THE SEA HAG(64)

"It's not for me to take precedence over such as you," said the old woman with a shake of her head. "But if the noble prince insists..."

Bowing to him, she stepped back through the doorway.

Dennis followed her, looking around sharply. It was just as the mirror had shown it, except that the lines of things—the stove, the cracks in the floorboards and walls—didn't seem quite as crisp as they ought to.

"She is very glad to see you," Chester said. "She is glad to devour you and revenge her sons, Malbawn and Malduanan."

Mother Grimes turned. Her face was full of hideous glee.

Dennis chopped through her neck with a back-handed stroke. The head bounced on the floor and began to giggle.

Mother Grimes bent over—he thought she was falling—and picked up the head. She lowered it onto her dripping neck-stump.

Mother Grimes' bodice of dumpy gray homespun split apart. Two clawed, chitinous arms thrust through the torn fabric. The pincers of the left arm held a short baton, black on one end and white on the other.

Dennis raised his sword. His face wore a set expression; he was beyond fear.

While Mother Grimes' human arms held the head in place, a pincered limb rubbed the white end of the baton across the wound. The puckering edges healed, leaving no sign of injury except the stain of blood that had already leaked out.

Something tugged at Dennis' sword.

He touched his left hand to the pommel for a hand-and-a-half grip and swung the weapon with all his strength. The sword pulled out of his grasp anyway and clanged flat against the ceiling. It began to glow red.

Mother Grimes chuckled and minced toward the youth, holding out her baton.

Dennis' scabbard twisted as the same power that drew the blade to the ceiling gripped the sheath's steel tip.

Dennis screamed in horror. His hands wrenched at his belt, but his whole weight hung from it and his fingers couldn't release the brass buckle. He watched like a cricket in a spider's web as Mother Grimes approached.

Reason overcame horror at last. "Chester! Hold her!" Dennis shouted.

The Founder's Sword and the scabbard tip exploded in white fire. Showers of sparks danced promiscuously across the room. They burned holes in Mother Grimes' garments as well as blistering Dennis' skin and melting knots in his hair with an awful stench.

Chester gripped Mother Grimes in a shimmer of metal, wrapping her slight form in four of the tentacles which had proved strong enough to hold Malduanan. Her grinning face turned; her chitin-armored pincer twisted; and the black end of the baton brushed the robot's carapace.

Chester slumped away. His tentacles fell slack and threatened to separate as if their segments were the beads of a necklace which had come unstrung. The robot's carapace had retained its smooth sheen for all the youth's lifetime—and the life of every man on Earth since the Settlement. Now a greenish corrosion grew across the surface like mold on fruit, etching deep pits in the metal.

Mother Grimes laughed deep in her throat.

The scabbard tip burned away, freeing Dennis to move. He dodged as the baton thrust at him... but that was a playful gesture anyway, not a real attack. He was to provide entertainment—

Before he was eaten.

The walls of the room were losing definition. Individual floor boards and stove bricks were blurring into one another. Pale slime oozed through all the surfaces; some of it dripped from the ceiling and burned Dennis as badly as the blazing sparks had done a moment before.

He wouldn't have been able to tell where the doorway had been, except that the ancient sword still hung on the wall.

Dennis spun away from Mother Grimes and snatched at the sword.

He didn't expect to be able to move the weapon, but it came away easily into his hand. Only gravity held the blade onto the pegs, not the fierce magnetic flux which had stripped the Founder's Sword from Dennis and devoured it.

Mother Grimes moved closer. Her foot brushed Chester's carapace. The metal rang hollowly.

Dennis shouted and swung his new sword in a glittering arc. The blade was lighter than steel, sharper than thought. It razored through Mother Grimes' torso from shoulder to breastbone, whickering in and out as though nothing but empty air impeded the stroke. Blood misted the air.

This sword really was forged from star-metal.

Mother Grimes giggled and sealed the gaping wound with the white end of the baton.

Dennis backed—bumped the wall. Shifted sideways as the baton twitched toward him like an adder's black tongue—bumped what had looked like a stove when he entered the room and was now a fungoid lump. The slime beading its surface burned as it began to devour Dennis' skin.

He thrust for Mother Grimes' mouth. The sharp point flicked her grin into half a smile that continued up the side of her skull and tore her bonnet away in a flutter of cloth. The black end of the baton missed Dennis' hand by so little that he thought the breeze ruffling the hairs of his wrist was the touch that had slain him.