The Hidden Land

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Ted,” said Ruth, in the tones of the sorcerer she was becoming. She looked both surprised and uneasy.

  “Granted,” said Ted to Fence, still irked.

  “Ted!” said Ruth, in the cousinly voice with which she had always greeted his excesses. Ted remembered, suddenly and vividly, the time he had pushed Ellen into the pond because she let free all the frogs he and Patrick had laboriously collected.

  “Never mind,” said Fence to Ruth.

  “Fence,” said Ted, “will you come and look at something?”

  “And leave me to deal with Agatha?” said Ruth, in a tone somewhere between scorn and panic.

  “Agatha!” said Fence. “Agatha will take you by the hand and thank you heartily, that you have thwarted Benjamin’s most untimely plans.”

  “Okay?” said Ted to Ruth.

  “Of a certainty,” she said.

  Fence and Ted clambered in silence to the patch of moss. Fence knelt, as Ruth had done, and scowled. “ ‘The visage of a prince,’ ” he read, “ ‘on the soul of a villain.’ That is from King John’s Book.”

  “Oh,” said Ted, wanting to comment on the difference between Ruth’s translation and Fence’s, but not knowing what it might mean.

  “How came this here?” asked Fence.

  “I cut it there,” said Ted.

  “Oh?”

  “I dreamed it.”

  “Oh.” Fence walked once around the patch of moss, twitched as a raindrop went down his back, and said, “What else dreamt thou?”

  Ted told him. Fence, startlingly, whistled. “What, I wonder, augers that?”

  “I hoped you could tell me.”

  “Great good or great ill,” said Fence. He looked at Ted with curiosity. “Dost feel like a villain?”

  “No,” said Ted, “I feel like a beggar.”

  Fence was nonplussed, and Ted was not sorry. They paced aimlessly back in the direction of the camp. A cardinal sang suddenly in the wet trees above their heads. They craned their necks and got water in their eyes.

  “I am weary of omens,” said Fence, “even good ones.”

  “Why, have you had others?”

  “A dream here and there,” said Fence.

  The bird sang smugly on. The wet black woods dripped. A clammy wind crept along and tugged at their hair. Fence sighed, and Ted tripped on a tree root and fell flat in a puddle.

  “Good,” said Fence briskly, hauling him out. “All will think I have knocked thee down for thy own good, and be satisfied.”

  Ted was not amused. Ruth was, and chortled, when she caught sight of them coming back, until Fence remarked that the whole army would be certain that Ted had tried to force her against her will and been suitably punished.

  “At least it’s a new lie,” said Ted sourly.

  Fence gave him a sharp look, but said nothing.

  After lunch on the next day they came to the mountains, which rose quite abruptly from the flat land, holding up the sky with gray and white and purple cliffs. The army of the Secret Country wound and scrambled to the beginning of the pass they would use out of their domains, and stopped for the night earlier than usual.

  Ted dreamed again. He dreamt that he and Lady Claudia sat in a summer garden and drank tea and fed the swans their biscuits. Claudia was offering him all the castles of the Secret Country, and the glory of them; but Ted seemed to have, running beneath his mind like the knowledge of fencing in his first dream here, an appreciation of her crimes considerably larger than his waking knowledge. He had no trouble refusing her. Claudia rose in a rage which did nothing to diminish her beauty, but did upset the table. Amid spilled tea and broken china, she spread her arms and wailed at him like the things in his nightmare of the letters. Her eyes grew red like theirs and the garden faded to a blank white fog. A cold wind blew the fog to tatters, and Ted saw what he took to be the ocean. Shapes began to rise from the crinkled surface of the water.

  Ted sat bolt upright in his bedroll, cold with sweat, and kicked Patrick without meaning to.

  “Have at you now!” shrieked Patrick, clutching at Ted. He flung himself, bedroll and all, upon his cousin and began to pummel him. Ted shoved a fist out of his eye and put his elbow into Patrick’s stomach. The sword of the nearest sentinel hissed out of the scabbard, and he came running, a dark figure with the thin light of the fire in his eyes and on his sword.

  “It’s all right!” yelled Ted. “Don’t hurt him!” He administered a soothing punch to Patrick’s shoulder and demanded, “Wake up!”

  “Uh?” said Patrick.

  “Wake up and shut up.”

  “Oh, no,” said Patrick. “Was that you?”

  “Well?” said the sentinel, standing over them accusingly.

  “Bad dream,” said Ted, acutely embarrassed.

  The sentinel’s disgruntled look began to try to be a smile. “My lords,” he said.

  Fence strode up, tousled and perplexed. He was fully dressed, however sleepy he might look. “What’s the matter now?” he said, in the precise tone of an exasperated parent.

  “Bad dream,” said Ted.

  “Oh?” said Fence, in a different tone entirely, and sent the sentinel away. Ted and Patrick disentangled themselves and worked their ways out of their distorted bedrolls.

  “Come to my fire,” said Fence, taking each by a shoulder, and they came with him. He had built the fire under an oak tree which presented an alarming collection of shadows in the fitful glow and rustled ominously over them. This gave a certain color to Ted’s story and a distinctly grim cast to Patrick’s.

  Patrick had dreamt that he, not Ted, was killing Randolph in the rose garden. Or at least, that he was trying to kill Randolph. He had dreamt that he was losing, not as a young prince, half-taught, might lose to his teacher, nor even as Patrick with only a few months’ training might lose to his teacher, but as Patrick Carroll, who had mimed fights with sticks of wood, might lose to a Lord Randolph who never knew him—quickly and ridiculously. Except that Randolph would kill him, and that was worse than ridiculous. Patrick could not tell it to Fence just that way, of course, but Ted had no trouble at all divining what the dream had been and how Patrick had felt.

  Fence was puzzled by both dreams. “Both have elements I cannot understand, wherefore I may not tell you what they signify. As with thy dream of the letters in the moss, Edward.”

  “Could Claudia have sent them?” asked Patrick. “You said she did things with magic that can’t be done, so maybe she sends dreams that can’t be read.”

  “Maybe,” said Fence. “Maybe.”

  “Which elements don’t you get?” said Ted.

  Fence hesitated. “Ah, well,” he said, “these are your own dreams, after all. In this of Patrick’s, then: the loss of power should come never with the teacher of power. And in thine, Edward, those of the red eyes have naught to do with water, most particularly with the sea.”

  “And what about my dream of the letters?” said Ted.

  “The dragon is not the mask of a prince,” said Fence. “Although time was when a prince was the mask of a dragon.”

  Ted and Patrick exchanged resigned glances, and did not protest when Fence sent them back to bed. Always, always, they must stop asking questions before they understood the answers, lest someone realize how little they knew, how foreign they were, how tenuous their claim was to the powers and privileges they enjoyed daily.

  “Wonderful,” said Ted to Patrick when they were back in their restored bedrolls. “We can’t hide anything around here!”

  “You mean the elements he can’t understand were from our—our other lives?”

  “I think so. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I bet we dream differently than people here do.” Ted thought. “We should have asked him what those of the red eyes are. Do you suppose they’re the Outside Powers? Benjamin said red was their color.”

  Patrick was silent. “It felt like Claudia,” he said at last.

  “What did?”

 
“The dream. I kept thinking I heard her laughing. I bet she dreams differently than people here, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Fence you heard her laughing?”

  “Well, she was laughing because I couldn’t fence. She knew. She knew about us.”

  They were silent for a moment. The trees dripped slowly, and over by the fire one sentinel relieved another.

  “In my dream, Claudia turned into a thing with red eyes,” said Ted. “Do you think she’s an Outside Power?”

  “Did we unfurl her when we used Shan’s Ring, then?” said Patrick. He concentrated, assembling memory and information as none of the rest of them was able to do. “Nobody saw her until the Banquet, which was after we used the ring.”

  “But things were going wrong before then,” said Ted, “so she couldn’t be responsible for them.”

  “Why?” said Patrick, bitterly. “Just because she wasn’t there? Why should that mean anything? Why should anything mean anything? We can’t figure out anything, Ted: we don’t know the rules.”

  “I’ll try to get more out of Fence tomorrow,” said Ted.

  It was a long time before he slept.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE pass through the mountains might have been disappointing to the truly adventurous, but it was a great relief to all five adventurers, none of whom had ever even pretended to be able to climb mountains. The paths grew rocky and narrow, but they were below the snow line all the way. The army came, finally, to the spot where things all went downhill instead of up, and saw a dizzying view of the land beyond the Secret Country.

  Laura thought that it looked like a deserted sandbox stuck about with twigs and pebbles. Nothing moved from the end of the mountains to the horizon, except the air shimmering in the heat. Brown and yellow and black the bare land fell to the smudgy line between sand and sky. She could smell dust and rock and heat.

  “They say,” said Agatha at her shoulder, “that this land, too, once had a Border Magic. Through a double treachery the Dwarves were made to march across its borders, and so it is as you see it.”

  Neither Laura nor Ellen could find anything to say to this.

  They camped in a round valley with a spring in the middle. The floor of the valley sloped back toward the mountains and the stream from the spring ran, seemingly perverse but really natural enough, back toward the mountains to disappear under a cliff.

  Laura managed to collar Ted before supper and tell him what Fence and Matthew had said about dragons and the Dragon King. He seemed only mildly interested, and asked her what visions she had seen in things lately. Laura, feeling as though someone had jumped out of a bush at her, remembered the things she had seen in the windows of the Secret House.

  “I saw Claudia burying me in the basement of the Secret House,” she said, “and I saw five people standing by a stream, in the fog. They looked familiar, but not right. And—I saw Lord Andrew in the North Tower looking at the broken Crystal of Earth.”

  “Claudia burying you?” said Ted, with flattering concern.

  “I thought we’d go home before it happened.”

  “I should hope so!” said Ted, still staring at her. People hurried by them carrying wood and tents. “Or wait,” he said. “Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was the other one.”

  “What?”

  “Princess Laura.”

  “I am Princess Laura.”

  “No, the real one.”

  “Now look.”

  “Never mind. Come and have supper with me, and bring Ellen. I’m going to ask Fence some things.”

  The five of them sat around Ted’s fire with Fence, Randolph, and Matthew. Randolph and Matthew were still arguing about the fire-letters.

  “Fence,” said Ted, “could we ask you more about dreams?”

  “You may ask, doubtless,” said Fence, in a tone more encouraging than his words.

  “First,” said Ted, “Laurie, tell him about Claudia and the basement.”

  Laura was mildly put out. That had been not a dream but a vision. And yet she had had dreams also, and would have liked to know what they meant. On the other hand, she would be telling Fence her vision, and that should please the unicorns.

  “I dreamed that Claudia was burying me in the cellar of the House by the Well of the White Witch,” she said.

  Matthew broke off his discussion with Randolph to say something like “Faugh!” in commiserating tones.

  “Matthew,” said Fence, “hast taught these younger ones aught of dreams?”

  “Not yet,” said Matthew.

  “Know, then,” said Fence to Laura, “that this may mean one, or some, or all, of five things. It may be that this hath happened, that it shall happen, that thou fearest it may happen, or that Claudia wishes ’twere so. It may mean only that she wisheth thee harm.”

  “Does that apply to the dreams Patrick and I had?” Ted asked.

  “Not to thine,” said Fence. “That was an allegory, I think. Thy brother’s, perhaps.”

  “But couldn’t Patrick and Laura’s be allegories too?”

  Matthew laughed.

  “There is a school of thought,” said Fence, “holding that all dreams are allegories. I myself have suffered true dreams both of past and things to come, and so I hold not with that school.”

  “Well, what was mine an allegory of, though?”

  “I know not,” said Fence, sounding thoroughly troubled, “because of those elements I told thee of yesternight.”

  “You mean,” said Laura, having thought through what Fence told her, “that Claudia might kill me and bury me in the cellar?”

  “I think we can prevent it,” said Fence. He said this quite soberly, as if he were talking to another grown-up, and Laura was satisfied.

  Patrick, however, snorted. Fence’s head swung around toward him, but Randolph said, “Fence, in what manner have we thus far prevented aught that she chose to do?”

  “Well,” said Fence, “she hath not yet chosen to lay hands upon any of us.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” muttered Patrick. “Action at a distance.”

  “That is a skill of the Outside Powers,” said Fence, very softly.

  “She?” said Randolph; even in the firelight they could see him staring.

  “If she is of that family, she would not harm a child,” said Matthew.

  “What if she’s gone bad?” demanded Patrick.

  “Forgive me; I spoke carelessly. If she is of the family,” said Matthew, “she cannot harm a child.”

  “She’ll wait ’til Laura grows up?” said Ellen.

  “Were you grown up in the dream?” asked Patrick.

  “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Fence,” said Ted, exasperated beyond bearing, “what are the Outside Powers?”

  “Hush,” said Fence. “Speak not that name so loudly.”

  Patrick snorted again, but nobody heeded him.

  “I tried asking Benjamin,” said Ted, “but he just told me riddles. And what does it mean that they are rising again?”

  “They are a riddle,” said Randolph.

  “I know you know more than that! Why won’t you tell me?”

  Laura saw Fence and Randolph look across the fire at one another.

  “ ’Tis a thing kings must know,” said Randolph.

  Patrick made an explosive noise of profound disgust.

  “He said not that thou shouldst not know,” snapped Fence.

  Laura stifled a giggle as Ellen poked her gently in the ribs and whispered, “That showed him!”

  “But it beareth not upon our present distresses,” said Fence.

  “But you said at the council that they were rising again, and everybody was upset. It sounded as if it had everything to do with this war!” said Ted.

  Fence let his breath out. “Only in the same manner,” he said, “that, if our weather-augurers were to tell us, during the month we propose to fight in the desert great dust storms will come. Now dust storms are a thing of natur
e; the Dragon King bringeth them not. But they have a most potent bearing on the battle: where and how and whether it shall be fought.”

  “But when you said at the council that the Outside Powers were rising, Benjamin said—”

  “Benjamin,” said Fence, with finality, “hath concerns past those of the Hidden Land.”

  Laura watched Ted decide to settle for this, and then tap Patrick on the knee when Patrick shifted and began to speak. She was impressed that Patrick did not go ahead anyway.

  “Milady Ruth,” said Randolph, “thou art silent.”

  “I was wondering,” said Ruth, abstractedly, “if it was dry enough, my lord, for you to play the whistle.”

  “I think not,” said Randolph.

  Everyone else thought not also: there was neither singing nor story-telling that night. But long after everyone was asleep, someone began to play a flute. It sounded eerie and everywhere, like a cricket in a quiet house.

  Laura had been dreaming, again, the dream in which she hurried through an autumn forest listening for a tune. When she heard it, she began to sing to it. Slowly the noise of men starting from their blankets and calling for torches, of sentinels drawing their swords and Fence calling for some book, grew around her, but by the time she realized that she was awake, she had been singing loudly for at least one verse. Ellen and Agatha were sitting up and staring at her. Then they stared past her with even greater shock, and Laura turned around and saw what they had seen.

  The musician came out of the woods at the foot of the mountains, glimmering like the moon behind a wisp of cloud. The night was still, but his long dark hair streamed behind him. His cloak flapped but made no sound, his pale clothes were flattened against him, and he walked with his head bent against some great force. The light that came from him did not show up the trees he came from or the ground whereon he walked. He looked like Ruth and Ellen and Randolph. He lifted the flute he carried, and although his face and clothes did not catch the light of the watchfires, the instrument did.

  “Who claims this music?” he cried, in a voice so like Randolph’s that Laura looked wildly around for him, half convinced that remorse and guilt had sent him mad. But Randolph was standing with Fence beside a fire a little way off. He looked, in the dubious light, perplexed and a little irate, like someone who will be able to remember something if everyone will just keep quiet.