The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  The young Praetorians who’d just arrived on scene stared around them as they emerged from their vehicles, and Adam couldn’t blame them. They’d just entered a war zone, the edge of Gehenna or Tartarus. He kept his hands where they could see them, and produced his badge when asked for confirmation of his identity. They were all . . . unaware of the scope of the destruction at this point, but Adam knew it couldn’t be good out there. He’d seen what Loki’s willing banishment and Hel’s death had wrought. He’d seen what Inti’s death, and the destruction of the mountain gods of Tawantinsuyu had done. Adam looked at his cloak, which now held his friend’s bones, and felt blackness sweep over him. I did this. I sent him here to try to prevent the destruction. And maybe we stopped them from siphoning off the god and using him for their own ends . . . but I don’t think anyone is going to call this a victory. I cost Kanmi his life . . . and we didn’t even get a win out of it.

  They clambered into the vehicles with their young charges. Lassair was still, quietly mourning the child she’d been unable to save, and Saraid wrapped an arm around the other spirit’s shoulders, and Trennus, from the other side, did the same. But they also all took turns keeping an eye on Minori.

  Their first sight of the ruined city of Tacape, however, stole any words that they might have spoken. Sigrun, who’d been quiet and dazed, covered her face at the sight. There wasn’t a building left standing, and the pall of smoke and chemical haze over the city looked as if the region had been transported directly to Tartarus.

  The usual first round of debriefing was . . . abbreviated. The local Praetorians recorded the sessions, for posterity, but they had much more important things to be doing, and a satellite call to Rome ensured that they were taken in a convoy along a highway riddled with cracks and broken chunks of poured-stone, northwest to Carthage, itself. The airport there was in disarray, but relief flights were landing. They were informed that they’d be taken to Rome in twelve hours, when one of the cargo planes that had just landed could be turned around and sent back.

  There was no power at the Carthage airport; the entire ley-grid had been knocked offline, thanks to the power of the gods running through it, and most of the tapping stations and distribution centers had been destroyed. So they didn’t have much information, until Lassair and Saraid began relaying questions and queries from the children in Judea. From Solinus, on the Persian front. From Latirian, at an aid station in Chaldea. From Inghean, out working with Fritti to lend aid to refugees streaming in from the coast of Judea.

  But it took setting down in Rome—Rome, where few buildings had been damaged, and most of the inhabitants were safe and healthy—and being directed to a room, not in Praetorian headquarters, as Adam had expected, but at the Imperial Palace, that the enormity began to sink in. That, and having a far-viewer in the same room with them switched on, and set to a station that had converted over to all-news format to cover the crisis. Adam just stared at the wide swathes of destruction, whole communities washed out to sea, and whispered to Sigrun, “You know . . . I think I’ve forgotten what victory is supposed to feel like.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder, and just nodded. She must have been exhausted; she’d actually slept through the morning flight to Rome. Then again, she’d been awake all night at the Carthage airport. Too much adrenaline, she’d told him, as he’d lain in a tangle of empty cargo nets to rest. She’d draped her travel cloak over him; his was tucked in a small suitcase, wrapped around Kanmi’s bones, like a shroud.

  Adam didn’t want it back.

  The first round of questioning took eight solid hours, and went on into the night. Caesarion IX himself came down to the room, as the leader of the entire Praetorian Guard, Naevius Maximus Albanus, said, incredulously, “This was supposed to be an operation intended to prevent wide-scale devastation. This was supposed to be an operation directed by our resident experts in the matter of . . . deicide. It seems to me, from your records, that any time that you are sent somewhere, the result is nothing but destruction.” The commander ran a hand through his curling, short-cropped hair. “The only reason that Rome itself does not have . . . half-fish, half-humans swimming in the fountains, is that the gods of Rome are powerful enough to have sheltered us!”

  Caesarion sat back, saying nothing, as they each took turns answering. Most of their voices were dull. Saraid and Lassair were in the best shape, and Saraid, surprisingly, took the commander on, upbraiding him sharply, I do not fall even remotely under your jurisdiction. If the gods of Rome are displeased with me, or with my sisters, they will surely send an intermediary and inform us. I do not believe that you are that intermediary. Your Name is neither Iris nor Mercury. The dappled, leaf-green eyes had been slightly narrowed as she glared at the man. And while you speak out of temper and frustration, you do not ask any questions. Ask, and you will be answered, but do not accuse without knowledge or understanding. Her lips curled back, slightly, showing just a hint of fang, though she’d calmed as soon as Trennus laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “You may not fall under my jurisdiction, spirit, but your mortal arcessitor certainly does.”

  “Ask questions,” Caesarion interjected, quietly, from the head of the table. “For my part, I would like to know how events transpired, in their entirety, from beginning to end.”

  For three solid days of questioning, Adam quietly danced around the questions of how he’d managed to fire on, and do damage to the gods. The idol was already superheated by its coals. I’m sure nothing would have happened without that, and the fact that Baal-Hamon was already being pulled apart by his adherents. He wasn’t sure Caesarion bought it, but it was as much truth as he could give. Though he caught young Rig watching him closely. Rig had seen what Caliburn fired. And the son of Loki didn’t say a word about it during his own testimony, for which discretion, Adam was grateful. The weapon was packed away with all their other personal effects. I’d better get it back when this is done. Not that anyone but me can fire the damned thing.

  Towards the end, they were informed that a technomancy team had confirmed that the energy release levels, based on Kanmi’s findings in Nahautl, Tawantinsuyu, and Fennmark, had been far lower than one might have expected from the deaths of no less than three very old gods. This had the effect of verifying their story, and suggesting that things could actually have been much worse. A general estimate, presented by a technomancer with very high clearance, suggested that as much as half of Dagon’s energy, ninety percent of Baal-Samem’s, and approximately forty percent of Baal-Hamon’s had . . . simply not been dispersed into the ley-grid. “If it had been, the energy ripples would have reached Alexandria to the east, and perhaps as far as Britannia to the north and west,” was the summation.

  Minori had looked up from the table, and put on a pair of glasses to read the numbers on the hastily-prepared slide presentation. “Your math, in the left-most column,” she told the technomancer, very quietly. “It does not add up. You forgot to add a variable from the fourth row.” She paused while the sorcerer grimaced and hastily corrected the slide. “Your work is based, do you know, on my own, and that of my husband.”

  A more than uncomfortable glance from the technomancer. “Yes, Dr. Eshmunazar. I . . . am aware.”

  “Now that you have corrected your math . . . and my husband is . . . was . . . ” Minori swallowed, her eyes down, “very particular about his math . . . I think you will find that your overall blast radius estimates will now show a modest increase of fifty to sixty miles in each direction. Perhaps not a large concern, but let us be correct in our evaluations, please.”

  Adam was awed by how much strength was in Minori. As Sigrun had once said of her, years before, the woman tended to be quiet, but she always showed the quality of her steel. “And if it pleases you, your Imperial Majesty,” Minori added now, raising her eyes, and speaking with exquisite courtesy, “I would like very much to take my husband’s bones home and bury him.”

  However, the Praetorians wouldn’t release hi
s bones, at first. They were entangled in the bureaucratic red tape of ‘crime scene evidence,’ which Adam frankly thought was code for ‘we need to hit something, and this is the only way we can currently hit you.’ So they returned to Judea without Kanmi, and watched Minori simply fold up on the airport tarmac as Masako put her arms around her mother, and the two of them leaned into each other, and sobbed.

  Going back to the office was an exercise in futility. Adam did so, in the main, to clear out his desk. They’d been informed that they were looking at two months of administrative leave, minimum, which would leave the Judea office effectively in limbo. Adam couldn’t allow that.

  When he’d started here, back in late 1970, he had thought his desk was too small. That was nothing compared to the feeling of utter emptiness that now pervaded him. Picturing going to lunch with Trennus, without Kanmi available to drop by and make acerbic comments, at any of the usual cafes . . . reaching for the telephone to ask for a sorcerer to do a quick case evaluation . . . oh, Min could do the work, but Kanmi had always been his first call. What do you do when you lose a limb? You keep going, of course. That’s all there is to do. But in this case . . . .

  It was time for a few changes. An acknowledgement, to the universe at large, that time had passed. And that he was tired, and that the universe had won.

  So he cleared out his desk, and as he was doing so, there was a knock at his door. Before he could even answer—a clear breach of protocol—young Agent Duilus poked his head in. “You’re back. And the Carthaginian Liberation Party was involved in this, somehow. There are news reports of people being turned into horrific aberrations in North Africa and Hellas . . . all clearly the result of sorcery.” Duilus had been moving into the room all this time, and now put his fists down on Adam’s desk. “And you’re going to tell me that Kanmi Eshmunazar isn’t involved in this, all the way to his neck? You pulled me off the case, then put me back on it, and then there was nothing but . . . stonewalling from the main office. Diversion into other, pointless cases, when if I’d been permitted to do my job, I could have apprehended the man and none of this would have happened!” A muscle in the younger man’s face twitched. “You’ve been protecting him for years. You’re as culpable for the destruction, as responsible for the lives lost, as he is! If you ask me, every sorcerer should be either in the direct service of the state, or imprisoned—”

  Something inside of Adam snapped, and he put his box of picture frames and everything else down, very carefully, on his chair. He moved around his desk, moving with deceptive grace, and put a hand on Duilus’ shoulder. “Hear me,” he said, and the back of his mind told him that he probably shouldn’t enjoy this, as he caught the back of Duilus’ head in his other hand, and, with two points of contact and a side-step, brought the other man’s face down on his desk. A quick, smooth movement, and his right forearm was wedged against the back of the man’s neck, the blade of it sawing against the vertebrae, painfully, and keeping him pinned there, while Adam deftly caught the man’s right arm and forced his hand to just between his shoulder blades with his own left. “. . . and hear me very well.” His voice was a whisper. “It is not my fault that you are too stupid to recognize an undercover mission when you blunder into it. It is, however, my fault, that having recognized your stupidity and blindness, that I made use of it to make Kanmi Eshmunazar’s disguise look that much more complete to the organization he’d been asked, by me, to infiltrate.”

  He was dimly aware that the younger man was trying to stand up, and Adam just increased the pressure on the wrist he had pinned, and the amount of his own weight grinding into the vertebrae of the man’s neck. “Now, if you had paid even the slightest bit of attention to any of Professor Eshmunazar’s lectures, instead of dismissing them, you would understand that sorcery has limitations, and transforming a human body into an ‘aberration’ is one of them. You are looking at the power of a god in North Africa and Hellas, Agent.”

  He released his grip on the man all at once, and stepped back, hands raised, fully expecting the young agent, to turn and try to strike him in return, all wounded pride. Duilus rose, glaring at him, one hand to the back of his neck, as Adam went on, with a certain amount of force, “Kanmi Eshmunazar died a hero, trying to prevent worse from occurring. And I will not have his memory used as a pissing post by someone as petty as you are. Someone who’s doing nothing more than trying to stake out territory and play dominance games. Get out of my office. And leave your badge on my desk. Whoever’s appointed as interim commander can decide what to do with you till I get back.”

  Adam didn’t think he’d be coming back to this office, but the lion never informs the hyena as to the contents of his social calendar, either.

  By Aprilis 10, Adam had come to a decision, and submitted a letter of resignation to the Praetorian Guards. Forty years of unstinting service to the Empire was enough for anyone. He’d get his full retirement pension and benefits, and he could work as a consultant to Judean Intelligence, as his father had before him, to keep his mind active . . . but on his terms and on his hours. And he wanted to underline the importance of his request for Kanmi’s honors, and burial.

  Still, writing the letter was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. He had no idea who he was, anymore, without the office, without the badge. He’d successfully kept Caliburn a secret from the rest of the Guard, and from the Imperator, and he wasn’t about to change that. With any luck, the damned thing will never need to be used again, he thought, as he signed his letter, but there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he recognized it as a sense of his own mortality. He folded the letter and put it into an envelope, and went to go find Sigrun. He was worried about her.

  Sigrun was curled up in their bed upstairs, asleep. At noon. He knew his wife, and her relentless sense of duty. This was out of place, and markedly so. However, she hadn’t slept at night, since Kanmi’s death. No surprise, really; neither had he. They’d both lie in bed, tossing and turning restlessly, for hours. Sometimes talking, but most of the time, not. He’d found that if he turned over and wrapped his arms around her, and held very still, he could get her to doze off, usually close to dawn . . . which was when she had, through thirty years of marriage, always gotten up. She was sluggish through the morning hours, perked up in the afternoon, and restless at night.

  They both attributed it to grief, guilt, being off-schedule because they weren’t at work. Being on edge, because every phone call could be an order to come to Rome for more questioning. Of course, that . . . really didn’t hold much water, because every afternoon, once Sigrun was able to open her eyes, she’d clamber into the motorcar and head off to the new refugee areas at the southwest side of town. The first influx had been Judeans whose communities been hit by the tidal wave, but most of them had started going home by now—to family and friends, for the time being, or had headed back to their own homes, to start clearing debris and rebuilding. No, at the moment, there were Hellenes and Carthaginians from North Africa filtering into Jerusalem and Alexandria and Byzantium. So many of their cities had been leveled, either by the earthquakes or by the tidal waves, that there were few places left for refugees to go, internal to each country. And so, by plane and by bus, they were being shipped wherever there was room. As far away as Lutetia on the Sequana, up in Gaul, and a few even into Nova Germania.

  Adam had found the satellite pictures, taken from the Libration Point station, to be the most unnerving of all. They showed, in clear detail, the hydrogen bomb that Kanmi had created of the lake, the mushroom cloud that had resulted . . . and the fact that, after Baal’s death, most of the Great Eastern Erg, a region of rolling sand dunes hundreds of miles across . . . had been faced, in its entirety, in glistening yellow glass, as the top inch of sand on every dune had fused. The devastation to the wildlife was one thing. But Adam wasn’t sure what this was going to do to the regional climate. The Sahara had already been hot enough. With a sea of glass reflecting light straight up, he wasn’t sure
if it would cause albedo, and reflect heat, causing regional heat, or if it would act like a condenser and a trap, increasing the local heat. Question for scientists, ben Maor. Over your head.

  Persian newspapers and Mongol newscasts had attributed the devastating earthquakes to the judgment of the gods on Rome for its arrogance and pride, and Persia had redoubled its attacks on Chaldea and Media in the past nineteen days. Solinus and Latirian had been recalled for hardship leave, to comfort Masako and Himi . . . and a good thing, too. The little mad godlings, which had first popped up in Hellas, had begun to move around the world. They didn’t, apparently, dare go into the Roman peninsula, but they ranged, freely, up into the Balkans, eastern Europa—already hard-hit by the ettin and the grendels—and Raccia. Trennus had reported that every spirit he knew was terrified of them, and Zhi, Lassair, and Saraid were furious, because the mad godlings seemed to be killing and consuming every lesser spirit they encountered.

  And still, they moved, elusively and erratically. One had apparently traversed the whole of Raccia, into Siberia, and popped over the Bering Strait into Caesaria Aquilonis this week, traveling underground and causing earthquakes as it did. Another three had catapulted directly into Persia. Normally, Adam would have been cheering on any disruption to the Persians, but the problem really was, no one knew what the little godlings were going to do, from moment to moment. Two of them had been sighted in Qin, which had the Emperor of Qin demanding to know what Rome had awakened. There were unconfirmed reports of three others moving down through Egypt and into Nubia, and then further south. The Bantu and Zulu nations further to the south were reporting widespread bush fires, and small earthquakes . . . as well as, yes, spirits being too afraid to answer their summoners. Or being simply unable to answer at all.