Conan the Triumphant (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 4)

Synelle nodded, and the four women in iron belts produced leather straps. Karela jerked futilely at her bonds despite herself. If only she had a dagger, or but a single hand free, or even her tongue to shout her defiance at them.

“Listen to me, wench,” Synelle said. “These women will prepare you. If you fight, they will beat you, but in any event they will carry out my orders. I would have you as little marked as possible, so if you will submit, nod your head.”

Karela tried to shout through her gag. Submit! Did this fool woman think she was some milksop maiden to be frightened by threats? Her green eyes hurled all her silent fury at Synelle.

Abruptly Synelle moved, placing a foot on Karela’s knees, bound beneath her chin, to roll her onto her back and hold her there. “A taste, then. Cut well in.”

The other women darted forward, their leather straps slicing beneath Karela’s corded heels, raining blows on her helpless buttocks, drawn taut by her tying.

Her green eyes bulged in her head, and she had an instant to be grateful for the gag that held back her cries, then her head was nodding frantically. Derketo! There was no use in being beaten while lying trussed like a

pig for market.

Synelle motioned the women back. “I was sure you would be reasonable.”

Karela tried to meet the dark eyes staring down at her, then closed her own in humiliation. It was clear from the look on Synelle’s face that she had never doubted that the red-haired woman could be brought to heel. Let them free her, Karela prayed, and she would show them the worth of pledge wrung from whips. She would …

Suddenly the cords binding her were severed. Karela caught a flash of a dagger. She moved to grab it … and sprawled in boneless agony on the stone floor, muscles stiff from long confinement barely able to do more than twitch. Slowly, painfully, she brought a hand up to drag the gag from her mouth. She wanted to weep. The dagger was gone from sight, and she had neither seen who had held it nor where it was hidden.

Even as she dropped the wadded cloth two of the women pulled her to her feet. She gasped with the pain; had they not supported her she could not have stood. One of the others began drawing an ivory comb through her tangled locks, while the last wiped her sweat away with soft, damp clothes.

Karela worked her mouth for the moisture to speak. “I’ll not sell you to a tavern,” she managed. “I’ll tear your heart out with my bare hands.”

“Good,” Synelle said. “I feared your spirit might have been broken. Often the journey here, bound, is enough for that. It is well that it was not in your case.”

Karela sneered. “You want the pleasure of breaking me yourself, then? You will not have it, because you cannot do it. And if you want Conan back—”

“Conan!” the noblewoman cut her off, dark eyes widening in surprise. “How do you come to know of the barbarian?”

“We were once,” Karela began, then spluttered to a halt. She was tired, and spoke of things of which she had no wish to speak. “No matter how I know of him. If you want him, you’ll cease your threats and bargain.”

Synelle trilled with laughter. “So you think I merely attempt to dispose of a rival. I should be furious that such as you could think of yourself as my rival, but I find it merely amusing. I expect he is a man who has known many women in his time, and if you are one of that number I see he has little discrimination in his choosing. That is at an end, now.” She held out a slender palm. “I hold the barbarian there, wench. He will crawl to me on his belly when I call him, dance like a bear for a tin whistle at my command. And you think to be my rival?” She threw back her head and laughed even harder.

“No woman could treat Conan so,” Karela snapped. “I know, for I have tried, and by Derketo, I am ten times the woman you are.”

“You are suitable for the rites,” the silverhaired woman said coolly, “but I am High Priestess of Al’Kiir. Yet were I not, you would still not be woman enough to serve as my bowermaid. My tirewomen were nobly born in Corinthia, and she who draws my bath and rubs me with oils was a princess in far Vendhya, yet to obey my slightest wish is now the whole of their lives. What can a jade of a bandit be beside such as they, who are but my slaves?”

Karela opened her mouth for another retort, and gasped when a black-armored man in a horned helmet appeared in the entrance to the cavern. For an instant she had thought it was the creature the bronze represented. Foolishness, she berated herself. Such a creature could not exist.

“Has Taramenon come yet?” Synelle demanded of the man.

“No, my lady. Nor any message of him.”

“He will suffer for this,” Synelle said heatedly. “He defies me and I will see him suffer for it!” Drawing a deep breath, she smoothed the already taut black silk over her rounded breasts. “We will proceed without him. When he comes, he is to be seized and bound. There are rites other than the gift of women.”

“Taramenon, my lady?” the man said in shocked tones.

“You heard my command!” Synelle made a brusque gesture, and the armored figure bowed himself from her presence.

Karela had been listening intently, hoping for some fragment of information that might help her escape, but now she became aware of how the four women were dressing her, the tiny white tarla blossoms woven into her hair, the diaphanous layers of blue silk meant to be removed one by one for the titillation of a groom.

“What travesty is there?” she growled. “You do think me a rival, but if you mean to rid yourself of me in this way, you are mad! I’ll marry no man! Do you hear me, you pasty-faced trull?”

A cruel smile curled Synelle’s lips, and the look on her face sent a chill through Karela’s blood. “You will marry no man,” the haughty noblewoman said softly. “Tonight you will wed a god, and I will become ruler of Ophir.”

The tall white marker at the crossroads, a square marble pillar inscribed with the distances to the borders of Nemedia and Aquilonia, loomed out of the night ahead of Conan. No sound broke the silence save his labored breath and the steady slap of his running feet on the paving stones. Beyond the marker reared the dark mass of Tor Al’Kiir, a huge granite outcropping dominating the flat country about it.

The big Cimmerian crouched beside the marble plinth, eyes straining at the blackness. There was so sign of his men. Softly he imitated the cry of a Nemedian nighthawk.