''Throw down that torch, white dog, or your bitch will choke on her own blood!" the Amazon queen commanded in a cold, deadly voice.
Conan cursed luridly, but there was nothing else to do. The torch clattered to the flagstones.
The Amazons surrounded him. Thick cords of woven dried grass were wound around his wrists, back and forth. His arms were lashed to his sides with the same material. The metallurgy of the backward Amazon country was still not up to the manufacture of complex fetters and locks. The locks on the cell doors, Conan supposed, had been inherited from the original builders of the city.
"He is safe now, O Queen," boomed a woman warrior. "Why not put him to the sword at once?"
Nzinga looked over Conan's sweat-glistening torso appraisingly. "Nay," she said at last. "I have another doom in mind for the traitor. He who spurns my love shall not be indifferent to my hatred. Put them both in the slave pen until dawn. Then take both and cast them to the kulamtu trees!"
It seemed to Conan that, at the mention of that unfamiliar name, even the hardened, burly Amazons flinched. But what could be so terrible about a mere tree?
Chapter Sixteen: THE DEVOURING TREE
Conan blinked, squinting against the slanting rays of the rising sun as it soared above the treetops of the distant jungle. He stared about him curiously.
The Amazons had dragged the Zingaran girl and himself into the central square of Gamburu. To one side rose the royal palace, with the two age-worn, cryptic statues flanking its gate. Conan lay in the broad, shallow pit in the center of the square, on the sandy surface that formed its floor. When he had glimpsed this feature on his first arrival in Gamburu, Conan had noted the resemblance of this depression to an arena, like that which he had seen in his mercenary days in Argossean Messantia. But the Messantian arena had included pit doors whereby gladiators or wild beasts could be loosed into the arena to work upon each other or their victims. This arena had no such portals.
Another odd thing was the clump of trees in the center of the sandy floor. These must be the kulamtu trees of which Queen Nzinga had spoken. He looked the nearest one over and found it unlike any tree he had ever seen, although it had some faint resemblance to a banana tree. The trunk had a spongy, fibrous look; but, instead of tapering to a point, it ended at the top in a round, wet-looking orifice, like a mouth. Below this orifice grew a circle of huge leaves, each one as large as a man … long, broad, and thick, with their upper surfaces covered with hairlike projections a finger's breadth in length.
Amazons, resplendent in leopard skins, nodding plumes, and jingling barbaric jewelry, were slowly filling the rising tiers of stone seats that ringed the arena. Among these were many notables known to Conan from their mutual attendance at Nzinga's feasts.
Surreptitiously, he tested his bonds. Ropes of muscle stood out boldly along his bronzed arms; his brows contorted with effort. But the woven ropes resisted his best efforts … yielding a little but retaining their implacable grip on his arms and legs, which were also bound together by a rope around the ankles. How ironic, he thought, that he who had in his time broken chains of iron should now be defeated by cords of woven grass! Those who had bound his arms and legs, however, had known their business.
The benches were now nearly full. At a shout from Queen Nzinga, who sat amongst her grandees, the guards dragged Conan and Chabela close to the clump of strange-looking trees. Then they hastily retreated, leaving the two captives lying helplessly in the sand.
All around the pit, the Amazons kept up a rising spate of talk. Now they were pointing, jabbering, shouting, laughing, and generally carrying on.
Chabela screamed. At the same time, Conan felt a touch on his foot and looked to see the cause. "Crom!" he burst out.
One of the huge leaves of the kulamtu tree had reached down and was curling slowly around his ankle. Chabela screamed again, and Conan looked to see her limbs enfolded in the frond of another tree.
Conan set his jaw. This part of Kush was unfamiliar to him. But years before, when he had ravaged the Black Coast with Belit, he had heard tales of horrors of the inner jungles from her black crew. These rumors had included a story of a man-eating tree; but Conan had put this down to one more tall tale of superstitious barbarians.
Now he paled beneath his swarthy tan, for he understood the litter of dry, white human bones about the bases of these trees. The sticky fronds would curl slowly about his body, jerkily lift him up to that obscene-looking orifice, and pop him in. The devil-tree would swallow him alive. The acids secreted by the inner tissues would dissolve his flesh, and the tree would finally regurgitate his bare bones.
Three of the big fronds had curled about his body now, despite his thrashings and efforts to roll away. Slowly, they heaved him upright. Every one of the hairlike projections on the leaves stung like a hornet's sting where it touched him. Terror and revulsion lent new strength to his powerful muscles.
Then, beneath the shrill shouting from the benches, Conan heard a faint sound that lent new vigor to his thews. This sound was the snap of one of the grass cords as it parted. Then another one gave.
In a flash, Conan realized that the leaves, too, secreted a corrosive fluid, and that this fluid was dissolving and weakening the grass cords. He strained frantically, and more of the cords gave. An arm came free, and with his liberated hand he tore away a leaf that was starting to wrap itself about his head. He broke more cords, tore at the clinging, sticky leaves … and fell with a thump to the sand. His limbs, where the leaves had been in contact with them, were covered with itching red spots.
From the roar that exploded from the benches of the arena, Conan surmised that this had never happened before. Doubtless the Amazons had hitherto been prudent enough to feed their man-eating trees only victims weakened by torture or imprisonment. They had never offered to their vegetable executioners a man of unusual size and strength, in full possession of his powers. Ripping the last clinging leaf away, Conan grimly resolved to make the most of their error.
Chabela, now swathed like a mummy from head to foot in thick leaves, was halfway to the mouth of her tree when Conan got to her. He sprang up, caught the fronds that were lifting her, and clung. His added weight was too much for the leaves.
They broke, some tearing in half and some pulling loose from the trunk altogether. Conan fell sprawling on the hot sands, holding the girl in his arms.
Quickly he stripped away the leaves that enshrouded her, which, as he tore at them, slowly writhed as if in pain. Like his own skin, hers was red-dotted where the leaves had caressed it. Then he tugged at the grass cords that bound her.
These, like his own, had been largely eaten through, so that it took no great effort to break them and set the girl free.
The Amazons were now in an uproar. A number of guardswomen had leaped down into the arena and were thudding toward him, the sun flashing on the bronze of their harness and weapons. Conan ripped away the last leaf from Chabela's face, so that she could breathe, and sprang to meet these human adversaries.
They did not, as he expected, pour down at him with spear and sword and club.
Instead, halted a few yards away, brandishing their weapons and yelling threats and epithets. Then he realized that it was not merely Conan, standing before them bare-handed and naked but for a loincloth, of whom they were wary, but the trees behind him. Their hesitancy might stem from simple fear of the loathsome man-eating plants, or the trees might be regarded as gods. Whatever the reason, their hesitancy gave him an idea.