THE SEA HAG(62)

It was small, but no smaller than the old houses in Emath village which had been built before space in the bustling community became too valuable to waste on one-story dwellings. The house sat at—in—the margin of the jungle, the way Malbawn and Malduanan's huts did, but it had a proper, human-sized door with a window to either side. The walls seemed to be shingled, and the roof was probably covered with thatch.

It couldn't be hair, though that was what it looked like no matter how carefully Dennis squinted.

"Show me the inside," he ordered.

He was getting very used to the mirror. It didn't make him uncomfortable, the way he'd felt when using the Wizard Serdic's device.

That had put him into an unreal scene—unreal because it was part of the past and therefore dead. Malbawn's mirror was no more than a window through which Dennis could look. He could understand the mirror.

So long as he didn't think too closely about it.

The image in the mirror flip-flopped as though a painting were being spun—front-side, back-side, and both images executed in meticulous detail.

Inside the house, a plump old woman in bonnet and apron was sweeping the floor with a twig broom.

"Oh!" Dennis gasped.

He'd expected some horrific monster, though why...? This was a human dwelling. A man as tall as Dennis would have to duck to step through the doorway. A creature like Malbawn or Malbawn's brother—

Well, either of those monsters were nearly as big as this whole house.

The house had only one room. The woman stood her broom in the corner and checked a pot of something on the brick stove. Apparently satisfied, she opened the door and finished her sweeping with firm, quick strokes. Her face was old—lined and gray.

Dennis felt his nose wrinkle in distaste, then felt embarrassed. His nurse had been old and ugly too, with a perpetual scowl and a hair-sprouting wart on her chin. No one could have had a kinder heart—or have been dearer to him until her death when he was ten.

But what were the house and its occupant doing here?

The only thing Dennis saw that disturbed him was the sword resting above the doorway on wooden pegs. It seemed completely out of place in this homely dwelling. As out of place as the house itself was.

Dennis ran his finger along the mirror's bronze frame. It felt much cooler than the humid air.

"Enough," he said quietly, and at once he was facing his dim reflection in a sheet of glass. "Chester," he went on, still facing the mirror, "can we find that house, or is it too far away?"

"It is at the end of the field, Dennis," the robot said. "It is a mile from here, or somewhat less." Chester's voice was empty of inflection or implied advice.

When Dennis let his mind wander, it showed him Gannon smiling and Aria smiling back at the champion.

"All right, let's go then!" he said harshly.

He strode out of the hut, gripping his sword pommel crushingly. For a hundred yards he walked very fast, squinting against sunlight and the tears of frustration that were prickling their way out of the corners of his eyes.

Sun and exercise warmed the youth, slowed him; made him calmer. He glanced to the side and smiled to see Chester mincing along with his tentacles fully extended so that the high grass only brushed the bottom of his carapace.

Dennis reached toward the robot. Chester humphed! internally and ignored the gesture. He was making it clear to his master that Dennis' enthusiasm—for getting into trouble—was no more than a way to work off other frustrations.

Dennis understood. He smiled ruefully and waved his right palm to the robot. It was blotchy from its pressure on the swordhilt.

"The man who is violent like the wind will founder in the storm he raises, Dennis," the robot said grumpily, but a tentacle snaked up and curled into the offered hand.

"Still," Dennis said, "it's not a bad thing that we're doing..."

Though to be honest with himself, he wasn't sure what he was doing. Visiting a little old lady, very possibly. But it just didn't seem right that a perfectly normal house should be here, where nothing else was normal.

The pasture rolled and curved through the jungle. The cows were out of sight before Dennis got his first direct glimpse of the house nestled into the jungle side. The sun was near mid-sky, so the the overhanging thatch shadowed the front of the little building. Flowers grew in little boxes beneath the shuttered windows.

Something was very wrong.

Dennis paused and took a deep breath. "Well, it won't be anything we can't handle," he said. "We beat Malbawn and Malduanan, didn't we?"

"That is so, Dennis," Chester agreed unemotionally.

"And," Dennis went on, slipping the Founder's Sword up in its sheath and letting it ring as it slid down again, "I've got a star-metal blade, have I not, Chester?"