Olivia (85 page)

A very long silence.  Even Cheyenne was still.

“Now, beast, you die.”  He went for her.

“Babies,” Olivia managed to gasp, and her vision went slightly blue.  This would be fascinating if it weren’t so frightening.

“There will be other young.”

“Please.”

He stood tensely at arm’s reach of Cheyenne.  His whole body was expanding with each breath he ripped from the air.  His hands were curled into deadly claws, capable of cutting through rock like warm butter; Cheyenne would be opened clear to her spine.

Time crawled by.  Tina’s voice was a soothing whisper as she probed at Olivia’s head.  There was no other sound.  No one even seemed to be breathing.

“Done,” he said at last, a growl of liquid rage.  “Know this, beast:  You live at the whim of my loved mate.  But you will never rise from that pit to work your evil again in my mountain.  Turn her.”

Cheyenne didn’t have time to struggle before Yawa had her on her stomach.  Vorgullum caught her kicking feet and pinned them both in one of his huge hands.  His claws slashed across the backs of her knees in a gush of gore and the sound of scraping bone.  He released her as she shrieked and bucked in agony, but her legs only swayed sluggishly in the spreading pool of blood.

“Bind her,” he commanded, and turned his back.

Tina was cutting swift eyes at the writhing, screaming woman in the pit, but she kept her arms around Olivia as Vorgullum crossed and hunkered down beside her.

“How badly is she hurt?”

Tina didn’t immediately answer.  That was never a good sign coming from a doctor.  Neither was looking at the world through hazy shades of yellow, come to think of it.

“Vorgullum, her skull is broken.”

His voice was deceptively calm.  “Are you certain?”

A longer pause this time, and when she spoke, it was in a frightened whisper.  “Vorgullum…I can’t fix this.  She’s going to die.”

Oh drat
, thought Olivia, and knew no more.

10

“
Waken, daughter of Bahgree
.”

Olivia shut her eyes even tighter and tried to roll over.  Too early to wake up.  Too heavy.  Too hurt. 

“
Waken
.”

Olivia groaned softly and cracked her eyes open.  The room was full of stars.  No, the room was full of Urga.  Urga was full of stars.

The goddess of the moon stretched out the lump of her hand impassively.  “
Come to me, come out of that husk you wear.  My mate and master commands me to make you whole again, and you cannot endure my power and live
.”  Nothing in Urga’s voice or face suggested she would be much dismayed by Olivia’s death.  “
Come to me, else you die
.”

That was finally starting to sink in.  Olivia fumbled out her hand and ran it clumsily through the air until it slapped down on Urga’s arm.  That awful, meaty appendage at the end of her wrist closed over Olivia’s hand.  There was a painless, tugging sensation and then she was standing.

She looked back over her shoulder in confusion and saw a woman lying in a sleeping pit, tangles of hair protruding from the bandaged mass of her head, and blood underneath that, blood that had dried across the sleeping bag she lay on like a dark halo.  The woman’s hand flopped limply out of the air and onto her stomach, where one finger continued to jitter and twitch.  Her face was pinched and shockingly pale except where it had been streaked with blood.  She looked like she was sleeping, and having the mother of all bad dreams. 

Who is that
? she asked.

Urga looked faintly amused.  “
It is the sack of mortal flesh you wear
.”  She reached out her other hand and felt the air just above the sleeping woman’s face.  “
Cooling now with coming death.  It would not take much, I think, to still the heart that vainly beats within this mortal breast
.”

Olivia looked around, still locked in Urga’s clammy grip.  There were shadows moving about in the room, but she couldn’t seem to make them out.  It was as if a great light were shining down on just this place, casting all the rest of the room into blackness.  She supposed Vorgullum was there, somewhere.  And Tina, maybe.  And maybe Amy.

“
Will you beg for your life, daughter of Bahgree?
”

No
, she said, but with distraction, still trying to pierce the veil and identify her visitors. 

A long, considering silence.  “
Why will you not?
”

What would be the point?  You’ll save me or you won’t
.

“
And if choose to allow your husk to die?
”

Then I die.  And Somurg dies, and all the babies will die.  Ultimately, that means the death of this tribe
.  The thought made her sad, in a vague way.

Urga stared at her, her moonlight wings fanning the dead air.  “
And if I restore your life to you?
”

I’ll be grateful.  And I’ll do what I have to do to try and save my son.

“
Will you indeed be grateful?
”  Cold appraisal.  “
Will you be grateful, even as my mate of these many ages comes to you?  Will you be grateful as you call him to lie with you?
”

One of the shadows crawled into the pit beside the sleeping woman.  Olivia still couldn’t make out any features, couldn’t even tell if it were human or gulla.

Urga
?

“
Yes?
”  Expectant, triumphant, prepared to hear a plea.

Thank you for helping Beth
.

Silence.

And thank you for coming to be with me when I was in labor.  Thank you for helping me deliver my son
.

Silence.

That’s all.  I’m ready to die now
.

Urga looked down at the woman in the pit. 

The shadow was embracing the sleeping woman.  Had to be Vorgullum then.

Urga pressed her hand against the woman’s serene brow.  She seemed almost to hesitate.  Then her hand disappeared beneath the skin. 

The woman’s body lit up slowly from within; she burned with the cold blue light of the moon.  None of the shadows seemed to notice.

Urga’s hand withdrew.  “
Return, then
.”  Her voice was strangely subdued.  “
Return, daughter of the River.  Live, for now.  Return
.”

Olivia wanted to say something, but the pull of her body was too strong.  She closed her eyes, felt herself bending backwards, falling.

11

“Thank you,” she muttered.  “I’m sorry about this.  I’m sorry about everything.  I’m sorry about…about…”   Someone was holding her.  She opened her eyes, puzzled.

Vorgullum was lying beside her, his arm tight around her waist, his head buried in the join of her neck and shoulder.

Olivia sat up.

There was an immediate bay of surprise, human and gullan alike.  Olivia clamped her hands over her ears, wincing.  The sound was bright, cut into her like knives.

Tina pulled her hands away and shone a flashlight into her eyes, causing her to squirm back, mewling.  “Hold still.  What hurts?”

“Nothing hurts.  Hang on.”  Olivia rubbed her face, braced her hands on the small of her back and stretched, then reached around and felt gingerly at the back of her head.  “I took a hell of whack, didn’t I?” 

“You broke your head-bone, girl!”  Tina looked as if she couldn’t decide whether she should be amazed or exasperated.  “Bend down.  Goddammit, get
back
, Vorgullum!”

Olivia obediently put her head between her knees and offered Tina the back of her head.

“Jesus Christ, it’s gone,” Tina breathed.

“Merciful Spirit, I thank you,” Vorgullum murmured and rolled onto his stomach as if not daring to move.

Olivia straightened in time to see an expression of near-religious awe melting over Tina’s face.  “I didn’t do it,” she said.  “Urga healed me.”

Tina immediately frowned and bent her over again.  “No,” she muttered, “No, it’s really gone.”  She allowed Olivia to sit up again.  “Eyes look good, color’s good.”  She plucked Olivia’s wrist up and looked at her watch.  “Pulse is strong.”

“Urga healed me,” Olivia said again.

“Um, yeah.  It…You know what, fine.  Makes as good an answer as anything else.”  Tina glanced at Vorgullum, still pressing his face into the bedding, and reached over to take his pulse. 

“Is Cheyenne okay?”

Tina checked herself before she actually dropped her jaw and gaped, but it was a near thing.  “Is
Cheyenne
okay?  Jesus wept, girl!”

“Now I know she is well,” Vorgullum muttered, his wrist limp in Tina’s grip.

“Cheyenne is…well, she’s not okay, but she’ll do.  She’ll probably lose the use of her legs from the knees down, but at this point, nobody cares.  Except you.  She lost some blood, but not so much that she can’t recover, and not enough to hurt the babies any.  Rumm and Thurga are taking turns changing bandages and force-feeding her orange juice and in the meantime I’ve been giving her some of Murgull’s all-purpose baby aspirin stuff.”

“Where’s Somurg?”

“Still with Amy and Kurlun.  I’d better go see them; they were both scared green when Vorgullum carried you in here.  There’s about twenty gullan camped outside your chimney.  Are you going to throw up?”

“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.