Pan pipes were a little too sweet and insistent for Dennis’ taste; but the servants liked them, and somebody was always ready to play in the evening after chores were done, while a few danced and others listened and relaxed.
In the evening. But—
“Chester, how long were we in Parol’s quarters?” Dennis demanded. Because of the shrouded gloom of the chamber holding the machines, he hadn’t noticed earlier that the light shifting through the crystal palace wasn’t the bright noon he expected but rather twilight.
“Seven hours, forty-nine minutes and a half, Dennis,” said the little robot.
“But—” Dennis said.
Well, of course they’d spent that long. The light said it was evening; the servants’ music said it was evening; and Dennis’ muscles all ached with the effort of holding him upright for eight hours without a break. So the question was—
“Where did the time go, Chester? Was it a trap of, of one of the wizards—to hold us there?”
“It was not a trap, Dennis. You wished to see certain things, and to show you those things required time. The time to see them, and the longer time to journey to where they were to be seen.”
Dennis remembered the way his companion had urged him to leave the room of the machines—and how Dennis had masterfully insisted on watching Hale’s third meeting with the sea hag. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
“You did not ask that, Dennis,” Chester said primly.
One of the walls of the corridor where they were pausing was a true window, a plate of perfect clarity with neither facets nor filaments to diffuse the view beyond it. That view was of the open sky to seaward, sulphurous now as the sun set with no clouds to turn the event into a spectacular.
There would be a storm tomorrow, though. Of that, Dennis was certain.
“I would have stayed even if I’d known how—how long it was taking,” he said. “But I thought it was just a few minutes we were there.”
“That is so, Dennis,” Chester agreed with the same tone of cool disapproval as before.
Dennis began walking again. The robot fell in beside him.
“Chester?” the youth asked without looking at his companion. “If I didn’t ask you a question, and it was—really important that I know the answer anyway… Would you let me—hurt myself anyway because I was too stupid to ask?”
Chester slipped a tentacle into the youth’s right hand, brushing the palm gently with the hair-fine tip. “Sometimes the guide,” he said in a more diffident tone than he usually used for his pedantic catch-phrases, “is not himself a wise man.”
Dennis squeezed the tentacle. “So long as he’s a friend,” he said.
CHAPTER 9
Three places were laid for dinner on the balcony which opened from the anteroom of the royal suite. Liveried servants waited there in feral nervousness—for diners; for orders; for anything, even a chewing-out, because that would be better than frightened uncertainty. Nobody knew what was wrong in Emath Palace; but everyone knew something was wrong.
Nobody knew but King Hale; and now, his son.
The servants leaped to attention when Dennis and Chester entered the suite. “Your highness,” said the carver, bowing with a watery shimmer of the blue and silver flounces of her dress.
“Your highness-ighness-ness,” echoed the three placemen—bobbing like birds and slightly out of synchronous in their haste to do the right thing.
“Will you be dining now, your highness?” asked the carver.
“Not—” Dennis began. He realized that he hadn’t eaten since the night before. He ought to feel starved—and probably he would, if his stomach weren’t so knotted up with fear.
He wasn’t afraid yet of the sea hag—because before he confronted her, he had to face his father.
“Not yet, thank you,” he said, marveling that, though his face burned with the emotions he felt, his voice remained steady. “Ah—do you know if the King has returned as yet?”
The servants darted quick, side-long glances at one another. A placeman bowed and said, “Your highness, I believe one of the cooks did mention that King Hale had entered the suite by the back stairs.”
Dennis realized that he was still limb-in-limb with Chester. He released the tentacle and said, “Thank you. I can’t give you much direction on dinner, I’m afraid.”