The Taint: Octavia

The Taint

Octavia

Georgina Anne Taylor

Copyright 2011 Georgina Anne Taylor

The Taint

Octavia

Sol, messenger of the Thirteen Elder Gods, rode the wind’s warm thermals.

He flew over the sapphire-blue waters of the Aeacus Sea, his sculptured limbs glowing radiant and golden, and his immense white wings caressing the breeze. Guided by chance, blown by fortuitous winds, the young God arrived at the Isle of Tinne.

A white castle stood high on the crest of a hill. Silver banners hung from the high ramparts, shimmering in the breeze. Framed within a tower’s arched window, a young woman stood looking down at the teeming life below. Her long, light brown hair flowed loose upon her shoulders, catching and reflecting the morning light. A beautiful, bewitching beacon.

Perhaps it was only her youthful splendour that drew Sol, or the look of bored petulance in her delicate, green eyes. Yet as the God soared closer he sensed the creature’s carnal nature. Her Mortal mind was a caged beast that stalked within its prison, twisting and turning, craving adoration and stimulation.

She was all but naked beneath a wisp of sheer silk, with small but full breasts, her stomach flat and her legs long, slender and shapely. A sudden urge to posses this tender young Mortal morsel in the full flower of her bloom seized Sol. With a single shift in thought and mass the God vanished and a small, dark rain cloud filled the space he had just occupied. Without wind the cloud entered the room.

The woman looked up in surprise as the cloud condensed into a single droplet of liquid. Ever so slowly it fell upon her lips. She gasped as the droplet flowed over her chin and down her soft white throat. It moved languidly, seductively, teasingly, sliding over her skin, heating her blood and quickening her pulse. With a small cry she ripped off the silk, baring her breasts to the liquid’s kiss. To the sound of her heated moans it travelled down her stomach, entering the light curls that covered her sex. Gripping the window ledge, she arched her back and opened her legs wider as if to gather the droplet inside.

A spasm seized her lovely torso as the liquid slipped within. Small sounds escaped her lips and she began to stroke her own eager body as she felt the droplet deep within her. It seemed to expand, filling her utterly and completely. As her climax took her, her cry became a carnal scream. Her body arched, thighs clenching tightly, holding the fluid inside.

Slowly opening her legs, she looked down in wonder as the droplet slid down her thigh and fell to the floor at her feet. As it struck the tiles it flared brightly, filling the room with a radiance that brought her to her knees.

In awe she watched as the golden light rose up and out through the window. As it passed into the sky beyond, the light flared again and immense white wings beat the air into a tempest.

Blinded by the divine gusts, when her vision returned the horizon was empty.

*****

The Lady Octavia of Tinne lay sprawled upon the white, silk sheets.

A wandering breeze brought scents of life through the tower’s open windows; fish and poultry, a tang of citrus and exotic smells of spice; the tantalising array of aromas that accompanied the distant noises of the city markets, far below.

Octavia’s chamber caught the morning sun and the white stone walls amplified the light. The silver bed curtains had been pulled back at her command, so that she might feel the sunlight’s caress. The windows offered breathtaking views of the famed city of Tinne and the wave-tossed sea. But neither the sea nor her beautiful city drew Octavia’s expectant gaze, but rather the clear blue sky above: the realm of her Divine lover.

Her sheer, white nightdress stretched taught over Octavia’s burgeoning form. Her legs and feet were swollen, and her alabaster belly—just visible beneath the thin cloth—was marred by purple and red stretch marks, formed as she had grown to accommodate the accelerated growth of the Divine life within.

An elderly Priestess, of the Triple Goddess Achaiva-Urania-Iachema, moved briskly around the chamber preparing for the birth. The purple sash at her waist marked her as a Midwife of Urania, and the thin, grey band of sheer cloth that masked her eyes declared her to be of the highest of orders. Long-tapered candles burnt on a table near Octavia’s bed, emitting a sweet-smelling smoke that drifted slowly in soft, grey ribbons across the chamber and out the open windows, while an infusion of healing herbs brewed in a large, silver cauldron that hung over the glowing embers in the white stone hearth.

Octavia sighed and shifted awkwardly upon the bed in a futile attempt to relieve her growing discomfort. Her gaze was caught by a shaft of sunlight on a nearby tapestry, a rippling breeze adding sinuous life to the meticulously stitched silver griffin, transporting her imagination to the world outside. Yet her days of freedom had ended with her marriage. The forays out into her fair city, the gay parties, the congenial conversations with the noble blooded families of Tinne, all had ceased as her husband had enforced his jealous nature.

Octavia felt a twinge of unease as she thought about her husband and the impending birth of her child. While some might appreciate the honour that the God had bestowed upon their wife, she knew that Warrick would not look upon the Divine seduction in a favourable light. His own position was precarious. He needed an heir, not only to ensure the continuation of his line but also to authenticate his marriage to Octavia and thus his claim to Tinne. Without a child born of the bloodline of Tinne—Octavia’s blood—Warrick would remain an outsider, an interloper, the Anghard King’s puppet.

Shifting her bulk once more Octavia attempted to shrug the feeling aside. Warrick was not a cruel man after all, she reasoned, if anything he was weak. He had not a fraction of the strength and might that her father—the last true Thane of Tinne—had possessed. If the child within resembled its Mortal mother, the subterfuge would go unnoticed, and if it did not...

Octavia gasped as a sudden, acute and piercing pain flared deep within her womb, swiftly rising to an unbearable peak. She bit back a scream. The pain slowly receded. As she struggled to catch her breath, the Priestess gently pressed a cold cloth to her fevered brow, murmuring soft words of encouragement.

A second bolt of clenching pain struck. Octavia’s heart thudded and her pulse raced madly. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and she could feel her face contort in a grimace as the pain swiftly escalated into unendurable agony, sharp as a knife, deep and wrenching, so intense that she arched up off the bed and a scream escaped from between her clenched teeth.

‘My Lady, in the case of the first born, the labour is often long. Conserve your energy. Slow your breathing. Do not hinder your body with unnecessary fear,’ the Priestess chided gently.

Octavia panted, sweat and tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes were wide, the veins at her temples throbbing as one long continual contraction wracked her womb. She twisted, her long nails ripping at the silk sheet beneath her. Her hammering heart raced the blood through her veins in a vertiginous onslaught.

Screaming. Wailing. Howling curses at the world. The agony became torturous, a terrifying crucifixion, as if her limbs were dislocating and her womb tearing open, careless of whether she lived or died. Nothing existed, save for the direful rending and stretching—the burning, searing pain as the creature inside pushed its way out.

The bloody red head emerged.

The white sheet turned crimson.

The infant sat up.

Unfurling soft, white feathered wings, the newborn Demigoddess regarded the world around her with large, beguiling blue eyes. Then, as if satisfied with what she saw, she seized her own umbilical cord between her small, sharp teeth and severed her tie with her mother with one, quick bite.

Octavia moaned and drew on the last of her reserves of strength as her body arched again. A second infant slid onto the silk sheets, his small, winged body squirming and wriggling in an attempt to seek his mother’s breast.

‘My Lady, they are not Mortal,’ the Priestess said, her voice little more than a whisper as she leant down to cut the second infant’s cord with trembling hands.

Octavia gathered her children into her arms. Although her head reeled with the violent birth and the blood loss—blood that even now flowed from her torn womb—the anguish and pain seemed to vanish as she looked down at her golden-haired twins. ‘They are perfect,’ she murmured. ‘As befits the children of a God.’

The statement was verified in every infant feature. The twins were sublimely beautiful to behold, their heads covered with burnished curls, their skin a golden hue, wings snow-white, eyes wide and blue; they were flawless.

Footsteps sounded outside the chamber door. The Thane of Tinne strode into the room. His greying hair was windswept, his sword still hung by his side. Warrick’s swift breath revealed the haste with which he’d sped to his Lady’s chamber. Yet as he crossed the room his eyes widened and his look of anxious expectancy changed to dismay.

He faltered at the foot of the bed. Octavia searched his face for sign of his intent, and watched his dismay harden into jealous anger.

‘What treachery is this?’

Octavia looked away. She clutched her children to her breast.

The Priestess spoke hesitantly into the silence.

‘Sir, your Lady wife believes the progeny to be Divine...’

‘Do I care who sired the whelps, and to what purpose?’ the Thane responded. ‘You have betrayed me,’ he said to Octavia. ‘Your faithlessness tarnishes the honour of my title, and of my house.’

The Thane turned and at his call his personal guard, dressed in the white and silver uniforms of Tinne, marched into the room.

‘My Lady wife is to be taken to the South Tower. She shall remain there until I have decided her fate.’

‘My Thane. It wouldn’t be wise to move the Lady now,’ the Priestess insisted. ‘The birth was too rapid. She has lost too much blood…’

‘Enough!’ the Thane commanded. ‘No-one will speak of this outside of this room!
No-one
!’

The Priestess’s sharp intake of breath conveyed her outrage, but she remained silent as the Thane strode away.

The guards stepped forward. Octavia rose, holding both hissing infants to her chest. A wave of weakness sent her staggering. The Priestess hurried over and draped an ermine trimmed robe over the Lady’s shoulders, yet as she made to accompany her charge, she was dismissed by the guards.

‘So this is the way it is to be,’ Octavia said. A single tear fell from Octavia’s pale cheek, the salty wet droplet splashing onto the upturned face of her first born twin. With a hiss and a savage swipe, the newborn voiced her angry protestation.

*****

The thick, blackwood door of the South Tower closed with a creak, followed by the conclusive sound of bolts being drawn. Octavia sagged against the wall. The twins mewed softly in her arms.

As a child she had wandered at will throughout the expanse of the White castle, but Octavia had never set foot in these chambers. The South Tower had been irreparably damaged over one hundred years ago, during the Uprising, when Isle of Tinne had been purged of the taint of the Witch Kings—it was said that the Queen and her Ladies were slain within these very walls.

The neglected Tower’s white stone had crumbled over the intervening century, and vines had overrun the sagging ruins, concealing the bloody past. The chamber was dim, the darkness relieved by the meagre daylight that crept through the questing tendrils of a vine that climbed outside the large, open arched window. This sickly green light cast its hue upon the broken furniture, the tattered wall tapestries and the mildewed portraits of long dead Witch Lords and Ladies. Thin, grey cobwebs cloaked the room’s high ceiling, draping down from the joists in long delicate strands. Sour soot lay in the empty stone hearth and a thick layer of dust covered the floor, the furniture, and a sagging, cloth-shrouded sleeping berth that slanted precariously on three ornately carved feet. The berth’s faded green drapes were water-stained, its tassels disintegrating and its roof home to a large, abandoned bird’s nest.

A weight of despair came crashing down on Octavia as she staggered across the room. She sunk onto a large, velvet armchair as the twins struggled and squirmed in her arms, voicing their discontent and hunger with small rumbling growls.

‘Hush, hush,’ she crooned, the soft words doing little to abate the infants cries. Yet as Octavia undid the row of pearl buttons on her nightgown, and parted it to reveal her full breasts, the twins fell swiftly silent.