The Hidden Land (25 page)

“How do we avenge them, kill Claudia?” said Ellen. The idea seemed to please her.

“Fat chance of that,” said Ruth. “Even Fence can’t seem to do anything with her. But wouldn’t it be a fine revenge to get them all back? Then they could testify against her.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Ted, “but now I don’t know. Can you think of five things you’re unwilling to give up? Also, Edward said Melanie wouldn’t let them by the gates of life. I don’t know what that means, but I’d hate to tangle with Melanie.”

“Isn’t
she
dead?” said Ellen. “Seems to me the dragon killed her because Shan couldn’t fulfill his word to the dragon without her, and she broke
her
word to Shan.”

“Well,” said Ted, “around here that wouldn’t stop her from standing at the gates of life, I bet, not if she were on the side of death, keeping people there. Besides, from what the voice said to me and from some things Randolph said when I asked him about bringing the dead counselors back, I don’t think they’ll take anything but somebody else’s life.”

“Chryse did ask about Shan’s Ring,” said Ruth.

“Well, that’s true. I wonder if Chryse would take that for the five of them. Or for the counselors?”

“They won’t take anything you want to give them,” said Ruth. “Or at least, that’s what it sounded like.”

“Do you really want to give them Shan’s Ring?”

Ruth shrugged, and one of her braids fell down. “Chryse thought I did. And I don’t see what use it is to us. We used it to change the time, but it doesn’t seem to do anything else. Except to combine with the sword to take me somewhere I’d just as soon never go anyway.”

“How do you know you don’t want to go there if you don’t know where it is?”

Ruth sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

Ted looked at her thoughtfully. “You sound disillusioned.”

“Well . . . the Well took my ring away, and I didn’t bring you back from the dead, and the worst part of the story is all that’s left, and—”

“And we won a great battle but there’s something missing,” said Ted, identifying the source of his own unease with considerable astonishment.

“Well, you were dead,” said Ellen, practically, “you didn’t see the end.”

Ted looked at Patrick. “You did, didn’t you?”

“I know what you mean,” said Patrick, slowly. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t spectacular at all. We did what we were told, and Randolph and Fence’s plan worked, and Benjamin kept me from being killed, and Randolph almost kept you from it, and we won, that’s all. Wouldn’t you think the Dragon King would have figured out King John’s tactics in four hundred years? I expected this Belaparthalion they keep talking about to swoop down from the sky and save the day or something. But the day didn’t need saving. Which ought to be fine, but—”

Ted thought of five hundred and forty-three dead men and uncounted dead creatures, and Conrad, and the haunted faces of the people in the hospital tent.

“For pity’s sake,” said Ruth to her brother, “what’s the matter with you?”

“The same thing that’s the matter with you!” said Patrick, very red in the face. “Now that you can’t do anything you don’t like it. Well, Ted and I couldn’t do anything about winning the battle; and we didn’t even make
up
anything spectacular
about
winning the battle, so we’re disappointed. And so are you.”

“I don’t dislike it because I can’t do anything!” flared Ruth. “I fear things are getting out of control, wherefore I am afraid.”

“Things have been out of control since we got here,” said Patrick.

“Not like this.”

“Yes they have. It just took a while for everything to come together. We’re just puppets of our damn plot—”

“Whose damn plot?”

“Well, all right. Maybe it’s Claudia’s damn plot.”

“Stop it a minute,” said Ted. “Before I forget what else I have to say. Do you know what Fence and Randolph are going to do with our swords?”

“How could we?” said Ellen. “This is no time for dramatics.”

“They’re going to give them to Chryse and Belaparthalion in exchange for their keeping the Dragon King in line.”

He wished he were in a better frame of mind to appreciate their reactions. Laura and Ellen looked blank, Ruth horror-struck, and Patrick desperately thoughtful. A cardinal whistled over them, and they all jerked their heads back and gaped at it.

“And those stupid birds,” said Ted, remembering that it was one of them that had sent Laura blundering into the hedge in the first place.

“They’re Green Caves servants,” said Ruth. “They’re all right.”

“Well, but they’re red, and Benjamin said that was the color of the Outside Powers.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean that everything red is from the Outside Powers, does it?”

The cardinal whipped away toward the mountains.

“I feel spied on,” said Ellen.

“We stray from the point,” said Ted.

“Which one?” said Patrick.

“All right. First, we’ve got to get those swords back. And when we do, we had better go home.”

“Leaving everything all up in the air?” cried Ellen.

“If we stay I’ll end up killing Randolph.”

“But now that we know Claudia killed the real us—”

“What are we supposed to do about it?” said Ted, wishing she would not so accurately reflect half his own mind on the matter.

“But I want to know
why!
” said Ellen.

“When did she do it?” Patrick asked Ted.

“They didn’t say. We didn’t have very long.”

“Well,” said Patrick, sitting forward, “remember the first day we were all here together, and Benjamin found us? He was mad because you and Ruth were together, and you were late to the Council. But we didn’t seem to have been missing for very long. What if she did it then, because we were all here?”

“Why should she want us here?”

“I think we should ask her.”

“If we could find her,” said Ted. “I agree that we should give Claudia her just deserts. But what we try to do doesn’t seem to have much connection with what happens; or else it has the wrong kind of connection.”

“What if we left a note for Fence?” said Ruth, abruptly.

“
That’s
an idea!” said Ted. “I wouldn’t feel so responsible then. And I wouldn’t kill Randolph.”

“You’d still owe him your life,” said Patrick, “and leave him in a mess. Not to mention—”

“Well?”

“I don’t think I’ll mention it,” said Patrick, looking secretive.

There was a pause, full of the rustle of pine needles and the distant trickle of water. Ted considered the debt he owed Randolph, and remembered the land of the dead. A great burst of clarity overcame him.

“Wait!” he said. “Randolph didn’t want
me
. He wanted Edward Fairchild. Well, Edward Fairchild’s still dead; he’s still down there. Chryse didn’t fulfill its bargain, so why should Randolph fulfill his?”

“You think Chryse’d let you get away with that?” said Ruth.

“I bet it’ll have to. Magic and bargains with the devil and things like that are always very—what’s the word—”

“Literal,” said Ruth, brightening.

“What?” said Ellen.

“Literal,” said Ruth. “That’s when someone says to you, ‘Make me a chocolate milkshake,’ and you turn him into one.”

Ellen gave a delighted chortle.

“We can point that out to Fence in the note,” said Ted.

“If Randolph really wants to die, he’ll find a way,” observed Patrick.

“But look,” said Ted. “The whole point of what he’s been doing has been to save the Secret Country. Well, once we’re gone and he knows what’s really happened, saving the Secret Country will mean getting Edward back. And maybe by the time he’s done that he’ll feel better about having killed the King.”

As he spoke, Ted saw again the shadowy Council Room, the King’s candlelit, agonized face, and the way Randolph looked as if he had been poisoned himself. Ted, who had tried to stop it, did not feel any better about the whole thing: how could he expect that Randolph, who had done it, ever would?

This did not seem to occur to the others.

“Well,” said Ruth slowly, “let’s see. If we get the swords and go, and leave a note, we’ll have to put Fence and Randolph on Claudia’s trail and given them a chance to get the real us back, and we’ll have kept Ted from killing Randolph and perhaps given Randolph something to live for.”

Ted groaned. “And we’ll have taken away the bribe Fence was going to give to Chryse and Belaparthalion to keep the Dragon King in line.”

“If the Dragon King’s out of line, won’t Randolph have more to live for?” asked Ellen.

Ted could not help laughing. “Maybe,” he said, “but it hardly seems fair.”

“If you throw the sword back through the hedge,” said Patrick, in his most superior tone, “it should take itself back here. Then they could come get it, if we put that in the note, too. And the same with ours.”

There was a long silence.

“That would be it, then,” said Ellen. “We’d be stuck home for good.”

“We can always stay here and kill Randolph,” said Patrick.

“Oh, all right. But—oh, well,” said Ellen.

“You could have cornflakes for breakfast,” Laura said to her, tentatively.

Ellen shrugged.

Ruth sighed heavily.

Ted looked up through the wavering green and black of the trees to where another cardinal was beating lazily across the illimitable sky. There was one round cloud that looked as if it had been cut out of cardboard. A fierce possessiveness clamped down on him: he wanted to hold the entire Secret Country in his two hands, as if it were the Crystal of Earth. He felt that it was his, and not even its shadowy Hell nor the inhuman humor of the unicorns nor the ugliness shortly to erupt when Fence discovered the treachery of Randolph could make him want to give it up.

“Ted,” said Ellen, “now can you tell us what the land of the dead was like?”

Ted sat up, staring. The Secret Country was not his. It was not even the Secret Country. It was the Hidden Land, and it was Edward’s. Every act he had performed as its King had been disastrous. Randolph could rule it; Edward could rule it. Ted would ruin it.

He began to tell Ellen about the land of the dead, and the conversation drifted off into what the rest of them had been doing while Ted fretted in councils. Nothing extraordinary had happened, except to Ruth and Laura.

“She can play that flute,” said Ruth, “and I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” said Patrick.

“Well, you know what happens when you let an ignorant person play around with a flute. He can get a few squeaks and whistles out of it, but he probably won’t hit on the right fingering or the right way to blow into the mouthpiece. That’s how it seems with that flute when I try to play it, even though I know what I’m doing. But Laurie, who doesn’t know what she’s doing, and who had to give up piano lessons because she was so uncoordinated—”

“Hey!” said Ellen.

“I’m sorry,” said Ruth, looking abashed. “But it’s a significant detail, even if it is rude to mention it. She can play all sorts of complicated things without even thinking. And it’s not that the proper fingering for that flute is unusual, because I can tell by looking at her playing that it isn’t.”

“How does it work, Laurie?” asked Ted. Something in Ruth’s description sounded familiar.

Laura, red in the face, looked up from the tree-root she sat on. “I just know, somehow, underneath.”

“In the back of your mind?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how I knew how to fence,” said Ted to Patrick.

“Huh,” said Patrick, in his most noncommittal tones.

“It’s too bad I can’t remember how to ride a horse that way,” said Laura.

“Maybe it’s only the important things that stick,” said Ruth.

“No,” said Ted, “because I remembered the names of the flowers we saw on the Unicorn Hunt the same way, and that wasn’t important.”

“Well,” said Ruth, “it might have been important to Edward.”

“Ruth Eleanora Carroll,” said Patrick, in a scandalized tone that Ted recognized as an imitation of Patrick’s mother’s, “is that how you do your sorcery so well?”

“Only some of it,” said Ruth, growing as red as Laura had been. “That’s how I could read the alphabet. But I had to work hard, too, Patrick!”

“I knew it!” chortled Patrick. “You wanted us to think it was all your own cleverness, and all the time—”

“Patrick,” said Ellen, “how did you get those keys out of Fence’s pocket?”

“Prince Patrick was a prestidigitator!” cried Ruth.

Patrick was not at all embarrassed. “What a bunch of fakers,” said he.

“Ted’s not,” said Laura.

“Neither are you,” said Ted, promptly. “Must run in the other side of the family.”

“
I’m
not a faker,” said Ellen.

“Only because you didn’t get the chance,” said her brother.

Ellen threw a handful of pine needles at him, and Ruth began helpfully to stuff them down the back of his tunic.

“Wait!” said Ted. “What does it mean? What kind of connection is there between us and the real us, that we can remember things they knew how to do?”

“That’s nothing,” said Patrick. “I’ve got a whole list of hard questions. Why didn’t breaking the Crystal of Earth work? Why is Laura having visions and what do they mean? How did Randolph poison the King’s wine after Ted spilled the bottle? What’s the story that they’ve put all over plates and doors and coffins? Why did Shan’s Ring hold Claudia? Why did it stop holding Claudia? What’s Claudia up to? Why—”

“Stop!” begged Ellen. “You know we’re leaving and we’ll never know.”

“Speaking of Laura’s visions,” said Ted, “let’s go root Fence out of the Council and tell him about them.”

The bell rang for the noon meal, and they abandoned this pleasing plan, to plague Fence’s appetite instead.