“M… mother?” Dennis said.
Selda peered through the mat of her disarranged hair. It had grown out several inches since the last time she’d dyed it, leaving the roots of mixture of gray and mousy brown against the fading orange nearer the tips. Dennis recognized the dress as one of her favorites, rose pink with a bright green sash.
After a week in Rakastava, he also knew that the colors made an ugly combination with each other and with his mother’s ruddy complexion.
“Oh thank goodness, Dennis, you’re here to save me!” Selda said. She tried to struggle to her feet, but she seemed to have twisted her ankle in falling. “I fled here to escape Parol. It—it’s been terrible since you’ve been gone!”
Selda stretched out a hand to her son. Instead of stepping forward to lift her, Dennis stood transfixed. His tongue licked his lips, but his mouth was too dry for that to help.
It had to be his mother, but—
Shocked, fearful again at his lack of response, Selda lifted herself and hobbled forward. “Dennis? Darling?” she said. “Why are you—”
“Don’t come closer!” Dennis screamed. His sword lifted of its own volition. He remembered the way it sheared through Mother Grimes’ body, the way the blood sprayed him and the walls as she fell…
“Dennis!” Selda cried in horror, staggering toward her son with both hands out and a look of disbelief on her worn, familiar face.
Dennis thrust with sudden instinct and practiced skill, his body blending into the motion of his arm.
His left arm. The baton’s white tip touched and flicked away from Selda’s fingers as Dennis stepped away.
It wasn’t Selda standing before him. It wasn’t even anything alive.
A thing of sputtering wires, like a sculptor’s armature on which to smear clay as the first stage of casting a human statue.
A statue of Queen Selda, perhaps; but the wires were featureless, fleshless. All they had was the spit and sparkle of lightning coursing through them, clothing them in blue haze and whispering menace.
“Oh…” Dennis murmured.
The creature now stood naked and quiescent before him. If he’d used his sword on it, he’d have received a blast like the one Rakastava had used to stun Chester as they battled in the cavern.
Dennis looked back at his companion.
“It will not harm you now, Dennis,” Chester assured him. “It is a part of the sea hag, but you have drawn its will to injure you.”
“But it’s a machine. It isn’t alive!”
“The sea hag is not alive, Dennis,” the robot repeated.
“I think I see the staircase through the trees, Chester,” the youth said, trying to get his pulse under control. He moved on, giving the thing of wires a wide berth.
It followed them; but Chester said nothing, so Dennis said nothing further.
The staircase was only a glint. Its base was hidden beneath the creepers which used the structure as support to mount toward the sky; but something had broken through the mass of greenery in the past few days, trampling down the vines and leaving foliage to yellow as its torn tips starved.
Dennis touched his left index finger to a handrail that looked as though it had been spun by two sources which dripped molten glass in opposing circles. He rubbed it, noticing the friction. His fingertip felt hot instead of gliding along the surface as it would on the walls of Emath Palace.
“A long way up,” Dennis murmured as he started to climb. He’d have to be careful not to slip on the glass treads, but he no longer regretted not having a hand free to grip the rail.
Chester’s tentacles click-clicked along with Dennis, sounding just as they had in childhood in the halls of Emath Palace; and behind both of them, the wire creature paced. Where its feet touched the vegetation, juices sizzled and the green leaves turned black.
The glass tower was built in slanted bands along the side of the rock. The stairs themselves twisted and rose more sharply than the structure that enclosed them, treads meeting “floor supports” at acute angles and increasing the sense of unease with which Dennis climbed higher.