"I was in an adjoining room when Tomos visited the Queen this morning," explained the girl, "and I overheard him tell her that Thudos and Gemnon and Tarzan were conspiring against her and that Tarzan loved Doria, the daughter of Thudos."
"How did Tomos know these things?" asked Phobeg. "Did he offer proof?"
"He said that Erot had watched and had seen Gemnon and Tarzan visit the house of Thudos," explained Maluma. "He also told her that Erot had seen Doria and had reported that she was very beautiful."
Phobeg whistled. "That will be the end of the daughter of Thudos," he said.
"It will be the end of the stranger, too," prophesied Maluma; "and I am sorry, for I like him. He is not like the jackal, Erot, whom everyone hates."
"Here comes the Queen!" exclaimed Phobeg as the head of the procession debouched into the temple square. "Run along now and get a good place, for there will be something to see today; there always is when the Queen comes to worship god."
Before the temple, Nemone alighted from her chariot and walked up the broad stairway to the ornate entrance. Behind her were the priests with the slave girl, a frightened, wide-eyed girl with tears upon her cheeks. Following them came the nobles of the court, the warriors of the guard remaining in the temple square before the entrance.
The temple was a large three-storied building with a great central dome about the interior of which ran galleries at the second and third stories. The interior of the dome was of gold as were the pillars that supported the galleries, while the walls of the building were embellished with colorful mosaics. Directly opposite the main entrance, on a level with a raised dais, a great cage was built into a niche, and on either side of the cage was an altar supporting a lion carved from solid gold. Before the dais was a stone railing inside of which was a throne and a row of stone benches facing the cage in the niche.
Nemone advanced and seated herself upon the throne, while the nobles took their places upon the benches. No one paid any attention to Tarzan; so he remained outside the railing, a mildly interested spectator.
He had noticed a change come over Nemone the instant that she had entered the temple. She had shown signs of extreme nervousness, the expression of her face had changed; it was tense and eager; there was a light in her eyes that was like the mad light he had seen there occasionally before, yet different—the light of religious fanaticism.