The Whim of the Dragon (44 page)

“What saith the King of the Hidden Land?” said Andrew.

Ted looked at Randolph, who returned him a steady gaze of which Ted could make nothing, and who did not offer to answer for him. Ted assembled what courage he had, and addressed the young, benign face of the Dragon King. “I am sorry,” he said. “But I think it would be a greater wrong than that you so liberally seek to recompense, to break up these old agreements and shatter all the fabric of policy they uphold in our country. Nor could we be easy having wrested from you the fairest flower of your land. Some more modest payment, surely, would serve better, as is commonly given after war.”

The Dragon King still looked benign, but as if he were turning this speech over in his mind to see what it was made of.

Andrew said, “There is no fabric of policy. These are lies. Lord Randolph is—”

“Andrew,” said Randolph, softly, as if he were asking him, under the hum of dinner conversation, to pass the salt, “hold your tongue.”

“I will not so,” said Andrew. He addressed the Dragon King, on whose unclouded countenance a shadow of trouble was appearing. “My lord. It’s time for plain speaking. These men do fling your offer in your face because they are most—”

Randolph whipped the sword from its sheath at his side and slammed the flat of it across Andrew’s chest. “One of us,” he said, “will die ere the next words leave thy mouth.”

In fact, Andrew could probably have blurted out a few words before Randolph killed him; but Ted saw from the reaction around him that this was not an extemporaneous remark, but the beginning of a ritual challenge. He didn’t see why Andrew should choose to abide by it when he was willing to flout any other convention that hindered him; but Andrew stood still, his face flaming and his eyes burning into Randolph’s, while all around them people got out of their chairs and moved them back and created a wide open space, dotted with a few rose trees, for their arena.

“I cry you mercy, lord King,” said Randolph, without looking around, “that these our private woes should come to their conclusion in the realm of your pleasures.”

“All may yet be very well,” said the Dragon King, placidly.

Ted turned slowly and stared at him; Ruth was doing the same. Randolph, however, disengaged his look from Andrew’s and turned it on Ted. “Do you remember those words,” he said.

“Now wait,” said Ted, “just a—”

But the daughter of the Dragon King touched Andrew on the shoulder, and both Andrew and Randolph followed her to the center of the open space. All the brightly dressed people crowded around in a circle, like the audience at some open-air juggling act. Ted saw the alarmed faces of Stephen and Julian, with Dittany shaking her head behind them and Jerome looking furious; but none of them, it was clear, proposed to do anything except watch. The Dragon King joined the crowd. Whether from respect, scorn, or suspicion, nobody stood closer than a few feet to Ted and Ruth.

Andrew drew his own sword. He and Randolph saluted first the Dragon King and then each other. The fresh-faced girl held out a short sword of her own, over which they crossed theirs. She removed her sword with a hiss of metal, and Andrew and Randolph began to fight.

Andrew was amazingly good. Ted doubted that he was as good as Randolph; but of course, Randolph was not going to do his best. He was going to give them a good show to save Andrew’s face, and then he was going to let Andrew kill him. William had told him to hold his tongue, so he would hold his tongue; but both his natural inclinations and his bargain with the Lords of the Dead had determined him to die. Ted could see it in his face.

“Ruth, we’ve got to do something,” he said, very quietly.

“He wouldn’t,” said Ruth, who had clearly come to the same conclusion Ted had and was now rejecting it. “He wouldn’t leave us in a mess like this.”

“I’m not prepared to take the risk. This has got to stop. Besides, I don’t want him killing Andrew either, just to keep our secret. Or for any other reason. I’ll introduce some due process into this place if I—
Die for it,”
finished Edward. Ted let his breath out.

“Good point,” said Ruth. “Which of them do you want to tackle? If we stop Andrew, Randolph will stop.”

“You can’t just stop him,” said Ted, “you’ve got to shut him up long enough for Randolph to retrieve the situation.”

“All right,” said Ruth, “I’ll go for Andrew; he’s not very big.”

This is crazy, thought Ted. “I,” he said firmly, “will distract Andrew so you can get near him, and then grab Randolph.”

To a point, this worked. Ted pushed his way through the intent crowd, awaited his moment, ran out into the open space, and smashed his own sword, the one he had found in the armory of High Castle, which fit into his hand as one piece of a jigsaw puzzle fits into its neighbor, down on the momentarily crossed swords of Randolph and Andrew. Andrew disengaged at once, and turned on him. A pair of gauze-clad arms wrenched Andrew’s arms behind. Ruth wasn’t strong enough to stop his mouth too, but he didn’t shout anything distinguishable while he struggled. She twisted at his wrist in a way Ted thought she must have gotten from Lady Ruth, and Andrew’s sword bounced on the grass.

None of the Dragon King’s people seemed likely to interfere. Ted, breathing hard, looked at Randolph; and Randolph struck Ted’s drooping sword upward with his own and lunged at him.

Ted’s sword, the sword he had dreamed of before he found it, the sword with which he fought a dream-bout with Randolph and made but one mistake, answered for him.

This was not the cool, moon-silvered garden of his dream. He had neither moon nor sun in his eyes, but heard the roaring of the sea. The grass was not wet; it gave him good purchase. His feet and Randolph’s did not squeak on the Dragon King’s grass, but rushed and rustled. Their light blades did not hiss, but clanged as they came together, for this was neither a dream nor a session of practice. Ted’s eyes stung with sweat. The clear, bright light of this southern morning seemed to be dimming; the roar, maybe, was a storm coming up. The air in the rose garden was still. He had no leisure to look up.

But he was fighting in the same way as he tied his shoes or rode a bicycle, easily and without thought. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the names of Randolph’s moves and his own were flicking by, too quick and faint to catch. The crowd was quiet. Suddenly Ted knew he had Randolph. He did something with his wrist that swept Randolph’s sword out of line; and lunged straight at Randolph with a force that should have put the sword through him. And froze, fully extended, his sword stretched foolishly in the empty air, three inches from Randolph.

He saw on Randolph’s face not fear, not relief, but a sick disappointment. Randolph would go on standing there, and Ted could kill him. “Oh, no,” he said, the harsh air rasping in and out of his aching throat. “No way, my lord.” The crowd was making a great deal of noise now, but nobody had come out here to intervene. The roaring was louder.

Have at him now,
said Edward.
He killed my father.
Your father forgave him! thought Ted furiously, which was a mistake; it let Edward further in, and Edward knew this sword, this body, and his own mind.

Dittany and Stephen were now holding on to Andrew. Ruth might not be strong enough to hold Edward, but he didn’t trust anybody else. “Ruth!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Come here!” He and Edward lifted the sword, and then Ted wrenched himself around so that it pointed nowhere. Randolph circled and placed himself before it again. Ruth came up behind Ted. “Grab my arms,” gasped Ted. “Get the sword away.”

Ruth promptly pinioned him as she had Andrew, but made no move to take the sword. “Are you crazy?” she said in his ear. She smelled of lavender.

“It’s Edward,” panted Ted. “Say something soothing to him, can’t you?” Edward was silent now, but Ted was afraid to move the sword, lest it call him back.

“Randolph,” said Ruth, “put away thy sword.”

“No,”
said Ted, “don’t make him disarm himself. Edward wants me to kill him.”
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece,
said Edward, faintly. The roaring grew louder.

“Edward won’t kill an unarmed man,” said Ruth. Edward said nothing. “Randolph,” said Ruth, as if she were talking to Patrick. “Drop the sword.”

Randolph, the sweat running down his flushed face, his hair dripping, and every fold of his doublet limp as old lettuce, shook his head. His gaze, however, lingered on Ruth.

“Randolph,” said Ted, in desperation, “by your oath to me, put down that sword.”

Randolph’s hand tightened visibly on the hilt of the sword; he brought it back into line; and then he curved up the corners of his mouth in the most mirthless smile Ted had ever seen, said, “I do obey you, both my lieges,” and dropped it.

Ted uncramped his sword hand, and his own sword rolled on the grass with Randolph’s. Ruth let go of him, and he walked unsteadily up to Randolph, a long, ordered, meticulous rebuke rising in his breast. Randolph reached out a shaking hand, probably meant for his shoulder, and bumped it against his collarbone with no more force than that of a falling leaf. “Look behind you, my prince,” he said, in what was left of his voice.

Ted turned, thinking that Andrew was going to make trouble again. He found Andrew’s gold velvet back, but Andrew was just standing there, as was everybody else. Ruth was making her way in their direction with great speed. Ten feet away stood what they were all looking at, a grimy and bedraggled group of people, every one of whom Ted knew; and a cluster of soberly dressed and nondescript people, whom he did not know, and a little apart from them, the man in red, and a unicorn, both unnaturally still.

The man in red held a sword that shone green as bottle-glass. Melanie’s. Who had given him that? Ted took an incautious step forward, and one of his knees buckled. Randolph caught him under the arm, and then they were both on their knees in the grass.

“Just rest a moment,” said Ted. He almost had his breath back, but his legs felt rubbery, and Randolph’s arm was quivering. “Let them get settled down. Who are those weird people in brown? They look like a bunch of lawyers.”

“Those are the Lords of the Dead,” said Randolph, “as they commonly appear in drawings.”

“And the man in red?”

“Him I know not.”

“It’s the man from the stark house, the one who asked us the riddles. He’s not the Judge of the Dead, then?”

“There are no drawings of the Judge of the Dead,” said Randolph.

“What’s he doing with Melanie’s sword? What have they been up to?”

“That is Chryse,” said Randolph. “Beside Fence.”

Ted had been counting heads. “They’re all there,” he said. “All of ours.”

He and Randolph leaned together in the grass and listened to the vivid voice of the Dragon King greeting the Lords of the Dead as his dear cousins, and asking to what he owed this pleasure. One of them, in a lovely, lilting voice, answered, “To Fence the Wizard, King’s Counselor of the Hidden Land.”

“I might have known,” said Randolph. His voice was less raveled.

Fence answered this assertion rather sharply, and in a louder voice than he usually employed. “Rather to the Princess Laura,” he said. “I pray you pardon me.” He pushed through the crowd and came swiftly across the trampled grass to Ted and Randolph, his tattered black robe floating behind him and no expression whatsoever on his round face. He dropped to his knees in front of them, squeezed Ted’s shoulder in a grip that hurt, and said to Randolph, “Laura saw you fighting in a vision.”

“It was Edward,” said Ted. “He wanted to fight. What was Randolph supposed to do?”

Fence’s hold slackened. His eyes were on Randolph, not Ted.

Randolph said, “It began with Andrew, who would have spewed the whole sorry tale all over the court of the Dragon King, and who moreover did muddy our dealings with offering Ruth and Ted in marriage to the children of the Dragon King. Ted did interfere in that bout, whereupon Edward did turn on me.”

Fence still had no expression. He said, “There’s other matter in thy face.”

“Fence,” said Ted, “when I rendered myself harmless and ordered him to drop his sword, he did it.”

“Fence,” said Randolph, “let be.”

Fence looked at him; then, “With very great pleasure,” he said, and taking his hand from Ted’s shoulder he put both arms around Randolph. Randolph leaned his forehead on Fence’s muddy robe and shut his eyes as if he never intended to look up again.

Ted got up in a hurry and walked over to his little sister. “We owe it all to you, huh?” he said.

“Somebody,” said Laura, in an agonized whisper, “should apologize to the Dragon King; and somebody else should separate Chryse and the red man, because they were fighting.”

“I think somebody should explain, not just apologize,” said Ted, also in a whisper.

“Are these new statues for my garden?” inquired the Dragon King.

“My lord, no,” said Laura, with more haste than courtesy. She cast a stricken glance in the direction of Fence, who was standing up now but still talking to Randolph. “These—we—” She stopped. Ted saw that the problem was not a failure to speak, but the fear that she would say too much. He launched into a series of elaborate introductions.

The Dragon King seemed to enjoy them. If Celia and Matthew disliked being presented to so fresh and elegant a monarch when they looked as if they had slept in a pile of leaves in the same clothes for a week, they managed not to sound like it. Ellen greeted the Dragon King sweetly and looked as if she were about to ask him a question. Ted hurriedly introduced Patrick, whom he had saved till last for fear of what he might say.

Patrick bowed and said, “We’ve brought you, your grace, a little exercise in sorcery.”

“Patrick!” said Celia.

“Shan’s Ring,” said Patrick, disregarding her, “which we have just given to your good cousins there, hath rendered those two as statues. How, think you, might one best restore them?”