Part 27 (2/2)

”Those lead into adjoining chaht and left ”That one” pointing to a copper-bound door opposite that which opened into the corridor ”leads to a corridor which runs to a stair that descends into the catacoht can harm you here”

”Who spoke of fear?” snapped Valeria ”I just like to knohat sort of harbor I' anchor in No, I don't want you to sleep at the foot ofwaited on not by woo”

237

Alone in the room, the pirate shot the bolts on all the doors, kicked off her boots and stretched luxuriously out on the couch She iined Conan similarly situated across the corridor, but her fe and rin as he cast hileeful ht had fallen In the halls of Xuchotl the green fire-jewels blazed like the eyes of prehistoric cats Soht wind es stealthy figures began stealing, like disembodied shadows

Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch In the dusky e over her For a bemused instant the apparition see She had seemed to lie on the couch in the cha, while over her pulsed and throbbed a gigantic black blosso Its exotic perfuuor that was so into scented billows of insensible bliss, when soed senses, that the light touch was like a dislocating i her rudely into full wakefulness Then it was that she saw, not a gargantuan blosso above her

With the realization caer and instant action The woman turned lithely, but before she could run Valeria was on her feet and had caught her arht like a wildcat for an instant, and then subsided as she felt herself crushed by the superior strength of her captor The pirate wrenched the woht her chin with her free hand and forced her captive to aze It was the sullen Yasala, Tascela'sover me? What's that in your hand?”

The woht to cast away the object Valeria twisted her arreat black exotic blossoe as a woerated vision she had seen

”The black lotus!” said Valeria between her teeth ”The blosso me! If you hadn't accidentally touched my face with the petals, you'd have why did you do it? What's your game?”

Yasala maintained a sulky silence, and with an oath Valeria whirled her around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind her back

”Tell me, or I'll tear your aruish as her arly up between her shoulder- blades, but a violent shaking of her head was the only answer she made

”slut!” Valeria cast her frolared at the prostrate figure with blazing eyes Fear and theall her tigerish instincts of self-preservation These people were decadent; any sort of perversitythe that moved behind the scenes, soeneracy Fear and revulsion of this weird city swept her These people were neither sane nor noran to doubt if they were even human Madness smoldered in the eyes of them all all except the cruel, cryptic eyes of Tascela, which held secrets and mysteries more abysmal than madness

She lifted her head and listened intently The halls of Xuchotl were as silent as if it were in reality a dead city The green jewels bathed the chalow, in which the eyes of the wolittered eerily up at her A thrill of panic throbbed through Valeria, driving the last vestige ofthe wolare into her sullen, long-lashed eyes ”Did Tascela send you?”

No answer Valeria cursed venomously and slapped the woman first on one cheek and then the other The blows resounded through the room, but Yasala made no outcry

”Why don't you screaely ”Do you fear someone will hear you?

Whom do you fear? Tascela? Olmec? Conan?”

YASALAher captor with eyes baleful as those of a basilisk Stubborn silence always fans anger Valeria turned and tore a handful of cords fro

”You sulky slut!” she said between her teeth ”I' to strip you stark naked and tie you across that couch and whip you until you tellhere, and who sent you!”

Yasala made no verbal protest, nor did she offer any resistance, as Valeria carried out the first part of her threat with a fury that her captive's obstinacy only sharpened Then for a space there was no sound in the chamber except the whistle and crackle of hard-woven silken cords on naked flesh Yasala could not move her fast-bound hands or feet Her body writhed and quivered under the chastisement, her head swayed from side to side in rhythm with the blows

Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip and a trickle of blood began as the punishment continued But she did not cry out

239

The pliant cordsbody of the captive; only a sharp crackling snap, but each cord left a red streak across Yasala's dark flesh Valeria inflicted the punishth of her war-hardened ar a life where pain and torenuity which only a woman displays toward a woman Yasala suffered more, physically and mentally, than she would have suffered under a lash wielded by a

It was the application of this feminine cynicism which at last tamed Yasala

A lohimper escaped from her lips, and Valeria paused, aroing to talk?” she deht, if necessary!”

”Mercy!” whispered the woman ”I will tell”

Valeria cut the cords from her wrists and ankles, and pulled her to her feet Yasala sank down on the couch, half reclining on one bare hip, supporting herself on her ar flesh with the couch She was treed, dry-lipped, indicating with a quivering hand a gold vessel on an ivory table ”Let me drink I am ith pain Then I will tell you all”

Valeria picked up the vessel, and Yasala rose unsteadily to receive it She took it, raised it toward her lips then dashed the contents full into the Aquilonian's face Valeria reeled backward, shaking and clawing the stinging liquid out of her eyes Through a s back a bolt, throw open the copper-bound door and run down the hall The pirate was after her instantly, sword out and murder in her heart

But Yasala had the start, and she ran with the nervous agility of a woman who has just been whipped to the point of hysterical frenzy She rounded a corner in the corridor, yards ahead of Valeria, and when the pirate turned it, she saw only an eaped blackly A damp moldy scent reeked up from it, and Valeria shi+vered That must be the door that led to the cataco the dead

Valeria advanced to the door and looked down a flight of stone steps that vanished quickly into utter blackness Evidently it was a shaft that led straight to the pits below the city, without opening upon any of the lower floors She shi+vered slightly at the thought of the thousands of corpses lying in their stone crypts down there, wrapped in theirher way down those stone steps Yasala doubtless knew every turn and twist of the subterranean tunnels

240

She was turning back, baffled and furious, when a sobbing cry welled up froreat depth, but huuishable, and the voice was that of a woman ”Oh, help! Help, in Set's naht the echo of a ghostly tittering

Valeria felt her skin crawl What had happened to Yasala down there in the thick blackness?

There was no doubt that it had been she who had cried out But what peril could have befallen her? Was a Xotalanca lurking down there? Olmec had assured them that the catacombs below Tecuhltli alled off froh

Besides, that tittering had not sounded like a hu at all

Valeria hurried back down the corridor, not stopping to close the door that opened on the stair

Regaining her chamber, she closed the door and shot the bolt behind her She pulled on her boots and buckled her sword-belt about her She was detere hiht their way out of that city of devils

But even as she reached the door that opened into the corridor, a long-drawn screah the halls, followed by the staor of swords

V

TWENTY RED NAILS

TWO warriors lounged in the guardroole Their attitude was casual, though habitually alert An attack on the great bronze door from without was always a possibility, but for many years no such assault had been atte allies,” said one ”Olainst the enemy toht have spoken In the miniature world of Xuchotl each handful of feudists was an army, and the empty halls between the castles was the country over which they caned