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

He turned, and found his shadow there. It should have been impossible to see, given the thick overhanging branches, but this shadow was darker than the gloom of the Wood, a true glistening black, like some kind of petroleum slick in water. It was also disproportionately large compared to his frame, with vast shoulders, and to his mild horror, the damned thing had yellow-glowing eyes. As he moved, spikes and hooks jutted out from its sides, and he half-expected it to rise up from the ground, tackle him, and overwhelm him. Abscond with his body, right here and now. Too much time studying godslayer lore. It’s coming back to haunt me. He tried to make light of it, but he was horrified to see his nightmare coming true here in this idyllic place.

  Worldwalker’s face was stricken. Come. Leave that behind you, where it belongs. Come hunt with me, old friend.

  The problem was, it was his shadow. He couldn’t leave it behind. No matter where they went, it remained stubbornly at his feet. When Worldwalker’s sun was directly overhead, the shadow almost disappeared, of course, but that meant that the eyes were directly under his toes. Steelsoul stamped on them periodically, but that didn’t prevent them from staring up at him.

  He was now glad that Stormborn wasn’t there to see this. The lightning storm she would have unleashed on the shadow would have been catastrophic, and he had a suspicion that any damage done to the inky pool of blackness at his feet, would hurt him, in equal measure.

  When pressed for details later, Adam remembered that he’d spent three days there. The time had been glorious, once he’d decided to ignore the damnable shadow. Running, fishing, hiking, swimming. Wrestling with Trennus, managing to get pins and locks, taking throws and falls and rolling back up to his feet again. No pain. No worry. All the things he’d once been able to do without even thinking about it. Colors looked brighter—no incipient cataracts to worry about, here. Food tasted better. Once, he looked up, as a dark shadow passed overhead, and thought he might have seen a lindworm, or something like it, cruising high overhead. And then it was gone again. The occasional creeping sensation of being watched usually resolved itself into some curious spirit-friend of Trennus’. But once, he thought he saw light glint off something silver in the distance, well away from any lakes or streams. And when he pushed through the underbrush, he found nothing there, but the print of a booted sole in the soft soil. Mysteries abounded in the Veil, it seemed.

  Trennus made a point of asking him if he wanted to return to the mortal realm. Nothing says that you have to go back. Stormborn would be able to meet you here, whenever either of you wished.

  I don’t want her to see the damned shadow. If I can find a way to excise the damned thing, maybe then. A twinge of unhappiness had passed through him. He was young here, and he really did want her to be here with him. To pull her deep into the trees, lay with her in the cool grass, and show her all the ways he still cherished her. Do all the things his wretched body wouldn’t let him do in the real world anymore. He kept his next thoughts to himself. I know it hasn’t been good lately between us. The best I can do for physical intimacy most nights is to brush her hair. Even spooning up behind her hurts my hips too much, though it’s been getting a little better of late. Sex, well . . . it’s better when there’s emotional intimacy. And that’s been difficult for years, thanks to all the separations, though she used to come home and we’d fall on each other like rabid animals. Now she’s stuck caring for the wreck of the man she loves. Caregiver. Nurse. And it’s only going to get worse. How long before she’s visiting me in a nursing home one day, and Sophia in the insane asylum, the next? How long before she’s dealing with one physical cripple and one lunatic, all while trying to fight a war she’s been told we can’t win? A directed, focused thought at Worldwalker followed. I thought you said she had a bad self-image. A crone.

  That was then. Prometheus has been working very hard on destabilizing the variables that make up the parameters of Trueseer’s memory-visions and prophecies. Perhaps it will even be enough to tip the balance.

  A pause as Adam assessed that, and then, reluctantly, I have to go back, Worldwalker. This is beautiful. But it isn’t real.

  It is as real as we make it.

  But, as every spirit tells me, there are no consequences here. No futures. No pasts. Nothing really matters.

  The Forest is different. There are consequences here.

  But no risks. I’ve lived by risks. I’ll die by them, too, if needed. He’d paused. Wait, how much time have we spent here? Stormborn might be worried.

  One day of mortal time. She called to us to verify your whereabouts. She’s occupied at the moment..

  Adam stewed over that as they exited the Veil. Then the shock as his body was once more weighted down with years hit him like a blow. “Damn it,” he swore, doubling over, and felt Tren’s hand catch his arm. He panted for a moment, in pure animal distress. Maybe staying in the Veil wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. He paused, and looked up at the sky. “You know what?”

  Trennus looked wary as Adam’s gaze came back down again. “What?”

  “I don’t seem to have been smitten. No lightning. No plague of boils. No being turned to salt.” A sudden, distressing image of Kanmi’s bones, in their shrouding pillar of salt. Adam’s lips thinned. “Apparently, my god doesn’t mind me sneaking into paradise after all.” He leaned on his cane, nodding to Trennus. “I wouldn’t mind if you invited me over more often, old friend. Just . . . have to find a way to get rid of that shadow, before I let Sig see me there.”

  Tren shook his head. “We can work on that, I suppose. It’s odd that all that godslayer research is affecting your self-image. But then again . . . you are one. That particular distinction at least passed me by. You, Sig, Kanmi all have that for your resumes.”

  “Then again, you have demigod and king on yours.” Adam paused. “Kanmi would never let you live that down.”

  “Hah.”

  “Hah.”

  Trennus helped him back to where the motorcar had been parked, and Adam sat back, already weary after no more than a ten-minute hike. With his eyes closed, he began to review the information he’d been looking over from Judean Intelligence for the past week, and what he’d been told during secure phone calls from Marcus Valerius Livorus. That Rome had been trying to bring Persia back to the bargaining table, but that the entire Roman embassy had been expelled from the Empire, on the grounds that the diplomats were supposedly spying. The various envoys had been returned to Roman soil in Asia Minor, and were grateful to be left with their lives . . . and had reported that the mad gods were keeping to the outskirts of Persia’s borders, in much the same way they kept outside of Rome’s proper borders, and Judea’s. Heartland areas belonging to powerful gods were still . . . mostly safe. Britannia had been attacked, but only the northernmost edge of the northernmost province of Gallic territory. Germania and Nova Germania had yet to see a mad god attack, but Iceland and Greenland, both small and distant, had been hit. And the small nations of Caesaria Aquilonis, like the Iroquois Confederacy, had been devastated. The correlation was clear: Powerful gods with relatively small territories to protect were still . . . more or less safe. Places like Qin and India, with many larger and small gods, and large territories, were being hammered on all sides. The various islands of Nippon still had a few people there—who were still trying to evacuate—but their kami had been savaged by mad godlings that had fed very well, indeed, on the Polynesian gods.

  Persia had a relatively compact land territory, and a small pantheon of virtues, or Amesha Spentas, which opposed daevas, or evils, under the direction of Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian main god. They had a legend, the expelled diplomats had pointed out, of a great dragon, Azhi Dahaka, that had been hung from a mountain in chains (not unlike Prometheus). That dragon would supposedly escape during the end times, and destroy a third of mankind. Adam thought it probably wise to keep Prometheus’ resurrection a closely-guarded secret, not just from the Hellene gods, but from the Persians, too. They might think he was their dragon, in
some fashion.

  The diplomats had been less flippant in their analysis. They thought that the Zoroastrian priests believed that the mad gods were the dragon, divided. And that when the dragon rejoined itself, completely, a third of the world would die, the other two-thirds would be saved. That it would finally be slain, and the world would be renewed. Their real concern, therefore, was ensuring that their people would be among the two-thirds who survived. A pragmatic goal, if one based on a prophecy that bore only scanty similarities to current events.

  The diplomats had also heard rumors that the priests were working closely with Persian magi. Their suspicion was that the local magi had uncovered a method by which they could control the ghul raised by the mad godlings. The ghul’s kills would still feed the godlings—thousands of mouths, constantly rending and chewing—but the Persians summoners were presumably directing the ghul. And the godlings probably did not have enough consciousness to care, so long as they fed, so the Persians served several goals at once. First, they were able to kill their enemies. Second, they were able to redirect the mad godlings into other people’s territories, as the godlings tended to follow their ghul mouths. Third, they might see this as propitiation . . . or at least, a tribute paid to a mightier enemy, for a time. This was common in politics. Nations paid tribute to Rome, on the theory that Rome would protect them from their enemies. Now that Rome looked weakened, there was a tide of unrest in a dozen nations, muttering that they should not have to pay taxes, if they did not receive protection.

  Adam had taken a look at the strategic and hastily-revised topographical map of upper Judea, Carthage, and West Assyria before entering the Veil with Trennus. With the Wood in the way—and actively attacking interlopers—he was of the opinion that Persia would probably pull back within the next month. Regroup. Assess the territory to its north, where the Mongols were being hit by the first wave of migrating ettin and grendels. The Mongols were also seeing surges of Raccians, fleeing from the giants, and mad godling attacks that had destroyed many of their native spirits. Persia could try to bite off land there . . . or, alternately, they could swing south, instead. Cross the Gulf in ships, and try to make landing in the wide deserts, held largely by fiercely clannish nomadic tribes who might resist . . . or who might simply scatter into the desert, and allow the invasion to pass, like a great windstorm. There, and then gone again.

  Adam opened his eyes. “You said Sig was occupied. With what?”

  “She didn’t tell you?” Trennus sounded surprised. “Valhalla’s alliance with my people’s gods is in jeopardy, thanks to Jormangand. She was told to grab Fritti—and Rig, if possible—and take them north to Lake Pielinen. And to have Fritti try to call Loki back. He’s probably the only entity who has a shot at reasoning with Jormangand.” Trennus turned his head. “Not a word of this to Sophia, Adam. She cannot know that we’re trying to retrieve Loki earlier than she said we would. If she knows, then Apollo of Delphi knows, and . . . no one can predict what he’ll do. Possibly try to put everything back on the original track.”

  “You’re all hanging a lot of hope on Prometheus’ abilities to predict the future,” Adam said, quietly. “What happens if trying to change it, causes it?”

  “It’s a damn sight better than doing nothing,” Tren replied, grimly, turning onto the Imperial highway that led back towards old town Jerusalem. “And his doubts and destabilized timelines give me far more hope than Sophia’s certain, predestinate future.”

  Maius 12, 1992 AC

  Frittigil had finished work the previous day by outlining an entire relief schedule. Not for the Picts, but for the displaced Judean farmers and country-folk who’d had their land completely consumed by a forest, overnight. Most of them had straggled out of the forest unharmed, and made their way to family and friends in Jerusalem, but there was evidence that some farmers, in a fit of anger, had gone outside with axes and chainsaws. One shell-shocked widow had clutched at Fritti at Jerusalem’s main hospital, and babbled that the tree had yanked the chainsaw out of her husband’s hand, and then turned the blade on him. “Oh, they’re evil,” she’d sobbed against Fritti’s shoulder. “Oh, god, how can such abominations exist!”

  Fritti had patted and soothed, as, long ago, someone had patted and soothed her, when the shock and trauma had been too much for her young mind. She didn’t think it was entirely appropriate to tell the horrified young woman, who had, after all, just watched her husband dismembered in front of her, that her husband had been stupid. Rather than waiting to see what an obviously magical event had in store, or testing the waters cautiously, he’d gone out to take back his land . . . and paid the price for it. No way to say that to the young woman, however. No way to make it right. “And the Picts! They’re responsible for this! Who . . . whoever did this . . . should pay!”

  Fritti had sighed, and pulled back. Offered the young woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three at the most, a handkerchief, and told her, as gently as she could, “The Picts aren’t responsible. The Caledonian Forest was just a forest to them—a home, a wilderness, a place of beauty and mystery, maybe, but just a normal forest, until it appeared here. It was transformed, for better or worse, by the passage. It’s a living creature now, I think. One whole organism. Where you look at a hive of ants, and each individual ant is . . . limited and not very bright? The whole hive is extremely intelligent, collectively. Any one tree is now, I think, a finger in a very large hand. And the whole organism reacts when it is harmed.”

  Sniffling, and a blown nose. “Someone still did this. Someone horrible.”

  And this is how hatred starts, Fritti thought, sadly. Her husband was stupid, but now he’s martyred in her heart. No matter that the Forest’s condition is no one’s fault, really, or that his death was his own fault for failing to stop and think for ten seconds . . . she needs someone to blame. “Blame the gods, then,” she told the girl, gently. Somehow, most young people seemed like children now that she was fifty, herself. “They are the ones who moved the Forest.”

  “Gods. I don’t believe in them.” The sulky response was made by rote.

  Fritti had done her best not to snort. “Which, if any, you worship, is up to you. But your lack of belief will not make the rest of them go away.” She’d retrieved the handkerchief, and tossed it in a laundry bin for sterilization. “I’m going to leave you to your family now. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

  That had been Frigedæg afternoon. She’d returned to setting up relief centers, re-training courses and job fairs, and had called the city council to ask about opportunities for farmers to exchange their land, one acre for one acre, for new locations south and west of town. It wouldn’t replace the buildings or the crops, but in her opinion, the best way to deal with this was to treat it like a natural disaster, and help people move on with their lives. No matter how unnatural a disaster it was.

  Her secretary had buzzed her on the intercom at half past three postmeridian. “Mistress Chatti? There’s someone here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment, but she’s . . . most insistent.”

  “Who is it?” Fritti asked.

  “A Praetorian named Sigrun C—” a pause, over the Romanized surname.

  “Caetia. Yes. She can always come in. She’s on the list.” Fritti hopped out of her chair and caught the door even as it opened, looking up at Sigrun, a little wide-eyed. “Are you here about the Forest and our latest refugee crisis?” She switched to Gothic out of habit.

  Sigrun looked somehow different from the last time Fritti had seen her, months ago. The edge to her that had been clearly visible after so many years spent at war was even more evident, as was the weariness. She still wore her hair back in a neat braid, pinned in a bun at the nape of her neck. The gray eyes still looked like steel under a running stream. Fritti couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was an indefinable aura of power around the valkyrie now. Her movements were smoother, more graceful, but her head would snap towards any sound like
a wild creature’s, before she’d visibly relax. “Actually, no. I am here on unrelated business.” Sigrun closed the door behind her. “Valhalla commands that I must take you—and Rig, if possible—north to where Loki left this world. Their alliance with the Gallic gods is threatened by the fact that none of u . . . no one can command Jormangand, except possibly Loki. And, in truth, Jormangand is something akin to a very large, self-willed weapon of mass destruction.”

  Fritti’s mouth dropped open. “And the gods want me to do what?”

  “Call Loki home,” Sigrun told her, wearily. “Use your power of rebirth and renewal, if necessary. We need him, Fritti. We need all of our weapons, as has been explained to me, with great patience, by those wiser than I am.” Her tone was grimly rueful, and Fritti blinked, not knowing what to make of it.

  “I usually need a life to give in exchange for a life,” Fritti said, cautiously. “I will not take Rig with me. I will not sacrifice him in exchange for his father.”

  “Typically, you are dealing with raising the dead,” Sigrun told her, kindly. “Loki did not die, though what you will be doing might be thought of as . . . blowing on the coals of his power, and re-igniting him. He cannot be dead and in the Veil. The two are . . . contradictory concepts.”