The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Didn’t you cut your knee on Shan’s sword, too?” Patrick put the sword down and rummaged in his cloak.

  “I can’t help it.”

  “No, I just meant, since we don’t have any other clues, why don’t you take the one you fell on?”

  “Which one will you take?”

  Patrick tied a handkerchief around her knee. Ted would have wiped the blood off first, but this was not the time to say so.

  “Well,” said Patrick, “I know Melanie’s had three stones in it, so I’ll take a green one with three stones.”

  “You think they’ll work the same?”

  “A magic sword is a magic sword.”

  A battery is a battery, thought Laura, looking at him with exasperation. A transistor is a transistor. Was that even true? Impossible to argue with Patrick on his own terms if you didn’t even know what they meant. She stood up and tried her knee. “We should go before I get all stiff,” she said from experience.

  Patrick looked rebellious for an instant. “Oh, well,” he said, “I should get these keys back to Fence before he misses them.”

  They took up their swords and stood looking at the dim colors of the room.

  “I bet they’re all enchanted,” said Laura. Enchanted weapons might be useful in a battle against monsters; she wondered if anybody knew this room was here. Fence had seemed amused, more than anything else, when he had seen the stairs going down instead of up. He had seemed to think this was a joke that Randolph might play. No doubt they knew all about it.

  “Too bad we don’t know what it all does,” said Patrick. He took the torch from where he had stuck it in a tangle of swordbelts, and then looked thoughtfully at the tangle. “Wait a minute. If we get belts for these things we won’t have to carry them.”

  This accomplished, they began their climb.

  CHAPTER 8

  TED got through his coronation dinner by repeatedly reminding himself how much worse the Banquet of Midsummer’s Eve had been. In the intervals of this, he wondered whether he ought to have stood up to Benjamin more. Even allowing for his grief and perplexity at the King’s death, Benjamin had been overbearing and rude. Edward would certainly have put up with this: his sudden acquisition of a real personality, in the game, did not happen until just before he killed Randolph. But Ted had already shown a real personality. Perhaps he should have gone on showing it.

  Smitten by a sudden thought, Ted found that he was staring at Celia, and quickly smiled instead. He could not remember ever having shown a real personality to Benjamin. Something in Benjamin’s manner made it evident that he expected to be tolerated and to be obeyed. Ted remembered how, at the first Council meeting, Benjamin had with a touch kept an enraged Randolph from speaking, and how he had sat at the King’s left hand. Benjamin had not been at the Banquet when Ted attacked Andrew. All Ted’s other defiances had been flung at Fence or Randolph. But Fence and Randolph put up with Benjamin, too.

  Ted looked down the table at him. He was haranguing Matthew’s wife and family. Celia grinned at him and occasionally said something. The three yellow-haired children sat stiffly, their noses almost in their plates and their faces solemn. Only when Celia said something would they slide their eyes sideways at one another; and then they looked as if they were battling what Ted’s mother called interior mirth. Benjamin must have invited them on Ted’s behalf, to make up for having forbidden Ruth and scared off Patrick and Laura. They did not look either pleased or honored.

  Ted gave up on Benjamin and Matthew’s children both, and looked at the rest of his dinner guests. Ellen sat next to Matthew and across from the two boys, and every time Ted glanced her way she made a face at him. Fence and Matthew were talking about music, with occasional appeals to Celia. Randolph, while everyone else had gotten to dessert, was still looking at his soup, and as if he expected to find worms in it.

  Ted, staring absently at Margaret and thinking about Benjamin again, realized that she was speaking to him.

  “Are you in the play, your Majesty?” she asked.

  “No,” said Ted firmly, fighting his stomach’s lurch of panic.

  “Why, what a pity.”

  “Are you?”

  “Most certainly. I am the cat.”

  She was so obviously pleased that Ted ventured to say, “That’s a good part.”

  “You may have it again next year, my lord,” said Randolph, letting a servant take away his soup. “Being the New King’s play, Margaret, ’twere foolish to ask whether he be a player.”

  Margaret shrugged. “And being a secret play, my lord, ’twere foolish to let out the cat from’s bag.”

  Randolph laughed.

  “Margaret,” said Celia, “speak not so pert.”

  “She hath the right of me,” Randolph told her.

  “The more reason she should speak it meekly.”

  Just like a parent, thought Ted. Celia had spoken pert to Benjamin when she had the right of it.

  Someone somewhere blew a trumpet, and everybody looked at Ted. No doubt he was to lead them to wherever the play would be performed. All my imperfections on my head, he thought wildly. He stood up, started to hold out his hand to Margaret, and hastily offered her his arm instead. “As one cat to another,” he said, hoping he did not sound too idiotic, “will you walk with me?”

  This seemed to please everybody except Celia, who raised her eyebrows at her daughter. Margaret raised hers back and smiled at Ted.

  “Good King of Cats, I will,” she said.

  He had been right: she knew where to go, and he had only to follow her. They were obliged to parade the length of the Banquet Hall, stared at by everyone in the place. Ted could not think of another word to say; Margaret, luckily, did not seem to expect it of him.

  When they had passed through the doors he heard the scrape of chairs as the rest of the company began to follow them.

  Margaret led them to the fountain in the rose garden, did him a courtesy, and said, “By your leave, my lord.”

  “My best thanks to you, good cat,” said Ted. She went on past the fountain and into a clump of bushes, and Ted stood waiting for someone to show him where to sit.

  The feast had been a long one; it was early evening. The fog was gone, but the air was still chilly. The stone seats looked uninviting. Ted felt more kindly toward his coronation clothes.

  The rest of the feasters began arriving behind him, gabbling and giggling. In their elaborate and no doubt costly coronation garments, they sat themselves down on the grass and flagstone paths and stone seats of the rose garden. Ted supposed that if you kept your finery in a dusty, clovey tower, you might as well sit on the grass in it. He was irritated with them all, without knowing why. He spotted Ellen and beckoned to her. She came to him readily.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” she demanded of him.

  “I was going to ask you.”

  Randolph came up to them. “I’d forgot,” he said to Ted, “thou hast never seen this form of the play. For this thou sittest on the edge of the fountain, not in the chair of state.”

  “Can I sit with him?” said Ellen.

  Randolph scrutinized her for a moment and nodded. “Thou shalt be a page,” he said, and made for the other side of the fountain, where another crowd of people had appeared.

  Ted and Ellen stared at each other. Randolph came back with two velvet caps, a purple one for Ted and a gold one for Ellen. Ellen was delighted. Gold for faithfulness, thought Ted, that’s right for a page. And purple—purple is kingliness. He tugged the hat on over his disordered hair. Ellen’s hair, never orderly at the best of times, flared out beneath the tight rim of her cap like a cloud of soot. She looked, as she had looked on the last day of their game, like a witch, not like a page.

  “Come on,” Ted said to her. They walked over and sat on the edge of the fountain.

  The crowd, seating itself, had left empty a wide round space before the fountain. Two pages, with gold caps like Ellen’s, came from Ted’s left, each carrying a
torch, and took up places in the middle of this space, with perhaps ten feet between them. The last murmurs and laughter died down, leaving only the faint splash of the fountain. Randolph, with a red velvet cap on his head, walked out of the crowd into the space between the torches, bowed, and spoke.

  His walk was not his usual swift and easy stride, but a sort of flat-footed, swinging affair; his bow, that could speak volumes of private history, was brief and clumsy. His voice was, if anything, more clear and compelling than usual, but Ted could not understand a word he said. The language Fence had used at the second council meeting, the language Fence and Randoph had used at the King’s funeral, for the third time teased him with its almost-understood cadences, its words that stopped just the wrong side of the threshold of meaning.

  Ellen tugged at his sleeve. “What language is that!” she said in a ferocious whisper.

  “I don’t know. Hush up.”

  Randolph, having finished his speech, sat down cross-legged on the flagstones, again with an abrupt and ungraceful motion unlike his accustomed behavior. It occurred to Ted that the effect of these different mannerisms was to make Randolph seem very young, perhaps not much older than Ted. The red cap meant, presumably, a Red Sorcerer; which was funny, when you thought of it, because Randolph was apprenticed to a Blue Sorcerer. The only Red Sorcerer Ted could call to mind was Shan, who had started out as one before taking his own strange path. But there was no guarantee that this play dealt with matters Ted knew anything about.

  Out of the crowd on Ted’s right came the vast figure of Conrad, with his black beard. Another red cap sat on his bald head, and he carried a staff. As Randolph’s easy walk had become clumsy, Conrad’s clumsy but vigorous stride had become halting; he moved like an old man. He stood over the seated Randolph, his shadow eclipsing the red cap, and said, in words Ted understood plainly, “Would you so?”

  “I would,” said Randolph, brisk and blithe; and Ted, for no reason he knew, shivered.

  Conrad put three fingers into his mouth and whistled. A small form in a black-and-white checked cap bounced out of the middle of the crowd and clattered up to Conrad, grinning. It was one of Matthew’s sons—Mark, Ted thought; and it was quite clear, though he walked on two feet and wore no costume, that he was a dog. Conrad tousled his checked cap and presented him to Randolph.

  “This is your dog, child. Dog, guard him well. Child, this is the essence of faith; if you betray it, all the world else will betray you. Do you take this one as your fellow?”

  “I do,” said Randolph, his voice pleased, careless, and confident, as if he were agreeing to read a story to Laura after dinner. Ted shivered again. Shan, a young wizard, proud, and o’er-hasty, might have greeted so solemn-sounding an undertaking in just that tone.

  The dog-boy sat down behind Randolph. Conrad whistled again. Margaret, in an orange-and-white cap, came gliding out of the crowd, sleek and serene, a very creditable cat. She bumped her forehead into Randolph’s knee.

  “This,” said Conrad to Randolph, “is your cat. Cat, inform him well. Child, this is the essence of subtlety; if you betray this one, all your stratagems will be clear as glass to your enemies. Do you take this one as your fellow?”

  “I do indeed,” said Randolph, cheerfully.

  Conrad whistled a third time, and the tall, lanky, solemn Jerome, wearing a brown-and-white cap, came nimbly out into the torchlight and bowed his head before Randolph.

  “Horse,” said Ellen, in tones of considerable approval.

  “This is your horse,” said Conrad. “Horse, bear him well. Child, this is the essence of swiftness. Betray it, and all your journeys will bring you too late to your desire. Do you take this one as your fellow?”

  “Of a certainty,” said Randolph, and the complacence in his voice started a pain in Ted’s chest.

  Conrad whistled. Matthew’s other son, gray and white on his head, swooped in from the left, his arms outstretched.

  “This is your eagle. Eagle, feed him well. Child, this is the essence of cruelty; betray it, and there will be no mercy for you. Do you take this one as your fellow?”

  “This one most of all,” said Randolph, and under the careless confidence of his tone Ted heard a grim amusement that almost choked him.

  “Page!” called Conrad, turning to Ted and Ellen.

  Ellen got up quickly and went over to him. “What service, my lord?” she said, which was probably safe enough.

  Conrad took two round objects from his belt; they sparkled and glinted in the torchlight, but Ted could not make out what they were.

  “Do you take these to your master and bid him choose between them, what path the Hidden Land will take during the years of his reign. Bid him remember well the choice of Shan, and all its consequences.”

  “My lord,” said Ellen, made him an excellent bow, and carried the two round objects to Ted.

  They were medallions of some sort, about three inches across. One of them was inlaid with a golden sun; the other was dark inside its thin gold border.

  “It’s the tapestry!” whispered Ellen urgently, bowed, and moved aside so the crowd could see Ted.

  It was the story of the tapestry, all right: here he was, choosing between the hole and the sun. On the surface, the choice was obvious. All the animals had run away from the hole in the tapestry; and from what Ted knew of Shan’s story, all the world had indeed betrayed him, and all his stratagems had been laid bare to his enemies, and his most vital journey had been made too late, and no one had had mercy on him when he stood before his judges.

  But then why did everybody in the Secret Country swear by Shan’s mercy? It was too obvious, it was too easy, to choose the bright sun and shun the dark places. The sun could burn you as easily as the dark could trip you up. Ted closed his left hand on the cool dark disk, and stopped. He was not choosing for himself; he was choosing the path of the Secret Country, not just during his reign, short as he hoped this would be, but during Edward’s, if they found him. You couldn’t play games with other people, with a whole country and a whole history, because you thought the symbol of the sun was too obvious. In the ceremony this afternoon, he had promised not to do so.

  He held up the glittering golden disk in his right hand.

  “I choose this,” he said.

  There was a profound stillness in the garden. If they were waiting for something more, Ted could not give it to them.

  But they had been waiting for Fence, who came forward with his moons and stars around him, his round face blurred in the torchlight so that only the bright hollows of his eyes were clear. The cap on his head was white. He passed the line of animals, and Randolph, and the stooped form of Conrad. Only Randolph, sitting on the ground, did not stand taller than he.

  He walked straight up to Ted, and took the dark disk from Ted’s left hand. “Then I will keep the part thou hast not chosen, shouldst thou have need of it,” he said. He turned around and moved to Ted’s left; Ellen was standing on his right.

  “Bow,” hissed Fence, after a moment.

  Ted bowed; Fence bowed; Ellen bowed; Conrad bent stiffly; all the animals pranced and dipped their heads. The crowd applauded. Conrad and the animals filed past the fountain and disappeared into the darkness. The crowd stood up and rustled and muttered its way back into High Castle. The two boys took their torches away.

  Fence and Ted and Ellen stood in a row, looking at Randolph, who sat still in the empty darkness with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  “What’s the matter with him?” whispered Ellen to Ted.

  She had actually learned, sometime in the past year, to make a whisper that could not be heard for yards around. But Fence heard her just the same.

  “The play’s not over,” he said. He touched Ted lightly on the arm. “What did Shan choose?” he asked, a note of ritual in his quiet voice. He sounded just as any one of them might sound in playing the Secret.

  “He chose glory,” said Ted, and stopped.

  “The
n do you give him length of days,” said Fence.

  Fence had the dark disk that apparently represented length of days, and the speech he had made when he took it had not sounded like something you would say if you were going to give it up again. Ted was thoroughly bewildered. Melanie had given Shan length of days, just how Ted didn’t know, though Ellen might. He was also having trouble with the fact that Randolph was playing Shan, so that, in some wise, what he did to Shan he did also to Randolph. Of course, giving Randolph length of days was what he earnestly desired to do. How, then?

  He remembered his talk with Randolph in the West Tower. White was for health. He snatched the cap from Fence’s head, ran across the flags to Randolph, and dropped to his knees.

  “Your cap, I pray you,” he said.

  Randolph took his head out of his hands and pulled the cap off. His wild black hair, so like Ellen’s, sprang up around his head again. Ted took the red cap from him and held out the white.

  “Your health, my lord,” he said; he could not help the faint malice that showed in his voice.

  Randolph put the white cap on, absently; even in the dim evening his eyes held Ted’s. Then he took hold of Ted’s cold hands with his own colder ones, and they stood up together.

  “All may yet be very well,” said Randolph; and in his voice, as in Fence’s, Ted heard the tone of ritual.

  Randolph let go of him, turned, and walked away.

  “Well!” said Ellen.

  “Very well,” said Fence.

  Ted, turning Shan’s red cap over and over in his fingers, wondered what he had done.

  “Fence?” he said.

  “Oh, thou didst choose wisely,” said Fence. “But consider, didst thou so out of wisdom, or for that thy father’s choice was the other?”

  “Edward’s very wise,” said Ellen, with every evidence of sincerity. Ted suspected her of making a joke that only the members of the Secret could appreciate: Prince Edward was indeed wise, whoever and wherever he was; but Ted was not Prince Edward.