The Crown, she remembered vaguely, had been stolen from Conan in Kulalo―how long ago? Eons, it seemed. Then, how came it here? The slavers who had captured herself and Conan must have also taken the Crown from the thief who had stolen it originally.
Nzinga had paused in her work to gulp wine. Now she was returning; to the scarlet rapture of the whip. Steeling herself for the next blow, Chabela forced her eyes open. Through her tangled locks, she beheld a baffling scene.
Behind the nearly naked Nzinga, a weird phenomenon was taking place. First came a faint luminescence―a phosphorescent shimmer of elusive radiance, like the will o' the wisp of a ghost-haunted swamp.
Then the faint green light brightened and expanded. Within the time of a dozen heartbeats, it assumed a spindle shape as tall as a man.
Chabela gasped. Observing that the girl was staring wide-eyed at something behind her, Nzinga whirled. As she did so, the spindle brightened to a blinding emerald flame, then faded and vanished. In its place stood a man.
This man was dusky of skin, tall, and powerful. He had a harsh bronze mask of a face, with keen black eyes and a jutting beak of a nose. His head had recently been shaved, so that his hair was a mere black stubble, so short that the brown scalp showed through it. He wore a simple white linen robe, which left his muscular arms bare.
Thoth-Amon looked older than when Zarono and Menkara had entered his presence in his underground throne room. Beads of sweat bedewed his swarthy forehead, for the magical operation that had transported him bodily from the Oasis of Khajar to Gamburu had been one of the most powerful known to the magical fraternity.
Few wizards in the world were capable of it, and the mental effort had taxed even Thoth-Amon's powers to the utmost.
Nzdnga was amazed that a stranger―and a contemptible male, at that―should come unannounced into her disciplinary chamber. The intrusion was an incredible affront, for which she instantly decided to have the stranger's head. She opened her mouth to shout for her guards, at the same time drawing back her arm for a slash of the whip.
The Stygian watched with a quiet, enigmatic smile on his somber face. As the whip rose, ne extended a hand toward the black queen. A nimbus of jade-green radiance nickered into being about his fingers, brightened, and grew, until a beam of emerald light shot out to bathe in glory the ebony figure of Nzinga of Camburu.
The queen uttered one harsh cry, tensed as if stabbed, and collapsed limply, to sprawl on the earthen floor. The ray faded and vanished.
Some premonition caused Chabela to slump as if unconscious, hanging from the straps that oound her wrists to the overhead ring. She let her head fall forward, so that her thick mass of glossy black hair obscured her features.
Thoth-Amon gave her scarcely a glance. She was obviously a slave being punished for some fault and hence beneath his notice. Never having seen Chabela at close range in the flesh, he did not realize that she was the princess whom Menkara and Zarono were hunting along the Black Coast. Wizards are as capable of blunders as common men.
When Thoth-Amon had sent his ka to the akashic plane, Conan and Chabela had still been in Kulalo; Bwatu had not yet stolen the Cobra Crown. At that time, the future was too clouded by possible alternatives for the wizard to discern.
After his minions had departed on their es tion to recapture the princess, Thoth-Amon had recourse to his scry-stone again. He wished to locate the Cobra Crown accurately before undertaking the powerful spell that should transport him thither. Since he could remain at the far end of his journey only for a limited time, he could not afford to materialize at some point leagues distant from the thing that he sought.
In the meantime, however, Bwatu had stolen the Crown and had been slain by the slavers. Zuru had hidden the Crown and taken it with him to Gamburu, where Queen Nzinga had paid him enough quills of gold dust to make him wealthy for life. Hence, when Thoth-Amon sought to locate the Crown by crystallomancy, he had―somewhat to his surprise―discovered that it was no longer in Kulalo but in Gamburu.
About Conan and Chabela he did not concern himself. Chabela he assumed to be still in Kulalo, whence Zarono and Menkara would in due course remove her. In any case, the spell that transported him to Gamburu would not have enabled him to fetch another human being back to his lair with him.
As for Conan, Thoth-Amon regarded the Cimmerian buccaneer as but a minor annoyance, as one would a buzzing mosquito. If Conan got in his way, Thoth-Amon would swat him as one would an insect; but he would not go out of his way to pursue him. He was playing for bigger stakes than the life of a mere barbarian adventurer.
Had Thoth-Amon focused his occult vision on Chabela, he would soon have divined her identity. Just now, however, his whole attention was bent upon the Cobra Crown. A flicker of delight lit up his harsh features as he recognized the object on its taboret Quickly he strode across the senseless body of the Amazon queen to where the Crown rested. With reverently caressing hands, he raised the Crown and examined it in the torchlight, running his strong brown fingers delicately over the curving coils and the great white jewels that studded them.
"At last!" he breathed, the fires of insatiable ambition leaping up in his dark eyes. "With this, the emp-ery of the world is within my grasp! And the holy rule of Father Set shall be restored over lands near and far!"
As a grim smile lit his normally empassive features, Thoth-Amon spoke a word of power and made a peculiar gesture. A whirling web of green light enshrouded his figure and hit it. The light faded, shrank to a mere spindle of green phosphorescence, and flickered out.
Left alone in the chamber with the recumbent body of the queen, Chabela roused herself from her stupor of horror and terror. By standing on tiptoe, she found, she could ease the pressure of the straps that bound her wrists to the ring overhead. Although the straps had been drawn tightly, her hands and wrists were now so covered with sweat that the bonds could be slid along them. She struggled, first with one arm and then the other. After an eternity of effort, one hand at last slipped free from its strap. The other quickly followed.
Exhausted, Chabela collapsed to the floor. Her hands were so numb that she could not even flex her fingers. Soon, however, red-hot needles of returning circulation began to stab into them. She whimpered with the pain but choked back the sound lest it rouse her enemy, the queen.
Little by little, sensation and control returned to Chabela's hands. She rose, staggering a little, and bent over the form of Nzinga. The queen's superb breasts rose and fell in regular breathing, as if she were in a normal sleep.
Chabela limped across the room to where stood the ewer of wine from which Nzinga had refreshed herself. The princess drank the sweetish, bland liquid in thirsty gulps. New strength flowed into her limbs.
Then she turned her attention back to the unconscious queen. Chabela's eyes sought the dagger at Nzinga's girdle. Should she snatch it from its sheath and bury it in the queen's bosom? She trembled with hatred of the queen. She longed to slay her with a passion that she had never felt against any human being.
But she hesitated. For one thing, she had no way of knowing in how profound a slumber Nzinga lay. Suppose she drew the dagger. The motion might arouse the queen, who, being far larger and stronger than the sturdy little princess, would seize her arms and either slay her herself or shout for her guards to come and seize her. Even if Chabela possessed herself of the weapon without arousing her foe, her first stab must needs be instantly fatal. Otherwise the queen, at the very least, would cry out for help before she expired.
Another consideration also held her back. The code of chivalry of Zingara, with which she had been imbued since childhood, absolutely forbade the slaying of a sleeping foe. True, Zingarans violated their own rules quite as often as men of other nations did theirs; but Chabela had always tried to live up to the highest ideals of her race. If she could have slain the queen without danger to herself, she might have overcome her instinctive repugnance to such a treacherous act. As things were, however…
She quickly stole across the chamber and drew aside the hanging cloth that masked the doorway. Summoning up her courage, the girl stepped forward into the darkness.
In the chamber, the torches burned low, their ruddy light flickering on the empty ring that dangled from the ceiling, on the bloodstained whip, and on the sprawled black body of the queen.
Chapter Fifteen
THE BLACK LABYRINTH
As she left the disciplinary chamber, Chabela hesitated. Never having been in this part of the palace, she did not know which way to go. She was, however, fiercely determined to avoid recapture at any cost.
Peering down the empty, stone-lined corridor, she decided that she must be in the crypts rumored to lie beneath the palace of the Amazon queen. These chambers, she understood, were jealously guarded against intruders; she might well, therefore, run into a guard at any moment. Choosing a corridor that seemed to slope upward, she set out at a rapid pace.
The silence was complete, save for the distant drip of water and occasionally the scuttle of tiny claws. At long intervals, a torch of oil-soaked wood, set in a bracket of greened bronze, illumined the corridor with a fitful yellow light But so far apart were these torches that between them the darkness thickened almost to utter blackness. In these dark stretches, Chabela glimpsed a pair of eyes like ruby chips at ground level, as scurrying rodents paused to stare at her.
In the sinister silence, the naked girl glided like a white phantom through the gloom, her nerves stretched taut with terror. She felt the pressure of unseen eyes―or was it only her own nerves?
The corridor curved and angled and forked. Forced to guess which way to take, Chabela soon realized that she was lost and wandering at random. She could no doubt retrace her steps, but that would only bring her back into Nzinga's dreaded clutches. There was nothing to do but keep on, praying to Mi-tra to lead her back into the open air.
After more wanderings, Chabela saw that she had reached the dungeon area. On either hand stood copper-barred cell doors. In the gloom of the cells behind lay half-seen captive things, some of which moaned or sobbed but most of which were silent.
The girl peered into the first few cells she passed, but the sights she glimpsed were so repulsive that thereafter she averted her eyes and kept them on the path before her. Some of the prisoners were emaciated to skeletons, as by years of starvation. Some stared blankly from mad eyes out of matted hair. Bodies were scabrous with sores and coated with filth. Some had died, and the scavenger rats had stripped the scrawny flesh from their bones, leaving only skeletons.
Turning a curve in the corridor, Chabela was astonished to come upon a cell containing Conan the Cimmerian.
His massive body sprawled on thick straw in one of the cells. She stopped dead, wondering if she had gone mad or if it was truly the burly buccaneer who lay therein.
It was indeed the Cimmerian. At first she thought him dead, he lay so still.
Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom of the cell, she observed the rise and fall of his mighty chest. He was evidently unconscious.
Hesitantly she called his name, but this elicited nothing but a snore from the recumbent barbarian. She tested the cell door; it was securely locked.
Chabela lingered, wondering what to do. At any moment, Nzinga's guards might come clanking around the curve of the corridor and find her. The wise course would be to press on―yet she could not abandon to his fate the redoubtable buccaneer who had rescued her from the Nameless Isle.
Again she called his name in a desperate whisper. Then her eyes lighted upon an earthenware jug, standing against the wall. A probing finger discovered that it contained cold water. It must De the water that was doled out daily to the wretches in the cells.
Chabela hoisted the pot in her arms and brought it to Conan's cell. Luckily, the unconscious Cimmerian had been flung into the cell in such a way that his upturned face lay near the bars.
The Zingaran girl therefore was able to pour the contents of the jug through the bars and on the sleeping Cimmerian's face. Coughing, sputtering, and growling, Conan came back to a groggy awareness. With a groan, he heaved himself up to a sit-' ting posture glaring blearily about.
"What in Ymir's frozen hells―" he grumbled. Then his dull gaze fastened itself on the pale, frightened face of the naked Zingaran princess, and he came fully awake.
"You? What in Crom's name is happening, girl?" he growled. Staring about with a puzzled expression, he continued: "Where in the eleven scarlet hells are we?
What's been going on? My skull feels as if all the demons of the Pit had been kicking it around…"
In low, terse words, the girl described her recent misadventures. Conan's lionlike gaze narrowed as he reflectively rubbed a stubbled jaw.
"So Nzinga drugged me, did she? I might have expected it, curse her jealous black heart! She didn't want me awake lest I interfere with the punishment she planned for you. She must have decided that my quarters in the harem were not secure enough and bade her servants bear me down here for safekeeping." He fingered the straw on which he had lain and gave a low rumble of laughter. "This straw is luxury by her ideas. It looks as if she meant to keep me on as her fancy man, to service her after she'd gotten rid of you."
"What can we do, Captain Conan?" asked Chabela, almost in a whimper. The ordeal had nearly exhausted her considerable store of courage.
"Do?" Conan grunted and spat. "Make a break for itl Stand clear of the door."
"What do you? I have no key―"
"To hell with keys!" he snarled, setting his huge hands on one of the bars.
"These bars are of soft copper and have been here for ages. Corrosion has bitten into them; and, if it has gone far enough, I need no keys. Stand back, now!"
Setting one foot against a bar, Conan bent his shoulders and heaved on the bar he grasped, which was green with verdigris. All of the coiled, terrific strength of his back, shoulders, and brawny arms went into one titanic effort. His face darkened; his breath came hoarsely. Drops of sweat on his broad forehead glistened in the torchKght. His thews stood out in bronze relief, like woven metal cables.
Chabela drew in her breath and bit her lip.
With a faint scream, the bar pulled out of the lower socket in the door frame; the metal bent and yielded. Then, with a thunderous crack, the bar broke. The report was like the snapping of a great whip.
Conan dropped the bar with a muffled clang on the straw. He sagged against the wall, drinking in great lungsful of air. Then he squeezed through the gap in the bars, turning sidways to do so, and stood in the corridor.
Chabela stared wide-eyed. "Never have I seen such strength!" she breathed.
Conan massaged his arms. "I shouldn't care to have to try that every day," he said with a grin. Then, peering along the corridor: "Which way? How do we get out of here? And who's been whipping you? Nzinga?"
She nodded and in quick, terse words outlined the events that had taken place since the incident in the dining chamber. Conan growled, his eyes kindling.
"A strange tale," he said, "and the strangest part of it is this magical apparition of a Stygian sorcerer ―for such I take him to be. I have met his kind in my wanderings before. But I wonder who he is, who came to seize the Crown?
You're sure it was not that skull-faced dog Menkara? He was skulking at Za-rono's heels in Kordava."
Chabela shook her head, so that her black, glossy curls tossed. "Nay. I saw Menkara oft on the Wastrel and should know him at once. He is a gaunt, sad-looking fellow of medium size, who speaks in a dull, listless voice as if the world utterly wearied him. This man, albeit methinks of the same race, was very different: much taller, powerful, not unhandsome, with an air of vitality and command."
Only half heeding, Conan sent his glance roving the corridor. He intuitively felt the need for action. If they were ever to escape from the city of warrior women, it must be now, while Queen Nzinga lay unconscious. How much longer she would slumber under the power of the Stygian's green ray, he
had no way of knowing.
Conan led the way off down the winding corridor. He paused to pull from its bracket a heavy torch. He hefted it with an appreciative grunt. At least, he had something to defend himself with. The torch was a club of a dense, glossy wood, the charred upper end of which had been wrapped round and round in bands of coarsely woven cloth, which in turn had been soaked in some viscous oil. The oil sent up a smoky, wavering yellow flame. One of Chabela's tasks as a slave had been to replace these torches as they burnt out around the palace and to rewrap and rekindle those that had become exhausted.
An unexpected turn in the corridor brought Co-nan and the princess face to face with a squad of woman soldiers. They were big, strapping females, with strong arms, flat pendulous breasts, and broad-cheeked, slit-eyed faces. They wore crude breastplates of leather, to which squares of bronze were tied by thongs, and kilts of leathern straps similarly studded. They carried throwing-spears and short, bronze-bladed swords.
"Seize them!" yelled a harsh voice, and Conan looked beyond the grim rank of Amazons to see Nzinga herself. The queen's handsome black face was distorted with fury. He grinned mirthlessly; there was no way out of this but to fight.
Conan was a barbarian from Cimmeria, and to him many of the ways of the South seemed soft, effeminate, and corrupt. But he was not without a certain rude chivalry of his own, and he did not like the idea of fighting and perhaps slaying women.
Still, when it was a question of either fighting or being recaptured, he fought.
He did not await attack but sprang among the Amazons with one great bound, striking right and left with the blazing torch. In a trice he had felled two of the hulking woman warriors, whom he laid out of action with cracked skulls. A snarling Amazon lunged at him with a short sword; he shoved the torch into her face. She fell back with a scream, beating at her woolly hair as it blazed up.
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