the_seafarer | [au] Narnia and the North

He puts a hand warm on her back, then gets up off the hay bale and offers that same hand to help her up. "I'll borrow Duncan, I think," he tells her. "He could use a little exercise, anyway."

She takes his hand and lets him draw her to her feet. "Aye, he'd do well with it, and he kens the trail," Susan agrees, and then looks thoughtfully at Cuthbert. "I'll saddle Kiseki for ye--"

"Sue, I can saddle him myself," 'Bert protests, but gives her a quick grin all the same. "But say thankya for letting me ride him."

"We'll be back before you know it," Caspian promises. He squeezes her fingers and lets go, then moves over to Duncan's stall. "Come now, sir," he murmurs, reaching to greet the horse, who nuzzles over his palm with a soft, curious nose. "Shall we take a ride?"

Alain fetches Kiseki's tack before she can step to it, with a patient look for her. Susan throws up her hands and goes to the other end of the stables to start her work there before impatience can get the better of her.

It's due to nerves and strain, what with all the day's to bring, but there's no reason to take that out on any of them, and she'd not be pleased with herself if she did.

He has the big chestnut gelding saddled and ready soon enough, and leads him outside to the mount-post before climbing up and onto his back. Leaving her fills him with trepidation, but she's with Alain, and it's more than possible Reepicheep will come by the stables, as well, little as he likes the horses.

Lifting his face to the sky, Caspian breathes deep of the crisp autumn air and waits for Cuthbert to join him.

He trades a look with Alain before he walks Kiseki out of the stable, careful to do it where Susan can't see, and receives an equally speaking look in return. Alain'll keep a close watch on her until they're back, and she'll be safe as houses with him.

Cuthbert swings into the saddle, clicks sidemouth to Kiseki, and moves up. "All right, where's this garden of yours?"

Caspian nudges Duncan forward with legs and a cluck of his tongue, and nods toward the forest path. "About half a league hence, the path splits," he tells the gunslinger. "The garden is a little ways past that."

He glances over at Cuthbert as they ride past the paddocks and towards the woods. "Have you encountered dryads before?"

"Treewives, aye?" He looks back at the other man with an easy smile and a glance that misses nothing.

"Not personally."

"Perhaps," Caspian allows. "The tree-sisters aren't quite dryads, anyway. Only one of them is even conscious enough still to speak and to move about, but there are several there."

The weeping willow by the stream. A tall and queenly beech. A pine, with long needles soft as a cloud. "They're very gentle."

"How'd you happen upon them to begin with?" Kiseki snorts at a whirl of leaves, and Cuthbert sighs, but gives him a consoling pat. "Easy, knot-head."

"The path led us there."

He thinks of the swirling leaves and the scent of flowers, the gay blue and yellow spots of the silkflower lining the sides of the path. "I think they were lonely, and wanted a little company. So they used their magic to call some."

And there, in the garden, she'd held a sweet berry to his mouth and he'd let himself go, falling into the depths of his feelings for her. By the time they'd left the garden, everything had changed between them.

"That kind of lure never meant anything good where we're from," Cuthbert observes. "Glad to hear this was different."

If it hadn't been, by now they'd know, probably.

"It's difficult to explain," he says. "It felt the way it felt to blow Queen Susan's horn, or to run about with Bacchus and Silenus – like Deep Magic, not White or Dark. One could feel the love in it – and the loneliness, too."

Caspian shakes his head as they pass into the stand of dark trees. "I've felt that other sort of lure before – "

(Deathwater)

"– and this, thank the Lion, wasn't anything like."

Cuthbert, say sorry, isn't paying as much attention as he should be to everything Caspian's just said.

"Queen Susan's Horn?"

There's an odd sort of intensity in the way he asks it.

"Aye."

He gives the gunslinger a curious glance, but is happy enough to expand on it. "Queen Susan the Gentle, she of the Golden Age. Susan Pevensie, if you know her. Aslan gifted her a horn, and it became one of the treasures of the realm. It was said that blowing it at one's darkest hour would bring aid."

Cuthbert reins up sharply enough to draw a protest from Kiseki.

"Aye? And you've blown it?"

Caspian and Duncan carry on a few more steps, largely because Caspian is so surprised at the sudden halt, before they, too, rein up. "Yes, I've blown it," he confirms, and frowns at Cuthbert.

"What interests you so?"

And at that he can't help it, no more than he could help himself at Jericho Hill when he'd wrung the most glorious music from Eld's horn, the Horn o'Deschain, in those final minutes before he fell.

(I blow it sweeter than you ever did)

Cuthbert starts laughing, bending forward over the saddle-horn as mirth overcomes him, and his laughter is somehow the shining bell-silver of youth and vibrancy and life and hope unfettered.

Caspian's frown turns bemused, and Duncan's ears flicker. There's nothing mean in Cuthbert's laughter – rather, it seems like he's just realized something and been a bit surprised and amused by it.

Or it could be something else. Either way, Caspian can hardly listen without chuckling, himself.

(this is a merry shipmate you've brought us, brother)

"Whatever the joke is," he observes, "it seems a fine one."

"Oh, 'tis, surely 'tis," Cuthbert manages, when he can catch his breath. "Part of the trials of a ka-mai, I'll have you know."

He straightens, finally, and meets Caspian's eyes, amusement still in his own.

"We'd a horn something like that in Gilead as well, you see. The Horn of Eld; known by many as the Horn o'Deschain. And to sound it, why, it was like calling down light itself. Believe me, I've got excellent reason to know."

"Loud as thunder," Caspian murmurs, "but far longer; cool and sweet as music over water but strong enough to shake the woods."

There's a glint of mischief in his own eyes as he meets Cuthbert's amused glance. "And did it call down the great Kings and Queens of the past for you, too?"

"Wouldn't that have been something? We could have used such aid that day - the gunslingers before us all the way back to Arthur Eld, we really could. Maybe if I'd been able to blow it just a little longer," Cuthbert tells him. He shrugs and spreads his hands, Kiseki's reins held in his left.

"But alas, I caught an arrow though the eye, and now I'm as you see me."

Caspian grimaces, then looks wry. "I suppose truly magic horns are in a far shorter supply than the fairy tales would have us believe."

He shakes his head. "Besides I have it on good authority from the Kings and Queens themselves that it was a bit unnerving to think they could be whistled for, like hounds."

"I guess it would be at that." He shakes his head and chirrups to Kiseki, starting him along the trail again to bring him even with the other man.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"

He waits for Cuthbert to join him, then turns Duncan's head and moves him back along the path. "Not by my reckoning," he says, cheerfully, and looks over at Cuthbert with a small smile.

"But you don't know me very well yet." Nor he Cuthbert. Or Alain, though he suspects not many people at all know all of Alain's quiet depths.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject