Conan the Buccaneer

Начало книги

Two hours before midnight, the princess Chabela awoke. Drawing the filmy coverlet about her naked body, the buxom daughter of King Ferdrugo of Zingara lay tense and trembling. She stared into the darkness, while cold horror sent thrills of premonition through her quickening nerves. Outside, rain drummed on the palace roofs.

What had it been about, that dark and dreadful dream from whose shadowy clutches her soul had so barely escaped?

Now that the ghastly dream was over, she could hardly recall its details. There had been darkness, and evil eyes glaring through the murk; the glitter of knives … and blood. Blood everywhere: on the sheets, on the tiled floor, crawling beneath the door … red, sticky, sluggishly flowing blood!

Shuddering, Chabela tore her thoughts from this morbid introspection. The glimmer of a night light caught her glance; it came from a waxen taper in a sconce on the low, ornate prie-dieu across the chamber. On the prie-dieu also stood a small painted icon of Mitra, Lord of Light and chief divinity of the Kordavan pantheon. An impulse to seek supernatural guidance brought her to stand shivering on the tiles. Wrapping the lacy coverlet about her voluptuous, olive-hued body, she crossed the bedchamber to kneel before the idol. Her night-black torrent of hair poured down her back like a cataract of a liquid midnight.

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