The Sea Hag

by David Drake

Change wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

  "Mirror, show me the Princess Aria," he demanded. His chin was lifted and eyes turned resolutely away from Chester. The robot had no expression, but Dennis knew that he'd imagine a look of disapproval on the metal if he let himself see it.

  He realized with a lurch of dismay that he'd hoped—dreamed, prayed—that Aria would be bathing again. But—

  The mirror showed what was rather than what the viewer wished. Aria sat cross-legged on a stool, with a twelve-string lute nestled into her lap. The strings flashed light as her fingers played over them and her lovely mouth shaped sounds which Dennis couldn't hear.

  Gannon could hear them. The King's Champion lounged on the floor, his right arm leaned across the end of a low divan.

  There were twenty or more people watching Aria's performance, young men and women—all the women beautifully gowned and none of them as beautiful as the princess.

  Gannon, with his black garb and dark good looks, was in the center of the group. His eyes were on Aria, and it seemed to Dennis that she looked back at the champion more than chance would require.

  Gannon smiled.

  "No!" Dennis cried, turning his head.

  He'd come to the mirror for reassurance. The mirror instead gave him truth; two truths, and neither of them reassuring in the least.

  "No," Dennis repeated as he looked again, his voice now a whisper. His tortured expression gazed back at him, looking for help that the youth didn't know the words to ask for.

  His face hardened, and he shrugged loose the sword at his side. "Show me—" he ordered. "Show me any other huts that are, are beside this pasture."

  Dennis was wondering how he could rephrase his question and make it clear to the mirror—to the demon or device which controlled the mirror—that he wanted to find another creature like Malbawn or Malduanan.

  "Before they find me," Dennis muttered aloud.

  Chester made a metallic snorting sound.

  "All right!" the youth snapped as he looked down at his companion. "But it's something I can do something about. Not like Emath."

  And not like the Princess Aria, who could look at anyone and sing to anyone she pleased. Whether Dennis, a vagabond and visitor to Rakastava, liked it or not.

  Dennis was blushing as he turned back to the mirror. Chester knew him too well.

  Chester had saved his life against Malduanan.

  The mirror had understood his instructions. On it gloomed the image of Malduanan's hut, hunching in the woods where Dennis had left it less than an hour before. The vision had remarkable depth and detail: when a scarlet lizard scooted up the doorframe, its tail seemed to flick beyond the surface of the glass.

  "That's good," Dennis said encouragingly, as though he were speaking to another person instead of a thing of glass and bronze. "But show me a different one. Is there a—"

  The picture was shifting before Dennis could finish his question. As he blinked at the new scene, he thought the mirror had made a mistake after all: this was a real house, not a hovel of twigs and moldy leaves.

  It was small, but no smaller than the old houses in Emath village which had been built before space in the bustling community became too valuable to waste on one-story dwellings. The house sat at—in—the margin of the jungle, the way Malbawn and Malduanan's huts did, but it had a proper, human-sized door with a window to either side. The walls seemed to be shingled, and the roof was probably covered with thatch.

  It couldn't be hair, though that was what it looked like no matter how carefully Dennis squinted.

  "Show me the inside," he ordered.

  He was getting very used to the mirror. It didn't make him uncomfortable, the way he'd felt when using the Wizard Serdic's device.

  That had put him into an unreal scene—unreal because it was part of the past and therefore dead. Malbawn's mirror was no more than a window through which Dennis could look. He could understand the mirror.

  So long as he didn't think too closely about it.

  The image in the mirror flip-flopped as though a painting were being spun—front-side, back-side, and both images executed in meticulous detail.

  Inside the house, a plump old woman in bonnet and apron was sweeping the floor with a twig broom.

  "Oh!" Dennis gasped.

  He'd expected some horrific monster, though why...? This was a human dwelling. A man as tall as Dennis would have to duck to step through the doorway. A creature like Malbawn or Malbawn's brother—

  Well, either of those monsters were nearly as big as this whole house.

  The house had only one room. The woman stood her broom in the corner and checked a pot of something on the brick stove. Apparently satisfied, she opened the door and finished her sweeping with firm, quick strokes. Her face was old—lined and gray.

  Dennis felt his nose wrinkle in distaste, then felt embarrassed. His nurse had been old and ugly too, with a perpetual scowl and a hair-sprouting wart on her chin. No one could have had a kinder heart—or have been dearer to him until her death when he was ten.

  But what were the house and its occupant doing here?

  The only thing Dennis saw that disturbed him was the sword resting above the doorway on wooden pegs. It seemed completely out of place in this homely dwelling. As out of place as the house itself was.

  Dennis ran his finger along the mirror's bronze frame. It felt much cooler than the humid air.

  "Enough," he said quietly, and at once he was facing his dim reflection in a sheet of glass. "Chester," he went on, still facing the mirror, "can we find that house, or is it too far away?"

  "It is at the end of the field, Dennis," the robot said. "It is a mile from here, or somewhat less." Chester's voice was empty of inflection or implied advice.

  When Dennis let his mind wander, it showed him Gannon smiling and Aria smiling back at the champion.

  "All right, let's go then!" he said harshly.

  He strode out of the hut, gripping his sword pommel crushingly. For a hundred yards he walked very fast, squinting against sunlight and the tears of frustration that were prickling their way out of the corners of his eyes.

  Sun and exercise warmed the youth, slowed him; made him calmer. He glanced to the side and smiled to see Chester mincing along with his tentacles fully extended so that the high grass only brushed the bottom of his carapace.

  Dennis reached toward the robot. Chester humphed! internally and ignored the gesture. He was making it clear to his master that Dennis' enthusiasm—for getting into trouble—was no more than a way to work off other frustrations.

  Dennis understood. He smiled ruefully and waved his right palm to the robot. It was blotchy from its pressure on the swordhilt.

  "The man who is violent like the wind will founder in the storm he raises, Dennis," the robot said grumpily, but a tentacle snaked up and curled into the offered hand.

  "Still," Dennis said, "it's not a bad thing that we're doing..."

  Though to be honest with himself, he wasn't sure what he was doing. Visiting a little old lady, very possibly. But it just didn't seem right that a perfectly normal house should be here, where nothing else was normal.

  The pasture rolled and curved through the jungle. The cows were out of sight before Dennis got his first direct glimpse of the house nestled into the jungle side. The sun was near mid-sky, so the the overhanging thatch shadowed the front of the little building. Flowers grew in little boxes beneath the shuttered windows.

  Something was very wrong.

  Dennis paused and took a deep breath. "Well, it won't be anything we can't handle," he said. "We beat Malbawn and Malduanan, didn't we?"

  "That is so, Dennis," Chester agreed unemotionally.

  "And," Dennis went on, slipping the Founder's Sword up in its sheath and letting it ring as it slid down again, "I've got a star-metal blade, have I not, Chester?"

  "That you have not, Dennis," Chester said in the same cool voice as before. "The Founder's Sword is steel and smith's work, forged f
or your father when he became King of Emath."

  The youth's vision went gray, as if for a moment the whole world were Malbawn's mirror in a state of flux between reflection and distant images. All this time he'd been sustained by the thought that he had a weapon of magical potency, while in fact—

  Dennis drew the long sword, fingering the fresh nicks and notches he'd tried to grind smooth with the whetstone. He remembered Conall tapping the blade with his nail and smiling...

  "They knew it wasn't star-metal, didn't they?" he said. "Conall and the rest? They were laughing at me."

  "There is much in Rakastava from the Age of Settlement, Dennis," the robot replied. "It may be that they knew the blade was not of star-metal."

  Dennis winced in past embarrassment.

  "But Dennis?" Chester continued. "They do not laugh at you now."

  "By heaven, they'd better not!" the youth muttered. The sword trembled with the fierceness of his grip on it.

  He shook himself and managed to chuckle, though the sound as well was shaky. What was done, was done.

  "At any rate, Chester," he said, "it's good steel."

  "It is that indeed, Dennis," the robot agreed. "And there is a good man to use it."

  Dennis patted his companion in a rush of pride. "Let's go see what this house is doing here," he said.

  CHAPTER 41

  The grass at this end of the field was uncropped. The long stems were bent in graceful curves by the weight of their bristly seed heads. Thistles shot up like dark green pagodas, eight feet high and crowned with splendid purple flowers. Insects buzzed and quivered within their miniature landscape.

  Ten yards from the front of the house, Dennis set his hand on his swordhilt and hesitated while he decided whether or not to unsheathe the weapon. The door opened.

  The Founder's Sword trilled like a mating frog as Dennis swept it from its scabbard.

  "Oh, heaven save me, noble prince!" gasped the old woman, throwing her hands to her cheeks to amplify the amazed circle of her mouth. "Oh! You mustn't be so frightening to an old body as me—begging your pardon, that is, for speaking so when it's not my place."

  "Who are you?" Dennis demanded.

  He lowered the point of his sword. Had it been smaller, he might have shielded it behind his body; but it was too long for that, and sheathing the blade again would have been as embarrassing a production as drawing it in the first place.

  "Me, noble prince?" the old woman said, pulling out her drab skirts as she curtsied. "Oh, I'm no call for such as one as yourself to notice. Mother Grimes, they call me—"

  She looked up. "Used to call me, I might better say. When there were folk here, and not all traipsing off to the fine city and leaving poor Mother Grimes to her loneliness."

  "Off to Rakastava?" Dennis said, frowning as he tried to understand the situation. "But then why didn't you go too?"

  Mother Grimes curtsied again. "Ah, noble prince, but there's the question. It's my sons, you see, headstrong lads that they are. They left me years ago to find their own way in the world, but it's home they'll return some day, for I'm sure of it. And what will become of them if I'm not here to greet them, tell me that?"

  Dennis shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs from his brain. He could understand what the old woman was saying, but... Rakastava had existed for—from before men settled on Earth. And what about Malbawn and—

  "But noble prince," Mother Grimes was saying. "Forgive me my presumption, for I know my hut is unworthy of your highness' feet, but—will you not come inside and talk with me for only a moment? It will remind me so of my boys, fine young lads that they were when they left me to seek their fortune."

  Dennis opened his mouth to refuse. The old woman held out her work-worn hands. The youth thought of his own mother, weeping for her son and for herself now in Emath.

  "I have cider, noble prince," Mother Grimes wheedled. "Fresh squeezed and cool in my root cellar."

  Dennis wiped his brow with the back of his left hand. He looked down at Chester and said, "Well, she seems glad to see us...?"

  "She is that, Dennis."

  "All right," Dennis said. "A mug of cider would be very good, mistress."

  "After you, then, noble prince," Mother Grimes said, gesturing toward the door. Her beaming expression was enough to beautify even a face as ugly as hers.

  Dennis shook his head as natural caution reasserted itself. "No," he said brusquely. "You go first."

  "It's not for me to take precedence over such as you," said the old woman with a shake of her head. "But if the noble prince insists..."

  Bowing to him, she stepped back through the doorway.

  Dennis followed her, looking around sharply. It was just as the mirror had shown it, except that the lines of things—the stove, the cracks in the floorboards and walls—didn't seem quite as crisp as they ought to.

  "She is very glad to see you," Chester said. "She is glad to devour you and revenge her sons, Malbawn and Malduanan."

  Mother Grimes turned. Her face was full of hideous glee.

  Dennis chopped through her neck with a back-handed stroke. The head bounced on the floor and began to giggle.

  Mother Grimes bent over—he thought she was falling—and picked up the head. She lowered it onto her dripping neck-stump.

  Mother Grimes' bodice of dumpy gray homespun split apart. Two clawed, chitinous arms thrust through the torn fabric. The pincers of the left arm held a short baton, black on one end and white on the other.

  Dennis raised his sword. His face wore a set expression; he was beyond fear.

  While Mother Grimes' human arms held the head in place, a pincered limb rubbed the white end of the baton across the wound. The puckering edges healed, leaving no sign of injury except the stain of blood that had already leaked out.

  Something tugged at Dennis' sword.

  He touched his left hand to the pommel for a hand-and-a-half grip and swung the weapon with all his strength. The sword pulled out of his grasp anyway and clanged flat against the ceiling. It began to glow red.

  Mother Grimes chuckled and minced toward the youth, holding out her baton.

  Dennis' scabbard twisted as the same power that drew the blade to the ceiling gripped the sheath's steel tip.

  Dennis screamed in horror. His hands wrenched at his belt, but his whole weight hung from it and his fingers couldn't release the brass buckle. He watched like a cricket in a spider's web as Mother Grimes approached.

  Reason overcame horror at last. "Chester! Hold her!" Dennis shouted.

  The Founder's Sword and the scabbard tip exploded in white fire. Showers of sparks danced promiscuously across the room. They burned holes in Mother Grimes' garments as well as blistering Dennis' skin and melting knots in his hair with an awful stench.

  Chester gripped Mother Grimes in a shimmer of metal, wrapping her slight form in four of the tentacles which had proved strong enough to hold Malduanan. Her grinning face turned; her chitin-armored pincer twisted; and the black end of the baton brushed the robot's carapace.

  Chester slumped away. His tentacles fell slack and threatened to separate as if their segments were the beads of a necklace which had come unstrung. The robot's carapace had retained its smooth sheen for all the youth's lifetime—and the life of every man on Earth since the Settlement. Now a greenish corrosion grew across the surface like mold on fruit, etching deep pits in the metal.

  Mother Grimes laughed deep in her throat.

  The scabbard tip burned away, freeing Dennis to move. He dodged as the baton thrust at him... but that was a playful gesture anyway, not a real attack. He was to provide entertainment—

  Before he was eaten.

  The walls of the room were losing definition. Individual floor boards and stove bricks were blurring into one another. Pale slime oozed through all the surfaces; some of it dripped from the ceiling and burned Dennis as badly as the blazing sparks had done a moment before.

  He wouldn't have been able to tell where the doorw
ay had been, except that the ancient sword still hung on the wall.

  Dennis spun away from Mother Grimes and snatched at the sword.

  He didn't expect to be able to move the weapon, but it came away easily into his hand. Only gravity held the blade onto the pegs, not the fierce magnetic flux which had stripped the Founder's Sword from Dennis and devoured it.

  Mother Grimes moved closer. Her foot brushed Chester's carapace. The metal rang hollowly.

  Dennis shouted and swung his new sword in a glittering arc. The blade was lighter than steel, sharper than thought. It razored through Mother Grimes' torso from shoulder to breastbone, whickering in and out as though nothing but empty air impeded the stroke. Blood misted the air.

  This sword really was forged from star-metal.

  Mother Grimes giggled and sealed the gaping wound with the white end of the baton.

  Dennis backed—bumped the wall. Shifted sideways as the baton twitched toward him like an adder's black tongue—bumped what had looked like a stove when he entered the room and was now a fungoid lump. The slime beading its surface burned as it began to devour Dennis' skin.

  He thrust for Mother Grimes' mouth. The sharp point flicked her grin into half a smile that continued up the side of her skull and tore her bonnet away in a flutter of cloth. The black end of the baton missed Dennis' hand by so little that he thought the breeze ruffling the hairs of his wrist was the touch that had slain him.

  Giggling maniacally, Mother Grimes began to heal the horrible cut before coming after Dennis again. The walls and ceiling of the room were clearly drawing in.

  The realization wasn't clear in Dennis' mind before instinct guided the next quick cut. The star-metal blade sliced chitin as easily as it had the human-looking flesh of Mother Grimes' neck and torso.

  One of the creature's middle limbs spun to the floor with the baton still locked in its pincers.

  Mother Grimes screamed. The sound became a whistling sigh when the youth's keen blade slashed across her cheek and throat again in a blood-spray. She stumbled back, her foot slipping on the greenish ruin of one of Chester's tentacles.

  "He was my friend!" Dennis shouted as he swung overhand. The swordtip slit a line through the ceiling as the blade cut over and down.