Susan must have paced at least a score's count around the chamber after Vitus had left her and Lucy by themselves. The youngest queen had slept peacefully for the most of the hour and as it came to a close, the Gentle's pacing slowed to the large window. The rain splattered in strong drops against the pane as if it were engaged in a vain siege of the castle. A bolt of lightning crossed the sky and the thunder immediately responded.
As a girl in Finchley, Susan's father would hold her tight when storms came. He had told her that if she counted the time between the lightning flash and the thunder's rumble that they could calculate how far the storm was. When the thunder came right after, Susan had always taken comfort in the fact that the storm was over them and in a few minutes, it would pass over them, becoming but a distant memory. But this storm had hovered over the castle and every flash of lightning was answered immediately with the thunder's rebuttal.
The Gentle placed a hand on the window pane, a feeling of hopelessness washing over her anew. She had no doubt that Vitus would come through with answers but-and she shuddered at the very thought for it was against her nature- what good would answers do them? Even if they were still alive to hear what Vitus had uncovered, would knowing the story behind their tormentor really do anything for them? Could knowing the story have saved Dores' life? Could it keep her siblings from being attacked? Would it have really prevented Waylon taking his own life on the battlements? These thoughts troubled her for logic had no place in them. 'Perhaps,' she began to think to herself extending her pointer finger, 'I should attempt to find the answers in my own ways to ensure Vitus would have living bodies to report to…'
"Suuuuusannnnnn…." The call made her pause in her steps. At first she wondered if she even heard her name. It sounded so soft that it could have easily have been the patter of rain, the scurrying of small Narnians or even the sound of her long skirts brushing against something. But when it sounded again, a shimmer in the mirror caught her eye. Casting a quick look at her sister's sleeping form, Susan concluded with a lump of fear in her throat that Lucy could not have called for her. Once again, she heard her name and as she walked hesitantly to the mirror, the voice began to grow louder.
For a brief moment, when the Gentle looked into the mirror, all she could see was her own haggard reflection. But then, as if the body was made of a light gauzy fabric, she saw Waylon's body materialize. His tunic was soaked in his own blood and as his head materialized, all she could look at was the gash in his neck. With the appearance of his windpipe settling deep with in the gash, Susan gagged. She had always imagined that a ghost would appear as they were in life not as they were at death. A wave of hopelessness and grief washed over her anew as the realization that her dearest friend was indeed dead. Did she loose her pillar of strength because she was too stubborn to leave this retched place?
His name was on the queen's lips before she knew it as she pressed her hand on the mirror's glass as if to touch Waylon. A smile spread her former friend's countenance and when he greeted her with his usual 'Gentle Susan', she let out a strangled sob. He had always said her name as if her title and name were one word. The realization that she would never hear his greeting again caused the reality of the situation to hit the young queen. Waylon- the man who taught her how to greet each member of King Lune's court in Archenland-was dead. But surely if he were to speak to her beyond the grave it would be to aid her as he always did in life.
"You look as though you've seen a ghost, Gentle Susan." The former noble spoke with a grim grin at his poor joke. The Gentle only gaped at his fatal neck wound, noting with a clenched stomach how she could see his windpipe move with every word. Shrugging, the apparition gave a dry laugh that was poles apart from his laugh in life. "But I suppose that I am that ghost, eh?"
It took a moment for the queen to gain her tongue but at length she asked. "Are you trapped here?"
"Aye," Waylon nodded casually as if his response was of a more mundane topic. "I suppose I am. Not all of the mirrors were covered at the time of my death. Yet, who would imagine any soul would be allowed to leave with the evil that binds the place even if the tradition was observed?"
Susan cast a glace at Lucy who remained asleep. How could she not wake to this? Susan swallowed that persistent lump in her throat. She could think of a few reasons why Lucy was oblivious and did not like either of them. Yet she reasoned that Waylon was there for a reason and if he was there then that meant the other souls lost that night would be trapped as well. "Is Dores there with you?"
"Aye," came the simple reply.
"Where is she then?"
At the question Waylon's smile faltered. "She is elsewhere in the castle. But you will never get a hold of her. There are others in the castle, Gentle Susan, other countless souls but some are not meant to be seen."
"What on earth do you mean?" Susan wondered, cocking an eyebrow. Waylon was making no sense and the possibility that she was going mad and hallucinating was becoming a very viable possibility.
"There are three types here. Those who are meant to be seen. Those who are meant to be heard and those who are meant to be felt. Woe to whichever mortal soul encounters the latter." Waylon replied calmly-about as calmly and matter of factly as he would have in life yet his explanation was not comprehended.
"I do not follow." Susan admitted irritably for she rarely ever wanted to admit that. "Why did you show yourself to me? Why did you kill yourself in the first place?! Why ME?" Her frustration was building along with the volume of her voice.
"You want answers, Gentle Susan?" The question came on a whisper and from a slightly crooked grin. "You want to know why and who is doing this to you and yours. It was always in your nature…to question."
The queen paused. A small fiber of her being seemed to cry out in protest to the idea yet a much more dominant one urged her forward with an aggressiveness she was unaware of. She barely heard herself reply to Waylon. "Aye."
Waylon's eyes flashed with an emotion that almost seemed satisfied with her answer. Wordlessly, he reached out his hand through the glass. And with out question, Susan took it, ignoring how the congealed blood on his hands squished around her pale hand, staining it a light red.
She had no clue if she was taken into the mirror or if she was hallucinating but in half a moment, the Gentle found herself standing in a swirling void with her dead friend by her side. The sitting room had faded away into nothingness yet grey mist swirled around them, revealing the inner secrets of that damned castle.
A breath later and she found herself watching a young man carrying his sun kissed bride up the stairs of the great hall. She knew the face of that man from the sculptures, tapestries and paintings that managed to escape the Witch's purge. The version she was used to had the man much more age-worn with graying brown hair but the blue eyes of King Frank II was the same in youth as they were in his prime. The castle must have been where he and his young wife made house before he took the throne and thus his father's name. As soon as they reached the top of the staircase, the man who would become Frank II set his wife on her feet. The Gentle chanced a glance at Waylon who somberly looked on as if he were looking at nothing at all. Did he even see the specters she saw or was she completely off of her rocker?
'I fear that my prowess concerning the threshold tradition is limited to me having to put my bride down before I open the door.' The current prince admitted sheepishly as a blush crept up to his cheeks. 'But then again,' he added quickly, 'I doubt that the tradition applies to all of the thresholds.' He began to continue but his new wife silenced him by a slender finger on his lips.
'Such practices fall beyond my understanding.' She told him with a laugh. Lihi paused and looked at her feet with a blush to match her new husband's. She was truly beautiful, Susan decided. Lihi's dark hair fell loosely and straight down her back. From behind a lush curtain of eyelashes, Lihi looked up at the prince. 'You must remember that I am not of your kind, my love.'
'But of course, Lihi.'
'Your traditions are strange to me as are the varied natives of this lush land but you will find I am an eager and independent learner, Patrick*.' She paused to let the innuendo sink in.
In the brief silence, Waylon spoke up before Susan could ask him what he meant. "Desert Dryad, Calmorene Sand Sirens, call them what you like. Cunning and manipulative creatures, they were to the heart of every man. She happened to be one of the leaders of a cluster in the deserts of Calmoren. Married Prince Patrick to see other places than endless sand.'
'There's no such thing as a desert dryad, is there?' Susan wondered, 'We would be bound to have read about them in our lessons.'
'Tis no surprise that you don't know of them. They were slaughtered, the lot of them when they tricked the early Calmorene men one to many times. No more exist.'
Susan opened her mouth to reply yet her attention was drawn to the couple on the stairs.
' I agreed to be your wife to learn more of your ways. While your family treats me with a suspicious shoulder, I know that you will always stand up for mistakes made in this Narnia.'
The future king scoffed kindly and lifted his wife's chin as he assured her, 'You worry for nothing. Lihi, regardless of what my family thinks, you are my wife. And as I had promised, I will forever support you.'
They turned to exit the great hall and the scene melted into another set in such a familiar and vivid place, Susan almost thought she had traveled the week long journey back to the Narnian capital. "The Cair!" She breathed with fond recognition.
Despite the centuries between the current castle and the one that she stood in at that moment, there was a surprising lack of difference. She knew from the filigreed carvings along the alabaster pillars and the deep hue of the carved cherry wood mantle, that they stood in one of the chambers in the west wing of the castle. The rich colors contrasted in a beautiful harmony with the azure of the ocean seen from the balcony and from the white marble walls. It almost seemed like the room itself glowed.
Footsteps sounded from the chamber connected to the room Susan and Waylon stood in and in a moment, a woman entered in a huff with a swish of an olive green skirt with silver embroidery. Susan's voice caught in her throat as she noticed the woman's piercing and all knowing blue eyes, her delicate features which seemed to belie her air of hardiness. And with one look at the woman's silver streaked chocolate curls swept up into a chignon and the gold crown that graced her head, her identity was obvious. Susan was seeing Queen Helen the Snowdrop of the North.
Before she could speak her astonishment, Helen's son, Prince Patrick entered swiftly followed by another man. He was decidedly several years older than the prince and his clothes bespoke his station to be close to or at the same level of the royal family.
"Now, Patrick, you must see reason!" The man half yelled at the prince, "She abducted and tortured eleven Narnians under her service with in the half a year you two have been in the Cair. You've been wed for a year and a half. Just think of the number of victims that lie in your castle in the swamp regions." His anger seemed unchecked and his lack of formality to the queen and prince was untraditional. With in a moment Susan placed the man as Owen Lighton, the adopted son of Frank and Helen and also the founder of Archenland which had started out as part of Narnia itself.
"Lihi is my wife, Owen," Patrick shot back fiercely, slamming down his fist against the fireplace's mantle. "I can't just drop her like she's burnt my hands!"
Helen paced across the room, her body rigid from the strain of the events and the stand her son was making. A strangled cry escaped her lips and she placed her hands over her mouth as if to keep the sobs at bay. "Your father's health is perilous and soon I will be a widow." Helen began as she turned to her sons, rising herself to her fullest height. "Which means you will take your father's throne and his name once his body has gone cold. But this thing who shares your bed… I will be dammed if she will take my throne and lead my people along your side.
She's killed eleven and the lion knows how many more. Lihi must be held accountable, even if 'she knows not of our culture'." Helen paused and took her son's face in her hands as she asked firmly, "Who would follow a king who has a wife who slaughters his people for 'curiosity's sake'? Listen to me, Patrick! If you want to be the king that your father is and keep your country safe from internal and external threats, you must leave your wife."
"You of all people are asking me to leave the woman I love for politics?" the Prince accused, wrenching himself away from his mother's grasp.
"I don't know why you don't see this but what you and that desert dryad have is a marriage of lust and sexual pleasure. It is certainly not love. And before you begin thinking with your body, my son, and write this off as just politics, remember those who have sacrificed so many things that Narnia could live on. I did not loose my oldest son to the giants' insurrection for you to throw away the kingdom due to lust. I did not leave my home with out a single question for you to take Narnia for granted. If you could have known the poverty I've seen and experienced before Aslan brought me to Narnia….you would not be willing to trade your kingdom for a…"
Susan turned to Waylon with a quizzical look on her face. "Lihi tortured and killed those Narnians and therefore she must be brought to justice and she was banished. But why are they trying to convince Prince Patrick to leave Lihi?"
"It's one thing to have an estranged wife as a criminal than a cherished wife as a criminal. Helen was afraid of Narnians taking arms against Prince Patrick if he took the throne with a queen who was so sadistic to have spilt Narnian blood needlessly. And so they urged him to leave her in order to satisfy the cry of revenge Narnians were screeching." Waylon explained calmly as the first queen and Owen attempted to convince the Prince that what they were saying was truth.
Susan looked Waylon in the eye, attempting to take in this impromptu alternative history lesson. She could not bring herself to reply and when she turned back to the scene, it had already changed so that they were standing in the Great Hall.
The two invisible onlookers stood between the two thrones that were lost to history in the present. The King's throne held the grim faced Prince and next to him his mother sat clad in black, her countenance covered by a black veil. History told that King Frank's health had teetered dangerously on the eve of his twenty-first year of his reign and Prince Patrick had stepped in as a steward for some months incase an untimely death forced the prince to kinghood.
Helen sat beside her son, her face set impassively in stone and her chin set defiantly. Along the edged of the dais were U shaped chairs set aside for the rest of the royal family.
Two centaur guards flung a woman to the floor so that she could kneel prostrate before her sovereigns. The woman's dirty elegant gown, caramel skin and black hair that fell haphazardly over her face designated her as Lihi. She looked up at Patrick from behind a curtain of locks and reached out to her husband.
"Tell them I was not at fault, Patrick!" Lihi pleaded in a honey dripped voice.
At her plea Owen stood up and hissed angrily, "Keep your forked tongue in your head, Sand Siren. You are in no position to plead your innocence."
Susan quietly observed taking the visions of the first royal family for all that it was worth as a small porcupine page waddled forth and offered a parchment to the prince. Patrick unscrolled the proclamation, his eyes never leaving the woman before him and read in a voice so firm, determined and hard that his words echoed off of the walls as if placing ultimate authority over what he read. "Lihi, Sand Siren of the Calmorene Desert, you are hereby charged of the brutal massacre of eleven known Narnians in the space of six months: the centaur Vesperius, Fauns Deszeo and Wioleta, the ram Bergliot, Herald the Pig; appointed Porter of Cair Paravel, the Nobel Panther Azarias, a hound; Gulzar, the birch dryad Honey Glaze, Lark; handmaiden to the Queen, Eudane; a swan and one soul so mutilated identification is impossible. The charge of murdering an unanswered quantity of Narnians is also added to these charges.
Your victims were found by the gracious Queen Helen in the North Eastern tower room horribly mutilated each appearing to have been a part of grisly experiments. Some were cut open in various places and had organs removed- of which were either strewn about the floor or inserted in various orifices of other victims. Other incisions were sewn closed with intestines or blood vessels, still attached to the victim. Limbs were broken, taken apart and reassembled on unnatural regions of the body. Victims with the blessing of death were left where they expired, rotting. Your last victim, Wioleta was found on a table, insides fully exposed and skin pulled back like a canvas. It appears that you were attempting to turn the faun inside out. How do you plea, wife?"
Susan shuddered at the grisly description and tried to turn away from the scene and stop her ears. But Waylon's firm grip enclosed around her shoulder as he none too gently turned the Southern Sun to face the scene. "You wanted answers, Gentle Susan." He reminded swiftly with a hint of mockery in his voice as Lihi admitted to everything in the background.
A shiver ran down Susan's spine at his words. "I've seen enough." She lobbied in a feeble voice. There was some sort of argument between several people but Susan did not know why nor did she care. Her head felt light and her stomach clenched in protest to the descriptions of Lihi's victims.
Waylon's grip tightened and a darkness clouded his features. "You know not the half of it. Watch."
"Madame Lihi," Patrick continued, looking intently on the parchment in his hands rather than his wife. "Due to your crimes against the Narnian people, you are hereby stripped of your title and are no longer fit to be called my wife. You shall return to the castle in the Marshlands and there you will be contained until death takes you." Several of those assemble shook their heads believing that the woman should have gotten a harsher sentence that made her death more immediate. Patrick rolled up the scroll and handed it back to the page. Silently he walked down the dais and upon stopping in front of Lihi, tilted her chin up to face him. Quietly he whispered, "Know, woman, that what ever existed between us has withered and died. Only respect out of what we shared in the time of our time together is what keeps your life in tact. I shall forget you as the seasons pass."
Lihi snarled and opened her mouth to reply but once again the scene shifted and Susan found herself standing on the balcony overlooking the courtyard with the royal family. Owen and the other children of Helen and Frank sat in seats much like the ones reserved for them in the Grand Hall. Helen sat in a gilded chair to the right of the thrones. Her black garb and veil showed that she was a widow at the time and that her oldest son sat on the throne. The king stood next to his beautiful new wife, Amaranta who held their first born son protectively from her bosom.
"An act that should have occurred years ago." Helen muttered to Owen as the king passed judgment and allowed the condemned for last words.
From the court yard a woman's voice bellowed and Susan was urged by Waylon to step forward in order to get a better look. Lihi stood before the executioner's block, her dark hair blowing out of her bun in the wind, clad in a simple blue gown. The surrounding crowd demanded her blood, the names of Lihi's victims on their lips. Raising a finger to the balcony Lihi spoke, "It is you Helen who has brought me to this and I blame you for my fate. Know that I will continue to take Narnians for as long as there is Aslan's own on the throne that should have been mine. Your dynasty will be destroyed in a flash of white! I call upon the Darkness to give me strength! Mark my words from this night forth, you shall not sleep with peace of mind! Your nightmares will be inhabited by me and your base fear of what lurks in the night will be me. And you will pay…for I know all that the moon sees…"
The scene melted again and Susan found herself standing in darkness with Waylon. Silently, he released his grip from Susan's shoulder and the young queen resisted the urge to rub her shoulder.
"The Darkness heard Lihi and granted her the status of a Moroi, a malevolent being borne from life evils and a pact with Darkness."
"Why us?" Susan wondered simply, asking the question that was on the Four's minds since the beginning of the whole ordeal.
"What a stupid question. You're here, are you not? What more does the Mistress need?"
Susan raised her eyebrow in suspicion and for the first time since the beginning of the conversation with her old friend, a trickle of fear ran down her spine at the notion that this could possibly not be the Waylon she knew in life. "Mistress?"
"Indeed, Child of Helen." A woman's voice spoke from the darkness. Lihi sauntered seductively up to the two despite her feet facing in the wrong direction. "Well done, Newcomer. It is rather tedious to only possess a body for a short amount of time." Lihi turned her attention to Susan who was frozen in her place by fear. "I do love the feel of torn flesh in my hands." Lihi took the young queen's face in her cold, cracked hands and continued, "Thanks to you and others, I am getting stronger…"
* See revision note in Chapter 2 concerning King Frank II's name. I had to make some revisions in this story for continuity sake.
A/n: Yes, I went there with the poltergeist reference. I really could not think of a better way to end the chap than on a cliff hanger….Thanks to all who read and also those who review too! ^_^ Happy Halloween!!