Somebody shouted, “It’s Dennis! It’s the prince!”
Thugs in orange tried to struggle through the crowd to get to the speaker.
At the head of the central street which led from the palace to the perimeter was a line of men in Parol’s orange livery. They were supported by a pair of demons whose hair of smoke and flame billowed as high as the nearest eaves.
Rifkin stood in the middle of them; even fatter than Dennis remembered him, and carrying a polished black staff as tall as he was.
“Go away!” shouted the ex-butler.
“Rifkin, who are you to tell me to do anything?” Dennis replied. Only ten feet separated them, but those within Emath were treating the perimeter as a physical barrier.
“Get away from here!” Rifkin shouted back. “Whoever you are, you’re not wanted in Emath!”
He gestured with his staff of office. The two demons bent toward Dennis. Their rippling bodies breathed with the soft, sucking sound of flames.
“Chester,” Dennis said quietly. He was well aware that his boots were still sunken in the dust of the perimeter, and that the dragons might rush back at any moment. “How may we kill these demons?”
“The demons cannot be killed, Dennis,” the robot explained, “because they are but images, as empty as the features of those with whom the sea hag greeted you on the island.”
“That’ll do,” Dennis muttered.
Before he could act, Aria stepped closer to one of the demons and waved her mantilla in its insubstantial face. “Begone!” she cried. “Out of the prince’s way!”
The huge figure quivered like a picture projected on smoke when the breeze blows. Then it was gone. Rifkin jumped back, and Aria began to laugh like mocking silver bells.
Dennis strode forward. There were twenty liveried guards, all of them armed, and Aria’s scrap of lace wouldn’t stop a sword-cut. The remaining demon floated toward him, hot and dry and blurring the youth’s vision of Rifkin as if through a fiery screen.
If Dennis could take out the leader of Parol’s men with his first stroke, perhaps the rest would—
“All hail Prince Dennis!” boomed a voice from the crowd. The same voice, Ramos’ voice—and Hale’s old friend raised high both of the guards who had gone to silence him.
Ramos’ great calloused hands were locked on each guard’s right wrist. One of the men still waggled his sword vainly.
It acted as a banner to rally the people of Emath Village against their orange-clad oppressors.
A roofing tile struck down a guard, but the rush by hundreds of citizens was too sudden and overwhelming for further missiles to be necessary. The second demon vanished, an empty phantasm which left behind no trace of its passage.
Rifkin dropped his staff. He jumped backward, away from the mob—and bumped into Dennis, who scarcely had time to turn his sword and avoid cutting the ex-butler apart by accident. Rifkin saw what he’d done and screamed, plunging back the way he’d fled. He was starting to tear off his orange tunic, as though that could save him.
It did give the people a useful idea, though. As Dennis and his companions stepped into Emath, the mob began to wave flags of orange fabric as they shouted, “Hail Prince Dennis!”
Ramos had gotten rid of his two captives. He swept his arms around Dennis—still bigger than the youth and far too careless of the drawn sword. One of Chester’s tentacles whisked the blade aside to avoid disaster.
“I never thought you’d return, lad,” the old man blurted. “I thought that little swine Parol had made away with you.”
“None of his doing,” Dennis said, hugging Ramos hard with his left arm. “Are—are my parents…?”
“He’s got them in the palace,” Ramos said. Even though their heads were close together, they both had to raise their voices to be heard over the mob.
“To the palace!” somebody cried, taking up the words.
“King Dennis to the palace!” hundreds of throats replied in a building chant. The crowd surged back down the street, parting to let Dennis and his companions through to its head.
“King Dennis!” the people roared.
CHAPTER 66
Chester walked in front of them, his glittering tentacles providing a breathing space for the others without threatening the members of the friendly mob.