The Hidden Land (17 page)

“They’re still going to get killed,” Patrick said in his reasonable way, “and dead is dead, whether they get you with an arrow or an H-bomb.”

“But for a good reason,” said Laura.

“What’s a good reason?”

“Defending the Secret Country from monsters,” said Ellen promptly. She looked ready for argument, and Laura sighed. “Not to mention,” added Ellen, “that weird Border Magic.”

“Weird isn’t the word for that,” said Patrick. “We can’t even wait until we’re sure they’re an enemy; we have to go fight them outside in case they are.”

Laura was alarmed. She reminded herself that this was only Patrick.

“I’ve been reading up on the Dragon Wars,” Patrick went on, “and one historian thinks that dragons aren’t really evil, but ever since the Dwarves cheated them in that deal over the Fabulous Mines, they’ve wanted their revenge.”

Laura thought of the dragon smiting the Secret House with fire. If Claudia had been in the house at the time, you could hardly call that an evil deed.

“Why should they go bothering us?” said Ellen. “We aren’t Dwarves, and they don’t have to come this way to get the Dwarves; the Dwarves live on the southern islands. Or they’re supposed to,” she added, with the caution that three months of unpleasant surprises had instilled in all of them.

“We probably look like Dwarves to the dragons,” said Patrick.

“We don’t look anything like them!” said Laura. She watched Patrick decide to bypass the chance for an insult.

He said patiently, “Dwarves and people look more like one another than like dragons; just like a mouse and a hamster look a lot alike to you.”

“I can tell a mouse from a hamster!”

“Can you tell a hawk from a handsaw?” said Ellen, but both of them ignored her.

“That’s because you’ve had a scientific upbringing,” said Patrick.

“I have not! I just looked at them.”

“Observation, that’s the scientific method.”

“Observation means looking?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that’s how I said the dragons could tell us from the Dwarves!”

There was a dusty silence.

“What would you like to sing?” asked Patrick.

But Laura, on reflection, did not want to sing anything.

When they stopped for lunch, Ellen dragged Laura with her to ask Fence about the villainy, or lack thereof, of the dragons. They found him standing at the head of the army’s line, looking southward and shaking his head.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ellen.

“The spies have been withdrawn,” said Fence, “but there is some presence here that mislikes me. Perhaps the Dragon King hath us in his looking glass.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ellen. “Why didn’t all these spies set off the Border Magic? They’re enemies, aren’t they?”

“The Border Magic regardeth enemies in arms,” said Fence, still looking south. Laura looked that way herself, but saw only the long green plains of grass, with a smudge on the very horizon that might be dust, or the mountains.

“Fence,” said Ellen, “Patrick says the dragons aren’t evil.”

“Nor are they,” said Fence, looking faintly surprised.

“Well, why do they fight for the Dragon King?”

“They do not.”

“Well, who
does
fight for him if his own subjects won’t? Why won’t they?”

“I think I must speak to Matthew on the matter of thy education,” said Fence, not smiling. “The Dragon King is the Dragon King; he is not King of the Dragons.”

“Who is, then?”

“Belaparthalion.”

“Oh!” said Laura.

“And why do you call him the Dragon King if he isn’t—”

“He is a shapechanger, and the dragon’s the shape that best pleaseth him.”

“What do the dragons think of that?” said Laura, thinking of what dragons could do when displeased.

“Ask not a wizard for the mind of a dragon,” said Fence.

“I don’t suppose they’d help
us,
because they don’t like him?”

“It is not their task to help us,” said Fence. “It may be their task to destroy us at the end.”

“Oh,” said Laura, hollowly.

“Well, by what three things may the Secret Country be destroyed?” Fence asked her, a little impatiently.

“The Border Magic,” she said, that being the only answer she knew.

“The Crystal of Earth,” said Ellen, boldly.

“And,” said Fence, smiling on them now, “the Whim of the Dragon.”

“I hate that!” said Ellen. Laura suspected her of hating this sudden presentation of new and contrary information about the Secret Country, but Fence of course could not know what she meant.

“Think not, three things may destroy us,” he said to her, “but rather, a milliard things may not: not flood nor earthquake nor plague nor sorcery; not even the jests of the unicorns.”

“Are dragons terribly whimsical?” said Ellen, dubiously.

“Ask not a wizard,” repeated Fence. He looked south again, and after a moment Laura and Ellen crept away. Ellen was furious, and Laura thoughtful.

“Let’s go find Matthew,” she said, “and get educated.”

Matthew was with Randolph, arguing with him about the fire-letters they had found in Shan’s journals. He wanted to cast them into the fire and play a piece of music traditionally associated with Shan, in the hope that whatever information was in them could be gotten out and thought about before the battle. Randolph, who seemed to have fewer doubts about the battle than did Matthew, wanted to save the fire-letters, do more research, and risk them to the wrong music only in a slow and orderly fashion. Laura and Ellen stood silently until this argument had begun for the third time, in different words.

Then Ellen said, “Excuse me!”

They looked around and smiled.

“Fence was criticizing our education,” said Ellen, “so we thought we should get some more from you before we talked to him again.”

“Well?” said Matthew.

“Are dragons terribly whimsical?”

“No; that is why we are in the keeping of the Dragon’s Whim.”

“And there won’t be any dragons in this battle?”

“Only in seeming.”

“Is it easy to break the Crystal of Earth?”

“How thy thoughts run on doom!” said Randolph, laughing. “Now, I promise you, that even though the Outside Powers rise again there shall be no dragons in the battle; that the Dragon King’s army shall not breach the Border Magic, for we will be there before it; and that not Chryse herself could break the Crystal of Earth, even were half the Queen’s Council not between it and her. Are you satisfied?”

“Thank you,” said Ellen, so Laura had to go away with her, though she was not satisfied at all. She wanted to ask about Belaparthalion, King of the Dragons, and what might make him smite the Secret House with fire. She wanted especially to know whether he had done it already, or if it was still to come. She had seen somebody reading a book about it; but perhaps the book was still to come.

“So,” said Ellen, as they went to find Agatha and their lunch, “Patrick couldn’t have broken the Crystal of Earth because the Secret Country wasn’t destroyed, and so what he did break wasn’t the Crystal of Earth.”

“It was something, though,” said Laura, remembering that frozen moment when the Secret Country had faded around her and she had seen again the dusty concrete of the Midwestern town she and Ted had been exiled to. “We almost went home when he did it.”

F
OR the next five days of the march, it rained. Sometimes it rained in a fine drizzle; sometimes in great sad drops that went down your back when you bent to lace up your boot, and hit the flint and tinder just as you were striking a spark, and plopped onto your wrist when you put your arm out of your bedroll in your sleep, and went into your eyes when you looked up to see if it was raining. Randolph put his whistle away because the damp was bad for it; Matthew got a sore throat; and Fence told worse stories, both in quality and in scariness, than any of them had ever heard in summer camp.

Whether from the stories or from some other cause, Ted began to have bad dreams. He would find himself on a vast plain where red eyes came at him out of the blackness and unseen things chuckled evilly. When he pulled his sword out they shrieked with laughter, and when he slashed at them they vanished. A wind came up with sobbing voices in it, and pulled the sword out of his grasp. He ran crazily after it through the howling air until he came upon a man in a dragon mask, gray and intricate with red eyes, who held the sword and cut with it letters in the ground. Ted could not read them. They were in the alphabet of the Secret Country, and he could not remember it.

After dreaming this dream four nights running, he could remember their shapes, though he still did not understand them. On the sixth night of the march, when they had camped by a little wood, he got Ruth to come with him after supper to a patch of moss he had found, and he cut the letters in the moss with his sword and asked her to read them.

She knelt, looking, in her brown tunic and leggings, more like his cousin than she had in some time, and squinted at them. “The mask,” she said hesitantly, “of a prince, on the face of a beggar. I think. That’s in the older alphabet and I don’t really know it very well.” She looked up at him. “Where did you get this?”

“I dreamed it.”

“What do dreams mean here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s just a nice psychological dream,” said Ruth consolingly. “It means you feel like an impostor. Which is silly, but perfectly natural.”

“I don’t know,” said Ted. “The other dream I had here meant something. And the man with the sword had a mask on, too.”

A drop of rain went down Ruth’s back, and she shivered vigorously. “I almost miss Australian weather, ” she said, standing up.

“Do you think I should ask Fence about the dream?”

“I don’t guess it could hurt,” said Ruth. She eyed him speculatively. She had been several inches taller than he was to begin with, and had grown this summer, so she could do this impressively. “Just don’t go trying to confess to him. He has enough on his mind without thinking you’re losing yours.”

“I don’t know,” said Ted slowly. “I think he’s the only person here who might understand what happened to us.”

“What good would it do?” demanded Ruth. “We’d still have to fight this battle. And we know too much for a bunch of strangers from another universe. They’d think we were dangerous and I don’t like to think what they do with people they think are dangerous.”

“I know, I know.” Ted hesitated. “Do you suppose Patrick’s right about us?”

“Sure,” said Ruth. “Look at what a good time you’re having. Look at how happy you are. Look at me queening it over the army and being carried in a litter and pampered to death. Patrick thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

Ted was unable to reply to a combination of sarcasm and Shakespeare, but he was not altogether reassured.

When they got back to the camp, the guards on its perimeter, and the boys carrying water, and the men putting up the tents, looked at them with surmise, and with unpleasant expressions. They looked at one another with shock.

“We forgot,” said Ted.

“Fence’ll kill us, especially after that kiss at the coronation.”

“How long were we gone?”

“Half an hour?”

“Lovely,” said Ted.

Fence bore down upon them with a terrifying expression. Ted refrained from clutching at Ruth, which would only have made matters worse. She took a step toward him and then away again.

“Fence, we forgot,” said Ted desperately.

Fence stopped with his mouth open; in itself a sight to dare much for. The hopes this aroused were speedily squashed, however.

“Forgot,” he said, as if he were cursing, and meant it to stick.

“Fence,” said Ruth, “think how easy it would be for us to forget if we weren’t really fond of one another.”

Fence was caught again with his mouth open. Ted fought down a wild desire to giggle. “If you are not,” said Fence at last, “why all this mummery?”

“What mummery?” said Ted.

“We
were
fond of each other,” said Ruth, obviously hating it, “but we stopped being. It was—it was a childish fancy. But we would like to talk to each other occasionally.”

“As you did at the coronation?”

“That was an impulse,” said Ruth. “Because—because I was most marvelously moved at the ceremony. But if I were secretly in love with Ted, would I be so stupid as to give way to my feelings like that?”

Fence seemed beyond speech, but his mouth quirked.

“Couldn’t you tell everyone,” said Ruth, “so we can go talk in peace if we want?”

Fence looked as if he had had too much. He put the flat of one hand to his forehead and said, “If this is some stratagem—”

“Fence!” said Ted, before he knew he was going to.

“My lord, I humbly beg your pardon,” said Fence instantly.

“I hope so!” Ted felt quite unreasonably enraged, not so much on his own behalf as on that of the absent Edward, for whose existence he might in some wise be responsible, and whose reputation he must uphold.

“Ted,” said Ruth, in the tones of the sorcerer she was becoming. She looked both surprised and uneasy.

“Granted,” said Ted to Fence, still irked.

“Ted!” said Ruth, in the cousinly voice with which she had always greeted his excesses. Ted remembered, suddenly and vividly, the time he had pushed Ellen into the pond because she let free all the frogs he and Patrick had laboriously collected.

“Never mind,” said Fence to Ruth.

“Fence,” said Ted, “will you come and look at something?”

“And leave me to deal with Agatha?” said Ruth, in a tone somewhere between scorn and panic.

“Agatha!” said Fence. “Agatha will take you by the hand and thank you heartily, that you have thwarted Benjamin’s most untimely plans.”