Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “What’s happening?” Taziri asked. “Where is it?”

  Metal screamed and stone cracked, and the metal plate ripped free of its chains and flew high into the air with dust and pebbles trailing after it as it arced over the road and came streaking down toward the obelisk.

  “Run, run!” Asha spun and grabbed Taziri’s arm to run back from the road down the dark alley. Gideon lingered at the roadside, beckoning to Wren to hurry back out of the open. A second later, the metal plate smashed into the ancient stone obelisk. The pillar exploded into large and small fragments of dust and etched sandstone, which rained down on the walls and ground and people.

  Asha felt something strike her calf and her leg collapsed from beneath her. As she fell, Taziri turned to help her up just as another head-sized rock crashed down into the magnet device in her hand. The machine fell to the ground and all of the delicate wires and switches and screws were crushed and scattered into the darkness, leaving only the sun-steel rod intact, but trapped under the rubble. Taziri fell backward, clutching her arm as she struggled to get the heavy black battery off her shoulders. Asha rubbed her leg, finding it unbroken but bruised from knee to ankle and bleeding heavily from a long gash on the side. Standing up, she found she could put her weight on it and walk, though it hurt a great deal.

  “Damn it.” Taziri stared down at the ruins of her invention. She looked up, devastated and lost. “I can’t fix it. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about that now.” Asha helped Taziri up, and together they limped back toward the obelisk.

  The huge metal plate rested on the shattered stump of the pillar like the lean-to shelters that Asha had once made as she traveled across the forests of India. Beneath the roof of the plate she saw a ragged mound of broken stones, some with smooth faces and some still bearing the ancient Aegyptian glyphs.

  “Here, over here!” Taziri pointed at the ground at her feet and started digging with her uninjured hand.

  Asha hurried over to help her. They could see Gideon’s head and shoulders, and underneath him, a large fox ear in a pool of dark red curls.

  “Wren? Wren!” Asha grabbed the stones on Gideon’s back and dragged them off. “Wren!”

  Gideon coughed.

  There was one very large chunk of the obelisk lying across the soldier’s back, pinning him down. Asha set her feet, slipped both hands under it, and pulled with all her strength. The stone didn’t move, and neither did Wren.

  “Wren, can you hear me?” Asha yelled through clenched teeth as she strained to move the stone.

  Move, damn you, move!

  As the jagged edges of the rock cut into her hands, she felt the dragon stir.

  Not you, I don’t need you!

  Still, the dragon purred and growled, and an angry heat began to build in her chest. She glanced down and saw the golden scales on her hands and on her feet. The rock began to rise.

  Gideon coughed and moved his head.

  There. Did Wren move too?

  “Wren? Wren!” Asha strained at the rock and it rose a hair higher, and the golden scales spread to her fingertips and up her forearms and lower legs. She felt the dragon’s strength filling her body and the stone grew lighter in her hands.

  There! Wren is moving, she’s alive!

  Another screaming roar echoed across the road and Asha looked up to see a dark shape emerge from the hole that had been covered by the metal plate.

  The thing that climbed up out of the ground was massive and its muscled flesh rippled with long, stiff feathers. At first only the dim outline of the creature’s head rose above the ground, a long sharp head with huge silver eyes and a beak shaped like an enormous axe. The beak opened and the beast quorked and snorted. Then it bobbed its head and leapt up from its buried cage and crashed onto the crumbling stone road.

  It stood twenty feet high on two thick legs that ended not in claws or talons but in blunt stumps that reminded Asha of an elephant’s feet. Above its rough flanks, its flesh was covered in dark feathers that glittered blue and green in the shadows, and if it had any wings, they were too small for her to see. The beast stood in the shadows, sniffing the cold, stale air and hissing softly deep in its throat.

  “What is that?” Asha whispered.

  “It looks like a hatun-anka,” Taziri whispered back. “In the New World, they ride them like horses, but they’re only half this tall.”

  “So it’s only a bird?”

  Taziri looked at her. “It’s a bird that eats men and horses on the battlefield.”

  Asha stared at the beast, wondering how such a thing had been made, and now, how such a thing could be unmade.

  The sword!

  Asha looked down at Gideon, still trapped under the stone.

  We need that sword now!

  “Gideon, get up! Wake up!” she hissed as loudly as she dared. “We need your blade now! Now! Taziri, can you reach it? If I let go of the stone, Wren could be crushed. You need to get his sword!”

  Taziri dashed over and began pulling on Gideon’s arm, to no avail. The beast’s head snapped up and its two silver eyes shown in the darkness, staring back at her. It took one cautious step toward them, and then another. The ground shuddered with each footfall.

  “Gideon!” Asha strained at the stone and felt the dragon within her awakening, its soul growling and preparing to roar, coiling to strike out, readying itself to swallow her whole and seize her body again.

  “To hell with his sword.” Taziri stood up, stepped into the road, and raised her left arm. She yanked a small switch and the medical brace on her forearm snapped open and a small revolver rose up as a trigger mechanism swung up into her left hand. And as the monster charged at her, she fired.

  BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

  Click.

  With each bang, a small bark of flame and smoke burst from the tiny gun, revealing the face of the beast, its brightly colored feathers, its huge unblinking eyes, and its smooth black beak, all rushing across the road bellowing with rage, threatening to crush the Mazigh woman beneath its feet or tear her in half with its vicious beak. But with each bang, the beast winced and recoiled, stumbling forward to the edge of the road as the blood ran down over its face. After the final shot, the huge predator groaned once, and toppled over on its side, gasping, only a few scant paces from the engineer’s feet. Its massive belly heaved and heaved, and then it lay still.

  Asha stared at the enormous body, and then slowly tore her gaze away to look at Taziri. The Mazigh woman was breathing fast and thin as she lowered her arm to her side and looked back at Asha. Her eyes were wide, her lips pale, and her complexion nearly white.

  Then Taziri’s trembling lips parted in an uncertain smile and she said, “You people and your swords.”

  Chapter 29

  While Asha held the fallen stone, Taziri helped Gideon and Wren crawl out from under it. The youthful soldier emerged with a cough and a grin, dusting himself off and bemoaning the small tears across the back of his jacket and pants. Wren fared far worse, and it only took Asha a moment’s examination to find three separate fractures in the girl’s left leg. And when she bumped the injuries, the girl screamed.

  “Sorry,” Wren said. She looked even paler than usual, her face shining with sweat, and she took quick, shallow breaths as she tried not to move or jostle her broken leg. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been in the road…”

  “You’re alive,” Taziri said. “That’s all that matters. We can fix a broken leg. Don’t you worry for a minute.”

  Asha rummaged through her bag for something to give the girl in black, but she had already given all of her anesthetics to the people back in the road by the bonfire. She exhaled and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you until we get back up to the city. Then I can splint this and make you some fresh painkillers.”

  “It’s all right,” Wren said as she leaned back against the wall behind her. “I can sit still for a little while. Go on. Go finish it. Find O
mar.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Taziri volunteered. She nodded at the shattered magnet device. “It’s not as though there’s much else I can do now anyway. Plus, I’m out of bullets.”

  Asha hesitated and glanced at Gideon, who nodded and shrugged as if to say that he couldn’t think of any better course. So she patted Wren’s hand, thanked Taziri for staying with her, and stood to leave.

  With Gideon at her side, she crossed the road and circled around the huge feathery beast to stand before the dark pyramid. The light of the seireiken only served to paint the face of the ancient tomb in starker whites and blacks, revealing every tiny crack and gash in the stone walls.

  “Together this time?” Gideon winked at her.

  She nodded.

  Stone by stone, level by level, they climbed up the stepped face of the pyramid. Some sections were harder to cross than others, but some were so broken and decayed and collapsed that there was an easy trail to follow with steps and handholds on every side. And so in only a quarter of an hour and without incident, they reached the summit where the small yellow signal fire burned high above the dark streets of the necropolis.

  From their airy perch, they looked down a stone corridor to a small chamber with a round hole in the floor where bright torch light flickered and soft voices echoed.

  “Do we have a plan?” Gideon asked.

  “I can’t be certain, but I think there are only two people left inside,” Asha said as she tilted her dragon’s ear toward the torch light. “Both immortal. So let’s be quick. Find Omar and get him to safety, and then deal with Lilith.”

  “Who does which?” he asked.

  “We both do both, together.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the glass vial with the powder mixture she had completed earlier by the fountain. With the open vial in one hand, she took a second vial from her bag, one that tinkled softly as the liquid inside sloshed back and forth, and she poured the warm water over the powders.

  Then she quickly replaced the rubber stopper, shook the vial several times, and rolled it down the stone corridor. The vial rattled softly on the bare stones, and then rolled off the edge of the hole and vanished into the chamber below. A moment later they heard the glass shatter, and a steady hissing sound filled the air.

  “What was that?” Gideon asked.

  Asha hurried forward to the edge of the hole and looked down. A thick white smoke was filling the room below, and she could hear people coughing.

  “A distraction. Let’s go!” She set her bag aside and slipped over the lip of the hole and into the room below. Holding her breath and narrowing her eyes, she darted forward through the smoke, following the sounds of the coughing and the sounds of the paired souls of the immortals. In the wider chamber, she found one of the strangers was to her left and the other to her right, and the one on the left sounded more male, so she turned in that direction.

  “Who’s there?” a woman yelled.

  Asha ignored her and a moment later she bumped into a table and through the smoke she saw a man’s boot and leg on that table.

  “Gideon! Over here!” she called out.

  Out of the smoke, the blazing white shape of the soldier’s triangular blade came hissing and crackling with tiny lightning arcs on its surface. Gideon stepped past her, coughing loudly as he inspected the table and the man on it, and the chains binding the two together. And then he gently sliced the chains and shackles apart with his seireiken as though the restraints were no stronger than butter and cheese.

  The prisoner sat up, coughing and waving his hand at the smoke. “Thank you,” Omar wheezed.

  The smoke began to thin away. Asha could see more and more of the room now, including the far wall and a thickly padded chair, and several trays of moldy fruit and bread.

  And a woman.

  The woman was tall and slender, and her bare arms were fairly muscular. Her long black hair shone even through the haze, and her blue silk dress shimmered with silver chains and bright, glittering jewels. She stood in the archway between them and the hole in the ceiling that led back to the outside world, and she placed her hands on her hips with a very stern and cold expression on her face.

  “Gideon,” she said. “How unlike you to barge into my home, uninvited and unwelcome, with some other woman.” She gave Asha a brief and disapproving glance. “I expected better manners from a man as honorable as you.”

  “I came for Bashir,” Gideon said. “We’ve already freed all of your other slaves, and healed them as well. You can’t hurt them anymore. Not the mortals, or the immortals. Horus and Isis are safe, too.”

  Lilith groaned and rolled her eyes. Then she tilted her head to one side. “Why would you do that? Why bother? Where’s the profit in it? Where’s the pleasure in it? Are you really such a small creature that you would enslave your will to someone else’s notion of justice or honor, to labor in these so-called good deeds just to earn the approval of some prince or god? Or is this all for my benefit? To spite me?”

  Asha helped Omar off the table to stand between her and Gideon. “We didn’t come here to waste our breath debating morality with you. Get out of our way.”

  “Or what?” Lilith smiled. The smoke had completely vanished now and she stood before them quite radiant in the light of the torches. The light danced and played over her jewels and skin… and over the tiny glints of gold on her bare shoulders and thighs.

  Asha frowned.

  Sun-steel needles? In herself?

  “Lilith, please, let these people go,” Omar said. “I don’t mind staying a while longer to talk. We have all the time in the world. But let them go. And don’t stand there dreaming of ways to hurt them, or the others outside. Just let it go. Please.”

  “No.” Lilith shivered as the changes began. The soft brown skin of her arms hardened into a rough, armored, reptilian hide, and thick curling ram horns erupted from the sides of her skull, winding around her ears to point forward as the shining blue feathers of a peacock rippled upward from her scalp. Dark scales covered her long, muscular legs, and her feet twisted and expanded into the three-toed talons of a bird of prey. And in her armored, jagged hand she held a short, slender seireiken that burned brightly, though not as brightly as Gideon’s.

  “I knew you might come for him,” Lilith said, her eyes fixed on Gideon. “So I prepared this just for you. I’m going to kill you, and take that bright, shiny toy of yours, and then I’m going to play with your dead body for the rest of the evening. How does that sound to you?”

  “Disgusting. And foolish.” Gideon shook his head. “I used to think you were the cleverest of us all.”

  “That’s because I am.” Lilith lunged forward with the seireiken, driving it straight for Asha’s heart, but Gideon’s arm was faster and he slipped his fiery blade in front of her. Lilith’s slender seireiken disintegrated against the soldier’s weapon, the sun-steel erupting into smoke and aether and molten blobs of liquid metal that dripped and spattered on the floor.

  Lilith glanced at the ruined sword once, and then tossed it aside. “So much for that.” And quick as a snake, she lashed out, grabbed Asha’s hair, and yanked her across the room. Gideon barely managed to pull his arm away before the deadly blade touched Asha’s skin, and she stumbled and fell against the far wall.

  “She’s not even immortal,” Lilith said, turning back to the men. “What use was she supposed to be to you, Gideon? A distraction? Or a sacrifice?”

  Asha stood up, her torn yellow sari hanging off her shoulders.

  She’s strong. Too strong. And too fast. The souls of all those animals inside her, they’re too powerful.

  She curled her hands into fists.

  Dragon! You are dead, and you are mine. You will never own this body, never swallow this mind, and never devour this heart.

  You are my servant now. My will is greater than yours. It always has been, even when I was a child.

  You’ve tried to kill me and failed. You’ve tried to enslave me and failed. Yo
u will never try again.

  Within her breast she felt the soul of the golden dragon writhing and glowering, but it did not scream, and it did not rage.

  Now, dragon, give me your strength. Not because I am angry or because my memories rouse you, but because I will it!

  The golden scales spilled out over her arms in a shining cascade from her shoulders down to her hands, where her ruby claws appeared and began to roast the air. She felt the scales harden on her belly and legs, enclosing her soft skin in armor stronger than steel and lighter than silk. Her body felt solid and warm, and sharp and bright all at once.

  “Lilith,” she said.

  The woman in blue looked back at her, and Asha saw the surprise in her eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I am Asha, the Dragon of Kathmandu.” She stepped forward. “And for the sake of all those you have tortured and killed, and those you would torture and kill in the ages to come, I am here to end you.”

  Lilith swung her crocodilian arm at her, and Asha raised her fist. Black scales crashed on gold scales, and though both women strained and pushed, neither woman moved.

  “A dragon?” Lilith smiled. “Fascinating.”

  “Gideon, get Omar out of here,” Asha said.

  Lilith lurched away from her and dashed across the room toward the men. “No, I want them to stay.” She shoved Omar in the chest and sent him flying back against the edge of the table.

  Gideon raised his sword to her in a defensive posture, but did not attack. “Please, Lilith, stop this now, while we’re all still alive. I don’t want to fight you. We can find another way!”

  “Yes. Here’s one.” Lilith smashed her armored fist into the corner stones supporting the archway above Gideon’s head and the roof collapsed in one sudden, plummeting motion and roaring crash, knocking him to the floor and burying his back and legs. Only his hands and a bit of black hair lay out in the open, with his seireiken gauntlet on the floor, the blade still exposed and still locked on his arm. Lilith nudged the gauntlet with her talon-foot. “That’s fascinating as well.”