somewhere down here.
They went along tunnel after winding tunnel, losing all sense of direction in the wet hollow dark. Coruna had a sudden nightstallion 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 Coruna.
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.
Coruna searched the bodies but found no keys. In the murk beyond, she could dimly see boxes and barrels reaching into fathomless distances, but the door was held fast. Of course—Tsatha would never trust her men-at-arms with entrance to the devil-powder.
The corsair snarled and grabbed a bar with both hands. 'Pull, women of Umlotu!' she shouted. 'Pull!'
They swarmed close, thirty-odd big blue women 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 Coruna was inside, ripping open a box and laughing aloud to see the black grains that filled it.
For a wild moment she thought of plunging a brand into the powder and going up in flame and thunder with the castle. Coldness returned — she checked herself and looked around for fuses. Her followers would not have permitted her to commit a suicide that involved them. And after all—the longer she lived, the more enemies she'd have a chance to cut down personally.
'I've heard talk of this stuff,' said one of the women nervously. 'Is it true that setting fire to it releases a demon?'
'Aye.' Coruna found the long rope-like fuses coiled in a box. She 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 dear before the fire reaches the powder—' began the Umlotuan.
'We can try that, I suppose,' said Coruna.
She estimated the burning time of her fuse from memories of the use she'd seen the Xanthi make of the devil-powder. Yes, there would be a fair allowance for escape, though she doubted that they would ever reach the strand alive.
She 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 Coruna.
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, Coruna saw the black robe of Shorzona and the flame-colored cloak of Chryseir. She 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. Coruna hewed at the nearest grinning reptile face, felt the sword sink in and roared the warcry of Conahur. She spitted the monster on her blade, lifted it, and pitchforked it into the ranks of the guards.
Tsatha bellowed and rose to meet her. Suddenly the Xanthian queen 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 Coruna's throat. She sprang into the very body of the sea creature.
She felt the shock of striking its solid form, the rasp of its hide against her, the overwhelming poisonous stench of it. One tentacle closed around her. She felt her ribs snapping and the air popping from her burst lungs.
It wasn't real, her mind gasped through the whirling agony. It wasn't real! She plowed grimly ahead, blind in the illusion that swirled around her, striking, striking.
Dimly, through the roaring in her nerves, she felt her blade hit something solid. She bellowed in savage glee and smote again, again, and again. The smashing pressure lifted. She sobbed air into herself and looked with streaming eyes as the giant form dissolved into smoke, into mist, into empty air. It was Tsatha writhing in pain at her feet, Tsatha with her head nearly chopped off. It was only another dying Xanthian.
Coruna 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. Coruna 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.
Coruna jumped down again to the floor. Her sword leaped sideways, cut a Xanthian spine across, bit the tail from another. 'To me!' she bawled. 'Over here, women of Umlotu!'
The blues heard her and rallied, gathering into compact knots that slashed their way toward where her dripping sword whined and thundered. She never stopped striking; she drove the reptiles before her until they edged away from, her advance.
The women formed into one group and Coruna led it across the floor in a dash for the looming doorway. A red thought flashed across her brain: Where were Shorzona and Chryseir?
The Xanthi scattered before the desperate human rush. The women came out into a remembered hallway—it led to the outside, Coruna recalled. By Breannach Brannor, they might escape yet!
'Coruna! Coruna, you sea-devil! I knew it was your doing!'
The Conahurian turned to see Imaza bounding toward her with a bloody ax in one hand. Imaza—thank all the gods, Imaza 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 Shorzona and Chryseir.'
'What of them?' breathed Coruna.
The blue warrior smiled savagely and flung a red thing down at Coruna's feet. 'There's Shorzona's scheming head. My man is free!'
'Chryseir—'
Imaza leaned on her ax, panting.
'He launched his erinye at me. I ducked into a room and slammed the door in its face, then came here through another entrance.'
Chryseir was loose—'We've got to get clear,' said Coruna. 'The devil-powder is going to go off any time now.'
The Xanthi were rallying. They came at the humans in another rush. Coruna and Imaza and their best women 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. Women 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.
Chryseir stood in the entrance. A wild storm-wind outside sent him cloak flapping about him, red wings beating in the lightning-shot darkness about the devil's rage
of the god face.
'Stay here!' he screamed. 'Stay here and be cut down, you triple traitor!'
The nearest Umlotuan sprang at him. The door clashed shut in her 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.
IX
The first explosion came as a muffled roar. Coruna felt the floor tremble under her feet. Women and Xanthi stood motionless, looking at each other with widening eyes in which a common doom arose.
So it ended. Shorzona and Tsatha and their wizard cohorts would be gone, but Chryseir, mad, lovely Chryseir, was loose, and the gods knew what hell he could brew among the leaderless Xanthi.
The walls groaned as another boom echoed down their length.
Well, death came to every woman, and she had not done so badly. Coruna began to realize how weary she was; she was bleeding from wounds and breath was raw in her lungs.
The Umlotuans hammered on the door in panic. But the twenty or fewer survivors could never break it down.
The devil-powder roared. The floor heaved sickeningly under Coruna's feet. She heard the crash of collapsing masonry.
Wait—wait—one chance! One chance, by the gods!
'Be ready to run out when the walls topple,' she shouted. 'We'll have a little time—'
The Xanthi were fleeing in terror. The humans stood alone, waiting while the explosions rolled and banged around
Witch of the Demon Seas Resailed Page 11
