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.
Before a general melee could break out, a middle-aged woman with a flute paced out in time with the stately music she played. Unlike the trumpeter, she was expert indeed. Her flushed face suggested that she as well as the children had rushed to get into position to greet the newcomers.
Behind the flautist came—"marched" would imply too much organization—six men wearing swords, breastplates, and neck-flared helmets. The sheathed swords looked sturdy enough to be real weapons, though their hilts were gorgeously ornamented. None of the swords had the length or heft of Dennis' star-metal blade.
The armor was too light to be intended for more than decoration. The tallest of the six, a man of at least half again Dennis' age, strode forward from his companions. His trousers and tunic were black, and his armor was plated with black chrome. The sunlight danced on its smooth curves as it had over the surface of the Cariad's pond.
The flautist paused.
"In the name of King Conall and the people of Rakastava," boomed the man in black, "I welcome you, stranger, to our community. I am Gannon, the King's Champion."
"I, ah," Dennis said.
He drew himself up straight—he was a little taller than Gannon, he noted—and said, "I am Dennis, Prince of Emath. My companion and I are adventuring through the jungle."
His words sounded impressive—and they were true, though the greatest adventure he'd had outside of dreams was to run from a fish-girl... But he was barefoot and his clothing hung in tatters. The splendidly-attired folk of Rakastava must think him a fool and a braggart to speak that way!
Gannon's eyes moved from the great sword to something beyond Dennis. His face paled, and there was no mockery in it.
Dennis glanced behind him to see what it was that affected the King's Champion. Had Chester done something, or had they been followed by a monster? But the robot was motionless, and there was nothing else—
Except the wall of the jungle itself.
He'd become used to it in the weeks since he'd left Emath. It was neither friend nor foe, just fringing undergrowth and the majesty of the vine-draped monarchs toward whose peaks Dennis stared while he lay resting on his back.
The jungle might have denizens more fearful than the birds and lizards which had brightened its vegetation and his life as Dennis journeyed among them, but—
The Founder's Sword quivered as Dennis' grip tightened on it. The terrors of the jungle might find a terror of their own to face if they met him now.
The folk of Rakastava felt the same way about the newcomer. It was on the faces of all of them, children and woman and armed men, as they gazed at Dennis in his rags.
"Prince Dennis," said Gannon in a voice that lost its tremulousness after the first syllable. "Please come with me to our king, who even now prepares to receive you."
Gannon gestured. The children moved in a flutter of banners and loose clothing. They glanced back over their shoulders in quick nervousness toward the newcomers—then squealed and scattered forward when they saw that Chester moved also. The flautist took up her measured cadence and followed them.
Dennis waited for further direction. The King's Champion gestured again, this time with a touch of irritation in his eyes.
Dennis sheathed his sword. It rustled against the scabbard sides, then chimed as it shot home to the cross-guards.
"As you will," he said, striding on after the woman with the flute while Gannon and his fellows arranged themselves behind.
"Pride and arrogance are the ruin of their owner," Chester murmured.
Dennis, with the look of the King's Champion fresh in his memory, had no doubt at all for whom the robot meant that bit of wisdom.