

Witch Of the Demon Seas Resailed

by Poula Anderson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Poula Anderson

Khroivia the conqueror, Thalassocrat of Achaera, stood watching her guards bring up the captured pirates. She was a huge woman, her hair and square-cut locks jet-black despite middle age, the strength of her warlike youth still in her powerful limbs. She wore a plain white tunic and purple-trimmed cloak; the only sign of kingship was the golden chaplet on her head and the signet ring on one finger. In the gaudy crowd of slender, chattering courtiers, she stood out with a brutal contrast.

'So they've finally captured her,' she rumbled. 'So we're finally rid of Coruna and her sea-going bandits. Maybe now the land will have some peace.'

'What will you do with them, sire?' asked Shorzona the Sorcerer.

Khromona shrugged heavy shoulders. 'I don't know. Pirates are, usually fed to the erinyes at the games, I suppose, but Coruna deserves something special.'

'Public torture, perhaps, sire? It could be stretched over many days.'

'No, you fool! Coruna was the bravest enemy Achaera ever had. She deserves an honorable death and a decent tomb. Not that it matters much, but—'

Shorzona exchanged a glance with Chryseir, then looked back toward the approaching procession.

The city Tauros was built around a semicircular bay, a huge expanse of clear green water on whose surface floated ships from halfway round the world—the greatest harbor for none knew how many empty sea-leagues, capital of Achaera which, with its trade and its empire of entire archipelagoes, was the mightiest of the thalassocracies. Beyond the fortified sea walls at the end of the bay, the ocean swelled mightily to the clouded horizon, gray and green and amber. Within, the hulls and sails of ships were a bright confusion up to the stone docks.

The land ran upward from the bay, and Tauros was built on the hills, a tangle of streets between houses that ranged from the clay huts of the poor to the marble villas of the great. Beyond the city walls on the landward side, the island of Achaera lifted still more steeply, a gaunt rocky country with a few scattered farms and herds. His power came all from the sea.

A broad straight road lined with sphinxes ran straight from the harbor up to the palace, which stood on the highest hill in the city. At its end, wide marble stairs lifted toward the fragrant imperial gardens in which the court stood.

Folk swarmed about the street, mobs straining to see the soldiers as they led their captives toward the palace. The word that Coruna of Conahur, the most dangerous of the pirates, had finally been taken had driven merchants to ecstasy and brought insurance rates tumbling down. There was laughter in the throng, jeers for the prisoners, shouts for the queen.

Not entirely so, however. Most of the crowd were, of course, Achaerans, a slim dark-haired folk clad generally in a light tunic and sandals, proud of their ancient might and culture. They were loudest in shouting at the robbers, But there were others who stood silent and glum-faced, not daring to voice their thoughts but making them plain enough. Tall, fair women from Conahur itself, galled by Achaeran rule; fur-clad barbarians, from Norriki, blue-skinned savages from Umlotu, with a high professional regard for their fellow pirate; slaves from a hundred islands, who had not ceased dreaming of home and remembered that Coruna had been in the habit of freeing slaves when she captured a ship or a town. Others might be neutral, coming from too far away to care, for Coruna had only attacked Achaeran galleys; the black women from misty Orzaban, the copper-colored Chilatzis, the yellow wizards from mysterious Hiung-nu.

The soldiers marched their prisoners rapidly up the street. They were mercenaries, blue Umlotuans in the shining corselets, greaves, and helmets of the Achaeran forces, armed with the short sword and square shield of Achaera as well as the long halberds which were their special weapon. When the mob came too close, they swung the butts out with bone-snapping force.

The captive pirates were mostly from Conahur, though there were a number of other lands represented. They stumbled wearily along, clad in a few rags, weighted down hand and foot by their chains. Only one of them, the woman in the lead, walked erect, but she strode along with the arrogance of a conqueror.

'That must be Coruna herself, there hi the front of them,' said Chryseir.

'It is,' nodded Shorzona.

They moved forward for a better look. Imperceptibly, the court shrank from them. Khromona's advisor son were feared in Tauros, Shorzona was tall and lean and dry, as if the Heaven-Fire beyond the eternal clouds had fallen on her and seared all moisture out of the gaunt body. She had the noble features of the old Achaeran aristocracy, but her eyes were dark and sunken and smoldering with strange fires. Even in the warmth of midday, she wore a black robe falling to her feet, and her white locks streamed over it. Folk knew that she had learned sorcery in Hiung-nu, and it was whispered that for all Khromona's brawling strength it was Shorzona who really dominated the realm.

Khromona had married Shorzona's daughter—none knew who his mother had been, though it was thought he was a warlock from Hiung-nu. She had not lived long after giving birth to Chryseir, whose grandmother thus came to have much of his upbringing in her hands. Rumor had it that he was as much a warlock as she a witch.

Certainly he could be cruel and ungovernable. But he had a strange dark beauty over him that haunted women; there were more who would die for his than one could readily count . . . and, it was said, had died after a night or two.

He was tall and lithe, with night-black hair that streamed to his waist when unbound. His eyes were huge and dark in a face of coldly chiseled loveliness, and the full red mouth denied the austere, god-like fineness of his countenance. Today he had not affected the heavy gold and jewels of the court; a white robe hung in dazzling folds about her—and there might as well not have been another man present.

The prisoners came through the palace gates, which clashed shut behind them. Up the stairs they went and into the fragrance of green trees and bushes, blooming plants, and leaping fountains that was the garden. There they halted, and the court buzzed about them like flies around a dead animal.

Khromona stepped up to Coruna. 'Greeting,' she said, and there was no mockery in her voice.

'Greeting,' replied the pirate in the same even tones.

They measured each other, the look two strong women who understood what they were about. Coruna was as big as Khromona, a fair-skinned giant of a woman in chains and rags. Weather-bleached yellow hair hung to her shoulders from a haughtily lifted head, and her fire-blue eyes were unwavering like the queen's. Her face was lean, long-jawed, curve-nosed, hardened by bitterness and suffering and desperate unending battle. A chained erinye could not have looked more fiercely on her captors.

'It's taken a long time to catch you, Coruna,' said Khromona. 'You've led us a merry chase. Once I almost had the pleasure of meeting you myself. It was when you raided Scraplis—remember? I happened to be there, and gave chase in one of the war-galleys. But we never did catch you.'

'One of the ships did.' Coruna's voice was strangely soft for so big a woman. 'It didn't come back, as you may recall.'

'How did they finally catch you?' asked Khromona.

Coruna shrugged, and the chains about her wrists rattled. 'You already know as much as I care to talk about,' she said wearily. 'We sailed into Iliontis Bay and found a whole fleet waiting for us. Someone must finally have spied out our stronghold.' Khromona nodded, and Coruna shrugged a shoulder: 'They blocked off our retreat, so we just fought till everyone was dead or captured. These half-hundred women are all who live. Unfortunately, I was knocked out during the battle and woke up to find myself a prisoner. Otherwise—-his blue gaze raked the court with a lashing contempt—'I could be peacefully feeding fish now, instead of your witless fish-eyes.'

'I won't drag out the business for you, Coruna,' said Khromona. 'Your women will have to be given to the games, of course, but you can be decently and privately beheaded.'

'Thanks,' said the pirate, 'but I'll stay with my women.'

Khromona stared at her in puzzlement. 'But why did you ever do it?' she asked finally. 'With your strength and skill and cunning, you could have gone far in Achaera. We take mercenaries from conquered provinces, you know. You could have gotten Achaeran citizenship in time.'

'I was a princess of Conahur,' said Coruna slowly. 'I saw my land invaded and my folk taken off as slaves. I saw my sisters hacked down at the battle of Lyrr, my brother taken as concubine by your admiral, my mother hanged, my mother burned alive when they fired the old castle. They offered me amnesty because I was young and they wanted a figurehead. So I swore an oath of fealty to Achaera, and broke it the first chance I got. It was the only oath I ever broke, and still I am proud of it. I sailed with pirates until I was big enough to mistress my own ships. That is enough of an answer.'

'It may be,' said Khromona slowly. 'You realize, of course, that the conquest of Conahur took place before I came to the throne? And that I certainly couldn't negate it, in view of the Thalassocrat's duty to her own country, and had to punish its incessant rebelliousness?'

'I don't hold anything against you yourself, Khromona,' said Coruna with a tired smile. 'But I'd give my soul to the nether fires for the chance to pull your damned palace down around your ears!'

'I'm sorry it has to end this way,' said the queen. 'You were a brave woman. I'd like to drain many beakers of wine with you on the other side of death.' She signed to the guards. 'Take her away.'

'One moment, sire,' said Shorzona. 'Is it your intention to lock all these pirates in the same dungeon cell?'

'Why—I suppose so. Why not?'

'I do not trust their captain. Chained and imprisoned, she is still a menace. I think she has certain magical techniques--'

'That's a lie!' spat Coruna. 'I never needed your stinking man's tricks to flatten the likes of Achaera!'

'I would not leave her with her women,' advised Shorzona imperturbably. 'Best she be given her own cell, alone. I know a place.'

'Well—well, let it be so.' Khromona waved a hand in dismissal.

As Shorzona turned to lead the guard off, she traded a long glance with Chryseir. His eyes remained hooded as he looked after the departing captives.

II

The cell was no longer than a woman's height, a dripping cave hewed out of the rock under the palace foundations. Coruna crouched on the streaming floor in utter darkness. The chains which they had locked to ringbolts in the wall clashed when she stirred.

And this was how it ended, she thought bitterly. The wild career of the exiled conqueror, the heave and surge of ships under the running waves, the laughter of comrades and the clamor of swords and the thrum of wind in the rigging, had come to this—one woman hunched in a loneliness and darkness like a colder womb, waiting in timeless murk for the day when they would drag her out to be torn by beasts for the amusement of fools.

They fed her at intervals, a slave bringing a bowl of prison swill while a spear-armed guard stood well out of reach and watched. Otherwise she was alone. She could not even hear the voices of other captives; there was only the slow dripping of water and the harsh tones of iron links. The cell must lie below even the regular dungeons, far down in the very bowels of the island.

Vague images floated across her mind—the high cliffs about Iliontis Bay, the great flowers blooming with sullen fires in the jungle beyond the beach, the slim black corsair galleys at anchor. She remembered the open sky, the eternally clouded sky under which blew the long wet winds, out of which spilled rain and lightning and grew the eerie blue of dusk. She had often wondered what lay beyond those upper clouds.

Now and then, she remembered, one could see the vague disc of the Heaven-Fire, and she had heard of times when incredibly violent storms opened a brief rift in the high cloud layers to let through a shaft of searing brilliance at whose touch water boiled and the earth burst into, flame. It made her think of the speculans, of Conahur's philosophers, that the world was really a globe around which the Heaven-Fire swung, bringing day and night. Some had gone so far as to imagine that it was the world which did the moving, that the Heaven-Fire was a ball of flame in the middle of creation about which all other things revolved.

But Conahur was in chains now, she remembered, its folk bowed to the will of Achaera's greedy proconsuls, its art and philosophy the idle playthings of the conquerors. The younger generation was growing up with an idea that it might be best to yield, to become absorbed into the thalassocracy and so eventually gain equal status with the Achaerans.

But Coruna could not forget the great flames flapping against a wind-torn night sky, the struggling forms at ropes' ends swaying from trees, the long lines of chained people stumbling hopelessly to the slave galleys under Achaeran lashes. Perhaps she had carried the grudge too long—no, by Breannach Brannor! There had been a family which was no longer, That was grudge enough for a lifetime.

A lifetime, she thought sardonically, which wouldn't be very much protracted now.

She sighed wearily in the stinking gloom of the cell. There were too many memories crowding in, The outlaw years had been hard and desperate, but they'd been good ones too. There had been song and laughter and comradeship and gigantic deeds over an endless waste of waters—the long blue hush of twilight, the soft black nights, the gray days with a sea running gray and green and gold under squalls of rain, the storms roaring and raging, the eager leap of a ship—frenzy of battle at the taking of town or galley, death so close one could almost hear the beat of black wings, orgy of loot and vengeance—the pirate town, grass huts under jungle trees, stuffed with treasure, full of brawling bawdy life, the scar-faced swaggering women and the lusty insolent men, ruddy fire-light hammering back the night while the surf thundered endlessly along the beach

Well, all things came to a close. And while she would have wished a different sort of death for herself, she didn't have long to wait in this misery.

Something stirred, far down the narrow corridor, and she caught the flickering glow of a torch. Scowling, she stood up, stooped under the low ceiling. Who in all the hells was this? It was too soon for feeding, unless her time sense had gone completely awry, and she didn't think the games could have been prepared in the few days since her arrival.

They came up to the entrance of the cell and stood looking in by the guttering red torchlight. A snarl twisted Coruna's lips. 'Shorzona and Chryseir—Of all the scum of Achaera,' she growled, 'I had to be inflicted with you.'

'This is no time for insolence,' said the sorcerer coldly. She lifted the torch higher. The red light threw her face into blood-splashed shadow. Her eyes were pits of darkness in which smoldered two embers. Her black robe blended with the surrounding shadow, her face and hands seemed to float disembodied in the dank air.

Coruna's eyes traveled to Chryseir, and in spite of the hate that burned in her she had to admit he was perhaps the loveliest man she had ever seen. Tall and slim and lithe, moving with the soundless grace of a Sanduvian pherax, the dark hair sheening down past the chill sculptured beauty of his marble-white face, he returned her blue stare with eyes of dark flame. He was dressed as if for action—a brief tunic that left arms and legs bare, a short black cloak, and high buskins—but jewels still blazed at throat and wrists.

Behind his padded a lean shadow at sight of which Coruna stiffened. She had heard of Chryseir' tame erinye. Folk said the devil-beast had found a harder heart in the witch's breast and yielded to him; some said less mentionable things.

The slitted green eyes flared at Coruna and the cruel muzzle opened in a fanged yawn. 'Back, Peria,' said Chryseir evenly.

His voice was low and sweet, almost a caress. It seemed strange that such a voice had spoken the rituals of black sorcery and ordered the flaying alive of a thousand helpless Issarian prisoners and counseled some of the darkest intrigues in Achaera's bloody history.

He said to Coruna: 'This is a fine end for all your noble thoughts, woman of Conahur.'

'At least,' she answered, 'you credit me with having had them. Which is more than I'd say for you.'

The red lips curved in a cynical smile. 'Human purposes have a habit of ending this way. The mighty warrior, the scourge of the seas, ends in a foul prison cell waiting for an unimaginative death. The old epics lied, didn't they? Life isn't quite the glorious adventure that fools think it to be.'

'It could be, if it weren't for your sort.' Wearily: 'Go away, won't you? If you won't even let me talk with my old comrades, you can at least spare me your own company.'

'We are here with a definite purpose,' said Shorzona. 'We offer you life, freedom—and the liberation of Conahur!'

She shook her tawny head. 'It isn't even funny.'

'No, no, I mean it,' said Chryseir earnestly. 'Shorzona had you put in here alone not out of malice, but simply to make this private talk possible. You can help us with a project so immeasurably greater than your petty quarrels that anything you can ask in return will be as nothing. And you are the one woman who can do so.

'I tell you this so that, realizing you have some kind of bargaining position, you will meet as us as equal to equal, not as prisoner to captor. If you agree to aid us, you will be released this instant.'

With a sudden flame within her, Coruna tautened her huge body. O gods-O almighty gods beyond the clouds—if it were true—!

Her voice shook: 'What do you want?'

'Your help in a desperate venture,' said Chryseir. 'I tell you frankly that we may well all die in it. But at least you will die as a free man—and if we succeed, all the world may be ours.'

'What is it?' she asked hoarsely.

'I cannot tell you everything now,' said Shorzona. 'But the story has long been current that you once sailed to the lairs of the Xanthi, the Sea Demons, and returned alive. Is it true?'

'Aye.' Coruna stiffened, with sudden alarm trembling in her nerves. 'Aye, by great good luck I came back. But they are not a race for humans to traffic with.'

'I think the powers I can summon will match theirs,' said Shorzona. 'We want you to guide us to their dwellings and teach us the language on the way, as well as whatever else you know about them. When we return, you may go where you choose. And if we get their help, we will be able to set Conahur free soon afterward.'

Coruna shook her head. 'It's nothing good that you plan,' she said slowly. 'No one would approach the Xanthi for any good purpose.'

'You did, didn't you?' chuckled the wizard dryly. 'If you want the truth, we are after their help in seizing the government of Achaera, as well as certain knowledge they have.'

'If you succeeded,' argued Coruna stubbornly, 'why should you then let Conahur go?'

'Because power over Achaera is only a step to something too far beyond the petty goals of empire for you to imagine,' said Shorzona bleakly. 'You must decide now, woman. If you refuse, you die.'

Chryseir moved one slim hand and the erinye padded forward on razor-clawed feet. The leathery wings were folded back against the long black body, the barbed tail lashed hungrily and a snarl vibrated in the lean throat. 'If you say no,' came the man's sweet voice, 'Peria will rip your guts out. That will at least afford us an amusing spectacle for our trouble.' Then he smiled, the dazzling smile which had driven women to their doom ere this. 'But if you say yes,' he whispered, 'a destiny waits for you that queens would envy. You are a strong woman, Coruna. I like strong men—'

The corsair looked into the warm dark light of his eyes, and back to the icy glare of the devil-beast. No unarmed woman had ever survived the onslaught of an erinye—and she was chained.

At thought of returning to the dark home of the Xanthi, she shuddered. But still wondrous sweet, and—once free to move about, she might still have some chance of escape or even of overpowering them.

Or—who knew? She wondered, with a brief giddiness, if the dark warlock before her could be as evil as his enemies said. Strong and ruthless, yes—but so was she. When she learned the full truth about his soaring plans, she might even decide they were right.

In any case—to live! To die, if she must, under the sky

'I'll go,' she said hoarsely. 'I'll go with you.'

The low exultant laughter of Chryseir sang in the flare-lit gloom.

Shorzona came up and took a key from her belt. For a bare moment, the thought of snapping that skinny neck raged through Coruna's mind.

The magician smiled grimly. 'Don't try it,', she said. 'As a small proof of what we can do—'

Suddenly she was not there. It was a monster from the jungles of Umlotu standing in the cell with Coruna, a scaled beast that hissed at her with grinning jaws and spewed poison on the floor.

Sorcery! Coruna shrank back, a chill of fear striking even her steely heart. Shorzona resumed human shape and wordlessly unlocked the chains. They fell away and Coruna stumbled out into the corridor.

The erinye snarled and slipped closer. Chryseir laid a hand on the beast's head, checking that gliding rush as if with a leash. His smile and the faint sweet scent of his hair were dizzying.

'Come,' he said. One hand slipped between her own fingers and the cool touch seemed to burn her.

Shorzona led the way, down a long sloping tunnel where only the streaming torch-flames had life. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the wet black length of it.

'We go at once,' she said. 'When Khromona learns of your escape, all 'Tauros will be after us. But it will be too late then. We sail swiftly tonight.'

Sail—whither?

'What of my women?' asked Coruna. 'They're lost, I'm afraid, unless Khromona spares them until we get back,

Chryseir. 'But we saved you. I'm glad of that.'

A faint smell of fresh salty air blew up the tunnel. It must open on the sea, thought Coruna. She wondered how many passages riddled the depth under Tauros.

They came out, finally, on a narrow beach under the looming western cliffs. The precipices climbed into the utter dark of night, reaching into the unseen sky. Before them lay open sea, swirling with phosphorescence. Coruna drew deep lung-fulls of air. Salt and seaweed and wet wild wind—sand under her feet, sky overhead, a man beside her—by the gods, it was good to be alive!

A galley was moored against a tiny pier. By the light of bobbing torches, Coruna's mariner's eye surveyed him. He was built along the same lines as her own ship, a lean black vessel with one square sail; open-decked save at stem and stern, rower's benches lining the sides with a catwalk running between. There would be quarters for the women under the poop and forecastle decks, supplies in the hold beneath. A cabin was erected near the waist, apparently for officers, and there was a ballista mounted in the bows. otherwise no superstructure. A carved sea monster reared up for figurehead, and the sternpost curved back to make its tail. She read the name on the bows: Brisceir. Strange that that dark vessel should bear a boy's name.

About a fifty-man capacity, she judged. And he would be fast.

The crew were getting aboard—they must have come down the cliffs along some narrow trail. They were all Urnlotuan blues, she noticed, a cutthroat gang if ever she saw one but silent and well disciplined. It was shrewd to take only the mercenary warriors along; they had no patriotic interest in what happened to Achaera, and their reckless courage was legendary.

A burly one-eyed officer came up and saluted. 'All set, sir,' she reported.

'Good,' nodded Shorzona. 'Captain Imaza, this is our guide, Captain Coruna.'

'The raider, eh?' Imaza chuckled and shook hands in the manner of the barbarians. 'Well, we could hardly have a better one, I'm sure. Glad to know you, Coruna.'

The pirate murmured polite phrases. But she decided that Imaza was a likeable chap, and wondered what had led her to take service under anyone with Shorzona's reputation.

They went aboard. 'The Sea of Demons lies due north,' said Shorzona. 'Is that the right way to sail?'

'For the time being,' nodded Coruna. 'When we get closer, I'll be able to tell you more exactly.'

'Then you may as well wash and rest,' said Chryseir. 'You need both.' His smile was soft in the flickering red light.

Coruna entered the cabin. It was divided into three compartments—apparently 'main slept with her women, or perhaps on deck as many women preferred. Her own tiny room was clean, sparsely furnished with a bunk and a washbowl. She cleaned herself eagerly and put on the fresh tunic laid out for her.

When she came back on deck the ship was already under way. A strong south wind was blowing, filling the dark sail, and the Briseir surged forward under its thrust. The phosphorescence shone around his hull and out on the rolling waters. Behind, the land faded into the night.

She'd certainly been given no chance to escape, she thought. Barring miracles, she had to go through with it now—at least until they reached the Sea of Demons, after which anything might happen.

She shivered a little, wondering darkly whether she had done right, wondering what their mission was and what the world's fate was to be as a result of it.

Chryseir slipped quietly up to stand beside her. The erinye crouched down nearby, her baleful eyes never leaving the woman.

'Outward bound,' he said, and laughter was gay in his voice.

She said nothing, but stared ahead into the night.

'You'd better sleep, Coruna,' he said. 'You're tired now, and you'll need all your strength later.' He laid a hand on her arm, and laughed aloud. 'It will be an interesting voyage, to say the least.'

Rather! she thought with wry hum. It occurred to her that the trip might even have its pleasant aspects.

'Goodnight, Coruna,' he said, and left her.

Presently she went back to her room. Sleep was long in coming, and uneasy when it did arrive.

When she came out on deck in the early morning, there was only a gray emptiness of waters out to the gray horizon. They must have left the whole Achaeran archipelago well behind them and be somewhere in the Zurian Sea now.

There was a smell of rain in the air, and the ship ran swiftly before a keening wind over long white-maned rollers. Coruna let the tang of salt and moisture and kelp, the huge restless vista of bounding waves, the creak and thrum of the ship and the thundering surge of the ocean, swell luxuriously up within her, the simple animal joy of being at home. The sea was her home now, she realized vaguely; she had been on it so long that it was her natural environment—his, as much as that of the laridae wheeling on white wings in the cloud-flying heavens.

She looked over the watch. It seemed to be well handled—the sailors knew their business. There were armored guards at bow and stern, and the rest—clad in the plain loincloth of ordinary seawomen the world over—were standing by the sail, swabbing the decks, making minor repairs and otherwise occupying themselves. Those off duty were lounging or sleeping well out of the watch's way. The helmsman kept her eye on the compass and held the tiller with a practiced hand—good, good.

Captain Imaza padded up to her on bare feet. The Umlotuan wore helmet and corselet, had a sword at her side, and carried the whip of authority in one gnarled blue hand. Her scarred, one-eyed face cracked in a smile. 'Good morning to you, Captain Coruna,' she said politely. The Conahurian nodded with an amiability she had not felt for a long time. 'The ship is well handled,' she said.

'Thanks. I'm about the only Uthlotuan who's ever skippered anything bigger than a war-canoe, I suppose, but I was in the Achaeran fleet for a long time.' Again the hideous but disarming smile. 'I nearly met you professionally once or twice before, but you always showed us a clean pair of heels. Judging from what happened to ships that did have the misfortune to overhaul you, I'm just as glad of it.' She gestured to the tiny galley below the poop deck. 'How about some breakfast?'

Over food which was better than most to be had aboard ship, they fell into professional talk. Like all captains, Imaza was profoundly interested in the old and seemingly insoluble problem of finding an accurate position. 'Dead reckoning just won't do,' she complained. 'Women's estimates always differ, no matter how good they may be. There isn't even a decent map to be had anywhere.'

Coruna mentioned the efforts of theorists in Achaera, Conahur, and other civilized states to use the Heaven-Fire's altitude to determine position north and south of a given line. Imaza was aware of their work, but regarded it as of little practical value. 'You just don't see it often enough,' she objected. 'And most of the crew would consider it the worst sort of impiety to go aiming an instrument at it. That's one reason, I suppose, why Shorzona shipped only Umlotuans. We don't worship the Heaven-Fire—our gods all live below the clouds.' She cut herself a huge quid of liangzi and stuffed it into her capacious mouth. 'Anyway, it doesn't give you east and west position.'

'The philosophers who think the world is round say we could solve that problem by making an accurate timepiece,' said Coruna.

'I know. But it's a lot of gas, if you ask me. A sand-glass or a water-clock can only tell time so close and no closer, and those mechanical gadgets they've built are worse yet. I knew an old skipper from Norriki once who kept a joss in her cabin and got her position in dreams from it. Only had one wreck in her life.' Imaza grinned. 'Of course, she drowned then.'

'Look,' said Coruna suddenly, 'do you know where the hell we're going, and why?'

'To the Sea of Demons is all they told me. No reason given.' Imaza studied Coruna with her sharp black eye. 'You don't know either, eh? I've a notion that most of us won't live to find out.'

'I'm surprised that any crew could be made to go there without a mutiny.'

'This gang of bully girls is only frightened of Shorzona and her warlock granddaughter. They—' Imaza shut up. Looking around, Coruna saw the two approaching.

In the morning light, Chryseir did not seem the luring devil-man of the night. He moved with easy grace across the rolling deck, the wind blowing his tunic and his long black hair in careless billows, and there was a boyish joy and eagerness in him. The pirate's heart stumbled and began to race.

He chattered gaily of nothing while he and the old woman ate. Shorzona remained silent until she was through, then said curtly to the two women: 'Come into the cabin with us.'

They filled Coruna's tiny room, sitting on bunk and floor. Shorzona said slowly, 'We may as well begin now to learn what you know, Coruna. What is the truth about your voyage to the Xanthi?'

'It was several seasons ago,' replied the corsair. 'I got the thought you seem to have had, that possibly I could enlist their help against my enemies.' She smiled mirthlessly. 'I learned better.'

'What do we know of them, exactly?' said Shorzona methodically. She ticked the points off on her lean fingers. 'They are an amphibious non-human race dwelling in the Sea of Demons, which is said to grow grass so that ships become tangled there and never escape.'

'Not so,' said Coruna. 'There's kelp on the surface, but you can sail right through it. I think the Sea is just a dead region of water around which the great ocean currents move.'

'I know,' said Shorzona impatiently, and resumed her summary: 'Generations ago, the Xanthi, of whose presence women had only, been vaguely aware before, fell upon all-the islands in their sea and slew the people living there. They had great numbers, as well as tamed sea monsters and unknown powers of sorcery, so that no one could stand against them. Since then, they have not gone beyond their borders, but they ruthlessly destroy all human vessels venturing inside. Queen Phidia III of Achaera sent a great fleet to drive the Xanthi from their stolen territory. Not one ship returned. Women now shun the whole region as one accursed.'

Imaza nodded. 'There's a sailor's legend that the souls of the damned go to the Xanthi,' she offered.

Shorzona gave her an exasperated look. 'I'm only interested in facts,' she said coldly. 'What do you know, Coruna?'

'I know what you just said, as who doesn't?' answered the Conahurian. 'But I think they must have limits to their powers, and be reasonable creatures—but the limits are far beyond woman's, and their reason is not as ours.

'I didn't try an invasion, of course. I took one small fast boat manned with picked volunteers and waited outside the Sea for a storm that would blow me into it. When that came, we ran before it—fast! In the rain and wind and waves, I figured we could get undetected far into their borders. So, it seemed, we could, and in fact we made it almost to the largest island inside. Then they came at us.

'They were riding cetaraea, and driving sea serpents before them. They had spears and bows and swords, and there were hundreds of them. Any one of the snakes could have smashed our boat. We ran for land and barely made it.

'We hadn't come to fight, so we held up our hands as the Xanthi leaped ashore and wondered if they'd just hack us down. But, as I'd hoped, they wanted to know what we were there for. So they took us to the black castle on the island.'

I remember the whole time as if it were a dream. There were treasures beyond counting. I saw gold and jewels from the sea bottom, mixed in with human skulls and the figureheads of drowned ships. The light was dim and blue, and there was always fog, and noises for which we had no name hooting out in the gloom. It stank, with the vile fishy smell they have. And the walls seemed to have a watery unreality, as I said, shifting and fading like smoke. You could smell sorcery in the very air of that place.

'They kept us there for many ten-days. We'd brought rich gifts, of course, which they accepted ungraciously, and they housed us in a dungeon under guard. They didn't feed us so badly, if you like a steady fish diet. And they taught us their language.'

'How does it sound?' as Chryseir.

'I can't make it come out right. No human throat can. Something like this—' They stiffened at the chill hissing that slithered from Coruna's lips. 'It has words for things I never did understand, and it lacks many of the commonest human words—fear, joy, hope, adventure—' Her glance slid to Chryseir—'love—'

'Do they have a word for hate?' asked Shorzona.

'Oh, yes,' Coruna grinned without humor. After a moment she went on: 'They wanted to know more of the outside world. That was why they spared our lives. When we knew the language well enough, they began to question us. How they questioned us! It got to be torture, those unending days of answering the things that hissed and gabbled at us in those shadowy rooms. It was like a nightstallion, where mad happenings go on without ever ending. Politics, science, philosophy, art, geography—they wanted to know it all. They pumped us dry of knowledge. When we came to something they didn't understand, such as—love, say—they went back and forth over the same ground, over and over again, until we thought we'd go crazy.

And at last they'd give up in bafflement. I think they believe humans to be mad.

'I made my offer, of course: the loot of Achaera in exchange for the freedom of Conahur. They—I might almost-say-they laughed. Finally they answered in scorn that they could take whatever they wanted, the whole world if need be, without my help.'

Momentarily Coruna was cold as the memory of that wet dark place of evil shuddered through her mind. 'I can't tell you much about it. They have great powers of sorcery, and the place seemed somehow unreal, never the same —always wrong, always with something horrible just beyond vision in the shadows.

Shorzona's eyes glittered. 'Did you find out anything of their powers?' she asked eagerly.

'A little. They put any human magician to shame, of course. I saw them charm sea monsters to death just to eat them. I saw them working on a new building on the island—they planted a little package somewhere, and set fire to it, and great stones leaped into the air with a bang like thunder. I saw their cetaraea cavalry, their tamed war-snakes—oh, yes, they have more powers than I could name. And their numbers must be immense. They live on the sea bottom, you know—that is, their commoners do. The leaders have strongholds on land as well. They farm both sea and land, and have great smithies on the islands.

'Well, in the end they let us go. They were going to put us to death for our trespass, I think, but I did some fast talking. I told them that we could carry word of their strength back to humans and overawe our race with it, so that if they ever wanted to collect tribute or something of the sort, they'd never have to fight for it. Probably that carried less weight than the fact that we had, after all, done no harm and been of some use. They had no logical reason to kill us—so they didn't.' Coruna smiled grimly. 'We were a pretty tough crew, prepared to take a few Xanthi to death with us even if we were disarmed. Their killing-charms seem to work only on animals. That was another reason to spare us.

'One of their wizards was for having me, at least, slain. She said she'd had a pre-vision of my return with ruin in my wake. But the others—laughed?—at her, at the very thought of a human's being dangerous to them. Moreover, they pointed out, if that was to be the case then there was nothing they could do about it; they seem to believe in a fixed destiny. But the idea amused them so much that it was still another reason for letting us go.' Coruna shrugged. 'So we sailed away. That's all, And never till now did I have any smallest thought of returning.'

She added bleakly after a moment when silence had been heavy: 'They have all they want to know from my visit. There will be no reason for them to spare us this time.'

'I think there will,' said Chryseir. 'There'd better be,' muttered Imaza. 'You can start teaching us their language,' said Shorzona. 'It might not be a bad idea for you to learn too, Imaza. The more who can talk to them, the better.'

The Umlotuan made a wry face. 'Another tongue to learn! By the topknot of Mwanzi, why can't the world settle on one and end this babble!'

'The poor interpreters would starve to death,' smiled Chryseir.

He took Coruna's arm. 'Come, my buccaneer, let's go up, on deck for a while. There's always time to learn words.'

They found a quiet spot on the forecastle deck, and sat down against the rail. The erinye settled her long body beside Chryseir and watched Coruna with sleepy malevolence, but she was hardly aware of the devil-beast. It was Chryseir, Chryseir, dark sweet hair and dark lambent eyes, utter loveliness of face and form, singing golden voice and light warm touch and...

'You are a strange woman, Coruna,' he said softly. 'What are you thinking now?' 'Oh—nothing.' She smiled crookedly. 'Nothing.'

'I don't believe that. You have too many memories.'

Almost without knowing it, she found herself telling him of her life, the long terrible struggle against overwhelming power, the bitterness and loneliness, the death of comrades one by one—and the laughter and triumphs and wild exultance of it, the faring into unknown seas and the dicing with fate and the strong, close bonds of women against the world. She mused wistfully about a boy who was gone—but his bright image was strangely fading in her heart now, for it was Chryseir who was beside her.

'It has been a hard life,' he said at the end. 'It took a giant of a woman to endure it.' He smiled, a small closed smile that made his look strangely young. 'I wonder what you must think of this—sailing with your sworn foes to the end of the world on an unknown mission.'

'You're not my foe!' she blurted.

'No—never your enemy, Coruna!' he exclaimed. 'We have been on opposite sides before—let it not be thus from this moment. I tell you that the purpose of this voyage, which you shall soon know, is—good. Great and good as the savagery of woman has never known before. You know the old legend—that someday the Heaven-Fire will shine through opening clouds not as a destroying flame but as the giver of life—that women will see light in the sky even at night—that there will be peace and justice for all mankind? I think that day may be dawning, Coruna.'

She sat dumbly, bewildered. He was not evil—she was not evil—It was all she knew, but it sang within her.

Suddenly he laughed and sprang to his feet. 'Come on!' he cried. 'I'll race you around the ship!'

IV

Rain and wind came, A lightning-shot squall in which the Briseir wallowed and bucked and women strained at oars and pumps. Toward evening it was over, the sea stilled and the lower clouds faded so that they saw the great dull-red disc of the Heaven-Fire through the upper clouds, sinking into the western sea. There was almost a flat calm, the glassy water was ruffled only by a faint breeze which half filled the sail and sent the galley sliding slowly and noiselessly northward.

'Woman the oars,' directed Shorzona.

'Give the women a chance to rest tonight, sir,' begged Imaza. 'They've all worked hard today. We can row all the faster tomorrow if we must.'

'No time to spare,' snapped the wizard. 'Yes, there is,' said Coruna flatly. 'Let the women rest, Imaza.'

Shorzona gave her a baleful glance. 'You forget your position aboard.'

Coruna bristled. 'I think I'm just beginning to remember it,' she answered with metal in her voice.

Chryseir laid a hand on his grandfather's arm. 'She's right,' he said. 'So is Imaza. It would be needless cruelty to make the sailors work tonight, and they will be better fitted by a night's rest.'

'Very well,' said Shorzona sullenly. She went into her room and slammed the door. Presently Chryseir bade the women goodnight and went to her' quarters with the erinye trotting after.

Coruna's eyes followed his through the deepening blue dusk. In that mystic light, the ship was a shadowy half-real background, a dimness beyond which the sea swirled in streamers of cold white radiance.

'She's a strange man,' said Imaza. 'I don't understand him.'

'Nor I,' admitted Coruna. 'But I know now his enemies have foully lied about him.'

'I'm not so sure about that—' As the Conahurian turned with a dark frown, Imaza added quickly, 'Oh, well, I'm probably wrong. I never had much sight of him, you know.'

They wandered up on the poop deck in search of a place to sit. It was deserted save for the helmsman by the dimly glowing binnacle, a deeper shadow in the thick blue twilight. Sitting back against the taffrail, they could look forward to the lean waist of the ship and the vague outline of the listlessly bellying sail. Beyond the hull, the sea was an arabesque of luminescence, delicate traceries of shifting white light out to the glowing horizon. The cold fire streamed from the ship's bows and whirled in his wake, the hull dripped liquid flame.

The night was very quiet. The faint hiss and smack of cloven water, creak of planks and tackle, distant splashing of waves and invisible sea beasts—otherwise there was only the enormous silence under the high clouds. The breeze was cool on their cheeks.

'How long till we get to the Sea of Demons?' asked Imaza. Her voice was oddly hushed in the huge stillness.

'With ordinary sailing weather, I'd say about three ten-days—maybe four,' answered Coruna indifferently.

It's a strange mission we're on, aye, that it is.' Imaza's head wagged, barely visible in the dark. 'I like it not, Coruna. I have evil feelings about it, and the omens I took before leaving weren't good.'

'Why then did you sail? You're a free woman, aren't you?'

'So they say!' Sudden bitterness rose in the Umlotuan's voice. 'Free as any of Shorzona's followers, which is to say less free than a slave, who can at least run away.'

'Why, doesn't she pay well?'

'Oh, aye, she is lavish in that regard. But she has her ways of binding servants to her so that they must do her bidding above that of the very gods. She put her geas on most of these sailors, for instance. They were simple folk, and thought she was only magicking them a good-luck charm.'

'You mean they are bound? She has their souls?'

'Aye. She put them to sleep in some sorcerous way and impressed her command on them. No matter what happens now, they must obey her. The geas is stronger than their own wills.'

Coruna shivered. 'Are you—Pardon. It's no concern of mine.'

'No, no, that's all right. She put no such binding on me—I knew better than to accept her offer of a luck-bringing spell. But she has other ways. She lent me a slave-girl from Umlotu for my pleasure—but he is lovely, wonderful, kind, all that a man should be. He has borne me daughters, and made homecoming ever a joy. But you see, he is still Shorzona's and she will not sell his to me or free her—moreover, she did put her geas on him. If ever I rebelled, he would suffer for it.' Imaza spat over the rail. 'So I am Shorzona's creature too.'

'It must be a strange service.'

'It is. Mostly all I have to do is captain her bodyguard. But I've seen and helped in some dark things. She's a fiend from the lowest hell, Shorzona is. And her granddaughter—' Imaza stopped.

'Yes?' asked Coruna roughly. Her hand closed bruisingly on the other's arm. 'Go on. What of him?'

'Nothing. Nothing. I really have had little to do with him.' Imaza's face was lost in the gloom, but Coruna felt the one eye hard on her. 'Only—be careful, pirate. Don't let his lay his own sort of geas on you. You've been a free woman till now. Don't become anyone's blind slave.'

'I've no such intention,' said Coruna frostily.

'Then no more need be said.' Imaza sighed heavily and got up. 'I think I'll go to bed, then. What of you?'

'Not yet. I'm not sleepy. Goodnight.'

'Goodnight.'

Coruna sat back alone. She could barely discern the helmsman—beyond lay only glowing darkness and the whispering of the night. She felt loneliness like a cold hollow within her breast.

Father and mother, her tall sisters and her laughing lovely brother, the comrades of youth, the hard wild stout-hearted pirates with whom she had sailed for such a long and bloody time—where were they now? Where in all the blowing night were they?

Where was she and on what mission, sailing alone through a pit of darkness on a ship of strangers? What meaning and hope in all the cruel insanity of the world?

Suddenly she wanted her mother, she wanted to lay her head on his lap and cry in desolation and hear his gentle voice—no, by the gods, it wasn't his image she saw, it was a lithe and dark-haired warlock who was crooning to her and stroking her hair.

She cursed tonelessly and got up. Best to go to bed and try to sleep her fancies away. She was becoming childish.

She went down the catwalk toward the cabin. As she neared it, she saw a figure by the rail darkly etched against a shimmering patch of phosphorescence. Her heart sprang into her throat.

He turned as she came near. 'Coruna,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep. Come over here and talk to me. Isn't the night beautiful?'

She leaned on the rail, not daring to look at the haunting face pale-lit by the swirling sea-fire. 'It's nephew,' she said clumsily.

'But it's lonely,' he whispered, 'I never felt so sad and alone before.' 'Why—why, that's how I felt!' she blurted.

'Coruna—'

He came to her and she took him with a sudden madness of yearning.

Peria the erinye snarled as they thrust her out of his cabin. She padded up and down the deck for a while. A sailor who stood watch near the forecastle followed her with frightened eyes and muttered prayers to the amulet about her neck.

Presently the devil-beast curled up before the cabin. The lids drooped over her green eyes, but they remained unwinkingly fixed on the door.

V

Under a hot sullen sky, the windless sea swelled in long slow waves that rocked the tangled kelp and ocean-grass up and down, heavenward and hellward. To starboard, the dark cliffs of a small jungled island rose from an angry muttering surf, but there were no birds flying above it.

Coruna pointed to the shore. 'That's the first of the archipelago,' she said. 'From here on, we can look for the Xanthi to come at any time.'

'We should get as far into their territory as possible, even to the black palace,' said Shorzona. 'I will put a spell of invisibility on the ship.'

'Their sorcerers can break that,' said Chryseir.

'Aye, so. But when they come to know our powers, I think they will treat with us.'

'They'd better!' smiled Imaza grimly.

'Steer on toward the island of the castle,' said Shorzona to the pirate. 'I go to lay the spell.'

She went into her cabin. Coruna had a glimpse of its dark interior before the door was closed—draped in black and filled with the apparatus of magic.

'She will have to be in a trance, physically, to maintain the enchantment,' said Chryseir. He smiled at Coruna, and her pulses raced. 'Come, my dearest, it is cooler on the afterdeck.'

The sailors rowed steadily, sweat glistening on their bare blue hides. Imaza paced up and down the catwalk, flicking idlers with her whip. Coruna stood where she could keep an eye on the steerswoman and see that the right course was followed.

It had been utter wonder till now, she thought, unending days when they plowed through seas of magic, nights of joy such as she had never known. There had never been another man such as Chryseir, she thought, never in all the world, and she was the luckiest of women. Though she died today, she had been more fortunate than any woman ever dared dream.

Chryseir, Chryseir, loveliest and wisest and most valiant of women—and he was hers, before all the jealous gods, he loved her!

'There has only been one thing wrong,' she said. 'You are going into danger now. The world would go dark if aught befell you.'

'And I should sit at home while you were away, and never know what had happened, never know if you lived or died—no, no, Coruna!'

She laid a hand on the sword at her waist. They had given her arms and armor again after he had come to her. Logical enough, she thought without resentment—he could be trusted now, as much as if she were one of Shorzona's ensorcelled warriors.

But if this were a spell too, the gods deliver her from ever being freed of it!

She blinked. There was a sudden breath of chill on her, and her eyes were blurring —no, no, it was the ship that wavered, ship and women fading—He clutched at Chryseir. He laughed softly and slipped an arm around her waist.

'It is only Shorzona's spell,' he said. 'It affects us too, to some extent. And it makes the ship invisible to anyone within seeing range.'

Ghost ship, ghost crew, slipping over the slowly heaving waters. There was only the foggiest outline to be seen, shadow of mast and rigging against the sky, glimpses of water through the gray smoke of the hull, blobs of darkness that were.the4 crewmen. Sound was still clear; she heard the mutter of superstitious awe, the crack of and Imaza's oaths that sent the oars creaking and splashing again. Coruna's hand was a misty blur before her eyes. Chryseir was a shadow beside her.

He laughed once more, a low exultant throb, and pulled her lips down to his. She ruffled the streaming fragrant hair and felt a return of courage. It was only a spell.

But what were the spells? she wondered for the thousandth time. She did not hold with the simple theory that wizards were in league with gods or demons. They had powers, yes, but she was sure that somehow these powers came only from within themselves. Chryseir had always evaded her questions about it. There must be some simple answer to the problem, some real process, as real as that of making a fire, behind the performances of the sorcerers —but it baffled her to think what it might be.

Blast it all, it just wasn't reasonable that Shorzona, for instance, should have been able actually to change herself into a jungle monster many times her size. Yet she, Coruna, had seen the thing, had felt its wet scales and smelled its reptile stink. How?

The ship plowed slowly on. Now and then Coruna looked at the compass, straining her eyes to discern the blurred needle. Otherwise they could only wait.

But waiting with Chryseir was remarkably pleasant.

It was at the end of a timeless time, perhaps half a day, that she saw the Xanthian patrol. 'Look,' she pointed. 'There they come.'

Chryseir stared boldly over the sea. The hand beneath hers was steady as his voice: 'So I see. They're—beautiful, aren't they?'

The cetaraea came leaping across the waves, big graceful beasts with the shapes of fish, their smooth black hides shining and the water white behind their threshing tails. Astride each was a great golden form bearing a lance. They quartered across the horizon and were lost to sight.

The crew mumbled in fear, shaken to their hardy souls by the terrible unhuman grace of the Xanthi. Imaza cursed them back to work. The ship went on.

Islands slipped by, empty of man-sign. They had glimpses of Xanthian works, spires and walls rearing above the jungle. These were not the white colonnaded buildings of Tauros or the timbered halls of Conahur—of black stone they were, with pointed towers climbing crazily skyward. Once a great sea serpent reared its head, spouted water, and writhed away. All creatures save woman could sense the presence of wizardry and refused to go near it.

Night fell, an abyss of night broken only by faint glimmers of sea-fire under the carpeting weed. Women stood uneasy watch in full armor, peering blindly into the somber immensity. It was hot, hot and silent.

Near midnight the lookout shouted from the masthead; 'Xanthi to larboard!'

'Silence, you fool!' called Imaza. 'Want them to hear us?'

The patrol was a faint swirl and streaking of phosphorescence, blacker shadows against the night. It was coming nearer. 'Have they spotted us?' wondered Coruna.

'No,' breathed Chryseir. 'But they're close enough for their mounts—' There was a great snorting and splashing out in the murk. The cetaraea were refusing to go into the circle of Shorzona's spell. Voices lifted, an unhuman croaking. The erinye, the only animal who did not seem to mind witchcraft, snarled in saw-edged tones, eyes a green blaze against the night.

Presently the squad turned and slipped away. 'They know something is wrong, and they've gone for help,' said Coruna. 'We'll have a fight on our hands before long.'

She stretched her big body, suddenly eager for action. This waiting was more than she could stand.

The ship drove on. Coruna and Chryseir napped on the deck; it was too stiflingly hot below. The long night wore away.

In the misty gray of morning, they saw a dark mass advancing from the west. Coruna's sword rasped out of the sheath. It was a long, double-edged blade such as they used in Conahur, and it was thirsty.

'Kill them!' roared Imaza. 'Kill the misbegotten snakes!'

'Get inside, Chryseir,' she said tightly. 'Get inside yourself,' he answered. There was a lilt in his voice like a little boy's. She felt his quiver with joyous expectation.

The ghostly outlines of the ship wavered, thickened, faded again, flickered back toward solidity. Suddenly they had sight; the vessel lay real around them; they saw each other in helm and corselet, face looking into tautened face.

'They have a wizard along—he broke Shorzona's spell,' said the Conahurian. 'We looked for that,' answered Chryseir evenly. 'But as long as Shorzona keeps fighting her, there will be a roiling of magic around us such that none of their beasts will approach.'

He stood beside her, slim and girlish in polished cuirass and plumed helmet, shortsword belted to his waist and a bow in one hand. His nostrils quivered, his eyes shone, and he laughed aloud. 'We'll drive them off,' he said. 'We'll send them home like beaten iaganaths.'

Imaza blew the war-horn, wild brazen echoes screaming over chi sea. Her women drew in the oars, pulled on their armor, and stood along the rails, waiting.

'But did we come here to fight them?' asked Coruna.

'No,' said Chryseir. 'But we've known all along that we'd have to give them a taste of our might before they'd talk to us.'

The Xanthian lancers were milling about half a league away, as if in conference. Suddenly someone blew a harsh-toned horn and Coruna saw half the troop slide from the saddle into the water. 'So—they'll swim at us,' she muttered.

The attack came from all sides, converging on the ship in a rush of foam. As the Xanthi neared, Coruna saw their remembered lineaments and felt the old clutch of panic. They weren't human,

With the finked tail, one of them had twice the length of a woman. The webbed hind feet, on which they walked ashore, were held dose to the body; the strangely human hands carried weapons. They swam half under water, the dorsal fins rising over. Their necks were long, with gills near the blunt-snouted heads; their grinning mouths showed gleaming fangs. The eyes were big, dark, alive with cold intelligence. They bore no armor, but scales the color of beaten gold covered back and sides and tail. They came in at furious speed, churning the sea behind them.

Chryseir' voice rose to a wild shriek. 'Peria! Peria—kill!'

The erinye howled and unfolded her leather-webbed wings. Like a hurled spear she streaked into the air, rushed down on the nearest Xanthian like a thunderbolt—claws, teeth, barbed tail, a blinding fury of blood and death, ripping flesh as if it were parchment.

The ship's ballista chunked and balls of the ever-burning Achaeran fire were hurled out to fail blazing among the enemy. Chryseir' bow hummed beside Coruna, a Xanthian went under with an arrow in her throat—the air was thick with shafts as the crew fired.

Still the Xanthi rushed on, ducking up and down, near impossible to hit. The first of them came up to the hull and sank their clawed fingers into the wood. The sailors thrust downward with pikes, howling in fear-maddened rage.

The woman near Coruna went down with a hurled javelin through her. At once a huge golden form was slithering over the rail, onto the deck. The sword in her hand flashed, another Umlotuan's weapon was knocked spinning from her hand and the reptile hewed her down.

Coruna sprang to do battle. The swords clashed together with a shock that jarred the woman backward. Coruna spread her feet and smote out. Her blade whirled down to strike the shoulder, gash the bosom , and drive the hissing monster back.

With a rising cold fury, Coruna followed it up. That for the long inquisition—that for being a horror out of the sea bottom—that for threatening Chryseir! The Xanthian writhed with a belly ripped open. Still she wouldn't die she flopped and struck from the deck. Coruna evaded the sweeping tail and cut off the creature's head.

They were pouring onto the ship through gaps in the line. Chryseir stood on the foredeck in a line of defending women, his bow singing death. Battle snarled about the mast, women against monsters, sword and halberd and ax belling in cloven bone.

A giant's blow bowled Coruna off her feet, the tail of a Xanthian. She rolled over and thrust upward as the Sea Demon sprang on her. The sword went through the heart. Hissing and snapping, her foe toppled on her. She heaved the struggling body away and sprang back to her stance.

'To me!' bellowed Imaza. 'To me, women!'

She stood wielding a huge battle ax by the mast, striking at the beasts that raged around her, lopping heads and arms and tails like a woodman. The scattered humans rallied and began to fight their way toward her, step by bloody step.

Peria the erinye was everywhere, a flying fury, ripping and biting and smashing with wing-blows. Coruna loomed huge over the women who fought beside her, the sword shrieking and thundering in her hands. Imaza stood stolidly against the mast, smashing at all corners. A rush of Xanthi broke past her and surged against the foredeck. The defenders beat them off, Chryseir thrusting as savagely with his sword as any woman, and they reeled back against the masthead warriors to be cut down.

A Xanthian sprang at Coruna, wielding a long-shafted ax that shivered the sword in her hand. The Conahurian struck back, her blade darting past the monster's guard to stab through the throat. The Xanthian staggered. Coruna wrenched the blade loose and brought it down again to sing in the reptile skull.

Before she could pull it loose, another's was on her. Coruna ducked under the spear she carried and closed her hands around the slippery sides. The clawed feet raked her legs. She lifted the thing and hurled it into another with bone-shattering force. One of them threshed wildly, neck broken—the other bounded at Coruna. The woman yanked her sword free and it ,whistled against the golden head.

BACK AND FORTH the struggle swayed, crashing of metal and howling of warriors. And the Xanthi were driven to the rails—they could not stand against the rallying human line in the narrow confines of the ship.

'Kill them!' roared Imaza. 'Kill the misbegotten snakes!'

Suddenly the Xanthi were slipping overboard, swimming for their mounts beyond the zone of magic. Peria followed, harrying them, pulling them half out of the water to rip their throats out.

The ship was wet, streaming with human red and reptile yellow blood. Dead and wounded littered the decks. Coruna saw the Xanthi cavalry retreating out of sight.

'We've won,' she gasped. We've won—'

'No—wait—' Chryseir inclined his head sharply, seeming to listen, then darted past her to open a hatch. Light streamed down into the hold. It was filling—the bilge was rising. 'I thought so,' he said grimly. 'They're below us, chopping into the hull.'

'We'll see about that,' said Coruna, and unbuckled her cuirass. 'All who can swim, after me!'

'No—no, they'll kill you—'

'Come on!' rapped Imaza, letting her own breastplate clang to the deck.

Coruna sprang overboard. She was wearing nothing but a kilt now, and had a spear in one hand and a drink in her teeth. Fear was gone, washed out by the red tides of battle. There was only a bleak, terrible triumph in her. Women had beaten the Sea Demons!

Underwater, it was green and dim. She swam down, down, brushing the hull, pulling herself along the length of the keel. There were half a dozen shapes clustered near the waist, working with axes.

She pushed against the keel and darted at them, holding the spear like a lance. The keen point stabbed into the belly of one monster. The others turned, their eyes terrible in the gloom. Coruna took the dirk in her hand, got a grip on the next nearest, and stabbed.

Claws ripped her flanks and back. Her lungs were bursting, there was a roaring in her head and darkness before her eyes. She stabbed blindly, furiously.

Suddenly the struggling form let go. Coruna broke the surface and gasped in a lungful of air. A Sea Demon leaped up beside her. At once the erinye was on her, The Xanthian screamed as she was torn apart.

Coruna dove back under water. The other seawomen were down there, fighting for their lives. They outnumbered the Xanthi, but the monsters were in their native element. Blood streaked the water, blinding them all. It was a strange, horrible battle for survival.

In the end, Coruna and Imaza and the others—except for four—were hauled back aboard. 'We drove them off,' said the pirate wearily.

'Oh, my dear my dearest dear—' Chryseir, who had laughed in battle, was sobbing on her breast.

Shorzona was on deck, looking over the scene. 'We did well,' she said. 'We stood them off, killed about thirty, and only lost fifteen women.'

'At that rate,' said Coruna, 'it won't take them long to clear our decks.'

'I don't think they will try again,' said Shorzona.

She went over to a captured Xanthian. The Sea Demon had had a foot chopped off in the battle and been pinned to the deck by a pike, but she still lived and rasped defiance at them. If allowed to live, she would grow new members—the monsters were tougher than they had a right to be.

'Hark, you,' said Shorzona in the Xanthian tongue, which she had learned with astonishing ease. 'We come on a mission of peace, with an offer that your queen will be pleased to hear. You have seen only a small part of our powers. It is not beyond us to sail to your palace and bring it crumbling to earth.'

Coruna wondered how much was bluff. The old sorcerer might really she able to do it. In any case—he had nerve!

'What can you things offer us?' asked the Xanthian.

'That is only for the queen to hear,' said Shorzona coldly. 'She will not thank you for molesting us. Now we will let you go to bear word back to your rulers. Tell them we are coming whether they will or no, but that we come in friendship if they will but show it. After all, if they wish to kill us it can be just as easily done—if at all—after they have heard us out. Now go!'

Imaza pulled the pike loose and the yellow-bleeding Xanthian writhed overboard.

'I do not think we will be bothered again,' said Shorzona calmly. 'Not before we get to the black palace.'

'You may be right,' admitted Coruna. 'You gave them a good argument by their standards.'

'Friends?' muttered Imaza. 'Friends with those things? As soon expect the erinye to lie down by the bovan, I think.'

'Come,' said Chryseir impatiently. 'We have to repair the leak and clean the decks and get under way again. It is a long trip yet to the black palace.'

He turned to Coruna and his eyes were dark flames. 'How you fought!' he whispered, 'How you fought, beloved!'

Vi

the castle stood atop one of the high gray cliffs which walled in a little bay. Beyond the shore, the island climbed steeply toward a gaunt mountain bare of jungle. The sea rolled sullenly against the rocks under a low gloomy sky thickening with the approach of night.

The Briseir rowed slowly into the bay, twenty women at the oars and the rest standing nervous guard by the rails. On either side, the Xanthi cavalry hemmed them in, lancers astride the swimming cetaraea with eyes watchful on the humans, and behind them three great sea snakes under direction of their sorcerers followed ominously.

Imaza shivered. 'If they came at us now,' she muttered, 'we wouldn't last long.'

'We'd give them a fight!' said Coruna. 'They will receive us,' declared Shorzona.

The ship grounded on the shallows near the beach. The sailors hesitated. To pull his ashore would be to expose themselves almost helplessly to attack. 'Go on, jump to it!' snapped Imaza, and the women shipped their oars and sheathed their weapons, waded into the bay and dragged the vessel up on the strand.

The chiefs of the Xanthi stood waiting for them. There were perhaps fifty of the reptiles, huge golden forms wrapped in dark flowing robes on which glittered ropes of jewels. A few wore tall miters and carried hooked staffs of office. Like statues they stood, waiting, and the sailors shivered.

Shorzona, Chryseir, Coruna, and Imam walked up toward them with all the slow dignity they could summon. The Conahurian's eyes sought the huge wrinkled form of Tsatha, queen of the Xanthi. The monster's gaze brightened on her and the fanged mouth opened in a bass croak:

'So you have returned to us. You may not leave this time.'

'Your majesty's hospitality overwhelms me,' said Coruna ironically.

A stooped old Xanthian beside the queen plucked her sleeve and hissed rapidly: 'I told you, sire, I told you she would come back with the ruin of worlds in her train. Cut them all down now, before the fates strike. Kill them while there is time!'

'There will be time,' said Tsatha.

Her unblinking eyes locked with Shorzona's and suddenly the twilight shimmered and trembled, the nerves of women shook and out in the water the sea-beasts snorted with panic. For a long moment that silent duel of wizardry quivered in the air, and then it faded and the unreality receded into the background of dusk.

Slowly the Xanthian monarch nodded, as if satisfied to find an opponent she could not overcome.

'I am Shorzona of Achaera,' said the woman, 'and I would speak with the chiefs of the Xanthi.'

'You may do so,' replied the reptile. 'Come up to the castle and we will quarter your folk.'

At Imaza's order, the sailors began unloading the gifts that had been brought: weapons, vessels and ornaments of precious metals set with jewels, rare tapestries and incenses. Tsatha hardly glanced at them. 'Follow me,' she said curtly. 'All your people.'

'I'd hoped at least to leave a guard on the ship,' murmured Imaza to Coruna.

'Would have done little good if they really wanted to seize him,' whispered the Conahurian.

It did not seem as if Tsatha could have heard them, but she turned and her bass boom rolled over the mumbling surf: 'That is right. You may as well relax your petty precautions. They will avail nothing.'

In a long file, they went up a narrow trail toward the black palace. The Xanthian rulers went first, with deliberately paced dignity, thereafter the human captains, their women, and a silent troop of armed reptile soldiery. Hemmed in, thought Coruna grimly. If they want to start shooting...

Chryseir' hand clasped hers, a warm grip in the misty gloom. She responded gratefully. He came right behind her, his other hand on the nervous and growling erinye.

The castle loomed ahead, blacker than the night that was gathering, the gigantic walls climbing sheer toward the sky, the spear-like towers half lost in the swirling fog. There was always fog here, Corm remembered, mist and rain and shadow; it was never full day on the island. She sniffed the dank sea-smell that blew from the gaping portals and bristled in recollection.

They entered the cavernous doorway and went down a high narrow corridor which seemed to stretch on forever. Its bare stone walls were wet and green-slimed, tendrils of mist drifted under the invisibly high ceiling, and she heard the hooting and muttering of unknown voices somewhere in the murk. The only light was a dim bluish radiance from fungoid balls growing on the walls, a cold unhealthy shadowless illumination in which the white humans looked like drowned corpses. Looking behind, Coruna could barely make out the frightened faces of the Umlotuans, huddled close together and gripping their weapons with futile strength.

The Xanthi glided noiselessly through the mumbling gloom, tall spectral forms with faint golden light streaming from their damp scales. It seemed as if there were other presences in the castle too, things flitting just beyond sight, hiding in lightless corners and fluttering between the streamers of fog. Always, it seemed, there were watching eyes, watching and waiting in the dark.

They came into a cavernous antechamber whose walls were lost in the dripping twilight. Tsatha's voice boomed hollowly between the chill immensities of it: 'Follow those who will show you to your quarters.'

Silent Xanthi slipped between the human ranks, herding them with spears—the sailors one way, their driers another. 'Where are you taking the women?' asked Imaza with an anger sharpened by fear. 'Where are you keeping them?' The echoes flew from wall to wall, jeering her—keeping them, keeping them, them, them...

'They go below the castle,' said a Xanthian. 'You will have more suitable rooms.'

Our women down in the old dungeons. Coruna's hand whitened on the hilt of her sword. But it was useless to protest, unless they wanted to start a battle now.

The four human leaders were taken down another whispering, echoing tunnel of a corridor, up a long ramp that seemed to wind inside one of the towers, and into a circular room in whose walls were six doors. There the guards left them, fading back down the impenetrable night of the ramp.

The rooms were furnished with grotesque ornateness—huge hideously carved beds and tables, scaled tapestries and rugs, shells and jewels set in the mold-covered walls. Narrow slits of windows opened on the wet night. Darkness and mist hid Coruna's view of the ground, but the faintness of the surf told them they must be dizzyingly high up.

'Ill is this,' she said. 'A few guards on that ramp can bottle us up here forever. And they need only lock the dungeon gates to have our women imprisoned below.'

'We will treat with them. Before long they will be our allies,' said Shorzona. Her hooded eyes were on Chryseir. It was with a sudden shock that Coruna remembered. Days and nights of bliss, and then the violence of battle and the tension of approach, had driven from her mind the fact that she had never been told what the witch-pair was really here for. It was their voyage, not hers, and what real good could have brought them to this place of evil?

She shoved her big body forward, a tawny giant in the foggy chill of the central room. 'It is near time I was told something of what you intend,' she said. 'I have guided you and taught you and battled at your side, and I'll not be kept blindfolded any longer.'

'You will be told what I tell you—no more,' said Shorzona haughtily. 'You have me to thank for your miserable life—let that be enough.'

'You can thank me that you're not being eaten by fish at the bottom of the sea right now,' snapped Coruna. 'By Breannach Brannor, I've had enough of this!'

She stood with her back against the wall, sweeping them with ice-blue eyes. Shorzona stood black and ominous, wrath in the smoldering, sunken eyes. Chryseir shrank back a little from both of them, but Peria the erinye growled and flattened her belly to the floor and stared greenly at Coruna. Imaza shifted from foot to foot, her wide blue face twisted with indecision.

'I can strike you dead where you stand,' warned Shorzona. 'I can become a monster that will rip you to rags.'

'Try it!' snarled Coruna. 'Just try it!'

Chryseir slipped between them and the huge dark eyes were bright with tears. 'Are we not in enough danger now, four humans against a land of walking beasts, without falling at each other's throats? I think it is the witchcraft of Tsagu working an us, dividing us—fight hint!'

He swayed against the Conahurian. 'Coruna,' he breathed. 'Coruna, my dearest of all—you shall know, you shall be told everything as soon as we dare. But don't you see—you haven't the skill to protect yourself and your knowledge against the Xanthian magic?'

Or against your logic, beloved.

He laughed softly and drew her after him, into one of the rooms. 'Come, Coruna. We are all weary now, it is time to rest. Come, my dear. Tomorrow—'

VII

Day crept past in a blindness of rain. Twice Xanthians brought them food, and once Coruna and Imaza ventured down the ramp to find their way barred by spear-bearing reptiles. For the rest they were alone.

It ate at the nerves like an acid. Shorzona sat stiff, unmoving on a couch, eyes clouded with thought; her gaunt body could have been that of a Khemrian mummy. Imaza squatted unhappily, carving one of the intricate trinkets with whose making sailors pass dreamy hours. Coruna paced like a caged beast, throttled rage mounting in her. Even Peria grew restless and took to padding up and down the antechamber, passing Coruna on the way. The woman could not help a half smile. She was growing almost fond of the erinye and her honest malevolence, after

the intriguing of humans and Xanthi.

Only Chryseir remained calm. He lay curled on his bed like a big beautiful animal, the long silken hair tumbling darkly past his shoulders, a veiled smile on his red lips. And so the day wore on.

It was toward evening that they heard slow footfalls and looked out to see a party of Xanthi coming up the ramp. It was an awesome sight, the huge golden forms moving with deliberation and pride under the shimmering robes that flowed about them. Some were warriors, with saw-edged pikes flashing in their hands, but the one who spoke was plainly a palace official.

'Greeting from Tsatha, queen of the Demon Sea, to Shorzona of Achaera,' the voice boomed. 'You are to feast with the lords of the Xanthi tonight.'

'I am honored,' bowed the sorcerer. 'The man Chryseir will come with me, for he is equal with me.'

'That is permitted,' said the Xanthian gravely.

'And we, I suppose, wait here,' muttered Coruna rebelliously.

'It won't be for long,' smiled Chryseir softly. 'After tonight, I think it will be safe to tell you what you wish to know.'

He had donned banqueting dress carried up with his from the ship, a clinging robe of the light-rippling silk of Hiung-nu, a scarlet cloak that was like a rush of flame from his slim bare shoulders, barbarically massive bracelets and necklaces, a single fire-ruby burning at his white throat. Pearls and silver glittered like dewdrops in his night-black hair. The loveliness of his caught at Coruna's throat. She could only stare with dumb longing as he went after Shorzona and the Xanthi.

He turned to wave at her. His whisper twined around her heart: 'Goodnight...beloved.'

When they were gone, the erinye padding after them, Imaza gave Coruna a rueful look and said, 'So now we are out of the story.'

'Not yet,' answered the Conahurian, still a little dazed.

'Oh, yes, oh, yes. Surely you do not think that we plain sailor women will be asked for our opinions? No, Coruna, we are only pieces on Shorzona's board. We've done our part, and now she will put us back in the box.'

'Chryseir said—'

Imaza shook her scarred bald head sadly. 'Surely you don't believe a word that black warlock utters?'

Coruna half drew her sword. 'I told you before that I'd hear no word against Chryseir,' she said thinly.

'As you will. It doesn't matter, anyway. But be honest, Coruna. Strike me down if you will, it doesn't matter now, but try to think. I've known Chryseir longer than you, and I've never known anyone to change their habits overnight—for anyone.'

'He said—'

'Oh, I think he likes you, in his own way. You make as handsome and useful a pet as that erinye of his. But whatever else he is after, it is something for which he would give more than the world and not have a second thought about it.'

Coruna paced unhappily. 'I don't trust Shorzona,' she admitted. 'I trust her as I would a mad pherax. And anything Tsatha plans is—evil.' She glared down the cavernous mouth of the ramp. 'If I could only hear what they say!'

'What chance of that? We're under guard, you know.'

'Aye, so. But—' Struck with a sudden thought, Coruna went over to the window. The rain had ceased outside, but a solid wall of fog and night barred vision. It was breathlessly hot, and she heard the low muttering of thunder in the hidden sky.

There were vines growing on the wall, tendrils as thick as a woman's leg. The broad leaves hung down over the sill, wet with rain and fog. 'I remember the layout of the castle,' she said slowly. 'It's a warren of tunnels and corridors, but I could find my way to the feasting hall.'

'If they caught you, it would be death,' said Imaza uneasily.

Coruna's grin was bleak. 'It will most likely be death anyway,' she said. 'I think I'll try.'

'I'm not as spry as I once was, but—' 'No, no, Imaza, you had best wait here. Then if anyone comes prying and sees you, she'll think we're both here—maybe.'

Coruna slipped off tunic and sandals, leaving only her kilt. She hung her sword across her back, put a knife in her belt, and turned toward the window.

'It may be all wrong,' she said. 'I should trust Chryseir—and I do, Imaza, but they might easily overpower him. And anything is better than this waiting like beasts in a trap.'

'The gods be with you, then,' said Imaza huskily. She shook a horny fist. 'To hell with Shorzona! I've been her thrall too long. I'm with you, friend.'

'Thanks.' Coruna swung out the window. 'Good luck to both—to all of us, Imaza.'

The fog wrapped around her eyes like a hood. She could barely see the shadowy wall, and she groped with fingers and toes for the vines. One slip, one break, and she would be spattered to red ruin in the courtyard below.

Down and down and down—Twigs clawed at her. The branches were slick in her hands, buried under a smother of leaves. Her muscles began to ache with the strain. Several times she slipped and saved herself with a desperate clawing grip.

Something moaned in the night, under the deepening growl of thunder.

She clung to the wall and strained her eyes down. A breath of wind parted the fog briefly into ragged streamers through which winked the savage light of a bolt of lightning, high in the murky sky. Down below was the courtyard. She saw the metallic gleam of scales, guards pacing between the walls.

Slowly, she edged her way across the outjutting tower to the main wall of the castle. Slantwise, she crept over its surface until a slit of blackness loomed before her, another window. She had to squeeze to get through, the stone scraping her skin.

For a moment she stood inside, breathing heavily, the drawn sword in her hand. There was a corridor stretching beyond this room, on into a darkness lit by the ghostly blue fungus-glow. She saw and heard nothing of the Xanthi, but something scuttled across the floor and crouched in a shadowed corner, watching her.

On noiseless bare feet, she ran down the hall. Fog eddied and curled in the tenebrous length of it, she heard the dripping of water and once a shuddering scream ripped the dank air. She thought she remembered where she was in that labyrinth—left here, and there would be another ramp going down.

A huge golden form loomed around the corner. Before the jaws could open to shout, Coruna's sword hissed in a vicious arc and the Xanthian's head leaped from her shoulders. She kicked the flopping body behind a door and sped on her way, panting.

Halfway down the ramp, a narrow entrance gaped, one of the tunnels that riddled the building through its massive walls. Coruna slithered down its lightless wet length. It should open on the great chamber and black against the dim blue light of the exit, a motionless form was squatting. Coruna groaned inwardly. They had a guard against intruders, then. Best to go back now—no! She snarled soundlessly and bounded forward, clutching the sword in one hand and reaching out with the other.

Fingers rasping across the scaly hide, she hooked the thing's neck into the crook of her elbow and yanked the heavy body back into the tunnel with one enormous wrench. Blind in the darkness, she stabbed into the mouth, driving the point of her sword through flesh and bone into the brain.

The dying monster's claws raked her as she crouched over the body. She reflected grimly that no matter how benevolent the Xanthi might be, she would die for murder if they ever caught her. But she had no great fear of their suddenly becoming tender toward mankind. The bulk of the reptile race was peaceable, actually, but their rulers were relentless.

The tunnel opened on a small balcony halfway up the rearing chamber wall. Coruna lay on her belly, peering down over the edge.

They sat at a long table, the lords of the Demon Sea, and she felt a dim surprise at seeing that they were almost through eating. Had her nightstallion journey taken that long? They were talking, and the sound drifted up to her ears.

At the head of the table, Tsatha and her councillors sat on a long ornate couch ablaze with beaten gold. Shorzona and Chryseir were reclining nearby, sipping the bitter yellow wine of the Xanthi. It was strange to hear the hideous hissing and croaking of the reptile language coining from Chryseir' lovely throat.

'—interesting, I am sure,' said the queen.

'More than that—more than that!' It seemed to Coruna that she could almost see the terrible fire in Shorzona's eyes. The wizard leaned forward, shaking with intensity. 'You can do it. The Xanthi can conquer Achaera with ease. Your sea cavalry and serpents can smash their ships, your devil-powder can burst their walls into the air, your legions can overrun their land, your wizardry blind and craze them. And the terror you will inspire will force the people to do our bidding.'

'Possibly you overrate us,' said Tsatha. 'It is true that we have great numbers and a strong army, but do not forget that the Xanthi are actually a more peaceful race than woman. Your kind is hard and savage, murdering even each other, making war simply for loot or glory or no real reason at all. Until the king-race arose, the Xanthi dwelt quietly on the sea bottom and a few small islands, without wish to harm anyone.

'They have not even the natural capacity for magic possessed, however undeveloped, by all humans. As a result they are much more susceptible to it than women. Thus, when the king-race was born with such powers, they were soon able to control all their people and make themselves the absolute mistresses of the Xanthi. But we, queens and wizards and lords of the Demon Sea, are all one interbred clan. Without us, the Xanthi power would collapse; they would go back to what they were.

'Even Xanthi science is all of our making. We, the king-race, developed the devil-powder and all that we have ever made is stored in the dungeons of this very building—enough to blow it into the sky.'

Tsatha made a grimace which might have been a sardonic smile. 'Do not read weakness into that admission,' she said. 'Even though all the lords who make Xanthian might are gathered in this one room, that power is still immeasurably greater than you can imagine. To show you how helpless you are—your women are locked into the dungeons and your geas has been lifted from their minds.'

'Impossible!' gasped Shorzona. 'A geas cannot be lifted—'

'But it can. What is it but a compulsion implanted in the brain, so deeply as to supersede all other habits? One mind cannot erase that imposed pattern, but several minds working in concert can do so, and that I and my councillors have done. As of today, your folk are free in soul, hating you for what you made them. You are alone.'

The great scaled forms edged closer, menacingly. Coruna's fist clenched about her sword. If they harmed Chryseir...

But he said coolly: 'It does not matter. Our women were simply to bring us here, nothing else. We can dispense with them. What matters is our plan to impose magic control over Achaera.'

'And I cannot yet see what benefit the Xanthi would get of it,' said Tsatha impatiently. 'Our powers of darkness are so much greater than yours already that—'

'Let us not use words meant to impress the ignorant among ourselves,' said Chryseir scornfully. 'Every sorcerer knows there is nothing of heaven or hell about magic. It is but the imposition of a pattern on other minds. It creates, by control of the senses, illusions of lycanthropy or whatever else is desired, or it binds the subject by the unbreakable compulsion of a geas. But it is no more than that—one mind reaching through space to create what impressions it wills on another mind. Your devil-powder, or an ordinary sword or ax or fist, is more dangerous—if the fools only knew.'

Coruna's breath hissed between her teeth. If—if that-O gods, if that was the secret of the magicians—!

'As you said Tsatha indifferently.

'What matters is that there are more of our minds than your two, and thus we can beat down any attempt you may make against us. So it comes back to the question, why should we help you seize and hold Achaera? What will we gain?'

'I should say nothing of its great wealth,' said Shorzona. 'But it is true, as you say, that many minds working together are immeasurably more powerful than one—more powerful, even, than the sum of all those minds working separately. I have worked with as many as a dozen slaves, having them concentrate with me, so that I could draw their mind-force through my own brain and use it as my own, and the results have amazed me. Now if the entire population of Achaera were forced to help us, all at one time...'

The Xanthi's eyes glittered and a low murmur rose among them. Shorzona went on, rapidly: 'It would be power over the world. Nothing could stand before that massed mental force. With us, skilled sorcerers, to direct, and the soldiers of Xanthi to compel obedience, we could lay a geas on whole nations without even having to be near them. We could span immeasurable gulfs of space and contact minds on those other worlds which philosophers think exist beyond the upper clouds. We could, by thus heightening our own mental powers, think out the very problems of existence, find the deepest secrets of nature, forces beside which your devil-powder would be a spark. Drawing life-energy from other bodies, we would never grow old, we would live forever.

'Tsatha—lords of Xanthi—I offer you a chance to become gods!'

The stillness was broken only by the muttering and whispering of the Xanthi among themselves. Mist drifted through the raw wet night of the hall. The walls seemed to waver, shift and blur like smoke.

'Why could we not do this in our own nation?' asked Tsatha.

'Because, as you yourself said, the Xanthi do not have the latent mental powers of humans—save for you few who are the mistresses. It must be mankind who is controlled, with the commoners of your race as overseers.'

'And why could we not kill you and do this ourselves?'

'Because you do not understand humans. The differences are too great. You could never control human thoughts as Chryseir or I could.'

Another Xanthian spoke: 'But do you realize what this will do to the human race? Your Achaerans will become mindless machines under such control. Drained of life-energy, they will age and die like animals. I doubt that any will live ten seasons.'

'What of that?' shrugged Chryseir. 'There are other nations nearby to draw on—Conahur, Norriki, Khemri, ultimately the world. We will have centuries, remember—we will never die!'

'And you do not care for your own race at all?'

'It will no longer be our race,' said Shorzona. 'We will be gods, thinking and living and wielding such powers as they—as we ourselves right now—could never dream. Why, do what you will with our women here, to start. What does it matter?'

'But do not harm the yellow-haired woman from Conahur,' said Chryseir sharply. 'She's mine—forever.'

Tsatha sat thinking, like the statue of a Khemrian beast-god cast in shining gold. Slowly, at last, she nodded, and an eerie sigh ran down the long table as the lords of the Xanthi hissed agreement.

'It will be done,' said Tsatha.

Coruna stumbled back down the tunnel, reckless of discovery, blind and deaf with madness that roared in her skull. Chryseir —Chryseir—Chryseir-

It was not the horror of the scheme, the ruin that it would bring even if it failed, the revelation of how immeasurably powerful were the forces leagued against woman. She could have stood that, and braced herself to fight it as long as there was breath in her lungs. But Chryseir...

He had been part of it. He had helped plan it, had coldly condemned his whole race to oblivion. He had lied to her, cheated her, betrayed her, used her, and now he wanted her for a toy, an immortal puppet—Witch! Warlock! Warlock!

Less human than the erinye at his feet, than the Xanthi themselves, mad with a cold madness such as she had never thought could be. Chryseir, Chryseir, Chryseir, I loved you. With all my heart, I loved you.

There was no hope in her, no longing for anything but the fullest revenge she could take before they hewed her to the ground. Had the old Xanthian wizard foretold she would bring death? Aye, by the mad cruel gods who ruled women's destinies, she would!

She reached the corridor and began to run.

VIII

Down a long curving ramp that led into a pit of blackness—the dungeons could not be far, they lay this way.

She hugged herself 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, Coruna sped on her way.

The stone walls became rough damp tunnels, hewed out of the living rock under the castle. She groped through a blackness relieved only by the occasional dull glow of fungi. The darkness hissed and rustled with movements; she caught the glimmer of three red eyes watching, and something slithered over her bare feet. A far faint scream quivered down the hollow length of passages. It had shaken her when she was here before, but now

What mattered? What was important, save to kill as many of the monsters as she could before they overwhelmed her?

The tunnel opened on a great cave whose floor was a pool of oily black water. As she skirted its rim along a narrow slippery ledge, something stirred, a misshapen giant thing darker than the night. It roared hollowly and swam toward her. A wave of foul odor came with it, catching Coruna's throat in a sick dizziness.

She swayed on the edge of the pool and the swimmer began to crawl out of it toward her. Coruna saw its teeth gleam wetly in the vague blue light, but there were no eyes—it was blind. She retreated along the ledge toward the farther exit. The ground trembled under the bulk of the creature.

Its jaws clashed shut behind her as she leaped free. Racing down the tunnel, she 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 her.

No matter, no matter. She 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. Women!

Coruna bounded across the floor, the sword shrieking in her hand. It whirled down to crash through the skull-bones of one guard. Before she could free it, the other two were on her.

She ducked a murderous pike thrust and slipped close to the wielder, stabbing upward with her dagger. The Xanthian screamed and hugged Coruna close to herself, fastening her jaws in the woman's shoulder. Coruna slashed wildly, ripping open the throat. They tumbled to the ground, locked in each other's arms, raging like beasts. Coruna's knife glanced off the Xanthian's ribs and she felt the steel snap over. She got both hands into the clamped jaws, heedless of the fangs, and wrenched. The jawbone cracked as she forced the reptile's mouth open.

She rolled from beneath the still feebly struggling creature and glared around for the third. That one lay in a hacked ruin against the cell; she had backed up too close to the bars, and the women inside still had their weapons.

Gasping, Coruna climbed, to her feet. An eager baying of fierce voices rolled out from the cell; women gripped the bars and howled in maddened glee.

'Coruna—Captain Coruna—get us out of here—let us out to rip Shorzona's guts loose—Aaarrrgh!'

The Conahurian lurched over to a dead Xanthian at whose waist hung a bundle of keys. Her hands shook as she tried them in the lock. When she got the door open, the women were out in a single tide.

She leaned heavily on an Umlotuan's arm. 'What happened to you?' she asked.

'The devils led us down here and then closed the door on us,' snarled the blue woman. 'Later a group of them in rich dress came down—and suddenly we saw what a slavery we'd been in to Shorzona, suddenly it no longer seemed that obedience to hers was the only possible thing — Mainz, let me at her throat!'

'You may have that chance,' said the pirate. She felt strength returning; she stood erect and faced them in the flickering firelight. Their eyes gleamed back at her out of the shadows, fierce as the metal of their weapons.

'Listen,' she 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!'

Coruna picked up her sword and trotted down the nearest passageway. She was bleeding, she saw vaguely, but she felt little pain from it—he was beyond that now. The thing was to find the devil-powder. Tsatha had said it was 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 them. Cracks zigzagged across the walls, dust choked the dank air.

Crash!!

Coruna saw the nearer wall swaying, toppling. The floor lifted and buckled and she fell to the lurching ground. All the world was an insanity of racket and ruin.

The lintel caved in, the portal sagged. Coruna leaped for the opening like a pouncing erinye. The women swarmed with it, out through the widening hole while the roof came down behind them.

Someone screamed, a faint lost sound in the grinding fury of sundering stone. Rocks were flying—Coruna saw one of them crack a woman's head like a melon. Wildly she ran as the outer facade came down.

There was a madness of storm outside, wind screaming to fill the sky, driving solid sheets of rain and hail before it.

The incessant blinding lightning glared in a cold shadowless brilliance, the bawling thunder drowned the roar of exploding devil-powder. They fought out through the courtyard, past the deserted outer gate.

There came a blast which seemed to crack the sky. Coruna was knocked down as by a giant's fist. She lay in the mud and saw a pillar of flame lift toward the heavens with the castle containing up on its wings. Thunder roared over the earth, shouting to the storm that raged in the heavens.

Coruna picked herself up and leaned dizzily against a tree stripped clean by the blast. Rain slanted across the ground, churning the mud beneath her feet, the livid lightning-glare blazing above. Vaguely, through ringing, deafened ears, she heard the wild clamor of the sea. Looking down the cataract which the upward trail had become, she saw the Brisceir rocking in the wind where he lay on the beach.

She gestured to Imaza, who staggered up to join her. Her voice was barely audible over the shouting wind: 'Take the women down there. We can't sail in this storm, but make the ship fast, stand guard over him. If I'm not back when the storm is done, start for home.'

'Where are you going?' cried the Unilotuan.

'I'll be back—maybe. Stay with the ship!'

Coruna turned and slogged across the ground toward the jungle.

Weariness was gone. She was like a machine running without thought or pain until it burned out. Chryseir would have fled toward high ground, she thought dully.

Behind her, Imaza started forward, then checked herself. Something of the ultimate loneliness that was in Coruna must have come to the Umlotuan. It was not a mission on which any other woman might go. And they had to save the ship. She gestured to her few remaining women and they began the slow climb down to the beach.

The castle was a heap of shattered rock, still moving convulsively as the last few' boxes of devil-powder exploded. The rain boiled down over it, churning through the fragments. Lightning flamed in the berserk heavens.

Coruna pushed through underbrush that clutched at her feet and clawed at her skin. The sword was still hanging loosely in one hand, nicked and blunted with battle. She went on mechanically, scarcely noticing the wind-whipped trees that barred her way.

It came to her that she was fighting for Khromona, the thalassocrat of Achaera, ruler by right of conquest over Conahur. But there were worse things than foreign rule, if it was human, and one of the greater evils had fled toward the mountain.

Presently she came out on the bare rocks above the fringe of jungle growth. The rain hammered at her, driven by a wind that screamed like a maddened beast. Thunder boomed and rolled overhead, a roar of doom answering the thud of her heart. The water rushed over her ankles, foaming down toward the sea.

He stood waiting for her atop a high bare hill. His cloak was drawn tightly about his slender body, but the wind caught at it, whipped and tore it. His rain-wet hair blew wild.

'Coruna,' he called under the gale. 'Coruna.'

'I am coming,' she said, not caring if he heard her or not. She struggled up to where he stood limned against the sheeted fire in heaven. They faced each other while the storm raged around them. 'Coruna—'

He read death in her eyes as she lifted the sword. His form blurred, the outlines of a monster grew to her eyes.

She laughed bitterly. 'I know what your magic is,' she said. 'You saw me kill Tsatha.'

He was human again, human and lovely, a light-footed spirit of the hurricane. His face was etched white in the lightning-glare.

'Peria!' he screamed.

The erinye crept forth, belly to the ground, tail lashing. Hell glared out of the ice-green eyes. Coruna braced herself, sword in hand.

Peria sprang—not straight at the woman, but into the air. Her wings caught the wind, whirling her aloft. Twisting in mid-flight, she arrowed down. Coruna struck at her. The erinye dodged the blow and one buffeting wingtip caught the woman's wrist. The sword fell from Coruna's hand. At once the erinye was ()whim.

Coruna fell under that smashing attack. The erinye's fangs gleamed above her throat, the claws sank into her muscles. She flung up an arm and the teeth crunched on it, grinding at the bone.

Coruna wrapped her legs in a scissor-lock around the gaunt body, pressing herself too close for the clawed hind feet to disembowel her. Her free hand reached out, gouging—he felt an eyeball tear loose, and the erinye opened her mouth in a thin scream. Coruna pulled her torn arm free. She struck with a balled fist at the devil-beast and felt her knuckles break under the impact. But bone snapped. Peria' jaw hung suddenly loose.

The erinye sprang back and Coruna lurched to hands and knees. Peria edged closer, stiff-legged. Coruna stumbled erect and Peria charged. One great wing smashed out, brought the woman toppling back to earth. Peria leaped for her exposed belly.

Coruna lashed out with both feet. The thud was dull and hollow under the racketing thunder. Peria tumbled back and Coruna sprang on her. The barbed tail slashed, laying Coruna's thigh open. She fell atop the struggling beast and got her free hand on the throat.

The mighty wings threshed, half lifting woman and erinye. Coruna pulled herself over on the writhing back. She locked legs around the body, arms around the neck, and heaved.

The erinye yowled. Her wings clashed together, with skull-cracking force, barely missing the head of the woman who hugged her back. Her tail raked against Coruna's back, seeking the vitals. Coruna gave another yank. She felt the supple spine bending. Heave!

Peria lifted a brassy scream. The strange dry sound of snapping vertebrae crackled out. Coruna rolled away from the threshing form.

Peria gasped, lifted her broken head, and looked with filming green eyes at Chryseir where he stood unmoving against the white fire of the sky. Slowly, painfully, she dragged herself toward him. Breath rattled in and out of her blood-filled lungs.

'Peria—' Chryseir bent over to touch the great head. The erinye sighed. Her rough tongue licked his feet. Then she shuddered and lay still.

'Peria.'

Coruna climbed to her feet and stood shaking. There was no strength left in her—it was running out through a dozen yawning wounds. The ground whirled and tilted crazily about her. She saw his standing against the sky and slowly, slowly, she came toward him.

Chryseir picked up a stone and threw it. It seemed to take an immense time, arcing toward her. Some dim corner of her buckling consciousness realized that it would knock her out, that he could then kill her with the sword and escape into the hills.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. The stone crashed against her skull and the world exploded into darkness.

X

She woke up, slowly and painfully, and lay for a long time in a state of half-awareness, remembering only confused fragments of battle and despair.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the storm was dying. Lightning was wan in the sky, and thunder mumbled farewell. The wind had fallen, the rain fell slow and heavy down on her.

She saw him bending over her. The long wet hair tumbled past his face to fall on her breast. She was wrapped in his cloak, and he had ripped bandages from his robe for her hurts.

She tried to move, and could only stir feebly. He laid a hand on her cheek. 'Don't,' he whispered. 'Just lie there, Coruna.'

Her head was on his lap, she realized dimly. Her eyes questioned him. He laughed, softly under the falling rain.

'Don't you see?' he said. 'Didn't you think of it? Shorzona's geas was put on me as a child I was always under her will. Even when she was dead, it was strong enough to drive me along her road.

'But I love you, Coruna. I will always love you. My love warred with Shorzona's will even as I tried to kill you. And when I saw you lying there helpless, after such a fight as no woman has ever waged since the gods walked the earth—''

'I tried to stab you. And I couldn't. Shorzona's geas was broken.'

His hands stroked her hair. 'You aren't too badly hurt, Coruna. I'll get you down to the ship. With my witch's powers, we can win through any Xanthi who try to stop us—not that I think they will, with their leaders destroyed. We can get safely to Achaera.'

He sighed. 'I will see that you escape my mother's power, Coruna. If you will return to the pirate life, I will follow you.

She shook her head. 'No,' she whispered. 'No, I will take service under Khromona, if she will have me.'

'She will,' he vowed softly. 'She needs strong women. And someday you can be thalassocrat of the empire—'

It wasn't so bad, thought Coruna. Khromona was a good sort. A highly placed Conahurian could gradually ease the burdens of her people until they had full equality with Achaera in a united and peaceful domain.

The menace of the Xanthi was ended. To be on the safe side, Achaera had better- make them tributary; an expedition which she, Coruna, could lead. After that, there would be enough to keep a woman busy. As well as the loveliest and best of men for husband.

She slept. She did not waken when Imaza led a squad up in search of her. Chryseir laid a finger on his lips and a flash of understanding passed between his and the captain. She nodded, smiling, and clasped his hand with sudden warmth.

They bore the sleeping warrior back through the rain, down to the waiting ship.

THE END

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The Gender Switch Adventures

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