After a while, Volistad seemed to be breathing normally, and he pushed himself up into a sitting position beside me. “What happened?” His voice was little more than a croak, but he seemed fully back in control of his body. “We were-” He coughed and trailed off. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know the words in his language. Instead, I just sat beside him. We sat there for a while in companionable silence, just breathing clean air and letting our heart rates fall back down to a more reasonable rate. After a while, Volistad murmured. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Only after you saved mine,” I replied. “I could not have fought so many. They would have torn me to pieces.”
Volistad was silent. I knew what he was thinking, that he had failed anyway. In his eyes, he hadn’t fought hard enough, hadn’t kept them at bay, and as a result, they had gotten past him and to me. I didn’t have the words to explain to him why he was wrong, so I just slapped him about the head. “Don’t be silly, Volistad,” I said. “Now let’s go. The way out is up.”
I fumbled my way over to the spike ladder and put a foot up on the nearest metal bar, then hopped up and seized one a little way above my head. Volistad followed my lead, making much less noise in the dark. We climbed in silence in the crushing dark, our already tired muscles straining against the weight of our waterlogged clothes. After a long time, I felt my head bump gently against something solid. Nervously, I lifted one hand up to feel for another hatch. Sure enough, there was one just above me. Carefully, not wanting to fall off of the crude, narrow ladder-spikes, I lifted my hand and pressed it against the hatch, giving it an experimental push. It moved, just a little, but it was just as heavy as the one below us. I took a deep breath, climbed to press my shoulder against the metal portal, and heaved with my legs and back. The hatch lifted open, swinging away on its hinges. I didn't dare push hard enough to fling it open. Instead I flopped over the edge of the hole into the space above while keeping the hatch lifted with one hand. Volistad quickly came up and helped me hold it up while I got to my feet, wary of the edge of the shaft we had just climbed. I held the heavy door in place as he scrambled up in a clatter of weapons, and then, when he was clear, I let the hatch slam shut with a hollow BOOM that raised dust from the ground all around us.
I stopped. I could see the dust. Which meant… I looked around and found the source of the light. We were standing in a great circular chamber, which had not been shaped to the same precise smoothness as the rest of the temple. Ringing the rough, craggy walls there were clusters of aquamarine crystals, glowing with a soft radiance that cast a soothing, relaxing light across everything in the cave-like chamber. The ceiling was high and scattered with stalactites, from which grew shaggy, highly reflective moss. The floor was uneven, though paths had been carefully shaped to crisscross through the space. All around us, I could see what looked like overgrown garden plots, full of plants I had never seen, and fungi larger than anything I had heard of before. It was a god's garden. A literal Garden of Eden, though it seemed to be meant for a different purpose than the one in the ancient Christian holy text. I could smell a hundred commingling, fascinating scents, and I wished I knew what Volistad was experiencing. His own sense of smell was so powerful, I was sure he was breathing in the olfactory equivalent of a vibrant tapestry. If only…
Volistad suddenly retched. "Palamun above," he grumbled. "We stink." He pointed off in a direction with somewhat frantic motions; his face wrinkled up against his own foul aura. "Flowing water," he muttered, clearly trying to breathe as little as possible. "That way." He led the way through the garden, and I tried to suppress my laughter at his reaction. I guessed that he had suddenly been hit with how rank we smelled because of the sharp contrast with the inviting smell of the garden.
I heard splashing and stopped staring around at the garden to see where we were going. Sure enough, a waterfall fell from somewhere high up on the cavern wall, splashing crystal clear liquid into a deep pool, clearly shaped for easy bathing. I didn't wait for an invitation. I dropped my sodden pack and my sword belt and began stripping out of my soaked furs as quickly as I could. Volistad wouldn't be beaten, however, and as I was shaking my one entangled foot out of my twisted hide pants, he took a few quick steps past me and dove into the pool with smooth precision. He surfaced a moment later in the middle of the water, all of the dirt and grime and filth of our journey coming off of him in the wonderful water. I finally kicked free of my pants and splashed my way in after him, doing so in a considerably less dignified manner.
Even without soap, the bath was one of the most relaxing things I had ever felt. It was cold and crisp, but not so much that it bothered me. I wasn't sure if that was the blessing's work or not, but I felt like I was bathing in a mountain spring- which, I guessed, I was. I submerged and just hung there, suspended in the cool, comforting dark, finally safe, finally clean. I hadn't realized how tense I had been since… since the foul power below had invaded my dream with Barbas. Had it been so long since that disastrous night? I had been traveling with Volistad and the others for only a fortnight, but it felt like a lifetime ago. I felt like a different woman.
My lungs began to burn, so I surfaced, letting the water run down off of my body. I put a hand to my smooth, hairless scalp. I missed my hair. I understood why it had been taken, but those beautiful raven locks… that was the part of being Joanna Angeles that I had actually liked. Clean, well-kept hair, smooth skin, enough food to eat. I thought about where I was and laughed out loud. I was in a god’s garden, swimming in a pool of the clearest water I had ever seen. I had two of those three things, so what if I didn’t have the hair. I looked over at Volistad, and to my surprise, I found him watching me.
He wasn’t doing or saying anything untoward, but the way he looked at me abruptly reminded me that I was standing naked as the day I was born in a secluded, secret pool with a naked man. A beautiful naked man. A black cloud of shame feathered its way over my brain as I remembered my last moments with Barbas before… before he had… I turned away, trying not to do so in a way that would hurt Volistad, but knowing that it would anyway.
“It is all right,” the ranger said, gently, in my own language. “It is not time for those things right now. I was simply… what is the word… admiring your beauty.”
Despite myself, I felt the edges of a grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I replied coyly, giving him a very obvious once-over with my eyes.
Volistad cocked his head to the side, unsure, and I realized I had thrown him off a little with my use of slang. He probably wasn't sure if I was complimenting or insulting him when I said, "not so bad." I turned back around, feeling his eyes travel up and down my body. "It's just a saying. It's a way of saying that you're quite pretty yourself by deliberately understating it."
Volistad blinked. “I only understood half of that.”
I laughed again. “Just know that it means you look good.” I blushed, embarrassed, but I wasn’t sure he could actually see that with the odd quality of the light. Besides, he seemed a little too distracted to notice something like blushing.
Volistad smiled then, both with his eyes and his mouth. It was a good look on him, even if his fangs lent the expression a savage aspect. “Joanna, are you sure you aren’t a goddess? Because right now…” He trailed off, self-conscious.
I felt a cold spike of anxiety go through my stomach, and my own smile faltered. I looked away, the heat of the moment suddenly gone. The water felt uncomfortably cold, no longer the refreshing pleasure it had been just a moment before. "I- I guess I'll be one soon, whatever that means." I got out of the water and shivered my way over to my clothes. They were soaked and filthy, and I didn't want to put them back on. "Fuck," I said under my breath. Then I sighed and started dragging the lump of sodden furs over to the pool to wash them.
Volistad got out of the pool as well, and I carefully avoided looking at him. Still, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and the fact that he was a
s perfectly muscled as the mythical Adonis did not make the situation easier. Before meeting him, I would not have thought extreme paleness would be attractive in a man, but this was a little different. He looked like Michelangelo had carved him straight from the purest marble. As he walked past me, I looked up, and I was surprised to see that the skin of his back, as well as the outside of his arms and the front of his legs, were mottled with subtle patches of gray that covered him in a pattern of small spots like those of a leopard. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed it before, but it made sense. He was usually fully clothed, and his face was unmarked by these spots. I supposed it must have been some kind of vestigial camouflage, though I couldn’t imagine Volistad’s people running around on Chalice unclothed and unprotected to utilize this natural advantage. I wondered if that meant that the Erinye were somehow not native to this world. It would fit with what I knew of them. No one could have evolved in this kind of climate, could they? It was warmer down here, underground, but there were too many things that would make life all but impossible here. In any case, though I could not possibly have guessed his origin, I marveled in Volistad’s beauty. He was an intriguing vision of a man, walking the line between a comfortable familiarity and a fascinating strangeness. I knew that I was very attracted to him, and he had made it clear how he saw me.
But the throwaway comment about me being a goddess was frightening, on a base level. I couldn’t even consider sex- I was going to change, very soon. I was going to be changed permanently and intimately. What would that entail? What would it cost me? Would I even be myself anymore? I wanted to sit and discuss it with Barbas, in our cabin by the lake in the midst of the peaceful, green wood. But he was forever lost to me. He had- or at least something that looked and sounded like him had- tried to kill me. He had damn nearly succeeded. It hurt, now that I had a moment to think about it. I had trusted him, even after our short time together, and that security had been shattered. I hadn't trusted someone like that in a very long time, and the one I had trusted had broken me and left me to die. And I was seeking an ancient, frightening power, so that I could change into someone capable of killing the man I had trusted. Even though he was an AI, I had begun to love him. All of that was rushing through my head, now, and all the sexual chemistry in the world could do nothing before the scourging heat of that pain.
There was a sharp sound of splintering wood, and I looked up to see Volistad, still naked and dripping from the pool, smashing the base of a very large brown mushroom that sprouted up from one of the garden plots. His greathammer swung in a series of precisely aimed arcs, quickly cracking through the stem of the mushroom and tipping it over so that it rested on the side of its broad, smooth cap. With the brisk motions of great practice, he severed the rest of the stalk completely from the cap with the serrated inside edge of one of his climbing axes. He then split the woody stalk into several chunks and began making a pile of them.
I got up, leaving my filthy clothes at the edge of the pool, and crossed over to him. “What are you doing?”
"I'm making a fire," he said simply, his voice just as warm and amiable as before. I felt a silly sort of relief that he didn't seem put off by my sudden switch in mood. Immediately, I felt a little irritated at myself for feeling apologetic. He had made an advance; I had been put off and turned him down. I didn't need to be sorry about that. Still, his apparent lack of anger was heartening. It meant he was a better person than many I had dealt with over the years.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Then our clothes can dry.”
“That’s what I thought too.” Volistad piled the stalks of the mushroom into a little pyramid, and then lifted a small rock that I hadn’t seen in his hand. He switched from Pan-American into Erin-Vulur and said, “This is the yetavota. This part," he said, gesturing to the cap, "is not very tasty. But if you are out of food, you can cook pieces of it over a fire, and they will keep you going. You usually find them growing on the sides of deep caves, if you find yourself near the stone of a mountain."
“The stalks,” he said, indicating the little pyramid. “Burn for a long time, and produce little smoke.” He flicked the dark claw of his forefinger hard against the little stone in his palm, and a few sparks spewed out over the pile of stalks. None of them caught. He harvested some of the thin, gill-like structures from the inside of the cap, and brushed the greenish dust of the mushroom’s spores off of the handful of crumbly mushroom flesh in his hand. He piled this kindling in the heart of his pyramid, and then flicked a stream of sparks into it. These caught, and a small, fragile orange glow began to issue from beneath the pyramid. Volistad bent low and blew gently on it, and after a few minutes, small tongues of flame began to lick at the edges of the piled chunks of stalk. He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled with his eyes, clearly pleased with himself.
I returned the smile in the manner of his people, a little of my uneasiness swept aside by the simple joy on his face at a job well done. “I should learn these things,” I said with my limited Erin-Vulur vocabulary. “I’m going to be here for a long time. Probably forever.”
Volistad looked up from his fire, which was now going strong. “That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
I looked at him, really looked at him then, taking in his easy self-assuredness, the nonchalance with which he tended to his tasks, utterly unconcerned with his nakedness. I thought of the vicious, cruel cold of the planet, and of the raw violence that was all I had experienced from his society. But then I thought about how it had felt to fight alongside him, his sister, and Thukkar- how they had thrown themselves into the fight with the minotaur without a second thought, without even knowing who I was. I remembered the ten days of travel, and the easy companionship we had shared, none of us affected by the fact that just a short time ago, two of them had been actively attempting to kill me. It had been a good time. Not an easy time, not a comfortable time, but a good time. "I think I could, Volistad. With friends like you and Nissi and Thukkar, I think I could grow to like this place."
Volistad smiled with his eyes and simply said, “Good.”
With the fire going, we washed our clothes and laid them out to dry. We roasted some thick slices of the mushroom cap and hunted through the garden for some fruit, of which there was a surprising abundance. After we had eaten, we sat together by the fire, almost intimately close, and I was very aware of where our hips touched each other- even if I pretended not to notice or care. Volistad carefully tended to his armor and his impressive array of weapons, his movements almost meditative in their rote precision. Somewhat less smoothly, I cleaned all of the muck from my new sword, and I was surprised to notice that the leather of the hilt was unstained, and seemed ultimately unaffected by its submersion. Likewise, the blade seemed as perfect and new as it had when I had picked up the sword, and I wondered what power or property could bring a weapon so close to being completely impervious.
When we finished our work, we just sat together by the fire, barely touching, neither of us speaking. We just sat and basked in the warmth until the heat and the fullness of our bellies caused us to drift off to sleep. And for the first time in ten days, I slept well, despite the stone floor, despite all that had happened. For just a little while, I was completely at peace.
Chapter Fifty
Volistad
Godmaker
When I woke up, Thukkar and Nissikul had joined Joanna and me at our camp. The fire was little more than ash, but the air was still fairly comfortable. I sat up carefully, taking my now dry pack, which was still empty, and replacing my arm under Joanna's head with it so that she didn't wake. She looked very peaceful there, curled up on the stone beside me and sleeping soundly. She seemed so small and fragile in sleep, and it seemed impossible that this was the same woman who had directly challenged one of the Eater's Children with nothing but a spear, and who had carried my unconscious body up a ladder and saved my life. How could so much strength of body and will be contained in such an unassuming frame?
I tilted my head to one side in question, not daring to speak for fear of waking her. Nissikul continued, speaking carefully. “She’s grieving, Vol. Can’t you see it? She’s lost everything, and just looking at her, I don’t think this was her first time.” She stopped, musing, but did not speak right away. We sat in silence, and I turned those words over in my mind, again and again. Nissikul huffed out a short sigh, then continued, her expression pained. “I can see that you care about her. And I understand why. She’s a remarkable woman: strong, brave, and dedicated. But she’s hiding something, brother. She seems small and frail, but she fights like one of us. She doesn’t have claws, her teeth are flat as a vulyak’s, and her senses are pitifully limited- but sometimes when I meet her eyes, I’m not sure which one of us is the more dangerous predator.” She stood, and even dressed in a tattered collection of rags, she somehow maintained her instinctive poise. Even exhausted and worn thin as we all were, my sister still looked the part of the priestess mage. “I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t love her. But I want you to keep your eyes open, Volistad.” Without waiting for my response, she turned on her heel and joined Thukkar in harvesting breakfast from the magnificent garden that surrounded us.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 28
