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

by Deborah Davitt

  Mad godlings had cruised in from over the Pacifica, but had avoided the Caribbean, for some reason unbeknownst to the humans. They had flocked to the Yucatan as a place of perceived safety, as a result, but one godling had cruised overland and attacked there, only to be driven away by Quetzalcoatl and a handful of the other Nahautl gods. Belief soared at seeing the gods in the skies, naturally. And there were public announcements on the radio and far-viewers, reminding residents that if they left Nahautl, their gods could not protect them, and that the gods of other lands had proven to be weak and ineffective in fighting the mad ones. Stay here, where it is safe. Stay here, where the gods can protect you. If you leave, you will die, or become a ghul.

  The campaign worked, in the main, but then, there were so few places left to go. The Quecha Empire was conducting raids across the isthmus that connected Caesaria Aquilonis to Caesaria Australis daily, and Nahautl was doing the same in return. Cargo ships were now prohibited from being sent to either country, because of the high danger of pirates attacking the ships, not just for the supplies, but for the crews. Pirates were assured, in both countries, that if they could provide a steady stream of foreign bodies, that their families would not be sent to the altars.

  Tawantinsuyu struggled to stay out of these affairs, but theirs was the smallest nation of the three, and sacrifice raids came to their mountains, as well.

  Food that would normally have been exported by all three countries was rotting on the docks, unable to get to places like Nova Germania or Novo Gaul, or even Rome. And no supplies were making their way into these regions, either. Starvation wasn’t yet a specter in the capital cities, but out in the outlying areas, people had begun planting subsistence-level crops on whatever land they could find. Corn, beans, and potatoes.

  The gods of Nahautl and Quecha had also been fighting each other, just as their people were, but without casualties . . . until now. Today, that changed. A mad godling came in from the Pacifica near what was left of Tiwan. Piltzintecuhtli, one of the many Nahautl sun-gods, the one associated with dawn and vision-giving plants, rose into the air to fight the creature, calling out for Quetzalcoatl for assistance.

  Quetzalcoatl had remained apart from most of his kin. He’d continued to refuse sacrifices, and his temples were among the only places of asylum for people throughout the land. If someone was pursued by a flayed man or a cihuateteo, and could reach a temple of the Feathered Serpent, the priests and god-born there would attack the monstrous creatures, and thus far, not even the Emperor’s most loyal guards had dared to turn against them. People who feared for their lives, or their children’s, took refuge at his increasingly overcrowded temple complexes, and members of the other priesthoods circled the outskirts in trucks, watching for any who strayed off the sacred grounds. It was an untenable situation that was bound to collapse into violence at any moment.

  But the Feathered Serpent had maintained his neutrality with regard to his kin; his main concern was his humans. He wanted to ensure that his people lived. And thus, he fought the mad godlings, alongside his kin when they called him for aid. And did his best to protect the mortals, even from each other.

  At the moment, as Piltzintecuhtli cried out for his aid, Quetzalcoatl was caught, however, trying to repel an attack by Ix Chel of the Quecha gods, to the south. Piltzintecuhtli fought the godling, valiantly; it took up a third of the sky, but he was alone. He could see, however, the gods of the Gauls, lining up across the northern horizon, and sent them a desperate thought. If you do not aid me, it will come for you, next. It will come for Nimes.

  Taranis’ thought came back, with chilling indifference. When you die, we will be here to absorb and deflect your energies from our people. Then we will fight the godling.

  Desperate, Piltzintecuhtli begged them, We were once all allies! Please, I beg of you. I have not come against you. We permitted your people free passage through our lands—

  Free passage, but Tezcatlipoca harried them and attacked those of us who escorted them home. You have not personally come against us, but your people try to take ours prisoner, for sacrifices. And Obsidian Butterfly crossed our border and killed Anoku earlier this year. Taranis, in the distance, smiled. Tell her, if you should happen to survive, and see her again, that we will avenge our kin.

  The Morrigan, beside him, laughed. And that I will greatly enjoy tearing out the throat of your bat-winged lady of the dead.

  Piltzintecuhtli had no more time to waste. He used all of his powers. He tried to hide himself with illusion. He tried to tear at the creature with gravity. But he was alone, and the godling was powerful. He grasped, faintly, how he might be able to defeat it, and reached out for all the additional power coming from the altars all across his land. All the belief—inculcated by fear as it was—ready to hand. And then he liberated all of his energy at once, lighting up the sky like a nova. Tiwan had already been nearly leveled by an earthquake earlier in the year. Most of its inhabitants were trying to rebuild, but some had fled. This time, it was scorched by radiation. The people who remained in the border city were killed, almost instantly, by the radiation; they were the lucky ones. The survivors, almost to the last man and woman, had radiation poisoning. Their lives, too, became part of the energy flow.

  The godling tried to take it all in, at once, tried to swallow it all, greedily and reflexively. There was, however, too much for it to take in, all at once. All the sacrifices, all the lives, all the blood, had empowered the Nahautl gods. And as such, like a tic that had somehow drilled into an artery, the mad god exploded, and rained down a hundred smaller whorls of darkness, disorganized and chaotic . . . all of which swept this way and that, raging across the rivers and the plains, looking for something to feed upon.

  The gods of the Gauls stared across the river at it all. Taranis finally lowered his head in respect, as the others did, one by one. Perhaps not rendering assistance was a tactical error, the Morrigan said.

  It is a pity that I did not realize he was capable of nobility before the end, Taranis agreed, tiredly. Of course, he also reeked of the blood of sacrifices. I suppose some of them must not be asking for the sacrifices, but also not telling their followers no, either. He glanced around at those who had accompanied him. Toutatis? Nodens? Damara? Begin the hunt. We have many of these damnable creatures to track down, now.

  None of them noticed a tiny, ephemeral creature, in the center of the blast crater left behind by the sun-god’s demise. I have a Name, the being thought, in confusion. I am. I am what I am. And yet . . . who am I? It looked up at the sun, and was entranced with the searing orb of light. Oh, that. That is what I am. I think . . . yes, I should go home for a little while. This place isn’t home. Home is the other place. The safe place. But this world . . . it is so beautiful. It looked around again, still confused. I think I will miss it. Though I don’t really . . . remember much about it.

  The wisp of power Named Piltzintecuhtli let itself fade home, back into the Veil, feeling both content, and as if a task had been left unfinished.

  Chapter 12: Night Falls

  There comes a point in time, at which the news has been so universally bad, and for so long, that people begin to ignore it, out of self-preservation. If it does not directly affect the well-being of them or their families, it can be overlooked. Different people have different thresholds for reaching this saturation point. And thus, judgments are made. “How can the newspapers be printing all this gossip on the front page, when there’s a war on, when Rome is invading, when gods are dying?” people say, in disgust, and toss the paper into the fire’s grate.

  Sadly, the modern newsroom plays to the saturation point of the largest part of its audience, in order to be able to sell newspapers. While some news outlets are, indeed, a public service, hearkening back to ancient times, when heralds and criers were paid by the state to give the people tidings of births and deaths, invasions and crop failures, in these modern and suspicious times, state-sponsored news outlets are largely considered propaganda ma
chines. Information is not a right, unfortunately. It is a commodity, and it is traded as such.

  And as such, newspapers know what playwrights and poets always have: Sex sells.

  That being said, I would greatly appreciate it if, on opening my copy of the Jerusalem Daily News, Carthaginian-language edition, if the first thing that I see of a morning, is information on troop movements within a hundred miles of this city, as opposed to the recent divorce of what I can only assume is an actress or singer. And to anyone who might say, “How can you not have heard of her? Have you been dead for the past seven years?” my answer is yes. Yes, I have.

  —Kanmi Eshmunazar, unpublished letter to the Jerusalem Daily News, dated December 32, 1994 AC.

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  December 27, 1994 AC

  “You’re sure you can do this?” Rig whispered to Maccis. He’d been released by Caesarion to go back into the field for this mission. “I can put illusion over you—”

  “They’re looking for illusion. That’s the whole point behind all the illusions you’ve been throwing at them the past week,” Maccis hissed back. They crouched behind a warehouse on the outskirts of Tyre, in a slum-ridden area near a loading yard for goods moving between the rail lines and the docks. It was in obvious disuse, with weeds growing everywhere, and Rig couldn’t see a single human in the vicinity.

  Tyre had been occupied for months by Roman troops. Its people could still ply the seas for fish, and were employed by Rome to move goods between this port and Rome itself along the dangerous sea lanes . . . but this major shipping hub was currently not doing business with Egypt, African Carthage, Judea, Qin, or Novo Gaul. Hundreds of ships were docked in the harbor, rusting, and thousands of men and women were currently unemployed. Violence among the unemployed dock workers and mariners was apparently very common, and the local gardia put down riots on almost a nightly basis.

  In preparation for the attempt to take back Tyre, Rig had swept the city with illusions. Flights of rocs from Persia, dropping bundles that appeared to explode into chemical smoke on impact. Elaborate hallucinations of legionnaires staggering out of the haze, choking and dying. He’d been particularly pleased with a scenario that involved three dragons the size of Nith, but brilliant scarlet, flying overhead at midnight and gouting down flames at the ground, only to have efreet rise up out of the fires and go on a rampage. The cover of darkness had allowed him to leave out the fine details, which had been useful. He could let people’s imaginations fill in the gaps.

  Even so, he’d needed to sit down with an icepack on his head after treating the occupying forces and citizenry to that one. So many moving pieces, so many people to depict running out of ‘burning’ buildings. The fire brigades had assembled; the legions had begun firing, wasting ammunition up into the harmless, empty sky. Shoulder-mounted rockets, a hail of anti-aircraft fire from hundreds of turrets all spread through the city, with tracers that light up the night like a fireworks display. Various Roman battle-mages had tried to stop the madness, telling their superiors that they had reason to suspect that everything was an illusion . . . until Maccis’ landsknechten had set off carefully-placed incendiary charges, to give Rig’s illusions that much more sense of reality

  It had allowed them to test Rome’s defenses without hazarding lives. And after a week of seeing kraken rise in the harbor, a brigade of Immortals appearing at the eastern gate, and efreeti storming through the city, Roman troops’ response times were beginning to lag. Their rational minds knew that being lulled into a false sense of security was precisely what the enemy wanted of them. But there was only so long that someone could go on, with an alarm screaming in their ears, before they eventually began to tune it out.

  In the meantime, also covered by illusions, these provided by Coyote and Loki, the real troops of the Eastern Empire had made their way out of the sheltering branches of the Caledonian Wood, and set up just miles from Tyre’s eastern gate. They’d be advancing tonight. After Rig, Maccis, and their groups of special forces and landsknechten attended to a few small issues.

  They crept into the city, and found the anti-aircraft turrets that they’d been testing, daily, for the past week. They observed one of these outposts, how the men moved, interacted. Watching for the right moment. That one, Maccis said, in wolf form, indicating an officer with his nose.

  You’re sure? Rig responded.

  I’ve heard his voice. I’ve seen how he moves. I’ve seen which of the soldiers he greets with a clap on the shoulder, and which he doesn’t. I have his scent. That’s the one we need.

  You’re the expert. Rig moved in, covered in invisibility, and found the Roman officer in charge of the first area. One hand at the chin, one at the shoulder, lifting and rotating the head just so . . . and he felt the neck vertebrae grate on each other. The centurion died without a sound, and Rig held him upright, whispering, “I’m sorry. This is so we don’t have to kill all your men.” Then he dragged the body back to the others, where Maccis had already shifted out of his wolf-form and was crouching, naked, in an alley, while one of the nieten had passed him a canteen of water to wash the mud and dirt off his hands. “Got him,” Rig said, tersely, and began stripping the corpse of its uniform. Found the man’s identification card, as Maccis glanced at the uniform, which was three sizes too small. “Hemigidius Palinurus, centurion, Eighteenth Legion. He apparently had a . . . wife and two daughters, judging from the pictures in the wallet.” Rig put it out of his head. There would be plenty of time for guilt later. “Take the wedding ring—”

  “Hold onto mine,” Maccis said, handing his own over to Rig. The dead man’s ring was currently too small for the young man’s finger; Maccis was six-foot-four, and had broadened out to match in the past few years. His face was still young, but his eyes, like those of everyone around him, were old. He looked down at the corpse, his face calm, despite his current state of nudity. And then his form began to melt. Shrink. From four inches past six feet in height, and a solid two hundred and thirty pounds, to three inches less than six feet, and possibly one hundred and eighty, at least in appearance. His long white hair vanished, replaced by a shorn pate of dark stubble. His blue eyes became dark, and his clan tattoos vanished from his skin. Without a word, he pulled on the uniform. And became, for all intents and purposes, Centurion Palinurus. Rig hadn’t seen the young man do this before; it was something he’d picked up fighting with Fenris in Caesaria Aquilonis.

  Even for a son of Loki, it was rather chilling to see the body-language replicated, precisely, as Maccis/Palinurus clapped him on the shoulder, soldier-to-soldier, and walked out of the alley.

  Rig tensed, watching from concealment, as Maccis passed back through a sentry’s path, and getting waved through, on showing his face. At the base of the building where the turret was, there was a fairly standard magic detector set up, and the troops there held up a scanner, checking Maccis for magic . . . and found none. The change of shape was not held in place by magic; it was absolute, until Maccis changed back.

  And then he vanished into the building.

  Ten minutes after that, he came back out again, through the front doors, and Rig let out an explosive exhalation as he continued to watch the scene transpire through his field glasses. Maccis strolled away from the building, clearly unconcerned, and moved back out towards the street . . . which was when the turret on the roof exploded.

  Everyone in the immediate vicinity spun back towards the building in horror and consternation, including Maccis. Rig flicked out a hint of illusion, and rendered the younger man invisible. Now would be a good time to run, he said, tightly.

  I agree! came the reply, and Rig could watch him moving, in othersight, darting past and around people in turmoil, who were looking for their centurion, and not finding him. Maccis made his way back to the alleyway, and once more began to strip, while Rig got on the radio. “Team One, first objective down,” he said. “Moving to secondary objective.”

  All through the
city, similar strike teams were taking out the anti-aircraft batteries, the munitions dumps, anything they could, in swift, surgical strikes. Preparing the way for the helicopters, lindworms, and harpies to cover the advancing infantry from the air. Teams of dryads had entered the city the night before, and had stayed in public parks during the day . . . and now crawled through windows, taking out radio installations and radar sets, so that Rome’s troops were blind, deaf, and mute. Judean jets soared through the skies, and bombed the troop transports in the harbors, while Roman fighters scrambled into the heavens to retaliate.

  Rig kept his people on track. They moved through the city, taking objective after objective. He was keeping the jotun under a shield of invisibility as they walked—the closest he could manage to making the giants stealthy—and when the Roman troops understood that they were under a real attack this time, they poured into the streets. Formed barricades at pre-arranged choke-points to deter vehicles. Areas that would become shooting galleries for snipers. But all Rig needed was to get his people close enough, and then turn the jotun loose, really. So they approached, concealed, and then Rig constructed the illusion of a dragon in the air above them, belching out fire. Everyone looked. Even if only for an instant, they looked. And then the jotun swarmed the barricade, invisible until the last second, lifting and throwing the dumpsters and parked cars used to create it out of the way. Soldiers behind the barricade scattered hastily, falling back to prepared positions in the square beyond it.