The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1)

by Deborah Davitt

  Several phone calls later, Camulorix was upset because he couldn’t reach his youngest daughter—a woman in her late forties or early fifties, apparently. “I seem to recall her daughter is pregnant.” The professor frowned over his contact book. “If everyone’s in as much danger as you think . . . .”

  “We’ll put in a call to the local gardia and see if they can confirm her location,” Trennus said, soothingly, and finally got the old man to lie down on one of the couches, before tossing a blanket lightly at Minori. “Make yourselves comfortable. We’re apparently getting directions from Rome in the morning. The propraetor’s on a plane somewhere right now.”

  Somewhere was actually Raccia, Kanmi knew. Qin had, in the past month, abandoned neutrality in favor of attacking Mongol lands in the east. With the Mongols pinned down in the west, fighting Rome along the Caspian, it was a perfect time for Qin to expand its territory . . . something that made Raccia very, very nervous. The politics of it all made Kanmi’s head hurt, but there was no way around it. They lived in the world in which they lived. And he figured that it could be much worse than it already was.

  Having so many wards and guards, Kanmi and Trennus had opted to only stand partial watches. And around two antemeridian, when Trennus was in the bathroom, Professor Camulorix apparently got up and left the hotel room, opening the door, which was keyed to his hand, and walked out without an alarm sounding. Trennus discovered that fact about ten minutes later, and woke everyone in the suite up with his swearing. “No,” Kanmi told him, sharply, as the big Pict started for the door. “We’re not going to all run out there after him. Contact the local gardia and let them do their jobs. Security only works if everyone stays inside of it.” He rubbed at his face.

  “I can send spirits out—”

  “You have anything of his that they can key on? Hair? Blood? Clothing?”

  Trennus dropped down to examine the couch. “No hairs that I can detect. Damnit. Maybe his books?”

  “Are they personal enough?” That was a big question with spirit tracking.

  “Maybe. The words written in his own hand . . . perhaps.” Trennus sounded dubious, however. “Worth a try.”

  None of them got any sleep after that. Trennus’ various water and air spirits wafted out, and came back with little to report. One of them said only, Dark place. No light. No life . . . and Kanmi watched Dr. Sasaki’s face crumple at the words. “Can’t you do something?” she demanded.

  “Like what?” he shot back. “Run out into the dark, no idea which way he went—”

  “Probably to his daughter’s house—”

  “Right, so we’re going to leave you here unprotected, or split our forces, or haul you and all of your notes with us.” Kanmi shook his head. “No. We forted up. We stay in the fort till dawn.”

  The Lutetian gardia got back to them at six postmeridian, when Camulorix’s daughter called them to report that when she’d gotten back to her house, it had clearly been broken into. Shattered front windows, opened front door . . . and her father in a crumpled heap on the floor.

  No blood, the gardia reported, but an odd, rancid odor, as of burned flesh. No burns on the body, at least, not visible ones. A full autopsy would be conducted, because Camulorix’s keys were in his pockets. And there was little physical evidence at the scene, besides the body itself. Kanmi shook his head, and thanked the lieutenant on the other end of the line. “Send the crime scene pictures to the Praetorians for forwarding to us,” he said. “And the autopsy report. No, we don’t need to see the body personally. Thank you.” He slammed the phone down on the hook, and stared off into the distance for a moment, trying to control the rage. They’d taken such pains to ensure the old man’s safety, and in a fit of stubbornness, he’d just . . . gone off on his own. “Camulorix was . . . a fairly competent ley-mage, wasn’t he?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Trennus replied, immediately. “He was fairly well-known even in Britannia.”

  “So whoever jumped him either surprised him, completely, or overwhelmed his defenses.”

  Trennus grimaced. “He spent his entire life training other ley-mages and working on engineering designs. If you don’t train for combat magic . . . .”

  “. . . you play how you practice, yes.” Kanmi rubbed at his jaw again, hearing the stubble grate against his fingers, and regarded his fellow lictor. “We’re getting on a plane for Rome, and taking her with us.” He nodded in Minori’s direction. He was startled to see that she’d turned her face away to dab at her eyes. “I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve been watched.”

  Trennus grimaced. “L . . . Asha’s usually pretty good at sensing when people watch us.” A sidelong glance at Lassair, who’d been, apparently, asleep in her manifested form, and snuggled up in bed when the old man had slipped out.

  They could be employing spirits of their own. It would be simple to pick up items by which someone might be tracked, ahead of time. A bloody bandage, for example. Humans are careless with their blood, nails, and hair in these days. Lassair sounded glum. I might not be able to see such spirits, if they are quiet and skilled.

  “Do I have any choice about going to Rome?” Minori asked, quietly, and wiped at her face again with a handkerchief.

  “Not really. We have to keep you where we can keep an eye on you. And don’t, for the sake of all the gods, go walking out a warded front door.”

  ___________________

  Aprilis 7-8, 1955 AC

  It was very late on dies Saturni, or very early on dies Solis. As such, most of Jerusalem was still closed down for Shabbat observances. Adam and Sigrun had, after some debating over their finances, purchased a house together. It had been a bit of an embarrassment to him to realize that she was financially much better off than he was, largely because she’d been employed for an undisclosed number of years longer than he had been, and she had no noticeable expenses at all. But they’d opted to buy the house across the street from his parents. It had been badly damaged in the pazuzu attack, and the owners simply wanted out. They’d collected their insurance and left the house to the bank . . . and the bank hadn’t wanted to rebuild it.

  Technically, it was a historic structure, but all the interior damage had allowed Adam and Sigrun to buy it at a very low cost, and they’d subsequently gutted it. As such, their infrequent leaves were not so much vacations, as . . . projects. This time, for example, Adam had run wiring through all the interior walls, so they’d have modern electricity without exposed cables. The air conditioning was functional, something Sigrun appreciated very much in the summer months . . . but they didn’t have wallboard hung yet anywhere, and the entire interior smelled of sawdust. It wasn’t terribly habitable yet, but when they left this time, they were going to have some contractors come in during their absence to do some work. Get a proper Roman-style bath in the master bathroom, with a sunken tub. A mother-in-law suite with a small kitchen of its own was one of Adam’s long-term goals. He wanted to be able to offer his parents a place to live when they were too old to get along on their own. Mikayel would probably make the same offer, but Adam had a feeling his parents would be more comfortable in this house, than in his brother’s.

  The house had been designed in an era when large, multigenerational families had often lived together. As such, it had about a half dozen bedrooms, and the upstairs area echoed hollowly. Adam had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and was giving a certain amount of thought to the future. He and Sigrun had discussed children, on and off, and just this past week, she’d mentioned the ramifications of all her sister’s prophecies about her. “I honestly don’t know if I can have children. Telling me I won’t have children until the world ends could be her . . . polite way of telling me that I’m barren.” Sigrun had grimaced.

  Adam had long since decided never to mention the words that still echoed, periodically, in his own mind: you’ll be a stepfather to your own daughter, and your wife will be your widow ere you meet her again. Prophecy was damnable. The words could mean that he
might, at some point in time, be missing in action for long enough to be declared dead, for example. The word wife could mean someone other than Sigrun. He could, theoretically, screw around, and get someone besides Sig pregnant—an utterly laughable concept, considering that she was, other than Lassair, the single most beautiful woman he’d ever met—and wind up adopting his own child . . . but then Sig would probably geld him. But none of that was ever going to happen. Not without him being some other person than Adam ben Maor. “Sig,” he’d told her, gently, “when we’re ready, and when you’re tired of chasing Livorus all over the world, we can worry about it then. I’m not going to be concerned about anything your sister says. It’s just asking to go insane.” He’d kissed her forehead, lightly. “And I say that, having puzzled over some of her remarks to me over the years. I like puzzles, damnit. But I’m missing far too many of the pieces to make sense of hers.”

  Sig had snorted. “The ones your father comes over and sticks on the refrigerator are a little fairer.” These usually involved ‘simple’ substitution ciphers . . . say, the words were all Hellene, but had been written in Hebrew characters, to disguise them from a casual eye. Or, when Maor was feeling particularly clever, they were Latin words, spelled without vowels, written in Hellene characters. Anything to keep the brain active, Maor usually told them.

  After a moment of silence, Sigrun had added, “I’ve been on birth control since the wedding, which means I haven’t bled at all. Usually, there’s at least a little, I’m told . . . .” Physicians, since the invention of the hormone-based pill, had advised women to take it year-round, avoiding all menstrual cycles entirely. In a world where blood was an important component of some spells, and menstrual blood was particularly effective, and either could be used to track the person to whom it belonged, or bind a person to a spirit, this was just plain common sense.

  “I’m fine with that. Technically, I’m not supposed to touch you if you’re . . . well . . .” Adam had just grinned as Sigrun shook a fist at him. He wasn’t about to say the word niddah. Unclean. “Hey, we both get to have much more fun this way.”

  Sigrun had sighed. “I know. It’s just . . .” She made a face, and finally admitted, “I wonder if the medication might have done something wrong to me. I am not entirely human, after all.”

  Adam had pulled her close. “You know, there are pretty good doctors here. And if they can’t figure out god-born physiology, we can talk to someone in Hellas, Nova Germania, or Egypt when the time comes. In the meantime . . . let’s not borrow trouble, eh?”

  And so, that night, they were sleeping in the atrium courtyard, under the stars, in a hammock strung between two trees. Sigrun didn’t mind the Aprilis chill, and Adam wrapped himself around her, and kept a blanket or two over them as they swung back and forth.

  Adam rolled to his back now, and stared up at the stars. The moon was just creeping up over the edge of the roof, casting down pale light, and, reminded, Adam shook Sigrun’s shoulder lightly. “Wake up, neshama.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Need you to turn on the far-viewer. The moon landing should be happening right about now.”

  Sigrun sat up, shedding blankets, and gave him an amused look. “Tell the truth, Adam ben Maor. If I weren’t here, you’d turn it on yourself, wouldn’t you?”

  Adam grinned. “Probably. But you’re here, and thus, I don’t have to debate between my principles and my desires.”

  “You want me to turn on any lights while I’m up?” she asked, tartly, sliding off the hammock and making it rock from side to side. Her bare skin was very pale in the moonlight, and the runes were invisible, for the moment. “The stove, perhaps?”

  “Did we buy a stove when I wasn’t looking?” The kitchen had been in the worst shape of the entire house. Other than the wall that the pazuzu had thrown a refrigerator through, trying to hit Sigrun. And the roof, of course.

  “Yes, we did. It arrives tomorrow.” Sigrun looked back over her shoulder. “Well?”

  Adam sat up to regard her. “If I get up, do I miss the whole ‘watch you walk around naked’ part?”

  Sigrun took two steps back to the hammock, and flipped the blankets up over his head. While he was recovering—and laughing—Sigrun padded off, and he saw a light flick on in what would, eventually, be a living room again, and heard a muffled curse. “Please don’t tell me you stepped on a nail,” he called, finally slipping out of the hammock, himself, and padding in after her.

  “No. It’d heal, anyway.”

  “I don’t like seeing you injured, regardless of how fast you heal.” Adam pointed at the far-viewer. “Please?”

  “That’s better,” Sigrun told him, approvingly, and turned the knob, causing the unit to hum and flicker to life. She rotated another dial, found the correct channel . . . and stood there, bathed in the pale light of the far-viewer, as Adam sank to his haunches to watch. “It doesn’t get old for you, does it?”

  “No. It really doesn’t.” Adam drank it in, watching as the astronauts began unloading gear from the landing module. Everything so light, it was effortless to lift and carry a huge piece of drilling gear. “I would give just about anything to be able to stand where they are. Just once. Mare Tranquillitatis. Look up and see Earth overhead.” He smiled a little, feeling her hand come down on his shoulder to rub for a moment. “God, Sig. Just look at what we little mortals can do. We’ve got a little station at the Libration point for docking and redirection . . . and now we’re going to start taking core samples. Finding a place with bedrock. And then we’re going to build.” He looked up at her, the edges of her face made luminous by the far-viewer’s light. “That’s what we’re for. We’re here to build.”

  For some reason or another, that made her drop down beside him, cup his face in light, almost wondering fingers, and kiss him as if she never intended to come up for air. Adam laughed after a moment, and they more or less crashed to the hard floor, and curled up to watch the rest of the video. Bland, almost casual tones of the astronauts, all speaking to each other in Latin. The lingua franca of the joint space mission, since there were Hellene and Nipponese astronauts in the program, too, after all.

  About ten minutes after the programming faded to grayscale bars, and he and Sigrun had gone back to their hammock, the phone rang. “I expect you wish for me to get that, too?” she said, after a moment, her voice muffled.

  “No. Phone can wait till morning.” He kissed her throat. “We’re on leave.”

  The phone rang again, shrilling out across the open walls of the atrium.

  “Whoever they are—” another kiss, “they seem insistent.”

  “They can wait.”

  The phone rang again, and Adam, annoyed, rolled over. “All right.” He gave her a grin. “You want to get that?”

  “You put on orthodoxy solely to see how I react, do you not?”

  “Most of the time . . . yes.” Adam ducked as, this time, a pillow was tossed at his head, and shed the blankets again to follow her, once more, back into the house.

  All laughter faded from her face, however, as she answered the line. “Caetia here. Yes, I’m aware of Eshmunazar and Matrugena’s location.” A pause. “Yes. We can be on a plane in the morning.”

  Adam sighed. So much for being on leave. “At least this time, I got the wiring done,” he said, in a tone of resignation as she hung up. “What’s the problem?”

  “Main dispatch informs me that Kanmi called in, and requested that we return to Rome. No details, besides that he also asked for safe houses for two technomancers.” Sigrun yawned a little. “So much for sleep.”

  Adam shook his head. “May as well start packing, yes. He’d better have a damned good reason for us to be called in, though.”

  ___________________

  Aprilis 8-10, 1960 AC

  Guilt. Seething, dark masses of it, coiling up around her like smoke, or mist, roiling over the landscape like waves. Emotions could obscure and dim physical reality. The sky was darker. The confines
of the airport, smaller, dingier, the humans within it all glistening, liquid eyes and smooth faces, the enfleshed spirits within them glimmering, some faintly, some brightly. Physical reality and spiritual reality commingled.

  Why did I sleep? Flamesower asked that all the other spirits watch and guard, but they only thought to look to the outside. For invaders. They did not know that it was important that the old one left. They are . . . limited creatures. I should not have slept. I should have remained awake, and if I had, the scholar would yet be alive. I would not have let him leave, not without telling Flamesower or Emberstone.

  But it felt so good to lie beside Flamesower. This body has needs, and sleep is one of them. It feels wonderful to listen to his breathing. The rush of blood through his veins. To feel the texture of his skin, the way the muscles all fit together so cunningly. The warmth of energy radiating out of him, like a distant star. The flicker of his spirit, buried so deeply inside of him. And to allow my awareness to sink into this body, and experience dreams. They’re like visiting the Veil, without having to stay there. But as I dreamed, the scholar’s spirit was cut from his body. And human souls are so precious. They only get to experience reality once, and for such a short period, but they experience it so richly, so deeply. They interface with time. And now, one is lost, and it is my fault.

  Lassair’s steps felt heavy, and her body was tired. Oddly so. She felt . . . disconnected from it . . . in a way that she usually did not, when she had manifested in a human form. Something is different. Something has changed. As she waited in line behind Trennus in the airport, patiently—always patiently, because time had no meaning for her, time was infinite, and she was apart from it—Lassair ran her awareness through her corporeal form like a sieve, looking for the source of that difference.