“You see, I didn’t realize you had one, ben Maor. I thought you were just a summoner’s construct. Someone in a darkened room says your Name, and you appear in a flash of light and a swirl of iron duty.”
Ehecatl and Trennus both laughed at that, and Adam gave Kanmi a look, before laughing himself, if reluctantly. It was really the only way to deal with the sorcerer. If you reacted in any other way, he’d lead you into a maze made entirely of edged words, and you’d cut yourself open trying to fight your way out.
This elevator deposited them on what was, apparently, a training floor, and they passed an enclosure with a one-way window that allowed them to look in on groups of young people being trained in hand-to-hand, spear, and sword combat. Half were men, half were women; the men were all around the same size as Brandr, and they were all cross-training with one another. And they all seemed to be going at full strength and full contact, though with wooden training weapons, thankfully. Adam winced as one of the young men was thrown into a wall and bounced off. The young man regained his feet, shook his head, and started to foam at the mouth, before charging back at the trainer who’d thrown him, tackling the older, more scarred bear-warrior. “Battle-madness,” Sigrun noted, clinically. “Male god-born are known for it, among my people. Part of their training here consists of learning how to restrain it. It’s not always an advantage to lose your mind in battle.” She gave them all a sidelong smile. “Just think what this team would be like, with a god-born of Thor on it, rather than me.”
Adam grimaced. Sigrun’s tactics tended to be straight-forward and direct, and she met force with force, words with words, but she never lost her head. The night in Ponca when the Atenist had insulted her was the closest he’d ever seen her come to losing her temper . . . and even then, her response had been highly measured. He wasn’t sure he could work with a bear-warrior, especially one prone to uncontrolled rages. That seemed as if it could hinder a team as much as help.
As they watched, the instructors managed to pin the huge young man, and simply held him to the floor; the fact that it took three other massive bear-warriors to do so was perhaps the most frightening part. Then they simply rode out the rage, while the other students continued to work around them. “You trained with three bear-warriors? For four years?” Trennus said, staring as one of the men on the other side of the glass picked up and threw one of the women, who barely managed to turn the attack into a roll in time.
“Some things never change,” Sigrun replied, gesturing at the four men around her with a little quirk of her lips.
Trennus snorted a little, and passed a hand over his braids. “I was just about to say . . . no wonder you have so many, ah . . . .” he hesitated uncertainly.
“Scars?” Sigrun shrugged. “As they say, whatever fails to kill you, makes you stronger.” She put a hand on the window, and stared through at the practice room for a moment. “I had a good deal of practice in becoming strong here, yes.” She shrugged again and turned away, leading them onwards.
One more elevator, and now they were on the sixty-fifth floor. The elevator opened into a space that was completely open, pristinely white, and seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, as if there were no internal walls, and they had exited the elevator into an entirely different plane of existence. It was lit, from above, as if there were a small sun inside the building.
Adam shielded his eyes, blinking rapidly, and could not make himself step forward, at first. “It’s all right,” Sigrun told them all, her voice gentle. “You can step out. You probably won’t be permitted beyond here, though.” She moved out ahead of them, and then took each of their hands, in turn, as they all winced at the brightness of the light, and set foot on a reassuringly real and solid floor. Adam peered down, and saw, faintly, tile lines under his feet. That, too, was somewhat reassuring. They hadn’t actually taken a wrong turn and wound up in Valhalla, at least.
When he looked up again, however, the white, limitless space had vanished, and he hovered somewhere in a galaxy completely filled with stars. He was part of the darkness outside the Milky Way, watching the limitless points of light burn in front of him. And then he began to fall forwards, into and through it, seeing clouds of nebular gas whip past his face. Planets, thousands of them, each with their own moons, atmospheres, mountains, volcanoes . . . some with rings, like Saturn’s, some gas giants so close to their suns that lines of fire poured between them and their star. “Everyone sees the room differently,” Sigrun’s voice told them all. “It’s a little overwhelming the first time. Come on. Take normal steps. You’ll find your path.”
How? How am I supposed to walk when I’m . . . ahh. All right, I’m not so much stepping, as . . . directing myself in space . . . Adam squinted. He could see the others now, all drifting with him through the starfield. Trennus was looking around with every evidence of delight. Kanmi’s expression was speculative, and Ehecatl had dropped to a crouch, and now stared around himself with mild suspicion. Sigrun didn’t walk here, Adam noticed, so much as she . . . hovered.
There was a shape in the distance, in the next globular cluster of stars, which, as Sigrun lead them towards it, resolved into a desk. Behind that desk, bathed in the light of a half-dozen newborn and furious stars, was a man half Adam’s height, scratching carefully at a large book with a goose-quill pen. His face was wizened by age, and his long white hair and beard caught periodically on the pen, making him stop and mutter irritably. “Dvalin,” Sigrun whispered, her tone deeply respectful, then spoke in quick, sharp Cimbric.
Yes, yes. You’re expected. The words seemed to be in absent-minded Latin, but the lips behind the beard didn’t move, and the glowing blue gaze that the creature raised from the papers in front of him were anything but thoughtless. Adam felt the others all shift a little, and he was finally starting to understand why Sigrun had laughed when they’d insisted on accompanying her.
She wasn’t facing review from any earthly authority for having participated in the death of a god. She was facing her own gods.
Adam turned and looked at Trennus and Kanmi. “Having waited and gone to Praetorian headquarters,” Kanmi muttered, “is starting to sound like a wonderful idea that I should have pursued.”
“At least,” Adam murmured, softly, “it’ll be over with quickly if they decide to drop us out a window for our temerity.”
Trennus, for his part, was looking around with an abstracted expression, smiling a little, as if he could see things that the others couldn’t. “It’s beautiful here,” he finally said.
“Beautiful, but dangerous,” Ehecatl told them, still watching his surroundings. “You have to be careful in a place like this. You never know what’s really behind the next tangle of vines.”
What do they all see? Adam wondered, for an instant.
Sigrun. Daughter. Come to me. It is time.
Adam’s head rocked back, and he stared as a figure appeared beside the desk. The voice was neither harsh, nor severe; but merely calm, as was the face of the man now standing there. He was even taller than the bear-warriors downstairs, with flaxen hair, still bound back in the same style of braid. But where the others downstairs lumbered, this man bore himself as lightly as a candle flame. As if his feet did not quite touch the floor. Adam didn’t quite dare to meet the eyes, and never could quite remember what the face looked like, afterwards, but he had an impression of storm-touched steel. Electric blue.
And the god . . . for a god it was . . . was no more locked in the past than the rest of the Odinhall. For while he carried a spear in one hand that held all the fires of a levinbolt, he wore no armor or furs, but a simple pair of gray leather pants, a white shirt, and a gray cloak . . . but with a golden brooch and buckles. And while he leaned on that glowing spear in one hand, the other hand had what surely looked like a modern wristwatch on it, if one crafted of soft, pure gold.
This was not Tlaloc, a god that had been damaged by the fading belief of his followers even before he had been bargained with and bound,
his powered siphoned off to provide power for people’s . . . .washing machines and motorcars and whatever else ley-power was normally used for. This was Tyr, Adam understood, suddenly. The Gothic god of justice, duty, honor, and loyalty. A god rich with the belief of millions behind him.
Your friends love you much, daughter of my line, Tyr said, unexpectedly, that they would come so far for you. Would dare so much. Know, humans, that though you are none of mine, I honor you for your loyalty. And I say to you that it has not been given in vain. Though you may not go to your valkyrie’s trial, understand that I know what is in your hearts . . . and your testimony will be weighed, as if you had spoken it, in truth.
Part III: Wounds
Eurasia in 1955 AC.
Middle East in 1955 AC.
Chapter X: Preparations
The history of what is now the Persian Empire is a tangled and contentious one, in which Rome, Hellas, Judea, and Egypt have all played their parts. Sumerian Ur was supplanted by Akkadian Babylon . . . and Babylon was conquered, repeatedly, by various tribes. The Elamites, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans all contended with the native Babylonians for rule, but in the main, these were tribes whose gods had been slain in or around 1100 BAC. A few gods remained, of course, but the loss of entire pantheons had a keen effect on the people of the area.
The Chaldeans, who, during their short-lived hold on Babylon, ruled as far west as Tyre, Megiddo, and Jerusalem, achieved dominance by allying with another kingdom, the Medes. By the time of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldeans had a firm grip on the region, and they did it almost entirely by virtue of their magi.* The Chaldeans had almost no god-born; few, if any, had been born in the region since the godslayings. They had, as a result, developed different methods of accomplishing the same results: the Magi. The Chaldean Magi were astronomers, natural philosophers, alchemists, sorcerers, and summoners. Nebuchadnezzar II himself was a notable magus, and, it is said, designed the Hanging Gardens himself. He was also noted for having prophetic dreams about the fall of his empire. Prophecy is usually the hallmark of the god-born, but in this case, it is widely presumed that Nebuchadnezzar’s attendant spirits brought him these intimations, which were interpreted by one of his Israelite servants, a man named Daniel.
After the fall of the Chaldean Empire, the Chaldeans were subsumed into the general population of Babylon, but remained particularly noted as sorcerers and summoners. Their magi became an entire caste of sorcerers, summoners, and philosophers who served the later rulers of the region, in particular the Achaemenid Persian kings, such as Darius, Cyrus, and Xerxes. This is the origin of the scholastic organization and intertwined family lineages known today as the Magi.
Now, the Achaemenid kings were followers of Zoroaster, and while Hellenic writers, and even Roman authors, such as Pliny, misunderstanding the region and its history, called Zoroaster the first inventor of magic, modern scholarship indicates that this is definitely not the case. All archaeological evidence indicates that much of the magic that was not tied specifically to a god—sorcery, in essence—was largely an invention of the Chaldeans. Ley-magic was independently discovered in the lands of the Gauls. And summoning has been used in almost every culture, since before each civilization developed writing; it is clearly attested in the legends of Sargon of Akkad, for example.
No, Zoroaster was almost without question a god-born; however, followers of his philosophy do not believe that their creator god, Ahura Mazda, manifests in any material way on Earth. They believe that he is all that is good, and no evil originates with him, and that he has servant spirits and lesser gods that do his bidding and interact with mankind. This is, in many ways, similar to the modern beliefs of Atenists, reflecting a contemporary feeling that there must be a larger, greater, more mysterious force of creation behind the gods that we know here on earth.
The Achaemenid Persian kings swept westward, conquering and holding much of what we call Persia to this day; the Chaldeans, Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, and Medes all became subject kingdoms under their boot. They found the subtleties of sorcery and summoning as the Chaldeans understood them to be highly useful and effective, and employed the Magi heavily in battle. They required spirits to rampage through enemy lines, and ordered the summoners to bind spirits into the bodies of their most trusted men. Ten thousand men were so bound: the honor guard of the Achaemenid kings. They had, before this point, been called the Anûšiya, or companions of the king. Once the Chaldeans bound spirits to each man, however, they were called the Anauša, or the Immortals, for the Hellenes who fought them swore that they could not be killed. An arrow or a spear or a sword, alone, was not enough. Unless the body was beheaded, or the heart cleft in twain, the Immortal in question simply pulled the offending weapon from his body and went on fighting. That the fabled band of three hundred Spartans under the command of Leonides held off the Immortals for as long as they did is a testament to the carefully-chosen strategic location of Thermopylae, as well as to the skill of the Spartan warriors. Still, there was only one way in which such a lopsided battle could end: with the massacre of the Spartan soldiers.
Herodotus writes, however, that the Magi warned Xerxes that the spirits were growing restive, and demanding better bargains, refusing to keep the bodies of the men alive in this fashion. Such heavy magics require vast amounts of energy, and the strain on the minds and bodies of the Immortals themselves must have been fearsome. (See Chapter 15: The Modern Immortals, for details on how the Magi eventually overcame these technomantic problems.)
The Achaemenid forces met the disparate city-states of Hellas, and clashed in repeated battles that shaped the very course of world history. Some Hellene city-states paid the Persians tribute for generations, and others remained unconquered. This period of cross-cultural fertilization is, most sources agree, the origin of Hellenic sorcery, as the natural philosophers of Hellas examined and systematized Chaldean-origin mysticism.
This lasted, of course, until Alexander of Macedon amassed his armies and pushed eastward, defeating the Persians under Darius III, the last Achaemenid king. According to classical sources, Darius retreated repeatedly, and Bessus, a satrap and relative of Darius’, slew his own king and assumed command of the scattered remnants of the Persian forces, in a last, futile effort to save his people from Alexander’s armies. Alexander captured, tortured, and executed Bessus. Another of Darius III’s generals, in an effort to appease Alexander, gave the Macedonian emperor Bagoas, the eunuch who had been Darius’ favored catamite. Alexander apparently received the gift with great favor, and bestowed upon Bagoas the title of Beloved.
While Alexander was the single greatest commander of military forces in human history, there is considerable debate in the scholarly realm as to whether or not he was god-born. There was extensive propaganda that surrounded his birth—his mother claimed to have dreamed that her womb was struck by lightning, for example, while she was carrying him. And he later claimed descent from Heracles and Perseus—Heracles, who ascended to godhood, and Perseus, who remained a god-born until his own death. No great powers are, however, attributed to Alexander. Rivers did not still themselves at his approach. The heavens did not split themselves asunder with lightning at his command. And he died at the age of thirty-two, either of poison or disease . . . two things to which most god-born seem largely immune. In the end, his amazing success as a general is not diminished, but made the greater by his mortality.
Alexander’s tragic and youthful death left his generals to carve up his empire, and gave rise to the Seleucid kings of Persia, who all claimed descent from Seleucus I Nicator, and their lands, at the height of their power in 300 BAC, reached as far west as Asia Minor, parts of Syria, and parts of what is, today, modern Judea. The Seleucids, descendants of Alexander’s generals, promoted a Hellenistic culture, but sorcery remained common in their empire—far more so than in Hellas. Indeed, many of the Seleucid kings were competent sorcerers and summoners in their own right. They fought vigorously with sister kingdoms, such a
s the Ptolemaic Pharaohs, some of whom had god-born might from intermarriage with the Egyptian line of kings . . . but in the era of Antiochus IV, in 216 BAC, the Seleucids drove the Egyptians back into Alexandria itself.
This brought Proconsul Gaius Popillius Laenas into the fight, in an effort to negotiate an end to the conflict that threatened Rome’s grain supply in Egypt. It is said that when the Proconsul met with Antiochus, the king held out his hand in friendship, and the Proconsul, rather than accepting it, placed into his hand tablets that held Rome’s demands. When the king replied that he would read them at his leisure and consult with his court about them, the Proconsul drew a circle around the king’s feet and demanded an answer.
The king accepted the demands of Rome, and retreated, never to attack Egypt again. Scholars of the mystic arts will clearly recognize what the Proconsul did; he drew a binding circle around the king, and cut him off from his attendant spirits. He may even have threatened to remove their binding links and cut Antiochus off permanently from the spirit realm. Remarkably, Gaius Popillius Laenas is noted in the Senatorial records of the era as that rarest of things at the time: a patrician who understood summoning. Also, Antiochus clearly saw the prudence in avoiding further conflict with Rome. Instead, he preoccupied himself with attempting to Hellenize Judea, and requiring the Judeans to worship Hellene gods. These heavy-handed practices resulted in the Maccabean Revolt. Today in Judea, the rededication of the Temple after the revolt is still celebrated as Hanukkah. By 187 BAC, Judea had fully established its independence from Persia.
The following centuries were marked by instability, civil war, attacks by the Parthian king Mithridates, and the establishment of Roman client states in the region. Pompey, in particular, attempted to create stable governance in the region, and finally did away with the Seleucid line. Armenia and Judea were permitted to continue under their existing kings, but Pompey established Syria as a Roman province, including coastal areas as far distant as Tyre.
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 48
