Saraid seemed to sigh, and put an arm around Sigrun’s shoulders, relaxing, even as Sigrun stiffened once more. Listen to the leaves on the wind. The ripple of the stream.
What stream?
If you relax, you will hear it. Be at peace, and be in the moment. I would never harm you. You are my sister, and I love you. Saraid’s wide green eyes held an entire forest, and, fighting every instinct that said resist, Sigrun managed to settle back, and permitted Saraid to finish unraveling her hair. Let her run her fingers through it, and, when she finally relaxed, she realized that she really could see green-tinged shadows on the ceiling, as if leaves were backlit by the low-glowing electric lamps. They danced a little on an intangible wind, and Sigrun could hear the soft soughing of that same breeze through the branches. The trickle of a stream.
“You bring the Veil here?” Sigrun asked, quietly, inaudible through the hum of other voices.
Only a shadow of it. Through Trennus. It is my forest he tends, after all. Saraid had found a comb, somewhere, and had started working it through Sigrun’s hair now. Sigrun lifted her eyes, and found Adam’s on hers, and stiffened again, slightly. The leaf-shadows started to dissolve against the wall. Please, sister. You’re so close now. Just relax. Once you know the way, I might be able to bring you here any time. And you are as sorely in need of respite as Trennus is.
Sigrun tried. She really did. But it wasn’t until Saraid assumed the form of a white wolf, bulk half-on, half-off the loveseat, that she actually did relax. Leaned back and pillowed her head against the beast’s flank, and stared up at the leaf-shadows, uncaring of the loose tangle of her own hair trapped under her torso. You relax more for a wolf, than for a human form? Saraid asked, in some amusement, sniffing her hair.
“Humans always want something,” Sigrun said, her eyes sliding shut. “Nothing for nothing, after all.”
Lassair’s light, cheerful objection, Oh, so all these years, when all I wanted to do was give, I should have stayed in feline form? Would that have helped?
Probably, Sigrun thought, but didn’t say. It was true, though. Man or woman, humans always were after something. There was always an angle. Animals were much safer.
Then here is something that I offer for nothing. Your curse does not allow you to bear a child. Have you considered that someone else might bear it for you?
Sigrun’s eyes snapped open. “We looked into in vitro fertilization,” she said, her tone blank. “It’s not just that I don’t ovulate. Even my ova are . . . inert. The Judean doctors removed a few from me, put them in a dish and gave them some of Adam’s sperm. They sat there. Not dividing.” The eggs were part of her, and therefore, subject to the curse. Outside of time. The doctors had been unnerved. And Sigrun had no reason to doubt what they had shown her on the monitors.
There . . . are still other options, Lassair offered, tentatively. Sigrun shifted around to her side on the loveseat, her head still resting on Saraid’s flank, feeling deeply uneasy, and guilty for feeling that way. You know that I made this body, based in part on women that I admire. Their life essences. Yours, the summoner from Chaldea, and others I found fair or strong or noble.
Sigrun winced. “Yes?”
I could make a different body. One based entirely on your life-essence.
“You mean, you’d form an avatar that was a genetic clone of Sigrun’s,” Adam said, his own tone uneasy now. The scientific words didn’t make it sound any better, really.
Yes.
“And then what?”
Lassair looked at Trennus. They’d clearly discussed this before; Trennus didn’t look embarrassed at all. You would get me with child, Steelsoul. It would be entirely yours and Stormborn’s. I believe I could keep my energies . . . disparate from it.
Kanmi had, with surprisingly diplomacy, put his face down in his hands. Minori was stroking his shoulders, which were shaking, and Sigrun could only imagine how much self-control the man was exerting not to comment at the moment. Her own eyes were wide.
Sigrun didn’t particularly like the idea of sharing Adam with anyone, but . . . it might work. But at the same time, she also didn’t want this. Her future was her sacrifice. Anything that interfered with that seemed like . . . cheating. Adhering to the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it.
Adam, however, was already shaking his head. “Lassair, I . . . appreciate it. I understand that you’re offering out of love. But you and Sari are soul-bound to Trennus. And honestly, most Judeans consider marriage to be something akin to a soul-bond, too.” He smiled a little, his expression caught somewhere between regret, amusement, and discomfort. “So, no.”
That leaves two more options. I hold Stormborn’s form, and we use your ‘science’ and try for ‘conceived in glass.’ Which I rather doubt will work for me. Lassair grimaced, which was an unfairly pretty expression on her. Or, I reform this body to be an even mix of your life-essence and Stormborn’s, and Trennus provides the other half. Genetically, this would make the child your grandchild.
“Lassair,” Sigrun said, obscurely grateful for the fact that her head was pillowed on Saraid’s flank right now. She suspected her tone wouldn’t have been so gentle, if she weren’t relatively relaxed. “You have every good intention in the world. And I thank you for it.” Her throat closed. Something for nothing, indeed. “But sometimes, you just have to accept when the answer is no.”
Why? Why should you accept the end of a dream?
Because, in the end, it doesn’t matter. The thought slipped out, unbidden, and Sigrun pushed it back behind her eyes. Tried to find another truth to tell, and was relieved when Adam took over for her. “Because sometimes, pursuing a dream at all costs, just twists you until you no longer recognize yourself, or the dream,” Adam replied. “Sometimes, it’s better to let go.”
Around eleven antemeridian, Kanmi and Minori packed a sleeping Masako into their car, and headed off for their house in the Little Nippon district. Sigrun had fallen asleep on the loveseat, her head pillowed on Saraid’s flank, and, as Adam came back in from seeing Kanmi and Minori off, Saraid shifted back to her semi-human form to lift Sigrun’s head from her lap, and slip away, leaning down to give the valkyrie a kiss on the cheek. She’s exhausted, Saraid told him.
“I know. She won’t take a break, though. Not really, I mean. I don’t see me being able to kidnap her and take her to . . .” Adam thought about all the places in the world where someone might take a holiday, and frowned. Nothing with beaches . . . ski vacations in Europa are one hundred percent out of the question now . . . . “somewhere with mountains. Aotearoa, or whatever that island near Australia is, maybe.” He grimaced. “At the moment, I have a travel interdiction, anyway. At least, I have to get permission from my superiors to leave the country.” He wasn’t being held at fault in the Loki business, but he wasn’t Livorus’ chief lictor anymore. He didn’t have the authority and clout of the second-most important man in the Roman Empire behind him.
I have a suggestion, Lassair suggested, pertly. She and Trennus had already carried their children next door to their own house, and were now just waiting to say their farewells in the archway of the living room.
“What, another one?” Adam asked, and blinked as she reached up—not far, since she was Sigrun’s height, at the moment—and planted a red-blooded, thoroughly hedonistic kiss on him. With tongue. He’d gotten the random kiss from her over the years, and had learned not to pay them heed. All right, not much heed. Lassair’s kisses somewhat demanded attention. Adam raised his hands into the air, making it clear that he was nothing more than the designated recipient. Particularly with the earlier conversation still ringing in his head. The concept of a Lassair perfectly disguised as Sigrun had been more enticing than it should have been. But in the end, wrong was wrong and right was right. Lassair, stop now. Trennus is my best friend, and I don’t want us to have to beat each other to death. He moved his hands down, and gingerly applied two fingers from each to push her away, and then shot a highly apologetic
glance towards Tren. One that clearly said, Not my idea.
Oh, he knows. He doesn’t even mind nearly as much as he would have, years ago. He knows I love all of you. Lassair smiled and touched Adam’s face with gentle fingers. Now go give a little of that to Stormborn. Do a good job. My mums are looking parched.
Trennus, for his part, shook his head, and held out one hand for Lassair, and then the other for Saraid. “You’re a witch, Lassair,” he told her, shaking his head. “And a wretched tease. Have I been paying too much attention to Saraid lately?”
No. Just the right amount. Lassair’s tone was happy, and the three of them moved out of the house, Trennus looking back at Adam, and saying, apologetically, “My life is so strange, that the oddity occasionally tries to establish colonia in yours. Sorry about that.”
Adam watched the door close behind them, and then turned around to see Sigrun pushing herself up from the couch, yawning. “Ah . . . how much of that did you just see?” he asked, preparing to make explanations and reparations.
“All of it, I think. Lassair does what Lassair does, Adam.” Her expression was calm, and Adam once again, thanked his stars that he had Sigrun.
He stepped over, quickly, and picked her up from the couch, letting her slide down the length of his body and then allowed her feet to touch the floor before leaning in to kiss her. “I’m glad you see it that way,” he told her, once he raised his lips from hers. “Otherwise, I’d have to remind you that you just got done sleeping with Tren’s other wife.”
A half-smile, coupled with a patient stare. “She was a wolf, Adam.”
“Not really . . . interested . . . in semantics . . . right now.” Adam punctuated each phrase with a kiss, and felt the muscles in Sigrun’s body starting to relax. Melt into him, matching every plane of his body with a curve of hers. Dissolving. “Point me . . . towards . . . the stairs . . . .”
“Perfectly . . . good . . . couch . . . right here . . . .”
And all Adam knew was, he never ever wanted this to end.
. . . in the Garden of Continuity, or the Vale in the Veil, Flamesower had a full night of work ahead of him. The castle was being stubborn. He’d long ago discussed with Steelsoul and Emberstone what kind of defenses were even valid in the mortal realm in the modern era, and this place needed to be both a fortress that he could understand, and that made sense, in Veil terms. That meant walls of rebar-reinforced poured-stone, twenty feet thick, both around the outer perimeter, and throughout the underground bunker. This allowed him to understand the defenses, and understanding reinforced his own will.
The actual heart of the castle was that bunker, of course, behind the walls. And it was an odd take on the old motte-and-bailey construction. Specifically, it was missing the bailey.
The motte, or hill, actually was the final fortress. It was shaped like a spirit-mound, or a dolmen for the dead, with monolithic rocks set up in a crude post-and-lintel configuration atop it, and he’d ensured that turf and grass grew above the hidden poured-stone construction. No one would be able to tell, by looking at it, what this place actually was. All they would see inside the walls was greenery. Lassair had begun training ivy and roses to grow over the massive walls around the bunker, which once again, concealed what this place was, and were, in themselves, another form of defense; the roses could come alive, and shred an intruder with their thorns, and the ivy could trammel up invading spirits in their long tendrils. War is coming, the back of his mind told him, and put renewed urgency into the hours he spent here. There must be a safe place, a haven, for all who have need of it.
The unstinting and very difficult labor of forming raw Veil into poured-stone reality was continuous now. Most nights, Saraid was off, doing her own, vitally important work in the north, her voice no more than a whisper in the wind among her trees, and Lassair . . . Lassair had her own tasks, and rarely spent more than a day or two a month in the Veil anymore. She was becoming more and more a creature of the mortal realm, in many ways. She’d always been fascinated by it, and her connection to him allowed her to indulge in that fascination. She midwived children in the internment camps in Judea, and occasionally helped Saraid with the fenris. But that was the way things were; they had helped him with his tasks, because they were bound to him. And now, he helped them with their tasks, because he was bound to them.
Tonight, he formed a lake within the enclosure, reaching down and finding/creating water beneath the earth. A clear spring, like the one elsewhere in Saraid’s dream-woods, which he’d manifested here for both of them. He brought it up, with a surge of power, and then stopped, feeling giddy with tiredness, and watched the water spread around his feet, forming a lake all around the outside of the walls. Fresh water. Continuous, unpoisonable supply. Another barrier to reaching the bunker. If it doesn’t flood, I should consider sinking the bunker entrance lower, so that the water hides it. Hmm. Sounds like the legend of the Isle of Apples. Let the trees grow up to hide the walls . . . yes. Steelsoul spoke of gun emplacements, but there’s power, too, in being hidden.
He needed a break, however, and ran through the woods, where winter was coming, and snow drifted down from the clouds overhead. He threw his head back, relishing the cold flakes on his overheated face, and breached the outer edge of the wooded ring, and looked out into the abyss. The raw Veil itself, where he’d feared to tread for years. But he had two lines now to secure him. Lassair’s cord of vivid flame, and Saraid’s cool green cord. All right. Let’s see if I can find our errant pair of wanderers.
He stepped off the edge, falling through a star going nova, through a waterfall, into a river made entirely of rainbows, and landed in a pile of ashes and cinders. Flamesower looked around, realizing that, once more, he was dressed as a Pictish hunter. His bow and quiver were over his back, and he’d left off his shirt, opting for just his kilt and boots. The landscape was forbidding. The city was shattered, the skyscrapers twisted, jagged fingers of metal reaching up towards a gray and desolate sky. Ashes, everywhere, the fallen sides of smaller buildings splayed out from their supports, as if they were small, eviscerated animals. Flamesower reached down, and took some of the ashes in his hand. Rubbed them on his face. And began to hunt, running through this desolate, dead world, looking for the footprints of a god.
He passed through a dozen different realms, all shifting, constantly churning places maintained by entities whose Names he did not know. When he met them, their greeting-and-bargaining was cordial but distant. They knew he was the emissary of powers, and that he had power, himself. They did not want him in their realms, and wished, very much, for him to leave. He brought the scent of mortality with him, and that was a new and frightening thing. He was continuity now, and he knew it. What he did, stayed done.
A dozen realms, and no sign, yet, of Loki or of his traitorous valkyrie. A hint of a something, however, on the wind. An edge of winter, sorrow, night, and magic that smelled familiar. Then a cold hand touched his bare shoulder . . . but when he turned to see who it was, no one was there.
Pushing his anxiety away, Flamesower fixed his eyes in the direction he next needed to travel, burning the sense of it into his mind. No matter how the terrain changed—and it would—he could find his way back here. To whatever this realm was, however deep in the Veil it rested. And he could start from here next time. Because for him, there was time.
Trennus opened his eyes, blinking. For his part, he wouldn’t object to awakening more often, exactly where he was . . . between Saraid and Lassair, both of them in their corporeal forms. This was a rare delight for him. All of them had been very busy in the last year. Trennus let his eyes drift back closed, and reflected that somehow, he was the luckiest man on the face of the entire planet, and he was fairly sure he didn’t deserve it. He’d unNamed a man, when he was young, and there were spirits out there that knew that, and feared him for it. And beyond that, he wasn’t sure what he’d done to merit having one such creature in his life, let alone two.
Saraid, pressed along
his back, began to stir, biting and nipping along his shoulder and neck. Sweet torture, since he didn’t want to wake Lassair just yet, by turning or moving. Cool, sweet lips, moving down his spine, while Lassair, warm and limp with sleep, was plastered to his chest, skin sticking together with just a little sweat.
Saraid, if you don’t stop what you’re doing in the next ten seconds, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.
I think you should do precisely what you’re thinking about doing. That was Lassair’s voice, though her body’s eyes never opened.
I’m contemplating about seven different things at once, all of them probably illegal here in Judea. And the worst part was, he knew that Lassair was technically “awake” and would highly enjoy her body being awakened by him slipping up inside of her. On the other hand, that hardly seemed fair, and it was Saraid who was signaling her interest right now. Trennus had, by and large, when both of them were present and corporeal, allowed them to decide their pecking order, as it were. At the moment, however, it looked like both of them were trying to make him decide.
All the more reason to do them all. Lassair’s sleeping lips quirked into a ghost of a smile. But you are different this morning.
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