The Hidden Land (22 page)

A voice spoke out of nowhere. It had a clear and piercing sound, like a flute heard from a distance. Its tone was neutral.

“Such water is not for you.”

This did not sound promising. Ted decided to find out the worst. “Is this Hell?”

“This is not.”

Not Hell, or not anything? thought Ted, and realization smote him. He had given the Secret Country neither Heaven nor Hell, only a shadowy, dim, pathetic sort of place, like Hades in the
Odyssey
. What had anyone else done? Patrick didn’t believe in an afterlife; he wouldn’t have bothered making up what type the Secret Country had. But people in the Secret Country said, “Dear heaven,” or “For the love of heaven.”

Ted looked around again and thought that it was clear that nobody besides himself had so much as considered the matter. Nobody in the game or out of it, he thought grimly. This looked to be the one place where there were no unexpected changes. Then he wondered whom he was talking to. In the game Patrick had done well at being a bent and twisted figure in black robes; but here there was nobody to be seen.

“Why is the water not for me?” he asked.

“The living cross it to become the dead. You are neither. There is a bargaining for you.”

Well, Ruth had managed to get their attention, at least.

“I hope they remember their lines,” said Ted.

The voice did not answer that.

“Who is bargaining?” asked Ted.

“Ruth of the Green Caves, Fence of no land, and Lord Randolph, King’s Counselor of the Hidden Land.”

“What is the bargain?” His lines came easily to him.

“What must it be? Life for life.”

That was wrong. Ted, Ruth, Fence, and Randolph were all supposed to promise to do certain labors for the Lord of the Dead. Once or twice Ted’s family had spent Christmas at the farm, and those labors had come in handy then.

“Whose life?” said Ted.

“That concerns you not. Only the outcome concerns you.”

“Is the one whose life is to be exchanged engaged in the bargaining?”

“Tricks will not avail you,” said the voice, but its neutrality had given way to amusement. Ted found a sense of humor to be a disconcerting quality in the Lord of the Dead. If this
was
the Lord of the Dead.

“Who are you?”

“I am the Guardian of the River.”

“What’s the river?”

“If the bargaining is not concluded, you will know. If it is, you will not need to know.”

“Isn’t it my right to know the terms of the bargain?”

“Who art thou, then?”

“Edward,” said Ted, “King of the Se—the Hidden Land.” After all, he had been crowned. It would be a lie to say, “rightful King,” but what he had said was probably all right.

“What power hath the Hidden Land over the Lords of Death?”

The question had a quality of rote about it; the voice clearly expected that Ted would know the answer. As a matter of fact, he did not. He stared into the mist until his eyes ached, but neither memory nor logic gave him an answer. Then he was distracted. Like an aerial photograph of familiar country, the mist came into focus and he knew what he saw.

It was ghosts, hundreds of them, crowding down to the opposite bank of the river and staring at him across it. Their voices came across gradually louder, like the television warming up.

“Living man, hast thou brought blood?”

“He is not living man, he hath had his death’s wound.”

“He is not dead man, for his substance is solid.”

“Hast thou brought us blood?”

“Only mine,” said Ted, wryly.

“Come across, that we may drink of thee and be for but a brief while what we were. Let us remember.”

Too bad I don’t have a sheep handy, thought Ted crazily. Not that I’d want to cut its throat anyway. He put a hand to his chest. It came away sticky. Maybe that blood would do; it seemed a pity to waste it. He stood up.

“I’ll give you what blood I can,” he said, “if you’ll tell me, what power hath the Hidden Land over the Lords of Death?”

The voice said, again with a faint note of amusement, “You cannot cross with the blood of life yet in you.”

“Well, they don’t want me without it!”

“This is the doom of men,” said the voice, not sepulchrally, but with the glee of someone making a particularly complicated pun.

Ted took a step toward the river, and another. The river and the ghosts stayed the same distance from him.

“You cannot cross,” said the voice.

Ted had been staring steadily at the ghosts, and their outlines had become clearer. He saw creatures like the ones he had killed in the battle. He hoped only the newly dead were here. He did not want to see the King. Then he froze, and the breath went out of him as if someone had hit him. Down at the very edge of the river was a group of children. Ruth, Ellen, Patrick, and Laura. Oh, God, thought Ted, were we all killed, did we lose the battle? And then, are they all dead but me?

Then he saw himself. He was taller than Ruth; but it was he. Ted felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck. He had always thought it would be terrible to meet one’s own image walking in the garden; but that would have been a charming surprise compared to meeting it in Hell.

“Hey,” he tried to call, but his throat was dry. He swallowed, and tried something more dignified.

“Hark!” he shouted. “You five children! Who are you?”

“We know not,” said the figure of Ruth. Her voice was perfectly identical to his cousin’s, although she had a trace of accent.

“Well, I bet
I
do. Are you Lady Ruth of the Green Caves, and Princesses Ellen and Laura and Prince Patrick of the Secret Country—of the Hidden Land?”

Four of the ghosts stirred and leaned together, whispering; except Edward, who came a step forward, his head tilted. “I have seen thee before.”

“In the mirror,” said Ted. Edward’s voice was not familiar to him, but they did say that nobody really knew what his own voice sounded like. It was still a boy’s voice, not a man’s, despite Edward’s height. The strange voice made things easier.

“Truly?” said Edward.

“Think about the mirror,” said Ted, with no very clear idea of what he was doing, but possessed of a burning desire to make Edward remember who he was. “What can you see in it, behind you?” He felt he sounded like either a psychiatrist or a dishonest hypnotist, but it was the only thing he could think of.

Edward looked at Prince Patrick, and laughed. A wavering like that of water into which a stone has dropped went through the other ghosts, and most of them backed away from the five children.

“My brother Patrick,” said Edward, “coming privily with a wet towel to make me late for supper.”

“Edward!” said Prince Patrick, exactly like someone in a bad romance; and he and Edward hugged each other. “Laura!” cried the ghost of his sister, gleefully; “Ellen!” yelled the other small girl, and then they hugged each other and shouted, “Ruth! Ruth!” whereupon Ruth hugged them, and Edward, and Patrick.

Ted, who had never considered hugging Laura, let alone Patrick, was nonplussed.

“We thank thee,” said Edward to Ted, formally, “for giving us back ourselves. What power is in thee to do this thing?”

“Who are you, then?”

“Edward Fairchild, Prince of the Hidden Land. And thou?”

“My name’s Edward, too, Edward Carroll. But they all think I’m you. What happened to you?”

“Treachery,” said Edward, grimly.

“Was it Claudia? Andrew’s sister?”

“Verily, by that guise were we slain.”

“How’d she do it?”

“A stratagem and a potion,” said Edward. “What art thou?”

“I don’t know,” said Ted, “but look—they think they’re bargaining for your life—”

“They haggle for a pig with no poke,” said Edward; “there is no life in me now.”

“But I’m talking to you!”

“That is not life, but spirit. Besides,” said Edward, “Melanie waits at the gates of death and of a certainty I could not pass her. Nor,” he added, “might I leave my brother and my cousins in this place.”

“King Edward!” said the voice.

“King!” said Edward. “What of my father?”

“King Edward!” said the voice, imperatively.

“That is no name of mine,” said Edward, in a way that made Ted wish it was none of his, either.

“Answer or forfeit,” said the voice, delightedly.

“Well?” said Ted.

“You may go back to life if you will kill Lord Randolph.”

“What infamy is this?” demanded Edward.

Ted, who fully intended to say No, opened his mouth and was shaken with sudden fear. What would happen if he didn’t agree? Did the negotiators get more than one chance? The voice had sounded hideously pleased with itself. But if he said he would kill Randolph, he would have to do it; and it seemed to him at that moment as if he had spent all his time in the Secret Country plotting to avoid that very action. He would just have to hope that Ruth would not abandon him.

“No,” he said.

The ghosts were silent. Ted put a hand to his chest and it came away wet. He pinched at his ankle, and the flesh was there. His substance was still solid.

The voice spoke again; it held a clean and vigorous glee. “You may go back to life,” it said.

“I won’t kill Lord Randolph.”

“We are assured that he will die; how is the business of those who covenanted for you. You may go back.”

“I won’t!” said Ted, seized with perversity.

“This is not your place.”

“Edward!” said Edward. “Go. Avenge our foul and most unnatural murder.”

The place wavered and went out, and bright light hurt his shut eyes. He blinked them open. He was lying in the sand, in the sunshine, under blue sky. Randolph was hunched down beside his shoulder, bloody and dirty and bespattered, but very pale underneath it all. Laura was standing beside Randolph, with enormous eyes, and she looked one degree worse than he did: she had as much dirt and blood and grime on her face as he, and tear streaks on top of that.

Ted put up a shaking hand and pulled at the remnants of one braid. Laura smiled at him. He looked back at Randolph, who was also smiling.

“How could you?” said Ted. “How dare you?”

“Necessity dares all things,” said Randolph, lightly, but he gave Ted a look which meant that Ted had better be quiet. Ted looked at his sister and decided to shut up for the moment.

He sat up and wiped his sweaty hair out of his eyes, looking over Randolph’s shoulder. “Where’s the battle now?” he asked, and stopped.

The sand was red, and there was a great deal more red that was not sand: mounds and huddles of things he did not want to look at. Just beyond Randolph were a hand and outstretched arm clothed in green. Ted looked quickly back at Randolph’s face.

“The end passed while you were yonder,” said Randolph. “We have the victory.”

“And,” said Ted, reluctantly falling back on his lines, “at what price?”

“A very high one,” said Randolph. He had stopped smiling. “Many of the best are gone.”

Ted could not remember whom of their characters he and the others had so blithely killed. Now was not, in any case, the time to find out whether the reality had followed the game. He remembered that Conrad had been hurt, and did not ask about him. “Is any of the enemy left to treat with?”

“We do not treat,” said Randolph, “with the likes of those that are left. If their master wisheth terms, no doubt he will so inform us. His immediate army is destroyed, and Fence saith that his sorcery is vanished from the desert.”

“I hope there aren’t any prisoners?”

“No,” said Randolph. “My lord, none of those we fought were men.”

“You mean there wasn’t any mundane army on the Dragon King’s side?”

“If you mean by that, was there then no need for our own, there was great need. The greater part of those creatures had only to set foot over the border to leave us without a home to go back to.”

“What was it that got me?” said Ted, wiping his face again.

“I have never seen its like,” said Randolph. “ ’Twas a shape-changer, yet it seemed held to but several shapes.”

“What happened to it?”

“I got it with this sword,” said Laura.

“Who told you you could fight?”

“Who told me I couldn’t?”

“You little brat,” said Ted, heatedly, and stopped. A number of things he had been almost too busy to notice, let alone think about, fell together in his mind. “Oh, well,” he said. “A lot of good most of my liege men did me when I needed them. Do you think you’d like to be one, too? Maybe you could show them something.”

Laura looked as if she thought he was making fun of her; then she shrugged suddenly and grinned at him. “Sure,” she said.

“Do you know the words?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, kneel, then.” Laura obeyed him, and Randolph sat where he was; he looked bemused. Ted took his sister by the hands. “Put your title in,” he whispered.

“I, Laura, Princess of the Secret Country, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folk. So help me God,” added Laura, startling both Ted and Randolph.

“I, Edward, King of the Secret Country, do become your liege lord of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and that faith and truth I receive of you, that I will requite. Rise, Sir Laura,” said Ted, in his best Prince-Edward tones, “Knight of the Secret Country.”

Laura seemed as delighted as he had ever seen her, but all she said was, “Does this mean I have to ride a horse?” Then she looked in alarm at Randolph, but he had stood up and was staring out over the battlefield; you could probably have burst a paper bag under his nose without making him jump.

“Now what about this sword?” said Ted.

“It wanted to come here,” said Laura, “and when you stick it into one of those black things with the red eyes, they shrivel up.” She held it out to him. “Hey!” she said. “What happened to the stones?”