Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Fourteen: UNDER THE LASH

For several days more, time passed without incident. Then…

Nzinga lolled on cushions in her seraglio or private quarters. For two days, the white slave, Chabela of Zingara, had been assigned to the most exhausting and degrading tasks. These chores were performed under the very eye of Conan. Nzinga saw to this by a system of carefully planned subterfuge and accident.

Wary of the queen's attention, Conan assumed a mask of indifference, although he often boiled with a rage to strike out on behalf of the captive princess.

Failing to draw any reaction from the Cimmerian, the black queen staged a final scene calculated to expose Conan's true feelings. She declared a small feast for several of her Amazon officers … big, scarred, tough-looking black women, with about as much femininity, in Conan's eyes, as a battle ax.

During the feast, the Zingaran girl waited upon her mistress and upon the latter's fancy man. As she was serving wine, one of the Amazon officers shot out a sandaled foot and tripped her.

With a stifled cry, Chabela lost her balance and upset a beaker of wine over several feasters. One of these, a stout officer named Tuta, scrambled to her feet with an oath and struck the cowering slave girl a terrific blow across the face with her open hand. The girl sprawled on the earthen floor.

A sadistic gleam lit the eyes of the Amazon officer; the sight of the cowering, naked white girl seemed to rouse her to additional fury. In tingling silence, she approached the slave girl like a panther stalking its prey. One scarred, muscular hand sought a needle-sharp bronze dirk, which hung at her hip.

The room remained silent, save for the faint whisper as the ruddy blade, gleaming in the torchlight, slid from its sheath. Tuta, her face a mask of blood-lust, bent over the slave girl and raised the dagger.

With breathless fascination, Chabela watched the approach of the dirk. She knew that she ought to leap to her feet and run, even though she was sure to be caught. But the horror and hopelessness of her position drained the strength from her limbs, so that she could only stare helplessly. In another instant, the blade would sink into her panting breast…

Then Tuta froze as a viselike grip seized her by wrist and nape. The crushing pressure of those huge hands paralyzed her as surely as her approach had paralyzed Chabela. The dirk dropped to the ground with a faint, metallic sound.

Then, with a surge of his powerful thews, Conan hurled her across the hall, to sprawl, half stunned, against the further wall.

Conan was fully awake to the position into which Nzinga had maneuvered him. He could not let the daughter of King Ferdrugo be stabbed to death; on the other hand, he realized that Nzinga would take his interference as proof of his interest in her rival and vent her jealousy on one or both of them. He forced a laugh.

"Surely the queen of Gamburu is not so spendthrift as to let her slaves be slain for a few drops of wine!" he said, grinning as jovially as he could.

Queen Nzinga eyed him coldly, without expression. Then she gave a small signal to Chabela, who scrambled up and scurried from the room. The tension relaxed.

Conan returned to his place. Beakers of wine went round again, and desultory conversation sprang up.

Conan hoped that the taut moment was over. He covered his thoughts with deep drafts of plantain wine. But he did not fail to notice that Queen Nzinga was eyeing him from time to time with hard, thoughtful eyes.

As Chabela left the dining hall, powerful black hands seized her and held her fast. Before she could cry out, a wad of cloth was thrust into her mouth and secured by a strip of the same material tied around her face and the back of her neck. Then a sack of cloth was drawn over her head. Her wrists were twisted behind her and bound with leather straps. She was lifted off her feet and borne through twisting corridors and down steps to an area of the palace that she did not know. Here her wrists were unbound but then bound again, above her head, to a copper ring suspended by a chain from the ceiling. When this was done, she was left alone.

The pain in her hands slowly diminished as the straps cut off the circulation in them, rendering them numb. She dangled weakly in the silent room, praying that Conan could somehow learn of her predicament.

But Conan, at this moment, was himself helpless. He sprawled on the cushions of the dining chamber. His eyes were closed, his head lay back, and he snored like distant thunder. Although he had drunk only moderately, a sudden lassitude had come upon him. The thought entered his bemused mind that perhaps Nzinga had drugged him … but, before he could do anything about it, he fell into a slumber so profound that not even an earthquake could have aroused him.

Nzinga gave him a slitted glance and tersely ordered him borne from the room.

Then she arose to stalk through the corridors to the chamber where Chabela hung.

As she strode, fury grew in her heart like the flames pent in a brazen furnace, and gloating anticipation smoldered in her fierce gaze.

The sack was snatched from Chabela's head and the gag from her jaws. She found herself looking into the blazing eyes and savage smile of Nzinga. The slave girl gave a cry of terror.

The black Amazon laughed. "Scream all you like, you white-skinned milksop. It will avail you naught!"

As Chabela hung in her bonds, Nzinga ran a gloating gaze over her victim's supple body. The queen turned away and chose a whip from several instruments of torment that hung from hooks along the wall. The lash, six feet of supple hippopotamus hide from braided handle to threadlike tip, slithered across the floor like a crawling serpent. Chabela stared with horror. Again, the queen laughed harshly.

"Conan's lips have never thrilled you," she said, "as will the kiss of my pet here. Nor have his hands caressed your flesh as shall the lash!"

"What have I ever done to you, that you should torment me so?"

"You took Conan's heart from me, ere we first met!" snarled Nzinga. "Never have I known such a man. But his arms have crushed you in their embrace; his lips have rained burning kisses on your white bosom… These things I know, and I cannot bear the knowledge! With you gone, he will turn to me and love me with all his mighty heart. I will make him king in Gamburu … an office no male has held for a thousand years!" She swished the whip.

''It is not true!" moaned Chabela. "Never has he touched me!"

"You lie! But the kiss of the lash shall wring the truth from you!"

Nzinga drew back her arm, and the lash sang and cracked about Chabela's waist.

The girl screamed at the knifelike stab of agony. The whip left a scarlet weal, from which drops of blood slowly oozed.

Nzinga slowly drew back her arm for another slash. The only sound in the chamber was Chabela's hoarse breathing.

Again the whip sang, and a shriek of anguish was torn from the slave girl as the lash coiled about her loins. Nzinga watched, her handsome face distorted with eager lust, as the naked girl writhed and twisted in her bonds. Again she struck; now her ebony body glistened with tiny drops of sweat. Again Chabela screamed. The queen laughed, licking her full lips.

"Scream all you like, whimpering slave! No one can hear you. Even if he could, no one would dare to come to your aid. Conan lies in a drugged slumber, from which he will not recover for hours. In all the world, there is no one to help you!"

Her face alight with unholy passion, the giant Amazon caressed with her eyes the form of the slave, now glistening with sweat and blood, as she drew back her arm once more. She meant to indulge her perverted lust to the utmost, until the girl expired beneath the torture of the whip.

Never had Chabela imagined that flesh could endure such torment. Pampered by the luxuries of court lif e, the princess had never experienced true pain before.

Added to the agony of her flesh was the torment of shame. As the only daughter of a fond old king, she had been allowed to go her headstrong way, rarely thwarted by her aged and preoccupied royal parent. Now, as her flesh shrank from the kiss of the lash, so did her spirit shrink from the humiliation.

The Zingaran nobility commonly held black slaves —Kushites brought up from the south by Stygian and Shemitish slavers— and Chabela knew that they were often punished for real or imagined faults just as she was being chastised now. But never in her wildest imaginings had she supposed that the roles could be reversed, and that a black woman could have her strung up and flog her like the meanest field hand on a Zingaran plantation.

As lash followed lash, Chabela, through the red haze of pain, fixed her gaze on a glittering object that lay across the chamber on a small taboret: a golden headpiece, crusted with countless gems, in the form of a coiled serpent. Of course! She recognized the Cobra Crown, which Conan had seized from the black temple on the Nameless Isle. She strove to keep her mind on the Crown, to counteract the pain of the flogging…

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.

Nzinga 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, he 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 bound 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 expedition 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 empire 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 impassive 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.