by James Silke
Gath remounted his black stallion and rode up onto the tongue of lava.
There was no sign of the many staircases which had been carved out of the rocky cliffs. They were either crushed or buried, and the shadowed mouths of the mountains’ many caves had vanished, either swallowed by volcanic explosions or drowned by spewing lava. The ground itself had been rearranged, like a quilt kicked by sleeping feet. There was no indication of which volcano had held the underground chambers of the Queen of Serpents with its secret entrance to the living altar of her lord, the Master of Darkness.
He halted at the crest of a rise, and his eyes thinned.
The skeletons of men rose out of the lava flows, some buried to their knees, others to their skulls. More bodies were draped among the blackened branches of burnt-out oaks and pine trees, their bones picked clean by flying predators. There was no armor on the skeletons, and no weapons lying about: the booty, no doubt, of two-footed predators.
He turned one way, then the other, and saw a distant ridge of black lava. Beyond it, in the far distance, there was a patch of green forest that had somehow escaped both lava and fire. He looked back at the dead volcanoes, and his fingers drummed the head of his axe. A moment passed. He unbuckled the horned helmet from his belt and held it up with both hands.
Its living steel was warm against his calloused fingers, and the horns seemed to pulse and reach for him, daring him to defy its addictive power.
Snarling, he lifted the helmet over his head, as if to put it on as casually as he buckled his belt. But his blood and bones rebelled. The muscles in his forearms knotted and, with their veins bulging under sun-darkened flesh, resisted, instinctively afraid. They seemed to know that once the helmet covered his head there was every chance he could become its prisoner again, and could not remove it without the help of Robin Lakehair’s magic.
His face glistened hotly in the shade cast by the headpiece, then his pride welled up defiantly, and slowly his arms forced the helmet down until its rim descended over his forehead. A primitive pleasure shone behind his reckless eyes, then they vanished behind the metal, and the helmet was in place.
His harsh breathing was noisy behind the mouth hole. The whites of his eyes glittered briefly behind the eye slits, then a fiery red glow replaced them.
The mark of the Death Dealer.
Six
FORKED TONGUES
Gath drew his axe and prodded the stallion into a trot. His helmeted head moving from side to side. Alert. Expecting trouble. Wanting it.
Veins corded and throbbed along his forearms, and steam drifted from the sleeves of his chain mail as his blood, growing hotter, coursed through him. His senses sharpened and expanded, sending vibrations into his scalp and hair, then into the metallic flesh of the helmet and through its horns into pointed tips.
He prodded his horse into a gallop and moved deep into the enveloping landscape, recklessly riding through narrow guts and gullies designed by nature for ambush. But he felt nothing save the chill of the air flowing past him, and heard nothing but wind and cawing vultures.
He was deep in the domain of the Lord of Death, crossing over earth and rock in which the heart of darkness was buried. Here sin, corruption and murder were the coin of existence. Here the power of evil rivaled earthquake and tornado. But he saw only a mysterious foreboding void.
He turned off the tongue of lava, galloped up the side of a huge crater and reined up at the crest of the cone. Rubble filled its center: the opposite side had collapsed inward and sealed the volcano. Here there was not even a thin spire of smoke to proclaim its former majesty.
He rode down into the crater, turning and twisting the stallion between massive boulders, churning up clouds of fine dust. Finding nothing but earth and lava, and sensing no danger, he galloped back to the crest of the crater and again reined up. The helmet throbbed against his head, hungering for battle, and frustration spit flames from the eye slits. But he sat still in his saddle, defying the headpiece’s demands, and slowly the flames abated, the red glow died.
He spent the morning slowly and carefully searching the other craters, but found no cave entrances, no golden doors, no staircase cut out of lava, only the charred skeletons of lizards, pythons, adders and men with and without tails. Returning to the largest crater, he again searched the rubble filling the cone, and again found nothing. He remounted the crest and stood in his stirrups surveying the distant landscape.
Beyond the dead volcanoes to the north and west, mountains rose in steep cliffs to jagged peaks half hidden by clouds. To the east and south, the direction in which the molten lava and its trailing cloud of dust had traveled, the hills were strewn with rocks and beds of dust, bisected and decorated by puddles and rivers of hard lava.
The entrance to the underworld was sealed. Hidden.
He sank back into the saddle, raging with frustration. Suddenly the red glow reappeared behind the eyes of the helmet, then black smoke spewed out, and he growled demonically. The stallion reared, whinnying, and Gath yanked on the reins, holding the stallion’s head erect, his body quaking. The helmet’s demon fire drained into his blood and groin, and the headpiece turned his head, its flaming eyes scanning the horizon to find a thin spire of smoke rising behind the distant ridge of black lava. He drove his spurs into the stallion, and it leapt forward, charged down the slope.
Gasping with blood lust, sweat draining down his arm to ride in glittering spider trails over the blade of his axe, Gath rode over hills, across tongues of lava and through a maze of towering boulders thrown about haphazardly by volcanic explosions. Folds of black lava undulated beyond the boulders, forming the ridge beyond which the smoke spire rose. A narrow rocky defile zigzagged through its left side. Gath plunged into the defile with the animal turning and twisting, then erupted into a clearing surrounded by rock walls thirty feet high, and reined up.
A campfire, surrounded by stones laid out in a ritualistic triangle, occupied the center of the clearing. Beside it, skeletons were stacked and strewn in a narrow stream of water flowing through the clearing. Some still carried chunks of meat and flesh, and the water was dark red. In the corners, armor and weapons pillaged from the dead made heaps against the rock walls. Three narrow, twisting gullies opened onto the clearing. They were filled with deep shade and crouched figures. More lurked in the clefts of the overhanging ridges, barely discernible against the black rock.
Gath, with a low rumble of satisfaction escaping the helmet’s mouth hole, walked the stallion into the sunlight filling the middle of the clearing, and the helmet’s horns pulsed with life, curving down in cruel challenge.
The shadowed creatures cringed and hissed with pink-red tongues protruding. They were forked.
Gath slowly turned the stallion in a tight circle, affording each of the creatures a chance to attack his back.
They hesitated, then lurched cautiously into the sunlight at the edges of the defiles and clefts. They wore ragged tatters of hunter-green tunics, the uniform of the Queen of Serpents’ bodyguards, and belts hung with daggers and swords. But they ignored their weapons, and held their hands in front of them like claws, drawing back lips to expose fangs and teeth. Patches of scales clung to fuming sores in arms, jaws and thighs. Fingers and toes had fallen off. Noses had shrunken to hard black scales, ears had shriveled to bloody holes, and they were bald.
Gath reined the stallion to a halt and drew back warily as the creatures’ fumes swirled about him. He gagged on the stench, and the creatures, some of them resorting to their bellies for propulsion, launched themselves at him.
The first attacker led with his mouth wide open and quickly discovered his mistake. Gath greeted him with his axe, and when the snakeman hit the ground, the upper half of his mouth was lying ten feet away from the lower half.
The axe buried itself in the meat of two more attackers, then five bodies hit Gath. They drove him out of his saddle, bore him to the ground with hissing squeals and buried him under snapping, swarming bodies.
Gath rolled across the ground crashing through the pile of skeletons, splashing in the blood-red water, ripping the bodies away. They came apart like half-baked dough, and greenish wet fumes and blood spattered helmet and chain mail. Fangs bit into his forearm, but broke off before doing damage. When he fought his way back to his feet, he no longer had his axe, but held a muscular arm by the wrist. He had pulled it out of a shoulder as easily as if it were a cherry on a cake. He hammered his assailants with the arm until they writhed on the ground like dying snakes, and in the process reduced the arm to a two-inch stump.
He threw it aside impatiently and moved for the creatures slithering on their bellies. His eyes held the hunger of a starved man.
He kicked at a head, removing it from its shoulders, and stepped on another. It exploded like a melon and he slipped on the pulp, crashed into a boulder headfirst. The rock, being made of harder stuff than the decaying demon spawn, left him in a dazed lump on the ground. The creatures slithered around to feed on him, and the stallion moved in among them, rearing up and stomping. The creatures coiled and hissed under the descending hooves, then began to jerk and fume in the throes of death.
The stallion backed away from the carnage, and Gath rose slowly. He moved onto the heap of skeletons, retrieved his axe from the bony rubble and stood leaning on it. The blade glistened with bloody streaks. Behind him, a red-orange glow filled the distant sky, tinting his black armor and matching the glow of his eyes. The same color tinted the flowing water. It was the only movement, a river of death.
The axe came back into Gath’s hands, as two more figures emerged from one of the gullies. They also wore hunter-green and had forked tongues, but stood erect and held sword and spear in hand.
The horned helmet lowered its horns, growling in anticipation, and the creatures backed up a step, moving away from each other to attack from different angles. One hesitated, digging a small leaden vial from a belt pouch, and the other lunged for it. His partner lifted his sword in a short swing and cut off his friend’s hand. Howling, the creature dropped to the ground with green blood spewing from the stump of his wrist.
Gath moved for the surviving snakeman, and he stuffed the vial back in its pouch, sank into a crouch with his sword playing in front of him. The helmet’s eye slits replied with spitting fire, but Gath stopped in place. His body heaved as he once more brought the helmet under control, and the fire died in his eyes. He deliberately dropped his axe, then leaned in, feeding the snakeman’s sword his helmet. The creature slashed, but the blade glanced off harmlessly. Suddenly Gath stepped inside the swing of the sword and, carefully measuring the force of his punch, hit the snakeman flush on the side of his head.
The creature went reeling back, leaving his sword behind, met a boulder with his face and fell back on the ground like a drop cloth.
Gath picked up his axe, moved to the snakeman and straddled him. When the stunned creature came to, he found the cutting edge of the axe poised on his Adam’s apple and the menacing face of the horned helmet looking down at him. He held perfectly still, not daring to swallow.
“What has happened here?” Gath demanded.
An inarticulate hiss was the reply.
Gath leaned slightly on the axe, drawing a trickle of blood. The snakeman flinched with pain, and terror swam through his eyes as he blurted an answer. It was in a language Gath had never heard before.
“The entrance to the underworld?” Gath snarled.
The creature replied with a long, rapidly spoken and seemingly lucid flow of words, as if he understood Gath perfectly. But again he used the foreign language.
Gath lifted his axe angrily to pulp the creature’s head, and the man fainted with a whimpering hiss.
Gath inspected the snakeman carefully, but found nothing that told him what he wished to know. He hesitated thoughtfully, then, without untying the jar with the holes drilled in it that dangled from his belt, lifted it, feeling its warmth, and gave it a shake. The captive in the tiny prison moved about vigorously, causing the jar to move on Gath’s palm. Satisfied that it still lived, he lowered the jar and looked over the battlefield without satisfaction. The helmet, its hunger unfulfilled, still churned and boiled for satisfaction, and his pride still cried out for a worthy challenge. There had been no glory or honor in this day’s work, only bloody labor.
Gath dragged the unconscious snakeman to his feet and threw him across the clearing beside the stallion. Then, tying him securely, he tossed him over the saddle facedown and walked the horse through a gully and out of the clearing.
In a nearby area was a flat spread of lava with a large irregular bowl-like depression in the middle. It was about fifty feet across and easily twenty feet deep at its lowest point. He dropped the reins and descended the steep incline of the bowl. About ten feet short of the lowest point, he set his axe on the ground, squatted and untied the earthen jar from his belt. He lifted it to his ear, listening, then held it in front and away from him. With the jar resting in one hand, he took hold of the cork and hesitated, did nothing for a long moment.
The helmet was hot and heavy against his head, sinking low and weaving back and forth as if trying to throw him down. He fought it back into place, and flames erupted angrily. He sat still, forcing them to abate, then firmed his grip on the cork, took a deep breath and, in one fluid movement, ripped the cork out and rolled the jar down the slope toward the bottom of the bowl.
Seven
THE SKINK
The jar spun around like a chubby dancer and rolled to a stop in the deepest depression. A moment passed, and a thick-scaled, shovel-like head peeked out of the open neck. Its heavy-lidded eyes blinked against the glare of daylight.
Gath, axe held across his thighs with both hands, rose into a crouch, as if facing a dragon instead of a tiny Skink snake.
The small creature probed the air with its tongue and wiggled partway out. Its brown wedge-like body had four tiny legs, no more than wrinkled memories degenerated from its primordial past. A short struggle and its puffy body popped free, fell on its smooth white chin.
The Skink gathered, and staggered about uncertainly, trying to burrow into the ground and hide. The lava was too hard. With a swimming motion, it hurried up the shallow incline, saw the axe and the man holding it and retreated. It tried to climb the steep sides of the bowl several times, but each time slid back to the bottom. Exhausted, it looked directly at Gath. The heavy lids lowered and the head tilted slightly. Waiting.
Gath took a step back.
The Skink spread its jaws wide, as if laughing silently, and yellow fumes issued forth, like a long vaporous tongue. They billowed and rolled, filling the bowl until the reptile was only a vague shadow within the yellow mist. Almost languorously, the creature rolled over, and its belly opened up like a lipless mouth. Hissing issued forth, faint and gentle, and a sharp wailing shriek. Then all sound and movement stopped, and the vapors hung heavy and thick, hiding whatever lay within.
The horns of Gath’s helmet grew hot and slightly erect. A glow reappeared behind the eye slits. Excitement was spilling through him. He rolled his shoulders and advanced defiantly into the bowl, dispersing the smoke with the flat of his swinging blade until he reached the bottom.
Within the thinning vapors, a woman sprawled beside the jar, heaving with exhaustion. Her colorless tunic and faded brown cloak were ragged and rent with holes. She reclined on one hip and elbows, torso twisted away from Gath and face hidden between her arms. They were bare, an ivory white, and her legs were drawn up under her in artful disarray. Lush curves of breast, hip and thigh pressed through the torn openings in her garments, their poverty only enhancing the wealth of her voluptuous beauty.
Gath’s eyes cast a hot light over the lovely sprawl, here and there invading its secret places.
When the smoke cleared, she lifted her head. Long straight black hair fell over face and shoulders. She parted it with three red-tipped fingers and looked up at Gath. Her face was the crowning jewel of her b
eauty. Bright red lips, creamy cheeks tinted with rose madder, grey-gold eyes set in thick black almond outlines flaring under arched brows. Regal. Deadly. Cobra, the Queen of Serpents.
She looked about furtively, then back at Gath, and asked breathlessly, “Where are we? What are you going to do with me?”
He did not reply.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” he said, as if it would take no more effort than folding a saddle blanket.
She hesitated, then spoke in a slow, precise voice. “That would be a mistake, Dark One. I can help you. And I won’t give you any trouble. I’ve learned that lesson. I’ll be whatever you want me to be, slave… cook… whore…anything.”
“We’ll see.”
A careful smile lifted the corners of her lips, cold and bitter, and she drew her body into a sitting position, self-consciously arranging her rags about her. Just above her left ankle, the pale flesh of her calf had a greenish cast that grew darker at the anklebones, then became thick and crusted, and turned into scales covering her entire foot. Not the plain brown workmanlike scales of the Skink, but the glittering ice-blues and emerald-greens of the cobra. Seeing it, she gasped shrilly, and quickly drew the offending appendage under her, arranging her tattered cloak over it. Shame blotted her flushed cheeks.
There was no contempt or pity in Gath’s harsh low voice. “Your cage has not been kind to you.”
She dipped her head, more in surrender than agreement, and said submissively, “I regret that my appearance offends my new lord and master.” A familiar stroking caress echoed in her tone, barely veiling the also familiar challenge. “Your prison was so small and cramped, and my strength has been diminished by a diet of dirt and beetles. But when it returns, the scales will go away, and you will no longer be reminded of my unnatural lineage. Until that time… if you will allow me… I will bathe and adjust my toilet to be as pleasing to your sight as possible.”