The Hidden Land (19 page)

“I tried asking Benjamin,” said Ted, “but he just told me riddles. And what does it mean that they are rising again?”

“They are a riddle,” said Randolph.

“I
know
you know more than that! Why won’t you tell me?”

Laura saw Fence and Randolph look across the fire at one another.

“ ’Tis a thing kings must know,” said Randolph.

Patrick made an explosive noise of profound disgust.

“He said not that
thou
shouldst
not
know,” snapped Fence.

Laura stifled a giggle as Ellen poked her gently in the ribs and whispered, “That showed him!”

“But it beareth not upon our present distresses,” said Fence.

“But you said at the council that they were rising again, and everybody was upset. It sounded as if it had everything to do with this war!” said Ted.

Fence let his breath out. “Only in the same manner,” he said, “that, if our weather-augurers were to tell us, during the month we propose to fight in the desert great dust storms will come. Now dust storms are a thing of nature; the Dragon King bringeth them not. But they have a most potent bearing on the battle: where and how and whether it shall be fought.”

“But when you said at the council that the Outside Powers were rising, Benjamin said—”

“Benjamin,” said Fence, with finality, “hath concerns past those of the Hidden Land.”

Laura watched Ted decide to settle for this, and then tap Patrick on the knee when Patrick shifted and began to speak. She was impressed that Patrick did not go ahead anyway.

“Milady Ruth,” said Randolph, “thou art silent.”

“I was wondering,” said Ruth, abstractedly, “if it was dry enough, my lord, for you to play the whistle.”

“I think not,” said Randolph.

Everyone else thought not also: there was neither singing nor story-telling that night. But long after everyone was asleep, someone began to play a flute. It sounded eerie and everywhere, like a cricket in a quiet house.

Laura had been dreaming, again, the dream in which she hurried through an autumn forest listening for a tune. When she heard it, she began to sing to it. Slowly the noise of men starting from their blankets and calling for torches, of sentinels drawing their swords and Fence calling for some book, grew around her, but by the time she realized that she was awake, she had been singing loudly for at least one verse. Ellen and Agatha were sitting up and staring at her. Then they stared past her with even greater shock, and Laura turned around and saw what they had seen.

The musician came out of the woods at the foot of the mountains, glimmering like the moon behind a wisp of cloud. The night was still, but his long dark hair streamed behind him. His cloak flapped but made no sound, his pale clothes were flattened against him, and he walked with his head bent against some great force. The light that came from him did not show up the trees he came from or the ground whereon he walked. He looked like Ruth and Ellen and Randolph. He lifted the flute he carried, and although his face and clothes did not catch the light of the watchfires, the instrument did.

“Who claims this music?” he cried, in a voice so like Randolph’s that Laura looked wildly around for him, half convinced that remorse and guilt had sent him mad. But Randolph was standing with Fence beside a fire a little way off. He looked, in the dubious light, perplexed and a little irate, like someone who will be able to remember something if everyone will just keep quiet.

“Who made the claim?” cried the musician.

“Laura,” called Fence, gently.

“I know the
song,
” said Laura. She felt as if she had spoken out of turn in a word game.

The musician looked across the fire at her. There was a light in his eyes, but it was not firelight. “Who art thou?” he said.

“Laura,” said Laura, choked in time over her last name, and added, “Princess of the Secret Country.”

“Who taught thee this music?”

Laura, panicked, fell back on the truth. Princess Laura was supposed to have a music master, but Laura had never seen him. “I can’t tell you.”

“Dimwit!” whispered Ellen. “His name was Nathan.”

“Well said,” the musician told Laura, “for I cannot tell thee whence came the flute.”

He moved across the grass toward her, stepping right over or through the fire. She could not see it through him; it did not cast light upon him; and when it was behind him he cast no shadow forward. He brought a breath of cold air with him.

Laura, pretending valiantly that he was Randolph, stood her ground. He knelt before her on the grass, which meant she could look him in the face, and held out to her across his two palms the shining flute. He had a ring on his finger. The red stone in it was all the color he had.

Laura took the flute. It was cold. “Well,” she said; she resented him enormously for so embarrassing her. Then she looked at his long hands and kindly face, and was ashamed of herself. “My lord,” she said, “I humbly thank you.” And she did him, as well as she could in the short boy’s tunic, a courtesy.

The musician stood up and walked away into the forest. He faded through, and not between, the trees.

“Who was that?”
said Laura, wishing they would not all stare at her.

“Cedric,” said Randolph. “He was a wizard and his skill was with sounds. He was the only one of all the wizards in history to master music. He was my six-times great-grandfather.” He had started on a pleased note, but he sounded a little shaken by the time he had finished.

Laura remembered the unicorns. They had said that she would play Cedric’s flute. Well, here it was. Maybe Ruth could show her how.

“Fence,” said Ted, “what does this mean?”

“Rather ask a musician,” said Matthew. “The prophecies touching Cedric have come down not from wizards but from bards.”

“Well, then?”

“It is said he will save us at the end.”

“Is this the end?”

“No doubt,” said Fence, dryly; “if it is, seemingly we shall be saved.”

Randolph looked at the circle of faces. “Back to your posts and your beds,” he said, cheerfully. They went as he bid them. Laura noticed how quiet they all were. They were not discussing what had happened. She wondered why.

Ruth and Ellen came over to her and looked at the flute.

“Can you show me how to play it, Ruth?” said Laura in an urgent whisper. Princess Laura probably knew how already.

“Well, I could try,” said Ruth. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Randolph and Fence came over, trailing Ted and Patrick. Most of the others had dispersed; Agatha still lurked, waiting for Ellen and Laura, and Matthew stood beside her.

“May I see it?” said Fence to Laura. She held it out to him. He took it from her, and she felt him jerk and stiffen as he touched it.

“Well,” he said, and his voice caught. “If sorcery can save us at the end, then of a certainty there is enough here to do’t.” He handed the flute back to Laura. She wondered what he meant. It was very cold to the touch, but it did not prickle as the enchanted swords did. “Guard it well,” said Fence.

Laura, accompanied by Agatha and Ellen, took it and put it in her pack. Then she took it out again and got into her bedroll with it.

 

Fence and Randolph stared at one another in the moon- and firelight, and Ted and Patrick fidgeted. Ruth stood still.

“Fence,” said Ted, suddenly, “what about the fire-letters?”

“Well?”

“I mean—if this is a famous flute, and the song means something, if we used it on the fire-letters it might turn out to be right.”

“If it were not,” said Fence, as he had said to Randolph several times already, “it would be the end of the manuscript, which would burn like any common parchment.”

“Couldn’t you copy it?” said Ted.

“It would then not be sorcerous. Half its virtue lieth in the substance whereon ’tis inscribed.”

“Fence,” said Matthew. “It may be—”

“Speak to me in the morning, then,” said Fence.

Ruth said in Ted’s ear, “For pity’s sake, don’t get them to ask that child to play the flute! She hasn’t any idea how.”

“Good grief, I forgot,” whispered Ted. “Sorry.”

“I should hope so.”

Ted turned to find Randolph’s eye on them. He did not look angry. Ted was not sure how he looked, but he did not want to see it again. “Randolph,” he said. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course, my lord,” said Randolph.

Ted took him a little way off into the dripping trees. “I just wanted to tell you,” he said, “that I don’t want to marry Ruth, and Ruth doesn’t want to marry me. And,” he added, feeling this too brusque, “you’re welcome to be happy with her.”

It was too dark to see Randolph’s face, but he made a startled movement. “This is most convenient, my lord, seeing that I am betrothed to her.”

“You don’t act like it,” said Ted, without thinking. Then he remembered Claudia.

Randolph was quite still. “Well,” he said at last, “I am amazed. What is the Lady Ruth’s desire?”

“That,” said Ted, “you will have to take up with Ruth.” He turned to go before he got himself—or Ruth—into any more trouble, and Randolph caught his wrist.

“My lord,” he said, “why tell me now?”

“Because,” said Ted, his fear coming unbidden to his tongue, “I might not be here to tell you tomorrow.”

Randolph’s grip on his wrist bit like a manacle. “Not while I have breath—in which case it would not matter.”

“I know,” said Ted, suddenly close to tears, “but still.”

“Edward,” said Randolph, “who art thou?”

Ted was too startled even to jump, but he was sure Randolph could feel the shocked blood pounding in the wrist he held.

“You know as well as I do.”

“Maybe,” said Randolph.

“If that’s too little,” said Ted, truthfully, “you can’t be sorrier than I am.”

“No?”

“What do you want?” cried Ted.

“That thou shouldst tell me who thou art.”

“I’m the King,” said Ted, desperately.

“And what am I?”

Ted’s throat hurt as if he had been running.

“Thou knowest quite well. Now, is it meet that a king should give his cousin to a—”

“Be quiet!” shouted Ted. “I will not hear this!” So he had said, playing; so Edward would say when Randolph was finally accused of having poisoned the King. “I am the King and I give what I like.”

Randolph let go of him. “And see naught but what liketh thee?”

Ted felt all the shame that ought to be felt by a king who was willing to marry his cousin to a murderer. In the damp dark of the woods his face burned. He still found it very hard to think of Randolph as a murderer, or of his treachery as wrong; but Randolph did think of these things thus. There was, of course, no question of Ruth’s marrying anybody here; and Ted did not want to marry Ruth: so telling the truth had seemed a harmless way of making things easier. But he certainly could not say that to Randolph.

Randolph seemed to mistake his silence. He said, “Consider this. Fence squeezed from the napkins that wine you spilled from my hand.” He looked at Ted’s face, and his mouth twisted. “And he gave it to Matthew, who is something of an alchemist. And he did find therein, not a poison, but an antidote therefor.”

“Andrew was mad because I spilled his antidote?”

“So ’twould seem.”

“But how’d he know there’d be anything for it to be an antidote
for?
I mean, it makes sense he didn’t want the King killed, because the King agreed with him, but—”

“I know not,” said Randolph.

Ted barely heard this. Coldness had washed through him. “Oh, God,” he said. “Shan’s mercy, my lord. If I hadn’t spilled the antidote the King would’ve drunk that with the poison.”

Randolph nodded. His face was impassive. He watched Ted as if Ted were a pan of fudge about to lose its shine.

“This is awful,” said Ted. He had killed the King. The one part of the game they had tried most earnestly to change, he himself had accomplished. He began to laugh, painfully and found that tears were running down his face.

“So close were we come to immediate salvation and final doom,” said Randolph. “But see you that Andrew, on whom Fence would most quickly put the blame, is now safe from it?”

Ted wiped his eyes.

“So have a care,” said Randolph, “that you use me not in your deeper-laid plans. I will not be here.”

They turned and went in silence back to the camp.

T
HE army of the Dragon King was two days late. This seemed to afford great satisfaction to Fence and Randolph, and to unsettle Andrew considerably.

“Maybe he
is
a spy of the Dragon King,” said Ted to Patrick, in the middle of the second day. It was too hot to do anything in particular, even if their nervousness would have allowed them to be interested.

“I think so,” said Patrick. “I’ve been talking to the Peonies—that’s his company—and they’re mad at him because he told them the army was leaving two days later than it did, and Conrad yelled at
them,
not Andrew, for not being ready.”

They had learned a little about the organization of the army. Its smallest unit seemed to be called a company, to consist of twenty-four men, and to be named after a flower. The companies were collected into fellowships, which were named after jewels, and the fellowships into orders, which were named after trees. This was the mundane army; how the sorcerers were organized, how the two were to be combined, and who exactly was running things, they did not know. Most of the King’s counselors commanded mere companies, Conrad being the notable exception.

“And who told Andrew?” asked Ted.

“I don’t know, but I’ll bet it was Fence.”

“He did take Laura seriously when she said Andrew was a spy.”