THE SEA HAG(41)

"The wise man takes counsel patiently before he acts," Chester said. Though Dennis knew the robot could move or see in any direction, the normal 'front' of his carapace now looked off into the jungle as if he were ignoring his companion.

"Well, all right," Dennis said in the exasperation he always felt at his companion's unwillingness—or perhaps inability—to volunteer anything but quoted wisdom. "What would you do?"

"I will do whatever my master wishes me to do, Dennis," Chester said primly. "But—there is a city not so far away from here, though it be through the jungle with no trail save the trail that we make for ourselves."

The youth shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked back at the road they had followed so far. "A village of the lizard people, Chester?" he asked.

"It is a village of men, Dennis," Chester replied. "Though it was not made by men or by lizardfolk either. It is called Rakastava."

Dennis thought for a moment. "It doesn't mean crossing—that, does it?" he asked. His thumb gestured over his shoulder without looking at the bowl which death itself had excavated.

"It does not," the robot said, and a light-silvered tentacle pointed the way to their right. A clump of sword-edged leaves with black, spear-shaped tips rimmed the road there for several yards. "But there is no trail."

Dennis drew the Founder's Sword and slashed a broad gap through the immediate vegetation. "We can handle the jungle," he said.





CHAPTER 25




A day and a half later, he knew enough to be less positive if the question came up again. The difficulties weren't particularly from the undergrowth—away from the tunnel of light which the road let fall to the ground, lesser vegetation was stunted and easy to avoid.

The footing was worse than terrible. Streams; bogs that might be ankle-deep or over his head; fallen timber that Dennis might have to circle for a hundred yards because it was too soft with rot to climb; and the rare outcrop of quartz or other faceted stone that would slash through even the calluses his bare feet had formed tramping the hard, smooth roadway.

Dennis didn't see Rakastava until he hacked through an unexpected tangle of briars. Beyond them, he noticed that his feet were on grass and his face in sunlight.

"This is Rakastava, Dennis," Chester said needlessly.

Dennis let his breath out slowly.

No one could have doubted that the crystal spires of Emath Palace were artificial, built by the men of old with tools more wondrous than those they had bequeathed to their progeny. No one could have doubted—save Hale and later his son, the only men who had seen the palace rise by itself, an organic part of the headland on which it stood.

Rakastava seemed instead to be a great vaulting hill, brown and barren; wholly a thing of the Earth and not hands... but Dennis wondered.

The city or city-huge palace had no gates or windows, only slopes too steep to climb. They rose hundreds of feet in complex curves. The exterior of Rakastava was brown; reddish-brown in its own shadow, closer to golden in the portions which the sun flooded—but the same color throughout, a uniformity as false to nature as the oily smoothness of the walls when Dennis tested them with one hand.

His other hand held the great sword which he had thought not to sheathe.

"Chester, how do we—" Dennis began. The shrill, broken note of a trumpet interrupted him and drew his eyes upward.

Three men were leaning over a high battlement to stare down at Dennis and his companion. Their tunics were splashes of orange, yellow and chartreuse, and their peaked caps were all bright blue. As Dennis watched, the man in chartreuse straightened and raised the trumpet to his lips again.

He wasn't a very skillful trumpeter. It took him three tries to get the effect he wanted; and that (though clear and loud) was by no means musical.

A section of solid wall near Dennis drew back to either side in accordian pleats. The movement was noiseless, but a medley of human sounds came from the opening in advance of more people appearing.

"Do not tie yourself to a fiend, though he be powerful," Chester quoted morosely.

"I don't understand," Dennis said, glancing from the gateway to his companion—and back to the gate, as his sword shifted across his body.

"You will understand, Dennis," Chester said. The robot composed his limbs at precise intervals around his body, as if they were no more mobile than table legs.

Half a dozen children scampered out the gate, carrying banners on short poles. They made an effort to look serious, but one's peaked cap was sideways over her curls. When she tried to straighten it surreptitiously, her banner dipped across the back of the boy next to her—who jabbed with his elbow in response.