Hi again. Thanks so much to those who have read and who have taken the time to review and follow and favourite. It's really encouraging.

Thanks to Hristonostore who has given me an idea which I'll begin to explore in this chapter. AS I said to him / her I'm very suggestible so if you have any ideas feel free to share.

I realise everything's a bit angsty at the moment (I love angst - I get bored when everyone's happy - not sure what that says about me) but things will get better for our favourite siblings - promise! (Just can't say how quickly! :)

What happened ...

But what had happened to Susan and Lucy?

Shortly after Peter and Edmund were taken, more guards had appeared and started to drag the struggling Queens from the cell.

They ignored the furious struggles and curses of Oreius, who thrashed futilely in his bonds trying to reach the soldiers so that he could help his Queens.

"If you harm so much as a hair on their heads" he growled. "I will make you regret ever being born."

One of the guards strode over to Oreius until he stood just millimetres out of reach of the raging centaur.

"Your legs seem to have recovered demon." He sneered thrusting the butt of his sword into Oreius's chest, causing him to stagger. "We'll have to see what we can do about that."

Oreius stood his ground, glaring at the guard as if provoking him to do his worst.

"No!"

It was Susan. She looked at the Centaur, begging him silently with her eyes to stand down, to not provoke the wrath of the guards further.

"We will come," she told the guard. "Just leave him be!"

With one more glare at the Centaur, the soldier joined his comrades.

As they were dragged, still in chains, out of the room, Susan looked back at Oreius, he was staring after her, eyes clouded with pain.

But he looked once again the Oreius she had known … the Oreius from before she went into that cursed wardrobe … the Oreius who wasn't part of this nightmare world … who she had once thought might have been more than just a General to her … more than a friend …

As they mounted the steps and entered the ground floor of Cair Paravel, Susan's mind was torn from her reflections by a gasp from her sister. Susan turned to Lucy whose face had turned deathly white.

"Lucy?"

When Lucy didn't answer Susan followed her sister's gaze.

Ruins … it was all in ruins!

With a heartfelt cry Lucy collapsed to her knees between the two guards who held her, tears springing to her eyes. Susan stared at her sister, the realisation of what lay around her coming crashing in around her also.

Cair Paravel was in ruins.

Cair Paravel had been attacked.

They were surrounded by foreigners.

The only Narnian in sight, was their General who was in chains.

All their people … the residents of Cair Paravel … their subjects … their friends …

They were likely ….

With a strangled sob Susan fell to the ground beside her sister, throwing her arms around her in shared misery.

With muttered curses the guards dragged them to their feet and forced the sobbing Queens along the hall and towards the landward side of the castle, where the hallways and rooms appeared to be intact. Susan and Lucy fought the whole way. Not with any hope of escape, but they could go quietly, could not mutely accept captivity by the very men who had in all likelihood slaughtered their people.

However as they approached the stairs, Susan calmed somewhat. She wrenched her arms from her guards, drying her eyes and indicating to Lucy to do the same. There would be time to mourn later … and to fight, with everything they had. But for now, they needed to think, to plan.

"We can walk without your aid" she told the guards with a steely glare. Lucy straightened beside her also glaring at the guards with now dry eyes. The sisters mounted the stairs, surrounded by the guards, and continued along a wide passage until they reached a doorway where the soldiers halted.

They glared at Susan and Lucy and one jerked his head at the door.

"In there" he growled at them, shoving Susan towards the door.

"Be thankful that we were told you were not to be harmed" he continued.

Susan straightened and raised her eyebrow at the soldier, she would not be intimidated by this man.

"We are prisoners here; would you expect us not to fight with everything that we have?" she asked him.

The soldier moved threateningly towards Susan, but she did not move.

"Women are not meant to fight, Archenlandish wench!" he sneered. "Perhaps some time in the Telmarine Court will teach you how to behave like a proper woman."

Susan did not reply, merely glancing at Lucy a triumphant look in her eyes. They now had their first two pieces of information; they had been captured by Telmarines and their captors thought that they were Archenlanders.

The soldiers removed the last of their chains and with another vicious shove, Lucy and Susan were through the door into their room, the door slamming behind them.

"Well," an accented voice came from behind them. "Don't just stand there, staring at the door, come on in My Ladies."

Whirling Susan and Lucy saw the speaker. She was a slender girl in her twenties, dressed in what appeared to be servant's clothing. Thick curly black hair framed a pretty face with deep brown eyes which looked as if they could see right through you. But Susan and Lucy were less concerned with the girl than with the room.

They were standing in one of the guest bedrooms in Cair Paravel, one of the more luxuriously appointed ones which was usually reserved for visiting royalty. Given the soldiers' treatment of them they had expected to be brought to another dungeon. The Telmarines clearly did not know who Susan and Lucy were, but here they were … what could it mean?

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

In the dungeon, Edmund's ears started ringing. He stared at his General.

"Oreius!" he cried hoarsely, beseeching him with his voice and eyes. The centaur stared back at him with a haunted expression.

"Tell me … I have to know" Edmund whispered brokenly.

Even if Oreius told him the worst, he had to know … even though it would kill him …

Oreius swallowed; from the moment that he had realised that they were indeed his Kings and Queens returned to him, the dread of telling King Edmund had been growing in his chest.

"It was about a year after Your Majesties disappeared that Cair Paravel was attacked" he began haltingly.

"They had no warning. The Telmarines, they attacked from the sea. They had waited until I and our army were on the Northern frontier fighting the giants. Cair Paravel was only lightly defended …"

Oreius paused wondering how to word the next sentences. How did you tell such news … how could it be broken gently when there was nothing gentle about it?

"We had suffered heavy losses from our campaign fighting the giants," he continued.

Oreius shuddered as he recalled the day that he and the ragged army had crested the hill before the castle. They had been looking forward to returning home, war worn and weary that they were. More than half their number had been killed in the battles and half of those who remained were wounded and in urgent need of medical attention. They had climbed to the top of the last hill before home and staggered to a halt … and had looked down on the half ruined Cair Paravel; a Telmarine flag snapping defiantly on the flagpole of its highest tower.

"We thought we were coming home" he said brokenly. "We had the dead and injured with us, our force less than half the size it was."

Orieus looked at his kings, his eyes begging them to understand.

"We thought we were coming home" he repeated. "Thought we were safe. We had set no scouts … But the Telmarines had! They were on us before we had even recovered from the shock of seeing Cair Paravel in ruins … in the hands of an enemy."

Oreius shuddered.

"It was a massacre!

We fought as fiercely as we could, but we were outnumbered, the Telmarines had three, perhaps four times our number and we were fighting to protect our wounded as well. The Telmarines showed no mercy!"

"When I saw it was hopeless … that we would all be massacred, I gathered a force of the men who were still able to stand and fight and we punctured a gap in the Telmarine lines and escaped. I remembered the escape tunnels and, when I realised that there would be no way that we could retake the castle, I knew my duty was to seek survivors of the attack."

Here Oreius looked at Edmund.

"To find your wife the Queen, My King."

Edmund held his breath, waiting to hear the worst.

But Oreius continued.

"We reached the caves under the shuddering woods and there they were; most of the court had made it out through the tunnels. Only the guards and soldiers that we had left at the castle were missing, but the rest were there; the gardeners, the kitchen staff, the household staff, Lord Peridan, Tumnus, the Beavers … and Queen Avaline and," here Oreius looked directly into Edmund's anxiously waiting eyes.

"Her Majesty had had the baby, a boy … she named him Randall."

Edmund's eyes filled with tears. He had a son and Ava had given the baby his middle name in remembrance of him. Edmund's heart swelled with pride and happiness.

"I have a son!" he whispered in awe.

Peter reached over from where he was chained and just managing to touch Edmund's shoulder from where he stood gave his brother a congratulatory pat on the back. After a brief smile to his brother Edmund turned to Oreius. Why had the centaur general not told him this at once? Why leave him waiting until now to know that his wife and son were alive and well?

Unless …

"Orieus" he asked hoarsely, his smile withering. "What happened?"

Oreius squared his shoulders as if bracing himself for the news he had yet to tell.

"We fought" he continued.

"All of us, Peridan and the Queen as fiercely as anyone. We fought to stop the Telmarines from slaughtering the rest of the inhabitants of Narnia, gathered as many of them as we could into the caves. After a year we had saved everyone that we could. But we still did not have the numbers to oust the Telmarines.

The Queen, Peridan and I held council and we decided to flee to Archenland, to seek shelter and to plead for the help of King Lune and his army. We thought that with Archenland, we would finally have the numbers to take back Narnia. We had taught the Telmarines to fear the forest and so we had some hope that we could make our way unseen to the Archenlandish border.

We were fools!

The Telmarines had been watching us all along, allowing us to gather all the Narnians in one place, so that they could massacre us all at once … minimum effort for maximum bloodshed.

We were half-way through the pass, I was guarding the rear with about fifty of my soldiers when it happened.

The mountain fell."

Oreius paused looking into the devastated faces of his Kings.

"The Telmarines waited until we were in the middle of the pass. They had rigged something on the slopes above us. Something to start an avalanche."

Oreius who had lowered his gaze to the ground to tell this news, lifted tear filled eyes to his Kings again, his heart wrenching at their pained faces.

"I tried to get everyone back, away from the fall, but … Queen Avaline … she was at the front with Lord Peridan, carrying the Prince. We had wanted to get them into Archenland as soon as possible!

When the dust settled there were barely twenty of us left who had avoided the falling rocks. We were surrounded by Telmarine soldiers and there was no sign of the Queen and the Prince."

Edmund fell to the ground with a heart-rending howl as Oreius finished his story, his heart which had lifted at the news of his wife and son, felt shattered into a million pieces.

Peter, unable to reach far enough to embrace his sobbing brother looked helplessly at Oreius, his heart also plummeting. He had loved his bright, golden, vivacious sister – in – law dearly, especially since she had made Edmund so happy.

"Is there no hope" he asked brokenly.

Oreius stared at his devastated Kings.

"I'm sorry!"

A/N: Hope you enjoyed - please review, let me know what you think. Even one word would do (I'd prefer nice ones but constructive criticism is also welcome)