Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate

by Amalia T. Dillin

  “Is that so terrible?”

  Ra looked up at him, his face gray. “Their child would inherit this world in its entirety, and have the power of the True God to change it, or destroy it utterly. Everything we had built would be lost. At best, we would be cast out of this plane, at worst wiped from existence.”

  Thor set down his wine, his stomach gone sour. “Why would the True God allow such a thing?”

  “He is old and has not the strength even to govern his own creation, or else none of us would be permitted here. I think his children are the only hope he has left, but the risk is too great. Even Michael and the angels fear it.” Ra’s gaze remained distant, his expression grooved with some remembered pain he did not share. “Perhaps it would not be so terrible a thing, but for Adam. We should all be grateful he does not know who or what he is, or nothing would stop him. He is a much more agreeable creature, living in ignorance.”

  Thor shook his head. He had met Adam briefly, on his way east. The flicker of his aura, like the glow of electrum, impossible to miss after Thor had watched Eve for so long. Adam was a selfish man, and ambitious to be sure. Thor had lingered long enough to see him turn a village against its chief with nothing but charm and charisma. Adam had negotiated his marriage to the man’s daughter, placing himself in the best position possible before beginning his campaign, and then it had only been a word here and there in the right ears, each argument carefully chosen to undermine the chieftain. He had worked as smoothly as Loki to reach his goal, and Thor could well imagine the man could be dangerous in the wrong circumstances.

  Eve on the other hand, he could not imagine as a force for anything but good from the little he had seen of her. She did not seem to search for power as her brother did, or want anything but peace in her own life. But if she could end the world it was his duty to learn all he could about her.

  “This True God. Is he a threat to us?”

  Ra still stared at the river, his face lined and brittle. “The angels are the ones you should consult about God’s plans, if they’ll bother to speak with you,” he admitted. “But if what you really wish to know is the truth about the girl, I may be able to point you in a more fruitful direction. There seems to be one line she returns to, often enough that it’s been noted. The House of Lions. After escaping Troy, she fled there. She doesn’t like war.”

  “Odin will wish to know of her, I am sure.” Thor scratched at his jaw. It was more than he had hoped for, but he had no wish to appear too eager. “Can you direct me to these people?”

  “You’ll find them on the other side of the Alps, not terribly far from the coast, somewhere in the foothills. I’m told they live quite alone there, apart from any others.” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I cannot promise they will receive you warmly or that they will give you the information you wish to know about the girl. The rumor is that the bloodline is descended directly from her first husband, at the dawn of Creation. They appear to be quite protective of her.”

  Thor ignored the warning. If these Lions did not accept gold, they would certainly accept the information he could offer them, and being a god with power over rain and storm made him a valuable ally if nothing else. “I thank you, Amun-Ra, for your hospitality.”

  Ra inclined his head in the slightest of acknowledgments. “I will be curious to hear what you discover.”

  Thor bowed and showed himself out.

  He traveled by foot, for the most part. It was easier to explain himself that way, with the dust and sweat of the journey on his clothes. He could have called the lightning to take him as far as the Etruscan lands, but Odin’s order was to learn and Thor had done this duty often enough to know the best way to learn about a world was to live in it.

  He sailed with traders from Egypt across the sea, giving them good winds and clear skies to Ra’s greater glory, and then made his way north over land. He was grateful to be leaving the desert behind. The arid lands had not appealed to him—all yellows and browns. And the gold with which Egypt chose to drape itself served only to remind him of Sif. Her golden hair, warm and soft as silk, wrapped around his hand. The scent of her skin, gleaming in the firelight after their lovemaking. And her eyes, glowing with gold fire as she looked at him, bathing him in her light.

  Thor smiled as he trudged over another rocky hill. Sif would be waiting for him, even now. As soon as he finished this final journey to learn what he could about the Lions and Eve, he could return to her. It had been more than two centuries, now. Far too long for any god to remain celibate. Sif would be very pleased to see him, and he had no intention of stirring from her bed for the next year, if he could get away with it. Odin owed him that much for his service.

  “Meh!”

  The noise startled him from his thoughts, followed by soft scuffling. A nanny goat stood on the slope, beside a crevasse in the rock. The scuffling noise came again from behind the nanny, followed by a pathetic bleat.

  “Meh-ehh!”

  The nanny was fat, its coarse brown fur shining, with a tattered piece of twine tied around its neck. The animal was heavy with milk. Heavy enough that it should have found its way home to be milked. When he stepped forward the goat didn’t start, but stared at him with narrow eyes.

  “Lost your baby, have you?” He crouched down, letting the goat catch his scent and reaching out to scratch between its horns. The scuffling sound came from the pit again, and he leaned over to look. The nanny stiffened, but he stroked her soft ears and kept scratching, murmuring reassurance.

  “Meh!”

  As he had thought, her baby was caught in the crevasse. The kid’s front leg was stuck straight out, though at its mother’s call it tried to shift and rise. The leg gave, and the kid fell back to the dirt with the goat equivalent of a whimper.

  Thor grunted and lay down against the stone on his stomach, reaching down to grab the kid. It was a long fall, and he could only just reach the animal himself from the rock above. He caught it by the hind leg, and it bleated anxiously, exciting the nanny which promptly bit his ear.

  He growled, and the mama left off with a shudder. The kid stopped squirming at once, and he pulled it up, setting it down in the scrub. “There. You ungrateful geit.”

  The nanny scrambled toward its young as soon as Thor rose. The kid tried to climb to its feet to suckle, but it didn’t put any weight on its front leg, holding it off the ground oddly. Thor rubbed at his ear, but it had been more nuisance than anything else, and he didn’t think the nanny would try anything similar a second time.

  There was little sign of the rest of the herd. The area had been picked over, most of the green stripped from the branches of what plants had grown, but if there had been other goats here, they’d moved on. Judging by the nanny’s bag, it couldn’t have been more than a day. The animal might have been left behind this morning when the rest of the herd left, unwilling to leave its young.

  The kid wouldn’t be able to walk very far in this landscape with a broken leg. If he left it, they were both more likely to be eaten by a lion or wolf than to find their way home. But he was close to where Ra had told him he was likely to find Eve’s people. He sighed. When the kid had finished suckling, he picked it up and nodded to the nanny. “Go on. I’ll follow.”

  The nanny’s eyes narrowed to slits again, but it shook itself and started off down the hill, pausing every few steps to be sure that he followed. They hadn’t gone very far when he heard a voice calling, and the nanny goat picked up her speed and called back, recognizing its keeper.

  Thor pushed through a line of brush and the nanny led him around a small stand of trees into a meadow. A young girl stood, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, watching for them. Or at least watching for the goat.

  When she saw him she reached for a staff, abandoned on the ground, and whistled sharply. A large white dog lumbered to its feet amidst the goats and barked. Thor gave it a look and it whined, its hackles raised along its back. The nanny bleated and trotted to its mistress.
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  The girl dropped a hand to the goat’s head, almost absently, her eyes not leaving Thor’s face. “What do you want?”

  He smiled and nodded to the nanny, the kid still in his arms. It took him a moment to find the language and lift it from her mind.

  “I found your goat on the hill.” The words did not fall as easily from his tongue as he might have wished, though it was only a slight variation from that which was spoken in the southern peninsula. He cleared his throat. “This one has a broken leg, I’m afraid, but I thought you might like it back.”

  The girl hesitated, her fingers tightening around the staff. The dog was at her side now, its ears perked forward and its head low.

  “Meh!” the nanny said. The kid bleated back, and the girl’s gaze shifted, softening at the sight of the animal he held. She set the staff aside and reached for the kid.

  “Thank you,” she said, her fingers moving over the bones of the front leg. She frowned. “What happened to him?”

  “He fell into a fissure. By the look of the leg, it can’t be too terrible a break. If you set it, he should be just fine in a few weeks.”

  “Can you find me something to splint it?” She sat down carefully on the ground, the kid in her lap, and began to tear a strip of cloth from the bottom of her skirt. He didn’t think she could be more than twelve years old, though she worked with the seriousness of someone older.

  There were plenty of branches to pick from, though the younger and greener the more it would bend. He settled on one as thick around as the kid’s leg, and snapped it into two lengths. It was another moment’s work to strip the twigs. He pulled lightning through his hand and burned the bark free, leaving the wood slightly charred but smooth.

  “Oh!”

  She was watching the smoke rise through his fingers, her eyes wide. He smiled again and crouched down in front of her, handing her the wood. “If I’d left the bark, it would have worn rough against his leg. This will be better.”

  She took the wood without looking at it. “But how did you do that?”

  He opened his hands, showing her his palms, then brushed the soot from them. “I just can.”

  “Didn’t it hurt?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all.”

  Her forehead creased and she dropped her gaze to the kid in her lap, taking the branches and the cloth and splinting them against the leg. He could hear her mind, buzzing over what she’d seen, trying to understand. But she was young enough, he hoped, that she would believe.

  “What else can you do?” she asked, after she had finished tying the splint, and set the kid back to its feet by the mother.

  Thor helped her up from the ground, and glanced at the sky. It was sunny and bright, clear and cloudless. “See that tree, there?”

  He pointed toward a medium sized oak, its boughs heavy with green leaves, and she nodded. Torching the hill would not make him a very welcome guest, and while he could have chosen one already dead, it would be more likely to catch fire.

  “Don’t blink,” he said. “And don’t be frightened.”

  Thor closed his eyes, and called to the static in the air, drawing it together and focusing it into the sky around the tree. He could feel the moisture following, like a sweat breaking out on a hot day, and didn’t stop the cloud from forming, though he could have. He opened his eyes and traced the path from the cloud to the tree in his mind.

  There was a flash of white where the lightning followed, crawling over the tree and into the earth, singeing leaves and branches on its way. The thunderclap was immediate, startling the goats and causing the dog to start barking. But Thor paid no attention to the animals, his gaze on the girl.

  Her face was white as bone and she did not turn to look at him. “You did that?”

  Smoke rose from the tree, and he rang the moisture from the cloud that had formed, focusing the rain into a deluge over the area that had been struck and leaving the animals and the two of them in sunlight.

  “Yes.”

  “And the rain, too?” she asked.

  He smiled. “The rain, too.”

  She turned to look at him, almost shyly, as if she wasn’t sure if she should. “Are you an angel?”

  Thor grunted. It bothered him to be mistaken for one a second time, but he didn’t let it show on his face. These people could hardly be expected to know him for what he was, and the Aesir were too new to the world to be known at all this far south, but for the word he had spread himself.

  “Do angels summon lightning and rain?” he asked.

  She bit her lip and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Not exactly. Grandmother Eve told us that the Archangel Michael can call lightning and fire through his sword though.” She frowned and glanced at his side. “Do you have a sword?”

  “No.” Grandmother Eve. Then he had found them, the House of Lions. It did not seem possible that two Eves could exist with particular knowledge of the angels. “But in the city where I live, I have goats.”

  The girl smiled, and it lit her face and eyes. Yes. These were Eve’s people. And this girl was of Eve’s blood. He could see the resemblance in that smile, the closeness of the line to the goddess they called grandmother. “What are you then, if not an angel?”

  He met the girl’s eyes and let his own glow white. “My name is Thor,” he said. “God of thunder.”

  Her name was Evelia. For weeks he met with her, helping her to tend the goats, and bringing rain and sun to the village to ensure a bountiful harvest. Freyr might have done better, making the grapes grow larger and plumper, and the wheat taller and sweeter, but Freyr was by now in Asgard, building his home with the other gods who followed Odin, and Thor did what he could do. It wasn’t inconsiderable.

  When the time came to harvest the wheat and the other grains, he asked Evelia to take him to the village. Visitors were always more welcome in times of plenty, hospitality less begrudged, and he would be able to help in the fields while he gave them good sun.

  “Mama and Papa will be happy to meet with you, when I tell them what you have done.” Evelia said, prodding one of the goats with her staff to keep it moving. The young kid he had rescued had long since grown out of his splint, and charged about the hillside over the slippery stone as if he had never fallen. “Papa won’t believe that you’re a god, of course. You’ll have to show them. Like you did with me.”

  “I’ll give them any proof they require. As I have already.” Thor nodded to the wheat field outside the village, more valuable than gold for farmers. “Eve’s people, of any, should know the truth. And I can protect her, if the need arises.”

  Evelia frowned. “From the man with the stone eyes. Adam. That’s why we’re supposed to be wary of strangers. No man with gray eyes is permitted on our lands. It’s one of the laws.”

  “Is that how you know him?”

  “That’s how Grandmother Eve told us we should. She said we would feel him, too, like fire on our skin, but if he got that close to us, it was probably too late.”

  “Too late for what?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the goats.

  He nudged a nanny that had stopped to graze on a bush. How she could eat anything more with her bag so heavy with milk, he wasn’t sure. They were nearly to the village now, though, and he could hear the sounds of the people within it. Laughing and shouting, barking dogs and bleating animals. The goats heard it too, and for the most part, they sped up, anxious to be milked and stabled.

  “Too late to stop him from hurting us,” she said, as if there was no other answer.

  Thor grunted. Evelia’s knowledge was vague in regard to Eve and her brother, but valuable all the same. He imagined her parents must know more. He hoped they did, or else this trip to the village would be wasted effort. The golden wheat reminded him too much of Sif, and he wanted to return to Asgard.

  “When Eve came here last, what was her name?” he asked.

  Evelia looked up at him and smiled. “Mama says she was called Helen, and her hair was the color of sunshine
. She was glorious, Grandpapa says. Like an angel from God. But even Mama and Papa were not born yet when she lived here.”

  He returned her smile. Helen. Then she would have come out of desperation and fear. Yes. These people would know. He would stay as long as necessary to earn their trust, as a god and as a man. And then he would return to Odin, and be very grateful for the loving embrace of his wife.

  Chapter Seven: Present

  Eve frowned and rubbed her face. It had been weeks since Adam’s intrusion, but she could not shake the feeling that he still hovered around her, somewhere just outside her immediate perception. It left her unsettled and worried she’d wake up in the night to see Michael and his sword standing over her bed, ready to put an end to the threat she was to the world. An old nightmare she could not stand revisiting. Worse even than the nightmares from her last life, of the mental ward, and the blood.

  She set aside the invitations she’d been addressing and leaned back in her chair, letting her eyes lose focus while she concentrated on the distinct presence of her brother. There was a steady buzz of thought surrounding her. The town, which had sprung up near the DeLeon estate when she had been married to Ryam, had not grown too terribly large. But it was distracting and difficult to sift through, peppered with so much of her bloodline. A perfect place for him to hide.

  Garrit touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we should take a break for tonight. We’ve finished more than half of them. My hand is beginning to cramp, and you look like you’re years away.”

  She opened her eyes, drawing back to herself and pinching the bridge of her nose to forestall a headache. “I’m all right.”

  “You’re worrying again. I can see it in your face. I promise you, you’re safe as long as you stay here. Forget him.”

  Eve wished she had as much faith in the security of the manor, and Garrit’s ability to protect her, if it came to that. She was sure there was something they were keeping from her, but had not yet had any luck discovering what it was. Juliette had only smiled, when she had asked, telling her to leave that sort of thing to the men, so that they would not feel useless. But if something protected the manor, it had not stopped Adam from finding her within it already. She couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t fail a second time.