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 trying 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!"

Yasala squirmed in anguish as her