The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1)

by Deborah Davitt

  Adam finished with the very tail end of her braid. “Don’t look at me. Relatives have been known to serve in the houses of their richer family members in Judea, and there used to be slavery for captives of war, but other than imported Roman and Hellene slaves . . . and not many of those . . . it hasn’t been much of a factor in centuries.” A quick, droll smile. “No one’s begetting extra children on their wives’ handmaidens anymore.” He paused. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

  She half-turned, squinted, and shook her head. “I don’t understand. But I’ll pretend, for the moment, that I do.”

  Adam chuckled at her, and gestured at the throng of still-damp people. “Back to work?”

  “Back to work.” Sigrun sighed. “I think I’d rather be getting shot at. It’s simpler.”

  “Pretend the words are bullets.”

  “Very helpful, ben Maor. Very helpful.”

  “I live to serve.”

  ____________________

  Kanmi Eshmunazar moved around the interior of the large palace building, dodging servitors with trays, occasionally snagging a snack from one or another. Aristocratic nibbles here seemed to tend towards meat, deep-fried inside of envelopes of flat dough, with cheeses. Tasty, really, but finger food filled the hollow of his belly very slowly indeed. And, being a sorcerer, he tended to need to eat a lot, in order to fuel his sorcery. He knew perfectly well that sorcery was a matter of willpower . . . but when you used your own body as a conduit for will and magic, it did use up caloric reserves. Nothing came from nothing, after all.

  He wore a dress version of his work clothes—as such, he wore rubber-soled shoes, and a leather vest with dozens of small pockets, occupied by a seemingly random assortment of items. Copper-topped nickel-metal hydride batteries, chosen in spite of their annoyingly high rate of self-discharge. High-energy snacks, such as Nahautl chocolate, wrapped around raisins, tucked into little paper sacks. Circuit boards, chosen for their ability to modulate energy, particularly electricity, with tiny capacitors strung along their length like colored beads. Coils of copper wire, a large magnet, an iron knife, and a silver one, too. The trappings of the modern shaman, Kanmi reflected, his lips quirking as he studied the room. He despised the well-dressed guests, mostly on principle, and chuckled under his breath as they twitched uncomfortably in their damp clothing.

  He didn’t see any threats in the room, which was a sort of art gallery, filled with Roman, Nahautl, and even Qin masterpieces, but that wasn’t his only task here tonight. It was difficult to keep his mind on the job, however; he’d scouted the ballgame venue, perched in the rafters for the entirety of the match, and had now been watching this room for hours. His eyes burned, and the best part was, one or two of them tonight, probably him and Trennus, would go from this detail directly to guarding the propraetor first thing in the morning. Kanmi might have four hours to fall on his face and sleep before doing this all over again. It’s a shitty job sometimes, but it pays the bills.

  At that moment, he turned to cover another quadrant of the room, and finally spotted Sigrun coming into the room from outdoors, soaking wet. Ben Maor was with her, and Kanmi couldn’t hear their words from a distance, but could see the expressions. Mostly blank, quick exchanges, glances around the room. About time you made it back in here, god-born, Kanmi grumped, silently. The more eyes, the better.

  At that point, one of the party-goers bumped into him, and Kanmi spun, eyes narrowing . . . and then widening again, in surprise. The face was familiar, but in a setting like this, so far from any with which he’d had previous association, he couldn’t place it. Green eyes—unusual in a Nahautl—dark-tanned skin, dark, long hair, earplugs, markings on the skin, slacks and a white shirt, and an equally white smile splitting the dark-tanned face. “Kanmi Eshmunazar, as I live and breathe!”

  It took a moment for the sorcerer from Tyre to find a name that matched the face in memory. “Gratian? Gratian Xicohtencatl?”

  “One and the same!” Gratian offered him a hearty wrist-clasp. “By the gods, I didn’t expect to see you here. How are you?”

  Stunned, Kanmi could only manage a startled smile, before reflecting that he and Gratian had never really been close. “Fine, and I thank you for asking. Gods. I think the last time I saw you was . . . seven years ago? University of Athens?”

  “Yes, I graduated a year ahead of you.”

  The University of Athens was the foremost school for technomancy in the West, and ranked just slightly ahead of the University of Edo, in far-off Nippon. Kanmi had spent four years there, training in sorcery and how it could enhance technology, and be enhanced, itself, by an understanding of natural philosophy. The origins of technomancy were ancient, and went back to before even the Mongols’ attempted invasion of the West. Someone bright had put sorcerers beside catapults, and told them to heat the stone loads to red hot. To increase the force with which they were thrown. To control where they landed, by manipulating the airflow around the stones.

  As a result, Roman catapults, ballistae, and mangonels had had pinpoint precision, and their boulders had landed in enemy formations and shattered into red-hot splinters. Arrows had been enhanced with similar applications of raw will, and sorcerers—the first technomancers—had looked for ways to embed their will in arrows, and, later, in arquebus shot and musket balls. Lightning had been examined and found to be a natural force—a different state of matter and energy than fire and earth and air and water—and accessed as another tool in the technomancer’s repertoire. Gravity, magnetism, friction, and even light were all tools, as well.

  As such, students usually studied physics and chemistry in addition to natural philosophy and sorcery. Kanmi remembered Gratian now; both of them had been equally out of place in Athens, surrounded by Hellenes. Kanmi had learned Hellene in Carthaginian sorcery preparatory schools, but he hadn’t been fluent enough to listen to lectures in it with any degree of comprehension until halfway through his first year. Gratian, the son of a Roman woman with a Nahautl minor lord, had been in much the same boat, and had been in charge of a small student group dedicated to bringing together people from different provinces and subject kingdoms and giving them common causes and activities. So that they wouldn’t feel quite so alone. Kanmi had always been a bit of a loner, and had viewed most of the parties and social outings as an enormous waste of time. He vaguely remembered something about politics being associated with one of the subgroups, a topic he normally avoided like the plague—another good reason to avoid anyone associated with the group. And of course, in his third year, he’d met Bastet, and gotten married. Even more reason not to be wasting time with a group of over-privileged wealthy brats.

  Still, it was pleasant to see a familiar face, and one belonging to someone in a similar line of work. Kanmi put all of the memories to the back of his mind, and merely asked, “So, what are you doing these days, and how did you get an invitation to the emperor’s personal party?”

  Gratian laughed easily. “Oh, I’ve worked my way up through the local ley-grid company. It’s state-run here, of course, but they’re always in need of a good technomancer. Started out rebuilding transformers in the field about seven years ago. Now? Vice president of Research and Development, with a close working relationship with Installations and Maintenance.” He nodded, radiating pleased self-assurance. “We’re installing new taps in the Tikal region right now, in fact. Get those people down there some actual power, and they’ll see the world in a whole new light.”

  For all of Kanmi’s teasing of Trennus, he knew perfectly well that ley-lines existed. What their actual source was, was up for debate, as far as he was concerned, but he didn’t quibble now. Arguing over academics with someone who’d gone into business, rather than pure theory, was usually not a winning conversational gambit. “It works and don’t ask why, so long as the money keeps coming in,” was the usual attitude Kanmi had encountered.

  As it was, he did his best not to change expressions as he thought, Doesn’t hurt to have an aristocrat f
or a father, now, does it? Out loud, all he said was, neutrally, “Sounds interesting.”

  Actually, it sounded anything but. His hours might be horrible, and the job might take him away from his wife and children for months at a time, but at least it wasn’t middle management. Sitting at a desk, watching life pass by, measured out by how tall the sheaf of reports in front of him was.

  “Oh, it is, it is.” Gratian grinned at him, all pleasure. “And it gets me invitations to social events like this one, once in a while. I meet and greet with the high aristocracy, and get them to invest a little more in the common man. Some of them actually take an interest in the little people now and again, or can be motivated to do so.”

  Oh, Asarte’s tits. You are the political type. All right, so I work for a politician, but I don’t have to talk about it all damned day. Theoretically everything Gratian was saying accorded with Kanmi’s own beliefs; he detested the aristocracy on principle, and inherited wealth on the same basis. On the other hand, he’d rather kiss an electrical socket, full-tongue, than kiss up to an aristocrat to get them to hand out a little of their ancestors’ wealth. Kanmi made a general sound of agreement in Gratian’s general direction, and added, “Power to the people, eh?”

  He’d tossed out the phrase, using it as conversational time-keeper. It let him sound as if he were paying attention, when, in fact, his eyes were mostly on the room around them.

  He wasn’t so distracted that he missed Gratian’s start of surprise. “Potentia ad populum,” the man returned, shifting the words into antique Latin, out of the more commonplace modern dialect that they were currently speaking. “The potential and power inherent to the great mass of people, if only they could overcome their own inertia, eh?”

  Having no idea where this was going, Kanmi let the current tug him along with it. “I’ve always been a proponent of the notion that if you gather enough people together, and get them to focus on what they truly desire, you can focus their combined will to do remarkable things.” Admittedly, if you bring together five thousand perfectly normal, untrained people, and get them to all stare at a feather, they might be able to excite the motion of the air molecules around it just enough to stir the barbules of the feather, but I doubt if they could move the damned thing just by wishing . . . . As it was, he thought his comment little more than a platitude.

  “Yes, I remember that about you. Scholarship boy, weren’t you?” Gratian was focusing on Kanmi intently now.

  “Good memory. Yes, I was.” Kanmi glanced around, trying to find a way to redirect the conversation away from himself, and back onto Gratian and the man’s odd reactions. “With your family’s connections, why didn’t you study at the University of Rome, instead of the University of Athens?”

  “My choice, really. I wanted to breathe the air of free men,” Gratian said, airily. “To imbibe, directly, from the well-spring of democratic thought.”

  Democracy. Yes, so long as you happen to be male, free-born or freed, and have land or a certain level of income per year. Oh, wait, no, they gave free-born women who met the monetary clauses the vote about thirty years ago, didn’t they? Far more likely that you wanted to go there for the night-life. Which Athens has, by the cartload. “And here I’d thought all this time that you were actually there to drink from the well-spring of that terrible pine-resin wine . . . .”

  Gratian chuckled. “Well, you did keep your distance at the time.” He paused. “So . . . .” After a pause, the other mage asked, “what brings you here?”

  A shrug. “Four years on the Mongol border, and then the Empire came calling for other services.”

  “Hmm, well, yes, can’t beat a government paycheck, can you? Feeding on the beast, eh?” The words made Kanmi’s eyes narrow slightly again. And you say this, given that you have a job with a state-run power company?

  Out loud, Kanmi replied, noncommittally, “It’s steady. My wife doesn’t like the long separations.”

  “Oh, so you’re not here in Nahautl on a permanent assignment? What a pity. I could have stood to have another proper technomancer around.”

  “I’ll be here as long as the propraetor is, and no longer.” Kanmi frowned. He’d missed a conversational current here, somewhere, and he knew it. One moment, a riptide had been pulling him one direction, and then he’d been released.

  Gratian’s eyebrows arched. “Oh, so you’re one of the lictors for Propraetor Livorus? My mistake. You have come up in the world.” A pause. “You say your wife doesn’t like the long trips away from home?” He snapped his fingers, smiling as if he’d just remembered something. “Nubian woman, I think?”

  “Bastet, yes.” Kanmi reached into a pocket in his vest reflexively, and brought out a round watchcase; on the inside, his wedding picture, the only one he ever took with him anywhere. A simple, black and white picture, him in a white caftan, and Bastet in a dark, striped dress. She was half a head taller than he was, arrow-straight and thin, with rich, dark skin that the camera completely failed to do justice to, unfortunately. “Her father claims to be descended from a one-eyed archer queen who repelled the Roman legions from Nubia, back in Strabo’s time.” It was an idle comment. Kanmi wasn’t particularly good at small talk. “I’ve always had my doubts about that, though.”

  Gratian’s face lit up in interest, however, and the riptide was carrying Kanmi along again. “You know, it’s a pity that she’s not with you. As is, since you’re alone here in my country, I simply must introduce you to some like-minded people. You won’t lack for entertainment while you’re here in the capital, I promise you.” The Nahautl man’s smile grew sly. “Why, I have a standing reservation at one of the best brothels here in Tenochtitlan. When next the propraetor can spare you, do give me a call.” He offered Kanmi a card with his name and telephone number on it. Embossed in the upper corner was the image of a black and yellow bumblebee—which matched the clasp of the light business cloak Gratian wore tossed around his shoulders this evening.

  Reflexively, Kanmi accepted the thin vellum square, and watched the other man leave. Now what in Astarte’s name was that all about, anyway?

  Chapter VI: Backgrounds

  The history of the kingdom of Judea stands as an anomaly. With the Persian Empire and its subject kingdoms to their east, Egypt to the west, Carthage and Byzantium, under the direct rule of Rome, to the north, and the vast, empty deserts of the Sinai Peninsula to the south, they are hemmed in on all sides by either empires, the sea, or an inhospitable wasteland ruled by nomadic tribes. This has resulted in dozens of waves of conquest of the area over the millennia, which should have ensured cultural cross-fertilization . . . and did, to a certain extent. However, the people of this small province cling to their own traditions, culture, and religion. There are groups outside of the major cities who live precisely as their ancestors did, thousands of years ago, tending herds of sheep, cattle, and camels, with only a bare interest in the modern amenities of cities like Jerusalem. But within the major cities, cultural cross-pollination . . . and resistance to that hybridization . . . has created strange new efflorescences.

  For example, the region is situated at a crossroads for close to a dozen cultures, all of which use magic in some form or another. Persian Magi and nomadic shaman have hurled spells at the walls of this desert province for centuries. Egypt and its god-born have long trafficked in spells of some form or another. Rome, with its long history of massive engineering projects, has had a historical bias towards natural philosophy and reason, but has a tradition of god-born as well, going back to Aeneas, not to mention Romulus and Remus.

  Judea, however, has had a religious prohibition against the use of common magic for almost three thousand years. Magic is variously described, by the denizens of that land, as a ‘crutch’ or ‘a betrayal of the covenant.’ They cite King Saul’s prohibition of magic, and get along with the products of natural philosophy alone. They have no god-born, or at least, have not had since the days of their prophets and judges. Historically, any of their p
eople who might have been termed ‘god-born’ by other peoples, are difficult to identify in Judean records, because none of their historical wise men, prophets, judges, or heroes have ever called themselves the son of a god, the way, say, Heracles, Achilles, Hermes Trismegistus, or Asclepius did.

  While it is easy to see why they would not wish to risk their god’s displeasure by making bargains with the gods of other peoples, or by benefitting from a foreign god-born’s powers, it is less easy for an outsider to comprehend why they would not wish to pursue the powers of a sorcerer or a ley-mage. A sorcerer’s abilities, to an outsider, look to be wholly the product of his or her own native will. But to many Judeans, a sorcerer takes the power of god into a mortal’s hands; they view this, apparently, as arrant presumption. Ley-magic, which is derived directly from the energies of the cosmos itself, and can be tapped by largely mechanical means? They reject utterly, again on the grounds that it is taking the power of god into mortal hands.

  It seems likely that over the centuries, the oligarchy of priests that has traditionally governed this largely theocratic province, may not have wanted outside influences to impinge upon their hold on their peoples’ minds. The presence of Roman governors, traders, and citizens has at least introduced republican principles into the governmental mix, and into the Judean mind.

  With all this being said, the history and geography and philosophy of the region has resulted in a people who are enormously self-reliant, and who have developed unique technological solutions to problems found nowhere else on earth. While Hellas and Nippon both have exceptional academies for natural philosophy, and even currently work with Judea on a number of joint ventures in natural philosophy, including space exploration, both countries split their attentions between magical and scientific methodologies. Judea does not.