Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Most of them have been moving farther north, building dens in the hills up toward Lamb’s Run where there are no people, only the herds and the flocks. Wild sheep and deer by the hundreds.”

  “Are the reavers afraid of people?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe they remember that they themselves used to be people, and the memory drives them mad with rage, or sorrow.” Omar shrugged. “Either way, they do keep to the north these days. When I want to find one to try to cure it, I have to go quite a way. If we walk all night, we should reach Lamb’s Run by noon tomorrow.”

  Freya stopped. The sky was already a deep violet and the stars were shining in the east, and a soft cool breeze rustled through the tall yellow grass. “And then what?”

  Omar paused to look back at her. “And then we start looking for Ivar. Or Fenrir, if you prefer.”

  Freya shook her head. “No, that will take too long. We could spent days wandering the hills looking for Fenrir, chasing down the wrong reaver, fighting off whole packs of them at a time.”

  “I don’t see that we have a choice in the matter.”

  “Erik doesn’t have that much time,” she said sternly. “We need to find Fenrir as quickly as we can. Tonight, if possible.”

  “I don’t see how,” he said with a bemused smile.

  “It’s simple.” She gazed up at jagged heights of Thaverfell overlooking the lake. “We bring him to us.”

  “Aha. A trap?”

  “A trap.” She turned left off the path and struck out for the high hill. They hiked up the slope, their boots crunching on the frozen earth and the bits of ice in the depressions in the ground with Freya leading and Omar trailing several paces behind. After a while, she said, “Tell me more about the bloodflies.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve been bitten by bloodflies before. Everyone has. But no one’s turned into a mad, hairy beast before. Why is that?”

  “I see.” The foreigner was still behind her, but she could tell from his voice that he was smiling in the dark. He said, “Your average bloodflies are different from the ones we found in the pit on Mount Esja. The ones we released were an ancient and special breed, a breed with the ability to drink not only blood but aether as well, and with that aether they can swallow a drop of their victim’s soul. I can only imagine how vicious and savage those ancient flies were in their prime, engorged with blood and filled with the strength of mountain goats or stags or bears. But that sort of bloodfly must have died out long ago, leaving only their feeble cousins behind to pester you with their buzzing and nipping.”

  “So the flies that came out of the pit still had the blood, and the soul, of their last meal in their bellies?” Freya frowned. “I see now. This isn’t a germ-plague at all. It’s a soul-plague?”

  “Exactly. These people are all tainted with tiny drips and shreds of the soul of an animal, and from my research, I believe that ancient beast was a giant summer fox, another creature that died out long ago and left only its smaller and less threatening cousin behind to harry your flocks. That would be the winter fox, of course.”

  “You can tell all that from the flies?”

  “No, I can tell that from the bodies of the victims that I examined over the last few years. And not only was it a red-furred summer fox, but it was a female at that. A vixen, in heat.”

  Freya threw a smile over her shoulder. “Now you’re playing games with me. How could you possibly know that it was a female in heat?”

  “Because all of the victims, all of the men and women who have been turned into beasts either by the bloodflies or by the bites of other victims, every single one of them, is now a female reaver. There are no males.” Omar paused. “I didn’t notice it at first. But by the time I examined my fourth subject I was becoming suspicious. And then I happened upon a young man lying on the ground just a few leagues out there.” He pointed to the east.

  “He was a hunter too, just like you and your husband, and he had killed the reaver that attacked him. The beast lay dead nearby with a spear through its throat. But it had bitten him in the leg, leaving him unable to get home. I stayed with him, trying to keep him calm, watching for the signs of the change. And along with the fur and the ears and eyes of the beast, I saw the little pink buds on his belly.”

  Omar cleared his throat. “In the middle of the night I killed him, struck him dead with a single cut to the throat. I couldn’t stand to watch anymore, or hear anymore of his screaming as his bones wrenched apart, stretching his flesh. But when the sun rose the next morning, I stripped away his clothes to examine the body further and found his manhood quite gone. And that is how I know that the summer fox that fed the soul-sucking bloodflies countless eons ago was in fact a vixen, fair lady. I’m guessing that it was in heat from some of the, ahem, behavior that I’ve seen.”

  Freya had slowed and finally stopped as she listened to his tale and now she stood still and silent on the hillside beneath the stars, staring at the dark stranger with her mouth hanging open.

  My Erik, my poor Erik. He has no idea. I don’t know if he could stand the thought of it. Losing his voice nearly broke his heart when he was a boy. But now, losing his…

  This could destroy him if it happened, if he knew. But he doesn’t know. Thank the Allfather for that. And I won’t let it happen, whether the Allfather helps me or not.

  Freya started walking again. “Let’s hurry. We need to set our trap.”

  At the top of Thaverfell, they found a bare, wind-blasted mound of dry earth and rock with a few light dustings of frost in the cracks in the ground. The night sky spread from one horizon to the next in unbroken cloudless beauty, cold and lifeless and silent. Freya dashed left and right around the hilltop, kneeling to examine this hole or that stone. Eventually she worked her way over to the east side of the hill, which overlooked the lake, and she found a long and narrow defile that ran in lightning jags down to the water’s edge. “Here. This is where we’ll do it.”

  “Do what, exactly?” Omar gazed down the slope at the jagged black line sliced into the hillside.

  “Snare Fenrir.” Freya took the long, slender cord from her belt and uncoiled it on the ground. She shook her head. “I’ll need to double it up to make sure it’ll hold him, but that won’t leave enough for the second snare. Although, maybe we can cheat on that as well.” She climbed down into the crevasse and trotted along the flat bottom to a sharp corner that shot to the left. “Here.”

  “Would you mind terribly giving me some notion of what you’re working on?”

  “Fenrir’s a big boy, isn’t he?” She winced. “Fenrir’s big, right? And if we’re going to get a little ring off his finger, we’re going to need to pin him down.”

  Omar shrugged. “Or kill him.”

  “No! No more killing if we can help it. The reavers are our people, and we’re here to help them, not to kill them.”

  “I understand that you think that. But you must understand that the Yslanders in Rekavik are also your people, and your first duty should be to protect them, not the ones who are already infected and are most likely lost forever.” Omar crossed him arms over his chest. “Finding the ring is no guarantee of success. Your trust in Skadi is misplaced.”

  “I don’t trust Skadi,” Freya said as she began folding and knotting her cord. “I barely know her.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  She paused. “I saw your hand heal before my eyes. I’d say that I know you better than I know Skadi.”

  “Ah, but I could have been lying to you about who I am and why I’m here,” he said.

  Freya grinned. “You could have, but you weren’t. I can tell. Besides, hacking off Leif’s arm was real enough, and I definitely didn’t trust him. So I guess I do trust you. Some.”

  Omar nodded and raised his eyebrows. “A reasonable analysis, if ever I heard one. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Not yet. But you will.”

  Freya devised a complex snare with h
er cord, creating a spider’s web across the floor of the ravine in the narrow corner where any pursuer would be forced to slow and turn to continue running down the hill. She hid the cord with dead grass and small pebbles, but the deep shadows from the ravine’s walls hid her trap utterly. Then she climbed up to the top of the defile and found a large round stone, which she rolled to the edge of the wall a few paces downhill of the snare.

  “And now?” Omar asked.

  “And now,” Freya said, sitting down on her stone, “You need to go up to the top of the hill and start waving that fancy sword of yours and yelling at the top of your lungs.”

  “Oh really? So I’m to be the bait then in your little trap?”

  “Exactly.” Freya smiled up at him.

  “And what makes you think Ivar will come? What if he’s too far away to see or hear me? Or what if he had a particularly large elk at tea time and decides to sleep through the evening completely? And what if I find myself surrounded by lesser reavers?”

  Freya drew her favorite knife and nodded. “Maybe he won’t come. That’s possible. But I still think we have a better chance of bringing him to us than of us finding him any time soon. Yell Skadi’s name. Maybe that will catch his ear.”

  “Hmm.” Omar began trudging up the hill. “And if I am assaulted by a pack of feral monsters, all by myself up there? I may be immortal, but I’m flesh and bone, just like you. I’ll still be very much alive when they start to devour me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can handle a few unarmed and unclothed vixens,” she said with a smile. “You can dismember a man with a flick of that sword faster than the eye can follow. I have faith in you.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” he said drily. He paused to frown down at her. “And I suppose when the fox-queen is upon me, I should lead him, or her, down here to you.” He grimaced. “What joy. Running. In the dark. And what will you be doing down here? Lying in wait with your spear?”

  “Eventually. But first I need to make a cord for the second snare.”

  “Make a cord? From what?”

  Freya held up her bone knife, and then with a quick sawing motion across the back of her head she hacked off her long shining hair and felt the weight of it vanish from her scalp. The bright silvery strands flashed in the starlight once and then hung from her fist like spun gold. “From this.”

  The foreigner merely shook his head and hiked up the hillside in silence.

  The huntress settled down on her stone seat to work, quickly dividing her shorn lock into three smaller strands, and then each of those into three smaller strands. She frowned.

  It’ll work, but only barely. I’ll have to get close to him. Very close. But it will work.

  And she set to work braiding and knotting her hair into a cord. Soon she heard Omar’s voice echoing down from the hilltop, and she smiled as she picked out the various curses and jokes that the man was shouting at the northern hills. She saw the flash of his sword once, but after that she only glimpsed a few glimmers of light on the rocks above.

  It took most of an hour to finish the new cord to her satisfaction, and to compensate for how short it was she devised a new trick for her second snare. She pushed her large round stone even closer to the edge of the gully so that it tipped out into empty space, and then she rammed a smaller stone underneath to prop it up just enough to keep it from tipping over and plummeting down into the ravine. And then she tied the end of her hair cord to that smaller wedge stone.

  She grabbed her knife and spear and dropped down into the gully again and checked the first snare, finding it just as taut and just as hidden as it had been before. Then she grabbed the dangling end of her hair cord and began fashioning it into a noose.

  The first howl split the silent night just as the first pale snowflakes began to fall upon the hill. Freya paused in her work to listen to the bestial cry, wondering what sort of sound it was.

  A greeting? A warning? A call to the hunt?

  As the snowfall quickened and the ground transformed from a jagged nest of shadows into a smooth pillow of moonlight, a second and a third howl rose to the north. High-pitched yips and barks echoed for many long moments afterward.

  Freya crouched down in a cleft in the rock wall so that she was facing uphill with a clear view of the tight corner where her first snare lay hidden by the snow. She clutched her spear in one hand and her cord in the other.

  A sharp night wind blasted down the gully, spraying her in the eyes with snow and ice crystals, and she felt her shortened hair flying about her head, lighter and wilder than before, and her naked neck prickled with gooseflesh as the cold air crept over the newly exposed skin.

  The stars crept across the sky, the snow continued to fall, and the white drifts grew taller all around her.

  Erik, are you at the mill? Are you watching the stars? Or are you locked inside with chains on your hands and feet?

  Freya heaved a sigh.

  And Katja… oh, Katja.

  She shivered.

  The night settled over her just the same as a hundred other nights out in the hills, in the mountains, by the waters. Hunting. Stalking. Waiting. Freya settled into the night and let her mind wander, but not home to Logarven and the empty house by the lake, or the tower in Denveller, or the castle in Rekavik.

  Marrakesh. Ifrica. Alexandria.

  She tasted the strange names one by one, wondering what sorts of people lived in those places. What did they eat, and wear, and do? Were they all brown like Omar? Or maybe they came in even more colors, or sizes, or shapes. Her imagination ran wild, folding together the bits of Omar’s bizarre story with the fairy tales the old valas used to tell of dwarves and elves and trolls.

  Skyships made of steel, sailing ships made of dead men’s nails.

  Men who could not be killed, and drunken gods who murdered their children.

  Dragons.

  Fenrir.

  A deep-throated growl echoed from the hilltop, only to be cut off with a sudden yelp.

  Freya sighed.

  Poor King Ivar, where are you?

  Chapter 17

  Midnight came and went, and Freya sat without moving in a pile of snow as high as her shoulder. Every few minutes she shuffled her feet and pushed the newly fallen snow a bit to each side. The steel spear in her hand was freezing and it was starting to stick to her hand.

  From what she could hear, she guessed that Omar had killed four reavers on top of the hill, though she only had a few grunts and yelps to judge by. The foreigner never came down, never called out to her. He just went on shouting at the sky and swinging his bright white sword in the air.

  Four poor souls who didn’t even know what they were doing. At least they’re at peace now.

  And then she heard the howl. It was a high and clear sound, as pure and fatal as ice. A moment later, a few other reavers answered the howl with their barks and yips and cries, but they were all pale imitations of that first inhuman wail.

  So she shook her arms and legs to keep the blood moving, to keep the feeling in her fingers, and she focused on the buried snare in the turn in the gorge. In her mind’s eye, she imagined the beast’s approach.

  Now. It happens now. Ivar crosses the snow fields.

  The stars turned a bit farther and the snow stopped falling, and the wind died.

  He creeps up the hill, his eyes fixed on that white sword. Mesmerized.

  She glanced upward, but there was no glimmer of Omar’s blade.

  He’s stalking his prey now. Eager. Hungry. But also curious. He’s cautious. Careful. Wary. Hunched down low to the ground, edging forward on his belly. Her belly. Whatever.

  Omar’s voice echoed down the hillside again, and the queen’s name resounded loudly in the night.

  He’s waiting. Waiting. His heart is slowing. He holds his breath. He’s very still.

  Omar stopped yelling.

  He strikes.

  Omar’s sword flashed at the top of the slope, not just the reflected light but the blade it
self shining in the darkness. He was running toward her, a tiny figure illuminated by his deadly weapon, and then he dropped out of sight as he leapt down into the crevasse.

  The snow slows Omar down, dragging at his legs, making him uncertain about the ground underneath. Is there a stone? Is there a hole? He second-guesses every step in the darkness, and so Ivar gains on him.

  His heart is pounding and he feels the heat of his blood in his face. He’s afraid. He knows that a single misstep means being torn apart by those claws and fangs. Does the fear speed him along, or does it make him careless and clumsy?

  The beast snarled and growled, and the man shouted, the sounds echoing up against the black steel of the night sky and distorted by the walls of the crevasse. Freya re-wrapped the cord around her left hand, feeling the strands of her own cold hair scratching her dry skin, and she gripped her spear in both hands, rising into a crouch.

  Now, Omar, remember where the snare is. Remember where to jump. Remember!

  A slender black figure darted around the corner into view, leaping lightly along a narrow lip of the rock wall just above the level of the snow. Omar held his blazing sword out level over the snow, illuminating the path over the snare, and as he came through the sharp corner he turned to look over his shoulder.

  No! Never look back!

  Omar’s last step on the rock ledge didn’t hold. His boot slipped off the lip and he plunged down into the snow up to his hip and the man tumbled face-first into the drift.

  “Omar!” Freya rose up. He had fallen only a dozen paces in front of her, but she couldn’t move that far without letting go of her cord tied to the teetering stone above her head. “Omar!”

  A second shadow appeared in the pass, and then a long sleek snout came into view. Ivar’s head hung above the snow, his jaws open to release his steaming breath past his black gums and white fangs. Between the canine muzzle and the tall ears covered in blood-red fur, Freya saw the beast’s bright golden eyes staring at her.

  He’s huge.

  She glanced down at the dark hole in the snow where Omar had vanished, and then she looked back up at the deformed king. “Come on! I’m right here! Come on!”