CHAPTER 26 

Dennis expected a cave. Instead, the interior of Rakastava was brighter than Emath Palace at midday. The air, while somehow lifeless, was fresh and moved in gentle currents even after the gate closed behind them. 

The walls glowed. Light couldn't come through them, the way it did in Emath Palace, so it must be generated by the material itself. Maybe the air did the same... 

The corridor down which the children led Dennis was high-ceilinged and lined with people. More spectators appeared at every moment from side halls or doorways that vanished again when they closed, just as the gate had done. 

The citizens blinked at Dennis and gaped at the robot beside him, but their whispered excitement stilled when the newcomers passed close to them. Gannon was the only inhabitant of Rakastava who'd actually spoken to Dennis. 

The youth matched his pace to that of the flautist. He'd have preferred to let his legs take the full stride he'd found so natural on the road through the jungle. For a while he tried to meet the eyes of the people looking at him, but they ducked away. That made him uncomfortable—he wasn't a freak, for goodness' sake!—and he let his sight rove along the walls instead. 

The corridor's lines were softened by bands of color, primaries as well as pastels; but there was no visual art to give the passageway a human touch. 

Nothing in Rakastava was human except the inhabitants. 

The corridor opened into a chamber incomparably greater than anything Dennis had expected to find within a building. Even the mountainous bulk of Rakastava as he had first seen it, a slick, brown mass rising sheer from the jungle, seemed inadequate tho hold this—audience chamber, he supposed, because there were thrones and a carpeted path to them across the expanse of stony floor. 

Trumpets sang, high and clear and echoing. Their well-blown notes sounded thin in the huge room. 

Gannon strode past Dennis and Chester, marching toward the thrones with his head back and his armored chest thrust out. The woman with the flute had stepped to the side and vanished among the spectators. 

There weren't as many people as Dennis had at first assumed. There were at least a score of corridors like the one he and Chester had followed, and all of them were spilling gaily-dressed people into the audience chamber now. But the room could hold twenty Emath Villages; and the crowd now assembling totaled less than Dennis had seen at the Founder's Day parades on any of the past five years. 

In Emath, the crowds were alive—coarse, pushy; smelling of fish and spices and the sea—but alive and sure of their growing success. These folk of Rakastava were good-looking, almost without exception. They were dressed in clothes of a quality that in Emath only Hale and his family could afford—and they wore their garments with a stylishness that Dennis hadn't imagined existed before he saw it here. 

But the flies glittering in circles about a corpse were brilliant to watch also; and if there was liveliness in the eyes of the folk Dennis saw around him, it was only that. Rakastava was great, but it was dead; and the people who inhabited the city spun in their courses over carrion. 

The King's Champion quick-stepped toward the thrones. Dennis followed, lengthening his own stride instead of trying to match Gannon step for step. They reached the end of the carpet. Spectators were drifting along beside the newcomers, watching them avidly. There didn't seem to be much formality in the arrangements, despite the way the newcomers had been greeted. 

Buzzing flies, Dennis thought again. Aloud though in a low voice he said the Chester, "I don't like this place at all. What's wrong with them?" 

"Do not be in haste to quarrel with a powerful ruler," the robot quoted sharply. But a tentacle reached behind the youth and curled affectionately in his palm—his left palm, the hand he wouldn't need if he had to draw the sword abruptly. 

The red carpet was thick enough to feel comfortable under Dennis' bare feet. 

The pair of thrones provided Dennis with something other than vastness on which to focus. As he approached them, the visual scale of the room reduced to human norms. The face of the man seated to the right had wrinkles only about the eyes, but he was at least as old as Dennis' own father. 

Certainly he was older than the woman to his left. She was the most beautiful girl Dennis had ever seen. 

"Most noble King Conall," Gannon shouted, twenty feet from the thrones but still unable to sound impressive in a room so large. "Most gracious Princess Aria—" 

There were ten or so additional men in decorative armor to either side of the thrones. An honor guard, Dennis supposed, like the one Ramos commanded at Emath. 

And equally needless, it seemed. The men beside the thrones were older and paunchier than the ones who accompanied Gannon. Dennis suspected that the six who'd greeted him outside the gate were those who could throw on their accoutrements and race down the corridor in time to do so. 

"I bring you Dennis of Emath," Gannon was continuing. "A wayfarer who begs your hospitality." 

Dennis squeezed Chester's limb and stepped past Gannon. His body had gone cold when he realized what he was about to do, but it wasn't fear like that with which the dream wizard had struck him. 

This was Dennis' choice; his decision not to be belittled before strangers... one of whom was named Aria, and whose blond hair spilled from golden combs to the middle of her back. 

"Sir," he said, wondering if his own voice seemed as thin as that of Conall's champion, "I'm indeed Dennis, and I've come from Emath where my father is king. But while I wish your friendship, I need beg from no man. The jungle fed and kept me on the way here. It'll keep me again before I'll become a burden anywhere I'm unwanted." 

Conall laughed and stood up. 

"Pardon our insensitivity," he said as he stepped forward, extending his hands toward Dennis. "Visitors are a rare pleasure to those of us who live in Rakastava. And as for a burden—" 

He gestured with one hand while the other clasped Dennis in friendship. "There are no burdens here," he said forcefully. "Rakastava is Paradise on Earth." 

Aria had stepped down beside her father. Her smile had as much of amusement as greeting in it. "At the very least, Prince Dennis," she said in a clear voice pitched like a viola, "won't you allow us to provide you with clothing? If only until you return to the jungle to have it provide for your needs." 

Dennis glanced down and blushed. He'd forgotten how ragged he looked. "Look," he said, grimacing. "We're traders in Emath. Traders and fishermen. Just Dennis is fine, please." 

Aria herself wore a dress of gauzy blue pastel, cinched with a waistbelt. The belt's gold matched her combs and sandals, while her ring and earrings were clear, faceted jewels. 

Around Aria's neck was a silver chain. Three carven crystal balls, nested one inside the other and the largest no bigger than a walnut, hung between her breasts. The pendant moved when the girl did, but Dennis realized with a shock that there was no physical connection between the chain and the crystal. 

As for his clothing... 

"Ah, I'd very much appreciate—something to replace these," Dennis said. "I—the thorns, you know." 

"Clothing of course," said Conall heartily. "And a meal, at least. You surely won't deprive us of a chance to talk with you during a banquet, will you?" 

"Well, I..." Dennis said, losing his train of thought as he stared at Aria's crystal pendant. The three balls were rotating within one another, each on a separate axis. Their carved surfaces made patterns which changed the way the shadow pictures moved when a breeze stirred the leaves of Dennis' dream. 

"And maybe Prince Dennis wouldn't mind taking a bath," Gannon said harshly from beside Aria where he now stood. 

"I'll take him to a room where he can change, father," Aria said coolly, turning her head as if the King's Champion hadn't spoken. 

"Certainly, daughter," Conall agreed, but his eyes were on Chester. "Ah, Dennis?" the king went on. "That is a—an artifact from the Age of Settlement, is it not?" 

"Yes, Chester," Dennis agreed, reaching back and feeling his palm warmed by the tentacle it had snatched itself away from a few moments before. "We came from Emath together. We're friends." 

Gannon smiled. 

Flushing again, Dennis said, "This may interest you, Champion." 

He slid the Founder's Sword a hand's breadth from its scabbard; not quite a threat but enough to show the blade's rugged lines. "It's from the Age of Settlement too. It's made of star-metal." 

Conall smiled also. "How interesting," he said, bending forward to peer more closely. "May I?" 

Dennis thought the king was going to take the sword. Instead, Conall flicked his hand so that the nail of his index finger rang against the flat of the blade. 

He straightened. "How interesting," he repeated without emotion. "We have many artifacts of the Settlement here as well. I see you noticed my daughter's pendant." 

"Is that what he was staring at?" Aria said with a twinkle of amusement. 

Dennis flushed. Conall blinked. Gannon looked as though he'd been slapped. 

"Yes, well," said the king. "Do please take our guest to a room. The banquet will begin as soon as he's refreshed himself." 

"In our apartments, I think," said Aria. 

Dennis watched the by-play between the princess and her father, but none of it made sense to him. 

"I don't think—" Conall began doubtfully. 

"It's closer," Aria said. "And it needn't be for long." 

Gannon gave a snort. 

"Yes, well, of course," Conall said at last. "Whatever you think best, child." 

Aria gestured Dennis to come with her. The wall opened into a doorway just as Dennis was sure that she was about to walk into something solid. 

But as he followed, watching the dress sway against her softly-curved body, he was sure of one thing: Aria wasn't a child.