The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (60 page)

The warlock rubbed until the paste was covering every scratch
on her body. He held up a finger and said something in his strange tongue. Then
he left her. She didn’t understand the words, but she knew he meant for her to
stay there.

The cooking fires had been left to smolder by the time the
warlock returned to check on her. He was carrying a small basket filled with
several varieties of plants and grasses. She watched him separate and tie them
off into bundles with lengths of thin cord.

“
Titrobaid
,” he said, and waved her closer.

The strips of paste had dried, and when they crumbled away
the skin beneath felt fresh. Lizneth could still feel the wounds and see where
they had begun to scab over, but the pain and redness had receded. “Thank you,”
she said, bowing her head.

“
Maetha
,” said the warlock, and bowed in turn.

He could’ve been wishing death upon me, for all I
understood of that
. She took her leave and returned to the fire, where the
leader of the
calaihn
was still sitting. The others around him were talking
and joking, but he was staring into the fire, lost in thought.

Lizneth still wasn’t very good at judging hu-man facial
expressions, but something in the
calai
’s eyes was somber. “How long
have you been away from home?” she asked him.

“This is my home,” the
calai
said, indicating the
foothills around them.

“Don’t you have a family? A mate? Children?”

The
calai
was silent for a time, still staring into
the flames. “Do you know why the
lathcui
call us nomads?” he asked.

“I don’t know what a
lath-cui
is,” Lizneth admitted,
taking her time with the foreign word.

The
calai
laughed. “One is a
lathcu
. Many are
lathcui
.”

“Ah, just like you are one
calai
and all of you together
are
calaihn
.”

 “Yes, I suppose so. Your language and mine are similar, you
know. Both are rooted in the same history, before the long ages drove them
apart. The
lathcui
are… how do I explain? They have impure blood.
Borrowed blood from distant shores. Their skin is light in color. They have
lesser heritage.”

“Oh, you mean the
eh-calaihn
.”

“That is your word for them? Well then. The
eh-calaihn
,”
he said. The word sounded as strange on his tongue as
lathcui
had felt
on hers. “The
eh-calaihn
call my people nomads, or savages. Not because
we have no grace, but because we came out of the north long ago. From
Calgareth, across many sands. The sand is in our blood. As it shifts and moves,
so do we also. I have a wife and six children. They understand what it is for a
man to move with the sands. The movement is part of us.”

“I used to think movement was part of me too,” Lizneth said.
“I wanted to leave home so badly, to see the whole world and never go back. But
since I’ve been gone, all I’ve wanted to do is go home again.”

“The desire for movement does not mean you will not miss
home. It means you bring home with you wherever the movement takes you. The
master-king sends me home every time I go to him for new orders.”

“That isn’t possible for me. My fields won’t tend themselves
while I’m away. If I don’t tend the fields, the mulligraws will die, and
Sniverlik will punish Mama and Papa for a poor harvest.”

“I do not pretend to have sympathy for the
muirrhadi
,
or even to understand them. We keep as many
muirrhadi
slaves as we do
lathcui
in our city. The master-king’s interest in Sniverlik goes only so far as to
protect our people from him. But I have to say, little one, that it will do me
great honor to know your family is served well when my job is done.”

“I’ll take your message to Sniverlik,” Lizneth said.
“Whatever I can do, I’ll help you fight him.”

“Travel with us to the base of the Vors’ Rhachis, little one.
Then we will speak more of the message I want you to deliver. If Sniverlik
refuses us, we will stage our attack from the western edge of the vale.”

“You don’t have to call me little one. My name is Lizneth.”

The
calai
gave her a warm smile. “Very well, Lizneth
of Bolck-Azock. Call me Neacal Griogan of Sai Calgoar.”

The burrow-kin harried Neacal’s forces all the way to
the Vors’ Rhachis, hurling javelins and slingstones at them from hidden niches
and fleeing at the first signs of retaliation. Lizneth had been right, it
seemed; Sniverlik was already rallying the burrow-kin to his cause. She doubted
they would’ve been so aggressive unless Sniverlik had already exerted his influence
over them in some way.

The mountains were too treacherous to ride over, so Neacal’s
forces were all on foot. That meant they had to carry the full weight of their
supplies on their backs. Neacal was determined to arrive in Sniverlik’s domain soon
enough to put an end to his growing revolt before it got out of hand. The
Brinescales offered the nomads a faster trip north than if they’d ridden through
the vale with a full complement of mounts.

Lizneth had never seen a horse or a corsil, except the few
she’d spotted from a distance while she was in Sai Calgoar. Sometimes the
younger warriors would struggle through a tale or two in the Aion-speech for
her benefit, so she heard plenty of stories around the campfires about the
great beasts the
calaihn
rode when they were on the sands. Lizneth grew
fond of several of the younger
calaihn
, who were more accepting of her
than the elders. Neacal had to reprimand a group of older
calaihn
one
night for making jokes about Lizneth in their language. They kept their
distance from then on.

Traveling during daylight hours would’ve been rough going for
any
ikzhe
, but it was especially hard on Lizneth. She would often start
the day at the front of the group with Neacal. By the time they made camp for
the night, she would often find herself lagging near the back with the porters.
At times, the younger warriors would take turns hoisting her up onto their backs
and carrying her over the long horizons, but too often they had their own
burdens to carry, and they left her on her own to cover the distance.

On the third day of their trek, they made camp where the
eastern edge of the Vors’ Rhachis met the westernmost point of the Brinescales.
Neacal summoned Lizneth to his fire. They ate a meal of stale bread, grilled
corn, and a thin stew of mutton with bits of onion and potato.

“You look tired,” Neacal said, wiping the last of the stew
off his chin. “You have spirit to have kept up with us for this long.”

You have spirit. That’s the same thing Bilik told me
before he made me row so hard I nearly died
. “I barely kept up,” Lizneth
said. “If I hadn’t been carried—”

“Your role has become crucial to our success,” Neacal said,
interrupting. “I believe I can depend on you, Lizneth of Bolck-Azock. I have
placed a great deal of trust in you by asking you to deliver this message. It
is important to be sure that you possess the strength to go on. Do you still
wish to help us?”

Lizneth studied him, trying to read his eyes, but unsure of
what she was seeing.
Now that I’m here, going before Sniverlik seems scarier
than I thought it would be
, she almost said. “I… I do want to help you. But
I need to go home and make sure my family is okay.”

“Then do it,” Neacal said, setting his bowl aside. “Go home
first, if you must. But be quick about it. Each day we linger here is another
chance for Sniverlik’s spies to learn of our presence. This is what I want you
to tell him.” He cleared his throat.

Lizneth was confused. “Hold on. You aren’t writing it down?”

Neacal’s eyes flashed, his brow crumpling. “We have no scribe
here, no scholar of languages. The best I could do is make one of my men
scribble something in Calgoàric, but then what use would it be to you? Your
warlord would not even understand it. Do you write?”

“Sniverlik is not
my
anything,” Lizneth said. She
looked at the floor. “No. I don’t write. At least, I’ve never tried. I can read
some. I just thought you would write something Sniverlik could read, so I
wouldn’t have to… say it.”

“You will not speak to him, now?” Neacal was becoming angry;
that much Lizneth could tell.

“You don’t get what it means for me to do this. Carrying your
words to him makes me as much his enemy as you are. My whole village is bent to
his rule. He could have my entire family wiped out at the slightest whim, and
nobody could do a thing to stop him.”

“I was sent here to do
everything I can
to stop him,
and I will. If he does not release you, we will come for you. If we have to, we
will fight in the below-world with torches in one hand and our swords in the
other.”

“So what do you expect me to do? Deliver him your verbal
threat of force and then throw myself at his mercy? Wait for you to show up
with your torches while his Marauders surround you in the dark?”

Neacal’s face softened, and the anger drained out of him. He
looked her in the eyes as if searching for something he didn’t see there.
“There is only one thing I expect from you, little one. Courage.”

You know who I am. Stop calling me little one
, she
wanted to say. There was a roiling in the pit of her stomach like nothing the
Omnekh had ever wrought. The tears wanted to come, and her legs wanted to carry
her away, but everything inside her knew she had to resist those instincts and
be brave. To see this through. It was the only way things would ever change.

CHAPTER 54

A Strike in Two Parts

The siege of the basilica began as a much quieter
affair than Sister Bastille would’ve imagined. After discovering the basilica’s
hidden Catacomb, she had learned that the Order of the Most High Infernal Mouth
existed only as a means to protect the Arcadian Stars. Sister Gallica’s words
had been haunting her ever since.
Keep in mind the price of refusal
,
Gallica had said.
There are no exceptions to our rules.

A veiled threat if ever I’ve heard one,
Bastille
thought, as she emptied a bucket of bones and cartilage into the hog pen. What
haunted her even more was the image of that face. That gray, sallow face behind
the door with the porthole window, and those piercing black eyes. There was
that dark presence, too; the one that had made her believe with such certainty
that the world was collapsing in around her like a balled up sheet of paper
.
She’d had to remind herself that the scriptures and meditations she was in
the habit of reciting whenever she was scared or worried were nothing but vain
attempts at subterfuge. She felt tricked. The Order had fooled her into
believing in the Mouth, along with all the other priests and acolytes and aspirants
who had come through the basilica’s gates.

Sister Bastille was getting used to her normal, quiet life
around the basilica again. She still hadn’t decided whether she wanted to
accept Sister Gallica’s offer and become one of the Esteemed, and part of her
had begun to doubt her decision not to leave the basilica with Brother Mortial
when she’d had the chance. The smell had gone out of the East Tower, but since Gallica
had taken her Arcadian Star, Bastille had been powerless to investigate further.
Some mysteries, she decided, would have to be left alone.

As she went about her chores this morning, there was little
to distract her from her thoughts until she caught a glimpse of something
falling from the parapet outside. When she turned toward the conservatory
windows, Father Rook hit the south yard like a bag of bricks. She could feel
the impact thud from where she was standing. A cloud of dust rose up around him,
and through the dust she could see him moving, trying to get up.

When a volley of projectiles rained across the wall like
chunks of ice in a hailstorm, Bastille knew something was wrong. This was more
than a Cypriest losing his balance and taking a spill. She went out to Father Rook
as the daylight was beginning to harden the parapet’s shadow in the south yard.
The Cypriest’s right eye had been ruptured. Blood was spurting from the stringy
pulp trailing out from the wound. Father Rook was making slow writhing
movements that dredged up dusty earth, struggling against some vague
recollection of pain. Bastille cradled his head on her lap, trying to soothe
him. There was little more she could do. She prayed that Brother Reynard and
his hospital staff wouldn’t be long in coming.

On the ground beside Father Rook was a metal ball bearing,
the same kind Brother Soleil had removed from Father Kassic’s shoulder.
Bastille stood and climbed the parapet steps, peeking her head around the
guardhouse at the top. There were gray-cloaked men hiding in the surrounds,
darting back and forth among the ruins of vehicles and walls and windowsills. They
wore long hooded trenchers in various shades of gray ranging from ash to charcoal.
They would’ve blended into the scenery better, if not for the filtermasks that
obscured their faces; most were painted to resemble some manner of fearsome
wild beast or monster. Several were painted like skulls, while some resembled
macabre clowns or green amarpids, the venomous sea serpents whose poison could
paralyze a man within seconds.

Another storm of shots clattered over the guardhouse,
punching holes in the sheeting and blowing chunks of rock dust off the wall
within inches of Bastille’s face. The Cypriests returned a volley, firing and
reloading their crossbows like perfect silent machines. The gray-cloaked men
must have intended to take the Cypriests unawares, but Bastille knew they had
detected the attackers long before their crossbows were even in range. The
Fathers always knew when heathens were about.

In warfare as in all other things, the Cypriests seldom involved
the Brothers and Sisters in their affairs. They had kept their single-minded
vigil along the crumbling parapets all the same, conducting the business of
battle as though it were a minor adjustment to their daily routine. But this
was more than some ragtag bunch of hoodlums trying to cause trouble. This was a
real attack; the first real attack the basilica had ever faced, as far as
Bastille knew. She thought of Brother Mortial and the Scarred soldiers who had
taken Sister Jeanette away.
I’ll never forgive Brother Soleil if the Scarred
are behind this
.

The gray-cloaked men outside the walls were not wearing the
camouflage fatigues of the Scarred, however. It gave Bastille a claustrophobic
feeling to know that whoever these men were, they had targeted the Order for
some reason unbeknownst to her. She wondered who they might be, and why they
were doing this.
If not the Scarred Comrades, then what other organized group
of militants might have a bone to pick with the Order?
she wondered.
After
this, I should think there’s no telling how deep and wicked Brother Soleil’s affairs
might run
.

Bastille ducked and retreated to the yard to watch the battle
unfold. She’d always thought battles were supposed to be loud and chaotic, but
neither the Cypriests nor the gray-cloaked men outside the basilica walls did
anything to fracture the early morning silence. The crossbows operated with
nothing louder than a series of soft
clicks
and
thrums
, and the
attackers’ weapons gave no sound of exploding gunpowder or air-piercing
velocity. It was an eerie thing, to see men killing one another in an
atmosphere of such quiet. The Cypriests never telegraphed their pain. When they
were hit, they never made it known, except by bleeding. They would fight with
constant efficiency and fervor, Bastille knew, until their Enhancements gave up
from lack of fuel, or until what remained of their natural bodies ceased to
function.

The diversion at the south wall lasted only a short while
before there came a deep rumble from the west. Bastille felt an intense change
in the air pressure, and an orange cloud rose beyond the basilica’s roofline, tinged
in black. By the time she rounded the building’s corner, the basilica’s gates
were a gnarled wreckage of burning splinters and bent wrought-iron rods. The
gray-clad men were swarming through the opening, their faces shrouded by those
frightful painted filtermasks they wore beneath their hoods.

Bastille slid up against the basilica wall and closed her
eyes, praying to the Mouth that none of the intruders had seen her.
Old
habits
, she scolded herself. As she waited for the crowd to pass, she found
herself wishing she had taken Father Rook’s crossbow with her when she’d left
him. She would sooner have refrained from confrontation altogether, but a
loaded crossbow would get her further than a scornful word with these heathens.

The basilica’s front entrance consisted of a pair of arched
doors, heavy wooden things with stained glass insets that depicted an image of
Infernal’s amber rays shining down on a vibrant green land. The Cypriests on
the western parapet shot after the masked intruders, cutting several down with
their uncanny aim before they could reach the doors. Bastille lost sight of the
rest as they shouldered their way inside.

Apart from the staging of a new Cypriest or the restorative
work she had occasionally done on the older ones, Bastille had never seen the
Cypriests come off the parapet in any great number. Now, they were leaving
their stations in droves, stalking across the yard after the intruders like the
cold-blooded murderers they had become.

Bastille found it hard to believe there were so many
Cypriests. She knew about two dozen of them by name. There were others from the
western wall that she only knew by sight, and others still whom she couldn’t
remember having seen before. She realized that in the years since she’d come
through the basilica gates for the first time, she hadn’t been back outside the
outer walls more than twice. Her usual duties took her from her bedchamber on
the north end of the basilica to the conservatory gardens and the southern
courtyards, then to her rooms in the cellars. So there were several unfamiliar
faces in the throng of Cypriests that came flooding across the yard after the
intruders.

She waited until the Cypriests were inside before she
followed them. Heathen bystanders had begun to gather around the ruined gates,
most of them thin and undernourished, with eyes that hungered to know the
comforts of the basilica. The Cypriests who remained on the parapets began to fire
down into the crowd, and the onlookers dispersed.

The narthex was littered with bodies when Bastille entered.
Brother Padrig was slumped against the moulding at the corner of the sanctuary
hallway, his eyes wide open and his prosaics wet with blood. He was making little
gurgling sounds, opening and closing his mouth like a grounded fish. He
followed Bastille with his eyes as she hurried past him.

On the cloister grounds, the fighting had intensified. The
intruders fought as though they were surprised to be facing such strong
resistance. They were running around and diving for cover and huddling behind
dead hedges and the low stone walls that bordered the arcade.

The Cypriests, however, waded in without fear or theatrics.
Everywhere a gray-cloaked man hid, the basilica’s defenders converged on him,
resolute and ruthless, even against the torrents of gunfire from the intruders’
strange silent weapons. Bastille watched an intruder duck behind a wiry brown
hedgerow. Father Devereaux sent a bolt into the shrubbery, and a cry went up
from the other side. Another gray-cloak popped out of his hiding place to shoot
at Father Xan, but the Cypriest put a bolt through his mask before he could
take aim. When yet another man fled his position, Father Terrence drew a bead and
loosed. The intruder toppled over with a bolt in his back, squirming and
screaming in a heap on the walkway.

It took the better part of the morning for the Cypriests to
root out the last of the gray-cloaked men. Those who lost hope and fled for the
gates fell victim to the guardians on the parapets. When they rounded up the
survivors in the west yard, there were fewer than ten left. The Cypriests bound
their wrists, removed their masks, and put them on their knees before
presenting them to the Most Highly Esteemed. Every priest, acolyte, and
initiate healthy enough to stand and not on the hospital staff was present to
witness the spectacle. Cypriests stood vigil over the gap in the wall as
Brother Jaquar and his artificers worked to repair the damaged gates.

Brother Soleil was strangely absent from the proceedings.
Bastille hadn’t seen him since the fighting broke out. The three other priests
of the Most Highly Esteemed prowled the yard like mountain cats waiting to
pounce on wounded prey. Gallica’s hair was tied back, revealing the river of
blisters and boils running along her jawline. Sister Dominique was trying not
to look uncomfortable, her pale skin reddening at Infernal’s touch.

Brother Liero’s face was hard-lined, his brow glistening with
sweat. “Why have you come? Who sent you?”

The intruders gave no reply.

Liero’s brow darkened. “Father Xan, since none of these men
wishes to speak with me, please choose one of them at random and shoot him in
the head.”

Father Xan strode down the line of captives. He was bleeding
from a handful of wounds, and his clothes and armor were soaking wet. He passed
several of the men, moving at an even pace. Bastille saw them catch their
breath as he passed them. When he reached the man fourth from the end, Father
Xan whirled and brought his crossbow to bear.

“I’ll talk,” the man shouted, trembling. They were his last
words.

The crossbow gave a
thwip
. The man’s head snapped back
as the bolt crashed through it. Blood spattered on the men kneeling next to
him, and he slumped over into the dust.

When Brother Liero spoke again, his voice was loud and sharp,
as if a rage had taken him. “Father Xan, please choose another man and shoot
him in the head.”

Father Xan loaded his crossbow and stepped over the dead man,
his boots tracking bloody prints as he strode back the other way.

When the Cypriest pointed his crossbow at another one of the
gray-cloaks, the man cried out. “Stop killin’ people,” he said. “I’ll talk to
you.”

“Father Xan. Please stop.”

The Cypriest lowered his weapon and stepped aside.

Brother Liero approached the man and crouched in front of
him. “Speak.”

The man’s dark hair was thinning on top. His slender face was
clean-shaven, though the skin was full of fresh nicks and scratches. “We know
y’all got some of the Ministry’s goodies in that church of yours. We wanted to
have a look.”

“The Ministry’s goodies, you say. I’m afraid I don’t
understand. What are you referring to, and where did you hear this?”

“Ain’t heard it from nobody. We just figured, is all.”

“You just… figured.” Brother Liero lifted his chin and looked
down his nose at the man. “You decided that the most appropriate way to examine
this compound was to break down the door and begin killing people. Is that
right? Do I understand you correctly?”

“Well, if you’d invited us in, we wouldn’t ‘a had to shoot
anybody. Them robots of yours weren’t too nice to us the first few times we
tried to get in.”

Brother Liero was dismissive. “You should’ve taken the hint.
You were better off minding your own business. Instead, you chose to continue meddling
in ours. We have no secrets here, sir; not from you, not from anyone. We’re a
simple, peaceful group of people, living to serve the Infernal Mouth. We don’t
bother anyone, and in return we only wish not to be bothered. Our defenses are
simply a preventative measure, intended to shield us from people like you. The
only people welcome inside these walls are those willing to pledge their lives
to the Mouth. Are
you
willing, sir?”