The Hidden Land Read Online Free PDF

looked at him, remembering Ruth’s remark about the dearth of parents. Conrad was supposedly Ellen and Laura’s parent, but Ted did not think he had ever seen Conrad address a word to either of them. And who was their mother?
    Randolph came back into the room with a wad of cloths in one hand and a collection of bottles in the other arm. He did not look pleased to see Andrew and Conrad.
    “You are early, cousins,” he said. He put the wine bottles untidily at one end of the table and attacked the pool of water with his cloth.
    “Not so early as thou,” said Conrad.
    “I must depart early,” said Randolph. This was news to Ted, who looked warily at him. “I thought therefore to do my serving while I might.”
    “Why, no man leaves this feast before its end,” said Andrew.
    Randolph shrugged. Ted had never seen him approach rudeness. Perhaps when you were about to murder somebody it was harder to be polite.
    Randolph opened a cupboard against the wall and took out a pile of napkins, yellow and faded. Ted knew by now that the old ones were the good ones, but he wished for fresh white napkins to brighten the room. Randolph turned back to the cupboard and took out wine-glasses; they were a cloudy blue, and much finer work than Ted had seen on any table in High Castle heretofore, even at the Banquet of Midsummer’s Eve.
    “These are something dusty,” observed Conrad, picking one up.
    “Do you polish them, then,” said Randolph, shortly, and handed him a cloth.
    Conrad cocked an eyebrow at him, and began to polish glasses. Ted looked at Randolph, who was staring into the empty cupboard. Ted followed his gaze, and saw only a cobweb in the corner of the bottom shelf.
    “That’s something dusty, too,” he offered.
    Randolph turned on him, and suddenly laughed. “In such a castle, why should it not be?” he said, gaily. Ted blinked at him.
    Randolph pulled open a drawer and began taking out candles and candlesticks. Conrad was still polishing glasses and Andrew had begun to fold the napkins into intricate shapes—a talent Ted would never have dreamed of assigning him—so Ted was left to put the candles into the sticks and light them from the torch in the hall.
    They were not, in the absence of the usual augmenting torchlight, as cheering as they ought to have been. They cast great leaping shadows into the high corners of the ceiling, put an eerie halo around every head, and distorted every visage into unfamiliarity by smoothing out some features and deepening others. Ted began to wonder how, in this bewilderment, he was to keep an eye on Randolph. Follow him like a pet dog, he supposed.
    Of course, it might already be too late. Had Randolph poisoned the cloth with which Conrad was polishing glasses? No, that was silly, that would get everyone. How in the world did it go in the story: how did Randolph administer the poison? In the wine, yes. But in what form was it: a liquid, a pill? Had they followed Hamlet and made the poison a pearl?
    Ted cursed himself for not having asked the others when he had the chance. Then he calmed down a little. He would probably have gotten four different answers, Randolph’s exact method having been one of the less stable items of their repertoire. And you could not trust the Secret Country not to come up with a fifth answer, anyway.
    Matthew and Julian came in, Matthew in a red robe that quarreled with his hair, and Julian in a black one that made him look like a bad watercolor of his usual vivid self. They were given spoons and knives and plates to polish, and fell cheerfully to these duties. If he had been feeling better, Ted would have laughed to see lords and counselors, in their best clothes, doing kitchen work. As it was, he stayed within a foot of Randolph and was stepped on several times. Randolph was so good-natured about this that Ted began to despair: he must have arranged his poison already. That meant that he could not be allowed to give anything to the King. Ted wished