by David Drake
Mother Grimes' body fell in two halves.
On the floor, the elbow of the arm holding the baton straightened and bent; straightened and bent. Dennis stabbed at the pincers joint. The sections flew apart, letting the baton roll clear. The sword drove six inches deep in the flooring, but a quick tug cleared it easily.
Mother Grimes' five remaining limbs were scrabbling weakly. Most of her head was still attached to the right side of the torso. Everything was covered in blood—Dennis, the walls, and the remains of Chester.
With the dress slashed to rags, Dennis could see Mother Grimes had a jointed exoskeleton like that of Malbawn and Malduanan. A thin filament attached the creature's right heel to the floor.
Dennis sliced through the filament. Mother Grimes thrashed momentarily. Then all the pieces, arm and body halves, became as still as meat in a locker.
"My friend!" Dennis repeated. In a rush of loathing, he began to slash at the quiescent body, grunting with the effort of blows that sent his sword deep into the floor and walls.
When he paused, he was gasping for breath. His body felt as if it were crawling. When he looked down, he found his clothing was in rags, dissolving in the juices that still dripped from the wall. Angry blotches rose wherever the slime had touched his skin.
Mother Grimes' baton lay between his feet, not far from the hollow shell that had been Chester.
Dennis gasped with the suddenness of the thought that struck him. For a moment he remained frozen in the slump to which exhaustion had reduced him. Then he straightened and cut an opening in the front wall with four long, deliberate strokes. What fell away looked like the rind of a gourd.
He paused again, still panting.
Light had seeped through the walls of the hut, but the opening brightened the interior considerably. For this, Dennis had to see what he was doing very clearly...
He picked up the baton between his left thumb and forefinger. The surface was sticky with blood, but apart from that, the baton felt as though it were a piece of wood.
Dennis gingerly moved the white end toward the robot's carapace. Just before the two touched, he looked away. He couldn't let himself watch the failure of a hope that meant so much to him.
The baton went chank! on the hollow metal.
"I want to die," the youth whispered through his tears.
"Do not turn away from life because someone else has died, Dennis," said Chester in a cross voice.
"Chester!" the youth shouted. He started to hug the robot, then remembered the baton he held. If the black end touched him or the robot—
Grimacing with horror, Dennis flung the object through the opening he'd hacked in the wall. Then he clutched his life-long companion with his free hand and the elbow of his sword arm, holding the weapon point-up and safe during the embrace.
"I thought I'd killed you," he babbled. "I thought I'd never see you again, Chester, and I wanted to die."
There was a faint wash of verdigris on the robot's limbs and carapace, but the metal was whole again and the tentacles that encircled Dennis' shoulders were as smooth and supple as ever before.
"Whether we stay here or go back is up to you, Dennis," Chester said quietly.
The digestive juices were burning almost the whole of the youth's body by now, as though Mother Grimes had surrounded him with fire before he slew her.
"Oh," Dennis said. "Of course."
He reached his sword arm out through the opening, then cocked his body free like a contortionist avoiding further contact with the house.
Avoiding contact with the creature that looked like a house with a little old lady inside.
The new sword fit well into the scabbard made for the old one. The smith who'd hammered out the Founder's Sword for King Hale must have seen the real thing somewhere to copy the style and dimensions so accurately.
Dennis sheathed the weapon, stripped off his ragged clothes, and rubbed his body with handfuls of dry grass. The stems and leaves prickled, but they scraped away the fluids that smeared him and seemed even to reduce the redness and swelling which the slime had already caused.
The exterior of what had been Mother Grimes looked like a puffball, half-deflated and already rotting. Dennis couldn't imagine how he'd thought it was a house.
"Let's go back to Rakastava, Chester," Dennis said. Now that things were calm, his body sagged with the effort it had delivered.
He left his clothing where it lay. The garments were still crumbling, though the weight of direct sunlight seemed to be slowing the process. He carried the belt, the damaged scabbard, and the star-metal sword instead of wearing them against his bare, swollen skin.
"Is it me or yourself that you would have carry the baton, Dennis?" the robot prompted.
"There's nothing of men in that thing, Chester," the youth replied with a vehemence that surprised even him. "I'll take the sword, for it's a fine sword and I've lost the one I came with. But that other thing—"
He spat. "I want it no more than I want Malduanan tramping at my side, Chester."
"Do not slight a little thing, lest you suffer for its lack," Chester murmured.
But one of his tentacles looped around the scabbard, taking the weight from his exhausted master as they trudged back to Rakastava.
CHAPTER 42
Rakastava was so underpopulated that Dennis encountered only three of its citizens on his way to his room.
He expected to be laughed at. He was a ludicrous figure, tired, naked and blotched with swellings.
The woman and men who faced Dennis, from around corners or a doorway, fled in the opposite direction as soon as their eyes took him in. A naked wildman might frighten anybody, but there was more to it than that. One of the men bobbed a nervous bow, and the woman muttered, "Prince Dennis," before she bolted away.
They were in awe of him. Not even because he'd killed monsters.
The folk of Rakastava were in awe of Dennis' willingness to go well beyond the city's walls.
"They're all cowards," he muttered as the door of his room opened with its promise of bath and balm. He was too exhausted to put real venom into the observation.
"Not all of them are cowards, Dennis," Chester disagreed in a mild tone. Then he added, "The Princess Aria will be at meal in the assembly hall when you have bathed."
Dennis grinned. "Not all of them," he agreed.
But the cheerful expression faded when he remembered the way Gannon's image looked at the princess—and the way the princess looked back.
CHAPTER 43
The evening meal had started by the time Dennis joined the gathering. There was an empty space on the bench between Conall and his blond daughter.
Aria glanced around as Dennis approached. The way her face brightened to see him made memories of her mirrored image less bitter.
Conall peered at the youth. "You've been—" he said, then looked down and took another forkful of 'meat'.
"Always glad to have you with us, boy," he said gruffly.
Aria's finger traced a splotch on the side of Dennis' neck where a drop of slime had splashed the youth soon after Mother Grimes' door shut behind him. The swelling had gone down, but the skin was still tender.
He turned. She touched a similar blotch on his forehead.
"You've been fighting again," she said. If her touch was cool, then her voice was cold, clinical. "Did you have a good time?"
A disinterested adult talking down to a six-year-old.
"Well, I..." Dennis said, taken aback by this kind of hostility, from—from Aria.
She was concentrating on her plate again, though a certain stiffness in the line of her back suggested that she was no less aware of his presence than she'd been before.
Well, I... Dennis thought; but he couldn't find a useful way to finish the sentence even in his mind, so he didn't attempt it aloud.
They'd seen the damage Mother Grimes had done him. It wasn't their fault, hadn't anything to do with Rakastava and her people; but it reminded them of those they
'd sent to die in the past. King Conall was embarrassed. And Aria—
Dennis blushed. He didn't understand Aria, but he suspected the fault was in the way he felt about the princess.
"Say, boy," said the King's Champion, leaning forward to speak past Conall. "Some more flotsam tossed up in Rakastava. See them?"
He pointed to the next down of the circular arc of tables rising from Rakastava's floor.
A couple, brightly dressed but obvious from their emaciation, sat gawping at the splendor around them. They looked ancient, though after staring at them, Dennis decided neither was more than thirty. Their faces were smeared with gravy from the food they'd shoveled in—with their bare hands, from the look of them. The time they'd spent in the jungle had left them with no more table manners than the lizards.
If they'd ever had table manners to lose.
"Maybe you'd like to go join them, boy," Gannon continued. "They're more your type, aren't they?"
"Gannon," Conall murmured to his plate.
"What will you do with them?" Dennis asked. There was no more emotion in his voice than there was on the edge of his sword.
"Well, they'll stay, I suppose," Conall said in surprise. "I don't imagine they'll want to leave again, now that they've found safe—"
He broke off when he realized exactly what Dennis meant. "Oh, good heavens!" the king blurted. "You mustn't think we did—the things that happened, that is, because we wanted to. Rakastava welcomes strangers. It was only necessity that caused us to..."
Dennis thought of the weapons piled in Malbawn's hut, clubs and knives and spears of sharpened wood. The sort of weapons simple folk, like the ones at the next table, would carry if some catastrophe sent them wandering through the jungle.
"You're right," Dennis said. "It doesn't matter now."
He began to eat, uncomfortably aware of the way Conall stared at the cup he held in both hands and Aria turned her torso at such an angle that Dennis had only her back to look at when he glanced to his right side.
The lights dimmed.
Dennis continued eating. He was hungry, even for the bland offerings of the city's table, and there was still enough light to see the food. He didn't know why the glow from all the room's surfaces had shrunk to a fraction of its usual intensity, but there wasn't very much about Rakastava that he did know.
He was going to have to leave this place. Despite Aria.
Because of Aria.
There was a long, hushed sound, a combination of wailing and sobbing, from the people in the assembly hall.
Dennis set down his fork and dropped his hand to the pommel of his new sword.
All around him, the citizens of Rakastava were covering their eyes or staring fixedly at the empty air in the huge room's center. The other newcomers to the city, the stragglers at the next table, were as confused as Dennis—though they reacted by clutching one another and hunching down as if they were about to slip under the table.
There was something in the hollow air after all.
It glowed with a pale green light, expanding slowly—the way a puffball swells in the hours before it bursts. It had a snake's body and three heads from which snake-like tongues slipped and forked as the creature grew.
It hung twenty feet in the air; and it wasn't real. Dennis could see ceiling moldings through the glowing shadow of the creature's body.
"Humans," said the head on the left. The voice thundered with echoes from a hollow even greater than that of the assembly hall. "It is time to pay Rakastava again."
One of the guards at Dennis' table began to sob in terror.
"Who shall it be this time, humans, that you send to Rakastava?" asked the head on the right.
There was a serpentine hiss in the way the creature pronounced sibilants. The voice was more than ample to be heard throughout the hall which Dennis had thought was too large for sound to fill.
There was a general cry of terror, muted by the very fear which wrung it from the throats of the cowering citizens.
Dennis' hand slipped from the pommel to the hilt of his sword, though he didn't draw the weapon for the moment. It was time for a sacrifice, and he knew where the folk of Rakastava looked for sacrifices...
"This time, humans," boomed the center head, appearing to stare straight at Dennis, "it is with the Princess Aria that you will pay Rakastava for your lives and the comfort in which you live them."
The assembled citizens gasped. Though horror may have been a part of the sound, most of it was relief.
The citizens chose the ones who went out to keep Malbawn at bay. But this creature chose his own victims...
"She will meet me in the morning—" said the left head.
"—with a single champion," said the right head.
"If she has a champion," the central head concluded with mocking emphasis.
The shadowy creature began to fade, or perhaps the increasing brightness of the room made it seem that way. But the vision was gone before the last echoes of its voice had vanished from the assembly hall.
Everyone was babbling to their neighbors with covert looks toward the king and princess. The volume of the creature's voice was underscored by the relative hush that a thousand humans talking brought to the big room.
"Daughter," Conall said in a choked voice. His face was turned toward Aria, but Dennis—between them—doubted the king could see anything through his tears.
"Well, of course I'll go," said Aria, answering a question that hadn't been asked aloud. She carefully folded the napkin in her lap, set it beside her plate, and stood up.
Gannon had gotten up already and was walking toward the door behind them with tiny steps as though he were a statue being pulled on casters.
"Well, Gannon," the king said—briskly, royally. "This time it'll have the tables turned on it, won't it? You'll have its heads off in a trice."
Gannon looked like a man who'd just heard the twang of the crossbow aimed at his chest. "Indeed, sire," he said. "I was just going off to prepare myself to meet Rakastava in the morning."
Dennis put his hand on Aria's wrist. "Please," he said, looking up at the standing woman. "I don't understand. This is Rakastava. What's going on."
Aria smiled at him sadly. "This is Rakastava's city," she said. "That—" her index finger pointed toward the vault, empty air again "—was Rakastava; and every so often, we pay him for the use of his city."
Her smile grew coldly bitter. "At a price of his choosing, as is fair."
"But that's a ghost!" Dennis said. "A shadow! There's nothing really there, it's just a—"
He didn't have the words to finish, but his companion—
"Chester!" Dennis said, "tell them that Rakastava isn't a real thing."
The little robot slipped from beneath Dennis' seat at the bench. "What you have seen, Dennis and Princess," he said, "is not real but a projection—light interrupting light in the air."
"You see?" Dennis crowed. He jumped to his feet, straddling the bench, and took each of Aria's hands in one of his own.
"But beneath the city, Rakastava is very real," Chester continued inexorably, as if he were unaware of his master's false joy. "And it is to Rakastava, not his projection, that the princess is to go in the morning."
Part-eaten dishes had disappeared into the tables. Goblets of strong, sweet wine rose from the surface in place of the food—many goblets, and the citizens attacked the wine with enthusiasm and relief.
From the corner of his eye, Dennis saw the King's Champion drain one cup, then—after a moment's hesitation—replace it with the full one sitting unnoticed before Conall's bent head.
"Wait a minute!" Dennis cried. "If it's real, this Rakastava, then I'll fight him!"
The youth's loud voice carried to the immediate circle of the king's table and those standing near it. Gannon looked at him, and for a flashing instant Dennis was sure that he saw hope and agreement in the champion's eyes.
Aria took her hands from Dennis and turned away.
"You're
a very brave young man, Prince Dennis," Conall said with kind formality. "But this is a task for one with more experience."
"Go back to your cows, boy," Gannon cried harshly. "Leave man's work to a man."
"A ruler is punished for giving honor to a fool!" Chester rasped in the same hectoring tone. Gannon jumped in surprise.
But pride had more of a grip on the King's Champion than fear. He straightened and struck a heroic pose, knuckles against the points of his hips, beneath his polished armor, and his elbows splayed out to the sides.
"Gannon, there's no need to be—" the king said mildly.
"Wait!" Dennis repeated. He put a hand on Aria's shoulder with enough pressure to beg, though not force, her to turn. "Aria. Tell them you want me to fight Rakastava with you."
Aria met Dennis' pleading gaze. There was no warmth in her eyes, but she put a hand over the youth's where it rested on her shoulder. "Many champions have gone down to fight Rakastava, Dennis," she said quietly.
She turned to her father, squeezing Dennis' hand as she lifted it away. "I desire that Gannon be my champion and companion in the morning," she said in a clear, ringing voice. "When I go to meet Rakastava."
Gannon winced. Dennis didn't notice, because he was stumbling toward the door in blind humiliation.
There were cheers behind him in the assembly hall, but he doubted many of the citizens could have given a reason for their enthusiasm—
Beyond the fact that someone else would feed the monster this time.
CHAPTER 44
The cows' breath sweetened the morning air with the scent of the fodder they'd grazed the day before. One of the calves rubbed its black-and-white head against Dennis in a friendly gesture before frisking off after its mother.
The sun hadn't risen over the fringing jungle, but the sky above the pasture was already bright.
Dennis rubbed his face with his palms.
"Dennis?" said the little robot.
"Yes, Chester?"
"It is now that you have need of the armor in Malduanan's hut."