Hi! Sorry again lovely readers...it's been awhile! I do hope some of you are still around! I've been ridiculously busy, but since yesterday was Christmas I really wanted to make sure I posted at least something, so for those of you still reading, here is your next chapter...two months in the making!
Aslan's Daughter: The answer is...not a whole lot, but he might be getting better at it...maybe...possibly...Hope you're still around!
23rd. of Greenroof, 1012—Third-day
The sound of quiet, cautious footsteps roused Peridan from the uneasy doze he had fallen into with his back against the stone wall of the small cell. He had been left alone, save for the wizened old man who brought him food and water at infrequent intervals and, over the indeterminate number of days he had been wherever it was that he found himself, he had learned to recognise the old man's shuffling, rheumatic footsteps. Whoever was approaching now was not the old man. These footsteps were lighter, only audible, he supposed, because of the bare, echoing stone that comprised the corridor beyond his cell, and they were approaching far more quickly.
He shifted back, trying to blend into the shadows as much as possible in the dim light of the single, smoking torch on the wall, and gritted his teeth in annoyance as the chains that bound his wrists clinked—the sound was nearly deafening in the near silence.
The footsteps paused and he strained his ears against the silence, trying to hear the sound of a weapon being drawn, or the clink of a tray. Maybe the old servant had been replaced by someone younger and lighter of foot. Or maybe, he thought with a shudder that had nothing to do with the perpetually chill air of the dungeon, maybe that Tarkaan has finally come to kill me.
Another long moment passed, the only sound Peridan could hear was the rushing of the blood in his veins and the terrified thudding of his heartbeats, and then the footsteps resumed, somehow seeming more cautious. Another long moment passed, with Peridan nearly holding his breath, until a long, frightening looking shadow crossed through the torchlight and crawled across the floor. Looking cautiously in the direction of what had cast the shadow Peridan could just make out a tall, thin figure moving forward cautiously, head turned to look back at the corridor they had just emerged from.
He shrank further back into the shadows and did not even dare to breathe as the figure took another step forward and looked in his direction. It was King Edmund, but seemingly a different King Edmund than the one he had followed through the marketplace and confronted outside the Tarkaan's palace on the night of his capture. He looked exhausted and uneasy, but the familiar and accustomed sharp intelligence and cunning was back in his expression and he moved cautiously, as if aware of every sound and prepared to fight if necessary. This was the King Edmund Peridan had become used to on the southern voyage aboard The Bolt of Tash but, remembering what he had overheard in the marketplace, he stayed silent, half hoping that he would remain unseen.
"Peridan?" the King was speaking in a low whisper, but his voice held the familiar Northern accent, rather than the lilting pronunciation of the Calormene as it had in the street.
That doesn't mean it isn't a trick, Peridan reminded himself, still hesitating as he saw King Edmund move to the other side of the corridor and begin glancing inside the empty row of cells there.
"Peridan?" he called again, slightly louder and far more urgently. "Are you here?"
Even if it is…He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but he was certain that it had been long enough that this might be his one chance at escape. If it is a trick surely the worst they intend is to kill me.
"Here!" His own voice surprised him by coming out as a hoarse, barely audible whisper, but King Edmund seemed to have heard him anyway and he turned quickly, half stumbling as if his foot had caught on an uneven slab of the stone that formed the floor.
"Peridan?" A moment later King Edmund had dropped to his knees in front of the barred cell door and was leaning over the lock, cursing as he seemed to be trying to force the unyielding mechanism open with the end of a cloak pin.
His hands were shaking, Peridan noticed curiously, and that seemed nearly as odd as his previous behaviour in the street. There was something that was unidentifiably strange about him still, and Peridan kept his distance from the barred door and watched with a mounting sense of fear as the lock at last gave way and the cell door swung inward with a faint creak.
The king stepped into the cell, looking quickly over his shoulder as if to check that the sound of the unoiled hinges had not drawn attention, and crossed the narrow room to kneel next to Peridan. "Are you alright?" he asked urgently as he began struggling with the lock that held the manacles on Peridan's wrists. "
"I—" Am I? It seemed a strange question, and one that Peridan realised he had not considered very much, even in the days that he must have been kept prisoner here. It hadn't really mattered if he was alright or not—there was nothing he could do in any event. Now he was rather surprised to find that he was alright. He was frightened, he doubted that he would ever not be frightened, but the fear was not incapacitating as it had once been and his thoughts were far more orderly and focused than he had expected them to be.
King Edmund had been captured in an alleyway, someone who seemed to be King Edmund at a distance but had none of his mannerisms or cunning had led him into a trap and caused his capture, and now, here was King Edmund again, more weary, shaky, and looking as though he might collapse at any moment, spending what seemed to be all his remaining energy on freeing him. The only conclusion he could reach sensibly was that the man who he had followed and confronted had not been King Edmund—as impossible as it seemed it was the only circumstance that could account for his bizarre behaviour.
"I'm alright, I haven't seen anyone except an old servant who brought me food. I'm not sure how long I've been here either." It surprised him too how little the loss of time disturbed him. He had been uneasy and restless, that was true, but it did not seem the calamity it once would have.
The corner of King Edmund's mouth twitched into a slight smile that somehow lacked any semblance of humour. "I'm not the best person to ask about time either," he said quietly, the half-smile turning to a grimace as the lock on the chains creaked and fell open. He stood quickly, glanced back over his shoulder, and offered Peridan a still unsteady hand to pull him to his feet.
Peridan considered for a moment, caution still warning against absolute trust, and then accepted the King's help.
His legs were unsteady beneath him and the room spun slightly, reminding him that it must have been many hours, perhaps even a day, since the old servant had brought him his food, but even through the lightheaded daze he noticed that King Edmund was swaying on his feet as if the effort of picking the locks and getting Peridan on his feet had taken the last of his strength.
"My lord? Are you well?" The words felt strange to Peridan, especially after the days he had spent considering the man standing next to him to be a traitor to the land he so desperately wanted to call home, but it would have seemed stranger to him not to show his accustomed deference to the king who had come to his rescue.
King Edmund leaned heavily against the wall of the cell and nodded. "You need to get out of here. Peter's in the cellar, down the corridor, turn left, down the stairs, then to the right. He's probably in a bad mood." The smile was genuine this time, as if the younger king found the prospect of his brother in a bad mood amusing enough to counteract whatever strange, dark mood seemed to hang over him.
Peridan nodded and stepped out of the cell, still a trifle unsteadily and peered down the dimly lit hallway that the King had indicated. He had taken two steps to his right, eager to be out of the grim, stone chamber lined with cells, before he realised that King Edmund was not following him. Looking back, he saw the younger man still leaning against the wall of the cell, one hand pressed to his head and the other gripping the bars so hard that Peridan found himself surprised that the iron was not bending beneath his fingers.
"Your majesty?"
"Go on, I have business here." His voice was strained, as if he was speaking through gritted teeth, and Peridan saw a thin stream of blood start to drip from his nose. He took a step back towards him, confusion and concern warring with the sense of dread that warned him to run—to get out before it was too late.
"King Edmund, I—" Peridan wasn't entirely sure what he had been about to say, and the words, whatever they had been, were cut short as King Edmund raised his head, blood dripping from his nose, and gave him a look of absolute determined fury.
"Get. Out." From those two, quiet, strained words Peridan sensed that there would have been no room for argument or defiance even if he had been the type of man accustomed to arguing with or defying Kings. In a single moment King Edmund seemed to shift from a young man, exhausted, shaking and bleeding, to a King whose words and orders had the force to command countries and to move the mountains themselves.
Peridan turned and ran, stumbling slightly over the uneven stones, half-blind in the dim light and the sudden rush of ashamed tears that flooded his sight. It was the second time that he had run, obeying his King but leaving him alone, in danger and obviously unwell. A stronger man would have stayed both times, of that Peridan was sure. A man worthy of serving the four rulers of Narnia would have stood at his king's side in the dark alleyway and fought the guards who sought to capture him. A brave man would have stayed in the dungeon beneath the Tarkaan's palace and demanded to know the truth of King Edmund's strange actions rather than running to follow the orders of someone who looked ready to fall at any moment and leaving him behind in a place where he would surely be quickly surrounded by enemies.
But Peridan had always acknowledged that he was not brave and, while there might have been a time, months ago when he had first stepped through the gates of Cair Paravel, when he had thought himself worthy of the place he was to be given he no longer had any illusions regarding his own worth.
He turned to the left, stumbling again, and nearly choking with the effort of holding back the tears that were swimming across his vision. Everything he had tried to accomplish, the name he had so painstakingly constructed for himself, the years of careful plans, of deference to supercilious and despicable nobility, and this was what it had led to—utter and abject failure.
The stairs led down into darkness when he reached them, and he was forced to stop and lean against the wall, his breath coming in harsh rasping pants, before going on—far more slowly and cautiously, feeling his way along the wall and testing every step before he put his weight on it. At the bottom of the stairs he turned right, feeling his way along a sloping stone wall that led into utter blackness before him, and shuddered.
He had always hated the dark and hated it more now with the weight of his failure pressing down on him like an iron weight. He tried to tell himself that there had been no choice—he had been ordered by his King to go—but surely…
Surely I could have stayed. I could have helped him. He stopped, alone in the dark, one hand pressed against the wall and the other held out in front of him so that he would not run straight into a wall or door at the end of the corridor. He stood for a moment, considering the impossibly daunting possibility of going back, of defying orders and returning to aid King Edmund in whatever, likely insignificant and largely useless way he could. Before he could quite gather the courage to try it, he realised that he could see a faint glow at the end of the corridor, a vaguely flickering light that reminded him of the torch that had lit the corridor leading into the Tarkaan's dungeons.
He froze, barely breathing, and pressed his back against the wall. His heartbeat thudded deafeningly in his ears, leaving him certain that whoever it was approaching in the hallway must be able to hear the echo of it, reverberating through the dark. His hands were trembling badly and he clenched them into fists at his sides, wishing—for the first time, he realised—that he had a weapon.
The light drew closer, wavering and throwing grotesquely stretched and distorted shadows dancing on the walls. The shadows were enough to how him that there were two people approaching, but were so twisted in shape that it was impossible to tell who they were. Or of they are even human, he thought with a shudder. In Narnia it might have been reassuring to think of the shadows not being human, but in Tashbaan the only rumours of inhuman figures were tales of demons and the tortured souls of the damned.
Don't be a fool, he told himself sternly. Such tales were fanciful nonsense, spun the priests and politicians to frighten peasants into compliance lest demons should descend upon them and their lands.
However certain his rational mind was that the approaching figures must be nothing more sinister than guards the reassurance did nothing to steady the terrified racing of his heartbeat as the shadows and their accompanying light grew steadily closer.
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The walls of the corridor were smooth, with no crevices or alcoves that he might slip into unseen and he had passed no doors or branching passageways since he had descended the stairs. I could run, try to make it back up the stairs, but…but then what? He tried desperately to think, to remember what had been in the corridor at the top of the stairs. Were there doors? Other corridors? But his mind was blank, the image of the previous corridor blotted out by the looming, lumbering, and steadily growing shadows.
He braced himself for the shouts as the guards saw him, gritted his teeth, waiting for rough hands to seize him and throw him to the ground, perhaps for the rasp of steel as weapons were drawn—
"Peridan?"
He hadn't realised he had closed his eyes, but now the flew open and he blinked, vaguely seeing the outline of two dark shapes behind the flickering aura of the torch. He recognised the voice, incongruous in the surroundings, although he realised belatedly that he should have expected no one else.
High King Peter stood before him in the narrow corridor, holding the torch in his left hand and the hilt of his sword clenched in his right hand. A nervous looking Dwarf with a scruffy red beard and hair stood a step or two behind him, both hands wrapped in strands of his beard as he tugged at it and stared up at Peridan suspiciously. Peridan thought he recognised him vaguely as a servant of King Edmund's, though he couldn't quite recall the fellow's name.
"Y-your majesty!" Peridan found himself stammering like a fool, the terror of the past moments fading into an immense relief and then into a feeling of complete and abject shame. His knees buckled and he found himself quite suddenly, and without quite meaning to, kneeling before the king, his eyes suddenly burning as he stared at the featureless floor of the corridor. "Your—your brother, he—"
There was a rasp of steel as the High King sheathed his sword and grasped Peridan's shoulder. "Where is he?" Peridan felt the king's fingers tighten around his shoulder and would not have been surprised to find himself being shaken. The High King, however, seemed to have more self-control than most other nobles Peridan had encountered under much less trying circumstances.
"I don't—" the words caught in his throat, nearly choking him, and he shook his head helplessly. "He sent me to find you. He said he had business with—" Now that he thought about it King Edmund hadn't actually told him what his business was. The Tarkaan was the most likely option, but Peridan found he was no longer certain what the motive for any business King Edmund might have with Tarkaan Obridesh was.
King Peter did shake him then, not roughly, but enough to pull him back from his own racing thoughts. "I don't care if he has business with the Tisroc, may his house be forever cursed!" Peridan was still staring at the floor, not daring to look up and see the king's expression, but he could hear the utter fury in his voice. "Where the devil is he?"
Peridan winced at the volume of his voice as the words echoed off the bare stone of the corridor wall and he thought he heard the Dwarf sigh loudly, as if frustrated by the display of anger. Peridan hunched his shoulders, half expecting the question to be followed by a blow, but after a moment the hand on his shoulder withdrew and he heard the High King sigh.
"No need to hang your head and stare at the floor Peridan," he said sharply, though his tone was not entirely unkind. "If my brother had his mind set to something I doubt there was anything you could have done to stop him. For Aslan's sake get off the floor." There was a sharp annoyance in his tone, but Peridan had a strange sense that it was not directed at him, and he stood, a little shakily, though he kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
The scuffed toes of worn leather boots entered his line of sight and he resisted the urge to shrink back against the wall as Brickle shuffled past the High King in his direction and held up a waterskin in one grubby hand. Peridan took it, feeling rather dazed, and gave the fellow a quick nod of thanks.
"Are you hurt?" King Peter asked sharply, and Peridan realised he must have noticed the shakiness of his hands as he took the water.
"No, your majesty," Peridan found himself mumbling, still unable—unwilling, he corrected himself with a vague feeling of disgust—to look up from the ground. He heard the king sigh and heard his footsteps recede slightly, then return, as if he were pacing restlessly in the narrow space.
"How was he?" he asked at last, his voice quiet and tense. Peridan didn't need to ask who he was talking about—the High King's concern for his family was famous in the court of Archenland.
"He was—" Peridan thought back briefly to the tense, drawn expression on King Edmund's face, the tremors that had made his hands clumsy as he picked the lock to the cell, and the blood that had started to trickle from his nose before he ordered Peridan to leave. "He did not seem well, your majesty, but he seemed to be himself. We were separated, days ago when we first arrived. I looked for him, and found him in the market, but he did not seem to be himself then. He was—" he paused, gritted his teeth, and went on, willing his voice to remain steady and his eyes to stay fixed on the stone floor. "He was talking to the Tarkaan Obridesh—"
"Yes, yes," the High King sounded impatient. "Sallowpad told me all about that, and your capture."
For the first time Peridan raised his eyes to focus on the King's face and he felt his jaw drop in amazement. He had not seen him clearly before when he had been half-blinded by the torchlight, only enough to recognise him, but now he saw clearly what he had missed before.
He looked tired, and there was a short beard on his face that had not been there the last time Peridan had seen him, but that was not the shocking part of his appearance. Someone had quite obviously, and quite recently, punched him in the face. One eye was already swelling badly and Peridan could see a bruise forming along his right cheekbone.
King Peter actually smiled at Peridan's expression, and ran his fingers cautiously across his swelling face. "My brother," he said in a quiet, measured tone that Peridan was certain held a great deal of affectionate fury, "Decided it would be a good idea to knock me down and run away. Taking that into account I am inclined to agree with you that he is in his right mind."
Peridan stared at him, aware that it wasn't strictly polite to do so, but too shocked that anyone would dare to strike the High King of Narnia, much less that his own brother would do so, to find himself capable of doing anything else. King Peter sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He had given the torch to the Dwarf, and Peridan saw that his free hand was clenched around the hilt of his sword as if in preparation for some desperate and sudden battle.
"Where is he?" he asked again, his voice still practically vibrating with fury, and Peridan felt a flash of concern for King Edmund. If his brother found him the outcome would certainly not be a pleasant one for him—not after he had struck his High King, openly defied his wishes and gone off on his own.
The High King seemed realise what Peridan must be thinking and he laughed quietly, though the sound held more exasperation than humour. "I'm not going to kill him, if that's what you're worried about, Peridan. However ill-disposed I may be towards him at present, I am not about to resort to fratricide." The words were light, but his voice still held anger and his eyes were cold and hard, like chips of blue ice.
Peridan shivered and looked away. "I don't know where he is," he said quietly, very aware that it was the absolute truth, but that even the truth might not appease a furious king. "He came to the dungeon where they were keeping me. The last time I saw him he was standing in my cell. He ordered me to leave, but I doubt he's still there. He said he had business." But what kind of business? Peridan wondered desperately. Was it the kind that boded ill for Narnia, or that only boded ill for King Edmund himself?
The High King shook his head and growled something inaudible under his breath before turning to the Dwarf at his side and taking the torch back from him with quick, impatient movements. "Brickle, have you a second torch?"
Brickle, so that was the fellow's name. Peridan remembered seeing him skulking behind King Edmund's chair at the one feast the King had bothered to attend since Peridan had been at Cair Paravel, and a rather tipsy Faun had informed Peridan that the fellow was a feared and respected spy-master. At the time Peridan had believed him without question, too awed by the splendour and bustle of Cair Paravel to question anything the Narnians told him. Now that he saw the fellow more clearly he found it hard to believe that Brickle would be calm and collected enough to be a spy-master of any type—currently he seemed to be in the process of systematically pulling his beard out by the roots. Perhaps the Faun had meant that King Edmund was a respected and feared spy-master but had been rather too deep in his cups to make that clear.
Brickle shook his head glumly in response to the king's question and mumbled something under his breath.
"What was that?" King Peter demanded sharply, and Peridan found himself shifted back a few inches until his back was pressed against the wall. The king was clearly on the verge of losing his temper and the last thing Peridan wanted was to be in his line of sight when he did.
Brickle shuffled his filthy boots. "This is my second torch," he muttered, sounding distinctly cross himself. "Your royal brother broke my first torch when he knocked us both down."
Now that Peridan looked more closely he could see that the Dwarf had a black eye to match the High King's beneath the grime that caked his cheeks. How? Peridan wondered, dumbfounded. The King Edmund he had seen in the dungeon had not seemed capable of doing much more than staying on his feet, let alone knocking down his brother and a very solid looking, if somewhat nervous, Dwarf.
"Good enough," King Peter said shortly as he turned on his heel and brushed past both Brickle and Peridan on his way to the stairs. "Which way at the top?" he called over his shoulder, sword already half drawn from its sheath.
"R-right?" He hadn't precisely meant it as a question and the High King obviously took it as a statement of absolute certainty and was halfway up the stairs before Peridan had time to move.
Brickle grumbled something half under his breath and stumped up the stairs after him, holding the torch aloft with one hand and tugging on his beard with the other. "He's always like this," he mumbled over his shoulder, presumably in Peridan's direction.
Peridan stared after them as the light cast by the torch began disappearing up the narrow stairway. He couldn't quite shake the feeling that he had made a terrible mistake. Whatever the High King had said about his brother being in his right mind, and whether he was in his right mind or not, he couldn't help thinking that he had been very wrong to leave King Edmund alone.
When he had first arrived at Cair Paravel he had sworn fealty to King Edmund, just as he had to the High King and both the queens. He knew what that meant, knew that he had a duty to obey his king's orders, but surely that oath wasn't meant to contradict his own sense of what was right. He realised with a shock that he had never before considered what he ought to do when oaths contradicted his own morality. He had never questioned—he had simply followed orders, went where he was told, done as instructed—then again, he had cared before.
However enigmatic Narnia's rulers proved to be, however strange King Edmund's actions and frightening the High King's actions were, he cared what happened to them. It was frightening, uncomfortable, but undeniably true. After all, King Edmund had come back for him, the High King had come back for him. They had both been free of the Tarkaan, they could have left Tashbaan and never spared him a second thought, but they had not. They had valued him enough to risk their own safety for his freedom and in another moment he had made up his mind as he hurried to catch up with the High King.
Oaths be damned, he thought, surprised at his own vehemence. Next time I will not run. Next time, I will stand and fight. There was no longer any question in his mind that there would be a next time, if the Narnian kings were willing to tolerate his presence then there was no doubt that they would eventually run into trouble.
Resolutions to some storylines are coming soon to a laptop near me...
Please read and review and I will try to be much better about updating so that I don't leave all of you waiting for MONTHS! Sorry about that!
Cheers,
A