“What the hell,” said Patrick, walking up to the two tall men and looking from one to the other, “do you think you’re doing?”

There was a petrifying silence. Laura considered her cousin, in his stained jeans and filthy tennis shoes and his dusty black cloak, and was stricken with admiration and jealousy. She looked at the two identical faces. One of them was grinning; the other wore an expression as of patience come abruptly to an end, like Laura’s teacher just before he sent somebody to the principal.

The grinning Prospero spoke over Patrick’s head to Fence. “You come carefully upon your hour,” he said.

“I do not,” said Fence. “I come abominably late.”

“Not so late as we’d have made you,” said the tall man, smiling still. There was something about the smile that oppressed Laura.

Michaelmas had been leaning in the doorway between the two Prosperos and preserving a perfectly blank expression. This latest remark, however, or perhaps that smile, appeared to stir him to wrath. “If that’s a threat, my lords,” he said, “go make it otherwhere.”

The smiling Prospero and the frowning one both swung on him.

“Doubt you our word?” said the smiling one.

“No,” said Michaelmas. “But I do doubt your manners. Having sworn to do no harm in Heathwill Library, it will behoove you not to threaten none. And concerning harm—what have you done with my colleague Prospero?”

“Why, nothing, save to look upon him in admiration,” said the frowning man.

Michaelmas made an impatient motion with his hand. “Go in,” he said; “sit down; and answer the boy’s question.”

The two men came in. Every cat in the room leapt up, sniffed the air, and curved across the floor to purr at the Prosperos. Michaelmas rolled his eyes at them, and sat down behind his desk.

The two Prosperos sat where Patrick and Ellen had been. Patrick and Ellen sat on the table. Celia and Chalcedony stood in the doorway.

“And for the love of mercy,” said Michaelmas in a tone of profoundest irritation, “do you, one of you, or both of you, take some form other. And do you not,” he added sharply, as the two men turned and smiled at each other, “assume some other, horrible form which might deprive our sovereignty of reason, and then say in innocence, I did bid you do’t. Take you,” said Michaelmas, breathing hard through his nose, “some harmless and inoffensive form that can speak with us, and leave your frivolings for but five minutes.”

“You’ve dealt with us before,” said the austere Prospero.

“And to my sorrow,” said Michaelmas.

“Wizard, have a care,” said the smiling one, and stopped smiling.

“Oh, go to,” said Michaelmas. “You’re as slippery as a mess of eels, but you do not break your sworn word.”

“No,” said the once-smiling Prospero, “but our memories are as long as time.”

“Peace; make thy change,” said the austere one.

The once-smiling one looked at him, and shrugged; and by what means Laura could not see, by the time his shoulders had leaned back on the cushion again, he was a little dark woman dressed in an infinity of layers of pink gauze. In a voice melodious as a flute, she said, “Will this serve?”

Behind Laura, Chalcedony made a muffled exclamation. Michaelmas, who appeared to be of a ruddy complexion and who had been growing ruddier in his exasperation, turned stark white, leaned forward, leaned back again with great deliberation, and swallowed hard. “It will serve,” he said. “But I say to you now, my memory is long also.”

“So,” said Patrick, insouciantly but with a strained look on his sharp Carroll face, “is anybody going to answer my question?”

“We are come,” said the dark woman, “to ask it of you, or of some minion of the Hidden Land. Something is amiss there.”

“Took you long enough to notice,” said Patrick.

“Patrick,” said Fence, mildly but definitely. He turned his head and addressed the two shape-shifters. “Well, great ones, what amiss is this, and how may we mend it?”

“We look to you to tell us of the first,” said the one who still looked like Prospero. “Michaelmas hath given us some clue. Is it true that you have dabbled with Shan’s Ring?”

“It is,” said Fence.

“That did awake us from our dreaming,” said the dark woman. “But ere our start was o’er, before we could settle again, we did hear something other.”

“A great shearing and clashing of swords,” said the man.

“There was a battle in the south,” said Fence.

The dark woman laughed. “We who slept through the ten years’ agony of Owlswater, the twenty-five years’ tossing of Feren atween Fence’s Country and thine, to wake at that?”

Fence was silent. Laura knew what these two had heard. They had heard Ted and Patrick, practicing with Shan’s and Melanie’s swords in the rose garden.

“There are few sorceries,” said the dark woman at last, “so potent as Shan’s Ring.”

“No doubt,” said Fence. “Seek you the list of th’others in this admirable library, and come to me again when you have a more particular question. I’d tire the moon with talking, to tell you all our petty deeds since first we wielded Shan’s Ring.”

The tall man said, “Have you the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

“What is their fashion?” said Fence.

“Little one,” said the man, in a clam voice infinitely worse than any angry tone could have been, “my patience hath an end.”

“The swords are small,” said the dark woman, laying her hand on the man’s arm. He went on looking at her, as if the sight of Fence would be too much for him, all the time she was talking. She said, “Small, as for a Dwarf, or a child. Their hilts are black, and set with stones, Shan’s with blue, Melanie’s with green. Their blades from time to time do glow, with the colors of their several stones. They send a kind of tingling into the hand that toucheth them. Now, Fence, give us answer.”

“I have a milliard such,” said Fence. “How shall I tell the sword of Melanie from any that gloweth green?”

“Have you,” said the tall man, still looking at his companion, “the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

“It may be so,” said Fence. “You have not told me sufficient that I may mark them.”

“They’ll take you, an you carry them aright,” said the dark woman, “almost as far as I’d send you, an I could.”

“Have you,” said the tall man, turning his cold yellow eyes on Fence again, and speaking in a deadly monotone, “the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

And Fence said, “Yes.”

“Third time pays for all,” said Patrick.

“We do require,” said the tall man, “that you deliver them to us.”

“By what right?” said Fence.

“None,” said the dark woman, crisply. The tall man turned and glared at her. She said to Fence, “’Twill serve if you but promise to employ them no more.”

“I do so promise,” said Fence, without hesitation. He did not even glance at Ellen or Patrick or Laura, whom he had just condemned to the vagaries of Apsinthion.

“For your little lifetime,” said the tall man. “A catnap; the space of a snore. What’s that to us?”

“All you may have from so paltry a creature as I am,” said Fence, looking right back at him. His hands were gripped hard on the carved arms of the chair and his jaw was rigid, but he sustained the look of the tall man, and it was the tall man who suddenly jerked his head around and said to Michaelmas, “Choose thy guests better.”

Whereupon he and the dark woman got up and went out, closing the door behind them with a solid and unfriendly thud.

“Could I choose my guests at all, I know whom I’d un-choose first,” said Michaelmas. He wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “Fence, you harrow me with fear and wonder.”

“They are not in agreement,” said Fence. “Had they been so, I do assure you, I had trod far softlier.” He stood up, carefully. Laura suspected him of having shaky legs, but he spoke steadily enough. “Now,” he said. “Let’s find Matthew, and the true Prospero, and ask our riddles, and get us gone.”

“You’re better here,” said Michaelmas. “Outwith these precincts they are bound by no oath.”

“Can we but travel quickly, they’ll have Chryse and Belaparthalion to deal with,” said Fence. “’Twere a very great pleasure, Michaelmas, but no profit at all, to bide here.”

“No pleasure, either, with the pair of them huggermuggering about,” said Michaelmas.

Fence, who had turned for the door, looked around. “Which of them were those?” he said.

“Nay, I know not. Chalcedony?”

“They’re strange to me,” said Chalcedony. “Do you think, Michaelmas, that they may be some species other than the usual? There was something in their eyes; and the cruelty that took your daughter’s form is of a different brand than what we’re used to.”

Laura wondered who Michaelmas’s daughter was, and what had happened to her.

Michaelmas rubbed his forehead again, scowling at the drifts of paper on his desk. “I’d thought we had seen them all.”

“I know,” said Chalcedony. “But this troubleth me.”

“Well,” said Fence, “let’s to Prospero’s chamber, an you will.”

Chalcedony and Michaelmas both came, leading the rest of them down the bright-lit hall and the narrow, winding stair and along yet another hall to a closed door. Michaelmas knocked at it. Nobody answered. Michaelmas rattled the handle, and then stood aside for Chalcedony, who took a key from her bunch and unlocked the door.

Prospero’s room was the same size as Michaelmas’s, but sparser in its furnishings. He had a bed, a table, a chair, a wardrobe, and many shelves crammed, but neatly, with books. If there was a bed in Michaelmas’s room, thought Laura, it was well buried. Prospero’s room was empty, though all its lights blazed and on the table were a half-written sheet and an uncapped bottle of ink. From the smooth bed a white cat blinked at them.

“Where would Matthew seek him next?” said Fence to Michaelmas.

Michaelmas looked helpless; Chalcedony said, “The Index Room; and then in the Special Collection. I’ll go seek them; you stay here should they return.”

She jingled off down the hallway. Michaelmas walked into the room, and after a moment of hesitation the rest of them followed him. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit, and none of them, it appeared, felt comfortable wandering around looking at the books and other possessions of someone who had not invited them. Laura looked at the cat; that was not an invasion of privacy. The cat was large and clean, like the room, and well brushed. It wore a green collar with gems in it. Laura walked across the room, and the cat lifted its head.

Gold light flashed off the stones in the collar, and ran like water over rock, and dimmed and dulled until she saw a small bare room lit with cloudy light from one round window. A young man in a red robe sat on the floor, leaning forward over his crossed legs to write on a large sheet of waxy paper. He looked uncomfortable, but his voice when he spoke was pleased. He said, “Never go down to the end of town if you don’t go down with me.” Something tapped at the window; Laura looked at it, and saw a flash of red.

Ellen shook her arm. “Wake up, Laura, here’s Matthew and Prospero.”

The real Prospero looked just as the false one had. Laura received her introduction to him rather absently, and only just remembered to do him a courtesy.

Ellen shook her arm again, and she gave up. Michaelmas was delivering an admiring account of Fence’s dealings with the two false Prosperos, for the benefit of the real one and Matthew. They greeted it with blank silence during which Laura sat down on the bed, careful to miss the cat. Prospero’s embroidered black robe swam giddily before her eyes, behind a gloss of gray light and redness.

“What’s the matter?” said Michaelmas, sharply.

“Fence, I’d credited thee with more sense,” said Matthew, in a tone so unlike him that Laura forgot her vision completely.

“What do we need those characters for?” said Patrick.

“Matthew?” said Fence. “I see we do need them. What’s the matter? Sit down, man, thou’rt like suet.”

“Yon shape-shifters you all so blithely did offend,” said Matthew, “are the Lords of the Dead, come forth from their dominion for the first time since it was laid down. A fine welcome you gave to them.”

“You didn’t hear them,” said Ellen. “They had terrible manners and they didn’t care beans about us. They were miffed because we’d woken them up.”

“We require a boon of them,” said Matthew.

He looked at Fence until Fence sat forward and opened his mouth; then Matthew said suddenly, “I cry you mercy; I had done the same had I been here.”

“No doubt,” said Fence. “Do you do otherwise when you come to ask our boon.”

Matthew looked as if he were going to object; Patrick said, “How do you know they’re the Lords of the Dead?”

“I came upon two of them in the kitchen,” said Prospero.

“You’ve seen them before, then?”

“How does seeing them before help?” demanded Ellen. “They’re shape-shifters; they can look like anybody.”

“There’s a little fire in the eyes,” said Prospero.

This kept getting worse. “The man in the stark house had a little fire in his eyes,” Laura said.

“Of what nature?” said Prospero.

“Red,” said Laura.

“Triangular, or i’the’shape of a diamond?”

“I don’t know,” said Laura, regretfully.

“For future reference,” said Patrick, “which is which?”

“The triangular flame defineth the Lords of Death.”

“Prospero,” said Fence. “Is the Judge of the Dead among them?”

“I know not,” said Prospero. “I got no speech of them.”

“Wiser than I,” said Fence. “Well, we’d best get it now. Matthew?”

Matthew looked around at all of them. “Said the rest of you aught to discomfit them?”

“I asked them what the hell they thought they were doing,” said Patrick.

“Aught else?”

The rest of them shook their heads.

“Well, then,” said Celia from the doorway, “Patrick and Fence shall stay here and beguile Master Prospero with the tale of our adventures; for our poor part, we’ll seek out these lords and beg their favor.”

“I think not,” said Matthew. “Fence, they’ll not hear me. I am neither a wizard nor a king.”

“I begin to think I’m neither also,” said Fence.

“They will tell you otherwise,” said Matthew.

They looked at each other for some time; and then Fence nodded. “Come, then,” he said.

Ellen, Chalcedony, and Celia moved from the door, with an alacrity that Laura found disturbing. She herself went on sitting on the bed, hoping to be forgotten. But Fence looked back at her quite kindly and said, “Come, lady; this concerneth thee closely.”

Laura got up and went out the door in the others’ wake. “Well, Mistress Chalcedony,” said Fence, as they reached the juncture of the two halls and headed for the staircase again, “what ground wilt thou choose for this battle?”

“The Reading Room,” said Chalcedony. “Any such company will think thrice, e’en on the verge of breaking all its oaths, afore ’twill do damage there.”

“What if somebody’s studying there?” said Ellen.

“Then he’ll garner a spectacle,” said Fence.

Ellen caught Laura’s eye and grinned at her. Laura shook her head and looked away. Celia and Matthew were holding hands again, and carrying on a complex and wordless conversation with their eyes. Laura and Ellen were accustomed to referring to such behavior, in their parents or in the older kids at school, as “making goo-goo eyes.” But there was nothing gooey about this exchange of glances. Laura wished she knew what they were worried about; or perhaps she didn’t.

They went back the way they had come, and turned into the room across the corridor from Michaelmas’s chamber. It was furnished with three large tables in the middle and a series of carrels, exactly as you could find in a modern library, along the walls. The furniture was heavy and beautiful, and perhaps half the material on the shelves was in the form of scrolls rather than bound books. The polished floor was scattered with intricately worked rugs; the light was warm and golden, not the harsh glow of fluorescents. But in its essentials, it looked like a library. Laura felt better immediately.

In a far corner of the room, somebody in a green robe and a black hat was scribbling furiously. Michaelmas went over and spoke to her quietly. She laughed, and appeared to thank him, and went back to scribbling.

“Well,” said Ellen, sitting down sideways at one of the tables. “We’re here. Who’s going to round them up?”

“We who know the Library,” said Chalcedony; and without further ado, she and Michaelmas made for the door. Ellen’s voice arrested them halfway through it.

“Wait! Can we look at the books?”

“Wash your hands first,” said Chalcedony. “Celia can show you.” And they were gone.

The five remaining looked soberly at one another. Ellen did not clamor to be shown where to wash her hands. Matthew said, “I would we knew how th’other party fareth.”

“They’ll have been to the land of the dead for nothing,” said Ellen. “Unless the Lords of the Dead can be two places at once.”

Matthew smiled a little. “Not to my knowledge,” he said.

Laura sat down next to Ellen and leaned back in the chair. The ceiling of the room was beamed and plastered. The wood was carved, the plaster molded; both were painted. The wood showed hunting scenes, and people building castles and making brooms and kneading bread and mending a wagon wheel. The plaster was formed into a series of medallions. Laura found the running fox of High Castle on its blue background; there were also an owl perched in a thornbush, and a mountain hare sitting up on the bank of a stream, and three brindled hounds with their tongues hanging out, each scene stylized and cleverly fitted into the confines of its circle. And there was also a scarlet curve of dragon with, horribly, a unicorn drooping from its toothy mouth. The dead unicorn looked like pictures Laura had seen of antelope being dragged away by the lions that had killed them. Its open eyes were picked out in gold paint.

Laura couldn’t look away from them; and suddenly the glitter strengthened and spread. Good, thought Laura, maybe she could figure out what she was supposed to see in the young man’s bare room. But what she saw was Claudia, in the back room of her house, leaning on the diamond-paned glass. She still wore the checked dress. Now she raised her hand to the glass, grimaced, and dropped it again. Then she smiled. She looked like somebody who has decided to eat a piece of chocolate cake despite a New Year’s resolution to lose ten pounds. She went on watching her windows. Laura tried to see what she saw. A stone wall, a shelf of books, a golden globe for a lamp. Meredith’s domain in High Castle? Heathwill Library? Some place other?

Laura blinked her way back to the Reading Room to find everybody except Fence staring at her. Fence had leaned his head against the high back of his chair and closed his eyes.

“I thought you were seeing things again,” said Ellen. “What were you seeing back in Michaelmas’s room?”

Laura told her instead of what she had seen in Prospero’s room. Urged to tell what she had just seen, she told what she had seen in Michaelmas’s room. She did not want to tell Fence about Claudia, even if he didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Nobody had any comment. The woman at the far end of the room rustled her papers. It grew so quiet that they could hear the scratching of her pen. Laura was sleepy. It must be almost morning.

“Matthew?” said Ellen. “Do you want us to say anything to the Lords of Death?”

“Heaven love you, not a word,” said Matthew. “Indeed, I’ll say naught myself. Celia and Fence have the lighter touch.”

“Oh, much thanks,” said Celia.

There was a commotion in the hall outside. Five people came in, all scowling. It was hard to tell what they looked like; they were like sketches, or cartoon drawings, or the artistic efforts of a five-year-old. They made Laura’s eyes hurt.

Matthew jumped to his feet and bowed; so Laura and Ellen scrambled out of their chairs and made the best courtesies they could manage, given their clothing and the inadequate warning. Celia stood up more naturally and bowed from the waist.

“The rest come by and by,” said one of the newcomers, in a rich contralto Laura would have known again, she thought, in ten years, or fifty.

“Sit you down, then, and wait in comfort,” said Celia.

The newcomers settled themselves at the end of the table, displacing the party from the Hidden Land. The dim voice in Laura’s head said, Move down; I want a clean plate.

The newcomers began talking among themselves, in some language Laura did not understand, but recognized. It was that maddening tongue, used in the Secret Country’s ceremonies, that one felt always just on the edge of understanding. It was less vexing this time because all of the speakers had such breathtakingly beautiful voices. Well, thought Laura, that made sense. They had come here to talk, so they had expended their arts on their voices and kept the appearance to a minimum.

She looked at Matthew and Celia, who were standing stiffly at about the middle point of the long table. They, it was clear, could understand the maddening language perfectly, and the lovely tones in which it was spoken were not mitigating in the least their reaction to what was being said. Fence had opened his eyes and appeared to be listening, but not to be disturbed by what he heard.

The voice in her head said, more clearly, Is’t not possible to understand in another tongue? You will to’t, sir, really.

There was a burst of unintelligible speech in the corridor, and four more indeterminate shapes spilled into the room, followed by Michaelmas. The four sat down next to the first five; Fence got up and marched down to the head of the table; and Celia, Ellen, Laura, and Michaelmas sat at the foot, separated from the nine strangers by an empty chair or two, and from Fence by an appalling stretch of polished table.

All nine went on talking. Fence did not call them to order. It took them about ten minutes to calm down, during which Ellen amused herself by drawing cats with a stick of charcoal and some scraps of paper that she found in a drawer of the table, and the voice in Laura’s head said, The sun was shining on the sea, / Shining with all his might: / He did his very best to make / The billows smooth and bright.

Finally the hubbub died and the shape with the rich contralto voice turned to Fence. “You have a grievance?”

“That’s for you to determine,” said Fence.

“Tell your tale,” said a clear, lilting voice.

Fence told it, without adornment, and without explaining who the extra royal children were or where they came from.

“Five at one swoop,” said the rich voice, consideringly. “This Claudia is bold.”

Fence grew red; Laura could see that, all the way at the other end of the enormous table. He said nothing. The lilting voice said, “But we are cautious. Five at one swoop, back to the world of light? For what consideration?”

“For Shan’s Ring,” said Fence.

A babble of almost-sense broke out. Fence sat with his hands folded, his round face blank but rather light. The yellow light shone on the table, and on the almost-present shapes of the Lords of the Dead. A new voice, deep and resonant, said, “The River’s Guardian hath been offered this token already, and hath refused it, on the ground that it was too eagerly given.”

“I,” said Fence, with considerable force, “give it not eagerly. We have but this year discovered its purpose and its power; a century of study might, an we were fortunate, show us its uses; a millennium of study might show us to avoid its dangers. It is my dear desire to have this thing.”

There was another babble.

The lilting voice said, “Yet how will it profit us?”

“If you possess it, then none other doth so,” said Fence. “Wherefore you will have peace from its thunderings.”

“What bargain,” said the rich voice, apparently not to Fence, “made we with Shan concerning this thing?”

“Oh, hell, oh, damnation, oh perdition!” breathed Ellen.

“Hush,” whispered Celia.

“What did you make up?” hissed Laura.

Fence looked down the table at them, and they all shut up. The lilting voice said, “That it be left as an heirloom of his house, and a weapon against Melanie, whom he could not vanquish.”

“Offer us some thing other,” said the rich voice.

“Will you take,” said Fence, “the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

Matthew shot bolt upright in his chair, his shocked face flaming. Celia slammed her arm across his chest, and whatever he had been about to say turned into a huffing kind of choke. The mass of light and shadow that was the shape-shifters seemed to drift in his direction.

“We cry you mercy,” said Celia, breathlessly; and they all turned back to Fence and broke out in their maddening speech.

“What’s he thinking!” whispered Matthew.

“I know not,” said Celia. “Don’t cross him. Our division is their opportunity.”

“So is his madness,” said Matthew; but then he was silent.

The rich voice said, “That is our dear desire. For each sword, you may retrieve one child.”

“Oh, God!” breathed Ellen.

Laura’s throat hurt her.

“My lords,” said Fence, in a grating voice. “Do consider one thing other. Edward Fairchild died in June. Edward Carroll was slain in battle in August. Lady Ruth and Lord Randolph and I did bargain with the Guardian of the River for the life of Edward Fairchild; but we did receive back Edward Carroll.”

“That’s easily mended,” said the lilting voice. “Do you give us Edward Carroll, and we shall give you Edward Fairchild. Do you give us the swords, and we shall give you two other children of your choosing. That is three of the five. Are we agreed?”

Laura cast a stricken glance at Celia and Matthew. They sat like snow statues, as pale as their shirts, their enormous eyes on Fence as if daring him to say a word. Laura looked at him too, in time to see him drop his face into his hands. He sat that way for what seemed like forever. None of the Lords of the Dead moved or spoke.

When Fence took his hands away, they revealed a face with nothing in it at all. “Nay,” he said. “We are not agreed. Edward Carroll is out of this reckoning. All five children do we require of you, my lords, or swords you shall have none.”

“All five is too great a boon,” said the rich voice.

“Fewer is too small,” said Fence.

“Well, then,” said the rich voice, “we have come to the end of our speech together.”

“Mind you,” said a voice that had not spoken in this room before, but that Laura had heard last from the mouth of a false Prospero, “should you at any time wish to change Edward Carroll for Edward Fairchild, that offer stands. All others we withdraw; should your mind alter, this must be all done again.”

“Hold,” said the lilting voice. “Speak not so hasty. The payment for Edward Carroll hath not been made.”

“Tell Randolph,” said Ellen, very softly, “to walk warily.”

“Truly?” said Prospero’s voice. “You may make change and payment at once, an you will.”

“I thank your gracious presences,” said Fence, dryly.

Their gracious presences, quiet for once, did something very like standing up and walking out of the room. The door shut behind them. Nobody looked at anybody else.

Laura’s hands hurt. She unclenched them and looked blankly at the red creases in the palms. They were cold and wet. Her heart was trying to hammer its way out of her throat. She could not settle to any feeling: not relief, because of Fence’s sorrow, and not sorrow, because of her own relief. They were all safe; and she hated being safe at such a cost.

Finally, she made herself look at Fence. He was staring at the space of polished table between his clasped hands. In the bright, warm silence of the Reading Room, the scholar’s pen scratched busily. Laura wondered if she had even heard.