Sharn trotted slowly forward, moving west, deeper into The Shades.
Robin twitched the reins, and the horse obeyed. Blindly they moved into dense shadows. After forty paces the horse balked. Robin tied off the reins and jumped down from the driver’s box. Plucking the torch from its embrasure she hurried to the horse. Moving her hands gently over his eyes and around his muzzle, murmuring steadily, she led the animal forward casting the torchlight on the trail ahead.
It flickered on Sharn’s yellow eyes, then the eyes vanished and were replaced by a brush of tail.
As Robin followed the wolf, she glanced into the shadows. She could not see them, but knew the night creatures were there, watching silently. The great horned owl, the jackal, and the bat-winged moth. She wondered if they had seen such a sight before, and if they would remember and someday tell of it. Of the night when wild wolf led tame girl.
Twenty-four
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.