THE SEA HAG(93)

Gobbets of molten glass were rained past the arched openings like the first breath of a volcanic eruption. If Dennis and his companions didn't get off the Banned Island soon, he was pretty sure that they would melt; or burn; or smother.

Dennis thought of the creature which told him it was Aria and which demanded that he enter its embrace. At least death would have been quick when the arms encircling him blazed sun-bright.

The rock spire shook. Bits of laterite flaked off the stairwell's inner face, pattering down the steps beside the fleeing companions. The air filled with a roar too great to be called a sound. Dennis wasn't sure whether it came from the fire, the sea hag—

Or the core of the planet.

Dennis spun around the balcony where he'd found the manikin which looked like his father. A loud crack! broke the omnipresent thunder. He didn't look back.

He didn't have to. Two lines split their way down the outer surface of the stairwell—ribbons of irregular thickness, dancing with the light they spilled out in an iridescent variety of wavelengths.

Then the stairwell's multi-arched exterior slipped in an increasing rush: crumbling, chanting glassy hymns to the wind, and painting all the world nearby in a dazzling rainbow coruscance.

Faster, Dennis' mind whispered.

There was no reason to speak the word aloud. Aria already took ten steps to his nine, and Chester deliberately slowed his pace to keep from getting too far ahead of his human companions.

They were down among the trees, now. The trunks of the nearest were waving, their leaves and branches stripped away by the tons of glass which had cascaded through them moments before.

Birds spun and squawked in the air in colorful confusion. An occasional lizard clung to an island of bark on a stripped trunk, its eyes wide and its throat-pouch fluttering.

Something thumped from the top of the spire. Again Dennis refused to look behind him, but the sun dimmed as it tried to shine through the cloud of gas and debris which puffed out of the shaft.

They were among the creepers, now, very close to the ground. Dennis saw bright, fresh blood on a step. His heart jumped. Aria's foot, spiked by a thorn—but she continued to bound forward in a wave of blond hair, ignoring her hurt and the chance of hurting herself again.

Dennis would have drawn his sword when he hit the ground, but there was already a flurry of vegetation in the direction of the shore. Chester stalked ahead on four limbs, spinning the tips of the other four like cutting blades. Foliage and small stems disintegrated.

Dennis lifted Aria in both arms and ran after the robot. He was saving her bare feet from further harm; and he was holding her close, because he loved her, would always love her, from the Cariad's magic or Aria's own, and they might not have very long to live.

The top of the laterite spire pulverized itself in a staggering blast. A second explosion took a bite off what remained, pelting the leaf canopy with pebbles and whipping the sea to momentary foam as the companions reached the shore.

Aria squirmed out of Dennis' grasp and set her shoulder against the boat's gunwale to push if off even before he did. Chester pushed as well, but the narrow curves of his tentacles ground deep in the shingle as the robot put strain on them.

It was Dennis' boots and the flexing of his powerful calf muscles that broke the keel's grip on the land and kept it jouncing and sliding down to the water.

Chester and Aria slipped over the weathered gunwale. Dennis continued to stride forward, knee-deep in the water, as he pushed the fishing boat ahead of him.

Another explosion spattered bits of rock. The chunks were too light to hurt seriously, but they flew hard enough to sting.

"It is time that come aboard with us, Dennis," Chester said.

"No, I want to get—" Dennis insisted, and the last of the sentence drowned in the sea when he stepped off the island's underwater edge—as abrupt as had been the spire pointing up into heaven.

Chester's tentacle, prepared for the event, looped under the youth's armpits and lifted him aboard spluttering. "Small advice, if heeded, can prevent great harm, Dennis," the robot chided.

A deeper explosion shook the Banned Island. Nothing more flew from the truncated spire, but the sea lifted in a swell that flattened the chop as it expanded from the shore. The boat rocked.

Dennis settled onto the center thwart and took the oars. He looked over his shoulder and his destination, then began stroking. He tried to remember the motions he had watched his father make so many times.

In the stern sat Aria, her hands demurely in her lap. She seemed none the worse for being swallowed down by the sea hag. The nested pendant spun merrily between her breasts.

Aria combed a hand through her loose hair, lifting out a bit of twig. "Where are we going, darling?" she asked. A faint tremor in her voice warned Dennis that reaction was beginning to catch up with the princess now that she'd time to rest.