Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Omar rubbed his eyes as his mouth twisted downward and his voice began to break. “Art. Music. History. Engineering. Politics. Philosophy. I haven’t added one bit to even the smallest corner of human achievement, in four millennia of life. I’ve just played with things I didn’t understand, and turned decent people into murderers and self-loathing shadows of themselves. How many people are dead because of me? How much of the world has been dented, broken, stained, and ruined by me?”

  Wren played with her glass, swirling the last dregs of her wine around and around. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is that I’ve known you for the last year, and I think you’re a decent man with good intentions.”

  Omar said nothing.

  “You discovered sun-steel. You invented immortality. I’d say that’s something.”

  “I invented a new sort of torture,” he whispered. “Seductive, and insidious, and unnatural.”

  Wren sighed.

  What does he want from me? He’s pouting like a child. Does he want me to forgive him, or tell him what to do? Is this just guilt and regret, or something deeper? How can he possibly feel responsible for what Koschei and Yaga did five hundred years after he left them?

  “So what? Do you want me to kill you with that sword of yours? Put you out of your misery? I can, if you want,” she said sharply. “It would be a waste, I think, but if that’s what you want, then it’s the least I can do for you.”

  He looked at her. “You’re young. The world is still new and interesting and simple to you. It’s still so easy for you to judge, isn’t it? Good and bad, right and wrong. You don’t see all the pitfalls and traps waiting for you out there.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. You want to do good? Let’s do some good,” she said, sitting up a little straighter and looking around the room. “We’re in a war-torn city. Things are broken. People are hurt. We can stay here and fix things. You know, help.”

  Omar sat up a little straighter too. “You’re right, we could. And you’re right, that would help. Although, now that everyone here knows who I am, it would be hard to avoid being caught up in the world again. In politics. In the next war. And I know myself. The next problem will come along, and I’ll want to help, but somehow I’ll go a bit too far, lose sight of the dangers, and make everything worse again.”

  Wren leaned back and folded her arms. “Well, you need to make a decision. You need to go somewhere and do something with yourself. Fix a house, build a road, teach someone how to fish. Something.”

  He smiled sadly. “I’m a very old man, Wren, and I’m afraid I’m more than a little bit set in my ways to start over, just like that. I’ll lose interest. I’ll start making the same mistakes all over again, sooner or later.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “Give me your sword. I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

  He blinked up at her, a vague horror in his face. “No. At least, not yet. There are other things I can do. Or we can do together, if you like.”

  “Like what?”

  He smiled again, this time with a hint of his old playfulness. “Well, I was just thinking that we could go undo all the things I’ve done. There’s a world full of immortal people and deadly weapons and unholy trinkets out there. I think the world would be a better place without them.”

  There’s the old Omar. I knew he was still in there.

  Wren smiled. “And I can’t think of anyone better qualified to find them, and unmake them.”

  “So you’ll come with me? Help me?”

  Wren’s smile faded as she looked across the room at Tycho, who was still talking with the soldiers and clerks, reviewing reports and giving orders as the sour-faced Italian loomed over his shoulder and muttered what must have been snide remarks.

  He won’t leave. This is his home. This is where he belongs. He’ll stay here and help his people, and I guess that’s the way it should be. He’s a patriot, and a hero, and I can’t ask him to leave, even if I thought he’d come along. This is where he needs to be. And that’s all right. Maybe one day, I can come back here, maybe even to stay. But not yet. There’s still so much to see, and learn, and do.

  She looked at Omar. “Yes, I will. I’ll come with you. After all, someone needs to keep an eye on you and make sure you stay on the straight and narrow. So, where will we start?”

  The Aegyptian looked thoughtfully up at the stained glass portrait above them again. “I suppose we should start at beginning. Do you still want to see Alexandria?”

  Wren nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Epilogue

  Wren and Omar stayed in Constantia for five weeks after the destruction of the airships and the fleets. Vlad returned from Stamballa with his younger brother in irons and after much politicking flavored with Vlachian sibling rivalry, a new treaty was signed between the Hellans and the Turks. Wren spent the days down in the streets by the waterfront, helping to mind the children while the soldiers and marines slowly rebuilt the shattered homes and shops and warehouses and docks. From time to time, someone would call her out to another neighborhood, or into the countryside, or just down to a graveyard where some poor soul was still trapped in its half-frozen corpse, and she would rattle her silver bracelets and gently set them free.

  She spent her nights in Tycho’s bed.

  By the time she and Omar boarded their ship to Aegyptus, both the bombed district of Constantia and the burned district of Stamballa were well on their way to being fully restored, although the beached warships remained stranded high above the water on both sides of the Strait and no one had any idea what to do with them yet.

  The journey to Alexandria only took two days by Mazigh steamer, and they stepped onto the docks as the setting sun painted the Middle Sea in shining gold and the great lighthouse tower in deepest crimson. Omar led her into the dusty streets bustling with porters and merchants, wagons and carts, horses and zebras, huge lumbering sivatheras, and huffing steam carriages.

  They walked down broad boulevards of pale stone buildings all hundreds of years old with the slender towers and shining domes of ancient palaces and temples in the distance. It was a city of babbling noises, voices and animals and machines all competing for attention in the markets and in the streets and alleyways. It was a city of smells, of cooking meats and rotting vegetables and burning oil and mounds of elephant dung in the middle of the road.

  Wren hurried down the streets behind Omar, one hand clutching her bag and the other hand clutching her scarf to keep it in place over her ears and hair as she stared up and around at everything, trying to see and hear and smell it all at once. She was so overwhelmed by the sheer size and life and strangeness of it all that she ran straight into Omar when he stopped walking. She stepped back and looked up at the building in front of him.

  At its base it was a massive stone fortress, similar to the stone houses and shops around them only much, much larger, but rising above the stone fortress was an elegant wooden temple, each level slightly smaller than the one below, until her eyes reached the tiny wooden shrine at the very top where a single bell hung in the early evening light.

  “What is this place?”

  “The Temple of Osiris,” Omar said. “A nest for priests and scholars, and thieves and assassins.”

  “Tycho told me about the Osirians,” she said. “They’re dangerous.”

  “Very,” he agreed.

  “So why are we here?”

  He smiled. “Didn’t I tell you? I live here.”

  She stared at him. “You live here? You’re one of…? Nine hells, you created this place, didn’t you?”

  “I helped,” he admitted. “But now I’m going to raze it to the ground. Care to join me?”

  She grinned. “Love to.”

  They approached the main doors and the row of green-robed guards protecting the entrance, but a flash of color caught Wren’s eye and she turned and nudged her blue glasses down her nose to get a better look at the two women standing in the road beside her,
staring up at the temple. One of the women wore a yellow dress and carried a brown bag on her shoulder, and she gazed around at the passing foot traffic with stern, almost angry eyes. Her shorter companion wore a red robe, with a strip of red cloth tied over her eyes, and bright white flowers nestled in her long black hair, and unlike the woman in yellow she seemed to be unable to stop smiling. And on the smiling woman’s shoulder hunched a small furry creature with tiny black eyes. The women both had light brown skin and wore thread-bare sandals on their dusty feet, and they were talking in a strange language like nothing Wren had ever heard before.

  She smiled at them and offered a little wave, which the blind woman didn’t notice and the serious woman didn’t acknowledge. Wren followed Omar up to the temple doors.

  What a strange city. I’ve never seen anyone like those two ladies before. This is all so exciting!

  Curse of the Golden Dragon

  Chapter 1

  A light rain fell on the forest, the tiny droplets pattering softly on the leaves far overhead. The drips collected in the grooves of the leaves and the wrinkles in the bark, worming their way down until they grew too large and too heavy, and they fell again, plummeting to the soft earth to land with heavy plops in the muddy puddles. Asha paused beside a tree to look up at the bright slivers and patches of the sky between the branches where the sun was burning brightly beyond the clouds, its light obscured by the thunderheads rumbling overhead.

  Wet forest sounds rose and fell all around her. The applause of the falling water, the shaking of the leaves and slender branches, the distant cracking and keening of trees tearing free from the muddy earth and toppling over into their unsuspecting brothers and sisters.

  It had been raining for three days. Sometimes more, sometimes less. In the middle of the day with the sun high overhead, Asha felt the warmth creeping back into the soil and the air, and the hours of walking along the narrow dirt path were almost pleasant. Her long black hair clung to her neck and face and back, and cold trickles of water snaked down her skin under her clothes, but she didn’t mind. Not during the day.

  The nights were worse. When the sky grew too dark or her feet grew too sore, she would climb a small tree, sit on a sturdy branch, and tie her waist to the trunk. If she was lucky, she would fall asleep quickly and awaken at dawn with only a slight pain in her back and neck. If she wasn’t so fortunate she would sit awake on the branch, listening to the rain and shivering. She sometimes wrapped herself in a heavy wool blanket kept dry by her well-oiled bag, hoping that it would keep her warm long enough to fall asleep before it too was completely soaked.

  But there was more to hear than just the rain. Huge green vines constricted around the trees and swung through the empty air between them. Brilliant white and yellow flowers huddled in small groups, no doubt where the sun had fallen through the canopy before the rains came. Thick bushes squatted everywhere, and huge ferns reached out their soft fronds to touch her legs and arms as she passed. Her left ear heard none of these things, but her right ear caught the strains of thousands of roots and stalks drinking and growing. They sounded like ropes twisting and bansuri flutes playing long, low notes on the wind.

  Within the flora rustled smaller and faster creatures. Ants streamed through the undergrowth, heedless of the water washing away their scent trails. Earthworms wriggled in the muddy puddles in the path. High overhead, a dozen different monkey voices hooted and screamed while the birds huddled in their nests, fluttering their feathers and flapping their wings to shake off the relentless rain. Bright green lizards and yellow frogs skittered over the rocks and up the trees, searching for grubs and flies. At first the rain had driven them all into their homes, but hunger had driven them out again and only a truly brutal torrent would keep them from their hunts now.

  Asha trudged up the slippery track to a low rise and looked down on a creek winding across the forest floor, and a short distance farther down she saw the village beside the water.

  “Finally.”

  The village was smaller than she had expected, maybe three dozen houses all on stilts several feet above the ground. The stilts themselves were logs as thick as Asha’s arm was long, and at least one of the stilts supporting each house was not a log at all but a living tree still rooted to the earth and spreading its leafy branches above the roof. A fleet of battered canoes and rafts drifted on the swollen creek, each one tied to the supports of a different house. Farther back from the water and high above the muddy flood line stood a row of small huts on the grassy earth sheltered by several large stones looming up from the ground on three sides.

  Upstream she found three fallen trees, one old and the other two so young that there was still mud clinging to their tangled roots. Asha crossed over the largest log and then followed the creek down to the village. There were no signs of life on the ground, not even footprints in the mud. But above her she saw flickering candlelight and thin traces of smoke rising from the stilt-houses.

  She cleared her throat. “Hello!”

  After a moment an old man emerged from the house on her left. “Hello to you.”

  “I’m looking for someone named Kishan,” she said. “I was told he lives here.”

  “He does, up there.” The old man pointed to the row of huts on the earthen ledge in the lee of the rocks above the creek. “Second one from the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  She climbed the slope and knocked on the doorframe of the second house. “Hello? Kishan?”

  A woman pulled back the leaf curtain. “Kishan is my son. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Asha. I’m an herbalist from up north. I was passing through a town a few days ago when I heard about a very unusual animal in this village. So I thought I would come see for myself.” She glanced over the woman’s shoulder at the hand-woven rugs, the crooked candles, and the rusted iron pot sitting on the red coals in the corner. “Is this the right village?”

  “You came to see Jagdish!” A little boy leapt onto the woman’s back. He grinned as he kicked his feet in the air. “Come see!”

  “Oh, that.” The mother nodded and pushed her hair behind her ear as the boy slid back down to the floor. “The squirrel. I suppose you can see it. Come inside.”

  “Thanks.” Asha ducked inside the hut and knelt down on the rough rug. With the rain drumming on the roof, the sighing of the forest abruptly vanished and all she could hear was the pat-pat-pat of the heavy drops on the woven leaves above her head.

  The boy Kishan sat in the corner with a ball of fur in his hands. “Here he is. Jagdish! I found him all alone in the forest and started feeding him myself. He’s the biggest, strongest, smartest squirrel in the world!”

  Asha leaned forward to inspect the animal, and frowned. “This isn’t a squirrel, Kishan. It’s a baby mongoose. I’m surprised you’ve never seen them before. They’re pretty common.”

  “Really? What’s a mongoose?” The boy wore a very serious face as he studied his pet.

  Asha leaned back. “It’s what you’re holding. He’ll get bigger soon.”

  “Bigger?” The mother shook her head. “Kishan, throw that thing out this minute.”

  “Actually, a mongoose can be a very useful thing to have around.”

  “I don’t care.” She coughed. “I want it out of my home.”

  The boy pouted but did not argue. He stood and moved toward the door with Jagdish cradled in his arm.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll take him off your hands,” Asha said.

  The boy smiled and thrust the animal at her. “You’ll take good care of him, won’t you?”

  “Sure I will. After all, he’s used to being taken care of, isn’t he?” Asha peered into the mongoose’s eyes and poked at his teeth. “He’s very healthy. You did a good job raising him.”

  Kishan plopped back into his seat in the corner, still smiling. “Do you know a lot about animals?”

  “More than most,” Asha said. “I study them. Plants, too. I spend most of my time searching fo
r things to make new medicines.”

  “Have you ever seen an elephant?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about a tiger?”

  “Lots.”

  The boy chewed his lip. “What about a lotus demon?”

  Before Asha could answer, the boy’s mother said, “Kishan!”

  “Sorry.” The boy dropped his gaze to the floor.

  Asha turned to the mother. “What did he mean? What’s a lotus demon?”

  “It’s just a story.” She coughed again.

  “You know, I think have something for your throat here. A little tea.” Asha dug into her bag and glanced toward the leaf curtain between them and the outside world where the rain was beginning to fall faster and harder. “And I think I have time for a story.”

  The woman looked back at the door as a fresh peal of thunder rolled across the sky. “I suppose you do.”

  * * *

  “Two hundred years ago, they say the village was much larger.” The mother set the water to boil for the tea. “More than a hundred houses stood on the banks of the river, and the river itself flowed deep and clear, full of fish and prawns. The river was so bountiful that the men often carried baskets of their catches across the forest to sell to other villages. In those days, there were deep pools upstream and downstream, and they helped to control the swelling of the river during the rainy season and the houses by the water stood on much taller stilts. And every year as winter ended, a village elder would go to the spring at the head of the river to offer the mountain spirit a goat in thanks for its bounty.

  “But then, one summer, the river shrank to a mere trickle and most of the fish and prawns disappeared. Animals stopped drinking from the river, and sometimes the people would get sick from drinking the water themselves. After several months of this, a few men went up into the forest to see what had happened to the river. Many days later, one of the men returned. His arm was broken and his leg was swollen with poison.

  “He said the men had found the mountain bursting with life. Enormous trees towered overhead. Broad ferns bent so low that they carpeted the ground. And everywhere they looked they saw white lotus blossoms. They followed the stream up the mountain to a cave, lit their torches, and went inside. After that, the man couldn’t say exactly what happened. They lost their torches one by one, and in the darkness something attacked them. He heard their screams, and the crunching of their bones, and the slithering of a creature moving along the floor and walls. The demon bit his leg and hurled him to the ground, breaking his arm, but he managed to escape and stumble back down the mountain and through the forest to the village.