Overhead, a shimmering dome of light appeared, as the defense grid that Erida, Minori, and so many other Magi had worked on came to life. They’d recently retuned it for energy reflection and dispersal, and Adam fervently hoped that it would work if needed.
Through the field glasses, he could see that they now had someone ringed, and that there were golden and silvery bands of energy wrapped around whoever it was . . . and then the dark figure who had appeared with the golden one moved in, dozens of smaller dark shapes leaving her form, like a storm of crows, or arrows, lancing out to attack the bound figure. Adam winced. Move it, he thought again, more urgently. Get away from the city!
As if they could hear him, they did precisely that, edging further south, heading for the desert. A blaze of white light went off, and he spun, closing his eyes and flinging an arm over his face. After a moment, Adam blinked rapidly, hoping he hadn’t just blinded himself, and fought violet afterimages as he looked up once more.
The explosion still filled the sky, like a star gone nova. The defense dome rippled rapidly through the spectrum of visible light, from violet to red and back again, barely visible against that hellfire glow. And then the dome tore completely asunder, and a wave of displaced, hot air hit Adam, hard enough that it knocked him on his ass on the cold, sleet-covered balcony, and every car-alarm in the neighborhood promptly went off—even on motorcars that hadn’t been driven in weeks or months. Adam swore, repeatedly and viciously under his breath, and tried to get to his feet, praying that he hadn’t just broken a hip. Wouldn’t that just take the cake. Sig’s out there, fighting for her life, and I get laid up with a god-damned broken hip . . . . He got his fingers on the balcony rail and hauled himself upright. He didn’t dare call to her. Not if she might still be fighting. Sig, he thought, his throat tightening. Please, don’t be dead.
He moved stiffly back into the house, and looked around in some surprise. Everything was still on the shelves. The house was only a couple of miles from the rich ley-lines that intersected at the Temple . . . all that power had to have gone somewhere. And that usually meant earthquakes.
The storm outside began to abate, as Adam sat in the living room, watching the replays of the combat that some news station had managed to catch on film, and would probably show for the next week. He’d known, objectively, that Sigrun was an entity now. However, to him, that had meant ‘a human with some extra powers.’ Just as she’d always been.
There were few differences between weak god-born and medium-powered sorcerers. Governor Caesarion, for example, was an example of a god-born so far from the wellspring of his powers, that he barely qualified. He healed a little better, and his skin had a few armor-like qualities. He could raise a fog or summon a few snakes. Nothing more. So, in terms of categorization, to Adam, Sigrun was a god-born who’d grown more powerful than average. There were probably statistical charts on it, somewhere, in some temple. He’d flinched at the notion that people were praying to his wife—and more so, at the idea that she was listening to them. That seemed a sure route to arrogance, pride, and believing all this . . . tripe.
Now his mind spun as he tried to put the world back together in a fashion that made sense to him. There had always been other gods. He’d understood that and accepted it since he was a child. They just weren’t his gods. And as he’d come to understand in his years as a Praetorian, those gods weren’t all-powerful and omniscient. They were spirits—highly powerful ones, but spirits, nonetheless—who knew as much as humanity knew . . . or would know . . . or some damn thing like that. It all interwove with time, space, and interdimensionality. But in the end, they might be gods, but they weren’t god. They weren’t responsible for the creation of the universe. They didn’t know why the universe existed. They were learning from humanity, and humanity from them, and they were all on the same journey together. But not all humans could grasp that, which was why some people got the simple truths, and some people got the complex ones.
There was, Adam ben Maor knew, something missing in his thought process. He could grasp the concept of a human or a spirit who had become enormously empowered. Saraid and Lassair had always been spirits. It more or less made sense for them to be worshipped by people who needed simple truths. And Trennus? He could more or less accept that his friend had become some sort of demigod. If not one of nature, then of . . . interdimensional travel, as ridiculous as that sounded. No one worshipped Tren; the mere concept was laughable. Kanmi had come back from the dead . . . but again, no one worshipped him. The notion made Adam want to snort. Min was hauling a goddess around inside of her; people worshipped Amaterasu, but certainly not Min. Ehecatl had become the walking repository of Quetzalcoatl. And Adam had only the god’s word for it that his old friend still existed inside of him. Frankly, Adam doubted it.
Adam’s hands opened and closed. None of his friends could do, however, what he’d just seen Sig do. It was as close to seeing a human become a spirit as he could ever have conceived. She fought like a seraphim . . . part of his mind whispered, and Adam closed his eyes. That was the fundamental difference between Sig and say, Trennus. She had . . . transcended the human. She’d been trying to tell him this in words for years now, and he’d nodded and told her to go be a goddess. To fight alongside her gods, free of concern about him, was what he’d meant by those words. But all the little things had bothered him. And now . . . .
. . . he didn’t know what to think, or feel, or do. He’d taken it as a fundamental truth that in combat, when you fought someone on the mats, you could see who they really were. The people who were devious, layering feints within feints. The people who liked to control the fight, their environment, everything. The people who were purely reactive and relaxed. The people who wouldn’t untense their muscles, even to let the instructor teach them something, because they had to show how strong they were, how dominant, at all times.
It had been years since he’d seen Sigrun in combat. But even in that last battle against Baal-Hamon and the technomancers, she hadn’t been anything like what he’d just seen. She’d been . . . beautiful. No. Sublime. Somehow, the sublime became ordinary, when you saw it every day. His heart ached with awe and wonder, every time he watched the replayed, jittery footage of the fight. Sublime. Transcendent. Inhuman, and yet, the pinnacle of what a human could become.
And on the other hand? I’ve lost her, he thought, tiredly. Because no one, after being that, would limit themselves to being merely human again. No one could. Because you can never go backwards, not without unmaking yourself. Cutting parts of yourself away, and denying them.
The door banged open, and Adam looked up as Sigrun hung up her cloak by the door. Nith, his lindworm form lithe and supple as ever, with no evidence of wounds, entered behind her, and found the corner of the living room where Sig had taken to leaving books for him, and delicately levered one open with a shining diamond claw. Sigrun glanced at the far-viewer, and winced. “Could you turn that thing off? I doubt they’re covering the real news—”
Her tone was prosaic, in comparison with his ruminations, and it took him a moment to match her. “How many people died?” Adam said, turning off the device. “How many mutations are we looking at? There was no earthquake, so—”
“That’s the thing,” Sigrun said, slowly. “I know one of the pilots died. But there are no reports of other fatalities. Minimal property damage. I caught some of the power, and so did Nith, Freya, and the Morrigan . . . but I know we didn’t catch all of it.” She sat down, rubbing her face. “That’s why it took me so long to get here. I needed to stop over in the Veil. Heal up, and try to stabilize the energy I’d just inherited.”
I do prefer ‘inherited’ to ‘consumed,’ Nith put in, sounding amused.
Adam frowned. “Where did all the energy go, if not into the ley-lines?”
“Kanmi, Min, and Erida are already working on that. They’re out taking measurements all over town.” Sigrun rubbed at the back of her neck with both hands, but Adam sat there, staring
at her. The human façade seemed entirely real. Like the genuine Sigrun he’d always known. But he’d seen her real face now, at least in part. And he could never unsee it. “They’re telling me it was absorbed. And they don’t know how or why or by whom.”
I’m positing that the god of Abraham did it, Kanmi’s voice rustled in Adam’s mind, and Adam jumped, shocked at the intrusion. Sorry. Easier to have a conversation than have everyone relay things piecemeal. We know he exists . . . at least enough to bind people like you to him, Adam. He just doesn’t take an active hand in events. Maybe he’s made himself into the world’s biggest heat-sink, and poured himself into the ground here. You do call it the Holy Land, after all. Either way, it’s a damned lucky break for Judea. And a good explanation for why most of the mad godlings stay as far the fuck away as they can. They’re scared they’ll be eaten.
At least, if this is true, he has a discriminating palate. Adam jolted at hearing Sigrun’s voice in this manner. He has yet to consume Nith, Loki, or me, and left Freya and the Morrigan alone, too. Comforting, yes? She leaned back in the chair, and absently reached over to turn a page in Nith’s book for the dragon. Quite a few books in the house now had ragged edges that suggested that diamond talons had tried to turn fragile pages, but had required several attempts.
Adam hesitated. This was Sigrun. He knew everything about her, or so he’d have said before today. He knew the tiny shifts of expression, the way her eyes warmed when she was in private, around the people that she knew. This was his wife. And yet, she was as distant and untouchable as the moon. “How badly were you hurt in the fight?” he asked. It was like picking at a scab.
Sigrun closed her eyes. “Tezcatlipoca technically did more damage. He summoned a rather large quantity of lava directly over my head. Burns always hurt worse.”
Adam noticed, immediately, that the words were a dodge. “That wasn’t what I asked, Sig. How badly were you hurt?” He stood, and moved closer, and her eyes flew open as he touched her shoulder. The part of him that still saw his wife sitting there hurt. He wanted to check her over for wounds. Touch her hair. Take care of her. But there wasn’t enough hot water and scented soap in the world to erase what the world itself was grinding into her. There seemed nothing he could do for her. He couldn’t fight at her side. He couldn’t comfort. He couldn’t protect. Useless, hissed the back of his mind.
“I’m fine,” Sigrun said, wearily. “The energy released with her death replenished what she took from me.”
“Sig—”
She sustained wounds including three ribs, not cracked, but sliced, an open lung wound that filled with blood before her body managed to heal the damage, talon cuts through the armor at the shoulders, shoulder blades, neck, and near the kidneys, as well as a few other incidental lacerations from the Butterfly’s sword. Nith’s catalogue was crisp. Additionally, the sword leeched essence from her with each strike. I felt its bite myself. Not that you have asked, but I suffered a broken snout, thirty-seven cuts, shattered scales, and a few fractured ribs. Sigrun prevented me from being blinded, for which I thank my lady.
Nith! He doesn’t need to hear this! Sigrun glared at Nith.
“Yes, I do!” Adam snapped out.
Does not Tyr teach that if someone can ask the question, they are ready to hear the answer? The dragon’s voice was infuriatingly calm.
“Trying to protect me is a little misguided, Sig!”
“All that happens when you find out is that you get angry,” Sigrun returned, probably more sharply than she intended. “You worry. You grow frustrated that you can’t help. Your blood pressure goes up, and your adrenaline begins to flow, but you have nothing on which to use that adrenaline, so your body lives in constant state of stress.” She sighed. “It’s not good for you.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s good for me,” Adam warned, and regretted the words, again, as soon as they’d left his mouth.
Her eyes, so old and tired in that young face, went bleak. “Of course I do not,” she said, quietly, and stood. “I will be going now.”
“Sig—” Adam felt wretched. He couldn’t help, unless he made the damned choice that they all wanted him to make. And yet . . . his god was here, apparently. Silent. But present, draining away the power of the entity that had died in the skies. He’d spent his entire life believing that words written in the Iron Age couldn’t be interpreted literally by a world that had split the atom. He had a book of instructions, and a mind gifted at interpretation and the finding of patterns.
Yet he couldn’t find the pattern that fit his circumstances. When he did, he knew it would all click together like a kaleidoscope, and the way forward would be clear. But in the meantime, he was losing Sigrun. His beautiful, strong, intelligent wife was disappearing, day by day. Becoming something else. Someone else. “I’m sorry,” he managed, and looked away. “Half the time, I’m angry, and I don’t even know what I’m angry at.”
“The world,” Sigrun suggested, and swallowed. “It’s what I’m angriest at, myself, most days.”
Chapter 14: Winter’s Heart
It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.
—Horace, Epistles, 24 AC
We are not born for ourselves alone.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, 1 AC
Nothing endures but change.
—Heraclitus, quoted in Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. ca. 579-
519 BAC.
_____________________
The year 1996 passed in a blur for most of humanity. Most people could not afford to be concerned about current events other than those that impacted their own country, their own people, their own family, directly. Even those who might have been expected to look at the big picture were hard-pressed to see it. There were simply too many problems, all at once, for any one person to see it all clearly. Minori said it was a question of too many variables; Prometheus contended that there was no such thing. That the issue was not the number of variables, but correctly identifying them. Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t help. And while it should have concerned people that their neighbors’ homes were burning down, all the individual nations of humanity were far too busy trying to keep their own homes from going up in flames, to render assistance to those next door.
In Europa, at the height of summer, Mars met and challenged Camulus, one of the many Gallic gods of battle, and killed him. A week later, Taranis, the Gallic thunder-god, found Mars in the ruined area of Gaul that had once belonged to the Belgae, and moved to attack. Mars parleyed, offering honorable terms of engagement. It would be a duel. Just the two of them and their powers . . . in an area where the only people who might be damaged by their combat would be grendels and lindworms. There was a detachment of jotun and fenris in the region, trying to hold back the grendel tide. And they were the sole witnesses to the duel.
The fenris howled in homage to the battle unfolding to the north of them, an unearthly chorus that echoed across the land. The jotun, watching from the hills beside the fenris, could just make out the scene, and shook. “We should get out of range,” one of the younger jotun suggested.
“I don’t think we can run fast enough to get out of range of any shockwave,” one of the veterans replied, grimly. “And if we run, the grendels have an open path into western Gaul. We stay.”
Mars tore the spires off of the ruined skyscrapers of the Belgae capital of Toxandria, and hurled them like hundred-foot long spears at Taranis; Taranis dodged them, or brought lightning down on the metal while it was still in Mars' hands. Mars lofted chunks of masonry at Taranis, and the thunder-god lashed at them with the winds, deflecting them from their course. And then Mars landed in the center of the city, near the tangle of I-beams that had once been the provincial governor’s palace, and lifted his hands.
The litter of weapons still on the ground where the defenders had been overrun, lifted up. Rocket launchers aimed themselves. Tanks cranked their guns skywards. Machine-gun turrets loaded thems
elves, and calibrated their sights. A fusillade from a hundred different kind of weapons arched through the air, all aimed for Taranis, leaving tracer fire and smoke to mark their path.
Both gods were bloody at the end of ten hours, but neither would run. Neither would surrender. And Mars was clearly frustrated at what he’d thought would be an easy victory. The only thing that stopped the battle was the approach of a mad godling, from over the North Sea. Another time, Taranis, Mars said. You are an honorable and worthy opponent. I bid you farewell.
Taranis, wounded and weary, and a mad godling darkening the sky behind him, called back, Stay and fight the mad one. We can defeat it together.
Mars hesitated. He was Mars Pater. He had always been more of a father to his people than Jupiter. Rome had ever loved Mars, and had never truly accepted childish Ares. Taranis bared teeth at him. Or would you have it said that you ran and left me, wounded, to fight your battles for you?
I will not be your ally after, Mars warned, and rose into the air in a red streak. The mad godling was one of the largest yet seen. And he and Taranis fought it, until a dozen smaller godlings rolled in behind it, like hyenas following a lion. Take the small ones. I will stay on the largest.
The Goddess Embraced Page 113