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

by Deborah Davitt

  “Should there be lights pouring down from the heavens? Maybe a choir of subject spirits, singing?” Kanmi scoffed. “Maybe I should appear to just a few of my old students, and bid them go spread the word of my return, so that people will start believing in me.” He made a rude noise. Across the room, the faucet in the sink turned on, and water lofted across the room in a thin stream, pouring neatly into one of the glasses, leaving the other empty. No incantations, no gestures. The arak turned milky.

  “So now what for you?” Adam asked, his voice uneven. “Post-apotheosis, that is?”

  “I’m not sure I make a good god. I see a problem, I go fix it, regardless of how dirty my hands get, and I tend to sleep well afterwards. Aside from which, if anyone started to worship me, I’d spend so much time trying to tell the dimwits to stop, and go get some work done, that I’d never get anything done myself.”

  Adam couldn’t help the snort of laughter, and Kanmi grinned briefly, before pointing down at the milky arak in his glass. “Still won’t touch this stuff, I take it?”

  “I have a bottle of Tren’s uisce beatha around here.”

  “You can’t tell me that’s kosher.”

  “It’s made locally. Most distilled spirits are naturally kosher. This one has a hechsher label on it to state that the casks it was aged in were never used for non-kosher wine.”

  “Funny that you’re more concerned about that now, than you were on the road.” Kanmi arched his eyebrows at Adam.

  “I’m not that concerned about it. It’s just that almost everything you get off a shelf here has the certifications, just like food and drug labels in Rome. And you asked about it.” Adam started to get to his feet, and Kanmi waved for him to sit down, as the correct cupboard opened, and the bottle gently sailed across the room to land beside him. “You’re showing off, Esh.”

  “A little. On the one hand, it’s nice being able to use my hands for things. Being able to interact with physicality. But I’m also used to using my mind to do even small things.” Kanmi lifted his glass, and stared at it. “And taste . . . Baal’s teeth. I’m going to put on twenty pounds in a week. I just finished lunch with Min, and I couldn’t stop eating.” He chuckled, but there was unease in his tone. “She tells me that Reginleif is much the same way.”

  Adam grimaced at the name. He’d yet to be re-introduced to the valkyrie-turned-siren, and was grateful for that fact. Now, he picked up the bottle. If this was an illusion, it was an exceptional one. The empty glass felt cool to the touch. The bottle itself felt heavy. When he poured the uisce, it glugged out, and the smell made the hairs in his nose curl up, as usual. When he took a sip, it burned the back of his throat, and warmed him. All in all, he was inclined to believe the evidence of his senses.

  Kanmi shook his head. It’s me, ben Maor. It really is.

  The words whispered in Adam’s mind, and he closed his eyes before taking another swig of the liquor. With that warming his stomach, he asked, “So. What was being dead like, anyway?”

  Kanmi snorted. “If you’re looking for a preview, I’m not going to be much help. I clearly remember the incantation that turned the Chott el Jerid into raw hydrogen surrounded by an oxygen-rich environment. I remember igniting it. I remember about a half a second of . . . force. Not even pain. Just . . . impact. As if something the size of Sigrun’s dragon had punched me.” He looked away, staring at the wall. “The first thing I actually remember after that is . . . Min’s voice. From a very long way away. And a candle. I could see the candle’s flame. There are . . . flashes. I assume of the Veil.” He shook his head. “Fighting with things that wanted to eat me. I convinced them not to do so.”

  “Sigrun tells me that Regin turned herself into a swan, and made herself a pond. So long as she never got out of the pond, she was safe, apparently.” Adam did his best not to roll his eyes.

  Kanmi took a long drink of his arak. “I don’t have memories that clear. Just scraps. I just saw the candle flame. And I followed it. Things got in my way, tried to consume me, I fought. Sometimes I lost, I think.” He shook his head. “But I followed the candle and Min’s voice, and when I found both, I wasn’t in the Veil anymore.” He paused. “I was here. Back in the land of continuity and causality. And I couldn’t do a damned thing.” Kanmi turned back towards Adam. “There are house-spirits more powerful than I was. I couldn’t even lift a piece of foolscap. Everything I was used to doing . . . setting up the structure in my mind, redirecting ambient energy . . . didn’t work. I didn’t have a body to focus through. Just a mind, a will, and a Name. So I . . . learned how to shift the focus.”

  Adam’s eyebrows had gone up. “This sounds like something you should talk about with Tren.”

  “King Trennus and I have had a few words in his realm in the Veil, yes.” Kanmi grinned.

  “So what did you wind up using as your . . . focus?” Adam asked. The curiosity was idle. He couldn’t use the information.

  “My Name, apparently. I need to do something nice for Lassair when I see her again. She’s the one who told me my Name years ago. At least part of it. Maybe give her a big kiss and tell her that if Min and I ever have more children, we’ll name one for her.” Kanmi exhaled. “So. I came here to talk, but I could also hear you thinking my Name, or close enough.” He snorted at Adam’s grimace of discomfort. “I can’t hear your every thought, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “There’s nothing worth listening to in here anyway.” Adam tapped on his own temple with a knuckle, and then paused, formulating his question. “Esh, you were older than I was when you . . . died.” He paused, but Kanmi’s expression didn’t change. “How in god’s name did you keep your mind focused for spell-casting? Mine wanders off without me sometimes, and I have to pull it back to me on a leash of spider’s thread, and hope it found good ideas while it was away.”

  Kanmi sighed, but there was empathy in his tone as he replied, “That’s different from person to person, ben Maor. You’ve kept your mind active, and that’s a help. People who don’t do more than sit around watching the far-viewer and swilling ale are usually the ones who lose their minds, I’ve noticed. There’s an expression in calculi-programming that applies. Garbage in, garbage out.” He raised his eyebrows again. “You should tell Sigrun. She’s better with fixing minds than you might think. All that practice on her sister.”

  The alcohol dulled his reaction to hearing Sig’s name, and he avoided the subject. “So . . . about what level of entity are you, anyway? I’m assuming stronger than a house-spirit now.”

  Kanmi finished his glass of arak, and pushed it aside. “About Tren’s level of entity. Not as far along as Sigrun and Saraid. Lassair’s pretty powerful, too. She just needs to figure out who she wants to be. Though after today . . .” He shook his head. “The people behind the attack in Novo Gaul are exactly like the people I was dealing with out of the Carthaginian Liberation Party. The people I trained.” His expression was bleak. “No wonder they like the mad godlings. They are them. Previous to becoming mindless killing machines comprised mostly of hate.”

  Adam grimaced. “Yes. I’ve been watching the news.” He exhaled. “But . . . Potentia ad Populum doesn’t seem like a logical group to do this, Esh. They might hate the god-born, they might not be particularly happy with the gods, but . . . a large number of them were technomancers. Anyone can write a manifesto or a letter taking credit for an attack, and send it to a news station.”

  “It could be someone trying to cover their own tracks. Yes. We’re investigating that, too.” Kanmi tilted his head to the side. “We’re also going to look into the source of the diamond they used to store the spell. They’d also have needed laser engraving machines to incise the spell inside of the crystal. That’s not something you find at a corner hardware store.” He shrugged. “Of course, that’s the slow method. Sigrun’s using a faster method to try to track down the people who put the spell in place, physically. Charged it. Touched it in transit.”

  Adam frowned. “I
. . . don’t understand. Through DNA, or something like that? A scent-trail that Nith can follow?”

  Kanmi stood and put the bottle of arak away in the liquor cupboard. “It’s a little metaphysical, and doesn’t follow the recognized chains of evidence and probable cause,” he admitted, and chuckled, probably at the look on Adam’s face, “but it seems to be an extension of her deathsense. Or maybe it’s a justice or vengeance thing.” He shrugged. “The people involved have guilt-ties to the crime, even if they’re proud of what they did.” Kanmi sounded nauseous. “Baal. Maybe she keys in on the pride, too. I don’t know. I just know she’s tracking them.”

  Adam put a hand over his eyes for a moment. “Without any evidence. Without a court. Without anything besides a feeling about the issue, she’s going to try, convict, and execute them?” He felt cold. This is not my Sigrun. My Sigrun understood the importance of the laws. In fact . . . she embodied them. “Tyr isn’t going to stop her?”

  Kanmi turned, half-frowning. “Tyr’s helping to track them, Adam. They’re supposed to bring the perpetrators to the gods of the Gauls and their people, for questioning. So we can find out how far this has spread. Potentia isn’t the only extremist group out there. There’s still Blood Pact and others.” He paused. “Aside from which, she’s . . . not a Praetorian anymore. She handed in her badge.”

  Adam lurched to his feet, and braced himself against the table. “God damn it, Esh. The whole world is breaking down. This is not a time for the rule of law to be overturned. This is the time when it needs, more than ever, to be enforced. Because if the systems that gave us civilization break down, there isn’t going to be civilization, but anarchy. And it’s not going to be pretty.”

  A muscle in Kanmi’s jaw worked. Strange to see the old Kanmi’s expressions on that young face; he’d only picked up grinding his teeth in his years in the Carthaginian Liberation Party. “Point your temper a different direction, ben Maor. What do you want us to do? Go at human speed, in human time? Process the microscopic traces of evidence sprayed across what used to be thirty miles of city? Take pictures of the carbon shadows on the walls that are all that’s left of some of the people in the western section? Interview their fucking ghosts?”

  Adam slammed the palms of his hands down on the table, ringingly. He didn’t need the reminder of the increasingly wide divide between himself and his old friends. He said us. He put himself on the side of the gods. Esh of all people doesn’t see himself as human anymore. “I didn’t say that, Esh. All I’m saying is that this sets a very goddamned—hah!” Adam paused. “A bad precedent. We’re bringing go—entities—in to do humanity’s work for them. We’re using Sigrun as an attack dog—”

  “Actually, that’s Fenris’ job. He’s on the hunt, too.”

  Kanmi’s dry observation didn’t assuage Adam’s temper. “At what point do we tell the gods to mind their own business again?”

  “The gods of the Gauls and the gods of Valhalla have always remained involved in their people’s lives. My people’s gods, not nearly as much. Yours? Not at all. And that’s between them and their people.” Kanmi folded his arms across his chest. “Personally, after seeing the entire city turned to rubble by a spell that I created?” His dark eyes were inhuman for a moment. “They’re going to have to wrap me up in one of the chains they originally made for Fenris if they expect me to be around any prisoners that Sigrun, Tyr, and Fenris might bring in. I will not have my work perverted for this kind of thing, Adam. And any mage who would use it like this, on a city, on non-combatants, and with such . . . intolerable sloppiness that it could have self-perpetuated until the river ran dry . . . doesn’t deserve to live.” Kanmi’s glare bored a hole into Adam’s own. “I’m looking in my way. She’s looking in hers. Let it go, ben Maor.”

  “Let what go?”

  “Your irritation that you aren’t out there with us. Keeping us on the straight and narrow.”

  “It has nothing to do with me. It has more to do with the fact that now we have two sets of laws, one human, and one divine, and gods shouldn’t be out enforcing the human ones—“

  “Oh, so you’re objecting on a technicality.” Kanmi clapped his hands briefly. “There’s always been several levels of laws, Adam. You know this as well as I do. There are laws at the Imperial and provincial levels that strictly apply to ley-mages, sorcerers, and summoners. And there are regional laws for god-born. A higher standard, if you will, or at least, a different one. In some areas, they have more rights than ordinary people—the Magi of Chaldea were their people’s ruling class, largely. The god-born of Egypt were the nobles. But in Germania and Gaul, the god-born became the servants of their people, as well as of their gods. The different levels have always existed. Sorcerers enforce the rules among ourselves. The god-born do the same. You’re objecting now because we’re enforcing the laws of the normal humans as well as those that pertain to us? Except we’ve always done that, too.” His eyebrows rose. “Think for a moment before you answer. Because I can crucify you six different ways with almost anything you say.”

  Adam exhaled. “God, you have to be who you look like. No one else in the world is this irritating.”

  “Thank you. I’ve cultivated my talents for many years.” Kanmi lifted a hand. “So?”

  “Not all laws are intended for all people. They really should be . . . .”

  “In a world where all people were exactly the same, with no differentiations in power, sure. One law. Ours is an imperfect world, ben Maor. I just try to live in it. Now and again.” Kanmi grinned, and then sobered. “At least admit that half of why you’re so angry is self-inflicted. Tell Sigrun or Tren that you’re willing to take a soul-bond. Come back on the team.” He shrugged. “Baal’s teeth, Lassair needs a new playmate. Why not you?”

  Adam sat back down, very slowly. It always came back to this. “I’m not dead yet. I can still be of help.” He managed a faint smile. “Besides, Lassair?”

  “Oh, like you’ve never thought about it.”

  “I’m alive and not a planarian. Of course I have.” Adam grimaced. She’s not my type would be a stupid thing to say. She’s too young, in regards to an ancient yet ageless spirit, was equally foolish. I’m married was probably laughable, considering one of the people he was turning down was his own wife. And while he could tell Nith what he feared, ironically enough, he wasn’t sure he could tell the others. Nith probably wouldn’t tell Sigrun. Not unless it became important. Tren . . . Tren had seen the shadow on the ground in the Veil. Esh . . . . “So, everything Sophia Caetia ever told you about yourself, came true, eh?”

  “So far. Of course, I don’t think she expected me back this soon. Or in this good of condition. Something about living eyes in a dead face.” Kanmi shuddered. “She’s insane, ben Maor.”

  Adam looked down. “She told me I was going to be a godslayer. One of the old ones. I don’t want to be.” He looked up. “If you can find a way out of it that doesn’t wind up with me playing right into the hands of prophecy? I’d appreciate it. And . . . if it happens . . . Nith’s already promised to kill me before I take a shot at Sig.” Except, I don’t know what she’s becoming. Maybe . . . maybe, god help me, she’s going to become as dark and insane as Baal-Hamon. Maybe I’m going to think she needs to be stopped. No. God, no. I’d never think that. Ever.

  Kanmi looked horrified, but his quicksilver mind worked away behind his eyes, as always. “Don’t get locked on it. Too many things are different, Adam. Things might not go the way Sophia saw them.”

  “Yes, but how does that even work? How can things have gone along perfectly in line with her predictions for so long, and now, all of a sudden, it’s diverging?” Adam threw his hands wide. “I’d love to say it’s free will and the power of the human spirit, but we’ve had those all along.”

  Kanmi’s eyes were almost predatory. “I’ve been doing the math on that one, ben Maor. I have a working theory, and Min thinks it’s viable . . . but we need a little more data.” He sighed, and put a han
d on Adam’s shoulder. “It’s been good talking with you, my stubborn old friend. I need to see Erida before I make it back home to my wife.” There was a tone of relish in his voice. “I’ve already stopped in on Bodi, Himi, and Masako. And when I’ve got access to Zaya and Sigrun again, I think it might be a good idea to see how far we’ve diverged from baseline prophecy, by visiting Sophia Caetia.” He shrugged. “In and around catching some very large-scale murderers, before they do it again.”

  Adam swallowed. “They may have done trial runs—”

  “Too many places are off the grid, and too much damned seismic activity. They could have detonated any trial-runs in the areas of the north overrun by grendels and lindworms, parts of Carthage in North Africa . . . even northern Caesaria Aquilonis. It’s never been heavily populated—”