[au] Narnia and the North

[the_seafarer]

There's a chill bite to the air, these days. The horses have been growing out their winter coats, and they look shaggy and plump as Caspian turns them out into the paddocks. Behind the stables, in the makeshift woodshop he'd cobbled together, the sleigh from his drawings is starting to come together. 

He hopes he'll have it finished by Christmas. With a little luck, and maybe some assistance, he thinks it should be possible. The tack, he's largely left up to Susan's devices, though he'd commission Gimli the dwarf for the various buckles and other metal pieces they'll need.

Once the horses are turned out, he gets to his other morning chores with a will, whistling cheerfully as he does. The stable stays strangely quiet around him. It takes him the better part of an hour to realize the strangeness is because he's become accustomed to Susan's cheerful presence working alongside him, talking or humming or simply working in companionable silence. 

Caspian pauses in his task – refilling the grain chest – and looks around. Susan's nowhere to be seen, and when he later wanders through the stables, checking each stall and outside, he can't find her there, either.

Comments

[the_seafarer]

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?"

[sai_delgado]

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.

[the_seafarer]

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."

[sai_delgado]

"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."

[the_seafarer]

"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?"

[sai_delgado]

"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."

[the_seafarer]

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."

[sai_delgado]

"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?"

[the_seafarer]

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.

[sai_delgado]

He chuckles. “We’re never strangers to ourselves, is that it? But aye, I don’t. Not yet.”

The two horses move along the path at ease with each others’ presence. Cuthbert seems easy enough as well, though there’s something thoughtful about his glance.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian, too, is deep in thought. "There was something else about her dream this morning," he says, finally, having come to his decision.

He looks over at the gunslinger. "I didn't mention it before because I'm not sure she even knows it. There was a moment where she thought I was one of the harriers after her."

(get yer filthy blue-marked hand off me, you bastard)

"But at the name of Aslan, she relaxed and would speak with me. It didn't quite bring her back to herself – "

Here, he looks rather grim. " – but it seemed to help."

[sai_delgado]

“Did it, now.” It doesn’t sound like a question, more like Cuthbert’s thinking over the implications. He shoots Caspian a glance. “Good to know. Although you don’t sound especially happy about that.”

[the_seafarer]

"I'm happy it helped Susan."

(that name again)

What will he do, if Rilian comes in again? "What enchantment is on her, at least, seems not so deep as to be insurmountable."

[sai_delgado]

"It wasn't the first time she was witched either. If this is the same thing," Cuthbert informs him. "Which I'm not at all sure it is. Rhea Dubativo's been sent to Na'ar, may it do ya, to trouble us no more."

Not that that always matters around here, of course - after all, the both of them are dead and still riding along. Not to mention the business with Walter o'Dim, Marten Broadcloak that was.

Still, there's something about the other man's manner that sets alarm bells ringing, and Cuthbert's attention on him sharpens.

"You have reason to think that might not be the case?"

[the_seafarer]

"I think magic like that can leave a scar," he says. "I think you're right, and it's not the same thing, but having been enchanted once... perhaps it's like the hypnotism, and it's easier to do a second time."

Like an illness that leaves a person vulnerable to another infection, and another, and another. He can feel the gunslinger's attention on him, sharp as a blade. "Not with Susan."

Caspian studies the path before them, between Duncan's pricked ears. "You remember, I think, that I have a son? Rilian."

[sai_delgado]

"Aye. The one your centaur friend likes." No question, no hesitation; he was always the one, among their ka-tel, who remembered the names and faces and put them together.

"The one who followed you to the throne." Caspian's watching the path; Cuthbert's watching him. "Something happened, didn't it."

It's not a question. Not quite. But the invitation's there all the same.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian nods. "I have a son," he says. "It will not surprise you, then, to learn I had a wife. We had Rilian very late, you know; we'd almost given up the idea of having an heir at all. But have him we did, eventually, and he grew up tall and fair and bold, a true knight of Narnia. And he loved his mother."

If he tries, he can see a haze of spring-green on the trees ahead of them, can hear the gaily blowing horns and the laughter of the courtiers as they rode out. "One morning, about ten years ago or a little longer, Rilian rode out a-Maying with his mother and her courtiers."

If he's going to tell this story, he thinks, he might as well tell it as well as he can, ignoring the old, old pain that aches beneath his breastbone as he does. "But while they were out, his mother the Queen was bitten by a serpent, and perished."

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert draws a sharp breath. It's worse, somehow, to think of such a thing happening in the midst of joy and celebration.

In his mind's eye he can see with the unflinching clarity of memory the flash of green amid yellow leaves, hear the deadly hiss and his own scream

(Roland look out!)

and the thunder of the big gun as Roland shot the witch's serpent from the air mid-strike.

He also hears what Caspian doesn't say. "Give her peace," he murmurs. "That can't have been easy for him. Or you."

Rilian had been there but hadn't been able to stop it. Caspian, from what he says, hadn't been there at all, and Cuthbert knows very well the weight of that kind of guilt.

[the_seafarer]

Cuthbert's indrawn breath is like a key turning, unlocking the grief that's never far away. He thinks of the star-girl, Liliandil, smiling and gentle, and of taking her in his arms, knowing he'd never be able to hold her there with him. "It wasn't," he agrees, his voice a little rough.

"And it was especially hard on Rilian. He vowed to find the serpent and have his revenge, and went out riding every day for a month or more searching for it. On one of those days, he simply never returned. We found no trace of him, not horse nor cloak nor trail, nor anything else, that day or any other."

[sai_delgado]

"He vanished?" His eyes are narrow with concentration, now, as he starts to put together the pieces.

To have succeeded Caspian on the throne of Narnia, this Rilian had to have returned, but given what else he's said--

"What happened to him?"

[the_seafarer]

"Even now I know only some of the tale," Caspian tells him. "And then, I knew nothing. Rilian was close with my old friend Drinian, and Drinian came to me to say he'd ridden with Rilian to the place where my wife had died, and there observed Rilian greeting a woman of impossible beauty, wrapped in a garment of green. He said Rilian stared at her like a man out of his wits. That day, he and Rilian returned together to Cair Paravel, and the next, Rilian vanished."

He shakes his head. "That was all I knew for ten long years. We of course suspected some foul enchantment, and that the lady in green was one and the same with the serpent, but nothing could ever be found. At length, I resolved to sail east once more, to ask Aslan who ought to be king after me, but a vision on the way had me turn about and return. And there I saw Rilian for the first time in years. Seeing his face in that moment is the last memory I have from my mortal body."

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert lets out a low whistle. "Yar, we've seen a little of that sort of enchantment, the kind that leaves one spell-mazed and wit-wandering. Alain and I have, that is."

Anger and sorrow will always spear through him at the thought of Roland's mother, Gabrielle Deschain, ever more sinned against than sinning, and the truth of the web Broadcloak had trapped her in.

"Ten years. A long time. Is it wrong to say I'm glad you didn't die thinking he was still lost?"

[the_seafarer]

"No," Caspian tells him. "And I thank you for your gladness. But listen, Cuthbert – "

He turns to the gunslinger and fixes him with an intent glance. "All the rest has passed in my time already. But Rilian has come here. And not the Rilian I saw before my eyes closed their last."

He looks hard at Cuthbert, willing him to see. "This Rilian does not know me. He does not even know Aslan. He is the Knight of the Underworld, and loyal only to his lady, the Lady of the Green Kirtle."

[sai_delgado]

This Rilian does not know me. Shock widens his eyes before it burns away into something far more grim and coldly focused.

(we've a saying - to have forgotten the face of one's father)

He remembers Roland's agony when Jake's mind had been stolen from him, both before and after he woke. It's easy to see the same agony in the man before him now, carefully controlled or not, and he understands very clearly some things which have come before.

(was it something I said?)

(if you think me some soft and sheltered fool who has never known pain and loss and grief)

They were already at a slow walk, but he reins Kiseki to a stop. It's hard to bow from saddle-back, but he manages it, hand to chest.

"I have offended, and I cry your pardon." Cuthbert straightens and meets his eyes. One hand lightly brushes the gun at his hip. "And if there's aught we can do... well, it wouldn't be the first time we've dealt with such."

(you have sinned against the White - and I consign you forever to the black)

[the_seafarer]

Caspian draws Duncan to a halt, and the look in his eyes is older by far than the face they're in: older and weary and full of grief. "Thee have not offended," he replies, falling without thinking into formality before he shakes himself out of it.

"You couldn't have known. Hardly anyone here does, except Susan and the Pevensies. I haven't had it in me to tell Reep."

It's selfish, perhaps, and weak, but he dreads having to tell that loyal and martial Mouse any part of this horrible story. "It'll break his heart."