Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Freya moved carefully down the empty lanes, pausing here and there to listen or to sniff, or to bend down and peer at the dust at her feet. But if there were any tracks, she couldn’t recognize them on the gravel roads. And every step they took brought them closer to the great ribcage towering over the town and casting nightmare shadows across the plains by the light of the setting sun.

  The sky was violet and the world beneath it was gray and cold when Freya reached the first of the giant’s ribs. Erik and Wren lingered in the road behind her as she stepped forward and touched the massive bone.

  “It’s not bone,” she said. “It’s steel. Old and rusted. And look, there’s moss growing on it here, and grass inside there.” She pointed. “But not much. It’s been here a few years, but not many.”

  Wren crept up to her side. “Steel? Frost giants had bones of steel? No wonder only the Allfather could kill them.”

  “Maybe.” Freya scraped her spear’s blade along the face of the rib in front of them, watching the rust flake away and flutter to the ground. Above them the rib swept up in a dramatic curve to touch the slender spine of the creature. “Or maybe this isn’t a frost giant. Look there.” She pointed down the belly of the beast to a twisted, blackened mound.

  “The heart?” Wren clasped her hands to her chest, her fingers rubbing at the rinegold ring on her right hand. “Gudrun says to beware its heart.”

  “Let’s take a closer look.” Freya led the girl inside the enormous cage of steel ribs to the small mound and they looked down on the tiny bits of steel melted onto the broken rubble of the house that no doubt had stood where the giant had fallen. Freya squatted down and scraped her bone knife along a charred lump nailed to the ground with a small metal spike. The lump made a crackling sound, and chips of blackened char fell from it.

  “What is that?” Wren asked.

  Freya picked up the chips and sniffed them. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “I think… I think it’s wood. Old, burnt wood. Real wood, from a tree.” Freya pocketed the strange treasures, along with a few more bits from the scorched lump, and then she led Wren back out to the street where Erik and Arfast waited with Katja in the deepening shadows of Hengavik.

  “So much for finding Skadi,” Freya said. “No one’s here. No one’s been here for over a year.”

  “It’s getting late,” Erik signed. “We need to find a safe place to sleep.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Freya pointed up the road. “Let’s take a look up that way.”

  They resumed their earlier formation and the huntress led the others up the gravel lane, away from the giant’s ribs, and up to the open doorway of a long house buried in a man-made hill side-to-side with a second identical house. Both houses ran in a straight line with a second door at the far end, and the earth had been piled over them like a husband and wife lying together under the blankets in bed. With a bit of effort, they wrestled Arfast’s antlers through the doorway and Wren saw to making Katja comfortable while Freya and Erik spent the next half hour piling heavy stones in the southern doorway, and making the northern doorway narrower.

  Night fell quickly, draining the last remaining shreds of light from the sky, and a thousand tiny eyes winked open in the darkness above, staring down at the dead town in uncaring silence. Erik took the first watch, so Wren and Freya both lay down beside the feverish Katja and went to sleep with empty bellies.

  Freya woke quickly when Erik touched her arm, but he was smiling and yawning, not telling her that there was some new danger.

  “It’s midnight. Mostly quiet,” he signed. “There was some howling, but it was far to the north, and that was more than an hour ago.”

  She nodded and glanced at her sister and the young girl in black beside her. Both were sleeping soundly, though Katja was panting through her open mouth in quick shallow breaths. Freya frowned, but turned away. There was nothing she could do for her sister at the moment, so she reached for her spear to take the watch. But Erik caught her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, and then the side of her neck, and she closed her eyes and felt the heat of him moving across her skin to her mouth and she let him press her back down onto her blanket, his tongue surging between her lips, his hands massaging her neck and hips as he lay down beside her.

  Freya wrapped her arms around his head, trapping his mouth against her own for a moment, and then she pushed him back and saw the disappointment and understanding mingled in his eyes as he leaned back and let her sit up. She leaned over to bite his ear, and then stood up, fetched her spear, and went to sit by the open doorway. A soft breeze sighed through the empty streets and the sound of the grassy plains rustling filled the night with a chorus of distant whispers.

  Her bones were tired but her mind was not, and the cold air kept her eyes feeling sharp. Wrapped in her heavy wool blanket with her arms and legs curled around her spear, she sat in the doorway and stared up at the stars, at the thousand cold eyes staring back down at her. When she looked down at the empty road beyond the door, it was covered in a thick white mist.

  Aether. Damn.

  Freya glared at the fog. It flowed past the doorway like a river of clouds and sea foam, swirling and rippling and rolling upon itself. She stood up and stepped outside, checking the road in both directions, but there was nothing to see.

  Not yet, anyway.

  With the speed and grace of a mountain lion she leapt up the side of their earthen house to stand on its grassy roof and look out across the town with her spear planted beside her. The mist lay thick and white upon the ground, blanketing the gravel roads and lapping silently at the empty doorways of the abandoned homes. And to her left, toward the western end of the town, Freya saw the shadowy figure of a man walking slowly down the center of the road toward her. The huntress frowned.

  Ghosts. I hate ghosts.

  It took the man several minutes to come down the road to the house where Freya stood exposed on the roof, and when he arrived the ghost paused and looked up at her. “Have you seen a fair-haired girl come by this way?” he asked. He held his hand by his waist. “About this tall?”

  Freya blinked and tightened her grip on her spear. The steel felt cold and clammy. “No,” she said softly.

  The ghost nodded and continued on his way down the street and around a corner out of sight.

  Then a shadowy woman emerged from a house across the street and wandered off to the south without sparing Freya a glance. And then the shade of an old crone shuffled by. And two solemn children. And a husband and wife. And on and on they came by the dozens, drifting silently through the streets, occasionally pausing to look at something or someone, even exchanging a few quiet words with each other, and then continuing on their starlit strolls through the streets of Hengavik.

  After several minutes of watching the aethereal dead wandering the town, Freya jumped down from the roof and stepped back into the open doorway of their shelter. Sometimes a ghost would appear in the road in mid-stride, and sometimes one would vanish just as suddenly. Their quiet voices murmured through the streets as they spoke to each other, offering bland greetings and asking simple questions, usually about whether the other person had seen a certain lost soul lately.

  An hour passed and Freya came to realize that there were no more than a dozen faces among the ghosts, but because they kept wandering in circles, appearing and disappearing suddenly and randomly, it seemed that there were more.

  The aether at her feet began to thin, revealing patches of the road, and the ghosts appeared less and less often around her, staring into empty houses and asking each other if they had seen this little girl or that old man. Freya watched them with an anxious gnawing in her belly, wondering how they died, and when, and why. And why were they wandering the empty lanes of Hengavik at all, instead of sleeping in the cold earth? Ghosts were common enough in Ysland, but never so many in one place, and never wandering for hour upon hour.

  Leaving her spear leanin
g against the wall, Freya stepped out into the street into the path of a shadowy woman, her features drawn in wisps of aether that fluttered in ragged lines in the weak breeze.

  “My name is Freya,” the huntress said.

  The ghost paused and glanced away. “I’m Dalla,” she whispered.

  “What happened here? What happened to this town? Where are the people?”

  “Dead.” The ghost lowered her gaze to her feet. “All dead.”

  “How did they die? War? Famine? Or was it the reavers?” Freya resisted the urge to reach out and take hold of the dead woman, to force her to look her in the eye.

  “The fox plague…” The ghost of Dalla wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as the breeze stiffened and threatened to tear apart her fragile form of mist. “The fox plague took some away, and left others dead.”

  Freya nodded. “When?”

  Dalla shook her head. “I don’t know. A day, a year? I can’t tell one night from the next.”

  “Oh.” Freya pushed her hair back over her head. “Can you tell me about the giant? The creature with the metal bones on the south side of town. Was it a frost giant? Or a whale from the sea?”

  “It was like a whale.” Dalla looked up sharply, a wide-eyed look of wonder splashed across her face. “Yes, like a whale. It fell from the sky in the night, streaming fire across the heavens. It came from the southeast, plummeting like a wingless bird. I stood in the lane and watched it grow larger and larger, bigger than anything I had ever seen before. The beast smashed down into the ground, crushing the houses. Its skin was on fire, sweeping from nose to tail, shredding its flesh to the bones.” The ghost’s mouth hung open, moving slightly as though she had more to say but couldn’t find the words.

  Freya squinted through the gloom in the direction of the skeleton. “Was that before or after the reavers came?”

  “Before.” Dalla nodded. “I was alive then. I saw it fall. The reavers came later, and then I wasn’t alive anymore.”

  The huntress winced and nodded and stepped back into the doorway of her shelter. “Thank you. Farewell, Dalla.”

  “And to you.” The dead woman took two steps and vanished, leaving Freya alone with her spear and her thoughts, though neither gave her much comfort.

  Chapter 6

  Freya woke to the sound of Wren waking Erik beside her. Night had faded into day once more, and a weak light fell through the doorway to illuminate the cold stones and earth of their beds. The aether had drifted away, taking the shapes and faces of the ghosts with it, leaving only the empty homes behind.

  They ate nothing because they had nothing to eat, so they wrestled Arfast out into the street and stood staring at the distant hill crests as their breath steamed in the morning air.

  “What now?” Wren nodded at Katja. “She’s getting worse. Gudrun tells me that your sister will be waking up soon, crazed and feral, mad with hunger. When that happens…”

  Freya looked at her poor beautiful sister and saw limbs stretched too long and thin, fingernails stained yellow and narrowing into claws, and everywhere her skin wore more and more hair in blood-red and snow-white that hid the pinks of her cheeks and neck and chest. Katja’s ears were taller and sharper, and the bottom of her nose had grown black and rough to the touch.

  “Should we go back east?” Erik signed. “If the reavers have killed everyone in the west, then maybe we can still find another vala somewhere to the east of Logarven where the reavers haven’t been yet.”

  “No.” Freya banged the butt of her spear on the gravel of the road to feel the steel hum and shiver in her hand. “In the east, the reavers are still just stories from the old wars. No. The plague came from the west. If there are any answers to find, if there’s any cure for Katja, it’s in the west.” She rested her spear on her shoulder and nudged Arfast to follow her. “Let’s go.”

  Erik set out just a step behind, but Wren did not move.

  Freya called back over her shoulder, “You don’t have to come with us.”

  “If the good lord Woden wants me to die by the claws of the reavers, then far be it from me to second guess his wisdom,” the girl said. “But he hasn’t mentioned any such plans to me yet.”

  “Then go home, with our thanks.”

  “Alone?” Wren began shuffling after them. “Back to that empty tower?”

  “If you want.” Freya cracked her knuckles against the haft of her spear. “On the other hand, you’re more than welcome to come along with us.”

  Wren grunted and glanced up at the sky. “Certain death behind me and certain death ahead. That’s quite the riddle, lord. I suppose I should have made it more clear in my prayers that I’m not as fond of riddles as you are.” The vala apprentice quickened her pace to catch up to Erik. “But I’ll do my best to unravel this one. Just don’t let me die before I do.”

  Freya and Erik exchanged a silent smile.

  They left Hengavik and its grassy fields and followed the old ridge road up west. The smoking peak of Mount Esja glowered down at them from the distant north, its lower slopes gleaming snow-white and blue against the pale sky. They were less than an hour on the road before Erik said he could smell the salty sea air. Freya smelled the change in the air as well, but whether it was the sea she could not tell. Something else, something foul, lingered in the hills.

  Dark clouds gathered in the west, shrouding the sky and rumbling with the first angry hints of the storm to come. Freya minded the road, scanning for fresh tracks of men, or mules, or sheep. But the only tracks she could identify were fox prints, and they were all far too large. Erik moved on ahead, a hundred paces or more, always cresting the next hill long before the women and Arfast did, and each time he would wave the all-clear sign.

  It was nearing noon, with the sun shining weakly on the shrubby hills patched with ice, when Erik reached the top of a hill, dropped to one knee, and raised his fist. Freya pulled the white elk to a halt and told Wren to stay put, and then the huntress jogged up the road to her husband’s side. He pointed to the northwest.

  A bright warble of cold water ran down from the skirts of Mount Esja and raced in its narrow channel down through the hills, and not far from their hilltop Freya could see a small water mill standing beside the swift stream. The mill sat half-buried in the bank beside the water, roofed in turf that would hide the building from any travelers on its northern side, but to the south it presented a crooked stone face with a crooked, curtained doorway. Its three water wheels spun steadily in the water, each one a cleverly lashed arrangement of ribs and femurs with oiled leather sheets stretched tightly over the paddles to catch the water.

  “It’s still working? Why the hell would anyone need a mill where all the farmers are dead?” Freya asked.

  “Look again,” Erik signed. “Most of the paddles have rotted away. The bones are just spinning loose. And there used to be more than three, but the others are gone.”

  Freya nodded, trusting her husband’s keen eyes over her own. He’d always had stronger vision and sharper ears, even before his injury, before he was excluded from the world of conversation and found himself simply listening and watching, year after year, until Freya and Katja had helped him learn to speak with his hands.

  “It’s not far,” Freya said. “We should take a look inside. There might be food.”

  “Really?” Erik raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe in a cellar buried along the bank, something forgotten when the people left, or ignored when the reavers came.”

  They followed the road a bit farther and then struck out along an overgrown footpath down a gentle slope through tall grasses and crunching snow to the edge of the stream across from the mill. Thin plates of ice clung to the banks, floating on the silver ripples of the stream. The water wheels were indeed broken and rotting, still turning in the water but no longer able to turn anything inside the mill.

  Freya leapt across the water and quietly dashed to the roof of the mill where she searched for tracks and signs. The g
round above and behind the mill was wild and unmarked, but at the edge of the stream where the earth was softer, she saw the footprints leading to the door of the mill. She pointed at them and Erik nodded. They were boot prints. And they were fresh.

  “Hello?” Freya circled around the mound of the buried mill and approached the muddy bank where the door faced the water and the broken wheels spun in the stream. “Is there anyone here? We’re travelers from Logarven. We mean you no harm. We’re just looking for some food.”

  A dry scrape echoed from inside the mill, the sound of a boot on earth or stone. Freya rested her hand on her favorite knife. A gift from Erik, it had a serrated edge and a sculpted handle that fit her thin fingers perfectly. Holding it tightly reminded her of home.

  There were a few more soft scuffling sounds inside the mill, and Freya began to wonder if she had been mistaken, if there was no man inside at all but some lost sheep or goat. Erik lowered his spear and nodded at the doorway, and Freya pulled back the leather curtain.

  Inside it was pitch black, save for the rectangle of light from the doorway that revealed nothing except for a smooth earthen floor. The scuffling sound came again, louder and faster, as though some animal was struggling to stand or to run, but couldn’t.

  Wren screamed and Freya spun around, crashed across the freezing stream, and scrambled up the steep bank toward the sound. She reached the top of the slope with Erik half a step behind her. Just a stone’s throw away there stood a man in a filthy wool cloak with one arm wrapped around Wren to pin her arms down, and his other arm wrapped around her neck with a steel knife in his hand. He had a scraggly blonde beard and his grimace revealed several missing teeth between his cracked lips.