The Goddess Denied Read online

  The Goddess Denied

  Book Two of the

  Saga of

  Edda-Earth

  Deborah L. Davitt

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2015 Deborah L. Davitt

  Maps and interior artwork, © 2015 Deborah L. Davitt

  Cover art by Elizaveta Gokoeva

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9860916-0-5

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without permission.

  For more information on this and other books in this series, please visit www.edda-earth.com.

  For my parents, Barbara and Dennis McRann. Miss you, Dad.

  Special thanks

  No book is ever written in a vacuum, and this book is no exception. I’d like to thank Anastasia Ivanova and Allen Yang for their typo-whacking prowess (made all the more impressive by the fact that English is not Anastasia’s first language!). The text of the book would not be nearly as clean as it is, without their invaluable efforts. Nathan Mittelman, once more, gave feedback throughout the writing of the entire trilogy, and Alexander Thomas gave valuable insights on the third draft. And, as always, a special thanks to my husband, Jason Davitt, for giving me the time and space to write these books. And for never being shy about telling me when something has dragged on long enough, or isn’t working.

  A Note on Dates

  For a full calendar and timeline of important historical divergences, you may refer to the Appendices. All you need to know at the outset, is that all dates in Edda are not BC/BCE (before common era) or AD/CE (common era). They are noted as BAC/AC: Before the ascent of Caesar, and after the ascent of Caesar. All dates are offset by 44 years as a result.

  Thus, 1954 AC is 1910 AD.

  Our Story to date

  Synopsis of The Valkyrie

  Propraetor Livorus is asked to investigate a number of potentially disastrous diplomatic situations in the further reaches of the modern Roman Empire. The first involves the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old Marcomanni girl named Frittigil Chatti (Marcomanni = Cincinnati) by the Chahiksichahiks, members of a small regional kingdom outside the greater Comanche Alliance. Rome has been contacted by someone within the Chahiksichahik kingdom to alert them that the girl has been brought to their homeland, near Ponca (Omaha), on the border with Novo Gaul.

  The informant has reason to believe that the local shaman, who strongly opposes modernization for his people, and enforces cult-like strictures on their lives, means to re-enact the outlawed Morning Star ritual, using the girl as a human sacrifice. Livorus wishes to resolve the issue peacefully, and without diplomatic repercussions; however, the shaman and one of the other kingdom elders are god-born, and engage his lictors in direct combat; Sigrun must fight one of them in the air, while the other lictors try to save Frittigil’s life on the ground. As the shaman lays dying, he tells Livorus, as his own blood runs out on the earth, that he’s saved his people. And asks Livorus if he knows where his gods are.

  Frittigil is marked out by both Baldur, one of her own gods, and the Evening Star, whose place Fritti was meant to take in the ritual that re-enacted the Evening Star’s kidnapping and rape at the hands of the Morning Star. She is god-touched now, and the Odinhall agrees to train her.

  This question becomes more important as the narrative continues. Two of Livorus’ current lictors are badly injured; one retires, and the other is placed on temporary disability. Adam and Sigrun must agree to two replacements, and find Trennus Matrugena, a summoner, and Kanmi Eshmunazar, a technomancer, to be adequate additions to the team. . . which leads them into life-long friendship, not that this seems likely at first. Adam is wary of magic, and Kanmi in particular is abrasive.

  They next must go to Nahautl (the Aztecs) to investigate more rumors of a resurgence of human sacrifice in the back country. The ruling emperor knows nothing of this, but a local technomancer who works on the ley-power grid (ley replaces electricity for a great deal of Edda) knows Kanmi from school, and remembers him as having anti-Imperial leanings. This ley-engineer and sorcerer, Gratian Xicohtencatl, tries to recruit Kanmi for a semi-populist group he’s part of, which is involved in revolutionary activity in the province, while the lictors investigate the allegations of human sacrifices in the southern reaches of Nahautl.

  Livorus’ Nahautl lictor, Ehecatl Itzli, rejoins the team to give them background information on the area as well as an understanding of the culture, and they discover that one of the new ley-tapping platforms in southern Nahautl doesn’t absorb or redirect ley-energy from cosmic strings; rather, it seems to be a platform for receiving and transmitting spirit-based energy. They also find the sacrificed body of a young Jaguar warrior under its foundation—a Jaguar warrior whose heart was removed without opening his chest, suggesting the use of magic.

  They trace Xicohtencatl and Tototl, the god-born high-priest of Tlaloc, a god whose worship is currently much in decline, to the ruined city of Teotihuacán, where another, similar series of machines and copper lines have been connected into the Pyramid of the Sun. Underneath the pyramid, they find their quarry, and much more than they bargained for, including Tlaloc himself, bound as any lesser spirit might be bound, his power being mitigated and transmitted by machines. A replacement for “foreign” ley-power. . . but in order to use the god’s power, they must feed him through sacrifices.

  In the ensuing fight, Adam manages to kill Tlaloc’s avatar. . . and because the god is so weakened and attenuated, it’s likely that he killed him, in truth. Sigrun is badly injured, and as she’s recovering in the hospital, her sister, Sophia, a prophetess at Delphi, calls, and addresses Adam on the phone by name, and tells him he’s fated to be a godslayer. That it wasn’t just Tlaloc, but something he’ll do, over and over again.

  Xicohtencatl’s intended purpose in all this was trying to give power to the common person, a theme that extremist groups in Edda will return to, time and again. There’s seething resentment among the “normals” against those who have power, whether those powers include money, title, prestige, or magic. For now, the government and priests of Nahautl decide to cover up the reality of Tlaloc’s death, and the lictors and Livorus must remain in the region to broker regional autonomy for Quechan sub-provinces. All the Praetorians must undergo an evaluation at the highest levels to review their actions; Sigrun, in particular, is required to speak with her gods personally. Her fellow lictors didn’t realize this when they volunteered to go with her to the Odinhall in Burgundoi (San Francisco) to speak on her behalf.

  Time passes, and Livorus is given an opportunity to bring Chaldea and Media out of the Persian empire. He and his lictors meet with Chaldean emissaries like Erida Lelayn in Judea, but the secret meetings are clearly on Persian radar; their agents unleash a djinn in Livorus’ hotel, and an ancient demon known as the pazuzu in Jerusalem’s streets, forcing Adam, now head of the lictors, to take his team and their protectees to his parents’ house for safety. Once they’re assured of safe quarters in the Governor’s villa, they can get back to the negotiations, which are being conducted at an air-and-space expo dedicated to the potential new moon base. Again, Persian Intelligence is ahead of them, and plants summoning bottles, with alu-demons bound to them, in various trash receptacles, which are broken when they receive a radio signal from the Erida’s traitorous chief bodyguard. The alu-demons rampage through the convention center, slaughtering civilians, while military and police personnel on hand try to defend them. Erida’s bodyguard takes her hostage to try to get out of the center, and so that he can stage her death later, but the lictors manage to save her—and she kills her bodyguard, herself.

  Adam gets caught in the crossfire as military personnel fire on the alu-demons, which demanifest, and he takes the bullets meant for t
he creatures. Sigrun takes his near-mortal wounds on herself, healing him, and this makes him realize how much he’s come to cherish her. They admit to feelings for one another, and are married a year later. Trennus admits to feelings for one of his bound spirits, Lassair, who gained in power from Tlaloc’s death. Kanmi’s marriage begins to break apart over his Praetorian work, and his wife’s inability to see his work as real, valid, or important.

  Kanmi begins tracking extremist groups like the Source Initiative (which is mostly a professional organization of ley-mages and engineers), and looks more deeply into the energy released in Tlaloc’s death. Curiously, a large amount of that energy seems unaccounted for in anyone’s math; part of it could have been absorbed by Lassair, but a great deal of it still seems to be missing.

  Years pass, and Dr. Minori Sasaki, a sorceress and ley-engineer, has released data that suggests, to her, that improper ley-facility construction in Nahautl led to earthquakes resonating all along the ley-grid throughout Caesaria Aquilonis (North America). She, like the rest of the world, doesn’t know that the energy issues came from the death of a god, but she’s also traced similar seismic activity in Tawantinsuyu (Peru, Incas), all located around new ley-platform construction sites. Her work has garnered her and her fellow researchers threats; Trennus and the divorced, embittered Kanmi are dispatched to investigate. One of her colleagues is murdered, and they take her into Praetorian protection.

  Livorus asks his lictors to look into the matter—delicately. Since Minori has access to the ley sites, and can serve as bait. . . and has an adequate background in discretion, having been raised at the Imperial Court in Nippon. . . she and Kanmi are asked to pretend to be lovers, while Trennus and Lassair go with them to investigate what’s going on in Tawantinsuyu. Lassair discovers that she’s pregnant with Trennus’ child, something the spirit didn’t realize was possible, and now feels that she cannot demanifest without potentially harming the child.

  In Tawantinsuyu, they discover that the Nazca lines have been turned into enormous binding diagrams, some holding ancient spirits, and some holding gods. The ley platforms are totally normal. . . but there are towers built in various locations near the ley platforms, in a semicircle, which looks like a binding circle large enough for the entire country, or a cog in a much larger machine. Trennus winds up accidentally freeing one of the trapped gods: Mamaquilla, goddess of the moon and sea, and mate of Inti, the local sun-god. She cannot find her brother-husband’s essence anywhere.

  Livorus, Adam, and Sigrun come to Cuzco now, as there’s enough information to act on, and confront the Sapa Inca (First Inca, emperor), Sayri Cusi. Unfortunately, Cusi appears, for all intents and purposes, to be schizophrenic. He’s been consuming minor gods, with the aid of a greater god, and their personalities are not wholly absorbed. He has some of their powers, but they periodically take over his body, giving him the appearance of madness. He takes them all prisoner when Livorus antagonizes him, and sends Adam and Sigrun to Coropuna, the central location in his plan to cause a rebirth for his people.

  In the meantime, Lassair and Minori have been captured as well, as one of Sayri Cusi’s main advisors wants Lassair to heal his wife of Paredes’ disease; the gods haven’t listened to his pleas, his emperor hasn’t either. Rebirth for everyone except his wife seems in order, so the advisor is desperate enough to have Minori tortured for Lassair’s true Name, which would give him control over the spirit.

  Trennus breaks the rest of the Nazca Lines, freeing thousands of spirits, all of whom give him their Names in token of a debt owed, that he may call in at a later date. Mamaquilla takes him and Kanmi to Coropuna, where all their friends are being held captive. . . and where Inti has been taken captive by both humans and the death-god, Supay. His power holds five other gods captive in the towers throughout Tawantinsuyu, and they are meant to be part of a great machine that will focus their power on their land, for the betterment of their people. Of course, Supay really just wants all their power for himself.

  Minori kills her torturer moments before Kanmi and Trennus enter their prison; Adam and Sigrun break themselves free, and find and speak with captive Inti. In the ensuing fight between their people, Sayri Cusi, and Supay, the Sapa Inca entombs Lassair in the earth, forcing her to choose between demanifesting (possibly terminating a pregnancy she didn’t know she could have) and death. Trennus sacrifices himself to empower her, giving her the whole of his soul to work with. Empowered, Lassair puts his spirit in the Veil, keeps his body alive, and fights the Sapa Inca. Sigrun fights Supay, and Inti takes Adam’s gun, and imbues it with his power; it is now a god-touched weapon. He asks Adam to kill him, so that his power cannot be used against his people any further, and so that Supay might be more easily killed.

  Adam, hating himself, executes a god. Sigrun kills Supay in fair battle. Inti’s power creates a cascade failure in the great machine to which he’s attached, killing all the other captive gods, and rendering Mamaquilla the monotheistic head of a religion that used to comprise thousands of greater and lesser deities.

  The social disruption is intense, as Mamaquilla actually becomes, temporarily, the head of state for her human people, whose land has been wracked by earthquakes as Inti and the other gods’ power resonated through the ley-lines. Kanmi and Minori become lovers. And yet, again, some of the gods’ power is missing from the final measurements and tallies. Lassair and Saraid may have taken part of it . . . and Sigrun emphatically denies that she’s acquired any part of it. Though she does, suddenly, develop spirit-based senses, such as ‘othersight.”

  She must again report to the Odinhall for training in suppressing the vision. Kanmi and Minori marry, and Sophia’s madness is explored in more depth, with Sophia finally telling Sigrun that the difference between the two sisters is simple. Sigrun is a servant, and can say no. Sophia is a slave, and cannot.

  Part V: Sacrifices

  Northern Europa, 1970 AC.

  Chapter 1: Dreams and Intimations

  The ancient Hellene poet, Homer, gave to his literary and philosophical descendants a lovely conceit about the origin of dreams, based on a pun in Attic Hellene that is lost on those who do not speak the language. He states that true dreams sally forth from a gate of horn, or κέρας, which is similar to the Hellene word for κραίνω, or to fulfill. And false dreams come through the gate of ivory, or ἐλέφας, which is a pun upon ἐλεφαίρομαι, or to deceive. This counters the expectations of the modern reader. The true dream of prophecy comes through the gate of less-rare, less-precious material. Even Ovid, who was the first to commit to writing the existence of the god Morpheus, lord of dreams, retains this literary conceit.

  Of course, these days, most people understand that regular dreams—the ones that Homer would tell us come through the gate of ivory—are the product of REM and other sleep cycles in the brain. They’re still scarcely understood. But whether their purpose is occupying the brain during sleep, processing the day’s events in memory formation, or something else, people remain inclined to try to interpret them. Priests and priestesses trained in modern psychology attempt to help people understand their dreams, not as divinations of the future, but as a way of comprehending human nature and how we interact with our pasts.

  Still, there are true-dreams, ones that issue forth, if not from a gate of horn, then from spirits attempting to warn us, or, if we are particularly honored, from the gods themselves. Prophetic visions that speak of the future, or whispering voices that warn us against a current course of action. My sister spends her entire life in such a dream. Even when her eyes are open, she cannot awaken. And I cannot think it a gift.

  And of course, there are the dreams that we build and assemble during our conscious hours. Flights of fancy that may become reality, if we strive and work to make them real. But is there anything more bitter and unpalatable, than a dream worked for, struggled for, and yet still denied?

  —Sigrun Caetia, unpublished letter to Dr. Minori Eshmunazar, Iunius 15, 1967 AC. />
  ______________________

  Caesarius 32, 1969 AC

  Years had passed. The lictors had continued their bodyguard work. While Livorus remained completely loyal to them, and they to him, it would be politically unwise for someone like Imperator Caesarion IX to take any of them into his own protective detail. They each now had a reputation for being present wherever disaster struck. Adam did his best to deflect any and all questions about the events in Nahautl and Tawantinsuyu when reporters approached the team, and they all worked hard at returning to faceless anonymity. Trennus acquired smoked lenses to put in front of his existing spectacles while on duty, to conceal his eyes. Kanmi and Adam required little in the way of disguises, and Sigrun did her best to fade into the background. Adam, years later, realized that she had a knack for knowing precisely where a camera was, and looking away precisely when the photographer snapped the picture. It was a knack that tied in with other things that came to nag him, such as Sigrun’s tendency to avoid mirrors. But he had hundreds of other concerns to worry about, which took priority over poking his wife in the ribs about her nigh-miraculous ability to avoid being caught on film.

  For instance, the war with Persia and Mongolia finally ground to a halt for Rome in 1967, though the Khanate and Persia continued to fight with Qin on their eastern front. Chaldea, Media, and Eastern Assyria were formally recognized as subject kingdoms of the Roman Empire, and Eastern and Western Assyria were re-integrated for the first time in close to five hundred years. However, by treaty agreement, Domitanus’ Wall could not be expanded around them for another fifty years. “Not that I’m sure how we could expand it,” Adam grumbled. He was forty now, and the war had officially begun between Persia and Rome in 1958, eleven years ago. It made him feel . . . annoyingly old, actually. “We’d have to build a second one, one that runs from the Caspian, past Rhagae and Ecbatana at a very steep angle, and then it would cut off at the Gulf of Persia, anyway. On the other hand, not having a wall there is going to make protecting the new provinces much more difficult.” He rubbed at his chin, irritably.