Adam had stopped moving, chilled to his core. “Can that be done?”
“Akhenaten tried to do it. His methods were primitive, however. Effacing the names on the temple walls is one thing. Effacing them from reality . . . is another.”
Adam had paused again, and then asked, tentatively, “Can’t you . . . block out the voices for a while?” Can’t you, just for a little while . . . be here, in the moment, with me? Be human with me? Being human used to be important to you. But I guess it isn’t, anymore.
He’d told her to go be a goddess. He shouldn’t complain that she was one, now.
“I am only listening to the loudest voices, the . . . highest-priority messages,” Sigrun replied. “The things that if I don’t hear them, might cost lives.”
He’d sat up, and dug around for a brush. She’d always loved it when he brushed her hair. And so he’d done that small service for her, and smelled the cold salt tang of her tears. To distract her, he’d asked, “You never did tell me what happened with Skadi and Njord. Did he, ah . . .” Adam hesitated. Give birth just sounded . . . wrong.
“He produced a daughter,” Sigrun replied, her head bowed as he worked the brush through her long hair. “Ciele. She is daughter-self to Skadi-who-was, and remains in Valhalla. If she has Skadi’s memories, she has not yet revealed them, and while she has a core of her old powers, she is yet weak. Not enough belief. Not enough people yet know her Name.”
Adam shook himself free of the reverie, finished polishing the armor, and put everything back away. Tucked Caliburn at the small of his back—futile gesture. He thought that the weapon could kill a mad godling, given the opportunity. But he was too damned old to go up to the front lines, get in position, and aim at the sky. And while it would have responded to someone of his line . . . he had no children. If Sig had ever asked Loki to undo what he’d done to her . . . no. Loki’s only been back for seven years. I couldn’t send a child in his or her first year of primary school to the front lines with Caliburn in hand, now could I? Adam slumped down the hall to his office, and sat at his desk, sorting through photostats of documents from the Temple that Zaya had earmarked for him to review. Erida had told him about Zaya’s odd ‘translation’ of the Phaistos Disc.
The only thing that kept Adam from attributing it to an overactive imagination was the fact that Erida said she’d had similar dreams. He didn’t know what to make of it. If the story was true, the long-gone godslayer had killed her god-born lover, while pregnant with his child. No bargaining. No attempts at diplomacy, at convincing people that there were other options than human sacrifice. She’d just killed him, the priests, and then, apparently, herself, only to pop up again, a generation later, like a mushroom in a damp field, this time in a male body. When the godslayer had probably been responsible for the eruption of Thera, which had wiped out the entire Minoan civilization. It wasn’t a rousing endorsement of the godslayers. Nephilim. Aetheric beings. They seemed . . . stupidly rigid. And Zaya’s words about fate controlling their actions? After a lifetime of listening to Sophia Caetia’s madness, the word stuck in Adam’s craw.
Adam pushed the papers away, and walked down the hall slowly, to the suite in which his mother and father had lived. The furniture, covered in slip-cloths against the dust, loomed like mounds of snow. And there, on the wall, was what he’d sought. The framed print of the tomb-wall of Nefertiti. As always, the yellow, gleaming eyes of the godslayer seemed to be looking at him. “No,” Adam told the figure. “You don’t get her. You might get me. I might not have a choice about that. But you’ll never lay a claw on her.”
After a moment, he realized that he was talking to a picture on the wall, and exhaled. Dementia settling in so soon, eh, ben Maor? Go back to work, old man.
______________________
Februarius 2, 1999 AC
The city of Rome was covered in a nasty gray blanket of slush. Every time it snowed—and it snowed often of late—the clean white was immediately coated in a dust of gritty volcanic ash. The gray streets were almost empty; martial law had been declared several years ago, and only public transportation and official military and governmental vehicles were permitted these days.
Behind the walls of the Imperial palace, Hadrianus watched as his elder brother paced the long room. He’d been under house-arrest for years now, and Julianus took a strange sort of delight in depriving him of privileges for perceived infractions. He’d go weeks on a diet of gruel and water for having looked out a window when his guards left him in a room with one. Apparently, that indicated that he was planning to escape.
Hadrianus barely recognized Julianus most days. His eldest brother had always had a classical sort of beauty to his face and body, but he was gaunt now, almost emaciated, and hectic color burned in his cheeks, his eyes fever-bright. Did you contract syphilis, and have it run to the brain before the doctors caught it? Hadrianus wondered, but kept the thought tucked behind his eyes, and very far indeed from his tongue. Truthfully, he didn’t understand his brother’s behavior. Julianus had never given any indications of the paranoia that seemed to dictate his every move since taking the throne. Although, if Hadrianus’ suspicions were correct, and Julianus had actually murdered their father to speed up his own ascension, perhaps he had reasons for fear.
“Answer the question!” Julianus hissed now.
The younger brother exhaled, feeling the shackles bite into his wrists. “I am not in communication with any member of the Livorus family,” he replied, resignedly. How could I be? I’ve spent the last several years in the Palace, usually in restraints, and always under guard. “I do not even know if any of them are currently alive.”
Julianus leaned forwards, into his face. “We’ll see about that. Bring her in!”
Two more guards dragged in an elderly woman. Hadrianus glanced up at her, and then dropped his eyes, hastily. She’d been beaten, badly, and her mouth and eyes were swollen and distorted by bruising and wrinkles. “Don’t you recognize your own accomplice?” Julianus taunted him.
“I have no accomplices,” Hadrianus replied, quietly. “I have committed no crimes. I plan no crimes. I do not recognize this woman, no.”
“Mariana Livorus, widow of the late, lamented Antonius Livorus. She spoke out passionately in public on your behalf, asking that senators be permitted to see you, to verify your good health.” Julianus turned his head and spat. “She wished to mobilize popular opinion on your behalf. And to help you escape. My information specialists are still collating her full confession.”
Hadrianus lifted his eyes, and met the woman’s, which were little more than slits. I’m sorry, he thought, tiredly. You shouldn’t have spoken. Not on my behalf. You’re old, and your husband’s memory is dust.
He thought he could see forgiveness in her eyes, but he couldn’t let her courage go unanswered. Hadrianus raised his head. “Tell me, brother,” he asked Julianus, and got the butt of a rifle in the kidneys, for his pains. He grunted, staggering forwards slightly, but stifling any more of an outcry, and went on, slowly, “Whom will you next suspect, now that your eye has fallen on widows? Will it be the orphans next? Surely, they’re very suspicious. No families. Perfect agents. You should burn all the orphanages.” The Praetorians around him shifted uneasily.
And then Julianus was on him, hauling his head back, and pressing a knife to his throat. Hadrianus looked up at the ceiling, almost hoping, at this point, that this would be it. That today would be the day. This was the first time his brother had touched him in decades, however, and something . . . hummed in his touch. “You dare defy me?” Julianus whispered against his ear. “You dare mock me? I am a god.”
Hadrianus swallowed. “You aren’t even god-born,” he told his brother, in quiet defiance. “Only Caesarion carries the blood. I don’t. You don’t.”
The cold, hard, sharp edge of the knife pressed in more deeply, and he stopped breathing. “You misunderstand me,” Julianus whispered in his ear. “I did not say I was god-born. I said that I was a g
od. And I am. Jupiter holds me in his palm. I see everything, now.”
Hadrianus both believed, and did not believe his brother, at the same time. It was certainly possible for Jupiter to have made Julianus god-touched. But madness could take this form, too. A powerful delusion could have his brother in his grip. Julianus, as the heir, had been educated in governance. Caesarion, low in the line of succession, had been given to the Legion. Hadrianus, the middle brother, had been groomed for the priesthood; he was in line to be the next high priest of Mars Pater, or had been, before the Praetorians had come to his house late at night and apologetically arrested him. And, of course, before Mars had been killed.
Analytically, Hadrianus thought that if his brother truly were the avatar of a god, he’d recognize the signs. For one thing, he’d be taller. His voice would ring out through the air. But the sensation of power in Julianus’ fingertips . . . that was something else. Not a god, then. A different spirit. A malevolent one, possibly possessing him? And I do not have access to the temple’s books, so that I might cast it out. Or he’s genuinely mad, and somehow tapped into a latent talent for sorcery, very late in life . . . no.
Julianus released him, and looked at Mariana Livorus. “Kill her,” he told his guards, who, to their credit, hesitated. “Kill her in front of him, so that he understands the price of his defiance.”
“How about if you just kill me?” Hadrianus said, swiftly. “There’s no point in killing an old woman that I don’t care about.” He wanted to apologize to Mariana with his eyes, but didn’t dare. “Killing me punishes me. And it removes me as a threat.”
Julianus had paused, considering it, but Hadrianus knew he’d overplayed his hand as a tic formed under his brother’s left eye. “Threat? You’re not a threat to me. And the very fact that you want death is a reason not to give it to you.”
“Then perhaps I should beg for my life,” Hadrianus muttered, and got another shot in the kidneys.
“Perhaps you should beg for hers.” That was a purr.
This was a new angle to the game, and anything he said, could kill her. Even remaining silent could mean her death. Obedience is safest. “I beg you to spare the life of this woman.”
“Not convincing enough. You should beg on your knees. That’s how humans talk to gods, isn’t it?” Julianus pursed his lips as the guards pushed Hadrianus to his knees. “Oh! I know. I have no Ganymede at present. I had to have the last one executed for trying to poison my cup. Guards, have him dressed as a bucolic youth—an ancient Hellene shepherd. Add a little kohl around the eyes, though. He can wait on me and my dear empress tonight at dinner. And if he pleases me enough, I’ll let the old whore live.”
Hadrianus caught the look on Mariana’s eyes, even as his own guts churned. He’s no longer satisfied with demeaning and starving me. Now, he means to unman me. As the guards prodded him out of the room, he thought that Caesarion had it easy off in Judea . . . assuming that their rebellious youngest brother was still alive, of course. He might have to organize a rebellion and fight a war, but he was free. In an anteroom, Hadrianus turned towards the Praetorians guarding him. “You’re supposed to serve the office, not the man,” he told them, quietly.
“Shut up,” one of them replied, his face a mask.
“My father would be ashamed of you.” Hadrianus’ voice was austere. He was in his fifties. He’d had a couple of wives, four or five children—the paternity of the fifth had been in dispute, pending DNA testing, though if it had been proven, he’d have claimed the boy and given him full legitimacy beside the others. He’d lived his life for Rome. And now, he rather thought that Rome owed him a death. “I would be greatly obliged to any of you who were able to bring me a bare razor. After all, if I, with my gray hair, am to look like Ganymede, I cannot have whiskers on my downy-soft cheeks, now can I?”
And an hour later, Hadrianus wrote his last will and testament, and enclosed it in a letter to his brother, Caesarion, which he handed to a Praetorian, who bowed his head, muttering that the last words of a dying man were a sacred trust. Be steadfast and true, little brother. Something has possessed our brother, but I do not know if it is a human madness, a spiritual one, or a combination of the two. And then, like a true Roman patrician, Hadrianus sat down, slit his wrists, and waited. The intricate liturgical phrases with which he’d once reverenced Mars tolled through his head, uselessly. He considered praying to Jupiter, and discarded the notion. Pluto, make another spot in your realm, which is over-crowded of late, he thought, muzzily.
And then the room flickered, and went out.
It might have been his demonstration of ancient Roman stoicism. But the Praetorian Guard moved, within a month, to remove Julianus from power, imprisoning a sitting Emperor for crimes against the state—a first, in Roman history. “They should’ve just executed him,” was sentiment on the street. “Now those he put in power will rally, and we’ll have a second civil war. And who knows who will wind up in charge. No one’s seen Hadrianus in years. No one even knows if he’s still alive . . . .”
At least, the Praetorians who took part in the coup comforted one another, we’re fairly sure Julianus isn’t really a god. He’s still in the prison cell where we put him. A god would have already left the building. I just wish he’d stop smiling in there. It’s giving me chills.
Get counter-summoning in there. If the Persians put a daeva in him, we can at least get it out.
And what if he’s just mad?
Then he’d be just about the same as the rest of the world, wouldn’t he?
On Martius 1, Jupiter moved out from Olympus. He had already fended off one mad godling near the Alps. This time, he caught Cernunnos, the horned hunt-god, near the city of Valentia, in Iberian Gaul. This was apparently too close to Rome for Jupiter’s liking . . . and of course, Cernunnos had killed Apollo of Rome months before. Jupiter definitely believed in retribution.
The Roman legions had recently landed forces in the port city, trying to secure it for its commercial and strategic value. Their radio signals lit up the air, as did those of the Gauls under siege in their own city. Reports of the largest lightning storm any of them had ever seen, of the night being lit up more brightly than the day, spread out across the Mediterranean. Meteors streaked across the sky. Buildings collapsed . . . .
. . . and then all transmissions from the embattled region ceased. Nothing but static on the radio, on all channels, no matter who called to the defenders or the invaders. And the earth trembled.
The Roman legionnaires outside the city proper, had lost all of their communications equipment. And for the first twelve hours after the storm had finally passed, they didn’t quite dare enter the city to investigate matters. They’d just seen the wrath of Jupiter, at very close hand. Most of the men spent the hours praying. However, some of their own had been infiltrating the city before the attack, and when they didn’t return, and when no shots from within Valentia were aimed at their camps, a few enterprising legates began to send out men to investigate.
The city seemed oddly pristine at first. Not one person walked the empty streets. No dogs barked, no cats chased mice in the alleys. No birds sang, and no insects buzzed, except on the very outskirts of town. There was, however, a decided odor of char in the air, and when the investigators began a door-to-door search, they quickly realized that every living being in the region had simply . . . fallen down dead. The only marks, universally, were blackened fingertips. The only answer was that either a massive electrical surge had hit every living creature within the city . . . or all the electricity in every body had been removed at once. And when they found the bodies of the legionnaires who’d been fighting inside the city limits, they removed their fallen comrades for cremation.
There were a few men who felt the urge to thump their chests and exult in the power of their god. Guess that taught the Gauls, they crowed. The majority, however, felt a kind of deep unease. If I’d been in a forward position today, I’d be dead, they thought. Not because I had done som
ething wrong, not because I’d displeased the gods . . . but because I was there. Doing my job.
The desertions began quietly. A few men, here and there, going out on patrol together, and their uniforms being found the next day. The tribunes tried to put an end to it. By the end of a week, over two thousand men had slipped away into the Iberian country-side. They might not be able to withstand the wrath of an angry god . . . but getting out of his way seemed more of an option, in terms of survival, than being anywhere near him. Regardless of who was on his side.
Martius 15, 1999 AC
“I hate this day,” Sigrun said as she entered Minori and Kanmi’s house. Every year, the anniversary of Livorus’ assassination crept up on her.
Reginleif drifted in behind her, shaking traces of snow from her wings. “You hate the memories, and the guilt associated with them,” the siren corrected, her voice carrying shimmering harmonics. “You should let go of that guilt. You were not there. You could not have been there.”
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