tful eyes.

On the ivory throne-seat Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled
their spirals about her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs
like caressing fingers. She could not sit still; she squirmed and
shifted about with sensuous abandon, as if finding pleasure in the
contact of the smooth ivory with her 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 men and women merely
glanced incuriously at the corpse of their prince and at the man who
rose from the ruins of the door, then swung their eyes greedily back to
the writhing white shape on the black altar. Tascela looked insolently
at him, and sprawled back on her seat, laughing mockingly.

"Slut!" Conan saw red. His hands clenched into iron hammers as he
started for her. With his first step something clanged loudly and steel
bit savagely into his leg. He stumbled and almost fell, checked in his
headlong stride. The jaws of an iron trap had closed on his leg, with
teeth that sank deep and held. Only the ridged muscles of his calf saved
the bone from being splintered. The accursed thing had sprung out of the
smoldering floor without warning. He saw the slots now, in the floor
where the jaws had lain, perfectly camouflaged.

"Fool!" laughed Tascela. "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."

Conan's hand instinctively sought his belt, only to encounter an empty
scabbard. His sword was on the stair behind him. His poniard was lying
back in the forest, where the dragon had torn it from his jaw. The steel
teeth in his leg were like burning coals, but the pain was not as savage
as the fury that seethed in his soul. He was trapped, like a wolf. If he
had had his sword he would have hewn off his leg and crawled across the
floor to slay Tascela. Valeria's eyes rolled toward him with mute
appeal, and his own helplessness sent red waves of madness surging
through his brain.

Dropping on the knee of his free leg, he strove to get his fingers
between the jaws of the trap, to tear them apart by sheer strength.
Blood started from beneath his finger nails, but the jaws fitted close
about his leg in a circle whose segments jointed perfectly, contracted
until there was no space between his mangled