The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (2 page)

It was all the opportunity Daxin needed.

Slipping his skinning knife from its loop on his belt, Daxin
leaned forward and took Toler in the eye. Toler cried out and stumbled backward.
When he screamed, Daxin felt the pain as if it were his own. Sour regret silted
on his tongue; the idea that he’d given to such an impulse grieved him, whether
it was a means to saving his own life or not. He was still in danger, contrite
as he was, so he forced his broken body into motion.
Coff it, this is going
to hurt.

On his knees, Daxin found the machete still quivering in
flesh. Standing with a grimace, he dislodged the blade just as the first of
Toler’s companions—the one he’d called Blatcher—came careening around the
mare’s rear end. Daxin anticipated the superior reach of the javelin and was
rewarded for it. His shattered ankle rasped like a bag of seashells as he
evaded the thrust and yanked the spear forward by its pole. The broken thing at
the end of his leg made a better stumbling block than it did a foot just now,
and he plunged it into the path of his assailant to send him tumbling. He
whirled when the next attacker rounded the corner. The machete’s blade was
sharp, and his stroke sent the man sprawling in a spray of blood and flesh and
teeth.

Daxin faltered as lightheadedness took him, the strain on his
battered parts washing over him like a fever. His knees wanted to buckle, but desperation
kept him on his feet. Behind him, Toler screamed again, a tortured keening that
etched itself onto Daxin’s heart with all the veracity of an oath. To feel his
brother’s pain was an ache worse than any wound he could’ve sustained.
I
couldn’t look him in the eye, so I stabbed him there instead
, he reflected.

Leaping belly-first onto his mare, Daxin smacked her
hindquarters to send her bolting toward the trees. A javelin wobbled past and
found rest somewhere in the ground ahead as he climbed up and took the saddle.
Two more missed them before he’d gotten out of range. He felt every fall of the
animal’s hooves as he galloped through the skeletal cropping of forest. Blood
ran from the gashes in his arms and side, over his trousers and down the mare’s
flank. Toler’s screams fell distant as he rode on, looking back every now and
then, grimacing at the trauma it caused him to turn his body. Soon he could
feel nothing anymore. Was it the adrenaline, or the remorse in his veins that
numbed him?

The last time he glanced over his shoulder, Toler was laboring
to his feet, trembling and screaming and clutching at his face like a madman.
The other three Vantanible men stood like poachers around a trapped creature,
timid and uncertain, caught somewhere between sympathy and fear. The fifth was
still splayed out on the ground with half his face decimated and glistening
red. Daxin thought maybe he’d killed that one, and he wondered how long it
would be before their thirst for vengeance soured inside them. Maybe now that
they had what they’d come for, they would leave him alone. He doubted it. Toler
would come after him someday.

A lump rose in Daxin’s throat, and he felt the color drain
from his face. He was small again, a misbehaving child awaiting punishment.
That feeling would stay with him, he knew, no matter how far he rode or to
which corner of the Aionach he fled. Toler had never been one to abandon a
grudge. If there was any chance Daxin’s little brother could have forgiven him
before, that chance was gone.

CHAPTER 2

Council

“You have truly no idea what the above-world is like,”
shouted Raith Entradi, hammering the desk with clenched fists. The clatter
echoed down the long concrete hall, sending old facility maps and schematic
diagrams drifting to the floor. Some of the other councilors flinched; the rest
stood still as stones, their shapes sterile against the bluish lights pulsing
along the walls. The pockmarks in the floor cast miniature shadows, and the
room fell silent. Raith slid his chair back and stood, towering above them. On
the desk, smooth fist-shaped craters remained where his hands had been.

“Most of us born and bred here in Decylum cannot hope to understand
the dangers of the outside,” Raith said. “The flare that Infernal began so many
years ago has grown more deadly with each passing year. The surface is
suffering a slow death, blistered by the light-star’s malevolent presence, and
there’s no sign of a solution or an end. The topsoil turned to dust long ago.
The Aionach has been baked to ash and swept up in the arms of the wind, layer
by layer. Crop yields are smaller each harvest, and the width and breadth of
the wasteland grows. It won’t be long before even the hardiest plants wither,
the beasts starve, and the blight spreads to every shore. And so it stands to
reason that our only remedy is to delve further into the depths and expand our
facility. We must do this if we’re to provide room for our growing community.”

Loren Horner shrugged the waistband of his synthtex suit up
around his substantial breadbasket. He had jowls to match his belly, dark hair
flecked with gray, and spectacles that many supposed were less to improve his
sight than to enhance his intellectual affect. He adjusted the spectacles and
cleared his throat. “Councilor Entradi, I did not mean to offend. I am aware of
the, hmm, situation. I assure you, I am just as concerned as you are.”

Raith eyed him, settling on the man’s midsection. “You’ve
become far too concerned with your suppers lately, and not enough with the
matters concerning this council.”

There was an uneasy murmur, a fidgeting that fell short of
laughter.

Loren adjusted his waistband again, as if to shrug off
Raith’s insult. “What I mean to say, hmm, is that, perhaps, it would be best
for us to move. Let us dig deeper if that is what you think best, but in the
meantime let us also send, hmm, hunters. Equip them for longer journeys, so
they can search for… a new home. If there is one to be found, I say we find
it.”

“I speak with you,” said Wardel Slake, holding up the
two-fingered sign of accord.

“We ought to pack up and move to the Arcadian Catacombs,”
said Rodge Leonard, raising his voice to be heard from the back. The comment
garnered a few laughs. He had bright green eyes and a puff of coppery curls
that sagged under their own weight. Rodge often kept to himself until he found
the opportunity to inject a well-timed remark.

In this instance, Raith deigned to offer him a reply. “If
even one of us could get close enough to that place, we’d have considered it a
long time ago.”

“Yes, Decylum has served us well,” Loren continued, ignoring
the interruption, “but we are outgrowing it, hmm, and as you have already
explained, we do not know how many years longer the above-world will be
habitable. Perhaps this is not the place for us, and there is another.”

Several councilors murmured their agreement. Wardel Slake
clapped Loren on the back.

Raith himself was not so swayed. He cocked his head to the
side and narrowed his eyes at Loren. “Have you ever tried to grow crops inside
a mountain? Planted seeds in the floor of a quarry?” He rubbed the toe of his
boot on the concrete as if crushing a bug, and paused to let them hear the soft
whish-whish-whish
. “You know that what we sculpt is finite. There are
many forms and purposes among us, but none of us can feed life. Not in many
long years. And you want to send our hunters into the wastes. Send them to meet
the bandits, marauders, nomads, mutants, and whatever other beasts roam the
above-world?”

Raith put a hand on one of the lightbeams on the wall. His
fingertips glowed like dull orange embers, and the beam brightened until the
shadows were dancing and flickering again. Raith hadn’t had fingernails for
longer than he could remember. His skin was as black as charcoal from his
wrists down, and so dry it cracked and split whenever he made a fist. From the
wrists up, his skin faded to a dark, calloused gray, finally reaching its
normal color at the elbows. Many of the other councilors’ hands looked the
same.

“Our hunters are more than capable,” said Laagon Dent. “The
group we have is very skilled.” Laagon was Raith’s brother-in-law, a thin man
of average height with reddish brown hair and a humorless face. Raith had
brought him onto the council at his sister’s behest. Laagon had taken to the
position with vigor, and a sense of pride that sometimes verged on pretension.

“And when we turn our hunters into scouts… who will hunt for
those they leave behind?” Raith asked.

“The council will train and appoint new hunters in their
stead. There are enough of us.”

“There are enough of us only because we’ve foregone life on
the surface in such large part. This place has kept us sheltered from
predators, criminals, and the ravages of Infernal—the same ravages that are
stripping the above-worlders of their ability to survive. Even their fertility
wanes in the daylight.”

“You don’t know that,” said Sebastian Rice, golden brown hair
brushing the shoulders of his aqua-gray thermal suit. He was one of the younger
councilors, but as wise and stubborn as his elders. “Many say it’s our gift that
lets us make children.”

Raith spread his hands. “Who truly knows? Perhaps we should
bottle our seed and trade it to the surfacers.”

Raucous laughter filled the hall. Sebastian Rice gave him a
wry smirk. The only person who didn’t so much as smile was a middle-aged councilor
named Cord Faleir, whose countenance remained as sour as usual.

“However it may have come to pass that our pricks have
maintained their awe-inspiring vigor,” Raith went on, “none of us can deny that
Decylum keeps us safe. That safety, above all else, is the reason we thrive
while the surfacers perish. If we remain here, we can keep our way of life
intact. Our borders are secure, the facility is still functioning, and we as a
people are flourishing. That’s why our best hope is to expand here.”

“How much further
can
we expand?” asked Hastle Beige,
Raith’s closest friend. “We need blasting supplies. Wood, steel, and iron to
build new chambers. Where will we get the materials?” Hastle’s ruddy skin and sheets
of hard muscle were a testament to the time he’d spent building cities on the
surface in his younger days. Trimmed white-blond hair crowned his scalp and
descended into a platinum beard.

Raith could still remember standing in the hangar the day
Hastle left Decylum. He could still see the heat shimmer that had swallowed
Hastle’s figure as he trudged into the wastes. Raith’s hope of ever seeing his
friend again had been as bleak as the surface itself that day. But Hastle had
returned several years later, claiming to have seen enough of the above-world
to know he didn’t want to be a part of it. Hastle’s return had proven him to be
one of the strongest and bravest men Raith had ever known. Hastle had spent
days recounting his adventures, and the people of Decylum had learned a great
deal about the above-world and its condition as a result. That knowledge had
paved the way for a trickle of other adventurous souls to leave the facility in
the years that followed.

“You know what life on the surface is like better than most
of us, Hastle,” Raith said. “If the council votes to send our hunters into the
wastes alone, of course I’ll have to allow it. But I would sooner organize a
scavenging expedition. The city of Belmond is our best hope of finding the
materials we need to expand. If we were to go there, I would lead the party
myself.”

“Belmond is infested with, hmm, zoomheads, and… and rotters,”
said Loren Horner. “A supply caravan will not make it half a day outside the
city before it is, hmm, overrun.”

“And yet, rather than travel as a host who can defend itself,
you would have us scatter our hunters across the desert like sand, to journey
in every other direction, looking for a home better suited to us than this one?
Your logic disproves itself, Loren. If we take a host to Belmond and we find
ourselves overrun, we’ll fight. Each one of you can handle any five surfacers
with ease—ten, if they’re unarmed. Better to take our chances as a multitude, I
say.”

“I speak,” said Kraw Joseph, the eldest among them, and
Raith’s predecessor as Head Councilor. Kraw was a stout, bald man with a wiry
gray beard streaked with silver. He had served as the Head for many years
before giving up his seat, opting to take a position of lesser responsibility instead.

“I speak with you. To Infernal with whatever’s in that city.
We’ll face it just as we’ve faced everything before it,” said Jiren Oliver, one
of Raith’s fiercest supporters. Jiren had a young man’s lust for warfare, and he
tended to lean toward whatever plan was most likely to find him more of it.
Like Laagon Dent, Jiren had once been hunter. For some reason that Raith didn’t
quite understand, many of the hunters styled their hair and clothing with inspiration
from the nomads. Jiren shaved the sides of his head, but he kept the top long,
sweeping it forward to mask one of his pale green eyes.

“Even if this expedition is successful,” Hastle Beige said,
“and we return with the materials we need, we then must begin the process of delving
into the below-world. Myriad spoke of dangers—” That was a far as Hastle got
before Laagon Dent interrupted him.

“Myriad has been gone many long years now, without a trace.
I, for one, would prefer to remember the visionary—not the doom prophet, as some
seem to. Myriad’s warnings were intended to prepare us, not force us to live in
fear.”

“I’m not entirely convinced of that, Laagon,” Raith said. But
Myriad’s words echoed once again in his mind.
There are mysteries trapped in
the innermost places, and in the farthest places. There are wonders to behold,
and secrets fathomless, and horrors beyond horror beneath the Aionach. Yet of all these dangers, mankind’s will is
the greatest.
“Myriad held great power and wisdom, and we would all
be at our best to heed those words as Hastle urges, though they’re long-since
spoken. I don’t intend to lead thousands of innocents blindly into the
below-world with little thought toward the potentials.”

“And even so, you claim it must be done,” said Laagon.

Raith remembered a time when his sister’s husband was a
bolder man, focused only on the success of his hunters.
His faith in them is
biased, and it’s made him more hard-nosed in his dealings than is good for him.
Authority has not had a positive effect on Laagon Dent
, Raith decided. The
council needed conflict at times, but Laagon stirred it up with such disregard
that it often served only to alienate him from the other councilors.

“This is not a decision I take lightly, Laagon,” Raith said,
“nor would I expect any of you to do so. A solution can’t be reached without
considering every option first. Whatever is decided, the clans must act in
solidarity. Our choices stand before us: we send hunters to explore the surface
for a new home, or we send a host to Belmond to gather raw materials for the
expansion of our current facility. We can only spare enough people for one
option or the other, as we’ve already agreed. We must never leave our gates
unguarded, and that means some must always stay behind. Now… go home to your
families. Rest, and think on these things. Tomorrow, we vote.”

With that, Raith left them. The council carried on, their voices
diminishing behind him as he strode down the long hall and turned the corner. The
Head Councilor found himself alone with his thoughts as he made his way home,
stopping every now and then to replenish the lightbeams that were running low.
At last he came to the thick metal door that led into his hab unit. Clinical
and bare as that door was, it was as welcoming a sight as any he’d ever seen.

The hab unit held a collection of clean, simple furniture
spread through three rectangular spaces. The plush white brengen skin rug in
the center of the entry space was a comfort to his weary feet. In the old days,
factories would’ve spat out thousands of rugs exactly like this one. In
Decylum, it was a luxury. The chair and table were black upholstery and
machine-cut wood, stained the color of dark coffee and polished to a shine.
Both pieces of furniture still looked brand-new, as though they’d been
preserved against time itself.

In the next room, Raith touched the lightbeam, and it filled
the chamber with its bluish glow. He unclasped his heavy nyleen vest, then
stripped off his brown synthtex suit and flopped into bed. He was tired. He’d
spent most of the day training the children whose hands were turning black.
A
blackhand’s gift can kill him if he doesn’t know how to use it
, he’d told
them. And it was the truth.

Raith’s breathing slowed as he stared up at the blank white
ceiling. The lightbeam danced and dimmed, but no matter how hard he wished for
sleep, it wouldn’t come. As was usually the case, the day’s activities were
weighing on his mind. What was more, lying still had made him realize how much
his hands hurt.

He roused himself with a grunt and lumbered into the third
room, where he filled the sink and tempered the water with a few drops of Theodar
Urial’s soothing formula. The old apothecary had taken great pains to get the
mixture right.
Fight through the discomfort, and a measured dose will take
away the day’s strains
, Theodar had told him. As Raith slouched over the
sink and plunged both hands beneath the water, his skin began to tingle. There
was a stinging, but he held fast until the moisture began to work its way into
the cracks, softening the hard, dry skin and dulling the pain.