The water in the fountain wasn't freezing, but it was colder than Peter would have liked. When he lost Susan's hand and began to plunge deeper in, he knew there was something amiss. After all, fountains-even really big ones-weren't quite this deep. Then there was the bottom; it wasn't green and silver as it ought to have been going by the colour it was before it filled with water, back when it was empty. No, it was a clear white with specks of pale icy blue mixed in that looked more like a trick of light than anything else.

He reached down, thinking to steady himself on the bottom then push up, presumably back to the edge of the fountain and the professor's garden-if either of them were still there. But then he found himself lifting the bottom, as if it were a trap door made of gauzy silk. It turned black under his hand-then white with blue again. Murky, darkened, greatly obscured light trickled into where-ever he was now.

It felt like being in a coffin underground. He wasn't swimming or thrashing or sitting up; Peter found that he was lying flat on his back. At first he could breathe easily, but after a few more seconds he couldn't. He felt colder and colder, like he was trapped inside of a giant freezer. The light was bloody awful, he could not get over that. How was he supposed to figure out where he was in such horrid lighting? Worse, he was so lightheaded due to lack of air.

Peter winced, shutting his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, he could see a little better. This was not because the light had changed but, rather, because his eyes had adjusted a bit. There was something long and thin and solid above him. He reached up and felt it, pounding at it. It was a thin layer of ice.

Without much effort, even as his weakened lungs were almost done for, he pounded harder and broke the ice, thrusting his body upwards through the opening he had created.

His rising would have been an unpleasant sight if anyone had been there to see it. The shape looked no different than a man, fully dressed, emerging breathlessly from a bathtub after being under for too long, gripping the sides and gasping for air. But Peter's face was worse than that; his cheeks were blue with cold, his quivering lips purple.

Peter sneezed. Then he tried to take in his surroundings.

He appeared to be sitting in a wooden water-trough that had (before he smashed it and broke free) been frozen over. It was very cold, where-ever he was.

Coughing and wheezing, still gasping in a rather raspy manner, he pulled his bottom out of the trough. Losing his balance-again-he fell over into a patch of wet straw and frost-covered dirt.

No, it's all right, he thought bitterly to himself, my head broke the fall.

He sneezed once again and pulled a piece of straw out of his wet hair, tossing it aside.

The room the trough was in seemed to be some sort of storage area. At first he thought it was a stable, but he changed his mind when he didn't find any animals; there wouldn't have been any room for livestock with all the old junk piled as high as a horse's rear-end. And it would have been too cold, besides.

Suddenly there came voices. They were deep, strong voices-fierce also, and at once Peter got the sense that the speakers were not human. As the sound of their thick, rumbling tones got closer, he hid himself behind a wide beam of half-rotted wood, hoping it would be enough to conceal him from whatever creatures he was hearing.

Maybe, and he could only pray this was the case, they-whoever they were-wouldn't have very good hearing.

When he saw them at last, two minutes or so later, his heart skipped a beat, momentarily paralyzed with fear. The creatures not only had good sight and hearing, but, also, he knew without shadow of doubt now that he saw them for what they were, excellent senses of smell. They were panserbjørne, armoured bears.

Their armour was very bright and well polished-there were even chunky gold chains with ruby pendants around the bears' thick, white necks!-and Peter, in spite of his fear, was distracted for a second, wondering what Lyra would have thought of that. He knew she admired the more rough-and-tumble sort of nobleman rather than the posh kind and that her same principles probably went for ice bears as well. Lyra loved Iorek Byrnison; and Iorek would have never, ever dreamed of donning such ridiculously adorning armour, never-mind jewelry! His armour was beautiful in its own way, perhaps, but it was also dented in places and he'd had to wash blood and rust off of it before. These bears, fearsome as they were, might as well not have even known how to do so. They probably just had new armour made whenever anything happened to their old ones.

That didn't seem right, though. Iorek talked of his armour being like a soul. This flaky behavior, this wealth-flaunting, in turn, was comparable to a person who tried to separate themselves from their dæmon whenever it 'got older'. No, it was worse than that. They didn't have souls, not if their armour was purely decorative, they couldn't. So, it was more like the do-nothing guards of an unthreatened crown prince who carried swords, but only for the look of the thing, not for protection.

Peter's next thought, when that one of Lyra's probable disgust with the bears had passed by like a blazing comet, flashing away into nothing, was that he suddenly knew where he was. Svalbard!

And if Edmund really was in Svalbard, then he couldn't have come up in a better place!

Or, maybe he couldn't have come up in a worse place.

How was he supposed to rescue his brother-in-law by himself? (Where was Lyra? Hadn't she made it through?) Quite frankly, it was impossible. It was impossible, and there was no one to help him because he seemed to have arrived on his own.

He sighed and fought the childish urge to stamp his foot and pout, and to curse under his breath. Not only would have been a very juvenile thing to do, but the bears would hear him; they seemed to be leaving, but they weren't gone yet.

If the bears had been looking for him, or paying attention to the scents their noses were picking up, then Peter would have been detected instantly. As it was, they were just sort of loitering around with no purpose. Besides, Peter was slightly down-wind in the dank storage room. If they noticed that the ice over the trough was broken, they didn't care. They probably just thought a servant had done it as part of their job or something.

Peter shivered again; he wanted to sneeze. He did, and was panicked. If the ice bears were still anywhere within ear-shot, they would have heard that.

But no teeth met his throat, there was no white-fur-covered paw pressed against his chest, pinning him down in place. There was no sound of rustling, no bear-grunts. He dared to peek out of his spot. The bears weren't there; he'd chosen just the right second to sneeze.

"Hang it all," he muttered to himself in disbelief. "You must be the luckiest chap to ever enter this world!"

Was it a trick? Were they waiting for him? No, they weren't. Simply, his guess was correct, they were already gone when the sneeze echoed the whole length of the junk-filled chamber.

"Or maybe I'm not," he said, still talking to himself. "I can't stay here, and if it go outside wet like this, in these sopping clothes, Svalbard's climate will kill me for sure."

Dash it! Dash it! Dash it!

Meanwhile, Edmund and Ella were still in their cell, sitting still as anything. Edmund leaned against the wall and, tired of flying about the area and not being able to see anything (it was much too dark for that, even with owl-eyes), Ella was perched on his shoulder.

Just then, from the far-side of the cell, there came a faint grunt.

Edmund blinked, but it was useless, he could just barely see past the tip of his own nose in this beastly hole-and he suspected that if Ella was not white all over, he wouldn't be able to make out even the outline of his own dæmon-so of course he couldn't see anybody else. He'd suspected for a while that there may have been another part of the cell that had only a half-sized rough divider and that, at some point, somebody else might turn up there. However, he'd guessed that only through echoes and foot-steps and the distance his own voice traveled when he coughed or sneezed or else, just because he was so frustrated, shouted out a word or two he would prefer Lucy never find out he'd used.

"Is someone there?" asked Edmund, his voice cracking a bit.

"Yes," answered whoever it was.

Ella whispered in Edmund's ear that she couldn't sense another dæmon's presence so that, unless it was Peter Pevensie, she doubted their cell-mate was human.

"Who are you?"

"Oh," said the voice, laughing bitterly, "I'm a dangerous criminal, I am. That's why they shut me up in here. Dust and dwarf-drums! This place is dark, isn't it? I can't see you at all, for all I know you might just be a voice in my head-or worse, a delusion of a ghost. I don't believe in ghosts, but places like this…well, they play tricks on the mind."

Something inside of Edmund snapped; he knew that voice, that trick of speech! Could it be? Was it really his own old dwarf manservant from the days before he was Edmund Belacqua, back when he was still Edmund Coulter the second?

"DLF?" He couldn't hide the excitement in his voice.

"That's never Trumpkin!" said Ella, as if she were quite certain it was him.

"Edmund?" There was more grunting and the voice came closer.

"It is you!"

"Bottles and blue-barrels! Edmund Coulter?"

"Edmund Belacqua," he corrected him.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm an alethiometrist." Wasn't it horribly ironic that the one place he could admit that was the very sort place he had kept it a secret to avoid being trapped in?

"You?" Trumpkin, having served Edmund for years, was amazed. Could the boy who alternatively 'didn't believe in Dust' and feared it 'knowing his mother had to be doing right' by turn really have grown up to be an alethiometrist? "Really?"

"Shocking, isn't it?"

"All right," said Trumpkin, cynically; "what's her name?"

Edmund was glad it was too dark for Trumpkin to see him blush. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." He did not sound convincing.

"Fine then."

He felt hard-pressed, avoiding the question, in a cell where there was no where else to go, nothing to pretend to be busy with. They had nothing but time, and it ticked by very slowly. Trumpkin would get an answer out of him just because he wanted to talk, if nothing else, sooner or later.

"Lucy," said Edmund at last. "Lucy Pevensie." Then hastily, "But I'm not doing all this for her…" –he remembered the last time he'd seen her as he slammed the trap-door down above her head, protecting her from the Ruling Power's guards. "Or, at least, not only for her. For the Lion, too."

"You know Aslan?" Trumpkin seemed, Edmund thought, though he might have been mistaken, impressed.

"Well, he knows me. He saved my life once, when I was crossing an ice bridge."

"I remember Lucy," Trumpkin told him. "She's the one who's brother had no dæmon, isn't she? The one who got away from Bolvangar so early on?"

"That's her."

"Grew up nice?"

"Very nice."

"I see. Tell me more about the ice bridge."

"It's a long story," Edmund blurted, a bit stupidly. Ella whistled, realizing how dumb that sounded before her master did.

"You have some major event you simply can't miss starting in an hour?" Trumpkin teased. "A ball, perhaps? An alethiomertrist's convention, ending in a reenactment of you getting taken?"

"All right, all right; you've made your point."

So, as they had nothing better to do anyway, Edmund told his old servant, his dear little friend (DLF), all about his studies and adventures and how he had finally been caught by the Ruling Powers.

Trumpkin listened well to everything, only adding a small question here and there when he misunderstood some fact or else Edmund, getting too wrapped up in his story, was talking too fast for someone returning into his life this late in the game to comprehend what was being said.

When the story was finished at last, goodness knows how many hours later, the dwarf, wishing for a pipe and a good supper of fish or steak, trying not to think of either, asked, "But what do you suppose happened to Lucy?"

"I told you," said Edmund, rather shortly, "they didn't find her; she was hidden-I hid her before they broke in."

"I mean, where do you think she would have gone after you were taken? She couldn't have stayed in the flat."

"No," Edmund agreed. "You're right about that, DLF, she couldn't stay there."

"So where do you think she would have gone? Is she safe?"

"I don't know." He hated to admit this, but what else could he say? He honestly didn't know for sure. If nothing else, Edmund liked to think that Lucy was-if not truly safe-at least safer than she would have been if the Ruling Powers had caught her and discerned who she was.

"If we ever get out of here," Trumpkin said, "are you going to go find her?"

"Yes." That he knew; there could be no questioning that.

"I'll go with you."

Edmund registered this and, contemplating that Trumpkin was in Svalbard just as he was, realized, "You're against the Ruling Powers now, too, then."

"Yes."

"And what about your own story?" Ella cawed.

"We did tell you ours," Edmund pointed out.

"Well, mine isn't half so good, long, or interesting." Trumpkin once again had a craving to puff thoughtfully on a pipe. His stomach was also growling; unfortunate that prisons never seemed to have generous portions. "It's really quite simple. After your mother died-everyone was told it was some accident in the north, no one knows, or no one admits to knowing, the version you told me-and the Ruling Powers took up your estate and all, I was fired. No, I was-" He cleared his throat scornfully "-'relieved of my services'. It didn't matter, though. Aside from being your manservant, I never had any real place in that household, or standing at Bolvangar."

"Where did you go?"

"No where, I was fed up with everything. I was tried. Mostly I hoped you or your sister would turn up and collect your inheritance and sort some things out-some bills I was being unlawfully given. I was a poor dwarf for a while."

"And after?"

"Aslan came to where I was staying and he-"

"Where were you staying?" Being cooped up made Edmund desperately thirsty for tales of different places, real or false, anywhere that wasn't Svalbard.

"A dirty little hovel I shared with another dwarf who was ill-mannered. We were friends, but he was a handful all the same. I remember he tried to convince me that tobacco ash was good for the carpet and wouldn't listen when I pointed out that we didn't have a carpet to begin with!"

"I see, and Aslan turned up in the hovel?"

"No, outside of it, he wouldn't have fit inside."

Edmund nodded, forgetting that it was too dark for Trumpkin to see him do so.

Somehow getting the hint anyway, Trumpkin went on. "The Lion roared, scared the living daylights out of me, then he picked me up in his mouth and shook me up and down till I couldn't see straight. Afterwards, I realized I'd actually been safer being shaken by him than I'd been in all my former years of employment to your family, I just didn't feel it. Anyway, I started hiding persons the Ruling Powers were looking for, on and off, nothing major. They caught up with me, tried to teach me a lesson. I got six warnings before they finally decided to lock me up here in…where is here anyway?"

Didn't he know? "Svalbard."

"You don't say!" Trumpkin went into hysterics at that, laughing wildly and banging loudly against the nearest walls. "Bloody blooming Svalbard! When they said another prison, one up north…oh, they sure meant it, those poor fools! They sure meant it!" He kept laughing and laughing until a new sound, one that Edmund didn't dare say was…crying, sobbing…came out of him.

A long silence ensued. Then, before they had any time to feel uncomfortable about Trumpkin's sudden breakdown, or to awkwardly attempt to pretend it never happened, there was the sound of the cell's door opening.

Edmund felt his facial muscles recoil; not so much from fear as vague wonder of who was coming into them and why. There many not have been any real ways of telling time in that cell, but somehow he got the sense that this wasn't a meal-call.

Maybe it was because there was no sound of tins and metal-cups and steel pans banging against each other. Or else, maybe it was because the person opening the door seemed, odd as it was, to be trying to be as quiet as possible. Usually the doors opened with bangs; no one generally cared about loud sounds here, not so far as Edmund knew.

It was weird (or had been the first couple of days before it got as dull as everything else) having so many human guards as well as bear-guards. It might have been more "normal" if all of these were the Ruling Powers' guards on duty, working at Svalbard for various reasons, but they weren't. Not all of them.

From what Edmund had heard in hear-say, the current king of the ice bears was a bit obsessed with human things, especially their living-styles and the fact that they had dæmons while bears just had their armour. This made Edmund think of the late Telmarine Gyptian Lord, Miraz; he'd been obsessed with dæmons, too, even though he had one of his own, unlike the bear king. They probably had a lot in common, the bear and Miraz, both were said to have taken things that weren't theirs to take. Thinking of them both, Edmund wondered what Iorek would say on the subject. Iorek didn't seem to like to talk about Svalbard much, yet he never told anyone-except for Lee Scoresby and maybe a Gyptian or two-why.

Anyway, the guards didn't all belong to the Ruling Powers, many of them were simply installed as human-servants in the panserbjørne court for no other purpose than that the bear king liked to think of himself as a person, and it was easier to do so with more humans around. These guards wore blue doublets with gold-braiding on the right sleeve. For warmth, the doublets were also lined with soft fur, probably from artic foxes.

The man standing in the doorway, letting some of the light in, looked awkward in his doublet. It was a mite too big on him, and the way he was taking such short, deep breaths and blowing so heavily on his hands showed that he wasn't used to the cold, not the way a properly trained servant who'd worked their way up to the privilege of guarding major criminals would have been.

When his eyes adjusted, Edmund studied the man more closely. He was young, only maybe a year or so older than Ed's elder sister, and blonde. Ella couldn't sense the presence of any forthcoming dæmon. Peter!

Peter smiled and put his index finger to his lips. He was overjoyed to see his brother-in-law again after so long, and there was nothing more he wanted to do than to rush over to him at once and ask him a hundred thousand questions, starting with, "Are you okay?" and working his way up to, "By the way, is Lucy here in Svalbard, too?"; but it was too risky.

He felt a little sorry for the guard he'd had to hit upside the head to snatch the doublet and a set of keys off of, however, he couldn't have jolly well gone outside of the storage room in his wet clothing and he couldn't stand by the trough twiddling his thumbs until a 'kinder' option presented itself. If possible, he'd find the poor (currently doublet-less) man and make it up to him when all this trouble with the Ruling Powers and Dust, and war, and Edmund in prison, was over…somehow…

AN: Please review.