Records of this period are rare, and even when found, difficult to translate. In many cases, they are contradictory. Some records suggest that namtar-demons—creatures like the lilitu that may have birthed Sargon in the desert, unstoppable and invincible—fought at the king’s side as he sacked the temples. Some records suggest that the namtar-demons were already engaged in a conflict with the gods, which had resulted in the famines . . . and when the king attacked the temples, he fought gods already locked in struggle.
Thus it is arguable if Naram-Sin, sometimes called “the first godslayer,” deserves this epithet. It is unknown if he killed any of the gods of Sumer by his own hand. He may have sacked their temples and destroyed the idols to which they were bound, but whether the gods fell as a result of his actions, or at the hands of the namtar-demons is unclear. Regardless of the proximate cause, many of the gods of Akkad and Sumer were now dead, or at least, dispersed. The compact between the gods and the line of kings was severed by Naram-Sin’s pride and vanity. The fields failed to ripen, and within three generations, the mighty empire of Akkad, was no more. Sumer rose to ascendancy once again. A few of the gods had been left alive, such as Ishtar, mother of the Akkadian line. Marduk and Ninutra’s worship increased, as hers did; there were no other gods for their people to follow.
By the time of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur (Nebuchadnezzar), ca. 1170–1147 BAC (before the ascent of Caesar), unrest had become widespread once more, as invading Elamites attacked. One record, the Enmeduranki legend, suggests that the Elamite invasion, led by KingḪulteludiš-Inšušinak, was a punishment for previous failings of the kings of Sumer and their people:
“In the reign of a previous king . . . good departed and evil was regular. The lord . . . gave the command, and the gods of the land abandoned it . . . . Evil demons filled the land, the namtar-demons [Fragment missing] penetrated the temples. The land diminished, its fortunes changed. The wicked Elamite . . . [Fragment missing] His attack was swift. He devastated the habitations, he made them into a ruin, he carried off the gods, he ruined the shrines.”
We take this as evidence to help substantiate an otherwise spotty historical record, which suggests thatḪulteludiš-Inšušinak attacked Sumer at around this point in time, with or without the assistance of early magi, who may have summoned demons to assist him. He was certainly pre-occupied with destroying the temples, like Naram-Sin before him, and apparentlymelted down the idols for their precious materials. AndḪulteludiš-Inšušinak is considered by most chroniclers to be the ‘second’ godslayer . . . though there were few gods left for him to slay.
That the namtar-demons reappear, sometimes called godslayers in the ancient texts, is intriguing. They appear to be self-willed spirits, not allies of the Elamite king, who was also engaged in destroying temples at the time. They appeared. They slew. They vanished again . . . and after this time, do not appear again in the Sumerian or Babylonian historical record. The few physical descriptions that remain suggest that they varied in height, and were made of flame, stone, ice, air, or metal. A modern student of magic may scoff that these sound like simple elemental spirits . . . which an honest commentator must admit that they might well have been. There were few summoners in those times who were not priests or kings. The ability to beseech the gods or spirits for favors was not a prerequisite for rule, but it helped, much in the way that having technological innovations such as sharper, stronger swords helped these kings overcome their enemies. Someone who could unleash a handful of spirits could decimate an army and overthrow a kingdom.
However, it is clear that these were no simple spirits. They overcame gods, not just men, and their presence wrought destruction wherever they went. Whatever secret the ancients possessed to summon such fell creatures is lost, and best so. For if they had the power to destroy gods, then they had the power to destroy the whole world.
—Bailos Aiskhulos, Legends of the Godslayers. University of Athens Press, 1945 AC.
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Iunius 2, 1954 AC
Trennus?
It was a whisper in his mind. The man’s eyes snapped open, instantly, and he rolled up to an elbow in bed, reaching for the two amulets on leather cords around his neck. One of them was warm to the touch. Yes, Lassair? What’s wrong?
He used the spirit’s Name silently, and with infinite care and gentleness. She was a delicate thing, and misusing her Name could damage her further than she already had been. Names were power, as he’d tried to explain to Adam ben Maor months ago. Names—true Names, anyway—defined a spirit or a person. By naming something, you circumscribed it. Limited it. In a way, it would be freeing to be without a name. Then, you would be . . . undefined. But you would also lack the power that a Name brought. And if you twisted someone’s Name, or re-defined them, you could alter their very reality.
He’d seen the rituals in grimoires he wasn’t technically supposed to have. But knowledge shouldn’t be blotted out. Efface something, and it had a tendency to be re-discovered, a generation or two later. A page or two from a lost book would re-surface, or some researcher would build along the same paths of thought laid down in perfectly innocent books. No, the only real solution was to ensure that the people who had the knowledge also had the ethics, understanding, and self-control not to use it . . . without a damned good reason.
White light poured between his fingers from the amulet, turning his fingers ruddy as the light shone through his flesh and the spirit manifested. Feebly, because Lassair had been under his protection for only a year or so. The amulet was a convenience for her, really—a conduit. It helped her manifest more easily. Your friends are outside. You asked me to awaken you when they were near. Her mental voice was as light and sweet as a carillon’s notes, carried on the wind.
How close?
She didn’t answer in words; for a moment, Trennus felt disoriented as his perceptions stretched. Suddenly, he could see through the walls of the hotel, though not with his physical eyes. And he immediately spotted his fellow lictors—not their physical forms, but their spirits. Shining, silver steel for ben Maor . . . . and a figure comprised of the blue-white light of a levinbolt, sheathed inside a gray storm cloud. Sigrun. Damn. You should have woken me earlier. Trennus kept the thought gentle, and stood, kicking the sheets away and grabbing his clothes.
You needed to rest, Lassair told him, calmly. You were awake all night, guarding the man to whom you are bound for now, and will doubtless be awake again all of tonight. I care for you, as you care for me.
Spirits had a hard time with names that weren’t Names. Names that were just pretty sounds were meaningless to them. Lassair as a Name, for example, actually meant flame in one of the ancestral languages that had given rise to Pictish and Gallic. There were legends, minor ones, admittedly, among his people about a spirit with a similar name . . . Lasair. He wasn’t sure if she was that Lasair, the spirit of flame and growing plants and harvesting crops. There was no difference in the sound of the names, and spelling was just . . . orthography. Idiosyncratic in any language. But that being said, her name meant something. He’d tried to tell her what his given names meant. For instance, Trennus meant strong, and Matrugena meant good bear, amusingly enough. And surprisingly, she’d managed to hold onto that. But it wasn’t his Name. Trennus wasn’t sure he’d ever know what his truename was. It sometimes took years of dedicated study and meditation to learn it . . . but once you did learn it, you could offer it to a spirit for a stronger pact. Of course, doing so was dangerous. It required a great deal of trust.
Trennus shook his maunderings away. “I’m being mothered by a spirit,” he muttered out loud, and pulled a shirt on over his head, before looking at his trousers in distaste. In the interests of at least attempting to blend in a little better with Rome’s population, and now, with the population of Tenochtitlan, he had traded in his kilt for a pair of slacks in soft-woven cotton, and was doing his best, as the days on duty as Livorus’ lictor passed, to get used to the way the damned things f
elt. They made it difficult to bend his legs and their tendency to ride up . . . everywhere . . . was truly annoying. He was of the opinion that trying to look ordinary was probably a lost cause; he stood a head and a half taller than most residents of Rome and Tenochtitlan, with the exception of other ‘barbarians.’ Nothing would induce him to cut his hair, worn loose with thin braids to keep it out of his face. And wearing long sleeves in the heat of a Nahautl summer to cover his tribal markings was not the most enjoyable experience of his life. Back home, he’d run through the woods in snow up to his knees with no more on than his boots, socks, kilt, and a wool shirt, maybe with his plaid draped over his shoulders if it happened to be actively snowing. The heat here in the Nahautl capital was . . . enervating. How close are they now?
Just outside the building. Stormborn’s spirit is always very easy for me to see approaching.
Trennus grinned. Lassair was like a cheat-sheet to life’s little mysteries sometimes. She’d immediately whispered to him that Sigrun was god-born, on first meeting the woman. He hadn’t been sure that the spirit had the right of it, so he’d still been a little surprised when Caetia had admitted to it . . . but it was a good confirmation that Lassair could pick out strong, powerful human spirits, even if they were bound to gods. While Sigrun had provided a dry, factual overview of her abilities in that meeting, no details had been provided until they’d all gone out in the field together to practice team tactics. Ben Maor had asked Kanmi to illustrate some of his abilities, and the Carthaginian had noted that he could hover off of the ground, by means of manipulating gravity fields around his body, but rated this one of the hardest things he’d ever learned to do.
And then the sorcerer and technomancer had looked up in time to see Sigrun, who’d been three hundred feet away—well out of earshot, in other words—lift off the ground in effortless flight.
Kanmi had dropped back to the ground and sworn under his breath. Fortunately, he’d only been about three feet off of it. “All right. I don’t know whether to complain that that is not fair, or whether to accuse her of showing off.” He shook his head, mild irritation crossing his face. “Seriously, what the fuck is she doing guarding a propraetor? Don’t the god-born have better things to do, like noting down when sparrows fall and telling people what to do?”
Trennus had caught the expression that had crossed ben Maor’s face then—mild annoyance, quickly masked. “To be honest, I don’t know why she’s chosen to serve Rome. I think she sees it as another way of serving her people, and her god. Past that, I’ve respected her privacy on that count.” His words held a hint of a suggestion there; clearly, he expected them to follow his lead on that matter. But Kanmi wasn’t the sort to follow anyone’s lead, unless it was a matter of a direct order. And even then, the sorcerer tended to like to know why an order had been given. Trennus frankly wondered how the man had ever gotten through four years of military service on the border with Mongolia, but there was no denying that Kanmi knew what he was doing, as far as magic went. On the other hand, Kanmi had edges, and reacted oddly to some of the most mundane things. Trennus regarded him as a puzzle.
Back in the here and now, Trennus finished getting dressed, and headed down to the hotel’s lobby, feeling Lassair’s invisible presence following him. His other spirit, Saraid, was quiescent, for the moment; she usually only appeared when called, or when she sensed danger to him. She mainly appeared as a white hind, but could adopt stag form, as well.
He felt the elevator’s sway in the pit of his stomach, and wished he’d taken the stairs. Trennus was always just happier when he was in touch with the ground. Finally, the brass diamond mesh of the antique elevator cage opened before him as the lift reached the ground floor, and Trennus stepped out into the lobby, eyes automatically canvassing the area. Like much of the rest of Tenochtitlan, this hotel showed cultural synthesis on almost every level. There were Roman-style pillars all through the large, open room, supporting the ceiling without blocking off eye-lines, but the floors were brown tile, and the walls were plaster over adobe brick, and painted with vivid, almost garish colors, and in a style he’d never seen before coming to this part of the world.
One entire wall was covered with a circle filled with geometric, winding shapes, centered around a mask-like face. He’d been told this was a calendar, but he couldn’t read it. The rest of the images in the murals were of . . . people in their daily lives, really. Going to offices, shopping in markets, working in fields, repairing motorcar engines . . . whatever the artist had felt like showing. They were depicted in their native costumes, down to feathered headdresses. That was, he suspected, something of a artist’s joke; he’d seen plenty of people working machine shops in coveralls, maybe with jade earrings, or stripped down to loincloths to work in fields, but he’d yet to see anyone wearing feathers on anything but formal occasions down here.
He’d been to a couple of temples so far here, and sometimes the local gods and goddesses, like Quetzalcoatl or Coatlicue or . . . a whole host of names that Trennus found completely unpronounceable . . . were depicted in Roman fashion, in three-dimensional, free-standing statues, with the ideal body proportions promulgated by centuries of classical Hellenism, but still with their native garb and accoutrements, including headdresses and earrings. In some temples, he’d seen Roman gods depicted in the Nahautl style, with heavy masks, skull-like visages, and claws.
Propraetor Livorus had shaken his head over those. In pure amusement, Trennus thought.
Trennus put his back against one of the brightly-painted walls, standing between two planters filled with jade-green jungle plants, and waited. Half a minute later, ben Maor and Sigrun entered the lobby through the revolving glass door, and immediately spotted him. “You’re going to have to tell us how you always know we’re coming,” Adam told him. The Judean man, Trennus thought, still was uneasy with him; the brown eyes were perpetually wary.
“Oh, I could,” Trennus told him, lightly. “But then I’d lose my mystique.” He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose as Sigrun chuckled, and noted that ben Maor hadn’t smiled. Trennus sighed. “Very well. One of my bound spirits recognizes you two and Kanmi very well by now. She lets me know when you’re around.” He grinned as ben Maor shifted slightly, clearly uncomfortable. “She even has names for you.”
Sigrun looked around, as if the god-born woman expected to see the spirit. Perhaps she could, but Lassair was keeping tucked out of sight. “Do I want to know what she calls us?” ben Maor asked.
“Nothing rude,” Trennus told him, lowering his voice. “You’re Steelsoul. Sigrun here is Stormborn. Kanmi is Emberstone. The propraetor doesn’t have a name yet.”
Adam blinked at that, shook his head, and muttered, “I’m not sure whether to be complimented or disturbed.”
Trennus chuckled. “Oh, complimented. I’m not sure if these are your Names, or if she’s just picked nicknames for you. On the off-chance that she’s pulled your truenames? I wouldn’t noise them about. Just in case.”
”I’ll take the same care with the name as I do with blood samples,” Sigrun told him, nodding. “It’s not wise to give anyone any sort of a hold on you.”
Trennus nodded. It was a pleasure working with her and Kanmi; they understood where he was coming from. Adam’s lack of understanding of even the basic rules of magic was disconcerting. Most people at least understood the concept of keeping a house-spirit happy. Leave out some bread and milk once a week, and the spirit would usually do small jobs, like dusting or keeping the drains clean. Having glanced at Sigrun, however, his attention was now held. She wore her usual black leather bodice top, laced comfortably, but for once, there was a black evening dress underneath, with slightly dressier boots than usual. “What’s the occasion, æðelinga?” He liked calling her noble lady. It was a gesture of respect that cost him nothing, made her chuckle, and, for whatever reason, seemed to make Adam twitch a bit.
Sigrun grimaced. “The propraetor’s brainstorm. He doesn’t want anyone he
re to know what I am, for as long as we can keep it under wraps. He has a distaste for putting every card he has on the table for all to see that’s almost reflexive.”
“We’ve been here for weeks,” Trennus felt compelled to point out.
“Tonight is the first night that we’re doing something in the public eye.” She sighed. “So, the plan tonight is, we need to look like a strong force around Livorus, but at the same time, he wants to distract anyone watching from what our strengths actually are . . . and in between confusing any observers as to what my actual role is—” her voice turned even glummer, “he seems to think that I might be able to distract observers from watching the four of you.”
“Four of us?” Trennus asked, immediately.
“We’re getting Ehecatl Itztli back tonight. Thank god,” Adam said. “He’s been out on disability for a bit. But the more eyes, the better. Come on. Walk and talk.”
Trennus trailed along behind them, out into the nightscape of the city of Tenochtitlan. He wasn’t sure about having another team member; they were only just beginning to gel, in terms of their chemistry. “He’s Nahautl?”
“Yes, born and raised. He knows the language and the people. He’ll be in the propraetor’s box to keep Livorus advised of all the things the diplomats here might not have briefed him on.” Adam shook his head. Trennus had noticed that while Adam was a skilled negotiator, himself, he had the career military’s faint distaste for diplomats.
The local Praetorians had provided them a black Epibintores VII with bullet-proof glass, and it was waiting at curb. A valet had brought it around for them, which meant that they would need to check it for listening devices. Before they climbed in, however, Trennus frowned, and glanced at Sigrun. “You said something about your role?” Trennus asked, and then suddenly got it as he caught ben Maor’s grim look.
“Yes. He seems to think almost everyone here will see a pretty young thing on his arm and assume she’s his lictor in name only.” Adam’s voice was curt. “I’m not in favor of this plan, but the propraetor proposes, and we dispose.” He gestured towards the door. “Come on. All of us are on tonight.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 21
