"I should not care to be the one to defend a man who came here to kill the Queen," sneered Erot meaningly.
"Enough of this!" said Tomos curtly. "The man shall be judged fairly and destroyed as Nemone thinks best."
As he ceased speaking, a door at one end of the room opened and a noble resplendent in ivory and gold stepped into the chamber. Halting just within the threshold, he faced the nobles at the table.
"The Queen!" he announced in a loud voice and then stepped aside.
All eyes turned in the direction of the doorway and at the same time the nobles rose to their feet and then kneeled upon the floor, facing the doorway through which the Queen would enter. The warriors on guard, including those with Tarzan and Phobeg, did likewise, Phobeg following their example. Everyone in the room kneeled except the noble who had announced the Queen, or rather every Cathnean. Tarzan of the Apes did not kneel.
"Down, jackal!" growled one of the guards in a whisper, and then amidst deathly silence a woman stepped into view and paused, framed in the carved casing of the doorway. Regal, she stood there glancing indolently about the apartment; then her eyes met those of the ape-man and, for a moment, held there on his. A slight frown of puzzlement contracted her straight brows as she continued on into the room, approaching the table and the kneeling men.
Behind her followed a half dozen richly arrayed nobles, resplendent in burnished gold and gleaming ivory, but as they crossed the chamber Tarzan saw only the gorgeous figure of the Queen. She was clothed more simply than her escort; but that form, which her apparel revealed rather than hid, required no embellishments other than those with which nature had endowed it. She was far more beautiful than the crude Phobeg had painted her.
A narrow diadem set with red stones encircled her brow, confining her glossy black hair; upon either side of her head, covering her ears, a large golden disc depended from the diadem; while from its rear rose a slender filament of gold that curved forward, supporting a large red stone above the center of her head. About her throat was a simple golden band that held a brooch and pendant of ivory in the soft hollow of her neck. Upon her upper arms were similar golden bands supporting triangular, curved ornaments of ivory. A broad band of gold mesh supported her breasts, the band being embellished with horizontal bands of red stones, while from its upper edge depended five narrow triangles of ivory, a large one in the center and two smaller ones on either side.
A girdle about her hips was of gold mesh. It supported another ivory triangle the slender apex of which curved slightly inward between her legs and also her scant skirt of black monkey hair that fell barely to her knees, conforming perfectly to the contours of her body.
About her wrists were numerous bracelets of ivory and gold and around her ankles were vertical strips of ivory held together by leather thongs, identical in form to those worn by Valthor and by the Cathnean men. Her feet were shod with dainty sandals; and as she moved upon them silently across the stone floor, her movements seemed to Tarzan a combination of the seductive languor of the sensualist and the sinuous grace and savage alertness of the tigress.