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

by Deborah Davitt

  Sigrun could see the roof of the building starting to buckle as structural supports within it gave way, and threw her full strength into weaving a web under that roof, until she was sure most of the people had run out the side exits. And then Orcus and Nith emerged from the other side, into a public park. Nith was a rolling ball of silent fury, exhaling deathfrost whenever he wasn’t slapping at Orcus with his claws. And Orcus . . . Orcus was laughing. Exulting, whenever a human died. The scythe lashed out, opening rents in Nith’s obsidian armor, and Sigrun released the roof to blast Orcus with lightning once more.

  An unearthly howl echoed through the buildings, and the humans on the ground once more turned, and tried to flee back the way they’d come as Fenris loped in from the north. A silver arrow lit up the night sky like a comet, arcing down from a different rooftop, and caught Orcus in the chest. Sigrun looked up in time to see Artemis, clad in white doeskin, knock the next shaft, and sight along it.

  Orcus dematerialized, and his laughter echoed back from the poured-stone streets and walls. How delightful! You’ve brought me another plaything. Another weak goddess, though her time has long since passed. How many have sniffed after your stale and faded chastity, Artemis, my dear?

  Sigrun couldn’t tell if Orcus was drunk on the power of the dying humans around him, or if he was just overconfident. As his demanifested form, visible only in othersight, swarmed towards Artemis, the goddess blurred into a line of moonlight, and moved away from him, faster than thought. And at that moment, Sigrun realized, She can only do that at night . . . oh, good. Night has fallen.

  Her own form blurred into insubstantiality, becoming shadow, and she phased to Nith’s side. Let me heal you—

  No. The rage in his voice almost covered the pain, and up close, she had confirmation of why he hadn’t been biting at Orcus; his jaw hung open, awkwardly, broken.

  I can do it without taking the wound—

  No! Don’t waste the power. If we all attack together—

  Orcus was a blur, chasing after Artemis now, who was leading him a merry dance around the rooftops, there one moment, gone the next. Are you all just going to stand there? Artemis shouted, her voice harried.

  Fenris snarled and leaped up into the air, his paws treading on the wind as if he climbed a grassy hill, and he managed to catch Orcus’ leg in his powerful jaws in the instant between manifestation and demanifestation. The great wolf spun and threw Orcus back to the ground, and Artemis managed to land another shot with her bow . . . which healed, immediately, as Orcus reached out, and the humans nearby fell to their knees, wheezing, gasping for air as he pulled their lives out of them, and into himself.

  No, no, no, no . . . . It was a chant in Sigrun’s mind as she slid forwards, here one moment, there the next, fleeting between shadows. She brought her spear around and tried to plant it in Orcus’ chest, only to see him vanish and reappear by Artemis, catching the goddess across one arm with his scythe, before she, too, vanished in a glimmer of pale light, retreating. A second later, Orcus was back on Sigrun, appearing behind her, and she whirled, bringing her spear up to catch and deflect the scythe’s blade, only to be rocked back on her heels. She managed to get one return strike in, and Artemis winged an arrow past her left ear, scoring Sigrun’s cheek on its way to Orcus . . . but then Orcus vanished before the arrow struck. Nith hissed, and exhaled where he thought Orcus would next strike . . . covering a building in rimefrost, but missing his target, entirely. Stay back to back with me! Sigrun tossed towards Artemis. In that way, he cannot attack us from an unguarded side!

  I hardly require your assistance, Artemis sniffed. I have been fighting battles since before your people discovered the written word.

  The next five minutes were endless. Sigrun lost track of how many times she flinched as Orcus appeared beside her and attacked, only to de-manifest . . . and the last time, as she held off the scythe with her spear, and Nith lunged in to attack, Orcus grinned and de-manifested the instant a moonshaft arrow, aimed between his shoulder blades, slid home.

  The silver shaft never encountered his flesh. Instead, its sharp point penetrated Sigrun’s armor, and she looked down, stunned, at the white feathers sprouting from her upper chest. Sigrun staggered back, a prickling, hot-cold sensation spreading through her veins from the wound, like the toxin that had been in the pazuzu’s claws. She pulled at the arrow, and the white-hot pain dissuaded her from trying again. Have to . . . get it out . . . can’t heal like this . . . can’t breathe . . . . Telling herself that this was just an analogue for Artemis’ power didn’t help at all. She found a huge forepaw planted in front of her, and latched on with her left arm, trying to pull herself up. Any movement on her right side caused pain. I . . . can’t get the arrow out, Nith.

  The growl that emanated from his body was inhuman. He shrank down to lindworm size, and a clawed, five-digited paw wrapped around the arrow and pulled. Sigrun’s world went white.

  And then a hand pulled her to her feet. Not Nith’s. This was humanoid, and cold enough that even she could feel it through her armor. There was power in that grip. A power like her own, that called to her. Invited her to come and join with it. Sigrun raised her eyes, and found what appeared to be an empty cowl above her head. Artemis’ arrows still pierce deeply, I see, Pluto rasped. Pause. Heal. He turned, and his voice, still a whisper, resonated in the ground and stones. Orcus. Stop now, and we will make your end . . . relatively painless.

  Power rippled out from Pluto, and Sigrun suddenly understood that the Roman god truly hadn’t been fighting with his full heart or abilities against Sekhmet. Her heartbeat—she still had a physical body, after all—slowed. The trickle of hot blood down her ribs inside the armor lessened. Every step she took perceptibly dragged, as if she were caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole. Falling forever, while othersight informed her that outside of Pluto’s grip, time was moving more quickly. Even the light of Artemis’ moonbeam slowed, tugged off-course by Pluto’s power, and she manifested on the cornice of the building northeast of Sigrun.

  He is the master of entropy. He is a master of time . . . There was something important about that thought. Not pre-memory, but . . . . And then another wave of pain hit her, as the power of Artemis’ strike continued to burn through her body, vein by vein. It took a moment of concentration. And then she stopped breathing entirely. If I can survive in a vacuum, drowning in my own blood isn’t going to happen. My body is not in possession of the facts. All I need . . . is a moment . . . to be calm . . . . And Pluto’s power was giving her that moment. Because while her body was impeded, her mind raced ahead of it.

  Sigrun’s eyes tracked back and forth, Nith, returned to his normal size, had his bulk against her back. They were wholly in defensive mode at the moment as Sigrun’s body tried to knit itself back together. She didn’t think she could attack right now, beyond lightning and seiðr. Any movement beyond a light hover was probably past her. And Nith was bleeding from savage wounds, as well. White clouds panted out of his open mouth, continuously.

  Orcus’ voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, as he defied Pluto. I am done with binding and being bound! Jupiter is dead. Why should I not sup of the cup that is humanity? Why should I not devour, as we all did, in the days of old? Why should we not take what we want, while the world lasts? You know as well as I do, that it is doomed.

  It took an agonizing second and a half after those words for Orcus to materialize behind Artemis on the cornice, his back to the building. Sigrun had enough time to register the shock in Artemis’ eyes, as Orcus called down to Pluto, No more rules! and ripped his scythe across Artemis’ throat.

  The shockwave was milky white to othersight, and poured out of Artemis’ falling body. The earth shook, and any remaining windows shattered, but few buildings fell . . . because, as othersight showed, Orcus was drinking in Artemis’ power. He’s a mad god, himself, she thought, numbly, and wrapped her fingers around her spear more tightly. He is what they are. But where the godlings
act out of almost animal instinct, he has malice and guile.

  Pluto threw back his hood, revealing his face. At first, it was seemingly ordinary. A handsome enough man, but his skin was pallid. The nose was Etruscan in lineage, probably, and the rest of the features followed suit . . . but there was no sense, as she had with other gods, that this face had ever lived. No avatar. He’s never taken a human host. Only his eyes were alive, a brilliant, cold gray. And then his face began to melt away, unwinding into a mass of roiling worms, and Sigrun wrenched her eyes away as she spotted bone under the constantly undulating creatures. Pluto lifted a hand, and without a word, his flesh stripped off his arm, becoming a rain of worms that arced upwards like arrows from a field of archers.

  As Orcus demanifested and tried to escape, Fenris leaped through the air, and caught him, teeth closing on what looked like empty air . . . and Orcus’ avatar abruptly rematerialized as they both crashed to the ground. There was an audible crack of bone, and then Orcus screamed as Fenris’ jaws sheared through his lower leg. This seems a better appendage to remove, than Tyr’s hand, the wolf snarled, as Pluto’s worms changed course, humming through the air like a swarm of bees. Orcus tried to roll away from Fenris, but the wolf latched onto his other leg and started worrying at him, shaking his head back and forth, savagely . . . and then the worms descended.

  Look, Nith counseled, his voice harsh in Sigrun’s mind. Watch. You have seen justice done before . . . .

  The worms found the partially amputated leg and burrowed into the flesh as into the earth, biting and eating, and Orcus screamed once more, trying to demanifest. Tried to shift himself to the Veil. You are going nowhere, Fenris told him, almost casually, and held him in place, as the worms worked their way up, and began to bite and chew and devour his genitalia and bowels.

  The screams that rose up tore the plaster off the walls, sending it to the ground in white clumps to mingle with the broken snow on the ground. Sigrun staggered to her feet, and put a hand on Nith’s shoulder. Sir? You’re sure that the worms . . . they won’t feed on Fenris, will they? She asked it as quietly and as respectfully as she’d ever addressed Livorus.

  Pluto turned back towards her, his face assembling itself, smoothing itself, and she still had to brace to meet his eyes, as a part of her brainstem gibbered in terror. The worms are a part of me. You guide your hand. I guide them. I would not harm an ally.

  At that moment, Nith’s head came up. Mad ones, he growled. A large one, and two small ones, drawn by Artemis’ death. If you slay Orcus now, more will come. And slaying him here, in the middle of this city . . . .

  A sigh’s worth of silence from Pluto, and then the cold hand descended on Sigrun’s shoulder. Are you well enough to fight, young ones?

  We’ll have to be, Sigrun replied, simply, and pulled herself, laboriously, up onto Nith’s back, wincing as her hands came up, stained with his black-silver blood.

  And then the godlings were on them, much faster than Sigrun had ever seen the godlings move before. She and Nith leaped into the sky, and Pluto stayed on the ground, as they once more called for reinforcements . . . .

  But there were few reinforcements to be had. Poseidon and Dionysus appeared, reluctantly pulled out of the Veil by Pluto’s insistence. Sif and Loki appeared, as well, Loki on Sleipnir’s back, and holding his distaff in one hand. Where are the others? Pluto called.

  Odin, Taranis, Toutatis, the Evening Star, and the Morrigan are in Nimes. Freya, Thor, and Tyr are over Novo Trier’s ruins. Amaterasu is in the ruins of Nippon, gathering survivors with the aid of Worldwalker, Truthsayer, and Emberstone. Prometheus has taken Sekhmet, Illa’zhi, and Shadeslore with him into the southern deserts. He fears an attack on one of the nuclear plants. Loki’s words filled Sigrun’s mind, and she realized, not for the first time, how stretched they all were. Shall we to work?

  ______________________

  In Nimes, things were going entirely by the plan. Several of Maelchon’s followers were sorcerers, and they’d contained the crowds in the temple with barriers of air reduced to its frozen, solid state, and pushed the high priest of Toutatis into a tomb made of the self-same material, and made his followers watch him die. “Look!” Maelchon shouted, letting his hood drop from his face. “He is not a god-born! He is a mortal man, the same as any of us! Why should he hold power over you? His god does not love his high priest. His god does not love any of you. You are things to be used. Counters on a game-board, and nothing more. You are the power of your gods. You are the only real power that they have!”

  He’d had to shout. The screams of the high priest as his skin was burned away by the searing cold material had been horrifying, until the sorcerers turned all the air inside the tomb to liquid, so that his lungs had been dry-frozen, in and around being drowned to death by the liquid nitrogen. It had at least become quieter.

  The power of the death, the life-essence, Maelchon carefully worked into the construct of the spell he was building, holding his grimoire in front of him, and then looked out at the crowd of screaming, terrified people, held back from attacking him by the barriers of frozen air. Penned in like animals. “Hear me!” Maelchon called out, pitching his voice to cut through the crowd’s noise. “We are human, and mortal, and I say to you that we are the power of the gods. That the gods need us, more than we need them! That they have kept us down for millennia, because they feared what we might become! That they have forbidden knowledge to us—knowledge, the light of reason—out of fear!” He paused, as the various humans in the temple went silent. “And I will prove that all to you today!”

  The ground underfoot rocked, but that was almost normal for Nimes. The ceiling overhead released a fine stream of plaster dust, which Maelchon blew off the pages of his book, and then looked down at the floor, gathering himself. When this ritual was performed on a human, all it really took was the right words . . . and the summoner’s will. Summoning was all about wrestling with spirits, after all. What he was about to do was the opposite of summoning. It wasn’t even banishing—all a banishing spell did was throw a spirit back into the Veil. And generally, one hoped that they didn’t have a conduit, or enough strength to tear the Veil and return on their own.

  This went far beyond bending a spirit by knowing its Name. This was the forbidden ritual. Old Akhenaten had had an inkling of what he was doing, trying to efface the names of the gods in the old temples, cutting them right out of the stone. But he hadn’t known about this, now had he?

  Maelchon knew he couldn’t possibly match a god’s will. Not on his own. Not without certain amounts of assistance. And thus, his followers led out the first victim, a young woman, whose five-year-old son screamed and clung to her leg, and was shoved back into the containment area. The sorcerers forced her to kneel before the altar . . . and Maelchon raised the knife. “I’m so very sorry,” he told her, gently. “But this is necessary, to lead our people out of subjugation.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, and then back down, to meet her eyes as he sent the knife home.

  Her blood became the first lines of the intricate binding circle. More plaster and debris fell from the ceiling, as the gods fought above. “What’s happening?” Maelchon asked one of his followers, after a particularly bad rumble shattered some of the dry-ice enclosures, and some of the other Gauls tried to break free.

  “The main mad godling is almost dead. I believe one of the gods has been siphoning away all of its energy—Odin, I think. They all appear to be well-distracted. Toutatis in particular appears to be wounded.”

  “Good. I would have settled for any of them, but here, in his temple? It’s a focus of his belief. There should be a lensing effect.” Maelchon pushed his glasses up on his nose, noting the blood on his fingers, and wiped it away before turning the page in his grimoire, and beginning to speak the words written there.

  UnNaming didn’t require many words. It required distorting the Name. Mispronouncing it, interspersing it with negation syllables and sounds, while concentrating in spe
cific ways that would begin to tear the Name out of the entity to whom it belonged. Primitive people had once believed that malefic spirits could be summoned by writing the Name of a god backwards. This was not true. Invoking a Name incorrectly could summon a different spirit, or, if it were just close enough, and done with the intention of injuring the god or spirit, you’d summon them anyway . . . and they would be extremely angry when they arrived, as if a loud and discordant note had been trumpeted in their ear.

  A Name defined an entity. It summed up everything that they had been, were, and would be. Names were as living as the creature they defined. Mortal Names could be added to, over time, though a spirit’s Name rarely changed. Except in UnNaming. Erasing. Tearing the word away from the entity, removing its identity, and unmaking it. Sweat broke out on Maelchon’s forehead as he continued to murmur the broken, fractured Name, removing one syllable or another . . . and suddenly, he had Toutatis’ complete attention.

  In the sky, the crafter-god of the Gauls felt a sharp stab of pain in his core, and took his attention off the mad godling he was holding in place for Odin to consume for a split-second. The momentary inattentiveness was all the godling needed. As Toutatis reached out with a burst of will, trying to destroy Maelchon in the temple below, the mad godling wrenched a tendril free from Toutatis’ slackening grip and slid it through the god’s core. It was a siphon, and the mad god drew on Toutatis’ power, trying to consume him from within, to replace what Odin had reft away from it. I am being attacked! I am being unNamed! Toutatis writhed. The mad godling, he could deal with, or the mortal attacking him, but not both at the same time.