and watch that chunk of iron grind your guts out. But I'm in a hurry. Where's Valerian?"
"Loose me!" urged Tascela. "I will tell you all!"
"Tell me first."
"Never!" The prince's heavy jaws set stubbornly.
"All right." Conyn seated herself on a near-by bench. "I'll find his myself, after you've been reduced to a jelly. I believe I can speed up that process by twisting my sword-point around in your ear," she added, extending the weapon experimentally.
"Wait!" Words came in a rush from the captive's ashy lips. "Olmec took his from me. I've never been anything but a puppet in Olmec's hands."
"Olmec?" snorted Conyn, and spat. "Why, the filthy--"
"No, no!" panted Tascela. "It's worse than you think. Olmec is old-- centuries old. He renews his life and his youth by the sacrifice of beautiful young men. That's one thing that has reduced the clan to its present state. He will draw the essence of Valerian's life into his own body, and bloom with fresh vigor and beauty."
"Are the doors locked?" asked Conyn, thumbing her sword edge.
"Aye! But I know a way to get into Tecuhltli. Only Olmec and I know, and he thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear I will help you rescue Valerian. Without my help you cannot win into Tecuhltli; for even if you tortured me into revealing the secret, you couldn't work it. Let me go, and we will steal on Olmec and kill his before he can work magic--before he can fix his eyes on us. A knife thrown from behind will do the work. I should have killed his thus long ago, but I feared that without his to aid us the Xotalancas would overcome us. He needed my help, too; that's the only reason he let me live this long. Now neither needs the other, and one must die. I swear that when we have slain the warlock, you and Valerian shall go free without harm. My people will obey me when Olmec is dead."
Conyn stooped and cut the ropes that held the princess, and Tascela slid cautiously from under the great ball and rose, shaking her head like a bull and muttering imprecations as she fingered her lacerated scalp. Standing shoulder to shoulder the two women presented a formidable picture of primitive power. Tascela was as tall as Conyn, and heavier; but there was something repellent about the Tlazitlan, something abysmal and monstrous that contrasted unfavorably with the clean-cut, compact hardness of the Cimmerian. Conyn had discarded the remnants of her tattered, blood-soaked shirt, and stood with her remarkable muscular development impressively revealed. Her great shoulders were as broad as those of Tascela, and more cleanly outlined, and her huge breast arched with a more impressive sweep to a hard waist that lacked the paunchy thickness of Tascela's midsection. She might have been an image of primal strength cut out of bronze. Tascela was darker, but not from the burning of the sun. If Conyn was a figure out of the dawn of time, Tascela was a shambling, somber shape from the darkness of time's pre-dawn.
"Lead on," demanded Conyn. "And keep ahead of me. I don't trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail."
Tascela turned and stalked on ahead of her, one hand twitching slightly as it plucked at her matted locks.
Tascela did not lead Conyn back to the bronze door, which the princess naturally supposed Olmec had locked, but to a certain chamber on the border of Tecuhltli.
"This secret has been guarded for half a century," she said. "Not even our own clan knew of it, and the Xotalancas never learned. Tecuhltli herself built this secret entrance, afterwards slaying the slaves who did the work for she feared that she might find herself locked out of her own kingdom some day because of the spite of Olmec, whose passion for her soon changed to hate. But he discovered the secret, and barred the hidden door against thim one day as she fled back from an unsuccessful raid, and the Xotalancas took her and flayed her. But once, spying upon him, I saw his enter Tecuhltli by this route, and so learned the secret."
She pressed upon a gold ornament in the wall, and a panel swung inward, disclosing an ivory stair leading upward.
"This stair is built within the wall," said Tascela. "It leads up to a tower upon the roof, and thence other stairs wind down to the various chambers. Hasten!"
"After you, comrade!" retorted Conyn satirically, swaying her broadsword as she spoke, and Tascela shrugged her shoulders and stepped onto the staircase. Conyn instantly followed her, and the door shut behind them. Far above a cluster of fire-jewels made the staircase a well of dusky dragon-light.
They mounted until Conyn estimated that they were above the level of the fourth floor, and then came out into a cylindrical tower, in the domed roof of which was set the bunch of fire-jewels that lighted the stair. Through gold-barred windows, set with unbreakable crystal panes, the first windows she had seen in Xuchotl, Conyn got a glimpse of high ridges, domes and more towers, looming darkly against the stars. She was looking across the roofs of Xuchotl.
Tascela did not look through the windows. She hurried down one of the several stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor that wound tortuously on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight of steps leading downward. There Tascela paused.
Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable, welled a man's scream, edged with fright, fury, and shame. And Conyn recognized Valerian's voice.
In the swift rage roused by that cry, and the amazement of wondering what peril could wring such a shriek from Valerian's reckless lips, Conyn forgot Tascela. She pushed past the princess and started down the stair. Awakening instinct brought her about again, just as Tascela strruck with her great mallet-like fist. The blow, firece and silent, was aimed at the base of Conyn's brain. But the Cimmerian wheeled in time to receive the buffet on the side of her neck instead. The impact would have snapped the vertebrae of a lesser woman. As it was, Conyn swayed backward, but even as she reeled she dropped her sword, useless at such close quarters, and grasped Tascela's extended arm, dragging the prince with her as she fell. Headlong they went down the steps together, in a revolving whirl of limbs and heads and bodies. And as they went, Conyn's iron fingers found and locked in Tascela's bullthroat.
The barbarian's neck and shoulder felt numb from the sledge-like impact of Tascela's huge fist, which had carried all the strength of the massive forearm, thick triceps and great shoulder. But this did not affect her ferocity to any appreciable extent. Like a bulldog she hung on grimly, rolled, until at last they struck an ivory panel-door at the bottom with such and impact that they splintered it its full length and crashed through its ruins. But Tascela was already dead, for those iron fingers had crushed out her life and broken her neck as they fell.
Conyn rose, shaking the splinters from her great shoulders, blinking blood and dust out of her eyes.
She was in the great throne room. There were fifteen people in that room besides herself. The first person she saw was Valerian. A curious black altar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles in golden candlesticks sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke, disturbingly scented. These spirals united in a cloud near the ceiling, forming a smoky arch above the altar. On that altar lay Valerian, stark naked, his white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebon stone. He was not bound. He lay at full length, his arms stretched out above his head to their fullest extent. At the head of the altar knelt a young woman, holding his wrists firmly. A young man knelt at the other end of the altar, grasping his ankles. Between them he could neither rise nor move.
Eleven women and men of Tecuhltli knelt dumbly in a semicircle, watching the scene with hot, lustful eyes.
On the ivory throne-seat Olmec lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about him; the wisps of smoke curled about his naked limbs like caressing fingers. He could not sit still; he squirmed and shifted about with sensuous abandon, as if finding pleasure in the contact of the smooth ivory with his sleek flesh.
The crash of the door as it broke beneath the impact of the hurtling bodies caused no change in the scene. The kneeling women and men merely glanced incuriously at
the corpse of their princess and at the woman who rose from the ruins of the door, then swung their eyes greedily back to the writhing white shape on the black altar. Olmec looked insolently at her, and sprawled back on his seat, laughing mockingly.
"Gigolo!" Conyn saw red. Her hands clenched into iron hammers as she started for him. With her first step something clanged loudly and steel bit savagely into her leg. She stumbled and almost fell, checked in her headlong stride. The jaws of an iron trap had closed on her leg, with teeth that sank deep and held. Only the ridged muscles of her calf saved the bone from being splintered. The accursed thing had sprung out of the smoldering floor without warning. She saw the slots now, in the floor where the jaws had lain, perfectly camouflaged.
"Fool!" laughed Olmec. "Did you think I would not guard against your possible return? Every door in this chamber is guarded by such traps. Stand there and watch now, while I fulfill the destiny of your handsome friend! Then I will decide your own."
Conyn's hand instinctively sought her belt, only to encounter an empty scabbard. Her sword was on the stair behind her. Her poniard was lying back in the forest, where the dragon had torn it from her jaw. The steel teeth in her leg were like burning coals, but the pain was not as