Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Something that will not let you take the stone.”

  Taziri pulled up her left sleeve and released the gun barrel in her brace. The weapon snapped up with a click and a hiss of compressed air. She set about loading a shell. “Well, if it’s human, this should scare him away.”

  “And what if it’s not human?” Dante asked.

  “As long as it’s not a snow bear, a gunshot or two will send it running.”

  The Italian frowned. “I’ve heard stories about snow bears.” He knelt down and picked up a jagged rock. Shahera picked up one as well. Alonso picked up a handful of stones about half the size of his fist.

  Mirari leaned back against a dark gray boulder. “I’ll wait here for your friend, the Don.” She produced a small hatchet and a long knife from inside her coat, which she held tightly as she crossed her arms. “Go on, if you still want to.”

  Taziri stared up the dry path to where it ended in a wall of swirling white. “We can’t stand around waiting for him. We’ll start losing daylight eventually and I don’t want to be caught on this mountain in the dark. Come on. Let’s find his rock.”

  She led the way down the slope, gravel crunching under her boots. Dante and Shahera followed close behind her. The Mazigh pilot scanned the mountain side.

  A lump of gold as big as my head. That’s going to be heavy.

  Ten minutes later a cascade of pebbles drew her attention to the trail behind them and Taziri saw Lorenzo shuffling sideways down the steep path. The hidalgo shrugged at her. “I waited at the last narrow pass, but our shadowy friend never came. Maybe he turned back.”

  “Or maybe he fell.” Dante grinned.

  “Or maybe he’s still out there, stalking us,” Shahera said.

  “Or maybe he was never there to begin with.” Taziri pointed at the chaos of rock and earth below them. “We need to find your stone and get off this mountain as quickly as possible. We won’t survive a night on that trail.”

  The five of them spread out and picked their way down the slope from ledge to ledge, peering into cracks in the earth and under fallen stones.

  “This is pointless!” Dante yelled. “Your precious stone is probably buried a hundred feet underground, if it even exists!”

  “Mirari said she saw it here,” Alonso said. “So it has to be on the surface.”

  “Oh, right. The crazy girl saw it, I forgot.”

  “She’s not crazy!”

  “Alonso!” Lorenzo sighed. “Let’s just focus on the search right now.”

  Taziri continued down, trying to angle across the mountain in the direction that the masked girl had pointed. The ground underfoot grew hotter. And then she saw it. A great bowl had been cut or beaten out of the face of the mountain and in that depression, on a wide flat rock that glowed a dull red, was a golden lump shining with a bright golden light. “There! There it is!”

  She started toward it, hopping lightly to avoid scorching her boots any more than necessary. The others called back to her and to each other. “Which way? She found it? Who did? Down there! Oh, I see her!” Their voices echoed across the huge stone bowl, reverberating up into the bright noon sky.

  And a bloodcurdling roar answered back. Taziri stumbled against a boulder and grabbed it for support. It was warm to the touch. The sound of the roar grew and grew, like the screams of a thousand madmen and hungry lions and enraged elephants. When it stopped, its echo screamed on all across the mountain, and when the echo faded the following silence was horrible. Taziri looked wildly all about her.

  What could scream like that? A beast? Just one or many? And where is it? Where? Where?

  With her right hand on the trigger of her brace-gun, she jogged out into the open, descending the almost smooth slope of the bowl. The golden stone sat on its glowing red table only a few dozen yards away.

  Just a little farther. Almost there now.

  To her left she saw Lorenzo and Alonso rushing down toward her with a strange harness dangling between them. As they approached, she saw that the heavy leather straps were reinforced with steel bands on the outside, but on the inside was an arrangement of ceramic tiles and studs to hold the stone. When she asked about them, Lorenzo claimed they wouldn’t shatter from the heat. Taziri hoped he was right.

  The three of them dashed to the edge of the red rock and spread the harness between them. Working without speaking, they shuffled right and left, stretching the leather straps over and around the golden stone and when the hidalgo nodded, they wrapped their ends down and around and lifted the stone from the ground in its new cradle of steel, leather, and clay. Taziri peered at the lumpy golden mass in all its jagged imperfection. Despite the heat, the stone showed no sign of melting, and when she reached her hand toward it, the sensation of the heat did not grow any stronger. The only heat she could feel radiated up from the rock on which the skyfire stone had rested.

  Alonso and Taziri held the laden web for a moment while Lorenzo carefully inspected the straps to be certain that only the ceramic plates were touching the stone, and then he closed the clasps and tied the handles shut. The entire package was lowered into a heavy canvas sack, which Lorenzo rolled over his shoulder. He smiled and nodded, and took the first step back up the slope.

  A second roar boomed across the bowl, and here at the bottom of it Taziri felt the pure bestial rage behind the sound piercing her bones. She turned to look just as Lorenzo stumbled and dropped his precious cargo. The hidalgo straightened up and reached for the sack, but the canvas was already blackening and tiny flames licked its seams.

  “It’s burning the bag!” Alonso pointed at it.

  “No, it’s not the stone. It’s the heat from the ground, the gravel, the pebbles.” Lorenzo lifted the bag a second time and resumed his climb.

  Taziri looked back over her shoulder and what she saw made her fall to one knee on the burning stones. She struggled up and pointed across the bowl to the figure on the far edge. “Look!”

  It was shaped like an enormous man with massive shoulders and no neck. Long shaggy white hair hung over every inch of its body, and above its bearded face two huge dark eyes peered out beneath its heavy brow. From its giant fist hung a long wooden club, but when the creature shook its club over its head, Taziri saw the long row of metal teeth shining on the edge of the weapon.

  “Dear God,” Lorenzo said. “It is a basajaun. They exist.”

  “A what?”

  “Run. RUN!”

  They all turned and scrambled up the steep, rocky slope as fast as they could. The ground grew steadily cooler the higher they climbed, and step by step Taziri noted the falling snow as it began to reach her eyes, and then her hands, and finally her feet. She wanted to turn, she wanted to look back, but the gravel was so loose and the patches of ice and snow so slick that she didn’t dare take her eyes off the path in front of her. She heard Lorenzo yelling to the others to run, to make for the trail, to go on without them.

  And for a brief moment, she hoped that she would reach the top of the slope first so that the hidalgo would be between her and the monster.

  If someone has to die, God, let it be someone else. Let me get home to my little girl. Let me see her face again, please!

  But then she thought of all the thousands who might die if the holy stone fell into the wrong hands, and how much this Lorenzo had done for her, a stranger, and she hated herself for that moment of selfish weakness. Planting both feet on solid ground, Taziri grabbed the trigger of her arm-cannon and turned to look for the beast.

  The basajaun was only a dozen yards behind them, just a few seconds away. It had followed them up the slope, running as silent as a cat, and now it loomed over her with its huge saw-bladed club raised to strike.

  “No!” She screamed as she pulled the trigger and felt the recoil of the shotgun snap her arm back as she fell to the ground. The blast hit the creature in its left arm and the monster screamed at the woman as a dozen tiny red rivers began streaming from its fur.

  Taziri kicked and
clawed her way back up the slope and when her feet finally picked her up, she began fumbling for a second shell.

  “Alonso!” Lorenzo threw the canvas bag to his student and drew his espada. He dashed down and lunged at the creature, stabbing it twice in the right arm, and then slashing it across the leg.

  The monster lowered its club as it cradled its huge arms around its injuries, moaning and screaming. It stumbled back a step, and then another. Lorenzo lowered his sword and backed away up the mountain. Then the giant howled. And from the distant white slopes, another howl answered.

  Taziri shoved a new shell into the gun strapped to her arm. Her elbow was throbbing and her hand felt cold and weak, but she could still lift and aim, and that was all that mattered. She pointed the barrel at the beast.

  “No, don’t.” Lorenzo took her hand and pulled her up beside him. “It’s injured. It’s not following. Let’s just go.”

  “But there’s another one out there.” She pointed in the direction of the second howl.

  “All the more reason to leave.” Lorenzo pushed and she obliged by hiking up to the trail. They found the others with Mirari, standing in the ankle-deep snow.

  Taziri breathed a cool breath and enjoyed the absence of the sultry vapors of the mountain side as she folded up her tall collar and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She shoved her gun barrel back down to click shut in her brace and then slid her sleeve back down to her wrist.

  Mirari, her face unreadable behind the slightly amused expression of the Italian mask, waved them back onto the trail with her drawn hatchet and Dante and Shahera followed close behind her. Taziri gave one last look at the wounded creature on the slope below, and then started walking a few paces behind Alonso with Lorenzo bringing up the rear.

  The second basajaun leapt from a stone ledge just above and to their left. The huge mass of flesh and hair smashed into Alonso and sent the young man sliding down the icy slope, slipping and rolling away from the trail toward the featureless wall of whiteness where anything might await him. The canvas sack tumbled away, down and down through the deep snow until it lodged beneath a spear of rock. A sudden blast of wind lifted the curtain of falling snow for a moment and Taziri saw the sharp outline of a cliff edge just below the fallen diestro.

  “Alonso!” Taziri dashed after the young man, her whole body bent low to the ground to grab at the sharp teeth of the rocks around her to keep herself from falling out of control. She could see him struggling to roll over and sit up, his hands clinging to a long lip of rock jutting out of the snow.

  “Alonso!” someone screamed.

  Taziri froze and looked up behind her. Lorenzo had drawn his sword again and was holding the second creature at bay, but he wasn’t the one who cried out. To her right, Taziri saw a figure in dark fur racing back up the trail toward them, a hatchet and long knife flashing in her hands. Mirari leapt up from the trail from one rock ledge to another to gain some height and then fell on the basajaun’s shoulders with both her blades.

  The beast-man screamed and flailed left and right, shaking the girl through the air, but she clung to her weapons as her legs swept through the falling snow. Lorenzo shouted and slashed at the basajaun’s hands to keep it from reaching back to grab Mirari.

  Taziri looked down at Alonso. He was straining to haul himself up over the rock lip, kicking to get his boot onto solid ground. She scrambled and slid down the slope, skidding from rock to rock until her feet landed on Alonso’s handhold. Grabbing his coat, she helped him up and over the edge, hauling him up to his feet. “You okay?”

  He nodded and together they began crawling back up the slope. Taziri’s gloves were soaked from groping through the snow for solid handholds and her fingers began to tremble and tighten. All except the two little fingers of her left hand, the numb ones that never recovered from the fire.

  Above them, Lorenzo and Mirari had leapt back from the wounded basajaun. The masked girl had left her knife in the creature’s shaggy back, but she still held her bloody hatchet in her gloved hand. The hidalgo yelled over the howling wind, “Alonso! Taziri! Can you make it?”

  Alonso had one hand pressed tight to his ribs and his steaming breaths were huffing in short, quick bursts. Taziri tried to measure the distance back up to the trail. It’s not that far, and there are plenty of rocks to grab, plus the snow is hard-packed but not icy. “I think so!”

  The basajaun roared at Lorenzo’s sword, and it swiped one of its massive hands through the snow on the ground to hurl a small blizzard at the hidalgo. Lorenzo took the blow on his arm, where the snow clung to his coat.

  Taziri focused on climbing.

  Hand, foot, hand, foot. Always keep three points of contact on the mountain. Weight on the legs, not on the arms.

  Just above her, she could see the outcropping where the canvas bag had fallen. She started angling toward it. Alonso struggled along close to her feet.

  “Get back!” Lorenzo yelled. “Stop right there!”

  Does he really think that animal will understand him?

  Taziri looked up again to see Mirari and the hidalgo standing back to back. While the girl threatened the moaning, bleeding creature, Lorenzo pointed his espada at another man with a drawn sword.

  Fabris!

  “Where is the stone?” The Italian slashed his rapier in short, vicious arcs.

  Taziri glanced at the canvas bag. It was only a few feet away now. She crept forward.

  “Salvator!” Lorenzo’s sword flashed through the blinding waves of snow. “If you don’t stop, we could all die. Look at that beast behind me! There are more out here, and they’re not in a forgiving mood. We need to get off this mountain. Go back! Go!”

  As the clashing steel blades rang out across the mountain side, Taziri wrapped her fingers around the woven strap on the mouth of the bag and gently pulled it back toward her. The heavy stone inside the bag rolled and lodged deeper under the rocks. She whipped her hand back to avoid it being crushed. “Damn it!”

  She looked up again and saw Fabris staring straight back at her from the trail.

  “No, no, no!” Lorenzo lunged just as the Italian took two running steps and leapt out over the snowy slope.

  Fabris landed gracefully on an exposed stone, then dashed down and stutter-stepped his way through the snow, bounding over mounds and crashing through the drifts. It only took him a few seconds to reach the rock where the canvas bag was wedged. Taziri was still hauling on the strap to pull it free when the Italian’s boot slammed into the rock just above her head and his sword sliced toward her face.

  And then the world raced away and she saw the rapier spark against the rock as she fell backward. Alonso’s hands were digging into her underarms, the left one pinching her breast, as he hauled her away from Fabris’s blade and she fell back onto the young man.

  “Thanks,” she wheezed.

  Alonso fumbled across her chest and yanked down on her left sleeve. “Shoot him!”

  Salvator had both hands on the woven strap and was straining to pull the bag free of the rocks. Taziri shoved her sleeve back to her elbow and released her cannon. It sprang up and clicked into position as the mountain air stung her exposed skin. “Fabris! Drop the bag!”

  If he heard her over the gusting wind, he made no sign of it as he continued to yank the bag back and forth. A moment later, the bag scraped free of the rocks and the Italian wobbled upright, swinging the bag over his shoulder.

  “Shoot!” Alonso cried.

  I’m killing a man in cold blood. I’m shooting a human being. I’m committing murder. What if…

  Taziri held up her shaking arm against the arctic blasts of snow and sleet and she pulled the trigger. The shotgun’s recoil shoved her back and the side of her head clipped Alonso’s chin. For a moment all she could do was clutch the blazing spot on her skull and clench her eyes shut, grinding her teeth and trying not to scream. Alonso groaned through his pressed lips.

  With a blazing, throbbing ache in her arm, Taziri sat up and saw
Fabris staring back at her with a hateful glare.

  I meant to wing him, not to miss him!

  She fumbled through her pockets for another shell as she stood up. Alonso dragged himself up by grabbing her belt and almost pulled her back to the ground. By the time she found another shell and opened the chamber to reload, Taziri’s fingers were blue and numb.

  The Italian was already halfway back to the trail with the bag slung over his shoulder by the time Taziri raised her gun again, but she dropped her arm a second later.

  Not in the back.

  “Come on!” She grabbed Alonso’s arm and together they began trudging and stumbling and clawing their way up through the snow and over the rocks.

  Chapter 24

  The hidalgo almost leaped after Salvator, but Mirari’s shrieking turned Lorenzo back to the tower of shaggy white hair behind him. The basajaun didn’t seem to notice the knife still stuck in its back or the dark red streams of blood running down its arms and legs to stain the snow. It leaned down to roar in the masked girl’s face, and the masked girl raised her hatchet to scream back into the creature’s fanged maw.

  The beast swung its sharp rock at Mirari’s head and she swung her hatchet two-handed into the basajaun’s wrist. A thin spatter of blood sprayed across the virgin snow as the creature fell back a single step, wailing and clutching the stump where its hand had been.

  It lunged forward again, throwing its full body weight down on the girl as through to crush her into the freezing snow. Lorenzo caught the tails of her coat and pulled her out of the way. The basajaun collapsed face down on the ground, two of its outstretched fingers clawing at Mirari’s boot.

  Lorenzo scrambled forward and slid his espada into the beast’s neck and then again through the back where he guessed the heart to be. Standing back and surveying his work, a sudden coldness and emptiness hollowed him out, leaving him disgusted and saddened. The creature didn’t move, didn’t twitch, didn’t gasp.