Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  She was gorgeous, not in the way that a fresh young girl is pretty but in the way that a woman in her prime is beautiful, both soft and strong, powerful yet delicate, caring and cruel, dominating yet inviting, a thousand contradictions and more that he didn’t have the words to express. And two thousand years ago, he hadn’t bothered with many words.

  “Oh, you know how much I like to be the center of attention,” Omar said as he pulled on his chains.

  Back then, he had spent only a single stolen hour with her in a shadowed alcove of the palace. He hadn’t dared to linger, or to return, because the prince of Damascus was not nearly as apathetic or as gullible as a man of his wealth ought to have been. But there had been other meetings, walks in the garden and in the gallery, evenings at the supper table, long rides through the orchards with the prince and his other companions. They were all meetings in which there was more talking than looking, and no touching at all, and he had grown more and more impressed with her as she surprised him over and over again with her knowledge of the world, of politics and science, of art and history, and of the human mind and spirit. Looking back, he often liked to think that she had seduced him a second time, although he doubted whether that was really true. He had wanted to be seduced, and that was cheating.

  “Well, you have my undivided attention now,” Lilith said. She moved around the table, her clothing and jewels a delicate cascade of blue waves and silver flashes, like a school of sharks circling a corpse. “I’m still waiting to hear about Ysland and your pretty little friend with the red hair. I’m told she somehow managed to push all of my lovelies back down into the tunnels, all by herself, with a wave of her hands.” Lilith nodded to the far side of the room where there stood a young woman in a torn brown dress, and from her shoulders hung two sickly white tentacles that gleamed wetly in the torchlight.

  “It’s true,” the woman slurred through her labored breathing. She teetered slightly on her feet as though drunk or on the edge of exhaustion. She held her long serpentine arms away from her body, and whenever one of her tentacles gently brushed her leg, she shivered and looked ill. “She was far away, but she pushed us with the wind.”

  Omar shrugged. “It sounds to me that your lovelies, as you call them, have a bit of a balance problem, if they can be knocked down by the wind. Of course, if this one here is anything to judge by, I’d say they have more than a few problems. Maybe one day you’ll have your technique perfected, but not yet. Not nearly. I wish you’d put them back the way you found them, and let the poor things go.”

  “What are you saying?” Lilith pouted and said in a mockingly childish tone, “There’s nothing wrong with my darlings. They’re each exactly what I created them to be. You didn’t think I would be foolish enough to create some sort of master race of perfect children, did you? Poor old Bashir! You should know better. They’re not meant to be perfect people. Only perfect servants.”

  “Oh, I see.” Omar gave up pulling on the chains and trying to lie comfortably on the shackles. “So that’s what you’ve been doing for the past two thousand years? Designing the perfect handmaiden, with scales and feathers?”

  Lilith’s expression hardened from petulant child to cruel mistress. “For the past two thousand years, I have been doing precisely what you asked me to do. Studying the art of soul-breaking. That was the agreement, the price of my immortality. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Oh no, I haven’t forgotten,” Omar said. “I just wish you had. Nadira and Gideon walked away, you know. You should have as well. There’s nothing to find at the end of these paths. Sun-steel, aether, and soul-breaking. It doesn’t lead to revelations or salvation. Just pain and suffering, and regrets. So many regrets.”

  “No regrets,” Lilith said. “Just look around. I’m a queen here, the mistress of hundreds of lives and fates, a shaper of flesh as well as spirit.”

  “You live in a cave,” he observed. “A very big cave, I’ll grant you, but a cave nonetheless. Why are you down here in the dark? The Aegyptians came down here to escape from public life, and frankly I thought they went about it the wrong way, but it was their choice. But now you’re here too. Underground. In the dark.”

  “Don’t be thick,” she said. “I don’t care about palaces and treasures anymore. I care about my work, something you taught me, as I recall. And this is the ideal place for me to carry on. Plenty of aether, a source of unrefined sun-steel, and an endless supply of live raw materials.” She cast a cruel smile at the young woman with the tentacle-arms.

  “To what end?” Omar closed his eyes and rested his head back on the hard edges of the straps and buckles around his neck. “I mean, what’s the point? In a hundred years, or a thousand, what are you hoping to accomplish with all this? Where is it all going?”

  “I don’t know,” Lilith said. She sat down sideways in a large wooden chair beside him and draped her legs over the arm. “I really don’t. Knowledge for its own sake, I suppose. What is possible? What’s waiting for us? It’s a mystery, and I enjoy mysteries.”

  “Knowledge is all well and good, but using it to torture these people is not at all well or good,” Omar said. “If you can’t learn without hurting people, then you shouldn’t be learning.”

  Lilith sighed. “Is there really any difference whether this girl lives fifty years up there or five days down here, with arms or with tentacles? Is there really? She’ll die either way and history will forget she ever existed. At least this way, her life contributes to something larger. To knowledge. To the future.”

  Omar rolled his eyes.

  Was this really me? Did I put these thoughts in her head and these words in her mouth?

  “When I first set out to learn about souls, and to invent immortality, as it were,” Omar said slowly. “I didn’t experiment on people. I didn’t even experiment on animals.”

  “No, you experimented on yourself,” Lilith said. “And a noble effort it was, too. Fortunately, you managed to stumble upon exactly what you were looking for before you killed yourself, or devolved into some sort of hairy little beastie.”

  Omar sighed. “You’re not listening.”

  “I am listening. You’re just not saying anything I haven’t heard before, or thought of before. I’m not stupid, Bashir,” she said. “I’m not blinded by ambition or twisted by my immortal pride, or whatever it is you’re thinking right now.”

  “I’m thinking that being physically tortured was less tortuous than listening to you justify torturing others,” he said. “Yes, you’re very clever, and yes, you’ve done remarkable things, and no, I don’t care about any of that. You’re a monster, living in a cave, making monsters.”

  She stood up and leaned over him, her lovely face hovering just above his. “You made me first,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he whispered back. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I’m not.” She pushed away from him and crossed the room to a table covered in mismatched plates and glasses of mostly fresh fruits and breads, and she began to pick and nibble at the stolen feast. “So tell me, old man, when exactly did you have this little change of heart? I know you were still making immortals up in Rus five hundred years ago, so it must have been later than that.”

  “Actually,” Omar said, “it was only a few weeks ago. Those two immortals in Rus were… a mistake. A terrible mistake. I found them in Constantia this past winter, and they were, just, well, out of control. Koschei had become a butcher, and Yaga had some sort of breakdown. He just wanted to kill, and she just wanted to die.”

  “So what happened to them?”

  “I killed Koschei,” Omar said softly. “And Yaga killed herself.”

  Lilith sighed. “So you made a mistake. Who hasn’t? We may be immortal, but we are still only human. I make mistakes all the time. It’s called learning. It’s also called science.”

  “No, this isn’t science.” Omar stared up at the blank stone ceiling. “This isn’t even philosophy. This is just a handful of people who can’t die,
making the world worse instead of better. Hurting people instead of helping people. I never wanted it to turn out this way. I never imagined it would turn out this way. But here we are.”

  “I see. And since you’ve had this little crisis of faith, all of a month ago, the rest of us have to pay the price for your guilty conscience?” She paced back toward him with a crust of brown bread in her hand, and she broke off small pieces to nibble one by one. “Is that why you came back to Alexandria? To kill off your little cult of Osiris, and then to kill the immortal Aegyptians, too? Tell me. Were you planning to stab little Bastet in the chest or in the back?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Oh? So you weren’t planning to kill her? Who exactly were you planning to kill? Me, obviously. What about Gideon and Nadira?”

  Omar tried to move his hand to rub his eyes, but the shackles kept his hand up above his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I just want to undo what I’ve done. Yes, I came to dismantle the temple and destroy the sun-steel. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to kill anyone in the process. Yes, I knew it might be necessary, but I still hoped otherwise.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “Now?” Omar shrugged. “Now I’m chained to a table, and you have my seireiken, and unless you plan to kill me with it, I expect I’m going to be here for a very long time.”

  Lilith glanced over at the sheathed sword leaning in the corner. Then she pranced gracefully over to it and swept it up in her arms and danced back to the table to present it to Omar. “Your sword, sir.”

  He sighed.

  “Oh, don’t be gloomy.” Lilith took the grip of the seireiken in one hand and the scabbard in the other, and gently slid them apart, revealing a small section of the blade. The charged sun-steel shone with a blinding white light, and tiny crackles of electric energy writhed across its surface. “Pretty.”

  She shoved the sword back in and tossed it aside, letting it crash and clatter on the stone floor. “But I don’t want to kill you. I want to talk more.”

  “Why Set and Nethys, and the others?” Omar asked. He had only glimpsed them briefly, in quick flashes of torchlight and starlight, as Nethys had carried him upside down, winging through the streets of Alexandria, and then hurling him down into the darkness of the undercity. And then there had been the chaos when the Indian woman showed up, dressed in her golden scales, and he had seen Horus and Isis, with their feathers and horns. “Why do this to them? They’ve never hurt you, have they? And they’re the few people in this world who understand what it means to be immortal. They could have been your friends, your family.”

  Lilith shrugged. “I like them better as my servants. More predictable. And more helpful, too. But most of all, they don’t burn out or fall apart. Souls can be slippery things, and striking the perfect stability between the native soul, the invading soul, and the balancing agent can be so difficult sometimes. Using an immortal makes all of that so much easier.”

  Omar shook his head slowly. “I’m so sorry, Lilith. I’m sorry for all of it. For you, and for them.” He paused. “What are you using for a balancing agent?”

  “What’s this? Now you’re interested in my work?”

  “I’m chained to a table with nothing to look at but a gray ceiling and your gorgeous eyes,” he said blandly. “So yes, I’m interested.”

  She smiled. “I’ll show you.” She disappeared from his field of view for a few moments, though he could hear her in the next room, moving small metal and glass objects around so that they clinked and clicked softly together. And then she returned and leaned over him, and held up a small golden needle.

  “A sun-steel needle?” He peered at it.

  So small, so thin. Probably about the same weight as Wren’s ring.

  “Exactly.” She rolled the tiny needle between her thumb and finger, letting it catch the light. “The needle draws out the aether from the animal’s blood, along with the soul I want. Careful timing allows me to control exactly how much the soul I take. And then I just insert the needle into the patient.” Lilith reached over and began rolling down his sleeve to expose his forearm. “Very simple, clean, and safe. Nothing left to chance. The placement of the needle and the size of the soul fragment allow me to target and limit the extent of the transformation.”

  Omar eyed his bare arm and the needle in her hand. “I’d love to see your notes, if you have them handy. Your journal, perhaps?”

  “Notes later. Demonstration first.” She smiled and leaned over him, brushing his lips lightly with her own. She whispered, “I still remember, you know. I remember what it was like to have you inside me, to hold you, to feel your flesh and your excitement inside my body. And now, I’m going to return the gesture.”

  Omar’s eyes remained fixed on the needle hovering over his skin. “That’s really not necessary.”

  “Oh, but I think it is.” She pinched his arm and slid the needle under his skin.

  She did it so quickly and smoothly that there was no pain, only a brief moment of warmth, and then she stepped back to watch him. Omar stared at his arm, feeling the heat building inside his muscles and shaking his bones. A discoloration appeared where she inserted the needle, and it grew quickly, becoming a hard black sheen with flecks of bright blue and green upon it.

  “What is that? What did you do?” he asked, trying not to panic. But the fear was already spinning out of control in his belly and chest and it took all of his strength not to scream and beat his arms on the table, and try to shake the needle out of his flesh.

  It’s inside me, it’s changing me, and you can’t take one soul out of another soul and I’m going to be a monster like Set and this is how it all ends, because I deserve it, to suffer this way, at the hands of my own creations, to be reduced to an animal, to be a thing, to be a…

  “What’s happening?” he asked. His skin was still changing, becoming hard and smooth from his elbow up to his fingertips. The black armor was one continuous shell, with tiny gaps around his wrist and knuckles so he could still move them, somewhat.

  “I’m honoring your Aegyptian heritage,” Lilith said. “A fascinating place, Aegyptus. A long history of powerful dynastic kings and warrior queens, the great kandaces of Aegyptus! I wish I could have met them. But there’s also your folklore, your religion. So colorful, so nuanced. Blending stories of family with images of nature.” She gently petted the shining black armor of his transformed arm.

  Omar felt his flesh becoming weak and thin inside that armor, barely capable of flexing or twitching. He looked away, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think of anything other than his arm, trying to imagine that he had no right arm at all, never had, and that there was nothing to feel or be afraid of.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “The soul of a scarab,” she said, smiling. “You see? I’ve studied. The scarab beetle is immortal, giving birth to itself from its magic little balls of dung, or something. Well, I didn’t study very hard. Your ancestors had silly beliefs. It’s just a beetle.”

  Omar felt his stomach churning like a bowl of cold slush, and he shivered as the first trickles of sweat began to creep down the sides of his face. He wanted to vomit and run and die all at once just to escape the feelings in his own flesh.

  Is this what Wren feels? It can’t be. She’s never mentioned anything like this before. Her ears never make her sick. Maybe humans are more compatible with foxes than with beetles. Or maybe… maybe that shred of my soul inside her doesn’t just keep the transformation from spreading. Maybe it helps her to feel stable, to feel normal.

  Lucky girl.

  “Everything all right?” Lilith asked.

  Omar just looked at her, not trusting his voice. He didn’t want to gasp or squeak, or cry, and he could feel his body on the verge of betraying what little dignity he had left.

  “You’ll be fine.” She patted his beetle arm, sending sickening vibrations through his shoulder and chest. “I’ll just give you a little time alone to think about your new li
fe here with me, and to think about whether you want to tell me about your little red-haired friend. I’ll be just around the corner, polishing my needles.”

  She gave him one last, lingering look filled with a strange muddle of inviting desire and vicious hatred, and then she left.

  And Omar turned his head away from her and away from his arm.

  Dear Lord, I am sorry for everything I have done, and I will suffer whatever I have to suffer for it. But don’t bring Wren into this. Don’t let me betray her. Don’t make her another victim in this.

  Please.

  Omar shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut, and waited.

  Chapter 17

  Anubis stood beneath the endless sea of stars and listened to the rippling of the savanna grasses in the spring breeze. It was a warm night, one that hinted at the promise of far warmer summer nights in the months to come. The plains were alive with the distant growls of hunting cats and the cries of birds and the creaking of insects. Leopards, grass owls, and locusts sang together, heedless of each other, mindful only of the hunt.

  “I’ve known for years, you know,” Anubis said. He turned slowly to look down the grassy slope at the falcon-headed youth. “Maybe I’ve always known that Osiris was my father. But I’ve never spoken of it. And why would I? We’re forever. We’re eternal. What is family to a person who is four thousand years old? Little more than a distant memory of devotion, really. An echo of love. A whisper of shared blood. I don’t know anymore.”

  Horus glared up with his blank white eyes and hissed.

  “That’s not the point.” Anubis returned his gaze to the heavens. “The point is that long ago, before we were gods, before were immortal, we were just people. My mother wanted a baby, and her husband didn’t, or couldn’t. So she went to her sister’s husband, and she found her heart’s desire in his bed.”