Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  She can’t possibly see anything from here.

  Then Baba Yaga reached out her hand draped in silver bracelets, and her necklace of bird skulls clattered on her breast as a violent wind rushed through the open tower and raced over the palace and the park and down the hill to the sea wall, and then over the waves to the ironclad ships. But only a soft puff of mist wafted over the decks, and as far as Tycho could tell, none of the ant-like sailors even noticed.

  Yaga screamed up to the heavens and then spun about to grab the Hellan major. “My son! My precious son is there, right there, I can see him! Where are your men? Where are your ships? Why have you abandoned him?”

  Tycho gasped as the two clawing hands pressed in against his throat. He grabbed her wrists, trying to pry her off as gently as possible. He wheezed out, “Salvator is telling Lady Nerissa right now. She’ll decide what’s to be done.”

  Yaga shoved him away and he stumbled back into Wren, who caught him and held him steady on his feet as he rubbed his neck.

  “I’m sure they’ll send someone to rescue him,” Wren said. “Now that they know where he is, and so close at that, I’m sure that’s what they’ll do.”

  Tycho grimaced. “Maybe. Those are powerful warships, stronger than anything we have. There’s little hope we could sink them. Even just to storm the deck and carry Koschei away would be a massive operation that would cost us both ships and men.”

  The tall witch whirled back to the railing to glare at the distant ships. “Damned Turks. They dare to invade the north, they dare to take my son, they dare to hurt him within my sight! These Turks dare too much. And for what? They want to frighten you, to give you nightmares resounding with Koschei’s screams. So be it. I will teach them something about nightmares.” She leaned forward and wrapped her bony fingers around the rail, and closed her eyes.

  Tycho glanced up at Wren. “What’s she doing?”

  But the girl with the fox ears only shrugged and shook her head.

  As he looked from the witch to the ships and back again, Tycho felt a sickening vertigo and he staggered against Wren and then against the rail, and then fell to his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed rapidly to keep his breakfast down, and dimly he knew that Wren had fallen beside him, moaning and gasping. With shaking hands, Tycho reached for her but his fingers found only empty space. He tried to open his eyes and the world spun wildly to one side and he toppled forward, and fell.

  The world went on spinning and he fell and fell, and something hard smashed his shoulders and back and legs, again and again, and when it finally stopped he peered out through squinting eyes to see that he had fallen all the way down the stairs to the ground floor of the tower. Still shaking and wobbling, he staggered up to his feet and shuffled away from the stairs toward the door that led out into the courtyard. But he paused and looked back at the entrance to the stairs, a black rectangle of stone that twisted and spun and warbled like water in the air.

  Wren… she’s still in… needs help…

  He took a step back toward the stairs, and a freezing white cloud billowed up from the cellar and poured into the vestibule. As it swirled around him, Tycho shivered and gasped as the cold air penetrated his lungs, and he saw his fingers growing long and thin, twisting away to pale strings in the breeze.

  “No!” He ran drunkenly through the whiteness and burst out onto the steps of the tower where the cloud abruptly ended and he fell again, rolling down the sharp marble stairs to the gravel road at the edge of the yard where he lay gasping, staring up at the sky. He held his hands in front of his face and saw his fingers were as short and solid as ever.

  What the devil just happened?

  He blinked and swallowed and balled his hands into fists until the nausea and dizziness faded. And then, as he sat up, he saw the mist again. It engulfed the Tower of Justice, clinging to the stones like white smoke, roiling and storming and rushing around and around as it spiraled up toward the distant clouds.

  Tycho stood up, staring at the unholy storm raging around the tower against the pale blue sky. “God save us all.”

  Chapter 10

  Wren lay on the cold floor in a ball, her arms wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to imagine a calm grassy field that was quiet and solid and safe. But her body and mind continued to tell her that the world was spinning and tumbling and racing out of control, and her stomach churned with bile and her eyes burned with tears. She tightened her right hand into a fist, feeling the lump of the ring around her finger, and she cried out to the souls of the dead valas hidden within the ring.

  Gudrun! Brynhilda! Kara! Anyone! Help me!

  And after a moment, she heard over the blasting aether storm around her a shaking old woman’s voice. Gudrun’s voice.

  Help yourself, girl. It’s only aether.

  Wren blinked her eyes open for a brief moment and saw the white maelstrom around her, and she snapped her eyes closed again. The aether buffeted her body, her arms and legs and head, even her hair, but her lifeless clothing lay still and heavy on her skin. So she focused on that stillness, on the folds of her shiny new skirts and sleeves and ribbons.

  Still.

  Solid.

  Quiet.

  Slowly, the spinning sensation passed and Wren slowly unclenched the muscles in her belly and back. She could still feel the aether pushing and pulling on her body, but it was only the sensation of wind or water, or maybe soft hands. It was only physical and no longer inside her head, and so with one last deep breath, she opened her eyes.

  The world was still a whirling white storm of aether flying around and around, but through the wispy gaps in the chaos she could glimpse the pale stone walls and the dark vistas of the palace beyond the balcony, and the shadowy figure of the woman at the railing. Wren tried to stand up and the aether shoved her sideways into the wall. But she pushed away from it and staggered through the aether typhoon toward the tall woman.

  “Baba Yaga!”

  The woman did not move.

  “Yaga!”

  The dark figure shifted, though still vague and rippling through the veil of aether. Wren saw her turn and reach out. A pale bony hand shot through the mist and touched her forehead, and Wren felt the icy fingers of aether flood sharply into her nostrils and mouth, and she fell back to the floor, choking and gasping.

  The next thing she knew, Wren was lying on a bed of grass. The shadows stretched out around her into the distance in shapeless, formless darkness, and she peered in every direction, seeing nothing. No walls, no trees, no people. There were no stars overhead and the air hung perfectly still and cold around her. She exhaled and watched her breath curl away from her nose.

  “Hello?”

  There was no echo and no answer. She stood up, turning and turning, looking and looking.

  Where am I? What happened to the tower? Where is the witch? What happened to Tycho?

  She took a few steps in no particular direction and found only more dead grass underfoot and more darkness all around.

  “Hello? Yaga? Tycho?”

  “You.”

  Wren spun to see who had spoken, and saw the crumpled form of a little old woman standing behind her, clutching a moth eaten blanket around her shoulders. She was pale and shriveled and shrunken, with wrinkled translucent skin hanging from her cheekbones and watery yellow eyes under her snowy brows. Only a few thin scraps of gray hair clung to her spotted scalp, and a bright trail of spittle hung from her thin lips.

  Wren’s eyes widened. “Gudrun?”

  “You. Here. Heh.” The crone hobbled forward, peering up at the girl. “One of us now.”

  “One of…?” Wren covered her mouth. “This is the ring? Am I inside the Denveller ring too? Am I dead? I died? Yaga killed me?”

  Gudrun cackled and looked to her left, and Wren looked as well. Seven other bent and broken figures shuffled out of the shadows, some leaning on canes, some dragging crippled feet, and one crawling with her lifeless legs stretched ou
t behind her on the ground.

  The dead valas of Denveller!

  She knew their faces well. In the long year since Gudrun had died and Wren had taken up the ring, she had communed with these women, seen their ghostly faces hovering in the darkness around her, heard their voices whispering and sneering in her mind. Sometimes they offered their wisdom and experience with herbs or animals to heal some injury, and sometimes they helped her to negotiate with the spirit world, seeking out lost souls and learning their secrets. But always with a look of contempt. Always with a smug or cruel laugh.

  “You’re not dead, girl,” said Brynhilda. She was a tall and gaunt figure, a woman of too much bone and too little skin. “You’re not in the ring, yet. We are in you.”

  “In me? In my soul?” Wren tried to let her arms hang calmly at her sides, but her hands leapt together to fidget and squirm in front of her. “Possessed?”

  Gudrun shuffled forward and her milky white eyes slowly darkened and came into focus as she wiped the drool from her lips. “Yes, little bird. Why? Don’t you like it here, with us? You should show some gratitude, after all we’ve done for you. All the answers we’ve handed you over the last year, all the work we’ve done for you. What a miserable excuse for a vala you would be without us.”

  “I-I know, and I’m grateful for everything,” Wren said. “But I shouldn’t be here, or you shouldn’t. This is wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Yet another woman came forward, one looking a bit younger and stronger than the others.

  Kara! Nine hells…

  The most ancient vala of Denveller took Wren’s hands and peered into her eyes. “Little Wren. Oh, little Wren. It might be a little early, yes, but there’s nothing wrong about being here. This is where you’re going, little Wren, this is home, this is where the long road will bring you in the end.”

  Wren glanced around at the endless darkness, the starless sky, the black void of a world resting on a tiny patch of dead grass and dry earth where eight dead women huddled together in the endless night, wheezing and shaking and spitting on each other.

  Wren looked back at Kara, a woman who died of old age at forty-two winters with a dozen gray claws in her raven hair, and then she looked down at their hands still clasped together. Kara’s hands were thin and wrinkled around the knuckles, and Wren’s…

  She blinked and shook her head.

  My hands!

  Wren’s hands were as thin as chicken feet, like brittle twigs shaking in the wind. She could barely bend her fingers, barely lift her arms, they were so stiff and sore. Suddenly she was gasping for breath, wheezing through tiny wet lungs with a huge weight crushing her chest. Wren fell to her knees, her mouth hanging open as she struggled to breathe, and her hair fell forward around her face, thin strings of gray and white. Wren tried to raise her head, but her back was aching and her vision blurred.

  “Help me,” she wheezed. “Someone, help me…”

  She blinked.

  The shadow world of the Denveller ring was gone. The ghosts of the crones were gone. Now the world was blinding white and freezing cold, and she could breathe again. Wren stood up, squinting at the bright snowy hills and the distant snowy mountains. The pain in her back was gone, and her hands were her own again, and her hair was dark red again. She shivered as the wind blasted over the hill, pelting her with ice.

  “Hello?”

  She took a few more uncertain steps and heard the snow crunching underfoot. Huge white clouds sailed across the face of the sun in a pale blue sky.

  “Hello? Kara? Anyone?”

  The snow crunched behind her. Wren turned around and felt her bowels turn to frozen slush.

  A dark titan loomed over her, a giant covered in red fur and obsidian claws, with eyes that burned like molten gold, and in its maw stood a forest of white fangs dripping with venom. The beast roared.

  Wren stumbled back, her shaking hands reaching for her sling, but it was gone, reaching for her knife, but it was gone, summoning up the aether, but it wouldn’t answer.

  “No, no, stay back, stay away!” She turned to run and the giant fox demon roared again. Wren fell to her hands and knees in the freezing snow as a sharp cracking pain raced down her spine and erupted from her back. She twisted around and saw the dark red fur of her own tail writhing and flicking around her thighs.

  “No!”

  She lurched up to her feet and saw the fur on her hands, the black points of her nails as they sharpened into claws, and the dark tip of her nose as her face stretched forward into a canine muzzle.

  Not this, please, Woden, no, not this, it can’t be this, I’m not an animal, I’m human, damn it, I’m human!

  She could feel the points of her fangs slipping out over her lips, and she could feel the fur growing all over her body, scratching and rustling inside her clothes.

  Another sharp crack of pain raced down her spine and she leaned back, her arms outstretched and head tilted back to howl at the bright winter sky.

  But when she flopped forward again, exhausted and sweating, her arms remained suspended at her sides. She pulled at them, but they were bound tightly at the wrists. Wren looked and saw first her pale pink hand and then the rough ropes tied around her arms, lashing her to a wooden beam. She tried to pull free again, but she was tied at the ankles and waist and neck as well.

  I’m not an animal. I’m myself again. What the hell is happening?

  The pale winter sky was swallowed by raging thunderheads flashing with lightning. As the shadows rolled across the white landscape, Wren saw figures moving out of the corners of her eyes. People were trudging through the slush from behind her, circling her, gathering before her. They were strangers, all of them, dressed in rags and smeared with mud and soot. Men and women, and children too. They formed a filthy, silent congregation in front of her, and stared.

  “Untie me, please. Someone, please let me go. What’s happening? What are you all looking at? Who are you? Please, someone untie me.”

  Wren struggled against the ropes, yanking at her hands and wrenching her legs back and forth, but the ropes held firm.

  The crowd parted and an old man stepped forward. A black cloak hid his body and clothes, and a slouching hood covered his head. A knotted and braided gray beard fell across his chest, and from within the folds of his hood, the man peered out at her with a single gray eye.

  “Who…?” Wren’s voice faltered and she slumped against the ropes. “Lord Woden?”

  “Ah, my poor sweet little Wren,” the man whispered. “Look at you now, with your little wings clipped and nowhere left to run. These are holy people, Wren, people of faith. And they will not suffer a witch to live.”

  The man took up a stick from the ground and scraped his fingers over the end of it, and where he stripped away the dead bark the wood sparked and burst into flame. Wren looked down at her feet and saw the pile of kindling stacked up as high as her knees. The one-eyed man thrust his burning brand into the dark thicket on the ground, and instantly every stick and twig was dancing with yellow flames.

  A tremendous wave of heat rolled up Wren’s body and a filthy column of black smoke raced up into her nose and mouth. Wren choked and shook, pulling and twisting against the ropes, and all she wanted to do was beg the silent people to help her, to cut her free, to put out the fire, but she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even whisper. The smoke had reached deep into her chest and was crushing her lungs, and her heart was screaming as her eyes went dim.

  No… Why would they do this? I never hurt them… them… wait… Who are they?

  She tried to open her eyes and saw the blurry faces of the grim people around her beyond the flames.

  They have no faces… They’re not real… This isn’t real!

  The flames vanished, the people vanished, and the entire dark hilltop vanished. Wren crumpled to the ground, coughing and shuddering, feeling the cold smooth floor beneath her.

  I’m alive. I can see.

  Wren sat up, one hand pressed to her throbb
ing head. She squinted around at the balcony at the top of the Tower of Justice, at the view beyond the railing of the Palace of Constantine and the distant waters of the Bosporus. And standing at the railing was the witch, Baba Yaga.

  A torrent of white aether blasted around and around outside of the tower, flowing past the balcony in icy waves of vapor and mist. But despite this maelstrom, the air inside the tower was perfectly still.

  Aether can’t even stir the empty air. The only thing it can touch is a soul.

  Wren coughed and saw the aether spilling out of her mouth. She pounded her chest as she got back up to her feet, and the world gradually felt more solid and heavy around her as the last fading claws of the nightmare slipped away, leaving her clear-minded but exhausted.

  “Yaga!”

  The old witch turned, her long white hair clattering quietly with the tiny bones in her braids. “You woke up? Good for you, little one. I’m impressed. A little.”

  “What did you do to me?”

  Yaga smiled. “You claim to be a student of the other worlds, a mistress of aether. You tell me.”

  Wren swallowed and came a few steps closer to her. “You can move the aether, so you must have a rinegold object. Omar called them tuning forks, resonators, for moving aether.”

  “Rinegold? You have a strange name for sun-steel, girl. And Omar? Is that your teacher?”

  Wren blinked.

  He must have used a different name when he knew her. Makes sense, really. It was five hundred years ago, after all.

  “Yes.” She held up her right hand to display the tiny glimmer of dark gold. “I received this ring from my first mistress, Gudrun. It’s what I use to move aether.”

  Yaga smiled and held up both of her arms. Four silver bracelets clattered on each of her arms, and in a narrow channel around the center of each one ran a slender golden wire. “These are what I use.”

  Wren stared.

  Eight of them!

  She said, “And you used the aether to put me in that hell? To make me live out my own nightmares? Why?”