Susan is in bed, nearly asleep, when there is a pounding at her door like thunder. Her body jerks, suddenly wide awake, and she flings the blanket away, running to the door.
"What's wrong?" she calls, and without a thought to the danger she might be in she opens the door.
Peter nearly falls in, and she catches him, feeling something wet on her fingers where she is holding his side. "Peter, what's happened?"
He grasps her waist, straightens to cup her chin and look into her face. "You're all right?" he gasps. "Thank Aslan. Thank Aslan you're safe." He holds her tightly, kissing her forehead hard, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth.
When she touches the side of his face he hisses, and she realizes he's hurt. Susan pulls him to her bed where he sits, shivering. Quickly she lights the candle by her bedside, and in the light she gasps to see the blood on her hands.
She turns and sees Peter clutching his side. His nightshirt is smeared with blood – Susan thinks she can see paw prints and handprints both. "Oh, oh god," she breathes. "How bad are you – I'll get Lucy –"
"No," he says. "No. It's not as bad as it looks – most of it isn't my blood. I've only a shallow cut, and some scratches..." Susan can see the tracks of claw marks on the side of his head, by his ear.
"You're so pale," she says, taking his hand from his side. "Have you lost much blood?" There's a spot the size of her hand there soaked crimson, but the hole in the shirt isn't big, and she knows Peter's face when he's been stabbed and this isn't it.
"No," he says as she lifts the hem of his shirt. "Tumnus warned me. He woke me up with his shouts. I'm afraid I don't know what happened to him – he's only scratched, gone to search out the castle for more of them – it was two wolves, Susan. We had to fight them off, we had to kill them or else they would have killed us. They weren't running."
"Wolves," she repeats, voice tight. Now she can see, looking closer, the marks of teeth on his wrist, in his side. She touches his marred skin to probe and he hisses in pain, but the wounds don't look very deep. "I thought we ran them out –"
"There are miles of dark woods for them to hide in. My guess is they came from Northern pine forests, the thick ones we went around on the slopes of the mountains, where it's still cold this time of year. I don't think we'll ever rid ourselves of the dark creatures."
"But why now?"
"Now? It's as good a time as any. And we're preoccupied with the Terebinthians; look how they've caught us off guard." His voice reveals his bitterness and shame, and she puts a soft hand on his shoulder.
"And Tumnus?"
"He will be safe, I'm sure. He knows the passages of this castle as well as anyone, and I left him with a mountain lion guard."
"Are we safe?"
"I don't know." He winces as she dabs the blood from his face.
"If there were more," she says, fetching rags from a basket in the corner, "wouldn't they have run? Since they fought to the death they knew this was their only opportunity and they had to take it." Susan shudders at the thought.
She wraps his side well enough to stem the sluggish flow of blood, and stops the bleeding from the shallow cuts on his face. The skin on his lower back is scratched as well, and as she dabs ointment on it Peter hisses but doesn't move away. She finds herself touching him consciously, running her hand over his smooth bare shoulder blades, and he shivers. When she is finished bandaging him, she pulls a blanket around him, suppressing the swell of panic she feels rising inside her chest . What if he were killed? What if he were near death here and she could not save him? Her hands are shaking and Peter sees, holds them in his.
"I'm alive, Susan. We're all right. Don't be afraid." She feels the warmth and roughness of his hands around hers, and thinks of all the works of days those hands have touched and molded, the parts of Narnia they have formed and the parts of Narnia that have formed them. Peter is no soft-handed monarch who rules from his castle. She wonders if the Terebinthian King also browns in the summer, if Prince Talmin would be seen walking among the farmers of the fields, if either of them would have built a bridge or mended a beaver's dam or climbed a mountain, if they would come home at night and touch the stones of Cair Paravel with tenderness. But what else, what else? What ships do they sail, what streets do they walk, what gardens do they kneel in? Susan believes in the body of the land. She believes in the sensuous curving hills, the rocks that are the earth's bones, the trickles and streams and rivers of lifeblood water, and knows that the land has this body wherever she goes. Susan believes in the sea, that endless stretch, that womb of life that cradles her. Some days, she thinks, looking away from Peter's torn skin and dark eyes to the paling sky in the east, she would like to climb into it and sleep forever.
She stands and walks to the window when she hears Edmund's shout.
Peter moves quickly to the door and opens it to let their brother in. "Are you hurt?" he asks. "Are you in danger?"
Edmund is pale but unharmed, and his eyes are wide in panic. "Lucy's gone," he says. "They've taken her."
Susan says, "We must search the woods" at the same time Peter says, "There must have been more –"
"Wait, the woods?" Edmund interrupts. "Why would the Terebinthians –"
"The Terebinthians?" Peter shouts.
Biting his lips, Edmund hands Susan a scrap of paper with a note written on it with Ardamin's insignia. It is addressed to her.
"Your sister is safe; you will recover her if you meet my conditions. Come to the shore at noon. Bring no one else or her life is forfeit. Aslan's mane," Susan whispers. "Is she really unharmed? Were there any signs of struggle? Was this in her room?"
"On her bed. I went, to check on her; on my way I saw Tumnus and he told me you had been attacked, Peter."
"Dark Narnians." Then the horrible connection dawns upon him, and his eyes widen. "The Terebinthians must have used them..."
"She was in a bad way last night, probably dead asleep when they took her." Edmund's voice cracks. "There was no blood, thank Aslan, but the covers were thrown every which way. We have to find her." He has never looked so livid.
Peter says, "If they had Narnian help, she could be anywhere, hidden away. But the Terebinthians want something out of this. They're not looking to overthrow us; if they had, they would have attacked us all in our sleep. Not only me."
"It's me," Susan says, voice hollow. Edmund looks at her sharply, Peter with horror. "Of course it's me. What else has he been pursuing from the start?"
Peter bites his lip; Edmund is pacing, eyes on the floor or on the pale sky in the window. He seems distant. She wants to reach out to him but she feels frozen, walled off. Peter doesn't meet her gaze.
"I have to go," she says. "I have to go alone."
Her brothers protest, but she silences them with a look. "Don't you understand? This is my fault. I should have said no in the first place, I should have told him I was too young, that I needed to stay here, that I was engaged already, anything. Now he thinks he can have me. And Lucy, poor Lucy, was drawn in too by the Prince. It was all a plan, it must have been, to distract us and divide us and then whether I said yes or not they would have one of us. They would have Narnia. It makes so much awful sense."
Edmund shakes his head miserably. "I should have known. I was suspicious from the first, I knew things were going to go wrong. We should have guarded her more closely. I should have protected her." But Susan has a point, and Lucy too was willingly blinded – how foolish these Terebinthians had made them! How blinded he was by simple jealousy! "You can't go to Ardamin alone," he objects. "We'll go too."
"No," Peter says, and Edmund gapes at him. "Susan must follow Ardamin's instructions – the Terebinthians won't hurt her if Ardamin is intent on marriage. But they won't release Lucy yet, not until the marriage is final. We'll find her." Peter is pale as death underneath the red wounds on his face. His still expression belies the terrible look in his eye, cutting short any protest Edmund could have thought to make. He has the wild look, Susan thinks, of one who has escaped death only to turn back to it readily.
-
Lucy's eyes aren't yet open when she feels her pounding headache. She curses the wine, and feels her bed roll beneath her.
But when she reaches an arm out to lift herself up, she realizes she isn't in her bed at all, but a scratchy blanket on a damp wooden floor. This is not her room. Her room has windows that the moonlight comes through, and dry stone floors, but this room is pitch black, so dark she can't even see how big it is. This isn't anywhere she's ever been before. She still feels the ground moving, though, which doesn't make sense because she can't still be drunk.
Without warning a door opens a crack, and in the weak glow of a candle Lucy can see that the walls are also wooden. Judging by the utter lack of stone around her, she doesn't think she's in Cair Paravel at all. She shivers, not just with cold but with fear.
Prince Talmin enters her small cell, and Lucy's heart nearly stops.
"Where am I?" she cries. "Have you come to help me out?"
He looks at her, stricken. But he does not move toward her.
"Prince Talmin," she says, "what on Aslan's green earth is happening? I demand an explanation."
"Your Majesty is being held temporarily. A situation has arisen."
"Let me speak to my brothers and sisters."
"We cannot reach them."
Lucy looks at his face and knows what he says to be a lie.
"Traitor!" she shouts.
He shakes his head and looks at her pleadingly. "Queen Lucy, you can't understand how much I wish this weren't happening. I must ask you to write to your brother the High King asking him to abdicate the throne to Queen Susan. You must do this, for your own good." He holds out to her a quill, bottle of ink, and piece of parchment. Lucy ignores it and stares at him.
"Abdicate? But she's already Queen of Narnia."
"She must have supreme sovereignty."
Lucy bristles. "We rule together."
"Then all of you must abdicate, or King Ardamin will make sure you no longer pose a threat to his imminent rule of Narnia."
"Do you mean to say that Susan has accepted his offer of marriage? She can't know about this!"
The Prince shakes his head slowly. "Majesty, I beg you: write your brother. If you cooperate it will give me time to find you a way out of here, before the King decides that hurting you will be a more effective means of achieving his ends."
"You're threatening a sovereign queen of Narnia, Prince Talmin."
"Please, Majesty, believe me that I wish you no harm. Think rationally: save yourself and your brothers. Ask them to abdicate." He seems small before her, in the dark cell. Lucy had not realized until now how he demurred so, how much she resembled a fox with his tail between his legs.
"Your condescension stinks." She stands to spit at his feet and looks him in the eye. "Do you think the Kings and Queens of Narnia weak? Do you think my brothers won't find me? Do you think they won't know? Aslan's will guides them! We have the eyes, the ears, the hands and paws and hooves of every Narnian. Do not underestimate us."
-
Just after dawn, Tumnus finds the Kings and Queen in Susan's quarters with his news.
"Your Majesties, King Ardamin and the Prince are gone from Cair Paravel, along with all their belongings."
When they barely respond but to look at him, he feels something heavy in his stomach. "Where is Lucy?" he asks.
"Are their ships gone, too?" Peter asks.
"Yes. Where is she?"
Susan looks down, Peter and Edmund exchange glances. "Kidnapped," Peter says, "for the ransom of Susan's hand. But we're going to get her back. Are the dolphins still in the bay?"
"Yes," says Tumnus. "But I don't –"
"They've taken her to their ships," Peter says. "Stay with Susan. Edmund and I are going to the caves."
-
The Kings of Narnia emerge, torches held above their heads, from the steep and winding stairs of Cair Paravel's hidden passage to the caves beneath the cliffs. Peter found it in their first few months, an inconspicuous door hidden behind a tapestry in the corridor off his room. Since then he has found others, and though his findings have slowed he doesn't doubt that there are still more that Aslan, or the Cair itself, has chosen to keep hidden for the time being.
The Kings stand on a sloping ledge that meets the water about fifteen feet from the stairs' end. The cave is oddly quiet, only the soft slap of the water lapping at the stone.
"It's high tide," Edmund says. "The opening is blocked. How will we get out?"
Peter doesn't seem concerned. "Hang on," he says, extinguishing his torch in the water. "I have to summon help."
Edmund looks puzzled but sets his torch on the stone and follows Peter into the ocean. Peter is waist-high when he turns to Edmund and says, "Hold the back of my shirt, and don't let go, please. I'm going to have to submerge myself entirely."
Edmund does as he is told, and Peter takes a breath before he slips in, leaving no inch of his body above water. He gives a long, loud cry, and from above the water Edmund can hardly make out what he's saying, but he's certain it couldn't be anything but Narnia. He feels a pulling at his bones like a deep ache, a thorough itch he can't scratch.
Peter emerges, gasping with the cold. "It might take a while," he says. "Sound travels more slowly through water, but they will hear me."
Edmund shivers. "Something tells me every Narnian will have heard you."
"All those in the sea, at least."
It is only a few minutes before the bottlenose dolphins come in their pod, one by one after another breaching the water of the cave.
"High King," the first trills, "what drives you to call us to this place?"
"Dolphins, my friends," Peter says solemnly, "the Queen Lucy has been kidnapped."
"Never the Valiant!" A chorus of angry whistles breaks out.
"It was an act of treachery, one that must be avenged," Edmund says. "The Terebinthians have taken her back to their ships. Will you bring us to her?"
The dolphins nod emphatically, their wet heads gleaming in the orange torchlight. "I am Kirseet. If it please you I will bear you, High King" says the first. "Taka, will you bear the King Edmund?"
"If his Majesty wishes, gladly." Edmund bows from the waist, and Taka bobs deeply, the closest thing Edmund can imagine to a dolphin's bow.
"If you will take us beyond the cliffs, to the South, we will be grateful to you."
"Without delay." Peter inclines his head, and Kirseet whistles. The brothers take hold of the dolphins' dorsal fins.
"Breathe deeply, your Majesties." They do, and the dolphins submerge, carrying them below the water, deep enough that Edmund's ears ache dreadfully until he feels the dolphins turn upwards and can see light through his eyelids. They surface in the bright sun, and the Kings barely have time to catch their breath before Kirseet and Taka lunge onward, swimming swiftly toward the Terebinthian ships.