Sigrun didn’t know what to say, so she stood behind her sister as Sophia lay on the divan, her face reddening where Minori had slapped her. “Here’s where Rig and Inghean are going to get married, in 1985. His father will be there for the ceremony, you know. Fritti’s going to see Loki, like a ghost at the feast, and cry on your shoulder when she can’t find him. Oh, and here’s Masako and Solinus getting married the same year. Oh, how the Archmage will rage and weep that he wasn’t there to see his little girl get married, or hold her first child in his arms. Or either of his sons’ children. All those years, stolen . . . but necessarily so.” Sophia’s green eyes filled with tears. “And you know why he’s doing it? He’s going to tell Minori, ‘Not for the good of the fucking Empire. And while I wish I could claim that I was doing it to save innocent lives, that’s not why. I’m doing it because a good man asked me to. A man I know is a better man than I am myself.’” A tear rolled down her face and splashed on the page. “It’s so hard, Sigrun. It’s so hard to know . . . all the things that I know.”
Sigrun looked at the door, outside of which Minori waited. Minori needed her. Needed comfort and reassurance. But right at the moment, Sophia needed her more. So she sat down on the divan beside her sister, who sat up and put her golden head down on Sigrun’s shoulder. And she stroked the tousled curls as Sophia sobbed like a child, and she took the pain of the slapped cheek on herself, the bruise vanishing from her almost as soon as it stained Sigrun’s pale cheek. And when Sophia had wept herself to exhaustion, Sigrun picked her sister up and tucked her into bed . . . and took one of the sheets and two letter openers from the desk, and hung the sheet over the most disturbing of the murals, stabbing the letter openers deep into the plaster to hold the sheet in place. “Go to sleep,” she told her sister, tiredly. “Thank you for . . . sharing what you have seen.”
“Sigrun?” Sophia’s voice was frail.
“Yes?” She paused at the door.
“I’m so sorry. For everything. I love you, sister. I might not . . . I might not always be able to tell you that. But I do.”
Sigrun sighed. “I love you, too, Sophia.”
“Do you know . . . what the difference . . . between a servant and a slave is, Sigrun?” The words were barely audible.
Sigrun considered it for a moment. “A servant can say no.”
“And you do, Sigrun. You say no every single day. Oh, how I envy you that word.”
Sigrun’s throat burned, and she turned around and crossed the room once more. You’ll make the choices you were always going to make in this universe, because otherwise, you wouldn’t be you, she told me. One of these days, I am going to try doing exactly the opposite of everything I think is best. But for the moment, she had to give it one more effort. Because she couldn’t not do this, and remain herself. “Close your eyes, Sophia,” Sigrun said, tiredly. “I want to try something.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and waited until the green eyes slid shut. Then she reached out and put a hand on Sophia’s forehead. Reached down into herself, and opened herself to the othersight that she tried to shut out since the last time she’d helped Saraid with the fenris in the north. 1973. Eight years out of practice. Oh, how Freya will laugh. But this is . . . just healing. I can’t take her madness on myself, like a wound. But I can try to unknot her mind.
She’d been able to help Lassair and Saraid with the fenris and the jotun. To find memories in their minds that correlated to the best parts of the people whom they’d once been, and had mapped the connections. Created baseline personalities, like constellations in the sky, that drowning minds could latch onto, and follow to solid ground. Sophia’s mind felt . . . nothing like that. Lassair had often compared Sophia’s mind to a broken mirror. All of her memories were shards of broken mirror in a burlap bag, which had been pounded into dust. No two pieces connected to each other, a third of the memories hadn’t even yet occurred, and every time Sigrun tried to put a mental hand into that mass of shattered glass, she pulled back again, as if the skin had been flensed from her bones. It hurt to touch.
“That feels nice,” Sophia mumbled. “Like a cool breeze on a hot day.”
“Shh. I have no idea what I’m doing.” Sigrun closed her eyes, to concentrate more fully on othersight. On her own image of Sophia as a dying star. Yes. There. There’s . . . one of Trennus’ cosmic strings? A ley-line in space and time . . . no. It’s more like one of Kanmi’s wormholes. A white hole. It stretches on to infinity from her heart . . . . Sigrun concentrated. Focused in on that string, until it seemed to be as tall in her vision, as she was herself. Enormous power and energy . . . and emotion. Golden colored . . . it’s her bond to Apollo. This is what makes her god-born, more than anything else. This is his power feeding her . . . and . . . feeding from her? Sigrun’s head snapped back, as realization hit. “What happens in the mortal realm,” she said, slowly, “on entering the Veil, has always already happened. Is always already known.”
“Yes.” Sophia’s voice was soft.
“So Apollo’s prophecies are the result of his future-self passing that information into the Veil. A knowledge repository of some sort. And then his past-self already knows it. And that resonates into you.” But then . . . why wouldn’t every god know what he knows? Do they choose to forget? Are some of them just more attuned to that sort of knowledge than others? Are they only aware of one quantum reality? The questions boiled in Sigrun’s mind.
“Yes.” A single tear trickled from Sophia’s closed eyes. “His core-self, his Hellene self, is weak by the standards of the gods. Oh, he’s worshipped under the same name in Rome, but that’s . . . another god, entirely. That’s the secret of the Roman gods. They bargained with the Hellene ones. They share power. The Hellene ones, after Prometheus, and after Troy, were afraid. So they hid in the Veil, where they cannot be killed, but they linked themselves to their Roman twins, who stay out in the world. The Hellene ones share in some of the bounty of worship of the Roman gods, and the Roman gods believe that they cannot be killed. Because they have a conduit that always remains in the Veil.” Sophia opened her eyes. “It’s not true, of course. Apollo of Rome will die in 1999. He knows this. Apollo of Delphi has no knowledge of him after a certain date. No knowledge of anything else, after another. I can see further ahead in time than a god can. Isn’t that a marvelous thing? I think he would smite me for it, except that he thinks that some part of him will live on through me, though I’ll only outlive him by weeks.” She paused, and repeated herself, a little smile on her lips. “I can see further than he can. That’s me, not him.” A tiny spark of pride there, quickly snuffed.
Sigrun swallowed. Closed her eyes again, and studied the cord that bound her sister with trepidation. Apollo might not be as strong as, say, Loki, but he was still a god. She’d fought Supay, but . . . Supay wasn’t Apollo. Supay had been bound, in an avatar, unable to escape Inti’s grasp, and weakened by combat with Mamaquilla. And while Apollo of Delphi was, relatively speaking, weak . . . Apollo of Rome bestrode the earth like a Colossus. “I . . . I could try to sever the binding,” she ventured, after a moment. “But even if it worked, it might kill you. And even if it did not, he would notice. And I cannot fight him.” A further realization hit. “His terror is what’s filling you. And he’s not protecting you from it, out of spite. Like he cursed Cassandra for refusing to share his bed, permitted no one to believe her prophecies.” Rage at the injustice filled her. What can you expect of a god whose primary hobby was chasing dryads, nymphs, and young men and seducing or raping them? And I cannot call him to account for it!
Sophia reached out and took her hand. “Oh, it’s not just his fear,” she told Sigrun, almost placidly. “I have plenty of my own. But I don’t see you doing it,” she added. “Things will happen as they’re going to happen. And I don’t want you to hurt, when they do. But I know you will, anyway.” She reached up, and tugged on Sigrun’s braid, making Sigrun start; no one but Adam did that. “Thank you for the thought. But now, you need to go take care of
Truthsayer.”
Sigrun stood up, her heart aching, and watched as her sister pulled the blankets up around herself, as if to ward off a chill. She whispered, “Good-bye, Sophia,” and shut the door behind her, realizing that the weather had changed outside. Somehow, the day had gone from bright and sunny, somewhere around eighty degrees, to the miserable kind of cold drizzle that usually only appeared in Hellas in midwinter. Wonderful. This will make getting a flight home all the easier. Sigrun sighed, and went to go take care of Minori. Got the distraught woman to their car, and comforted her the best she could. “So . . . there’s no hope at all?” Minori finally asked, as Sigrun drove her back to the airport.
“No, I think there’s hope. I live for the opportunity to prove my sister wrong, Minori.” Sigrun tried to sound as bracing as she could. And when Adam, at home in Judea, asked her about the results of their trip, Sigrun closed her eyes, and told her husband, “Min will see him for the first time in 1984. Alexandria. Sophia may have slipped. She gave us a location. Let’s focus our attention there in terms of trying to find him earlier. And if that fails, we will all see him in person in 1987, I think.”
Adam exhaled. “Thank god. That means he’s alive, and he . . . should be for a while. Six years is a lot of time to work with. We can do this. We can bring him home.”
Sigrun looked at her husband, and decided not to tell him the rest of what Sophia had said. Minori could tell him, if she chose. But she couldn’t rob him of all hope.
1982-1984 AC
The next two years passed in a blur for Sigrun. The Mongol Khanate, under pressure from Raccia, which had large portions of its populace trying to migrate away from the grendels, ettin, and lindworms in the west, also faced the same threat as the mad giants migrated along the same paths as the normal humans. Battle-fronts hundreds of miles in length ranged across Eurasia, and the Mongols themselves turned south, pushing into the region of Persia just to the east of the Caspian Sea. Sigrun woke up one morning with the message from the Odinhall blazing in her mind. The jotun and the fenris are required in the areas around the Wall, Media, and Chaldea. The giants and the wolves will require you. Put aside your badge and go to them. Consider your Legion rank reinstated.
Adam hadn’t been enthusiastic about the idea that Sigrun was about to go fight in a second war without him inside of the same decade. “I need you here,” he said, folding his arms across his chest as Sigrun packed. “Little Gothia is much quieter and calmer with you there.”
“Erikir will be coming down from the north. He knows most of Vidarr’s jotun. He can help keep the neighborhood calm. Brandr will be with me, on the lines.”
“He’s alive?” Adam’s eyebrows went up. Sigrun hadn’t heard from Brandr in over a decade.
“Yes, thank the gods. It will be very good to see him again. Every time I have petitioned for information on his status, all I have received is that he’s remained under observation.” Sigrun’s lips tightened as she turned back towards Adam. “I wish you could be there.” He wasn’t young anymore, but it was mostly still true. “Solid tactical experience, and you know how to integrate people with . . . disparate abilities into a contiguous unit.”
“I learned it from Livorus,” Adam said, quietly. “We were the fingers in Rome’s fist.”
“Or its extended hand of friendship,” Sigrun replied. “These days, all that’s left is the fist.”
He leaned down, and gave her a kiss, and Sigrun ran a hand against his cheek, noticing how deeply the laugh lines had carved themselves around his eyes, and also the beginnings of frown lines in his forehead. Those were new. “You’ll be careful?”
“Of course. I won’t be as far away this time, either.”
Still, being closer by was no guarantee of seeing him more often. Up in Gotaland, Fennmark, and Cimbri, she hadn’t been in the Empire. She hadn’t even been a representative of the Empire; she’d been wholly a valkyrie there, under the aegis of her gods. And thus, when Nith had appeared to carry her home to Judea, she’d been free to accept the rides. In Chaldea and Media and along the Wall, she would have her Legion rank back, and would be interfacing between the Legion and the jotun and fenris, who were currently mostly landsknechten. Mercenaries. It might be slightly inappropriate for her to flit off on Nith whenever she felt like it. Not that she had, previously. But she might need to remind Adam that she could be serving four to six months at a stretch without leave. Not such a long time for young people. Or for god-born. But for everyone else . . . . Sigrun leaned in and kissed him again. “I will be back before you know it,” she promised, keeping her tone carefully light.
“Yes. Of course you will.” He put on a smile, but it was as much of a lie as her tone. “Good-bye, Sig. Be safe.”
The latest Caspian Conflict quickly became a three-way meat-grinder. The Mongol Khanate tried to roll in with small, swift-moving tanks alongside their traditional cavalry, and ran headlong into a Persian column marching for Media. The Persians ran ornithopters in attack runs at the small tanks, which fired back at the wing-beat vehicles . . . but with every bomb the Persians dropped on the convoy of tanks, there was at least one glass bottle with an efreet inside of it. Unbound, and empowered by the raging inferno into which they’d been unleashed, the spirits manifested and began tearing the tanks up off the ground and hurling them a mile into the air, through their funnels. Sigrun and Brandr watched some of these events in December, 1982, from the balcony of Erida’s manor near the Caspian. They could all hear the whump, whump, whump of Persian artillery reverberating through the floors. Erida had her eldest daughter, all of seven years old, sitting on the bench beside her, while she rested her one-year-old on her shoulder and re-laced the front of her dress from having nursed him. “They’re getting closer,” Erida muttered. “I’ve mined the road with wards, but that will only prove a temporary deterrent.”
“You’re ready to evacuate?” Sigrun asked, turning and looking at Erida, Zhi, and their children. Most of them had their father’s eyes, glowing even in darkness, though at the moment, it was mid-afternoon.
Erida grimaced. “Not quite. We’ve moved about half the library to Jerusalem, but the other half is valuable. I cannot carry it all at once, and it’s not in me to run.”
Nor in me. This is my place now. Zhi sounded angry. Valkyrie, will Rome intervene soon?
Sigrun sighed. “At the moment, they are letting those two forces soften each other up,” she said, gesturing with her field glasses. “They’re not going to want to send troops through into that blender while the efreeti are still up and active. There are . . . five or six legions to the south of here, waiting for reconnaissance reports before they move up and take on whoever’s left here.”
The tactics of a jackal. Is this how Rome won the world?
Brandr, who’d been leaning silently against a pillar on the balcony, snorted a little. Sigrun was still quietly horrified by the changes in her old friend and mentor. He’d easily been the most articulate bear-warrior she’d ever met. Thor had managed to return his voice to him after Hel’s attack, but Brandr had been left with a pronounced stutter. Hence, he’d become laconic, even taciturn. As all eyes turned towards him now, he shrugged, and nodded. “Y-yes.”
“Brandr’s correct,” Sigrun said, filling in the gaps. “Their military doctrine has always been to fight the battle on their own terms. Make the enemy come to them, in prepared forts, over prepared ground. Make the enemy bleed for every inch of soil they take. And only then carry the fight to them. And if local troops can be used to do some of the bleeding for Rome? So much the better.” Sigrun looked through her field glasses again. “Lovely. The Mongols are counter-summoning.”
With? My kind are fire and wind. Earth, we ignore. Other air spirits avoid us. Fire does not affect us, as it does the lesser djinn.
“Looks like water spirits. That might ruin an efreet’s day.”
Then it will depend greatly on how many or how powerful the water spirits are.
Sigrun watched as wha
t looked like a waterspout on dry land went up in a column, sucked up by an efreet in its cyclonic form, and the two spirits waged a battle together, wrestling for dominance. Clouds of steam began to pour into the sky above them, a mile and more up, as from a smoke stack. And when a victor emerged, it was the efreet, contracting back down to a smaller, more compact funnel system as it raged towards another group of tanks. “They really need to be out there banishing some of these,” Sigrun muttered. “Not that I am necessarily cheering the Mongols on, mind you,” she added, looking back at Erida.
The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2) Page 72