"Prince Dennis," said Aria. "How are you finding your stay in our city?"
She was standing beside him. Dennis hadn't seen her get up from her seat. From the black look the King's Champion was giving the pair of them, Gannon hadn't noticed either—until Aria was already beyond his ability to stop her without a public scene.
"Comfortable, lady," the youth replied. He avoided a stutter by not looking up into Aria's eyes until he'd gotten the first syllables out. "Very comfortable."
"I'm glad to hear that," she said. "You're looking worn, you see. I wouldn't want it on my conscience—in the morning, you see—that we of this city had been remiss in the way we dealt with an honored guest."
Dennis felt his face color. He wanted to get up, but Aria was standing so close that he'd bump her if he tried. He slid a few inches down the bench, into the area Dalquin had vacated.
Golden combs caught Aria's hair and swept it across her right ear and shoulder, concealing the fact that she wore only one earring. She toyed with the thick, lustrous strands as she continued, "You know, it was rather odd. I thought I saw your little friend, there, battling Rakastava this morning."
Her open-toed sandal indicated but did not quite touch Chester's carapace.
"I'm sorry, lady," Dennis said, rising as he now had room to do. "You must be mistaken. Chester was with me this morning; and I was in the pasture as always, with the herd."
"No doubt," the princess agreed with icy unconcern. She tossed her head. "I must be getting back to Gannon. After all, he's saved my life twice already. It's a small thing, isn't it, that he have my body in exchange?"
Dennis' expression shrank into a bony grimace. "As you wish, milady," he managed to say.
When Aria did not move for a moment, he added, "Princess? I wish you well in the morning."
Her face softened. "Thank you, Dennis," she said. "And I wish you and your friend well."
She turned around very quickly; but Dennis thought, as he strode for the door and his room, that Aria had begun to cry.
CHAPTER 50
The helmet locked over Dennis' head.
"Well, this is it," he muttered to himself. "I'll finish it, kill it for good and all, or—or..."
"The fool who wanders, Dennis," Chester quoted sharply, "loves neither peace nor the man of peace."
Dennis drew his sword. "I'm sorry, Chester," he said. "I don't—know what I want."
"Is it losing that you want, Dennis?" the robot asked.
"No. No, I'm not here to lose. Not that."
"Then you know what you want, Dennis; and the rest will follow."
The mirror's surface was almost black. The ambient light in the cavern had faded with each blow Dennis struck Rakastava. Aria was as faintly visible as a tuft of thistledown floating over a dark sea.
Something sunbright appeared in the cavern's distance.
Dennis locked his visor down. "Chester," he said softly. "Come with me, my friend, and we'll finish Rakastava this morning."
"As fate wills it," the robot said. He touched a gauntlet.
The companions stepped together into battle and a darkness already thundering with Rakastava's voice.
The serpent body glided in a cloud of steam, like a bead of sodium skittering in a bowl of water. Rakastava glowed a bright yellow-white. It was a fierce, foul color like that of gases blazing above the crevice of a volcano.
Rakastava's eyes had no texture. They were pure light and pure hatred.
Aria touched Dennis on the shoulder.
If she was trying to speak, he couldn't hear the words over the monster's wordless threatening; but Dennis wasn't sure that she spoke, just touched him.
He waved her back. Aria bent closer and kissed the bars of his visor, then stepped away to give Dennis the room he needed for slaughter.
Rakastava blazed like sour daylight as it came closer, illuminating angles of the cavern that had been dark for all previous eternity. The severed heads glinted where they lay on the coping, scales catching light and reflecting it as if they crawled with life and not decay.
Water surged ahead of Rakastava's approach. It caught and tumbled the trophies, then receded. The dead jaws gaped and the tongues lolled out—flaccid, now, and harmless.
Chester gave back the light with a sheen like gold, and Dennis could see Rakastava's glowing reflection elongated in the star-metal blade of his sword.
"I have not come to kill you, human," the creature boomed. "Let me past and I will let you live."
"You won't kill me, Rakastava," Dennis shouted. "And if you try to pass me, you will surely die!"
Rakastava's neck swayed slowly, side to side. The vertical bars of Dennis' visor turned the movements into slots of dark and light at the corners of his eyes, threatening to mesmerize the youth. He blinked.