The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (55 page)

Memories of waking up in dilapidated tenement buildings like
this one, of hiding from either gangers or his father, depending on the hour,
were all that remained of Merrick’s formative years. He was six when Pilot Wax
organized the Scarred Comrades and put up the first border walls, reopened the White
Birch Primary School and gave Merrick a sense of structure he’d never known
before.

The mark of the Scarred at the crook of his thumb was
unmistakable, shining black in a luster of sweat. He drew the knife and examined
the blade. Kugh had taken good care of the weapon, if this was his. Merrick
held it like a pencil, with the back of the blade resting on his knuckle and
the point resting over the mark. He began to scrape. The first drop of blood
came quickly, and it hurt. The tattoo was an inch long at least. It
would take time.

He bit his lip as he worked, ignoring the grumbling in his
stomach. His eyes stung with sweat and ran with tears, but he didn’t stop until
after he’d scraped away the last signs of the mark. Both his hands were bloody,
and so were the knife and the wooden planks in the floor. He ignited and
touched himself with a fingertip. The heat began to cycle through him in a
bizarre current. He felt it leave him, and he felt it come back in just as
quickly. The scraped-off skin began to heal over with smooth white scar tissue.
Now he really was scarred, but it was the scar itself that was hiding who he
used to be.

When he was done, he risked climbing to the roof again for a
better view of his surroundings. He saw the first people he’d seen since he got
here; an old scavvy pushing a junked utility cart down a side street, its metal
bed rattling with the man’s treasures; a group of hoodlums ambling along behind
at a distance, trying to discern whether the old man had the means to defend
himself; a woman shaking the dust from a rug on the patio of a distant high-rise.
Everything looked familiar, like something from recent memory, though he knew
it was only his childhood come calling again.

Now that it was light out, Merrick could see the details of
the government building a little better. There was a fence of scaffolding and
plywood surrounding it, as though renovations had begun but were never
finished. There were spray—painted signs too weathered for meaning,
while tatters of plastic sheeting hung along the top, fragments of the larger
pieces people had torn off and hauled away. There was an air of solitude about
the place, something foreboding Merrick sensed in the empty streets around it.
Someone
lives there
, he surmised,
and the other residents are afraid of whoever
it is
.

The shadow appeared on the roof again. Merrick’s eyes darted
toward the movement, but the figure ducked behind the dome and was gone. The
movement had been more timid than menacing. Merrick felt drawn to it, whether by
some instinct, or out of loneliness, or the need to make a new ally. Nothing
was worse in the city south than being without an ally. Nothing was worse
anywhere. He was still wearing the gray fatigues of a Scarred Comrade. Even
without the mark, that would make friends hard to come by. He’d been here less
than half a day, yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone so long
without talking to someone.

Whatever was in that building that was scaring the southers so
much, Merrick decided he wouldn’t let it scare him too. If he was going to
survive, he had to get off this rooftop and find food. If he couldn’t find food
of his own, he would have to take someone else’s. That was the way of it, plain
and simple.

The ladder on the fire escape squeaked on rusted hinges as he
climbed to the ground, keeping his wits sharp about him. The shadows were
waning, but he clung to them where he could, molding himself anew in the shape
of every chunk of edifice. His mind clicked into gear like a reflex, the
automatic surrender of emotion to reason; of fear to training; of anxiety
to habit.

He came to the end of the row of buildings and peered out
onto the street. There were several stretches of bare asphalt between him and
his destination. He took a deep breath, and darted into the open. When he
passed the next cross street, the hoodlums he’d seen earlier were right at the
corner—six of them, thin but scrappy. They were laughing and joking, their
packs a little fuller than before. Merrick was exposed, and there was nowhere
to hide. One of the hoodlums pointed in his direction, and they broke off after
him.
Coffing shit. ‘Fernal son of a bitch
.
And I called myself brave for
going out alone at night in the city north. What a delusion that was
.

If he’d had his rifle, Merrick would’ve stood his ground and
sprayed them full of metal as they came. It would’ve been easier than picking
food from between his teeth. The knife in his pocket was a poor replacement, so
he bolted toward the Ministry building instead. Whoever lived there was about
to have more visitors than they knew what to do with—unless these hoodlums were
the ones who occupied it, in which case he was about to walk right into their
living room.

The hoodlums were older than him, but they had the benefit of
less wind resistance to slow them down. Merrick had a long way to go, and he knew
he shouldn’t wear himself out too soon, but he had to widen the gap. When he
ignited, he found it impossible to differentiate the heat in his chest from the
daylight beating down around him. At the next cross street, a couple of
hoodlums split off to either side. There were two left trailing him, and they
were keeping pace.
I might be able to take on just two of them
, he
thought, but he knew better than to try. The distance between basements and
storefronts could be deceptive; streets and alleyways twisted through passages
hidden from sight, and these hoodlums were likely to know every step, obstacle,
turn, and stair. Cautious and safe was better than overconfident and cornered.

Arms heaving, feet smacking pavement, Merrick’s breath began
to go ragged. He veered around a corner and found himself in the midst of a
leftover construction site, a dead-end section of road littered with scraps of
plastic traffic drums and bright orange road cones, cement barriers and holes
in the pavement. A knife of daylight shone through the slot between two
buildings, blinding him to what lay ahead. He could hear it, though; footsteps,
first from the right, then from the left, hoodlums materializing from whatever
clandestine passages they’d taken.

The course through the construction zone was treacherous.
Merrick had to keep his eyes sharp, both on where he was going and who was
around him. The hoodlums were shouting to one another, calling out his position.
Someone flew into step behind him, shoes sliding over loose gravel. He hurdled
the concrete barrier, surprised that he’d reached the end of the construction
zone already, and landed in the shallow pit on the other side. Scrambling up
and out, he jumped down onto the underside of a half-built bridge.

It was a wide bridge, and the underside was so low he had to
bend forward to run without hitting his head. Less than halfway across, he
smacked a shoulder into a jutting support bracket. Steel, as it turned out, was
harder than he was. The impact spun him to the side. He twisted his knee and
lapsed into a one-legged hobble as the pain came, bright and flashing, through his
synapses. His hopping foot buckled, and he slipped off the edge. It was a long
time before he touched down on anything solid again. He hit hard
and slid, then tumbled, down the concrete slope, as the world strobed between
darkness and daylight.

He ended up on the road that ran underneath the bridge, still
unsure whether he was igniting or acting on adrenaline alone. He used the
lingering momentum to roll to his feet, his vision still doing somersaults. The
hoodlums poured in around him like wolves to the kill. He whirled and sprinted
down the road, following the faded yellow lines until he emerged from below the
bridge. From there he turned northwest, where the taller structures cleared
away and he could see the Ministry building ahead. He was limping hard at
first, but as he ran, his twisted knee began to loosen and feel right again.

The hoodlums were close now, but he resisted the urge to slow
himself down by looking over his shoulder. He could see the wall of scaffolding
ahead, and the rubber-marked white of the sidewalk that curved around the
perimeter. It felt like his destination was horizons away, though it was no
more than a hundred yards off.

He sprinted with everything he had until a weight came down
hard on his back. Thin vice-like hands pinned his arms to his sides and wrapped
him in a tight bear hug. Feet tangled with his, tripping him up. For a second
he was floating, waiting for the next foot to fall in front of him, wondering
where it had gone and why it was late. Then he was horizontal, tied up and
falling like a roll of old carpet being dropped from a high window.

He cracked his head on the pavement, and everything blurred.
An anemic face, lined deep with hunger and desperation, the eyes sunken and
jaundiced. Stones in Merrick’s sides, hands pummeling him with strokes as hard
as iron, the sky crowding with fists that charged and retreated. Blurry shapes,
silhouettes against the dawn, trees standing and waiting to take their turns,
to drink his blood. A zip, crack, snap.

The anemic face lifted away and the weight slumped aside, and
Merrick was swimming in blood that wasn’t his own. One blurry tree fell where
it stood, and the rest uprooted and fled. A blank space in time. Blinking
against the crimson spray, wiping his eyes, Merrick saw a new shadow. It was
upside down, looking at him as he looked up into the red sky. The trees were
gone, the trees that had been the hoodlums, and all that was left was the shape
of an upside down man, hooded and cloaked. The same shape Merrick had seen on
the rooftop of the Ministry building. The shape of a gray shadow made flesh.

CHAPTER 49

Toward Home

When Lizneth drank the tincture, she felt it course
through her like the remains of a wave through creases of rock. Soon her tail
was ice-cold, and she could feel the texture of the sand in the wounds from
Bilik’s nails as if she were no bigger than a shovelcrab. She had already bled
the porphyrin from her eyes with Jakrizah’s Oculus Cordial, and though they had
itched and stung at first, the effects were astounding; she could stare into
the center of candle flames and torches without squinting, while at the same
time her eyes could draw vivid color and luminance out of even the deepest
shadows.

Artolo the Nuck was sullen, wind tugging at his fur. “Why do
you have to go?”

The crags above the valley were already a deep shade of blue,
receding into the violet-gray of evening. The reasons Lizneth had to go were
too many to name, truth be told. She was ready to leave all of this behind her
and go back to her plain old normal life. She needed to be gone before Morish
arrived, with his disease and his
aezoghil
. He would recognize her
haick
,
there was no doubting that. There could be nothing more between her and Artolo,
whom she’d taken as her lover like the fool she was, without knowing who
he
really was.

Zhigdain and Dozhie and all the rest would get by—and better without
her. She’d already wished them farewell, but when she’d told them what she
intended to do, the dams had begged her not to go. It was too risky, they said.
Fane, ever the pragmatist, had told her she would fail.
You’ll die a long
year before you ever make it home
, he’d said. And Zhigdain, with his
fatherly propriety, had invited her to stay with him and Dozhie, to become
their adopted
cuzhe
. When she had refused him, he’d given her the
goggles as a parting gift, wishing her luck in his typical unvarnished way. She
still wasn’t sure how she felt about Zhigdain. She had a feeling he was the
type who looked out for his own and had a problem with everyone else. She only
hoped he would treat Dozhie better than he had treated everyone they’d met
since they disembarked from the
Halcyon
.

Then there was Qeddiker. If Morish hadn’t found Lizneth in
Gris-Mirahz, Qeddiker would’ve. Maybe Qeddiker knew Gris-Mirahz was Morish’s
town. Maybe he was afraid to go there, and that was why he hadn’t followed
their
haick
sooner. Whatever the reason, Lizneth was done with slaves
and captives and criminals. She needed to get home and save whatever was left
of her family. If something had happened to them because of her absence, she’d
never forgive herself.

“I can’t stay and watch that
eh-calai
get sliced up. I
don’t have the stomach for it. And I told you I would be on my way home as soon
as Jakrizah was done mixing her potions. My parents need me to tend our fields
so they can stay on Sniverlik’s good side and live out another harvest in
peace.
Dyagth
, I never should’ve left.” She tugged the straps of her
waterskins, put a hand to her pouch and felt the glass vials clink inside,
checked the knife belt to make sure it was snug. Purple liquid sloshed inside
the tiny bottles of antivenom Jakrizah had placed into the pockets.

“I would go with you…”

“No. No, you can’t come. I know you can’t leave Gris-Mirahz.
If things ever change in Tanley, maybe we’ll see each other again.”

Artolo moved close, nuzzling her neck.

Krahz, get me out of this
. “All of this, it means a
lot. You’re very kind. I wouldn’t have been able to do this if it weren’t for
you.”

“I know, and I hate myself for it. Why have I been so nice to
you?” Artolo chittered, a pleasant sound, but sad.

“Goodbye, Artolo the Nuck.”

“So long, Lizneth the Adventuring
Scearib Parikua
.”

Lizneth turned and scampered off, knowing there would never
be a right moment to tell him goodbye forever. There was an ache in her chest, but
it was a different ache than she’d felt when she was with him. It was the
feeling of loss, yes, but it was also longing. Homesickness.

She followed the ridge north across the Brinescales, away
from Sai Calgoar and the harsh deserts that lay beyond. The terrain here was
hard to navigate, but she kept the vale to her right and the mountains to her
left at all times, traveling at night to keep cool.
Ikzhehn
weren’t
meant to live any further south than the
calai
city, she decided; being
there had felt unnatural, and any country not blanketed in mountain and hollow
beneath wasn’t worth the dirt it had been made from.

Each day, Lizneth found a cave or hollow to shelter in and
wait out the bright heat, though even with Jakrizah’s cold tinctures she never
got enough sleep. She would have food all the way home as long as she rationed
it, but the variety was poor, and the dried kelp tasted so bad that she never
ate it until she was ravenous.
Things that live in the sea do not make good
food for traveling
, she decided.

When she dreamed, it was of her family and Sniverlik, of
torture and slavery. She began to have a recurring dream where a great hole
opened in the mountain beneath where she lay, and she would wake up falling,
falling, some distance so great it was unnerving. But always in the dream she
knew the Omnekh was below her, somewhere so far down she could never see it in
the black. She wore chains in the dream too, so that when she finally landed in
the sea, she could only flail about and wait for death and darkness as the
waves crested, higher than mountains, and swept over her.

After a few nights’ travel, and just woken from a fitful
day’s sleep, she came to a ruin of mortared stone, half-toppled walls jutting
from dozens of outcroppings along the ridge.
This was a calai village, once
,
she surmised,
but there’s the haick of ikzhehn here too
. She had heard
of the burrow-kin,
ikzhehn
who made tunnels so close to the surface that
it was said they’d grown as tall and lean and brutal as the
calai
. Until
now, she’d thought she would make it home without coming across any burrow-kin.

A moss-covered wall opened onto a shallow yard where Lizneth
caught a glimpse of a handful of figures in the fading daylight as she
scampered by. There were a handful of them,
ikzhehn
standing together
between the fragments of two ruined walls. They had brittle claws, worn down
from digging in the stony soil. Their fur was mangy, run through with inbred
smudges of gray and brown and khaki. Their longteeth were stunted and chipped,
deteriorated over the rigor of hard diets.

When Lizneth saw the whites of their eyes flashing in her
direction, she scrambled down a rough-hewn staircase and hid behind a berm,
heart racing. They’d seen her. She was sure of it, though they were so quiet
about it she began to second-guess herself.
What am I doing? I can’t stop
moving. They’ll find me here
.

She bolted out from her hiding place on all fours, pouches
and skins jangling. The burrow-kin came scurrying down around her so fast it
startled her. She wove her way through a series of high rock tables as they
leapt from one to the next, their evening shadows falling beside her like
cackling black gargants.
There’s no way I’ll outrun them, and I’ll never
fight off so many
, she thought. The dagger gave her an advantage, but she
might as well have been trying to play a tune on the buzzhorn for all the skill
she wielded it with.

Lizneth had begun to veer westward the night before, leaving
the sands of the vale behind her. Now the mountains hedged her in on all sides,
and she could only see as far ahead as the next ridge or boulder in her path.
She could hear the chorus of feet whispering on the stone, getting closer as
she wove her way over the spines and furrows of the landscape, tiring but never
gaining ground. Soon she found herself racing through a wide gulley that was
starting to tilt downhill. She saw the edge before she reached it,
stutter-stepped and skidded on loose gravel. There was no sense in stopping;
they’d catch her if she didn’t face whatever was over that precipice.

Her momentum sent her straight over the edge. Her legs were
still pumping when she hit the side of the slope, and she found herself sliding
down a gigantic hill toward a dried-up river basin, kicking up shale and
pebbles, not so much running as being carried. The hill was so steep that if
she kept going straight down, she would come smashing to a halt at the bottom.

She swerved left to smooth out the angle of her approach, but
the scree gave out beneath her hind legs and swung her around. She lost her
footing first; then she lost all sense of equilibrium as she flipped and spun
and tumbled over the stones for what seemed like an interminable length of
time. The landing was better than she’d imagined, if only for the fact that she
was so adrenaline-soaked that she got up without feeling it. She was so
disoriented that she only realized she’d reached the bottom because the world
had stopped twisting around.

The river basin was silt and sand and limestone; bereft of
the flow of water, but still wet to the touch. At its head she could see a cave
entrance, waves of tan sediment laced with black cascading from its mouth. The
cave floor rose into the mountainside. In the other direction, the canyon
deepened and disappeared around a bend, the high walls leaving no other visible
avenues for escape.

A few of the burrow-kin were picking their way down the
slope, some sending up clouds of dust as they came down after her in a reckless
slide. Others were perched on the ledge, watching, and still more had taken off
along the ridge, following the canyon toward some destination ahead, as if they
knew another way down.

Lizneth ran for the cave, knowing they’d pick up her
haick
if she hid there, but hoping to find a way out at the other end. The wet
sediment felt good on her feet. It reminded her of the beach in Gris-Mirahz,
though she’d been safer in that den of thieves than she was now. She wondered
what old Morish would do when he got to Gris-Mirahz, if he picked up Lizneth’s
haick
or Artolo mentioned her. What would happen the next time he sailed to
Bolck-Azock? Would he really send his brutes all the way to Tanley to find her,
as Curznack had claimed?

She heard noises as soon as she was inside the cave.
Of
course the burrow-kin know where I’ll end up
, she realized.
Tunneling is
what they do. Coming into this cave was no better than walking into a trap they
set themselves
. It was hard going uphill in the sand, but it would’ve been
even harder to scale the loose stones of the canyon she’d fallen into. The cave
wound up the mountain, serpentine and meandering, with many false starts
running off to either side. There were sneaking, skittering sounds at every
intersection, and the dark shapes of things moved along the walls and made her
skin crawl. Her eyes were brilliant in the darkness after her second dose of
Jakrizah’s Oculus Cordial, and she told herself she wouldn’t let the burrow-kin
catch her unawares.

The trickle of water at her feet turned into a steady stream
further up, most of it diverted down a side passage. The sandy soil grew rocky,
and the rocks forged themselves into a series of ledges like giant stone steps.
Lizneth had taken the highest possible passage each time she came to a crossroads,
and she wasn’t about to change her method now. Getting back to the surface was
the only way to escape these burrow-kin.

She hopped onto the first ledge and splashed forward. The
water was ice-cold, and there was slippery moss growing from every submerged
stone. She felt more stable on all fours, but the water ran over her belly and
gave her a shiver. She grew colder as she ascended each step, and she could
feel even the faintest breezes on the wet parts of her skin. The water was
clean—purified by some aquifer near the surface—and it never seemed to irritate
her.

The highest ledge held the deepest water, though it was more
a bowl than a ledge. A low waterfall decanted into it from the round, flat lake
beyond. It was so deep that Lizneth had to walk upright, and the bottom was a
mire of loose sediment that caught hold of her feet and sucked them down. The
waterfall was slow-moving, but the force of it was strong enough that she had
to sidle to the edge and climb up where it was calmest.

She crouched on the rim, looking out over the cavern lake. She
could see across to the shore on the other side, where a passage continued
upward. There was no inlet stream as far as she could tell, though the surface
rippled as if it had been recently disturbed; it was a spring rather than a
lake, perhaps. She listened past the sound of the water running over her feet
and heard the burrow-kin beginning their climb behind her, splashing up the
first of the river steps. And from across the lake, a different sound.

Without knowing how deep it was, how fast the burrow-kin
could swim, or how many of them might be waiting for her up the passage on the
far side of the lake, Lizneth decided she’d make her stand here. She hopped off
the rim and let the flow carry her to the next step down, found a large, sturdy
rock near the sidewall to stand on, and drew her dagger. The scabbard was soaking
wet on the outside. When she saw the blade’s dull green glimmer in the darkness,
she breathed a sigh of relief. The scabbard was a snug fit for the dagger, and
the river hadn’t washed away the venom.

The burrow-kin advanced without torches or lanterns, needing
no light to aid their senses. They grumbled and spat at each other as they
picked their way up the river. The tops of their heads came into view first. As
each successive stair brought them closer, the dagger began to shake in
Lizneth’s hand. They were wiry things, all bone and sinew, worn and scraggly
from many scuffles—most with one another, she had no doubt.