FANFIC | Of Hearts Unknown - Chapter 07
Title - Of Hearts Unknown - CHAPTER SEVEN: Darkness Rising
Author - Kitoky
Fandom - Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Movie Verse)
Characters/Pairings - All; Susan/Caspian
Rating - Chapter rating: T, Overall: M
Status - Not Complete
Summary - An old foe in a new form.
WARNING - This is basically an alternative story to Prince Caspian. It's movie!based but there are some book-mentions for background information. Chapter rating T for implied rape. Unbeta'd.
Disclaimer - All rights belong to CS Lewis and Walden Media.
( Prologue) ( Chapter 01) ( Chapter 02) ( Chapter 03) ( Chapter 04) ( Chapter 05) ( Chapter 06)
A/N - This could quite possibly be the last chapter you'll be seeing for some time. Spring semester starts in... 18 hours, so my updates won't be frequent. It should give you all an opportunity to post some of your own stuff and read someone else's work.... or even catch up on this fic while it dawdles. I didn't expect the fic to be on its 7th chapter already, as I only started the fic a few days after my winter break. It won't be abandoned though, it'll just be set on the back burner for now. I will continue to do little one-shots and drabble challenge responses or anything else that would inspire me to write (that isn't a lengthy multi-chaptered project) in the meantime. But as for now, Of Hearts Unknown will be on a half-hiatus so mull through this chapter slowly. It's a heavy read.
P.S. I hate LJ-cuts more than anything in the world right now.
Of Hearts Unknown - CHAPTER SEVEN: Darkness Rising
.:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:.
Susan woke at the sound of creaking doors and she looked up just in time to see a sheet fall over here. Startled, she paused but shifted and lifted the sheet on her own accord. Looking around, she saw that she was back in her cell. Every time she woke up it seemed that she was in another place, would they just transport her when she was awake like normal captors? She gave herself a humorless grin at that last bit and looked up at the man Sopespian ordered to ‘take care of it’. She then realized she was still stripped of all her clothing and the only thing that covered her was the sheet.
Fear flooded her as she thought of the situation and what ‘take care of it’ really meant. She scrambled to the furthest corner away from Glozelle and wrapped the sheet tightly around her.
“Don’t,” Glozelle started and watched her hurry away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Yeah, I imagine that’s what you‘ve said to many,” she spat back and huddled against a wall.
He paused, unsure and jerked his head towards the cell gates, “I’ve ordered the guards to take a break so that we could talk privately. What they think is actually happening… is what they think.”
“Does it matter what they think?” Susan eyed him, weighing his words. “It’s going to happen anyways.”
Glozelle sighed and stepped forward, immediately stopping when he noticed that Susan pressed herself uncomfortably against the stone wall. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he insisted. He waved his hands slowly in the air, “I’ve got no weapons, nothing.”
“You don’t need weapons to… do that.” She swallowed. Susan watched him and she could see his eyes soften. He fidgeted for a few seconds and looked everywhere but at her.
“I… you’re not my type,” he seemingly blurted and Susan tried to keep from laughing too obnoxiously loud from the ridiculousness of it all.
“Well, I certainly hope your type aren’t tortured, wounded, and terrified young women,” her exhale was choked and lips were turned upward. He did seem to gain an ounce of her trust though and that was enough. He had to admit, she had an infectious smile and a beautiful face despite all her injuries. Glozelle felt… comfortable. More comfortable than he had been in a very long while.
“How is your head?” He ventured, sitting down at the very spot he stood, a good few feet away from her. “It looks bad.”
She was about to snap at him, but she could see that he was not like the others. Not like Sopespian at least, and it wasn’t him that gave her the head wound so it wouldn’t do any good biting his head off for it. “It’s… fine, I suppose.”
Silence grew and neither knew what to say until curiosity got to Susan.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To speak with you,” he said simply.
“I think you forgot the tea and scones,” replied Susan. “I would provide them but I don’t exactly have a lot.” She gestured down at herself as she pulled the sheet tighter. “Thanks… for this.”
He nodded and went on to say, “… I want you to know. I’m not on Miraz’s side.”
She could have guessed this. Well, she could have guessed that he was not on Sopespian’s side and from what she gathered Sopespian wasn’t playing on anyone’s side. It may seem that we had ourselves three sides to this war and only two conflicts. One internal and one external.
“You don’t seem to be on our side, either,” Susan commented.
“I’m on the side of my country,” he said flatly. Ah, Susan thought, so he’s a patriot. “I don’t fight for the Narnians, they are not my people. But Miraz… Miraz has steered us so far off the path…”
“What path was that?” Susan asked. “The Telmarines invaded Narnia. They made it their conquest.”
“We had our glorious days, as you have had your Golden Age,” he said harshly and she looked him straight in the eyes. “Now Miraz has turned everything into a puddle of mud. We were loyal once to the king, but that was when we knew the heart of our king. It would feel as though our heart was his and his heart was ours, but now…” He stared down at the stone floor of the cell. “My heart is cold and I do not know my heart, my king and for whom I serve.”
Susan listened to him as he spoke and felt the same questioning confusion within herself, the same sense of what her purpose was and why she was back in Narnia, and what was she meant to do. And she wondered then, did the Telmarines have an Aslan? As the Calormene had their Tash? Or was it their king only for whom they lived?
“You know your heart well enough, sir.” She said and she felt the reemergence of some sort of control. She felt the same ruling inspiration she had during the Golden Age when all Narnians exalted her words. “If you love your people and your kingdom and all that you do is for them, then you know your heart.”
She sees the hesitant flicker in his eyes and he nods silently in thanks.
“What’s your name?” Glozelle asked, and Susan fell silent, a habit she had taken to for the past two days. “I haven’t asked who you are, just your name.” He offered.
Susan mulled over his words and eventually said, “Susan.”
“Queen Susan?” His question surprised her and he got his answer from her reaction. “You are, then, a Queen of Old? I’ve… read about them… I’ve read about you.”
“You weren’t supposed to ask who I was. But yes, I am,” she nodded and kept his gaze. “But you don’t know that. Just like I don’t know that you’re not loyal to Miraz.”
He nodded in understanding. “I don’t suppose Professor Cornelius tutors you, too?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I’ve only started rummaging through his study. Miraz advised us to learn the history of the Narnians. He is smarter than he would seem, but Sopespian disregards it and believes nothing of the history of Narnians. He only believes power and numbers win. But… this,” he paused and pulled something out from the belt loop behind his back. “I do not know what this is. It’s nothing I’ve seen before and your history mentions nothing of it.”
Susan smiled as he held out Edmund’s torch.
“I’ve looked at it and it does nothing,” he said, twisting it and turning it.
“Then it’s useless to you if it does nothing.” Susan smiled knowingly. “I would just hide it away. It’s no more than a toy now.”
“If it’s no use then why should I even hide it? Should I not destroy it?”
Susan tilted her head slightly, “Depending on the outcome of our war, Ed wouldn’t be very pleased.”
There was rattling of cages and they both peered towards the doors to the dungeons. “It seems our time is up, Queen Susan. Here’s to hoping we meet in better circumstances.” He gave her a small smile and stuffed the torch back into his belt. Susan simply nodded and watched him leave. He nodded passed the guards who took their positions outside her cell but not after peering in to check her roughed up and disheveled state.
She simply shook her head and pulled the sheet around her more intimately. Susan thought back to what the Telmarine had said about not knowing his heart. She had comforted him, yes. Still, Susan felt disconnected from her words and the irony tugs at her heart, so to speak. Did she know her heart? She didn’t know her purpose here and these Narnians are not the Narnians she knew and loved. There should be one singular thing that connected them from thirteen hundred years ago.
That was Aslan. Aslan should be here. Aslan was their king as she, Peter, Edmund and Lu were Narnia’s Kings and Queens.
It seems as though she had forgotten what Aslan’s heart felt like.
~*~*~*~
The sun was peeking up through the top edges of the trees and Caspian marveled at how beautiful everything looked while reflecting against the sun. The scenary was sadly beautiful though. As Peter, someone who he had come to respect and admire, was fighting for his life. He sighed, helplessness creeping over him as he picked at the grass that grew between the cracks of stone on which he sat. Caspian had checked on the progresses of the Narnians that were ill since the day before. With Seele dead, they weren’t sure who would fall next until Trufflehunter had informed them that centaur had died.
There was something … off about the poison, as Trufflehunter had announced. They had first discovered it within King Peter, and only noticed the same symptoms in the other Narnians, so why had they progressively worsened more rapidly than the High King? It was not as though the High King was better off. He was closely submerging more and more into his unconscious. The centaur was known to have gone into a sort of vegetative state for a short while until the Narnian passed. With the Tiger… well, he had died too quickly to tell. Previously, they had been able to draw the young King of Old out of rest to urge him in drinking some of the herbs that the centaurs collected. The herbs were said to help with fevers, but it didn’t seem to help. The same medicines were given to the other Narnians but their condition only degraded.
Peter had showed the slowest progress, but he was soon becoming more and more difficult to wake and Caspian was afraid he will soon fall into the deep coma. He was concerned for the other Narnians, yes, but to lose a King of Old…
He ran frustrated fingers through his hair and leaned his forehead into his hand, elbow propped upon his knee while his other arm rested on its paired knee with its elbow angling outward. He was tired. Caspian realized. Not even five days ago, he was lying asleep and comfortable in his bed dreaming of distant lands and conquering nations. He spent long nights staring up at the ceiling of his bedchambers and admired the constellations and traveling comets. Caspian had almost wished that Prunaprismia had not had a child so soon, that she had never had a son. But that would mean constantly living under Miraz’s shadow, always endangered of being murdered for his throne.
He had wished that he was older, wiser, braver. He had wished he could lead these people with some sort of assuring confidence. He wished he didn’t cling to these Kings and Queens of Old so much. And he wished, and Caspian laughed at the sheer inappropriateness of this thought at such a time, that he could just once impress the Queen Susan. But she was … trapped and quite possibly dead. They had heard no news of Telmarine movement since the attack along the river and Caspian hoped that they had put a rather large and troublesome dent into Miraz’s plans, whatever they were.
He sighed once more, forcing his thoughts back onto Susan. Whenever he tried to think of her, whenever he tried to contemplate a way to rescue her, there was a hiccup. Peter had wanted him to focus on the Narnians and now the High King was gravely ill. It seemed as though Peter had always managed to somehow keep Caspian’s thoughts from wandering to his sister. He wanted to see her again, to know she was safe, to promise her that she’ll never be in danger ever again. Not as long as he had anything to do about it. And he would do anything, just to be able to hold her. No, he thought. Not even hold her. He didn’t deserve it. Just knowing of her well-being was good enough for him.
Caspian remembers daydreams … or dreams, he couldn’t differentiate between the two. Cornelius had always chastised him for such fancies during his studies. His dreams were of a beautiful girl, much like his beautiful aunt, locked up and imprisoned in a tower. She would be guarded by a monstrous beast, and he never could see what the beast actually looked like because it was always submerged in a shadow, the glare off of flamed torches highlighting parts of its body making it as vicious looking as possible. But Caspian the Courageous would always find a way to defeat the beast and rescue the damsel. She would reward him with a grateful embrace and a kiss full of love and adoration while the people cheered and praised his glory.
Now, a girl far more beautiful that one of his dreams was imprisoned and the monstrous beast that stood guarding there was his uncle. Except the beast had many other allied beasts and there were locks on all the gates and the beasts weren’t confined to just guarding the tower. They could remove themselves one by one to openly attack him ganging him up in a ----
What? He thought. Caspian shook his head. This was foolish. Why was he comparing one his daydreams with this? Susan’s life was not a feeble fancy to be taken lightly. And there was more on the line that winning the love and honor of a distressed damsel. She wasn’t even a distressed damsel really, something she had proven on the night of the raid. He had carefully watched her, but tried not to look so conspicuous about it. Caspian had enough trouble keeping his eyes of off the beautiful Queen. She had fought bravely and almost fiercely. She had not been the Gentle Queen he had imagined her to be. Her movements were graceful and yet… gutsy. If he could say such a thing about her. He imagined the only reason she had not taken all the Telmarines on her own was because of Peter’s concern for her.
And his pride. Caspian thought. His ponderings slowly traveled back to the King that now rested inside the How. Poison.
He had not heard of any poison that could hurt only Narnians. Though, he had not believed in the existence of Narnians until four days ago so neither would the Telmarines. So when had such a poison been developed? And how? During the night raid, his aunt carelessly pulled the trigger in her anguish and the arrow had struck him. It merely grazed him though, yet he was still not as affected as the dwarf. Had there been poison then? Many of the Narnians had been injured that night but were cared for the journey home.
Caspian shut his eyes tightly together as a headache started to emerge. He kept them shut, letting his head fall backwards, bending his spine to its most tolerable point. It still bothered him that he was not fighting a deadly fever as well, as the bolt struck his shoulder head on, its arrowhead was deep into the skin. He had pulled it out with a striking pain, but pulled it out quickly nonetheless. Perhaps Trufflehunter was right and it was just sheer dumb luck. But Caspian didn’t believe so, he was never so lucky. His father was murdered and his own life was on the line. He remembered his old nurse, who told him stories of vicious Narnians, was sent away after a while.
Something was caught in his memory and his eyes snapped open. The bolt. The arrow itself couldn’t be differentiated, he knew. They had procured all their weapons and resources from the camp that Reepicheep had raided.
He scrambled to unbutton his nightshirt, and shrugged off the cloth from his shoulder. The prince slowly started to unwrap the bandage that Cornelius had replaced for him earlier that morning and revealed the wound. He peered down at it, his hand clasping the area so he could spot it better. Caspian observed the opening and was grateful that it looked clean enough from being washed.
His wound opened at level. The bolt had to have projected… near his height. Had the arrow pierced him from below, the wound would open downward.
Caspian dropped the bandage from his grasp and looked off.
He had been shot… by friendly fire?
~*~*~*~
The general perused through the old parchments of the doctor’s study, admiring all the inscriptions and original ink paintings of… everything. There were drawings of practically every Narnian folklore he had known. He remembered only minute details from his own childhood when his mother had whispered such tales in his ear. These were different however, they were painted so brightly and colorfully. They depicted good Narnians. Miraz would not have allowed such paraphernalia to be laying around.
However, this would explain why these copies were extremely dusty and stiff from disuse. He had noticed a displaced plank of wood in the floorboard. The doctor had hidden them, as any sensible man would. And Miraz must have dug it up to look into what true Narnians were like…
A slam sounded and there were some hushed voices. Glozelle moved quietly around the desk to the door of the study, peeking down the hall quickly enough to see Sopespian march off in a huff, followed by an equally furious Lord Donnon.
Glozelle watched as the lord’s cloak disappeared around the curve of the hall and shook his head. He had no cares for the excess political dealings of the lords. He was a mere general, and he prefered to keep it as such. He would follow orders, nothing more.
“If you love your people and your kingdom and all that you do is for them, then you know your heart.”
Perhaps he should start questioning these orders. His men were being slaughtered left and right fighting for a man who was more power hungry than even the greediest of Calormene. Dismissing his thoughts, he turned back to the piles on the desk and rummaged through them, skipping whole stacks to get to the bottom. He observed the last few parchments, brows furrowing.
They were written oddly. Something sloppy about the ends of the letters and it wasn’t long that Glozelle realized that it wasn’t the language of the Telmarines at all.
He kept flipping through the pages, observing the ink drawings as well which were predominantly drowned in black. He flipped page after page, noticing the worn edges of the parchment. The text of each page got sloppier and sloppier and soon he couldn’t make out individual letters.
Then he stopped. He lowered the pile in his hand and squinted at the sheet before him. It was slightly discolored, he noted. It had a different, lighter , even new shade, than those pages that had surrounded it. The edges weren’t as weathered and was more straight edged.
Almost pristine.
Odd, he thought. Glozelle finally laid his eyes on the words, and it still had the sloppy curves to the lettering like the others. He squinted at them, trying to make them out. He was thankful that this one seemed to be in the language he understood.
“In favored shadows, it rises,” the general began reading. “To gain and conquer all its prizes… and before a man unknowing… of the darkness his heart was holding.
And thus it shall be born once more,
To ensnare all from shore to shore,
To drive the richest land fruitless and dead,
And to dry all the tears not yet shed,
Should there be an entity in which you spite,
There shall be an evil that stems from which you recite.”
Papers all around him flew and fluttered in the sudden wind that entered through the window. Their shutters had been blown opened and the general quickly placed the parchments down to close the windows back up. He paused, looking outside and seeing dark clouds approaching. The sun still glared down at him from above, but the clouds seem to be black and moved fast in the wind. Glozelle heard the sheets still flying behind him and hurried to shut the windows and locked them.
He moved to the last window of the room and peered down to through the city, seeing the people hurry quickly inside and locking windows of their own.
Strange… he quickly closed the aperture and locked it.
He turned and was startled slightly at the sight of Lord Donnon standing before him, only a few steps inside the room. He had a wicked smile on his face, something Glozelle was familiar with.
“My Lord,” Glozelle greeted.
Donnon’s eyes flickered and he hesitated. Before the general had the opportunity to ask what was amiss with the lord, Donnon bowed deeply.
“My Queen.”
“Wh---” Glozelle choked on his words and could utter no more sound. He saw the delighted look of the lord before him, his chiseled and stained teeth displayed in a sadistic smile. The general halted his thoughts as he felt an enormous pain pierce his heart, as though a spear had been driven through it yet did not puncture the skin or lung. He knew his mouth was agape, shaped around the silent cries of his agony.
He stumbled, gripping the edge the table closest to him. His eyes began to blur and the boundaries of his sight were darkening. Glozelle could not focus any more and he shut his eyes to try to disillusion himself from the pain he felt. His chest tightened as was the grip of his hand upon the furniture keeping him upright.
Glozelle opened his eyes and was overwrought when he found he could not see anything. The pain erupted outwards from his chest and he followed the convulsions from his heart, to his throat, and it danced around at the base of his skull. He clamped his teeth together in an effort to dispel the pain that swirled at his head and…
Lord Donnon watched appreciatively as the general before him twisted and turned, convulsed and stilled. He grinned happily when Glozelle stopped, his eyes once against closed and the man released his hold on the tableside to straighten himself.
Donnon gave a quick bow once more, “My Queen.” And straightened
‘Glozelle’ opened his eyes which were the deepest shade of black. Every part of them were shadowed and solid, and there wasn’t even a glare of light against them. It seemed as though they were hollowed and endless.
They were evil.
“There is much work to be done.” said ‘Glozelle‘, the pitches echoing.
Donnon offered another devilish smile.
.:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:.
End Chapter 07
.
Author - Kitoky
Fandom - Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Movie Verse)
Characters/Pairings - All; Susan/Caspian
Rating - Chapter rating: T, Overall: M
Status - Not Complete
Summary - An old foe in a new form.
WARNING - This is basically an alternative story to Prince Caspian. It's movie!based but there are some book-mentions for background information. Chapter rating T for implied rape. Unbeta'd.
Disclaimer - All rights belong to CS Lewis and Walden Media.
( Prologue) ( Chapter 01) ( Chapter 02) ( Chapter 03) ( Chapter 04) ( Chapter 05) ( Chapter 06)
A/N - This could quite possibly be the last chapter you'll be seeing for some time. Spring semester starts in... 18 hours, so my updates won't be frequent. It should give you all an opportunity to post some of your own stuff and read someone else's work.... or even catch up on this fic while it dawdles. I didn't expect the fic to be on its 7th chapter already, as I only started the fic a few days after my winter break. It won't be abandoned though, it'll just be set on the back burner for now. I will continue to do little one-shots and drabble challenge responses or anything else that would inspire me to write (that isn't a lengthy multi-chaptered project) in the meantime. But as for now, Of Hearts Unknown will be on a half-hiatus so mull through this chapter slowly. It's a heavy read.
P.S. I hate LJ-cuts more than anything in the world right now.
Of Hearts Unknown - CHAPTER SEVEN: Darkness Rising
.:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:..:.
Susan woke at the sound of creaking doors and she looked up just in time to see a sheet fall over here. Startled, she paused but shifted and lifted the sheet on her own accord. Looking around, she saw that she was back in her cell. Every time she woke up it seemed that she was in another place, would they just transport her when she was awake like normal captors? She gave herself a humorless grin at that last bit and looked up at the man Sopespian ordered to ‘take care of it’. She then realized she was still stripped of all her clothing and the only thing that covered her was the sheet.
Fear flooded her as she thought of the situation and what ‘take care of it’ really meant. She scrambled to the furthest corner away from Glozelle and wrapped the sheet tightly around her.
“Don’t,” Glozelle started and watched her hurry away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Yeah, I imagine that’s what you‘ve said to many,” she spat back and huddled against a wall.
He paused, unsure and jerked his head towards the cell gates, “I’ve ordered the guards to take a break so that we could talk privately. What they think is actually happening… is what they think.”
“Does it matter what they think?” Susan eyed him, weighing his words. “It’s going to happen anyways.”
Glozelle sighed and stepped forward, immediately stopping when he noticed that Susan pressed herself uncomfortably against the stone wall. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he insisted. He waved his hands slowly in the air, “I’ve got no weapons, nothing.”
“You don’t need weapons to… do that.” She swallowed. Susan watched him and she could see his eyes soften. He fidgeted for a few seconds and looked everywhere but at her.
“I… you’re not my type,” he seemingly blurted and Susan tried to keep from laughing too obnoxiously loud from the ridiculousness of it all.
“Well, I certainly hope your type aren’t tortured, wounded, and terrified young women,” her exhale was choked and lips were turned upward. He did seem to gain an ounce of her trust though and that was enough. He had to admit, she had an infectious smile and a beautiful face despite all her injuries. Glozelle felt… comfortable. More comfortable than he had been in a very long while.
“How is your head?” He ventured, sitting down at the very spot he stood, a good few feet away from her. “It looks bad.”
She was about to snap at him, but she could see that he was not like the others. Not like Sopespian at least, and it wasn’t him that gave her the head wound so it wouldn’t do any good biting his head off for it. “It’s… fine, I suppose.”
Silence grew and neither knew what to say until curiosity got to Susan.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To speak with you,” he said simply.
“I think you forgot the tea and scones,” replied Susan. “I would provide them but I don’t exactly have a lot.” She gestured down at herself as she pulled the sheet tighter. “Thanks… for this.”
He nodded and went on to say, “… I want you to know. I’m not on Miraz’s side.”
She could have guessed this. Well, she could have guessed that he was not on Sopespian’s side and from what she gathered Sopespian wasn’t playing on anyone’s side. It may seem that we had ourselves three sides to this war and only two conflicts. One internal and one external.
“You don’t seem to be on our side, either,” Susan commented.
“I’m on the side of my country,” he said flatly. Ah, Susan thought, so he’s a patriot. “I don’t fight for the Narnians, they are not my people. But Miraz… Miraz has steered us so far off the path…”
“What path was that?” Susan asked. “The Telmarines invaded Narnia. They made it their conquest.”
“We had our glorious days, as you have had your Golden Age,” he said harshly and she looked him straight in the eyes. “Now Miraz has turned everything into a puddle of mud. We were loyal once to the king, but that was when we knew the heart of our king. It would feel as though our heart was his and his heart was ours, but now…” He stared down at the stone floor of the cell. “My heart is cold and I do not know my heart, my king and for whom I serve.”
Susan listened to him as he spoke and felt the same questioning confusion within herself, the same sense of what her purpose was and why she was back in Narnia, and what was she meant to do. And she wondered then, did the Telmarines have an Aslan? As the Calormene had their Tash? Or was it their king only for whom they lived?
“You know your heart well enough, sir.” She said and she felt the reemergence of some sort of control. She felt the same ruling inspiration she had during the Golden Age when all Narnians exalted her words. “If you love your people and your kingdom and all that you do is for them, then you know your heart.”
She sees the hesitant flicker in his eyes and he nods silently in thanks.
“What’s your name?” Glozelle asked, and Susan fell silent, a habit she had taken to for the past two days. “I haven’t asked who you are, just your name.” He offered.
Susan mulled over his words and eventually said, “Susan.”
“Queen Susan?” His question surprised her and he got his answer from her reaction. “You are, then, a Queen of Old? I’ve… read about them… I’ve read about you.”
“You weren’t supposed to ask who I was. But yes, I am,” she nodded and kept his gaze. “But you don’t know that. Just like I don’t know that you’re not loyal to Miraz.”
He nodded in understanding. “I don’t suppose Professor Cornelius tutors you, too?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I’ve only started rummaging through his study. Miraz advised us to learn the history of the Narnians. He is smarter than he would seem, but Sopespian disregards it and believes nothing of the history of Narnians. He only believes power and numbers win. But… this,” he paused and pulled something out from the belt loop behind his back. “I do not know what this is. It’s nothing I’ve seen before and your history mentions nothing of it.”
Susan smiled as he held out Edmund’s torch.
“I’ve looked at it and it does nothing,” he said, twisting it and turning it.
“Then it’s useless to you if it does nothing.” Susan smiled knowingly. “I would just hide it away. It’s no more than a toy now.”
“If it’s no use then why should I even hide it? Should I not destroy it?”
Susan tilted her head slightly, “Depending on the outcome of our war, Ed wouldn’t be very pleased.”
There was rattling of cages and they both peered towards the doors to the dungeons. “It seems our time is up, Queen Susan. Here’s to hoping we meet in better circumstances.” He gave her a small smile and stuffed the torch back into his belt. Susan simply nodded and watched him leave. He nodded passed the guards who took their positions outside her cell but not after peering in to check her roughed up and disheveled state.
She simply shook her head and pulled the sheet around her more intimately. Susan thought back to what the Telmarine had said about not knowing his heart. She had comforted him, yes. Still, Susan felt disconnected from her words and the irony tugs at her heart, so to speak. Did she know her heart? She didn’t know her purpose here and these Narnians are not the Narnians she knew and loved. There should be one singular thing that connected them from thirteen hundred years ago.
That was Aslan. Aslan should be here. Aslan was their king as she, Peter, Edmund and Lu were Narnia’s Kings and Queens.
It seems as though she had forgotten what Aslan’s heart felt like.
~*~*~*~
The sun was peeking up through the top edges of the trees and Caspian marveled at how beautiful everything looked while reflecting against the sun. The scenary was sadly beautiful though. As Peter, someone who he had come to respect and admire, was fighting for his life. He sighed, helplessness creeping over him as he picked at the grass that grew between the cracks of stone on which he sat. Caspian had checked on the progresses of the Narnians that were ill since the day before. With Seele dead, they weren’t sure who would fall next until Trufflehunter had informed them that centaur had died.
There was something … off about the poison, as Trufflehunter had announced. They had first discovered it within King Peter, and only noticed the same symptoms in the other Narnians, so why had they progressively worsened more rapidly than the High King? It was not as though the High King was better off. He was closely submerging more and more into his unconscious. The centaur was known to have gone into a sort of vegetative state for a short while until the Narnian passed. With the Tiger… well, he had died too quickly to tell. Previously, they had been able to draw the young King of Old out of rest to urge him in drinking some of the herbs that the centaurs collected. The herbs were said to help with fevers, but it didn’t seem to help. The same medicines were given to the other Narnians but their condition only degraded.
Peter had showed the slowest progress, but he was soon becoming more and more difficult to wake and Caspian was afraid he will soon fall into the deep coma. He was concerned for the other Narnians, yes, but to lose a King of Old…
He ran frustrated fingers through his hair and leaned his forehead into his hand, elbow propped upon his knee while his other arm rested on its paired knee with its elbow angling outward. He was tired. Caspian realized. Not even five days ago, he was lying asleep and comfortable in his bed dreaming of distant lands and conquering nations. He spent long nights staring up at the ceiling of his bedchambers and admired the constellations and traveling comets. Caspian had almost wished that Prunaprismia had not had a child so soon, that she had never had a son. But that would mean constantly living under Miraz’s shadow, always endangered of being murdered for his throne.
He had wished that he was older, wiser, braver. He had wished he could lead these people with some sort of assuring confidence. He wished he didn’t cling to these Kings and Queens of Old so much. And he wished, and Caspian laughed at the sheer inappropriateness of this thought at such a time, that he could just once impress the Queen Susan. But she was … trapped and quite possibly dead. They had heard no news of Telmarine movement since the attack along the river and Caspian hoped that they had put a rather large and troublesome dent into Miraz’s plans, whatever they were.
He sighed once more, forcing his thoughts back onto Susan. Whenever he tried to think of her, whenever he tried to contemplate a way to rescue her, there was a hiccup. Peter had wanted him to focus on the Narnians and now the High King was gravely ill. It seemed as though Peter had always managed to somehow keep Caspian’s thoughts from wandering to his sister. He wanted to see her again, to know she was safe, to promise her that she’ll never be in danger ever again. Not as long as he had anything to do about it. And he would do anything, just to be able to hold her. No, he thought. Not even hold her. He didn’t deserve it. Just knowing of her well-being was good enough for him.
Caspian remembers daydreams … or dreams, he couldn’t differentiate between the two. Cornelius had always chastised him for such fancies during his studies. His dreams were of a beautiful girl, much like his beautiful aunt, locked up and imprisoned in a tower. She would be guarded by a monstrous beast, and he never could see what the beast actually looked like because it was always submerged in a shadow, the glare off of flamed torches highlighting parts of its body making it as vicious looking as possible. But Caspian the Courageous would always find a way to defeat the beast and rescue the damsel. She would reward him with a grateful embrace and a kiss full of love and adoration while the people cheered and praised his glory.
Now, a girl far more beautiful that one of his dreams was imprisoned and the monstrous beast that stood guarding there was his uncle. Except the beast had many other allied beasts and there were locks on all the gates and the beasts weren’t confined to just guarding the tower. They could remove themselves one by one to openly attack him ganging him up in a ----
What? He thought. Caspian shook his head. This was foolish. Why was he comparing one his daydreams with this? Susan’s life was not a feeble fancy to be taken lightly. And there was more on the line that winning the love and honor of a distressed damsel. She wasn’t even a distressed damsel really, something she had proven on the night of the raid. He had carefully watched her, but tried not to look so conspicuous about it. Caspian had enough trouble keeping his eyes of off the beautiful Queen. She had fought bravely and almost fiercely. She had not been the Gentle Queen he had imagined her to be. Her movements were graceful and yet… gutsy. If he could say such a thing about her. He imagined the only reason she had not taken all the Telmarines on her own was because of Peter’s concern for her.
And his pride. Caspian thought. His ponderings slowly traveled back to the King that now rested inside the How. Poison.
He had not heard of any poison that could hurt only Narnians. Though, he had not believed in the existence of Narnians until four days ago so neither would the Telmarines. So when had such a poison been developed? And how? During the night raid, his aunt carelessly pulled the trigger in her anguish and the arrow had struck him. It merely grazed him though, yet he was still not as affected as the dwarf. Had there been poison then? Many of the Narnians had been injured that night but were cared for the journey home.
Caspian shut his eyes tightly together as a headache started to emerge. He kept them shut, letting his head fall backwards, bending his spine to its most tolerable point. It still bothered him that he was not fighting a deadly fever as well, as the bolt struck his shoulder head on, its arrowhead was deep into the skin. He had pulled it out with a striking pain, but pulled it out quickly nonetheless. Perhaps Trufflehunter was right and it was just sheer dumb luck. But Caspian didn’t believe so, he was never so lucky. His father was murdered and his own life was on the line. He remembered his old nurse, who told him stories of vicious Narnians, was sent away after a while.
Something was caught in his memory and his eyes snapped open. The bolt. The arrow itself couldn’t be differentiated, he knew. They had procured all their weapons and resources from the camp that Reepicheep had raided.
He scrambled to unbutton his nightshirt, and shrugged off the cloth from his shoulder. The prince slowly started to unwrap the bandage that Cornelius had replaced for him earlier that morning and revealed the wound. He peered down at it, his hand clasping the area so he could spot it better. Caspian observed the opening and was grateful that it looked clean enough from being washed.
His wound opened at level. The bolt had to have projected… near his height. Had the arrow pierced him from below, the wound would open downward.
Caspian dropped the bandage from his grasp and looked off.
He had been shot… by friendly fire?
~*~*~*~
The general perused through the old parchments of the doctor’s study, admiring all the inscriptions and original ink paintings of… everything. There were drawings of practically every Narnian folklore he had known. He remembered only minute details from his own childhood when his mother had whispered such tales in his ear. These were different however, they were painted so brightly and colorfully. They depicted good Narnians. Miraz would not have allowed such paraphernalia to be laying around.
However, this would explain why these copies were extremely dusty and stiff from disuse. He had noticed a displaced plank of wood in the floorboard. The doctor had hidden them, as any sensible man would. And Miraz must have dug it up to look into what true Narnians were like…
A slam sounded and there were some hushed voices. Glozelle moved quietly around the desk to the door of the study, peeking down the hall quickly enough to see Sopespian march off in a huff, followed by an equally furious Lord Donnon.
Glozelle watched as the lord’s cloak disappeared around the curve of the hall and shook his head. He had no cares for the excess political dealings of the lords. He was a mere general, and he prefered to keep it as such. He would follow orders, nothing more.
“If you love your people and your kingdom and all that you do is for them, then you know your heart.”
Perhaps he should start questioning these orders. His men were being slaughtered left and right fighting for a man who was more power hungry than even the greediest of Calormene. Dismissing his thoughts, he turned back to the piles on the desk and rummaged through them, skipping whole stacks to get to the bottom. He observed the last few parchments, brows furrowing.
They were written oddly. Something sloppy about the ends of the letters and it wasn’t long that Glozelle realized that it wasn’t the language of the Telmarines at all.
He kept flipping through the pages, observing the ink drawings as well which were predominantly drowned in black. He flipped page after page, noticing the worn edges of the parchment. The text of each page got sloppier and sloppier and soon he couldn’t make out individual letters.
Then he stopped. He lowered the pile in his hand and squinted at the sheet before him. It was slightly discolored, he noted. It had a different, lighter , even new shade, than those pages that had surrounded it. The edges weren’t as weathered and was more straight edged.
Almost pristine.
Odd, he thought. Glozelle finally laid his eyes on the words, and it still had the sloppy curves to the lettering like the others. He squinted at them, trying to make them out. He was thankful that this one seemed to be in the language he understood.
“In favored shadows, it rises,” the general began reading. “To gain and conquer all its prizes… and before a man unknowing… of the darkness his heart was holding.
And thus it shall be born once more,
To ensnare all from shore to shore,
To drive the richest land fruitless and dead,
And to dry all the tears not yet shed,
Should there be an entity in which you spite,
There shall be an evil that stems from which you recite.”
Papers all around him flew and fluttered in the sudden wind that entered through the window. Their shutters had been blown opened and the general quickly placed the parchments down to close the windows back up. He paused, looking outside and seeing dark clouds approaching. The sun still glared down at him from above, but the clouds seem to be black and moved fast in the wind. Glozelle heard the sheets still flying behind him and hurried to shut the windows and locked them.
He moved to the last window of the room and peered down to through the city, seeing the people hurry quickly inside and locking windows of their own.
Strange… he quickly closed the aperture and locked it.
He turned and was startled slightly at the sight of Lord Donnon standing before him, only a few steps inside the room. He had a wicked smile on his face, something Glozelle was familiar with.
“My Lord,” Glozelle greeted.
Donnon’s eyes flickered and he hesitated. Before the general had the opportunity to ask what was amiss with the lord, Donnon bowed deeply.
“My Queen.”
“Wh---” Glozelle choked on his words and could utter no more sound. He saw the delighted look of the lord before him, his chiseled and stained teeth displayed in a sadistic smile. The general halted his thoughts as he felt an enormous pain pierce his heart, as though a spear had been driven through it yet did not puncture the skin or lung. He knew his mouth was agape, shaped around the silent cries of his agony.
He stumbled, gripping the edge the table closest to him. His eyes began to blur and the boundaries of his sight were darkening. Glozelle could not focus any more and he shut his eyes to try to disillusion himself from the pain he felt. His chest tightened as was the grip of his hand upon the furniture keeping him upright.
Glozelle opened his eyes and was overwrought when he found he could not see anything. The pain erupted outwards from his chest and he followed the convulsions from his heart, to his throat, and it danced around at the base of his skull. He clamped his teeth together in an effort to dispel the pain that swirled at his head and…
Lord Donnon watched appreciatively as the general before him twisted and turned, convulsed and stilled. He grinned happily when Glozelle stopped, his eyes once against closed and the man released his hold on the tableside to straighten himself.
Donnon gave a quick bow once more, “My Queen.” And straightened
‘Glozelle’ opened his eyes which were the deepest shade of black. Every part of them were shadowed and solid, and there wasn’t even a glare of light against them. It seemed as though they were hollowed and endless.
They were evil.
“There is much work to be done.” said ‘Glozelle‘, the pitches echoing.
Donnon offered another devilish smile.
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End Chapter 07
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