Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

  Vorgullum nodded again. “If he does not mind, I will have him keep Somurg a little longer yet. Things will be…complicated.” He raised his head, searching her eyes. “Doru was…fair to you?”

  “Very fair. I wanted to be alone at first, but…that didn’t work out,” she finished lamely.

  A ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “No, I imagine it did not. Still, if you had greeted the first suitor with the same gentle persuasion as you used against Huuk, you might have spared yourself some grief.”

  “You heard about that already?”

  “I did. And I saw him.” He dropped his eyes again to his hands. “They told me who had done it and oddly, I believed it at once. My Olivia. My fierce Olivia.”

  “I missed you,” she said again, as if she could make it more true with repetition.

  He looked back at her, drawing his eyes slowly and sadly down the full length of her as she stood in the doorway. He did not speak. He did not move. He gazed on her without blinking, tracing every curve of her body with his eyes.

  And then he sighed and looked away.

  “I could not wait.” He crouched tighter in on himself. “I am a coward. I knew that you would leave me when I returned, and I could not face one more span of days beneath the weight of that knowledge. I thought, ‘I will return, have it done, and use my time to grieve for her when she is gone.’ I can grieve, I think, better than I can sit and wait.”

  Olivia came to him, knelt in the warming pool of light that spilled from the hearth and put her arms around his unyielding body.

  “You have done very well in my absence,” he said after a moment. “They speak now of Olivia’s laws…I mean to keep them, make them tribe laws. They are good, I think…I don’t pretend to understand the need for all of them, but I see that they are good.” He started to say more, then fell silent again.

  “Vorgullum,” she began.

  He turned to stare at the fire. “They told me about Augurr. I have not spoken with him yet…but I intend to. And I think that I will let him live. Because you wish it.”

  “Won’t you hold me?”

  He shivered. “I don’t dare.” His voice was tight with pain.

  “Please.”

  He pulled in a hard breath, hissed it out again, then took her hand in his and leaned against her.

  The fire hummed and spread slow heat over both of them.

  Vorgullum removed his hand and slid back from her across the stone. His eyes were dark and bright and deep. “I have,” he said with harsh emotion, “another mate. Because I am tovorak and I can demand nothing of my tribesmen which I dare not do myself.”

  She managed a smile for him, and he flinched as though she had slapped him. “You’ll be her friend. You were my friend.”

  “I…” He lowered his head, stared at his hands. “I think I can learn to care for her. I hope I can. But it won’t be the same.”

  She reached for him and he moved further from her, still without looking at her again.

  “I have told her my name,” he continued. “She is learning to speak it. In five days…when my mourning is done…I will take her from the women’s tunnels and bring here…to this pit.” He looked around at it as though he had never seen it before. His eyes were wide with an ugly blend of bright emotion—shock and anguish and worst of all, a terrible confusion.

  Olivia lifted her hand a final time and Vorgullum shook his horns and stood up. His chest heaved once, twice. He swallowed hard, passed his hand over his eyes, and turned away from her.

  “Go, Olivia,” he said quietly. “I will never…never stand quite so tall without you. Not in my heart.” He walked swiftly past her and out from the room. He did not touch her. He did not look around. The sound of his steps receded and was gone.

  Olivia hunched around her knees and waited until she was sure she wouldn’t cry. Then she stood, gathered her traveling clothes and a pair of thick leather shoes. She washed her face, tied back her hair, and made ready for her journey. Last of all, she opened her belt-pouch, removed her climbing claws—blunt from usage—and laid them on the bench. She took up her photo album, brushed it free of dust, and laid that with the claws.

  She took a last look, then climbed down the entry chute and walked to where Kodjunn was waiting at the mouth of the commons.

  “Is there anyone else you wish to see?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” she said bleakly. She wouldn’t even know how to start.

  He nodded, his own eyes mirroring her inner struggle.

  “Have you,” she began, fighting to keep her voice level and calm. “Have you seen your children?”

  “I saw,” Kodjunn replied, and smiled painfully at her. “They look just like their mother.”

  They stood in silence and stared at each other in the shadows of the celebration of reunion.

  At last, Kodjunn took her into his arms and out of the mountain.

  BOOK III

  OLIVIA

  CHAPTER ONE

  JOURNEY

  1

  Kodjunn had to be tired after six days’ hard flight between Hollow Mountain and Dark Mountain, but either he had some hidden reserve of strength, or the Great Spirit was working in him to prevent him from stopping. They flew without rest until the sky began to grey with dawn, and it was not until Olivia saw the faint light of the coming day that she had any clear idea of what direction they were headed. Mostly south, but also east, and that was disturbing. When the Great Spirit had mentioned a Journey to the sea, she’d hoped he meant the Pacific, which couldn’t be all that far away, as the gulla flies. Although she wasn’t so certain of Dark Mountain’s location that she could point to it on a map, she knew the nearest southern sea had to be somewhere around Panama. Did he really mean to take her that far?

  The sun came steadily up. Kodjunn ducked in low to the tree line, scouting for a clearing to land in, and finally dropped in a lightly wooded place and landed clumsily with Olivia still in his arms. He looked at her with mute apology, and then released her and stood as if expecting a blow.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, staring past the gulla’s features to the unseen light of the god within. “You promised me another seven days.”

  She expected him to come forward, but the sudden rush of divinity that filled the gulla’s frame still struck with a force that knocked Olivia back off her feet. In an instant, Kodjunn’s body seemed to double in size, swell with flame and thunder, blaze with light; it was the Great Spirit who glared down on her, wearing a mask made of Kodjunn’s face.

  “I remember what I told you,” he said. “I told you I would take you safely from the threat of Bahgree’s influence when my host returned to the mountain. I could have easily summoned him at any hour, but did not!”

  She sat up, sobbing, but kept her face turned from him. “I didn’t have enough time!” she cried.

  He narrowed his eyes, but made an effort to speak in tones of reason. “Soon, you will have all eternity. That should be enough even for you,” he added darkly. “For you have known of your fate all this time and have not bothered to unfasten the ties that bound you within the mountain.”

  “Unfasten the ties?” she echoed, incredulous. “Just that easy? I had to do that once already for my parents, my people, and when I’ve finally forced myself to make a new life here, you think I can just shake it off again? Well, I can’t! And how dare you? How dare you expect me to?”

  The Great Spirit swelled within Kodjunn’s frame at the rebellious cry. “You owe me your obedience, woman!”

  “But I don’t owe you everything!” she shot back. “I don’t owe you my heart or my mind or my feelings!”

  “Your feelings? What do I care for your feelings? Enough of this! Come, the day is risen and we must begin. You may lie down if you wish.”

  She stared at him. “You honestly think I’m going to fuck you?!”

  He seemed puzzled. “Yes.”

  “No!” she shouted. “Not now, not today, and never again!�
��

  The god’s eyes darkened to pits of blood. “So be it,” he growled. “I have been patient with you until now. I have accepted what it has pleased you to offer. Now I will take what I wish.”

  He moved to seize her and Olivia flung out both arms and let the white balefire of her power surge through her body and soul.

  “Come and try it!” she said in a voice that roared all on its own. “We’ll see which of us breaks first!”

  She saw, perhaps for the first time ever in his existence, doubt enter the eyes of the Great Spirit.

  Slowly, he lowered Kodjunn’s hand. They faced each other as the sun climbed into the sky.

  At last, he bent his head very slightly. “I…was wrong to say such a thing. I…” His lip curled, and he broke his gaze from hers. “I ask your forgiveness.”

  The strain of holding her power at the fore of her body and yet still in check was telling on her, but she held it a while longer, all of her misgivings open on her face. “Don’t patronize me!” she spat. “I know you don’t mean it!”

  She half-expected him to meet her with renewed anger. Instead, the corner of his mouth twitched with thin self-depreciating humor.

  “It is not in the nature of an incarnation to offer emptiness in any form—apology, threat, or praise. Neither is it possible for an incarnation to deceive, except by omission of fact. I could not confess to a sin unless in fact I had committed one.” He was quiet for a moment, perhaps thinking that over. In the end, he shook his head and looked at her again. “Now it falls to you to forgive me, Olivia. You may unleash your anger—I’ve no doubt you can harm me in this borrowed form, and you will certainly be able to kill the body that holds me—or you may meet me again in the spirit of compromise.”

  “I don’t feel like compromising,” she said, but the words sounded churlish to her own ears, with none of the defiance she meant for them to have. And what would it mean, to strike out at the god? He was right; she could kill Kodjunn, and maybe chase the Great Spirit off for a while, but he would return to her in a new host soon enough. And even if she were able to hurt him severely enough to make him leave her alone, what good would that do to her? To Somurg, or to any of the other babies who were even now beginning to wean to give Cheyenne’s twins a chance at life?

  She lowered her arms and let her power burn down to low coals deep inside her. “All right,” she said, hating the submissive posture, the note of defeat that stained her voice. “I gave you my oath. I mean to keep it.”

  “So,” the Great Spirit murmured, looking out at the face of the sun. “I am appeased.”

  She couldn’t stop the curt sound of irritation that escaped her. He tipped his head back and glanced at her from the corner of one gold eye.

  “In all the empty fathoms of time since first I separated myself from the darkness of the universe, I cannot remember any being, mortal or immortal, who has had such power to placate me. It is not,” he added darkly, “a comfort to me.”

  She watched warily as he turned and came back to her. So close, even contained within the shell of Kodjunn’s mortal body, the aura of the god was a tangible, humming heat; the sheer masculine force of him crackled invisibly around them both. She thought he meant to touch her, and if he had, with her defenses lowered and the might of his divinity blazing from him, she supposed she would have let him.

  Instead, he spoke, and made no effort to disguise the uneasiness with which he regarded his own words. “I…apologize for threatening you. I shall not do so again. I will only tell you now, and never again, how vital it is that you take my essence before the final battle.”

  “I believe you,” she said, and looked down at her hands. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you, and I forgive you for threatening me.”

  “Ah.”

  She sighed and spread her hands helplessly. “So what now?”

  “Now?” He glanced towards the sun, considering the question. “When night falls again, this host must carry you. Until then, I mean to couple with you. Your final encounter with Bahgree is nearing, and she may try to kill you before you come to our destination.”

  “You’re going to fuck me from sun-up to sun-down, is that it? When do you expect me to sleep?” she asked.

  He tossed his horns. “When you possess my essence, even channeled through the mortal seed of this host, you will not require sleep.”

  To refuse invited another argument. And it would be a pointless one, anyway. Olivia took his hand.

  2

  The Great Spirit retreated long before sun-down, when the sexual limits of Kodjunn’s body were reached, as if the host no longer mattered once it could not be made to perform. One second, he was there, his gold eyes blazing as he thrust a final jet of hot semen into her body, and then he was gone and Kodjunn dropped, gasping and shivering, atop her.

  Olivia struggled with him briefly as he fought to orientate himself; at last, he looked down and the light of awful recognition filled him as he realized where he was and what he had been doing.

  Then he leapt away from her, stumbling in exhaustion over his own feet and falling on his back.

  Olivia cried out a warning, already reaching for him, her face contorting in expectation of the dry snap of his wing-bones, but he had flattened them as he fell and now only lay sprawled and naked, panting, his eyes shut against her. She knelt over him, feeling a terrible sinking pity for him. Her hands worried at themselves. She said, “Are you okay?”

  He gulped, shuddered, and shook his head.

  “Talk to me,” she pleaded.

  “I’m not okay,” he said dutifully.

  She crawled a little closer and lay her hand upon his stomach, feeling the jump of muscle below her touch. “I’m okay,” she offered.

  His features clenched once in self-loathing, although he did not open his eyes. “How can you be?” he demanded, almost wailing. “How can you be, when I…I…”

  “You didn’t do anything,” she said. “It was him, and it’s sort of what he has to do.”

  He pried his eyes open and looked at her, as though wanting very much to disbelieve her. What he saw in her eyes brought him slowly up, although he edged further from her and fumbled for his loincloth, discarded by the Great Spirit some time before, as though he feared he might fly at her again in lust if he stayed near her.

  “It’s all right, Kodjunn,” she said a final time. And you’d better get used to it, she thought, because I have a feeling you’re going to spend an awful lot of time in that position.

  He relaxed only after he was covered, and then only enough to crouch a short distance from her and stare at her in the light of dawn. “I missed you,” he said at last, awkwardly.

  “I missed you, too.”

  “It was awful. Worse than before.” He looked away at the ground, frowning. “Because, I think, we knew what to expect. We knew exactly what they would do, how miserable they would be.”

  There. The fact of the kidnappings, lying between them like a dead animal. Olivia hated herself for it, but she asked him anyway.

  “How many did you…did you take?”

  “Each of us took one. Forty-four, in total. I don’t know how many will survive. They told me Sarabee died on the birthing bench…and Victoria is almost in the shadow of the earth as it is. As for these new humans, who knows? There may be some who…who might die, some who might be barren.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is that enough?” she asked again, harshly.

  Silence. “No,” he said. And rubbed wearily at his face. “No.”

  “How long will Vorgullum wait before he goes for more?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Not until these are settled and sparking. Perhaps even long enough to see Somurg fledged. But…But he means to continue taking them until every male in the mountain, old, young, or even crippled, has a mate.”

  Olivia stared at him, numbly. “Another forty humans?” she asked.

  “At least.” He be
nt his head still lower, dropping his eyes again. “And he wants males for our females. The tribe is not decided in this.”

  “Now you’re growing a conscience? Now?”

  He was quiet for a short while. “Males…gullan males…tend to be more aggressive than the females…more dangerous. We think it is the same, perhaps, for humans. We don’t dare to take them when they are of breeding age, only to be forced to kill them.”

  “So you won’t,” she stated. When he didn’t answer, she reached out and shook his arm. “You won’t!”

  “Vorgullum is considering his options,” Kodjunn said. “He thinks either to take grown humans and hobble them…or perhaps…if they are still young, they can be raised as tribe…”

  Olivia had an awful vision of Vorgullum wandering through the maternity ward of a hospital, scooping up infants from the nursery and passing them into waiting gullan hands. She recoiled from Kodjunn, appalled.

  “Olivia,” he whispered, his face furrowed with pain. “There are more than twenty females of breeding age. How can we waste them?”

  Olivia twisted away and said something incoherent into the wind.

  He fell miserably quiet, closed his eyes. After a year or two, he opened them again. “I took one,” he said tonelessly. “I took a human from the hive. I suppose, if she is still unmated when I return, that I should claim her.”

  “Oh Kodjunn.” Spoken without anger, only with a numb dismay. Olivia crawled forward and wrapped her arms around his thigh, and rested her head on his knees. After a long time, his hand fell warmly over her back and lay there, heavy with comfort.

  “I stood over her a long time before I took her,” he said. “There were three females in the den, a mother and her young, I think. Lorchumn took one of the young, and I took the other. We left the mother. We took none, this time, with gray in her hair. I don’t know how old she is, the human I took. Old enough for a woman’s shape, at any rate. She and her sister clung to each other for days, sobbing. I felt profane.”