Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (3 page)

Gath studied her back, took another swallow, studied her some more.

She turned to him, looked him directly in the eye, said, “You are right, I lied. I knew you were hardly wounded. The entire forest knows it. The Grillard minstrels tell your tale at every road crossing, in every village square.” She hesitated, laughed quietly at herself. “Oh yes, I knew. The scouts were child’s play for you. They taught you nothing… were no test at all.” She turned back to the fire, softened her voice. “My true reason for coming is your strength. Because I… I need your help… your protection.”

He took two swallows of wine. Between them he muttered, “More lies.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I have become so human, I now find it hard to trust a serpent myself.” She picked up her cloak, stood, smiled with self-mockery as she looked at him. “I’ll go now. I won’t bother you again.”

She moved for the stairwell. He watched her, then stepped into a shadow, came away with his axe and flung it.

The blade buried itself in the first step, brought her to an abrupt stop. She looked at him. There was a hot, challenging glint in her eyes.

She said, “If you are asking me to stay, I accept.”

“Who sent you here?” he demanded sharply. “Who is your master?”

“I believe I have already told you that,” she said. There was a reckless abandon in her throaty whisper. “You are, Gath. You are my master.”

SERPENT’S KISS

C
obra waited for Gath’s reaction, but he showed nothing in reply to her declaration of servitude. Taking a circuitous route, she paused to warm her hands at the fire and idly fondle a wine jar on the table, then sauntered toward him. She looked up into his eyes, and he looked away. After a moment she said softly, “They tell me that the forest women blush like little girls and giggle hotly when they say your name.”

His jaw was clenched. He seemed no more interested than the underside of a rock.

The playfulness left her. “I don’t blame you. You are different.” Her breath quickened. “All the others were afraid of me.”

His dark mysterious eyes turned on her and blood suddenly gorged his cheeks. She lifted fingertips, touched one. His wide lips parted. His breathing became harsh, brutal. She moved close. Her breasts, stomach, thighs touched him.

She whispered, “You will let me go… afterwards?”

He put an arm around her, pulled her gently but firmly against him until her feet dangled above the floor. She coiled her arms around him, purred. He kissed her throat, the lobe of her ear.

She moaned with pleasure, pleading, “Oh, yes.”

He carried her to the alcove, spread her on his bed of furs with forceful but strangely gentle hands, like she had no more will than a blanket. She started to rise, feeling obliged to protest, and his lips met hers, forced her back down into the furs. His hands moved inside her garment, kneading her flesh, and the cloth surrendered, ripping away. He rolled her over slowly, fingers and lips invading naked swell and hollow. He could have broken her like a twig, but his tenderness was more powerful. It enslaved her, and she surrendered, gasping into the furs. His hands took hold of shoulder and hip, turning and lifting her body to his, then joining them. Her body arched back gasping, and her eyes came open with wonder and awe and love. Out of control, her body convulsed against him in serpentine passion, as if her bones were made of butter.

When they had finished, he kissed her florid cheek, and returned to the main room. He opened another wine jar, sat back against the edge of the table, and drank, watching the firelight play on Cobra’s flushed, moist body.

Slowly her breathing came back under control, and she stood. Arranging her tom garment about her, she moved to the table and poured water from the pitcher into a bowl. Dipping her hands in the cold water, she held them against her burning cheeks. Then she sat on a stool in front of the fire, opened her pouch, removed a mirror and arranged her mussed hair under her skullcap. Using a vial of red paste taken from her pouch, she applied fresh color to her lips with the tip of a little finger. Finished, she glanced over her shoulder and acknowledged Gath with a big dark eye saying, “I’d like some wine.”

He removed a cup from the shelf behind the table, and filled it as she joined him. Lifting the cup to her lips with two hands, Cobra stared past the rim at his brutal male flesh. Moist. Curls of soft black hair glistening like a panther’s on his chest. She sipped the wine, then murmured, “You have surprised me once more, Dark One. You live and feed like an animal, but you do not make love like one.”

“You are disappointed?” There was a subtle mockery in his tone.

She chuckled throatily, and said, “Hardly.” She moved close, her body again touching him, and her eyes holding his. Color rushed into her cheeks, and the sound of her breathing filled the room. A soft, vulnerable woman, yet proud, demanding.

“I want you again,” she whispered. “Now.”

Gath could not look away. She pressed against his chest, her lips slightly parted, her fragrant breath on his throat, cheeks. His lips lowered to meet hers. Without warning her eyes turned dead yellow, her cheeks ballooned like the cobra’s hood and venom spat past her wet red lips.

The poison splashed across Gath’s open eyes, sizzled in his hair above his ear. Blinded him.

He grabbed for Cobra. She was gone, had recoiled, or jumped away. He did not know which. He roared, lunged about, kicked the table over with his thigh splattering cups and wine jars in all directions.

Cobra backed against the wall near the stairwell, watched. There was pain, fear in her wide-open eyes.

Gath reeled, ran into a wall and it punched him to the floor. He lay dazed on his back for a brief moment, then rolled upright onto all fours, growling. He started to rise as the poison hit his spine, spread into his nerves. By the time he tottered to his feet, the best he could do was fall back down.

Cobra watched him flounder on the floor for awhile, then said coolly, “Do not fight it, Dark One. There will be no permanent harm. You will not be able to move for a few hours… but then you will be fine.”

He replied by rolling over on his back and twitching violently, then he lay still. His eyes were glazed. He could see nothing, feel nothing.

Cobra removed a small empty turquoise jar from her pouch. She unplugged it, kneeled beside Gath, set the jar on the floor. Then, using her tiny dagger, she trimmed his fingernails and cut away a thick tuft of his pubic hair. These she placed in the jar. Using the edge of the blade, she gathered spittle from his lips, put it in the jar, then plugged the jar, put it in her pouch, and removed a brown earthenware vial. She uncorked it, lifted Gath’s head, poured the contents into his choking throat saying, “This will ease the pain while you recover.”

She crossed to the alcove and came away with a fur blanket. She kneeled beside him, covered him tenderly, then took his hand in her hands, pressed it against her. Heat came to her face. Her garment glowed under his hand until the scales dissolved and it cupped a naked breast. A moan of pleasure escaped her lips. Then she kissed his hand, smiled warmly and whispered, “Until next time, Dark One.”

She stood, picked up her black cloak and put it on. She crossed to the stairwell, climbed it and went out, closing and locking the door behind her.

Outside Cobra found her giant python sprawled in the open track at the base of the root house. It was shuddering in the moonlight, dying slowly. She moved down to it, confronted the thin slits of its yellow eyes, and said coldly, “Fool!”

She turned, hurried off into the night. She was a half mile away before she could no longer feel the python’s shuddering in the earth beneath her feet.

THE DARK ALTAR

L
ava staircases climbed the side of a black active volcano, the largest in a range of volcanic mountains. Smoke rose in spires from their craters to form a thick layer of black clouds below a blue afternoon sky. This was the Land of Smoking Skies far to the west of the inhabited parts of the forest.

The domain of the Queen of Serpents.

Cobra climbed polished steps cut out of the black lava toward a cave with golden doors. She was stained with dust and perspiration from the three-day march, but exhilarated. Her stride was strong, triumphant; her hand clutched the small turquoise jar as if it were a weapon.

Reaching the shimmering entrance, Cobra did not break stride and the solid gold doors swung open. Beyond them, in a corridor of shiny obsidian, two soldiers kneeled with their foreheads to the ground. They wore dark green tunics belted with swords and daggers. Jewels glittered on their fingers and earlobes. Traces of scales crusted the backs of their hands.

With a silent nod, Cobra marched past them down the torch-lit corridor, then past a barracks cave to a tavern room at the end of the corridor. Oil lamps hung from beams casting flickering light over wooden tables, benches and a large red interior door at the cave’s deepest point. Soldiers, both male and female, who had been sitting and drinking, prostrated themselves in front of Cobra as she strode regally through them. She pushed open the red door, closed it behind her.

She had entered a corridor of black volcanic rock. Torches and incense lamps lighted it. Some distance below, the tunnel leveled off to become a polished obsidian hallway. Cobra descended it to a shallow stairway at its far end.

At the bottom of the steps was a short length of level floor, then a second flight of steps rising to heavy silver drapes through which passed slivers of golden light. In the center of the ceiling was a hole six feet in diameter. The hole opened onto a tunnel which passed horizontally above. Cobra passed under it and swept through the silver drapes.

She stood in a large circular cave with a dome ceiling of hammered gold. The floor was silver. The furniture was lacquered black. Highlights raced across the sharp edges like shooting stars at midnight. A massive circular bed of black furs dominated the center. The bedroom of the Queen of Serpents.

She dropped on the bed clutching the turquoise jar to her breast and sighed with relief.

Silver columns sculpted as giant serpents circled the room at four-foot intervals. The tails were coiled against the silver floor. The bodies wound up around the columns to the ceiling where their jaws, spread wide, supported the rim of the golden dome. The columns fenced off an outer corridor just large enough to contain a monster snake which lived within it. It was over five feet in diameter, and three times the length of the python Gath had killed. Its scaly skin bore diamond patterns of emerald green and gold.

The tail of the reptile flopped contentedly to the left of the curtained entrance. The body ran around the room, passed over an interior stairway opposite the entrance, then circled back to the front of the room. There the diamond-shaped head of the snake was feeding on a dead ox. Its jaws were just short of the entrance. The hole in the stairway ceiling provided the giant snake access to the polished obsidian hallway and bedroom when its services as a sentry were required. The reptile swallowed, then its eyelids drooped reverently, but the eyes glowed sensuously as they observed their queen.

Cobra rose, set the jar carefully on a stand beside the huge reptile’s head, then shed her garments, and poured a pitcher of water over her naked flesh. She shivered splendidly as a tongue big enough to pull off her arm shot out between two columns and licked her from knee to hip.

Cobra laughed easily, toweled off with a cloth, then removed a black garment of glittering obsidian scales from a silver chest and stepped into it clasping the hood over her head. Only the creamy white of her face and hands was revealed; the rest was black elegance. Picking up the turquoise jar, Cobra lifted her head regally and descended the interior stairway which led to a tunnel.

Alternating between gentle inclines and steep steps, the tunnel descended in a circular pattern toward the center of the mountain. Smoke was gathered against the ceiling. As she went deeper it thickened and the rock walls became warm, then hot.

The tunnel led her to the cone of a living volcano. Flames shot up out of holes bubbling with molten lava to cast active black shadows and moving red light over thousands of flickering forked tongues which protruded from snake holes pockmarking the walls. The devout were at worship.

Cobra genuflected, then moved towards a dark altar rising out of the largest fire-hole at the center of the cone.

It was a living altar. The most sacred shrine of Cobra’s god, the Lord of Death and Master of Darkness who provided life with all its appetites. It was a death’s-head altar which served as the god’s mouth. Here he could speak directly to those devoted supplicants who were privileged to comprehend his language of flickering flames and growling thunder.

A mammoth saurian skull formed the altar. It stood on an island of black rock protruding from a pit of bubbling and smoking lava. Its jaws were spread wide to reveal flames flickering within the skull, rising like fingers around a dark object so that it appeared to float in the brain cavity. A narrow stone bridge emerged like an ancient crusted tongue from the jaws, arched invitingly over the bubbling lava and came to rest on the edge of the pit.

Cobra’s almond eyes darkened noticeably as she approached and gazed hypnotically at the dark shape within the flames.

It was a horned helmet, hammered from a dense black ore, carved ornately. A spike stood erect at the crest. Dark horns protruded from either side in slow, cruel curves to point almost back at the masked face. The mask was unadorned except for eye, nose and mouth holes.

It was stark in its beauty, made starker yet by the power emanating from within it.

Reaching the bridge, Cobra prostrated herself, touching her forehead to the hot stone floor. Then she stood regally, triumphantly held up the small turquoise jar containing the fingernail clippings, pubic hairs and spittle of Gath of Baal, and offered it to the altar with both hands.

A flapping of rising flames and a roar of thunder shook the room.

Cobra knelt, dipping her head, the perfect image of sensual supplication.

“Thank you, Master, I am privileged to please you.” She rose with anticipation glittering in her dark eyes. “I will now prepare the ingredients…”

A slap of thunder brought her to a startled choking halt. She blanched. “Forgive me, my Lord, I did not mean…”

The thunder came again, a hard repetitive clap.

Anxiety filled her eyes and she protested, “No! I would never let any desire for him interfere with my judgment. I swear it.”

Flames rose up out of the pits, reached for the ceiling in towering walls, filled the cone with a blinding illumination until she was only a tiny vague shadow. She gasped and dropped to one knee, humbled by the power and majesty of her deity, thrilled and empassioned by his invincible strength.

“I understand and will obey.” She spoke with reverence and obedience. “I am to have the totems delivered, by my most trusted servant, to the high priest of the Kitzakks, Dang-Ling, who dwells in their desert city of Bahaara.”

Thunder rumbled quietly and steadily from the bowels of the earth. Cobra nodded repeatedly as she listened to it, then replied, “I will not forget. The secret of the high priest’s service and devotion to you will not be betrayed. It will be his task, not mine, to use the totems to humble and educate Gath of Baal, and convince him that he must align himself with you, my most holy Lord of Death, in order to satisfy his honor and pride.”

A slap of thunder echoed through the cone with a peculiar ring of approval.

She rose obediently, and said respectfully, “Thank you, Master, I understand now. If Gath of Baal is killed by the high priest’s efforts, then he is not the man I have claimed him to be. But if he is that man, then only the threat of death can now instruct him.”

The altar rumbled like a thousand well-fed stomachs, and Cobra, bowing low, backed slowly out of the room.

Returning to her chamber, she sent for Schraak, a small, devious, grey-skinned alchemist with perpetually blinking eyes who sidled into the room like a favored pet. She reluctantly handed him the turquoise jar and told him to deliver it promptly and secretly to the high priest Dang-Ling in the distant desert city of Bahaara.

When he had left, Cobra paced her chambers frantically without relief. She threw herself on the bed and writhed in an agony of rage and frustration, then surrendered and moaned hungrily as a craving to feel Gath’s human power again possessed her. It would be days, perhaps, weeks, before Schraak could deliver the jar, and Dang-Ling could prepare his magic and act. And all she could do was wait.