CHAPTER 18 

"Good sleep is the greatest of gifts to a man in the time of his feebleness, Dennis," said Chester as sunlight through the leaf canopy made his master's eyelids quiver. 

All of Dennis' muscles flashed taut. His body thrashed as if lightning-struck by the sudden surprise. "Ch-chester!" he gasped. Where have you—where are—" 

Dennis looked around. He and the little robot lay beneath a tree whose buttress roots spread broadly out through the lesser growths of the jungle. The bark was smooth, and the contours of the roots made a comfortable cup to support the youth while he was sleeping. 

Nothing in the jungle could stay dry. Dennis' hips lay in a pool of water, and the cloak that he'd pulled over himself and Chester was as sodden as the surface of a pond. He tweaked the garment back—it clung because of its weight and the surface tension of the water—and stroked the smooth, slick carapace of his friend and companion. 

"Where did you find my clothes, Chester?" he asked. 

"And this?" he added, noticing that the Founder's Sword was with them beneath the cloak also, belt wrapped around the hilt and scabbard. 

Dennis stood up, lifting the sword with one hand. He ached all over, and both his clothes and skin were ripped by thorns—but there was no sign of the battering he'd taken when he ran through the jungle naked, pursued by the corpse of his father's wizard. 

"Chester?" he repeated in concern, because the robot still hadn't responded. 

"Dennis, your clothes and your sword have been with you through this night and dawn," Chester said. Concern honed the precision of his words. 

"But the cabin," Dennis said. The chain closure of his cloak cut into his neck with the weight of water in the garment. He reached up to release it with his free hand, but wonder stayed the motion. "Chester, you remember the cabin, don't you?" 

The little robot stretched his own limbs, raising his body on four of them while the other four reached higher yet. Droplets cascaded down the silvery tentacles, leaving no more sign than if Chester also were made of fluid. 

"Dennis," he said, "there is no cabin that I remember." 

The tentacles groping through the sun's dapplings lowered to the ground; the other four rose and shook themselves free of water in silky iridescence. 

"Then what...?" said Dennis. His hand completed its motion, loosing the clasp and swinging the cloak away from his body. He leaned the sword against the tree bole and began to wring out his garment thoroughly. 

He didn't finish his sentence, because he had no idea what the rest of the question ought to be. 

The air was muggy, saturated with vapor transpiring from the leaves as sunlight touched them. It was hard to remember how miserable and chilly it had been a few hours before. 

"Didn't you see the—" Dennis began; and before his tongue formed the rest of the words, he recalled the fungus-knotted smile of the Wizard Serdic saying shall we play a game, boy? in a nightmare voice. 

"I was dreaming," Dennis muttered to himself aloud. "I dreamed it all, Chester. And it was awful." 

Chester coiled a tentacle around the youth's waist. "Happiness comes out of the hardship men undergo, Dennis," he said. 

Dennis belted on the sword again. The skin over his hipbone was still chafed from wearing the weapon the night before, but maybe he'd get calluses or something. It wasn't a problem he remembered hearing about in tales of past heroes. 

"Well..." he said, looking around them. 

His heart leaped. They were off the trail—that much of what he remembered from the night before was true. 

But there was no cabin, and no room in the heavy vegetation for a cabin ever to have been there. 

"Chester," he said, "can you find the trail from here?" He was amazed at his own calm. The night he had spent in his dreams with a dead man had burned all the fear out of him. 

"I can find the trail, Dennis," Chester replied. "And I can find a road, if you would travel a road instead." 

Dennis looked at his companion, wondering what the robot's expression would be now if he had a face. "Then let us take the road, Chester," he said. "And—" the grinning fungus in his memory momentarily wiped the smile from his own expression "—if it leads away from here, it leads us well." 

He followed the robot through the glittering leaves which showered them again with the night's raindrops.