THE SEA HAG(82)

She looked over to the suit of armor. "I don't understand how you came to me beneath the city. Your armor was here—and there aren't any steps down to Rakastava's cavern except the staircase that was locked behind me and, and Gannon."

"Mirror, show us the cavern," Dennis directed with a smile. "Now, we may not be able to see anything there, because the light faded when I'd killed the—"

But there was light. The water flickered with a clinging, gray phosphorescence like the rich sea beyond Emath harbor. The long shape of Rakastava, headless and still, was a line of shadow... but beyond it, where the water was deeper—

"Closer!" Dennis ordered.

In the water, the woman that was not a woman waved her human arms.

"Have you come to me, Prince Dennis," said the sea hag, "to pay your father's debt?"

Dennis stared transfixed.

"Dennis?" said Aria in concern.

"Dennis!" cried Chester in fear.

The sea hag extended her arms through the mirror and grasped Dennis around the waist. At the last instant he tried to cling to the mirror's frame, but the creature's inexorable grip pulled him away from the bronze as easily as a starfish opens clams.

The great maw gaped. For a moment the youth dangled above it. Then the arms released him and he fell, into the gullet of bone and blood-red tissue.

The sea hag closed her mouth. The lovely girl-face smiled. An arm waved up to Aria and Chester.

And with the slow certainty of lava moving, the sea hag sank out of sight.

In Malbawn's hut, the mirror cleared and its surface turned to glass again. Only then did the princess begin to scream.





CHAPTER 55




"No!" Aria cried. She turned away from the mirrored image of her horrified face and kicked the nearest object—a cow's thighbone. It rolled; but the bone was past hurt, and the open toe of Aria's gilt sandal gave her foot no protection.

"No," Aria repeated, but the word was a gasp of pain.

"It is not good to be angry at a hard fate," Chester said.

"How can you say that?" the princess demanded. "Chester, I've only known him for a week, but you've been with him all his life. Wasn't he your friend? Don't you care about him?"

"Do not be heartsore over a matter when its course comes to a halt," the robot said, quoting again—but there was a tone of appraisal in his voice that Dennis would have recognized if he had heard it.

"I..." Aria said.

She started to wring her hands, but will and royal training restrained her. Instead she walked into the sunlight, stepping with measured precision and using the pain jabbing her right foot as a reminder to control herself.

"Chester," she said, facing the bright meadow. "Is there no way that we can get him back?"

Cows watched her, their jaws moving side to side. Their ears snapped audibly as they flicked at insects.

"There is a way you can get him back, Princess," the robot behind her said.

Aria spun onto him, beautiful and imperious. "Then what is it?" she demanded. "What can I do?"

"The sea hag likes pretty things," Chester said softly.

The tip of one tentacle touched or did not quite touch the pendant spinning unsupported between the princess' breasts. "It might be that if you went to the sea beneath Rakastava with all your jewelry... and with your lute to summon the sea hag, for your voice is a pretty thing as well, Princess... It might be that she would come, and—who can say what might happen then...?"





CHAPTER 56




"Oh," murmured Dalquin. The pleasant, middle-aged man had become King's Champion by default when Gannon vacated the position. He adjusted the lens of his lantern to concentrate the beam and throw it farther.

Even so, the lantern could scarcely hint at the size of Rakastava's half-submerged corpse. "Oh..." Dalquin repeated.

"Aria, I wish you wouldn't insist on coming down here," said King Conall. He could feel the size of the cavern, but though he craned his neck in an attempt to see the ceiling, darkness hid all the boundaries.

Aria remembered the morning Rakastava blazed like incandescent steel and the light of the creature's body glared from dripping stone. Dennis had stood before her then, his sword drawn and his armor in harsh silhouette against the monster which would have her life if it could...

"Father, I didn't ask you to come here with me," Aria said. Her voice was as cold and hard as the sword which saved her that morning. "Go back, and I'll join you when I'm finished."

Conall looked doubtfully at the cloak which he and Dalquin had arranged on the coping under Aria's direction. Lowering his voice a trifle (though Dalquin was politely distant and the huge room drank voices anyway), the king said, "Is it because you and, ah, Dennis are having a problem? Believe me, dearest, you mustn't be concerned about a little awkwardness early in a mar—"