The Goddess Embraced Read online

  The Goddess Embraced

  Book Three 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 Liza Gokoeva

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13:

  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 husband, Jason W. Davitt, and our son, Kaden D. Davitt.

  Special thanks

  No book is ever written in a vacuum, and this book is no exception. I’d like to thank Anastasia Ivanova and Jake Mittelman 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, 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 the creatures. Sigrun takes his near-mor
tal 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.

  Synopsis of The Goddess Denied

  Ten years have passed. Information on the ancient godslayers, such as the mysterious creature that slew Akhenaten as the pharaoh attempted to swallow the power of the Egyptian gods he’d killed, is revealed. Livorus retires as propraetor, and tells his lictors that they must now look to their own careers, after their faithful service to him.

  Trennus has spent every night in the past ten years in the Veil, building a ‘realm’ there in the image of Saraid’s Caledonian Forest. He never has a chance to rest, until Saraid offers him surcease, and Lassair cedes the forest-spirit half his soul. Lassair and Trennus have had several children together, all ‘spirit-born,’ and powerful. Kanmi and Minori have had a single child. But Sigrun has been rendered barren by a curse placed on her by Loki.

  However, Loki himself has gone missing, and someone has meddled with the records at the Odinhall to make it appear that Sigrun did not request an audience with Freya regarding her barren condition until after consulting with Mamaquilla, something that would surely have made her look rebellious and apostate. Níðhoggr, Hel’s son and ‘pet,’ tests Sigrun at the Odinhall, but the dragon seems to feel a curious kinship with Sigrun, refusing to harm her.

  Sophia contacts Sigrun, and tells her that she foresees Sigrun making alliances with giants and wolves, and that while death might not be Sigrun’s ally, her shadow will be.

  Suspicions revolve around Reginleif Lanvik, a valkyrie born to Loki’s line, one of Sigrun’s former teachers, and the woman meant to test Sigrun’s loyalties in the wake of the previous god-deaths with which Sigrun has been involved. Reginleif has vanished, but so, too, has Frittigil Chatti, last seen at Sigrun’s wedding in The Valkyrie.

  Sigrun’s mentor, Brandr Ilfetu, was meant to tutor Fritti, and he has false memories of doing so, implanted by Loki. Rather, Fritti was tutored by “Radulfr Ecgwine,” who appears to be Loki himself. Sigrun, Adam, and a bear-warrior sent by Valhalla find Fritti in the Gallic city of Divodurum (Houston), living undercover with her son, Rig. She entered into a relationship in her twenties with her former mentor, Radulfr, not knowing that he was Loki, and Rig is the result. Loki has soul-bound her,
and they are invisible to all other gods, giving them a degree of freedom unknown to other god-born, but Fritti still feels bitter and betrayed.

  Trennus, Kanmi, Brandr, Lassair, Minori, and Saraid search Reginleif’s house for information that might lead them to her; Trennus sees in Reginleif’s home, shadows of what Sigrun may become. Both valkyrie were married to mortal men, and Reginleif watched her husband age and die, while she remained young. Most god-born endure this wound. Brandr believes that Reginleif would never betray Valhalla, and that she must have been investigating a populist group, Potentia ad Populum (Power to the People) that had distant links to the Source Initiative.

  All signs point to her having visited Lake Pielinen in Fennmark (Finland), and this tallies with what Loki told Fritti before his disappearance; he planned to work against Ragnarok in a place where his fellow gods wouldn’t think to find him. Unfortunately, there have been rumors of “monsters” all through the northlands—rumors that Brandr can confirm, as he’s encountered ‘lindworms,’ creatures from Germanic lore that are dragons the size of elephants.

  As they travel to Pielinen, their cars are attacked by wild jotun and ettin and wolves the size of horses. They manage to take one of the wolves and one of the giants captive, and determine, with Lassair and Saraid’s help, that both the giant and the wolf have human elements in their psyches. Sigrun is able to use othersight and a little of her inner powers to help the spirits re-integrate the captives’ minds; something she has never been able to do before.