Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Rest in peace, whatever you are.

  He turned away and made a half-hearted effort to look for Shahera and Dante on the trail ahead.

  Mirari stood up and retrieved her knife from the carcass. “You fight well, Don Lorenzo. You should try using a real sword some day.”

  He glanced down at the thin whip of a blade in his hand where a few drops of blood had already frozen and crystallized on the steel. “This one seems real enough.”

  He frowned at the snow obscuring the trail and then peered down the slope where he could see a cluster of bodies around a large rocky outcropping. “Mirari, go find Shahera and Dante. Make sure they’re all right.”

  “But Alonso!” she pointed at the figures below them.

  “I’ll get Alonso, you just take care of the others!”

  She nodded and dashed off into the whiteness, leaving a thin trail of blood dripping from her knife.

  With his sword in hand, Lorenzo leaned down to find a handhold and begin his descent when he heard the gunshot. The boom echoed up the mountain side and he froze, staring through the driving snow at the blurred figures.

  Did she kill him? Or did he overpower her and kill her with her own gun?

  “Alonso! Taziri!” Seconds passed and no one seemed to be moving so Lorenzo slid down a few yards to the first boulder. Then he saw Salvator climbing back up toward the trail, angling away from him, and below the Italian he saw two more figures struggling to ascend.

  They’re alive. They’re all right. So I need to stop him.

  Lorenzo scanned the terrain for a safe path, but saw only shining and shadowy whites, and so he dashed out from his boulder with a breathless prayer on his lips. He crashed and slipped and jumped and ran across the face of the mountain, careening downward twice as fast as he moved forward but still plunging straight for Salvator. Lorenzo kept his uphill hand on the ground and with the other he held his sword high and ready to strike.

  Five more paces.

  Two more.

  Lorenzo sliced at the Italian’s hand holding the canvas bag but his feet betrayed him, shooting across a sheet of ice and dropping him to the ground. His espada slashed down Salvator’s leg and the Italian shouted, “Merda!”

  Lorenzo fell on his side and grabbed at the snow and the rocks but his momentum carried him on below Salvator, sliding and falling sideways, faster and faster. He skidded to a stop just a few yards above Taziri and Alonso. He blinked down at them. “Are you all right?”

  They squinted up through the freezing wind. “Yes!”

  He looked up to see Salvator still trudging up the slope, though slower than before. Lorenzo sheathed his sword and grabbed the Mazigh woman’s hand. Together, they hauled Alonso up the slope one painful step after another. Several times the hidalgo looked up to see how far Salvator had gotten, and finally he looked up to see that Salvator was gone.

  He took the skyfire stone. He took my stone. What am I going to tell Ariel? How will I track him down? Where will he go? Back to Rome? And what will he do with the stone when he gets there?

  At the top of the slope, they staggered onto the trail and stood in the knee-deep snow beside the body of the basajaun already covered in a thin blanket of white powder. After a moment of exhausted gasping and shivering, Lorenzo helped the other two to properly close up their coats against the bitter storm and then he led them slowly along the trail in search of Mirari and the others.

  It took longer than he expected to find the three people huddled in the lee of a large overhang. They were kneeling and sitting close together in the snow.

  “Where is he? Where is Fabris?” Lorenzo shouted over the wind.

  Mirari pointed down the trail. “He ran past a moment ago.”

  The wind screamed higher and louder and everyone stumbled half a step toward the mountain side, all clutching their coats and hats.

  “Get up! Everyone needs to get up. We need to keep moving,” Lorenzo said. “I know we’re all tired and hurt, but if we don’t get off the mountain before dark, then we’ll freeze. Come on, everyone up.”

  He held out his hand to Dante. The Italian didn’t move. Shahera lay curled up beside him, one bare hand on his chest.

  “Both stabbed through the heart,” Mirari said calmly. “He must have killed them as he came up the path to find you.”

  Lorenzo swallowed as he knelt down to check them each for a pulse. There was none. Dante slumped against the rock, his legs dusted with fresh snow, one of his eyes still open and white with frost. Shahera’s mouth hung open, her lips blue. Lorenzo closed their eyes and mouths and smoothed their hair away from their faces.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of this was supposed to happen. And now we have to leave them here like this.

  He stood up. “We have to leave them here. We can’t carry them with us.”

  “Oh God, no.” Taziri knelt down beside the bodies. She took Shahera’s hand.

  “I’m sorry, but we have to go now.” Lorenzo helped her up and started her moving on down the trail.

  “But they were my responsibility!” Taziri shook him off. “We can’t just leave them.”

  “We have to!” Lorenzo grimaced as he pulled her away from the bodies.

  They were unarmed. Why kill them? Why would anyone kill a stranger for no reason?

  Mirari led the way with the others close behind her. Lorenzo lagged a few paces with Alonso. The younger man breathed in shallow wheezes and his hand remained tightly pressed against his ribs. Lorenzo kept a firm grip on his student’s shoulder, ever ready to grab him should he stumble or falter, but Alonso shuffled all the way back across the western face of the mountain and down the goat path without a single misstep.

  When they finally reached the deep rocky gullies, the sky was a deep purple and a few colorless stars were glistening overhead. The snow let up but the wind grew fiercer, whistling and howling and shrieking through the cracks in the rocks and showering them with the snow dust lying on the ground. Mirari led them all the way back down the road to Yesero, to the doors of the wayhouse. Taziri stumbled inside without pausing, but Mirari stood by the door and when Lorenzo and Alonso passed her she touched the young man’s arm. Alonso stopped, looked at her, and then nodded at the hidalgo.

  Lorenzo went inside alone and passed the table where Taziri sat near the fire, already clutching the edge of her steaming plate of roasted goat and potatoes, her face pale, her eyes vacant. He went back to the little room with the three beds, closed the door behind him, and sat down on his bed. The room was dim and cool, but compared to the hours of walking through the mountain storm, Lorenzo felt swaddled in heat and silence, his eyes useless after staring into the snow glare all day long. He looked down at his gloved hands, barely able to see them in the dark.

  “I’m sorry, sister.”

  “It’s not your fault.” The dead nun sat down on the bed across from him, her silvery hands folded in her silvery lap. “You did what you could. That’s all anyone can do.”

  “I should have left the others here,” he said. “Dante and Shahera would still be alive, and Alonso wouldn’t have been hurt, and those things on the mountain would…” He swallowed.

  “If you’d left the others here, then Salvator might have simply killed them all here before he came after you. You can’t know what might have happened. Be grateful that you’re alive, and your student is alive, and the Mazigh is alive.”

  Lorenzo raised his head. “Are you saying that it’s not so bad since the people who died weren’t important to me? Because they were strangers?”

  “Not exactly. But losing two strangers is easier than losing two friends or loved ones. I’m not saying it’s noble or holy, but it is human. Don’t hate yourself for that,” Ariel said. “You’re allowed to be human.”

  “I hate being human,” he said. “I should be better than this. Wiser. Stronger.”

  “Oh, Lorenzo. You already took them in, fed them and clothed them, and did everything you could to defend them from
their own enemies. God knows where your heart lies.”

  “This isn’t about scoring points with the man upstairs.” Lorenzo looked up at the black ceiling. “Dante and Shahera died because of me. Because I took them up there. Because I got them excited about finding the stone. But why…why did he kill them? Why bother? How can he just go through life killing innocent people? He could have left them alive and nothing else would have changed. He still would have stolen the stone, only maybe a moment or two later.”

  “A moment or two can make all the difference in the world.”

  They sat in silence. Lorenzo looked back down at his hands and slowly pulled off his gloves. He peered up through his brows, expecting to see a vacant bed but the ghost was still sitting there, watching him.

  “Lorenzo?”

  “Hm?”

  “I saw him leave. The Italian. I saw him leave through the village about an hour before you arrived. He mounted a horse and rode away with a large sack over his shoulder,” Ariel said. “And I knew the skyfire stone was in the sack. I could feel it.”

  He nodded. “I wish you could have seen it. A lump of gold as big as my head on a rock table glowing red from the heat. A whole mountain side bare of snow and hot to the touch, but the stone was cool as we wrapped the harness around it.”

  “No, Lorenzo. I mean that I actually felt the stone. I could feel it pulling me toward it just as I can feel the pull of your medallion and those other faraway cities.”

  Lorenzo touched the triquetra under his shirt. “You mean you have the same connection to the stone as to this? But I thought the reason you could sense the medallion was because you wore it in life. You never touched the stone in life, did you?”

  “Of course not. I never dreamed it was a mere half day’s walk from a little town like this, either. How were you so certain this was the right mountain?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t completely sure. I had a list of six mountains, but this was by far the best fit for all the evidence we collected. We got lucky.” He winced at his choice of words.

  There wasn’t anything lucky about today.

  The nun refolded her insubstantial hands. “Lorenzo, I can still feel the stone now. I can feel it drawing me south. It almost feels as though I could release this aether form right now and be whisked across the countryside to the stone this very minute.”

  Lorenzo pulled out his medallion and stared at the metal disc. “And it’s the same feeling you get from this thing?”

  “Oh yes, only stronger. Much stronger.” Ariel reached out her pale hand to the dim golden disc in his hand. As her finger passed through the metal, the drifting aether of her form suddenly swirled down violently into the triquetra. The woman cried out and snatched her hand away.

  Lorenzo stared as the white vapors slowly resolved back into the nun’s hand, and then he stared down at the medallion. “It feels…warmer. What just happened?”

  “It felt like I was being drawn into it.” Ariel shifted away down the bed. “It felt like a riptide of aether, and my very soul was draining down with it.”

  He held it out to her. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

  She frowned but reached out again with a single finger. As it came closer to the dark gold, the aether slid forward off her in a silvery cascade. “It feels warm. I don’t understand, I haven’t felt warm since I died, Lorenzo. I’m afraid.”

  “All right, that’s enough.” He pulled the medallion back and Ariel fell off the bed toward him, her entire hand embedded in the gold. “What’s happening? Back away, sister.”

  “I’m trying!”

  They both stood up and Lorenzo retreated to the far wall, but the nun glided after him, her arm sunken into the medallion up to the shoulder.

  “Lorenzo, please, make it stop. I can’t focus, I can’t think.”

  The hidalgo stared around the room, but there was nothing at hand except the bedding. “What can I do? Tell me what to do!” He pulled back again but the nun was swept along with him. The medallion felt warm in the palm of his hand. He threw the triquetra across the room.

  The medallion clanged against the wall and thumped on the floor.

  Lorenzo blinked. Ariel was gone.

  “Sister?”

  He slowly crossed the room, staring at the shadows, listening.

  “Sister?”

  Oh God, what have I done?

  He found the medallion in the corner and picked it up. The gold warmed his skin and he wrapped his hand around it, pressing the triquetra into his palm. “Ariel?”

  “Lorenzo?”

  “Sister?” Lorenzo looked around the empty room. “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see anything. It’s dark. And it’s warm.”

  Lorenzo opened his hand to look at the medallion.

  “It’s lighter now. I think I can see your face, Lorenzo, but I can’t seem to move. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t even turn my eyes. Can you see me?”

  He nodded at the golden disc in his hand. “I think I do. I think you’re inside the medallion.”

  “Inside…?”

  Lorenzo sat on the bed again. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

  “Neither have I.” She paused. “It feels like nothing I’ve ever known. It’s so still and warm. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t feel like anything. I feel adrift and anchored at the same time.”

  “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”

  What have I done? Nothing can harm a ghost, nothing!

  “I don’t know, Lorenzo.” Ariel fell silent for a long moment. “Well, whatever this is, I suppose it’s not the end of the world. I spent the first twenty years of my death resting in my grave, contemplating my life. It can’t hurt to spend a little time resting here. Wherever here is. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in time. Just try not to lose the medallion, Lorenzo.”

  “Of course not, never.”

  “And don’t wear it in bed with Qhora.”

  He blushed. “All right.” He turned the golden disc over and over in his hand. The discolored edge gleamed darkly at him. The gold. The dark gold, the red gold. Just like the skyfire stone. The warmth. The heat. “Oh my God. It’s the metal. The metal in the stone. There must be some of it here where the triquetra was mended. It drinks up aether. It’s some sort of lode stone, like an aether magnet!”

  “Not just aether, but souls as well,” Ariel’s voice said. “This is a natural substance that can imprison a person’s immortal soul. The divine fire of the human soul trapped in a bit of gold. Maybe this substance really is a shard of heaven, as you said.”

  “Souls. Divine fire. The heat.” Lorenzo felt his heart pounding in his chest. But if Ariel’s soul makes this medallion warm… “How many souls are there in the skyfire stone? How many souls would it take to make it so hot that it can make a rock glow red and keep the snow from touching the ground for a hundred yards in every direction?”

  “I don’t know. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?”

  He nodded, his hands trembling. “All those years on the mountain side, the stone must have been drawing in the souls of the miners and their families, all the ghosts that might have been wandering the north. Whole generations, whole towns.”

  “Dear God, that’s why I’ve never met a ghost from this region,” Ariel said. “Because there aren’t any. Sooner or later, they all stumbled across the stone high on the mountain, and they touched it. And now they’re all trapped inside the stone.”

  Lorenzo looked up sharply at the window. “The stone. Salvator has the stone. He’s taking it and all those poor souls to make a weapon, to kill people.”

  “And the more people he kills, the more souls could be drawn into the stone, making it even more powerful and more deadly.”

  The hidalgo looked at his pillow with infinite longing. His body ached and every blink of his eyes was a battle to force them open again. “Alonso’s hurt. He needs to rest. And I can’t put Taziri in any more danger. I
’ll have to go alone. And I’ll have to go now.”

  “You need to sleep. You’re no good to anyone exhausted.”

  “Salvator already has a long head start. I can’t waste the night sleeping.” Lorenzo stood up and slipped the medallion over his head, letting it rest on his chest over his coat. “Can you still feel the skyfire stone? Do you know which direction it is?”

  “Yes. South and east.”

  Out in the dining room, he announced his intention to leave immediately and he told Alonso to escort Taziri back to Zaragoza as soon as he felt strong enough to ride. “You won’t have to worry about Fabris. He isn’t heading that way. Find Qhora and the other boys, and when you’re ready, go back to the Diaz estate in Madrid and wait for me there. I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s safe for foreigners to travel openly again and you’ll be able to return to Marrakesh.”

  Alonso nodded. “Yes, sir. Will do.”

  Taziri frowned into her empty tea cup. “Don Lorenzo, my whole reason for being here with you was to protect my passengers. But I’ve lost them all. Nicola, Dante, and Shahera. But I have another oath to keep, to protect my country. I need to go with you to make sure that stone never reaches its destination. I can’t let it be used against my people, or yours, or anyone else’s.”

  “All right.” Lorenzo sighed. I can’t stand between her and her duty. I have to respect that. As much as I want her to stay far away from Fabris and the stone. God, please don’t let me lose her too. “Alonso, you’ll be all right on your own?”

  “Absolutely. Mirari invited me to lunch tomorrow with her sister Nina.” The young diestro winked. “Assuming these crazy mountain people don’t kill me, I’ll be just fine.”

  Lorenzo rested his gloved hand on the door. It’s going to be pitch black out there, and freezing, and snowing. Why did this all have to happen in the dead of winter? “We need to go now, if you’re sure you want to come with me.”

  “I’m sure.” Taziri stood up and crossed the room. Her eyes were half lidded and lined, her lips thin, her shoulders slumped. “Let’s go save the world.”

  The hidalgo managed a brief smile. “Let’s.”