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

  “How so?” Adam asked, taking a sip of his cooling coffee.

  Rig leaned forwards, his gray eyes gleaming with interest. “It’s like seeing storm systems collide and absorb into each other, forming a hurricane, Uncle Adam. Or like seeing the formation of a black hole. The more matter a black hole accumulates, the more powerful its gravity. The lower the pressure in an area, the more powerful the storm. These things aren’t accumulating mass. They’re accumulating energy. I’d be willing to bet that someday, if they’re not stopped? There will be only one of them left.”

  And it will have grown enormously, through devouring all of its fellows, and every god and spirit in this world. Saraid’s tone was strikingly grim, where she sat beside Trennus at the table.

  This world would be destroyed, Lassair said uneasily, putting her head against Trennus’ shoulder, at his other side.

  Saraid’s leaf-dappled eyes were fierce and worried at once. They must be hunted.

  Sigrun looked up. “That may be very difficult, Saraid. The gods who have the power to hunt the godlings cannot enter the territory of others.” Her eyes flicked to the side. “My gods . . . tell me that they are working on an alliance with the gods of Gaul. They will be able to enter one another’s territory freely. If more gods would enter this alliance? They might be able to hold the damned things at bay.”

  Sigrun had asked Rig not to mention her injury to Adam, or that he’d watched her being trained by Freya in using seiðr in combat against the godlings. She seemed . . . not embarrassed, but humiliated, somehow during those lessons. Yet at the same time, she’d grimly gone about the business at hand, her expression a mask of concentration. If she’d been forced by circumstances, somehow, to work in a brothel—ludicrous though that image was—Rig thought the expression on her face, and the sense radiating out of her, might well have been the same.

  Saraid nodded, her lupine ears twitching a little. I would hunt with them, if they would have me.

  “I am sure that the gods of Gaul would be grateful for any assistance you can render. You and Trennus took down a few of the ones up at the pole on your own.” Sigrun’s voice warmed. “And the two of you are not quite as visible as say, the Morrigan.”

  Funny, Adam thought, shifting in his seat, uncomfortably. Back in the day, Lassair would have been trying to figure out how to go with Trennus, even if it meant splitting herself in half. She’s changed. Then again . . . back in the old days, I’d have been out there with them. On the one hand, he was delighted that he was still enough of a part of this to hear about what was going on. On the other hand? It chafed that he wasn’t out in the field, Caliburn in hand, hunting the damned godlings himself. It was at least partially his fault that they even existed in the first place.

  His knees and hips gave a sharp twinge, however, reminding him of the reasons why he wasn’t out doing precisely that. All sixty-three reasons. Adam turned back towards Rig, words hovering on his lips, but held his tongue for a moment, just watching. Rig had turned towards Inghean, his wife, still illustrating the last events with his illusions, his gray eyes alight with excitement as he leaned in, holding her hand in his own. Inghean’s eyes were wide, anxious, delighted, and proud, all at once. Two young lovers who’d never age, or at least, would do so very gracefully. Light and dark, cold and warm, yin and yang. Perfect balance between them. Adam sighed inwardly, and quashed his regrets and his frustrations. “Go on, Rig,” he invited. “What else happened?”

  “This was the really interesting part,” Rig said, turning back to the rest of them, and lifted a hand, blotting out his current scene, and brought up a single, overwhelmingly large black sphere, moving towards the smaller figures of Trennus and Saraid in the middle of an Arctic ice field. “Zhi and I were coming in from about the six o’clock position on the biggest one. Aunt Sig and Nith were coming in from two o’clock, and Freya was coming in from the nine o’clock position. Uncle Tren reached down and held it in place with ley-energy—it was trying to feed off the energies, of course—and then Freya and—” the hesitation was minute, and wasn’t accompanied by any sidelong glances, but Adam still noticed it, “—the others came in and began tearing it apart. And then there was a rip.” Rig gestured again, and in the middle of the table, the air appeared to pucker. A rent in space, leading into . . . elsewhere.

  Adam stared at it. “That looks suspiciously like the white hole you made to draw Loki back to the Veil,” he told Trennus, after a moment.

  “Almost. Not controlled,” Trennus replied, tightly. “I had two stabilizing points when I made that portal, Sari and Lassair. This one was attributable to the ley-line not being fully repaired, inasmuch as I could repair it . . . and the sheer amounts of energy that had been dispersed in the area. The ambient energy levels were just increasing, too, as Freya—” a sideways flick of his eyes at Sigrun now, “and the others were pulling at it. There’s good news and bad news out of this.” Trennus sat back in his chair, staring at the illusion. “The bad news is, yes, rents can be torn in reality. This particular rent only went to the Veil—”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Adam interposed, raising a finger.

  “Well, the fact that it didn’t go to any other congruent reality, if the quantum physicists are correct, and they exist, is helpful.” Trennus grimaced. “The fact that it didn’t go to any of the micro-dimensions associated with ley-lines . . . also helpful. But what I considered to be the good news?” Trennus exhaled, and rubbed a hand up and down Saraid’s back, lightly. “Was the fact that the godling didn’t go through.”

  Adam frowned. “Wait. I thought everyone was concerned that if they got access to the Veil, that they’d be there forever. Empowered. Healing there, and able to move even more rapidly around the world, from there. That was why Hecate opened a door, threw one through, and then severed it in half.”

  “Correct,” Trennus said. “But it didn’t even try. Adam, we had it ringed. Freya, Zhi, Sari, Sig, and Nith were savaging it, and it still didn’t try to go through. I don’t think they can go through. I think that it’s possible, that even though their base energy was Veil-origin, that they’re simply too entropic now to go to the Veil.” Trennus sighed. “I’ll run it by Min and Erida, but I’d give a finger or two to be able to talk to Esh about this.” A moment of silence as Adam and Sigrun both sighed, and Adam lifted his coffee cup in a silent toast to their lost friend.

  “If entropy is the steady tendency of objects and energy to become disorganized, I’d definitely call the mad godlings entropic,” Adam muttered, putting the mention of Kanmi behind him, and trying to work it out in his own head. “They’re disorganizing. But the Veil sounds pretty disorganized, from everything you’ve said about it over the years.”

  “Yes, but it’s also aentropic. No death. Raw energy. Think about it, Adam. Creatures like Zhi . . . Zhi’s a devourer, to be certain. He was already powerful in the Veil—a hunter, and not usually the hunted. Zhi comes to the mortal realm for challenge, and growth. The more malefic efreeti enjoy hunting humans, particularly summoners. They like the challenge of tricking and outwitting us. But . . . the mad gods could never grow in the Veil. They exist solely to consume, and while they’d be able to consume there . . . they would never be more than what they were when they entered. And they could never consume it all.” Trennus shrugged. “That might be higher-order thinking than they’re capable of, so it might just be ‘that place is inimical to me. I don’t want to go there’ or ‘I can’t go there.’ Whatever the reason? It didn’t go through. The Veil is a refuge. Spirits should be safe if they stay there.”

  As we always have been. But if we do not take risks, we never grow. We never change. Saraid’s tone was surprisingly firm as she touched Trennus’ face. I have changed more in the past twenty years than any in my existence, and I do not regret it. Even if it has not been safe.

  Adam looked away. The Veil was a refuge, perhaps, but only for people who could go there. And that left the vast majority of humanity out in
the cold. “How about if we continue all this outside?” he suggested. “Stars should be beautiful tonight. No chance of rain in the forecast.” A flicker of a glance at Sigrun, but she’d already turned away to start picking up the plates. It was after sundown on dies Veneris, or Frigedæg. That made it Shabbat, but he didn’t like seeing her clean up after dinner without helping. The fact of the matter was, the lights were on in his house—and had been on, since just before sunset. She’d load the dishwasher and start it, so that they wouldn’t have dirty plates lying around. Anyone in the neighborhood who tsked their tongues over such matters had mostly moved away. Adam felt that the neighbors who’d remained behind secretly enjoyed the chaos of a fenris/lycanthrope family in one house, the Matrugena clan in another, and a dragon that periodically came and went at odd hours. Fritti, with her job as a refugee coordinator and community outreach specialist, was perhaps the most normal person on the block, and nevermind her starshine eyes.

  As such, Adam helped clear the table, and took the opportunity to watch Sigrun as she worked. She’d been quiet all evening. She was usually reticent around strangers, but everyone here was a close friend. Almost family. But for all her silence, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Finally, she shooed him towards the back door with his cloak and a cup of hot coffee to ward off the last of the chill. “Everything’s all right?” Adam asked her, hesitating at the door, trying not to be embarrassed at the cane in his hand, where the others would see him leaning on it.

  Sigrun looked up from where she was loading the machine with dishes. Her expression was blank. “As all right as it can be, given the circumstances. I have somewhat good news, however. I may be able to see more of you now, than before.” A smile appeared on her face, but Adam couldn’t escape the sensation that she was . . . uneasy about something.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Nith has told me that he would be willing to fly me home whenever I am not actively engaged in fighting.” A sideways flick of her eyes. Adam knew facial expressions. He knew when people were telling half-truths. He’d seen a lot of them tonight, and it was getting on his nerves. His security clearance was active and valid, and he’d taken down gods with everyone at the table.

  Thus, there was a little skepticism in his voice. “Nith told you? What, he talks now?”

  “Apparently, he always talked. I just wasn’t listening.” Sigrun turned back to the sink and found a spot for the roasting rack in the dishwasher. “He’s outside right now, actually.”

  Adam blinked. He usually didn’t have the sense of dichotomy strongly anymore, but somehow, watching her load the dishwasher while speaking of gods and dragons hit home. And the old feeling of coming in during act three of a play was back, with a vengeance. I’ll get the other half of the story out of her later. “All right. I guess I’ll find out if he likes star-gazing, then.”

  The dining room had a door that led out onto the covered back porch, which linked to a covered walkway that led, in turn, to the garage. The rest of the yard, however, had a stone wall around it, courtesy of Trennus, with a gate between their two houses. Trennus, Lassair, and Saraid were already outside, sitting under the stars. Adam periodically grumped about the cherry and apple trees blocking his view of the heavens, but at the moment, they weren’t what took up most of the sky. Nith’s black shape, as he wedged his haunches between trees and fence, his head lifted, blotted out the stars.

  Adam limped his way along the gravel path to where he’d positioned a chair and one of his telescopes, and sat down, slowly, beside an enormous paw. “So. Sig says you talk now?”

  Yes. I greet you, Godslayer. Courteous respect in that voice. One warrior to another.

  Adam’s eyebrows went up. It was disorienting to hear the creature’s voice, after twenty-some years of silence. Adam had had to give up flying three years ago (blood-pressure problems and being the pilot of a plane did not mix well), but he’d enjoyed the once-monthly aerobatics exercises that he, Sigrun, and the beast had engaged in before that. That the creature usually made himself available to permit Sigrun to travel more quickly had been a convenience to which Adam hadn’t objected. It ensured that he could see her more often, and he was all too aware that frequent, long absences tended to have a detrimental effect on most marriages. But the result had been that he’d come to think of the dragon as a large and faithful pet. Even fenris, like Larus Sillen, could at least speak. Nith never had. Until now.

  “I don’t suppose you could move? You’re somewhat blocking the view.”

  If I move, I will put the house, the fence, or Worldwalker in danger of being crushed. Stormborn has indicated that I should learn to make myself smaller, so that I can . . . fit in the front door. I will endeavor to do so. Amusement in the voice in his head. I can see Draconis from here, the beast added, as his form began, slowly, to shrink.

  “Appropriate constellation to look at,” Adam said, and began adjusting the telescope. “Alpha Draconis was the pole star, once. Back around . . . 3897 before Caesar. Until about 1748 BAC, if I remember it right.” He paused. “You’re not about to tell me that you remember that, are you?”

  No. That was long before I was born. The dragon’s tone was noncommittal.

  Adam considered that. He’d been immersed in godslayer lore for a very long time. “It’s actually something of a relief to hear someone not claiming to antiquity. Prometheus was a handful until we got him used to modern technology.”

  I am not as old as the foresighted one. But I have been in the world more than he has. I am around two thousand years old, if that is what you wished to know. The stars have changed somewhat in that time. I like looking at them. They are . . . peaceful.

  Adam nodded, slowly. Having Prometheus around really did accustom one to the idea that there were entities in the world who really did remember when bronze was the new, cutting-edge technology. The titan’s fascination with human innovation was particularly striking, and he had an amazing perspective on probability and weighted timelines. It was as different from dealing with Sophia as chalk was from cheese. So the transition from thinking of Nith as a pet to a person wasn’t really taking that long, and Adam was quite curious as to why the dragon suddenly had just decided to . . . start speaking. But he supposed it had to be that Sigrun had finally listened properly. She could be stubborn. “Alpha Draconis just over three hundred light years away,” Adam said, changing the subject slightly. “Really pretty, too. There’s also a very nice nebula that I might be able to catch . . . . ”

  The nebula is the one that looks something like a cat’s eye, is it not? The dragon had managed to reduce himself to just about the size of a lindworm now. I can see it quite clearly. You will be able to see it with your device, I think.

  “You really do enjoy looking at the stars.” Adam was startled. “And you can see enough of the electromagnetic spectrum to detect the shape of the nebula? That took an observatory in orbit to see its structure . . . it’s over three thousand light-years away!“

  Yes. It is quite small to my eyes, but beautiful.

  Adam looked at the creature, wrapped as it was in armor. A lethal adversary, calm, for the moment, but capable of flight, almost to the edge of space, if Sig was to be believed on the topic. And apparently, the creature also shared his love of the stars. Who knew? “I suppose that with eyes like that, the telescope would just make things blurry for you.”

  Possibly. If you would adjust the device, I would like to try, however.

  Well, I’ll be damned. Adam was a little off-balance now, but still heard the click of the back door and Sigrun’s soft steps as she walked out to join them. “Rig and Inghean just left for their house,” she told them all, quietly. And looked down, her face lost in the darkness, as Nith attempted to look through the telescope. Adam felt . . . incalculably better as her hand rested on his shoulder. Somehow, just having her around eased the aches and pains, just a bit.

  “So . . .” Adam began. “What does Prometheus say about all of this?”

&nbs
p; Sigrun shrugged. “He said that we’d gotten Jormangand calmed for the moment, but that his projections still showed a high-percentage chance that the beast would chase down mad gods, possibly through populated areas. He considers this a win, though we did not acquire him as an ally.” Sigrun sighed. “And he was relieved that none of us died.”

  Adam raised his head from the eyepiece of the scope. “That was a possibility?”

  “A four-percent chance, he said. I told him I would take his possibilities and probabilities over my sister’s certainties any day.”

  Adam snorted. “I agree.” Another minute adjustment. Alpha Draconis swam into view in the scope, and he leaned back. “Have a look, Nith. If you like.”

  The dragon’s much-smaller head was still larger than that of a horse, and negotiated for room at the telescope gingerly, at best.

  “So,” Adam began, looking up at his wife. “What are the things you aren't telling me? Something’s bothering you.”

  She hesitated. “Adam, if I could talk to you about it, I would.”

  “Does it involve your gods?”