The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (64 page)

Lizneth’s vision twisted like a seashell’s spiral, but she
shook it off. “Don’t negotiate with them, like they expect you to. Sneak out in
the night and attack them where they lie, when the air is cool and dark. That’s
the best advantage you can take.”

“An advantage, yes. Unless you run back and tell them that’s
what I will do.”

“If I don’t bring them your answer soon, they’ll come down
here looking for me. I don’t think you want that.”

Sniverlik was indifferent. “Let them come. They rot in the
light-star’s heat, a hundred horizons away from home, while I wait comfortably
in mine.”

Take courage
, Lizneth told herself again.
Stand up
to him. He’ll never take your advice unless you convince him it’s the only way
he’ll win
. “This stronghold is one flood away from collapsing. It’s never
been attacked. They’ll crush you if you sit here and wait for them. The whole
reason they’ve come is that your nighttime raids have been so successful. Don’t
change the thing you do best. Make them the victims of your biggest raid
yet, and you’ll have them fleeing for the City of Sand by morning.”

Sniverlik shifted in his seat again, scraping more white flakes
off the throne. He tapped the armrest as he thought, then rose and paced the
length of the table, patting his open palm with the scepter. “I don’t take
council from
parikuahn
,” he finally said. “Go back to your home. Tend
your fields. You are not to return to the
calaihn
. They lie. They did
not come here to defend their
vilckehn
from me, you foolish
cuzhe
.
They came here to make slaves of us all. It is I who protects you from
them
.”

That isn’t true. It can’t be true
, Lizneth thought.
Neacal
was kind to me. I may not have made it home if it weren’t for him
. Neacal
couldn’t have come all this way with all those
calaihn
just to take more
slaves. Why hadn’t he captured her, if that was his aim?
Because I need you
,
he had said. Had that meant something different than she thought it did?
“You’re a liar,” she said. “Neacal is here to stop your raids on the
calaihn
villages.”

Sniverlik laughed, loud and gravelly. “What
vilck
would I raid? There isn’t a
calai
village for days in every direction.
No, my dear
leparikua
. It is the
calaihn
who have told you false.
Now you must go home. My Marauders have worked up a hunger, so your harvest had
better be a large one. And if I scent you with the
calaihn
after
tonight, I will take your family’s tails out by the roots and pluck their
longteeth like mulligraws from a vine.” He gestured to the guards.

They took Lizneth roughly by the arms and began to remove her
from the hall. She ripped free of them and stepped back, swallowed the lump in
her throat, and tried to find her voice again. “I know the way. I don’t need
these
yinbelahn
escorting me.”

Sniverlik laughed again and spun the scepter in his hand. The
room came unscrewed. Rays of light slackened like loose strings. Lizneth’s eyes
went soft until Sniverlik was a fuzzy brown umbra and the walls had dulled to
bluish stains around him. Her head began to throb. Each pulse hit the back of
her eyes and sent a new splash of color or scent or taste through her, as if
the Zithstone were playing a game with her senses.

Next she knew, she was standing outside the stronghold with
the scent of her brother’s
haick
fading from her nostrils.
Deequol
.
She heard his voice, echoing like a recent memory. Had she seen him? Had he
been trying to talk to her as they dragged her out? She couldn’t remember a
thing that had happened since she left Sniverlik’s throne room. The guards were
walking away, and one of them was carrying her belt and dagger.

I need to get back inside
, she thought, running after
them. The ground was sloshing back and forth like water in a bucket, and she
had to stop and wait until the feeling subsided. The Marauders gave her a
backward glance and laughed.

“Give that back,” she said. She went after them again,
grabbing the belt and half-expecting to fight a tug-of-war over it.

The guard hadn’t been expecting her, however. Before she knew
it, the belt had slipped from his grasp and she was running away over the
snake’s spine, her feet slipping on the rime and threatening to send her
sliding down into one of the cold sluices on either side.

The guards followed her only a short distance before they
turned back.
Sniverlik will have more than a belt for them if they abandon
their posts
, Lizneth knew. She ran until she had escaped the rime caves and
come to the outer tunnel. The right-hand passage would take her back to Tanley.
The shallow rise to the left would lead her to the surface, where Neacal and his
calaihn
were waiting for her.

Lizneth’s head was still a confused jumble. She thought of her
parents and her siblings, then of Sniverlik and Neacal. Which of them was telling her the
truth?

She could trust Sniverlik. Or rather, she could obey him.
That was nothing new; she’d done it all her life. By going home as he’d commanded,
Lizneth would spare her family his punishment. And if Sniverlik told it true, she might also
be sparing her entire village a lifetime of slavery to the
calaihn
.

She didn’t like the
calaihn
. She never had. They were
weird-looking and cruel and they scented wrong and they made
sweat
. But
what if Neacal was the honest one? Just because there were no
calai
villages
nearby didn’t mean Sniverlik hadn’t been sending his Marauders to raid their settlements
elsewhere.

Lizneth felt a tingling rush of excitement at the idea of allying
with the
calaihn
—the hu-mans. If they did manage to slay Sniverlik,
the warlord’s death would be the greatest thing that had ever happened to Tanley.
With the Marauders leaderless, Deequol and her other siblings might even be able to come home.
The thought of it brought tears to her eyes. When she wiped the tears away, her dirt-stained
fur was crimson.
These aren’t tears of joy
,
she realized.
I’m stressed. I can’t decide what’s to be done. I’m
crying red
.

Lizneth leaned forward to keep the tears from running down
her snout. When they came naturally, they were nowhere near as painful or
plentiful as the tears produced by the Oculus Cordial. She stood and let
the droplets splash to the ground, surprised she had any porphyrin left in her
body after so many of Mama Jak’s cordials.

It would be wrong to make this decision lightly, she knew. If
she chose the wrong side, the consequences of that decision would nag at her until
her dying day. The wiser part of her wanted to turn toward Tanley, where the
haick
was familiar, and where she could finally see the nestlings again. She could be there
waiting when her parents came home. If she did that—if she listened to the timid, comfort-seeking
part of herself—there was the significant possibility that things would stay the same
forever. How many times in her life would she be in a position to influence the outcome of
a war? Even if it turned out she was wrong to trust Neacal, wouldn’t it be worth it
for the chance to see Sniverlik overthrown?

Yes, it would be easy to go home and let things stay the same.
But she couldn’t. Not while she had a chance to make them better.

Lizneth turned and scurried down the passage, once more toward the blind-world’s light.

Epilogue

“You done yet?” Lokes was getting impatient, and so
were the horses.

Weaver looked up from where she was kneeling and gave him a
withering look. “I really gotta tell you
again
? Ciphering takes time,
you want to do it proper.”

“Alright, alright. Don’t mess your britches,” Lokes said. “I
just think they might be coming, is all.”

Coff him, Lokes could be a bonehead sometimes, but Weaver
loved him. Matter of fact, that was most of
why
she loved him. He was a
real asshole when he wanted to be. Thing was, he could back up every bit of mouthing
off he ever did. She thought it was cute the way he was always looking out for
her, too, all watchful and protective. And heck if he didn’t look good in that
getup of his, tall and handsome and bearded and dark-eyed under that gambler.

Weaver brushed the sand off her hands and stood. “I can feel
every tremor for five horizons. I’d know it if you took a dump on the other
side of that dune. You think I don’t know they’re coming?”

Sure enough, here they came. It was a big train; holding it
up for long was going to be a tough job.
But that’s the job we took, and so
that’s the job we’ll do
, Weaver told herself.

Lokes shielded his eyes and looked out across the lowlands.
“I don’t recall that southern gentleman mentioning what this was all about. Do
you?”

“Ain’t our job to care,” Weaver said. She shook out her hair
and let the sand spray into the wind.

“Well
I
don’t care ‘bout no coffin’ Vantanible train,”
Lokes said, dismissive. “Just curious why he does.”

“He got a bone to pick with somebody, that’s sure enough.
Long as he gives us the hardware to do it with, I ain’t puttin’ up a fuss. By
the way, baby, you keep frowning like that and curious’ll stop looking good on
you. How ‘bout you put a smile on for Mama?” She gave him a silly grin.

Lokes raised his upper lip to oblige her, more snarl than
smile.

“Let’s go somewhere we can watch the show,” Weaver said,
mounting Meldi, her new filly. The horse was barely tamed, but she had
gumption, and Weaver liked that.

She and Lokes fled to their pre-selected overwatch and
waited. The caravan trundled past, flanked by its ever-vigilant shepherds. When
the flatbeds came to the patch of ground Weaver had ciphered, she laid her
palms flat and let herself flow—gritting, the Calsaires called it. She
connected with the sand, felt the weight and the texture, let it sift through
her body.

The ground shifted beneath the caravan. Earth fell away,
leaving a minefield of pits and holes where solid sand had been. Horses tripped
and stumbled. Flatbed wheels plunged into open cavities, and sand caved in to submerge
them. Crates and pallets slid and toppled over, spilling trade goods across the
sands. Weaver spread her fingers and stroked the earth, and the sand swallowed
the goods the caravan had spilled. It all happened so quickly that some of the merchants
didn’t realize what had happened until they were butts-up. The shepherds began
to shout at one another about getting to higher ground, but the train was in
such chaos that their warnings went unheeded for several moments.

“How do you do that?” Lokes asked her.

“Huh?” Weaver was distracted, watching the caravaners
struggle with their faltering cargo. Without looking at Lokes, she pictured him
setting his jaw and talking from the corner of his mouth, the way he always did
when he was whispering to her beside him.

“Make stuff disappear,” he said. “How do you do it?”

“Told you before, it don’t disappear. I relocate it.”

“So there’s a dune somewhere that just got a few million
grains of sand and two pallets’ worth of tin cans taller?”

Weaver shrugged. She didn’t like talking about it, especially
not while she was in the middle of
doing
it. She slid a finger through
the sand, creating a trough. A narrow channel opened up below one of the
flatbeds, like a gopher racing through a collapsing tunnel. The flatbed crashed
in, bouncing to rest on its springs.

“Coff it, you
are
good,” Lokes said, shaking his head
in awe.

Weaver knew she was good. She knew it better than he did.
“Uh-kay, you’re up, hot stuff,” she said. “And how ‘bout we stick to the script
this time?”

Lokes grunted by way of reply and slid down off the rise
where they were hidden. He dusted himself off before mounting the spotted
gray-and-white gelding he called Gish and riding out to meet the caravan.

“Hally, gents. Looks like you got yourself a sandcipher,” she
heard him say when he’d ridden to within a few yards of the nearest flatbed.

“Yeah, no shit, dway,” said one of the shepherds. He and half
a dozen others drew javelins when Lokes started to come closer.

“Hey, back off,” said another shepherd, a mulleted youngster
wearing riveted leather plates and fingerless gloves, who had a hunting rifle
slung over his back. “We don’t need any help. Get going.”

Lokes held up his hands in mock surrender.

Lokes, you coy bastard. Don’t blow this one. You know you
could draw from up there and butcher the lot of ‘em before they threw a single
javelin
. Tempted for a moment, Weaver hovered a finger over the sand,
thinking how funny it would be to watch Lokes take a tumble. It didn’t get much
more fun than messing with Lokes.
Naw, that’d ruin things. Plus, he’d tear
me a new one for it
. It still made her smile, knowing she could, if she
wanted to.

“Don’t mean to raise no fuss,” Lokes was saying. He began to
guide Gish alongside the column with his knees. “Just thinkin’ you could use a
hand. By the look of this, I’d say your sandcipher is close. Prob’ly just up
yonder.” He tilted his head. His hands were still in the air, Gish going at a
slow walk. A breeze swept back his duster, and daylight glinted off the steel
of one of his revolvers.

Most of the shepherds were busy picking things up and helping
the merchants dig out their flatbeds, but a few kept their eyes on him.

One of the shepherds poked the air with his javelin as Lokes
passed by, too close for comfort. “You trying to get yourself stabbed, mister?”

“Well now, that depends. You fixin’ to stab me? ‘Cause if so,
I reckon I’m tryin’.”

The shepherd looked like he was about ready to stab Lokes just
to shut him up.

Cut the showboatin’ and let’s get this done already
.
Weaver scanned the column, looking for the man who met the southerner’s
description, but they all looked the same from up here. She knew Lokes had a
better view, but if she found their target first, she could save him some time—and
a whole lot of bellyaching from the shepherds.

“He’s got long hair. Dark brown. Think a younger,
better-looking version of me,” the southerner had said when he’d found them at
the Scorpion’s Uncle. The man had stared off at nothing while he was speaking,
as if the shadows in the corner were helping him remember. Then he’d said, “He
rides a coal-black mare, wears leathers head-to-toe, and has this ratty old
checkered hood-scarf. And if it’s after about mid-morning when you see him,
he’ll be drunk. Answers to the name Toler.”

I could find a grain of sand in a dune easier than pick
out a shepherd in a herd of shepherds
, Weaver thought.
Half the
shepherds on the train match that southerner’s description. And I ain’t about
to start hollerin’ his name like I know the dway
.

“
Toler!
” Lokes was hollering. “Toler? Anybody here by
the name of Toler?”

Weaver shook her head and sighed, but she was smiling.
That’s
how he gets himself into these situations. Anything I’d never do in a million
long years, it’s the first thing he thinks of
.

The southerner had handed Weaver a scrap of folded notebook
paper, sealed in wax. “When you find Toler, give him this,” he’d said.

Weaver hadn’t told Lokes, but she’d slid a knife through
the seal one night by the campfire when he was off having himself a shit. The
paper was blank except for the short note scrawled across it. Admittedly,
reading wasn’t Weaver’s strong suit, but she’d had enough time to trudge
through it.

Toler,

Sorry bud—I memorized the routes. By the time you read
this, Vantanible’s empire won’t be long for this world. I’m sending these folks
to spare you from the war that’s coming. Consider them your guardian spirits. I
know how much you must hate me, but I want you to know that no matter what
happens, you’re still my brother, and I love you. I may not express it in the
healthiest ways, and I can’t change what I’ve done, but I mean that. Sorry for
everything. Stay safe.

-Dax

Weaver had melted the seal back on in the fire and returned
the note to her pack.

One of the shepherds was saying something to Lokes now, but
she couldn’t quite make it out. The shepherd hiked a thumb over his shoulder,
and Lokes continued toward the back of the caravan, still calling out the name.
A fellow on horseback rode out to him. They were too far away now for Weaver to
hear anything without resonating.

Lokes shot him. He drew and fired twice into the man’s chest,
collared him, and pulled him onto his lap. Then he rode off and left the man’s
horse standing there with an empty saddle.

Weaver went to work. Wherever there was a shepherd ready to
throw a javelin or draw a firearm, she made sure there was a new dimple in the
landscape for him to stumble into. Her fingers danced across the sand like a
pianist whose fingers remember all the right notes.

Lokes was grinning from ear to ear when he got back. “We
better hide, I’m thinkin’.”

Weaver rolled her eyes and gave a loud sigh. “Oh, is that what
you’re thinking? What’d you do that for? We’re supposed to protect him, not
kill him. I thought you—”

“This ain’t
him
,” Lokes said. “Toler ain’t with the
train no more, says this fella. Wouldn’t say where he is though. I reckoned he
could use some persuadin’.”

“Looks like you persuaded every shepherd in the train to come
after us while you were at it.”

A mob of shepherds was racing toward the dune. Some were on
foot, others were mounted; they all looked angry.

Weaver sighed. “Okay. Come on, ya dumb git.” She took Meldi’s
reins and led Lokes and his captive down the far side of the dune. “You better
hope he got good lungs, ‘cause I ain’t givin’ him mouth-to-mouth if he faints.”

She knelt and put both palms flat on the ground. A squarish
platform of sand began to slide downward, lowering them until the horses’ heads
were a foot below ground level. Sand flowed up the sides of the walls and
formed a ceiling over their heads. The humidity was unbearable in their little
chamber, the air stuffy and dank in her lungs. Gish and Meldi stood patiently,
waiting for it to be over. This was just another training session, for all they
knew.

“And another thing,” Weaver whispered. “Any of them steps on
that and falls through, you gotta kill ‘em fast, and without makin’ a lot of
noise.”

Lokes nodded, eyes scanning the ceiling of sand above them.
Maybe he was only heeding her words because he knew it was his fault they were
down here. Still, any time he listened was a win, as far as Weaver was
concerned.

They waited.

From time to time they heard muffled shouting, or the
vibrations of hoofbeats in the walls. The air was getting stale, and she knew
there wasn’t much left that was breathable. Opening a hole would be too risky,
though. Someone might see it, and it would take every effort not to let anyone
who stumbled upon the thin layer of sand fall through.

The shepherd on Lokes’ saddle gave a loud, anguished groan.
Lokes drew a revolver and cracked him on the skull. His body went limp.

Weaver glowered at him.

Lokes shrugged and smiled a toothy smile back at her.

Meldi stamped, growing restless, the way young horses do.

Almost half an hour passed before the sounds of the search
diminished above them.

“You wanna climb up and take a look-see?” Weaver asked.

“Be glad to. This hole’s hotter’n a bushcat’s buttcrack. Keep
an eye on this one.” Lokes shoved the shepherd aside and let the unconscious
man slump to the ground. He sidled Gish over to the wall and scrambled up where
Weaver made an opening, boots disappearing through the hole just before she
closed it again.

Weaver was glad to see the horses behaving themselves. They’d
never been underneath this long before. The shepherd’s tunic and leathers were
soaked with blood, but there was nothing she could do for him while she was
holding up the cipher.

A sudden weight hit the roof, two pinpoints of strain on the
fabric of sand. The depressions rose, and the weight lifted. Then it came down
harder. When the feet jumped and landed a third time, Weaver gave up and let
Lokes in. He came crashing through the ceiling in a cloud of sand and landed on
his rear, laughing and coughing.

“You having a good time up there?” Weaver was regretting that
she hadn’t given into the temptation to sandhole him earlier. “How’d you like
it if I dropped the whole cipher right now and let you claw your way out?”

Lokes stood and brushed himself off. “I love you. So much,”
he said, still chuckling.

If Weaver could’ve moved either hand to make a crude gesture
at him, she would’ve. “Love you too, y’asshole. What’s doin’ up there?”

“They gone back to diggin’ themselves out. Be on their way
before nightfall. You know how it is with them trains—gotta stay on schedule.
Can’t wait around to look for the lost sheep.” He kicked the shepherd to make
sure he was still alive. When the man groaned, Lokes gave a quick nod of
approval. “Let’s get outta here and see what this man knows.”

“You gotta be more careful,” Weaver scolded him, when they
were above ground again. “Just ‘cause I can slow the wounds doesn’t mean you
gotta go around giving people so many of ‘em.”