Dennis paused frequently, not so much because he was tired but for safety’s sake. His eyes drew down instinctively after a few minutes of climbing the steep, quickly turning, stairs; and whatever danger he faced would come from above him.
He wasn’t—he didn’t think he needed to be—in a hurry. By stopping for a moment and getting his breath, he was also able to shake away the mesmerizing numbness induced by the helical staircase.
At first when Dennis looked out, he could see nothing but jungle through the arches of the latticework tower. As he mounted higher, flashes of sea foam and brilliantly blue water became visible through the leaves. Then, when he guessed he was halfway up (though the spiral of light turned blue by the way it wicked down through the glass stairs gave him no certain measure), his eyes caught a glint beyond the sea.
“That is the palace, Dennis,” Chester said in answer to the question his master hadn’t asked. “It is Emath that you see.”
“Well, we’ll…” the youth muttered. He wasn’t sure how he wanted to end the sentence. “When we’re done here, we’ll… Well, that doesn’t matter until we’re done here.”
A door creaked open above them.
The star-metal sword was much lighter than a steel blade of equal size, but it still had considerable weight and leverage. Dennis’ arm tired, so that the point dipped slowly as he climbed. Twice already it had ticked against the higher treads, sparking without harm to either metal or the glass.
At the sound of the door, adrenalin lifted Dennis’ arm and blade as though he were perfectly fresh. He thought of waiting for further motion above—but from where he stood, he couldn’t see anything except the bottom of stair-treads.
Dennis rushed the sound, trusting Chester to cover his back.
A man had come out of a door of wood and strap-iron, set into the rock. The door opened onto a landing, half a turn of the staircase above where Dennis had climbed when he heard the sound; and the landing itself spread into a broad, icy balcony which overlooked the sea. The man stood, squeezing the rail of twisted glass with his broad, powerful hands when Dennis burst onto the landing.
“Father!” Dennis gasped. His blade wavered.
“Dennis?” the man said. “Dennis! My prayers were answered!”
King Hale’s face was gray; he looked thinner than Dennis remembered him being, even in the last days before Hale was due to pay his debt to the sea hag. His right hand trembled as he held it out toward Dennis—half in greeting, half to ward off a shocking apparition.
The sword trembled in Dennis’ hand also.
“Son?” Hale said. “Parol exiled me here—he’s made his own bargain with the sea hag. Are you here to free me?”
He started forward, stepping doubtfully.
“No!” Dennis shouted. “You’re not my father!”
“Oh, son,” Hale whispered. The old man—older than his years, now; older than Dennis had ever dreamed his strong, hot-tempered father could look—fell to his knees.
For a moment Hale pressed his hands to his face. Then he lowered them and said, “Dennis, I can understand why you’d feel that way. A true father would never have made the bargain I did. But—”
He started to rise again, his eyes imploring and one of his work-roughened hands reaching out toward Dennis “—can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me now, my son?”
His father had never hugged him. Dennis looked at the open arms and pleading expression, feeling all the years of hurt and fear and anger melt out of his heart. He sheathed his sword and stepped forward.
Behind Dennis, a spark went tsk! across two wires of the manikin which had followed him.
Dennis hadn’t dropped the baton because he hadn’t remembered it. He’d been a boy again, offered the affection he’d always hoped—and never received—from his father. The white end touched King Hale’s forehead—
And there was no King Hale: only a clear sack, man-shaped and filled with bubbling, yellowish fluid. The sack was featureless, as the wire thing had been; but it rose from its knees, the membrane folding and bulging like human skin, and stood with its lumpish arms at its side.