“Take a seat. We will eat soon.”
“We?”
“You’re hungry, are you not?”
Her accent sounded neither Scottish nor English. I could not place it. But then I reminded myself that she may well be Lilith and I had probably already entered Hades.
I must be wary. Lilith will try to trick me.
“Did you hear the wolves?” I asked her.
“When do I not hear wolves? They live here, like me.”
She placed her axe across her knees and stirred a black pot, suspended over the flames. Putting the ladle to her lips, she blew it cool and tasted the brown broth.
“Not bad!” she declared. “I think it’s ready. You had better stay here tonight.”
“Are you here on your own?”
“Yes. No. I have you now.”
“Ah. But I am just passing through. Do you have a man to look after you?”
“No. It will be I who will look after you.”
Her assertive attitude flustered me so I tried another tack:
“Have you seen somebody called Lilith?”
She replied with a stare so defiantly forbidding that it made me look away.
“It is getting dark,” she added.
I glanced up at the sky for the sun and noticed that the heavens were completely black.
How could I not have noticed that?
A shiver ran up my spine.
This is Hades!
I waited until she had swallowed a few mouthfuls before I tried the broth but it tasted excellent. She gave me something like beer to drink and when we had finished, she doused the fire and led me into the cave. I held the club ready to defend myself but she only put down her axe and drew a pile of skins over her.
“Come. You must keep warm!” she told me.
“In there! You certainly are a lusty maid!”
“Shut up!”
At this, I wanted to protest but I thought better of it, not wishing to anger Lilith, whose sexual appetite is legendary and power over life even more so. If I entered her, she would probably draw all life from me. Yet, this woman would be hard to refuse.
“You won’t need your mail shirt. These furs will keep us warm,” she added.
I hesitated before removing the shirt, boots, gloves and helm and laying myself beside her. She threw the skins over me and commenced taking off the remainder of her clothes.
Even by the faint light creeping around the skin in the cave entrance, she looked exceptionally beautiful. Her body looked supple and toned, like a dancer’s and yet still voluptuous. Such a body, I had not seen before.
This must surely be Lilith! I am doomed!
Once naked she began on my chemise and under breeches. I felt so surprized that I did not resist.
“You are very forthright Madame!”
She didn’t reply but once she had me naked, she commenced licking my own nipples. I noticed for the first time her body smell.
“Madame; your smell is the purest bliss! What perfume do you use?”
“None.”
She had the smell of a freshly bathed woman mixed with fresh bread, beer and every sweet fruit ever discovered. Her perfume alone intoxicated me and I felt powerless to resist her charms. Indeed I felt eager to experience them!
“I have come here seeking battle with a wolf and I have been seduced by a woman in bearskin!” I declared.
“You won’t meet the wolf if I have my way!”
This last exclamation jarred in my mind with my idea of Lilith’s trap. It wrenched me from my dream and I wondered for the first time if this might not be Lilith but merely a familiar or guardian spirit of hers.
“Then you are not Lilith?” I ventured.
But my host had set to my member with her tongue and ignored my question.
The very veins of my loins stood to attention but I had to live up to my declaration to Zosimyache and overcome this woman’s appeal, exploit her own need if I could.
I set to pleasuring her, pulling her from my loins and taking her own velvet recess with my tongue. I pleasured her as I have never pleasured another.
“Oh yes!” she finally declared.
“The way to Lilith! Which way is it?” I asked. “Tell me or I will stop!”
“I cannot!”
“If you tell me, I will come back for you and take you to Heaven!”
“Oh, a lie but a sweet one. I do believe I could love you. I have for so long been forsaken. But I am a mere spirit of the Underworld. Lilith will punish me!”
“When did you last dream of love?”
“Will you truly return for me?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Continue in the direction you were going. She is beyond the crest of the hill. But don’t leave me yet! Lilith is old and ugly.”
Now, you must remember that I had already been aroused to climax twice that evening and a third time so soon would be beyond most men. For some time I treated her body as the first instrument of love and all the while, her odour penetrated my nostrils as if she were the conqueror. At any time, I felt I could succumb to love but I held on and coitus occurred. I withdrew as she climaxed and looked at my throbbing member.
“Not today” I told it.
I lay still until I heard my host breathing evenly and deeply. She was asleep.
Stealthily, I dressed and, using her own thong, bound her wrist to a heavy trunk in the cave.
Slipping out unnoticed, I climbed the steps and set off, up the hill. Leaving her smell almost broke my heart. Its magic had brought me closer to Heaven than ever.
I had barely stumbled to the crest in the dark when I heard a terrible wolf-howl behind me. I pressed on. Beyond the crest, the full moon’s light gave me a better view of my surroundings but dark shadows still surrounded me.
“Hello John. You have come for me!”
The voice sounded like enchantment itself but when I sought the source, I saw only the biggest wolf I could ever imagine. I had thought it the shadow of another tree. It stood at least six feet to the top of its scull and bared its shining teeth in my face.
Immediately I brought my club to bear and aimed for its nose, as the enchantment had instructed. But the wolf moved quickly. While my club extended, its giant claw raked my waist, sending links of my mail flying. The wolf howled with either rage of pain and leaped upon me.
“No!” I cried in anguish, believing the moment to be my last.
With all my might, I beat the beast’s nose with my elbow and forced myself aside. The wolf rolled off but before raking my right leg from knee to ankle with its claw. I felt no pain at first and struggled to my knees. The beast leaped toward me again and I had just time to launch a swing at its nose. The club, a light weapon, smashed into the soft organ and the beast howled in pain. Blood poured from its wound but still it came on. After pausing to wipe blood from its nose with its paw, it crouched for another leap.
This time I would not be denied. I hefted the club but waited until the last possible moment before moving. When the wolf leaped, I took advantage of that preternatural speed that comes in direst need and dropped to the ground. In the nick of time, I passed under the wolf’s grasp but not before it nicked a sliver of flesh from my forehead. I balanced myself and leaped backwards, at the same time spinning round. I came down upon the surprised beast, which had slithered to a halt against a tree in an ungainly pose; its mighty head tucked beneath its heavy body.
When it righted itself, I brought the club down squarely upon the beast’s muzzle. I felt the bones crack and the skull crush to a pulp beneath my blow.
I had finished the game but the wolf’s form slowly changed into that of a woman, taller than myself, dressed all in shimmering white. Because of her size, she reminded me of my mother though her hair shone radiantly in a golden halo around its own corn-yellow rim.
“Are you Lilith?” I tried, and my lips hardly conveyed my words.
“Ha! Ha! You have caused me much trouble. What do you seek?”
>
“Your treasure.”
“Which treasure. There are many treasures in the World but few in Hades, and none worth taking.”
Indeed, darkness seemed to close around me as I thought this through, and shadows of lost souls seemed to wonder aimlessly past me. I began to doubt my purpose.
“Here!” Lilith said. Two demons with red tails dragged a large clay pot before me. “In that pot there is more gold than you could wish to acquire in ten of your years. Take it and go home!”
But I peered past her, to a door behind.
“What is in there, I asked?”
“More gold, but death for you.”
“I’ll take it!”
“Not yet. First you must make love to me!”
My weapon, armour and clothes dropped to the ground and we were both naked. Lilith’s body surrounded me, enveloped me like a vapour of purest love and desire. I felt myself dissolving but words came into my head. I found myself reciting:
I will not be worth ought, if I beat not the beast,
That lies within me, and Prince of the Flies,
Let me cast away from Heaven, take Samael’s guise.
If torture my spirit, you’ll not feign to do,
I will make my way downwards to sleep forever with you,
For I am a slave to the fourth phase of cycles, the nightjar on high,
Sings of its end, my own time to die.
The enchantment seemed to work, for suddenly I saw Lilith as just another woman. I felt that she clung to me, as a wounded person might cling to life or a drowning one, a log. I tore her from me and turned about.
“I will be back!” I swore.
“I know, my love!”
***
I fell to a stone floor and found myself back in the round chamber, within the Castle Labyrinth. I still had my armour on and in in my hand lay the club. Blood dripped from my wounded leg.
I tore off part of my discarded breeches and bound the leg before picking up the next weapon; a silver-handled dagger.
Might as well continue while the going is good! But if this is the first step, what will the dragon and chimera be like!
A chimera, part lion, part goat and part serpent, would be the fiercest of opponents and struck a little fear into even my hardened soul!
I turned and strode to the door marked with the serpent.
Once through, I found myself in what could have been the Garden of Eden. Once again the black sky reminded me that I had entered Hades, but this time the shadows of lost souls seemed thicker around me.
I pushed my way through lush vines and rows of fruit trees and could almost taste the sweet juice of fruit that depended from the branches.
“May I interest you in something tasty? Something to quench your thirst?” a sweet voice asked above me.
I looked up and saw the most gorgeous serpent, coiled around the trunk of a pomegranate tree. Its iridescent scales shimmered every colour through the spectrum from the lushest crimson to the deepest violet. Black scales like eyes dotted its flanks and I sought in vain for its real orbs. But then the voice came at me close to my ears and I turned. Large yellow eyes with cat-slits for irises hovered inches from me and then vanished, to be replaced by green-yellow eyes of a beautiful woman.
“Only a trick!” She laughed. “I thought you would like it! Welcome to my garden.”
“Your garden? But I thought this might be Eden!”
“No. That is up there, somewhere.” She pointed upward with her delicate fingers, which I already longed to taste. “Why are you here? Won’t you put down your weapon?”
“I am here to find Lilith and I will hold onto my dagger, thanking you.”
“Love, food, drink and merriment are all you will find here,” she replied.
“Don’t you mean lust?”
“If that is your desire!” She laughed at her own joke.
“Desire and lust are chalk and cheese!”
“How come you know so much about love? Will you teach me?”
I instantly regretted my vanity on the subject of love.
She danced around me and stopped with one hand on each of my shoulders. She reached behind me and clenched her hands before planting a sweet kiss on my lips. I felt as if I had tasted Heaven itself; her lips seemed to ooze the juices of every fruit I had known and many I had not. I knew I had to have this woman. But I reminded myself of the woman in the cave and the anguished wolf-howl I had heard when I left her.
If this woman seduces me to sleep, she will poison me with her fangs and I will never wake.
“Come! Which fruit do you like best?” she asked.
She led me to a glade, and upon a soft blanket, lay a vast bowl containing hundreds of succulent fruits, all of different types.
I sat down and took one.
“How do I know it is not poisoned?” I asked.
“Give me any!” she instructed.
I passed her a golden apple and she bit into it lustily. Its juice ran down her chin.
“Here!” she said, tossing the fruit to me. I bit into it and reclined in olfactory bliss.
“If only all Hell were as sweet as this, I might be tempted ne’er to do good again!” I declared.
“I know. It is tempting, isn’t it?” She giggled.
I found her innocent glee disarming and lay down my dagger.
She stood up and began to dance to some music that only she could hear. As she moved, her shift swung away from her body, this time revealing a breast, that time a hip or her Venus mound. She seemed careless of the unveiling and I felt like a child.
This spirit is more dangerous than the last!
We continued to feast on fruit, and she to dance, until I became sleepy.
“It’s quite alright to sleep here!” she declared, lying beside me. She arched her back, making a mound in the cloth of her shift with each perky young bud of a breast. After the advances of the cave-woman, I felt unsure what to do next but my hand decided for me, reaching out and slipping beneath her shift to clench her muscled thigh. She turned to me and her eyes shone with a dark delight.
Soon we both lay naked and writhed like serpents in each other’s arms. I became enraptured at her taste and licked every part of her soft body. My tongue seemed on fire with love and even I forgot whether this could be love or lust. At the peak of my heart’s desire, I found that my body could not supply the means and I fell away from her, disappointed.
“It doesn’t matter. Your tongue is enough!” she whispered.
Working with my tongue, I entered a dream world, with no taste impossible to find in the crevices of her body.
***
I woke from the dream to abject horror. I could not move! Opening my eyes, I saw that my body had become entirely encircled by the coils of the iridescent serpent, almost to my shoulder.
“Do not fret!” a silky-smooth voice implored. “Sleep will be long and restful. You will live here forever!”
Damn my weakness! I slept! Where is my dagger?
I remembered putting the dagger aside, which seemed a blessing because although I could still move my right hand, I could no longer reach my belt. My feet were still free so, hoping to surprise the serpent, I suddenly used every means possible to lever the weight of my body to one side, toward the blanket where I hoped the dagger lay.
The ploy worked to a degree for we rolled once before the serpent steadied herself with her tail. However, I had also used this moment to wriggle my right arm free and I reached for the blanket.
“There! I can see it!” I told myself. “On the blanket lies my dagger. If I can only pull it toward me!”
The edge of the blanket lay inches beyond my reach.
Not having any shots left in my breech, I kissed the scaly flesh of the serpent.
“Darling! My love; don’t you ache for love?” I entreated.
“True love is impossible here. I know you are here only to meet the Witch!”
“But I have found love. Doesn’t your heart te
ll that it is so? Why do you hurt me? I have been more than happy with you! I have found my own Heaven!”
Of course, I lied but she relaxed the tightness of her grip for just a moment, curious about my feelings and forgetting her jeopardy. Her release proved just enough for my fingers to lunge and grip the edge of the blanket. With a tug, I had the dagger in my palm and twisted so that I held it at her throat!
“No!” she hissed.
As soon as her tongue flickered between her fangs, I took it off. Her coils left me and I saw only the curled body of a wounded girl. Blood oozed from her mouth.
I had no time to stop. I ran from the glade, not knowing which way to go. Soon I reached the edge of the vast orchard and stood at the top of cliff, overlooking a rocky valley. I prepared to scramble down it but a voice stopped me;
“You almost failed this time. You will already be tired. Why don’t you let me ease your pain?”
I turned to face a Serpent, one of Biblical scale, towering ten or fifteen feet above me. I felt too weary to fight and almost surrendered myself.
The beast’s head swooped down and swung about my neck.
I felt ill-equipped with just a dagger and stepped away from the coil. I stepped into the buttress of the beast’s torso, knocking myself to the ground. The dagger almost slipped from my grasp. Blindly, I slashed behind me and I must have caught something for I felt flesh tear.
This enraged my attacker and it whipped a coil of its great body over my head for the first part of its constricting death.
But I had just the wit to leap over the coil, as it slashed beneath me, and land on the neck of the beast. I clung to its scales. I had to put the dagger between my teeth to hold on.
Inch by slow inch, I climbed the Serpent’s back until my hands were around its head.
“You will not reach my tongue so easily!” the Serpent declared.
“By foul means of fair, I will do so!” I told myself.
Clinging tightly with one arm, I took hold of the dagger and sunk it into first one eye and then the other of my attacker. It hissed in agony.
“You fight like all men, without honour!” the beast hissed in my own language.
But now it could not see. Its tongue flicked out and for a moment, the Serpent forgot itself and flicked the appendage toward me. It took only one brave sweep with my dagger to sever the great tongue and it fell, writhing, to the rocky ground. Almost at once, the beast transformed into the white Queen of the Underworld; Lilith.