The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  He had gathered something of the magnitude of their problem. Fence and Randolph, for all their youth, seemed to know a great deal about the art of war. Precepts, examples from history, episodes from their own experience, came easily to their tongues. But half their well-taught and successfully exercised theories foundered on the rock of sorcery. Neither of them had ever fought a sorcerous battle. Fence was a sorcerer, but not in the school of the Dragon King. He did not know, and apparently neither did anybody else, by what principles the Dragon King ordered his powers. He did not know his enemy; and that, said Randolph, somewhere in the cold dregs of the night, was the first rule of war.

  “What about all those spies?” Ted asked.

  “King John says,” said Fence, “that of the information your spies gather about a sorcerous opponent, it is necessary to discount half.”

  “Which half, he saith not,” said Randolph. He was still pale, and there were two lines of pain or weariness between his eyebrows; but he smiled at Fence with all his old charm, and Ted saw that this was an old argument between them.

  “Indeed he does,” said Fence.

  “Ah,” said Randolph, “but which half one cannot tell until one hath the whole; and we have not the whole.”

  “We were not permitted it,” said Fence, not smiling at all; and Ted knew he spoke of the King.

  As they talked on, and the west wind drove the clouds over the plain and the huge stars of the Secret Country bloomed from the clearing sky, Ted found that those precepts rescued from the rock of sorcery would drown in the whirlpool of what ought to have been the Secret Country’s greatest strength: the Border Magic. To meet your enemy before he was ready, on ground of your choosing; to attack him in his weak places, so that he must abandon his strong ones to defend them; to feint back and forth over large stretches of ground until you had exhausted him—all these things would give you the victory. But because of the Border Magic, the armies of the Secret Country could do none of them.

  If an army of enemies set foot in the Secret Country, the Secret Country would become a wasteland. Wherefore those wishing to defend it must fight its enemies where its enemies chose to gather. It was true that the Border Magic defeated from the start all those whose intent was to own the Secret Country, to live in it, to usefully occupy it in any way. But the Border Magic opened up vast new opportunities for the vengeful, the mischievous, the malicious. The Dragon King, by all accounts, was all three. And King John had nothing to say about the Border Magic, because the Border Magic had been contrived after his time.

  “Who by?” asked Ted, with considerable resentment. This was not so much for the contriver as for the ruthless manner in which his own invention, of which he and Patrick had been so proud, had been logically dismantled and shown to be like a badly thrown boomerang, that not only recoils upon its wielder, but smacks him in the forehead and leaves him helpless in the hands of his enemies.

  Fence shut King John’s Book and pushed his damp, flattened hair out of his eyes. His round face was a little sunken; Ted could see the line of his cheekbone, and realized with a lurch of the heart that in some curious and sidelong way, Fence looked like Claudia.

  “By the unicorns,” said Fence, “and by the Outside Powers. The Outside Powers owed the unicorns a boon, and this was what the unicorns asked of them.”

  “A joke, then,” said Ted.

  “Perhaps. Or in part.”

  Ted stood up and stretched. “Fence,” he said, “if King John’s Book is so little use, why did you make such a fuss about using it?”

  “It had been of far greater use,” said Randolph out of the depths of his chair, “had we been free to gather intelligence as it bade us during these months the Dragon King hath stumbled about our borders like a cow with the staggers.”

  Fence chuckled. “Well, I gathered some little store. And we are free now to gather what we may,” he said. “Edward. We stray from our path. Randolph, the map.”

  Now they were silent, and the first thoughtful murmur of awakening birds came in the windows with a stir of morning air. Ted resigned himself to a blind trust in his counselors, and looked at the two of them.

  “Well,” said Fence to Randolph, “when will we march?”

  “Should we not have the coronation before the battle?”

  “I’d rather not,” said Ted, unable to be as blind as he would have liked.

  “That is not the question,” said Randolph.

  “I, too, had rather not,” said Fence.

  Randolph frowned at him.

  “There is no time,” said Fence, “and it is not necessary.”

  “No?” said Randolph.

  “More men believe in the Book of King John than in the speeches of Lord Andrew.”

  “Think you not,” said Randolph, with some difficulty, “that to delay the coronation would make men to think we had doubts of the Prince in this matter of the poisoning?”

  “To hasten the coronation and damage the war thereby,” said Fence, “would make them to think we had doubts of the Regent.”

  “And is doubt of the Regent more damageful than doubt of the Prince?”

  “That is not the question,” said Fence.

  “No?” said Randolph again. He raised an eyebrow at Ted.

  “Randolph,” said Ted, “everybody knows who’s really fighting this war. And everybody has doubts of me anyway.”

  “Doubts of your skill perhaps,” said Randolph. “That is nothing. It is the question of who did the murder. If you are not crowned it will be said we think you did it.”

  “Randolph,” said Fence, “I tell you there is no time.”

  Randolph put the flat of one hand to his forehead and squinted at the opposite wall. “There is,” he said. “We cannot leave here before seven days; we must bury the King; Edward must call a council; and we must collect those troops the King did not make ready. We must wait for Chryse; we must raise Belaparthalion. Our last reports show the Dragon King still but distant.”

  “Shan’s mercy,” said Fence. “The coronation of William was months in the making.”

  “I don’t want a lot of fuss,” said Ted hastily. What Randolph wanted did, at least, fit in with their bedraggled story. It was as King of the Secret Country that Edward had visited the land of the dead.

  Fence’s mouth quirked. “Very well,” he said.

  “Could I ask you,” said Ted, “to call the council and arrange about the funeral?”

  “Randolph shall call the council,” said Fence; “let him have his duties for the short space left him. I’ll speak to Benjamin touching the funeral.”

  “Thank you,” said Ted.

  He climbed the cold stairs to his room. Patrick was sound asleep. Ted crawled into bed and lay shivering for a while. When he fell asleep he dreamed vaguely of a herd of unicorns galloping into a purple lake while all the stars fell into it and sent it smoking into the sky. He also dreamed that he was trying to paint this scene, which seemed no more unusual to him than a good sunset, and was vexed because he could not get the right shade of purple.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT rained when they buried the King. It had rained all night. It was raining when Agatha woke Laura and Ellen at the hideous hour of five and made them dress in black. It was raining when Ellen discovered that they would get no breakfast until after the ceremony, said “Shan’s mercy!” in front of Agatha, and was slapped for it.

  It rained on their procession as it wound its way through the stony woods, until everyone was as black and shiny as the trunks of the trees. Ellen stopped being furious long enough to whisper to Laura, “They look like the trees walking.” Laura stopped being shocked long enough to wish Ellen had not said it. The slosh and drip of foot and hoof and leaf sounded very like the noise a tree might make walking in the wet woods.

  The further they went, the less Laura liked it. She finally woke up enough to wonder why, and raised her dripping head to see the gate she had left open when she walked out of her own time and met the uni
corns. It was not open now. Laura realized that, unless somebody had come all the way out here, found the gate open, shut it, and not raised a fuss back at High Castle, she had not been here yet. She felt a qualm almost as strong as the one made by Agatha’s slapping Ellen.

  “Let’s not go,” she mouthed to Ellen.

  Ellen’s face lit up, and then she closed her mouth on a laugh and shook her head. Laura looked around and saw Agatha trudging on the other side of Ruth and watching them over Ruth’s head. She would have sworn herself, if she had dared. She had almost gotten used to things, but now that the King was dead, everything else looked likely to be awful, and again she wanted to go home.

  They slipped and scrambled up the hill. Laura looked for the flowers bordering the path, but there were only round gray stones.

  The brilliant green of the grass inside the wall was even more startling in this rain than it had been when Laura first saw it. There were fewer flowers on the gravestones, but there seemed to be as many gravestones. Laura followed the others to the clump of people around the new grave.

  “Oh, no,” she said. It was the newer grave she had walked around before. She had stood over the dead King and not even known it. Not for the first time since they came to this country, she felt that she was being laughed at.

  “Here, child,” said Agatha’s voice.

  Laura blinked upward into the rain, and took the bunch of flowers Agatha handed her. They were of six or seven different kinds, but all yellow. The only ones she recognized were the dandelions. Agatha gave Ellen a bunch of purple flowers, and Ruth a bunch of red ones, and Matthew a bunch of white.

  “What’s this for?” said Ellen to Laura; her voice was low, because of Agatha, but held a wealth of scorn. Laura had no idea, and shrugged.

  “It’s part of the burial custom,” said Ruth, joining them. “Everybody gets a bunch of a different color, and when the ceremony’s over, we throw them over the grave and they all mix together. It’s symbolic, but I can’t remember what of.”

  “Did you make it up?” said Ellen.

  “Ted and I did,” said Ruth, “but it was a long time ago.”

  “Where is Ted?” said Laura.

  “They made him help carry the coffin, him and Patrick,” said Ellen. She bestowed a clinical glance upon her bouquet. “Violets,” she said. “Wood gentians. Hey, what’s this?”

  “Shhh,” said Laura; Agatha was passing their way, and gave them a quelling glance. But she did not stop. She took Matthew, who looked strange without his cheerful expression, his wild red hair flattened and darkened with rain, by the arm, and moved him toward the grave.

  “Who does she think she is?” demanded Ellen.

  “Whoever it is, Matthew thinks so, too,” said Ruth. Matthew had smiled and bent down from his considerably greater height to say something to Agatha.

  “She can’t be just a nurse,” said Laura.

  “Nobody’s just anything around here,” grumbled Ellen. “Look at Benjamin.”

  “I think the cooks are just cooks,” offered Laura.

  “No, they aren’t,” said Ruth. “Two of them are ahead of me in sorcerous training.”

  “Maybe she was his nurse, too,” said Ellen, looking after Matthew and Agatha.

  “She’s not old enough,” said Ruth.

  A hand came down on Laura’s head, gently, but she jumped. She looked up; it was at Randolph.

  “It’s time, I fear,” he said.

  He looked, in his black clothes, as if he had been bleached, and there were lines around his eyes that had not been there the last time she saw him. Laura had once tripped over her mother’s sprained ankle, and her mother had looked like that for a few seconds. But Randolph went on looking like that as he spoke again. Laura felt a desperate and foolish desire to give him some aspirin.

  “Those closest to him must gather around the grave,” said Randolph.

  “I never even talked to him,” said Laura, following him nonetheless.

  Randolph turned around so suddenly that she almost fell into him, and took her by the hands. “It is too late for many things,” he said, bewildering her; and he kept hold of one of the hands and took her along with him.

  “He means by blood,” said Ellen in Laura’s ear.

  Randolph made room for them between Fence and Matthew. Across the gaping grave Laura saw Ted and Patrick; Ted looked miserable, and Patrick disgusted. Both of them were wet, and very red in the face. The coffin must have been heavy.

  Laura had intended not to look at the coffin, but it was so unlike what she expected that she looked at it before she knew what it was. It was a sturdy box of pale wood, spattered with rain, the running fox inlaid on the top, and a scroll of flowers, and the peculiar animals they had seen before. It was, even to someone who had been living among the beautiful things of High Castle for two months, a lovely object: Laura found herself wanting it for a moment, and then shivered.

  “Will you look at that!” hissed Ellen.

  “I did,” said Laura.

  “Look at the side, not the top.”

  Laura did. There, once more, in greater detail and richer color, was the story of the young man, the wizard, and the animals that they had seen on the tapestry, on Fence’s dishes, and on various doors. Only the first four panels of the tapestry were on this side of the coffin. On the far right the cat and the young man with decided eyebrows were, respectively, washing and feeding the dog.

  “Why couldn’t we have been on the other side?” raged Ellen under her breath.

  “I thought you were tired of that story.”

  “I want to see which last panel it is, the hole or the sun.”

  “Ted and Patrick can see it.”

  “Only if they have the sense to look.”

  “Stare at them,” said Laura, hopefully.

  She and Ellen opened their eyes as wide as they could and gazed earnestly through the misty rain at Ted and Patrick.

  Randolph came around behind Ted and began talking to him. Laura forgot what she was supposed to be doing. Ted kept shaking his head, and Randolph looked as if he would have liked to shake Ted. This argument eventually attracted Patrick’s attention, and at Laura’s side Ellen gave a martyred sigh.

  “Maybe I could find whoever made the thing,” she said.

  “I wonder what Randolph wants?” said Laura.

  “Milady Laura,” said Fence over Ellen’s head, “of your courtesy, hold your tongue.”

  Laura looked up at him reproachfully. It was Ellen’s fault they were talking, but no grown-up, even Fence, would ever bother to find out something like that before he yelled at you. Fence’s mouth quirked.

  “’Tis not the speech, but its substance, that I pray thee keep thy tongue from,” he said.

  Laura, having puzzled this out, was too astonished even to smile at him.

  “Hush,” said Fence, looking over her head and across the grave at Randolph. “We begin.

  Randolph, standing with his hands in the sleeves of his black robe and his hair dripping into his eyes, had managed by merely looking the crowd over to make them be quiet and watch him.

  “Servants, friends, and lovers,” he said; and like the King’s, his voice carried although he did not raise it. “We are foregathered to bid farewell to William, Celia and Conrad’s son, who hath served, befriended, and loved us these fifty years.”

  “Fifty-two,” said Ellen in Laura’s ear.

  Fence moved from beside her to stand with Randolph. Laura kept her eyes determinedly from his robe. Randolph asked him a question; he answered it with a short speech; Randolph asked him another; he answered it briefly.

  Laura gaped at them. She could not understand a word they were saying, and yet she almost did. It was like a conversation to which she was not paying attention; if she stopped reading and listened, she would be able to understand perfectly. Their voices held a ritual intonation which made it obvious that this was the ceremony, and not some consultation about details. The rain fell down thei
r faces.

  “What’re they saying?” whispered Ellen. Laura shrugged, and looked across the grave at Ted and Patrick. Patrick’s face was perplexed, and Ted’s resigned. Laura glanced around at Ruth, who was frowning. Everybody else was listening with a serious face; Laura could tell from an occasional nod or grimace or smile that the real inhabitants of the Secret Country had no trouble following the service.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes of this, during which a number of people began blinking and sniffling, and Laura watched Ted and Patrick fidget, Randolph bowed to Fence and stepped back. Fence, in his fantastic robe, knelt on the sodden ground and picked up a handful of mud.

  “In the tradition of John, by the mercy granted to Shan, in accordance with the laws of the Hidden Land,” he said, and slapped the mud onto the gorgeous top of the coffin.

  Laura watched him stand up, half expecting the mud to roll off his robe as if the robe were made of some new miracle fabric. But it was stained and wet, and remained so; and a fugitive gleam from a star half-muddied caught and held her eye. She saw Ted’s face, covered with blood, as she had seen it before. But this time the view was wider; Ted lay on the bare and dusty ground with a great blot of blood across his chest, and Randolph knelt over him with a despairing expression. Behind them the sky was hot and empty. Laura’s gaze jerked involuntarily to the real Randolph, who had come forward to hand Fence a bunch of flowers. When she looked back at the robe it was only a robe.

  “What’s the matter?” hissed Ellen.

  “Just a minute,” said Laura, staring hopefully at the stars. Nothing happened.

  Randolph made a gesture with his hand, and Benjamin came out of the crowd. His eyes were red, but his face was impassive. He looked around the crowd for a moment, and finally took Ted by the arm and drew him over to Randolph. Randolph touched Fence on the arm, and Fence shook his head. Randolph jerked his head at Conrad. Fence went back to stand by Patrick, and the four others, Randolph, Ted, Benjamin, and Conrad, took hold of the ropes around the coffin and lowered it into the grave.

  Laura heard a muffled sound beside her, and saw that Agatha was crying. Laura had not quite forgiven her for slapping Ellen, but she felt so guilty for not crying herself that she patted Agatha on the arm.