“We spent the night together in the hills, dealing with a… local problem,” Asha said. “She seemed like a very sad person. I wanted to help her, but she left in the morning. I think she went north to some war.”
“She did,” Omar said. “I saw her in Constantia just over a month ago.”
“So she’s all right?”
Omar shrugged. “The last time I saw her, she had decided to give up being a soldier and to try doing something else with her life. But then she wandered off and I haven’t seen her since, and I don’t know if I ever will again.”
“I see.” Asha glanced at Wren. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, thanks.” The girl in black smiled nervously as she sipped her tea.
Out in the street the traffic was growing a bit heavier again, and it was all flowing back toward the temple. The words Osiris and Demon were on every tongue, and half the heads in the cafe were glancing nervously out at the road, and at the red-clad soldiers who strode by every few moments on their way to the temple
“You said something back in the alley,” Asha said. “About the temple. About razing it to the ground. But I saw you walking up to the doors. Tell me, what were you doing there? Do you have any idea what those Osirian people do?”
The girl in black glanced at the Aegyptian man.
Priya laid her hand on Asha’s in one of her unnerving displays of spatial awareness. “I think what Asha means to say is that we have some concerns about the Sons of Osiris, and we’re curious about why you were going to see them.”
Omar cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Wren began to speak. “We came to Alexandria to find and destroy certain dangerous objects. Things made from a metal called sun-steel. This metal has the ability to-”
“Trap and enslave human souls,” Asha said. “Yes, I know about it. It’s what those little golden heart pendants of yours are made of, and the seireiken swords.”
The girl held up her gloved hands, displaying the eight silver bracelets on her wrists. A shallow groove ran around the center of each bracelet, and in each groove was a dark golden wire. Wren said, “In the north, we call the metal rinegold, and it’s used to preserve the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors. The wise-women, the valas, give their souls to the rinegold willingly.”
Asha frowned. “I suppose that’s the least offensive use for it that I’ve seen yet. But Gideon had the right idea. He has a sun-steel sword himself, but he uses it to destroy other such weapons, and when he has destroyed them all, he has vowed to destroy his own as well.”
“Good for him,” Omar said quietly with a faraway look in his eye.
“So it’s true?” Asha looked at him suspiciously. “You’re both sun-steel hunters like Gideon? How long have you been doing this?”
“Actually, we’ve only just started,” Wren said. “We decided to do this after the war in Constantia ended.”
“That’s very noble of you,” Priya said.
Wren blushed and smiled. “I guess. I just… I just don’t understand what happened back there at the temple. We have earthquakes in Ysland, my country, but they’re nothing like that. The ground didn’t even shake. It was like the temple just broke apart and collapsed on us.”
Asha sipped her tea and kept her eyes down. Had the topic of conversation been anything else, she would have looked her accuser in the eye and denied nothing, but the dragon was something else. Something she still could not fully control.
I should be stronger by now. I need to be, for Priya’s sake.
For everyone’s sake.
“No, I doubt it was an earthquake. I saw something back there just before it happened,” Omar said. “I saw a figure, like a person in armor, climbing the side of the temple. Someone did this intentionally. Whoever it was, we owe this person a debt for taking care of the temple for us.” He gave Asha a long, steady look.
Asha sat up straight and sighed. “Yes, I did it.”
Wren looked at her sharply in surprise. Omar sipped his tea calmly and let his eyes wander in the direction of their young waitress.
“How?” Wren asked. “How could you possibly destroy something so large all by yourself?”
Asha paused, and then said, “As I told you, when I was a little girl, something bit me. It was an infant dragon.”
“And it gave you that lovely ear?” Omar said, still looking at the waitress.
“Yes. And a short time ago near Damascus, I encountered that same dragon again, fully grown and strong enough to slaughter an army in just a few moments. Nadira and I killed the dragon, but its soul entered my body,” Asha said quietly. She glanced around the cafe, but no one was watching them. No one else was listening. No one else cared. “It can be difficult to control sometimes, but for the most part I command the dragon’s soul. I can unleash it when I want, to use its power, its strength. I’ve been using this soul to hunt down the Sons of Osiris and to destroy their seireikens.”
Omar nodded thoughtfully. “And to destroy their ancient temples.”
“It is a very powerful dragon, a very powerful soul,” Asha said. “Priya taught me to control it. If she hadn’t been there with me at Damascus, I would have been utterly lost. The dragon would have consumed me if not for her.”
Again the blind nun found her hand, and squeezed it. “It wasn’t so difficult.”
“Remarkable,” Omar said. “My congratulations to you both. You may be the first person to ever control such a soul by yourself.”
Asha looked down into her tea. “We’ve seen the Sons of Osiris throughout the Empire of Eran. They are slavers and murderers. So when I learned to control the dragon, I came here to do what no one else could do. Destroy their temple. Destroy their weapons. Destroy them.”
Omar nodded. “You tore down that huge building with your bare hands in just a few minutes. I’ve never heard of anything like it, and I’ve been around for a very long time.” He smiled.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?” Priya asked. “Nadira and Gideon said they were two thousand years old.”
“They are. I’m closer to forty-five hundred, myself.”
Asha froze, then blinked. “Over four thousand years old?”
“Yes.” Omar emptied his cup and refilled it from the steaming teapot.
“So that’s when Bashir made you immortal?” Priya asked.
Omar chuckled. “No, my dear. I made myself immortal, right here in Alexandria, as a matter of fact. I didn’t start calling myself Bashir until much later.”
“You’re Bashir!”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “Among others, of course.”
Asha sat very still, contemplating her tea, wondering what to say to a man who was over four thousand years old. Some part of her refused to believe his claim, refused to believe that this very ordinary man with his fancy shirt and coat and belt… Asha frowned at his belt and the scabbard on it. “Is that a… You carry one of their swords? Like Gideon?”
“Yes, I do.” Omar looked up into her eyes. “But my seireiken, for the most part, contains the souls of scholars and artists who gave themselves to me willingly so that their knowledge and skills might be preserved. And I’m no swordsman. I don’t go around killing people, for souls or for anything else. I swear to you.”
“It’s true,” Wren said quickly. “I’ve held his seireiken, I’ve seen the souls in it, and I’ve talked to them. Doctors and singers and, well, good people who wanted to be there. They’re mostly really old, too, from a long time ago.”
Asha smiled at the girl’s earnestness. “I believe you.”
The noise in the cafe had been growing by small measures throughout their conversation, and from time to time Asha heard someone exclaim something about the temple, but every time she glanced around, she only saw excited city people chatting over their drinks. Now, as she looked over her shoulder, she heard a man shouting out in the street. He was shouting in Eranian, but his Aegyptian accent was strong and she had to focus to understand what he wa
s saying.
Temple.
Help.
Monster.
Asha frowned and looked across the table at Omar, and saw him also frowning out at the street. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m not certain,” he said. “Either the local constabulary is looking for the demon responsible for destroying the Temple of Osiris, or there is a rampaging creature with the head of an animal dancing on the rubble at this very moment. It’s hard to tell, really.”
Asha blinked. “Are you serious? Is that really possible?”
Priya’s smile had faded and Wren played nervously with her silver bracelets.
Omar stood up. “Let’s go find out.”
Asha stood up beside him and slipped her medicine bag over her shoulder. As they all turned to leave the cafe, they heard a bestial roar echo across the city.
Chapter 3
Loss
Asha led the others out into the street where the milling pedestrians and the seated diners were quickly falling silent and every head was turning to look down the street toward the ruined temple. They listened together to the screams and roars echoing down the stone corridors of the city, broken here and there by the crunching or tumbling of heavy stones. A murmur ran through the crowd and Asha saw the nervous excitement in the faces around her, but she also saw the frightened people slipping out of the cafe and hurrying down the avenue away from the temple.
“Priya, I think you should wait here this time,” Asha said.
“And you, Wren.” Omar nodded. “Whatever is down there, it doesn’t sound pleasant.”
Wren held up her arms and jangled the silver bracelets on her wrists. “But I can help!”
“I know you can help. You can also die, whereas I cannot. So stay with the nun, please.” Omar rested his hand on the grip of his seireiken and stepped out into the street.
Asha strode out in front of him and started back toward the remains of the Temple of Osiris. She gently rolled her fingers into fists, and then let them fall slack again, working the blood into her extremities, trying to nudge the dragon within her just a bit, just enough to warm her muscles and make her strong enough and fast enough to get away if they should find trouble ahead.
No, I know better. Of course there is trouble ahead.
Asha walked up to the corner of the building across the street from the ruins, and peeked out. The street was mostly deserted. Everything with working wheels had been rolled away, and every animal that could walk or limp had been led away. All of the injured had been carried away, and the gawkers who had come were now gone, hurrying down dark alleys and along the shadowed edges of the boulevard, all rushing away from the bestial cries coming from the temple. The only life remaining now was a company of men in red shirts and steel armor, and they were slowly backing away from the rubble.
On the far side of the street the shattered remains of the temple rose from a thin scattering of pebbles and splinters in the middle of the road up to the massive pile of debris sitting on the broken foundations of the ancient fortress. And standing upon that pile were two figures.
The woman caught Asha’s eye first. She was tall and slender, and wore a simple white dress that left her arms bare, but over that she wore a queen’s ransom in golden necklaces hanging from her neck and thin chains around her waist. Her skin and hair were nearly identical to Asha’s in every way, and all of these details hovered in the back of Asha’s mind as she stared at the most incredible aspect of the Aegyptian woman.
She had wings.
They were magnificent white wings that hung from the woman’s arms like a cape of bright feathers, but they drooped far beyond the woman’s feathered hands and when she lowered her arms the feathers dragged along the dusty ground. The woman was stomping up and down the slopes of broken sandstone and shattered oak, and every time she swept one of her feathered arms, a blast of dust and splinters tore away into the air, and she would peer down into the gaps between the tumbled blocks and beams.
Asha reached back and pulled Omar forward to look around the corner beside her, and she asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“A woman with strange animal features?” Omar smiled at her. “Once or twice.”
“I mean the wings,” Asha said. “Have you ever seen that before? Or her before?”
“I don’t recognize her,” he said. “Though I can’t see her terribly well. She is dressed in the old Aegyptian fashion, I think. But I’ve never seen a person with wings at all.”
Asha looked out again and saw the winged woman leap into the air several times and use her outstretched arms to glide across the rocky heap to another spot, where she resumed sweeping the dust and debris aside with her long, shining wings.
Then Asha turned her attention to the second figure, the one who was screaming and roaring. On the far side of the temple where she could barely see him at all stood a man wearing a black robe. His back was turned to her and all she could glimpse of him were the golden bracers on his forearms and the black sheen of his hair. The man was kicking and clawing at the fallen stones, lifting and hurling huge beams and mortared bricks aside as though they were nothing more than rotten apples, causing the soldiers to run left and right to avoid being crushed by the jagged missiles. And after several long moments of this violent tantrum, the robed man turned and moved in Asha’s direction.
She inhaled sharply.
For a moment, a very brief moment, she thought the man wore a black mask carved with the features of a deformed sort of dog, like the ceremonial masks she had seen as a child in Ming. But then she saw the way the light played over him, and the way the long muzzle moved, and the way the tall black ears twitched, and she knew.
“He has the head of a dog!” she hissed at Omar.
The man stuck out his head again to squint at the robed figure. “I think you’re right, though it’s no dog that I recognize. But the rest of him looks human enough.”
Asha looked again and saw that the dog-headed man did indeed have human hands at the ends of his arms and what appeared to be human legs striding about between the flaps of his robe. She also saw that the fine sheen of the black fur on the man’s face only fell as low as his throat, and from that point down he had the same smooth brown flesh as a normal man. “It’s only his head, just like Wren’s ears, isn’t it?”
“Possibly.”
“What are they doing? What do they want?”
“Well, if they’re digging in the rubble, I can only assume they want to find someone or something that was in the temple,” Omar said. “Something of value to them. But of course, that only raises more questions.”
They watched the strange pair leaping and digging at the ruined Temple of Osiris. When the soldiers approached the woman, she would shriek and blast them back with a sweep of her wings, and then glide away to another part of the ruins. No one approached the man in black. And gradually, the raging bellows from the dog-headed man receded into soft growls and the winged woman’s quick flitting about became a calmer procession of walking and gliding.
“I think they’re getting tired,” Asha said. “Should we do something? They seem crazed, and people could be hurt by all the rocks flying around. Should we go out there?”
“Are you joking? This is what I do, kind lady.” Omar grinned, straightened up, and strode out from the corner and waved to the two strangers, calling out, “Hello there!”
“Lunatic!” Asha grimaced and then followed Omar out, keeping him between herself and the two creatures, and wondering what sort of angry memory she should use to summon the dragon, should its power be needed. She saw the soldiers looking at her, but they held their ground and kept their weapons pointed at the monstrous looters.
Are they holding spears? They look very short and heavy for spears.
“Hello!” Omar called again, his right hand raised in greeting as his left hand rested on his sword. “My name is Omar. Can I help you?”
The winged woman and the dog-headed m
an both jerked up and peered at him, and then both of them screamed. The woman leapt into the air and man dashed across the street with his canine fangs snapping and dripping with white foam. Several of the soldiers’ weapons fired from every side, barking and echoing sharply off the walls.
“Good Lord!” Omar drew his seireiken and the blazing white sun-steel blade lit up the shadowy street, painting every stick and stone in milk white, charcoal grays, and deepest blacks. He waved the flashing sword over his head as the woman soared down at him, and at the last moment she bent her feathered arms and streaked up into the evening sky.
Asha squinted against the glare of the seireiken and saw the dog-headed man veer around Omar in a wide circle and come racing toward her instead. For a moment, a cold panic washed through her breast and she couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. But then she felt her own fingernails biting into her palm and she remembered what she had to do.
In a flash, she recalled a small house in the mountains of Rajasthan where she had argued with a young mother over the life of her child. Asha had been angry that day, and regretted it later, but now as she looked back on that day her anger wasn’t directed at the mother but at her younger self, at her own arrogance and close-mindedness.
It was a very specific sort of anger, and it woke the golden dragon in a very specific sort of way.
Asha felt the heat rippling down her arms as the golden scales armored her flesh from the elbows down to her fingers and her shining ruby claws. The hot scales formed over her neck and chest, protecting her vital points, and the last of the transformation was in her lower legs, armoring her with golden greaves and ruby talons to grip the earth at her feet. When the beast man finally reached her, she was rooted to the street and already swinging one of her armored fists at his head.
The black snout of the creature snapped aside as she struck it, and in that instant she saw it clearly, saw that it was no dog’s head at all, that it was some other animal entirely. The muzzle was too long and slender, and the ears were too tall and square. Whatever it was, it was hideous.
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