The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  They didn’t know what would happen next. No one did, besides those to whom it was already happening.

  Raccia, to the east? Was not so fortunate. No sea in the way to buffer them. No towering mountain ranges. The energies poured through Varangkov, Kiev, Novgorod, and even Moskva, as far east as it was. The circle of energy dipped south, too, into the disputed area north of the Caspian Sea, where soldiers and mercenaries were still skirmishing with Mongols. Twisting. Rippling. Distorting. As far west and south as Polania and upper Germania—but not southern Germania. Not as far southwest as Gaul. But as far into the northlands as the Sami followed their reindeer. Over two million square miles of land were touched by the invisible hands of two dying gods.

  The people who were closest, were, of course, the most immediately affected. Some died, instantly, screaming and clutching their heads in agony. Some dropped to their knees, agonized, as their bones burst through their flesh, their growth outpacing the growth of flesh and skin. All the changes that had been tempered and constrained by the jotun’s six-month term of gestation in their earthen-wombs, took place in hours. Hearts gave out. Minds snapped. Those with the strongest wills, the strongest hearts and minds, didn’t give in to the pain. They survived, and looked down at themselves, as their clothing and flesh tore, and called out to the gods, begging to know why they were being punished . . . .

  . . . a Fennish woman, feeding her dogs, fell among them, as she and they all writhed on the ground in mortal agony. And when she awakened, she had four legs, and fur, and howled pitifully for her husband to come and open the door, leaping up to scratch at the wood with her new, stubby, useless claws . . . .

  . . . a Gothic man who’d gone to his barn and collapsed there, regained consciousness, and found nothing amiss with himself besides a bruised head. He went to check on his horses . . . and found that where he’d once had a dozen, he now only owned six, but all were like Sleipnir, with eight legs each. He ran, eyes bulging, shouting for his wife to get on the telephone and call a far-viewer station, and to get a camera . . . only to find his wife and his son missing, and a pool of blood inside their home. He ran outside, only to see a huge, naked woman, over eight feet in height, pulling a sheet from the laundry line with which to cover her blood-smeared form. “What have you done with Kaja, you monster! Where is my wife! Where is my son?” He backed up towards the house, where there was a blunderbuss leaning against the back door, in case he saw another lindworm, like he had last week.

  “F . . . father . . .” The voice came from across the yard, too low to be his son’s, and the man turned back to stare at another giant. This one letting itself down from his son’s tree house. Only six feet tall, the features were still young. Unformed. Wearing a set of his clothing, stolen from the wash line, and bloodstained, too. “Please. It hurts, Father.”

  The man gaped. The face was . . . faintly familiar. The creature almost looked like his nine-year-old son, Matti. Did you kill him? Eat him? Drain his essence?

  “K-keep . . . keep away . . . .” The female giant’s voice was muffled, as she backed away, holding the sheet up in front of her. “I . . . I don’t want . . . I don’t want to hurt you, Jorg, please, stay back . . . everything hurts, my mind hurts . . . .”

  And the man’s mind slipped and skittered for a moment, and he saw his entire life come crashing down. Because behind the blood streaked over the female’s face, in spite of the powerful jaw and vicious fangs, he could reconstruct the lineaments of his wife’s face. “Kaja . . . .” he said, as his back hit the wall of their house. “Oh, gods, Kaja, what happened to you, what happened to Matti . . . . “

  . . . in the streets of Turku, the capital of Fennmark, people screamed in pain and leaped through plate glass windows, trying to escape from monsters that they could only see inside their minds, only to bleed to death in the gutters outside . . . .

  . . . in Oslo, a pack of huge white wolves roamed the streets, howling out their confusion to the skyscrapers, baying to the blue-green curtain of light shimmering across the entire northern horizon. More and more of them came to each other’s call, their eyes desperately confused, trying to find some way in which to communicate beyond the yipping and the barking and the howling. Some were more human than others. They scratched words in the snow. Help me. Others sniffed, curiously, at the bodies of the humans who periodically threw themselves over the edge of the roofs high above. Something in the smell deterred them, though they were hungry. They dug in the garbage bins, instead. Followed the frantic mewling of frightened animals. Regarded terrified children locked in classrooms with lupine interest, smelling urine and fear. They weren’t that hungry.

  At least, not yet.

  . . . In Kiev, the konung of Raccia, Oleg Rostovsky, was receiving reports from as far away as the Barents Sea of social disruptions. Moskva was a backwater, but had been hard-hit. Novgorod, Kiev, and beautiful Varangkov, the city of a hundred bridges and white nights, were worse off. And the middle-aged man had no further to look than his own courtiers . . . ten of them had locked themselves in their rooms, and were screaming, incessantly. His wife, who’d taken a lover recently, had been caught by . . . whatever was causing all of this . . . in flagrante delicto. In an ironic bit of justice, she and her lover had fused into one being, one male head, one female head, one male body, and their heads faced the opposite directions. It had taken five palace guards to take down the giant monstrosity, and its corpse now lay in the courtyard, in the midst of bloody, trampled snow. Konung Rostovsky couldn’t even feel regret, staring at the face of his wife, distorted and hideous. Just a kind of numb horror.

  This is Lagunov’s fault. Somehow. She sent me reports of the army she was building to help defend against the Mongols, and she noted some of these creatures were . . . unintended and regrettable side-effects of the process. I allowed her to return from Siberia to defend this nation, not to destroy it. I will send agents to Fennmark to extract the good doctor . . . .

  . . . In the Sami lands, a woman doubled over, feeling as if fire was burning her from within. She scrabbled at her clothing, and looked down in horror as black scales shoved their way up from under her skin, tearing through the flesh, oh gods oh gods, I’m turning into a snake, oh gods, what is happening to me? And even as she cried out in pain and confusion, ten feet from her, a boy tumbled out of a moving sleigh and clutched at his forehead as reindeer antlers sprouted from his head . . . .

  . . . in Gotaland, a man dropped to his knees, and stared as fur sprouted along every limb, but his form never changed. My ex-wife always used to say I was part bear, but this is ridiculous . . . what is happening? Where are the gods?

  In Burgundoi, at the Odinhall, it was still night; they were a full twelve hours behind, in terms of time zones. But as the blast wave radiated out across their ancestral lands, every god that was presently manifesting within the great structure froze in place. Lifted his or her head.

  And then vanished, recalling themselves to Valhalla’s entrance, under the mountain of Áhkká, in the far north. It is Loki, Thor declared. This is his first move in Ragnarok. We must ride. I have lost touch with one of my god-born; Brandr’s mind is closed to me, and I cannot sense where he is, but I know where he was.

  I yet sense Sigrun, Tyr said, his tone concerned. She lives, but she is . . . faint. This is not Ragnarok. This is not how it was to happen.

  What, your hand hasn’t been bitten off yet, and the world-serpent has not yet risen? Thor scoffed.

  He refers to a slightly more recent prophecy, Odin’s tone was grim. Perhaps you should pay these things more heed, Thor. He paused. I hear thousands of prayers from our mortals. They need us, and we require answers. Disperse yourselves. Some to aid. Some to battle, if there is need.

  The gods armed themselves, and rose into the air, with flights of valkyrie around them. They landed in the major cities, and began doing what they could. Organized the bloody survivors of the city guards, who had been fighting with mad giants. Found sane giants, trying to de
fend human relatives. Found the wounded and the broken and the mad. Found the bodies, limp and silent, in the streets. But inside the vast circle of Hel and Loki’s influence, there had been over a hundred and forty-five million people their power had touched. Two out of every ten had fallen down dead, in the instant of Hel’s death, riven by a power beyond their comprehension . . . close to thirty million bodies. That alone would have made it the single largest one-day catastrophe in human history. Even without the madness. The mutations. The civil breakdowns, as people, mad and sane alike, barricaded themselves in their houses. There would be starvation within a week, the gods knew; no trucks to move food to stores. When supply chains broke down, the modern city-dweller had no recourse. No kitchen garden. No hunting available. There would be mass chaos, and civil institutions like the gardia had been as hard hit as every other sector of society.

  Buildings with holes torn where the doors had once been, where the giants had raged out into the streets. Automobiles, lifted and thrown in rage and pain and madness. Insanity. Insanity everywhere.

  There weren’t enough gods and god-born to bury all the dead, let alone to deal with the insane giants now running through the streets, hunting humans. Odin lowered his head, and appeared to his priests in Burgundoi. Send to Rome for aid. We have aided Rome, a hundred, a thousand times before this. Our people have fought for them. Bled for them. Died for them. We aided Tawantinsuyu. Ask for aid, but mobilize our own people, here in Nova Germania. Food and blankets will not be enough. We will need soldiers. Nurses. Everything.

  Freya, Tyr, Thor, and Freyr were the gods sent into Fennmark, where the gods of the Fenns and Baltic peoples screamed defiance and madness, and wept . . . but finally let them pass. Did not rise into to the sky to fight the interlopers. They, themselves, were too wounded by what had happened. Their followers were debilitated or dead, ten percent of the souls of their people rising up to join with their gods, all at once. The Baltic gods had had few worshipers to begin with. Only twelve million, all told; fewer than the gods of Tawantinsuyu. The loss of one in ten was more than a mere decimation, in effect; it devastated them. Weakened them, almost inconceivably, at the same time as absorbing all the lives somewhat empowered them. The other eighteen million deaths had been followers of the Nordic gods . . . but they still had over two hundred million other humans to worship them.

  So the gods entered Fennmark without a fight, though there were indications that the gods of the Fenns, Estonians, and Latvians would surely hold a deep and abiding grudge against Valhalla for the deaths of their people. And they flew, following the sensation of their god-borns’ minds, and following also, the increasing sense of wrongness in the land. Until they found its epicenter, just outside of Lieksa.

  In what remained of an abandoned ley-facility on the island of Kinahmonsaari amid the frozen waters of Lake Pielinen, Adam ben Maor found himself somewhat busy in the wake of disaster. Sigrun was unconscious. Trennus had slipped to the ground after closing the . . . white hole he’d created to transport Loki to the Veil. And just as Adam had moved towards them, the damned dragon had slipped back down from the roof, and had moved to stand over Sigrun’s still form. Adam had advanced, very slowly, with his hands spread at his sides, and stared into eyes bigger than his head. After a moment of enduring the beast’s scrutiny, he’d said, in Latin “I need you to move so I can take care of her, all right? Not to mention the rest of my people.”

  Much to his surprise, the vast creature had backed away, placing its feet as delicately as it could . . . and had, promptly, taken out part of another wall with its long tail. The dragon ducked its head, looking almost abashed at the grating crash, and spread out its wings, serving as a replacement ceiling, keeping the snow and the wind off of all of them. “Yes, I think it . . . might be best if you hold still,” Adam told the beast, and tried very hard not to think about how bizarre it was to be speaking to the creature as if to a peer. Then again, stranger things have, indeed, happened. Many of them within the last day, in fact. He wrapped Sigrun and Trennus in their cloaks, for warmth, and elevated their feet, just as Lassair slipped back over to cradle Trennus’ head in her lap. Saw Vidarr wrapping one of Ima’s paws with what looked like a length of his shirt, and started to trudge over with a first aid kit from his pack in hand, only to have Kanmi wave him off. “I’ve got this, ben Maor,” the Carthaginian noted, digging out gauze rolls and metal bandage clips from the pockets of his vest. “You keep an eye on the others.” An upwards glance, at the dragon, who still patiently stood, wings outstretched. “Caetia would decide to make friends with the only non-fire breathing dragon in the history of the world, wouldn’t she? Her friend here makes for a handy windbreak, but doesn’t do a damned thing about the cold.”

  The beast clearly seemed to understand the sorcerer’s words, and growled slightly, making the ground shake faintly, and snow slipped down from the shattered roof overhead. But the dragon didn’t bar Kanmi’s path, or strike at him in any way. Adam watched as Kanmi moved over and began to work on Ima’s battered foreleg. The wolf permitted it, dropping to her haunches and panting as the sorcerer worked what looked like shattered glass out of her paw with a little magic and a great deal of patience, while Vidarr looked down with anxiety clear in his huge face. Adam got ahold of Erikir, and dragged the bear-warrior over to Trennus’ left. The wound Reginleif had left him with wasn’t bleeding anymore, but he was much slower to heal than Sigrun. Bandages, antiseptics, pressure, and time, was the best Adam could do in the way of triage for the man. Brandr? Adam had to ask Minori to help lift the man, using magic to hold him stable. He wasn’t honestly sure what had happened to him when Hel had unleashed her power on the bear-warrior.

  Minori had taken an interest in understanding what magic could do to a body, after being tortured in Tawantinsuyu, and her aptitude for water magic, in particular, allowed her to send a gentle pulse of energy into Brandr’s body, and to ‘read’ the data that bounced back. “Gods,” Minori said, after a minute, sounding sick. “The solid structures of his body, like the skeleton itself . . . . Those are holding. The structures that hold organs in place, and the skin itself, are intact. But almost every cell in his body has had its outer membrane split. I . . . honestly do not know how he’s even alive. He definitely has regeneration on par with Sigrun’s. Better than Erikir’s, by far. But . . . .” Minori’s lips worked.

  Adam’s eyebrows rose. “You mean his organs are liquefied?” It was a sickening thought.

  “I mean everything is just barely holding together. By all rights, he should be dead. His heart was damaged. His brain looks like a stroke victim’s. His liver is . . . putty.” Minori turned her face to the side, inhaling and exhaling rapidly. “He’s in . . . far worse condition than I was . . . after . . . .” She fought it, visibly, and Adam gave her time. Minori was strong. Most of the time, the memory of the torture seemed to be locked in a room with neither doors nor windows to let it escape. “He has the healing of the kami-touched, however,” Minori went on, after a moment. “It’s . . . kept the brainstem intact, which has let him keep breathing. The lungs . . . half the alveoli have burst. L—Asha, dear . . . you’re going to need to heal him . . . .”

  I will do it, Saraid said, and paced over. The spirit retained the form of a giant white wolf, and trotted over now to nuzzle at the bear-warrior’s body. There is nothing wrong with Trennus’ body. I cannot help him in this fashion, so I will help those whom I can. It will not be a full restoration. But I can allow his body to continue to repair itself in better order.

  “What about the others?” Adam asked. “Sig? Tren? Erikir?” He trudged back over to Trennus and Sigrun, and crouched there for a moment, feeling useless. He reached down and took his wife’s hand in his gloved one, and smoothed a thumb along the fine metacarpal bones, thinking, Come on, Sig, wake up, give me a sign here. You’re breathing, your heart-rate’s stable. Why aren’t you waking up? He looked at Saraid, whose massive wolf-form glowed, and then at Lassair. “Why aren’t they waki
ng up?”