The Whim of the Dragon (7 page)

“So,” said Fence. “You’re very like them. But the copyist hath erred, here and there.”

“Who
is
the copyist?” said Patrick.

“Claudia,” said Laura.

“Not Claudia alone,” said Fence. “She hath too few years, for so much knowledge. That she doth is forbidden, or not yet arrived at in the careful labors of the true wizards. Hath trod a hard path and a long, that would take the road less traveled by.”

“And that,” said Ellen, as if she couldn’t help it, “has made all the difference.”

“Stop showing off,” said Ruth, sharply.

Fence looked at her quickly. “Showing off what?”

“You sound to us,” said Ted, “as if you’re quoting poetry half the time. Not just you—not just thou, but all of you.”

“This thy William Shakespeare was a poet, then, and I did presently recite from him?”

“Yes; but you just recited from Robert Frost,” said Ruth.

“I do not know,” said Fence, with considerable emphasis, “to read this riddle.”

“Well,” said Ted, “that’s the least of our worries.”

“Save that, ’til it be solved, we bear the millstone of Prince Patrick,” said Fence, quirking the corner of his mouth in the way he had.

“Not prince,” said Patrick.

“Amend me not,” said Fence. “Thou art the prince to all save me and Randolph, and mayhap some few others ’twere good to tell’t.”

“What all,” said Ted, “do we have to do?”

“Two matters strictly of the Hidden Land,” said Fence, looking to his right at Patrick, who looked blandly back at him but turned rather red, “we must not neglect, for they are pressing: the embassy to the Dragon King; and the messengers to Chryse and Belaparthalion, trying whether, in change for these swords of yours, they will put some rein on the plunging ambition of that prince.”

“Can you do them without us?” said Ted, leaning forward a little to see beyond Laura’s head, which she had propped on both hands. Nobody seemed likely to care that she had her elbows on the table. “Because what we need to do is to track down Claudia and find out how she found us and brought us here and what the connection between our country and yours really is.”

“We also,” said Laura, “need to find out who the red man is.”

“And we need to get your kids back from the dead,” said Ellen, “so we can go home again.”

Fence bit his lip, and then seemed to give up, and grinned. “All our ways may lie together. To discover the red man, ’twere best to read in the library in Fence’s Country. And that lies between here and the haunts of Chryse and Belaparthalion. To consult with the dead while being still alive, some must travel to the Gray Lake. And that lies between here and the realm of the Dragon King.”

“That’s easy,” said Ellen.

“Too easy,” said Patrick.

“How so?” said Fence. “Power and knowledge are two, but as twin compasses are two; one makes no show to move, but doth, if th’ other do.”

This baffling utterance, with which Fence seemed rather pleased, was accorded a blank silence. Ted realized that he, not Fence, had asked the last pertinent question. He looked at Fence, who appeared expectant.

“I would like,” said Ted, “to get it into everybody’s head that it’s essential to go on pretending we’re the royal children. Is it true, Fence, that they say, ‘Walk not in the Hidden Land, it will take all you have and laugh you to scorn for having nothing?’”

“Travel not,” said Ruth.

“Oh, aye,” said Fence. “They say so. Fence’s Country and the Outer Isles do have a better welcome for strangers; but ’tis not as strangers that you’ll be chastised, if matters run amiss, but as usurpers.”

“Usurpers do away with the rightful claimant,” said Patrick.

“By some accounts, you have done so. If you have power o’er matters in this land, is not Claudia but another of those matters?”

“But she wasn’t in our game at all,” said Ted.

“Fence,” said Laura. “The night of the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, I asked you, who is that snake lady. And you said you thought I knew her. I didn’t.” Fence regarded her steadily, and she added, “We didn’t like her, either.”

“Child,” said Fence, “fret not on me. But there are others will say, on the heels of such dissembling as the five of you have performed this summer, what is that, or any tale of thy ignorance, save another instance of’t?”

Laura put her head down and stuck the end of one braid into her mouth. Fence turned his innocent gaze upon Ruth, who was scowling, and said, “My lady, thou in especial art endangered.”

“Don’t I know it!” said Ruth.

“Canst thou then think of putting off thy duties for a while?”

“Well,
I
don’t mind,” said Ruth. “My duties would make it hard for me to go anywhere. But is it fair to Lady Ruth?”

“If Lady Ruth should walk again where fair or unfair concerns her, I’ll see to her reinstatement,” said Fence.

Ruth made a face. “Now I just have to manage Meredith.”

“I’ll speak to her,” said Fence.

“Thank you.”

“Do we want to get cut off from the Green Caves like that?” said Patrick. “If the cardinals are minions of the Green Caves, and the Green Caves people are stingy about sharing their knowledge—” He looked at Fence, who nodded. “Well, then, unless Ruth is one of them, we may not have much chance of solving that part of the mystery.”

Ruth said, “I don’t have to resign
immediately.
”

“We’ll do’t when the time is right,” said Fence.

There was another silence, broken by the sound of footsteps and breathing and a thump on the door as of somebody kicking it. Fence got up and unlocked it, and let in Randolph and the yellow-haired page, both carrying trays and panting. They set the trays at the end of the table. The boy started to fill mugs from a large jug, and Randolph said, “I thank thee, I’ll do the rest.” The page gave him a startled look and left.

Randolph poured for all of them, with extreme care. It occurred to Ted that he wanted to defer the moment of greeting. Ted looked at Ruth, who was staring at the table; at Ellen, who was trying to catch Randolph’s eye because she was genuinely glad to see him; at Patrick, who was gazing fixedly at Randolph as Shan had stared at Fence. Ted didn’t blame Randolph for stalling.

Randolph finally sat down at the other end of the table, with Laura on his right and Ruth on his left, his back to the door. He raised his mug. “To deception,” he said, “and to its confounding.” He drank without offering to click mugs with anybody. The rest of them drank too. It was the Secret Country’s version of lemonade, too full of cinnamon and nutmeg for Ted’s taste.

Fence put his mug down and said, looking hard at Randolph, “In your true guises, you are all welcome to High Castle.”

Randolph sat without responding. His hair and the dark blue of his clothes swallowed the lamplight; only his eyes, greener than Fence’s, the green of Ruth’s or Ellen’s, gleamed a little, and the golden contents of his goblet as he turned it between his palms. Ted suddenly realized that Randolph was wearing no jewelry. It had all been connected with his study of magic, and he was no longer Fence’s apprentice. Randolph finally said, in a much quieter voice than Ted was used to from him, “What others must we doom to this conspiracy?”

Down the length of the gleaming table, over the plates of meat pies and cheese pies and spinach pies, over the bowls of grapes and peaches and the little hard yellow apples of the Hidden Land, Fence’s eyes met Randolph’s and held them. “Benjamin,” he said.

And Randolph flinched. His voice was perfectly even. “Have we not broke sorrow enow to him to last a lifetime, without this burden also?”

“Consider his lifetime,” said Fence. “I’ll tell him; don’t trouble yourself. Who besides?”

“If there’s a learned pane in this window we piece together,” said Randolph, “ ’twere best have Matthew.”

“That is to have Celia also,” said Fence.

Randolph nodded.

“What about Agatha?” said Laura.

“They were very dear to her,” said Fence.

“She doesn’t act like it!” said Ellen, in astonished tones.

Fence looked at her briefly, but did not answer. Randolph, Ted realized, was acting as if he were having a private conference with Fence, and did not want to acknowledge the remarks of the five of them. Ted couldn’t blame him, but that did not make this treatment easier to take.

“Agatha’s so hard to fool, you see,” said Laura.

“You need deceive her a bare sennight,” said Fence. “We must away.”

“Well, okay, then,” said Laura.

Ted removed his startled gaze from his sister; nobody had asked her opinion, and it was usually hard enough to get it out of her when she was asked. He addressed Fence, who was still looking at Randolph, and rather as a nearsighted person will look at the chart in the eye doctor’s office. “Can we manage with so few?” said Ted.

“I do believe it,” said Fence, without moving. “If Randolph can sift the riddles of the Gray Lake, Matthew and I shall do what we may with the Library of Heathwill.”

“Who do we go with?” asked Ellen.

“I fear me you must be separate,” said Fence.

There was a chilly silence.

“Well, who gets to decide?” said Ellen.

Fence said to Randolph, “Which wilt thou have?”

Ted was reminded of choosing sides for gym class, and hoped absurdly that Laura would not be the last one picked.

For the first time since he had entered the room, Randolph looked at the five of them, one by one. His face was judicious. Patrick scowled at him, and he did not react. Ellen grinned, and he raised an eyebrow at her. Ruth lifted her chin and returned a good imitation of the judicious expression. Ted, when his turn came, tried to look reliable. Randolph’s gaze lingered on him.

“Are you right-handed?” said Randolph.

“Yes, my lord.” Ted remembered with uncomfortable vividness their first fencing lesson. Randolph, however, who must have had it in mind also, looked vaguely satisfied, though there was no warmth behind it.

“For an embassy to the Dragon King,” said Randolph, “’twere best have our own King.”

Ted did not think this a good plan to ensure that he didn’t kill Randolph, but Randolph was right; if they were going to continue this masquerade, the King belonged with the embassy wherein courtesy and preserving the forms mattered most. He doubted that Belaparthalion or Chryse would be half so impressed by the King of the Hidden Land as they would be by Fence.

“True enough,” said Fence. He turned his head to Laura. “I think I must have thee,” he said. “In the sorcerous library, we may find news of thy talent. Randolph?”

“Lady Ruth,” said Randolph, in rather an odd voice, “you have spoken once with the Judge of the Dead; will you so again?”

“An it please you, my lord,” said Ruth, in an equally odd voice, “I will.”

They had spoken with the Judge of the Dead in order to return Ted himself to life. Ted wondered what had happened then that remembering it now should make them sound so strange. The memory made him feel odd too, but he was the one who had died.

“Well, what about the rest of us?” said Ellen.

“A moment,” said Fence. “When entered you this country?”

“We came in the first week of June,” said Patrick, “but we didn’t do anything except wander around the Well of the White Witch until Ted and Laura showed up, on the fourteenth. Benjamin came looking for the real kids, and found us.”

“So she did it then,” said Randolph, “and all our dealings thereafter were with you five.”

They all nodded.

“What,” said Ellen, “about the rest of us?”

“I’ll take you,” said Fence, smiling. He was probably relieved to be able to change the subject. “Fence’s Country will like you greatly.”

“Is that where you’re from, Fence?” said Laura.

Fence went on smiling, but Randolph’s face grew utterly blank, and then he pushed the still-full goblet away from him until it clinked against the nearest platter. Fence said placidly to Laura, “Nay, I am but named for him that gave’s name to the country. I come from the Outer Isles.”

Randolph stood up. “I cry you mercy,” he said to Fence. “I have yet some business that awaiteth me.”

“This won’t serve,” said Fence, with no particular emphasis.

Randolph leaned the heels of his hands on the table and said, “I do beg you, then, hold to the affair we are bent on and start not aside for these trivialities.”

“Any knowledge,” said Fence, “is armor ’gainst their discovery.”

Randolph sat down again. It turned out that more planning must wait until Benjamin, Matthew, and Celia had been informed of what was going on; and until Andrew had been told that the King would be joining his party. Ted thought that this might cause trouble, but he meant to let Fence worry about it. For all the discussion they got done, Fence might as well have let Randolph leave; unless he had meant not to continue the discussion, but to make Randolph eat with the five imposters.

Which was probably in theory the right thing to do; but nobody had much of an appetite.

L
AURA lay in the breezy darkness of the room she shared with Ellen, under linen sheets and silk quilts and, square on her chest, the hot, solid weight of the black cat, which had decided suddenly after months of ignoring them that Ellen and Laura were the only people it could stand to look at.

She was not exactly asleep, or exactly awake. A blue wash of moonlight swept in the unglazed window, struck the silver pitcher that sat on their dressing table, and fell muted into her face. She wished Ellen snored. She wished for a thunderstorm. She was afraid of what she would see if she dozed, and terrified of what she would dream if she slept. She was not the Princess Laura and she had never even laid eyes on the Princess Laura’s mother; but Fence had told her that the visions she saw and the oddities she dreamed of were a legacy of that mother’s family. She did not mind playing Princess Laura, but she minded this.