Olivia (12 page)

Olivia’s confusion seemed clear.  Old Murgull peered at her, grumbling, then held out her hands before her already thick waist, miming a round, pregnant belly.  She said the words again, slowly, then added, “Have you ever made a child, eh?”

“No.”

“Never?  A poor omen.”  Murgull ambled up to the doorway and rattled the iron door.  “Open, Horumn.  Open to the ugly human if not to me.”

Footsteps dragged on the other side, punctuated by the sound of something heavy striking rhythmically onto stone.  “I have no desire to see either of you,” a sour voice said, but the footsteps just came closer.

And then she was there, lumbering out into the reflected light, a creature at least as old as Murgull, if not as repulsive, and the first of the creatures Olivia had seen wearing a robe and not just a loincloth.  Made of leather, backless by necessity, it covered her body from her withered neck to just above her cracked, worn toeclaws.  She’d belted it with a length of rope, from which hung a thick iron key, but she was in no hurry to reach for it.  She came to the door, rested her hand above the solid iron lockplate, and just sneered at them.

“Open, old fool,” Murgull said, and gave the door another curt rattle.  “I have no time to waste with you.  And you, surely, have no time to waste with me, yet I will keep you wasting it all day unless you open to the horrible human.”

Horumn gave Olivia a baleful glare, then unlocked the door and pulled it open for them to pass into the roundish, mirror-lit cavern on the other side.  There were a lot of tunnels leading out, a fire burning in the wide hearth with a few massive cauldrons cooking over them, but no other sign of life.

“Ugly,” Horumn grunted, and tugged sharply at Olivia’s hair as she edged by.  “What is this?  To keep her brain warm?”

“Leave off, leave off!”  Murgull slapped at Horumn’s hands.  “Would you pinch a toad for having warts?  We have too little time for talk, you beast, you grub-licker.  Show the little worm a child.”

Horumn grunted wordlessly and shuffled off.  She limped badly; there was a knobby branch leaning up against the wall with a lump of a candle stuck to it, and Horumn picked it up as she went by, using it as a crutch.  Long after her she had faded from sight down one of the many tunnels, Olivia could hear the heavy thump of wood on rock and the meaty slide of Horumn’s useless foot.

Murgull wasn’t one to wait in doorways.  She led Olivia to a low bench and sat down.  “What have you been told?” she asked, squinting grimly at her.

“Nothing,” Olivia said.  “Nothing at all.  He only said last night that he would show me to the others.  I’ve been here for days…many days…”  Olivia’s voice broke; she found herself on the verge of tears and could not imagine why, not here, with this old witch.  “He tells me nothing.”

Murgull nodded and patted her arm with the same idle comfort as Olivia’s captor sometimes showed.  She fanned her good wing slowly, deep in thought.  “Old Murgull will tell you something to surprise you, pale one.  He is afraid of you, ha.  He was opposed to bringing your kind to our caverns, opposed to bringing your kind to our troubles.  I am opposed too, but I am not so quiet about it.”  She cackled.  “And I am not afraid, as he is.  Take my name, croak it like a brave frog, see if I tremble!  Ha!  I know I am near to dying, and I do not care who joins me.”

Horumn reappeared, pushing a camping cooler on wheels ahead of her.

Murgull rested a hand on the lid of the cooler and looked grim.  “But we are all dying here, my wingless sister.  We are the last.  And if you are not the hope our
sigruum
claims you are, then we are truly doomed, and Hollow Mountain will become just as we have named it, hollow and empty and cold.”

“
Sigruum
?”

“Words,” Murgull said impatiently, then paused and rubbed at her neck again.  “Words,” she murmured, but gravely now.  “Too little of that, I think, for you.  But too much for me to say.  You are human, eh?  Human.  And we are gullan, and that is how we begin.”

It was a slow beginning.  Murgull tolerated Olivia’s questions just as she tolerated Olivia’s many interruptions to puzzle out some unfamiliar word—irritably, but with resolve.  Language was a barrier between them, but they would not let it be a strong one.  Pantomime, repetition and clumsy explanations in simpler terms helped when Olivia stumbled over meanings; if they could not make their point clear enough, she waved them on anyway.  There was too much to say.

“How many of you are there?” Olivia asked.

“Oh, several tribes that Murgull knows,” the old gulla murmured, then looked around sharply.  “But you mean, how many in these caverns, this tribe?  A very few, and that is our doom.  Forty females of breeding age.  Some little more than eighty males.  No children.”

“It has not always been so.  Once we were many more,” Horumn added.  “Once every lair was filled with families.  The tunnels breathed with life.  The mountain groaned.”

“That, too, was our doom,” Murgull interrupted.  “Wing to wing, we were pressed together, and when the White Fever came, half our number took ill.  You will not know the Fever, of course.  It is enough for you to know that it does not kill.  Blinds, yes.  Takes blood and breath and leaves the rest to live, ha, somewhat less than whole.  And then they breed, and what they breed is weak and wasted.  What they breed has foaming fits and soft brains and twisted bones.  Ha, and then
they
breed!  This was the beginning of our end, little frog,” she said, looking down at the cooler under her hand. 

“I do not understand,” Olivia said, horribly afraid that she did.

“Oh, it might have been mended,” Murgull snorted. “If they had been cautious, if they had been wise.  Everyone knows when the White Fever comes, those it takes must be killed.  But no, the
tovorak
ordered them driven back instead, into the deep reaches of the mountain.  They are still tribe, he said.  We are not beasts, he said.  Ha!  A beast knows better.  A beast knows compassion kills more than it preserves.  He let them live down there.  He let them breed down there.”

“When there were more of the wasted than there were of the whole, who was there to stop them when they crawled up from the Depths?” Horumn added disgustedly.  “The
tovorak
died.  The tribe fought.  The wasted won.  They stuck their foolish tools into any hole they could find and made all the young they could.  And the young are always worse than the fathers.”  She raised the hem of her heavy robe to reveal a leg, little more than a lump with claws sticking haphazardly out from the ankles.  “So I was born,” she spat. 

Olivia’s head spun.  She’d heard that phrase a thousand times without realizing that shock really could swim the world around.  She grabbed at the bench beneath her for an anchor and shook her head hard, but that flushed and fevered sensation remained.  “
Tovorak
?  What—?”

“Ha, useless!” Horumn spat, throwing up both hands.

“The
tovorak
,” Murgull said, scowling with the good half of her mouth.  “He who decides.  The strongest, eh?  The tallest.  The wise.  Enough croaking, little frog!  Listen!  Horumn and I and others like us were born at the end of that evil time, and there were those wise enough to know what it meant.  They who saw our doom coming gathered in secret, made the wisest among them
tovorak
and did what had to be done.” 

“They…They killed the Wasted?  All of them?”

“All?  No.  What would that leave but sisters to mate with brothers and fathers, one doom to replace another?  But they did kill, yes, and they killed until he was
tovorak
to all.”

Horumn dropped her robe back over her leg.  “He did his best to undo the damage.  No good.  Too much damage, too little cure.  The waste was in all of us by then.”

Olivia found herself shaking her head, looking from one to the other of them in confusion.  “Not…not mine?”

The two creatures exchanged glances. 

Murgull cocked her good eye at Olivia and said, “One drop of poison in the water may be invisible, eh? Tasteless.  But it can still cramp the belly, eh?  The waste may take a fair form like that of your mate, but it poisons all the same, little frog, and see what is born to us now.”

She lifted the lid of the cooler, reached into the oily dark liquid that filled it, and drew out…something.

A face screwed on sideways on a mottled head.  Blunt, unfinished hands with fingers growing out of the wrists and palms.  One foot, a useless club, the other a spiny monstrosity.  A gaping hole where the sex should be.  Two wings, stunted and sealed to its back with slimy shreds of skin.  The mouth hung dully open, revealing a jaw full of unnatural teeth.             

Olivia gagged and recoiled, almost falling off the bench.

“It came at sundown, never took a breath,” Murgull said, gazing at the thing meditatively.  “At first, only one or two were born so.  Then, only one or two were not.  The
tovorak
died, and a new one came, and we are so few, eh?  So few.  Some told him we should leave Hollow Mountain, find another tribe to join.  We have not heard from others in a hundred years, yet we know where they must be.  But how can we leave this place?  Our ancient ancestors carved these tunnels.  Our whole history is here!  Others said we should take humans and breed out the bad blood by them, as our legends say we may do.  But legends are not always truth, eh?  Stories are not babies to lie whole and healthy at our breasts!  So it raged for several years, and in those years, no young ones but these, vile and dead.

“In the end,” Murgull finished, slipping the thing back into the cooler, “he was convinced to take a small group of males to select human mates—wingless, furless, little maggots like you.  They were not enthusiastic, but desperation brings its own desire.  Now you are here, eh?  Seventeen of your ugly kind to be mates for the best of our males, mates for the strongest, the most whole.  He could find no more than seventeen.”  Murgull glowered at the cooler and rubbed at the loose folds of her neck.  At last, she shook her stubby horns and said, “If even one gulla puts a healthy child in a human belly, it will mean as much hope for my people as horror for yours.  We cannot cure what has happened here with only seventeen humans.”

“You don’t mean he will take more of us!” Olivia said.

“A risk,” Murgull muttered, now actually taking hold of her own loose skin and pulling at it.  “Terrible risk, but necessary.”

Horumn snorted and spat an amazing wad of phlegm on the cave floor.  “Necessary and foolish!  Ha!  Humans are dangerous enough when all we take are their cattle.  Now we will take their women?  Mark me, there is no hope!  None!  If we do not breed with you ugly maggots, we waste away and die!  If we do, the humans will find us in our homes and kill us!”

“Enough.”  Murgull motioned at the cooler, and Horumn took it away.  As Murgull watched the other female drag the coffin with its ghastly secret away, she quietly said, “For all it matters now, I think it was the best of bad choices.  To find another tribe is no promise of welcome, oh no.  Old Murgull thought to leave the caverns once before.  Away to the north, she flew in her youth, to the tribe that had spawned this one, in ancient days.  And did she find them?  Oh yes.  A hunting party high in the mountains, many days’ flight from here.  She pleaded with them for the sake of her people, and did they pity her?”

Murgull lapsed into silence, staring sorrowfully into the candlelight.  “No pity.  Laughter, they threw at her, and stones to strike her down.  Broke her wing to keep her on the ground, and put their pricks in her while she screamed and writhed in blood.  Chained her, yes, and held her for days…baking under the human sun by day…broken under their rutting weight at night.  Until, by the Great Spirit’s favor, she broke free.  Ha, free to scramble home with useless wing, useless eye, all ruin and fever and fear.  Months and months she scrambled, suffered, and no child, either.”  She rubbed at the patch of scar tissue, then seemed to remember Olivia.  “No, you are not so ugly.  Old Murgull knows ugly when she sees it.”

Even if she’d known the words, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.  It was hard enough just meeting Murgull’s steady, one-eyed gaze.

Murgull muttered under her breath, then heaved herself up with a groan.  “Come with me, little wingless sister.  We will find your kind in the commons now.  Let us hope together that one of them is sparking.” 

6

The common cave was much more crowded when Olivia returned.  Several other captive women were gathered around the empty fireplaces, talking to each other in and out of English, sometimes speaking both tongues at once.  There weren’t as many as seventeen, if Murgull’s count could be trusted, but maybe the others were still coming. 

Seeing them, Murgull uttered a disgusted grunt and released her at the doorway, muttering under her breath about maggots and slugs as she slouched off.  Olivia lingered, looking at the creatures—the gullan—grouped together around the raised, flat rock in the middle of the room.  She realized she knew which one was hers, and the realization both pleased and disturbed her.  He saw her, his strange face contorting with relief, and beckoned her to him.  She went, but slowly, looking at all of them together and seeing for the first time the subtle variations between them, wondering if the cracked horns she saw on one or the dull patch of fur on another were marks of age or of the waste.

“Is it wise to let her run loose?” asked a gulla as Olivia joined her captor.

Olivia’s captor tensed slightly.  “Murgull took her,” he said.

“And returned her?”  The gulla came up to look Olivia over, which in turn gave her the chance to study him.  Unremarkable for the most part, he did have one fascinating physical feature that stood him out not just from Olivia’s captor, but from all the others of his kind, at least all those gathered here: Beginning between his wings and ending just above his belt, following the curve of his spine, he’d grown a kind of bristly mane, much thicker and coarser than the rest of his fur, and slightly silvered at the tips.  It was just weird enough to make a girl overlook his lack of stature (still taller than Olivia, perhaps, but shorter than every other gullan here), his lack of strength (fit enough, as far as that went, but very lean, which made him seem positively scrawny compared with Olivia’s own captor), and just his general lack of noteworthy features (even his horns were slender and unprepossessing, although on closer inspection, they had a rougher edge to them, almost serrated). “I wonder why.”