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

by Deborah Davitt

  Mercury tried not to think. I believe that this may only fan the fires of rebellion.

  Have no concern.

  Apollo of Delphi rocked on his throne and giggled to himself. It’s happening. It’s happening the way I remember it . . . and yet not. It’s happening and it’s not happening, at the same time. There are differences. Two realities, both with the same ending.

  Mercury shut the words out. He could remember when Apollo of Delphi had loved music and pretty girls more than anything else. Before too much power had twisted him into a rapist and prophecy had transformed him into a drooling idiot. Yet the words nagged at him. What changed? What is different? No good asking Apollo that, though. He’d just start babbling again.

  Jupiter’s fingers tightened, and Mercury let his thoughts go blank. Go now. Begin our talks with the Quecha. If they are conciliatory . . . I may grant them some measure of mercy.

  How many of their worshippers being ordered to worship you directly would you consider ‘conciliatory’? Mercury wanted to ask, but didn’t dare. Out loud, his only reply was, Yes, my lord. And then he fled the echoing hall. He preferred the mortal realm. Even as wracked as it was by war and disaster, it was a far better place than Olympus. He wasn’t sure when the change had occurred. But once it had, it had always been that way. He could remember when the damned place had been a wooden hall, and Hephaestus had bound Ares and Aphrodite to one another with a net of his own power, their energies only half-shared, and all the gods had laughed—half at the couple, and half at Hephaestus, for objecting. You’ve been among the humans too long! You’re starting to think like they do!

  Surely, there was a better time, once . . . wasn’t there? Or is that better past an illusion?

  A voice whispered at the back of his head, They were always conquerors. There was no innocent, idyllic past, and you know it. Humans shaped them in their own image, and they shaped their humans.

  It didn’t matter. He had a task. He had a message to deliver. Mercury sighed, and lifted himself up into the sky. With luck, the Quechan gods wouldn’t know what had happened to Xipe Totec yet. That meant he could still approach them as a diplomat, a sympathetic envoy. And if they did know . . . he could twist things so that it looked as if the Gallic gods had taken revenge. He planned to leave Xibalba, the realm of the Quechan gods, alive and intact.

  Iunius 2, 1993 AC

  Adam leaned on his cane as he followed Caesarion and Marcus Livorus into the viewing stands, near the barracks of Vidarr’s landsknechten regiment. He watched with a discerning eye as Caesarion’s two visible Praetorians moved to flank the governor, and turned his head minutely, spotting the other guards here and there. There was a god-born of Boreas, a Hellene wind-god, perched on a roof with a Judean-made rifle, he knew, and the others were all doing their best to be inconspicuous. In a crowd this motley, that was actually not difficult.

  Packed into the stands were senior officials from Judea’s government, senior landsknechten like Vidarr and Ima, and a score of harpies, dryads, and assorted nieten. A roar from the assembled crowd, filled with the spine-tingling howls of the fenris, got Adam’s attention, and he looked down in time to understand why, even as the chorus of mind-speech became clear: Saraiiiiiiiiid . . . Saraiiiiiiid . . . Saraiiiiiid . . . .

  Trennus, current King of the Picts, had just entered the arena area below the viewing stands, with Saraid at his side, as his acknowledged queen. They still wore their plain, workaday clothes, leathers for Saraid, a kilt and white shirt for Trennus—but the fenris all knew who the Lady of the Wilds was, and they honored her. She raised her hands, and green light rose from her body, and the fenris all went still. I thank you for your greeting, she told them, smiling gently. It is good to hear your voices and your joy.

  Adam stole a glance at the Temple officials present today. They did not look pleased at all.

  Trennus and Saraid moved up to Caesarion’s box, taking their seats there. “Good day for the damned shield to work,” Adam told Trennus, as they exchanged wrist-clasps, and nodded at the sky. “Far too many people with high rank under the same roof.” A flash of memory. Sophia’s prophecy about Livorus’ death. Caused by a man who’d hated his roof.

  “I’m not planning on giving Caesarion’s lictors any extra work today,” Trennus said calmly, and sat down after accepting a wrist-clasp from Caesarion. Picts didn’t really bow to imperial officials.

  Adam shrugged and continued scanning the crowd. Just being around young Marcus Livorus made him revert to his old habits. “We’re waiting on someone?”

  “A few more guests,” Vidarr rumbled, and the box creaked noticeably as he and Ima both stepped over the partition that divided it from the rest of the stands, and took their own seats—hugely oversized wrought-iron chairs that didn’t look comfortable, but at least held their weight.

  Prometheus followed them in, folding his arms across his chest as he took another jotun-sized chair beside the pair. When I walk the streets of this city, no one looks twice at me. It is . . . rather pleasant, I must admit. I will grieve if I must leave this land. But for now, I thank you for the invitation to join you today. This, directed at Vidarr.

  Vidarr pummeled the titan in the shoulder with not a shred of regard for divinity, and grinned at him. “How else am I going to get an accurate idea of how well-prepared my people are, eh?” A shadow passed overhead, and the jotun looked up. “Ah. Here they are.”

  This, as Niðhoggr’s unmistakable form slipped through the sky. The cheer that rose up came from every Goth present, nieten, human, or jotun. The fenris raised their heads to howl, and Adam’s eyebrows went up. He’d been taken aback the first time he’d gone to the Odinhall and seen how people there treated Sigrun as a valkyrie. This was something else. On the one hand, Sigrun was well-known to the local Goths from her time in the Praetorians. The landsknechten had fought beside her in Germania and Chaldea. The fenris knew her from when she’d helped Saraid find their voices. That explained the adulation, but the awe . . . ? Well, she is sitting on a dragon that could have tail-slapped a tyrannosaurus into the next time zone. Still, it made Adam uncomfortable. Awe was something reserved for . . . gods. Not men. And for good reason.

  The dragon landed, lightly, and Sigrun slipped down, dwarfed by the beast, and strode for the box. She nodded to the rest of them as she took her seat, her face flushed. “Damn him,” she muttered. “He will never take the back door.” She glanced at Vidarr, and then at Caesarion. “I apologize for Nith’s love of dramatic entrances. Vidarr, Ima? It’s your show.” She sat down beside Adam, and he took her hand in his, and rubbed it to try to chase the chill in her fingers away. He couldn’t remember the last time her hands had felt warm to him.

  Vidarr grinned and stood. “Harpies!” he roared. “Commence demonstration runs!”

  As the all-female squad rose into the air, their wings beating, Adam leaned over towards Sigrun. “They’re all the six-limbed models, I see.” There were three major forms of harpies at the moment, all more or less vying for evolutionary supremacy—variants with arms, legs, and additional wings on their backs, versions in which the arms had more or less become the wings, with taloned fingers at the ends of their wings and taloned feet, and a variant more akin to a flying squirrel, with a long panel of skin running between wrists and ankles. Adam had heard that quite a few of the latter variety were opting for cosmetic surgery to have the panels removed, however. They rejected the monster. The others? Had no such choice.

  “Yes. The others require leaping from a high place in order to begin flight.” Her voice was absent.

  His eyes caught a single harpy with jet black wings and hair. “Is that Regin—”

  “Lorelei. Yes.” Sigrun pointed off into the stands. “And I think Brandr is here to watch the proceedings.” Sure enough, the bear-warrior was sitting with a group of jotun, looking more or less normal-sized beside them.

  Adam’s hand clenched around hers, as he remembered, vividly, pulling the trigger on Reginleif after she
’d beaten Sigrun and damned near killed Erikir. I do hope there’s a good reason for your continued existence, he thought at the woman.

  Reginleif had trained the harpies exquisitely, however, he realized. Every one of them was almost as agile in the air as a valkyrie—not quite, however, because a valkyrie’s flight depended on nothing more than will, but harpies had the physical constraints of their wings. The harpies that were closest to human morphology didn’t have tails to serve as rudders, either, which meant that their precision suffered in some respects.

  They all wore friction-resistant, tight outfits in haze gray that had slots at the rear that allowed their wings to pass through . . . and demonstrated hawk-like stoops at speeds that a radar-gun on the grounds clocked at over two hundred miles an hour. They pulled up at the end with tight control, and then lifted dummies that weighed a hundred and eighty pounds into the air with them on their return arc, like hawks stooping to kill squirrels. “This allows us to capture enemy soldiers,” Reginleif called from high above, her voice effortlessly reaching everyone in the stands, shimmering harmonics surrounding her words. “Of course, if we determine that the captive has no value, they may be disposed of, perhaps taking other soldiers with them.” On cue, her harpies all dropped their ‘captives’ eighty feet to the ground. “As we demonstrated a few weeks ago, we are capable of intercepting a low-speed ornithopter and forcing it to the ground. But the true value of the harpies does not lie in direct combat. We have trained extensively for scouting missions. While we cannot fly as high as Judean jets do, even the best stealth technology still can be detected by enemy radar installations, and spirits who happen to be looking for planes at high altitudes. We do not register on radar as metallic, and their radar sets will not be tuned to search for low-flying birds. Their spirits may detect us, but there are methods of hiding from spirits.” Reginleif swooped in for a landing, accompanied by the other harpies. “We can get in behind lines. We can relay troop movements. We can set explosive charges. Half of my people are trained snipers, and are far more mobile than the average legionnaire. We can use perches that a normal soldier cannot even reach. Put us to work. We want nothing more.”

  “None of them are trained in sorcery?” Caesarion said, turning towards Vidarr, Ima, and Sigrun, in a tone of mild surprise. “I would have thought that that would be advantageous.”

  “Lorelei has many such gifts.” Sigrun’s voice was emotionless. “The rest do not have that particular talent, dominus.”

  The acrobatic flights of the harpies had dazzled the crowd. Next, Vidarr had a game in mind for the audience, as potted plants and potted trees were brought in, and settled in place. “This looks familiar!” a voice shouted from the audience.

  Vidarr cupped his hands over his mouth and roared back, “What, a forest appearing out of nowhere? That’s never happened before!” He paused for the nervous laughter to die down. “Many of the dryads have moved into the Caledonian Forest, and I wish them well. We’ve had many applicants over the past few years for dryads who wanted to join the Lindworms, and I never could see how we could use them . . . until Ima pointed out the obvious to me.”

  Ima stood. “Legionnaires? Please take your positions.” Four infiltration-specialist legionnaires, in full ghillie suits, hustled out into the clusters and clumps of vegetation, nestling down and going still. “The very best-trained soldiers can become one with the landscape,” Ima said, her voice ringing out over the parade ground. “Legionnaires! There are eight dryads already in the forest. Find them before they find you.”

  A surprised yelp from one legionnaire as the tree he’d been crouched down next to suddenly moved and put a knife to his neck echoed through the pin-drop quiet stands. Then a roar of approval rose from the crowd. “There’s a difference between natural camouflage and being a trained infiltrator,” Adam muttered to Sigrun.

  Ima turned, one of her lupine ears cocked slightly. “Of course, you are correct, commander,” she told him, cheerfully. “But our dryads are trained.” Another shout from the parade ground attested that another legionnaire had just been captured by the trees. The third man managed to turn the tables on the dryad who was stalking him, but the fourth found himself ringed by three dryads—a hunt that Adam did not envy.

  “And finally,” Vidarr shouted, cutting through the crowd noise, “a project Ima and I have been working on for a few years, with the assistance of Maccis Matrugena, his younger ragamuffin brothers, Deomiorix and Caranti, Saraid—” the howls from the fenris were deafening, and all Adam could make out was the Lady, the Lady, the Lady! “—Sigrun Stormborn, and Niðhoggr.” Adam blinked; Sig had told him how much she hated that name when the fenris used it. And it seemed extremely bad security policy for her Name to be invoked in public.

  “Quiet!” Vidarr rumbled. “This is their first time in front of so many people!”

  The crowd began to still, but it took Nith turning his head, from where he currently lounged on his side in the warm morning sun, and exhaling a fine, cold mist right into the stands for everyone to find silence. Maccis and his two twelve-year-old brothers emerged from the entryway tunnel into the parade ground . . . each perched on the back of a full-grown lindworm. One was a vivid red, and the other an electric blue shade that dazzled the eyes. Leather saddles with buckles and harnesses for the rider’s safety. No reins—a lindworm could have chewed through any bit, anyway. Maccis was perched atop a lindworm as black and glossy as Nith, and had a hand soothingly on its shoulder.

  A thousand people in the stands collectively inhaled. Caesarion spun and looked at Trennus. “Those beasts could bite your younger sons in half and not even pause for thought.”

  Trennus lips had compressed until they turned white. His voice remained surprisingly level, however. “Caranti and Deo have been working with them since Maccis left. About eighteen months, give or take. Maccis worked with the broodlings for a year before that . . . without telling me.” He grimaced. “He was an adult, though, so he had the right to make his own decisions.”

  Ima stood again, and her voice, gentler than Vidarr’s, but no less audible, explained to the crowd, “We’ve spent two decades assuming that the lindworms were . . . just monsters. Raw creation simply spat them out as a curse to us, or so we thought. And yet, no other creature has been warped from animals into monsters, no matter what god’s death sparked the transformation. Lion-men from Carthage. Harpies, dryads, satyrs, centaurs from Hellas. Fenris, jotun, and the hveðungr from the north. It’s long been suspected that the lindworms were humans, once. But voiceless. Maddened.” Ima sighed. “As far as we can tell, criminals and the insane became lindworms on the Day of Transition. And they lost themselves, as so many of us lost ourselves to the wolf. They were bestial and monstrous, and we fought them, and rightly so. But the eggs . . . .” Ima shook her head. “Every one of the eggs had the chance to be a person.” She stressed the word, carefully. “To be human,” she added. “For me, they’re the same thing.”

  Sigrun stood, surprising Adam, and stepped up beside Ima. “I have destroyed rookeries,” she said, forthrightly, and her voice carried into the stands. “At the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do, because what I faced were monsters without speech or reason, only hunger and a need to hunt and kill. I was wrong.” There was guilt in her voice, and regret, and Adam saw her turn to look up at Niðhoggr.

  I never heard a voice in that first generation, Saraid said, sadly. I never thought of the second or the third. And they grow to maturity so very quickly. It takes a human child three years to form complete sentences. A lindworm grows to full adulthood in that time. And without exposure to language . . . .

  Nith shifted; the dragon had been leaning over the reviewing stands, which swayed a little as his bulk pressed into the metal support structure. It is good to see that all people may become more than what they are. That all people may change. His vast voice silenced the crowd, and Adam could see some of the Temple elders pressing their fingers against
their foreheads. And that all things strive. It is time, little ones. Fly.

  On the sands below, the three lindworms raised their heads, calling up to Nith, who raised his head and roared in return, making the stands shake. Adam caught the wild-eyed glances of some of the others in the Imperial box as the enormous voices echoed in the air.

  Then the lindworms, which were only little in comparison to Nith, being each about the size of an elephant, spread their wings, and leaped upwards, tearing through the sky, before beginning to glide. Deo unslung a paint gun from one shoulder, and began firing down into the trees that were still in the parade ground; Caranti and his mount began dropping small payloads of paint-bombs. Slow-flying, compared to a jet, again, but as the lindworms picked up speed, Adam thought they were at least comparable to a helicopter, possibly as fast as two hundred miles an hour. “They’re faster than I thought they were,” he told Trennus, who was watching his sons with a look of trepidation. “Tren, they’re not in planes, and the harnesses looked secure.”