“Would you mind holding my hand?” he asked her.
Laura gave him an astonished look and did as he asked.
When they were out of the area that had been fought over, Randolph asked Laura, with a grave politeness, to do him the favor of running ahead and bespeaking some stew for all three of them, “for, although thou hast fought most bravely this day, yet we two have fought longer.”
Laura bowed to him and went on ahead.
“My lord,” said Randolph, stopping Ted with a hand on his shoulder, “for all that she did bravely, and for all that her sword seemed made to deal with such shape-changers, I know the sorcery to deal with them; and had she not turned both our sights away from the battle, thou hadst not been killed and this dilemma would not now be upon us.”
Ted laughed, before he knew he was going to. “That would happen,” he said. He heard himself giggle, and stopped quickly. “I think it’s my fault,” he said, “because she didn’t swear fealty to me, you see, and I didn’t notice. And then I told El—the Lady Ellen that she couldn’t fight and bound her not to by her oath of fealty, you see, and so the Lady Laura got mad.” He snickered again.
Randolph’s mouth had fallen open somewhere in the middle of this speech; when Ted had finished, he blinked and closed it.
“So how can I scold her?” said Ted, laughter giving way to helplessness. It was one thing to have the story go differently than you expected. It was one thing, when you tried to make it go differently, to have that very attempt make it go as you had expected but hoped it wouldn’t. But this business of having something that never did happen in the original story, and that had not been done to stop something in the original story, be responsible for the occurrence of something that did happen in the original story, was another thing, and one thing too many.
“My lord, in some wise the fault is mine,” said Randolph. “I charged myself to see that all of useful age did swear to thee, and methinks I was mistaken in useful age.”
“I didn’t think of it either,” said Ted. “But look—however it happened, how could you let them take you instead?”
“Because it is in the nature of things that they will take me very soon,” said Randolph, looking him straight in the eye. “Thy use for me is drawing to its conclusion; and Fence, though he knoweth not what he knoweth, doth draw near to his conclusions touching the King’s death.”
“Why’d you try to get me to agree to kill you, then?”
“I did not,” said Randolph; “that was a condition made by the Judge of the Dead. It is also,” he said, dropping his hand from Ted’s shoulder, “a condition made by the laws of the Hidden Land, whereof thou art King. Think on it.” And he went on ahead of Ted into the camp.
CHAPTER 15
THERE was a great deal of cheerful confusion in the camp. Ted was swept into his share of it by Ruth, Ellen, and Patrick, who did not actually run and hug him, but did surround him, talk at him, and show a disposition to tug at his sleeves and help him take off his corselet. He wondered briefly why this garment had not turned the sword-thrust that had killed him. Probably the sword had been magic; certainly its wielder had.
Out of the usual tumble of their conversation he managed to discover that Patrick had a slash on his leg from some horned creature, and a bruise on his side from he was not sure what. He seemed both exultant and subdued; at least, thought Ted, many of his most Patrick-like qualities were subdued. He had gotten through the battle so well largely because Ellen, at the last minute, had insisted on his having her magic sword.
“But you weren’t used to it!” said Ted.
“I took it and the ordinary sword,” said Patrick, “and lost the ordinary one in the first five minutes. But the magic one seemed to know how to fight all the strange creatures by itself. And Benjamin,” he said, grimacing, “stuck to me like a piece of gum and took care of all the normal soldiers.” On his dusty face was an expression compounded of glee and puzzlement. Ted wondered if he could possibly have enjoyed the battle. Now was not the time to ask; it would only remind Ellen that she had been prevented from fighting.
“Matthew and Randolph did the same to me,” said Ted.
“Did the stones come out of your hilt, too?” Laura asked Patrick.
Patrick showed her that they had not; Ellen demanded to know what Laura had meant by “too”; and Ted was just as pleased to be dragged by Randolph away from the rising tide of Ellen’s indignation and into a brief Council about what councils should be held.
He was not glad for long. He wanted most desperately to collect his fellow-imposters and discuss with them what Randolph had done about the bargaining, what Claudia appeared to have done to their other selves, and what they proposed to do about it all. It was galling to him to be saddled, on top of these burning responsibilities, with innumerable kingly duties that could far better be performed by others.
Fence and Randolph wanted to leave half the army behind to deal with any strays from the Dragon King’s; they wanted it decided whether to bury the dead where they were, or take them back, or bury some and take some back; they wanted to settle whether an envoy should be sent to the Dragon King’s court, and if so, who it should be and what he should say.
Ted could not find fault with these wants, but he wished they would leave him out of it. Just when he could have done with being ignored, they had to bring him in on everything. He knew nothing about the army, but he had to sit for hours listening to Fence and Randolph and the pitiful remnants of his own King’s Council wrangling over which pieces of it should be left behind and with what precise instructions.
No doubt it would be good for a new King. But Ted had no patience with it when he had not decided to be King. It now seemed impossible to him that, knowing where Edward was and being able to talk to him, they should be unable to get him back where he belonged.
Besides, it was almost unbearable to sit and look at all the empty seats. Of the counselors he had lost, he remembered only Conrad well; he had not lost any of the game’s favorites. Nor, perhaps unfortunately, had he lost Andrew, who had not so much as a scratch. But along with him, he had only Randolph (with his arm in a sling); Julian (who limped); Jerome, Matthew, Benjamin (all of whom had their heads bandaged); and Fence (who seemed very gloomy and was not a proper counselor anyway). He missed the cheerful temper and practical mind of Conrad. So, he found, did everybody else. With the exception of Benjamin, of the erratic temper and anomalous position, Conrad had been the only counselor of very great age or experience; nobody else seemed to be over thirty. Ted no longer found the idea of appointing new and untraditional counselors quite so appealing.
Except for Fence, Randolph, and Benjamin, who acted toward him precisely as they always had, the counselors did not seem to find Ted very appealing either. The answer to the puzzle of their constraint and odd glances was obvious once he thought of it; but it took him a day and a night and half another day to think of it. It was, of course, hard to act normally around someone who had been brought back from the dead by sorcery. As far as he could tell, only his Council, his sister, and his cousins knew about that.
Randolph told Ted that, with his gracious permission—that part sounding like an order, not a request—they were to camp three days and four nights in the round valley between the desert and the mountains.
On the first day after the battle Ted found out who had been killed, and was taken by Randolph and Fence to visit those who appeared to wish they had been. The Secret Country seemed to have remarkable methods for curing bodily wounds, but the wounds inflicted by the Dragon King’s minions must have been mostly mental. Those who had been hurt had dreams worse than any of Ted’s. Fence, however, seemed more at home with these dreams, interpreting them handily and offering numerous methods, from potions to poetry, of preventing their return.
Ted stayed close to Fence during this visit; at first, because he had been braced for horrors of one sort, and then because he began to be visited by those of another. He knew quite firml
y, if vaguely, that hospitals had been terrible, verminous, filthy places before the advent of modern medicine. You could hardly expect modern medicine in the Secret Country; therefore he had been steeled for filth and vermin and the stench of gangrene. He found nothing of the sort. Agatha grumbled about the desert dust and sand that crept into everything, but all this did was give the hospital tents the air of a slightly neglected but very tidy attic. For the most part things were clean, airy, and decorous.
But nobody was happy, or even restful. Fence, who had flung off his gloom like an old cloak when he ducked into the first tent, could make people smile, but the moment he moved on they stopped smiling. There was an atmosphere of dread such as Ted had never known and would not, perhaps, have recognized had it not been for that part of his mind which knew some of what Edward had known. That underlayer of his thoughts was not susceptible to search; he recognized the feeling of the hospital tents without for a moment knowing what he recognized, or what had happened to Edward to make this state known to him.
“What’s the matter?” he exploded at Fence, the moment they were outside again.
“They have bad dreams,” said Fence.
“Yes, I know, but for heaven’s sake!”
“Those are the war wounds of sorcerers,” said Fence. “Be glad thou hast chosen another way.”
The evening of that day and most of the next were taken up with the disposition of the army. Then everyone wrangled over what to do with the bodies of the dead. Ted, during a break for food, took Randolph aside and asked if they could not all be brought back, as he had been. Randolph asked him if he cared to choose who should die in their stead. Ted, his suspicions satisfied and his conscience hurting him, apologized. The Council finally decided to bury in the valley those who had no families, and to take back with them those who did, so that the families could have the consolation of a funeral. Ted thought that if he were a family he would not find a funeral consoling.
That evening they discussed whether they ought to send an envoy to the Dragon King. They held their councils in the pavilion that had been set up, before the battle, to keep the rain off the cook-fires. It still smelled of woodsmoke and a batch of burnt bread. They sat on folding stools of wood and canvas, the ingenuity of which had both delighted and enraged Patrick; and leaned their shabby elbows on a series of long, narrow tables that also folded, but were less ingenious. To them clearly from outside came the smells of the stew the ousted cooks were making; a few tired voices and a few vigorous; and distantly the sound of a lute, two recorders, and an indeterminate number of voices singing mournfully a shapeless tune.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
“The best you may hope for,” said Benjamin in his abrupt voice, “is to waste yon villain’s time and patience as he hath wasted ours. You’ll stir in him neither regret nor fear.”
Agatha’s voice sang alone:
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
“But leave him alone,” said Randolph, “and you’ll stir contempt.”
“We have that already,” said Fence.
All the voices rose:
Red Mage or Blue
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as
you.
Ted, not wishing to consider Phlebas, and made courageous by impatience, said, “Isn’t it a little late to send him a protest? We should have done that when Fence came back and told us about all the signs of his spies in the South.”
“Certainly we should have,” said Randolph, “but your father forbade it.” His face and his bandage were both dirty, and his eyes narrowed as if his head hurt him, but his voice was as usual. “Besides, we should send more than protest. We have won a great battle, my lord, and we should press upon the Dragon King terms such that we need not fight another.”
“How can you make terms with somebody who has no honor?” said Ted, bewildered.
Fence looked up.
“By force, how else?” said Randolph. “In this matter, force sorcerous.”
Ted saw Fence wince and look troubled. Randolph looked over at him, apparently expecting him to give details, as if this were a plan they had worked out between them. He caught the end of the wince, and his face set as if the headache had gotten worse. Fence’s eyes widened suddenly and he leaned forward. Randolph’s gaze dropped before the wizard’s: not quickly or sneakily, but with considerable deliberation. Fence’s face flushed, and he turned to Ted.
“If Belaparthalion and Chryse did but give him a moment of their thought—” he said.
“Why didn’t they come to the coronation?” said Ted, thoughtlessly; but Fence did not seem to take the question amiss.
“No unicorn will come under a roof,” he said, “and thou knowest well that Belaparthalion fitteth not under any roof ever devised. We had not the time to travel to a place of their choosing. Fear not; thou hadst their blessing on thy accession.”
Ted was not sure he was comforted by this.
“What have we to offer them?” said Randolph, and once more looked expectantly at Fence.
Fence grinned. “I have certain weapons,” he said, “for which those two indeed have no use, but whose presence in hands such as ours makes them to sleep most uneasily.”
Ted thought of the armory below Fence’s tower.
Randolph frowned. “Have such hands as ours no use for them?”
Fence gave him a long, thoughtful look that to Ted seemed to say something like “I thought as much.” “Less use for them than for the good will of Belaparthalion,” he said, a little reprovingly.
“And Chryse?” said Matthew, without looking up from his writing.
“The good will of such as she is more perilous than the malice of the Dragon King,” said Fence, “but if history speaketh aright, she hath a fondness for Belaparthalion that we might turn to our own account.”
“Wilt thou speak with them, then?” said Julian.
“If the Council and the King so desire.”
The Council murmured that it did so desire, and Ted nodded.
“Granting that we have that to force him to our demands, then,” said Randolph, “whom will we send?”
“Lord Andrew?” said Ted, actuated half by mischief and half by curiosity.
“A most astute thought,” said Randolph, holding Ted’s eyes in a manner half reassuring and half alarming. “A true test of your philosophy, my lord,” he added to Andrew. “Whom do you desire to accompany you?”
“Julian,” said Andrew. He was a little red, but seemed less discomposed than Ted had hoped. He had thought it a nice irony to send Andrew as an envoy to the master he had failed; apparently Randolph thought so as well. Ted supposed he might have given to Andrew only an opportunity to make his excuses, whatever those might be.
“My lord?” said Randolph to Julian.
“Gladly,” said Julian; but he looked as alarmed as Andrew should have. “Might you spare Lord Jerome as well, your Majesty?”
Ted looked at Randolph, who gave him no sign. “I think so,” said Ted. Fence had said he must learn to speak for himself. What was galling was that he was speaking for Edward.
“You must choose you a party of soldiers also,” said Randolph, and wandered off into a maze of diplomatic complications that Ted did not bother to follow.
He busied himself instead with the exchange of looks between Fence and Randolph. At first he thought that Fence had not considered sorcerous force the way to keep the Dragon King honorable. But the rest of the discussion showed that he thought it a fine way. He must, then, have been disturbed by something in Randolph’s attitude. Perhaps saying “How else?” about sorcerous force was somehow wrong.
Ted scowled, caught
Matthew’s amazed glance, and composed his face again. Fence had been unhappy with, but not surprised by, what Randolph had said. And Randolph had expected this reaction and had set himself to ignore it. Now that had surprised Fence; and from Fence’s surprise Randolph had looked away.
Ted, in a burst of illumination, thought, why, Fence kept expecting Randolph to—to deny, or apologize for, or at least be ashamed of, what he said and the way he looked; and Randolph kept not denying it, and Fence looked as if that made him remember something, or realize it. And when Randolph asked didn’t we have a use for the weapons, then Fence thought that proved he was right. About what? He shook his head, wishing he knew what in Randolph’s original statement had been so distasteful to Fence.
He sat revolving the rest of the conversation in his mind, looking for a clue there, and when he remembered Fence’s saying, “I have certain weapons,” he knocked over his untouched wine-cup, and sat without apologizing while they sent for a page to clean it up. How could he have been so stupid? Those weapons had to be Shan’s and Melanie’s swords.
If Fence gave them to a dragon and a unicorn, that would be the end of that; or at least, Ted and his relatives could spend years questing around for them. The idea of such a quest flamed up briefly in his mind, and was pleasing to him; then it was drowned in a flood of fear, and he turned his attention back to the Council, trying to discover when Fence planned to give the swords to the creatures.
He was a little comforted by a number of intimations that dragons always talked over everything for a long time and that unicorns would not do anything to please you unless you could convince them that it would hurt you more than you knew. He probably had some time to work in. But this was one more reason to talk to the others.
On the third day the Council met again, but Randolph told Ted that he did not need to attend; he could read over Matthew’s notes later. Randolph sounded a little strained as he said this; but Ted would have let the Council plot his own murder if it would have given him an hour with the others. He scrambled around the camp, dragging Patrick from watching a competition with throwing-knives, interrupting Ruth and Laura in a flute lesson, and summoning Ellen away from Benjamin, whom she was making late for the Council by demanding fighting lessons of him.