[fic] Along the Midnight Edge 2/14
Dec. 31st, 2010 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Along the Midnight Edge
Rating: 18
Genre: drama, romance
Pairings: Edmund/Caspian
Wordcount: 80k
Warnings: it is rated 18 for potentially disturbing themes
Summary: Narnia ended a mere two hundred years after Caspian’s reign, as though he was the climax of her 2,500 years’ history. He was. There were stories unfolding in Narnia of which none of her rulers were aware, and stories must run their natural course, even though their heroes are dead.
[CHAPTER TWO -- This Day, O Soul]
Edmund didn’t think he could have found any words to describe heaven when he was living, thought for sure that there were none. What was more, he was certain it was only the living who needed words, and yet, now that he had achieved a place in Aslan’s country, he felt he wanted to name all the sensations that he was experiencing.
This was queer, partly because the heaven was not at all different from the adventures in Narnia, only this time bereft of fear or worry. There were mornings of sunshine every day, of glorious, golden sunshine that fell through the windows to bathe the chamber in its rays, but there were mornings of rain, too, warm summer rain that trickled down his face and made him glad to be alive. He wasn’t sure how many had there been -- he counted, but oftentimes he would end up with twelve, and sometimes it would be sixteen, then he would consider the sunsets, glorious and colourful and would get a figure that implied he was completely wrong in his accounts, by a margin of twenty in either direction. No one would confirm or deny his observations. Peter didn’t notice. Lucy didn’t care.
Then there was Caspian. His presence made it very hard to consider sunsets and sunrises, even as they tried to reconcile the figures they arrived at separately. His presence made it difficult to breathe, for fear of dissolving the moment, rendering the issue of time irrelevant.
Naturally, Edmund was happy. It was hard not to be happy, when he had everything he had ever wanted, right there, close enough to touch and with the promise of eternity binding it to him.
It didn’t mean there weren’t days (months? minutes? The sensation of time passing in Narnia had always been fluid, time in this land must have been governed by even more bizarre rules) when he couldn’t stand to see the smug expression on Caspian’s face and honestly considered hopping on a steed and riding until the dawn found him in a different place altogether. Of course, the fantasy would include Caspian riding along with him, each and every time and it never failed to bring a smile to Edmund’s face.
He breathed in the smell of the ocean, tasted the salt on his tongue. He would be able to see the water, but for the surrounding trees. He stretched and put his hands underneath his head, to watch the leaves overhead shimmer in the golden light.
“Are you hiding from me?” Caspian asked, over the crashing of the waves upon the shore.
Edmund didn’t even bother to open his eyes. “I am.”
“Why?”
“Because you can be annoying.”
“That is not true.”
“It is only too true.”
Caspian stretched out on the exquisite lawn at Edmund’s side. “I don’t think I’m so annoying as to justify you running and hiding from me. I am starting to wonder if perhaps you haven’t missed me enough.”
Edmund grinned, for the petulant tone of Caspian’s never failed to amuse him. “See, this is my reasoning precisely. I have siblings here, I have my parents, I have friends that you have never even heard of. Is it any wonder that I would wish to spend time with them?”
“I could swear none of them absorbs your mind presently.”
“I am permitted to have time for myself, aren’t I?”
Caspian considered. “Perhaps. What would you use it for?”
“I don’t know yet. I was on the verge of discovery, when you saw it fit to interrupt me. Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Of cornering you, after an hour of searching, alone, in a secluded grove. Oh, the shame is crushing.” Caspian twisted and rolled, stopping when he was straddling Edmund’s hips. The light haloed his head, sliding through his hair like the fingers of a lover. Edmund reached out to catch the strand that fell to obscure his eye and tucked it behind Caspian’s ear.
“I wonder, were you always this prone to sarcasm?” he asked.
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
“Have you no ears?”
“Often I leave them wherever I last used them. I don’t think they are all that necessary.”
“Arrogant princeling.”
“Princeling? Why, I ought to have you put in the stocks for this.”
“I’m certain it would end well, for all involved,” Edmund murmured. It was hard to think when Caspian was so close, or rather it was hard to think about things outside of Caspian.
“I would feel vindicated,” the king said, and his mouth was brushing Edmund’s as he spoke.
“You would have to catch me first.”
“I caught you.”
“That’s what you think.”
Caspian was an only child, so hadn’t had the advantage of spending his early years tussling with siblings on floors and carpets and lawns. It was almost too easy, bucking suddenly and using the momentum to dislodge him, and spring to his feet.
“Is that a challenge?” Caspian asked, lifting himself up on his elbow.
“Well, if you’re happy to admit you’re beaten, I should be happy to accept your forfeit.” However impressive it might have sounded, Edmund was already running before the last words could leave his mouth and so the kingly tone he affected was drowned in laughter.
Caspian didn’t let him enjoy the advantage for long. Before Edmund was even out of the grove he heard the leaves rustling and he knew Caspian was following. He took a sudden turn, jumped over a low wall, reached the orchard, which filled the courtyard of the castle and came to a stop behind a pillar, where his sister was seated.
“Hello Lucy,” he said, startling her out of whatever daydream she had conjured. She leapt to her feet and laughed.
“Ed! So good to see you. How’s Caspian doing?”
“Ask him yourself,” Edmund said, as he heard footsteps coming through the apple trees. He didn’t wait to confirm who it was, but was already running, past the gates and into the countryside.
“Edmund, really!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Edmund saw that Caspian had grasped Lucy around the waist and whirled her in a circle until she squealed in delight. “My lady. Always a pleasure,” he said and left her laughing heartily in his wake. In the distance Edmund could hear her ask “Are they crazy?” of Peter, who appeared out of nowhere to frown at Caspian. He did that a lot.
“Yes, they are,” Peter said, glaring at Caspian. “Honestly, have you no dignity?”
“I might. Why? Did you want to borrow some?”
“You insufferable little…!”
“I am at the very least as tall as you,” Caspian said, the chase temporarily forgotten. Edmund paused, then returned to the group, to hide behind Lucy. Pitting Caspian against Peter never got old. He wondered why it was so. Peter was so amicable, and yet the mere sight of Caspian, Caspian and Edmund, to be precise, as they were only rarely apart, was enough to send him into a frenzy. Oftentimes Edmund would find himself worried that the matter was quite serious indeed, when it got Peter so frustrated even the heavenly ambience couldn’t mellow him out.
“What is going on?” Eustace asked, appearing as though by magic at Edmund’s elbow.
“Peter and Caspian are conversing.”
“Really? It rather looks like a fight to me.”
“Why? There are no swords involved.”
“Why does this always happen?” Lucy asked, tilting her head, presumably to make sense of the complicated dance Peter and Caspian were performing. “No matter how it starts, it inevitably ends with Caspian picking a fight with Peter. I don’t remember Caspian being this eager to argue.”
“It’s not fighting,” Edmund told her as he shook his head. “That’s spirited discussion.” Of course, explaining that to a girl was next to impossible.
“I’ve seen spirited discussions. I tend to get animated when I talk. I don’t recall ever resorting to uppercuts.”
Edmund rolled his eyes. “Girls.”
“Boys. You’re all just a bunch of savages, aren’t you?”
Edmund casually lifted a hand to smack the back of Lucy’s head, but as usual she was quick to duck and kick him in the shin. “That’s not sporting!” she said.
“And insulting my gender is?”
“I did no such thing!”
“Eustace was right here and heard it!”
“I was here, yeah.”
“See?”
“He didn’t actually say I did it,” Lucy said with a bright grin. “He just said he was here.”
Eustace smiled at that. “Well, it is true.”
“Could you be any less of a help?”
“I imagine so, yes. Who’s going to win this one, d’you think?” Eustace nodded at Peter and Caspian, who had managed to find a couple of sticks to double as quarter-staffs and were now circling one another.
“Peter,” Edmund said without looking.
“Hey!” Caspian turned in his direction, to protest, which was a fatal mistake, as Peter used that moment of distraction to hook the staff around his legs and fell him. “That’s not fair!”
“You have fallen for that thrice already!”
“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Caspian pouted and Edmund very narrowly avoided bursting out laughing.
“Can’t recall ever saying that.” Caspian had a face naturally suited to feigning the expression of a wounded fawn, so Edmund continued in a softer voice, “I am, however, willing to nurse you back to health.”
“I suppose I must learn to live with that.”
“You’d better.”
Peter laughed, then, and stretched. “I should entertain a rematch when it’s convenient for you. Perhaps sometime next century, when you’ve had a bit of practice?”
“Perhaps when you’ve stopped resorting to underhanded tricks…”
“Why would I do that?” Peter asked. Edmund bit his lip. It seemed half the time he was forced to find new ways of stopping himself from laughing. It wasn’t easy. Peter had a natural tendency -- he supposed it was due to being the eldest in the family, cousins included -- to assume he was the older brother in any given group of his peers, regardless of actual age and status, and Caspian, having been spared from the horror of having an older sibling or indeed anyone who’d be familiar and daring enough to tease him, couldn’t get used to the idea.
This of course begged the question of whether Peter was older than Caspian, who had, after all, died of old age, and how did that factor into the grand scheme of things. Edmund would normally say this was the sort of thing that kept him up at night, except of course the only thing that kept him up at the times that most resembled night here was Caspian.
“What has you so confused?” Caspian asked, coming to seat by his side. There was something very cat like in his movements, almost like he had no bones at all, as he lowered himself to the ground. Edmund wanted to put his hands on the nape of Caspian’s neck and see if he’d purr when scratched.
“I was wondering how old we are,” he said, because heaven or not, doing that in front of Peter would result in bloodshed.
“How is that a concern?” Peter took a seat on his other side and Edmund felt it was high time to leave, for surely this would result in a shouting match he had no desire to be in the middle of.
“I have wondered that as well, in all honesty.” Caspian propped his head on a hand and stared into the distance. “I know how old I was upon my death, but here I feel like I’m no more than twenty.”
“You don’t act older than ten,” Peter muttered and Edmund sighed.
Just as Peter and Caspian were beginning another dispute over his head, Edmund’s gaze was drawn to a strange flickering on the grass, casting foreign shadows onto the ground. The edges of the blades sharpened, and the texture seemed to gain another dimension, when it was already so full of substance Edmund could spend a lifetime detailing its meanings. It was strange, in that the sun shone from high above, as though it were noon, and yet these shadows behaved as though a new light was shimmering behind his back.
“Hello,” Lilliandil said, and even her voice shimmered on the wind, like the light she cast upon the ground.
Edmund turned. “Good morning. Or afternoon.”
Rilian stood behind her. Edmund noted he was staring at Caspian, in particular at his hand, which was resting atop Edmund’s, with something akin to wonder in his eyes. Edmund found himself flushing and so he stood up, seeking to put some distance between them.
There was a long moment of silence. “I do believe we haven’t been introduced,” Peter said warmly as he stood up and took Lilliandil’s hand.
“I know who you are, High King of Narnia,” she said with a smile.
“I’m Peter. I don’t think such titles are quite relevant anymore.”
“I hail from the world of Narnia,” she said. “Though she may have died, the kingship does not die with her.”
“Be that as it may, I do believe you have been her queen as well, making us equals, so I insist on you using my given name.”
Lilliandil laughed and then there were more introductions, namely that of Rilian, with whom Edmund had not the chance to speak yet, which he suspected was a grievous oversight on his part. On the other hand, how does one conduct oneself in the presence of one’s lover, his wife and son? Edmund suspected there were no books to coach him on that matter.
“You look well,” Lilliandil told him some time later, once the company had broken into smaller groups. Caspian and Rilian were engaged in an animated conversation with Eustace, which, as far as Edmund could tell, mostly involved the world beneath Narnia and the chasm lower still. Peter and Lucy listened to it with avid interest, though they had heard the story before. Eustace did his best, immediately after his return, and he had many talents, but storytelling was not his strong suit -- he tended towards dry and concise reports, whereas Rilian seemed to have a flair for vivid description.
“Thank you. How have you been?”
“I find this place very beautiful. My time here has been a joy.”
Over among the smaller trees Caspian let out a boisterous laugh and flicked a fallen leaf onto Eustace’s head. Edmund looked their way and he saw Caspian’s gaze sweeping over the two of them, lingering on Edmund, then he looked back to Eustace.
Edmund smiled.
“Do you know, this is the first time I have seen Caspian be genuinely happy?” Lilliandil said lightly. She, too, was gazing at Caspian, and the look they shared couldn’t have escaped her attention.
“Surely not!”
“But it is true. He had been content in his role, but I think -- nay, I know -- the memory of you had always lingered in his mind and at times he seemed as distant as my brethren is upon the sky. I think it was only when Rilian was born that he came close to being at peace.”
Edmund didn’t quite know what to say. If this were any other place he would have felt guilt and perhaps horror, too, because he had been content back in England, buried in his studies and his secrets, but there was no one to force onto him a family, or worse still, force him onto a family which surely deserved better. He should apologise, he thought, but the nature of the regret was so alien to this country, that the moment the thought arose in his mind it was gone anew, leaving behind only compassion and acceptance.
He was spared the trouble of answering when both Caspian and Rilian, closely followed by Eustace, Peter and Lucy, came to sit by their side. Their conversation continued, and so Edmund and Lilliandil fell silent, listening to the animated account of the great cavern from which the gnomes hailed, where there were living jewels and rivers of fire.
“Did you see any of them at the door, Eustace?” Edmund asked, but was met with a blank stare.
“Any of who?”
“The gnomes, whatever you call them. Or the salamanders.”
“I cannot recall,” he said, and Edmund could swear he saw the thought disappear from his mind. He frowned and he would have said something, but then Eustace spoke of Puddleglum and his sense of the humour of the Marsh-wiggles was impeccable, even if he would punctuate most of the quotes with a good-natured roll of his eyes.
“Edmund always did have an affinity with the Wiggles,” Peter said. “There was the chap, what was his name? He lived in a tiny tent on the very edge of the sea, lion’s mane, he would be soaking every time the tide rolled in, and he refused to move even an inch.”
“Gloomfog.”
“Most fitting. He was our teacher, for a while. I know I couldn’t stand his lessons, he was so depressing!”
“He was accurate.”
“Come on, he could speak of nothing but the marches and the mud and when he chanced upon something interesting, he had to ruin it!”
“He taught us war history, Pete. War is mud, lice and occasionally blood.” Peter raised a brow at that, and Edmund immediately shook his head. “Never mind. He did have a splendid sense of humour, though I admit it was not always fit for the throne room.”
“Depends on the throne room. I found Puddleglum almost too optimistic. At least that is what I most remembered. He stayed with me awhile, after I became king,” Rilian said and his handsome face was clouded with the memory. Edmund recalled that he must have been crowned days after his father’s death, in the wake of a ten-year-long imprisonment. In the face of such tragedies the nature of a Marsh-wiggle must have been a ray of sunshine, because when most people dismissed the Wiggles’ attitude as pessimistic, Edmund had thought it merely on the grim side of realism, a view not eagerly shared among the Narnians.
But Eustace laughed at Rilian’s words, and soon the jokes and stories were being traded like they would be among old friends, who knew the same places at different times.
It was a wonder, how much history they could piece together between them; Caspian was proving himself quite the expert on the Golden Age of Narnia and its repercussions on the centuries that followed, while Lilliandil knew a surprising amount about the movement of armies and the travels of the people of the world, though of the reasons for them she could name very few.
Overhead, the sun shone and the sky flickered, a standing testimony to the fluent passage of time. Edmund dared to look up for a moment and became transfixed with the wonders of what played before his eyes. He could stare the sun in the face and see through its might, though what was it that he saw there, he couldn’t tell. Perhaps one day he would have to chance a trip, for surely it was possible in heaven?
“Ed,” he heard Caspian say.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?” Unlike in life, there were no dark spots before his eyes, just Caspian’s face, no less radiant than the sun.
“Daydreaming, are we?” he said. His mouth was stretched in a most inviting grin and Edmund tongue flicked briefly to wet his lips.
“In a manner of speaking.”
He should have noted the lull in the conversation, but it had only occurred to him after he kissed Caspian that they had an audience. Peter’s face was a sight to treasure. Lucy and Lilliandil looked amused to the point of tears, or so he assumed, given that Lucy was laughing so hard she was nearly glowing with mirth and Lilliandil shone just as brightly. Rilian’s expression mirrored Eustace’s, with perhaps a touch more amusement.
Edmund found himself going red, a fact not aided by Caspian’s laughter.
*****
The Cair Paravel of Aslan’s country was not everything that Edmund remembered. There were rooms and passages that he had never seen in his life, owing partially to the castle having been ravaged by time and then rebuilt by Caspian, following his escapade to the end of the world, but there were also many murals and statues whose theme and style suggested that parts of the building belonged to the times before Edmund’s reign.
The room he and Caspian had claimed as their own, for instance. Though Edmund was certain that this was the very same room that had been his chamber at one point (the shape of the window, the walkway outside, the secret door, just to the side of the fireplace, all were positioned exactly as he saw them in his mind’s eye), there were also features that must have been both earlier and later than he.
The best thing was, that there was a substantial library in the castle, too, and Edmund found that with enough hours devoted to the search he could find a book that contained in it the complete history of Cair Paravel, down to its least staircase. Most peculiar, he had thought at the discovery, but strangely fitting. This was heaven, wasn’t it, so why should it surprise him that the information on any given subject was readily available?
He had taken the book and made himself comfortable in his sunlit bedroom, confident that for a while at least Caspian would be absorbed by challenging Peter to some contest and being challenged in turn. It was easier to tune out the whisper of his voice when he concentrated on something. They were never wholly unaware of each other, but if their mutual focus was elsewhere the voices were like whispers on the wind, comforting in their presence, but just as invisible as air.
The stories, for they were stories, not history, and as well-written as the best book he had ever had the pleasure of reading, drew him in completely. He had just begun the chapter on the great hall (first erected to house the coronation of the Queen Soon, whose covenant with Calormen had ensured a peace that held for centuries), when there was a knock on the door.
“Come on in,” he called.
The door opened with some reluctance to reveal Rilian.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning to you too, Edmund.” Rilian looked around the room carefully. “May I intrude?”
“Sure. Can I help you with anything?”
“I wish you could.” His face was solemn as though there was indeed something to be troubled with, so Edmund cast aside his book and looked at the man expectantly. If he were able to feel dread, he surely would have, because solemnity, just as fear and anger, he hadn’t yet encountered.
“I had wondered that you should choose this room,” Rilian said and at least for a moment his face was brightened with a smile.
“It was mine once. At least I think so -- the castle has changed since I knew it and it changes even now.”
“It was once mine as well.”
Edmund opened his mouth. “That has to be a joke.”
“Not at all. When I was a child this was my bedroom. Or it was not, I’m quite confused, in all honesty.”
“I think I know what you mean. This is such a strange land. Everything seems like it should be, but coupled with the memories, nothing is as it was.”
“True.” Rilian came to sit on the side of the bed, staring at the mural over the mantelpiece. It depicted the hunting of the White Stag, and for the life of him Edmund couldn’t remember if it had been there all along, or if it only appeared when Rilian called it forth.
He voiced the thought and Rilian laughed. “It is queer that you should remark upon it. Others have accepted it without question and yet it seems strange to you.”
Edmund shook his head and looked at the scene. He recognised himself in one of the four figures, partially obscured by the trees. He seemed to be looking back, and if not for the young birch Edmund would have been able to look into his eyes, when his three siblings were already facing the way forth, into the painting.
“This is not a painting I would have chosen for a child’s room,” he found himself saying. “Though it’s beautiful.”
“My father commissioned it. I found it full of hope, especially in my later years.”
“It’s very well done.”
Silence fell between them and in it were the first seeds of unease. “Rilian,” Edmund said, “You have come here with a specific purpose, have you not?”
“Indeed I have.”
Though Rilian seemed to have made no move from where he sat, suddenly Edmund found him so close, he could feel the heat of his body. Except he couldn’t.
“Are you ill?” he asked, as he touched Rilian’s forehead. “You are cold.”
“No, I am well.” Yet his blue eyes burned brightly as the stars as he regarded him, and the sight of such inhuman eyes in a face so like Caspian’s brought a strange foreboding to Edmund’s heart. Rilian was the son of a star, he recalled dimly, so it should be no wonder that his features reflected it.
“Edmund,” he said and it seemed to Edmund the sun had paled when Rilian’s face was close to his. He, too, possessed some of the glow that set Lilliandil apart from the humans around her, but his was gentler, imperceptible to anyone not looking for it. “Did you know that for the longest time in my childhood I was expecting to meet you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“My father spoke of you so often. I hardly think I heard other stories but those of your kingship when I was little.”
“Caspian is prone to exaggeration.”
“You need not worry about that. As I grew, I discovered much of what he was telling me was in the history books.”
“Then he is a sorry storyteller, to boot. Were there no fairy-tales among the Telmarines to soothe children?”
“Few. Most of them, I think, feared to beget wonder in their offspring, so they settled for begetting fear.”
“I never figured Caspian for being interested in history, to be honest. If anything I thought he would make up excuses to avoid history lessons and go hunting instead.”
“Surely you did not assume it was history he was interested in,” Rilian said. There was a knowing smile on his lips and Edmund looked away to hide the flush that blossomed across his face and he unexpectedly found himself pushed onto the bed and held there. He laughed, though the laughter dwindled when he found his limbs wouldn’t move.
“Rilian,” he said, straining to shift on the sheets. “What,” he tried again, but the words caught in his throat as Rilian straddled him and he still couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw breath to speak.
The day was warm as any in the summer, there was no reason for Rilian’s hands to be this cold, yet, as he undid the lacings of Edmund’s shirt, the temperature seemed to drop. Edmund felt it keenly with each inch of the exposed skin. Cold fingers skimmed the skin over his sternum, drawing a shudder, made painful by his inability to move.
“I am sorry,” Rilian said. “I truly am. I bear you no ill-will.”
There was a knife in his hand. It did not belong there, Edmund thought; it was not of this world, it was wrong, so profoundly wrong. He knew that knife. Its shape had been burned into his memory, where it would forever be real, but how could the physical object have made its way here, into Rilian’s hands, how could it once more be poised over him, when it should have been long gone, destroyed and buried in the ice of the dead world? He found that he was afraid, a sensation he had already begun to forget, as in Aslan’s country there was no fear.
The sunlight crawled down the blade, thick like blood. Though Rilian’s hand shook, the light pooled in the etchings on its surface, spilling over onto the flats, and then disappearing over the side, as though the edges cut through the world and opened into the abyss outside. Edmund imagined it brushed against him as the tip touched the skin over his heart. The knife must have been as sharp as it looked, because it took no pressure at all to break his skin.
It was strange, how he could feel fear, but not pain, even as the ice-cold knife dug deep into his flesh and caught on the bone, even as bright red blood welled in the wound and overflowed, soaking into Edmund’s shirt. The smell of it was everywhere, it seemed, though logically it was but a scratch, he should barely feel it, but the smell invaded his nose, the taste of iron filled his mouth and it was quite fortunate he couldn’t breathe, as he would have drowned if he tried.
Rilian wouldn’t look into his eyes as the tip of the knife wedged under a rib and snapped bones in half, and Edmund saw -- or perhaps imagined, as the angle should have made it impossible to see -- his own beating heart. It was such a queer sight to behold, when everything he knew about anatomy told him he should be in tremendous amounts of pain, that he should be screaming in agony, or even slipping into unconsciousness, rather than observing the fleshy-red muscle as it contracted and expanded.
Then, perhaps too late, he realised that there was pain, and the fear gave way to terror, and worse, as he tried to throw his head back and scream and yet no sound was uttered and his body would not obey him.
Helpless to do anything but observe, Edmund saw that Rilian’s hands trembled as he set the knife aside and reached into his chest cavity. For Edmund the sensation was most unsettling, as though there was some liquid colder than the coldest winter slipping into his veins, pushing out all the warmth and life. Rilian looked up briefly then, and for a moment Edmund saw fear, and worse, in his eyes, akin to what he himself was feeling. He looked away just as quickly, hiding perhaps the lack of certainty and the fear.
He bent his head. Edmund felt like his breath caught in his throat, when it was already strained. Ice spread through him, blinding, painful, leaving bloody scratch-marks underneath his skin where it froze the flesh solid. He would have scooted away, crawled away and run, were it not for the fact that his body betrayed him, and so he lay still as death, when Rilian’s mouth touched his heart. Like a child’s, eager for a taste of a new thing, his tongue flickered, drawing from Edmund a sensation such as he had never imagined possible, not in his wildest nightmares.
He hadn’t been a terribly curious child, so he had not experienced the touch of frozen iron on his tongue, but if he had, he might have found the sensation similar, in nature if not in scope. For a moment there was nothing and then the cold started burning, hotter than a flame, spearing the flesh with such acuity that even the spell that had him bound had to relent and Edmund screamed, for he was certain that something inside him had broken and was ripping him apart.
Rilian straightened at that, with a look of shock upon his face. There was blood smeared on his lips, Edmund noted in a daze, before his vision began to blur, and Rilian stared at him with equal measure of shock and bewilderment.
His skin really was glowing, Edmund thought.
Then there were footsteps in the corridor and someone rattled the handle of the door.
“Edmund?” It was Lucy’s voice. Edmund didn’t know whether he should be relieved or terrified for her, but thankfully the interruption phased Rilian as well, for he leapt off the bed, grabbing the knife, just as the door opened. “Rilian, hello, such a pleasure to see you,” Lucy started saying, and something like a flame passed before her, which Edmund realised was her hand, but Rilian pushed past her and ran.
It was only then that Lucy looked around the room, leaving sparks where her eyes lingered. Edmund wondered briefly how he must have looked to her, splayed across the bed with his chest cut open and bleeding. He rather felt like the ringing in his ears would never die, even though her squeal ended almost as soon as it started, and she was at his side in an instant.
“Edmund!”
He was still unable to move and presently the pain was starting to creep in. Lucy looked wildly about, patting the sides of her dress, but of course this was heaven and her magical cordial was of no use in a place where there was no death, no fear and no injury that a wish couldn’t heal.
What a joke, Edmund thought wryly.
Thankfully, Lucy was not quite so shaken as to forget herself entirely. Within minutes she had pulled the cover off the bed and torn it into stripes. Edmund watched with interest as the fiery shadow, whose features he could barely make out, but whom he knew to be his sister, propped his unresponsive body against her side, holding the gaping would closed, and wrapped it as tight as she dared.
The blood ceased to flow soon enough and Edmund found that when the first layer of wrappings held him closed he could move again, enough to least to moan and grit his teeth. Lucy’s touch burned, not quite so fatally as Rilian’s had, but with every casual brush of her fingers Edmund felt a wave of fire blossom across his insides. “Oh, Edmund! I’m so sorry! Am I hurting you?”
“Wrap it tighter,” he said, or at least tried to. His mouth was still numb, but Lucy seemed to understand.
“Wait here, I’ll get Caspian,” she said, springing to her feet. Then, “No, I daren’t leave you alone.”
“Don’t go, he’ll be here soon enough,” Edmund started saying, and true to form, not five minutes had gone by when Caspian rushed through the door, closely followed by Peter and Eustace. Edmund didn’t get the chance to think before Caspian was at his side, luminous with fury and terror, pulling him into a bruising embrace.
Edmund turned into it; through the haze of burning and unrest Caspian was the only thing that seemed stable to him when the world was swimming before his eyes. Strange that though he could barely make out Lucy’s face, Caspian’s was as vivid as it always was, even though Edmund’s mind insisted on surrounding him with a fiery aura, but his skin was warm and the touch, though steeped in flames, soothed the burning and, when Edmund turned his head into Caspian’s neck, he could no longer smell blood. He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed, letting his mind settle and refocus.
Piece by piece, it all started to return to its proper shape. He let Caspian’s scent fill him, anchor him to a world of people and not fiery shapes. Edmund smelled grass that still stuck to Caspian’s shirt, smelled leather and daisies and sunlit skin, soap and salt. He let it wash over him, and when he opened his eyes he could see properly again.
“What happened?” Peter asked the room at large. Edmund saw his eyes flicker to the soaked linen binding his chest and the blood on Lucy’s hands and kirtle.
“I don’t know! I came by because Edmund was supposed to practice archery with me this morning, and I found him…” Lucy hesitated. Her voice started shaking as the image undoubtedly assaulted her eyes. “I don’t know! I saw Edmund, and he was so pale and bleeding, and he was, he was cut open!” She bit her lip and Edmund felt rather sorry for her, because reporting to Peter when he brimmed with fury was never a pleasant experience. “Edmund was cut open, like- like someone tried to eviscerate him.”
“Who, Lu?” Peter asked in a voice so tight that the merest hint, a shadow of a name, would send his crushing fury upon the perpetrator, whether he was certain of their guilt or not. Thankfully, Lucy knew this as well as Edmund did.
“It was so awful!” Lucy broke into tears and Peter’s anger had to relent for a minute or two, because she hid her face in his shoulder and cried.
“Edmund? How are you?” Eustace asked cautiously. He was so pale Edmund could count the freckles on his face.
“Not bad, considering.” This was true. Though he couldn’t see it, he could tell by the oddest sensation in his chest that his ribs were mending, and the flesh was sewing itself closed. More importantly, he was able to move again, or he would have been, were it not for Caspian’s death grip.
“Ed!”
“I shall live, I think that is an important consideration, don’t you?”
“What happened? Who did this?”
“I wish I could tell you. I do.” Except, of course, how could he discuss that which made no sense to him. He saw that it had been Rilian, because it had been Rilian, only how could it have been, when this was supposed to be heaven, free of evil and hatred?
Then again, it wasn’t hatred burning in Rilian’s eyes, but fear. The mystery remained unsolved, as fear was as equally unattainable as anger until now, but it served to shake Edmund’s certainty about great many things.
“Edmund,” Caspian hissed directly into his ear. “Who was it?”
“I’m-”
“Don’t lie to me!”
An icy feeling settled in Edmund’s heart, a fear, a loss -- something had changed. “I’m not lying,” he said, pushing against Caspian, so he could look into his eyes. “Why would I lie?”
“You aren’t telling the whole truth,” Caspian said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m lying!”
“You know who did this to you.”
“No,” Edmund said, because it might have been Rilian who held the knife, but it couldn’t have been Rilian who wished for his destruction.
Caspian was staring into him and -- what a wonder -- though his touch didn’t hurt him like Lucy’s had, the intensity of his gaze pierced him to the core.
“It was Rilian,” Lucy said quickly.
The room fell quiet and all but Edmund turned to look at her. “I walked in and he just ran out, didn’t even pause. Then I saw Edmund. There was no one else in here.”
Caspian sat frozen, though his grip on Edmund never wavered. “Rilian did this to you?” he whispered. “Why?”
“Not everyone has the courtesy to explain their motives before doing the deed,” Edmund said and regretted his words immediately. Caspian’s head rested against his and Edmund saw the guilt in the line of his body, as though it was his fault.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to Caspian’s cheek.
“He must be found.” Peter turned to Eustace, every inch of him recalling the high king he once had been. “Go and fetch any of the talking birds, they are sure to be swift. Tell them to alarm everyone. Tell them that Rilian must be found and killed, as soon as he is seen.”
“No!” It was Edmund they all now looked at. “No one shall move from this room, not until I say so!”
“Whatever devilry he is up to, he will pay dearly for it,” Caspian said, with his face still hidden against Edmund’s shoulder. “With his life, even.”
“You choose now of all times to agree with my brother? I am telling you, no.”
“I do not have to listen to you,” Peter said narrowing his eyes.
“Quite the contrary.” Edmund pushed Caspian away and stood up. “It was me he trespassed against, so it is upon me to exact justice.”
“To what law do you attribute this rule? It is my duty as-”
“You are not a king anymore! Your kingship ended with Narnia!”
“As your older brother, to see you avenged. Unless you plan to tell me that blood kin loses its meaning in Aslan’s country too?”
“Yet it was me he tried to harm. Since you failed to retaliate in the heat of the moment, exacting revenge is now my call.”
“He deserves to burn,” Caspian said slowly, with enough conviction for Edmund to fear for him. “He shall burn for what he did.”
“You don’t know what he did. You don’t know what he meant.”
“Know? What don’t I know that could possibly change my mind? I felt terror, for the first time since I died, when you were attacked. Here in Aslan’s country I felt such terror I haven’t felt when facing death in battle. So tell me, Edmund, how am I not justified in ripping his heart out with my bare hands?”
“He’s your son.”
“Lion’s mane, that is supposed to excuse him?”
“Yes! But if that doesn’t stop you, then perhaps this will: I shall have no part in his murder, Caspian. Therefore, if you choose to continue with the plan, you will do so without me.”
Caspian closed his eyes briefly, but Edmund saw he had already won the battle. “Very well. May I flay him instead?”
“No.”
“But it would hardly do harm at all! Injuries are so quick to heal here, I’m sure he would writhe in pain for less than an hour. Maybe two, if I’m careful.”
“Try and be silent, Caspian, if you can,” Edmund said, when Lucy, even dear, sweet Lucy was nodding at that. The horror.
“What do you intend for us to do, then?” Peter asked.
“I’m not quite sure.” That Rilian mustn’t be killed on sight had been the thought on the forefront of his mind. As for the rest, he wasn’t entirely sure. There was something he had to recall, something that he ought to be remembering then -- a feeling, a thought so fleeting it escaped his grasp before he could realise it, and as he tried to chase it he found that he was tired, so very tired, and that his legs would hold him up no longer. “But Caspian, please.”
“I promise. He shall not be killed on sight, at least.”
Edmund was only awake long enough to know that Caspian wrapped his arms around him and whispered “Sleep,” into his ear, and then all disappeared.
Rating: 18
Genre: drama, romance
Pairings: Edmund/Caspian
Wordcount: 80k
Warnings: it is rated 18 for potentially disturbing themes
Summary: Narnia ended a mere two hundred years after Caspian’s reign, as though he was the climax of her 2,500 years’ history. He was. There were stories unfolding in Narnia of which none of her rulers were aware, and stories must run their natural course, even though their heroes are dead.
[CHAPTER TWO -- This Day, O Soul]
Edmund didn’t think he could have found any words to describe heaven when he was living, thought for sure that there were none. What was more, he was certain it was only the living who needed words, and yet, now that he had achieved a place in Aslan’s country, he felt he wanted to name all the sensations that he was experiencing.
This was queer, partly because the heaven was not at all different from the adventures in Narnia, only this time bereft of fear or worry. There were mornings of sunshine every day, of glorious, golden sunshine that fell through the windows to bathe the chamber in its rays, but there were mornings of rain, too, warm summer rain that trickled down his face and made him glad to be alive. He wasn’t sure how many had there been -- he counted, but oftentimes he would end up with twelve, and sometimes it would be sixteen, then he would consider the sunsets, glorious and colourful and would get a figure that implied he was completely wrong in his accounts, by a margin of twenty in either direction. No one would confirm or deny his observations. Peter didn’t notice. Lucy didn’t care.
Then there was Caspian. His presence made it very hard to consider sunsets and sunrises, even as they tried to reconcile the figures they arrived at separately. His presence made it difficult to breathe, for fear of dissolving the moment, rendering the issue of time irrelevant.
Naturally, Edmund was happy. It was hard not to be happy, when he had everything he had ever wanted, right there, close enough to touch and with the promise of eternity binding it to him.
It didn’t mean there weren’t days (months? minutes? The sensation of time passing in Narnia had always been fluid, time in this land must have been governed by even more bizarre rules) when he couldn’t stand to see the smug expression on Caspian’s face and honestly considered hopping on a steed and riding until the dawn found him in a different place altogether. Of course, the fantasy would include Caspian riding along with him, each and every time and it never failed to bring a smile to Edmund’s face.
He breathed in the smell of the ocean, tasted the salt on his tongue. He would be able to see the water, but for the surrounding trees. He stretched and put his hands underneath his head, to watch the leaves overhead shimmer in the golden light.
“Are you hiding from me?” Caspian asked, over the crashing of the waves upon the shore.
Edmund didn’t even bother to open his eyes. “I am.”
“Why?”
“Because you can be annoying.”
“That is not true.”
“It is only too true.”
Caspian stretched out on the exquisite lawn at Edmund’s side. “I don’t think I’m so annoying as to justify you running and hiding from me. I am starting to wonder if perhaps you haven’t missed me enough.”
Edmund grinned, for the petulant tone of Caspian’s never failed to amuse him. “See, this is my reasoning precisely. I have siblings here, I have my parents, I have friends that you have never even heard of. Is it any wonder that I would wish to spend time with them?”
“I could swear none of them absorbs your mind presently.”
“I am permitted to have time for myself, aren’t I?”
Caspian considered. “Perhaps. What would you use it for?”
“I don’t know yet. I was on the verge of discovery, when you saw it fit to interrupt me. Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Of cornering you, after an hour of searching, alone, in a secluded grove. Oh, the shame is crushing.” Caspian twisted and rolled, stopping when he was straddling Edmund’s hips. The light haloed his head, sliding through his hair like the fingers of a lover. Edmund reached out to catch the strand that fell to obscure his eye and tucked it behind Caspian’s ear.
“I wonder, were you always this prone to sarcasm?” he asked.
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
“Have you no ears?”
“Often I leave them wherever I last used them. I don’t think they are all that necessary.”
“Arrogant princeling.”
“Princeling? Why, I ought to have you put in the stocks for this.”
“I’m certain it would end well, for all involved,” Edmund murmured. It was hard to think when Caspian was so close, or rather it was hard to think about things outside of Caspian.
“I would feel vindicated,” the king said, and his mouth was brushing Edmund’s as he spoke.
“You would have to catch me first.”
“I caught you.”
“That’s what you think.”
Caspian was an only child, so hadn’t had the advantage of spending his early years tussling with siblings on floors and carpets and lawns. It was almost too easy, bucking suddenly and using the momentum to dislodge him, and spring to his feet.
“Is that a challenge?” Caspian asked, lifting himself up on his elbow.
“Well, if you’re happy to admit you’re beaten, I should be happy to accept your forfeit.” However impressive it might have sounded, Edmund was already running before the last words could leave his mouth and so the kingly tone he affected was drowned in laughter.
Caspian didn’t let him enjoy the advantage for long. Before Edmund was even out of the grove he heard the leaves rustling and he knew Caspian was following. He took a sudden turn, jumped over a low wall, reached the orchard, which filled the courtyard of the castle and came to a stop behind a pillar, where his sister was seated.
“Hello Lucy,” he said, startling her out of whatever daydream she had conjured. She leapt to her feet and laughed.
“Ed! So good to see you. How’s Caspian doing?”
“Ask him yourself,” Edmund said, as he heard footsteps coming through the apple trees. He didn’t wait to confirm who it was, but was already running, past the gates and into the countryside.
“Edmund, really!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Edmund saw that Caspian had grasped Lucy around the waist and whirled her in a circle until she squealed in delight. “My lady. Always a pleasure,” he said and left her laughing heartily in his wake. In the distance Edmund could hear her ask “Are they crazy?” of Peter, who appeared out of nowhere to frown at Caspian. He did that a lot.
“Yes, they are,” Peter said, glaring at Caspian. “Honestly, have you no dignity?”
“I might. Why? Did you want to borrow some?”
“You insufferable little…!”
“I am at the very least as tall as you,” Caspian said, the chase temporarily forgotten. Edmund paused, then returned to the group, to hide behind Lucy. Pitting Caspian against Peter never got old. He wondered why it was so. Peter was so amicable, and yet the mere sight of Caspian, Caspian and Edmund, to be precise, as they were only rarely apart, was enough to send him into a frenzy. Oftentimes Edmund would find himself worried that the matter was quite serious indeed, when it got Peter so frustrated even the heavenly ambience couldn’t mellow him out.
“What is going on?” Eustace asked, appearing as though by magic at Edmund’s elbow.
“Peter and Caspian are conversing.”
“Really? It rather looks like a fight to me.”
“Why? There are no swords involved.”
“Why does this always happen?” Lucy asked, tilting her head, presumably to make sense of the complicated dance Peter and Caspian were performing. “No matter how it starts, it inevitably ends with Caspian picking a fight with Peter. I don’t remember Caspian being this eager to argue.”
“It’s not fighting,” Edmund told her as he shook his head. “That’s spirited discussion.” Of course, explaining that to a girl was next to impossible.
“I’ve seen spirited discussions. I tend to get animated when I talk. I don’t recall ever resorting to uppercuts.”
Edmund rolled his eyes. “Girls.”
“Boys. You’re all just a bunch of savages, aren’t you?”
Edmund casually lifted a hand to smack the back of Lucy’s head, but as usual she was quick to duck and kick him in the shin. “That’s not sporting!” she said.
“And insulting my gender is?”
“I did no such thing!”
“Eustace was right here and heard it!”
“I was here, yeah.”
“See?”
“He didn’t actually say I did it,” Lucy said with a bright grin. “He just said he was here.”
Eustace smiled at that. “Well, it is true.”
“Could you be any less of a help?”
“I imagine so, yes. Who’s going to win this one, d’you think?” Eustace nodded at Peter and Caspian, who had managed to find a couple of sticks to double as quarter-staffs and were now circling one another.
“Peter,” Edmund said without looking.
“Hey!” Caspian turned in his direction, to protest, which was a fatal mistake, as Peter used that moment of distraction to hook the staff around his legs and fell him. “That’s not fair!”
“You have fallen for that thrice already!”
“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Caspian pouted and Edmund very narrowly avoided bursting out laughing.
“Can’t recall ever saying that.” Caspian had a face naturally suited to feigning the expression of a wounded fawn, so Edmund continued in a softer voice, “I am, however, willing to nurse you back to health.”
“I suppose I must learn to live with that.”
“You’d better.”
Peter laughed, then, and stretched. “I should entertain a rematch when it’s convenient for you. Perhaps sometime next century, when you’ve had a bit of practice?”
“Perhaps when you’ve stopped resorting to underhanded tricks…”
“Why would I do that?” Peter asked. Edmund bit his lip. It seemed half the time he was forced to find new ways of stopping himself from laughing. It wasn’t easy. Peter had a natural tendency -- he supposed it was due to being the eldest in the family, cousins included -- to assume he was the older brother in any given group of his peers, regardless of actual age and status, and Caspian, having been spared from the horror of having an older sibling or indeed anyone who’d be familiar and daring enough to tease him, couldn’t get used to the idea.
This of course begged the question of whether Peter was older than Caspian, who had, after all, died of old age, and how did that factor into the grand scheme of things. Edmund would normally say this was the sort of thing that kept him up at night, except of course the only thing that kept him up at the times that most resembled night here was Caspian.
“What has you so confused?” Caspian asked, coming to seat by his side. There was something very cat like in his movements, almost like he had no bones at all, as he lowered himself to the ground. Edmund wanted to put his hands on the nape of Caspian’s neck and see if he’d purr when scratched.
“I was wondering how old we are,” he said, because heaven or not, doing that in front of Peter would result in bloodshed.
“How is that a concern?” Peter took a seat on his other side and Edmund felt it was high time to leave, for surely this would result in a shouting match he had no desire to be in the middle of.
“I have wondered that as well, in all honesty.” Caspian propped his head on a hand and stared into the distance. “I know how old I was upon my death, but here I feel like I’m no more than twenty.”
“You don’t act older than ten,” Peter muttered and Edmund sighed.
Just as Peter and Caspian were beginning another dispute over his head, Edmund’s gaze was drawn to a strange flickering on the grass, casting foreign shadows onto the ground. The edges of the blades sharpened, and the texture seemed to gain another dimension, when it was already so full of substance Edmund could spend a lifetime detailing its meanings. It was strange, in that the sun shone from high above, as though it were noon, and yet these shadows behaved as though a new light was shimmering behind his back.
“Hello,” Lilliandil said, and even her voice shimmered on the wind, like the light she cast upon the ground.
Edmund turned. “Good morning. Or afternoon.”
Rilian stood behind her. Edmund noted he was staring at Caspian, in particular at his hand, which was resting atop Edmund’s, with something akin to wonder in his eyes. Edmund found himself flushing and so he stood up, seeking to put some distance between them.
There was a long moment of silence. “I do believe we haven’t been introduced,” Peter said warmly as he stood up and took Lilliandil’s hand.
“I know who you are, High King of Narnia,” she said with a smile.
“I’m Peter. I don’t think such titles are quite relevant anymore.”
“I hail from the world of Narnia,” she said. “Though she may have died, the kingship does not die with her.”
“Be that as it may, I do believe you have been her queen as well, making us equals, so I insist on you using my given name.”
Lilliandil laughed and then there were more introductions, namely that of Rilian, with whom Edmund had not the chance to speak yet, which he suspected was a grievous oversight on his part. On the other hand, how does one conduct oneself in the presence of one’s lover, his wife and son? Edmund suspected there were no books to coach him on that matter.
“You look well,” Lilliandil told him some time later, once the company had broken into smaller groups. Caspian and Rilian were engaged in an animated conversation with Eustace, which, as far as Edmund could tell, mostly involved the world beneath Narnia and the chasm lower still. Peter and Lucy listened to it with avid interest, though they had heard the story before. Eustace did his best, immediately after his return, and he had many talents, but storytelling was not his strong suit -- he tended towards dry and concise reports, whereas Rilian seemed to have a flair for vivid description.
“Thank you. How have you been?”
“I find this place very beautiful. My time here has been a joy.”
Over among the smaller trees Caspian let out a boisterous laugh and flicked a fallen leaf onto Eustace’s head. Edmund looked their way and he saw Caspian’s gaze sweeping over the two of them, lingering on Edmund, then he looked back to Eustace.
Edmund smiled.
“Do you know, this is the first time I have seen Caspian be genuinely happy?” Lilliandil said lightly. She, too, was gazing at Caspian, and the look they shared couldn’t have escaped her attention.
“Surely not!”
“But it is true. He had been content in his role, but I think -- nay, I know -- the memory of you had always lingered in his mind and at times he seemed as distant as my brethren is upon the sky. I think it was only when Rilian was born that he came close to being at peace.”
Edmund didn’t quite know what to say. If this were any other place he would have felt guilt and perhaps horror, too, because he had been content back in England, buried in his studies and his secrets, but there was no one to force onto him a family, or worse still, force him onto a family which surely deserved better. He should apologise, he thought, but the nature of the regret was so alien to this country, that the moment the thought arose in his mind it was gone anew, leaving behind only compassion and acceptance.
He was spared the trouble of answering when both Caspian and Rilian, closely followed by Eustace, Peter and Lucy, came to sit by their side. Their conversation continued, and so Edmund and Lilliandil fell silent, listening to the animated account of the great cavern from which the gnomes hailed, where there were living jewels and rivers of fire.
“Did you see any of them at the door, Eustace?” Edmund asked, but was met with a blank stare.
“Any of who?”
“The gnomes, whatever you call them. Or the salamanders.”
“I cannot recall,” he said, and Edmund could swear he saw the thought disappear from his mind. He frowned and he would have said something, but then Eustace spoke of Puddleglum and his sense of the humour of the Marsh-wiggles was impeccable, even if he would punctuate most of the quotes with a good-natured roll of his eyes.
“Edmund always did have an affinity with the Wiggles,” Peter said. “There was the chap, what was his name? He lived in a tiny tent on the very edge of the sea, lion’s mane, he would be soaking every time the tide rolled in, and he refused to move even an inch.”
“Gloomfog.”
“Most fitting. He was our teacher, for a while. I know I couldn’t stand his lessons, he was so depressing!”
“He was accurate.”
“Come on, he could speak of nothing but the marches and the mud and when he chanced upon something interesting, he had to ruin it!”
“He taught us war history, Pete. War is mud, lice and occasionally blood.” Peter raised a brow at that, and Edmund immediately shook his head. “Never mind. He did have a splendid sense of humour, though I admit it was not always fit for the throne room.”
“Depends on the throne room. I found Puddleglum almost too optimistic. At least that is what I most remembered. He stayed with me awhile, after I became king,” Rilian said and his handsome face was clouded with the memory. Edmund recalled that he must have been crowned days after his father’s death, in the wake of a ten-year-long imprisonment. In the face of such tragedies the nature of a Marsh-wiggle must have been a ray of sunshine, because when most people dismissed the Wiggles’ attitude as pessimistic, Edmund had thought it merely on the grim side of realism, a view not eagerly shared among the Narnians.
But Eustace laughed at Rilian’s words, and soon the jokes and stories were being traded like they would be among old friends, who knew the same places at different times.
It was a wonder, how much history they could piece together between them; Caspian was proving himself quite the expert on the Golden Age of Narnia and its repercussions on the centuries that followed, while Lilliandil knew a surprising amount about the movement of armies and the travels of the people of the world, though of the reasons for them she could name very few.
Overhead, the sun shone and the sky flickered, a standing testimony to the fluent passage of time. Edmund dared to look up for a moment and became transfixed with the wonders of what played before his eyes. He could stare the sun in the face and see through its might, though what was it that he saw there, he couldn’t tell. Perhaps one day he would have to chance a trip, for surely it was possible in heaven?
“Ed,” he heard Caspian say.
“I’m sorry. Did you say something?” Unlike in life, there were no dark spots before his eyes, just Caspian’s face, no less radiant than the sun.
“Daydreaming, are we?” he said. His mouth was stretched in a most inviting grin and Edmund tongue flicked briefly to wet his lips.
“In a manner of speaking.”
He should have noted the lull in the conversation, but it had only occurred to him after he kissed Caspian that they had an audience. Peter’s face was a sight to treasure. Lucy and Lilliandil looked amused to the point of tears, or so he assumed, given that Lucy was laughing so hard she was nearly glowing with mirth and Lilliandil shone just as brightly. Rilian’s expression mirrored Eustace’s, with perhaps a touch more amusement.
Edmund found himself going red, a fact not aided by Caspian’s laughter.
*****
The Cair Paravel of Aslan’s country was not everything that Edmund remembered. There were rooms and passages that he had never seen in his life, owing partially to the castle having been ravaged by time and then rebuilt by Caspian, following his escapade to the end of the world, but there were also many murals and statues whose theme and style suggested that parts of the building belonged to the times before Edmund’s reign.
The room he and Caspian had claimed as their own, for instance. Though Edmund was certain that this was the very same room that had been his chamber at one point (the shape of the window, the walkway outside, the secret door, just to the side of the fireplace, all were positioned exactly as he saw them in his mind’s eye), there were also features that must have been both earlier and later than he.
The best thing was, that there was a substantial library in the castle, too, and Edmund found that with enough hours devoted to the search he could find a book that contained in it the complete history of Cair Paravel, down to its least staircase. Most peculiar, he had thought at the discovery, but strangely fitting. This was heaven, wasn’t it, so why should it surprise him that the information on any given subject was readily available?
He had taken the book and made himself comfortable in his sunlit bedroom, confident that for a while at least Caspian would be absorbed by challenging Peter to some contest and being challenged in turn. It was easier to tune out the whisper of his voice when he concentrated on something. They were never wholly unaware of each other, but if their mutual focus was elsewhere the voices were like whispers on the wind, comforting in their presence, but just as invisible as air.
The stories, for they were stories, not history, and as well-written as the best book he had ever had the pleasure of reading, drew him in completely. He had just begun the chapter on the great hall (first erected to house the coronation of the Queen Soon, whose covenant with Calormen had ensured a peace that held for centuries), when there was a knock on the door.
“Come on in,” he called.
The door opened with some reluctance to reveal Rilian.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning to you too, Edmund.” Rilian looked around the room carefully. “May I intrude?”
“Sure. Can I help you with anything?”
“I wish you could.” His face was solemn as though there was indeed something to be troubled with, so Edmund cast aside his book and looked at the man expectantly. If he were able to feel dread, he surely would have, because solemnity, just as fear and anger, he hadn’t yet encountered.
“I had wondered that you should choose this room,” Rilian said and at least for a moment his face was brightened with a smile.
“It was mine once. At least I think so -- the castle has changed since I knew it and it changes even now.”
“It was once mine as well.”
Edmund opened his mouth. “That has to be a joke.”
“Not at all. When I was a child this was my bedroom. Or it was not, I’m quite confused, in all honesty.”
“I think I know what you mean. This is such a strange land. Everything seems like it should be, but coupled with the memories, nothing is as it was.”
“True.” Rilian came to sit on the side of the bed, staring at the mural over the mantelpiece. It depicted the hunting of the White Stag, and for the life of him Edmund couldn’t remember if it had been there all along, or if it only appeared when Rilian called it forth.
He voiced the thought and Rilian laughed. “It is queer that you should remark upon it. Others have accepted it without question and yet it seems strange to you.”
Edmund shook his head and looked at the scene. He recognised himself in one of the four figures, partially obscured by the trees. He seemed to be looking back, and if not for the young birch Edmund would have been able to look into his eyes, when his three siblings were already facing the way forth, into the painting.
“This is not a painting I would have chosen for a child’s room,” he found himself saying. “Though it’s beautiful.”
“My father commissioned it. I found it full of hope, especially in my later years.”
“It’s very well done.”
Silence fell between them and in it were the first seeds of unease. “Rilian,” Edmund said, “You have come here with a specific purpose, have you not?”
“Indeed I have.”
Though Rilian seemed to have made no move from where he sat, suddenly Edmund found him so close, he could feel the heat of his body. Except he couldn’t.
“Are you ill?” he asked, as he touched Rilian’s forehead. “You are cold.”
“No, I am well.” Yet his blue eyes burned brightly as the stars as he regarded him, and the sight of such inhuman eyes in a face so like Caspian’s brought a strange foreboding to Edmund’s heart. Rilian was the son of a star, he recalled dimly, so it should be no wonder that his features reflected it.
“Edmund,” he said and it seemed to Edmund the sun had paled when Rilian’s face was close to his. He, too, possessed some of the glow that set Lilliandil apart from the humans around her, but his was gentler, imperceptible to anyone not looking for it. “Did you know that for the longest time in my childhood I was expecting to meet you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“My father spoke of you so often. I hardly think I heard other stories but those of your kingship when I was little.”
“Caspian is prone to exaggeration.”
“You need not worry about that. As I grew, I discovered much of what he was telling me was in the history books.”
“Then he is a sorry storyteller, to boot. Were there no fairy-tales among the Telmarines to soothe children?”
“Few. Most of them, I think, feared to beget wonder in their offspring, so they settled for begetting fear.”
“I never figured Caspian for being interested in history, to be honest. If anything I thought he would make up excuses to avoid history lessons and go hunting instead.”
“Surely you did not assume it was history he was interested in,” Rilian said. There was a knowing smile on his lips and Edmund looked away to hide the flush that blossomed across his face and he unexpectedly found himself pushed onto the bed and held there. He laughed, though the laughter dwindled when he found his limbs wouldn’t move.
“Rilian,” he said, straining to shift on the sheets. “What,” he tried again, but the words caught in his throat as Rilian straddled him and he still couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw breath to speak.
The day was warm as any in the summer, there was no reason for Rilian’s hands to be this cold, yet, as he undid the lacings of Edmund’s shirt, the temperature seemed to drop. Edmund felt it keenly with each inch of the exposed skin. Cold fingers skimmed the skin over his sternum, drawing a shudder, made painful by his inability to move.
“I am sorry,” Rilian said. “I truly am. I bear you no ill-will.”
There was a knife in his hand. It did not belong there, Edmund thought; it was not of this world, it was wrong, so profoundly wrong. He knew that knife. Its shape had been burned into his memory, where it would forever be real, but how could the physical object have made its way here, into Rilian’s hands, how could it once more be poised over him, when it should have been long gone, destroyed and buried in the ice of the dead world? He found that he was afraid, a sensation he had already begun to forget, as in Aslan’s country there was no fear.
The sunlight crawled down the blade, thick like blood. Though Rilian’s hand shook, the light pooled in the etchings on its surface, spilling over onto the flats, and then disappearing over the side, as though the edges cut through the world and opened into the abyss outside. Edmund imagined it brushed against him as the tip touched the skin over his heart. The knife must have been as sharp as it looked, because it took no pressure at all to break his skin.
It was strange, how he could feel fear, but not pain, even as the ice-cold knife dug deep into his flesh and caught on the bone, even as bright red blood welled in the wound and overflowed, soaking into Edmund’s shirt. The smell of it was everywhere, it seemed, though logically it was but a scratch, he should barely feel it, but the smell invaded his nose, the taste of iron filled his mouth and it was quite fortunate he couldn’t breathe, as he would have drowned if he tried.
Rilian wouldn’t look into his eyes as the tip of the knife wedged under a rib and snapped bones in half, and Edmund saw -- or perhaps imagined, as the angle should have made it impossible to see -- his own beating heart. It was such a queer sight to behold, when everything he knew about anatomy told him he should be in tremendous amounts of pain, that he should be screaming in agony, or even slipping into unconsciousness, rather than observing the fleshy-red muscle as it contracted and expanded.
Then, perhaps too late, he realised that there was pain, and the fear gave way to terror, and worse, as he tried to throw his head back and scream and yet no sound was uttered and his body would not obey him.
Helpless to do anything but observe, Edmund saw that Rilian’s hands trembled as he set the knife aside and reached into his chest cavity. For Edmund the sensation was most unsettling, as though there was some liquid colder than the coldest winter slipping into his veins, pushing out all the warmth and life. Rilian looked up briefly then, and for a moment Edmund saw fear, and worse, in his eyes, akin to what he himself was feeling. He looked away just as quickly, hiding perhaps the lack of certainty and the fear.
He bent his head. Edmund felt like his breath caught in his throat, when it was already strained. Ice spread through him, blinding, painful, leaving bloody scratch-marks underneath his skin where it froze the flesh solid. He would have scooted away, crawled away and run, were it not for the fact that his body betrayed him, and so he lay still as death, when Rilian’s mouth touched his heart. Like a child’s, eager for a taste of a new thing, his tongue flickered, drawing from Edmund a sensation such as he had never imagined possible, not in his wildest nightmares.
He hadn’t been a terribly curious child, so he had not experienced the touch of frozen iron on his tongue, but if he had, he might have found the sensation similar, in nature if not in scope. For a moment there was nothing and then the cold started burning, hotter than a flame, spearing the flesh with such acuity that even the spell that had him bound had to relent and Edmund screamed, for he was certain that something inside him had broken and was ripping him apart.
Rilian straightened at that, with a look of shock upon his face. There was blood smeared on his lips, Edmund noted in a daze, before his vision began to blur, and Rilian stared at him with equal measure of shock and bewilderment.
His skin really was glowing, Edmund thought.
Then there were footsteps in the corridor and someone rattled the handle of the door.
“Edmund?” It was Lucy’s voice. Edmund didn’t know whether he should be relieved or terrified for her, but thankfully the interruption phased Rilian as well, for he leapt off the bed, grabbing the knife, just as the door opened. “Rilian, hello, such a pleasure to see you,” Lucy started saying, and something like a flame passed before her, which Edmund realised was her hand, but Rilian pushed past her and ran.
It was only then that Lucy looked around the room, leaving sparks where her eyes lingered. Edmund wondered briefly how he must have looked to her, splayed across the bed with his chest cut open and bleeding. He rather felt like the ringing in his ears would never die, even though her squeal ended almost as soon as it started, and she was at his side in an instant.
“Edmund!”
He was still unable to move and presently the pain was starting to creep in. Lucy looked wildly about, patting the sides of her dress, but of course this was heaven and her magical cordial was of no use in a place where there was no death, no fear and no injury that a wish couldn’t heal.
What a joke, Edmund thought wryly.
Thankfully, Lucy was not quite so shaken as to forget herself entirely. Within minutes she had pulled the cover off the bed and torn it into stripes. Edmund watched with interest as the fiery shadow, whose features he could barely make out, but whom he knew to be his sister, propped his unresponsive body against her side, holding the gaping would closed, and wrapped it as tight as she dared.
The blood ceased to flow soon enough and Edmund found that when the first layer of wrappings held him closed he could move again, enough to least to moan and grit his teeth. Lucy’s touch burned, not quite so fatally as Rilian’s had, but with every casual brush of her fingers Edmund felt a wave of fire blossom across his insides. “Oh, Edmund! I’m so sorry! Am I hurting you?”
“Wrap it tighter,” he said, or at least tried to. His mouth was still numb, but Lucy seemed to understand.
“Wait here, I’ll get Caspian,” she said, springing to her feet. Then, “No, I daren’t leave you alone.”
“Don’t go, he’ll be here soon enough,” Edmund started saying, and true to form, not five minutes had gone by when Caspian rushed through the door, closely followed by Peter and Eustace. Edmund didn’t get the chance to think before Caspian was at his side, luminous with fury and terror, pulling him into a bruising embrace.
Edmund turned into it; through the haze of burning and unrest Caspian was the only thing that seemed stable to him when the world was swimming before his eyes. Strange that though he could barely make out Lucy’s face, Caspian’s was as vivid as it always was, even though Edmund’s mind insisted on surrounding him with a fiery aura, but his skin was warm and the touch, though steeped in flames, soothed the burning and, when Edmund turned his head into Caspian’s neck, he could no longer smell blood. He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed, letting his mind settle and refocus.
Piece by piece, it all started to return to its proper shape. He let Caspian’s scent fill him, anchor him to a world of people and not fiery shapes. Edmund smelled grass that still stuck to Caspian’s shirt, smelled leather and daisies and sunlit skin, soap and salt. He let it wash over him, and when he opened his eyes he could see properly again.
“What happened?” Peter asked the room at large. Edmund saw his eyes flicker to the soaked linen binding his chest and the blood on Lucy’s hands and kirtle.
“I don’t know! I came by because Edmund was supposed to practice archery with me this morning, and I found him…” Lucy hesitated. Her voice started shaking as the image undoubtedly assaulted her eyes. “I don’t know! I saw Edmund, and he was so pale and bleeding, and he was, he was cut open!” She bit her lip and Edmund felt rather sorry for her, because reporting to Peter when he brimmed with fury was never a pleasant experience. “Edmund was cut open, like- like someone tried to eviscerate him.”
“Who, Lu?” Peter asked in a voice so tight that the merest hint, a shadow of a name, would send his crushing fury upon the perpetrator, whether he was certain of their guilt or not. Thankfully, Lucy knew this as well as Edmund did.
“It was so awful!” Lucy broke into tears and Peter’s anger had to relent for a minute or two, because she hid her face in his shoulder and cried.
“Edmund? How are you?” Eustace asked cautiously. He was so pale Edmund could count the freckles on his face.
“Not bad, considering.” This was true. Though he couldn’t see it, he could tell by the oddest sensation in his chest that his ribs were mending, and the flesh was sewing itself closed. More importantly, he was able to move again, or he would have been, were it not for Caspian’s death grip.
“Ed!”
“I shall live, I think that is an important consideration, don’t you?”
“What happened? Who did this?”
“I wish I could tell you. I do.” Except, of course, how could he discuss that which made no sense to him. He saw that it had been Rilian, because it had been Rilian, only how could it have been, when this was supposed to be heaven, free of evil and hatred?
Then again, it wasn’t hatred burning in Rilian’s eyes, but fear. The mystery remained unsolved, as fear was as equally unattainable as anger until now, but it served to shake Edmund’s certainty about great many things.
“Edmund,” Caspian hissed directly into his ear. “Who was it?”
“I’m-”
“Don’t lie to me!”
An icy feeling settled in Edmund’s heart, a fear, a loss -- something had changed. “I’m not lying,” he said, pushing against Caspian, so he could look into his eyes. “Why would I lie?”
“You aren’t telling the whole truth,” Caspian said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m lying!”
“You know who did this to you.”
“No,” Edmund said, because it might have been Rilian who held the knife, but it couldn’t have been Rilian who wished for his destruction.
Caspian was staring into him and -- what a wonder -- though his touch didn’t hurt him like Lucy’s had, the intensity of his gaze pierced him to the core.
“It was Rilian,” Lucy said quickly.
The room fell quiet and all but Edmund turned to look at her. “I walked in and he just ran out, didn’t even pause. Then I saw Edmund. There was no one else in here.”
Caspian sat frozen, though his grip on Edmund never wavered. “Rilian did this to you?” he whispered. “Why?”
“Not everyone has the courtesy to explain their motives before doing the deed,” Edmund said and regretted his words immediately. Caspian’s head rested against his and Edmund saw the guilt in the line of his body, as though it was his fault.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to Caspian’s cheek.
“He must be found.” Peter turned to Eustace, every inch of him recalling the high king he once had been. “Go and fetch any of the talking birds, they are sure to be swift. Tell them to alarm everyone. Tell them that Rilian must be found and killed, as soon as he is seen.”
“No!” It was Edmund they all now looked at. “No one shall move from this room, not until I say so!”
“Whatever devilry he is up to, he will pay dearly for it,” Caspian said, with his face still hidden against Edmund’s shoulder. “With his life, even.”
“You choose now of all times to agree with my brother? I am telling you, no.”
“I do not have to listen to you,” Peter said narrowing his eyes.
“Quite the contrary.” Edmund pushed Caspian away and stood up. “It was me he trespassed against, so it is upon me to exact justice.”
“To what law do you attribute this rule? It is my duty as-”
“You are not a king anymore! Your kingship ended with Narnia!”
“As your older brother, to see you avenged. Unless you plan to tell me that blood kin loses its meaning in Aslan’s country too?”
“Yet it was me he tried to harm. Since you failed to retaliate in the heat of the moment, exacting revenge is now my call.”
“He deserves to burn,” Caspian said slowly, with enough conviction for Edmund to fear for him. “He shall burn for what he did.”
“You don’t know what he did. You don’t know what he meant.”
“Know? What don’t I know that could possibly change my mind? I felt terror, for the first time since I died, when you were attacked. Here in Aslan’s country I felt such terror I haven’t felt when facing death in battle. So tell me, Edmund, how am I not justified in ripping his heart out with my bare hands?”
“He’s your son.”
“Lion’s mane, that is supposed to excuse him?”
“Yes! But if that doesn’t stop you, then perhaps this will: I shall have no part in his murder, Caspian. Therefore, if you choose to continue with the plan, you will do so without me.”
Caspian closed his eyes briefly, but Edmund saw he had already won the battle. “Very well. May I flay him instead?”
“No.”
“But it would hardly do harm at all! Injuries are so quick to heal here, I’m sure he would writhe in pain for less than an hour. Maybe two, if I’m careful.”
“Try and be silent, Caspian, if you can,” Edmund said, when Lucy, even dear, sweet Lucy was nodding at that. The horror.
“What do you intend for us to do, then?” Peter asked.
“I’m not quite sure.” That Rilian mustn’t be killed on sight had been the thought on the forefront of his mind. As for the rest, he wasn’t entirely sure. There was something he had to recall, something that he ought to be remembering then -- a feeling, a thought so fleeting it escaped his grasp before he could realise it, and as he tried to chase it he found that he was tired, so very tired, and that his legs would hold him up no longer. “But Caspian, please.”
“I promise. He shall not be killed on sight, at least.”
Edmund was only awake long enough to know that Caspian wrapped his arms around him and whispered “Sleep,” into his ear, and then all disappeared.
