“W-would b-be easier . . . to f-follow m-my own advice . . . if p-people w-would stop l-lying to m-me.”
Given that you dwell in the mortal realm, that will, unfortunately, not happen anytime soon. But, you have your boon. Your memories are returned. And yet . . . my debt to you is still not paid.
Brandr held up both hands, immediately, and shook his head vigorously. “N-no debt.”
You really are an untrusting sort, aren’t you? A faintly regretful smile played on Loki’s lips, and a whisper entered Brandr’s mind. I could confirm for you whether or not your suspicions about Lorelei are correct.
It was tempting, if briefly. “W-would have t-to tr-trust your w-word.” Brandr closed his eyes, and really hoped that Thor loved him.
Loki’s laughter echoed through the small office. Fritti murmured, “Isn’t there anything you can do for him?”
I can give him the truth, Loki said. It’s in fashion these days. Consider this, Brandr Ilfetu. There were five god-born and one spirit-touched present at the death of Hel. Niðhoggr, her own son. Sigrun Stormborn. Reginleif Lanvik, whom I took with me to the Veil. Young Erikir, Trennus Worldwalker, and you round out our score. When gods have died before, their powers have passed into the receptacles best suited for them. He leaned back in his chair, and studied Brandr. Would you like to know what you’ve inherited from Hel?
“H-her ch-charming personality.” Brandr stood and lowered his head once, more or less respectfully, to Loki, and headed for the door, calling his hammer to his hand as he did. Again, he was aware of Lorelei’s distressed expression, through the fey curtain of Loki’s laughter.
Not that, Loki’s voice whispered in his mind. But determination and devotion? You already had those qualities. You were willing to give the full measure of your devotion to stop Hel. I think it might be almost impossible for a mortal to kill you these days, my friend. Isn’t that an extraordinary thing?
Chapter 7: Avalanche
Chorus: Who then is ruler of necessity?
Prometheus: The triple Fates and unforgetting Furies.
Chorus: Must Jove then yield to their superior power?
Prometheus: He no way shall escape his destined fate.
Chorus: What, but eternal empire, is his fate?
Prometheus: Thou mayest not know this now: forbear to inquire.
Chorus: Is it of moment what thou keep'st thus close?
Prometheus: No more of this discourse; it is not time
Now to disclose that which requires the seal
Of strictest secrecy; by guarding which I shall escape the misery of these chains.
—Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Prometheus: Dread Zeus, I cannot change what is written
In the book of fate; only you may change
The words that describe your end. Darksome glares
And louring glances will not change fate’s course;
And lightning bolts make the poorest of pens.
Zeus: You are steadfast in your vile predictions?
Blasphemous words that putrefy the air,
And claim that Zeus will die beneath the knives
Of his own sons and daughters, or their kin?
Prometheus: Mighty lord, again I say, to avert
Your fate, look within. Yours is the power,
The same as every mortal man that lives,
To shape the path that his steps will tread.
Show mercy to these your children, and they
In turn, will heap your name with sacrifice
And praise.
Zeus: My course is set, my cause is just.
No mortal must e’er dare to raise his hand
Against Olympus, or even petty
Godlings. In heaven, I reign supreme;
And on earth, I will brook no challengers.
Prometheus: Then you will surely die, and your death hastes
Towards you with mortal tread, sprung from the seed
You planted in the ashes of despair.
Zeus: For such defiance, there can be but one
Decree, and that is death.
Prometheus: Slay me or not,
That is your right as lord, but in this act,
You sign the warrant of your own demise,
In this my blood.
[Prometheus is struck dead. Enter the Titan who loosed him from his chains]
Zeus: Who are you, knave, that defies Olympus?
Titan: You foolish, depraved children masquerading
As gods. You will suffer as you have made
The mortals to suffer. I will take your
Playthings from you, petty children. I will
Leave nothing but ash. For today, my name
Is my brother’s. I am Prometheus.
And I have come to bring fire to the gods.
—Aeschylus, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer
______________________
Aprilis 23, 1993 AC
Brandr had put Loki’s words to the back of his mind, where they belonged, along with the horrific memories of the earthen womb and the tree roots . . . though he thought he’d be somewhat uneasy walking through the Caledonian Woods from now on.
Lorelei had asked to meet him in Little Hellas; the minotaur gangs were acting up, now that they didn’t have to deal with jotun encroachment in their territory. It was petty shit, in Brandr’s opinion, and he’d rather have been on the Wall, fighting alongside the landsknechten.
Currently, he was in the middle of expressing his disgruntlement to the minotaur gang-leader by holding the man down on the ground, knee planted in the middle of his back, left hand holding the back of the man’s neck, while he broke the horns off with hammer strikes. The larger the horns on a minotaur, the more status he had, and not a few of the minotaurs had taken to painting and gilding damned things. Status symbols. What, you think a woman’s going to think your cock is bigger, just because you’ve got shinier horns? Maybe it’ll work on a female minotaur, but I’m guessing that the average woman on the street is still going to run screaming the other direction if you tell her that her hair looks pretty.
Another hammer-strike, and then Brandr settled the weapon against the back of the man’s head, feeling the minotaur’s entire body go still. Having the horns shattered had to have hurt. But the same strike directed to the back of the head would kill him. “If I have t-to—” He stopped. Stuttering in the middle of a threat wasn’t going to intimidate anyone.
“If he has to come back,” Lorelei sang down from a rooftop, where she currently crouched, and her voice carried shivering dissonances with every word, “he’s going to remove two other things that you prize. Things that won’t grow back.”
Brandr snorted under his breath. He’d have said If I have to come back, next time I’m removing your balls, but Lorelei’s voice was a threat in and of itself to any of these Hellenes. It sounded like flensing knives right now, as if she could strip the skin off a man’s body with a single note. He’d seen a fight between cyclopeans and minotaurs broken up as Lorelei started to sing. And every man’s face had registered fear before they’d stopped moving.
Brandr had asked her why, and she’d shrugged. Because, she’d told him, softly, a harpy band led by a siren always had easy prey, when they were maddened. The sirens would sing their prey into stillness, and the harpies would come in and begin to feed while they were still alive. Some of them have seen it happen, in the distance. Were able to run, and passed on the tale.
B-but you n-never . . . .
. . . my madness came before my body changed. It is gone now. And now I try to make amends. I don’t use the voice of enchantment often. People can build up a resistance to it. And there is the small matter of free will, too.
Now, as Brandr stood, cautiously, trying to ensure that the minotaur wouldn’t come back off the ground at him—or any of his friends, who were lying on the pavement of this small alley—air raid sirens went off. Brandr kicked the minotaur leader once more in the head to ensu
re that the fool stayed down, and looked up in time to see rockets entering the sky over Jerusalem. Lorelei dropped from her rooftop to land beside him, as the various minotaurs began to pick themselves up from the pavement . . . and then dropped back to the ground as the building beside them was hit by one of the rockets. It went up in flames . . . and then a two-mile tall cyclone of smoke and fire stretched up from the shattered building, sending bricks and debris sailing through the air around them.
Brandr looked at the hammer in his hand, sighed, and stepped forwards. “G-go!” he told Lorelei and the minotaurs, shouting to be heard over the shrieking winds. “W-will hold it off.” Somehow. Damn it, I’ve got nothing to hit here.
“Don’t be a fool,” Lorelei told him sharply in Gothic, catching his arm. “Stay in the field of my illusion.”
Brandr looked down, and realized that his form and hers had the misty, slightly translucent quality that a highly skilled illusionist used to give a subject’s mind an understanding of where their body was . . . while making them completely invisible to an outsider. It was a use of a delusion to allow him to see himself, employed at the same time as a figment that would prevent minotaurs from seeing them, and might even block the efreet’s senses. Doing both at the same time required a tremendous degree of skill. “Wh-what about the m-minotaurs?”
“What about them?” Lorelei retorted, her voice hard, and Brandr watched as the various bull-men began to run away . . . chased by the towering efreet. “We need to get counter-summoners down here.”
Twenty minutes later, counter-summoners moved to the area, and Lorelei dropped the invisibility to give the summoners directions to which building probably held the bottle that had housed the closest efreet. “Your il-l-lusions are r-rem-markable. As g-good as a d-daughter of L-loki, aren’t you?” Brandr told her, and bared his teeth in disgust. He’d never had a nimble wit for flyting at the best of times, and now he sounded like a lackwit. But he enjoyed trying to get Lorelei to flinch. To betray that she was actually Reginleif Lanvik, no matter how heavy the disguise.
He caught the twitch as Lorelei murmured, “I was trained in seiðr before the Day of Transition.”
Got you. There were two days of transition. So far. “Wh-which one? G-gothic or H-he—”
She interrupted, however, something that he’d noticed she hardly ever did. “You have been longing for a chance to return to the front lines, Brandr. The front lines appear to have come to you.” She gestured at the city.
He allowed the distraction. “C-can’t f-fight them. N-not in that f-form. And n-never w-want to see f-fighting in a civ . . . a city.” Brandr shrugged, putting his mind properly back on the battle at hand, and swung his hammer idly, looking up at the sky, waiting to see if anything else would appear. He might be able to get in a good enough throw to shatter an ornithopter’s wing, if he saw it coming. A rocket moved too fast, even for his reflexes. “At l-least in b-battle, I can f-forget.” He spotted another one of the huge twisting pinnacles of smoke in the downtown are, just as it suddenly vanished. Counter-summoners bound it. Good.
“Forget what?” Lorelei asked.
“Everything.” He shrugged again. “D-doubt. C-confusion. Th-there’s just m-me and the en-enemy.” He paused, then added, absently, “B-battle’s b-better th-tha . . . than a br—a brothel.”
His eyes were on the horizon, looking for the next efreet, when he registered an impact against his arm. Brandr looked down and left, and realized that Lorelei had slapped his bicep, without force, and was frowning at him now, darkly. “You’re god-born,” she said, suddenly, and there was nothing beautiful about her voice now. Harsh dissonances of anger and incredulity ran through her siren’s voice like razors. “You should be better than that! You are better than that! You’re a bear-warrior! You can’t tell me that generations of young Gothic women don’t pray to meet someone like you.”
Brandr did his best not to snort, and failed. “In m-my class at the Odinhall, four people. All b-bear-w-warriors.” There had been a twenty-year span in which Valhallan god-born births had been rare, and no valkyrie had been born at all, until Sigrun—the year Brandr had graduated. Brandr’s generation of Valhallan god-born thus had been entirely male, and few in number. “M-my friend, Eitri . . . m-married a human w-woman.” He gave Lorelei a direct look. If she was Reginleif, she’d remember Eitri. “Sh-she w-would be ninety-f-five n-now, if she’d l-lived.”
Lorelei’s lips parted, as they stood in the warm sunlight on the street corner, Brandr still scanning the clear sky for any other rockets and ornithopters. “What of it?”
“M-maybe it’s d-different for valkyrie,” Brandr said, as diplomatically as he could manage. “B-but we’re st-still as w-we were when we were twenty. The s-same hungers. The same l—”
“Lusts?” The word was sharp.
“L-lib-bi . . .” The word was too difficult.
“Libido, then. Again, what of it?” Lorelei’s red eyes were narrow.
“Eitri h-had a w-wife w-who was eighty-three when sh-she passed. He still l-looked and f-felt—”
“Twenty-two.”
“He st-started visiting b-brothels when they h-hadn’t had sex in seven years. Sh-she told him to. Said th-that it hurt less than s-seeing him f-fall in love with someone else. She w-was seventy-two by then.” Brandr wouldn’t have told Lorelei this. But seeing Reginleif in her eyes . . . he could tell her this. He had to tell her this. She wasn’t the only one of them who’d ever had to endure the loss of a mortal spouse, after all. “He t-took care of her for another eleven y-years. He t-told me about it all . . . at the w-wake. W-when n-neither of us c-could g-get d-drunk, but all her relatives w-were.” Eitri had told Brandr how lucky he’d been, never to get married to a mortal. And he’d seen in his old friend’s eyes how much Eitri had hated himself for the relief he’d felt.
And the guilt.
Lorelei’s eyes were bereft, and a little bewildered. “That’s Eitri,” she said, poking a taloned finger into Brandr’s arm. “That doesn’t explain you. Why didn’t you ever get married?”
Brandr looked down at her finger, and shrugged. “W-was f-fond of s-someone when I w-was young. Sh-she m-married s-someone else. I g-got over it. C-courted a few others. N-never lasted. Thought about hand-fasting once, in m-my f-fifties. Eitri t-talked m-me out of it. It’s b-better this w-way. D-don’t have to w-watch them d-die. And they’re . . . they’re not st-stuck w-waiting—”
“Waiting to see if you come home alive.” Her voice had gone flat.
He nodded, emphatically. “That is nonsense, and you know it.” Lorelei sounded furious. “The gods never intended for anyone to be alone. Honor, duty, and family are what we fight for. How can you fight to defend a home or a family if you don’t have either? If nothing matters to you?”
We? You’re slipping, Regin, Brandr thought, then reconsidered. Or Lorelei could mean we in general. All of humanity. It was, again, too difficult to say what he thought on the matter. That he’d learned to extend his definition of family to my entire people, but that yes, abstractions were hard to fight for, most days. He did, however, say, mildly, “You kn-know what the g-gods intend? P-perhaps L-loki sp-spoke to you at Fr-fritti’s office?” Just a poke. Just enough to show that he’d noticed that Lorelei hadn’t been sent away when Loki had restored his memories.
Lorelei twitched. “Of course I don’t know what the gods plan. I don’t even know why he bade me stay there. I didn’t expect to see any of your memories.”
A sharp tang in his mouth, adrenaline precursors, which he bit down on, hard. “You saw.”
“Some, yes. Probably not all.” Her voice softened. “What happened to the girl you wanted to hand-fast?”
He shook his head, watching her eyes as he answered, “Th-the one Eitri t-told me not to m-marry? Thyri g-got m-married. H-her g-grandchildren f-found m-my c-contact in-information b-back in eighty-five. S-sent me her o-ob-bit . . .” Brandr swore mentally and defaulted to an easier way of saying it. “d-death notice.�
�� He eyed Lorelei for a moment. “The v-valkyrie? M-married a mortal. W-went m-mad with grief when he d-died.”
Her expression went shuttered, and he could see her glancing from side to side, as if reading from a mental list of names. “I’m sorry. What happened to her? Did anyone comfort her?”
Brandr laughed. “I t-tried to. She d-did her best to k-kill herself and everyone around her. Including m-me.” He caught the faint look of horror, and shrugged. “N-now? Br-brothels are easier. D-don’t h-have to talk.” He pointed at the horizon. “Orni—”
“I see it, yes. Too far for you to throw. JDF jets should be moving in on it—”
“If it’s c-carrying bottles—fire w-will en—”
Her eyes narrowed. “Good point. They do like using chemical fire to enhance their elementals’ power. Have to find a way to force them to land without breaking open their payloads.”
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 50
