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.