Sharn hesitated short of the open track. Robin’s torch was only a flicker now, but the moon was high in the sky. Its pale light filled the clearing between walls of lofty trees.
Robin stared awestruck at the cathedral-like corridor. The clear track stretched as far as she could see, with cool, blue moonlight gracing the smooth floor. It was as if large gods had marched this way in single file.
At the opposite side of the clearing, the giant roots of spruce and hemlock trees clustered, making shadowed passageways between their massive, gnarled bodies. Entrances to the underworld.
Robin trembled, took a deep breath, and followed the wolf across the track leading the horse and wagon. Sharn hesitated and eyed her over a bristling grey shoulder, then dipped between two thick roots and vanished. Robin stopped short in dismay, but promptly scolded herself and led her little caravan into the shadowy passageway.
Pulling the skittish horse and following the occasional padding sounds of the wolfs paws, Robin moved through a corridor of roots. Soon the air lost its wet grassy odor, and they moved into a large, dry dirt tunnel. It twisted through thick, buried roots to a crossroads joining three narrower, shallower tunnels. The wolf had vanished.
Robin dropped the reins and entered the largest tunnel. It ended a short way off in an underground room which could be closed by a low door made of logs. The back of the door had thick iron rings to hold a locking beam. There was hay scattered about the floor of the room, a water trough to one side, and rings buried in the dirt floor to which animals, or perhaps people, could be chained.
Robin hurried back to the crossroads. The wolf had not returned. She groaned and looked about frantically. A grating sound came from within the underground room. She pushed herself back against the dirt wall, held still. It came again. She shivered, edged sideways along the wall and peered into the room.
A semicircular outline of dim orange light emanated from a corner of the roof. It widened, throwing a faint glow on a ladder leaning against the dirt wall below. A trapdoor. It slid away from the hole, and a shaft of glowing firelight melted down into the darkness. Out of it appeared Sharn’s head.
Robin smiled with relief and dragged the horse and wagon into the room, closed and bolted its door. She looked up at the trapdoor. The opening was not big enough for Gath even if she could have carried him. She turned to Gath, touched his forehead and frowned. He was burning hot. She replaced her torch and hurried to the ladder, but hesitated. Sharn’s whiskered face was a threatening black silhouette against the orange glow. He backed out of sight, and Robin climbed the ladder.
She emerged in a narrow tunnel of tangled roots, and followed the wolf through a maze of tunnels to the entrance foyer of a root house, then down a staircase lit by a faint orange glow. At the bottom of the steps the wolf waited in the hot glow of a dying fire. Reaching the animal, she smiled in wonder, like a child.
Embers in a large fireplace of living roots illuminated a large room. It held meager furnishings, broken wine jars on the floor, and weapons and armor mounted on the root walls and heaped beside an anvil.
She moved about touching things thoughtfully. If this was Gath’s home, then how strange that the fire had not died. Did someone else live here? There were no answers in the room.
She stirred the embers in the fireplace, added logs, and light quickly filled the room. A dragging sound came from the staircase, and Robin looked up, gasped.
Gath was standing in the hollow of the staircase, filling it with his dark sweating bulk. His eyes were tight and hot. He smelt of dirt and blood and pride, reeked of it. Suddenly he sagged against the wall of the staircase, bleeding again from thigh and shoulder, and glared at Robin and Sharn. His voice was a dead echo.
“Fools.”
Robin smiled bravely and said, “You are probably right. But that should not make you angry. You would be dead now if it wasn’t for us.”
Gath watched her with the corners of his eyes, as if remembering vaguely what had happened, but it did not change his tone. “You are still a fool,” he growled. “Sharn may have led you here, but he will never let you leave.” He slipped lower and muttered darkly, “And neither will I.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and stood with legs spread in the middle of the staircase blocking it. He looked impressive, but starting down the stairs was a bad decision. His first step dropped him to his knees and he pitched forward, descended with all the control of a baby emptying its bowels. He finished facedown at Robin’s feet.
Undaunted, Robin fetched furs from the alcove and spread them in front of the fireplace. She helped Gath to his feet, guided him to the furs, and he sprawled there gasping.
Robin placed her knife in the fire, and removed her many vials from her satchel in preparation for a long night’s work. After cleaning and closing his wounds again, she made him chew on the inner bark of a birch tree, then cooked him a broth using meat and vegetables from his larder.
Gath, between short, fitful periods of sleep, spent the night glaring at her, eating, and passing out.
Sharn’s night was spent on the fourth step of the stairwell where he sat like a sentry. He ignored Robin’s attempts at friendship, but did not decline the food she served him.
When morning came, Gath was sleeping soundly. Robin had the room clean and orderly, and was heating water in a brass pot over the fire. As the water simmered, she found a partially concealed alcove, stripped and sponged herself off with a pan of water, then got dressed again, tied back her hair and rouged her lips. She added some herbs and a pale violet powder to the simmering pot, approached the wolf, and spoke in an uncompromising tone.
“I am going out. I need alder and iris roots to clean his wounds. I need clover to keep his spirit strong, roses to clean his blood, and more birch bark to ease his pain. And I need hops to make his sleep peaceful. I will come back, but if you do not believe that, come with me. Now please get out of my way.”
The wolf snarled at her in the manner belligerent men reserve for bossy women. When she started to mount the stairs, he made an extremely unpleasant expression, but got out of her way.
Robin unlocked the front door and went out into the dawn light. Her tenseness melted as the green glory of the primeval forest greeted her. She breathed deeply of its clean, sweet air, then descended a path through the roots and began her search with renewed strength.
She did not have to look far. The forest was a storehouse of magical supplies. A short time later, when she reentered the dwelling, she not only carried the needed medicines in her many pouches, but a skirt full of berries, mushrooms and vegetables. Her expression was buoyant.
She spent the day in much the same way she had spent the night. She redressed Gath’s wounds, fed him, and exchanged smiles for frowns and twinkling eyes for hard glares. When he slept, she slept in a blanket near him. Once she woke up to find him watching her intently, as if she were about to perform some magical feat, and she sat up to ask what he saw. But he looked away, and she withheld the question.
When the forest again surrendered to the night, she prepared a vegetable stew. She filled a bowl, laced it generously with hops, then sat down to feed it to him. Waving her aside, he sat up and fed himself. She fetched herself a bowl, one without hops, then sat down facing him and showed him that she could also feed herself, and far more efficiently, as he dropped generous portions on chest and floor.
Finished, he tossed his bowl among the broken crockery with an air of independence and deliberation. He told her again that she was a fool, and his prisoner as well, then lay back down with an expression of satisfaction that was not the least satisfied.
She smiled at him playfully and replied quietly, “We will see.”
Robin finished her stew, cleaned their bowls, then wrapped herself in her furs. In moments both were sound asleep.
When the fire died down to an orange glow, Sharn also slept.
It was not until well into the darkest part of the night that the animal heard the warning sound of the yellow stone dropping to the floor. His mane bristled. His nostrils dilated. Abruptly, he stood and stared narrow eyed and growling up into the darkness of the staircase. Suddenly his tail dropped between his hind legs and his murderous growl faded to a whimper. He backed numbly down the stairs and into an alcove. His head wagged, and his gut sagged so low it spread out on the floor bringing the rest of him with it. His red tongue lolled out, then his body and head fell over, and he slept.
A moment later, Cobra emerged from the darkness of the stairwell, and her beautiful hypnotic eyes appraised the sleeping wolf. They glittered briefly with amusement, and she stepped out of the shadows, descended. The glow of the firelight played among the deep folds of her emerald robe, touched her metallic skullcap with flashes of red and silver.
Her gold eyes shifted under thin arched eyebrows, and came to rest on the sleeping figures in front of the fire. Kneeling between the Barbarian and Robin, she delicately lifted the furs away from Gath’s body and studied his bandaged wounds. She softly placed her palm across his forehead, held it there, and the corners of her plush red lips made sharp creases in creamy cheeks.
Robin’s eyes suddenly opened, and she sat up. She lunged for her knife, resting on the floor beside her, but Cobra snapped it up. Robin drew back in a crouch, breathing hard, and demanded, “Who are you?”
Cobra answered with her eyes, and their intensity forced Robin back against the hearth. As she stared at the glowing almond eyes, her own eyes took on the expression of clouded glass. She was unable to move.
The Queen of Serpents said almost tenderly, “Do not be afraid. I have no desire to harm him, or you.”
Cobra stood and crossed to the stairwell, then looked back with curiosity. Resentment touched her eyes, then a hand played at her queenly throat, rode down over the thrusting pressure of a full breast, and across her stomach to her hip. Her hot scarlet lips brightened against her cool skin. A dazzling, fleshy temple as proud and sensual as her voice. “He was not made for a mortal like you, child. Only I can give him what he needs.”
Cobra started up the stairwell, stopped, glanced over a supple shoulder at Robin. “You will go back to sleep now. Tomorrow, and during the days that follow, you are going to need all your powers. He must be healed completely. And quickly! Death hunts him now.”
She moved up the stairs and was gone. Robin yawned and slumped over, certain now she was dreaming. She just made it back under the blanket before falling asleep.
Sharn’s sleeping head rose slowly. He yawned, then stood and looked across the room at the stairwell with confused eyes. His head low to the floor, he sniffed about the room retracing his steps several times and growling quietly, then returned to his position on the steps. The frustration in his eyes was cruel. The hair at his neck was erect. At irregular intervals he shuddered.