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 

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