The Scales Must Fall

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"Well it's big enough, isn't it?" Corin, munching on a fig he has pulled from his pocket, looked around them as they stood in the courtyard of the prince's palace and awaited the honour of Rabadash's arrival. Punctuality, it seemed, was not one of His Highness's strong points, and this may have lent the slightest edge to Susan's temper as she warned the little prince to hold his tongue.

"What?" Corin scrunched up his nose, and swallowed a mouthful of the fruit he held. "I only said-"

"'Twas not what you said, little prince, but the tone in which you said it," Susan frowned, halting what had threatened to become nervous pacing beside the litter in which she arrived. Her eyes drifted to the fig. "Wherever did-"

"Oh, this?" Corin indicated it. "Brought it from the palace. I've apricots, too," he checked his doublet. "And I think there are some almonds- would you care for some?" he wondered. "Ought I have offered-"

"No, no," even through the tension building within her, Susan found she had to smile. "I have little appetite at the moment, Highness, but my thanks for your consideration. Now please," her voice softened, but her eyes remained worried, "I ask that you mind all you say when we are out of safe counsel in our own chambers. Diplomacy is a tricky feat at the best of times, but in this land you must see it is of paramount importance."

At this, Corin's face wrinkled in confusion.

"I thought he was rather half in love with you," he said. "I mean, he's certainly been chasing after you well enough, sending you all sorts of gifts and such. Isn't that what princes do when they want to court somebody?"

"Oft times," Susan murmured, still watching anxiously to see that they were not overheard. "However, no monarch in a country not her own can ever forget that she represents-" and here she broke off, because at last trumpeters appeared. A general fanfare was played and Rabadash and what seemed a small army of courtiers appeared at the top of the courtyard steps and made their way down in what they doubtless thought was true magnificence, but really only looked a very self-important display of finery that in no way diminished the fact they had kept their guests waiting some three quarters of an hour.

"O Queen," Rabadash made one of the Calormene gestures of what Susan chose to believe was contrition, but was in fact merely an indication of his pleasure at seeing her, "can it be that you grow lovelier each moment within my sight?"

"Well if that were true," Corin mused, "she'd must needs have been a born a very ugly-" and here he stopped abruptly, since Susan had seized the remainder of the fig from his hand and stuffed it into his mouth. As Corin chewed awkwardly, Susan smiled at the prince and advanced from the side of the litter.

"His Highness's flattery overwhelms," she observed. "Truly, the prince of Calormen might make any lady feel a queen by the very beauty of his devotion and the poetry of his words."

Corin, behind her, could be heard to choke on his fig.

"A woman whose beauty of face is rivalled only by the loveliness of her voice," the prince proclaimed, and around him all his courtiers bobbed their helmeted heads in solemn agreement. "How well it was written by the poet who said that he who finds a woman fair of face and voice has found a treasure even the gods must covet."

For just the barest second Susan's tongue seemed to want to betray her, and she came perilously close to blushing scarlet and ducking her head whilst mumbling "Well, I don't know about that." Then the madness passed, and she made an appropriate rejoinder which was followed by the prince's formal invitation to Susan and her escort to take the air with him on horseback, which invitation Susan naturally accepted on behalf of them all.

They were then escorted through the palace to a slightly smaller courtyard near the back, this one boasting gates that led out into a small forest of cypress and cedar. Awaiting them were half a dozen horses of the same desert breed that the prince had presented to the Narnian monarchs during his visit, each one displaying the same sort of high temper that those first four had. Susan caught her breath at the sight of them, and beside her even Corin was impressed.

"I regret, Majesty," Rabadash spoke smoothly as they approached the animals, "that I had not thought you would bring with you an escort greater in number than two; else I should certainly have ordered another horse readied. Would it perhaps amuse the little prince to remain at the palace as we ride?"

It would not suit him at all, but Susan did not say as much, and trod on Corin's foot to be certain that he would not say so either. Then she smiled graciously, and suggested that the little prince might ride on the horse Rabadash had selected for her.

"'Twould break my heart," she explained, "to deprive him of such an outing."

Even through his anger at being so casually dismissed by their host, Corin had to admire the strategy of Susan's offer. Naturally no half-decent man could consent to his lovely guest struggling along with the double burden of both a strange horse and a young boy riding with her, and so all was halted as Rabadash sent away for another animal to be readied.

At the arrival of the snorting, blowing beast he had requested, a massive grey animal barely restrained by the large groom who held his head, Corin was so thrilled at the prospect of such a challenge that he forgot his anger and his nagging suspicion that Rabadash had somehow contrived to leave him out of things on purpose. Susan, however, took one look at the horse and was hard-pressed to conceal her horror.

"My little liege," she murmured, catching Corin's sleeve before he could rush forward to examine the horse better, "'twere perhaps prudent to ask one of our Narnian lords to seat this creature instead. He seems to be of . . . excellent spirit."

"Yes, I know; isn't he marvellous?" Corin's whole face shone, and Susan bit her lip in consternation. A small company of Calormene outriders on armed with spears appeared near the gates in readiness for the excursion, and Rabadash gestured that a mounting block be brought to the side of the horse he declared was to be Susan's mount. The necessity of seating her horse forced the queen to cut her further lecture short to just a handful of words.

"Have a care," she entreated, then crossed the yard to mount the much calmer mare, who tossed her head just twice as Susan settled herself and took up the reins with hands that brooked no argument. Corin took advantage of her departure to cross to the big grey, and beamed up at the swarthy, bearded face of the groom.

"He's something else, isn't he?" the prince observed, and the groom grunted in reply. Then, seeing that Lord Peridan was already moving toward him in a likely bid to exchange mounts, Corin made quick to fit his foot to the stirrup (which was a good deal above the ground, for all it had been let down as far is it would go) and swung up, up, up higher than he had imagined, seating himself across the broad back of the horse.

The beast was larger than all the others in the yard, and though his lines and certainly his temper were those of the desert horses, there seemed also to be some larger breed within him, since his size far outstripped that of all others they had seen since their arrival. Corin felt the muscles surge and bunch beneath his legs, and his face broke out in a wide grin. His father had promised him his first proper horse on his next birthday, and this was exactly the sort of animal he had hoped for. Corin enjoyed a challenge.

Susan did not enjoy a challenge; nor did she appreciate seeing others accept them. On guiding her own mount through a series of brief bends to get a better feel for her temperament, the Narnian queen saw Corin's choice of steed and turned quite pale. She was hardly in a position to argue, however, since the outriders were falling into position, the two Narnian Lords had made their choice of mounts, and the Calormene prince made an invitational remark as two courtiers of his own took charge of the remaining two horses. Biting her lip in consternation, Susan turned her mare toward the gates and fell in step beside Rabadash's horse as the whole party set out, through the courtyard wall and into the forest that awaited them.

She only hoped that part of Corin's diplomatic education in Calormen would not involve the courteous treatment of whatever physician they would surely be obliged to fetch to bind his skull, should the beast he rode see fit to throw him off.

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"Like you well this scenery Drinian?" Peridan, having spent some time getting a feel for the animal he rode, now felt reasonably confident in the direction of their path, and ventured making conversation with the man whose estate back home bordered his own. Drinian, for his part, shifted uncertainly in his saddle, cast an eye about him and lowered his voice to make his reply.

"Cedars and firs are well enough when left in their natural state, I'll grant you. But when fashioned into weapons such as are borne by this guard about us, I do confess to some uneasiness of spirit."

"There is truth in what you say there, to be sure," Peridan acknowledged, then turned his head and called out to one of the outriders. "How now, friend. What banditry do you expect in the prince's own forest, then, that you ride armed with such spears?"

The outrider, for his part, said nothing whatsoever, and Peridan was on the verge of thinking him unable to understand when one of the two Calormene courtiers drew abreast of the Narnian lords, and made an answer.

"I fear the outriders will be unable to converse," he explained, "for they have been rendered mute, that they might betray no confidences exchanged while the prince rides with his consort. As for the banditry you mentioned, the violence against which they guard comes not from man, but beast. There are lions about, and jackals, and these have been known to attack parties less guarded than our own."

The significance of this statement took some brief time to weigh upon the Narnian lords, but once it had sunk in, both turned rather ashy about the face. Peridan, who was a trifle younger than his companion, actually thought he might be sick. Drinian, who had a few years on the younger man and had seen some less savoury things in his time, put a delicate question to the surly fellow at their side.

"'Rendered' mute?" he repeated. "By this, you refer to a process by which . . ?"

"The slaves have their tongues made incapable of speech," the man grunted. "It is done in an effort to keep them trustworthy. These are the slaves that our Tisroc, may he live forever, has decreed are to be used at the most secret councils, that none may use our words against us." And his eyes glittered, and he looked very fierce and perhaps a trifle tyrannical as he spoke.

"I see," Drinian said quietly, and he did, indeed. Peridan, for his part, made an inarticulate noise that he quickly covered with a cough, and then a deeper sound, such as you are likely to make when you are trying very hard not to lose control of the very rich breakfast you ate just a few hours before.

To distract attention from this, Drinian then looked back to where Corin was perched high on the withers of the prancing, snorting grey he had mounted in the courtyard.

"How fare you, Highness?" he called, and Corin, who would not for the world have owned up to the fact that his legs were starting to ache and every muscle in his arms was beginning to tremble from the strain of simply reminding the animal that he had a rider at all, spared the breath to say that he was getting along famously.

If Drinian doubted the veracity of this claim, he was too much a gentleman to say so aloud. Instead he gave Corin one final, concerned look, then turned his gaze forward once more. Though he was far too seasoned in diplomacy to say so aloud, he could not help but think to himself that it would be only through the grace of Aslan himself that their party could hope to make it out of Calormen without mishap.

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"Truly," Susan craned her neck to fully appreciate the sights around them, "I have rarely seen a forest that looks so . . . tamed. 'Tis a marvel, indeed," she concluded, and smiled at her host, who smiled back in the practiced fashion that was his way.

"It is an honour indeed to receive praise from the lips of a beautiful woman," the prince decided. "That you appreciate the beauty of the order created out of what would otherwise have been erratic and . . . unrestrained is merely further testament to your great discernment."

Susan coloured delicately at the flattery, and turned her gaze from the planted trees to the ears of her horse. The prince then paid a flowery compliment to the becoming modesty of which her embarrassment spoke, and Susan was relieved he had not fully understood the implication of her remark that the orderly arrangement of the trees seemed a marvel.

True, she well appreciated the effort it must have taken to plant everything and keep it so well groomed, but that was because she came from a land in which the trees themselves decreed where and how they would grow. She rode with her family in woods that were so great in stature and wild in nature that they sometimes blotted out the very sun from reaching the forest floor, and while occasionally she grew annoyed at the way her gowns would snag and tear on outstretched branches, there still seemed something more reassuring in the ways of Narnian trees than there did in this precise, well-ordered Calormene attempt at a forest.

Rather than have to voice this thought aloud, however, Susan turned about in her saddle that she, too, might see how Corin fared. Calling out to him, she asked how well he liked this sport, and Corin, who was exhausting himself with the strain of controlling an animal who, for all its rider's determination, was far too much horse for him to control, took one very precious moment to tell her that it was certainly sport.

Then his eyes flew wide open, because the sweat that that gathered on his palms finally proved too much for even the reins to withstand, and his hands slipped, giving the horse his head. With a triumphant snort, the animal twisted and kicked, then put every ounce of his considerable strength into what had to be (if you looked at it objectively, which Corin was unfortunately in no position to do) one of the finest full-body bucks that had yet been seen in that part of the country.

I do wish you could have been there to see it; the whole length of the animal put its every fibre into kicking the hindquarters as high and hard as possible, the result being that Corin, already wearied from the strain of the ride, hadn't a prayer of staying on. He flew through the air, somersaulted twice (and fine somersaults they were, too) before mercifully coming to land in a low, prickly ground cover that, for all it broke his fall and saved him splitting his head, seemed hardly a mercy to the prince at the time since it scratched him well all over before he had managed to climb out.

"Corin!" Susan screamed, and turned quite pale, but before she could make to dismount the prince was up and rushing forward, beaming merrily up at his lady queen.

"I'm quite all right, you see!" he laughed. "It would be more than a horse and a bit of pricker-bush that did me in!"

Susan, for all her relief, could not quite manage a smile. Instead she murmured that it did her heart good to see him well, then rounded on Rabadash with a dangerous spark in her eye.

"That horse," she began, and had been about to say that Rabadash should have well known that the animal was too much for such a small boy to handle (it being beyond the grace of Susan's personality to outright accuse the prince of deliberately putting Corin on a horse beyond his abilities) when Rabadash interrupted her smoothly.

"Yes, naturally, Majesty, you are quite right; it shall be made an end of here and now."

Susan drew back, astonished.

"I asked for no such thing," she stammered at length, and the prince of Calormen nodded solemnly.

"As is to be expected, of such a gentle lady," he agreed. "However I see in your concern for the boy that the animal has committed a crime against both Archenland and Narnia, as well as the Empire of my own father (may-he-live-forever) in defying the wishes of a Royal rider. Therefore it cannot be permitted to live."

Susan, still struggling to follow his reasoning (if such a generous word may be applied to such a bit of foolishness) managed to say that she was perhaps dazed from the heat of the sun, but for all that she tried, could not understand how the prince felt death a fitting punishment for an animal that had done no more or less than throw a rider unprepared to handle it.

"It has defied its purpose," Rabadash declared. "Worse than that, it has dared to throw a prince; such an act, O Queen, you must surely see is tantamount to the crime of treason."

"But he is only a beast!" Susan was appalled. "He has not the understanding that would permit him to see this; he cannot be expected to know a prince from a beggar's brat! Surely, Highness, you must see that-"

"I must see nothing," Rabadash snarled, and for just a moment his whole face twisted in an expression that caused Susan to shrink back, "that I do not wish to see." Then he turned to face the assembled company, and raised his voice that they might all hear him.

"No beast that defies its master may be permitted to live," he decreed, and made the smallest of gestures that seemed understood by at least one outrider, who advanced on the horse and, with one motion, drove his spear through the riderless animal's throat.

Blood splashed forth, staining the dappled coat and proclaiming the end of a life even before the horse had hit the ground. The members of the Narnian company sat in shock, staring, as the Calormene courtiers looked generally disinterested in the whole mess, and all outriders looked to their prince to see what his next wish might be.

"Come," Rabadash invited smoothly, turning to face an ashen, shaken Susan. "Let us adjourn once more to my palace; there is a banquet prepared for us that I am certain will delight you well."

"I-" Susan was unable to tear her eyes from the body of the dying horse. Her hands shook, and her own horse danced both in nervous response to the pressure on the reins and the alarming scent of fresh blood. "I- my liege," she swallowed, shaking herself solemn with an effort, "what of the Prince Corin? You have," in tones she hoped desperately did not betray her horror, "deprived him of his mount."

"An outrider will return on foot," Rabadash said dismissively. "The little prince may take his horse." Then he turned his own horse and gestured at the path ahead in a manner that somehow made quite clear he would brook no further delay. "My Queen?"

And Susan, face pale but head held high, gathered the reins and guided her horse forward, in the direction he had indicated. Refusal at this point hardly seemed an option.

As Corin swung up on the vacated horse and fell in between Peridan and Drinian, he, too, was pale and exceptionally silent. The two Narnian lords exchanged troubled glances over the head of the younger boy, and as they all started on their way back to the castle, Drinian nodded at the stiff shoulders of their Queen, who rode ahead.

"Best wait until later to tell her about the mutes," he mumbled, and Peridan, his face also pale and drawn, murmured that he could not have agreed more.

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A.N.: Goodness, for a while there I thought this chapter would never get written! I've had the chapter that follows this one done for ages now, but this, for some reason, just would not come, and of course my Honours thesis and my "actual" work kept getting in the way as well, but today I just couldn't bear it anymore and sat down to basically force it. If it seems a little stilted that's why, but I do hope my finishing this means everything will come slightly easier than it has been lately! And of course what with the next part is already done it won't be much more than a week before I put that up, and hopefully by then I'll have the next one well underway too. See my goals? So big and shiny!

I wanted to take a moment to explain my use of the name Drinian, which most devotees of Lewis's work will know did not appear in HHB, but rather some centuries afterward, during Caspian's time. My reasoning (well, excuse, really) for using it here is that Drinian is most likely the family name, rather than a given name, and so it is entirely possible that an early Drinian travelled with the court from Cair Paravel while his descendant journeyed with Caspian on the Dawn Treader. An alternative explanation is of course that this Drinian became something of a legend for the later ages, and his given name was also given to the son of some (much later) loyal Narnian. Both options are something of a stretch, possibly, but I do like to stick to canon as much as I possibly can!

I'd also like to take the time to offer a most heartfelt thank you to everyone who has taken time to encourage, poke and berate me about just getting on with this. Your work has not been in vain; the fruits of it have just been a trifle slow in manifesting!

Up next: From King to Queen, in which a King is drenched, a Prince is only a little helpful, and the Highest King appears to his appointed Queen.