Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Woden, when I return home to Ysland, I promise to build you a temple like this one. Only less gloomy and ruined, of course, one worthy of the Allfather. But don’t worry, I won’t make it too pretty. I know how you feel about that.

  Boots crunched softly on the icy gravel of the road outside. Wren felt her tall fox ears twitching atop her head under the black scarf she wore over her wild red hair. They were always doing that, her ears, always shifting and twitching on their own as though hungry for sounds. They tickled her scalp when they moved, and sent shivers down her spine. She held up a cautioning finger and Omar frowned as he rested his hand on the grip of his seireiken.

  “How many?” he whispered.

  She held up two fingers, and then unwound the leather sling from her wrist and slipped a small stone into it. They both faded back into the shadows to one side of the church doors and stood together in the darkness, waiting, as the pale aether mist curled around their ankles. Wren glanced at her mentor.

  You know, they’re probably just travelers like us. All this hiding is stupid. He’s too cautious. What is he so afraid of?

  The sounds of footsteps approached the doors, and stopped.

  “Hello?” a woman called. “Is anyone in there?”

  Wren frowned. The voice was almost familiar, which made no sense. Everyone she had ever known was far away, back home in Ysland, hundreds of leagues to the north across the frozen sea.

  Who is that?

  She started toward the door, but Omar touched her shoulder and shook his head, and they waited.

  “Hello?” the woman called again. “I saw you go into the church. You’re the first person I’ve seen in a long time. Do you have any food?”

  Wren glanced up at Omar again, who shook his head again.

  Well, I’m not going to hide in the cold and the dark from some poor, starving woman. It won’t cost us anything to tell her that we don’t have any food to share.

  She shrugged off Omar’s hand and moved toward the door, saying, “Hello? My name is Wren. What’s yours? I’m sorry, but I don’t have any food with me.” She stepped out into the doorway.

  In the street stood a tall young woman in a filthy black dress holding a bow and a young man with long black hair and only one arm. In his hand, an Yslander broadsword shone silver in the starlight. Both of their heads were covered by hoods that mottled their faces with shadows, but their eyes flashed gold when they turned their heads to the light of the moon.

  Nine hells, it’s Thora and Leif!

  How did they get here? How did they find us?

  Wren felt her stomach contract into a cold knot, and she swallowed. “Oh, it’s you.”

  The one-armed man smiled, and lunged at her.

  Wren dashed back, the stone falling from her sling as she ran. Omar ran toward her, but he was too far away. Leif darted through the church doors with his blade raised, and Wren tumbled over the first bench just as the sword crashed down on the frozen wood behind her. Wren scrambled back and stretched out both of her arms in front of her, and then jerked her hands upwards. The thick aether mist on the floor instantly flooded upward in front of her, forming a swirling white wall between her and Leif. The one-armed warrior dashed toward her again, and crashed to a halt against the aether barrier. He stumbled back, wincing, trying to rub his nose with his sword-hand.

  “Leif Blackmane. Leif, Leif, Leif.” Omar drew his seireiken slowly. The sun-steel blade shone with an unearthly white glow, bathing the entire church in piercing daylight, banishing the shadows. The air around the short sword rippled and boiled, and blue-white electric arcs snapped and crackled along the single edge of the blade. Omar held the deadly weapon loosely at his side. “You’re looking well. Exile must agree with you.”

  Leif glanced from the bright sword to the wall of aether, glaring with bared teeth and dark golden eyes. “We’ve done well enough.”

  “Have you been following us this whole time? Since Ysland?”

  “We heard a rumor about a girl with fox ears passing through Vienna. And we just had to know who it was.” He tilted his face back to let his hood fall to his shoulders, revealing the vulpine ears on his head.

  “Oh. Well, I’m still flattered, either way.” Omar smiled. “So, did you want me to even you out? Take off the other arm to match?”

  The tall girl in the street raised her bow and called out, “Omar Bakhoum!”

  Omar glanced over his shoulder at Thora just as the arrow pierced his back and sent him sprawling to the floor.

  Wren grimaced at the sight of her mentor falling to the ground, but she kept her hands up, keeping the wall of aether as solid as she could, even though it kept her trapped inside the church with Omar alone near the doorway. She yelled at the Yslanders, “What do you want from us?”

  Thora stepped inside and said, “I want him to suffer for what he did to us. For what he did to Magnus, and to Ivar, and to everyone else in Ysland!”

  Leif glanced at Wren once before focusing on the Aegyptian wheezing and bleeding on the ground. The snow and ice on the floor was rapidly steaming away, and the stones themselves were beginning to glow red beneath the burning blade of the seireiken. Wren could see Omar’s fingers twitching, and his lips moving, and his eyes darting as his blood trickled out across the floor. The arrow in his back shuddered with a steady rhythm.

  It’s in his heart. He can’t fight. He can’t even get up.

  Wren shouted, “Get away from him!”

  The young man and woman ignored her, and Leif knelt down near the seireiken, its white light revealing his pale, thin features.

  “I said get away!” Wren pushed outward, shoving her wall of aether forward. The swirling mist crashed toward the church doors in an avalanche of cold vapor, knocking Thora and Leif straight out into the street. The blast rolled Omar over twice, snapping off the arrow between his shoulder blades before the mist thinned and fell back to the ground.

  Wren dashed forward and dropped to her knees at his side. He stared up at her, his breath coming in tiny gasps, his chest pounding, and his frightened eyes darting wildly. She saw the barbed head of the arrow poking up through his shirt, and she took his hand. “This is going to hurt.”

  Omar nodded with his eyes.

  She reached down, grasped the arrow shaft, and yanked it straight up through his flesh and breastbone. She had to fight for every inch as his body seemed to cling to the deadly missile, dragging at it as though his heart and muscles wanted to hold it inside. But it came free, dripping with dark blood, and she tossed it aside, and then held open the stained silk shirt to watch the man’s warm brown skin gently fold itself closed, leaving no mark at all. Omar’s breathing slowed, becoming dry and easy again, and his heart slowed, no longer pounding and shaking his body. The man sat up, massaging his chest with one hand. “Good God, that hurt. It’s been years since I’ve been arrowed.”

  “Arrowed?” Wren grimaced as she helped him to his feet. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

  “Oh, please. When you’re forty-five hundred years old, you can make up all the words you want.” He picked up his bright sword from the steaming stone floor and peered out the door at the street. “I must say, your aether-craft is coming along quite nicely. You must have thrown them back two dozen paces.”

  Wren resettled her black scarf over her hair and ears. “Three dozen, at least. I’ve been practicing every day.”

  “I can see that,” he said as he sheathed his blazing sword, returning the church to the shadows and the starlight. “You may be one of the best aether-wrights I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen two!”

  She smiled and hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Aether-wright? Is that what I am now?”

  “I’m very old. I make up words. Didn’t we just talk about this?”

  Wren was about to speak, but then she frowned as she listened to a fading echo. “They’re running away.”

  “Really? How thoughtful of them.”

  Wren and Omar stepped out into the road wher
e the bright moonlight fell gently on the glistening ice and snow between the dark, empty houses. Row upon row of snow-capped roofs covered the hills as the city spread out below them, holding back the black forests on the higher slopes. A dozen church steeples stood tall and thin in the night air above the cottages like toy soldiers keeping watch over the empty streets, and the wind carried the ceaseless wooden creaking and keening of the houses as they shook before the wintry blasts.

  Wren looked down at the fresh boot prints in the road leading south, deeper into Targoviste. And beside them, she saw several other fresh footprints.

  “Bare footprints?” Omar pointed at the ground. “Now who do you suppose was out here without any shoes on?”

  Wren felt her ears twitching as they tried to follow the distant sounds. “They’re over that way,” she said, pointing southeast.

  Omar touched his chest again. “I must say, I’m not entirely pleased to see those two again. What with the treachery and the murder, I just get the feeling that they’re not good people, not the sort I would want my apprentice to associate with, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s just typical,” Wren said with a pout. “You’re even more miserable and controlling than Woden.”

  He looked at her with a curious smile. “You still talk to your god?”

  “From time to time. I don’t want to trouble him too much, what with me being so far from Ysland. It must be a terrible burden on him to have to listen to my prayers from so far away. After all, he doesn’t have fox ears.”

  “Well, that is very considerate of you.” He tousled her hair, knocking her scarf askew. “But back to the matter at hand. Bare feet and missing murderers. I fear we must do the right thing, and stop them. The murderers, not the feet.”

  Wren sighed. “All right. But then you have to cook supper.”

  “Fair enough. I am the better cook.”

  They set out at a brisk trot, following the footprints through the streets, winding their way past broken down wagons in the middle of the road and other strange bits of furniture and cutlery and foodstuffs, all frozen and rotting in the street, covered in bright clear ice or blue-white snow. Wren glimpsed a broken chair, a shattered lantern, a handful of tin spoons, and a burlap sack of blackened beets as she ran.

  Sounds of violence echoed from the next street. Grunting, yelling, the clangor of a sword, the twang of a bow.

  Omar sprinted around the corner, his blazing seireiken hissing with heat and snapping with flecks of lightning as he drew it out. Wren dashed up beside him, her sling laden with a cold stone.

  “Nine hells,” she whispered.

  Leif and Thora stood back to back in the middle of the street, their weapons raised. All around them in a wide circle lay bodies, broken and dismembered bodies and limbs and heads lying in the snowy road. There were no weapons on the ground, just as there were no shoes on the feet of the corpses. The dead townspeople lay in tattered dresses and suits, unshod and unarmed, their bare skin shining deathly pale in the moonlight. Outside the ring of bodies stood three more half-naked people without so much as a stick to defend themselves with.

  Thora loosed an arrow straight into the breast of an old woman.

  And a second into her throat.

  And a third into her eye.

  The old woman stumbled forward, but did not fall. Behind Thora, two men lunged at Leif with empty, groping hands, leaping clumsily over the bodies of the fallen. The one-armed warrior hacked them down, chopping off arms and heads as fast as he could, and the limbs thumped down into the snow like hail stones.

  “Good God!” Omar ran forward, his sword raised. “Stop! You sadistic cretin, stop!”

  The two townsmen collapsed in pieces at Leif’s feet, and he dashed around Thora to cut down the old woman, who was bristling with arrows from her eyes to her knees. With her head and arms removed, she fell to the ground and lay still.

  Wren spun her sling once and sent her stone flying over Omar’s shoulder to smash the bow out of Thora’s hands. Omar jumped over the mound of bodies and brought his burning seireiken down on Leif, but the young man leapt back, yelling, “They’re dead! They’re all dead, you old fool!”

  “Of course they’re dead, you little prick, you killed them!” Omar shouted, chasing after him.

  Leif ran backwards around the ring of bodies. “They were already dead. Look!”

  Omar jogged to a halt, his sword still raised, but he did look down at the faces and hands near his feet. “Dear God…”

  Wren came forward as she set another stone in her sling. For a moment she locked eyes with Thora, but the taller girl looked away first and yanked her dark hood up to cover her furry ears. As she drew closer, Wren saw something move near the edge of the bodies, near the old woman that Thora had filled with arrows and that Leif had cut down.

  The aether mist around the dead woman was shifting, gliding, and flowing. And then a dim figure rose up from the body, the figure of an old woman identical to the one lying dismembered in the road. The ghost looked around herself, blinked, then turned to leave and simply faded away into the darkness. On the other side of the ring of bodies, Wren saw the shades of two men rise up and vanish.

  “Omar? What’s going on?” she asked.

  Her mentor waved his sword at the others. “Get back.”

  Leif and Thora withdrew to the far side of the bodies.

  Omar knelt down and picked up a severed hand. “Look at this.”

  Wren winced and stayed where she was. “Thanks. I’ve seen dead bodies before.”

  “Yes, and now you’re going to look at this one.” He tossed the hand to her.

  Frowning, she held the hand up daintily by one finger to inspect it. The skin was pale blue and veined in violet and black. The nails were black and chipped. The knuckles were black and scraped raw. She was about to drop it when it caught the light from Omar’s sword and the dead skin glistened with a strange blue glow. “What am I looking at?”

  “Aether,” Omar said, standing up. “Frozen aether in the skin, and in the blood.”

  “Aether can’t freeze in a person’s body,” she said, dropping the severed hand.

  “No, but it can freeze in the ice, or the icy ground. Permafrost.” Omar walked around the dead bodies, sweeping his bright sword over them. “It’s everywhere. Aether crystals. Frozen inside them.”

  “But how? People can’t get that cold.” Wren wiped her hand on her black skirt.

  “They can if they’re dead and buried.” Omar looked up at the scowling pair on the far side of the road. “Where did they come from?”

  “Everywhere, nowhere. I don’t know,” Leif said.

  Almost as one, Wren and Thora and Leif all turned to look down the lane where they saw two more bluish people walking toward them. The strangers moved quickly, thumping forward at a jog, but they were unsteady on their feet, weaving drunkenly, colliding with each other every few steps.

  The three fox-eared Yslanders turned at the sound of other bare feet on the snowy roads. Left, then right. North, then east.

  “More?” Omar asked.

  Wren nodded. “A lot more.”

  Chapter 2

  Wren clutched her laden sling as she ran. When a drooping blue face loomed out of the shadows, she hurled a stone at it, and ran on without looking to see what she had struck. She heard Leif and Thora panting along behind her, and every now and then she heard Leif hack one of the walking corpses to pieces along the way, but she never turned to look back.

  Woden, whatever you’re playing at, it isn’t funny!

  Omar led the way, veering around corners and down narrow alleys and across wide open market squares painted white and blue by the soft moonlight. The old Vlachian city moaned quietly with the wind pressing on the frozen walls and shaking the loose shutters, and breaking off chunks of snow from the eaves. But the homes and the streets were all empty.

  Except for the dead.

  Glistening blue bodies stumbled out of every doorway, their feet movin
g quickly but unevenly, their hands grasping clumsily, their frozen black eyes staring blindly at nothing and everything, their shriveled black tongues choking and gasping.

  Omar’s blazing seireiken lit the way, transforming the four running souls into a pocket of daylight racing through the streets of Targoviste. Wren tried not to look straight at the sun-steel sword, but every few moments it would swing up into her line of sight and leave a blinding after-image seared into her vision. As they ran, Wren noticed that the houses were taller. Two stories, then three stories. Glass-paned windows reflected the starlight, and wrought iron balconies hung overhead, dripping with long icicles.

  “We’re nearly there,” Omar yelled.

  “Where?” Leif yelled back.

  “The castle!”

  Up ahead, Wren saw the imposing walls of the castle rising above the street. It was nothing like the black stone castle of Rekavik back in Ysland. This was a building of pale bricks carefully shaped and mortared together into a proud and beautiful palace with arching windows and perfectly matched turrets capped in tiled roofs.

  On one side she saw a tower, and she noted how different it was from the filthy hovel she had lived in for seventeen years in Denveller. This tower was a perfect cylinder crowned in sharp crenellations, with arched glass windows on every floor. Hers had been a leaning pile of stones under a rotting thatch roof, a single doorway she had filled with stones from the inside, and a single window she had covered with iron bars at night.

  “Won’t we just be trapped in there?” Wren asked.

  “Better than being trapped out here,” Omar answered.

  They ran through the open gates into a paved courtyard, and then up the wide steps and through the gaping doorway of the first building they saw.

  “There aren’t any doors!” Thora pointed at the entrance, where the rusty hinges stood empty.

  “Here they come.” Leif strode back out to the steps. A dozen of the blue-skinned corpses rushed into the courtyard, moaning and gurgling and crashing into each other, with dozens more hurrying up the road behind them.