Never again.
Flames began to lick along her forearms, stood out in her tumbled hair like a corona. Fire couldn’t harm her, couldn’t consume her. She was the phoenix, the living flame, eternally reborn, no matter what body she wore. The spirit reached up and wrapped her arms around the man like a lover, and, as he screamed and recoiled, wrapped her legs around him, too. And let the fire come, raging out of her flesh, as if she were the living heart of a star. For an instant, the inside of the tower was so bright that it looked as if a nuclear reaction had taken place, and a few of the technicians fighting the fires around the Tholberg coils, who had looked up and over, now screamed and clutched at their eyes, blinded. If the god confined in the triangle had looked up with his divine eyes, he would have seen a shadow being consumed by white flame.
As the man’s body split and cooked, instantly, to ashes, Lassair could feel a warm, inviting rush of power. Could watch his inner spirit, unbound from its shell of flesh, shocked, pale, evanescent. Waiting. Lassair felt two conflicting desires at that moment. The rage screamed inside of her, Consume him! Destroy him, as he would have destroyed you!
The other voice felt pity. Wanted to cradle that lost and lonely spirit, so confused now that the only home it had ever known was gone. Wanted to pull it into her heart, and give it peace.
And in the balance point between those two impulses, Lassair refused both. Denied both. She would not take his life-energy, though he surely deserved consumption. And she would not make him part of her eternal core, either, would not bind him into her. He had loved, but he had not loved her. He was not part of her.
The wisp of energy wavered. Flickered. And dissipated.
For an instant, Lassair was . . . elsewhere. Time, always relative for her anyway, ceased to matter at all, as memory stirred. At the heart of a fire, somewhere in the northern lands. Her sisters, dancing in the flames with her . . . yes, she’d had sisters. Latirian, last to come beyond the Veil of the three, and the coldest. She Who Brings the Harvest, She Who Harvests Souls. Inghean, second of the three to leave the Veil, She Who Tends the Crops, She who Watches Over Mothers. And Lassair, She Who Makes the World Blossom, She Who Gives Life. The humans had given the three of them many names, but they knew their true Names, too. Lassair had called her sisters from the Veil, knowing she was diminished without them, knowing that they were three and they were one, and they had come at her call, delighting in this new, strange world, where things happened one after the other, and when something ended, it stayed ended. Where change was possible and where death was real. Delicious, the danger. Wondrous, the experiences. The humans knew them and loved them, and they loved their humans, and cared for them. But there were other spirits who shared these humans with them, and some of those spirits wanted more. Wanted more power.
Fear generated power. Worship generated power. They could take life-energy, if the body-shell was slain, or if the blood was given as a gift. Lassair hadn’t cared much about it, either way. All she’d cared about was dancing in the fire, and drifting through this beautiful, alien world. Examining its flowers. Watching the strange creatures that inhabited it. Feeling the rush and surge of passion and love in her humans. Watching, through Inghean, sister-self’s eyes, as the new lives the humans planted in each other were birthed . . . and sometimes, with Latirian, watching the women die in blood and in pain, as their bodies could not bring the new life forth. Lost energy. Lost life. And when it ended here, it ended . . . unless someone caught the spirit before it could dissipate. Latirian, because she had a fascination with such things, had tried to take a few of those ragged, evanescent spirits to the Veil . . . .
And that night, Lassair had looked out of the fire’s heart, and seen the humans—ones sealed to other spirits, who let the spirits enter their flesh and touch their essences—dragging a large wicker cage to the fire, and had seen that a man was inside of it. A captive, from a recent battle, he was bound to serve Lassair’s humans, and that hadn’t much concerned her when she’d first seen him and the others taken in that battle. Now, however, the humans stood around him and chanted, as they often did when they were about to offer her and her sisters wine and cakes. Lassair and Inghean and Latirian stopped their eternal dance, as the humans lifted the cage . . . and flung it into the fire.
Lassair had fled, shooting like a star across the heavens, Inghean at her heels. Latirian, because the humans always called on her when there was a death, stayed. Watched. And came away changed, as this world always changed those in it. Colder. Darker. She had learned to hate the humans, at least a little, for what they did to one another.
. . . why could I not remember this before? Where are my sisters now? Lassair thought, still hovering in that timeless moment of memory. They’d fled the humans, and, because the three-who-were-one could not bear to face their humans again, their humans forgot them. Forgot their Names. Forgot to love them, because they no longer loved their humans. Until all three of them were little more than flickers of what they had been, and they, too, began to forget who they were. And then he had come, the vile one. He had found their Names on an old piece of stone. Little more than scratchings in a language no one could read anymore, but he’d decoded it . . . and had summoned them. Bound all three of them. And Latirian had been the first used and burned out. It had taken a hundred years, but she, youngest and coldest, had dwindled down into nothing more than a whisper, and Lassair had only just been able to catch her sister-self’s Name and the last echo of her being, rather than letting her disperse. And then he had begun to use Inghean the same way. Forcing her to prolong his life. Heal him when he was ill. Burning her out, giving her nothing in return that would fuel the fire. And when she was nothing more than a shimmer, caught within Lassair’s own mind, he’d turned last to her, oldest and brightest . . . and he’d used her for a hundred years, as well. Until Trennus had come.
She threw back her head and keened for a moment, as all the years of sorrow and aloneness and desperation hit her at once. She had been three and then she’d been one, but now with Trennus, she was two, and if the child was born, she’d be three once more. And all of it, all of it, depended on escape. Escape meant life. Captivity meant dissolution. She had only to look at the slumped avatar of the god inside his golden bonds to know that.
Lassair made her body sit up, and, looking down, dusted herself free of the fine ashes that covered her. A quick glance around; only seconds had passed while she was caught in literally millennia of memory. As a spirit fresh from the Veil, a second or a century had had no meaning for her. She’d glanced up from watching a meadow slowly change and shift, to realize that twenty years had passed, and those who had been calling her names had withered and died in the interim. It had surprised her, then, that time bound humans so tightly. She’d learned to pay attention. And that seconds really could matter.
Quick blinks, as she assessed with body-eyes and spirit-senses. The technicians . . . all blinded, on their knees, clutching their faces and still screaming. Pitahaya, tears running helplessly down her slack face, sitting limp and unmoving in her wheelchair. Blind now, too, as well as unable to move, and Lassair felt a wrench of pity go through her for the human woman. Even if she’d closed her eyes, she’d been unable to look away from what Lassair had done. No evidence in the woman’s mind that she’d seen her husband consumed by flame. All the human woman knew was that he’d fallen, light had exploded, and then nothing more. Conviction in her, than she was dead, in fact, and relief and bewilderment, by turns . . . and then a surge of victory from Truthsayer, and Lassair shouted in jubilation, sharing her friend’s triumph . . . and then felt Truthsayer start to slip away. Do not go! I won’t let you go! Stay!
Lassair clung to Truthsayer’s fading consciousness, and glared down at the symbols on the floor that bound her. The heat of her fire couldn’t burn poured-stone. But there was nothing that couldn’t melt, given the right temperatures. For an instant, she’d reached those temperatures, in the heat of her rage. But while
the floor under her feet was searingly hot at the moment, it hadn’t reached plasticity. The earth had stopped trembling underfoot, and the ceiling no longer shook. She could feel guards coming back into the tower now, and wanted to scream in rage. She couldn’t take them all, not all at once, not in a human body, fragile and so easily broken, even if she managed to break the circle around her.
And then Trennus’ voice in her mind suddenly clear and strong, as it had not been in hours. Flameheart, Lassair! Where are you?
Here! In a high place of stone, a tower. How are you so close, so suddenly? She could actually see his essence now, as she could see, distantly, the blue-white spark that was Stormborn, the silver, gleaming blade that was Steelsoul, the dull red glow that was Emberstone, his inner energies limning the dark core of his rage. And with them . . . Lassair cringed and withdrew her senses. A vast personage, who felt of night and seawater.
Don’t ask. Please, don’t ask.
___________________
When the earthquake hit, Adam and Sigrun had been heading towards the ushnu. Adam had stumbled, Sigrun had caught his arm, and they’d found cover, for a second, behind a piece of carved stone, and waited for the world to stop moving. Lassair’s voice, imploring them to come to her and to Minori. Adam tried to send a wave of assurance the spirit’s direction that they would, just as soon as they figured out how. He could see a streak of white light arcing through the sky, and thought, shooting star, but the closest meteor shower on the calendar was the Eta Aquariids, and he’d watched those from the balcony of their home in Judea two weeks ago. Worry about it if we need to worry about it. Could have been an ornithopter crashing.
Shouts of alarm, muffled, from the building they’d just left. Adam knew that the guards inside would be in a bind. Stay inside, doing their job, rounding up prisoners and looking for them, and risk the roof falling on their heads, or make their way to an exit, and possibly let prisoners escape. Either way, the earthquake was a great distraction. He eyed the ushnu, and caught Sigrun’s arm as she started to move towards it. Sigrun sank back down, following the line of his finger as he pointed.
He’d caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and now they could both see it, he knew, feeling Sigrun stiffen. Whatever the creature was, a spider-web of molten red cracks pulsed across a roughly humanoid body, alternating between a lava-like glow and near-invisibility in the darkness, a steady cycle that matched the pace of human breathing. It was also, Adam estimated, about twelve feet tall, and it was apparently patrolling around the ushnu. It paused at a corner near where they hid, and turned its head, the moonlight revealing dark pits where its eyes might have been. The creature peered in their direction for a long moment, and Adam’s nerves screamed at him to be ready for an attack . . . and then it shuffled on, passing around the front of the long, three-tiered stone structure. The creature’s skin, this much closer, appeared rocky and pitted in places, and glossy in others, as if it were made of pumice and obsidian.
Once the creature had passed out of sight, Adam whispered, “What was that?”
“A stone elemental of some sort,” Sigrun replied, after a brief hesitation. “We’re on a mountain. Maybe it’s the spirit associated with this place?” Her tone said she didn’t entirely believe that.
“That would be almost too easy.” Adam gestured at the ushnu. “Besides, he was acting like the night watchman. If that’s his temple—”
“Yes. I don’t think it’s his. But that’s a heavy guard to have on that place.” Sigrun’s tone was considering now.
“Recon?”
“Information is a weapon, too, Adam. And we need to work our way . . .” Sigrun looked up; the clouds were letting the moon’s face show now, but no stars. “West, I think.”
“True. But not everything is a weapon.” Though, explain that to the Romans. I think they’d weaponize their fasces, if they could. Magic symbol, instrument of justice, and their favorite toy. Adam didn’t say that one out loud. No time, no breath.
They hustled over the broken ground, and got up against the short side of the rectangular, stepped structure, and moved along in the dark, crouching low. Adam swore mentally every time his foot slipped on the loose scree around the structure. It would be nice to be able to see in the dark. JDF R&D is supposedly working on some crazy idea of ‘night-vision goggles.’ Like something out of a Coemegin Cearmada Battle for Mars science-fiction novel. Doesn’t do me a damn bit of good now, and I can’t ask Sigrun for light, because then even a blind man would be able to spot us. Adam continued in the lead, and then the wall under his left hand changed texture, and the ground ahead of them shifted. Became a set of stairs leading down under the ushnu. “This thing’s supposed to be a solid structure, right?”
“Three platforms, one built atop the other,” Sigrun confirmed, softly. “Solid rock.”
Adam looked up. They had time before the stone creature would completely circle the building . . . assuming there wasn’t a second guard plodding along in exactly that same steady pace. “Underground,” he muttered, his palms already sweating. The memory of the ghul was still powerful, but it had been replaced by the Pyramid of the Sun in his dreams. Mostly. Sometimes, the cave under the pyramid had ghul in it, as well. Looking at the rough-cut steps leading down into the tunnel, the darkness yawned like an eye socket in a skull, or the mouth of a monster.
“Are you well?” Sigrun asked, edging forwards.
“Just need a moment.” Adam swallowed, reminded himself forcibly that guards could be returning any moment now, and that all he had to fight a creature made of rock were two muskets, a folding knife, and Sig’s natural gifts. He slipped over the edge of the stairs, dropping down from the upper edge of the wall to land neatly on the stone below. He ignored the sensation that the walls were closing in on him, and led the way into the tunnel. Faint glimmers of dim light up ahead. Light that came and went, irregularly, dimming to a faint spark now. If the tunnel runs the length of the structure . . . could be a very good way to move westwards without being seen. On the other hand, this might be where their entity stays when he’s not threatening prisoners. Adam shifted the musket in his hands, and crept forward, feet silent on the stone floor, feeling Sigrun behind him.
There were random pieces of rock and rubble on the stone-lined floor of the tunnel, and dust still hung in the air with a musty scent at which Adam grimaced. Clear evidence that the ancient structure had been rattled by the surge of the earthquake.
The passage widened towards the middle of the structure, becoming a large underground room. The dim glow of the lights rose and then faded again, and there was no cover . . . but Adam also didn’t see guards. So they crept onwards, even though he now wondered if this was a waste of time—time that Lassair and Minori might desperately need from them—or, worse yet, if it was a dead end in which they could be trapped.
___________________
He held up a fist to stop Sigrun at the end of the passage, and peered into the dimly-lit room, his eyes widening. A few dim, bare bulbs, ley-powered, swayed at the ends of their chains, providing dim light with which to survey the scene. Monumental stonework, just like the walls of the fortress in Cuzco. The ancients had sunk their massive stones down deep, and had carved into the bedrock to do so. Pillars rose up to support the ceiling, and the weight of the ushnu itself, and a symbol had been traced on the floor, in what looked to be solid gold. A circle, surrounded by triangles . . . sun with rays. The symbol of Inti, the sun-god, used on the flag of Tawantinsuyu to this day. And in the center of that symbol was a very tall man, wearing nothing but a loincloth, his arms stretched out wide, bound by iron chains to the massive pillars on either side of him. He was emaciated, every rib visible and countable. But in the diffuse glow of the ley-powered lights, his body looked gilded, and reflected light, as if he were made of metal.
Adam’s eyes went wide, and his fingers tightened on the musket in his hand. He’d felt that sense of presence before. The man’s head rose, and his eyes opened, and
the source of the periodic light that had come and gone was revealed, as golden fire blazed behind his lids, no orbs visible at all. The light flooded through the room, making it difficult to see the man’s face. You are not of my children, a voice spoke in Adam’s mind. You are subject to others. Why are you here? The voice was powerful, but gentle, with a sense of nobility and suffering to it.
Adam swallowed through a dry throat, and hoped, fervently, that the word godslayer was not visible in his mind to this creature. Rationally, he knew that the entity was bound. Theologically, he knew that this wasn’t his god—the creator of the heavens and the earth. This was a spirit. A very powerful spirit, but not god, as it were. That being said, he’d fought Tlaloc, his marriage had been conducted by Tyr, and he was now face-to-face with a chained being who inspired awe and pity, commingled. Questions were starting to crawl in the theological portion of his brain, and they were questions he’d be stupid not to ask at this point, but he’d prefer not to think them. Adam shook his head, rattling his brain back into place. He didn’t have time for existential quandaries right now. He could consider this over a glass of Trennus’ beloved uisce beatha some other time, could debate it with Kanmi and Trennus and Sig. If they survived, that is.
Sigrun had already stepped in, responding to the query. “We were taken prisoner,” she told the god, her back straight and her chin raised. A valkyrie did not bow to a foreign god any more than a Judean did. “Both of us have been threatened with sacrifice by a god wearing a mortal form.”
A low growl echoed through the chamber, a sound of anger and anguish at once. This should not be. We treated with the gods of Rome. We gave up human sacrifice. Told our followers, only animals, else all that we had built together would be destroyed. I gave my oath to the gods of Rome, and was bound to them. Compromise, and peace. He hung his head, closing his eyes, dimming the chamber once more. And yet, this is my fault.
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 112
