“Fence!” said Ted, feeling irrationally that everything would be all right now. “What’s he going to do to Andrew?”

“Give him his instructions,” said Fence, very dryly. “Don’t trouble yourself. Now. Is any part of your tale urgent?”

“Well, if you’ve got the Lords of the Dead—” began Ted.

Randolph interrupted. “Belaparthalion is im—”

“In that guise,” said Fence, gesturing at the man in red.

“That’s Belaparthalion?” said Ted. “But—”

“Who did destroy the dragon-shape?” said Randolph.

“Patrick,” said Fence; and as Randolph made for Patrick he stepped in the way and added, “At Chryse’s instigation.”

“Why, what a guardian is this!” said Randolph, bitterly.

“It was not at Chryse’s instigation, damn it,” said Patrick, “except indirectly. Belaparthalion told me to do it. He said that he would get more power from Melanie’s sword than he would lose by giving up the dragon-shape. Why the hell shouldn’t I have let him out?”

“You couldn’t help it,” said Ruth. “It’s this obsession you have with breaking large glowing globes.”

“Shan,” said Ted to Patrick, “told us to beware Melanie’s sword, because it would show us our hearts in such a guise we’d cut them out.”

“Well,” said Ruth, hollowly, “that’s what Belaparthalion did, isn’t it?”

“Nobody warned me,” said Patrick.

“Randolph,” said Fence. “What part of thy tale is urgent?”

“None, I think, beside this agitation of thine,” said Randolph. “Sit down, and speak of it.”

Fence folded himself to the ground, and the rest of them followed suit, forming a ragged circle. Fence said, “We are here for that Laura saw Ted and Randolph fighting, and did fear the outcome.”

“You might have helped prevent it,” said Ted, “if the Lords of the Dead took it into their heads to get Edward out of mine.”

“But,” said Fence, “we have now brought the two strongest guardians of the Hidden Land, helpless and at odds, into the very heart of the enemy.”

“The enemy seems pretty harmless,” said Patrick.

“He is indolent,” said Fence, “and the workings of his heart are strange to us. But he is not harmless. Can we release Chryse and Belaparthalion, and reform the cause of their quarrel, then all will be well. They will perform their word to us, chastising the Dragon King; and we may depart in peace with all good protection. But do we release them merely to quarrel, it cannot come to good.”

“All right,” said Ted, “what’s their quarrel?”

Fence explained it to him. Ted thought it sounded completely crazy; but he saw that Randolph took it seriously. “All right,” said Ted. “If Belaparthalion is somehow half an Outside Power—is Chryse right? Would he have to give up the guardianship of the Hidden Land? Who gave it him, anyway?”

“Who did so transform him?” said Randolph. “For look you, an he did so himself, then he hath forfeited the terms of his guardianship. An it were done to him unknowing, then—”

“What we need,” said Fence, “is the author of these disturbances.”

“Melanie,” said Ruth, flatly.

“What?” said Celia.

So Randolph explained that. Matthew was shocked. Celia looked grim. Ellen made an astonished mouth. Fence and Laura looked at each other as if they suddenly understood something; Ted wondered what that was about.

“Remember what the unicorn said, after the Hunt?” said Patrick to Ted. He, too, looked as if he understood something.

“We asked, who is Claudia, and it said, subtle, fair, and wise is she, but none of ours did send her.”

There was a gloomy silence.

Patrick said at last, “Do you suppose, if we give the Dragon King two statues for his garden, he’ll agree to leave us alone?”

Ellen sighed heavily; nobody else even looked up. Ted rubbed at his salt-encrusted eyes. His brain felt lamer than his body. They needed to find or fetch Claudia. Who and what was she, indeed? What did she want or care about; what shout would raise her? She was not dead; she was not in any of her houses they had been to in this country.

“Maybe we should go home,” said Ted. “That’s where we keep finding Claudia, in the Secret House in our own world.”

“I thought you burned it down,” said Ellen.

“That’s a weary journey,” said Fence, “during which we must leave these two hostage.”

“Besides,” said Laura, “if you use the swords, you wake up the Lords of the Dead, and they get nasty.”

“Do it quick, then, before they go back to sleep,” said Patrick.

“There are other Outside Powers,” said Fence, rustily, “harder to wake, and harder to lay to rest again.”

“Why a weary journey?” said Ted. “You got here fast enough.”

“We paid the Lords of the Dead with Shan’s Ring to bring us here,” said Patrick. “We’re running out of merchandise.”

“We’ve got Cedric’s flute,” said Laura. She looked suddenly, below the filthy, tangled hair and the scratches, alert. “Is this the end it will save us at?”

“It’s a pretty calm end,” said Patrick.

“What music will call Claudia?” said Randolph.

“God knows,” said Ruth. “Nobody knows her, that’s the problem; we haven’t the faintest idea what she’s like.” She looked up suddenly. “Randolph,” she said. “You know her. Think. You were by her night and day, you said, for—”

“And I never divined what she was,” said Randolph. He looked her squarely in the face. “That is what I said.”

“You must have divined something,” said Ruth, staring squarely back at him. Tears stood in her eyes, but her face was merely impatient. “Think, won’t you? Good grief, if even a shape-shifter gives away his nature no matter what his outward form, surely she must have given away something to you?”

Randolph rubbed at his forehead, streaking all the dust and sweat in a new direction. He looked up and said painfully, “When we would meet, there was a tune I’d whistle, that she would know who approached. At least there can be no harm in Laura’s playing it?”

“What was it?” said Ruth.

“‘The Minstrel Boy,’” said Randolph.

Laura, disentangling the flute from her tunic, said, “She showed up once, when I whistled that.”

“Randolph,” said Fence. “Do you think on the historical layer of that song. One great harp will sing thy praise and one strong sword defend thee. The harp is Chryse, the sword Belaparthalion. And would it not suit Melanie’s humor, that wished ill to the Hidden Land, to use that song as her emblem?”

Randolph looked sideways at him and smiled, not very successfully. “No doubt,” he said.

“Okay,” said Laura, “I’m ready.”

“Play, then,” said Fence, “as well as you are able.”

She played it through once. Ted lay back in the cool grass and closed his eyes. The sound of the flute was very sweet, and all the dim noises of the Dragon King’s castle died along the distances of the song. Laura played it through again, and Ruth, who had a pleasant voice, rather like Ted’s mother’s, began to sing. The others joined her, one by one. Ted had forgotten why they were doing this; but it was balm after the confused, stiff courtesies and pretended jollity of the evening before. He did not sit up, but he sang too. Laura played the song through for a third time, and the singers managed the second verse in something very like unison. And Ted looked idly through the green blur of the grass, past the still form of Chryse, around the bend of one of the drum towers, and saw a dark and slender woman in a red dress walking rapidly toward them over the grass. Ted thought she moved like an otter.

Ted sat up with a jolt. “Look,” he said.

She seemed to be taking a long time to get there. Ted wondered if they should all loll on the grass like this and watch her come. He felt no impulse to go and greet her. The last time he had seen her, he had hit her in the stomach, and broken the magic windows of her house, and started a conflagration therein that he still hoped had reduced it to rubble. Claudia walked past Chryse as if Chryse were in fact some fanciful statue of the Dragon King’s, and was within two feet of Laura when Randolph stood up and went toward her.

She smiled at him. “Oh, whistle,” he said, “and I’ll come to you, my lad.”

Randolph neither smiled nor answered her; it seemed to be all he could do to sustain her cat-eyed gaze. She moved a little away from him and tilted her head at Chryse and Belaparthalion. The black hair fell down her back like water. “Your harp and your sword want mending,” she said.

“How came they broken?” said Randolph.

“Wherefore should I tell thee?”

Randolph said, hardly above a whisper, “For the sake of what lay between us when we were innocent.”

Her face did not change. “I am five hundred years old,” she said. “When I was young, I had twelve fair lovers, the which I hated passing well. And lately in the summer, because my plans did draw to their conclusion, I did have you.”

“To what conclusion,” said Randolph, more strongly, “have they come?”

Claudia, who was Melanie, was silent for a very long time. Then she said, “That I should answer your question.” She walked a few steps farther, surveyed the seated representatives of the Hidden Land, and sat herself down on the edge of the Dragon King’s dais. Randolph came quietly around the outside of the circle and knelt in the grass behind Fence and Ruth.

“The twelfth of my fair lovers,” said Melanie, “was Shan. And we did think to have the moon and the stars in our hands. But he did betray me, in every way that it was possible for him to do; and then he did escape me; for his betrayal was a joy to the Lords of the Dead, and they did admit him where I could not go. Now, while he lived, your little country was his dearest care; and he did almost refuse the great mercy of death granted him, for that it might leave you open to my malice. And he did therefore set safeguards over you. The royal family of the Hidden Land hath his blood; the libraries of the Hidden Land have his learning; the rivers of the Hidden Land run with his songs. I have taken from you every safeguard you possessed, save these two here. Between them I have set a quarrel shall harm one or both, when Shan’s small meddling spell is removed.”

“Can you remedy that quarrel?” said Randolph.

“Oh, aye,” said Melanie. “Belaparthalion will not be as he was; but he’ll guard you well still, an he be spared to’t.”

Randolph did not say, And will you spare him? He did not say anything. He knelt in the grass in his green doublet with tissue of gold, and laid one hand on Fence’s shoulder, and looked at Melanie as Ted had seen his cousin Jennifer, who both adored and was allergic to strawberries, look at a bowl heaped full of them.

Ted swallowed. “How came Belaparthalion to this pass?”

Melanie had not, throughout her recitation, looked at anybody but Randolph. But now she turned her eyes on Ted, who felt as if he were being stared at by a basilisk.

“I gave him unicorn’s blood,” she said.

“No,” said Fence.

“Oh, yes,” said Melanie. “It killeth them not; that’s a tale of the Blue Sorcerers. Over a mundane creature, the power of the unicorn’s blood is to make it sorcerous, and that sorcery is expressed in immortality. Over an arcane creature, the power of the unicorn’s blood is to make it otherworldly. Hence Belaparthalion became an Outside Power.”

Matthew sat forward suddenly. “And the post of the Judge of the Dead was empty.” He seemed to remember to whom he was speaking, and cut his historical enthusiasm short.

“It was,” said Melanie.

“So,” said Randolph to Fence, “Belaparthalion forfeits not his guardianship.”

“It would like Chryse well, had she devised it, that he must protect the Hidden Land ’gainst himself also,” said Melanie. “In a hundred years, or two, the thought will be pleasing to her.”

“The thought that her fellow guardian hath taken unicorn’s blood will not please her in ten thousand years,” said Fence.

“She is too proud,” said Melanie, shrugging.

Patrick said, “Why are you telling us all this?”

“There’s another thing,” said Melanie, looking at him briefly. Her voice altered and grew light, incredibly, with laughter. “All this I did in despite of Shan. How, do I complete my plots, I shall never say to Shan, ‘Thus did I; thus didst thou’; for the Lords of the Dead will never let me in. An I desist, and they do let me in, for Shan I’ll have no tale. You did swear me, my lad, many several sorts of aid and comfort. What remedy hast thou for this ill?”

She looked back at Randolph, who did not move. Into the charged, unnatural silence fell the ordinary sound of footsteps. Ted wrenched his head around, and saw three of the Lords of the Dead coming purposefully in their direction. Melanie saw them too. Her calm face, lightly etched with amusement at her own dilemma, set suddenly into fierce lines. But the Lords of the Dead, arriving at the edge of the circle, did not speak to her. “Lord Randolph,” said the middle one, in its lilting voice.

Fence flinched under Randolph’s tightened hand, and then laid his own hand over it. But Randolph stood up. “What would you?” he said.

“Your time of grace hath been long, and you have walked above the earth with the one whose life you bought,” said the right-hand one, in its austere voice. “Since we have come hither, we thought to bring you back.”

“I’m ready,” said Randolph.

“You God damn well are not!” said Ruth, scrambling to her feet. Fence got up also, but said nothing.

“If there is dissent,” said the left-hand Lord, in its rich voice, “we have a thing to suggest. Edward Fairchild, for whom you did in fact bargain to exchange your life, proveth troublesome under the earth. We will send him back also.”

Ted in his turn got up. The sound of his heart in his ears was louder than it had been when he fought Randolph. His breath fought with his throat. He thought very carefully of Shan, with his quick perceptions and his wealth of strange tales. He thought of what changes might have happened, with the Lords of the Dead gone and Shan in possession of his brooch.

“Randolph,” said Ted. “If you’ve got Edward, you don’t need me. You stay; I’ll go.”

“You God damn well will not!” cried Laura, bounding up and letting Cedric’s flute roll across the short grass.

“This won’t serve,” said Randolph to Ted.

“Neither will your departure,” said Fence.

“Fence, a bargain was made. If any deserve this departure, I do so. Who shall go else? Will you lose Ted, whose crime is bright imagination?”

Fence’s round face, as it had once or twice since Ted had known him, sharpened suddenly, so that you could see the bones of it. He opened his mouth.

“No,” said Randolph. “Not thou.”

“I know!” said Ruth, with an artificial brightness tinged with genuine hysteria. “Let’s all go!”

“Oh, proud Death,” said Patrick to the Lords of the Dead, not much more calmly. “What feast is toward in thine eternal cell?”

“None,” said Melanie behind them.

They turned and looked at her. She had slid off the dais and now walked up to stand between Ruth and Randolph. Ruth shied away from her like a startled cat, and then moved closer again. Randolph stood still.

“Will you have me?” said Melanie to the Lord of the Dead.

There was another of those silences. Ruth looked sideways at Melanie, swallowed, and seemed to be about to speak. The rich-voiced Lord said, “Edward Fairchild must stay hence.”

“That’s naught to me,” said Melanie.

“Is it not?” said Celia.

Ted remembered, with a shock almost as great as the original discovery had been, that Melanie, to whom it was naught if Edward stayed or went, had put him there in the first place.

“He is still troublesome,” said the lilting voice.

The rich one said, “Let Melanie speak with him.”

“Oh, God,” said Ruth.

Melanie looked at her. “Vex not thy thoughts wi’that,” she said. “Consider him.” She inclined her head at Randolph, and looked around, picking out the five visitors. “You children,” she said. “Have you a use, or a fondness, for this lord?”

She was looking at Ted. “I have,” said Ted. “Both.”

“Despite that he did murder William?”

“He didn’t have any good choices,” said Ted.

“Claudia,” said Randolph.

“Who is she?” said Melanie, without looking at him. “Ruth Eleanora. Have you a use or a fondness for Lord Randolph?”

“Both,” said Ruth, between her teeth.

“Laura Kimberly.”

“Both,” said Laura.

“Ellen Jennifer.”

“A very great fondness,” said Ellen, scowling. “What kind of a trick is this?”

“None,” said Melanie. “I have misjudged my powers, or yours. I could not make you my creatures; you would not be my allies; you are caught in the web in a manner I did not mean, that is displeasing to me. Be quiet. Patrick Terrence. Have you a use or fondness for Lord Randolph?”

Oh, Lord, thought Ted. Edward said, quite clearly, The players cannot keep counsel, they’ll tell all.

“I,” said Patrick, “have neither use nor fondness for any of you; but keep in mind that the Lords of the Dead have much less of either for Randolph. I want him more than they do.”

“You five,” said Melanie, “I did wrong without cause. These others I did wrong with, it may be, insufficient cause; but cause there was. An Randolph will serve you better above the earth, I’ll take his place below it.”

Randolph stood up. “Melanie,” he said.

“What you have done,” said Melanie, smiling at him, “you may recompense by remembering it. Make this Edward a King. Be his Regent. An that’s not suffering enough, tell all I have done to High Castle, and comfort what uproar followeth.”

Randolph looked at Fence, and back at Melanie. He was extremely white. He said, “When two such warring teachers do bid me read in the same book, what may I do but obey?”

“Nothing,” said Melanie, and she walked from between Ruth and Randolph to the Lords of the Dead.

The austere one said, “Desirest thou no preparation?”

Melanie looked back at the rest of them. “The voices of your others,” she said. “How troublesome?”

“Edward was extremely so,” said Ted.

“Lady Ruth gave me some bad moments,” said Ruth. Ted heard in her voice an echo of his own tone, dazed and automatic.

“An I speak to them, will you keep them or let them go?”

“Keep them,” said Ted. If this was the closest he could come to restoring Edward to life, then he would do it.

Ruth nodded; so did Laura. Patrick looked thoughtful, which was normal; but Ellen, too, hesitated and stared at the ground before she nodded.

“What else you would know,” said Melanie, “seek in the house by the Gray Lake. I have writ a great part of my plans, if not of my accomplishments, therein.” She hesitated; Ted had never seen her look anything like uncertain. “There are cats therein,” she said.

“Are they more to you than those children were?” said Celia. Ted saw that she was so angry she could not even raise her voice; but very faintly, behind the fury, was a genuine desire to understand.

Melanie must have heard it too. Her tone was not placatory; but it was not scornful, either. “I had no children,” she said.

Celia only looked at her. “Fence,” she said. “Is this vengeance? Is this justice? She deserves—”

“Use every man after his desert,” said Fence, “and who shall scape whipping?”

Celia began to say something; Randolph touched her arm and said, “He speaks of me.”

Celia looked not at him but at Matthew. “Below the earth,” said Matthew, “she will have what she deserves.”

“Yes, she will,” said Ted. “We saw those children, Celia. Edward will deal with her. He’s changed.”

Into something rich and strange, said Edward, and chuckled.

Melanie might have heard him too. She had been watching the discussion steadily, but now she turned away too quickly for a good dramatic effect, and said to the Lords of the Dead, “My preparations are done.” They bowed to her; she did them a courtesy; they began to walk away. Against the bright roses and the brilliant grass, their sober brown dress looked darker.

Melanie spun suddenly and said to the gaping crowd of King Edward’s court, “For your guardians, sing them a song. For yourselves—speak and write truly of me or you will be the worse for’t.”

“We will,” said Randolph.

Melanie picked up her red skirts and ran lightly, like an otter, to catch up with the Lord of the Dead.