Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “How much longer?” Asha asked.

  “As long as it takes,” the prince replied sharply.

  “It’s already been too long.” Asha spun and marched back into the princess’s bedchamber. “Priya? Can you come out here to help us? These poor gentlemen are having trouble finding something. I thought you might be able to encourage them.”

  The nun smiled as she came to the door, Jagdish on her shoulder, and her bamboo rod in her hand tapping on the tiled floor. “I can certainly try. Did you think my sharp ears would be of use to them?”

  Asha led her companion over to the low wall at the edge of the garden. “No. Not exactly.” She snatched the mongoose from Priya’s shoulder and gently tossed him down into the undergrowth of the garden. Jagdish darted away into the greenery.

  “What have you done?” Priya asked, her voice straining to maintain its usual calm.

  “I’ve always said a mongoose is a useful thing to have around. It’s time for him to prove me right. Jagdish should be immune to the cockatrice’s venom, and I’m sure he can sniff out that creature, even if he can’t see it or hear it.” Asha stared at the ferns, searching for a flash of brown fur or blue feathers.

  “Should be immune?”

  Asha’s mouth hardened into a straight line. “Should be.”

  * * *

  Whatever happened in the underbrush was very brief and very violent. The ferns shook, the mongoose squeaked, the cockatrice hissed, and then all was still. The guards converged on the source of the noise and folded back the ferns to reveal Jagdish carefully cleaning the blood from his whiskers and the cockatrice lying dead beside him.

  One of the men picked up both animals and held them out to Asha. She took the dead cockatrice by the tail and held it at arm’s length, but Jagdish refused to go near her and instead scampered over to Priya, who picked him up and placed him on her shoulder, where he nestled into her hair and peered out at Asha with small accusing eyes.

  “I hope that was absolutely necessary,” the nun said.

  “It was.” Asha paused only a moment to stare at the creature in her hand before striding back into the princess’s bedroom and shutting the door behind her.

  She knelt down and spread the feathered body on a thick leather sheet, massaged the neck briefly, and then sliced off the head completely. With her scalpel and pins and probes, she deftly slit the cockatrice’s throat open to reveal the venom sacs at the base of the skull, and these she removed and placed in a porcelain dish. Then she tossed the body across the floor, out of the way, and went to work.

  After three hours, four spent candles, a dozen silver trays, two buckets of water, and more herbs than she cared to admit, Asha finally sat over a dish of pale red oil in a shallow silver bowl. In addition to the flesh of the venom sac, she had used the shell of the last cockatrice egg and more than a little of the creature’s blood, and now she studied the product of her labors.

  Logically, it was right. It should work. She had done everything just as she had been taught to do it, and now all that was left to do was use it.

  Still she hesitated. It wasn’t doubt that gnawed at her. It was distaste. Disgust. A true healer did not gamble with life carelessly. A true healer would test the new medicine in the dish first, and in an animal second, and only in a human last of all. But there wasn’t time. There wasn’t even enough of the red oil to use, even if there had been time.

  Asha carried the dish to the princess and began dribbling the oil into the woman’s bloodless lips. Then she drew a small amount of the oil up into a needle of blue glass and injected it into the princess’s neck.

  Through the evening and the long quiet night that followed, Asha sat by the princess and administered her medicine by every means she could think of. Priya came and sat by the windows overlooking the lake. The maid brought supper, tended her mistress, and left. And at some late hour, Asha fell asleep.

  The next day the princess seemed to breathe a little easier. Asha continued to apply her red oil, answered the prince’s questions as briefly as possible, and slept very little.

  Days passed. The princess slept easier, even murmuring in her sleep, but she did not wake.

  Asha experimented with what little remained of the cockatrice, from the feathers to the beak to the liver, producing similar oils and powders. She tried them all. Some seemed to work better. Most didn’t. And all of them ran out all too soon. There simply wasn’t enough of the small animal’s body to create enough medicine.

  After a week, the princess opened her eyes and spent a few precious minutes talking with her husband. Pratap Singh’s voice wavered as he sat beside her, stroking her cheek. But then she fell asleep again and couldn’t be roused.

  A month passed.

  And another.

  Asha stayed beside the princess, rarely leaving her bedchamber, every day trying to coax some new secret from what little remained of the cockatrice until she was left scraping at its bones. But the princess slipped back into her rigid state, her muscles as hard as ironwood, her skin as firm as stone.

  And then she died.

  At the end, her body was so rigid that the servants couldn’t undress her or even untangle her from the sheets, and were forced to cut away the cloth. But the woman’s face was perfectly serene, unlined and unblemished, smooth and young and strong. Everyone agreed that she was the most beautiful corpse they had ever seen.

  Asha and Priya stayed in Jaipur only as long as etiquette seemed to require. The heartbroken prince pressed them with gifts, left his palace open to them for all time, and gave them a place of honor in the funeral procession. But when it was over, they left.

  * * *

  Three months later.

  Asha stood in the marketplace of Jaipur, haggling with an older woman over a fistful of ginger roots. After overpaying for her stock, Asha sauntered back toward Priya, who stood at the foot of the steps of a temple of Vishnu. The nun frowned. “I could be wrong, but I think someone is following us.”

  “How can you tell?” Asha glanced around at the crowd quietly surging past them.

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Then let’s go.” Asha led the way through the market squares and market streets and found the way to the northern end of the city where the Jal Mahal appeared to float majestically on the surface of the lake. But the palace seemed dimmer and shabbier than she remembered it. Nothing had changed about it physically. It was just a sense. A feeling that this place had already seen its finest days and now was sinking into shadows and sad memories.

  They walked on. “Are we still being followed?”

  Priya nodded. “I’m certain of it now. A man with an uneven gait.”

  Asha looked around again, but there were still too many people about and none of them looked like sinister killers with conspicuous limps. “Let’s just keep moving.”

  They followed the main road north and soon came to the small shrine at the crossroads where the princess’s ashes had been placed only a few short months ago. Asha paused to stare at the little stone pillars and flickering braziers. Her memories of the long days and nights at the young woman’s bedside were still fresh. The long hours studying the dead cockatrice, the foul-smelling experiments, the ache in her arm from grinding and crushing one thing after another in her mortar.

  “She was very beautiful,” a man said.

  Asha looked sharply at the short fellow beside her. His limp black hair barely covered his scalp, and he squinted through filmy, cracked glasses. The shoes on his feet were Indian, but his dark blue robe was from Ming. She swallowed and turned back to the shrine. In a calm and even voice, she said, “Yes, she was.”

  “But it wasn’t enough for her. It never is, for some people.” The man smiled. A black leather bag sat on the ground beside his foot.

  “So you offered your services?”

  “No, not this time,” the doctor said. “I merely sold the prince something that he thought he wanted. A wonderful creature. Very hard to breed, you know. A bi
rd and a lizard. Tricky business. But then, I’m sure you appreciated all of that for yourself.”

  “Not really. I was too busy trying to keep her alive.”

  “Ah yes. A pity, to be sure,” he said. “I never thought she would eat the eggs.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He smiled. “Well, maybe.”

  “And the mandrake in Kasar? And the bitter fruits at the mountain hut? More of your little experiments, or were they just very bizarre coincidences?”

  He nodded absently, his gaze still fixed on the shrine. Not once did he look at her. “The world is full of sad people looking for help, and the world is full of strange things that might help them. I am but a humble purveyor of miracles.” He chuckled. “As are you.”

  “Your miracles kill people. And the ones who don’t die are hollowed out by false prophets and dreams. I’ve wasted more days than I can remember cleaning up your messes.”

  The doctor clucked his tongue. “Now, now. We all have our roles to play. If not for me, we would not know that the prickled gurbir’s effects will disappear for exactly eleven and a half months before the patient dies, or that the swamp mandrake seed can survive cremation fires, or that the anti-venom of the cockatrice egg is nearly as dangerous as the mother’s venom itself. Such knowledge is more precious than gold.”

  “Is such knowledge more precious than life?” Asha asked. She too kept her eyes fixed on the shrine, and on the dark red flames of the closest brazier in particular.

  “Of course. Life is cheap. Toss a carcass to the ground and ten thousand creatures will feast and rut and grow strong upon it. Kill all those ten thousand, and a million more will rise in their place. Life is inescapable. It’s everywhere. And more often than not, it is squandered and wasted. Thus, where I pass, life is at least spent more profitably for the betterment of all men, for the deeper knowledge of life and death.”

  Asha casually took a clear glass needle from her shoulder bag and shoved it into the man’s arm. He hissed and leapt away from her as he yanked the needle from his flesh and stared at the broken tip. “What was in that?”

  “An experiment.”

  “What was it?” he shouted.

  “Qilin’s tears,” she said softly.

  His eyes widened and he hurled the needle away into the tall grass behind the shrine. “You ungrateful bitch!”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked quietly. “Surely a doctor like you has the antidote? The powdered horn?” She paused for him to answer, but he said nothing. “Oh, I see. You don’t have it, do you? No, you never were very good at keeping up your stocks of remedies and antidotes and cures. I suppose you got used to relying on me to do that for you.”

  He glared at her. “But you must have it! Give it to me! Now!”

  She held up a small paper envelope between two fingers. He reached for it but she flicked it through the air to land on the nearby brazier. The red flames quickly consumed the envelope and its contents.

  The doctor gasped. “Murderer!”

  “That’s a bit of an exaggeration. You don’t look very dead to me. I would think a doctor could tell the difference.” The corner of Asha’s mouth twitched. “The qilin’s tears are a very slow poison. Painful, but slow. You have several weeks to find more of the horn for yourself.”

  “Weeks? But the horn of the qilin can only be found in Ming!”

  “Then I suggest you start walking very soon, and very quickly.”

  “After everything I did for you! I saved your life countless times between Yen and Ming. I raised you. I taught you. I gave you everything you have!”

  “You used me.” She turned slowly to look him in the eye. “Didn’t you? Eight years in a coma from dragon’s venom. Eight years? It should have killed me inside a week, or not at all. Instead you kept me on your table for eight years, and when I woke up you said all the tiny scars were from keeping me alive. But they were really from keeping me asleep, and taking my blood, and skewering my soul. I admit, it took me a very long time to put the pieces together, but I did. After all, you’re the one who taught me to unravel these little mysteries, doctor.”

  “So what if we did use you? We woke you up in the end and trained you in our noble profession.” The little doctor clamped his hand tightly over his arm where she had stabbed him with the needle. “We gave as much as we took. But it was all your fault to begin with. It was all because you tried to take my dragon!”

  Asha shook her head slightly. “No. It was all because you left a little girl alone in a room with a temptation, and with the cage unlocked for the first and only time. It was all just one more experiment, wasn’t it?”

  The doctor started toward her and Asha turned toward him with two more needles in her hand.

  “I could kill you,” she said. “But I won’t. Instead I’m giving you the chance to live, as much as I’ve threatened to let you die. Giving as much as I took, as you put it. So I suggest that you take this chance and go, before I forget that I’m a healer and not a doctor, like you.”

  The small man sneered at her a moment with a dark hatred burning in his eyes, but he backed away, grabbed his black bag, and left.

  Asha put away her needles and the two women stood before the shrine for a few minutes before the nun said, “Did you really poison him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he survive?”

  “That depends on whether he can find the antidote.”

  “And you destroyed the cure to torture him?”

  Asha shook her head. “Of course not.” She held up another, identical paper envelope. “The real antidote is right here. What I burned was just a cure for baldness, which no one really needs, do they?”

  “I heard you take the needle out of your bag. I almost stopped you,” Priya said. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. I trusted you. But now I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. You’re a healer, Asha, and you just poisoned a man.”

  “He deserved it. And more,” Asha said quietly. She looked down at the shrine in front of them. “This woman, the princess, would be alive today if not for him. And Hasika’s family in the mountains, too. And who knows how many more?”

  “I suppose.” Priya shivered against the cool breeze. “So is this why you left the temple in Ming? Because you figured out what they had done to you?”

  “No, I didn’t figure that out until much later. No, I left because of something else.” The words stuck in her throat and Asha paused to swallow. The sudden tightness in her chest surprised her. After a moment she said, “When I was training at the temple, I met a boy from the nearby village. I suppose he was too old to call him a boy, really, but I always think of him that way. A boy. My boy. A carpenter’s apprentice. He was my first.” She paused to be sure the nun took her meaning. “One day he and his master came to the temple to repair the roof. The boy was up in the rafters where it was dark. He didn’t see what stung him, but it was so bad that he collapsed the moment he climbed down. He was gasping for breath. Shaking. Turning blue. I was there. I saw it.”

  “What did you do?”

  Asha shook her head. “I didn’t do anything. The doctors grabbed him up and took him to a room where they poked him and prodded him, and argued over him. They muttered about cutting him open, inserting tubes into his lungs, draining fluid, and pumping air into him with the fireplace bellows. I stood in the corridor, just outside, watching them. I could hear him gasping. He kept pounding on the table, struggling to breathe.

  “Eventually they started to work on him. They cut him open. They inserted glass and rubber tubes. His blood ran down to the floor. And the boy screamed until he passed out. They worked on him for an hour or so.” Asha blinked. “And then they came out and told me that he was dead. My boy. My first. He was dead. I asked them why. What happened to him? A wasp sting, they said. Just a common wasp. I didn’t understand. I asked them, why didn’t they give him medicine? We had medicine for stings and allergies. I had made some of it myself. Why didn’t they give it to him
? They said, because they wanted to see what would happen if they cut him open instead.”

  Asha paused to breathe. “I remember how pleased they all were with themselves. Complimenting each other on their techniques. On their tools. On the measurements they took of him as he lay dying on their table. They were looking forward to examining his body again later.”

  Asha felt the tears running down her cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away. She didn’t shake or close her eyes, or cover her mouth, or move at all. She stood very still and felt the sick fire burning in her belly and her chest and her throat and her eyes. But she didn’t move.

  “They were proud of themselves. They were proud of what they had learned,” she whispered. “But he died. He died in agony. For their pride. And I just stood there and watched it happen.”

  Asha felt Priya take her hand. She gently but firmly pulled away. “That’s why I left.”

  Priya nodded.

  And then Asha stopped fighting. She let her face twist and squeeze together as the tears ran down and the sharp gasps burst out and she shook and sobbed, and sobbed. Eventually the pain and sorrow ran its course and she pushed her hair back, wiped her face, and cleared her throat. For many long moments, she just stood there, staring at the shrine, sighing and clearing her throat, and blinking her eyes dry.

  “You can talk now,” Asha said.

  “If you need to hear me say that they were wrong and you were right, then I’ll say it, because it’s true. But I know you don’t need me to say that. What do you need now?”

  Asha shook her head slowly. “Nothing.” She blinked again. “I’m fine.” She heaved one last sigh and stood a little taller. “Really, I feel…better.”

  “Let me do something, please.”

  “Maybe a little sleep. I could use a little rest.”

  “I think we can arrange that.” Priya took her by the arm and led her back toward the road, turning to the westward path. “And then some hot food and tea.”

  Asha nodded. “You know, I thought if we went west far enough, then I could get away from them. But they were here. He was here. They’re everywhere.”