by David Drake
But before the creature disappeared, it chuckled again and added, "I will keep my bargain, Hale. And you will keep your bargain too. In good time..."
And as the sea hag finally disappeared, the velvet drapes and the darkened palace closed Dennis in the embrace of reality.
Dennis flexed his arms, then offered a smile to his companion. "It's hard to do that," he said. "Hard to—to be there and not be able to, to really be there."
"Shall we go then, Dennis?" Chester replied, shifting his body doorward on the four of his limbs that now supported him.
"No, I—" He stopped and put on a calm expression, as if the robot's featureless case had eyes which a man could catch and hold. "Chester, will the machine show the future?"
"It will not show the future, Dennis," Chester said. Then, tartly, he added, "Fate does not look forward—and its blows do not fall wrongfully."
Dennis hugged his shoulders to remind himself that he had a body now... and to make sure that memory was fresh in a few moments, when he re-entered the past through magic.
"I want to see what happened next," he said. "When... wh-when I was four years old."
Chester's tentacles did not move on the pedestal at once. He twisted to face the door as if he heard someone coming.
"Parol!" Dennis shouted, resting his knuckles on his hips so that he stood arms akimbo. "Are you there?"
"He is not here yet, Dennis," Chester said, easing back on his limbs at his master's unexpected reaction to his hint.
"It doesn't matter where he is," Dennis said. "I want to know what happened on my fourth birthday—if this won't tell me what's going to happen on my sixteenth."
"The fool builds a fire and burns himself on it, Dennis."
"Chester, I am your master!" Dennis said, letting fear and uncertainty come out in his voice as anger. "I have the right to order you to do this thing!"
The little robot must have made allowances for the emotions that ruled Dennis at this moment. Instead of the silent insolence that Dennis expected even as the words left his mouth, Chester said, "I will do this thing, Dennis..."
His tentacles played on the controls, three of them touching the surface of what seemed metal until it lighted in its interior and the fourth poised, waiting for some stimulus that did not come before Dennis again sank into a dream of storm and darkness.
Hale's face was a younger version of the one Dennis had seen the evening before, ruddy with good living—and frightened gray beneath that patina of success. He was daubing at his palms as he waited within the circuit of the protective storm.
Hale's hands had grown soft and he'd lost his calluses in the three years since his son's image had watched him. The oar-looms had raised blisters and then torn them open as the king—no longer a fisherman—stroked his way out of Emath Harbor.
To bargain with the creature who had given that harbor to him—for a price.
When the sea hag rose, its mouth was already open. Water streamed back through hidden gills. There was no hint of humanity in the creature, and little enough of hope.
The fishing boat didn't pitch, because the sea hag's mass already gripped its keel and held it steady; but water thrown by the creature's upward rush slapped the wooden sides and filled the air with mist.
Hale very deliberately reached over the gunwales and skimmed his hands through the water, cleaning his blisters in its salty bitterness. "I have come, sea hag," he said formally.
"You have come alone, little man-thing," said the sea hag.
A lightning bolt wove its instant sinuosities across the storm wheel. The blade of blue-white light threw the boat into harsh relief and momentarily illuminated the monster beneath the water's gray surface. Dennis, looking down from standing height, saw not one mouth but a score of mouths gaping and grinning from a globe even huger than his nightmares.
The sea hag was nothing that had been born on a world that bore men.
The thunderclap pounded the ship and Dennis' father. The shattering cascade of sound provided the scream that Dennis had no mouth to utter.
He was not present in this past; his body could not be harmed here. But memory of the blue-lit sea hag would never leave his dreams...
"I have not brought my Dennis," said Hale, forcing the truth as he knew it out in a voice that threatened to break.
"Goodlady—" Hale hadn't looked down into the water as his son did when the lightning illuminated it. No one who'd seen the sea hag's full reality could have used the polite human greeting, even now when the beautiful woman-face smiled out of the waves again.
"—I beg you, ask for something else. Anything I can give you. My—my ships, they bring cargoes from every port the sea bounds."
"Salt water is my kingdom," rumbled the creature in its great stinking voice. "Every shore the sea bounds is mine to travel more swiftly than you or your ships can dream, King Hale."
"Caravans from the interior bring me jewels and wonders that the seas have never known!" Hale said with desperate brightness. "Things from ancient times, marvelous things. Ask me for anything, goodlady, anything!"
He was rubbing his hands unconsciously. They jerked apart every time pain brought the open blisters to his attention—and then began washing one another again, because nothing in Hale's immediate physical reality could stay in his mind very long.
"Nothing..." said the sea hag—though Dennis thought there was for the first time a hesitation in the voice that had been all arrogant certainty before.
"Nothing, King Hale—" the hesitation was gone "—but the price of our bargain, your firstborn. Bring me the price agreed!"
"G-g-g—" Hale stuttered into the cavern of blood-rich tissues and bone. He covered his eyes with his hands. "Goodlady, I beg you—a delay, please. Not my son. Not now."
The sea hag's booming laughter shook the vessel almost as the thunder had done moments before. "Ah, shall I show you mercy again, King Hale? Is that what you think?"
"Please."
"Then I will give you twelve years more with your son," said the creature, "to see how much less you love him after you know him the longer. But Hale...?"
"Please. Please."
"I will have the price of my bargain the next time we meet. Depend on it."
As the creature sank, a further bolt of lightning raked the sky, making Hale's hair stand out and reopening to view depths that should have remained hidden.
The sight and echoing thunder left Dennis shivering when the velvet room closed in around him and he had a body again.
Dennis' skin was hot and his head buzzed. He felt as though he were about to faint, so he squatted down on the cold crystal floor and put his head between his knees.
Chester looped a limb over his master's shoulders and hugged gently.
"What can I do, Chester?" Dennis whispered. He didn't open his eyes, but his hand reached out to embrace Chester's smooth carapace. "I'll have to go t-to it."
"Your father will not give you up, Dennis," said the robot.
Dennis rose to his feet, bracing his hand on Chester's body and partly supported by another of the robot's tentacles. The moment of real collapse had passed, but he didn't trust the strength of his knees just yet.
"He has to give me up, Chester," he said quietly. "Everything we have—everything we are—comes from the sea hag. If she takes back... Emath, the harbor, the palace... there's nothing. Everyone here will starve. And we're responsible for them b-because we're the rulers."
He squeezed his lips tightly together to keep them from quivering. His eyes looked unblinkingly at his companion, but he could not prevent the tears from dribbling down because of what he had seen—and was sure he must go to join.
"Now I know why Dad wouldn't let me go out in the boats," Dennis said. "He beat me when I sneaked aboard one of the big trading ships when I was little."
"The man who spoils his son, spoils himself," commented the robot.
"But that didn't matter!" Dennis shouted in sudden anger at the memory. "He can't save
me from the sea hag because he can't save Emath!"
"Parol is here, Dennis," said Chester without any sign of emotion in the words.
CHAPTER 7
A man-sized cloud of light, mauve and blue and angry orange, danced through the opening in the velvet-shrouded room. "Prepare to meet your doom, interlopers!" it cried.
The cloud's voice was understandable but not right. Its words were speeded up a trifle beyond human speech, turning them into bird-like chirps.
Under normal circumstances the situation would have been startling—even fearful, despite the way the threat was twittered instead of being boomed. But the doom Dennis had seen in the lightning-lit depths of the sea had wrung him too thoroughly for anything with the apprentice magician behind it to arouse fear.
"Parol!" he shouted, hands braced on his hips again. "What do you mean talking to your prince that way?"
The vaguely-humanoid cloud quivered, turning a dull gray with only a hint of color. Then it shrank in on itself like a pricked bladder, drooling momentarily along the crystal floor before it vanished completely. Parol, his mouth open in surprise, stood in the doorway.
"W-what are you doing here?" blurted the apprentice wizard.
Parol had black hair, a pasty complexion, and eyes of different colors—blue-green on the left, muddy brown on the right. He was almost as tall as Dennis, but the shapeless black robe he invariably wore made his soft body blur into the background while his face hung in the air like the full moon at dusk.
All the Wizard Serdic's apprentices had the look and personality of creatures that entered Emath hidden in baskets of jungle fruit or dredged from the deep sea. Parol was no better than his predecessors—perhaps even a little slimier, a trifle more weakly vicious, than the others whom Dennis had been old enough to remember as persons.
Recollection of how frightened he had been of Serdic added cruel pleasure to confronting the dead wizard's flunky this way. "How dare you question me? Get down on your knees, you little toad!"
"Luck leaves the harsh man because of his brutality!" Chester said sharply.
Dennis, keyed up from the present confrontation on top of days of strain, whirled with his hand lifting to slap. His mouth dropped open in horror when his mind realized what his body was doing. "Oh," he said. "Oh Chester."
Parol had dropped to his knees at the haughty order. He was bowing his forehead to the crystal floor. "Pardon me, Prince," he babbled. "Oh, pardon my surprise, only my surprise—never disrespect to you, most noble prince."
Dennis felt awful. He'd invaded Parol's privacy—sneaked in, knowing the owner was gone and hoping to leave before Parol returned. And then, because he was caught... and frightened; and disturbed... Dennis had covered his wrongdoing with the sort of angry arrogance that bothered him so much when he saw his father do the same thing.
Worst of all, Parol was fawningly willing to accept that awful behavior.
"Ah, Wizard Parol...?" Dennis said.
"Pardon, Prince," mumbled the other man—the other youth; he was a few years older than Dennis, but the only sign of color on his face were acne pocks. He was speaking to the floor.
"For pity's sake, get up," Dennis said.
He was disgusted with his own behavior a moment before, but Parol's behavior would have been disgusting at any time. The last thing Dennis wanted to do was to let his feelings about the pasty apprentice explode into fresh anger again—but if Parol didn't stop acting like a whining worm, it would be very hard not to treat him as one.
Parol didn't react for a moment, but his eyes scanned the reflection of Dennis' face in the crystal. He cautiously lifted himself, pausing for a moment on all fours while he watched the prince directly—looking like a dog ready to scuttle backward from a stranger who may kick.
"Wizard Parol," Dennis repeated formally as the apprentice at last stood like a man again. "I want to apologize for troubling you this way. Chester and I had some business here that didn't affect you, but we should have told you we were coming as, as a courtesy."
"Oh, your highness needn't speak to me," Parol said, bobbing his head. Either it was just the way he was standing or his left shoulder was higher than the right one. "Only—"
Parol had a disconcerting way of holding his head so that Dennis could see only one of his eyes at a time; now it was the brown orb, and both anger and fear glinted on its muddy surface "—some of the, ah, the devices... can be dangerous. But perhaps—"
Parol's head snapped around like that of a bird. "Your highness of course studied at length with th-th-th..."
His face lost everything but a glaze of stark terror. "My predecessor taught you, your highness," Parol continued with his eyes both focused on an empty upper corner of the draperies. "No doubt he taught your highness the proper use of his devices?"
"We're here for our own reasons," said Dennis curtly. "Not wizard reasons."
He had to spit the words out harshly to convince himself that what he was saying was true... as it was almost true, if you viewed what he and Chester had done in the right way. They weren't wizards, so they couldn't have wizard reasons—
Except when they were using magic to watch the past.
"Yes, yes, of course, your highness," said Parol, his voice as false as the hatred in his hidden, winking glances was real. But—
Parol was something that could have been found under a rock; but this was his rock, and he had a right to be angry when somebody moved it and prodded at him needlessly.
Parol was moving backward, into the room of glass-cased exhibits. Dennis thought the apprentice was trying to speed their departure—and there may have been something in that, but there was a ring of truth in Parol's voice as he explained, "Whatever your highness wishes, of course, but—I don't spend much time here myself. I, my sleeping room is through there and the, the library, but this—these devices. I don't—"
He stopped and looked Dennis directly in the eyes for the first time since he'd confronted the intruders. "There are dangers in these devices," Parol said, speaking as closely to blunt honesty as it was in his character to manage.
He winced away into his normal cringing slyness. "Even for those of us who've been carefully trained in their use," he added, the implied lie an obvious one.
"Yes, well," said Dennis. "Well, I won't trouble you further, Parol. Sorry for the inconvenience."
He stepped forward, brushing back the velvet hangings—glad to be back in the normal diffracted brightness of daytime in the palace, but shocked again by the creatures displayed in glass bubbles.
Dennis' skin crawled, feeling the pressure of hundreds—thousands—of dead eyes glaring at him. Chester laid a tentacle on Dennis' hip bone, a firm, familiar pressure to remind him that even here he had a friend.
As they strode past the apprentice wizard, Dennis controlled the impulse to twitch his shirt close to his body lest its hem touch the fabric of Parol's robe.
"Ah, your highness?" Parol said from behind the two companions as they reached the anteroom.
Dennis turned his head. "Yes?"
"If your highness wouldn't mind perhaps telling me what it was that he visited these chambers for," Parol said with a swarmy smile, "then perhaps I could hel—"
The apprentice's words trailed off. He scuttled back out of sight, looking as fearful as he had when he tried to speak Serdic's name.
Dennis didn't understand the reaction until he caught sight of his own face in the reflector of the lamp beside him in the anteroom. Parol couldn't know that Dennis' expression came not from being asked an impertinent question but rather from being reminded of the sea hag.
And her bargain.
Chester swung open the black pearl door. The draft of air drawn from the rotunda was as enticing as summer flowers after peculiar miasma of the wizard's suite.
"Ah, Chester?" the youth said when they had climbed stairs to the second floor and were no longer in sight of even the black door. "The little—furry animal in a case back there?"
"The
tarsier, Dennis?"
Dennis shrugged. "If that's what it's called. When I looked back, I thought—" He sucked in his lips and chewed on them for a moment. "I thought I saw its head turn."
Chester said nothing.
"But I guess that's crazy."
They strode down the disused hallway together. The whicker of the youth's trouser legs brushing together merged with the swish-click! of the robot's limbs on the crystal.
"Parol does not wish you well, Dennis," said Chester unexpectedly. "It would be wise for you to watch yourself with him."
Dennis shuddered despite himself. "But it isn't going to matter very long, is it?" he said bitterly. "Not after tomorrow, when I'm sixteen and my father has to keep his bargain."
He spoke quietly, but for minutes afterward he could hear his words echo in the emptiness of his mind.
CHAPTER 8
The notes of a Pan pipe rose in utter purity from one of the palace courtyards. Air trembled in each wax-stopped tube of the set, achieving a resonance and precision of harmony possible only to genius with an open-ended flute.
Pan pipes were a little too sweet and insistent for Dennis' taste; but the servants liked them, and somebody was always ready to play in the evening after chores were done, while a few danced and others listened and relaxed.
In the evening. But—
"Chester, how long were we in Parol's quarters?" Dennis demanded. Because of the shrouded gloom of the chamber holding the machines, he hadn't noticed earlier that the light shifting through the crystal palace wasn't the bright noon he expected but rather twilight.
"Seven hours, forty-nine minutes and a half, Dennis," said the little robot.
"But—" Dennis said.
Well, of course they'd spent that long. The light said it was evening; the servants' music said it was evening; and Dennis' muscles all ached with the effort of holding him upright for eight hours without a break. So the question was—
"Where did the time go, Chester? Was it a trap of, of one of the wizards—to hold us there?"