[fic] Along the Midnight Edge 7/14
Dec. 31st, 2010 01:54 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 SEVEN -- Despairing Cries]
Aslan’s country was empty -- it was as though all creatures had gone into hiding. There had been thoughts about raising an army to guard them on their way, at the very least spies who would warn them beforehand, but the idea was abandoned, mostly because there was a very real danger of death or worse awaiting anyone who joined their cause, no matter arguments to the contrary.
They waited until darkness fell before they set off, even though the cover of darkness meant nothing, when they were pursued by creatures of light, but there was comfort in returning to the habits from the time they were alive. They bade Coriakin good-bye at the doorstep of his home, accepting as a parting gift a vial of water that would provide inextinguishable light when triggered, and immediately took to the shadows of the forests and valleys. Somewhere up high the dragons circled, but none lowered their flight enough to be a cause for concern.
Still, they travelled through the darkness in glum silence.
It was a few hours before they heard the roar of the river. Lucy ran forth, eagerly dipping her hands into the water. Edmund forcefully squashed the impulse to hold her back, as the water was black and turbulent, but she immediately straightened with a broad smile on her face. “It is safe,” she said. “It remembers!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Edmund managed. He had serious misgivings, but what was there to do, but to follow her into the water. It was cold, and the frothing waves combined with a rocky bottom made the swim a difficult feat, but it was the safest place to be, at the moment.
They swam until they reached the great waterfall, at which Lucy didn’t even hesitate, but let the current take her over the edge. Edmund saw a look of sheer panic in Peter’s eyes, but then she was calling from the bottom and there was nothing to it but follow her example.
Despite the circumstance it was an exhilarating ride. Edmund surfaced in the cauldron with a gasp and a laugh, very much wishing they had time to do this over again.
“Never again,” Eustace was saying meanwhile, with a slightly hysterical edge to his voice.
“Why, this was fun!” Jill splashed at him and laughed, but he just shot her a dirty look.
“Perhaps when we are not fleeing from mortal peril, then, we might consider it.” Peter was already hefting himself out of the water, and shaking the excess of it off.
They abandoned the river soon after, pausing to wring out their packs and dry themselves (although many things had changed since the previous day, they found that it was still relatively easy to dry clothes just by wishing for it). From the Cauldron it was only a few hours of brisk march to the hill, where the door was.
“Did you bring the key?” Edmund asked once they reached it and Peter dumped his pack on the ground, in order to pat himself down.
“Of course I have it.” Despite the boast it took him a few more minutes to locate the chain, on which the key hung, even though it was around his neck. His face was grim when finally he inserted the key into the lock and turned. It didn’t give immediately and when he got it unlocked he had to lean on the door to push it open, but eventually it gave and they stood in the open doorway into Narnia.
There was darkness on the other side. The little light that the heavenly night provided illuminated only the first few feet of ice and snow, and nothing else. The air smelled stale, as though it hadn’t moved for the longest time. Edmund thought this must have been one of the worst plans in history.
“Everyone, grab a torch,” Peter said.
Without a word, they pulled on the cloaks Coriakin had equipped them with and lit the torches, then stopped in a semicircle around the doorway, each silently begging someone to go first.
Eventually Peter succumbed to the demand for heroism and, given his example, they all followed. Jill, who went last, pulled the door closed behind them, and Peter locked it from the inside, trapping them in the silent, dead world. It was no better than being trapped in a tomb, despite the orange glow of fire, which turned their faces into a spectacle of shadows and edges.
“All right, which way shall we go?” Peter asked raising his torch to reveal absolutely nothing.
“North.” Jill held out her torch in the direction Edmund assumed was north. “I studied the maps,” she said by way of explanation.
“Lead the way, then.”
*****
There was something deeply unsettling about this march, far beyond what they had felt during their travel through the decaying heaven, for there at least they knew it was still a world that lived and breathed. There was wind and light and even the malicious rain was a comfort, in its own way. Here, not even the slightest breath of wind moved the atmosphere and the expanse of the snow. Even the sound of snow and ice crunching underneath their feet was listless, like they were stepping on dead leaves, only worse, because the leaves in here were long past dead; they were particles buried underneath the ice, never to be seen again.
Edmund’s heart fluttered wildly and his throat would not let him speak easily. He had seen death, plenty of it. He had buried friends. He had seen decay and horror and yet this silent world, in which nothing moved, nothing breathed, why, this was like being buried alive, in a limitless tomb.
There were no landmarks to measure the passage of time or distance, nothing but the endless darkness, that should feel spacious, as there was nothing above them but the skies, but was all the more oppressive for the lack of limit.
This was Narnia, Edmund thought with sudden dread. This was what she’d become, this empty, dark place, where the firelight was enough to carve only the tiniest bubble into the blackness, and held nothing at bay.
It was something of a blessing, then, that the biting cold sought to drive all thought out of their minds, leaving them focussed on putting one foot in front of another and not losing the preceding person from sight.
The journey was harsh and thankless, filled with fright the further they walked. Its silence was so encompassing, that one by one they stopped breathing, for fear of disturbing something nameless that must have resided there, for the thought of a whole world empty of all life was too much to bear. Lucy was on the verge of bursting into tears, which was frozen by the shock, Edmund thought when he caught a glimpse of her face. Narnia had been always living for her -- he regretted deeply that she should be made to suffer this.
Then, in the silence, Edmund thought he heard a noise.
He stopped immediately and felt Emeth walk into him. “I thought I heard something,” he said quietly, and the words rang out like a cathedral bell.
“Please tell me you are merely going insane,” Peter said, pushing through the party to glare at Edmund.
“That would be a splendid thing to happen in this dark, uninhabitable world, wouldn’t it?”
“Hush,” Lucy said.
There it was again, a hiss and then a low murmur. The party clung together, until they were a mass of fur and limbs, with torches extended firmly before them. Far in the darkness something moved. At first it was just a shadow, which made it no less terrifying, but then, as they began to squint into the distance, they saw the light of the fire reflected in a hundred polished shapes.
It was coming closer. Edmund found he had drawn his sword without even meaning to, and the same could be said for everyone else. Jill had given her torch to Peter and put an arrow on the string of her bow.
Soon the creature crawled close enough so that they could see it fully -- it was black as tar and its movements were that of a bloated toad. A thick tongue hung out from its maw, swinging back and forth with every lurching step.
“Shall we kill it?” Emeth hissed.
“Better not,” Eustace said. “The noise might attract more of them.”
“They feed on their own kind,” Peter said.
“It’s a dragon, I figured. There is only one, though, and even if its carcass attracts its fellows for a feast, it won’t take long for them to eat it.”
“So… do we run?” Lucy asked.
“Jill? Can you keep us going in the right direction as you run?”
“I’d better,” she said, without much conviction.
“Off we go then,” Peter said perfectly evenly, and then they were racing across the snowy plain. Edmund dared to look back once. The creature wasn’t following them, which could either be very good news, or it could be very bad news.
Funny how his mind gravitated towards the latter.
Jill stopped abruptly, thrusting the torch before her, just in time to see two shadows rush away from its light and disappear. “I don’t think running will cut it this time,” she said.
There were at least three now, circling at a distance that allowed them to stay mostly invisible.
“Kill as many as you can,” Edmund said. At his side Caspian gripped his shoulder hard enough to hurt, even through the fur and cloth, a gesture that Edmund took to mean he was on to him, and there would be no foolishness if he could help it.
“No need for concern,” he said, just as Jill released an arrow into the glint most likely to be an eye. There was a screech and a growl, and the creature collapsed into the light, revealing that although she had missed the eye, an arrow through the throat was equally effective. It lived still, a fact easily remedied, and when the other creatures crowded it, Peter, Emeth and Caspian flung their torches to whomever stood the closest and stepped forth to add to the body count.
There was more noise in the air, noise that Edmund presumed was leathery wings, flapping. More creatures, he thought and his heart sank. How many of them could there be? Even when they were no challenge to kill, how much time could they buy themselves with this slaughter?
Just as he began to grasp the full extent of this foolishness, he heard Jill shriek and Lucy curse. He turned and, before he could think about it, he was rushing towards the creature that was attacking his sister. Except it was not one creature, but two, very slim and moving in tandem. Lucy took off the head of one, but the other managed to fell her. Jill kept an arrow notched, but the creature was so slim and moved so quickly that she didn’t dare fire, lest it hit Lucy.
Eustace ran out of the shadow then, from behind Jill, and -- Edmund was quite sure he wasn’t thinking at all -- grasped the snake-dragon’s muzzle and wrestled it away from Lucy’s face. The creature went quite still.
Edmund raised the torch higher, so that the cluster of monsters feasting on the carcasses of their own was illuminated, and he saw that they stopped moving. They remained frozen in the position they were in, some bent over the meat, some caught mid-growl.
Eustace, for his part, was equally still. Edmund saw in his face hunger and fear, but also a strange kind of excitement. His eyes narrowed and so did those of the creatures, which was when Edmund drove a sword through the serpent’s head. Eustace jerked, but allowed himself to be pulled from the carcass. Edmund, meanwhile, bent over Lucy, frantically searching for a wound, praying there wouldn’t be any.
“I am quite fine,” she said faintly. “Just a scare. It’s okay. It only got the armour.”
“Thank the lion,” Edmund breathed, wrapping her in a hug. “Do be more careful, Lu!”
“Like you’re the one to talk!”
“Eustace?” Jill said in a quivering voice and immediately they all turned, to where Emeth was shaking Eustace by the shoulders. The strange look was gone from his eyes, but he seemed a little pale.
“How are you?” Edmund asked, even as both Emeth and Eustace got to their feet and they all staggered away from the carnage.
“I don’t know,” he said clearly. “It’s so weird.”
“Are you all right?” Jill asked.
“I think so.”
“What happened? They all just stopped,” Caspian said, holding up a torch over Eustace’s crumbled form.
“I know. I mean, I think I know. I think I was it, for a moment. It was rather horrible, like being turned into a dragon all over again.”
“You have been turned into a dragon?” Emeth asked in surprise.
“Ah, what fun that was,” Edmund muttered, as Eustace summarised the affair briefly, summoning with it the memory of blue skies and bluer seas, of wind and salt and white foam. They all felt lighter, somehow, or at least they would have, Edmund thought darkly, if not for the memory that all of that was presently frozen and buried underneath the ice and snow, but fortunately it was only his own head that insisted on dredging up such memories.
With that, it came to him that what he had seen on Eustace’s face was a kind of surrender, or a promise of one. The look was echoed by the creatures he could see; they were all frozen, as though waiting for Eustace to make up his mind to either join or lead them. What a horrid thing to consider, he thought, but if the creatures could be thus controlled, then it could be used to their advantage, because what better weapon to use against the creatures of light then darkness itself?
The upside to the affair was that they were no longer bothered, though they heard the occasional slither of a creature passing them by. There were many, far too many to count. Edmund found some comfort in the knowledge that whatever their numbers, they avoided him, avoided them.
Undisturbed, they walked quite some distance before the question of precise directions reared its head. Edmund had been entertaining it for some time, particularly in that Jill had never been to these parts while Narnia existed, and the version of it that was preserved was grander and much more real. Here, when all landmarks were hidden under the snow, they might well end up walking the oceans until they reached the very edge of the world.
“But wait…” Emeth said, when Edmund shared his doubts. “I do believe the Stone Table was on a hill -- I studied the maps before I came to Narnia.”
“It was. There was later a barrow build over it, so it stood even taller.”
“How high was the hill?”
“You think it wasn’t covered by the water.”
“Well, there is a chance, isn’t there?”
“It would be easier than having to dig our way through the ice.”
“I never even thought of that.”
“We must still remember that we are in a place so dark we cannot see past the tips of our noses, so whether the Stone Table is above or underneath the ice is irrelevant, when we may well be within reaching distance and still miss it.” Edmund raised his torch high above his head and looked around. The extra yards that he could see were no different from those they had already crossed.
“Do you ever consider that things may just work out?” Jill was staring at him reproachfully.
“Rarely. It’s safer to plan that way.”
“I have been meaning to ask, why were you called ‘Just’?” Eustace asked. “Surely Edmund the Pessimist would have been a better choice.”
“As I recall, it was largely because ‘Edmund, you bloody scheming son of a whore’ didn’t seem like a fitting title for a monarch, nor did it roll off the tongue of awed subjects well.”
“Now that is a tale that I haven’t heard,” Caspian said. His grin was teasing, bright as any star in the darkness.
“There’s not much to tell. There had been a tense situation with one of the lesser counties of Calormen, one that was largely overlooked, as it was both removed and not very wealthy. It was rather unimportant, strategically, but still a conceivable threat, as it would be a secondary, but decent, spot for the Calormene army to gather, in the event of an invasion. I may have hinted to the Tarkaan governing it that he should claim his state independent from the empire, which resulted in a rather bold, if strategically unsound, move on his part and his subsequent arrest.”
“I do recall there had been a kidnapping,” Caspian said with a frown.
“I may have also mentioned that my royal brother had no understanding of the subtleties of politics and would rather ransom me than risk a war with such a mighty province.” Ah, what a fine afternoon it had been, watching the Tarkaan wander around him with a calculating look in his eyes, while his servants procured more wine. Edmund had been still young enough that the wine affected him quickly and in no time at all he’d looked utterly helpless, flushed and sleepy, at the mercy of his host. It was only too easy to let it slip that Narnia would surely support a valiant new country, and wasn’t this wine just delicious?
“So what happened?”
“He moved against the Tisroc. As this was still formally Tisroc’s country and I had been kept prisoner, I demanded retribution, in form of appointing my own governor.” Edmund shrugged. “It was only sensible, when the land could host a substantial force and the Tisroc’s eye had always been tinged with envy when he looked to the North. A governor loyal to Narnia would ensure the land would be at least partly controlled by us.”
Eustace looked cautiously impressed. “I see where the bloody scheming part comes from. How did they manage to spin ‘Just’ out of it?”
“When the Tarkaan realised what had transpired, he tried to kill me and I arranged for him a fair trial in retaliation.”
Caspian smiled. “I had my history masters recreate the trial. The Calormene records of your speech were a thing of beauty, even though they contradicted one another a few times.”
“Their scribes embellish the words to suit their masters’ tastes. I’m sure whatever you read was much more eloquent than I.”
“You spoke on the man’s behalf! And, as I recall, he was pardoned.”
“If by pardoned you mean beheaded without a fuss after being sentenced, then yes, he was.”
“I hate how matter of fact you are about this,” Peter said with a shudder. He didn’t look back as he spoke, for which Edmund was grateful.
Eustace seemed to share Peter’s opinion, as he look appalled, which Edmund supposed was partly because he had heard the story told in such a casual manner, but Caspian was nodding approvingly and the grin on his face was one that Edmund longed to press his mouth to.
“Getting him killed was justice?” Eustace asked.
“No, that was mercy. He was subject to the Calormene law, and their ideas of a just punishment for a traitor to the crown were revolting. No offence to you, Emeth,” Edmund added.
“None taken,” Emeth said mildly. “I, too, find torture loathsome.”
Then Peter whispered “Halt!” and they all stopped in their tracks. “If I am any judge of distance,” he said, “We should be at the appropriate level. Now we will see just how good you are at keeping to a direction, Jill.”
“Do not request miracles of me,” she said. “I can walk in a straight line easily enough, but without stars, without anything but a compass to guide me, this is the best we could hope for.”
“I think you did very well,” Lucy said. “Let us light more torches, to spread the light around. Even if Narnia was frozen, there were mountains and hills. We may still find something.”
They did just that. Each of them carried a small bundle of sticks, which they dug into the ground with some difficulty. It worked splendidly, and soon the small dome of light expanded enough to give them at least a hint of hope. The ice was not as even as they feared it would be. Here and there snow was covering earth, which had been frozen solid, but it was ground, not ice.
“All right,” Peter said, once they got the general measurements of all the spots of ground. He unfolded a map on the ice and considered. “Five hills,” he said. “How tall can they be?”
“Not very. The stable hill was covered almost up to the door, and it wasn’t terribly high to begin with. Why, you could make your way up in ten minutes, without too much exertion.”
“Now I really wish I had paid genuine attention to cartography,” Peter said, never looking up from the map. “This seems like a likely spot,” he said after some time. “If the map is to scale, we should find the Stone Table not far from here, a little to the right, sixty yards, perhaps.”
Peter proved, despite his worries, to be a splendid judge of distance and an excellent cartographer, to boot. Jill and Eustace walked no more than a hundred paces, not far enough to leave the lights behind, when they cried in joy.
“Jill, you are a genius,” Edmund said with feeling, once it was revealed that there was a hill before them, covered with ice up to the entrance. “You truly are.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little stunned herself as they gazed into the darkness of Aslan’s How.
“It can hardly be worse inside than it was out there,” Lucy said and bravely marched right in, leaving the rest of them to follow.
Somehow, the inside of the How was no worse than the outside. The air was just as stale, but no more, and the light stopped at the ceiling, instead of disappearing into the limitless black, which gave it a cosy, almost human feel. The etchings on the walls, already ancient when Edmund saw them last, brought a fresh breath into him. Though Narnia was dead, though everything he loved in her was gone and frozen, this was her memory, a sign that she was not wholly gone from the universe.
Caspian led the way, being the only one to visit the How after the battle that confirmed his kingship, and soon enough they spilled into the chamber that held the remains of the Stone Table.
The quest, it turned out then, was justified as it was necessary, for the surface of the stone was covered in writing. Though the world outside was dead, inside magic thrummed, reverberating in the letters in the stones and, if one stood still long enough, through the bones.
Peter took out the vial of magical light he got from Coriakin and set it in the space between the broken plates of the table, so that each was equally lit. “I sense a problem,” he said immediately.
“Oh dear,” Lucy said.
The writing on the table was in no language that Edmund could recognise, and yet… He bent over the stone until he almost touched its surface and focussed. There was something about the shape of the letters that he almost understood, as though he should know this, he should have studied this, at some point.
Of course, this might well have been what every student of the ancient languages feels when confronted with an ancient text, he thought wryly.
“I’ve seen writing like this,” Emeth said. “On the tombs of the kings. The oldest one bore such marks.”
“Can you read it?” Eustace dropped the pack he was carrying.
“Only if it says ‘a great conquerer’ anywhere, as that is the extent of my skills.”
“I think it might be Greek,” Edmund said. “Ancient Greek, to be precise.” Underneath his finger the letters changed, somehow, though he was equally sure they didn’t change their shape, and he saw at last why were they so familiar. “I can read most of it.”
“You know Greek?” Jill asked with a measure of surprise Edmund felt it didn’t deserve.
“Theology,” he reminded her. “Mandatory class.” He’d had some good times, studying the New and Old Testament as they had originally been written. He wondered if he would ever live it down. As he remembered the university, he found that beneath his fingers the letters started changing again, and though he still recognised the script, this would be more difficult, if not outright impossible. He slapped his palm on the surface of the stone and breathed. Greek. “ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς,” he said out loud and was gratified to find the letters take on the familiar shapes.
“That is very impressive,” Eustace said. “Can you try it in English now?”
“Why can’t you?”
Eustace shrugged and, with a very silly expression, bent to the table. “Can you speak English?” he asked clearly, and to Edmund’s amazement the letters did change shape just then, long enough at least to be recognisable as a form of English he knew he didn’t understand.
“It’s English alright,” Peter said. “Or close as it could get, given the era.” Though his studies had run in another direction, Peter had spent time in the company of Digory back in England, and Digory had, as far as Edmund recalled, a vast library of literature from all periods in the history of the British Isles.
“Great.”
“Hang on though, the trick may work with Latin. It’s not necessarily Greek, it just needs to be old enough.” Sure enough, when Peter quoted some of the Latin he learned at school, some of the text changed to suit his demands. “Does anyone else speak a dead language? Or have a dictionary?”
“I know some Latin,” Lucy said doubtfully. Jill and Eustace both shook their heads. Emeth tried his hand, but he had been more or less correct in his own assertion of his linguistic skill and the most he could read was the word king, great and conquer. Caspian knew only how to affect foreign accents, and the nasal speech of the Minotaurs or bears, and he did so in very convincing manner. It was of doubtful use, but Edmund found himself smiling nonetheless.
“Great. Well, Ed, it is time to test your proficiency.”
“Oh, do not even pretend you are not giving this a shot.”
“I quit Latin when I finished school. There’s no question which of us is more qualified, Reverend.”
“How is that no one has drowned you yet?” Edmund muttered, but aloud he said, “Don’t be an idiot, you know Latin well enough.”
“Enough to curse your ancestors, probably, if it wasn’t to my detriment as well.” Peter sat next to the smaller piece of the plate and focused. “How are we doing this?”
“I reckon the surest way would be to write it down, except we have no paper,” Edmund said. “So, I expect we must translate as we read.”
“Line for line?”
“Let’s first see how it’s organised.”
From the very first lines (if those were indeed first -- the layout of the writing made Edmund’s eyes water) the writing seemed to be a historical account from the dawn of Narnia. If he strained he could just about make out the other letters, spidery, smoky shapes underneath, that moved on the surface of the stone. These must have been the spells, he surmised when the words blood and traitor caught his eye.
“It’s just history,” Peter said, just as Edmund turned his head to share the discovery.
“Skim it, see if there’s anything interesting.”
Peter and Lucy took to the task, tracing the words with their fingers in Lucy’s case, until one or the other found a mention of something half familiar. “It speaks of the witch,” Peter said. “Then a litany of wrongs, and finally our names. Then, let me see… Disappeared, turmoil… Telmar, that I can understand, Caspian the First, hardly any merit here, Caspian the Seafarer, I see the numbers have been dispensed with.”
“Anything of interest?”
“Well, if it interests you to find out you aren’t really mentioned, then no. Wait, no, there you are; it mentions that you speak with the king on the very edge of the world, and then you disappear. Caspian weds the star, it goes on to say.” Here Peter frowned. “Says here she birthed a child, who would be the light of his people. The sudden death of the king, Rilian ascends to the throne on the day of his knighting. He rules for many years, marries, but when his son is grown, the king and his royal mother, lady of the stars, depart to the lands she hailed from.” Peter straightened and fell silent. “Didn’t Lilliandil die long before Rilian became king?”
“Ten years,” Caspian said tersely. His hand was on the hilt of the sword and he looked anxious. “I would almost be tempted to say my uncle’s historians worked on the piece.”
“There’s more,” Lucy said quietly. “I can only understand some of it, but there’s more names then there should be, Erlian, Tirian, Miriam the Great, Halrian, and a hundred more. I think there are dates, too, though my sight is blurry.”
“How can this be?” Caspian asked. “Erlian I recall; he has been introduced to me. Tirian arrived with you, but far as I recall he was childless.”
“Narnia ended before he even married,” Jill said.
Edmund immediately turned to his half of the table and focused. How would Tirian be transliterated into Greek? With that in mind he traced the text and finally found what could have been it. “Tirian, the last ruler of Narnia,” he read. “Who was at the door when the sun went out and the stars fell from the sky.”
“Well, at least one half of the table decided to remain faithful to what actually happened. I wonder why that is.”
“There’s more space here,” Edmund said, “Perhaps the author needed a a table of contents to work from.” Despite the levity he found an unnamed dread take hold of his heart, as though the answers that lay at his fingertips would bring nothing good.
“Ed…”
“I know. How detailed is your half?”
“Fairly,” Peter said with some surprise. “Oh, what a bother. There’s writing upon writing here. We could finally find out what happened to the jade chess set I lost while in the giant country.”
“Yes, a splendid opportunity. I shall make arrangements for a digging party.”
“Less stalling, more reading.”
Edmund bit his lip, but returned to the top of the text. “Let me see… The birth of Narnia, our first arrival, in glorious detail, then the reign. I see nothing of particular interest. Then disappearance, then the chaos and turmoil and the Telmarine invasion. A long line of numbered kings, culminating in Caspian the Seafarer. Followed by,” here Edmund frowned, “Rilian the Betrayed.”
“That is not a name that I was taught,” Emeth said. “In the stories I was told he is always Rilian the Disenchanted.”
“I find that I dislike the plan, all of sudden,” Eustace said. “What does it say?”
Edmund shook his head and held up the magic vial to shine directly onto the script. He found among the history the voyage of the Dawn Treader, and as his eyes became accustomed to the strange blue light he found the words became clearer and clearer, as though the memories were coming back to reinforce them. He was suddenly on board the ship, locked in a mock battle with Caspian, laughing as though there were no ill in the world. “She sailed ever East,” he said. “Until there was a Floating Island on the horizon.”
“I have the mention of a Floating Island over here as well. Why was it called that?”
“Guess.”
“You don’t mean it was truly floating?”
“A hundred feet above the waters, yes.”
“I would have loved to see that.”
“It was magnificent,” Lucy said. “More than that.”
“Huh. It says something about a tree and then it gets a bit weird.”
“I bet,” Edmund and Caspian muttered at the same time, then laughed. The shimmering light brought out angles and shadows in his face and Edmund remembered the enchanted sleep that the tree forced upon him, his pale face and the laughter dwindled.
“I am not reading any further,” Peter said, appalled.
“You may relax. I don’t think there would be anything there to offend your sensibilities, when you can stomach Caspian’s presence.”
“Clearly, you do not wish for me to read further.”
“Stop being such a baby.”
Peter rolled his eyes but pressed on. “Broadly speaking there is not much there. The voyage continues, the seven lords are found, or at least accounted for, you argue,” Peter frowned. “Edmund refuses.”
“Excuse me?”
“If I understand correctly, though there is no direct quote. There is an argument and Caspian expresses a desire to go beyond the world with you and you refuse him.”
There was silence. With some difficulty Edmund turned back towards the stone and found the Floating Island. Here the words spoke of what he remembered; the vision, the return, then the horrid moment when Aslan spoke to them and Caspian’s narrowly avoided abdication.
A curious sensation came over him then, and as he spoke the words he ceased to understand them; he stopped hearing, or rather he forced himself not to hear. He forced onto himself a feeling of serenity, fake though it was, and secure in his peace, detached from meaning, he spoke, as though it did not concern him, neither his life, nor his family, nor Caspian.
“Edmund,” Lucy said, when he fell silent, but he didn’t listen. His mouth was dry -- he’d been speaking for quite some time -- and he pushed past the people who were suddenly so foreign to him and ran out of the chamber.
Somehow he found his way in the darkness, for when he stopped he knew he was outside. There was snow underneath his feet and no ceiling over his head, even if the darkness was just as consuming as it had been within.
Only then did he let himself fall against the side of the mound.
His own voice, calm and bereft of inflection came back to him, speaking dispassionately as though from a great distance. “And thus Narnia was forfeit forever and doomed to die long before her time,” it whispered darkly, seeping into his heart like the poisonous promises of the witch. “Torn from her destiny and glory, for Edmund the Traitor had taken what belonged to her, the heart of her king, and stole it with him to another world.”
He wondered if he could possibly wander far enough and call for the creatures to hide his footsteps. He wondered if he could wander in the snow forever, until the world ceased to exist and he would disappear as though he never was.
His lips were parched. Even though the snow melted into pure water, it didn’t quench his thirst; it was dry in his mouth and cold enough to burn.
There were voices in the distance but Edmund never spoke; not even a breath to let them know he was there. He was hidden among the stones, where the light was sure to miss him, and if they moved far away, he would go and walk until a creature of the darkness accosted him and finally put an end to what should have ended thousands of years ago, or last night, on the table which should have been unbroken, whose story should have been continuous.
He had been king, he thought. He had sworn to protect the land and her people, he had sworn to serve her with his life. He had sworn to the people and to himself that he would repay the hurt he caused, would repent the betrayal and become worthy of the honour, and yet, all those years later, he was nothing but the traitor again.
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 SEVEN -- Despairing Cries]
Aslan’s country was empty -- it was as though all creatures had gone into hiding. There had been thoughts about raising an army to guard them on their way, at the very least spies who would warn them beforehand, but the idea was abandoned, mostly because there was a very real danger of death or worse awaiting anyone who joined their cause, no matter arguments to the contrary.
They waited until darkness fell before they set off, even though the cover of darkness meant nothing, when they were pursued by creatures of light, but there was comfort in returning to the habits from the time they were alive. They bade Coriakin good-bye at the doorstep of his home, accepting as a parting gift a vial of water that would provide inextinguishable light when triggered, and immediately took to the shadows of the forests and valleys. Somewhere up high the dragons circled, but none lowered their flight enough to be a cause for concern.
Still, they travelled through the darkness in glum silence.
It was a few hours before they heard the roar of the river. Lucy ran forth, eagerly dipping her hands into the water. Edmund forcefully squashed the impulse to hold her back, as the water was black and turbulent, but she immediately straightened with a broad smile on her face. “It is safe,” she said. “It remembers!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Edmund managed. He had serious misgivings, but what was there to do, but to follow her into the water. It was cold, and the frothing waves combined with a rocky bottom made the swim a difficult feat, but it was the safest place to be, at the moment.
They swam until they reached the great waterfall, at which Lucy didn’t even hesitate, but let the current take her over the edge. Edmund saw a look of sheer panic in Peter’s eyes, but then she was calling from the bottom and there was nothing to it but follow her example.
Despite the circumstance it was an exhilarating ride. Edmund surfaced in the cauldron with a gasp and a laugh, very much wishing they had time to do this over again.
“Never again,” Eustace was saying meanwhile, with a slightly hysterical edge to his voice.
“Why, this was fun!” Jill splashed at him and laughed, but he just shot her a dirty look.
“Perhaps when we are not fleeing from mortal peril, then, we might consider it.” Peter was already hefting himself out of the water, and shaking the excess of it off.
They abandoned the river soon after, pausing to wring out their packs and dry themselves (although many things had changed since the previous day, they found that it was still relatively easy to dry clothes just by wishing for it). From the Cauldron it was only a few hours of brisk march to the hill, where the door was.
“Did you bring the key?” Edmund asked once they reached it and Peter dumped his pack on the ground, in order to pat himself down.
“Of course I have it.” Despite the boast it took him a few more minutes to locate the chain, on which the key hung, even though it was around his neck. His face was grim when finally he inserted the key into the lock and turned. It didn’t give immediately and when he got it unlocked he had to lean on the door to push it open, but eventually it gave and they stood in the open doorway into Narnia.
There was darkness on the other side. The little light that the heavenly night provided illuminated only the first few feet of ice and snow, and nothing else. The air smelled stale, as though it hadn’t moved for the longest time. Edmund thought this must have been one of the worst plans in history.
“Everyone, grab a torch,” Peter said.
Without a word, they pulled on the cloaks Coriakin had equipped them with and lit the torches, then stopped in a semicircle around the doorway, each silently begging someone to go first.
Eventually Peter succumbed to the demand for heroism and, given his example, they all followed. Jill, who went last, pulled the door closed behind them, and Peter locked it from the inside, trapping them in the silent, dead world. It was no better than being trapped in a tomb, despite the orange glow of fire, which turned their faces into a spectacle of shadows and edges.
“All right, which way shall we go?” Peter asked raising his torch to reveal absolutely nothing.
“North.” Jill held out her torch in the direction Edmund assumed was north. “I studied the maps,” she said by way of explanation.
“Lead the way, then.”
*****
There was something deeply unsettling about this march, far beyond what they had felt during their travel through the decaying heaven, for there at least they knew it was still a world that lived and breathed. There was wind and light and even the malicious rain was a comfort, in its own way. Here, not even the slightest breath of wind moved the atmosphere and the expanse of the snow. Even the sound of snow and ice crunching underneath their feet was listless, like they were stepping on dead leaves, only worse, because the leaves in here were long past dead; they were particles buried underneath the ice, never to be seen again.
Edmund’s heart fluttered wildly and his throat would not let him speak easily. He had seen death, plenty of it. He had buried friends. He had seen decay and horror and yet this silent world, in which nothing moved, nothing breathed, why, this was like being buried alive, in a limitless tomb.
There were no landmarks to measure the passage of time or distance, nothing but the endless darkness, that should feel spacious, as there was nothing above them but the skies, but was all the more oppressive for the lack of limit.
This was Narnia, Edmund thought with sudden dread. This was what she’d become, this empty, dark place, where the firelight was enough to carve only the tiniest bubble into the blackness, and held nothing at bay.
It was something of a blessing, then, that the biting cold sought to drive all thought out of their minds, leaving them focussed on putting one foot in front of another and not losing the preceding person from sight.
The journey was harsh and thankless, filled with fright the further they walked. Its silence was so encompassing, that one by one they stopped breathing, for fear of disturbing something nameless that must have resided there, for the thought of a whole world empty of all life was too much to bear. Lucy was on the verge of bursting into tears, which was frozen by the shock, Edmund thought when he caught a glimpse of her face. Narnia had been always living for her -- he regretted deeply that she should be made to suffer this.
Then, in the silence, Edmund thought he heard a noise.
He stopped immediately and felt Emeth walk into him. “I thought I heard something,” he said quietly, and the words rang out like a cathedral bell.
“Please tell me you are merely going insane,” Peter said, pushing through the party to glare at Edmund.
“That would be a splendid thing to happen in this dark, uninhabitable world, wouldn’t it?”
“Hush,” Lucy said.
There it was again, a hiss and then a low murmur. The party clung together, until they were a mass of fur and limbs, with torches extended firmly before them. Far in the darkness something moved. At first it was just a shadow, which made it no less terrifying, but then, as they began to squint into the distance, they saw the light of the fire reflected in a hundred polished shapes.
It was coming closer. Edmund found he had drawn his sword without even meaning to, and the same could be said for everyone else. Jill had given her torch to Peter and put an arrow on the string of her bow.
Soon the creature crawled close enough so that they could see it fully -- it was black as tar and its movements were that of a bloated toad. A thick tongue hung out from its maw, swinging back and forth with every lurching step.
“Shall we kill it?” Emeth hissed.
“Better not,” Eustace said. “The noise might attract more of them.”
“They feed on their own kind,” Peter said.
“It’s a dragon, I figured. There is only one, though, and even if its carcass attracts its fellows for a feast, it won’t take long for them to eat it.”
“So… do we run?” Lucy asked.
“Jill? Can you keep us going in the right direction as you run?”
“I’d better,” she said, without much conviction.
“Off we go then,” Peter said perfectly evenly, and then they were racing across the snowy plain. Edmund dared to look back once. The creature wasn’t following them, which could either be very good news, or it could be very bad news.
Funny how his mind gravitated towards the latter.
Jill stopped abruptly, thrusting the torch before her, just in time to see two shadows rush away from its light and disappear. “I don’t think running will cut it this time,” she said.
There were at least three now, circling at a distance that allowed them to stay mostly invisible.
“Kill as many as you can,” Edmund said. At his side Caspian gripped his shoulder hard enough to hurt, even through the fur and cloth, a gesture that Edmund took to mean he was on to him, and there would be no foolishness if he could help it.
“No need for concern,” he said, just as Jill released an arrow into the glint most likely to be an eye. There was a screech and a growl, and the creature collapsed into the light, revealing that although she had missed the eye, an arrow through the throat was equally effective. It lived still, a fact easily remedied, and when the other creatures crowded it, Peter, Emeth and Caspian flung their torches to whomever stood the closest and stepped forth to add to the body count.
There was more noise in the air, noise that Edmund presumed was leathery wings, flapping. More creatures, he thought and his heart sank. How many of them could there be? Even when they were no challenge to kill, how much time could they buy themselves with this slaughter?
Just as he began to grasp the full extent of this foolishness, he heard Jill shriek and Lucy curse. He turned and, before he could think about it, he was rushing towards the creature that was attacking his sister. Except it was not one creature, but two, very slim and moving in tandem. Lucy took off the head of one, but the other managed to fell her. Jill kept an arrow notched, but the creature was so slim and moved so quickly that she didn’t dare fire, lest it hit Lucy.
Eustace ran out of the shadow then, from behind Jill, and -- Edmund was quite sure he wasn’t thinking at all -- grasped the snake-dragon’s muzzle and wrestled it away from Lucy’s face. The creature went quite still.
Edmund raised the torch higher, so that the cluster of monsters feasting on the carcasses of their own was illuminated, and he saw that they stopped moving. They remained frozen in the position they were in, some bent over the meat, some caught mid-growl.
Eustace, for his part, was equally still. Edmund saw in his face hunger and fear, but also a strange kind of excitement. His eyes narrowed and so did those of the creatures, which was when Edmund drove a sword through the serpent’s head. Eustace jerked, but allowed himself to be pulled from the carcass. Edmund, meanwhile, bent over Lucy, frantically searching for a wound, praying there wouldn’t be any.
“I am quite fine,” she said faintly. “Just a scare. It’s okay. It only got the armour.”
“Thank the lion,” Edmund breathed, wrapping her in a hug. “Do be more careful, Lu!”
“Like you’re the one to talk!”
“Eustace?” Jill said in a quivering voice and immediately they all turned, to where Emeth was shaking Eustace by the shoulders. The strange look was gone from his eyes, but he seemed a little pale.
“How are you?” Edmund asked, even as both Emeth and Eustace got to their feet and they all staggered away from the carnage.
“I don’t know,” he said clearly. “It’s so weird.”
“Are you all right?” Jill asked.
“I think so.”
“What happened? They all just stopped,” Caspian said, holding up a torch over Eustace’s crumbled form.
“I know. I mean, I think I know. I think I was it, for a moment. It was rather horrible, like being turned into a dragon all over again.”
“You have been turned into a dragon?” Emeth asked in surprise.
“Ah, what fun that was,” Edmund muttered, as Eustace summarised the affair briefly, summoning with it the memory of blue skies and bluer seas, of wind and salt and white foam. They all felt lighter, somehow, or at least they would have, Edmund thought darkly, if not for the memory that all of that was presently frozen and buried underneath the ice and snow, but fortunately it was only his own head that insisted on dredging up such memories.
With that, it came to him that what he had seen on Eustace’s face was a kind of surrender, or a promise of one. The look was echoed by the creatures he could see; they were all frozen, as though waiting for Eustace to make up his mind to either join or lead them. What a horrid thing to consider, he thought, but if the creatures could be thus controlled, then it could be used to their advantage, because what better weapon to use against the creatures of light then darkness itself?
The upside to the affair was that they were no longer bothered, though they heard the occasional slither of a creature passing them by. There were many, far too many to count. Edmund found some comfort in the knowledge that whatever their numbers, they avoided him, avoided them.
Undisturbed, they walked quite some distance before the question of precise directions reared its head. Edmund had been entertaining it for some time, particularly in that Jill had never been to these parts while Narnia existed, and the version of it that was preserved was grander and much more real. Here, when all landmarks were hidden under the snow, they might well end up walking the oceans until they reached the very edge of the world.
“But wait…” Emeth said, when Edmund shared his doubts. “I do believe the Stone Table was on a hill -- I studied the maps before I came to Narnia.”
“It was. There was later a barrow build over it, so it stood even taller.”
“How high was the hill?”
“You think it wasn’t covered by the water.”
“Well, there is a chance, isn’t there?”
“It would be easier than having to dig our way through the ice.”
“I never even thought of that.”
“We must still remember that we are in a place so dark we cannot see past the tips of our noses, so whether the Stone Table is above or underneath the ice is irrelevant, when we may well be within reaching distance and still miss it.” Edmund raised his torch high above his head and looked around. The extra yards that he could see were no different from those they had already crossed.
“Do you ever consider that things may just work out?” Jill was staring at him reproachfully.
“Rarely. It’s safer to plan that way.”
“I have been meaning to ask, why were you called ‘Just’?” Eustace asked. “Surely Edmund the Pessimist would have been a better choice.”
“As I recall, it was largely because ‘Edmund, you bloody scheming son of a whore’ didn’t seem like a fitting title for a monarch, nor did it roll off the tongue of awed subjects well.”
“Now that is a tale that I haven’t heard,” Caspian said. His grin was teasing, bright as any star in the darkness.
“There’s not much to tell. There had been a tense situation with one of the lesser counties of Calormen, one that was largely overlooked, as it was both removed and not very wealthy. It was rather unimportant, strategically, but still a conceivable threat, as it would be a secondary, but decent, spot for the Calormene army to gather, in the event of an invasion. I may have hinted to the Tarkaan governing it that he should claim his state independent from the empire, which resulted in a rather bold, if strategically unsound, move on his part and his subsequent arrest.”
“I do recall there had been a kidnapping,” Caspian said with a frown.
“I may have also mentioned that my royal brother had no understanding of the subtleties of politics and would rather ransom me than risk a war with such a mighty province.” Ah, what a fine afternoon it had been, watching the Tarkaan wander around him with a calculating look in his eyes, while his servants procured more wine. Edmund had been still young enough that the wine affected him quickly and in no time at all he’d looked utterly helpless, flushed and sleepy, at the mercy of his host. It was only too easy to let it slip that Narnia would surely support a valiant new country, and wasn’t this wine just delicious?
“So what happened?”
“He moved against the Tisroc. As this was still formally Tisroc’s country and I had been kept prisoner, I demanded retribution, in form of appointing my own governor.” Edmund shrugged. “It was only sensible, when the land could host a substantial force and the Tisroc’s eye had always been tinged with envy when he looked to the North. A governor loyal to Narnia would ensure the land would be at least partly controlled by us.”
Eustace looked cautiously impressed. “I see where the bloody scheming part comes from. How did they manage to spin ‘Just’ out of it?”
“When the Tarkaan realised what had transpired, he tried to kill me and I arranged for him a fair trial in retaliation.”
Caspian smiled. “I had my history masters recreate the trial. The Calormene records of your speech were a thing of beauty, even though they contradicted one another a few times.”
“Their scribes embellish the words to suit their masters’ tastes. I’m sure whatever you read was much more eloquent than I.”
“You spoke on the man’s behalf! And, as I recall, he was pardoned.”
“If by pardoned you mean beheaded without a fuss after being sentenced, then yes, he was.”
“I hate how matter of fact you are about this,” Peter said with a shudder. He didn’t look back as he spoke, for which Edmund was grateful.
Eustace seemed to share Peter’s opinion, as he look appalled, which Edmund supposed was partly because he had heard the story told in such a casual manner, but Caspian was nodding approvingly and the grin on his face was one that Edmund longed to press his mouth to.
“Getting him killed was justice?” Eustace asked.
“No, that was mercy. He was subject to the Calormene law, and their ideas of a just punishment for a traitor to the crown were revolting. No offence to you, Emeth,” Edmund added.
“None taken,” Emeth said mildly. “I, too, find torture loathsome.”
Then Peter whispered “Halt!” and they all stopped in their tracks. “If I am any judge of distance,” he said, “We should be at the appropriate level. Now we will see just how good you are at keeping to a direction, Jill.”
“Do not request miracles of me,” she said. “I can walk in a straight line easily enough, but without stars, without anything but a compass to guide me, this is the best we could hope for.”
“I think you did very well,” Lucy said. “Let us light more torches, to spread the light around. Even if Narnia was frozen, there were mountains and hills. We may still find something.”
They did just that. Each of them carried a small bundle of sticks, which they dug into the ground with some difficulty. It worked splendidly, and soon the small dome of light expanded enough to give them at least a hint of hope. The ice was not as even as they feared it would be. Here and there snow was covering earth, which had been frozen solid, but it was ground, not ice.
“All right,” Peter said, once they got the general measurements of all the spots of ground. He unfolded a map on the ice and considered. “Five hills,” he said. “How tall can they be?”
“Not very. The stable hill was covered almost up to the door, and it wasn’t terribly high to begin with. Why, you could make your way up in ten minutes, without too much exertion.”
“Now I really wish I had paid genuine attention to cartography,” Peter said, never looking up from the map. “This seems like a likely spot,” he said after some time. “If the map is to scale, we should find the Stone Table not far from here, a little to the right, sixty yards, perhaps.”
Peter proved, despite his worries, to be a splendid judge of distance and an excellent cartographer, to boot. Jill and Eustace walked no more than a hundred paces, not far enough to leave the lights behind, when they cried in joy.
“Jill, you are a genius,” Edmund said with feeling, once it was revealed that there was a hill before them, covered with ice up to the entrance. “You truly are.”
“Thank you,” she said, a little stunned herself as they gazed into the darkness of Aslan’s How.
“It can hardly be worse inside than it was out there,” Lucy said and bravely marched right in, leaving the rest of them to follow.
Somehow, the inside of the How was no worse than the outside. The air was just as stale, but no more, and the light stopped at the ceiling, instead of disappearing into the limitless black, which gave it a cosy, almost human feel. The etchings on the walls, already ancient when Edmund saw them last, brought a fresh breath into him. Though Narnia was dead, though everything he loved in her was gone and frozen, this was her memory, a sign that she was not wholly gone from the universe.
Caspian led the way, being the only one to visit the How after the battle that confirmed his kingship, and soon enough they spilled into the chamber that held the remains of the Stone Table.
The quest, it turned out then, was justified as it was necessary, for the surface of the stone was covered in writing. Though the world outside was dead, inside magic thrummed, reverberating in the letters in the stones and, if one stood still long enough, through the bones.
Peter took out the vial of magical light he got from Coriakin and set it in the space between the broken plates of the table, so that each was equally lit. “I sense a problem,” he said immediately.
“Oh dear,” Lucy said.
The writing on the table was in no language that Edmund could recognise, and yet… He bent over the stone until he almost touched its surface and focussed. There was something about the shape of the letters that he almost understood, as though he should know this, he should have studied this, at some point.
Of course, this might well have been what every student of the ancient languages feels when confronted with an ancient text, he thought wryly.
“I’ve seen writing like this,” Emeth said. “On the tombs of the kings. The oldest one bore such marks.”
“Can you read it?” Eustace dropped the pack he was carrying.
“Only if it says ‘a great conquerer’ anywhere, as that is the extent of my skills.”
“I think it might be Greek,” Edmund said. “Ancient Greek, to be precise.” Underneath his finger the letters changed, somehow, though he was equally sure they didn’t change their shape, and he saw at last why were they so familiar. “I can read most of it.”
“You know Greek?” Jill asked with a measure of surprise Edmund felt it didn’t deserve.
“Theology,” he reminded her. “Mandatory class.” He’d had some good times, studying the New and Old Testament as they had originally been written. He wondered if he would ever live it down. As he remembered the university, he found that beneath his fingers the letters started changing again, and though he still recognised the script, this would be more difficult, if not outright impossible. He slapped his palm on the surface of the stone and breathed. Greek. “ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς,” he said out loud and was gratified to find the letters take on the familiar shapes.
“That is very impressive,” Eustace said. “Can you try it in English now?”
“Why can’t you?”
Eustace shrugged and, with a very silly expression, bent to the table. “Can you speak English?” he asked clearly, and to Edmund’s amazement the letters did change shape just then, long enough at least to be recognisable as a form of English he knew he didn’t understand.
“It’s English alright,” Peter said. “Or close as it could get, given the era.” Though his studies had run in another direction, Peter had spent time in the company of Digory back in England, and Digory had, as far as Edmund recalled, a vast library of literature from all periods in the history of the British Isles.
“Great.”
“Hang on though, the trick may work with Latin. It’s not necessarily Greek, it just needs to be old enough.” Sure enough, when Peter quoted some of the Latin he learned at school, some of the text changed to suit his demands. “Does anyone else speak a dead language? Or have a dictionary?”
“I know some Latin,” Lucy said doubtfully. Jill and Eustace both shook their heads. Emeth tried his hand, but he had been more or less correct in his own assertion of his linguistic skill and the most he could read was the word king, great and conquer. Caspian knew only how to affect foreign accents, and the nasal speech of the Minotaurs or bears, and he did so in very convincing manner. It was of doubtful use, but Edmund found himself smiling nonetheless.
“Great. Well, Ed, it is time to test your proficiency.”
“Oh, do not even pretend you are not giving this a shot.”
“I quit Latin when I finished school. There’s no question which of us is more qualified, Reverend.”
“How is that no one has drowned you yet?” Edmund muttered, but aloud he said, “Don’t be an idiot, you know Latin well enough.”
“Enough to curse your ancestors, probably, if it wasn’t to my detriment as well.” Peter sat next to the smaller piece of the plate and focused. “How are we doing this?”
“I reckon the surest way would be to write it down, except we have no paper,” Edmund said. “So, I expect we must translate as we read.”
“Line for line?”
“Let’s first see how it’s organised.”
From the very first lines (if those were indeed first -- the layout of the writing made Edmund’s eyes water) the writing seemed to be a historical account from the dawn of Narnia. If he strained he could just about make out the other letters, spidery, smoky shapes underneath, that moved on the surface of the stone. These must have been the spells, he surmised when the words blood and traitor caught his eye.
“It’s just history,” Peter said, just as Edmund turned his head to share the discovery.
“Skim it, see if there’s anything interesting.”
Peter and Lucy took to the task, tracing the words with their fingers in Lucy’s case, until one or the other found a mention of something half familiar. “It speaks of the witch,” Peter said. “Then a litany of wrongs, and finally our names. Then, let me see… Disappeared, turmoil… Telmar, that I can understand, Caspian the First, hardly any merit here, Caspian the Seafarer, I see the numbers have been dispensed with.”
“Anything of interest?”
“Well, if it interests you to find out you aren’t really mentioned, then no. Wait, no, there you are; it mentions that you speak with the king on the very edge of the world, and then you disappear. Caspian weds the star, it goes on to say.” Here Peter frowned. “Says here she birthed a child, who would be the light of his people. The sudden death of the king, Rilian ascends to the throne on the day of his knighting. He rules for many years, marries, but when his son is grown, the king and his royal mother, lady of the stars, depart to the lands she hailed from.” Peter straightened and fell silent. “Didn’t Lilliandil die long before Rilian became king?”
“Ten years,” Caspian said tersely. His hand was on the hilt of the sword and he looked anxious. “I would almost be tempted to say my uncle’s historians worked on the piece.”
“There’s more,” Lucy said quietly. “I can only understand some of it, but there’s more names then there should be, Erlian, Tirian, Miriam the Great, Halrian, and a hundred more. I think there are dates, too, though my sight is blurry.”
“How can this be?” Caspian asked. “Erlian I recall; he has been introduced to me. Tirian arrived with you, but far as I recall he was childless.”
“Narnia ended before he even married,” Jill said.
Edmund immediately turned to his half of the table and focused. How would Tirian be transliterated into Greek? With that in mind he traced the text and finally found what could have been it. “Tirian, the last ruler of Narnia,” he read. “Who was at the door when the sun went out and the stars fell from the sky.”
“Well, at least one half of the table decided to remain faithful to what actually happened. I wonder why that is.”
“There’s more space here,” Edmund said, “Perhaps the author needed a a table of contents to work from.” Despite the levity he found an unnamed dread take hold of his heart, as though the answers that lay at his fingertips would bring nothing good.
“Ed…”
“I know. How detailed is your half?”
“Fairly,” Peter said with some surprise. “Oh, what a bother. There’s writing upon writing here. We could finally find out what happened to the jade chess set I lost while in the giant country.”
“Yes, a splendid opportunity. I shall make arrangements for a digging party.”
“Less stalling, more reading.”
Edmund bit his lip, but returned to the top of the text. “Let me see… The birth of Narnia, our first arrival, in glorious detail, then the reign. I see nothing of particular interest. Then disappearance, then the chaos and turmoil and the Telmarine invasion. A long line of numbered kings, culminating in Caspian the Seafarer. Followed by,” here Edmund frowned, “Rilian the Betrayed.”
“That is not a name that I was taught,” Emeth said. “In the stories I was told he is always Rilian the Disenchanted.”
“I find that I dislike the plan, all of sudden,” Eustace said. “What does it say?”
Edmund shook his head and held up the magic vial to shine directly onto the script. He found among the history the voyage of the Dawn Treader, and as his eyes became accustomed to the strange blue light he found the words became clearer and clearer, as though the memories were coming back to reinforce them. He was suddenly on board the ship, locked in a mock battle with Caspian, laughing as though there were no ill in the world. “She sailed ever East,” he said. “Until there was a Floating Island on the horizon.”
“I have the mention of a Floating Island over here as well. Why was it called that?”
“Guess.”
“You don’t mean it was truly floating?”
“A hundred feet above the waters, yes.”
“I would have loved to see that.”
“It was magnificent,” Lucy said. “More than that.”
“Huh. It says something about a tree and then it gets a bit weird.”
“I bet,” Edmund and Caspian muttered at the same time, then laughed. The shimmering light brought out angles and shadows in his face and Edmund remembered the enchanted sleep that the tree forced upon him, his pale face and the laughter dwindled.
“I am not reading any further,” Peter said, appalled.
“You may relax. I don’t think there would be anything there to offend your sensibilities, when you can stomach Caspian’s presence.”
“Clearly, you do not wish for me to read further.”
“Stop being such a baby.”
Peter rolled his eyes but pressed on. “Broadly speaking there is not much there. The voyage continues, the seven lords are found, or at least accounted for, you argue,” Peter frowned. “Edmund refuses.”
“Excuse me?”
“If I understand correctly, though there is no direct quote. There is an argument and Caspian expresses a desire to go beyond the world with you and you refuse him.”
There was silence. With some difficulty Edmund turned back towards the stone and found the Floating Island. Here the words spoke of what he remembered; the vision, the return, then the horrid moment when Aslan spoke to them and Caspian’s narrowly avoided abdication.
A curious sensation came over him then, and as he spoke the words he ceased to understand them; he stopped hearing, or rather he forced himself not to hear. He forced onto himself a feeling of serenity, fake though it was, and secure in his peace, detached from meaning, he spoke, as though it did not concern him, neither his life, nor his family, nor Caspian.
“Edmund,” Lucy said, when he fell silent, but he didn’t listen. His mouth was dry -- he’d been speaking for quite some time -- and he pushed past the people who were suddenly so foreign to him and ran out of the chamber.
Somehow he found his way in the darkness, for when he stopped he knew he was outside. There was snow underneath his feet and no ceiling over his head, even if the darkness was just as consuming as it had been within.
Only then did he let himself fall against the side of the mound.
His own voice, calm and bereft of inflection came back to him, speaking dispassionately as though from a great distance. “And thus Narnia was forfeit forever and doomed to die long before her time,” it whispered darkly, seeping into his heart like the poisonous promises of the witch. “Torn from her destiny and glory, for Edmund the Traitor had taken what belonged to her, the heart of her king, and stole it with him to another world.”
He wondered if he could possibly wander far enough and call for the creatures to hide his footsteps. He wondered if he could wander in the snow forever, until the world ceased to exist and he would disappear as though he never was.
His lips were parched. Even though the snow melted into pure water, it didn’t quench his thirst; it was dry in his mouth and cold enough to burn.
There were voices in the distance but Edmund never spoke; not even a breath to let them know he was there. He was hidden among the stones, where the light was sure to miss him, and if they moved far away, he would go and walk until a creature of the darkness accosted him and finally put an end to what should have ended thousands of years ago, or last night, on the table which should have been unbroken, whose story should have been continuous.
He had been king, he thought. He had sworn to protect the land and her people, he had sworn to serve her with his life. He had sworn to the people and to himself that he would repay the hurt he caused, would repent the betrayal and become worthy of the honour, and yet, all those years later, he was nothing but the traitor again.
