Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “I’ve met people like you before,” Asha said. “In Persia.”

  “You mean Eran,” he corrected her.

  “I know what I mean.” Asha glanced at Priya.

  “Tell me everything, please,” he said. “Who did you meet? What happened to them?”

  The nun smiled and reached up to pet the sleeping mongoose on her shoulder. “It would seem we have much to talk about. But first, should our duty not be to see to those who were in the street when the temple fell?”

  Asha frowned and looked back down the alleyway. Out in the dusty street she could see the soldiers now, picking their way over the debris and helping a few coughing, limping people away from the ruin. “Normally I would agree with you, but help has come for the injured already. And I don’t want those soldiers to see this girl and her ears. They may not be as understanding as we are.”

  “Ah.” Priya nodded sadly. “Then perhaps we might find a quiet place to continue our conversation, somewhere away from the street. Perhaps a place that serves tea?”

  Omar smiled, but there was a strange exhaustion and sorrow in his eyes.

  “What about the temple?” Wren asked. “What about the Osirians?”

  Everyone looked at her, and then looked back down the alley at the mountain of broken stone and wood lying in the street in the gathering shadows.

  “Shouldn’t we be worried about the Sons of Osiris?” the fox-eared girl asked.

  “I rather think not,” Omar said. “I was only being poetic when I suggested that we raze the place to the ground. But it would appear that some sort of earthquake took my meaning more literally. I hardly see any need to go back there now. Do you?”

  “But…” Wren frowned. “I guess not. You really think it was an earthquake? Because I—”

  “I think I saw a place earlier where we can talk,” Asha said a bit loudly. “It isn’t far. Perhaps we should go there. If that’s all right with you.”

  “Certainly, kind lady.” Omar helped Wren to her feet and they followed Asha and Priya to the back end of the alley and out into the quiet evening traffic. Most of the large animals and carts were gone now and the only people in the street were dusty laborers heading home and wealthy merchants heading to supper, with a few armed soldiers and book-laden scholars here and there among them. Many of them stood in the road, talking excitedly and pointing in the direction of the fallen temple, and several thin streams of people were jogging toward the corners and the alleys to investigate the disaster.

  Several minutes later, the foursome sat down together around a small round table in the corner of a small café that Omar described as “a rather Mazigh” sort of establishment. A steaming teapot was placed on the table with four small cups, and they sat for several moments, sipping their tea and brushing the dust from their clothes and hair.

  Asha stared into her cup at the dark liquid swirls.

  I didn’t plan. I didn’t even think. I just walked up to the temple and pulled it down. I pulled it down on this girl, Wren, the girl I was trying to save.

  I was lucky no one else in the street was hurt. But how many people inside the temple died? How many are trapped and dying still? And what if there were other slaves inside?

  I didn’t think. The dragon came free and did what it always does, what it always wants. Death and devastation. And I let it happen.

  Ash set down her cup and looked at the two strangers. “You asked about the immortals we met. In Babylonia, there was a man named Gideon.”

  Omar looked up. “Gideon! Really? Everyone’s seeing Gideon these days. I haven’t seen that boy in ages. How is he?”

  “He’s fine. Better than fine, he was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met,” she said. “We helped him in the mountains, and he helped us with a small problem of our own. We were only together a few hours.”

  “Oh.” Omar nodded. “Well, it’s good to know he’s still doing well. I worry about him.”

  “A few weeks later, we met an immortal woman named Nadira when we were passing through Damascus,” Asha continued.

  Omar’s face was a mad blend of astonishment and amusement. “Nadira, too?”

  “We spent the night together in the hills, dealing with a… local problem,” Asha said. “She seemed like a very sad person. I wanted to help her, but she left in the morning. I think she went north to some war.”

  “She did,” Omar said. “I saw her in Constantia just over a month ago.”

  “So she’s all right?”

  Omar shrugged. “The last time I saw her, she had decided to give up being a soldier and to try doing something else with her life. But then she wandered off and I haven’t seen her since, and I don’t know if I ever will again.”

  “I see.” Asha glanced at Wren. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thanks.” The girl in black smiled nervously as she sipped her tea.

  Out in the street the traffic was growing a bit heavier again, and it was all flowing back toward the temple. The words Osiris and Demon were on every tongue, and half the heads in the café were glancing nervously out at the road, and at the red-clad soldiers who strode by every few moments on their way to the temple

  “You said something back in the alley,” Asha said. “About the temple. About razing it to the ground. But I saw you walking up to the doors. Tell me, what were you doing there? Do you have any idea what those Osirian people do?”

  The girl in black glanced at the Aegyptian man.

  Priya laid her hand on Asha’s in one of her unnerving displays of spatial awareness. “I think what Asha means to say is that we have some concerns about the Sons of Osiris, and we’re curious about why you were going to see them.”

  Omar cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Wren began to speak. “We came to Alexandria to find and destroy certain dangerous objects. Things made from a metal called sun-steel. This metal has the ability to—”

  “Trap and enslave human souls,” Asha said. “Yes, I know about it. It’s what those little golden heart pendants of yours are made of, and the seireiken swords.”

  The girl held up her gloved hands, displaying the eight silver bracelets on her wrists. A shallow groove ran around the center of each bracelet, and in each groove was a dark golden wire. Wren said, “In the north, we call the metal rinegold, and it’s used to preserve the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors. The wise-women, the valas, give their souls to the rinegold willingly.”

  Asha frowned. “I suppose that’s the least offensive use for it that I’ve seen yet. But Gideon had the right idea. He has a sun-steel sword himself, but he uses it to destroy other such weapons, and when he has destroyed them all, he has vowed to destroy his own as well.”

  “Good for him,” Omar said quietly with a faraway look in his eye.

  “So it’s true?” Asha looked at him suspiciously. “You’re both sun-steel hunters like Gideon? How long have you been doing this?”

  “Actually, we’ve only just started,” Wren said. “We decided to do this after the war in Constantia ended.”

  “That’s very noble of you,” Priya said.

  Wren blushed and smiled. “I guess. I just… I just don’t understand what happened back there at the temple. We have earthquakes in Ysland, my country, but they’re nothing like that. The ground didn’t even shake. It was like the temple just broke apart and collapsed on us.”

  Asha sipped her tea and kept her eyes down. Had the topic of conversation been anything else, she would have looked her accuser in the eye and denied nothing, but the dragon was something else. Something she still could not fully control.

  I should be stronger by now. I need to be, for Priya’s sake.

  For everyone’s sake.

  “No, I doubt it was an earthquake. I saw something back there just before it happened,” Omar said. “I saw a figure, like a person in armor, climbing the side of the temple. Someone did this intentionally. Whoever it was, we owe this person a debt for taking care of the temple for us.” H
e gave Asha a long, steady look.

  Asha sat up straight and sighed. “Yes, I did it.”

  Wren looked at her sharply in surprise. Omar sipped his tea calmly and let his eyes wander in the direction of their young waitress.

  “How?” Wren asked. “How could you possibly destroy something so large all by yourself?”

  Asha paused, and then said, “As I told you, when I was a little girl, something bit me. It was an infant dragon.”

  “And it gave you that lovely ear?” Omar said, still looking at the waitress.

  “Yes. And a short time ago near Damascus, I encountered that same dragon again, fully grown and strong enough to slaughter an army in just a few moments. Nadira and I killed the dragon, but its soul entered my body,” Asha said quietly. She glanced around the café, but no one was watching them. No one else was listening. No one else cared. “It can be difficult to control sometimes, but for the most part I command the dragon’s soul. I can unleash it when I want, to use its power, its strength. I’ve been using this soul to hunt down the Sons of Osiris and to destroy their seireikens.”

  Omar nodded thoughtfully. “And to destroy their ancient temples.”

  “It is a very powerful dragon, a very powerful soul,” Asha said. “Priya taught me to control it. If she hadn’t been there with me at Damascus, I would have been utterly lost. The dragon would have consumed me if not for her.”

  Again the blind nun found her hand, and squeezed it. “It wasn’t so difficult.”

  “Remarkable,” Omar said. “My congratulations to you both. You may be the first person to ever control such a soul by yourself.”

  Asha looked down into her tea. “We’ve seen the Sons of Osiris throughout the Empire of Eran. They are slavers and murderers. So when I learned to control the dragon, I came here to do what no one else could do. Destroy their temple. Destroy their weapons. Destroy them.”

  Omar nodded. “You tore down that huge building with your bare hands in just a few minutes. I’ve never heard of anything like it, and I’ve been around for a very long time.” He smiled.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?” Priya asked. “Nadira and Gideon said they were two thousand years old.”

  “They are. I’m closer to forty-five hundred, myself.”

  Asha froze, then blinked. “Over four thousand years old?”

  “Yes.” Omar emptied his cup and refilled it from the steaming teapot.

  “So that’s when Bashir made you immortal?” Priya asked.

  Omar chuckled. “No, my dear. I made myself immortal, right here in Alexandria, as a matter of fact. I didn’t start calling myself Bashir until much later.”

  “You’re Bashir!”

  “Yes.” He shrugged. “Among others, of course.”

  Asha sat very still, contemplating her tea, wondering what to say to a man who was over four thousand years old. Some part of her refused to believe his claim, refused to believe that this very ordinary man with his fancy shirt and coat and belt… Asha frowned at his belt and the scabbard on it. “Is that a… You carry one of their swords? Like Gideon?”

  “Yes, I do.” Omar looked up into her eyes. “But my seireiken, for the most part, contains the souls of scholars and artists who gave themselves to me willingly so that their knowledge and skills might be preserved. And I’m no swordsman. I don’t go around killing people, for souls or for anything else. I swear to you.”

  “It’s true,” Wren said quickly. “I’ve held his seireiken, I’ve seen the souls in it, and I’ve talked to them. Doctors and singers and, well, good people who wanted to be there. They’re mostly really old, too, from a long time ago.”

  Asha smiled at the girl’s earnestness. “I believe you.”

  The noise in the café had been growing by small measures throughout their conversation, and from time to time Asha heard someone exclaim something about the temple, but every time she glanced around, she only saw excited city people chatting over their drinks. Now, as she looked over her shoulder, she heard a man shouting out in the street. He was shouting in Eranian, but his Aegyptian accent was strong and she had to focus to understand what he was saying.

  Temple.

  Help.

  Monster.

  Asha frowned and looked across the table at Omar, and saw him also frowning out at the street. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’m not certain,” he said. “Either the local constabulary is looking for the demon responsible for destroying the Temple of Osiris, or there is a rampaging creature with the head of an animal dancing on the rubble at this very moment. It’s hard to tell, really.”

  Asha blinked. “Are you serious? Is that really possible?”

  Priya’s smile had faded and Wren played nervously with her silver bracelets.

  Omar stood up. “Let’s go find out.”

  Asha stood up beside him and slipped her medicine bag over her shoulder. As they all turned to leave the café, they heard a bestial roar echo across the city.

  Chapter 3

  Asha led the others out into the street where the milling pedestrians and the seated diners were quickly falling silent and every head was turning to look down the street toward the ruined temple. They listened together to the screams and roars echoing down the stone corridors of the city, broken here and there by the crunching or tumbling of heavy stones. A murmur ran through the crowd and Asha saw the nervous excitement in the faces around her, but she also saw the frightened people slipping out of the café and hurrying down the avenue away from the temple.

  “Priya, I think you should wait here this time,” Asha said.

  “And you, Wren.” Omar nodded. “Whatever is down there, it doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  Wren held up her arms and jangled the silver bracelets on her wrists. “But I can help!”

  “I know you can help. You can also die, whereas I cannot. So stay with the nun, please.” Omar rested his hand on the grip of his seireiken and stepped out into the street.

  Asha strode out in front of him and started back toward the remains of the Temple of Osiris. She gently rolled her fingers into fists, and then let them fall slack again, working the blood into her extremities, trying to nudge the dragon within her just a bit, just enough to warm her muscles and make her strong enough and fast enough to get away if they should find trouble ahead.

  No, I know better. Of course there is trouble ahead.

  Asha walked up to the corner of the building across the street from the ruins, and peeked out. The street was mostly deserted. Everything with working wheels had been rolled away, and every animal that could walk or limp had been led away. All of the injured had been carried away, and the gawkers who had come were now gone, hurrying down dark alleys and along the shadowed edges of the boulevard, all rushing away from the bestial cries coming from the temple. The only life remaining now was a company of men in red shirts and steel armor, and they were slowly backing away from the rubble.

  On the far side of the street the shattered remains of the temple rose from a thin scattering of pebbles and splinters in the middle of the road up to the massive pile of debris sitting on the broken foundations of the ancient fortress. And standing upon that pile were two figures.

  The woman caught Asha’s eye first. She was tall and slender, and wore a simple white dress that left her arms bare, but over that she wore a queen’s ransom in golden necklaces hanging from her neck and thin chains around her waist. Her skin and hair were nearly identical to Asha’s in every way, and all of these details hovered in the back of Asha’s mind as she stared at the most incredible aspect of the Aegyptian woman.

  She had wings.

  They were magnificent white wings that hung from the woman’s arms like a cape of bright feathers, but they drooped far beyond the woman’s feathered hands and when she lowered her arms the feathers dragged along the dusty ground. The woman was stomping up and down the slopes of broken sandstone and shattered oak, and every time she swept one of her feathered
arms, a blast of dust and splinters tore away into the air, and she would peer down into the gaps between the tumbled blocks and beams.

  Asha reached back and pulled Omar forward to look around the corner beside her, and she asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

  “A woman with strange animal features?” Omar smiled at her. “Once or twice.”

  “I mean the wings,” Asha said. “Have you ever seen that before? Or her before?”

  “I don’t recognize her,” he said. “Though I can’t see her terribly well. She is dressed in the old Aegyptian fashion, I think. But I’ve never seen a person with wings at all.”

  Asha looked out again and saw the winged woman leap into the air several times and use her outstretched arms to glide across the rocky heap to another spot, where she resumed sweeping the dust and debris aside with her long, shining wings.

  Then Asha turned her attention to the second figure, the one who was screaming and roaring. On the far side of the temple where she could barely see him at all stood a man wearing a black robe. His back was turned to her and all she could glimpse of him were the golden bracers on his forearms and the black sheen of his hair. The man was kicking and clawing at the fallen stones, lifting and hurling huge beams and mortared bricks aside as though they were nothing more than rotten apples, causing the soldiers to run left and right to avoid being crushed by the jagged missiles. And after several long moments of this violent tantrum, the robed man turned and moved in Asha’s direction.

  She inhaled sharply.

  For a moment, a very brief moment, she thought the man wore a black mask carved with the features of a deformed sort of dog, like the ceremonial masks she had seen as a child in Ming. But then she saw the way the light played over him, and the way the long muzzle moved, and the way the tall black ears twitched, and she knew.

  “He has the head of a dog!” she hissed at Omar.

  The man stuck out his head again to squint at the robed figure. “I think you’re right, though it’s no dog that I recognize. But the rest of him looks human enough.”