The Hidden Land (3 page)

All four of them greeted him with their mouths full; remarked on his lateness without giving him space to explain it, supposing he had wanted to; and returned to their discussion of whether Agatha was more than she seemed, or just extraordinarily impudent. When the woman in question sat her plump, black-haired, elegant self down at the far end of their table, there was an abrupt silence around Ted. Agatha had sharp ears and a sharper tongue.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Ellen asked him quickly.

“Because I’m not hungry.”

Laura and Ruth looked up.

“Why not?” said Patrick.

Ted looked around. Randolph was not there, but Fence, High Castle’s resident wizard, and Matthew, the Scribe of the King’s Council, were in earshot, the brown head and the red one jostled together over a piece of parchment. Ted doubted they would notice anything less than a scream, but it was just as well not to take chances.

“Come outside and I’ll tell you.”

“Some of us are hungry,” remarked Ellen, cramming a meat pie into her mouth and stuffing two more into the pocket of her dress.

“Agatha’ll kill you,” said Laura, under her breath.

“I keep forgetting we can’t just throw these things in the washer,” said Ellen, with mild regret. “Come on, Ruthie.”

“I don’t want to hear any more arguments,” said Ruth.

“I’m not going to argue,” said Ted. “I’m just going to tell you what happened.”

“Patrick’ll argue,” said Ruth.

“No, I won’t.”

“You will so, you can’t help it.”

“You can come back in when he starts,” said Ted.

“He’s doing it now,” remarked Ruth, but she stood up.

Ted put his hand under her elbow as he had several times seen Randolph put his under Claudia’s during the Banquet of Midsummer’s Eve. “I want to ask you some things, too,” he added, thinking of Claudia staring in her tower, stopped cold by Ruth’s sorcery in the midst of her plots, whatever they were.

“I can’t tell much to outsiders,” said Ruth, standing up nonetheless.

“Well, I like that!” said Ellen.

“Good,” said Ruth.

They all moved for the door.

“My lord Edward!” called Fence.

Ted started and almost tripped Ruth, who snorted and pulled her arm out of his grip.

“Sir?” said Ted.

“I would have your advice on a matter.”

“Could I attend you later?” asked Ted.

“Come to my chamber,” said Matthew, “and spare us all the steps.”

Fence nodded, and Ted nodded, and the five children went on out.

“I’m getting tired of this,” said Ellen with her mouth full, as they made for their favorite spot on the pink wall above the moat. If you sat on a pink wall, at least you got to look at a white one.

“Ruthie,” continued Ellen, walking backward along the curving marble path so she could address all four of them, “has her sorcery. Ted gets to go give advice to Fence. Patrick doesn’t care. But Laurie and me, we can’t do anything. We can’t even go to our own feast.”

“Laurie and
I,
” said Ruth.

“You
want
to watch the King get poisoned?” said Laura to Ellen.

Ellen wedged herself between two stones of the wall and hurled a fragment of pastry amongst the waiting ducks. The day was clear, hot, and damp, and the moat shimmered and broke and came together again in great swatches of blue and green.

“I want to go to the feast,” she said, “and watch Ted save him.”

“Fat chance,” said Ted, bitterly. “I talked to Randolph while I was finding my costume.”

“Did you find a good one?” asked Ellen.

“That’s irrelevant,” said Ted, sharply.

“It is
not!
”

“Let him finish, Ellie,” said Ruth.

“He told me quite plainly,” said Ted, “that the King is still going to try to fight the war without magic, and that he—Randolph, I mean—is going to kill the King.”

“He said, ‘I am going to kill the King’?” demanded Patrick, coming awake suddenly. He had been lying on a stone bench with his eyes closed, as though falling asleep were the only way he could prevent himself from arguing.

“No,” said Ted. “But he told me I couldn’t stop him by talking.”

“That’s hardly the same thing,” said Patrick, closing his eyes again.

“He didn’t have to spell it out,” said Ted, exasperated. “We both knew what he was talking about.”

“Well, that’s not the point,” said Patrick. “If he’d said something you could tell Fence—”

“Oh, he did,” said Ted, realization smiting him. “He said he bore no ill will to the King and he was sworn to defend him. Isn’t that just great?”

“Nobody ever said Randolph was stupid,” said Patrick.

“I never did think you could make Randolph change his mind,” said Ruth. “We should just stop him.”

“Well, we tried to when we made Laurie wish on the magic ground in the Enchanted Forest,” said Ellen. “That could still work.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to have a backup plan, though,” said Patrick, opening his eyes again.

“Randolph told me three backup plans,” said Ted, wishing he could think that was funny. “He said I could use a sword, or tell Fence, or tell the Castle guard to arrest him.”

“And of course,” said Patrick, “he can beat you in a sword fight, and you’ve already talked to Fence. And we couldn’t make any sense at a trial without giving ourselves away, even if the King thought there was time to
have
a trial before the battle.”

“Randolph wouldn’t want to kill
you,
though, would he, Ted?” said Laura.

“That’s not the point,” said Patrick, overriding Ellen’s customary protest that Randolph was a murderer who would probably just as soon kill Ted as anybody else. Ellen had never liked the character Randolph, and the apparent charm and goodness of the actual person had not changed her opinion in the slightest. “What Randolph meant, Laurie, was that Ted could challenge him to a duel; and if he beat Ted, that would mean he was innocent.”

“Pretty sneaky,” said Ellen.

“Even sneakier than we thought,” said Ted, gloomily. “Patrick, I asked him to try some sort of plan with Fence and me—lock the King up and say he’s sick, or something—”

Patrick sat up. “Huh,” he said.

“He said he would have no conspiracies,” said Ted.

“He did?”

“I think he’s crazy or something.”

“Randolph?”
said Laura.

“So how are you going to stop him?” said Ruth.

“I don’t suppose you know any sorcery for it,” said Ted, bitterly.

“Green Caves sorcery isn’t people sorcery,” said Ruth. “That’s Fence’s kind. We do things with earth and water and plants.”

“If it doesn’t affect people,” said Ted, “how did it work on Claudia?”

“That wasn’t anything to do with the Green Caves,” said Ruth, sharply. “That was Shan’s Ring. I just altered a spell I’d learned from the Green Caves, to—to focus the power of the ring. But I don’t know any more about Shan’s Ring than you do.”

Ted gave up on this line of inquiry, and picked a yellow rose from a bush that wound its way over the wall. “Well,” he said, “which feast does Randolph kill the King at?”

“You mean, which feast is it supposed to be?” said Patrick, under his breath. Ellen kicked his foot, which he had propped up on the wall, but no one else took any notice of him.

“Every Man a Servant and a Master,” said Ellen.

“Oh, of course,” said Ruth. “Because it provides the most confusion.”

“How can you do anything with everybody running around?” asked Ellen.

“If everybody’s running around,” said Ted, “I can run around after Randolph.”

“How come Edward didn’t, then?”

“Edward didn’t suspect anything,” said Patrick.

“But isn’t
Andrew
supposed to be running around after Ted?” said Ellen.

“In the game, Randolph did the poisoning by baiting Andrew until everybody was arguing and yelling,” said Ted. “And Andrew said something nasty about Edward’s mother. That’s why Edward didn’t notice what Randolph was doing. It’s essential to Randolph’s whole plan that Edward not know what he’s done, because Randolph has to guide him through the war or the murder’s been for nothing, and the moment Edward finds out Randolph has killed the King, Edward has to kill Randolph. But I don’t care about Edward’s mother, so I can ignore Andrew and watch Randolph. He knows I suspect him, too, so I don’t think he can do it if I’m watching. Or I’ll take the cup and pour it out the window, if I have to.”

“What about Edward’s mother, I wonder?” said Ruth.

“I used to make up something different every year,” said Ellen, with unusual diffidence.

“No,” said Ruth, “I mean really. Where is she?”

Ted shrugged.

“There is a definite dearth of parents around here, when you come to think of it,” said Ruth.

“Royal children are always raised by servants,” explained Patrick.

“So,” said Ellen to Ted, “what’s your costume like?”

“Green,” said Ted.

“What else?”

“Ellie, I haven’t really looked at it.”

“You’re supposed to choose it with great care,” said Ellen, darkly.

Ted, an all-too-familiar impatience overtaking him, threw the rose into the moat. “I have to go talk to Matthew and Fence,” he said, and went.

Matthew had a cluttered room on the ground floor of High Castle’s second white circle, overlooking the rose garden. He and Fence were sitting on the elaborate carpet when Ted came in, probably because every chair and every table was piled with documents and scrolls and books. They both looked young, bookish, and confused.

“Be welcome,” said Matthew, without looking up, “and do me the honor of reading over these lines.”

Ted came around behind them and peered over their bowed heads. They were looking at a very grimy, tattered, creased piece of paper, or parchment, or who knew what. Ted squinted at the swift lines of black that filled the piece, not from top to bottom, but from corner to corner, and felt a vast dismay. He did not even recognize them as an alphabet of the Secret Country that he had invented and then forgotten.

“What thinkest thou?” Fence asked.

“Not much,” said Ted, still shocked.

“I thought it akin to the scribbling of the Dwarves,” said Matthew, “but Fence, who saith those are not scribblings, makes it to be a riddle of Shan’s. Hast seen aught of it in thy reading?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ted, so dizzy with relief that he had to lean on Fence’s shoulder.

“Consider a little longer,” said Fence, seeming not to take it amiss.

Ted took a breath to steady himself, smelled the aura of burning leaves that surrounded Fence, and sat down backward from his kneeling position. The day four years ago when he and Patrick had built the bonfire, and Ellen had found them and been furious at being left out: what ritual had they invented to placate her?

“Aren’t those fire-letters?” he asked.

Matthew yelped, and Fence looked blankly over his shoulder at Ted.

“Oh, my lord, thou’rt worth a hundred of scholars and wizards such as we!” said Matthew. “Canst read ’em, then?”

“No,” said Ted.

“What are fire-letters?” said Fence, mildly.

Matthew paused, as if to give Ted a chance to air his knowledge; but he was too excited to wait for long. “A device of the wandering minstrels,” he said. “I know not what sorcery ’tis akin to; but they do somehow place a sheet of this,” and he shook the sheet, “in the fire, and play certain notes, and speak what they would capture; and play certain notes at the ending. To make it speak, one but puts it into the fire again.”

“And plays certain notes, no doubt,” said Fence, dryly.

Matthew looked less exuberant. “Alas, that’s true.”

“So it’s not much good, knowing what they are?” said Ted.

“It is great good,” said Matthew, firmly. “Yet it may not come in time.”

“Do you think the King’s changed his mind, then, if you’re still doing sorcerous research?” said Ted, hopefully.

Fence fixed him with a most unpleasant look. “It is our place to be ready an he change his mind, not to pry and speculate hath he done so.”

“Have we any skilled scholars of music in the castle?” mused Matthew.

“Where did you get that, anyway?” asked Ted.

“Parts of Shan’s journal are written thus,” Fence answered him.

“I didn’t know Shan was a musician.”

“Nor did we,” said Matthew. He stood up, a little stiffly. “Fence, by your leave, I will go to Celia; a most accomplished musician, she knows something of these matters and may direct us to one who knows more.”

“As you will,” said Fence. “I’ll go on with the parts more straightly written.”

Matthew bounded through the door and could be heard running down the hollow corridor.

“He’s having fun,” said Ted, wistfully.

“That is a scholar,” said Fence, not looking up from his manuscript. “He’d welcome death itself if he learned from it what Melanie did in the Gray Lake or why the Dwarves dwindle.”

“Would you?” said Ted.

“For other knowledge, perhaps,” said Fence. “Not for the riddles of wizards and history.”

“I guess I’d better leave you to work,” said Ted.

Fence looked at him thoughtfully, with green eyes unusually sharp in his innocent round face. “Polish thy blade,” he said, “with use, not with sand. I would not lose thee easily.”

“If the King doesn’t change his mind, you’ll lose everything easily,” said Ted.

“Indeed I will not,” said Fence. “The Dragon King’s victory will come as hard as I can make it—and that is hard, in truth.” He bent his disheveled head to the scroll again. “Get thee to arms,” he said.

T
ED walked slowly along the dim halls. He could not walk quickly because he would trip over the green robe, and he was grateful for this. He found himself counting off the familiar landmarks of door, stair, and turn. He thought, I don’t have to worry until I’m past the kitchen; I have a long way to go still; I’m safe for a few minutes.