The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2) Read online

  Sigrun nodded, her eyes widening slightly. “He’d been . . . strict. Exacting. But when he was done teaching me, I . . . felt as if I’d learned quite a bit more than I’d thought. And when he met me again in Tuscarora, it seemed a chance occurrence. He seemed as surprised to see me, as I him. And he was far kinder. Treated me as an equal then, since it had been several years since I’d left his tutelage. He told me it was a pleasure to see me grown now, and close to the end of that first evening mentioned that it is often very lonely to be god-born. To watch those around you, whom you love, age and die, while you stay eternally the same.” Fritti sighed. “I asked him if he planned to be in town long. One meeting led to another. He kept putting off when he was to depart, and finally, before finally leaving, he asked me to meet him in Cimbri. I did. Things . . . progressed.” The younger woman fidgeted. “I think I was lonely, Sigrun. And it was . . . a wonderful thing not to see fear or awe in his eyes, as I have so often seen from those who were my classmates before I was taken. As I see in the eyes of . . . everyone in Nova Germania, when they look at me.” She sighed. “I wanted . . . I wanted what I see between you and your husband. I wanted that.” Her voice was dull. “I thought I’d found it.”

  Sigrun opened her mouth to reply, and then shut it again. Sometimes, the best thing to say was nothing at all.

  After a moment, Fritti went on. “When I realized that I was with child, I was overjoyed, at first. Radulfr was, too. He asked me to live with him, and said that he would ensure I would be safe through the birthing, and that he would take care of both me and the child. I went to him. And we lived together through the pregnancy, though he had many tasks, for the Odinhall, he said. And when Rig was born, he gave the boy the name, put one hand on the baby’s brow, and one hand on mine, as I lay still in the bed . . . and cold went through me. He said ‘these are my gifts to you.’ And when I looked up, I did not see Radulfr anymore. I saw Loki.”

  Sigrun had almost been expecting the words, but the name still hit her like a hammer blow to the stomach. Loki, she thought, dully. Getting Fritti with child. Preventing me from having my own. Nothing but games and lies and tricks. Sigrun swallowed. “A gift,” she said.

  Fritti nodded, miserably. “He said he’d given me the ability to see through his glamours. That this was right and just, because I was bound to him, and he was bound to me, in turn. I had the power to reveal his illusions, he said . . . but he trusted me to do the right thing with this ability. I . . . gods. I begged to know why he’d deceived me. Lied to me. Used me.” Her voice was sick. “He said nothing was a lie, except his face. That he’d put on another face to train me, because he had to be sure that someone with so much potential was trained correctly. That he’d worn that face to . . . to love me, because he knew I’d never accept his real one.” Fritti covered her face again. “He said that the end is coming, Sigrun. That so many god-born have been born in the past seventy years, because Ragnarok is at hand. And he said that he hoped to prevent Ragnarok. But that if he couldn’t, he’d left himself . . . an escape route or two.”

  Sigrun sat upright. “He’s the one who’s supposed to start Ragnarok!”

  Fritti looked up from between her fingers. “He said that he likes the world exactly the way it is. He has worshippers, he has their respect. The world has changed, and the gods have changed with it. And he and the other gods may not agree on much, but he likes the world. He likes his people. He doesn’t want the tale to end.” She exhaled. “All those words . . . came to me later. Then, I was too angry to hear. I screamed at him. I was . . . minutes after having given birth to a child that I’d conceived in love, only to discover that the father was the father of all lies, and I didn’t want to believe anything that he said.”

  Sigrun just stared at her. She had no idea what to say. This was so far outside of her experience as to be entirely alien. “Do you?” she finally asked. “Do you believe him?”

  “Enough to believe him when he said that the other gods would not want another of his first-born children in this world. Fenris? Jormangand? Hel? Sleipnir? Two are shackled, one is the queen of the dead, and one is Odin’s steed, a servant at best. I do not want that for my child, Sigrun. I won’t have him used by his father for any schemes, and I won’t let him be used as a servant by other gods, either.” Fritti’s voice was suddenly fierce. “I never asked for any of this. I never asked to be kidnapped for the Morning Star. I never asked to be marked by Baldur and the Evening Star. I never asked for Loki to bind me to him with the blood of my own maidenhead and the birth-blood of a son. I never asked for any of this, and neither did Rig.”

  Sigrun exhaled, and bowed her head. “No,” she agreed, quietly. “You didn’t.” She paused. “So that is how Baldur can no longer sense you. You’re bound to Loki. And in a . . . tighter fashion.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. “So . . . “ Fritti’s voice was uncertain now. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Sigrun blinked, looking up. “Do with you? Nothing. You want to have your own choices. You want your son to have freedom. I agree with both things.” Sigrun swallowed. “He needs training, however, Fritti. He’s not just a god-born. He’s a first-generation god-born. Directly sprung from the seed, as it were.” She exhaled. “He’s going to be powerful.”

  “He already is,” Fritti admitted, looking down. “He was born in 1963. He’s only seven, but the illusions he shapes . . . gods. I see right through them, but other people . . . “ A little shrug. “I’ve tried to train him, myself. I’ve hired pedagogues, but they always wind up asking questions, and Rig has learned how to make himself . . . disappear . . . when they ask too many.”

  Sigrun came to a decision at that point. “Go to Judea,” she told Fritti. “The gods of our people cannot go there, at least not without causing a certain amount of incivility.” She looked up at the ceiling. “You were right to try to . . . avoid them, in lands held by those who follow other gods. But you need to go yet a little further.” She sighed. “My sister is in my house, at the moment. She is . . . god-born of Apollo. I would expect that she can see through any illusions your son might wish to throw her way. And when I am done . . . dealing with everything with which I must deal, here . . . I will help you train your son. If that’s what you and he wish, at any rate.” She scrubbed at her face. Somehow, she thought, grimly, even a little bitterly, I am being turned into a pedagogue to everyone’s children but my own. And I know I am not a good one. Medea may not have left marks on my skin, but she did leave them on my soul.

  Fritti’s head snapped up. “Won’t the Odinhall disapprove?”

  Sigrun swallowed. Somehow, she kept getting cast as a rebel, by various people, when she really didn’t think she was one. “Quite likely,” she admitted. “but at the moment, you are not the only person who has gone missing, and they are more likely to be concerned with the big fish, than with one small fry.”

  The starshine eyes widened. “Who else is missing?”

  Sigrun sighed. “Loki himself. I . . . have been cursed by him.” The cold, black flicker of rage shifted inside her mind, and she tamped it down. It was not Fritti’s fault. “I intend to seek him out. But no one has seen him since 1964. You may have been the last to see him, Fritti. We do not know if he is hiding, or if he is . . . involved in something. More so than usual, that is.” Theoretically, Loki could be as captive as Inti and the mountain gods of Tawantinsuyu had once been, but Sigrun couldn’t quite make herself believe that. This was Loki, after all. “But I think that it might be wise to rule out one possibility.” She swallowed.

  Fritti’s eyes had gone wide. “You don’t think . . . you don’t think he’s inside my son, do you?”

  Sigrun closed her own eyes now. “You have no idea how much I hope that he is not.” It was hard to imagine trying to wreak vengeance on a seven-year-old child, to demand an accounting from a small boy who was currently playing with blocks.

  “But I can see through his illusions!”

 
; “And who told you that you could do that, Fritti?”

  A pause. “Hel’s black heart.”

  “It is, indeed.” Sigrun rubbed at her eyes. The problem was, there wasn’t any way to test, that she was aware of, anyway. Informing Erikir of the boy’s parentage would . . . very likely result in an argument. The younger bear-warrior was her friend, but he wouldn’t see any reason why boy and mother shouldn’t return to the Odinhall, where, in truth, they’d be well-protected, and Rig would have access to excellent training. But Sigrun would feel compelled to take Fritti’s side against her old friend.

  On the other hand, she could be doing Erikir a disservice. He might well take the side of free will and choice. But looking at Fritti, Sigrun thought that she couldn’t risk betraying the girl’s faith in her, in that way. Girl, Sigrun thought, glumly. She’s a mother, and all I see before me is a child. This is the existence I see stretching out in front of me. Everyone I care about dying, leaving me surrounded by increasingly younger children. Till the whole world will be peopled by naught but mewling infants.

  She shook the dark thought off, and focused. Her othersight, like Lassair’s Veil senses, had proven very accurate. Freya had trained her in its use carefully, and had hinted that it related to Sigrun’s truthsense, her ability to know when people were lying. And what is an illusion but a lie? Sigrun thought, as they walked back out into the living area.

  Adam had helped Rig build a tower taller than the boy’s head, and the boy grinned now, reaching up on his tiptoes to try to place the last block. The smile on Adam’s face hit Sigrun like a hammer straight to the midsection. He loved children. He was good with them, in the way that she wasn’t, really. Open, natural, kind, while she was closed off, and reserved. Rig strained, and then the whole pile collapsed. “Eh, half the fun of building towers is breaking them, and building them again, only better, right?” Adam told the boy.

  “Oh, it’s all right. I build them better in my head, anyway,” Rig said. “Want to see?”

  Fritti opened her mouth to interject, and Sigrun put a gentle hand on her forearm. “I would like to see,” Sigrun said.

  Rig’s face lit up, and he put his little hands out in front of him, and concentrated, hard. Sigrun tipped her head to the side, and watched with othersight and outer vision at the same time. From without, the blocks seemed to organize themselves. There were, suddenly, far more solid, stable rectangles than the box had previously held, and they formed an improbably thin base, joined to a T-intersection that should never have held any sort of balance, atop of which more rectangular blocks were spaced out, like bars in a cage, and finished with cylindrical blocks placed as lintels, that should have rolled right off. The entire structure seemed, however, more stable than the walls around them. The boy’s inner core of color was light blue, as distinctive as the pale gray of his eyes. A cheerful, happy color that made Sigrun think of flying through a cloudless sky. And there was so much innocent joy in building there, that it didn’t seem like something Loki would be . . . capable of expressing. He is the master deceiver, Sigrun reminded herself, and crouched down, looking at the illusory construct. “Would you mind a suggestion?” she asked. Loki was noted in every tale for his temper and inability to take criticism.

  “You don’t like it?” Rig sounded disappointed.

  “Oh, no, I do. I think it is a marvelous tower. But I think it looks more like a key, doesn’t it? Fat at the top, skinny at the bottom. It makes me wonder what it unlocks.”

  “Oh! I know! I know! A treasure chest, for Mama and me, so she won’t have to go to work all the time. Look!” Rig gestured, and the ‘key’ turned, and vanished, and the entire apartment suddenly filled with treasure. Admittedly, it was a child’s notion of treasure. There were huge, glittering gems in impossibly pastel colors, each the size of Sigrun’s head, piles of gold aurei coins, most of which appeared to be welded together, and which didn’t have the correct Imperator’s face on them. The Imperator, in fact, looked rather like a puppet, with goggling eyes and an absurd, floppy laurel wreath around his head. And he was in color, not in the same shade of the gold, because that was how the Imperator was shown on children’s puppet shows on the far-viewer stations . . . now that color was becoming more common on the ley-powered devices, anyway. There were toys, and there were cakes and pies of very description. Sigrun watched as Adam leaned back and inhaled, deeply, and with obvious enjoyment. “I like the cinnamon smell,” Adam told the boy, in contentment. “You’re very good at that.”

  Sigrun reached out to pick up one of the pies, but her fingers went through it. It could be that Loki-within was feigning a child’s lack of skill. But somehow, Sigrun just didn’t think so. “I like the pies,” she assured Rig. “They look good enough to eat.”

  “I like the ones at the bakery down the street. That’s what they look like. And the whole shop smells good.” Rig waved his hands excitedly. “I think I want to be a baker when I grow up.”

  Sigrun’s lips twitched into a very real smile. She had a very hard time picturing a god-born as a baker, but . . . his colors hadn’t twitched. Her truthsense wasn’t kicking her in the forehead. “If that’s what you want to do,” she told him, still smiling. “Personally, I like baking bread. It’s soothing.” She looked up at Fritti. “If you want to go to Judea, I’ll give you the money for the plane tickets. Just pack whatever you want, and go.”

  “I . . . would have to tell the school that they’ll need to arrange for a substitute . . . . “

  “Do so, but don’t tell them where you are bound, is my advice. Then again, you have been running for a long time, Fritti. You already know all the tricks.” Sigrun sighed, and looked at Rig, who seemed confused. Apprehensive. A little afraid. “A lot of our friends’ children are staying at our house in Judea. Six of them are spirit-born.” Sigrun actually thought they were quite a bit more than that, but it wasn’t politic to call Lassair’s children god-born. No one seemed to worship Lassair, for starters. “The last girl is the daughter of two very powerful sorcerers, and they’re all being looked after by my sister at the moment. I think you’d have a lot of playmates who’d enjoy building towers with you. Running around in the garden.”

  “Judea?” the boy said. “The land where there’s no magic?” He looked a little scared.

  Adam chuckled. “There’s a little magic,” he clarified. “But mostly, there’s science. If you’re really good, maybe your mother will take you to see one of the rockets launch for the moon.”

  Rig’s eyes went round. That, apparently, settled it. “Mama! Mama, when do we go? I’ll pack my things . . .” He started packing up his toys immediately and putting them away. Neatly, Sigrun noticed. He could have tried to glamour the room to make it look like he’d put them away. Then again, that doesn’t work on Fritti. Interesting.

  She and Adam and Fritti spent another ten minutes talking. Sigrun wanted to know, specifically, if Loki had ever told Fritti where he was going in his attempt to avert Ragnarok. Fritti shook her head, unhappily. “He said he was going to the last place his kin would ever look for him. That they wouldn’t be able to sense him, because the place was . . . insulated. Dark waters, he said. And then he kissed me, damn him, and he was gone, and he never came back.” Fritti folded her arms and looked away. “I was so stupid,” she repeated, bitterly. Whether she meant that she was stupid for having been deceived, stupid for having been angry, or some other reason, Sigrun couldn’t tell.

  Sigrun grimaced. She was being put in the unaccountable position of trying to find something good to say about Loki, the god who’d cursed her, personally, with barrenness, and who’d deceived and seduced Fritti. But bitterness didn’t sit well on Fritti. Sigrun exhaled, and said, not quite believing her own ears, “It is possible, Fritti, that he could not return. Adam and I have both seen . . .” she looked at the ceiling, “gods bound before. Never one as powerful as Loki. If he was creating escape plans . . . you may be sure that he thought there was danger. If he found a way to hide you . .
. there . . . may actually have been a reason.” Sigrun grimaced, and wished for water with which to wash out her mouth. It wasn’t a lie. But it galled her to say.

  Over the course of the conversation, Adam registered Fritti’s ability to see through illusions with a blink and an urgent glance at Sigrun, and when boy and mother were out of the room, he leaned forward, and switched to Latin. “Sigrun. Shouldn’t we be considering taking her with us to find Loki?”

  Sigrun shook her head. “No.”

  Adam gave her a look. “Sig. We need all the help we can get. She can see through illusions. He’s wronged her. She has a right to go with us.”

  Sigrun looked down. She and Adam very rarely quarreled, but when they did, they tended to be monumental clashes of will and principle. She didn’t like arguing with him, but on this matter, she was going to stand her ground. “No, Adam. She might have the right to go with us, but she’s correct when she said she never asked for any of this.” Sigrun looked up, biting her lower lip. “She never asked to be kidnapped. Threatened with sacrifice. She never asked to be made god-touched. She’d have been happy, I think, just to go back to her normal life. She certainly never asked to be . . . gods help her . . . ‘loved’ by Loki. I won’t drag her into this Adam. On top of everything else . . . she has a child.” Sigrun grimaced.