Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (18)
Jan. 4th, 2010 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (18)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Like the rest of Narnia, Jill has learned to tell the passage of time by the four great feast days. The first passed by unnoticed amidst the chaos that followed the Calormene conquest, when the Narnians that had escaped the Calormenes had been blundering about in the wilds trying to find each other, but the second she remembers clearly, because it had been just the holiday that all of Narnia had been hoping for. Promise of Hope, which follows the longest night of the year, when the days begin to grow longer and the nights begin to grow shorter, had, true to its name, held every promise and every hope the Narnians had had.
Pity they’d all been wrecked to shreds. It had been on Promise of Hope five years ago that the Calormenes had started the great burning that hadn’t stilled until this year, the murders that had destroyed half the trees and half the people in Narnia. If the Calormenes are here a thousand years, Jill doesn’t think they’ll ever be forgiven for that near-genocide.
There is no set date for Narnian feast days. Centaur augurs announce their arrival from the passage of stars, making their predictions days in advance, and while most of Narnia will follow what Cair Paravel decides, it is not unheard of for a feast to be celebrated on a dozen different days across a month in various parts of Narnia. With no Cair Paravel to guide the rest of Narnia – or at least no Cair Paravel that can be trusted – the feast days are even more ragged now, especially since there are fewer augurs than there once were.
Adelchis, traveling with them into Archenland, is one of those few, though he hadn’t been picked for his ability to tell the future or discern the movements of the present in the heavens. Jill knows him a little; he hadn’t been one of the Haven refugees, but Haven’s augur had been killed in the first month after the conquest, and their two camps had been close enough that they were able to meet on feast days, sharing out their meager supplies and producing some semblance of a celebration. He’s shorter than most of the centaurs Jill knows, hair and horse body both a dark, steely gray; the coming of spring has led him to discard the much-patched leather vest he’s been wearing against the cold for nothing except the necklaces he wears around his neck, Calormene finger-bones bleached white and strung on cord. His entire family had been killed when the Calormenes came, from his wife to his youngest son, who’d been born the very day Cair Paravel had fallen. Since then, he’s let his hair grow long in morning, braiding it in elaborate patterns to keep it out of the way of his quiver and his bow-arm. Unlike most centaurs, he carries a recurve bow like the dwarves bow, made of wood so dark as to be nearly black. The fletchings on his arrows are the same color as his hair; Jill has heard rumors that he uses strands of it to bind them to the shafts, whispering ill will and curses to his enemies, so that even if they aren’t killed instantly by his shots, an augur’s curse will haunt them to an early grave and into eternity. To her, though, he’s always been perfectly kind; she’s never been able to see the grim warrior in the burly, grief-stricken centaur.
Today, as they emerge still chilled from their bedrolls into the thin morning light of early dawn, he cocks his head to one side, gaze drifting to the stars above them, faint and fading fast into daylight. “The day after tomorrow is Winter’s End,” he announces without preamble, then goes back to stamping out the remains of last night’s campfire with his front hooves, until there’s nothing left but snow and upturned dirt.
Jill eyes the remnants sadly; she’d had vague hopes for hot tea heated over the coals, and they’re already in Archenland; it seems rather absurd to be worried about being spotted by Calormenes now that they’re a full day over the border. Calormene troops may follow Narnian refugees over the Archenlander border, but they have to know that they’re there first, and they’d been even sneakier than usual on their way into the mountains. It may have taken longer – they left Arn Abedin on the morning of four days past – but they haven’t seen hide nor hair of a Calormene. Surprising, when usually they’re crawling over the mountain slopes like the human cockroaches they are.
“But it’s spring already,” Susan Pevensie says, mouth quirking a little in quiet bemusement, the way it does whenever she’s presented with something Narnian she doesn’t know. Jill’s seen that expression a lot lately.
“It’s not about seasons,” Jill tries to tell her, after a moment of internal debate; Adelchis doesn’t seem inclined to do so and the rest of their meager party appears to be otherwise occupied, Graynor by rolling ecstatically around in a fast-melting patch of snow like a tame dog. “It’s – it’s a Narnian holiday, to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring, only there’s something to do with some great battle, the defeat of the Queen of Winter.”
“The White Witch,” Susan says, nodding knowingly. “We had something similar, though it had a different name, then.” She stands up to shake out her bedroll, swatting dirt off the side that had spent the night in the dirt, then rolls it up with a slightly awkward twist of her wrist, as if she hasn’t done this for a very long time. Jill supposes it would be a surprise if she had. She twists to balance the thick roll of quilted fabric on her knee as she ties it closed and lets it hang from one hand. “And it fell later in the year,” she adds. “Much closer to the beginning of summer. It was something like May Day.”
“Winter’s End isn’t like May Day,” Jill says fervently. She doesn’t suppose they’ll get a proper celebration on the trail; it must be somewhat harder than usual to find an animal whose throat will be cut and the blood spilled across a pile of stones. They’ve always managed that for every feast day, even in the ravaged forests of western Narnia, hunted nearly dry a year into the Calormene occupation. She thinks that she won’t mention this feature to Susan, though.
She rolls up her own bedroll while she tries to think of a better comparison, but she can’t think of anything that quite describes Winter’s End, which has in the past five years variously fallen when Narnia is still covered in snow, when Narnia is flush with greenery and wildflowers, on a day shrouded in mist so solid Jill is fairly certain she could have cut it with a knife, on a perfectly ordinary spring day with a few patches of lingering snow, and on one memorable occasion on the same day as some Calormene holiday, which she only knows because they’d been trying to raid the supply lines for a suitable sacrificial animal.
Jill’s life these past few years has been very odd, to say the least.
“There’s another feast day,” she says finally. “In summer. That’s sort of like May Day, only with more, um –” She makes a vague hand motion, tucking the bedroll beneath her arm to do so.
To her surprise, Susan smiles. “We had a few of those, too, as I recall,” she says, voice soft and warm with reminiscence. “And by ‘a few’, I mean ‘all of them’.”
Jill smiles back, suddenly uneasy, and goes to tack the little Calormene horse she’s been riding since they left Arn Abedin. It’s a little more docile than the others pastured there, which she frankly considers something of an insult, since she’s probably a better rider than any of them except Tirian and the few remaining Narnian knights – well, a better rider than Eustace, anyway; the Pevensies surprise her every time she turns around – but more polite and friendly than the others. Some of the other ones bite; maybe they’re certain in the knowledge that their previous masters were killed by the same people who keep trying to use them for one purpose or another. But this horse nuzzles at her hand when she offers it half a wrinkled a winter apple, lipping it up with only a slightly press on her palm, and stands still while Jill strokes her fingers along the hairy warmth of its neck, making small horsey sounds of satisfaction. She drops her bedroll to the side and tacks it up, kneeing it in the belly when it tries to hold its breath as she pulls at the girth strap.
“I thought you were the good one,” she whispers, and it nickers, sounding bemused. If horses – not Talking Horses – can sound bemused. It seems like an absurdly long time since she’s done anything with regular animals besides kill and eat them.
Jill pats its neck again, running through names in her mind – Spot? Gallant? Ironheart? Baby? – and throws her saddlebags up, then her bedroll, pulling the straps tight and double checking the buckles. The last thing she needs to do is lose valuable equipment by having it fall halfway down a mountain slope.
The rest of the group is ready to go in a matter of minutes. Jill and Susan are the only ones riding; with them are two fauns, a satyr, a tall, graceful stag whose heavy winter coat covers up the scars where Calormene arrows marked him, Adelchis, and Graynor. It seems an odd bunch to go making a pilgrimage to Anvard, but Jill supposes the only thing she can do is hope that Susan knows what she’s doing. She acts like she does; that’s better than nothing. Or worse, if she should get them into some kind of trouble, but – Jill, somewhat to her surprise, has found herself trusting Susan’s judgment more and more since before they left Arn Abedin. She – knows things. Things that she simply shouldn’t know, things that no one should know. And people trust her, strangers. They’d passed through a village yesterday, an Archenlander village, and people had come out to greet them, hailing Susan like a long-lost friend, though Jill would swear that Susan had never met them before. It makes no sense, but this is Narnia; Jill learned a long time ago that few things in this country make sense.
The day is clear and calm, unremarkable, and they make good time on Archenland’s one main road, beat down by thousands of years of passing feet. Archenland, higher in altitude than Narnia, is cooler than Narnia would be, but it’s still warm, enough so that after a few hours Jill sheds her coat, bundling it over the front of her saddle. The sunlight plays across her face and shoulders and she closes her eyes in sheer pleasure, letting her horse follow Susan’s up the steeply winding road. The trees in Archenland are sparser than in Narnia, save for the denuded regions, and though they flank the road, they seem to press in less closely than the Western Wild had. It’s a pleasant change; Jill decides she likes it.
Judging by the height of the sun, it’s nearly noon when they go around one of the sharp kinks in the road and suddenly, as if a radio’s been switched on, hear the sound of women laughing, accompanied by the splash of water and joyful voices. Even if one of the fauns hadn’t stopped dead at the sound, his face going dead white, Susan raises a hand to halt them in their tracks, cocking her head to one side to listen. As Jill watches, a slow smile spreads over her face. She dismounts in one fluid motion, dropping lightly to the ground as her horse whickers curiosity.
“Stay here.”
“As you will, your majesty,” Adelchis says solemnly.
Susan Pevensie is no queen of Jill’s, and she’s curious, so she dismounts too, ignoring Adelchis’s glower in her direction as she drops the reins and tells her horse to stand. Susan has already disappeared into the undergrowth at the side of the road, so Jill follows. It’s not thick, not like some parts of the forests in Narnia, where the trees and the brush press in so close to one another it’s impossible to pass, and Jill follows the skirts of Susan’s blue-green gown without difficulty. The sound of running water grows louder, though she can’t see the stream.
A cold nose presses suddenly into her palm, then withdraws as Jill almost leaps into the air, barely stifling a scream.
“You’re worse than a puppy on Long Dusk day,” Graynor says, sounding disgusted.
“What are you doing here?” Jill demands urgently. “Susan said stay –”
“And I’m sure she included you in that thought too, but here you are, aren’t you? If there’s something about these parts, I want a look at it; the wind’s good and I should have smelled them a mile back.”
“Smelled who?”
“That’s the question,” he says grimly, darting on ahead of her. Jill follows quickly, glad she’s wearing trousers and not skirts. She doesn’t know how Susan manages as gracefully as she does.
By the time they reach Susan, who’s stopped and waiting for them under the shelter of a drooping willow, they can hear neither the stream nor the voices of the Narnians they left behind them on the road. Susan eyes them, expression considerate, and turns away without a word. Jill and Graynor follow her as she steps out from beneath the willow onto the shore of a river. There’s a wide shallow area in front of them, sunlight playing through the trees and warming the rounded, water-worn stones on the beach; some of them are big enough to use as a big. Here, the water’s calm, peaceful, and its occupants are looking at them warily.
There are three of them, and at first Jill thinks they’re human. They’re young women, no older than her or Susan, with long hair that’s dark, sometimes muddy, sometimes greenish. One woman has waterweed in her hair; she doesn’t appear to notice. All of them are naked, fine-featured, with high, pert breasts and slender waists. The color of their eyes shift between all the colors of a river, and their skin seems to gleam slightly, damp. One of them, the tallest one, rises from the water, throwing her hair back over her shoulder.
“Humans,” she says, voice with an undercurrent of a river in high flood, swirling and catching up pieces of debris as it rushes towards the sea, “I fear you have made a grave misstep.”
They’re not human. Jill thinks of backing up as quickly as she can, but finds her legs don’t seem to want to work, and tries to remember to breathe instead. It’s harder than it should be, and she gasps for air the same way she might if she were swimming.
Susan, the utter madwoman, just smiles that slow smile again, head going slightly to the side. “Has it been so long, Corycia?” she says. “I’m hurt you don’t remember me.”
Corycia – if that’s her name – looks at Susan hard, eyes flickering blue-gray. “You speak as if you know me, woman.”
“I know you, Corycia.” Susan turns her attention to the other two women, still sitting in the pool, hair moving slightly with the river. “And I know you, Melaina and Kleodora. How do you fare? It has been long since I saw you last, and I thought to find you in Narnia, not in Archenland.”
“Give me your name,” Corycia orders. “Or I will drown your companions where they stand.”
“You know my name.” She takes a step closer, undoing the buckles that hold her quiver over her shoulder. She stops to lay it down gently, then undoes the pin of her cloak and lets that fall as well, before she pulls her hair free of its braid. Jill drags in another breath, watching her approach the water woman until they’re nearly kissing distance, Susan’s skirts swirling on top of the water as she stands calf-deep in the pool.
“You are a daughter of the river, Corycia,” Susan Pevensie breathes. “The passage of years should be as a breath on the wind to you. Have you had no word from your father since Tash chained your uncle Achelous to the river bed?”
Corycia’s eyes go wide, suddenly, shockingly green. “How did you –” she begins, and then stops. She and Susan stare into each other’s eyes for what seems like an eternity; Melaina and Kleodora rise slowly, water dripping down from them, and move to flank Susan. They keep their feet in the water, Jill notes with an air of hysteria.
“Susan,” Corycia says at last, in a voice Jill’s never heard of any of the Narnians use to address the Pevensies.
Susan smiles. “It has been a very long time,” she says, or starts to say, and then Corycia kisses her.
Jill stares.
She barely notices when she can move again, breathe without impediment, and is staggering onto her arse on the ground, still staring. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Graynor shake himself all over, restless and uninterested in the two women. The other water women – naiads, she realizes distantly, they must be naiads; she’s heard stories of them but never seen one – watch Susan and Corycia kiss avidly, smiling a little at each other in bemusement.
After what seems an eternity, Susan and Corycia pull apart, their heads bent to each other. Jill comes to the firm conclusion that if she ever sees Susan Pevensie smile at anyone – any woman – like that again, it will be too soon.
“Oh,” Corycia says softly. “I’ve missed you.” She shakes herself slightly, shedding water droplets in all directions. When she speaks again, her voice is clear, pitched to carry beyond Susan’s ears. “No,” she says, raising her head, “we have had no news from our father these past five years. My sisters were visiting our mother in her home in the mountains of Archenland, so we were not trapped with our father and the others of our siblings, our cousins. It is an ill tide out of Narnia, my queen. I have gone to the border, the old border, where the Calormenes’ power waxes and wanes with the moon, and dare not go further, for fear that the poison in the water would catch me as well.”
Another naiad, the one with waterweed in her hair, says, “Our sister Thyia was with us, and crossed the border to try and find what had gone amiss in Narnia. She has not returned.”
Susan nods a little. “I spoke with Achelous not long ago,” she says, and Jill sees all three of the naiads perk up, their attention caught by the name. Susan smoothes her hands down her skirts. “Tash walked in Narnia, and by some foul magic imprisoned the river spirits in slumber.”
“Impossible!” the third naiad exclaims. Her own hair would be as black as pitch if not for the blue and green sparks that flare as the sun strikes it. “We would have seen –”
“No,” her sister says. “Not if we were not in Narnia.” She flicks her fingers at the pebbles in front of her. “Whatever has happened in Narnia is beyond our sight. We were not there, and if Tash walked the lands, then he must have veiled the borders. The last time I threw the stones, they fell into the sand and were obscured. I thought I was losing my talent.”
“Will you try it again?” Susan asks her. “All of you, please?”
“Yes,” Corycia says without hesitation. “For you, Susan – anything.”
“You know you need not ask,” says black-haired naiad. She straightens, drawing a shawl delicately over her shoulders that lengthens into a kind of toga as Jill blinks. She offers a faint smile. “You are still our queen.”
“And I thank you for that,” Susan says. “Still, I think I will ask and not order, Melaina.” She steps out of the water without looking behind her, skirts adhering to her calves as she does so, and stoops to collect her cloak and quiver. When she does look at the shore, her gaze is sudden and piercing, strangely unexpected. Jill has to force herself not to shudder.
“Get the others,” Susan says. “I think they’ll want to hear this.”
Graynor jerks his head in acquiescence and springs off as if the idea of staying one more moment with Susan and the naiads terrifies. Jill jerks belatedly to her feet, flinching as all three naiads suddenly dissolve into water droplets and disappear.
Susan slings her quiver over her shoulder, re-doing the buckles, and flicks a few strands of grass off the faded wool of her cloak.
Jill chances a look at the pool. There’s no sign, now, that anyone had ever been there, not even a wet patch on the big stones. She takes a step closer to Susan. “You – she – they –”
“Corycia and her sisters are the daughters of Cephissus, who is a sort of –” She purses her lips, expression considering. “I suppose you might say he’s a sort of god, though he doesn’t have the power that Aslan or Tash have, or even that Achelous, the Great River, does. Their mother is Cybele, of course.”
“That’s not real!” Jill bursts out. “Those are only stories –”
Susan cants her head at the river behind her. She sounds bemused when she says, “Did you want to tell them that?”
Jill is not thinking about this. At all. Whatsoever. She’s not certain she can, because the Archen River – and the Great River – and for that matter all the rivers in Narnia – they’re just rivers. There are stories, and Tirian’s said something about some kind of yearly sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean – well, obviously there are naiads, like there are dryads, and dryads don’t really bow to any higher authority besides Aslan, and it can’t really be that different.
“You,” she says eventually, “and C-Corycia –”
“Were lovers in our own time,” Susan says, still with that bemused expression on her face, like she’s feeding bits of information to a child – all in words of one or two syllables, of course. Simple enough for Jill to understand.
“You sleep with women –”
“I also sleep with men,” Susan says dryly, “so it’s all perfectly fair.” Her mouth twists a little, almost a smirk, and Jill resists the urge to kick her. Susan thinks it’s funny.
She contents herself with saying, a little spitefully, “Does Peter know?”
That twist of her mouth turns into a real smirk. “Oh, yes.”
Jill decides she can’t deal with any more revelations about Susan Pevensie’s sex life, because it’s apparently even more sordid than she’d ever thought, which is saying something, and takes a few hasty steps backwards, finding a likely looking rock a few feet from the riverbank and sitting down on it. “Who’s Cybele?”
“The mother of mountains, among other things. You won’t see her often in Narnia; she and Aslan don’t get along. She’s mother to most of Cephissus’ children, and a few of Achelous’.”
“Of course,” Jill says, head swimming. She suddenly thinks she liked Narnia a lot better before she knew about all these…people. Marsh-wiggles and centaurs and unicorns, talking animals, she can understand them, because she can see them, can touch them; they don’t just disappear in the blink of an eye. Even dryads make sense, though that doesn’t stop them making her uneasy when they dissolve into showers of leaves. But Susan is talking about something more than that. She’s talking about gods.
Perhaps she’s gone utterly mad. Jill certainly wouldn’t be surprised, given the circumstances.
Graynor and the others emerge out of the trees a few moments later, Suatrius, one of the fauns that had come with them, leading their two horses. They look around at the empty clearing, the river cheerfully burbling along as if there’s never been anyone here at all.
“This is it?” Erelieva announces, her voice thick with disdain. “The wolf said there were naiads here.”
“There are,” Susan says absently, watching the water. “They’ll be back in a moment.”
Jill shifts a little on her rock, looking at Graynor. She wants to get up and join the Narnians, but she doesn’t want to seem uncomfortable in Susan’s presence, even though it’s probably no secret to them that she is. Some of them can smell fear.
There’s a slight splash, like a pebble skipping across calm water, and Jill looks at the pool to see the three naiads rise out of it. They’re all dressed now, she’s happy to see.
Susan straightens up from her crouch.
“I know you,” says Adelchis, looking at the women standing knee-deep in the water. “You are the honey-seers.”
“And you are an augur,” Corycia says, sounding almost, though not quite, gracious about it.
“Of a sort,” her sister Kleodora mutters. “If watching the stars can really be called augury.”
Jill stiffens, ready to defend Adelchis – it’s not that he hasn’t been right about a few things, it’s just that besides the festivals, he doesn’t actually prophesy much, she’s never met a centaur augur who has – but he says calmly, “It seems to me a more reliable method than throwing a few pebbles onto the ground and seeing where they fall.”
“Fair enough,” Corycia says, as her sister glowers. “We’ll agree to differ, augur. And for the rest of you,” she adds, with a faint hint of humor, “who are wondering what this argument is about, I will tell you that my name is Corycia, and these are my sisters Melaina and Kleodora, daughters of Cephissus, of the river you call Archen. And among other things, as your augur pointed out, we are seers.” She puts her head slightly to one side, waiting for a reply, and gets one.
“Every naiad I know is playing fetch and carry for the Calormenes,” says Cleph, the other faun. “Why aren’t you?”
“We were not in Narnia when the Calormenes came,” Melaina says. “Our river runs through both Archenland and Narnia. Do you have any other stupid questions?”
Susan sighs a little, as if in exasperation, and asks, “Will you see for us?”
“Yes,” says Corycia, and takes a step forward to the edge of the shore, scooping up a handful of the small round pebbles scattered there. She rolls them around in her palm, looking at them.
They’ve all gone quiet, Jill realizes, even the horses, who’ve stopped nibbling at the soft spring grass to watch the show. She finds herself holding her breath and lets it out, the sound explosive in her ears, though none of the others seem to notice. Corycia takes one last look at the pebbles, then steps up onto the shore and turns her hand over, letting the stones bounce out onto the grass. One lands near Herluin’s front hooves and he takes one awkward, graceless leap backwards, the least elegant Jill’s ever seen the stag be.
“The fools are playing at games!” Kleodora spits, suddenly angry. “They’ve broken the rules and the balance is overturned –”
“What balance?” Susan says anxiously. “What rules?”
“The Deep Magic is upset,” says Melaina. “This is not possible –”
“We are here, little sister, or haven’t you noticed?” Corycia says, scooping the pebbles back up. “Susan, I’m sorry, we cannot see this. The veil is still raised.”
“I have seen the same in the stars,” says Adelchis. All three naiads look at him, and he goes on. “I and the other augurs I have spoken to. We look to the future, and there is nothing. I cannot tell if that is because the slate is blank or because there is no future.”
“What do you mean there’s no future?” Erelieva demands. “More centaur witchery –”
“Susan.” Corycia beckons her, touching her wrist when she approaches, turning her hand upright as Susan looks at her with anxious eyes. She strokes her fingers down the center of her palm, apparently arranging Susan’s hand to fit her own whim, until it’s nearly a cup. From nowhere she produces a small crystal of vial of golden honey, turning it over into Susan’s palm. The honey glows gold as it runs down and gathers against Susan’s winter-pale skin.
“What are you doing, Corycia?”
“I cannot see into Narnia’s future,” she says, “but perhaps I can see into yours, just a little.”
Susan bows her head a little in acknowledgment, her expression troubled. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
Corycia cups her hand in both of hers and raises it to her lips, smiling up at her over the heel of her hand. Susan does not smile back. “Just a little,” she murmurs, and bends her head to the honey, licking it up with delicate little laps of her tongue. Susan closes her eyes; Jill looks away so that she doesn’t have to see her shiver, her lips parting slightly.
“You must allow the kings their choices,” Corycia murmurs, her head turned slightly to one side. “Oh, my darling. They know what it is they do.” She licks again, a straight line down the center of Susan’s palm. “Do not be so quick to trust the old ways. They may betray you yet.”
“Who do you mean?” Susan questions, an edge of strain in her voice. “Rycia –”
“You’d best hurry if you mean to reach Anvard by dinnertime,” Corycia says, and suddenly there’s a circlet of water-lilies in her hands, stems wound around each other to form a crown. Susan bends her head obediently as Corycia settles it on her brow. When she’s finished, she smiles at Susan soft and sweet, and adds, “Perhaps I’ll see you soon. The river runs not far from the castle.”
“I’ll put a candle in my window,” Susan replies. She kisses Corycia on the mouth, feather-light, and turns away, her hand dropping to her side to rub away the last of the honey on her skirts. To the Narnians, she says, “Ask your questions, if you have them. But be quick about it; we must leave soon. We have a dinner party to be at.”
There’s a moment of awkward waiting, the rest of the Narnians all looking at each other as Corycia sits down, arranging the folds of her stola across her knees.
“Well?” says Kleodora. “You heard Queen Susan. You don’t have all day.”
“None of us bite,” Melaina adds, smiling winningly.
There’s a long pause. Jill shifts uneasily on her rock, then gives it up and gets up, crossing over to stand next to Graynor, on the opposite side of the clearing from Susan.
“I have a question,” Suatrius ventures at last.
Kleodora beckons him with one hand, and he goes, passing the horses’ reins to Jill. He kneels down in front of her, murmuring his question, and Kleodora throws a handful of stones the way Corycia had and gives him her answer. He comes back to them looking relieved.
“Well?” Graynor demands anxiously.
“It’s about my brother,” he says, grinning as if he can’t help himself. “She says he’s in Cair Paravel.”
They all look at each other, and then Herluin darts forward, bending his head to Melaina.
Not all of them ask questions, but enough of them do that Jill finally takes a deep breath, then straightens and goes to crouch down by the shore. “How does this work?” she asks. “Do I have to promise you my first-born, or –”
“Maybe later,” says Melaina. “This one’s free.” She rolls her eyes a little; one of her sisters elbows her in the ribs, so that Jill can’t help but smile. For a moment, they almost seem human.
“All right,” she says, remembering why she’s here. “This is my question: how do Scrubb and I get home to England?”
It’s nearly dark by the time they draw in sight of Anvard, the castle lights winking out like stars as they break from the tree line. The vague, amorphous dark shape gradually forms into a castle as they approach, horses’ hooves clattering across the cobblestones of the city. There are people hurrying about, more humans than Jill has seen outside a Calormene encampment in years, and a few nonhumans as well – a pair of dwarves, a centauress carrying a basket over her arm, a leopard guarding a wagon full of bags and bales that raises its head to watch as they pass by, its eyes bright with curiosity. Jill shifts a little in her saddle, uneasy with so much attention; she half-expects an attack to come at any moment now. It all seems so bizarrely normal here, as if normal has somehow become strange and unreal to her.
Some part of her knows that this is only a small village compared to London, or even Cair Paravel, which she’s only seen from afar, but the rest of her is near to panic. Buildings on both sides of her, and streets, real streets, and sudden bursts of laughter from pubs that make her flinch and reach for a weapon. They crowd to one side of the street to make room for a wagon that clatters noisily by, turning into the courtyard of an inn. Jill looks after it, wondering if Corycia had been right and they’ll really sleep in beds tonight. She hasn’t even seen a bed in almost five years, not a real one.
No one challenges them at the castle gates, although she doesn’t miss the guards that eye them curiously from the walls. One comes down to take the reins of Susan’s horse as she dismounts, then juggles his pike and takes Jill’s as well.
“There’s a guests’ table just at the front of the hall, when you walk in, milady,” he says to Susan, who has her hood drawn up to cover her hair. “You’re due dinner and a place to sleep for the night, and maybe more if you’ve something to say that interests his majesty.”
“Thank you,” Susan murmurs to him, and he goes scarlet, as though she’s whispered some kind of secret promise in his ear instead of simple thanks.
They go in, no one giving a second look at the Narnians with them, not even the wolf and the stag walking calmly across stone floors and inside walls covered with richly wrought tapestries. Another guard opens the doors of the great hall for them, murmuring, “His majesty will ask for your stories after dessert is served, though you can refuse to say, if you wish, milady,” to Susan.
“Thank you,” she says again from beneath the folds of her hood.
Jill twitches a hand away from the knife on her belt, wishing that Susan would show her face; even if she had been someone once, that’s sixteen hundred years gone and surely she doesn’t expect anyone to recognize her now.
The hall is big, and long, made of grey stone covered with tapestries and battered banners from previous wars. There are fireplaces on either side of the room, each one large enough to roast a whole ox in, though none of them have anything more sinister in them than firewood. The tables form a kind of C, with the high table at the far side of the room, the king’s throne dead center and an empty chair at his right hand, with a place laid, the others all filled. The other tables are full as well, except for the table that the guard whispers to her is the guests’ table.
She hears Cleph curse softly under his breath and knows why, because every muscle in her body is taut with tension; she flicks her gaze up at the high table and then down again, because there are Calormenes there. A tarkaan, she thinks, and more at the lower tables. Jill clenches her teeth, reminding herself that the Tisroc has no real power in Archenland, not yet, even if he does have people here, but she’s spent five years running from the Calormenes; old habits die hard. She forces herself not to look anywhere except at the table they’ve been pointed towards.
She’s relieved to see that there are others at the table indicated at the guests’ table – a few merchants, and someone with a harp slung across his back, as well as a pair of women dressed in sturdy farmers’ clothes. She, the fauns, and Erelieva take seats at the end of the table, while servants carry away a bench so that Adelchis can stand, Herluin beside him. Graynor leaps up onto the bench besides Jill. She looks for Susan, expecting her to sit as well, but instead Susan is going up behind one of the side tables, ignoring them entirely.
“What’s she doing?” Jill demands. “What is she –”
Adelchis makes a motion for her to keep silent, and she holds her tongue, pulse hammering. She’d known that Susan had some kind of mad plan when they left Arn Abedin for Archenland, but she’d never been informed what it was, and had assumed it had just involved a lot of pleading for help. To conceal her nervousness, Jill takes off her coat. She’d left her bow and quiver with her horse, as had most of the others, all except Susan. There are more than a few people who are looking around at the weathered ivory quiver strapped across her cloak now, and whispers spreading like the trickle of a creek in the woods.
There are hooks on the wall for men to hang their weapons, away from their hands, and Jill watches with her heart in her throat as Susan unbuckles her quiver, then sweeps her hood back from her face, unpinning her cloak with her free hand. A servant ghosts up to take them from her and hang them up, and Susan takes the empty chair at the king’s right hand. Another servant pours her wine, and she drinks – like a normal person, Jill thinks to herself, a little madly – and the buzz of sound in the hall strengthens to its previous level. The tarkaan glares at Susan as if her appearance is a personal insult.
She stops staring at the high table when Erelieva starts to pile slices of roast pork onto her plate. “Eat,” the satyr ordered firmly. “At least they’re feeding us.”
“For the moment,” Cleph says dourly, square teeth closing on a drumstick. Jill remembers, vaguely, being surprised when she’d first arrived in Narnia that satyrs and fauns – and centaurs and minotaurs, for that matter – ate meat, since goats and horses and cows didn’t, but she’s used to it now. A few of the Archenlanders stare.
She keep sneaking looks at Susan, all though dinner. Susan eats neatly, speaking a few times when the man on her right tries to talk to her; she and the king make no attempt to talk.
“Whose seat is that?” she asks finally, because they should probably at least know who Susan’s pissing off –
The Narnians look around at each other, shrugging. It’s one of the farmers who says, “You must not be from around here.”
“No,” says Adelchis, his voice courteous. “We come from Narnia.”
That gives her a moment of pause, then she says, “Well, it’s a tradition here in Archenland to leave an empty seat for a guest. Their majesties take it a bit further, of course,” she adds, sweeping a hand around to indicate the guests’ table.
“That one we knew,” Graynor says, crunching a bone between his teeth.
“Well, here at Anvard, there’s a chair left at the king’s right hand. Some say it’s for a missing prince, like Cor, or for Aslan, or for the Narnian ambassador. Not from the Telmarine Narnia, I mean, but the old Narnia.” She takes a sip of her wine. “They say that the first king and queen of Narnia were kin to our king here, so it’s a seat left for a kinsman. Or woman.” Her gaze flickers up to the high table, where Susan is eating daintily with knife and fork, the water-lilies white against her dark hair.
“Do they mean –” Jill murmurs to Adelchis.
“Even we in Narnia know that the High King was not the first king in Narnia, but the others fell and were not remembered,” he replies, tail flicking behind him. “They are unimportant.”
She looks up at the high table again, wondering if that’s going to affect how Susan’s treated. And if that doesn’t, if King Eian will truckle to the Calormenes sitting at the table.
The servants remove the meat course, eventually, and bring out the dessert. It’s gingerbread. Jill looks at it and wants to cry, just a little, because it’s so – normal. And she hasn’t seen gingerbread in so long. Not since before Narnia. Maybe not since before the war, she can’t remember.
There are other desserts, of course, some other cakes and puddings, but for some reason it’s the gingerbread that gets to her, and Jill just looks at it. She’s so busy looking at it that’s she’s nearly startled out of her skin when King Eian says, his voice pitched to carry, “Perhaps it is an ill thing for me to ask this, and if so, may Aslan strike me down for it, but I would ask nonetheless.”
Jill turns her head up to see Susan smile, idly bemused. “Ask, your majesty,” she says.
Eian takes a breath, watching her. He’s a small, fair man with delicate features; his crown sits easily at his brow. Something about him reminds Jill of Tirian. “I would know your name,” he says, “and what your purpose is in Archenland.”
There’s a faint murmur through the hall. A woman at the high table who has the look of a Narnian about her starts to protest before her neighbor shushes her.
Susan sips at her wine, then puts the goblet aside. “My name is Susan,” she says, “I was queen in Narnia once, many years ago, when Lune your forefather sat in that chair, and I am still a queen of Narnia.”
The king has gone a shade paler, his grip tightening on the arms of his chair, but he manages to keep his voice steady as he says, “And what is it you want with Archenland, Queen Susan?”
She looks at him, then at the tarkaan. “There is a plague in your country, Eian of Archenland,” she says, voice soft but carrying. A window high at the top of the hall comes unlatched and bangs at its shutters in a sudden wind. “There is a rot and it spreads and grows, poisoning all that it touches. You know this. I know this. All your people know this. Soon it may subsume all of Archenland, and then you will find yourself lucky if you still have your life, let alone your throne.”
“Do you threaten me?” He doesn’t sound afraid, but the stiff way he’s holding himself betrays his voice.
“I don’t threaten you,” Susan says, with the faintest pressure on the word you. “I propose that I help you cut that rot out of the flesh and bones of Archenland. We are old kin, your country and mine.”
“Your majesty!” the tarkaan snaps, leaping up. “You cannot possibly listen to this Narnian witch –”
“You will silence yourself when I speak, Ilderim Tarkaan,” Eian says without looking at him. “I am still king here, not the Tisroc. Sit down.”
The tarkaan sits, glowering.
Susan takes another sip of her wine, apparently unmoved by the interchange. “We have a common interest, your majesty.”
“Perhaps we do. Perhaps we don’t.” Eian looks at her straight-on. “And what does Narnia want from me?”
“Your help.”
“If, as you say, we cannot even help ourselves, then how do you propose that we help you?” He laughs. It isn’t a pleasant sound. The window bangs against the shutter again, and Jill jumps.
“Old friend,” Susan says, “if I can’t help you, then it isn’t going to matter anymore.”
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Like the rest of Narnia, Jill has learned to tell the passage of time by the four great feast days. The first passed by unnoticed amidst the chaos that followed the Calormene conquest, when the Narnians that had escaped the Calormenes had been blundering about in the wilds trying to find each other, but the second she remembers clearly, because it had been just the holiday that all of Narnia had been hoping for. Promise of Hope, which follows the longest night of the year, when the days begin to grow longer and the nights begin to grow shorter, had, true to its name, held every promise and every hope the Narnians had had.
Pity they’d all been wrecked to shreds. It had been on Promise of Hope five years ago that the Calormenes had started the great burning that hadn’t stilled until this year, the murders that had destroyed half the trees and half the people in Narnia. If the Calormenes are here a thousand years, Jill doesn’t think they’ll ever be forgiven for that near-genocide.
There is no set date for Narnian feast days. Centaur augurs announce their arrival from the passage of stars, making their predictions days in advance, and while most of Narnia will follow what Cair Paravel decides, it is not unheard of for a feast to be celebrated on a dozen different days across a month in various parts of Narnia. With no Cair Paravel to guide the rest of Narnia – or at least no Cair Paravel that can be trusted – the feast days are even more ragged now, especially since there are fewer augurs than there once were.
Adelchis, traveling with them into Archenland, is one of those few, though he hadn’t been picked for his ability to tell the future or discern the movements of the present in the heavens. Jill knows him a little; he hadn’t been one of the Haven refugees, but Haven’s augur had been killed in the first month after the conquest, and their two camps had been close enough that they were able to meet on feast days, sharing out their meager supplies and producing some semblance of a celebration. He’s shorter than most of the centaurs Jill knows, hair and horse body both a dark, steely gray; the coming of spring has led him to discard the much-patched leather vest he’s been wearing against the cold for nothing except the necklaces he wears around his neck, Calormene finger-bones bleached white and strung on cord. His entire family had been killed when the Calormenes came, from his wife to his youngest son, who’d been born the very day Cair Paravel had fallen. Since then, he’s let his hair grow long in morning, braiding it in elaborate patterns to keep it out of the way of his quiver and his bow-arm. Unlike most centaurs, he carries a recurve bow like the dwarves bow, made of wood so dark as to be nearly black. The fletchings on his arrows are the same color as his hair; Jill has heard rumors that he uses strands of it to bind them to the shafts, whispering ill will and curses to his enemies, so that even if they aren’t killed instantly by his shots, an augur’s curse will haunt them to an early grave and into eternity. To her, though, he’s always been perfectly kind; she’s never been able to see the grim warrior in the burly, grief-stricken centaur.
Today, as they emerge still chilled from their bedrolls into the thin morning light of early dawn, he cocks his head to one side, gaze drifting to the stars above them, faint and fading fast into daylight. “The day after tomorrow is Winter’s End,” he announces without preamble, then goes back to stamping out the remains of last night’s campfire with his front hooves, until there’s nothing left but snow and upturned dirt.
Jill eyes the remnants sadly; she’d had vague hopes for hot tea heated over the coals, and they’re already in Archenland; it seems rather absurd to be worried about being spotted by Calormenes now that they’re a full day over the border. Calormene troops may follow Narnian refugees over the Archenlander border, but they have to know that they’re there first, and they’d been even sneakier than usual on their way into the mountains. It may have taken longer – they left Arn Abedin on the morning of four days past – but they haven’t seen hide nor hair of a Calormene. Surprising, when usually they’re crawling over the mountain slopes like the human cockroaches they are.
“But it’s spring already,” Susan Pevensie says, mouth quirking a little in quiet bemusement, the way it does whenever she’s presented with something Narnian she doesn’t know. Jill’s seen that expression a lot lately.
“It’s not about seasons,” Jill tries to tell her, after a moment of internal debate; Adelchis doesn’t seem inclined to do so and the rest of their meager party appears to be otherwise occupied, Graynor by rolling ecstatically around in a fast-melting patch of snow like a tame dog. “It’s – it’s a Narnian holiday, to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of spring, only there’s something to do with some great battle, the defeat of the Queen of Winter.”
“The White Witch,” Susan says, nodding knowingly. “We had something similar, though it had a different name, then.” She stands up to shake out her bedroll, swatting dirt off the side that had spent the night in the dirt, then rolls it up with a slightly awkward twist of her wrist, as if she hasn’t done this for a very long time. Jill supposes it would be a surprise if she had. She twists to balance the thick roll of quilted fabric on her knee as she ties it closed and lets it hang from one hand. “And it fell later in the year,” she adds. “Much closer to the beginning of summer. It was something like May Day.”
“Winter’s End isn’t like May Day,” Jill says fervently. She doesn’t suppose they’ll get a proper celebration on the trail; it must be somewhat harder than usual to find an animal whose throat will be cut and the blood spilled across a pile of stones. They’ve always managed that for every feast day, even in the ravaged forests of western Narnia, hunted nearly dry a year into the Calormene occupation. She thinks that she won’t mention this feature to Susan, though.
She rolls up her own bedroll while she tries to think of a better comparison, but she can’t think of anything that quite describes Winter’s End, which has in the past five years variously fallen when Narnia is still covered in snow, when Narnia is flush with greenery and wildflowers, on a day shrouded in mist so solid Jill is fairly certain she could have cut it with a knife, on a perfectly ordinary spring day with a few patches of lingering snow, and on one memorable occasion on the same day as some Calormene holiday, which she only knows because they’d been trying to raid the supply lines for a suitable sacrificial animal.
Jill’s life these past few years has been very odd, to say the least.
“There’s another feast day,” she says finally. “In summer. That’s sort of like May Day, only with more, um –” She makes a vague hand motion, tucking the bedroll beneath her arm to do so.
To her surprise, Susan smiles. “We had a few of those, too, as I recall,” she says, voice soft and warm with reminiscence. “And by ‘a few’, I mean ‘all of them’.”
Jill smiles back, suddenly uneasy, and goes to tack the little Calormene horse she’s been riding since they left Arn Abedin. It’s a little more docile than the others pastured there, which she frankly considers something of an insult, since she’s probably a better rider than any of them except Tirian and the few remaining Narnian knights – well, a better rider than Eustace, anyway; the Pevensies surprise her every time she turns around – but more polite and friendly than the others. Some of the other ones bite; maybe they’re certain in the knowledge that their previous masters were killed by the same people who keep trying to use them for one purpose or another. But this horse nuzzles at her hand when she offers it half a wrinkled a winter apple, lipping it up with only a slightly press on her palm, and stands still while Jill strokes her fingers along the hairy warmth of its neck, making small horsey sounds of satisfaction. She drops her bedroll to the side and tacks it up, kneeing it in the belly when it tries to hold its breath as she pulls at the girth strap.
“I thought you were the good one,” she whispers, and it nickers, sounding bemused. If horses – not Talking Horses – can sound bemused. It seems like an absurdly long time since she’s done anything with regular animals besides kill and eat them.
Jill pats its neck again, running through names in her mind – Spot? Gallant? Ironheart? Baby? – and throws her saddlebags up, then her bedroll, pulling the straps tight and double checking the buckles. The last thing she needs to do is lose valuable equipment by having it fall halfway down a mountain slope.
The rest of the group is ready to go in a matter of minutes. Jill and Susan are the only ones riding; with them are two fauns, a satyr, a tall, graceful stag whose heavy winter coat covers up the scars where Calormene arrows marked him, Adelchis, and Graynor. It seems an odd bunch to go making a pilgrimage to Anvard, but Jill supposes the only thing she can do is hope that Susan knows what she’s doing. She acts like she does; that’s better than nothing. Or worse, if she should get them into some kind of trouble, but – Jill, somewhat to her surprise, has found herself trusting Susan’s judgment more and more since before they left Arn Abedin. She – knows things. Things that she simply shouldn’t know, things that no one should know. And people trust her, strangers. They’d passed through a village yesterday, an Archenlander village, and people had come out to greet them, hailing Susan like a long-lost friend, though Jill would swear that Susan had never met them before. It makes no sense, but this is Narnia; Jill learned a long time ago that few things in this country make sense.
The day is clear and calm, unremarkable, and they make good time on Archenland’s one main road, beat down by thousands of years of passing feet. Archenland, higher in altitude than Narnia, is cooler than Narnia would be, but it’s still warm, enough so that after a few hours Jill sheds her coat, bundling it over the front of her saddle. The sunlight plays across her face and shoulders and she closes her eyes in sheer pleasure, letting her horse follow Susan’s up the steeply winding road. The trees in Archenland are sparser than in Narnia, save for the denuded regions, and though they flank the road, they seem to press in less closely than the Western Wild had. It’s a pleasant change; Jill decides she likes it.
Judging by the height of the sun, it’s nearly noon when they go around one of the sharp kinks in the road and suddenly, as if a radio’s been switched on, hear the sound of women laughing, accompanied by the splash of water and joyful voices. Even if one of the fauns hadn’t stopped dead at the sound, his face going dead white, Susan raises a hand to halt them in their tracks, cocking her head to one side to listen. As Jill watches, a slow smile spreads over her face. She dismounts in one fluid motion, dropping lightly to the ground as her horse whickers curiosity.
“Stay here.”
“As you will, your majesty,” Adelchis says solemnly.
Susan Pevensie is no queen of Jill’s, and she’s curious, so she dismounts too, ignoring Adelchis’s glower in her direction as she drops the reins and tells her horse to stand. Susan has already disappeared into the undergrowth at the side of the road, so Jill follows. It’s not thick, not like some parts of the forests in Narnia, where the trees and the brush press in so close to one another it’s impossible to pass, and Jill follows the skirts of Susan’s blue-green gown without difficulty. The sound of running water grows louder, though she can’t see the stream.
A cold nose presses suddenly into her palm, then withdraws as Jill almost leaps into the air, barely stifling a scream.
“You’re worse than a puppy on Long Dusk day,” Graynor says, sounding disgusted.
“What are you doing here?” Jill demands urgently. “Susan said stay –”
“And I’m sure she included you in that thought too, but here you are, aren’t you? If there’s something about these parts, I want a look at it; the wind’s good and I should have smelled them a mile back.”
“Smelled who?”
“That’s the question,” he says grimly, darting on ahead of her. Jill follows quickly, glad she’s wearing trousers and not skirts. She doesn’t know how Susan manages as gracefully as she does.
By the time they reach Susan, who’s stopped and waiting for them under the shelter of a drooping willow, they can hear neither the stream nor the voices of the Narnians they left behind them on the road. Susan eyes them, expression considerate, and turns away without a word. Jill and Graynor follow her as she steps out from beneath the willow onto the shore of a river. There’s a wide shallow area in front of them, sunlight playing through the trees and warming the rounded, water-worn stones on the beach; some of them are big enough to use as a big. Here, the water’s calm, peaceful, and its occupants are looking at them warily.
There are three of them, and at first Jill thinks they’re human. They’re young women, no older than her or Susan, with long hair that’s dark, sometimes muddy, sometimes greenish. One woman has waterweed in her hair; she doesn’t appear to notice. All of them are naked, fine-featured, with high, pert breasts and slender waists. The color of their eyes shift between all the colors of a river, and their skin seems to gleam slightly, damp. One of them, the tallest one, rises from the water, throwing her hair back over her shoulder.
“Humans,” she says, voice with an undercurrent of a river in high flood, swirling and catching up pieces of debris as it rushes towards the sea, “I fear you have made a grave misstep.”
They’re not human. Jill thinks of backing up as quickly as she can, but finds her legs don’t seem to want to work, and tries to remember to breathe instead. It’s harder than it should be, and she gasps for air the same way she might if she were swimming.
Susan, the utter madwoman, just smiles that slow smile again, head going slightly to the side. “Has it been so long, Corycia?” she says. “I’m hurt you don’t remember me.”
Corycia – if that’s her name – looks at Susan hard, eyes flickering blue-gray. “You speak as if you know me, woman.”
“I know you, Corycia.” Susan turns her attention to the other two women, still sitting in the pool, hair moving slightly with the river. “And I know you, Melaina and Kleodora. How do you fare? It has been long since I saw you last, and I thought to find you in Narnia, not in Archenland.”
“Give me your name,” Corycia orders. “Or I will drown your companions where they stand.”
“You know my name.” She takes a step closer, undoing the buckles that hold her quiver over her shoulder. She stops to lay it down gently, then undoes the pin of her cloak and lets that fall as well, before she pulls her hair free of its braid. Jill drags in another breath, watching her approach the water woman until they’re nearly kissing distance, Susan’s skirts swirling on top of the water as she stands calf-deep in the pool.
“You are a daughter of the river, Corycia,” Susan Pevensie breathes. “The passage of years should be as a breath on the wind to you. Have you had no word from your father since Tash chained your uncle Achelous to the river bed?”
Corycia’s eyes go wide, suddenly, shockingly green. “How did you –” she begins, and then stops. She and Susan stare into each other’s eyes for what seems like an eternity; Melaina and Kleodora rise slowly, water dripping down from them, and move to flank Susan. They keep their feet in the water, Jill notes with an air of hysteria.
“Susan,” Corycia says at last, in a voice Jill’s never heard of any of the Narnians use to address the Pevensies.
Susan smiles. “It has been a very long time,” she says, or starts to say, and then Corycia kisses her.
Jill stares.
She barely notices when she can move again, breathe without impediment, and is staggering onto her arse on the ground, still staring. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Graynor shake himself all over, restless and uninterested in the two women. The other water women – naiads, she realizes distantly, they must be naiads; she’s heard stories of them but never seen one – watch Susan and Corycia kiss avidly, smiling a little at each other in bemusement.
After what seems an eternity, Susan and Corycia pull apart, their heads bent to each other. Jill comes to the firm conclusion that if she ever sees Susan Pevensie smile at anyone – any woman – like that again, it will be too soon.
“Oh,” Corycia says softly. “I’ve missed you.” She shakes herself slightly, shedding water droplets in all directions. When she speaks again, her voice is clear, pitched to carry beyond Susan’s ears. “No,” she says, raising her head, “we have had no news from our father these past five years. My sisters were visiting our mother in her home in the mountains of Archenland, so we were not trapped with our father and the others of our siblings, our cousins. It is an ill tide out of Narnia, my queen. I have gone to the border, the old border, where the Calormenes’ power waxes and wanes with the moon, and dare not go further, for fear that the poison in the water would catch me as well.”
Another naiad, the one with waterweed in her hair, says, “Our sister Thyia was with us, and crossed the border to try and find what had gone amiss in Narnia. She has not returned.”
Susan nods a little. “I spoke with Achelous not long ago,” she says, and Jill sees all three of the naiads perk up, their attention caught by the name. Susan smoothes her hands down her skirts. “Tash walked in Narnia, and by some foul magic imprisoned the river spirits in slumber.”
“Impossible!” the third naiad exclaims. Her own hair would be as black as pitch if not for the blue and green sparks that flare as the sun strikes it. “We would have seen –”
“No,” her sister says. “Not if we were not in Narnia.” She flicks her fingers at the pebbles in front of her. “Whatever has happened in Narnia is beyond our sight. We were not there, and if Tash walked the lands, then he must have veiled the borders. The last time I threw the stones, they fell into the sand and were obscured. I thought I was losing my talent.”
“Will you try it again?” Susan asks her. “All of you, please?”
“Yes,” Corycia says without hesitation. “For you, Susan – anything.”
“You know you need not ask,” says black-haired naiad. She straightens, drawing a shawl delicately over her shoulders that lengthens into a kind of toga as Jill blinks. She offers a faint smile. “You are still our queen.”
“And I thank you for that,” Susan says. “Still, I think I will ask and not order, Melaina.” She steps out of the water without looking behind her, skirts adhering to her calves as she does so, and stoops to collect her cloak and quiver. When she does look at the shore, her gaze is sudden and piercing, strangely unexpected. Jill has to force herself not to shudder.
“Get the others,” Susan says. “I think they’ll want to hear this.”
Graynor jerks his head in acquiescence and springs off as if the idea of staying one more moment with Susan and the naiads terrifies. Jill jerks belatedly to her feet, flinching as all three naiads suddenly dissolve into water droplets and disappear.
Susan slings her quiver over her shoulder, re-doing the buckles, and flicks a few strands of grass off the faded wool of her cloak.
Jill chances a look at the pool. There’s no sign, now, that anyone had ever been there, not even a wet patch on the big stones. She takes a step closer to Susan. “You – she – they –”
“Corycia and her sisters are the daughters of Cephissus, who is a sort of –” She purses her lips, expression considering. “I suppose you might say he’s a sort of god, though he doesn’t have the power that Aslan or Tash have, or even that Achelous, the Great River, does. Their mother is Cybele, of course.”
“That’s not real!” Jill bursts out. “Those are only stories –”
Susan cants her head at the river behind her. She sounds bemused when she says, “Did you want to tell them that?”
Jill is not thinking about this. At all. Whatsoever. She’s not certain she can, because the Archen River – and the Great River – and for that matter all the rivers in Narnia – they’re just rivers. There are stories, and Tirian’s said something about some kind of yearly sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean – well, obviously there are naiads, like there are dryads, and dryads don’t really bow to any higher authority besides Aslan, and it can’t really be that different.
“You,” she says eventually, “and C-Corycia –”
“Were lovers in our own time,” Susan says, still with that bemused expression on her face, like she’s feeding bits of information to a child – all in words of one or two syllables, of course. Simple enough for Jill to understand.
“You sleep with women –”
“I also sleep with men,” Susan says dryly, “so it’s all perfectly fair.” Her mouth twists a little, almost a smirk, and Jill resists the urge to kick her. Susan thinks it’s funny.
She contents herself with saying, a little spitefully, “Does Peter know?”
That twist of her mouth turns into a real smirk. “Oh, yes.”
Jill decides she can’t deal with any more revelations about Susan Pevensie’s sex life, because it’s apparently even more sordid than she’d ever thought, which is saying something, and takes a few hasty steps backwards, finding a likely looking rock a few feet from the riverbank and sitting down on it. “Who’s Cybele?”
“The mother of mountains, among other things. You won’t see her often in Narnia; she and Aslan don’t get along. She’s mother to most of Cephissus’ children, and a few of Achelous’.”
“Of course,” Jill says, head swimming. She suddenly thinks she liked Narnia a lot better before she knew about all these…people. Marsh-wiggles and centaurs and unicorns, talking animals, she can understand them, because she can see them, can touch them; they don’t just disappear in the blink of an eye. Even dryads make sense, though that doesn’t stop them making her uneasy when they dissolve into showers of leaves. But Susan is talking about something more than that. She’s talking about gods.
Perhaps she’s gone utterly mad. Jill certainly wouldn’t be surprised, given the circumstances.
Graynor and the others emerge out of the trees a few moments later, Suatrius, one of the fauns that had come with them, leading their two horses. They look around at the empty clearing, the river cheerfully burbling along as if there’s never been anyone here at all.
“This is it?” Erelieva announces, her voice thick with disdain. “The wolf said there were naiads here.”
“There are,” Susan says absently, watching the water. “They’ll be back in a moment.”
Jill shifts a little on her rock, looking at Graynor. She wants to get up and join the Narnians, but she doesn’t want to seem uncomfortable in Susan’s presence, even though it’s probably no secret to them that she is. Some of them can smell fear.
There’s a slight splash, like a pebble skipping across calm water, and Jill looks at the pool to see the three naiads rise out of it. They’re all dressed now, she’s happy to see.
Susan straightens up from her crouch.
“I know you,” says Adelchis, looking at the women standing knee-deep in the water. “You are the honey-seers.”
“And you are an augur,” Corycia says, sounding almost, though not quite, gracious about it.
“Of a sort,” her sister Kleodora mutters. “If watching the stars can really be called augury.”
Jill stiffens, ready to defend Adelchis – it’s not that he hasn’t been right about a few things, it’s just that besides the festivals, he doesn’t actually prophesy much, she’s never met a centaur augur who has – but he says calmly, “It seems to me a more reliable method than throwing a few pebbles onto the ground and seeing where they fall.”
“Fair enough,” Corycia says, as her sister glowers. “We’ll agree to differ, augur. And for the rest of you,” she adds, with a faint hint of humor, “who are wondering what this argument is about, I will tell you that my name is Corycia, and these are my sisters Melaina and Kleodora, daughters of Cephissus, of the river you call Archen. And among other things, as your augur pointed out, we are seers.” She puts her head slightly to one side, waiting for a reply, and gets one.
“Every naiad I know is playing fetch and carry for the Calormenes,” says Cleph, the other faun. “Why aren’t you?”
“We were not in Narnia when the Calormenes came,” Melaina says. “Our river runs through both Archenland and Narnia. Do you have any other stupid questions?”
Susan sighs a little, as if in exasperation, and asks, “Will you see for us?”
“Yes,” says Corycia, and takes a step forward to the edge of the shore, scooping up a handful of the small round pebbles scattered there. She rolls them around in her palm, looking at them.
They’ve all gone quiet, Jill realizes, even the horses, who’ve stopped nibbling at the soft spring grass to watch the show. She finds herself holding her breath and lets it out, the sound explosive in her ears, though none of the others seem to notice. Corycia takes one last look at the pebbles, then steps up onto the shore and turns her hand over, letting the stones bounce out onto the grass. One lands near Herluin’s front hooves and he takes one awkward, graceless leap backwards, the least elegant Jill’s ever seen the stag be.
“The fools are playing at games!” Kleodora spits, suddenly angry. “They’ve broken the rules and the balance is overturned –”
“What balance?” Susan says anxiously. “What rules?”
“The Deep Magic is upset,” says Melaina. “This is not possible –”
“We are here, little sister, or haven’t you noticed?” Corycia says, scooping the pebbles back up. “Susan, I’m sorry, we cannot see this. The veil is still raised.”
“I have seen the same in the stars,” says Adelchis. All three naiads look at him, and he goes on. “I and the other augurs I have spoken to. We look to the future, and there is nothing. I cannot tell if that is because the slate is blank or because there is no future.”
“What do you mean there’s no future?” Erelieva demands. “More centaur witchery –”
“Susan.” Corycia beckons her, touching her wrist when she approaches, turning her hand upright as Susan looks at her with anxious eyes. She strokes her fingers down the center of her palm, apparently arranging Susan’s hand to fit her own whim, until it’s nearly a cup. From nowhere she produces a small crystal of vial of golden honey, turning it over into Susan’s palm. The honey glows gold as it runs down and gathers against Susan’s winter-pale skin.
“What are you doing, Corycia?”
“I cannot see into Narnia’s future,” she says, “but perhaps I can see into yours, just a little.”
Susan bows her head a little in acknowledgment, her expression troubled. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
Corycia cups her hand in both of hers and raises it to her lips, smiling up at her over the heel of her hand. Susan does not smile back. “Just a little,” she murmurs, and bends her head to the honey, licking it up with delicate little laps of her tongue. Susan closes her eyes; Jill looks away so that she doesn’t have to see her shiver, her lips parting slightly.
“You must allow the kings their choices,” Corycia murmurs, her head turned slightly to one side. “Oh, my darling. They know what it is they do.” She licks again, a straight line down the center of Susan’s palm. “Do not be so quick to trust the old ways. They may betray you yet.”
“Who do you mean?” Susan questions, an edge of strain in her voice. “Rycia –”
“You’d best hurry if you mean to reach Anvard by dinnertime,” Corycia says, and suddenly there’s a circlet of water-lilies in her hands, stems wound around each other to form a crown. Susan bends her head obediently as Corycia settles it on her brow. When she’s finished, she smiles at Susan soft and sweet, and adds, “Perhaps I’ll see you soon. The river runs not far from the castle.”
“I’ll put a candle in my window,” Susan replies. She kisses Corycia on the mouth, feather-light, and turns away, her hand dropping to her side to rub away the last of the honey on her skirts. To the Narnians, she says, “Ask your questions, if you have them. But be quick about it; we must leave soon. We have a dinner party to be at.”
There’s a moment of awkward waiting, the rest of the Narnians all looking at each other as Corycia sits down, arranging the folds of her stola across her knees.
“Well?” says Kleodora. “You heard Queen Susan. You don’t have all day.”
“None of us bite,” Melaina adds, smiling winningly.
There’s a long pause. Jill shifts uneasily on her rock, then gives it up and gets up, crossing over to stand next to Graynor, on the opposite side of the clearing from Susan.
“I have a question,” Suatrius ventures at last.
Kleodora beckons him with one hand, and he goes, passing the horses’ reins to Jill. He kneels down in front of her, murmuring his question, and Kleodora throws a handful of stones the way Corycia had and gives him her answer. He comes back to them looking relieved.
“Well?” Graynor demands anxiously.
“It’s about my brother,” he says, grinning as if he can’t help himself. “She says he’s in Cair Paravel.”
They all look at each other, and then Herluin darts forward, bending his head to Melaina.
Not all of them ask questions, but enough of them do that Jill finally takes a deep breath, then straightens and goes to crouch down by the shore. “How does this work?” she asks. “Do I have to promise you my first-born, or –”
“Maybe later,” says Melaina. “This one’s free.” She rolls her eyes a little; one of her sisters elbows her in the ribs, so that Jill can’t help but smile. For a moment, they almost seem human.
“All right,” she says, remembering why she’s here. “This is my question: how do Scrubb and I get home to England?”
It’s nearly dark by the time they draw in sight of Anvard, the castle lights winking out like stars as they break from the tree line. The vague, amorphous dark shape gradually forms into a castle as they approach, horses’ hooves clattering across the cobblestones of the city. There are people hurrying about, more humans than Jill has seen outside a Calormene encampment in years, and a few nonhumans as well – a pair of dwarves, a centauress carrying a basket over her arm, a leopard guarding a wagon full of bags and bales that raises its head to watch as they pass by, its eyes bright with curiosity. Jill shifts a little in her saddle, uneasy with so much attention; she half-expects an attack to come at any moment now. It all seems so bizarrely normal here, as if normal has somehow become strange and unreal to her.
Some part of her knows that this is only a small village compared to London, or even Cair Paravel, which she’s only seen from afar, but the rest of her is near to panic. Buildings on both sides of her, and streets, real streets, and sudden bursts of laughter from pubs that make her flinch and reach for a weapon. They crowd to one side of the street to make room for a wagon that clatters noisily by, turning into the courtyard of an inn. Jill looks after it, wondering if Corycia had been right and they’ll really sleep in beds tonight. She hasn’t even seen a bed in almost five years, not a real one.
No one challenges them at the castle gates, although she doesn’t miss the guards that eye them curiously from the walls. One comes down to take the reins of Susan’s horse as she dismounts, then juggles his pike and takes Jill’s as well.
“There’s a guests’ table just at the front of the hall, when you walk in, milady,” he says to Susan, who has her hood drawn up to cover her hair. “You’re due dinner and a place to sleep for the night, and maybe more if you’ve something to say that interests his majesty.”
“Thank you,” Susan murmurs to him, and he goes scarlet, as though she’s whispered some kind of secret promise in his ear instead of simple thanks.
They go in, no one giving a second look at the Narnians with them, not even the wolf and the stag walking calmly across stone floors and inside walls covered with richly wrought tapestries. Another guard opens the doors of the great hall for them, murmuring, “His majesty will ask for your stories after dessert is served, though you can refuse to say, if you wish, milady,” to Susan.
“Thank you,” she says again from beneath the folds of her hood.
Jill twitches a hand away from the knife on her belt, wishing that Susan would show her face; even if she had been someone once, that’s sixteen hundred years gone and surely she doesn’t expect anyone to recognize her now.
The hall is big, and long, made of grey stone covered with tapestries and battered banners from previous wars. There are fireplaces on either side of the room, each one large enough to roast a whole ox in, though none of them have anything more sinister in them than firewood. The tables form a kind of C, with the high table at the far side of the room, the king’s throne dead center and an empty chair at his right hand, with a place laid, the others all filled. The other tables are full as well, except for the table that the guard whispers to her is the guests’ table.
She hears Cleph curse softly under his breath and knows why, because every muscle in her body is taut with tension; she flicks her gaze up at the high table and then down again, because there are Calormenes there. A tarkaan, she thinks, and more at the lower tables. Jill clenches her teeth, reminding herself that the Tisroc has no real power in Archenland, not yet, even if he does have people here, but she’s spent five years running from the Calormenes; old habits die hard. She forces herself not to look anywhere except at the table they’ve been pointed towards.
She’s relieved to see that there are others at the table indicated at the guests’ table – a few merchants, and someone with a harp slung across his back, as well as a pair of women dressed in sturdy farmers’ clothes. She, the fauns, and Erelieva take seats at the end of the table, while servants carry away a bench so that Adelchis can stand, Herluin beside him. Graynor leaps up onto the bench besides Jill. She looks for Susan, expecting her to sit as well, but instead Susan is going up behind one of the side tables, ignoring them entirely.
“What’s she doing?” Jill demands. “What is she –”
Adelchis makes a motion for her to keep silent, and she holds her tongue, pulse hammering. She’d known that Susan had some kind of mad plan when they left Arn Abedin for Archenland, but she’d never been informed what it was, and had assumed it had just involved a lot of pleading for help. To conceal her nervousness, Jill takes off her coat. She’d left her bow and quiver with her horse, as had most of the others, all except Susan. There are more than a few people who are looking around at the weathered ivory quiver strapped across her cloak now, and whispers spreading like the trickle of a creek in the woods.
There are hooks on the wall for men to hang their weapons, away from their hands, and Jill watches with her heart in her throat as Susan unbuckles her quiver, then sweeps her hood back from her face, unpinning her cloak with her free hand. A servant ghosts up to take them from her and hang them up, and Susan takes the empty chair at the king’s right hand. Another servant pours her wine, and she drinks – like a normal person, Jill thinks to herself, a little madly – and the buzz of sound in the hall strengthens to its previous level. The tarkaan glares at Susan as if her appearance is a personal insult.
She stops staring at the high table when Erelieva starts to pile slices of roast pork onto her plate. “Eat,” the satyr ordered firmly. “At least they’re feeding us.”
“For the moment,” Cleph says dourly, square teeth closing on a drumstick. Jill remembers, vaguely, being surprised when she’d first arrived in Narnia that satyrs and fauns – and centaurs and minotaurs, for that matter – ate meat, since goats and horses and cows didn’t, but she’s used to it now. A few of the Archenlanders stare.
She keep sneaking looks at Susan, all though dinner. Susan eats neatly, speaking a few times when the man on her right tries to talk to her; she and the king make no attempt to talk.
“Whose seat is that?” she asks finally, because they should probably at least know who Susan’s pissing off –
The Narnians look around at each other, shrugging. It’s one of the farmers who says, “You must not be from around here.”
“No,” says Adelchis, his voice courteous. “We come from Narnia.”
That gives her a moment of pause, then she says, “Well, it’s a tradition here in Archenland to leave an empty seat for a guest. Their majesties take it a bit further, of course,” she adds, sweeping a hand around to indicate the guests’ table.
“That one we knew,” Graynor says, crunching a bone between his teeth.
“Well, here at Anvard, there’s a chair left at the king’s right hand. Some say it’s for a missing prince, like Cor, or for Aslan, or for the Narnian ambassador. Not from the Telmarine Narnia, I mean, but the old Narnia.” She takes a sip of her wine. “They say that the first king and queen of Narnia were kin to our king here, so it’s a seat left for a kinsman. Or woman.” Her gaze flickers up to the high table, where Susan is eating daintily with knife and fork, the water-lilies white against her dark hair.
“Do they mean –” Jill murmurs to Adelchis.
“Even we in Narnia know that the High King was not the first king in Narnia, but the others fell and were not remembered,” he replies, tail flicking behind him. “They are unimportant.”
She looks up at the high table again, wondering if that’s going to affect how Susan’s treated. And if that doesn’t, if King Eian will truckle to the Calormenes sitting at the table.
The servants remove the meat course, eventually, and bring out the dessert. It’s gingerbread. Jill looks at it and wants to cry, just a little, because it’s so – normal. And she hasn’t seen gingerbread in so long. Not since before Narnia. Maybe not since before the war, she can’t remember.
There are other desserts, of course, some other cakes and puddings, but for some reason it’s the gingerbread that gets to her, and Jill just looks at it. She’s so busy looking at it that’s she’s nearly startled out of her skin when King Eian says, his voice pitched to carry, “Perhaps it is an ill thing for me to ask this, and if so, may Aslan strike me down for it, but I would ask nonetheless.”
Jill turns her head up to see Susan smile, idly bemused. “Ask, your majesty,” she says.
Eian takes a breath, watching her. He’s a small, fair man with delicate features; his crown sits easily at his brow. Something about him reminds Jill of Tirian. “I would know your name,” he says, “and what your purpose is in Archenland.”
There’s a faint murmur through the hall. A woman at the high table who has the look of a Narnian about her starts to protest before her neighbor shushes her.
Susan sips at her wine, then puts the goblet aside. “My name is Susan,” she says, “I was queen in Narnia once, many years ago, when Lune your forefather sat in that chair, and I am still a queen of Narnia.”
The king has gone a shade paler, his grip tightening on the arms of his chair, but he manages to keep his voice steady as he says, “And what is it you want with Archenland, Queen Susan?”
She looks at him, then at the tarkaan. “There is a plague in your country, Eian of Archenland,” she says, voice soft but carrying. A window high at the top of the hall comes unlatched and bangs at its shutters in a sudden wind. “There is a rot and it spreads and grows, poisoning all that it touches. You know this. I know this. All your people know this. Soon it may subsume all of Archenland, and then you will find yourself lucky if you still have your life, let alone your throne.”
“Do you threaten me?” He doesn’t sound afraid, but the stiff way he’s holding himself betrays his voice.
“I don’t threaten you,” Susan says, with the faintest pressure on the word you. “I propose that I help you cut that rot out of the flesh and bones of Archenland. We are old kin, your country and mine.”
“Your majesty!” the tarkaan snaps, leaping up. “You cannot possibly listen to this Narnian witch –”
“You will silence yourself when I speak, Ilderim Tarkaan,” Eian says without looking at him. “I am still king here, not the Tisroc. Sit down.”
The tarkaan sits, glowering.
Susan takes another sip of her wine, apparently unmoved by the interchange. “We have a common interest, your majesty.”
“Perhaps we do. Perhaps we don’t.” Eian looks at her straight-on. “And what does Narnia want from me?”
“Your help.”
“If, as you say, we cannot even help ourselves, then how do you propose that we help you?” He laughs. It isn’t a pleasant sound. The window bangs against the shutter again, and Jill jumps.
“Old friend,” Susan says, “if I can’t help you, then it isn’t going to matter anymore.”
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31