The Hidden Land (28 page)

Randolph took the circlet from his head and the ring from his finger as he walked across the room, and laid them upon the carved chest. Fence, following, took up the circlet. He turned it in his hands and said three words under his breath. It broke in pieces, and the pieces crumbled to dust, and the dust, floating down, was gone before it could touch the floor. Fence took up the ring. “And what of this,” he said, without inflection.

“That too is forfeit,” said Randolph; but now he, too, looked pale.

Fence closed the ring in his fist, and opened his hand again. Something glittered in his palm like a jewel, but he slid it into his robe too quickly for Ted to see what it was. They could have left now, without being noticed, but there seemed no point now in escape, or in anything else.

“Randolph,” said Fence, “I am sorry I have so failed you.”

“So even that is denied me,” said Randolph.

“It is you who have denied it,” said Fence. “Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my ruling speaks.”

Randolph, suddenly and incredibly, smiled at him. “Thou seest, then,” he said, “thou hast not failed me. To deny me all I have denied, in the courage of that is not failure. Hadst thou been kinder, Fence, that had been failure indeed.”

“Carrion comfort,” said Fence, as if he were reading a road sign, and he turned and went straight between Ted and Patrick and out of the room. Ted’s throat swelled and closed.

Randolph leaned on Agatha’s table, as if his legs had failed him suddenly. Now he was very pale.

“My lord,” he said to Ted, “you had best set the trial soon.”

“No,” said Ted.

“My lord, I had thought to spare you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Choose your weapon, then,” said Randolph, “and your time; but I beg you, my lord, that it be soon. And disgrace not your teacher.”

He, too, went out.

“I told you!” said Ted, almost crying. “I told you!”

“Ted!” said Patrick. “He said, choose your weapon.”

“So—oh!” said Ted. He knew Patrick’s mind as if it were his own, and the relief was almost more than he could stand.

“Come on quick, and catch Fence!” said Patrick.

They caught up with Fence at the door to his tower.

“Fence!” shouted Ted. “Fence, wait!”

Fence turned to them a face like an accurate but uninspired statue of himself, and Ted’s words clogged in his throat.

“He’s come to choose his weapon for the duel,” said Patrick.

Fence’s aimless green gaze sharpened briefly. “Edward, is this wise?”

“I think so,” said Ted. “It’s quicker. Fence—just for this one thing, may Randolph and I use the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

Fence was silent, staring at the floor. “Shan’s mercy indeed,” he said at last, “but how dearly that would please Chryse.”

“Well, that’s all to the good, then, isn’t it?” said Ted, hating himself.

“And it would comfort Randolph, maybe,” said Fence. This made no sense to Ted at all, but since it seemed to be on his side, he said nothing.

“Wilt thou undertake that the bout is quickly over?” Fence asked him.

Ted saw no way that he, or the real Edward either, could undertake any such thing unless Randolph helped him, but it did not matter. “I will,” he said.

“And return the swords without demur, when thou hast done?”

“What would I want them for, after that?” burst out Ted.

“Very well, then,” said Fence. “When wilt thou—”

“This evening,” said Ted. “May I have them now? Randolph should have a little time to accustom himself to the blade, shouldn’t he?”

“Bide thee here,” said Fence, “and I will bring them.”

He went slowly up the stairs.

Ted sat down on the floor, as Randolph had leaned upon the table. “Oh, dear heaven,” he said. “I think we’ve done it.”

“I’ll get the girls,” said Patrick. “And we should dress in our old clothes.”

“No, someone might see us. We’ll just take them with us. Can you and Ruth write the note to Fence? And, look, tell her to find a page and ask him to give it to Fence at five.”

“No fear,” said Patrick, and ran down the passage.

Ted leaned his head against the purple-stained stone wall and closed his eyes. He felt like someone who truly has to be home at five, but has had the misfortune to be given this instruction on the day his team is losing badly whatever game it might be playing. He was leaving behind a broken friendship, a shattered trust, an empty throne, a kingdom without an heir, and a snarl of riddles. And he still felt that all of it was somehow his fault.

“Here are thy weapons,” said Fence’s voice over his head.

“That was quick,” said Ted, blinking and getting up. His foot was asleep.

“Thy thoughts have sped the time,” said Fence. He still spoke without expression, but he was beginning to look less stony and more crumpled. Ted wanted to do something for him; but if someone’s excellent good friend and first apprentice was a traitor both to his King and to his friend’s own teaching, what could you say to him? Especially when you had once thought that his pain made a wonderful story.

“I prithee heed this warning,” said Fence. “The sword of Melanie, that which gloweth green, doth enhance the skill of him that wields it; but the sword of Shan, that gloweth blue, doth increase the skill of him that it fights; for she was a warrior, but he was a teacher.”

“So if I use Melanie’s sword and he uses Shan’s,” said Ted, longing to get away but feeling it better to play his part to the hilt, in the little time remaining him, “I’ll have my own skill enhanced and also get some of his?”

Fence nodded. “It will be quicker so.”

“My skill is his anyway,” said Ted.

“Oft do our gifts come back in strange guise,” said Fence, with bitter meaning.

“Fence,” said Ted, “it isn’t fair!”

“What is foul today may be fair tomorrow,” said Fence. He held out the swords, still in their sheaths and tangled in their belts. Ted took the awkward bundle, and the power of the swords shivered up his arms and prickled the hair on his neck.

“If thou wilt tell me the place of thy choosing,” said Fence, “and what men thou wilt have for witnesses, I will arrange these matters for thee.”

“The rose garden, I think,” said Ted, whose composure was dwindling rapidly, “and—and choose what witnesses you will.”

“And the hour?”

“Five o’clock,” said Ted.

“It shall be done, my lord.”

They looked at one another in the sickly light.

“Would a trial have been better?” Ted heard himself asking, as if he were indeed Edward, as if it mattered.

“No,” said Fence. “He hath injured thee; let thy hand give him his reward.”

“He’s injured you more!”

“For that,” said Fence, “he hath his reward already.” He turned in a flurry of galaxies and went back up the staircase. When Ted could see again, he ran for the stables.

Patrick intercepted him in the courtyard. “The girls have four horses down by the moat,” he said. “Come on.”

“That was fast work,” said Ted.

“Well, the grooms did all the saddling. Ellie spun them some story about how she and Laura and Ruth were going to pick so many wildflowers that they’d need an extra horse to carry them back on. I don’t think they thought she’d manage it, but they gave her the horse. That child is becoming dangerous.”

Ruth, Ellen, and Laura stood without speaking in the shadow of the four horses. They looked depressed. Ruth had the pack she had carried on the march; it bulged with their old clothes. She handed it to Ted and gave Ellen a boost onto her horse. Ted and Patrick scrambled onto their horses; Ruth helped Laura up behind Ted and mounted the remaining animal. They rode away from High Castle.

It was a clear, bright day, cooler than it had been for some time. Ted thought he could smell autumn coming. He wondered whether, in the woods where they had hunted the unicorn, it would smell like the soul of autumn, as when he had come there it had like the soul of summer. He sighed; and as if in answer Laura clutched at him and cried, “My flute!”

“We can’t go back,” said Ted.

“But I need it!”

“It’s not yours, Laurie.”

“But it will save us at the end!”

“Not us; them. We won’t need saving where we’re going.”

“He gave it to me, not her! She’s
dead!
”

“We can’t go back.”

Laura was silent, but a hot wet patch spreading through the back of Ted’s tunic told him that she was not resigned.

They left the horses at the Well. Ellen wanted to water them, but Ruth refused to have anything more to do with the Well, and the horses showed a definite disinclination to go into the woods where the stream was. Ruth whispered sorcerous words in their ears again.

“Did you remember that with the back of your mind, too?” asked Patrick, and received no answer.

The horses went loping back toward High Castle, looking as if they were enjoying themselves.

“I always meant to get to know mine better,” said Ellen, “and develop a wonderful bond with it.”

They trudged through the woods, where the bushes and saplings were reddening and goldenrod thronged the clearings, and tramped hollowly across the wooden bridge. The stream was low, and the cracked mud revealed by its sinking reminded Ted unhappily of the desert where they had fought.

They came to the hedge before the Secret House, and stood silently in a circle. Laura was going to cry; it was just a question of when. Ellen looked solemnly furious, as if somebody had played a practical joke on her and she meant to get even. Ruth wore an air of vague irritation, as she would when she tried to make cookies and Patrick and Laura stole bits of the dough. Patrick seemed pleased, but was managing not to smile; probably, Ted thought, because he knew somebody would slug him if he did.

Ruth pulled a wad of crumpled clothing out of her pack and handed it around. The skirt that had reached her ankle when she came to this country now came to the middle of her calf. Ted’s jeans were too short. He had grown, after all. He looked at his sister, whose shirt was too tight in the shoulders. He hoped Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jim were not observant, or, if they were, they lacked the imagination and the knowledge to figure out what their observations must mean. Ruth, quite uselessly, packed their tunics and dresses and velvet caps and the odd linen underwear into her pack, and laid it on the bank.

“Don’t forget to throw your sword back through,” said Patrick to Ted.

“Ruth,” said Ted, “what’d you do with Shan’s Ring?”

“I sealed it up with the note.”

“All right, then.”

“Let’s all leave at the same time,” said Ellen. “We’ll go along to our bottle-tree, and I’ll yell, ‘On your mark, get set, go!’ ”

“We’ll write to you,” said Ted.

“See you next summer,” said Ruth, and walked away. Her brother and sister followed her. Ted and Laura watched them slither along the bank of the stream until they went around a bend.

“Better get ready,” said Ted. They crouched before the gap in the hedge, holding their sword. It sent up Ted’s arm the strongest prickling he had yet felt, almost a pain. He saw by the flinching in Laura’s face that she had felt it too.

“On your mark!” came Ellen’s voice, a little wavery. “Get set! Go!”

Ted and Laura ducked under the hedge and stood up in the weedy yard of the Secret House. It was a clear, cool day there, too; but the sky was duller, the air heavier. Ted could smell cars, and dust, and rubber, and a whole collection of things he had almost forgotten about.

He held the sword up into a shaft of sunlight, and for the first time since they had found it, the runes they could not quite make out ran down the blade. This time, the back of Ted’s mind knew them, and he read aloud:

“All may yet be very well.”

“What a weird thing to put on a sword,” said Laura; her voice wavered even more than Ellen’s had.

“Help me throw it back,” said Ted.

Laura put her hand on the hilt, and, awkwardly but with considerable strength, they swung their arms backward and forward, and hurled the sword through the gap in the hedge. Ted half expected to hear it clatter on the sidewalk. But there was only a brief rustle as it went through the leaves; a flash as a bit of sun hit it; and shadows; and nothing but hedge.

“
W
HAT do we do now?” said Laura.

“We’re in trouble at home,” said Ted, absently. He felt that something was wrong, but could not place it. He tried to remember how they had left their cousins’ house for the last time, to stay in the Secret Country and play their game through.

“Can’t we get used to being here first, before we get yelled at?”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Ted, abandoning his effort with some relief. They would be reminded soon enough of everything they had done, when Aunt Kathy laid eyes on them. “Let’s buy something we couldn’t have there. How about some ice cream?”

He did not want any himself, and Laura did not look pleased with the idea either, but she nodded.

“Do you have any money?” she asked him.

Ted went through his pockets, coming up with a wad of rubber bands, a book of matches, a tangle of string, two dusty pieces of hard candy without their wrappers, and a grimy paper with instructions for translating things from the Secret Country’s alphabet into English.

“I had that with me all along and never knew it!” he said. “But no money.” He scowled. “I thought I had five dollars—I gave it to you, Laura, when we had that bet about the flashlight.”

Laura fished in her own pocket. “I still say it turned into a lantern.” She jabbed her hand viciously into the bottom of the pocket. “Ouch!” she said, and pulled it out. “Oh, Ted!”

The little ivory unicorn hurt their eyes in that shady light.