THE SEA HAG(65)

Giggling maniacally, Mother Grimes began to heal the horrible cut before coming after Dennis again. The walls and ceiling of the room were clearly drawing in.

The realization wasn't clear in Dennis' mind before instinct guided the next quick cut. The star-metal blade sliced chitin as easily as it had the human-looking flesh of Mother Grimes' neck and torso.

One of the creature's middle limbs spun to the floor with the baton still locked in its pincers.

Mother Grimes screamed. The sound became a whistling sigh when the youth's keen blade slashed across her cheek and throat again in a blood-spray. She stumbled back, her foot slipping on the greenish ruin of one of Chester's tentacles.

"He was my friend!" Dennis shouted as he swung overhand. The swordtip slit a line through the ceiling as the blade cut over and down.

Mother Grimes' body fell in two halves.

On the floor, the elbow of the arm holding the baton straightened and bent; straightened and bent. Dennis stabbed at the pincers joint. The sections flew apart, letting the baton roll clear. The sword drove six inches deep in the flooring, but a quick tug cleared it easily.

Mother Grimes' five remaining limbs were scrabbling weakly. Most of her head was still attached to the right side of the torso. Everything was covered in blood—Dennis, the walls, and the remains of Chester.

With the dress slashed to rags, Dennis could see Mother Grimes had a jointed exoskeleton like that of Malbawn and Malduanan. A thin filament attached the creature's right heel to the floor.

Dennis sliced through the filament. Mother Grimes thrashed momentarily. Then all the pieces, arm and body halves, became as still as meat in a locker.

"My friend!" Dennis repeated. In a rush of loathing, he began to slash at the quiescent body, grunting with the effort of blows that sent his sword deep into the floor and walls.

When he paused, he was gasping for breath. His body felt as if it were crawling. When he looked down, he found his clothing was in rags, dissolving in the juices that still dripped from the wall. Angry blotches rose wherever the slime had touched his skin.

Mother Grimes' baton lay between his feet, not far from the hollow shell that had been Chester.

Dennis gasped with the suddenness of the thought that struck him. For a moment he remained frozen in the slump to which exhaustion had reduced him. Then he straightened and cut an opening in the front wall with four long, deliberate strokes. What fell away looked like the rind of a gourd.

He paused again, still panting.

Light had seeped through the walls of the hut, but the opening brightened the interior considerably. For this, Dennis had to see what he was doing very clearly...

He picked up the baton between his left thumb and forefinger. The surface was sticky with blood, but apart from that, the baton felt as though it were a piece of wood.

Dennis gingerly moved the white end toward the robot's carapace. Just before the two touched, he looked away. He couldn't let himself watch the failure of a hope that meant so much to him.

The baton went chank! on the hollow metal.

"I want to die," the youth whispered through his tears.

"Do not turn away from life because someone else has died, Dennis," said Chester in a cross voice.

"Chester!" the youth shouted. He started to hug the robot, then remembered the baton he held. If the black end touched him or the robot—

Grimacing with horror, Dennis flung the object through the opening he'd hacked in the wall. Then he clutched his life-long companion with his free hand and the elbow of his sword arm, holding the weapon point-up and safe during the embrace.

"I thought I'd killed you," he babbled. "I thought I'd never see you again, Chester, and I wanted to die."

There was a faint wash of verdigris on the robot's limbs and carapace, but the metal was whole again and the tentacles that encircled Dennis' shoulders were as smooth and supple as ever before.

"Whether we stay here or go back is up to you, Dennis," Chester said quietly.

The digestive juices were burning almost the whole of the youth's body by now, as though Mother Grimes had surrounded him with fire before he slew her.

"Oh," Dennis said. "Of course."

He reached his sword arm out through the opening, then cocked his body free like a contortionist avoiding further contact with the house.

Avoiding contact with the creature that looked like a house with a little old lady inside.

The new sword fit well into the scabbard made for the old one. The smith who'd hammered out the Founder's Sword for King Hale must have seen the real thing somewhere to copy the style and dimensions so accurately.

Dennis sheathed the weapon, stripped off his ragged clothes, and rubbed his body with handfuls of dry grass. The stems and leaves prickled, but they scraped away the fluids that smeared him and seemed even to reduce the redness and swelling which the slime had already caused.