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He lifted his hands to strike me, and with two fingers I crushed his wrist
into powder.
Heimdall, the once-mighty, the schemer, the demi-god who would have ruled gods
and lifted himself, gasped once, gasped twice, squared his shoulders, and
dropped his arms.
"Do your worst, with your hands dripping blood and fire! Do your worst and
feel righteous in your slaughter!"
I broke his neck with a single blow.
Silence.
I took in the black room, the crystal table of time, for that was what it was,
a tool of the Tribunes sheltered and used in secret.
I stared at the black crystal, willed it to shatter, and it did, the falling
shards themselves exploding into dust that was no more.
Eranas, the failed, who looked and would not see, who saw and would not act,
stood rooted in his own private forever Now, his vision locked into a universe
that soon would never have been, blackness creeping over his soul.
He, too, would die when the change-winds whistled around the Tower
and stirred the silent dust of time, for his mind could not bear the weight of
its own past.
Some things I had to finish, and I slid straight for Freyda's mountain
hideaway, the one overlooking Quest that had been in her family for millennia.
As I broke-out of the undertime, the invincibility broke also, and I
was scared, or sore afraid, as my former god-side might have said. I
was sore afraid, for the changes I had wrought could have been far beyond my
own conception. How small that conception was just began to dawn.
Freyda was sitting on the hidden balcony, watching a hawk circle over the
valley in the afternoon sun, sitting a bit too upright to be at as much ease
as she meant to convey. She acknowledged my entry without turning, staring at
the city below, still wearing her Tribune's black, star and all.
"I assume that's you, Loki god of fire, god of destruction and
madness."
"You expected me."
"Sooner or later. I was one of the few who didn't underestimate you.
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Gods take longer to grow up."
I didn't correct her assessment of me as a god. For Freyda, in some ways,
things were simple. Either I was a god, or I wasn't And I'd unconsciously
accepted her frame of reference, until Sammis's questions, while somehow
knowing it wasn't correct and fighting the simplistic definition.
But now the definitions didn't matter. The actions, my actions, mattered.
"Why didn't you stop me then?"
"Ten years ago it was too late to stop you. Your mother said it was too late
to stop you when you were born. You don't think people didn't try? They just
started too late
after you were born. The entire Guard couldn't have destroyed you after you
returned from Hell. Sammis was convinced you went only as a penance. One way
or another, with your birth, the Guard we knew was doomed."
It might have been
only I hadn't known it. After all, up until a season before, I hadn't
understood most of what I was doing. I told
Freyda that.
"Loki, don't you see? It didn't matter. If the Tribunes had strangled you at
birth, the guilt would have rotted us from within, at least those of us who
counted. If you had let yourself die on Hell, or if we had, no Guard would
have ever trusted the Tribunes or Counselors again. And what about you, the
real you? Have you ever really been forced to do what you didn't agree to?"
"I'm sure I have," I answered, but Freyda didn't go on.
The sun flashed through her hair, and the effect as she turned was the instant
impression of silver, of age before her time, which disappeared even as I
noted it.
"Sit down, young god. Sit down and watch the end of our era and the beginning
of yours."
I sat.
"What's the insistence on the god business?" I protested. "I'm no god." I knew
how she thought, but I had to try.
"Oh, not in the theological sense, but with your powers of mind over matter,
in practical terms it doesn't make much difference. You throw thunderbolts
without bothering to use microcircuits, walk on air and water, heal yourself
and probably others, destroy with a glance, go when and where you please
regardless of the barriers raised against you, and you cast down and raise up
whole planets and cultures."
Her dark eyes pinned me where I sat.
"Now. You define a god for me," she finished.
What could I say that she would accept? Yes, I could do all that she
described, all that she listed and more. But I was certainly not all-
knowing, nor all-understanding, nor even all-powerful.
"Then, I guess you'll have to call me a god."
Her attitude made one decision, or sealed it for me. Living legends,
particularly those reputed to be gods, never live up to their image.
Now, I would have to follow, in my own way, the example of my parents, of
Baldur, of Wryan, and strike out from Query, always treading the tight
time-path of accepting my power along with my own limitations.
Freyda turned full-face to me. "How does it feel to destroy the oldest
institution in galactic history, Loki? Does it make you feel grand?"
That was the first real bitterness I'd heard from Freyda.
I shook my head, not caring if Freyda believed me or not, thinking more of
Verdis, Loragerd, Narcissus, and the others who still believed in the shining
destiny of a new Guard rising from the ashes of the old.
The systems I had unshackled would not be put back in the ancient bottle of
temporal restraint cast so long ago by the Triumvirate. I had seen to that.
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Yes, I had seen to that.
Freyda, the last of the Tribunes, sat on the balcony of her retreat in the
hills overlooking Quest and pointed to the City of Immortals.
"Can't you feel it?"
I glanced at Freyda, seated in her sculpted chair and gazing out at
Quest from her protected terrace. So crisp she was, every white-blond hair in
place, golden skin smoother than glowstone, black eyes glittering.
"Can't you feel it?"
The change-winds were boiling just under the horizon of Now, their black chill
building.
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