by R. Lee Smith
Olivia looked back at Murgull with huge, panicked eyes. “What happened to her?”
“Poison,” the old gulla said bluntly, and pushed away further questions with impatient flaps of her hand. “Do not ask me which, it was not one of mine. Only look at her. This is no sleep, no sickness. No, there is a bottle of death in this room and we must find it, quickly, before Lorchumn returns.” She sat forward suddenly, her good eye narrowing. “That child below, she knows something, I think.”
“Liz,” Olivia said numbly.
“Go and see to her. Make her understand.” Murgull stood and shuffled over to have a closer look at the body. “To do this to the mate who hunts for you,” she murmured. “Little human, was your fear so much?”
Olivia climbed back down the chute to kneel beside Liz. “What happened?”
“I want my Mommy.”
“Stop that!” She’d used the same words with Cheyenne once, in the same tone, and now she got the same result: a flinch, a wince, and finally a fading of that tight shine of panic, and she knew that she was being heard. “I can’t do anything until I know what happened, so if you know something, you need to tell me.”
Liz gazed up at Olivia, her eyes shining with tears. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. She told me she was having trouble sleeping, and I…oh God, I have some pills.”
“You have what?”
“He s-said I could bring s-something with m-me and so I grabbed my p-purse and—”
—like, half the contents of my bathroom cabinet. She remembered now. And apparently that meant a little more than change for the phone and dental floss after all.
“What were you giving her?” Olivia asked. She couldn’t believe how steady her voice was.
“H-Hycodan. It’s…It’s the purer form of hydrocodone, f-from Canada.”
“Jesus, Liz!”
“She said she was h-having trouble sleeping, so I just gave her a few. Just a few, whenever she asked, you know, b-because we don’t see each other every day.” Her voice broke and she began to cry in great, gulping sobs. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know! I’m sorry! Oh, I want to go home!”
A gulla put his head around the corner and cleared his throat awkwardly. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Yes,” Olivia said. “Something is terribly wrong.”
Two more gullan appeared behind the first. “What’s happened?” one of them wanted to know.
“Someone is dead,” Olivia replied. “And this one found her.”
They stared at her, gape-mouthed and horrified. “Oh no!” one of them breathed. “Where’s Lorchumn?”
“He’s gone with the hunters. They just left,” another said, and turned to the third. “Go find Vorgullum or Doru. Let them tell Lorchumn. Go, run.”
“Is anyone up there now?” asked the first as the other bolted away down the tunnel. “You shouldn’t leave the dead alone. Just in case.”
“Murgull is with her,” Olivia answered, and held up her hand to forestall more questions, switching back to English and dropping her voice to a whisper just in case one of them understood that even a little. “Have you given pills to anyone else?”
“No! Just…Just some Midol for Beth and Sarah, and a couple sleeping pills once for the other Sarah. Just regular ones, not scripts. And…And some peppers for Carla once in a while. They’re mostly caffeine, I swear!” she burst out. “They’re totally legal! I get them at the gas station!”
Olivia turned and beckoned to one of the nervously-watching gullan. He came forward with his hand out, ready to take Liz and her hysterics away, but she said, “Go get Tina, right now, please. She should still be in the commons.”
He was away at once.
“I’m okay,” Liz said in a quavery voice. “I am, re—”
“Tina is going to walk you back to your lair,” Olivia told her. “And you’re going to hand over your purse, your pills, and your whole little pharmacy, you get me?”
Liz hesitated, wiped at her eyes, and haltingly nodded. “I didn’t know,” she said, without strength. “I didn’t, I swear.”
“I believe you. But Tina’s a doctor. It only makes sense for her to have any medications, right?”
Liz’s second pause was even longer than the first; her nod, noticeably more reluctant.
“At this point, the only one I’m going to tell is Tina,” Olivia said in her hard new voice. “But if you make me, by God, I will tell Vorgullum.”
Liz burst into fresh tears, bringing the hovering gullan a few steps closer.
“What happened?” one of them asked. “How did she die?”
“It was a sudden sickness,” Olivia replied. Liz’s sobs doubled in volume. “There was no way to know. No way to prevent it.”
“Poor Lorchumn,” the gulla said. “He suspected she’d sparked.”
Olivia only shook her head, helpless and heavy with sorrow. She held onto Liz and wished for Vorgullum to come back and handle all of this.
10
Judith’s mate came back fast, roaring down the mainway in a storm of grief. His friends tried to hold him back, but he raced up the chute to his chambers to see the body for himself, knocking Olivia into the wall without even seeming to see her.
Two gullan helped her to her feet, though she scarcely noticed them. She felt like a puppet whose strings were being pulled, as far removed from her own body as if she had chuffed her soul into a rocket and shot it into space.
He screamed.
It was a ghastly sound, a wordless, bone-shaking bellow that seemed to grind through the whole mountain. Those standing near his private passage heard the whooping gasp he made just before letting out another primal howl of agony and grief. Again. And again. Once more, and then he fell to broken, mindless sobs that were even more terrible than the screams had been.
Murgull climbed out of the chute and sagged against the wall. Her eyes met Olivia’s, searched inside her for a long span of seconds, and then she nodded once, as if she had asked her questions and heard them answered. She limped away.
Vorgullum’s hand fell on Olivia’s shoulder. “How?” he whispered.
“She fell suddenly ill,” she told him, not daring to look at him and show him the lie.
He squeezed her gently once, believing her at once and without reservation, then released her and started for the chute.
A moan rose out of the sobs, hanging in the air for an inexpressibly long time before dropping away again.
Vorgullum stopped and just looked at the chute. “Lorchumn,” he called, without much strength.
“My beauty,” Lorchumn groaned. “My treasure. Ahhh, curse you, spirits!” he screamed, this time in rage.
The gullan flinched back from the raw pain in his voice, looking at each other nervously.
“I curse you! Lorchumn curses all of you! I spit on you, Great Spirit! I piss on you!”
“Lorchumn!” Vorgullum called, louder.
Lorchumn let out a shriek, pure fury now, and screamed, “You killed my loved mate, you shit-sucking worthless bag of maggots! Face me in the flesh, Great Spirit! I’ll rip out your man-root and piss down your throat!”
Vorgullum scrambled up the chimney.
From within came sounds of battle. Lorchumn screamed and cursed and struck out wildly, but there was a final, heavy thud and then nothing but broken sobs.
“Olivia.” Another hand fell on her arm. She looked around into Wurlgunn’s sick face. “Come away from here. You look awful.”
She nodded gratefully and went with him as far as her own chambers. He wanted her to come with him and stay with Beth that night, since it was unlikely Vorgullum would be back soon, but she refused and climbed up the chimney to sit alone in her room.
She took out the photo album and turned the pages slowly, hating the silence, the emptiness.
I should have suspected something, she thought. I knew something was wrong. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I know?
Something rustled and Olivia lifted her h
ead and saw Cheyenne standing in the doorway.
“I just heard,” she said quietly.
“It’s awful,” Olivia whispered, staring down at the ground.
“It’s great,” said Cheyenne.
Olivia jerked her eyes back up, stunned.
Cheyenne came swiftly over to Olivia’s alcove and hunkered down. “Everyone is going to be all caught up with this death thing. Now is the perfect chance for me to escape.”
“What are you saying?”
“Meet me tomorrow in the back, where the chicks live. I’ve got to do community service or something.” Cheyenne regarded her with a cold, distant expression. “If you don’t want to help you don’t have to, but just hear me out. I know you don’t care or anything, but it is my life after all, and I thought you’d have at least a little sympathy.”
“I—”
“Just say you’ll be there.” Without another word, she withdrew and left Olivia alone by the smoking coals.
Olivia buried her head in her knees again. She started to rock back and forth, but it reminded her distressingly of Liz, so she stopped. The silence of the empty chamber was overwhelming at last. She got up and left.
She called half-heartedly to Beth from outside the private passage that led to the chambers she shared with Wurlgunn, and Wurlgunn appeared above her in a moment. He looked relieved as he stretched out a hand and hauled her up. “I was hoping you would change your mind.”
“How is Beth?”
“Dazed, but well. I think she wants to talk, but she won’t say much to me. She needs a human.” Wurlgunn walked with Olivia into the pit room and gestured at Beth, who sat cross-legged in a pile of bedding, looking at the fire.
“Beth,” Olivia said.
The young blonde looked around incuriously. She didn’t say anything.
“Are you all right?” Olivia asked timidly, in English.
“Horumn came around and told everyone,” Beth replied dully. “Really, Olivia, do I look all right?”
Wurlgunn’s eyes were darting back and forth from each woman, nervous but unwilling to interrupt. Now, as the conversation uncomfortably lulled, he hesitated, “They say she was sick.”
“Yes,” Olivia said.
“Was it the White Fever?” he asked anxiously. “Did Murgull see her?”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Beth said dully. “Just like Tina said it would be. And now they’ll all get polio and we’ll all die.”
“It wasn’t fever,” Olivia answered, and reached out to grip Beth’s shoulder, speaking carefully in gullan. “It was a human sickness called ‘overdose’.”
Beth recoiled, started to speak, looked at Wurlgunn, and was silent.
“How did she catch this sickness?” he asked, and immediately and frantically followed with, “Could my Beth catch it?”
“No,” Beth said. “It…It isn’t a sickness you can catch. Jesus, Olivia, are you sure?”
She nodded.
Baffled, Wurlgunn dropped onto another bench. “But, why didn’t she tell someone? Murgull could have given her a potion to make her well!”
“No,” Olivia said. “I don’t think anything could have made her well.”
Wurlgunn looked from one to the other of them, and then firmly said, “Lorchumn should know this.”
“He won’t want to hear it yet,” Olivia replied, rubbing her temples.
Wurlgunn considered her for a long time in silence, then said, “I think you’re wrong, Olivia. He needs to hear someone tell him there was nothing he could have done. No one who could have helped. Many of his own kind will be saying these things to him, but he won’t listen to them. He may listen to you. Will you go and see him?”
Olivia gaped at him. “What? Now?”
He looked back into the fire. “Tonight, her body must be prepared, made ready for release into the world of spirits.” He met Olivia’s eyes grimly. “He was her mate. He has to make her ready and he has to do it alone, but no one knows how humans are delivered to the dead. Lorchumn loved his Judith. He has to be terrified right now. You must teach him what should be done.”
“But I—”
“Olivia!” Wurlgunn stood up and grasped her hands tightly. “Who else does he have?”
Olivia hesitated, but couldn’t find a way out, so she pulled her hands out of his grip and stood up to go.
“If he curses at you, leave,” he said, “but remember that he is grieving.”
Olivia nodded and let herself out. She walked back down the tunnel until she came to Lorchumn’s passage. Some gullan were still standing here, but although none of them moved to stop her, they all looked as though they wanted to. She moved past them and stood below the entry chute.
“Lorchumn,” she called.
A broken sigh issued from within. “Olivia. Come.”
She climbed up, surprised at how calm he sounded, and how willing he was to admit her.
He was sitting in the pit beside the body, simply looking at it and touching its hair. He pulled his gaze away long enough to give Olivia a piercingly pleading stare. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.
“Let me.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Let me do it for you.”
He put his arms around Olivia’s waist and buried his face in her side. “What did I do to deserve this?” he cried, his voice muffled against her. “How could the Great Spirit hate me so much? Why did he lead me to her just to take her away?”
Olivia knelt and put her arms around him. “Oh, Lorchumn. This wasn’t a punishment. Judith was sick and no one could have known it. Even she might not have known how sick she was.”
He pulled back just far enough to gaze up hopefully into her eyes. “Was she…Do you think she was carrying my child?”
“No, Lorchumn,” she answered, as gently as she could. “Murgull, Judith and I all agreed that she could not be carrying your child.”
He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, looking down at Judith. “I tried to make her happy,” he said. “She could not forget the world she came from, but I had thought she was beginning to like me, a little.” He wiped again at his eyes. “And she was my whole world.”
She said nothing, only kept her arms around him.
He stood and clasped Olivia’s hands in his. “Will you stay with her while I make a grave? Please. I have to do this right. I have to do that much.”
She nodded and he embraced her again before leaving, taking one last look at Judith before he went. Alone with Judith, Olivia felt the depression she had been struggling with all night settle over her. She wanted nothing more than to walk away from this whole mess, or failing that, go sit in the corner and stare at the fire. But she had promised to make Judith’s body ready for burial, whatever that meant, so she set about it.
Judith’s body was still locked up in the grip of rigor mortis, and still could not be moved or adjusted. Olivia had no idea how long these effects would last, but she thought she should begin by washing her down.
She pulled the bedding off of the body and put it to one side. The jeans Judith wore came off after a short fight, but the position of her arms and the rigor of her death-hard body made it impossible to remove her crudely-fashioned tunic. She struggled with it for a short time, but her efforts were lackluster at best and soon, Olivia retreated to the entry chute, climbed down, and wearily faced the clustered gullan.
“I need a knife,” she said.
Vorgullum stepped forward at once, drawing his own hunting dagger and placing it in her hands. That he did so without hesitation struck her as faintly touching on some level. It was yet another show of faith, of trust, here before all those who had gathered to bear witness to this tragedy. She wanted to hug him, needed to, but it didn’t seem appropriate with Judith lying dead just behind her, so she took the knife, touched Vorgullum’s shoulder, and then went back up to the body.
It was still a struggle. She had to turn the corpse over and cut the tunic’s back, sides, and sleeves, then roll the body back onto its
back and alternately pull and cut until she had the clothing away.
Olivia was tired now, and she didn’t want to touch the lifeless flesh, but she didn’t see a choice. She took one of the larger rags from the tunic, and wet it with stale water from a jug by the hearth, and began to wash Judith’s body.
By this time, the corpse had taken on a bluish-bleached cast on top, and had turned a sullen purple below, where the blood had settled. Her back and buttocks, where they had been pressed against the bottom of the pit, were yellowish-white. Her lips were blue, and her mouth, half-filled with a yellowish scum of dried vomit.
Olivia scrubbed at the body, amazed to see a film of sweat and scum over all of Judith’s flesh. Clearly, she hadn’t been bathing lately. She worked at Judith’s fingers and especially her feet, the soles of which were black with caked-on dirt. Carefully, she used the knife to pare the toenails and fingernails so they looked less ragged, then searched through Judith’s things in the corner until she found a comb.
It was a pretty thing, nicer than her own, made of small ribs made hard by heat and bound with sinews to a carved wooden haft. Something this nice…it wasn’t just an object of necessity. It was a gift from a man who had sincerely wanted to make his mate happy. Had Judith ever been able to see that? Had she ever been able to look at Lorchumn and see anyone except a monster? She’d called him her abductor, even after all this time. He wasn’t her mate or her man or even just her guy, but her abductor. He was her nightmare, and not all the pretty little gifts in the world could change that for her.
And still some tiny part of Olivia’s mind whispered, Why should it? He is a monster. She was abducted. This was her nightmare. And this was the only way she had to wake up.
She shivered once, and then got back in the pit.
Olivia wetted Judith’s hair and worked the comb through it until the ratty tangles were gone and it could be braided. She put the corpse back on its back, and after a moment’s thought, arranged the braid over Judith’s breast.
Olivia retreated to the nearest stone bench, sat down, and studied the corpse. It was clean, white, and had nice hair. She felt rather proud of it, actually.
She supposed she should pray for Judith now, but she was not religious herself, and had no idea if Judith was or not. She went back to Judith’s things and looked through them again.