The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  Sigrun wrapped her cloak more tightly around herself. “I . . . will think on your words.”

  Do so, Stormborn. Now, go and fetch Loki’s son. We have much to do with Jormangand, Fenris, and their father.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  She needed time to think, and as she and Nith took back to the skies, she asked him not to go through the Veil to Palmyra, at least not unless he sensed a mad god approaching. She crouched low to his neck as his flight-speed exceeded the supersonic, and tried, desperately, to think. But her mind was completely blank.

  “Nith?” She stared down at the clouds as they rolled away below them.

  Yes?

  “Do you want to be human again?”

  I have been a dragon for two thousand years. I barely remember being in a child’s body. He hesitated. It would be nice to be able to seek a mate. That has never been an option. There is no other of my kind. Not that she would have permitted it. A ripple spread through his scales, almost like a shrug. But human form seems weak and vulnerable to me. How could such as I fight with but two hands? No armor? No breath to blast upon my enemies, no teeth, no claws, no tail, no wings? Bereft of half my senses?

  Sigrun cleared her throat. “When you put it that way . . . human form would disappoint you. Though you would fit better into spaces created for humans, then. Houses. Offices.” Trying to picture Nith in human form resulted in complete failure, but she had a ridiculous image of him the size of a lindworm, entering a market in Judea, and, like a fenris, trying to pay for meat at a counter with a plastic chit around his neck. She choked down the hysterical surge of laughter. It didn’t fit.

  If you wish me to make the attempt, I would consider it. But I think it best if I should wait. A surprisingly gentle touch on her mind. I say ‘we two’ to you, but Steelsoul has not heard this yet. And a human form would be . . . threatening. Steelsoul would not understand.

  No. He would not. Sigrun swallowed. But you are a part of my life . . . and have been for some time. It would be nice if you could . . . come into the house.

  It didn’t surprise her that he heard her thoughts. Clearly, he always had heard them. Then I shall work on making myself somewhat smaller. For such occasions. Amusement in his tone, and delight at the thought of being welcomed. Part of the family, instead of a pet or a weapon.

  Steelsoul will be apt to consider you a pet, I think, unless you speak to him directly.

  That is the major distinction that allows humans to think of fenris as people. For centuries, I was not permitted to speak to anyone except for her. He paused. And when she died, I simply did not wish to speak to others, until you had heard me. And you were not listening.

  I am sorry. That apology was far easier to give than the one she had offered Freya.

  I understand. You feared to lose what you have before its time.

  Sigrun cleared her throat, and changed her line of thought. Do you think that the lindworms could . . . become more than they are now? They were shaped in your image. The grendels are training them for war. Like horses or dogs.

  I do not know. I have never felt much kinship to these small beasts. But it is something that we can look into, as well. They may once have been human, as the fenris were. They might be human again, too. For a given value of that much over-rated word. There was a caustic note in Nith’s voice.

  The distraction only lasted a few moments. It cleared her head enough, however, that she was able to, wincingly, let herself look at what Freya had told her. The benefits of being an . . . entity. What would I do with these unlooked-for powers? I am already, technically, a godslayer. Should I hunt down Apollo of Delphi, drag him from the Veil, and kill him? She snorted at the thought. Even if it weren’t vainglorious, it wasn’t possible. The repercussions would be too severe. She and the other lictors had slain gods before. Unintentionally. But they’d never done so as the agent of another god. The political issues had been ironed over, when it had been clear that they had had little choice, each time. But now? As an entity herself, she might be even less of a free agent than before. The gods of Rome yet lived, and there were treaties between the gods, that those of Valhalla were bound to, as had been clear from the conversations that had swirled over her head in the great hall.

  She sighed and pushed the thoughts away. Concentrated instead on trying to unlock, in her mind, how to make Adam’s arthritis a little less crippling.

  Now that her mind spun less, Nith slipped back through the Veil, and brought them out again, circling to approach Palmyra from the south. The huge dragon slid through the sky over the Roman encampment leisurely, trying to indicate his peaceable intent by . . . not attacking. No sudden movements. Far below, people boiled out of a hospital building, like ants from a kicked hill. That doesn’t bode well, Nith noted.

  Land there, please.

  His black-silver form landed heavily, causing the people around them to scatter, and the legionnaires present who were in uniforms, and not hospital gowns, raised their weapons, clearly thinking that they were under attack.

  Sigrun slipped down, floating to the ground, and tossed back her hood, holding her free hand up in a gesture of peaceful greeting, addressing the troops around her in good Latin. “Ave. Tribuni angusticlavii Sigrun Caetia. What’s going on here? And where can I find Centurion Rig Lokison? He’s in the twenty-fifth legion. Where are they bivouacked?”

  Si . . . my friend. You don’t need to do that. Your othersight . . . .

  Forming the words inside her own mind was easy enough, after decades of working with Lassair and Saraid. I . . . need to be mortal when I’m allowed to be. Besides. Loki hid Rig from the sight of gods. He and Fritti might be the only two people on earth whom the mad gods would completely overlook.

  “They’re encamped about half a mile south of here,” a centurion told her, gaping up at the dragon, and then swiveling his head slightly down from Nith to stare at her as well. “But . . . the hospital’s under attack from some kind of a demon. I saw an officer of the twenty-fifth go in there a half hour ago—we’ve got counter-summoners on their way—”

  “On it,” Sigrun told him, and glanced up at Nith. Another occasion on which being somewhat smaller might be useful.

  Drag it outside and I will bite it in half for you. Faintly teasing tone, as if Niðhoggr were testing the boundaries of what she would tolerate.

  Sigrun actually found herself smiling faintly as she ran up the steps, though the expression faded rapidly as she made her way through the halls. Found the eviscerated body of one of the patients. . . . and then walked in on Solinus, Latirian, and Rig, all around the surprisingly small body of what had been, apparently, the demon in question. She swallowed, and opened herself to othersight. Rig was invisible to this form of vision, but she had no woundsense from him, either. Solinus was hurt, multiple broken ribs and a skull fracture, not to mention a concussion. Latirian, unharmed. Unknown Chaldean sorcerer, unharmed. She put a hand to the back of Solinus’ neck, and absorbed the wounds, letting her internal fires heal the damage to herself, and said, wearily, “I see you have all been busy.” She stepped forwards. “I think it best if all of you start at the beginning, and tell me everything that’s transpired here.”

  “I found this little Carthaginian boy in an abandoned district of town—” Solinus gave her a one-armed hug, keeping his sheet wrapped around him with his other hand.

  “—it was pretty clearly a trap, in retrospect—” Latirian cut in, sounding agitated.

  “—brought him back here, Rig took a look at him and saw something compromising his aura, as our Magus here put it—”

  “Aura, yes. It’s a useful term for lay-folk—”

  “And then we took an X-ray, and that seems to have set off a device that was surgically implanted in the boy’s stomach,” Rig put in, leaning against the wall. “Released a daeva from a container, and it immediately possessed the boy. It claimed that it wouldn’t have used him as a full avatar from the first moment, if Sol and Tiri hadn’t been in the
room with it when it woke up. Would’ve just gone around quietly killing everyone in the hospital, instead.”

  “I’ve never fought anything like that before,” Sol admitted. “It was able to hurt me even in flame-form. I thought I was going to go out.”

  “Me, too,” Latirian said, sounding shaken. “I have no idea how Rig kept it so . . . occupied.”

  “Illusions.” Rig shrugged. “Led it over a binding circle, and then the Magus here did a gods-be-damned good job of exorcizing and banishing it. But the boy’s still alive. Some part of his spirit—tattered remnants of it, anyway—is still in there. Trapped in a warped body.” He turned and gave Sigrun a look. “I’m really glad you’re here, Aunt Sig. Maybe you can fix this.”

  The conversation was almost prosaic, by Sigrun’s standards. The words and the voices, heart-warmingly familiar, easing some of the ice out of her heart. And there was nothing but love and trust in all those young eyes, which . . . weren’t really that young anymore. Too much experience. Too many battles. And not one of these youngsters was yet thirty years old. Sigrun sighed, and dropped to her knees beside the little body. Turned the boy over, and winced at the sight of the extra arms, the wings, the tail. A physical violation to go with the ones of mind and spirit. “This should never have happened, little one,” she murmured, softly. “Let us see if I can offer you anything besides a gentle death.”

  She closed her eyes. Swallowed hard, and opened her mind to seiðr. For the first time, she began to understand that Loki and Freya’s gifts went far beyond what sorcerers like Kanmi and Minori could do, though she still intended to talk to Min about this. A sorcerer couldn’t disentangle a broken mind, or reshape memories as Rig had been able to do, since Baal-Hamon. As Sigrun herself could do.

  She could also see, in othersight, the binding cord between the frail vessel, and the daeva that had inhabited it. It was nowhere near as powerful as the binding Apollo had put on Sophia. She’d thought, less than ten years ago, that she might have been able to snap that bond, if she’d dared fight the sun-god. This was a scant thing, in comparison.

  First thing was first, however. She found the tiny, frightened scraps of awareness. Barely any more than the first fenris she’d knitted back together with Saraid, so long ago. She’d had quite a bit more experience since then, however. She tied the memories together. Found, and eased to the back of the mind, the intolerable moment of being taken over by the daeva. The memory of little hands tearing a grown man apart with claws, she erased, entirely. She tied the shattered remains of the psyche back together, and paused for a moment. There wasn’t quite enough there. There would be, in time, as he grew up, as he gained in memories and experience . . . but for the moment, he’d need something to keep it all together. So she looked at Solinus, compared for a moment, and knitted into the boy a little of Solinus’ strong will and cheerful nature, the core of equanimity. An echo. A trellis, on which a vine might grow. “Aunt Sig . . .” Solinus’ voice was uneasy, suggesting that he’d felt her touch.

  “I am not binding you to him. You will not wind up with an additional son.”

  Solinus glanced down at the small body. “I wouldn’t mind, necessarily, adopting him, if he survives. Saki might kill me if I don’t ask her first, though. Since she’d be the one doing all the real work.” A faint, lopsided smile. “He’s a fighter, though. Just . . . be careful?”

  “I am always careful.”

  The boy opened his eyes as she sped up his body’s now-native regeneration, taking the wounds from him. She couldn’t dampen her rune-light, so when he looked up, he surely saw a face covered in glowing rune-marks under her dark hood. “Easy,” she told him as he lurched into wakefulness. “Do you feel better?”

  “A . . . little. I think.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I . . . don’t remember.” The small face contorted in distress.

  “Hannibal,” Solinus provided. “I never got a family name.”

  “The daeva’s name, please.” Sigrun looked up at the Magus, her expression blank.

  “Tawrich. She’s the essence of hunger. Immortal and eternal foe of Haurvatat, she who is Wholeness . . . .”

  “Thank you. That was all I needed to know.” She looked back at the boy. “All right, Hanni. This might sting a little, so you’re going to have to be brave.” The same tone with which she’d cleaned up a generation or so of skinned knees. Then she closed her eyes, reached out, and snapped the spectral cord that bound him to the daeva.

  The boy screamed in pain, and Sigrun slid him to the floor as he convulsed. Latirian raced to his side, making sure that he didn’t damage himself, and Sigrun stood. Held onto the end of the cord that she’d just severed, and pulled. “Tawrich,” she hissed, and her spear snapped to her hand. She could feel startled resistance on the other end of the line, and pulled harder.

  The daeva emerged from the Veil, and everyone in the room yelped and backed up. Solinus went flame-form, burning his sheet to ash. Latirian hovered over the boy, projecting a shield of fire. The boy screamed and backed away. Rig vanished, and the Magus started a banishing ritual, the words tumbling out over themselves.

  Sigrun wrapped power around the daeva, forcing it to recoil, forcing it into a manifested form. You dare! I am hunger! I will feed on your soul, valkyrie!

  It leaped for her, and she side-stepped. Caught it with one hand, and drove it to the floor by its shoulder . . . a little bitahevn Adam had taught her, long ago, though she was startled that it dropped so easily. She drove a knee into its back, wondering why it didn’t recoil to the Veil, even as she wrapped it more securely with seiðr, though the magic was hesitant, and far less reflexive than a physical attack. Every move she made seemed slow and deliberate as she lifted the spear that had tasted the blood of two gods. The wooden shaft needed replacing now and again, as it shattered from the rigor of combat. But the metal, and, more importantly, the will behind it, had stayed the same. “You were hunger. Not, I think, anymore.”

  She drove the spear into the back of its neck, removing the head. Again, she was baffled by how easy this had been, and for a moment, she wondered if it were some form of illusion. A deception. But then she felt a brief surge of energy, and the red and black vortex that limned the creature’s manifested body vanished from othersight. Sigrun turned and spat. “Foul thing,” she muttered, and stood, kicking the head away, conscious of eyes on her in the room. The Magus, staring in shock. The little boy’s eyes, showing whites all the way around.

  And yet . . . Solinus resumed his normal form, and grabbed for one of the lead aprons in the room, saying, cheerfully, “Nice work, Aunt Sig!” as if this were an altogether everyday occurrence.

  Latirian released her fire shield, and looked up at Sigrun, relief in her face. “What about his physical changes?” Her first words were oddly prosaic. As if she were numb to wonder. And the young woman was also . . . very used to Sigrun having the solutions to problems. I will have to ensure that she doesn’t default to relying on me when she sees me.

  “Surgery, perhaps—” she offered.

  “He’s had enough trauma, Aunt Sig.” Latirian’s tone was reproving. “Can’t you reshape him?”

  “Whatever gave you the impression that I can shape someone’s form?”

  “Mother said you showed her and Aunt Saraid how to build the switch inside the lycanthropes that lets them change forms.”

  Another open-mouthed stare from the Magus, and Sigrun cursed Lassair in the silence of her soul. “I provided information, nothing more. Your mother is far better at such things than I am.”

  “But you’re here,” Latirian pointed out, cradling the child to her.

  “Your mother has no excuses at the moment. She’s less than a hundred miles away.” Looking at the child’s glazed eyes, however, Sigrun cursed herself now, and relented. “But . . . I will try.”

  She knelt again and gave it a careful effort, before shaking her head. “I . . . don’t know what I’m doing. I can reconstruc
t a mind. I can heal a body. This is . . . not something I am willing to experiment with, not on someone so young.” She put a hand on Hanni’s head. “Just a moment.”

  She considered, briefly. Lassair might be grateful for the chance to help a child. It might recompense her for the one we couldn’t save from Baal-Hamon’s fires, years ago. But on the whole, I’d rather ask Saraid. More experience with traumatized spirits in bodies no longer quite their own. She was fond enough of Lassair, but she really rather thought that the spirit had taken advantage of Trennus’ good nature over the years. That didn’t mean she didn’t like Lassair. On the contrary, she did. But after some thirty years of living next door to the strange family, Sigrun felt a good deal of affinity for Saraid. They shared a preference for silence, and the forest-spirit seemed capable of . . . being . . . when Lassair always needed to be doing. So if Sigrun had a choice between which of Trennus’ spirits to spend time with, she would almost always pick the white hind, the white wolf, over the fire-spirit. And of course, Saraid had been there yesterday with Trennus . . . . He called her there for me. Sigrun sighed and steeled herself. Saraid?