THE SEA HAG(67)

"Gannon," Conall murmured to his plate.

"What will you do with them?" Dennis asked. There was no more emotion in his voice than there was on the edge of his sword.

"Well, they'll stay, I suppose," Conall said in surprise. "I don't imagine they'll want to leave again, now that they've found safe—"

He broke off when he realized exactly what Dennis meant. "Oh, good heavens!" the king blurted. "You mustn't think we did—the things that happened, that is, because we wanted to. Rakastava welcomes strangers. It was only necessity that caused us to..."

Dennis thought of the weapons piled in Malbawn's hut, clubs and knives and spears of sharpened wood. The sort of weapons simple folk, like the ones at the next table, would carry if some catastrophe sent them wandering through the jungle.

"You're right," Dennis said. "It doesn't matter now."

He began to eat, uncomfortably aware of the way Conall stared at the cup he held in both hands and Aria turned her torso at such an angle that Dennis had only her back to look at when he glanced to his right side.

The lights dimmed.

Dennis continued eating. He was hungry, even for the bland offerings of the city's table, and there was still enough light to see the food. He didn't know why the glow from all the room's surfaces had shrunk to a fraction of its usual intensity, but there wasn't very much about Rakastava that he did know.

He was going to have to leave this place. Despite Aria.

Because of Aria.

There was a long, hushed sound, a combination of wailing and sobbing, from the people in the assembly hall.

Dennis set down his fork and dropped his hand to the pommel of his new sword.

All around him, the citizens of Rakastava were covering their eyes or staring fixedly at the empty air in the huge room's center. The other newcomers to the city, the stragglers at the next table, were as confused as Dennis—though they reacted by clutching one another and hunching down as if they were about to slip under the table.

There was something in the hollow air after all.

It glowed with a pale green light, expanding slowly—the way a puffball swells in the hours before it bursts. It had a snake's body and three heads from which snake-like tongues slipped and forked as the creature grew.

It hung twenty feet in the air; and it wasn't real. Dennis could see ceiling moldings through the glowing shadow of the creature's body.

"Humans," said the head on the left. The voice thundered with echoes from a hollow even greater than that of the assembly hall. "It is time to pay Rakastava again."

One of the guards at Dennis' table began to sob in terror.

"Who shall it be this time, humans, that you send to Rakastava?" asked the head on the right.

There was a serpentine hiss in the way the creature pronounced sibilants. The voice was more than ample to be heard throughout the hall which Dennis had thought was too large for sound to fill.

There was a general cry of terror, muted by the very fear which wrung it from the throats of the cowering citizens.

Dennis' hand slipped from the pommel to the hilt of his sword, though he didn't draw the weapon for the moment. It was time for a sacrifice, and he knew where the folk of Rakastava looked for sacrifices...

"This time, humans," boomed the center head, appearing to stare straight at Dennis, "it is with the Princess Aria that you will pay Rakastava for your lives and the comfort in which you live them."

The assembled citizens gasped. Though horror may have been a part of the sound, most of it was relief.

The citizens chose the ones who went out to keep Malbawn at bay. But this creature chose his own victims...

"She will meet me in the morning—" said the left head.

"—with a single champion," said the right head.

"If she has a champion," the central head concluded with mocking emphasis.

The shadowy creature began to fade, or perhaps the increasing brightness of the room made it seem that way. But the vision was gone before the last echoes of its voice had vanished from the assembly hall.

Everyone was babbling to their neighbors with covert looks toward the king and princess. The volume of the creature's voice was underscored by the relative hush that a thousand humans talking brought to the big room.

"Daughter," Conall said in a choked voice. His face was turned toward Aria, but Dennis—between them—doubted the king could see anything through his tears.

"Well, of course I'll go," said Aria, answering a question that hadn't been asked aloud. She carefully folded the napkin in her lap, set it beside her plate, and stood up.

Gannon had gotten up already and was walking toward the door behind them with tiny steps as though he were a statue being pulled on casters.