The Hidden Land by PAMELA DEAN

“Randolph,” he said, without looking up, “where is the Book of King John?”
    “In Matthew’s chamber,” said Randolph. “Fence. What of the children?”
     
    The other four children had gathered in Ellen and Laura’s room. They sat, fidgeting and squabbling, on the bed with its green quilt. Around them the white horses raced unregarded across the green tapestries; the black cat slept on Ellen’s discarded yellow dress. Outside above the shadowy mountains the western sky grew prickled over with stars as some wind from lands they had never seen pushed the clouds over High Castle, south and west to the domains of the Dragon King. This same wind faltered in through the unglazed window, whose shutters no one had thought to close, and tipped the flames of the lamps a little sideways. Only Laura, carefully staying out of the argument, noticed any of these things.
    Ellen wanted to go listen at the door of the Council Room, but had been prevented by Ruth. Laura was not sure what she thought of Ruth these days. She had taken to wearing long white dresses, staring abstractedly into space when you were talking to her, and using her sorcerous voice for trivial things like telling Ellen that her hair ribbon did not match her dress. She was taller than ever, and wore her hair tightly braided and wound around her head, which made her look much less like Ellen and entirely too grown-up.
    “I guess we’ll know if anything went wrong,” said Ellen, resigning herself. “They’ll all shout ‘Treason!’ ”
    “Even if they did we wouldn’t be able to hear it over here,” said Patrick. “It’s probably half a mile to the Council Room.”
    “Matthew has to come right by here to get Agatha,” said Ellen. “So she can lay the King out.”
    “Why should she hit him when he’s dead?” said Laura, despite her resolutions. It did not matter in the slightest, of course, because nobody paid any attention.
    “Fence has to come tell us if the King’s dead,” said Ruth to Ellen, patiently. “He’s Patrick’s father and our uncle.”
    “He is not,” said Ellen.
    “The King is,” said Ruth, less patiently.
    “Let’s do something,” said Ellen.
    “Like what?” said Patrick. “Play hopscotch?”
    “I could read aloud,” said Ruth.
    “Can you read that stuff?” asked Laura.
    “Sure,” said Ruth. She picked up the book she had brought with her, a shabby affair with a much-scored leather binding, and opened it. “But King John,” she read, “had been raised by an old country woman, and he knew the ways of monsters. So when the—”
    “Oh, don’t!” said Ellen. “I can’t stand hearing any more about King John. I wish we’d never invented him. And that’s dumb. Why should a king be raised by an old country woman?”
    Ruth was exasperated, but she was interrupted before she could express herself. Fence came into the room without knocking. They all gaped at him. He was very still and remote; only the curling starry lines on his robe moved a little as the lamplight caught them.
    Fence looked at them for a moment as they sat and sprawled on the bed. Then he came across the room in a flurry of stars and put his hand on Patrick’s head. Patrick looked at him as if he were the worst part of a horror movie; except that horror movies never bothered Patrick.
    “Thy royal father’s dead,” said Fence.
    He appeared braced for hysteria; they simply stared at him. Laura was supposed to throw herself into his arms and howl, but she could not do it.
    “I knew it,” muttered Patrick.
    Fence took his hand from Patrick’s head and examined him much as he had examined Claudia’s knife. “Did you so?” he said.
    Patrick stood up and looked him straight in the face. “Ted told me what he thought.”
    “He does not think it now,” said Fence.
    Ruth was the first to recollect her part. Glaring at Patrick, she said, in strained tones. “What happened? I didn’t know his Majesty was unwell.”
    “He was not,” said