The Hidden Land (24 page)

“If Belaparthalion and Chryse did but give him a moment of their thought—” he said.

“Why didn’t they come to the coronation?” said Ted, thoughtlessly; but Fence did not seem to take the question amiss.

“No unicorn will come under a roof,” he said, “and thou knowest well that Belaparthalion fitteth not under any roof ever devised. We had not the time to travel to a place of their choosing. Fear not; thou hadst their blessing on thy accession.”

Ted was not sure he was comforted by this.

“What have we to offer them?” said Randolph, and once more looked expectantly at Fence.

Fence grinned. “I have certain weapons,” he said, “for which those two indeed have no use, but whose presence in hands such as ours makes them to sleep most uneasily.”

Ted thought of the armory below Fence’s tower.

Randolph frowned. “Have such hands as ours no use for them?”

Fence gave him a long, thoughtful look that to Ted seemed to say something like “I thought as much.” “Less use for them than for the good will of Belaparthalion,” he said, a little reprovingly.

“And Chryse?” said Matthew, without looking up from his writing.

“The good will of such as she is more perilous than the malice of the Dragon King,” said Fence, “but if history speaketh aright, she hath a fondness for Belaparthalion that we might turn to our own account.”

“Wilt thou speak with them, then?” said Julian.

“If the Council and the King so desire.”

The Council murmured that it did so desire, and Ted nodded.

“Granting that we have that to force him to our demands, then,” said Randolph, “whom will we send?”

“Lord Andrew?” said Ted, actuated half by mischief and half by curiosity.

“A most astute thought,” said Randolph, holding Ted’s eyes in a manner half reassuring and half alarming. “A true test of your philosophy, my lord,” he added to Andrew. “Whom do you desire to accompany you?”

“Julian,” said Andrew. He was a little red, but seemed less discomposed than Ted had hoped. He had thought it a nice irony to send Andrew as an envoy to the master he had failed; apparently Randolph thought so as well. Ted supposed he might have given to Andrew only an opportunity to make his excuses, whatever those might be.

“My lord?” said Randolph to Julian.

“Gladly,” said Julian; but he looked as alarmed as Andrew should have. “Might you spare Lord Jerome as well, your Majesty?”

Ted looked at Randolph, who gave him no sign. “I think so,” said Ted. Fence had said he must learn to speak for himself. What was galling was that he was speaking for Edward.

“You must choose you a party of soldiers also,” said Randolph, and wandered off into a maze of diplomatic complications that Ted did not bother to follow.

He busied himself instead with the exchange of looks between Fence and Randolph. At first he thought that Fence had not considered sorcerous force the way to keep the Dragon King honorable. But the rest of the discussion showed that he thought it a fine way. He must, then, have been disturbed by something in Randolph’s attitude. Perhaps saying “How else?” about sorcerous force was somehow wrong.

Ted scowled, caught Matthew’s amazed glance, and composed his face again. Fence had been unhappy with, but not surprised by, what Randolph had said. And Randolph had expected this reaction and had set himself to ignore it. Now
that
had surprised Fence; and from Fence’s surprise Randolph had looked away.

Ted, in a burst of illumination, thought, why, Fence kept expecting Randolph to—to deny, or apologize for, or at least be ashamed of, what he said and the way he looked; and Randolph kept not denying it, and Fence looked as if that made him remember something, or realize it. And when Randolph asked didn’t
we
have a use for the weapons, then Fence thought that proved he was right. About what? He shook his head, wishing he knew what in Randolph’s original statement had been so distasteful to Fence.

He sat revolving the rest of the conversation in his mind, looking for a clue there, and when he remembered Fence’s saying, “I have certain weapons,” he knocked over his untouched wine-cup, and sat without apologizing while they sent for a page to clean it up. How could he have been so stupid? Those weapons had to be Shan’s and Melanie’s swords.

If Fence gave them to a dragon and a unicorn, that would be the end of that; or at least, Ted and his relatives could spend years questing around for them. The idea of such a quest flamed up briefly in his mind, and was pleasing to him; then it was drowned in a flood of fear, and he turned his attention back to the Council, trying to discover when Fence planned to give the swords to the creatures.

He was a little comforted by a number of intimations that dragons always talked over everything for a long time and that unicorns would not do anything to please you unless you could convince them that it would hurt you more than you knew. He probably had some time to work in. But this was one more reason to talk to the others.

On the third day the Council met again, but Randolph told Ted that he did not need to attend; he could read over Matthew’s notes later. Randolph sounded a little strained as he said this; but Ted would have let the Council plot his own murder if it would have given him an hour with the others. He scrambled around the camp, dragging Patrick from watching a competition with throwing-knives, interrupting Ruth and Laura in a flute lesson, and summoning Ellen away from Benjamin, whom she was making late for the Council by demanding fighting lessons of him.

“It’s Randolph who gives fencing lessons,” Ted told her as they made for a little fir-wood on the mountain side of their valley.

“Randolph already said no,” said Ellen. She was the only one who seemed angry with Ted for the interruption; Patrick had said “About time,” and Ruth, “Thank goodness.” Laura, as usual, said nothing.

Arriving at the edge of the fir-wood, they sat down in a drift of pine needles, leaned their backs against convenient trees, rooted a few cones and sticks out of the way, and looked expectantly at Ted.

“
A
LL right,” said Ted, “first, Ruthie, thank you very much for getting me out. I didn’t like it down there.”

“What was it like?” asked Ellen, but Ruth interrupted her.

“I didn’t,” she said.

“What?”

“I didn’t get you out.” Ruth began shredding a pine cone. “Randolph came and got Fence and me and took us back to where you were. You looked horrible. Ted, if I’d known it would be like that I don’t think I’d have agreed that we should come to the battle. Did it hurt?”

“Never mind,” said Ted, putting a hand to the solid substance of his chest; something had lurched inside him. “I wouldn’t have agreed either, believe me. Just what do you mean you didn’t get me out?”

“I said the spell—that’s all you do, just say it. The trick is to know where to find the spell, and to know what to do once you’ve said it. A voice answered, coming out of nowhere, and said we must choose a ground whereon we might have speech of one another. It told us to choose between the sea and the Well of the White Witch. I figured we should stick to what we knew, so I said the Well.”

“I don’t know,” said Ted, “the Well doesn’t seem to like you.”

“I said the Well,” repeated Ruth. “A wind came up and blew sand in our faces, and when it died down we were standing right where I was when Ellie and I were using Shan’s Ring to change the time, and I got into the place that looked wrong. Remember, I told you about it: with the army camped by the Well, and the sky the wrong color and the air all shimmery?”

“Go on,” said Ted.

“And you were gone,” said Ruth. “It was just Fence and Randolph and me. We went through the woods, and across the bridge, and up to the Well. Randolph didn’t like it at all, walking right up to an army like that, but Fence kept telling him it was all right. And a unicorn came out of the army and stood on the other side of the Well.”

“What’d it look like?” said Laura.

“It had gold eyes,” said Ruth, promptly, “but otherwise it looked like the one we hunted.”

“That was Chryse,” said Laura.

“Chryse’s the one you talked to?” said Ellen.

“It told me that was its name.”

“It didn’t like me,” said Ruth. “Or maybe it thought I was funny. They’re very strange creatures, those unicorns. I told it we wished to bargain for the life of Edward Fairchild, King of the Hidden Land. That’s the last thing that went according to the game. It knew I had Shan’s Ring, and it asked me if I’d give it up to have you back. I said I would, and it said that the willingness took away the value of the gift, and we’d have to give something else. So Randolph offered his life—and Ted, the unicorn said exactly the same thing, that the willingness took the value away.” She gave him a sharp and anxious look from the green eyes like Randolph’s.

“Well, what do you expect?” said Ted, a little irritated. “We always said that Randolph wanted to die after he killed the King. He figured it was what he deserved, and worth it to save the Secret Country.” Ted paused, thinking. “He was probably tickled to death at the chance.”

“Ted!” said Laura. “He was! After you got killed,” and she swallowed hard, “he said, ‘This is not so foul a chance as it appears, so take heart’—to me, I mean, when I told him to get Ruth.”

“I’d forgotten that about Randolph,” said Ruth. “Well, it’s nice to be right occasionally, except we always seem to be right about the things we’d rather be wrong about. Anyway. Randolph asked if you could take part in the bargaining. The unicorn said we couldn’t talk to you, but it would apprise you of what was happening, and it tilted its head and pitched its voice a little oddly, and said, ‘King Edward! You may go back to life if you will kill Lord Randolph!’

“Well, Fence and I both objected, and Randolph said to the unicorn, ‘Here is thy unwillingness,’ and the unicorn said, ‘I have one will serve me better,’ and told us that if we would return to the place whence we came, we would find you alive.”

Ted supplied them with his side of the conversation with the Guardian of the River; a little discussion of the quality of the Guardian’s voice made them decide that it had been the unicorn’s.

“What’d it mean, it had one that would serve it better?” asked Ellen.

“Probably that my unwillingness was more fun than Ruth and Fence’s, because it was my life Randolph was saving,” said Ted, sourly.

“Ted, what are we going to do about that?” asked Ruth.

“Well, I won’t kill him. I didn’t ask him to die for me. He can damn well do it himself. Do they have hemlock here?”

Ruth looked appalled, and Ted, a little shocked himself, scowled at her. She did not seem impressed. “No, all right,” said Ted, “of course I don’t want him to kill himself. I need him if we can’t get Edward back. If we do get Edward back, Edward’ll need him. And anyway, he did save the Secret Country, so why should he suffer for it? I mean,” said Ted, overcome by a helpless feeling as he remembered the King, “even if it was wrong, what else could he have done?”

“A tragedy,” said Patrick, in a most peculiar voice. He fixed his untender blue gaze on Ted, in the way he used to do when he was playing Fence. “That’s what you get for reading Shakespeare so young.”

“I don’t think Randolph
can
kill himself,” said Ruth, sparing Patrick not so much as a glance. “He and Fence stood there in that peculiar air under that wrong sky, with the army writhing all over the plain, and argued about it. Fence was furious with him; I mean, quite apart from being his friend. He told him he’d offered what was no longer his to give. It sounded as if magicians aren’t allowed to kill themselves, and Randolph is Fence’s apprentice. Also, Fence convinced Randolph that he would have to be killed by someone unwilling or the unicorn wouldn’t accept the death and would take you back.”

“Hell!” said Ted, without knowing he was going to. “I have to kill him or I’ll die, is that it? My God, do you know what’s happening to us? If I hadn’t tried to stop it the King wouldn’t have died; if Laurie hadn’t tried to stop it I wouldn’t have died; and if you hadn’t tried to bring me back I wouldn’t be under an obligation to kill Randolph, which is really the one thing I’ve been trying to avoid all along!”

“What, what?” said the rest of them, and Ted had to fill them in. Laura seemed to shrivel up.

“It’s not your fault, Laurie, Randolph said it was all his.” Laura looked unconvinced, but less unhappy. “Furthermore,” said Ted, “when I was down there in the land of the dead I met the real us. I met Prince Edward and Princess Laura and the rest of them.”

Patrick, who had been tapping a dead branch on the ground, sat very still. Ruth stared, and so did Laura.

“They’re
dead?
” said Ellen.

“They didn’t remember who they were at first, but after they did remember, they said Claudia killed them.”

“Oh!” said Laura, with such profound relief that Ted gaped at her.

“It
was
the other one she killed,” said Laura. She seemed to pause and hear what she had said. The relief drained out of her voice, and she hunched her shoulders. “Claudia’s awful.”

“Laura!” said Ted. “Have you told Fence about those visions?”

“No . . .”

Ted put his head in his hands, feeling that he knew why Hamlet had called his head a distracted globe and had seemed to doubt how long memory could hold its seat therein. “Now look,” he said. “No matter what happens or what we decide or what time it is, even if we have to burst in on the blasted Council, when we’re done here we are going to tell Fence about those visions.”

“Randolph should have told him by now,” offered Laura.

“Should’s,” said Ted, “shoe no horses. All right. The real us told me that Claudia killed them and that it was treachery, and Edward said, ‘Avenge our foul and most unnatural murder.’ ”

“Isn’t it nice how all these people keep quoting Shakespeare?” said Patrick.