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

by Deborah Davitt

  Quauhtli shook in his eternal agony, and felt rivulets of blood course down his body, but knew that he was blessed. His blood would make the land bloom. He was a living image of fertility. Abundance. His ability to bear this pain made him worthy of the gods’ blessings, made him a god himself. Blessings would rain down on his people, through him. Quauhtli stared across the cityscape of Tenochtitlan. Smoke rose from the tops of all the temples. The once-proud suspension bridges were mostly tangles of metal, and there was a continuous hum of mosquitoes and flies around him, which his servants industriously fanned away from his body. Little specks of dust caught in the wind, and stung his naked body . . . which would make the flesh suppurate, later. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, at this moment, but the crowd of people at the foot of his elevated throne, the mad throng who called his name in joy and terror, and the smell of the braziers burning in the temples. He could hear, in the distance, an ahuizotl heckling like a monkey when it found its prey on some city street.

  “Let us all please the gods today!” the tlatoani called out, his voice a dull rasp that still cut through the crowd noise. The crowd cheered, egged on by the armed guards and the red-handed priests, and the guards began to move the first sacrifice up the great steps of the pyramid.

  Quauhtli was struck, however, by a face in the crowd that did not belong. The man was not cheering, and he didn’t stare up at the temple in awe or wonder, joy or relief. Rather, his deep-set eyes met the Emperor’s squarely, as if he thought he had the right to do so. He wore a simple, sleeveless tunic of turquoise-dyed cotton, and his bare arms were covered in glowing tattoos, as he folded them across his chest. And while his face was young, his eyes, burning into the Emperor’s, were old.

  Quauhtli turned, and beckoned to one of his guards, and pointed into the crowd. “That man,” he said, urgently. “He is here to kill me. He is an assassin! Make him the next sacrifice!”

  The guard looked up, and with evident concern for his own skin, lunged into the crowd, grabbed the first man he saw, and looked back for approval. Quauhtli tried to shout, no, no, not him, the other one! The one . . . there . . . except when he looked back up again, the first man was gone. Vanished entirely.

  He had the man his guard had seized prepared for sacrifice anyway. Authority could never be seen to be wrong. And as the first body tumbled down from above, something extremely sharp pressed into his back, and an unseen hand locked in place over his jaw, lighting up his raw nerve endings with pain. A voice whispered in his mind, The Romans, when their generals came home, and paraded in triumph through their city streets, used to employ a man to sit beside them in their chariots. And do you know what they used to whisper in the conquerors’ ears?

  Quauhtli tried to respond, but his jaw was locked, and all he could manage was a choked grunt.

  They told their heroes, ‘Remember, you must die.’ A good lesson, is it not? One that you have forgotten.

  Searing pain. Quauhtli looked down at his chest, and blinked as an obsidian knife, as sharp as any priest’s sacrificial dagger, sprouted from his sternum. The knife jerked back out again, and he sagged forwards, his vision skewing. In his last fleeting moment of consciousness, he managed to look behind him, and saw the man again. This time, he stood eight feet in height, and the turquoise tunic was polished scale armor made from the precious stone. A golden mask in the form of a snarling serpent covered his face, and quetzal feathers rustled around the mask.

  The crowd below was an inflamed beast, one mind in many bodies. All the beast knew was relief and fear. Relief that it’s not me being dragged up there, countered by the fear of but it could be me if I make one wrong move. It took a moment for those closest to the emperor to notice what had happened. And for the words to spread through to the rest of the mind of the beast. The beast knew that this man had been its head, its heart. It knew that this man had made it into what it was, created the frenzy in it. Bound them all together in solidarity. Equal parts guilt, fear, and exaltation (it’s not me!/it could be me/it will be me if I don’t do what I’m told). And on seeing the Emperor die, the beast went mad.

  The riot started at the base of the pyramid. Guards killed civilians. Civilians killed priests. Blood on the stones. And then a great voice called, Stop! and for an instant, everyone present fell to their knees, be their hands ever so red. The eyes of the priests present were instantly burned in their sockets, blinding them as Quetzalcoatl revealed himself in his glory, and again ordered them, The madness must end here. No more sacrifices. Leave here. Seek no retribution against each other. You can and you must work together to knit our land back together.

  But in the days that came after, conflicting rumors spread throughout Nahautl, and the army was unable to keep control, even after abandoning the war against Quecha. Some sub-provinces, hit hard by the sacrifice raids that targeted specific ethnicities, rebelled, killing every full-blooded Nahautl inside their borders. Some provinces burned down their temples, effacing the names and visages of the gods. The streets of every city ran with blood, and Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl appeared, attempting to restore order—the order that had fed them with sacrifices—only to be attacked by god-born of dead Tlaloc and dead Tezcatlipoca, along with the few remaining sorcerers of Nahautl who hadn’t been dragged to the altars as ‘enemies of the state.’

  With their temples in ruins and their believers in disarray, Mictecacihuatl was actually slain by god-born hands, and the shockwave of her death was such that she destroyed her husband in her passing.

  The orgy of violence and blood knew no bounds after that. It only spread. The army managed to retain control of its tanks, guns, and missile batteries, and the generals gave orders to fall back. To let the violence burn itself out, and then they’d come back in and restore order later. The only other choice was to massacre their own people. Who were actually massacring each other. The soldiers’ long drive to the north was punctuated by pyramids of skulls, heaped alongside the roads. By smoking, burned-out villages, and bodies, impaled on stakes or flayed alive. It was all the same, after a while. By the time they reached the Tó Ba’áadi River, the traditional border with Novo Gaul, all of the men were hollow-eyed, and a single thought had taken possession of most of them. In traditional Nahautl philosophy, the north was Mictlampa, the land of the dead. Better to be a live man, in the land of the dead, than a dead man, in the land of the living.

  “A man came to me, once,” one of these soldiers said, his voice dull. “He told me, if I believed in him, he could get me out of Nahautl. Could get my family out, too.” He turned and looked at the driver of his convoy vehicle. “I laughed. And now, my wife is dead. Sacrificed. She was Tiwani by birth. And my son was taken and sacrificed, too. ‘Impure’ blood.” He stared back out at the convoy ahead of them. “I wonder what would have happened, if I’d just believed in him. And taken the chance.”

  “You catch his name?”

  “Ehecatl.”

  “Named after one of Quetzalcoatl’s aspects. Hah. Probably thought he was a god, too.”

  Maius 1, 1999 AC

  Reginleif had been irritable and snappish all day. Brandr was used to how sharp her tongue was, but even by her standards, it was a little excessive. They’d been training new landsknechten recruits all morning with Ima, winnowing through the newcomers to see who could be sent to the front lines to replace those who’d been recently wounded or killed. Grim work, but necessary. Ima finally beckoned them off to the side, asking Reginleif, “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t feel right,” the siren admitted, frowning. “I wonder if someone’s slipped me red meat.” She put her hands on her stomach. “I feel bloated, and very uncomfortable.”

  “Does the sensation come and go?” Ima asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Not really. It’s a steady, dull ache.” Reginleif flipped a hand in annoyance. “It will pass.”

  Brandr had noticed that her waist had been a little thicker the past few weeks, but they’d been either in the field, o
r at the landsknechten barracks the whole time. And even a small fluctuation of weight showed on her knife-thin form. He didn’t say anything, but rubbed her shoulders a little before bed, and otherwise kept his hands to himself. If her stomach was, somehow, upset, she wouldn’t thank him for putting his weight on her.

  Around two antemeridian, her low groan of discomfort woke him, and his eyes snapped open, already calling his hammer to his hand, out of reflex. “It’s all right, I’m fine,” Regin told him from the hallway, her breathing a little faster than normal, as if she’d been exercising.

  “Conjure some light?”

  “I’d . . . rather not, right now . . . .”

  Brandr moved straight for her, and stopped dead, as his feet found something cold and wet on the floor. “You threw up?” He was surprised. Valkyrie and bear-warriors didn’t usually do that, even when poisoned. Though they wished that they could. How did I not hear this? I’m usually a light sleeper, even out of the field . . . damn it all.

  “No. Not quite.” She sighed, and conjured a ball of light, which hovered over her head. Brandr looked down, realizing only now that she’d dragged the sheets off their bed and had pulled them around feet and legs where she crouched in the corner of the hallway. Her skin glistened with sweat, and there was blood on the sheets, and on the floor, but not a lot, as well as what looked like water, which was what he’d just stepped in. Brandr’s mind went blank, and dropped his weapon and lunged for her. The only thing he could think at the moment was Miscarriage, and she didn’t even wake me . . . .

  And then she caught his hands, as he frantically reached for her, and said, “Shh, I’m all right. I just . . . wasn’t expecting this.” She sounded embarrassed, surprised, and awed, all at once, and then she held up something about the size of a small rabbit that was white and glistened a bit in the light. It also undulated slightly in her hands, and Brandr recoiled, his hands palms up, and his eyebrows rising. “It’s an . . . egg.” She grimaced a little. “Valkyrie pregnancy terms are usually halved anyway. I should have expected that any egg gestation would only take a few weeks for me.” She sighed. “Gods only know when the poor thing is going to hatch.” She looked up, and caught the expression on Brandr’s face, and pulled the egg back to herself, looking mortified now. “I didn’t mean to make a mess. But I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t actually make it to the toilet.”

  Brandr had managed to recover somewhat by this point, and put his hands on her shoulders now, lightly. “Wasn’t . . . going to get the deposit back on this place anyway,” he managed, and pulled her close to him. You’re . . . really all right? Not still bleeding?” He glanced around, shrugged, and picked her and the egg up, bodily, moving her back to the bedroom.

  “I’m going to get this all over the bed—”

  “Stay put. I’ll get water and a towel.”

  Cleaning up was easy enough. Wiping the blood away from her legs, and giving her a clean cloth to put there to catch any drips. Tossing the sheets from her makeshift nest into the bathtub with some detergent; they were in the middle of another blackout, which meant that their laundry machines were useless hunks of metal. Brandr was growing to hate living in an area with an electrical grid. Then he mopped the floor, so she wouldn’t have to do so.

  The hard part, was trying to feel anything besides concern for her. She was obviously fascinated by the egg, wrapping herself around it to keep it warm, a haunted look in her eyes as she did so. He’d wanted children, but he’d been concerned about feeling a bond even with a human infant. But a baby was at least a person. An egg was a thing. He came back to bed, curling up behind her, preparing to wrap an arm over her, as he usually did . . . when she rolled over, occasioning a fight with the blankets. Put the egg between them, in the circle of warmth created by their bodies. “If I r-roll over, I’ll break it,” he said. The stutter only returned in states of agitation these days.

  “You’ve never yet rolled over me in the night. Doubt you’ll roll over this, either.” She moved closer. “I’ll take it to an incubation center tomorrow. Put our names on it, so everyone knows it’s the Ilfetu egg.” She’d kept her family name when she’d married Joris, but had adopted Brandr’s.

  “Is that safe?”

  “Around all those broody harpy males? There are bank vaults that are less protected.” She sounded nervous, though. Cloudwalker?

  Hmm?

  What if being in the egg means it’s definitely a harpy? What if it’s god-born? What on earth would a bear-warrior harpy even look like?

  Hairier than the other harpies. Or do I mean more feathery?

  Brandr!

  I know what you meant. I’m . . . a little nervous, too. It’ll be all right, though.

  Her mind churned on. Loki kept Sigrun from having children to avoid attachments during Ragnarok . . . and this certainly feels like Ragnarok . . . .

  Funny. Thor told me that he thought that reaching for the future, for hope, was the thing that could save us all. Maybe he won that argument with Loki.

  Maybe.

  Maius 4, 1999 AC

  Sigrun had done her best to keep her gawking to a minimum as she and the others had been escorted into Olympus. She felt like a gauche tourist, and at least twice as clumsy as she’d ever felt in Erida’s gracious home, filled with all its delicate antiquities. She’d never in her life imagined that she might venture here.

  White marble columns towered so high above her head in the main hall, that she thought their tops should be covered by clouds. It gave this realm a chilly, inhuman feeling. And the great hearth, where Vesta sat weeping, only harbored a tiny flicker of flame among the great logs.

  Freya and Sigrun had taken this opportunity to escort Minerva and Mercury back to Olympus. The pair now looked around themselves a little nervously, considering the atmosphere under which each of them had left. They did not quite huddle together, but they and the shadows that were Athena and Iris . . . definitely clustered. Poseidon and Artemis were particularly angry with Mercury, darting glares in his direction every time they thought that the greater gods weren’t watching. But Pluto and Juno had made it very clear that the other gods of Rome were to welcome them back as comrades in arms. And as family.

  Hades, however, was imprisoned in Valhalla, pending a post-war trial. Sigrun’s eyes went narrow every time she thought about the Hellene death-god and his role in the destruction of Cimbri-on-the-Caestus, but Odin had agreed that the matter had to wait. And she understood why.

  Freya, Venus, Pluto, and Sigrun had, after exchanging formal pleasantries, retired to Juno’s apartments in Olympus, where the queen of the gods awaited them, her shadow-twin, Hera, knotting her hands nervously outside the door, as she kept watch.

  Juno’s private realm was simpler than the rest of Olympus, but still showed her power. A window seemed to open on the blue waves of the Aegean on a sunny day, and soft ocean breezes wafted in from the unglazed opening. The furnishings wouldn’t have been out of place in a Roman house of hundreds of years ago, with a wood-framed bed, rush-filled mattress, and a marble floor, polished and tidy. A table with a pitcher of water, and a bowl full of what appeared to be grapes stood beside the bed, along with an unlit lamp. The only things that betrayed that this was the home of a goddess, were the mosaics on the walls. They didn’t depict gods, but humans. Lineages. The more Sigrun looked at them, the more she saw. Concentrating on the figure of a single birthing female, the perspective shifted, skewed. The mosaic pieces moved apart, and new figures appeared. That woman’s children. Concentrate on one of her sons, and he and his wife, or wives, or wife and mistresses would appear. Only the ones who had borne him children. Those children would appear, and then the mosaic pieces shuffled again. It was . . . dizzying. And it all started with twenty people, ten couples, all wearing skins, their eyes fixed on the night sky . . . . and extended out for a hundred and fifty generations, easily.

  Sigrun would have loved to look longer, but she wasn’t really here to sightsee. Juno lay on the bed,
pregnant and irascible, while Pluto edged towards the door. I need no assistance. Juno’s voice rang through the room, and minor attendant spirits scuttled out of the way, looking uneasy.

  This was a short pregnancy, Sigrun told Freya, a bare whisper of a thought. She didn’t want Juno’s attention at all right now.

  She is a goddess, and her new mate is a god, Freya told her, a hint of amusement in her voice. They could have had this child almost instantly, and it could have sprung fully-formed out of her essence. They are choosing this path for the sake of symbolism, I think. Freya turned away, telling Juno, briskly, You have overseen the births of millions of human women, I realize, but this is a first for you.

  I am hardly in any danger. This is the Veil. I cannot die here. Juno’s pale eyes slid towards Pluto, who had just put his back up against a wall. Sigrun would have chuckled, if he’d been a mortal man, but while the lord of the underworld had his hood pulled up over his face, his skin and flesh kept lifting away from the bones of his hands, rippling like ribbons in the wind . . . or worms in the grass, after a hard rain. She kept her unease off her face. What right do I have to judge? He is what I am, writ large. A memory returned to her, unbidden. Freya telling her to control her image, or belief would shape her . . . as Pluto had, obviously, been shaped.