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.

“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.”

“You’re on the wrong track,” said Ruth. “That was profound sorrow, tempered by an awful desire to laugh.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” said Ted, only half attending. He was discovering in himself a craven desire not to go one step nearer that house. He and Laura had burned it down, in Illinois. He wondered if he would have to burn it down here, and on the shores of the twisty lake Laura had seen in her dream; he wondered how many such houses there were, and if Claudia would await him in each one, with her husky voice and her matter-of-fact recital of the things she had done and her offer to allow him to help her go on doing them. He had not been tempted, but he might be next time; and, quite apart from anything she might be able to do to him, he was afraid of her.

The rest of his party came up behind them. Ted turned around and gestured at Randolph, who came forward. “I might feel happier with a few drawn swords,” said Ted.

“As you will,” said Randolph, and drew his.

The Peony and the Mallow looked at each other, and drew theirs also. Ted’s was in his baggage. He started abruptly across the bridge, the rest of them clattering hollowly behind. Having crossed, they were obliged to go single-file along the narrow space between the edge of the stream and the beginning of the brush. The haphazard undergrowth gave way to the hedge, and Ted found with no trouble the gap one could crawl under.

“I wonder,” he said, “if it would be better to use the gate.”

“It’d be more dignified, certainly,” said Ruth. “But the gate’s been locked whenever we looked.”

“I keep the key of it,” said Andrew’s precise voice, from somewhere behind Randolph and the Peony.

Ted looked up at Ruth, whose face was as surprised as he felt. Ted leaned around Ruth to examine Randolph’s reaction. Randolph was astonished, so it was probably safe to ask questions. “By whose leave?” said Ted.

“By King William’s,” said Andrew.

That surprised Randolph too. There was something in Andrew’s voice that warned Ted to be careful. “Do you keep it for me also,” he said. “But now, of your gracious will, lend the use of it to me.” That last sentence he got from Edward; it was the way in which the King asked for things nobody had the right to deny him.

The key was on a silver chain that looked too fragile to hold it. The chain was warm; Andrew had probably been wearing it around his neck. The key was wrought iron with a tree-and-leaf pattern, like the gate, and as cold as clay. Ted walked along the hedge to the brick arch with the gate in it and fitted the key into the lock. It turned silently, and the gate, as heavy as it looked, moved inward before he began to lean on it. Ted hastily pulled the key out of the lock, and the gate went on swinging until it bumped gently into the hedge. The blue-gray flagstones of the walk, swept clean of their maple seeds, were slick with rain.

“How about somebody with a sword up here?” called Ted.

Randolph, Ruth, and Ted walked together up the flagstone path to the steps of the porch, followed by the others. Ted did not remember very clearly the porch of the Illinois house: he and Laura had walked up to it not because they wanted to but because Claudia’s spell had made them. But this porch seemed tidier than that one. It was newly painted, in a pleasant red that matched the roof.

He climbed the steps and went across the porch. The double doors were carved around their edges with the same old story. The right-hand one had an iron knocker in the shape of a cat’s head. The ring in its teeth with which you hit the door was, Ted discovered as he dropped it against the wood, actually a very long, thin, iron rat with its tail in its mouth.

“Cute,” he said to Ruth.

“Verily,” said Ruth.

Nobody answered the knock. Ted looked up at Randolph and said, “I’m not sure why I think we ought to be polite. Shall we just go in?”

“You’ve given fair warning,” said Randolph.

Ted put both hands on the damp wood of the doors, and pushed. They opened as easily as the gate had, and a warm gust of cinnamon-scented air swept out onto the dripping porch. Claudia’s other house smelled like this too. Ted said to Randolph, “Should we leave somebody to guard the front door?”

Randolph, maddeningly, did not answer him. Ted looked at the Peony and the Mallow. Stephen, the Mallow, looked hopeful, as if he were curious about the house. On the other hand, Ted didn’t know the Peony’s name.

“Stephen,” he said, “will you forego this exploration and guard the door?”

Stephen bowed, smiling, and went to stand on the steps. Ted walked into Claudia’s front hall, and Ruth and Randolph and Andrew and the Peony came with him. There was a perfectly standard Oriental rug on the polished floor. Before them on the left was a narrow flight of steps, carpeted in red, and on the right the long hall hung with odd dark pictures down which Claudia had led Ted and Laura, in another house.

“I think,” said Ted, in response to a kind of stirring at the back of his mind, “that to get to the smaller tower we go up the stairway as far as we may, bearing always to the left.” He looked at Randolph. “You’re my general; why don’t you make the dispositions?”

“As you will,” said Randolph; he did not, to Ted’s relief, sound displeased. Nor did Andrew or the Peony look as if Ted had said anything out of the way.

Andrew, on second glance, did not look as if he had heard anything since he stepped inside. He seemed to be listening for something behind the voices and the drip of rain and the profound stillness of the house; and he looked as if all the hair on the back of his neck were standing on end. Ted wondered how much Andrew knew about his own sister, and whether he was fond of her. He wasn’t sure he could imagine anybody at all being fond of Claudia. Even Randolph had implied that he was not so much fond of as bewitched by her.

They had to go up the narrow stairs one at a time. They passed three landings, all with little square windows having a border in red stained glass alternating with clear, with an occasional clump of grapes or stylized flowers. On the fourth floor the stairs let them into a wide hallway lined with open doors. It was dusty up here; Ruth sneezed, Ted said, “Bless you,” and Randolph looked at him sharply before going through the nearest door on the left. This room was empty, and had another door at the far end of its left-hand wall, which proved to lead to an even steeper and narrower flight of steps. The steps ended in a trapdoor.

Randolph heaved the trapdoor open, maneuvering his sword into such a position that he had some chance of slicing anybody who might try to come down. The flat slap of the door on the floor above died in its echoes, and the echoes dwindled, and they could hear the rain hitting the roof of the tower. There was no other sound, except for everybody’s breathing. The light falling through the square in the floor was a very rich yellow, mellower than sunlight and stronger than lamplight. It fell on Ruth’s upturned, intent face and made minute, sparkling globes out of every raindrop in her hair. It was cold up here at the top of the house.

“Oh, no,” said Ted. “Ruth. The color of the light.”

“Oh, good grief,” said Ruth. “It can’t be.”

“Randolph,” said Ted. “Can we come up?”

Randolph, without answering or looking around, heaved himself through the opening. There was a clattering thump, presumably his sword being dropped on the floor. Just as Ted began to worry, Randolph’s head reappeared, outlined in gold, and he reached a hand back through the trapdoor to help Ruth, who stared at it dumbly.

“Go on,” said Ted under his breath.

Ruth took Randolph’s hand, which she probably didn’t need, and disappeared into the room above. Ted clambered up the last ten steps, pulled himself onto the floor, stood up, took two steps sideways to leave space for the rest of the party, and looked at the contents of the room. There were two wooden benches with arms carved like dragons’ heads, a purple rug worked with blue and green dragons, and a round oak table that supported an enormous globe sparkling with motes of color and shot through with miniature lightnings. The globe was much bigger than the one in High Castle.

“Jesus!” said Ted.

“Don’t swear,” said Ruth, “you’re getting as bad as Patrick.”

“Shan’s mercy!” said the Peony, scrambling to her feet behind Andrew. In that light the polished blade of her sword was the color of honey. She looked horrified. “My lords! How came this here?”

“That,” said Randolph, “is the question.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Ted, without in the least meaning to. “That isn’t the Crystal of Earth.”

“How do you know?” said Ruth.

“Look at it,” said Ted, and when instead she went on looking at him with every evidence of exasperation, he mouthed “Edward” at her. Ruth turned obediently and stared at the shining globe.

“It’s larger than the one in High Castle,” she admitted.

“But of the same fashion otherwise,” said Andrew.

“No, not quite,” said Ted, having consulted the back of his mind. “Isn’t the light yellower? And the other one wasn’t so—so active, was it? I don’t remember all that lightning.”

“Still,” said the Peony, without lowering her sword, “what manner of thing is this?”

“Break it, and find out,” said Andrew.

Ruth turned on him, pushing her hair out of her eyes with one hand and flourishing the other at him as if he were a dog that was about to jump up on her. “You sound just like Patrick!” she said.

“It’s not a completely crazy idea,” said Ted. “If the one in High Castle is the real thing, then breaking this one won’t destroy the Hidden Land. And this is in Claudia’s house, and it’s the second of something there’s supposed to be only one of.”

“If the one in High Castle is the real thing,” said Ruth.

“My Lord Randolph?” said Ted, again without meaning to. Edward, damn his eyes, must have been accustomed to getting sorcerous advice from Randolph when Fence wasn’t available.

Randolph was silent for so long that Ted wanted to repeat the question, but he was afraid to. Finally Randolph said, “There are five signs whereby one may know the Crystal of Earth. These are the color of it, the shape of it, its texture, its place of abiding, and that which showeth in its depths when the full moon shines upon it.”

“Lovely,” said Ruth.

“What’s the color of it supposed to be?” said Ted.

“As the apples of Feren,” said Randolph.

Ruth fished in the pocket of her skirt and pulled out one of the little hard yellow apples that had come into season just as the five of them tried to leave the Hidden Land. “Like this?”

“That is an apple of Feren,” said Randolph.

Ruth gave Ted a look compounded of relief and resignation, and held the apple up. “Well?” said she.

“How can you tell?” said Ted. “That light colors everything.”

“This is profoundly silly,” said Ruth.

“The method may be so,” said Randolph. “The results are far other.” He looked around at them. “An it please you, my lady, give Andrew the apple. My lord, you have a fine eye for color. Will you look on this globe, and descending view the apple in some other light, and return to us with your verdict?”

“Well, if none of you will play at chess the nonce,” said Andrew, smiling, “this game likes me as well as another.” He took the little apple from Ruth’s unresisting hand, crossed the room with his graceful walk, so like his sister’s, and disappeared down the steps.

“What next?” said Ted. “The shape of it? It’s round. So’s the other one. What about texture?”

“The Crystal of Earth,” said Randolph, “though it appeareth as glass or crystal to the eye, and is called so, is yet to the hand like unto a piece of fine velvet.”

Ruth caught Ted’s attention and rolled her eyes heavenward. Ted did not respond; he had suddenly remembered how the panes of Claudia’s window had given before his avenging hand like cloth, not glass. He walked forward to the round table, and cautiously put out his hand. The globe did not seem to have an edge at all; but about two feet in from the spot where the yellow glow faded into the weird sparkling air of the room, his hand encountered a surface that was indeed like cloth. It was nothing like velvet, but had rather the sleek, soft feel of silk. Ted looked over his shoulder at Randolph, and Randolph came forward and laid his own hand on the globe.

“Silk,” said he.

“That’s what I thought. Well, what’s the next thing? The place of its abiding?”

“That is the North Tower of High Castle.”

Ted called up a view of the house to his mind’s eye, and groaned. “This is a north tower,” he said, “but this isn’t High Castle. Well, what’s next?”

“The full moon,” said Ruth, in tones of disgust.

“There is a full moon tonight,” said the Peony.

“If the rain stoppeth,” said Randolph, looking thoughtful.

“I thought this embassy had a certain urgency about it,” said Ruth. “Do we have time to hang around testing dubious magical artifacts by methods that are, to say the least, extremely subjective?”

“Now you sound like Patrick,” said Ted.

“Patrick may be a jerk, but his principles are not invariably wrong,” said Ruth.

“This artifact,” said Randolph, saying the word as if he rather liked it, “is a matter, on account of what its action on the world may be, far more urgent than this our embassy.”

Ruth’s face took on the most obstinate expression of which it was capable. Ted had seen it only once or twice. He had opened his mouth to forestall whatever she might be going to say, when the sound of Andrew returning distracted all of them. Andrew put his head over the edge of the trapdoor. “The light that this globe giveth,” he said, “hath a more warm and golden nature than the tint of the apple.”

“Our thanks to you,” said Randolph. “Now, my lady, do but consider.”

“What should I consider? At least two of your signs don’t match this object, so why should we hang around on the off chance that the sky will clear?”

“If this be not the Crystal of Earth,” said Randolph, “it is yet something like, and therefore, it may be, a most potent force for good or ill. If to damage it ruineth not the Hidden Land, it may yet ruin some land other.”

“He means, Ruthie,” said Ted, “that it’s a dangerous thing to leave lying about.”

“And suppose Claudia left it here just to delay us?”

Randolph, looking suddenly very tired, opened his mouth; and Ted realized that they did not have to argue. He was the King. “We’d better stay,” he said.

Ruth gave him a betrayed and furious look. He met it, with some difficulty, while he said, “Randolph, could you go get the rest of them and tell them to stop whatever they’re doing? We might as well use the kitchen, and be in out of the wet.”

“As Your Majesty wills it,” said Randolph.

Randolph shepherded Andrew and the Peony back down the steps. The sounds of their feet grew faint and stopped, and Ted and Ruth went on staring at each other. She looked unnervingly like Randolph. The yellow light of the globe showed little gleams of red in her hair and made her eyes the color of new leaves. It did not soften her expression.

“Come on,” said Ted.

“Suppose Claudia left it here just to—”

“Okay, she might have. But it doesn’t exist just to delay us. It’s too like the real thing. I think it has powers.”

“Well, leave somebody to guard it, or send back to High Castle for Meredith to deal with it.”

“Ruth, it’s just one night. The Dragon King expects us anytime before winter.”

“It makes me extremely nervous,” said Ruth.

“Not investigating would make me extremely nervous.”

“And you’re the King.”

“Well,” said Ted, “I’m afraid I am.”

Ruth heaved a deep sigh. She no longer looked angry, or obstinate, but her face was very sober. “Thou wouldst not think,” she said, “how ill all’s here about my heart.”

Ted decided to take a risk. “But it is no matter?”

Ruth made an angry gesture, and then suddenly smiled at him. “It is but foolery,” she said. “But it is such a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.”

Ted said, and meant it, “If your mind dislike anything, obey it.”

“No,” said Ruth. “My mind doesn’t dislike anything that much. Let’s stay, and consider this thing with such a scientific detachment and precision as would make thy brother proud of us, did he know of ’t.”

“I’ll give you the pleasure of telling him,” said Ted.

Ruth did him a courtesy, very gravely; and they went downstairs to join the others.

The rain had slackened to a mild drizzle. The water-laden plants and ankle-deep mud of the garden were troublesome, but Ruth had always liked getting muddy, so long as there was a clear prospect of a hot bath afterward. There was a fire in the parlor and a huge copper tub in Claudia’s kitchen; so Ruth, with a basket over her arm, was enjoying herself.

Andrew seemed to know his way around a garden; he was finding twice as many tomatoes as she was. Ruth would have ventured some pleasant remark, except that she was ignorant of his previous relations with Lady Ruth, and no longer trusted Lady Ruth to have behaved in a manner that would not embarrass somebody taking her place. Andrew did not seem disposed to conversation; he looked, in fact, sulky, and so consistently kept his eyes from Ruth that by the time they had moved on to the beans, she felt safe in staring at him.

He did look like Claudia. He didn’t have her coloring; she had hair so black you could see neither blue nor red in it, and big brown eyes, and her eyebrows, without looking in the least as though she plucked or shaped them, were arched like the ears of a cat. Andrew had ordinary brown hair and eyes of an indeterminate color between brown and green. But the shape of them was the same, and the arch of the light brows, and an extremely stubborn chin. He didn’t look like a villain. But then, thought Ruth, straightening her back and hurling a bunch of blackened beans over the tomatoes to land squelchily in the patch of broccoli, he wasn’t really a villain. He was there to divert suspicion from Randolph, and to subvert the King with his vile philosophies. But he believed the philosophies, and they were inaccurate rather than evil.

There was, of course, the matter of his spying for the Dragon King. If he had. It was maddening; even when the game was over, its mystifying effect lingered. Was Andrew a spy or wasn’t he? Fence and Randolph thought that so being would suit Andrew’s character. But to Ruth it seemed very odd that a man who did not believe in magic should serve a seven-hundred-year-old shape-changer who generally chose to appear as a dragon. She wondered how the Dragon King appeared to Andrew.

Andrew straightened his own back, and caught her looking at him. Ruth felt herself turning red, but managed not to look away. “Shall we try for some eggplant now?” she said.

“A light thought,” said Andrew, “to accompany so deep a gaze.” There was an accusing tone in his voice that she was at a loss to account for. He acted as if she owed him an apology.

“I was thinking about dragons,” she said.

Andrew began walking toward the corner occupied by the eggplant, and she went with him. Claudia had a very good drystone wall around her garden, three feet high and solid. It was mostly gray and white stones, mixed here and there with slabs of the familiar pink. Andrew leaned against one of these and looked at Ruth. “Dragons. Those whose whim may destroy us,” said Andrew, with a kind of exasperated sarcasm.

“Just one, I thought,” said Ruth.

“Ah,” said Andrew, “sith we know not which, we must guard ourselves ’gainst all. A monstrous dissipation of strength.”

“I don’t see what’s the point of doing any guarding,” said Ruth. She detached three fat, bloomy-purple eggplants from their stems, and decided that the others were too small to pick. “The whole nature of a whim is that it’s irrational.”

“Imbue thy kingly cousin with that thought,” said Andrew, in what sounded like complete earnest, “and this land will prosper under him.”

Ruth nodded soberly. They made a brief foray into the broccoli and then took their harvest back to the house.

Ensconced at the kitchen table, cutting up onions, were Stephen and a lithe young man with blond hair and a cheerful face. Julian, one of the King’s Counselors. Ruth gave him her basket of vegetables and felt, all of a sudden, extremely cold. She had had an argument with Ted, about three years ago, concerning who, exactly, should be killed in the battle with the Dragon King. She had wanted Julian to be among the slain. She tried to remember why; oh, yes. He was a friend of Matthew’s, and she wanted Matthew to be so distracted with grief that he would fail to discover that Randolph had killed the King. If she had insisted, Julian would not be sitting at Claudia’s scrubbed wooden table, slicing onions; his body would be in that mass grave at the desert’s edge and his ghost drifting foggy and forgetful in the land of the dead.

Ruth was shivering. She went and stood by the fire. Her cloak began to steam, which was very interesting. Andrew, appearing next to her on the hearth, held out his hands to the fire and said, “You were best to keep your eye from Julian, my lady. He honoreth Randolph exceedingly.”

Whatever that meant, it was nasty. Ruth cursed Lady Ruth and settled for saying, “And so do I also, my lord.”

Andrew said, “He did murder the King.”

Hell! thought Ruth. They were standing close together; the fire made a lot of noise, and so did whatever was bubbling in the iron pot hanging over the flames. Stephen and Julian were the room’s width away. Ruth stared Andrew in the eye and said, furiously, “That is a vile slander; I won’t hear it; if you bandy it about you’ll be sorry.” She was so angry she stopped shivering. She stalked over to Stephen and said, “Shall I wash the beans? They’re all over mud.”

Stephen nodded, and Ruth bundled the beans, mud and all, into the front of her skirt and hauled them over to the sink. Though made of slate, this was recognizable as a sink, and even had running water; but there was some sort of pump arrangement, not a faucet. Ruth was good at figuring out how things worked, but she found when she tried to use the pump that her fingers were shaking and she couldn’t think.

Andrew said, “If you will allow me,” and she got out of his way. He filled a large red bowl half up with water and put the beans into it. He said, “Hath your heart truly changed?”

Jesus Christ! thought Ruth, staring at him. Had that prize idiot Lady Ruth been secretly engaged to Andrew as well as to Edward? Or had she just told him her troubles, whatever they were? “I honor Lord Randolph,” she said, taking refuge in repetition, and also incidentally in the truth, “and I won’t hear slanders about him.”

Andrew drained the beans and rinsed the bowl. “Having spoke so many of them, thou hast perhaps a surfeit?” he said, still pleasantly.

Oh, hell, thought Ruth, again. God help us all. She didn’t want to marry Randolph and she told Andrew all about it.

“I’ve come to see,” said Ruth, as steadily as she could, “that speaking slander doth naught but harm.”

Andrew stared at her for a good fifteen seconds. “Do I then have thy help no longer in my enterprise?” he said.

Shit, thought Ruth, for the first time in her life. She did not know what to say. If she told Andrew she would still help him, she might find out what his enterprise was. Or she might just give herself away. She shook her head. She had just realized that this gesture was ambiguous when Stephen requested the beans. Ruth snatched the bowl from the sink and carried it over to him; and she stayed in the kitchen, close to either Stephen or Julian, cutting up vegetables and, later, stirring the pots and helping Stephen decide on the seasonings. Andrew hung around for ten minutes or so, looking neither angry nor puzzled, but not looking easy, either. Julian finally sent him to set the table.

At dinner, which they ate in a hollow, chilly room with a field of goldenrod painted on the ceiling and no other decoration at all, she contrived to sit between Ted and the Peony. This gave her a sense of security, and she was able to tell Ted quietly that she had to speak to him later. Then she was able to attend to the vegetable stew and the fresh bread, which were both good. She hoped there wasn’t anything unwholesome in Claudia’s cloves, or her flour, or her butter, or her vegetable garden.

The conversation was all of practical matters: when the moon would rise, how few rooms they could get away with lighting fires in, who should sleep right after dinner and who later, who was to go sit with the second Crystal of Earth, who was to stand guard outside the house, and who should wash the dishes. This last problem, thought Ruth, was never easily resolved in any world, real or imaginary. She grinned at Randolph’s suggestion that they scrape the dishes and leave them for Claudia, and set herself to putting names to the less-familiar faces.

The Peony was called Dittany. The Mallow was Stephen. Ted, Randolph, Andrew, Julian, she knew. That left the large, blond, gloomy man sitting next to Julian. Except for the size and the attitude, they bore a strong resemblance to each other. Of course, they were brothers. The large one was Jerome, another of Ted’s counselors. He had had charge of Claudia after she tried to kill Fence; and from his charge Claudia had escaped. It was impossible to tell if this meant that there was something sinister about Jerome.

As people began folding their napkins (and who’s going to wash and iron those? thought Ruth), Ted whispered, “Come upstairs. They can’t expect a King to help with the dishes.”

“Not just us,” breathed Ruth, who had doubts about his last assertion but did not think this the time to argue about it. “We can’t sneak off together.”

“Randolph doesn’t care now; he knows who we are.”

“I’m afraid Andrew might care.”

Ted raised both eyebrows; she shrugged. “Okay,” said Ted, softly, “you go on up, and I’ll bring Randolph.”

All the adults were still arguing, amiably, about the dishes. Ruth slipped out of the room, snagging a candle in a brass holder from the sideboard as she went, and climbed quickly up the steps. She went as far as the fourth floor, to the dusty hall lined with open doors. She went clockwise around it, peering into all the rooms. Most of them were empty, but the last one on the left held a rag rug in red and gold, and six carved chairs with gold cushions. Ruth put the candle on the floor and sat down in the nearest chair. It was not dusty here. Even the windows sparkled in the small light of the candle. Outside it was still raining.

After ten minutes or so, Ruth grew uneasy with her thoughts, which were turning on Andrew’s remarks and the probable character of Lady Ruth. She got up and went to one of the windows. It looked east, over a great many wet trees that faded into the misty sky. Ruth tried the other window. There were the garden and the outbuildings and a lumpy, thinly forested land through which wound dimly the rough road they had taken when they rode to fight the Dragon King. Ruth could pick out two minute white cottages. Nothing moved in the whole drenched landscape. It couldn’t be more than two in the afternoon, but it looked like twilight. Ruth leaned her forehead on the glass. Three crows flew in slow circles over the stubble fields around the cottages. Faintly, the back of her mind said, Your future, your future I’ll tell to you, / Your future you often have asked me. / Your true love will die by your own right hand, / And crazy man Michael will cursed be.

Ruth jerked her head back from the glass, which was not cool as glass ought to be, and spoke aloud to the six chairs and the innocent rag rug. “You’re a fine sort of morbid person to have in the back of one’s mind. Why couldn’t you die decently? A fine murderer Claudia must be.”

Murder, said the remote voice, tinged this time with a slight and indefinable accent, though it have no tongue, will speak / With most miraculous organ.

“Oh, thank you!” said Ruth, more or less automatically; in the central part of her she was extremely frightened, but this was a source of information that, unlike Andrew, could not betray her true nature. “I’ve always wanted to be a miraculous organ.”

“You’re wandering,” said Ruth, severely; and Ted and Randolph came into the room.

Ted had another candle, and Randolph had an iron lantern, which he hung from a hook on the wall. Ted put his candle next to Ruth’s and looked at her. “You’re talking to yourself.”

“I am not. I’m talking to Lady Ruth.”

“Is she answering?” said Ted, eagerly. “Edward doesn’t pay any attention to me.”

“Well, she doesn’t pay much; or at least, she’s easily distracted. Randolph, did Lady Ruth speak with an accent?”

“Oh, aye,” said Randolph, “through having been brought up her first five years in the Dubious Hills. We thought she had outgrown it this past summer.” He closed his mouth abruptly.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” said Ruth, doing so under the lantern. “Why was she brought up there?”

Randolph took the chair across from her, and Ted dragged another between them. Randolph said, “For that her lady mother loved her not.”

Ruth was disgusted. You couldn’t even enjoy a pure, just anger against Lady Ruth; she had had a warped childhood.

“Why did you ask?” said Ted.

“Well, I think there are two people in the back of my head; Lady Ruth, who speaks with an accent, and somebody else, who doesn’t.”

“What saith the other?” said Randolph.

“Lots of things,” said Ruth. “Most recently, it said, ‘The playing of the merry organ, / Sweet singing all in the choir.’”

“Well,” said Randolph, dubiously, “bear it in mind. Now. Wherefore calledst thou this conference?”

Ruth, who had practiced on her way up the stairs, repeated to him the conversation she had had with Andrew.

“Oh, Ruthie!” said Ted when she had finished. “Why didn’t you say you’d still help him?”

“Because,” said Ruth, “I thought I’d just give myself away. His ‘enterprise’ doesn’t have to be spying for the Dragon King. And even if it is, I don’t know what that entailed. Ellen remembers, for all the good that does us.”

“We do have a means of communication,” said Ted.

“I didn’t get the impression,” retorted Ruth, “that it operated as if it were a telephone. Lord Randolph? Can one talk back and forth as if the person receiving the message were in the same room?”

“No,” said Randolph, looking intrigued. “Thou sayest this telephone performeth so?”

“Yes,” said Ruth, “but you can’t have one here. God knows what it’d turn into. Anyway, Ted, I didn’t exactly tell Andrew I wouldn’t help him. But I refuse to talk to him again without some idea of what’s going on here.”

“Oh, come on,” said Ted. “You’ve been playacting with Meredith for three months and didn’t give yourself away. Andrew should be child’s play.”

Ruth was exasperated. Being King was making Ted entirely too autocratic. “Look,” she said. “I have the feeling that Lady Ruth’s relations with Andrew were not such that I would like to take them up. Okay?”

“What?”

“She was a baggage!” said Ruth, furiously. “No better than she should be! Getting engaged to people right and left!”

“Ruth, watch it!”

Ruth was consumed with confusion and remorse. She made herself look at Randolph, who had raised his eyebrows again but did not seem notably disturbed. “Forgive me,” said Ruth. “It was just a feeling I had. Maybe it was all Andrew.” She was sure it had not been all Andrew, but there was no point in harrowing Randolph’s feelings. If Ted would drop his insistence that she conspire with Andrew, she wouldn’t have to harrow them.

“It’s no matter,” said Randolph.

It occurred to Ruth that neither of Randolph’s women had been what he thought her. She wondered if he were stupid in that regard, or just unlucky. Either way, it seemed unwise to say more.

Ted said, “Did you want to marry Lady Ruth?”

Randolph’s head came up in a gesture of such affront that Ruth wished herself at the other end of the universe. Then his face cleared, as if he had remembered that allowances must be made for them. “No,” he said.

Ruth thought they should leave it at that. Ted said, “Then why—?”

“For the uniting of the two schools of sorcery,” said Randolph.

Well, thought Ruth, that explained a lot. She decided to risk it. “And why did the others want Lady Ruth to marry Edward?”

“To unite rival branches of the family,” said Randolph. “Look you; I believe that Edward loved her.”

“Ah; but did she love him?” said Ruth.

Randolph shrugged.

“I hate this,” said Ruth. Nobody having any reply to this, she went on. “We should keep an eye on Andrew.”

“We should anyway,” said Ted, “on account of the spying.”

They were quiet; Ruth supposed there was no point in going downstairs until the dishes were done. She tried to imagine Lady Ruth’s being in love with Edward. She could not conceive of being in love with Ted, though there was nothing wrong with him that a few years and a few inches wouldn’t cure. She supposed she had known him too long. But then, Lady Ruth had known Edward for the same length of time. It seemed far more likely that she had loved Randolph, regardless of what other slimy intrigues she might have been plotting. Ruth looked thoughtfully at Randolph’s bent head, and looked away.