The Hidden Land

Table of Contents

 

TREACHERY

Randolph took his place behind the King’s chair. The King had already proposed one toast, which Ted had missed. He drank some wine anyway, and grimaced. It made his tongue fur up. Well, they had decided that it must be strong enough to disguise the taste of the poison.

People were beginning to relax a little. Matthew stood up and flourished his goblet at them. The red wine and the blue glass caught the candlelight and sent it reeling around the room in sparks of purple.

“My lords,” said Matthew, “to the King. Both glory and length of days.”

Everybody echoed him, and drank. Ted looked over the smiling King’s shoulder at Randolph, and froze. Randolph looked as if he were going to throw up.

King William shook his head and put down his goblet with a thud.

“My lord?” said Matthew into the hush.

Ted got up, words from the warning labels on all the bottles of poisonous things he had ever seen going around in his head.

King William put both hands to his throat, and in the hideous light of the candles his staring and contorted face looked like a gargoyle’s. . . .

FIREBIRD WHERE FANTASY TAKES FLIGHT™

FIREBIRD
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,
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Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
First published in the United States of America by Ace Fantasy Books,
The Berkley Publishing Group, 1986
Published by Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2003

Copyright © Pamela Dyer-Bennet, 1986

All rights reserved

eISBN : 978-1-440-68443-2

S
UMMER swept on, faster, as it always did, than you expected. Ted, climbing the stairs of the West Tower on a blazing day in mid-August, wished that he had only the beginning of school to dread. It irked him how well the others had settled in. You would think they had lived in a castle all their lives, instead of in Pennsylvania. You would never think that their own elegant, symmetrical game, played over and over again every summer for nine years, had suddenly taken on a life of its own, flinging them into a country they had invented but that stubbornly refused to conform to their expectations and that, just as they were finding their feet, presented them with people they had never invented—like that weasel, Lady Claudia—and scenes they had never played—like that unexpected and awful moment in which Patrick broke the Crystal of Earth. You would certainly think that all of them might very soon be made to do in earnest the kinds of deeds that sound appealing only to the mind’s ear.

Ruth was almost impossible to find; she was devouring the magic of the Green Caves as she had once devoured mystery novels, that summer three years ago when she declared that she was sick of fantasies. You would never guess that she had been obliged to change her outward behavior from that of a gentle, poetic person who had not only never hit anybody in her life but actually believed one ought not to hit people, into that of an irritable and haughty sorcerer from whose uncertain temper all the servants fled. You would never guess she’d never seen a servant until three months ago, either. And she had hit Patrick when he broke that Crystal.

Patrick himself had acquired a sort of smug silence which displayed itself during any discussion of what they were going to do, but especially in talk of how they were to get hold of the swords of Shan and Melanie. Never mind that he was a materialist and didn’t believe in magic swords. Somebody whose authority he did not recognize—somebody, that is, who was neither a parent nor a scientist—had taken the swords away from him, and therefore he meant to have them back. That the swords were the only way any of them knew to return to their prosaic lives seemed to trouble him less than the assault on his dignity.

Ellen appeared to be having the time of her life. This was perhaps the most irritating thing of all, it was so normal: Ellen
always
had the time of her life. In their game she had played princesses and pages and messengers and talking animals; now she must play a princess all the time, and although she occasionally said this was boring, nobody who had been allowed to tame a unicorn not two months ago should expect to be believed when she said things like that. She probably only said them because she thought princesses ought to be bored.

So much for Ted’s cousins. His little sister was both more and less annoying than they were. Laura was not studying magic, like Ruth; nor plotting against High Castle’s resident wizard and its chief counselor, like Patrick; nor being lavishly rewarded for her native spunk even if it didn’t accord with that of the character she should have been playing, like Ellen. She was keeping out of the way and trying not to break things. Breaking things was her special talent: since the Princess Laura, her character in the game and the person she was now obliged to imitate, had had a great deal of grace and charm, Laura was probably unhappier than anybody except Ted. His misery liked the company; but Laura’s being unhappy was normal enough to be irritating, too.

Ted wondered if she had seen any visions in torches or candles or people’s bracelets recently. That wasn’t normal for Laura, certainly; but when it happened to her, she reacted to it in about the same way she had when the first-grade teacher told their mother Laura had a very high I.Q.: she was dismayed, and she refused to do anything about it. He should probably ask her. Not that anything she had seen so far had been much help. And that
was
like Laura; if she must have mystical visions, they would be of no use whatsoever.

Ted panted up the last steps and yanked at the door of the Garment Room. It was locked.

“Will you kindly open?” he said.

His tone was not polite, but the doors in High Castle seemed to hear only words. The door swung wide, and he went into the scent of cloves and dust. From seven of the West Tower’s nine narrow windows came a thin blue light; from one only the shadow of the East Tower; and from the last a line of pinkish sunlight that had found its way between the East Tower of this inner castle and the nameless towers of one of the outer walls. The sunlight was pinkish because every other wall of High Castle’s concentric five was made of violent pink marble. Ted had found this harder to get used to than the presence of Claudia, the appearance of Andrew, or even the harsh temper of Benjamin.

He picked his way among the piles of clothing. He had come to find his costume for the feast at which, in accordance with their game, Lord Randolph would poison the King, unless somebody did something. Rummaging and sneezing, he wished they had chosen some other occasion for the murder. The feasts had been the beginning of the Secret, before Laura and Ellen were old enough to play. He and Ruth and Patrick, whenever parents were going to be absent from a meal, used to dress themselves up as kings and courtiers and have their food in the barn. He had for his memories of such times a kindly feeling that he was quite sure would not survive an attempt, even an unsuccessful one, to poison the King.

He was as bad as his sister and cousins, caught between his own somewhat rash character and the meek and bookish one of Prince Edward, who everyone thought him to be. Ted, if he had been free to be Ted, would not have come obediently up here to choose his gown knowing that Randolph might kill the King and that, if he did, Ted would have to kill Randolph. Edward, not knowing these things, would not have worried and fretted as he obediently chose.

An orange velvet cloak ripped as Ted pulled apart its folds without noticing the brooch holding them together.

“Shan can turn you into a toad!” he said to the brooch. He had heard Agatha, the royal children’s nurse, say this to a cat that had gotten into her sewing, and it had a better sound, in this gray castle room, than “God damn it!”

Agatha being no sorcerer, the cat in question had not turned into a toad. Ted being even less a magician than she, the brooch remained a brooch also. It had caught in the bandage on his left hand. Ted worked it free thoughtfully. The cut from Melanie’s sword was not swollen or inflamed, and it never bothered him unless he knocked the palm of his hand against something, but it was remarkably slow in healing. If he had really been left-handed, it would have given him trouble. But it was Prince Edward who was left-handed. The cut was extremely convenient for Ted, since it gave him an excuse to use his right hand.

It was true that Agatha had looked grave over the cut, and called Benjamin, the Royal Groom who was more than he seemed, to examine it. But Benjamin said that it was no more than Edward deserved for playing with enchanted weapons, whereupon Agatha looked at him sharply and shut her mouth, and Ted wished he had noticed how long it took Laura’s knee to heal. Laura’s knee had started this whole business: if she had not tripped and fallen on Shan’s sword where it lay peacefully concealed under a hedge, they would not be here now.

Ted went on burrowing. It was a pity that they could not just play in the Secret Country. One of their old feasts would have been greatly enhanced by the costumes and food they could have wangled. He shook out a stiffly embroidered dress, thinking how much Ruth would have liked it if they had found it in her father’s attic. He might have liked it himself. But he was getting tired of gorgeous colors and decoration and jewels and feathers. He flung aside piles of green, gold, blue, scarlet; and came to a gray bundle. He unfolded it carefully. It, too, was fastened with a brooch, a twisted silver one with blue stones.

“Not again,” said Ted, unfastening it. The magicians of Fence’s party, who probably could turn cats into toads if they could stop laughing at the suggestion long enough to say the spell, wore silver ornaments with blue stones. This one made Ted’s hand prickle, very faintly: it was enchanted. He put it into his pocket so that it would not be lost in the confusion. He unfolded the gray bundle, and stood up, and shook it out.