By November, Lassair and Trennus had moved into Adam and Sigrun’s house in Judea, since it was in far more habitable condition than the one they’d purchased next door. Trennus had busied himself with both buildings. Other than the palace of the Roman governor, ley-power was virtually untapped locally, and no one had honored house-spirits in the area in about three thousand years. He bound a half-dozen spirits to small contracts for both homes. These ranged from spirits of the hearth that would work to prevent kitchen fires and would eat and dispose of refuse—he saw no need to throw out leftover food, when a spirit could turn that into perfectly useable energy—to earth spirits that would stand guard, and would emerge from the ground like wolves made of black stone if an intruder passed the door without one of them giving that being permission to enter. He bound other sprites with promises of bread and milk once a week, to look out for termites and other vermin. And he just grinned whenever Adam told him that the neighbors on either side of his parents’ house were gossiping about having heard strange noises in the night coming from the two homes. “I don’t mean to be unneighborly,” Trennus said, “but good. I don’t want to scare people off, but I also don’t want people necessarily walking in unannounced.”
“I don’t exactly want people looking through my dresser drawers, either,” Adam admitted, turning his head slightly, as they sat in the atrium, cooling off a bit after having finished framing new walls in Tren and Lassair’s house. Trennus knew what Adam meant. The Velserk he’d carried in Tawantinsuyu was locked in a box and hidden in Adam’s bedside table. “I don’t want to keep the world at a distance . . . but no one in or out of the house without one of us being here, for certain.”
The constant round of pure activity ensured that Trennus rarely had time to think, and that was, for the moment, how he wanted it. If he worked himself into a solidly exhausted state by night, he could sleep, and he wouldn’t dream. Or at least, the chances were better that he wouldn’t remember them. Every dream he had now, took him back to the Veil. At first, he thought it was just the work of a very active subconscious mind . . . until the morning after a particularly vivid dream, in which he’d wrestled with and bound a spirit there, and had bidden it to speak of what it knew of the godslayers of old. He’d woken up with a page of foolscap beside the bed, with names scribbled there in his own handwriting. The names didn’t make sense. They weren’t Names. Some were common human names, each of which meant something, in its original language . . . once he looked them up, anyway.
Adam, for instance, meant man or clay, out of Hebrew. Seeing that name written down had given Trennus a start, but all the others were equally . . . names, or words that were parts of modern names. Then there was Fosa, meaning light, in Hellene. Lylh, the Egyptian word for night . . . which happened to be very similar to the Hebrew word for the same. Saras, part of the Hindu name Sarasvati, was Sanskrit for water, fluid, or lake. Azar, which was an ancient Persian word for fire. Adamas, the Hellene term for invincible, which had become adamant, or diamond, in other languages. Vayu, back into Sanskrit for wind. Gevah, which was the Hebrew word for mountain. And it was the same word that Lassair had long ago told them had belonged to the godslayer that had beaten the pazuzu.
Each name wasn’t a Name . . . but they each embodied a very simple concept. Generally, an elemental one. As in the earliest forms of sorcery people had understood, on looking at the natural world around them. Dualisms. Air-earth, fire-water, light-dark, and how they could be combined, perhaps. And none of it made sense.
But that was all the spirit in the dream had known, and Trennus had realized, with a surge of nausea, that he was still connected to the Veil. Part of him had never really left it, perhaps.
Lassair held his hair for him as he threw up in the lavatory after that realization. You are still who you always were, she told him, comfortingly. You are just a little more.
What happens if I lose in my sleep? What kind of information might I give up, to an unfriendly spirit? What if a god comes looking for me in the Veil? All horrifying realizations, strung out like beads on a chain.
I am always with you, Trennus. And I am always here, as well. We are one.
As he walked the Veil in his sleep, he saw the white hind, as he always had, and followed her wherever she led. He hadn’t seen Saraid during his waking hours in six months, and he’d found he missed her gentle voice. But when he pressed the hind to return to him, she merely told him, I have never left you, and never will. But you have no need of me, at present. Save here, in the Veil. Where you require a guard and a guide.
His waking life was too full of changes to dwell on such things, however, and made more so in the early morning hours of Februarius 15, 1961, when Lassair rolled over in bed and rubbed his back. Flamesower?
Hmm? His drowsy mind took a moment to come back from the Veil to the room they were borrowing in Adam and Sigrun’s house.
It is time.
What time?
The baby. It comes now. I will wake Stormborn. Lassair’s tone was delighted and nervous at once.
Trennus sat up bolt upright in bed, throwing off the sheets. Even when he’d lived in the coldest, more northern parts of Britannia, he had slept in the nude; most people did, except perhaps those in the tundra regions of northern Europa, Raccia, and Caesaria Aquilonis. He hadn’t even registered that he was still naked, however, before he was out the door of their room, and calling down the hall, urgently, “Sigrun!” Framed in the doorway, he turned back towards Lassair. “You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? The doctors here are very, very good. Best in the world, really, besides maybe Hellas and Nippon.”
Given the problems that they had with understanding Stormborn’s healing, I have doubts as to how well they will react to me in one of their delivery rooms. Lassair’s tone was utterly placid, and then shifted to mischievous. Flamesower? You may wish to put on a kilt.
What?
Stormborn is coming down the hall. You may wish to be dressed, unless you wish to impress her.
What—oh. Shit!
Sigrun had arrived in their room about a minute later, as Trennus was still frantically wrapping and buckling. “So, contractions?” Sigrun asked Lassair.
Yes.
“Painful?”
No.
That pattern repeated itself through the day. Lassair had finally agreed to overcome her fear of water enough to deliver in the bathtub, for comfort and ease of cleanup, but while Trennus crouched beside her, offering her his wrists to clutch, as Pictish men were told, from childhood, they ought to do, Lassair laughed and chattered through most of the delivery, pushing as needed.
She was initially concerned about just one thing. What’s wrong with my hands? she demanded, sharply, holding them out of the water.
Trennus and Sigrun both stared at her for a long moment. “They’re a little wrinkled,” Trennus said, slowly.
Exactly! Is my body aging rapidly? Am I losing energy because of the birth process?
Sigrun coughed. Trennus began to laugh. “Ah . . . no. That’s a perfectly normal part of being in water, Lassair,” he told her, as Sigrun turned her face away.
Around the fourth hour, he finally believed it. “This . . . really isn’t hurting you, is it?”
No. It does not hurt. It started to, at first, and then I adjusted the body’s responses. It seems to me that people pursue actions as much for the reward of pleasure as from the fear of pain. The stronger the contraction, the better it feels to push. Lassair’s smile was radiant, if a little tired. However, if something is truly wrong, I will also know.
Sigrun had been on hand, mostly because she’d sat with birthing mothers in Raccia before, and so that, in case something did go wrong, she could take the wound from Lassair, so that Lassair wouldn’t have to try to heal her own body while still trying to give birth. She shook her head at the incarnate spirit now. “I do not know if I should chide you for cheating, remind you that birth is an essential human experience and you are missing
an integral part of it . . . or beg you to do the same for me, when it is my time,” the valkyrie said, arching her eyebrows. “I think one, perhaps two more strong pushes will do it, Lassair. I can see the head.”
And then Latirian will join us. Lassair’s tone was calm.
“Latirian?” Trennus blinked. “That’s your sister’s name, isn’t it?”
I would prefer that name. And, as I have told you from the moment she was a ball of . . . thirty-two or so cells . . . she is a girl. Lassair’s smile was infectious, and then she bore down again.
Two minutes later, Trennus held his daughter. She looked impossibly small in his hands, and Trennus’ world faded out a little. Noises in the background, as Lassair dealt with the mucky business of the afterbirth by simply changing her body, and stepping out of the bloody water and accepting a towel from Sigrun. I will agree, the water was not entirely a bad experience, Lassair admitted, and sat down on the edge of the tub as Sigrun pulled the plug. Let me hold her? I have waited so long to see her face.
Trennus handed the baby over, gingerly, and watched as Latirian’s eyes opened. The baby was sleepy, a little red . . . had ten toes and ten fingers, and brilliant, carmine-red eyes. The first wisps of fine pillow hair on the little head were as fiery red as her mother’s, and as Lassair smiled and cradled the baby to her breast, Saraid finally appeared in the form of a hind, pushing her head through the wall to study the child. It is very well, Saraid said, quietly. This one will run and play in my forests, will she not?
If you wish her to, yes. Trennus was startled by how relieved he was to see his oldest ally and friend, whose mark rode across his shoulders in blue ink.
I would welcome the sound of her laughter there. The spirit’s voice was affectionate, but there was a hint of sorrow there, too, which he did not understand. And then she vanished once more.
Sigrun helped Lassair to the bed, got her neatly dressed in a robe, so that she could receive visitors, when she so chose, cleaned out the bathtub for them, and started for the door. Do you not wish to hold her? Lassair called after the valkyrie. You were here all through the labor. Should you not have some of the reward?
Trennus watched Sigrun turn, the gray eyes a little disconcerted. She came back over, and perched, on the very edge of the bed that he shared with Lassair, and accepted the infant, who’d just finished a stint at Lassair’s breast, and was sleepy and sated as a result. “She definitely favors you both. Lassair’s eyes and hair, of course. But there is a good deal of Trennus in the facial features. She will be striking.” Sigrun rocked the infant, looking a little uncertain about it, and Trennus thought that this might be the first time that the valkyrie had ever actually held a child. Oh, she’d helped with labor and delivery, but actually holding one? She looked almost as frightened of breaking the infant as he felt, himself.
Ah, but she definitely has your nose and cheekbones, Stormborn, Lassair told the valkyrie, calmly, and Trennus tried not to choke.
“Ah . . . what?” Sigrun said, sounding a little confused.
I used some of your life-pattern to shape this body when I created it. I admire your appearance, strength, and certainty, so I wished to replicate it. Unsurprisingly, some of that pattern appears in Latirian’s life-essence as well.
About five different expressions rippled across Sigrun’s face, each one clear and distinct, and Trennus cautiously took Latirian out of her hands. He was seeing shock, agitation, anger, a little affront, and . . . fear. Quickly masked, but he knew Sigrun pretty well by now. Lassair, thankfully, intervened, taking Sigrun’s hand in hers, lightly. I did not intentionally put some of you into the child. I only patterned myself off of someone I admired. I did not know that I could create a life, much less that your patterns could pass to her.
Sigrun swallowed. Pushed everything down, visibly. “Poor thing,” she told the baby. “At least between Lassair and Trennus, that should cancel out absolutely anything you get from me.” She stood, and ran the backs of her fingers against the baby’s cheek. “Lassair, if you and Trennus decide to have more children? I would recommend asking someone before you use their . . . life-pattern again.”
I like my base body perfectly the way it is. I adjust it a little from day to day, manifestation to manifestation. You could think of it as us being . . . sisters, in truth. Or very distant cousins. Lassair paused. Which we already were, anyway, Stormborn. You know this.
Sigrun lowered her eyes. Swallowed. “I’ll let you three finish getting acquainted,” she said, without responding to Lassair’s words, and left the room quickly.
It took another two months to finish getting their own house here in habitable enough condition that they could finish moving in; this was made worse by the fact that they were, once more, back in the business of guarding Livorus. That meant that they all once more were based out of Rome, and Livorus was once more, constantly on the move. All of them were used to the peripatetic lifestyle, however, and Lassair insisted on one very important experiment before she went on the road with Trennus. I have to be able to protect this child, she said, simply. And my most certain methods of protection all revolve around flame. Latirian, I know you cannot understand me yet, but if this does not work, I truly do apologize.
As she cradled the infant in her left arm, Lassair had let just her right hand become flame, and had, very slowly, reached a hand towards the sole of their daughter’s right foot. Trennus had watched, eyes wide, and resisting the urge to reach out and snatch Lassair’s hand away. Lassair had let her hand hover near the baby’s foot for a moment, measuring the reaction to the heat without actually touching the baby. And then she’d rubbed her forefinger along the arch of Latirian’s pudgy sole, and the infant pulled away, as from a tickle, stuffed most of a fist inside her mouth, and drooled, but didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. Didn’t react in pain at all.
Trennus examined his daughter’s appendage carefully. “No sign of pink. No burns,” he said, after a stomach-churning moment of anxiety.
Lassair took it slowly, making sure that Latirian was, in fact, as fire-proof as she seemed. And to both parents’ enormous relief, Lassair could actually shift fully into her flame form, and hold the baby totally ensheathed in fire . . . and the most that would happen was that Latirian would go to sleep. “Wish we’d figured this out earlier,” Trennus muttered. “If I’d known she had an off button like this, it would have made for many fewer sleepless nights.”
It had been close to a year since the events on the mountain, and Trennus had, with much help from Lassair and Saraid, begun working to secure his dreams. Beings with enough willpower can shape the Veil around them, Lassair had explained, patiently. You have enormous will. You can construct for yourself a place of safety, where others cannot intrude. You simply must learn to impose your reality upon the Veil.
It had been enormously difficult, at first. The Veil fought him. It was a place where everything happened, and nothing had consequences. It resisted linear reality. It resisted one-thing-after-another. It resisted ordering. It took months, learning to visualize what he wanted to see, and patterning reality around him, but Trennus began to manage it. Night after night, he recreated the Caledonian Forest in the Veil. Saraid’s forest. He wasn’t entirely sure why, except that this was the place closest to his heart, of any in the world. It was where he’d grown up. Where he’d made the decisions that had led him to where he was now. Where he and Saraid had hunted together for the first time, and where he’d been bound to her, and she to him. She paced the imagined woods with him, a certain proprietary gleam in the hind’s eyes, and Trennus spangled the sky with stars and constellations. Not the ones of the real world, but as if they were on a planet somewhere much nearer the galactic core. The stars were thus huge, and the entire sky was filled with them, and there was never really dark. Just a dimmer form of light, and the trees of his imagined forest yearned towards the stars.
The more strongly he imagined it, the harder it was for creatures he did not wish to enter, to enter at
all. The landscape itself began to resist them. And the various creatures he had befriended, or defeated in amicable combat, and whose Names he had learned, began to people that place that wasn’t a place at all. Some of them were transient, there for a night, and then gone, then back, as if they’d never left. Others seemed content to become permanent residents. “I have a kingdom of the mind,” Trennus told Lassair, one morning. “And here I never once wanted to be a king.”
Better in the Veil than on this world, I think.
“I certainly don’t have to worry about taxes.”
There is that. But they are tithing you energy, are they not, in exchange for protection?
“Ah . . . I don’t think so? I think we’re just all unified, and there to protect each other.”
We shall see, she said, and smiled, a little winsomely, as she patted Latirian on the back, as the infant goggled over her shoulder.
___________________
For Kanmi and Minori, the first year after the destruction in Tawantinsuyu had seen a great number of changes. On getting off the plane in Rome, Kanmi’s first sight had been Bodi and Himi, there at the airport with their pedagogue, both tearing loose from the woman’s grip and plunging towards him at a dead run. They practically tackled him, and held on as tightly as they could, babbling, “I thought you were hurt, I thought you were dead!”.
“We saw the news on the far-viewer—”
“Yes, but I called, remember?” Kanmi dropped to his knees, and let his bags slide to the floor, pulling both of his sons to him in a tight embrace. “Don’t tell me you forgot about the phone call.”
Himi, the older one, pulled back first. “You called. Bodi was in bed, though. He didn’t believe me when I said that you were all right.” In spite of his brave words, Himi looked worried. He’d clearly understood a good deal more about the disaster than his younger brother had. “Did you see the mountain explode?”
From very close range, yes. Kanmi couldn’t say it like that. Not without spooking them worse. “I did, actually. I even took a few pictures. It was dark when the volcano first erupted, but I have a few tricks to let me take night pictures that look like daylight.” Casual tone, casual words. Making it less of a big deal. “I had my camera in my work bag, like I always do. Got some pictures of the ornithopter that Agent ben Maor was flying when I took the volcano shots. You’ll like that.” Admittedly, the pictures had all been taken in an effort to get the details of the destruction down for the intelligence wing of the Praetorians, but his boys would just see smoke, fire, and a good deal of debris. They wouldn’t realize just how close the ornithopter had been when Kanmi had started snapping pictures. “And you know what? When the gift shop in the hotel in Machu Picchu opened up, I grabbed a few things for you two,” he told them.
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