Fate of the Gods 01 - Forged by Fate (7 page)

But Ra grinned when they met at last, clasping hands with him. “It is good to see you again, my friend. Very good. How was your trip?”

“I was received warmly.” Thor returned the older god’s smile. Either Ra did not suspect his part, or did not care, and Thor was surprised how happy it made him to know they could continue in friendship. “Word of my coming had reached Bhagavan-Shiva ahead of me. He said you had promised me safe conduct and I was to consider myself his most honored guest as your friend.”

Ra nodded. “Some wine to rinse the dust from your throat?”

“I would be most grateful.” Thor went to the window, which looked out on the river, and ran a hand over his face. Egypt did not seem to have suffered much for the loss of its slaves. The temples still shone with gold, silver, and jewels.

A servant appeared at his elbow, offering a cup of wine with a bow, and Thor accepted it. This throne room was part of Pharaoh’s own, a back room known only to those who served Ra and to Pharaoh himself. Every whisper of request was attended to almost immediately, the servants anxious to please their god.

“And how did you find the company of the Olympians? I imagine Zeus was quite interested in you, as similar as your strengths are.”

Thor shrugged. Zeus had been determined to see Thor drunk beneath his table, and the other Olympians seemed eager only for whatever gossip he could share. “The goddesses seemed pleased by my gifts. I had not realized how fond they were of golden apples.”

Ra chuckled, joining him at the window. “I did hear that someone had inscribed a message on one. For the fairest, it said.”

“Indeed.” Thor had never met a vainer group of goddesses than those living on Olympus. Aphrodite and Hera in particular. He glanced at the other god’s face, but Ra did not meet his eyes. “What happened?”

“It must have been after you left them. You did hear about the Trojan War, I trust?”

“Only that it devastated the Greeks to win.”

Ra smiled, but it was thin. “That was the least of it. We came very close to losing the world, Thor, simply to relieve Aphrodite’s boredom. There are times I wonder if allowing the Olympians to settle was worth it, but then Athena comes to see me and I’m reminded why I was convinced.”

“She is a brilliant goddess, to be sure. The best of the lot.” But Thor’s thoughts were still distracted by Ra’s comments about the war. “What do you mean, about losing the world?”

“Aphrodite gave Eve into Adam’s hands. Eve was Helen of Sparta, of course, though how she was born a child of Zeus will give the Olympians nightmares for centuries. And Aphrodite helped Adam steal her.”

“Is that so terrible?”

Ra looked up at him, his face gray. “Their child would inherit this world in its entirety, and have the power of the True God to change it, or destroy it utterly. Everything we had built would be lost. At best, we would be cast out of this plane, at worst wiped from existence.”

Thor set down his wine, his stomach gone sour. “Why would the True God allow such a thing?”

“He is old and has not the strength even to govern his own creation, or else none of us would be permitted here. I think his children are the only hope he has left, but the risk is too great. Even Michael and the angels fear it.” Ra’s gaze remained distant, his expression grooved with some remembered pain he did not share. “Perhaps it would not be so terrible a thing, but for Adam. We should all be grateful he does not know who or what he is, or nothing would stop him. He is a much more agreeable creature, living in ignorance.”

Thor shook his head. He had met Adam briefly, on his way east. The flicker of his aura, like the glow of electrum, impossible to miss after Thor had watched Eve for so long. Adam was a selfish man, and ambitious to be sure. Thor had lingered long enough to see him turn a village against its chief with nothing but charm and charisma. Adam had negotiated his marriage to the man’s daughter, placing himself in the best position possible before beginning his campaign, and then it had only been a word here and there in the right ears, each argument carefully chosen to undermine the chieftain. He had worked as smoothly as Loki to reach his goal, and Thor could well imagine the man could be dangerous in the wrong circumstances.

Eve on the other hand, he could not imagine as a force for anything but good from the little he had seen of her. She did not seem to search for power as her brother did, or want anything but peace in her own life. But if she could end the world it was his duty to learn all he could about her.

“This True God. Is he a threat to us?”

Ra still stared at the river, his face lined and brittle. “The angels are the ones you should consult about God’s plans, if they’ll bother to speak with you,” he admitted. “But if what you really wish to know is the truth about the girl, I may be able to point you in a more fruitful direction. There seems to be one line she returns to, often enough that it’s been noted. The House of Lions. After escaping Troy, she fled there. She doesn’t like war.”

“Odin will wish to know of her, I am sure.” Thor scratched at his jaw. It was more than he had hoped for, but he had no wish to appear too eager. “Can you direct me to these people?”

“You’ll find them on the other side of the Alps, not terribly far from the coast, somewhere in the foothills. I’m told they live quite alone there, apart from any others.” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I cannot promise they will receive you warmly or that they will give you the information you wish to know about the girl. The rumor is that the bloodline is descended directly from her first husband, at the dawn of Creation. They appear to be quite protective of her.”

Thor ignored the warning. If these Lions did not accept gold, they would certainly accept the information he could offer them, and being a god with power over rain and storm made him a valuable ally if nothing else. “I thank you, Amun-Ra, for your hospitality.”

Ra inclined his head in the slightest of acknowledgments. “I will be curious to hear what you discover.”

Thor bowed and showed himself out.

He traveled by foot, for the most part. It was easier to explain himself that way, with the dust and sweat of the journey on his clothes. He could have called the lightning to take him as far as the Etruscan lands, but Odin’s order was to learn and Thor had done this duty often enough to know the best way to learn about a world was to live in it.

He sailed with traders from Egypt across the sea, giving them good winds and clear skies to Ra’s greater glory, and then made his way north over land. He was grateful to be leaving the desert behind. The arid lands had not appealed to him—all yellows and browns. And the gold with which Egypt chose to drape itself served only to remind him of Sif. Her golden hair, warm and soft as silk, wrapped around his hand. The scent of her skin, gleaming in the firelight after their lovemaking. And her eyes, glowing with gold fire as she looked at him, bathing him in her light.

Thor smiled as he trudged over another rocky hill. Sif would be waiting for him, even now. As soon as he finished this final journey to learn what he could about the Lions and Eve, he could return to her. It had been more than two centuries, now. Far too long for any god to remain celibate. Sif would be very pleased to see him, and he had no intention of stirring from her bed for the next year, if he could get away with it. Odin owed him that much for his service.

“Meh!”

The noise startled him from his thoughts, followed by soft scuffling. A nanny goat stood on the slope, beside a crevasse in the rock. The scuffling noise came again from behind the nanny, followed by a pathetic bleat.

“Meh-ehh!”

The nanny was fat, its coarse brown fur shining, with a tattered piece of twine tied around its neck. The animal was heavy with milk. Heavy enough that it should have found its way home to be milked. When he stepped forward the goat didn’t start, but stared at him with narrow eyes.

“Lost your baby, have you?” He crouched down, letting the goat catch his scent and reaching out to scratch between its horns. The scuffling sound came from the pit again, and he leaned over to look. The nanny stiffened, but he stroked her soft ears and kept scratching, murmuring reassurance.

“Meh!”

As he had thought, her baby was caught in the crevasse. The kid’s front leg was stuck straight out, though at its mother’s call it tried to shift and rise. The leg gave, and the kid fell back to the dirt with the goat equivalent of a whimper.

Thor grunted and lay down against the stone on his stomach, reaching down to grab the kid. It was a long fall, and he could only just reach the animal himself from the rock above. He caught it by the hind leg, and it bleated anxiously, exciting the nanny which promptly bit his ear.

He growled, and the mama left off with a shudder. The kid stopped squirming at once, and he pulled it up, setting it down in the scrub. “There. You ungrateful
geit
.”

The nanny scrambled toward its young as soon as Thor rose. The kid tried to climb to its feet to suckle, but it didn’t put any weight on its front leg, holding it off the ground oddly. Thor rubbed at his ear, but it had been more nuisance than anything else, and he didn’t think the nanny would try anything similar a second time.

There was little sign of the rest of the herd. The area had been picked over, most of the green stripped from the branches of what plants had grown, but if there had been other goats here, they’d moved on. Judging by the nanny’s bag, it couldn’t have been more than a day. The animal might have been left behind this morning when the rest of the herd left, unwilling to leave its young.

The kid wouldn’t be able to walk very far in this landscape with a broken leg. If he left it, they were both more likely to be eaten by a lion or wolf than to find their way home. But he was close to where Ra had told him he was likely to find Eve’s people. He sighed. When the kid had finished suckling, he picked it up and nodded to the nanny. “Go on. I’ll follow.”

The nanny’s eyes narrowed to slits again, but it shook itself and started off down the hill, pausing every few steps to be sure that he followed. They hadn’t gone very far when he heard a voice calling, and the nanny goat picked up her speed and called back, recognizing its keeper.

Thor pushed through a line of brush and the nanny led him around a small stand of trees into a meadow. A young girl stood, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, watching for them. Or at least watching for the goat.

When she saw him she reached for a staff, abandoned on the ground, and whistled sharply. A large white dog lumbered to its feet amidst the goats and barked. Thor gave it a look and it whined, its hackles raised along its back. The nanny bleated and trotted to its mistress.

The girl dropped a hand to the goat’s head, almost absently, her eyes not leaving Thor’s face. “What do you want?”

He smiled and nodded to the nanny, the kid still in his arms. It took him a moment to find the language and lift it from her mind.

“I found your goat on the hill.” The words did not fall as easily from his tongue as he might have wished, though it was only a slight variation from that which was spoken in the southern peninsula. He cleared his throat. “This one has a broken leg, I’m afraid, but I thought you might like it back.”

The girl hesitated, her fingers tightening around the staff. The dog was at her side now, its ears perked forward and its head low.

“Meh!” the nanny said. The kid bleated back, and the girl’s gaze shifted, softening at the sight of the animal he held. She set the staff aside and reached for the kid.

“Thank you,” she said, her fingers moving over the bones of the front leg. She frowned. “What happened to him?”

“He fell into a fissure. By the look of the leg, it can’t be too terrible a break. If you set it, he should be just fine in a few weeks.”

“Can you find me something to splint it?” She sat down carefully on the ground, the kid in her lap, and began to tear a strip of cloth from the bottom of her skirt. He didn’t think she could be more than twelve years old, though she worked with the seriousness of someone older.

There were plenty of branches to pick from, though the younger and greener the more it would bend. He settled on one as thick around as the kid’s leg, and snapped it into two lengths. It was another moment’s work to strip the twigs. He pulled lightning through his hand and burned the bark free, leaving the wood slightly charred but smooth.

“Oh!”

She was watching the smoke rise through his fingers, her eyes wide. He smiled again and crouched down in front of her, handing her the wood. “If I’d left the bark, it would have worn rough against his leg. This will be better.”

She took the wood without looking at it. “But how did you do that?”

He opened his hands, showing her his palms, then brushed the soot from them. “I just can.”

“Didn’t it hurt?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

Her forehead creased and she dropped her gaze to the kid in her lap, taking the branches and the cloth and splinting them against the leg. He could hear her mind, buzzing over what she’d seen, trying to understand. But she was young enough, he hoped, that she would believe.