Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Yes, they were,” Asha whispered. “Will you look for him now?”

  Wren glanced up at the dark sky overhead. “I guess so. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t know anyone here. I only just arrived in Alexandria today. Omar was the only person with me, and now, I mean, I don’t exactly blend in, do I?” She lifted her black scarf a bit to reveal her pale freckled cheeks, her curling red hair, and her tall fox ears. “Omar said I would be safe as long as I was with him. So much for that plan.”

  “Don’t worry,” Asha said softly. “You’ll be safe as long as you’re with me.”

  Wren smiled. “Are you sure it isn’t the other way around?”

  Asha stared blankly into the fire as it began to die down, burning redder and lower. “I don’t know anyone else here myself, and I’ve only just arrived. I don’t know the city at all. But I will help you. Priya would want me to. And I want to.”

  “Thank you.” Wren nodded. “I suppose we can ask people if they saw a woman with wings flying overhead. Or a dog-man running by.”

  “Perhaps. But we should be discrete.” Asha rubbed her finger over Jagdish’s head as she forced herself to focus on the task of finding the missing man. “The soldiers here carry dangerous weapons. No doubt other people here do as well. It may be safest to try to track the dog-man ourselves, with Jagdish’s help. A mongoose has a very fine sense of smell.”

  She picked up her medicine bag from where she had dropped it, and settled it on her shoulder. And then with Jagdish still cradled in her arms and Wren following close beside her, Asha set out into the dark streets of the ancient city and left the darkening ashes of the blind nun to settle into the shadows for the night.

  Asha looked back once before turning the corner and she tried to remember that moment, the sight of Priya’s makeshift pyre in a foreign land at the foot a mountain of broken walls. But already her heart was closing in, becoming colder, becoming harder. A part of her didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to carry the pain of that day. It was too awful, too impossible, too sudden. A part of her simply wanted to keep moving, to be somewhere else, to think about something else. And she hated herself for it as she turned and walked away.

  They started out in the direction that they had seen the dog-man running, and Asha began nudging and whispering to Jagdish, and leaning down to have him smell the ground, and eventually the furry mongoose began squeaking and leaning out, sniffing the air, and even pawing at whatever it was he was smelling. And so with little else to follow, Asha followed Jagdish’s nose.

  They paused from time to time at a corner to ask a waiter at a café or an old gentleman on a bench whether they had seen a strange man run past with the head of a great black beast, but the only answer they ever received was a shrug and a blank look.

  Jagdish went on sniffing and squeaking, and on several occasions he leapt across Asha’s arms and pawed at a turn in the road, and they would turn, and he would settle down, and this encouraged both of the women to think that he might actually be leading them somewhere.

  More than once Asha tried to focus on the cacophony of soul-sounds bombarding her scaled ear, searching through the noise of people and animals for something new, something strange, something that might be a winged woman or an immortal wearing a sun-steel pendant. But the city was so crowded and lively that she could barely even focus on the soft chitter of Jagdish’s soul or the exotic harmony of Wren’s soul intertwined with the fox-soul and man-soul within her.

  “You know,” Wren said softly, “About a year ago, a friend of mine died—”

  “Hush, please.” Asha shook her head.

  Not yet, please. And maybe not ever.

  Wren nodded.

  The city stretched on and on, and the two women walked side by side in the deepening darkness as the streets continued to empty of people and animals, of noises and smells. An hour of walking carried them through market squares all shuttered for the evening, and neighborhoods full of foreigners all babbling in strange languages in their tiny houses, and past several huge temples with wide stairs leading up to huge stone images of men and women that gazed out upon the city in immortal silence.

  Priya’s dead.

  Asha shivered.

  I should have… If I had only…

  She swallowed and glanced at the strange girl at her side, but Wren merely paced along in contented silence, her arms crossed to hold her many silver bracelets quiet as she moved.

  Priya should have lived, and I should have died. I should have died saving her. Priya had so much to teach, so much to share to make the world into the paradise we both wanted. And now she’s gone. Completely gone. I don’t even have her soul to talk to.

  All that’s left is me, and I can barely remember a fraction of what she taught me. About life. About balance. About peace. All I have is a power I can barely control, a power that’s wild and vicious. I’m as dangerous as all the doctors in Ming and all the Sons of Osiris combined.

  But Priya’s dead, and I’m still alive.

  What do I do now?

  Where do I go?

  What am I for?

  “I think he smells something,” Wren said, touching her arm.

  Asha looked down at the small hand on her arm and then up into the girl’s dark golden eyes. “He… Jagdish.” She looked down at the wriggling mongoose, which was leaning out over her left elbow and sniffing loudly.

  They turned to look down the darkened street and saw a dead end. The road continued past the intersection for a hundred paces to a dusty old fountain, and then simply stopped. The walls rising around the fountain looked a bit newer than the ancient stones of the temples, markets, and obelisks they had seen during their long walk, but these new walls left no way out of the street. No alleys, no doors, not even a grate in the ground for waste water to escape.

  Frowning, Asha walked down the dark road toward the fountain and stroked Jagdish’s fur. The mongoose huddled lower in her arms and by the time she reached the end of the street, he was no longer sniffing the air at all. He was shivering.

  Asha circled the fountain. It was wide and round, all made of rough red stone that had chipped and cracked in a thousand places. The bottom of the basin had been tiled once, but now only a grid-work of crumbling mortar and a few porcelain squares remained of whatever pattern or mosaic had been there. In the center stood a wide stone dais supporting a gray statue of a fish, its body arched as it leapt into the air. A small metal pipe where the water had once emerged was visible in the fish’s mouth.

  Looking away from the fountain, Asha saw only piles of trash, bits of paper, and shreds of cloth that had blown down the lane and been stranded in the corners and shadows of the dead end. She glanced at Wren, who shrugged, and then she looked down at Jagdish and found him sleeping.

  “Thus ends our search,” Asha said. “I’m sorry, Wren. I don’t think we’ll be finding your friend tonight.”

  Wren nodded. “I thought it might be a long shot since we were relying completely on your little friend’s nose.” She smiled briefly.

  “We should find a place to sleep for the night,” Asha said.

  “Yeah.” Wren looked up at her and Asha saw a rather different girl for a moment, one who was very young and uncertain and lost.

  “Don’t worry,” Asha said, forcing a smile. “I have some money and the place we stayed at last night seemed safe enough. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  Wren nodded and sighed. “All right. I just… I’m about a thousand leagues from home, and I can barely speak the language, and I’m not sure…”

  Asha put her arm around the girl and they leaned together.

  “I’m sorry,” Wren said, looking up. “You just lost your friend. I should be… I should be helping you, and not… Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. And you speak Eranian just fine. Better than I do. It’s not my first language either.” Asha patted her back, and stepped away. “Let’s go. It’s late. Are you hungry?”

  “A littl
e.”

  “All right. And don’t worry. Tomorrow, we will come back and keep looking for your friend Omar.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Wren said. “You don’t have to stay, or take care of me. I don’t want to impose on you, not after everything that’s happened.”

  “It’s not an imposition. I don’t have any… I want to help.” Asha paused to steady her voice. She glanced away for a moment, and then looked back again. “Besides, I have questions for your friend, when we find him. I want to know more about the immortals.”

  They started walking again, side by side, circling back around the fountain to head out to the main road, but Asha stopped short. There were two people standing beside the fountain just a few paces away. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, not with her plain left ear and certainly not with her golden right one. But now she could hear the strange new harmonies of the young man and younger woman standing before her.

  Divided souls. They’re both immortal!

  The young man was tall and slender with muscular arms, prominent cheek bones, and a perfectly shaven scalp. And his skin was impossibly black. Asha had seen many dark-skinned peoples in India and Eran, and even more since reaching Ifrica, but this handsome and silent youth was a different sort of black. A perfect black. The contrast was all the more striking against his bright white tunic and golden bracers, and the gold-ringed staff in his hand. He also had a black mask hanging from his belt over his right hip. A mask with sharp canine features.

  The young girl beside him was practically common by comparison. She was short and still a bit baby-faced for her age, which Asha guessed to be about twelve. Her skin was a more recognizable brown, and her hair a slightly wavy black. She too had a mask, but hers was perched atop her head, and it had a blunter muzzle and smaller ears. A cat, perhaps. Her dress was dark, trimmed in red with many small details that Asha couldn’t discern in the shadows of the unlit street.

  The girl was smiling. The youth was not.

  “If you’re looking for immortals, you’re certainly in the right place,” the girl said. “And if you’re looking for the man who was taken from the temple tonight, you’re also in the right place.”

  “Not that you’ll be seeing him anytime soon,” the sullen youth said. He lifted his staff.

  Asha stepped in front of Wren and pushed Jagdish into her arms, and began to search for a wellspring of anger that might bring back the dragon to protect them.

  Immortals? Shiva, save us. Can I fight an immortal? Two of them?

  But the black youth merely spun the staff across his fingers, turned his back to them, and sat on the lip of the old fountain, and stared at his sandaled feet.

  The young girl with the cat mask on her head sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind Anubis. He’s always like that.” She smiled brightly at Asha. “I’m Bastet. Who are you? And what’s it like having horns and a tail? Does it hurt? And does it ever tear your dress?”

  Chapter 5

  Asha stared at the girl, and then at the youth, and then back at the girl. “I’m sorry. What?”

  The girl who called herself Bastet went over to the fountain and hopped up on the stone ledge beside the black youth, and she wrinkled her nose as she said, “Your tail. I saw you grow it at the temple today. Does it hurt?”

  “Well, no, not exactly,” Asha said cautiously. “You, both of you, are immortal, aren’t you. Like Nadira and Gideon?”

  “Yes,” sighed the youth called Anubis. There was no pride or annoyance or anything else in his voice. There was only a hint of fatigue, which coupled with the faraway look in his eyes to make him look older than he had at first appeared.

  A cat mewed at the far end of the road.

  “The Aegyptian immortals.” Asha nodded. “Nadira told me about you. She said I should look for you if I ever needed help with my… condition.”

  “Nadira?” Bastet pouted. “Grandfather told me about her, but I’ve never met her. He said she never leaves Damascus. Not that I want to meet her. Nuns are always so boring.”

  “She isn’t a nun anymore,” Asha said. “But that isn’t why we’re here now.”

  “You mean you’re not looking for help?” Bastet giggled. “So you actually meant to knock down the Temple of Osiris? On purpose?”

  “Yes, I did.” Asha wrapped her hands around the woven strap of her shoulder bag. “The Sons of Osiris are evil. They torture and enslave both the living and the souls of the dead.”

  “Yes, they certainly do,” the girl said. Then she leaned forward to look around Asha. “And who’s your friend?”

  “My name is Wren. Wren Olgasdottir of Denveller.” The northern girl stepped closer, with Jagdish curled up in her arms. “I’m from Ysland.”

  “Never heard of it,” Bastet said.

  “No one has, apparently,” Wren said. “Omar brought me here to help him stop the Sons of Osiris, and to learn more about aether, but then Asha destroyed the temple all by herself, and those creatures took Omar, and now, I guess, we’re a bit lost.”

  “You were at the temple today?” Asha asked the Aegyptian girl. “You saw us there?”

  “Yep.” Bastet kicked her legs against the side of the fountain. A second cat joined the first at the end of the road.

  “Why were you there?”

  She stopped kicking and frowned at her shoes. “I’ve been trying to find my grandfather for a while now, and I thought he might be there, at the temple. I didn’t really think he’d be there, but I just had this feeling today, and I just had to go look. But when we got there we saw you. The gold scales were nice, but I really liked the red claws. The horns, not so much.”

  “Oh.” Asha nodded and frowned. “Thank you, I suppose.” She glanced down the deserted street to the dark intersection. No one was about except the cats.

  “I’ve never seen anyone like you before,” Bastet said. “Switching back and forth, growing things and then making them disappear. How do you do it? Some sort of amulet? And is it really a dragon, or is it just some sort of lizardy thing?”

  Asha leaned against the fountain beside the girl and noticed Wren smiling at her.

  She’s enjoying this.

  “It is a dragon, one that followed me west from Ming,” Asha said. “And there’s no amulet. Just the dragon’s soul. Inside me.”

  Bastet stared at her, eyes wide and mouth agape. “And you can just control it? By yourself? No one can do that!”

  Asha blinked. “I can. Mostly. I had help.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “I take it that you have seen other people with animal souls inside them,” Asha said. “But those people couldn’t control them?”

  “We’ve seen dozens over the centuries,” said Anubis. “All raging out of control. All slaves to their feral instincts. All dangerous. All needing to be hunted and destroyed.”

  “I see,” Asha said.

  “I’ve killed several,” the youth continued grimly. “So has my cousin Horus, and your friend Gideon. He comes here from time to time. He’s also set fire to the Temple of Osiris on several occasions, but he never tore it down, as you did.”

  Asha nodded with a pained expression as she remembered the kind-hearted immortal she had met in the east. “I’m sure it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

  “Uhm, there are other ways to control an animal soul,” Wren said. The girl shuffled Jagdish over onto her left arm and then reached up to pull the black scarf off of her hair, revealing the tall furry fox ears atop her head. “You can use another person’s soul, too.”

  Bastet leapt off the fountain and pressed close to Wren, staring up at her head. “That’s amazing! And you can use them and everything?”

  Asha saw the northern girl wince, and saw the fox ears twitch backward. “We can talk about such things later, perhaps in a more private place.”

  Wren pulled her scarf back up, and the Aegyptian girl skipped back to the fountain, where she leaned over the edge, balancing on the little stone wall on her belly.
Bastet said, “So you both came from different countries to attack the Temple of Osiris, all on your own, and showed up on the exact same day? Sounds like fate to me.”

  Asha shook her head. “Just a coincidence.”

  “There are no coincidences,” Anubis muttered.

  “Of course there are,” Wren said sharply. “Woden knows, the world is a chaotic place. It plays by a complicated set of rules, but there is no plan, there is no fate. So there are bound to be coincidences, lots of them, or at least lots of things that people think are coincidences. Think of all the people who happened to be inside the temple today, and the ones who happened to be out. The ones who died, and the ones who lived. There was no master plan at work there. Some of those people wanted supper, and some didn’t, and some had meetings, and some didn’t. That isn’t fate. It’s just life.”

  Anubis frowned at the northern girl, but said nothing.

  “You said before that this was the right place for finding immortals. Did you mean the two of you, or someone else?” Asha asked. “Jagdish, the mongoose there, we were following his nose when we came to this fountain. We thought he might be leading us to Wren’s friend, Omar, but he only brought us here for some reason.” She looked around the dead-end street as a soft, cool breeze picked up the bits of trash in the corners and swirled them around in the shadows.

  “Oh really?” Bastet smiled mischievously. “Well, your little friend there may have smelled something after all, because this dead-end road isn’t quite what it appears to be. There’s a door.”

  Asha looked around again, and saw nothing but solid stone walls and the fountain. “Where is it?”

  Bastet pointed at the stone fish in the center of the fountain. “You just shove the whole thing and it swings to the side, and there’s a tunnel. It’s one of the old entrances to the undercity. We used to use it all the time, but not so much these days.”

  “You used it? What’s down there?” Asha asked.