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 thing 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."
"No!" gasped Dennis.
"Hurrah!" cried the nearest citizens.
"Hurrah!" the shout went on in an arc expanding around the circle of tables. Someone threw a hat; the air began to spin with bright cloth.
Gannon took Aria's hand. She resisted his pull for a moment, then rose to her feet. Her face was turned aside and toward the floor.
"I request that our wedding be held at—"
The assembly hall was growing darker.
"—once!"
Rakastava's laughter boomed through the sudden hush.
"Humans, humans," called the monster's glowing image from the center of the hall. "You are not yet free of Rakastava."
Gannon tried to release the severed head. His fingers were wrapped in strands of the mane. His hand twitched with increasing violence, like that of a man who's touched something foul and sticky.
"In the morning," continued the image, "the Princess Aria must return to me... and with her must return my head."
Only the head on the creature's central neck was speaking. The stump hung limp, though at least in hologram there was no sign of the blood that had spurted from it earlier.
Dennis thrust his right hand into the sidepocket of his trousers as he watched Rakastava.
"And the champion who fights for the princess may come or may not come," said Rakastava in a voice as close to a caress as a roar could be. "It is all the same to me. But if he comes, he will stay."