But now, she reached all the way back to the first evil, the very first vision of hateful cruelty in her mind. It was the image of a beautiful youth lying on a table, his chest carefully opened and his blood dripping slowly onto the floor. The surgical knives were arrayed nearby with the lenses, powders, and razors. The doctors were coming toward her, leaving the room, leaving the youth alone on the table, his face still contorted in his final moments of agony.
She had asked them, Why didn’t you save him?
And they had answered, Because we didn’t want to.
Asha felt her skin burning, her heart pounding, and her brains searing as the tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. She curled her hands into fists and clenched her teeth as her lips rippled in a silent snarl.
The dragon awoke.
The soul of the great golden dragon, which slept deep down within her own fragile spirit and flesh, opened its ruby eyes and opened its golden maw, and from within her own heart, the beast roared.
Asha opened her eyes and saw the change begin. Her smooth brown skin rippled with golden scales that shone in the late day sun. Her fingertips grew longer and thinner, becoming deadly scarlet claws. She felt the warm pulses running down her skin as she traded her human flesh for dragon armor. Her spine throbbed as her slender whip of a tail erupted from her back and began to coil and lash the dusty ground behind her, tossing her pale yellow sari left and right.
All around her, men and women cried out in fear and surprise and she could sense them running away. Horses and zebras whickered and screamed before racing down the road. A nearby sivathera drawing a stately little coach reared up on its hind legs, bellowing and snorting, and it too thundered off down the street.
Yes, run away. Run away, all of you. And keep running.
A terrible heat rose in her chest, scorching her throat as she exhaled, and she saw the air around her nostrils shimmering like a watery mirage on the horizon. Asha pressed her hands to her forehead, knowing what would come next, but still afraid. She’d never let it go this far before.
From her temples where the golden scales met her thick black hair, two small mounds rose, and rose, and went on rising. The dragon’s horns were angular and ridged, and they curved gently back and forth through the air before finally tightening into ruby-tipped points.
Asha straightened up and stretched her back and arms, feeling the mass of her golden armor and the power in her legs. Her horned skull weighed heavily on her neck, and her lashing tail tugged her hips left and right. It was all awkward and new, all so much stranger than just the scales and claws that she usually released, but now with the dragon awake and raging within her breast, the strangeness felt natural and right.
This is what is needed. This will consume the evil.
I will consume the evil.
I will… devour… everything…
She looked up at the temple again as a crimson veil passed over her eyes. The world became a flat landscape of dark reds and light reds, punctuated by the sharp white figures of people and animals.
But through it all, she held on to the image of the youth on the table, and the doctors who had laughed as they walked away from his dead body, and hadn’t cared whether their patient had lived or died.
He was mine. My first.
They killed him.
I stood by. I watched them do it. And I did nothing.
Never again.
Asha dashed forward, ignoring the cries of the fleeing people and beasts all around her, and she sank her claws into the stone wall of the temple. The ancient blocks cracked apart and when she yanked her claws out the entire corner of the temple crashed down into the road, hurling up a massive cloud of dust that swallowed the street and everyone still in it.
She surged forward again and leapt high onto the side of the temple, and then leapt again all the way up to the top of the stone fortress where the grand wooden pagoda began. She had seen such buildings before in Ming, and while it did strike her as wholly out of place in this western city, it held no other fascination for her. She smashed the wooden columns, the panels, and the planks, driving her armored fists through beams as thick as ancient trees.
Asha ran back and forth, and climbed higher and higher, tearing, breaking, and rending everything in reach. She burst through walls and leapt straight up, exploding through ceilings and floors. From time to time she saw the flash of a frightened face or the bright light of a drawn seireiken, but they were all as slow as insects trapped in amber. She raced by them all, her mind bent only on the next thing she could drive her ruby claws into and tear to pieces.
Somewhere deep inside the temple, surrounded by splintered beams and collapsing walls, Asha stopped. The entire building was keening and moaning.
It’s dying. This place is dying. Soon it will fall and take all of its vermin with it. All of the killers and slave drivers. They’ll all be dead soon.
Asha ran back toward the outer wall, her tail lashing at the remains of the pillars, her claws shredding everything within reach. She burst through the last wall and leapt out into the cool evening air high above the city street, and fell. She crashed down onto the stone lip at the top of the lower fortress, and then slid down the sloping wall, smashing out the ancient blocks as she descended toward the street.
By the time her feet touched the ground, Asha was exhausted. Her arms and legs were aching, and her back was throbbing from the constant writhing of her tail. As she straightened up, she saw through the swirling clouds of dust to the slender white outline of a woman with the smaller white shape of a mongoose on her shoulder in the alley across the street.
Priya.
The memory of the young man on the table faded away, and Asha lost her grip on the anger and the hate. She was tired, and suddenly she realized that she didn’t want to be there anymore, not in that city, not even in that part of world. Destroying the temple seemed petty and pointless now.
It’s just a building. They can always build another.
But the dragon’s soul within her raged on, and she could feel it wanting to destroy and devour, to lash out at the world and indulge in every tiny whim of her flesh. Asha exhaled slowly.
I take refuge in life.
I take refuge in the forests and the rivers, the mountains and the seas, and the deserts.
I take refuge in the trees and deer, and the tigers and the eagles.
I am not a dragon.
I am Asha.
She blinked and the reds and whites were gone, and her skin was her own again. The world was brown and gray and blue, and everything was moving so fast. People were running and animals were bolting, wagons and carts were overturning, and chunks of wood and stone were falling from the sky.
“Asha!”
She blinked again. Priya was yelling at her.
“Asha!”
She looked up at the temple and her heart nearly stopped. The entire wooden pagoda, all five stories of it, was toppling forward in her direction, its walls and roofs cracking apart as the entire structure collapsed. Asha ran.
She crossed the road in a flash of yellow and black, wrapped her arms around Priya, and carried the blind nun down the alley away from the collapsing temple. When the dust cloud caught up to them, Asha knelt down, wrapping her arms around Priya’s head.
I’m so stupid. What was I thinking? She shouldn’t have been here. She could have died. And then what would I…
The dust blew past them and Asha felt a few small splinters patter on her back and a few small pebbles rolled past her feet. When the noise died down, Asha looked up. As the dust cloud thinned away, she saw a ragged shape emerge into the last red rays of the setting sun. The pagoda was gone. Bits and pieces of it lay atop the rubble, but nothing larger than a man’s leg. The fortress had collapsed on two sides, falling in upon itself and then spilling out into the road.
I did that?
She looked down at Priya. “It’s over. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” the nun said. Sh
e opened her arms and revealed the huddled furry ball of Jagdish. “I think we’re both just fine. Was anyone else hurt?”
Asha looked back at the devastation of the street.
My gods. Why didn’t I wait? Just an hour or two. Just until sunset, when everyone would be home, out of the road, out of danger. It was that girl in the black dress. I was so afraid of standing by and letting her walk into danger, I didn’t even think…
“Stay here. I’m going to see if anyone needs help.”
Asha headed back down the alley and stepped out into the shadowed devastation. She heard the soft crackling of falling rocks, the grunts and cries of frightened animals, and the coughing of weary and battered people. One old mule was hawing and grunting, but all of the human voices were calm, though frightened and weary.
No one is screaming. Perhaps I waited long enough after all.
“Is anyone hurt?” she called out. “I’m an herbalist. Is anyone hurt?” She stood still for a moment, listening, trying to peer through the last traces of the dust. She wondered if her accent was making her Eranian difficult for the Aegyptians to understand her. “Anyone?”
Someone cried out. A woman, young and weak. She was speaking, but Asha couldn’t understand the language at all. She hurried over the rubble, nearly twisting her ankle twice, and found the young woman lying on the ground, half-covered in small bits of wood and stone, and lots of dust. But through the debris, Asha could see the young woman’s black dress and red hair.
Oh gods, what have I done?
Asha swept the boards and rocks away as fast as she could, and eased the pale girl onto her back. She leaned over her mouth and listened to her breathing, which was slow and dry. Then Asha gently pried the girl’s eyelids open, and discovered that she had golden eyes that contracted slightly in the fading light.
Asha sighed.
She’s alive. She’s going to be fine.
Asha’s gaze traveled up the girl’s freckled face to her curling red hair and the black scarf that had blown loose on the girl’s head. Asha gasped.
Standing high on the girl’s head, pushing up through her hair, were two tall triangular ears covered in red and white fur.
Fox ears? Who is this girl? What sort of city is this?
Chapter 2
Asha cradled the girl’s head in her lap and stared at the two furry ears. Then she grabbed the black scarf and pulled it over the girl’s head again to hide them. She called over her shoulder, “Priya! I found someone who… needs help. I’m coming back to you now.”
She slipped her arms under the girl’s shoulders and knees, and picked her up. Asha needed no hint of the dragon’s strength for this, the girl was so slender and light. She turned and started back toward the alley, moving slowly and carefully over the unsteady rubble. But she had only taken a few steps when she heard the rocks shifting and tumbling softly behind her, and she looked back.
A dusty hand emerged from the rubble pushing aside the broken stones and bits of wood one by one until the entire arm was free, and then the man was able to shove a large beam aside and pull his head out into the clear air. He coughed violently and rubbed his eyes, and Asha recognized him as the Aegyptian man who had led the girl up to the temple doors.
If he was taking her in there, then he’s no friend of hers.
Asha continued toward the alley where she could see Priya waiting with her staff in one hand and Asha’s medicine bag in the other. Out of the corner of her eye she saw people approaching the ruined temple from the far end of the street. They were men in red shirts and steel breastplates, and they carried strange spears in their hands.
Soldiers. Good. They can help the other injured people.
“Wait!” the man in the rubble called out. “Please! Is she all right?”
Asha paused and glanced over her shoulder. The man had both arms free now and he finished hauling his legs out from under a piece of the fortress wall.
His legs must have been shattered.
The man got to his feet and proceeded to sweep the dust from his long blue coat.
Or not.
He started toward her. “How is she? Is she all right?”
Asha noted the expression of genuine concern on his face.
But is he really worried about her for her own sake, or because he doesn’t want to lose his little servant?
“She’s alive,” Asha said. “I need to look at her. I’m an herbalist.”
“You’re from India,” the man said, with a curious look of surprise. He had thick, wavy black hair with a few faint streaks of gray, and a salt and pepper stubble along his jaw and thin cheeks.
“Yes.” She frowned.
“How wonderful. I myself studied with several Indian physicians when I was younger. You’re of the Ayurveda school, perhaps?”
“Yes.” She frowned a little less, and began walking again toward the alley with the man following beside her. “Where did you study?”
“Kolkata, mostly,” he said. He leaned over the pale girl’s face and gently swept her red hair back from her eyes and touched her cheek.
“Really?” Asha stepped into the alley beside the nun in red. “Priya, let’s move back from the road a little way.”
“Priya?” The man nodded earnestly. “A pleasure to meet you. Omar Bakhoum, at your service. I see you are of the Buddhist persuasion. Excellent. And I particularly like those lotuses in your hair. Very nice, very pretty.”
Priya smiled as she walked with them. “Thank you very much, Mister Bakhoum.”
“Omar, please.”
Asha laid the unconscious girl on the ground and took her bag of supplies from Priya. From inside it she produced a wooden tube of waking salts, which she waved under the girl’s nose. A moment later the girl winced and blinked her eyes open.
“Shh, everything’s all right, Wren,” Omar said, taking her hand. “You’re going to be fine. Does anything hurt?”
The girl called Wren groaned and tried to sit up.
“Please, lie still,” Asha said.
“She may not understand you. She’s still learning Eranian,” Omar said. “Her first language is Rus.”
“Yslander, not Rus,” the girl muttered. “And I speak Eranian good enough.”
“Well enough, dear,” Omar corrected her.
Wren sat up and coughed. She looked at Asha, and her tall furry ears twitched and turned from side to side, just like a nervous fox.
Asha stared at the ears. “They’re real? I thought they might be some sort of… They’re real?”
“Yes,” Omar said as he gently lifted the girl’s black scarf over her head again. “They are.”
Wren leaned forward as though she was about to stand up and Asha put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Sit still a moment, please. I want to be certain that you aren’t injured.”
Asha swept her hair back from her right ear, the golden scaled ear, the place where the dragon had bitten her as a child, and now the one part of her body that was forever clothed in dragon skin. She leaned close to the girl, listening.
Asha heard a riot of sounds tinkling and booming and thrumming from the city all around her. The souls of men and women, the half-souls of beasts large and small, even the fragile soul-stuff that lived inside the distant trees and gardens all crowded into her golden ear, but she tuned them all out to focus on the girl. Asha listened to the healthy, vital rhythms of the girl’s body, her heart, her lungs, and bones. But then she heard something else.
No, two somethings.
The first noise was the stranger of the two, a wild and hungry growling deep inside the girl’s body.
A second soul. An animal soul, just like the one inside me. But it’s not complete, not nearly. It’s only a tiny shred of the fox’s soul, just as I once had only a tiny shred of the dragon’s soul.
Asha held her breath, trying to focus a bit more, trying to hear through the wholesome song of the girl’s soul and past the agitated noise of the fox soul. And she found a steady hum.
Asha leaned back and looked at the man called Omar. “What did you do to her? Why can I hear your soul in her body?”
Priya gasped. “Remarkable!”
“You can hear it?” Wren asked.
Omar’s eyes widened. “You are a healer of extraordinary talents. But it’s really nothing to concern yourself with. If you can hear my soul in her, then you must be able to hear the fox as well.”
Asha nodded.
“Well,” Omar hesitated. “I gave her a bit of my soul to keep the fox under control. Without me in there, the fox would do more than just give her those curious ears.”
Wren cleared her throat. “While we’re talking about ears.” She pointed at Asha.
Asha touched her golden ear, feeling the hard scales, and she let her hair fall back over it again. “When I was young, I was bitten by a creature. It did this to me, and now I can hear soul-sounds.” A small part of her felt guilty for not explaining more, but these were still strangers who were about to enter the Temple of Osiris of their own free will.
He could be lying about how she ended up this way, but it didn’t sound like he was trying to deceive us. In fact, he sounds like…
She tilted her head as she stared at him.
“Two souls?” Asha grabbed Priya’s arm, uncertain if she should be pleased or preparing to run. “You have a golden pendant around your neck with your soul inside it, don’t you? You’re one of the immortals!”
Omar’s jaw dropped. By way of answer, he tugged the little chain around his neck out of his shirt and displayed the heart-shaped lump of golden sun-steel. Then he dropped it back inside his shirt, saying, “How? How could you possibly know that?”
Aetherium (Omnibus Edition) Page 175
