Chuckling to hide his reaction, Brown John said, “You are no normal adversary, woman. I keep forgetting I should be afraid of you.”
“Good,” she said lightly, “then perhaps we can not only share the same trail out of necessity, but as friends?”
He laughed. “You are dangerous, aren’t you?”
“You flatter me,” she said, “and 1 thank you. But it will gain you no advantage.” Her smile lifted both corners of her inviting mouth, saying clearly that she did, however, have an exploitable weakness if he was interested.
Brown John chuckled and said, “Keep talking.” She laughed with delight, then in a level tone, said, “Despite what you say, I know you are not afraid of me. Neither of what I was or what I am. I like that.” The reserved smile returned. “Men without fear have been few and far between in my life, therefore I am vulnerable to them.” She grinned. “There, now you do have the advantage.”
“Now you are really dangerous,” he said.
Cobra laughed an easy relaxed laugh and said, “You, bukko, are neither a normal adversary nor an ordinary man. So, I will leave the choice to you. We can be adversaries or friends… I will enjoy either one.”
Brown John, liking her reply a good deal more than he thought he should, said, “Maybe we better talk about the weather.”
She laughed out loud, then sobered and put her gold eyes on his brown, saying, “Before we do that, I must warn you about this map. Once we reach the grotto and find it, I think it would be wisest if only I or the girl handles it.”
His eyes became thoughtful, questioning her, but he saw only genuine concern in her eyes. “Perhaps you had better tell me about it.”
“I will tell you all I know,” she said candidly, “and I believe it is all that is known.” She indicated the distant mountains. “At the crossroads of Boot Trail and the Way of Chains, there is a brothel called the Grotto of the Bald Veshta. Are you familiar with it?” He nodded. “It was a soldiers’ brothel when I was there. But that was over twenty years ago.”
“It is still a soldiers’ brothel,” she said, “but long ago it was a sacred shrine to Black Veshta, who the local tribes call Bald Veshta. That’s when the map was hidden there.”
“It’s been there all this time?”
“Yes. It’s a small image of Black Veshta sculpted from dark stone and laden with magic. It’s taboo. That’s why it’s not been touched. Black Veshta has forbidden any man to so much as put a finger on it, and promised to take cruel vengeance on any who do.”
“So you think I shouldn’t touch it,” Brown John asked, with one frousy white eyebrow arching, “so I won’t become contaminated?”
“It would seem to be prudent,” she said with a chuckle, “since you would risk having your yang shrivel up and fall off if you do.”
He laughed and said, “Blaughh! If I’m not afraid to put my hands on the jewels of the White Veshta, the Goddess of Light herself, then I am surely not going to hesitate when it comes to a puny little icon of a false bitch like Black Veshta.”
“Your mind is set then?”
He nodded his frazzled white head.
“Then I will not argue the point further,” she purred thoughtfully. “But I would have thought that a man of your profession, sensitivities and desires would have a greater respect for the deity which reigns over the glamour and passion of women.”
“Oh, I have great respect,” Brown John chuckled, “and admiration. Even adoration! But not for any goddess. It’s the women I love, every last one of them. I find them all absolutely fascinating… and each and every one, in her own way, beautiful.” He chuckled again and looked at her admiringly. “And my present company, despite her unnatural lineage, is no exception.”
She shook her head with amused cynicism and said, “Bukko, you surely cut your dreams from bright cloth.”
When the wagon pulled up at the crossroads, the sun was starting down the backside of the sky. Gath tethered his stallion to the wagon, then he and the bukko crossed the open clearing toward the brothel as Cobra, Robin and Jakar waited with the wagon.
Boot Trail, the Way of Chains and assorted footpaths and trails moved away from the clearing like crippled spokes of a wheel. The grotto, a series of caves pockmarking a wedgelike cliff of black rock, formed the hub. A wagon and several horses were tethered to a railing at the base of the grotto. A rough-hewn ladder rose to the first cave, where a guard sat with his legs straddling the ledge. Behind him rose a crude log building fronting the largest cave. Raucous laughter, the jangle of tambourines and the smell of musk and jasmine mixed with sweat drifted from it. Above the structure and to the sides, ladders led to higher caves, the highest being the one Cobra said held the map. There was no sign of guards near it.
Gath and the bukko climbed the entrance ladder, moved inside the log building and found what they expected to find.
Mercenaries sat at benches drinking wine, fondling their whores and haggling over the price of both. They were mostly spearmen and slingers, fodder which a warlord could feed cheaply to a civil war. At one table sat long-haired men in bits of armor. Recruiting captains. They were doing the laughing, as well as their share of the drinking, fondling and arguing. The whores were naked except for a sheen of perfumed oil and scraps of colored beads or sash. Among them was not one hair to cover head, armpits or groin.
Gath and Brown John sat down at an empty bench and did what everyone else was doing until everyone else was used to seeing them do it and stopped looking at them. Then they drifted through the back of the cave and up through the interior tunnels to the upper caves, giving the appearance that they were shopping among the girls lolling in the cribs dug out of the rock walls.
Reaching the next to highest cave, Gath sat on a rock and began to exchange stories with the three old whores relegated to this natural back room, while the bukko covertly climbed up the ladder and vanished inside the highest cave.
It was designed in the manner of all caves, carved and decorated by water and wind, about seven feet wide, thirty feet deep. A shaft of sunlight, passing through a hole cut through the rock ceiling, illuminated a black figurine standing on a small cleft carved out of the back wall.
Brown John smiled a smile that could not have been tamed with a stick, and cautiously looked back the way he had come. No sight or noise indicated he had been seen. He moved into the depths of the cave. There were many holes in the ceiling so that light, regardless of the sun’s course across the sky, would illuminate the icon at regular intervals and awe superstitious visitors.
Reaching the figurine, he saw it was only slightly taller than his forearm was long, and covered with dust. The body was trim but voluptuous, and stood upright, knee-deep in a sandlike cone which spread out in waves to form the base. The arms were thrown back, and neck and back were arched so that the pelvis thrust forward, provocatively presenting the triangular temple of flesh for which the grotto was named. It was bald, as was the oval head.
Chuckling, and with the reckless glint in his eyes dancing, Brown John thrust a pudgy hand through the cascading sunlight and picked up the statuette. Holding it to his face, he examined its markings. There were tiny inscriptions in an ancient sign language, and carefully sculpted strings of beads draped over neck, breasts and belly. There was no doubt that they indicated trails, just as lines did on a map.
He laughed out loud, stopped short and quickly crept back to the front of the cave. Again there was no indication he had been detected. He stepped back into the concealment of the cave, thumbed the dust off of the figurine’s breasts, and his smile once more roughed up his face, kicking his mouth wide and punching holes so deep in his cheeks that they ballooned.
Sounds of tinkling, flirtatious laughter came from within the cave, and he turned sharply, hiding the icon behind him. The sounds rose, filling the cave, but there was no one else in it. A wary shiver shot through him, but then he relaxed, telling himself that the sounds were coming from the cave directly below, and that in his ea
gerness he had simply not noticed them before. Then new sounds joined the laughter, a rising moaning and sighing, and the gasping of sexual pleasure. The sounds intensified, and he became aroused, began to perspire.
He held the icon at arm’s length, suddenly afraid of its contamination, but unwilling to let go of it. The sounds continued to rise, then became vague and inarticulate, and he became hesitant, averting his head from the figure and peeking at it with one eye.
The black body was warm in his hand. It felt pliant, then alive, and his fingers relaxed, allowing the doll to squirm and turn, hiding itself modestly within his grasp.
He shook his head hard and blinked his eyes, trying to clear his mind and vision. He drew the icon closer, to see if it had truly come alive, but it hid within his pudgy fingers. He tried to unfold them, but did not have the strength or will. His eyelids grew heavy and slowly closed, as if relaxed in sleep.
There was only darkness in his mind, and his thoughts fled back through it to younger times, names passing by, names with laughing faces. Naso the rubber man, Dulcia the harpist, Podoo the dwarf, and Leto, Balmara, Connie and Lale. They were times of feathers and dancing, good times born of endless spaces and the open road, of yesterdays filled with tomorrows.
Slowly the faces faded, giving way to blistering sunshine which spilled out of the sky like warm syrup onto a field of tall brown grass. His mind’s eye saw a small boy peering through the waving tips, a short stout boy of eleven with brown eyes. He scurried through the grass hiding himself, then stopped, raised up slightly and saw a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen moving through the grass some thirty feet away. She was running lazily, her arms outstretched, with her fingertips brushing the tips of the grass as she streamed past. Her raven-black hair was long and waving behind her in the glory of the golden sunlight, and her laughter was so light it weighed less than the air. Staying hidden, the lad followed her through the grass, then along a brook, trying to get a glimpse of her face, but could not. He ran faster, reaching the village before she did, and tried to casually intercept her. But he could not find her. Then, as he was about to give up and go home, he saw her standing in front of a large, brightly painted wagon with tall yellow wheels. She was talking to an old man and a dwarf, both of whom wore soiled tunics with large colored patches. He moved toward the wagon, trying to see her face, and just as it was about to come into view, she turned away and entered the wagon, closing the door behind her.
The boy waited until dusk, but she did not come out, so he raced home. But he was late for supper, so his father sent him to bed without his meat or milk. For a long time he stayed awake in the loft listening to the night, and was still awake when all others in the house slept. There was an ache in his heart and a trembling in his cheeks. He was thinking of the girl, and he could think of nothing else. She made him feel as he had never felt before, as if all things were now possible, and he was certain his small body was not nearly large enough to house the dreams of wonder and adventure that now soared within it. Later, he did sleep, and in his dreams he stormed castle walls, swung from vines and galloped to the rescue of a faceless dark-haired girl. The glory of her overwhelmed him, and when he came awake, he found himself crying and sobbing with such happiness that he had to hide his head under his pillow so that his parents would not hear.
The next day he returned to the place where the wagon had been parked. It was not there, and no one knew where it had gone, or if it would ever return. The boy fled back to the field of tall brown grass and hid there the rest of the day, alternately sobbing and dreaming, and certain he would never see her again.
Brown John came awake with a start, and found himself clutching the icon to his chest. He was still in the cave, and the sun still streamed down through the same hole, but he felt as if he had slept through a long night. He took a deep shuddering breath and looked down at the black doll far more carefully than he had earlier.
It appeared more normal now, just a crudely sculpted lump of black rock that was supposed to represent a strikingly good-looking goddess, but in actuality looked like nothing more than an overweight, bald savage.
He chuckled, then in a gruff manly voice, said to the doll, “Behave, woman, I’m doing you a favor,” and stuffed it inside his tunic.
It was dusk when Gath caught up with the wagon as it rolled west along the Way of Chains. Seeing him approach, Brown John reined up, halting the vehicle on the narrow cliffside trail. Cobra, sitting beside the bukko, turned in her seat to greet the Barbarian, and Robin and Jakar got out of the wagon.
Gath reined up on Cobra’s side of the wagon and spoke to the bukko.
“Nobody has missed it! We are not followed.”
The group expressed relief, and Brown John grinned with triumph at Cobra. “You see, Black Veshta has not been offended by my touch. In fact, I think she likes it.”
Cobra smiled reservedly, and Gath, in a harsh impatient tone, asked, “Is it truly the map? Can you read it?”
“Indeed it is,” said Brown John, grinning approval at Cobra. “She’s gone over it carefully with me.” He removed the black statuette from his tunic and pointed at a spot on the conelike base. “When we reach the end of the Way of Chains, we should be approximately here. Then we move northwest over dunes.” His finger followed a line winding over the cone’s undulating surface to the knees emerging from it. “Somewhere here, we’ll find the river called Staboulle. It may have changed its course slightly, but we’ll find it soon enough. Then we travel along the river, directly west.” His finger rode up the depression between the icon’s legs to the groin, and tapped the pubic region. “There, at the junction of the two rivers, is a caravansary, En Sakalda.” His finger wandered over the belly. “From there, we take the Way of the Scorpion across a wilderness Of lava beds called the Belly of Black Veshta until we come to a mountain range, the Breasts of Black Veshta, then take the pass between them.” His finger slid between the cleavage to the throat. “About here we’ll reach the Inland Sea, and the giant rock which supports Pyram.”
Gath nodded his satisfaction and put his hard eyes on Cobra. The color promptly drained from her face, and she pulled away from him. His hand grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her struggling and protesting out of the driver’s box, threw her to the ground. She landed in an awkward sprawl, grunting painfully. Her body instinctively tried to rise, but her head sagged dizzily against the earth, blood draining from temple and lip.
The bukko leapt up in the box, shouting, “What are you doing?” Jakar and Robin, startled and alarmed, moved to help Cobra, but Gath’s glare stopped them.
“Get back in the wagon,” he said, and turned to Brown John. “You ride ahead, I’ll catch up.”
“Hold on a moment!” Brown John blurted. “Let’s not be hasty, Gath.” He scrambled down from the driver’s box and kneeled over Cobra, his hands cradling her heaving body. Then he looked up at Gath and added, “We still need her. She’s the only one who can read the map, and we still need to know the distances and turns in the trail.”
“We’ll find a native to do that!”
“Perhaps, in time, we could. But it could cause delays, and since she’s been tremendously helpful, and given us no indication that she can’t be trusted, I think she deserves to be allowed to continue with us. Besides, we gave our word.”
“Yes,” said Robin, pushing forward.
Gath did not look at her. He said coldly, “She’s a serpent. When it suits her, she will betray us.”
He dismounted, and Brown John said, “Your point is well taken, friend, but it is also my point. Her nature can also be an asset to us. She has walked the very corridors of-evil we seek to penetrate, she has looked upon the secrets within their shadows, and she knows their mysteries, the natures of Pyram’s demon spawn, their disguises, forms, powers. We are going to need her help to find where the jewels are held. Besides, we have no time to find someone who can read the map.”
Gath’s eyes became wary.
Brown
John held up the black doll. “According to this map, it could be, not four or five days, but eight or nine before we see the castle’s walls. That means you’ll have to control the hungers that headpiece has planted inside you twice as long as you thought.”
“Do not worry about me, bukko.”
“On the contrary, I must worry about everything.”
Cobra half rose, and Brown John helped her to her feet. She straightened slightly and looked up under her arched eyes at Gath, blood spidering over her cheek. It was a more than appropriate cosmetic for the expression on her face. When she spoke, her voice was low and controlled.
“If you are going to kill me, Dark One, I suggest you use your hands. It will give the helmet far more pleasure… and give you an idea of how it will feel when the helmet’s hungers overwhelm your pride and you put them around Robin’s neck.”
Robin gasped sharply and withdrew behind Jakar’s shoulder, her eyes on Gath.
Gath again took no notice and said to Brown John, “You are growing soft, friend. A month ago, she would have killed us all if she’d had the chance.”
“I agree,” Brown John said evenly, “but she’s changed. She’s human now, just like the rest of us.” His eyes held Gath’s, refusing to release them. “Listen to me, friend. There is more to this quest than you or I understand. There are hidden powers at play, and if they have brought us this far, it would be madness to alter the cast now. Utter folly.”
Gath stared coldly at Brown John for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. “I cannot follow your fancy twaddle, old friend, but if you believe it, I will accept that and allow her to live… under one condition.” He removed a chain from his saddlebags and handed it to Brown John. “Keep her chained to your belt, night and day, or she dies.”
Sometime later, as the wagon rolled down the western side of the mountains, the sand dunes came into view. Beyond them the sun was setting, flooding the sky with sweeping blankets of oranges and pinks. Cobra, sitting beside Brown John in the driver’s box, stared silently ahead, her beautiful face thrust regally into the dying light. A chain was attached to the belt spanning her narrow waist. It wound down over her fleshly thigh and across the seat to an iron loop on Brown John’s belt. Her fingers fondled it idly as she spoke over the steady din of hoofbeats and rumbling wheels.
02 - Lords of Destruction Page 13
