Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Beyond the racks were bins full of gloves, leather helmets, leather breast plates, bronze heart guards, iron masks, dented greaves, and other mismatched bits of armor from a dozen countries across a dozen centuries.

  And then he came to the heavy linen curtain. Beyond it he heard the shuffling footsteps quite loudly. The footsteps stopped. “Yes, what is it?”

  An older man. Hm. Let’s see how far my borrowed clothes and accent can take me.

  The Italian swept the curtain aside with a smile. “Good afternoon, sir. I was hoping to have a quick word with you.”

  The middle-aged Aegyptian man sank back down into his chair at his desk, his face a nest of frowning wrinkles. “I don’t recognize you. One of Rashaken’s men, are you? If you report to him, you should be bothering him.”

  “Yes of course, I’m sorry, sir. And you are?”

  “I am Khai.” There was a hint of satisfaction in the way he said his name, a smugness and a sense of expectation, as though his name alone should have commanded respect.

  “Khai. Yes, of course. I’m sorry, again. Is it Lord Khai or High Priest Khai?”

  A dark sneer twisted his lip. “First Knight of Osiris. And who the devil are you?” He half-turned to reach for the short sword lying across the end of his desk.

  My accent still needs work, I see.

  Salvator whisked out his rapier and lightly tapped the point of its blade on the man’s sword to make him take back his hand. The Italian smiled. “First Knight? How quaint. I am the Supreme Knight of the Order of the Seven Hearts. I suppose that means I outrank you,” Salvator said. “Your duties and responsibilities?”

  “A northerner. Italian, I suppose. So? What is it you want?” Khai sat very still, his hands in plain view. There was no visible weapon on his belt or anywhere else on his person. “Money?”

  “Information. An old friend of mine works for your people. She’s done a few strange things, many strange things, and I want to know why. I want to know about the burning swords. I want to know about the assassinations.”

  “You want a great deal,” Khai said calmly. His eyes closed a small fraction. “In the east, they would call that the path to suffering.”

  “In the east, they worship cows. You’ll pardon me for thinking their ideas are stupid.” Salvator paced around the small office behind the curtain. Books and papers, measuring tools, maps. And a small bed in the corner. “Now. Let’s start with this temple of yours. What does it do exactly?”

  The Aegyptian shook his head. “You may as well kill me if you expect me to tell you that.”

  Salvator shrugged. “I may kill you anyway.”

  “Indeed. And that is hardly an incentive for me to talk, is it?”

  Both men chuckled.

  We’re two a kind, aren’t we? A pity we’re on different sides today.

  The Italian wiggled the point of his rapier at his hostage. “What would you be willing to talk about short of me taking a look at your spleen?”

  “Ah. Perhaps a history lesson. A brief one.” Khai gestured to the other chair.

  Salvator sat, his rapier resting on his knee. “A word of warning. I’ve killed four of your guards to get in here. I expect I’ll have to kill more to get out. If you play for time, especially if you bore me, I’ll only kill you as well. But not necessarily quickly or painlessly.”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” the Aegyptian said. “I’ll be brief, and as entertaining as I can. So you want to know about our swords, do you? Well then. Several thousand years ago on a faraway island, a sword smith discovered a strange golden nugget. He quickly learned that it was not ordinary gold. It drank in aether like a magnet draws in iron shavings. And it swallowed the souls of the dead that touched the metal, making the gold hotter and harder. In the span of a few generations, the sword smiths on this island learned to handle the gold with clay, and they learned to forge the gold into tools, and jewelry, and blades.”

  “I could have guessed that much, and probably made it more interesting with a few angels or demons for a bit of violent excitement.” Salvator frowned.

  “Ah. Yes, well. The sword smiths fought many bloody and exciting battles against the armies of heaven and hell, and dragons, and killed your Satan a few times for good measure, but they also formed a society of scholars to study the golden steel, to understand its properties, to discover its purpose and origin, and to master its power.” Khai gestured to the room around them. “In time, the society spread to other lands, absorbing similar cults and scholars along the way. Here in the west, they made our fair Alexandria their seat of power. And here we are, and here endeth the lesson.”

  “Bored. I’m bored now.” The Italian made a few half-hearted stabbing motions at the Aegyptian. “Tell me the good bits. Quickly.”

  “You seem a man of skill and intellect. I might be better inclined to reveal our private enterprises to you if I considered you an ally instead of an interrogator.” Khai leaned slowly across his desk toward his sheathed sword.

  Salvator lunged and fell back into his seat in one fluid motion. The Aegyptian yanked back his arm with a sharp gasp and he clutched his bleeding hand to his belly. His little finger rolled down the angled desk and fell to the floor.

  “Supreme Knight is not an honorary title, by the way. You have to earn it. By killing people. You get extra points for creativity and initiative.” Salvator flicked the blood from the tip of his blade. “And I don’t work for money or arcane knowledge of the universe. I’m a patriot. So unless you’re secretly the king of Italia, I’ll thank you to sit very still and tell me what I want to know. Or we can explore new and innovative ways of removing excess flesh and bone from your mortal coil.”

  Khai looked up with a pained rictus and a silent snarl. “I mistook you for a civilized man of intellect and breeding. Please pardon my error.”

  Salvator sighed as he reached over and slashed across the man’s face. The Aegyptian blinked and then reared back pressing his palm to the thin gash across his cheek that began weeping copious amounts of blood. Again, the Italian flicked the blood from his blade. “I can do this all day. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll grow bored in a minute and just kill you. And then I’ll have to go find someone else and start all over again.”

  “Fine!” Khai spat the word and drops of blood spattered his clothes and the floor. “Some members of our brotherhood continue to search for the steel. It appears there isn’t much of it in the world, and over the last two millennia we’ve collected most of it in the more civilized nations, including your wretched Italia. My old master in particular had a passion for finding new sources of it. But they are the minority.”

  “Yes, and?”

  Khai grimaced as he clutched his maimed hand. “The rest fall into two schools of thought. Those of us who use the wisdom and knowledge contained in our swords to consolidate power over the nations of men, and those of us who seek new and different forms of that power in itself.”

  Salvator nodded. “So, your assassinations and such probably fall in the former group. And what sort of powers are you trying to get for yourselves?”

  Khai sighed and shook his head. “Some want to speak to the dead, or to absorb the knowledge and wisdom of the dead within themselves. Some want to understand where the aether steel came from, or how it was made. And some want to apply the steel to their own flesh, to somehow preserve their own souls for all time. To become truly immortal.”

  The Italian smiled. “I take it you’re less interested in immortality than in the more mundane life of an earthly emperor.”

  “No one has ever succeeded in undoing death or extending life with the steel. Why chase a dream when you can live in luxury and shape the course of human civilization to build a perfect human nation that spans the entire globe?”

  “Sounds charming. Especially when we establish the capital in Rome. I’m thinking—” Footsteps echoed in the cavernous practice room. Salvator frowned at the curtain and then at the walls around them. “Other doors?” />
  Khai smiled just a little. “No, I’m afraid. Just the one.”

  Salvator stood and quickly surveyed the tables and shelves around them. He grabbed two small books and shoved them into his pockets, then a heavily annotated map which he rolled and shoved inside his coat, and lastly he picked up the sheathed short sword on the desk, which he swiftly hooked to the right side of his belt. The door opened.

  “Master Khai?” a young man called.

  Salvator gazed down at the old Aegyptian. “Master, is it?” He whisked his rapier at the man’s throat and felt a horrible jarring vibration race up his arm when his steel struck its target. The high collar of the man’s shirt split open to reveal the dim gray sheen of metal.

  Armor? Score one for paranoia.

  The curtain behind him flapped open and Salvator spun to face the two young men, who stared back at him with wide curious eyes. But a single glance at their bleeding master was the only order they needed. Both drew their swords and a soft orange glow illuminated the room. The fiery blades obscured everything near them, their blazing light drawing hypnotic lines through the shadowy air.

  Not this time.

  With a grimace, the Italian threw his rapier back into its sheathe and pulled out his stolen short sword. The ceramic grip was too thick, the blade was too short, and the whole thing weighed twice as much as clumsy Espani espada. But the blade did not glow at all.

  A fake! This thing is rubbish.

  He slashed twice at his opponents to push them back and then ran across the room and into the racks of practice weapons. Tossing the heavy sword aside, Salvator darted through the shelves and racks to the door and dashed out into the vast shadowy expanse of the practice room. His footsteps echoed louder and louder as he crossed the room, and soon a cacophony of answering echoes told him that the two other men were running close behind.

  A chase. At my age. Bah! Time to disappear.

  Chapter 15

  The dust hung in the air. It didn’t drift on the breeze because there was no breeze and it didn’t sink to the ground because the heat was just strong enough to keep lifting it up. So the dust just hung in the air. Qhora sat in the shadowed corner of the cracked and crumbling house and stared out the unglazed window at the pale blue sky. When she looked away, the bright after-image of the window haunted her vision and leapt about the darkened room. Beside her sat Mirari and across from her was poor old Philo, grimacing as he massaged his injured ankle and struggling slightly to breathe the hot dry air.

  The door rattled as it opened and everyone reached for a weapon, but it was only Tycho returning with a jug of water and a few rags. He tended to his master for a few minutes before flopping down on the floor himself. “I’ve noticed that it’s hot.”

  “Mm.” Qhora sighed. Outside the window she could hear the soft murmurs of many men and women, and all of them speaking in hushed Hellan dialects. The Hellan Quarter of Alexandria was not nearly a quarter of the city, in fact it was only three streets by four streets, and the buildings were all one-level structures. Less than three hundred souls lived there. They had little work and little food, but little trouble from the roving street gangs and that was a blessing at the moment. “So,” she said, “how long have you been here looking for a seireiken?”

  “Eleven days.”

  “Eleven?” She felt her heart sinking into her belly. “So you’ve been everywhere and spoken to everyone?”

  “Everyone we could find, and we found quite a few people who know about swords,” Tycho said. “No, the only men with seireikens are those men in green. They live in the Temple of Osiris, but outsiders are not allowed to enter. They have their own guards, their own porters, their own cooks, everything. And the Temple is huge. It’s likely that they forge the swords inside it. Maybe. All I know for certain is that no one else has a seireiken, and no one else knows where to get one.”

  Qhora nodded. “What else do you know about this Temple?”

  “The cult of Osiris is very old,” said Philo. “And if you keep your eyes open, you can find their agents everywhere in the world. It is a sort of assassins’ guild, but much more besides. We have seen them used in war, along the borders of Vlachia, in Rus, and at the walls of Constantia itself, of course. Always in the hands of these men in green robes, never anyone else’s. That is why Lady Nerissa sent us here. We are to procure a seireiken for the prince of Vlachia to seal a new alliance between his nation and Constantia.”

  “I thought Constantia was in Hellas,” Qhora said. “You make it sound like it stands alone.”

  “Constantia has always stood alone. It stands on the border of Eran. Hellas won’t claim it because they fear it will offend Emperor Darius and provoke a new war between the east and west. So the city stands alone, supported by whoever chooses to serve the Constantian Church and stand against the Mazdan Temple.”

  “It’s a beautiful city,” Tycho said. “The palaces and temples and cathedrals are ancient and massive, built by all the great emperors who conquered it in the past. I would invite you to see it, it if were safe to do so.”

  “Why a sword?” Qhora asked as the sweat tricked down her neck into her shirt. “Why do you need a sword to secure this alliance?”

  “As a symbol,” Philo said. ”The prince of Vlachia is a devout soldier and he believes in our cause, but he is afraid of these unholy swords. The power to steal a man’s soul is, well, terrifying. But Lady Nerissa believes that if we can put that power into the prince’s hand, he will master his fear and rekindle his confidence, and join us to push back Darius’s army.”

  “It is terrifying,” Qhora said softly. “It wasn’t enough to kill my Enzo, to take him from me, from our son, from all the people who love him and need him. That wasn’t enough. They had to steal my Enzo’s soul, to cage him, to torment him, to abuse him for all of time.” She blinked and focused on Tycho. “Is there any way to free a soul from a seireiken?”

  The Hellan shook his head. “I don’t believe so, no. They say if you pierce a man’s flesh with a seireiken, it rips the soul from his body and he falls dead to the ground in an instant, even if the wound itself isn’t fatal. A stab to the arm or leg is all that’s needed. The sword merely needs to touch the soul within you.”

  Qhora closed her eyes and tried to banish the image in her mind’s eye of Enzo standing in the hotel lobby, transfixed with that searing blade in his chest and little tongues of flame licking the wound in his back. “I need to find one. The one that killed my husband.”

  The young man’s eyes widened. “I’m so sorry. When did it happen?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Two days without Enzo. And two days without Javier, beautiful little Javier with his fat pink cheeks and fat little legs.

  Qhora swallowed. “It sounds like the best place to find these followers of Osiris is at their Temple. Can you take me there?”

  Tycho nodded. “I can. But you can’t go in. You can’t even talk to the guards. Well, you can talk but they won’t answer you. We tried for an hour, asking questions, offering to pay for their time, offering a king’s ransom to purchase a seireiken. The Osirians never answered. And they never took their hands off their guns, either.”

  “I don’t care. Just take me there. I’ll make them talk.” Qhora felt her chest constricting and each breath was a little harder to draw than the last. She wrapped her fingers around the knife in her belt and imagined herself killing the ugly Aegyptian and smashing his sword in a flash of fire and lightning, and then Enzo would be free, he would step out of the light and hold her and everything would be just like before. They would be together.

  “My lady, please listen to me,” Mirari said. “You know I will follow you and serve you faithfully to the ends of the earth, and no cause could be more just than to avenge the death of Don Lorenzo, but we are alone, blind, and toothless here. We cannot fight an army, and we cannot hope to triumph through sheer will or even faith. If we are to find this man and his sword, then we will have to work as Señor Fab
ris does, by talking and bribing and watching. But not by charging into battle at every opportunity. If we did that, you would soon deprive your son of both his parents, and I would never forgive myself if that happened, my lady. Please listen. If we are to save the soul of Don Lorenzo, we must move carefully and quietly and strike as a serpent does. My lady?”

  She’s right. Whenever she opens her mouth for more than a yes or a no, she’s always right.

  Qhora clenched her teeth, forcing her face to be as still as stone.

  No tears now. No sobbing, no shaking, no weakness now. Later, but not now. Not until it’s over. Not until we’re home.

  She nodded. “You’re right. You’re right, Mirari. Yes. Fine. Then we need to find Salvator and start finding some answers.”

  The older Hellan shifted his injured leg with much wincing and hissing through his teeth. When he was done he said, “I wouldn’t advise it. This is a dangerous city at the best of times and for the best of people. But it’s far worse for strangers, for foreigners. We ourselves have been accosted by thieves and bandits four times since we arrived, and that was openly in the middle of the day where all could see. These brigands have no fear because there is nothing to fear, no law and no lawmen. But for you, a pair of foreign women, alone on the streets of Alexandria, I shudder to think what might befall you out there. There are many in this city who would take you, use you, and kill you without a second thought. And even your great courage and your knives and your bird would not save you. Tycho, I’m sorry, but I fear our mission is to end in failure.” The old man sighed. “We will stay a few more days and try again, but it would seem we are fated to return to Constantia empty-handed.”

  The younger Hellan nodded gloomily.