The Secret Country

by PAMELA DEAN

  There was nobody in the dining hall, but there was even more food than usual on the sideboard; some empty plates and cups on the table showed that other people were up too. They inspected the sideboard.

  “Hey!” said Laura. “Oatmeal.”

  “Gah,” said Ellen. “I’m getting tired of pork chops for breakfast.”

  They took their food and dishes and sat down at one end of a long table. The high roof of the hall arched above them, full of shadows. It was very quiet. Outside two birds argued. Laura buttered her bread lavishly, licked her knife, and blanched. She kept forgetting that there was no salt in the butter. There was none in the oatmeal either, or perhaps something else was wrong with it. Whatever was wrong, she didn’t like it.

  “How long,” she asked Ellen, “are we going to be here?”

  “Well,” said Ellen, laying a bare chop bone on her plate, “I guess it depends on how many stories we’ve made up. We never did use them all, you know. By the time Ted comes back to life and is king—”

  “But wait,” said Laura. “Those other stories came before now. We didn’t want them to happen afterward because we didn’t like having stories without Lord Randolph.”

  “I never thought Lord Randolph was so much,” said Ellen, scowling. “Who wants murderers around anyway?”

  “But he wasn’t a murderer before.”

  “He was thinking about it.”

  “Well, you agreed,” said Laura.

  “Huh,” said Ellen. She picked up her plate, letting the bone fall to the table, and examined the pattern. “Hey,” she said. “It’s that darn pattern again.”

  “Has it got the sun or the hole?”

  Ellen turned the plate, examining it. “Well!” she said. “It doesn’t have that scene at all.”

  “I wonder what’s going on,” said Laura, sadly.

  There was a sudden commotion at the door as Ted, Ruth, and Patrick all struggled to get through it at once. It was just barely too narrow for all of them, and none of them would give way. Ruth and Ted were laughing, but Patrick, who was stuck in the middle, kept repeating calmly, “I won this race.”

  “Ha!” said Ruth, dropping to her knees and scooting between their legs and across the floor to the sideboard. “Ha!” she repeated, standing up. “You said, I’ll race you to breakfast. This is breakfast. I win.”

  Ellen and Laura looked at one another.

  “Maybe she’s forgotten about being a sorcerer,” whispered Ellen.

  Laura doubted it. She knew of no rule that sorcerers could not occasionally be silly.

  Patrick picked himself up off the floor and came sedately over to join her. Ted followed. Before they had finished choosing their breakfasts, Randolph, Fence, and Matthew came in and made for the sideboard.

  “Listen, you guys,” said Ruth, holding a ladleful of oatmeal over the iron pot and watching it dubiously, “do you really think Ted can keep up with the hunt? I’ve been riding longer, and—”

  “Shut up!” said Ellen, making odd movements with her eyebrows at the two lords and the magician.

  Ruth did not see her, but they did. Fence and Matthew simply stopped walking and looked receptive, but Randolph, to the everlasting astonishment of Laura, came quietly up behind Ted, who was carefully spooning honey onto a plate, and tickled him. Ellen burst out laughing. Laura dropped her cup of mead into her lap.

  Ted gave an unnerved shriek and leaped backward, his hand going to his belt. Laura saw that he had there a dagger in a leather sheath, and any impulse to laughter she might have felt was stilled.

  Randolph was smiling at Ted, but he looked a little anxious. Ted stared at him for a moment and then giggled, possibly in relief. Patrick rolled his eyes at the ceiling, which made Laura giggle too. Ruth placidly served herself some oatmeal. Fence and Matthew, exchanging glances Laura would have given a great deal to know the meaning of, came and got their own breakfasts.

  Fence sat across from Ellen and Laura as Ellen was trying to mop the mead off Laura’s dress.

  “Stupid napkins,” she muttered. “They’re as bad as the towels.”

  “Never mind,” said Laura, trying to squirm away from her. Fence looked suspicious again. She had not seen him since he gave her the ivory unicorn, and her reaction to that seemed to have been what he expected. Apparently spilling mead in her lap was not what he expected of her. Laura cursed Princess Laura and pushed Ellen’s hand away.

  “Seek out the old napkins,” said Matthew to Ellen, sitting down beside Fence. “They grow more pliable with age.”

  “Unlike men,” said Randolph, and slid himself in next to Ellen.

  “This is not a day for such remarks,” said Fence severely.

  Randolph looked at him, and Laura expected him to shrug. He looked remarkably like Patrick for a moment. Then he smiled. “I cry you mercy,” he said, and bit into his bread.

  “I have been thinking,” he added, with his mouth full, a thing for which he had chided Laura at dinner the night before, “that we require a new riddle for the ceremony for the hunt, if that which we commonly ask the unicorns hath been answered by another. Am I not right, lady,” he said to Ruth, “to say that you have solved the riddle of Shan’s Ring?”

  Ruth choked on her oatmeal and turned red, whether from the choking or from embarrassment Laura did not know. The rest of them sat very still; Laura looked at Ted and saw that he was afraid.

  “What?” said Fence, dropping his knife.

  “Well,” said Ruth, and cleared her throat.

  “Oh, well done!” said Fence, beaming at her. Ruth was too nonplussed to say anything.

  “It’s what I used on Claudia,” she told him, cautiously.

  Fence nodded. “I had wondered,” he said, “but—ah, well, ’tis not for me to pry into your secrets. So Shan’s Ring goes now to be an heirloom of the Green Caves.”

  Ruth shrugged; Laura suspected her of being confused.

  “I would we had known this sooner,” said Fence, looking reproachfully from Ruth to Randolph.

  “Well,” said Ruth, “I thought we’d ask the riddle again and check the unicorn’s answer this year, just to be sure. I mean, the Ring could do what it’s done so far because of a lot more theories than mine.”

  Laura felt Patrick, who had sat down on her other side, move jerkily. She glanced at him. He looked outraged. She supposed that he disliked Ruth’s taking credit for his ideas.

  “Cautious, prudent, sober,” said Fence. “Not according to the Unicorn Hunt, methinks.”

  “What instead, then?” said Randolph.

  “There is our present distress,” ventured Matthew, but both Fence and Randolph shook their heads at him.

  “Not so close to battle as we are,” said Randolph.

  “Indeed not,” said Fence. “The answer would raise more dispute than it could answer; each man would bend it to his own need. The unicorns speak not straightly. We would be more muddled than we are, and what little strategy we have would be undone. Besides, some things it is better not to know.”

  “Isn’t that pretty cautious and prudent too?” said Patrick.

  “Very well,” said Matthew, patiently. “Then let us ask the unicorns what is the nature of Claudia?”

  Everyone turned toward him with exclamations of surprise and pleasure. He looked smug.

  “Excellent,” said Fence.

  “Oh, good,” said Laura. “We can find out who she is and what she’s up to and—”

  Ellen bumped her.

  “Why do you ask who she is?” said Randolph. “She has lived here longer than you have. She and I were from our childhood days brought up here.”

  “She was a goodly child,” said Fence, thoughtfully. “When, I wonder, did—”

  “I keep wondering,” said Laura, who had just thought of it, “if she could have put a spell on us to make us think she’d been here and was Andrew’s sister and was nice, but—”

  “That would be a considerable spell,” said Fence.

  Laura b
egan to feel irritated with him. Obviously he did not like to admit that someone he had not taught could do anything right.

  “In the same league,” said Randolph, suddenly, “as covering the Southlands with monsters that seem as trees?”

  Fence stared at him. “I had thought she furthered her own ends. A spy of the Dragon King?”

  “No, no!” cried Laura, unbearably exasperated. “Lord Andrew is the spy of the Dragon King!”

  “Laurie!” said Ted.

  “Laura!” said Randolph a bare second behind him, and much more severely.

  But Fence brought his hand down on the table with a crash that rattled the bones on the plates and spilled what remained of Laura’s mead. “Why not?” said he.

  “Why?” said Randolph.

  “Consider his beliefs touching magic,” said Matthew.

  “All the better,” said Fence. “The deluded mind is the easier to deceive.”

  “Fie on this,” said Randolph, “where is the evidence?”

  “Laura?” said Fence, and looked at her much too intently for comfort.

  Laura was unbearably frustrated and extremely frightened. None of the others seemed inclined to help her. Or perhaps they could not; they looked frightened too. She swallowed.

  “I just thought so,” she said. “Because he hangs around the King all the time and you can tell he doesn’t like him.” This was a restatement of something Ted had said when he was reporting the second council to them.

  Randolph shrugged. “Andrew likes no one, save perhaps himself.”

  “Well, he doesn’t hang around anybody else,” said Laura, gaining a little confidence from the mere fact that someone had bothered to answer her.

  “Maybe he wants to be King,” said Ellen, a little shakily. Laura looked at her with gratitude.

  Fence had an expression on his face that Laura was not sure she liked; he looked as if he were about to pounce.

  “How could he become King?” said Ruth to Ellen, a little irritably.

  “He’s related,” said Ellen, bristling.

  Randolph, looking at Fence, said, “It is but distantly.”

  “So,” said Fence, “who stands in his way? Ted, Patrick. Who next?”

  “Siblings,” said Randolph, with a sort of glee that Laura did not understand at all. “Patrick the Elder. Anna. Children of siblings. Justin the Younger. Angus. Laura, Ellen. Children of the grandsires’ siblings.”

  Ellen began to giggle.

  “William’s father, John V, had one brother, Edward,” said Fence, frowning as if he were doing mental arithmetic. “His children were James and Elaine.”

  “Elaine,” said Matthew, with the air of one entering a game, “is High Sorceress, and has forfeited her claim.”

  “James,” said Fence, “is a hermit in the Dubious Hills.”

  “John also,” said Fence, “had one sister, Celia, who had five sons and two daughters. None is dead and all have children.”

  Laura had not the remotest idea what they were all doing, but they were so obviously having a joke that she, too, began to giggle.

  “We may see by this,” said Fence, raising his voice over their chortles, “that the other heirs to the throne are far too numerous to be disposed of by assassination or by any other means that Andrew might effect on his own. His alliance with the Dragon King lies therefore within the borders of the probable. Granting the premise,” he added, nodding in Ellen’s direction. She snorted, and began to laugh again.

  “There is a much simpler premise,” said Randolph. “Andrew wants, not the throne, but rather that considerable degree of power that comes from being in the King’s favor and in his confidence, both of which he hopes to gain by speaking what he views as hard sense, when every other counselor who is his own man is babbling children’s stories.”

  “In which case,” said Matthew, “Andrew must himself believe what he says touching magic?”

  Randolph shrugged. “It’s like him,” he said, scornfully. “He can see inward to the minds of men, but never outward to anything that is not Man.”

  “ ‘The proper study of Mankind is Man,’ ” mumbled Ruth.

  “And a more foolish teaching I’ve seldom heard,” exclaimed Randolph. “Had King John studied Man we would all be slaves in the mines of the Dragon King and all our gardens would be a wilderness of snakes.”

  “Laura,” said Fence, “why did you say that Andrew was a spy?”

  Ruth said to Randolph, “If the Dragon King had studied man, he’d only be a man now, and we wouldn’t have to worry about Andrew’s loyalties.”

  “If pigs had wings,” said Fence, laughing, “they would be pigeons.”

  “No matter the circumstances, we needs must concern ourselves with Andrew’s loyalties,” said Randolph, “for that they lie always with himself whether that be right or wrong.”

  “Randolph,” said Fence.

  “Have a care for thine own tongue,” said Randolph, smiling; there was an edge to his words.

  Fence looked thoughtfully at him, and nodded. “A very palpable hit,” he said. “This is a day neither for politics nor for philosophy, save what twisted and uncertain bits of’t come our way in the Riddle Game. But once more, before we turn our tongues to merrier things. Laura?”

  “I already told you,” said Laura, a little sullenly; she had thought the danger was over.

  Fence dropped his hand to the table. “You may be a child,” he said, “which I can see you hope will excuse you, but you are not stupid, nor malicious, nor fanciful. I will have this out of you ere the next council. Let it be for now.”

  With one accord they stood and made for the door.

  I knew I shouldn’t have come, thought Laura, but she could not dread Fence’s questions when the Unicorn Hunt lay before her. She felt that seeing a unicorn again was all that anyone could ask for.

  “Not malicious or fanciful, maybe,” said Ted in Laura’s ear, “but you’re certainly stupid. What made you do that?”

  “They need to know!”

  “Not unless you can back it up.”

  “Well, you told Fence about Randolph!” said Laura, and then stared at him. Had he told Fence as she had, without thinking, because he was exasperated? She tripped on the doorsill, and Ted picked her up. Laura was relieved that Fence had not seen.

  “Keep an eye out for Agatha,” said Patrick, on the other side of Laura. “We don’t want you breaking your neck.”

  “Agatha’s right there,” said Laura, waving as they came out into the courtyard. “Where are the horses for Ted and everybody?”

  “There’s Benjamin,” said Ellen, behind her.

  All four of them stopped and stared. Benjamin was on foot, and he was not dressed for riding. He led one white horse, without a saddle. With him came the King and the other counselors. They were all on foot, and they were not dressed for riding either.

  “What now!” said Ted. “Claudia again?”

  “Where?” said Ellen.

  “No, I mean she did this.”

  “How could she?” said Laura. “She’s locked up.”

  “Be quiet a minute,” said Ted, watching the rest of their breakfast party merge with the King’s. Randolph kissed the King’s hand and spoke to him earnestly. Several counselors made for Fence. Matthew stood looking amused, and Ruth hovered nervously near him. A cardinal whistled out of the fir trees.

  “I know perfectly well,” said Ted, “that this hunt goes on horseback. Now what’s she done?”

  “Well, it saves a lot of trouble,” said Ellen.

  “That’s unusual for Claudia,” said Ted. He caught Patrick by the sleeve. “Name me those random factors again,” he said.

  Patrick blinked at him. “Solving Shan’s Ring. And it looks like you were wrong about that too; it’s not dangerous. Let’s see. Getting Fence in trouble a couple of different ways. Claudia definitely did that. And the Crystal of Earth not working.”

  “And no horses on the hunt?”

  Patrick s
trode across the courtyard, followed by Ted, and tapped Matthew’s elbow. “Sir.”

  “My lord?”

  “Were we not to ride upon this hunt?”

  “The Unicorn Hunt?” said Matthew, astonished. “It was never so. You know that.”

  “He’s just being troublesome,” said Ted, dragging at Patrick, who had acquired his stubborn look.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Ted said to him. “If she can make them believe she’s been at court all her life, if she did, or get out of Fence’s spell, which he says she did anyway, she can make them think they’ve never used horses for the hunt, can’t she?”

  “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Still at Claudia?” said Matthew.

  Patrick looked up at him. “I remember as well as I remember anything that we ride to this hunt.”

  “And I,” said Matthew, “remember better than anything that we do not.”

  “You’re bewitched!”

  “Or you are,” said Matthew, sounding mildly interested.

  “Me!” said Patrick, outraged.

  Ted felt cold all over. “Why not?” he said. “How could you tell? Maybe that’s how they put all this into our heads.”

  Behind them there came a tumult of horns, a blare and blast of enormous melody that shook the bones in them and seemed likely to accomplish what Patrick had wanted when he broke the Crystal of Earth. Their ears rang, the ground trembled, a cloud of pigeons shot away from the towers of High Castle, and Ted saw the cardinal go like a red arrow out of the fir trees.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE hunters came in a crowd of hounds. They were tall men, with intent faces and large eyes. They were dressed in red and green, and they had caps with feathers. Some of them carried horns, but most of them had long spears. Their eyes stared over or around or through the assembled lords and ladies and servants and children. They seemed to contemplate, with infinite patience, something enormously remote, farther than the mountains, past the shores of evening, west of the west.

  The King stepped from among his counselors to greet these men, and he bowed to them.

  “You are welcome, my lords,” he said. His voice carried as well in the courtyard as it had in the Council Chamber. “You do us great honor, to come so far for so brief a time that we who cannot even track the hart may be overbold and merry with the unicorn. Is all well with you?”