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

by Deborah Davitt

  Erida shook her head, and stood once more, picking up a small business satchel, and beginning to fill it with books, a hand-held calculator, and spell-matrix crystals. “What we’re seeing right now is pitched combat between Diana, Sunna, Freyr, and Baldur,” she said, her voice tight. “The gods of Valhalla are angry. They pursued Diana through the Veil until she tried to escape them by entering the mortal realm . . . Minori says they’re over Asia Minor right now. East of the ruins of Byzantium. Fighting. Amaterasu can feel it, resonating through the air. She and Kanmi are at the defense center, enabling the defense shields and reprogramming them to try to repel energy, instead of projectiles. The Caledonian Woods’ own . . . strangeness . . . might protect them from any blast, but Jerusalem itself . . . I don’t know. ” She finished packing. “You’re in charge of the Archives, Zaya. I need to get to the defense center, myself. Bodi, Athim, and Masako have all been called in, too.” She put a gentle hand on Zaya’s forearm. “I will be back when I can.”

  Zaya sat alone in their office after her mother left, and stared down at the photostats on her desk, feeling useless. Maccis was off somewhere to the north, on the borders of Tyre, protecting that city from another Roman attack. He was surely in range of any energies that might be emitted from the combat between the gods. In range, perhaps, of a mad godling that might be attracted by the released power. Her younger brother, Zafir, now eighteen, had just left home to fight on the front lines. It seemed like only yesterday, he’d been barely able to fly, and her father had spun him around and around in his vortex-form until the boy had laughed and begged Illa’zhi to do it again . . . and now he, like Maccis, was off at war. Zaya put her face in her hands, trying to fend off the crushing weight of her own uselessness, and made herself read.

  Somewhere, in this archive, was an answer. She wasn’t even sure what the question was, other than how do I make it all stop? but . . . there had to be an answer.

  Three hours later, Zaya still huddled at her desk, studying the tablet that Prometheus had been buried with. The mystery that was Linear A seemed no closer to being solved today . . . though she put the slab next to a transcription of the markings on the Phaistos Disc, to see if she could find any commonalities.

  Her eyes glazed over, and she found herself ignoring the conventional advice that each hieroglyph on the Disc represented a sound or cluster of sounds in a non-Indo-European language unattested in any other form. Instead, she began assigning names to each symbol. A dog, symbol of fidelity and faith. A priest or a king. A bird-man. And since she was looking at the B-side of the disc, she fancifully began to invent a little story that went with the symbols.

  Priest, glimmering gem . . . no, wait, the filled gem . . . A binding stone? A golem? The Hellenes perfected those after the early Judeans abandoned them. Dividing road, legs, clay jar . . . .

  The priest met the filled gem upon the dividing road of fate. Fate had brought her legs to walk upon, and a jar of clay into which she might pour her essence.

  Zaya stared at what her hand had just written. She’d thought, for an instant, that she’d found meaning. It was nonsense, however. Any competent scholar would laugh at her . . . but if the ‘filled gem’ was a binding stone, and its essence was poured into a clay vessel . . . often a term for a mortal body, in ancient texts . . . . Her brow furrowed. Robe, water, clay jar, fertile sprout . . . .

  He gave to her his own robe, having found her vessel naked by the sea. And in his heart, a seed began to sprout. Zaya hesitated. Priest, screw, mace, birdman . . . The priest knew the ways of the screwed plane and the threshing flail . . . or maybe weapon of war . . . ? But he was also a man between places, part man, part god.

  Divided road, flail, robe . . . . The ever-dividing road of fate measures out men, winnows them with a thresher's tool, no matter the costly robes they wear. Her pen scratched rapidly across the page. Caught fish, temple? hall? No, house, conch shell, the filled gem . . . And thus, she was as a caught fish. She dwelled in his house, and she was given priceless conch shells. He lavished the glittering gem with care.

  Zaya stopped, her hand hovering over the page. “I’m going crazy.” And yet . . . her pen touched the paper again. The filled jewel could see the men bearing their sheaves of grain to the temple, a heavy tithe. She could see the three-fold road of fate, what has been, what is, what will be, but remained a caught fish, and the hook in her mouth was love.

  A choice loomed before her, between the way of tools and building, or the way of sacrifice and war. Her lover walked with her vessel to the temple, and showed her the fertile sprouts in the fields. Her lover told her, “If we would make things sprout . . . sacrifice must come. The running man, you know his purpose here.”

  Zaya’s vision skewed. She had no idea where she was getting these ideas from. She could be taking dictation from a spirit, for all she knew. But she could see the man running through the fields, his arms and legs gashed, so that he would bleed into the plowed furrows. Sacrifice. And the paper, the pen in her hand, the electric lights overhead, seemed so far away . . . .

  . . . she could feel someone’s hand on her shoulder, and she could barely open her eyes. She coughed weakly, and then vomited up seawater, bitter and vile. Every inch of her body had been pounded by the waves against the rocks, and her skin was on fire, torn open in a thousand places by sand and shells and stones. Tears rolled out of her eyes as she stared up into a pitilessly blue sky, and caught sight of a man’s face. Bronze skin, sun-kissed, eyes the same blue as the heavens above, dark hair . . . and wings. He is a god. “Charon . . . calls me . . . to the Styx . . . .”

  He shook his head. Words in a foreign language. Gentle hands on her broken body, trying to turn her. Sweet, clean water being trickled into her lips, though she gagged. Arms, trying to lift her, but she cried out in agony, her throat raw. Too many broken bones. “Ship,” she said. “Slavers . . . they took us . . . .”

  Then nothingness, for a while. Blessed, peaceful, painless nothingness. When she opened her eyes, she was in a wooden hut, with the rush of the surf still in her ears. The god looked down at her in concern. And then he held a stone over her head, like a piece of ice filled with rainbows. A holy relic, to be sure. She’d never seen the like.

  As he spoke, she began to understand, though it was no longer his voice she heard, but some other, greater Voice. He was going to heal her. But to heal her, she had to become a vessel for something else. Something greater than herself. She would become the relic he held in his hand. She would become Adamas. The Invincible.

  Her consciousness faded away. And her body recovered with amazing rapidity. Within two days, she could stand. But her body had changed. Her skin now shone like light reflecting off the waves, silver-clear in moonlight, and blindingly bright in the sun. The god-man wrapped her in his own fine robes, to protect his own eyes from her brilliance. Her hair had become impossibly fine strands of a similar clear material, and looked like spun rainbows. Even with a costly bronze knife, her hair and skin could not be cut, and she was as heavy as a stone. She learned to tread lightly, as the god-man taught her how to walk once more, for she crushed things underfoot, when she stepped carelessly. He led her out onto the beach, holding her hand gently, his eyes wide in wonder, and she saw her face for the first time, reflected in a calm pool. Her eyes, set in that glimmering face, looked like ice. No whites, no colored iris. Just rainbows, like her hair, and the rainbows danced out from her as she walked, chasing her steps and her shadow.

  The first word she learned was his name: Aiolos, for the wind-god who had fathered him on a local woman. The next word he taught her was sea, though considering her near-drowning, she feared the ocean. And then shell, as he picked up a lovely golden conch, and pressed it into her hand. She could give him no name but Adamas. Invincible. And as she began to learn his words, he asked her questions. Where she had come from. Why she had been cast on this distant shore. Who the slavers had been, who had captured her. She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that her li
fe was no longer her own; she owed a service for breathing air once more. And her foreboding told her that this service was not owed to Aiolos.

  That sense dwindled as the days passed. Aiolos took her with him wherever he went. He was much loved by his people; he usually flew from village to village, bringing tidings all across the island. But with her, he walked. He healed the sick. Held children at their first Namings. And she saw the people working in the fields, harvesting and tilling, and watched the sacrifice of the bulls at the temples, in all the blood and the gore, and ate at the feasts afterwards. His people stared at her in awe, and called her a goddess, but she shook her head. She was Adamas. Nothing more.

  She wore the conch shell around her neck on a piece of sinew, and Aiolos lifted her into the moonlit sky over the ocean with him in spite of her weight, letting her feel the rush of the wind against her face. An errant gull crashed into them, and she slipped. Fell towards the dark water, and he plunged after her to save her . . . . The thudding of her heart, as she knew that the waters would have ended her new life, as surely as they had ended the old. She was too heavy to swim now, and surely, she could still drown. The wideness of his eyes, as he kissed her. Told her that the gods had surely sent her to heal his heart of its loneliness. The darkness of his house as they discovered, to their mutual pleasure, that under the cold, unyielding skin she now had, she was still supple and warm inside.

  A year passed, a year spent helping the villages during the day. Flying over the waves at night. Loving one another in his house by the sea. Her waist swelled, and she worried. She thought it likely that she had never done this before, though she hadn’t been a maiden when she and Aiolos had first loved each other. Aiolos was concerned, but kissed her till she couldn’t think.

  The winter had been harsh, and many people had been sickened, in spite of Aiolos’ care. A warship came to their shores, and Aiolos fought alongside the men, and Adamas was required to stay with the women, though she longed to stand at his side. Knew, in fact, that she could . . . do things. Terrible things that would devastate the enemy. She was Adamas, the Invincible. They could not stand before her, but none of the villagers would let her go forth and fight, for she carried a child in her womb, and she had the aspect of a woman. The enemy burned the fields, but were finally subdued, and captives kept in a series of caves in one of the many mountains on the island. The farmers planted their crops in the burned fields, and prayed for rain.

  None came. Just heat. Unbearable heat, which withered the crops in the fields. The farmers might as well have planted stones. Adamas’s belly swelled further, and she could feel the infant moving inside her, as if she had eaten too much fruit. She worried that Aiolos would find her ugly now, but he kissed her belly often, though his expression became increasingly concerned. “There may not be enough food,” he warned her. “The priests often require that infants be exposed on the rocks, in times of famine. For the good of the people.” He frowned. “But not a child of the gods. I do not think that they would dare.”

  A twitch at the back of her mind, where foreboding dwelled. No one’s child should be valued more than any other. Lots should be cast, if circumstances are that dire. Fate will dictate who lives and dies.

  The crops failed. The people grew worried, and restless. And she could hear drums coming from the temple, something she had never heard before. Her foreboding strengthened. Finally, the priests took Aiolos away for a time. He returned, looking grim, and told her that they both were required to participate in a ritual at the temple. A sacrifice, for the good of all.

  Adamas did not understand, but she had seen the bulls sacrificed before. So she went with her beloved to the temple, where she was bathed by attendants in clean water, and anointed with oils. They slipped a pure white robe over her shoulders, and put a threshing tool in her hands, which she stared at, in confusion. And then they took her out into the fields, where she saw one of the enemy soldiers who had come to their shores. “But where is the bull?” she asked, and Aiolos lowered his eyes, and did not reply.

  The solider was naked in the dry, dusty field, his hands bound together with twine. And then the priests cut his arms and legs with a knife, and they flogged him to make him run the length of the field, until he toppled over, moaning in pain and exhaustion. She could sense the frantic beating of his heart as it squeezed down and found no more blood. “They . . . want us to do the same,” Aiolos said, his voice low.

  “They want us to run the field and die?” Adamas asked, horrified. She would kill every one of them, before permitting that. The sense of wrongness crested inside of her.

  He shook his head, violently. “If they put so much as a hand on you, I would kill every one of them where they stand,” he told her. “I would call winds the likes of which they have never seen, and raise them into the air and dash them against the cliffs.”

  “Then what?”

  “They wish us to make the sacrifice, as well. They have tried with all the other soldiers from the ship. They have only two captives left, before they feel they must try again with some of our own people.” Aiolos swallowed. “I am a child of the gods. The gods . . . may listen to me. And you . . . you are a child of the gods now, too. And you may well carry one. They believe that the gods will hear our voices more clearly, and will reward the sacrifice with rain.”

  Purpose rose in her. Terrible purpose. What was happening here could not be permitted. The others, the spirits-of-chaos, could not be permitted to do such things. Not in this place. They could not be allowed to have such power in the middle realm. This was the reason for which Adamas had been summoned, and what was left of the human began to die within her own mind. “You would do this?” she demanded, her voice implacable. She was Adamas. The Invincible.

  “If there is no rain, there will be no food. If there is no food, every newborn child will be exposed on the rocks, to save food for those already numbered among the people.” He looked at her, his eyes desperate. “If there is no rain, my people will die.”

  She fought. She didn’t want to do this thing. But purpose already had her in its grip. This is the purpose for which I was summoned. They must all die. If they are allowed to continue, a cult of human sacrifice will spread across the entire sea. Every island will run with blood. She took one step forward. Two. Touched his face. Wavered, as her human heart screamed that she loved this man, that he loved her, that he loved his people. That there had to be another way.

  But the humans were weak. The spirits of the chaos-place were too strong. The spirits-of-chaos would be driven back. The ones from the other place were an anomaly. They changed everything around them. Mutability would not be tolerated. Everything must remain as it would be, as it always would have been. The bringers-of-chaos would not change the fate of this world.

  There would be order.

  And then she slid a knife home into his heart, before springing away, shedding the fine robes, and the pitiless light of the sun refracted back from her, blinding them. They couldn’t see to aim their arrows. Their bronze swords bent and dulled against her skin as she clamped her hard, cold fingers around their throats, and crushed their windpipes, throwing them aside. She snapped their spears and dragged the priests to their own altars, breaking their spines over her uplifted knee . . . .

  . . . and then she came back to the forefront of her own mind again. And she crouched, for a long time, over Aiolos’ body, ignoring the broken bodies of the priests. Stroking the red-feathered wings with which he had leaped into the sky. Touching the lips that had taught hers how to kiss. Her hands were sticky with his blood, and the sense of purpose had faded. The creature that had filled her was dwindling away, though she remembered all that she had done, while possessed. She even remembered the name she’d been given at birth: Ariadne.

  She cradled her lover’s hands in hers, and begged him to come back to life. Told him that she hadn’t meant to harm him. He had simply . . . been in the way of fate. Incomprehension, from the creature dwindling within her
. It knew nothing of love, of emotion. It only understood what it was: Invincibility. And its purpose: Fate. But it was, faintly, curious about her emotion. Distantly, it was aware that love was an idea, much as it was, itself.

  Ariadne damned the creature and its name. If she’d known that the price for her own continued existence would be Aiolos’ life, the life of the one who had used the creature’s summoning ritual to save her, the life of the man who had loved her, and given her the child in her belly . . . no. She would have chosen to die on the rocks, pounded by the sea.

  But he was just as guilty as all the rest. If he had lived, he would have brought sacrifices everywhere.

  You don’t know that.

  It was fated.

  There is no fate, but that which we make.

  We ensure that Fate occurs. The ones of chaos create chance. They are an error that should never have been permitted into your world. We are immortal. Immutable. You do not understand.

  I understand that you are cruel. That you don’t understand what it means to be human. To taste the wind and the water and the lips of another. She stroked his feathered wings again. I understand that you have no business in this world, meddling with humanity, when you make no effort to understand us.