THE SEA HAG(61)

Those were the human guards. At either side of the throne shimmered a demon, orange also but clad in flames that vanished upward in curls of filthy smoke.

Parol cackled and pointed at the merchant. The guard holding the chain of office in his soft hands laughed in agreement. He stepped closer and slapped a loop of the heavy gold across Takseler's face, then kicked the merchant as he stumbled to his knees.

The guard was Rifkin. King Hale's butler now had new livery and new duties. He seemed comfortable in both of them.

Parol laughed. The human guards joined him.

The demons raised their snaky heads. Billows of fire surged from their throats, curling so high that they threatened to blister the painted sailcloth...

"No more!" Dennis shouted, to the mirror and to fate.

The mirror obeyed, showing the youth only a reflection of himself.

Fate—the doom which closed on King Hale and his subjects when he determined to cheat the sea hag of her bargain—would be harder to avoid.

Dennis' left hand was caressing Chester's carapace. The metal wasn't even scratched by the blow Malduanan had struck it the day before. It provided Dennis with the touch of something that had stayed unchanged since his earliest memories.

His parents had aged and shrunken from the wonderful, all-powerful creatures of his youth. Emath Palace was no longer the glittering wonderland in whose halls the boy Dennis had gamboled.

Chester said quietly, "Do not tie yourself to one who is so much greater that your life becomes a toy."

Dennis rubbed the robot affectionately.

He'd changed too, although—

He shrugged his shoulders, watching the play of his muscles in the mirror. A man's muscles, and a sword at his side that he'd used as a man—with the scars to prove it.

Change wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

"Mirror, show me the Princess Aria," he demanded. His chin was lifted and eyes turned resolutely away from Chester. The robot had no expression, but Dennis knew that he'd imagine a look of disapproval on the metal if he let himself see it.

He realized with a lurch of dismay that he'd hoped—dreamed, prayed—that Aria would be bathing again. But—

The mirror showed what was rather than what the viewer wished. Aria sat cross-legged on a stool, with a twelve-string lute nestled into her lap. The strings flashed light as her fingers played over them and her lovely mouth shaped sounds which Dennis couldn't hear.

Gannon could hear them. The King's Champion lounged on the floor, his right arm leaned across the end of a low divan.

There were twenty or more people watching Aria's performance, young men and women—all the women beautifully gowned and none of them as beautiful as the princess.

Gannon, with his black garb and dark good looks, was in the center of the group. His eyes were on Aria, and it seemed to Dennis that she looked back at the champion more than chance would require.

Gannon smiled.

"No!" Dennis cried, turning his head.

He'd come to the mirror for reassurance. The mirror instead gave him truth; two truths, and neither of them reassuring in the least.

"No," Dennis repeated as he looked again, his voice now a whisper. His tortured expression gazed back at him, looking for help that the youth didn't know the words to ask for.

His face hardened, and he shrugged loose the sword at his side. "Show me—" he ordered. "Show me any other huts that are, are beside this pasture."

Dennis was wondering how he could rephrase his question and make it clear to the mirror—to the demon or device which controlled the mirror—that he wanted to find another creature like Malbawn or Malduanan.

"Before they find me," Dennis muttered aloud.

Chester made a metallic snorting sound.

"All right!" the youth snapped as he looked down at his companion. "But it's something I can do something about. Not like Emath."

And not like the Princess Aria, who could look at anyone and sing to anyone she pleased. Whether Dennis, a vagabond and visitor to Rakastava, liked it or not.

Dennis was blushing as he turned back to the mirror. Chester knew him too well.

Chester had saved his life against Malduanan.

The mirror had understood his instructions. On it gloomed the image of Malduanan's hut, hunching in the woods where Dennis had left it less than an hour before. The vision had remarkable depth and detail: when a scarlet lizard scooted up the doorframe, its tail seemed to flick beyond the surface of the glass.

"That's good," Dennis said encouragingly, as though he were speaking to another person instead of a thing of glass and bronze. "But show me a different one. Is there a—"

The picture was shifting before Dennis could finish his question. As he blinked at the new scene, he thought the mirror had made a mistake after all: this was a real house, not a hovel of twigs and moldy leaves.