There was something in the hollow air after all.
It glowed with a pale green light, expanding slowly—the way a puffball swells in the hours before it bursts. It had a snake’s body and three heads from which snake-like tongues slipped and forked as the creature grew.
It hung twenty feet in the air; and it wasn’t real. Dennis could see ceiling moldings through the glowing shadow of the creature’s body.
“Humans,” said the head on the left. The voice thundered with echoes from a hollow even greater than that of the assembly hall. “It is time to pay Rakastava again.”
One of the guards at Dennis’ table began to sob in terror.
“Who shall it be this time, humans, that you send to Rakastava?” asked the head on the right.
There was a serpentine hiss in the way the creature pronounced sibilants. The voice was more than ample to be heard throughout the hall which Dennis had thought was too large for sound to fill.
There was a general cry of terror, muted by the very fear which wrung it from the throats of the cowering citizens.
Dennis’ hand slipped from the pommel to the hilt of his sword, though he didn’t draw the weapon for the moment. It was time for a sacrifice, and he knew where the folk of Rakastava looked for sacrifices…
“This time, humans,” boomed the center head, appearing to stare straight at Dennis, “it is with the Princess Aria that you will pay Rakastava for your lives and the comfort in which you live them.”
The assembled citizens gasped. Though horror may have been a part of the sound, most of it was relief.
The citizens chose the ones who went out to keep Malbawn at bay. But this creature chose his own victims…
“She will meet me in the morning—” said the left head.
“—with a single champion,” said the right head.
“If she has a champion,” the central head concluded with mocking emphasis.
The shadowy creature began to fade, or perhaps the increasing brightness of the room made it seem that way. But the vision was gone before the last echoes of its voice had vanished from the assembly hall.
Everyone was babbling to their neighbors with covert looks toward the king and princess. The volume of the creature’s voice was underscored by the relative hush that a thousand humans talking brought to the big room.
“Daughter,” Conall said in a choked voice. His face was turned toward Aria, but Dennis—between them—doubted the king could see anything through his tears.
“Well, of course I’ll go,” said Aria, answering a question that hadn’t been asked aloud. She carefully folded the napkin in her lap, set it beside her plate, and stood up.
Gannon had gotten up already and was walking toward the door behind them with tiny steps as though he were a statue being pulled on casters.
“Well, Gannon,” the king said—briskly, royally. “This time it’ll have the tables turned on it, won’t it? You’ll have its heads off in a trice.”
Gannon looked like a man who’d just heard the twang of the crossbow aimed at his chest. “Indeed, sire,” he said. “I was just going off to prepare myself to meet Rakastava in the morning.”
Dennis put his hand on Aria’s wrist. “Please,” he said, looking up at the standing woman. “I don’t understand. This is Rakastava. What’s going on.”
Aria smiled at him sadly. “This is Rakastava’s city,” she said. “That—” her index finger pointed toward the vault, empty air again “—was Rakastava; and every so often, we pay him for the use of his city.”
Her smile grew coldly bitter. “At a price of his choosing, as is fair.”
“But that’s a ghost!” Dennis said. “A shadow! There’s nothing really there, it’s just a—”
He didn’t have the words to finish, but his companion—
“Chester!” Dennis said, “tell them that Rakastava isn’t a real thing.”
The little robot slipped from beneath Dennis’ seat at the bench. “What you have seen, Dennis and Princess,” he said, “is not real but a projection—light interrupting light in the air.”
“You see?” Dennis crowed. He jumped to his feet, straddling the bench, and took each of Aria’s hands in one of his own.