Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Only a few thin patters and drips of blood fell from the wounds before their bodies healed themselves, the punctures and cuts slipping closed like water to become a seamless whole once more. And as the wounds vanished, so did the monstrosities.

  Asha watched in spellbound fascination as the tall horns fell from Isis’s head and thumped on the floor. The thick brown hair on her legs rained down on the ground, quickly revealing two soft brown legs that were slowly shrinking back to their original size. One by one, the woman’s little toes popped free of the fused mass of her hoofs. And then it was over. Isis opened her eyes, her weary dark brown eyes, and she moved her thin, cracked lips to make faint gasping sounds.

  “Can’t… breathe…”

  “Wren, lift her up!” Asha said. “Lift both of them!”

  The northern girl stepped forward and raised her empty hands, making the heavy silver bracelets on her wrists ring out across the warehouse. The swirling white aether rose from the earth in two thick columns and gently lifted Isis and Horus so they were no longer suspended by their chains. Gideon dashed to the side of the room, slipped his blinding white blade out of its sheathe and smashed the ends of the chains. Mother and son dropped their arms to their sides, and Wren lowered her hands, letting the aether pillow beneath them and deposit them softly into Asha’s and Bastet’s arms.

  As she eased the young man down to the floor, Asha looked at Horus’s face for the first time. She hadn’t seen the feathers fall out or the beak break off, but they all lay on the ground beside her. And now the groaning, gasping youth looked up at her with his all-too-human eyes and chattering lips and rasped, “I’m sorry.”

  Asha stroked the thin black hair on his head and rocked him gently as he cried into her arm, soaking her sari with his hot tears. She looked over him to Bastet and Isis, and saw them smiling and crying, shaking and holding each other. After a few moments, Horus sat up enough to drag himself over to his mother and they embraced, and cried all over again.

  Searching the faces of her comrades for guidance, Asha stood up and went to sit on a crate. Wren sat beside her, and a moment later Gideon and Taziri joined them, and they all tried not to stare too intrusively at the three immortals weeping on the floor. Jiro frowned, nodded once at Taziri, and left the warehouse. Gradually, the emotion of the moment faded and left the threesome quiet and tired, looking vaguely sick and confused as to what to do next.

  Asha cleared her throat and said, “We’re all very sorry for what you’ve had to suffer through, and for your losses. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to save the others.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Isis rose to her feet. Her hair was tangled and dirty, and her dress was stained and torn, yet she composed herself with a queenly bearing, folding her hands together in front of her and speaking in a calm yet commanding voice. “You’ve all worked tirelessly to protect this city from us, and to protect us from ourselves. And now, you have done the impossible. You’ve given us back our bodies, and minds, and spirits. I cannot thank you enough for all you have done for us, and for Alexandria.”

  Horus stood beside his mother, rising half a head taller than her. He was a lean and athletic youth with a handsome face and bright green eyes set between a sharp nose and a shock of black hair. He nodded and whispered, as though he didn’t quite trust his voice yet, “Yes, thank you all.”

  Asha stepped toward them. “Do you know everything that has happened? Do you remember the last few days?”

  Isis nodded. “The last few days, and all the days before them. Every day that I was in Lilith’s power remains sharp and bright in my memory. Painfully sharp. The things I did. The people I hurt. The lives I ruined. The feeling of the horns on my head, and the hoofs on my feet.” She winced as she reached up to touch her head and smoothed back her dull black hair.

  Horus looked up as though he wanted to speak, but instead he quickly clenched his jaw and looked away. Bastet wrapped her thin arms around his waist, and his mother laid a firm hand on his shoulder.

  In her dragon’s ear, Asha heard a whispered exchange between the younger immortals. Bastet spoke softly into her cousin’s chest, saying, “I know you didn’t mean to kill him. I know she made you. I know you would never do that.”

  And Horus whispered down into her hair, “I’m not so sure. He was so angry, and I… I was too.”

  “Oh, uh, excuse me.” Taziri bent down by her magnetic device and from among the sun-steel needles she held up the golden pendants on their thin chains. “I think these belong to you.”

  Isis and Horus took the golden hearts, glanced at them, exchanged them to their rightful owners, and hung them around their necks. Asha squinted.

  Does Isis have two hearts on her chain?

  The mother moved uncertainly, taking very small and cautious steps as though she didn’t trust her feet to hold her up, and she moved her head with equal deliberation. The son, on the other hand, jerked his head sharply as he looked from person to person, and he used his hands awkwardly, his fingers sometimes reaching out at strange angles or missing their targets by a hair or two as he clung to Bastet or touched his own face.

  “How long were you… like that?” Wren asked.

  Isis paused. “Over two years. Not long, by our standards, but far longer than anyone should ever have to suffer like that. The others, the ones who weren’t immortal, the ones who died… they suffered as much, or more, even if only for a few days or weeks. And after they lost their freedom and their humanity, they lost their lives as well. I remember their faces. I remember their tears.”

  Asha asked, “Is there anything we can do for you now? Is there anything you need?”

  The regal woman smiled sadly. “No. Nothing. We are healed. We are whole. The only thing hurting us now is the memory, though that too will fade in time. But thank you.”

  “What now?” Horus rasped. He coughed and cleared his throat, and then in a much clearer voice he said, “Grandfather is still down there. And all the others as well. We need to get them out. And we need to deal with Lilith.”

  “We will,” Asha said. “Now that we know that Taziri’s device works, we can save them all.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Horus said.

  “No.” Gideon shook his head. “You and Isis and Bastet should stay here. Lilith went after you before and she might again.”

  “But I can fight!” Horus glared and struck his chest. Tears shone in his eyes. “That bitch took me, and my mother, and made me kill Anubis. And I let her! I let it happen!”

  “No,” Isis said gently. “You didn’t let it happen any more than I did. Lilith taints her needles with shreds of her own soul, giving her dominion over all her victims. None of this was your fault. The blame is hers, and hers alone.”

  “Her soul is in the needles?” Wren squatted down and looked at the pile of needles beside the magnet. “All of them?”

  “At least one for each victim,” Isis said. “It gives her control over the person, as well as strengthening her own immortality by sealing herself away in so much sun-steel. Even if you were to destroy her pendant, she would remain immortal until every one of these needles was found and destroyed as well.”

  Wren nodded and looked up with a playful grin. “I think we can do that. Well, you two can do it.” She bobbed her head at Taziri and Gideon. She carefully gathered up the needles and carried them over to Gideon, who slid out a portion of his seireiken. Wren dropped the needles onto the burning blade and watched them hiss and vanished. “There. That’s a start.”

  “Good.” Asha slung her medicine bag over her shoulder. “Then we should get moving. Omar is waiting for us. And so are all those other poor souls down there with him.”

  “Wait.” Isis reached out toward her. “What will you do with Lilith when you find her?”

  Asha looked at Bastet, and then at Gideon. “You’ve known her the longest. What do you think?”

  “We could imprison her down there, perhaps with a very unpleasant cellmate,” the soldier said.
“A few hundred vipers might be a good idea.”

  “Prisoners can escape,” Asha said.

  “Well, actually, I have something to say about that. About Lilith, I mean,” Wren said. “Omar and I came here to Alexandria to put right all the things he had done, to destroy the Temple of Osiris, and to destroy the seireikens. And he never said it in so many words, but I think he also meant to destroy the pendants. To end immortality, for everyone.”

  The room was silent.

  Wren bit her lip. “So we might do that. To her, I mean. Not to everyone.”

  Asha looked around the room at the stern and thoughtful and angry eyes all around her.

  First Priya.

  Then Set, Nethys, and Anubis. An entire family.

  And all those countless, nameless others.

  “No,” Asha said. “No prison. No mortality. She’s too dangerous, and her crimes are too terrible.”

  “You mean… kill her?” Gideon asked, his normally smiling eyes now tense and sad.

  Asha nodded. “Is that a problem? You’ve killed before. Is it because you knew her before, in Damascus?”

  “No. No, it’s nothing personal. In fact, I didn’t know her at all in Damascus,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve never killed a woman before.”

  Never? In two thousand years of executing criminals and Osirians? Not one woman?

  Asha saw the genuine pain in his eyes, the conflict between his sense of duty and justice, and some deeper sense honor and propriety. She said, “Don’t worry about it right now. Right now, let’s just save as many people as we can.”

  Chapter 27

  Asha sat on the low wall that ringed the dusty fountain at the bottom of the dead-end road. Her hands worked steadily, grinding the little marble pestle against the seeds and leaves in the bottom of her little marble mortar. Gideon stood in the center of the fountain peering down into the dark chasm that led into the undercity. Wren and Taziri sat on the wall next to each other, both lost in silent thoughts and staring at the broken tiles at the bottom of the dry fountain.

  “What are you thinking about?” Wren asked.

  “My family.” Taziri smiled. “It’s funny. I keep going off on these crazy adventures. Getting into trouble in faraway places. Helping strange people with strange problems. And I don’t know why. I like my life back home, and I know I’m very fortunate to have everything that I have. Still, here I am. I guess I like the challenge of it. The excitement. But even now, all I can think about is my little girl. Wanting to see her again. Hear her voice again. I really don’t want to die here, you know, in some cave in Aegyptus.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.”

  “So what are you thinking about?” the Mazigh woman asked.

  “Sex.” Wren smiled at her. “It’s been a couple weeks.”

  Taziri laughed, and Wren laughed with her.

  “I don’t know if the good lord Woden would approve,” Wren said. “He’s the sort of god who can be hard to please. He’d probably want me to be thinking about the coming battle, preparing to die gloriously, to honor my family and my homeland, and to take my place beside him in paradise.”

  “Where is your homeland?”

  “Ysland.”

  Taziri shrugged. “Sorry, I haven’t heard of it.”

  “No one has,” Wren said. “But that’s all right. I think I like it better here anyway.”

  “So you’re really not worried about going down there, into that hole, in the dark, and fighting more of these animal-people and immortals?” Taziri asked.

  Wren shook her head, and her thick red hair and tall fox ears shook in the breeze. If the Mazigh engineer had found the ears strange, she hadn’t said so. She hadn’t even given them a second look. Wren said, “Can’t say that I am. I’ve done this sort of thing before. Giant foxes, dead people, witches, nightmares, armies. You get scared for a moment or so, near the beginning. I think it’s because you’re not really ready. You’re still waiting for it to start, or maybe you don’t really think it will start. Or you don’t want it to start. And then it does start, and your heart is pounding and you forget everything you’ve learned and you just want to run. But you don’t run. You take a breath and remember what you’re meant to do. And then when you start in, when you hurl that first stone, and you call up the aether, and you see your friends standing at your side, then everything’s just fine. The fear goes away. You just do what you’re there to do. No matter how long it takes, you just keep going, and eventually it ends, and everything’s all right. Even if there’s screaming and blood, and fire and darkness, you just keep going until you reach the end. That’s all anyone can do, really.”

  Taziri hesitated. “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen. Twenty this summer.”

  Taziri blinked. “Wow.”

  “You don’t see many battles, do you?”

  “No, not if I can help it,” the Mazigh woman said. “I see bills and invoices, and schematics and lesson plans. And the few times I’ve been in real trouble, I mostly excelled in running the other way. I’ve only pointed a gun at a person a half dozen times or so, and I could have done without all of them.”

  “Oh.” The girl in the lacy, frilly black dress looked up. “I don’t like fighting, or being someplace where I could die. But I guess I don’t mind that much, either. I don’t blame you for not liking it.”

  Taziri nodded.

  Wren winked at her. “But you do like sex, right?”

  They both burst out laughing again.

  Asha listened to them with a faint smile on her lips, and she almost laughed out loud with them, but her laughter didn’t quite break through the worries in her heart and the plans racing around her head.

  That girl Wren is only half my age, but it sounds as though she’s already seen twice the horrors that I have. And listen to her. Happy as a lark. Thinking of nothing more than a pleasant night with a warm body between her legs.

  The other one, Taziri, has faced the Sons of Osiris, and traveled the world in strange machines. Younger than me by a bit, and with a family, and a career, and students…

  And here’s me, crushing my seeds and wondering where my dead friend’s soul has wandered off to. Did I do this? Was it done to me?

  Does it matter?

  No.

  Asha frowned and squinted up at the sun, which was easing its way across the western sky beyond thick white clouds.

  We get what we get. We choose. We try. It doesn’t matter what Wren has done, or what Taziri has at home. We’re here, and we have a job to do. People are suffering and dying, and I’m going to stop it. That’s all that matters now.

  That’s all that ever matters.

  She finished grinding her seeds and inspected the fine white powder in her mortar. Satisfied, she poured the powder into a glass vial with a red sandy mixture and shoved the rubber stopper over it.

  “Is everyone ready?” Asha asked. She stood up and shouldered her medicine bag.

  Gideon looked back at her. “You might want to leave that bag. It’ll only get torn or lost when you change.”

  “Let’s hope not,” she replied. “Ready?”

  Taziri and Wren hopped off the fountain wall, brushed off their hands, and joined her at the edge of the dark hole. A cool breeze blew up out of the shadows.

  “Gideon leads,” Asha said. “Taziri and Wren follow, and I watch our rear. And remember, whatever we see down there, whatever creatures come after us, they’re the people we’re going down there to save. So Gideon, you keep that sword away from them. You’re in charge of lighting the way, and incinerating the needles that Taziri’s magnet collects. Wren, I’m afraid you’re going to be doing more work than any of us. We’ll need your aether both as a shield to keep us safe and as a tool to herd the creatures together.”

  “Should be easy enough,” the northern girl said as she adjusted the heavy silver bracelets on her wrists. “Down there in the dark, in the cold? We’ll have plenty of aether. No worries. I’ll just have to be car
eful not to get carried away.”

  Asha paused, watching the girl’s face. “What do you mean? What happens if you get carried away?”

  For a moment, the carefree look in Wren’s eyes vanished. “If I lose control, I could tear the souls out of every living person around me, killing everyone instantly.” And then, the girlish smile slipped back into her expression. “But you shouldn’t worry about that. I once dragged a fleet of Turkish ironclads across the sea and onto dry land by pulling on the souls of the crews, and I didn’t kill a single one of them! Really, I checked. Not one.”

  “Oh.” Asha exchanged a baffled look with Gideon and Taziri. “All right then. Let’s get started. Gideon, if you would be so kind?”

  The soldier smiled and bowed, and then stepped out over the hole and dropped straight down, to land with a thud deep in the shadows. A moment later the shadows vanished and the tunnel was flooded with pure white light shining from Gideon’s sword. The triangular blade blazed like a thousand suns from the gauntlet on his arm, and the air around the sun-steel wavered and rippled like the waves on the sea as the heat billowed upward into the afternoon sky.

  One by one, the women sat on the edge of the hole and slipped down to the floor of the tunnel, and then they turned to follow Gideon and his bright seireiken down into the darkness. After just a few paces, the meager light from the opening disappeared behind them around a corner, and the walls closed in, and a hot wind began to blow from the blade strapped to Gideon’s arm.

  “So, what is an undercity, exactly?” Taziri asked. “Bastet mentioned it to me once, but I never asked about it.”

  “Is it really a city?” Wren asked. “Because I was in a place called the Sunken Palace once, and it wasn’t much of a palace. They used it as a cistern.”

  “It’s a city, all right,” Gideon said. “I hate to spoil a humbling, terrifying, and mystifying surprise, but I will tell you that it’s big. Bigger than Alexandria.”

  “How is that possible?” Taziri asked.

  “Anything is possible,” Asha said. “If you have enough slaves to make it possible.”