The Goddess Denied

by Deborah Davitt

  Negotiations would probably take weeks, if not months, but Adam was buoyed by the fact that he could see interest in so many faces and eyes. When asked for his input, he noted that from the Praetorian perspective, the immigrants were largely here to stay. “In twenty or thirty years, the situation in the north might be stable enough for people to begin returning,” he said, and shook his head. “But in twenty or thirty years? The humans who remember living there will either be too old to return, or dead. Their children will have been born here. Some will feel a desire to return, I have no doubt.” Always assuming that the jotun factions who want to push all normal humans out of the north haven’t won out, he added, mentally, “But many will see this province, this place, as their home. Where they were born. Where their children were born.”

  “They aren’t Judean.” A tone of absolute frustration, from another Temple elder, and Adam couldn’t deny it.

  “No,” he said, and met the elder’s eyes. “But those who are born here, regardless of the fact that their ancestors came from outside the Empire? Are, if not Roman citizens, then at the very least citizens of a subject state of the Empire. They have rights, just like every other Judean, Egyptian, Gaul, Goth, Hellene, Nahautl, or Quechan.” He paused. “They might not share our ethnicity or our religion, but by birth? Yes. They are Roman, and they are Judean.” More or less.

  “They need to be sent back to their homelands—”

  “By all means!” Vidarr rumbled. “Clear our lands of the grendels and the ettin and the lindworms. Most of us would be glad of it. Send more of the Empires’ young people to die in the north, just as our people have been dying, for eight years.”

  “Or,” Adam said, simply, “we can adapt to the shifting reality around us. It is difficult, for everyone, and I realize it. But this is what is, and that’s what counts.”

  After the meeting, he walked out with Sigrun. “You were quiet in there,” he told her.

  “It was not my place to speak. Your elders have no compelling reason to hear me. And this was Vidarr and Ima’s moment, as well as yours.” Sigrun’s tone was dispassionate. “I do understand your people’s resistance, however. The Roman occupation, which led to two millennia of Roman influence, has changed and shaped how most of your people understand themselves and their faith. The vast majority of Judeans are what you are, Adam. Modern, Romanized, in some form or another. You judge for yourselves which precepts of the faith to adhere to, and which are . . . outmoded. Then there are the conservatives, like Mikayel, who see the Romanized Judeans as being . . . fallen, in a way, from the true path. Your Temple elders are just as factionalized as the rest of your society. The small number of Nipponese and Hellene engineers living here aren’t a threat. The vast influx of refugees, however? Are. They see a generation of Judeans in close contact with people of another faith. They see ideas being spread between both peoples. They see cross-fertilization and intermarriage and hybridization of culture and ideas. And for the vast majority of people, that seems like a good thing, because hybridization brings vigor. Analysis of the foreign ideas, and then synthesis of new ideas, previously unknown to anyone, but based on both.” Sigrun shrugged. “But there are plenty of people for whom that is a threat.”

  Adam opened the door of the car for her. It was old-fashioned of him, and he knew it, but when he was driving, he rather liked this sort of gesture. When she was the driver, it didn’t matter, but when he was in charge? It was a way of showing her he cared. Little things count. “I understand all that. I still don’t see why you didn’t speak up.”

  “I am god-born of a foreign god, Adam.” Sigrun’s voice was patient. “If I spoke in that room, it would solidify some people who wavered, against the issue. I am a symbol of outside interference. I am a focus for resentment and fear. Just ask your brother.” She slanted him a tired glance, and buckled herself into her seat.

  Adam grimaced, and started the car. He didn’t like it. But that didn’t make it any less true. “All right.” He backed his way out of the parking spot, and headed out of the municipal garage, winding his way back to street-level. “Tell me something, Sig. Considering the fact that we were all up there, right at ground zero where the blast wave went off . . . most of us should have been turned into something else, shouldn’t we have?” He paused. “Would you still love me, if I’d turned into a monster, Sig? If I’d become a jotun?”

  Sigrun’s eyebrows rose, and he could see her turn her head to regard him, out of the corner of his eye. “Of course. So long as you were still you.” She paused. “You, Kanmi, and Minori represent the one in ten humans who didn’t transform, go insane, or die. Trennus . . . arguably, the same.” Sigrun nodded, and sounded faintly queasy. “We were as lucky as any people on earth could be. But probability is probability. Just like Ima’s children. She could have had all jotun. One or two lycanthropes. Even a true fenris was possible. But all three happened to turn up as hveðungr.” She leaned her head back against seat. “Of course, there is one thing that probably helped save all of us.”

  Adam darted her a glance. “Oh?” he ventured, cautiously.

  “Niðhoggr,” Sigrun clarified. “He probably absorbed incredible amounts of both gods’ energies. Just as Livorus’ sword absorbed at least a small portion of them. I am exceedingly grateful that even though it was in your possession, that you were not warped with it.”

  Adam regarded her out of his peripheral vision. She sounded entirely sincere, and absolutely certain. ”Yes,” he agreed. “Me, too.”

  Part VI: The War of the Gods

  Africa, 1980 AC.

  Chapter 9: Pebbles

  Even in Judea, a province in which magic is, if not actively suppressed, certainly not much practiced, law enforcement has to address the subject of its use and abuse. And in order to track crimes that involve magic, and enforce laws regarding it, you almost have to use it. There’s no way around it

  Take, for example, the unglamorous crime of counterfeiting. Early counterfeiters took base metals, such as lead or iron, as a core for the coin, and then put a thin shell of gold or silver around this plug. They got the materials for this by shaving or clipping the edges of existing coins, making them underweight. These practices led to two separate innovations: the development of accurate weights and measures, particularly displacement scales, so that counterfeit coins and adulterated gold could be found quickly, and milling, the raised, gear-like grooves on the sides of coins, which ensured that the edges of coins could not be easily clipped. Better images were placed on coins, and more elaborate designs, often with hidden symbols, were also employed to deter forgeries. The counterfeiters raised the bar, and began using spirits to do the work of the engraving of their molds, and began hiring sorcerers to bind extra ‘apparent mass’ into coins that were under-mass for their size. That they could afford to do these things is a testament to the profitability of counterfeiting in the Empire. And once they started employing summoners and sorcerers, law enforcement had to do the same, checking coins for thaumic resonances and spell residue.

  Counterfeiting is the least romantic, but the most wide-spread crime that the Praetorian Guard has to deal with, on an Empire-wide basis. We deal with kidnappings that either cross provincial borders or involve separate nationalities, we deal with murders that again, somehow involve multiple provinces. We deal with drug trafficking that goes beyond mere religious observances, and enters the realm of mass production and mass distribution. I don’t care, personally, if someone wants to run a distillery. The Empire cares if they don’t pay taxes on their aqua vitae. I don’t care if someone, in the privacy of their own home, uses poppy juice. The Empire cares if they go outside, drugged, get behind the wheel of a motorcar, and kill a fellow citizen. The Empire doesn’t care if someone uses peyote or tobacco for genuine religious practices. But the Empire becomes concerned when people who try to evade taxes and regulation become affiliated with other crimes, such as, say, kidnapping, murder, blackmail, and extortion.

  And naturally,
all of these crimes can be aided by the use of magic. Magic to conceal tracks. Magic to create the illusion of empty boxes, or harmless goods. Spirits to whisk items past Customs. Magic to forge import/export seals on crates. But whatever magic does, can be detected by magic. Which is why there is a counter-summoning team in most gardia departments. Which is why forensic thaumaturgy exists as a field of study at most major universities. Of course, measuring magic is difficult. There are some devices that can manage it, but a good deal of forensics involving magic boils down to “I have a spirit as my witness” or “I’ve seen this before, and in my expert opinion, it looks like a common Chaldean-style spell.”

  Of course, this is all just . . . human-caused sorcery, ley, or spirit-based magic. There are free-willed spirits at large in the world, too. Ones who might take revenge on a human who mistreated them, or broke a contract. Ones who might, for pure malevolence, or for the power it gives them, create fear and panic and distrust among humans by assuming a human guise, as a fetch does, or convincing some human or another to allow them to possess their body . . . or worse yet, simply overwhelming the original soul, and taking possession of the body, leaving the helpless victim alive and screaming, trapped in a body they no longer control . . . or annihilating the human spirit entirely. Because there’s no human agency in those situations, those are much harder to track and deal with, in their way, and often, the gardia are faced with having to turn the whole matter over to local summoners.

  But all that being said, there is no such thing as a perfect crime, even with magic. Everything leaves traces, evidence, and clues. Everyone can be tracked. And real breaks in cases come, ninety percent of the time, through persistence, and putting bodies in the field.

  —Adam ben Maor, “Modern Law Enforcement: Gardia methods and methodologies.” Lecture given at the University of Jerusalem Department of Thaumaturgy, Ianuarius 12, 1980 AC.

  ______________________

  Martius 15, 1980 AC

  At her family’s estate on the Caspian Sea, Erida had Athim home on holiday from his apprenticeship with the Eshmunazars and Trennus Matrugena. She was delighted in her nearly eighteen-year-old son’s progress, but it was a quiet, reserved emotion. She hadn’t really bonded with him after his birth, she realized now. She’d felt nothing for his father, even at the beginning of the marriage, and the realities of her position as a noblewoman had ensured that their relationship was . . . distant at best, in the formative years. After the death of his father—however justified, and however much Athim understood the execution, rationally—he’d directed a certain amount of resentment towards Illa’zhi, and for obvious reasons. The efreet was the one who had executed his father, and who had replaced him, as a stepfather. The efreet had refused one of Erida’s strongest wishes, which had been for him to assume some completely human guise and background, and she had to admit now, that that was probably for the best. Trying to create an entire backstory for him, with credentials and people who ‘remembered’ him, would have, in time, unraveled. Sometimes, honesty was simply easier.

  So while Illa’zhi had been the boy’s stepfather since the age of eight, there were constants in the universe, and one of them was that young men and their fathers argued and pushed one another. That Illa’zhi was a powerful personality, much used to control and authority was clear, and moving Athim out of the house had seemed a very good idea, five years ago, when he’d entered into adolescence. Not to mention all the advantages it had provided as a cover for moving the library of the Magi to a safer, more secure location. “Next year,” she offered Athim now, calmly, “you’ll have entered into your majority. This was your father’s house. I’ll sign the deed over to you, and Zhi and I and your sisters and brother will move to a new home. You’ll have full access to your inheritance at that point, as well, so you should be able to maintain the house and staff adequately, even though I expect that you will be attending the College of the Magi. Or, alternately, the University of Athens, or even the University of Jerusalem.”

  “Jerusalem would be better, in terms of continuing to move the library there, though, wouldn’t it?” Athim had been instructed, since a young age, in the grim political realities of their world. Personal preferences didn’t often enter into decision-making, not at the level of power at which most Magi lived and worked. Or god-born, for that matter.

  “It would make it easier, yes. I am attempting to give some of the decision-making to you now, however.” Erida lifted her eyebrows. “The only way to learn to make good decisions, is to make them, and see if they have good results, or bad ones.”

  He tipped his head to the side, regarding her. His dark eyes were calm and steady, and he looked around her study for a moment, at the hundreds of books she still needed to move out of this house. “I would just shut the house up, Mother, and not use it at all. Keep it until I’m done with my work at the university. We can work out an arrangement by which you rent it from me.” He grinned at her, and Erida feigned shock, and then laughed.

  “That’s my wise son. Nothing for nothing, indeed.” She touched his hair very lightly, and they went off in search of the rest of the family.

  Illa’zhi had surprised her, repeatedly, through the years. And she was reminded, daily, of the summoner’s truism, that spirits were influenced by the humans to whom they were bound, and that their humans were influenced in turn. She’d periodically raged at the spirit, in the first five years, that there were things one did not do with power. Oh, most Magi weren’t averse to . . . subtlety. Dealing with problems quietly, and in ways that didn’t attract attention. But, for example, magical assassinations were discouraged, and had been for centuries, largely because if you did it, your enemies would do it, too. Kings, satraps, and emperors had thus discouraged this, in the same way that they discouraged poison. They prepared defenses against it, and the universal condemnation that accrued to anyone who resorted to it (and was caught) was a powerful deterrent. It was difficult to be a modern nation if no one would trade with you or sign treaties with you. It was difficult to bargain in good faith, when one had no history of good faith to offer.

  And so, Erida had periodically served as a check to the efreet’s lethal power. She’d seen, gradually, in that first five years, changes in his demeanor. He’d always been a stickler for the letter of a contract; that remained unchanged. However, his first response to a situation had ceased to be kill that which opposes us, through constructive use of fire. Now, he tended to consider what she had to say about ramifications first.

  And, though she’d been slower to realize it, she had also found changes in herself. She’d always regarded herself as cool and aloof and largely indifferent to many things. Most of that had been an inculcated attitude, forced upon her by her training, her upbringing, and her position. Soul-bound to the efreet . . . she’d discovered fire inside of herself. Passion, and not just in bed, although that was delicious. Passion for causes. For the project of defending the Magi’s treasure trove of scrolls and books and relics. Passion for protecting her people—something that had always been a duty, but that was now . . . a reason for existing.

  Illa’zhi had surprised her again, when their first child, Zaya, was born. As the girl was perfectly human in every respect. Erida had expected the efreet to be disappointed. He had seemed a little confused—certainly, all of ‘Asha’ and Trennus’ children were half-spirit . . . but he’d taken an entirely human form the night they’d conceived their daughter. He hadn’t put a hand to the soul-bond at all, in all their loving, and that, they’d determined with their son, Zafir, and their second daughter, Nisane, had been the issue. He hadn’t wanted to . . . compel, even though Erida had been perfectly willing to make the attempt to have a family with him. And while he’d been in his smoke-like semi-human state as he’d held her hand all through labor, as he’d taken the child in his arms for the first time, Erida had been able to read flickers of . . . awe . . . in her spirit-lover. I made this. No . . . we made this. He’d looked up at her, and the conf
usion had rung even more loudly in her head. I have never created anything before. I am a spirit of destruction. I . . . did not even think that we would succeed, until now, in even this much.

  “You’ve had nine months to get used to the thought,” she’d told him, tiredly.

  Yes, but she was not . . . truly real. Not until now. He’d looked down at the small, red, squished face, and calmly added, You have a Name. Fireflower.

  Here in the privacy of the house, out of sight of prying eyes, and behind the most elaborate wards a powerful efreet and a high-ranking magus could manage, Illa’zhi played with their children in the gardens, and Erida smiled at the sight as Zaya ran to her father, who lifted her up into his arms . . . and then carried the shrieking, laughing five-year-old up to the roof of the house as he assumed his whirlwind form, gently tossing her and swirling her in a circle. “Down, down, down, Papa!” immediately became “Do it again, do it again!” as her toes touched the grass.