The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  “That’s why you want Ima along,” Minori said, a brilliant smile crossing her face.

  Sigrun nodded. “The . . . entity in question might be able to fool our eyes, ears, noses, and even our sense of touch. But the wolf’s senses are keener. And she can talk to us. With a little help from Sari.” Sigrun rubbed at her eyes again. “I feel as if I am forgetting something.”

  Is it possible that even a spirit’s sight might be clouded? Lassair asked, in some concern.

  Ah. There it is. “Yes,” Sigrun admitted. “He is the master of the destructive side of seiðr, as Freya is the mistress of seiðr that creates. He is the master of illusion. Deception. There are tribes in Caesaria Aquilonis that revere the Coyote as a trickster. But our quarry is . . . above Coyote in power, I would think.” She shivered, in spite of herself. She’d begun this expedition in outrage, and with the foolish, naïve idea that when she found Loki, Tyr would manifest by her side, and she’d make her claim, and Loki would . . . admit wrong-doing and remove his curse.

  Somehow, none of that seemed particularly likely now. And once again, they seemed to have stumbled into something far worse than a mere curse on a single woman.

  So you will need to use your other senses, sister, Lassair told her, patiently. You cannot limit yourself to your mortality in this time, and in this place.

  Sigrun slid her eyes to her left, without turning her head. Looked at Adam. I am mortal, she told Lassair, understanding, somehow, that the spirit was addressing her, and her alone at the moment. I stand with him.

  Chapter 6: Delusions

  As I have been engaged in training some young spirit-born children, sons and daughters of friends of mine, the children have occasionally asked what my own training was like. I generally note that it was more rigorous than what they have so far undergone, and leave it at that. This does, however, leave me open to being accused of exaggeration. What their father refers to as ‘walking uphill to school every day through hip-deep snow.’ As such, they have asked me to record, for posterity, what training at the Odinhall in Burgundoi was really like. I was the only valkyrie in a class with three young bear-warriors, but there were classes that preceded and followed us in age, so we were not alone. All told, I had about forty-six god-born classmates, and the Odinhall also offers specialized instruction to powerful young practitioners of seiðr and summoning, as well as, obviously, those who wish to become priests, or godi.

  As best I recall, this was the daily schedule:

  5:30 AM

  Awaken, morning calisthenics.

  6:00 AM

  Change and wash.

  6:30 AM

  Breakfast. No talking permitted.

  7:00 AM

  First class: Law or natural philosophy, depending on semester.

  8:00 AM

  Second class: History or military tactics

  9:00 AM

  Third class: Philosophy or comparative religion

  10:00 AM

  Fourth class: Literature or magic

  11:00 AM

  Work. Could be an hour of service in the hospital, an hour of service in the law center, an hour of service in the food kitchens, an hour of service teaching young children

  12:00 PM

  Lunch. No talking permitted. Expected to study quietly once done eating.

  1:00 PM

  Fifth class: Foreign language.

  2:00 PM

  Reading, effectively 'homework time'

  4:30 PM

  Sparring practice, 2.5 hours. Armed. Unarmed. Magical. Practical lessons in avoiding bullets, arrows, magic, knives, punches, and recovering from each, once, inevitably, you get hit. It was . . . strenuous

  7:00 PM

  Cleanup.

  7:30 PM

  Dinner. Only meal in which conversation was permitted.

  8:00 PM

  Work. Practical labor. This could include sewing clothing for the poor, butchering and skinning animals, cooking, cleaning, laboring in the rooftop gardens, and more.

  9:00 PM

  Evening discussion forum with older god-born. Intensive study of a topic, such as sociology or magic or religion.

  10:30 PM

  Free time. This actually usually involved finishing any studying missed earlier in the day.

  11:30 PM

  Lights out.

  The only difference on weekends was that combat training took over the entirety of the day, with water and food breaks. By Monandæg morning, every week, I was covered in bruises, and more than willing to sit, aching and quiet, in the classroom.

  This schedule ran three hundred and sixty days a year. We had single-day breaks for the equinox and solstice holidays, and for the start of the new year. If our families chose to visit, we were permitted to see them in the evenings, in place of the evening discussion forum, and into our free time period. My father married a new wife when I was seventeen; I was not permitted to attend the ceremony. He had a new child at home by the time I was nineteen. There were, therefore, no visits from my family, though I met my fellow students’ kin.

  The education in the Odinhall is intense and strenuous, and it is designed with several goals in mind. First, and foremost, is to instill into each young god-born’s mind one singular truth: We exist to serve the gods, and to serve mankind. We are born to be intermediaries between the two, and we are servants. Never masters. Our powers come with an enormous weight of responsibility. Thus, we were educated in the ethical use of that power. We were turned into well-rounded, intelligent, and above all, modern citizens, with an awareness of and a respect for the past—how else to avoid making the same mistakes, after all?—and a solid grounding in principles of natural philosophy and magic.

  Of course, the real point of any education is teaching someone how to learn. Then, they can teach themselves anything that they wish, in the future. They can then formulate new ideas, new concepts, can synthesize whole systems of thought, for themselves, out of disparate idea sets.

  I have no time for people who waste four years of their lives, four years of their parents’ money, on ‘finding themselves’ or ‘learning to express themselves’ at a school. That is code for “I have no skills, no ambitions, and no goals, and all I really wish to do is drink and have a good time while someone else foots the bill.” That the people who do this, usually wind up embittered at the educational system that they feel ‘failed them’ is, to me, quite laughable. It is not the system that failed them. It is they, simply, who failed. And they will, very likely, remain failures for the rest of their lives. Unless, of course, they happen to manage the singular feat of growing up.

  The god-born do not have the luxury of being dilettantes. With power and talent comes the commensurate requirement of using those gifts, and for the betterment of humanity. That is why the god-born cannot be educated in any other way. We are tools in the hands of our gods, and servants to the rest of mankind.

  —Sigrun Caetia. “Educating the God-Born: Treating Life as Service to Others.” Pedagogy Today, University of Divodurum Press, Spring, 1974 AC.

  ______________________

  Aprilis 27, 1970 AC

  “Ima. Stop licking my face.”

  But why?

  It was disconcerting, hearing her voice in his mind. Low, throaty voice, slight Trollheim accent, perfectly human, to match the blue and very human eyes . . . set just above a lupine snout, complete with fangs and a tongue that lolled out as she panted. Ima had slept next to or on top of Vidarr for most of the last year. Largely for warmth. Cold didn’t seem to injure either of them anymore; Vidarr could walk barefoot through snow and not get even a hint of frostbite . . . but that didn’t make cold any more comfortable. He’d always known she was more than a mere wolf; the writing in the snow with her paws had definitely established that. But she’d never had a voice before, so he’d tried to treat her like a friend and a companion, but something that was shaped like a very large dog occupied the dog spot in his brain. And so, he’d found trees to urinate against, and c
hided her when she’d reflexively sniffed at it, and chuckled when she’d slunk off into the underbrush to do her own business, almost shame-facedly, tail and head slung low. He was, as he’d told the others, still fully male, so he’d woken up any number of mornings with an erection, and a seven-hundred-plus pound wolf sprawled across his chest. It had been much easier to think of her as an animal at those moments, and roll her away so he could stand up and try to get on with the morning, and do his level best not to think about the fact that only one in ten of the volunteers had been women, and, as far as he could tell, only one in ten of those female volunteers had survived the earth-wombs. He wasn’t about to resort to a cow or a sheep, and imagining any human woman was . . . absolute futility. He’d damage a human woman. He weighed over eight hundred pounds, with strength to match.

  But now, Ima’s voice kept bringing an image to mind. His mental picture probably didn’t even match her original face; no one ever looked the way they sounded. And that mental picture was . . . beautiful. A little sad, because Ima always sounded mournful. Same dark blue eyes, however. White hair, matching her fur. Sharp cheekbones and chin, echoing the wolf’s face. But a flash of a smile, and maybe even a laugh? Vidarr cursed his imagination, and tried to make the picture go away. Hearing her voice reinforced that this is a person, this is a woman and that concept kept slamming, headlong, into the concrete reality that she was trapped in the body of a damned wolf.

  Vidarr sighed. Reached up and rubbed at her furry, up-perked ears, and watched her eyes glaze over in contentment. “You survived the damn process, Ima,” he muttered. “Gods. Why couldn’t they have . . . just put you in by yourself? You’d be like me, then.” If they’d put her in the earth alone, she’d be a jotun. She’d be one in a hundred, a female volunteer who’d survived. They could have spent this last year that they’d had together . . . talking. Being together. Maybe even more. He couldn’t deny that his thoughts, inevitably, took that track.

  I would greatly prefer that. The senses are wonderful. The fur is warm. But having wolves . . . most of whom haven’t kept much of their humanity . . . literally sniffing at my tail, has not been enjoyable. She laid her head down against his chest, and let her mouth close.

  He slid his hand along the curve of her skull, then down into her ruff, where he closed his fingers. “Hearing your voice definitely makes this . . . both better, and somehow, much worse. Now I want to kill some of these people twice. Especially Lagunov.”

  I remember her. She recruited me, too. Ima lifted her head, and pulled her lips back from her teeth. I think I would like to have her throat in my jaws.

  “That sounds fair to me. Unless she knows a way to fix this.” He wasn’t holding out much hope. He didn’t think he’d survive the process twice, and still woke up from nightmares about it. He’d told the Praetorians and the god-born as much as he could, but he didn’t have words to convey how bad it had been. Sensory deprivation torture. No light, so no sight. No sound, not even that of his own heartbeat in his ears. No weight, or at least, inability to move, and being wrapped in earth. The only actual sensation had been pain, unending. His only thought had been the knowledge that he was dead, and trapped in the earth. He’d known he wasn’t breathing. He could feel the leaden weight of the mud in his lungs, once it had poured into his mouth and nose. Forced its way, burning-cold, into windpipe and gullet, filling his belly, too. No hunger, because the belly was full, and he was dead, but still pain. Needlefire in every inch of his body as he was . . . unraveled, and then knitted back together again. Helplessness. His mind hadn’t been coherent, thanks to the terror, the death-fear, and then the sensory deprivation. He’d lost language. Lost self. Lost everything that had made him a man, and had woken up a monster, instead.

  But he knew he had Ima to thank for ensuring that he ate game once they’d escaped. He was fairly sure that outside of captivity, he hadn’t killed a human. Hadn’t eaten anything . . . intolerable. He closed his eyes, tightly, trying to force the memory-flashes from the cages back behind his eyes. The electrical shocks to keep them back from the cage doors while the handlers were present. The handlers themselves, in their white robes . . . doctors . . . opening the cage doors and keeping guns and shock-prods aimed at him, to ensure he turned away from them. Down into the fighting pit. Tearing one of the heads off an ettin with his bare hands, flash of the blood-spray flying up into his face. And being told he could finally eat everything he wanted, after being starved for a week . . . .

  Vidarr? You’re holding me too tightly.

  His eyes snapped open, and he stared directly at her. Nowhere else. Not at the barred door of his new cage. “Sorry. Only been in his cage for eight or nine hours. And I’m already going back. In my head.”

  They built cages in our minds, Ima told him, and pressed a cold nose to the side of his throat, making him pull away.

  “Not in yours. You were never insane, were you?”

  I was when I wiggled out of the earth. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed, and all that came out were howls. They were pleased, I remember that. They kept me apart from the other wolves. They didn’t want me bearing a litter of random puppies. They wanted to make sure that they only bred me to the best and strongest of the males. Her tone was disgusted. So I was kept apart. Fed good meat. Sometimes the handlers even talked to me. That brought the words back. Kept me . . . Ima.

  He put his feet against the cage door. Waited, reflexively, for the sensation of an electrical shock, and pushed, gently, against the bars. “What are we going to do, Ima?”

  Excuse me. Different voice. The forest-spirit, the one who was, blessedly, letting Ima talk.

  Vidarr sat up, hastily, and Ima scrambled back, making a disgruntled whuffing sound, and sat up on her haunches. “Sari?” he asked, looking around.

  Yes. I apologize for the intrusion. The others are coming to release all of you, now. The spirit paused. They’ve received some information that suggests that the location of at least one of the places where you were wrought is nearby. The two god-born males are going there, and have ordered the rest of us to stay behind.

  “Oh, they can go to Hel’s frozen realm if they think that I’m staying here,” Vidarr returned, switching to Latin, a little more loudly than he’d intended.

  Precisely what the others have said, as well. They come now, to release you all. The spirit’s voice was . . . a little excited, Vidarr thought, as he stood, stooped to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling of the tiny cell, and leaned his weight on the iron bars. “Matrugena,” he called across, to the cell directly opposite his. “Your people are—”

  “Making arrangements.” The Pict’s lilting accent made his Latin sound oddly sing-song. He, too, stood, and closed his book, looking around. Strange, like all the Praetorians—inhuman blue-violet eyes that burned like the inner heart of a flame, and a little more age and wisdom in them than should have been there, for a man who seemed to be but thirty winters old. His sleeves were rolled up, showing dark blue tattoos that knotted across his flesh. Blue-green tartan kilt, like most Picts, and no more reaction to the chill air in the cells than Vidarr himself had. “They’re trying to talk our way out right now.” He squinted for a moment. “I’m told that’s not going well, however.”

  Vidarr could see the others starting to stand. Hands reaching out through the bars, a little cautiously. Helga’s voice now, quiet and worried. “They will let us go, won’t they?”

  “One way or another, yes,” the Pict said, simply, resting his hands lightly on the bars in front of him.

  Ten minutes after that, Vidarr watched an expression of annoyance cross the Pict’s face. “All right,” Matrugena said, after a moment. “Looks like we do this the hard way, then.” He raised his hand, concentrated visibly . . . and the metal bars of cell door warped in front of him, letting him step through. The guards on duty were in a break room at the end of the hall, and not currently patrolling, so Matrugena had plenty of time to reach out, touch the bars of Vidarr’s door, and
pull the bars completely asunder, as well. Ima leaped out of the cell, first, with a joyous little yip.

  Vidarr followed, after a moment, mildly stunned. “You could have done this at any time?” he asked, as Matrugena opened Helga and Torvald’s cell, next.

  “That is something of the problem with trying to incarcerate ley-mages, sorcerers, and summoners at a certain level of power,” the Pict replied, calmly. “If we go bad, past a certain point . . . you really need to kill us. There’s no way of holding us, short of finding someone more powerful to sit on us.” He frowned. “Perhaps putting us in the Veil. Not sure how I’d do that, though.” Next cell door, and the nameless newcomer and the male wolf both poked their heads through, cautiously. “And now, we make a door,” the ley-mage added, sounding unconcerned. “That wall is natural stone. That’ll do nicely.” A hole appeared, widening, as the stone and mortar simply pulled back, revealing the night outside . . . and letting a cold blast of wind into the cellblock, in which they were the only prisoners. “Step through,” Matrugena said. “I’ll close it behind us. They can wonder where we went when they come through on rounds.”