Behind them, they heard Dalquin saying, "Now Dennis is a good lad and a brave one, sir. He'll not let your daughter come to any harm."
Around a corner of the path, Dennis shook his head sadly. If only he could be so confident.
"What if the sea hag stays deep in the sea, Chester?" he asked. "It doesn't matter that we can—go to her through the mirror if we, if I drown before..."
"It is not to the sea hag that we will go, Dennis," the robot replied calmly, "but to its life, which is on the Banned Island beyond the jaws of Emath Harbor."
"You mean the hag will be on the Banned Island," Dennis said, half in question as he tried to make sense of Chester's words.
"The creature may be there and may not," Chester explained with a note of exasperation. "But its life is on the island, and it will come to its life when you hold that in your hands."
Dennis frowned. "Chester, how can the sea hag's life be separate from her?" he asked.
"Because she is not really alive, Dennis."
"That can't be!" Dennis said with unintended firmness.
"Am I alive, Dennis?"
"Of course you are!"
"Then the sea hag is alive, Dennis; but her life is on the Banned Island."
The pasture was bright and a friend to Dennis by now, all the things Rakastava was not. Some of the differences—the way the grass tickled and could cut; the insects that buzzed and sometimes stabbed; the excessive heat when the sun was full in the sky—were discomforts and bad from any logical standpoint, but...
But life wasn't a sterile endeavor, and life wasn't truly possible in an environment as sterile as that of Rakastava.
"We won't stay in Rakastava," Dennis said aloud. "In the city. We'll go back to Emath or build a house in this pasture or something."
"After you have slain the sea hag, Dennis," Chester reminded. "And first, it is to Mother Grimes and not Malbawn's mirror that we must go."
Dennis loosened his sword in its scabbard. "She's dead, isn't she, Chester?" he asked, remembering the way his companion had let him enter Mother Grimes' house unwarned—because he had not asked for advice as he should have done.
"She is dead, Dennis," the robot agreed. "But her baton is there where you left it, and you will need it now."
Dennis stopped in the tall grass. "I said I didn't want anything to do with that."
"Do not squander the little you have when there is no one else to support you," Chester quoted sharply.
"Chester, I saw what that, that stick did to you," the youth pleaded. "I don't want to touch it. Look, my sword is good enough."
He drew the long blade, as though sunlight dancing on the metal were an argument.
"Dennis," the robot said gently, "on the island, the sea hag will try to stop you. She will send out things that are of her and not of life; and for those you might trust your sword, though it is my mind that the sword would fail you."
Dennis swallowed. "But—" he began.
"But the sea hag has still greater powers," Chester continued, ignoring his master's interruption. "She will send things that have the semblance of persons... but it may be that she will send the persons themselves. If she does that, Dennis, and you trust your sword... you will wish it was on yourself instead that you had used your blade."
Dennis closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the vision he had just seen—Aria falling in two parts, a shocked look on her face as she died; and blood, so much blood...
"Right," he said. "Let's go find the baton."
CHAPTER 59
Dennis expected Mother Grimes' house to look more weathered, but essentially the way it had been when he glanced back at it after hacking his way clear.
"Oh..." he murmured in distaste and horror when he saw the reality. "Oh. I should have known."
The "house" was Mother Grimes, a chitinous shell to draw in the unwary. Dead, Mother Grimes decayed as quickly as her sons had rotted where Dennis left their corpses sprawled in the grass.
The roof had fallen in; the upper portions of the walls were bare and white. The layer of flesh which had pretended to be wood and brick and stone was now slumped onto the ground as a pond of thick green fluid in which maggots swam and feasted.
Dennis stared at what he had seen and walked into, thinking it was a house. He nibbled at his lower lip, wondering what kind of deceptions he would face on the Banned Island.
"The baton is here, Dennis," Chester said from a short distance away. One tentacle pointed to the ground, where the object had fallen when Dennis hurled it away from him. "Do you wish that I should carry it?"