She was so wrapped in that memory that she walked into the conference room, looked up, and blinked. Last year, there had been a fairly good attendance. This year? The room was packed, and there were people there with cameras. Minori swallowed. Oh, gods. Kanmi, I think I would prefer that you and Trennus were here to savage my math, than the reporters. You, I know how to answer. Plain facts and numbers make sense to you.
She went through her presentation, showing how there had been two sets of equipment established in Tawantinsuyu. One standard ley-grid, and, at five or six sites, experimental equipment rigged to take energy from an alternate source—she left that source deliberately vague—and drive that energy through the ley-lines themselves. The differences in the experimental ley-towers’ machinery she stressed, went against all occupational and power safety standards. In the end, she concluded, “This was not a failure of ley-power. This was human error. They deviated from known safety standards, used an entire geographical region as an experiment, and paid the price.”
“Dr. Eshmunazar!” One of those present—not one of her colleagues, but a reporter, raised a hand. She’d shed her assumed name with no little relief when she’d married Kanmi, and didn’t actually care if it made it harder for people to find all of her academic papers in journals. The assumed name hadn’t really been hers. It had just been a way of hiding.
Minori ignored the reporter, and gestured to one of the various scientists in the room. “Bjarga Bartos, University of Lipsk,” the man introduced himself; it was a city in the eastern part of Germania, in Sachsen, on the border of one of the many smaller Slavic countries that stood between Germania and Raccia. “Dr. Eshmunazar, you have been one of the foremost voices suggesting that ley-power may not be as safe as everyone has previously assumed. Last year, you correlated earthquakes and volcanism with the spread of ley-power grids through previously uncovered regions of Caesaria Aquilonis and Australis. You’re here today to tell us precisely the opposite?” Skepticism rang in his voice.
Minori couldn’t really blame him. “I believe we had a goddess inform the entire world that the earthquakes and volcanic activity in Tawantinsuyu were the result of combat between the gods.” Minori grimaced, internally. Mamaquilla hadn’t precisely lied. She’d . . . omitted. And Minori, Kanmi, and the rest of the lictors were deeply grateful for the omissions about them, so they were doing their best to return the favor by not mentioning the precise means by which the Sapa Inca had tried to become a new Akhenaten.
“I am aware of what the news broadcasts have said,” the professor replied, with a dubious glance over his shoulder at the various reporters, whom Minori was ignoring, steadfastly. “Unfortunately, the . . . testament of a goddess is unquantifiable and unverifiable. You noted that the ley-engineers in Tawantinsuyu flooded their ley-lines with alternate power. Like adding too much water to an existing, natural aquifer, I believe was your exact comparison.” He leaned back on the bench seat he shared with about a dozen other conference attendees. “What was the source of this power? The gods, perhaps?” He essayed a laugh.
Minori took a paper cup filled with water off the podium and sipped, trying to buy herself some time while the rest of the people in the room chuckled, uneasily. “I really can’t say what the additional source of power was,” she finally said. Which was, technically, true. She couldn’t say anything about it. “What I can say is that it was not electrical, and no one has, as yet, found any evidence of nuclear plants, such as those used in Judea, and the power was definitely not ley in origin. That leaves magical methods of energy production to be investigated. The system was obviously radically unstable.”
“I simply find it remarkable that you’ve pulled a nearly one hundred-and-eighty-degree turn since a year ago, Dr. Eshmunazar. You say that it is magical energy that caused the devastation in Tawantinsuyu. You say it was transmitted along the ley-grid. The simplest explanation is that it was, in fact, ley-energy, and that you are engaged in some sort of a cover-up.”
Ripples of laughter and murmurs, and Minori was aware of various cameras flashing at her. “Let me see if I have this straight,” she said, mildly. “A year ago, I worked for a ley-energy company, and expressed concerns about ley-power that could have cost me my job, if Eleutherian Industries hadn’t taken the possibility very seriously, and, being an ethical corporation, given me free rein to investigate. A year later, and six months after leaving the company for a faculty position at the University of Rome, which is unaffiliated with the ley-industry in any way, I present a paper suggesting that ley-power isn’t dangerous. And you are the person looking for the simplest answer here?” Minori listened to a another rustle of laughter go through the crowd.
The conversation went on in circles from there. Minori was in the uncomfortable position of having information that she couldn’t reveal, and having a marked gap in her data that she couldn’t defend. She retreated, merely, to the broad-minded position of allowing other people to do the research into what, precisely, the other energy that had flooded the system had been. It was merely her intent, she maintained, to show where information was lacking, and to allow others to do the research. And whenever the various academics and even reporters in the room tried to push her to comment on what she knew, personally, about the energy source used, she maintained that she had not had an opportunity to examine the wreckage of the various experimental ley-facilities, or to see them in their working state, but that other people had, and she trusted them when they said that there were nonstandard configurations and components. “Yes, but you are a trained sorcerer and technomancer. Surely, you can provide eyewitness testimony. You surely had a gauge or a meter with you?”
No, actually, my captors rather inconveniently didn’t bring my equipment with me. And I was, at the time, rather too busy being tortured, healed, and then fighting for my life to take measurements. Minori shrugged slightly. “If those here assembled would not take the word of a goddess as testimony, since it is unquantifiable and unverifiable,” she said, dryly, “why should anyone trust my eyewitness account, based solely on what my senses told me at the time, and based solely on human memory, that most fallible of instruments?”
She got out of the conference feeling oddly mendacious, and not having enjoyed the pure play of ideas nearly as much as she once had. She had too many things she couldn’t say. And she wasn’t the same person as she had been a year ago. As Kanmi liked to put it, like a soldier in ancient times, she’d been out into the darkness, beyond the lights on the city walls. She knew what was out there, beyond the illusions that civilization wrought for itself in comfort and safety. And she’d come back changed. Marked.
___________________
1963 AC
Sophia Caetia continued in her daily round of activities at Delphi, as she had every day since her arrival there in 1947. Every morning, she dreamed about the end of the world.
. . . beautiful cities in flames, the glory of Rome collapsing under the earthquakes and a drift of ash from Vesuvius, the beautiful bridges crisscrossing the lake of Tenochtitlan collapsing as the lake drained into the cracks in the earth, the Pyramids of Nahautl and Egypt, the temples of Hellas falling in on themselves as the earth tears itself asunder. The armies of the desperate, the frightened, and the mad gathering and rolling across Qin. The blood-red light over the eastern sky of Burgundoi as the supervolcano located at Goldeseasteð, also named Mitsi'adazi, the place of the gold-rock river, begins to erupt. It’s close to a thousand miles away, but the ashes rain down like the ghost of snow, catching in Sigrun’s hair as she drags herself out of the ruins of the Odinhall. She’s a ghastly figure, scarcely recognizable—
—so much blood, it’s turned her hair to stiff hanks, and there are gobbets of flesh here and there that the raven, one eye milk, and one eye topaz, picks out of the tangles to eat, as it lands on her shoulder—
—leaning on a spear that isn’t her own, face blank, eyes staring, but not seeing her surroundings as the buildings all burn around her and th
e ashes of a dying world fall on her head and shoulders, wounds healing as they always heal, rune-wrought light barely visible under the caked-on gore, but the wounds of the flesh aren’t the worst ones, now are they, sister? —
—mad eyes, clawing fingers, distorted bodies. A man flayed of all skin, but still alive, leaping out of a fallen building, screaming and throwing himself at Sigrun, and the spear whirls in her hands, and he falls, mercifully dead, at her feet. The valkyrie, all light gone from her skin, limps on, out of the broken city, as another creature, and another, came howling for her blood. Blood binds, Sigrun, blood binds in more than one way! Sometimes the blood is just a metaphor. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, oh, gods, that’s an odd expression . . . what’s a cigar, anyway? Huh. —
The dream always ended the same way. Sigrun finally found the energy to fly instead of walk. Found her way to the black road, which, to Sophia’s eyes, looked like the Styx, frozen over, and began to walk along its length. Between steps, the ash stopped falling on her head, and Sigrun turned. Looked back. Met her sister’s eyes. Good-bye, Sigrun, last of the valkyrie.
And she disappeared.
There was always a moment at the end of the dream that Sophia struggled to see beyond. Once in a while, she could catch hazy images. It wasn’t entirely unlike watching a bad transmission on a far-viewer. A lot of static in the intended image, and . . . ghostly faces, bleeding through, from a different channel. She’d thought that very amusing as a child, watching a children’s show, and seeing, behind the puppets on the screen, ephemeral beings, locked in a tight embrace, kissing and undressing behind them. Now, it was merely frustrating.
And every morning, she knew precisely when she was going to wake up, before she woke up. Opening her eyes the second time was always jarring, and the headache always started at that exact moment.
Routine was the only thing that let her get through her days. She got up. She brushed her teeth, always the same way. She ate the same breakfast—yogurt with honey—because that was all she could see herself doing, and if she deviated, even an iota, it meant that something had changed and nothing could change. She tried, because Sigrun would want her to try, to hold off from using the medication in the mornings. Tried to face reality, the way her strong, sure, beautiful older sister would do. She sat on her divan and listened to the plaints of her morning appointments. All people who wanted to know what their futures held.
Will Tomas marry me?
Is my family going to accept the fact that I’m homosexual?
Is it safe to have children with my husband? We both have a family history of cystic fibrosis . . . .
Should I invest in sorghum or in wheat?
My family says I should train as an accountant, because that’s a career that’ll support me and my kids, but I really think I’m an artist. Tell me they’re wrong, tell me I’m going to be the next Praxiteles . . . .
. . . tell me I’m going to be an actress . . . .
. . . tell me everything’s going to be all right . . . tell me I’m going to be rich and famous and never going to have to work . . . tell me I’m going to win the lottery . . . tell me . . . tell me . . . tell me . . . tell me the answer to the riddle of the sphinx, tell me that I’m going to be king of all Asia, tell me how to solve the Gordian Knot . . . and then he cut it with his sword, imagine that . . . .
No one ever came to Delphi expecting bad answers. At most, they looked for confirmation of their fears.
By nine antemeridian every day, Sophia’s hand crept into her sash, where she kept, always, one or two pills of the blood of the poppy. A little mescaline. Something that kept her from telling each of them the truth. That it didn’t matter that Tomas would never marry Cestina, or if Donatus’ family accepted the fact that his adolescent romance with his boxing partner had matured into a stable relationship, or that Franzeza and her husband absolutely would not have any children with cystic fibrosis. It didn’t matter that the would-be artist had all the talent of a can of peas, and that the best acting the would-be thespian would ever do would be on the director’s couch before landing her first role.
She saw it all. Their lives unrolling before her, and every last one of them ended in death. Donatus got off easy; he’d have a heart attack, and die in his lover’s strong arms at the age of fifty. Cestina would marry someone else besides the hoped-for Tomas, and she and her entire family would drown in mud when Vesuvius erupted. Franzeza, her husband, and their four children would be crushed to death when their apartment complex collapsed. The actress would be trampled when people fled the theater, as fire broke out in the rafters, her body broken and bleeding under their feet. The would-be sculptor would die in a pauper’s house, having eaten his way through every one of his relatives’ charity. He’d have syphilis, and a drinking problem, and not one shred of actual talent, but he’d die convinced that someone would, eventually, discover his genius.
By lunch—always the same, phyllo dough triangles wrapped around spinach and cheese, a salad on days on which she could see herself eating one—Sophia had usually already dry-swallowed one or two of her pills. Three, if she could see she would need a little more comforting haze.
After lunch, another round of prophecies, until three postmeridian, when she could stop for the day. Go practice wrestling with the other priestesses, or swim, whatever she knew she would be doing. Take another pill. Meet with a lover. Whoever she saw herself being with that day. She had a hard time remembering the names, to be honest. Male or female, it didn’t matter. Anyone who could make her forget, just for a little while, the inevitable.
Of course, she knew it wouldn’t work. But she had to go through the motions, anyway. Even though she knew that the pleasure would be transitory at best. Even though she knew she would see the face rising from between her legs to smile up at her as a rotting skull . . .
. . . and then she did see it as a rotting skull . . . .
. . . and had to turn her face away from whoever it was in her bed in a whirl of confusion, because now she didn’t know if she was seeing it ahead or seeing it now or just remembering yesterday. But if it happened to be now, then she needed to make sure that they couldn’t see it in her face. Not that it mattered. Not that any of it mattered.
Visions that didn’t have to do with her clients whirled through her head, sometimes unsummoned, and sometimes summoned by her thinking about someone in particular. Sigrun always inspired the visions. Her beloved older sister had been the only one to believe her when the visions had started. And when Sigrun was around, the visions were so much less intense. As if she were a stable rock to which Sophia could cling. Part of it was the fact that Sigrun’s was one of the only faces that didn’t look like a rotting skull to Sophia. No matter how Sophia squinted at her, Sigrun’s eyes never fell in on themselves and decayed. The skin stayed whole. The lips didn’t pull back in a rictus grin from the teeth. The others, Sigrun’s friends . . . did and didn’t. The Archmage would die, but even though his face was a skull, his eyes remained clear and lively and cynical, though not a scrap of flesh was on his face. The Summoner was god-touched, as young and immortal as Sigrun herself. Lassair was Lassair. Truthsayer would age at first, but then she’d age in reverse, and certainly wouldn’t die. And the Godslayer . . . he always looked wrong to Sophia. And yet, somehow right, as well. But she knew he’d live. After he gave up his life. Sigrun wouldn’t like it, but then, Sigrun didn’t want to believe any of it anymore. She was afraid. Sigrun, the last of the valkyrie—or at least, she would be—was afraid.
So Sophia actually rather liked thinking about the lictors. Thinking about them brought visions of their lives, and she knew more about them each, probably, than any of them would ever have cared for someone outside of their own minds to know. It was just so hard to know what had happened already, and what hadn’t yet, some days.
One moment, she’d be walking to dinner—always the same meal, lamb stew, except for very special occasions, on which she had seen herself having fish—and th
e next, she’d be in her sister’s body, smiling up a little at the Godslayer as he leaned down to kiss her. Walking through her sister’s house, in her sister’s body, looking down at the lithe, athletic body, and wanting to run her hands down it, just to show Sigrun how beautiful she actually was, but knowing better. This was just a vision. No mirrors in the house, besides a small one that the Godslayer used to shave his face in the mornings, so Sophia couldn’t even get little peeks at her sister through Sigrun’s own eyes. Not that Sigrun ever looked in mirrors. She wouldn’t even look at herself in the window of a shop. Mother used to cane her when she caught her looking at herself in the mirror. And now, she sees the runes, and all she sees are scars. Pretty scars, but still scars . . . .
And then flipping through bodies. Visions. Present and future were the same thing. Minori, the Touchstone, the Truthsayer, telling the Archmage that if they had a little girl, she wanted to name her for Hojo Masako, the wife of the first shogun, Minamoto no Yoritomo. “Why’s that?”
“She’s always been a heroine of mine. They actually married for love, you know. She rode with him on his campaigns, and when she was there, he never suffered a defeat.”
“This is the same guy whose relationship with one of the young imperial guards started the whole ‘the older samurai should have a physical and romantic relationship with his apprentice samurai’ thing? In which they swore oaths not to take any other male lovers, and so on?”
Minori raised her eyebrows. “He loved both of them. The same way my father loves both his wife and my mother. It hardly signifies.”
“I just think that this lady put up with a lot of shit she probably shouldn’t have had to put up with. You really want to pin that on our kid?”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 130
