The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  So she searched—around the edges of the bowl, up the sides of the tank, along the walls, over the floors, and across the ceilings. The room’s reflective façade was cracked in places, greened with moss and lichen, and stained with other things that gave wet earthy smells. There was no indication of another way out, until she came close enough to see that what had appeared to be a rivulet of grime staining the lip of the wall was actually a collection of tiny scuff marks. Marks made by people climbing onto the ledge hidden in the space above. If she could climb a tree, Bastille was sure she could hoist herself up onto the ledge. Everything within her wanted to follow, but outside it was broad daylight, and she knew better than to venture out into the city on her own.

  There was more to consider, too. She was still inside the labyrinth, in violation of the unspoken laws of the Order, and each moment she lingered here was a moment that put her at further risk of being caught. It made her head throb all the more to think of what would happen to her if anyone caught her down here. She decided she’d come as far as she dared, and headed back down the tunnel toward the basilica. Under her breath, she swore on the name of the Infernal Mouth, frustrated. Discovering the identity of the person who had overheard her conversation with Sister Adeleine seemed a lost hope. She stepped over the muddy footprint at the T-junction and turned into the corridor, heading toward the stairs that would take her back into the walk-in freezer.

  There was a flickering orange light and the echo of slow footsteps coming from around the next bend. When the sounds of two male voices came to her ears, Bastille doubled back and headed down the only passage she hadn’t been down yet—the same intersection where her quarry had instead gone left toward the fountain. She went right, her chest pounding, the blood beating in her head as she hastened down the corridor. A sudden warm breeze blew back her hood and made the candle gutter, and she had to slow her pace to keep the flame from dying.

  The next change in the passage was as far along as the first, a winding stone stair that twisted down into utter darkness. To the right was a small square chamber, empty but for the ladder that hung from the far wall. Bastille considered each option before heading for the ladder. The sounds of the men behind her were growing louder, but there was still time before they reached the next bend.

  A pressure plate on the floor below the ladder was the obvious trigger for the trapdoor above, but pressing it did nothing. Dread washed over her when she noticed the indentations in the wall beside the ladder. A keyhole. Had there been others like it that she hadn’t noticed? The pressure plates must close the doors from within, but some device was required to open them again to get out. All the better to deter unwanted intruders, she thought. I should’ve anticipated as much.

  With her company drawing near, Bastille fled the ladder room in favor of her only other route of escape, and scuttled down the winding staircase. At the bottom, she came to a landing with a sturdy wooden door, banded in shining tin straps that reflected the candlelight with a mirror sheen. She could smell the newness of the wood and see the grain in its light brown color, but it was mounted on a rusted iron frame that looked as old as the basilica itself. She would have expected to find some ancient rotting thing attached to those hinges, but this door looked as if it had been hung within the long year. The door had a keyhole, but no handle, and neither pushing nor pulling moved it.

  Bastille felt along the top of the door frame, checked for loose stones in the wall, and stepped on each flagstone, shining her candle into every nook she could find. Finally she tucked herself into the space below the stairs, snuffed the candle, and crouched in tight to the wall. For a time, she was alone in utter darkness.

  At the top of the staircase’s circular shaft was a ceiling made of solid wooden rafters topped by thick planks. This is the underside of the floor in the east tower, she discerned. It was likely that this part of the floor joined the scriptorium or one of its many studies or classrooms. Bastille’s stomach dropped, recalling how the floors in that part of the basilica so often heaved and creaked. One rotted rafter, and anyone within that room would find themselves tumbling two stories straight down into this secret place.

  The voices approached, and the first hint of torchlight cast their wavering shadows along the stairwell. When the footsteps reached the midpoint of the staircase, the vague drone of voices sharpened into distinct words.

  “…what she wanted was not to be thought of as a lover of the heathens, naturally. Our stores are strained, and with the stranglehold the nomads have put on the trade caravans, the residents of the city south have less to offer now than they used to. Lethari claims he’s made things better, when in truth the nomads are keeping the best of everything for themselves.”

  “The nomads—those savages have set up a permanent camp in the old chemical factory, wouldn’t you know it,” said the other voice.

  “I do know it. And on top of that, to claim that our generosity stems from anything but a desire to appease the heathens. Preposterous.” The man spoke in a brusque whisper, and as they made their way to the bottom of the stair, Bastille recognized him as Brother Froderic, one of the Greatly Esteemed. When he glanced at his companion, Bastille was sure he would look past the man and spot her where she was crouching in the shadows. But if he had, he gave no indication of it.

  “Anyone who is hungry—man or beast—loses his ferocity when he is fed. But if he is fed so much that he grows lazy and sluggish with excess, he begins to expect these things, believing that he must no longer work for them, and even going so far as to think he deserves them.” To Bastille’s surprise, this was the voice of Brother Soleil, the bony old codger whom Adeleine had confessed was the father of Sister Jeanette’s unborn child.

  “She is bent on doing a little good,” said Brother Froderic.

  “Let her do it then,” said Brother Soleil, “and leave her be. Our stores may be low, but we still have plenty to share. Where in the scriptures does it say that we are to bear ill will toward the heathens?”

  “According to the scriptures, the unrepentant heathens are to be regarded as already-devoured,” Brother Froderic replied. “Spending more than necessary on those who have died already is a waste. It shows a lack of reverence. Now, trading is another matter entirely.” He grinned, searching the pockets of his robes. “Now where did I put that—ah, here it is. We are much better served in our dealings with the…”

  Bastille lost his words as the two men went through the door, their voices growing hollow and muffled behind it.

  The door clunked against the frame, but when Froderic let go, the hinges sighed and the door inched open, not latched properly. Against her better judgment, Bastille crept over and peered through the narrow slit. The stench from within was familiar and unbearable: waste and death, like the city outside, but stronger. Brother Froderic fastened his torch to a sconce on the far wall. Light threw trembling puddles of shadow off each of the priests and danced along the iron bars of a cage. Chains rattled somewhere out of sight. Bastille thought she heard a whimper, but it was too faint to know for sure.

  Brother Froderic crossed his arms and swept his robes up over his head, tossing them to the floor below. He was the sort of stocky man one might’ve categorized as fat. Now that she saw him unclothed, Bastille noted that the surplus was more than marginal. He had pudgy arms, a squat belly, and a thinning shock of stormy gray hair that his robe had tousled when he removed it, making him look like some half-mad troll on stubby legs. Being in charge of the storerooms has given him ample opportunity to make use of their contents, Bastille mused.

  Froderic thrust his white underclothes down around his ankles and stepped out of them. His skin glistened, as did the dense silver thatchings of hair on his chest and shoulders. Metal sounded again, a brighter tinkling this time, and Brother Soleil was backing outward with the wide cage door in his hand and the key in its lock.

  No matter how she strained, Bastille couldn’t get a view of the cage’s contents through the tiny sliver be
tween the door and its frame. The chains clinked once more, and something in the sound was more urgent and fierce this time.

  Struggling.

  Soleil said something to Froderic and laughed; Froderic muttered a reply under his breath, a brutal glimmer passing through his dark eyes. His mouth hung open, and he seemed to have forgotten all about what they’d been discussing. He was erect, entranced by whatever was behind those bars. He strode toward the cage, past the rightmost edge of Bastille’s view, and out of sight. Oh, the Mouth… is this what those who profess to believe are really like?

  Bastille’s first instinct was to pull the door open a little further, but she resisted, lest the hinges give her away. She heard a series of metallic clinks, more chains dragging, and then a loud slamming thud. There was nothing else for several moments. The far-off torch hissed and crackled. Brother Soleil leaned against the cage door and looked on at something Bastille couldn’t see. Then there were the beginnings of a slow rhythm, a slap and a gentle thud, followed by the shambling of the chains.

  The rhythm repeated. Again. Then twice more, quicker than the last. There was another whimper—more like a sob this time—but it was so brief and feeble that Bastille couldn’t tell what sort of person or thing it belonged to. She could only surmise that, whatever was in that cage, its spirit was so broken it had ceased to resist.

  Her breath caught in her throat, coarse and ragged. The room spun. Her skull felt like it was about split open with the worst headache she’d had in weeks. She dropped to a crouch and closed her eyes, pressed her cheek against the cold stone wall. Acid surged in her throat, burning her insides like liquid fire.

  Within the room, the rhythm intensified. The problem of Sister Jeanette’s pregnancy seemed so distant now, so much less important. Bastille wished she wasn’t alone; she wished she were one of the Most Highly Esteemed, with a retinue of high priests behind her to storm through these Mouth-forsaken tunnels and expose Brothers Froderic and Soleil for the heathens they were. But she wasn’t a high priest; she had no authority to punish them, and she was all by herself down here. What she wouldn’t give for a chance to return to the small hours before she’d left her bedchamber, a chance to do it all again, but with the benefit of some instinct to bring her down a different path. Maybe the instinct would have told her to stay in her room and study for just ten minutes longer, or stirred her emotions in such a way that she lingered outside the sanctuary to listen to the lovely songs of the tetrarchs, or went inside to pray to the Mouth; maybe the premonition would’ve convinced her to put off her chores until later in the day, and she would’ve gone to her preparation rooms instead.

  Whatever cruel trick it was that had brought her here—that had exposed her to this atrocity—it was breaking her. Her stern severity, the icy exterior and the fervent zeal with which she sought the things of the Mouth; the rigid discipline she held herself to—they were crumbling. Her faith in the Mouth itself was crumbling. How could she serve an Order whose corruption ran so deep? Where could she go now? Who could she tell? How was she to escape this place without being noticed? The cavity below the stair wouldn’t hide her when they returned this way, and she didn’t have the key to re-enter the basilica.

  When Brother Froderic was finished, he donned his prosaics once more. Then Brother Soleil took a turn. The light in the room had grown scant as the torch sputtered, and Bastille could see even less than before through the tiny crack between the door and its frame. Though her stomach still churned with grief and worry, she took her extinguished candle in hand and waited in the crevice for them to come back through. After a long while, no one had emerged.

  She approached the door and looked through the sliver again. The cage door was still open wide, though she saw no keys in the lock anymore. She couldn’t see either of the two priests, though the light was dimmer now. She waited there and listened, but she heard nothing.

  She found herself wanting to open the door, but before she made a sound, she had to be sure they were gone. She dropped to the floor and looked through the space over the threshold. It was a bigger gap than at the side, but she saw no feet and only the bottoms of the cages to interrupt the flagstones. Across the room in the opposite wall, barely visible below the dying torch, was another door. It was open.

  Sister Bastille stood and brushed herself off, pulling up her hood again. Her robes were stained with dark wet splotches from the puddles of murky water she’d been laying in. Tucking the candle away in her robes, she opened the door on its squealing hinges and peered into the room. No one was there.

  Three cages stood along the right side of the room; two open and one shut, all empty. All three were of the same size and fashion—great squarish things of heavy rust-spotted iron about six feet on each side. The closed cage was empty but for several sets of chains and manacles lining the inside. The open cages were empty too, but they looked as though they’d been used recently; brittle hay was piled around their edges, stained with excrement, sodden with unevaporated urine.

  A low wooden table stood to the left, stained in much the same way as the stone slab in Bastille’s preparation chamber, though the wood hadn’t fared as well as the stone. A smaller side table was tucked into a nearby corner, with a leather packet of gleaming metal instruments spread out on top. Bastille was familiar with these instruments; they were the very same surgical tools she and Brother Soleil had used on many occasions. They’re doing some other type of experiment down here, she realized.

  The ensconced torch guttered in the far wall as a warm wind blew from the passage beyond the open door. It was a rough-hewn stone cave, shaped like a horseshoe and wide enough for several men to travel through shoulder to shoulder. Bastille scurried to the door and tiptoed down the shallow wooden steps to the cave’s hardpan floor. The tunnel ran in either direction, but she didn’t need to wonder which way the priests had gone; the left tunnel was black as pitch, but a faint glow came from the right. What she did have to think about was whether it was worth it to follow them. It wasn’t long before she decided there was little she stood to lose.

  By the smell of the warm wind, Bastille guessed she was close to the surface. She hugged the inside wall and held her hood up as she crept down the curving passage, using the light ahead to guide her way. She halted when the torches came into view and leaned out from behind a cleft in the rock to observe.

  Brothers Soleil and Froderic were leading a pair of hunched figures down the tunnel by chains that were clapped around their necks like dog collars. Each figure was dressed in a plain woolen poncho and bound at the ankles in iron manacles. One had the wide hips and slender waist of a woman; the other had a short, furry body and a long tail. A tail.

  More than a dozen armed men stood facing the priests and their two slaves. Some held torches, others javelins, firearms, bows, or strange curved swords with blades as thick as a man’s arm. Bastille had seen men like these before. They had grim faces and dark eyes; their skin was tanned to a sable deeper than polished ironwood, and criss-crossed with puckered scars that gave it a resemblance to stitched leather. Most of the men wore very little, baring their chiseled chests and the gnarled symbols engraved in their skin as if in some prideful display. What clothing they did wear was loose and free-flowing, loincloths and billowing trousers and simple tabards of gossamer fabric in whites and creams and ivories. Almost all had their hair set in barbaric fashion: shorn along one side; woven into braids; tossed forward in a sheet; blazed into mohawks; or set free in shaggy disheveled manes that hung to their shoulders. Some accented their garb with goggles or hood-scarves. There was a film of sand and grit covering them all.

  These were nomads; there was no mistaking them. The heathens and heretics in the city were tanned, but not to such an extent; there was too much shade amongst the tall buildings of the city. Only the native savages who lived out on the wastes had skin so dark. The thought of so many of them—half-naked, rippling with sheets of muscle below bulging veins—was overwhelming, and Bastille f
elt her face flush as the blood rose inside her.

  “Let me see them,” said one of the savages.

  The wind was strong in this part of the tunnel, and it seemed to carry the words to Bastille across the distance.

  Brother Soleil tore the ponchos away to leave the chained figures naked and trembling. They were both so thin and sallow from malnourishment that it looked like an effort just to stand. The furry one had the build of an animal, but it walked upright on two legs like a human. Sister Bastille had seen plenty of murrhods, but the sight of one was a rarity for her these days. Wynesring had endured many nighttime raids at the hands of the verminkind. She’d thought she was leaving all that behind her when she came to Belmond.

  As she watched them standing there, a rare bout of compassion overcame her, and she found herself wishing she had some way to liberate these poor chained souls—even if the only way to free them was to snuff out their lives as she had her candle. Even the already-devoured, the heretics, and the lesser creatures of the Aionach were destined for death rather than endless suffering. Surely any fate was better than the one these slaves were bound to. Bastille caught herself when she realized she was returning to her habit of reciting the scriptures in times of stress. It disgusted her to think that these were the same scriptures that had been written by generations of Brothers and Sisters as corrupt as Soleil and Froderic.

  The savage stepped forward and scraped the tip of his javelin along the inside of the woman’s thigh. Something dark and thick flaked off. “You have spoiled them. Did you not think I would notice? Return my slaves to me like this, and you will pay extra from now on.”

  The savage was no taller or swarthier than the rest, but even at a distance, Bastille could feel his ferocity. A man who carried himself this way knew no danger except the kind he wrought himself. Above his gleaming brown eyes, a mop of curly black hair toppled to one side, like a pillow dared to balance on end. He wore an alabaster tabard, and his baggy knee-length knickers heaved in the tunnel wind like plumes of white smoke. His belt and bandolier were lined with knives, bullets, a sword, and even a small firearm.