by David Drake
"To do what?" Dennis asked in amazement.
"To wear, Dennis," Chester replied. "To watch, and to wait."
The jungle was reclaiming Malduanan's hut. The woven leaves of the roof were tattered, creating pools of light. Plants were beginning to sprout among the bones.
The black armor stood in calm magnificence. Chester's tentacles worked the catches with a speed and ease beyond that of a human attendant, dressing his master piece by piece while another pair of limbs readied the next of the accouterments.
The armor covered Dennis completely. Each piece fit as perfectly as if it had been made for him instead of some long-dead hero.
Where the armor touched bare flesh—his wrists and neck, and his hands which flexed and released within the gauntlets—the metal had the feel of satin. It seemed to weigh no more than the ordinary clothes he wore beneath it.
"This is star-metal, isn't it, Chester?" Dennis said in awe. He worked the helmet's slotted visor with his left hand while the robot fitted the swordbelt around the sliding bands that permitted him to bend at the waist.
"It is star-metal, Dennis," Chester agreed smugly. The robot backed a pace as if to view his handiwork. "And now," he continued, "we will go to Malbawn's hut."
Dennis swallowed. "To—watch the Princess Aria?" he said.
"Yes, Dennis. And to wait."
CHAPTER 45
The back of Malbawn's hut had collapsed from the weight of evening rains and a branch the rain had brought with it. Vines were crawling through the sagging remainder of the structure, but the mirror was still clear.
Dennis stood before the glass—if it was glass—with his visor raised, waiting for Chester to prompt him.
"There are those," the robot quoted acidly, "who know the path but do not take it."
Dennis blushed. "Mirror, show me the Princess Aria," he ordered.
He needed Chester's help to guide him through this. But he also needed to act on his own when he could.
The mirror shimmered, but for a moment Dennis thought it was still displaying the interior of the hut and the shadowed jungle beyond. Then his eyes focused on the new scene; he recognized Aria. She stood at the bottom of a sloping staircase. There was a lamp in her hand and a look of mastered fear to make her lips quiver.
There was illumination beyond the sphere of lamplight which hung in the humid air. The half-light was a gray ambiance, scarcely bright enough to be called a glow. It soaked the floor—and perhaps the walls as well, but they were too inconceivably distant for Dennis to see them.
The staircase down which Aria had come was made of stone, not the slick material from which most of the city was constructed. The treads had been worn hollow in the center, though Dennis couldn't imagine that anyone came by this path except at Rakastava's demand.
Aria's lips moved as she called out.
"Chester, where's Gannon?" Dennis demanded. "He's supposed to be with her."
"Gannon came with the princess to the bottom of the stairs," Chester explained calmly. "And now he is in the darkness behind her, where she does not see him... and he hopes Rakastava will not see him either."
"W—" Dennis said. "Will it see him?"
"Rakastava cares nothing for Gannon, Dennis," the robot said. "Rakastava's business is with the Princess Aria."
The youth's eyes stung with tears. "She should've taken me," he mumbled. "I wouldn't have run."
"She knew you would not run, Dennis. And she did not want you to die."
Aria stepped forward carefully. Only a few yards from the base of the stairs was a stone coping. Beyond that was water, smooth and black and limitless in expanse.
The glow from the walls fell on this underground sea as on glass. The princess was a white blur, a statue of Grief reflected in a cemetery pool.
The water rose, slopped over the coping and the princess' sandals. Her lamp bobbled as she took a startled step backwards. She covered her mouth with her free hand.
The sudden wave receded, then rushed forward again and soaked the lower treads of the staircase.
Aria dropped the lamp to sputter and die in the foam as she clapped both hands to her ears. Dennis couldn't hear the bellow—but he'd heard Rakastava's voice in the assembly hall, and he could imagine the thunder that was beating on the princess now.
"Chester," he moaned, "why did you let me leave her? I should have—I should have gotten down there..."
His eyes were closed and his mind was so concerned with punishing him for his failure—cowardice, he should have found a way—that he didn't for a moment understand the words when Chester said, "You can go there now, Dennis."
"You mean?" the youth said as his eyes flew open and flashed around him, somehow expecting to find that he was in the city instead of the hut a mile away. "No, it's too far to get there in time!"
Something was moving in the distance glimpsed through the mirror. It was as black as the water, but the water surged away from it; and above were its eyes, six sparks as bright as rubies from the floor of Hell.
"You can be there now, Dennis," Chester said, "if you step through the mirror."
Dennis drew his sword and stepped through the mirror. He didn't ask or question, because Chester had told him what he wanted to hear.
The youth's left elbow rang on the bronze mirror-frame, but of the glass there was no hint or hindrance. The atmosphere was humid and sticky with salt, and the air rebounded with monstrous bellowing.
Rakastava was coming.
The creature's scaly breast raised a tide on the underground sea, washing Dennis knee-high as his feet clanked down onto the stones. The star-metal armor sealed his legs against the sea's rush, but the pressure of the water made his footing chancy for a moment.
God in heaven! but the monster's roars were loud. Even when the triple throats were silent, the distant echoes competed with the slap of water against stone.
"Gannon?" called the Princess Aria. "Gannon? Who are you?"
She was a cloud of virginal white, but Dennis didn't dare let his mind dwell on her.
"Get back!" he shouted through the bars of his visor. "I've more to think of now than you!"
Dennis clenched and unclenched his left fist, proving to himself that his hands moved freely in their metal gauntlets. He lifted the point of his sword another inch.
Rakastava was bigger than its projection in the assembly hall, though most of the creature's dragon-length was hidden by the water. The body moved snake fashion, side-to-side loops that drove it forward and made the saw-edged comb on its back wobble.
The creature's eyes were red and burning. Behind its serpent necks streamed manes. They burned too, but with a sickly light deep into the violet end of the spectrum. The heads to right and left wove complex patterns as Rakastava approached, but the head in the center drove a line as direct as a beam of light.
The rippling slowed and the body straightened out, letting Rakastava's mass glide forward like that of a boat nearing dock. More of the back rose out of the water, slanting upward in a line which paralleled that of the shelving sea-bottom. As it moved closer, Dennis saw that Rakastava had short, clawed limbs at the base of its triple throats, where the pectoral fins of a fish would have been.
"Step aside, little man," the center head rumbled. The eyes glared ten feet above the water and ten feet away from Dennis, so that he had to look up to meet them. "I will take the Princess Aria, and I will let you live."
Dennis said, "You won't take—" and the head on Rakastava's left struck at him.
The helmet cut off some of Dennis' peripheral vision so he didn't react quickly enough to meet the attack with his point, but reflex lifted the cross-guard and the meat of his blade against the rushing jaws. Though the impact slammed him back, his star-metal edge cut a notch from Rakastava's lip.
Blood with orange fire at its heart spattered. The head drew back and jaws from the other side clamped Dennis around the waist.
Teeth squealed on star-metal armor. Neither broke or flexed, but
Rakastava began to lift Dennis off the ground.
The youth swung, aiming down near the base of the neck where his arm had the leverage of a full stroke. The creature's scales were rock-hard and rock-strong, but they split under the force behind Dennis' new sword. Shattered bits splashed into the water, and more glowing blood oozed out to brighten the scene.
The head bellowed and dropped him. Rakastava lunged forward, using its weight to slam Dennis back. The claws on the right foot splayed open as they raked down his torso, sparking and pinging without being able to penetrate the armor.
All three sets of jaws opened. Their forked tongues jabbed out, armed with suckers and spiked nodules like the stinging cells of jellyfish.
Dennis was off-balance but he stabbed anyway, as much to give himself time as to do real harm to Rakastava.
His point glanced off. The star-metal blade was sharper than fear, but Rakastava's scales were very nearly the blade's equal. Only a well-aimed stroke would cut them—and even that they resisted.
A tongue curled around Dennis' right ankle. He swung for it but the center head was dipping toward him...
Dennis struck upward, but the neck was already swinging away. The youth's left leg shot out from under him: Rakastava's right tongue had curled and gripped during the center head's feint.
The center head lifted. Its laughter boomed. Dennis crashed backwards onto the wet stone as the creature drew up on both his legs.
Dennis' armor transmitted the shock of impact in a numbing flash from the base of his spine. Rakastava spread the youth's legs sideways as well as lifting them, as if the creature were a sailor preparing rope for splicing. The youth's groin muscles began to blaze as Rakastava stretched them more than even fencing exercises had done in the past.
Dennis reached out with his left hand, trying to grip one of the heads. His gauntlet slid off the armored muzzle, then groped with the tongue holding his left ankle. Even Rakastava's tongues had the texture of quartz, not soft, spongy flesh.
Fiery pain filled Dennis' eyes. He swung into the center of it, judging where the head must be from where the tongue pulsed within his grip. He felt his sword strike, but in his spasm of hysterical strength, he couldn't be sure whether the blade bit, glanced off, or flew from his hand.
He didn't feel the floor when he fell back on it, but salt water spattered his cheeks through the helmet visor. Rakastava was roaring like an earthquake through its two remaining throats.
The stump of the third neck spouted like an orange-lit fountain.
Dennis rose to his knees. He hadn't lost his grip on his sword. His thighs clicked together in their armor. The feel of his overstretched muscles relaxing gave him a feeling of success greater even than seeing one of Rakastava's heads on the coping before him.
Rakastava was sliding its body backwards. Its two remaining heads were high, but the third neck trailed limp in the water and the third head was Dennis' prize.
"One is off, but two are on, human," Rakastava's main head called as the creature backed into darkness. "I will return for the princess—and for you."
The sea boiled. Dennis braced himself to receive Rakastava's rush and vengeance. The water surged instead—breast-high as the youth knelt and staggering in its impact, but only water and the creature's real farewell as it dived to whatever depths it called home.
Dennis waited on his knees and left hand while his body gasped its breath back. His eyes were focused on his sword.
The blade still smoothly reflected the cavern's light. No nicks or scratches marred the pallid metal, despite the battering it had taken in the fight.
Neither salt water nor Rakastava's glowing blood beaded on the flats. The star-metal sword was as perfect as it had remained through the millennia before it came into Dennis' hands.
"Oh..." the youth whispered.
Aria's motion was a white shimmer where water pooled in the low spots of the stone floor. Dennis turned and tried to stand—then decided that he'd stay where he was instead. He balanced on one foot and one knee with his left hand near enough the ground for a third point of contact if he became that dizzy.
"Are you all right?" she asked as she knelt beside him. She touched his shoulder with the fingers of one hand, but the metal's unearthly feel made her flinch away.
"Better than he is," Dennis grunted. He prodded the severed head with his sword-point.
The eyes were dead black now, and the mane had lost much of its violet fire. Dennis leaned forward and ran his fingers through the seeming hair. It rustled like glass against his gauntlet.
"Are you really Gannon?" the princess asked. Her hands framed Dennis' face as she started to raise the visor of his helmet.
He stood up suddenly, pulling away from her touch. He slammed his sword into its sheath, his motion driving Aria back a step.
The underground sea had grown as still as volcanic glass. On its surface Dennis could see the reflection of something that wasn't there—the mirror in Malbawn's hut, and Chester waiting at the edge of it.
He stepped toward the coping.
"Wait!" Aria called. Her slim, smooth hand was pale on the armored elbow.
Dennis turned. He wanted to clasp her; but there was nothing in that for him except the thought, and nothing for her beyond pressure from a slick, grim casing of star-metal.
"Give me your ring," he said, wondering for how long the visor and the cavernous echoes of this underworld would hide his voice from the princess.
She obeyed without hesitation, twisting the ring off her little finger to put it in Dennis' metal palm. It was a circle of carven crystal which matched her earrings and complemented the triple pendant between Aria's breasts.
"Now will you—" she said; but Dennis, hoping that he understood what he saw, stepped back toward the reflection—
And into Malbawn's hut, where Chester's quick support kept him from falling as his boots hit the floor.
"There are men who trust their moment," said the robot, "and for whom it goes well forever, Dennis."
"Just get me out of this suit, Chester," the youth said. He could hear the metal-to-metal whisper of Chester already beginning to loosen the catches of the black armor.
The mirror was only a mirror again. Dennis decided he liked it that way.
At least for the moment.
CHAPTER 46
Aria gasped. The water didn't tremble when the man in armor stepped into it. He and the rectangular shimmer—reflection, she would have said, but there was nothing to be reflected—disappeared as suddenly as if they'd never existed.
But Rakastava's head, larger than that of a horse, lay at her feet. The neck-stump was still oozing blood.
She bent to touch the head. The scales were hard and as slick as the armor of the hero who'd left the grisly trophy behind when he vanished.
Gannon's step was so soft that his hand was on her arm before Aria heard him. She leaped upright. She was too shocked to scream.
Gannon smiled at her, his face unreadable in the dim light. "A pretty thing, isn't it?" he said, lifting the head by the mane. "A pretty thing to show the folk who didn't think Rakastava could be defeated, even by me."
"It wasn't you who fought..." Aria whispered. Even she couldn't be certain whether she was denying his statement or begging him to confirm it. It had been dark...
Gannon still held her arm. His grip tightened. "Not me, Aria? Not me? Princess, I fought a monster that no one else could face, much less defeat. It was a terrible fight, though I won it, and—were anyone to deny me my honor, Princess, I can't answer for what I might do to them in a fit of righteous indignation. To anyone, Princess."
Gannon's fingers continued to squeeze, harder and harder as he spoke. Aria's face worked in pain, expecting the big man's thumb and fingers to meet through the flesh of her arm.
He released her suddenly. "We wouldn't want that, would we, Aria?" he said as softly as a cat purring. He lifted Rakastava's head, staring at it instead of at the princess. "That wouldn't be a good t
hing at all."
Aria wasn't sure whether or not Gannon was the hero who had saved her.
But she was quite sure that he meant his velvet threat to murder her if she spoke her doubts to anyone else.
"No," she said in a calm voice, massaging her smarting arm with her other hand. "That won't happen, Champion Gannon."
Gannon's teeth were a gleam in the pale lighting. "Not so formal, my dearest," he said. "Now, let's go and display my triumph to the others.
CHAPTER 47
Dennis smoothed the new trousers over his thighs as he and Chester walked down the corridor to the assembly hall. He squeezed the big muscles at the back of his thighs, trying to rub some of the ache out of them.
"Even with the armor and the sword," he said softly, "I thought I was gone there, Chester. I thought it would..."
His tongue didn't finish the sentence. Clear in his mind was the image of a chicken's wishbone, being pulled apart between the fingers of two children.
"He who runs from evil," the robot said, "finds evil waiting for him."
"I ran from Emath's evil, Chester," Dennis replied. "Not my own."
The door opened, just as cheering filled the assembly hall as thoroughly as human throats could manage.
"Rakastava is dead!" Gannon shouted. He raised the severed head so that everyone in the room could understand him, whether or not they could hear his words.
Dennis paused. Gannon, Conall, and Aria were alone at the table where Dennis had sat on previous nights. The remainder of Conall's glittering 'guards' were divided among the tables to either side; and Gannon stood now between the seated king and princess.
Conall glanced back and saw Dennis. He gestured the youth to a seat among the guards.
"And now, King Conall," cried the champion, turning to the older man beside him. He lowered Rakastava's head so that its weight rested on the table. The stump smudged the smooth surface.
"In recognition of my saving your daughter—and in saving all of us for the future from the monster's exactions—I claim the Princess Aria in marriage."