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tenderly, then took his hand in her hands, pressed it against her. Heat came to her face. Her garment glowed under his hand until the scales dissolved and it cupped a naked breast. A moan of pleasure escaped her lips. Then she kissed his hand, smiled warmly and whispered, “Until next time, Dark One.”
    She stood, picked up her black cloak and put it on. She crossed to the stairwell, climbed it and went out, closing and locking the door behind her.
    Outside Cobra found her giant python sprawled in the open track at the base of the root house. It was shuddering in the moonlight, dying slowly. She moved down to it, confronted the thin slits of its yellow eyes, and said coldly, “Fool!”
    She turned, hurried off into the night. She was a half mile away before she could no longer feel the python’s shuddering in the earth beneath her feet.

Eight
    THE DARK ALTAR
     
    L ava staircases climbed the side of a black active volcano, the largest in a range of volcanic mountains. Smoke rose in spires from their craters to form a thick layer of black clouds below a blue afternoon sky. This was the Land of Smoking Skies far to the west of the inhabited parts of the forest.
    The domain of the Queen of Serpents.
    Cobra climbed polished steps cut out of the black lava toward a cave with golden doors. She was stained with dust and perspiration from the three-day march, but exhilarated. Her stride was strong, triumphant; her hand clutched the small turquoise jar as if it were a weapon.
    Reaching the shimmering entrance, Cobra did not break stride and the solid gold doors swung open. Beyond them, in a corridor of shiny obsidian, two soldiers kneeled with their foreheads to the ground. They wore dark green tunics belted with swords and daggers. Jewels glittered on their fingers and earlobes. Traces of scales crusted the backs of their hands.
    With a silent nod, Cobra marched past them down the torch-lit corridor, then past a barracks cave to a tavern room at the end of the corridor. Oil lamps hung from beams casting flickering light over wooden tables, benches and a large red interior door at the cave’s deepest point. Soldiers, both male and female, who had been sitting and drinking, prostrated themselves in front of Cobra as she strode regally through them. She pushed open the red door, closed it behind her.
    She had entered a corridor of black volcanic rock. Torches and incense lamps lighted it. Some distance below, the tunnel leveled off to become a polished obsidian hallway. Cobra descended it to a shallow stairway at its far end.
    At the bottom of the steps was a short length of level floor, then a second flight of steps rising to heavy silver drapes through which passed slivers of golden light. In the center of the ceiling was a hole six feet in diameter. The hole opened onto a tunnel which passed horizontally above. Cobra passed under it and swept through the silver drapes.
    She stood in a large circular cave with a dome ceiling of hammered gold. The floor was silver. The furniture was lacquered black. Highlights raced across the sharp edges like shooting stars at midnight. A massive circular bed of black furs dominated the center. The bedroom of the Queen of Serpents.
    She dropped on the bed clutching the turquoise jar to her breast and sighed with relief.
    Silver columns sculpted as giant serpents circled the room at four-foot intervals. The tails were coiled against the silver floor. The bodies wound up around the columns to the ceiling where their jaws, spread wide, supported the rim of the golden dome. The columns fenced off an outer corridor just large enough to contain a monster snake which lived within it. It was over five feet in diameter, and three times the length of the python Gath had killed. Its scaly skin bore diamond patterns of emerald green and gold.
    The tail of the reptile flopped contentedly to the left of the curtained entrance. The body ran around the room, passed over an interior stairway opposite the