The Secret Country

by PAMELA DEAN

  Laura stopped dead when she saw the strange children. Patrick and Ellen did not seem to want to get any closer to them either. Laura was sure they were dangerous; they would be able to find out far faster than any grown-up how little she and the others really knew.

  “There aren’t many children in High Castle, are there?” said Patrick.

  “Well, a lot of the servants are just kids,” said Ellen.

  “We don’t have to talk to them.”

  “We don’t have to talk to these either.”

  “I wonder if we’re supposed to know them,” said Patrick.

  Laura went back a way and settled herself onto a bench in an alcove where she could see out the doorway. Patrick and Ellen stayed where they were, arguing in low voices. Outside, suddenly, the sun came out and fell in a block over the strange children. They all had yellow hair, and the sun made them look exactly as children in a fairy tale should look.

  They seemed to think the sun had spoiled their game. They craned their necks at the sky outside, shook their heads at one another, and began packing up their pieces in a wooden box. Patrick and Ellen, noticing this, moved off to one side and went on arguing. The strange children went by them without paying them any heed. Laura shrank back as they went past her, but they paid no attention to her either. She noticed that all of them looked a little like Matthew, and wondered if they were his.

  She looked back at the doorway. She was beginning to get bored.

  Ellen and Patrick came over to her.

  “Who were those kids?” asked Ellen.

  “Is Matthew married?” Laura asked her.

  Patrick looked over their heads back into the noisy hall. “Hey, here comes—” he said, and stared.

  Laura and Ellen turned around. Lord Randolph was coming toward them with a woman. She was a snaky lady with black hair. She wore a dress of deep red which showed exactly how snaky she was. She had her hands folded around Randolph’s arm, and against the blue of his sleeve the ruby in the ring she wore gleamed as a cat’s eye will when the light hits it just so. She was beautiful.

  “Who’s that?” said Laura.

  They came up to the three children, and Randolph bowed as well as he could with the woman on his arm. She looked at them measuringly, not as if she were greeting them, but as if they were something she might want to hang on the wall.

  “Good festival to you,” said Randolph. He wore his circlet and his ring, and the jewels on the silver hilt of his dagger were those same blue ones. Laura wondered if he ever got tired of them.

  “And to you,” said Patrick.

  Ellen was staring at the woman, not in a friendly way.

  “Where is thy angry cousin?” Randolph asked Patrick.

  “Benjamin said . . .” said Patrick, and stopped. Laura could almost see him remembering that Ted, however angry, was not his cousin here, but his brother.

  “Should any of you see her,” said Randolph, “tell her to ware Lord Andrew.”

  “She always does,” said Patrick. Randolph laughed, but the woman in red looked at Patrick as if she would have liked to step on him.

  “Tell her to ware her temper, then,” said Randolph. “He is baiting every magician in the place with his vain philosophy, hoping one will break the ban and disgrace the calling. Thy cousin hath a hasty temper. Let her look to’t.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Patrick.

  “And have a care thyself,” Randolph added thoughtfully. The woman looked at him and at Patrick, surprised. “Forgo thy accustomed tricks,” added Randolph, with a meaningful look Laura was at a loss to interpret.

  Patrick seemed to understand it. He bowed. “I shall,” he said.

  Randolph smiled at all of them as the woman steered him away. “ ’Tis but a jest,” she said in his ear, and the sound of her voice made the fine hairs stand up on the backs of their necks. Then she and Randolph were too far away to be heard.

  Ellen sat down heavily on the bench. “Gah!” she said.

  “He likes her,” said Laura, staring after them.

  “Well,” said Patrick, “she is awfully pretty.”

  “Not really,” said Ellen. “Not healthy pretty. She’s like Spanish moss.”

  “Just because she hangs all over him,” said Laura. She and Ellen looked at each other and laughed.

  “But who is she?” said Laura again. “If she’s with Randolph, she must be important, and I sure don’t remember her.”

  “Wait until we can find out her name,” said Patrick. “That might bring it back to you.”

  “I thought I recognized her voice,” said Ellen.

  “It sounded like Ruth doing the Demon Queen,” said Patrick.

  “Well, sort of. You don’t suppose she is?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Laura looked back at the doorway. The late sunlight still poured through it. Laura felt a desire to do something sensible, like swimming in the moat or playing with the dogs. Evenings always made her restless.

  A shadow fell into the middle of the block of sunshine, and a man came slowly into the hall. He was rather short, and he wore a long blue cape. It was patched and stained and dusty. His boots were caked with dust. His hair was so dusty it looked gray. He wore a pack, as dusty as the rest of him. His back was bowed, his head down. Laura hoped he would go on by, but he paused just inside the hall, lifting his head and rubbing at his eyes.

  Laura jerked upright, gaping. A shock went through her as if someone had put an ice cube down her back.

  “Fence!” she shrieked, leaped up, bowled Ellen aside, and ran at him.

  He laughed at her out of his filthy face and went down on one knee to meet her. “Gently, gently,” he said, as she cannoned into him and a cloud of dust rose up. “I am a dusty carpet indeed, and moth-eaten too. You will ruin your dress and I shall topple.” He hugged her anyway, and then pushed her back and looked at her. His smile vanished. “What hast thou been up to?”

  Laura looked at the patched knee of his hose, disappointed almost to tears. She knew him as she had not known anyone else here, and he could take one look at her and see that she was not what she should be.

  “Hey!” shouted a girl’s voice behind her. “Mark! Fence is back! John!”

  Boots clattered on the floor behind her, and the three children who had been playing in the doorway flung themselves upon Fence. Laura backed hastily out of the tangle to where Ellen and Patrick stood looking embarrassed.

  “Nice work,” said Patrick to Laura. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “You forgot to ask him if he’d brought you any presents,” said Ellen, “but you were very good.”

  “Where’s Randolph?” said Laura, looking back at the crowd. She found him by the color of his companion’s dress. They were standing a little apart from the main crowd, holding each other’s hand. Randolph had his back to Laura.

  Laura began to jump up and down and wave. The woman in red shot her the meanest look Laura had ever seen. Randolph had not seen Laura jumping and waving, but he saw that look, and turned around. He looked as if he expected a dragon; his hand was on his dagger.

  Laura pointed at Fence. Randolph stood quite still while all the expression went out of his face. Then he disengaged his other hand from the lady’s and took a step. She caught his arm and spoke to him urgently. He shook his head, shook off her hand, and came running. Laura got out of his way.

  Fence rose out of the strange children’s embraces just in time. Randolph hurtled into him and swung him right around. They hugged each other briefly, hard. Laura, seeing Randolph’s face over Fence’s shoulder, was reminded of her mother’s face when Ted finally arrived home three hours late, in the middle of the worst storm in eighteen years.

  “My friend,” said Randolph, letting go of Fence and regarding him soberly, “I had not thought to see thee again.”

  “Am I so late as that?”

  “This is Midsummer’s Eve.”

  Fence put a hand on his arm, but said nothing.
r />   “Fence,” said the strange girl, who still stood there with her companions, “what did you bring us?”

  “Precious little,” said Fence, ruefully. “I have been in the Dubious Hills.” But he smiled at her.

  “You could have brought a rock.”

  “Peace,” said Randolph to the children. “He is weary. Plague him tomorrow.”

  They scowled briefly and then made off through the crowd.

  “Come on,” said Patrick to Laura and Ellen.

  Fence looked around. “Not you,” he said to the three of them. “I hope that you and Lord Randolph will sup with me.”

  “Thank you,” said Patrick.

  Laura poked him. “What about that snake woman?”

  “Snake woman nothing,” said Patrick. “Sir,” he said to Fence, “what about Ruth?”

  “Has she forsaken her calling, then?”

  “What?”

  “I hope you do not propose to wait your meal until midnight.”

  “He forgot,” said Ellen. Patrick just looked glazed.

  “Well,” said Fence, “if the bolder of you would oblige us by telling the kitchen what we require, we will go before you and dust the dishes.” He looked at Patrick and Laura as he said this.

  “They won’t pay any attention to us,” said Laura. “They’ll just think we want our dinner early.”

  “I’ll go with them, Fence,” said Randolph.

  Fence looked at Ellen. Laura suddenly understood what was going on. She and Patrick were the bolder ones. Princess Ellen was shy, so Fence was sparing her the ordeal of going to the kitchen. Princess Ellen was shy for much the same reason that Prince Edward was: Ellen, like Ted, had had too much else to do to properly attend to her namesake.

  Laura pulled a braid over her shoulder so she could chew on the ribbon. This would be awful, if Fence was going to be so considerate all the time. Ellen would hate being left out of things, and Laura would hate being put in them.

  Ellen must have decided much the same thing, because she turned to Randolph. “Laurie’s bruised her arm,” she said, which was true, “and she shouldn’t be carrying things,” which was not.

  “Patrick and I will do well enough,” said Randolph.

  So Laura and Ellen went off with Fence. It was not until they came to the corridor before Fence’s tower, which now had sunlight pouring into it and looked nothing worse than dusty, that they remembered that there was something wrong with the stairs.

  CHAPTER 12

  FENCE produced a key and a cloud of dust from his sleeve.

  “The door’s not locked,” said Ellen.

  Fence was instantly still. “When was it not locked?”

  “This morning.”

  Fence handed her the key. Laura saw that it, too, was silver, with a blue stone on the shaft. Fence bent and peered through the keyhole. “Did you go through the door, then?”

  “Not very far,” said Ellen. “The stairs went the wrong way.”

  Fence froze again; then he grinned. “I wonder. Hath Randolph played the fool again?”

  “It didn’t feel like Randolph,” said Laura, and immediately felt foolish. But Fence seemed disposed to take her seriously.

  “Was it cold?” he asked her, and she nodded. “Dear heaven,” said Fence. He looked through the keyhole again. Then he took the key from Ellen and turned it in the lock. Then he tried the door, which, since he had just locked it, did not open. Then he unlocked it and pushed it open.

  On the third step up, the beast gurgled at them. Laura leaped backward, squeaking. Fence laughed, but not at her.

  “Is that yours?” Ellen asked him.

  “No,” said Fence.

  “Told you,” said Laura.

  Fence looked at her over his shoulder. “You would know,” he said, puzzling her.

  “Whose is it if it’s not yours?” said Ellen.

  “This,” said Fence, “is the best outcome of trying to reconcile rival magics.”

  “What’s the worst?” said Ellen.

  “You’ll know soon enough,” said Fence, shortly. He gurgled at the beast, and it coiled in upon itself, shrank to a trickle, and was gone.

  Laura felt a little better about the beasts now that Fence had laughed at one, but much worse about the stairs having gone the wrong way this morning now that Fence had looked sober about it.

  Fence put the key back in his sleeve and began to climb the steps, leaving drifts of dust in his wake. The steps themselves were quite clean, and there were no cobwebs. The walls were stained amber by the sunlight coming through the arrow slits. It was very warm, almost like summer. Laura and Ellen followed Fence.

  Fence had the three top rooms of the tower. He lived in the third from the top, and slept in the second from the top, and did his stargazing and his magic at the very top. Fence was a white magician, but Laura had never liked to think about his magic. She and Ellen had discovered several years ago that reading old spells, which they had tried in order to give themselves an idea of what Fence actually did, made them nervous, and they had had to give it up. Laura and Ellen had, therefore, only the vaguest notion of what Fence did in the top room, but its presence brooded on them as they scrambled behind its owner.

  They soon had something more tangible to worry them. Ellen had asked that there be two hundred and eight steps to Fence’s rooms, that being the number of steps, she said, to Merlyn’s tower at Camelot. Patrick said that he was not sure you could build a tower that high without modern methods, but he had been overruled. It seemed that he had also been wrong. If there were not two hundred and eight steps to Fence’s rooms, Laura thought, wiping sweat from her forehead onto the green velvet of her sleeve and looking at Ellen’s sweat-damp muslin back ahead of her, it was only because there were three hundred, or five hundred. She started counting steps after they had gone around a few curves and it had become evident that they were nowhere near the end. She gave up at one hundred and nine; it was enough trouble just breathing.

  She was almost desperate enough to say something when Fence stopped and turned around to wait for them.

  “I cry you mercy,” he said. “I am very weary. You may take the key on ahead.” He looked at them and grinned. “I see,” he said, and sat down on a step next to an arrow slit.

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” Ellen told him, testily “And there aren’t this many steps anywhere else.” Ellen prided herself on being able to keep up with Ted or Ruth even though they were bigger; Fence’s grin must have irked her.

  Her speech did not seem to irk Fence, but it certainly startled him. “Hast learned courage, then?” he asked her.

  Laura’s stomach sank. She had been gladder to see Fence than she had ever been to see anyone. He might as well have been the person she loved best in the world. And now he looked to be more trouble than all the rest of them put together.

  “Well,” said Ellen, “you’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Longer for me than for you,” said Fence. He leaned his head on the stone wall and shut his eyes. Laura looked at him, and wondered if he was supposed to be that thin, and how old he was. She had thought he was older than Randolph, but he looked more like a young person who has had a hard time. She looked at Ellen, who shook her head and grinned.

  “Two hundred and eight steps,” said Ellen.

  Fence’s eyes jerked open. They were green, like Ellen’s. Laura wondered whether, under all the dust, his hair was like Ellen’s too. She had not thought that Fence was related to anyone in High Castle. He came from outside.

  “How know’st thou that number?” Fence demanded of Ellen.

  Ellen looked at Laura, who stared helplessly back. “I counted them?” said Ellen as if she were proposing the idea for consideration.

  “How many times?”

  “Isn’t once enough?”

  Fence laughed, as if in spite of himself. “Hast been studying sorcery?”

  “No,” said Ellen.

  “Thou?” said Fence to Laura.

>   “No.”

  “Perhaps you ought,” said Fence, and stood up. Laura sneezed.

  The door to Fence’s living chamber was carved like the door to the tower stairs, except that in the place of the jagged hole there was a perfectly round piece, surrounded with rays, like a sun. Laura and Ellen looked at each other. Fence unlocked the door with a plain key.

  Fence’s living room had seven narrow windows, a bearskin on the floor, tapestries on the walls, a few carved chests and a plain table and chairs, all of dark wood, and a fireplace across from the door. It was disappointingly normal. Laura supposed that the interesting things were in the top room, and once she thought of it its weight settled over her spirits again.

  Fence stood in the middle of the room with his head tilted, as if he were sniffing or listening for something.

  “All seems well here,” he said, and made a sign in the air with his hand. The logs in the fireplace sprang into flame, and three lamps sputtered and burned bright. Laura jumped. This was much more startling than the blazing of their magic swords, because Fence had made so little fuss about it.

  “You may set the table, if you will,” he said to them, and unlocking yet another door, a plain one this time, he took another flight of stairs up. Dust drifted through the air where he had stood, and Laura sneezed again.

  “You’d think,” said Ellen grumpily, “that if he can light a fire just like that, he could keep the dust off,” and Laura knew that she had been startled too.

  Only one of the chests opened, and the dishes were in it. They were thick, glazed, and white, with a colored border of great intricacy. Laura squinted at the border of a plate as she carried it to the table; they were too heavy to carry more than one at a time.

  “Ellie!” she said, caught her foot on the edge of the bearskin, and let go of the plate. It landed on the stone floor with an enormous musical crack and broke into six pieces.

  “Hell,” said Laura.

  “What made you do that?”