The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  And then Quetzalcoatl, constricting tightly, invoked his true power, and let the sun’s force fill him. His body became plasma. Ekchuah dissolved into a fine fall of ash, and the jungle directly below them exploded into flame as flares and prominences rippled out of Quetzalcoatl’s form, searing the ground and licking at the air. Winds howled as heat billowed away from him and from the firestorm birthed on the ground. Hero Twins! Quetzalcoatl roared. Come and face us, if you dare! Ekchuah’s energies spread out through the air like a wave, boiling through the bedrock of the continent. The cities of humanity trembled. My brethren told me they would meet you in peace, and you repaid them with slaughter!

  Taranis and Odin regarded him. No sacrifices? Odin asked, doubtfully. Quetzalcoatl had narrowly avoided being slain by Obsidian Butterfly in an ambush attack last year. He had been weakened by that attack . . . but now he showed his original strength, and more.

  A single willing self-sacrifice. Quetzalcoatl didn’t need to say more. A god could wade to the hips in the blood of those sacrificed by force, but the human spirit resisted. A willing sacrifice, however, gave all of themselves to a god. And the more power, the more experience, the more of themselves they had to give? The more powerful the sacrifice. Ehecatl had been an ordinary man. But he’d had faith, wisdom, and immense strength of will. And Quetzalcoatl resonated now with his sacrifice, and with the renewed belief of his people. The ones who looked to him to save them from the rest of his blood-hungry brethren. And Quetzalcoatl could feel the humans in the region calling the names they used for him here as they saw his blazing form in the sky. Q'uq'umatz. Tepeu. Gukumatz. His worship had been syncretized with existing Quechan beliefs, particularly that of poor Tohil, dead at Mercury’s hands and Jupiter’s behest. But this syncretized belief, too, gave him power . . . and those who had believed in Tohil, now looked to him entirely.

  The Quechan pantheon had already taken casualties. Tohil, himself, however much he’d been associated with Quetzalcoatl, had been assassinated by Mercury. Ixchel, the goddess of midwifery, had been slain by Obsidian Butterfly. Chaac, god of storms, echo of Tlaloc that he had been, had been slain alongside the Nahautl goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. Yum Kaax had killed the pair of them, traitors to both their brethren . . . and had been slain in turn by Obsidian Butterfly, who had killed almost a half-dozen others on both sides. As such, many of the Quechan gods fled, rather than face the Feathered Serpent.

  The only god that joined the Hero Twins as they rose into the heavens was Awilix, who was bound to Ixbalanque, one of the Twins; they were both embodiments of the moon, and had been lovers for centuries. She ascended beside the pair on eagle wings, the rest of her body covered in a jaguar’s spotted hide. Her voice rose in the scream of a jungle cat, and silvery light radiated out from her and from Ixbalanque, while Hunahpu radiated the golden light of the sun. The twins were notable for looking mostly human, however. Dark-bronzed skin, long, straight, dark hair. Loincloths, and the ancient stone-and-wood armor of ball-players. They haven’t moved with the times, Ehecatl-within whispered. They haven’t needed to do so.

  But with them came tidal forces. Gravitic waves, as the three Quechan gods sought to pin the intruders in place. You dare, Feathered Serpent? Long we have tolerated your place in our people’s hearts. But today, the arrogance of your brethren, and your own arrogance, will be your undoing. Ixbalanque’s voice was a hiss.

  They came in peace— Quetzalcoatl wasn’t fighting the gravitic forces yet. He could have. But there was value in looking weaker than one was.

  They longed for a fight in their hearts, though their lips spoke words of peace. We gave them what they wished for! Hunahpu’s voice was defiant.

  Ixbalanque, a little calmer than his brother, offered, Odin, Taranis. This is not your territory, and those whom we slew were not your allies. Leave now, and we will not come against you.

  Odin lifted his spear, Gungnir, in one hand, and studied the three gods. What does it say about the Goths, Ehecatl-within whispered, that Odin is the leader of the gods of Valhalla? Not Thor, the thunder-god, like Zeus or Taranis. Not Tyr, war and justice, as Mars was the leader of Rome’s gods, before their compact with Olympus. Even the Egyptians honored Horus, lord of the sky, over Osiris, god of the dead. Is there any other people on earth who enshrined a god of death, war, and poetry as their leader?

  A fell light entered Odin’s single visible eye. You feel you know much of my concerns. Presumptuous, nithing fool. The air around him seemed to darken a little, and his ravens spun around him, calling out harshly. Mamaquilla has been my ally for years, and you have sent your mortals to her lands to capture her children as sacrifices. Hunting deer, your humans call it, but at least deer fill a human’s belly. You have injured Mamaquilla, and she is my ally. You have injured Quetzalcoatl today, and he, too, is my ally. When you injure my allies, you injure me.

  Lightning crackled through the air, and formed around Taranis in a cage of fractal lines. Odin’s words are wise. The concerns of our allies are our concerns. Stand down. Make reparations for your actions. And order your mortals to cease their raids into Nahautl and Tawantinsuyu.

  And leave ourselves vulnerable to the rest of the gods of Nahautl, who will continue to accept sacrifices, and grow more powerful? Ixbalanque scoffed. Leave ourselves open to attacks by the mad gods? I think not!

  Quetzalcoatl was aware of pressure impinging on the very outer edges of his awareness. Ekchuah’s death had been a beacon in time and space. Mad gods approached from over the seas. Mostly small ones, at the moment, still they were drawn, like sharks scenting blood in the water. If you make reparations, I will not attack you, he said, evenly.

  You? You cannot even control your own brethren. You may have killed Ekchuah, but in reality . . . you are weak. Awilix bared her teeth. I will eat your heart, feathered serpent. I will dine on your essence and make it a part of my own. She laughed, a fey, cold trill. Perhaps I will discover if it tastes of fowl.

  The forms had been observed. They’d given the Quechan gods a chance to surrender. To make reparations, and stop the damned war. Quetzalcoatl reached down for his reserves of energy, and tore at the gravity field around him and the others, his radiance bursting forth over the jungles.

  Gravity curves space-time. It changes the speed at which time is perceived. But in this particular case, Quetzalcoatl was content to flip the other gods’ gravity field on them, encasing them in it, and added his own power to the weave. Far below, the burning jungle rippled. Blackened trunks tore free, breaking into hundreds of thousands of shards, rising up through the air. He concentrated, and the charred stumps strained at the earth, and then tore loose, tap-roots dangling. Stones and earth rose, and tangles of vine, but this was merely a side-effect. His real intent was the murderous compression of gravity on their avatars, compacting down at somewhere in excess of twenty Gs. An inconvenience for them, but lethal if sustained for a human. And then he began to twist the field, shearing at their bodies, even as the still-smoldering chunks and pieces of wood and stone shot into the air, dancing at his command.

  Hunahpu, a sun-god himself, tore at the construct, releasing gravity’s hold, straightening all of the curved space-time—and all the highly-compressed air inside Quetzalcoatl’s sphere blasted out, at high speed. Smoldering chunks of wood were blown outwards for miles, spreading the fires further, as Hunahpu soared forwards to attack Quetzalcoatl directly.

  The fight raged for hours, and they threw one another into the ground, or up into the heavens, repeatedly. Every time one of them touched Quetzalcoatl in his plasma form, they cringed back in pain, and when he was cast down against the earth, fires rose and raged through the jungle, and the ground turned to obsidian instantly, or melted to slag. Mile-long chunks of earth rose into the air, and crashed back down again into the rainforests.

  Quetzalcoatl killed Awilix early, tearing her avatar apart with his teeth and feeding on her essence, as she’d boasted she’d devour his. Taranis hammered at the Twins with lightning and
storms—winds which, again, spread the fires below, and thick, black smoke rose chokingly from the jungle. And just at the periphery of his attention, Quetzalcoatl could feel the mad gods lurking. Could feel his own brethren, watching and waiting. Vultures, he thought distantly as he and Hunahpu wrestled, evenly matched. The sun’s power against the sun’s power, and they crashed into the ground once more, rolling and snarling and punching. Dim awareness of ancient trees splintering under his weight, turning red-hot, and in many cases, exploding. Parrots fleeing, monkeys shrieking, tapirs bolting.

  Something silver streaked by overhead, and Ixbalanque’s scream of pain filled the world. Hunahpu, still fighting Quetzalcoatl froze, his dark eyes lifting as Odin rode by overhead, and his spear came back to his hand. You two have been gods for so long, that you have forgotten what it is to be mortal, he said, calmly. Allow me to remind you. Muninn! Share your voice!

  One of the ravens screamed, and for a moment, Quetzalcoatl’s mind went blank. Only Ehecatl’s memories remained, alien and compelling. Infancy. Childhood. Love of mother, love of father, schooling, learning. The relativity of time’s passage, am I five yet, am I five yet? I can’t wait till I’m ten! Oh, gods, how am I looking at my fortieth birthday already? No, I can’t be sixty-five, I’m not ready to be old . . . . Love and loss. Loss of friends, of parents, of wife. The inevitability of death. Entropy’s cold grip. Everything passes.

  Quetzalcoatl managed to snap out of the memory-trance as Ehecatl remembered the moment of transition, of becoming one with his god. He looked up in time to see tears streak down from Hunahpu’s eyes, and wondered what the erstwhile god-born saw in memory, that affected him so. Remember! Odin shouted. Remember who you are, who you have been! Remember that you were mortal once. It does not have to be this way. You do not have to fight—

  The moment of paralysis was broken as Ixbalanque reared up off the ground. He was already bleeding heavily from several cruel spear wounds, and now streaked for Odin in a mad charge . . . only to have Taranis catch him off-guard, the Gallic god sweeping in from the side, a sword in his hands made of raw power and will. He took Ixbalanque’s head off his shoulders with a scything blow, dropping to kneel for a moment in empty air, as the head went one direction, and the body continued, carried by its own momentum, the other.

  Brother! Hunahpu shouted as the shock-wave erupted. Quetzalcoatl set himself, trying to absorb as much as he could, but this was not like his own power. This was closer to what Tezcatlipoca had held. As such, Odin actually managed to contain part of it, but it still rolled out unchecked. All around him, Quetzalcoatl could see the flattened trunks of trees. His senses told him that the forest had bowed in homage to Ixbalanque’s passage for hundreds of miles in every direction.

  It doesn’t have to be this way, Quetzalcoatl said, his own rage at Xototl’s death burning out at the devastation on Hunahpu’s face. The two of them had been twins, two-as-one, for almost as long as he and Xototl had. It was enough. He offered his opponent his hand. End this, Hunahpu. Surrender. There are mad gods to fight. And your people and mine need peace.

  No! They killed us once, and we returned in the flesh of our sons. They tried to kill us again, and still we fought. You have killed my brother, but I will never . . . stop . . . fighting! The conflict renewed, and Quetzalcoatl coiled around him, trying to burn more and more brightly, just as Hunahpu did, until the earth around them turned molten, and the trees exploded.

  I cannot defeat him by being what he is, Quetzalcoatl realized. But what did he have left?

  Allies, Ehecatl-within reminded him. I’ve always been part of a team.

  Quetzalcoatl caught the images from Ehecatl’s mind, and those of his allies, and uncoiled. Rolled out of the way, just keeping Hunahpu tethered to the mortal realm, as Taranis brought down lightning and cold, trying to snuff Hunahpu . . . and Odin brought down his spear, again and again. Each time he did so, there was the sense of inevitability about it. As if the spear itself was weighted down with death and dissolution.

  In the end, there were three of them, and Hunahpu was alone. It was not the stuff of legends. Though if humanity survived, surely new legends would be told of this day. Quetzalcoatl did what he could to absorb the other sun-god’s essence, but there was simply too much power.

  Afterwards, he rose into the sky shakily, looked down at the world . . . and closed his eyes. The rainforests were burning. There were, roughly speaking, about two million square miles of jungle in this region. Thousands of square miles had been flattened, as from a meteor’s impact. Thousands of square miles were on fire. It would be visible from space. Smoke billowed up into the atmosphere, joining the pall already cast by volcanoes throughout the world.

  And now, the mad gods ringed them. They’d clustered at the edge of the fight, retreating whenever the battle got too close. Quetzalcoatl didn’t like that. It suggested that the damnable things were learning. They’d lapped up the leavings of the dead gods’ power—some of them overfeeding in the process, and fissuring. There were about a hundred of the small ones present, and two large ones. And he, Taranis, and Odin were weary and wounded. Not a good tactical situation, Ehecatl agreed, quietly.

  Fight or withdraw? Taranis asked.

  Withdraw, for now. Odin’s voice was clinical, and he latched onto them both, pulling them to Valhalla. The Quechan people will be largely unprotected, the one-eyed god warned Quetzalcoatl. Your people, your brethren, will attack them at will. The mad godlings will tear through what is left of the Quechan pantheon.

  Quetzalcoatl lowered his head. I know. There are those in their lands who call on me, by other names. They are my responsibility.

  But in truth, he had his hands full already, trying to rescue his own people. And the Hero Twins had been correct about one thing: he couldn’t control his brethren. None of them were likely to hear his words, even after he had just killed several of their highest-ranking foes. Bloodthirst ruled, at the moment. All they would tell him was You’ve drunk deep of the blood of our foes. You want to keep us from doing the same, so that you may grow in power, while we remain weak.

  The cities of the continent had been badly shaken by the earthquakes that had spawned from the deaths of no less than six gods in fewer than ten hours. Energy had flowed along ley-lines as far north as Chia in northern Quecha—a city under siege by Nahautl troops anyway—to the Chaco Plain to the south. The earth danced, as Odin had predicted. Dormant volcanoes flared to life all over Caesaria Australis, and, where the Twins had died, the ley-lines tore. At first, this looked to be fortunate: for a hundred miles in any direction, the fires in the jungle died. The smoke dissipated. And then the wood that remained began to rot. Years’ worth of decay passed within weeks, and Hecate was once more called into action . . . as Worldwalker was not available to assist. Sending Hecate was a risk, as the mad gods were moving across the continent at will now. Mamaquilla was holding them out of her people’s territory . . . but only barely.

  As such, it was Sigrun and Nith that took Hecate to the weakened area in the jungles, and stood guard while the lady of doors attempted to seal the breach between their reality and another. Some of the other places have had higher gravity values, Sigrun said, watching the sky. Or were made of antithetical energies. What’s this one like?

  Higher entropic flow than this realm, Hecate said, irritably. Lend me your power, Stormborn.

  How? Sigrun shifted in her armor, peripherally aware that she should be sweating in the steamy air. In truth, the jungle was disturbingly quiet at the moment. No parrots, no insects, no monkeys. Nothing but the squelch of mud under her boots, and the smell of rotting vegetation and char.

  Time and space are part of the same matrix. Gravity bends time. We are . . . free of time, if we choose to be, Hecate looked up, and Sigrun could feel the goddess’ eyes on her, burning under her hood. As if weighing her words’ impact on Sigrun. We can bend time and space, Stormborn. Remember that. Now, I need you to look at reality. And see not plants and animals, but . .
. substance. Matter intersecting with space and time. Look. I will show you.

  Sigrun swayed, leaning against Nith’s forepaw. All around her, the world shifted. Melted, resolving itself into othersight, but othersight with a difference. She could see, for the first time, the ley-lines, the cosmic strings that connected one piece of matter in this reality with another. They stretched through the earth, extending out into the stars. She could see the way space curved around the earth, and could perceive its motion in its orbit . . . and how the sun, too, curved space. “I’m going to throw up,” Sigrun muttered, crouching to take her helmet off. Nothing in this view was really . . . alive. It was all just matter. Atoms spinning where space and time intersected. Hecate, how do you tolerate seeing this?

  You perceive it differently than I, Hecate admitted. In the main, I see doors. I see where they can be opened most easily between here and there. It took until this century for human understanding to improve as much as it has, and my sight began to change with their understanding. New words, new ideas, to quantify what I have always done. Now observe the weak place. You will hold the edges of what I will build. And then you will help pull it all together.