CHAPTER 54 

One of the cows mooed in approval as Dennis led Aria and Chester into the clearing. The princess gasped and shaded her face with her hands. 

"Are you all right?" Dennis asked quickly. 

"Yes, I'm..." she said. "It's just that I never saw this before. The sun, directly." 

Then she added, "Dennis? Could you be happy, living in Rakastava?" 

"Do not let your tongue differ from your heart when you are asked for counsel, Dennis," Chester said. 

Dennis laughed without humor. 

"Love," he said, "I can be adequately happy wherever you are. But if that means Rakastava, I will be happy despite the city." 

"Then perhaps we should go back to where you came from, Dennis," Aria said coolly. She put her arm around him. "Would that be better?" 

"I don't know," he admitted. "Let's—look at something in Malbawn's hut. I came here to do that anyway." 

Scavengers and decay had scoured Malbawn's corpse into a heap of chitinous plates, yellowish and translucent. Aria paused by the hut's opening and stared at them. 

"That was...?" she said. 

"Yes." 

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she said without emotion. 

"Love, that was the first. There were two more that were no one's choice but my own." Dennis kissed her and held her soft body in his arms. 

"I left Emath thinking that only a great hero would dare the jungle—and I was wrong. But don't be sorry because—your community gave me the chance to be what I left home saying I wanted." 

Aria gasped when she saw the armor standing articulated, to the left of the sagging doorway. "Oh!" she said. "He's the one who—" 

Chester tapped the armor with a tentacle so that the hollow metal rang. 

"Oh," the princess repeated, but with understanding. "It's empty." 

"It's the armor I wore—when you saw me," Dennis explained. 

"But how did you...?" Aria began, pausing at her husband's broad smile. 

"You wanted to see where I came from," Dennis said. He was proud that what he could now demonstrate would amaze even a princess familiar with Rakastava's sophistication. "Mirror, show us Emath." 

The glass clouded and cleared, above the sun-struck crystal beauty of Emath Palace. The pendant on Aria's breast spun more swiftly, as if it were trying to match the dazzling scene in the mirror. 

"Oh..." the princess breathed. From the way she looked aside to him, Dennis knew that in her heart she'd doubted until now his tales of the palace in which he'd been raised. 

"Closer," Dennis ordered. "Show us the village." 

The mirror's point of view shifted down, toward the shingled roofs and half-timbered houses that had grown up around the palace and the prosperity of community Hale ruled. A twelve-foot demon of smoke and orange flames turned to face them. 

Aria started but did not cry out. Dennis had his sword drawn a hand's breadth before intellect overruled reflex. The demon was not here... 

Two men in orange livery were entering a shop. The demon followed them as far as the door, bending to stare within as it gripped the jamb with either hand. No one else was visible on the street, though faces peered furtively through upper-floor shutters. 

After a moment, the liverymen returned. Both were laughing as one dropped coins into the fat purse on his belt. They walked around the corner, the hulking demon behind them. Only when the trio was out of sight did other citizens appear cautiously from doorways. 

"That's where you lived?" Aria asked, as careful as she could be to keep the distaste out of her voice. 

"That isn't where I lived," Dennis said, his hand still playing with the pommel of his sword. "It's—what's become of the place in which I lived. 

"Show me my father!" he added harshly. 

The mirrored scene tilted dizzyingly through angles and the walls of the palace. It settled on King Hale, staring from a balcony out at the harbor. There was trash and litter on the floor with him. Beyond the double doors into the royal suite was a wrack of garbage and clothing left where it had been cast aside. Hale's cheeks were sunken; there were dark rings around his eyes. 

As Dennis watched, his father took a drink from the squat green bottle in his right hand; but there was no life in his face, even at that. 

"Enough!" Dennis shouted. 

He didn't have to ask to see the throne room. He knew what—and who—he would find there. 

Aria leaned softly against his arm. "Can you show me Rakastava, Dennis?" she asked, as though she were unaware of the tumbling fury in the mind of the man who loved her. 

Dennis took a shuddering breath. "Mirror, show us King Conall," he directed, as willing as she to get his mind away from what was happening in Emath. 

Conall was on his throne in the assembly hall, watching what seemed to be a dramatic performance by a score of costumed actors. A hundred or so other citizens watched with their king. 

Pointless, but harmless; and a further reminder of Parol on Emath's throne. 

"Do you want to see your own room?" Dennis said, forcing his mouth into a smile. The mirror responded to his intent before he stated it as an order—clearing and freezing again on the gold and white chamber in which he had watched Aria bathe. 

As he'd intended, that sight and its memories rushed all grimmer thoughts from Dennis' mind. 

Aria grinned. "You watched me—didn't you?" she said. 

Dennis nodded, his eyes on the mirrored scene. A smile of embarrassment played with his lips. 

Aria nestled closer to him. "You have a beautiful body, my husband," she whispered. "Perfectly beautiful." 

"Ah," said Dennis. "Is there something else you'd like to see? Anything?" 

"I'd seen nothing of the world before you came, Dennis," Aria replied honestly. "This—hut—is as wonderful and new as anything else could be. But..." 

She looked over to the suit of armor. "I don't understand how you came to me beneath the city. Your armor was here—and there aren't any steps down to Rakastava's cavern except the staircase that was locked behind me and, and Gannon." 

"Mirror, show us the cavern," Dennis directed with a smile. "Now, we may not be able to see anything there, because the light faded when I'd killed the—" 

But there was light. The water flickered with a clinging, gray phosphorescence like the rich sea beyond Emath harbor. The long shape of Rakastava, headless and still, was a line of shadow... but beyond it, where the water was deeper— 

"Closer!" Dennis ordered. 

In the water, the woman that was not a woman waved her human arms. 

"Have you come to me, Prince Dennis," said the sea hag, "to pay your father's debt?" 

Dennis stared transfixed. 

"Dennis?" said Aria in concern. 

"Dennis!" cried Chester in fear. 

The sea hag extended her arms through the mirror and grasped Dennis around the waist. At the last instant he tried to cling to the mirror's frame, but the creature's inexorable grip pulled him away from the bronze as easily as a starfish opens clams. 

The great maw gaped. For a moment the youth dangled above it. Then the arms released him and he fell, into the gullet of bone and blood-red tissue. 

The sea hag closed her mouth. The lovely girl-face smiled. An arm waved up to Aria and Chester. 

And with the slow certainty of lava moving, the sea hag sank out of sight. 

In Malbawn's hut, the mirror cleared and its surface turned to glass again. Only then did the princess begin to scream.