THE SEA HAG(95)

The dragons' breath, redolent of the fish they were fed and not wholly unpleasant to Dennis after so many years in a fishing community, oozed heavily through the foliage.

Dennis drew his sword. "All right," he said, eyeing the bees with the caution they deserved. "Let's go."

He brought his star-metal blade up in a curve that sheared a mass of briars as though they were cobweb, then made the second cut which turned the slice into a pathway. Chester moved ahead of the youth, pushing aside the sliced vegetation whose thorns could do him no harm.

It was as though they'd planned the maneuver; and perhaps they had, during the battles they'd fought together since leaving Emath. Chester waited; Dennis slashed the rest of the way through the barrier—

And Aria's white mantilla snapped once, twice, overhead, startling back the insects which were preparing to buzz down in attack.

Both dragons roared as the companions pushed toward them through the jungle wall. Dennis, in the lead again, was laughing in exultation.

They'd shrunk. These guard-beasts weren't as large as the pair when Dennis fled Emath.

He flicked his sword at the nearer dragon. It snatched at the blade—and snatched back its injured foreleg with a yelp.

Dennis slapped the beast's snout with the flat of his weapon. "Chester!" the youth cried. "These aren't the same dragons. Has Parol replaced the old ones with these little fellows?"

Chester was raised to his full height on four limbs, spinning the others above him to weave a false silvery bulk that kept back the other guard-beast.

"They are not so great as Malbawn and Malduanan, Dennis," the robot said, advancing through dust that was ankle-deep on the humans. The three companions were within the dragons' perimeter by now. "Nor yet so great as Rakastava... but they are the beasts that have guarded Emath for all your life."

The dragon which had cut itself on Dennis' sword made another lunge at him. Dennis shifted his arm slightly. The beast blatted and scrambled back, pricked between the nostrils by the star-metal point.

In sudden determination, the injured guard-beast rushed its fellow from the side and knocked it down. The pair of dragons began to bellow and claw and one another, rolling across the perimeter in a huge cloud of the dust they had pulverized during their years of pacing.

Dennis and his companions began to step with care and reasonable quickness across the remainder of the trackway. It struck the youth that you could be very brave and very well-armed—and still be crushed to death by a couple of dragons battling in frustrated fury.

"Fortune goes as fate commands," Chester called, over the dragons' roars; but the beasts were flopping and snarling in the opposite direction, and the three of them could sprint the last yards into Emath Village if they had to...

Dennis looked toward Emath, taking his eyes off the dragons for the first time since he'd slashed his way into the perimeter they patrolled. The streets, roofs and windows were full of people who stared back at him.

Somebody shouted, "It's Dennis! It's the prince!"

Thugs in orange tried to struggle through the crowd to get to the speaker.

At the head of the central street which led from the palace to the perimeter was a line of men in Parol's orange livery. They were supported by a pair of demons whose hair of smoke and flame billowed as high as the nearest eaves.

Rifkin stood in the middle of them; even fatter than Dennis remembered him, and carrying a polished black staff as tall as he was.

"Go away!" shouted the ex-butler.

"Rifkin, who are you to tell me to do anything?" Dennis replied. Only ten feet separated them, but those within Emath were treating the perimeter as a physical barrier.

"Get away from here!" Rifkin shouted back. "Whoever you are, you're not wanted in Emath!"

He gestured with his staff of office. The two demons bent toward Dennis. Their rippling bodies breathed with the soft, sucking sound of flames.

"Chester," Dennis said quietly. He was well aware that his boots were still sunken in the dust of the perimeter, and that the dragons might rush back at any moment. "How may we kill these demons?"

"The demons cannot be killed, Dennis," the robot explained, "because they are but images, as empty as the features of those with whom the sea hag greeted you on the island."

"That'll do," Dennis muttered.

Before he could act, Aria stepped closer to one of the demons and waved her mantilla in its insubstantial face. "Begone!" she cried. "Out of the prince's way!"

The huge figure quivered like a picture projected on smoke when the breeze blows. Then it was gone. Rifkin jumped back, and Aria began to laugh like mocking silver bells.

Dennis strode forward. There were twenty liveried guards, all of them armed, and Aria's scrap of lace wouldn't stop a sword-cut. The remaining demon floated toward him, hot and dry and blurring the youth's vision of Rifkin as if through a fiery screen.