White (N/DiR, 2297 words)
For chaos_pockets.
White
There is a sound for a moment in the snow, high and faint and peeling like bells. Sprawled out in the courtyard of the House of Spires - that castle of needle topped towers that served as the home of the White Witch - the wolf raised his snout and sniffed at the air. No scent came to him, save that crisp clearness of ice, but softly, then louder, closing, he heard the sound of hooves.
Perhaps it was some trick of the snow or the breeze in his eyes that made it seem, for no longer than a blink, that a crowd approached, for when he rose to his paws it was to face a single horse and a rider in a hood and cloak, and in neither hood nor cloak nor horse was there a single drop of colour, only the perfect shining white.
"We are well met, Maugrim of the Wolves," the Rider said, voice cold as the winter around them and, deep beneath that, filled with a sort of soft, subtle mockery. It was the voice of one accustomed to power and position, the voice of a Lord, and Maugrim lowered his head automatically, though his lips drew back from his teeth. "Well met, aye; yet it is to your mistress I would speak."
"I will tell Her Majesty," said the Wolf. "Stand still on the threshold," he started, and the white horse suddenly shifted, hooves clacking on the stone, and Maugrim recollected himself, "If it pleases you."
In the shadow of the hood, white teeth gleamed. "Aye," said the Rider, "if it pleases me."
There was little Maugrim could say to that, and nothing without offence, so he turned silently, passing close to the horse, and up the steps, shivering as he went - for even close the Rider had no smell at all and they made no sound, not even breath, so that with his back turned it might be that they were not even there at all. There they were though, that hideous shining smile still turned on him when he glanced back, and so he went on, and in, as fast as the remaining tatters of his dignity would allow.
It was with even greater reluctance that he returned moments later to invite the Rider in, trying not to slink with his tail between his legs and failing miserably. The Rider dismounted with silent, liquid ease, and walked beside him into the castle. They traversed corridors with a silence that grew heavier with every pace, a dark and terrible weight that settled on Maugrim and seemed not to bother the Rider in the slightest; and lower and lower went the wolf until he was almost crawling as they come out into the long, gloomy hall of statues and pillars where the White Witch awaited them, sat in the hazy shine of the single light.
"Stranger, come forth," she said, not rising from her throne, speaking in the ringing tones of command. "Be you friend or foe, stand before me and reveal yourself."
The Rider smiled again, cold and sharp, and strode forward in a swirl of cloak that made Maugrim think of blizzards, cold and unending; but when the Rider spoke, the voice was suddenly gentle and warm and beautiful and, when she pushed back her hood for she was a woman Maugrim realised, her face was the same.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, your Majesty," the Rider said, and there was nothing but sincerity in her voice.
The White Witch's red lips thinned into a sharp line that may or may not have been a smile but she gave no response, only an idle 'go on' flick of the fingers of her left hand - and in her right she held her long straight golden wand, its point so casually fixed on the Rider. Maugrim slunk to her side and settled at the Witch's feet, lips drawn back from his teeth, though he kept his growls locked deep away.
"And Majesty you are," the Rider continued, "for Cair Paravel, the jewel of the shore, lies open and empty; with neither bugles nor parties, but only the cries of gulls and the endless crashing whispers of the tide to fill that barren Hall of Thrones."
"You speak the truth, stranger," said the Witch, "and yet you tell me only those things I already know; what news have you? A name, perhaps?"
"I've had many," said the Rider, "and I will have many more before the last rising of Dark, before the flood that overwhelms the world and brings us all at last to the silver on the tree. Gwyn of Tywyn did Owain of Gwynedd call me, Owain who was called Glyndwr and the greatest Welshman of them all and who still fell before my fire. Albus was I called as long ago before then as then was before now, and just as far into the future I will be called Blodwen Rowlands--"
"Enough!" roared the White Witch. "I am no ingénue, to be distracted and deceived. Name yourself and be done with it."
"--and here," continued the Rider blithely, "I may be addressed as the White Rider, Lord of the Dark."
The Witch's gaze swept the rider from crown to toe and back up again. "Fascinating, I'm sure," she said, "but what use are you to me?"
The Rider laughed, a soft, musical sound; yet when she spoke again her voice was all at once oddly different, soft and sibilant but with a new force behind it. "What use indeed? I am no summer to be snowed upon, no servant to be sent forth and fetched back at your whim, no slow and feeble thing to join your stone menagerie, no soft-furred Aslan to rail at and shrink from and fear in the shadows of your castle."
"I'm not afraid of him," said the Witch.
"Of course not," said the Rider solicitously.
"I am not afraid of the lion," said the Witch again, and Maugrim, at her heels, growled agreement, "and I am certainly not afraid of you. You say you're not my servant and so it may be, unless I should wish otherwise, yet I can see you are the servant of something; it is the Dark that has sent you -- aye, I know them of old -- and it is the Dark that bids you speak. Has the war gone badly? Has the Light driven you from your places of power, that you must beat a path to my door and ask my boon?"
"Arthur fell at Camlann," said the Rider, and the dark thing in her voice grew strong, "and the circle was broken. The Pendragon is lost to the wilds of time and the Dark moves unimpeded upon the land, poison in the hearts and minds of human men. There will be wars, soon, wars that spread beyond countries to encompass entire continents. And they will fight, and fail, and flee: yet no doors shall open to them, no rocks shall shield them, no caves shall hide them, and no matter where they run, there we will already be."
The statues in the hall seemed almost to shift and change, as if, ringing with the force of her words, they had gained a momentary half life.
"A pretty speech," the Witch sneered, "but words are just words."
"Words have a power of their own," said the Rider, softly. "They can charm and beguile; they can tease and taunt. They can cut like a scalpel and pummel like a hammer. Words are never just words, and those we speak hold the truth. The Dark will rise. And when it comes, there must be no place to run; no green and pleasant land just a doorway away. When the Dark rises, there must be no Narnia."
"Narnia will never be green," the Witch said. "I have seen to that."
"Aye, you've a good start; that I'll grant you." The Rider smiled. "We shall simply make it more certain. You'll offer your fealty, of course, and it is accepted, yet there are other measures--"
"My fealty?" said the Witch, and now there was a coldness in her voice to match the force in the Rider's. "My fealty. You dare assume that of me?"
"Without hesitation," sneered the Rider.
"Have a care," said the Witch dangerously.
"Keep your own," returned the Rider, eyes flashing. "All your skills are nothing to our power."
The Witch gave no reply but lunged forward out of her throne, wand blazing; and in that same moment, Maugrim came to his feet and bound forward with his mistress - yet with only a simple gesture of her outstretched fingers did the Rider turn magic and teeth and claws aside, as if they struck some unseen wall and fell away. Maugrim whimpered as he crashed into the throne. The Witch made no cry though her wand was so quickly ripped from her hand her palm bled, thick droplets of a blood as red as death, as black as night, though she fell too to the cold stone.
"We were old," the Rider said, cold and terrible in her shining glory, "old long before you first bit the gleaming silver apple which gave you youth and strength. We were old before you came to this unformed world. We were old before you slept in the Room of the Bell, old before you betrayed your sister and laid waste to Charn with your own words of power, were old long before the Giant and the Jinn came together in unholy coupling to birth you. We are vast and ancient and ours are the kingdoms of terror, the wombs of nightmares and the tombs of hope."
The Rider stared down at the Witch with burning eyes, as if daring the Witch to speak. She did not, and the Rider went on.
"We are the force of which you are but a murky reflection. We, the Kings of the Future, the Lords of the Dark." The Rider smiled. "What are you to that, Jadis? A broken Queen in a hall of stones. Pathetic."
"Aye," the Witch said slowly, "aye, I am she. Queen, I was once, Queen of all the world." Her voice grew stronger. She pushed herself up onto her knees. "And Queen I will be again, when all is snow and wastes and the land is choked in endless winter, blank as the void and cold as my heart."
The Rider took a short step back as the Witch slowly rose, and her hands, drifting up it seemed of their own accord, pulled the hood of her cloak forward so her face was once more lost in darkness, save those pale burning eyes and sharp white teeth.
"Aye," said the Witch again. "I was Jadis of Charn, and I will bow to neither the Light nor the Dark, neither to the High nor to the Wild, neither to the Emperor nor his bastard son." And now she drew herself up to her full height and there came at once to her face a look of such fierceness and pride that it seemed she could have struck people to stone with her very gaze, wand or no wand. "I am the White Witch of Narnia and I shall bow to none!"
The Rider rose up again but the Witch struck out with that vast, inhuman strength that had never deserted her, not even in the wizard's world where her own magic was as nothing. The blood of giants flowed in her veins, true enough, and it leant her a wicked strength and an evil speed and, with furious and mighty blows, she struck the Rider again and again, driving her back and back until they were once more out in the courtyard and the Rider was stumbling backwards down the stairs.
"I cast you out," said the Witch, "from this castle and from this world and from all these places that are mine by right and by will; mine, now and forever more. Out, I say, and be gone with you, for though it is said only the Dark may destroy the Dark, I am sore tempted to test that law for myself."
The Rider made as if to speak, but the Witch raised her clenched fist, and the Rider hissed and turned and leapt -- into the saddle of the white horse that was suddenly there, charging to meet her. Swinging into the saddle, the Rider wheeled the horse away without another word and, leaning low in the saddle, galloped from the courtyard.
"And let that be an end to you," said Witch. "I am Queen indeed. And all Narnia will tremble. To me, Maugrim!" She turned back to the hall. "I feel the need for more decorations - a stone dwarf, perhaps, or a fox for the Banquet hall. Maugrim! To me!" And she returned once more into the depths of the House of Spires, tasting triumph on her tongue.
Yet had she but looked out the gate, she would have seen the white horse had not raced far, but stopped just beyond her lands. If she had looked close, she would have seen a cold, bright smile under the darkness of the White Rider's hood. For, blinded by shining ideas and locked in the darkness of her own head, the White Witch was already more their creature than she could possibly imagine; and there would be no safety here, not for Old Ones or for the Sons and Daughters of Adam, of that the Dark was now assured.
Smug in the estimation of her own power, the White Rider turned her horse into the snow and in two, three steps was gone, leaving only the faint and distant sound of chimes.
-30-
White
There is a sound for a moment in the snow, high and faint and peeling like bells. Sprawled out in the courtyard of the House of Spires - that castle of needle topped towers that served as the home of the White Witch - the wolf raised his snout and sniffed at the air. No scent came to him, save that crisp clearness of ice, but softly, then louder, closing, he heard the sound of hooves.
Perhaps it was some trick of the snow or the breeze in his eyes that made it seem, for no longer than a blink, that a crowd approached, for when he rose to his paws it was to face a single horse and a rider in a hood and cloak, and in neither hood nor cloak nor horse was there a single drop of colour, only the perfect shining white.
"We are well met, Maugrim of the Wolves," the Rider said, voice cold as the winter around them and, deep beneath that, filled with a sort of soft, subtle mockery. It was the voice of one accustomed to power and position, the voice of a Lord, and Maugrim lowered his head automatically, though his lips drew back from his teeth. "Well met, aye; yet it is to your mistress I would speak."
"I will tell Her Majesty," said the Wolf. "Stand still on the threshold," he started, and the white horse suddenly shifted, hooves clacking on the stone, and Maugrim recollected himself, "If it pleases you."
In the shadow of the hood, white teeth gleamed. "Aye," said the Rider, "if it pleases me."
There was little Maugrim could say to that, and nothing without offence, so he turned silently, passing close to the horse, and up the steps, shivering as he went - for even close the Rider had no smell at all and they made no sound, not even breath, so that with his back turned it might be that they were not even there at all. There they were though, that hideous shining smile still turned on him when he glanced back, and so he went on, and in, as fast as the remaining tatters of his dignity would allow.
It was with even greater reluctance that he returned moments later to invite the Rider in, trying not to slink with his tail between his legs and failing miserably. The Rider dismounted with silent, liquid ease, and walked beside him into the castle. They traversed corridors with a silence that grew heavier with every pace, a dark and terrible weight that settled on Maugrim and seemed not to bother the Rider in the slightest; and lower and lower went the wolf until he was almost crawling as they come out into the long, gloomy hall of statues and pillars where the White Witch awaited them, sat in the hazy shine of the single light.
"Stranger, come forth," she said, not rising from her throne, speaking in the ringing tones of command. "Be you friend or foe, stand before me and reveal yourself."
The Rider smiled again, cold and sharp, and strode forward in a swirl of cloak that made Maugrim think of blizzards, cold and unending; but when the Rider spoke, the voice was suddenly gentle and warm and beautiful and, when she pushed back her hood for she was a woman Maugrim realised, her face was the same.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, your Majesty," the Rider said, and there was nothing but sincerity in her voice.
The White Witch's red lips thinned into a sharp line that may or may not have been a smile but she gave no response, only an idle 'go on' flick of the fingers of her left hand - and in her right she held her long straight golden wand, its point so casually fixed on the Rider. Maugrim slunk to her side and settled at the Witch's feet, lips drawn back from his teeth, though he kept his growls locked deep away.
"And Majesty you are," the Rider continued, "for Cair Paravel, the jewel of the shore, lies open and empty; with neither bugles nor parties, but only the cries of gulls and the endless crashing whispers of the tide to fill that barren Hall of Thrones."
"You speak the truth, stranger," said the Witch, "and yet you tell me only those things I already know; what news have you? A name, perhaps?"
"I've had many," said the Rider, "and I will have many more before the last rising of Dark, before the flood that overwhelms the world and brings us all at last to the silver on the tree. Gwyn of Tywyn did Owain of Gwynedd call me, Owain who was called Glyndwr and the greatest Welshman of them all and who still fell before my fire. Albus was I called as long ago before then as then was before now, and just as far into the future I will be called Blodwen Rowlands--"
"Enough!" roared the White Witch. "I am no ingénue, to be distracted and deceived. Name yourself and be done with it."
"--and here," continued the Rider blithely, "I may be addressed as the White Rider, Lord of the Dark."
The Witch's gaze swept the rider from crown to toe and back up again. "Fascinating, I'm sure," she said, "but what use are you to me?"
The Rider laughed, a soft, musical sound; yet when she spoke again her voice was all at once oddly different, soft and sibilant but with a new force behind it. "What use indeed? I am no summer to be snowed upon, no servant to be sent forth and fetched back at your whim, no slow and feeble thing to join your stone menagerie, no soft-furred Aslan to rail at and shrink from and fear in the shadows of your castle."
"I'm not afraid of him," said the Witch.
"Of course not," said the Rider solicitously.
"I am not afraid of the lion," said the Witch again, and Maugrim, at her heels, growled agreement, "and I am certainly not afraid of you. You say you're not my servant and so it may be, unless I should wish otherwise, yet I can see you are the servant of something; it is the Dark that has sent you -- aye, I know them of old -- and it is the Dark that bids you speak. Has the war gone badly? Has the Light driven you from your places of power, that you must beat a path to my door and ask my boon?"
"Arthur fell at Camlann," said the Rider, and the dark thing in her voice grew strong, "and the circle was broken. The Pendragon is lost to the wilds of time and the Dark moves unimpeded upon the land, poison in the hearts and minds of human men. There will be wars, soon, wars that spread beyond countries to encompass entire continents. And they will fight, and fail, and flee: yet no doors shall open to them, no rocks shall shield them, no caves shall hide them, and no matter where they run, there we will already be."
The statues in the hall seemed almost to shift and change, as if, ringing with the force of her words, they had gained a momentary half life.
"A pretty speech," the Witch sneered, "but words are just words."
"Words have a power of their own," said the Rider, softly. "They can charm and beguile; they can tease and taunt. They can cut like a scalpel and pummel like a hammer. Words are never just words, and those we speak hold the truth. The Dark will rise. And when it comes, there must be no place to run; no green and pleasant land just a doorway away. When the Dark rises, there must be no Narnia."
"Narnia will never be green," the Witch said. "I have seen to that."
"Aye, you've a good start; that I'll grant you." The Rider smiled. "We shall simply make it more certain. You'll offer your fealty, of course, and it is accepted, yet there are other measures--"
"My fealty?" said the Witch, and now there was a coldness in her voice to match the force in the Rider's. "My fealty. You dare assume that of me?"
"Without hesitation," sneered the Rider.
"Have a care," said the Witch dangerously.
"Keep your own," returned the Rider, eyes flashing. "All your skills are nothing to our power."
The Witch gave no reply but lunged forward out of her throne, wand blazing; and in that same moment, Maugrim came to his feet and bound forward with his mistress - yet with only a simple gesture of her outstretched fingers did the Rider turn magic and teeth and claws aside, as if they struck some unseen wall and fell away. Maugrim whimpered as he crashed into the throne. The Witch made no cry though her wand was so quickly ripped from her hand her palm bled, thick droplets of a blood as red as death, as black as night, though she fell too to the cold stone.
"We were old," the Rider said, cold and terrible in her shining glory, "old long before you first bit the gleaming silver apple which gave you youth and strength. We were old before you came to this unformed world. We were old before you slept in the Room of the Bell, old before you betrayed your sister and laid waste to Charn with your own words of power, were old long before the Giant and the Jinn came together in unholy coupling to birth you. We are vast and ancient and ours are the kingdoms of terror, the wombs of nightmares and the tombs of hope."
The Rider stared down at the Witch with burning eyes, as if daring the Witch to speak. She did not, and the Rider went on.
"We are the force of which you are but a murky reflection. We, the Kings of the Future, the Lords of the Dark." The Rider smiled. "What are you to that, Jadis? A broken Queen in a hall of stones. Pathetic."
"Aye," the Witch said slowly, "aye, I am she. Queen, I was once, Queen of all the world." Her voice grew stronger. She pushed herself up onto her knees. "And Queen I will be again, when all is snow and wastes and the land is choked in endless winter, blank as the void and cold as my heart."
The Rider took a short step back as the Witch slowly rose, and her hands, drifting up it seemed of their own accord, pulled the hood of her cloak forward so her face was once more lost in darkness, save those pale burning eyes and sharp white teeth.
"Aye," said the Witch again. "I was Jadis of Charn, and I will bow to neither the Light nor the Dark, neither to the High nor to the Wild, neither to the Emperor nor his bastard son." And now she drew herself up to her full height and there came at once to her face a look of such fierceness and pride that it seemed she could have struck people to stone with her very gaze, wand or no wand. "I am the White Witch of Narnia and I shall bow to none!"
The Rider rose up again but the Witch struck out with that vast, inhuman strength that had never deserted her, not even in the wizard's world where her own magic was as nothing. The blood of giants flowed in her veins, true enough, and it leant her a wicked strength and an evil speed and, with furious and mighty blows, she struck the Rider again and again, driving her back and back until they were once more out in the courtyard and the Rider was stumbling backwards down the stairs.
"I cast you out," said the Witch, "from this castle and from this world and from all these places that are mine by right and by will; mine, now and forever more. Out, I say, and be gone with you, for though it is said only the Dark may destroy the Dark, I am sore tempted to test that law for myself."
The Rider made as if to speak, but the Witch raised her clenched fist, and the Rider hissed and turned and leapt -- into the saddle of the white horse that was suddenly there, charging to meet her. Swinging into the saddle, the Rider wheeled the horse away without another word and, leaning low in the saddle, galloped from the courtyard.
"And let that be an end to you," said Witch. "I am Queen indeed. And all Narnia will tremble. To me, Maugrim!" She turned back to the hall. "I feel the need for more decorations - a stone dwarf, perhaps, or a fox for the Banquet hall. Maugrim! To me!" And she returned once more into the depths of the House of Spires, tasting triumph on her tongue.
Yet had she but looked out the gate, she would have seen the white horse had not raced far, but stopped just beyond her lands. If she had looked close, she would have seen a cold, bright smile under the darkness of the White Rider's hood. For, blinded by shining ideas and locked in the darkness of her own head, the White Witch was already more their creature than she could possibly imagine; and there would be no safety here, not for Old Ones or for the Sons and Daughters of Adam, of that the Dark was now assured.
Smug in the estimation of her own power, the White Rider turned her horse into the snow and in two, three steps was gone, leaving only the faint and distant sound of chimes.
-30-