The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (45 page)

“So, the Mouth…”

“…is a lie, kind Sister. The Mouth is a ruse. We are here to
protect the keys, and the treasures they guard, both wondrous and malevolent.
We offer the reward of long life to those who are willing to dedicate their
lives to our cause. You look disappointed, Sister Bastille. Did you think this
was really about service to a god who lives within the depths of the light-star?
Did you think the Order was gifted with the Nexus technologies and given all
the tools it needed to survive out of sheer luck or divine providence? Did
you
join the Order for salvation, or did you join it for the promise of freedom
from the physical affliction that has ailed you all your life? If you’re like
most of us, it was the latter.”

Bastille was speechless. She scratched around the bandage on
her forehead. With the other hand, she set the metal plate down on one of the
machines, pulled off her hood, and swept her hair back. Her hands felt
unfamiliar, as if they were acting on their own. She didn’t know what to do
with herself. She had dedicated her life to a lie. Aside from the severity of
that revelation, she was having trouble coming to grips with the mystery of the
face behind the door. So she had to ask the question that was burning in her
mind. “Who is that? In that room back there?”

“Not who, kind Sister. What. People come here looking for
salvation. They could not possibly know the true burden of the Order’s task. We
are not here to hide some valuable treasure, as some believe, but to protect
the Aionach from itself. Behind that door, Sister Bastille, is the fearsome culmination
of a war that never happened. It’s the reason Infernal only misbehaves, instead
of destroying us all. The man who gave us the task of preventing this war is
unknown to us. Like the locations of his Catacombs, his name has been lost to
time. It’s possible that someone out there knows who he was, or has information
on his life. Finding those clues has become part of Brother Mortial’s mission.”

“But how could the man’s name have been forgotten entirely?”

“Let me ask you something, Sister Bastille. What was your
great-grandmother’s name?”

“Something Hestenblach. I… don’t know.”

“How about your great grandfather on your mother’s side?”

“The family name was Treborough. I can’t remember his first
name.”

“And if you don’t remember that, how is it so hard to believe
that a few hundred years isn’t enough to wipe away the name of a reticent man—apparently,
a man with issues of extreme paranoia and a link to forces that run deeper
through the Aionach than we could ever imagine? It’s strange what history remembers,
and what it forgets. But it’s also reasonable, and merciful.”

“So, the symbol on the key is the Order’s true symbol after
all.”

Gallica nodded. “The Order has existed for much longer than
you may have realized when you joined.”

“And the Cypriests aren’t protecting us. They’re protecting
the keys… and whatever that thing over there is.”

“Protecting the members of the Order is a very fortunate side
effect derived from protecting the keys, yes.”

Now Bastille understood that Brother Soleil wasn’t serving some
religious ideal, which he’d violated by committing his sins. The ethical
implications of Soleil’s actions still made him a monster in Bastille’s mind.
But to know that his life was dedicated to keeping a secret, not upholding a
code, changed the way she felt about him. She leaned on one of the paper
presses, her head throbbing. She could feel the machine’s sturdiness, the thin
grooves that ran down its sides and the smooth surface of its belt. “I don’t
understand the purpose of this room. If the man hid a part of his fortune in
each Catacomb, which part of the fortune is this?”

Sister Gallica gave a wry smile. “It’s clear that these
machines were once used to draw marks on this paper. But, like you, I fail to
see how that could be of any value. Perhaps it was something of great personal
interest to the man; something he regarded with more sentimentality than most.
I believe our Catacomb is the most worthless of them all. Just a room full of
mold-ridden paper and broken machines. When I showed it to Brother Mortial, he
circled the room once to look everything over, then walked out. He never even
went near that door. He said he wanted nothing to do with the dark powers or
their manifestations; only that he wanted to uncover what wealth lay hidden in
places like this one. It’s a disgusting place. So wet and cold. It may have
been the first Catacomb the man ever built. It’s clearly not as structurally
sound as he intended it to be. The walls are cracked and leaky, the foundation
unstable, except for that room, which is as solid as thick steel plate can get.
The rest of this place would’ve needed to remain sealed up just as tight for
any of this paper to have been preserved properly over the long years.”

“So the Order has just been hiding this here, keeping the
keys a secret for centuries? Why?”

“Can you think of a better life than one in which all your
needs are met? That kind of life doesn’t exist outside these walls, as far as
we know. Divulging the basilica’s secrets would bring the world to our gates.
It would disrupt our way of life in potentially irretrievable ways. That’s why
the barrier to being told the Order’s secrets is so high. If a priest can’t
dedicate herself to the ways of the Mouth—something distant and intangible—how
could she ever be trusted to hide the truth of something real? The Most High
Infernal Mouth is the allegory to our quest; that we must always keep our
mouths closed, and the truth hidden. The Mouth is the constant reminder of our
vows as the Esteemed. When you came to meet with me the other day, I knew you
were ready. I could see it in your nature, your demeanor. You are an unyielding
bastion, Sister Bastille. Your name fits you. And you fit the Order. Will you
accept the call placed on your life and become one of the Esteemed?”

Once again, Bastille didn’t know what to say. She was
overcome with emotion, a flood of pride and sorrow and uncertainty that changed
within her from one fleeting moment to the next. “This is a lot to take in,”
she said. “Can I have some time to think about it?”

“Of course,” said Gallica. “It’s a lot for anyone to learn
the truth of these things. But if the decision is one you must think about, you
should keep in mind the price of refusal. In the meantime, I’m going to need
that key you’ve found. There are no exceptions to our rules.”

The high priest held out her hand.

There are always exceptions
. “Do you really not know
where I got this key?” Bastille asked, pulling the leather cord from around her
neck.

Gallica sucked a puddle of gathering saliva through her teeth.
“What do you think?”

“I think it belongs with the man in the east tower,” said
Bastille. She let the iron key—the Arcadian Star—dangle until it came to rest
in Gallica’s outstretched hand. “Am I right?”

Gallica tucked the key into her pocket. “You’re not one of
the Esteemed yet, Sister Bastille. Now, if you’ll kindly step outside so I can
lock the door… we should be getting back to the basilica. People will start to
miss us.”

No, I’m not one of the Esteemed
, Bastille agreed.
I’m
not even sure if I want to be, anymore. But I don’t seem to have a choice in
the matter
.

CHAPTER 40

Into the Wastes

Daxin dismounted from a night’s hard riding and made
camp near the eastern edge of the Skeletonwood, resting beneath an early
morning sky that was radiant with swathes of pink and orange. It struck him then that he
might never see Ellicia again, but he allowed himself only a brief moment to
miss her before he pushed the thought away.

He’d been selfish, there was no denying that; he’d left her
and the others alone against the sanddragons and gotten away clean. Even if he
could’ve loved Ellicia—even if he ever came to the point where he was ready to
give up the search for Vicky—there was an emptiness inside him. An emptiness that
was so crippling, it had started to make him believe he was unfit to be loved.
He’d given in to that emptiness when he fled Dryhollow Split. He’d let his
mission outweigh his goodwill; he’d let fear replace self-sacrifice, and it
made him feel as rotten inside as the animal carcasses he’d discarded on the
trail behind him.

But if he was so heartless, so incapable of love, why had
abandoning Ellicia been so hard? He remembered being twelve years old, leaving Pleck’s
Mill with tears streaming down his face as he bid all his summer friends
farewell. He knew too well the ache of goodbye; he knew how things changed at
the end of the long year, when the days begin to shorten and every ill-fated
love story makes its slow journey toward the far reaches of memory. Ellicia had
meant something to him, but hers was one of those stories. Even if he’d
recognized it sooner, his feelings for her had been doomed from the start.

When he thought of Victaria now, he could still see her long dark
hair, the clarity of her form. But his memory of her was fading. There was nothing
left of her eyes; no surety in the sound of her voice. Even the image of
her face had begun to darken and smudge around the edges like so much wet clay.

The next night, Daxin emerged from the Skeletonwood
and crossed into the vast desert of the Inner East. This was the true
wasteland, even more barren than the scrubs and covered in windswept dunes that
threw off sheets of grit with every strong breeze. The sand here was heavier
than scrubland dust; it stung his skin, got in his eyes, and worked its way
into his clothing. It irritated his rain rash too, so that by the end of each night’s ride he felt like
one big sheet of sandpaper.

Despite his discomfort, it was the desert that held the purest part of
him. It was here that he could hear his father’s voice most clearly. When Daxin
was old enough, his parents had brought him on the less dangerous of
their journeys. It was there that he’d learned most of what he knew about survival
in the Aionach.
The wasteland will offer you no quarter or
forgiveness
, his father had told him.
Never doubt its malice, or fail to
appreciate its power. If you ever find yourself at your last hope, remember
that the land speaks to those who listen. Look at the way things are and you’ll
fail. Look to the way things were, and you’ll be rewarded
.

At dawn on the third day, the neglected spires of Belmond
appeared within the gloom of a fierce sandstorm that had been spitting its
effluvium from the lower atmosphere all night. His mare was ready to give out
beneath him; water and shade had grown scarce, and the reserves he’d
collected in the Skeletonwood were running low. He couldn’t afford to give
Belmond a wide berth, even if he weren’t in need of fresh supplies.
Hug to
the outskirts and use them for cover
; that was the way to get past the city
without drawing the Scarred Comrades’ attention. He knew the safest routes into
and out of Belmond as well as the nomads did; they used the same paths to
approach the city from Sai Calgoar. They knew the fingerprint of the land—every
dune and mesa, every hill, fold and funnel a traveler could use to disguise his
passage.

The smell of clean sand became the city’s hot rusted stench,
the shifting dunes hardening to concrete. There was a little place Daxin knew—a
store, if you could call anything in the city south by that name. It was
nestled inside an old electronics repair shop, its exposed cinder block walls
cracking with age, shards of colored glass poking in around the borders of an
old back-lit sign. Two broad-shouldered security guards stood at the door in
spiked leather, with nail-board maces in their hands and pistols holstered at
their hips.

“Mistah Glaive, you sad son of a bitch,” exclaimed the
proprietor when Daxin stumbled through the door. “Looks like you got caught in
a rainstorm. That or you’re going bald faster’n a dead bushcat.”

“Gachenko.” Daxin touched two fingers to his brow in
greeting. He knew the man better than he trusted him.

The shop smelled of mildew and polishing oil layered with
dust, motes swimming through the shaft of light in the doorway. Shelves lined
the walls, a façade of black and silver chassis with wire guts spilling out in strands
of red and green and yellow.

“Atcha service,” said Gachenko. “Been awhile, y’skinny old
coffer. What you been up to these days?”

“Just now, I’m into selling things,” Daxin said.

“Never been one for small talk, have you?” said Gachenko,
chuckling to himself. “Fine, let’s see what you got.” The shopkeep lifted the
counter and came around to greet Daxin. He was a boulder of a man in a faded
green tunic and suede leggings, thick through the chest and belly. The skin on
his face was taut and his eyes bulged with strain, as if his pulse ran so high
he’d burst at the slightest increase in pressure. When he took Daxin’s hand in
his gold-ringed grip, veins stood out on his forearm.

The handshake made Daxin’s fingers feel like straw through a
baler, but he endured the cramping in his hand as he dumped his tradestuffs
from a cloth sack onto the counter. The things he’d brought with him had looked
better in the daylight, when there wasn’t so much else around for them to
contend with.

“Right off the bat, I’ll take the scissors,” said Gachenko. “They’re
in good shape.” He held up two of the diamond rings. “These, I have a million
of. But I’ll take the gold. You might as well throw away the rocks, unless
you’re like one of them flashy bastards who comes in here looking for
diamond-studded knuckles. What you looking for?”

Daxin knelt to the floor and whacked the rings with the hilt
of his machete until the diamonds broke free of their settings and skidded away
over the concrete. “I’ll take one of those shirts and a hood-scarf,” he said,
tossing the empty rings onto the counter. “A razor if you’ve got one. Some
paper, too.”

“I got some paper,” said Gachenko, lifting a stack of books
from the floor and setting them on the counter. “Plenty.”

“Not for smoking. Blank paper. For writing on.”

Gachenko grinned. “Fancy educated man, over here. Alright, I
think I have some in the back.”

“Also, water for four days’ ride and some food, if you can
spare it.”

“What do I look like, a grocery store to you?”

Daxin gave him a sour look.

“Sheeze, relax, okay?” Gachenko’s mouth widened into a grin.
When Daxin’s expression didn’t change, the grin faded. “I’m just busting your
balls. I tell ya… learn to take a joke sometimes, eh? Where you headed,
anyway?”

When Daxin said nothing, Gachenko rolled his eyes. “Now don’t
make me do the math here. You need four days water, so that must mean… you’re
going to Wynesring? You might make Unterberg in four days, but not on that
horse. Nah… somewhere along the coast? Ah shoot, of course. Sai Calgoar. What
in the name of all that is good and holy are you doing up there? Huh? Hello?
Buddy, I swear… talking to you is like
that
much more fun than banging
my head on the wall.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together.

“Anything else you like?” Daxin asked, laying his hands on
the counter.

“In a hurry, are we? Yeah, gimme the coffing scissors. I’ll
take the pelts—the biggest two, here—and the, uh… the roll of wire. How much
wire on here?” He turned it around in his hands. “Okay, I’ll take the wire. And
throw in the plastic thing, whatever this coffing thing is. Take all the water
you need, some jerky, and I got a little rice too.”

Daxin scooped his unwanted wares into his sack along with the
food. Gachenko handed him the rest of the items, then filled his skins from the
basin of filtered water connected to the cistern on the roof.

“Oh, and when you get to Sai Calgoar—if that’s where you’re
going—give this to the master-king for me.” Gachenko made an obscene gesture.
“Coffing savages have pinched every train through here the last six months but
one. You believe that? Come in here trying to sell me all the beat-up junk they
take, like I don’t know it’s stolen. Coffers.”

“I’ll pass that along,” Daxin said, shouldering his
waterskins and exiting the shop.

A series of narrow back alleys took him to a little
flatlander saloon called the Scorpion’s Uncle. The swinging door squeaked on
its hinges as he came through. A sea of dark faces turned to look at him.
Through the smoke haze he could see a game of godechente going at the back, and
two men were arm-wrestling for a crowd of onlookers and a pile of glinting
hardware. The tables were high, beer-stained wooden squares with cast-iron
stands that had once been bolted to the floor; the bar stools were padded aluminum,
most so decrepit their footrest bands were being held up with string.

“Just a water,” Daxin told the barkeep, a blond-haired man
about his age with a sharp mustache and a wart under his eye. He tossed a
one-inch length of copper electrical wire onto the bar and took his seat to
wait out the afternoon’s heat.

“I seen you before?” the barkeep said, sliding him a cloudy
glass and shoving the wire into a pocket.

Daxin gave him a curt nod.

“Cause you ain’t from here, not with that chestnut outside
and the skin you got. This place is hard to find. Most folks from out of town
don’t know it.”

“Friend of mine told me about this place. I come here every
time I visit now. I like that it’s out of the way.” Daxin put a hand through
his hair, self-conscious. Running his fingers over the tiny bald patches only
made the feeling worse. Tonight, he would make good use of the razor Gachenko
had traded him.

“You’re one of
those
dways, eh? I read you. Okay.
Don’t want to know about it.” The barkeep held up a hand.

Daxin liked to think he wasn’t
one of those
dways—not
the kind the barkeep was referring to, anyway. But he wasn’t in the mood for
small talk either, so he said nothing. He spun halfway around on his stool and
looked the room over, studying the memorabilia on the walls. A taxidermied
bushcat, a giant bottle-shaped replica of the Fizzy’s logo, property signs,
figurines, photographs; what was left of the old junk had been there for
decades, but there were clean outlines in the grime where objects had been
taken down and appropriated to some other purpose over the years.

The arm-wrestling match was over, and the victor was
collecting his winnings and calling for a new challenger.
The stuff of
hooligans
. There was a time when Daxin might’ve taken interest in such
things, but a week in the wastes had made him neither fifteen years younger nor
one iota stronger.

A pair of patrons came into the saloon an hour or two after
him. One was a tall man with a scraggly brown beard, his eyes dark beneath the
brim of a gambler; the other, his companion, a willowy girl with straight black
hair who wore a long duster, the leathers beneath it tighter than any clothing
had a right to be. They approached the bar to order drinks, got one look at the
shotgun on Daxin’s hip, and took their seats elsewhere.

“You know those two?” asked the barkeep, when the newcomers
were out of earshot. “They sure don’t seem to be very fond of you.”

I know the look of troublemakers when I see it
. Daxin
gave a paltry shrug.

“Lokes and Weaver. One’s a Calsaire, the other’s just your
average deadeye.”

That caught Daxin’s interest. “Which is which?”

“It’s the woman.”

Daxin had never expected to find a sandcipher in Belmond, of
all places, but if what the barkeep said was true, he wasn’t about to let the
opportunity pass him by—whether these two were
fond
of him or not. He
found himself standing at their table, letting the wary pair look him over, the
way folks of their type tend to do.

“I have some work that needs doing,” Daxin heard himself say.

“We’re interested,” the man said without hesitation.

That was too desperate
. “I hear you’re a sandcipher,”
Daxin said, shifting his eyes from one to the other.

The man’s greasy brown hair was mashed to his head in the
shape of the hat he’d removed, his eyes dark, even without its brim to shade
them. “Not just any ol’ sandcipher. She’s a Calsaire.”

The difference came down to semantics—someone schooled in the
arts, versus someone with an untrained knack—but Daxin didn’t see the benefit
of pointing that out. “All the better,” he said, and explained his offer to
them. When he was done, they looked at each other with knowing stares, as if
what he’d asked of them were the simplest task in the Aionach.

 Daxin tossed a pouch onto the table. “Half now. We meet back
here in two weeks’ time, you bring me the evidence of your success, and you get
the other half.”

In the pouch was an assortment of ingots, tiny slabs of metal
melted down and harvested from other objects of gold and silver. There were a
few precious stones, and the two diamonds he’d bludgeoned from the rings in
Gachenko’s shop.

“See you in a couple weeks,” said the man—Lokes or Weaver,
Daxin wasn’t sure which.

For all he knew, they’d squander his payment and skip town
before he returned. Sandciphers weren’t easy to find; reliable ones were rarer
still.
If they hold to their word, this will all go off as smooth as
snakeskin
. It would save Daxin some time too, to make up for his internment
in Dryhollow Split.