"You grew from a child in this Palace, did you not?" the blonde began in a pleasant tone.

Jelanna's reply was curt. "I did."

"Playing hide and seek through the corridors. Gamboling in the courtyards, splashing in the fountains. Your every wish met as soon as it was made."

"Did you ask me here to speak of childhood?" Jelanna asked.

"I did not," Sularia said sharply. "I summoned. Know you Enaro Ostorian?"

If the imperiously beautiful woman was surprised by the question, she did not show it. "That repulsive little toad?" she sniffed. "I know of merchants, but I do not know them."

Sularia's feline smile returned. "He seeks a wife."

"Does he?"

"A young wife, of the n.o.bility." Sularia saw the dart go home, and pressed to drive it deeper. "He thinks to marry the t.i.tle he has not been able to buy. And of course he wants sons. Many sons. Garian," she added to the lie, "has asked me to suggest a suitable bride."

Jelanna licked her full lips uncertainly. "I wish, Lady Sularia," she said, a tremor in her voice, "to apologize if I have in any way offended you."

"Do you know the man Dario?" Sularia demanded. "The keeper of Garian's kennels?"

"No, my lady," Jelanna faltered.

"A foul man, I'm told, both in stenches and habits. The slave girls of the Palace hide from him, for his way with a woman is rough to the point of pain." Sularia paused, watching the horror grow on the imperious woman's face. "Think you, Jelanna, that one night with Dario is preferable to a lifetime with Ostorian?"

"You are mad," the slender woman managed. "I'll listen to no more. I go to my estates in the country, and if you were queen you could still choose which of Zandru's-"

"Four soldiers await without for you," Sularia said, riding over the other woman's words. "They will escort you to Dario, or to your wedding bed, and no place else."

The last shreds of haughtiness were washed from Jelanna's face by despair. "Please," she whispered. "I will grovel, an you wish it.

Before the entire court on my knees will I beg your forgive-"

"Make your choice," Sularia purred, "else I will make it for you. Those soldiers can deliver you to Ostorian this day. With a note to let him know you think him a repulsive toad." Her voice and face hardened.

"Choose!"

Jelanna swayed as if she would fall. "I... I will go to Dario," she wept.

For a moment Sularia savored the words she had waited for, counting hours. Then she spoke them. "Go, b.i.t.c.h, to your kennel!" As Jelanna ran from the room, peals of Sularia's laughter rang against the walls. How wonderful was power.

Chapter XXII.

When next the door of his cell opened, Conan at first thought that Alba.n.u.s had decided to have him slain where he lay chained. Two men with drawn crossbows slipped through the open door and took positions covering him, one to either side of the cell.

As the Cimmerian gathered himself to make what fight of it he could, the round-faced jailor appeared in the door and spoke.

"The sun stands high, barbarian. 'Tis time to take you to the wolf pit.

An you try to fight when Struto and I remove your chains, these two will put quarrels in your legs, and you'll be dragged to the pit.

Well?"

Conan made an effort to appear sullen and reluctant. "Take the chains,"

he growled, glowering at the crossbowmen.

In spite of his words the two jailors kept clear of the crossbowmen's line of fire as they broke open his manacles with repeated blows of hammer on chisel. Did they think him a fool, he wondered. He might well be able to take both jailors and bowmen despite the way they were placed, yet he could hear measured steps approaching the cell, the sound of a middling body of men, Dying was not hard, but only a fool chose to die for naught.

Rubbing his wrists, Conan rose smoothly to his feet and let himself be herded from the cell. In the hall waited a full score of the Golden Leopards.

"Don't need so many," Struto said abruptly.

Conan blinked. He had thought the man without a tongue.

Struto's fellow jailor seemed only slightly less surprised at hearing him speak. The round-faced man stared before saying, "He near escaped from as many the night he was taken. You know I don't like prisoners escaping. I asked for twice as many. Move on, now. The King waits."

Half the soldiers went before him, and half behind, the jailors walking on either side. The crossbowmen brought up the rear, where they could get a shot at him did he run, in whatever direction. So they made their way up into the Palace and through corridors once more bare of n.o.bles.

Conan strode in their midst as if they were an honor guard and he on his way to his coronation. There was no glimmer of escape in his mind.

At the wolf pit would most certainly be the impostor Garian and Alba.n.u.s. Under the circ.u.mstances, a man could do worse than die killing those two.

Their way led through the parts of the Palace familiar to the Cimmerian, and beyond. Polished marble and alabaster gave way to plain dressed granite, then to stone as rough as that of the dungeons. Lamps of gold and silver were replaced by torches in iron sconces.

The wolf pit was an ancient penalty indeed, and had, in fact, not been imposed since the time of Bragorus, nine centuries earlier. Nor had any come to this portion of the Palace at all in several centuries, to judge by its appearance. The halls showed signs of hasty cleaning, here a torn cobweb hanging from the ceiling, there dust left heaped against the wall. Conan wondered why Alba.n.u.s had gone to all this trouble after replacing Garian with the impostor. And then they entered the circular chamber of the pit.

Though of the same rough stone, it was yet as marvelously wrought as any of the great alabaster rooms in the Palace. Like half of a sphere, its walls rose to a towering height unsupported by column or b.u.t.tress.

Below, a broad walk spotted with huge tripod lamps twice as tall as a man was crowded with the n.o.bility of Nemedia, laughing gaily as men and women at a circus, pressing close about the waist-high stone wall that encircled the great pit.

A path to that wall cleared at their entrance, and the soldiers escorted Conan to it. Not waiting to be told, the Cimmerian leaped to the top of the wall and stood surveying those who had a.s.sembled to watch him die. Beneath his icy blue gaze they slowly fell silent, as they sensed that here was a man contemptuous of their t.i.tles and lineages. They were peac.o.c.ks; he was an eagle.

Directly across the stone-floored pit from him stood the impostor King, Alba.n.u.s to one side in robes of midnight blue, to the other Vegentius, his face still showing bruises beneath his red-crested helmet. Sularia was there as well, in scarlet silk and rubies, and Conan wondered why he had thought she would not attend.

Below the imposter was the man-high gate through which the wolves would be let into the pit. Conan saw no eager muzzles pressed between the bars of the gate, heard no hungry whines and growls. A complicated system of iron chains served to draw the gate aside. Perhaps he need not die.

Alba.n.u.s touched the arm of the man wearing the Dragon Crown, and he began to speak. "We have gathered you-"

Conan's wild war cry rang from the rocky dome; shouts and screams ran through the n.o.bles as, ma.s.sive arms raised above his head, the Cimmerian hurled himself into the pit. Soldiers forced their way through the n.o.bles to the wall; the crossbowmen took aim. About the straw-strewn pit Conan strode with all the c.o.c.ky arrogance of youth that had never met defeat in equal combat, and in a few unequal.

Alba.n.u.s motioned, and the guards moved back.

"Fools!" Conan taunted the a.s.semblage. "You who have not a man among you have come to see a man die. Well, must I be talked to death by that buffoon in the crown? Get on with it, unless your livers have shriveled and you have no stomach for killing." Angry cries answered him.

Alba.n.u.s whispered to the impostor, who in turn said, "As he is so eager to die, loose the wolves."

"Loose the wolves," someone else shouted, relaying the command.

"Hurry!" The gate slid smoothly back.

Conan did not wait for the first wolf to emerge. Before the astonished eyes of the court the Cimmerian ran into the tunnel, roaring his battle cry. Behind, in the pit, yelling n.o.bles dropped over the wall to seize and slay the escaping barbarian who had denied their manhood.

In the dark of the tunnel Conan found himself suddenly in the midst of the snarling wolfpack. Razor teeth ripped at him. He matched them snarl for snarl, his fists hammers that broke bones and knocked beasts the size of a man sprawling. Seizing a growling throat in his hands he dashed the wolf's brains out against the low stone roof.