The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3)

by Deborah Davitt

  Attending to the health of one of my pack-mates. Heal her. There was evidently no love lost between these two.

  She appears minimally wounded. She should wait at the back of the line, with the bear-warriors and others who have no pressing need for my services.

  I can wait, Tofa said, and tried to struggle to her feet. Sigrun winced, and moved forwards. She really hoped that the fenris’ normal healing would take care of the nerve damage, given time, but she wasn’t sanguine about that. She’d never tried to repair a broken spinal column before, and the internal injuries had been severe. She got a hand on the fenris’ shoulder, and pushed her back to the ground, gently.

  Eir turned and gave Sigrun a look, as well. She felt small, meeting that glance; she usually felt young and untried around Tyr and Freya, and even Loki, but Eir was even worse, in her own way. The expression was overtly critical. And why are you here, death-crow? Eir challenged her.

  Sigrun tried to put out of her head the fact that a god-born of Eir had failed to cure her mother of cancer, seventy-eight years ago. Not that medical science had held many options, at the time, either. “I attempted to heal her wounds. Liver lacerations, broken ribs that had perforated the lungs, bruised kidneys, and a severed spinal cord. Her natural regeneration will deal with the soft tissue problems, but I am concerned for her long-term nerve damage—”

  She is a fenris. Her natural regeneration will deal with the nerve issues. Eir flicked her fingers.

  I need my entire pack ready to fight, and in short order.

  Then find a replacement. That is what all armies must do, when someone is injured, and must recuperate. In the meantime, there are people here who need my aid more. Eir turned and stared again at Sigrun. Either heal them . . . valkyrie . . . or leave me in peace to tend to them.

  Fenris growled, making the earth shake. Maccis growled, higher in pitch, but reverberating on a similar harmonic. And Nith came in for a landing, nearby, and loomed. Quietly. Sigrun lowered her head for a moment. Eir did have a point. Triage was triage, and Tofa was not as badly injured as those around her. On the other hand, this confrontation was also something of a pissing contest. “Of course I will aid the survivors. As I always have done.” She turned to Fenris. “I would recommend taking Tofa to the Roman field hospital. They may have spine specialists there, good Hellene- or Judean-trained physicians who can evaluate her for her mobility and for numbness, and might be able to give her some assistance.”

  She turned away, and began healing the wounded, all too aware of the fact that Fenris and Eir were still glaring at each other. Fenris picked Tofa back up, and told Eir, I will remember this day. The one you called a death-crow offered healing, and saved the life of one of my own, when you turned away from healing, which is your purview.

  I have people here who are at death’s door, Eir snapped back. I suggest that you remember that in the future, and not make presumptuous demands based on a tenuous alliance—

  Nith’s head swiveled, and cold air stirred as he lifted his wings. Sigrun knelt, and carefully started knitting together the wounds of the soldier in front of her. Sucking chest wound, from a bullet in the lung . . . possibly a friendly-fire accident. It took energy and concentration to do it without taking the wounds, taking the pain, on herself. It required the full union of othersight and seiðr, and was far more like surgery than she thought she was qualified to carry out. The tenuous nature of this alliance is made more so by your attitude, Niðhoggr said, with sudden sharpness. No one here denies that the fenris female was only mildly wounded. But you have taken more time away from your patients in arguing, than you would have in merely ensuring her health.

  Eir’s head rose. I do not recall having asked for your opinion, pet of Hel.

  “Son,” Sigrun said, with meticulous accuracy, and finished healing the man on the stretcher in front of her. “Nith is the son of Hel. Technically, his name would be Niðhoggr Helsson, if we wished to be at all accurate here. And he is correct. Attitude when dealing with allies is very important. For example, I am always courteous to Fenris, because not only has he earned my respect and my trust, but he also has in his entourage one who is dear to me. Disrespect on my part could visit suffering on that young man. Likewise, I am respectful to Niðhoggr, who is a valuable ally and friend. And I believe that I am respectful to you as well, Eir. My personal feelings do not come into account. The personal is not important.” She’d moved on to the next soldier in the triage line, this time a savage leg wound, and sighed. She felt intensely inept at this process, but at least she understood, more or less, how the veins and arteries and muscles all worked together, and how they’d been ravaged was plain in othersight, when she concentrated. “This is a crushed femoral artery. Judean- and Hellene-trained surgeons could handle this,” she added, clinically. “It would help to clear the triage line by handing to them cases that they can handle easily, while we work to restore those who are beyond the reach of natural philosophy.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Eir finally turned, looking grim, and spoke to Fenris. I apologize for my ill-temper. I have lost track of how many I have healed in the past several hours. Let me see your wolf, and see what I may do for her.

  Ten minutes after that, Sigrun endured a cross-examination about the surgical techniques pioneered in Nippon, Hellas, and Judea. How many of them had been promulgated to Rome and even Caesaria Aquilonis. “They developed heart transplants over seventy years ago,” Sigrun told the goddess, feeling helpless.

  Nonsense. If you remove the heart, the brain and other organs will die from lack of blood flow.

  Sigrun did her best to conceal her thoughts, most of which revolved around how Eir’s own god-born should have passed this sort of information on to her. Perhaps they had tried, but Eir had chosen not to listen. I’ve been guilty of the same tendency in the past. She cleared her throat, and explained, “They use a heart-and-lung bypass machine. It supplies the blood with oxygen and circulates the blood without the heart. They used one on me in the fifties when I took a heart-wound from the body of the man who became my husband, for example.” Sigrun paused. “Mechanical hearts have been built, but a donor heart from a cadaver is preferred, still.”

  The look of outright horror on Eir’s face might have been funny, if she hadn’t been a goddess. That is monstrous. People who are part machine, and part human? People who carry around . . . parts of other humans?

  “With respect, I disagree. All organ donation is voluntary. It is a generous last gift, the gift of life. And wherever the human soul flies after death, surely, they have no more use for their bodies.”

  Eir shuddered, visibly, and got back to work. After a time, Sigrun asked, quietly, “If I may ask . . . when you found yourself . . . elevated . . . how did you deal with it?” Eir was the only person alive of whom she could ask this question, after all. The kami, Tenjin, was dead. No one had seen Heracles in generations—he was probably off in the Veil with all the other Hellene gods, and whenever she asked Prometheus about the man, the titan invariably laughed. How do you think I convinced him that I wasn’t Prometheus, and that he should go release my brother, the godslayer, from my old chains? The man had no end of muscle, but a functioning brain? There are reasons Zeus was sufficiently unthreatened by him to raise him fully to godhood! All that prancing around, anointing his body in olive oil so that his muscles shone in the sun . . . .

  Eir looked up at her inquiry. Better than you did, from all reports. Then again, I was not informed that I was the new Hel. I suspect I might have rebelled at that, in part. She held a hand over a civilian woman’s clawed chest, and the wounds sealed over, instantly. Sigrun tried to see how she did it, but it all went by too fast. I had a bear-warrior lover. He died in battle just before I . . . ascended. I couldn’t save him. The blue eyes were distant. For the first hundred years or so, I kept track of our children. Our children’s children. And then theirs, in turn. After a while, I realized something very important. She looked steadily at Sigrun. A cert
ain amount of distance is necessary, if you wish to retain your sanity. If you allow yourself to love mortals, as a mortal does, then you are bound to suffer when they die. And suffer you will, over and over and over again. In time, all you will see in a newborn is the inevitability of their death.

  Sigrun’s head jerked back. That sounded . . . horribly like what Sophia saw in everyone around her. “But without love, without connections to those who share the world around us, this world would be without meaning, would it not? Would we not just be slaves to duty, with nothing more to live for than the next task?” For some reason, Reginleif’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, and she looked around, thinking rapidly. She’d seen massive changes in technology just within her own lifetime. If Bodi, Kanmi, Adam, and Min hadn’t forced her to do so, she probably would never have learned how to use a calculus. She still didn’t much like the damned things, other than the occasional game that challenged her mind and reflexes, but she could use them. She rather suspected that she was the only . . . entity . . . currently around who could, although Prometheus was fascinated by them. Isn’t that what I see here in Eir? Someone who has become disconnected with the world around her, who is . . . stuck in time, if not in physical reality? Is that why her god-born cannot cure aggressive, end-stage cancer? Because they cannot heal what they do not understand? Will I have to study medicine, like Latirian, in order to heal people properly? No, that can’t be it, not entirely. I didn’t understand the damage done to my own body in wound after wound, and it still healed . . . .

  Eir gave her a patient look. You will have to strike your own balance. If you become completely detached from humanity, you run the risk of becoming . . . Tlaloc. Or Hel. Someone who sees mortals as a means to an end. And if you remain intimately involved in the lives of mortals, living as one of them, except never aging, never dying . . . ah, yes. You have already begun to understand the price. It will cost you your sanity. Find just enough distance to let you survive, and just enough contact that lets you remain . . . connected and integral, and that will permit you to sustain yourself on belief— she chuckled at Sigrun’s expression of pure distress, and you’ll survive. You might not stay yourself. No one really does, over time. Not even the mortals. But you’ll discover that, too.

  Sigrun turned her face away, and got back to work. She’d asked the question. She’d gotten an answer. And just as always, she didn’t really like what she’d heard, wanted to resist it. Love is what matters, connections are important, if we aren’t a part of something greater than ourselves, then we’re nothing at all . . . . And yet . . . .

  Eir’s words sounded uncomfortably like the truth.

  December 15, 1992 AC

  The office in which Brandr Ilfetu sat occupied a corner of the Jerusalem Transitional Living and Assistance Authority building. It was institutional and drab, and the last place one would imagine the beloved of a powerful god working on a daily basis. And yet, Frittigil Chatti had spent the last two decades of her life in just this building. She couldn’t have found a better hiding place, if she tried. Brandr’s face remained expressionless as he regarded the young god-touched woman before him.

  “Master Ilfetu, thank you for meeting with us on such short notice.” Frittigil had usually seemed nervous around Brandr, at least since the mid-eighties, when he’d been ‘re-introduced’ to the young valkyrie. He was never entirely able to shake the sensation that he knew her, and knew her very well indeed. He strongly suspected that Loki had used some of the god’s own memories of teaching Fritti as Radulfr to create the visions and memories that filled Brandr’s mind, replacing whatever had really occurred in the two years Brandr had been missing. Brandr knew that his feeling of betrayal by a former student was irrational; he’d never actually taught Fritti, and her desire to hide from the Odinhall—from him!—was understandable. He was a stranger to her.

  And in many ways, he was still a stranger to himself, as well.

  But now, her eyes were clear and calm, and she no longer tended to look away from him, or pull at her fingers when in his presence. So, what the priests are saying is true, then. Loki has returned. And she’s found some answers. Good for her. If only wyrd were that kind to others.

  Rather than speak, Brandr nodded acknowledgement to Fritti. There were people present that he did not know, and he still hadn’t quite mastered the stutter, which had resulted from the massive brain damage inflicted on him by Hel’s attack, twenty-two years ago. The stutter left him sounding dim-witted, in his own opinion. It showed weakness that was intolerable in a bear-warrior. Silence, therefore, was his best option when meeting strangers. “Let me introduce everyone,” Fritti said, smoothly. “Everyone, this is Brandr Ilfetu, god-born of Thor. He’s had over eighty years of experience in both combat and training god-born. I know that since 1980 or so, he’s had stints on the Persian front, with our landsknechten, and up in Germania, trying to hold back the grendels and ettin.”

  Brandr nodded again. She’d summarized his life pretty well, there. It might cut down on any pissing matches with the locals who didn’t know a god-born when they saw one. Fritti cleared her throat. “And these are officers Eyal ben Gil and Lior ben Niv, from the Jerusalem gardia. Fannar Hakonsson, you’ve already met, he’s my community outreach specialist for the jotun—” Brandr exchanged a nod with the hulking male. “And this is Lorelei.” Fritti gestured towards the last person in the office, and suddenly, she did look nervous again, briefly.

  This woman was a black-haired harpy, with red swan eyes, a faint scar on one cheek, and black down ruffling the length of her pale arms. She was knife-slender, and beautiful, in a cold, composed way. A brief, highly male thought entered Brandr’s head as he studied her, and he wondered if her lustrous black wings would get in her way if she was on her back in bed, or if she’d prefer, for her own comfort, for her lover to taker her on her hands and knees. The image that flickered through his thoughts was dismissed, with the realization that he probably needed to visit a brothel sometime soon. “L-lorelei,” he repeated, forcing the word out. The lack of surname usually indicated someone who did not remember their past. “N-not Hellene.”

  The red eyes flicked towards him, and he was aware of a shift in her expression. Not disgust, or disdain, but a faint impression of distress, quickly veiled. “No,” she said, her voice melodic, and soothing. “I am a Goth by birth.”

  Brandr frowned. The words were Latin, but her voice nagged at him, on the edge of familiarity. Now she added, liquid gold overtones entering her words, like molten honey, “Many people have forgotten their pasts, or have chosen not to pursue their memories in these troubled times, Master Ilfetu,” she murmured. “It is a courtesy to permit them that, do you not think?”

  It must be nice to be able to speak so fluently. To wrap people up with words. And of course, he could sympathize, heartily, with the thought of missing years of life. Brandr found himself almost nodding in response to her, without even thinking, and then his eyes narrowed at the impulse. The other problem with not being able to trust his own memory . . . was that it made him scrutinize everything around him, with almost paranoiac intensity. He never wanted to lose time like that again. Be deceived like that, again. “W-which are you?” He’d shifted to Gothic. Sometimes, speaking his native language, he could escape the stammer for a bit.

  Her lashes fell down, concealing the red eyes, and replied in Latin, “Neither, I fear. I remember everything with perfect clarity.” She raised her head, and met his gaze directly, and again, he saw regret’s shadow slip over her features. “But that is not why we are here, Master Ilfetu.”

  She’s speaking Latin for a reason. She doesn’t want the others to be upset that we’re speaking in Gothic . . . or she doesn’t want me to hear her accent. Brandr turned his gaze back to Fritti, and lifted a hand, silently, palm up, asking her to continue, without having to speak, himself.

  Fritti nodded now, biting her lower lip, her eyes still fixed on the two of them, and then regained control of her facial f
eatures. “The local gardia have indications that a jotun clan has gotten involved in organized crime in Little Gothia.”

  “It looks as if they were initially brought in as the muscle,” one of the gardia officers noted. “And somewhere along the line, they figured out that they could run the show, pretty easily. Mostly protection rackets.”

  “They started off pretty much terrorizing their own people, and some fenris and other jotun took it amiss,” Fritti said, quietly. “They couldn’t make much headway inside little Gothia, so they’re currently trying to make inroads in Little Hellas . . . .”

  “Where they are currently in a turf-war with a minotaur gang,” Lorelei supplied, her voice weary. “When they presented themselves outside my window last night, and found a number of lamp posts to swing at one another, I took it upon myself to speak to the young lads, and one of the jotun was intelligent enough to listen to persuasion.”

  “H-how many?”

  “Five or six minotaurs, and an equal number of jotun.” A muscle tensed in her cheek.

  “B-by yourself?” His voice rose skeptically.

  “A siren’s voice is a wondrous thing.” She smiled, and the whispering harmonics that surrounded her voice spoke of enchantment. “The jotun with whom I spoke has turned himself in to protective custody, and has informed the gardia where his leaders have hideaways.”