AN: Many thanks to CSL, for inventing such versatile characters and such a wonderful country, and to WillowDryad, who let me borrow the premise of Counted Among the Traitors way back in January, when I couldn't bear Peter's nightmares and the angst of having Edmund banished. That was before almost anything had been settled on, save the nightmares and the banishment, so none of it fits with the lovely, heartwarming, superlative ending she wrote and finished posting yesterday, but she told me to go ahead and post anyway.
I also have a mass of Susan-centric stuff, bits of which I'll be putting up if anyone wants to see them, so let me know.
There was no moon that night, when the lone, cloaked rider departed from Cair Paravel an hour after sundown and traveled swiftly to the south. Through the night he rode, with no company but the hoofbeats beneath him, the sleepy rustle of trees and quiet movements of night animals around him, and the bright, ever-singing stars above him. South, ever south he rode, walking and trotting and cantering, along a rushing river, over low rises and small hills, up the mountain slopes, and so finally over the pass into Archenland.
There was yet an hour to sunrise when he pulled up his weary horse before the gates of Anvard. He had sent an urgent, private message ahead of him to the lord of the castle, the night watchman let him in quietly, so as not to rouse the entire castle, and a sleepy page appeared to escort him.
Meanwhile, in one of the royal guest chambers of the same castle, another dim figure stood at an eastern window, silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky. How long he had stood there, waiting for sunrise, he did not know. He had lost count of the darkened days and sleepless nights spent in hopeless, faithful vigil, waiting—watching—wondering. He had not seen any of his family in many months, and even the secret letters from his younger sister (the only one still—clandestinely—calling him brother) were necessarily infrequent, for fear of discovery. It had been longer, far longer, since he had been able to share a simple meal with the ones he loved. The ones who believed him a traitor. The ones who had banished him. The ones he still loved and was fighting to protect.
Would he ever see them again?
No. So had said the voice of his King (who had once been proud to be called his elder brother) on that last, terrible day. We ourself shall not see your face again.
Still, he clung to hope. Hope given him by the Lion—"You are called and chosen . . . a King of Narnia did I name you, and a King of Narnia shall you remain forever . . . your family still loves you . . . I love you . . . I am always with you." Hope given him by the single, shining tear he had seen on his King's cheek before his back was turned for the last time on that last day. Hope. It was all he had. He had not the jolly optimism of his cousin King of this adjoining land, the lord of the castle in which he had found refuge; nor the staunch confidence of his loyal Horse and friend. He had only hope. Hope that someday, some way, somehow, the sun would rise.
There was a tap at his door. The voice of the page said, "A visitor, sir."
His eyes remained fixed on the horizon, straining to see the faintest ray of light, and his voice was dull and flat when he spoke. "Enter."
The door whispered open and shut. The floor creaked and was still. Then the voice spoke.
"Sire—my lord king."
And his heart stopped. The words were choked and hoarse with tears and hard riding, muffled by the hood, yet still the voice—the voice—
He knew that voice. It was the voice that had teased him, the voice that had admonished him, the voice that had comforted him—the voice that had banished him.
He turned slowly from the window and bowed in a desperate bid to stay calm. A cloaked figure knelt before him, hood thrown back, bare head bent low, hands raised in pleading supplication. The hair on the bowed head was flax-pale in the crepuscular predawn.
With great effort, he kept his voice low and cool. "Why does His Royal Majesty, the High King of all Narnia, come thus to the humblest of his subjects, who lives here in exile?"
"No," came the voice, broken and oh! so familiar that the ache in his chest began to throb. "No. It is I who am the lowest of Your Majesty's servants, who am unworthy to be in your presence but long for one glimpse of your face—"
His legs gave way. The voice was cut off by the squeak of the floorboards as he, too, fell to his knees.
The bowed head raised—slowly, hesitantly—and the two men stared into each other's eyes.
For one eternal moment the only sound was the thumping of two hearts.
Then—"Peter?" came the hoarse whisper, ragged from sleeplessness.
"Edmund?" was the equally hoarse answer, streaked with tears and broken with anguish. Then the flaxen head dropped again, and there was the splash of tears on the floor.
He knelt in silence, his hands on his knees, watching the older man, waiting, waiting still.
Finally the elder broke the silence. "My lord king, how can I find words to speak my sorrow? How can I ask you to listen to a word I say when it was I who betrayed everything: betrayed you, betrayed the bond we once shared, betrayed the crown the Lion placed upon me? It was I who disowned you, drove you from your home and family, and forced you to flee. My lord, no longer have I the right to call you Brother," his voice broke, but he mastered himself and went on, "for I threw that name from me and trampled it in the dust.
"I have come to bring you word of the arrest and imprisonment of he who was once called Duke and Lord High Counselor and is now known to us all to be the falsest and most untrue knight who ever did live; to make it known unto you that your royal pardon and inlawing is being cried in every settlement of Narnia, from Cair Paravel on the Eastern Sea to Chippingford below Caldron Pool, high in the smallest Songbird's nest and deep in the heart of the great Dwarf mines; and to implore you to return to Narnia, to Cair Paravel, and to your throne. I entreat you, not in my name nor that of the Queen Susan, nor in the names of the Creatures who disdained you, but in the name of your love for the Great Lion Aslan, in the name of your loyal sister the Queen Lucy, and in the memory of the love you once bore for me, that vilest of traitors—"
He had listened silently, allowing the other to say what must be said, but he could keep still no more. Fiercely, he gripped the bowed shoulders of the broken man before him, and his choked cry was that of a weeping man. "Brother!"
His brother's shoulders shook under his hands, and in one swift motion he pulled him into a crushing embrace. "Brother. Brother," he whispered, his own tears falling freely into the flaxen hair. "I love thee still." A sob shook his voice. "How could I but love thee still?"
And the first ray of dawn shone gold on the flaxen hair.