The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3)

by Deborah Davitt

  “That’s not . . . that’s not true.” Sudden, frantic understanding. “You’re the one turning this into the grand separation, not me.”

  She looked down again. “Do you know what a selkie is, Adam?”

  He shook his head. “No idea.”

  “A Gallic spirit, a seal-wife. It was said that when they came out of the water, and cast off their seal-skins, and chose to love a mortal man, they’d become human. And their mortal husbands, to keep them there, took away their seal-skins, and hid them, so that they could never leave, never return to the sea, never return to their seal-husbands and children in the waves. And invariably, when the seal-wife found her skin in some locked and hidden chest, she did return to the waves. And every now and again, when the human husband saw her out at sea, he’d hunt and kill her seal-husband and seal-children.”

  “. . . I don’t like where this metaphor is going.”

  “The sea is the Veil, of course.” Sigrun’s tone was tired. “When we two were young, and we fought together, you accepted me in my swanskin. And when you could no longer fight beside me, I took off my swanskin every time I came home to you. Because you couldn’t be what you had been, and I could not bear to see the look of longing in your eyes, to be more than what you were now. I hung it on a peg, and whenever I left, I took it back up again.”

  “I’ve never held you back. I’ve never told you not to be what you are—” Adam flung a hand towards their wedding picture, on the wall, her wrapped in a white swan-cloak, and him in his Praetorian armor.

  “You accepted the valkyrie, but what happens when the warrior becomes too old to fight?” Her voice trembled. “There is a reason, I think, that all my people’s legends end with the man dying nobly in battle—young—and the valkyrie dying of grief thereafter. Like the first Sigrun, and all her reincarnations, always loving the same nameless man, who was reincarnated along with her. Life after life after life. Meeting again and again, only to die again and again.” She looked away. “If I could talk to her now? I’d tell her to learn from the mistakes of her past lives. To move on, and love someone else, or no one at all, and certainly not a man who always chooses death. I would tell her to grow up.” Sigrun bowed her head. “Those legends rarely tell of the warrior who grows old, and wise, and becomes a king, and then grows even older. The best of the legends . . . do. Beowulf, king of the Geats, was old and white-haired when he picked up his sword and spear one last time to fight a dragon, the tales say. And he died for it, but he saved his people. But all the others? Died young, and were saved the indignity of no longer being able to fight beside the valkyrie who loved them.”

  “And the valkyrie were spared having to play nurse to an old man.” Adam’s voice was bitter.

  “I haven’t minded helping you. But it hurts, every day, seeing you choose this over me.” A frozen tear streaked down her cheek. “The other thing about those pretty old stories is that neither the hero nor the valkyrie ever changes. They stay young forever. They die, and pass into legend, and never have to grow up. Never have to teach a child. Never have to nurse a sick mother, a sick sister, a sick father-in-law.” Sigrun sighed. “I’ve changed, Adam. For better or for worse. And so have you. We are not now who we once were.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “If in forty years, you cannot say you have not changed, either you have learned nothing and done nothing with your life, or you are lying.” Sigrun lowered her head. “I have changed, Adam. I grew up. I have put my adolescent stubbornness behind me. I had taken such pride in being nothing more than what I had been born to be . . . and part of that related to you, of course. I did not wish to be so much more than what you were. But when the truth was shown to me, in such a way that I could no longer avoid it or deny it . . . I accepted it. I put aside childish things. And now I do my job.”

  Adam put his face down in his hands and sat there for a long moment. “Sigrun,” he said, between his fingers. “Can I think about your offer?”

  “Take all the time you wish. But do not take to the end of the world.”

  That sounded like faint humor, and perhaps a bit of relief in her voice. Adam stood, and hesitantly crossed the room to her, and gingerly, as if they were both made of fragile glass, put his arms around her. She started for an instant, and then relaxed. Clutched at him, almost desperately. I don’t want to lose you. It was a whisper inside his mind, and he flinched at it, but forced himself to relax. It was still her. She was still Sigrun. And he still loved and trusted her.

  Finally, he whispered against her hair, “You say you share your humanity with me. And you won’t share the goddess with me, unless I . . . accept your offer.” The only compromise you will offer is one that changes me fundamentally. A change in state, like your own.

  “Not will not. I cannot. You keep me human. It’s not a bad thing. I would say, in fact, that it is a good thing.” She looked up at him. “But could you live with what I am, day in and day out?”

  “. . . it would be a little odd seeing you baking in the full armor.” He paused at the damp snort of laughter, and then asked, carefully, “So . . . who does share the goddess? Nith?” He frowned slightly. Nith had long since stopped being an animal or a servant in his mind. Sigrun clearly treated the dragon as a friend, and it was hard not to see him as one, now that he chose to speak. And yet, at the same time, while part of him wanted to be jealous of the god-born beast, how could he be, when he’d told Sigrun no, that he would not share this with her, not yet, in the only way she could or would share it with him?

  “Minori’s been instructing me in seiðr. Helping me practice what Freya put in my mind. The other gods have instructed me. Eir has given me some advice here and there. Saraid was much more helpful. She’s helping me learn how to block out the voices, so I’m not being torn fifty directions at once. Lassair, too. But yes, Nith helps me with it the most. He just won’t take a back door into any building.” Rueful amusement in her voice. “He says he will not tolerate me treating myself as a servant, nor will he allow himself to be treated so, anymore. Bad for my image and for . . . belief, he says.”

  For an instant, Adam wanted to buy the dragon a goddamned cask of beer. It was precisely what he’d been trying to get Sigrun to see for decades, and the dragon managed it simply by dint of being what he was. But his mind had balked over something else she’d said. “Voices?”

  “. . . people asking for my help.” Sigrun sounded embarrassed.

  A chill passed through him. “You’re accepting prayers now?”

  “No! But if someone asks me for help, if it’s important, if they really can’t handle it themselves . . . I have to intervene.” He could feel her trembling like a leaf in against him. His strong, sure Sigrun. “I fought these powers for decades. Prometheus ripped almost all the illusions I had away, and Tyr took away the rest. I have to be this. I told Tyr that I’d use the powers for the war, and that if we won, that I wanted him to take them away, so . . . so I’d be what I was when we married. No more, no less. He agreed to it . . . if I still wanted them taken away.”

  “And now?” His throat hurt to ask it.

  “I . . . see their advantages. I can do so much more with these powers than I could before. I can . . . help people. I can do more . . . than just kill or arrest them, or, once in a while, heal them.”

  Adam swallowed. “Power corrupts, Sig. It always corrupts. You’re human . . . all right, you started out as human. Fallible. Even gods are fallible. We both know this.” The terrible reality of it hit him. How could anyone, even Sig, be trusted with . . . this much power? “Sometimes the right thing to do is nothing at all.”

  And yet . . . in spite of all the transcendence he’d seen her reveal . . . she hadn’t been eight feet tall. She didn’t put herself on the same level as her gods. She didn’t glorify herself. The self-doubt that her step-mother had instilled into her kept her, humble, in a way. It was part of what had kept her from reaching for what she’d been given, for decades.

  On th
e one hand, it was glorious to see her standing, tall and proud, believing in herself. Horrifying to realize that he could make her recoil from that with a word as simple as no.

  And just a terrible was the understanding that there was now almost no part of her that he could share. Because he could not—would not—give her his spirit. His soul.

  “Yes. Power corrupts,” Sigrun agreed, quietly. “I know this. But I also know that the instant I use these powers in a way that’s detrimental to humanity, someone will rise and strike me down. Whether it’s you with Caliburn, or some other entity . . . it won’t matter. Justice will be done. And I accept that.”

  He started to shake again, even as he held her. A flash of a dark figure with yellow eyes, looming out of the darkness. Is that why I’m fated to become what I’m to become? I won’t. I won’t do it if it means killing her. I can’t do it. She was light-in-darkness right now. A good person, who embodied the darkest parts of mankind. Every god she had been exposed to had been, to some degree, been considered ‘evil’ over the years. Of course, Lassair and Saraid had taken powers from those gods, too, and Lassair was as bright and sunny and as cheerful a creature as could be found in the whole of creation. But Saraid’s mild and gentle nature had become that of an alpha female wolf. She had been changed.

  Yet it had been Sigrun who had taken all of the ‘dark’ aspects of these gods. Every last one. Surely . . . that changed her. Warped her. That’s why she could . . . accept being what she was now. “Your entire culture is in love with death, Sigrun. You don’t need to be, too.”

  “That belief gives me a certain power,” she said, quietly. “Every battlefield is my holy ground, Adam.” She swallowed. “Everywhere a mother or a father weeps for a lost child, or a lover for a beloved? Their tears are my sacrament. Lassair fuels herself on passion.” She looked up at him. “Sorrow is what feeds me, Adam. Sorrow, anger, and death. I can feel the difference, at night, on a battlefield. It wells up in me.” Sigrun exhaled, and Adam knew his face had gone rigid, even though his arms remained wrapped around her. “And yet, I have worked with Prometheus for nothing more than the chance to subvert my sister’s prophecies. If I thought for one moment that we could win this war, defeat her prophecies forever, by my death? I’d tell you to take Caliburn and shoot me, here and now.”

  “That’s the easy way out, Sigrun—” No. Not that. Sigrun, don’t you dare.

  “Listen. I know that it’s not the kind of self-sacrifice that will win this. I don’t have much hope, Adam.” She exhaled. “But I have to trust that we’re changing enough of Apollo of Delphi’s memories, that we have a chance. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning. Otherwise, there would be no point beyond going through the motions. That’s what Sophia never understood.”

  He shook his head. “I love you, Sigrun. But you’re giving up everything you were. Everything you believed in. If we give up our principles, is it still a victory?”

  “I grew up. That’s all. And once, I was mostly human. And now, I’m mostly not. But even if I gave up every single thing that made me, me? If the rest of the world survived? Yes. It would be worth the cost.” Her voice rang with conviction.

  He nodded, and swallowed as they leaned against each other, and listened to the rain, which had diminished now to a gentle patter. “So. Here we are. Just us, and the truth.”

  “Yes.” Her voice had dulled once more.

  She’s been forcing herself down to my level for decades. She’s been fighting with one arm tied behind her back, because of me. Because she thought that I would hate her. I don’t. I love her. But unless I accept her offer, or Tren’s, the best thing I can do for her is not be a burden to her. Adam nodded. “Where do we go from here? How do we . . . keep living?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was muffled. “I expected to have to leave once you knew.”

  “Why would you ever think that I would reject you in that way?”

  “It’s only going to get worse, Adam,” Sigrun told him, her voice gentle. “Now that you know? You’re going to be looking and watching for all the things that make me not human.”

  “And couldn’t they be a wonder to me?” He tipped her face up, and kissed her, gently. Trying to remind her of everything they’d both felt. And yet, the chilly touch of her tears was an immediate reminder that they weren’t the same people anymore. “Sig . . . I’m trying. I’m trying to reach you.” Reach back down and take my hand, neshama. “This doesn’t have to end badly.”

  “Every life is a tragedy told in three acts. And everyone is the author of their own fall.”

  Adam kissed her forehead. “Enough of that.” He stroked his fingers at the base of her scalp, trying for . . . normalcy. It was a lie, of course, and he’d demanded truth from her. “You shouldn’t have to live two lives at once, Sig.”

  No reply but her silence.

  Adam exhaled, and braced himself. “Lassair managed to be unselfish enough to free Tren.” He swallowed, hard. “I’m . . . not that unselfish. I love you. You’re the reason I keep . . . going on.” The words were hard to say. “But I can’t keep tearing you in half, either. Tren and Kanmi both said, over the years, that someone’s abilities are limited by imagination, belief, and will.” Adam closed his eyes. “If you’re in a habit of thinking of yourself as human . . . you’ll limit yourself, unconsciously. You won’t think of trying something, because you are, in your own mind, mortal.”

  She nodded against his shoulder, “So Min, Freya, Reginleif and Nith all tell me. Erida and Hecate, too.”

  I really was the last one to know. Adam didn’t dare open his eyes. “I could get you killed, Sig.”

  “I’d tell you that I can’t die till the world ends, but we’re trying to break my sister’s future, so that’s no help.” Her voice sounded colorless.

  He opened his eyes, and leaned down and kissed her as if it were the first time all over again. “Go be a goddess, Sig.”

  Sigrun’s face crumbled, and she turned away. “You want me to leave.”

  “No, I don’t want you to leave! Come back when you can. Don’t make it a nightly thing. Don’t make it a duty. Sig, I can’t live with the idea that I’m holding you back, that my goddamned mortality is weighing you down like a boulder, when you were born to fly.” Adam swallowed. “You can check in on me. We’ll . . . figure out the political shit when and if the rebellion actually happens. Tren can pop me in the Veil if we need to move the house, or if I . . . fall over with a heart attack. If I . . . if I can’t say yes to you . . . .” Words were becoming increasingly difficult. “I promise we’ll at least have a chance to say goodbye.”

  “This is a goodbye, Adam. The less I am with you, the more I will change. I will be shaped by belief, in spite of all my efforts to anchor myself in your reality.” Sigrun looked up at him. “I won’t be who I have been anymore.”

  Adam pulled her to him, tightly. “No one ever is, Sig. And yet we also stay the same.” I can hope, anyway. “How about if you get the others back in here. I want to see what we can do about Mercury.”

  Sigrun exhaled on a shudder, and pulled away. “Back to work?”

  “Back to work. Let’s see what, if anything, can be done about the assassin of the gods.” And who better to take care of that, than me?

  Chapter 8: Ignition

  Humans have the remarkable ability to defy death. It might be bravado, it might be denial, but in the face of disaster, they laugh and make merry. They cling to tradition or overturn convention with equal vigor. We see it in the wild revels of our young soldiers as they come back from the front lines. We see it in the increased birthrate in the generation currently thirty or younger. Birthrates have tended to be flat since the introduction of birth control centuries ago, except during times of war or natural disaster, when they invariably spike. People reach to affirm love and life, and that is an amazing natural instinct that has ensured the survival of our species.

  Even the god-born seem to feel this urge; their birth-rates had been st
agnant for the last two hundred years, with an uptick beginning around 1910 AC. Being god-born is not an assurance of having god-born children, of course; perhaps the gods somehow knew that more of their servants would be needed soon. But even with this early rise in their numbers, by 1970 AC, there were only 75,000 total god-born in the Empire, out of slightly under a billion citizens and subjects. Thousands have since perished in battle, and yet, today, a general census finds that there are 85,000 god-born currently in the Empire—a net increase of ten thousand. Some of these are refugees from foreign nations, but at least fifty percent were born in the last twenty years.

  Of course, many god-born never appear to age. Many of them never lose their reproductive capability. Why, then, are normal mortals not outnumbered by the god-born? Two factors pertain. First, many of them have a greatly decreased fertility rate compared to normal humans. Second, most of them are the shock troops of the gods. They are put to work in combat situations far more frequently than any population of normal humans. The Legion rotates standard troops out of combat every six months to prevent combat fatigue, if possible, and a normal legionnaire serves for twenty to forty years. A god-born's career never ends except in death, and they usually serve for nine to twelve month stretches, with few breaks. Their mortality rate within their first century of life is generally thought to be seventy-five percent, though such statistics are not released by major temples. Up to half of the remaining twenty-five percent do not survive their second century. Again, the temples are silent as to why. Those who study psychology posit burn-out and a lack of human connections. That the aging god-born become out of touch with mortal reality, or simply despair, because all those whom they ever loved, they have lost.