Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

  “It’s not your fault,” she tried to say, but he silenced her and went on.

  “I am not interested in laying blame. I concern myself only with you. The day is coming when you will leave me, maybe forever. That day will be misery enough. And now I must leave you, without knowing if you will be here to greet me when I return. I feel…I feel that I have nothing to hold onto, only my tribe. I am leaving tonight, because that is all that I can think to do. If I stay, if I have to lie in my pit beside you and think about the Great Spirit’s hand upon you, I will do something foolish…and futile. And so I’m leaving, and because I am leaving, there is something else I must do. I must protect you, provide for you in the only way I know how. Give me my son.”

  Olivia hesitated, but stood and put Somurg in his outstretched arm. He turned and walked away, leaning on his spear, and she had little choice but to follow him.

  “I have told myself again and again that we are in no danger. That humans, despite all that we have stolen from them and done to them, have never known of us or lurked in wait for us. Still, I can’t shake this feeling, like a cloud hanging over us. I know that I might not return; the tribe knows, and they will look to you for leadership while I am gone.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said again, trying to sound very strong and sincere.

  He stopped in the doorway of the new commons, where most if not all of the tribe were gathered. In the center of the room, Damark held Smugg while Amy sent Kurlun off with a kiss. Liz’s Gormuck and Anita’s Murk were standing close together and watching with obvious unease as their humans just as uneasily selected their new mates, but the rest were huddled around Horumn, apparently intent upon waiting out their mates’ return in the women’s tunnels.

  “I could go to the women’s tunnels,” Olivia heard herself say. “I spend most of my time there anyway.”

  “It is your right,” he said heavily. “But I ask you to reconsider. I am leaving only a handful of hunters and they will have to work hard to keep our stores filled. There will be much fear and much uncertainty, and the tribe will need a leader to assuage it. That leader will be the male who shares your pit, and everyone here knows that. If you hide from them in the women’s tunnels, certain males may become aggressive.”

  She looked at him sharply.

  “You are in no danger,” he said, and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “But I’m afraid to come home and find a tribesman dead. Please, Olivia.”

  “I understand.” Olivia managed a smile. “I don’t like it, but I do understand.”

  “Good.”

  A gullan shape detached from the shadows and limped up to them. It was Sudjummar, looking grim.

  “Here is my brother,” Vorgullum said. “He is a good man.”

  Olivia couldn’t help herself. She gaped. Even Somurg goggled.

  Sudjummar averted his eyes, stretching one wing uncomfortably. The dried limb made a crackling sound like cellophane. “I know you,” he said. “You want to be independent, like you were when Vorgullum was moving the tribe. But things are changed, Olivia. And Vorgullum won’t be here.”

  He spread his hands, looking crippled and helpless, then suddenly snapped them into fists and flexed his powerful frame. In that moment, he looked perfectly capable of cracking a gullan skull like a hollow eggshell. “I am able to defend you if I must and every male here knows that.”

  Vorgullum was waiting, silent.

  Sudjummar stretched out his arm and Olivia took it, allowing him to draw her in close. It was almost a ritualized movement, one that the entire tribe could see. Now that she had been passed out of Vorgullum’s shadow and into Sudjummar’s, an armored field had gone up around her, proclaiming her off-limits. When Vorgullum set Somurg firmly in the metal maker’s hands, the moment was complete.

  Olivia looked back at Vorgullum, to make a final farewell, and fell silent. He had taken several steps back, and was looking at Sudjummar strangely—reluctance, guilt, relief, and pain were all mixed together in that steady gaze. At last, after a few false starts, he managed to speak. “Thank you for this, brother. Stand tall.”

  Sudjummar nodded once, somewhat stiffly, and squeezed Olivia’s shoulder. “It was a long time ago,” he said, just as softly. “Make your journey. Return swiftly and return whole. I will keep your mate and son safely until you grow tall again.”

  Bewildered, Olivia looked back at Vorgullum, but he only turned away. He didn’t kiss her goodbye this time. He didn’t even touch his brow to hers. She was someone else’s mate now. He called to his travel party, and they filed out of the commons, leaving the tribe much depleted. Only the humans called goodbyes, and only a few of them at that.

  Then they were gone and it was quiet.

  Sudjummar immediately released her. “You have things to do, I think,” he said. “I will have your things brought to the forge. Olivia, I…” He looked for a moment as though he meant to say something more, then shook his horns, turned, and limped away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHANGES

  1

  Olivia spent that first long day in the women’s tunnels, but found no peace there. All the gullan seemed to think that being assigned a new mate was something to be tremendously excited about and listening to their chatter about what it meant that Anita chose Truunal or how many males had been furious that Sarah B. refused Burgelbun’s chosen replacement to live in the tunnels or (and this was worst of all) the shocking shame of Olivia being given to a cripple, even if he was the metal-maker. She paced unhappily through the tunnels until she found the lair that Sarah B. was sharing with three other women, but Sarah was in no mood to talk—about Burgelbun, about her pregnancy, about anything—and after several minutes of one-sided conversation, Olivia left her alone. With nowhere else to go, Olivia gave up and went home.

  She was halfway to the tovorak’s lair before she remembered that she was staying with Sudjummar and she had no idea where the forge even was. While she was standing in the mainway, feeling at once stupid and sorry for herself, she heard footsteps. She moved aside, but rather than pass by, whoever it was stopped and put a hand on her arm.

  She jumped and whirled about, waking Somurg from a light doze and sending him into fits of indignation. The gulla behind her flinched back, either at her sudden movement or the baby’s wails, so that the faint candlelight that lit the mainway fell fully on his face; she recognized Victoria’s former mate at once, but being startled put more anger than he deserved into her voice when she said, “Thugg! You frightened me!”

  “It wasn’t my intention,” he apologized, giving her and the crying baby some space. “I saw you here alone and thought I would walk you to your lair.”

  Olivia answered distractedly, attempting to soothe her son. “That’s kind of you, but I’m not certain just yet where I’ll be sleeping.”

  “I see,” Thugg said, sounding peculiarly pleased.

  At the same time, a thin kernel of bright power sparked to life within Olivia, almost like a warning.

  Oh jeez, Olivia thought, struggling to control it even as she felt it growing stronger. “I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I only meant that I might be needed in the women’s tunnels.”

  He smiled faintly, regarding her with a hunter’s eye. “There is no need for that,” he said, letting the barest hint of a thrumm enter his voice.

  Her control was slipping. “No need for a healer to see to the pregnant women of this tribe?”

  “That isn’t why you want to stay in the women’s tunnels.” It wasn’t a question. “You want to avoid the metal-maker’s pit.”

  It now took all her attention to hold the Great Spirit’s damned spark in check. She couldn’t answer him, and he took her strained silence and flushed face for agreement. Or arousal.

  “Then consider me,” Thugg said, fanning his wings out as far as he was able in the tunnel, as though to win her over by showing his bodily perfection over Sudjummar. “I am strong and sound, one of Vorgullum’s trusted
hunters and providers. Let me provide for you, Olivia.”

  “How…How can you say this to me?” she managed, squeezing her thighs together helplessly. “How dare you? My mate hasn’t been gone even one day! You couldn’t give me a lousy day before chasing after me?!”

  That stopped him. He even backed up a little, but continued to run his eyes over her body with undisguised intent and that power within Olivia was now boiling at the very edge of her ability to control. “If I gave you the day, would you consider my offer tomorrow?”

  “If you want to rut this badly, go to the Eldest!” she snapped, trying to make him angry now, trying to say anything that would cool these terrible fires. “Although if Chugg is busy, you might have to settle for Victoria, or did you think I’d forgotten what you did to the last women who shared your pit?”

  It did cool, but not by much. The glint of anger in his eye did not diminish the lust shining there at all.

  “You mean Umma,” he said, speaking the gullan name given to Victoria. “I did what I had to do to give healthy young to my tribe, but I always provided for her. I provide for her still, when she has no men willing to couple with her shadow.” He came a step closer, glaring. “And I was a good mate to her, before I put her aside. I could be a good mate again.”

  “I’m not interested, Thugg.”

  His head cocked. “You shouldn’t have to settle for a cripple when you can have a whole man.”

  “I’m not settling for Sudjummar!”

  “You don’t want to be with him. I can make you want to be with me.” He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek, just like Vorgullum. “I miss having a woman in my lair.”

  She jerked away from him, heart and loins and power pulsing together to the same insistent beat. “There are lots of them in the women’s tunnels for you to win over, but I have a mate while Vorgullum’s away.”

  “I don’t want Sarahjay or Beth. I want you.” He advanced again and this time brushed at her hip. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

  “What goes on here?” Doru asked mildly.

  Olivia spun towards him with obvious relief, but the chief hunter was leaning against the wall and looking meditatively past her at Thugg.

  Thugg rapidly put space between them. “I thought I might offer to carry Olivia’s belongings to the forge.”

  “Really. The echoes in this new mountain are really something, because that isn’t what it sounded like to me.” Doru pushed himself off the wall and closed the distance between them in two swift steps. “It sounded to me,” he said calmly, “like a female who is trying very hard to explain the word no. Now…perhaps you need me to define it for you?”

  And before Thugg could say or do a thing, before Olivia could even blink, Doru had swung his massive arm and slapped Thugg hard across the face. The force of this unexpected blow lifted the other gulla right up off his feet and sent him slamming into the rock wall of the tunnel. Thugg staggered, found his balance, gripped his snout, and looked up at Doru with huge, white-ringed eyes.

  “No,” said Doru, very softly.

  Thugg inched back a few steps, still hunched over with a hand to his face. “I hear you. I’m leaving.”

  “You do that.” Doru remained where he was, filling the tunnel with the sheer size of him, glaring down at the older gulla who squeezed hurriedly past him and was gone. “Dickhead,” he muttered.

  Olivia’s breath whooshed out of her in a flood of relief; the power was fading with Thugg’s inglorious retreat. Although it did not die entirely, it could be managed. She looked down at Somurg’s pinched and sleeping face, then rocked him foolishly, at the knife’s edge of sudden tears. For a moment there, she’d forgotten he was even in her arms. If the power had gotten away from her…She could actually see him dropping from her hands to the stone floor of the tunnels as she leapt at Thugg, lost in the grip of the Great Spirit’s spark.

  Doru’s huge hand patted at her shoulder. “Easy, Olivia. He’s gone.”

  “I know,” she said, and tried to sound like she meant it. “I’m fine.”

  “And now,” Doru said dryly, “I will take your belongings to the forge.”

  He fell into step beside her as she headed for Vorgullum’s chambers. It was a long walk, made longer by stifling silence.

  “He wouldn’t have harmed you,” he said at last.

  “I know.” She thought she knew.

  “I hope you weren’t too unnerved, because you’re likely to go through it more than once. At least until the most aggressive ones get it through their goat-heads that you’re really serious about staying with the metal-maker.”

  “I was expecting it, just not so soon.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, going ahead of her until he stood before the chimney to Vorgullum’s cave. “A word of advice, if I may. Pay attention to the ones that come for you the fastest. They’ll be the ones that make the most trouble for Sudjummar. If there is a challenge, and barring a miracle there will be, it will come from one of them. Wait here.” He climbed up out of sight.

  Olivia stood in the short tunnel, jogging Somurg nervously while Doru presumably packed her things. Without warning, the power flared.

  “Olivia, I greet you,” said a male voice.

  She turned fast, clutching her son like a shield. There was a gulla roughly Kurlun’s age standing at the mouth of the alcove, fanning his wings out to block the tunnel and any chance of escape. “Um, hi. Who are you?”

  “Vorung.” He did not sound disappointed that she didn’t know him. “Gathering your things?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will it take long?”

  She blinked. “Maybe.”

  “I see. Well, if you’re not busy tomorrow, perhaps you would like to come to my pit?”

  She was little bowled back by the complete lack of subtlety. “I…I’m staying with Sudjummar.”

  “I do not propose to remove you from him.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You appeared content enough to accept him when Vorgullum gave you to his care. Whether you did so out of loyalty to the tovorak or not, I respect your choice. I desire only the pleasure of your body.”

  “My mate has only just left me!” she said again, fighting a second battle for self-control. “I haven’t even spent a whole day with Sudjummar!”

  “Spend as many days as you like,” he replied. “The metal-maker is a good man, but perhaps a poor companion in the pit. I am not.”

  Both of them glanced around as Doru began to descend through the chute. Vorung’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “I leave you to consider my offer,” he said and moved away.

  “Who was that?” Doru asked, adjusting the packs he carried over one arm. She told him. He snorted. “Vorung. No kidding. He had this same chat with Sarahjay and Anita earlier. I suppose he thinks he’s improving his chances. Speaking as an impartial observer, Olivia, you can do better.”

  They walked in silence through the tunnels to the forge.

  “Have you seen my…have you seen Tobi?” he asked eventually.

  “She drops in on Tina once in a while, but we haven’t really spoken.”

  “Ah. It’s the same with us. I see her nearly every night—one of my best hunters, in fact—but we don’t talk much. She seems happy, doesn’t she?”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “So am I.”

  She could hear the ringing of Sudjummar’s hammer striking on metal long before she arrived at the forge. Keeping pace with Doru, she had no time to brace herself; she walked in and there he was, his back to the door, one hand holding the work in place while the other rose and fell with the hammer, beating it into form. The muscles in his back clenched and coiled, his crippled wings fanned steadily, and steam poured endlessly around his powerful body.

  Funny. She’d expected to feel dread at this moment, planned for it, wanted it. But her first thought when she saw him was what a good looking man he really was. It disturbed her.

  “Ho there, m
etal-maker. I bring your mate.” Doru set his armload of packs on the ground and stretched. “And you ought to know that both Thugg and Vorung are interested in making your acquaintance.”

  “Let them come.” Sudjummar lay the hammer down and held up the crude metal for inspection. It was a spear-head, or it was going to be, as soon as it was hardened and an edge put on it.

  “Is it customary for them to move so fast?” she asked, feeling a little out of her element.

  Both males exchanged amused glances. Sudjummar said, “Not customary, but not unexpected. You aren’t just any female, after all. Bad enough that half the tribe thinks of you as Olivia Urgarna, but the other half thinks of you as Olivia Issugul.” Olivia in Ecstasy.

  “And of course, there are those few ambitious males that think of you as Olivia Who-Will-Make-Me-Tall-If-I-Have-Her,” Doru added. “Vorgullum does not intend to return for some time. There may be some resistance to the idea of a tovorak who can’t hunt.”

  Sudjummar snorted. “Some. You’re hilarious, Doru.”

  “It’s called tact. I didn’t think you’d recognize it.”

  “So let them come,” Sudjummar repeated. “It should be a good lesson for those who believe crippled means vulnerable.” He dropped the spear-head into a vat of water and was briefly curtained by steam. When the air cleared, he set the unfinished metal back on his anvil and dried his pelt with a handy towel. “In the meantime, understand if I start ordering you around, chief hunter.”

  “Do it. Every chance you get. I plan to be absolutely obnoxious with obedience.” Doru glanced at Olivia, a frown darkening his eyes. He turned to go, but paused and rested his heavy hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “I hope for your sake you’re every bit as brave as Vorgullum thinks you are,” he said. “You’re about to see a very ugly part of our lives.” He squeezed gently, then departed.

  Sudjummar and Olivia were left to stare at each other.

  “Let me show you to the sleeping room,” he said unnecessarily, backing away from her. “I have a place for your son to sleep, and I got some wrappings and things from the Eldest. I didn’t know what toys he likes, and frankly, it’s been so long since I have seen a baby-toy that I wouldn’t know what to give him, so I borrowed some from Amy. The pit is big enough for both of us, I think, and I made certain there was enough bedding for us to share. Vorgullum told me you liked books, so I got some from the sigruum before he…” He stopped, blinked twice, and looked down at his feet. “I’m chattering, aren’t I?”