THE SEA HAG(94)

"We're going to Emath, my love," Dennis said. He glanced over his shoulder again. "We're going to my home."

In a softer voice he added, "Maybe it's still my home."





CHAPTER 64




The sea was calm, and there was very little current along this stretch of coast... but there was some, and that was enough to throw off an oarsman as totally inexperienced as Dennis was. He realized before he'd pulled half way that the boat was drifting north of the the north headland.

Unless they got help from a passing vessel, they were going to land at the foot of the jungle instead of rowing into Emath Harbor directly.

"There ought to be other boats out, Chester," the youth said doubtfully as he rested his oars for a moment. "At least ordinary traffic, even if nobody put out to see what was happening to the Banned Island."

His palms were calloused, but the oar-looms stressed the skin in a pattern different from that of a swordhilt or any other work he had done with his hands. He was going to have some bad blisters soon...

"It may be," said Chester, "that Parol does not permit citizens to leave Emath, for fear that none would return to be ruled by him."

Dennis had shifted his sword so that it didn't interfere with his clumsy attempts to row. He touched the pommel and said, "It may be that I will have questions to discuss with Parol—before I put him out of Emath for good and all."

Their boat grounded at the base of the corniche, the ten-foot cliff which waves had sliced from the side of the continent. The rock was porous—an easy climb up to the level of the jungle, even without the help Chester gave Dennis' boots and Aria's bare feet.

Flowers bloomed with a saffron pungence. When a creature hooted from the far depths of the jungle, Dennis smiled as though he'd been greeted by a friend.

"We—go through this?" Aria asked. Her glance indicated the profusion of flowers and broad leaves around them, filling the clifftop.

"Oh!" Dennis said, startled out of his reverie. None of the immediate stems and creepers were thorny, and the ground would open out as soon as they got within the jungle's sunlit margin, but...

"Here," he said, grasping his sword. "I'll cut—"

"No need," Aria said, touching his arm with a smile. She pushed forward, into the mass of foliage which gave before her.

"You really love this, don't you," she added without looking over her shoulder.

"The, the jungle?" Dennis said. He put his arm around the princess's shoulders and hugged her, then stepped past. "Here, I'll lead."

Dennis walked on, handing aside whippy twigs so that they didn't snap back at Aria. "It was the first time I was on my own—"

He paused, smiled, and reached back for the tentacle he was correctly sure that Chester would be ready to curl into his hand.

"On my own with Chester," he corrected himself. "And that brought me many things, most importantly you, my love."

"It brought you to yourself, Dennis," the robot said. "Is not that also of importance?"

"Important to me," Aria said with a smile in her voice, joining her hand briefly with Dennis and Chester before they all separated to get on with the business of moving through heavy cover.

One of the dragons roared from the perimeter of Emath Village.

"You know," Dennis said, "I think that was a bad idea to begin with. Cutting the village off from the, from everything but the sea, really."

He loosened the sword in its scabbard, thinking of the way he had crept—and scuttled—across the perimeter only weeks before.

"It'll be different from now on," Dennis muttered under his breath.





CHAPTER 65




The vegetation surrounding the magical perimeter formed a hostile wall.

Nets of vine and brambles cloaked sword-shaped leaves whose tips would spike all the way to an unwary man's shin-bone. Ants with mandibles like wire-cutters patrolled paths through the foliage. The bees which frequented the blossoms rose when the companions approached. They buzzed and hovered, flexing their abdomens under them to point their stings forward.

Dennis paused. "I thought it was all a nightmare," he mused aloud. "What I remembered from the first night in the jungle. Along with the, with the ghost in my dream. But this is the way I remembered it."

"Wizard's work?" Aria asked.

"I don't think it's—" Dennis said.

"Wizard's work imposed on the land, Princess," Chester said flatly. "And the land responding, as all things respond to hostility. 'He who loves his neighbor, finds a family around him.'"

The dragons on guard had heard them talking. One of the beasts snuffled close to the invisible barrier and began to scratch with its foreclaws. Its body was a wall of black scales which blocked the rare openings through the leaves.