Rise of the Death Dealer (39 page)

“Just how, may I ask, did you come by that plot?”

“You are obviously aware that the girl is in grave danger?”

“I am.”

“And you presume Gath can deal with it?”

“Exactly.”

“Are you aware of just how grave the danger is?” He nodded. “A Lord of
Destruction, Baskt, tried to kill her.”

Cobra gasped with shock. “He was here?”

“Yes, at Clear Pond. The filth killed five of my girls thinking one of them
was Robin.”

All color left her face. “Then the danger is far worse than I thought. She
knows… someone has told her everything.” His eyes questioned her, and she
answered them. “Tiyy, the Nymph Queen of Pyram. Baskt belongs to her.” She took
a breath. “Where is he now?”

“I had him followed, and he took Amber Road north, then headed west toward
the Barrier Mountains.”

“Did he,” she hesitated, lowering her voice respectfully, “did he take the
remains of your girls with him?” He nodded, and she relaxed slightly. “Then he’s
headed back to Pyram. That gives us some time. But as soon as Tiyy examines
them, she’ll know the Lakehair girl is not among them. She’ll send him back. But
it will take him better than two weeks.”

“That won’t do Robin any good. The
bloody demon left his soldiers behind, to keep track of my Grillards, it seems.
We could be being watched right now.”

She looked off at the threatening darkness of the forest, listening to the
whistle of the wind in the tree canopy, and said quietly, “Then the girl is our
only hope.”

“As I recall,” Brown John said, getting her attention with the tip of his
sword, “it wasn’t so long ago that you wanted her dead yourself. In fact, wanted
all of us dead.”

Her pale cheeks lifted in an agreeing smile. “I know. But I am nothing but a
woman now and, as such, I believe I am entitled to change my mind.”

“A woman,”
he scoffed. “That you will have to prove.”

“In time, I am certain it will be all too apparent. In the meantime, I
suggest we work together. I know Tiyy, and the nature of her powers. Perhaps
you, being a man of plots, can use the information I have and fashion one to
save us all… providing, of course, that Gath doesn’t kill the girl.”

“Kill Robin?” He laughed. “You don’t know him.”

“Oh, but I do, bukko… as well as you, if not better. But it is not Gath we
are concerned with, not tonight… it’s the helmet.”

“But he’s not wearing it now!”

“That no longer matters,” she said, a rush of childish fear pulsing through
her voice. “It’s part of him now… perhaps the strongest part.”

SAVAGE HEAT

T
he black stallion bolted out of the dark body of the forest into a moonlit
clearing beside the river, Whitewater, bordering the eastern edge of the Valley
of Miracles. It pulled up, snorting steam and stomping the wild periwinkles and
snapdragons to muddy pulp, and Gath swung out of the saddle with Robin in his
arms. He dropped onto the mossy ground, and she staggered free, fearfully
averting her face and clutching the horned helmet to her breasts.

He put a meaty hand on her shoulder, and turned her to him as easily as a
swinging gate. She gasped. Singed, tangled hair hung beside his flushed face,
brutish with raw wounds glittering wetly in the moonlight. She moaned and again
looked away. Growling, he ripped the horned helmet out of her hands and threw it
savagely aside.

It clanged against the trunk of an oak and tumbled across the moss, splashing
to rest in the shallows of the river beside the startled horse. Cold water
lapped against its hot metal, and steam rose, drifting around the stallion’s
head. He bolted back, snorting in complaint, and waded further out into the
river to drink elsewhere.

Robin’s shoulders twisted for release inside the grip of Gath’s hands, and
her eyes continued to avoid his.

“What’s wrong?” she pleaded. “Why are you acting like this? Why… why did
you bring me here? I’m…”

His thumb and fingers circled her throat. They were not gentle, and she
gasped painfully. The sound encouraged him. He pushed her back against the
sloping side of a boulder and pressed his metal-clad body against her pliant
length, bending her slowly back. Blunt steel edges burrowed into her breasts and
hipbones, and rock cut into the soft flesh of her back. She convulsed against
him and cried out, an inarticulate, wailing plea.

The sound rang in his head like a mating call. His eyes narrowed, and he
began to pant, lust mad, like a wolf fresh from the grip of death, frothing to
defy its terrors in the forgetfulness of a sheet of flaming pleasure.

His hand gripped her jaw, turning her face to his, and his lips hungrily
kissed her cool cheek, her open, gasping mouth, her throat. He pressed into her
with chest and driving thigh, his lips and fingers probing and exploring the
small body that twisted and cringed and shuddered like a mouse in the maw of a
cat.

“No!” she screamed, beating at his shoulders. “Nooooo!”

Nothing in him could have resisted her wild song; the animal inside him had
taken control.

He rolled her over, facedown. Taking hold of her clothing at the base of her
back, he ripped both cloak and nightgown apart and fell heavily against her. His
hands held her by armpits and shoulders. One of her closed eyes and a shuddering
cheek were bright in a spill of moonlight.

He moved against her, his body heat mingling with hers despite the separating
metal. Suddenly he held still, eyes transfixed by the moonlit cheek. It was so
beautiful it hurt.

He snarled, and her red curls shuddered in the spill of moonlight. Her head
rolled to the side as she moaned helplessly, and eye and cheek and lips again
languished in the wan light.

Her beauty knifed into him, and his grip lost its rage. His fingers tenderly
conformed to the soft sculpture of her back and shoulder. The savage heat in his
blood cooled. The snarl on his face withdrew slowly.

Tears were welling from her eye, draining over her white cheek to gather in
glistening drops on her lips. Their plump red flesh trembled fitfully as sobs
racked her body.

The brutal glint faded from Gath’s eyes, and he studied her uncertainly, like
the wolf finding a human babe abandoned in the forest, sensing her helplessness
and need.

His fingertips explored her lips, careful now to be gentle, and memories
passed behind his eyes. Vivid memories of the first time he had seen Robin
sleeping beneath the blackened thorn tree atop Calling Rock. Her lips had danced
then in the fire’s glow, to the song of her contented sighs and the night wind
in the treetops. They had enchanted him, and brought back his childhood dreams
for the first time since he could remember. But it was different now, and he
withdrew his fingers as his flesh began to crawl and his neck hairs bristled.

Her lips were not dancing, but shuddering, and the song they moved to was
that same song his lips had sung when, as a boy in Baal, he had been put to bed
at night in his cage.

He released her and stepped back. His muscle and sinew contracted with
self-revulsion, bending his huge frame.

Robin, still sobbing, placed her palms against the rock and pushed weakly,
her head hanging. Her body lifted and she sagged back facing him with her hands
outstretched, steadying herself against the boulder. Without raising her head,
she wiped her tears away. Her body suddenly heaved for breath, and she
staggered, but caught herself, again using both hands.

Gath watched her red-gold curls tremble, watched her breasts rise and fall
against her cloak where his fingers had left dirty smudges. Lust again heated
him, and he turned away, fighting off the demands the helmet had planted within
him.

From the river bank, the helmet’s black eyes watched him, mocking, as the
shallow water washed in and out of the mouth hole.

He straightened, his pride returning, and strode to the helmet, stood over
it. Frustrated rage, long caged inside him, suddenly broke free, and he roared,
a sound echoing out of an ancient, howling age. His boot caught the face of the
helmet, drove it deep under the water into the muddy bottom. Geysers of water
and mud and sparks erupted to his thighs, and his body sank to one side. His leg
was knee-deep in river bottom. He yanked it out with a sucking sound, and the
water swirled around the hole, gulping and bubbling, then flowed on.

He glared down at the tiny bubbles rising from the unseen metal. His hard
breathing slackened, and he strode out into the deeper shallows to the stallion.
Leading, the animal back into the mossy clearing beside Robin, he removed his
black cloak from a saddlebag and wrapped it around her.

Her head lifted timidly, and she looked up under long feathery lashes. Her
eyes were vacant, hollow corridors to shocked bone and blood and mind.

He gathered water from the river and held it up to her lips with cupped
hands. She stared at them a moment, then brought her hands up to his, but
hesitated, not touching them. Looking into his eyes, she asked, “Gath?”

The single word hung heavily on the night air. When he answered it, his voice
was thick and slow.

“Yes,” he said, “it is Gath.” That surprising mystical tenderness which
marked his soul even more deeply than his savage strength was back in his eyes
and voice. “Forgive me.”

Robin, voice trembling, whispered, “It was the helmet, wasn’t it? Not you.”

He nodded. “It will never happen again.” It was a vow.

She took hold of his hands as if they were a bowl, and held his fingertips to
her lips, drinking slowly. Two more times he fed her water. When his hands had
emptied the third time, she held their cool, wet fingers against her hot cheeks,
and kissed his palms softly. As she did this, she spoke to him in a voice that
trembled with surrender.

“You must forgive me,” she said. “I should not have resisted. It was wrong of
me. You saved my life… my people… everyone. I… I have no right to
refuse you. I belong to you.”

“No!” His low, coarse voice commanded her. “You saved my life… twice…I am the one who is in debt.”

Her eyes widened, startled by his intensity.

“I will protect you, but I do not belong to you… or you to me.”

“But I do,” she protested. “I vowed myself to you… by the midnight star.
This is written… isn’t it?”

The surrender in her voice, her closeness and the smell of roses on her lips
again stirred him. Heat flowed back into his wounded face, the brutal glint
returned to his eyes. But as he spoke, he forced it back, his voice blunt.

“You were young and filled with victory… your vow means nothing.”

“Nothing? But…”

“Nothing. We are bound by a mutual danger, that is all. I am your
guardian… this is what is written.” A hesitant smile lifted her cheeks, as if with a
sudden rush of relief.

He wanted to touch that smile, but turned away and strode to the river’s
edge. There he dropped his sword and dagger belts on the ground and ripped off
boots, chain mail and padded undertunic. Clothed only in loincloth and
moonlight, he waded out into hip-deep water, splashing his body, and steam
furled from chest, shoulders and face. He dove into the water, stroked out into
the strong rushing current and swam against it, defying it to wash him
downriver. It could not.

When he came out of the river, he found Robin sitting on a rock beside his
armor. She was wrapped in his cloak, and her own was spread across her lap. One
of his daggers rested beside her. She had cut thongs on one side of the ripped
seam and parallel eye slits on the opposite side. By overlapping the torn parts
and passing the thongs through the eye slits and tying them off, she was mending
the cloak.

Watching her, he kneeled in the shallows and scrubbed his face with water,
removing the crusted ash and dirt and cleaning his wounds. Then he moved his
massive bulk beside her and began to dress.

When she finished mending her cloak, she held it up and said, “This is the
first way I learned to join cloth, when I was very little. The temple
priestesses in Weaver taught it to us the first week of school. It’s a very old
and primitive method, but quite effective.”

Pulling on a boot, he nodded without interest and said flatly, “You are in
great danger, and I must find a place to hide you. I have angered the Master of
Darkness, and to get at me, he has sent his demons to destroy you.”

“I know,” she said, holding her voice under control. “It’s one of his
sorceresses, a woman called Tiyy. She’s the high priestess of the Black Veshta.”
His eyes questioned her, and she added, “It’s true. Jakar, a… a young man
helping Brown John, knows the demon she sent.” Her voice suddenly filled with
misery. “Oh, Gath, terrible things have been happening.”

“What things?”

As he buckled on his belts, she told him all that had happened, ending her
tale with the fact that Baskt had left soldiers behind to keep track of the
Grillards, and that they could be nearby now.

He glanced at the shadows between the surrounding trees, more in anticipation
than caution. “These soldiers are not the only danger you face. The Master of
Darkness has sent the Queen of Serpents’ creatures for you.”

Her eyes widened, and she looked around, trembling. “You mean snakes and
lizards? No wonder they’re everywhere lately.” She looked at him. “Then they did
murder the girls, thinking they were me.”

“Do not be afraid,” he said quietly. “They have been deprived of the magic
which feeds them, and are dying.”

She nodded, and her trembling abated.

“Who is this Jakar?”

“Oh, yes,” she said apologetically, “I should have explained. He’s a Kaven
nobleman, but also an orphan, like myself. His sister was one of the girls who
was killed, and unlike the relatives of the other victims, he is not afraid to
do something about it. He has sworn to help Brown John until the demons are
destroyed, and he’s been a big help. He knows all kinds of things, and has been
just about everywhere.”

Gath, studying her suddenly excited face, rolled his shoulders adjusting his
chain mail, and moved to the river’s edge. He reached deep into the water, came
away with the horned helmet and washed it off in the river, shook it dry.

Robin held her breath as she watched him, and fear came back into her large
eyes. “Please,” she pleaded quietly, “don’t put it on.”

He turned to her, and their eyes met and held each other. His blunt facial
bones were more chiseled since they had last seen each other, and the hollows of
his cheeks were deeper, his shoulders thicker. She seemed to note each
difference before she spoke.

“It’s… it’s done something to you. It’s like I don’t really know you
anymore.”

He moved to the stallion, unbuckled a saddlebag and forced the helmet inside.
“You have nothing to fear. It’s going to stay in here. You won’t have to remove
it again.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. That’s no trouble. I just…”

She stopped short, seeing his dark eyes flash. “I will not spend my life at
the end of your leash.”

“Oh, Gath, I didn’t…”

“I will destroy these demons that hunt you, because I have put you in danger.
When that is finished, the serpent bitch, Cobra, will find a way to tame the
helmet. Then you and I are finished.”

She hesitated, then said quietly, “You’ve said that before. Not just once,
but maybe three or four times.” Her smile was slightly chiding.

“If Cobra fails, I will find another way.” His expression became brutal.
Blood trickled from a wound on his chin. “I will not be enchanted… not by
the helmet, not by you.”

She hesitated uncertainly and nodded, shyly removing his cloak. She put on
her own, and handed him his, saying quietly, “I understand you want to be by
yourself, but I’m glad you’re here now. And I’ll miss you if you go away. We
went through horrible, frightening times together, but they were also
wonderful.” Her eyes became moist, and she smiled to hold back tears.
“I’ll… I’ll never forget you, Gath. Never.”

He looked at her a long time, absorbing her and the memories of her: of her
healing the wounded wolf and healing him, of her bravely defying the dangers of
The Shades to come to him and deliver Brown John’s message about the Kitzakk
invasion, of that time when the helmet was about to destroy him and the sight of
her stopped it, and of that moment when he held her in his arms and kissed her
wondrous lips.

When the memories were imprisoned again, he put his cloak back in his
saddlebags and said, “Neither of us will forget.”