The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (41 page)

One of the sanddragons in the
path of Daxin’s shot was squirming, and blood was trailing from holes in the
neck and leg of another. Daxin flicked the lever and fired the second barrel.
There was a flash so bright he could see it through his eyelids. The kick was even
stronger this time, but when he opened his eyes, the gun hadn’t burst, and
there were more bleeding sanddragons.

He snapped open the breech and
yanked out the spent shells, nervous hands fumbling with the hot brass. The
shells fell to the water and floated, and he replaced them with two more before
the last tendrils of smoke had cleared. There was chaos in the cave; the mare’s
fearful sloshing below and the sanddragons’ wounded thrashing and a flurry of
women’s screams coming from another alcove. Daxin saw the reason for the
screams before he could fire again—two men inching along the narrow crescent.
Biyo and Eivan, cutlass and knifespear, poking and jabbing with the points of
their weapons to keep the sanddragons back. Both men were so afraid, Daxin
could see them trembling across the distance.
Coff it, you idiots. There’s
no need for this. One of you is as brave as the other is stupid
, he wanted
to say. “Get back,” was all he managed.

Biyo gave him a weak smile and
waved by peeling a few fingers from his white-knuckled chokehold on the
cutlass. Daxin snapped the breech closed and raised his gun just as half a
dozen more sanddragons detected the two men and started over toward them. Daxin
squeezed off the first round, flicked the lever, and followed up with the
second, not stopping to see what he’d hit. The cave echoed and left his ears
ringing louder. It was as if someone had begun to blow a whistle behind his
skull with no intention of stopping. The air was so smoky now that he could
only just see the sanddragons hissing and flailing about on the shore.

Biyo and Eivan lunged forward,
taken by a sudden surge of confidence. Daxin’s volleys seemed to have served
only to encourage them. He busied himself reloading, then batted a hand to
clear the smoke as the two men clashed with the slithering mass of lizards.
Where Biyo was cautious and deliberate, Eivan was aggressive and quick with his
makeshift spear, gritting his crooked teeth as he slashed in and drove the
point home again and again. The big lizards didn’t go down easily, and soon the
two men were finding it tougher to hold their ground. There was nowhere Daxin
could aim without the risk of hitting them, so he drew the machete and slid
forward until he was dangling by the meat of his buttocks.

Facing even a single
sanddragon was folly, he knew. Facing a dozen through a pool of caustic groundwater
was far beyond that. He let a moment pass, giving himself the opportunity to
heed his better judgment and listen to that voice in his head again.
You’re
being a jackass
, it told him. Biyo and Eivan were done being heroes, it
seemed; they were backing away now, the advancing green tangle craving after
them. In that instant Daxin hated them both, if only because putting themselves
at risk had made him consider doing the same. It was Biyo he was worried about;
Biyo was the one the villagers would miss if he were to fall prey. Eivan could
make a meal of himself for all Daxin cared, though his heroism had curbed
Daxin’s distaste for the moment. He cursed their ignorance, wondering how they’d
survived in the Skeletonwood for so long without him.

Daxin let himself slip off the
ledge before he was sure he wanted to, bending his legs to cushion his fall
without letting his head go underwater. When he stood, the water rose to his
sternum, cold and murky, and he felt his bare feet sink into an inch of sludge.
Shouting every insult he could think of, he raised his arms and clanged the
machete blade against the gun barrels as he made his way toward shore. A few sanddragons
broke off their pursuit of Biyo and Eivan, and stood guarding the shoreline
like inanimate gargoyles, venomous saliva dripping from hungry jaws.

Daxin’s skin was tingling by
the time he’d risen to his thighs, his stomach the color of a lightburn. He
stood less than two fathoms away from the shore, close enough to get a good
look at the damage he’d done. A number of the sanddragons had sustained
significant wounds, but few seemed to have been hampered by them. When the
first sanddragon leapt into the water and began to swim toward him, the heroic
surge that had gotten him off that ledge became a wave of regret.
Stupid really
must
be contagious
, he thought, and he had to laugh at the absurdity
of it all.

Daxin could hold his own in a
fight, but he was no warrior—not like his brother. From time to time, he still
marveled at his escape from Vantanible’s men that day in the scrublands. It
seemed so long ago now, and he had only gotten more worried about Toler finding
him every day since. If the eye wound he’d given his brother hadn’t killed him,
it had made him angrier—that much he could guess with relative certainty.

Half a dozen sanddragons stood
on shore waiting for him, staring at him and flicking their tongues as though
they were playing audience to his performance. He loosed the first barrel in
the direction of the nearest lizard’s head. With his left hand, he hacked at
the one swimming toward him, making clumsy splashes until he connected with two
consecutive blows. The first crashed through the middle of the dragon’s skull,
leaving a gash from nose to crown; the second cut it through the eye and
dislodged its jaw by the tendons. The sanddragon writhed, then grew listless,
and began to sink.

The sanddragon he’d shot gave
a furious twitch before it slumped and lay still, its head bleeding and full of
holes. The others crowded around it, flicking their tongues and sensing the end
of its life. As Daxin stood watching, they began to devour their dead cohort, hinging
their jaws at grotesque angles to rip away chunks of flesh with their fangs. Daxin
didn’t remember reading that they were cannibals, but he was glad for it.

There was no time to let his
sickened relief sink in; Eivan and Biyo were still being hunted, the dead
sanddragon having lured away scarce few of their pursuers. They’d run out of
room to flee and were stabbing frantically at the oncoming mob, their courage
dissolving with each inch of ground they lost.

The tingling in Daxin’s legs
was verging on pain now. He whistled for his mare, and climbed onto her back
when she came splashing over. She was unbridled, so he took her by the mane and
gave her a gentle easing in the direction he wanted to go, avoiding the feeding
sanddragons for a berth further up the shoreline. He’d never fired a shot from this
horse’s back before, but judging by the way she’d spooked earlier, he thought
better of it.

He reloaded, then dismounted
on a vacant patch of land and emptied both barrels into the pile of cannibalistic
sanddragons.
You’re as big a fool as these two
, he scolded himself,
switching to his machete. He chose his targets as he ran, foreseeing every
slash and cut before it happened. The distance proved to be too far and his
timing too late, however. The sanddragons had struck both men about the legs
numerous times with teeth and claws by the time Daxin entered the fray. He
danced around them, hacking at heads and necks even as Eivan fell against the
cave wall and Biyo stumbled down onto one knee.

Daxin kept at it until the
great lizards began to turn on him; many were wounded, but more than one was
still too many to face by himself. As the ravening dragons began to clamber
over cutlass and knifespear, Daxin knew there was nothing more he could do for
them. Across the way, the cannibal sanddragons were losing interest in the
corpse and wandering away from it. Daxin heard their guttural noises behind him
as he fled back along the narrow strip of land and leapt to horse. His mare
splashed into the deep water, but this time the sanddragons didn’t stop when
they reached the shore. They were diving, flinging themselves forward with
powerful forelegs and slithering through the water like slow green missiles.

When he reached the ledge,
Ellicia lay curled into a ball at the back, staring through wide eyes as Biyo
and Eivan’s screams rang through the cave.

“Come with me,” Daxin said,
tossing his bags and saddle over the mare’s back and cinching the straps tight.

Ellicia cowered and shook her
head.

“You have to come now,” Daxin
said, holding his hand out to her.

She didn’t budge; she only sat
watching through eyes bright with dread, as the bodies glided through the
water, cold green scales run through with muddy brown.

Daxin checked the lizards’
approach and knew it was time to go. His legs were as red as beets and he could
still hear the rain coming down in sheets outside, but he hadn’t been bitten,
and neither had his mare, as far as he could tell. “If you won’t come, then you
must stay there,” he told her. “They can’t get to you as long as you stay
there.”

He hesitated, perhaps a second
too long, deciding between gallantry and self-preservation. He wanted to tell Ellicia
everything, but the time for that had passed. How could he even begin to
explain that he wasn’t who he said he was? How could he tell her where he was
going? And what would she do if he told her the reason why? There was no time
for any of it, so he spurred his mare and trudged along the wall until the
water was shallow, forcing the swimming sanddragons to alter their course. He
emerged onto the shore, skin sore and dripping, and forged a path over a bare
section of beach. The predators were swimming too slowly to catch up.

Daxin ducked down and hugged
his mare’s neck as she squeezed through the entrance passage, slipping and
sliding up the mud-stained slope all the way to the surface. Rain was still
falling on the above-world, but the worst of the storm had passed to the south
and been swept out over the Horned Gulf. Daxin donned his leathers, for what
meager protection they offered him from the rain, then rode hard. He tried to convince
himself there was no way he could’ve stayed, and he knew it was a lie. It
would’ve been suicide, and his horse was too important to sacrifice; he would
never make it where he was going on foot with a bad ankle. But how would that
have sounded, telling Ellicia he cared more about a stupid animal than about
her and all the people in Dryhollow Split?

Daxin fled across the
Skeletonwood until he found a cranny beneath a high rock that was large enough
to shelter beneath. There he raised a tarp and set out the few containers he
had that were strong enough to collect water without breaking down. The rain
had eaten his underclothes to rags, and his mare’s flesh looked as if someone
had been scrubbing her with a hard pumice stone instead of a brush. When he ran
a hand over his scalp, the hair came away in long gray strands.

The ground was too wet to lay
on, and it was too wet for a fire, so he made a passable seat out of his saddle
and saddlebags and spent the night drifting in and out of sleep. There were
brief moments of dream in which he heard Eivan and Biyo screaming, their voices
shrill with terror. They pleaded with him for help, but his body was paralyzed
with fear and he could only watch as the lizards devoured them. He saw more sanddragons
tearing apart his brother’s corpse, but when he rushed in to save him, Toler only
looked up at him with vacant black pits where his eyes should’ve been.
Toler’s voice came through the empty holes, though his lips never moved.
She
left you
, Daxin’s brother told him.
She left you. Poor Dax. You’re
looking so thin and gray these days, and she left you
. Then Toler began to
scream, that same haunting, voiceless sound Daxin had caused with his skinning
knife that day in the scrublands.

In another dream, there were
people starving on the high rock above where he’d made his camp, flood waters
rising all around them. He took aim and shot each of them, one at a time, and
watched them fall into the water, where Toler and his shepherds swam like
carnivorous fish and pulled them under.

He was drenched when he woke
from the last dream, covered in sweat and rain water and fluid from his red,
weeping skin. The sky was still pink with the first pre-dawn light, and the
rain had stopped. Without a tunic or underclothes, the leather had stuck to him,
and the moisture was making it chafe, so he got undressed and toweled himself
off with the robe in his bag.

Before the light-star was full
in the sky, he’d set half a dozen traps within a horizon of his camp and had
built a small fire to boil his water and cook the cactus meat he’d harvested.
He drank from one of his waterskins until it was empty, then pissed in it.
Later he would purify the urine into drinking water, if he ran low.

Daxin spent the day in the
shade while he let his mare graze over what she could find nearby. He stayed
there another night and the day afterward, gathering provisions and checking
his traps when the heat was low. He set off at dusk on the following day,
letting the darkness cover his advance, using the cool of night to conserve his
strength. Though his ankle still creaked and his skin was raw and stinging, he
was determined that nothing would get in his way this time. When he brought his
mare up to speed and the wind was whipping over him, he knew he was finally
back on his way toward achieving what he’d set out to do, all those weeks ago.

CHAPTER 37

The Blind-World

The
Halcyon
was a crippled gargant, laying
half-sunken at port with its hull ablaze. Its keel bumped the shoal with each
wave as torrents of flame engulfed it. The fire had already taken its toll,
though
calaihn
and
ikzhehn
alike were still racing about to quell
the spreading flames. There was a terrible aching in Lizneth’s head and a coil
of sick in her stomach as they set her on the docks; the air felt too hot to
breathe, and the planks were hard and unforgiving beneath her.

Zhigdain, the big-eared gray-and-white, had rushed into the
captain’s quarters moments after Curznack left, administering the last two
vials of purple liquid to Lizneth and Fane. Then he and the others had carried
them off the ship. The venom had inundated Lizneth in waves of increasing
severity, so the last few minutes had passed in a blur of half-awareness. She
could feel the antidote working now, lifting the narcosis from her like thin
layers of shadow.

“Welcome back to the world,
cuzhe
,” said Bresh. “We
were worried you wouldn’t make it.”

“She wasn’t so bad off,” Zhigdain said coolly. “The antidote
was in her before the venom had a chance to take hold.”

“You acted valiantly,” Dozhie said, favoring him with a
shallow nod.

“Where did Fane go?” Lizneth asked. Her lips and tongue felt
swollen and clumsy, as if they didn’t belong in her mouth.

“He’s right beside you,” Dozhie said, laughing.

Fane was, in fact, lying beside her on the dock, his head
propped on the same woolen blanket, his eyes fixed on the scuttled boat. His
gaze met hers, and the hint of a smile played behind his longteeth. “You ought
to be more careful, getting yourself stabbed like that,” he said, grinning
weakly.

“I thought that was the end for both of us,” Lizneth said.
She looked up at Zhigdain. “How did you get those vials from Curznack?”

“I slew him,” Zhigdain said. “I saw you both go into the
captain’s quarters while we were fighting Qeddiker. When Curznack came out, I
intercepted him at the gangway as he was trying to leave the ship. He was still
hobbled from his wounds, and weaker still from the poison you put in him. A
bend in his back and too much lag in his step. Otherwise, I’d have been no
match for him in a fight. I put my sword through his neck and he died choking
on his own blood, if it pleases you to know. He kept trying to speak, clutching
at his belt, holding onto it like he thought it would stop him from drowning.
You’d told us about the poison, so it didn’t take long for me to connect the
pieces. I’m just glad I got to you in time. I don’t know how long it’ll be
before the effects wear off, but we should be going now… we’ll help you walk
until you’re back to normal.”

“This venom is strong,” Fane said. “There’s no promising
we’ll ever be
normal
again.”

“Oh, Fane,” Bresh said. “Must you be so cynical?”

“A firm sense of cynicism never hurt anyone,” said Fane,
smiling through his discomfort. “It’s the secret to happiness, you know. You’ll
let yourself believe all kinds of hogwash if you don’t strike every whimsical
thought with a good dose of logic. Expect the worst, and today will be the best
day of your life.”

Bresh patted him on the cheek and gave him the exasperated
look of one whose fondness outweighs their irritation, if only just.

“You slew Curznack?” Lizneth asked.

Zhigdain smiled. “You need not worry about that
dyagthezhe
anymore.”

“What about Qeddiker and the rest of the crew?”

“Qeddiker jumped ship,” Fane said. “While we were fighting…
he went overboard.”

Zhigdain gave their surroundings a wary glance. “There’s
little doubt some of the crew will survive the fire. It’s only a matter of time
before they break out or someone goes on board and frees them. Many of the
other rowing slaves have fled, and I think we would be wise to follow in their
steps.”

“Into the blind-world?” Lizneth asked.

“The blind-world is the only direction available to us, since
we have no boat,” said Zhigdain.

“That boat isn’t going anywhere,” Fane added. “And we can’t
stay here while we’re still in chains, either. Someone will round us up, hoping
for a bounty.”

“There’s a village in the Calgoar Vale. They say it’s a haven
for outcasts and refugees. We should be safe there, but we’ll have to walk
through the blind-world to get to it.”

“Where’s Curznack’s body?” Lizneth asked, realizing she was
still chained. “Did you search him for the keys?”

“Qeddiker had the keys on him when he jumped,” Zhigdain said.
“But Fane is right; we can’t stay.”

“I can scent him,” said Lizneth. “He can’t be far.”

“We can all scent him,” Zhigdain said. “It’s a question of
whether pursuing him would be prudent.”

Lizneth slouched, letting out a sigh. “I guess it wouldn’t.
So we have to walk all the way there bound in chains?”

“Unless you happen to know a good locksmith or an honest
thief who works for free. If we wait here we’re more likely to be picked up by
another group of slavers than we are to find Qeddiker again.”

“Help me up,” Lizneth said, chains rattling as she reached
for Zhigdain’s hand.

“It sounds like the
scearib
has come to her senses,”
Dozhie said, grinning.

When Lizneth was on her feet, Zhigdain handed her Curznack’s
belt and dagger. “I think you should have this. It’s thanks to you we’re all
saved,
cuzhe
. Without any of the antidote left, I fear the blade may be
too dangerous to use, but it’s a token of our victory nonetheless.”

Lizneth fastened the belt around her waist and tried to stand
on her own. She was sore all over. Her tail sent painful shivers up her spine
every time she tried to balance. At least some of her strength was returning,
thanks to the antidote. Bresh and Dozhie helped her along while Zhigdain gave
Fane a supportive shoulder, and together they shrank into the shadows and fled
through the port, taking with them what small collection of weapons and
provisions they’d managed to salvage from the ship.

The way to the blind-world was a long, gently sloping rise
that took them past warehouses, taverns, and fishing shacks filled with
mariners and longshore workers, over plank decks where they could hear the
water lapping below them, and through narrow lanes and alleys that felt as
deserted as the sea. They could hear the faint current of music in the air from
time to time, and there were always the sounds of
calaihn
and
ikzhehn
hollering from the docks, where Lizneth caught glimpses of the
Halcyon
burning from time to time.

As they drew closer to the blind-world, their shadows cowered
behind them, until suddenly it was flooding them in its soft glow, rendering them
exposed and vulnerable to every passing eye. Their armament seemed the biggest
deterrent to any who took an interest in them; though they were chained, slaves
with weapons were nothing to be trifled with unless they were in the act of
causing a disturbance, which Lizneth and her companions made certain not to be.

A retinue of fierce-looking
calaihn
stood at the
entrance to the city proper, patterns of self-inflicted scars shining stark
against their copper skin. They looked unconcerned with Lizneth and her group,
throwing them only casual glances as they went by. She thought them all the
more peculiar from up close; they had a wet look about them, their skin
glistening as if they’d just been underwater. That, together with the damage
they’d done to their bodies, made them look more ridiculous than frightening.

Their
haick,
too, was cumbersome. Lizneth couldn’t
separate the scent of one
calai
from another; it came to her as a single
thick presence, the fetor of yellow saltrock mixed with a humid stench like rotting
leaves.

Soon they reached the end of the last shadow, where the
blind-world’s light cut a line from the top of the cave across the ground,
sharper than the edge of a claw. Lizneth had never known there was a light so
strong and brilliant in all the Aionach. She had certainly never seen such a
crisp contrast before. As she looked out beyond the cave, she found that she
couldn’t see the same way she’d always been able to. The light made everything
fuzzy and vague; it was impossible to open her eyes more than a sliver. She
understood then why it was called the blind-world.

“We should go on,” Zhigdain said, as the five of them stood at
the edge of the shadow, the cave mouth yawning from the earth like a round,
toothless maw.

Lizneth shielded her eyes and looked back toward the
calaihn
.
Behind them, she could see the city of Sai Calgoar in the distance, hundreds of
tiny caves opening onto the side of a cliff that shot upward and onward for
thousands of fathoms. She could just make out the dark shapes of
calaihn
coming and going from homes and meeting places, entering and exiting the many
tiny holes and doorways that lay tucked into the rock face.

Spread out below were the trappings of a vast market, though
it didn’t appear to be open for business at the moment. Perhaps the hour was
too early yet. Tents and clay huts lined dusty aisles in the gorge between the
mountains and the city. In the opposite direction—where Lizneth and the others
were headed—the peaks fell away into a great valley of sandy soil and desiccated
grasses that stretched further than she had any hope of seeing.

The five companions set off into the light, irons clinking as
their chains dragged over the dust, kicking up more of it than was desirable for
breathing or escaping notice. Zhigdain took the lead, his enormous ears perked
for signs of danger. Fane stayed beside him, bent and wilted from the poison,
but resisting further help all the same. Old Bresh was limping along on Lizneth’s
left, while Dozhie, the dam who was younger but somehow wiser and
older-looking, walked on the other side, lending Lizneth a supporting hand from
time to time.

Daylight was splashing full against the mountainside,
offering the former slaves no shade or shelter as they followed the curve of
the vale. No sooner had Lizneth entered the blind-world than she’d begun to
hate it. The warmth ran through her like a drink that was so hot and irritating
it scalded her insides and boiled her blood. Her injured tail wasn’t cooling
her as well as a healthy tail would’ve, and after a few minutes there seemed to
be no difference in temperature between the hot ground and the pads of her
feet. It felt as though the blind-world’s light would burn right through and
bake her from the inside.

She remembered how cold the Omnekh’s waters had been, and she
almost considered running back into the cave and throwing herself into the sea.
At least in the cold she had fur to keep her insulated; there was no escape
from the heat. Worse, she found herself wishing she was still on board Curznack’s
ship. It was cool and damp and comfortable there, and she began to forget the
violence of the waves, remembering only the feeling of the icy spray on her
face.

The sounds of the port waned behind them as they trudged into
the vale. Lizneth’s eyes had begun to hurt so much that she was sure they would
melt out of her skull; she kept them shut tight as she shuffled along,
squeezing them open every few seconds to make sure the ground was still there
and she wasn’t about to run into anything.

“Water,” Fane said, finally putting his obstinacy aside.

Zhigdain pulled a skin from among his things and let Fane have
a few small sips. “There is only a little left,” Zhigdain said, and Lizneth
heard the fatigue in his voice. “The light grows. It will grow for hours yet.
All we can do is press on toward Gris-Mirahz.”

“We should stop… find shade…” Fane said.

“That would be the death of us,” Zhigdain said. “Shade will
only slow the process, not stop it.”

“How do the
calaihn
live here,” Lizneth asked,
“without tails to cool them?”

“They have better than tails,” Bresh said. “Did you see their
skin, how wet it was?”

Lizneth nodded.

“They call it sweat. The skin leaks water when the daylight
falls on them.”

“Disgusting,” Lizneth said. “What kind of water? Saliva? Or
urine?”

“I don’t know,” Bresh said. “Both, maybe.”

Lizneth made a face. “The more I learn of them, the less I
like them.”

“No one here will disagree with you,
scearib
,” said Fane.
“
Calaihn
are repulsive.
Ikzhehn
who deal with them are not right
in the mind.”

“It takes a cruel mind to be a slaver,” said Zhigdain. “It’s
no wonder Curznack dealt with the
calaihn
.”

“I’m sure slaving is profitable work, but the blind-world has
goods we need besides slaves,” said Bresh. “Trading with
calaihn
is a
dirty thing, but some believe it necessary.”

“Let them believe that if they want,” said Fane. “They’re
wrong.”

The day grew hotter as they walked. Lizneth wondered how long
it could go on, sapped and sluggish as she was already feeling. Nodes of pain
flashed across every part of her, lingering signs of the antidote helping her
body fight away the poison.

A point of rock shot up in front of them like a spear,
blocking the distance ahead from view. It wasn’t until they passed the high
outcropping that they could see the shape of the valley; this part of it, at
least, was like the space between two outstretched fingers, with Sai Calgoar
pinched into the joint. They were walking out toward the knuckle of rock, the
distant mountains of the far finger only just visible beyond the heat haze.
Lizneth’s eyes burned even more fiercely now as she tried to get a glimpse of
the way ahead.

Beyond this point, clusters of red-orange stone interrupted
the sand at every hillock and rise. Their travel was slow and labored, but soon
all sight and sound of Sai Calgoar was lost behind them, and the smell of the
sea gave way to the scent of wild sage and creosote. Scenting in the absence of
sight didn’t seem to help Lizneth much; the blind-world’s aroma was foreign to
her, and trying to orient herself on smell alone was like navigating a
labyrinth with shifting walls.