CHAPTER 33 

"My, there's no one to greet us," Dennis muttered in renewed bitterness as the stable door closed behind them. The cows were making their own docile way to stalls where mechanical fingers milked away the pain of their udders. "You'd think they didn't expect us to be back." 

"Indeed, they did not expect us to be back, Dennis," the robot said. "Is it to your room that you wish to go?" 

"They'll be at dinner now, won't they?" Dennis said. 

"It may be that they will," Chester said in qualified agreement. Then he added in a different tone, "A fool who forgets balance is not far from trouble." 

"I've seen trouble, Chester," the youth said quietly. "And now I will see Conall and his people." 

"We will go to the hall, then, Dennis," the robot agreed. "And if they are not there, we will find where they are." 

The corridors had a bright sameness of illumination. It wasn't harsh, but it grated on Dennis' eyes because it didn't vary the way light did in a natural setting. He was beginning to get dizzy again; or perhaps that was just the hormonal surge of fury wearing off. 

He was very tired. 

"This is the door to the assembly hall, Dennis," the robot said. 

Dennis came to full alertness. His skin flashed hot and crawled as though there were tiny bugs crawling under its surface. 

He looked at the blank wall and said, "Door, open." 

He strode forward even as the fabric of the wall stretched itself aside. 

The effect of his entrance spread throughout the big room like a drop of oil on a pond's surface. A face turned toward him; then the faces nearest; and then, in expanding circles, all the population of Rakastava—staring, rising to their feet, climbing onto the tables to gape and murmur. 

The first eyes to look at Dennis were those of the Princess Aria. They were clear and blue and fearless. 

Dennis walked toward the king's table. There was no place set for him between Conall and Aria this night. Gannon was sitting to the princess' other side, his arm raised to not-quite-touch her shoulder in a proprietary gesture. When he looked at the returning youth, the arm dropped and his staring face went white. 

"Here, here," Conall babbled, sliding sideways on his bench. The armored courtier beside him got up hastily to make room and scuttled off, staring over his shoulder. 

Dennis smiled at Gannon and drew the Founder's Sword. He flicked a finger at the King's Champion. 

No one breathed for a moment; then Gannon realized that Dennis was demanding his space, not his life. He crawled over the bench also and backed away. 

Dennis put his foot on the seat and stood the sword point-down beside it. He looked over Aria's blond head at her father. Steadying the pommel with his left hand, he began to stroke his whetstone across the nicks in the metal. 

"I watched your cows," he said, "just as you told me to do. And they're all safe, King Conall. Every one of them. And I am safe as well." 

Sring! went the stone against the swordblade. Sring! Sring! 

"Sit," Conall murmured, patting the bench beside him as he raised his fine, noble face to the youth with the naked sword. "Please sit, P-prince Dennis, and we'll..." 

The king met Dennis' eyes instead of fluttering his gaze across the younger man's bruised forehead; the bloody gouges streaking down from his hair and across the bunched muscles of his shoulders; the scabs and purple swellings on his ribs where Malbawn's corpse had continued to strike Dennis' unconscious body... 

"We didn't mean—" Conall said in a firm voice; but he broke off the sentence because he couldn't speak the lie after he thought about it. 

Aria slipped from the bench and stood before Dennis. The fall of her hair blocked his view of the seated king. She reached out, touching Dennis on the forearm. Her cool fingers traced along his biceps, just beneath a scabbed gouge left by Malbawn's first blow. 

"Come," she said softly. "These must be bathed." 

She nodded solemnly to Chester, an equal to an equal, and began to lead Dennis back to the door by her touch on his arm. 

"What?" Gannon blurted. 

"Aria!" Conall cried. 

She looked at the men: coldly at the champion; a softer but still inflexible glance toward her father. "Come," she repeated to Dennis. 

A great babble of sound broke out behind them as the doorway closed. Dennis started to glance back, but Aria strode on—and he followed, down the hall and into the room that had been assigned to him. 

"Fill, bath," she directed with the same assurance with which she had led the youth. "And I'll have unguents—as well as some food for later." 

Dennis looked at Chester for support. The robot stood to the side, as still and silent as a piece of furniture. 

"Well, get into the tub," the princess said. She was wearing a dress of the same bright chicory-flower blue as her eyes. It had long puffed sleeves which she was rolling up while the nested crystal spheres spun in her cleavage. 

The door opened. 

Gannon stood in the frame of the doorway. He stood with his thumbs tucked into his sword-belt, arms akimbo, with a hectoring expression on his face and his open to speak. 

Dennis' face went blank. Light trembled on the blade of the weapon he still carried bare in his hand. 

Aria turned and pointed her index finger at Gannon. "Go," she said in a tone like that of the sword crunching into Malbawn's throat. 

Gannon backed as though steel and not a delicate hand were thrust toward his face. "Princess," he blurted, "you—" 

The wall closed with a rushing certainty that cut off any words he meant to add. 

Aria turned to Dennis, too controlled to be calm. "Get your trousers off," she ordered. "No one can open the door again until I say so." 

"I—" Dennis said. 

The steam rolling from the warm water was scented. He was feeling dizzy again and very tired. Without arguing further, he sheathed his great sword; unbelted the scabbard; and slipped out of his torn and stained trousers. 

The water in the shell-shaped tub was a caress that melted the agony from his strained muscles even as it dissolved the scabbed blood on his skin. 

"Oh..." Dennis breathed, slipping down so that his scalp and whole body were under the surface. His eyes were closed and he was on the quivering edge of unconsciousness. "Oh..." 

A lemon-pungency of ointment filled the air. He felt Aria's fingers reaching through the water to work unguent into the scrapes and tears and punctures that he had accumulated during his weeks of travel and a battle for his life. Her touch was cool despite the tub and the healing sharpness of the ointment. 

"Turn now," her voice whispered through the fog of exhaustion and steaming water. "Turn..." 

There were flaps of loose skin on his shoulders where he had deliberately accepted punishment from the creature's armored limbs. Aria kneaded the ointment into the wounds, then forced the skin back over Dennis' bare flesh while he rested his chin on the sloped rim of the tub. The sudden pain made him suck in his breath... but after the first rush, he could feel the injured surfaces starting to knit together. 

"I'm beginning to think I survived after all," Dennis whispered. He wasn't sure whether he was speaking aloud or only in a pink-misted, lemony dream. 

"I am glad that you survived, Prince Dennis," murmured the woman's voice from the mist. "Now it is time for you to get out of the water and to sleep." 

The tub was draining into itself. Hands and tentacles as gentle as hands were helping Dennis, drying his body with towels and clothing it again in loose, light garments before lifting him to the bed. 

Dennis could see the crystal spheres spinning, so close that if he blinked his eyelashes might brush them. 

"I am glad that you survived," the voice said. "And I am very glad that you have returned as well. Now, sleep..." 

His mind obeyed that instruction, as Dennis had obeyed every instruction Princess Aria had given him this night.