THE SEA HAG(74)

The core of the stroke was his heart's memory of Chester flailing in blue fire.

The sword bit clean and deep. The tongue gripping Dennis jerked the youth to his knees in the instant before the retracting muscles went limp and the fire died from the two blazing eyes.

The newly-severed neck spasmed. Acid sprayed out as from a hose; Dennis covered the slots in his visor with his left forearm, hearing the droplets snap and burn as they runneled off the armor.

Rakastava's remaining head reared. Dennis braced himself against the lightning he expected when the mouth opened.

"Two are off, but one is on, human," the monster thundered. "The third day is my day."

The serpent body pulsed a brighter red with each syllable; the sea around Rakastava began to steam. As the monster sank into the deeps, Dennis could follow its glowing descent for hundreds of feet through the dark water.

Chester curled a tentacle around his master's armored ankle and pulled himself up onto the coping. The robot's carapace was unscarred, but the eight limbs trembled noticeably as Chester lifted himself.

"Water extinguishes the fire," he muttered. "But the water boils as well."

Dennis hugged him.

Echoes died; the sea settled back to turgid calm. The loudest sounds in the cavern were Dennis' dragging breaths. His sword trilled as he sheathed it.

Aria was walking toward them. Her slippers whispered on the wet stone, and the jewel between her breasts spun with a light as clean and yellow as the sun.

"Go back!" Dennis called.

The cavern was very dark now. The princess was a blur without shape, dress and streaming blond hair merged in paleness.

"Are you all right?" she asked. She continued to approach.

The sea was not yet the mirror by which Dennis could make his escape. He lifted Rakastava's two heads and carried them toward the princess. He stepped slowly and his boots rang on the pavement, weighted by the trophies and the youth's exhaustion.

Aria's hand touched his armor, his visor.

"Go back," he repeated.

Dennis bent and began to knot together the manes. There was still a tinge of glowing color in the strands from the head he taken off minutes before, but the other mane was as lifeless as asbestos fibers growing from a cliff face.

"Please," Aria said. "Come back with me."

He shook his head violently. The slotted visor brushed her away.

"Go on," he said. "Take these and go."

He lifted her hand in one of his and transferred the weight of the joined trophies to her. The manes' hard strands pressed deep into her bare palm.

"Wait," she said as Dennis backed from her. She reached up with her free hand, too proud to drop the heads first, and fussed within her hair.

"Here," she said. The earring she handed him chinked against the black armor of Dennis' palm.

The youth turned and strode for the reflection on the water. Chester waited for his master, much as he had the day before; but this time on the cavern-side of the mirror.

Together, hand and tentacle linked, they stepped into the water—

And stumbled out in the hut that had been Malbawn's.

Dennis raised his visor and rested, panting, while Chester clicked and tapped and spun the armor's fastenings. The earring was of crystal so brilliant that at some angles its core seemed to move the way the pendant nestled on Aria's breast did.

Chester lifted the helmet off.

"Tonight at the banquet," Dennis said. "Gannon'll brag again that he's slain the monster."

"The donkey is not praised for braying while it carries a load, Dennis," the robot said. He slipped off the left gauntlet, then paused with the right while the youth transferred the earring to his bare hand.

"He'll be praised," Dennis said grimly. "And she'll... Chester, when that lying coward sneers at me, I'd like to split him all the way open!"

"It is better to bless someone than to harm one who has insulted you, Dennis," said Chester as he snicked away the brassard, cubitiere, and vambrace from his master's left arm, leaving it bare from shoulder to wrist.

"Why does she lie for him, Chester?" Dennis said, closing his eyes because he was afraid he might begin to cry with frustration.

"Aria tells no lies, Dennis," Chester replied, stripping the youth's right arm with two tentacles while two others freed the gorget and epaulets from Dennis' neck and shoulders. "And if it is not the whole truth she tells—then the princess knows nothing for a certainty, and little enough even by conjecture."

Dennis sighed. "If I told them the truth, Chester," he said, "they'd call me a liar."

"Would the princess call you a liar, Dennis?" the robot asked softly. He unfastened the hinged plates that had covered Dennis' back and chest.