Viglus, his eyes protruding, his hand clutching at his breast, struggled to rise but could not.
Heming half staggered up, fumbling for his sword, then pitched forward on the table with a horrid rattle of the throat.
But Corsus leaped up trembling, his dull eyes aflame with triumphant malice. “The King hath thrown and lost,” he cried, “as well I foresaw it. And now have the children of night taken him to themselves. And thou, damned Corinius, and you sons of Corund, are but dead swine before me. Ye have all drunk venom, and ye are dead. Now will I deliver up Carcë to the Demons. And it, and your bodies, with mine electuary rotting in your vitals, shall buy me peace from Demonland.”
“O horrible! Then I too am poisoned,” cried the Lady Zenambria, and she fell a-swooning.
“’Tis pity,” said Corsus. “Blame the passing of the cups for that. I might not speak ere the poison had chained me the limbs of these cursed devils, and made ’em harmless.”
Corinius’s jaw set like a bulldog’s. Painfully gritting his teeth he rose from his seat, his sword naked in his hand. Corsus, that was now passing near him on his way to the door, saw too late that he had reckoned without his host. Corinius, albeit the baneful drug bound his legs as with a cere-cloth, was yet too swift for Corsus, who, fleeing before him to the door, had but time to clutch the heavy curtains ere the sword of Corinius took him in the back. He fell, and lay a-writhing lumpishly, like a toad spitted on a skewer. And the floor of steatite was made slippery with his blood.
THE LAST CONJURING IN CARCË.
“’Tis well. Through the guts,” said Corinius. No might he had to draw forth the sword, but staggered as one drunken, and fell to earth, propped against the jambs of the lofty doorway.
Some while he lay there, harkening to the sounds of battle without; for the Iron Tower was fallen athwart the outer wall, making a breach through all lines of defence. And through that breach the Demons stormed the hold of Carcë, that never unfriendly foot had entered by force in all the centuries since it was builded by Gorice I. An ill watch it was for Corinius to lie harkening to that unequal fight, unable to stir a hand, and all they that should have headed the defence dead or dying before his eyes. Yet was his breath lightened and his pain some part eased when his eye rested on the gross body of Corsus twisting in the agony of death upon his sword.