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

by Deborah Davitt

  Apollo of Delphi had exactly enough time to turn. For his eyes to widen. And then the shadow behind him materialized fully, and the spear that wasn’t really a spear anymore, so much as an expression of the will of a death-goddess . . . lashed out.

  His head toppled from his shoulders, the surprised look still on the avatar’s flesh. The body toppled, and the spirit inside reeled backwards from the blow. Sigrun could hear, faintly, No, no, no, I can’t die, I won’t be killed today, if you can defy fate, so can I!

  Die, mad god. Die like a dog. You’re done destroying the lives of mortals. Sigrun’s left hand, all shadow now, shot forwards, sliding through the slowly-falling mortal body, deep into the chest, and hooked around the spirit still locked inside the flesh. And she poured herself into the blow, all her seiðr, all her rage, all her despair, and tore the god apart from the inside out.

  The energy released shook Mount Parnassus, but most of Hellas had been long since left to the monsters that roamed its lands. Athens trembled, but Sigrun could not bring herself to care for once, as Apollo’s body finally hit the ground. She could not even bring herself to care about what this might mean for the alliance of the gods. Though she dully knew that she should present herself to Pluto and ask what weregild he demanded for her actions.

  But these were secondary considerations. I need to get back to Sophia. Recalled to her duty, Sigrun slipped between the shadows back to Jerusalem, where Nith now stood guard outside Sophia’s window. Inside, the lights were on, as Sigrun poured herself into the chamber, startling the doctors and nurses in the room. They were trying to give Sophia rescue ventilations, using the hole she’d stabbed into her own throat as an emergency tracheotomy site. Sigrun removed her gloves, and pushed one of them out of the way, gently, before pulling the trach tube from her sister’s throat. Tried to repair the damage there.

  She worked without a word, but she could barely see through her tears, which fell down onto Sophia’s hair and hung there, like a fretwork of frozen diamonds. Something touched her shoulder, and she turned to lash out at whoever it was . . . and realized that Nith had compressed himself into lindworm size, to fit in the room. You must stop, Nith told her, very gently.

  No, no, no, no, no, no . . . Sigrun sat down on the edge of the bed as the doctors all scattered away. She wiped at her face with her bloody hands. She’s my little sister. She’s my responsibility. She’s . . . all I have left. It both was and wasn’t true at the same time. Sophia had been all she’d had left of her own family. The only real blood she had left in the world. The genetic quirks of Saraid and Lassair’s children didn’t count.

  You cannot bring her back, my lady. Nith’s voice was still terribly gentle.

  Sigrun’s head jerked up, and for a wild instant, hope bloomed in her heart. Fritti, she thought. Fritti could. I can go get her—

  Hiddenstar’s power is a trade. A life for a life.

  She could take of my power. The mad godlings’ power inside me. Apollo’s power, what of it I could absorb. They owe me a life! He owes her a life! The energies inside of her snarled.

  And to what would you return her? Nith asked, softly, his head hanging. Insanity and another death, at some other time?

  Sigrun looked at Nith, and for a blinding instant, she hated him. She hated him for being right. For seeing the truth. She hated him for being a part of this universe, the universe that had driven her sister mad, and then taken her life. She screamed out loud, and plaster sheared off the walls, which already showed cracks from earthquake damage, and the doctors and nurses gave up and ran into the corridor. Sigrun reached out to hit Nith, strike him, with her bare hands. She dropped to her knees beside him, and pounded on his riven, damaged scales, until her fists began to bleed.

  Outside, the snow turned to sleet, and frozen rain poured down from one end of Judea to the other, coating every limb of every tree in the Caledonian Forest with ice. It’s not fair, Sigrun cried, like a child. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. She never asked for any of this. She didn’t deserve any of this. And I want her back. She put her face against Nith’s cold scales. I’ve failed her in every conceivable way. I want her back. I want to tell her how . . . how sorry I am . . . I want her to tell me all the things I’m doing wrong . . . I want her to laugh and tell me she found the last of the nesting dolls that was lost so long ago, that she’d had it in her chest of belongings at Delphi all along. I . . . just . . . I can’t . . . She looked up at Nith, her lashes rimed with ice. Nith, what good is being what I am, if I can’t protect the ones I love? If I can’t save them?

  I do not have an answer for that, Nith told her, and spread his wings over her. I think you did everything you could to save her. But I also think that she made the choices that she made. And that she died a death that she chose. Surely, that counts for something.

  Her armor was broken in a dozen places, and she had a barely-filled-in hole in her chest where Artemis’ arrow had struck her. His jaw was still broken, and his scales were shattered from Orcus’ scythe and mad godlings’ tendrils. They both needed time to heal in the Veil. She should check on Mladena, certainly; the russalka was her ally, and had risked much today, at Sigrun’s behest. They should probably call to Fenris and Pluto, and ask what had been done with Orcus.

  But then the doctors and nurses returned, tentatively, and Sigrun had to sign the release forms that would allow her sister’s body to be cremated. She signed the hospital’s statement that they were not liable for Sophia’s death. And she stared ahead of herself in a numb haze as Nith took her to the Judea house, and, ignoring the front door, simply exited the Veil directly in the living room, not even knocking over the coffee table with his tail.

  It was four antemeridian, and Sigrun found a spot on the couch. Her black swan-cloak dripped water on the floor as the ice melted off of it, and Nith curled up at her feet, pushing the coffee table out of the way to do so. There was no electricity, Sigrun noted, dully, as the house grew colder. The hospital had been apparently running on backup generators. She closed her eyes, and shut out every voice in the world. Ignored the power of the mad gods seething inside of her. Listened only to the remorseless tick-tick-tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, inherited from Abigayil.

  The last time they’d had this much additional energy to absorb, she’d vomited in the Veil, and Nith had nearly destroyed the tower of her keep as he’d rolled in the courtyard, struggling to contain it. At the moment, however, the nausea and desire to destroy was muted. Subsumed to the emotional reality. But she also knew that she and Nith had to enter the Veil, and soon. Because their ability to control what was in them was . . . limited, in the mortal realm. I can’t take the chance that I might start wanting to devour everything around me. We should leave. But . . . not yet. Is it wrong to seek comfort here? Balance?

  Adam hadn’t gotten much sleep overnight; Erida had called him to let him know that Prometheus had come up with a high-order probability that the Persians were maneuvering to get in range of Judea’s nuclear reactors, either to capture or destroy them. Either would allow Persia to take Judea that much more easily. All so their Emperor can camp here, where the mad gods haven’t attacked yet.

  Caesarion and young Livorus had already been notified, so he’d sat up half the night, glued to the far-viewer he’d gotten one of Trennus’ children to move upstairs for him, so he wouldn’t have to risk using the stairs in the dark. The telephone had rung constantly, as Caesarion’s office kept his main Judean advisor in the loop regarding the battle to the south . . . and then the earthquakes had started, shaking the house. Adam had checked on a particularly loud crash, hobbling to his parents’ old suite to find that the print of the Nefertiti tomb wall had fallen from its dry-wall anchors. The protective glass had shattered, the frame was broken, and the golden eyes of the godslayer stared up at him, as if to say, I’m free now.

  He’d found a closet to shove the damned thing into, and cleaned up the glass, before limping back down the hall to his own room, one hand on
the wall to keep his balance. Equilibrium was a tricky thing, these days. He’d spent his life knowing where his body was at all times. Perfect self-awareness. But now, if he put one foot wrong, he’d be picking himself painfully off the floor, with a kind of shock. He knew he wasn’t this clumsy. His body had just forgotten to be graceful. That he could roll his hundred and eighty pounds of mass on the grappling mats without a sound. That a single flight of stairs shouldn’t look as insurmountable an obstacle as the Hindu-Kush.

  He’d settled back down into his empty bed, and had been just drifting off to sleep when one of the transformers in the neighborhood blew, with a loud crack. His hand had found Caliburn under his pillow, and he rolled to his feet with a groan, limping to the window to find that every light in the Old City had gone dark. He’d called Caesarion’s office, and Marcus Livorus, still on hand in spite the fact that it was three antemeridian, had told him that one of the reactors had been attacked, and that a million people were without power. More rolling blackouts would be required until the load could be balanced. “Do you need me to come in?” Adam asked.

  “There’s nothing you could do right now,” Marcus Livorus told him, forthrightly. “Get some sleep, old friend. Come in later this morning, when we have more information.”

  Adam had gone back to bed. And in spite of his feeling of bitter uselessness, he’d actually fallen asleep. But now, with only three hours of sleep, he made his way cautiously down the stairs, rounded the corner, and headed for the kitchen. He’d switched the stove over to natural gas a few years ago. He could at least boil some water, and the blue flames would warm up the rest of the room. The house was unnaturally cold, for Iunius.

  As he rounded the corner, he stopped, blinking, and his hand slipped to the small of his back, as if to massage an ache . . . and found Caliburn’s well-worn grips. “Sigrun?” he asked, staring at the unmoving shadow in the living room. A second shadow stirred, and he saw moonfire eyes staring at him from near the floor. Nith. Of course. Adam took another step forwards. “What brings you home?” he asked, touching a light switch out of reflex.

  He could smell blood. It had a distinctive, metallic tang. Adam hobbled closer, and removed the chimney of a kerosene lantern on the mantelpiece to light it with a match, sending pale radiance all through the living room. The silence was oppressive, and he filled it with words, knowing that something indefinable was wrong. “Were you to the south, protecting the reactors?” He slipped the glass back into the lantern, and turned . . . and his eyes widened once more.

  Nith’s jaw hung askew, and several of his diamond teeth were missing. Black-silver blood still oozed from rents in his sides, and had soaked through the carpet at their feet, and might even be staining the hardwood floor by now. But the dragon just stared at him for a mute instant, and then lowered his head to the rug once more.

  Sigrun’s own armor was slashed, cut, and torn. He could see crusty brown streaks that had dried on it, from one surprisingly small hole in the upper right chest. Her face was blank, her eyes empty, and tears streaked down her face, leaving ghostly trails of ice and brine. Adam took one helpless step towards her, and said, urgently, “Sig. . . what happened? You’re hurt—”

  “Sophia is dead,” Sigrun told him, woodenly. “She will be cremated tomorrow. I would like you to be there.” Her eyes were still locked on the distance.

  The words hit him like riot-suppression rounds, knocking the breath out of him. He took a seat beside her, lowering himself to the couch slowly, and put a hand on Sigrun’s shoulder gingerly, mindful of the cold that radiated from her armor. “I’m so sorry, Sig.” The words seemed inadequate. Adam hadn’t particularly liked Sophia, but he’d always known that Sigrun tied herself into knots over her younger sister. Mostly out of guilt. He started to put an arm around her shoulders, but the armor was death-cold, and felt as if it might strip the skin off of him. He pulled back, wondering, yet again, what in god’s name she was becoming. “Shouldn’t you . . . be healing up?”

  I deserve the pain. I failed her. I failed her again. The words roiled through him, but her lips didn’t move. Adam’s own lips pulled down in a grimace, and Sigrun turned her face away. “I apologize. My control is poor.”

  She started to stand, and Adam braced himself, and put a hand on her forearm, trying to hold her where she was. A feeble, futile gesture. “It’s all right. Sig . . . just . . . talk to me. Where . . . where were you?” And why couldn’t you get to her in time, if you say you can hear anyone saying your Name . . . ?

  “I was fighting mad gods to the north, when Apollo attacked her.” The words limped out, tonelessly. “The earthquakes . . .” Her gaze shifted, taking in the pictures on the walls, all hanging askew. The disarray on the ornaments on the shelves. “You felt them here?”

  Adam nodded, and then swallowed. “So . . . Apollo killed her?”

  “I think she killed herself to escape him.”

  Adam felt his soul contract, just a little. Suicide was forbidden in his culture. A defiance of god, the destruction of god’s handiwork, the desecration of his god’s greatest gift, which was life. “Her despair finally won, then,” he said, quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

  Nith raised his head, and Adam’s own jaw ached, seeing the damage to the dragon’s face. And for the first time, the dragon spoke, with quiet force. I disagree. I heard her words, Stormborn. She said that she died free. The moonfire eyes glowed in the dim room. Surviving for as long as she did? Every day was a victory against Apollo. And her escape, at the end? Her greatest moment of triumph. The dragon pulled himself to his feet, the raw edges of his wounds looking faintly puckered as he healed. I do not tell you not to mourn, my lady. But I believe that she went to her death with joy in her heart, as a captive finally released from prison. And you avenged her death, though there is no punishment dark enough for the ruin that was made of her life.

  Adam blinked, rapidly. The words intimated that Sigrun had gone after Apollo of Delphi and killed him. Probably in single combat, or an . . . execution strike. Every time he thought he’d gotten a handle on how much power she actually had, his expectations were overturned.

  Then Sigrun curled in on herself, and Adam wanted to curse Niðhoggr. She raised her face, after a moment, however, and replied, looking at Nith steadfastly, Ah, my friend. I hope that your words are true. It would ease the burden of my heart. For while the greater part of me mourns, some part of me is . . . relieved. And I hate that part of me with all the rest of my soul.

  Adam froze in place at the silent admission, and then swallowed again, hard. “Is it relief for her, or relief for yourself?” he asked, in the pre-dawn grayness of the living room. “Relief that she’s free of the pain, or relief that you no longer have to see her, carry the burden of her madness?”

  Sigrun looked down at the floor, and her voice was almost inaudible as she replied, “I do not know.” Her expression filled with shame, and while Adam wanted to kick himself for putting that on her shoulders, a niggling at the back of Adam’s mind whispered, And when you die, she’ll mourn, but a part of her is going to be relieved that she doesn’t have to help you in and out of the shower anymore. Won’t have to monitor your heart, and blood pressure, and mitigate the arthritis. One less burden. And she’ll get to hate herself for that relief, as well. He reached out, and touched a piece of hair that had pulled loose from her braid. His throat ached, and he had no idea what to do to comfort her. Once, he’d have pulled her into his arms, held her, and prayed that that would be enough. But the death-cold armor would forbid that, even if her expression wasn’t as remote as the stars. “Sig,” he said, chilled. “What do you want me to say?”

  She looked up, her grey eyes once more filling with tears. She started to speak, and her breath caught in her throat. And then she shook her head. “Nothing at all,” Sigrun told him. She stood, and went to the kitchen, and mechanically opened cupboards. Turned on the gas-powered stove. And shortly thereafter, she’d put together a simple meal of oatmeal, bread,
and honey-beer. “It’s customary, at funerals,” she said, her face blank. “These would have been put into the ground with her ashes, or with her body, if she’d asked for a burial mound.”

  Adam accepted a bowl from her, but he had no appetite. “What else is involved?” he asked, hesitantly. Her father’s funeral had been chilly and Roman, at Medea’s directions.

  Sigrun shrugged. “A king, in ages past, might have had a thrall volunteer to join him in the afterlife. If a woman volunteered, all of the king’s men would have relations with her, on the theory that they were sending their life-force into the afterlife with the king, through her body. Then they’d beat their shields with their swords to cover her screams as they stabbed her to death before laying her to rest with the king.”

  Adam shook his head. “Your people greeted death with orgies and beer.”

  “My people greeted winter with sex and liquor. Also spring, summer, and fall.” Sigrun returned, with a note of asperity in her voice that lifted some of the chill in her demeanor. “Sexual magic was common in ancient times. Sex was generativity, and a way to invoke life-force. To send it into the earth, to wake up the land by having couples out in the new-plowed fields in spring, or to hold off the worst of winter, and defy death. It’s an example of the pervasive as above, so below theorem that Trennus and Kanmi always talk about.” She shrugged.