Valeria unbuckled her sword belt and laid it with the sheathed weapon on the couch where she meant to sleep.  She noted that the doors were supplied with bolts, and asked where they led.

"Those lead into adjoining chambers," answered the woman, indicating the doors on right and left.  "That one" - pointing to a copper-bound door opposite that which opened into the corridor - "leads to a corridor which runs to a stair that descends into the catacombs.  Do not fear; naught can harm you here."

"Who spoke of fear?" snapped Valeria.  "I just like to know what sort of harbor I'm dropping anchor in.  No, I don't want you to sleep at the foot of my couch, I'm not accustomed to being waited on - not by women, anyway.  You have my leave to go."

Alone in the room, the pirate shot the bolts on all the doors, kicked off her boots and stretched luxuriously out on the couch.  She imagined Conan similarly situated across the corridor, but her feminine vanity prompted her to visualize him as scowling and muttering with chagrin as he cast himself on his solitary couch, and she grinned with gleeful malice as she prepared herself for slumber.

Outside, night had fallen.  In the halls of Xuchotl the green fire-jewels blazed like the eyes of prehistoric cats.  Somewhere among the dark towers, a night wind moaned like a restless spirit.  Through the dim passages, stealthy figures began stealing, like disembodied shadows.

Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch.  In the dusky emerald glow of the fire-gems she saw a shadowy figure bending over her.  For a bemused instant the apparition seemed part of the dream she had been dreaming.  She had seemed to lie on the couch in the chamber as she was actually lying, while over her pulsed and throbbed a gigantic black blossom so enormous that it hid the ceiling.  Its exotic perfume pervaded her being, inducing a delicious, sensuous languor that was something more and less than sleep.  She was sinking into scented billows of insensible bliss, when something touched her face.  So supersensitive were her drugged senses, that the light touch was like a dislocating impact, jolting her rudely into full wakefulness.  Then it was that she saw, not a gargantuan blossom, but a dark-skinned woman standing above her.

With the "realization came anger and instant action.  The woman turned lithely, but before she could run Valeria was on her feet and had caught her arm.  She fought like a wildcat for an instant, and then subsided as she felt herself crushed by the superior strength of her captor.  The pirate wrenched the woman around to face her, caught her chin with her free hand and forced her captive to meet her gaze.  It was the sullen Yasala, Tascela's maid.

"What the devil were you doing bending over me?  What's that in your hand?"

The woman made no reply, but sought to cast away the object.  Valeria twisted her arm around in front of her, and the thing fell to the floor - a great black exotic blossom on a jade-green stem, large as a woman's head, to be sure, but tiny beside the exaggerated vision she had seen.

"The black lotus!" said Valeria between her teeth.  "The blossom whose scent brings deep sleep.  You were hying to drug me!  If you hadn't accidentally touched my face with the petals, you'd have - why did you do it?  What's your game?"

Yasala maintained a sulky silence, and with an oath Valeria whirled her around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind her back.

"Tell me, or I'll tear your arm out of its socket!"