The Hidden Land (21 page)

“Oh, well,” said Ted, “I should give up expecting things.”

“That’s easy,” said Laura. “It’s the unexpected things that are the trouble.”

“Have you been seeing things again?”

“No. But there was one I forgot to tell you.” And she told him about the dragon burning the Secret House, and about the man with the book, reading about the dragon burning the Secret House, that she had seen on the steps leading to the enchanted armory below Fence’s tower.

“Belaparthalion,” said Ted. “I’ve heard that before.”

“They did a song about it the other night. And Fence said Belaparthalion was the King of the Dragons.”

“No, before that. I’ve got it. At the council after Fence came back. Andrew said he couldn’t accuse Fence of treachery because anybody could have told somebody something, I forget who or what. And Fence said not just anybody could, and he asked Andrew if Belaparthalion had honored us with his presence.”

“Huh,” said Laura.

“And that’s not all. Randolph and Belaparthalion had to be raised or consulted or something before the coronation. But we had the coronation all right, and there certainly wasn’t a dragon there. I think that’s what he said.” Ted scowled. “Yes, that’s right. He said that we had to wait for Chryse and raise Belaparthalion.”

“Chryse?” said Laura.

“What’s the matter?”

“I know Chryse; it’s a unicorn; I talked to it the day of the Hunt.”

“You what?”

“That’s why I started telling you all these things I see; Chryse said to.”

“If I’d known
that
I wouldn’t have waited so long to tell Fence about them,” said Ted. “We’d better do that right away.”

Lord Randolph, looking as if someone had emptied a flour sack over his head, came back to them and sat down heavily upon a stump. “Thy challenge hath been delivered,” he said. “Stay yet a while for the answer.”

“Where’s Fence?” said Ted.

Randolph’s mouth twisted. “Battling some kitchen-wizard. Better he left such work to his apprentices.”

Ted and Laura looked at one another. Ted shrugged, and Laura shook her head.

“What do you know about visions?” Ted asked Randolph.

“More than I care to,” said Randolph.

“Well, Laurie’s been having them.”

Randolph looked at Laura, who looked at his foot.

“Of what nature?”

“If I look at a light or a fire, or something reflecting off something, then I see things.”

“What manner of things?”

Laura, sounding as if she were reciting a list of the principal exports of Brazil, reeled off the things she had seen. Ted noticed that she did not mention the sight of him covered with blood on a field of battle.

“All the stars in heaven,” said Randolph, staring. “First that, and now the flute. Child, what art thou?”

“What do they mean?” said Laura, her voice quavering.

“Thou hast seen naught bearing on this present battle?”

“No,” said Laura, firmly. Ted opened his mouth and closed it again. Maybe she had a good reason.

“We must tell Fence of this, when all is done,” said Randolph, “and he can tell thee, better than I, what these things purport.” He looked thoughtfully at Laura, who appeared ready to cry. “Thou art safer having them than not,” he said, and pushed a loosening ribbon back up on one of her braids. Ted, who had heard Agatha scolding Laura for doing that very thing instead of retying the bow, grinned.

A page came up calling Randolph’s name, and he excused himself to them and went off.

“Why didn’t you—” began Ted.

“Because we can’t tell him we know you’ll be okay, and he’d just worry, or not let you go back.”

“Which might not be such a bad thing,” said Ted.

“Don’t you want to finish the story?”

“Good God!” said Ted. “Doesn’t anybody but me take any of this seriously? Why should I want to get killed and go to the land of the dead?”

Laura looked at him soberly. Her braids, as well as losing their ribbons, were coming undone, and her face was dirty. “Is it really awful?” she asked him.

“How should I know. I’ve never been there.”

“No, I mean the battle.”

“I don’t know,” said Ted, slowly, “there isn’t time to think about whether it’s awful.”

“Because the people we’re taking care of, some of them are hurt, and it
is
awful; but most of them act more like they’re crazy. They sound like we did in that grass, yelling about things that aren’t there.”

“I guess the mundane part is doing better than the arcane.”

“What?”

“The unmagic part of our army is doing better than the magical part.”

“So Fence will have to fight the challenge?”

“I don’t know.”

They sat in silence until Randolph came back with a message from the Dragon King. Ted could not read it, but it was clear from what Randolph said that the challenge had been refused, and not politely.

“Well,” said Ted, handing his cup to Laura and standing up, “I guess I should get back.” You sound like an office worker, he told himself.

Randolph looked at him thoughtfully and came with him without a word. From a distance, the battle looked different. The army of the Secret Country appeared to have driven the Dragon King’s some way back into the desert and seemed to be herding the Dragon King’s soldiers in the direction of a great outcropping of rock that stood up above the sand like a spoon in a bowl of cornmeal mush. For somebody who had been able to choose his ground, the Dragon King was not doing very well. But no; he had not been able to choose his ground, because Fence had gotten here first.

Close up things were the same as ever, except that it was hotter now and everything seemed to move much more slowly.

Ted had been dimly aware, in the morning, that Matthew was saving him from any number of unpleasant fates. But now he could examine every stroke. Randolph was much faster than either he or Matthew was, and, obviously, much faster than most of the enemy, too. Ted felt a sudden acute fear for Patrick, with no one to protect him and less reason to fight well. But someone came at him, and there was no more time for thought.

The monsters had dwindled. It was mostly men now. The sword was more use against them, and Edward’s knowledge in the back of Ted’s mind grew stronger. Ted put the sword through the face of the third person who attacked him, and stared horror-struck at the result.

“Young fool!” said Randolph, pulling him behind a rock. “An he were but a little quicker, such a stroke had left thee open to be gutted.”

Ted, the image of the man he had killed still before his eyes, looked away from Randolph’s wrathful, dusty face to what he had thought another rock, saw that it was someone who had in fact been gutted, and threw up.

“I know,” said Randolph, offering him a filthy rag with which to wipe his mouth, “but ’twill do thee no good neither to make thyself weak and dizzy.” He hauled Ted to his feet. “This is no time to stand chattering. Guard thyself better in future.”

They came out from behind the rock again and found themselves in the midst of a mixed group of Mallows and Peonies. The men themselves were filthy, their helmets scratched and dented and covered with sand, their sashes slashed and thick with a mud composed of dust and blood rather than water. But on each helmet and each sash the little embroidered flower shone clear and clean. The badges must be magical. Ted thought of all those women, warriors and counselors in their own right, and probably sorcerers too, sitting in High Castle sewing because the ruler was a man. It seemed a very odd way to run a country.

He shook his head sharply and tried to attend to what was going on. They were in a little pocket of quiet, but the sound of the battle was still immense. One of the Peonies wore a yellow feather and was talking so fast to Randolph that Ted could not understand him. He plucked the nearest Mallow by the sash.

“Please, what is it?”

“Conrad,” said the young man. His look at Ted was compounded of curiosity, reluctance, sympathy, and speculation. “He’s sore hurt.”

“Oh, God,” said Ted. He stood very still and did not try to remember whom the game had killed. Then he took three steps and stood as close to Randolph as he could get.

“I will serve better where I am,” said Randolph to the messenger. “Do you find Jerome—and you, Stephen, go as quickly as you may to the camp and bring Agatha. I weary of this waste.”

“Aye, my lord,” said the messenger, a little dubiously, and made off into the desert.

Stephen, the young man whom Ted had asked what was going on, frowned, looked at Ted, looked back at Randolph, and followed the messenger.

“Randolph,” said Ted, in a tone of voice he had not known he possessed. “Go where you’re needed.”

The hovering Mallows and Peonies melted away from around them as cats leave the room when people began to quarrel. Randolph’s green eyes regarded Ted calmly from out of his sweat- and dust-striped face.

“I am there now,” said Randolph. “Use me while yet you may.” And he caught Ted by the wrist and pulled him toward the retreating Peonies. A yelling crowd of little pale men in red rose up suddenly out of the rocks, and it was not possible to argue. Ted gave his mind back to Edward’s impulses and let the sword do what it would.

 

Laura watched Ted and Randolph walk away, and put the cup down on the ground. She thought of the coronation, of Claudia and the cellar, of Ted in the land of the dead, where he did not want to go after all, and of Ellen grumbling and fingering her sword-belt as she washed the bloody bandages. She drew the stolen sword from its scabbard. It blazed like a lightning bolt even in the bright air before the desert. The prickling previously absent shot up her arm and shoulder, and suddenly she felt that she knew all about fighting.

“I’ll show you,” she said to all of them, and went after Ted and Randolph.

The shrieking cacophony of the battle would have frightened her into going back, had it not seemed to have an almost magnetic effect on the sword. Laura had to run to keep it from pulling her arm out of joint; it was like being run away with by a very large, energetic, and invisible dog whose leash you held. The sword did not seem to care whether there was a path for Laura, as long as the space it had to go through was clear; but she managed to keep her feet until it zipped over a rock almost as tall as she was, which caught her painfully in the chest and left her breathless.

“Wait!” croaked Laura. The sword, more obedient than such a dog, promptly stopped pulling, although it quivered in her hand.

“What are you
after?
” said Laura; she could hardly hear herself in the din, nor see more than a few yards for the dust.

But in those few yards she saw more than enough. Ted and Randolph were battling five or six very tall men with braided yellow hair, and bare chests, leather trousers, and high boots. For a moment Laura thought everything would be all right, seeing Randolph deal three of them wounds that certainly looked as if they ought to be mortal.

But as each man went down he blurred and wavered and became a small dark woman in leather armor; and as those were injured they turned into large fox-like creatures; and when they crumpled up bloodily they became inky shadows with red eyes, hugging the ground. Ted’s and Randolph’s swords went into them and came out smoking, but the shadows seemed none the worse for that.

The sword tugged at Laura. “All right,” she said to it, “and we’ll show those visions, too.”

She came out from behind the rock, and thrust the sword at the nearest red eye. The creature made a bubbling noise horribly like one of the purple beasts’, shriveled up, and sank slowly into the ground, like spilled motor oil. Laura slashed at one that was pulling itself up Randolph’s leg, and it followed the first. The sword wrenched her around and did in two more. Randolph shouted behind her, and she spun and dispatched the last one. It did not seem to matter in the least where the sword touched them.

“Laura Kimberly Carroll!” said Ted. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“
I
didn’t swear you an oath,” said Laura, and was satisfied.

“Edward!” said Randolph behind her, and thrust her against the rock. She heard more than felt the crack of her head against it, and doubled over, clutching her head in her arms. It took some time for the pain to wear off. When she looked up again, Randolph was fighting a tall man in green, and Ted lay sprawled in the sand with blood all over his front.

Laura screamed, surprising herself.

Randolph finished his opponent off somehow; Laura did not care to look at them. He crouched down over Ted, put a hand to Ted’s throat, and shook his head. He shook it several times, as if he were warning Ted from a distance not to talk with his mouth full. Then his look slid into something worse than unhappiness but different from anger. They seemed frozen before her eyes, exactly as she had seen them in the vision.

T
ED opened his eyes, or thought he did. He could not see anything with them, not blackness, not anything. He did not seem to have eyes, or anything else. Randolph, he tried to say, but he had nothing to say it with. It was like dreaming, and knowing you were dreaming, and trying to wake up by remembering the bed, and the pillow, and the color of your pajama sleeve: it was like the time just before the trick worked and you woke up.

“Randolph!” said Ted, and jumped. He had a voice, and ears to hear it, and a nervous system to make him jump when he was startled.

He stared into grayness, and blackness, and mist, and a hundred shadows suggestive of nothing familiar. He looked down at himself. The sourceless light was not strong enough to show colors, but he knew well enough what the blackness caked over the whole front of him was. He decided not to look more closely. He held out a hand and looked at it instead. His fingernails were black. He was as grimy as he had been in the battle. He stared around him again, and a few yards ahead of him the shadows took on shapes that might have been the foam and waves of a swift river. Ted stood up. Everything worked and nothing hurt, but there was a curious emptiness in the region of his chest. He took a step toward the river.