The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (23 page)

“You all sit around the fire and tell jokes about me while
I’m sleeping, don’t you?” Daxin said. “I guess you already know me better than
I’d like you to.”

“And that’s been no easy accomplishment.” Ellicia’s tone had
gone from whimsical to demure. “Luther, I’ve been wanting to ask you something,
but I didn’t think it would be polite.”

“If you’ve been thinking about it that much, you should ask.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll give me a straight answer.”

Daxin shrugged. “I guess not. But I’m not stopping you.”

“Okay.” Ellicia sighed, her eyes searching Daxin’s for some
form of reassurance. “How is it that you can make children?”

“That’s a good question. We’ve tried to have more kids since
Savannah, but it hasn’t happened. People in Brad—in Pleck’s Mill think there’s
something special about us. We’ve gotten offers for every type of surrogate
parenting arrangement you can imagine over the years. I think we’re both too
old now to be up for the task, though. The reality was that we aren’t special.
Just lucky.”

“We had some people in Unterberg who had children,” Ellicia
said. “Not many. I knew a couple who had two sons and a baby on the way. I’ve
heard stories of people living below-world for long enough and getting their
strength back, being able to make babies again.”

Daxin had heard the same stories. “I hope that’s true.”

Over the next three weeks, Daxin’s wounds seemed to
heal faster every day. His ankle grew stronger too, though he still couldn’t
put his full weight on it. Biyo rode Daxin’s mare whenever he went out to check
the traps or gather firewood, and soon the horse was in better shape than
Daxin.

Each evening, Ellicia cleaned and dressed Daxin’s wounds
until he no longer needed the dressings. Yet the less attention his wounds
needed, the more time they started to spend together. Most nights they talked
until Daxin got so tired his eyelids gave out on him.
Sometimes they stayed together all day, either carrying on fragmented
conversations while they worked or wasting away the hours whenever the air was
judged too poor to venture outside. After four years of being alone, Daxin
found himself craving the attention. Soon he was using every excuse he could
come up with to justify the time they were spending together.

The thought of Eivan and Duffy plotting his demise had been
enough to keep Daxin on edge during his first days in Dryhollow Split. Now the
two men appeared to have little interest in bringing him harm; they seemed more
interested in improving their trapping expertise, and they had started to
volunteer almost every day to inspect the previous night’s catch and reset the
traps. Daxin thought better of letting them take his mare whenever they went
out alone, but the two seemed willing enough to set out on foot.

Despite his own mistrust, the other villagers never
questioned the two men’s intentions. Time and again, Eivan and Duffy returned
after long hours away, bringing fresh game, cactus meat, and sprigs of whatever
edible or medicinal plants they had come across. They would leave early in the
morning and be gone until mid-afternoon sometimes, and the villagers were all
the more grateful for the extra time they spent gathering. Often they gave
weather reports, although the weather hardly changed. Some days they would
claim to have seen a herd of wild horses, a heavily flowered plant,
or some other uncommon sight that would stir the villagers into a flurry of
excitement.

On one particular afternoon, as they waited for Eivan and
Duffy to return, the villagers were discussing the idea of sending out an
exploration party. Daxin had pointed out the importance of knowing their
surroundings, but he had since decided to limit the extent of his aid to
suggestions and guidance. After he was gone, the villagers would no longer have
the benefit of his consultation, so he thought it best that they learn to live
without his help now. Two more weeks were all it would take, he estimated,
until his ankle was strong enough to stand on. Staying any longer than that was
out of the question; he felt the burden of his mission too urgently to deviate
from it for longer than was necessary.

“Here’s where I think we need to look first,” Biyo was
saying. In the absence of an actual map, he had scrawled out a rough diagram
from memory on the cave wall.

There were too many people crowded around for Daxin to see
much of the map, but he could tell that Biyo was pointing to an area south of
Dryhollow Split. It was the direction Daxin had been coming from when he’d
happened upon them. He and Ellicia were sitting on the smooth, low stools made
of hewn tree stumps, speaking to one another in hushed tones as they watched
the meeting unfold. “He’s a good leader,” Daxin said. “And yet he has that hotshot
swagger that makes you want to break his neck. It’s not because he’s full of
himself. He just wants you all to think he knows what he’s doing.”

“He does know what he’s doing,” Ellicia said. “At least as
far as the way he gets everyone to work together. The way he’s kept us going
all this time is something special. When we left Unterberg, some of the people went
off on their own. Biyo said we should stay together, and we’ve all sort of
followed his lead ever since. We were all so scared, but he put on a brave face
and gave us the hope we needed.”

“The people of the Inner East don’t have much to cling to
anymore,” Daxin said. “They’re quick to rally around anyone who can give them
the tiniest shred of hope. So somebody comes along and tells them they can fix
all their problems, and they believe it. You know, the truth is that the
easiest thing to believe is the thing you
want
to believe. The most
powerful leaders in history were the ones who told the most congenial lies. But
Biyo isn’t like that. He gives you the truth, even if the truth isn’t what you
want to hear.”

“After living under someone like Nichel, Biyo is a refreshing
change,” Ellicia said. There was something in the way she said it, something in
her pacing or her tone that Daxin found odd. He was about to ask her what she
meant when one of the scouts, an old beak-nosed man they called Schum, padded
into sight at the cave entrance.

“They’re coming back,” he shouted. “Looks like they caught
somethin’ big. Real big.”

The meeting ground to a halt as the villagers began to jostle
toward the entrance like a flock of rubbernecking birds. Duffy’s silvery-red
beard came into view as the returning trappers rounded the bend, carrying a
pole on each shoulder. Along one of the poles were tied several small catches:
a desert fox, two mice, a tiny squirrel, a groundhog, and something else the
trap had crushed so badly Daxin couldn’t tell what it was. The crowd parted as Eivan
and Duffy stepped down into the cave and shunted this pole off onto the nearest
two men who were willing to take it.

“Outta the way, it’s heavy,” Duffy yelled. Both men were
red-faced and sweating, but Duffy in particular was flushed almost purple and
breathing heavily. He stumbled over his own feet as they heaved the second pole
off their shoulders. A murmur rose when the people saw what they were carrying.

Covered in brownish green scales and rippling with reptilian
muscle, the beast’s head and tail hung limp, eyes bulging from its skull like
some macabre clown. Its open mouth showed serrated rows of cuspidate teeth, a
lolling, forked tongue, and a jaw that looked as if it could stretch wider than
a snake’s. The animal was several feet longer than the height of a man, and
everything about it was built in the way of a predator. Daxin recognized it
right away.

The village was in an uproar; everyone was asking Eivan and
Duffy the same questions, but the commotion was drowning them all out.

“What in the high Infernal sky is
that
thing?” Biyo
was shouting as Daxin and Ellicia approached.

Daxin clapped a hand on Biyo’s shoulder and leaned into him,
shouting into his ear. “Let’s quiet these people down so we can talk this out.”

Biyo nodded. After a laborious few minutes of hushing and
shushing, they were finally successful in calming the villagers down.

“So where’d this thing come from?” Biyo asked. He crossed his
arms, looking all the less comfortable for having done so. His face had taken
on the same frightened, gun-to-his-head expression Daxin recognized from the
day they met.

“It was in one of the big traps,” Duffy said, “body just
laying out like this, head squished under the rock. At first we thought it was
a mountain cat we’d missed on our rounds somehow, what with the color and all.
Looked like it could’a been rotting there for days. But naw, it’s fresh,
alright. Never seen anything like it in all my life.”

“And you, Eivan? You know what this is?” Biyo asked, his face
as blanched as the dead trees outside.

Eivan bared his skewed yellows in a snarling grin. “A big
lizard.” He had begun to neglect shaving, and tufts of hair had cropped up like
a crown on his skull, making him look all the more crazed.

Having observed Eivan’s behavior over the previous weeks,
Daxin had begun to think him less a threat. The man was unpredictable, but that
was more likely because he was slow-minded than because he was prone to
violence. Still, Daxin would take no chances with him.

“Doesn’t anybody know what this thing is?” Biyo pleaded,
searching the faces in the crowd.

No one spoke, the villagers’ attention locked on the big dead
creature on the floor of their home.

Biyo looked at Daxin. “Luther, you must have seen one of
these things before.”

“I’ve never seen one before. But I know what it is.”

A clamor rose again, but the crowd grew silent just as
quickly.

“Tell us what you know then, Luther.”

“I’ve read about them. Back home in Pleck’s Mill, we have
lots of books from the old university that still have most of their pages. It
was in an old textbook, one of the ones they used to give out to first-year
students. This thing is called a voranic tarragon. That’s the official name, or
it’s also called other things like the voranic lizard, rock lizard, rock
monster, or sanddragon.” The crowd was murmuring, but Daxin spoke over them.
“Don’t ask me how I remember this much about it, but it’s venomous. When it
bites its prey, the venom keeps the blood from clotting. So if the poison
doesn’t kill it, the blood loss is supposed to weaken it enough that the
tarragon can overpower it.”

Biyo was stoic, as if the muscles in his face had gone limp. “High
coffing Infernal.”

“If you’re lucky, you’re dead by the time they get there. A
tarragon this size can swallow a full-grown man, no problem. They usually keep
to the deserts, so this one probably wandered into the Bones from the east.
We’ll make this fella into a nice couple of dinners, and then it should be the
last one you ever see, I hope.”

Duffy was the only one there who hadn’t gone white as a sheet;
his cheeks were still rosy and flushed. He wobbled and leaned forward,
half-closing his eyes as if he were on the verge of sleep.

Daxin bent his knees and took hold of the bearded man as his
legs gave out. Others came to his aid, and together they lowered Duffy to the
ground, an awkward dance of lost balances and tangled limbs.

“Get us some water. Cold if you can,” Biyo shouted as they
fanned Duffy with whatever they had on hand. “He’s gotta be suffering from heat
exhaustion. Ellicia, can you take a look at him?”

It was an ironic sight: the bearded, potbellied man laid out alongside
the carnivorous reptile he had nearly died carrying.

Ellicia knelt and handed Daxin a wet rag from a wash pot
someone had given her. She began to unlace Duffy’s animal skin overvest. “Soak
his skin. Chest, arms, underarms; everywhere you can.”

Daxin did as she instructed, not noticing that the crowd had
fallen silent.

Biyo almost stumbled over the dead tarragon as he came to
kneel beside Duffy. “Someone get this thing out of here,” he said.

Schum and another man took up the pole and carried the beast
away.

“This isn’t heat stroke,” Ellicia said, after she’d spent a
moment examining Duffy. “He’s feverish.”

“You mean he’s got the flu or something?” Biyo asked.

“Seems like it,” Ellicia said, befuddled.

Daxin saw why when he glanced down at Duffy’s leg. There was
a jagged hole in the man’s trousers about halfway up the calf. The leg had been
bandaged with a strip of cloth about the same color as his pants. When Daxin lifted
the pant leg and untied the bandage, blood flowed from the sodden bite marks
beneath. The skin around the fang holes had already begun to corrode.

“He’s been bitten, he’s been coffing bitten,” Biyo said, and
fell backward on his haunches. When his hands touched the floor behind him, he scrambled
away, cringing at the memory of the tarragon that had lain there.

Daxin was hesitant to reveal what else he knew about the
sanddragons, but it was better to get it out now, while there might still be
time. “This is very bad. If the sanddragon injected its venom into Duffy’s leg,
there are other sanddragons who already know it. They can smell toxified blood from
several horizons away.”

The uproar resumed. The villagers were screaming at Biyo for
guidance, at Daxin with questions about the sanddragon, and at Eivan for an
explanation of how this had happened.

“I’m going to get these people away,” Daxin told Ellicia,
shouting. “That’ll give you some space. Just do what you can.”

“If that bite is poisonous, then either we need the cure now
or there’s nothing I
can
do,” Ellicia yelled back. “We could amputate
the leg, but it may be too late. How long is it supposed to take?”

“Depends how much venom the thing put in him. Could be as
little as a long day, or as many as three,” Daxin said, showing the numbers with
his fingers. “I’m no doctor; I have no idea if amputating would help or not.
That’s up to you to decide.”