Dennis rose out of the sea hag’s mouth.
Aria couldn’t see how he was being lifted. Dennis wore the same clothes that he had when the creature snatched him from her side, and his sword still hung in its sheath… but there was no expression on his face, and no light in his eyes.
“Sea hag!” Aria cried. She flipped back the top of the cloak folded beside her. All her jewelry lay there, gold and crystal and pieces of ancient work with fiery hearts as bright as stars. “All that you see here is yours—if you let my Dennis go.”
The creature sighed again. Dennis began to move forward—slide forward, motionless himself but resting on a translucent membrane like the stomach of a starfish belched out to digest what the creature could not swallow whole.
Dennis was as rigid as a statue until he reached the stone coping. Then, like a man moving in his sleep, he took one hesitant step—and another—to stand on solid ground. He blinked, raising a hand to rub his eyes.
Aria would have embraced him, but she couldn’t move—couldn’t speak.
“I accept your bargain, Princess Aria,” said the sea hag.
The flattened membrane spread, extending still further. It covered the jewelry, the gold and things far more precious… covered the cloak…
Flowed over the Princess Aria and drew her back into the open maw—with her lute, and with all the things she had meant to offer in trade to the sea hag.
Dennis turned. His eyes were trying to focus on a reality he had left utterly from the moment in which the sea hag engulfed him. He could hear Chester’s tentacles clicking on the stone stairs, coming to greet his master’s return, but there was something moving on the phosphorescent sea, and Dennis was sure that it must be important.
“Who is it?” he called. “Who are you?”
But the sea hag and her treasures had submerged so softly that not even the slap of waves on the stone answered Dennis’ cries.
CHAPTER 57
“But how could she do that?” Dennis muttered, sitting on the coping with his face in his hands. He’d suspected that the ripples in the sea were—something wrong. If he’d just rushed them, perhaps with his sword he could have…
Done little or nothing, to be logical. The sea hag had been in water too deep for Dennis to reach the creature, much less for him to use his blade effectively.
“She can’t have thought I’d want her to do that, to sacrifice herself.”
“One never knows the heart of a woman,” Chester said smugly, “any more than one knows the sky.”
Dennis looked up sharply. The phosphorescence was fading from the water, but there was still enough light for him to peer at his companion as though there were something to be read in the metallic countenance.
“Did you put her up to this?” he demanded. “Did you tell her to throw herself away, Chester?”
“Master…” the robot replied with an unexpected hesitation. “There were questions that she asked me, the Princess Aria. I answered those questions… and now you are back with me, as I would wish if my makers had permitted me to wish.”
Dennis face grew very still. Then he nodded and hugged the robot’s smooth body to him.
“It’s not what I’d have wanted, Chester,” he whispered. “But it’s all right. It’s all right.” He paused. “So long as we get her back.”
“It may be, Dennis,” Chester said in a meek voice, “that you will wish to slay the sea hag after the Princess Aria is returned to you.”
The youth straightened to look at his companion, though he could barely make out the robot’s shape. “I don’t care about killing it, Chester,” he said. “So long as it gives me back my Aria—and leaves us alone.”
“Do not trust your enemy,” Chester quoted, “lest his heart contrive your destruction.”
Dennis got up. His companion’s tentacle curled into his palm and led the way through darkness toward the stairs. It struck him forcibly that Chester was showing more initiative than his human builders, so many generations ago, might have intended.
“All right, Chester,” he said aloud. “Maybe we’ll finish the thing for good and all, if that’s what you think we must do. But first, we must free my Aria…”