The sun slipped into the western sky over a world of sizzling stone, and a wilted flower crown slipped over Lucy's eyes. She pushed it back up into place, leaves brittle in the dry heat, and doubled her pace to catch up with Caspian, striding easily over the rough hillocks with his infuriatingly long legs.
They'd camped in another sparse patch of forest last night, much drier than the first, but their traps had still produced a squirrel and another large bird none of them could name, and Lucy had dug up more roots that proved edible when roasted, if a bit tasteless.
Jill had braided the tubers' flowering stems into a chain, her practiced, intelligent fingers working without thinking as she'd asked Lucy for another story.
Even Edmund hadn't argued with this request, so Lucy repeated from memory as best she could the story of Moonwood the Hare, who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel.
"That's not even possible," said Edmund.
"Only if you don't account for magic," said Lucy.
"I think he sounds like a dear," said Jill, and Edmund rolled his eyes.
Jill pressed for more, and Lucy and Caspian took turns reciting whatever they could remember, stories of ancient giants in far off northern lands, of small woodland creatures and their quaint ways, of realms below the earth descending away beyond human knowledge.
Caspian told Deathwater again, and only then did Edmund visibly prick up, undoubtedly catching the similarity between the story and the poisoned pool in the caves.
By the end, Jill offered Lucy her finished flower crown, tiny white lily-like flowers flecking its leafy shape, and Lucy hadn't taken it off since.
Edmund proved an early riser and a great deal more aware of their surroundings than the rest of them, as if he carried a map of the entire arena in his head, and he took the lead as they trekked across the stony wasteland once again toward where he guessed the stone table would be.
"We must be getting close now," he sighed as the burning sun hung heavy on their left.
"We better be," said Caspian, "We'll need to camp again before long, and I haven't seen so much as a shrub since we crossed the river this morning."
"That's why I think we're going the right way," snapped Edmund, as if it should have been obvious.
Caspian shot Lucy a dry look, and eventually Jill said "Tell another story."
Lucy almost argued that she was far too tired and too hot to talk, but then watched as Jill struggled over a gap in the stone, shouldering the backpack now stuffed full of provisions, and thought better of it.
She jogged another few steps to catch up to Caspian, and racked her mind for a simple story she hadn't already told.
"Okay," she sighed. "Once upon a time, a voyaging knight set out from his home to travel the eastern seas. He had many strange adventures, slaying evil beasts and meeting all manner of creatures from distant shores as league by league his ship carried him closer to the world's edge."
"The world is round," muttered Edmund up ahead, but Lucy ignored him.
"At last, he reached a lonely island, and when at sunset he let down his anchor and came on shore, he found a beautiful woman lying like a statue upon a table of stone. An old man soon came out to meet him, a wizard by his look, and the wary knight asked what had happened to the woman. She sleeps under a spell, said the man as one who is grieved, cursed by the man who wished to marry her, but whom she denied in her wisdom for his cold and cruel heart. The knight looked upon the woman with sadness, and asked whether anything could be done to free her."
Caspian glanced back at Lucy, and she hurried again a few steps to catch up.
"The spell can be broken, said the old man, only when a man bearing in his heart true love for my daughter journeys beyond the world's edge, never to return to the land of the living. I would go myself, but I am the caretaker of this island, and cannot abandon my duty to the Lion. The old man expected nothing from this speech, as he had given it many times before; but the knight, loving the woman upon sight, for she seemed too pure and beautiful to be caught in such peril, resolved to continue his journey beyond the world's end."
"Well that's a rubbish exchange," said Edmund, "it's not like he'll ever see her again, what does he get out of it?"
"Nothing," said Lucy. "He disappeared beyond the world's edge never to return, and the woman awoke with her father, knowing nothing of her savior but that he would exchange his life for hers."
"But he never even spoke to her," said Edmund, "How could he love her?"
"Shut up," said Jill, "I think it's beautiful."
"Of course you do, you're thinking of the woman, what about the unlucky chap?"
"It was his choice."
"Well, it was a stupid choice, and I would never make it."
"No fear," said Jill, "no-one would ever expect it of you."
Edmund scoffed. "It sounds like the knights in these stories just need to stop wandering into strange lands and asking questions. That would solve most of their problems."
"Don't you have any sense of adventure?" asked Lucy.
"No, not really, I haven't been particularly partial to the one I've had so far. And don't call yourself an adventurer either, lagging behind like that."
She hurried another few steps and said "I'm doing just fine, I'll have you know, if the members of the party who got a full night's sleep would kindly keep their opinions to themselves."
"What do you want me to do, carry you?"
She shot him a sardonic look, and kept a painfully quick pace next to Caspian, until she caught her district partner's eye.
Caspian faltered, suppressed a grin, and after a long and silent exchange he sighed and slowed down. "Alright, fine."
Lucy giggled and hopped up onto his back, clasping her arms around his neck as he tucked his elbows under her legs and kept walking.
Jill glanced at Edmund.
"What are you looking at me for? I'm not about to lug you across the arena like a sack of potatoes."
She scoffed. "I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole. But you could at least carry the bag for a while."
"No thanks."
She huffed and stormed to the front of the group, punching him in the arm on the way by.
Edmund rubbed his shoulder indignantly, watching her hike the backpack higher as she kept the pace out of spite. "Women."
Caspian chuckled softly.
The rocky ground sloped upward again, and as afternoon dragged on, the tiniest silhouettes of scattered pillars crowned the top of a hill to their left.
A dark shadow which might have been a pine forest crept over the edge of the stone, and they turned to follow, cresting the low rise half an hour later onto the familiar grey plateau they'd first come up into out of the catacombs.
Caspian let Lucy off his back and she stepped around in front of him, the carved slab of the stone table standing monolithic on its dais in the center of flat paving stones, broken pillars scattered at a distance, again giving Lucy the impression of a ruin.
A ruin she didn't like very much.
"They really cleared out," murmured Caspian.
Not a single weapon, pack, or tool lay anywhere on the plateau, or upon the table, a bare altar to the fiery sun, casting its shadow harshly into the east.
Perhaps their quest had not been so fruitful after all.
"I said there wouldn't be anything left," muttered Jill dejectedly.
Edmund strode up to the table, stepping onto the dais and brushing its edge with his hand as he turned to scan the area.
The rest trailed after him, spreading over the stone, and Lucy glanced over a blackened soot-smear where the careers must have kept a fire going, ashes now swept over the whole area in curling wind patterns.
A few yards from the table, Caspian bent to pick something off the ground, and Lucy stepped closer to look.
An empty canteen.
"Guess they forgot something."
Lucy glanced around, and caught another dusty shape much closer to the dark wall of pine forest flanking their north-western side.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a partially unraveled bundle of rope, caked in grey dirt as if it had been trampled into the ground.
"Weird," she muttered.
"Good weird or bad weird?" asked Jill, and Edmund leapt down from the dais to examine a stretch of disheveled stone along the edge of the forest.
He paused and dragged the toe of his boot over a dark patch on the ground, disturbing the dirt and dislodging cracked bits of stone.
"Blood?" asked Caspian, stepping closer to the dark patch.
"Maybe," said Edmund. "Hard to tell."
"These look like drag marks," said Lucy, trailing along a path of debris leading into the eaves of the forest.
"Wait," said Caspian, and she pulled up short. "Maybe don't go in there."
She glanced back at him. "Why not?"
"Caspian's right," said Jill, "I don't like the look of it."
"I've been in there," said Edmund, "It's not very interesting. There's a stream a ways up north."
Lucy glanced into the trees, dark roots tangling over cracked earth and stone, pinpricks of light piercing evergreen branches and etching their sharp quills in the shadows, drag marks stretching through gashed and splintered roots and torn up underbrush, and something glinted a few yards further in.
She ducked under a branch and picked it up.
A shining dagger.
"Okay," said Edmund, "that's new." He ducked after her and glanced from the dagger to the path carved through the forest floor, widening up ahead with branches snapped and hanging at odd angles.
They looked at each other in the shadows.
"Feeling adventurous yet?" asked Lucy.
Edmund clenched his jaw and glanced at the ground again before moving deeper in amongst the trees.
Lucy followed cautiously on his heels.
It darkened only a few paces in, thick trees packed so tightly together that they let in almost no light, but the rut in the ground only became easier to follow, and after about a minute in which Caspian and Jill moved reluctantly after them, it opened suddenly into a gully.
Edmund stopped, Lucy came up to his shoulder, and there, scattered at the bottom of the deep ditch, lay all manner of swords, packs, knives, axes, bottles and pots and camping supplies and rolled up sleeping bags.
Edmund gave a low whistle.
"What—" Lucy could only stare. "How—?"
"Woah," Jill murmured when she reached Lucy's side. "They must have dragged it all in here to hide it."
"Clumsy job," said Edmund, "it's not even buried. Wasn't too hard to find."
"Maybe they were just lazy," said Caspian, eyes gleaming at the unexpected sight of treasure all still intact. Or, mostly intact.
A great deal of the items at the bottom of the gully looked broken or torn or charred, as if someone had attempted to destroy them but gave up halfway, and a strange feeling twinged in Lucy's gut.
Her skin prickled, and she rubbed her arms, glancing around as if she expected a pair of eyes to blink out at them from the shadowy wood.
"Isn't something odd about it?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder to the gouged and broken path through tangled roots, some shattered into splinters. It seemed too… big. Heavy. Obvious. Not like anyone had been careful about hiding the weapons away, especially not while leaving pieces behind like they had.
"What if it's a trap?" asked Jill, just as the same thought came into Lucy's mind.
They looked at each other, Jill's wide brown eyes glinting in the darkness.
"You think the careers are patient enough for that?" asked Edmund, jumping down into the ditch and crunching over metal.
Nothing happened, nothing stirred, and he glanced back up at them.
"They like hunting for the fun of it, they're not gonna sit around doing nothing for days hoping some hapless tribute will think to check if they've left. I mean, maybe Ivy would, the lazy cow, but not the rest of them."
This seemed to convince Caspian, and he dropped down as Edmund turned to draw a sword out of the pile.
Lucy glanced around once more before slipping carefully into the deep rut, like a wound in the earth, and Jill followed even more reluctantly, though clearly neither of them could resist the gleam of real weapons after days of defenseless wandering.
"Maybe someone else got here after the careers left." Lucy turned to survey the trove and grasped a thick sheath of arrows, staring around until she found a bow to match. The perfect tool shone silver as she brushed away the dried dirt and strung it over her shoulder. She didn't sound very convincing by the time she said "It might still be a trap."
"Yeah," said Jill, hesitantly turning a knife over in her hand, "Someone else might be that patient."
"Who?" asked Caspian, buckling a sword belt around his waist.
Edmund picked up a sheath that fit several throwing knives. He kicked a shredded tent and uncovered the silver blades that had fallen out. "What I don't understand is why they left so much. Edith wasn't the only one who could throw, and they only had two bows in this whole stash. Susan's probably still got the other one. You'd think they'd at least take backups."
Caspian eyed the knives as he fitted the clasp through his belt loop. "Could be somebody else drove them off."
"Yeah, but who?"
Lucy ran her fingers along a deep gouge in the side of a thick, splintered root curling down into the gully, and something plastic rustled underfoot when she stepped back.
She bent down, gingerly lifting a mud-caked garment with her thumb and forefinger.
It was a jacket, identical to those they all wore, though you almost couldn't tell from the ripped fabric, hanging limp and nearly shapeless with gaping holes torn into its back.
Something cold plunged into her gut. "Who… or what…?"
Edmund furrowed his brow as he fastened off his sheath and stepped closer to investigate the jacket, but at that very moment, Lucy froze. Every nerve in her body pricked and she dropped the jacket, clutching Edmund's arm on reflex.
He pulled away, eyes flashing up to hers in surprise and confusion, but when he saw her face, he stopped. "What?"
She glanced up into the unnatural twilight of the overhead canopy, pierced by sparse patches of sunset orange, and suddenly it all felt much wilder than it had a moment ago. Softly, she breathed "We're being watched."
Caspian and Jill looked up into the trees, as if they would catch someone peering down at them from the shadows.
"How long has it been quiet?" asked Jill, the slightest tremble creeping into her voice.
They all looked at each other.
The air hung deathly still. Not a single bird or a cricket broke its delicate suffocation.
Caspian opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a massive snap shattered the silence and they all spun to face the north, branches creaking and groaning as something very big moved through the forest.
Shadows bent and swayed just beyond their range of vision, the crunch of wood snapping straight to Lucy's core as her heart skipped a beat.
She stumbled backward, reaching for the earthen wall of the gully, but something slipped underfoot and she landed hard on her tailbone with a squeak.
Edmund looked back.
She scrambled to right herself, boots slipping over a blue scrap of tarp, and then the edge of the material gave way as she yanked it back with her rubber sole to reveal a severed human arm.
Lucy gasped and slammed against the wall, spine digging into the dirt as she stared at the wrinkled, filthy, blood-caked limb, and Edmund froze with ice cold realization just as the trees above the gully snapped, and out from between them slithered the bulk of a massive, dusty, black creature, shuddering out of the darkness.
Caspian bolted.
Lucy's mind stuttered to keep up, kicking the severed arm away and scrambling back against the earth as another crack split the air. She spun to grasp a mass of twisted roots, but not before the horrifying image burned itself into her retinas: rows of gleaming ivory teeth, curling horns, a decrepit face like a horse's rotting corpse, limbs doubling up over its back like a spider and lugging the sluggish weight of its body along the ground, plowing through the undergrowth and splintering roots, the stench of death flooding in with the horrible earth-shaking rattle in its throat, like a plugged drain.
She heaved herself out of the ditch with a burst of strength, skidding on rough bark as her fingernails clawed dirt and blood pounded in her ears, knees shaking as she scrambled to the top and Caspian burst out through the trees ahead of her, out into the speck of daylight at the end of the tunnel, and somewhere in the back of her mind she could only scream dragon.
Edmund leapt up the embankment and Lucy stumbled to follow before she glanced over her shoulder and caught Jill struggling to haul herself over the edge.
Lucy doubled back without thinking, crashing to the ground and hauling Jill up by her shirt, both scrambling to their feet as they regained their balance and pelted after the boys.
Trees creaked and cracked behind them, a blood-curdling shriek erupting in the gully, and Lucy almost tripped before Jill grabbed her arm and they burst out into blazing sunlight.
Flat stone sprawled before them and Lucy glanced wildly around for cover, any crack, any crevice, but the plateau stretched out in a bare open expanse, nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
Caspian slid under the stone table and Edmund leapt over it, spinning around just as a thunderous crash erupted from the edge of the forest with a horrible screaming roar.
Lucy barely felt her boots pounding the uneven stone.
The table wavered before her, but in an instant she knew they would never reach it, the ground shaking behind them with bounding strokes, behemoth form lumbering faster than they could run, and at the last second Lucy glanced back into looming black jaws unhinged to consumer her, white teeth flashing with a roar.
"Lu!" Jill's cry snapped her back to attention just as the girl ripped her hand from Lucy's grasp and shoved her hard to the right, sending her reeling off course as her boot caught in a rut and she lurched off balance.
She slammed to the ground with a sharp cry, rolling and skidding and grappling to regain her bearings just in time to spot Jill splitting off in the other direction, and the monster snaking after her with its bulging, coiling neck.
Lucy wanted to cry out, to shriek after her, but before she could draw so much as a breath into her burning lungs, the monster snapped down on Jill.
The girl's scream cut short with a crunch, and Lucy's ears rang, writhing black flesh tightening overhead as the monster shook its head with a terrible snap of bones, and a cannon boomed.
Lucy's heart stopped.
The world slipped into slow motion, as if she were floating in a nightmare, trapped in a pool of molasses, staring only at the limbs dangling from red jaws, her own ribs pressing painfully into the ridge of an uneven paving stone.
Silver flashed overhead and the monster wheeled with a shriek, something glinting in the fleshy folds of its throat as it convulsed and threw Jill to the ground where she cracked against the stone in a heap.
The haggard obsidian maw turned toward the table, wings unfurling as if they were made of shredded, dusty parchment that hadn't been opened in a hundred years, slashed membrane casting splotchy shadows over Lucy as a rattling hiss escaped its throat.
"Lucy!" shouted Edmund, and she snapped hazily back to her senses, struggling to her feet even as her limbs protested, still wading through molasses, clumsy, slow, the flower crown slipping from her hair onto the stone and crunching underfoot.
She stumbled and ran for the nearest pillar as another knife glanced off scaly hide, but this time the sunken eyes spotted her, and the lumbering giant turned away from its pesky, stinging attacker.
The ground shook and the rattling hiss intensified, building until a wave of heat struck her from behind and she skidded and reeled around the opposite side of a crumbling pillar just as scalding flame burst on either side.
The air turned to ash and she choked on it, roasting alive, squeezing her eyes shut against the heat as she doubled over and buried her face in her sleeves, lungs screaming, skin searing, until the deafening roar shuddered to a rumble and the wave passed.
Lucy squinted through the smoke, stumbling over cracks of liquid fire, burning as if in rivulets of thick gasoline through broken stone.
The earth jolted beneath her feet and she broke into a run again, coughing as she sucked in toxic fumes and turned sharp to the left just as the beast crashed into the pillar behind her.
She lurched and almost lost her footing, adrenaline hammering in her chest, and then all at once she remembered the bow.
Feverishly she unslung it, grasping for an arrow, fingers fumbling to nock it, footsteps jarring her every movement, trying to recall the feeling from her days in training.
Her steps aimed vaguely around the outside of the flat area, passing the stone table on her left just as another pillar cracked behind her and she veered onto the pavers, crumbling stone crashing to the ground where she'd just been, the shiver of it running up her spine.
She whipped around and pulled back the tight bowstring, fingers shaking, and let the bolt shoot up into the cadaverous black mass.
It missed wide to the right.
Another silver flash glanced off its neck, and it jerked with a roar toward the stone table as Lucy leapt out of the way of its lashing tail and pounded toward the standing stones on the far eastern side of the table land.
Another figure bolted in the same direction out of the corner of her vision as the rattling hiss gurgled up behind them, and for a second the memory of the bloodbath assaulted her senses, bolting for this same grey monolith out of Susan's range, and then a firestorm exploded at her back and strong hands grabbed her shoulders as she crashed to her knees behind the pillar.
A boy's chest slammed into her back with a grunt as heat burst around them and Lucy curled in on herself, certain her face would melt off, ground shaking as the thick acrid smell of ash filled the air, liquid fire pooling over the stone and spilling into the cracks.
She took a breath and dry heaved in the form of a rasping cough that raked at her lungs and lurched in her stomach, and before the panic reeling through her gut had remotely run its course, Edmund's breath rushed hot down her neck and he snapped "Shoot it in the mouth," before bolting out into the jagged eastern expanse.
She fumbled to obey, sheer instinct kicking in at the commanding power in his voice, and she grasped for her quiver in spite of the smoke stinging her eyes and throat.
The beast curled after Edmund, writhing toward the gap just to the left of her hiding place.
She knocked the arrow, pulled back with all her might, and fired.
And missed.
The dragon crashed past her and she swore under her breath, stringing another arrow just as it bore down on Edmund, sharp fletching brushing her cheek, the power of the bow straining in her arms.
She fired, and the bolt shot into the back of its scaley hide.
The beast turned on her with a scream, fleshy mouth gaping wide, teeth gleaming.
She drew a third arrow, muscle memory creeping in as she drew it back, settled into the weight of the bow, and let the red-fletched bolt fly.
It glanced off the dragon's neck.
And now the rotting beast lumbered straight for her.
She scrambled to her feet and jumped over flaming rivulets of red oil to bolt back toward the table, mind reeling, aiming for cover, maybe the forest, anything, heart pounding hard in frustration.
She leapt up over the dais and skidded across the stone slab to the other side, clambering down the steps and running another few paces before her boot caught on a crack and she crashed to one knee with a cry.
The beast clawed its way up onto the table, bulbous neck snaking after her movement, almost on top of her.
And then Caspian rolled out from under the table and dropped down to level ground in a flash, blade flying into his hand between Lucy and the beast as it bore down on him.
She almost shouted, but the cry caught in her throat as he thrust his sword up through the roof of the dragon's gaping mouth and it clamped down on him, thrashing with a sudden jerk and throwing him against the stone table, his body crumpling in a heap to the dais.
"Caspian!" screamed Lucy.
The beast reeled back, shrieking, dragging its head along the ground, contorting as Caspian's blade flashed in its mouth, propping its jaw wide open.
"Shoot!" cried Edmund from the standing stones, "Lucy! Shoot!"
She strung an arrow before her wits could even rush back to her, the feral creature lashing out with black talons and serrated tail, and the arrow shot from her string at the first white flash of teeth, flying down its throat with a fresh jerk.
The beast reeled back with an unearthly scream, gurgling as molten fire spewed from its throat, and Lucy scrambled away, bolting down the south side of the plateau away from the wave of heat, until she crashed into Edmund around the other side of a pillar and he grabbed her to steady them both.
The hulking beast crumpled to the stone below the table, twitching with horrible guttural choking noises into its own pool of fire, spew rushing darker and thicker, until at last the shambling black form went still and dark blood gushed from its mouth to extinguish the flames.
Lucy looked at Edmund, both panting, gasping to catch their breath, and he let go of her, taking a step back, dark eyes flicking to the flat stone.
Through thick grey smoke, Jill's crushed and mangled body lay crumpled on the far side of the beast, wavering through the heat.
And sprawled upon the dais, unmoving as blood trickled down the edge of the table above him and seeped out from underneath his body over the stone, like a human sacrifice to some ancient and long forgotten god, lay Caspian.