Rationally, Adam knew that eating Freya’s apple would be intrinsically no different than carrying the god-touched weapon of Inti. It would be no different than working with a summoner in combat, and accepting the aid of Trennus’ spirits. No different than accepting Kanmi’s assistance in enchanting his bullets, or pulling up warding incantations to ward off attacks in battle. Accepting Sigrun’s healing, so he could get back off the ground and continue to fight.
But to Adam’s mind, accepting assistance to do his job effectively was one thing. That was the Roman part of him, the pragmatist. The man of the world. Accepting magical aid in his personal life . . . there had been inroads, over the years. He’d accepted Trennus’ wardings and the stone dogs, mostly to ensure that Caliburn would stay out of the wrong hands. So that he and Sig could sleep safely, on the off-chance that someone out there realized that they were partially responsible for the deaths of Tlaloc, Supay, Hel, Baal-Hamon, and decided to take revenge. But accepting assistance in keeping his home safe was still pragmatism.
Somehow, accepting magical assistance that would prolong his life stepped over the line, for Adam. He rubbed at his face, and took a few more items out of his pockets. Lined them up, neatly. As if reviewing the evidence of a case.
A picture of him and Sigrun on their wedding day. She wore the white cloak and formal armor of a valkyrie, and her face shone with happiness and inner light. He wore the garb of a Praetorian of old, the full formal armor that no one had used in the field for centuries. There he was. The man of Rome, not the Judean.
Next to that picture, he set Sigrun’s wedding ring. She’d taken it off, in probably justifiable anger, ten days ago. But Adam was all too aware that he’d probably lost her years before. She’d only stayed out of faithfulness, fidelity, to the man he’d been. To the man of Rome he’d been, when they’d met and loved and lived and wed. He set the shining silver circle down on the image, his throat tightening. Ah, Sig. I’ve made a mess of this. And I don’t even know when I lost my way. He touched her face in the image, gently. I’ve spent my whole life trying to balance being Judean in my soul, and being Roman in my mind, while giving my heart to you. And I let something slip, somewhere along the way. He looked up at the ceiling, and shook his head. And you? I have listened. I have listened and listened for the voice of certainty in my soul. We’re supposed to stand on our own, as adults do. I’ve always accepted that. But there is a difference between a loving parent, who steps aside to allow the child to walk on their own . . . and a parent who is entirely absent. Or worse, indifferent.
I don’t accuse. That’s not my place. But as I have free will, I can also choose. He stared at the scroll. The Ideal of Man. It was an impossibility. But it was also . . . tempting.
But in the absence of any guidance . . . he had to understand what his choice might mean. And while Freya’s apple might bring nothing more than a relief from the aches and pains of age . . . it might also be what he needed most. Wisdom. They say it’s prideful for a man to test god. To assume that god will stop him from a wrong choice. Well . . . here’s your chance. Lightning, heart attack, take your pick. This is going to be my sacrifice. If Trennus could stab himself in the heart for Lassair, if Kanmi could end himself to stop Baal-Hamon . . . all right, those are bad examples, since they lived to tell the tale. Here’s a better one. There are thousands of young men and women fighting outside the city, and inside of it. Our last stand. The fenris, the jotun, the nieten, the harpies, the lindworms, the dryads, the centaurs, the Picts, and my people. All fighting for this last refuge. Should I be willing to sacrifice less than them?
The only answer was a voice out of memory: Your god is the only one of which I know, who has punished his people for seeking wisdom. And yet, your people seek wisdom in every way. Through scientific inquiry. Through philosophical debate. It’s a dichotomy . . . And Adam ben Maor picked up the golden apple, and bit into it.
At first, nothing, beyond the flavor and the smell, both indescribable in their intensity. Like suckling winesap directly from the heart of the tree, like the clearest water from a mountain spring, like a desert wind wreathed with the scent of flowers, sere and sweet at once. Adam’s eyes slid shut in bliss, and he could feel the effect on his body as he swallowed and chewed. Radiance, deep inside of him. Warmth. The arthritis faded away. The dull aches in his back, hips, and knees dissolved. He bit and chewed again, and the constriction around his heart vanished. The hundreds of tweaks and twinges he’d lived with for so long that he scarcely even noticed them anymore, vanished. And for the first time in over fifteen years, his mind was completely clear. Thoughts whirled by at the speed with which they had formerly moved through his consciousness, and Adam’s eyes snapped open, dazed: I didn’t realize how much old age changed the shape and texture of my mind. How much the fear of my own mortality changed me.
Snatches of a hundred conversations, summing up the whole of his life . . . no order. No rhyme. No reason. Just words. Words that made him who he was.
“There’s always a way to improve,” Adam told Sigrun, as they climbed into a trolley that would carry them across Rome. “If you’re not reaching for the stars, what good is life, anyway?”
. . . The night of the first moon landing, as he needled Sigrun into turning on the far-viewer for him. Her exasperated question: “You put on orthodoxy solely to see how I react, do you not?”
“Most of the time . . . yes.” Adam ducked as, this time, a pillow was tossed at his head.
Sigrun sat up, shedding blankets, and gave him an amused look. “Tell the truth, Adam ben Maor. If I weren’t here, you’d turn it on yourself, wouldn’t you?”
Adam grinned. “Probably. But you’re here, and thus, I don’t have to debate between my principles and my desires . . .”
He hovered in the void with his own memories. My principles. Are they really my principles? I fled Judea as a young man. I embraced the larger world. In making this my home, did I limit myself? Didn’t Kanmi tell me, when he came back from the Veil . . . that it was odd that I was more concerned with what was kosher here, than in the hinterlands of Tawantinsuyu?
Memories flooded in again. “Actually, she’ll be in Burgundoi, and you’ll be rather busy doing some fairly serious self-reflection.” For some reason, Sophia’s lips quirked at that . . . God damn her poor benighted soul, she knew, she knew that I would be looking into my own face when I read the scroll, and seeing the inevitability of fate . . . .
. . . And then back to 1955, just after their rescue of Fritti, and before they’d met Trennus and Kanmi . . . . “The list of what rules you follow and which ones you don’t is a little idiosyncratic.”
“I follow the ones that make sense to me and that are in the scope of reason. Dietary laws exist to keep people from being sick. The markings on the skin rule . . . probably originated to distinguish us from all of our neighbors. I can get behind it, because it’s permanent, it’s identifying, and can be a health hazard. Plus, if it ties me to spirits or gods not my own, that’s a real problem.”
. . . His own voice, years distant from that flash of conversation. “ . . . I’ve never met a nephilim, either. Doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.”
Sigrun, confused. “A what? . . oh. I know this one. The . . . ‘giants in the earth.’ The offspring of the ‘sons of God’ who lay with the daughters of mortal men . . . . The union of angels, or spirits, with mortals. Your people’s variant of god-born, Adam. Nothing more. Probably wiped out thousands of years ago.”
His words, moments later: “Now, in the book of Enoch, the nephilim are ‘fallen angels.’ They’ve left heaven. They are egregori. Watchers. Angels who deliberately chose to come to earth to watch over humanity. Larger and more powerful than other spirits. They’re the namtar-demons, Sig.”
“They’re the godslayers?” Her voice had held shock, hostility, and muted fear.
“Even Trennus was talking about another universe, beyond the Veil. What if that’s heaven, Sig?”
“He sa
ys the spirits call it the Aether.”
“The spirits can’t go there. But he also told us that ‘entities’ leave the Aether and come to Earth. What if those are watchers? Egregori? Namtar-demons?”
The flow of memories stopped for a moment, and Adam wiped sweat from his face. What if the godslayers really are angels? Is it pride to call one of them into myself? And what if they’re not angels at all? What if they really are mindless killing machines? What regrets will I have to live with, if I do this, and awaken from it, only to realize I’ve killed someone dear to me?
The visions picked up again . . . a nightmare from the past. Just past twenty, and trapped in an underground emplacement, where his squad had taken refuge. Ghul pouring in from all sides. His squad, trying to fight their way out. Mindless faces, dead eyes, and knowing that a spirit was housed inside of them, their bodies under the control of some other malignant thing . . . . Is this what I’ll be, my own worst fear, if I accept this?
Flicker . . . “She told me, ‘You were only ever going to make the choices, that in this universe, you were going to make. What does that even mean, Adam?’
Flick . . . Sophia’s voice, chanting on the phone, “Adam, Adam, Adam, son of Light . . . poor old Akhenaten never had a chance, did he . . . .”
Decades later . . . Sigrun home from the war, staring at the food in the kitchen. “Adam . . . did you leave the stove on all night, just on low, with the food inside, or did you break the rules and turn it on yourself a few hours ago?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been known to bend the rules for important phone calls and moon landings.”
As if reminded, his memory returned to the first moon landing . . . “I would give just about anything to be able to stand where they are. Just once . . . God, Sig. Just look at what we little mortals can do. We’ve got a little station at the Libration point for docking and redirection . . . and now . . . we’re going to start taking core samples. Finding a place with bedrock. And then we’re going to build.” He looked up at her, the edges of her face made luminous by the far-viewer’s light. “That’s what we’re for. We’re here to build.”
And what have I built in my life? I stood on the moon, but because it wasn’t by my own hand, my own effort, I spurned it. I spat on a gift, didn’t I?
The visions faded for a moment. He’d done much in his life. He’d touched thousands of lives. He’d saved some, like Frittigil. He’d executed others—always those whom it had been needful to kill. He’d never intentionally started an earthquake or tried to send a ripple of power across a continent that left mutation and madness in its wake. But it had happened. Over and over again. And after Kanmi’s death . . . .
. . . I became afraid to choose, didn’t I? I’d already done so much wrong, that I could never make it right again. As a young man, I knew I was mortal. I gloried in it, and the risk it entailed. And after Kanmi’s death . . . I stopped taking risks. I stopped striving. Oh, I never stopped working. I kept trying to make the world a little better, with Judean Intelligence, and as an advisor to young Caesarion. But I stopped striving. And when I stopped reaching for the stars, and became content only to watch them, is when our paths began to divide, wasn’t it? Oh, certainly, I was in my fifties. I was getting older. And I can’t be blamed for that. It’s natural. But I was . . . afraid. And I let my own fears consume me.
All around him, the neighborhood was silent. Trennus and Lassair no longer lived next door, in the house that had resembled a fey mound out of Pictish lore. Saraid and he had moved to Caledonia, where he was both king and a religious figure, standing between two realms. Solinus and Masako had moved in, with their children. And even they were gone now, the children to the Veil, and Solinus and Masako to the front lines.
Across the way, his parents’ home stood empty. Rig was on the front lines, and Fritti, Loki’s beloved, might be with the refugees, or even in the Veil. Across town, Kanmi had died and risen again. Minori had carried a piece of her goddess in her heart, and been elevated for that service. Sigrun . . . Sigrun had ascended. She pursued the tasks her gods set for her, and fought like a seraph, beyond his mortal reach, beyond his hand of lumpen clay . . . and now the street was dark and empty.
He’d made the wrong damned choices.
His dazed eyes, filled once more with visions, fell on the scroll once more, and his own words, to Zaya, years ago, rang in his head. “Read up on that pazuzu. It still wore bronze. It was powerful, but four of us beat and bound it, when it took an army and a godslayer to defeat it, three thousand years ago. What could a spirit who hasn’t been in this world since the Trojan War actually do? Look at how long it’s taken for Prometheus to regain his strength and understanding of the world around him.”
Flicker . . . a conversation with Niðhoggr, the dragon’s voice rasping in his mind. I fail to understand how a godslayer could have died to that petty, feeble thing. I had no difficulty cowing it enough to make of it a servant to Sigrun.
“You what?” Adam almost swallowed his own tongue.
I converted it from a threat to an ally, if a reluctant one . . . . The issue is resolved. The godslayers must have been weak by today’s standards, if that poor creature killed one.
Adam stared at the scroll, and then reached out and touched Sigrun’s wedding ring on the desk, very lightly. Reviewed everything he’d told her, ten days ago, and closed his eyes. Some of it had been despair talking. He didn’t see a way around this fate that Sophia had lined out for him, decades ago. Not with his own name on the damned scroll, as if it were penned for him, specifically, to find. Some of it had been his Roman self talking; the part that did really see his life as an acceptable trade for that of some young person otherwise on the line. And yet . . . There are several problems. First, how can a creature that was weak enough to be destroyed by the pazuzu be strong enough to fight the mad godlings? Second, how can there possibly be an Ideal of Man, or an Ideal Man? Humanity is not static. We evolve. We change. Even within a single human lifetime, we strive to perfect ourselves. If a creature claims to be the perfection of humanity . . . it’s a lie. Such a creature could never be perfect, because we’re not perfect, and we never stop changing. We cannot be locked outside of time. The only way it would be possible for such a creature to exist would be if it never ceased to change any more than we do. Never ceased to strive.
Adam reached out with his mind, and called out across the miles. Sigrun! Neshama! I am so sorry that I couldn’t believe in you. Doubts and fears clouded my mind, and I couldn’t see. Can you ever forgive me?
And instead of the instant and reassuring sound of her voice, there was, instead, what he’d come to expect not of her, but of his own god.
Silence.
Adam put his face down in his hands for a long moment. Either she’s still so angry that she won’t respond . . . or she’s dead, and can’t respond. Either way, I am a damned fool. Just as the Guardian in the Veil told me that I was.
The warmth of the apple still curled inside him, and Adam felt, conversely, both the healthiest he had in over twenty years, and the worst he’d ever felt, at the same time. He could see all his mistakes so clearly now—all of them made with the best of intentions. With the most honorable of principles. Except that somehow, in spite of all those principles and intentions, he’d still lost his way. I can never go back. But I can make it right. Or try, anyway. Adam cleared his throat, and looked at the scroll on the table. “All right. At seventy, I’m functionally useless in battle. Without a bargain, I’m worthless. I’ve got nothing left to give, except myself, and I’ve got no one left to bargain with, except for you.” I should’ve taken Sig’s offer. Nith’s. Tren’s . . . no. I’d just be stuck in the Veil, looking an eternity of uselessness in the eye . . . .
A final flash of memory, a last gift of Freya’s wisdom. Trennus, the first night they’d met, talking about wrestling with spirits. How Heracles had wrestled with Antaeus. “And of course, there’s the Judean tale of the angelic spirit and Jacob, wres
tling all night, a contest of strength.” The embarrassed expression on Tren’s young face. “The spirit and your Jacob wrestled, until the spirit saw it couldn’t defeat him. The spirit struck him in the leg, making him lame, and marking the start of their bargain—don’t eat of the meat of this part of any animal, where I’ve struck you. More of a symbol than a real energy transfer, but the spirit already knew it couldn’t beat him. But there needed to be an exchange. And then your Jacob demanded a favor in return, and the spirit gave the human a new Name, and a blessing.” Trennus had raised his hands. “I personally would have asked for slightly more specific terms . . . .”
Adam exhaled, and picked up Inti’s weapon. Turned the gun towards himself, and curled his finger on the trigger. “I had all the pieces all along, damn it. I just didn’t know what puzzles they belonged to, did I?” His laugh was harsh. “But I’m not going to be some unwitting pawn, some empty vessel that you take over, and use, you hear me? I’ll even make sure of it.” Adam slid the scroll closer, picked up the knucklebone in his other hand, and said, “Let’s bargain. Just you and me. Adam ben Maor.” Man, son of light.
The Goddess Embraced Page 173
