The Whim of the Dragon

  Laura swallowed with great force and pretended it was the rain making her eyes hurt. She and Ellen moved back under the archway, where one was subjected to large, discrete drips instead of a steady sheet of water. They almost collided with Ruth.

  “Oh, good,” Ruth said. Her fuzzy black hair was misted with damp and stood out in all directions except straight up. “Ellen, behave, and don’t kill Patrick, we’d never be able to explain it to Mom and Daddy. Laura, don’t you kill him either. Your father likes him.” She knelt in the soaking grass, hugged each of them with one arm, stood up with mud on Lady Ruth’s black skirt, and said, “Don’t you dare cry. All may yet be very well.” And she, too, made for the center of the confusion.

  “Make way!” called a voice from inside.

  Laura and Ellen looked around and saw several wagons rumbling over the drawbridge. With one accord they darted back through the tunnel, ran along the inner side of the pink wall, and took shelter in the overhang of the nearest tower. The wagons went ponderously by them, mud clogging the red and yellow paint of their wheels, the rain sheeting off the leather covers tied lumpily over their contents. Laura and Ellen, shivering, stayed where they were, and thus missed whatever ceremony Andrew departed from High Castle with, and did not say good-bye to Randolph. Laura didn’t care. Her hair was dripping down the back of her neck, inside all the layers of good dry clothes, and they had not even begun their own journey.

  She looked at Ellen, whose pale face was beaded with water and whose hair was so wet that it was almost flat. “The rain it raineth every day,” said Princess Laura.

  CHAPTER 13

  TED belatedly pulled his hood over his dripping head and pushed through the crowd. On the way he passed the blue-clad trumpeters with their horns as long as a yardstick. He must have missed whatever leave-taking ceremony there had been. Andrew and Randolph were already mounted. Benjamin was holding the reins of Andrew’s horse and talking to him intently. Fence was holding the reins of the unoccupied horse, an inoffensive-looking white one that was not Prince Edward’s stallion and should suit Ted much better than that cantankerous beast. Randolph was holding his own reins. Fence was looking at Randolph, and neither of them was saying anything.

  “Does it always do this in September?” said Ted, coming up behind Fence.

  Fence turned, a little twitchily. He had put a black cloak of thick felt on over his wizard’s robe, and its hood hid his face. His voice was as usual. “Not so early as this,” he said. He nodded at the horse. “This one’s fast but biddable.”

  “Thank you,” said Ted. It—she, he ascertained—might be biddable, but she was still extremely large, and Benjamin was here. He thought of Edward and mounted competently.

  “I wish you were coming with us,” Ted said to the top of Fence’s hood. It had a little tassel on it, like the ones on the seniors’ graduation caps.

  Fence tilted his head; the hood fell back, and Fence produced a rather unconvincing grin. “I’m better with the young ones,” he said. “And with yon Patrick’s meddlings. You’ll be well enough. Randolph hath promised it.”

  That word was a dangerous one just now. Ted looked over at Randolph, who wiped the rain out of his eyes and said, “Fence, no more.”

  Fence looked startled and then rueful. “Nay, I cry you mercy,” he said. “That was ill done, in Ruth’s chamber.”

  “It was as well done as may be,” said Randolph, with extreme grimness. “Wherefore I say to you, lean not on me.”

  “There’s no one else,” said Fence.

  Randolph smiled at him, with a perfect naturalness that made Ted feel cold. “And that was ever the doom upon us,” he said.

  Fence held his gaze and said nothing. Randolph gradually stopped smiling, until he looked very sober indeed, but neither chagrined nor angry. Ted, his burning eyes braced wide open, felt something hotter than the beating rain slide down his face, but could not look away.

  “Rest you merry,” said Randolph.

  “Not until thou art,” said Fence. He reached up a hand. Randolph gathered the reins in his left hand, leaned down, and closed his right hand over Fence’s wrist. Ted blinked, since no one was regarding him, and looked down at the mare’s ears.

  “So, then,” said Fence; his voice trembled a little, and if Ted could have escaped without being noticed, he would have been gone. As it was, he sat still, and the mare was quiet under him, and the rain slid down the coarse, pale hair of her mane like beads on a broken string. Randolph was silent, and Fence said, “As well cut off mine own hand. As well have done the deed. An thou but keep safe, we shall yet read this riddle.”

  “I can read it,” said Randolph; his tone had sharpened, and Ted looked up involuntarily. “It means death,” said Randolph.

  “That is a faulty reading,” said Fence, quite steadily this time. “Edward being dead, this is a matter to settle between us. Not in solitude. Dost thou understand me?”

  “Oh, aye,” said Randolph.

  “And wilt obey?”

  “How not?” said Randolph, and let go of Fence’s hand.

  Fence came back to Ted. “Be not o’er-hasty,” he said. “We’ll meet again.” And he pulled the hood over his head again and went away through the crowd, back into High Castle.

  Ted would not have looked at Randolph for anything. He carefully pulled the mare around until his back was to Randolph and he was looking at Andrew’s profile. Andrew was staring down his straight nose at Benjamin, and Benjamin was glaring back. Ted did not want to know what they had been saying; but he might need to. He started to speak, and stopped. He had managed to avoid an encounter with Benjamin so far; what was the point in saying good-bye when you had not yet said hello? He tried to back the horse, but either she felt stubborn or he hadn’t given her the right signals. She moved neatly three steps to the left, bringing her head level with Benjamin’s, and Benjamin put his hand on her nose and looked up at Ted.

  Benjamin couldn’t say anything much in front of Andrew, of course; and, to Ted’s relief, he managed to school his face as well. “I wish you were coming with us,” Ted said, and immediately regretted it. In the first place it wasn’t true, and in the second it probably constituted an insult to Andrew.

  Benjamin rubbed the mare’s head; then he rummaged inside his cloak and came out with two pieces of carrot, and fed one to each horse. Over the sound of crunching he said, “My prince, I wish so also. But consider High Castle in the grip of Celia’s children, and none to say them nay.”

  Ted could not help grinning. “We couldn’t have that, could we?” He thought, and ventured, “Prosper well, then.”

  “And you,” said Benjamin. He looked at Andrew. “Fare well, my lord,” he said, and left them.

  Andrew gazed after him with a less than pleased expression. It occurred to Ted that he and Andrew were going to have to endure one another’s company for several weeks. He said, “Was Benjamin haranguing you?”

  Andrew whipped his head around so fast that a strand of wet hair fell over his forehead. Ted could not tell if he was angry, or just startled. “Not above the usual,” said Andrew, in his pleasant, neutral voice.

  So much for that, thought Ted. He looked over his shoulder for Randolph, but Randolph wasn’t there. Ted scanned the crowd, which had diminished greatly, probably because of the rain. Randolph was over by the wagons, talking to the little cluster of soldiers that Andrew had chosen to accompany the embassy. One of them rode off a little way and then waited; the wagons followed, each with a soldier riding beside it. Andrew moved his horse off after the wagons, and so did Randolph.

  Ted and Ruth followed them. The white horse had a nice gait; Ted blessed whoever had thought to give her to him, and spared some attention for the rain-sodden plain. Nothing moved in the brown grass. The road was covered with a thin layer of water, but there was no mud, and the horses’ hooves sounded on it as sharply as on concrete. Patrick would have wondered what technology had produced such a surface on what looked like a dirt road. Ted
was merely grateful for it. He sat up straighter and wiped the rain off his face.

  Ruth called across to him, “With an host of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, / With a burning spear—”

  “And a horse of air,” Ted answered her, out of his own memory, “To the wilderness I wander—”

  “By a knight of ghosts and shadows,” said Andrew’s clear, carrying voice, to Ted’s immense discomfiture, “I summoned am to tourney / Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end. / Methinks it is no journey.”

  There was a brief silence, and it began to rain harder.

  “Well,” said Andrew, who had fallen back and was now riding on the other side of Ruth, “we go not even half so far as that.”

  “Thank God,” said Ruth, in the dry voice she had never used to use, “for small favors.”

  Andrew looked vaguely puzzled. Ted said nothing. This was the long, straight road that led to the Well of the White Witch, and Claudia’s house, to the mountains of the border and through them, south and west to the lands of the Dragon King. And to the Gray Lake. There, in some sense, Ted thought suddenly, was the wide world’s end. Or at least Edward thought so. Ted wished that Edward would either come in or go out; this hanging around with the door open was disconcerting. Edward promptly faded out. Ted put his hood back on.

  Laura and Ellen waited until they saw Fence come back through the pink tunnel. His face was not encouraging; they fell in a few feet behind him and were quiet. He led them to the little postern in the southeast corner from which the five of them had escaped their first day in this country. There was a great clutter of horses and baggage and milling people. Patrick was there, leaning on the damp pink wall and watching the chaos as if it were a movie for which he was considering requesting the return of his money.

  Matthew was putting saddlebags on the horses and doing, Laura thought, a very good job of pretending that his youngest son, Mark, was helping. John really was helping Margaret with the same task. Benjamin moved from horse to horse, talking to them. They were remarkably quiet for horses in such a turmoil.

  Fence went up to Benjamin and began walking around with him, talking also, but not, from his tone, to the horses. Laura made sure that the two bags Agatha had packed for her and Ellen were there. She wondered if only the six of them were going, or if there would be men-at-arms. She knew nothing of the lands east and north of the Hidden Land, and very little about what dangers might lurk in the Hidden Land itself. The Hidden Land had not seemed, on their journey south for the battle, to be very heavily populated; but neither had there been bears or wolves or even any deer. Maybe there would be deer in the north, and, if they traveled quietly, they would see some.

  It began to rain harder. Matthew came over to them, his fair skin flushed and the red hair sticking to his brow.

  “Is anybody else coming with us?” asked Laura. She realized that this was not what her fifth-grade teacher would have called a clearly phrased remark, but Matthew seemed to understand.

  “No,” he said. “We must go swiftly; and the librarians of Heathwill frown on parties o’er-large.”

  “Aren’t there bandits?” said Ellen.

  Matthew laughed. “In Fence’s Country?” he said.

  “Well, but before we get there?”

  Matthew laughed again, a little more exasperatedly. “None,” he said. “There are farmers and traveling merchants.”

  “Why?” said Ellen; she was disappointed.

  “Because,” said Matthew, kneeling in a puddle without seeming to notice it, and looking first Ellen and then Laura soberly in the face, “that is the country of the unicorns, where even the innocent may come to grief. The guilty have no more joy there than a lump of butter in a hot pan.”

  “Matthew!” said Ellen, and Laura saw on her face a look of unholy glee, like the one she had had the day she let all Ted and Patrick’s frogs loose. “Are we going to travel through the Enchanted Forest?”

  “Thy geography is without fault,” said Matthew. “Now mind thy face.”

  He stood up and returned to the packing. Everything was loaded, including the people, and Celia still had not arrived. Mark, John, and Margaret hung around looking glum. Benjamin stood behind them looking glummer. Matthew dismounted twice to tell them good-bye. Laura sat behind Patrick on a black horse with one white leg. Patrick’s pack was going to bump her under the chin once they started, but it was still better than riding a horse by herself. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle that seemed capable of going on all day and got you much wetter than it looked as if it could.

  Celia finally came trudging over the pink paving, lugging a bulging, misshapen pack. She hugged her three offspring, and said something to them that Laura couldn’t hear. They nodded, resignedly, and opened the little door of the postern. Celia patted Benjamin on the shoulder and swung briskly onto her horse.

  They rode out the postern one by one, Celia, Patrick and Laura, Ellen, and Matthew, who was leading the pony with the luggage. Laura turned and waved, and the three yellow-haired children whose parents she was stealing waved dutifully back. Laura had thought, the first time she saw them, that they looked just as children in a fairy tale ought to look; and they still did, even wet and gloomy-faced. Behind them, Benjamin raised his hand and waved too; Laura felt absurdly better. The three children disappeared behind the door and slammed it. Laura heard the bolt snick shut, and felt desolate. She turned around, and hit her nose on Patrick’s pack.

  They rode down a long, shallow slope toward the edge of Stillman’s Wood. It bordered on the Enchanted Forest, but did not itself look enchanted, or at least not in any appealing way. Its oaks were a dark, grim green that the wet only made worse. The beeches had been a pleasant coppery color all week in the sunlight, but now looked like dried blood. They rode along the edge of the woods until Celia found the path. It was narrow and clogged with ragged brown leaves, which, stirred up by the horses’s hooves, smelled musty.

  The dull spaces of the woods were misty with rain. Laura remembered her dreams with longing. Either of them had been better than this. They rode on further. Laura began to think she recognized this stretch of path. They had come this way for the King’s funeral. It had rained then too.

  Behind them, Matthew began to whistle, and the words slid upward from the bottom of Laura’s mind. O Westron wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain?

  But that was for spring, thought Laura; and this was autumn.

  CHAPTER 14

  WHEN the army of the Hidden Land had come south in August, it had stopped at the Well of the White Witch for a ceremony. Ted assumed, without thinking about it, that his party would do likewise. But the horses and wagons ahead of him went on by the Well, which sat squatly in the sad, wet grasses, its lid tightly in place, its pink stone darkened with rain, and glowed not at all. Ted looked to his right, through the trees, to where Claudia’s house loomed. Its gray stone walls were muted by the rain, and its red tile roofs showed sharply against the dark forest and the pale sky.

  There was a light in the window of the smaller tower. Ted reined his horse abruptly, and she responded with a very good grace. “Ruth!” said Ted. Ruth pulled her horse to a stop; Andrew stopped too. They sat there in a row, all looking sideways. Randolph rode up beside Ted. “Look,” said Ted, and looked, himself, at Randolph.

  Randolph stared past Ted and Ruth and Andrew, and his eyes opened wide, in an expression of startlement very unlike him. “Shan’s mercy,” he said. “What sorcery is this?”

  “I’ve never seen a light in that house,” said Ted. “Hadn’t we better take a look?”

  Randolph, his astonished gaze still on that vivid yellow line high up in the dark of the woods, said, “Thou art the King. If thou shouldst choose to delay thy embassy in searching out this riddle, who shall gainsay thee?”

  “Well, you’d better stop the rest of them before they disappear,” said Ted, not entirely pleased to have had his question answered with another. Randolph rode off.
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  “Good grief,” said Ruth, in a voice where Ted heard exasperation warring with nerves, “didn’t anybody think to search here, after Claudia disappeared?”

  “Oh, aye,” said Andrew. “Fence did order the lords Jerome and Julian to do so; but they found nothing.”

  Randolph came back, followed by the wagons and the little clump of men-at-arms. The latter began dismounting.

  “I have given orders, my prince,” said Randolph to Ted, “that food be prepared. Who shall accompany thee?”

  “You,” said Ted. “And Ruth and Andrew.” He hesitated. “Do you think men-at-arms would do us any good?”

  “No,” said Randolph, “but thou mightst do them good to ask them.”

  “Okay, find two, could you please?”

  Randolph dismounted; so, after a pause, did Ted and Ruth and Andrew. Some of the soldiers came up and took their horses. Two of them bowed to Ted and intimated that they were at his service. One of them had a mallow embroidered on his sash; he had been in the battle. His name was Stephen, that was it; it was he who had told Ted that Conrad was sore hurt. He was tall, thin, fair, and amiable-looking. The other was a young woman with a peony on her sash. She was a stocky person with sleek brown hair who seemed nothing like a peony.

  They all stood expectantly and looked at Ted. He felt like Captain Kirk at the outset of some hazardous mission, which did not help in the least. “This is a sorcerer we call upon,” he said, “but, should she prove troublesome, remember that a goodly anger can break a spell of stillness, and that, do you move quickly enough, she can be surprised with simple force.” That was all he knew that might prove useful, and magic probably didn’t make these people half as nervous as it made him. “Let’s go,” said Ted, and started up the hill. They followed him.

  As he stopped at the little wooden bridge, Ruth caught him up. “Just how goodly an anger?” she said, quietly.

  “Very goodly,” said Ted. “Remember the time Ophelia had kittens on your green velvet dress.”