Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  The warrior frowned at the southerners on the bed, but he sighed and nodded. “If they keep quiet, they’ll be safe enough for a while. No one seems to care much about our dead friend’s sudden return. Skadi has everyone thinking he was just hiding all this time, running from hole to hole to save his skin all these years, going mad with fear. It’s enough to make them pity him, but not enough for any to think him much of a hero. I suppose that’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right,” Freya said. “He is a hero, and everyone will know soon enough. He has a cure for the plague, and it’s out there right now, moving through the city, and soon it will move out into the hills and the reavers will all just be folk again. But for right now, they need to keep their heads down. And I need to find Wren.”

  Halfdan nodded. “Good luck to you. The little vala’s got quite a few hours’ lead on you. Any idea where she went?”

  “Oh, that’s the easy part. What sort of huntress would I be if I couldn’t find a girl on a road in broad daylight? Just tell me where I can find Arfast.”

  “He’s in the stable by the south gate,” Halfdan said. “No worries. I told the stabler that no one was to eat your elk.”

  “Oh, good.” Freya reached up to scratch at her short hair, which felt uncomfortably twisted on top of her head.

  “Freya?” Omar beckoned to her.

  She knelt beside him. “What is it? Is Riuza all right?”

  “Don’t you worry about us. We’ll be fine.” He reached across her shoulders and gently pulled her heavy leather hood up over her head. “You just stay warm out there. And when you see that handsome elk of yours in the stable, be sure to give him a second helping of barley for me, all right?” He winked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “All right.”

  Freya stood and gave Halfdan a curious look as she left, but the big man merely shrugged and stepped aside. She took up her steel spear from the cloak room, and set out. It was a long walk south through the winding roads of Rekavik, and several times she found herself in a lane that dead-ended in a ring of houses built into the same hillock.

  It was in one of these dead-ends that she became annoyed with the edges of her hood blocking her vision, and she was about to shove it back off her head onto her shoulders when she remembered the strange little wink Omar had given her as he pulled the hood up. So as she walked, she gently pushed her hand back up under her hood, running her fingers through her hair over her head, wondering what he had meant about staying warm. When her fingers hit her ear, she didn’t know what to make of it. Her hand was in the wrong place, or her ear was. The sensation was dizzying, like being spun about on a high hill with her eyes closed.

  My ear. It’s too high. It’s too… big? Pointed? Hairy?

  She swallowed hard.

  No, it can’t be. I was bitten by Omar’s bloodflies, they had the cure, not the plague. Unless.

  She looked sharply in the direction of the castle.

  He lied. Leif was right about him wanting revenge. Leif was right!

  She gripped her spear and ground her teeth and for a half a moment she considered running back to plunge her spear through the southerner’s belly. But then she frowned.

  If that were true, why would he want to hide my ears from Halfdan and everyone else? He was trying to protect me. If he wanted me dead, he could have killed me a hundred times over when we were alone on the moors, on the hunt.

  Maybe the cure doesn’t work.

  Or maybe…

  Freya tugged at her sleeves and found her arms as smooth and pale as ever, marked only with Katja’s inked runes and animal icons. There was no fur there.

  I’m not sweating like Katja and Erik and Wren were when they were infected. And Omar said I should keep warm. He was trying to tell me something. He was telling me that I’m not infected. Whatever is happening to me, it’s not the plague.

  She hesitated a moment longer, then resumed striding down the road.

  Either way, Erik and Wren need me.

  With the looming south wall as her guide she eventually found the iron door they called the south gate and the stable nearby. Arfast stood in the first stall, passively watching the people of the city marching down to the water, or to the market, or to their friends’ homes. Freya threw her riding blanket over the elk’s back and was about to jump up on him when she noticed the two sacks of barley leaning up against each other in the next stall. A tiny buzz of wings whined in her ears.

  What did Omar say? Give the elk a second helping of barley? Why did he say a second one?

  She slipped into the other stall, glanced up to make sure the stabler wasn’t looking, and quickly searched the sacks. And there, tucked under the second bag of barley, was a familiar looking ball of mud. It had split open on one side and she saw that it was mostly empty, but there were two or three tiny bloodflies shaking their wings and skittering about inside the ball. She gently pressed the mud back together, sealing the insects inside, and she slipped the ball into her sleeve. Then she leapt onto Arfast’s back and rode him out through the narrow passage under the wall, and into the wide world again.

  It didn’t take her long to find Wren’s boot prints on the road. They were fresh and sharp indentations in the frozen mud dusted with dry snow. So she turned east and followed them, knowing full well where they were leading her.

  “Hya!”

  Arfast dashed through the fields of dead grass, his huge antlers pounding up and down with the powerful strokes of his legs. Eventually she crested the last rise overlooking the icy stream and saw the water mill buried in the high bank beside the silvery water.

  There was no sign of anyone outside.

  “Erik? Wren?” She rode down the bank and across the water, and slid down off the shaggy elk’s back. She rested her spear against the wall of the mill and placed her hand on her sheathed knife. The carved bone felt cool against her palm. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  And from inside the mill, she heard the sharp scratching of claws on stone. Drawing her knife, she pulled back the curtain and stepped inside. The sudden transition from daylight to deep shadow made her pause, waiting for her vision to return. And to her surprise, her eyes quickly sharpened and easily picked out the shape of the figure on the far side of the room.

  It was a reaver, long and crooked and furry, and when it moved it rattled the chains behind it. The creature sat up and stared at her, and she was glad it was too dark to see its face clearly. But it shifted its legs, turning its body toward the meager light, and she saw the tiny pink teats on its belly, and the rounded shape of its hairy sex between its hairy thighs.

  Without taking her eyes from the reaver, she reached into her sleeve and brought out the mud ball, and gently broke it open, and sent the pieces rolling into the room. The unseen bloodflies whined into the air, and she slipped back out through the doorway, and drew the curtain shut behind her.

  Freya stood outside, listening to the soft tinkling of the cold stream and watching the occasional bit of grass or pane of ice float past the spinning leather paddles of the mill.

  I suppose that has to be Erik. He said he would use the chains. He…

  She swallowed and looked up at the pale blue sky and the pale gray clouds streaming across it.

  Wren. I should find Wren.

  From inside the mill there came a sudden shuffling and snorting, and the thumping of a foot or hand on the stone floor, and the rattling of chains.

  It’s going to hurt. And it’s not a cure, Omar said. It’s a vaccine. Who knows what it will do to a fully turned reaver?

  She heard more scratching and thumping and rattling behind her, louder and faster than before. Tears burned in the rims of her eyes.

  Wren needs me now. I should go.

  Still she lingered, listening to the rushing water, and the buzzing flies, and her Erik.

  And she sat down to wait.

  Chapter 27

  Omar sat at the edge of the bed, gently petting Riuza’s hair. She had fallen asleep almo
st as soon as he had coaxed her into lying down properly, and now he guessed by the steady sound of her breathing that she was truly at ease, for the moment. He thought back to their time together, the three years between the ill-fated flight of their airship and the ill-fated construction of Ivar’s Drill.

  Riuza hadn’t been the easiest woman to get along with, even though they were stranded together on a strange island at the top of the world surrounded by huge Europan barbarians. She’d been so impatient, unwilling to learn the language, unwilling to make friends, unwilling to consider the possibility of being in Ysland one minute longer than necessary. For her, there had only been the mission of finding a way out, a way home to Marrakesh.

  Omar leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  And nothing I said was ever good enough for you, was it? I was never clear enough, never stern enough with Ivar, never persuasive enough with the smiths or the miners. I just didn’t want to leave as badly as you did. Maybe I should have been. If we’d sailed away instead of digging up the mountain, none of this would have ever happened.

  He sighed.

  She looked very different. It wasn’t just the sunken cheeks and veined hands and thin arms. She had always kept her head shaved. The hair made her look like another person altogether. And she’d been so strong, too.

  Halfdan brought them food, and Omar tried to wake Riuza and feed her, but the woman was too weary and too dazed to eat. He grasped his seireiken and summoned his dead friend the Indian physician, who could only sigh and shake his ghostly head and tell Omar what he already knew. There was little chance of Riuza surviving very long, much less recovering at all. Even now, eating too much could burst her stomach.

  So he sat beside her, holding her hand, trying to remember their better nights together when they had stumbled, laughing and drunk, into their little stone house. And she had stripped off his clothes with the speed and skill of an engineer dismantling a machine, and she had ridden him as though he might carry her all the way back to Marrakesh, if only she squeezed him hard enough and clawed him deep enough, and grunted loud enough. But when morning came they were always still in their little stone house in the cold wasteland of Rekavik.

  It was very late in the morning when Omar noticed the noise coming from outside. For a time he just sat still, listening, trying to sort it out. It was voices mostly, male and female, and laden with all sorts of emotion. Anger. Fear. Surprise. Confusion. There was even some laughter. He’d lived in many cities in many lands, and he had come to know them all by their voices. The gentle chanting of Jaipur, the wailing songs of Damascus, the rumbling chaos of Alexandria, and the mechanical cacophony of Tingis. Rekavik had always been a quiet place, true to its fishermen’s roots, a place punctuated by sudden laughter and sudden anger, both usually the result of some fishing mishap. But the city was not quiet now.

  They sounded like separate arguments. A few shouts here or there. Some angry, some scared. The crack of a stone as it hit a house. The metallic clang of a hammer on stone. It should have been more scattered and less urgent. But it wasn’t.

  Damn my curiosity. It’s going to get me into trouble some day.

  Omar went to the narrow window and saw nothing but the inside of the castle wall, so after tucking the blankets carefully around Riuza, he slipped down the hall with his hand resting on the grip of his seireiken. He received a few strange looks from the men in the dining hall, and a sympathetic smile from one of the cooks, but he hurried by them, eager to see what was amiss outside and to return to Riuza’s bedside.

  He wasn’t far from the castle gate when he found the first group of shouters. A dozen angry men and women were pressing in against a young woman with a small girl in her arms and a small boy clutching her skirts. A rock was thrown.

  Omar drew his seireiken and called upon the dead samurai in the blade, but the ghost of Ito Daisuke was already there, already guiding his hand. Together they plunged forward and slashed the rock out of the air, sending two jagged shards of stone clattering to the ground. The pieces glowed red and steamed quietly in the icy road at his feet. Omar raised the bright sword to let its light sear the eyes of the mob as he herded the mother and the two children behind him.

  “What’s going on here?” he said softly.

  Another rock flew and again the dead samurai flicked Omar’s wrist, smacking the stone aside.

  “I asked what you’re doing here,” Omar said. “We can stand about all day playing hit the rock, but I’m not going to let you hurt this woman and her children. So you might as well start talking.”

  “Get away from them,” an older woman snapped. “They have the plague! Get them out of the city before they kill us all!”

  Omar glanced back into the terrified eyes of the mother. The little girl on her chest peeked out with huge golden eyes, and Omar saw the reddish hair standing on the girl’s tall ears. The boy’s ears were even larger and redder, the hair sweeping up to two little tufts above the points of the canine folds.

  Omar turned back to the mob with a smile. “We’ve lived with the plague for five long years. You all know the signs of it. What is the first sign of the plague?”

  The old woman and the young fisherman at her side glared. “The sweating. The shivering.”

  “Yes, exactly!” Omar angled his body to let them see the mother and her children. “And you can all see quite clearly that these poor little ones are not suffering from the sweats at all. And if they are trembling, it’s only in fear from you. Look at them again! Yes, their ears and eyes have changed, but these children are not infected with the plague. They aren’t in pain, they aren’t confused.”

  “They will be soon enough!” the old woman shouted.

  “I don’t think so,” Omar said calmly. “These children have not been infected with the plague. Look at them. Do you really think a bloodthirsty reaver snuck into the city, sank its huge filthy fangs into their tender flesh as they slept in their beds, and then simply walked away, leaving them to grow ill? Of course not! If a reaver had found these two, they’d have been eaten in two gulps. They’re deliciously tiny!”

  A nervous titter ran through the crowd.

  “No, this is not the plague,” Omar continued. “This is a miracle. You all know what happens with other plagues, like the pox. Some people never grow sick. Some people grow sick and die. But many people grow sick, and then survive bearing the scars of the plague, never to grow sick again. Don’t you see? These children bear the scars of the plague, but not the plague itself. They’re healthy. And better still, that means they can never be infected by the plague at all, even if a reaver did bite them now. Look at this boy! Look at this little girl!” He pointed to them. “Trust your eyes. This is not the feverish, sickly beginning of their transformation into beasts. This is the clear-eyed, iron-strength of two Yslander children who will live long, happy lives in Rekavik, fishing its waters and defending its walls!”

  He scanned the eyes of the crowd and saw the distrust and the misgiving and the fear, but where it had been sharp and vicious a moment ago, now it was muddled with doubt and even hope. Slowly, a few of the younger women came forward to look at the children, and then the younger men, and finally everyone was gathered around the mother and her two little ones. They tugged at the tall hairy ears and peered at the bright golden eyes, but there was soon no doubt among them that the boy and the girl were not stricken with the plague.

  “But, how did it happen?” asked the mother. “I mean, if they were never bitten by reavers, then how did they come through the plague at all with these… scars?”

  Omar smiled as he sheathed his sword. “Every plague has sown within it the seeds of its own undoing. Somewhere in the world there is some plant or fish or flea, some humble little thing that can defeat these reavers. And that’s what your little ones have stumbled upon. Tell me, have you eaten anything strange in the last week?”

  “No.”

  “An oddly colored fish, perhaps? Or overripe herbs?” he prodded.
<
br />   “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe you killed a spider with a cooking spoon, and accidentally mixed it in with—”

  “Never!” The mother frowned indignantly. But then her face softened. “But this morning… this morning there were bloodflies in the house. I thought it strange for winter, for such a dry season. And they did bite the children. Could it be that?”

  Omar clapped his hands. “It must be that, you clever young thing. Everyone, did you hear? There are bloodflies in Rekavik, bloodflies in winter, no less. You would think the poisoned blood of the reavers would kill off such fragile little things, but no! The bloodflies have survived the plague, and now they are the cure, they are our salvation. So go back to your homes and wait for the flies. Suffer their tiny, painless bites. And soon we will all be saved from the plague!”

  The crowd murmured.

  “Are we all going to get big ears like that?” someone asked.

  “Probably,” Omar said breezily. “And it may last a day or a year or the rest of your life, but which is the greater sacrifice? To have the keen ears and eyes of a proud fox, or to become a slavering, mad reaver beast that lives naked in the wilderness?”

  It took a bit more prodding and reassurance and even threats, but eventually he managed to send everyone home with the notion that the bloodflies were a blessing from the Allfather and that soon they would all be saved from the long darkness of the reavers. But even then, there were more fights to find and more mobs to pacify, and so Omar spent the day wandering the streets, brandishing his bright sword, teasing the truth of the bloodflies from whoever had been bitten, and then convincing the angry and the fearful to go home and embrace their strange new fate.

  By the time the sun was setting, Omar had been struck by rocks four times in the head and seven times in the back, but not a single man, woman, or child had been killed or exiled. Even the most skeptical of the house carls and squinting crones had been forced to concede what they saw with their own eyes—that the bloodflies had left their victims stronger and healthier than ever before, at the meager cost of their tall ears and golden eyes. And more than a few children had run home, eager to find a bloodfly of their own, to be the first of their friends to gain the sharp hearing and night vision of a fox.