The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  “So was Shan,” said Fence.

  Neither Ted nor Ellen chose to respond to this. The three of them went silently inside.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE day after the coronation found Ted hustled by Benjamin from one council to another. Most of them consisted of endless reports from officers and artisans of what they had been doing to get ready for the battle. Ted wondered fleetingly why they always spoke of a battle rather than of a war. Then, with a jolt like coming to the end of a flight of stairs one step sooner than you expect, he remembered the Border Magic.

  It became clear to Ted that what Randolph called the mundane army had been mustering for weeks. Probably the old King had ordered that; he had believed that something was happening down on the southern border. The sorcerers, on the other hand, were in a state of vast disarray. Some of them had been quietly persuaded by Fence or Randolph to prepare as they would for a battle with monsters, and the division this had created between those who agreed with Fence and those who did not had cut right down to the apprentices and made a tangle of political and personal grudges and alliances such as Ted had never imagined in his wariest moments. And even the mundane army was not entirely ready for this battle: the great strength of the old King’s army had been the cavalry, and horses, said Fence, were afraid of all sorcerous creatures. Ted found himself hoping Randolph had killed the King in time, and was appalled.

  Nobody asked for Ted’s orders. He found this both a relief and an irritation. He would not have known what orders to give, but, being King, he ought to have been allowed to give some. Besides, it would be a poor present to the real Edward, if they found him, to turn over to him a bunch of minions who always got their own way.

  He was therefore rather testy when Benjamin told him, in the early evening, after five councils but before supper, to come along to the armory and choose his sword.

  “Fence has my sword,” said Ted.

  Benjamin’s face darkened. “Thou art not trained to an enchanted weapon,” he said, “and it is overlate to change thy choice. Now come.”

  Oh well, thought Ted, following him, it was worth a try. Fence must have told him all about it.

  The armory was under the Banquet Hall, and seemed even larger, for it was half underground and its slits of windows let in little light. Dim aisles, lined with racks of swords, spears, shields, stretched into darkness. Ted thought at first that there were enchanted weapons there; everything was so well polished that it glowed even in so little light. But he remembered Patrick’s description of the room under Fence’s Tower: weapons shining with their own light in every color. No, these were only mundane weapons. He could smell the polish that kept them so bright.

  “They are making shield and helmet for thee,” said Benjamin, “but for thy first battle thou must choose thy sword.”

  Ted wondered how. Quite apart from wanting to get Shan’s sword back from Fence so they could go home, he remembered the bout he and Patrick had fought in the rose garden. Shan’s and Melanie’s swords had known what they were doing. It would have been a comfort to have them for the battle. He put no particular trust in the swords Patrick and Laura had stolen. Those were magical, but not, he would bet, that magical.

  He wandered down the long aisles, Benjamin at his heel. He fingered a grip now and again, but was not moved to do more. Perhaps he could find the sword he had had in his dream, the one that had fit his hand as one piece of a jigsaw puzzle fits into another. That would be a comfort, too. He wished he knew what it looked like. The dream-Edward had been thinking of other things.

  In the middle of the third aisle he found it. It slid into his questing hand—the right hand—as if it had been waiting for him. Ted pulled it from the rack, saluted no one, and lunged with it down the empty aisle. Oh, yes, this was it. He stopped in mid-lunge, wrenched his knee, recovered, and stood staring. He had, in the dream, used this sword to try to kill Randolph. He had failed in the dream, but now he knew why, and if in fact they did fight he would not make that mistake. He looked along the blade. Should he play so into the dream’s hands, into the game’s hands? Did taking this sword mean he would kill Randolph?

  Ted parried an imaginary attack and sighed. With this sword he might not fall in battle. He could save himself a trip to the land of the dead and Ruth a great deal of worry. That part had been fun to act out, but he saw no prospect of fun in the reality. After all, he thought, in the dream I was surprised at the mistake, so maybe I’d make it anyway. And I can refuse to fight Randolph. I do refuse.

  He turned to Benjamin. “This one,” he said.

  Benjamin came closer and looked without touching. “Ah,” he said. “That was John’s.”

  “I thought he was a sorcerer,” said Ted.

  “Not he. He but knew when to employ them. Well, come: this may be a good omen. This sword was a curse to the Dragon King when last he came.” Benjamin’s voice was not as pleased as his words, and Ted looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Benjamin,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages. What are the Outside Powers?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “That question meeteth a different answer in every mouth. I will say only, their color is red, their power beyond sorcery, their hearts not kindly.”

  “Claudia,” said Ted.

  Benjamin laughed. “No need to jape with fogs and daggers, were she such.” He turned to go.

  “What does it mean if they’re rising again?”

  Benjamin did not answer him directly. “When last they rose, the Border Magic kept them from us,” he said. “They are not our sworn enemies, as the Dragon King is, but are yet inimical to us by their nature. I can tell thee no more.”

  “But I thought you said, at the council before Fence came back, that they made the Border Magic?”

  “Wherefore should it not therefore keep them from us? I say again, their nature is inimical to us. They might hurt us as a man in a hurry trampleth the grass. And they might undo the Border Magic as a man in desperate need will destroy his own fences to get at his foe.”

  “Who’s their foe?”

  “I have said, I can tell thee no more.”

  That tone brooked no argument. “Benjamin,” said Ted, struck with a sudden thought, “what about my dwarf-armor?”

  “Randolph,” said Benjamin, dangerously, “hath told me it did fit thee but by a trick.”

  “Oh, well,” said Ted, wondering whether he had grown since Randolph measured him, but not caring to make an issue of it. “We march tomorrow, then?” he said.

  “At dawn.”

  Ted thought he would take a nap after supper, to prepare and to compensate for the midnight meeting with his relations in the rose garden.

  The nap made him late, of course. He found the others by the blue and green glow. For an instant he thought they had their swords back. Then he remembered the ones Patrick and Laura had stolen.

  “We’re trying to decide who should have these,” Patrick told him when he joined them.

  “We haven’t even decided if we’re going yet!” said Ted. He sat down by Laura on a stone bench, brushing a wet spray of roses aside. Petals drifted down the sword-beams, dyed purple and orange. “And put those things away; what if somebody sees the light?”

  “Well,” said Patrick, sheathing the green sword with an uncharacteristic lack of argument, “I think, if we can do it without being noticed, we should try these swords and see if they get us home. But we shouldn’t count on it.”

  “Ruth,” said Ted. “What do you think? Can you bring me back?”

  Ruth nodded, and her hair swung in the sword-glow. “It’s a very simple spell,” she said. “They call it advanced sorcery because they don’t want just anybody doing it. You’re supposed to save it for special cases. The sorcerers don’t want the Lord of the Dead mad at them.”

  “Laurie, will you put that thing away? Are kings special cases?”

  “Well, not any king. But a young one, who doesn’t have an heir yet, and dies fighting the Dr
agon King, yes. It sounds like the Judge of the Dead and the Dragon King are enemies from way back. The Judge of the Dead made the Lords of the Dead let John come back to life, Meredith says.”

  Ted stumbled for a moment over the idea of having an heir, considered the rest of what Ruth had said, and nodded. “I’m okay, then. What about everybody else?”

  “Sorcerers of the Green Caves don’t fight,” said Ruth, “and Meredith says I’m to come along to watch, so I guess they won’t try to make me do anything I can’t.”

  “Did Benjamin take you to choose your sword, Pat?”

  “Younger sons don’t get taken,” said Patrick, without rancor. “He just told me to go and choose, and not, in my overweening ambition, to take one too long for me.”

  “I didn’t know Prince Patrick had any ambition,” said Ellen.

  “He said he didn’t altogether like my conduct at the coronation,” said Patrick.

  “Well, it was weird,” said Ellen. “What were you doing, anyway?”

  “We were discussing the oath,” said Ted, “and I want to know about Patrick’s sword.”

  “Well,” said Patrick, “I’d like an enchanted one, but then I thought, maybe we should give them to the girls.”

  Ted looked at his sister, who looked away, but did at last sheathe the blue glow of the sword she held. “Are they going to let you guys come?”

  “Agatha’s been packing for us,” said Ellen after a moment. “We even get to wear boys’ clothes.” She paused. “I want to take our jeans.”

  “Don’t,” said Ted. “I don’t know what they’d say around here if they got a good look at those zippers.”

  “They have running water,” remarked Ellen.

  “So did the ancient Romans,” said Patrick.

  Ted said to Ellen, “Are you and Laurie supposed to fight?”

  “I’m going to,” said Ellen. “And take the jeans.”

  “We’ll need them to go home in, anyway,” said Ruth.

  Laura pulled a ribbon from one of her braids and addressed the ground. “Agatha says we should see war in case there’s a change in fortunes and we get to be more than door wardens. Whatever that means.”

  “I’m going to fight,” said Ellen.

  “If you wanted to fight,” Ted told her, “you should have been out in that yard every morning with Patrick and me. You don’t know how. You’ll get killed.”

  “I will not.”

  “Ellen. I forbid you to fight.”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m Edward,” said Ted. “You swore me an oath.”

  “Now look,” said Ellen, and paused, and said, “now look,” and was quiet.

  Nobody else said anything. The fountain bubbled like one of the purple beasts, and thin in the background some night insect creaked. Laura snarled the ribbon up, and Ted untangled it and tied it back onto the braid for her. She still would not look at him.

  “If you can do that, how come you wouldn’t let me swear to you?” Patrick said.

  “You did swear to him,” said Ruth. “I heard you.”

  “Yeah, but he made me qualify the oath first, so I was really swearing to the King of the Secret Country.”

  “What?” said Ellen. “You whoreson dogs!”

  “Ellen!” said Ruth.

  “The undercooks say it!”

  “They don’t insult their own mother when they say it!”

  “What?”

  “Well?” said Patrick.

  “You wouldn’t keep the real oath if you didn’t want to,” said Ted, “because you’d think it wasn’t serious. And then you’d get in trouble for breaking an oath. But if I made you think about it, and swear a limited oath, then you’d keep that.”

  “There, Ellie,” said Ruth, “you and I have been complimented.”

  “And I’ve been insulted, I suppose,” said Patrick cheerfully. “Now, who gets these swords?”

  “I think you’re right; we should give them to Laura and Ellen,” said Ted. “Not to fight with, but just in case things go wrong.”

  “Wish I’d thought to steal more,” said Patrick. He made a figure eight in the air with the green sword, and sighed. “You’re right, I guess. They’ll need all the help they can get.” He put the sword away as Ted drew breath to yell at him. “Come on down to the armory with me,” said Patrick in his friendliest tones, “and help me pick out a normal one.”

  They left at dawn. The morning was clear again. In the mill before everyone was organized, Laura looked for Claudia. Laura and Ellen and Agatha were to walk behind Ruth and the other students of the Green Caves, among the pages and cooks. Claudia, if she were coming, would hardly be with them.

  Laura climbed up the wall that overhung the moat, and watched High Castle empty itself, but she saw no one with black hair and a weasel’s walk. As she began to climb down, she saw a group of women with spears, standing on the bridge over the moat. They were talking to Ted and Benjamin and Patrick. Laura was not sure she was speaking to Ted yet, but when the three of them came by she scrambled down the wall, tore her tunic, and caught Patrick by the sleeve.

  “Who were those people?”

  “Ted thinks they were the Queen’s Council when there was a Queen,” said Patrick, “and now they hang around waiting for another Queen and doing what nobody else wants to do. Like staying home from the battle.”

  “Claudia wasn’t there, was she?”

  “No.”

  Trumpets blew around them.

  “I have to go,” said Patrick. “Have you got your sword?”

  Laura nodded, and went back to Ellen and Agatha to be scolded for tearing her clothes.

  It took much longer to march to the Well of the White Witch than it had taken to ride there. Laura began by being grateful that they were not riding horses, but a few hours into the morning her knee began to bother her.

  “Why didn’t they bring the horses?” she snarled at Ellen.

  “Horses are afraid of dragons,” said Ellen.

  Laura, thinking that that was very sensible of the horses, put her hand to the hilt of the sword and wondered if it would take them home.

  They reached the Well of the White Witch at around breakfast time, according to Laura’s stomach. The Secret House sat lumpily on its hill in the sun, and the light gleamed off its many windows.

  Laura blinked and was caught. The spark of sun on glass shrank to a pinpoint surrounded by shadows. The pinpoint came closer, bobbing oddly. Claudia’s face sprang up behind it, and Laura realized that she was carrying a candle down a flight of steps. She had something over her shoulder. She came forward, and the candlelight showed a cellar. Its floor was of great blocks of stone, like the floors at High Castle. Two of these had been propped up. Darkness gaped below them. Claudia tumbled her burden onto the floor and turned to set the candle on a shelf.

  “Shan’s mercy!” said Laura. As Claudia moved the candle, it had shown Laura her own face in a tangle of hair on the cellar floor. She looked like a rag doll.

  “What, what?” said Ellen’s voice beside her. “Don’t say that, Agatha’ll hear you. Did you stub your toe?”

  Patrick came up behind and took each of them by an elbow. Laura screeched, and then stood dumbly shivering.

  “Shhh!” said Patrick. He drew them behind a supply wagon, out of Agatha’s range. She was unpacking something from another wagon, but kept glancing around for them.

  “Ted says Randolph says we have to stay here long enough to tell the Well what we’re doing—”

  “What?” said Ellen.

  “That’s what he said. And eat some breakfast. So look. Ruthie has to help with the Well. But the minute that’s over, you guys slip away and meet us by the wooden bridge, over in the trees, remember? Don’t forget the swords.”

  “Are we going home?” said Laura. Oh, God, she thought, let the swords work.

  “Well, I don’t think we decided. But we have to find out if it’s possible.”

  Ellen jogged Laura�
��s elbow. “Come on, let’s get close to the Well so we can see Ruthie.”

  Laura came with her, hugging her elbows. Mother, mother, make my bed/Make for me a winding sheet/Wrap me up in a cloak of gold/See if I can sleep. They didn’t play that when they thought she could hear it, and they didn’t sing it at all. But she had heard. Patrick tagged along with them. They sat in the dry brown grass a few feet from the Well, and examined it.

  “Still looks wrong,” said Ellen. “I can’t get over that pink.”

  Laura looked up the hill she had rolled down, and then squinted sideways at the house. In case they were not going home, she had better see just what Claudia was up to. She set him in a golden chair/She gave him sugar sweet. Laura stared at the mullioned windows, the odd sprouting round towers with their drapes of ivy, the red-tile roof going in humps like somebody’s drawing of the ocean, until her eyes watered. But she saw nothing except what was there. She laid him on a dressing-board / And stabbed him like a sheep.

  A trumpet blew, and Laura jumped. There was a solid circle of people around the Well now. The trumpeter stood on the other side of it from them. Behind him came a line of people in white, mostly women, but with one or two boys. They blocked Laura’s view, and everyone else was standing formally, so she stood up, too. After a moment Patrick and Ellen joined her.

  Each person in white carried a wooden bucket with a rope. The first three took the lid off the Well and leaned it against the side. Patrick and Ellen and Laura looked at each other, remembering their first meeting in this country. The first woman lowered her bucket into the Well and then spoke for some time in the infuriating, almost-sensible language Laura had heard at the King’s funeral. She heard Ellen’s indignant muttering beside her.

  The woman took a ring from her finger and dropped it into the Well, talked for a little longer, and raised the dripping bucket.

  “Ruthie can’t do that by herself,” whispered Patrick.

  “She has to,” said Ellen.

  The woman peered into her bucket and seemed satisfied. She carried it over to a group of pages, who dipped into it with a silver dipper and began to fill silver cups and hand them around to the crowd.