The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  “Yes?”

  “When I went through Reginleif’s house,” he said, slowly, still watching the crowd, and staying in Latin, though he got a curious look from a nearby dark-haired female onlooker, her head turning towards them for a moment, “I saw a few things that really made me think.” The female on-looker turned away from them, staring back at the giants once more, and twisted her fingers in a string of beads at her throat.

  “I am glad I was not there for that,” Sigrun admitted. “Going through the belongings of someone known to me would have been uncomfortable.” She folded her arms across her chest, her expression hardening. “Even though it is clear she has done her best to betray me.” Her lips turned down at the corners. “What did you see, Trennus?”

  He hesitated. It was going to be hard to say this. “I saw a very long life, Sigrun. Two hundred years, at least. Parents, dead. Brothers and sisters, dead. Their children, dead.” Trennus paused, looking down at Sigrun. Kanmi had laughed at him for years for his ‘crush’ on her. He’d thought, briefly, of asking her to walk out with him, but the path hadn’t turned that way, and his feelings had instead matured into a gentle kind of love. He was fond of Sigrun, prickly and apt to keep the world at bay as she was, both for herself, and as the wife of one of his two best friends. “And then I watched, through her photographs, as she married a mortal. Watched him age. Watched him die.”

  Sigrun swallowed. “Do you say this, to make me pity her?” Her voice was unsteady.

  Trennus reached out, and put a hand on her shoulder. “No,” he told her, gently. “I say this, because I’m worried that you might become her, in . . . thirty years. Forty, at the most. Her house was old-fashioned, Sigrun. No far-viewer. A really antiquated radio. Full of memories, and devoid of life.”

  He glanced up, and saw that he and Sigrun were, remarkably, still attracting attention, in spite of the four huge giants and two enormous wolves, not to mention the armed guards in the street. Trennus met the eyes of one of the onlookers, a Fennish woman, dressed in bright colors, with long, strikingly dark brown hair, and blue eyes, and she looked away after a moment. Most people had trouble meeting his eyes anymore. It made him uncomfortable, himself. Even after ten years, the flame brightness of them behind his spectacles was . . . disconcerting.

  Sigrun bowed her head. “Trennus . . .” Her voice was quiet. “Three weeks ago, if you’d told me that, I would have said that it would be no bad thing to be like Reginleif, in time.” She looked up, and her face was, for an instant, vulnerable. “She was a hard teacher. But a fair one. She’s considered one of the most intelligent valkyrie ever born, and certainly one of the most powerful. I . . . didn’t enjoy our sessions in the past few years. She asked difficult questions, and expected answers. They were . . . needful questions, however.” Sigrun sighed. “I looked up to her. I thought her a far better teacher than my pedagogue.” A hint of vulnerability flickered through Sigrun’s face. “And I do not know what I have done that has made her . . . hate me so.”

  Trennus looked down at Sigrun, and said, quietly, “You still have everything that she’s lost, Sigrun. That’s probably part of it.”

  At that point, the squabbling between the vahdit and the bear-warriors and Adam had reached a crescendo, with Adam putting in, sharply, “They are people, and they are not charged with any crimes—”

  “They’re monsters,” the lead officer repeated, for about the fourth time. “I will not have them running amuck in my town! They must be caged, shackled, or executed!”

  “I brought my people here in good faith,” Vidarr rumbled, his temper obviously finally wearing. “I will not be shackled or confined. I have done nothing to you or yours.”

  “Excuse me,” Trennus said, interjecting himself into the conversation as he stepped forward. “May I suggest a small compromise?”

  Everyone turned on him, and Trennus winced internally at the amount of hostility in the air. “What?” Brandr grated out.

  Trennus raised his hands. “Simply this. If our giant friends must be confined, so that the townsfolk may feel safe, then I will be confined with them, so that they will feel safe, and confident in their . . . quality of treatment.”

  He found he rather enjoyed the way various jaws around him dropped, but did his best not to smile. Erikir recovered the most quickly, and said, sharply, “Are you mad, Matrugena? You’re Praetorian Guard. Word gets out that the Fenns are holding a Praetorian in their cells without charges, and there will be . . . misunderstandings.” The bear-warrior scratched at the scars on his cheek, and shook his head. “Very large misunderstandings.”

  “Well, this is a very large issue,” Trennus replied, and gestured to include Vidarr and the others in that statement. “But I think it fair to say that the local authorities will treat their captives better if I am there to share in their imprisonment.”

  Adam switched languages. Flipped to Hebrew, which Trennus could more or less hack out, after close to a decade of spending part of every winter in Judea. “Are you sure? We could use you, talking to the locals.”

  “I’m sure. Truthfully, I don’t think they could hold me in a normal prison cell anymore, not if I didn’t want to be held.” Tren shrugged. “I can perform summonings of local spirits from the prison just as well as anywhere else, and try to gain information that way. Besides, it will give Sari more time to work with the wolves.” He looked around, and found Lassair’s manifested form with his eyes; she was bundled up today, not because she got cold, but because she enjoyed the sensation of fur against her skin. Flame-heart? Would you like to go with the others and help get answers?

  I can certainly do that. Lassair’s tone was uneasy, however. However, I have . . . never really questioned someone before. How do I do this?

  Smile at them and be yourself, Lassair. You’ll do just fine.

  Six hours later, Trennus sat on his bunk, his back against the wall of his cell, and reminded himself that he was doing the right thing. Most of the giants hardly fit in the cells; the males could, if they were careful, and lay on the floor, extend their legs out without having to bend their knees. He’d learned their names . . . other than the newest recruit, who still had not chosen a new one, or remembered the old.

  Helga and Torvald, however, had chosen new names within the last six months. They considered each other to be mates, apparently, and Vidarr had found them together, Torvald holding off a pair of ettin who had apparently found Helga fetching. They hadn’t remembered who they were then, and barely remembered their lives before the transformation now . . . just bits and pieces. Torvald remembered his wife leaving him for another man. Helga remembered being a school-teacher, but she didn’t remember how she’d been recruited for the ‘project.’ She was also desperately shy, and wouldn’t speak often, leaving Torvald to tell her story for her, as they crouched together in the same, all-too-tiny cell.

  Each of them had had X-rays done today at a local veterinary clinic that specialized in horses—the only facility with an X-ray machine big enough to accommodate the jotun. And Vidarr’s people were clearly uneasy inside their cells. Helga occasionally wept, though she’d been permitted to share a cell with her mate, and Torvald and the nameless male from the roadside both put their feet against the barred doors of their cells, and seemed to be trying to keep themselves from pushing against it. Of all of them, Vidarr seemed to be the most relaxed. He lay on his back on the floor of his cell, feet propped halfway up the bars of the door, and Trennus had chuckled internally as Ima had, promptly, stretched out on his chest like a blanket made of wolf. The position looked . . . highly practiced. But Trennus could hear Vidarr’s steady low mumbles of “Stop licking, Ima,” and Saraid’s amusement rippled through his mind.

  What is it, wild-heart?

  They are speaking privately, Saraid replied, primly. While I can let her voice be heard, I think it would be impolite for me to pass along their words to you.

  Trennus chuckled under his breath, and turned a page in his grimoire. That�
��s refreshing. Lassair has the habit of telling me when the neighbors down the street have just conceived a child. Usually with an aww, it’s going to be such a cute little girl thrown in.

  I am not the fireling, Saraid returned, with a renewed burble of amusement. I understand discretion and privacy.

  Can I at least guess?

  You may guess all that you wish.

  Hmm. He’s probably had a wolf-blanket every night for the last year, and now that he’s heard her voice, suddenly, various things have become awkward.

  He sees a woman inside the shape forced upon her now, and that is, indeed, troubling for him..

  We must find a way to help them.

  I do not know if we can. But I will do all that I may for them.

  For Sigrun and the others, the next twenty-four hours were a whirlwind of trying to interview locals and ask questions about monster attacks in the vicinity . . . and attempting to find information about Reginleif’s recent activities in the area.

  The problem, however, was that none of the locals had ever seen the valkyrie, in spite of information found in her house that had indicated that she’d been coming to the area since at least 1963. Yet no one in the vicinity had recalled a relatively short, slender valkyrie with a short cap of white hair and blue eyes. Even a picture of her turned up no results at all. No hotel registers in her name. Nothing. “She is a master of the art of illusion,” Sigrun muttered to the others, dispiritedly, over dinner in their hotel. She was trying not to think about Trennus, stuck in a prison cell, while the rest of them had comfortable beds and warm meals. “She could have made herself look like anyone in the past seven years. Perhaps even several someones.”

  Under the table, Adam’s fingers caught her own, and squeezed, lightly. “The fact remains,” Brandr said, staunchly, “we don’t have any real proof of anything, besides that she’s disappeared. I’ve known her for over sixty years. I’ll believe, until I have contrary proof, that all Reginleif has been doing is investigating. Maybe infiltrating. Nothing more.” He exhaled. “I attended her wedding. I helped carry Joris’ body to the pyre. If Reginleif was truly in this much pain, this much anger . . . why wouldn’t she have spoken to me of it?” Confusion, and more than a little frustration in his tone.

  “She’s a hundred years your senior. Perhaps she considers you a child?” Erikir raised his eyebrows at Brandr, who gave him a sour look. “No, truly! Perhaps she looks on you not as a confidante, but as one who requires assistance in tying his trews.”

  “She married a man two years younger than I am. If I require help lacing my trews, he would have required swaddling.” Brandr gave the younger bear-warrior a dark look, at which Erikir brayed with laughter. “Perhaps I overestimate the amount of esteem in which she might have held me.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t change the esteem in which I hold her. I require proof before I’ll believe.”

  There’s no record of her ‘infiltration mission’ at the Odinhall, Sigrun thought, bleakly, but didn’t speak the thought aloud. And there’s considerable evidence that she meddled with my request for an audience with Freya. Not that being guilty of that infraction means that she’s culpable for anything else. But everything here smells like Tawantinsuyu, in a way. It smells like the powers of a god, being . . . misused. Misapplied. Certainly, no mortal sorcery can do what we’ve been seeing, as Kanmi and Min have been at pains to point out to us. And she’s gone missing, right in the middle of it. Sigrun took a deep breath, and put her anger with Reginleif as far below the surface as she could. “Admittedly, she could be operating on her own,” she acknowledged to her old mentor. “We still need to find her.”

  “Any lucky getting the locals to talk about monsters?” Adam asked.

  Kanmi snorted, and incanted, pulling a deadening field around their table now. “Well, with Asha there to translate for me? They were happy to tell me a dozen different locations of attacks. Northeast, southeast, Southwest, north, west. Edge of town, on a farm, on the road . . . I’ve plotted it all out on a map. The main shore of Pielinen sweeps down to the south here, west of us. But there’s no connection to any of the attacks. They’re overjoyed to talk to someone who will listen about a little lake to the southeast . . .” he looked at his notes. “Likolampi. They’re delighted to talk about how the lindworms are somehow mysteriously responsible for crop blight.” He paused. “I didn’t believe that one.” Kanmi shrugged now. “They’ll even talk about peat-cutters going missing in the bogs. But none of it connects.” He unrolled his map, and showed them the dots he’d marked off on it.

  There were dozens of reported attacks, Sigrun saw, immediately. Scattered to the four winds. “The giants, when they awaken,” Sigrun murmured under her breath, “But there are none directly around Likolampi. The lake itself is marked as fresh, not brackish, and it has forest around it . . . that is a good hiding place. Fresh water. Trees for cover. It’s a natural place where someone relying on instinct would run towards, to try to throw off pursuit. It is a natural place where the fenris would feel at home. Again, fresh water. Game.” Sigrun looked at it the map, and carefully began removing Kanmi’s pushpins.

  “What are you doing?” the Carthaginian asked, sharply.

  “Removing all the places I would run to, if I needed to hide. If we remove those, we might have fewer places to look. We do not need to know to where the creatures run; we need to know from whence they come.” Sigrun’s words were tight and precise as she removed another pushpin, and Kanmi’s dark eyebrows, grizzled here and there with light touches of gray, rose.

  “Excuse me,” a voice spoke off to the side, in Latin. It clearly wasn’t the first time the person had spoken; the voice sounded annoyed. Sigrun raised her head, and saw their waiter, looking flustered as the woman leaned in, fully entering Kanmi’s silencing field. “There’s someone at the front desk, asking if she can speak with all of you. Her name is Kylliki Nurmi. She’s a local shaman. She says it’s urgent.”

  Everyone around the table exchanged looks. Sigrun couldn’t help but feel the tension between the two groups, though it came and went periodically, only appearing when there were enough items to disagree with, that crystallized it around them, like too much salt in a solution. She’d known Brandr and Erikir for forty-four years, damn it.

  She was aware that Brandr was on edge about something, but she suspected it had to do with his orders to signal Valhalla when they’d found Loki, and to bring in Hel to start negotiations. And there was the fact that he truly counted Reginleif a friend, and once Brandr’s loyalties were given, that was that. He was also probably in an invidious position, having been deceived by Loki. Not that a bear-warrior could really withstand a god’s might, but . . . he’d been deceived, and shamed. And part of himself had been taken from him. Two years of memories, stolen and replaced with lies. There were many reasons that Brandr was being stubborn on the topic of Reginleif. The truth of his friendship with her was one of the few things the bear-warrior could cling to, at the moment.

  Some of his agitation was getting reflected back on her. Her old mentor had told her, several times in the past week, that she should be training routinely with bear-warriors, or at the very least, god-born of other faiths. Because she was working exclusively with humans—Trennus’ status as a spirit-touched was questionable at best—Brandr seemed to believe that she wasn’t training at her full ability. He’d used the term sand-bagging several times. Sigrun had to admit, that this was probably the case, but she couldn’t just pick up and go train with bear-warriors once or twice a week. Her life was in Rome and in Judea, and that, really, was that. So, pressure from one side, suggesting that she should be doing more, better, different things. And from the other, her Praetorian colleagues weren’t entirely enjoying being pushed out of control of what had been a personal mission.

  So it was up to her to try to balance between the two. To try to smooth things over between the two groups. She just . . . wasn’t good at that. So now, before Brandr could respond, Sigrun stepped in. Trie
d to make it sound natural as she told the waiter, “Please bring her to our table. I think we have room for one more.” She edged further down, as the others all did, as well, and again, Sigrun tried to ignore the gap at the table where Trennus should have been sitting, at Lassair’s side.

  Kylliki Nurmi turned out to be, as her name suggested, a Fenn. She had dark brown hair tucked back into a net and lively blue eyes, and wore a light wool tunic and felted dark pants, along with a clattering variety of beads and baubles. “I greet you,” she said, cheerfully, clasping wrists with everyone around the table. “I saw you with your captive giants in town this afternoon. A wonderful thing, that you have imprisoned those who are such a threat to lives and livestock in these parts.” Her Latin had an odd accent, a little sing-song, and Sigrun frowned for a moment.

  Brandr smiled as she clasped his wrist. “Well, these particular giants don’t seem to be too much of a threat.”