Time snapped back into place, and Adam raised Inti’s weapon and fired, center-mass, right at Hel. Double-tap.
The bullets, the tears of the sun, didn’t make any noise when they emerged from the chamber. They just emerged, radiant and bright and raced for their target, and slammed into the goddess, burning into her flesh. Hel screamed, staggering back to clutch at her chest, and the sound inside of his head could have melted metal. Adam dropped to his knees, putting the heels of his hands to temples, still holding the sun-touched weapon. He wasn’t sure if he could die from the psychic overload, but it certainly felt possible.
With what dim part of his mind that still functioned in and around that assault of sound and rage, Adam found himself faintly surprised that Hel was still alive. Inti himself had only required one bullet. But then again, the sun-god had been weakened. He’d been a willing sacrifice, and Adam had fired point-blank into the back of his head, execution-style. Every defense Hel had, had been up when he’d fired. Shaking, Adam forced his trembling hands back down. Compelled them to cup the gun, just as they had a thousand times before. Aimed for the goddess’ heart . . . .
. . . and then a black tide of metal and flesh hit her, as Niðhoggr turned on his mistress, pushed past the limits of his endurance. Adam stared in shock for the second time in as many minutes as diamond-like teeth clamped around the goddess’ waist, and bit down. Then Niðhoggr lifted his head to shake Hel violently, like a shark, letting his savage, serrated teeth do their work while embedded in her flesh.
Get to Sig, part of Adam’s mind ordered, and he followed that order, scrambling for his wife’s prone form. Got a look at the wound in her stomach—lot of good it did for you to take that wound, Sig, I thought we talked about the whole noble self-sacrifice deal already. Verified that the bleeding had slowed to a mere ooze, and got her over his shoulder and ran her back to the others. Set her limp form down against the poured-stone wall Trennus had raised, so that she was sitting up, at least for the moment. He could treat for shock in a moment, but he thought he might need to cover her body with his own before that.
Kanmi and Min were already incanting in unison, weaving a protective barrier all around them . . . and Adam had just enough time to look up and see Hel’s form shear in half in Niðhoggr’s jaws. Searing white light, exploding out of her body, turning her body into a shadow, into ash, in an instant. Sigrun, in the area of effect. Niðhoggr himself, unaffected . . . and Loki, just visible past the dragon’s tail, caught in the blast wave, absorbing the energies of his daughter’s demise. Brandr’s body, limp as a doll on the ground. Reginleif and Erikir had to be near Loki, somewhere, but they were invisible behind the dragon’s bulk. Screams from the few remaining human guards and sorcerers, and a vague impression that they were all now turning to flee . . . .
Sigrun opened her eyes, dazed, wondering where in the name of the gods she was, and, for a moment, was completely unable to remember . . . until she saw Niðhoggr shaking Hel in his jaws. She managed to get her arm up over her eyes in time to protect them from the fusion-bright flash of light, and stared up, in mingled awe and wonder, as the dragon swung his massive head, his jaws opening once more, as if he were . . . spitting something out. Then he sat up on his haunches, before leaping, with surprising agility, back onto what remained of the building’s roof. Pieces of tile and plaster rained down on them all again, and part of a beam fell, and Sigrun tried to get out of the way, only to have it stop two feet above her head, landing atop a . . . helpful wall, that was somehow up against Sigrun’s back. Warmth of Adam’s hands on hers. “You all right to be sitting up?” he shot down at her.
Not really, Sigrun thought, but pulled herself further up, using his hands as a brace, in spite of it. Her ravaged abdominals screamed, and her face ached from Reginleif’s boot, but that was the least of her worries at the moment. Far more troubling was what she could see in the othersight that she couldn’t seem to shut out at the moment. Energy. Energy everywhere. It looked as if a star had gone nova where Hel had been, and the first major shockwave had gone out in a single, ever-expanding sphere, like the high-energy gamma radiation usually first emitted from a supernova . . . and then the slower particles and energy types had expanded out in the wake of that first shell of energy. But in this particular area, there was another, older star. More massive by far, but it had been destabilized by events in its stellar neighborhood. Some of its matter siphoned away, over time . . . but the vast majority of the energy and matter expanding out from the nova began to move towards that other star’s gravity well. Sigrun, nearly blind to reality around her, hitched herself backwards, her feet scrabbling at the poured-stone. She could see . . . resonances within the ancient star. Patterns that had held stable, for millennia, were now weakened, set to wobbling, and then hit by this new deluge of energy. Oh, gods, she thought, a pitifully inadequate response to what she was seeing. “Loki!”
I . . . cannot hold . . . this was too much. Too weak. The god’s voice was strained. I can see . . . all their plans. To use my power. Disperse me into every human in Gotaland. Samiland. Raccia. Fennmark. Trollheim. Make everyone here . . . at least a little god-touched. Use my stored power, and reach down into the earth. Awaken Jormangand. Cause him to rise, where their enemies were. A weapon of mass destruction that . . . would turn on the wielder. Jormangand is alive, and would not be . . . used so.
She could see surges of energy, shearing off of him, arcing like solar prominences, one lashing out and catching . . . Saraid’s cool green presence, somewhere behind Sigrun. The spirit cried out in pain for a moment, and Trennus collapsed, sliding down the wall beside Sigrun, his face and eyes blank as he struggled to help the spirit.
You must all go, Loki told them, and Sigrun could feel giants and wolves standing behind them now, staring at the god, who still had chains wrapped around his legs. The light coming from his body looked like liquid silver in othersight, and was too bright to look on, but closing her eyes didn’t make it stop. Run. I will try to hold . . . myself contained . . . until you are clear . . . .
“There’s nowhere far enough that we can run,” Kanmi said, suddenly, and bluntly. “Not fast enough, anyway. If you die, it’s going to be worse than Inti, in Tawantinsuyu. Worse than when every god in that pantheon died. They had thirty-six million worshippers, at most. You have two hundred and twenty-five million. You say they wanted to wake your world-serpent? You’re going to wipe northern Europa off the gods-be-damned map.”
No . . . I am not . . . tied into the earth. They . . . would have dispersed me . . . through the air . . . into people . . . not the ground. No earthquakes . . . .
“Just mutations,” Trennus said, his voice horrified. “What you would have done to the volunteers . . . what they wanted to do to everyone . . . .”
Worse. My energies could burn everyone from Germania to the pole into shadows on a wall. Transformations . . . would seem a lesser evil . . . . .
“Then don’t die,” Trennus said, pushing himself back up, managing to regain his feet. “Can’t you cross into the Veil?”
I . . . cannot open the way . . . and hold myself . . . together. Every word hurt to hear. And when I go, I may still . . . disperse . . . on the other side. I have never . . . precisely longed for dissolution. Agony now, as the god struggled to pull in pieces of himself that struggled to explode away. A dying star, holding itself together in spite of nature, in spite of gravity, in spite of entropy, by force of pure will. But better dissolution for me . . . than destruction for all my people.
“I’ll open the way for you,” Trennus said, and Sigrun turned her head towards him, blind to reality, seeing only the green-brown swirl of his essence, the ripple of Lassair’s fires overlaying him, the shimmer of green-dappled leaf shadows swirling behind him that was Saraid. They are beautiful together. And far stronger together, than separate. “I can’t bind you. But I can try to banish you.”
“Matrugena, you’re fucking insane,” Kanmi said, in a tone of awe.
&nbs
p; “You have a better idea? I’m listening.” Trennus sounded ragged.
Kanmi’s burning-coal essence, with a shimmering, constantly shifting corona of shields around it, seemed to shrug. “Fresh out, I’m afraid. Guess if you kill yourself trying to banish a god, you won’t be any more or less dead than the rest of us will be in short order anyway.”
“You’re so reassuring, Esh.” Trennus held up something at his throat that flashed with blinding power for a moment, and Sigrun turned her face away, realizing that this was what the device Kanmi had built for Trennus did; it stored energy and flash-cut summoning circles and binding circles on the ground. How do I make this stop? Sigrun thought, trying to close herself off, the way she always had before. I cannot be blind like this forever. Or perhaps I will be, for the rest of my life. Which could be a very short time, indeed . . . .
She could see . . . something rippling. Distorting. Space-time itself was fluctuating around Loki, as Trennus attempted to tear open their reality and part the way to the Veil. The energy currents around the god, however, were too unstable. Everything Trennus did, destabilized as some ripple, some vibration, some harmonic current, from Loki struck the weave of Trennus’ energies. The portal flickered open, then vanished again. “Asha! Sari! I need . . . anchor points. I think I can open the way . . . to the forest . . . .”
The words made no sense, but Sigrun could watch the three-fold link between them all form into a triangle, the two spirits helping anchor him to this reality, and yet assisting him to reach beyond it. “It won’t work,” Sigrun said tiredly, tipping her head back and looking, blindly, at towards the ceiling. “He is too massive, and too unstable.”
Reginleif’s jarring laughter, from where Erikir still held her prisoned against the far wall. The valkyrie was a constantly-shifting chromatic blur in othersight now, sometimes orange-red, sometimes violet. Almost as unstable as Loki himself. “He releases his power, it sweeps through everyone. Everyone gets a little piece of him, after all.”
“Or everyone dies, you fool,” Erikir told her, without charity.
There is . . . another . . . alternative . . . to random dispersion . . . . The words were labored. I can give of myself. You do not understand, daughter. Because you have closed yourself off. You cannot see . . . a willing sacrifice . . . that is not the product of despair.
Sigrun closed her blind eyes, and frantically worked at the inside of her own mind. There was a trick to not seeing. She had to pull in. She had to close down all the pathways to seiðr in her mind. She had to be . . . human. Mortal. She concentrated on the feeling of Adam’s hand on her own. Focused on that, on the pain in her abdomen. Pulled up walls inside of her own mind, the ones that were almost always there. Fought the pull of the spirit-sight, the energy ambient in the air. Managed to open her lids again, and saw, with her physical eyes, the look on Loki’s face, as he whispered, Take of me.
Lingering traces of othersight showed her two arcs of power, torrents, really, pouring out of the god, and Sigrun slammed herself shut, and fought othersight. Fought seiðr. This is not who I am, this is not what I am, I am who I am, and nothing more, I am nothing more, I need nothing more, I am a sword in the hand of the gods, let this pass away, shouldn’t have relied so much on this crutch today . . . .
Awareness, as Sigrun opened her eyes again, of Loki’s gaze on Saraid. Sigrun could hear, peripherally, the god’s command to the spirit. Use what I give you. Reshape the wolves, if you can, with Stormborn. Restore their sanity, the sanity of the jotun. Even if this effort works, there may be . . . many more of them. I wanted an army to fight for our world. I never wanted it this way. Save them.
I will try, Saraid promised, her voice awed. My sisters will aid me.
Yes. They will.
The opening to the Veil was enlarging now, around Loki. A tear in reality that Sigrun didn’t even need othersight to perceive, and Adam’s hand had clenched around hers. “I dreamed of seeing space,” Adam whispered, staring into the otherness that was the Veil. “I never thought I would see other universes . . . .”
Loki’s gaze, fixed on Sigrun now. A whisper in her mind. You fight, even now, valkyrie. You’ll fight to the last, and beyond. That is what we need of you. I’ve denied you a family, but someday . . . you may forgive me for it. When you understand.
“Sacrifice is necessary. Sacrifice is acceptable.” Sigrun’s voice was a rasp as she lowered her head, her throat tight. “But I will fight that future every day of my life, Loki.”
Yes. A pause. You will.
Something searing-cold seethed through her, and Sigrun thought it felt like regret. Tell Fritti . . . I will never use the boy as an avatar, not even if it is my only way to return from the Veil. All I ever wanted . . . was freedom. To enjoy this rich world. I give that to him, as I have never had it, myself. I give it to her, too. Tell her . . . it wasn’t all a lie. She has the love of a god. Perhaps not the one she would have chosen. But she has it, nonetheless. Care for them. Protect them. Guide them.
“Of course I will.”
As the tear in reality widened, and Trennus dropped to his knees, sweating visibly, trying to maintain a physical connection between two universes so disparate, it normally took the power of the Odinhall to maintain a stable interface between them, Reginleif struck. Erikir had been staring at Loki, his eyes wide, trying, obviously, to comprehend everything he was seeing. The two-hundred-year-old valkyrie slipped out of his weakening grip and tripped him, a thought-fast hand tearing a knife from the man’s own belt, stabbing him on the way down. A dozen mirror-images appeared around her, like a flock of birds, and every one of them threw herself, with more speed in flight than Sigrun had ever dreamed possible, directly at Loki.
And yet, even as weakened as the god was, he still caught her. Picked the true valkyrie out of a flock of doubles, though she drove him to the ground in her rage. They grappled at the brink of the abyss, the twisting, alien terrain of the Veil behind them, as he kept her knife from his throat.
Adam swore. “I shouldn’t have missed,” he said, and aimed Inti’s weapon once more.
“Don’t!” Trennus snapped, still on his knees. “You miss, you clip Loki with that damned thing, we’re looking at a back-blast that will make a nuclear reactor leak look trivial. He’s barely holding onto his form, let alone his power, and he didn’t release nearly all of it.”
Sigrun heaved herself more or less upright, her stomach muscles sore . . . and absently noted that the gaping hole there, had faded to no more than fresh scabs. Her spear snapped to her hand, but as she tried to stand, she almost lost her balance and fell forward. Only Minori’s quick hand to her shoulder kept her from slamming face-first into the floor. Have to do something . . . . Sigrun’s eyes flicked from the two grappling figures, to where Erikir had just pulled himself back to his knees, after Reginleif’s devastating sneak attack. Her old friend had a tight grimace on his face as he drew his sword. Freyr-blessed steel. He swayed as he stood, then shouted and threw the weapon, end over end, so that it slammed into Reginleif from behind . . . and, having gone completely through the valkyrie’s suddenly fragile-looking form, cut into Loki’s body, through the last defenses that the god had.
Reginleif toppled forward into Loki’s arms, bleeding out her life. Energies began to expand out of Loki, without control. Trennus shouted in wordless anguish as the portal twisted, destabilizing once more. Lassair keened, and took human form beside him, glowing sun-bright as she fought to control the energies. Help me! All of you, aid me, now!
Loki staggered upright, lifting Reginleif’s dying body, and cradling her close. No, daughter. You have caused enough harm today. But I will forgive you, and damn you in the same breath. Enter the Veil, mortal, and abide there with me. If you are strong, if we both . . . survive, your body should be . . . renewed. And you will understand, I think, many more things, if and when you return, than you do today. He turned, and took one more look at the world he loved. Farewell.
He stepped through the port
al, and final shockwave of power lanced out, from the Veil itself, through the warping, collapsing gateway, and through all the equipment to which Loki had been bound, which contained so much of his power and essence, anyway. Aentropic environment mixed with entropic, and the power surge rendered Sigrun, already dizzy from blood loss and everything else that had passed, unconscious for the second time in an hour.
______________________
The first impulses of energy had been contained, relatively speaking. Like water finding the lowest point, or electricity finding the path of least resistance, the energies had moved from Hel to Loki and Saraid, and Loki had deliberately shed some of his energetic potential to try to make the transfer into the Veil safely. There had been mechanical batteries and spiritual sinks. There were copper wires strung all through the northlands, in preparation for the technomancers attempt to spread his energies out, deliberately. Not saturating the land, as in Tawantinsuyu, but directing it into the people.
This last, unconstrained pulse, which also contained some of the raw energy of the Veil itself, blasted outwards, and all of the closest sinks were at capacity. It rushed out beyond them, melting the copper wires even as it used them to move. It filled the air and the land, the plants and the animals, moving slightly faster than the speed of sound. To the west, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, both salt water, slowed the energy, at least a little. Forced it to transmit solely through the air, and not in the earth. Thus, the energy took longer to reach the western coast of Trollheim and Gotaland than other regions, and then the North Sea stopped it entirely. Buffered what remained of the western edge of the giant, circular explosion, which reached the city of Molde, in the Raumsdalr region, for instance, less than an hour after the initial flashpoint. A distance of seven hundred and fifteen miles, traversed by rippling, shifting, surging energy, and Molde had been sheltered by the Trollheim and Jotunheim mountain ranges, by the buffering of the Baltic Sea between it and the land of the Fenns. People there were aware that there was some kind of a catastrophe going on; the northern lights were visible in the sky with the sun up, as far south as the Cimbric peninsula. They were aware that far-viewer stations and phone lines were down, all through the north, that radio stations were off the air. But when the people of Molde, living as they did, with their feet nearly in the chill waters of the North Sea, felt the shockwave, it was only as a cool tingle that passed through their bodies. Someone just walked over my grave. Someone must be saying my name.
The Goddess Denied Page 36
