The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  “Satellite feeds, Esh! It would still have set off a thermal cloud—”

  Kanmi looked thoughtful. “Not if they did it underground in a cavern, but yes, the satellite feeds might be helpful, and the technicians would only have to go a few months back—”

  Adam felt a band ease around his chest as Kanmi left. At least I came up with one idea he hadn’t. That’s something. I’m still . . . useful.

  He settled in at the table again, and tried not to pay attention to how empty the house was. And damned himself for a fool for having told Sigrun to go be a goddess. He stopped the line of thought, and pushed the pages in front of him away. Poured himself a second, and very rare, glass of liquor, and drank it while reading an old favorite science fiction novel instead.

  At least it might keep him from thinking.

  Martius 3, 1994 AC

  One of the fundamental problems with any sort of law enforcement endeavor at the moment was that the Empire’s gardia and Praetorians were forbidden to exchange information with their counterparts in rebellious provinces. In addition to which, there were massive disruptions to communications and transportation all over the world. Even getting someone in a neighboring country on the telephone was far more difficult than it used to be.

  The satellite grid was largely Judean-Hellene-Nipponese; with two out of the three countries devastated, it had fallen completely under Judean/Imperial jurisdiction. And in the wake of Caesarion’s Rebellion, as it was being called in Rome proper, technicians at Libration Station and on the ground in Jerusalem had worked day and night to block Rome out of the satellite systems. Rome currently had no satellite navigational aids for its ships, and satellite phones were useless bricks unless registered to someone in the Eastern Empire, Gaul, Novo Gaul, or Nova Germania. Qin had paid for launches of its own satellites into orbit by the joint-nations space force, but that system was currently falling into disrepair.

  The moon base and the Mars base were, technically, Roman soil, but both had opted to swear allegiance to Caesarion’s cause, though their resistance was token at best. No one was going to attack them in space, but if Rome managed to gain control of the fleet of ships used to access them, they could starve to death. Fortunately, both colonies had striven for self-sufficiency since the beginning. “A good thing, too,” Adam told Dr. Larus Sillen. “I can’t believe you’re actually going up there. I’m rather envious.”

  The fenris scientist dropped to his haunches and panted. Linnea and the children are excited. We will be the first fenris-hveðungr family to live in the L’banah base. The first of Loki’s children to do so. My hope is, actually, to go to Mars eventually. Though that may require accommodations that the humans there are not yet ready to offer one of my kind. On the other paw, our regeneration should help mitigate some of the radiation hazards for us. And the hveðungr can at least wear environmental suits, if large ones. And we may not require as much heat in the suits on Mars as a normal human would.

  “What about your protein needs?”

  I can eat soy-based products. I find them unpalatable, but it is an acceptable trade. The fenris’ blue eyes were amused. I can do math anywhere, and so long as I have colleagues to talk to . . . even if it’s with a few minutes’ radio delay, and with my words being passed along by a translator, like Linnea . . . I can add to the sum of human knowledge.

  “I’m beginning to think that the space colonia might be humanity’s only hope,” Adam admitted. I could go. Sigrun would take me. But that would be quitting. He’d wanted to go when he was younger, quite desperately. But he only wanted to go on his own merits, not as a favor to Sigrun. “It’s just getting worse here on the ground,” he added, grimly.

  Worse was an understatement. Witnesses in Lutetia on the Sequana had seen a second sun rise in the sky on Ianuarius 29, and had borne witness to a battle between Apollo of Rome and Bragi, the Valhallan god of poetry and song. The sun-god of Rome was also the patron of music, and the humans who’d witnessed the attack were, to the last child, stone-deaf now. They spoke in flat, terrified voices, attesting to music that had been louder than any thunder, and which had shaken the walls of the buildings around them. Of great voices singing, luring them out of their homes, to look up at the sky. “I wept with longing. I thought I could hear my dead mother’s voice in that choir of voices, and I wanted to run to her. It was the same song she always put me to bed with, when I was a babe, and then I saw them in the sky.”

  “The sun-lord shot Bragi with many arrows, and every arrow was a song . . . .”

  “. . . every note pierced my soul. I heard Bragi scream with pain, and his blood poured down onto the ground on the banks of the Sequana, and the river began to run bright gold . . . .”

  “. . . I dropped to my knees, and put my hands to my ears, and when I took my hands away, I could see blood on them. But I could still hear them. I saw the Morrigan appear in the sky, dark as death, with her raven-maidens all around her, and she let the ravens all fly and attack the sun-lord . . . they drew his blood, and it fell, too, like gold. Then the Morrigan caught Bragi’s body to her . . . .”

  “. . . the sun-lord fled. And I could see Bragi reach up his hand and touch the Morrigan’s face. And he sighed out his last breath, and even that was a song. Take of me. Let my death not harm your people. Take all of me.”

  No earthquakes. No destructive wave. No mutations. Just a population of the deaf who mourned for this foreign god, who’d been there to protect them, and had been murdered for it.

  Just ten days after that, on Februarius 9, Cocidius, a minor Gallic god of soldiers and war, was caught in Cantium, one of the southern kingdoms of Britannia. He was overseeing the evacuation of a flooding area, and helping to keep the Tamesis river under control until local gardia and soldiers could get sandbags into place. The people of Cantium, Kernow, Cymru, Umbria, Eboracum and the dozen other small kingdoms that comprised the whole of the isle were under enormous pressure already; the rapid sea rise caused by Jormangand in the Arctic had not yet begun to recede. The entire kingdom of the Picts had been transplanted, resulting in economic upheaval. And they were playing host to millions of refugees, while having to shuffle their own population around.

  Just after dawn on that grey and chill day, Minerva, the Roman goddess of warfare and craftsmanship, appeared in the sky overhead, and slammed her spear against her shield—the Aegis. The noise reverberated like thunder, and the humans in and around the muddy, frigid floodwater, already shaking with the cold, looked up at the sound. The shield held a hundred golden tassels around its edge, but at its center, there was a human woman’s face, buried in the metal . . . and for an instant, those who looked on it understood that the tassels were the ends of the woman’s long golden hair. And every one of them was, at the same time, the head of a serpent. Minerva had taken this shield from Athena, and it held the visage of Medusa trapped within it, and all that long-dead god-born’s bound power, with it.

  None of the humans could look away. At least half froze in place, and turned, quite literally, to stone, populating the entire bank of the flooding Tamesis river with statues, caught in the instant of looking up to heaven. Like the dead of Pompeii, caught by Vesuvius, so long ago. The others couldn’t look away, but managed to close their eyes, and testified, later, that they could hear the shield screaming in their minds.

  Cocidius rose into the sky to fight her, surely knowing that he was outmatched. He was a minor god of a greater pantheon, and she was the first-born daughter of Jupiter, or so the legends said. Those who dared to open their eyes once more swore later that they saw the gods fighting, spear against spear, as freezing rain spat down from the sky. And Minerva wept, they said, as she slid her spear between Cocidius’s ribs, and caught him in her arms as he fell. I am sorry, people of Britannia, she told them, as the shockwave rolled out of his body . . . somewhat contained by her encircling arms. Jupiter demands the deaths of the rebellious. I bear you no ill-will. Tell your kings and gods to submit, and we shall have peace
. And then she landed and placed the dead body of Cocidius on the ground, vanishing just as Thor and Taranis both appeared in the skies overhead.

  And in Caesaria Aquilonis, twenty-one days later, Ītzpāpālōtl, the Obsidian Butterfly, she who flew at night on bat-wings tipped with knives of flint and obsidian, managed to catch Anoku, one of the Gallic death-gods, south of Nimes on the coast of the Pacifica. They fought back and forth over the border, and finally rolled to a halt near the Nahautl city of Tiwan. With Gallic gods erupting into the sky to reinforce Anoku, she brought the delicate, but deadly claws of her wings down in front of her, opening Anoku’s chest, yanked his avatar’s heart out, still beating, into her hands, and bit into it with her fangs, as if it were an apple. Devoured the core of his power. She smiled winsomely down at him, assuming a form as fresh and lovely as a girl experiencing her first crush, and told him, as he died, We need more power than the sacrifice of mere mortals can grant us. I thank you for your life, death-god. Your power will reinforce my own.

  Toutatis and a handful of lesser gods swooped in, but to no avail; Anoku’s power swept out over the land, an earthquake rocking Tiwan to its foundations, and rumbling north into Nimes. And Ītzpāpālōtl fled into the Veil, probably for Mictlan, the stronghold of the gods of Nahautl.

  In the meantime, Sigrun, Fenris, Tyr, Lassair, and Nith had been quite busy. Kanmi knew of at least twenty apprehensions by the five of them, and seven fatalities involving people who had been stupid enough to resist. Kanmi was also bitterly aware that the sorcerers with this group had miniaturized the spell. A diamond spell matrix of less than a carat could topple a skyscraper, so long as it had water with which to work . . . so when Fenris closed in on one of the technomancers in an office building in the swampy city of Arlesus in Novo Gaul, the sorcerer he was hunting tripped the fire alarm, got the automatic sprinklers churning . . . and threw the spell-stone over his shoulder as he fled out a window. The building’s structural steel supports melted, and the walls exploded outwards like the petals of a flower . . . before the thirty stories above the bottom floor began to pancake down on themselves.

  Fenris had been injured in the blast, and delayed by trying to help rescue the handful of people who’d been on the uppermost floors, and thus somewhat shielded from the original blast. Lassair had been the one to pursue, being unaffected by the flames, and had finally caught the sorcerer in question deep in the bayous. He had still resisted, until Lassair, in the form of a phoenix the size of a roc, latched onto him with her talons, and had carried him away.

  There were clues, however, from the testimony of those who had been captured. It was starting to look like a splinter faction of Potentia ad Populum had formed. Some of the technomancers actually believed, passionately, in the idea that the gods had wronged the world. That they needed to be stopped from trampling on the rights of humanity. Kanmi had sighed as he read those reports. He’d always known the gods existed, and he’d wanted absolutely no truck with them. Baal-Hamon had happened, he’d been unwillingly bound into the senile old god’s service, and he’d died of it. He, more than anyone else on earth, should have been able to sympathize with their point of view . . . if it weren’t for the fact that his brain inevitably chimed in with a cynical, Yeah, we want to get these gods and these god-born out of our way so that we can tell the rest of humanity how to live. They’re really cramping our style with their rules. “Free will’s a fine thing, and I’ll defend to the death everyone’s right to it,” Kanmi muttered as he worked in a Praetorian office with Minori, scowling down at the papers in front of him, “but gods, why is it that no one ever wants to use it except to deprive other people of theirs?”

  “Human nature,” Minori told him, tiredly. “That’s the short answer, anyway.”

  With such goings on in the world, it might be understandable why the pedestrian state of mortal investigative affairs . . . lagged. And yet, Kanmi and Minori doggedly persevered, trying to track down the source of the diamonds used in the blast at Crann Péitseog. They could quickly rule out man-made gems. There had been four primary sources of lab-grown diamonds in the world, prior to 1985 AC; Nippon had been first, Qin second, Judea third, and Hellas fourth in terms of production. With the destruction of Nippon and Hellas, and the monumental disruptions to Qin, no man-made gems were currently being sold in the west that hadn't been manufactured in Judea, unless their creation pre-dated 1985. Gems of the quality and size required for the Crann Péitseog blast—over sixty carats—were rare, even when lab-grown, and none of that size had been manufactured in recent years.

  “Admittedly, a sorcerer could have used their own body and mind as the focus for the spell, as I did,” Kanmi muttered several minutes later, as they reviewed records of sales transactions that the Judean artificers had sent them. “That’s suicide, however. That takes a different level of commitment, though, and few people in Potentia . . . if this is really Potentia . . . ever really seemed to have that level of conviction.”

  "Agreed,” Minori said. "So that leaves us with . . . natural diamond formations. Raccia had huge natural deposits in Siberia, and the Raccian government . . . and their gods, such of them that remain . . . have no reason to love Rome. Their people might be unwilling to cooperate in any investigations.” She sighed and rested her chin on her interlaced fingers, elbows braced on the table in front of her “Add to that the fact that while Caesarion still calls the Eastern Empire Rome, we’re allied with the Goths, and the Raccians blame the Goths for the grendels . . . .”

  “It might not be a question of willingness. They might be unable to help with any investigations,” Kanmi returned, swiftly. “They retreated from Europa and the grendels and the lindworms, but it's not like Asia is any more stable. Qin isn't allowing any information out, but there are reports of seismic anomalies there once every three months or so, right?”

  “The most they're acknowledging is limited earthquakes,” Minori replied, her face closing down. Kanmi knew why—millions of refugees from Nippon had wound up fleeing to Qin and Korea and other countries in the vicinity. It wasn't just her reaction; he could see the same reaction rippling through Amaterasu-within, as well. Fascinating to see what they shared, and what they didn't, the human and the kami. Also, worrisome to him. He wanted Min to stay Min. “Which, to be fair, they . . . could be natural earthquakes.”

  “But it's mostly code for ‘mad god attack resulting in casualties’ these days.” Kanmi reached out, and took her hand, savoring the touch of skin for a moment. “There might still be mining going on in Siberia, but getting the product out of there and shipping it across the Pacifica . . . not very good odds. Not unless Potentia has spirits willing to work with them and transport the gems through the Veil, and since their stated purpose is destroying gods by attacking their worshippers . . . .”

  “Low order of probability, as Prometheus might say.” Minori stared down at the stack of reports on the table they were currently sharing at Praetorian headquarters in Jerusalem. Getting office space had been . . . something of a hassle. Kanmi had been declared dead, and getting him . . . undead in the databases had been a challenge, as had been the process of retrieving his security clearance. The Empire, Eastern or not, lived on red tape. "Southern Africa. It's a Roman colony, even if it's not receiving much in the way of protection these days. No reports of mad god strikes there in the past few years, however. And without much in the way of security forces . . . .”

  “Hmm. Not only are they exposed to smuggling and attacks, but the Praetorians in the province might not care as much about Rome's edicts right now. They might be willing to exchange some information. It's worth a shot, anyway.” Kanmi squeezed Min's fingers. He loved being able to work with her again. The free interplay of ideas and thoughts. “Speaking of Prometheus . . . I have some questions for our resident prognostician.”

  “I am not a native speaker of Latin, but I think the word is prognosticator.”

  “No. Prognostician. Part prognosticator, part mathematician, part mag
ician.” Kanmi nodded, and relished Min’s chuckle. “Let’s get our questions written up to have our Praetorians talk to . . . Rome’s Praetorians. I’d do it myself, but right at the moment, the badge they gave me to work in this office is probably not worth the metal it was cast from.”

  Much to their surprise and pleasure, the southern colony was more than willing to work with their Praetorians. And as it turned out, one of the mines in the region had been robbed about six months before, a heist involving several million aurei of raw diamonds. Getting such things cut currently was problematic, but there were indications that the stones been taken to Egypt overland in small shipments, to lessen the chances of each caravan being destroyed.

  Egypt had yet to recover from the devastation of Baal’s death, but still had large diamond-cutting facilities. And Egypt was in the Eastern Alliance. “I don’t really want to go back to Egypt,” Kanmi told Min. “My face is probably still pretty well-known in some quarters. Particularly the remnants of the Carthaginian Liberation Party.”

  “Kanmi,” Minori said, a flicker of amusement crossing her face, “As far as the CLP knows, you died in the desert years ago. And you were over sixty at the time. Should I go fetch a mirror?”

  Kanmi blinked, and then laughed, ruefully, rubbing at his jaw, harshened with a full day’s growth of dark stubble. No gray in his hair. Good teeth, too. “You have a point.”