sweeping the horizons with a blue-white light.
A voice rose up from the crowd, an old man’s voice speaking in Eranian, and he said, “…but when Master Omar returns with more sun-steel, then surely we will unravel the last riddle of the aether…”
Asha shuddered as the voice faded back into the crowd.
Her hand holding her sari up to smother the light felt cold. Very cold. Asha blinked and could barely open her eyes again. She felt herself sinking down, down, down into the cool black depths of her mind. Asha bit her lip, trying to shock herself back awake, but still she felt herself slipping away. Dimly she became aware of other people all around her. No one was moving. Everyone was standing very still and gazing up through the darkness at a small sliver of light overhead. Asha looked up at the light and saw two fingers holding a needle, and behind that a face. A woman’s face. Her own face, her eyes closed, her skin pale and ashen.
“No!” she screamed.
The hot needle’s tip softened into a rounded bulb, and the entire shaft began to curve and fold, breaking contact with the blade. Instantly the black space with its silent watchers vanished and Asha blinked up at her own hands and the floorboards and the shining sword.
Asha dropped the melted needle and looked at her left hand. A thin trail of blood was escaping the scratch on her thumb, but the blood wasn’t running down. It was running up. The blood had trickled up her finger and along the melted needle toward the glowing sliver of steel.
She shivered, staring at the blood.
After a moment’s pause, she picked up her other needle and scratched at the scabbard instead of the blade and was rewarded with a few thin scrapings of a rough material that felt like broken pottery.
Then she used her needle to push the exposed sword blade away from the crack in the floor, and with the light hidden she crawled back out from under the bunkhouse and carefully made her way back to her own tent. She crept into her blankets and lay very still, listening to the murmurs of the sleeping woman beside her.
The old man’s voice echoed in her mind as she replayed his words over and over again.
Master Omar.
Sun-steel.
Aether.
Asha looked at her thumb and watched the single drop of blood roll down her finger toward the ground. Then she licked her wound and went to sleep.
7
The next morning, Asha made a last round of checks among her patients, trying to give them simple instructions for caring for their own injuries. But soon she had no more patients and no more chores, so she led Priya to the small passenger car of the train directly behind the engine and its huge bin of coal. They stood together on a small platform where the warm sun battled with the cool breeze to create some small comfort for them. The engineer sauntered past, explaining briefly that the train would be returning to Herat backwards, with the engine pushing instead of pulling. And then they were alone.
“You’re very quiet this morning,” Priya said. “Did you find something interesting last night?”
“Something troubling.” Asha squinted eastward across the camp to watch the men breaking and hauling stone away from the collapsed tunnel in front of the train. “There were voices in that sword. And the scabbard was made of this.” She pressed the shavings into the nun’s hand.
“What is it?”
“Fired clay. The blade melted one of my needles when I touched it, so this must be some sort of ceramic that can withstand the heat of the blade.”
“But what does it all mean?”
“That I was right. Sebek’s sword is the same metal as my aether siphon, and it’s full of human souls trapped inside the blade. I scratched my finger on my needle by accident and the sword tried to drink my blood, or more likely the aether in my blood, and my soul along with it. If the needle hadn’t melted away, I might have been trapped in the blade, too.”
The nun froze, her lips parted in a soundless cry.
“I know.” Asha took her hand for a moment.
“We have to take it from him! We have to set those souls free!”
“I’d love to, but I don’t see how. It’s too dangerous. We need to learn more about it, and him. When we know more, then maybe we can do something for those poor souls.”
The train’s whistle blew. Hooooooot. Hoot-hoot.
Asha glanced up to see the sun approaching its zenith. When she lowered her gaze, she saw Master Sebek striding across the yard toward them. He was not hurrying, but there was a power and purpose in his step. He came up to the train and smiled at the women. “Good day. I see you are on time.”
“Yes,” Asha said. “Thank you again for your help on our journey.”
“My pleasure.” He smiled briefly. “Do you believe that dreams have any real meaning?”
“Rarely.”
“Neither do I. Which is good, I think. I had the strangest dream last night that someone had stolen my sword. My seireiken.” His hand rested on the pommel of the short sword at his side. “The dream was so vivid, so real, that when I awoke I immediately reached for my sword, and I was relieved to find it right where I left it.”
The locomotive’s whistle blew again and the engine shuddered, sending a rumbling vibration throughout the train. They began to roll very slowly, and Sebek began to walk alongside them.
“But it was the strangest thing,” he continued. “My sword had been drawn. Just a fraction, just a hair, but enough to expose the blade. Very strange, don’t you think?”
Asha nodded. “Very strange. You know, your sword reminds me of a story I once heard about a temple on the island of Nippon.”
Sebek frowned.
“The story tells of a brotherhood of warriors with heavenly swords that can split a hair lengthwise, and that shine with the light of the sun even in the deepest darkness. Have you ever heard of such warriors?”
Sebek shook his head.
Asha shrugged. “I heard the story when I received one of my medical tools. A golden needle, also from Nippon. A needle with strange properties.”
The train picked up speed and Sebek strode faster to keep pace. His frown deepened.
“I’ve always wondered about this needle.” Asha patted the bag slung over her shoulder. “Perhaps one day I will go to Nippon and learn more about it. Unless, that is, someone in the west could also tell me about it. Do you know of anyone who might know about it, Master Sebek?”
“No.” He was jogging now, arms pumping and sword bouncing on his hip, and he was slowly falling behind.
The train whistled a third time and the chuffing of its pistons and wheels forced Asha to raise her voice. “Perhaps when I reach the heart of Eran, I will be able to unravel these riddles.”
Sebek’s eyes widened and he broke into a full sprint as the engine accelerated yet again. He had fallen back behind the passenger car, behind the coal car, and was now alongside the engine itself, and still falling farther behind.
Asha shouted into the wind, “Perhaps Master Omar can tell me more about this sun-steel!”
Sebek whipped his sword from its scabbard and with its bright golden light falling on his face he shouted at the engineer, but his words were lost beneath the noise of the engine, and he stumbled to a halt as the train raced out of the valley.
Asha took Priya’s hand and helped her to step back through the narrow door into the passenger car and to sit down on the shaking, shuddering seat. The nun clutched her bamboo rod in one hand and Asha’s sleeve in the other. Jagdish clung to the saffron cloth of her robe. “Asha? What did you mean? Who is Master Omar? What is sun-steel?”
“That’s what they call it, this metal in my needle and his sword. And I think Master Omar may have the
