Down a long curving ramp that led into a pit of blackness--the dungeons
could not be far, they lay this way--
He hugged himself into the shadows as a troop of guards went by. They
were talking in their hoarse croaking language, and did not peer into
the corners of the labyrinth. When they were past, Corun sped on his
way.
The stone walls became rough damp tunnels, hewed out of the living
rock under the castle. He groped through a blackness relieved only by
the occasional dull glow of fungi. The darkness hissed and rustled
with movements; he caught the glimmer of three red eyes watching, and
something slithered over his bare feet. A far faint scream quivered
down the hollow length of passages. It had shaken him when he was here
before, but now--
What mattered? What was important, save to kill as many of the monsters
as he could before they overwhelmed him?
The tunnel opened on a great cave whose floor was a pool of oily
black water. As he skirted its rim along a narrow slippery ledge,
something stirred, a misshapen giant thing darker than the night. It
roared hollowly and swam toward him. A wave of foul odor came with it,
catching Corun's throat in a sick dizziness.
He swayed on the edge of the pool and the swimmer began to crawl out of
it toward him. Corun saw its teeth gleam wetly in the vague blue light,
but there were no eyes--it was blind. He retreated along the ledge
toward the farther exit. The ground trembled under the bulk of the
creature.
Its jaws clashed shut behind him as he leaped free. Racing down the
tunnel, he heard the bellowing of it like dull thunder through the
reeking gloom. It wouldn't follow far, but that way of return would be
barred to him.
No matter, no matter. He burst out into another open space. It was
lit by a dim flickering fire over which crouched three armed Xanthi.
Beyond, the red light glimmered on an iron-barred doorway, and behind
that there were figures stirring. Men!
Corun bounded across the floor, the sword shrieking in his hand. It
whirled down to crash through the skull-bones of one guard. Before he
could free it, the other two were on him.
He ducked a murderous pike thrust and slipped close to the wielder,
stabbing upward with his dagger. The Xanthian screamed and hugged Corun
close to himself, fastening his jaws in the man's shoulder. Corun
slashed wildly, ripping open the throat. They tumbled to the ground,
locked in each other's arms, raging like beasts. Corun's knife glanced
off the Xanthian's ribs and he felt the steel snap over. He got both
hands into the clamped jaws, heedless of the fangs, and wrenched. The
jawbone cracked as he forced the reptile's mouth open.
He rolled from beneath the still feebly struggling creature and glared
around for the third. That one lay in a hacked ruin against the cell;
he had backed up too close to the bars, and the men inside still had
their weapons.
* * * * *
Gasping, Corun climbed to his feet. An eager baying of fierce voices
rolled out from the cell; men gripped the bars and howled in maddened
glee.
"Corun--Captain Corun--get us out of here--let us out to rip Shorzon's
guts loose--Aaarrrgh!"
The Conahurian lurched over to a dead Xanthian at whose waist hung a
bundle of keys. His hands shook as he tried them in the lock. When he
got the door open, the men were out in a single tide.
He leaned heavily on an Umlotuan's arm. "What happened to you?" he
asked.
"The devils led us down here and then closed the door on us," snarled
the blue man. "Later a group of them in rich dress came down--and
suddenly we saw what a slavery we'd been in to Shorzon, suddenly
it no longer seemed that obedience to him was the only possible
thing--Mwanzi, let me at his throat!"
"You may have that chance," said the pirate. He felt strength
returning; he stood erect and faced them in the flickering fire-light.
Their eyes gleamed back at him out of the shadows, fierce as the metal
of their weapons.
"Listen," he said. "We might be able to fight our way out of here, but
we'd never escape across the Demon Sea. But I know a way to destroy
this whole cursed house and every being in it. If you'll follow me--"
"Aye!" The shout filled the cavern with savage thunder. They shook
their weapons in the air, gleam of red-lit steel out of trembling
darkness. "Aye!"
Corun picked up his sword and trotted down the nearest passageway. He
was bleeding, he saw vaguely, but he felt little pain from it--he was
beyond that now. The thing was to find the devil-powder. Tsathu had
said it was somewhere down here.
They went along tunnel after winding tunnel, losing all sense of
direction in the wet hollow dark. Corun had a sudden nightmare feeling
that they might wander down here forever, blundering from cave to empty
cave while eternity grayed.
"Where are we going?" asked someone impatiently. "Where are Xanthi to
fight?"
"I don't know," snapped Corun.
They came suddenly into another broad cavern, beyond which was another
barred door. Four Xanthi stood guard in front of it. They never had
a chance--the air was suddenly full of hurled weapons, and they were
buried under a pile of edged steel.
Corun searched the bodies but found no keys. In the murk beyond, he
could dimly see boxes and barrels reaching into fathomless distances,
but the door was held fast. Of course--Tsathu would never trust his
men-at-arms with entrance to the devil-powder.
The corsair snarled and grabbed a bar with both hands. "Pull, men of
Umlotu!" he shouted. "Pull!"
They swarmed close, thirty-odd big blue men with the strength of hate
in them, clutching the cell bars, grabbing each other's waists, heaving
with a force that shrieked through the iron. "Pull!"
The lock burst and they staggered back as the door swung wide.
Instantly Corun was inside, ripping open a box and laughing aloud to
see the black grains that filled it.
For a wild moment he thought of plunging a brand into the powder and
going up in flame and thunder with the castle. Coldness returned--he
checked himself and looked around for fuses. His followers would not
have permitted him to commit a suicide that involved them. And after
all--the longer he lived, the more enemies he'd have a chance to cut
down personally.
"I've heard talk of this stuff," said one of the men nervously. "Is it
true that setting fire to it releases a demon?"
"Aye." Corun found the long rope-like fuses coiled in a box. He knotted
several together and put one end into the powder. The ignition of one
container would quickly set off the rest--and the cavern was huge, and
filled with many shiploads of sleeping hell.
"If we can fight our way to our ship, and get clear before the fire
reaches the powder--" began the Umlotuan.
"We can try that, I suppose," said Corun.
He estimated the burning time of his fuse from memories of the use he'd
seen the Xanthi make of the devil-powder. Yes, there would be a fair
allowance for escape, though he doubted that they would ever reach the
strand alive.
He touched a stick from the fire to the end of the fuse. It began to
sputter, a red spark creeping along it toward the open box. "Let's go!"
shouted Corun.
They pounded along the tunnel, heedless of direction. There should be
an upward-leading ramp somewhere--ah! There it was!
Up its length they raced, past levels of the dungeons toward the main
floor of the castle. At the end, there was a brighter blue light than
they had seen below. Up--up!
Up--and out!
* * * * *
The chamber was enormous, a pillared immensity reaching to a ceiling
hidden in sheer height; rugs and tapestries of the scaled Xanthian
weave were strewn about, and their heavy, intricately carved furniture
filled it. At the far end stood a towering canopied throne, on which
sat a huge golden form. Other shapes stood around it, and there were
pikemen lining the walls at rigid attention.
Through the haze of mist and twilight, Corun saw the black robe of
Shorzon and the flame-colored cloak of Chryseis. He shrieked an oath
and plunged for them.
A horn screamed and the guards sprang from the walls to form a line
before the throne. The humans shocked against the Xanthi with a fury
that clamored through the building.
Swords and axes began to fly. Corun hewed at the nearest grinning
reptile face, felt the sword sink in and roared the war-cry of Conahur.
He spitted the monster on his blade, lifted it, and pitchforked it into
the ranks of the guards.
Tsathu bellowed and rose to meet him. Suddenly the Xanthian king was
not there; it was a tentacled thing from the sea bottom that filled the
room, a thing whose bloated dark body reared to the ceiling. Someone
screamed--fear locked the battlers into motionlessness.
"Magic!" It was a sneering rattle in Corun's throat. He sprang into the
very body of the sea creature.
He felt the shock of striking its solid form, the rasp of its hide
against him, the overwhelming poisonous stench of it. One tentacle
closed around him. He felt his ribs snapping and the air popping from
his burst lungs.
It wasn't real, his mind gasped through the whirling agony. It wasn't
real! He plowed grimly ahead, blind in the illusion that swirled around
him, striking, striking.
Dimly, through the roaring in his nerves, he felt his blade hit
something solid. He bellowed in savage glee and smote again, again,
and again. The smashing pressure lifted. He sobbed air into himself
and looked with streaming eyes as the giant form dissolved into smoke,
into mist, into empty air. It was Tsathu writhing in pain at his feet,
Tsathu with his head nearly chopped off. It was only another dying
Xanthian.
Corun leaped up onto the throne and looked over the room. The guards
and the sailors were still standing in shaken silence. "Kill them!"
roared the pirate. "Strike them down!"
Battle closed again with a snarl and a clang of steel. Corun glared
around after other Xanthi of the sorcerer breed. There were none in
sight; they must prudently have fled into another part of the castle.
Well--let them!
But other Xanthi were swarming into the chamber, battle horns were
hooting and the guttural reptile voices crying a summons. If the humans
were not to be broken by sheer numbers, they'd have to fight their way
out soon....
And down in the dungeons a single red spark was eating its way toward a
box of black powder.
Corun jumped down again to the floor. His sword leaped sideways, cut a
Xanthian spine across, bit the tail from another. "To me!" he bawled.
"Over here, men of Umlotu!"
The blues heard him and rallied, gathering into compact knots that
slashed their way toward where his dripping sword whined and thundered.
He never stopped striking; he drove the reptiles before him until they
edged away from his advance.
The men formed into one group and Corun led it across the floor in a
dash for the looming doorway. A red thought flashed across his brain:
Where were Shorzon and Chryseis?
The Xanthi scattered before the desperate human rush. The men came out
into a remembered hallway--it led to the outside, Corun recalled. By
Breannach Brannor, they might escape yet!
"Corun! Corun, you sea-devil! I knew it was your doing!"
The Conahurian turned to see Imazu bounding toward him with a bloody ax
in one hand. Imazu--thank all the gods, Imazu was free!
"I heard a noise of fighting, and the tower guards went off toward it,"
gasped the Umlotuan captain. "So I came too. On the way I met Shorzon
and Chryseis."
"What of them?" breathed Corun.
The blue warrior smiled savagely and flung a red thing down at Corun's
feet. "There's Shorzon's scheming head. My woman is free!"
"Chryseis--"
Imazu leaned on his ax, panting.
"She launched her erinye at me. I ducked into a room and slammed the
door in its face, then came here through another entrance."
Chryseis was loose--"We've got to get clear," said Corun. "The
devil-powder is going to go off any time now."
The Xanthi were rallying. They came at the humans in another rush.
Corun and Imazu and their best men filled the corridor with a haze of
steel, backing down toward the outer portal.
It was a crazy blur of struggle, hewing at faces that wavered out of
night, slapping down thrusts and reaching for the life of the enemy.
Men fell, and others took their places in the line. Down the corridor
they retreated, fighting to get free, and they left a trail of dead.
The end of the passage loomed ahead. And the monstrous iron door was
swinging shut.
Chryseis stood in the entrance. A wild storm-wind outside sent her
cloak flapping about her, red wings beating in the lightning-shot
darkness about the devil's rage of the goddess face.
"Stay here!" she screamed. "Stay here and be cut down, you triple
traitor!"
The nearest Umlotuan sprang at her. The door clashed shut in his
face--they heard the great bolt slam down outside. They were boxed in
the end of the hall, and the Xanthi need only shoot them down with
arrows.
Down in the dungeons, the fuse burned to its end. A sheet of flame
sprang up in the opened box of powder, reaching for the stacks around
it.