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bedlamsbardgo back to part one
The saltwater Narnians’ embarrassment at injuring Edmund doesn’t extend to Caspian; as soon as they hear the name “Caspian” their friendly attitude turns cold despite Edmund’s insistence that Caspian is a friend of Narnia.
“Sorry,” Edmund says to Caspian, faintly apologetic for no particular reason. The saltwater Narnians are his people; that means their attitudes are his responsibility.
Caspian shrugs and winces at the movement. The ghosts have cleaned the blood from his face, drawn to the living blood, but all that means is that there’s nothing to conceal the cuts and bruises, the split lips and broken nose. “I’m a Telmarine,” he says softly. “My people are universally hated by every Narnian in the country, and my family especially so. It doesn’t help that I share Caspian the Conqueror’s name.”
“Still,” Edmund says, “I’m sorry. Once we wouldn’t have done this.” He catches Caspian’s chin with the two fingers of his left hand, his touch gentle, and turns his head from side to side to get a better idea of the damage. Caspian stills, unprotesting, and lets him. “Can you see out of both eyes?”
“Mostly,” Caspian says. His face really does look horrible; both eyes are swollen and black with bruising, a blood vessel burst in the corner of his left eye and turning the white red. “What would you have done?” he asks.
“Well, for one,” Edmund points out, letting go and running his thumb idly over the healing cut on his right palm, “we wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place, unless someone got supremely lucky and managed to conquer Narnia while Peter was…indisposed. Which he has been, a few times, and it’s been close more than once. Ask me or Susan about it when we get back to the How; Peter’s version can be summed up pretty much as, ‘And then I came back and killed anyone that looked at me cross-eyed.’ But no,” he adds, “we wouldn’t have done this. Even when we were at war with Telmar we had Telmarines living in Narnia, and while there might have been anger between native Narnians and immigrants – refugees – it never came to violence. Or if it did, we ended it as soon as we found out.”
“Ended it?” Caspian repeats warily.
“The stocks, fines, public whipping, the mines, the galleys – and the punishment for murder is death,” Edmund says. “An Archenlander merchant was lynched in the first year of our reign; Peter beheaded the satyrs that did it.” He looks at Caspian steadily. The boy swallows, but doesn’t look away.
“I can’t punish them for this,” Edmund says slowly. “They won’t accept it, and now – now isn’t the time. If we were back at the How – Peter’s already given the only warning he’ll give.”
“I understand,” Caspian says.
Edmund raises his eyebrows. “Do you?” he asks, voice soft.
Caspian hesitates. “Yes,” he says at last. “I understand. They aren’t under the High King’s command.”
“Not that it would help much if they were,” Edmund says under his breath. They’re sitting on the beach across the channel from Cair Paravel, which the saltwater Narnians had been all too eager to leave. It’s not our place, Pontos had said when Edmund asked. We’re not wanted here. And it’s – uncomfortable. Too many dead. Too much sorrow and too much anger.
He’d rather be riding hard for the How than waiting here in the open, but the swan-maidens had promised them faster passage and help from the freshwater Narnians, so he’ll hold his peace for now. The freshwater Narnians will be able to help where the saltwater Narnians can’t; he can tell from the Telmarine presence at Beruna that they’re going to need the help if they want to win this war. And he hasn’t seen a single one of them since he arrived in Narnia.
Caspian stirs restlessly beside him; Edmund glances over. “What?”
“Why didn’t they come?” Caspian asks. “The others came when I blew the horn, and those that didn’t came at King Peter’s summons. Why didn’t they? Or your freshwater Narnians?”
Edmund hesitates for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I don’t think they heard it. Sometimes it can’t be heard over running water. Or –” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Water is more resistant to magic than earth. And it’s not like magic is reliable.” He hears the bitterness in his voice before he finishes speaking, and from the sharp look Caspian gives him, it’s not missed.
“Peter will be glad to know they’re still here,” he says at last. He’s glad they’re still here, but the initial surge of relief was outweighed by the shock of getting his wrist broken, his face bloodied, and his pride bruised. And now both of those are being outweighed by the shocking suspicion of why didn’t they come?
Narnia has changed a great deal in the past millennium; not only are they not being told everything, nobody knows everything. There are secrets being kept that they need to know.
Caspian is silent for a few minutes. Edmund picks a stone idly up from the beach and rubs it between his fingers, worn smooth from the sea. Behind them, their horses stir at the edge of the woods and he glances up, reaching for his dagger with his left hand as a woman emerges from the trees.
Her hair shimmers green and gold in the moonlight, sleek and wet, and her eyes glow briefly green as Edmund rises and turns toward her. Caspian scrambles to his feet.
“The eker say that you are Edmund Silvertongue, King of Shadows,” the rusalka says, eyeing him warily. “Are you?”
“I am,” Edmund replies, keeping a firm grip on his dagger.
Her gaze flickers up and down him, considering, then over Caspian. “You travel with a Telmarine,” she says.
“I travel with a friend of Narnia,” Edmund corrects, but doesn’t name Caspian. He doesn’t need to deal with that explanation just now. “My brother High King Peter gathers all true Narnians to him at Aslan’s How; we mean to take back Narnia for our own. You did not answer his summons, or the call of my sister’s horn?”
“No messenger, Narnian or Telmarine, will enter these lands in fear of their own lives,” the rusalka says, inspecting her nails lazily. “Those that do will not return to their homes.” For emphasis, she licks her – very sharp – teeth, and next to Edmund, Caspian goes very still.
“My cousin Deidre said that not a week ago, two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve were seen on the Great River,” she continues. “They saved a son of earth from two Telmarines on the shore of the nameless isle –” she gestures at Cair Paravel, “– and entered the Great River, sailing westward into the heart of Narnia. Think carefully before you reply, human.”
“I don’t have to,” Edmund says. “My brother and I were the sons of Adam, my sisters Queen Susan and Queen Lucy the daughters of Eve, and the son of earth was a Red Dwarf called Trumpkin. We were called back to Narnia by my sister’s horn.” He sheathes his dagger, but keeps his hand on the hilt.
“Is that what you mean when you speak of a summoning?” the rusalka asks. When Edmund nods, she continues, “No magic penetrates these woods; it was the last spell woven before the trees entered their great sleep. What proof do you offer me and my kin that we do not kill you where you stand?”
“He spoke to the ghosts of the Cair and they let him live,” Pontos the oceanid says from behind them, drawing himself up out of the water. “No Telmarine could do such a thing.”
“Nor any Narnian, either,” the rusalka says, glaring at him. “Very well…majesty,” she adds, the title half a grudge and half a challenge. “We will take you upriver as far as we can, and then we will speak to the High King.”
“Peter will be glad of it,” Edmund says neutrally, even though Peter won’t be glad, he’ll be pissed, because he doesn’t want to have to negotiate whether or not his people are going to follow him into battle; he wants them to follow his orders without hesitation. Not even the dryland Narnians are doing that; he’d hoped for a little more cooperation from the freshwater and saltwater Narnians. Apparently, that’s not an option they’re willing to offer.
“Come, then,” the rusalka says, turning away without waiting for Edmund and Caspian.
They take the horses down to the river’s mouth, where two kelpies and a banshee are waiting. “You are not the High King,” growls one of the kelpies, its white mane tangled with waterweed and dripping riverwater.
“That would be my brother,” Edmund says.
“This is Edmund Silvertongue, the King of Shadows,” says the rusalka, giving him an imperioius look. “He comes in the High King’s name.”
“Does he?” says a voice from the wood.
“Kvikindi,” the banshee mutters under her breath as a woman emerges from the trees.
Edmund shifts to put himself between Caspian and the huldra. She’s dressed plainly, wearing little more than a tunic that comes to mid-thigh and fastens over the shoulders, but from behind a cow’s tail cuts the air lazily.
Kvikindi. Creature of the earth. A dryland Narnian, and another one who didn’t answer Peter’s call – or Caspian’s summons, to be strictly factual about it. He remembers the dryland Narnians being friendly with the freshwater Narnians, but times have obviously changed.
“Perhaps you are too trusting, little cousin,” the huldra says to the rusalka as she approaches, clicking her tongue in reproach. “No man dares venture into these woods.”
“No Telmarine,” the rusalka spits, glaring at her fiercely. “And he is no Telmarine; even one of the kvikindi can tell it by looking at him.”
“And even one of the nicor can be fooled,” the huldra replies. “The men of the east and the south come to the nameless isle sometimes, hoping to find gold and treasure there, the legacies of the kings and queens of old. Who are you, man? Those who dwell in these woods saw you approach from the west, but that gives no clue to your name or your blood.”
“My name is Edmund,” Edmund says, steady, calm, fist clenched around the pommel of his dagger. “They called me Silvertongue, Shadowmaster, and Whisperer once. The great lion Aslan named me King of Narnia in the great hall of Cair Paravel, which stands in ruins across the channel. I have been known by many titles, King of Evening, King of Shadows, and King of Whispers among them. Once I riddled the dragon Hadassar out of his cave in the mountains north of Narnia. Of those four thrones in Cair Paravel, one of them is mine; I am second only to my brother Peter the High King and my sister Queen Susan, who wait for my return at Aslan’s How in the heart of Narnia so that we may raise Narnia against the tyrant Miraz.”
“Fine words,” says the huldra, “and bold phrasing. But what proof can you offer? The stories of the King of Evening are well-known; any child can parrot them.”
“The ghosts of the nameless isle –” the rusalka begins indignantly.
“I am no water-creature, to believe the whispers that come on the crests of the waves,” the huldra says, her tone dismissive. “I am of the earth, of the forests and the fields. We need proof more concrete than mere rumors.”
Fuck, he is not going to have to play Peter’s old trick, is he? And he’s not Peter; there’s not a reason in hell this is going to work if he tries it. But the rusalka are deadly, the huldra more so, and they need every Narnian in Narnia to win this war. Edmund licks his lips and says, “If you are of the earth, then you know that Narnia wakes once more. Ask her and not me if I speak the truth.”
The huldra’s eyes flare wide in surprise and beside her, the rusalka’s are green again. “You had best hope you are not lying,” she says at last, and raises one hand to her mouth. Her sharp teeth puncture the tip of one finger and she lets the single drop of blood that forms fall to the ground.
Dryland Narnians are tied to the earth in ways that no other Narnians are, and Narnia’s earth is a living entity in her own right. She knows them – knows Peter, really, the rest of them are just a convenience as far as the country herself is concerned. This is a question, and Narnia will answer. He can feel the magic travel across the land in a spine-tingling ripple up hips and back, and then –
There’s a single sharp stab of annoyance that Edmund feels at the back of his skull, and somewhere in Narnia, Peter is startled and pissed off and wary, because the question goes to him. It fades as quickly as it came and Edmund bites his tongue against the automatic wince – he hates this, hates being tied to Narnia and Peter without a choice in the matter. But there’s no way around it, and it has its moments of usefulness. Like now, for example. He clenches his good fist as the magic fades back into the land, trying to force the tension away by sheer strength of will.
“Majesty,” the huldra whispers, bowing deeply. Her expression is visibly shaken. He doesn’t know how she got the message, but if Narnia told her in the same way that she told Peter, he’s not surprised at her reaction. “Forgive me. Forgive my cousins, who sought to spill your blood as you approached. Times are dark.”
“Yes, I noticed,” Edmund says waspishly, then shakes his head. “Your caution’s appreciated, under the circumstances,” he adds as the huldra straightens.
Her eyes slide over to Caspian. “And your…companion,” she says. “A Telmarine man.” She approaches with hooded eyes, smiling with her lips covering pointed teeth, and Caspian takes a hasty step backwards.
Edmund moves between them again. “A friend of Narnia,” he says firmly. “He’s with me.”
“How disappointing,” the huldra says, moving away. “The Telmarines grow ever more wary of these woods, and we cannot touch them on the river. If we want to eat, we must venture further inland into the land they claim.”
“Eat?” Caspian bursts out, sounding horrified.
She cuts her eyes at him. “Why, yes, Telmarine,” she says. “Where do you think those of your people foolish enough to enter these lands vanish to?”
“Little gods,” he whispers, half-prayer and half-curse.
“Huldra,” Edmund says, and she looks at him.
“Your majesty,” she answers, voice even, eyes wary. There’s the same instinctive awe there he’s seen in the Narnians at the How, tempered with the same awareness of all their past sins, what they’ve taken from Narnia by their leaving. These Narnians don’t look at them as saviors the way they were looked at when they first arrived in Narnia at the end of the Long Winter.
“Bring your people to Aslan’s How as soon as you can gather them. My brother means to win back Narnia.”
This time, when the huldra smiles, she shows all her teeth. “Gladly, majesty,” she says. “Has the time for vengeance come, then?”
“Vengeance?” Edmund says, and then says no more.
-
-
The River Rush runs colder and shallower than it used to, once upon a time. Drought, Edmund thinks, bitter with anger. He doesn’t remember everything about Narnia, but he remembers this.
There’s less life here than there should be. The kelpies they’re riding race along the river floor, swift-footed and sure, and once upon a time Edmund would have been able to look around and see naiads and talking beasts and rusalka, stranger things, all keeping pace with him, laughing and racing and flirting. Now – now there’s nothing but the rush of water in his ears, the harsh burn of magic in his lungs every time the kelpie surfaces briefly to let him breathe before diving down again. Traveling underwater is quick, but it costs both the rider and the kelpie in strength, because it’s an extension of a kelpie’s natural magic, and all magic is at its core is energy in one form or another. The kelpies will be useless for at least a day when they arrive at the How, but it’s one of the benefits of having freshwater allies. There are saltwater equivalents, but they aren’t…pleasant. And the cost is more than Edmund’s willing to pay for anyone other than Peter.
He’s expecting the kelpie to stop where the Elif splits off from the Rush and goes underground – it comes up at the base of the How – but instead the waterhorse surfaces, shakes its head and takes an enormous breath, then dives back beneath the water. Edmund bends forward over its neck as the tunnel walls compress around them, but the kelpie makes itself smaller somehow, eeling agilely through places where it shouldn’t be able to enter. It’s so disconcerting that Edmund shuts his eyes and clings to the kelpie’s mane with both hands, good and bad, thinking furiously of Narnian runic, picturing each symbol carved on the inside of his eyelids, his broken wrist throbbing in time to his pulse.
They’re underwater for a long time this time, so long that Edmund’s vision is whiting out and the kelpie is panting in sharp, watery breaths, its breakneck pace slowing incrementally. Aslan guard us, he thinks in blind panic, and then the kelpie bursts out of the water, webbed and taloned feet scraping over the stone of the lowest cave in the How, Hengoern the unicorn shouting in panic.
Edmund tumbles ungracefully off the waterhorse’s back, dragging the saddlebags down with him and landing on his bad wrist. “Just us,” he says between great gulps of air, too exhausted even to shout in pain at the way his wrist feels now. Probably any bones that weren’t already broken breaking, with his luck. Freezing water splashes across his face as the second kelpie claws its way out of the spring that waters the How, depositing Caspian and the second set of saddlebags next to Edmund.
“Herdsman’s path,” Hengoern swears fervently as footsteps beat on the stairs leading down. Susan emerges a moment later, bow drawn, with a snow leopard named Hilzarie at her side and two minotaurs just behind her.
“Ed –” she says, blinking as she takes in the scene. “I see you found the freshwater Narnians.”
“Oh, yeah,” Edmund says, looking up at her from the floor. From this angle, she’s upside down. “Peter around? We need to talk.”
“Yes, we certainly do,” Susan says, coming around to his front and offering him a hand up.
Edmund gives her his left hand and makes Susan put real strength into pulling him up. “What happened to your right?” she asks. “And your face?”
“Long story,” Edmund says. He tilts his head towards Caspian, who’s getting painfully to his feet, and winces as his neck cracks. “He got off worse.”
“I am learning,” Caspian says wryly as Susan looks over at him, her eyes widening, “that Telmarines are not very well-liked in the wild lands of Narnia.”
“With good reason,” one of the kelpies mutters, then shakes itself and bows low to Susan. “Heartsbane, I presume,” it murmurs.
Susan looks startled. It’s been a good three years since anyone called her that in public, and the last person to do so was Rabadash – and the circumstances hadn’t been particularly good. “Yes,” she says a moment later, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. She turns back to Edmund. “Did you get it?”
Edmund leans down and flips back the flap of one of the saddlebags. Peter’s armor gleams in the torchlight. “Peter can go off and get himself killed in safety,” he says. “It might even still fit him, since it’s the same armor he wore when we fought the White Witch.”
Someone – one of the kelpies, maybe, since he’s hoping the Narnians at the How have started to get used to their casual references to (in their eyes) legendary events – makes a strangled sound.
Susan nods. “Is it the same armor he wore at Angrisla?” she inquires carefully.
Edmund looks down again, calculating years in his head. “Yes,” he says slowly. The caves of Angrisla are where Peter once lost a third of his army and very nearly his life. It’s not a happy memory for any of them. “Do you think that’s going to bother him?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him, I suppose. He’s in his room,” she adds. “He’s in a bad mood.”
“And the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and someone’s trying to kill us,” Edmund points out. “Anything else new?”
“There’s been some skirmishing between Telmarine scouts and our outliers, but nothing serious,” Susan says. “You’d better go see Peter. He’ll want to know you’re back. Also, it’s raining.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Edmund says, glancing up at the flight of stairs and groaning. He picks up the saddlebags and slings them over his shoulder, biting his tongue as the motion jars his broken wrist. He turns to the minotaurs. “Take that up to my room,” he orders, gesturing at the second set of saddlebags with his bad hand. “And, Su –”
“You,” Susan says meaningfully to Caspian, “are going to go see someone about that broken nose. Not Lucy; it’s not bad enough for that. But there are some healers here. Ed, you need to see Lucy, you can’t –”
“I will,” Edmund forestalls. “I like not being injured too, you know. I’ll go after I’m done with Peter. It might be…a while,” he adds, and doesn’t look at Susan as he says this last.
He sees her head turn out of the corner of his eye. “Ed –” she begins.
“I’d better go,” Edmund says, turning away.
The door to Peter’s room is open when he gets up to the top level of the How, already abused muscles aching from the weight of the saddlebags, and Edmund raps on the wood once, cursory, before going in.
Peter’s sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, maps spread out on the floor around him. I've never seen you without a god-damned map, Edmund had said to him once. And not a one of them's ever of Narnia.
I know Narnia, Peter had replied. It's everywhere else that's the problem.
What are you looking at now, Pete? Edmund wonders. After all, unless he’s planning to run the Telmarines over the border, which isn’t anywhere near here – if it’s anywhere near where it used to be, for that matter – then there’s no use for the maps.
“You’re late,” Peter says without looking up.
Edmund slides the saddlebags off his shoulder and closes the door behind him. “I wasn’t aware I was actually being timed.”
“You said dawn today,” Peter says. “It’s mid-afternoon.”
“I got delayed,” Edmund says, touching his broken wrist. It’s swollen and painful, and he probably should have taken Susan’s advice and found Lucy before finding Peter, but Peter needs the news he’s about to get.
“Telmarines?” Peter asks, leaning forward to mark something on one of the maps in front of him, idly shoving his hair out of his face.
“Narnians,” Edmund says.
Peter looks up at that. Then he jerks to his feet, eyes wide, and comes over to Edmund, tilting up his chin with one hand. “Trickster’s balls,” he spits, the words harsh and angry, and Aslan, Edmund’s forgotten just how terrifying Peter can be when he’s not thinking about it.
“Who did this?” he demands. “I’ll kill them.”
“You’d better not,” Edmund says, swatting him away with his good hand. Peter’s eyes go immediately to his broken wrist. “I think we need them.”
“Not that much,” Peter says flatly. “What in seven hells –”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Edmund tells him firmly. “And can’t you just swear by Aslan like the rest of us?”
For a moment Peter looks startled. “Old habits die hard,” he says after a moment.
“Narnia had you for fourteen years and Natare only had you for one. Did they make that much more of an impression on you?” Edmund asks, suddenly weary.
“Don’t change the subject,” Peter snaps. “Who did this?”
“Well,” Edmund says, “the good news is I have your armor, and my armor, and your bag of weapons, which you’ll have to tell me about sometime because I don’t remember it at all, and that I found the saltwater and freshwater Narnians, and the dryland Narnians from the seaboard. The bad news is that I think they’ve gone a little crazy sometime in the past millennium, and that they’re killing any Telmarines or Narnians who enter their lands.”
“So?”
“Killing and eating,” Edmund says meaningfully.
“Those marks are from being hit,” Peter says, “not from being gnawed on. I don’t particularly care what they’ve been up to for the past thousand years so long as they don’t do any of it under my command.”
“That’s the rest of the bad news,” Edmund says. “Although there are a pair of kelpies down below waiting for you, and there’s a huldra bringing Caspian’s horses back at some point in the near future who wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” Peter repeats, raising his eyebrows. “When did we get to the point where I have to negotiate my authority?”
“Now, apparently,” Edmund says. “If you thought the inland Narnians were bad, these ones are worse. They damn near killed Caspian. They were ready to kill us for setting foot on Cair Paravel. And they didn’t answer either Susan’s horn or your summons, although that last part is probably because no sane Narnian crosses the Rush or goes anywhere near the seaboard.”
“Of course,” Peter says sourly. “Because anything else might mean that this would be merely difficult, instead of damn near impossible. But they are coming?”
“The saltwater Narnians won’t be any help this far inland, but the dryland and freshwater Narnians both said something about coming to talk to you,” Edmund says, and does his best to look apologetic at Peter’s scowl. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Peter says. “I suppose there’s a story in there somewhere explaining the migraine I got in the middle of the night?”
“The second option was getting killed and eaten,” Edmund says frankly. “At least it proved that I wasn’t some crazy Telmarine with a superiority complex.”
“In that case, I don’t grudge the headache,” Peter replies. “If there’s nothing else urgent, you should go and get your wrist seen to. I would have waited if I’d known, and I need you in one piece for the battle.”
“There’s something else,” Edmund says. He steps away from Peter and leans over one of the saddlebags, digging for the roll of leather and the garroting wire. He comes up with a closed fist.
Peter opens his hand and Edmund lets the two signet rings fall into his palm.
For a long time Peter just looks at them, then he raises his hands to Edmund. Silent, breath drawn taut in his throat, Edmund fits the signets over each ring finger – Peter’s personal seal on the right, Narnia’s signet on the left. He expects them to fit loosely or to fall off, but they close around Peter’s flesh like a second skin, like a part of him.
Peter looks down at his hands, rubbing the ball of his thumb briefly over the lion rampant on his left hand, then raises his head and smiles at Edmund, open and heartbreaking. “You’d better get that wrist seen to,” he says again. “Then come back here and give me a full report.”
end
The saltwater Narnians’ embarrassment at injuring Edmund doesn’t extend to Caspian; as soon as they hear the name “Caspian” their friendly attitude turns cold despite Edmund’s insistence that Caspian is a friend of Narnia.
“Sorry,” Edmund says to Caspian, faintly apologetic for no particular reason. The saltwater Narnians are his people; that means their attitudes are his responsibility.
Caspian shrugs and winces at the movement. The ghosts have cleaned the blood from his face, drawn to the living blood, but all that means is that there’s nothing to conceal the cuts and bruises, the split lips and broken nose. “I’m a Telmarine,” he says softly. “My people are universally hated by every Narnian in the country, and my family especially so. It doesn’t help that I share Caspian the Conqueror’s name.”
“Still,” Edmund says, “I’m sorry. Once we wouldn’t have done this.” He catches Caspian’s chin with the two fingers of his left hand, his touch gentle, and turns his head from side to side to get a better idea of the damage. Caspian stills, unprotesting, and lets him. “Can you see out of both eyes?”
“Mostly,” Caspian says. His face really does look horrible; both eyes are swollen and black with bruising, a blood vessel burst in the corner of his left eye and turning the white red. “What would you have done?” he asks.
“Well, for one,” Edmund points out, letting go and running his thumb idly over the healing cut on his right palm, “we wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place, unless someone got supremely lucky and managed to conquer Narnia while Peter was…indisposed. Which he has been, a few times, and it’s been close more than once. Ask me or Susan about it when we get back to the How; Peter’s version can be summed up pretty much as, ‘And then I came back and killed anyone that looked at me cross-eyed.’ But no,” he adds, “we wouldn’t have done this. Even when we were at war with Telmar we had Telmarines living in Narnia, and while there might have been anger between native Narnians and immigrants – refugees – it never came to violence. Or if it did, we ended it as soon as we found out.”
“Ended it?” Caspian repeats warily.
“The stocks, fines, public whipping, the mines, the galleys – and the punishment for murder is death,” Edmund says. “An Archenlander merchant was lynched in the first year of our reign; Peter beheaded the satyrs that did it.” He looks at Caspian steadily. The boy swallows, but doesn’t look away.
“I can’t punish them for this,” Edmund says slowly. “They won’t accept it, and now – now isn’t the time. If we were back at the How – Peter’s already given the only warning he’ll give.”
“I understand,” Caspian says.
Edmund raises his eyebrows. “Do you?” he asks, voice soft.
Caspian hesitates. “Yes,” he says at last. “I understand. They aren’t under the High King’s command.”
“Not that it would help much if they were,” Edmund says under his breath. They’re sitting on the beach across the channel from Cair Paravel, which the saltwater Narnians had been all too eager to leave. It’s not our place, Pontos had said when Edmund asked. We’re not wanted here. And it’s – uncomfortable. Too many dead. Too much sorrow and too much anger.
He’d rather be riding hard for the How than waiting here in the open, but the swan-maidens had promised them faster passage and help from the freshwater Narnians, so he’ll hold his peace for now. The freshwater Narnians will be able to help where the saltwater Narnians can’t; he can tell from the Telmarine presence at Beruna that they’re going to need the help if they want to win this war. And he hasn’t seen a single one of them since he arrived in Narnia.
Caspian stirs restlessly beside him; Edmund glances over. “What?”
“Why didn’t they come?” Caspian asks. “The others came when I blew the horn, and those that didn’t came at King Peter’s summons. Why didn’t they? Or your freshwater Narnians?”
Edmund hesitates for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I don’t think they heard it. Sometimes it can’t be heard over running water. Or –” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Water is more resistant to magic than earth. And it’s not like magic is reliable.” He hears the bitterness in his voice before he finishes speaking, and from the sharp look Caspian gives him, it’s not missed.
“Peter will be glad to know they’re still here,” he says at last. He’s glad they’re still here, but the initial surge of relief was outweighed by the shock of getting his wrist broken, his face bloodied, and his pride bruised. And now both of those are being outweighed by the shocking suspicion of why didn’t they come?
Narnia has changed a great deal in the past millennium; not only are they not being told everything, nobody knows everything. There are secrets being kept that they need to know.
Caspian is silent for a few minutes. Edmund picks a stone idly up from the beach and rubs it between his fingers, worn smooth from the sea. Behind them, their horses stir at the edge of the woods and he glances up, reaching for his dagger with his left hand as a woman emerges from the trees.
Her hair shimmers green and gold in the moonlight, sleek and wet, and her eyes glow briefly green as Edmund rises and turns toward her. Caspian scrambles to his feet.
“The eker say that you are Edmund Silvertongue, King of Shadows,” the rusalka says, eyeing him warily. “Are you?”
“I am,” Edmund replies, keeping a firm grip on his dagger.
Her gaze flickers up and down him, considering, then over Caspian. “You travel with a Telmarine,” she says.
“I travel with a friend of Narnia,” Edmund corrects, but doesn’t name Caspian. He doesn’t need to deal with that explanation just now. “My brother High King Peter gathers all true Narnians to him at Aslan’s How; we mean to take back Narnia for our own. You did not answer his summons, or the call of my sister’s horn?”
“No messenger, Narnian or Telmarine, will enter these lands in fear of their own lives,” the rusalka says, inspecting her nails lazily. “Those that do will not return to their homes.” For emphasis, she licks her – very sharp – teeth, and next to Edmund, Caspian goes very still.
“My cousin Deidre said that not a week ago, two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve were seen on the Great River,” she continues. “They saved a son of earth from two Telmarines on the shore of the nameless isle –” she gestures at Cair Paravel, “– and entered the Great River, sailing westward into the heart of Narnia. Think carefully before you reply, human.”
“I don’t have to,” Edmund says. “My brother and I were the sons of Adam, my sisters Queen Susan and Queen Lucy the daughters of Eve, and the son of earth was a Red Dwarf called Trumpkin. We were called back to Narnia by my sister’s horn.” He sheathes his dagger, but keeps his hand on the hilt.
“Is that what you mean when you speak of a summoning?” the rusalka asks. When Edmund nods, she continues, “No magic penetrates these woods; it was the last spell woven before the trees entered their great sleep. What proof do you offer me and my kin that we do not kill you where you stand?”
“He spoke to the ghosts of the Cair and they let him live,” Pontos the oceanid says from behind them, drawing himself up out of the water. “No Telmarine could do such a thing.”
“Nor any Narnian, either,” the rusalka says, glaring at him. “Very well…majesty,” she adds, the title half a grudge and half a challenge. “We will take you upriver as far as we can, and then we will speak to the High King.”
“Peter will be glad of it,” Edmund says neutrally, even though Peter won’t be glad, he’ll be pissed, because he doesn’t want to have to negotiate whether or not his people are going to follow him into battle; he wants them to follow his orders without hesitation. Not even the dryland Narnians are doing that; he’d hoped for a little more cooperation from the freshwater and saltwater Narnians. Apparently, that’s not an option they’re willing to offer.
“Come, then,” the rusalka says, turning away without waiting for Edmund and Caspian.
They take the horses down to the river’s mouth, where two kelpies and a banshee are waiting. “You are not the High King,” growls one of the kelpies, its white mane tangled with waterweed and dripping riverwater.
“That would be my brother,” Edmund says.
“This is Edmund Silvertongue, the King of Shadows,” says the rusalka, giving him an imperioius look. “He comes in the High King’s name.”
“Does he?” says a voice from the wood.
“Kvikindi,” the banshee mutters under her breath as a woman emerges from the trees.
Edmund shifts to put himself between Caspian and the huldra. She’s dressed plainly, wearing little more than a tunic that comes to mid-thigh and fastens over the shoulders, but from behind a cow’s tail cuts the air lazily.
Kvikindi. Creature of the earth. A dryland Narnian, and another one who didn’t answer Peter’s call – or Caspian’s summons, to be strictly factual about it. He remembers the dryland Narnians being friendly with the freshwater Narnians, but times have obviously changed.
“Perhaps you are too trusting, little cousin,” the huldra says to the rusalka as she approaches, clicking her tongue in reproach. “No man dares venture into these woods.”
“No Telmarine,” the rusalka spits, glaring at her fiercely. “And he is no Telmarine; even one of the kvikindi can tell it by looking at him.”
“And even one of the nicor can be fooled,” the huldra replies. “The men of the east and the south come to the nameless isle sometimes, hoping to find gold and treasure there, the legacies of the kings and queens of old. Who are you, man? Those who dwell in these woods saw you approach from the west, but that gives no clue to your name or your blood.”
“My name is Edmund,” Edmund says, steady, calm, fist clenched around the pommel of his dagger. “They called me Silvertongue, Shadowmaster, and Whisperer once. The great lion Aslan named me King of Narnia in the great hall of Cair Paravel, which stands in ruins across the channel. I have been known by many titles, King of Evening, King of Shadows, and King of Whispers among them. Once I riddled the dragon Hadassar out of his cave in the mountains north of Narnia. Of those four thrones in Cair Paravel, one of them is mine; I am second only to my brother Peter the High King and my sister Queen Susan, who wait for my return at Aslan’s How in the heart of Narnia so that we may raise Narnia against the tyrant Miraz.”
“Fine words,” says the huldra, “and bold phrasing. But what proof can you offer? The stories of the King of Evening are well-known; any child can parrot them.”
“The ghosts of the nameless isle –” the rusalka begins indignantly.
“I am no water-creature, to believe the whispers that come on the crests of the waves,” the huldra says, her tone dismissive. “I am of the earth, of the forests and the fields. We need proof more concrete than mere rumors.”
Fuck, he is not going to have to play Peter’s old trick, is he? And he’s not Peter; there’s not a reason in hell this is going to work if he tries it. But the rusalka are deadly, the huldra more so, and they need every Narnian in Narnia to win this war. Edmund licks his lips and says, “If you are of the earth, then you know that Narnia wakes once more. Ask her and not me if I speak the truth.”
The huldra’s eyes flare wide in surprise and beside her, the rusalka’s are green again. “You had best hope you are not lying,” she says at last, and raises one hand to her mouth. Her sharp teeth puncture the tip of one finger and she lets the single drop of blood that forms fall to the ground.
Dryland Narnians are tied to the earth in ways that no other Narnians are, and Narnia’s earth is a living entity in her own right. She knows them – knows Peter, really, the rest of them are just a convenience as far as the country herself is concerned. This is a question, and Narnia will answer. He can feel the magic travel across the land in a spine-tingling ripple up hips and back, and then –
There’s a single sharp stab of annoyance that Edmund feels at the back of his skull, and somewhere in Narnia, Peter is startled and pissed off and wary, because the question goes to him. It fades as quickly as it came and Edmund bites his tongue against the automatic wince – he hates this, hates being tied to Narnia and Peter without a choice in the matter. But there’s no way around it, and it has its moments of usefulness. Like now, for example. He clenches his good fist as the magic fades back into the land, trying to force the tension away by sheer strength of will.
“Majesty,” the huldra whispers, bowing deeply. Her expression is visibly shaken. He doesn’t know how she got the message, but if Narnia told her in the same way that she told Peter, he’s not surprised at her reaction. “Forgive me. Forgive my cousins, who sought to spill your blood as you approached. Times are dark.”
“Yes, I noticed,” Edmund says waspishly, then shakes his head. “Your caution’s appreciated, under the circumstances,” he adds as the huldra straightens.
Her eyes slide over to Caspian. “And your…companion,” she says. “A Telmarine man.” She approaches with hooded eyes, smiling with her lips covering pointed teeth, and Caspian takes a hasty step backwards.
Edmund moves between them again. “A friend of Narnia,” he says firmly. “He’s with me.”
“How disappointing,” the huldra says, moving away. “The Telmarines grow ever more wary of these woods, and we cannot touch them on the river. If we want to eat, we must venture further inland into the land they claim.”
“Eat?” Caspian bursts out, sounding horrified.
She cuts her eyes at him. “Why, yes, Telmarine,” she says. “Where do you think those of your people foolish enough to enter these lands vanish to?”
“Little gods,” he whispers, half-prayer and half-curse.
“Huldra,” Edmund says, and she looks at him.
“Your majesty,” she answers, voice even, eyes wary. There’s the same instinctive awe there he’s seen in the Narnians at the How, tempered with the same awareness of all their past sins, what they’ve taken from Narnia by their leaving. These Narnians don’t look at them as saviors the way they were looked at when they first arrived in Narnia at the end of the Long Winter.
“Bring your people to Aslan’s How as soon as you can gather them. My brother means to win back Narnia.”
This time, when the huldra smiles, she shows all her teeth. “Gladly, majesty,” she says. “Has the time for vengeance come, then?”
“Vengeance?” Edmund says, and then says no more.
-
-
The River Rush runs colder and shallower than it used to, once upon a time. Drought, Edmund thinks, bitter with anger. He doesn’t remember everything about Narnia, but he remembers this.
There’s less life here than there should be. The kelpies they’re riding race along the river floor, swift-footed and sure, and once upon a time Edmund would have been able to look around and see naiads and talking beasts and rusalka, stranger things, all keeping pace with him, laughing and racing and flirting. Now – now there’s nothing but the rush of water in his ears, the harsh burn of magic in his lungs every time the kelpie surfaces briefly to let him breathe before diving down again. Traveling underwater is quick, but it costs both the rider and the kelpie in strength, because it’s an extension of a kelpie’s natural magic, and all magic is at its core is energy in one form or another. The kelpies will be useless for at least a day when they arrive at the How, but it’s one of the benefits of having freshwater allies. There are saltwater equivalents, but they aren’t…pleasant. And the cost is more than Edmund’s willing to pay for anyone other than Peter.
He’s expecting the kelpie to stop where the Elif splits off from the Rush and goes underground – it comes up at the base of the How – but instead the waterhorse surfaces, shakes its head and takes an enormous breath, then dives back beneath the water. Edmund bends forward over its neck as the tunnel walls compress around them, but the kelpie makes itself smaller somehow, eeling agilely through places where it shouldn’t be able to enter. It’s so disconcerting that Edmund shuts his eyes and clings to the kelpie’s mane with both hands, good and bad, thinking furiously of Narnian runic, picturing each symbol carved on the inside of his eyelids, his broken wrist throbbing in time to his pulse.
They’re underwater for a long time this time, so long that Edmund’s vision is whiting out and the kelpie is panting in sharp, watery breaths, its breakneck pace slowing incrementally. Aslan guard us, he thinks in blind panic, and then the kelpie bursts out of the water, webbed and taloned feet scraping over the stone of the lowest cave in the How, Hengoern the unicorn shouting in panic.
Edmund tumbles ungracefully off the waterhorse’s back, dragging the saddlebags down with him and landing on his bad wrist. “Just us,” he says between great gulps of air, too exhausted even to shout in pain at the way his wrist feels now. Probably any bones that weren’t already broken breaking, with his luck. Freezing water splashes across his face as the second kelpie claws its way out of the spring that waters the How, depositing Caspian and the second set of saddlebags next to Edmund.
“Herdsman’s path,” Hengoern swears fervently as footsteps beat on the stairs leading down. Susan emerges a moment later, bow drawn, with a snow leopard named Hilzarie at her side and two minotaurs just behind her.
“Ed –” she says, blinking as she takes in the scene. “I see you found the freshwater Narnians.”
“Oh, yeah,” Edmund says, looking up at her from the floor. From this angle, she’s upside down. “Peter around? We need to talk.”
“Yes, we certainly do,” Susan says, coming around to his front and offering him a hand up.
Edmund gives her his left hand and makes Susan put real strength into pulling him up. “What happened to your right?” she asks. “And your face?”
“Long story,” Edmund says. He tilts his head towards Caspian, who’s getting painfully to his feet, and winces as his neck cracks. “He got off worse.”
“I am learning,” Caspian says wryly as Susan looks over at him, her eyes widening, “that Telmarines are not very well-liked in the wild lands of Narnia.”
“With good reason,” one of the kelpies mutters, then shakes itself and bows low to Susan. “Heartsbane, I presume,” it murmurs.
Susan looks startled. It’s been a good three years since anyone called her that in public, and the last person to do so was Rabadash – and the circumstances hadn’t been particularly good. “Yes,” she says a moment later, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. She turns back to Edmund. “Did you get it?”
Edmund leans down and flips back the flap of one of the saddlebags. Peter’s armor gleams in the torchlight. “Peter can go off and get himself killed in safety,” he says. “It might even still fit him, since it’s the same armor he wore when we fought the White Witch.”
Someone – one of the kelpies, maybe, since he’s hoping the Narnians at the How have started to get used to their casual references to (in their eyes) legendary events – makes a strangled sound.
Susan nods. “Is it the same armor he wore at Angrisla?” she inquires carefully.
Edmund looks down again, calculating years in his head. “Yes,” he says slowly. The caves of Angrisla are where Peter once lost a third of his army and very nearly his life. It’s not a happy memory for any of them. “Do you think that’s going to bother him?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him, I suppose. He’s in his room,” she adds. “He’s in a bad mood.”
“And the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and someone’s trying to kill us,” Edmund points out. “Anything else new?”
“There’s been some skirmishing between Telmarine scouts and our outliers, but nothing serious,” Susan says. “You’d better go see Peter. He’ll want to know you’re back. Also, it’s raining.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Edmund says, glancing up at the flight of stairs and groaning. He picks up the saddlebags and slings them over his shoulder, biting his tongue as the motion jars his broken wrist. He turns to the minotaurs. “Take that up to my room,” he orders, gesturing at the second set of saddlebags with his bad hand. “And, Su –”
“You,” Susan says meaningfully to Caspian, “are going to go see someone about that broken nose. Not Lucy; it’s not bad enough for that. But there are some healers here. Ed, you need to see Lucy, you can’t –”
“I will,” Edmund forestalls. “I like not being injured too, you know. I’ll go after I’m done with Peter. It might be…a while,” he adds, and doesn’t look at Susan as he says this last.
He sees her head turn out of the corner of his eye. “Ed –” she begins.
“I’d better go,” Edmund says, turning away.
The door to Peter’s room is open when he gets up to the top level of the How, already abused muscles aching from the weight of the saddlebags, and Edmund raps on the wood once, cursory, before going in.
Peter’s sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, maps spread out on the floor around him. I've never seen you without a god-damned map, Edmund had said to him once. And not a one of them's ever of Narnia.
I know Narnia, Peter had replied. It's everywhere else that's the problem.
What are you looking at now, Pete? Edmund wonders. After all, unless he’s planning to run the Telmarines over the border, which isn’t anywhere near here – if it’s anywhere near where it used to be, for that matter – then there’s no use for the maps.
“You’re late,” Peter says without looking up.
Edmund slides the saddlebags off his shoulder and closes the door behind him. “I wasn’t aware I was actually being timed.”
“You said dawn today,” Peter says. “It’s mid-afternoon.”
“I got delayed,” Edmund says, touching his broken wrist. It’s swollen and painful, and he probably should have taken Susan’s advice and found Lucy before finding Peter, but Peter needs the news he’s about to get.
“Telmarines?” Peter asks, leaning forward to mark something on one of the maps in front of him, idly shoving his hair out of his face.
“Narnians,” Edmund says.
Peter looks up at that. Then he jerks to his feet, eyes wide, and comes over to Edmund, tilting up his chin with one hand. “Trickster’s balls,” he spits, the words harsh and angry, and Aslan, Edmund’s forgotten just how terrifying Peter can be when he’s not thinking about it.
“Who did this?” he demands. “I’ll kill them.”
“You’d better not,” Edmund says, swatting him away with his good hand. Peter’s eyes go immediately to his broken wrist. “I think we need them.”
“Not that much,” Peter says flatly. “What in seven hells –”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Edmund tells him firmly. “And can’t you just swear by Aslan like the rest of us?”
For a moment Peter looks startled. “Old habits die hard,” he says after a moment.
“Narnia had you for fourteen years and Natare only had you for one. Did they make that much more of an impression on you?” Edmund asks, suddenly weary.
“Don’t change the subject,” Peter snaps. “Who did this?”
“Well,” Edmund says, “the good news is I have your armor, and my armor, and your bag of weapons, which you’ll have to tell me about sometime because I don’t remember it at all, and that I found the saltwater and freshwater Narnians, and the dryland Narnians from the seaboard. The bad news is that I think they’ve gone a little crazy sometime in the past millennium, and that they’re killing any Telmarines or Narnians who enter their lands.”
“So?”
“Killing and eating,” Edmund says meaningfully.
“Those marks are from being hit,” Peter says, “not from being gnawed on. I don’t particularly care what they’ve been up to for the past thousand years so long as they don’t do any of it under my command.”
“That’s the rest of the bad news,” Edmund says. “Although there are a pair of kelpies down below waiting for you, and there’s a huldra bringing Caspian’s horses back at some point in the near future who wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” Peter repeats, raising his eyebrows. “When did we get to the point where I have to negotiate my authority?”
“Now, apparently,” Edmund says. “If you thought the inland Narnians were bad, these ones are worse. They damn near killed Caspian. They were ready to kill us for setting foot on Cair Paravel. And they didn’t answer either Susan’s horn or your summons, although that last part is probably because no sane Narnian crosses the Rush or goes anywhere near the seaboard.”
“Of course,” Peter says sourly. “Because anything else might mean that this would be merely difficult, instead of damn near impossible. But they are coming?”
“The saltwater Narnians won’t be any help this far inland, but the dryland and freshwater Narnians both said something about coming to talk to you,” Edmund says, and does his best to look apologetic at Peter’s scowl. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Peter says. “I suppose there’s a story in there somewhere explaining the migraine I got in the middle of the night?”
“The second option was getting killed and eaten,” Edmund says frankly. “At least it proved that I wasn’t some crazy Telmarine with a superiority complex.”
“In that case, I don’t grudge the headache,” Peter replies. “If there’s nothing else urgent, you should go and get your wrist seen to. I would have waited if I’d known, and I need you in one piece for the battle.”
“There’s something else,” Edmund says. He steps away from Peter and leans over one of the saddlebags, digging for the roll of leather and the garroting wire. He comes up with a closed fist.
Peter opens his hand and Edmund lets the two signet rings fall into his palm.
For a long time Peter just looks at them, then he raises his hands to Edmund. Silent, breath drawn taut in his throat, Edmund fits the signets over each ring finger – Peter’s personal seal on the right, Narnia’s signet on the left. He expects them to fit loosely or to fall off, but they close around Peter’s flesh like a second skin, like a part of him.
Peter looks down at his hands, rubbing the ball of his thumb briefly over the lion rampant on his left hand, then raises his head and smiles at Edmund, open and heartbreaking. “You’d better get that wrist seen to,” he says again. “Then come back here and give me a full report.”
end