Chapter Thirty-One

PETE recovered quickly in the days that followed. The color came back to his skin; he was able to keep food down; and his strength began to return. He looked better and healthier with each passing day, and by the time a week had gone by, Princess Cliodhna had decided that Pete wasn't such an eyesore after all. Pete took meals with the princess, and they would go on "dates" together, ostensibly to get to know each other better—walking together through the streets of Narrowhaven, or swimming in the ocean and relaxing on the beaches. But whenever Cliodhna was pulled away to deal with the wedding preparations, Pete would disappear back to his rooms and go find Phineas or Penelope, so that he could practice his archery and swordsmanship again. Combat practice was the best way, he judged, to recover his health as quickly as possible. And he wanted to spend as much precious time as he could with his Narnian friends. The Islanders were starting to monopolize his attention, leaving little time leftover for his companions.

When Pete did manage to get away for a workout, the mood would be different depending on who he trained with. Penelope was withdrawn and disinclined to talk. She completely avoided any discussion of the impending wedding. She would drill Pete in his swordplay, and that was that. Phineas, on the other hand, was always jovial. As they drew bowstrings and loosed at targets, the faun would tease Pete about his sudden betrothal, and the human would answer in kind with friendly jibes about Phineas's lack of any such engagement with Cynthia.

Then, at last, came the night before the wedding. A bachelor party was out of the question, Pete knew. The custom simply didn't exist in Narnia. Instead, the only thing that Pete could look forward to this evening was another formal dinner with his intended. But that wasn't so bad, all things considered. Cliodhna was charming, she was beyond beautiful, and she was a crown princess. Pete had to wonder whether he could really hope for more than that.

At sundown that night, they sat together on a terrace overlooking the city. Two butlers stood discreetly off to the side, occasionally removing used dishes or freshening the wine-glasses. "That will be all," Cliodhna said to them at last. "Thank you." The two mermen bowed and left, and then Pete and the princess were alone.

Pete looked out over the mer-city. It was past high-tide right now, so everything south of the dike was under water. On the dry side of the city, lamps were being lit, casting an eerie reflection out on the harbor. The pinks and oranges of the sunset mingled with this and made a glowing panorama.

"Something troubles you," said Cliodhna. "You're nervous about tomorrow?"

"Of course I am," said Pete. "Aren't you?"

The mermaid nodded and sipped her wine gingerly.

Pete asked, "Have you ever been in love, Clio?"

The mermaid smiled at Pete's nickname for her, and she nodded again. "Yes I have."

"You get that I'm not in love with you, right?" said the human bluntly.

"Obviously. And I'm not in love with you either."

"Oh, good," said Pete, "I'm glad we got that cleared up."

"But," said Cliodhna, "I've always known that my husband would be chosen by circumstances beyond my control, and I'm resolved to make the best of it. You're a good man, Peter. For what little it's worth, I'm glad that I'm marrying you and not somebody else."

Pete laughed hollowly at that. "You're not so bad yourself, at that," he said. "I could do a whole hell of a lot worse."

"You see?" smiled the mermaid. "We're romancing each other already." Then her demeanor grew serious. "I… I'm given to understand that people in our position—royalty, I mean—usually grow to love each other. Over time."

"Yeah," said Pete. "I've heard that too."

Several moments passed in silence. Then Cliodhna said, "You still look like a bundle of nerves! Is the prospect of marrying me truly so disheartening? Do I repulse you somehow?"

"No!" said Pete. "No, it's not… okay, look. This time tomorrow, it will be, like, our wedding night, right? And I'm still not sure that we… I mean… how can the two of us…?"

"Just spit it out already!" said the princess.

"What I'm trying to say is, you're a mermaid, and so you're part… the bottom part, that is… is it… are we… compatible?"

"Because I'm half fish?" supplied Cliodhna. "That's what has you worried?"

"Well… yeah," said Pete. "It's… a mystery to me how… things… are supposed to work for your species."

"Things like sex," said the mermaid. "You don't have to dance around the subject. And there's nothing to worry about. We're perfectly 'compatible'—I'm quite certain of that." To demonstrate, she lifted up the gauzy fabric of her dress and pointed at her belly-button. "How do you think that got there, unless I was born live and not hatched from a fish-egg?"

Pete was taken with Cliodhna's direct answer and snorted with laughter. "Okay, okay," he said, putting his hands up in surrender. "Mermaids are mammals. Gotcha. I'll have Mr. Spock note it down in the science log." He half-grinned and added, "There's a caviar joke in here somewhere, but I'm going to leave it alone. Because I respect you too much, as a person."

"So… have I put all your darkest fears to rest?" asked Cliodhna, leaning over the table and closing the distance between herself and Pete.

"Mostly," said the human. "You know, aside from the fact that we're about to get hitched, and if it doesn't work out between us, we'll only be miserable for the rest of our lives."

"I won't make you miserable," said the mermaid, pressing her lips to Pete. They kissed deeply, and Pete couldn't help but get lost in the sensation. How many different species of women did this make for him now? He was starting to feel like a regular Captain Kirk. Princess Cliodhna pulled away and smiled at the dazed look on Pete's face. "Good night," she said, rising to leave.

"Uh… yeah, good night," said Pete. He watched as the mermaid slid away, her tailfin flapping on the ground as she moved. It was strange. When Queen Morrigan "walked" on her tail, Pete was reminded of a slithering snake, or the medusa from Clash of the Titans. And that woman was about to become his mother-in-law, he shuddered to think! But Cliodhna… as she swished and swayed away from the terrace, Pete only saw a seductive siren, of the kind that sailors would gladly drown themselves for. He whistled softly to himself. Yes indeed, he could certainly do worse than her.

The next day, Pete and the Narnian rebels waited nervously in the common room that connected all the bedchambers in their suite. They were all dressed in Islander finery, in preparation for tonight's big event. Pete had been asked to wear a suit of coral-colored clothes trimmed in pearls. He looked down at himself, sucked in his breath, and sighed noisily for what must have been the thirty-seventh time that morning. "Somehow, I never imagined that on my wedding day, I'd have to dress up like Long John Silver's effeminate cousin, just so that I can walk down the isle with a girl who looks like she should be doing a modeling job for a tuna-can," he said. "My life is weird."

Penelope clip-clopped across the marble floor and straightened the front of Pete's vest for him. "You really mean to go through with this, then? I should remind you, Peter, that you've sneaked into and out of fortresses more heavily guarded than this one."

"I can't just run away from this, Penny," answered Pete. "I made a deal. A promise. And besides, I don't think we can afford to piss off 'Queen Neptuna' right now." He slipped into a bad Marlon Brando impression and said through puffed-out cheeks, "She made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"It doesn't hurt that the princess is so beautiful," said Cynthia, who sat on a plush sofa next to Phineas. "She makes a fitting bride for our future king."

"And Lord Peter is far more likely to become our king, once this alliance with the Island Kingdom is made official and inviolable," added Lumpkin. The dwarf paced back and forth and wrung his hands, while Brenawen sat on a settee and followed him with her eyes.

"Those are all very good reasons," said Penelope to Pete, "but do they really justify your marrying this woman you barely know?"

"We both know it's a marriage of convenience," said Pete. "We're going into this with eyes wide open." He sighed again (raising the morning's total to thirty-eight). "I don't have to like it. But I do have to go through with it."

"No, you don't!" said Penelope. "Why are you suddenly determined to be so damned honorable?"

"Why are you so determined to change my mind?" Pete shot back. "I know that you have some bad history with the whole arranged marriage thing, but—" The words were out of Pete's mouth before he even realized that he was saying them openly and in front of everybody.

Penelope was shocked and drew her hand up over her mouth. Then, venomously, she retaliated by saying, "Cliodhna won't replace Taraiel in your heart."

Everybody else in the room became silent, red-faced, and totally engrossed in watching the human and the centaur stare each other down. Then Pete said, "That was a hit below the belt, Penny. Thanks a heap."

Penelope realized that she had gone too far. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have—"

"No, you really shouldn't have," said Pete. He brushed past Penelope and stormed back to his bedroom, where he was determined to wait—alone—until the evening came.

That night, in the grand hall of Narrowhaven Palace, the entire royal court sat in assembly, along with innumerable distinguished guests which had lately arrived from all over the Sea Kingdom. A royal wedding was an affair of superlative importance, after all, and a wedding involving a human being was altogether unprecedented. Naturally, Queen Morrigan had spared nothing for the occasion. Guests, food and drink, decorations, entertainers, honor guards, gifts… there was so much of everything that the spectacle inundated the senses and left one drunk from nothing but the excess of movement and colors.

Oghma, the Chief Bard of Narrowhaven, officiated the ceremony. Peter Pevensie of New York stood beside Princess Cliodhna, while the bard proclaimed his blessings over them. They faced each other and recited vows, and then Oghma came forward and placed the princess's hand into Pete's. They kissed, and the assembled guests erupted in cheers. The celebration made at their engagement, not so very long ago, paled in comparison to this. Bands played soaring music, confetti fell from the ceiling, and tears flowed as freely as the wine. Princess Cliodhna shone with radiance, her glowing cheeks standing out against the sea-green of her exquisite gown. She smiled at Pete, and his heart skipped a beat.

As guests of honor, the Narnians were seated close to the front of the chamber. When the ceremony had concluded at last, they clapped and cheered politely—for the most part. Some of them were less happy than others to see this wedding take place.

Pete took his wife by the hand—his wife, he thought in astonishment—and followed her from the grand hall to the banquet chamber, where all of the guests were soon to follow. The wedding was over, and the reception was about to begin. This thing that had just happened, it was overwhelming, and it was insane, and Pete didn't care. After all the terrible crap that he had experienced in this world, this was one of the good moments. Wars, witches, and curses could be forgotten for a while. It was party time.

After the festivities had finally run their course, and the majority of the guests had slowly repaired back to their rooms, Cloidhna took Pete back to her own apartments in the palace. They clung together and stumbled a bit—more than a little wine had been consumed on both of their parts. At the door to the princess's chambers, Pete stopped her. "Wait, wait. It's a tradition from home." He picked up the surprised mermaid in his arms—no easy feat, considering how heavy that long fishtail really made her, but Pete had recovered most of his strength by now—and he carried her across the threshold.

"We don't have a custom like this," Cliodhna laughed. "A merman would just fall over!"

Between the alcohol and the unexpected weight in his arms, Pete grew red in the face and let out a breath as he let Cliodhna back onto the floor. "Whew. I'm guessing that's not the only reason."

The mermaid smiled alluringly and pulled Pete into the bedchamber. She let herself fall back onto the mattress and beckoned to the human. "Come to bed, my prince," she said.

"Prince," repeated Pete. "Huh." Somewhere along the line, he had completely forgotten about that part. Marrying Cliodhna made him the Prince of the Islanders. He was honest-to-God royalty now, and that came with responsibilities. There were obvious perks—one of them was waiting for him on the bed with desire in her eyes—but mostly, responsibilities. The weight of it suddenly hit Pete, and he sat down on the bedside.

Cliodhna's arms snaked around his torso, and her tail likewise wound around his legs—and boy, was that ever an odd sensation. He felt the mermaid bury her head in the crook of his neck, resting on his shoulder. "It's our wedding night," she reminded him. "It may not have been our choice, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves."

"No, it doesn't," agreed Pete. "I'm sorry, Clio. It's just… the last time a woman came onto me this strongly, it turned out she was a wicked witch. Of course, we weren't married, so the situation was totally different—"

Pete was cut off by Cliodhna, pressing her lips to his. Pete returned her embrace, and they fell down onto the bed together. "You've had many interesting adventures, my husband," said the princess. "You can tell me all about them… in the morning."

Chapter Thirty-Two

GROGGY and a little bit hung over, Pete blinked away the sleep and rolled over in his bed. No, wait, it wasn't his bed—not the one he'd been sleeping in since he had come to Narrowhaven, anyway. This was somebody else's bed. He rolled over and felt around. Somebody else was in the bed with him… long hair… soft skin… slick scales. Oh. Right. He'd gotten married last night. To a mermaid. To Princess Cliodhna. Which officially made him Prince Peter. Which Pete wasn't sure he liked.

"Mm, good morning," said Cliodhna sleepily. She rolled over under the sheets and snuggled up to Pete.

This part was pretty likable, though. All things considered. "Good morning yourself, Princess," said Pete with a cheeky grin. "Whew… if my breath smells anything like yours…"

The princess giggled and kissed her husband's lips. "I'm certain it does. But this is still more comfortable than getting up."

So they stayed cuddled together in bed for most of the morning. And as they rested together, Pete realized something that surprised him: he was starting to feel something for Cliodhna. There was an undeniable attraction, to be sure, but could it perhaps be more than that? In all honestly, last night hadn't felt like newlyweds making love. Not by a long shot. It had been more like a desperate one-night-stand shared between two people who were each trying to ground themselves in their circumstances. Pete was more or less confused by the conflicting emotions.

The bedroom was extremely bright. Sunlight streamed in from the windows and the terrace and reflected off all the white marble. Pete figured that he would want to get up sooner or later. He had never been inclined to just lie in a bed all day. Still, getting up would mean extricating himself from the coiled embrace of his gorgeous wife. So… he just laid there and tried not to think about moving.

"I cannot believe that I am wedded to a legendary human being," said Cloidhna, her sea-green eyes peering into Pete's. "It is… like living in a myth, or a storybook come to life!"

Pete grinned. "The feeling's mutual. Nobody believes in mermaids where I come from, so that makes you just as mythical."

"Me? Mythical?" The mermaid laughed aloud. "What a funny thought! I've always seen myself as… as… perfectly ordinary!"

"Except that you're a royal princess," said Pete.

"Oh. Yes, well, there's that." Then, quite suddenly and out of the blue, Cliodhna said, "I wonder how long it will be before I am with child."

Pete was a little startled by the turn of subject and stammered, "Ch-child? As in, kids?"

"Of course!" said Cliodhna. "We're expected provide the kingdom with an heir. You do want children, don't you?"

"Those are the kinds of questions that most people hash out before they get married," said Pete, "but… yeah, I do. Want to be a dad, that is." Now that he was thinking about it—seriously considering the matter for the first time in his life—he really did like the idea. Him… with kids… maybe his imagination was idealizing the picture somewhat, but he could certainly see himself raising a little boy or a little girl with Cliodhna. The only question was, what species would they be? "Uh… we're able to… because… the two of us can have children, right?"

"Why couldn't we?" asked Cliodhna. "If all the other races can intermingle their bloodlines, why not sea-folk and humans?"

"I didn't know," said Pete. "But I'm glad that's the case."

"As am I," said Cliodhna. "I want to be a mother even more than I want to be queen."

In that moment, as if by sudden and mutual agreement, the newlyweds resumed such activities as would make Cliodhna's wish a likelier and sooner reality.

The days passed quickly after the wedding. Pete and Cliodhna enjoyed their honeymoon, such as it was, by spending several days secluded in the princess's apartments. The Narnians saw very little of Pete, but Queen Morrigan was more than gracious with her continuing hospitality towards the rebels. She would frequently take the time to entertain them personally with dinners and other gatherings, and whenever they saw the elder mer-woman, she was pleased as punch and more pleasant to be around than they had ever seen her. It was as if Pete's marriage to Cliodhna had at last lifted a great burden from her shoulders.

But one day, the queen summoned the Narnians to a council-chamber. So, led by Penelope, the five rebels came into a great hall with a large, round table and many empty seats. The only people present here were Queen Morrigan, Princess Cliodhna, Pete, and a merman that none of them had seen before. "Greetings," said Morrigan. "We have much to discuss. First, let me introduce to you the Grand Admiral Pwyll, Commander of the Queen's Navy." The merman nodded his head curtly, and the five Narnians greeted him in turn.

"Forgive us, Your Majesty, but what is this all about?" asked Penelope.

"Straight to the point again," said Morrigan. "I like that about you, Captain. But the admiral, I think, can explain things better than I."

Grand Admiral Pwyll rose from the table and unrolled a scroll made from shark-hide. It contained a map of the Island Kingdom and all the surrounding waters. He pointed to a spot in the northwestern corner of the map, not far from the coast of Narnia, and said in his rumbling voice, "A great fleet masses at Galma. As all of you know, I'm sure, Galma was once sovereign Islander territory, but the White Witch seized it for Narnia more than six centuries ago. Her military presence at Galma has always been significant, but now it's been multiplied tenfold by the aggregation of this—this—"

"Armada," offered Pete. "Jadis is trying to gather enough ships to challenge the Sea Kingdom."

"Impossible!" said Cliodhna. "Nobody in the world has more ships than we do!"

The admiral coughed and cleared his throat. "Not on their own, no," he said, "but our spies tell us that Jadis has brought Calormene mercenaries into her service, and their ships comprise a full third of this Galmatian armada."

Penelope looked over the map and said, "The Seven Isles are the closest to Galma, which makes them Jadis's natural target, and she would have to pass through them to reach Narrowhaven. But what if she decides to send the fleet south, to Terebinthia, to seize that island first? The Island Kingdom would be completely cut off from Calormen and Archenland if she did that, and Jadis would further tighten her grip on the slave-trade."

"I say, I hadn't considered that," blustered the admiral. "Bravo, Lady Knight! We'll have to commit some of our ships to the defense of Terebinthia—"

"No," said Pete, "don't bother. I think I have a sense of how the White Witch thinks. Jadis will send her fleet wherever we decide gather ours—because she'll assume that I'm right there with it, and the only thing she really wants is to see me stone-cold dead."

"Because you're the only real threat to her reign," said Penelope. "The curse of winter can't be broken unless you go to Cair Paravel." The centauress looked sharply at the admiral and said, "I stand corrected. If Jadis means to attack the Island Kingdom, she will make for the Seven Isles directly. If, however, this fleet is defensive… in that case, its sole purpose is to stand barrier between Lord Peter—forgive me, Prince Peter—and the Cair."

Grand Admiral Pwyll stroked the graying stubble on his chin and poured over the map. At length, he announced, "I quite agree. I shall order the Navy to gather at Redhaven, and if we learn that the Galmatian fleet has put to sea, we will brace ourselves to defend the Isles. But if the enemy remains at Galma…"

"If that proves to be the case, Admiral, you are hereby authorized to take any action you see fit," said Queen Morrigan. "Even at the risk of provoking open war with Narnia, you may decide to attack this armada and reclaim Galma for the Sea Kingdom. Should you prove successful, why, in that case, nothing would stand between our royal son Peter and the high throne of Narnia! Wouldn't that be fortunate?"

In reaction to the queen's words, the Narnians exchanged various looks of worry and suspicion. If Morrigan was nothing else, she was a savvy politician. "Of course," said Phineas, speaking for the group, "if Peter becomes our High King, he and the Princess Cliodhna would be expected to rule Narnia from the king's house at Cair Paravel."

"But of course," said Queen Morrigan. "That is the tradition, and I would never do anything to countermand tradition."

Cliodhna clasped Pete's hand tightly and whispered, "Imagine the two of us, High King and Queen of Narnia and the Islands! Oh, it's almost too much to hope for!"

"I'm not king yet," Pete whispered, "but that's just a detail." He turned his attention back to the war-council and said, "I have to go to the Seven Isles."

Looks of dismay passed over both Cliodhna and Morrigan. The queen said, "Are you sure that that would be wise, O Prince? If Jadis knows where you are, she may attempt assassination—"

"No!" said Cliodhna, clinging tightly to Pete's arm. "Peter, please say that you'll stay with me in Narrowhaven!"

"I have to go," said Pete. "It's my fight. I have to face it. And I have to be in Pyrstead, to see some dwarves about another alliance."

"Oh dear, I'd forgotten all about them!" said Lumpkin, who tugged on his beard nervously. "I should warn you, my people are stubborn. Very little apart from the sight of a Son of Adam in the flesh will sway them to our cause."

"Then it's settled," said Pete. "I'll—"

"We'll go to the Seven Isles then," corrected Cliodhna. "I'll not leave your side so quickly, husband."

"Cliodhna, no!" said Morrigan. "What if the Galmatian fleet attacks? You'll place yourself in danger!"

"Danger I mean to face by Peter's side," said the princess. "And I can help our ships, if the need arises. I've been trained all my life to sing like the bards."

"Say, that's an idea," said Pete. "Those bards could come in handy. Can we take them with us too?"

"It's been done before," said Admiral Pwyll. "Their spell-songs can raise or calm the winds, heal grave wounds, and do many other useful things."

"Very well," said Queen Morrigan. "Despite my deep misgivings, I give you my permission. Cliodhna may go with you, Peter, and the bards shall be protection for the both of you. I did promise, after all, to commit everything I had to your war for Narnia. Just see to it that I don't lose everything because you feel the need to make a display of your bravery."

After a few short days of preparations, one of the great Islander galleons set out for the Seven Isles. It carried the five Narnians, the Seven Bards of Narrowhaven, and the Prince and Princess of the Island Kingdom. Pete and Cliodhna shared the second-best cabin on the ship, after the captain's quarters. The Narnians and the Bards had other bunks in the forward section of the ship. Sailing aboard this immense vessel was a different experience altogether from life aboard the Dawn Treader. The sailors of the Royal Navy were cordial enough, and of course they were always treated Pete with deference, but the whole ship was so much more impersonal than Captain Diarmuid's vessel had been. The Dawn Treader was the ship of a smuggler and a pirate, and it had that kind of character. This ship was a military ship, and it had a different sort of character—one that reflected discipline and efficiency.

Despite the galleon's size, her passengers would be together in relatively close quarters for all of nearly two weeks. This meant that there was really no chance of anybody avoiding anybody else. The Narnians had to socialize with Princess Cliodhna, particularly since she rarely separated herself from Pete, and they came to know her as an acquaintance, if not a friend. The chief bard, Oghma, also spent a great deal of time in their company, and he was generally better-liked. He could sing and play music and tell all kinds of stories: tragedies, comedies, histories, myths, and folk-tales. All of the sailors on the ship were glad for the presence of the bards, since they kept the evenings lively and entertaining. As the days passed, and the Narnians got to know their Islander companions better, the tension between the two parties eased somewhat. Eventually, even Penelope had to admit that Princess Cliodhna made a good match for Pete. They each seemed to like the other's company, at any rate. The mermaid and the human were always together, and they frequently secluded themselves in their cabin. It seemed to the others that Pete and Cliodhna really were starting to fall in love with each other!

The Navy ship arrived in Redhaven, but the Narnians no longer needed to patronize the inn that they had occupied on their last visit, during Pete's fevered brush with death. Now they accompanied Islander royalty, and so it was the honor of the Seven Isles' Governor to entertain them in his own house. This proved to be a seaside mansion on Muil Island, the same island where the dwarven community of Pyrstead had been built.

"It's up in the mountains, not far from the mines," said Brenawen the next morning, "but you couldn't drag me there with a dozen dragons. I'd be shot on sight."

Lumpkin, Brenawen, and Pete stood together at the foot of a rocky path that wound this way and that, back and forth, up into the heights of the island. "I want you to come with us anyway," said Pete. "The Red Dwarves need to learn that this racist bullcrap won't fly with their future king. And if we all go together, they'll have to get through me to get at you."

"Let me remind you, my kind have never before seen a Son of Adam," said Lumpkin. "They could mistake you for a warlock, or an elf, or a jinn—all things that will have them reaching for their bows and quivers before they even think to ask a question."

"Okay," said Pete, "so we bring a flag of truce or something. You're coming anyway. Both of you."

Lumpkin sighed. "In spite of what you have said in the past, royal command suits you, my Prince."

"Yeah," said Pete, "it's really starting to grow on me."

Chapter Thirty-Three

CERTAIN matters of fact will interest only the very curious, the very mature, and the very immature. One such fact concerns the clothing habits of the many races of Narnia. It is rather common knowledge that certain species—notably the fauns, the nymphs, and the centaurs—don't bother to cover themselves unless they have a particular reason to do so. They will wear armor to protect themselves in battle, and they will wear heavy cloaks and furs in the wintertime for protection from the cold. When traveling abroad, they will wear clothes for the sake of the more modest races' sensibilities. But in warm weather, among their own people, they see little purpose in draping themselves with cumbersome sheets of fabric. Among the Four Peoples, the dwarves and the elves and the jinn all think it a strange custom indeed, but they simply and unquestioningly accept it as the way things are for Narnians. The fourth race, the mer-people, are more singular in their behavior. Practicality determines what they wear, and when and where they wear it. Underwater, garments are more hindrance than help, and so those merfolk who rarely venture onto dry land are also disinclined towards clothing themselves. Conversely, mer-people who prefer to dwell on the surface will wear whatever clothes prove convenient. After a certain age, for example, mermaids begin to notice that their figures are ruled by gravity rather than buoyancy when above the surface; whereas, for the young, choice of dress tends to range from "sparse" to "optional." But since the merfolk are essentially an amphibious people, they will naturally adapt to whichever circumstances present themselves, and they don't think anything of it.

Nobody ever bothered to mention any of these things to Pete Pevensie. He only saw Narnia in the dead of winter, and when he left that place, his friends accompanied him into the countries of the elves and the jinn. Therefore, as one might expect, the Narnians that Pete knew were always fully dressed. When they arrived in the Island Kingdom, though, it was quite impossible to go for very long without seeing some mermaid or merman prancing about in a complete state of nature. The mermen neither shocked nor interested Pete very much, but the mermaids certainly did—and the human had caught himself staring shamelessly on more than one occasion since his arrival in Narrowhaven some weeks back. The other Narnians noticed this, but they simply assumed that Pete appreciated a beautiful female when he saw one. Phineas, for example, had much the same reaction to the Islanders as Pete did—but without the human's red-in-the-face embarrassment. And it was fairly safe to assume that Penelope and Cynthia felt a similar appreciation, however shallow all of this might be, when gazing upon some bare-chested merman.

I only set this digression down before the gentle reader to explain the lack of concern, or indeed even noteworthy reaction, on the part of Princess Cliodhna and Captain Penelope when they happened to encounter each other on the beach one morning in a shared condition of complete undress.

The very morning that Pete and the two dwarves left the governor's house on Muil Island to visit Pyrstead, Princess Cliodhna did what any sensible mermaid would do while waiting for a human husband to return from an overland journey: she discarded her seashells and spent early part of the day swimming in the ocean, lazing on the beach, and tanning herself on seaside rocks. Cliodhna did not expect, however, that Penelope might by coincidence decide to spend her own morning in much the same fashion—namely, bathing in the sea and soaking up sun. The centauress waded into the surf up to her waist and splashed some of the cold seawater on her bare skin to get used to it—and then gave a start when she saw Cliodhna reclining on a rock some distance out in the water.

When the mermaid spotted the centauress, she flexed her tail, flipped her fin, and slid bodily off the rock, cutting into the water with nary a splash. She swam lazily over to the centauress and said, "Good morning, Captain."

Penelope bowed her head respectfully and said, "Forgive me, Your Highness. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"Think nothing of it," said Cliodhna. "I was only watching the ships gather around Brenn."

Sure enough, across the narrow strait between Muil and Brenn Islands, a number of warships and supply vessels had already massed at the port of Redhaven—and this was only a tiny fraction of the Sea Kingdom's navy. Penelope observed this growing fleet and said, "It's an impressive sight. Even Jadis's armada can't hope to stand against your navy."

"Hm? Oh, yes, of course it couldn't," said Cliodhna. The mermaid hardly paid the centaur-woman any attention, so focused was she on watching the ships sail into the harbor one-by-one.

"Might I ask what Your Highness is looking for so intently?" said Penelope.

"I'm hoping to see a particular ship," answered Cliodhna.

"I'm afraid I can't tell one ship from another at this distance," confessed Penelope, "but then, I know little of sea-craft, and you've lived among ships all your life."

"Oh, you'd spot this ship right away if you knew what to look for," said the princess. "It's bright green, and painted to look like a dragon—"

"I do know that ship!" said Penelope. "The Dawn Treader!"

Cliodhna was surprised and turned to the centauress. "You've sailed aboard the Treader?"

"Of course! She brought us all the way from Calormen to the shores of Felimath Island."

"Only to Felimath?" said Cliodhna. "He didn't come to Doorn?"

Penelope said, "He…? Oh. But you mean Captain Diarmuid, of course."

"Yes I do," said Cliodhna softly. "I… I sailed on the Dawn Treader myself for a time."

"On a pirate ship?" said Penelope.

"He wasn't always a pirate," said Cliodhna. "Diarmuid earned his captaincy in the Royal Navy. I met him when he was still a well-regarded officer." There was just a hint of nostalgia in the mermaid's voice.

"We do still regard him highly," said Penelope. "We sailed with Diarmuid long enough to count him a friend."

"I wonder why Peter never mentioned it," said Cliodhna.

"Perhaps to keep him safe," answered the centauress. "Diarmuid said that he wasn't welcome in Narrowhaven, and that your mother the queen wanted him dead."

Cliodhna nodded. "Yes. Yes, I suppose that's true. Um… if you'll excuse me, Captain, I have to… be somewhere else…" And without another word, the mermaid dove underneath the water and disappeared from sight. Penelope was left alone to bathe in private, to gaze at the ships arriving across the strait, and to wonder at whatever had Peter's wife so perturbed.

Pete, Lumpkin, and Brenawen neared the high stone wall that warded the winding mountain path. Pete carried a plain white banner on a pole, a flag of truce that he could only hope the dwarves would honor when they saw it. Lumpkin walked in front of Pete, wishing that he could somehow disappear altogether. Brenawen stayed behind the human and actually did a fair job of going unseen. The dwarf-built fortification stretched all the way across the path, from the mountain-face on their right to the very edge of the cliffside on their left. A set of gates made from some sturdy, dark wood barricaded the only passage through the wall, and a watchtower with crenelations ringing the battlement looked down over the approach.

"Hello the tower!" called Lumpkin.

The head of a red-bearded dwarf appeared in a crenel on the tower-top. "Who goes? Speak quickly, on your lives!"

Lumpkin was just about to announce their names and their mission, when Pete pushed his way to the fore and called, "Hello! I am Arthur, King of the Britons, and this," he put a hand on Lumpkin's shoulder, "is my loyal servant, Patsy. Tell your master, if he will give us food and shelter for the evening, he may join us on our quest for the Holy Grail!"

The dwarf on the tower called back, "What? Hold a moment…" and his face disappeared from sight.

Lumpkin and Brenawen gaped at Peter, but the human only grinned and said, "I always wanted to shout that up to a guard on a castle-wall."

A few moments later, the sound of footsteps could be heard descending the innards of the watchtower. Then, a tiny peep-hole opened in the wooden gate-door at just the right height for a dwarf to peer through. The guard's face was much closer now, and he said, "What are you on about, with Britons and Grails?"

Pete said, "You must have misheard me from all the way up there. My name is Peter Pevensie. I'm a Son of Adam and the Prince of the Sea Kingdom, and I'm here to talk with your leaders about an alliance against the White Witch of Narnia."

"Oh!" said the guard. "That's something else altogether! All right… just another moment…" And now a much larger door opened in the gate, this one just big enough for Pete and his two companions to pass through. On the other side, the Red Dwarf gate-warden stood with short-bow and arrows in hand. Beyond, the mountain path continued to wind up, up, up to a small city of stone. "Hold it," said the guard when his eyes fell upon Brenawen. "You can't bring that up to Pyrstead."

Pete knew who the guard was talking about and said, "She is a friend of mine, and loyal to Narnia. Brenawen goes where I go. Or are we going to have a problem here, Short Stuff?" Pete rested his hand on the hilt of his cutlass.

The dwarf said, "All right, all right, go on past. But let me warn you, Highness, you won't make many friends in Pyrstead by keeping company with a Black Dwarf—or by calling anybody 'short.'"

"Duly noted," said Pete. He left the guard and led Lumpkin and Brenawen up the path.

Prystead seemed to have been made entirely from buildings carved and hewn into the mountainside. The dwarves had no need to build with bricks and stones, for the solid rock gave way to the great skill of their engineers and architects. Delving into the mountainside also carried with it the great advantage of natural protection, for only a direct assault on the front of the town could gain an attacker entry, and that was no hopeful prospect as long as dwarves remained within to defend it.

The business of the town fell especially to one dwarf, the Lord Mayor Trefflin, and he spoke for his people. When Pete arrived and requested an audience with the Lord Mayor, the answer was simple: Pete was instructed to appear at a gathering of all the citizens in a great hall-under-the-mountain where these sorts of meetings ordinarily took place. And so, Pete, Lumpkin, and Brenawen descended into the dwarf-tunnels, and they wandered through these until they came at last to a high-vaulted chamber with many stone columns, beautifully carved, that ran all the way to the ceiling. Here, Lord Trefflin and six other dour dwarves sat in stone chairs upon a dais, while a crowd of Red Dwarves filled the hall behind Pete and the others.

"Word had reached us several days ago that Princess Cliodhna was wedded to a Son of Adam," said Trefflin, "and some among us grew hopeful once again that the time had come for the prophecies to be fulfilled. And yet, Prince Peter, you bring before us two outcasts: one exiled for his treachery, and the other shunned for the treachery of all her kind. What say you to this?"

"I say, it's high time you people learned to forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones. Everybody needs to come together on this fight, or the White Witch wins before it's even started. Lumpkin has been at my side since day one, and he—" Here Peter was cut off by the mayor.

"Lumpkin of Pire is well known to us," said Trefflin, "and his crime is counted unforgivable."

"What, because he fell in love?" retorted Pete. "Because he wouldn't judge another dwarf by the color of her… uh, hair?"

"Our laws are strict and inviolate," said Trefflin.

"If that's the case, we're wasting our time here," said Pete. "If you can't see past your prejudices, I don't want you on my side. So you're not invited to the party anymore. Come on, guys." Pete motioned for Lumpkin and Brenawen to follow him, and he turned to leave.

"Wait," said Trefflin. "It seems that your companions desire to speak."

Pete stopped, turned back, and nodded to his friends.

Lord Trefflin acknowledged them as well and said, "What have you to say, Captain Brenawen of the Redhaven Watch?"

Brenawen stepped forward and addressed all the Red Dwarves: "What many of you think about my people… it is true. The tribes of Black Dwarves who dwell in the north of Narnia have served the Witches for many generations. It was a tragic choice… made long ago, by our ancestors, and handed down to us without our consent. I don't ask any of you to ignore evil deeds committed in Jadis's name, for anybody—dwarf or centaur or goblin—who does evil is also making a choice. But some of us have chosen to oppose the Witch, and I beg you all now, do not condemn an entire people because they weren't given a choice." She turned to Pete and said, "You need these dwarves at your side, Your Highness. I have said my peace, and now I shall take my leave if it will ease the negotiations."

"Not a chance," said Pete. "This deal is all-or-nothing."

Lord Trefflin then said, "And what of you, Lumpkin of Pire? Have you anything to say in defense of your crime?"

"Crime?" repeated Lumpkin. His features contorted into a scowl of rage. "Crime? Brenawen is my wife! We have no secrets between us! I shall deny to my dying breath that I have done anything criminal!"

Shocked gasps rippled through the assembled crowd, but Trefflin and the other dwarf-lords stood up and raised their hands, trying to calm the crowd. It was little use; everybody started shouting at everybody else. At last, Pete got fed up, and so he put two fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle worthy of Yankee Stadium. The high-pitched note echoed and reverberated off the walls of the acoustically-carved chamber.

"Enough of this!" said Pete in a voice loud enough to cow every dwarf there into stunned silence. "I'm going to make it really, really simple: are you guys friends with the White Witch, or enemies?"

Lord Trefflin composed himself, waited for the other six dwarf-lords to resume their seats, and said, "Enemies, of course. You should never need to ask that: every dwarf in this community is here because we were sold into slavery by soldiers of Jadis."

"Yeah, and so is Brenawen," said Pete. "Imagine that. Now, I am getting ready to take the fight back to Narnia. So, I have a very simple question for the Red Dwarves of Pyrstead: are you going to stay here, or would you like to come with me and help us fight the bad guys?"

"That question, Prince Peter, will take some debate," said Trefflin. And almost instantly, the dwarf-lords leaned in close and started talking amongst themselves in low tones.

Eventually, they split apart, and one of the dwarves, Gollin by name, said, "We would like to aid your war-effort, of course, but we Red Dwarves are not renowned as soldiers. We fight at need, to defend our homes, but we have little love for war."

"Cowards!" shouted Lumpkin. "All are needed! All must fight!"

But Pete quickly quieted his friend and said, "That's okay, actually. What I really need are some good smiths and engineers. Know any?"

Lord Trefflin smiled. "The best smiths in the world dwell in Pyrstead. They answer to the Forgemaster, Eld Brock." The mayor pointed to an elderly dwarf, his beard almost completely white, who dozed placidly among the other dwarves watching the proceedings.

"Great," said Pete. "What I really need to do is talk with your smiths. And I need some paper, or whatever it is you draw blueprints on. I've had a lot of time to think about this, you see, and I've got a plan that I think you dwarves can help me with…"

"If you're going to build this," said Pete, "brass will be better than iron, but steel would be even better than brass."

Eld Brock, the Forgemaster of Pyrstead, poured over the schematic that Pete had hastily sketched up. "These measurements must be exact?"

"Yup. The barrel has to be thick, perfectly round on the inside, and it can't be made of anything brittle, or else you have nothing but a glorified pipe-bomb. Incidentally, the ammunition—it's usually made out of lead—it has to fit the barrel almost exactly. Maybe an eighth of an inch smaller in diameter. And also perfectly round."

"Steel is out of the question for the numbers that you want," said Eld Brock, "but brass we can manage, and lead we have aplenty. I just don't understand how it's supposed to work. How can a great metal tube fling such a heavy projectile?"

Pete and Brock were in the Forgemaster's workshop, another largish cavern in the mountainside. There were anvils, crucibles, slag-heaps, fire-pits, bellows, ore-carts, and everything else one might imagine in such a busy forge. Brock stood before his workbench, and Pete knelt next to him, explaining his drawing of a cannon.

"For that, I'm going to need some other minerals, and I'm hoping that you have them here. Carbon and sulfur are the easy ones—these islands are volcanic, right?—so you've got to have brimstone. And charcoal is easy to get anywhere."

"Of course," said Brock. "They're easily found. Though brimstone is rather dangerous to look for, since it's usually found near pockets of bad vapor."

"Bad vapor?" asked Pete.

"Foul air that kills whoever breathes it," said the dwarf. "Sometimes it's pressurized, and digging into a pocket of it will cause a cave to burst or collapse. Other times, one spark, and woosh! All turns to flame. It's why they don't do much mining on Galma: the whole island is sitting on a vast, underground pocket of the bad vapors."

"It sounds like you're talking about a few different things," said Pete. "Carbon dioxide, methane gas, and sulfur dioxide."

"Oh, dash your wizardry," said the dwarf. "These ears are too old for such spell-craft! Now, what else do you need?"

"The last ingredient is saltpeter," said Peter. "It's white, crystalline, volatile… it can be synthesized, but it's a whole lot easier to dig it up if you have a source."

"Ah! I believe that the substance you require can be found on another island," said Brock. "Kettek Isle. It was prospected long ago, and some miners still dwell there. Perhaps we can trade for what we need."

"Okay," said Pete, "great. Let's… let's do this thing. When do we start?"

"We start as soon as this ancient dwarf can teach the younger smiths what you've taught me," said Eld Bock with a laugh. "And I must say, it's very refreshing to meet another Son of Adam at long last. You're even cleverer that Master Digory was."

Brock's speech rattled around inside Pete's brain for several moments, bouncing incoherently off of this neuron and that long-forgotten memory, before Pete finally made sense of what the dwarf had just said. "Wait. Digory? As in Digory Kirke?"

Chapter Thirty-Four

DIGORY Kirke. The man who had started it all. The reason that Pete was in this mess to begin with. He was a mystery; and, wouldn't you know it, Pete just happened to be a detective with every conceivable reason for wanting to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, of all the dwarves living in Pyrstad, only Eld Brock was old enough to remember ever meeting him. None of the other dwarves had been born yet when the last of the legendary human beings had visited Narnia. In those days, Brock was a young apprentice smithy, working in the forges of the dwarven undercity at Mount Pire. Master Kirke had been a strapping youth at the time, perhaps fifteen years of age, according to Brock's memory-clouded judgment. The dwarf remembered that this Son of Adam had been an eager student of the sword, and he had proved himself better with a blade than any dwarf in a very public sparring contest. Brock had not known him personally, though, and so there weren't many other details that he could give to Peter.

The most curious part of this whole story, though, was the time-frame. The Digory Kirke that Pete had investigated, the dead professor with the wardrobe in his attic, had been eighty-two years of age when he committed suicide. That placed the date of his birth squarely in 1926. And yet, this Digory Kirke, the one that Eld Brock had seen, had been in Narnia when Brock was a young dwarf, more than two hundred years ago! "It can't be a coincidence," Pete had said. "There can't be two Digory Kirkes with a connection to Narnia."

"Unless one was a relative of the other," Brock had suggested. "Perhaps my Kirke was the grandfather of yours."

"The great-great-grandfather, you mean," Pete had said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it must be the case. There's no other logical explanation. Only… what happened to this other guy? I take it he tried to fight the White Witch and failed?"

"Nobody really knows," had been Brock's reply. "One day, he just disappeared off the face of the world. He lived in Narnia for several years, I think. But as far as I know, he never gathered enough of a following to pose Jadis any real threat."

It took several days of experimentation and some rather dangerous trial-and-error, but eventually, Pete and the dwarves constructed a working prototype of a proper battlefield cannon. Pete had to test various permutations of the gunpowder formula until he found something that worked, and the dwarves had to forge a brass gun that wouldn't bloat or simply explode when loaded with powder, wadding, and cannon-ball. That the Red Dwarves succeeded so quickly was a testament to their engineering skills, and soon they were able to replicate this feat on a broader scale. The Pyrstead forges became a foundry, and the smiths worked feverishly to manufacture enough cannon and munitions to arm the Islander Navy.

Meanwhile, over on Brenn Island, Grand Admiral Pwyll oversaw the massing of the fleet at Redhaven. He also kept himself apprised of intelligence reports from the spies watching Galma. The armada, it seemed, was indeed poised to defend. It was by all appearances complete and battle-ready, but it waited in place like a stalwart sentinel, a deadly barrier between Prince Peter of the Islands and the throne of Narnia's High King. Jadis did not mean to attack, at least not yet; and this gave Admiral Pwyll the initiative to act. When the Navy was ready, he needed only to consult Prince Peter and Princess Cliodhna, for he meant to propose a preemptive attack.

When Peter, Lumpkin, and Brenawen descended back to the coast of Muil Island, they brought with them a veritable procession of Red Dwarves and newly minted gunnery. The dwarves were instructed to confer with the mer-people and see about arming the Navy ships. Lumpkin and Brenawen remained with them to oversee this daunting task. As for Pete, he went back to the governor's house to search for his wife and the rest of the Narnians.

When he arrived, though, only Phineas was present. "What's up?" Pete said to the faun.

"I phrase I shall never understand," said Phineas, "but if you're looking for the others, they're all otherwise occupied."

"How so?"

Phineas's answer was simple. "Swimming."

Pete repeated this slowly. "…Swimming."

"Yes. The Princess Cliodhna hasn't come back from the beach in days on end, and Penelope and Cynthia have been down there every day, bathing with her."

Pete became red-faced and let out a heavy breath. "All three of them together? Um… I, uh… whew."

"Is something the matter, Your Highness?" asked Phineas.

"Yeah, there sure is," said Pete. "I can't tell which I could wish for more right now: a cold shower and a good game of baseball; or some lawn-chairs, lemonade, and popcorn."

"It has been rather hard on the imagination these past few days," Phineas admitted. "Easy on the eyes, but hard on—"

"Do not finish that sentence," said Pete. "And… hey, wait a sec! One of the women you're talking about is my wife!"

"And another is my paramour, but you don't see me pointing fingers."

Pete rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. I've, uh, I'm gonna go find Clio.

So Pete went down to the beach. And there, sure enough, he saw Cynthia and Penelope frolicking in the ocean, and he found himself silently reciting the statistics from the Yankees' last season… and when that didn't work, he considered the Red Sox as well, just to make himself mad enough to the point of distraction. "Hey, Penny. Kiddo. Either of you seen Clio around?"

Cynthia had long ago come to understand what Pete's nickname for her, "Kiddo," essentially meant, and she found the irony amusing enough to retaliate in kind. "She's not here, Old-Timer," laughed the nymph. "She swam to Redhaven again." Cynthia pointed to the port across the strait, over on Brenn Island. Penelope, meanwhile, casually crossed her arms over her chest in order to hide her "assets" from Pete. The centauress, at least, had some understanding of the human's sense of propriety.

Cynthia did no such thing, though, which caused Pete to flush red and turn away. "Okay. Clio's not here. Got it. See you two up at the house later."

When Pete left, Cynthia turned to Penelope and asked, "What's the matter with him?"

"Humans, I've come to understand, are even more concerned with modesty than dwarves."

Cynthia turned bright red at the realization. "Oh, poor Peter!" Then she burst out laughing, and the centauress joined her.

Only several hours later did Pete learn where Cliodhna had gone off to, and this was surprising news. At first, it was also very happy news: after only a short trip to and from Terebinthia, the Dawn Treader had put back in at Redhaven! We can only imagine Captain Diarmuid's surprise at seeing the whole of the Islander Navy coming together in the Seven Isles, but even this was as nothing compared to the shock he received when Princess Cliodhna arose from the water in all her glory one morning and requested permission to come aboard.

Pete had to ask around Redhaven for quite some time before he learned where the princess was: she had been spotted on the deck of a ship in the harbor, a conspicuously dragon-shaped ship with a hull of bright green. Pete hovered somewhere between elated and perplexed as he sought out the Dawn Treader. At last, he found the ship, and all of the merman buccaneers aboard recognized him at once. It was a brief and jovial reunion they had; only, there was no sign of either Diarmuid or Cliodhna.

Then, from the stern cabin, the both of them emerged together, sliding arm-in-arm across the deck. They were both surprised enough to see Peter there, but Cliodhna let out an audible squeak when she saw him. "Oh! Peter… I… I hadn't wanted to… not this way, but—"

Pete narrowed his eyes at his wife and said, "I take it you and Diarmuid know each other."

Cliodhna nodded, and the look of guilt on her face was reflected in a similar expression on Diarmuid's.

"Oh God," said Pete, physically stepping back from them when the realization hit him. "The two of you… you're…"

Cliodhna cast her eyes down to the deck and said, "I'm so sorry, Peter. But when Diarmuid arrived in Redhaven, I had to see him again, and—"

"I'm sorry too," said Pete. "I didn't know. Dammit, Diarmuid! We were friends! How come you never mentioned that you and the princess were old flames?"

"Remember when ye asked me about Narrowhaven?" said the merman.

"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell," quoted Pete. "Right. You might want to rethink that policy in the future." The human faced his wife and said, "Clio, do you love him?"

"I like you well enough, Peter," said the mermaid, "but I'm in love with Diarmuid. I always have been."

"Well then, I guess somebody's got to step up and be the bigger man here," said Pete. He gave a bitter, snorting laugh and said, "It's not like we wanted to get married in the first place, is it? And anyway, I can't be with somebody who'll never fall in love with me." Pete had always hated that cliché, loving without being in love. He had never known how such a thing could be possible. Either you loved someone, or you didn't. And yet, as he thought back on his time with Cliodhna, he realized that it was an apt description for how they felt about each other. They were affectionate; and they had certainly been in lust with each other; but if Pete honestly asked himself whether he was in love with Cliodhna, he couldn't give himself a definite answer. And that was probably why it defaulted to "no." True love, Pete somehow felt, should be doubtless.

"So… you intend to free me from our marriage?" said Cliodhna in no small measure of surprise.

"That's the idea," said Pete. "How do mer-people get divorced? Any rituals or documents to deal with?"

"All you have to do is leave me," said Cliodhna, a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

"Is it what the both of you want?" asked Pete.

Cliodhna blinked and wiped her eyes, but she managed to nod in confirmation. Diarmuid said, "I would owe ye more than I'll ever be able to repay in a lifetime."

"All right then," said Pete. "I just have one more question for Cliodhna… that I need to ask her alone."

Diarmuid nodded and said, "Very well. I'll leave ye both to it." And he retreated back into the cabin.

Pete looked around and saw the sailors gathered in a crowd, pretending that they weren't hanging intently on every spoken word that passed among the threesome. "That goes for everybody," he said. At once, the gathering broke apart, and several of the pirates shuffled off or whistled to themselves and went back to work.

Cliodhna pulled Pete aside so that they could speak privately. "What is it?" she asked.

"Just one little matter," said Pete. "We've been man and wife for a few weeks now, and let's be honest: we've really been acting like it. So I have to ask… what if you're pregnant?"

That upsetting question caused Cliodhna to gasp and cover her mouth with her fingers curled into a fist. "I hadn't thought of that! But… I don't think I am."

"Can you be sure? Do mermaids have that 'special time of the month?'"

Cliodhna nodded. "Yes we do. And if it doesn't come for me, you'll be the first person I tell."

"That's not good enough. I can't leave a kid without a father."

"You wouldn't be," said Cliodhna. "Diarmuid is a very good man."

"I know he is," said Pete. He sighed. "What about your mother and royalty and all that jazz?"

"We'll just have to stand up to her," said Cliodhna. "Find a way to make an exception, or change the law. It would help if you succeed in your quest and become High King. She would have to listen to the High King of Narnia."

"She should listen to her own daughter," said Pete, shaking his head.

"You're a good man too, Peter Pevensie," said Cliodhna. And then she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a slow kiss, and bittersweet, and Pete knew that it meant goodbye.

The human sighed. "All right. Go get Diarmuid, and we'll make this official."

Cliodhna nodded and went to fetch the captain. They both returned a few moments later.

"Okay, friend, here's how it's gonna be," said Pete. "I'll leave the both of you alone, but I have one condition for you."

"Name it," said Diarmuid.

"You've got to give up this 'Pirates of the Caribbean' shtick and go legit. No ex-wife of mine is going to go running off with a wanted criminal."

Diarmuid nodded and said, "I can try, Prince Peter, but o' course, me career options are limited, seein' as how, criminal or no, I'll be wanted regardless."

"Give it your best shot," said Pete. "From what I understand, the woman you're going to marry has some pull in the kingdom. And, just so nobody forgets, I'm not a prince anymore."

"No you aren't," said Cliodha, "but you're certainly worthy of the title."

"Thanks," said Pete. "So… is that it? We're divorced?"

"I believe so," said the princess.

"Okay then." Pete nodded to Cliodhna and Diarmuid both, turned toward the gangplank of the Dawn Treader, and left them without another word. He was free of a marriage that he had never wanted to begin with, and he was once again free of a royal title that he had wanted even less—but the price was grave, because leaving Cliodhna pained him. It hurt in a way that Pete hadn't felt since Taraiel had died.

When Pete returned to Muil Island, he found his five Narnian friends gathered in the small town half a mile up the coast from the governor's mansion. He was so dejected in his demeanor that they all knew something was the matter, and Phineas asked him, "What has happened, Your Highness?"

"I'm not a Highness anymore," said Pete. "Clio and I… we're through. Broken up. Divorced."

"How did it happen?" asked Cynthia, deep sympathy in her voice.

"I left her," said Pete. "Because she's in love with Diarmuid."

"Oh dear," said the nymph. She embraced Peter tightly, and he returned the hug, but only stiffly.

"Where does that leave us, then?" asked Lumpkin. "What of the Jadis's armada, and our plans to attack it?"

"I don't think it changes much," said Pete. "The Islanders still want to take Glama back for themselves. They're welcome to it, if it gets us to Cair Paravel. And besides, Clio can smooth things over with the admiral if she has to. But I doubt that it'll be necessary."

"What are you going to do now?" asked Brenawen.

"The same thing that any guy in any universe would do after he gets divorced," said Pete. "Find a bar and get shitfaced."

Penelope interjected at this point, "I realize that we all still have much to learn about human speech, but, does that mean that you intend to drink yourself into a stupor and embarrass yourself in front of the whole island?"

"Pretty much," said Pete, "and before you ask, I know you'd love to come along and say your 'I-told-you-so's,' but you're not invited. Men only. Finny, Lumpkin, care to join me in getting wasted over guy-talk?"

"Of course, Lord Peter," said Phineas. "It's the least we can do for you right now."

"Fantastic," said Pete. "Ladies," he added, bowing his head to the girls in a gesture of departure.

"Wait," said Penelope. "What is meant by 'guy-talk?'"

Before Pete could explain, Cynthia said, "He means to discuss those delicate subjects that only males will understand."

"Ah," said Penelope. "So, lots of grunting and pointing, then?"

Pete grinned and said, "You know, Penny, I've missed that witty rapport that we'd built up over the past few months. It's kind of nice to have it back."

"It's the least that I can do for you right now, Lord Peter."

As Pete had predicted, the sudden and unexpected dissolution of his marriage to the princess had no measurable effect on the Grand Admiral's plans. On a bright morning in late June, the Royal Navy of the Sea Kingdom set sail for the island of Galma. The ships were laden with sailors and soldiers, both merrow and dwarf; and with the brass cannon that the smiths of Pyrstead had forged. The dwarves had been taught how to man the guns, and they in turn trained the sea-folk in the same art. As for Pete and the Narnians, they continued to sail on the Grand Admiral's galleon. Captain Diarmuid and the Dawn Treader were coming with the fleet, and Diarmuid had offered bunks to Pete and his company, but Pete didn't relish the idea of sailing on the same ship as Princess Cliodhna right now, and so he tactfully declined. Nevertheless, Pete's mood didn't stay dreary for long. He was single again, he wasn't royalty anymore, and he still wasn't a vampire (which was something he checked for more frequently than you might guess). Taken altogether, that was a lot to be optimistic about. Plus, assuming the Royal Navy made good speed to Galma, he would get to witness some fireworks come this Fourth of July. Altogether, that wasn't too shabby.

Chapter Thirty-Five

ON the fourth day out from Redhaven, the sails of the Islander ships slackened, and the wind died down to nothing. The fleet had drifted into the doldrums, and it would have been caught there, had it not been for the presence of the Narrhowhaven Bards. The Bards sailed aboard the admiral's galleon, just as Pete and the Narnians did; and when this eerie stillness set upon the fleet and caused all of the ships to slow to a halt and then drift listlessly, Grand Admiral Pwyll summoned all of his passengers to meet in one of the ship's offices.

"This isn't natural," said Pwyll. "We've not so much as a gentle breeze behind our sails, and yet we're much too far north for the wind to die so completely."

"You suspect sorcery?" asked Oghma the Bard.

"More like witchcraft," said Pete. "This is Jadis's doing."

"Perhaps," said the admiral. "Master Oghma, can you and your Bards counter this magic, if magic it be?"

"Whether magic or no, we can try to sing for the wind," said Oghma, bowing his head before the admiral. The other six bards mimicked the gesture.

"Please do so, then," said Pwyll. As the Bards left the office, the admiral turned and faced the Narnians. "I had hoped for the element of surprise, but it seems that our Enemy knows we are coming."

"Jadis is the mistress of winter," said Phineas. "A stillness in the air is the least of our worries, if she means to cast spells at us from afar."

"Let us hope, then, that our Bards prove her equal and more," said the admiral.

The Narrhowaven Bards gathered on the deck of the galleon, and they began their spell-song. The notes carried on the still air, out to a vast distance. Then, from somewhere else in the fleet, an eighth voice added itself to that of the Seven Bards: it was Princess Cliodhna, combining her own melody with the spell-song's. The air stirred, and then a breeze picked up, and at last a full gust of wind filled all the sails in the fleet. The ships' canvasses pulled taut, the boats picked up speed, and they were underway once more.

The fair wind continued for some weeks more, and as the days rolled by, Pete came into the habit of standing at the ship's bow alone, hanging over the forward gunwale and watching the galleon cut through the choppy water. Cold wind whipped his face and stung his cheeks, but he liked the feeling anyway. It was lively and calming all at once.

Then, one evening, his five companions approached him while he was yet engrossed in staring out to sea. "My lord?" said Phineas.

Pete looked over his shoulder and saw his friends. "Hey, guys. How's it hanging?"

"You're the one doing all the 'hanging,'" said Cynthia, "dangling yourself in front of the ship like a figurehead!"

"I'm not dangling!" said Pete. "See? Both feet, firmly on deck, and inside the railing."

"But you're spending a great deal of time up here, all alone, and not talking to anybody," said Penelope.

"And you're all concerned?" said Pete. "Don't be. I'm just clearing my head. Thinking some things over. And I like to keep an eye out for icebergs."

"Icebergs, Lord Peter?" asked Brenawen.

"Sure," said Pete. "If the Witch can send bad weather our way, she might decide to send icebergs too, and then our little voyage would end up like it did for Jack and Rose."

"Do we even want to know who Jack and Rose are?" asked Phineas.

"Probably not. Titanic was even more of a pain to sit through than Gone with the Wind." Pete turned himself around and sat back on the railing. "So… anything in particular you all wanted to ask about?"

"We just wanted to see how you're doing," said Cynthia. "After everything that's happened…"

Pete cut the dryad off by nodding his head and saying, "Yeah. Yeah, it's all been a ride, hasn't it? But I'm okay. Really."

"You are quite certain, Lord Peter?" said Lumpkin.

"Yep. I've just about had it up to here," Pete put his hand level with the top of his head, "with all drama in my life, so I'm done with it. No more whining, no more sulking. It's time I focused on winning this war for the good guys."

Penelope said, "It's a great relief to hear you say that, Peter."

"Well, I figure, Clio moved on. She got the guy she wanted. And Tara, if she were here to say something about it, would want me to move on too. So… this is me, moving on. The soap-opera ends here."

Phineas grinned. "'Soap-opera?' Oh dear, but Your Lordship simply must explain that one."

"I… I don't think I can," said Pete after thinking for a moment. "It's a little bit too involved." He looked up at the sky, and the stars were just starting to come out. There were a couple of very bright ones visible near the crescent-moon—two bright stars that shone red and orange, but neither one twinkled. "Hey," said Pete, pointing them out, "those are planets, right?"

"Yes they are," said Penelope. "The red one is Tarva, and the bright orange one is called Alambil. My people have watched the stars and planets for ages and ages, and some of my race can make predictions from what they read in the sky."

"Huh," said Pete. "I always thought astrology was bunk, but in this world? Who knows." After a moment, his eyes widened, and he said, "I can't believe it's taken me this long to ask, but what do you call this planet, anyway?"

The question was met with a round of blank stares. "Which planet, my lord?" asked Phineas.

"This one," said Pete. "The one under our feet. The world."

"I don't understand," said Phineas. "What do the wandering stars have to do with the world beneath us?"

"Because the 'wandering stars,'" said Pete (and, of course, he raised his hands and made "air quotes" with his fingers when he said "wandering stars"), "are also worlds. And this world is also a planet. The planets all go around the sun, and the sun is just an ordinary star. All the other stars the sky, the ones that don't move, they're just distant suns, probably with other worlds orbiting them."

Phineas and Penelope only stared at Pete curiously, but Lumpkin and Brenawen laughed aloud. "What an imagination you have, my lord!" said Lumpkin. "You almost had me going there for a moment, but of course it's all nonsense. The world is solid and unmoving beneath our feet."

"Yeah, sure, and I bet you think it's flat, too," said Pete with a roll of his eyes.

"Well of course it is," said Cynthia. "What other shape could it be?"

"Uh… a sphere, maybe?" said Pete. "Worlds are round." When he met more incredulous stares and politely stifled laughter from his friends, Pete just scowled and said, "Okay, answer me this: when a ship sails into the distance, does it shrink to a point and vanish, or do you see it dip down over the horizon, hull first, then masts and sails?"

The Narnians fell silent at that. "It sinks down, bottom first and top last," Lumpkin admitted finally.

"And how would that be possible, unless the world's surface were curved?" asked Pete.

"Oh dear," said Lumpkin. "This… this… that's quite true, and so, therefore, the world must be… oh, dear." Lumpkin tugged on his beard and turned away, silently muttering confused half-sentences to himself.

"Uh-oh," said Pete. "I think I broke him."

"I'll take him back to our bunk," said Brenawen. "And, please, Lord Peter, in the future, if you have anymore brilliant new ideas aimed at shattering our very picture of the world, might you perchance keep them to yourself?"

"I'll try," said Pete. "But I should warn you, I'm incorrigible." As Brenawen led Lumpkin away, Pete turned back to the others and said, "So, back to my question. This world. Narnia, Archenland, Calormen, the Eastern Ocean… what's it all called?"

Phineas stroked the tuft of curly black beard on his chin and said, "There are many stories that my people have passed down since our old city was destroyed. They speak of the Ancients, the human beings who ruled this world in the Elder Days, before the witches came. From what I can recall, they called this world 'Dünya.'"

"Dünya," said Pete, nodding and smiling. "Cool."

Pete's prediction about icebergs never came true. The ocean remained clear and unfrozen, even as they sailed north for Galma. It was the middle of summer, after all, and the Witch's curse affected Narnia, not the Sea Kingdom. Then, of a sudden, an entire pod of dolphins appeared by the side of the admirals' galleon one day, leaping out of the water and diving back in again, squeaking and chattering as they did so. "Ah," said Pwyll, coming to stand near Pete on the forecastle, "the spies report back to us."

Pete looked over at the stiff-necked, older merman and said, "You understand what the dolphins are saying?"

"Of course," said the admiral. "They tell me that the enemy armada is positioned ahead of us, perhaps one more day's sailing. Dolphins make the very best intelligence operatives a navy could hope for."

"Until the Vogons come," quipped Pete. "Then it's 'so long, and thanks for all the fish.'"

The admiral hemmed and hawed and clasped his hands behind his back. "Quite so," he said at last, though, of course, he had no idea what Pete was talking about.

"Ships ahoy!" was the cry that carried over every vessel in the Islander Navy. Jadis, it seemed, had chosen to place her great armada some distance out from Galma, an effective blockade for any single ship trying to break through and make for Cair Paravel—but hardly a match for the whole of Queen Morrigan's Royal Navy. The battle plan had been discussed at length and finalized back in Redhaven, and all of the sailors had been well-trained in the use of Pete's new kind of weapon. All of this meant one thing: the battle to come would be short and easily fought, for all its massive scale. With more than a hundred ships on either side of the battle, an ordinary ship-to-ship fight using the tactics native to this world would have been protracted and bloody for both sides. But that was not fated to happen on this day.

As soon as the two fleets spotted each other, they sailed into attack formations, pairing off to shoot arrows and harpoons and ballista bolts, and throw grapnels and board enemy ships for hand-to-hand combat. But then the Islander vessels turned sideways and proceeded to broadside the Narnian and Calormene ships with round after hot, leaden round from brass guns. The sound of thunder, like nothing any soldier or sailor there had ever heard before, echoed over the open sea. Armada ships were battered and crippled at ranges unheard of, for a cannon could fire a ball much farther than a ballista could fling a quarrel, and the damage caused by the cannon was that much more devastating.

After only a small taste of this blasting and battering, the armada fell apart. Calormene schooners surrendered or tried to flee south. Narnian ships—crewed by goblins, hobgoblins, and Black Dwarves—turned north and tried to limp back to Galma. Grand Admiral Pwyll gave the order, though, to pursue and destroy. All the ships that he caught up with, he fired upon or set fire to, and they were sunk. If any survivors were found, whether jinn or dwarf or goblin, they were taken prisoner and clapped in irons or tossed in a brig. But the battle as a whole was a disaster for Narnia, a complete rout, and a stunning victory for the Sea Kingdom.

"And we owe it all to your human weapons," said Grand Admiral Pwyll at dinner that evening. "Those glorious guns of yours have carried the day, my lad! Er, I mean, my lord!"

Somehow, though, Pete couldn't bring himself to bask in the glory. He had seen the battle from a top-notch, front-row seat, in Technicolor, and had been an ugly thing. True, the Islanders had lost few ships and suffered far fewer casualties, but the drowning death-throes of goblins and dwarves yet rang in Pete's ears. "You're welcome," was all he could bring himself to say to the admiral.

The galleon's officers, the Narnian party, and the Bards of Narrowhaven were gathered around a large table that took up nearly all the space in the cramped, shipboard dining-room. "It was a splendid battle, and brilliantly fought," said Lumpkin, calmly buttering a biscuit and stuffing it into his mouth. He raised a mug and added, "A toast: to the ingenuity of humans, the diligence of dwarves, and, er, well, the seamanship of the sea-folk."

"Well put, my little friend," said Oghma, smiling. He raised his glass, and so did the other Bards, the grand admiral, and the Narnians.

Pete stared at his plate and idly scraped a fork over the surface of it. The screeching noise made everybody stop what they were doing and look at him. Pete suddenly felt that every eye in the room was on him, and he looked up. "We're celebrating," he said. "Why are we celebrating the start of a war?"

"We're celebrating the end of a battle!" said Penelope. "The war won't end soon or all at once, but still we must take whatever good may come, as it comes."

"I quite agree," added Phineas. "Narrow your perspective, Lord Peter, and you'll see that we're simply living in the moment."

"I don't exactly have that luxury," said Pete. "You're all dead-set on making me king, and that puts the big picture squarely in my lap at all times."

Cynthia was about to jump into the conversation, when an ensign came into the dining room and said, "Admiral Pwyll, sir, you're going to want to come topside and see this."

All at once, the dining room emptied. Everybody there rushed up onto the deck and looked ahead. It was evening, but even still, they could all see the high column of cloud and shadow, a mass of solid blackness, standing directly in their path.

"What is that?" said Brenawen, squinting through the gloom.

"Storm-clouds," said Admiral Pwyll. "A winter storm."

"Whatever it is, it's not moving," said Phineas. "It just sits in place… like a wall of ill weather."

The admiral called for a spyglass and then looked out to the waters ahead. "Ice floes," he pronounced. "You can barely see them through the snowfall, but they're there."

"Aw, I knew we'd run into icebergs," grumbled Pete. "Admiral, you can't take us much further than this. It's way too dangerous for the fleet."

"You're quite right, of course," said Pwyll, but he sounded very disappointed to admit it. If the navy had to turn back now, the admiral would lose his chance to recapture Galma for the greater glory of Queen Morrigan. "But what will you do now, Lord Peter? Your destination lies beyond, on the shores of Narnia! Will you let some ice and snow bar your way?"

Pete gazed at the stormy weather ahead. Then he arrived at a decision. "No," said Pete, "but I won't risk taking more than one ship into that mess."

Cynthia shook her head. "Oh, Peter, you can't mean—!"

"Yeah, Kiddo, I do. We're going to have to ask Captain Diarmuid if we can take the Dawn Treader."

Chapter Thirty-Six

"WHY must we do this?" asked Cynthia. "Can't the Bards simply calm the weather with their magic?"

"I already asked Oghma about that," said Pete. "He says they'll have enough trouble as it is just keeping one ship safe from the storm."

"Wait," said Cynthia. "The Bards are coming with us?"

"Actually, we insisted."

Pete and Cynthia were standing on the deck of the Dawn Treader. The Narnians had already moved their gear from the admiral's flagship to their old bunks on Diarmuid's ship. And now, it seemed, the Bards were doing the same—for the voice that had just answered Cynthia belonged to Melusine, one of the Seven Bards, a mermaid with pink scales on her tail and hair of an even brighter green than the dryad's. Melusine was the youngest of all the Bards in Oghma's circle, by two decades and change; she was also a few years younger than Princess Cliodhna. Whereas Oghma and the other Bards had mastered the magic of siren-songs with a lifetime of study, this girl Melusine had earned her place among them for being something of a prodigy. She had a special talent for tapping into the Deep Magic with her voice.

"But why would you do that?" asked Cynthia. "Don't you know how dangerous this is going to be? And what if the Queen's Navy needs your magic more than we do?"

"Danger doesn't frighten us," said Melusine. "And we Bards are disciples of Aslan, not the Sea-Queen. The prophecies say that Aslan will go into Narnia before Jadis is defeated, and we want to be there to meet him."

"Matter of fact, he's already in Narnia," said Pete. "We sort of met him on the border. Nice guy, but even when he promises to speak plainly, he's a little bit cryptic."

Melusine turned a surprised look on Pete. "You've met Aslan? In person?"

"Uh, yeah. But it's probably not a good idea to go—"

"I must tell Master Oghma and the other Bards at once! The prophecies… at last, they're coming true!" The mermaid slithered off before either Pete or Cynthia could get another word in edgewise.

"Well this isn't good," said Pete.

The news spread quickly among the crew of the Dawn Treader after the frantic young mermaid had gone running off to tell Oghma all about Pete's having met Aslan. Pete knew that it wouldn't go over well with his friends that he and Cynthia had kept the meeting a secret, and Pete braced himself for a severe tongue-lashing from Penelope. But, astonishingly, the lashing never came. After an hour or so of nervous waiting, Pete asked Cynthia how this might be possible, and the nymph sheepishly admitted that she had told Phineas everything quite a long time ago. So Pete went to ask Phineas who he had told, and the faun cheerfully admitted to having broached the subject with Lumpkin. That explained it, of course, because Lumpkin would have told Penelope at some point, and obviously, Brenawen too.

So that was one great weight lifted off of Pete's shoulders. The other involved Diarmuid and Cliodhna.

The pirate-captain and the princess had insisted on marrying as soon as possible. Ergo, on the very day that the fleet had set out from Redhaven, Master Oghma had been asked to preside over a second of Princess Cliodhna's weddings. The Chief Bard had not been happy to hear that Pete had divorced Cliodhna, for a wedding officiated by a Bard involved sacred vows spoken in Aslan's name. But Diarmuid and Cliodhna had insisted on a prompt ceremony, and Pete had put in a word for them as well; so Oghma had had little choice but to bow before royal authority and perform the wedding. Consequently, the whole of the nearly three-week journey between Redhaven and Galma had been a second honeymoon for the princess, this time shared with a man she truly loved.

Then, in the aftermath of the great battle fought between the Islander Navy and the Galmatian Armada, Pete had asked Diarmuid if the Dawn Treader could take them all the way to Narnia. The captain had readily assented, of course, for he still claimed to owe Pete a lifetime of favors for stepping aside and freeing Cliodhna—and if Pete needed to go to Cair Paravel, Diarmuid would see him there, come hell or high water. Talk of danger would dissuade neither the captain nor his royal bride, for Cliodhna said that she felt invincible by the side of her dashing rogue of a husband. And even now, the faith they had in each other showed in every moment that they spent together—which was most moments, since they never seemed to leave each other's side. Even when the captain was on duty and overseeing his ship, Clio was there to hang on his every word or action; and Diarmuid returned her every attention in kind. In short, they were happily married. Pete could see this because it was obvious to anybody; and he didn't want to look as if he were trying to interfere. But circumstances had conspired to throw them all together again.

The Dawn Treader and the Royal Navy hadn't yet parted ways, when Pete found himself looking nostalgically at Clio and Diarmuid from the deck of the pirate-captain's own ship. He caught himself wishing, occasionally and for just a moment, that he were in Diarmuid's place…

"I hope you're not feeling jealous."

Pete gave a start and spun around. Penelope had somehow managed to creep up behind him without his noticing. "Jeez, Penny! I wish everybody would quit sneaking up on me."

"I wasn't sneaking; I was trying to get your attention! But you were obviously too preoccupied to notice."

Pete looked back at the happy couple (Diarmuid and Cliodhna were sitting above the aftercastle together, their hands clasped and their fishtails intertwined, making moony-eyed gazes at each other) and then returned his attention to Penelope. "I'm not jealous. Not over Diarmuid being with Clio, anyway. But I do wish that I could find what they have."

"Don't we all?" said Penelope.

Pete smirked. "I guess, when it comes down to it, we're all just a bunch of romantic idiots."

Penelope feigned shock and whimsically said, "Speak for yourself, human!"

"Okay, I'm a romantic idiot. You are a very sensible, badass, sword-fighting centaur-chick."

"I think that might be the sweetest thing that anybody's ever said to me," said Penelope without a drop of sincerity in her voice.

"What can I say? I'm a sweet-talker."

"You're a horse's arse, is what you are."

"That better be some kind of weird centaur compliment," said Pete. He chucked Penelope lightly on the upper arm.

"You… you just hit me," said the centauress in disbelief. "What was that for?"

"It's a friendly gesture. Humans do it all the time."

"Oh." Penelope returned the favor by punching Pete in the arm. Hard.

"Ow! Penny!"

At last, Grand Admiral Pwyll became satisfied that the blizzard ahead was indeed a magical obstacle and not likely to subside on its own. So the Islander fleet turned southeast and charted a course for home, while the Dawn Treader pushed northwest into the gloomy winter-night. If Diarmuid was master and commander of the Treader, then Cliodhna was now its rightful mistress. And along with them sailed Pete Pevensie, the five rebels from Narnia, and the Seven Bards of the sea-people. They sailed into the unnaturally frigid waters, picking a careful course between the icebergs that floated everywhere now. Snow flurried and fell in heaps, and the deck had to be cleared often. Slick frost also formed on the planks and the rigging, making normal ship's business more dangerous than usual. But the real peril came from the chance that the water ahead could turn to a solid sheet of ice at any moment, and the Dwan Treader might run aground on it before she could be steered clear. A constant watch was posted to make sure that the course they kept was free of any frozen floes.

The wind still howled and the snow still fell when Galma came into view. Weather like this should have buried or frozen or sunk a small ship like the Dawn Treader, but for the songs of the Bards, which kept the worst of it at bay and prevented some small part of Jadis's evil spell from touching the ship. Cliodhna and the Bards sang carols of warmth and cheer, and the subtle magic in these songs helped to stave off winter's icy hands. At last, they made it to the shores of the last island (or, as the Narnians tended to think of it, the first island) of the Eastern Ocean in safety.

A great many Narnian warships were anchored along the southern coast of Galma. The island itself was large, high, and rocky, with sheer cliffs on three sides of it and pebbly beaches along the south shore only. On the island's easternmost point, where the cliffs were highest, an immense stone fortress sat on the edge of a tall bluff. This was Fort Galma, Jadis's beachhead into the Eastern Ocean, and the base from which her armada had received its orders.

"It is doubtless manned almost entirely by goblins," Brenawen explained. "Nobody decent has lived on Galma for centuries, and dwarves would never come to live here regardless."

The Dawn Treader had circled around to the north of the island to avoid being spotted by the warships, and now she was anchored in a small cove flanked by high rock walls. The cliffsides here were peppered with small cave-openings.

"I remember Eld Brock saying something like that back in Pyrstead," said Pete. "That dwarves avoided Galma."

"Because it's too dangerous to mine here," said Lumpkin. "The whole island is practically hollow, with caves crisscrossing caves like holes in a soft cake, and some of the openings underneath are filled with a cursed vapor that kills the breath and catches like hellfire!"

Pete grew pensive, and several minutes dragged by while he pondered in silence. "I don't like it," he said at last. "Jadis almost certainly conjured up this blizzard to cover her armada's retreat, and now there are a whole lot of ships on that beach, so even if we make it to Narnia—"

"Jadis has a spare army just a stone's throw away, and she has kept enough ships to move it quickly, should she need to," said Penelope. "If we bring a force to assault Cair Parvel, she could box us in from behind."

"—And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I put her in charge of the rebel army," said Pete, pointing to the centauress with his thumb. "Exactly the problem I was thinking of. So, the way I see it, we need to do some scouting. Get onto that island somehow and see what we're up against."

"That could prove difficult," said Phineas. "We'll never get onto the southern beach with all of those ships in the way."

"We could swim," suggested Cliodhna. "Some of us, anyway. We could sneak onto the beach, look around the island, and report back what we find."

"Nah," said Pete, "no need to risk it. We can go that way." He pointed to the natural walls of the cove, and to all of the little cave-mouths. "Lumpkin, Brenawen, you guys are coming with me. The three of us are going to do a little spelunking."

Pete and the two dwarves managed to climb over the lip of one of the lower, larger cave-mouths. Once on solid footing, Lumpkin led the way. The expertise of Red Dwarves at negotiating underground tunnels was unparalleled, after all. They knew which kinds of rock to follow, which formations were safe and which weren't, and how to follow their noses and stay in caves with fresh air. It wasn't long, though, before the three spelunkers found one of the vapor-vents that so worried dwarven miners.

"Phew!" said Brenawen. "It smells like a privy!"

"It's natural gas," said Pete. "The whole island must be sitting over one huge pocket. A giant bubble of the stuff."

"Whatever it is, we must avoid it," said Lumpkin. "It's the great danger of Galma."

A few minutes later, the dwarf was forced to revise that assessment… because the next series of tunnels that they came into had some very distinct, very familiar claw-marks all along the walls. "I know these markings," said Lumpkin, his voice quavering in fright. "Trolls!"

"Trolls?" Brenawen whispered back. "We need to get out of here, now!"

"Trolls," said Pete. "Those are the, uh, the big nasty things that we don't ever want to see again ever, right?"

"Right!" said Lumpkin. "Slaying one troll is enough for a lifetime."

Stars filled Brenawen's eyes as she regarded her husband. "You've slain a troll?"

"Er, well, yes. I didn't mention this? I, uh—I had help, of course, and—"

"Psst! Lovebirds! It's time to go!" said Pete. "Save the storytelling for when we get back to the ship!"

And so the trio turned and retraced its path back out of the caves. "This at least settles one question," said Brenawen. "There aren't likely to be any dwarf or centaur soldiers here. Trolls prey upon them. The only things they won't eat on sight are goblin-kind, because the trolls and the goblins are kith and kin. If Jadis has placed those giant beasts here, then goblins must be the ones keeping the trolls."

"Goblins," muttered Pete. "Those are the guys who turned me over to Serpens. I wish that we could just…" At that moment, they once again passed the methane vent, and inspiration struck Pete like a tiny light-bulb clicking on inside his mind. "Hold it," he said. "We need to get some stuff from the ship and come back here."

"Come back?" said Lumpkin. "Why ever would we do that?"

"Because," said Pete, "we've just been presented with a target of opportunity, and I mean to take it out."

Once they were back aboard the Dawn Treader, Pete assembled everybody on the deck and said, "Okay, new plan. All of the gunpowder that we brought for the cannons? Pack it up." The Dawn Treader had been equipped with two brass guns for the battle, and six full powderkegs yet rested in her hold. Pete only hoped it would be enough.

"What are you planning?" asked Phineas.

"This whole island is a giant Roman candle," said Pete. "I'm going to light it up."

"That's mad!" said Penelope. "You'll be killed!"

"Not if I use a long enough fuse," said Pete. "I can set it from the cave entrance and get clear before the spark gets anywhere near that gas-vent."

"But… what will this do to the island?" asked Cliodhna.

Pete said nothing, but he mimed an explosion with his fingers and silently mouthed the word, "boom."

The crew of the Dawn Treader worked quickly and quietly under Pete's direction. A dozen of the mermen helped to carry the six kegs into cave and set them by the vent, while Pete brought a long, oil-soaked rope to serve as a makeshift fuse. Pete had the sailors pile the kegs right in the intersection of the two tunnels, where the natural gas could mix with the oxygen. Then he set the rope into a hole in one of the kegs and started rolling it back, back, back along the way that they had come. The mermen left the tunnel altogether and swam back to the ship, but Pete had to stop when the rope came to an end, perhaps fifty yards from the cave mouth. That was quite a distance to run from inside of a slick, winding, uneven tunnel, but he figured that the fuse was long enough to give him three or four minutes to get clear, so it wouldn't be too dangerous. He pulled out that old cigarette lighter of his… and flicked it on… and set the flame to the oiled rope. It caught at once, and the tiny flame raced away down the tunnel.

"Holy crap," grunted Pete as he raced in the opposite direction, tearing for the cave-opening at his best speed. He dove out the end and plunged head-first into the water… and then a familiar set of arms grabbed him and pulled him to the surface. It was Cliodhna. "Hang on, Peter," she said. "This water is much too cold for a human!"

"Y-y-y-you're t-t-telling m-me," said Pete through chattering teeth.

The mermaid dragged Pete through the water, careful to keep his head above the surface. At last, they made it to the Dawn Treader, and the crew helped to haul them both up.

Cynthia and Penelope came forward with blankets and heated wine for Pete. Before they could tend to him, though, Pete said to Diarmuid, "G-g-get the anchor up. G-get us out of here."

In that moment, a gout of flame burst forth from the cave opening that Pete had just come from… and then another jet came from another cave… and then another… and another… and then it seemed as if the sky over Galma were the inferno of hell itself; and a terrific, dull, thudding boom sounded from somewhere deep underground. Geysers of orange light sprang up all over the island, and waves of heat made the air ripple and shift.

The sailors panicked and rushed to weigh anchor. Diarmuid shouted orders and kept them working together towards getting away quickly. The Dawn Treader pulled out of the cove, leaving the island-wide blaze in its wake. Pete sat on the deck, huddled in the blanket, but he noticed that his friends were staring at him… with fear in their eyes.

Pete rose, cast aside the covering, and basked in the sweltering warmth that rolled off of Galma. "Take that!" he suddenly shouted over the side of the ship. "Take that, Jadis! I hope you can see this from Castle Dracula, Serpens! 'Pete Pevensie was here,' you bastards, and I'm coming for you next!"

Penelope grabbed Pete by the shoulders and pulled him away from the side of the ship. "Peter, what's gotten into you?"

"Nothing, Penny. Just enjoying the moment. After all, we're successful terrorist bombers now." There was an edge to Pete's voice, a hardness that the Narnians had only heard once before—in Tashbaan, when he had stormed off with Jill Greene to try and find his way home. "I don't know about you guys, but I've had a full day, so I'm going to go get some sleep." Without another word, he went down into the ship and headed for his bunk.

"What was that?" asked Cynthia worriedly.

"That," said Phineas, "was Peter… moved on."

Chapter Thirty-Seven

PENELOPE followed Pete down into the hold of the Dawn Treader. She found him lazing on his hammock, staring up at the ceiling. "Lord Peter?"

Pete rolled over, showing Penelope his back. "Save it for the morning. I said I wanted to get some sleep."

"You're starting to worry us again," said Penelope. "You need to know that we all care about you, Peter."

Pete sighed, sat up in the hammock, and faced the centauress. "Tell the others that they can quit worrying so much. We're at war; war is hell; and this time, I mean business. Plus, I did say that it was no more Mr. Nice Guy."

"You said that you were done sulking about the past," Penelope corrected. "Peter, you just blew up an island. That's a bit more dramatic than not sulking!"

"It had to be done, right? Tactically, we couldn't just leave a fortress full of goblins and trolls behind us. And anyway, you should be happy that I'm finally sticking it to the witch!"

"Not if it costs you too much."

"Like what, my soul?" scoffed Pete.

"Like your right mind!" said Penelope. "You… scared us up there."

"I hope I didn't give you the craps."

"The creeps," said Penelope softly. She smiled wanly and said, "Look, I don't mean to be a nag—"

"You realize that 'nag' is a synonym for 'horse,' right?"

"Will you stop it?" said Penelope, punching Pete in the arm again. "I'm trying to be serious here!"

Pete rubbed his upper arm. "You've still got a heck of a right hook there…"

"We centaurs are very strong. As I was saying, Peter, I'm not trying to be a bother, but friendships run both ways, and if you need to get anything off of your chest, I'm willing to listen."

Pete stared into Penelope's eyes for several moments, boring into her with his gaze. The centauress thought that Pete's eyes were colder than she remembered them. His face was like granite. At last, he said, "Thanks, Penny. But I'm fine. Really. You should get some rest too; we'll all need to be at the top of our game when we turn down the home-stretch and run for the Cair."

Penelope bowed her head. "As you wish, milord." She left Pete in his hammock and went to find the hay-bail in the aft quarter of the hold that served as her own sleeping-place.

Cair Paravel was almost directly west of Galma, but sailing straight to the high palace of Narnia would be suicide, they all knew. The vampire Serpens used Cair Paravel as one of his lairs, and Queen Jadis had created him the titled count of all the lands around it. That virtually ensured that the Cair would be well-defended by the vampire's army of the dead—skeletons and zombies, ghouls and ghasts, wights and wraiths, spectres and spooks, and who only knew what else—but only at nighttime, of course, for the undead were evil spirits whose substance dissolved into nothingness when the daylight came. Even still, while the dead rested beneath the earth, Cair Paravel would doubtlessly be guarded by whatever living troops that Jadis had seen fit to give over to her Black Knight and Champion—centaurs, dwarves, goblins, and perhaps even trolls. Without Serpens and the undead, the Cair would be weaker during the day, and Pete hoped to exploit that weakness when the time came, but he still needed his own army to lay the castle a proper siege.

So Pete asked Diarmuid to sail southwesterly and make for the mouth of the Glasswater. For the first several days of this last leg of their sea-voyage, they avoided the coastline and all the land near Cair Paravel. Then the Dawn Treader adjusted its course slightly westward, and after that they remained within sight of shore. They skirted the coasts all the way south, until they came at last to the mouth of the great river that flowed eastward out of Narnia and emptied into the sea. The river was wide and navigable, and so the Dawn Treader turned upstream and headed inland.

The Islander pirate-ship dropped anchor and came to rest near a broad, high, grassy riverbank. An encampment of sorts was situated on the south bank—a collection of tents flying flags of red and yellow. The flags depicted a golden lion: they were the banners of Aslan. The crew of the Dawn Treader debarked and all stood with feet, hooves, or finned tails upon Narnian soil at long last.

"Narnia," said Brenawen. "I wondered that I would ever see it again."

"Grass," said Penelope, looking down at the green ground. "Where has all the snow gone?"

"If I had to take my guess, Jadis sent it all out to sea after us," said Phineas, still shivering from the memory of their cold voyage.

"It won't truly be spring until Peter sits on the king's throne, though," said Cynthia. "The spell over Narnia is weakened, but hardly broken."

Pete strode past all of them and said, "Let's go say 'hi' to the happy campers."

The procession that formed behind Pete was an odd one indeed, for the human was flanked by a centauress, a faun, a dryad, two dwarves, and a whole company of merrows—Diarmuid, Cliodhna, the Seven Bards of Narrowhaven, and the pirate-crew of the Dawn Treader. They moved over the open wold and approached the conglomeration of red and yellow canvass tents. Many races milled about between them: centaurs and fauns, nymphs and dwarves, and even elves. There were talking animals of many varieties too: mice, beavers, foxes, wild dogs, great cats, birds, horses, and too many other species to list.

"I've been away from Narnia for so long, I'd almost forgotten about the talking animals," said Pete. "This is going to take some getting used to."

Of course, as soon as the human and his entourage were spotted, everybody in the camp fell silent, dropped what they were doing, and stared. Startled, excited whispers drifted through the crowd. "That's him." "That's the Son of Adam." "That's Lord Peter!" "I journeyed to Archenland with him." "He saved us from slavery on Terebinthia!" And, indeed, it seemed that many of the faces here were familiar: former slaves who had been freed by Pete's clever deception back on Terebinthia, and even more astonishingly, all of the centaur and faun rebels that they had left in Anvard!

Penelope recognized several faces and rushed joyfully ahead to greet them. "Jocasata! Naussus! Eikron!" A centauress and two centaurs had been milling about in the crowd, when Penelope spied them and remembered these troops who had escaped from the witch's western garrison with her. They had followed Pete all the way to the seat of the elf-kingdom with her. The centauress, Jocasta, laughed and embraced her long-absent captain.

"Milady Penelope!" she said, gleeful at the reunion. "You were away for so long, we'd all feared the worst—and when the Tisroc's messengers reached Anvard and told us that Queen Taraiel had been killed by Count Serpens—"

"What happened when the elves learned this news?" asked Penelope.

"They were enraged," said the centaur Eikron. "The elves' new ruler, King Rashiel, vowed to see Narnia's Black Knight destroyed, and two whole legions of elvish infantry were sent here with us. Their commander is known to you: the late queen's brother, the hybrid, Falon."

Pete, who had caught up to Penelope by now, was surprised by that. "Rashiel seemed like a pretty sensible guy when we met him. Why would he put a nut like Falon in charge of an army?"

Eikron smiled. "Commander Falon is eccentric, but he's not as crazy as he lets on. And do not forget, he was raised by hobgoblins. He is a fierce and intelligent warrior."

"So… Falon led all of you here, to this place?" asked Penelope. "Elves, fauns, and centaurs?"

"Yes," said Nassus with mild skepticism in his voice. "The half-breed said that it was Aslan's will. None of us understood how that could be… and yet, here all of you are, so perhaps the commander knew something that we didn't."

Penelope turned to Pete and said, "Falon was with you and Cynthia when you met Aslan in Archenland, correct?"

"Uh, yeah. He was."

"There you have it, then," said Penelope. "By the way, when were you planning on telling the rest of us that you had actually met Aslan?"

"I would've gotten around to it!" said Pete. "But, hold on. How did all the slaves from Terebinthia wind up here?"

"Actually, they were the ones waiting for us when we arrived," said Jocasta. "The prisoners that you freed from the slavers—they set up this camp. When the slave-traders arrived on the shores and found nobody here to take charge of their 'cargoes,' they did not know what to do. In the confusion, the slaves rioted and freed themselves, and they set fire to the Terebinthian ships. Then they traveled up the Glasswater, where they claim to have met Aslan. The Great Lion told them to wait here for us, and for you."

"The Great Lion," said Pete. "That's Aslan?"

"Of course he's a lion," said Penelope. "I thought you met him!"

"I did meet him!" said Pete. "He just… didn't look like a lion at the time. I figured that all this 'by the lion's mane' talk I've been hearing since I got here must've been, like, symbols and metaphors and stuff."

"He is indeed a great lion," said Naussus. "Bigger than any you've ever seen before. And wild he is—and fierce!"

"Fierce, but very good," added Eikron.

"The greatest good," said Jocasta, "and the true king of Narnia. Even if you sit on the throne, Lord Peter, you are but Aslan's representative to the rest of us."

"Sure, okay," said Pete. "Where is he?"

"We don't know," said Jocasta. "He had already left when we arrived. But the escaped slaves all said that he had gone west, deeper into Narnia, 'onward and inward' to gather more allies."

"That's good," said Penelope quietly. "Beruna lies west of here. He will find loyal centaurs, and many others."

"So, who's in charge now?" asked Pete.

"Commander Falon was in charge," said Naussus. "Now, you are."

Pete and his closest friends met Falon in the camp's largest tent. The odd looking creature, who one could reasonably describe as either an attractive hobgoblin or an ugly elf, seemed to have found his place. He was very comfortable wearing the armor of a battle-commander, and he didn't repeat himself so much anymore, though he would whisper things as he thought to himself aloud. "Peter," he said in his low voice. "Good. You're here. Now the war can start."

Pete cast a worried look sideways at his friends, and then he said, "I take it you heard about Tara?"

"About my sister. Yes." Falon's voice fell to a whisper. "Serpens has taken much from both of us. And he must be made to pay! Yes, to pay."

Pete clapped his hands together and said, "I couldn't agree with you more. So here's how this will go down: Penny, I still trust you more than anybody here with military decisions. So from now on, you're General Penelope of the Rebel Alliance."

"My Lord Peter! I… don't know what to say!"

"Say thanks," said Pete. "As for the rest of you guys… Falon, Phineas, Brenawen, you guys are colonels now. You're all warriors, so you know what you're doing. You only answer to me and Penny: her on military matters, and me on everything else. Got it?"

Phineas nodded. "Thank you, my lord."

Falon looked Pete in the eye, shook the human's hand, and solemnly declared, "I accept this office in the name of the vengeance we are both owed."

Brenawen asked, "What about Lumpkin? And Cynthia?"

"Seeing as how they're more or less civilians, like me, I have other jobs for them," said Pete. "Especially you, Lumpkin. I'm going to need you to gather together all the dwarves in the camp. We need to forge some more weapons."

"More cannon, my lord?" asked Lumpkin. "That could prove difficult, without the mines and metalworks we had at hand in Pyrstead."

"No, not cannon," said Pete. "We're trying to take Cair Paravel from Serpens, not batter the walls down to rubble. We need something different for a siege like this."

"Serpens isn't stupid," said Penelope. "If Jadis has ordered him to guard the Cair and keep Peter away from the throne, he'll remain within the castle, where he is fortified and defended. He won't strike out at this camp, so we do have some time to prepare."

The days passed quickly in the camp on the Glasswater, for Pete and the others were all kept very busy getting the Narnians ready to go to war. Cynthia had been placed in charge of scouting, and all of the talking animals, nymphs, and sprites answered to her. Phineas, meanwhile, resumed command of the faun Runners, but now they addressed him as a colonel rather than a marchwarden. Brenawen found herself without any soldiers under her direct command, and so she became Penelope's aide-de-camp and executive officer. And Lumpkin, despite the other Red Dwarves shaking their head at him for having a Black Dwarf for a wife, quickly organized his own people into a corps of blacksmiths.

Pete wanted them to make small arms, pistols and muskets, as many as could be made. The guns' barrels and stocks were easily fashioned, and Pete even showed the dwarves how to bore rifled grooves inside the barrels to make the weapons shoot straighter. But all of the little parts to the snaplock mechanism—the triggers, the hammers, the flints and frizzens, the flashpans—these were delicate and difficult to make, and so production was slow overall. Nevertheless, the dwarves became fair gunsmiths in a relatively short span of time. They also knew where to find the minerals needed to make black powder and the lead that Pete wanted for bullets. Supplies of all these things were built up over a few weeks, and Pete taught all of the soldiers there how to shoot the muskets. The dwarves and fauns were equipped with these guns as soon as there were enough to go around, and the centaurs were all given cavalry pistols. Eventually, the rebels in the camp were practicing daily drills involving shouldering and readying the weapons, aiming and firing on command, and reloading and cleaning them.

Then, one day, Cynthia came running into the camp with a fox and couple of hares at her heels. "Lord Peter! General Penelope! There are ships on the horizon!"

"What kind of ships?" asked Pete.

"Islander ships," said Cynthia. "It's the Royal Navy of the Sea Kingdom!"

Pete and his top officers (including Lumpkin and Cynthia) ran to get Captain Diarmuid, who gathered all of his sailors and had the Dawn Treader made ready to sail in record time. Once the pirate-ship got out into the current of the Glasswater and sped on its way, Pete met everybody on the deck of ship. "What do you guys think they want?" he asked of the captain and his wife.

"I couldn't say," said Diarmuid, "but they've not had time enough to sail all the way to Narrowhaven and back. Redhaven, perhaps, but no farther."

"Still, they might've met a courier ship with orders from my mother," said Princess Cliodhna. "Admiral Pwyll did send a dispatch home before we left Redhaven, telling her of my divorce and remarriage."

"Okay, so we can assume that mom's pissed," said Pete. "The question is, why would she send the whole freaking navy after us?"

"I don't know," said Cliodhna. "I suppose we'll find out soon enough."

Chapter Thirty-Eight

GRAND Admiral Pwyll boarded the Dawn Treader with a dozen trident-armed merrow soldiers. "Princess Cliodhna," he said, "I have been ordered by Her Majesty, Queen Morrigan, to arrest Your Highness, and Prince Peter, and the pirate Diarmuid. Your Highnesses are to be returned to Narrhowaven, in irons if you refuse to come quietly; and Diarmuid is to be executed by hanging, on Her Majesty's orders."

"She cannot do this!" said Cliodhna. She pointed a finger in the admiral's face and said, "You will not do this!"

"Truth be told, I don't like the thought of turning on past comrades-in-arms," said Pwyll. "It's bad form. Dishonorable, even. But I swore an oath of loyalty to my queen, and I must obey Her Majesty's commands."

"Diarmuid and I are lawfully wed," said Cliodhna. "He is the rightful Prince of the Islands now, not Peter! You cannot hang a prince!"

"There is some dispute as to the legality of that claim, Princess," said the admiral. "I looked the other way before the battle was upon us, but I have that liberty no longer! My orders come from your mother. She insists that you are still married to Peter, and that Diarmuid, who is not of royal blood and cannot rightfully marry you, must be executed for piracy, adultery, and treason."

From all over the deck of the ship, a series of clicks signaled the cocking of hammers. The moment that the admiral had uttered the word "treason," every sailor aboard the Treader had drawn a shiny, new flintlock pistol and pointed it at him. Pete, too, held a gun, and so did most of the Narnians. "That doesn't really work for me," said Pete. "Especially seeing as how you guys brought tridents to a gunfight."

The salty old merman looked around at all of the gun-barrels pointed at his head, smiled, and gave the order for his soldiers to stand down. "More cannons," he said, "but this time in miniature. That human cleverness of yours never fails to astound me. All right," he said, throwing up his hands. "You win. I'm your prisoner, and quite at your disposal."

Pete grinned, uncocked the hammer of his own flintlock, and put the gun up. "Okay, first off, they're 'pistols,' not cannons; and second, this is either way too easy, or you're looking for an excuse to switch to our side."

"An excuse? Never, milord Peter. Wouldn't be honorable. But since you're holding me at the point of a weapon, of course I must do whatever you ask of me. Until, that is, Her Majesty Queen Morrigan sees fit to ransom the commander of her Royal Navy by giving in to your demands."

"Why, you crafty old devil," said Pete, holstering his gun and shaking the admiral's hand.

Princess Cliodhna dashed forward and embraced Pwyll around the neck. "Thank you, Admiral," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "I won't forget this."

The admiral harrumphed at the princess's sudden effusion and said, "Quite all right, of course. As I said, I wasn't comfortable going against you lot in the first place." He ordered his own men to return to the flagship, which they did; and while they left, the admiral explained, "Once we had our orders, of course we turned back immediately and sailed for Galma. This time, that cursed ice-storm was gone, and so we were able to go all the way to the island. But when we got there, nothing was left. Galma was destroyed. Burnt to a crisp, I should think. Can't imagine how that happened."

"That were Lord Peter, in point of fact," said Diarmuid. "He used his black powder and fired the island from within."

"By Aslan!" said Pwyll. "Truly?"

"It wasn't really me," said Pete, "it was the gas under the island. Galma was already powderkeg waiting to go off; I just lit the fuse."

With boats and cannon added to their forces, Pete concocted a new plan. He had the Red Dwarves in the rebel camp craft a new sort of ammunition—canisters of bullets, each with a diameter that fit the cannon barrels—"grape shot," a means of turning the artillery into more effective anti-personnel weapons. "Carry the brass guns on your ships, Admiral," Pete had told him, "and sail north along the coast. Be ready to meet us about four leagues south of Cair Paravel, ten days from now." That was how long it would take to pack up everything they needed and march north to the Cair.

General Penelope made the order official: it was time to march north and proceed with the attack. The fauns had their packs of gear and their brand-spanking-new muskets. The dwarves took the tools that they would need to continue their smith-craft. The elves from Archenland, following the lately commissioned Colonel Falon, were peerless ground infantry armed with pikes and swords. And the centaur cavalry marched with lances and horse-pistols. Open wagons carted all the many supplies needed support this army (which was yet modest in size, as armies went). They carried everything from armaments and rations to linens and clothing.

The talking animals perhaps fared the best on the march, for they needed none of these material things. Weapons and clothes were of course useless to them, and their food was provided by nature. As they marched, Pete made an effort to converse with everybody he could, including the animals, and the more he got to know them, the more he realized that he liked their company. It was strange company, but it grew on him.

"I've always wondered," said a tiny squirrel that had to run quickly to keep up with Pete, "what humans are like? How do you live? Do you eat nuts… or," she let out a tiny gulp, "small animals?"

"Uh… I can honestly say that nobody's ever asked me that question before," said Pete, who had been asked to answer many of the animals' oddest queries since his return to Narnia. "I'm not sure how to answer it."

"She doesn't mean herself personally," said a coyote that kept a more leisurely pace. "After all, even predators must eat in Narnia. We just eat the animals that aren't smart enough to plead for their lives."

"But sometimes, you eat talking beasts who simply get taken by surprise, or who might have lost their voice, perhaps because they've caught a cold!" said the squirrel indignantly.

"Tragic accidents, of course," said the coyote. "No respectable Narnian predator would knowingly eat a fellow talking beast. So, Son of Adam, which are you? Herbivore or carnivore?"

"Oh, we humans pretty much eat anything that moves, grows, or comes wrapped in pretty plastic," said Pete. "But lately, I've been rethinking my stance on vegetarianism."

A brown bear trundled up behind Pete and laughed deeply. "Why contradict your nature? Omnivores are flexible. Adaptable. It shows good survival instincts. Some of us can respect that!"

"You would say that," sniffed the squirrel.

Pete buried his forehead in his hand. "I can't believe this. My life is turning into a Looney Toon."

Several days later, sure enough, the rebel army met Grand Admiral Pwyll's fleet on the shores south of Cair Paravel. The admiral ordered all of the cannon moved off of his ship and onto land, and the dwarves and merrows who sailed with him joined up with Pete's ground forces as artillerists. Then the whole great amalgamation of warriors set up a new base camp, and Cynthia was sent out with a troupe of fairy-folk and animals to get a first look at the castle.

Cair Paravel was large stone fortress of a castle, with high walls and many towers, and crenelated battlements all the way around. It was daytime when the scouts approached it through the woods, and they didn't know what to expect. This place was of supreme importance to Jadis, even though she didn't dwell here; so surely it would be well-defended, though they had no idea who or what would be doing the defending.

But strangely, as the nymphs and the beasts peered through the treeline, they saw no sign of movement in or around the castle, and nobody at all patrolling the walls. At once, they ran back to the camp to report what they had found to Pete and the officers.

"There's nobody?" said Pete. "No guards? No soldiers? Not even one goblin with a rusty butter-knife?"

"Nobody at all," said Cynthia. "It's a puzzle, but we watched the castle for some time, and there was neither sight nor sign of life."

"I don't like it," said Penelope. "It must be some kind of trap."

"Probably," said Pete, "but if they're not guarding the castle, that's even better. We don't even have to take it by force—we can just waltz in through the front door, sit my keister on the throne, break the spell, and get out of Dodge."

"That won't make you our king," said Phineas. "The High King of Narnia rules from Cair Paravel. Your task is through—"

"My task is through when we march up to Jadis's ice-palace, put a bullet in her brain, and take back Narnia's crown," said Pete. "This is a pit-stop. Let's just go in there and break the witch's curse!"

"All right," said Penelope, "but we need to be prepared for a trap. We'll go in, break the spell, and leave until—"

"No!" growled Falon with sudden and undisguised anger. "No, we must attack at night! We must destroy Count Serpens! We must—"

"Whoa, whoa, okay, down boy!" said Pete. "Falon is right. We can't leave until we stake us a nosferatu. But I've had a lot of time to think about this, and I think I've figured something out." Pete started pacing back and forth inside the commanders' tent as he spoke. "Okay, see if you can follow me on this. The undead in this world disappear during the day. That's something new; we don't have that rule back on Earth. Where I come from, the legend is that during the day, vampires have to rest in a coffin touching some of the soil that comes from the place where they died. If they're not in their coffin when the sun comes up, they can't rest, and it weakens them. And if the sun actually touches them, poof, they're dust. I think… I think these rules might apply here too. When we first met Serpens, he had to get inside that ruined temple before the sun came up, so I think that if sunlight actually touches him before he disappears for the day, it'll kill him. And we know that he only has a few particular lairs around the country: Silenopolis, Mount Pire, Cair Paravel. He must have coffins there! Which means, there must be places where he doesn't just disappear during the day—he sleeps and recovers his strength. Phineas, you're our lore and history guy. How does all this sound to you?"

The faun replied, "It's certainly possible. In stories, a vampire can only cross rivers and oceans when sleeping in a box filled with dirt. As to whether Serpens retains his physical form in such a state, though, I couldn't say."

"None of this makes any sense," said Penelope. "He either disappears during the daytime, or he doesn't! And even if he didn't, he's not so foolish as to leave himself vulnerable like that!"

"Vampires have a history of making their coffins really hard to find," said Pete. "It might not even be inside Cair Paravel. It could be in a cave nearby, or just about anywhere. But I'm baking on Serpens's arrogance here. If he already thinks he's invincible, he won't bother to cover his weaknesses—and you can trust me on some of this, because he's been in my head. I know how he thinks. It just fits his profile."

"If he's in there, we'll root him out!" said Falon. "We'll find him, and we'll kill him! Or, better yet, do what he did to us! Take him prisoner and torment him endlessly!"

"That's not the brightest idea in the world, buddy, but we'll decide what to do with Serpens when we find him," said Pete. "We're doing this. We have to do this."

Penelope tried to protest. "My lord—"

"It's not a military decision, General," said Pete. "No enemies to fight, no battle. This is a good old-fashioned vampire hunt."

"The last one ended with one of us dying," Penelope reminded him.

"And now it's payback time," said Pete. "Rally the troops. We're going to take an army into that castle, and we'll tear it apart from the inside until we find what we're looking for."

While Pwyll's fleet sailed into the harbor near the Cair, Pete divided his forces into two groups. The dwarves, nymphs, animals, and merrows would stay outside with the artillery and cover the rebels' position. The elves, fauns, and centaurs would go in and help search the castle, ready at a moment's notice to do battle if they encountered foes. A lit powderkeg made short work of the gates, and Pete and Penelope led their soldiers through the outer bailey and into the castle yard. The yard was a decrepit ruin; broken statuary and unkempt weeds were strewn everywhere. Beyond this was the keep, and here the soldiers continued on their way.

The inner gates were closed, but they weren't barred or locked in any way. Penelope and several centaurs pushed them open, revealing a dusty, shadowy hall of grand size, lined with two rows of huge columns. Though only a small amount of light crept in through the front gates, skylights and windows cast other beams around the hall. On the far side, a massive, cracked throne of solid gray stone rested on a raised section of floor.

"That's it?" said the Pete. "That's the High King's Throne?"

"It is," said Phineas. "We've come to it at last."

"That's got to be the least comfortable chair I've ever seen," said Pete. "It could use some cushions, maybe a throw-pillow or two…" He entered the hall and strode down its length, friends and loyal soldiers following behind. Their footsteps made a clattering echo in the quiet expanse of the chamber. "Careful," said Pete. "With our luck, the floor here is probably one big trapdoor."

Pete's dire prediction proved unfounded, though, for in all too short a time, they found themselves standing before the throne. Still there were no signs of enemies or traps.

"Are we sure this is the real throne?" said Pete. "They didn't move it and swap it for a dummy?"

"It's not the chair itself that is important," said Phineas. "It's what this place signifies. The throne in Cair Paravel is the seat of Narnian power. When a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve sits here, all is right in Narnia."

"All right," said Pete. "Here goes nothing." He stepped forward, turned around, and faced everybody in the room. There were the faun and centaur and elf soldiers, waiting expectantly for the human to take action. The fauns and centaurs wanted their freedom, and the elves wanted their vengeance. Falon was their respected commander, and he was dangerously obsessed with revenge, Pete knew that; but it was borne out of love for a sister that he had known all too briefly. There were Captain Diarmuid and Princess Cliodhna—one, his roguish but kindhearted friend and ally; and the other, his former wife, a woman he might have loved in time. Phineas and Cynthia were there—Phineas, the wise faun who had challenged Pete until they came at last to understand and respect each other; and Cynthia, the upbeat dryad who had sought love and found it in Phineas. Lumpkin and Brenawen had found their love as well, and between the spitfire Black Dwarf and the cagey, silver-tongued Red Dwarf who had been Pete's first ally in this world, he knew that he had two true friends here. And then there was Penelope: she was special. She was Pete's best friend, for reasons he wasn't sure that he could fully articulate. But she was strong, and brave, and witty, and indomitable, and Pete was naturally drawn to that in the centaur-woman. He was sure that he had chosen his general well. These were the people who loved him in this world, and Pete was about to take the first step towards freeing them from Queen Jadis and becoming their rightful king. He sat back on the throne.

Nothing happened. Pete looked around nervously, scanning all the shadows. He half expected Count Serpens to jump out and bite him in the neck again. But there was nothing: no magic, no undead, no nightmares. "Well," said Pete, "that was certainly anticlimactic."

"What were you expecting?" asked Cynthia.

"I don't know; sparkly lights, puff of smoke, maybe the booming voice of a narrator telling us that the spell is broken and now we can live happily ever after."

Cynthia smiled. "The spell is broken. I can feel it. And look at my hair!" The dryad grabbed a clump of her curly tresses in one hand and displayed the streaks of yellow that were now running through the green. "Winter has given spring the slip and passed straight onto summer!" she laughed.

Pete grinned and jovially quoted, "And then King Arthur's knights were forced to eat Sir Robin's minstrels, and there was much rejoicing."

"Lord Peter, your peculiarity is truly boundless," said Penelope.

Pete replied, "Admit it: you think it's cute."

In that moment, a faint noise echoed in the distance: the long, low, dull blat of a goblin horn. Another answered it, and then another, and another. A doe came running into the hall of Cair Paravel, and she skidded to a halt on her hooves. "My Lord Peter, General Penelope! Soldiers of Jadis come upon us from the north!"

"It was a trap," said Penelope. "They mean to pin us down in here until nightfall, when the undead can rise!"

"Then we have to hurry," said Pete. "Get all of our people and guns inside the castle, and everybody who's a solider, man the walls. You're in charge of the defenses, General. Civvies, you're with me: Diarmuid, Clio, Lumpkin, Cynthia. Get the animals to help us; we've got to search this castle top to bottom. If Count Serpens has a coffin, we're going to find it and get rid of him—because no Serpens means no undead popping out of thin air at sundown."

"Your will, milord," said Penelope, saluting Pete.

"Good luck, General," said Pete, returning the salute. "And… uh… may the Force be with us."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

GENERAL Penelope ordered the soldiers onto the battlements, and squadrons of fauns and dwarves lined the walls, peering through the crenels with their muskets at the ready. Dwarves and centaurs helped merrow-folk hoist the cannons and ordnance up to the tops of the towers, where the heavy guns could be angled to rain leaden death down upon the enemy at great range. Down below, in the yard, the elves waited with swords unsheathed, poised to defend if the gates should be breached. And behind these, more centaurs stood alongside nymphs with bows and full quivers. Cair Paravel was indeed well-defended, though the rebels hadn't expected that they would be the ones inside the walls… but that could prove to be a curse as well as a blessing, depending on whether Pete failed or succeeded in his search.

Within the keep, beasts and animals of all sizes and varieties searched here and there for something, anything, that looked like a box large enough to hold a man's dead body. A group of mice ran up to Pete, and one of them squeaked, "No way to get into the walls, milord; they're solid stone! But one of the foxes found the door to the basement."

"The basement? Show me!" Pete took after the mice, and when the others saw this, they followed: Lumpkin and Cynthia, Diarmuid and Cliodhna, and all the animals.

A nondescript wooden door with a plain metal ring for a handle stood in an out-of-the-way corridor between the dining hall and the long-unused kitchen. Pete pulled the door open, and dust and cobwebs greeted him. "I need a light," said Pete.

Lumpkin produced a torch, and Pete struck a spark to set it ablaze. He took the light, told all of the animals to wait here, and he led his friends down the winding stone staircase. The stair went down, down, down into the bowels of the Cair—the high seaside hill upon which the palace had been built. They descended to a depth perhaps three or four times the height of the palace's walls, before they finally came to another door at the bottom of the stairwell. "Weird," said Pete. "I feel like I've seen this place before."

"That's just not possible," said Lumpkin. "I've been at your side since you arrived in Narnia, and you've never been anywhere near here!"

"No," said Pete, "not like that. It's more like… something from a dream. I don't know why, but this is familiar to me. I'm getting a serious déjà vu vibe from everything."

"You were afflicted by Serpens's curse," said Cliodhna. "Before you were cured, you were mere days away from dying and becoming a vampire in his thrall! It's little wonder that something familiar to Serpens should seem familiar to you."

"Yeah, that's gotta be it," said Pete.

Cynthia shuddered. "I don't like it down here. It reminds me of the dungeons under Mount Pire. Let's just search it quickly and get this over with!"

"I agree with the lass," said Diarmuid. "The swifter, the better."

Pete opened this door and shined the light into the room beyond. He then beheld the sight of a broad chamber with a low ceiling, lined on all the walls by crude mud-bricks. Hewn into the walls were many niches, burial alcoves, each one just the right size to entomb a pile of human bones. "It's a crypt," said Pete. "It looks just like the medieval tombs from underneath Rome that you always see in National Geographic specials."

"A crypt?" said Lumpkin. The dwarf's knees knocked together. "Ah… uh… you don't suppose it's haunted, do you?"

"Of course it's haunted!" said Cynthia. "Where do you think we are? But nothing here can hurt us for several hours yet, so do let's search quickly."

"This is actually kind of fun," said Pete, shining the torch around. The light revealed a pile of broken wood planks, strips of rotted cloth, and bits of rusty metal—but no bones or other remains.

"You have an odd notion of fun," said Cliodhna.

"Aw, come on. This is so 'Indiana Jones!' In fact, it's just like in the third movie, when—" Pete froze in his tracks when he passed into the next chamber. Beyond the burial niches, the brick-walled passage gave way to a natural tunnel in the rock, and this tunnel opened into a tall underground chasm with a narrow rock-bridge that spanned the breadth of it. Pete shined his torch into the chamber. The cylindrical opening was more or less round, and more than fifty feet in diameter; whereas the rock-bridge was two feet wide, if that. Looking up, there was no sign of a ceiling. Looking down… the bottom of the pit was only twenty or thirty feet down, but it was filled completely with heaps and heaps of bones. There were limbs, ribs, skulls, and uncounted phalanges… but not the variety of species that one might expect to see in a mass-burial-pit in Narnia. No; all of these bones were human—Pete didn't have to be a forensic scientist to see that.

Lumpkin swallowed. "So… this is where Count Serpens's army comes from."

"They're all human," said Pete. "Or, they were."

"Ancients," breathed Cynthia in awe. "From the Elder Days before the Witches."

"'Tis no concern of ours," said Diarmuid, "unless the bloodsucker be down there with them."

"No," said Pete. "I'm pretty sure that it'll be somewhere with loose dirt."

"Let us be on our way, then," said Cliodhna. And so the five of them crossed single-file over the narrow bridge and passed into the next chamber.

The enemy soldiers arrayed themselves on the fields beneath Cair Paravel. There were many: goblins and hobgoblins, dwarves and centaurs, minotaurs and harpies; and most of them wore armor of black iron. Penelope, Falon, and Brenawen stood atop a parapet and gazed out at this force arrayed against them. They were outnumbered by the foe perhaps five-to-one, but in Penelope's estimation, it would take a ten-to-one ratio at the least to successfully win Cair Paravel in a siege. On their own, these foemen could be hurled back time and again, outlasted, and defeated by attrition. No, the centauress reasoned, they would not attack quite yet. They would wait for nightfall.

"Blast it with furnaces!" swore Brenawen. "They're staying beyond the range of our guns!"

"But they've only brought soldiers," said Falon. "There are no catapults or siege-towers. How can they expect to take a castle without any war-engines?"

Penelope answered, "They expect the dead to rise at sundown and attack us from within, while they wait without to prevent our escape. The trap is sprung, and the jaws are closing shut. If Peter fails to find what he is looking for, Jadis will see us all destroyed before the next dawn."

"What do we do, then?" asked Brenawen. "There's no escape from the castle now. Admiral Pwyll is of no use to us; he stayed with his fleet, and his ships only have skeleton crews left. Our only hope is to wait for the attack, and repel it if we can."

"We must organize our defenses on two fronts," said Falon. "Outside and inside, inside and outside… guard the walls from outside the castle, and from the keep inside the castle…"

"Don't you start with your mutterings now!" said Penelope. "We have to keep our heads. For the moment, there's only one army that we have to deal with: the one outside the walls. Let's worry about them for the time being."

"Of course," said Falon. "Of course, I lost my head. Forgive me. I—what is that?" The half-elf hybrid squinted his eyes and looked down onto the field. A tall figure had come forth from among the troops: many times taller than a human being, and shaped like a woman. It was a giantess. She emerged from the mass of enemies flanked by two squadrons of hobgoblins and a row of black-armored centaur knights with their faces hidden behind visors. One of the centaurs carried the standard of Jadis, the snowflake on ice-blue; another carried a white flag.

"They mean to parley," said Brenawen. "What utter cheek!" The dwarf-woman turned to a couple of mermen who stood nearby on the parapet and said, "Load that cannon with a ball and sight in the giantess's head. If she so much as sneezes, you have my permission to fire!"

One of the gunners asked of Penelope, "General?"

"Colonel Brenawen's orders stand," said Penelope. "Any suspicious action, and I want that giantess taken down. There's something familiar about her that I just don't like."

Pete and his friends passed through another tunnel, and then into a subterranean room which was carved from the stone and lavishly decorated. Nothing here looked rotten or crumbling: there were red carpets on the stone floors, red tapestries hanging from the walls, and an armor stand… holding a suit of black-iron plate. There was a table with several golden goblets, blood-red rubies set into the sides of them. There was a rack for weapons, of the sort that a knight might wield when riding into battle—swords, lances, hammers, picks, maces, flails—all cast from iron. And in the middle of it all was a box, like a casket, made from some wood so dark that it seemed almost black under the light of Pete's torch.

"No way," said Pete. "I was right. He's here!"

"Let us be certain," said Lumpkin. The dwarf looked from the casket to Peter and then said, "Y—you'd best lift the lid."

"Whatever you say, Captain Courage." Pete handed his torch off to Cynthia and approached the coffin. He found the lid and pried it open with a drawn-out squeak. Inside rested the body of a man, pale white, but with lips and cheeks flushed red from fresh blood. His eyes were closed and he was as still as a corpse, but there was a twisted smile on his face, as if he had died during a sadistically happy dream. "It's Serpens." There was a layer of earth in the bottom of the coffin, just as there had been in Pete's dream, when the bards had cured him. Serpens rested upon this bed of dirt.

"Then let us stake the fiend and be rid of him!" said Lumpkin.

"Or burn him up!" said Cynthia, waving the torch.

Pete looked down at the helpless form of Count Serpens, his hated enemy, the creature that had tortured him and taken away his love. He should have felt hatred in his heart. He should have demanded justice, vengeance, retribution. But instead, he felt pity. "God help me, I can't believe I almost turned into that," said Pete. "If it hadn't been for those Bards of yours, Clio, I don't know what…" Pete's voice trailed off, and a thoughtful look passed across his face. "Say… the Bards… they're here in the castle with us, right? They didn't go with Admiral Pwyll's fleet?"

"Aye, they're here with us," said Diarmuid. "What do ye need them for?"

Pete waved his hands and snapped his fingers, but he was almost too excited to speak. When he found he voice, he said, "Clio! Clio, the Bards cured me! Do you think they could cure him?" He pointed worriedly at Serpens's body.

"I… don't know," said Cliodhna. "But you were still alive when the Bards lifted the curse. Serpens is dead."

"Undead," said Pete. "There might… I don't know… but if it had happened to me, I would want someone to try at least…"

"What are you going on about?" asked Lumpkin. "We have but a couple of hours now before sunset! Destroy the vampire!"

"No!" said Pete. "Go get Oghma and the others! We have to try and save him!"

Penelope left Brenawen and Falon in charge on the walls, and she ran out onto the field with several centaurs from her old company. The centauress Jocasta flew Aslan's banner, while the centaur Naussus carried the white flag. Penelope's silvery armor, polished to a shine, glinted brilliantly in the afternoon sun. She looked the very part of a majestic lady knight. "Who would speak with me?" she demanded.

The giantess looked down and smiled, showing sparse and yellowed teeth. "I am General Gurzla, commander of the eastern forces of Her Majesty, Queen Jadis's Army of Defense. Who are you, rebel? And where is the Son of Adam—where is the so-called 'Lord' Peter Pevensie?"

"Lord Peter is otherwise indisposed," said the centauress. "I am General Penelope. If you are here to parley, you will treat with me."

"Penelope," said Gurzla. "I have heard of you. You deserted a fortress of Her Majesty's army… you have unlawfully aided and abetted a fugitive Son of Adam… and you partook in the brutal murder of the giant Grubash, my own beloved child!" The giantess's wrinkled face contorted in anger, and she shook her head, causing greasy locks of gray-black hair to whip her own cheeks.

So, Penelope thought, this explained why General Gurzla looked familiar: a family resemblance to the hated and cruel Captain Grubash. "It was indeed a centaur who struck down Grubash," said Penelope. "His name was Cyrus. But he is dead now. Many months ago, your son's slayer was himself slain by Count Serpens's ghouls. And we mourn him as a hero!"

The giantess scowled at Penelope. "You are all criminals, and by the law of this land, you should die. But Queen Jadis is not without mercy. She will generously give you this one chance: surrender now, give yourselves up, and your soldiers will live. Only you, and the Son of Adam, and the other conspirators will be put to death. But if you should fight…" Gurzla grinned toothily and chuckled. "…you will be trapped in the Cair between my army and a doom worse than death."

Penelope gazed stonily at the smirking face of the giantess. "If we do surrender, what happens to my soldiers? Are they free to leave, to go where they please?"

"Of course not," said Gurzla. "Jadis will not tolerate malcontents in her country. They will be sent elsewhere."

"Sold into slavery, you mean," said Penelope. "You don't present a very enticing bargain."

"And you are in no position to negotiate," said Gurzla.

"Perhaps not," said Penelope, "but your position is little better—a mere hundred yards from the mouth of a brass gun." The giantess watched, confused, as Penelope turned about and removed her helmet—her polished, shining helmet—and angled it so that a flash of sunlight reflected to the forward parapet on the castle. The booming report and the orange muzzle-flash that came from above the walls were proof that Brenawen had received the signal. Something whizzed through he air over the centaurs' heads, too fast to see. Then Penelope once again turned and faced the giantess; but Gurzla couldn't react. She had a hole between her eyes, exactly the diameter of a cannonball. A line of blood trickled down the giantess's nose. And then she fell… like a tree… backward, onto several of her hobgoblin escorts.

The enemy soldiers, hobgoblin and centaur, were thrown into a confused chaos. They didn't know whether to attack, or to seek further orders elsewhere. Penelope commanded her own knights to turn back and run for the gates of Cair Paravel. She remained behind, just long enough to shout to the enemy centaurs, "Tell whoever commands your army now, negotiations are through! Lord Peter will never surrender to False Queen Jadis!"

"This is… unheard of," said Oghma. "I don't know if we can do it."

The Seven Bards of Narrowhaven met up with Pete and his friends down in the depths of Serpens's coffin-chamber, in the crypt underneath Cair Paravel. Pete didn't dare disturb either Serpens's body or his coffin, for fear that the vampire would simply melt into a mist or a shadow and vanish. So the Bards had had to come all the way down here from the castle yard, into this dreary and dismal chamber of death. Little more than an hour remained until sundown.

The young mermaid Melusine slithered up to the corpse in the coffin and poked it. "He's not exactly stone-cold dead," she said. "There's an evil spirit inside the body, keeping it hale and uncorrupted. If we exorcise the body and expel the demon within, there's no telling what the result will be. But in all likelihood, the spell will simply destroy him."

"Then we've got nothing to lose," said Pete. "But I have to be able to say that I at least tried to save him."

"Why?" asked Cliodhna. "He tormented you, he stole your love, and he nearly destroyed you!"

"And I almost met the same fate as him," said Pete. "I have to make sure that it can't be reversed or cured. I have to know."

"Very well," said Oghma. "We will begin the Song of Requiem."

Whoever Gurzla had chosen for seconds-in-command, they must have been more reactionary than tactical in their way of thinking, because they blundered. Upon witnessing their general struck down from afar by some unknown weapon, they ordered an immediate attack on the gates of Cair Paravel, with no ladders, no siege towers, no trebuchets or catapults, nothing that could help them breach or surmount the castle's high walls. The order was given, the horns sounded, and the foe marched towards the castle. Goblins and hobgoblins hurled themselves at the gates with batters and rams, while dwarves and centaurs and minotaurs waited behind for their own chance to rush in and do battle. The harpies fared rather better: they simply took to the air and tried raining arrows down upon the soldiers warding the walls.

General Penelope galloped along the battlements, shouting orders. Fauns and dwarves armed with muskets picked their shots carefully, shooing harpies out of the air or drawing beads on the goblins trying to batter through the outer gates. Some of the harpies' arrows found their marks, and several of the rebels on the walls fell dead. But then, the dwarves and the merrows angled the artillery upward and loaded the barrels with the canisters of grape-shot. Brenawen gave the order, and the cannon spewed forth scattered cones of bullets into the sky like oversized shotguns. Harpies fell dead in flocks, and many of the survivors screeched in fear and fled.

On the ground, though the goblin corpses piled up, still they came, bashing the gates with heavy logs, causing cracks to form in the wood. Hobgoblins held up broad shields to guard themselves, and though musket-balls crashed into these and knocked hobgoblins down, the iron was thick enough to save their lives. The goblins, meanwhile, withstood the onslaught of massed gunfire, and eventually they punched through the wooden gates… only to find an iron portcullis on the other side, with nymphs and centauresses aiming bows through the gaps in the iron bars. An order was given, and they all loosed their shafts at once. The volley punctured every goblin pressed against the portcullis, and most of these died, adding to the pile of bodies around the outer bailey. Then the rebel archers ducked into the walls of the Cair to avoid any return fire.

A unit of minotaurs surged to the fore, sweeping Black Dwarves and goblins aside. They howled like monstrous bulls and ran on surprisingly spry hooves, dodging arrows and bullets. They made the portcullis, and several of them gripped the bars and lifted, heaved with all their might… Above, cannon thundered, sending balls and bullets raining down on the mêlée. Still, the minotaurs lifted the iron barrier, and then goblins with battering rams surged into the walls and attacked the second set of wooden doors, the inner gates.

Meanwhile, the passages within the walls that the archers had used to escape were now filled with fauns and Red Dwarves—musketeers, loaded and ready to fire. They shot, and goblins fell dead. Then, with bayonets affixed to the muzzles of the muskets, they charged the surprised minotaurs…

And outside, a retreat was sounded. Jadis's army turned away from the castle walls and withdrew. The rebels had hurled back the first charge and defended Cair Paravel. Now the battle was begun, and the siege was underway. And the sun crept down toward the horizon.

Chapter Forty

THE Bards of Narrowhaven sang. Their spell-song called out to the Deep Magic, begging the Emperor-across-the-Sea to help a wandering soul find rest at last. The mournful dirge sounded like groaning wind, interspersed with melodious movements that anticipated peace and happiness in the hereafter. The whole effect was beautiful, and magical, and potent. Count Serpens opened his blood-red eyes, and he shrieked in horror and pain. Pete looked on in satisfaction. Even if this magical music only destroyed the vampire, he would be happy to see Serpens gone from this world and out of his life. Lumpkin was agitated and watched Pete more closely than the vampire; but Cynthia, Cliodhna, and Diarmuid observed the ritual in rapt fascination.

The Bards sang, and Serpens's body lifted out of the coffin. He literally levitated up, writhing and struggling all the while, suspended in midair. He retched and spat and spun around, and finally cried out, "You think you can drive me out of this body? I have inhabited this human for seven-hundred years! Nothing but true and final death can separate us!"

Then Oghma came forward, while the other six bards sang to a crescendo. The Chief Bard diverged from the melody and chanted a separate spell in time with the music, a solemn command for the demon to be gone from this place in Aslan's name. Twice, Serpens resisted the command, and so twice more, Oghma repeated the incantation. On the third attempt, the vampire's body contorted and doubled over, and somehow, it separated in two. The vampire's human form was flung clear away from the center of the Bards' circle, where it crashed into the coffin like a lifeless ragdoll and knocked it over. In its place, still hovering in the air, was a mass of disgusting, pulsating, green and black smoke. A foul smell filled the room, something like burning flesh and blood. "Be gone, demon!" cried Oghma once more. "In the name of the Emperor, Aslan his son, and the Deep Magic, be gone!"

And then something happened that nobody expected. The cloud of vapor took shape—it formed into a great, green serpent, hooded like a cobra—something many times larger than the incipient seed of a demon that the Bards had driven out of Pete. This creature, whatever it was, was a devil—an infernal power. Driving it out of this realm had a price, as Oghma was soon to learn. The incorporeal mass, the evil spirit that looked like a serpent, darted forward and sank its fangs into the Chief Bard. The demon was not a physical creature, and so the teeth left no marks or wounds, but Oghma was nevertheless whelmed by the touch of a hellish spirit. The elderly Bard gasped, clutched his chest, and stopped chanting. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell backward onto the ground. At once, the other Bards knew that he was dead, and their song faltered. The demon seemed to grow in size and strength…

And then Princess Cliodhna added her voice to the Bards', and she brought their number up to seven again. The melody surged, and the demon twisted and howled, and it shrank and it shrank, until, at last, it withered away. The glowing green vapor disappeared, and then the only light in the chamber came from the torches. And Melusine, Cliodhna, and the other bards cried out in dismay, for Oghma had given his life to banish the fiend from this world.

Pete felt sick. He could have prevented this. He could have destroyed Serpens when he had had the chance. He could have staked him, or burned him, or cut his head off, but instead, he had to go meddling in powers that he didn't understand, and it had cost a good man—another friend—his life! And now the Bards were without their chief. Pete's face fell into his hands, and he felt the tears come. If Cliodhna and the other mer-people never forgave him for this, he would understand; because he didn't think that he would ever forgive himself.

And then something else happened, even more unexpected: the body which had been thrown away from the circle and onto the coffin stirred. He groaned… and then he stood up. Count Serpens was alive!

"It cannot be!" said Lumpkin. "The devil yet lives!"

But Serpens only sat up and looked at Lumpkin strangely. He tilted his head to one side, and then he smiled, sobbed, and burst into tears. Through his crying, Serpens managed to blubber out, "Be thu at pais, gode Monsieur Dwergh! The diabol that thu clepest 'Serpens' is na more." He then wiped the tears away with one hand, fell to his knees, and cried out, "Thankes be to God the Fader and mi Lord Jesu Christ! Thankes be to the Haly Gost! Hit is over… and I am deliverid forth fram Hell!"

"Why is he talking so funny?" asked Cynthia.

"I read Chaucer in high school," said Pete. "I think it's Middle English."

Diarmuid drew his sword and said, "I care not what he speaks. He lives yet, and ought to die!"

But Pete put himself between Diarmuid and Serpens and held the merman off. Then he turned to Serpens and asked, "Who are you? Can you understand me?"

Serpens dusted himself off and stood up. Even in the torchlight, Pete could see that the pale, ghoulish face of the vampire was gone. Here stood a man, a living man, in the prime of his health—a little older than Pete, perhaps in his late thirties. "Forgive me," he said. "I was possessed by that devil for seven hundred years. I understand the newer speech, but I quite forgot myself, so glad I was at being freed after all these centuries. While Count Serpens yet lived, I was forced to watch from within, trapped in my own mind. I had to watch while a demon with my face killed and maimed so many. It was a very perfect hell, and a fit punishment for my failure." The man held out his hand to Pete and said, "I am Sir Baelin. In a past life, I was a knight in the Norman court of England. I accompanied the French King Louis the Ninth on his second crusade, in the year of Our Lord twelve-hundred and seventy, but I was lost at sea… and I found myself in this strange land of Narnia. I have been here ever since."

"Baelin," said Pete, taking the knight's hand. "Baelin… I've heard that name before…" Then Pete snapped his fingers. "Jada! The Green Witch! She said… that you were…"

"Her father," said Baelin. The knight hung his head. "Yes. To my everlasting shame, I was seduced by foul Jadis and made to sire one of her hellish brood. That was before…"

"Before Jadis turned you into a vampire," said Pete.

"Yes," said Baelin. The knight looked to one side and saw the Bards of Narrowhaven carefully lifting up Oghma's body. Melusine and Cliodhna wept openly. "Serpens's final victim," pronounced the knight. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"You didn't do this," said Pete. "The vampire did, and he's gone for good. Sir Baelin, listen to me: we're underneath Cair Paravel, and we're surrounded by Jadis's soldiers. We need help. Will you join us, help us to fight Jadis, and finish what you started seven centuries ago?"

Sir Baelin approached Peter and put both hands on the younger man's shoulders. "Sir Peter, I have wronged you. I have tortured you, and I have killed the woman you loved."

Pete shook his head. "Serpens did that—"

Baelin said, "And Serpens came into this world because of my weakness. Because I let myself be led astray by Jadis. It is all my fault… but I will atone. No longer will the sins of the White Witch go unpunished. I will right all the wrongs that have transpired because of my failure, Sir Peter! And I will do it with the very power that the Witch has bestowed upon her Black Knight!"

From the battlements around Cair Paravel, the soldiers watched the daylight slip away. Sunset came, and darkness fell, and then it was nighttime. Penelope, Falon, Phineas, and Brenawen all watched from the parapets as the soldiers of Jadis marched forward once again. This time, they were arrayed in a tight formation: organized columns, armed with pikes, spears, and other weapons designed to prevent a charge from breaking through their lines—to prevent escape. They concentrated their forces around the gates of the palace, putting rank after black-armored rank in between the rebels and freedom.

Penelope closed her eyes and swallowed her fear. The only word that they had heard from Peter was that he wanted the Bards to join him underneath the castle. She didn't know whether he had found Serpens's coffin, or whether such a thing even existed, or whether destroying it would mean anything at all once the dead could rise from their graves.

The last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon, and out on the fields, the goblins and the dwarves and the minotaurs beat their weapons and their shields together in a rhythm. Bam… bam… bam… the tempo started slowly at first, and then increased, rising to such a rapid cacophony that even stalwart Penelope felt her heart beating in her chest.

"Be calm," said Falon. "The fear that you feel is more than simply proof that you are alive: it flows from the very real hope that you will still be alive tomorrow."

Brenawen smirked and said, "You're awfully wise for a crackpot, Colonel."

"Yes. Yes, I am. Yes," said Falon. "Yes, yes, yes."

And then the noise stopped. The soldiers outside the walls stood ready. They waited. And inside the castle, a mist crept out of the cracks between the stones. It poured out of the widows, and it rose from the very earth. It had no definite shape or color, for it would be blue in one moment, green in the next, and then violet after that. It was clammy and cold, and if you waved your hand through it, it clung to your fingers in wisps and curls. Then it began to coalesce, to take shape, and the forms of men appeared within the castle. They appeared all over: in the yard, on the battlements, within the walls, here and there amongst the rebel soldiers, filling all the empty space between them. The mist solidified into bones, into bodies, into moving corpses: skeletons and zombies and vicious ghouls and soul-chilling wights still wrapped in their burial shrouds. Other clouds of the stuff remained insubstantial, taking the form of man-shaped shades and shadows only: wraiths, spectres, ghosts. They were mere images of long-dead men, but nevertheless they sapped the strength and spirit of all who gazed upon them.

Penelope buried her terror and held up her two sabres. "To all friends of Narnia…" she shouted, "to Islanders and Archenlanders… to all who stand with Lord Peter… we will not give in, and we will not stand down! We fight, for our lives, for our loves, for our countries! We fight!"

"Sunset," said Sir Baelin. He smiled as the glowing wisps of ectoplasm condensed all around them and took the form of his undead minions. "It would seem that Jadis has created a monster she never meant to. Count Serpens, she could control. Sir Baelin, though… Sir Baelin is her undying enemy, and all the necromantic power that she has given me will be turned and loosed upon her!"

Pete gawked at all the zombies and wights in the chamber around them. The undead stood, and they stared with empty eye-sockets, but they made no move to attack. They awaited their dark master's command. "Hold the phone," said Pete. "You can still control the undead? These guys will do whatever you say?"

"Apparently so," said Baelin.

"But… you're human now," said Pete. "Aren't you?"

"Completely human, and very much alive," Baelin affirmed. "I can feel my heart beating within my chest… I feel the air fill my lungs… I can feel warmth. I have not felt these things in too many centuries. And now, it is Jadis's turn to know the cold oblivion of death."

Baelin didn't even need to speak the command. He seemed to merely will it, and the undead corpses marched out of the crypt. Baelin followed behind his soldiers, paying little heed to Pete or the Bards anymore.

Penelope and the other soldiers in Cair Paravel watched in utter confusion while the undead turned as one, stepping in time like well-drilled soldiers, and marched for the gates. They meant to leave Cair Paravel, and not one of them had lifted a finger to attack the rebels!

"This… could be some kind of trick?" Penelope wondered aloud. But she couldn't for the life of her think of any reason why their enemies would simply leave like this. Seconds ago, they had had every tactical advantage: position, surprise, and superior numbers. They could have wiped out the rebels in record time. But instead, they were leaving. This puzzled the centauress to no end.

Then, the door to the keep swung open, and all of the talking beasts emerged, fleeing in fright. They got well away from the door and gave it a wide berth, for even more undead then came forth from within the palace, and these too marched for the gates. All of the soldiers within the walls, centaurs and fauns and elves and dwarves and merrows and animals, watched as Cair Paravel was emptied of the unholy dead. Then, from the keep, even more figures emerged. There were Pete, and Cynthia, and Lumpkin. Penelope breathed a sigh of relief, and she had no doubt that Phineas and Brenawen were doing the same. There were Diarmuid and Cliodhna, but their moods were muted, and soon Penelope saw why: behind them, only six Bards came out alive. The seventh, Master Oghma, they carried. Last, there came another figure, one that Penelope didn't recognize at first. It was a man, human, with piercing eyes and a black beard… the centauress gasped. It couldn't be… Count Serpens? This was all too much. Penelope had to get down to the yard. She galloped along the wall and went for the stairs inside one of the towers.

Colonel Falon, commander of the Archenlander legions, howled and gritted his teeth together. "He's alive! How is he alive? He cannot be alive! Should not be alive!" The elf-hobgoblin hybrid drew his sword and readied himself to charge at the vampire. He would have Serpens's head if it was the last thing that he ever did.

But Penelope was swifter than the half-breed, and she galloped past him. "Peter! What is the meaning of this? What has happened? Why does Count Serpens walk among you like an ally?" The centauress pointed her swords at Baelin.

Pete came forward and pushed Penelope's weapons down. "Count Serpens is dead and gone!" said Pete. "It's over! The vampire is gone. This guy," he pointed at the knight, "is Sir Baelin, a fellow Son of Adam… and enemy of Jadis."

Falon caught up and pointed his own sword at Baelin. "It's impossible!" he said. "Can't be possible. Serpens is tricky. You know how tricky he is, Peter, you were there with me! Let me kill him and end his tricks!"

Pete pulled his flintlock and pointed it at Falon. "Put it down, Colonel, or we're gonna have words. Get it through your head: Serpens is dead, Tara's been avenged… and Oghma gave his life for it."

Penelope shook her head and stared at Baelin in horror. His face was the face that been the bogeyman in their dreams, the demon who had hunted and haunted Peter for so long. At last, she said to the knight, "Can you prove, to Lord Peter's satisfaction, that you really are a Son of Adam?"

Pete just shook his head and said, "Penny, I'm already sure. Sir Baelin is on our side, and he's going to fight the Witch."

"It is as Lord Peter says," said Baelin, sneering at the centauress. "Now, horse-maid, if you will kindly step aside, I will command my soldiers to destroy the enemies that await us outside these walls."

Penelope and Falon could only watch in open-mouthed fright as Sir Baelin, stalking behind a vast army of the dead, exited the gates of the Cair. Outside, confusion reigned, and then the noises of a battle could be heard. It sounded brutal. Terrifying. Pete, Penelope, and the others ran back up to the battlements so that they could look out onto the fields and see what was going on… and what they saw was truly horrible. The undead swept over the soldiers of Jadis like a wave of death itself, swallowing whole regiments and leaving only corpses in their wake. Goblin, dwarf, harpy, giant, they didn't discern or discriminate. They just destroyed. Serpens stood on the ground below, watching the battle from behind the ranks of his undead troops, and he raised up his iron broadsword in one hand and laughed. Then he turned around and called up to Peter, "There is a new power in Narnia, my friend, and it calls Queen Jadis an enemy! You and I are both Sons of Adam, Peter, and one of us will someday be king of this land! May it be the better of us!" And then Sir Baelin took off running, charging into the morass of combat, swinging his blade madly with two hands. He hacked and hewed and cleaved and cut… and he vanished into the throng. And, a short while later, the enemy soldiers sounded another retreat. The horde of Jadis fled. They ran away, heading for the hills to the north. The undead followed in hot pursuit, and Pete and the rebels saw nothing more of Sir Baelin that day.