by R. Lee Smith
He started walking. So did Olivia, after a moment.
“Kurlun is happy,” Doru said. “Wurlgunn is happy. Lorchumn was happy, spirits pity the poor bastard. Vorgullum is happy. And that is all we have of happiness here. That, and the spark in your belly. You’ll forgive me if I choose not to risk it for the sake of that beast you’re protecting.”
He stopped outside the narrow chute leading up to Kodjunn’s lair and eyed her feet. “I’m going to carry you,” he said, and put out his hands.
Olivia stepped into them gratefully, hissing with pleasure as he took her into the air and her weight left the ground. An instant later, the dull ache that had settled like stones inside her wounds turned to fire-hot flares of agony and she almost wished she was walking again. Then her back was scraped along the rough chimney wall as Doru attempted to squeeze them both up together and that more or less took her mind off her feet.
“Bear piss,” Doru grunted as he heaved them both out and spilled into the entry chamber. “That about took half my hide clean off.”
“Who comes?” Kodjunn appeared in the entry room, his wings fanned out impressively and the glint of a steel knife in his hand. When he saw them, he relaxed slightly but continued to fill the doorway to his inner lair. “What does Vorgullum ask of me?” he asked with an edge of suspicion.
“Nothing, that I know of,” Olivia said with surprise.
“He sends his mate and his chief hunter for nothing?”
“I was not sent, sigruum,” Doru countered mildly, testing the stretch of his left wing and wincing. “I was walking a woman with crippled feet.”
Kodjunn’s eyes darted to Olivia’s bandages and she saw a shadow of pain flash across his face. He sheathed his knife in his belt. “Forgive me. More than one gulla has come here this evening to offer me…advice.”
“Ha, I’m sure.” After a moment, Doru realized both Kodjunn and Olivia were looking at him expectantly. He managed not to show too much of his obvious annoyance as he turned around. “I’ll wait just below,” he said. “But you are warned, woman, I intend to carry you right back to your lair when you are finished with this pointless endeavor.”
“Thank you,” said Olivia, and Kodjunn showed him his open hand in respectful, if distracted, salute.
After Doru was gone, Olivia came forward and touched Kodjunn’s arm. “How is she?”
“Hurt. Murgull brought her something for her pain this morning, but she just spits it out at me when I try to give it to her.” He started to say more, then gave her an embarrassed sort of glance and shook his head. “She’ll recover. How are you?”
“My feet hurt, but Murgull says there’s no infection. The wounds were deep and feet always heal slowly, but they should heal well.”
“I meant the baby.”
“I’m a moon along at most,” she told him, rolling her eyes. “I’m perfectly fine.” His somber expression had not changed. She let her smile fade away, glanced past him at the sleeping room and said, “Is something wrong?”
“I told her you were pregnant. I told her that babies are the reason she and the others were brought here, and now that we know it is possible, I expect her to be my mate. I told her she would be free to live in the women’s tunnels once she catches my spark, but until then, I will couple with her when she is in season. I’ve been patient, but I won’t allow her to refuse me anymore.”
Olivia could feel her features darkening with foreboding.
“I know,” he said, as if she had spoken aloud. “But I…don’t have a choice. Vorgullum knows I haven’t been coupling with her. He was willing to overlook it as long as it was not known whether our kinds could breed, but now it is, and if I’m not willing to give him a child, he’ll find someone who will. Someone who won’t limit himself to her seasons. I don’t want her…but I don’t want her hurt.” Kodjunn covered his eyes briefly, then looked at her again. “I suppose you want to see her.”
“I think I ought to.”
“If it were anyone but you…” But Kodjunn gave that up with a sigh and beckoned her to follow him.
Cheyenne lay in the sleeping pit. Her left leg had been wrapped with bandages and splinted with straight wooden stakes, but that was not the first thing Olivia saw.
Cheyenne had indeed been chained to the wall. Both hands and her good foot had been caught up in iron shackles, padded by sheepskin (had Sudjummar made those as well? Climbing claws for some, shackles for others), with enough slack to allow her to move almost anywhere in the sleeping room, but not as far as the hearth, and not as far as the door. All her needs had been provided for: a bucket of ashes waited beneath the nearest bench; she had two jugs of water and a basket of bread and apples within easy reach on one side; on the other, a short stack of magazines, untouched.
Cheyenne looked at Olivia furiously and turned her face to the wall.
Olivia turned to Kodjunn. “Give us a moment alone, please.”
He gazed into her eyes a long time in silence, then finally nodded and withdrew.
“Have you ever noticed,” Cheyenne began in a tight, calm voice, “that all the worst words in the English language are male? For instance, I can’t call you a son of a bitch; I can only call you a bitch. A fucking bitch, a stupid bitch, a goddamn bitch, but a bitch all the same and that’s not good enough.”
“I see.” Olivia sat down on the bench with a restrained sigh of relief. “This is my fault, for not distracting him enough, I suppose.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Cheyenne, you have got to see that you can’t live like this.”
“Fuck you!” Cheyenne shouted suddenly. “I came to you for help and you gave me a fuck-potion, so what was I supposed to do? Then you send your fucking witch to tattle on me, is that it? Play nice or you’ll have me fucking killed? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She unleashed a wordless shriek of rage and frustration, seizing her chains and throwing herself in a fit of unrestrained fury, heaving and yanking and smacking herself a ringing blow on her own head in the process, ultimately falling back in a panting heap in the pit. “I wish I’d killed you,” she hissed. “You hear me? I wish I’d killed you!”
“Did she catch you, Olivia?” Kodjunn called.
“No.” Olivia stood up and limped closer, but only a little. “I’m sorry things worked out like this, but this is how they worked out.”
“Fuck you!”
Olivia sighed. “I’ll have someone bring you more of Murgull’s medicine.” She left Cheyenne in a huddle of chains, hurling profanities after her.
2
Bolga lost the baby.
It was not unexpected. The cramps which had plagued her for the past month, ever since Olivia’s injury, had become more and more frequent, and then the fever came and it was just a matter of time. When Murgull came and got Olivia from the commons, she knew what it meant without needing to be told. They went together to the women’s tunnels, where Bolga rolled and thrashed in the pit she shared with Horumn.
Murgull took a rag, wetted it thoroughly with liquid from a pop bottle, and gave it to Olivia. “Press it over her face and make her breathe it,” she commanded.
Olivia knelt by Bolga’s head, waited until the gulla was almost holding still, then pounced on her, holding the cloth over Bolga’s nose and shrieking mouth. Within a few moments, the suffering gulla’s struggles began to wane, and soon she was lying there, drooling quietly, staring up at Olivia’s face in wonder. ‘That would be tharo,’ thought Olivia, and gently stroked the sides of Bolga’s ugly face.
“Look there,” Horumn murmured, pointing between Bolga’s thighs.
Olivia raised herself up to see and saw a thin trickle of blood seeping through the thick loincloth.
“So. It’s over.” Horumn shot Olivia a mistrustful, despairing glance. “Help me pull her up.”
They each got an arm under Bolga’s unresisting shoulders, and hauled her into a sitting position. Olivia could see the gulla’s stomach jumping in the grip of powerful cramps.
“I have her,” Horumn said gruffly. “Unbind her and let it happen.”
Olivia unfastened the binding and unwound the strip of leather as best she could while Bolga sat there dumbly. As she worked, the dribbling flow of blood heaved into a thick, clotted mass of fluid.
Bolga whimpered, but that was all she did as the beginnings of her doomed child washed out between her thighs.
“Well,” Murgull said in a low voice. “That answers that.”
The flood slowed again to a trickle.
“Give her raspberry tea and bloodbalm for a few days,” Murgull advised, bending to help Olivia gather the soiled bedding and pull it out from under Bolga. “Milk and meat, and let her sleep.”
Horumn nodded, stroking Bolga’s head, and didn’t look up as they left.
“Pity them both,” Murgull muttered when they had left the women’s tunnels. “Horumn was too old when she bore Bolga. She knows it, and she knows many of Bolga’s troubles are her own fault.”
“Bolga is Horumn’s daughter?” Olivia echoed, surprised.
“Horumn’s last child, the first in twenty years, I think. Too old for birthing.” She grunted. “Too old for mating, I think, but that is Murgull’s opinion. And Bolga lived long enough to draw breath, which surprised us all. Horumn nearly died in the birthing, there were such troubles.”
Olivia tried to suppress a shudder, but Murgull noticed.
“Do not fear for your own time,” she said, patting her. “Olivia is healthy. Vorgullum is strong. All will be well.”
It was comforting to hear, but Olivia had her doubts. Still, she welcomed the chance to throw her mind into her work and leave her fear behind. She followed Murgull back to her secret room behind the false wall and watched as the withered gulla threw the bloodied loincloth and bedding into the fire.
“Will Bolga be all right?” Olivia asked.
“Her body will heal,” Murgull replied. “In another moon’s time, she will not remember this night, as she has already forgotten the evil man who used her. She will play with her stones and her toys, and perhaps Horumn will take more pains to keep her in the tunnels when her next season comes upon her.”
“I only wish I knew who had been with her.”
Murgull shook her head in frustration. “You are not alone. A male that will lie with her once will do it again if he can. It is a serious threat to us and to all that we are trying to do. You believed once you knew who had done it…”
Olivia could only shake her head, aware of Murgull’s piercing stare, but unable to answer it. She had seen him, yes. She had seen the stiff mane of silvery hair running down his back, just exactly like the one on Kodjunn. But then she’d met Kodjunn, really met him, and the evidence of her eyes paled beside what she had learned of him.
“A man can show many faces,” Murgull said, prodding at the bedding so that it would burn evenly. “Is it so unimaginable that he should play for your sympathy after he had lain with you, and you the leader’s mate?”
“But he wanted to confess everything,” Olivia said. “You can’t believe how guilty he felt, the things I had to say to keep him quiet…Kodjunn never could have let Bolga stand alone before the whole tribe.”
“So you say and I must trust you.” Murgull moved to her worktable, rattling bottles, boxes and unknowable tools as she cleared a space to work. “But who else could it be? It was no spirit that put his prick in Bolga, no harmless pleasure-dream. It was a male in this mountain, a male we feed and clothe and provide for! What is the word Thurga uses…? Dickhead.”
The word, uttered in Murgull’s thickly accented English, caught Olivia unawares and she started snickering before she could help herself.
Murgull glared at her over her withered wing. “Ah, you laugh at Murgull! Go, have fun with her! Useless, ugly old gulla, no good for anything but worm fodder. Poor Murgull,” she keened. “Suffering Murgull! Little bald frogs laughing at old Murgull!”
“I apologize,” Olivia smiled. “It just surprised me to hear you swearing in my tongue. And you’re right. Whoever it is, is a dickhead.”
“Ha,” Murgull muttered darkly. “Murgull laughs at Olivia. Ha ha!”
“Please, I’m sorry, Murgull.”
Somewhat mollified, Murgull stood aside and gestured at the row of glass bottles she had arranged on her work table. “Bolga’s pain could have been avoided,” she said. “These are all potions that can be made to expel a life from the belly—the root of blue or black bitterwort, bark of stagbush, oil made of bluespear, wormwood and rue, yes—but they can only be used on a child without a soul! After the third moon has passed, the only result will be terrible pain and damage to the child. Here, most precious of all medicines, flowers of whelpsbreath. If the child is sick or dead inside her, whelpsbreath will force it out. If the child is healthy and the mother weak, whelpsbreath will strengthen her. There are many more herbs that might strengthen a weak womb—raspberry, yes, and waterweed and rosehips, and yellowhair best of all. You will study each of them tonight, so you will have the knowledge if ever you need to have it.”
“Let us hope,” Olivia said softly, “there is never a need.”
“Hope is good to have,” Murgull said after a moment. “But hope does not lift a tree about to crush your mate, or bring meat to a starving belly. It warms a cold heart and it soothes a worried brain, but what use is that?” She ran her hands over the tops of the bottles. “Murgull had so many hopes in her youth. Hoped to find a friendly tribe. Hoped to bear a child. Hoped her wing would heal and her scars would melt away. Hoped to stay young forever. Now you and that life you carry are the only coals left in my pit of hope.”
“Oh Murgull…”
The gulla looked up, her single eye bright with naked pain. “I am too old for this, Olivia. I should have passed on this wisdom years ago, and now here I am! Cold and hurting and lonely, heaping my burdens onto your naked back. It is not fair!” she cried suddenly. “Not fair to you, and not fair to me! I wanted more! I promised so much, I meant to do such great things, and now look at me!” She looked down at herself with helpless anger.
Olivia could not think of anything to say.
At last, Murgull looked up again, her features twisted in despair. “Olivia, you must make me a promise, and it will kill your heart to hear it.”
“What is it, Murgull?”
“In the chest behind my pit there is a black bottle. It is poison, the most potent and painless I know. If the child you bear is malformed and dead like the others, promise me—” She saw the revulsion in Olivia’s eyes and seized her by the shoulders, shaking her. “Promise me to give that poison to the other humans here! Promise me to take it yourself! Force my people to abandon this place and find a new tribe! No hell can be worse than this, to watch the mountain dwindle and blood thin, until sisters mate with brothers and all our young are made crooked and foolish!”
“I will,” Olivia whispered.
“Promise!” Murgull hissed. “Say the words!”
“I promise that I will poison the other humans if no healthy babies can be made between us. My solemn oath.” Olivia stood stiffly in Murgull’s grip, then shook off the gnarled hands and said, “Damn you for doing that.”
“Murgull is damned already.” Years of age and hard living seeped slowly into Murgull’s face, bending her shoulders and buckling her knees. “More than that, has Murgull done. A river of blood on her hands. For vengeance, for pride, for the vanity of a ruined body that was no treasure to begin with.” She turned away. “Lives are like lamp flames. So easy to put out.”
Olivia stared at Murgull’s back.
“Over the mountains, Murgull climbed. With no spark and no eye and no wing. She saw with an eye of hatred. She flew on the winds of rage. Her child was a burning thing that giggled and scratched and sang for blood. And Murgull fed it. Murgull grew strong and cunning and cruel. And then Murgull returned to the place of her crippling. She lay beneath the moon and saw a hunting party overhead. She followed th
em back to their lair in the mountain. She waited until night, when all the tribe were locked in sleep.”
Murgull’s voice broke and she began to weep an old woman’s tears. “She had thick, brown candles. Candles the humans use to open mines. She fixed them to the entry wall and blew it all to hell. No tunnels out for gulla tribe. Males that kicked her and chained her and fucked her on her broken wing died inside, slow deaths of hunger and horror. Males that did nothing died! Mates died! Children! Oh, damn me!” Murgull’s words were lost to broken sobs.
Olivia did not move, did not speak. She felt as though Murgull were shrinking away into the distance. The enormity of what had been done, of what Murgull had done, staggered her down to the roots of her soul.
How long she stood and watched the gulla sobbing, Olivia did not know. It was as though time was frozen in place. Olivia imagined she could see Murgull’s sins crawling through her thinning fur.
Finally, Murgull’s weeping tapered off to sighs and shudders, and she stood there, a broken, bitter old woman. “It will be the same here if there are no healthy young,” she whispered. “Slow death. Decay. Our bloodlines curdling into filth. But they dare not take their human mates on a journey to seek a new tribe to join, and your mate will never order them killed now.”
“I gave my word,” Olivia said.
Murgull glanced around, and her eyes were cold and damp and dead. “I have been haunted by the dead ones all these years. I could not lose them in all my great works, or hide from them in the arms of all those lust-sick men. I have begun to see them, sister, and I know now that I am close to them at last. Soon I must face them again, the six whose lives I was right to take, and the unknown many whose lives I wrongly stole. Olivia, please, I have earned so much hate in my time, do not add yours as well.”
“I don’t hate you, Murgull,” she said, reaching out to lay a hand on Murgull’s arm. But it changed things, and that Olivia did not even need to say. The knowledge was already there in Murgull’s steady, sorrowful gaze.