Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Finally, Omar shuffled into his room in the castle and flopped down beside Riuza. She was wheezing quietly and trembling slightly. He touched her cheek. “If I thought a bloodfly could bring you back to me, I would run out and catch one for you right now. But I’m afraid not even this mad experiment of mine would help you, dear lady. It won’t be long now.”

  The leather curtain in the doorway burst aside and Skadi dashed into the room, a storm of black skirts and scarves and blood-red hair. She caught Omar around the throat as he was still in the process of standing up, and she shoved him back down flat on his back. He choked, struggling to breathe. The knowledge that he couldn’t be strangled to death was a small comfort as the pain in his neck and chest grew sharper.

  “What did you do?!” the queen shouted in his face.

  He twisted his fingers under and between hers, and pried them off his windpipe. She straightened up, but remained kneeling on his arm with her painted nails hovering over him like bloody claws. As he blinked and massaged his throat, Omar noted that Thora and Leif were standing behind their mistress wearing grim faces.

  Omar smiled weakly. “Highness, yes, you may come in. Please make yourself comfortable.”

  She slapped him. “What did you do?”

  “I take it you’ve heard about the miracle sweeping through the city,” he said, rubbing his cheek.

  “Those damned flies of yours.” Her hand flew at his face again, but this time he caught her wrist and held it tight as he sat up, pushing her back. She tried and failed to yank her hand free.

  “Oh no, not of mine,” he said sharply. “They’re yours, Highness. Those are the same bloodflies that you unearthed with your damned drill, the same bloodflies that turned a good king into an insane monster.”

  “But you did something to them. What did you do?”

  He was about to answer when he suddenly realized that all three of his guests were wearing hoods or scarves over their heads. And then he saw the flash of gold in Skadi’s eyes. Omar grinned.

  “Rejoice, Highness. You too, miss, and you, young murderer. You are all saved from the reaver scourge. The plague will soon be nothing but an unpleasant memory, and with any luck, so will I, assuming you let me leave in peace.”

  “Saved?” Skadi yanked the scarf from her head to reveal the tall fox ears nestled in her hair. “We’re monsters! We’re deformed!”

  Omar laughed. “You know, the children outside were a bit more sanguine about this. They were excited about having super-human hearing and what not. They think they’re demigods, or some such. Do you people have a fox-god? If not, you should, or you will very soon, I imagine.” Omar stood up.

  The queen stood as well, rising half a head taller than the southerner. “When the people realize what you’ve done to them, there will be civil war! The city will tear itself to pieces and the children will drown in the rivers of blood in the streets!”

  “I’ve already told the people what I’ve done,” Omar said. Then he shrugged. “More or less. Anyway, they’re quite content about it. Maybe not everyone is thrilled about the ears, but they seem willing to embrace a few little changes since it means they are now immune to the reaver plague. As are you.”

  Skadi stepped back, her face twisted in disbelief. “Immune?”

  “Yes. Immune.”

  “So you were telling the truth after all.” The queen stood a bit easier, relaxing her shoulders. “You really did spend all those years trying to find a cure.”

  “I did, although I must confess, I only succeeded in finding this remedy a day ago. And I have you to thank. If you hadn’t sent that lovely young lady into the wild, to find me and remind me of the drill and the flies, I would probably still be in my little cave, dreaming of warmer climes.”

  “And the people all know about this? And they accept it?” Skadi touched one of her hairy ears and winced at the sensation.

  Omar sighed. “They know as much as they need to know. The bloodflies are the cure, and the ears are the price of their good health. All you need to do now is keep them calm and quiet a few more days and everyone in Rekavik will be saved. Wait a few more weeks for the flies to find the reavers in their dens, and everyone in Ysland will be saved. The hard part is done, Highness. By the time spring arrives, it will all be over. And if you like, you may take all the credit for it, however you wish.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “And what price will I pay for this generosity?”

  “Nothing at all. A good deed is its own reward.” Omar smiled briefly.

  “Just like that? No blood feud, no vendetta for what I’ve done to you?”

  “No.” Omar gazed down at Riuza. She was hardly breathing at all. He said, “I’m no Yslander. Gods, I’m barely even human anymore. And Riuza was always going to die, whether in five years or fifty. If I hadn’t boarded her ship eight years ago, she probably would have returned safely to Tingis, only to be killed in some other airship accident or even in a war with the Songhai Empire. Death is a universal constant, just like me.”

  Skadi smirked. “Is that really how you see the world?”

  He looked up at her. He remembered the stained and patched black dress she had worn as the vala of Hengavik, and the way her young eyes had lit up when he talked about airships and the city of Tingis, and his travels around the world. “You were just like me, once. So eager, so curious. But you had the same curse as me, too. Obsession. It’s such a pity because you had such good intentions. Grand intentions! A machine to warm the land, to make the earth fertile, to bring back the forests of Ysland. It was a beautiful dream you had. And I was so caught up in helping you that I missed the little signs along the way. When you replaced the vala of Rekavik. When you seduced Ivar. It was such a subtle and insidious ambition.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” she said haughtily.

  “Nothing at all,” he said gently. “But that ambition led you to a precipice. You climbed so high and grasped so much that you became terrified of losing it. And when you saw Ivar turning into a monster right before your eyes, when he tore those three men to pieces and hurled their shredded flesh in your face, that was the moment when you decided that what you had was more important than truth or life. And you told Leif to kill everyone to hide your failure, just so you could wear a little crown and sit on a little throne.”

  Omar’s shoulders shook and his lip curled, and slowly the laughter built up inside him until he was roaring and crying.

  “What’s so funny?” the queen asked.

  He wiped his eyes, but the grin remained. “I’ve stood in the grand halls of the Aegyptian kings, the Hellan temples to the Olympian gods, the imperial bathhouses of the Persian lords, and the royal gardens of the Rajput princes. I’ve walked on polished marble, through gilded halls of towering alabaster statues, through the rainbow light of delicate stained glass windows, gazing up at the frescoed panels of soaring domed ceilings.” Omar exhaled the last of the giggles, and he gestured at the room around them. “You people live in stone caves with dirt floors, and the only remaining wood in the entire country is in your bedroom, which stinks of mold, by the way. And this,” he giggled, “is what you’ve been fighting so hard to hold on to. There are beggars in Aegyptus who live better than you do.”

  She scowled at him in silence.

  He sighed and glanced down at Riuza again. He couldn’t see her breathing anymore. Omar knelt down and touched her neck, and then stood back up. “She’s gone.”

  “Then I’m a very lucky woman that you’re so far above matters of life and death,” Skadi said. “You can go now. Leave the city. Leave the country. No one will stop you.”

  Omar didn’t move. “You know, if you had just executed Riuza or exiled her to some hovel in the hills, I probably wouldn’t care at all, now. But you threw her into the darkness and held her on the brink of starvation for five years. Five years. Until her body broke down, and her mind broke down, and she died in pain and confusion and fear, just now. Right here at our
feet, when we weren’t even looking. And you did it just because you were angry at your own failure, didn’t you? But she didn’t deserve this. She just wanted to go home. And if the universe was a just and fair place, you would be punished for this.” He looked the tall queen in the eyes. “But the universe isn’t a just place, and life, as we all know, isn’t fair. But then, I suppose… I suppose that I can be fair, can’t I? I can be just.”

  Omar drew his seireiken.

  The blade flashed in the dim room, the walls erupting into a thousand shades of silver for the barest fraction of a moment.

  The light was extinguished. The blade was already back in its clay-lined sheathe. The ghost of the samurai hovered in the corner of Omar’s vision, and then vanished as he took his hand off of the sword.

  Thora gasped.

  The queen fell to the floor in a heap and the top half of her head slowly separated from the bottom, tearing apart on a diagonal line from the bottom of her jaw to the top of her ear, opening up her skull and spilling her charred brains on the cold stone floor.

  Omar looked past the disgust on Leif’s face to the horror in Thora’s eyes. “I hope you’ll remember this sight every day for the rest of your life, young miss. You’re the vala of Rekavik now, for whatever that’s worth. They may even make you queen as well. Whatever power you ever come to hold, always remember why you hold it. Because if you abuse that power, then one day, eventually, someone with nothing to lose will come for you, just as I came for your mistress, and he or she will stop at nothing to destroy you. The grand high vala and queen of Rekavik, the great and powerful Skadi, is just a pile of rotting shit now. So take a good long look, young miss. Take a very good look.”

  And then he left.

  Chapter 28

  Freya sat outside the water mill listening to Erik gasp for breath and pound on the floor inside. She glanced inside once to check on him, and saw the inhuman expression on his face. It was a face stretched beyond a man’s capacity to understand pain, a face that wanted to scream but never could, a face on the edge of madness and far, far beyond despair.

  It was a face she needed to forget.

  Time passed. The stream gurgled by, the mill paddles creaked, and gradually the noises inside the mill died down until even her keen fox ears, which were now much larger than before, could no longer hear anything above the gentle whispering of Erik’s breathing. She rose to her feet, set her cold steel spear aside, and went back inside the mill.

  This time the figure on the floor was Erik, the real Erik, her Erik. He stretched across the cold earth, pale and naked, his muscles quivering and limbs shaking. Her eyes darted downward and saw that he had indeed been fully restored.

  The only differences she could see were the hairy ears standing up through his heavy, matted blonde hair, but the sight only made her smile. There was something almost cute about them.

  It’s not just a vaccine. It’s a real cure. A cure for everyone!

  Freya stripped off her long leather coat and draped it over her shivering husband, and a moment later his eyes opened, and his lips moved, mouthing, Freya?

  “It’s me.” She helped him sit up and then kissed him gently. “How do you feel?”

  He winced and looked around. His hand snaked out of the coat and he signed, “Like a corpse that someone lit on fire and then left out in the rain.”

  She nodded. “Well, it’s all over now. You’re all right now. Do you remember what happened?”

  “I remember coming here,” he signed. “And putting on the chains.”

  She leaned around him and unlocked the shackles on his ankles and wrists.

  “But after that, it’s all hazy, like a dream.” Erik paused, staring at his hand. “I remember being hungry, and angry, and scared. But that’s all. What happened after I left you? You found a cure with that man, Omar?”

  “It’s a long story. But yes, he did make a cure. He’s giving it to everyone in Rekavik right now to protect them from the plague, and then hopefully it will spread to the reavers themselves and they’ll all turn back to normal, just like you did.”

  Erik nodded and massaged his eyes. When he looked up again, he was squinting at her face, and then above her face. His eyes widened. “Oh no, you’re infected too?”

  Freya reached up and touched the tall fox ears on her head. They felt so soft between her fingers, and the sensation tickled her scalp. “No, I wasn’t infected. This is the cure. The vaccine. It changes us a little bit, but it makes us stronger than before. I can see you just as clearly as you can see me, here in the dark. And listen. We can hear the running current outside, and the wind in the grass, and Arfast’s footsteps, even though he’s far upstream, drinking the cold water.”

  Again Erik started, and he grabbed at his own head and discovered the large furry ears.

  “It’s all right. It’s happening to everyone, and it means we’re safe from the plague.” She took his hands down from his head and kissed his dry lips.

  As she leaned back, he looked at her strangely and signed, “You cut your hair.”

  She grinned and ran her hand up the back of her head, feeling the short locks ripple lightly over each other. “Yeah, that’s a long story. But I’ve gotten a lot of practice telling it, so it’s a pretty good story now. I’ll tell you in a moment. Can you stand up first?”

  They stood and went to the door where they both had to pause for their golden eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight. She took up her spear, and as they walked upstream in search of Arfast, she told him about her journey to Thaverfell, and killing Fenrir, and returning the ring to Skadi. When they found the white elk, she pulled off the saddle blanket for Erik to tie around his waist under her coat.

  He patted Arfast’s neck, and signed, “It sounds like it was quite an adventure.”

  “It was. And I’m glad it’s over. Well, it will be over as soon as we find Wren. I followed her tracks here, but she seems to have moved on. Do you have any memory of her coming to see you in the mill?”

  Erik shook his head. He frowned. “I do wish I had my clothes. And my spear.”

  “Well, you probably tore your clothes off when you changed,” she said quietly. Then she frowned. “But your spear should be wherever you left it. I mean, I can’t imagine anyone came to visit you out here. And if they did find a chained up reaver and a spear close at hand…”

  “They would have killed me,” Erik signed.

  Freya said, “Maybe Wren took it.”

  “But why?”

  “Why else would she need a spear? To kill something.”

  Together they searched the banks of the stream all the way back to the mill, and in the dead grass behind the house Freya found a fresh boot print in the snowy earth. They set out north, following the faint trail as it meandered around boggy pits and rocky crags and over hillocks until they both began to hear something on the reedy wind. They knelt together in the snow to listen as Arfast stood behind them, flicking his tail over his rump.

  “Is it a voice?” Erik signed.

  “It could be an animal,” Freya signed back.

  “It almost sounds like a deer caught in a snare. Hear the way it’s breathing, short and shallow?”

  She nodded and they set out again, quicker than before. The sounds led them up a rocky slope and when they reached the top they looked down on a wide jagged gash in the earth more than fifty paces long though only six or seven paces wide at its center. It looked as though the Allfather himself had plunged his sword into the ground, carving a wound in the stone and soil that plunged far down into the darkness below. Across a narrow part of the ravine, with its steel butt and blade just barely clinging to either side of the rock, was Erik’s steel spear, and in the center of the spear’s shaft they could see ten white-and-red fingers.

  “Wren!” Freya dashed down the slope and across the broken rock floor to the edge of the ravine, and looked down.

  Wren looked up, her face pale and drawn, her feet dangling above the black abyss. “I made
a bet with the Allfather that you would come and save me before I fell,” she said. “Looks like I lost.”

  “You bet against me?” Freya reached down to steady the spearhead at her feet as Erik leapt across the gap and took hold of the butt.

  “Well, you know how clever Woden likes to be. I thought if I tricked him into taking the wrong end of the bet, I would come out ahead when I fell to my death,” she wheezed breathily. “I would go to the next world with the Allfather owing me a favor. It seemed like the wise thing to do at the time.”

  Freya and Erik lifted the spear and the dangling girl with it, and then Erik leapt back across the narrow ravine and Wren collapsed onto solid ground. When she caught her breath, she said, “But now I owe him a favor. Clever bastard.”

  “I can always throw you back in,” Freya offered as she sat down beside the young vala.

  “Maybe another time.” Wren leaned against the huntress and sighed, rubbing her hands. “Thanks for saving me, all the same.” Then she hopped up and hugged Erik. “And thanks for not eating me, you know, when you were a reaver.” She pulled back and glanced down at the rough blanket around the man’s waist and his bare chest behind Freya’s white and gray leather coat. “I think you need some clothes.”

  “This is how all recovering reavers dress,” he signed with a smile.

  Freya interpreted for him, and Wren laughed and hugged him again. Then she handed him his spear. “Sorry. Looks like I scraped it up a little.”

  Erik rolled his eyes and took back his weapon with a mocking glare. He marched over to Freya with an open hand and she gave him the small whetstone from the pouch on her belt, and he went to sit on a rock to try to fix his spear with a very serious pout on his lip.