The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  Adam hesitated, aiming his gun, but not firing yet. “Sig, Lassair, you getting anything about the wolves?”

  They are not natural creatures. But neither are they spirits, either.

  “You know, I got that from the fact that they can look the bear-warriors in the eyes,” Kanmi shouted over the howling of the trapped giant. “The freezing breath was a clue, too.”

  “Ice-based methods won’t work on them, I suspect,” Minori said, evenly. “Even temperatures of below two hundred degrees, solidified air, failed to work on the giants.”

  “That has yet to work on me, either,” Sigrun pointed out, grimly. “Use fire, if you must. Adam? Lassair? I think we might . . . try something with the wolves.” She sounded troubled. “I . . . am admittedly relying on something my sister said, but . . . they look . . . chaotic. Maddened. But Lassair, do you see . . . a pattern, in the colors?”

  Yes. I do not understand it, but it looks almost like a collar around their necks.

  “Can you . . . pull on it?” Sigrun sounded confused. “Bring one to me?”

  That actually got Adam to turn and look at Sigrun. “What?”

  I am trying. There is nothing in them that responds to me. Lassair’s tone was confused.

  I might be able to assist, Saraid offered, suddenly. I hear them. There is that in them that is wildness and wilderness.

  “All right, then. Help me if you can, please.” Sigrun’s voice remained uneasy. “Everyone else? Don’t hit me.” She hovered in the air, suddenly, rune-light clearly visible now that the sky had clouded over, and a howling wind surrounded her, like an attendant. And then she sped forward, and Adam only realized at the last moment that she’d left her spear on the ground beside him.

  “Sig! Wait! No—damn it,” Adam steadied his hands, and aimed for wolf off to the left.

  Sigrun wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing, but she could see colors, in the wolves, just as she could in the giants. Blue-white, like her own lightning, shuddering through them, along nerve pathways, outlining them like a frame made of wire, only flickering and shifting. The lights also, strangely, seemed to connect them to each other, too. There was also a red-tinged band around the throat, as Lassair had said . . . but it reached up inside their heads, as well, outlining the brain, and there were fracture marks all through it, where the color oscillated at different rates in different pieces, some pieces pulsing slowly from orange to red, and some faster, from red to violet. The two-headed creatures were, by far, the worst to look at in othersight. Wholly mad. The living giant entombed in Trennus’ earthen grip had ridges of pure yellow running through his body . . . terror, Sigrun thought. But he, like the wolves, had a fractured look to him. They look a little like Sophia does. Lassair called her a broken mirror. Reflecting truth, as a mirror does . . . but her mind is shattered.

  She coasted in closer, and hovered, just behind one of the wolves, as Brandr and Erikir fought. Heard the dull report of Adam’s gun, and one of the wolves off to the left whimpered and wheeled to gnaw at its own wounded hindquarters, and Brandr capitalized on that, slamming his hammer into the back of the creature’s head. “Don’t just stand there!” he called to Sigrun. “Help us!”

  Sigrun watched for her opportunity, and, as Erikir committed to attacking one of the wolves to his left, deftly swerved in the air, and landed on the back of one of the other wolves. Its haunches were five feet off the ground, which meant that its head was six and a half to seven feet in the air. It was nothing like riding a horse, as the beast promptly went wild and whirled, trying to bite her, snarling. Sigrun dove forward, wrapping her arms around the beast’s neck, and pressed her face against the fur, keeping her vulnerable face away from a maw that could have engulfed her entire head in one bite. “That’s it!” Brandr roared. “Keep it occupied, we’ll kill it!”

  “No!” Sigrun shouted. “Stay back!”

  She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone but Adam and her closest friends, but Sophia had actually given her the clearest, least cryptic prophecy Sigrun had ever heard from her sister before they’d embarked on this journey. Don’t be afraid to make new friends. The words about how death wouldn’t be Sigrun’s ally, but its shadow would . . . well, those were rather useless. But Sophia had also said, I see you with wolves lying at your feet. Sigrun thought, dimly, Maybe Sophia can, every once in a while, break through the curtain of madness, and say something useful, and held on as if breaking a wild horse, allowing the wolf . . . the fenris . . . to exhaust itself. Lassair, get in the sky, watch for the giants, if you would. Let Saraid come help me, please?

  She was dimly aware that the other wolves had all been put down, and felt, obscurely, a touch of sadness at it, as she slipped off the creature’s back, and wrestled with it, keeping her arms looped around the muzzle to prevent the beast from opening his jaws. Forced the massive head down, below the level of her own. To the ground. Met the creature’s eyes with her own the whole time. And realized, in wonder, that those eyes were not those of a beast. Like the ahuizotl, the monkey-like creatures under the Pyramid of the Sun in Nahautl, the wolf’s eyes were human. “S—” Sigrun cut herself off. They didn’t have a code-name for Saraid yet. If you’re going to talk to him, now would be good. I’m not sure how long I can hold him down.

  He’s accepting your dominance for the moment. Do you feel him relaxing? That’s submission. Saraid bounded out of the woods, kicking her hind legs like a doe as she flitted over a fallen tree. Soothe him. I will . . . try to reach him. I do not know what has been done to these creatures . . . but I feel wildness in them.

  “Can you fix what’s broken in his mind?” Sigrun asked, tightly, hearing the scrape of boots on pavement. The others were approaching. “I can repair damage that has been inflicted on a body, but I cannot heal a mind.” Else I’d have mended Sophia’s years ago.

  “What in Hel’s name are you doing?” Brandr demanded as he and the others limped closer. Sigrun couldn’t look up at the moment, but she’d already seen the bloody, torn bite wounds that he and Erikir had taken. “Get away from it, or put the damned thing down. It’s rabid, at the best. Fey-mad, at worst.” A pause. “A damned good thing that only Erikir and I took any bites from the creatures.” A half-step closer, and Sigrun could see a flicker out of the corner of her eye that suggested he’d hefted his hammer. “If you won’t, I will.”

  “Step back,” Sigrun told him. She wasn’t snapping at her old tutor, but commanding him. She put enough of the authority of the law into her voice, to freeze Brandr in his footsteps, even as the wolf snarled and tried to go after the threatening male. She slammed a knee down on the wolf’s muzzle to pin its head to the ground and put her hands on its head. “And you? You had best be calm.” She worked her hands back along the massive skull, and found wet, clotted fur, matted with blood. I can’t remember the last time I healed an animal, but this isn’t a beast, now, is it? Not truly . . . . She took the wounds to herself, and felt the almost electrical shock go through the wolf’s body as the pain dissipated. The red pulsation in his head began to fade a little, and Sigrun was aware of Saraid doing . . . something. The spirit pushed her ephemeral hands into the beast’s body, and manipulated what Sigrun perceived as the color fields for a moment or two. Sorting the strands. No, Sigrun thought, just for an instant. More like that. Yes. There is a pattern there.

  I see it. Interesting. Not all of his thoughts are . . . lupine. Much of his pattern is . . . human. Saraid paused. You must sort the human strands—

  I can’t . . . .

  Try.

  Sigrun wasn’t actually sure what she was doing. But she made the strands that seemed the most human move out of Saraid’s way. Braided them back. Tucked the ends away, along the length of the spine.

  There, Saraid said, in satisfaction. I think . . . yes. Release his jaws, sister.

  Warily, Sigrun did just that, vaguely registering that Saraid had called her sister, as Lassair often did. She slid back and away from the beast as he stood now, shaking
his head as if he sought to fling water out of his face and ruff, and then turned his head to look over his shoulder at the others. Adam had his gun drawn, but aimed at the ground. Trennus, Minori, and Kanmi had all drawn up their various defenses around their bodies, but none showed weapons. The wolf bared his teeth at Erikir and Brandr, and nosed the air where Saraid appeared to stand . . . and then slowly padded over to Sigrun, and dropped down to lie at her side, his massive flank slamming into her leg, almost all the way up to her hip. Sigrun stared down at the beast, her eyes wide, as the fenris unrolled a long, pink tongue, and began to pant, for all the world, like an ordinary dog.

  “We’re not taking him home to Judea,” Adam warned her, immediately. “We don’t have nearly enough of a yard, and the neighbors would have fits.”

  A muffled snort of laughter from Brandr, who relaxed enough to examine one of his rapidly-healing bite-wounds. “You’re taking this in stride, ben Maor,” he said, genially.

  “If you two knew the half of the things we’ve all done in the past fifteen years,” Kanmi said, shortly, “you wouldn’t be surprised at the things we don’t blink at.” He pointed behind them all, at their captive giant, still half-entombed in Trennus’ trap of earth. “You think we can actually question one of these? Baal’s teeth, Sigrun. As much as it pains me to agree with our . . . esteemed liaisons . . .” a quick, dark glance at Erikir and Brandr, “but it’s not like that giant’s going to be any more house-trained than the giant fucking wolf. We might have to put them both down.”

  Sigrun held up her hands. “I know,” she told Kanmi, meeting his eyes. “But the giant spoke Gothic. And begged that this not be done to him again.” She raised her eyebrows. “We are here to solve mysteries, are we not?” The seething impatience at the back of her head would have to wait. The reports of monsters in this area went back to 1965, or about a year after Loki’s ‘disappearance.’ The two could very well be correlated.

  Even with Saraid and Lassair circling through the forest, watching for the return of the giants, Sigrun felt uneasy. A prickling sensation formed between her shoulder blades, and she didn’t know why. Brandr and Erikir lifted the wreckage of their motorcar off one of the other giants and settled it down, carefully, on the road, and walked around it, shaking their heads. “Frame’s twisted,” Erikir called back to the rest of them. “And the ley-battery system is leaking. There’s no way it’s safe to drive, even if your ley-mage provided it with power.”

  Sigrun shook her head, and put that out of her mind for the moment. They couldn’t leave . . . not yet, anyway. “Do either of you want to ask him any questions?” she called back over to the bear-warriors, indicating the prisoner with a thumb.

  “Your prisoner. Doubt he can talk more than he has already,” Erikir called back.

  “Very helpful,” Adam muttered as they all gathered around. Trennus was continuously wrapping fresh stone around the mound that held the giant in place, and strain showed on the ley-mage’s face. “You all right, Tren?”

  “Physically speaking, he’s stronger than almost any creature we’ve ever had to bind, besides the pazuzu,” Trennus answered, shortly, dropping to a crouch, his blue-green checked kilt fanning out around his heavily-muscled thighs. He’d grown to adulthood in a climate much like this one; he simply wasn’t reacting to the cold the way Kanmi and Adam were. “He’s cracking it every so often. Honestly, don’t know how long I can hold him.” He looked up at Sigrun. “Make it quick.”

  Sigrun nodded, swallowing hard. She wasn’t usually the one of them that handled questioning. Adam had a knack for persuading people. He could see their point of view. Sympathize enough to get them to empathize back. And they’d answer. Kanmi? The Carthaginian had no qualms about hard questioning, if it were necessary, as he’d demonstrated in Tawantinsuyu. Sigrun had spent years as an ælagol, however. You can do this. You’ve just never had to question a nine-foot-tall monster before. Sigrun straightened up, and shifted languages to a European dialect of Gothic, and hoped her accent wouldn’t be unintelligible to the creature. “Waes hael,” she called up to him. She wasn’t encouraged by the madness in his eyes, the way they bulged, white all the way around. He stared down at her, focusing now, as intently as any predatory beast. Sigrun let herself channel power, let the rune-marks along her skin light up. Assurance of safety, to anyone of her culture. “Cease your struggle. We have not covered your face. We have not slain you. Be calm, and answer my questions, honest and true.”

  The creature flinched away from her, his expression terrified. Panicky. “Please!” he shouted, and she could see tears in his wild eyes. His words were rough, broken, just barely comprehensible, and boomed out, a full octave lower than a human voice should be able to reach. “Please. Not again. Not . . . bury me in the earth again. Can’t die in the ground again, being born hurts too much.” Desperation. Pleading. “No breathing mud and drowning in dark water, taste of brack and peat until I am born again. Please. Let me die another way.”

  Sigrun’s eyes went wide. She . . . hadn’t expected any of that. She couldn’t even begin to understand it. “He sounds mad,” she finally told the others, and translated.

  “Well, you are something of an expert on insanity,” Kanmi muttered, and held up a gloved hand as Adam and Sigrun both shot him hostile glances. “I mean, Sigrun, you know what it sounds like. For better or worse. But there’s . . . lucidity behind that. There’s a narrative. It all connects. Somewhat.”

  Minori’s brow crinkled, her expression horrified. “You don’t think he was actually drowned, do you?” she asked.

  Trennus appeared almost nauseous. “You’re sure he said peat?” he asked Sigrun. Though he spoke Gothic fluently enough, he didn’t seem inclined to trust the evidence of his own ears.

  She nodded, confused. “Gods,” Trennus muttered. “Bog-bodies.”

  “Like that corpse we found in Nahautl?” Adam asked, staring blankly at Trennus. “Where the acidic water of the swamps had almost mummified the sacrificed Jaguar warrior?”

  Trennus grimaced. “Good memory, but . . . a little different. I’m talking about a method of sacrifice common to Britannia, Gaul, parts of southern Germania, and even up here. I’m familiar enough with the history of it, and I saw it show up when I started researching the history of this area. Sometimes they’d drag criminals out to the peat-bogs, strangle them, and leave them there. Just execution, instead of sacrifice. Sometimes it was a king or a queen who’d been defeated in battle, and the victor didn’t want the body found and venerated.” He swallowed. “And sometimes, people were taken out into the bogs and sacrificed. Hasn’t been done in . . . fifteen hundred years. Rome didn’t approve.” The strain of holding the giant in place showed on his face again, briefly. “Sigrun . . . .”

  “It fits the same old pattern,” she agreed, her stomach clenching, and coldness seeping through her. “Except this creature is alive.” Sigrun turned back to the giant. “We don’t wish to harm you. Why did you seek to harm us?”

  “. . . hungry. Always hungry. Deer run too quickly. Set traps on the road.”

  Sigrun’s stomach roiled. It was horrifying to consider that she was speaking, in her native language, to a creature capable of thought and speech and reason, which might very well be hunting humans. “You eat the humans you trap?”

  “. . . don’t remember.” The creature struggled with it. Internal lies. She could see it, feel it in her truthsense. He doesn’t want to remember. He knows right from wrong, but only sometimes.

  “Speak truth.” Voice of the law again, compelling words from the beast. She was honestly surprised when it worked.

  “Don’t want to.” He writhed in the stone. “Smell bad. Taste worse. But so hungry. Sometimes, just take what they have in their metal machines. Make them run. The wolves chase. Wolves need food, too.” He looked around, dazed. “It’s their fault.”

  “Someone bears guilt? Who is to blame, and for what?”

  “. . . the humans. I . . . they killed me. They fed me to
the earth. Then the earth vomited me forth.”

  Sigrun backed away, and looked at the others. Brandr and Erikir looked sick. “I don’t know what else to ask,” Sigrun muttered.

  “Ask him what he remembers,” Kanmi advised, practically. “Where he was fed to the earth. Details on the people. Where the others came from.”

  “Where their lair is,” Brandr put in, sharply. “Priorities. How close are they to allies who will return for us here? What towns are in danger from them?”

  The questioning was slow, and painful. The giant didn’t remember many details. He knew that he and his pack had a lair about a day’s journey north of their current location, but place-names meant little to him. He remembered being ‘vomited forth’ from the earth, but again, not where. He remembered humans being there to hold him down and force him into the earth . . . and one or two being there when he took his first sweet breath of air again . . . but his memories were hazy, and he shook and bellowed in rage, and, paradoxically, wept at the same time. Spoke of marrow and blood and running in the wilderness. Sigrun was sickened after finishing the questioning, and she could see the same horror in everyone’s eyes. “If it’s true,” Brandr said, quietly, “then someone with enormous magic is turning humans into jotuns and ettin.” He pointed at the two-headed body, and then looked back at their captive. “We should kill him. Honor his request for a different kind of death. Strangle him, or give him a warrior’s death with a blade to the throat. We cannot stay here. And we cannot take him with us.” He jerked his head at the western horizon. “We lose the light.”