The Conan Chronology, page 492
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.
An assegai was thrust at his midriff; he knocked it out of its wielder's hand and sent it clanging against the wall. Moving with the speed of a pouncing panther, he swung the torch up for another blow―and froze.
Nzinga had circled around the melee of struggling warriors. Now she stood with one brawny arm around the naked Zingaran princess. Her free hand held a needle-pointed dagger against Chabela's throat.
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?
XVI
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 centre 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 centre 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 jewellery, 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 Bêlit, he had heard tales of horrors of the inner jungles from her black crew. These rumours 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 realised 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 ut him with spear and sword and club.
Instead, halted a few yards away, brandishing their weapons and yelling threats and epithets. Then he realised 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.
Turning, he set his shoulder against the tree that had attempted to make a morsel of him. This tree was now writhing and flopping its broken fronds as if in pain, making no more effort to seize Conan. The trunk had a flimsy, fibrous look and perhaps was no stronger than the stem of a plantain tree, which it resembled.
Conan hurled his weight against the trunk and felt it give slightly, with a ripping sound. Another heave, and the trunk tore out of the ground, the loose-packed sand of which gave little purchase to the network of white tendrils that served the cannibal tree as roots.
A howl of unholy outrage roared from the stands as Conan broke down the tree. He hefted it under his arm like a battering ram. It was about ten feet long from roots to mouth, a foot or so thick, and surprisingly light for so bulky an object.
Conan charged the women warriors, using the tree as a ram. They broke and fled squealing from his advance. He laughed exultantly. The Amazons evidently had a horror of their own sacred tree and sought to escape its proximity. He spun about, knocking down two of the guards with a swing of the trunk. The others fled back to the stands.
Now javelins began to fall about him in a deadly rain. One went thunk into the trunk a hand's breadth from his arm. Several angular throwing-knives whirled past his head like boomerangs.
'ChabelaP he roared. 'Grab one of those spears and follow me!'
The pair of them ran to the stands, Conan in the lead. A knot of Amazons in front of him broke and scattered as he swung the upper end of the tree among them, spattering drops of corrosive sap. The two climbed nimbly up the benches to the level of the square and loped for the street leading to the West Gate.
When he emerged from the pit, Conan fully expected to see half the female army of Gamburu assembled to attack him. Instead, a strangely different vista met his eyes as he clambered out of the arena. Fire arrows flickered through the air; nearby roofs blazed. A dozen corpses sprawled in puddles of gore, with shafts protruding from their bodies. A chorus of booming war cries rang through the air. The city of the Amazons was under attack.
