Sophia stared at the flowers on the table in front of her, taking in their scent, their color. “Apollo loved Hyacinth, a precious Spartan boy,” she told the therapist, not touching the blooms. “Taught him all the manly arts, and when Hyacinth declared he’d rather be Apollo’s lover, than the lover of the west wind, Zephyrus, Zephyrus caused Apollo’s discus to go off-course and kill the boy. Apollo wept and refused to release his soul, and these flowers sprang up from his blood.” Sophia considered that. “The men almost always get off easy in the early legends, have you noticed?”
The therapist tucked the flowers into a wooden vase. “I don’t know. Dying doesn’t seem like getting off easy, to me.”
“Dying is easy,” Sophia said, blankly. “Anyone can do that. And everyone will. I meant that the men usually wind up with a choice.” She drifted away, watching the others in the room as, with fumbling, drugged fingers, they tried to arrange the flowers into something resembling harmony and order. And when the instructor’s back was turned, Sophia picked up a pair of shears.
They were sharp. And they would do very nicely what they were designed to do. I put on my boots, she thought. I remember that. I didn’t remember doing it before, but I did it anyway . . . .
Iunius 12, 1999 AC
The taverna on the outskirts of Nimes held the dull roar of voices and the rancid odors of sweat, dirt, cheap beer, and wine. The liquor was mainly brewed in the house beside the taverna. Drust privately thought that the owner used his socks as a source of the yeast for the fermentation. It was really the only thing that could explain the taste. But, after a long day spent trying to repair power lines with whatever people could scrounge up . . . and copper was getting expensive enough that thieves were breaking into empty houses just to tear out the walls for the wiring . . . it felt damned good just to relax and let the muscle aches die down a little. And it beat walking the highway. When he closed his eyes before sleep at night on his cousin’s couch, Drust could still see the shallow graves in the ditches alongside the road. Some of them hadn’t been the graves of robbers. Every once in a while . . . there had been a forlorn, weather-beaten doll left beside a very small cairn of stones. And if any feral dogs had been gathered around those graves, digging, he’d picked up a rock and thrown it at the mutts, trying to drive them off.
Conversation in the taverna always seemed to revolve around the same topics. Weather, religion, and politics. Drust’s parents, long ago, had always taught him that religion and politics had no place in polite conversation, so that left him with the weather. Everyone else, however, felt free to opine on the other two conversational possibilities. “Maelchon’s in town,” one of the men from the line repair crew told him, quaffing half his tankard of Last Week’s Socks.
Drust nodded, staring ahead at the barrels and dingy spigots behind the bar. The man to his right, however, turned and shouted over his head, “Maelchon? What’s that heretic doing here?”
“He’s not a heretic! He’s not perverting the teachings of a god.” That, from someone behind him, reaching in to pull on the tavern-keeper’s sleeve to get another drink. “He’s an apostate.”
Drust ducked as a tankard was passed over his head. Sadb hated it when he came home stinking of spilled beer. The finer details of what made someone a heretic or an apostate were as much over his head as the tankard. And, sure enough, the man to his left objected, “He’s no such thing. He’s a free-thinker. You should go listen to one of his rallies. He makes a lot of sense.”
“He’s preaching against all the gods. And I do mean preaching. The Romans would have thrown him to the lions.”
“And here I thought you liked throwing the Romans out—”
“Hey, they had a few good ideas—”
“How can you preach against the gods? It’s a contradiction in terms—”
The voices were swirling now. Drust’s omnipresent headache, usually firmly in place by the end of a long day, was getting worse, and medicating it with the rest of his tankard of beer didn’t seem as good an idea as it had a half hour ago.
“Look, someone standing there telling me what and what not to believe is still preaching, even if he’s saying everyone should go tear down the temples. No one’s got the right—”
“But you’ve got to admit, he’s right about some things. The gods are the cause of all of our problems. What caused the destruction of Divodurum?” A pause, as Drust raised his head, and the speaker added, hastily, “Sorry, old man,” thumping Drust on the shoulder, before continuing, “The gods did. Mad godlings, and regular ‘non-mad’ gods. The priests say they’re up there,” a vague wave at the ceiling, “protecting us from the godlings. Tell that to the people of Novo Trier and Cimbri-on-the-Caestus.”
Drust cleared his throat, and set his tankard down. “Cimbri was destroyed by humans,” he said, pointedly, and silence fell around him, spreading out in rings. “Potentia ad Populum. And Novo Trier was destroyed when Diana killed Dagr.”
The man to his left recovered his balance. “You make my point for me. Diana and Dagr. Two gods at war, and humanity has to pay the price!”
“And what about Cimbri, now?” Drust said, still speaking quietly. The silence around him grew a little more. “Humans did that to themselves, I’m thinking. Crann Péitseog? That was us, too.” He stood up, and turned a little. A disturbing number of people around him were wooden-faced. They didn’t like hearing what he had to say. “Divodurum was my home. My city, my house, everything I owned, was destroyed when the gods fought the mad ones. I haven’t heard from my son in over a year. And I walked to Nimes with my wife, along a stretch of highway filled with bandits and raiders, and with graves dug into the shoulders of the road.” He thought if he’d dropped a coin on the floor right now, the sound might have echoed back off the rafters. “I could go and blame the gods. And you might be thinking that I’d have the right. But they’re not here for my convenience and I’m not here for theirs, either.” It was probably the longest speech he’d made in the past six months, and his throat felt dry afterwards. Not dry enough for another mouthful from his tankard, however. “We’re supposed to be grown men, now. Men stand up. You can mewl about injustice here in this taverna . . . .” and a flash of the small cairns dotting the sides of the highway flickered across his mind’s eye, the tiny, weathered dolls, left behind to comfort the spirits of small children who hadn’t survived the long journey . . . or left to preserve the sanity of parents who couldn’t bear to look on such a reminder even one more time . . . “or you can shut the fuck up and do an honest day’s work.”
He turned to leave, and did his best to ignore the expressions on the others’ faces. He’d never made his opinions known before. But as far as he was concerned, humanity had done as much to itself, as the gods had. Take the responsibility, and try to fix it. Don’t go blaming the gods for everything. That’s for children, he thought as he started walking home. But he also couldn’t ignore the sensation of leashed violence he’d gotten in the taverna. There was going to be a fight before the end of the night. There was, most nights, but tonight had felt worse. Some of the men really believed in this Maelchon. No more gods. Burn down the temples. Break the statues. Strike out their Names. Belief was . . . belief. And people would fight, not just for beliefs, but for belonging. A belief was almost as good as a uniform, or a flag. I belong with these people.
He hadn’t gotten more than a block away when he heard a crash and shouting behind him, and turned to see two men tumble out of the taverna’s door, as their friends pushed out after them, trying to pull them apart. While others tried to hit one or another of the combatants, themselves. For a moment, Drust’s lips pulled up in a cynical smile. I hate being right sometimes.
At around four antemeridian, sirens blared, and Drust and Sadb lurched up in bed. “What’s going on?” Sadb mumbled, groping for clothes. She’d sat down with an old set of ugly brocade drapes and made them both heavy shirts, and a skirt for herself as a change from her road-worn jeans.
/> Drust didn’t have an answer, until his cousin turned on the far-viewer. In the cold light in the living room, a Gallic news announcer looked pale. “Citizens of Nimes, please report to your security shelters. What appears to be an army is approaching from the south, along Imperial Highway Five. We do not know if these are the remnants of the Nahautl state army, which recently occupied Tongeran, a band of well-armed refugees, or the army of the Nahautl priests.”
Drust shook his head. “They took the Tongeran right behind us. And they’ve been fighting back and forth over the city with the Novo Gaul legions ever since.” He swallowed. “Did they get tossed out of Tongeran, then? Is this them retreating . . . ?”
His cousin shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’d better get to our shelter.”
Drust and Sadb exchanged troubled looks. “That’s . . . all right,” Sadb said, uncertainly. “You go. We’re not really residents. We couldn’t take a spot from someone who expected to have it.”
His cousin didn’t take the time to argue with them. He and his wife packed a suitcase each, and left the house. In the pre-dawn gloom, Drust looked at Sadb. “You feel it, too?” he asked.
His wife shifted. “It’s like I’m a bird,” she said, dubiously. “All I know is, I want to go north. Away from this city. It’s gone bad here, Drust. All the talk at the school where I’ve been teaching, has been that everything is the gods’ fault—”
“You’ve been hearing that, too?”
“At least once a day in the break room.” She pulled down their backpacks from a shelf, and started filling water bottles. There weren’t many to fill; they’d kept a ready supply of boiled snow-melt on hand at all times. Habit, from the road. “And if this was the Nahautl army, how did they get here so fast, then? Shouldn’t there have been a couple of days of warning?”
Drust blinked. She was obviously thinking faster than he had. “You’re right,” he admitted, and started looting his cousin’s pantry, with a mutter of apology to the missing man. Canned goods in his pack, dry goods in Sadb’s. He could carry more than she could. “So what’s this army, then?”
Sadb licked her lips. “Probably ghul,” she said, quietly. “Perhaps a godling. Oh, gods. I don’t want to live through that again.” Her hands shook as she tried to stopper another bottle, and water spilled over her fingers. “Maybe it’s just flayed men and those pregnant, skull-faced women, and the monkey-dogs.” She slung the water bottles close to her sides, with the ease of practice. “Either way, they’re going to hit the refugee camp to the south of town first.”
Drust stood still, ammunition cases in his hands. “Everyone from the bus, Sadb. Everyone who walked the highway with us, is in that camp.” His stomach churned. They couldn’t have gotten through the desert without those people. They’d slowed down so that, his sprained ankle or not, they could all stay together. “We . . . gods. We can’t go get them.”
“We could.” She said it slowly. “We could walk them around the edge of town, and then north.”
“If they even agree to go.”
Their eyes met, and Drust shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
He couldn’t escape the sensation, however, as they took Imperial Highway V north, that they were betraying the Divodurum refugees they’d walked with. Betraying the cousins that they’d stayed with, too. Everyone makes choices, Drust reminded himself. That’s what life is for.
They managed to catch a few trolleys and buses that took them to the outer suburbs. A good thing, too; eight hours on foot would only have taken them deeper into tract homes, and they’d have had to camp in city parks, which local gardia frowned on people doing. They could have been arrested as vagrants, or curfew-breakers.
They weren’t the only people leaving the city. They fell in with another group. Some Gauls. Some Nahautl. Some Goths. Everyone carried weapons, from a walking stick to a rifle. Their destination was Burgundoi. And midway through the first full day’s walk, Sadb caught Drust’s cloak, and tugged. “Look,” she told him, and Drust turned back towards Nimes. The skyscrapers at the city’s heart weren’t visible at this distance. But what was over the city, surely was.
The light sucked in over the city. Whatever hung there was definable only by absence. By void. By negation. Three quarters of the sky wavered, and Drust felt fear grip his bowels. “Let’s walk faster,” he said, and everyone in their group began trotting forwards at a renewed clip.
______________________
At the center of the city, Maelchon stood at the heart of a temple of Toutatis, his head covered by a hood. He was surrounded by refugees who’d taken shelter in the large building, but he was also surrounded by his bodyguards and followers. No one, not even his closest associates, knew his family name; he’d forsworn its use, years ago. Nor did anyone know his Name. He’d spent over forty-five years masking his DNA, carrying vials of preserved blood and toenail clippings from other people—sometimes living, sometimes dead—and amplifying the life-signature of each to conceal himself. He’d wrestled with spirits, greater and smaller, and enslaved them. He wouldn’t risk a soul-bond, but he’d blood-bound them, for additional concealment.
And under his cloak, he carried a book. Not just any book, but a grimoire, and an ancient one, its bindings clasped with brass fittings.
At the front of the massive temple, there stood a statue of the Gallic crafter-god, a hammer in one hand, and a chisel in the other, bent slightly as he seemed to work to free himself from the rock. Caught in an instant of self-creation, the god smiled at his followers beneficently. Maelchon ground his teeth at the god’s visage. Placid. Peaceful. Self-absorbed. Content with the adoration of millions. And useless. His fingers played with the clasps of his grimoire.
He’d been a summoner. A highly-trained member of Sangua Foederis for decades, in fact. Blood Pact. The secret society was dedicated to the preservation of the most ancient summoning skills, and they recruited only the most powerful and trustworthy summoners. The ones with the right attitudes, anyway. He’d been just an apprentice in Europa, back in the fifties, when the Praetorian crackdown had begun, and he’d escaped to Caesaria Aquilonis two steps ahead of the Guard and Trennus fucking Matrugena. Joined another cabal in deep hiding in Novo Trier, and had gone on with his daily life. Finished his university education. Jumped through all the hoops necessary to find employment in the Empire. Not as a summoner, no. Not as what he was. But as a ley-engineer.
Maelchon had heard a great deal about Trennus Matrugena for the past twenty years, at every meeting of his cabal. Half admiration at the man’s power, and half curses. But none of his brothers and sisters in the Pact would have offered membership to Matrugena. His spirits controlled him. That was a weakness, right there.
No wife. No children. No family, besides the Pact. Nothing besides the work, the ideal, the goal.
His brothers and sisters talked about finding ways to bind gods. Enslave them. Maelchon thought that fear made an admirable chain. But you had to demonstrate the ability to destroy a spirit, before they feared you. And today, he planned to prove that point.
“Everyone, bow your heads in prayer,” the high priest said, his voice shaking with fear. “Lend lord Toutatis your faith. Empower him, so that he might strike down our foes today.”
“If he even comes,” Maelchon said, just loudly enough to be heard. His cynical voice echoed in the huge chamber, and he could see the effect it had on those around him. Could see the subtle knife of terror and fear and doubt cut its way through the crowd. And he smiled.
In the skies above Nimes, the gods assembled. Toutatis. Taranis. The Morrigan. Baldur. Odin, as the death-god intended to swallow the worst of the mad godling’s power. On the ground, the Fenris and the Evening Star materialized on the city streets. Fenris stood guard at the southern edge of the city, waiting to fight ghul, and the Evening Star caught the hands of people still running to shelters, guiding them through the urban maze as easily as through a windswept arroyo. Dodging the gunfire of the defenders as
if the bullets were snowflakes, the leather-clad goddess paused to lift a child to her own shoulders. A pack of ghul standing over the bodies of those they’d slain looked up in time to see her approaching, and snarled . . . and a cluster of tiny meteors fell from the heavens, cutting through their bodies, and pock-marking the poured-stone pavement below. The Evening Star flicked a hand, throwing the twisted bodies of the ghul aside, and found the single person in the pile of bodies who still lived. She dropped to her haunches, resting her hand on the woman’s bloody, terrified face. Live, the Evening Star told the woman, whose legs were festooned with bite-marks, chunks of flesh missing from where the ghul had already begun feeding on her. Stand. Live. And come with me.
______________________
Inside the temple, Maelchon went on, just loudly enough to be heard over the prayers wafting up, “A god cannot be a true god, if he requires our prayers. If he requires our belief to be made more powerful. A god shouldn’t require faith to be; he should just be. What is your god, but a spirit, stuffed full of the belief you’ve fed him over the centuries? What is he, but a spirit whose original summoner lost control? And now, instead, he controls you. His pact. Your blood. But not mine.”
The Goddess Embraced Page 137
