by R. Lee Smith
“No, why?” Olivia tracked Tina’s eyes and saw she was rubbing her stomach. Oh you’ve got to be kidding, she thought helplessly. “No, I’m just…Can you tell people that I’m sleeping or something? I don’t want to deal with them right now. Okay?”
“Sure.” Tina actually seemed reassured by this, as if a desire for privacy were some indicator of mental health. She gathered up her pack and slung it over one shoulder. “And you,” she said, pointing firmly at Vorgullum. “You make sure she gets plenty of bed rest.” She turned and marched from the room. Distantly, Olivia heard her trying to disperse a crowd.
“My Olivia, I thought that I would lose you…. Are you sick?”
“No,” she said, feeling the hot boil of that new power surging towards him. “But I think I’m going to hurt you now.”
It drove out at him and he was hers.
12
Olivia left Vorgullum sleeping heavily, scarcely conscious after the violent bout of that act which could not be called lovemaking by any stretch of the imagination. But after the necessary work of washing the blood out of her hair had been completed, she didn’t really know what to do with herself. She was afraid to go walking in the tunnels at random, afraid to encounter any other male that might become ensnared in the unpredictable energies the Great Spirit had set inside her. Whatever it was, and she feared to know exactly what, she didn’t appear to be having any trouble translating it.
Restless and giving in by slow degrees to the little fingers of panic inside her, Olivia went to fetch Somurg, in the hopes that having the infant at her breast might chase the raging power into some other corner. After all, who ever heard of a breast-feeding sex maniac?
Olivia called to Amy from the chimney and received a languid answer in the feminine. She emerged from the chute edgily, casting wary eyes around for Kurlun. “Is your mate here?” she asked, tensed to flee.
“Nope, gone hunting before the big…gone hunting. C’mon in.”
Olivia came gratefully up and trotted into the sleeping room. Although much smaller than the leader’s lair, Kurlun’s chambers were almost opulent. The entry room was furnished with benches and warm furs and there were a half dozen wooden statuettes, each between three and four feet tall, placed around the room. In the sleeping room, the hearth was flanked with columns of painted stone and blankets had been hung up with pitons all along the far wall. There were camping coolers neatly lining the room, and a lidless wooden box beside the bed lined with soft folds of pink fabric. There was a five-foot tall wooden carving, half-finished, of a gulla and a human twined together in sexual abandon, apparently in mid-flight, and several ledges of stone holding smaller, somewhat less graphic carvings. The ledges also held a variety of human objects, including Smugg’s baby toys and Amy’s colored rocks, and there was a good row of magazines and worn books, propped up at both ends by matching electric can openers—one yellow, one pink. Pink.
“Wow,” Olivia said at last, shaking her head. “Nice place, Amy.”
“I’ll pass that on. Honestly, sometimes I think Kurlun is the result of too many beers between Bigfoot and Martha Stewart.” Amy was sitting in a nest of goose-down comforters and velvet drapes, propped up with a pile of Asian pillows in cream and gold and scarlet, a baby at each breast, eyes closed contentedly as they nursed. Sleepily, she said, “And how ‘bout you, huh? Back from the dead. What do you do for an encore?”
“Walk on water.” It was meant as a joke; the image of herself rising like Bahgree from the river crushed the humor in it.
Amy opened her eyes and looked at her. “What happened, really?”
“Cheyenne gave me a toss on the cobblestones, I knocked my noggin a good one, bled a lot, Tina told Vorgullum I was dying, etcetera, etcetera. I sit up, instant miracle.”
“Yeah, right. Now what really happened?” Amy quirked her mouth in a smile. “Tina is not the panicking kind.”
“What do you call it when a slight concussion gets turned into a fractured skull?” She felt a little guilty saying this when Tina wasn’t even in the room to defend herself. “Besides, it’s been a while since Tina actually practiced real medicine. Easy to forget what a fractured skull looks like in that time.”
“I should think a fractured skull is one of those things you never forget the looks of. But okay, have it your way. Here, grab Sir Lunchalot. I gotta burp Fang.”
Olivia reached for her son only to have Somurg yowl at her. She said soothing things in his pointed ear and he punched her furiously in the jaw, stuffed both hands in his mouth and started gumming them noisily.
“Friendly, ain’t he?” Amy asked wryly. “My God, he fusses a lot. I must have been up in the night six times.”
“Only six? He went easy on you.”
Amy smirked. “Smugg wakes up every day at precisely noon for her morning constitutional and then goes right back to sleep. Ha ha all over you, babe.” She coaxed a dainty burp from the aforementioned and leaned back to cuddle her.
“I didn’t get more than a few hours of sleep the first week after Somurg was born,” Olivia said. “But I think he’s finally beginning to adjust.”
“That’s what he calls adjusting, huh? Aw, he’s not so bad, I guess. I would have enjoyed it more if everyone wasn’t so worried about you getting killed by Cheyenne.”
“I wasn’t killed.”
“This right on top of your mysterious trip to Murgull’s grave,” Amy continued. “Which you have not said one word to anyone about. I was so concerned, I couldn’t even have sex.”
“For the whole night?”
“Funny. Kurlun said the same thing, only he was serious.”
“He’s such a sweet guy,” Olivia remarked, looking back at the can openers.
“Kurlun? He’s wonderful. He’s so astounded by everything Smugg does, it’s hilarious. She spits up on him and he’s thrilled. And did you see his baby basin?”
Olivia glanced back at the lidless wooden box and smiled. “It’s very nice,” she said. “I suppose he made it himself.”
Amy leaned back and grinned wickedly. “He was worried about rolling off me and crushing her.”
“How did you ever survive a whole eight hours of labor?”
“Prayer and pure thoughts,” Amy said piously. “It’s not all his fault, either. It turns out that I’m sexually excited by the smell of baby burps.”
Olivia thought of Bodual and couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh. How long could she really go on avoiding all the male gullan in the mountain, anyway? And what was she taking out of them? Was she even absorbing the power correctly? There had to be more to it than simply sucking out all their strength and will.
A cold thought struck her then: Maybe there wasn’t any more than that. After all, Bahgree hadn’t been much more than a succubus herself. Maybe that was all Olivia had to be too, in order to assimilate her powers.
“What’s the matter?” Amy asked.
Olivia blinked and stared at her. “Nothing,” she said after a short pause.
“It’s Vorgullum, isn’t it?”
“Vorgullum?” Olivia thought of the gulla lying comatose in her sleeping pit and felt baffled. “What about him?”
Now Amy looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Okay, it isn’t Vorgullum. Um, I don’t suppose you can forget I said that?”
“No, what’s wrong?”
“Today’s the red-letter day,” Amy said reluctantly. “Vorgullum came around this morning. He actually woke Kurlun up, and you must know what it takes for one of them to do that.”
“They’re leaving tonight? For…For the…”
“For the girls,” Amy said, and her mouth twisted, as if tasting something bitter. She looked down at Smugg, patted her absently, and then shook her head. “That was the plan, anyway. But things have probably changed. I’m sure Vorgullum will want to hang around and make sure you’re okay before they go, but if he does wait…it won’t be for very long. He seems to think he’s run out of time.”
“I guess he
has,” Olivia murmured.
“He still hasn’t…told you?”
“He had a few other things on his mind.”
“Me and my big mouth. I’m sorry, Olivia.”
Olivia demurred to keep Amy from looking quite so miserable. “It’s okay,” she said at last. “I had a few other things on my mind, too. I can cope with it. In fact,” she sighed, “I guess I’d better get brewing on Murgull’s Magic Birth Control Potion.”
“I guess you’d better,” Amy agreed. She reached out a comforting touch of her hand for goodbye, then lay back down in her pillow-strewn pit with Smugg in the crook of one arm, looking troubled as Olivia left.
She wanted to go by the commons first, just to let everyone know she was all right, but the fear that she might lose control right there in front of everyone was too great. She kept to the tunnels instead, ducking into any handy side-passage if she heard someone coming, and made her way slowly to the women’s tunnels. With every step, she made an effort to lock out any emotion, trying not to think as she did that even Mr. Spock got horny once in a while.
Finally in sight of the stretched hide that separated the women’s tunnels from the rest of the mountain, Olivia gathered herself and ran for it.
So naturally, Wurlgunn picked that precise moment to step out of the side passage to the hot baths and smack into her. She tried to jump back, shrilling out a little cry of alarm, certain that she was about to fly into a sexual frenzy. He immediately flung out his arms to catch her, misjudged the distance between them, and inadvertently punched her in the stomach.
She fell on her rump, jarring both her and the baby. Wurlgunn uttered a high-pitched howl and set about trying to lift her off the ground and soothe Somurg at the same time.
“Did you hit your head?” he was asking, panicked.
“I don’t keep my head in my butt,” she shot back, and started laughing when he promptly dropped her again. So much for her defenses, and yet she felt absolutely no urge to throw herself at him. “You clumsy goat,” she groaned, getting her feet under her at last despite his eager help.
“I’m sorry, Olivia. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“How’s Beth?” Olivia asked absently, trying to coax Somurg back to silence.
“She’s sick,” he replied, downcast. “All day long, most days. I don’t know what the matter is.”
“She’s pregnant,” Olivia said, still distracted. “Tell her to come by and I’ll give her some bellyroot. It really helps.”
There was a long silence. “She is?” Wurlgunn asked, startled.
“Yes, of course she is.” Olivia realized he was staring at her and looked up. “How could you not know?” she asked, surprised. “Didn’t you notice that she hadn’t gone into season?”
“Beth has never been all that consistent,” he remarked, still looking slightly dazed. He began to move off, growing a goofy smile, thumped full-length into the nearest wall. “She’s pregnant,” he said happily.
Shaking her head, reminding herself to see to Beth later, Olivia continued to her workroom, patting Somurg gently as she went. Perhaps sensing that she was herself more relaxed, Somurg gradually calmed down, and Olivia was able to unpack her gathered herbs before he began to snuffily demand sustenance. Once she had all the herbs sorted out, Olivia found a bench and sat to nurse Somurg. She had been sitting there for some time before she realized someone was watching her.
She looked up into Kodjunn’s pensive face. “What are you doing, lurking in the shadows?”
“I wasn’t lurking, I was only watching,” he returned mildly. “Admiring the perfect picture of motherhood before me and thinking fond thoughts of my own children. Shall they be sons? Daughters? Shall I have one of each?”
“So you’ve been to see Cheyenne. I didn’t think they allowed males in this part of the cave for any reason.”
“The sigruum is a special case. Are you hurt? Horumn told me you were dying.”
“Urga healed me.”
He nodded, accepting this without question. “Vorgullum crippled Cheyenne. I’m surprised he didn’t kill her.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Provided she refrains from further stupidity. When I believed that you would not survive, I wanted to kill her myself.” He came all the way into the room and crouched down to tickle Somurg’s brow. “And she knew it, I think. When I left, she was saying that she would stay on her back with an assistant present for the duration of her pregnancy. Which is a better promise than she made for the conception,” he added.
“She says that like she’s got a choice.”
“No, she says that like she wants my help. I’ve seen this Cheyenne before, the night she tried to escape from Hollow Mountain, when she lay there with her broken leg promising me she would let me couple with her in her times of season.” His hand moved away from her laughing son to comb through her damp hair. It began as a curious touch, questing for injury, but ended as nothing but a caress. “She claims it was an accident. She claims she didn’t mean to strike at you, and certainly did not mean for you to fall and hit your head.”
“I don’t think she did.” When he rolled his eyes, she said irritably, “Well, I don’t.”
“In any event, she says now that she will give me the babies when they are born, if only we will allow her to live. My babies,” he corrected, and laughed a little. “I can’t seem to say that enough. My babies.”
“You’re going to make a good father,” Olivia said, trying to coax a burp out of her son.
“Babies don’t frighten me,” Kodjunn said, handing her a towel to clean up the inevitable baby-puke that she never seemed to remember. “Bears, yes. Spiders, sometimes. But deep in my heart, I know that if I had to, even I could fend off a baby.”
Olivia started to laugh, and he laughed with her. After a moment, Somurg joined in, one hand tethered in Kodjunn’s thick hair while the other waved at Olivia.
“Ah, here you are!”
They both stopped laughing and turned as one to see Vorgullum stride into the workroom. He was limping slightly, and held his hunting spear as a kind of cane, leaning on it when he stopped before them.
“Leave us, sigruum. I must speak with my mate. The…The hunters are gathering. Go.”
Kodjunn touched Olivia’s shoulder once in wordless sympathy; she supposed he already knew what Vorgullum meant to say. Then they were alone, and Vorgullum simply stood there and looked at her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Olivia,” he said, his voice low and reluctant. “Olivia, there is something I must tell you. It is time. We are leaving.”
Olivia felt her smile fading. “Tonight?”
He frowned at the wall, as though he could see through it to the place where Cheyenne lay. “I could be persuaded to delay if you are not well.”
“But I am well. You ought to know that by now,” she added with a faint smile. “Or do you require further demonstration?”
He nodded slowly, but it was not an answer to her teasing question, only a silent affirmation that he had heard exactly what he’d expected to hear. “I have set apart those men who will be receiving mates and they have been ready to receive them for several months. I told them I would give the order when we were settled here and our stores begun to fill. Then I told them I would give the order when my son was born and I could see that he was well. Then I told them you must be recovered from delivery, then that you must fulfill your promise to your teacher. And so it goes, and there will always be one thing more that I could wait for…but now you have told me that soon you will be leaving.”
“But I don’t know when! It could be moons away! It could be—”
“It could be,” he agreed. “But however many days or moons it may be, I can’t spend them doing nothing but waiting to lose you. So.”
“So you gave the order,” she said, looking at Somurg. Her son grinned his rare, toothless grin, unaware that his mother had ever stood drugged in a parkin
g lot staring into the face of a monster, oblivious to the hell his father was planning for forty more women just like her. “You could stay,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” he said, and sighed. “And I will. Olivia, my mate, if you are not well, I will stay with you until you are.” He looked at her. “I will let you tell me when to leave.”
She stared at him in perfect horror. “No,” she managed. “No, my God, don’t make me a part of that!”
He nodded once and looked away. “Then it is tonight.”
“But—”
“Olivia…there is something more.” Vorgullum rubbed at the base of his horns, his face tight with strain. “What I must say to you will be difficult to hear. I think you will despise me for it. Olivia, you will not be alone in my absence.”
No. No, not this.
“I know this is difficult,” Vorgullum continued. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I wish that you had never come here, so that you would never have known the fear of those first days. I wish Murgull—” Here he made that hooking motion with his left hand. “—had never picked you to follow in her terrible path. I wish the Great Spirit had never put his hand on you, and above all other wishes, I wish that I could cut my claws across him for laying such a burden across your shoulders when your life, ha, has been difficult enough.”
And she noted that he did not make the warding sign that should have caught his blasphemous words before they were lifted to the Great Spirit’s ears.
“But of what matter are my wishes? Nothing I have ever wished for…” Vorgullum took a deep breath and collected his thoughts. Hesitantly, he said, “I know that you hate to be reminded of the Great Spirit, even though you cannot deny that his hand has been upon you all this while and has done much good. Still I see the unhappiness that touch brings you and I know that he means to take you from me. If he were a male in flesh and bone, I could challenge him, battle him, kill him if I could and banish him if I could not. But he is the Great Spirit,” he said, agonized. “What can I do against that?”