“Let ‘em have it, Doc!” Kirin yelled. He thumbed the catch and a secret panel opened in the wall through which he sprang out into the rotunda, racing to the aid of the fat thaumaturge.
Wheezing, Temujin lurched to his feet as the file of robots came clanking down on him. His wand blazed electric fire, shattering the shoulder-joint of the foremost automaton. The metal casing shattered and the limb went flying. The maimed mechanical staggered into a comrade and jostled him from his stance. The metal man, flailing to regain his lost balance, crashed against the balustrade. Thin sculpted marble broke before his weight, hurling him over the edge. He fell to the landing below with a tremendous crash of rending steel.
Although he ached in every nerve and sinew, Kirin hurried to the side of the embattled thaumaturge. The Rod of Power was slow-working and could not hold the massed squadron of steel-clad war-machines at bay for long. And already the alarm was spreading—broadcast by one of the robots, no doubt, using a radio beam to contact the central command post of the palace forces. Again the magnified voice rang out through the citadel.
“The missing prisoners have been located on the Ninth Level, in the White Rotunda at the junction of corridors 9-delta and 11-beta. They are armed with energy weapons and are under attack by guard squadron 104. All units advance to block exits leading to those halls—”
“Good to see you in one piece, lad,” Temujin puffed, cocking a merry blue eye at the Earthling. “Sorry about all this fuss, though!”
“Forget it—wish I had my gun. Can you hold ‘em off, Doc? Caola is holding the panel open—there’s a secret passage in the wall right over there—”
“So that’s where you popped from! I was wondering!” Temujin broke off to blast one of the metal men to flying fragments with a bolt directed at the center of its steel thorax.
“Alas, I doubt if I can keep this up much longer,” he wheezed. “These rods are not inexhaustible, you know.”
“Quickly!” the girl called from the black opening in the wall. “This way—Azeera comes!”
“Let’s go, Doc,” Kirin snapped. “Back up towards the wall. Keep holding them off with your blast the best you can…”
“Hold, Earthling!”
The cold silver voice froze him in his tracks. He turned and saw a fearful sight. Azeera slowly melted into being out of thin air in the center of the rotunda. By whatever science miracle of the Ancients her materialization was accomplished, it was clearly no illusion. She was present in the flesh and wild with rage.
The cold inhuman beauty of her jade features was distorted into a carven mask of utter fury. Her eyes blazed with hatred. Her jet-black hair had burst loose from her slender coronet and floated about her head like a halo of black flames. The silken gown clung to every sinuous curve of her magnificent body, accentuating the lines of breast and hip and thigh with glittering silver fire.
Gone was the seductress, the alluring siren. This was Azeera, the tyrant queen of Zangrimar, terrible as a mad goddess in her rage, and armed with might. Kirin’s heart sank to behold her in her wrath.
As she held him at bay with the blaze of her witchery, he dimly heard the clank of steel-shod legions coming from either hall. They were trapped between three forces, and at the mercy of the Witch Queen. And he had no gun! How could mere mortal flesh do battle against hard steel?
And then, in the utter extremity of his need, that mysterious Other Presence within him woke once more. A tide of more-than-human power surged through his weary, battered body and aching brain. He felt a tingling flood of fresh vigor sweep through every cell and nerve and organ of his body. His mind became crystal clear, sharply focused. From hidden depths within him, that eerie command over mind forces awoke once again… the same force that had against all odds destroyed Pangoy the Nexian earlier. A boundless confidence filled him. How can flesh battle against steel…?
He answered his own unspoken question aloud.
“It can’t. But we can set steel against steel… !”
As Temujin and Caola regarded him with puzzled, almost frightened eyes, the Earthling straightened. The bright glory of a God flamed into being around him, like a visible aureole of Power.
He held out his hands against the oncoming horde of steel warriors. And then he struck.
11. SKY BATTLE
For a moment it seemed as if nothing had happened. Then the advancing line of robots coming down the opposite hall stopped dead. They milled in confusion. The air shrilled with the squeal of electronic conversation as they babbled to one another in strange confusion.
Then the foremost of their number turned on the second and battered in his head!
Circuits shorted with a blaze of sparks. The dead colossus fell sprawling, and his metallic murderer turned to assault a second victim. Caola, Temujin and the Witch Queen stared in awe and astonishment at this unexpected diversion.
The rank of robots on the stair, who had been first to accost the fallen Temujin, now broke the strange paralysis that had halted their progress as well. Steel limbs rose and fell, as metal warriors roared in battle with their former comrades. Stone cracked and splintered as steel gladiators, locked in combat, shattered through the balustrade and fell to the landing below.
Within instants the metal horde were caught in a fury of internecine strife. Ignoring the humans, they fell upon each other in a fury of blind rage. The din of battle was terrific, as steel claws wrenched and tore at steel limbs, as clubbed extremities battered in metal skulls, stove in steel-clad thorax and chest.
Blue fire spat from torn wires. Power centers detonated deafeningly, blasting metal bodies apart. Oily smoke seethed from steaming bodies of the fallen.
Azeera was frozen in astonishment. Never in the long years of her reign had her metal legions revolted against her supremacy. Now it seemed that her robot warriors had gone mad!
“Stop, you fools! I, your Queen, command you to cease!”
The metal-clad horde turned to regard her. Then, stilling their combat, they marched forward again. Kirin—who alone knew what had happened—seized the gaping doctor and jerked him aside, out of the path of the metal giants. They tramped across the rotunda towards the place where Azeera stood. Behind her, at the mouth of the other hall, a similar troop advanced, and up the stairway came a third.
Azeera screamed, as realization came to her; terror flamed in her glorious eyes. She clawed at the crystal scepter that danged like an ornate, jewelled toy at her girdle. Lambent green flame welled from its tip. Tendrils of emerald radiance whipped out to writhe about the limbs of the oncoming steel colossi. They fell, some of them, immobilized by the force of her magic weapon. But the others marched forward…
She fell, trampled and torn beneath the steel-shod legs of her mechanical slaves. It was a grim sight to behold and Temujin shuddered to see it. Caola paled and turned away. Even Kirin turned aside, his thin lips tightening, his face bleak. He did not look again at the torn and scarlet thing that wriggled feebly beneath the crushing tread of the marching automata…
He knew not how he had done the thing, but he had directed a blast of electric force against the robot horde. Their reasoning centers, overloaded, had gone dead. Mindless, they obeyed only the last order they had received—to kill! And in their blind fury, they had crushed and trampled down Azeera, the Witch Queen of Zangrimar, into death. She had dreamed of whelming the Inner Worlds beneath her steel-shod legions. Well, the Inner Worlds had naught to fear from her now…
The thunder of conflict when the three files of marching robots encountered each other, echoed from the curved walls of the rotunda. In seconds the air was filled with a frightful din. And from other portions of the palace, Kirin heard a similar uproar. It would seem that the force he had directed against their robot foes had passed through the entire citadel.