“You could talk to Fence,” said Ted, “or Agatha. I bet they know the proper forms for rejecting a suitor without hurting his feelings.”
“And tell them I want to go to Harvard?” said Ruth, bitterly.
“Maybe you could commute,” said Ted. The conversation was ridiculous. They were going home. But he derived some small comfort from talking as if they were not, and would somehow have to live with what they had done. Ruth was looking at him as she more often looked at Patrick. Ted became irate. He added stubbornly, “Use magic somehow.”
Ruth, to his surprise, appeared to consider the suggestion. Perhaps this mummery comforted her, too. “It would be an awful waste of magic,” she said briskly.
“Well, it’s not as if it were electricity,” said Ted.
“How do you know?”
“We could ask Fence,” said Ted. “As a matter of fact, we really should give some thought to telling Fence the whole thing.”
“We’d end up in an insane asylum.”
“There aren’t any,” said Ted.
“Or a dungeon. I’m not an initiate; I haven’t taken any vows. And I’ve been faking my way around Green Caves ceremonies for months now, until I don’t have to fake it any more, and I can tell you from what I’ve read that they wouldn’t like that at all. And you’ve been letting them treat you as if you were King.”
“I said, tell Fence,” said Ted. “After hearing his oath, I don’t think he’d give us up as spies.”
“Fence!” said Ruth. “We’ve been acting like his friends, when we hardly know him. He’s been treating us as friends, and we’re strangers. We think we know him well, but he doesn’t know us. And he’d hate the idea that we know him well because we think we made him up, even if we couldn’t have. And—”
“All right, all right.”
“And what would they do with us if they got the other ones back? Now if we got the other ones back, we might have some bargaining power. You’re spoiled, Ted—we all are, because we’re the royal children. This is not a very comfortable place for strangers. Do you know what the people of the Outer Isles say about us? ‘Travel not in the Hidden Land: It will take all you have and laugh you to scorn for having nothing.’ ”
“All right.”
Ruth pulled a red leaf from a bush and began to shred it. There had been no frost yet, but some of the trees were beginning to turn already. Ted thought briefly that back in Illinois it would still be summer; and then remembered with a shock that it would still be June.
“Besides all that,” he said, “I think we should be getting home. We still have the rest of the summer to get through back there. Not that it won’t keep, I guess, but—”
“Rest of the summer!” said Ruth, abandoning the leaf and pulling at her hair again. “It’s winter in Australia, but never mind. We have to get through the rest of our lives!”
“We don’t want to go home, do we?” said Ted.
“Not in the least. Do you suppose they have any good universities here?”
“Well, you can stay. I won’t kill Randolph, and the only way not to kill him is to go home.”
“If you’re gone Patrick will have to kill him,” said Ruth, with a despairing giggle.
Ted thought of Patrick’s dream, and profound unease settled on him.
“Besides,” said Ruth, “that would be cheating.”
“This isn’t a game,” said Ted, automatically.
“But we can’t help acting as if it were.”
If he thought about that at all, he would think too much, and possibly become as dangerous as Patrick. He stood up and held out his hand to Ruth. “Well, let’s ask Fence about the magic, anyway. It can’t hurt.”
“Your manners are improving,” said Ruth, accepting the hand but sounding rather blank.
That did not bear thinking about, either.
They got Fence almost to themselves at dinner; Randolph and Matthew also shared their fire. Fence seemed as usual. Matthew was unwontedly subdued, and Randolph did not so much as smile at them when they sat down. There was a great deal of hilarious laughter from the other fires.
“Fence,” said Ted, “I wanted to ask you a question about magic.”
Fence looked accommodating.
“Is it infinite, or does it run out?”
“Magic runneth not out,” said Fence, slowly, turning the phrase over as if he liked it. “The limitation of magic is in the strength of those it must run through. In itself it hath no limits.”
“Do a great many very small magics wear people out?” asked Ruth.
“Of a certainty,” said Fence. “Those are more perilous than a single great deed of sorcery. They creep upon their doers like the sunset; little by little the light goeth, but in the end it is dark, and they without their torches.”
“Suddenly one day you fall over?”
Fence nodded; he seemed, again, to enjoy Ruth’s phrasing. He looked thoughtfully at Ruth. Ted, afraid he would ask why someone who had studied in the Green Caves for years would need to ask such questions, asked one himself.
“Fence, what do you know about other worlds?”
Ruth choked briefly. Fence turned his thoughtful look upon Ted. “Speakst thou of the stars?”
“Well . . .”
“Is the world round?” Ruth asked abruptly.
Fence was taken aback. “Of course.”
“Ruth!” said Ted.
“Just checking.”
“No doubt one day thy knowledge will check mine,” Fence said to her, “but not in such questions as that.”
“Fence,” said Ted, bypassing the pun, which had made Matthew grin and Ruth scowl, “how would you get to those other worlds?”
“Is there any magic for it?” added Ruth.
“No,” said Fence; he seemed wary, but willing to answer. “There is no magic quicker than a dragon or a unicorn.”
“What would you say,” Ted asked him, “if you crawled under a hedge in High Castle garden and came out in the Border Lands?”
Fence sat bolt upright, joggling Matthew’s elbow. Matthew, his wine soaking into his cloak, leaned forward, paying it no heed.
“Hast done this thing?” demanded Fence.
“No,” said Ted, truthfully enough.
“My saying would serve me ill,” said Fence. “The curses I know are many and deep.”
“Curses?”
“Dost know what danger such things hold? Dost know what power to make such a place in the hedge would need? To that, I am a kitchen-wizard and Randolph is a spit-boy and Lady Ruth is a gardener.”
“Oh,” said Ted. He wondered if they should add to their note the information that Shan’s and Melanie’s swords held this power. Or was it the places under the hedge and the bush that held it? Or was it Claudia?
“Whence came such ideas?” Fence asked both of them.
“Well,” said Ted, feebly, “well, we were wondering if we could shorten the march home.”
Randolph laughed; Matthew sat back and began mop-ping at his cloak; but Fence looked Ted and Ruth over as if they were a book full of difficult writing, and said no more.
They received a tremendous welcome when they returned to High Castle. People cheered and sang and blew on horns and piped and threw flowers. Ted went cold when the first bouquets came down, scattering their petals on the wind: he felt like a body in some funeral of the spirit. He looked at Patrick’s fair head strewn with petals white and red, and for the moment was entirely willing to go home and never return.
CHAPTER 18
AFTER two days of fruitless discussion, several unsuccessful attempts to catch Fence’s door open, and a Council which confirmed Ted’s guess that the weapons with which Fence meant to bribe Chryse and Belaparthalion were indeed Shan’s and Melanie’s swords, they decided to try stealing Fence’s keys again.
Their only other hope seemed to be to wait for the last moment and somehow waylay the expedition to take the swords to Chryse. They thought that that seemed even less li
kely to succeed than using the keys again. Besides, since the entire business with the swords and Chryse and Belaparthalion was not in the game, they did not know whether it would take place before or after the revelation to Fence of Randolph’s crime. Ted was sure that this unhappy event ought to happen in October. But he was no longer willing to put much faith in what ought to happen; and when he discovered that Ellen thought it happened in September and the others seemed not to have any idea of its date, he wanted to hurry.
He and Ruth and Patrick came to this conclusion in Ruth’s room, and they had just begun to discuss when Patrick should make his attempt when Laura and Ellen burst in on them.
“Ruth!” said Ellen. “Fence and Randolph are in the Mirror Room; we went looking for Agatha and they were polite but they hurried us out and Randolph looks awful. I think this is it.”
Ted and Patrick leaped for the door and pounded down the hall.
“Should we go back, too?” said Ellen.
“We’re not there in the real scene.”
“Neither is Patrick,” said Ellen.
“I don’t want to see it,” said Laura.
“But if there’s one more chance to stop it—”
“I don’t think,” said Ruth, “that anything can stop Randolph once he makes up his mind.”
The door to the Mirror Room was closed. Ted and Patrick looked at one another, put their shoulders to it, and burst into the room. Fence and Randolph faced one another over a carved chest against the outer wall. The draperies were drawn over all the mirrors and windows; the room seemed dark and close.
“Fence!” said Ted, although both of them were already looking at him.
“What’s the matter?” said Fence, coming forward.
“Not the matter, exactly,” said Ted, and went on with the first thing that came into his head. “I just remembered that I never asked Randolph to tell me about the Council I missed, before we marched back, and—” He had no idea what to say next, but Randolph came forward, too, with a wry look.
“You come most carefully upon your hour,” he said. “Fence and I were speaking of that Council even now.”
He gestured at the only chair in the room, and Ted found himself sitting down in it. Patrick came and sat on the floor next to him. Fence and Randolph faced one another in the middle of the room, and seemed to forget about the two boys.
“Well?” said Fence to Randolph; in his face was a challenge, but in his voice a plea. Ted sat forward: he thought he knew what that Council had been about, and that he had delivered them all into Randolph’s hands.
“Do you truly say to me,” said Randolph, “that all the Council could make nothing of this matter? That none among them hath a thought upon it save that they know not what befell? Not one hath the glimmer of a thought?”
“Some have,” said Fence, reluctantly.
“What is this glimmer, then?”
Fence scowled, and then ruined the effect by sitting on Agatha’s sewing table and swinging his legs. “Their thought considers the matter too loosely,” he said. “Where did the plot begin, and how long was it in the making? They have left unexamined the vintner, the merchant, the wine cellar, the butler, the kitchen, the page.”
“Forget not the cupbearer,” said Randolph.
Fence glanced at him and smiled, but Ted thought the smile looked more hopeful than confident. “Thou hast heard the whispers, then,” he said. “ ’Twill be easy enough to stifle such talk; trouble not thyself. I will see to’t.”
Ted stood up quietly and backed for the door. He felt trapped and frozen, and could think only of getting out. Patrick looked at him in surprise.
“Consider first, my lord,” said Randolph, “whether such talk ought indeed to be stifled.”
Patrick stood up, too, not quietly enough.
“What ails the two of you?” demanded Fence.
They looked at him.
“There’s no need,” Randolph said to them. “If you know, what will it avail you not to hear me say it? If you know not,” he added, as Ted tried to say something, “what do you fear?”
“Randolph,” said Fence, who had stopped swinging his legs and was looking a little pale.
“Could vintners and merchants distill such poison?” said Randolph. “Could butlers, pages, cooks know its secret? You taught me the use of my wits: now where are yours?”
Patrick walked over and stood beside Ted, bumping shoulders with him. He was shaking. So was Ted.
“Tarry but a moment longer,” said Randolph, not looking at them.
Fence slid down from the table, and as the folds of his starry robe fell into place again he seemed suddenly to dwarf the room. “If my wits are addled,” he said, “I needs must make do with thine. Make them to work for me, Randolph.”
“I know the truth,” said Randolph. “I need not my wits to discover it. And knowing it already, how can I tell you in what way you should work your wits to discover it yourself?”
“Tell me this truth, then,” said Fence.
“No, indeed I will not,” said Randolph. “I would not betray your teachings thus. How many times, knowing the truth, have you made me dig it out for myself? Can I do less for you?”
“Knowest thou,” said Fence to Randolph, “why I did thus?”
“I do,” said Randolph. “It was that I might believe the truth when I saw it. For truth hath strange and terrible shapes.”
“And this truth,” said Fence, “a most terrible one.”
“I will not hear these things,” said Ted, as the game dictated he should; but he was far too late. They did not heed him. They saw only one another.
“Say it,” said Randolph.
“Randolph,” said Fence. In his round face the bones showed clearly. “You have betrayed all I ever taught you; you have betrayed your liege lord and your solemn word; all this besides with the lowest and cruellest of all weapons, a weapon of cowards. You poisoned King William.”
“Well done,” said Randolph. “The master is yet master, and not pupil.”
“Had the master been truly master,” said Fence, “the pupil had not done what is done.”
“He didn’t!” cried Ted, hardly knowing what he said. “How could he have? I knocked the bottle out of his hand; I took the cup from him and brought him another; how could he have done it?”
Randolph looked over at Patrick. “Thy royal brother,” he said to Ted, “following the philosophy of Andrew and scorning magic as tricks only, hath set himself to learn such tricks as, he thinketh, account for the doings of sorcery. And in an idle moment of the dull winter, he did teach some few of those tricks to me; and so I had them to hand when thou, Edward, took from me the cup I had prepared.”
“But why did you have two doses of poison, that doesn’t make sense!” said Ted.
“The second was for mine own use,” said Randolph; he turned back to Fence in time to catch the look on his face. “I regret it most heartily,” he said to him.
He looked at Ted again. “I thought thou knewest, and didst keep me here for thine own ends, fearing thy lack of skill.”
Ted could not answer him.
Fence was so still that all his previous stillnesses would have seemed fidgety by comparison; he spoke very quietly and with no expression. “You must return what you have forfeited,” he said.
Randolph took the circlet from his head and the ring from his finger as he walked across the room, and laid them upon the carved chest. Fence, following, took up the circlet. He turned it in his hands and said three words under his breath. It broke in pieces, and the pieces crumbled to dust, and the dust, floating down, was gone before it could touch the floor. Fence took up the ring. “And what of this,” he said, without inflection.
“That too is forfeit,” said Randolph; but now he, too, looked pale.
Fence closed the ring in his fist, and opened his hand again. Something glittered in his palm like a jewel, but he slid it into his robe too quickly for Ted to see what it was. They could have left
now, without being noticed, but there seemed no point now in escape, or in anything else.
“Randolph,” said Fence, “I am sorry I have so failed you.”
“So even that is denied me,” said Randolph.
“It is you who have denied it,” said Fence. “Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my ruling speaks.”
Randolph, suddenly and incredibly, smiled at him. “Thou seest, then,” he said, “thou hast not failed me. To deny me all I have denied, in the courage of that is not failure. Hadst thou been kinder, Fence, that had been failure indeed.”
“Carrion comfort,” said Fence, as if he were reading a road sign, and he turned and went straight between Ted and Patrick and out of the room. Ted’s throat swelled and closed.
Randolph leaned on Agatha’s table, as if his legs had failed him suddenly. Now he was very pale.
“My lord,” he said to Ted, “you had best set the trial soon.”
“No,” said Ted.
“My lord, I had thought to spare you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Choose your weapon, then,” said Randolph, “and your time; but I beg you, my lord, that it be soon. And disgrace not your teacher.”
He, too, went out.
“I told you!” said Ted, almost crying. “I told you!”
“Ted!” said Patrick. “He said, choose your weapon.”
“So—oh!” said Ted. He knew Patrick’s mind as if it were his own, and the relief was almost more than he could stand.
“Come on quick, and catch Fence!” said Patrick.
They caught up with Fence at the door to his tower.
“Fence!” shouted Ted. “Fence, wait!”
Fence turned to them a face like an accurate but uninspired statue of himself, and Ted’s words clogged in his throat.
“He’s come to choose his weapon for the duel,” said Patrick.
Fence’s aimless green gaze sharpened briefly. “Edward, is this wise?”
“I think so,” said Ted. “It’s quicker. Fence—just for this one thing, may Randolph and I use the swords of Shan and Melanie?”
Fence was silent, staring at the floor. “Shan’s mercy indeed,” he said at last, “but how dearly that would please Chryse.”