by R. Lee Smith
“She did Logarr plenty of harm!”
The Great Spirit shrugged. “She gave him only dreams until he gave himself wholly to her. If she had made the same effort with your metal-maker, yes, I suppose she might have had the power to harm him, yet your Sudjummar is not the fool this Logarr would seem to be. He might have fought her back and allowed some warning to come to you. By taking your form, Bahgree was able to seduce him without enslaving him, but without resistance either. A calculated risk. We are fortunate it did not go in her favor.”
“What do we do now? How can we fight her?”
“Fight her?” The Great Spirit cocked his head curiously. “You will fight her at the Binding Place, mortal.”
“But Logarr will want me again!”
“Then go to him.”
She shook her head, frustrated with him. He had touched her, he was supposed to understand! “I can’t do that and you must know why! He says he’s blinding you!”
“He has already done so,” the Great Spirit replied, unbothered. She started to protest and the Great Spirit silenced her with a wave of his hand. “She knows I have chosen you to be the vessel of her immortal power. By blinding me to you, she thinks you will not have enough of my essence to defeat her when we come to the Forgotten Waters. She means to kill you. She would have done so already if not for my influence.” He shot her a glance that Olivia read easily as And this is the thanks I get. “But Bahgree can take only so much of my sight. I will always be able to see you when I stand in my own flesh before you. I see no reason why you should not finish with her servant.”
“But he’s stronger than I am!” Olivia cried. “He could be doing anything to me! I can’t fight him!”
“Do not fight. Give the River Woman her little victory. You shall have your vengeance when you hold her essence.” He regarded her without sympathy. “You asked what you should do and I told you.”
“Right, go to Logarr,” she snapped, blinking back angry tears. “When he’s finished with me, then I suppose you’ll ask me to come back to you. You’ve got a few days before Urga comes into season, and you can always count on me for a good time, is that it? You’re a pig, do you know that? You’re a horny bastard and a lousy excuse for a god!”
He had been surprised by the explosive violence of her rage, but the more he listened, the angrier he got. When she stopped to catch her breath, he filled the silence with his rage. “You humans are all alike!” he spat. “From the time your kind first crawled out of the water, you have subjugated and killed all other beings solely to further your comfort! You are no different! You resist this Logarr to spare yourself having to open your legs, and why? What does it hurt? It hurts your human heart!”
He flung out one arm and pointed out through the door, his rage flaring out from him in a visible aura of flame. “My children are dying!” he roared. “The son you bore is dying, and you, who can save them all, whine at me because the means are unpleasant to you! My children are the verge of extinction, but if sympathy were spit, you could not fill a cupful!”
“You want sympathy?” She spat a wad of runny saliva at his feet. “That’s more than you and your whole fucking race is worth!”
He swung his arm and his palm cracked across her cheek with the sound of a thunderclap.
Olivia staggered back, struck the wall and stared at him, one hand pressed to the side of her face. He waited, unmoving, as she sank to her knees and pressed her face against the floor, sobbing herself hoarse.
“I forgive you that outburst,” he said at last. “And now I will remind you of your oath to me and demand your obedience.”
She shuddered against the rock. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stand and face me.”
Her hands drifted over the stone; she pushed herself upright, and got first to her knees, then to her feet. She looked at him with numb resignation.
He studied her in silence for a while, apparently finding no trace of deception or defiance. “Go to Logarr,” he ordered. “Do what you must and be rid of his influence, and then return to me. No mortal could survive what he plans for you tonight. Had you not lain with two, you would have killed your last lover.”
“I’ll die,” she said bleakly, and his expression turned dark and formidable again.
“If you do, it will be of pride, woman,” he shot back tersely. “When he is done with you, return here. I will remain.” He paused to eye her, plainly expecting a furious response. When there was none, he continued. “I will learn the end of Logarr’s tale, and advise you further. But know this, Olivia, and swallow it: Your time here is nearly ended.”
She nodded once, submissive as a child.
“You are dismissed,” he said formally. He folded his arms over his chest and watched her withdraw from the cave.
8
Olivia went to the baths and had both a long soak and a good cry. When she was done with both, she went to the commons, arriving at the same time as the returning hunting party. She heard her name muttered in tones of surprise, and then Doru’s strong voice hailed her with his usual good humor. He and the other hunters fanned out towards the females, laden with satchels of meat and other, less pleasant but equally practical, animal remains.
Doru muscled an older male out of the way before that other could take more than two steps towards her, and unslung part of his burden for her carry. “For you,” he said.
“Mighty hunter,” she said wanly, trying on a smile. “What did you bring for my tribe? An elk? A bear, perhaps?”
“Greater prey than that, beautiful Olivia. For you, I have stalked and slain the rare and perilous gulla-eating mountain hare.”
“And I helped,” Bodual called.
“He did,” Doru agreed. “He tripped me with his spear so that I could fall on it and kill it.”
“I didn’t mean to trip him,” Bodual protested, coming up on her other side with another rabbit. “I was trying to stab him.”
“Doru?” Olivia asked, feigning surprise.
“No, the rabbit. Fortunately, he hopped out of the way.”
“The rabbit?” she echoed obediently.
Bodual gave her an exasperated grimace meant to disguise his delight at her apt delivery of her cues. “No, Doru.”
“So besides crushing the rabbit and nearly killing Doru, did you bring anything else back yourself?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. I caught another she-goat to replace the one who got away two nights ago. I personally have no idea what good it does for sparking women to drink milk, but Murgull—” he sighed, hooking at the air and rolling his eyes. “—Murgull always insisted on it, so that’s what we’ve always done. Damn things keep chewing through the ropes and escaping.”
“You should build a pen,” she suggested.
“We’ve tried that,” Doru interjected. “They either hop over it, or they chew through it. Either way, we’re out another goat. Fortunately for us, their innate ability to slip our bonds is the only real sign of cleverness they seem to have. They may be hard to keep, but they’re easy enough to replace.”
“All in all, a productive hunt,” Bodual added. “We brought down eight rabbits. One of the others caught another goat, and Thugg snuck into an animal pen and made off with about ten big chickens.”
“You and I seemed to have been the only ones who couldn’t perform,” Doru added. To Olivia, he said, “They’ve been teasing us all night.”
“Too bad they don’t know you like I do,” she said. “I certainly had no complaints about your performance.”
Bodual flicked a glance behind them, but the other hunters were still hanging back, even if they were watching with some interest. “I can think of a nice way to improve my crippled ego,” he remarked in a low voice, punctuating the suggestion with a friendly leer.
Doru gave him a light smack to the ear, but turned hopeful eyes on Olivia. “You are always welcome, you know,” he said.
She smiled at them, feeling absurdly touched by the o
ffer. The warmth and genuine friendship flowing off them contrasted harshly with the scene she’d just had with the Great Spirit. She fought briefly with tears and won. “I’d like that,” she said. “You really have no idea how much.”
“Good.” Doru dropped an arm around her shoulders, half-unfolding one wing to tuck around her. “Then come to my pit,” he said, a little too loudly to be the intimate offer it seemed. He turned around.
Logarr stood in the shadows just beyond the common cave’s mouth. He looked at her and then at Doru, who gave no sign of even seeing the other gulla.
Not now, thought Olivia. Later, please, but not now.
Logarr’s pale eyes came back to her. Lust flared, sharp and cruel as a knife in her guts, and died away slowly. He slipped back into the shadows and was gone, leaving nothing behind him but the echoing burn of his warning and a single word whispering through her mind:
Tonight.
9
Olivia was almost asleep when she felt Logarr calling her from somewhere in the caverns. She opened her eyes, at once awake and alert, to lift her head from Bodual’s chest. Doru muttered something—it may have been a question—and started snoring again.
She disentangled herself gently and stepped over them to fetch her clothes. This time it was Bodual who woke and tried to crawl out of the pit, mumbling something chivalrous about walking her to the women’s tunnels.
“Go to sleep,” she whispered.
“As you command,” he said, and burrowed back into the bedding.
Olivia dropped out of Doru’s chambers and wandered through the empty passages, following the call of Logarr’s mind. She found him in yet another unused room in an uninhabited tunnel, sitting on a bench and staring morosely into the embers of a new fire. He did not bother to greet or acknowledge her in any way.
“Is Sudjummar all right?” he asked after several long minutes of silence.
“He was when I left him.”
He nodded, gazing at the flame. “I didn’t know. It’s important to me that you understand that. I didn’t know what she was doing, or even that she was here. I am a tool,” he continued, speaking almost to himself. “A man may use a pick to mine rock or to cleave another man’s skull. The pick doesn’t know.”
“Have you sat here all this time worrying about it?”
Just when she thought he had not been listening to her at all, he shook his head twice, slowly. “I wish I could say that I have, but no. I have been looking my life over, trying to find the one place where I could have stopped becoming what I am. There had to have been a point when I could have walked away, simply, safely. I could have had a mate by now, a human like you. When? Where?” He rubbed his face wearily. “How?”
She crossed over to the bench and sat beside him. Her arm brushed his, but that was the only contact and she hoped it was comforting.
“I killed her, you know,” he said. His face, hollow-eyed and haunted, was bathed in sullen orange light. “That little human. I hurt her the first time I drove her mad the second, and I killed her on the third. I shouldn’t have gone back to her, but I didn’t know where else to go. She opened her eyes when I entered her. There was a moment when I thought she really saw me, really knew it was no dream. And then the power ripped out of me and killed her.”
Logarr leaned back and shuddered, his eyes closed against the memory. “A male burst in on us. I was in agony with unrelieved power. I took his head off without really seeing him. I heard a female scream—the little human’s mother. Maybe, because she was older, she was stronger. I don’t know. She lasted…just long enough.”
He shook his head slowly, opened his eyes and stared at the fire without seeming to see it. “Afterwards, I buried the bodies and burned the den. The third time, the last time, I swore it was the end. I swore I would rather die. I could not defy the River Woman, but when she was done with me, I jumped into the sky and flew blindly away from the lights of the humans. The pains came and I endured them until my wings seized up and I dropped out of the sky. I landed on a road and lay there, unable to move, even to scream. I am certain I would have died, if I had been left alone.
“I wasn’t.
“As I lay there, wrapped in my own wings, caught between two breaths of silent screams, I heard singing. I could open my eyes, and what did I behold but a woman, stumbling down the road in a fog of drunkenness. She might have passed me by if I had not been so horrified at the sight of her that I let out a cry to warn her away. Naturally, she headed straight for me, her face the very image of concern and compassion. She dropped beside me and tried to turn me over. I do not remember attacking her. I remember nothing at all until after I had finished with her, lying atop this…smoldering thing.
“But after many years, I decided these were things I could live with. I told myself that I wasn’t responsible, that I’d had no control. I told myself over and over that it could never happen again, that it was a secret I could keep.”
“And now?”
“I was certain you would be like that poor she-human I killed,” he said, but she somehow knew he was not answering her. “I would hurt you, turn your mind to moonlight, then return and kill you. When the third night came and went and you were sound, I feared to find one of my tribe dead. That never happened, either.”
Logarr paused, then looked at her again, distantly curious. “I suppose that you must be stronger than I am, or maybe you’re doing something with it that I can’t do. I don’t pretend to understand this power, I only do what I must to be rid of it.” He sighed, a sound of reluctant resignation, and stood up. “That is as much as I am permitted to tell you of that. All that remains for you to know are Bahgree’s words to me, her thoughts, from that dream of ages past.”
“You can’t just me tell me now?”
He shook his head, dismayed. “Things are forbidden to me. I am only a tool, and there is a hand upon me.”
“But you do regret it,” she said. “You haven’t used any of your tricks on me tonight. Instead, you chose to sit and talk to me.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, his eyes dark with hopelessness. “What does it matter if I speak to you? When I touch you, it will be the same.”
To prove it, he put out his hand and caressed her hip through her skirt. A ripple of sheer erotic pleasure flowed outward from that spot. She closed her eyes, faint and flushed, and melted onto her back on the bench.
Logarr pushed her skirt up and straddled the bench between her open thighs. “I wish you’d never come here,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t taken that spiteful, stupid Journey when Vorgullum grew tall. I wish that damn woman hadn’t picked that night to get drunk and go singing through the streets.”
Moving almost of their own accord, his hands roved over her body, periodically sending out those crushing mini-orgasms that rocked her to her core. He spoke on, sometimes bitterly, sometimes fiercely, but always with sorrow and a deep sense of shame. He thrust and rocked, and sweated against her, shouting out remonstrations in gasps and ragged breaths.
Olivia held on to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to concentrate for longer than a few brief seconds at a time. Her body, independent of her sympathy or her compassion, drove her relentlessly towards the same, gut-wrenching conclusion.
He came with a sudden violent expletive, then heaved himself hard against her and locked into place. Power coursed out of him, killing her own as it gushed through her. She expected Logarr to get up when it ended, as he had before, continuing his story and finishing whatever work he’d begun with her.
Instead, the moment he took his first tortured gasp of air, he dropped atop her and banged his fist on the side of the bench. He roared out a curse, then another, and then broke down into terrible, abrasive-sounding sobs, burying his head in the crook of her neck.
She rubbed the base of his horns to soothe him. “It’s all right, Logarr. I don’t blame you. You tried, I know—”
“I tried to die,” he said raggedly. “I tried to bleed out my life. Th
e knife went in, but it wouldn’t cut. My bones don’t break anymore. I can’t starve, Olivia. I can’t drown. I have nothing but pain.” He reached up his bruised hand and wiped his face dry, then regained his feet and stumbled away from her. “Bahgree told me that any young conceived by humans and gullan would never be accepted by the world. They were born to die.”
“I know this.”
“But did he tell you the rest of it?” Logarr asked. “Did he tell you about Urga’s curse?”
Olivia frowned.
“No, I thought not. Bahgree may be evil, but the evil that has been laid upon us did not come from her. In as much as she can be innocent, she is innocent of that.” Logarr looked away, and when he spoke again, it was in the low, inflectionless tones of recital. “Urga destroyed Bahgree as much as she could be and the Great Spirit bound her powers in the pool where she had been made, and for a time there was peace. Eventually, the daughters of Bahgree, seeking to reclaim their mother’s power, came to the Great Spirit while his mate waited in the sky for her hour to give birth, and he resisted them no more than he had resisted their mother. One night, when the moon rose high, Urga looked down and saw her mate thrashing wildly with the daughters of the River Woman.” Logarr laughed, a low, humorless sound. “And because Urga had no power over her mate, she cursed the wombs of his children instead. She did this, knowing our race would die. She did this because she knew.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said.
“Each moon-span, Urga comes into our world to lie with the Great Spirit,” said Logarr, glaring at the blank face of the wall. “Each moon-span, she conceives his child, and at the fullest of the moon, she births that child back into our world through a gullan female.”