A/N: Hi again. Thank you for the reviews, likes and favourites! It's great to know that people are reviewing and enjoying the story. Unfortunately I can't reply individually to anonymous reviews, but in answer to one question, yes I will be continuing and completing this story. So on with the story.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Narnia. Just an unhealthy obsession!
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Previously in Return through the Wardrobe!
"Watch your tongue General" Edmund barked. "We are your Monarchs as you well know!"
Oreius let out a bitter laugh.
"Would that it were so!" he declared. "My Kings and Queens are missing and presumed dead these five years!"
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We are your Monarchs …
Oreius huddled in the darkened corner. The words had rattled him, struck him to his very core. How dare these humans pretend to be his beloved Kings and Queens? How could they mock him so?
We are your Monarchs …
His Kings and Queens were gone these five years. Gone after hunting the White Stag, the stag who would grant wishes to whoever had caught him. What had they wished? Had they wished to return to their own land of Spare Oom?
We are your Monarchs …
As if he would believe the lies of these human scum. His Monarchs had left Narnia and would never return. He had given up all hope of that long ago. The words only served to enrage him.
We are your Monarchs …
They were liars. Four liars were before him.
His life in numbers …
Five years since the Kings and Queens had left Narnia. He had not believed as others did, that they had used their wish to leave Narnia. Had abandoned Narnia. He had held onto hope. But hope can only keep you going for so long …
One year of attempting to help with the rule of Narnia in their absence.
One year – all that it took for the invading forces to utterly bring all of Narnia under its rule.
Three years under the yoke of their oppressive regime.
Two years since he was captured.
One year since he had given up all hope.
And four …. Four deceivers in front of him who wished to mock him … to bring him false hope …
"Liars!" he hissed.
"Enough Oreius!" Peter commanded sternly.
He was about to say more when Susan held up her hand. Ever the Gentle Queen, she had been listening and watching. Searching for clues as to what was happening. And she realised, fully realised what the others were still struggling to admit to themselves.
This was no game, no trick. Something was wrong – terribly wrong.
"Oreius" she said gently. "If you move a little closer, you will see that it is us, that we speak the truth!"
"Move?" replied Oreius with a bitter laugh. "I would if I could!"
Lucy who was nearest to Oreius and who had been monitoring him closely then saw what the others in the darkness of the cell could not.
"Oreius" she gasped her eyes filling with tears. "Your legs, they are broken!"
Oreius peered through the darkness at the figure who had spoken. That voice … it was familiar. Could it be? His eye was drawn by a movement. The figure was holding out something in her hand.
"Here Oreius" she said softly.
As Oreius looked at what she held, his breath caught in his throat. She held a bottle. When the Pevensies had woken in the dungeon, all of their weapons had been removed, but their captors must not have though the bottle worth taking.
Oreius stretched out his hand towards the bottle, the little crystal bottle, towards hope.
Oreius had been cured by Queen Lucy's cordial before, when he had been gravely injured during a battle with the Northern giants. Unstopping the bottle, he smelled that smell once more; the smell of everything good and wholesome. He tipped the bottle and let one precious drop fall into his mouth.
Gently as a mother cradling her baby the cordial set to work. Repairing all of the damage that had been done to the General; the broken legs, every cut and bruise vanished under the cordial's loving care.
With a gasp that was nearly a sob General Oreius struggled to his knees, his head bent to his Monarchs.
"I, Oreius do hereby swear to serve, obey and protect Your Majesties.
I swear I shall serve with all that I have and all that I am.
With my mind, my body and my very soul I swear to uphold this oath.
This I swear in this world and the next, until the end of time."
The Kings and Queens looked at their General as he completed his oath, worried smiles on their faces.
"Oreius" Started Lucy. "Are you alr …"
But Edmund was too distraught to wait, he cut across his sister.
"Oreius you said that it has been five years! Where is she? Is she safe? Has she ha …"
"Hush." Oreius had opened his mouth to answer his King but hearing footsteps approach he held up his hand for silence.
"Tell them nothing My Lieges." He whispered urgently. "Do not tell them who you are. Your very lives will be in grave danger if you do!"
The door opened and two soldiers in vaguely familiar uniforms entered.
"You and You" ordered the foremost guard pointing as the other bent to undo Peter and Edmund's shackles from the wall, leaving their wrists and ankles chained. "Come with us."
"Where to?" asked Edmund as he and Peter stood.
"Silence Archenlandish scum!" Roared the guard and dealt Edmund a rough blow to his face, so hard that he nearly staggered to the floor. He heard Susan and Lucy stifle cries of concern.
Edmund however kept his feet, years of training as a warrior helping him to keep his balance, even shackled as he was. He glared at the guard, letting his lip bleed, not wanting to give the guard the satisfaction of trying to wipe the blood away.
The guard looked back at Edmund; his fist raised to strike again. But something in the King's face stopped him from striking again, something dangerous. He lowered his fist and without another word, he and his companion gave Peter and Edmund rough shoves out of the cell. Four more soldiers were waiting in the corridor to escort them. They fell into formation in front and behind Peter and Edmund as they went up the steps from the cellar.
Edmund caught his brother's eye and grinned. Peter knew the meaning of that grin. If their captors believed they were Archenlanders, who were they to disagree?
As they made their way through Cair Paravel, Peter and Edmund's hearts broke a little more with every step that they took. Their castle was in ruins!
Peter caught Edmund's eye and nodded towards the now ruined wall of the Throne room as they passed by. Their thrones now buried in the rubble of the wall.
"Catapults" he mouthed.
Edmund nodded; his face grim. What had happened here?
As they made their way through the castle, away from the seaward side, the castle became progressively more whole, until they were walking through rooms and halls that were completely undamaged. Cair Paravel had been attacked from the sea. But what land had a navy capable of this? Edmund frowned, the answer was at the back of his mind, barley eluding him. He looked again at the soldiers surrounding him. He knew those uniforms!
Eventually, they were herded into what had been their ballroom. As they made their way through the room, Peter and Edmund took note of the flags and shields now adorning the walls of the room.
"Telmarines!" Edmund hissed.
Peter nodded a bleak look on his face as he too recognised the standards.
The room was full of courtiers, many standing in small groups throughout the room chatting to each other, all but ignoring Peter and Edmund's presence. Along the wall were ten large ornate chairs, on these sat ten men: Lords of Telmar. But it was to the front of the room that Edmund and Peter's attention was drawn.
There on a dais, seated on a throne which dwarfed the Lords' chairs, sat what could only be the King of Telmar. The King watched them with an indecipherable expression as they approached. He was a heavy-set man in his mid-fifties, wearing Telmarine armour and a heavy crown. His face was sallow but handsome in a brutish way. Edmund glanced at Peter, reading the same thought in his brother's eyes. This was a dangerous man.
They stood before the Telmarine King; he stared at them for some time without speaking; trying to take their measure. His eyes finally flicked to the guards behind them.
"Kneel before the King of Narnia. King Caspian, first of his name!" one of the guards commanded and with that they struck Peter and Edmund's knees with their spears from behind, forcing them to kneel. Peter and Edmund bit back hisses of pain as they fell.
"I see no Narnian King before me!" Peter declared; his voice deceptively calm.
The throne room, awash with gossip and laughter just moments before, fell silent, waiting to see what King Caspian's reaction would be.
After a heavy pause, King Caspian threw his head back and laughed.
"I am King of Narnia, not a 'Narnian King'" he guffawed. "Every day that I wake I thank the Gods that I am not Narnian. That I am not a demon in animal's form or a misshapen travesty of a beast."
Edmund's eyes flashed fire.
"Those beasts and demons as you call them are the rightful inhabitants of Narnia!" he declared. "By what right do you take their land from them?"
King Caspian laughed again. But there was no humour in the laugh.
"What right?" he asked smiling coldly. "By the same right that Telmar has taken everything that it owns, by the right of conquest!"
At this the courtiers and soldiers in the throne room broke out into thunderous applause and cheers.
King Caspian held up his hand to silence them, the smile fading from his face to be replaced by a dangerous look.
"And it is by conquest that we shall soon subjugate your lands, Archenlanders!" he hissed.
"Now, you are not here to ask questions, but to answer them.
What are your names?"
Peter and Edmund straightened and glared at the King, their mouths firmly closed, their looks steely.
"How did you get past our blockades on the border?
Are there others with you?
Does King Lune know that you are here?
What is your mission in Narnia?"
As Peter and Edmund refused to so much as flinch in the face of the King's increasingly frustrated and angry questions, King Caspian finally stopped.
"Vey well" he sighed. "We shall see if you are more amenable to answering questions when you have been in the dungeons for a few days." He glanced at the soldiers.
"Take them away."
As Peter and Edmund were about to leave the room, the guards roughly dragging them, when King Caspian called after them.
"We shall see if the beautiful wenches that you had with you can be more amenable to questioning" he shouted with a leer. "I certainly shall enjoy questioning them!"
With twin growls of rage, Peter and Edmund wrenched themselves free of the soldiers holding them. Even with shackled legs they managed to make it half the length of the throne room, toward the now frightened-looking King, before the guards recovered and knocked them both on the heads rendering them unconscious.
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"Oreius!"
Edmund struggled back to consciousness to find himself shackled to the wall of the dungeon once more, Peter sitting near him.
"Oreius" Peter was saying to the clearly distraught Centaur General. "You need to calm down!"
"I … I …" Oreius stammered, gasping for breath. "I let them take My Queens. I could not stop them!"
Edmund's face paled, as, looking around the room he saw that Susan and Lucy were indeed gone.
"We will get them back Oreius" Peter promised.
Edmund nodded. He was worried about his sisters of course. But Susan and Lucy were two of the most capable women he knew. They would be alright. They had to be! But he had another question for the centaur. One which had been haunting him since he had finally realised that five years had indeed passed while they had been in the Spare Room. One which he had tried to ask before, but he kept getting interrupted.
"Oreius" he said urgently, causing the centaur to jerk his head towards him. "Where is Avaline?"
Oreius stared at Edmund, his face devastated.
"General!" Edmund barked.
"Where is Avaline,
where is my wife?
And the baby?
Where is my family?