纳尼亚传奇：狮子、女巫和魔衣柜（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5594-1

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目录

第一章 露西初入魔衣柜

第二章 露西的惊人发现

第三章 爱德蒙和魔衣柜

第四章 土耳其软糖

第五章 重返人类世界

第六章 深入森林

第七章 在海狸家的一天

第八章 晚餐后发生的事

第九章 女巫的城堡

第十章 魔法开始解除

第十一章 阿斯兰越来越近了

第十二章 彼得首战告捷

第十三章 远古时代的高深魔法

第十四章 女巫的胜利

第十五章 太古时代的更高深魔法

第十六章 石像的变化

第十七章 追猎白鹿

CHAPTER ONE LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE

CHAPTER TWO WHAT LUCY FOUND THERE

CHAPTER THREE EDMUND AND THE WARDROBE

CHAPTER FOUR TURKISH DELIGHT

CHAPTER FIVE BACK ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR

CHAPTER SIX INTO THE FOREST

CHAPTER SEVEN A DAY WITH THE BEAVERS

CHAPTER EIGHT WHAT HAPPENED AFTER DINNER

CHAPTER NINE IN THE WITCH’S HOUSE

CHAPTER TEN THE SPELL BEGINS TO BREAK

CHAPTER ELEVEN ASLAN IS NEARER

CHAPTER TWELVE PETER’S FIRST BATTLE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN DEEP MAGIC FROM THE DAWN OF TIME

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE TRIUMPH OF THE WITCH

CHAPTER FIFTEEN DEEPER MAGIC FROM BEFORE THE DAWN OF TIME

CHAPTER SIXTEEN WHAT HAPPENED ABOUT THE STATUES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE HUNTING OF THE WHITE STAG

第一章
露西初入魔衣柜

从前有这么四个孩子，分别叫彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙和露西。这个故事讲述的就是他们的亲身经历。那是在战争期间，为了躲避空袭，他们被送离伦敦，来到了一位老教授的家里。老教授的家在乡村的中心地带，离最近的火车站有10英里远，到最近的邮局也有2英里路。老教授没有老伴，和女管家玛卡蕾蒂太太以及三个仆人一起住在一栋很大的房子里。老教授年事已高，有一头蓬松的白发，胡子也花白，孩子们一来就喜欢上他了。但第一天傍晚，当老教授从前门走出来接他们时，他那副怪模样却让年纪最小的露西觉得有些害怕，而爱德蒙却忍不住想笑，他只好一次又一次装作在擤鼻涕才掩饰了过去。

第一天晚上，他们向老教授道过晚安后就上楼了。之后，两个男孩子来到女孩子们的房间里，大家聊起天来。

“我们运气真的太好了！”彼得说，“这儿太棒了！那个老伙计才不会管我们。这下我们可以想干嘛就干嘛！”

“他真是个老可爱呀。”苏珊说。

“哦，得了吧！”爱德蒙说。他明明很累却硬撑着，每当这时，他总要发发脾气，“别老是像那样说话！”

“像哪样？”苏珊说道，“而且，你该上床睡觉了。”

“老是想学妈妈那样说话！”爱德蒙说，“我什么时候睡用得着你管？睡你自己的觉去。”

“我们大家都去睡觉，怎么样呀？”露西说，“如果被人听见我们还在这里说话，肯定少不了一顿骂。”

“不会的，”彼得说，“我和你说，在这里没有人会管我们在做什么。再说了，他们也听不见我们说话。从这里下去到饭厅，怎么样都得走十来分钟，而且中间还有这么多楼梯和过道。”

“那是什么声音？”露西突然问道。她还从来没在这么大的房子里待过，一想到那些长长的过道和一道道通往空房间的门，她就有点儿害怕。

“笨蛋，只不过是一只鸟而已。”爱德蒙说。

“是猫头鹰，”彼得说，“这里太适合鸟儿们来了。我要去睡了。要我说，我们明天去探险吧！这地方肯定有很多神奇的东西。在来这里的一路上，你们瞧见那些山了没？还有那些树林？那里可能有老鹰，牡鹿，还有秃鹫！”

可第二天早晨，雨却下个不停。雨太大了，透过窗子向外看，看不见山，看不见树林，就连花园里的小溪都看不见。

“这雨下个没完！真烦人！”爱德蒙说。他们刚和老教授一起吃好早饭，上楼回到了老教授给他们腾出的房间里。那房间狭长低矮，两头各开着两扇窗户，可以看到外面的风景。

“别抱怨了，爱德蒙！”苏珊说道，“说不定再过一个小时左右天就晴了。而且现在我们也不无聊啊。这里有无线电，还有很多书。”

“我才不要玩这些，”彼得说，“我要在房子里大探险。”

大家都同意彼得的这个提议。一场奇遇就这样开场了！这房子太大了，你似乎永远也走不到尽头，里面净是些不可思议的地方。他们走进一个空荡荡的房间，里面只放着一个很大很大的衣柜，柜门上镶有镜子的那种。窗台上有一只死掉的青蝇，除此以外，房间里别无他物。

“这儿什么都没有！”彼得说。于是大家就走出去了——除了露西。她留在房间里，想试着打开那个衣柜的门，即便她几乎百分百确定它是锁着的。但她没想到衣柜居然很容易就打开了，里面还滚出了两颗樟脑丸。

她看见衣橱里挂了几件外套，大多是长款的毛皮外套。没有比毛皮的味道和毛茸茸的触感更让露西喜欢的东西了。于是她一步跨进衣柜，挤进毛皮外套之间，把小脸蛋儿贴在毛茸茸的外套上轻轻地摩蹭。当然喽，露西让柜门一直开在那儿，毕竟她也觉得只有傻瓜才会把自己一个人关进衣柜里。过了一会儿，她往里挪动了一下身子，发现那排外套的后面还挂着一排外套。衣柜里太黑了，她向前伸出双手，生怕自己的脸撞到衣柜的后壁。她又向里跨了一步，接着两步、三步，总觉得手指尖应该能摸到木头的柜壁了，但却始终没摸到。

“这个衣柜也太大了吧！”露西一边暗自想，一边继续往里走。她拨开交叠着的外套给自己腾出些空间。这时，她感到脚底下有什么东西在吱嘎吱嘎地响。“难道是我踩着樟脑丸了？”她纳闷着，又蹲下身来用手去摸。然而她摸到的不是坚硬光滑的木头橱底，而是柔软冰冷的、粉末状的东西。“真奇怪啊！”露西说着，站起来又朝里走了一两步。

她很快就发现，碰在她脸上和手上的不再是软绵绵的毛皮了，而是一种又坚硬又粗糙甚至扎人的东西。“哎哟，这好像树枝啊！”露西惊叫了一声。此时，她看见前方有一束光。衣柜应该只有几英寸深，但这光线看上去却像在很远的地方。有种冰冷柔软的东西轻轻地落在她身上。过了一会儿，她发现自己正站在深夜的树林中，脚下全是积雪，雪花从空中飘落到她身上。

露西有点害怕，同时又觉得好奇和兴奋。她回头望去，透过黑色树干的间隙，她依然可以看到敞开着的柜门，甚至还可以瞥见她进来的那个空房间。（当然，她是让柜门开着的，因为她知道把自己关在衣柜里是件非常愚蠢的事。）那里看起来好像还是白天。“即使出了什么事，我也能回去。”露西心想。她又继续朝前走，嘎吱嘎吱地踩着积雪，穿过树林，朝着那束光线走去。

露西用了差不多十分钟就走到了光源处。原来是一根灯柱。她仔细瞧着这灯柱，思索起为什么在树林中有一根灯柱，考虑着下一步该做什么，这时，她突然听到一阵啪嗒啪嗒的脚步声，应该是向她这儿来的。没多久，从树林中走出一个怪模怪样的人，来到了灯柱的光线下。

这人只比露西高一点点，头上顶着把伞，伞上满是白雪。他的上半身看起来像人，但腿却像山羊，腿下面不是脚，而是山羊的蹄子。他还有一条尾巴，但露西最初并没有看见。他把尾巴挂在拿伞的手臂上，怕尾巴拖在雪地里被弄得脏兮兮。他脖子上围着一条红色的羊毛围巾，皮肤也红扑扑的。他的小脸长得有点奇怪，却又讨人喜欢。他留着尖尖的短胡子，长着卷曲的头发，额头两边各长着一只角。他一只手撑着伞，另一只手抱着几个棕色纸包，看上去像是刚刚完成了圣诞节采购。他是一只半人羊。当他见到露西时，惊讶地连手中的纸包都掉落在雪地上。

“我的天哪！”半人羊惊叫了一声。

第二章
露西的惊人发现

“晚上好啊！”露西说道。但是，半人羊忙着捡他掉在地上的纸包，没能马上回复露西的问候。等他收拾好东西，他向露西微微弯腰鞠了个躬。

“你好，晚上好啊。”半人羊说道，“不好意思——我不想表现得太好奇——但我想，你是夏娃之女，对吗？”

“我叫露西。”露西回答说，她没明白半人羊在说些什么。

“但——恕我冒昧地问一句——你是他们所说的女孩吗？”半人羊问道。

“是的，我当然是个女孩。”露西说。

“那你真的是人类吗？”

“当然啊，我是人类。”露西还是觉得有些莫名其妙。

“当然，当然，”半人羊说，“是我犯傻了！我从来没见过亚当之子或者夏娃之女。我太高兴了，也就是说……”他突然停下不说了，仿佛正要说出什么不该说的话但及时想起来了。他接着说道：“太高兴了，太高兴了。请允许我自我介绍一下，我叫图姆纳斯。”

“很高兴见到你，图姆纳斯先生。”露西说。

“露西，夏娃之女，”图姆纳斯先生说道，“我想请问一下，你是怎么来到纳尼亚的呢？”

是怎么来到纳尼亚的呢？”

“纳尼亚？那是什么？”露西问道。

“这里就是纳尼亚啊，”半人羊说，“咱们现在就在纳尼亚，从这灯柱到东面海上的凯尔帕拉维尔大城堡那儿都是。那，你是从西边的那片野树林过来的吗？”

“我……我是从空房间的衣柜里过来的。”露西说。

“啊！”图姆纳斯先生显得有些忧愁，“如果我小时候好好学地理，那就肯定能了解这些陌生的国家啦。只可惜现在太晚了。”

“但那些根本就不是什么国家啊，”露西说着忍不住笑了出来，“那地方就在那后面——至少我是这么认为的，但我也不太确定。那边还是夏天呢！”

“而现在，”图姆纳斯先生说，“纳尼亚还是冬天呢。这里的冬天很漫长，如果我们俩继续站在雪地里说话，一定会冻感冒的。来自遥远‘空房间’国度的夏娃之女，在那光明的衣柜之城有着永恒的夏天。你愿意到我家里和我一起吃点茶点吗？”

“非常感谢，图姆纳斯先生，”露西说，“可我想我应该回去了。”

“我家就在附近，”半人羊说着，“家里生着暖烘烘的炉火，有烤面包，有沙丁鱼，还有蛋糕。”

“啊，你真好，”露西说，“那我就待一小会儿。”

“请挽住我的手臂，夏娃之女，”图姆纳斯先生说，“这样，我们就可以合撑一把伞了。现在跟我来吧，往这边走。”

就这样，露西和这个奇怪的生物手挽手穿过了树林，好像他们是老朋友似的。

没过多久，他们来到了一个地方，这里的路面高低不平，到处都是石头，起伏的小山连绵成片。在一个小山谷的谷底，图姆纳斯先生突然拐向一旁，径直走向一块硕大无比的石头，最后露西发现他正领着她来到一个洞口。一进洞内，露西就感到两眼被柴火的光亮照得睁不开来。图姆纳斯先生蹲下去，用一把小巧的火钳，从火堆里夹出一块正在燃烧的木柴，点亮了一盏灯。“马上就好啦！”他边说边把一个水壶放在火上。

露西觉得，她从来没到过比这更舒适的地方。门边的壁橱上面放满了书，当半人羊正在摆弄餐具的时候，露西就翻看着这些书：《西勒诺斯的生平与书信》《若虫及其生活方式》《男人，僧人与猎场看守人》《通俗神话研究》《人是神话吗？》。

“好了，夏娃之女，开动吧！”半人羊说。

这真是一顿非常丰盛的茶点。首先，每人有一只漂亮的褐色鸡蛋，煮得嫩嫩的，然后是沙丁鱼吐司、黄油吐司和蜂蜜吐司，还有一块顶上洒满糖霜的草莓蛋糕。直到露西再也吃不下任何东西了，半人羊才开始说话。他讲了很多森林中的精彩故事。最后他讲到了森林里的夏天，万物披上绿装，这时年迈的森林之神准会骑着一头壮硕的驴子四处拜访。有时候酒神巴克斯也会亲自过来，他一来，河水全部变成了美酒，整座森林都会沉浸在欢乐的节日宴会中。“不像现在这样，总是没完没了的冬天！”他突然忧郁起来。为了让自己看起来更精神点，他从餐具柜上的箱子里拿出了一支像是用稻草秆做的短笛，吹了起来。这笛声使得露西一会儿想哭，一会儿想笑，一会儿想跳舞，一会儿又想睡觉。就这样，露西迷迷糊糊地过了几个钟头，然后突然清醒过来，说道：

“哦，图姆纳斯先生，很抱歉打断了你的演奏。我非常喜欢这曲子，可是我得回去了，真的，我本来只想待几分钟的。”

“现在可不行。”半人羊放下笛子，悲伤地摇了摇头。

“为什么不行？”露西吓得地跳起来，“你什么意思，我要马上回家。大家一定担心我了！”接着她又问半人羊，“图姆纳斯先生，究竟怎么了？”因为这时，半人羊棕色的眼睛中已经慢慢地溢满了泪水，然后眼泪慢慢地流到脸颊，顺着鼻尖滚落下来。最后他泪流满面，用手捂着脸，开始号啕大哭起来。

“图姆纳斯先生！”露西摇晃着他的身体，在他耳边大声喊道，“不要哭了，赶快停下来！你不害臊吗，都这么大的半人羊了。究竟是什么让你哭得那么伤心呢？”

“呜呜呜，”图姆纳斯哽咽着说道，“因为我是个坏心眼的半人羊。”

“不，你的心眼绝对不坏，”露西说，“你是一个好心肠的半人羊，是我遇到过的最好的半人羊。”

“呜呜，你知道真相之后，恐怕就不会这么说了。”图姆纳斯先生哽咽着，继续说道，“我心眼很坏的。我觉得，从古至今，在这个世界上最坏的那个半人羊就是我。”

“那么，你到底做了什么事啊？”露西问。

“我那老父亲，”图姆纳斯先生说，“壁炉架上的那张画像就是他，他一定不会做出这样的事情来。”

“什么样的事情呢？”露西问。

“就是我做的这种事，”半人羊回答道，“我替白女巫做事，我就是干这些事情的，我被她收买了。”

“白女巫是谁？”

“还用问她是谁吗？就是她，控制了整个纳尼亚！就是她，使得纳尼亚终年寒冬，常年都是冰天雪地，从来没有圣诞节。你想想，这是一种什么样的情景呀！”

“太可怕了！”露西问道，“但她收买你去做什么事呢？”

“她要我干的，绝对是世界上最坏的事情，”图姆纳斯先生深深地叹了口气，“我帮她诱拐小孩子。夏娃之女，你会相信吗？我就是这样一个坏心眼的半人羊。当我在森林里遇到一个天真可怜、从来没有伤害过我的孩子，我就假装和她交朋友，请她到我的洞里来，骗她睡熟以后，就把她给白女巫送去。”

“我不信。”露西说，“我敢肯定，你不会做出这样的事情。”

“可我已经做了。”半人羊说。

“那好吧，”露西说得很慢（因为她不想撒谎，但又不想表现得太过苛责），“好吧，那确实太糟糕了。既然你现在这么愧疚，我相信你不会再做那样的事了。”

“夏娃之女，你难道还不明白吗？”半人羊说，“这不是我以前做的事，而是我现在正在做的事。”

“你这话是什么意思啊？”露西尖叫一声，脸色一下子变得煞白。

“你就是那个孩子啊！”图姆纳斯说，“我早就接到了白女巫的命令，如果我在森林里看到亚当和夏娃的儿女，就得把他们抓回来交给白女巫。你就是我碰到的第一个孩子，我假装对你好，请你来我家里喝茶，我一直在等你睡着，然后去告诉白女巫。”

“不，你不会这样做的，图姆纳斯先生。”露西说，“你不会去的，对吗？你千万不能去啊！”

“假如我不告诉她，”说着说着他又哭起来了，“她肯定会发现的。她会割掉我的尾巴，锯下我的角，拔光我的胡子。她还会挥动她的魔杖把我这美丽的偶蹄变成劣马那样可怕的单蹄。如果她太生气了，还会把我变成一尊石像，我会成为她恐怖庭院里的一座半人羊石像，一直等到有人登上凯尔帕拉维尔城堡的四个宝座。但是天知道那得等到什么时候！”

“真对不起，图姆纳斯先生，”露西说，“但是求求你，让我回家，好吗？”

“我当然会让你回家的，”半人羊说，“我必须这样做。在你之前，我从来没有遇到过人类，不知道人类是什么样的。既然我已经和你成了朋友，我当然不能把你交给白女巫。但是我们得马上离开了，我会把你送到灯柱那里，然后我想你应该可以找到回‘空房间’国和‘衣柜’之城的路了。”

“我一定能找到的。”露西说。

“我们要尽量悄悄地走，”图姆纳斯先生说，“森林里到处都是她的眼线，甚至有些树木都听从于她。”

他们起身就走，连餐具都没收拾，图姆纳斯先生再次撑起了那把伞，让露西挽着他的手臂，两人一起走进了风雪里。他们换了条路回去，蹑手蹑脚地赶路，谁都没有说话。一路上，图姆纳斯先生尽量隐藏在黑暗中。直到他们回到了那根灯柱的地方，露西才终于松了一口气。

“夏娃之女，你知道回去的路吗？”图姆纳斯问。

露西透过树枝间的缝隙努力张望，看到不远处有一片像是白天的光亮。“我知道，”她说，“我能看到衣柜的门。”

“那你快些回家吧。”半人羊说，“你能……能原谅我原来打算做的事情吗？”

“瞧你说的，”露西真诚地握着图姆纳斯的手说，“我只是希望，你不会因为我而惹上麻烦。”

“别了，夏娃之女。”他说。

露西急忙跑向远处那片有光亮的地方。不一会儿，她就感到从身上擦过的不再是坚硬的树枝，而是柔软的毛皮外套；脚底下也不再是冰冷的积雪，而是木地板了。转眼间，她发现自己已经跳出了衣柜，回到了那个空房间里——这一段奇遇就是从这个空房间开始的。她紧紧地关上了柜门，向四周张望了一下，不停地喘着粗气。雨还在下着，她清清楚楚地听见其余的人还在走廊里说话呢。

“我在这儿哪。”她喊道，“我在这儿哪。我回来啦，我没事。”

第三章
爱德蒙和魔衣柜

露西从空房间里跑出来，跑到了走廊里，看到了另外三个人。

“太好啦，”她连声说，“我回来啦！”

“露西，你到底在说些什么？”苏珊问。

“啊？”露西感到很奇怪，“你们一点也不好奇我到哪里去了吗？”

“所以你刚刚躲起来了，是不是？”彼得说，“可怜的小露西，你躲起来了都没人发觉啊。如果你想要别人来找你，你就得躲久点。”

“但是我已经离开了有好几个小时啦！”露西说。

三个人都惊讶地瞪起了眼睛，我看看你，你看看我。

“说什么呢！”爱德蒙拍着他的脑袋说，“你可真是发疯啦！”

“小露西你在说什么呢？”彼得问。

“我是说，“露西回答道，“吃完早饭，我走进了衣柜，我在里边待了好几个小时，有人请我吃了茶点，还发生了许多事情。”

“露西，别说傻话，”苏珊说，“我们刚从那间空房间里出来，你就在那儿躲了一小会儿功夫就出来了。”

“她一点儿也不傻，”彼得说，“她是在编一个有趣的故事，对吗，露西？这有什么不好呢？”

“不，彼得，我没在编故事。”她辩解道，“那——那是个魔法衣柜。里面有一座森林，正在下着雪，那里有个国家叫纳尼亚，还有一个半人羊和一个女巫，你们来看吧。”

她这么一说，其他人觉得更加莫名其妙了，但露西越说越激动，他们就都跟着她一起回到了那间空房间。她跑在前面，抢先推开了衣柜门说：“喏，现在你们自己进去看吧。”

“你这个傻瓜，”苏珊把头伸进橱里，把外套向两边拨开说道，“这不过是一个普通的衣柜，瞧，这不是衣柜的后壁吗！”

大家都朝衣柜里仔细地观察了一番，把外套拨开以后，他们都看见——露西自己也看见——这完全是一只普通的衣柜。里面没有树林，也没有雪，只有衣柜的后壁，上面钉着一些衣钩。彼得跨进衣柜里，用手指头轻轻地敲了敲，证实这确实是衣柜的后壁。

“你可真会耍把戏啊，小露西。”他一边走出来，一边说，“我得承认，我们真的被你骗了，我们几乎都快信你了。”

“才不是把戏，”露西说，“的的确确是真的，刚才不是这样的。我敢发誓，这是真的。”

“算了吧，露西，”彼得说，“再说下去可就有点过分了。你的玩笑已经得逞了，你可以到此为止了吧。”

露西急得满脸通红，她想解释，但又不知说什么好，结果哭了起来。

连着好几天，露西都闷闷不乐。如果她不顾事实随口承认这个故事只是编出来让大家开心的话，那她随时都可以与大家和好；但露西是一个非常诚实的小姑娘，她坚信自己是对的，她不肯随便乱说。可是别人呢，都认为她在说谎，还是一个非常愚蠢的谎，这使她觉得非常委屈。彼得和苏姗批评她说谎并不是有意奚落她，但爱德蒙却是有点故意找碴，这次，他像抓住了把柄似的不断取笑她，一次又一次地问她是不是在别的柜子里又发现了什么国家。那几天本该是非常令人愉快的日子，天气很好，他们从早到晚都在外边玩，洗洗澡，钓钓鱼，爬爬树，掏掏鸟窝，躺在石楠花丛中享受温暖的阳光，但露西对这些却一点也提不起兴趣。日子一天天过去了，这样的情况一直延续到下一个阴雨天。

那天，雨到下午还没停，一点也没有转晴的意思。他们决定玩捉迷藏，由苏珊来捉，其他三个人躲。大家刚散开，露西就走进了放衣柜的那个空房间里。她并不是想躲到衣柜里去，因为她知道那么做只会使其他人再次说起那件令人难堪的事来。但她很想到衣柜里去看一看，因为这些天来，她自己也开始怀疑纳尼亚和半人羊只不过是个梦罢了。她想，房子这么大，结构又这么复杂，可躲藏的地方多得很，先到柜子里看一看，再躲到别的地方，时间也总是来得及的。但她一走进衣柜，就听见外边走廊里有脚步声，她没别的办法就只好跳了进去，并顺手带上了柜门。她没有将门关严，因为她知道，即便这不是一个带魔法的衣柜，把自己关在衣柜里也是非常蠢的事。

原来露西听到的脚步声是爱德蒙的。他走进屋内，刚好看见露西的身影消失在衣柜里。他急忙追上去，这倒不是他把衣柜看作是躲藏的好地方，而是因为他想继续嘲笑她。他拉开柜门，里边像平常一样挂着外套，还有樟脑丸的气味，黑乎乎、静悄悄的，不见露西的人影。爱德蒙自言自语道，“她一定以为我是来捉她的苏珊，所以才一直躲在衣柜里不吭声。”于是，他一步跨进衣柜还关上了门，甚至忘记了这样做有多傻。他随即在暗中摸索起来，他原以为用不上几秒钟就能摸到她，但使他吃惊的是，他怎么也摸不到。他想去开门，让亮光透一点进来，可他找不着柜门。他气得四处乱摸，还高声喊着：“露西，小露西！你在哪里呀？我知道你在这儿。”

但没人回答他，与此同时爱德蒙发现自己声音的回音很奇怪，不像想像中在柜子里的那种声音，而像是在旷野里发出来的。他感到冷得出奇。正在这时，他看见前面有一线亮光。

“谢天谢地。”爱德蒙说，“一定是柜门自己荡开了。”他已经将露西忘得一干二净，只顾朝着那亮光走去，他以为那里就是开着的柜门。但他马上就发现，他并没有走出衣柜回到空房间，而是从浓密的树荫里走进了林中的一片空地。

他的脚下是又干又脆的雪，树枝上也堆着一簇簇的积雪，头顶是蔚蓝的天空，就像人们在冬天晴朗的早晨抬头看到的那种颜色。鲜红的太阳刚从正前方的树干间冉冉升起。四周一片寂静，好像在那个地方，除了他以外，什么生灵也不存在。树林里连一只知更鸟和松鼠也没有，森林向四面八方伸展开去，一望无际。他不禁打起了寒战。

这时他忽然想起自己是来找露西的，他还想到自己对她讲的那个“想像中的国家”百般刁难，而现在周围的一切证明她讲的都是真实存在的。他想露西一定就在附近什么地方，所以他高声喊叫着：“露西！露西！我是爱德蒙，我也来了！”

没人回答他。

“她肯定是因为我最近错怪她而生我的气吧。”爱德蒙想。虽然他不愿意承认自己错了，但他也不想一个人孤零零地站在这个陌生、寒冷又孤寂的地方，于是他又喊了起来：

“喂，露西，请你原谅我原先不相信你说的话。现在我明白你说的是对的。赶快出来，我们和好吧。”

依然没有人回答他。

“女孩子家就是小心眼，”爱德蒙自言自语道，“一个劲地闹别扭。我都赔礼道歉了还是不理人。”他又看了看四周，觉着实在没有必要在这里逗留。他正准备回家的时候，听见树林里远远地传来了铃儿的响声。他仔细听着，那铃声越来越近，最后他看到有两匹驯鹿拉着一辆雪橇疾驰而来。

这些驯鹿和谢德兰群岛的矮种马差不多大，身上的毛比雪还要白，头上的角在阳光下闪烁着红光。它们脖子上的套具是用深红色的皮革制成的，上面还带着铃铛。坐在雪橇上赶鹿的是个胖胖的小矮人，站直的话大约只有三英尺高。他穿着北极熊皮做的衣服，围了一条红色的头巾，顶上有长长的金色穗子垂下来；他的大胡子一直垂到两膝，像是盖着一条毯子。他后面有一个与其截然不同的女人坐在雪橇中间一个高得多的座位上，她比爱德蒙以前见过的任何一个女人都要高大。她也全身穿着雪白的毛皮衣服，右手握着一根又长又直的金色魔杖，头上戴着一顶金冠。她的脸特别白——不只是苍白，是雪、纸或冰糖那样白，却有着血红的嘴唇。她长得很漂亮，但看起来十分骄横冷酷。

雪橇向爱德蒙飞驰过来，铃儿叮当地响着，小矮人噼噼啪啪地挥着鞭子，雪向雪橇的四边飞溅，呈现出一幅美丽的图景。

“停！”雪橇上的那个女人说道，小矮人猛地拉了一下绳，驯鹿被扯得几乎都要坐下来了。它们很快就恢复了原状，立在那儿，咯咯地咬着嘴里的嚼子，呼呼地直喘气。在这种寒冷的天气里，它们鼻孔里呼出来的热气看起来就像烟雾一样。

“喂，你是什么东西？”那个女人两眼紧盯着爱德蒙问道。

“我，我，我叫爱德蒙。”爱德蒙战战兢兢地回答道。他不喜欢她打量自己的那种神情。

那女人皱起双眉，看起来更加严厉了，“你就是这么对女王讲话的吗？”

“请原谅，陛下，我不知道你是女王。”爱德蒙说。

“不认识纳尼亚的女王？”她尖声喊道，“哈，很快你就会认得的。回答我的话：你是什么东西？”

“女王陛下，”爱德蒙说，“我不明白你的意思。我还在上学——至少之前在上学——不过这几天学校正放假。”

第四章
土耳其软糖

“可你还没回答我，你究竟是什么东西？”女王再次问爱德蒙，“你是个发育过度剃了胡子的小矮人吗？”

“不，女王陛下，”爱德蒙说，“我还没有长胡子，我是个男孩。”

“一个男孩！”她说，“你是说你是亚当之子？”

爱德蒙站在原地，一句话没说。他被问糊涂了，一点也不懂这话是什么意思。

“依我看，不管你是什么，你都像个白痴，”女王说，“这是你最后一次机会。快回答我的问题，否则我就要失去耐心了。你是人类吗？”

“是的，女王陛下。”爱德蒙说。

“那么，我问你，你是怎么进到我的领土来的？”

“对不起，女王陛下，我是从一个衣柜里进来的。”

“衣柜？这是怎么回事？”

“女王陛下，我，我打开了柜门，一跑到里面，就发现我在这儿了。”爱德蒙回答道。

“哈！”女王像是在自言自语，“一扇门，一扇人类世界的门！以前我也听说过这样的事。这下可糟糕了。不过，他只有一个人，还容易对付。”她说着这话时从座位上站起来，死死地盯着爱德蒙的脸，两眼放光，同时举起了手中的魔杖。爱德蒙想，她肯定要做出什么可怕的事情了，但他似乎觉得自己已经动弹不得。正当他感到自己快要死了的时候，女王似乎改变了主意。

“我可怜的孩子，”她的语调变了，“瞧你冻成什么样了！快坐到我的雪橇上来吧，我给你裹上披风，一起谈谈心。”

爱德蒙不愿意但又不敢违抗她，便只好跨上雪橇，坐在她脚旁。她把毛皮披风的一角围在他身上，将他裹得紧紧的。

“你想喝点什么热乎的吗？”女王问。

“谢谢，女王陛下。”爱德蒙说，他冻得牙齿不停打战。

女王从身边掏出一个看上去像是铜做的小瓶子，然后她伸出手臂，从瓶里倒出一滴东西滴在雪橇旁边的雪地上。爱德蒙看到这一滴东西在落地前像宝石一样闪闪发光，但它一碰到雪便发出一阵咝咝的响声，顿时就变成了一个宝石杯，杯子里盛满了冒着热气的饮料。那个小矮人马上拿起杯子递给爱德蒙，皮笑肉不笑地向他鞠了一躬。爱德蒙呷了一口，感到舒服多了。这是一种他从没喝过的奶油饮料，非常甜，泡沫很多，他喝下以后，从头到脚都暖和起来了。

“亚当之子，喝东西的时候不吃点什么多乏味啊，”女王说道，“你最喜欢吃什么东西呀？”

“土耳其软糖，女王陛下。”爱德蒙说。

于是，女王又从瓶子里倒出一滴东西滴到雪地上，地上立即出现了一个扎着绿丝带的圆盒子。一打开，里面装着好几磅最好的土耳其软糖。爱德蒙现在觉得非常暖和舒适。

在他吃软糖的时候，女王接二连三地问了他许多问题。一开始，爱德蒙还竭力让自己记住，嘴里塞满了东西讲话是不礼貌的，但没多久他就忘得干干净净，只顾狼吞虎咽地吃着软糖。他吃得越多，就越是想吃，一点儿也没想到为什么女王要问他这么多问题。最后，他把一切情况都告诉了她：他还有一个哥哥，一个姐姐和一个妹妹。他的妹妹也曾来过纳尼亚，还遇见了一个半人羊。除了他们兄妹四人以外，没人知道纳尼亚的事。女王对他们共有兄妹四人这件事特别有兴趣，反反复复地问：“你确定你们正好是四个人吗？两个亚当之子和两个夏娃之女，不多也不少？”爱德蒙嘴里塞满了软糖，一遍又一遍地回答：“是的，我已经告诉过你了。”

最后，爱德蒙把土耳其软糖全吃完了。他直盯着那个空盒子看，想着她能再问他一声是不是还想吃。女王很可能知道他现在在想什么。因为她很清楚，尽管爱德蒙并不知道这一点，但这种土耳其软糖其实被施了魔法，不管谁吃了以后，都会越吃越想吃，只要有得吃，他就不会住口，一直吃到送命为止。女王并没有再让他吃下去，只是对他说：

“亚当之子，我多么希望能够看到你的哥哥和姐妹啊！请你把他们带到我这儿来好吗？”

“我会试试的。”爱德蒙两只眼睛仍盯住那只空盒子。

“如果你再来的话——一定要把他们一起带来——这样我就会给你更多的土耳其软糖吃。但现在不能给你，因为这种魔法只能使用一次。当然，等到了我自己家，情况就不同了。”

“那么我们现在就到你家里去好吗？”爱德蒙试探着问道。他刚坐上雪橇时还担心着她会把他带到陌生的地方去，永远也回不来了，可现在他才顾不上担心呢。

“我家非常舒服。”女王说，“我想你一定会喜欢的，那里有好些房间是专门放土耳其软糖的。再说，我自己没有孩子，我很想抚养一个漂亮的男孩当王子，我死后就让他当纳尼亚的国王。他当了王子就会戴上一顶金冠，还有吃不完的土耳其软糖。你是我见过的最聪明、最英俊的小伙子。哪天你把另外三个人带到我家来，我就让你当纳尼亚的王子。”

“为什么不让我现在就去呢？”爱德蒙说。他满脸通红，嘴和手指上面都黏糊糊的。不管女王怎么夸奖他，他看起来还是既不聪明又不英俊。

“哦，假如我现在就把你带回家去，”她说，“我就见不到你出色的哥哥、姐姐和妹妹了。我很想认识他们。要知道，你将成为王子，以后还要当纳尼亚的国王，但你还必须有大臣和贵族。我将封你的哥哥当公爵，封你的姐姐和妹妹当女公爵。”

“他们没有什么值得你特别器重的，”爱德蒙说，“我可以随便哪天把他们带来。”

“不错，但是如果你现在就到我家里去，”女王说，“你就会把他们忘得一干二净，你就会只顾着自己玩乐，而不想再去找他们了。不行！你现在必须回到你自己的国家去，改天带他们一起到我这儿来，不和他们一起可不行。”

“但我不认得回去的路了。”爱德蒙恳求道。

“这容易。”女王回答说，“你看见那盏灯了吗？”她用魔杖指了指，爱德蒙转过身去，看见了露西碰见半人羊时所在的那个灯柱。“一直往前走，到灯柱那边，就能找到通向人类世界的路。嗯，现在看看另一边，”她指着相反的方向问，“顺着树梢向上看过去，你看到那儿有两座小山吗？”

“看到了。”爱德蒙答道。

“很好，我住的地方就在那两座小山之间。你下次来的时候，只要找到灯柱，朝着那两座小山的方向，穿过这座森林，就可以到我的家了。必须记住，你得带着你的哥哥、姐姐和妹妹一起来。如果只来你一个人，可别怪我发火。”

“我会尽力的。”爱德蒙回答说。

“嗯，顺便提一句，”女王说，“你不必把我的情况告诉他们。我们两人必须严守秘密，这才有趣，你说对吗？要让他们来了以后大吃一惊才好。你只要想办法把他们带到那两座小山处就行了。像你这样聪明的孩子要找个这样的借口还不容易？你到我家以后，只需要说一声，‘让我们看看谁住在这儿’或别的这一类的话就行了。据我看来，这是再好不过的办法……”

“女王陛下，”爱德蒙插嘴问道，“能请你再给我一块土耳其软糖，让我在回家的路上吃好吗？”

“不行，不行，”女王大笑着说，“一定要等到下一次。”她边说边向小矮人打了一个继续赶路的手势，于是雪橇便疾驶而去。女王朝着爱德蒙挥手喊道，“等到下一次，下一次。别忘了，一定要尽快过来啊。”

正当爱德蒙凝视着远去的雪橇时，他忽然听见有人在喊他的名字。他掉转头来，看见露西正从树林的另一个方向朝他走过来。

“噢，爱德蒙！”她惊喜地喊了起来，“你也进来了！是不是很奇妙呀！现在——”

“是啊，”爱德蒙说，“我承认你说的都是真的，这真的是个魔衣柜。我必须向你道歉，可是你刚才究竟在哪里？我到处找你呢。”

“要是我知道你也进来了，我一定会等你的。”露西高兴极了，一点也没注意到爱德蒙说话时是多么急躁，他的脸色是红得多么奇怪。“我和亲爱的半人羊图姆纳斯先生一起吃了午饭。上次他把我放走了，白女巫没有对他怎么样，他现在安全得很。他觉得这件事应该没有被女巫发觉，他大概不会遇到什么麻烦了。”

“白女巫？”爱德蒙问，“她是谁呀？”

“她是个十分可怕的女巫。”露西说，“她自称是纳尼亚的女王，可是她根本没有资格当女王。所有的半人羊、树神、水神、小矮人和动物，凡是心肠好的，都对她恨之入骨。她能把人都变成石头，她能干出各种各样恐怖的事来。她使魔法让纳尼亚一年到头都是冬天，但又始终过不上圣诞节。她手持魔杖，头戴王冠，坐在驯鹿拉的雪橇里四处跑。”

爱德蒙吃了太多土耳其软糖，早就觉得不太舒服，现在听说和他交朋友的那位原来是个危险的女巫，他就感到更不舒服了。可他还是想吃土耳其软糖，想得不得了。

“是谁告诉你这些事情的？”他问。

“半人羊图姆纳斯先生。”露西说。

“你不要总是相信半人羊的话。”爱德蒙说，装出一副比露西更加了解半人羊的样子。

“这话又是谁说的？”露西问。

“大家都知道，”爱德蒙说，“随便你问谁都行。我们还是回去吧，冒雪站在这儿有什么好玩的。”

“也好，”露西说，“哦，爱德蒙，你也来了，我感到很高兴。现在我们两人都来过纳尼亚了，别人一定会相信我们了。那该多有趣呀！”

爱德蒙却暗自认为，对他来说，这件事并不像露西说的那样有趣，他不得不在大家面前承认露西是对的。他敢肯定，别人都会站在半人羊和动物们一边，而他却几乎已经站在女巫这一边了。如果大家都知道了纳尼亚的情况，他不知道自己要怎么说，又如何保守他的秘密。

不知不觉，他们已经走了好远，忽然他们发现，周围已不再是树枝而是那些衣服了。转瞬间，两人已经回到空房间里了。

“哎哟，”露西说，“你的脸色看起来好差，爱德蒙，你不舒服吗？”

“我没事。”爱德蒙答道，但这并不是真话，他确实觉得很不舒服。

“那我们走吧，”露西说，“我们找他们去，有好多话要告诉他们！如果我们四个人都到纳尼亚去了，那该多有意思呀！”

第五章
重返人类世界

这时捉迷藏还没结束，因此爱德蒙和露西花了好长时间才找到彼得和苏珊。当大家一起聚集到那间有盔甲的大房间里后，露西大声说：

“彼得！苏珊！我说的都是真的！爱德蒙也看见了，衣柜里面藏着一个国家。我俩都进去了！我们是在树林里遇到的。爱德蒙，快！把所有的情况都告诉他们。”

“爱德蒙，到底发生了什么事情？”彼得问。

现在我们写到这个故事中最令人讨厌的部分了。此刻之前，爱德蒙觉得很不舒服，甚至有些恶心想吐，他也因为要被迫承认露西是对的而感到有些懊恼，他都没想好自己到底该怎么办。可就在彼得发问的那一刻，他突然把心一横，做了一件自己有史以来最卑鄙、最不光彩的事情。他决定临时改口来整一下露西。

“告诉我们吧，爱德蒙。”苏珊说。

爱德蒙摆出一副老成稳重的样子，好像他比露西要大得多（实际上两人只相差一岁）。他扑哧一笑说：“噢，是啊，露西和我一直在做游戏，我俩假装上次讲的衣柜里有个国家的故事是真的。当然喽，我们只是开开玩笑，其实那儿什么也没有。”

可怜的露西看了爱德蒙一眼，一下就冲出了房间。

爱德蒙越来越让人讨厌了。他就像取得了多大的成功似的，立马又说道：“她又跑出去了。她这是怎么了？这就是小孩子最不像话的地方，他们总是……”

“听着，爱德蒙，”彼得转过身，盯着他说，“闭上你的嘴！自从上次露西说了衣柜的事情以后，你总是对她冷嘲热讽。现在你又拿这件事和她开玩笑，故意让她难堪。我看你做这些事，其实就不怀好意。”

爱德蒙大吃一惊，说道：“可露西本来就是在胡说八道啊。”

“她当然是在胡说八道，”彼得说，“但这就是问题所在。露西刚离开家的时候还是好好的。但是，自从我们来到这里之后，她要么就是看起来神经不正常，要么就在说谎。可是不管怎样，你一会儿嘲笑她，一会儿唠叨她，一会儿又怂恿她继续撒谎，你觉得这样对她又有什么好处呢？”

“我是想……我是想……”爱德蒙说，但是他又想不出该说什么。

“你想什么来着，”彼得说，“你尽想一些坏主意。你总是对年纪比你小的孩子那么坏，我们以前在学校里就见识过了。”

“都别说了，”苏珊说，“你们现在吵吵又有什么用？我们还是去找露西吧！”

过了好一会儿，他们才找到露西。谁都能看得出她大哭了一场。无论他们说什么，露西都坚持她说的都是真的。

“不管你们怎么想，也不管你们怎么说，我都无所谓。你们尽管去告诉老教授，去写信告诉妈妈，随便你们怎么做都可以。我知道我确实在那里碰见了一个半人羊。我要是留在那里多好啊！你们都是坏人！”

这个夜晚十分不愉快。露西感到很委屈，爱德蒙也开始觉得他的计划并不像他想的那样奏效。那两个年龄大些的孩子真的开始以为露西的精神不大正常了。在露西入睡以后很久，他们还站在走廊里小声讨论这件事。

第二天早上，他们决定把所有的事情都告诉老教授。“假如他也认为露西真的有什么问题，他就会写信告诉爸爸，”彼得说，“我们可管不了这样的事。”于是他们去敲了敲老教授书房的门。老教授说了声“请进”，便站起身来，找了椅子让他们坐下，还说非常乐意为他们处理问题。然后他坐下来，双手指尖合在一起，静静地听他们把整件事情讲完。听完以后，他好长时间没有吭声，最后他清了清嗓子，出人意料地问道：

“你们怎么能确定你们的妹妹讲的故事不是真的呢？”

“哦，但是……”苏珊欲言又止。任何人都能看出老人脸上严肃的神情。过了一会儿，苏珊鼓起勇气说：“但是爱德蒙亲口告诉我们，他们只是装着玩的。”

“有一个关键问题倒值得你们好好想想，”老教授说，“根据你们的经验——请原谅我提出这个问题——你们认为是你们的弟弟，还是你们的妹妹更诚实一些呢？”

“这个问题很有意思，先生，”彼得说，“我得说，直到现在为止，露西要比爱德蒙诚实。”

“那你怎么看呢，孩子？”教授转过头来问苏珊。

“嗯，”苏珊说，“我嘛，基本上和彼得的看法相同。但她说的森林和半人羊的故事总不可能是真的。”

“这我就不清楚了，”教授说，“但是，随口指责一个你们都认为是诚实的人说谎，这倒是一个非常严重的问题。”

“我们担心的并不是露西说谎，”苏珊说，“我们认为很有可能露西在精神上出了问题。”

“你是说她疯了？”教授非常冷静地说道，“嗯，这个你们很容易判断。你们只要观察观察她的脸色，再和她说说话，就可以看出她并没有发疯。”

“但是……”苏珊刚开口又不说了。她做梦也没想到像教授这样的大人会说出这种话来，她真被搞糊涂了。

“逻辑！”老教授多半是在自言自语，“现在的这些学校怎么都不教你们一点逻辑呢？这件事只有三种可能：要么你们的妹妹说了谎，要么她精神不正常，要么她说的都是真话。你们都说她向来不说谎，她的精神又没有什么问题。那么在发现更充分的证据之前，我们就只能假定她讲的是真实的。”

苏珊两眼紧盯着他，从他脸上的严肃神情看来，她可以肯定老教授没有在开玩笑。

“但是，这怎么可能呢，先生？”彼得问。

“为什么就一定不可能呢？”教授反问了一句。

“因为，”彼得说，“假如是真的，为什么不是每个人每次到衣柜里都能发现那个国家呢？上次我们去看的时候，里面什么都没有，还是露西亲自领着我们去看的呢，甚至她自己也没有看到。”

“这又怎么样呢？”老教授说。

“如果露西说的是真的，那么那些东西应该一直在那里啊。”

“是这样的吗？”老教授问道。彼得不知该如何应答。

“但是露西只在衣柜里躲了一小会，”苏珊说，“即使衣柜里有这么一个国家，她也没时间去呀。我们刚从空房间里出来，她就跟在我们后面溜出来了，前后还不到一分钟，她却硬是说自己离开了好几个钟头。”

“正因如此，她说的故事才更真实，”老教授说，“如果这房间里真的有一扇门通向某一个别的世界（我得提醒你们，这是一栋非常神秘的房子，连我都知之甚少）——就算她真的到了另一个世界，我们也不应该感到奇怪，那个世界一定有它自己的时间概念，所以不管你在那儿逗留多久，也不会占去我们这个世界的任何一点时间。另外我还认为，像她这个年纪的女孩子，是不可能自己编出这样的故事来的。假如她想说谎，她就会在里面多藏一段时间，然后再出来讲故事的。”

“老先生，你是说，“彼得问道，“在这栋房子里，到处都有可能存在别的世界吗？”

“一切皆有可能，”教授说，他一边摘下眼镜擦擦干净，一边又自言自语道，“我真不懂，这些孩子在学校里到底学了些什么？”

“这叫我们怎么办？”苏珊说，她感到这场谈话的主题已经开始偏移了。

“我亲爱的小姐，”教授突然抬起头来，用一种非常敏锐的神情看着他俩说，“有个计划值得一试，但谁也没有提起过。”

“什么计划？”苏珊问。

“我们不妨试着少管别人的事。”他说道。谈话就这样结束了。

这之后，事情有所好转。彼得做了许多工作使得爱德蒙不再嘲笑露西，包括露西在内的所有人都不想再谈衣柜的事，这已经成了使人不快的话题。所以在之后相当长的一段时间里，一切奇遇似乎都已成了过去，但事实却并非如此。

老教授的这栋古老的房子，虽然他自己知之甚少，但却非常出名。全英国的人都希望能来参观。这栋房子经常出现在旅游指南一类的书上，甚至在各类历史书籍上也记载了关于它的很多故事，其中有些故事比我现在对你讲的这个还要离奇。每当游客要求进屋看看的时候，老教授总是满口答应，女管家玛卡蕾蒂太太就带着他们到各处转转，给他们介绍那些名画、盔甲以及图书馆里稀有的书籍。玛卡蕾蒂太太不怎么喜欢孩子，也不喜欢别人在她给游客们滔滔不绝地讲述她所知道的各种故事时插嘴打扰。所以在孩子们来的第一天早上，她就同苏珊和彼得交代过（同时还交代了许多别的规矩）：“请你们记着，我带人参观的时候，你们能离多远就多远。”

“就好像我们当中有人故意要跟一群陌生的大人浪费半天时间似的。”爱德蒙说。其余三人也有同感。谁知第二次的奇遇就是因此开始的。

几天后，彼得和爱德蒙正望着那副盔甲出神，想试试能否把它拆下来，两个女孩忽然跑进房间里说道：“不好啦，玛卡蕾蒂太太带着一群人来了！”

“真糟糕！”彼得说，四个人很快就从另外一头的门缝里溜出去了。他们溜出来后先进了那间休息室，后来又跑到了图书馆。这时他们突然听到前面有说话的声音，他们这才意识到，玛卡蕾蒂太太并不像他们所想的那样带着游客们到前楼去了，而是带着游客们来到了后楼。之后，不知是他们自己昏了头，还是玛卡蕾蒂太太有意要来抓他们，还是这所房子的魔力再次显现，非要把他们赶往纳尼亚，他们感觉无论走到哪里，都有人跟着。最后苏珊说：“啊，这些游客真够讨厌的！走，让我们躲到有衣柜的那个空房间里去吧，等他们走了以后再说。没人会跟着我们到那儿去的。”但他们刚进空房间，就听见外面走廊有人在讲话，接着又传来了有人摸索门把手的声音。接着，他们看见门把手转动了。

“快！”彼得说，“没别的地方能躲了！”他猛地一下推开了衣柜门。四个人都躲在黑咕隆咚的衣柜里不停地喘着气。彼得带上了柜门，但并没有把它关紧。因为他知道，但凡是个有理智的人，就永远不会把自己关在衣柜里面。

第六章
深入森林

“我求求玛卡蕾蒂太太快点带着这些人离开。”没过一会，苏珊忍不住说道，“我要被挤死了。”

“樟脑丸的味道实在太难闻了！”爱德蒙接着抱怨道。

“我猜这些衣服的口袋里都放满了樟脑丸，”苏珊说，“这样就不会有小飞蛾了。”

“好像有什么东西在戳我的背。”彼得说。

“而且，我还感觉凉凉的？”苏珊说。

“你这么一说，我还真是觉得有点冷，”彼得说，“真该死，这里面居然是湿的！这地方到底是怎么回事？我好像坐在一块湿漉漉的地方，而且好像越来越湿了。”他挣扎着站了起来。

“我们还是出去吧。”爱德蒙说，“他们已经走啦。”

“噢——啊！”苏珊突然大叫一声，其他人立刻向她那边望去，问她怎么了。

“我正靠着一棵树坐着。”苏珊说，“看，那儿有亮光——就在那儿。”

“天啊，你说的没错，”彼得说，“瞧这儿，还有那儿，到处都是树。那些湿乎乎的东西原来是雪。这是怎么回事？啊，我现在相信我们到了露西说的那个森林里了。”

彼得说得一点也没错。四个孩子发现自己似乎来到了郊外，还沐浴在冬天的阳光下。他们眨了眨眼睛，发现他们身后是挂在衣钩上的一排排外套，而他们面前则是一片白雪皑皑的森林。

彼得转过身，朝着露西说：“我之前不相信你说的话，现在我向你道歉。真对不起，露西，我们握个手，好吗？”

“好啊。”露西一边说，一边伸出手。

“那现在，”苏珊说，“我们该怎么办？”

“怎么办？”彼得说，“当然是去森林里探险啊。”

“喂，大家，”走着走着，爱德蒙开口说道，“我们是不是应该往左边走一点，如果我们想去灯柱那边的话，就应该往这边走。”他一时忘记自己必须装得像是从没来过这儿。话刚说出口，他就意识到自己说漏了嘴。这时，其他三个人都停下了脚步，直盯着他看。彼得吹了一声口哨。

“这么说来，你真的来过这儿。”彼得说道，“上次露西说在这儿碰见你，你却不承认，还说她撒谎？”

在这之后，四个人陷入了死一般的沉默。“唉，真是什么歹毒的小鬼都有啊。”彼得说着，耸了耸肩膀，没有再往下说。看来，也确实没别的什么可说了。过了一会儿，四个人又重新开始他们的旅程。只有爱德蒙心里暗暗在想：我总有一天要让你们尝尝苦头，你们这群自以为是的讨厌鬼！

“我们到底该往哪里走啊？”苏珊问道，主要是想岔开刚才的话题。

“我看，该让露西做向导，”彼得说，“也只有她有资格做向导。小露西，你打算带我们上哪儿去啊？”

“去看看图姆纳斯先生，好不好？”露西答道，“他就是我对你们讲过的那个善良的半人羊。”

大家一致同意后就马上出发了。他们一边快速前进，一边跺着脚。事实证明露西是个好向导。一开始她还担心自己找不到路，但她在一个地方认出了一棵长得稀奇古怪的树，后来又认出了之前看到过的一个树桩，终于把大家带到了一个崎岖不平的地方，接着进了那个小山谷，没多久就到了图姆纳斯先生的山洞前。然而，他们看到的却是一幅十分可怕的场景，这让他们都大吃一惊。

山洞的门已被撞脱了下来，断成了好几截；又黑又冷的山洞里弥漫着潮湿的气息。看来，这个地方已经有好些日子没人住了。雪从洞口吹进来，靠近门口的地上已经积了厚厚一层雪，里面还混着一些黑黑的东西；再一看，那是烧剩下来的木炭屑和炭灰。显然，有人把烧着的柴火扔到了洞内，然后又把它们踩灭了。陶罐碎了一地，壁炉上半人羊父亲的画像也被人用刀划成了碎片。

“这地方简直糟透了。”爱德蒙说，“我们来这儿干吗？”

“这是什么？”彼得一边说，一边蹲下身子。他发现地毯上钉着一张纸。

“上面写了什么吗？”苏珊问。

“我想是的，”彼得回答，“但在这儿看不清楚，我们还是拿到外面去看吧。”于是大家都跑到了洞外，围着彼得听他念道：

本山洞的原主人，半人羊图姆纳斯，因背叛纳尼亚女王、凯尔帕拉维尔城堡的女主人、孤独群岛女皇简蒂丝陛下，甚至庇护女王陛下的敌人，窝藏奸细，与人类交好，现已被捕。该罪犯罪行严重，即将受审。

落款：秘密警察局局长毛戈林姆

女王陛下万岁

彼得读完后，孩子们面面相觑。

“我说不上来自己该不该喜欢这个地方。”苏珊说。

“这个女王是谁，小露西？”彼得问，“你知道她吗？”

“她哪里是什么女王，”露西回答说，“她就是个可怕的女巫，就是那个白女巫。森林里所有的居民都恨她。她对整个纳尼亚施了魔法，所以这里永远都是冬天，永远没有圣诞节。”

“我——我在想继续走下去还有什么意义，”苏珊说，“我是说，这里看上去并不安全，也没有多少有趣的地方。天气越来越冷了，我们又没带吃的东西。不如我们现在就回去吧。”

“哦，不能，我们不能走，”露西急忙说道，“你们难道没看到吗？事实已经清楚地摆在我们眼前了。我们不能就这样回去。都是因为我，可怜的半人羊才受了这样的罪。多亏了他的庇护，我才没有遭受女巫的毒手；他还告诉了我回去的路。这张纸上说他庇护女王的敌人、与人类交好指的就是这些。我们必须赶紧想办法救他。”

“可我们连吃的都没有，还能做些什么？”爱德蒙说。

“你给我闭嘴！”彼得厉声说道，到现在为止他还在对爱德蒙的所作所为感到生气，“你的意见呢，苏珊？”

“我有种不祥的感觉，恐怕露西说得没错。”苏珊说，“我一步也不想往前走了，甚至希望我们从没来过这儿，但事已至此，我们必须给那个先生——他叫什么名字？我记不清楚了——我说的是那个半人羊，想想办法。”

“我也是这样想的，”彼得说，“可我也担心我们身上没带吃的东西。我想过先回去拿点吃的再来。但是看起来我们一旦出去以后，恐怕未必能回得来。我看，我们不得不继续前进。”

“我同意。”两个女孩子异口同声地说。

“要是我们知道这个可怜的伙计被囚禁在什么地方就好了。”彼得说。

大家默不作声，考虑着下一步该怎么办。突然，露西对大家说：“你们看，那里有一只知更鸟，它的胸脯多红啊。它是我在这儿看到的第一只鸟。我在想，纳尼亚的鸟儿会说话吗？它看来好像有什么话要对我们说似的。”说着，她就转过身对知更鸟说：“请问，你知道半人羊图姆纳斯先生被押送到什么地方去了吗？”她说着朝鸟儿走近了一步，那鸟儿立刻就飞开了，不过它只是飞到了不远处的另一棵树上，停在树枝上，紧紧地盯着他们，好像听懂了他们说的话似的。见此情景，四个孩子不由自主地向前走了几步，来到了知更鸟栖息的那棵树下。看到他们走近了，那鸟儿又飞到了另外一棵树上，一双眼睛仍然紧盯着他们。

“我说呀，”露西说，“我真觉得它是要我们跟着它走呢。”

“我看也是这样。”苏珊说，“彼得，你看呢？”

“嗯，我们可以试试。”彼得说。

那知更鸟好像完全听得懂人话似的，不断地从一棵树飞到另一棵树，总是飞落在他们前面几码远的地方，使他们很容易就能跟上来。它就这样引着他们慢慢地走下山坡。它每停一处，那儿的树枝上就掉下一阵雪来。没过多久，头上的乌云散开了，太阳出来了，茫茫雪原变得更加耀眼晶莹。他们就这样一直走了大约半个小时，两个女孩子一直走在前面。这时，爱德蒙对彼得说：“如果你不再用那种高高在上的口气和我说话，我就告诉你一些事情，我觉得你最好听一听。”

“我们现在跟随的这个向导，它的情况我们可一点也不清楚。我们怎么知道那鸟儿是好是坏呢？难道它就不会把我们带到危险的地方去吗？”

“你怎么会这么想？在我读过的所有故事中，知更鸟都是善良的鸟儿。我敢肯定，知更鸟不会站在坏的那一边。”

“就算是这样吧，可哪一边是好的呢？我们又怎么知道半人羊是好的，而女王（是的，我知道露西告诉我们她是女巫）是坏的呢？他们两边的情况我们真的一点也不清楚。”

“可是，那位半人羊救了露西的命。”

“这是半人羊自己这样说的，我们又哪里知道呢？另外，又有谁知道我们从这里该怎么回家呢？”

“天哪！”彼得说，“这一点我还真没有想过。”

“而且，我们还没饭吃！”爱德蒙嘟囔了一句。

第七章
在海狸家的一天

正当两个男孩在后面窃窃私语时，走在前面的两个女孩突然尖叫了一声“啊！”随后就停下了脚步。

“知更鸟！”露西喊道，“知更鸟飞走啦！”抬头望去，小鸟的确已经飞得不见踪影了。

“我们现在该怎么办？”爱德蒙说，他看了彼得一眼，意思是说：“看到了吧，我说得没错吧！”

“嘘，你们看那儿！”苏珊说。

“什么东西？”彼得问。

“靠左那边，树林中有什么东西在动。”

他们睁大眼睛，四处搜索着，看得眼睛都有点难受。

过了一会儿，苏珊说：“瞧，又动了。”

“这次我也看到了，”彼得说，“它还在那儿，这会儿躲到那棵大树后面去了。”

“那是什么东西呀？”露西问道。她努力装出一副不怎么害怕的样子。

“不管是什么，”彼得说，“看样子，它是在躲着我们呢，就怕被人看见。”

“我们回去吧。”苏珊说。就在这一刻，虽然谁也没有大声说出来，但每个人都突然意识到刚才爱德蒙低声对彼得提到的问题：他们迷路了。

“它长什么样呀？”露西问。

“好像——好像是一种动物。”苏珊回答。过了一会儿，她又喊道：“你们快来看，快！它就在那儿！”

这一次他们都看清楚了，一个长满了络腮胡子的毛茸茸的脑袋从一棵大树后面探出来，向他们这里望着。但这一回它并没有立刻把脑袋缩回去。相反，它还用一只爪子抵着嘴巴，就好像人们把手指压在嘴唇上示意别人安静的样子。接着它又消失了。孩子们都屏住呼吸，站在原地一动不敢动。

“我知道它是什么了。”彼得说，“是海狸，我看到它的尾巴了。”

“它想让我们到它那边去，”苏珊说，“还叫我们别出声。”

“这我知道。”彼得说，“问题是我们去还是不去？小露西，你怎么想？”

“我觉得那是一只好海狸。”露西说。

“是吗，可我们怎么知道呢？”爱德蒙问。

“我们非冒一次险不可吧？”苏珊说，“依我看，光站在这儿也不是办法。而且我也有点饿了，想吃点东西。”

就在这时，那只海狸从大树后探出头来，向他们挥手，样子看起来十分诚恳。

“来吧，”彼得说，“让我们试一试吧，大家不要走远了。如果它真是敌人，那我们四个人联手对付一只海狸应该也不成问题。”

于是孩子们一起朝着那棵树走过去。果然，他们在树后面看到了那只海狸，但它却在不断地向后退。它压低了嗓子对他们说：“往里再过来一点，到我这儿来。我们在外面不安全。”

孩子们在海狸的带领下，一直向树林深处走去，最后走到一块光线阴暗的空地上，空地的周围耸立着四棵参天大树，浓密的枝叶交织在一起。由于雪落不到下面来，地上看得见褐色的泥土和松针。这时，海狸才开口和他们说话。

“你们就是亚当之子和夏娃之女吗？”它问道。

“是的。”彼得答道。

“嘘——”海狸说，“请不要这么大声说话。即便是在这儿我们也并不安全。”

“为什么？你在害怕什么？”彼得问道，“这里除了我们以外没有其他人啊。”

“这里有树。”海狸说，“它们总是在听我们说话。绝大多数的树站在我们这边，但也有背叛我们倒向她那一边的。你们明白我在指谁吧。”它接连点了好几下头。

“要是说到立场的话，”爱德蒙说，“我们怎么知道你是朋友而不是敌人呢？”

“别见怪，海狸先生，”彼得补充说，“你看，我们还不认识呢。”

“对，对，”海狸说，“我这里有样东西给你们看看。”说着，它把一个白色的小东西递到了他们跟前。孩子们都惊讶地看着这个东西。突然，露西说道：“这是我的手帕，是我送给可怜的图姆纳斯先生的。”

“没错，”海狸说，“我可怜的伙伴，他在被捕前听到了风声，就把这手帕交给我，说如果他有什么意外，我就必须在这个地方与你们会面，并带你们到……”说到这里，海狸的声音低得听不见了。它非常神秘地冲孩子们点点头，又朝他们做了个手势，示意他们尽量靠近些，以致孩子们的脸都碰到了它的胡子，弄得他们痒痒的。它非常小声地补充道：

“据说阿斯兰已经在行动了，也许已经来到这里了。”

这时，一件奇怪的事情发生了。这些孩子们和你一样，都没听说过阿斯兰这个名字。但海狸先生一提起阿斯兰，他们每个人身上就有一种不一样的感觉。就像在梦中，有人说了你不懂的什么东西，但你觉得它肯定意义重大——要么是可怕得会将整场梦变成噩梦，要么是语言无法描述的美好，成为你牢记一生并常常想着再次回味的美梦。现在就是这样的感觉。一听到阿斯兰这个名字，每个孩子都觉得自己的心有所触动。爱德蒙感到一阵莫名的恐惧；彼得顿时感到无所畏惧；苏珊觉得心旷神怡，就好像是闻到了一阵芬芳或是听到了一首美妙动听的乐曲；露西则感受到了一份愉悦舒畅的好心情，就和某个早上醒来想到假期或夏天就要从今天开始时的心情一样。

“那图姆纳斯先生现在怎么样了？”露西说，“他现在在哪儿？”

“嘘——嘘——嘘！”海狸说，“这儿还不是说话的地方，我得把你们带到一个可以畅所欲言，还能吃点东西的地方。”

除了爱德蒙，现在谁也不再怀疑海狸先生了，而且当他们听到海狸先生说“吃点东西”的时候，所有人——包括爱德蒙在内——都变得兴奋起来。不一会儿，他们走出了森林。头顶上空是一片晴朗蔚蓝的天，太阳依旧照耀着大地，景色美极了。

这时他们来到了一座山崖边，山崖下面是一条又窄又深的大峡谷，峡谷中央流淌着一条大河——若不是河面已经结冰，那准会是一条汹涌澎湃的大河。就在他们脚下，有一条水坝横亘在河面上。他们一看见水坝，就猛地想到海狸最擅长的就是筑坝；而且他们几乎可以肯定，脚下的这条水坝就是这位海狸先生的得意之作。他们注意到海狸先生的脸上露出了一种特别谦虚的表情，就像你去参观别人家的花园或阅读别人写的书时，你所看到的园丁或作者本人常有的那种表情一样。于是，苏珊出于礼貌而赞叹道：“这水坝筑得多好啊！”而海狸先生这一次没有说“嘘——嘘！”，而是小声地说了句：“哪里哪里！只不过是个小玩意儿！还没有全部完成呢！”

水坝的上游处原本是个很深的池塘，但现在因为结冰，变成了一块墨绿色的冰面。坝的下游处结着更多的冰，不像上游处那样平滑，这里的冰面凹凸不平，看起来就像是奔流而下的河水被突然冻住，所以依然保持着河水流淌时那波浪起伏的样子；并且在突然冻结的一瞬间，河水因为遇到岩石或其他障碍物而溅起的水珠也被冻在了空中，形成了一根根粗细各异的冰柱和大小不一的冰花。在坝的正中央，有一间外形看起来像蜂窝的小房子，一缕缕炊烟透过屋顶的一个小洞飘出来。如果你在肚子饿得咕咕叫的时候看到那些烟雾，你就会立刻想到是有什么东西在锅里煮着，肚子就会饿得更慌。

这些是其他三个孩子所看到的画面，而爱德蒙却注意到了别的东西。顺着这条大河往下不远的地方，还有一条小河从另外一个小山谷里流出来与这条大河汇合。爱德蒙抬头向那个山谷望去，看见有两座小山，他敢肯定那就是那天白女巫与他在灯柱那儿分别时指给他看的那两座小山。他想，那两座小山之间一定就是她的宫殿，离他大约只有一英里远，甚至还不到。他突然想起了土耳其软糖，想起了白女巫给他的“国王”承诺（他在心里暗自想道：“我倒是想看看，彼得知道这些后会怎么样。”）。这时一个可怕的念头在他的脑海里产生了。

“我们到了，”海狸先生说，“看来我的太太正在等着我们呢。好，让我来带路。大家都小心点儿，不要滑倒。”

坝顶相当宽，上面完全可以走路，但是人类在上面还是不太好走，因为坝顶上覆盖了一层厚厚的冰。此外，虽然结了冰的池塘十分平坦，但与下面的落差还很大，看起来还是有点吓人。在海狸先生的带领下，他们排成一排、沿着中间的路向前走，他们的两侧都是已经冻住的河水。他们看到，沿着那条河流向上有一条很长的路，沿着河流向下也有一条很长的路。他们终于走到了大坝中间的那座小房子门口。

“我们回来啦，亲爱的，”海狸先生说，“我找到他们了。他们就是亚当和夏娃的儿女。”大家全都走进了屋子。

“总算把你们盼来啦！”海狸太太一边说，一边伸出两只布满皱纹的苍老的爪子，“终于找到你们啦！我做梦也没想到我还能看到这一天！土豆在锅里煮着了，水壶里的水也开了。哎，亲爱的，你替我捉些鲜鱼回来！”

在海狸先生出去捕鱼的时候，女孩子们也在屋里忙碌着。她们帮着海狸太太把水壶灌满，在桌子上摆好餐具，把面包切好，再把面包放进烤箱里加热，又从角落的一个桶里替海狸先生舀出一大杯啤酒。最后，他们把煎鱼的锅子放到炉子上，倒油烧热。露西认为，海狸夫妇的家虽然和图姆纳斯先生的山洞完全不一样，但非常小巧舒适。室内没有书，没有画，两个墙洞便是他们的床，看上去就像轮船上倚壁而设的铺位一样。屋顶上挂着火腿和一串串的洋葱，靠墙放着胶靴、油布、斧子、羊毛剪、铲、泥刀和其他运灰泥的工具，还有钓鱼竿、渔网和鱼篓。桌上的台布虽然粗糙，却很干净。

正当油锅嘶嘶响的时候，彼得和海狸先生拎着鱼回来了，海狸先生已经在外面用刀把这些鱼剖开洗净。你们一定能想象到现捕的鱼放在锅中煎的时候味道有多美，肚子饿得咕噜叫的孩子们又是多么希望它们能早点煎好。在海狸先生说“马上就好了”之前，他们已经饿得不行了。苏珊把土豆滤干后又把它们放回空锅上烤，露西帮海狸太太把鲑鱼盛到盘里去。过了不到几分钟，大家就把凳子摆好，准备吃饭了（海狸夫妇家里除了放在炉边供海狸太太坐的特制摇椅以外，都是三条腿的凳子）。桌上有一罐专门给孩子们喝的牛奶（海狸先生只喝啤酒），桌子中间放着一大块深黄色的奶油，可以在吃土豆的时候随意用。孩子们都认为——我也同意他们的看法——当你吃着半小时前还活着，一分钟前刚从锅里盛出来的鱼时，没有任何事物能够和它媲美。吃完鱼后，海狸太太出乎意料地从炉子里拿出热气腾腾的绵密果酱卷；同时把水壶移到炉子上。所以孩子们吃好果酱卷以后，茶就已经准备好了。孩子们喝了茶，把凳子往后挪了挪，靠墙倚着，心满意足地舒了一口气。

“现在，”海狸先生把空啤酒杯往旁边一推，把茶杯拿到面前说，“请你们稍等片刻，让我点上我的烟斗。然后我们该谈谈正事了。外面又开始下雪啦，”他望了望窗外继续说道，“这就更好了，雪一下，就不会有人来找我们了；而且如果有人想跟踪你们，也发现不了你们的任何足迹。”

第八章
晚餐后发生的事

“现在，”露西说，“请你告诉我们，图姆纳斯先生到底出了什么事？”

“啊，那可不是一件好事。”海狸先生摇着头说，“那可是非常非常糟糕的事。毫无疑问，他已经被警察抓走了。这个情况我是从一只鸟儿那里打听到的，它亲眼看到他被带走的。”

“那么他被带到什么地方去了呢？”露西接着问道。

“嗯，鸟儿最后看到他们的时候，他们是朝北去的。大家都知道那意味着什么。”

“我们不懂。”苏珊说。海狸先生望着她，沮丧地摇摇头。

“恐怕他们把他带回城堡了。”他说。

“他们会怎么对他呢，海狸先生？”露西喘着气问道。

“唉，”海狸先生说，“这就难说了，凡是被抓进去的能够出来的不多，全变成石头雕像了。据说，在她住的院子里、楼上、厅堂里都堆满了石头雕像。她把他们……”他顿了一下，不由自主地哆嗦了一下，说道，“通通变成石头了。”

“但是，海狸先生，”露西说，“难道我们不能——我们应该想尽办法去救他。这一切太可怕了，而且这全都是因为我。”

“孩子们，我知道，如果你们能有办法的话，你们一定会救他，”海狸太太说，“但是，你们根本就无法靠近那座城堡。你与她为敌，一旦进去了，就根本出不来。”

“我们是不是可以用些计谋呢？”彼得说。

“没用的，亚当之子，”海狸先生说，“你们再怎么想办法也没用。不过，听说阿斯兰回来了……”

“对了！给我们讲讲阿斯兰吧！”他们异口同声地说着。说到阿斯兰，那种奇妙的感觉又出现了，就像春天来临的第一个信号，就像喜讯那样拨动着他们的心弦。

“阿斯兰是谁呀？”苏珊问。

“阿斯兰？”海狸先生说，“你们还不知道吗？他是国王，是森林之王，但他不经常在这儿。在我父亲那辈和我这辈子里，他都没来过。但现在有可靠的消息说，他已经回来了。他现在就在纳尼亚。他一定会彻底消灭白女巫的。能救图姆纳斯先生的只有他，你们不行的。”

“她不会也把他变成石头吗？”爱德蒙说。

“我的孩子啊，亚当之子，你说得倒是容易！”海狸先生哈哈大笑，“把他变成石头？如果她敢站在他面前，正视他一眼，就算是有种的了。我打包票她不敢这么做。阿斯兰要重整纳尼亚，就像一首古老的歌谣写的那样：

阿斯兰出现在我们面前，是非颠倒的现象就会改变；

人们一听到他的吼声，所有的悲痛就不再有；

阿斯兰一露他的牙齿，漫长寒冬就会消逝不见；

当阿斯兰轻抖鬃毛，我们就能重睹春天。

等你们见到他，就自然明白了。”

“我们会见到他吗？”苏珊问道。

“当然啰，夏娃之女，我就是为了这个才把你们带到这儿来的。我要带你们去见他。”海狸先生说。

“他——他是人吗？”露西问。

“人？！”海狸先生严肃地说，“当然不是。我不是告诉你们了吗？他是森林之王，是海外大帝之子。你们难道不知道百兽之王吗？阿斯兰是一头雄狮，是伟大的百兽之王。”

“哦，哦，哦，”苏珊说，“我还以为他是人呢。那么他——会伤害我们吗？一想到要见一头狮子，我就有点害怕。”

“亲爱的，这很正常，”海狸太太说，“如果有谁在阿斯兰面前能不发抖，那他要么是一个非凡的勇士，要么就是一个傻瓜。”

“那就是说，他很可怕？”露西说。

“可怕？”海狸先生说，“你没有听见我太太说的话吗？他当然使人望而生畏，但他很善良。他是这里的国王，懂了吗？”

“即使我见到他会感到害怕，我还是很想见到他。”彼得说。

“说得对，亚当之子，”海狸先生说，他伸出爪子猛地拍了一下桌子，震得满桌的杯子和碟子叮当作响。“你们应该去见他。有消息说，你们要去见他。如果可以的话，就在明天，在石桌那儿。”

“那是哪儿？”露西问。

“我会给你们带路的，”海狸先生说，“它在这条河流的下游，离这儿好远呢，我会送你们到那儿。”

“但是，可怜的图姆纳斯先生怎么办？”露西说道。

“如果想帮他，最快的办法就是找到阿斯兰，”海狸先生说，“一旦我们与他会合，我们就能开始采取行动。当然，这并不是说我们不需要你们。因为另一首古老歌谣很早就告诉我们：

一旦亚当的至亲骨肉

登上凯尔帕拉维尔的宝座，

邪恶的时代就将一去不复返。

所以，既然阿斯兰回来了，你们也出现了，这就意味着所有的一切很快就会有个了断。我们很久以前——谁也说不清楚具体是什么时候——就听说阿斯兰回来了。但至今为止，还没有人类踏上过这片土地。”

“这正是我搞不清楚的地方，海狸先生，”彼得问，“我是说，难道女巫不是人类？”

“她倒是希望我们相信她是人类，”海狸先生说，“她就是以此自封为女王的，但她根本不是夏娃之女，她是你父亲亚当……”说到这里，海狸先生鞠了一个躬，“第一任妻子莉莉丝的女儿。莉莉丝是精灵族，这是女巫一半血统的来源，而她的另一半血统来自巨人族。所以她的身体里根本没有一滴人类的血液。”

“怪不得她如此冷血无情，海狸先生，”海狸太太说。

“说的没错，亲爱的，”他回应道，“人类或许还有好坏之分（我这么说并不是想冒犯在场的人），但像她这种长得像人类却不是人类的种族根本就没有好坏之分。”

“我倒是认识一些善良的小矮人。”海狸太太说。

“我也认识，”她的丈夫说，“但真正善良的极少，而且他们是最不像人类的。总之，请你们记住我说的话，当你们遇见任何要想成为人但还不是的，或过去曾经是人而现在已不是的，或应该是人实际上不是人的什么生灵，你们务必要打起十二分精神，随时保持警惕，准备好你们的斧子。白女巫总是害怕纳尼亚会出现人类，已经提防你们好几年了，而是如果她知道你们是四个人，你们的处境就更加危险了。”

“这是为什么？”彼得问。

“这就要说到另一个预言了，”海狸先生说，“在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡，也就是这条河流入海口附近的那个城堡，照理说它应该是整个国家的首都，在那里有四个宝座。很久很久以前，谁也记不清是什么年代了，在纳尼亚有这样一种传言，说一旦亚当的两个儿子和夏娃的两个女儿坐上这四个宝座，白女巫的统治和她的生命都将一并结束。这就是刚才我们来的路上为什么要这样小心翼翼。因为假如让她知道了，她就会害死你们，和我抖抖胡子一样容易。”

孩子们一直聚精会神地听着海狸先生讲话，很长时间都没有去留意身边的情况。当海狸先生说完最后一句话，房间里陷入了沉寂。就在这时，露西突然说道：

“我说，爱德蒙到哪儿去啦？”

先是一阵可怕的沉默，接着大家都问：“谁最后看见他的？他消失多久了？他在外面吗？”大家马上冲到门口去看。外面大雪纷飞，地上的积雪就像一张厚厚的白色毛毯，不仅遮住了墨绿色的池塘冰面，也盖住了两侧的河岸。除了白茫茫的一片，什么也看不到。大家冲进大雪里，到处找爱德蒙，两脚深陷在刚落下的柔软的雪中。“爱德蒙！爱德蒙！”他们拼命地喊着，嗓子都喊哑了，但他们的喊声似乎全被寂静的大雪淹没了，甚至连句回声也听不到。

最后，他们沮丧地回到屋里。“太可怕了！”苏珊说，“啊，如果我们没到这儿来该有多好啊。”

“我们究竟怎么办呢？海狸先生？”彼得问。

“怎么办？”海狸先生一边说着，一边已经穿上了雪地靴，“怎么办？我们必须立即出发，一刻也不能停留！”

“我们最好分成四个搜寻小组，”彼得说，“朝各个方向去找，找到他之后就马上回到这儿来，还有……”

“亚当之子，你说搜寻小组？”海狸先生问，“搜寻什么？”

“当然是去找爱德蒙啰！”

“不必去找他了。”海狸先生说。

“你这是什么意思？”彼得说，“他一定没走多远，我们会找到他的。你说不必去找他，这是什么意思？”

“不必找他是因为，”海狸先生说，“我已经知道他到哪儿去了！”大家听了，一时摸不着头脑，目瞪口呆地看着他。“你们难道还不明白吗？”海狸先生反问道，“他到白女巫那儿去了。他已经背叛了我们。”

“哦，不会的，我敢肯定，”苏珊说，“他不会干那种事的。”

“他不会？”海狸先生紧盯着三个孩子问。孩子们的话刚到嘴边又咽了下去，因为他们突然意识到海狸先生说的是事实，爱德蒙的确已经背叛了大家。

“可他认得路吗？”彼得说。

“他之前来过纳尼亚吗？”海狸先生问，“他是不是一个人来过这儿？”

“是的，”露西小声说，“我想他确实来过。”

“他跟你们说过他在这儿做了什么，或遇见过什么人吗？”

“没有，他从没说过。”彼得说。

“那么，你们听我说，”海狸先生说，“他一定见过白女巫，并且加入了她的阵营。他知道她住在哪儿。我起先不提这事，因为他是你们的兄弟，但我一见到你们这位兄弟，就看出他脸上写着‘叛徒’两字。他脸上有一种特别的表情，只有和女巫在一起、吃过她东西的人脸上才有这种表情。如果你们在纳尼亚待的时间长了，就可以根据眼神把他们辨别出来。”

“不管怎样，”彼得略有些哽咽，“我们还是得找到他。即使他是个小坏蛋，他到底是我们的兄弟。他毕竟还是个孩子。”

“你们想到女巫那里去找他？”海狸太太说，“你们难道还不明白吗？救他或者救你们自己的唯一办法就是远离她！”

“这话是什么意思？”露西说。

“这还用问吗？她一心想的就是要把你们四人一网打尽。（她一直在觊觎着凯尔帕拉维尔的四张宝座。）你们四个人一到她家里，她正好下手。你们还来不及开口，就会变成四座新的石头雕像。但是如果她只抓住他一个人，那她就会让他活着，因为她要把他作为诱饵，来引你们其余的人上钩。”

“啊，难道就没人能帮我们了吗？”露西大声哭了起来。

“只有阿斯兰了，”海狸先生说，“我们一定要去见他，这是我们眼下唯一的办法。”

“孩子们，依我看，”海狸太太说，“现在要紧的是知道爱德蒙是什么时候溜走的。他能告诉女巫多少取决于他听到了多少。例如说，在他溜走前，我们已经开始谈到阿斯兰了吗？如果还没有，我们可以照常行事，因为女巫还不知道阿斯兰已经回来了，也不知道我们将去见阿斯兰，她在那方面就不会有所警惕。”

“我记得我们谈论阿斯兰时他好像不在这儿……”彼得说，但露西马上打断了他的话。

“哦，他在的，”她面带苦色地说，“你忘了吗，就是他问女巫能不能将阿斯兰也变成石头的。”

“天哪，没错，”彼得说，“这样的问题也只有他才问得出来。”

“糟了！糟了！”海狸先生说，“还有一个问题，当我告诉你们跟阿斯兰见面的地点是在石桌时，他还在这儿吗？”

显然，没人回答得了这个问题。

“因为，如果他那时也在的话，”海狸先生继续说道，“那么，女巫知道了这一情况，她就会驾着雪橇直奔石桌，在半路上拦住我们。这样，我们很有可能会失去和阿斯兰的联系。”

“但这还不是她首先要干的事，”海狸太太说，“我觉得她不会那么做。如果爱德蒙告诉了她我们都在这儿，她今晚就会到这里来抓我们。如果爱德蒙是半小时以前溜走的，那么，再过二十分钟，她就会赶到我们这儿来。”

“你说得对，亲爱的，”海狸先生说，“我们现在必须马上离开这里，一刻也不能耽搁！”

第九章
女巫的城堡

说到这儿，你们一定很想知道爱德蒙出了什么事。他吃完了他的那份晚餐，但并没有觉得多好吃，因为他一直想着土耳其软糖——回味起那被施过魔法的食物，再好吃的普通食物也让人喜欢不起来了。而且他听到这番谈话也觉得不是滋味，他老想着别人都不理他、冷落他。可事实并非如此，这些都是他想像出来的。后来他一直听到海狸先生告诉他们有关阿斯兰的事，还听到在石桌与阿斯兰见面的整个安排。正是在那时，他开始悄悄挪到门帘下。因为一提到阿斯兰，他就有一种神秘而恐怖的感觉，而其他人听到这个名字就萌生出一种神秘而喜悦的感觉。

就在海狸先生提到那首古老的歌谣吟诵“亚当的至亲骨肉”时，爱德蒙已经悄悄拧动了门把手；在海狸先生告诉他们白女巫根本不是真的人类，而是一半精灵一半巨人以前，爱德蒙已经走到外面雪地里，还小心地把门关上了。

即使到了这会儿，你们也千万别认为爱德蒙坏到真的想让白女巫把他的兄弟姐妹变成石头。他只是想吃更多的土耳其软糖并当上王子（日后当个国王），还想出出彼得骂他的这口恶气罢了。至于女巫会怎么对待其他人，他虽然不希望她对他们特别好——当然不能给他们和他一样的待遇——但他竟然相信，或者是自以为相信，她不会对他们干出什么坏事。“因为，”他暗自说道，“凡是说她坏话的人都是她的敌人，也许这些坏话里面有一半都是假的。不管怎么说，她对我挺好的，比他们待我要好多了。我倒希望她是真正的女王。不管怎么说，她总比那个可怕的阿斯兰要好吧！”总之，这就是他为自己的所作所为找的借口；不过这个借口并不高明，因为在他内心深处，他也知道白女巫又凶狠又残酷。

爱德蒙出来后看到外面正在下雪。他最先想起来的就是自己把大衣忘在海狸夫妇家里了，而眼下当然没有机会回去拿大衣。其次，随后他意识到天快要黑了，因为他们坐下来吃午饭时已经快三点了，而且冬天夜长昼短。他原先没估计到这一点，但他得充分利用这一点。所以他竖起衣领，拖着脚步，穿过大坝顶部（幸亏下了雪，上面才没那么滑），沿着河岸向远处山谷走去。

等他到了远处的河边，情况就不大妙了。天一点点变黑，再加上雪围着他打转，他连三英尺以外的东西都看不清。再说，森林里本来就没有道路可言，所以一路上他老是滑到深深的雪堆里，滚到结了冰的水潭里，被倒下的树干绊倒，从陡峭的河岸上滑下去，小腿在岩石上擦破了皮，弄得浑身是伤，又湿又冷。寂静和孤独是可怕的。其实，要不是他时不时对自己说“等我当上纳尼亚的国王，第一件事就是修几条像样的路”，我还真以为他可能会放弃整个计划，回去认个错然后跟其他人和好呢。当然，当上国王的想法及一系列要做的事情让他振奋不少。就在这时，变天了。先是雪停了，接着突然刮起一阵风，冷得要命；最后，云散了，月亮出来了。一轮满月照在白雪上，几乎跟白天一样亮——只是阴影把他搞糊涂了。

要不是在他到达另一条河的时候月亮出来了，他根本就找不到路——你们记得，在他们刚到海狸夫妇家时，他已经看到了一条小一点的河在下游处汇入大河。如今他走到这条小河边，转身沿着这河往上游走。不过小河源头的小山谷比他刚离开的那个更陡峭，岩石更多，而且到处都是枝叶丛生的灌木，因此他在黑暗中根本没法过去。即便如此，他也弄得浑身透湿，因为他得弯着腰在树枝下走，大块的雪就都滑到他背上了。每当这时，他对彼得的恨意就多添一分——就好像这一切都是彼得的错。

不过，他终于走到了山谷口，踏上了一片略微平整而开阔的土地。就在离他很近的地方，小河的另一边，两座小山之间矗立着一座城堡。他想，那一定是白女巫的家。这时，月亮似乎比任何时候都更加明亮。借着月光，他看到那城堡是由无数小塔楼拼凑而成的。小小的塔楼上面是又长又尖的顶，看上去就像是一根根又尖又细的针。远远望去，那些塔楼就像是劣等生受罚戴的或巫师的尖角帽。在月光照耀下，塔楼长长的影子在雪地上显得异常古怪。爱德蒙开始对这幢城堡感到害怕了。

但是，现在害怕也晚了，他已经回不去了。

他穿过结冰的河面，向这幢城堡走去。四周是死一般的寂静，一点声音都没有。连他自己两只脚踩在刚下的深深的雪里也没有声音。他走啊走啊，拐了一个又一个弯，走过一个又一个塔楼，绕了一大圈，到了较远的一侧才找到门。那是一扇巨大的拱门，不过铁门是敞开的。

爱德蒙蹑手蹑脚地走近拱门，探着脑袋向里面张望，但他看到的情景把他吓了一大跳。在月光的照耀下，有一只大狮子就蹲在大门里面，好像随时准备扑向他。爱德蒙站在拱门的阴影里，两腿直哆嗦。既不敢往前走，也不敢向后退。他就在原地站了很久，牙齿即使不是怕得打战也早已冷得打战了。我不知道他在那儿到底站了多久，不过爱德蒙觉得已经过了好几个小时。

后来他想知道那狮子为什么蹲着一动也不动——因为自从他看见它以来，它就没动过。这会儿爱德蒙放大胆走近点，但仍然尽量躲在拱门的阴影里。他现在从狮子站的架势看出，它根本不可能看见他。（“但假如它转过头来呢？”爱德蒙想。）事实上它正盯着另外什么东西——确切地说是一个小矮人，他背对狮子站在大约四英尺开外的地方。

“啊哈！”爱德蒙想，“等它扑向那小矮人，那时就是我逃命的机会了。”但狮子仍然一动也不动，小矮人也一样。爱德蒙这时终于想起其他人说过的白女巫把人变成石头的事。也许这只是一只石狮子吧。就在他想到这点时，他突然注意到狮子的背上和头顶上都积满了雪。没错，它只是座石像！活的动物决不会让自己身上积满雪的。于是，爱德蒙慢慢大着胆子向狮子走去，一颗心好像要跳出来似的。他还是不大敢摸它，但他过了很久终于伸出手来很快地摸了一下。的确是冰冷的石头。他没想到自己竟然被一座石狮子雕像给吓坏了！

爱德蒙如释重负。尽管天还是那么冷，他却突然觉得从头到脚都暖和了。同时，他脑子里突然蹦出一个让他欢呼雀跃的想法：“也许这就是大家在说的伟大的狮王阿斯兰吧。白女巫已经抓住他把他变成石头了。这么一来他们在他身上打的如意算盘也就落空了！呸！谁怕阿斯兰呀！”

他就这么站在那儿幸灾乐祸地看着石狮子，不一会儿，他就干了一件幼稚的傻事。他从口袋里掏出一截铅笔头，在狮子的上嘴唇处涂了两撇胡子，还给它加上了一副眼镜。做完这一切后，他说：“哈哈！又老又蠢的阿斯兰！成了石头你还想怎么样啊？你自以为很了不起吧？”尽管他在狮子脸上乱涂，大石兽看上去仍然很可怕，它仰望着月亮，那威严的面孔还带着一点悲戚和高贵。爱德蒙发现戏弄一座石像并没有多少乐趣，于是就转过身朝院子走去。

他刚走到院子里，就看见周围有好多石像——到处都是，倒有点像棋盘残局上的棋子。有石头的森林之神，石头的狼啊、熊啊、狐狸啊、山猫啊。还有些可爱的石头看上去像女人，其实是树精。有一座巨大的半人马石像，还有一匹长翅膀的马，还有一条长长的软体动物，爱德蒙认为那是龙。这些石像看上去都那么古怪，在明亮冰冷的月光下栩栩如生，又完全静止不动，有谁穿过院子准会被吓死。在院子正中央矗立着一座巨大的石人像，足有一棵树那么高，面相凶猛，长着蓬松的大胡子，右手拿着根大棒子。虽然爱德蒙知道这只是一个石头巨人，但他仍然不愿意走过巨人的身边。

这会儿他瞧见院子那头有个入口透出一点暗淡的光。走到那儿，他发现那儿有几级石阶通向一扇开着的门。爱德蒙走上石阶，只见门槛上躺着一匹大狼。

“没关系，没关系，”他不停地自言自语道，“那只是一匹石头狼而已。它伤不到我的。”他刚抬起脚要跨过它，那匹狼立刻站起来，背上的鬃毛一下子全竖了起来，张开血盆大嘴，吼着说：

“是谁？谁在那儿？老老实实地站在那儿，报上名来！”

“劳驾您帮我通报一声，先生，”爱德蒙吓得结结巴巴地说，“我名叫爱德蒙，我就是女王陛下前几天在森林里遇见过的亚当之子。我到这儿来报信，我们兄弟姐妹现在都在纳尼亚——很近，就在海狸夫妇家。她——她想见见他们。”

“我会禀报女王陛下的，”那匹狼说，“但是在此期间，你最好待在原地别动，不然，当心你的小命！”说着它就进去了。

爱德蒙站在那儿等着，他的手指冻得好疼，心怦怦直跳。不一会儿那匹灰狼回来了——他就是白女巫手下的秘密警察局局长毛戈林姆。他依旧趴回门槛处，说道，“进来吧！进来吧！幸运的女王宠儿——否则你可就没那么好运了。”

于是爱德蒙走了进去，一路小心翼翼，生怕踩到狼爪子。

他发现自己来到一间满是柱子、阴暗且狭长的大厅，跟院子里一样满是石像。离门最近的是一只半人羊石像，神情忧伤，爱德蒙不禁在想这会不会是露西的那位朋友。大厅里只点了一盏灯，白女巫就紧挨在这盏灯后面坐着。

“我来了，女王陛下。”爱德蒙一见到她就立刻跑上前去。

“你竟敢一个人来？”白女巫用可怕的声音质问道，“我不是吩咐你把其他几个一起带来吗？”

“请原谅，女王陛下，”爱德蒙说，“我已经尽力了。我把他们带到附近了。他们就在大河水坝顶上的那座小房子里——跟海狸先生和海狸太太在一起。”

白女巫的脸上慢慢露出一丝冷酷的微笑。

“你就带来了这么点消息吗？”她问。

“不，女王陛下。”爱德蒙说。接着他一五一十把他离开海狸夫妇家以前听到的事都告诉了白女巫。

“什么！阿斯兰！”女王闻言大叫，“阿斯兰！你说的是真的吗？要是我发现你编假话骗我——”

“请相信我，我只是把听到的一切都重复给您而已。”爱德蒙结结巴巴地说道。

不过女王已经不再搭理他了。只见她拍了拍手，爱德蒙上回看见的跟着女王的那个小矮人立刻出现了。

“立刻备好雪橇，”白女巫命令道，“用不带铃铛的挽具。”

第十章
魔法开始解除

现在我们得说回海狸夫妇和另外三个孩子身上来了。海狸先生刚说完“一刻也不能耽搁”，大伙儿都开始匆匆忙忙穿上大衣，只有海狸太太开始拿起一些口袋放在桌上，说：“好了，海狸先生，把那块火腿拿下来。这是一包茶叶，还有一点糖和一些火柴。谁到角落的瓦罐里拿两三个面包出来啊？”

“你在干什么呀，海狸太太？”苏珊叫道。

“给我们每个人都收拾点东西啊，小宝贝，”海狸太太十分冷静，“你们可不想饿着肚子赶路吧？”

“可我们没时间了！”苏珊一边说着，一边开始扣外套领子上的扣子，“她随时都可能赶到这儿的。”

“我就是这么说的。”海狸先生插嘴道。

“别着急，”海狸太太说，“好好想想，海狸先生。她至少还要一刻钟才能赶到这儿。”

“如果我们要赶在她前头到达石桌那儿，”彼得说，“我们不是要尽可能地争取时间吗？”

“你别忘了，海狸太太，”苏珊说，“她到这儿一看，发现我们不在了，就会快马加鞭地追赶上来的。”

“是这样没错，”海狸太太说，“不过我们无论如何也赶不到她前面，因为她是乘着雪橇，我们是走着去的。”

“那——这么说的话，我们一点希望都没了？”苏珊说。

“放轻松一点，孩子们，”海狸太太说，“请从那个抽屉里拿出六条干净的手帕吧。我们当然还有一线希望。我们赶不到她前面，不过我们可以藏起来，走一条她意想不到的小路，或许能成功。”

“对的，海狸太太，”海狸先生说，“但我们真的应该出发了。”

“你也别大惊小怪的，海狸先生，”海狸太太说，“瞧，这样就好些了。这儿有五个包袱，最小的那个就给我们当中最小的，也就是给你的，小宝贝儿。”她对露西说。

“哦，我们还是赶快吧。”露西说。

“好吧，我差不多都准备好了。”海狸太大终于答道，一边让海狸先生帮她穿上雪地靴，“我想，缝纫机太重了，我们带不了吧？”

“是啊，太重了，”海狸先生说，“重得不得了。我看你总不见得在赶路时还能用上缝纫机吧？”

“一想到那个巫婆会乱动我的缝纫机，我就受不了，”海狸太太说，“她八成会把缝纫机弄坏的，要不然就会把它偷走。”

“哦，求求你了！快点吧！”三个孩子哀求道。就这样他们才终于出了门，海狸先生把门锁上了。（“这应该能拖延她一点时间。”他这样说。）于是他们就出发了，大家都把自己的那份行李扛在肩上。

等到他们上路时雪已经停了，月亮也出来了。他们排成一排快步向前走着——海狸先生走在最前面，随后是露西，再是彼得、苏珊，海狸太太走在最后。海狸先生带他们穿过大坝，来到河的右岸，然后走到河岸旁树丛里一条崎岖不平的小路上。月光照耀下，山谷两边的峭坡高耸入云。“我们尽可能在下面走，”海狸先生说，“她驾着雪橇只能从上面走，根本下不来。”

如果此刻是安逸地坐在扶手椅里往窗外眺望的话，看到的也许还算是一幅美景；尽管事情到了这个地步，露西在赶路之初也不忘欣赏这里的景色。不过随着他们走啊走的，她感到背上的包袱似乎越来越重了，她开始怀疑自己怎么坚持得下去。河面以及水帘子都结了冰，她不再去看月光下那条亮得耀眼的冰河，也不去看树顶上大团大团的积雪，还有那光芒四射的硕大月亮和数不清的星星，两只眼睛直盯着前面海狸先生的两条小短腿在雪地里啪哒啪哒地走，仿佛永远也停不下来似的。走着走着，月亮不见了，雪又开始下了。最后露西累得几乎是边走边睡了。突然，她发现海狸先生向右一转带着他们离开了河岸，爬上陡峭的山坡，走进密集的灌木丛中。等到她完全清醒过来，她发现海狸先生正钻进山坡上的一个小洞里。那个洞几乎完全被灌木丛遮住，一直走到洞口才能看得见。等露西明白过来是怎么回事，她就只看得见海狸先生那扁扁的短尾巴了。

露西赶紧弯下腰跟着海狸先生一同爬了进去。紧接着她听到身后传来了呼哧呼哧的喘气声和窸窸窣窣的摩擦声。不一会儿，他们五个就都钻进洞里了。

“这到底是哪儿呀？”黑暗中传来了彼得的声音，听上去苍白无力，疲惫不堪。

“这是海狸原先在危急时刻的一个藏身处，”海狸先生说，“这是我们海狸家族的一大秘密。地方虽不怎么样，不过我们得先睡上几小时。”

“要不是你们在准备走的时候那么手忙脚乱，我还可以带几个枕头来的。”海狸太太说。

这儿跟图姆纳斯先生的山洞比可差太远了，露西想。这里就是一个地洞，不过幸好洞里还算干燥，而且是泥土地。地洞非常小，因此当他们全都躺下时，就只看得见一大堆皮毛和衣服。长途跋涉后躺在干燥的地上也挺暖和的，只不过大家都觉得这洞里的地要是再稍微平整一点就更好了。随后海狸太太在黑暗中传过来一个小小的长颈瓶子，每个人都喝了一口。喝了这东西，大家都咳嗽起来，嗓子眼火辣辣的，不过喝下去以后倒让人感到暖和舒心。大家很快就睡着了。

一觉醒来，露西觉得自己似乎只睡了几分钟（实际上她已经睡了好几个小时了），而且一醒来她觉得身子有点冷，身体的每一个部位都僵硬得可怕。她心想要是能洗个热水澡该有多好。随后她就觉得有一束长胡子在她脸颊上撩来撩去，弄得她怪痒痒的，又看到洞口有冰凉的阳光照进来。这一来她马上就完全清醒了，这时大家也都醒了。事实上他们全都坐了起来，眼睛嘴巴都张得大大的，仔细听着他们昨晚走路时一直想着的声音（有时他们还想像自己听到了呢）。那是一串铃铛的声音。

一听见声音，海狸先生顿时就蹿出了地洞。也许你会像露西当时想的那样，觉得这么做是犯了傻，但海狸先生这么做其实是很明智的。他知道自己能悄悄地爬到地面上，躲在茂密的灌木丛里不被发现；更重要的是他想看看白女巫的雪橇究竟往哪条路走。其他人都坐在地洞里满肚子疑问地等着。等了大概五分钟，他们就听见了什么动静，把他们吓得够呛。他们听见了说话声。露西想着：“完蛋了！海狸先生被发现了！他被逮住了！”

出乎意料的是，过了一会儿，他们竟听见海狸先生在洞口叫他们了。

“没事儿，”他大声叫道，“出来吧，海狸太太。出来吧，亚当和夏娃的儿女们。一切安全！来的不是她！不是那巫婆！”

于是海狸太太和孩子们匆匆忙忙从地洞里钻出来。大家在阳光下直眨眼睛，身上全是土，看上去脏兮兮的，一个个都没梳洗过，一副睡眼惺忪的样子。

“来吧！”海狸先生叫道，他高兴得几乎要跳舞了，“来看，这对巫婆可是个沉重的打击！看来她的魔法正在逐渐瓦解啊！”

大家一齐爬上了陡峭的山坡，彼得喘着粗气问道，“这到底是什么意思，海狸先生？”

“我不是告诉过你们吗？”海狸先生回答说，“那巫婆把这儿变得一年到头都是冬天，而且从来没有圣诞节。我不是说过吗？那你们现在来看看哪！”

他们站在山坡顶峰，放眼望去。

只见几只驯鹿驾着一辆雪橇往这边驶来，挽具上挂着的铃铛直作响。不过这些驯鹿比女巫的驯鹿大多了，它们也不是白色的，而是棕色的鹿。雪橇上坐着一个人，大家一见就认识了。

人人都认识他，他就是圣诞老人。虽然只有在纳尼亚才会看到他本人，但在我们的世界里——就是在衣柜门另一边的世界里——我们也见过圣诞老人的照片，听人谈起过他们。不过一旦你在纳尼亚真正看到他们，这感觉还是不大一样。在我们的世界里，有些圣诞老人的画像看起来只是让人觉得好玩有趣而已。不过现在孩子们站在山顶瞧着他，就觉得并不完全是这样。他是那么魁梧，那么欣喜，那么真实。他们全都静了下来，感到非常高兴，但也非常严肃。

“我终于回来了，”他说，“她把我赶走这多年了，但我终于进来了。阿斯兰正在行动，女巫的魔法已经开始衰弱了。”

露西只觉得浑身上下快活得颤抖起来，这种感觉只有在一个人心情庄严而宁静时才会有。

“好了，”圣诞老人说，“这是你们的礼物。海狸太太，这是一台更好的新缝纫机。我路过你们家时会把缝纫机送去的。”

“请别见怪，先生，”海狸太太说着，行了个屈膝礼，“我家的房子上锁了。”

“对我而言，有没有上锁或插门闩都没什么区别，”圣诞老人说，“至于你嘛，海狸先生，等你回到家，就会看到你的大水坝完工了，该修的地方都修好了，所有的裂缝都不漏了，还配上了一道新的水闸门。”

海狸先生高兴得几乎合不拢嘴，什么话也说不出来。

“亚当之子彼得。”圣诞老人接着说。

“是的，先生。”彼得说。

“这些是你的礼物，”圣诞老人说，“这些不是玩具，而是武器。也许你很快就会用上。好好保管。”说着他递给彼得一把宝剑和一块盾牌。盾牌是银色的，中央处刻着一只跳跃而起的红色雄狮，那颜色就像刚摘下的熟草莓那么红。宝剑的剑柄是金铸的，还配有剑鞘和佩剑用的腰带，以及一切用剑必备的东西，而且剑的尺寸和重量对彼得也正合适。彼得接过这些礼物时一句话没说，态度非常严肃，因为他觉得这是一份十分庄严的礼物。

“夏娃之女苏珊，”圣诞老人说，“这些是给你的。”他递给她一张弓、一只装满箭的箭袋和一只小小的象牙号角。“这弓箭百发百中。只有在万不得已的时候，你才能使用这弓箭，”他说，“因为我并不想让你去打仗。这只号角一旦被你吹响，不管你在哪儿，我想你都会得到帮助。”

最后他才说，“夏娃之女露西。”露西走上前去。他递给她一只小瓶子，看上去好像是玻璃的（不过后来有人说那瓶子是钻石做的）和一把小匕首。“这个瓶子里，”他说，“装的是一种灵药，是用长在太阳之山上的一种火焰花的汁液提炼而成的。如果你或你哪个朋友受了伤，在伤口处滴上几滴就能痊愈。这把匕首是给你在紧急时候自卫用的。我也不希望你上场打仗。”

“为什么，先生，”露西说，“我想——我不知道——不过我想，我会足够勇敢的。”

“我不是那个意思，”他说，“一旦女人参战，这场战斗就会变得可怕丑陋。现在呢，”——说到这儿他一改先前严肃的口吻和神情——“还有一些东西是眼下给你们大家用的！”他拿出一只大托盘，上面有五套杯碟，一钵方糖，一罐牛奶，一个嘶嘶直响的滚烫的大茶壶（我猜是从他背上那只大口袋里拿出来的，不过没人看见他怎么拿的）。接着他大声喊着：“圣诞快乐！真正的国王万岁！”说着他一扬鞭子，驾着驯鹿拉的雪橇在所有人反应过来前就走得没影了。

彼得刚从剑鞘里抽出剑给海狸先生看，海狸太太就说道：

“好了，好了，别站在那儿说话了，茶都要凉了。做些男子汉该做的事情吧。来帮帮忙把托盘搬下去，我们要吃早餐了。幸好我还带了切面包的刀。”

他们走下山坡回到地洞。海狸先生切了点面包和火腿，做成了三明治；海狸太太给大家倒茶；大家都吃得津津有味。不过他们吃饱喝足后没多久，海狸先生就开口道，“我们该出发了。”

第十一章
阿斯兰越来越近了

与此同时，爱德蒙则度过了他有生以来最失落的几个小时。当小矮人去准备雪橇时，他本以为白女巫会好好款待他，就像他们上次见面时那样；但她什么也没说。最后还是爱德蒙鼓起勇气说，“求求您，女王陛下。能给我一些土耳其软糖吗？您——您说过——”女巫答道，“闭嘴，你这个蠢货！”接着她好像又改变主意了，仿佛在自言自语，“我也不能让这个小崽子昏倒在路上。”于是她又拍了拍手，另一个小矮人过来了。

“给这个人类拿点吃的喝的来。”她吩咐道。

小矮人走开了，不一会儿就拿来了一只铁碗，里面盛了点水，还有一只铁盘子，上面放了一大块干面包。他把东西放在爱德蒙身边的地板上，还咧嘴一笑，那副神情实在令人厌恶，他说：

“小王子的土耳其软糖来了。哈哈哈！”

“把它拿开，”爱德蒙没好气地说，“我才不要吃干面包。”不料女巫顿时朝他发了怒，脸上那副骇人的神情把爱德蒙吓得不轻。他只能连忙道歉，然后开始一点点啃起那块面包来。可那面包太干了，简直难以下咽。

“在你有机会吃到别的东西之前，有这个吃就算不错了。”白女巫说道。

当爱德蒙还在那儿费劲啃面包的时候，第一个小矮人回来报告说雪橇已经备好了。白女巫闻言起身就走，命令爱德蒙跟她一起。他们走到院子里时，雪又下起来了，但她对此并不在意，还让爱德蒙到雪橇上坐在她身边。临出发前，她又叫来了毛戈林姆，那条大灰狼像条大狗似的跳到雪橇旁边。

“带上几匹跑得最快的狼，马上赶到海狸家里去。”女巫说，“不管看到谁，都格杀勿论。如果他们已经跑了，那就全速赶到石桌去，但千万注意别给人看见。你们躲在那儿等着我。我得向西赶好多路才能找得到一个能驾雪橇过河的地方。你可以趁那些人没到达石桌前先赶上他们。一旦抓到他们，你知道该怎么做！”

“遵命，女王陛下。”毛戈林姆吼了一声就飞奔起来，转眼就消失在黑暗的雪地里，就像骏马那么快。一转眼的工夫它就带着另一匹狼一起奔向大坝。两匹狼在海狸夫妇的房子里四处闻。不过房子当然是空的。要是那天晚上天气一直很好，倒是害了海狸夫妇和孩子们，因为狼会跟踪他们的足迹——十之八九在他们进地洞以前就能赶上他们。但这会儿又开始下雪了，气味也淡了，连脚印也都被积雪覆盖了。

同一时间，小矮人一挥鞭子，驯鹿就载着坐在雪橇上的白女巫和爱德蒙跃出了拱门，一路向黑暗的冰天雪地里驶去。对没穿外套的爱德蒙来说，这可真是一次可怕的旅程。不到一刻钟，爱德蒙的身上和周围就积满了雪——不一会儿他也不再掸雪花了，因为哪怕他掸得再快，但刚掸掉就又积起一堆来，而且他真的很累了。没过多久他就浑身湿透了。唉，可怜的爱德蒙。现在看起来，女巫并不打算封他当国王。回想之前，他为了让自己相信她是个好心善良的女王，相信她的阵营才是正义的一方而对自己说过的种种自欺欺人的话，如今听来都愚蠢极了。他愿意放弃现在的一切回去找大家——就算是彼得也好！如今唯一能安慰他自己的办法就是尽量相信这一切都是梦，并且他随时会醒过来。他们行驶了一个又一个小时，看起来的确像极了一场梦。

这一路上花的时间太长了，恐怕我再写上多少页也写不完。所以我不妨跳过这一段，直接写后面发生的故事。后来雪停了，天亮了，雪橇在阳光下飞驰着。他们还在继续赶路，除了雪地上不断的嗖嗖声，驯鹿挽具的嘎吱声，什么声音也没有。最后女巫终于说：“我们看看这儿有什么？停下！”他们这才停下了。

爱德蒙多么希望她开口说说吃早饭的事！可是她停下来却完全是为了另一个理由。距离雪橇不远的一棵树下坐着快快乐乐的一伙：松鼠夫妇和小松鼠们、两个森林之神、一个小矮人和一只上了年纪的雄狐狸全都围着桌子坐在矮凳上。爱德蒙看不清他们在吃什么，不过味道闻起来真香，那里似乎还用冬青做了些装饰，他简直不敢相信自己看见了梅干布丁之类的东西。当雪橇停下时，那只在场年纪最大的狐狸正站起身来，右爪举起一只杯子，似乎要说些什么。但等这一伙看到停下的雪橇上坐着的是谁时，大家脸上的欢乐就全部消失了。松鼠爸爸送到嘴边的叉子停在了半空中，其中一个森林之神僵在那里，嘴里还含着叉子，小松鼠们都吓得直发抖。

“你们这是在干什么？”白女巫问道。但没人回答。

“说话啊！你们这群该死的东西！”她接着说，“难道你们想要我的小矮人用鞭子叫你们开口吗？你们竟敢在这里大吃大喝，铺张浪费，纵情欢乐！这些东西你们究竟从哪儿弄来的？”

“请息怒，女王陛下，”狐狸开口说道，“这些都是别人给我们的。请恕我冒昧，让我们为女王陛下的健康干杯——”

“是谁给你们的？”女巫又问道。

“圣——圣——圣诞老人。”狐狸结结巴巴地说。

“什么！”女巫吼怒道，从雪橇上一跃而起，大步走向那些受惊的动物，“他没到这儿来过，他绝不可能到这儿来！你们竟敢——不，告诉我，你们刚才是在说谎。这样的话，我就会宽恕你们。”

这时一只小松鼠竟然完全昏了头。

“他来过了！他来过了！他来过了！”它一面叫着，一面用小勺敲桌子。爱德蒙看见女巫咬紧了嘴唇，雪白的脸颊上沁出一滴血。接着她举起了魔杖。“哦，不，不，请不要这样。”爱德蒙叫道，但就在他大声喊叫时，她已经挥动了魔杖，刚才一群动物欢宴的地方，立刻出现了一座座动物的石像（其中一座石像举着石头叉子永远停在了半空中）围坐在一张石桌前，桌上是石盘子和石头梅干布丁。

“至于你，”女巫在踏上雪橇时用力扇了爱德蒙一记耳光，“这就是你替奸细和叛徒求情的教训。上路！”在这个故事中，爱德蒙还是第一次为别人感到了难过。想到那些小小的石像将一直坐在那儿度过寂静的白天、漆黑的夜晚，日复一日，年复一年，直到身上长满苔藓，最后甚至连容貌也分辨不清。这一切实在是太残忍了。

这会儿雪橇又稳稳地飞驰向前。不久爱德蒙就注意到雪橇冲过去时溅起的雪比昨晚潮湿多了。同时他也注意到自己已经不大觉得冷了。天变得雾蒙蒙的。事实上，雾气越来越浓，天也越来越暖和。雪橇也远远没有原来行驶得那么快了。一开始他以为是因为拉雪橇的驯鹿累了，但不久他就看出这不是真正的原因。雪橇猛地一动，朝边上滑去，还不断颠簸，就像撞上了石头。尽管小矮人用力鞭打可怜的驯鹿，雪橇还是越来越慢。他们周围似乎还有种怪异的声音，但雪橇行驶和颠簸的声音加上小矮人呵斥驯鹿的声音响得爱德蒙没法听清楚那是什么。直到后来，雪橇突然卡住了，动弹不得。一时四下寂静，爱德蒙总算能好好听一听那声音了。原来那是一种奇特又可爱的沙沙声、潺潺声——但毕竟也不算太奇特，因为他知道自己以前听见过这种声音——要是他想得起在哪儿听见的就好了！接着他突然想起来那是流水声。虽然看不见，但就在他们周围，那是小溪潺潺欢唱，水流淙淙，噗噗冒泡，水花四溅，甚至（远处）还有激流在咆哮。等他明白严冬已经过去了，他心头也猛地一跳（虽然他压根不知道为什么）。离他们近些的树木的枝干上都在滴滴答答地滴水。随后，他看见一大块积雪从树上滑落下来，这是他进入纳尼亚以来第一次看见一棵深绿色的冷杉树。但他没时间多听多看，因为女巫发话了。

“别坐在那儿傻看了，蠢货！快下来帮忙。”

爱德蒙当然只好服从。他踩到雪地里——不过目前这都是雪水了——开始帮小矮人把陷进雪泥潭里的雪橇拉出来。他们终于把雪橇拉了出来，小矮人对驯鹿十分凶狠，雪橇总算又动了，他们又走了一小段路。这会儿雪真的完全融化了，到处都出现了一小块一小块的绿草地。除非你也像爱德蒙那样长时间看着一片冰雪世界，否则很难想像看了无穷无尽的白雪之后，看到那一片片绿地时的心情有多么欣慰。此时雪橇又停下了。

“不行，女王陛下，”小矮人说，“我们在融雪中没法用雪橇。”

“那我们就得走着去。”女巫说。

“走着去我们永远也赶不上他们，”小矮人咕哝道，“他们先走一步。”

“你是我的顾问还是我的奴隶！”女巫说，“照我说的办。把这个小崽子的手绑在身后，拉住绳子一头。带上你的鞭子，把驯鹿的挽具割断，它们自己会找路回家。”

小矮人服从了命令。不一会儿爱德蒙的双手就被绑到了身后，被迫尽快赶路。他不断滑倒在雪水中、泥浆里和湿草地上，每次他一滑倒，小矮人就恶狠狠地骂他，有时还给他一鞭子。女巫走在小矮人后面，嘴里不停地说：“快点！快点！”

绿草地的面积在渐渐变大，雪地的范围在缩小。时不时有更多的树木脱下雪袍。不久，无论你朝哪儿看，都看不见白色了，只见深绿色的冷杉树，光秃秃的橡树伸出黑色多刺的树枝，以及山毛榉和榆树。接着薄雾由白色转为金色，一会儿就完全消失了。美妙的阳光照向森林的地面，透过交织在一起的树梢可以看到那一片蓝天。

没多久，更奇妙的事情发生了。当他们突然绕过一个拐角来到一片银白色的白桦树林中的空地时，爱德蒙看见这里开满了黄色的小花——白屈菜。此时，流水的声音更响了。一会儿他们果真穿过了一条小河，河边还长出了雪花莲。

“少管闲事！”小矮人说道。他看见爱德蒙扭头看花，恶毒地用力拉了拉绳子。

“快点！再快点！”女巫喊道。

这会儿，森林里的雾气都散开了，天空变得越来越蓝，不时还有几片白云匆匆掠过。广阔的林间空地上盛开着朵朵樱草花。一阵微风吹过，摇曳的树枝上露珠纷纷洒落，拂来了阵阵清凉的飘香。树木也重新焕发出了生机：落叶松和白桦树披上了绿衣裳；金莲花也闪着金灿灿的光；山毛榉树长出了娇嫩、透明的新叶，当行人从树下走过时，连光线也变成绿色的了。一只蜜蜂在他们走的那条小径上不停地嗡嗡叫着。

“这不是雪融化了，”小矮人停下脚步说道，“是春天来了。我们该怎么办，女王陛下？你施了魔法的冬天已经被破坏了。这肯定是阿斯兰干的。”

“如果你们谁再提起那个名字，”女巫说，“我就立刻杀了他！”

第十二章
彼得首战告捷

小矮人和女巫正说着话，好几英里之外的海狸先生、海狸太太和孩子们正在不停赶路，他们觉得自己就好像做了个美梦。他们早就把外套脱了。他们默默走着，深深陶醉其中。他们从暖和的阳光下走进阴凉碧绿的灌木丛中，又走到宽阔、长满苔藓的林间空地，空地上高高的榆树为他们搭起枝叶茂密的绿荫，接着他们又走进密密麻麻一大片开着花的红醋栗丛中，再走到山楂丛中，醉人的香味扑鼻而来。

眼看着冬天逝去，整个森林在几小时内就从一月到了五月，他们也和爱德蒙一样惊奇不已。虽然他们不像女巫那样肯定这一切是因为阿斯兰回到纳尼亚的缘故，但他们都知道是女巫施法让纳尼亚一直处在冬天。因而他们都明白这个不可思议的春天的到来意味着那巫婆的阴谋诡计失败了，而且失败地很彻底。积雪融化了，女巫也用不了雪橇了。此后他们就不再匆匆忙忙赶路，也容许自己多休息几回，休息得久一些。他们眼下当然很疲劳，但还没到筋疲力尽的程度——只是没精打采，恍恍惚惚的，而且心里很平静，就像在户外走了漫长的一天，终于要结束的感觉。苏珊的一只脚后跟还磨出了一个小水泡。

他们早就离开了那条大河的河道，因为稍向右转（就是说稍稍向南）才能到达石桌。即便这条不是他们该走的路，但随着雪开始融化他们也不能老沿着河谷走。那么多雪融化了，大河很快就水势大涨——颜色黄浊、来势汹汹又咆哮轰鸣着——他们原本走的小路早就被洪水淹没了。

这会儿太阳要下山了，霞光越来越红，影子被拉得越来越长，花儿也开始慢慢收拢了。

海狸先生说着“已经不远了”，又领着他们上山，接着穿过一段深厚松软的青苔（他们疲惫的双脚踩在上面倒觉得舒服得不行）。那地方宽阔得很，只稀稀拉拉长着一些高大的树木。赶了一天的路，又要开始爬山了，大家都累得气喘吁吁。露西心里正琢磨着，不好好休息一阵子的话也不知道自己能不能爬上山顶，但突然间他们就登顶了。他们眼前出现一片风景。

他们站在一片郁郁葱葱的空地上，俯瞰着整个森林——除了正前方，目光所及皆是绵延不绝的森林。在东边远处，似乎有什么闪闪发亮的东西在流动着。“天哪！”彼得悄声对苏珊说，“那是大海！”山顶这块空地的正中央就是石桌。那是一块硕大的灰色石板，由四块竖直的石头支撑着，看起来就像一张大石桌。石桌看上去年代悠久，上面刻满了奇怪的线条和符号，可能是某种无名语言的字母吧。他们看着这些符号，一种好奇的感觉油然而生。接下来，他们看到的是空地一边搭起的一个帐篷，奇妙极了。尤其是这会儿落日的余晖正照在帐篷上，篷面是黄色的丝绸，上面系着深红色的绳索，帐篷桩是象牙做的；帐篷的支柱上高高挂着一面绣着一只腾跃的红色狮子的旗帜，迎着风飘扬。一阵阵从远处海面吹来的微风轻拂着他们的脸。正当大家都看着帐篷时，只听见右边传来一阵音乐。他们向那边转过身去，这才看见了他们特地赶来看的一幕。

只见阿斯兰就站在不远处，被一群生物围在中间。它们围着阿斯兰形成一个半月形。那其中有怀抱弦乐器的树精和水精（我们称它们为森林女神和水泽仙女）在演奏着音乐。还有四个魁梧的半人马，身体像英国农场里饲养的骏马，头部看上去像是面部坚毅而俊美的巨人。除此之外，还有一匹独角兽，一个半人牛，一只鹈鹕，一只老鹰和一条大狗。阿斯兰身边站着两只豹子，一只举着阿斯兰的王冠，另一只举着阿斯兰的旗帜。

说到阿斯兰，海狸夫妇和孩子们都不知道看见他时该做什么、说什么。没到过纳尼亚的人往往认为，绝不会有让人见了心生恐惧的好人。以前有这种想法的孩子们眼下也不这么想了。因为当他们想看看阿斯兰的脸时，只看了一眼金色的鬃毛和那双威武、高贵、庄严、慑人的眼睛，大家就不由自主地颤抖起来，根本不敢直视阿斯兰。

“去吧。”海狸先生小声说道。

“不，”彼得悄声说，“你先走。”

“不，亚当之子得走在动物前面。”海狸先生又悄悄回了他一句。

“苏珊，”彼得小声说，“你先走？女士优先嘛。”

“哦，不，你年龄最大。”苏珊悄声说。显然，这样时间拖得越长，大家就越感到尴尬。后来彼得终于明白这事全得靠他，就抽出剑来，高高举起，匆匆对大伙儿说：“来吧，振作起来。”他向阿斯兰走去，说道：

“阿斯兰，我们来了。”

“欢迎你，彼得，亚当之子，”阿斯兰说着，“欢迎你，苏珊和露西，夏娃之女。欢迎你们，海狸先生和海狸夫人。”

他的声音低沉而浑厚，不知怎么地竟消除了他们的不安。他们如今只觉得既高兴又平静，站在那儿不说话也不觉得尴尬了。

“可第四个人在哪儿呢？”阿斯兰问。

“哦，阿斯兰。他已经背叛了他们，成了白女巫的手下。”海狸先生说。于是彼得只好接着说：“这事多少得怪我，阿斯兰。我对他发火，我想那反而促使他变坏了。”

阿斯兰听了不吭声，既没说原谅彼得，也没责怪他。他只是站在那儿，金色的大眼睛直直望着他。大伙觉得似乎也没什么可说的了。

“求求您，阿斯兰，”露西说，“有什么办法可以救救爱德蒙吗？”

“我们会想尽一切办法，”阿斯兰说，“不过这事可能比你们想像的更困难。”接着他又沉默了一会。先前露西一直觉得阿斯兰的脸看上去高贵、刚毅又宁静；但如今她突然发觉他看上去也有点忧伤。不过这种神情转瞬即逝。狮王摇摇鬃毛，两爪一拍（露西想，“要不是他刚中带柔，这对爪子可就太吓人了。”），说道：

“好了，现在开始准备宴席吧。女士们，把夏娃之女带到帐篷里去，好生照看着。”

女孩子们离开后，阿斯兰伸出一只爪子搁在彼得肩膀上——虽然动作轻柔，却十分有力——说道，“来吧，亚当之子，我带你看看那座你将来当国王后要生活的城堡。”

彼得这时仍手握宝剑，他跟着狮王一起来到山顶的东面，一幅美景出现在他们眼前。太阳已在他们背后落下了，整片国土都笼罩在暮色中——森林和小山，山谷，以及像条银蛇般蜿蜒流过的大河。看向远处，几英里以外是大海，大海以外全是天空，落日映照下的云层是玫瑰色的。但就在纳尼亚靠近海的地方——也就是那条大河的入海口——有东西屹立在一座小山上闪烁着光芒。那是一座城堡。正对着彼得的城堡窗户折射着阳光，让城堡看起来金光闪闪的；不过彼得觉得城堡像一颗栖在海岸上的巨大星辰。

“看啊，我的小男子汉，”阿斯兰说，“那就是有着四张宝座的凯尔帕拉维尔城堡。你必须以国王的身份坐上其中一张宝座。因为你是老大，你注定要成为身份和地位都高于其他人的至尊国王，所以我才带你到这儿来。”

彼得还是什么也没说，此时响起了一种奇怪的声音，打破了这片沉默。这声音像一阵军号，不过声音听起来更浑厚。

“那是你妹妹的号角声，”阿斯兰低声对彼得说，声音太小了，听上去就像是一阵咕噜声，如果这么形容对于狮子来说不算不敬的话。

彼得一时没能明白，他看见所有的生物都拥上前去。阿斯兰挥挥爪子，说道：“退下！让王子来吧！”他这才明白过来，紧接着飞快地奔向帐篷，在那儿看到了可怕的一幕。

水泽仙女和森林女神们正四处逃窜。露西脸色苍白，撒开两条短腿奋力向他跑来。他又看见苏珊冲向一棵树然后爬上了去，一头灰色的巨兽正在后面追着她。起初彼得以为那是一只熊，后来他看出这头野兽很像一只阿尔萨斯犬，但却比狗大得多，再后来他才想到这是一匹狼——狼支起后腿，前爪扑在树干上咬着，背上的鬃毛全都竖了起来，大声吼叫着。苏珊只攀得上第二根大树枝，再也没法爬得更高。她还有一条腿吊在树枝下面，离那乱咬的狼牙只有一两英寸。彼得不知道她为什么不爬得再高一点，至少也要抓牢些；后来他才明白苏珊是快晕过去了，如果她晕过去，那她就要摔下来了。

此时此刻的彼得并不觉得自己有多勇敢；说真的，他觉着有点恶心。不过这并不影响他的意志，他径直冲向那头猛兽，瞄准它肋间猛刺一剑，但并没刺中那匹狼。它闪电般转过身来，眼睛冒着火，嘴巴张得老大，狂嚎了一阵。要不是它怒气冲冲，非得嚎叫一通才痛快，它就会立刻咬住彼得的喉咙不放了。事实上，这一切都发生得太快了，彼得根本来不及想；他弓着背，弯下腰，用尽全力把剑刺进那猛兽的前腿之间，一剑刺穿了狼的心脏。接下来一段时间就像噩梦一样又可怕又混乱。他用力拖拉那匹狼，但它看上去既不像死了，也不像活着，它露出的一口利牙磕在他的额头上。彼得感觉浑身上下都充满了一股热气，身上还沾满了血和皮毛。又过了一会，他才发现那头巨兽已经倒地死去。他拔出剑，挺直腰板，擦去满头满脸的汗。这可把他累坏了。

过了一会儿，苏珊才从树上下来。她见到彼得时两人都觉得有些恍惚，但免不了亲吻和哭泣。不过在纳尼亚，没人会因为这事而把你往坏处想的。

“快！快！”只听得阿斯兰在大声喊叫，“半人马！老鹰！我看见灌木丛中还有一匹狼。瞧——就在你们后面！它要回到女巫那儿去了。现在正是你们找到女巫、救出第四个亚当之子的好机会。”话音刚落，顿时响起一阵雷鸣般的马蹄声和翅膀扑棱声，约有十几只动作最迅速的动物消失在暮色中。

彼得还没喘过气来，转过身看见阿斯兰就在他身边。

“你忘了把剑擦干净。”阿斯兰说。

的确，那把光亮的剑已经被狼的毛发和血弄脏了，彼得看到后不由得涨红了脸。他弯下腰，在草地上把剑擦干净，再用自己的衣服把剑擦干。

阿斯兰说：“把剑递给我，然后跪下，亚当之子。”彼得照办了。当他跪下后，阿斯兰用剑身拍了他一下，接着说道，“起来吧，屠狼勇士彼得阁下。请记住，不管出了什么事，永远别忘记擦干净你的剑。”

第十三章
远古时代的高深魔法

现在让我们回到爱德蒙这边。他被迫一直向前走，走了很长一段路。就他所知，谁也走不了比这更远的路。女巫终于在一个长满了冷杉和紫杉的黑暗峡谷里停了下来。爱德蒙立马扑倒在地上躺着，如果他们就让他一动不动地躺着，之后会出什么事他统统不在乎。他太累了，累得连自己有多饿多渴也顾不上了。女巫和小矮人就在他身边低声说着话。

“不，”小矮人说，“现在没用了，女王陛下。他们这会儿一定已经赶到石桌了。”

“也许狼会闻到我们的行踪，给我们送消息来。”女巫说。

“就算来了，也不见得是好消息。”小矮人说。

“凯尔帕拉维尔城堡有四张宝座，”女巫说，“如果只有其中三张有人坐，那么预言就实现不了。”

“既然已经在这儿了，那又有什么区别呢？”小矮人说。事到如今，他仍然不敢在女巫面前提阿斯兰的名字。

“他不会待很久的。等他一走——我们就可以抓到另外三个人。”

“话说回来，我们最好还是留着这一个吧。”小矮人说到这儿踢了爱德蒙一下，“可以拿来做做交易。”

“是啊！就留他一条命。”女巫不屑一顾地说。

“那么，”小矮人说，“我们最好马上就开始干我们该干的事。”

“我是希望在石桌那儿干的，”女巫说，“那是最合适的地方。以前干这种事总在那儿。”

“恐怕要过很长一段时间石桌才能再派上原有的用场呢。”小矮人说。

“不错，”女巫接着又说道，“好吧，我就要开始了。”

正在这时，一匹狼气喘吁吁地赶到他们面前。

“我看见他们了。他们全在石桌那儿，跟他在一起。他们把毛戈林姆给杀了。我躲在灌木丛里全看见了。是一个亚当之子杀了它。快逃！快逃！”

“不，”女巫说，“不必逃。你快去，召集所有人马尽快赶到这儿来跟我会合。动员巨人、狼人，还有站在我们这一边的树精。别忘了食尸鬼、沼泽妖、食人魔、牛头怪、嗜血怪、巫妖婆、幽灵还有毒菌怪。我们要战斗了。什么？我不是还有魔杖吗？即使他们来了，不是也会变成石头吗？快去，趁你走的这段时间，我还有点小事要处理。”

那匹狼点了点头，转过身一溜烟跑走了。

“现在，我们该怎么处置他呢，”她说，“我们没桌子啊。让我想想，我们最好把他绑在树干上。”

爱德蒙只觉得自己被粗暴地拉了起来，接着小矮人让他背靠着一棵树，很快就把他给绑得紧紧的。他看见女巫脱下了外面的披风，露出两条白得吓人的光胳膊。在漆黑的树下，山谷里又那么黑，除了胳膊他什么也看不见。

“把祭品准备好。”女巫说。小矮人解开爱德蒙的领子，把领口往里折，露出脖子。随后他抓着爱德蒙的头发，把他的头往后拉。爱德蒙只好抬起下巴。接着，爱德蒙听见一阵怪声：嚯——嚯——嚯——他一时想不出这是什么声音。后来他才意识到原来那是磨刀声！

就在这时，他听见四面八方喊声震天响——一阵阵蹄声，一阵阵翅膀的扑棱声——女巫发出一声尖叫，周围一片混乱。接着他发现自己被松了绑。好几条有力的胳膊扶着他，只听见几个和气的大嗓门在说，“让他躺下——给他点酒——喝下去——好了好了——你一会儿就没事了。”

接着他又听见好多声音，不是在对他说话，而是相互在交谈着。他们在说什么“谁抓到女巫了？”——“我以为你抓到她了。”——“我把她手里的刀打下来了，但没见到她。我在追小矮人啊，你是说她逃走了吗？”——“一个人不能面面俱到啊。”——“那是什么？哦，不好意思，那只是一截老树桩！”不过听到这儿，爱德蒙就晕了过去，什么也不知道了。

山谷里寂静一片，月光更加明亮了。如果你在那儿，就会看到月亮照在一截老树桩和一块不大不小的圆石头上；你接着观察，就会逐渐觉得这树桩和石头有点不对劲；你再看看就会觉得那个树桩其实很像一个小胖子趴在地上。如果观察够久的话，你就会看见那个树桩走到石头身边，石头坐起来开始跟树桩讲话。事实上那树桩和石头就是女巫和小矮人。这也是女巫的魔法之一，她可以把任何事物都变成另一个完全不同的东西。就在她手里的刀被打下来的一刹那，她就使出了这招。又因为她一直魔杖不离手，所以魔杖也还是好好的。

第二天早上，当另外那三个孩子醒来以后（他们就睡在帐篷里的一堆垫子上），就听到海狸太太在说他们的兄弟已经得救，昨天深夜已经被带回营地，这会儿正在阿斯兰那儿。他们刚吃完早饭就一起上外面去，只见阿斯兰和爱德蒙避开在场的其他人，在挂满露珠的草地上散步。你无须知道阿斯兰说了些什么（也没人听到他俩的这次谈话），不过这次谈话让爱德蒙终身难忘。三个孩子走近时，阿斯兰带着爱德蒙一起转身来见他们。

“你们的兄弟来了，”阿斯兰说，“过去的事就不必再提了。”

爱德蒙跟大家一一握手，挨个儿说了“对不起”，每个人都说“没关系”。随后，他们都很想说点什么来表示他们已经重归于好了——一些寻常而且自然的话——但谁也想不出说什么才好。不过他们还没来得及感到尴尬，一只豹子就来到阿斯兰跟前说：

“陛下，敌人派了一个信使前来求见。”

“带他进来。”阿斯兰说。

豹子走开了，不一会儿就领着女巫的小矮人回来。

“你带来什么口信，大地之子？”阿斯兰问。

“纳尼亚兼孤独群岛的女王陛下要求与您进行会谈，但她需要得到安全保障。”小矮人说，“商谈一些对双方都有利的事情。”

“纳尼亚女王？岂有此理！”海狸先生说，“她的脸皮可真厚——”

“安静，海狸，”阿斯兰说，“善恶终会有分晓。现在我们大可不必为此争论。告诉你的女主人，大地之子，我保证她的安全，前提是她得将魔杖留在那棵大橡树下。”

双方达成一致后，两只豹子跟着小矮人一起回去监视对方是否履行条件。“但假如她把豹子变成石头可怎么办呢？”露西小声对彼得说。豹子自己可能也有同样的想法。总之，他们走去时背上的毛全都竖起来了，尾巴也翘得笔直——像猫见到陌生的狗那样紧张。

“没事儿，”彼得悄声回答说。“如果有事儿阿斯兰就不会派他们去。”

几分钟以后，女巫出现在山顶之上。她径直走到阿斯兰面前。三个孩子从没见过她，一看她那张脸就觉得背上发毛；在场的所有动物也都低声咆哮着。虽然这时阳光明媚，可每个人都突然感到一阵寒意。现场只有阿斯兰和女巫两个看来仍然从容自若。看见一张金黄色的脸和一张惨白的脸凑得这么近可真是件天大的怪事。怪的倒不是那女巫竟敢正视阿斯兰的眼睛，海狸太太特别留心到这一点。

“你身边有一个叛徒，阿斯兰。”女巫说。当然在场的人都知道她指的是爱德蒙。但爱德蒙经过了这一次事件，早上又谈了一次话，已经不再只考虑自己了。此刻他只是一直望着阿斯兰。女巫说什么他似乎并不在意。

“何必呢，”阿斯兰说，“他并没有与你作对。”

“难道你忘了高深魔法吗？”女巫问道。

“就当我已经忘了吧，”阿斯兰庄重地回答说，“给我们讲讲这高深魔法吧。”

“给你们讲讲？”女巫说，她的声音突然变得更尖厉了，“告诉你我们身边那张石桌上写了些什么？告诉你那些像插在神秘之山燧石上的长矛那样深深镌刻在石桌上的字母代表着什么吗？告诉你海外君主的权杖上刻着什么？至少你该知道君主在纳尼亚诞生之初制定的魔法吧。你知道每个叛徒都被当作合法的祭品归我。凡是有谁做出了背叛之事，我都有权杀了他。”

“哦，”海狸先生说，“原来你就凭这个自称是女王吗？就因为你是皇帝的刽子手？我可算是明白了。”

“安静，海狸。”阿斯兰说着低低咆哮了一声。

“所以说，”女巫继续说，“那个人就应该归我。他的生命在我手里，他的血也归我所有。”

“那你来拿拿看吧。”半人牛怒声咆哮道。

“笨蛋，”女巫凶残地笑着，几乎吼着说道，“你当真认为你的主人单用武力就可以抢走我的权利吗？阿斯兰比我更清楚高深魔法的法则，也决不会这么糊涂。除非我依法得到血，否则纳尼亚就将陷入水深火热。”

“一点不错，”阿斯兰说，“我不否认这一点。”

“哦，阿斯兰！”苏珊悄悄在狮王耳边说，“我们能不能，我的意思是说——我们能不能在高深魔法上想点什么办法？你有办法对付高深魔法吗？”

“对付高深魔法？”阿斯兰似乎向她皱起了眉头。于是再也没人向他提出那种建议了。

爱德蒙站在另一边，一直望着阿斯兰的脸。他有一种透不过气来的感觉，不知道自己该不该说点什么；但过了一会儿，他觉得自己除了等待，照人家的吩咐去做之外，什么也干不了。

“你们大家都退下，”阿斯兰说，“我要跟女巫单独谈谈。”

大家遵命退下了。这段时间可真难熬——当狮王和女巫压低声音恳切会谈时，大家就焦虑地等啊等。

最后他们听见了阿斯兰的声音。“你们大家可以回来了，”他说，“我把这事解决了。她不要你们兄弟的血了。”话音刚落，整个山头都响起了声音，仿佛大家刚才一直屏息以待，现在才又开始呼吸了。随后传出了一阵喃喃的说话声。

女巫面露狂喜，正要转过身去，却又停下来说：

“你怎么能保证会信守诺言呢？”

“啊——吼！”阿斯兰半个身子离开宝座怒吼起来，只见他的嘴张得越来越大，吼声也越来越响，而女巫呢，张大了嘴盯着狮王看了一会儿，之后就拉起裙子滚去逃命了。

第十四章
女巫的胜利

女巫前脚刚走，阿斯兰就开口了：“我们得马上离开这个地方，这儿要派别的用场。我们今晚得到贝鲁纳浅滩那儿安营扎寨。”

大家当然都很想问问阿斯兰是如何与女巫达成协议的，但阿斯兰的表情异常严肃，而且大家耳边依然回荡着他的怒吼声，因此谁也不敢开口。

大家在山顶露天吃了一顿饭（因为阳光这会儿已经变得很强烈，把草地都晒干了），之后他们忙了一阵子，拆掉帐篷，收拾东西。不到两点，他们就启程向东北方向出发。大家从容地走着，要去的地方并不是很远。

旅途刚开始那会儿，阿斯兰向彼得说明了他的作战计划。他说道：“女巫一旦完成她在这一带的活动，就会带着她的手下回到城堡准备下一次围攻。你尽可能切断她的路，不让她回到城堡，当然你也可能切不断她的路。”随后他又提出另外两种作战方案——一种是和女巫及其手下在树林里作战，另一种是直接袭击她的城堡。在这段时间里，他一直指点彼得怎么指挥战斗，说什么“你必须把半人马布置在某某地方”，或者说“你必须派侦察员去看好她，不要让她如何如何……”彼得最后说道，“可你自己不也在场嘛，阿斯兰。”

“这我没办法保证。”狮王回答道，接着又继续给彼得讲那些作战要领。

旅途即将抵达终点的时候，苏珊和露西一直注视着阿斯兰。他不大说话，看起来有些忧伤。

天还没黑，他们到了一个地方，这里的河谷豁然开阔，河面又宽又浅。这就是贝鲁那浅滩，阿斯兰命令众人在河岸的这一边扎营。这时，彼得开口道：“把营地驻扎在那一边岂不是更好——就怕女巫会来一次夜间偷袭什么的。”

阿斯兰似乎正在想着别的事情。只见他抖了抖那身漂亮的鬃毛才回过神来，说道，“啊，什么？”彼得只得又重复了一遍。

“不会的。”阿斯兰声音低沉，似乎这事并不重要，“不会的，她今夜不会发动进攻的。”接着他深深叹了口气，一会儿他又加了一句，“你能想到这点还算不错。作为一名士兵，你应当如此。不过现在真的没必要。”于是他们就继续着手搭帐篷了。

那晚阿斯兰的情绪影响了大家。彼得一想到要由他来打这一仗，心里就觉得很不安；阿斯兰可能不在场的消息对他是一大打击。那天晚上的一顿饭大家吃得鸦雀无声。大家都觉得这天晚上跟昨天晚上甚至和当天早上大不一样。仿佛好时光刚刚开头，却已经快结束了。

这种情绪也严重影响了苏珊。她上床后一直睡不着，躺在那儿数羊，还不停地翻来覆去。后来只听见露西长叹一声，在黑暗中翻到她身边。

“你也睡不着吗？”苏珊问。

“是啊，”露西说，“我还以为你睡着了呢。我说，苏珊！”

“什么事？”

“我有一个非常可怕的预感——好像有什么大事要发生了。”

“是吗？因为事实上，我也有这种感觉。”

“这事跟阿斯兰有关，”露西说，“不是他要出什么可怕的事，就是他要干什么可怕的事。”

“整个下午他都不大对劲，”苏珊说，“露西！他说打仗时不跟我们在一起是什么意思？你看他今晚不会离开我们然后偷偷溜走吧？”

“他现在在哪儿？”露西说，“在帐篷里吗？”

“这可说不准。”

“苏珊，我们出去看看吧。也许能看到他。”

“好吧，我们走，”苏珊说，“醒着躺在这儿还不如出去看看。”

两个女孩静悄悄地在其他睡着的人中摸索出一条路来，偷偷出了帐篷。月光皎洁，除了河水潺潺流过石头的声音，一切都十分寂静。这时苏珊突然抓住露西的胳膊说，“瞧！”她们看见营地的那一边，就在树林边上，狮王正慢慢离开大家，往树林里走去。她俩一句话也没说，跟上了他。

她们跟着他爬上河谷的陡坡，然后稍微向右走去——显然这是当天下午她们从石桌山下来时走的路线。她们一直走，走进黑咕隆咚的阴影里，又走到苍白的月光下，她们的脚都被浓重的露水沾湿了。不知怎么的，他看上去和她们最初见到的阿斯兰判若两人，尾巴和脑袋都耷拉下来，慢吞吞地走着，仿佛累极了。后来，在穿过一片开阔的空地时，没有阴影让她们可躲了。这时阿斯兰停下了，四面张望着。这会儿再逃走也无济于事，她们索性朝他走去。她们走近时阿斯兰说道：

“哦，孩子们，孩子们，你们跟着我做什么？”

“我们睡不着。”露西说。她深信自己不用多说，阿斯兰知道她们一直在想什么。

“我们跟你一起——不论你去哪儿，好吗？”苏珊说。

“这个——”阿斯兰似乎在考虑，但后来他说，“我很高兴今晚有人陪着我。好吧，如果你们答应在我叫你们停下的时候就停下，然后让我一个人走，就跟我来吧。”

“好的好的，谢谢你，谢谢你，我们答应你。”两个女孩子说。

他们接着向前走了。两个女孩分别走在狮王两侧。可他走得太慢了！他那庄严高贵的脑袋就那么低垂着，鼻子都快挨到草地了。不久他一个踉跄，发出一声低低的呻吟。

“阿斯兰！亲爱的阿斯兰！”露西说，“到底怎么了？你能告诉我们吗？”

“你病了吗，亲爱的阿斯兰？”苏珊问道。

“没有，”阿斯兰说，“我只是觉得有些悲伤和孤独。你们把手搁在我的鬃毛上，好让我感觉到你们在这儿，好吗？我们就这样继续走吧。”

两个女孩照着他的话做了。这可是从她们第一次看到他就想做、但未经允许永远也不敢做的事呀。她们把冰凉的手伸进他那一大片美丽的鬃毛里，边抚摸着他边向前走着。不一会儿，她们就发现自己跟着他已经爬上了石桌所在的山坡。她们爬到树林边缘那儿，走到最后一棵树旁（就是周围还有几丛灌木的那棵），阿斯兰停下说：

“哦，孩子们，孩子们，你们得在这儿停下了。不论发生什么事，可别让人家看见你们。永别了。”

于是两个女孩都放声痛哭（虽然她们也不知道自己为什么要哭），她们搂着阿斯兰，亲亲他的鬃毛、他的鼻子、他的爪子、以及他那双庄重又悲伤的眼睛。这之后他才转过身向山顶走去。露西和苏珊蹲在灌木丛中目送着他，以下是她们看到的情景：

石桌周围站着好大一堆人。尽管月光如此明亮，仍然有好多人手里拿着火把，冒着邪恶的红焰和黑烟。可那哪是人啊！口露獠牙的食人魔、豺狼、牛头怪、还有恶树精和有毒的植物怪；其他动物我就不一一描写了，因为如果我再描写下去，大人可能就不让你们看这本书了——当然其中有嗜血怪、巫妖婆、魇魔、阴魂、恐怖魔鬼、炎魔、小妖精、大头鬼和小头鬼等等。事实上凡是站在女巫这一边、听到狼传下命令的都来了。站在中间，靠着石桌的就是女巫本人。

这些畜生起先看见伟大的狮王向它们走去时都发出一阵阵惊慌的嚎叫，就连女巫自己一时也有点惊慌。但很快她就恢复镇定，发出一阵粗野的狂笑。

“那笨蛋！”她大声叫道，“那笨蛋来了。先把他捆起来！”

露西和苏珊躲在灌木丛里，连大气也不敢出，等着看阿斯兰怒吼一声向他的敌人扑去。可是他竟没吼。四个龇牙咧嘴笑着的巫婆走到阿斯兰身边，但一开始她们也犹豫不前，对要做的事有点害怕。“我说，把他捆起来！”白女巫又再说了一遍。四个巫婆顿时壮着胆子向他冲去，当她们发现他竟毫不抵抗时，发出阵阵得意的尖叫声。随后凶恶的小矮人和猿猴们都一拥而上，前来帮助她们。它们把体形庞大的狮王掀翻在地，四个爪子绑在一起，欢呼喊叫着，仿佛它们做了什么勇敢的事。虽然狮王一只爪子就可以要了它们大家的命，但他一声不吭，甚至敌人把绳子拉得那么紧，又拖又拽，绳子都勒进肉里去了，他也不吭声。接着它们把阿斯兰拖到石桌附近。

“停下，”女巫说，“先把他的毛剃了！”

这时一个食人魔拿着一把大剪刀走上前来，蹲在阿斯兰脑袋旁边，那群动物发出了一阵恶毒的狂笑。大剪刀咔嚓咔嚓，一堆堆鬈曲的金色鬃毛纷纷掉在了地上。食人魔完成后就后退一步站着，两个女孩从她们躲的地方能看见阿斯兰没有了鬃毛的脸，昔日的威风不在，是那么小，那么奇怪。围在阿斯兰身边的敌人也注意到了这一变化。

“咦，到头来，不过是一只大猫啊！”一个叫道。

“我们过去害怕的就是那玩意儿吗？”另一个说。

它们全都拥向阿斯兰身边嘲笑起来。说什么“咪咪，咪咪，可怜的猫咪”，还有“你今天抓了几只老鼠，猫猫？”，或是说“想要一碟牛奶吗，小猫咪？”

“哎！它们怎么能这样！”露西的脸颊上落下了眼泪。“畜生！畜生！”一开始的震惊过去了，她觉得阿斯兰剪掉毛的脸看上去比以前更勇敢、更美丽、更坚忍。

“把他的嘴套上！”女巫说道。即使是在它们给他的嘴上套时，只要阿斯兰一张口就能咬掉它们两三只手，但他一动也不动。这群畜生似乎气红了眼。如今大伙儿都来欺负他了。那些连他被绑起来以后仍然怕靠近他的，竟也鼓起勇气来欺负他。过了片刻，两个女孩子甚至都看不见他了——他被密密麻麻地包围着，大家踢他，打他，向他吐唾沫，嘲笑他。

最后这伙暴徒闹够了。大家开始把五花大绑、被箍住嘴的狮王拖向石桌，大家推的推，拉的拉。阿斯兰是那么魁梧，它们得用尽全部力气才能把他抬到石桌上。后来他又被紧紧地捆上了很多道绳子。

“一群胆小鬼！胆小鬼！”苏珊呜咽着说，“事到如今，它们还害怕阿斯兰吗？”

等到阿斯兰被捆在那块平坦的石头上（事实上他身上绑着一大团绳子），这群暴徒才静了下来。四个巫婆拿着四支火把，站在石桌的四个角上。白女巫露出两条白得吓人的胳膊，就跟前一个晚上爱德蒙看到的一样。紧接着她开始磨刀。在姐妹俩看来，那刀被微弱的火把光这么一照，形状看起来既古怪又可怕。那刀看起来不是金属制成的，而是用石头制成的。

最后她走向阿斯兰。她站在他的头旁边。她的脸激动得抽搐扭曲起来，而阿斯兰却仰着脸望着天空，脸上一片平静，既不生气，也不害怕，只有一点忧伤。就在女巫要砍下去的时候，她弯下腰，颤抖地说道：

“看清楚，现在是谁赢了？笨蛋！你以为这样做就能救了那个人类叛徒吗？按照我们的条约，现在我要把你杀了来代替他，这样一来那高深魔法才会应验。但等你死了，谁还能阻止我把他也杀了呢？而且到了那时，谁又来从我手里把他救出去呢？你要明白，你已经把纳尼亚永远给我了。你既送了自己的命，也救不了他。现在知道这些，是不是绝望了？受死吧！”

两个女孩没看到杀戮的那一幕。她们不忍心看，都蒙住了眼睛。

第十五章
太古时代的更高深魔法

当两个女孩还双手掩面，蹲在灌木丛中的时候，她们听见女巫大声喊道：

“现在！大家都跟着我，我们要去收拾那些残兵败将了！既然这个大笨猫已经死了，我们很快就可以打败那些人渣和叛徒了。冲啊！”

这时姐妹俩的情形非常危险。只听见阵阵野蛮的叫喊，尖锐的风笛声、号角声响成一片，那帮恶劣的暴徒从山顶上一哄而下，正好经过她们藏身的地方。她们只觉得恶灵裹挟着一阵阴风从身边掠过，大地在牛头怪飞奔的蹄声中颤抖了，头顶上一阵猛禽扑翅的腥风，黑压压的-片都是兀鹰和大蝙蝠。换了别的时候，她们早就害怕得浑身发抖了，但如今，她们满脑子都是对阿斯兰之死的悲哀、羞辱和恐惧感，完全顾不上对眼前的情形感到害怕。

树林里一静下来，苏珊和露西就爬到空旷的山顶上。月亮慢慢下沉着，片片浮云飘过，她们仍然看得见狮王被五花大绑、躺在那儿的样子。她俩跪在湿漉漉的草地上，亲吻着他冰凉的脸，摸着他残存的美丽鬃毛，一直哭到哭不出来为止。随后她们看着彼此，渐渐地又都感到凄凉，两人手拉手又哭了起来，接着是再一次的沉默。最后露西说：

“我实在看不下去阿斯兰戴着那副可怕嘴套的样子。我们能不能把嘴套摘下来？”

于是她们就试着取下嘴套。弄了好一阵子之后（因为她们手指冰凉，而且这时恰逢夜里最黑暗的时候），她们终于拿掉了嘴套。等她们看到他脸上没有嘴套了，又大哭起来，她们亲吻他，抚摸他，还尽可能把上面的鲜血和血沫擦掉。我真不知道该怎么描写这种凄凉、绝望又可怕的场景。

“不知道我们能不能把他身上的绳子也解开？”不一会儿苏珊说。但敌人出于怨恨，把绳子拉得实在紧，两个女孩怎么也解不开这些结。

时间似乎就在这种麻木的平静中过去了好几个小时，她们一点没注意到身上越来越冷了。但最后露西总算注意到两件事情：第一件事，小山东面的天空比一小时前亮了一点；第二件事，她脚边的草地上似乎有些小动静。一开始她对此毫无兴趣。这又有什么关系呢？现在什么都无所谓了。但她终于看出这不知名的东西开始爬上石桌；这会儿，那些东西正在阿斯兰身上爬来爬去。她凑近仔细看看，原来是些灰不溜秋的小东西。

“啊！”苏珊在石桌另一侧说着，“多讨厌！这些恶心的小老鼠在他身上爬来爬去。走开，你们这些小畜生。”她举起手想把它们吓跑。

“等等！”露西一直在近处观察着它们，“你看不出它们在干什么吗？”

姐妹俩弯下腰，仔细地盯着。

“太不可思议了！”苏珊说，“它们正在啃咬那些绳子呢！”

“我也这么觉得，”露西说，“我看它们是一群友好的老鼠。可怜的小东西——它们不知道阿斯兰已经死了，还以为把绳子解开会让他舒服点。”

这会儿天亮多了，两个女孩子第一次注意到彼此的脸多么苍白。她们能看见那些小老鼠，几十只几十只的，甚至有几百只，它们一口口咬着，最后把那些绳子全咬断了。这会儿东方的天空已经发白，星星渐渐隐没了——只有地平线上还有一颗很大的星星。这时她们觉得比晚上更冷了，那些小老鼠也都爬开了。

姐妹俩把咬断的绳屑都清理干净。没有了这些绳子，阿斯兰又恢复了原来的模样。天色越来越亮，她们也看得更清楚了，他那张没有生气的脸看上去越来越高贵了。

在她们身后的树林里，有只鸟儿叽叽喳喳地叫了一声。这声音把她们吓了一跳，因为好几个小时以来这里都是一片寂静，接着又有一只鸟儿应和着。不一会儿到处都是鸟儿在歌唱。

这会儿肯定是清晨，而不是深夜了。

“我好冷啊。”露西说。

“我也是，”苏珊说，“我们走走吧。”

她们走到小山的东崖边往下看去。那颗巨大的星星几乎消失了。整个纳尼亚笼罩在一片深灰色之中，不过在远方的世界尽头处，天空已经开始泛白；渐渐地，天空开始变红了。她们为了取暖，在死去的阿斯兰和东面山脊之间来回走了无数次。哎，她们的腿多累啊。因而她们停下来，站着眺望大海和凯尔帕拉维尔城堡（这会儿她们才看得出城堡的轮廓）。海天交接处的天空渐渐由红色变成了金色，太阳也冉冉升起来了。就在这时，她们听见背后一声震耳欲聋的巨响，仿佛一个巨人绷裂了他巨大的铠甲。

“那是什么声音？”露西说着一把抓住苏珊的胳膊。

“我——我不敢回头看，”苏珊说，“一定是出了什么可怕的事。”

“它们对他下毒手啦，”露西说，“快来吧！”她拉着苏珊一起转过身来。

太阳一升起，这儿的一切看上去就大不相同了——所有的色彩和阴影都变了——因此一时间她们并没有看出发生了什么。后来她们才看见，原来那张石桌在一声巨响中从头到尾裂成了两半；而阿斯兰不见了。

“哦，哦，哦！”两个女孩子哭着奔回石桌。

“哦，这太糟糕了，”露西呜咽着说，“它们该留下尸体的。”

“这是谁干的？”苏珊叫道，“这是什么意思？这又是魔法吗？”

她们身后响起了一个洪亮的声音，“是的，这又是魔法。”她们回头一看。只见阳光下，站着的正是还在抖动鬃毛的阿斯兰，个头比她们先前看到的更大（显然鬃毛又长出来了）。

“哦，阿斯兰！”姐妹俩都叫了起来。她们目不转睛地看着他，心里又高兴又害怕。

“原来你还活着，亲爱的阿斯兰？”露西说。

“是的，现在活过来了。”阿斯兰说。

“你是不是——是不是——？”苏珊声音颤抖着。她不忍心说出那个“鬼”字。阿斯兰俯下金色的脑袋，舔了舔她的额头。他的呼吸是温暖的，鬃毛似乎散发出一股浓郁的气味笼罩着她。

“我看起来像吗？”他说道。

“哦，你还活着，你还活着！哦，阿斯兰！”露西叫着，两个女孩都扑上前去，把他吻了个遍。

“可是这一切是怎么回事？”等大家稍微平静了一点，苏珊问道。

“意思是，”阿斯兰说，“虽然女巫懂得高深魔法，可她不知道还有比这更高深的魔法。她懂的那套魔法只到远古时代为止。但如果她能看得更远一点，看到太古时代的寂静和黑暗深处，她就会看到还有不同的魔法。她就会知道一个自愿送死的牺牲者，如果本身没有背叛行为却被当作一个叛徒而杀害，石桌就会崩裂，死亡就会起反作用。而现在——”

“哦，是啊，现在呢？”露西跳起来拍着手说。

“哦，孩子们，”狮王说，“我觉得自己的力量又恢复了。哦，孩子们，来看看你们能抓住我吗？”他站着没动，眼睛闪闪发亮，四肢抖动个不停，尾巴用力地甩啊甩。接着他一跃就跳过她们头顶，落在石桌的另一边。露西哈哈大笑，虽然她自己也不知道为什么笑；她赶紧爬过石桌去抓他。阿斯兰又是一跳。一场疯狂的追逐就此开始。他带着她们在山顶上到处跑，一会儿让她们够也够不着，一会儿让她们差点抓到他的尾巴，一会儿从她们中间冲过去，一会儿用他宽厚柔软的大爪子把她们抛向半空又稳稳接住，一会儿又冷不防停下来，他们三个就嘻嘻哈哈地滚成一团，只看得见皮毛啊、胳膊啊、腿啊混作一堆。这种嬉闹的场面只可能出现在纳尼亚；而且露西怎么也确定不了，她们究竟是在跟雷霆一般的狮王玩呢，还是在跟小猫玩。有趣的是等他们三个最后一起躺在太阳下喘气的时候，两个女孩子再也感觉不到疲劳、饥饿和口渴了。

“好了，”不一会儿，阿斯兰说道，“开始干正经事吧。我想先吼一声，你们最好把耳朵堵上。”

她们照办了。阿斯兰站起来，张开嘴怒吼，他的脸变得那么可怕，她们都不敢正眼看他。而且她们还看见他面前的树随着吼声全部弯下了腰，就好像草场里的草儿随风倾倒。随后他开口道：

“我们要走的路还长着呢，你们得骑在我身上。”说着便趴下了，姐妹俩就爬到他温暖的金色背脊上。苏珊坐在前面，紧紧抓住他的鬃毛，露西坐在后面，紧紧抓住苏珊。他猛地一挺身，飞奔而去，比任何骏马都快，眨眼间就下了小山，进入了密林。

对这姐妹俩来说，这次骑狮子也许是她们到纳尼亚以来最美妙的事情了。这次骑行既不需要带路，也决不会疲劳。阿斯兰一直向前，从不跌倒，从不犹豫，熟练地在穿梭在树干之间，跳过灌木丛，跳过荆棘丛，跳过小溪，穿过小河，游过大河。你不是在路上骑行，也不是在公园里，甚至也不是在草原上，而是横穿整个纳尼亚，在春天里经过山毛榉林间一条条幽暗的林荫小道，越过橡树林间一块块向阳的空地，穿过一片片长满雪白樱桃树的野生果园，路过水声轰鸣的瀑布、青苔覆盖的岩石、回声不绝的山洞，爬上金雀花丛照亮的迎风山坡，穿过石南丛生的山肩，沿着令人晕眩的山脊一直跑下去，跑下去，又一次跑进开阔的山谷，跑进大片的蓝色花田。

日近中午，他们发现自己正在一片陡峭的山坡上俯瞰一座城堡——从他们站的地方望去，那就像是一个小小的玩具城堡——看上去全是尖尖的塔楼。不过随着狮王全速冲向城堡，这城堡显得越来越大。她们还来不及问自己到哪儿了，就来到了城堡跟前。此刻这城堡不再像个玩具了，而是阴森森地耸立在她们面前。城垛上不见人影，城堡大门紧闭；阿斯兰却一点没有放慢步子，像一颗子弹似的径直朝城堡冲去。

“那就是女巫的家！”他叫道，“好了，孩子们，抓紧点！”

一眨眼间天翻地覆，姐妹俩只觉得五脏六腑都翻了出来。狮王振作精神，又跃了一大跳，这一次比他以往任何一次都跳得更高——倒不如说阿斯兰是飞过了城堡的墙头。两个女孩子简直喘不过气来，但毫发未损，不知不觉中已从狮背上滚了下来，落在一个摆满石像的宽阔石砌院子里。

第十六章
石像的变化

“这地方太奇怪了！”露西叫道，“所有动物还有——人都是石头做的！就像——就像一个博物馆。”

“嘘！”苏珊说，“阿斯兰好像在做什么。”

苏珊说的没错。阿斯兰跳到石狮面前，对着石狮吹了口气。接着突然转过身去——就像猫在追自己的尾巴那样——对那个石头小矮人也吹了口气，你们大概还记得，这小矮人正背对着石狮，两者大约距离一两英尺。然后他又突然扑向站在小矮人那边的一个高大的石头树神，又立刻转向他右边的一只石兔，再冲到两个半人马身边。但就在这时露西说：

“呀！苏珊！快看！看那头狮子。”

阿斯兰对石狮吹了口气以后，有一刹那那头石狮看上去并没什么两样。后来他那白色大理石的背上开始掠过一小缕金色——然后金色蔓延开了——后来金色似乎在他全身掠过——然后，尽管他的后腿是石头，那只狮子却用力抖动着鬃毛，所有那些沉甸甸的石头褶痕都飘动起来，成了活生生的鬃毛。接着，他张开血盆大嘴，呼出了热气，打了一个大大的呵欠。这会儿他的后腿也活过来了。他抬起一条后腿在身上搔搔。接着，他看见阿斯兰，就跳到狮王后面，在阿斯兰身边又蹦又跳，高兴得哭了起来，还跳起来舔舔阿斯兰的脸。

姐妹俩的眼睛当然跟着狮子转；不过她们看到的景象奇妙得让她们很快就把他忘了。院子里到处都是活过来的石像，看起来不再像一个博物馆，反而像一个动物园了。动物们都跟着阿斯兰跑，围着他跳舞，到后来他几乎被大伙儿遮住看不见了。原本惨白一片的院子里如今变得色彩斑斓；半人马栗色的马身，独角兽深蓝色的角，鸟儿们五颜六色的羽毛，狐狸、狗和森林之神红棕色的皮毛，小矮人穿黄袜子戴着红风帽，白桦姑娘一身银装，山毛榉姑娘晶莹碧绿，还有落叶松姑娘那一身苍翠的衣装鲜艳得都快发光了。这地方原是死一般寂静，而如今整个院子里都回荡着欢乐的喧闹声：狮吼，虎啸，驴叫，狗吠，鸽咕，马嘶，还有尖叫声、跺脚声、呐喊声、欢呼声、歌声和笑声。

“哦，”苏珊的声音都变了，“瞧！我在想——我是说，他这样安全吗？”

露西一看，只见阿斯兰正朝一个石头巨人的脚吹了口气。

“没事儿！”阿斯兰兴冲冲地大声喊叫，“只要他的脚恢复了，其余的部位就会跟着复原的。”

“我指的不是这个。”苏珊小声地对露西说。不过即便阿斯兰听到她说的话，这会儿也来不及了。巨人的两腿已经复原。现在他正在挪动双脚，过了一会他拿下肩膀上那根大棒子，揉揉眼睛说：

“天哪！我一定是睡着了。嗨！那个在地上跑来跑去的死巫婆上哪儿去了？刚才她还在我脚边什么地方呢。”当大伙儿都抬头对他大声解释着发生了什么事时，巨人把手放在耳边让他们再说一遍，这才算听明白了。接着他深深低头一躬，脑袋低得只有干草堆顶那么高，不停摸着帽檐向阿斯兰致意，他那张诚实而丑陋的脸上满是笑容。

“现在该进去看看了！”阿斯兰说，“大家赶快。楼上，楼下，还有女巫的房间！每个角落都要搜。你们根本不知道那些可怜的囚犯会被关在哪儿。”

于是众人一起冲了进去。不到几分钟，那整座黑暗、恐怖、霉臭的旧城堡里响起了开窗户和大伙儿喊叫的声音：“别忘了地牢——帮我们打开这扇门！——这儿还有一条弯曲的楼梯——哦，我说，这儿有一只可怜的小袋鼠。叫阿斯兰来——嘘！这儿太难闻了——小心那些暗门——到这儿来！楼梯平台上还有好多呢！”不过最好的事要数露西冲上楼去，嘴里大叫着：

“阿斯兰！阿斯兰！我找到图姆纳斯先生啦。哦，快来吧！”

过了一会儿，露西和那个半人羊手拉手跳着舞，高兴地转了一圈又一圈。这小家伙虽然给变成了石像，但并没受伤，所以兴致勃勃地要听她讲述一切。

对女巫老巢的彻底搜查终于结束了。整个城堡都空了，门窗全部大开，阳光和芳香的春天气息涌进了所有那些黑暗而邪恶的地方，那些地方是多么需要阳光和新鲜空气啊。这一大群重获生命的石像又回到了院子里。到了这时才有人（我想，是图姆纳斯先生吧）首先开口说道：“可我们怎么出去呢？”阿斯兰是跳进来的，院子大门仍旧锁着呢。

“那没关系，”阿斯兰说着站了起来，对巨人大声喊叫。“嗨，上边的大家伙，”他吼道，“你叫什么名字？”

“报告大人，我是巨人伦波布芬。”巨人说着，又摸了摸帽子以示敬意。

“那好吧，巨人伦波布芬，”阿斯兰说，“让我们从这儿出去，好吗？”

“当然可以，阁下，十分乐意效劳。”巨人伦波布芬说，“你们这些小家伙都离大门远点！”接着他大步走到门口，抡起大棒就砰砰砰敲了三下。第一下，大门吱嘎响了；第二下，大门裂开了；第三下，大门就成了碎片。随后他又去对付大门两边的塔楼，又捶又捣，几下功夫两边的塔楼和旁边大部分高墙都轰隆隆倒下了，成了一大堆碎砖烂瓦；等到尘土散去，大家站在这个灰秃秃、阴森森的石头院子里看着外面那些草地，摇曳的树木，森林中波光粼粼的溪流，以及溪流外的青山和山外的碧空，可真是别有一番风味。

“我浑身都是汗，都湿透了，”巨人开口说道，他的声音听上去轰隆隆的，像大火车头似的直喘，“这儿条件太差了，我想你们两位年轻小姐身上都没带手帕吧？”

“有，我有。”露西边说着边费力地踮起脚尖，尽可能举高她手里的帕子。

“谢谢你，小姐。”巨人伦波布芬说着弯下了腰。转眼间露西吓了一大跳，因为她不知不觉中竟被巨人用两个指头捏住提到半空中了。不过就在她凑近他脸的时候，他突然一惊，随即把她轻轻放回地上，嘴里还喃喃说，“老天爷，我竟把小姑娘拎起来了。对不起，小姐，我还以为你就是那块手帕呢。”

“不，不，”露西笑着说，“手帕在这儿呢！”这一回他总算设法拿到了，不过对巨人来说那手帕就像你们的糖精片那么大，因此露西看见他一本正经地用这块手帕在他那张又大又红的脸上来回擦着，不由得说道：“伦波布芬先生，恐怕这块手帕对你来说派不上多大的用场吧。”

“哪儿的话，哪儿的话，”巨人有礼貌地说，“从来没见过比这更好的手帕了。多么精致，多么方便。哎呀——我都不知怎么形容了。”

“他是个多么好的巨人啊！”露西对图姆纳斯先生说。

“是这样的，”半人羊回答说，“布芬家的人全都这样。他们是纳尼亚最受人尊敬的巨人家族之一，也许不太聪明（我从来就不知道巨人还有聪明的），但他们是一个古老的家族。这是有传统的。如果他不是这样的人，女巫也根本不会把他变成石头了。”

这时阿斯兰拍拍爪子，叫大家安静下来。

“我们今天的工作还没结束呢，”他说，“如果要在睡觉前打败那巫婆，我们必须立刻找到战斗的地方。”

“希望算我一个，先生。”个头最大的半人马加了一句。

“当然，”阿斯兰说，“现在呢，那些跟不上的——就是说，孩子们、小矮人和小动物们——必须骑在那些跟得上的动物背上——就是狮子、半人马、独角兽、马、巨人和老鹰。那些鼻子灵的必须跟我们狮子一起走在前头，好闻出哪儿在打仗。赶快，你们自己分分类吧。”

接着又是一阵忙乱和一阵欢呼。这里面最高兴的要算另外那头狮子了，他一直东跑西颠装做忙忙碌碌的样子，其实是为了对他见到的每一个人说，“你听见阿斯兰说什么了吗？我们狮子。那意思就是他和我呀。我们狮子。我就喜欢阿斯兰这点。没有架子，不盛气凌人。我们狮子！那意思就是他和我呀。”他一直说来说去，至少说到阿斯兰把三个小矮人、一个树神、两只兔子和一只刺猬放到他背上，这才把他稳住了。

一切都准备好以后（一条大牧羊犬帮着阿斯兰让大家都各就各位），他们就从城堡高墙的豁口处动身了。开头狮子和狗四处乱嗅。可是接着有条大猎狗忽然闻到了气味，叫了起来。此后大家就抓紧时间。所有的狗啊，狮子啊，狼啊，还有其他参加追捕的动物都把鼻子贴近地面，全速前进，其他的都在他们后面大约半英里处尽快跟着飞跑。他们刚刚来到窄狭且弯曲的峡谷的最后一个转弯处，露西就听出在所有这些声音之外，还有另一种声音——那是一种不同的声音，她一听心里就有一种怪异的感觉。那是些呐喊声、尖叫声和金属撞击声。

等她们走出峡谷，露西立刻就明白其中的原因了。彼得和爱德蒙带了阿斯兰其余的军队正拼命跟她昨晚看见过的那群可怕的动物战斗，只不过如今在日光下，那些动物看上去更怪异、更恶毒、更丑陋，数量也似乎更多了。彼得的军队是背对着露西的，看上去少得可怜。而且战场上散布着好多石像，显然女巫一直在动用她的魔杖。但这会儿她似乎没在用魔杖，而是用石刀在作战。她在跟彼得作战——双方打得十分激烈，露西简直看不清是怎么回事；她只看出刀光剑影飞闪，叫人眼花缭乱，看上去倒像有三把刀和三把剑。这一对在中间厮杀，两边都排成一条战线。不论她朝哪边看，都是一片可怕的场景。

“孩子们，快从我的背上下来。”阿斯兰叫道。她们俩立刻翻落在地。随后传来了一声怒吼，震撼了西起灯柱东到海边的整片纳尼亚的土地。阿斯兰猛地扑向白女巫。露西看见刹那间女巫抬起头来看着他，脸上充满了恐怖和惊讶。接着狮王和女巫就滚成一团了，但她被压在下面。这时阿斯兰从城堡里带来参战的动物都狂热地朝敌阵中冲去，小矮人用战斧，猎狗用牙齿，巨人用大棒（他的双脚也踩死了好多敌人），独角兽用角，半人马用剑和马蹄，大家都战斗起来。彼得那支累坏了的军队此时士气大振，新上阵的动物们怒吼着，敌人尖声喊叫逃窜着，树林里充满了喧嚣，杀声震天。

第十七章
追猎白鹿

这场战斗在他们赶到后没多久就结束了。大部分敌人在阿斯兰和他的伙伴第一次猛烈进攻时就被消灭了，那些还活着的看见女巫死了，不是投降就是逃走了。后来露西就看到彼得在跟阿斯兰握手了。她觉得彼得这会儿看上去很奇怪——他脸色苍白，神情严峻，看起来成熟多了。

“这都是爱德蒙的功劳，阿斯兰，”彼得说道，“要不是他，我们就要被打败了。女巫把我们的军队都变成石头排在两边，可什么也挡不住爱德蒙。他一路打倒了三个食人魔，一直打到她刚把一只豹子变成石像的地方。他靠近她时，非常机智地先用剑劈了她的魔杖，而不是鲁莽地直接向她进攻。这样女巫就没办法把他变成石像，而其他人正是犯了这个错误。要是我们原先损失没那么严重的话，她的魔杖一断，我们就能有转机了。爱德蒙受了重伤。我们必须去看看他。”

他们发现爱德蒙就在离战线不远的后方，由海狸太太负责照看着。他浑身是血，张着嘴，脸色惨白。

“快，露西。”阿斯兰说。

到了那时，露西才头一回记起作为圣诞礼物送给她的那瓶珍贵的灵药。她两只手抖得厉害，怎么也打不开瓶塞。不过好在最后她总算打开了，往她哥哥嘴里倒了几滴。

“这儿还有别的伤员。”阿斯兰说。可露西仍然焦急地望着爱德蒙苍白的脸，不知灵药起没起效果。

“是啊，我知道，”露西烦躁地说，“再等一下。”

“夏娃之女，”阿斯兰的声音严肃起来了，“别人也在生死关头，难道一定要更多的人为爱德蒙而死吗？”

“对不起，阿斯兰。”露西说着就站起来跟他一起走去。接下来半小时里他俩忙得不可开交——露西忙着照顾伤员，阿斯兰忙着把那些变成石头的动物变回原样。等她终于抽出身子回到爱德蒙那儿时，她发现他已经一个人站在那儿了，不仅伤口长好了，而且看上去比以前还要好。事实上，自从他上了那个讨厌的学校，第一学期他就开始变坏了。如今他已经恢复了原来的样子，敢于正视别人的脸了；阿斯兰也因此在战场上封他为骑士。

“他知道，”露西悄悄对苏珊说，“阿斯兰为他做出了什么牺牲吗？他知道狮王和女巫的真正协议吗？”

“嘘！他当然不知道。”苏珊说。

“我们难道不应该告诉他吗？”露西说。

“哦，不应该，”苏珊说，“那对他来说太可怕了。如果你是他，想想你会怎么想？”

“即便如此，我还是认为他应该知道。”露西说。不过这时有人打断了她们的对话。

那天晚上他们就在原地睡觉。我可不知道阿斯兰怎么供所有这么多人吃饭的；不过不管怎么说，大伙儿在八点钟左右全都坐在草地上吃了一顿美美的正式茶点。第二天他们开始沿着那条大河向东出发。第三天，大约在该吃茶点的时候，他们果然来到了入海口。

那天傍晚吃过茶点，四个孩子全都想方设法再到海滩上去，他们脱下鞋袜，光脚在沙滩上玩。不过第二天则严肃多了。那天，在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡的雄伟大厅里（屋顶是象牙制成的，西门全都挂满了孔雀毛，东门直通大海），阿斯兰当着大伙儿的面，就着号角声，庄严地为他们加冕。“彼得国王万岁！苏珊女王万岁！爱德蒙国王万岁！露西女王万岁！”在震耳欲聋的欢呼声中，阿斯兰领他们坐到四张宝座上。

“在纳尼亚，一日为王，终身为王。好好记住，亚当之子！好好记住，夏娃之女！”阿斯兰说。

与此同时，敞开的东门外传来了雄人鱼和雌人鱼的声音，它们游到靠近城堡台阶的地方，用歌声向国王和女王致敬。

四个孩子坐在宝座上，接受了权杖，他们对所有好友分别犒赏，表示敬意，包括半人羊图姆纳斯、海狸夫妇、巨人伦波布芬、豹子、善良的半人马和小矮人以及另一头狮子。那天晚上在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡举行了一场盛大的宴会，纵情歌舞，金光闪闪，觥筹交错，和城堡里的音乐相呼应的是海上传来的那种更奇妙甜美、更扣人心弦的音乐。

但就在这场欢庆中，阿斯兰悄悄地走了。两位国王和两位女王注意到他不在倒也没说什么。因为海狸先生曾经对他们有言在先。“他来去自由，”海狸先生说，“你们今天看见他，明天或许就看不到了。他不喜欢被拴住——当然他还有别的国家要去操心。这很正常。他会常常来的。只是你们不能逼他。要知道他性子野，不像驯化了的狮子。”

说到这里，你们也看得出来，这故事就快接近尾声了（不过还没有结束）。话说在两位国王和两位女王的悉心管理下，纳尼亚长治久安，百姓们安居乐业。一开始，他们大部分时间都用于搜寻白女巫军队的残党并消灭他们。长期以来确实也有潜伏在森林中偏僻地带的坏蛋作恶——到处捣乱、杀戮，这个月看见一个狼人，下个月又谣传出现了巫婆。不过到头来所有的祸害都被消灭了。他们制定了完善的法律，维持社会治安，保护树木不受滥砍滥伐，不强迫年轻的小矮人和森林之神上学，严禁人们多嘴多舌、多管闲事，鼓励愿意安居乐业的普通百姓安定下来。他们赶走了胆敢越过纳尼亚北部边境的凶猛巨人（这些巨人跟伦波布芬大不相同）。他们跟海外一些国家结成友好同盟，与那些国家相互进行国事访问。岁月流逝，他们自己也都长大成人，起了变化。彼得变成一个身材高大、胸脯厚实的男人，一个伟大的武士，人称至尊国王彼得。苏珊长成一个身材颀长、举止文雅的女人，一头黑发几乎拖到脚跟，海外一些国王开始纷纷派大使来向她求婚，人称温柔女王苏珊。爱德蒙比起彼得来显得更严肃、更沉默，善于掌握议会和主持审判，人称公正国王爱德蒙。至于露西，她一向无忧无虑，那一带所有的王子都想娶满头金发的她为王后，人们都称她勇敢女王露西。

他们就这样过着欢乐的日子。如果他们想起过他们在人世间的生活，也只是像人们想起一个梦似的。有一年，图姆纳斯（如今这个半人羊也到了中年，体型也开始发胖了）顺河下来给他们带信说，白鹿又出现在这一带了——如果你抓到白鹿，白鹿就可以实现你的愿望。于是两位国王和两位女王带上大臣们，还带着号角、猎犬，骑着马到森林西部去追踪白鹿。他们去了不久就看到了白鹿的身影。他们跟着白鹿飞快地翻山越岭，历尽艰险，折腾得所有人的马都累倒了，只剩这四位国王仍然紧追不舍。他们看见那只鹿钻进一片灌木丛中，坐骑进不去。于是彼得国王说（如今他们已执政多年，所以说话的口气也大不一样了），“各位王弟王妹，现在让我们下马，跟随那白鹿进入灌木丛吧；因为我生平从未追捕过比这更高贵的猎物了。”

“王兄，”其余三个说，“既然如此，我们就走吧。”

于是他们都下了马，把马拴在树上，继续向密林中走去。他们刚走进树林，苏珊女王就说：

“各位，这儿有一大奇观，我似乎看见了一棵铁做的树。”

“王姐，”爱德蒙国王说，“如果你好好看一看，就会看出这是一根铁柱，顶上装了一盏灯。”

“确实如此，真是个奇怪的东西，”彼得国王说，“把灯装在周围树木这么密、这么高的地方，就是灯亮着也照不见人啊。”

“王兄，”露西女王说，“很可能这根柱子和这盏灯装在这儿的时候，这地方只有小树，也可能树木太稀，也可能没树。因为这里是一片幼林，而铁柱却很古旧。”于是他们都站在那儿望着铁柱。后来爱德蒙国王说：

“不知道怎么回事，但柱子上的这盏灯对我有种奇怪的影响。在我脑子里闪过，以前我好像见过类似的东西，似乎是个梦，或者是梦中梦。”

“王弟，”他们大家都回应说，“我们也这样想。”

“而且，”露西女王说，“我脑子里老在想，只要我们走过这根柱子和灯，我们就会遇到奇怪的事情，或者命运就要发生很大的变化。”

“王妹，”爱德蒙国王说，“我也有这样的预感。”

“我也是，王弟。”彼得国王说。

“我也这么想，”苏珊女王说，“依我看，我们还是悄悄地回到拴马的地方，不要再追踪这只白鹿了。”

“王妹，”彼得国王说，“这一点我要请你原谅。因为我们四个自从在纳尼亚当了国王和女王以来，我们不论着手进行什么大事，诸如战争、审讯、比武、执法之类，都没有半途而废过；我们一向都是一旦着眼于目标，就必定贯彻到底的。”

“王姐，”露西女王说，“王兄说得对。而且我觉得，要是我们因为恐惧或预感就回去，放弃追捕那么高贵的野兽，似乎太不像话了。”

“我也这么想，”爱德蒙国王说，“我一心想发现这东西的意义，就是拿整个纳尼亚最珍贵的珠宝和所有的岛屿来换，我也决不回去。”

“那么以阿斯兰的名义起誓，”苏珊女王说，“如果你们都决定这样做，那么不管将遇上什么奇怪的事，我们还是坚持走下去吧。”

于是两位国王和两位女王走进了灌木丛。刚走了几步就全想起来了，他们看见的那东西叫做灯柱，再走了不到二十步，他们发现自己不是在树枝间摸索，而是在一堆大衣里行进。不一会儿他们全都从大衣柜的一扇门回到空房间里了，而且他们也不再是穿着猎装的国王和女王，而是穿着过去衣服的彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙和露西。时间还是他们躲进大衣柜的同一天，同一个时辰。玛卡蕾蒂太太和参观的游客还在走廊里讲话；不过幸好他们没到这空房间里来，因此孩子们也没被他们发现。

要不是他们觉得真的得对老教授说清他的大衣柜里丢失了四件大衣的原因，这个故事本来也就结束了。而老教授呢，是一个非常了不起的人，他并没教训他们别犯蠢或别再说谎话了，而是相信了整个故事。

“不，”他说，“我认为拿回那些大衣没什么好处。你们不要从那条路再回纳尼亚了。即使拿回来了那些大衣，也没多大用处。啊？什么？是啊，当然有一天你们会回纳尼亚去。在纳尼亚一朝为王，就终身为王嘛。不过你们不要再走同一条路线。别再想着上那儿去。真的，你们不去找它，它自会出现的。而且你们也别再多谈这件事，也别对任何外人说起，除非你们发现他们也有过类似的奇遇。什么？你们怎么知道？到时候你们准会知道的。碰上怪事，他们说的话——甚至他们的神情——都会告诉你们的。你们留心就可以了。天哪，那些学校是怎么教他们的啊？”

这就是魔衣柜奇遇的结尾了。不过如果教授说对了的话，纳尼亚奇遇才刚刚开始。

CHAPTER ONE
LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the airraids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs. Macready and three servants. He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy was a little afraid of him, and Edmund （who was the next youngest） wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls’room and they all talked it over.

“We’ve fallen on our feet and no mistake,” said Peter. “This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like.”

“I think he’s an old dear,” said Susan.

“Oh, come off it！” said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. “Don’t go on talking like that.”

“Like what?” said Susan. “and anyway, it’s time you were in bed.”

“Trying to talk like Mother,” said Edmund. “And who are you to say when I’m to go to bed? Go to bed yourself.”

“Hadn’t we all better go to bed?” said Lucy. “There’s sure to be a row if we’re heard talking here.”

“No there won’t,” said Peter. “I tell you this is the sort of house where no one’s going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won’t hear us. It’s about ten minutes’walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between.”

“What’s that noise?” said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.

“It’s only a bird, silly,” said Edmund.

“It’s an owl,” said Peter. “This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let’s go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There’ll be hawks.”

But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden.

“Of course it would be raining！” said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for them-a long, low room with two windows looking out in one direction and two in another.

“Do stop grumbling, Ed,” said Susan. “Ten to one it’ll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we’re pretty well off. There’s a wireless and lots of books.”

“Not for me,” said Peter. “I’m going to explore in the house.”

Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. They looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.

“Nothing there！” said Peter, and they all trooped out again-all except Lucy. She stayed behind because she thought it would be worth while trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily, and two moth-balls dropped out.

Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up-mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in — then two or three steps — always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe！” thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. “I wonder is that more mothballs?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.

Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. “Why, it is just like branches of trees！” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree trunks; she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out.（She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.） It seemed to be still daylight there. “I can always get back if anything goes wrong,” thought Lucy. She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood towards the other light.

In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming towards her. And soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.

He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat’s and instead of feet he had goat’s hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler round his neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands, as I have said, held the umbrella：in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels.

“Goodness gracious me！” exclaimed the Faun.

CHAPTER TWO
WHAT LUCY FOUND THERE

“Good, evening,” said Lucy. But the Faun was so busy picking up its parcels that at first it did not reply. When it had finished it made her a little bow.

“Good evening, good evening,” said the Faun. “Excuse me — I don’t want to be inquisitive — but should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?”

“My name’s Lucy,” said she, not quite understanding him.

“But you are — forgive me — you are what they call a girl?” said the Faun.

“Of course I’m a girl,” said Lucy.

“You are in fact Human?”

“Of course I’m human,” said Lucy, still a little puzzled.

“To be sure, to be sure,” said the Faun. “How stupid of me！ But I’ve never seen a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve before. I am delighted. That is to say—” and then it stopped as if it had been going to say something it had not intended but had remembered in time. “Delighted, delighted,” it went on. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tumnus.”

“I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy.

“And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve,” said Mr. Tumnus. “how you have come into Narnia?”

“Narnia? What’s that?” said Lucy.

“This is the land of Narnia,” said the Faun. “where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you — you have come from the wild woods of the west?”

“I — I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room,” said Lucy.

“Ah！” said Mr. Tumnus in a rather melancholy voice. “if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries. It is too late now.”

“But they aren’t countries at all,” said Lucy, almost laughing. “It’s only just back there — at least — I’m not sure. It is summer there.”

“Meanwhile,” said Mr. Tumnus. “it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy. “But I was wondering whether I ought to be getting back.”

“It’s only just round the corner,” said the Faun. “and there’ll be a roaring fire — and toast — and sardines — and cake.”

“Well, it’s very kind of you,” said Lucy. “But I shan’t be able to stay long.”

“If you will take my arm, Daughter of Eve,” said Mr. Tumnus. “I shall be able to hold the umbrella over both of us. That’s the way. Now — off we go.”

And so Lucy found herself walking through the wood arm in arm with this strange creature as if they had known one another all their lives.

They had not gone far before they came to a place where the ground became rough and there were rocks all about and little hills up and little hills down. At the bottom of one small valley Mr. Tumnus turned suddenly aside as if he were going to walk straight into an unusually large rock, but at the last moment Lucy found he was leading her into the entrance of a cave. As soon as they were inside she found herself blinking in the light of a wood fire. Then Mr. Tumnus stooped and took a flaming piece of wood out of the fire with a neat little pair of tongs, and lit a lamp. “Now we shan’t be long,” he said, and immediately put a kettle on.

Lucy thought she had never been in a nicer place. On one wall was a shelf full of books. Lucy looked at these while he was setting out the tea things. They had titles like The Life and Letters of Silenus or Nymphs and Their Ways or Men, Monks and Gamekeepers; a Study in Popular Legend or Is Man a Myth?

“Now, Daughter of Eve！” said the Faun.

And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake. And when Lucy was tired of eating, the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest. He told about summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end. “Not that it isn’t always winter now,” he added gloomily. Then to cheer himself up he took out from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of straw and began to play. And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time. It must have been hours later when she shook herself and said：

“Oh, Mr. Tumnus — I’m so sorry to stop you, and I do love that tune — but really, I must go home. I only meant to stay for a few minutes.”

“It’s no good now, you know,” said the Faun, laying down its flute and shaking its head at her very sorrowfully.

“No good?” said Lucy, jumping up and feeling rather frightened. “What do you mean? I’ve got to go home at once. The others will be wondering what has happened to me.”But a moment later she asked. “Mr. Tumnus！ Whatever is the matter?” for the Faun’s brown eyes had filled with tears and then the tears began trickling down its cheeks, and soon they were running off the end of its nose; and at last it covered its face with its hands and began to howl.

“Mr. Tumnus！” bawled Lucy in his ear, shaking him. “Do stop. Stop it at once！ You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a great big Faun like you. What on earth are you crying about?”

“Oh — oh — oh！” sobbed Mr. Tumnus. “I’m crying because I’m such a bad Faun.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad Faun at all,” said Lucy. “I think you are a very good Faun. You are the nicest Faun I’ve ever met.”

“Oh — oh — you wouldn’t say that if you knew,” replied Mr. Tumnus between his sobs. “No, I’m a bad Faun. I don’t suppose there ever was a worse Faun since the beginning of the world.”

“But what have you done?” asked Lucy.

“My old father, now,” said Mr. Tumnus. “that’s his picture over the mantelpiece. He would never have done a thing like this.”

“A thing like what?” said Lucy.

“Like what I’ve done,” said the Faun. “Taken service under the White Witch. That’s what I am. I’m in the pay of the White Witch.”

“The White Witch? Who is she?”

“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that！”

“How awful！” said Lucy. “But what does she pay you for?”

“That’s the worst of it,” said Mr. Tumnus with a deep groan. “I’m a kidnapper for her, that’s what I am. Look at me, Daughter of Eve. Would you believe that I’m the sort of Faun to meet a poor innocent child in the wood, one that had never done me any harm, and pretend to be friendly with it, and invite it home to my cave, all for the sake of lulling it asleep and then handing it over to the White Witch?”

“No,” said Lucy. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything of the sort.”

“But I have,” said the Faun.

“Well,” said Lucy rather slowly （for she wanted to be truthful and yet not be too hard on him）, “well, that was pretty bad. But you’re so sorry for it that I’m sure you will never do it again.”

“Daughter of Eve, don’t you understand?” said the Faun. “It isn’t something I have done. I’m doing it now, this very moment.”

“What do you mean?” cried Lucy, turning very white.

“You are the child,” said Tumnus. “I had orders from the White Witch that if ever I saw a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve in the wood, I was to catch them and hand them over to her. And you are the first I’ve ever met. And I’ve pretended to be your friend and asked you to tea, and all the time I’ve been meaning to wait till you were asleep and then go and tell Her.”

“Oh, but you won’t, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy. “You won’t, will you? Indeed, indeed you really mustn’t.”

“And if I don’t,” said he, beginning to cry again. “she’s sure to find out. And she’ll have my tail cut off and my horns sawn off, and my beard plucked out, and she’ll wave her wand over my beautiful clove hoofs and turn them into horrid solid hoofs like wretched horse’s. And if she is extra and specially angry she’ll turn me into stone and I shall be only a statue of a Faun in her horrible house until the four thrones at Cair Paravel are filled — and goodness knows when that will happen, or whether it will ever happen at all.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy. “But please let me go home.”

“Of course I will,” said the Faun. “Of course I’ve got to. I see that now. I hadn’t known what Humans were like before I met you. Of course I can’t give you up to the Witch; not now that I know you. But we must be off at once. I’ll see you back to the lamppost. I suppose you can find your own way from there back to Spare Oom and War Drobe?”

“I’m sure I can,” said Lucy.

“We must go as quietly as we can,” said Mr. Tumnus. “The whole wood is full of her spies. Even some of the trees are on her side.”

They both got up and left the tea things on the table, and Mr. Tumnus once more put up his umbrella and gave Lucy his arm, and they went out into the snow. The journey back was not at all like the journey to the Faun’s cave; they stole along as quickly as they could, without speaking a word, and Mr. Tumnus kept to the darkest places. Lucy was relieved when they reached the lamp-post again.

“Do you know your way from here, Daughter of Eve?” said Tumnus.

Lucy looked very hard between the trees and could just see in the distance a patch of light that looked like daylight. “Yes,” she said. “I can see the wardrobe door.”

“Then be off home as quick as you can,” said the Faun. “and — c-can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?”

“Why, of course I can,” said Lucy, shaking him heartily by the hand. “And I do hope you won’t get into dreadful trouble on my account.”

“Farewell, Daughter of Eve,” said he.

Lucy ran towards the far-off patch of daylight as quickly as her legs would carry her. And presently instead of rough branch brushing past her she felt coats, and instead of crunching snow under her feet she felt wooden board and all at once she found herself jumping out of the wardrobe into the same empty room from which the whole adventure had started. She shut the wardrobe door tightly behind her and looked around, panting for breath. It was still raining and she could hear the voices of the others in the passage.

“I’m here,” she shouted. “I’m here. I’ve come back, I’m all right.”

CHAPTER THREE
EDMUND AND THE WARDROBE

Lucy ran out of the empty room into the passage and found the other three.

“It’s all right,” she repeated. “I’ve come back.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Lucy?” asked Susan.

“Why? said Lucy in amazement. “haven’t you all been wondering where I was?”

“So you’ve been hiding, have you?” said Peter. “Poor old Lu, hiding and nobody noticed！ You’ll have to hide longer than that if you want people to start looking for you.”

“But I’ve been away for hours and hours,” said Lucy.

The others all stared at one another.

“Batty！” said Edmund, tapping his head. “Quite batty.”

“What do you mean, Lu?” asked Peter.

“What I said,” answered Lucy. “It was just after breakfast when I went into the wardrobe, and I’ve been away for hours and hours, and had tea, and all sorts of things have happened.”

“Don’t be silly, Lucy,” said Susan. “We’ve only just come out of that room a moment ago, and you were there then.”

“She’s not being silly at all,” said Peter. “she’s just making up a story for fun, aren’t you, Lu? And why shouldn’t she?”

“No, Peter, I’m not,” she said. “It’s — it’s a magic wardrobe. There’s a wood inside it, and it’s snowing, and there’s a Faun and a Witch and it’s called Narnia; come and see.”

The others did not know what to think, but Lucy was so excited that they all went back with her into the room. She rushed ahead of them, flung open the door of the wardrobe and cried. “Now！ go in and see for yourselves.”

“Why, you goose,” said Susan, putting her head inside and pulling the fur coats apart. “it’s just an ordinary wardrobe; look！ there’s the back of it.”

Then everyone looked in and pulled the coats apart; and they all saw — Lucy herself saw — a perfectly ordinary wardrobe. There was no wood and no snow, only the back of the wardrobe, with hooks on it. Peter went in and rapped his knuckles on it to make sure that it was solid.

“A jolly good hoax, Lu,” he said as he came out again. “you have really taken us in, I must admit. We half believed you.”

“But it wasn’t a hoax at all,” said Lucy. “really and truly. It was all different a moment ago. Honestly it was. I promise.”

“Come, Lu,” said Peter. “that’s going a bit far. You’ve had your joke. Hadn’t you better drop it now?”

Lucy grew very red in the face and tried to say something, though she hardly knew what she was trying to say, and burst into tears.

For the next few days she was very miserable. She could have made it up with the others quite easily at any moment if she could have brought herself to say that the whole thing was only a story made up for fun. But Lucy was a very truthful girl and she knew that she was really in the right; and she could not bring herself to say this. The others who thought she was telling a lie, and a silly lie too, made her very unhappy. The two elder ones did this without meaning to do it, but Edmund could be spiteful, and on this occasion he was spiteful. He sneered and jeered at Lucy and kept on asking her if she’d found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house. What made it worse was that these days ought to have been delightful. The weather was fine and they were out of doors from morning to night, bathing, fishing, climbing trees, and lying in the heather. But Lucy could not properly enjoy any of it. And so things went on until the next wet day.

That day, when it came to the afternoon and there was still no sign of a break in the weather, they decided to play hide-and-seek. Susan wa. “It” and as soon as the others scattered to hide, Lucy went to the room where the wardrobe was. She did not mean to hide in the wardrobe, because she knew that would only set the others talking again about the whole wretched business. But she did want to have one more look inside it; for by this time she was beginning to wonder herself whether Narnia and the Faun had not been a dream. The house was so large and complicated and full of hiding-places that she thought she would have time to have one look into the wardrobe and then hide somewhere else. But as soon as she reached it she heard steps in the passage outside, and then there was nothing for it but to jump into the wardrobe and hold the door closed behind her. She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.

Now the steps she had heard were those of Edmund; and he came into the room just in time to see Lucy vanishing into the wardrobe. He at once decided to get into it himself — not because he thought it a particularly good place to hide but because he wanted to go on teasing her about her imaginary country. He opened the door. There were the coats hanging up as usual, and a smell of mothballs, and darkness and silence, and no sign of Lucy. “She thinks I’m Susan come to catch her,” said Edmund to himself. “and so she’s keeping very quiet in at the back.”He jumped in and shut the door, forgetting what a very foolish thing this is to do. Then he began feeling about for Lucy in the dark. He had expected to find her in a few seconds and was very surprised when he did not. He decided to open the door again and let in some light. But he could not find the door either. He didn’t like this at all and began groping wildly in every direction; he even shouted out. “Lucy！ Lu！ Where are you? I know you’re here.”

There was no answer and Edmund noticed that his own voice had a curious sound — not the sound you expect in a cupboard, but a kind of open — air sound. He also noticed that he was unexpectedly cold; and then he saw a light.

“Thank goodness,” said Edmund. “the door must have swung open of its own accord.”He forgot all about Lucy and went towards the light, which he thought was the open door of the wardrobe. But instead of finding himself stepping out into the spare room he found himself stepping out from the shadow of some thick dark fir trees into an open place in the middle of a wood.

There was crisp, dry snow under his feet and more snow lying on the branches of the trees. Overhead there was pale blue sky, the sort of sky one sees on a fine winter day in the morning. Straight ahead of him he saw between the tree-trunks the sun, just rising, very red and clear. Everything was perfectly still, as if he were the only living creature in that country. There was not even a robin or a squirrel among the trees, and the wood stretched as far as he could see in every direction. He shivered.

He now remembered that he had been looking for Lucy; and also how unpleasant he had been to her about he. “imaginary country” which now turned out not to have been imaginary at all. He thought that she must be somewhere quite close and so he shouted. “Lucy！ Lucy！ I’m here too — Edmund.”

There was no answer.

“She’s angry about all the things I’ve been saying lately,” thought Edmund. And though he did not like to admit that he had been wrong, he also did not much like being alone in this strange, cold, quiet place; so he shouted again.

“I say, Lu！ I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I see now you were right all along. Do come out. Make it Pax.”

Still there was no answer.

“Just like a girl,” said Edmund to himself. “sulking somewhere, and won’t accept an apology.”He looked round him again and decided he did not much like this place, and had almost made up his mind to go home, when he heard, very far off in the wood, a sound of bells. He listened and the sound came nearer and nearer and at last there swept into sight a sledge drawn by two reindeer.

The reindeer were about the size of Shetland ponies and their hair was so white that even the snow hardly looked white compared with them; their branching horns were gilded and shone like something on fire when the sunrise caught them. Their harness was of scarlet leather and covered with bells. On the sledge, driving the reindeer, sat a fat dwarf who would have been about three feet high if he had been standing. He was dressed in polar bear’s fur and on his head he wore a red hood with a long gold tassel hanging down from its point; his huge beard covered his knees and served him instead of a rug. But behind him, on a much higher seat in the middle of the sledge sat a very different person — a great lady, taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen. She also was covered in white fur up to her throat and held a long straight golden wand in her right hand and wore a golden crown on her head. Her face was white — not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing-sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.

The sledge was a fine sight as it came sweeping towards Edmund with the bells jingling and the dwarf cracking his whip and the snow flying up on each side of it.

“Stop！” said the Lady, and the dwarf pulled the reindeer up so sharp that they almost sat down. Then they recovered themselves and stood champing their bits and blowing. In the frosty air the breath coming out of their nostrils looked like smoke.

“And what, pray, are you?” said the Lady, looking hard at Edmund.

“I’m — I’m — my name’s Edmund,” said Edmund rather awkwardly. He did not like the way she looked at him.

The Lady frowned. “Is that how you address a Queen?” she asked, looking sterner than ever.

“I beg your pardon, your Majesty, I didn’t know,” said Edmund.

“Not know the Queen of Narnia?” cried she. “Ha！ You shall know us better hereafter. But I repeat — what are you?”

“Please, your Majesty,” said Edmund. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m at school — at least I was — it’s the holidays now.”

CHAPTER FOUR
TURKISH DELIGHT

“But what are you?” said the Queen again. “Are you a great overgrown dwarf that has cut off its beard?”

“No, your Majesty,” said Edmund. “I never had a beard, I’m a boy.”

“A boy！” said she. “Do you mean you are a Son of Adam?”

Edmund stood still, saying nothing. He was too confused by this time to understand what the question meant.

“I see you are an idiot, whatever else you may be,” said the Queen. “Answer me, once and for all, or I shall lose my patience. Are you human?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” said Edmund.

“And how, pray, did you come to enter my dominions?”

“Please, your Majesty, I came in through a wardrobe.”

“A wardrobe? What do you mean?”

“I — I opened a door and just found myself here, your Majesty,” said Edmund.

“Ha！” said the Queen, speaking more to herself than to him. “A door. A door from the world of men！ I have heard of such things. This may wreck all. But he is only one, and he is easily dealt with.”As she spoke these words she rose from her seat and looked Edmund full in the face, her eyes flaming; at the same moment she raised her wand. Edmund felt sure that she was going to do something dreadful but he seemed unable to move. Then, just as he gave himself up for lost, she appeared to change her mind.

“My poor child,” she said in quite a different voice. “how cold you look！ Come and sit with me here on the sledge and I will put my mantle round you and we will talk.”

Edmund did not like this arrangement at all but he dared not disobey; he stepped on to the sledge and sat at her feet, and she put a fold of her fur mantle round him and tucked it well in.

“Perhaps something hot to drink?” said the Queen. “Should you like that?”

“Yes please, your Majesty,” said Edmund, whose teeth were chattering.

The Queen took from somewhere among her wrappings a very small bottle which looked as if it were made of copper. Then, holding out her arm, she let one drop fall from it on the snow beside the sledge. Edmund saw the drop for a second in mid-air, shining like a diamond. But the moment it touched the snow there was a hissing sound and there stood a jewelled cup full of something that steamed. The dwarf immediately took this and handed it to Edmund with a bow and a smile; not a very nice smile. Edmund felt much better as he began to sip the hot drink. It was something he had never tasted before, very sweet and foamy and creamy, and it warmed him right down to his toes.

“It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating,” said the Queen presently. “What would you like best to eat?”

“Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty,” said Edmund.

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Edmund was quite warm now, and very comfortable.

While he was eating the Queen kept asking him questions. At first Edmund tried to remember that it is rude to speak with one’s mouth full, but soon he forgot about this and thought only of trying to shovel down as much Turkish Delight as he could, and the more he ate the more he wanted to eat, and he never asked himself why the Queen should be so inquisitive. She got him to tell her that he had one brother and two sisters, and that one of his sisters had already been in Narnia and had met a Faun there, and that no one except himself and his brother and his sisters knew anything about Narnia. She seemed especially interested in the fact that there were four of them, and kept on coming back to it. “You are sure there are just four of you?” she asked. “Two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve, neither more nor less?” and Edmund, with his mouth full of Turkish Delight, kept on saying. “Yes, I told you that before.”

At last the Turkish Delight was all finished and Edmund was looking very hard at the empty box and wishing that she would ask him whether he would like some more. Probably the Queen knew quite well what he was thinking; for she knew, though Edmund did not, that this was enchanted Turkish Delight and that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves. But she did not offer him any more. Instead, she said to him,

“Son of Adam, I should so much like to see your brother and your two sisters. Will you bring them to see me?”

“I’ll try,” said Edmund, still looking at the empty box.

“Because, if you did come again — bringing them with you of course — I’d be able to give you some more Turkish Delight. I can’t do it now, the magic will only work once. In my own house it would be another matter.”

“Why can’t we go to your house now?” said Edmund. When he had first got onto the sledge he had been afraid that she might drive away with him to some unknown place from which he would not be able to get back; but he had forgotten about that fear now.

“It is a lovely place, my house,” said the Queen. “I am sure you would like it. There are whole rooms full of Turkish Delight, and what’s more, I have no children of my own. I want a nice boy whom I could bring up as a Prince and who would be King of Narnia when I am gone. While he was Prince he would wear a gold crown and eat Turkish Delight all day long; and you are much the cleverest and handsomest young man I’ve ever met. I think I would like to make you the Prince — some day, when you bring the others to visit me.”

“Why not now?” said Edmund. His face had become very red and his mouth and fingers were sticky. He did not look either clever or handsome, whatever the Queen might say.

“Oh, but if I took you there now,” said she. “I shouldn’t see your brother and your sisters. I very much want to know your charming relations. You are to be the Prince and — later on — the King; that is understood. But you must have courtiers and nobles. I will make your brother a Duke and your sisters Duchesses.”

“There’s nothing special about them,” said Edmund. “and, anyway, I could always bring them some other time.”

“Ah, but once you were in my house,” said the Queen. “you might forget all about thern. You would be enjoying yourself so much that you wouldn’t want the bother of going to fetch them. No. You must go back to your own country now and come to me another day, with them, you understand. It is no good coming without them.”

“But I don’t even know the way back to my own country,” pleaded Edmund.

“That’s easy,” answered the Queen. “Do you see that lamp?” She pointed with her wand and Edmund turned and saw the same lamp-post under which Lucy had met the Faun. “Straight on, beyond that, is the way to the World of Men. And now look the other way”—here she pointed in the opposite direction— “and tell me if you can see two little hills rising above the trees.”

“I think I can,” said Edmund.

“Well, my house is between those two hills. So next time you come you have only to find the lamp-post and look for those two hills and walk through the wood till you reach my house. But remember — you must bring the others with you. I might have to be very angry with you if you came alone.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Edmund.

“And, by the way,” said the Queen. “you needn’t tell them about me. It would be fun to keep it a secret between us two, wouldn’t it? Make it a surprise for them. Just bring them along to the two hills — a clever boy like you will easily think of some excuse for doing that — and when you come to my house you could just say‘Let’s see who lives here’or something like that. I am sure that would be best—”

“Please, please,” said Edmund suddenly. “please couldn’t I have just one piece of Turkish Delight to eat on the way home?”

“No, no,” said the Queen with a laugh. “you must wait till next time.”While she spoke, she signalled to the dwarf to drive on, but as the sledge swept away out of sight, the Queen waved to Edmund, calling out. “Next time！ Next time！ Don’t forget. Come soon.”

Edmund was still staring after the sledge when he heard someone calling his own name, and looking round he saw Lucy coming towards him from another part of the wood.

“Oh, Edmund！” she cried. “So you’ve got in too！ Isn’t it wonderful, and now—”

“All right,” said Edmund. “I see you were right and it is a magic wardrobe after all. I’ll say I’m sorry if you like. But where on earth have you been all this time? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“If I’d known you had got in I’d have waited for you,” said Lucy, who was too happy and excited to notice how snappishly Edmund spoke or how flushed and strange his face was. “I’ve been having lunch with dear Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, and he’s very well and the White Witch has done nothing to him for letting me go, so he thinks she can’t have found out and perhaps everything is going to be all right after all.”

“The White Witch?” said Edmund. “who’s she?”

“She is a perfectly terrible person,” said Lucy. “She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be queen at all, and all the Fauns and Dryads and Naiads and Dwarfs and Animals — at least all the good ones — simply hate her. And she can turn people into stone and do all kinds of horrible things. And she has made a magic so that it is always winter in Narnia — always winter, but it never gets to Christmas. And she drives about on a sledge, drawn by reindeer, with her wand in her hand and a crown on her head.”

Edmund was already feeling uncomfortable from having eaten too many sweets, and when he heard that the Lady he had made friends with was a dangerous witch he felt even more uncomfortable. But he still wanted to taste that Turkish Delight again more than he wanted anything else.

“Who told you all that stuff about the White Witch?” he asked.

“Mr. Tumnus, the Faun,” said Lucy.

“You can’t always believe what Fauns say,” said Edmund, trying to sound as if he knew far more about them than Lucy.

“Who said so?” asked Lucy.

“Everyone knows it,” said Edmund. “ask anybody you like. But it’s pretty poor sport standing here in the snow. Let’s go home.”

“Yes, let’s,” said Lucy. “Oh, Edmund, I am glad you’ve got in too. The others will have to believe in Narnia now that both of us have been there. What fun it will be！”

But Edmund secretly thought that it would not be as good fun for him as for her. He would have to admit that Lucy had been right, before all the others, and he felt sure the others would all be on the side of the Fauns and the animals; but he was already more than half on the side of the Witch. He did not know what he would say, or how he would keep his secret once they were all talking about Narnia.

By this time they had walked a good way. Then suddenly they felt coats around them instead of branches and next moment they were both standing outside the wardrobe in the empty room.

“I say,” said Lucy. “you do look awful, Edmund. Don’t you feel well?”

“I’m all right,” said Edmund, but this was not true. He was feeling very sick.

“Come on then,” said Lucy. “let’s find the others. What a lot we shall have to tell them！ And what wonderful adventures we shall have now that we’re all in it together.”

CHAPTER FIVE
BACK ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR

Because the game of hide-and-seek was still going on, it took Edmund and Lucy some time to find the others. But when at last they were all together （which happened in the long room, where the suit of armour was） Lucy burst out：

“Peter！ Susan！ It’s all true. Edmund has seen it too. There is a country you can get to through the wardrobe. Edmund and I both got in. We met one another in there, in the wood. Go on, Edmund; tell them all about it.”

“What’s all this about, Ed?” said Peter.

And now we come to one of the nastiest things in this story. Up to that moment Edmund had been feeling sick, and sulky, and annoyed with Lucy for being right, but he hadn’t made up his mind what to do. When Peter suddenly asked him the question he decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.

“Tell us, Ed,” said Susan.

And Edmund gave a very superior look as if he were far older than Lucy （there was really only a year’s difference） and then a little snigger and said. “Oh, yes, Lucy and I have been playing — pretending that all her story about a country in the wardrobe is true. Just for fun, of course. There’s nothing there really.”

Poor Lucy gave Edmund one look and rushed out of the room.

Edmund, who was becoming a nastier person every minute, thought that he had scored a great success, and went on at once to say. “There she goes again. What’s the matter with her? That’s the worst of young kids, they always—”

“Look here,” said Peter, turning on him savagely. “shut up！ You’ve been perfectly beastly to Lu ever since she started this nonsense about the wardrobe, and now you go playing games with her about it and setting her off again. I believe you did it simply out of spite.”

“But it’s all nonsense,” said Edmund, very taken aback.

“Of course it’s all nonsense,” said Peter. “that’s just the point. Lu was perfectly all right when we left home, but since we’ve been down here she seems to be either going queer in the head or else turning into a most frightful liar. But whichever it is, what good do you think you’ll do by jeering and nagging at her one day and encouraging her the next?”

“I thought — I thought,” said Edmund; but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You didn’t think anything at all,” said Peter. “it’s just spite. You’ve always liked being beastly to anyone smaller than yourself; we’ve seen that at school before now.”

“Do stop it,” said Susan. “it won’t make things any better having a row between you two. Let’s go and find Lucy.”

It was not surprising that when they found Lucy, a good deal later, everyone could see that she had been crying. Nothing they could say to her made any difference. She stuck to her story and said：

“I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you say. You can tell the Professor or you can write to Mother or you can do anything you like. I know I’ve met a Faun in there and — I wish I’d stayed there and you are all beasts, beasts.”

It was an unpleasant evening. Lucy was miserable and Edmund was beginning to feel that his plan wasn’t working as well as he had expected. The two older ones were really beginning to think that Lucy was out of her mind. They stood in the passage talking about it in whispers long after she had gone to bed.

The result was the next morning they decided that they really would go and tell the whole thing to the Professor. “He’ll write to Father if he thinks there is really something wrong with Lu,” said Peter. “it’s getting beyond us.”So they went and knocked at the study door, and the Professor sai. “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected：

“How do you know,” he asked. “that your sister’s story is not true?”

“Oh, but—” began Susan, and then stopped. Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said. “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”

“That is a point,” said the Professor. “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration. For instance — if you will excuse me for asking the question — does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?”

“That’s just the funny thing about it, sir,” said Peter. “Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time.”

“And what do you think, my dear?” said the Professor, turning to Susan.

“Well,” said Susan. “in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true — all this about the wood and the Faun.”

“That is more than I know,” said the Professor. “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”

“We were afraid it mightn’t even be lying,” said Susan. “we thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.”

“Madness, you mean?” said the Professor quite coolly. “Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.”

“But then,” said Susan, and stopped. She had never dreamed that a grown-up would talk like the Professor and didn’t know what to think.

“Logic！” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

Susan looked at him very hard and was quite sure from the expression ont his face that he was not making fun of them.

“But how could it be true, sir?” said Peter.

“Why do you say that?” asked the Professor.

“Well, for one thing,” said Peter. “if it was true why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend there was.”

“What has that to do with it?” said the Professor.

“Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”

“Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter didn’t know quite what to say.

“But there was no time,” said Susan. “Lucy had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than a minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours.”

“That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really a door in this house that leads to some other world （and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it）—if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at au surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stay there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”

“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter. “that there could be other worlds — all over the place, just round the corner — like that?”

“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself. “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”

“But what are we to do?” said Susan. She felt that the conversation was beginning to get off the point.

“My dear young lady,” said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp expression at both of them. “there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying.”

“What’s that?” said Susan.

“We might all try minding our own business,” said he. And that was the end of that conversation.

After this things were a good deal better for Lucy. Peter saw to it that Edmund stopped jeering at her, and neither she nor anyone else felt inclined to talk about the wardrobe at all. It had become a rather alarming subject. And so for a time it looked as if all the adventures were coming to an end; but that was not to be.

This house of the Professor’s — which even he knew so little about — was so old and famous that people from all over England used to come and ask permission to see over it. It was the sort of house that is mentioned in guide books and even in histories; and well it might be, for all manner of stories were told about it, some of them even stranger than the one I am telling you now. And when parties of sightseers arrived and asked to see the house, the Professor always gave them permission, and Mrs. Macready, the housekeeper, showed them round, telling them about the pictures and the armour, and the rare books in the library. Mrs. Macready was not fond of children, and did not like to be interrupted when she was telling visitors all the things she knew. She had said to Susan and Peter almost on the first morning （along with a good many other instructions）, “And please remember you’re to keep out of the way whenever I’m taking a party over the house.”

“Just as if any of us would want to waste half the morning trailing round with a crowd of strange grown-ups！” said Edmund, and the other three thought the same. That was how the adventures began for the second time.

A few mornings later Peter and Edmund were looking at the suit of armour and wondering if they could take it to bits when the two girls rushed into the room and said. “Look out！ Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her.”

“Sharp’s the word,” said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the Library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of them, and realized that Mrs. Macready must be bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs — instead of up the front stairs as they had expected. And after that — whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs. Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia — they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere, until at last Susan said. “Oh bother those trippers！ Here — let’s get into the Wardrobe Room till they’ve passed. No one will follow us in there.”But the moment they were inside they heard the voices in the passage — and then someone fumbling at the door — and then they saw the handle turning.

“Quick！” said Peter. “there’s nowhere else,” and flung open the wardrobe. All four of them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.

CHAPTER SIX
INTO THE FOREST

“I wish the Macready would hurry up and take all these people away,” said Susan presently. “I’m getting horribly cramped.”

“And what a filthy smell of camphor！” said Edmund.

“I expect the pockets of these coats are full of it,” said Susan. “to keep away the moths.”

“There’s something sticking into my back,” said Peter.

“And isn’t it cold?” said Susan.

“Now that you mention it, it is cold,” said Peter. “and hang it all, it’s wet too. What’s the matter with this place? I’m sitting on something wet. It’s getting wetter every minute.”He struggled to his feet.

“Let’s get out,” said Edmund. “they’ve gone.”

“O-o-oh！” said Susan suddenly, and everyone asked her what was the matter.

“I’m sitting against a tree,” said Susan. “and look！ It’s getting light-over there.”

“By Jove, you’re right,” said Peter. “and look there — and there. It’s trees all round. And this wet stuff is snow. Why, I do believe we’ve got into Lucy’s wood after all.”

And now there was no mistaking it, and all four children stood blinking in the daylight of a winter day. Behind them were coats hanging on pegs, in front of them were snow-covered trees.

Peter turned at once to Lucy. “I apologize for not believing you,” he said. “I’m sorry. Will you shake hands?”

“Of course,” said Lucy, and did.

“And now,” said Susan. “what do we do next?”

“Do?” said Peter. “why, go and explore the wood, of course.”

“I say,” began Edmund presently. “oughtn’t we to be bearing a bit more to the left, that is, if we are aiming for the lamp-post?” He had forgotten for the moment that he must pretend never to have been in the wood before. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized that he had given himself away. Everyone stopped; everyone stared at him. Peter whistled.

“So you really were here,” he said. “that time Lu said she’d met you in here — and you made out she was telling lies.”

There was a dead silence. “Well, of all the poisonous little beasts—” said Peter, and shrugged his shoulders and said no more. There seemed, indeed, no more to say, and presently the four resumed their journey; but Edmund was saying to himself. “I’ll pay you all out for this, you pack of stuck-up, self-satisfied prigs.”

“Where are we going anyway?” said Susan, chiefly for the sake of changing the subject.

“I think Lu ought to be the leader,” said Peter. “goodness knows she deserves it. Where will you take us, Lu?”

“What about going to see Mr. Tumnus?” said Lucy. “He’s the nice Faun I told you about.”

Everyone agreed to this and off they went walking briskly and stamping their feet. Lucy proved a good leader. At first she wondered whether she would be able to find the way, but she recognized an odd-looking tree on one place and a stump in another and brought them on to where the ground became uneven and into the little valley and at last to the very door of Mr. Tumnus’s cave. But there a terrible surprise awaited them.

The door had been wrenched off its hinges and broken to bits. Inside, the cave was dark and cold and had the damp feel and smell of a place that had not been lived in for several days. Snow had drifted in from the doorway and was heaped on the floor, mixed with something black, which turned out to be the charred sticks and ashes from the fire. Someone had apparently flung it about the room and then stamped it out. The crockery lay smashed on the floor and the picture of the Faun’s father had been slashed into shreds with a knife.

“This is a pretty good wash-out,” said Edmund. “not much good coming here.”

“What is this?” said Peter, stooping down. He had just noticed a piece of paper which had been nailed through the carpet to the floor.

“Is there anything written on it?” asked Susan.

“Yes, I think there is,” answered Peter. “but I can’t read it in this light. Let’s get out into the open air.”

They all went out in the daylight and crowded round Peter as he read out the following words：

The former occupant of these premises, the Faun Tumnus, is under arrest and awaiting his trial on a charge of High Treason against her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc., also of comforting her said Majesty’s enemies, harbouring spies and fraternizing with Humans.

signed MAUGRIM, Captain of the Secret Police,

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

The children stared at each other.

“I don’t know that I’m going to like this place after all,” said Susan.

“Who is this Queen, Lu?” said Peter. “Do you know anything about her?”

“She isn’t a real queen at all,” answered Lucy. “she’s a horrible witch, the White Witch. Everyone — all the wood people — hate her. She has made an enchantment over the whole country so that it is always winter here and never Christmas.”

“I — I wonder if there’s any point in going on,” said Susan. “I mean, it doesn’t seem particularly safe here and it looks as if it won’t be much fun either. And it’s getting colder every minute, and we’ve brought nothing to eat. What about just going home?”

“Oh, but we can’t, we can’t,” said Lucy suddenly. “don’t you see? We can’t just go home, not after this. It is all on my account that the poor Faun has got into this trouble. He hid me from the Witch and showed me the way back. That’s what it means by comforting the Queen’s enemies and fraternizing with Humans. We simply must try to rescue him.”

“A lot we could do！ said Edmund. “when we haven’t even got anything to eat！”

“Shut up — you！” said Peter, who was still very angry with Edmund. “What do you think, Susan?”

“I’ve a horrid feeling that Lu is right,” said Susan. “I don’t want to go a step further and I wish we’d never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name-is — I mean the Faun.”

“That’s what I feel too,” said Peter. “I’m worried about having no food with us. I’d vote for going back and getting something from the larder, only there doesn’t seem to be any certainty of getting into this country again when once you’ve got out of it. I think we’ll have to go on.”

“So do I,” said both the girls.

“If only we knew where the poor chap was imprisoned！” said Peter.

They were all still wondering what to do next, when Lucy said. “Look！ There’s a robin, with such a red breast. It’s the first bird I’ve seen here. I say！—I wonder can birds talk in Narnia? It almost looks as if it wanted to say something to us.”Then she turned to the Robin and said. “Please, can you tell us where Tumnus the Faun has been taken to?” As she said this she took a step towards the bird. It at once flew away but only as far as to the next tree. There it perched and looked at them very hard as if it understood all they had been saying. Almost without noticing that they had done so, the four children went a step or two nearer to it. At this the Robin flew away again to the next tree and once more looked at them very hard.

“Do you know,” said Lucy. “I really believe he means us to follow him.”

“I’ve an idea he does,” said Susan. “What do you think, Peter?”

“Well, we might as well try it,” answered Peter.

The Robin appeared to understand the matter thoroughly. It kept going from tree to tree, always a few yards ahead of them, but always so near that they could easily follow it. In this way it led them on, slightly downhill. Wherever the Robin alighted a little shower of snow would fall off the branch. Presently the clouds parted overhead and the winter sun came out and the snow all around them grew dazzlingly bright. They had been travelling in this way for about half an hour, with the two girls in front, when Edmund said to Peter. “if you’re not still too high and mighty to talk to me, I’ve something to say which you’d better listen to.”

“We’re following a guide we know nothing about. How do we know which side that bird is on? Why shouldn’t it be leading us into a trap?”

“That’s a nasty idea. Still — a robin, you know. They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read. I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side.”

“It if comes to that, which is the right side? How do we know that the Fauns are in the right and the Queen （yes, I know we’ve been told she’s a witch） is in the wrong? We don’t really know anything about either.”

“The Faun saved Lucy.”

“He said he did. But how do we know? And there’s another thing too. Has anyone the least idea of the way home from here?”

“Great Scott！” said Peter. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And no chance of dinner either,” said Edmund.

CHAPTER SEVEN
A DAY WITH THE BEAVERS

While the two boys were whispering behind, both the girls suddenly crie. “Oh！” and stopped.

“The robin！” cried Lucy. “the robin. It’s flown away.”And so it had — right out of sight.

“And now what are we to do?” said Edmund, giving Peter a look which was as much as to sa. “What did I tell you?”

“Sh！ Look！” said Susan.

“What?” said Peter.

“There’s something moving among the trees over there to the left.”

They all stared as hard as they could, and no one felt very comfortable.

“There it goes again,” said Susan presently.

“I saw it that time too,” said Peter. “It’s still there. It’s just gone behind that big tree.”

“What is it?” asked Lucy, trying very hard not to sound nervous.

“Whatever it is,” said Peter. “it’s dodging us. It’s something that doesn’t want to be seen.”

“Let’s go home,” said Susan. And then, though nobody said it out loud, everyone suddenly realized the same fact that Edmund had whispered to Peter at the end of the last chapter. They were lost.

“What’s it like?” said Lucy.

“It’s — it’s a kind of animal,” said Susan; and then. “Look！ Look！ Quick！ There it is.”

They all saw it this time, a whiskered furry face which had looked out at them from behind a tree. But this time it didn’t immediately draw back. Instead, the animal put its paw against its mouth just as humans put their finger on their lips when they are signalling to you to be quiet. Then it disappeared again. The children, all stood holding their breath.

“I know what it is,” said Peter. “it’s a beaver. I saw the tail.”

“It wants us to go to it,” said Susan. “and it is warning us not to make a noise.”

“I know,” said Peter. “The question is, are we to go to it or not? What do you think, Lu?”

“I think it’s a nice beaver,” said Lucy.

“Yes, but how do we know?” said Edmund.

“Shan’t we have to risk it?” said Susan. “I mean, it’s no good just standing here and I feel I want some dinner.”

At this moment the Beaver again popped its head out from behind the tree and beckoned earnestly to them.

“Come on,” said Peter. “let’s give it a try. All keep close together. We ought to be a match for one beaver if it turns out to be an enemy.”

So the children all got close together and walked up to the tree and in behind it, and there, sure enough, they found the Beaver; but it still drew back, saying to them in a hoarse throaty whisper. “Further in, come further in. Right in here. We’re not safe in the open！”

Only when it had led them into a dark spot where four trees grew so close together that their boughs met and the brown earth and pine needles could be seen underfoot because no snow had been able to fall there, did it begin to talk to them.

“Are you the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve?” it said.

“We’re some of them,” said Peter.

“S-s-s-sh！” said the Beaver. “not so loud please. We’re not safe even here.”

“Why, who are you afraid of?” said Peter. “There’s no one here but ourselves.”

“There are the trees,” said the Beaver. “They’re always listening. Most of them are on our side, but there are trees that would betray us to her; you know who I mean,” and it nodded its head several times.

“If it comes to talking about sides,” said Edmund. “how do we know you’re a friend?”

“Not meaning to be rude, Mr. Beaver,” added Peter. “but you see, we’re strangers.”

“Quite right, quite right,” said the Beaver. “Here is my token.”With these words it held up to them a little white object. They all looked at it in surprise, till suddenly Lucy said. “Oh, of course. It’s my handkerchief — the one I gave to poor Mr. Tumnus.”

“That’s right,” said the Beaver. “Poor fellow, he got wind of the arrest before it actually happened and handed this over to me. He said that if anything happened to him I must meet you here and take you on to—” Here the Beaver’s voice sank into silence and it gave one or two very mysterious nods. Then signalling to the children to stand as close around it as they possibly could, so that their faces were actually tickled by its whiskers, it added in a low whisper—

“They say Aslan is on the move — perhaps has already landed.”

And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning — either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

“And what about Mr. Tumnus,” said Lucy. “where is he?”

“S-s-s-sh,” said the Beaver. “not here. I must bring you where we can have a real talk and also dinner.”

No one except Edmund felt any difficulty about trusting the beaver now, and everyone, including Edmund, was very glad to hear the wor. “dinner”. A minute later they came out under the open sky （the sun was still shining） and found themselves looking down on a fine sight.

They were standing on the edge of a steep, narrow valley at the bottom of which ran — at least it would have been running if it hadn’t been frozen — a fairly large river. Just below them a dam had been built across this river, and when they saw it everyone suddenly remembered that of course beavers are always making dams and felt quite sure that Mr. Beaver had made this one. They also noticed that he now had a sort of modest expression on his face — the sort of look people have when you are visiting a garden they’ve made or reading a story they’ve written. So it was only common politeness when Susan said. “What a lovely dam！” And Mr. Beaver didn’t sa. “Hush” this time bu. “Merely a trifle！ Merely a trifle！ And it isn’t really finished！”

Above the dam there was what ought to have been a deep pool but was now, of course, a level floor of dark green ice. And below the dam, much lower down, was more ice, but instead of being smooth this was all frozen into the foamy and wavy shapes in which the water had been rushing along at the very moment when the frost came. And where the water had been trickling over and spurting through the dam there was now a glittering wall of icicles, as if the side of the dam had been covered all over with flowers and wreaths and festoons of the purest sugar. And out in the middle, and partly on top of the dam was a funny little house shaped rather like an enormous beehive and from a hole in the roof smoke was going up, so that when you saw it （especially if you were hungry） you at once thought of cooking and became hungrier than you were before.

That was what the others chiefly noticed, but Edmund noticed something else. A little lower down the river there was another small river which came down another small valley to join it. And looking up that valley, Edmund could see two small hills, and he was almost sure they were the two hills which the White Witch had pointed out to him when he parted from her at the lamp-post that other day. And then between them, he thought, must be her palace, only a mile off or less. And he thought about Turkish Delight and about being a King. “And I wonder how Peter will like that?” he asked himself） and horrible ideas came into his head.

“Here we are,” said Mr. Beaver. “and it looks as if Mrs. Beaver is expecting us. I’ll lead the way. But be careful and don’t slip.”

The top of the dam was wide enough to walk on, though not （for humans） a very nice place to walk because it was covered with ice, and though the frozen pool was level with it on one side, there was a nasty drop to the lower river on the other. Along this route Mr. Beaver led them in single file right out to the middle where they could look a long way up the river and a long way down it. And when they had reached the middle they were at the door of the house.

“Here we are, Mrs. Beaver,” said Mr. Beaver. “I’ve found them. Here are the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve”—and they all went in.

“So you’ve come at last！” Mrs. Beaver said, holding out both her wrinkled old paws. “At last！ To think that ever I should live to see this day！ The potatoes are on boiling and the kettle’s singing and I daresay, Mr. Beaver, you’ll get us some fish.”

Meanwhile the girls were helping Mrs. Beaver to fill the kettle and lay the table and cut the bread and put the plates in the oven to heat and draw a huge jug of beer for Mr. Beaver from a barrel which stood in one corner of the house, and to put on the frying-pan and get the dripping hot. Lucy thought the Beavers had a very snug little home though it was not at all like Mr. Tumnus’s cave. There were no books or pictures, and instead of beds there were bunks, like on board ship, built into the wall. And there were hams and strings of onions hanging from the roof, and against the walls were gum boots and oilskins and hatchets and pairs of shears and spades and trowels and things for carrying mortar in and fishing-rods and fishing-nets and sacks. And the cloth on the table, though very clean, was very rough.

Just as the frying-pan was nicely hissing Peter and Mr. Beaver came in with the fish which Mr. Beaver had already opened with his knife and cleaned out in the open air. You can think how good the new-caught fish smelled while they were frying and how the hungry children longed for them to be done and how very much hungrier still they had become before Mr. Beaver said. “Now we’re nearly ready.”Susan drained the potatoes and then put them all back in the empty pot to dry on the side of the range while Lucy was helping Mrs. Beaver to dish up the trout, so that in a very few minutes everyone was drawing up their stools （it was all three-legged stools in the Beavers’house except for Mrs. Beaver’s own special rocking chair beside the fire） and preparing to enjoy themselves. There was a jug of creamy milk for the children （Mr. Beaver stuck to beer） and a great big lump of deep yellow butter in the middle of the table from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes, and all the children thought — and I agree with them — that there’s nothing to beat good freshwater fish if you eat it when it has been alive half an hour ago and has come out of the pan half a minute ago. And when they had finished the fish Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle onto the fire, so that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured out. And when each person had got his （or her） cup of tea, each person shoved back his （or her） stool so as to be able to lean against the wall and gave a long sigh of contentment.

“And now,” said Mr. Beaver, pushing away his empty beer mug and pulling his cup of tea towards him. “if you’ll just wait till I’ve got my pipe lit up and going nicely — why, now we can get to business. It’s snowing again,” he added, cocking his eye at the window. “That’s all the better, because it means we shan’t have any visitors; and if anyone should have been trying to follow you, why he won’t find any tracks.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER DINNER

“And now,” said Lucy. “do please tell us what’s happened to Mr. Tumnus.”

“Ah, that’s bad,” said Mr. Beaver, shaking his head. “That’s a very, very bad business. There’s no doubt he was taken off by the police. I got that from a bird who saw it done.”

“But where’s he been taken to?” asked Lucy.

“Well, they were heading northwards when they were last seen and we all know what that means.”

“No, we don’t,” said Susan. Mr. Beaver shook his head in a very gloomy fashion.

“I’m afraid it means they were taking him to her House,” he said.

“But what’ll they do to him, Mr. Beaver?” gasped Lucy.

“Well,” said Mr. Beaver. “you can’t exactly say for sure. But there’s not many taken in there that ever comes out again. Statues. All full of statues they say it is — in the courtyard and up the stairs and in the hall. People she’s turned”—（he paused and shuddered) “turned into stone.”

“But, Mr. Beaver,” said Lucy. “can’t we — I mean we must do something to save him. It’s too dreadful and it’s all on my account.”

“I don’t doubt you’d save him if you could, dearie,” said Mrs. Beaver. “but you’ve no chance of getting into that House against her will and ever coming out alive.”

“Couldn’t we have some stratagem?” said Peter.

“It’s no good, Son of Adam,” said Mr. Beaver. “no good your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move—”

“Oh, yes！ Tell us about Aslan！” said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling — like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.

“Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.

“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver. “Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”

“She won’t turn him into stone too?” said Edmund.

“Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say！” answered Mr. Beaver with a great laugh. “Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it’ll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He’ll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts：

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

You’ll understand when you see him.”

“But shall we see him?” asked Susan.

“Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him,” said Mr. Beaver.

“Is-is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man！” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion-the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh！” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

“I’m longing to see him,” said Peter. “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”

“That’s right, Son of Adam,” said Mr. Beaver, bringing his paw down on the table with a crash that made all the cups and saucers rattle. “And so you shall. Word has been sent that you are to meet him, tomorrow if you can, at the Stone Table.”

“Where’s that?” said Lucy.

“I’ll show you,” said Mr. Beaver. “It’s down the river, a good step from here. I’ll take you to it！”

“But meanwhile what about poor Mr. Tumnus?” said Lucy.

“The quickest way you can help him is by going to meet Aslan,” said Mr. Beaver. “once he’s with us, then we can begin doing things. Not that we don’t need you too. For that’s another of the old rhymes：

When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone

Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,

The evil time will be over and done.

So things must be drawing near their end now he’s come and you’ve come. We’ve heard of Aslan coming into these parts before — long ago, nobody can say when. But there’s never been any of your race here before.”

“That’s what I don’t understand, Mr. Beaver,” said Peter. “I mean isn’t the Witch herself human?”

“She’d like us to believe it,” said Mr. Beaver. “and it’s on that that she bases her claim to be Queen. But she’s no Daughter of Eve. She comes of your father Adam’s”—（here Mr. Beaver bowed) “your father Adam’s first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn. That’s what she comes from on one side. And on the other she comes of the giants. No, no, there isn’t a drop of real human blood in the Witch.”

“That’s why she’s bad all through, Mr. Beaver,” said Mrs. Beaver.

“True enough, Mrs. Beaver,” replied he. “there may be two views about humans （meaning no offence to the present company）. But there’s no two views about things that look like humans and aren’t.”

“I’ve known good Dwarfs,” said Mrs. Beaver.

“So’ve I, now you come to speak of it,” said her husband. “but precious few, and they were the ones least like men. But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet. And that’s why the Witch is always on the lookout for any humans in Narnia. She’s been watching for you this many a year, and if she knew there were four of you she’d be more dangerous still.”

“What’s that to do with it?” asked Peter.

“Because of another prophecy,” said Mr. Beaver. “Down at Cair Paravel — that’s the castle on the sea coast down at the mouth of this river which ought to be the capital of the whole country if all was as it should be — down at Cair Paravel there are four thrones and it’s a saying in Narnia time out of mind that when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sit in those four thrones, then it will be the end not only of the White Witch’s reign but of her life, and that is why we had to be so cautious as we came along, for if she knew about you four, your lives wouldn’t be worth a shake of my whiskers！”

All the children had been attending so hard to what Mr. Beaver was telling them that they had noticed nothing else for a long time. Then during the moment of silence that followed his last remark, Lucy suddenly said：

“I say — where’s Edmund?”

There was a dreadful pause, and then everyone began askin. “Who saw him last? How long has he been missing? Is he outside? and then all rushed to the door and looked out. The snow was falling thickly and steadily, the green ice of the pool had vanished under a thick white blanket, and from where the little house stood in the centre of the dam you could hardly see either bank. Out they went, plunging well over their ankles into the soft new snow, and went round the house in every direction. “Edmund！ Edmund！” they called till they were hoarse. But the silently falling snow seemed to muffle their voices and there was not even an echo in answer.

“How perfectly dreadful！” said Susan as they at last came back in despair. “Oh, how I wish we’d never come.”

“What on earth are we to do, Mr. Beaver?” said Peter.

“Do?” said Mr. Beaver, who was already putting on his snow-boots. “do? We must be off at once. We haven’t a moment to spare！”

“We’d better divide into four search parties,” said Peter. “and all go in different directions. Whoever finds him must come back here at once and—”

“Search parties, Son of Adam?” said Mr. Beaver. “what for?”

“Why, to look for Edmund, of course！”

“There’s no point in looking for him,” said Mr. Beaver.

“What do you mean?” said Susan. “He can’t be far away yet. And we’ve got to find him. What do you mean when you say there’s no use looking for him?”

“The reason there’s no use looking,” said Mr. Beaver. “is that we know already where he’s gone！” Everyone stared in amazement. “Don’t you understand?” said Mr. Beaver. “He’s gone to her, to the White Witch. He has betrayed us all.”

“Oh, surely — oh, really！” said Susan. “he can’t have done that.”

“Can’t he?” said Mr. Beaver, looking very hard at the three children, and everything they wanted to say died on their lips, for each felt suddenly quite certain inside that this was exactly what Edmund had done.

“But will he know the way?” said Peter.

“Has he been in this country before?” asked Mr. Beaver. “Has he ever been here alone?”

“Yes,” said Lucy, almost in a whisper. “I’m afraid he has.”

“And did he tell you what he’d done or who he’d met?”

“Well, no, he didn’t,” said Lucy.

“Then mark my words,” said Mr. Beaver. “he has already met the White Witch and joined her side, and been told where she lives. I didn’t like to mention it before （he being your brother and all） but the moment I set eyes on that brother of yours I said to myself‘Treacherous’. He had the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food. You can always tell them if you’ve lived long in Narnia; something about their eyes.”

“All the same,” said Peter in a rather choking sort of voice. “we’ll still have to go and look for him. He is our brother after all, even if he is rather a little beast. And he’s only a kid.”

“Go to the Witch’s House?” said Mrs. Beaver. “Don’t you see that the only chance of saving either him or yourselves is to keep away from her?”

“How do you mean?” said Lucy.

“Why, all she wants is to get all four of you （she’s thinking all the time of those four thrones at Cair Paravel）. Once you were all four inside her House her job would be done — and there’d be four new statues in her collection before you’d had time to speak. But she’ll keep him alive as long as he’s the only one she’s got, because she’ll want to use him as a decoy; as bait to catch the rest of you with.”

“Oh, can no one help us?” wailed Lucy.

“Only Aslan,” said Mr. Beaver. “we must go on and meet him. That’s our only chance now.”

“It seems to me, my dears,” said Mrs. Beaver. “that it is very important to know just when he slipped away. How much he can tell her depends on how much he heard. For instance, had we started talking of Aslan before he left? If not, then we may do very well, for she won’t know that Aslan has come to Narnia, or that we are meeting him, and will be quite off her guard as far as that is concerned.”

“I don’t remember his being here when we were talking about Aslan—” began Peter, but Lucy interrupted him.

“Oh yes, he was,” she said miserably. “don’t you remember, it was he who asked whether the Witch couldn’t turn Aslan into stone too?”

“So he did, by Jove,” said Peter. “just the sort of thing he would say, too！”

“Worse and worse,” said Mr. Beaver. “and the next thing is this. Was he still here when I told you that the place for meeting Aslan was the Stone Table?”

And of course no one knew the answer to this question.

“Because, if he was,” continued Mr. Beaver. “then she’ll simply sledge down in that direction and get between us and the Stone Table and catch us on our way down. In fact we shall be cut off from Aslan.”

“But that isn’t what she’ll do first,” said Mrs. Beaver. “not if I know her. The moment that Edmund tells her that we’re all here she’ll set out to catch us this very night, and if he’s been gone about half an hour, she’ll be here in about another twenty minutes.”

“You’re right, Mrs. Beaver,” said her husband. “we must all get away from here. There’s not a moment to lose.”

CHAPTER NINE
IN THE WITCH’S HOUSE

And now of course you want to know what had happened to Edmund. He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight — and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food. And he had heard the conversation, and hadn’t enjoyed it much either, because he kept on thinking that the others were taking no notice of him and trying to give him the cold shoulder.

Just as Mr. Beaver had been repeating the rhyme about Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone Edmund had been very quietly turning the door-handle; and just before Mr. Beaver had begun telling them that the White Witch wasn’t really human at all but half a Jinn and half a giantess, Edmund had got outside into the snow and cautiously closed the door behind him.

You mustn’t think that even now Edmund was quite so bad that he actually wanted his brother and sisters to be turned into stone. He did want Turkish Delight and to be a Prince （and later a King） and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didn’t want her to be particularly nice to them — certainly not to put them on the same level as himself; but he managed to believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldn’t do anything very bad to them. “Because,” he said to himself. “all these people who say nasty things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isn’t true. She was jolly nice to me, anyway, much nicer than they are. I expect she is the rightful Queen really. Anyway, she’ll be better than that awful Aslan！” At least, that was the excuse he made in his own mind for what he was doing. It wasn’t a very good excuse, however, for deep down inside him he really knew that the White Witch was bad and cruel.

The first thing he realized when he got outside and found the snow falling all round him, was that he had left his coat behind in the Beavers’house. And of course there was no chance of going back to get it now. The next thing he realized was that the daylight was almost gone, for it had been nearly three o’clock when they sat down to dinner and the winter days were short. He hadn’t reckoned on this; but he had to make the best of it. So he turned up his collar and shuffled across the top of the dam （luckily it wasn’t so slippery since the snow had fallen） to the far side of the river.

It was pretty bad when he reached the far side. It was growing darker every minute and what with that and the snowflakes swirling all round him he could hardly see three feet ahead. And then too there was no road. He kept slipping into deep drifts of snow, and skidding on frozen puddles, and tripping over fallen tree-trunks, and sliding down steep banks, and barking his shins against rocks, till he was wet and cold and bruised all over. The silence and the loneliness were dreadful. In fact I really think he might have given up the whole plan and gone back and owned up and made friends with the others, if he hadn’t happened to say to himself. “When I’m King of Narnia the first thing I shall do will be to make some decent roads.”And of course that set him off thinking about being a King and all the other things he would do and this cheered him up a good deal. The weather changed. First the snow stopped. Then a wind sprang up and it became freezing cold. Finally, the clouds rolled away and the moon came out. It was a full moon and, shining on all that snow, it made everything almost as bright as day — only the shadows were rather confusing.

He would never have found his way if the moon hadn’t come out by the time he got to the other river you remember he had seen （when they first arrived at the Beavers’） a smaller river flowing into the great one lower down. He now reached this and turned to follow it up. But the little valley down which it came was much steeper and rockier than the one he had just left and much overgrown with bushes, so that he could not have managed it at all in the dark. Even as it was, he got wet through for he had to stoop under branches and great loads of snow came sliding off onto his back. And every time this happened he thought more and more how he hated Peter — just as if all this had been Peter’s fault.

But at last he came to a part where it was more level and the valley opened out. And there, on the other side of the river, quite close to him, in the middle of a little plain between two hills, he saw what must be the White Witch’s House. And the moon was shining brighter than ever. The House was really a small castle. It seemed to be all towers; little towers with long pointed spires on them, sharp as needles. They looked like huge dunce’s caps or sorcerer’s caps. And they shone in the moonlight and their long shadows looked strange on the snow. Edmund began to be afraid of the House.

But it was too late to think of turning back now.

He crossed the river on the ice and walked up to the House. There was nothing stirring; not the slightest sound anywhere. Even his own feet made no noise on the deep newly fallen snow. He walked on and on, past corner after corner of the House, and past turret after turret to find the door. He had to go right round to the far side before he found it. It was a huge arch but the great iron gates stood wide open.

Edmund crept up to the arch and looked inside into the courtyard, and there he saw a sight that nearly made his heart stop beating. Just inside the gate, with the moonlight shining on it, stood an enormous lion crouched as if it was ready to spring. And Edmund stood in the shadow of the arch, afraid to go on and afraid to go back, with his knees knocking together. He stood there so long that his teeth would have been chattering with cold even if they had not been chattering with fear. How long this really lasted I don’t know, but it seemed to Edmund to last for hours.

Then at last he began to wonder why the lion was standing so still — for it hadn’t moved one inch since he first set eyes on it. Edmund now ventured a little nearer, still keeping in the shadow of the arch as much as he could. He now saw from the way the lion was standing that it couldn’t have been looking at him at all.” “But supposing it turns its head?” thought Edmund.） In fact it was staring at something else — namely a little dwarf who stood with his back to it about four feet away.

“Aha！” thought Edmund. “When it springs at the dwarf then will be my chance to escape.”But still the lion never moved, nor did the dwarf. And now at last Edmund remembered what the others had said about the White Witch turning people into stone. Perhaps this was only a stone lion. And as soon as he had thought of that he noticed that the lion’s back and the top of its head were covered with snow. Of course it must be only a statue！ No living animal would have let itself get covered with snow. Then very slowly and with his heart beating as if it would burst, Edmund ventured to go up to the lion. Even now he hardly dared to touch it, but at last he put out his hand, very quickly, and did. It was cold stone. He had been frightened of a mere statue！

The relief which Edmund felt was so great that in spite of the cold he suddenly got warm all over right down to his toes, and at the same time there came into his head what seemed a perfectly lovely idea. “Probably,” he thought. “this is the great Lion Aslan that they were all talking about. She’s caught him already and turned him into stone. So that’s the end of all their fine ideas about him！ Pooh！ Who’s afraid of Aslan?”

And he stood there gloating over the stone lion, and presently he did something very silly and childish. He took a stump of lead pencil out of his pocket and scribbled a moustache on the lion’s upper lip and then a pair of spectacles on its eyes. Then he said. “Yah！ Silly old Aslan！ How do you like being a stone? You thought yourself mighty fine, didn’t you?” But in spite of the scribbles on it the face of the great stone beast still looked so terrible, and sad, and noble, staring up in the moonlight, that Edmund didn’t really get any fun out of jeering at it. He turned away and began to cross the courtyard.

As he got into the middle of it he saw that there were dozens of statues all about — standing here and there rather as the pieces stand on a chess-board when it is half-way through the game. There were stone satyrs, and stone wolves, and bears and foxes and catamountains of stone. There were lovely stone shapes that looked like women but who were really the spirits of trees. There was the great shape of a centaur and a winged horse and a long lithe creature that Edmund took to be a dragon. They all looked so strange standing there perfectly life-like and also perfectly still, in the bright cold moonlight, that it was eerie work crossing the courtyard. Right in the very middle stood a huge shape like a man, but as tall as a tree, with a fierce face and a shaggy beard and a great club in its right hand. Even though he knew that it was only a stone giant and not a live one, Edmund did not like going past it.

He now saw that there was a dim light showing from a doorway on the far side of the courtyard. He went to it; there was a flight of stone steps going up to an open door. Edmund went up them. Across the threshold lay a great wolf.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he kept saying to himself. “it’s only a stone wolf. It can’t hurt me”, and he raised his leg to step over it. Instantly the huge creature rose, with all the hair bristling along its back, opened a great, red mouth and said in a growling voice：

“Who’s there? Who’s there? Stand still, stranger, and tell me who you are.”

“If you please, sir,” said Edmund, trembling so that he could hardly speak. “my name is Edmund, and I’m the Son of Adam that Her Majesty met in the wood the other day and I’ve come to bring her the news that my brother and sisters are now in Narnia — quite close, in the Beavers’house. She — she wanted to see them.”

“I will tell Her Majesty,” said the Wolf. “Meanwhile, stand still on the threshold, as you value your life.”Then it vanished into the house.

Edmund stood and waited, his fingers aching with cold and his heart pounding in his chest, and presently the grey wolf, Maugrim, the Chief of the Witch’s Secret Police, came bounding back and said. “Come in！ Come in！ Fortunate favourite of the Queen — or else not so fortunate.”

And Edmund went in, taking great care not to tread on the Wolf’s paws.

He found himself in a long gloomy hall with many pillars, full, as the courtyard had been, of statues. The one nearest the door was a little faun with a very sad expression on its face, and Edmund couldn’t help wondering if this might be Lucy’s friend. The only light came from a single lamp and close beside this sat the White Witch.

“I’m come, your Majesty,” said Edmund, rushing eagerly forward.

“How dare you come alone?” said the Witch in a terrible voice. “Did I not tell you to bring the others with you?”

“Please, your Majesty,” said Edmund. “I’ve done the best I can. I’ve brought them quite close. They’re in the little house on top of the dam just up the river — with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.”

A slow cruel smile came over the Witch’s face.

“Is this all your news?” she asked.

“No, your Majesty,” said Edmund, and proceeded to tell her all he had heard before leaving the Beavers’house.

“What！ Aslan?” cried the Queen. “Aslan！ Is this true? If I find you have lied to me—”

“Please, I’m only repeating what they said,” stammered Edmund.

But the Queen, who was no longer attending to him, clapped her hands. Instantly the same dwarf whom Edmund had seen with her before appeared.

“Make ready our sledge,” ordered the Witch. “and use the harness without bells.”

CHAPTER TEN
THE SPELL BEGINS TO BREAK

Now we must go back to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and the three other children. As soon as Mr. Beaver said. “There’s no time to lose,” everyone began bundling themselves into coats, except Mrs. Beaver, who started picking up sacks and laying them on the table and said. “Now, Mr. Beaver, just reach down that ham. And here’s a packet of tea, and there’s sugar, and some matches. And if someone will get two or three loaves out of the crock over there in the corner.”

“What are you doing, Mrs. Beaver?” exclaimed Susan.

“Packing a load for each of us, dearie,” said Mrs. Beaver very coolly. “You didn’t think we’d set out on a journey with nothing to eat, did you?”

“But we haven’t time！” said Susan, buttoning the collar of her coat. “She may be here any minute.”

“That’s what I say,” chimed in Mr. Beaver.

“Get along with you all,” said his wife. “Think it over, Mr. Beaver. She can’t be here for quarter of an hour at least.”

“But don’t we want as big a start as we can possibly get,” said Peter. “if we’re to reach the Stone Table before her?”

“You’ve got to remember that, Mrs. Beaver,” said Susan. “As soon as she has looked in here and finds we’re gone she’ll be off at top speed.”

“That she will,” said Mrs. Beaver. “But we can’t get there before her whatever we do, for she’ll be on a sledge and we’ll be walking.”

“Then — have we no hope?” said Susan.

“Now don’t you get fussing, there’s a dear,” said Mrs. Beaver. “but just get half a dozen clean handkerchiefs out of the drawer.‘Course we’ve got a hope. We can’t get there before her but we can keep under cover and go by ways she won’t expect and perhaps we’ll get through.”

“That’s true enough, Mrs. Beaver,” said her husband. “But it’s time we were out of this.”

“And don’t you start fussing either, Mr. Beaver,” said his wife. “There. That’s better. There’s five loads and the smallest for the smallest of us：that’s you, my dear,” she added, looking at Lucy.

“Oh, do please come on,” said Lucy.

“Well, I’m nearly ready now,” answered Mrs. Beaver at last, allowing her husband to help her into her snow-boots. “I suppose the sewing machine’s too heavy to bring?”

“Yes. It is,” said Mr. Beaver. “A great deal too heavy. And you don’t think you’ll be able to use it while we’re on the run, I suppose?”

“I can’t abide the thought of that Witch fiddling with it,” said Mrs. Beaver. “and breaking it or stealing it, as likely as not.”

“Oh, please, please, please, do hurry！” said the three children. And so at last they all got outside and Mr. Beaver locked the door. “It’ll delay her a bit,” he said） and they set off, all carrying their loads over their shoulders.

The snow had stopped and the moon had come out when they began their journey. They went in single file — first Mr. Beaver, then Lucy, then Peter, then Susan, and Mrs. Beaver last of all. Mr. Beaver led them across the dam and on to the right bank of the river and then along a very rough sort of path among the trees right down by the river-bank. The sides of the valley, shining in the moonlight, towered up far above them on either hand. “Best keep down here as much as possible,” he said. “She’ll have to keep to the top, for you couldn’t bring a sledge down here.”

It would have been a pretty enough scene to look at it through a window from a comfortable armchair; and even as things were, Lucy enjoyed it at first. But as they went on walking and walking — and walking — and as the sack she was carrying felt heavier and heavier, she began to wonder how she was going to keep up at all. And she stopped looking at the dazzling brightness of the frozen river with all its waterfalls of ice and at the white masses of the tree-tops and the great glaring moon and the countless stars and could only watch the little short legs of Mr. Beaver going pad-pad-pad-pad through the snow in front of her as if they were never going to stop. Then the moon disappeared and the snow began to fall once more. And at last Lucy was so tired that she was almost asleep and walking at the same time when suddenly she found that Mr. Beaver had turned away from the river-bank to the right and was leading them steeply uphill into the very thickest bushes. And then as she came fully awake she found that Mr. Beaver was just vanishing into a little hole in the bank which had been almost hidden under the bushes until you were quite on top of it. In fact, by the time she realized what was happening, only his short flat tail was showing.

Lucy immediately stooped down and crawled in after him. Then she heard noises of scrambling and puffing and panting behind her and in a moment all five of them were inside.

“Wherever is this?” said Peter’s voice, sounding tired and pale in the darkness.

“It’s an old hiding-place for beavers in bad times,” said Mr. Beaver. “and a great secret. It’s not much of a place but we must get a few hours’sleep.”

“If you hadn’t all been in such a plaguey fuss when we were starting, I’d have brought some pillows,” said Mrs. Beaver.

It wasn’t nearly such a nice cave as Mr. Tumnus’s, Lucy thought — just a hole in the ground but dry and earthy. It was very small so that when they all lay down they were all a bundle of clothes together, and what with that and being warmed up by their long walk they were really rather snug. If only the floor of the cave had been a little smoother！ Then Mrs. Beaver handed round in the dark a little flask out of which everyone drank something — it made one cough and splutter a little and stung the throat, but it also made you feel deliciously warm after you’d swallowed it — and everyone went straight to sleep.

It seemed to Lucy only the next minute （though really it was hours and hours later） when she woke up feeling a little cold and dreadfully stiff and thinking how she would like a hot bath. Then she felt a set of long whiskers tickling her cheek and saw the cold daylight coming in through the mouth of the cave. But immediately after that she was very wide awake indeed, and so was everyone else. In fact they were all sitting up with their mouths and eyes wide open listening to a sound which was the very sound they’d all been thinking of （and sometimes imagining they heard） during their walk last night. It was a sound of jingling bells.

Mr. Beaver was out of the cave like a flash the moment he heard it. Perhaps you think, as Lucy thought for a moment, that this was a very silly thing to do? But it was really a very sensible one. He knew he could scramble to the top of the bank among bushes and brambles without being seen; and he wanted above all things to see which way the Witch’s sledge went. The others all sat in the cave waiting and wondering. They waited nearly five minutes. Then they heard something that frightened them very much. They heard voices. “Oh,” thought Lucy. “he’s been seen. She’s caught him！”

Great was their surprise when a little later, they heard Mr. Beaver’s voice calling to them from just outside the cave.

“It’s all right,” he was shouting. “Come out, Mrs. Beaver. Come out, Sons and Daughters of Adam. It’s all right！ It isn’t Her！”

So Mrs. Beaver and the children came bundling out of the cave, all blinking in the daylight, and with earth all over them, and looking very frowsty and unbrushed and uncombed and with the sleep in their eyes.

“Come on！” cried Mr. Beaver, who was almost dancing with delight. “Come and see！ This is a nasty knock for the Witch！ It looks as if her power is already crumbling.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Beaver?” panted Peter as they all scrambled up the steep bank of the valley together.

“Didn’t I tell you,” answered Mr. Beaver. “that she’d made it always winter and never Christmas? Didn’t I tell you? Well, just come and see！”

And then they were all at the top and did see.

It was a sledge, and it was reindeer with bells on their harness. But they were far bigger than the Witch’s reindeer, and they were not white but brown. And on the sledge sat a person whom everyone knew the moment they set eyes on him.

Everyone knew him because, though you see people of his sort only in Narnia, you see pictures of them and hear them talked about even in our world — the world on this side of the wardrobe door. But when you really see them in Narnia it is rather different. Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.”

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.

“And now,” said Father Christmas. “for your presents. There is a new and better sewing machine for you, Mrs. Beaver. I will drop it in your house as I pass.”

“If you please, sir,” said Mrs. Beaver, making a curtsey. “It’s locked up.”

“Locks and bolts make no difference to me,” said Father Christmas. “And as for you, Mr. Beaver, when you get home you will find your dam finished and mended and all the leaks stopped and a new sluice-gate fitted.”

Mr. Beaver was so pleased that he opened his mouth very wide and then found he couldn’t say anything at all.

“Peter, Adam’s Son,” said Father Christmas.

“Here, sir,” said Peter.

“These are your presents,” was the answer. “and they are tools not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well.”With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword. The shield was the colour of silver and across it there ramped a red lion, as bright as a ripe strawberry at the moment when you pick it. The hilt of the sword was of gold and it had a sheath and a sword belt and everything it needed, and it was just the right size and weight for Peter to use. Peter was silent and solemn as he received these gifts, for he felt they were a very serious kind of present.

“Susan, Eve’s Daughter,” said Father Christmas. “These are for you,” and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. “You must use the bow only in great need,” he said. “for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips; and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you.”

Last of all he said. “Lucy, Eve’s Daughter,” and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass （but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond） and a small dagger. “In this bottle,” he said. “there is cordial made of the juice of one of the fireflowers that grow in the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle.”

“Why, sir?” said Lucy. “I think — I don’t know — but I think I could be brave enough.”

“That is not the point,” he said. “But battles are ugly when women fight. And now”—here he suddenly looked less grave—“here is something for the moment for you all！” and he brought out （I suppose from the big bag at his back, but nobody quite saw him do it） a large tray containing five cups and saucers, a bowl of lump sugar, a jug of cream, and a great big teapot all sizzling and piping hot. Then he cried ou. “Merry Christmas！ Long live the true King！” and cracked his whip, and he and the reindeer and the sledge and all were out of sight before anyone realized that they had started.

Peter had just drawn his sword out of its sheath and was showing it to Mr. Beaver, when Mrs. Beaver said：

“Now then, now then！ Don’t stand talking there till the tea’s got cold. Just like men. Come and help to carry the tray down and we’ll have breakfast. What a mercy I thought of bringing the bread-knife.”

So down the steep bank they went and back to the cave, and Mr. Beaver cut some of the bread and ham into sandwiches and Mrs. Beaver poured out the tea and everyone enjoyed themselves. But long before they had finished enjoying themselves Mr. Beaver said. “Time to be moving on now.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASLAN IS NEARER

Edmund meanwhile had been having a most disappointing time. When the dwarf had gone to get the sledge ready he expected that the Witch would start being nice to him, as she had been at their last meeting. But she said nothing at all. And when at last Edmund plucked up his courage to say. “Please, your Majesty, could I have some Turkish Delight? You — you — said—” she answered. “Silence, fool！” Then she appeared to change her mind and said, as if to herself. “And yet it will not do to have the brat fainting on the way,” and once more clapped her hands. Another dwarf appeared.

“Bring the human creature food and drink,” she said.

The dwarf went away and presently returned bringing an iron bowl with some water in it and an iron plate with a hunk of dry bread on it. He grinned in a repulsive manner as he set them down on the floor beside Edmund and said：

“Turkish Delight for the little Prince. Ha！ Ha！ Ha！”

“Take it away,” said Edmund sulkily. “I don’t want dry bread.”But the Witch suddenly turned on him with such a terrible expression on her face that he apologized and began to nibble at the bread, though it was so stale he could hardly get it down.

“You may be glad enough of it before you taste bread again,” said the Witch.

While he was still chewing away the first dwarf came back and announced that the sledge was ready. The White Witch rose and went out, ordering Edmund to go with her. The snow was again falling as they came into the courtyard, but she took no notice of that and made Edmund sit beside her on the sledge. But before they drove off she called Maugrim and he came bounding like an enormous dog to the side of the sledge.

“Take with you the swiftest of your wolves and go at once to the house of the Beavers,” said the Witch. “and kill whatever you find there. If they are already gone, then make all speed to the Stone Table, but do not be seen. Wait for me there in hiding. I meanwhile must go many miles to the West before I find a place where I can drive across the river. You may overtake these humans before they reach the Stone Table. You will know what to do if you find them！”

“I hear and obey, O Queen,” growled the Wolf, and immediately he shot away into the snow and darkness, as quickly as a horse can gallop. In a few minutes he had called another wolf and was with him down on the dam sniffing at the Beavers’house. But of course they found it empty. It would have been a dreadful thing for the Beavers and the children if the night had remained fine, for the wolves would then have been able to follow their trail-and ten to one would have overtaken them before they had got to the cave. But now that the snow had begun again the scent was cold and even the footprints were covered up.

Meanwhile the dwarf whipped up the reindeer, and the Witch and Edmund drove out under the archway and on and away into the darkness and the cold. This was a terrible journey for Edmund, who had no coat. Before they had been going quarter of an hour, all the front of him was covered with snow — he soon stopped trying to shake it off because, as quickly as he did that, a new lot gathered, and he was so tired. Soon he was wet to the skin. And oh, how miserable he was！ It didn’t look now as if the Witch intended to make him a King. All the things he had said to make himself believe that she was good and kind and that her side was really the right side sounded to him silly now. He would have given anything to meet the others at this moment — even Peter！ The only way to comfort himself now was to try to believe that the whole thing was a dream and that he might wake up at any moment. And as they went on, hour after hour, it did come to seem like a dream.

This lasted longer than I could describe even if I wrote pages and pages about it. But I will skip on to the time when the snow had stopped and the morning had come and they were racing along in the daylight. And still they went on and on, with no sound but the everlasting swish of the snow and the creaking of the reindeer’s harness. And then at last the Witch said. “What have we here? Stop！” and they did.

How Edmund hoped she was going to say something about breakfast！ But she had stopped for quite a different reason. A little way off at the foot of a tree sat a merry party, a squirrel and his wife with their children and two satyrs and a dwarf and an old dog-fox, all on stools round a table. Edmund couldn’t quite see what they were eating, but it smelled lovely and there seemed to be decorations of holly and he wasn’t at all sure that he didn’t see something like a plum pudding. At the moment when the sledge stopped, the Fox, who was obviously the oldest person present, had just risen to its feet, holding a glass in its right paw as if it was going to say something. But when the whole party saw the sledge stopping and who was in it, all the gaiety went out of their faces. The father squirrel stopped eating with his fork half-way to his mouth and one of the satyrs stopped with its fork actually in its mouth, and the baby squirrels squeaked with terror.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked the Witch Queen. Nobody answered.

“Speak, vermin！” she said again. “Or do you want my dwarf to find you a tongue with his whip? What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence? Where did you get all these things?”

“Please, your Majesty,” said the Fox. “we were given them. And if I might make so bold as to drink your Majesty’s very good health—”

“Who gave them to you?” said the Witch.

“F-F-F-Father Christmas,” stammered the Fox.

“What?” roared the Witch, springing from the sledge and taking a few strides nearer to the terrified animals. “He has not been here！ He cannot have been here！ How dare you — but no. Say you have been lying and you shall even now be forgiven.”

At that moment one of the young squirrels lost its head completely.

“He has — he has — he has！” it squeaked, beating its little spoon on the table. Edmund saw the Witch bite her lips so that a drop of blood appeared on her white cheek. Then she raised her wand. “Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t,” shouted Edmund, but even while he was shouting she had waved her wand and instantly where the merry party had been there were only statues of creatures （one with its stone fork fixed forever half-way to its stone mouth） seated round a stone table on which there were stone plates and a stone plum pudding.

“As for you,” said the Witch, giving Edmund a stunning blow on the face as she re-mounted the sledge. “let that teach you to ask favour for spies and traitors. Drive on！” And Edmund for the first time in this story felt sorry for someone besides himself. It seemed so pitiful to think of those little stone figures sitting there all the silent days and all the dark nights, year after year, till the moss grew on them and at last even their faces crumbled away.

Now they were steadily racing on again. And soon Edmund noticed that the snow which splashed against them as they rushed through it was much wetter than it had been all last night. At the same time he noticed that he was feeling much less cold. It was also becoming foggy. In fact every minute it grew foggier and warmer. And the sledge was not running nearly as well as it had been running up till now. At first he thought this was because the reindeer were tired, but soon he saw that that couldn’t be the real reason. The sledge jerked, and skidded and kept on jolting as if it had struck against stones. And however the dwarf whipped the poor reindeer the sledge went slower and slower. There also seemed to be a curious noise all round them, but the noise of their driving and jolting and the dwarf’s shouting at the reindeer prevented Edmund from hearing what it was, until suddenly the sledge stuck so fast that it wouldn’t go on at all. When that happened there was a moment’s silence. And in that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly. A strange, sweet, rustling, chattering noise — and yet not so strange, for he’d heard it before — if only he could remember where！ Then all at once he did remember. It was the noise of running water. All round them though out of sight, there were streams, chattering, murmuring, bubbling, splashing and even （in the distance） roaring. And his heart gave a great leap （though he hardly knew why） when he realized that the frost was over. And much nearer there was a drip-drip-drip from the branches of all the trees. And then, as he looked at one tree he saw a great load of snow slide off it and for the first time since he had entered Narnia he saw the dark green of a fir tree. But he hadn’t time to listen or watch any longer, for the Witch said：

“Don’t sit staring, fool！ Get out and help.”

And of course Edmund had to obey. He stepped out into the snow — but it was really only slush by now — and began helping the dwarf to get the sledge out of the muddy hole it had got into. They got it out in the end, and by being very cruel to the reindeer the dwarf managed to get it on the move again, and they drove a little further. And now the snow was really melting in earnest and patches of green grass were beginning to appear in every direction. Unless you have looked at a world of snow as long as Edmund had been looking at it, you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white. Then the sledge stopped again.

“It’s no good, your Majesty,” said the dwarf. “We can’t sledge in this thaw.”

“Then we must walk,” said the Witch.

“We shall never overtake them walking,” growled the dwarf. “Not with the start they’ve got.”

“Are you my councillor or my slave?” said the Witch. “Do as you’re told. Tie the hands of the human creature behind it and keep hold of the end of the rope. And take your whip. And cut the harness of the reindeer; they’ll find their own way home.”

The dwarf obeyed, and in a few minutes Edmund found himself being forced to walk as fast as he could with his hands tied behind him. He kept on slipping in the slush and mud and wet grass, and every time he slipped the dwarf gave him a curse and sometimes a flick with the whip. The Witch walked behind the dwarf and kept on saying. “Faster！ Faster！”

Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms. Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops.

Soon there were more wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers — celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it they found snowdrops growing.

“Mind your own business！” said the dwarf when he saw that Edmund had turned his head to look at them; and he gave the rope a vicious jerk.

“Faster！ Faster！” said the Witch.

There was no trace of the fog now. The sky became bluer and bluer, and now there were white clouds hurrying across it from time to time. In the wide glades there were primroses. A light breeze sprang up which scattered drops of moisture from the swaying branches and carried cool, delicious scents against the faces of the travellers. The trees began to come fully alive. The larches and birches were covered with green, the laburnums with gold. Soon the beech trees had put forth their delicate, transparent leaves. As the travellers walked under them the light also became green. A bee buzzed across their path.

“This is no thaw,” said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. “This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you！ This is Aslan’s doing.”

“If either of you mention that name again,” said the Witch. “he shall instantly be killed.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
PETER’S FIRST BATTLE

While the dwarf and the White Witch were saying this, miles away the Beavers and the children were walking on hour after hour into what seemed a delicious dream. Long ago they had left the coats behind them. They walked on in silence drinking it all in, passing through patches of warm sunlight into cool, green thickets and out again into wide mossy glades where tall elms raised the leafy roof far overhead, and then into dense masses of flowering currant and among hawthorn bushes where the sweet smell was almost overpowering.

They had been just as surprised as Edmund when they saw the winter vanishing and the whole wood passing in a few hours or so from January to May. They hadn’t even known for certain （as the Witch did） that this was what would happen when Aslan came to Narnia. But they all knew that it was her spells which had produced the endless winter; and therefore they all knew when this magic spring began that something had gone wrong, and badly wrong, with the Witch’s schemes. And after the thaw had been going on for some time they all realized that the Witch would no longer be able to use her sledge. After that they didn’t hurry so much and they allowed themselves more rests and longer ones. They were pretty tired by now of course; but not what I’d call bitterly tired — only slow and feeling very dreamy and quiet inside as one does when one is coming to the end of a long day in the open. Susan had a slight blister on one heel.

They had left the course of the big river some time ago; for one had to turn a little to the right （that meant a little to the south） to reach the place of the Stone Table. Even if this had not been their way they couldn’t have kept to the river valley once the thaw began, for with all that melting snow the river was soon in flood — a wonderful, roaring, thundering yellow flood — and their path would have been under water.

And now the sun got low and the light got redder and the shadows got longer and the flowers began to think about closing.

“Not long now,” said Mr. Beaver, and began leading them uphill across some very deep, springy moss （it felt nice under their tired feet） in a place where only tall trees grew, very wide apart. The climb, coming at the end of the long day, made them all pant and blow. And just as Lucy was wondering whether she could really get to the top without another long rest, suddenly they were at the top. And this is what they saw.

They were on a green open space from which you could look down on the forest spreading as far as one could see in every direction — except right ahead. There, far to the East, was something twinkling and moving. “By gum！” whispered Peter to Susan. “the sea！” In the very middle of this open hilltop was the Stone Table. It was a great grim slab of grey stone supported on four upright stones. It looked very old; and it was cut all over with strange lines and figures that might be the letters of an unknown language. They gave you a curious feeling when you looked at them. The next thing they saw was a pavilion pitched on one side of the open place. A wonderful pavilion it was — and especially now when the light of the setting sun fell upon it — with sides of what looked like yellow silk and cords of crimson and tentpegs of ivory; and high above it on a pole a banner which bore a red rampant lion fluttering in the breeze which was blowing in their faces from the far-off sea. While they were looking at this they heard a sound of music on their right; and turning in that direction they saw what they had come to see.

Aslan stood in the centre of a crowd of creatures who had grouped themselves round him in the shape of a half-moon. There were Tree-Women there and Well-Women （Dryads and Naiads as they used to be called in our world） who had stringed instruments; it was they who had made the music. There were four great centaurs. The horse part of them was like huge English farm horses, and the man part was like stern but beautiful giants. There was also a unicorn, and a bull with the head of a man, and a pelican, and an eagle, and a great Dog. And next to Aslan stood two leopards of whom one carried his crown and the other his standard.

But as for Aslan himself, the Beavers and the children didn’t know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly.

“Go on,” whispered Mr. Beaver.

“No,” whispered Peter. “you first.”

“No, Sons of Adam before animals,” whispered Mr. Beaver back again.

“Susan,” whispered Peter. “What about you? Ladies first.”

“No, you’re the eldest,” whispered Susan. And of course the longer they went on doing this the more awkward they felt. Then at last Peter realized that it was up to him. He drew his sword and raised it to the salute and hastily saying to the other. “Come on. Pull yourselves together,” he advanced to the Lion and said：

“We have come — Aslan.”

“Welcome, Peter, Son of Adam,” said Aslan. “Welcome, Susan and Lucy, Daughters of Eve. Welcome He-Beaver and She-Beaver.”

His voice was deep and rich and somehow took the fidgets out of them. They now felt glad and quiet and it didn’t seem awkward to them to stand and say nothing.

“But where is the fourth?” asked Aslan.

“He has tried to betray them and joined the White Witch, O Aslan,” said Mr. Beaver. And then something made Peter say. “That was partly my fault, Aslan. I was angry with him and I think that helped him to go wrong.”

And Aslan said nothing either to excuse Peter or to blame him but merely stood looking at him with his great unchanging eyes. And it seemed to all of them that there was nothing to be said.

“Please — Aslan,” said Lucy. “can anything be done to save Edmund?”

“All shall be done,” said Aslan. “But it may be harder than you think.”And then he was silent again for some time. Up to that moment Lucy had been thinking how royal and strong and peaceful his face looked; now it suddenly came into her head that he looked sad as well. But next minute that expression was quite gone. The Lion shook his mane and clapped his paws together. “Terrible paws,” thought Lucy. “if he didn’t know how to velvet them！” ） and said,

“Meanwhile, let the feast be prepared. Ladies, take these Daughters of Eve to the pavilion and minister to them.”

When the girls had gone Aslan laid his paw — and though it was velveted it was very heavy — on Peter’s shoulder and said. “Come, Son of Adam, and I will show you a far-off sight of the castle where you are to be King.”

And Peter with his sword still drawn in his hand went with the Lion to the eastern edge of the hilltop. There a beautiful sight met their eyes. The sun was setting behind their backs. That meant that the whole country below them lay in the evening light — forest and hills and valleys and, winding away like a silver snake, the lower part of the great river. And beyond all this, miles away, was the sea, and beyond the sea the sky, full of clouds which were just turning rose colour with the reflection of the sunset. But just where the land of Narnia met the sea — in fact, at the mouth of the great river — there was something on a little hill, shining. It was shining because it was a castle and of course the sunlight was reflected from all the windows which looked towards Peter and the sunset; but to Peter it looked like a great star resting on the seashore.

“That, O Man,” said Aslan. “is Cair Paravel of the four thrones, in one of which you must sit as King. I show it to you because you are the first-born and you will be High King over all the rest.”

And once more Peter said nothing, for at that moment a strange noise woke the silence suddenly. It was like a bugle, but richer.

“It is your sister’s horn,” said Aslan to Peter in a low voice; so low as to be almost a purr, if it is not disrespectful to think of a Lion purring.

For a moment Peter did not understand. Then, when he saw all the other creatures start forward and heard Aslan say with a wave of his paw. “Back！ Let the Prince win his spurs,” he did understand, and set off running as hard as he could to the pavilion. And there he saw a dreadful sight.

The Naiads and Dryads were scattering in every direction. Lucy was running towards him as fast as her short legs would carry her and her face was as white as paper. Then he saw Susan make a dash for a tree, and swing herself up, followed by a huge grey beast. At first Peter thought it was a bear. Then he saw that it looked like an Alsatian, though it was far too big to be a dog. Then he realized that it was a wolf — a wolf standing on its hind legs, with its front paws against the tree-trunk, snapping and snarling. All the hair on its back stood up on end. Susan had not been able to get higher than the second big branch. One of her legs hung down so that her foot was only an inch or two above the snapping teeth. Peter wondered why she did not get higher or at least take a better grip; then he realized that she was just going to faint and that if she fainted she would fall off.

Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the monster and aimed a slash of his sword at its side. That stroke never reached the Wolf. Quick as lightning it turned round, its eyes flaming, and its mouth wide open in a howl of anger. If it had not been so angry that it simply had to howl it would have got him by the throat at once. As it was — though all this happened too quickly for Peter to think at all — he had just time to duck down and plunge his sword, as hard as he could, between the brute’s forelegs into its heart. Then came a horrible, confused moment like something in a nightmare. He was tugging and pulling and the Wolf seemed neither alive nor dead, and its bared teeth knocked against his forehead, and everything was blood and heat and hair. A moment later he found that the monster lay dead and he had drawn his sword out of it and was straightening his back and rubbing the sweat off his face and out of his eyes. He felt tired all over.

Then, after a bit, Susan came down the tree. She and Peter felt pretty shaky when they met and I won’t say there wasn’t kissing and crying on both sides. But in Narnia no one thinks any the worse of you for that.

“Quick！ Quick！” shouted the voice of Aslan. “Centaurs！ Eagles！ I see another wolf in the thickets. There — behind you. He has just darted away. After him, all of you. He will be going to his mistress. Now is your chance to find the Witch and rescue the fourth Son of Adam.”And instantly with a thunder of hoofs and beating of wings a dozen or so of the swiftest creatures disappeared into the gathering darkness.

Peter, still out of breath, turned and saw Aslan close at hand.

“You have forgotten to clean your sword,” said Aslan.

It was true. Peter blushed when he looked at the bright blade and saw it all smeared with the Wolf’s hair and blood. He stooped down and wiped it quite clean on the grass, and then wiped it quite dry on his coat.

“Hand it to me and kneel, Son of Adam,” said Aslan. And when Peter had done so he struck him with the flat of the blade and said. “Rise up, Sir Peter Wolf’s-Bane. And, whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DEEP MAGIC FROM THE DAWN OF TIME

Now we must get back to Edmund. When he had been made to walk far further than he had ever known that anybody could walk, the Witch at last halted in a dark valley all overshadowed with fir trees and yew trees. Edmund simply sank down and lay on his face doing nothing at all and not even caring what was going to happen next provided they would let him lie still. He was too tired even to notice how hungry and thirsty he was. The Witch and the dwarf were talking close beside him in low tones.

“No,” said the dwarf. “it is no use now, O Queen. They must have reached the Stone Table by now.”

“Perhaps the Wolf will smell us out and bring us news,” said the Witch.

“It cannot be good news if he does,” said the dwarf.

“Four thrones in Cair Paravel,” said the Witch. “How if only three were filled? That would not fulfil the prophecy.”

“What difference would that make now that He is here?” said the dwarf. He did not dare, even now, to mention the name of Aslan to his mistress.

“He may not stay long. And then — we would fall upon the three at Cair.”

“Yet it might be better,” said the dwarf. “to keep this one （here he kicked Edmund) “for bargaining with.”

“Yes！ And have him rescued,” said the Witch scornfully.

“Then,” said the dwarf. “we had better do what we have to do at once.”

“I would like to have it done on the Stone Table itself,” said the Witch. “That is the proper place. That is where it has always been done before.”

“It will be a long time now before the Stone Table can again be put to its proper use,” said the dwarf.

“True,” said the Witch; and then. “Well, I will begin.”

At that moment with a rush and a snarl a Wolf rushed up to them.

“I have seen them. They are all at the Stone Table, with Him. They have killed my captain, Maugrim. I was hidden in the thickets and saw it all. One of the Sons of Adam killed him. Fly！ Fly！”

“No,” said the Witch. “There need be no flying. Go quickly. Summon all our people to meet me here as speedily as they can. Call out the giants and the werewolves and the spirits of those trees who are on our side. Call the Ghouls, and the Boggles, the Ogres and the Minotaurs. Call the Cruels, the Hags, the Spectres, and the people of the Toadstools. We will fight. What? Have I not still my wand? Will not their ranks turn into stone even as they come on? Be off quickly, I have a little thing to finish here while you are away.”

The great brute bowed its head, turned, and galloped away.

“Now！” she said. “we have no table — let me see. We had better put it against the trunk of a tree.”

Edmund found himself being roughly forced to his feet. Then the dwarf set him with his back against a tree and bound him fast. He saw the Witch take off her outer mantle. Her arms were bare underneath it and terribly white. Because they were so very white he could see them, but he could not see much else, it was so dark in this valley under the dark trees.

“Prepare the victim,” said the Witch. And the dwarf undid Edmund’s collar and folded back his shirt at the neck. Then he took Edmund’s hair and pulled his head back so that he had to raise his chin. After that Edmund heard a strange noise — whizz — whizz — whizz. For a moment he couldn’t think what it was. Then he realized. It was the sound of a knife being sharpened.

At that very moment he heard loud shouts from every direction — a drumming of hoofs and a beating of wings — a scream from the Witch — confusion all round him. And then he found he was being untied. Strong arms were round him and he heard big, kind voices saying things like. “Let him lie down — give him some wine — drink this — steady now — you’ll be all right in a minute.”

Then he heard the voices of people who were not talking to him but to one another. And they were saying things lik. “Who’s got the Witch?” “I thought you had her.” “I didn’t see her after I knocked the knife out of her hand — I was after the dwarf — do you mean to say she’s escaped?” “— A chap can’t mind everything at once-what’s that? Oh, sorry, it’s only an old stump！” But just at this point Edmund went off in a dead faint.

It was perfectly still and presently the moon grew bright; if you had been there you would have seen the moonlight shining on an old tree-stump and on a fair-sized boulder. But if you had gone on looking you would gradually have begun to think there was something odd about both the stump and the boulder. And next you would have thought that the stump did look really remarkably like a little fat man crouching on the ground. And if you had watched long enough you would have seen the stump walk across to the boulder and the boulder sit up and begin talking to the stump; for in reality the stump and the boulder were simply the Witch and the dwarf. For it was part of her magic that she could make things look like what they aren’t, and she had the presence of mind to do so at the very moment when the knife was knocked out of her hand. She had kept hold of her wand, so it had been kept safe, too.

When the other children woke up next morning （they had been sleeping on piles of cushions in the pavilion） the first thing they heard — from Mrs. Beaver — was that their brother had been rescued and brought into camp late last night; and was at that moment with Aslan. As soon as they had breakfasted they all went out, and there they saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court. There is no need to tell you （and no one ever heard） what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation which Edmund never forgot. As the others drew nearer Aslan turned to meet them, bringing Edmund with him.

“Here is your brother,” he said. “and — there is no need to talk to him about what is past.”

Edmund shook hands with each of the others and said to each of them in turn. “I’m sorry,” and everyone said. “That’s all right.”And then everyone wanted very hard to say something which would make it quite clear that they were all friends with him again — something ordinary and natural — and of course no one could think of anything in the world to say. But before they had time to feel really awkward one of the leopards approached Aslan and said,

“Sire, there is a messenger from the enemy who craves audience.”

“Let him approach,” said Aslan.

The leopard went away and soon returned leading the Witch’s dwarf.

“What is your message, Son of Earth?” asked Aslan.

“The Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands desires a safe conduct to come and speak with you,” said the dwarf. “on a matter which is as much to your advantage as to hers.”

“Queen of Narnia, indeed！” said Mr. Beaver. “Of all the cheek—”

“Peace, Beaver,” said Aslan. “All names will soon be restored to their proper owners. In the meantime we will not dispute about them. Tell your mistress, Son of Earth, that I grant her safe conduct on condition that she leaves her wand behind her at that great oak.”

This was agreed to and two leopards went back with the dwarf to see that the conditions were properly carried out. “But supposing she turns the two leopards into stone?” whispered Lucy to Peter. I think the same idea had occurred to the leopards themselves; at any rate, as they walked off their fur was all standing up on their backs and their tails were bristling — like a cat’s when it sees a strange dog.

“It’ll be all right,” whispered Peter in reply. “He wouldn’t send them if it weren’t.”

A few minutes later the Witch herself walked out on to the top of the hill and came straight across and stood before Aslan. The three children who had not seen her before felt shudders running down their backs at the sight of her face; and there were low growls among all the animals present. Though it was bright sunshine everyone felt suddenly cold. The only two people present who seemed to be quite at their ease were Aslan and the Witch herself. It was the oddest thing to see those two faces-the golden face and the dead — white face — so close together. Not that the Witch looked Aslan exactly in his eyes; Mrs. Beaver particularly noticed this.

“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he’d been through and after the talk he’d had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn’t seem to matter what the Witch said.

“Well,” said Aslan. “His offence was not against you.”

“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch.

“Let us say I have forgotten it,” answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic.”

“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Beaver. “So that’s how you came to imagine yourself a queen — because you were the Emperor’s hangman. I see.”

“Peace, Beaver,” said Aslan, with a very low growl.

“And so,” continued the Witch. “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”

“Come and take it then,” said the Bull with the man’s head in a great bellowing voice.

“Fool,” said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl. “do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.”

“It is very true,” said Aslan. “I do not deny it.”

“Oh, Aslan！” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear. “can’t we — I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”

“Work against the Emperor’s Magic?” said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

Edmund was on the other side of Aslan, looking all the time at Aslan’s face. He felt a choking feeling and wondered if he ought to say something; but a moment later he felt that he was not expected to do anything except to wait, and do what he was told.

“Fall back, all of you,” said Aslan. “and I will talk to the Witch alone.”

They all obeyed. It was a terrible time this — waiting and wondering while the Lion and the Witch talked earnestly together in low voices.

At last they heard Aslan’s voice. “You can all come back,” he said. “I have settled the matter. She has renounced the claim on your brother’s blood.”And all over the hill there was a noise as if everyone had been holding their breath and had now begun breathing again, and then a murmur of talk.

The Witch was just turning away with a look of fierce joy on her face when she stopped and said,

“But how do I know this promise will be kept?”

“Haa-a-arrh！” roared Aslan, half rising from his throne; and his great mouth opened wider and wider and the roar grew louder and louder, and the Witch, after staring for a moment with her lips wide apart, picked up her skirts and fairly ran for her life.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE TRIUMPH OF THE WITCH

As soon as the Witch had gone Aslan said. “We must move from this place at once, it will be wanted for other purposes. We shall encamp tonight at the Fords of Beruna.

Of course everyone was dying to ask him how he had arranged matters with the witch; but his face was stern and everyone’s ears were still ringing with the sound of his roar and so nobody dared.

After a meal, which was taken in the open air on the hill-top （for the sun had got strong by now and dried the grass）, they were busy for a while taking the pavilion down and packing things up. Before two o’clock they were on the march and set off in a northeasterly direction, walking at an easy pace for they had not far to go.

During the first part of the journey Aslan explained to Peter his plan of campaign. “As soon as she has finished her business in these parts,” he said. “the Witch and her crew will almost certainly fall back to her House and prepare for a siege. You may or may not be able to cut her off and prevent her from reaching it.”He then went on to outline two plans of battle — one for fighting the Witch and her people in the wood and another for assaulting her castle. And all the time he was advising Peter how to conduct the operations, saying things like. “You must put your Centaurs in such and such a place” o. “You must post scouts to see that she doesn’t do so-and-so,” till at last Peter said. “But you will be there yourself, Aslan.”

“I can give you no promise of that,” answered the Lion. And he continued giving Peter his instructions.

For the last part of the journey it was Susan and Lucy who saw most of him. He did not talk very much and seemed to them to be sad.

It was still afternoon when they came down to a place where the river valley had widened out and the river was broad and shallow. This was the Fords of Beruna and Aslan gave orders to halt on this side of the water. But Peter said. “Wouldn’t it be better to camp on the far side-for fear she should try a night attack or anything?”

Aslan, who seemed to have been thinking about something else, roused himself with a shake of his magnificent mane and said. “Eh? What’s that?” Peter said it all over again.

“No,” said Aslan in a dull voice, as if it didn’t matter. “No. She will not make an attack tonight.”And then he sighed deeply. But presently he added. “All the same it was well thought of. That is how a soldier ought to think. But it doesn’t really matter.”So they proceeded to pitch their camp.

Aslan’s mood affected everyone that evening. Peter was feeling uncomfortable too at the idea of fighting the battle on his own; the news that Aslan might not be there had come as a great shock to him. Supper that evening was a quiet meal. Everyone felt how different it had been last night or even that morning. It was as if the good times, having just begun, were already drawing to their end.

This feeling affected Susan so much that she couldn’t get to sleep when she went to bed. And after she had lain counting sheep and turning over and over she heard Lucy give a long sigh and turn over just beside her in the darkness.

“Can’t you get to sleep either?” said Susan.

“No,” said Lucy. “I thought you were asleep. I say, Susan！”

“What?”

“I’ve a most horrible feeling — as if something were hanging over us.”

“Have you? Because, as a matter of fact, so have I.”

“Something about Aslan,” said Lucy. “Either some dreadful thing is going to happen to him, or something dreadful that he’s going to do.”

“There’s been something wrong with him all afternoon,” said Susan. “Lucy！ What was that he said about not being with us at the battle? You don’t think he could be stealing away and leaving us tonight, do you?”

“Where is he now?” said Lucy. “Is he here in the pavilion?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Susan！ let’s go outside and have a look round. We might see him.”

“All right. Let’s,” said Susan. “we might just as well be doing that as lying awake here.”

Very quietly the two girls groped their way among the other sleepers and crept out of the tent. The moonlight was bright and everything was quite still except for the noise of the river chattering over the stones. Then Susan suddenly caught Lucy’s arm and said. “Look！” On the far side of the camping ground, just where the trees began, they saw the Lion slowly walking away from them into the wood. Without a word they both followed him.

He led them up the steep slope out of the river valley and then slightly to the right — apparently by the very same route which they had used that afternoon in coming from the Hill of the Stone Table. On and on he led them, into dark shadows and out into pale moonlight, getting their feet wet with the heavy dew. He looked somehow different from the Aslan they knew. His tail and his head hung low and he walked slowly as if he were very, very tired. Then, when they were crossing a wide open place where there were no shadows for them to hide in, he stopped and looked round. It was no good trying to run away so they came towards him. When they were closer he said, away so they came towards him. When they were closer he said,

“Oh, children, children, why are you following me?”

“We couldn’t sleep,” said Lucy — and then felt sure that she need say no more and that Aslan knew all they had been thinking.

“Please, may we come with you — wherever you’re going?” asked Susan.

“Well—” said Aslan, and seemed to be thinking. Then he said. “I should be glad of company tonight. Yes, you may come, if you will promise to stop when I tell you, and after that leave me to go on alone.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you. And we will,” said the two girls.

Forward they went again and one of the girls walked on each side of the Lion. But how slowly he walked！ And his great, royal head drooped so that his nose nearly touched the grass. Presently he stumbled and gave a low moan.

“Aslan！ Dear Aslan！” said Lucy. “what is wrong? Can’t you tell us?”

“Are you ill, dear Aslan?” asked Susan.

“No,” said Aslan. “I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that.”

And so the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission, but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him — buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur and stroked it and, so doing, walked with him. And presently they saw that they were going with him up the slope of the hill on which the Stone Table stood. They went up at the side where the trees came furthest up, and when they got to the last tree （it was one that had some bushes about it） Aslan stopped and said,

“Oh, children, children. Here you must stop. And whatever happens, do not let yourselves be seen. Farewell.”

And both the girls cried bitterly （though they hardly knew why） and clung to the Lion and kissed his mane and his nose and his paws and his great, sad eyes. Then he turned from them and walked out on to the top of the hill. And Lucy and Susan, crouching in the bushes, looked after him, and this is what they saw.

A great crowd of people were standing all round the Stone Table and though the moon was shining many of them carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke. But such people！ Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won’t describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book — Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch’s side and whom the Wolf had summoned at her command. And right in the middle, standing by the Table, was the Witch herself.

A howl and a gibber of dismay went up from the creatures when they first saw the great Lion pacing towards them, and for a moment even the Witch seemed to be struck with fear. Then she recovered herself and gave a wild fierce laugh.

“The fool！” she cried. “The fool has come. Bind him fast.”

Lucy and Susan held their breaths waiting for Aslan’s roar and his spring upon his enemies. But it never came. Four Hags, grinning and leering, yet also （at first） hanging back and half afraid of what they had to do, had approached him. “Bind him, I say！” repeated the White Witch. The Hags made a dart at him and shrieked with triumph when they found that he made no resistance at all. Then others — evil dwarfs and apes — rushed in to help them, and between them they rolled the huge Lion over on his back and tied all his four paws together, shouting and cheering as if they had done something brave, though, had the Lion chosen, one of those paws could have been the death of them all. But he made no noise, even when the enemies, straining and tugging, pulled the cords so tight that they cut into his flesh. Then they began to drag him towards the Stone Table.

“Stop！” said the Witch. “Let him first be shaved.”

Another roar of mean laughter went up from her followers as an ogre with a pair of shears came forward and squatted down by Aslan’s head. Snip-snip-snip went the shears and masses of curling gold began to fall to the ground. Then the ogre stood back and the children, watching from their hiding-place, could see the face of Aslan looking all small and different without its mane. The enemies also saw the difference.

“Why, he’s only a great cat after all！” cried one.

“Is that what we were afraid of?” said another.

And they surged round Aslan, jeering at him, saying things lik. “Puss, Puss！ Poor Pussy,” an. “How many mice have you caught today, Cat?” an. “Would you like a saucer of milk, Pussums?”

“Oh, how can they?” said Lucy, tears streaming down her cheeks. “The brutes, the brutes！” for now that the first shock was over the shorn face of Aslan looked to her braver, and more beautiful, and more patient than ever.

“Muzzle him！” said the Witch. And even now, as they worked about his face putting on the muzzle, one bite from his jaws would have cost two or three of them their hands. But he never moved. And this seemed to enrage all that rabble. Everyone was at him now. Those who had been afraid to come near him even after he was bound began to find their courage, and for a few minutes the two girls could not even see him — so thickly was he surrounded by the whole crowd of creatures kicking him, hitting him, spitting on him, jeering at him.

At last the rabble had had enough of this. They began to drag the bound and muzzled Lion to the Stone Table, some pulling and some pushing. He was so huge that even when they got him there it took all their efforts to hoist him onto the surface of it. Then there was more tying and tightening of cords.

“The cowards！ The cowards！” sobbed Susan. “Are they still afraid of him, even now?”

When once Aslan had been tied （and tied so that he was really a mass of cords） on the flat stone, a hush fell on the crowd. Four Hags, holding four torches, stood at the corners of the Table. The Witch bared her arms as she had bared them the previous night when it had been Edmund instead of Aslan. Then she began to whet her knife. It looked to the children, when the gleam of the torchlight fell on it, as if the knife were made of stone, not of steel, and it was of a strange and evil shape.

As last she drew near. She stood by Aslan’s head. Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad. Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,

“And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die.”

The children did not see the actual moment of the killing. They couldn’t bear to look and had covered their eyes.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DEEPER MAGIC FROM BEFORE THE DAWN OF TIME

While the two girls still crouched in the bushes with their hands over their faces, they heard the voice of the Witch calling out,

“Now！ Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war！ It will not take us long to crush the human vermin and the traitors now that the great Fool, the great Cat, lies dead.”

At this moment the children were for a few seconds in very great danger. For with wild cries and a noise of skirling pipes and shrill horns blowing, the whole of that vile rabble came sweeping off the hill-top and down the slope right past their hiding-place. They felt the Spectres go by them like a cold wind and they felt the ground shake beneath them under the galloping feet of the Minotaurs; and overhead there went a flurry of foul wings and a blackness of vultures and giant bats. At any other time they would have trembled with fear; but now the sadness and shame and horror of Aslan’s death so filled their minds that they hardly thought of it.

As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hill-top. The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds. And down they both knelt in the wet grass and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur — what was left of it — and cried till they could cry no more. And then they looked at each other and held each other’s hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again were silent. At last Lucy said,

“I can’t bear to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder could we take if off?”

So they tried. And after a lot of working at it （for their fingers were cold and it was now the darkest part of the night） they succeeded. And when they saw his face without it they burst out crying again and kissed it and fondled it and wiped away the blood and the foam as well as they could. And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.

“I wonder could we untie him as well?” said Susan presently. But the enemies, out of pure spitefulness, had drawn the cords so tight that the girls could make nothing of the knots.

Hours and hours seemed to go by in this dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder. But at last Lucy noticed two other things. One was that the sky on the east side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an hour ago. The other was some tiny movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no interest in this. What did it matter? Nothing mattered now！ But at last she saw that whatever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stone Table. And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslan’s body. She peered closer. They were little grey things.

“Ugh！” said Susan from the other side of the Table. “How beastly！ There are horrid little mice crawling over him. Go away, you little beasts.”And she raised her hand to frighten them away.

“Wait！” said Lucy, who had been looking at them more closely still. “Can you see what they’re doing?”

Both girls bent down and stared.

“I do believe—” said Susan. “But how queer！ They’re nibbling away at the cords！”

“That’s what I thought,” said Lucy. “I think they’re friendly mice. Poor little things-they don’t realize he’s dead. They think it’ll do some good untying him.”

It was quite definitely lighter by now. Each of the girls noticed for the first time the white face of the other. They could see the mice nibbling away; dozens and dozens, even hundreds, of little field mice. And at last, one by one, the ropes were all gnawed through.

The sky in the east was whitish by now and the stars were getting fainter — all except one very big one low down on the eastern horizon. They felt colder than they had been all night. The mice crept away again.

The girls cleared away the remains of the gnawed ropes. Aslan looked more like himself without them. Every moment his dead face looked nobler, as the light grew and they could see it better.

In the wood behind them a bird gave a chuckling sound. It had been so still for hours and hours that it startled them. Then another bird answered it. Soon there were birds singing all over the place.

It was quite definitely early morning now, not late night.

“I’m so cold,” said Lucy.

“So am I,” said Susan. “Let’s walk about a bit.”

They walked to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down. The one big star had almost disappeared. The country all looked dark grey, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to and fro more times than they could count between the dead Aslan and the eastern ridge, trying to keep warm; and oh, how tired their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out towards they sea and Cair Paravel （which they could now just make out） the red turned to gold along the line where the sea and the sky met and very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise — a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate.

“What’s that?” said Lucy, clutching Susan’s arm.

“I — I feel afraid to turn round,” said Susan. “something awful is happening.”

“They’re doing something worse to Him,” said Lucy. “Come on！” And she turned, pulling Susan round with her.

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different — all colours and shadows were changed — that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.

“Oh, oh, oh！” cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table.

“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy. “they might have left the body alone.”

“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it magic?”

“Yes！” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.”They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane （for it had apparently grown again） stood Aslan himself.

“Oh, Aslan！” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.

“Not now,” said Aslan.

“You’re not — not a—?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

“Do I look it?” he said.

“Oh, you’re real, you’re real！ Oh, Aslan！” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan. “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know：Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. And now—”

“Oh yes. Now?” said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.

“Oh, children,” said the Lion. “I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can！” He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn’t know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty.

“And now,” said Aslan presently. “to business. I feel I am going to roar. You had better put your fingers in your ears.”

And they did. And Aslan stood up and when he opened his mouth to roar his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind. Then he said,

“We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me.”And he crouched down and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first, holding on tightly to his mane and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, down hill and into the thick of the forest.

That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. This is a mount that doesn’t need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.

It was nearly midday when they found themselves looking down a steep hillside at a castle — a little toy castle it looked from where they stood-which seemed to be all pointed towers. But the Lion was rushing down at such a speed that it grew larger every moment and before they had time even to ask themselves what it was they were already on a level with it. And now it no longer looked like a toy castle but rose frowning in front of them. No face looked over the battlements and the gates were fast shut. And Aslan, not at all slacking his pace, rushed straight as a bullet towards it.

“The Witch’s home！” he cried. “Now, children, hold tight.”

Next moment the whole world seemed to turn upside down, and the children felt as if they had left their insides behind them; for the Lion had gathered himself together for a greater leap than any he had yet made and jumped — or you may call it flying rather than jumping — right over the castle wall. The two girls, breathless but unhurt, found themselves tumbling off his back in the middle of a wide stone courtyard full of statues.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHAT HAPPENED ABOUT THE STATUES

“What an extraordinary place！” cried Lucy. “All those stone animals — and people too！ It’s — it’s like a museum.”

“Hush,” said Susan. “Aslan’s doing something.”

He was indeed. He had bounded up to the stone lion and breathed on him. Then without waiting a moment he whisked round — almost as if he had been a cat chasing its tail — and breathed also on the stone dwarf, which （as you remember） was standing a few feet from the lion with his back to it. Then he pounced on a tall stone dryad which stood beyond the dwarf, turned rapidly aside to deal with a stone rabbit on his right, and rushed on to two centaurs. But at that moment Lucy said：

“Oh, Susan！ Look！ Look at the lion.”

For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back then it spread — then the colour seemed to lick all over him — then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself. Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisking round him whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face.

Of course the children’s eyes turned to follow the lion; but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.

“Oh！” said Susan in a different tone. “Look！ I wonder — I mean, is it safe?”

Lucy looked and saw that Aslan had just breathed on the feet of the stone giant.

“It’s all right！” shouted Aslan joyously. “Once the feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” whispered Susan to Lucy. But it was too late to do anything about it now even if Aslan would have listened to her. The change was already creeping up the Giant’s legs. Now he was moving his feet. A moment later he lifted his club off his shoulder, rubbed his eyes and said,

“Bless me！ I must have been asleep. Now！ Where’s that dratted little Witch that was running about on the ground. Somewhere just by my feet it was.”But when everyone had shouted up to him to explain what had really happened, and when the Giant had put his hand to his ear and got them to repeat it all again so that at last he understood, then he bowed down till his head was no further off than the top of a haystack and touched his cap repeatedly to Aslan, beaming all over his honest ugly face.

“Now for the inside of this house！” said Aslan. “Look alive, everyone. Up stairs and down stairs and in my lady’s chamber！ Leave no corner unsearched. You never know where some poor prisoner may be concealed.”

And into the interior they all rushed and for several minutes the whole of that dark, horrible, fusty old castle echoed with the opening of windows and with everyone’s voices crying out at once. “Don’t forget the dungeon — Give us a hand with this door！ Here’s another little winding stair — Oh！ I say. Here’s a poor kangaroo. Call Aslan — Phew！ How it smells in here — Look out for trap-doors-Up here！ There are a whole lot more on the landing！” But the best of all was when Lucy came rushing upstairs shouting out,

“Aslan！ Aslan！ I’ve found Mr. Tumnus. Oh, do come quick.”

A moment later Lucy and the little Faun were holding each other by both hands and dancing round and round for joy. The little chap was none the worse for having been a statue and was of course very interested in all she had to tell him.

But at last the ransacking of the Witch’s fortress was ended. The whole castle stood empty with every door and window open and the light and the sweet spring air flooding into all the dark and evil places which needed them so badly. The whole crowd of liberated statues surged back into the courtyard. And it was then that someone （Tumnus, I think） first said. “But how are we going to get out?” for Aslan had got in by a jump and the gates were still locked.

“That’ll be all right,” said Aslan; and then, rising on his hind-legs, he bawled up at the Giant. “Hi！ You up there,” he roared. “What’s your name?”

“Giant Rumblebuffin, if it please your honour,” said the Giant, once more touching his cap.

“Well then, Giant Rumblebuffin,” said Aslan. “just let us out of this, will you?”

“Certainly, your honour. It will be a pleasure,” said Giant Rumblebuffin. “Stand well away from the gates, all you little‘uns.”Then he strode to the gate himself and bang — bang — bang — went his huge club. The gates creaked at the first blow, cracked at the second, and shivered at the third. Then he tackled the towers on each side of them and after a few minutes of crashing and thudding both the towers and a good bit of the wall on each side went thundering down in a mass of hopeless rubble; and when the dust cleared it was odd, standing in that dry, grim, stony yard, to see through the gap all the grass and waving trees and sparkling streams of the forest, and the blue hills beyond that and beyond them the sky.

“Blowed if I ain’t all in a muck sweat,” said the Giant, puffing like the largest railway engine. “Comes of being out of condition. I suppose neither of you young ladies has such a thing as a pocket-handkerchee about you?”

“Yes, I have,” said Lucy, standing on tip-toes and holding her handkerchief up as far as she could reach.

“Thank you, Missie,” said Giant Rumblebuffin, stooping down. Next moment Lucy got rather a fright for she found herself caught up in mid-air between the Giant’s finger and thumb. But just as she was getting near his face he suddenly started and then put her gently back on the ground muttering. “Bless me！ I’ve picked up the little girl instead. I beg your pardon, Missie, I thought you was the handkerchee！”

“No, no,” said Lucy laughing. “here it is！” This time he managed to get it but it was only about the same size to him that a saccharine tablet would be to you, so that when she saw him solemnly rubbing it to and fro across his great red face, she said. “I’m afraid it’s not much use to you, Mr. Rumblebuffin.”

“Not at all. Not at all,” said the giant politely. “Never met a nicer handkerchee. So fine, so handy. So — I don’t know how to describe it.”

“What a nice giant he is！” said Lucy to Mr. Tumnus.

“Oh yes,” replied the Faun. “All the Buffins always were. One of the most respected of all the giant families in Narnia. Not very clever, perhaps （I never knew a giant that was）, but an old family. With traditions, you know. If he’d been the other sort she’d never have turned him into stone.”

At this point Aslan clapped his paws together and called for silence.

“Our day’s work is not yet over,” he said. “and if the Witch is to be finally defeated before bed-time we must find the battle at once.”

“And join in, I hope, sir！” added the largest of the Centaurs.

“Of course,” said Aslan. “And now！ Those who can’t keep up — that is, children, dwarfs, and small animals — must ride on the backs of those who can — that is, lions, centaurs, unicorns, horses, giants and eagles. Those who are good with their noses must come in front with us lions to smell out where the battle is. Look lively and sort yourselves.”

And with a great deal of bustle and cheering they did. The most pleased of the lot was the other lion who kept running about everywhere pretending to be very busy but really in order to say to everyone he met. “Did you hear what he said? Us Lions. That means him and me. Us Lions. That’s what I like about Aslan. No side, no stand-off-ishness. Us Lions. That meant him and me.”At least he went on saying this till Aslan had loaded him up with three dwarfs, one dryad, two rabbits, and a hedgehog. That steadied him a bit.

When all were ready （it was a big sheep-dog who actually helped Aslan most in getting them sorted into their proper order） they set out through the gap in the castle wall. At first the lions and dogs went nosing about in all directions. But then suddenly one great hound picked up the scent and gave a bay. There was no time lost after that. Soon all the dogs and lions and wolves and other hunting animals were going at full speed with their noses to the ground, and all the others, streaked out for about half a mile behind them, were following as fast as they could. Faster and faster they went as the scent became easier and easier to follow. And then, just as they came to the last curve in a narrow, winding valley, Lucy heard above all these noises another noise — a different one, which gave her a queer feeling inside. It was a noise of shouts and shrieks and of the clashing of metal against metal.

Then they came out of the narrow valley and at once she saw the reason. There stood Peter and Edmund and all the rest of Aslan’s army fighting desperately against the crowd of horrible creatures whom she had seen last night; only now, in the daylight, they looked even stranger and more evil and more deformed. There also seemed to be far more of them. Peter’s army — which had their backs to her looked terribly few. And there were statues dotted all over the battlefield, so apparently the Witch had been using her wand. But she did not seem to be using it now. She was fighting with her stone knife. It was Peter she was fighting — both of them going at it so hard that Lucy could hardly make out what was happening; she only saw the stone knife and Peter’s sword flashing so quickly that they looked like three knives and three swords. That pair were in the centre. On each side the line stretched out. Horrible things were happening wherever she looked.

“Off my back, children,” shouted Aslan. And they both tumbled off. Then with a roar that shook all Narnia from the western lamp-post to the shores of the eastern sea the great beast flung himself upon the White Witch. Lucy saw her face lifted towards him for one second with an expression of terror and amazement. Then Lion and Witch had rolled over together but with the Witch underneath; and at the same moment all war-like creatures whom Aslan had led from the Witch’s house rushed madly on the enemy lines, dwarfs with their battleaxes, dogs with teeth, the Giant with his club （and his feet also crushed dozens of the foe）, unicorns with their horns, centaurs with swords and hoofs. And Peter’s tired army cheered, and the newcomers roared, and the enemy squealed and gibbered till the wood re-echoed with the din of that onset.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE HUNTING OF THE WHITE STAG

The battle was all over a few minutes after their arrival. Most of the enemy had been killed in the first charge of Aslan and his companions; and when those who were still living saw that the Witch was dead they either gave themselves up or took to flight. The next thing that Lucy knew was that Peter and Aslan were shaking hands. It was strange to her to see Peter looking as he looked now-his face was so pale and stern and he seemed so much older.

“It was all Edmund’s doing, Aslan,” Peter was saying. “We’d have been beaten if it hadn’t been for him. The Witch was turning our troops into stone right and left. But nothing would stop him. He fought his way through three ogres to where she was just turning one of your leopards into a statue. And when he reached her he had sense to bring his sword smashing down on her wand instead of trying to go for her directly and simply getting made a statue himself for his pains. That was the mistake all the rest were making. Once her wand was broken we began to have some chance — if we hadn’t lost so many already. He was terribly wounded. We must go and see him.”

They found Edmund in charge of Mrs. Beaver a little way back from the fighting line. He was covered with blood, his mouth was open, and his face a nasty green colour.

“Quick, Lucy,” said Aslan.

And then, almost for the first time, Lucy remembered the precious cordial that had been given her for a Christmas present. Her hands trembled so much that she could hardly undo the stopper, but she managed it in the end and poured a few drops into her brother’s mouth.

“There are other people wounded,” said Aslan while she was still looking eagerly into Edmund’s pale face and wondering if the cordial would have any result.

“Yes, I know,” said Lucy crossly. “Wait a minute.”

“Daughter of Eve,” said Aslan in a graver voice. “others also are at the point of death. Must more people die for Edmund?”

“I’m sorry, Aslan,” said Lucy, getting up and going with him. And for the next half-hour they were busy — she attending to the wounded while he restored those who had been turned into stone. When at last she was free to come back to Edmund she found him standing on his feet and not only healed of his wounds but looking better than she had seen him look — oh, for ages; in fact ever since his first term at that horrid school which was where he had begun to go wrong. He had become his real old self again and could look you in the face. And there on the field of battle Aslan made him a knight.

“Does he know,” whispered Lucy to Susan. “what Aslan did for him? Does he know what the arrangement with the Witch really was?”

“Hush！ No. Of course not,” said Susan.

“Oughtn’t he to be told?” said Lucy.

“Oh, surely not,” said Susan. “It would be too awful for him. Think how you’d feel if you were he.”

“All the same I think he ought to know,” said Lucy. But at that moment they were interrupted.

That night they slept where they were. How Aslan provided food for them all I don’t know; but somehow or other they found themselves all sitting down on the grass to a fine high tea at about eight o’clock. Next day they began marching eastward down the side of the great river. And the next day after that, at about teatime, they actually reached the mouth.

That evening after tea the four children all managed to get down to the beach again and get their shoes and stockings off and feel the sand between their toes. But next day was more solemn. For then, in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel — that wonderful hall with the ivory roof and the west wall hung with peacock’s feathers and the eastern door which looks towards the sea, in the presence of all their friends and to the sound of trumpets, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them to the four thrones amid deafening shouts of. “Long Live King Peter！ Long Live Queen Susan！ Long Live King Edmund！ Long Live Queen Lucy！”

“Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen. Bear it well, Sons of Adam！ Bear it well, Daughters of Eve！” said Aslan.

And through the eastern door, which was wide open, came the voices of the mermen and the mermaids swimming close to the shore and singing in honour of their new Kings and Queens.

So the children sat on their thrones and sceptres were put into their hands and they gave rewards and honours to all their friends, to Tumnus the Faun, and to the Beavers, and Giant Rumblebuffin, to the leopards, and the good centaurs, and the good dwarfs, and to the lion. And that night there was a great feast in Cair Paravel, and revelry and dancing, and gold flashed and wine flowed, and answering to the music inside, but stranger, sweeter, and more piercing, came the music of the sea people.

But amidst all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn’t there they said nothing about it. For Mr. Beaver had warned them. “He’ll be coming and going,” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

And now, as you see, this story is nearly （but not quite） at an end. These two Kings and two Queens governed Narnia well, and long and happy was their reign. At first much of their time was spent in seeking out the remnants of the White Witch’s army and destroying them, and indeed for a long time there would be news of evil things lurking in the wilder parts of the forest — a haunting here and a killing there, a glimpse of a werewolf one month and a rumour of a hag the next. But in the end all that foul brood was stamped out. And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live. And they drove back the fierce giants （quite a different sort from Giant Rumblebuffin） on the north of Narnia when these ventured across the frontier. And they entered into friendship and alliance with countries beyond the sea and paid them visits of state and received visits of state from them. And they themselves grew and changed as the years passed over them. And Peter became a tall and deep-chested man and a great warrior, and he was called King Peter the Magnificent. And Susan grew into a tall and gracious woman with black hair that fell almost to her feet and the kings of the countries beyond the sea began to send ambassadors asking for her hand in marriage. And she was called Susan the Gentle. Edmund was a graver and quieter man than Peter, and great in council and judgement. He was called King Edmund the Just. But as for Lucy, she was always gay and golden-haired, and all princes in those parts desired her to be their Queen, and her own people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant.

So they lived in great joy and if ever they remembered their life in this world it was only as one remembers a dream. And one year it fell out that Tumnus （who was a middle-aged Faun by now and beginning to be stout） came down river and brought them news that the White Stag had once more appeared in his parts — the White Stag who would give you wishes if you caught him. So these two Kings and two Queens with the principal members of their court, rode a-hunting with horns and hounds in the Western Woods to follow the White Stag. And they had not hunted long before they had a sight of him. And he led them a great pace over rough and smooth and through thick and thin, till the horses of all the courtiers were tired out and these four were still following. And they saw the stag enter into a thicket where their horses could not follow. Then said King Peter （for they talked in quite a different style now, having been Kings and Queens for so long）. “Fair Consorts, let us now alight from our horses and follow this beast into the thicket; for in all my days I never hunted a nobler quarry.”

“Sir,” said the others. “even so let us do.”

So they alighted and tied their horses to trees and went on into the thick wood on foot. And as soon as they had entered it Queen Susan said,

“Fair friends, here is a great marvel, for I seem to see a tree of iron.”

“Madam,” said King Edmund. “if you look well upon it you shall see it is a pillar of iron with a lantern set on the top thereof.”

“By the Lion’s Mane, a strange device,” said King Peter. “to set a lantern here where the trees cluster so thick about it and so high above it that if it were lit it should give light to no man！”

“Sir,” said Queen Lucy. “By likelihood when this post and this lamp were set here there were smaller trees in the place, or fewer, or none. For this is a young wood and the iron post is old.”And they stood looking upon it. Then said King Edmund,

“I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh upon me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream.”

“Sir,” answered they all. “it is even so with us also.”

“And more,” said Queen Lucy. “for it will not go out of my mind that if we pass this post and lantern either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes.”

“Madam,” said King Edmund. “the like foreboding stirreth in my heart also.”

“And in mine, fair brother,” said King Peter.

“And in mine too,” said Queen Susan. “Wherefore by my counsel we shall lightly return to our horses and follow this White Stag no further.”

“Madam,” said King Peter. “therein I pray thee to have me excused. For never since we four were Kings and Queens in Narnia have we set our hands to any high matter, as battles, quests, feats of arms, acts of justice, and the like, and then given over; but always what we have taken in hand, the same we have achieved.”

“Sister,” said Queen Lucy. “my royal brother speaks rightly. And it seems to me we should be shamed if for any fearing or foreboding we turned back from following so noble a beast as now we have in chase.”

“And so say I,” said King Edmund. “And I have such desire to find the signification of this thing that I would not by my good will turn back for the richest jewel in all Narnia and all the islands.”

“Then in the name of Aslan,” said Queen Susan. “if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us.”

So these Kings and Queens entered the thicket, and before they had gone a score of paces they all remembered that the thing they had seen was called a lamp-post, and before they had gone twenty more they noticed that they were making their way not through branches but through coats. And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes. It was the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide. Mrs. Macready and the visitors were still talking in the passage; but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children weren’t caught.

And that would have been the very end of the story if it hadn’t been that they felt they really must explain to the Professor why four of the coats out of his wardrobe were missing. And the Professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn’t tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think it will be any good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coats. You won’t get into Narnia again by that route. Nor would the coats be much use by now if you did！ Eh? What’s that? Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it. And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the same sort themselves. What’s that? How will you know? Oh, you’ll know all right. Odd things they say — even their looks — will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”

And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.

纳尼亚传奇：凯斯宾王子（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5696-2

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目录

第一章 小岛

第二章 古老的宝库

第三章 小矮人

第四章 小矮人讲述凯斯宾王子的故事

第五章 凯斯宾深山历险

第六章 隐居者

第七章 危机四伏的古纳尼亚

第八章 离开小岛

第九章 露西看到了什么

第十章 狮王归来

第十一章 狮王长啸

第十二章 巫术和复仇

第十三章 至尊国王指挥作战

第十四章 大家分头行动

第十五章 阿斯兰开启天门

CHAPTER ONE THE ISLAND

CHAPTER TWO THE ANCIENT TREASURE HOUSE

CHAPTER THREE THE DWARF

CHAPTER FOUR THE DWARF TELLS OF PRINCE CASPIAN

CHAPTER FIVE CASPIAN’S ADVENTURE IN THE MOUNTAINS

CHAPTER SIX THE PEOPLE THAT LIVED IN HIDING

CHAPTER SEVEN OLD NARNIA IN DANGER

CHAPTER EIGHT HOW THEY LEFT THE ISLAND

CHAPTER NINE WHAT LUCY SAW

CHAPTER TEN THE RETURN OF THE LION

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE LION ROARS

CHAPTER TWELVE SORCERY AND SUDDEN VENGEANCE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE HIGH KING IN COMMAND

CHAPTER FOURTEEN HOW ALL WERE VERY BUSY

CHAPTER FIFTEEN ASLAN MAKES A DOOR IN THE AIR

第一章
小岛

从前，有四个孩子，分别名叫彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙和露西。我们在本系列的另外一本书——《狮子、女巫和魔衣柜》里，讲述了他们的一段异彩纷呈的历险故事。他们意外开启了一个有魔力的大衣柜，穿过那个衣柜，来到了一个与我们的世界迥然不同的另一个世界。在那个世界里，有一个王国叫纳尼亚王国，而他们后来成了纳尼亚王国的国王和女王。他们统治了纳尼亚很多年；可是当他们再一次穿过大衣柜的柜门，重新回到英国以后，却发现这段漫长的历险似乎只是发生在一瞬之间。无论如何，还没有人发现他们离开过，而他们除了向一位非常睿智的老人透露过之外，没有对其他任何人提起过这段经历。

那已经是一年前发生的事情了。现在，这四个孩子都坐在火车站的座椅上，身边堆放着各自的大箱子和玩具箱。其实，他们正在返校途中，而这座火车站是一个枢纽站。几分钟后，两个女孩就会乘坐一列即将进站的火车返回她们的学校，而大约半小时以后，两个男孩将乘坐另一列火车返回另一所学校。旅程之初，四个孩子热热闹闹地聚在一起说说笑笑，总觉得仍然像在度假似的；可是现在，马上就要向彼此道别，各奔东西了，他们这才切实感到假期是真的结束了，在学校里按部就班的日子又要开始了。孩子们的情绪都颇为低落，谁也想不出说些什么好。这一年，露西第一次去寄宿学校上学。

这是一座空荡寂静的乡间火车站，除了他们四个，月台上基本没有别的人。突然，露西轻轻尖叫了一声，就像被马蜂蜇了似的。

“怎么了，露？”爱德蒙问道。话音刚落，他突然停下来并“哎哟”一声叫了起来。

“究竟怎么……”彼得话刚说出口，突然也改变了原本要说的话，转而叫道：“苏珊，放手！你在干什么呢？你要拽我去哪儿？”

“我没有碰你啊！”苏珊说道，“有人在拽我，哎呀——哎呀——哎呀，别拽了！”

孩子们面面相觑，每个人的脸色都变得煞白。

“我也感觉到了，”爱德蒙气喘吁吁地说，“好像有人在拽着我走。这股劲儿太可怕了——啊！它又来了！”

“我也是，”露西说道，“哎呀，我要撑不住了。”

“大家当心！”爱德蒙喊道，“我们手拉手，别松开！我凭感觉可以断定这是一股魔力。快！”

“对，”苏珊说道，“我们手拉手。哎呀，我真希望它能停下来——哎呀！”

紧接着，行李、座椅、月台和车站已全部无影无踪了。四个孩子手拉着手，喘个不停，发现他们竟然身处一片树林之中——这里的树木枝叶稠密，有些树枝直直戳到了他们身上，使他们动弹不得。他们揉了揉眼睛，深深地吸了一口气。

“哎呀，彼得！”露西惊叫道，“你说我们有没有可能回到了纳尼亚？”

“任何地方都有可能，”彼得说道，“这里的树木这么繁多，一码开外我就看不清了。我们得想办法到一个开阔的地方——也不知道这树林里有没有开阔的地方。”

荨麻和荆棘刺痛着孩子们的皮肤，他们好不容易才挣脱了灌木丛。然后，他们又是一阵惊讶。一切都变得更明亮了，往前走几步，他们就发现自己已经身处树林的边缘，往下瞧是一片沙滩。不远处则是风平浪静的大海，海水卷起微小的涟漪，寂静无声地追逐着沙滩。他们视野范围内，没有陆地，万里无云。根据太阳所在的位置来看，现在大约是上午十点钟。海水是炫目蓝色，孩子们静静驻足，深深地呼吸着大海的气息。

“天哪！”彼得说道，“这儿景色真好。”

五分钟后，孩子们赤脚蹚入了清凉又澄澈的海水中。

“这可比坐在闷热的车厢里赶回学校去上那些拉丁文、法文和代数课好多了！”爱德蒙说道。之后有好一阵子，大家都没有交谈，只是在泼打戏水，寻找小虾和螃蟹。

“不过，”玩了一会儿，苏珊说道，“我们是不是也该计划计划，要不然过不了多久就会饿肚子啦。”

“我们有妈妈让我们路上吃的三明治，”爱德蒙说道，“至少我那份还在。”

“我的不在了，”露西说道，“我把它们放在小包里了。”

“我的也不在这儿。”苏珊说道。

“我的那份在衣服口袋里，就在海滩上，”彼得说道，“四个人吃两份午餐，这可不是闹着玩的。”

“我现在倒还不想吃东西，只想要点喝的。”露西说道。

其他人现在都感到口渴了，因为通常情况下，人在烈日下的海水里蹚水玩耍过后都会觉得口渴。

“这就像遭遇了海难，”爱德蒙说道，“在书里面，遇险的人总能在荒岛上找到清澈又甘甜的泉水。我们最好也去找找。”

“这么说，我们还得回到刚才那片茂密的森林里去啊？”苏珊问道。

“不需要，”彼得说道，“如果这里有溪流，它们肯定会流入大海的。我们就沿着海岸走，一定能找到溪流的。”

于是，他们都往回跋涉，先是走过细而湿的沙滩，然后一直走到粘脚趾头的干燥又疏松的沙滩上。他们开始穿上鞋袜。爱德蒙和露西一开始还想把鞋袜都丢掉，光着脚丫去探险，但是苏珊认为那真是太疯狂了。“鞋袜一旦丢了可能就再也找不回来了，”她指出，“如果晚上气温降下来，我们还要待在这里，可缺不了鞋袜啊。”

再次穿好了鞋袜，他们便开始沿着海岸走去，左边是大海，右边是森林。除了偶尔能听到海鸥的鸣叫声，周围非常安静。那片森林十分茂密又杂乱，他们几乎看不清林子里是什么样子；森林里没有动静——没有一只鸟儿，甚至连一只昆虫也没有。

贝壳、海藻、海葵抑或岩石缝里的小螃蟹都很好玩，只不过当你正感到口渴难耐，就不会像往常那么喜欢它们了。从清凉的海水中走上岸之后，孩子们感到脚又闷热又沉重。苏珊和露西手里都拿着各自的雨衣，在魔力突然来袭之前，爱德蒙将外套丢在了车站的座椅上，于是他和彼得轮流着拿彼得的大衣。

不久，海岸线开始向右延伸。大约一刻钟之后，面前出现一个尖尖的石崖，经过一个大转弯，他们翻过了那个石崖，把最初走出森林所看到的那片海域甩在了身后，现在，向远处望去，他们看到对面的海岸，那边与他们正在探索的这片陆地一样丛林密布。

“那是一座独立的岛屿吗？还是说，我们很快就能走到那上面去？”露西问道。

“不知道。”彼得说道。大家都默不作声，吃力地往前走着。

他们脚下的海岸与对面的海岸越来越靠近。每转向一个海角，孩子们就期待发现两岸相连之处，可是总也不能如愿。现在他们来到几块岩石跟前，爬上了岩石顶部，看见前方有一条航道——“哎呀，真烦人！”爱德蒙说道，“真是白费劲！我们根本走不到那边的树林。我们是在一座岛上啊！”

他说得没错。在此处，他们和对面海岸之间的海峡宽度大概只有三四十码；但是他们现在看出这是距离对面海岸最短的地方。再往远看，他们这边的海岸继续向右延伸，可以看到此处与大陆之间开阔的海面。显然，他们已经环绕小岛走了大半圈。

“看！”露西突然说道，“那是什么？”她指向横亘在海滩上的一条长长的、银色的、蛇形的东西。

“一条溪流！是一条溪流！”其他三个孩子大叫道。尽管孩子们已经非常疲倦，他们还是迅速跳下了岩石，朝着甘甜的水冲了过去。他们知道离海岸较远的上游的溪水更好喝，于是立即奔向了溪流从密林中流淌出来的地方。森林里，树木十分茂密，但是溪流已经在苔藓丛生的河岸之间冲刷出了一条河道，只要俯身前行，就能走在以树叶为穹顶的隧道里，追溯到溪流的源头。孩子们很快就发现了第一个水潭，这是一个呈棕色的凹陷。他们围着水潭跪下身来，尽情地喝着溪水。他们把脸浸到水里，又把胳膊也浸到水里，让水一直没到了手肘。

“话说，”爱德蒙说道，“我们把那两个三明治吃了吧？”

“噢，我们还是先省着不吃比较好吧？”苏珊提议道，“我们之后可能会更加需要它们呢。”

“我真心希望，”露西说道，“口渴的问题解决后，我们还能像之前口渴那会儿一样，一点儿也不觉得饿。”

“可那俩三明治到底怎么办呢？”爱德蒙又问了一遍，“省着不吃，等到它们变质了，那可不好了。你们可别忘了，这儿可比英国热多啦，而且我们已经把它们捂在口袋里走了好几个小时的路了。”于是他们还是把那两小包三明治取了出来，分成了四份来吃，最后谁都没有吃饱，但这总比什么都不吃要好得多。接着他们又讨论了下一餐的着落。露西想要回到海边去捕虾，但有人指出他们没有捕网。爱德蒙说他们必须去岩石缝里找找海鸥蛋，可是他们仔细一想，谁也想不起来先前在哪里看到过海鸥蛋，再说即使能够找到海鸥蛋，他们也没有办法将其煮熟。彼得心中暗想，除非他们能交上好运，要不然过不了多久，能有生的蛋吃都已经谢天谢地了，不过他知道这话就算说出来也无济于事。苏珊则后悔不该那么早就吃掉三明治。眼下，他们一个两个地，都有些一筹莫展。最后，爱德蒙说：

“听着，现在摆在我们眼前的只有一条路了。我们必须去密林里探索一番。隐士、游侠骑士，还有别的诸如此类的人，在森林里都能找到办法活下来。他们就以根茎、浆果还有别的东西为食。”

“哪种根茎呀？”苏珊不禁问道。

“我一直觉得是树根。”露西说道。

“那就走吧，”彼得说，“爱德是对的。我们必须努力做些什么，这样总好过再次走出林子直面骄阳。”

于是他们站起身来，开始沿着小溪前行。这路走起来十分艰难，他们得俯身或攀爬过树枝，磕磕绊绊地穿过大片的杜鹃花之类的灌木丛，衣服挂破了，鞋子也在溪水里面弄湿了。而且，除了溪流的声音和他们自己弄出的响动之外，四周依然寂静无声。他们不由开始对这样的探索感到厌烦，就在此时，他们闻到了一股诱人的香味，接着，他们还看到右边河岸上方闪过了一道明亮的色彩。

“嘿！”露西兴奋地叫道，“我敢肯定那是一棵苹果树。”

那还真是一棵苹果树。他们气喘吁吁地爬上陡坡，又艰难地穿过了几丛荆棘，终于围着一棵老树站着。那树上结满了正如他们所希望看到的色泽金黄、硬实多汁的大苹果。

“这儿的苹果树可不止这一棵呢。”爱德蒙塞了满嘴的苹果，边嚼边说道，“那儿，还有那儿，都是。”

“哎呀，竟然有好几十棵呢！”苏珊说着，啃完了第一个苹果，扔掉了果核，又摘了第二个。“这里曾经一定是个果园——大约是很久很久以前了吧，那时候这儿肯定还没这么荒凉，树木也还没有长起来。”

“照这么说，这里曾经是一个有人居住的小岛。”彼得说道。

“那又是什么？”露西指着前方，问道。

“天哪，那是一面墙！”彼得说道，“一面古老的石墙。”

他们从结满果实的树枝间穿过，来到了那面墙跟前。石墙已经很老旧了，有好几处破损的地方，墙上长着苔藓和一些小花，除了最高的树，再也没什么比这面墙更高的了。他们走近看，发现墙上有一个大拱顶，这儿从前肯定是一扇大门，可是现在，原本该是大门的地方几乎被一棵最大的苹果树给堵了个严实。他们不得不折断一些树枝，才能通过，过去之后，他们全都眨起了眼睛，因为门那边的光线明显刺目得多。他们来到了一个开阔的地方，四周都是围墙。这里没有树木，只有平坦的野草坪、雏菊、常春藤以及灰色的围墙。这是一个明亮、神秘而又宁静的地方，也充满了忧伤。四个人迈步来到场地中央，心里倒是十分高兴，因为他们终于找到地方自由舒展腰背，活动四肢了。

第二章
古老的宝库

“这里以前不是花园，”苏珊很快说道，“而是一座城堡，我们所在的地方一定就是城堡的庭院。”

“我懂你的意思，”彼得同意道，“没错，那儿是城堡的遗迹，而且这里有一段通向围墙顶部的台阶。你们看其他的台阶——就是又宽又浅的那些——它们一路通往门口，那扇门一定通往城堡的大厅。”

“这地方看起来有许多年历史了吧。”爱德蒙说道。

“没错，准有许多年历史，”彼得说道，“真希望我们能揭开谜底，查明当年住在这座城堡里的都是什么人，还有那是多久以前的事情。”

“这个地方给我一种奇怪的感觉。”露西说道。

“是吗，露？”彼得转过身来凝神细视着她，“正好我也有同感。在这奇怪的一天里，这恐怕算得上最奇怪的一桩事情了。我真想知道我们这是到了哪儿，以及这一切都意味着什么？”

孩子们就这样聊着穿过了庭院，走过另一扇门，来到了一个原本是大厅的地方。这个地方现在却与庭院相差无几，屋顶早就不见了，这里早成了又一个野草和雏菊杂乱丛生的地方，只是相比起来更短、更窄了一些，围墙更高一些。大厅的另一端有一个平台，大约比别处高出三英尺。

“我想知道，这里从前真的是大厅吗？”苏珊说道，“那个平台是做什么用的呢？”

“哎呀，你真傻，”彼得说道（莫名激动了起来），“你没发现吗？那原本是放贵宾桌的地方，是国王和贵族们坐的地方。任谁听了都以为你把一年前的事全忘了，当时我们自己就作为国王和女王坐在城堡的高台上啊，那个高台和眼前这个像极了。”

“是啊，在我们的凯尔帕拉维尔城堡里，”苏珊用一种柔和怡神、抑扬顿挫的声音接着说道，“就坐落在纳尼亚大河的入口处。我怎么可能会忘呢？”

“让这一切都重现，怎么样！”露西说道，“我们现在可以假装是在凯尔帕拉维尔。这座大厅一定像极了我们过去举行宴会的城堡大厅。”

“可惜了，现在可没有宴会。”爱德蒙说道，“瞧，天色已晚，影子都这么长了。而且也不那么热了，你们都注意到了吧？”

“要是我们得在这地方过夜的话，篝火是必不可少的。”彼得说道，“我身上有火柴，我们赶紧去找找，看能不能拾些干树枝来。”

大家都觉得彼得说得有道理，接下来的半小时内，他们都忙着进进出出找柴火。之前那个废弃大厅外的果园里柴火并不多。于是孩子们穿过大厅，经过一扇小侧门，去了城堡的另一端。到那儿一看，简直就是石堆和凹槽组成的巨大迷宫。那里从前一定是走廊和小房间，可现在却长满了荨麻和野蔷薇。往前再走几步，他们看见城堡的墙上有一个大裂口。穿过裂口，他们进入了一片树林，那儿的树木颜色更加幽深，也更加高大。他们在树林里发现了许多枯死的树枝、腐朽的木头、干枯的叶子和冷杉树的球果。他们一趟又一趟、一捆又一捆地搬运，在城堡的高台上堆成一大堆。搬运到第五回的时候，他们还找到一口井，这井就在大厅外面，被草丛给掩盖住了。他们清理了井边的杂草，打了点井水尝了尝，发现那井水又清澈又甘甜，而且也很深。一条往日遗存的碎石路沿着这口井绕了半圈。两个女孩又去果园摘苹果了，两个男孩则在靠近墙角边的高台上点篝火，这是他们挑选的最温暖舒适的位置。他们费了好大劲，用了许多根火柴，终于燃起了一堆熊熊的篝火。四个孩子背对着墙壁，围着篝火坐了下来。接着，他们用木棍尖儿串起苹果，试着用篝火烤苹果吃。可是因为没有白糖，烤苹果的味道实在谈不上多好吃。而且，要不就是苹果烤得太烫，烫到不能用手拿着吃，要不就是等它凉了，凉到虽然可以用手去拿，可是已经难以下咽。结果，他们只好退而求其次，照旧吃生苹果。爱德蒙说得很对，这的确会让人觉得学校里的晚餐说到底也没有那么糟糕——“要是现在给我来片厚面包和黄油，我还是乐意吃的。”他说道。但是，四个孩子的心都被一股因探险而燃起的热情鼓舞着，事实上谁也不想回学校去。

吃完了最后一个苹果，苏珊又跑去井边喝水。回来的时候，她的手里拿着一样东西。

“你们看，”她的声音听上去像是噎住了，“这是我在井边发现的。”她把东西递给彼得，坐了下来。她的神情和声音让其他三个孩子以为她马上就要哭出来了。爱德蒙和露西急切地向前俯身，去看彼得手里到底是什么东西——原来是一个小小的、亮亮的东西，映着篝火，闪着光泽。

“呃，这，这——怎么会有这种事呢！”彼得说道，他的声音也不由得变了调。然后，他就把那东西递给了其他人。

现在孩子们都看出来了——原来那是一枚小小的象棋马，与普通棋子一样，却格外重，因为它是由纯金打造的；马的眼睛由两颗小小的红宝石制成，不过确切说只有一只眼睛，因为另一只眼睛已经掉了。

“哎呀！”露西惊声说道，“这简直同我们在凯尔帕拉维尔当国王和女王那会儿常玩的金棋子一模一样。”

“别发愣，苏。”彼得对苏珊说道。

“我不知道怎么回事，”苏珊说道，“它让我想起了——噢，多美好的日子啊。我记得我曾经和半羊人还有善良的巨人们一起下象棋，水族的朋友们在大海里歌唱，还有我那匹漂亮的小马，还有——还有——”

“现在，”彼得说道，语气不同以往，“我们四个该好好想想了。”

“想什么？”爱德蒙问道。

“你们该不会都没猜到我们在什么地方吧？”彼得说道。

“接着说，接着说，”露西说道，“这几个小时以来，我一直觉得这个地方笼罩着一团迷雾。”

“你就快说吧，彼得，”爱德蒙也催促道，“我们都听着呢。”

“我们就在凯尔帕拉维尔的废墟上。”彼得终于公布了答案。

“可是，嘿，”爱德蒙回应道，“我的意思是，你是怎么辨认出来的呢？这个地方已经废弃了很多年。你看那些大树，它们一直长到顶起了大门。你再看这些石头。任何人都看得出来，这个地方已经有好几百年没人居住了。”

“我知道，”彼得说道，“确实不好辨认。不过我们先不管这些，我想把我的思路一点一点理出来。第一点：这个大厅不管形状还是大小都和凯尔帕拉维尔的那个大厅完全一样。只要想象上头是个穹顶，再想象那里没有杂草，而是彩色的路面，再想象墙上挂起壁毯，那么这里就是我们的皇家宴会厅了。”

谁也没有出声。

“第二点，”彼得继续说道，“那口城堡水井和我们以前那个水井的位置一模一样，在大厅偏南一点，大小和形状也完全相同。”

其他人还是没有出声。

“第三点：苏珊刚刚发现了我们以前玩的棋子——也许是与我们过去玩的棋子一模一样的东西。”

还是没人接他的话。

“第四点。你们没忘记吧——正好在卡乐门国王的大使到来之前的那一天——我们不是在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡的北大门外面种了满园的果树吗？森林精灵中最伟大的精灵，波莫娜，亲自来为果园施了祝福的咒语。是那些得体的小鼹鼠过来刨好了坑。你们准没忘记吧，他们的首领，那个特别有意思的老哩哩格拉唔，他倚在铁锹上说：‘相信我，陛下，未来的一天，这些果树一定会为您带来快乐的。’天哪，这一切都被他说中了。”

“我记得！当然记得！”露西拍着手说道。

“但是你想想，彼得，”爱德蒙说道，“还是说不通啊。首先，我们可不是紧挨着大门种的那些果树。我们可没有那么傻。”

“我们当然没那么傻，”彼得说道，“但是后来那些果树慢慢长高，就挨着大门了。”

“还有一点，”爱德蒙又说道，“凯尔帕拉维尔也不在岛上。”

“没错，这个我也百思不得其解。不过也要看你怎么称呼它了，当年它就是一个半岛，几乎就是一座小岛了。也许在我们之后的年代被人改造成了一座孤立的小岛呢？比如说有人挖了一道海峡，于是它就变成了现在的样子。”

“你先等等！”爱德蒙说道，“你老是说我们之后的年代，但我们从纳尼亚回到英国才不过是一年前的事情吧。你是想说不过短短一年里，城堡倒塌了，茂密的森林长出来了，而我们亲眼看着种下去的小树苗都长成了又高大又古老的果树，天晓得还有什么别的奇迹。这太让人难以置信了！”

“还有一点，”露西说道，“如果这里就是凯尔帕拉维尔，那么高台的这一端应该有一扇门，而且这扇门现在应该就在我们背后。你们知道的——这扇门直通我们的地下宝库。”

“我觉得这儿没有门。”彼得站起来说道。

他们身后的墙上爬满了常春藤。

“我们马上就能知道。”爱德蒙说道。只见他拿起了一根原本用作柴火的树枝，开始在满是常春藤的墙壁上这里敲敲，那里打打。树枝敲在墙上，发出“嗒嗒”的响声；他又继续敲打，仍然是“嗒嗒”的声音；突然，“咚咚”，敲打声变了，是一种空空的、打在木头上的声音。

“我的天哪！”爱德蒙惊声叫道。

“我们必须先把这些藤条给清理干净。”彼得说道。

“哎呀，可千万别管藤条，”苏珊说道，“我们可以明天一早再试着开门。要是我们得在这儿过夜，我可不希望身后是一扇开着的门，后面是一个又大又黑的窟窿，什么都有可能从里面出来，更何况里面一定又有风又潮湿。而且天很快就要黑了。”

“苏珊！你怎么能这么说呢？”露西责备地看了她一眼。不过两个男孩子都摩拳擦掌、跃跃欲试，压根不理会苏珊的建议。他俩动手清除藤条，还用上了彼得口袋里的小刀，最后把小刀都给弄断了，之后又用了爱德蒙的小刀。很快，他们先前坐着的地方就铺满了常春藤；最后，他们把那扇门上的藤条全都清理干净了。

“门是锁着的，我就猜到了会是这样。”彼得非常失望。

“可是木板已经全都烂掉了，”爱德蒙说，“我们用不了多久就能把它弄碎，正好能多出一些柴火。动手吧。”

实际花的时间可比他们想得多，在大功告成之前，大厅里的光线已经变得十分昏暗，头顶的天空也已经出现了一两颗星星。两个男孩站在一堆碎木头上面，擦掉手上的碎屑，看着他们一番劳动之后露出来的那个又冷又黑的大窟窿。这个时候，不止苏珊一个人感到一阵微微的战栗。

“现在我们需要一支火把。”彼得说道。

“哎呀，有什么用呢？”苏珊说，“就像爱德蒙说的——”

“我现在可没那么说，”爱德蒙打断了她，“我依旧没弄明白，但是我们可以之后再想。我猜你是打算下去吧，彼得？”

“我们必须下去，”彼得说道，“打起精神来，苏珊。我们都回到了纳尼亚，在这里耍小孩子脾气是没有用的。你在这儿是女王。而且不管怎么说，心里有这么大一个谜团没有解开，谁都不可能睡得着觉。”

他们试过点燃长一些的树枝当作火把，但是没有成功。要是点着的那头朝上拿着，火就会熄灭，可是点着的那头朝下拿着，火就会烧到手上，烟也会飘进眼睛。最后，他们不得不用爱德蒙的手电筒；所幸那是不到一周之前刚收到的生日礼物，里面的电池差不多是全新的。于是爱德蒙打着手电筒，走在最前面。紧接着是露西、苏珊，彼得走在最后面。

“我已经走到最顶上的台阶了。”爱德蒙说道。

“数数有多少台阶。”彼得说道。

“一——二——三，”爱德蒙一边数着数，一边小心地往下走，一直数到了第十六级台阶。“已经走到底了。”他朝身后喊道。

“居然真的是凯尔帕拉维尔，”露西惊讶地说道，“那儿以前也正好是十六级台阶。”直到他们走下最后一级台阶，彼此紧挨着站在一起，谁也没再吭声。爱德蒙拿着手电筒，慢慢照了一圈。

“噢——噢——噢！”孩子们立即发出一阵欢呼。

毋庸置疑，这里确实是凯尔帕拉维尔的那个古老的宝库。他们曾经作为纳尼亚的国王和女王，统治着这个国度。宝库正中间有一条通道（就像温室里一样），通道两边每隔不远就竖立着一套盔甲，就像守护宝藏的卫士。盔甲之间，通道两旁，架子上摆满了各式珍宝——项链、手镯、戒指、金餐具、长象牙、胸针、王冠、金链子，还有尚未镶嵌的宝石，随意地堆在那儿，好像是一堆石子或者土豆一样——有钻石、红宝石、绿宝石、红玉、黄玉和紫水晶。架子的下面立着几个铁片包边的橡木大箱子，上了大锁。这地方格外寒冷，又是那么安静，静得他们都能听见自己的呼吸声。那些珍宝全都覆满了灰尘，要不是他们清楚这是什么地方，而且记起了大部分事物，他们一定难以发现那些灰扑扑的玩意儿居然是珠宝。这个地方给人一种悲凉的感觉，甚至稍微有些骇人，因为这里实在太像一个很久以前就被遗弃的地方了。因此至少有一分钟的时间，他们谁也没有吭声。

接着，很自然地，他们开始四处走动，把东西一样样拿在手上细细地端详，就像与久未谋面的老朋友再度相逢一般。如果当时你也在那里，你就会听到他们发出类似这样的感叹：“噢，看啊！这是我们的加冕戒指——还记得头一次戴上它的时候吗？——哎哟，这不是那枚我们都以为弄丢了的胸针吗？——哎呀，这不是你在孤独群岛的比武大会上穿的盔甲吗？——还记不记得那个为我定制东西的小矮人？——你们记不记得我们用那只角喝过酒？——还记不记得，还记不记得？”

突然，爱德蒙说：“大伙儿都听着，我们可不能再浪费电池了，天知道以后会有多少需要用它的时候。我们要不要拿上一些需要的东西，然后赶紧从这里撤出去啊？”

“必须把我们的礼物带出去。”彼得说道。记得很久以前，在纳尼亚的一个圣诞夜，他、苏珊和露西都得到了一些礼物，在他们心里，这些礼物比整个王国都更加珍贵。当时只有爱德蒙没有得到礼物，那是因为他没有和大家在一起。（这只能怪他自己，你在另一本书里可以读到。）

孩子们都赞同彼得的话，他们顺着通道朝宝库另一端的墙壁走去。在那里，和记忆中分毫不差，他们的礼物依然挂在墙上。露西的礼物最小，是一个小瓶子。但瓶子是由钻石制成的，而非一般的玻璃，里面的神水还剩半瓶多；这瓶神水可以治愈几乎所有的创伤和疾病。露西一言不发，非常庄重地把它取了下来，用带子斜挎在肩上，还是挂在从前的那个位置。苏珊的礼物是一张弓、一壶箭和一只神号。那张弓依然在从前的地方，那只象牙箭壶里装满了羽箭，可是——“哎呀，苏珊，”露西说，“你的神号在哪儿呢？”

“哎，糟了，糟了，糟了！”苏珊想了一会儿，说道，“我现在想起来了，最后那天我还带着它的，就是我们去围猎白色牡鹿的那天。它肯定是在我们回那个世界时被弄丢了——我是指，英国。”

爱德蒙惋惜地吹了声口哨。弄丢了那只神号确实非常可惜，因为那是一只有魔力的神号，无论何时何地，只要你吹响它，你就一定会得到帮助。

“来到了这儿，我们正需要这样的宝贝。”他说道。

“算啦，”苏珊说道，“至少我的弓箭还在。”她取下了弓箭。

“弓弦没坏吧，苏？”彼得问道。

也许宝库内的空气有什么魔力，那张弓还可以使用。苏珊一向特别擅长射箭和游泳。只见她拉开了弓，轻轻弹了一下弓弦。弓弦发出“嗡”的一声，那高频的震动声响彻了整个宝库。这一声嗡鸣比至今发生的一切都更真切地把孩子们带回了往日的时光。所有光荣的战斗、紧张的狩猎、欢乐的宴会，一下子都涌现在了他们的脑海中。

苏珊放开了弓弦，把箭筒挎在了身侧。

随后，彼得取下了他的礼物——一块镶着红色巨狮的盾牌和一把皇家宝剑。他吹了吹礼物上面的灰尘，又在地毯上蹭掉灰，接着把盾牌绑在了手臂上，又把宝剑佩在了身侧。他原本担心宝剑会因为生锈而拔不出来，所幸这种情况并没有发生。他迅速一抽，宝剑便出了鞘，在手电筒的照射下剑光闪耀。

“这是我的宝剑，”他说道，“我用这把剑杀了那只恶狼。”他的声音里比之前新添了一股自信与豪气，这让其他几个孩子都感到他重新成了过去的那个至尊国王彼得。过了一小会儿，他们突然想起必须省着点儿用电了。

他们走上台阶，回到了地面，又燃起了温暖的篝火，彼此紧靠着躺了下来，相互依偎着取暖。地面很硬，硌得难受，可是最后他们还是进入了梦乡。

第三章
小矮人

露宿最叫人讨厌的一点就是，你醒来的时间非常早，而且只要醒了就非起身不可，因为那硬邦邦的地面实在让人觉得难受。早餐除了苹果什么也没有，要知道前一天的晚餐同样只有苹果，这可真是糟糕透了。露西说，这是个美丽的早晨——当然她的话完全正确，不过除此之外，似乎也没什么其他好听的话可说了。然后，爱德蒙用一句话道出了所有人的心声：“我们得想办法赶紧离开这座小岛。”

他们喝足了甘甜的井水，匆匆洗了一下脸，便顺着溪流向下回到海岸，凝望着这片横亘在他们与大陆之间海峡。

“我们得游到对岸去。”爱德蒙说道。

“苏完全没问题，”彼得说道（苏珊在学校里就得过游泳的奖牌），“可我不知道其他人能不能行。”这里的“其他人”其实仅仅指爱德蒙和露西，爱德蒙连在学校的泳池里都游不了一个来回，而露西几乎一点也不会游泳。

“不管怎么说，”苏珊说道，“海里很可能会有暗流。爸爸说过的，在你不熟悉的地方游泳不是明智之举。”

“可是，彼得，”露西说道，“你想想，在家里我的确一点儿都不会游泳——我是说，在英国。可是在纳尼亚，我们不是很久以前就学会游泳了吗？——不知道是不是真的是很久以前——就是我们还是纳尼亚的国王和女王的时候。那会儿我们还会骑马呢，还会其他各种事情。难道你不觉得——”

“啊，可是那时候我们都是大人，”彼得说道，“我们统治了纳尼亚好多年，在位期间也学到了很多。可我们现在不是又回到原本的年龄了吗？”

“噢！”爱德蒙突然叫了一声，那语气使得其他人都不再说话，转而听他说。

“我总算弄明白了。”他说道。

“你明白了什么？”彼得问道。

“哎呀，明白了这一切！”爱德蒙激动地说道，“昨晚让我们百思不得其解的是什么？我们离开纳尼亚才一年，可是这里的一切都仿佛表明凯尔帕拉维尔已经有几百年没人住过了。还不明白吗？你们知道的吧，无论我们在纳尼亚待过多久，只要一穿过大衣柜回到原本的世界，在那里，时间就几乎和我们来之前完全一样，不是吗？”

“接着说，”苏珊说道，“我想我开始理解了。”

“这就意味着，”爱德蒙继续说道，“一旦离开了纳尼亚，就不会知道纳尼亚的时间如何流逝了。虽然在英国时间只过了一年，而在纳尼亚可不就是已经过了好几百年了吗？”

“天哪，爱德，”彼得说道，“我想你说得对。照你的说法，我们住在凯尔帕拉维尔还真是几百年前的事情了。现在我们重返纳尼亚，就好比十字军的战士，或者盎格鲁、撒克逊人，或者古代的英国人来到现代的英国一样，不是吗？”

“如果别人看到我们，该有多激动——”露西刚出口的话被其他人打断了，有的说“嘘！”有的说“看！”因为这时候出现了某些状况。

对面的陆地上，在他们右手边的位置有一片树林，他们敢肯定河口就在那片树林的另一侧。这时，视野中出现一条小船，绕过树林，朝他们的方向驶来。船上有两个人，一人划着船桨，另一人稳坐船尾，抓着一捆不停扭来扭去的东西，看起来是个活物。两个人看起来都像士兵。他们头戴钢盔，身穿铁甲，满脸胡须，面容冷峻。孩子们从海滩上撤回树林里，一动不动地暗中观察着。

“就这儿吧。”坐在船尾的士兵说道。他说这话时，小船差不多就位于孩子们对面。

“给他的脚上捆块石头吧，下士？”另一个士兵说着，暂停了划桨。

“胡说什么！”船尾那人粗声粗气地说道，“没必要，再说我们手头也没有石头。只要用绳子把他绑紧了，哪怕不用石头，也一样能淹他个彻彻底底。”话说完，他站起身，把那捆东西提溜了起来。这下彼得看得很清楚了，那确实是个活物，而且是一个小矮人，他的手和脚都被捆得死死的，但依然拼尽全力挣扎着。就在这时，彼得耳边“嗡”的一声响，那个下士立刻一甩胳膊，把小矮人给甩在了甲板上，自己扎进了水里，挣扎着向对岸游去。彼得看到苏珊刚才那一箭不偏不倚射中了他的头盔。他转身一看，苏珊尽管紧张得脸色苍白，但仍然抽出第二支箭，拉满了弓弦。但这支箭并没有射出去。那个士兵一看到同伴落水，叫了一声，立刻从船的另一侧翻下水去，挣扎着游到了对岸（水深和他的高度差不多），然后飞速上了岸，进了树林，再也看不见了。

“快！不能让小船顺水漂走！”彼得大喊道。他和苏珊甚至连衣服都顾不上脱，便一起跳进水里，不等水没过肩膀，便双双将手搭在了船的边沿。不过几秒钟的工夫，他们协力将那小船靠了岸，再将那小矮人从甲板上抬了出来，爱德蒙便忙着拿小刀去割断绑在小矮人身上的绳索。（彼得的宝剑比小刀更加锋利，但是长剑这会儿用起来并不方便，因为剑柄以下就没有可以握的地方了。）忙活了好一阵子，那小矮人终于重获自由，他坐起身来，揉揉胳膊和腿，然后大声说道：

“啊，随便他们怎么说，你们给人感觉并不像鬼怪。”

和大部分小矮人一样，他矮小粗壮、胸脯厚实，站起来的话身高大约三英尺，粗硬的红色大胡子几乎覆盖了整张脸，除了胡子，脸上只剩下山峰一样的鼻子和闪闪发光的黑眼睛。

“不管怎么说，”他继续说道，“不论你们是不是鬼怪，多亏你们救了我，我对你们万分感激。”

“可是为什么说我们是鬼怪呢？”露西问道。

“我可听人说了一辈子了，”小矮人说道，“他们说这片靠近海岸的林子里，树有多少棵，鬼怪就有多少个。传说就是这么说的。因此，他们每次想除掉谁，就把人带到这儿来（他们就是这么对付我的），说是把人交到鬼怪手里。可我一直怀疑那些鬼怪不会真的把人沉入大海，或者割喉断魂。我向来不大相信鬼怪的存在，可是刚才你箭头瞄准的那两个懦夫倒是非常相信，他们不过是押送我上路的，居然比我还要怕死！”

“哎呀，”苏珊恍然大悟，“难怪他俩都慌忙逃命去了。”

“啊？什么意思？”小矮人问道。

“他们逃跑了，”爱德蒙说道，“逃回大陆了。”

“我射那一箭的时候并不是要杀了他们，你知道的。”苏珊连忙澄清道。她不想让别人以为连这么近的目标她都射不中。

“嗯，”小矮人说道，“那可不是什么好事，说不定将来还会有什么麻烦，除非他们为保自己的小命而守口如瓶。”

“他们为什么要淹死你呢？”彼得问道。

“哎呀，实不相瞒，我可是一个危险的罪犯呢！”小矮人相当愉悦地回答道，“那还真是说来话长。我现在想的是，你们会不会请我吃一顿早餐呢？你们无法想象，一个面临处决的人胃口会有多么好。”

“可是我们只有苹果。”露西犯愁地说道。

“那也好过什么都没有，但要是能有几条鲜鱼就更好了。”小矮人说道，“看来得反过来，由我来请你们吃一顿早餐啊。那艘船上有钓鱼工具，我见过。不过，我们必须把那艘小船划到岛的另一边去，可不能让对面陆地上的人下来看到它。”

“我刚才就该想到这一点的。”彼得说道。

四个孩子和小矮人来到水边，费了好大劲儿才把那艘小船推下水，接着他们爬上了船。小矮人很快接管了指挥大权。对他来说，显然船桨太大，不便使用。于是彼得划桨，他来掌舵，顺着海峡朝北行船，绕过小岛的岬角之后，又转向东方前进。从这里向远处眺望，孩子们看到了河的上游、整个海湾和对面海岸的土地。孩子们原本以为，故地重游，他们还能辨认出以往的痕迹，但那片在他们的时代之后才长成的树林，使得原本的一切都换了面貌，再也认不出来了。

他们终于来到了小岛的东边，进入了一片开阔的海域，小矮人开始钓鱼了。不一会儿，他们就钓到了好多鳟鱼，这是一种像彩虹一样色泽瑰丽的鱼。孩子们不由想起了当初他们也曾在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡里吃过这种鱼。后来大家感觉钓到的鱼已经够他们吃了，便逆流将小船划进一条小溪，然后将其拴到了岸边的一棵树上。那小矮人真是能干（说真的，坏蛋小矮人还遇得到，但是笨蛋小矮人真是从未听说），他剖开鱼肚，把鱼清洗干净，说道：

“现在，我们需要一堆柴火。”

“我们之前已经在城堡里有一堆柴火啦。”爱德蒙说道。

小矮人轻轻吹了声口哨。“天哪！”他惊叹一声，“所以真的有一座城堡，是不是？”

“只是一堆废墟罢了。”露西说道。

小矮人看上去十分好奇，他细细打量他们四个人。“那你们到底是——？”他刚开口，却又立刻改了口，“没关系，先吃早饭吧。不过得先做一件事。能不能请你们把手贴在心口上，然后告诉我，我是真的还活着吗？你们确定，我没有淹死，还有我们不是一群鬼魂，对吧？”

他们一起向他保证，终于使他安了心。下一个问题是，怎么带走这些鱼。他们既没有能把它们串起来的东西，也没有能把它们打包带走的篮子。最后，他们只好用上了爱德蒙的帽子，因为别人都没有帽子。其实要不是爱德蒙自己实在饿得要命，他才不会这么轻易同意呢。

一开始，小矮人在城堡里并不是很自在。他不断地四下张望，这儿闻闻，那儿嗅嗅，嘟哝道：“唔，这地方看上去果然阴森森的。闻起来也好像个鬼窟似的。”可是到了点篝火的时候，他立刻精神了起来，还向几个孩子示范如何用炭火来烤新鲜鳟鱼。他们没有叉子，鱼又是火烫火烫的，五个人还不得不共用一把小刀，结果这乱糟糟的一顿饭还没吃完，几个人的手指就都烫伤了。可是现在都已经上午九点了，而孩子们从早上五点醒来就一直饿着，所以对于烫伤倒也没有那么在意。大家喝了些井水，又吃了一个苹果，早餐就算是吃完了。这时候，小矮人做好了一根大约和他手臂一样粗的大烟斗，填满烟丝，把烟点着，吐出了一大团香喷喷的烟雾，惬意地说：“我们现在谈点别的吧。”

“先说说你的故事，”彼得说道，“之后我们就告诉你我们的故事。”

“好吧，”小矮人说道，“你们是我的救命恩人，我得满足你们提出的要求，这样才公平。不过我还真不知道该从何说起。首先我要说明，我是凯斯宾国王的使臣。”

“他是谁呀？”四个孩子立即同时问道。

“凯斯宾十世，纳尼亚的国王，吾王万岁！”小矮人答道，“我是说，他本该是纳尼亚的国王，我们希望他能顺利归位。目前他还仅仅是我们纳尼亚旧臣的国王——”

“请问，你说的‘纳尼亚旧臣’指的是哪些人呢？”露西好奇地问道。

“哎，就是指我们，”小矮人说道，“我想，我们应该算是叛乱者吧。”

“我明白了，”彼得说道，“凯斯宾就是纳尼亚旧臣的领袖吧。”

“嗯，从某个意义上说是这样的，”小矮人边挠头，边说，“可他自己其实是个新纳尼亚人，一个台尔马人，你们都懂我的意思吧。”

“我没听懂。”爱德蒙说道。

“这简直比玫瑰战争还要难懂。”露西说道。

“哦，亲爱的，”小矮人说道，“看来是我讲得不够明白。不如这样，我想我应该从头讲起，讲讲凯斯宾是怎样在他叔叔的王宫里长大，后来又是怎样站到了我们这一边的。不过，这可是一个很长的故事。”

“越长越好，”露西开心地说，“我们可喜欢听故事啦。”

于是，小矮人坐了下来，讲了以下这个故事。我不会把他的话原封不动地讲给你们听，因为小矮人讲故事的时候，孩子们提了不少问题，也插了不少话，如果原话照搬，故事就会显得冗长而复杂，而且还会漏掉孩子们后来才听到的一些内容。总之，他们最后了解到的，大概是下面所讲的这样一个故事。

第四章
小矮人讲述凯斯宾王子的故事

凯斯宾王子跟他的叔叔和婶婶一起，住在纳尼亚王国中心地区一座宏伟的城堡里。他的叔叔是纳尼亚的国王米拉兹，他的婶婶是那个红头发的普鲁娜普瑞丝弥亚王后。凯斯宾王子的生父和生母很早就去世了，他最爱的人是他的保姆。这位王子有许多好玩的玩具，除了不会说话之外，那些玩具几乎什么都会做，但是他最喜欢的还是每晚睡前的那段时间，那时，玩具都被放回了柜子里，他的保姆则来到他的身边给他讲睡前故事。

凯斯宾和他的叔叔婶婶谈不上感情深厚，不过每周总有差不多两次，他的叔叔会召他去城堡南侧的阳台上散步半个小时。一天，他们正散着步，国王对他说：

“哎呀，孩子，我们必须要尽快教你骑马和用剑了。你知道你婶婶和我没有孩子。如此看来，我过世以后，得由你来继承王位。你觉得怎么样，嗯？”

“我不知道，叔叔。”凯斯宾回答道。

“不知道，嗯？”米拉兹说道，“奇怪了，我倒想知道除此之外，一个人还能有什么愿望！”

“可我真的还是希望——”凯斯宾说道。

“你希望什么啊？”国王问道。

“我希望——我希望——我希望自己可以生活在过去的时代。”凯斯宾说道。（那时候他还只是个很小的孩子。）

到现在为止，米拉兹国王一直在用一种大人特有的讨厌腔调跟他谈话，这虽然表明他对别人说的话并不真正感兴趣，然而这时他突然非常犀利地望向了凯斯宾。

“嗯？什么意思？”他说道，“什么‘过去的时代’？”

“哦，你不知道吗，叔叔？”凯斯宾说，“那时一切都截然不同，所有的动物都会说话，在溪水和树林里还住着些善良的人，就是水族仙女和林中仙女。那里还有小矮人。树林里还有可爱的半羊人，他们的脚就和山羊的脚一样。还有——”

“那些胡编乱造的故事都是用来哄小娃娃的！”国王厉声呵斥道，“只适合说给小娃娃听，你听见没有？你都这么大了，再也不能听信那些胡言乱语了。你这个年龄，脑子里应该是战斗和探险，而不是童话故事！”

“哦，可是那时候也一样有战斗和探险呀，”凯斯宾自顾自地说，“多么奇妙的探险啊！曾经有一个白女巫，她自封为纳尼亚的女王，控制了整片纳尼亚国土，使那儿只有寒冷的冬天。后来，不知从哪儿来了两个男孩和两个女孩，他们杀了白女巫，被人们拥戴为纳尼亚的国王和女王，他们的名字叫彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙和露西。他们统治了纳尼亚好多年，大家都过上了美满的生活，这都多亏了阿斯兰——”

“他又是谁？”米拉兹问道。假如当时凯斯宾年纪再大一点儿，他叔叔的那种语调就会让他警醒，知道这个时候闭嘴才是更明智的做法。可他那时还小，他一直喋喋不休。

“哦，您难道不知道吗？”他说道，“阿斯兰是从海的那边过来的狮王。”

“这些无稽之谈都是谁告诉你的？”国王用雷霆一般的语气厉声问道。凯斯宾被他吓得一个字也不敢再说了。

“王子殿下，”国王米拉兹说着，松开了他一直握着的凯斯宾的手，“回答我！看着我的脸。都是谁在向你灌输这一大堆的谎言？”

“是保——保姆。”凯斯宾支支吾吾地说着，大哭了起来。

“不许哭！”国王一边抓着他的肩膀用力摇，一边说，“不许哭。再也不要让我听到你讲——连想也不要想——那些愚蠢的故事！根本不存在什么国王和女王！怎么可能同时有两个国王？而且根本就不存在什么叫阿斯兰的人，也没有什么狮子，更没有会说话的动物。你听清楚了没有？”

“听清楚了，叔叔。”凯斯宾哭着说道。

“那我们不谈这个话题了。”国王说道。接着他召来了恭候在阳台另一端的侍从，冷漠地吩咐道：“送王子殿下回他的房间，并带王子的保姆过来见我，马上！”

第二天，凯斯宾就发现自己的无心之言后果有多严重，因为保姆被他们送走了，连和他当面说一句再见的机会都没有。他还被告知自己马上会有一位家庭教师。

凯斯宾无比怀念他的保姆，为此他不知掉了多少眼泪。正因为他的悲伤，他反而比从前更加频繁地想起古纳尼亚的故事。每个夜晚他都会梦到小矮人和林中仙女，他还努力尝试想让城堡里的狗和猫同他说话。但是那些狗只会冲着他摇尾巴，那些猫也只会对他温顺地叫唤。

凯斯宾无比确信，他一定会憎恶新来的家庭教师。可是一个星期后，当那位家庭教师来到他面前时，凯斯宾竟然发现他是那种绝不可能叫人生厌的人。他是凯斯宾平生见过的最矮，也最胖的人，长着长长的、尖尖的银色胡子，一直垂到他的肚子上。他的脸是棕色的，布满了皱纹，看起来是那样聪慧，那样难看，但却显得十分和善。他的声音总是透着庄严肃穆的感觉，眼睛里却常常闪着愉快的笑意。因此，在对他有相当的了解之前，很难分辨他什么时候是在开玩笑，什么时候是严肃认真的。他的名字叫科尼利厄斯博士。

在科尼利厄斯博士的所有课程中，凯斯宾最喜欢的是历史课。从小至今，除了保姆给他讲的那些故事，他对纳尼亚的历史基本一无所知，所以，当他得知当今的王族原本是这片土地的外来者的时候，他真是惊讶极了。

“殿下的先祖，凯斯宾一世，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“他是第一个征服纳尼亚的人，他让这片土地成为他的王国。是他把你们全族带到了这片土地。你们完全不是土生土长的纳尼亚人。你们都是台尔马人——来自西部大山那一头的台尔马王国，离这里非常遥远。所以，凯斯宾一世也被人们称作‘征服者凯斯宾’。”

“请问，博士，”一天，凯斯宾问道，“在我们从台尔马王国迁到这里之前，又是什么人住在纳尼亚的土地上呢？”

“在台尔马人征服这里之前，没有人类，或者说很少有人在纳尼亚居住。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

“那么我那位先祖征服的对乡是谁呢？”

“是‘对象’，不是‘对乡’，王子殿下，”科尼利厄斯博士却避开了这个问题，“我们似乎该结束历史课了，接着我们来讲语法。”

“哦，拜托了，还没讲完呢，”凯斯宾不禁请求道。“我想知道，难道没有过战争吗？要是这片土地上都没有人和他战斗，那为什么称他为‘征服者凯斯宾’呢？”

“我说过，那个时候，几乎没有人类居住在纳尼亚。”博士说道。他透过那副硕大的眼镜，以一种奇特的眼神望着眼前的小男孩。

听了这话，一开始，凯斯宾感到十分不解，然后，他的心脏突然一阵狂跳。“也就是说，”他气喘吁吁地说，“还有别的生灵对不对？您是说就像故事里那样？曾经有——”

“嘘！”科尼利厄斯博士低下头，和凯斯宾靠得很近，“一个字都别再说了。你不知道吗？你的保姆之所以被赶走了，就是因为她给你讲了古纳尼亚的故事！国王不希望有这样的事发生。要是被他发现我对你透露了这些秘密，你会挨揍的，而我则会被杀头。”

“可是为什么呢？”凯斯宾问道。

“好了，真的该学习语法了，”科尼利厄斯博士提高了嗓门，“请王子殿下翻开《细说语法》第四页，找到‘语法花园’或‘词法园地’以及‘语言妙用’。”

随后一直到午饭前，博士讲的全是名词和动词，可是凯斯宾基本都没学进去。他的内心无比激动。他十分确信，科尼利厄斯博士要告诉他的远远不止这些，他迟早会告诉自己更多秘密的。

博士果然没让他失望。几天后，博士对他说：“今晚我要给你上一堂天文课。今天深夜，两颗神圣的行星塔瓦和阿拉姆毕尔将在相距不到一个经纬度的位置行经彼此。这样罕见的星象已经两百年没有出现了，王子殿下今生也不会再见到第二次。请你今晚提早上床，我会在两星相遇之前过来叫醒你。”

这好像和古纳尼亚毫不相关，凯斯宾真正想知道的不是这个，可是半夜起床总是一件有意思的事儿，也足以让他感到高兴。上床睡觉之前，他还以为自己会兴奋得睡不着觉，可他很快就睡熟了，好像才睡了没几分钟，他就感到有人在轻轻晃他。

他一骨碌坐起来，只见房间里洒满了月光，科尼利厄斯博士身穿一件带帽子的长袍，手提一盏小油灯，正站在他的床边。凯斯宾马上想起了他们接下来要做的事情。他下了床，穿上了衣服。虽然是夏夜，他仍感到天气凉得出人意料，因此，他很高兴博士给他披上和他相似的长袍，还给了他一双保暖又柔软的半高筒靴。戴上长袍的帽子，经过黑暗的走廊时就不容易被人看见，穿上厚厚的靴子，走起路来就不会发出一丝声响。不一会儿，师生俩就离开了凯斯宾的房间。

凯斯宾跟着博士穿过了好多走廊，又登上了好多台阶，最后，他们终于穿过角楼的一扇小门，来到了外面的通道。一头是城垛，另一头是陡峭的屋顶；朝下看去，城堡的花园影影绰绰；抬头望去，夜空中挂满了繁星，一轮明月挥洒着光辉。他们快步走向另一扇门，这门通向城堡中心那座巨大的高塔。科尼利厄斯博士打开门锁，两人开始沿着漆黑的旋转楼梯拾级而上。凯斯宾感到更加兴奋了，因为他一直不被允许登上这个楼梯。

旋转楼梯又长又陡。他们终于登上了塔顶，等到凯斯宾平复了呼吸，他马上觉得累成这样非常值得。向右远望，依稀看见西部山脉。他的左边则是大河，在月夜下闪着粼粼波光。夜深人静，凯斯宾甚至能听见一英里外比佛坝传来的水声。认出那两颗他们想看的星星非常简单。它们低低挂在南边的天宇，像两个小小的月球一般明亮，彼此非常接近。

“它们会相撞吗？”凯斯宾怀着敬畏的心情问道。

“不会的，亲爱的王子，”博士耳语一般轻声地说道，“苍穹之上，那些伟大的星辰太熟悉它们的舞步了，绝不会出现纰漏的。仔细看着吧。它们的相聚多么祥和，对于苦难的纳尼亚，这意味着巨大的福祉。胜利之神塔瓦在向和平女神阿拉姆毕尔致意。它们马上就到最近的位置了。”

“只可惜有树遮挡了视线，”凯斯宾惋惜地说道，“我们如果去的是西塔楼，可以看得更清楚，虽说西塔楼没有这里高。”

大约有两分钟时间，科尼利厄斯博士一言不发，只是伫立着，凝望着塔瓦和阿拉姆毕尔这两颗星辰。接着，只见他深深地吸了一口气，转而面向凯斯宾。

“好了，”他说道，“你所看到的景象，现在活着的人都不曾见过，而且这辈子再也不会见到了。你刚刚说得也对，要是去那个小塔楼，我们可以看得更清楚。我带你来这儿是另有原因的。”

凯斯宾抬头望着他，可是长袍的帽子把他的脸遮了一大半。

“这个塔楼的妙处，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“是我们下方有六个空的房间，还有一段长长的楼梯，而且楼梯底下的门已经上好锁了。所以，我们在这儿的谈话不可能有人听到。”

“您是不是要告诉我那天您不愿继续再讲的秘密呀？”凯斯宾满怀期待地问道。

“没错，”博士说道，“但你要记住，你我绝不能轻易谈论这些秘密，除非是在这里——这个大塔楼的塔顶。”

“好，我保证做到。”凯斯宾说道，“拜托接着往下说吧！”

“殿下听好，”博士说道，“你所听过的所有关于古纳尼亚的故事都是真的。纳尼亚并不是人类的领土。这片土地上有狮王阿斯兰，有会行走的大树，有凡人可见的水中仙女，有半羊人和森林之神，有小矮人和巨人，有很多神仙和半人马，还有许多能言兽。与凯斯宾一世战斗的正是他们。正是你们台尔马人将这些野兽、树木和泉水都变得静默不语；你们将小矮人和半羊人赶尽杀绝，现在甚至想抹除关于他们的记忆。国王不允许人们提起他们。”

“哦，我真希望我们的族人当初没有犯下这样的暴行！”凯斯宾说道，“我很高兴这一切都是真的，尽管那都已成为往事。”

“你的许多同族私底下也有同样的想法。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

“可是，博士，”凯斯宾说道，“您为什么说‘我的同族’呢？不管怎么说，我想您也是台尔马人吧。”

“我是吗？”博士说道。

“好吧，不管怎样，您是人类吧。”凯斯宾说道。

“是吗？”博士以一种更为深沉的声音又重复了一遍，与此同时，他将他长袍上的帽子掀到脑后，在明亮的月光下，凯斯宾能清楚地看到他的脸。

瞬间，凯斯宾明白了真相，他感觉自己早就应该有所领悟了。科尼利厄斯博士身材那么矮小，又那么胖，还有那么长的胡子。他的脑海中一下子闪现了两个念头。一个念头是害怕——“他不是人类，根本不是，他是小矮人，他把我带来这里是为了杀我。”另一个念头却是纯粹的喜悦——“果然有小矮人活了下来，我终于亲眼见着了一个。”

“那么，你终于猜到真相了吧，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“或者，你几乎要猜着了。我不是纯种小矮人，我的身体里还有人类的血液。许多小矮人在那场大战中逃脱，活了下来，他们刮掉胡须，穿上高底靴子，伪装成人类的样子。他们就混在你们台尔马人中间。我就是其中一个，我只是个混血小矮人，如果我的同胞，纯种小矮人还活在世上的话，他们一定会鄙视我，管我叫叛徒。但是这么多年过去了，我们从来不曾遗忘自己的同胞，以及纳尼亚从前那些快乐的生灵，还有那早已逝去的自由的日子。”

“我——我很抱歉，博士，”凯斯宾说道，“可那并不是我的过错，您知道的。”

“我把这些透露给你，并不是为了责备你，亲爱的王子。”博士答道，“你可能会问我，为什么要对你说这些。我有两个理由。第一，这些秘密埋藏在我心里太久了，它们让我的心隐隐作痛，如果我不悄悄透露给你，我的心说不定就要炸开了。第二，我希望等你继承了王位，会愿意帮助我们，因为我知道你虽然是一个台尔马人，却也同样热爱过去的事物。”

“是的，没错！”凯斯宾说道，“但我怎样才能帮到你们呢？”

“你可以宽仁地对待小矮人族可怜的幸存者，比如我。你可以召集一批学问高深的魔法师，寻觅一个重新唤醒树神的方法。你可以搜遍这片土地上的每一个角落，看是不是还有半羊人、能言兽和小矮人，在这个国度的某个地方隐秘地生存着。”

“您真的认为他们还活着吗？”凯斯宾急切地问道。

“我不知道——不知道，”博士深深叹了一口气，“有时候我也担心他们早已不复存在了。我这辈子都在找寻他们的踪迹。有时，我似乎听到小矮人们在山里敲鼓；有时，在夜里，在森林中，我感觉好像远远地看到了半羊人和森林之神在跳舞。然而每当我走到那个地方，却什么也没有。我常常感到失望，可又不断发现各种迹象，使我又一次产生希望。我也不知道。可是我想，殿下至少可以努力做一位像从前的至尊国王彼得那样的好国王，而不是像你的叔叔那样。”

“也就是说，关于两位国王和两位女王的故事也是真的啦？还有那个白女巫？”凯斯宾问道。

“千真万确，”科尼利厄斯说道，“他们统治的时代是纳尼亚的黄金时代，这片土地从来不曾忘记他们。”

“他们也曾住在这座城堡里吗，博士？”

“不，我亲爱的殿下，”博士说道，“这座城堡不过是较近的年代建起来的，是你的曾曾曾祖父修建的。当年，阿斯兰为亚当的两个儿子和夏娃的两个女儿加冕，使他们成了纳尼亚的国王和女王，自那之后，他们一直住在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡。今天在世的人都没有见过那神圣的城堡，就连城堡的废墟如今恐怕也已经无迹可寻了。但我们相信它在一个遥远的地方，在大河的入海口，就在那里的海岸上。”

“啊！”凯斯宾浑身一颤，“难道是在‘黑森林’里吗？就是那个到处都住着——嗯——住着鬼怪的地方？”

“王子殿下，你说的正是别人灌输给你的那一套，”博士说道，“但那都是谎言。那里根本没有鬼怪，都是台尔马人编造出来的谎言。你们的国王们对那大海畏惧到了极点，因为他们一直没有忘记过去的传说，传说里，阿斯兰会从海的那一边归来。他们自己没那个胆子接近大海，也不希望任何人靠近海岸。于是他们任凭那里长起层层的森林，将他们的臣民与那片海岸隔离开。由于和树神有过纷争，他们畏惧森林，又因为他们畏惧森林，所以他们就凭想象说那个地方都是鬼怪。那些国王和王公贵族们仇视大海和森林，所以他们一方面相信那些编出来的故事，一方面鼓励人们流传这些故事。如果谁都不敢到海边去，去远望阿斯兰的土地，远望清晨的来临，还有东方的世界，他们就感到安全了。”

好几分钟内，两人都沉默不语。后来，科尼利厄斯博士说道：“走吧。我们在这儿也待得够久的了。该下去睡觉了。”

“非走不可吗？”凯斯宾说道，“我真希望谈上几个小时啊。”

“要是那样的话，就该有人四处寻找我们了。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

第五章
凯斯宾深山历险

那次之后，凯斯宾和他的家庭教师在塔顶上又密谈了多次，每次的密谈都使凯斯宾对古纳尼亚了解更多，所以每当他有了空闲，脑海里几乎都是对旧日时光的怀想以及对重返旧日时光的渴望。不过，如今的他并没有太多闲暇时间了，因为他要开始接受正规教育了。他学习了击剑、骑马、游泳和潜水，以及使用弓箭、弹奏西奥伯琴、狩猎牡鹿、在鹿死之后割取鹿肉，还学了宇宙结构学、修辞学、纹章学、诗律学，当然还有历史、法律、物理、炼金术和天文学；关于魔法，他只学了些理论，因为科尼利厄斯博士说实际操作部分不宜传授给王子。“至于我本人，”他补充道，“也远不是一位高明的魔法师，只能做些最简单的实验。”至于航海（“这是一门高尚且充满英雄色彩的艺术。”博士这样说过），他一节课也没有上过，这是因为国王米拉兹厌恶航船和海洋。

他通过观察和聆听，还学会了很多别的知识。当他还是个小男孩的时候，他就想知道为什么他不喜欢婶婶——普鲁娜普瑞丝弥亚王后，现在他懂了，那是因为婶婶不喜欢他。他还渐渐发现，原来纳尼亚竟是一个不幸福的国家，这里的税收过于高昂，法律又严苛，而米拉兹则是一个残暴的国王。

几年后的一段时间里，王后似乎得了什么病，城堡里的人都为她来回奔忙、焦躁不安，医生们一波一波前来诊断，子民也议论纷纷。这时正是初夏，一天夜里，外面还是一片忙乱，凯斯宾睡下才不过几个钟头，却意外地被科尼利厄斯博士叫醒了。

“我们是要学会儿天文学吗，博士？”凯斯宾问道。

“嘘！”博士压着嗓子说道，“你要相信我，照我说的去做。穿上衣服，你要出一趟远门了。”

凯斯宾感到非常意外，可他深信自己的老师，二话不说就照他说的做了。他穿好衣服之后，博士说：“我给你准备了一个袋子，我们立刻去隔壁房间，从餐桌上拿些吃的，把包装满。”

“那儿有我的仆人。”凯斯宾说道。

“他们都睡着了，不会醒的。”博士说道，“虽然我只是个法术低微的魔法师，但是让人昏睡这种小事我还是做得到的。”

他们来到前厅，只见两个仆人确实仰靠在椅子上，鼾声大作。科尼利厄斯博士迅速切下剩余的冷鸡肉和几片鹿肉，又拿了面包、几个苹果以及一小瓶好酒，一起放进了袋子里，递给凯斯宾。袋子上有一根背带，凯斯宾把袋子背上，就像背着去学校的书包。

“你的宝剑在身上吗？”博士问道。

“在。”凯斯宾答道。

“那就快披上这件斗篷，把宝剑和袋子都遮住。这就对了。我们现在去塔顶，我有话要说。”

他们到了塔顶（这天夜里多云，一点儿也不像他们一起来看塔瓦星和阿拉姆毕尔星相会那天晚上的样子），科尼利厄斯博士说：

“亲爱的王子殿下，你必须马上离开这座城堡，到广阔天地里去追求幸福了。你在此地会有生命危险的。”

“这是为什么？”凯斯宾问道。

“因为你才是纳尼亚真正的国王：凯斯宾十世——也就是凯斯宾九世的亲生儿子和继承人。陛下万岁！”突然间，矮小的科尼利厄斯博士单腿跪下，吻了一下他的手，这让凯斯宾大吃一惊。

“这是怎么回事儿？我不明白。”凯斯宾说道。

“你似乎从来没有问过我，”博士说道，“为什么作为老凯斯宾国王的儿子，你却不是纳尼亚的国王。除了陛下你之外，无人不知，米拉兹是篡位之后才当上国王的。他一开始统治的时候，用的还不是国王的身份，尚且自称是护国公。可是后来，你的母后，一代贤后，也是唯一一位待我宽仁的台尔马人，去世了。在那以后，所有熟知你父王的刚正的大臣，都一个个死去或失踪了，而且都不是因为意外。正是米拉兹把他们铲除了。比如，伯力沙和犹威拉思在一场狩猎中被箭射死了，对外却宣称是死于误伤。他还把所有伯萨瑞德的世家子弟都派到北方的战场上，去与巨人战斗，最终他们一个接一个地死在了战场；阿里安、艾瑞蒙还有其他十几个人，都被他以莫须有的叛国罪处死了；比佛坝的两兄弟也被他当作疯子关了起来。最后，他还说服了台尔马人当中仅剩的不怕大海的七位勋爵，远航到东海的彼岸去寻觅新的陆地，最后正如他盘算的那样，他们再也没有回来。这下子，能替你说话的人终于一个也没有了，他便指使那些对他吹溜拍马的小人出马，求他来继位。他自然便顺水推舟地接受了他们的请求。”

“您是说，他现在又想杀掉我吗？”凯斯宾吃惊地问道。

“毫无疑问。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

“可是为什么现在动手？”凯斯宾说道，“要是他想这么干，为什么不早点下手？我是做过什么伤害他的事吗？”

“就在两个小时前，发生了一件事情，所以他改变了对你的态度——王后生了个儿子。”

“我不明白这跟我有什么关系。”凯斯宾说道。

“你竟还不明白！”博士不由大声说道，“我给你上了那么多历史课和政治课，就没有让你更有远见些吗？听着，只要他自己没有儿子，那么他死后自然由你来继承王位。虽然他并不怎么喜欢你，但他宁愿继承王位的人是你，也不愿把王位让给一个外人。现在他自己有了儿子，当然是希望自己的儿子来继承王位了。你就成了障碍，他自然要除掉你了。”

“他真有那么坏吗？”凯斯宾说道，“他真的要杀我吗？”

“他已经谋害了你的父亲。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

凯斯宾感到一阵难受，什么也说不出。

“我可以把事情经过原原本本地告诉你，”博士说道，“但不是现在。没时间了。你必须马上逃命。”

“您和我一起逃吗？”凯斯宾问道。

“我不敢这么做，”博士说道，“那将会使你的处境更加危险。两个人会比一个人更容易追踪。亲爱的王子殿下，亲爱的凯斯宾国王，你必须勇敢起来。你必须独自逃走，立刻逃走。你得想办法穿越南部边境，去找亚钦兰王国的奈恩国王。他会好好待你的。”

“我是不是再也见不到您了？”凯斯宾用颤抖的声音说道。

“但愿如此，亲爱的国王陛下，”博士说道，“在这广阔的世界，除了陛下你，我哪里还有别的朋友呢？我会一些魔法，但是眼下，速度就是一切。在你走之前，我有两件礼物相赠。这是一小袋金子，按理说，这座城堡里的一切宝物都应该属于你。这儿还有一件比金子更珍贵的宝物。”

他把一样东西放在凯斯宾手里，凯斯宾虽然看不清楚，但他摸得出来，那是一只号角。

“这个，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“就是纳尼亚最珍奇、最神圣的宝物。在我还年轻的时候，我忍了那么多可怖的事情，念了那么多咒语，就为了找到它。这是苏珊女王的神号，是在黄金时代末期，她从纳尼亚消失之前留在这里的。传说中，无论谁吹响了这只号角，它都将为那个人带来奇妙的帮助——谁也不知道那会是多么奇妙的帮助。也许它能把女王露西、国王爱德蒙、女王苏珊和至尊国王彼得从过去召唤回来，而他们会使一切回到正轨。甚至也许能把阿斯兰召唤回来。带着它吧，凯斯宾国王。但是，除非是最危急的关头，否则不要轻易使用它。好了，现在赶快走吧，快走，快！塔底那扇通往花园的小门还没有锁。我们必须在那里分别了。”

“我能带走我的马儿戴思特里尔吗？”凯斯宾问道。

“马已经上了鞍，它在果园的角门等着你呢。”

两人快速沿着那长长的旋转楼梯往下走时，科尼利厄斯博士又轻声告诉凯斯宾许多指示和建议。凯斯宾心情沉重，可他努力把老师的话牢牢记住。他们很快就呼吸到了花园里的新鲜空气。凯斯宾紧紧握了握博士的手，奔跑着穿过草坪，戴思特里尔发出一阵嘶鸣表示欢迎，就这样，凯斯宾十世离开了他祖辈居住的城堡。回首望去，他看到夜空升起礼花，那是为了庆祝新王子的诞生。

他彻夜疾驰，起初，在这片熟悉的土地上，他只挑树林中的小路或便道穿行，后来，他干脆策马在大路上放开了胆子疾行。这从未经历过的旅程让戴思特里尔和它的主人一样感到激动不已。至于凯斯宾，尽管刚才和科尼利厄斯博士告别时还在掉眼泪，现在却充满了勇气，甚至有些快乐，因为他想到自己是凯斯宾国王，现在正骑着骏马奔跑在探险之路上，左侧是宝剑，右侧是苏珊女王的神号。但是到了黎明时分，天空飘起了细雨，凯斯宾环顾四周，只见周围都是陌生的森林、野生的石楠和青色的山岭，他想到世界是这么广阔和奇异，内心不免还是有些惊慌，也感到了自己的渺小。

天完全亮了以后，凯斯宾就策马离开了大路，在森林中找到一片开阔的草地，想要休整一下。他取下了戴思特里尔身上的马鞍，让它自由地吃草，自己吃了些冷鸡肉，又喝了点儿酒，很快就睡着了。醒来一看，黄昏将至。他吃了点儿食物就又开始了旅程，还是朝着南方，在一片片荒原上穿行。现在，他来到了一片山岭之中，一会儿上山一会儿又下山，不过总的来说，上山的时候比下山的时候更多。每次抵达一个山脊，他就发现前方的山岭更庞大，更幽暗。夜晚来临的时候，他正骑行在较低的山坡上。一阵大风呼啸着刮过，接着下起了倾盆大雨。戴思特里尔开始躁动不安。天空中电闪雷鸣。这时，他们走进了一片阴暗的、仿佛永远也走不到头的松树林，无数从前听过的故事涌上了凯斯宾心头，在那些故事里，树林对人类总是不怀善意的。他想起了自己终究是个台尔马人，他的家族曾经四处砍伐树木，还和所有野外的生灵打过仗。尽管他本人和其他台尔马人并不一样，可是怎么能指望树木知道这个呢。

树木的确不知道。大风刮得更猛烈了，树林呼啸着，四周吱嘎巨响。突然，雷声一阵轰鸣，一棵大树倒了下来，恰恰倒在了他身后的大路上。“安静，戴思特里尔，安静！”凯斯宾一边说着，一边拍马的脖子，可他自己却瑟瑟发抖，他明白自己刚才险些丧命。天上一道闪电劈过，又响起一声惊雷，仿佛要把天空劈成两半。戴思特里尔没命一般飞奔了起来。凯斯宾一直是个优秀的骑手，但此时他却无力拉住狂奔的马儿。他稳稳坐在马鞍上，但心里却清楚在这样的疯狂旅程中他真是命悬一线。暮色四合，一棵又一棵大树迎面扑来，却又只是擦肩而过。突然之间（然而伤害毕竟是切切实实的），他感到前额被什么东西狠狠击打了一下，然后便彻底失去了意识。

醒来后，他发现自己躺在一个点着篝火的地方，四肢伤痕累累，头也痛得要命。就在这时，身边传来一阵低沉的说话声。

“现在，”一个人说道，“在这个家伙醒来之前，我们必须决定怎么处置他。”

“杀了他！”另一个人说道，“我们不能留他性命，他会出卖我们的。”

“我们当时就应该立马把他杀掉，或者放任不理，”第三个声音说道，“现在不能杀他了。我们都已经把他带回来了，给他包扎了头上的伤口，还留他住着。现在杀他可就是谋害客人了。”

“先生们，”凯斯宾说话了，声音非常虚弱，“不管你们怎样处置我都行，我只希望你们能仁慈地对待我那匹可怜的马儿。”

“我们发现你之前，你的那匹马早就已经跑远了。”第一个声音说——凯斯宾觉得，这声音听起来沙哑粗犷，有些特别。

“别听他那专门哄你的好话，”第二个声音说道，“我还是认为——”

“我的天哪！”第三个声音高声说道，“我们当然不能杀掉他。真不害臊，尼克布瑞克！你怎么说，特鲁佛汉特？我们该拿他怎么办？”

“我还是先喂他喝点儿水吧。”第一个声音又说道，估计那就是特鲁佛汉特了。一个黑影朝床边靠近，凯斯宾感到有一只胳膊轻轻扶起了他的肩膀——不知道这是不是一只人类的胳膊。瞧那形状似乎不像。向他俯下来的那张脸好像也有些不对劲儿。他感觉那张脸毛发旺盛，长着一只长长的鼻子，脸的两边还有奇奇怪怪的白色斑点。“估计是某种面具吧，”凯斯宾心想，“或者是我发烧了，这些都是幻觉。”有人把一杯甜甜的、温温的东西放到了他嘴边，他全都喝了下去。这时，另外两人中有一人拨弄了一下篝火。火烧得更旺了，而凯斯宾几乎要惊声大叫起来，因为他借着火光终于看清了正对着他的那张脸。原来那不是一个人，而是一只獾，尽管它远比他以前见过的任何一只獾体格更大，更加友善，也更聪明。而且可以肯定，刚才它一直在讲话。他还看到自己身处一个山洞，正躺在用石楠草铺成的床上。火堆边上，坐着两个留着长胡须的小个子，他们显然比科尼利厄斯博士更野性，更矮小，毛发更浓密，体格更粗壮，于是他立即明白了，他们是纯种小矮人，属于古老的小矮人种族，血管里一滴人类的血液也没有。凯斯宾明白自己终于发现了古纳尼亚的子民。接着他又感到一阵头晕目眩。

之后的几天里，凯斯宾渐渐知晓了他们的名字：那獾的名字叫特鲁佛汉特，它的年纪最大，脾气也最和善；之前想杀掉他的是一个脾气很坏的黑发小矮人（他的头发和胡须都是黑色的，像马鬃一样，又粗又硬），他叫尼克布瑞克；另一个是红发小矮人，顶着一头好像狐狸一样火红的头发，他的名字叫杜鲁普金。

“现在，”在凯斯宾恢复到能够坐起来说话的第一天晚上，尼克布瑞克说，“我们还是要决定怎样处置这个人类。你们两个不让我杀他，自以为给了他天大的恩典。可是依我说，我们最终还是会不得不把他囚禁终身。反正我肯定不会让他活着离开这里——他会回到他的同类那里，出卖我们所有人的！”

“天哪！尼克布瑞克！”杜鲁普金说道，“你讲话何必这么无礼？这家伙一头撞在我们洞外那棵大树上，又不是他的错。何况我看他不像是个会告密的。”

“喂，”凯斯宾说道，“你们都还不知道我是不是想走呢。我不打算离开这里。假如你们允许的话，我想和你们待在一起。一直以来，我都在寻找你们这样的人。”

“说得像煞有介事，”尼克布瑞克咆哮着说，“你是台尔马人，是人类，对不对？你当然想回到自己的族人当中去啦。”

“可是，就算我这样想，我也回不去了。”凯斯宾心情沉重地说道，“我是逃出来的，因为逃命才出了这个意外。国王想杀我。假如你们将我杀了，那就正合他意了。”

“哎哟，”特鲁佛汉特惊讶道，“不是吧！”

“嗯？”杜鲁普金说道，“什么意思？你做了什么事，这么小小年纪的，居然就成了米拉兹的眼中钉？”

“他是我的叔叔。”凯斯宾话没说完，尼克布瑞克就跳了起来，一只手已握在了匕首上头。

“了不得了！”他叫道，“不光是个台尔马人，竟然还是我们头号敌人的侄儿和继承人。你们居然还想留这小子一命，脑子都坏了吗？”若不是獾和杜鲁普金及时挡住他，使了大劲把他摁回座位上去，凯斯宾也许当场就被他刺死了。

“听着，这是我最后一次警告你，尼克布瑞克！”杜鲁普金说道，“你是自己老实点，还是需要特鲁佛汉特和我一起坐到你头上去？”

尼克布瑞克愠怒地保证不会乱来，于是另外两位便要求凯斯宾把他的故事全部都讲出来。凯斯宾讲完后，大家沉默了片刻。

“我还从没听过这样的稀奇事情。”杜鲁普金说道。

“真是太讨厌了，”尼克布瑞克说道，“我之前从不知道，在人类之间，居然还流传着关于我们的故事。关于我们，他们知道得越少越好。那老保姆，啧，她当初真该管好她的嘴。还有那个什么老师，事情简直被他搞得一团糟，他这叛徒小矮人！我恨他们！他们简直比人类还要可恨！你们记着我的话，事情这么下去是不会有好结果的！”

“你明明不懂，就别再胡说了，尼克布瑞克！”特鲁佛汉特说道，“你们这些小矮人和人类一样健忘且善变。我是兽族，而且是獾。我们没有那么善变，总是坚定不移。要我说，这件事情对我们大有好处。我们面前正是纳尼亚真正的国王：一位真正的国王回到了真正的纳尼亚。尽管你们小矮人已经忘记了，可我们兽族却依然记得：只有亚当的儿子当国王，纳尼亚才能回到正轨。”

“得了吧！特鲁佛汉特，”杜鲁普金说道，“你该不会是想把这个国家让给人类吧？”

“我可没那么说，”獾回答说道，“这不是人类的国家（这个谁能比我更清楚？），但这是一个由人类国王来统治的国家。凭我们獾的好记性，我们是不会忘记这一点的。上苍保佑，至尊国王彼得不就是人类吗？”

“你还真信那些古老的传说啊？”杜鲁普金问道。

“我可以告诉你，我们兽族是不会改变的！”特鲁佛汉特说道，“我们不曾遗忘。我相信曾经在凯尔帕拉维尔城堡统治纳尼亚的至尊国王彼得和其他国王，就和我们相信阿斯兰一样坚定不移！”

“就算你们深信不疑，我敢说，”杜鲁普金说道，“现如今还有别的谁相信阿斯兰的存在吗？”

“我相信，”凯斯宾说道，“就算从前我不相信他的存在，现在我相信了。那些嘲笑阿斯兰的人同样也大肆嘲笑关于能言兽和小矮人的传说。有时候，我的确感到疑惑，阿斯兰到底是否存在，也疑惑像你们这样的生灵是否存在。可是现在，你们就在我的眼前，不是吗？”

“说得对，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“说得太对了，凯斯宾国王。只要你忠于古纳尼亚，你就是我的国王，别人说什么都随他去。陛下万岁！”

“你真让我觉得恶心，獾，”尼克布瑞克咆哮着说，“就算至尊国王彼得和别的国王都是人类，他们也属于别的种族。我们面前这位可是一个天杀的台尔马人。他曾经一定以围猎兽类为乐。你说，你有没有那么做过？”突然间，他把身子转向凯斯宾。

“好吧，说实话，我是那么做过，”凯斯宾说道，“可那些都是不会说话的普通动物。”

“反正没什么两样。”尼克布瑞克说道。

“不，不，不，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“你明明知道那不一样。如今生活在纳尼亚的动物和我们大不相同，它们只不过是些可怜的哑巴，毫无智慧的生灵，在卡乐门和台尔马随处可见。它们个头也很小。它们与我们之间的差距比混血小矮人与你们纯种小矮人之间的差距还要大得多。”

他们争论了很久，最后终于达成了共识，决定让凯斯宾留下来。他们甚至承诺，等他能出门了，他们立刻就带他去见杜鲁普金口中的那些“别的同伴”。毫无疑问，在这片荒郊野岭里，古纳尼亚的子民们避世而居，直至今日。

第六章
隐居者

就这样，凯斯宾开启了有生以来最快乐的一段日子。在一个晴朗的夏日早晨，露珠还挂在青草上，他已经同獾和两个小矮人一起出发，先穿过树林，再翻越高高的山脊，最后来到了南面的山坡，这里阳光明媚，极目远望，便能看到亚钦兰那绿色的高原。

“我们先去找那三只大棕熊吧。”杜鲁普金说道。

他们来到了树林间的一片空地，走到了一棵覆满了青苔的空心橡树前。特鲁佛汉特伸出爪子，在树干上敲了三下，里头没有回应。于是他继续敲门，这次，从树干内部传来一个含糊不清的声音：“走开，没到起床的时候呢！”特鲁佛汉特又敲第三遍门时，里头传来一阵仿佛地震一般的声响，门终于从里头打开了，三只大棕熊慢吞吞地走了出来，他们看上去挺胖，还眨巴着小眼睛。特鲁佛汉特所言不差，当凯斯宾的故事讲完之后（讲故事花了不少时间，因为三只大棕熊都还没睡醒），他们全部表示赞成由亚当的儿子来统治纳尼亚，都走上前来亲吻了凯斯宾——那是湿乎乎的、吸鼻子一样的吻，还取出了蜂蜜来招待他。凯斯宾其实并不喜欢在早上的时候不吃面包只吃蜂蜜，不过出于礼貌，他还是伸手接下了。后来他花了好长时间才把那黏糊糊的蜂蜜清理干净。

随后，他们继续前行，走到了一片山毛榉树林中。特鲁佛汉特喊了三声：“佩蒂威格！佩蒂威格！佩蒂威格！”话音刚落，他们就看见一只极其漂亮的红色松鼠灵活地从树梢上跳了下来，停在了他们头顶的树枝上。凯斯宾偶尔在城堡的花园里见过一些普通的、傻呆呆的松鼠，他却比那些松鼠要大得多，体格有猎犬那么大，你一看见他那张透着一股聪明劲儿的脸，立刻就能判断出他一定是会说话的。事实上，让他不说话才难呢，因为他就和所有的松鼠一样，是个话痨。他当即对凯斯宾国王的到来表示了欢迎，并殷勤地问凯斯宾想不想吃点坚果。凯斯宾向他道了谢，说自己很想吃点儿坚果。于是佩蒂威格一蹦一跳地取他的果子去了，他走远了的时候，特鲁佛汉特贴近了凯斯宾耳边，低声告诉他：“不要盯着他看，看看别的地方。对松鼠来说，你如果注意看他的仓库，或者四下乱看，就好像你想知道仓库的秘密，那可是很不礼貌的行为。”过了一会儿，佩蒂威格抱着坚果蹦跶回来了，等凯斯宾吃完了坚果，佩蒂威格又问是否需要由他给其他朋友捎个信。“我能去任何一个地方，不发出一丝声响呢。”他说道。特鲁佛汉特和小矮人们都认为这是个好主意，他们一起写了好多张便条，打算送给许多名字听起来怪里怪气的人，邀请他们三天后的午夜光临跳舞草坪，参加宴会和政务会。“记得通知那三只大棕熊啊，”杜鲁普金补充说，“刚才我们忘记提到他们了。”

告别了松鼠，他们又去拜访萨德森林的七兄弟。杜鲁普金负责带路，大伙儿先是翻过了山脊，又在北山坡上一路东行，最后到了岩石堆和松树林之间的一个看起来颇为庄严的地方。他们谁也没有说话，就在这时，凯斯宾突然感到脚下的大地在震动，仿佛地底下有什么人在不停地用锤子敲打着什么东西。杜鲁普金踩上了一块扁平的、长得像水桶一样的大石块，在上面跺了几下脚。过了好一阵子，不知什么人从地底下挪开了这块石头，露出了一个又黑又圆的洞口，霎时从洞里冒出了好大一股热气和水汽，只见洞里出现了一个小矮人的脑袋，外表看起来和杜鲁普金非常相似。他们进行了长时间的交谈，看来那小矮人的疑心要比松鼠和棕熊重得多，不过最后，那个小矮人还是邀请了大家伙儿全部下到洞里去。里面一片漆黑，凯斯宾沿着通往地下的台阶摸黑前行，终于走完了台阶，这时他看到了火光。原来是炼铁炉里炉火的光亮。这里竟然是一个地下锻冶场，而且地洞里的一侧还有一条地下河流过。只见鼓风箱边，两个小矮人正卖力地鼓着风，第三个小矮人用钳子夹住了砧子上一块烧红的铁块，第四个小矮人正用力锤打着铁块，边上的两个小矮人在一块油滋滋的布上擦了擦他们满是老茧的手，走上前来和他们的访客交谈。他们颇费了一番口舌，终于说服了两个小矮人，使他俩相信凯斯宾是朋友而不是敌人。确信这一点之后，所有小矮人都高呼——“国王万岁！”还慷慨地给凯斯宾、杜鲁普金和尼克布瑞克献上了精美的礼物：三套链甲衫、三个头盔、三柄宝剑。其实，那獾如果想要的话本来也可以有一套的，可是他说自己是个兽族，假如他靠自己的爪子和牙齿都无法保护自己的话，那要装备也没有用。这些武器的做工比凯斯宾从前见过的任何武器都要好得多。他愉快地用小矮人制作的宝剑换下了自己原有的剑，两者相比，他原来的那把剑简直和玩具一样单薄，和棍子一样笨拙。最后，七个兄弟（他们都是红发小矮人）也都接受了去跳舞草坪赴宴的邀请。

又向前走了一段路，在一个干燥少水、岩石遍布的深谷里，他们找到了五个黑发小矮人住的山洞。说明来意以后，他们依旧疑虑难消地盯着凯斯宾，可是后来五个当中的老大说：“如果他反对米拉兹，那我们就立他为王。”老二问道：“要不要我们带你们走段路，到悬崖那边去？那儿住着几个食人怪，还有一个巫婆。我们可以把你介绍给他们，就在那边儿。”

“真的不用了。”凯斯宾说道。

“我看也完全不必，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“我们的队伍可不能要那些家伙。”尼克布瑞克不赞成这话，但杜鲁普金和獾驳回了他的异议。凯斯宾这才知道，古老传说里的物种，除了善良的生灵以外，也有些怪物的后代活在世上，他不由震惊不已。

“如果我们收编了这些坏蛋，阿斯兰就不会站在我们这一边了。”他们离开黑发小矮人的山洞之后，特鲁佛汉特说道。

“哦，阿斯兰！”尼克布瑞克心情不错，但有些不屑地说道，“你们要是没有我这个盟友，那才叫糟呢！”

“你相信阿斯兰吗？”凯斯宾问尼克布瑞克。

“我可以相信任何人、任何东西，”尼克布瑞克说道，“前提是他能彻底干掉那些天杀的台尔马野蛮人，或者把他们从纳尼亚驱逐出境。只要能做到这一点，那么不论是什么人还是什么东西，不论他是叫阿斯兰，还是叫白女巫，我都信！你懂了吧？”

“你说够了吧，快住嘴！”特鲁佛汉特说道，“你根本不知道自己说了什么胡话！白女巫，那可是比米拉兹和他的同族更加可怕的敌人！”

“对我们小矮人来说，她可不是敌人。”尼克布瑞克说道。

下一站就让人愉悦多了。沿着山路往低处走，两侧大山越发宽阔，他们走进了一个宽阔的山谷，谷底流淌着一条河，水流湍急。河岸边的空地上开着大片的洋地黄和野蔷薇，蜜蜂在空中嗡嗡飞舞。特鲁佛汉特高声唤道：“格兰斯托姆！格兰斯托姆！”没过多久，凯斯宾听到一阵马蹄声。马蹄声越来越响，整个河谷都颤动起来，终于踏出了茂密的灌木丛。这是凯斯宾见过的最高贵的生灵——半人马格兰斯托姆和他的三个儿子。他的马身是一种光亮的栗色，金红色的胡须覆盖着宽阔的胸膛。他是预言家，也是占星师，清楚客人此行为何而来。

“国王万岁！”他高声说道，“我和我的儿子们已经做好了战斗准备。请问战斗何时打响？”

其实，直到现在，凯斯宾和同伴都还没有认真考虑过打仗的事儿，他们只有一些模糊的想法，比如临时突袭人类的农庄，或者攻击一伙猎人——假如他们闯入这片南方未开化的森林中来。但是总体而言，他们只希望在森林和洞穴里隐居，秘密地重建起一个古老的纳尼亚，继续偷偷摸摸地生活。格兰斯托姆说的话使大家一下子严肃了起来。

“你是说，发动一场真正的战争，把米拉兹彻底赶出纳尼亚吗？”凯斯宾问道。

“不然呢？”半人马说道，“陛下身穿盔甲，腰佩宝剑，还能为了什么呢？”

“我们能成功吗，格兰斯托姆？”獾问道。

“时机已经成熟，”格兰斯托姆说道，“我看了星相，獾，因为我的本领就是观察星相，如同你的本领就是铭记历史。在苍穹的大殿里，塔瓦和阿拉姆毕尔两颗星辰相遇了，在大地上，亚当的儿子将再一次统治和指挥纳尼亚王国的子民。钟声已经敲响，跳舞草坪的政务会议将成为这场战争的动员大会。”他的话字字铿锵，消除了凯斯宾和伙伴们的疑虑。他们意识到，这场战争不可避免，胜利必将属于他们！

中午已经过去了一小会儿，他们留下来同半人马父子共进午餐，餐桌上提供的食物有燕麦饼、苹果、香草、酒和乳酪。

接下来的拜访对象，住处虽然不远，可是他们为了避开人类的居住区，不得不绕了一个大圈子。这时是午后，他们来到一片平坦的原野，边上是灌木丛。他们来到了靠近河岸的一个洞口前面，特鲁佛汉特开始高声呼唤。话音未落，洞里头跳出了一个动物来。凯斯宾完全没料到，那竟然是一只能言鼠。当然，他的体格要比普通的老鼠大得多，用后腿往那儿一站能有一英尺多高，头上的两只耳朵长度几乎和兔耳差不多（不过更宽一些）。他的名字叫雷佩契普，生性乐天，勇武无比。他的身侧佩着一柄小巧的宝剑，时而用手捻着几根长须，就好像捻的是一丛胡子一样。“我们一共十二个勇士，陛下，”他迅速又优雅地鞠了一躬，“我们全部任由陛下差遣，赴汤蹈火，在所不辞！”凯斯宾十分努力地忍住笑（总算给他忍住了），因为他实在忍不住想到雷佩契普及其身后的全员，都可以毫不费劲地放进一只菜篮子里，任何人都能把他们背回家去。

那天他们访问了许多朋友，由于时间有限，在此就不一一描述他们了——有鼹鼠克劳兹利·肖弗，钢口利牙三人组（都是像特鲁佛汉特一样的獾），野兔卡梅罗，还有刺猬豪格尔斯道克，等等。最后他们来到一口井边，决定休息一下。井旁是一片广阔平坦的草坪，四周都是榆树。这时，投在地上的树影已经很长，太阳已开始落山。雏菊合拢了花瓣，白嘴鸟也要飞回家睡觉去了。他们在此取出带来的食物当晚餐。杜鲁普金点燃了他的大烟斗（尼克布瑞克从不抽烟）。

“现在，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“如果我们能唤醒沉睡的树神就好了，那样的话今天可真是太值了。”

“我们做不到吗？”凯斯宾问道。

“做不到，”獾说道，“与他们相比，我们的力量太弱小。自从人类来到了这片土地，他们砍伐森林，污染河流，林中仙女和水中仙女都陷入了沉眠。谁知道她们还会不会再度醒来？这对我们来说真是个很大的损失！原本那些台尔马人最怕的就是森林，一旦大树们愤怒起来，我们的敌人就会害怕到发疯，飞快地逃出纳尼亚。”

“你们兽族的想象力简直太丰富了！”杜鲁普金根本不信，“可是你为什么只讲到树和水，就不再往下说了？假如石头全都能够自己飞起来，砸向老米拉兹，那样岂不是更好吗？”

獾听了这话只是哼了一声，这之后是长时间的沉默，凯斯宾差点就要睡着了。忽然，他仿佛听到身后的树林深处传来了一阵轻缓的音乐声。他以为这是梦，翻了个身打算继续睡，可是当他的耳朵刚贴近地面，他马上感觉到，或者说听到（说不清是感觉到的还是听到的）一阵微弱的敲打声。他抬起头来，那打击声马上弱了下去，可音乐声又响起来，而且这一次听着更加清晰，好像是笛子的声音。他看见特鲁佛汉特坐起身来，两眼盯着树林。这时已是夜晚，天上月光皎洁。凯斯宾睡着的时间比他以为的还要长。音乐声越来越近了，那是一种充满野性而又如梦似幻的旋律，终于，伴随着轻快的脚步声，一群翩翩舞动着的身影从树林里来到月光下，正是这些年来一直萦绕在凯斯宾心头的身影。他们不比小矮人高多少，可身材却苗条得多，体态也优美得多。他们蜷曲的头发上伸出两只角来，淡淡的月光映出他们赤裸的上身，可他们的腿和脚都与山羊的一模一样。

“半羊人！”凯斯宾跳了起来，兴奋地叫出了声。半羊人们立刻把他围在当中。没说几句，他们就明白了整件事情，并且立刻接受了凯斯宾。凯斯宾不由自主地跟着他们一起跳舞。杜鲁普金步履沉重，摇摇摆摆，也随着跳了起来，连特鲁佛汉特都全情投入地跳起舞来，不停地蹦着、跳着、扭摆着。只有尼克布瑞克一动不动地待在一边，只是沉默地看着。半羊人们用他们纤细的脚围着凯斯宾跳呀跳。他们那古怪的面容，看上去好像很悲伤，又好像很快乐，他们都凝望着凯斯宾。众多半羊人都来了——曼蒂犹斯、奥本蒂纳斯、达姆纳斯、佛伦斯、佛提纳斯、吉尔比乌斯、尼米爱努斯、那乌苏斯，还有奥斯昆斯。他们都是佩蒂威格邀请来的。

第二天早晨，凯斯宾一觉醒来，差点以为这一切都是梦，可是草地上分明布满了羊蹄印。

第七章
危机四伏的古纳尼亚

他们正是在跳舞草坪上遇到半羊人的。凯斯宾和他的朋友们决定留下，等到盛会开场。夜晚就在满天繁星下休息，渴了就喝井水，饿了就吃野果，这些对凯斯宾来说都是无比新鲜的经历——他所熟悉的，是城堡里那些挂满壁毯的卧室，质地柔软的丝绸床单，摆在金银餐盘上的精美食物，还有随叫随到的皇室奴仆。周围的环境看似根本不能和从前相比，可是他却感到自己从来没有现在这么快活，他的梦从来不曾这么甜美，食物也从来没有这么可口。他已经变得坚强了起来，看上去也有了君主的威仪。

那备受期待的夜晚终于来临。三三两两、成群结队地，凯斯宾的那些奇形怪状的臣民们陆续来到了跳舞草坪——那晚的月光无比皎洁——看着这么多朋友，听着他们的问候，凯斯宾不由心潮澎湃。之前他见过的朋友们全都来了：大棕熊、红发小矮人和黑发小矮人，还有鼹鼠、獾、兔子和刺猬，除此之外，还有一些之前没见过面的朋友——五个长着火红色头发的林中精灵；全副武装的老鼠大军，伴着高而尖细的小号声向他走来；猫头鹰也飞来参加盛会；还有老渡鸦。最后到场的这位（看着这位，凯斯宾的呼吸都顿了一顿）是和半人马一同前来的来自死人山的巨人韦姆布威热，他的体格倒算不上特别庞大，但他是个血统纯正的巨人。巨人背后的筐里装着满满一筐子晕晕乎乎的小矮人，他们接受了巨人的好意，由他一路背着过来，可是现在小矮人们一个个都悔不当初，因为还不如自己走路来得好呢！

大棕熊们迫切期待举行宴会，又提议延迟政务会，或许延迟到明天。雷佩契普和老鼠勇士们则建议宴会和会议都可以缓缓，应该当天夜里突袭城堡，直取米拉兹。以佩蒂威格为首的松鼠们说，边吃边商议吧，这样才能节约时间，宴会和政务会何不同时进行呢？鼹鼠们提议，先在跳舞草坪四周挖出一道防御壕沟，然后再做其他事情。半羊人们认为，会议开始之前，大家最好先跳一支庄严的舞蹈。老渡鸦虽然同意棕熊们的意见，说等到整个会议开完了再吃饭就太晚了，可是他还请求凯斯宾同意由他先向全体朋友简短致辞。但是凯斯宾、半人马和小矮人们不赞成所有提议，他们坚持立马召开有关战争的会议。

他们终于说服了所有伙伴，让大家围成一圈坐了下来。接着他们又费了更大的劲儿，才成功拦下了佩蒂威格，阻止他来回不停地奔跑呼喊“静一静，静一静！大家安静，国王要发表演说了。”怀着紧张的心情，凯斯宾站起身来。“纳尼亚的子民们！”他说道。他正要往下说，但就在此时，兔子卡梅罗突然说：“嘘！这附近有个人！”

这些生活在野外的兽族早已对人类追捕习以为常，于是他们一下子像雕塑一样静止不动，又全都把鼻子转向卡梅罗示意的那个方向。

“闻起来仿佛是个人，可又不完全像人类。”特鲁佛汉特悄声说道。

“他越走越近了。”卡梅罗说道。

“两只獾和你们三个小矮人，备好弓箭，悄悄走过去，瞧瞧来者何人。”凯斯宾下令。

“我们去干掉他！”一个黑发小矮人冷酷地说着，搭起一支利箭。

“如果只有一个人，就别射箭，”凯斯宾说道，“抓活的过来。”

“为什么？”小矮人问道。

“叫你做什么你就做什么。”半人马格兰斯托姆说道。

三个小矮人和两只獾弯着身子，快步向跳舞草坪西北方向的那片树林走去，剩下的则静静地在原地等候。没过多久，那里传来了小矮人尖细的声音，“站住，来者何人？”接着就是一阵急步声。又过了一会儿，大家听到另一个声音，这个声音是凯斯宾再熟悉不过的，“放心放心，我没带武器。你要咬的话就咬我的手腕好了，值得尊敬的獾老弟，只不过麻烦别把我的手给咬破。我有话要和国王说。”

“科尼利厄斯博士！”凯斯宾高兴地叫出了声。他急忙跑上前去，迎上他那上了年纪的家庭教师。大伙把他俩围在了中间。

“呸！”尼克布瑞克说道，“不过是一个叛变的小矮人，只有四分之一小矮人的血统！要不要我一剑刺穿他的喉咙？”

“快住嘴，尼克布瑞克，”杜鲁普金说道，“他又没法选择自己的血统。”

“这是我最忠实的朋友，也是我的救命恩人。”凯斯宾说道，“谁要是不欢迎他，可以离开我的队伍，现在就离开。最亲爱的博士，真高兴能再次见到您。您是怎么找到我们的？”

“不过施了点儿小小的魔法，陛下。”博士说道。由于走得太急，他一口气到现在还没有顺过来。“现在没时间说这些了，你们必须马上离开，你们被出卖了！米拉兹率领大军，已经在过来的路上了，再不走的话，明天中午之前你们就会被大军包围了。”

“被出卖！”凯斯宾问道，“是谁出卖了我们？”

“肯定又是一个叛变的小矮人。”尼克布瑞克说道。

“是你的马，戴思特里尔，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“那可怜的畜生，它也是茫然不知所措。你摔下马背之后，它只好独自返回了城堡，又回到自己的马厩里去了。之后，你逃走的事也就不再是秘密。我当然不想被米拉兹抓去审讯室，也出来逃命。我观察水晶球，推测出你们大致的方位。可就在前天，我看到米拉兹的搜查大队从城堡出发，进了森林。昨天，我又听说他的军队也出动了。我发现你的部下，那些……呃……那些纯种小矮人，没有多少森林生存的知识。你们四处行走，处处都留下了痕迹，这也太大意了！总而言之，米拉兹发现古纳尼亚并没有如他所希望的那样彻底消亡。所以他开始行动了。”

“好哇！”一个又尖又细的声音从博士的脚边响起，“让他们放马过来！我只请求国王陛下派我和我的勇士们上前线去！”

“谁在说话呀？”科尼利厄斯博士问道，“陛下怎么把蚱蜢——还是蚊子——也招进队伍里来了？”说着，他俯下身，透过眼镜仔细看了好一会儿，突然哈哈大笑起来。

“以狮王的名义起誓，”他发誓说道，“这肯定是只老鼠。老鼠先生，我衷心希望能和你成为朋友，能结识你这样一位英勇的兽族，真是我的荣幸。”

“你将收获我的友谊，博士先生，”雷佩契普尖声答道，“不管是小矮人还是巨人，谁要是胆敢对你无礼，就来领教我的利剑吧。”

“现在是说这些蠢话的时候吗？”尼克布瑞克问道，“我们的计划是什么？是战斗，还是逃命？”

“如果需要，那就战斗，”杜鲁普金说道，“可我们还没做好战斗的准备，再说这里也不是一个容易守住的地形。”

“我可不喜欢临阵脱逃。”凯斯宾说道。

“他说得对！不能逃跑！”大棕熊们意见一致，“不管我们做什么，决不能逃跑，尤其是吃上晚饭之前，晚饭刚吃完那会儿也不行！”

“战略上的转移和战败后的逃跑可不是一回事儿。”半人马说道，“为什么任由敌人为我们指定作战地点，而不是我们自己主动引领形势呢？我们还是找一个有利的地形吧。”

“这才明智，陛下，这才明智。”特鲁佛汉特说道。

“但是我们该去哪里呢？”大家一起问道。

“陛下，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“还有诸位，我认为我们必须立刻向东转移，沿河而下，到密林里去。台尔马人仇视那里。他们一向畏惧大海，害怕有谁会从海的那边过来，所以他们任凭那里的树林茂密生长。如果传说所言不虚，那么古老的凯尔帕拉维尔城堡就坐落在那个河口处。那儿整片区域都是我们的朋友，也都仇视我们的敌人。我们必须去阿斯兰堡垒。”

“阿斯兰堡垒？”几个声音又同时问道，“我们不知道那是什么。”

“在大森林边缘有一个神秘的地方，那里有一个大土丘，是古纳尼亚子民堆起来的，大土丘上曾经立着——也许现在还立着——一块具有魔力的巨石。大土丘是空心的，内部挖了许多通道和洞穴，巨石就放在土丘中心的洞穴里。土丘足够我们储备一切用品，我们当中最需要掩蔽、最习惯于地下生活的伙伴，都可以住进洞里。剩下的可以住在森林里。危急关头，我们全部人员（除了这位巨人阁下）都可以撤到土丘内部，在那里头，只要不断粮，我们就能摆脱一切危险。”

“我们的队伍里有这么一位博学之士，真是太好啦！”特鲁佛汉特说道。但是杜鲁普金却轻声嘟哝道：“荒唐至极！我希望我们的领袖少听这些无稽之谈，多想想粮食和武器的问题。”但是大家都赞成科尼利厄斯的建议。就在当晚，半小时后，他们就出发了。第二天日出之前，他们全体抵达了阿斯兰堡垒。

这里真是块风水宝地，一个圆圆的绿色土丘，坐落在小山顶上，土丘上早已覆满了树木，树底下有一条小道直通土丘内部。对不熟悉这里的人来说，堡垒内部简直就是个迷宫。四周的墙壁和屋顶都是用光滑的石头砌起来的。借着黎明的微光，凯斯宾看到石壁上刻着一些奇特的文字和蛇形花纹，还有许多狮子形状的图画反复出现。这一切似乎都属于比保姆所讲的纳尼亚还要古老的古纳尼亚。

他们便在这里安营扎寨，不料命运似乎开始与他们作对。米拉兹的探子很快就发现了他们的藏身之处，他和军队都来到了树林边缘。就像历史上常常发生的一样，敌人的兵力比他们所预计的要强得多。敌军一队接一队地到来，这让凯斯宾的心情非常沉重。尽管米拉兹的士兵惧怕进入这片密林，但在他们心中，米拉兹甚至比他们一向畏惧的密林还要可怕。米拉兹一声令下，士兵们都开始向着密林深处进发，有时候甚至都已经快要打到堡垒门前。凯斯宾和他的手下也曾向平原发动了几次反攻。他们的战斗多数发生在白天，有时也发生在夜晚，然而总的形势对凯斯宾这一方非常不利。

终于到了一天晚上，形势已经糟到了极点。大雨下了整整一天，到了黄昏时分才停下来，但取而代之的却是气温骤降后的严寒。次日一早，凯斯宾部署了他麾下至今火力最猛的一次反击，所有人都将希望寄托在了这场战斗上。凯斯宾将率领大部分小矮人在黎明时分突袭米拉兹的右翼，紧接着，趁着双方打得火热，巨人韦姆布威热、半人马和部分最凶猛的兽族就从另一个地方冲出来，努力折下米拉兹的右翼人马。谁料这一仗又打败了。没有人提醒过凯斯宾（因为此时的纳尼亚臣民也已经忘了这一点）巨人并不聪明。可怜的韦姆布威热，尽管他像狮子一样英勇，可是在聪明才智方面，他终究还是符合一个真正的巨人的水准。由于他选择了错误的进攻时间和地点，结果他的队伍和凯斯宾的队伍都损失惨重，而敌方却并没有受到多少损失。战斗力最强的一只熊负了伤，一个半人马伤势严重，凯斯宾的部下几乎都受了伤。营地里士气低迷，他们挤在滴着雨滴的大树下面，吃着那点儿少到可怜的晚餐。

最最消沉的是巨人韦姆布威热，他明白这都是自己的错。他一声不吭地坐着掉眼泪，大滴大滴的眼泪聚到了鼻子尖上，然后滴了下来，溅落到了老鼠们的营地上——他们才刚刚感到暖和了一些，开始昏昏欲睡。于是所有老鼠一下子都跳了起来，赶紧用力抖掉耳朵里进的水，拧干他们的小毯子，接着用他们尖锐有力的声音质问巨人是不是还嫌他们身上不够湿。这一通吵吵嚷嚷把别人都吵醒了，于是都来责备这些老鼠勇士，说他们加入队伍是来当侦察兵的，不是来当合唱团的，要求他们保持安静。韦姆布威热蹑手蹑脚地走开了，想去找一个能让他不被打扰、静静忧伤的地方，可是一不留神又踩着了谁的尾巴，尾巴的主人转身就咬了他一口（后来别人说那是只狐狸）。结果所有人都大发脾气。

此时此刻，在堡垒中心那个既隐秘又神奇的房间里，国王凯斯宾、科尼利厄斯、獾、尼克布瑞克和杜鲁普金正在开会。年代久远的古老大石柱支撑着房间的屋顶，屋子中央摆着一块巨石——那是一张石桌，从正中间被截成了两截，上面刻着某种文字。但是，早在石桌还立在山顶，山顶上也还没有大土丘的古时候，由于经年累月的雨雪侵蚀，石桌上原本的字迹几乎已经磨蚀殆尽了。他们没有围坐在石桌周围开会，因为他们认为石桌是一件神奇之物，不能随意使用。于是他们坐在离石桌不远的几段木头上，中间是一张粗糙的木制桌子，桌上摆着一只简陋的黏土制成的灯，灯光照着他们苍白的脸，在墙壁上投射出巨大的影子。

“陛下若想使用那只神号，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“我想现在该是时候了。”凯斯宾曾在几天前向他们讲起过这个宝物。

“我们现在确实急需援助，”凯斯宾答道，“可我难以确定现在是不是已经到了最危急的关头。如果我们先用过了神号，可之后又出现了更糟糕的情况，那时又该怎么办呢？”

“要是这么说的话，”尼克布瑞克说道，“陛下就会一直不动用它，而最终形势就会糟到不可收拾。”

“我赞成这个想法。”科尼利厄斯博士说道。

“你怎么看呢，杜鲁普金？”凯斯宾问道。

“哦，要我说嘛，”红发小矮人此前一直漠不关心地听着大家讨论，“陛下是知道的，在我看来，不论是那只号角，还是那边那块断裂了的大石头，还有你们伟大的彼得国王，以及你们所说的狮王阿斯兰，统统都是水里的月亮罢了，不过是虚幻的泡沫。我不在乎陛下什么时候吹响那只号角，我只希望陛下不要对我们的军队提起这件事，以免大家对所谓的神奇援助抱有希望，结果却（我认为必将）大失所望，这样一点也不好。”

“那么，以阿斯兰的名义，就让我们吹响苏珊女王的神号吧。”凯斯宾说道。

“陛下，有一件事情，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“或许我们应该先办好。我们并不知道号声将为我们带来什么样的援助。也许那号声能唤来海那边的阿斯兰，但我认为，更有可能唤来至尊国王彼得和他那几位神勇的女王。但是我想，无论是哪种情况，我们都不能指望援助会直接降临到我们跟前。”

“你总算说了句实在话。”杜鲁普金插嘴道。

“我认为，”这位博学之士继续说道，“他们——或他将会降临在纳尼亚的某个古老圣地。我们所在的这个地方，就是最古老和最有魔力的圣地，我认为援助最有可能降临于此。但是还有其他两处地方。一处是灯柱荒原，在河的上游，比佛坝以西，根据传说，那里是四位王室的孩子第一次在纳尼亚国土上出现的地方。另一处圣地在下游的河口处，是当年的凯尔帕拉维尔城堡的所在地。而假如阿斯兰亲自前来，那也会是迎接他的最佳地点，因为每一个传说都告诉我们，他是伟大的海外皇帝之子，他将从大海那边而来。我提议派遣使臣到灯柱荒原和河口这两个地方去迎接他们——或者他——或者它。”

“如我所料，”杜鲁普金嘟哝道，“这愚蠢的行为不仅不会带来帮助，反而会先导致我们失去两个战士。”

“你觉得该派谁去呢，科尼利厄斯博士？”凯斯宾问道。

“要想安全地穿越敌方封锁区，松鼠是最合适的人选了。”特鲁佛汉特说道。

“我们这儿所有的松鼠（虽然数量并不多），”尼克布瑞克说道，“都很轻浮，没什么责任心。此次行动关系重大，我认为唯一值得信任的人选非佩蒂威格莫属。”

“那就是佩蒂威格了，”凯斯宾国王说道，“那么谁来做我们的另一位使臣呢？我知道你愿意去，特鲁佛汉特，可是你的速度还不够快。你也不行，科尼利厄斯博士。”

“我可不去，”尼克布瑞克说道，“这里有这么多人类和兽类，必须有个小矮人留下来，确保所有小矮人都能得到公正的待遇。”

“你这说的是什么话！”杜鲁普金勃然大怒，“你就这么对国王说话吗？派我去吧，陛下，我愿意去！”

“可你之前不是不相信神号吗，杜鲁普金？”凯斯宾说道。

“我现在依旧不相信，陛下。但是那又如何？死在别的什么白费力气的事情上也好，死在这里也罢，对我来说都没什么两样。你是我的国王，我分得清何时应该提出忠告，何时应该执行命令。我已经向你提出了我的忠告，现在该是我执行命令的时候了。”

“我将永远记住你这番话，杜鲁普金，”凯斯宾说道，“传召佩蒂威格。那么，我该什么时候吹号呢？”

“我认为要在日出时分，陛下，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“白魔法有时就是在日出时生效。”

几分钟后，佩蒂威格应召而来。他和多数松鼠一样，浑身充满了勇气、冲劲和活力，又是兴奋，又是淘气（倒不是说他自大），才刚听完了任务内容，他就已经迫不及待地想要出发了。凯斯宾派他去灯柱荒原，而杜鲁普金的目的地则要近一些，是那个河口。两位使臣匆匆吃了点东西，就带着国王、獾和科尼利乌斯衷心的感谢和祝福，出发上路了。

第八章
离开小岛

“正如我所说，”杜鲁普金说道（现在你该知道了吧，坐在废弃的凯尔帕拉维尔大殿的草地上，给四个孩子讲完了上面那个故事的，正是小矮人杜鲁普金）——“就这样，我往口袋里塞了几片面包，卸掉了身上别的武器，只带了一柄短剑，便在黎明时分向森林深处走去。我一路前行，走了好几个小时，突然听到一种有生以来从没听过的声音。哎呀，我一辈子也忘不了那个声音，它充满了所有空气，响似惊雷，却不像雷声那么短暂；轻柔甜美，就像拂过水面的音乐，但又是那么强劲，足以摇撼整片森林。我对自己说‘要是这不是神号声的话，就管我叫兔子。’过了一会儿我就开始纳闷，他为什么不早点儿吹响神号呢——”

“那会儿是几点钟呢？”爱德蒙问道。

“九点到十点之间。”杜鲁普金说道。

“正好是我们在火车站的时候！”四个孩子们齐声叫道，眼里闪着光，面面相觑。

“请你接着往下说。”露西对小矮人说道。

“好吧，就像我刚才说的，听到号声后我纳闷了一下，然后继续前行，整整走了一天一夜。再之后，今天的黎明时分，我像巨人一样做了件蠢事——为了不去绕那条河道，我冒险抄小道穿过一片开阔的平地，结果就被敌人抓住了。抓我的不是军队，而是一个自大的老傻瓜。他掌管着一个小城堡，那是米拉兹在通往海岸的路上设下的最后一个关卡。不用说，他们一句实话都没从我嘴里问出来。但我是个小矮人，这一点就足够判我的罪了。不过，嘿呀！幸亏那管事儿的是个自大的蠢货，换了别人一定当场就一剑把我刺死了。可谁让他非认为只有把我送到‘鬼’那儿去，搞得和某种仪式一样，才是处决我的最狠的方式呢。结果，这位年轻的小姐射箭救了我（他冲苏珊点头致意）——我不得不说，那一箭射得真是漂亮。遇到你们以前的故事就是这些了。只可惜我身上的盔甲没了，被他们拿走了。”他倒掉烟灰，重新装上一斗烟。

“真是绝了！”彼得说道，“这么说，昨天早上是那号角——就是你那只神号，苏——把我们大家从站台的座位上生生给拽到这儿来的啊！简直难以置信，可这一切确实都讲得通了。”

“我不明白你有什么不好相信的，”露西说道，“只要你相信有魔法，就没什么不能相信的。好多故事都讲过，魔法能使人离开某个地方，或者离开某个世界，到另一个世界去，不是吗？比方说，《一千零一夜》里，法师一旦召唤了精灵，精灵就会出现在他的面前。我们之所以回到了纳尼亚，也是一样的道理。”

“没错儿，”彼得说道，“怪就怪在，故事里召唤精灵的总是我们世界里的人，谁也没有认真想过，精灵是从哪儿来的。

“现在我们知道精灵是什么滋味儿了，”爱德蒙咯咯笑道，“天哪！原来只要吹一吹号角，我们就能被召唤过来，这还真让人有那么一点儿不舒服。这感觉比爸爸说的成天被电话呼来喝去还叫人不舒服呢。”

“只不过我们都愿意到这儿来，不是吗？”露西说道，“只要是阿斯兰想要我们来。”

“可是，”小矮人说道，“现在我们要做什么？我想我应该马上返回，回禀国王，告诉他并没有援助。”

“没有援助？”苏珊说道，“可那号角不是生效了吗，我们都在这儿了啊。”

“嗯——嗯——是的，当然，我明白。”小矮人说道，他的烟斗似乎突然堵住了（不管堵没堵，反正他正忙着清理烟斗），“可是——好吧——我是说——”

“你难道还不知道我们是谁吗？”露西叫道，“你真够笨的。”

“我猜你们就是古老传说中的那四个孩子，”杜鲁普金说道，“当然，我真的很高兴能见到你们。毫无疑问，这个事情也很有意思。可是——你们听了不生气吧？”他又犹豫了。

“不管你想说什么，接着说下去吧。”爱德蒙说道。

“那好吧——我无意冒犯，”杜鲁普金说道，“可你们知道，国王、特鲁佛汉特和科尼利厄斯博士都在期待——嗯，不知道你们明不明白我指的是什么，他们都在期待强大的外援。换句话说，我想他们一直把你们想象成一群英勇有力的战士。当然——我们都非常喜欢孩子，不过现在这种时候，在战斗中，你们又能干什么呢？相信你们能理解我的意思。”

“你的意思是说你认为我们一点儿用都没有。”爱德蒙的脸涨得通红。

“请相信我真的无意冒犯，”小矮人打断了他的话，“我向你们保证，我亲爱的小朋友——。”

“你这小矮人居然嫌我们小，真是岂有此理！”爱德蒙气得都跳了起来，“我猜你也不会相信是我们打赢的柏卢纳战役吧？好吧，你想怎么说我就怎么说吧，因为我知道——”

“发脾气可无济于事，”彼得说道，“我们先给他配备一套盔甲，我们自己也从宝库里找东西武装起来，有什么话之后再说。”

“我不明白这样有什么意义——”爱德蒙开口说道，可是露西在他耳边悄声说，“我们按彼得说的做好吗？你知道他是至尊国王。我觉得他心中有数。”爱德蒙便也同意了。他举起手电筒，所有人，包括杜鲁普金，借着手电筒的光，又一次走下台阶，来到那又黑又冷、布满尘埃的宝库。

看到架子上有那么多宝物（尽管他只有踮起脚尖才能看得到），小矮人两眼放光，嘴里自顾自地嘟哝着，“可千万不能给尼克布瑞克看到这些，千万不能！”孩子们很快就为他找到了一套合身的链甲衫、一把宝剑、一个头盔、一块盾牌、一张弓和满满一壶的箭，这些都是专为小矮人们制作的，大小非常合适。头盔是铜制的，镶嵌着宝石，剑柄是由纯金铸成的。杜鲁普金这辈子连见都没见过，更不用说拥有这么贵重的宝物了。

孩子们也套上了盔甲。爱德蒙选了一把宝剑，一块盾牌；露西选了一张弓；彼得和苏珊早已拿好了自己的宝物。他们沿着台阶走出了宝库，身上的链甲衫叮当作响，看起来个个都是纳尼亚的勇士，再也不是学校里的学生了。两个男孩走在后头，显然在商议行动方案。露西听到爱德蒙说：“不，还是让我上，如果我赢了，他的失败会显得更加惨烈；就算我输了，我们也不至于太没面子。”

“好吧，爱德。”彼得同意了。

他们走到室外的阳光下，此时，爱德蒙转向小矮人，非常礼貌地对他说：“我有一个请求。我们这样的小孩子，难得能够遇上你这样英勇的战士，不知你是否愿意和我比一比剑术？你要是同意，那就再好不过了。”

“但是，小伙子啊，”杜鲁普金说道，“这些宝剑可是很锋利的。”

“我知道，”爱德蒙说道，“但我不可能接近你，而你却轻易就可以解除我的武装，还能不伤我一分一毫。”

“这游戏十分危险，”杜鲁普金说道，“但是既然你坚持要这样，我就陪你玩上一两回吧。”

转眼间，两把宝剑都出了剑鞘，其余三个孩子都从高台上跳了下来，站在一旁观战。这场较量非常值得一看，因为这完全不是舞台上那种耍耍刀剑、装装样子的愚蠢演出，就连精彩的击剑比赛也显得逊色。这是真刀真枪的格斗。最精彩的部分就是用宝剑去劈敌方的腿和脚，因为这两个部位都是没有盔甲防护的。你要瞄准对方的宝剑劈来的瞬间，敏捷地向上一跳，这样一来，对手的一击就只是从你脚下掠了过去。这样的比试当然对小矮人更加有利，因为爱德蒙比他高得多，不得不全程俯着身子。其实，如果他和杜鲁普金这一场对战发生在二十四小时之前，爱德蒙获胜的机会并不大。

但是自从他们抵达了小岛，纳尼亚的氛围便一直影响着他，唤醒了他曾经所有的战斗记忆，他的胳膊和手指也都恢复了从前的战斗技巧。现在他又是当年的爱德蒙国王了。两个勇士相互缠斗，打了一回合又一回合，击出一剑又一剑。苏珊（她怎么也没法喜欢这种事情）不住地高呼：“哎呀！千万小心呀！”突然，爱德蒙以没人看得清的超快速度（彼得除外），手腕一转，剑花一翻，使出一个凌厉的剑法，直接击飞了小矮人的剑。只见杜鲁普金扭着那只空空的右手，就好像被板球拍给打到了一样。

“没有伤到你吧，我亲爱的小朋友？”爱德蒙稍稍喘了口气，然后把宝剑插回了剑鞘。

“我明白了，”杜鲁普金干巴巴地说道，“你刚刚那个花招我没学过。”

“说得太对了，”彼得插话道，“就算是世上最好的击剑手，也有可能被一个他没见过的招数解除武器。我想应该再给杜鲁普金一次机会，换个别的项目再比试一下，那才公平。你想和我妹妹比赛射箭吗？你知道的，射箭这个项目是没有花招可言的。”

“啊，你们真会开玩笑啊，你们！”小矮人说道，“我已经看出来了。今天早上她救了我之后，我就知道她的箭术有多高明了。不过没关系，我愿意试试。”他粗声粗气地说道，但眼睛却亮了起来，因为他在自己的族里是个有名的弓箭手。

他们五个全都来到了院子里。

“用什么做靶子呢？”彼得问道。

“我觉得那边树枝上挂的那个苹果就行。”苏珊说道。

“很不错啊，小姑娘，”杜鲁普金说道，“你说的是靠近树杈中部的那个黄苹果吗？”

“不，不是那一个，”苏珊说道，“是上面红色的那个——比城垛还高的那个。”

小矮人的脸色有些变了。“什么苹果，看上去倒更像颗樱桃。”他轻声嘟囔道，但没有大声说出来。

他们以掷币的形式决定谁第一个射箭（杜鲁普金非常感兴趣，因为他从来没有见过别人掷币），结果是苏珊第二个射。从大殿到花园有一段台阶，他们要站在台阶顶端开弓。看了小矮人对位置的选择和他拉弓的姿势，孩子们都看得出他是个内行。

弓弦“嗡”的一声，箭射出去了。这一箭射得非常漂亮。只见那箭擦过了苹果，小苹果晃了晃，边上有一片树叶飘了下来。接着，苏珊走到最高一级的台阶上，拉开了弓。她对这场比赛的兴趣还不及爱德蒙的一半，这倒不是因为她没有信心射中那个苹果，而是因为她心地十分善良，不愿再去打败一个已经被打败过一次的小矮人。小矮人热切地看她把箭杆拉向耳边。刹那间，伴随着一声轻响，那个苹果掉落在草地上，苏珊的箭正中目标。

“哦！好样的，苏！”其他三个孩子欢呼起来。

“我并不是真的比你射得准，”苏珊对小矮人说道，“你射的时候好像有阵风刮过。”

“不是的，没有风，”杜鲁普金说道，“你不必安慰我了，我明白我完全输了。我也不想说刚才拉弓时我肩膀上的伤在隐隐作痛——”

“哎呀，你受伤了吗？”露西问道，“快给我看看伤口。”

“这可不是小姑娘该看的，”杜鲁普金话刚一出口，马上又收回了，“哎，我又像个傻瓜一样讲话了。你的哥哥是一位了不起的剑客，你的姐姐是一名不俗的射手，我猜你也很可能是一位优秀的医生。”他坐在台阶上，脱下链甲衫，解开贴身的小衬衫，露出那水手一般汗毛浓密、肌肉发达的胳膊（尽管并不比小孩的手臂粗）。他肩膀上有一块草草包扎的绷带，露西上前解开一看，只见绷带下面是狰狞的刀伤，伤口又红又肿。“哎呀，可怜的杜鲁普金，”露西说道，“这太可怕了。”她取出了自己的随身小瓶，小心地在他的伤口上滴了一滴神水。

“喂！嗯？你做什么了？”杜鲁普金说道。不过不管他怎么转动脑袋去看，怎么来回摆动着小胡子，他也没法看到自己的肩膀。然后他使劲儿去触摸，用胳膊和手指去够那伤口，他那样子就像去抓一个怎么也够不着的地方。再接着，他转了转胳膊，又抬了抬胳膊，活动活动肌肉，终于跳起来大声叫道：“天哪！我的伤好了！那地方和新的一样！”紧接着，他大笑着说，“哎，没有哪个小矮人像我这么犯过蠢！我想你们都没生我的气吧？我向各位陛下致敬——尽管只是点儿微不足道的敬意。感谢你们救下了我的命，治好了我的伤，款待了我一顿早餐——还给我上了重要的一课。”

四个孩子都说，这没什么，不值一提。

“现在，”彼得说道，“要是你已经决定信任我们——”

“那是当然。”小矮人说道。

“我们要做的事，再清楚不过了。我们必须马上与凯斯宾国王会合。”

“越快越好，”杜鲁普金说道，“由于我的愚蠢，我们已经耽搁了将近一个小时。”

“从你来时的路往回走，大约需要两天时间，”彼得说道，“我是说，对我们来说。我们没法像你们小矮人那样，日夜兼程。”说着，他转向其他人，“杜鲁普金口中的阿斯兰堡垒，显然就是那张大石桌。你们还记得吗，从那里往下走到柏卢纳渡口，大概需要半天时间。”

“我们都管它叫柏卢纳大桥。”杜鲁普金说道。

“在我们那时候，那儿还没有桥，”彼得说道，“那时候从柏卢纳到这儿大约需要一天多，要是走得不快，我们通常在第二天下午茶时到家。要是加快步伐，也许我们一天半能赶到那儿。”

“可是别忘了，现在到处都是树林，”杜鲁普金说道，“而且这一路上，我们还要避开敌人。”

“我说，”爱德蒙开口了，“我们只能走‘我们亲爱的小朋友’来时的路线吗？”

“可别再那样叫我啦，陛下，你就给我点面子吧。”小矮人说。

“好吧，”爱德蒙说道，“那我能管你叫‘我们的DLF’吗？”

“噢，爱德蒙，”苏珊说道，“别老拿人家开玩笑。”

“这没什么，小姑娘——我是说，女王陛下，”杜鲁普金笑着说道，“开玩笑罢了，没关系的。”（从那以后，他们常叫他DLF,到后来，他们几乎都忘了这戏称原本的含义。）

“刚才我想说的是，”爱德蒙继续说道，“我们没必要走原来的路线。我们也可以乘船再往南去一点儿，去清水湾，然后逆流而上，对吧？这么走能走到大石桌的后山。我们在海上也更安全一些。如果我们马上出发，那么天黑之前就能抵达清水湾的上游，接着睡上几个小时，明天一大早就能和凯斯宾会合了。”

“但是我们必须熟悉沿岸的情况，”杜鲁普金说道，“我们都不清楚清水湾的情况。”

“食物怎么办呢？”苏珊问道。

“哦，我们得用苹果将就将就了，”露西说道，“我们快出发吧，已经两天过去了，我们还什么正事都没做呢！”

“不管怎样，这次别想再拿我的帽子作鱼筐了。”爱德蒙说道。

他们拿起一件雨衣做成袋子，装了好多苹果，又在井边喝饱了水（因为大家都清楚，在到达清水湾之前很可能没有淡水饮用了），接着，大家登上了小船。就要离开凯尔帕拉维尔了，孩子们心里不禁涌起一阵惆怅。尽管那里已是废墟，可他们已经开始觉得那就是他们的家了。

“DLF,由你来掌舵，”彼得指挥道，“我和爱德蒙各划一只桨。先等等，我们最好还是把盔甲给卸下来，免得还没抵达目的地就已经热得难受。你们两个女孩坐在船头，给DLF指示方向，因为他不认得路。最好能平安行到海上，离开小岛。”

没过一会儿，那郁郁葱葱、树木繁茂的小岛海岸已渐渐远去，小小的海湾和海岬看起来也开始变得犹如平地，小船随海浪起伏着。他们周围的海域越来越辽阔，远处的海水较蓝，船的周边倒是一片碧绿，浪花激起些泡沫。空气中都是海水的咸味。除了海水冲击着船舷、船桨拍打着水面的哗哗声以及桨架发出的规律的嘎吱声，再没有任何声音。阳光照射下，天气变热了。

露西和苏珊坐在船头，满心欢畅。她们俯下身子，试着将手伸入海里，可是总也够不着。但她们能看见海底纯净的白沙，有时候还能看到成片的紫海藻。

“像是回到了过去呢，”露西说道，“你还记得我们的特里宾西亚——盖尔马——七岛——还有孤独群岛之行吗？”

“当然记得啊，”苏珊说道，“还有我们那艘船头镶有天鹅头，船身刻有天鹅翅膀的大船‘辉煌海尔兰’号吧？”

“还有绸子做的帆和船尾的大灯笼吧？”

“还有艉楼上的盛宴和那些乐师。”

“你还记不记得，我们还让乐师爬到索具上吹笛子，让那笛声听上去就像来自天外一样？”

过了一会儿，苏珊接替爱德蒙划桨，他得以来到船头和露西坐在一起。现在他们已经驶过小岛，距离前方的海岸更近了——那里如今树木繁茂、荒无人烟。若不是想起那里曾经广袤无垠，微风拂面，朋友欢聚，他们可能会觉得那里风景还算不错。

“唷！划船可真够累人的。”彼得说道。

“就不能让我划一会儿吗？”露西说道。

“船桨对你来说太大了。”彼得唐突地回答道。他这样并不是因为他生气了，而是他连说话的力气都没有了。

第九章
露西看到了什么

在他们绕过最后一个海岬，开始沿着清水湾逆流而上之前，苏珊和两个男孩都已筋疲力尽。由于太阳照射和海水反光，露西有点头疼。就连杜鲁普金都盼着这趟航行赶紧结束。他坐的那个掌舵的座位原本不是为小矮人设计的，而是为人类设计的，因此，他双脚悬空，就算只坐十分钟也是很难受的。他们越来越疲倦，情绪也越来越低落。之前，孩子们满脑子想的一直都是如何尽快与凯斯宾会合。现在他们开始思考，找到他之后，他们要做什么，就凭这么几个小矮人和兽族，怎样才能打败一大群成年人类。

当他们慢慢划过清水湾的时候，已是黄昏时分——暮色渐浓，两岸渐近，悬垂着的树枝在头顶上纵横交错。他们身后大海的声音浸微浸消，这里安静极了，他们甚至能听见小溪从森林一直流向清水湾，发出缓缓的流淌声。

他们终于登上了岸，简直累到了连生火的力气都没有的地步，他们宁愿再吃一顿苹果（尽管他们中多数人都觉得再也不想看到苹果了）都不愿意费力气去采集或者狩猎。他们安静地啃完了苹果，便彼此紧挨着躺倒在地，睡在四棵高大橡树下的苔藓和枯叶上。

除了露西以外，其他人立刻就睡着了。露西没有那么累，她发现自己很难舒适地躺着。而且她忘记所有小矮人睡觉都爱打鼾这回事儿了。她知道最好的入睡方式之一就是停止努力入睡，于是她睁开了双眼。透过枝条、树杈的空隙，她能看见一汪溪水和它上方的夜空。这个场景一下子唤醒了她原本的记忆。这么多年过去了，她终于再次看到纳尼亚璀璨的繁星。相比对原本世界的星星的了解，她对这些星星了解更多。这是因为当年身为纳尼亚的女王，她比在英国身为小孩子时就寝要晚得多。从她所躺的位置望去，至少可以看见三个夏季星座：船舶座、铁锤座和豹子座。“亲爱的老豹子。”她愉快地喃喃自语道。

她没有昏昏欲睡，反而更加清醒了——这是一种古怪的、夜间才会出现的梦幻般的觉醒。清水湾的水面越来越明亮，尽管她看不见月亮，她现在也知道月亮正好照着水面，此刻，她开始觉得整个森林都像她自己一样苏醒了过来。出于一种难以名状的原因，她迅速起身，离开了他们的宿营地点。

“多美的夜晚啊。”露西自言自语道。空气中弥漫着凉爽、清新又芳香的气味。她听见不远处有一只夜莺开始歌唱，它唱一会儿，又歇一会儿，如此反复。前方的光线更加明亮。她向着光亮处走去，发现那里枝叶稀疏，月影斑驳，皎洁的月光和树木的影子相互交织，使人难以分辨眼前的景物。与此同时，那只夜莺终于定好了调子，放声高歌起来。

露西渐渐开始适应了这儿的光线，她能看清离她最近的树木了。她心里涌起了对往昔岁月的怀念之情，那时候，纳尼亚的树木还都能说话。她很清楚，只要她能唤醒它们，这些树木该有多么的能说会道，又能化成什么样的奇妙人形。她看着一棵白桦树：它应有一副轻柔婉转的嗓音，看起来像个苗条的姑娘，头发在脸上飘拂，生性热爱跳舞。她又看向一棵橡树：它应是一位满脸皱纹却精神矍铄的老人，脸部长着卷曲的胡须，手上长满树瘤，树瘤也能长出头发来。她站在一棵山毛榉树下，望着这棵树说道：“啊！她是所有树木中最好的。她应是一位优雅的女神，柔和、端庄，是树中的淑女。”

“噢，树儿，树儿，树儿，”露西说（尽管她根本不打算讲话的），“噢，树儿，醒醒，醒醒，醒醒啊。你们不记得了吗？你们不记得我了吗？树精和树神啊，你们都出来吧，到我这儿来吧。”

虽然此时的林子里一丝风都没有，那些树却在她身旁摆动起来，树叶的窸窣声就像低声倾诉。夜莺也停止了歌唱，仿佛在侧耳倾听。露西觉得她马上就能听懂树儿要说什么了，但还没等她听懂，窸窣声就渐渐消失了，夜莺重新开始歌唱，月光下的树林看上去又一切如常了。可露西却感觉（就跟有时候你努力想记起某个名字或某一日期，答案似乎呼之欲出，最终却还是没能记起来的感觉一样）自己刚刚错过了什么：好像她刚才对树儿说的那段话早了一点点，或者晚了一点点，好像她的那些词语都说对了，只是少说了一个词，又或者是刚好说错了一个词。

突然之间，她开始感到疲倦，于是转身回到营地，舒适地躺在苏珊和彼得之间的位置，没过几分钟就睡着了。

次日清晨，一觉醒来，大家都感到阵阵凉意，无精打采。一抹灰蒙蒙的晨曦透过树林（因为此时太阳还没升起），一切都是潮乎乎、脏兮兮的。

“苹果，嗨！”杜鲁普金苦笑着说，“我不得不说，你们几位古代国王和女王，可别给你们的大臣吃太多苹果！”

他们站起身，抖擞抖擞精神，环视四周。树林茂密，无论他们朝哪个方向看，几码之外都看不清。

“我猜各位陛下肯定都认得路吧？”小矮人问道。

“我不认得，”苏珊说道，“我以前从未见过这些树林。事实上我一直都在想我们本该顺河而上的。”

“这话你当时怎么不说？”彼得回应道，语气带了点儿尖刻，却也可以理解。

“噢，别理会她，”爱德蒙说道，“她就爱扫兴。彼得，那个袖珍指南针你带着吧？好了，那我们就没什么问题了。我们只要继续朝西北方向走——穿过那条小河，那条河你们叫它什么来着？拉什——”

“我知道，”彼得说，“那条小河在柏卢纳渡口汇入大河，DLF则称其为柏卢纳大桥。”

“没错，我们过了桥，一直往山上走，八点或者九点左右就能抵达石桌（我是说，阿斯兰堡垒）。我希望凯斯宾国王能好好款待我们一顿早餐！”

“但愿你是对的，”苏珊说道，“我对这一切都毫无印象了。”

“女孩子最糟的就是这一点，”爱德蒙对彼得和小矮人说道，“她们的脑子里从来没有装过地图。”

“那是因为我们的脑子里装了其他东西。”露西说道。

起初，似乎一切都挺顺利，他们甚至以为走上了一条老路。可是，如果你对森林有起码的常识，你就会知道走在森林里的人们会拐进一些想象中的路线。那些路过不了五分钟就消失了，之后你还以为又找到了另一条路（心里还希望那不是一条新路，而是接上了之前的老路），结果没走多久路又不见了。这时候，你已经偏离了正确的方向，终于意识到之前走的路全都不对。多亏两个男孩子和小矮人熟知森林里的状况，最终他们并没有绕多少弯路。

他们吃力地行进了大约半小时（其中三人昨天划了船，现在依旧浑身酸痛），突然，杜鲁普金悄声说：“停！”于是所有人都停了下来。“有什么东西在跟踪我们，”小矮人低声说道，“或者说，有什么东西在和我们齐头并进——就在左侧。”大家原地不动，侧耳细听，凝神观察，耳朵眼睛都发疼了也没见什么动静。“我们俩最好都搭上一支箭。”苏珊对杜鲁普金说道。小矮人点点头。两张弓都搭好了箭之后，大家又继续前行。

他们在一片开阔的林地里又走了几十码，一路保持着警惕。然后他们来到一个灌木丛生的地方，不得不挨着灌木丛前进。正当他们要走出这个地带的时候，只听得一声咆哮猛然响起，一只野兽便跃出灌木丛，扑了过来，迅如闪电。露西一下子被扑倒在地上，打了几个滚。倒下的时候，她听见“嗡”的一声弦响。等她清醒过来，便看到地上躺着一只凶狠可怖的大灰熊，它中了杜鲁普金的箭，已经气绝。

“这回的射箭比赛，DLF可把你打败啦，苏。”彼得很勉强地笑着说。连他都因这个意外受到了冲击。

“我——我的箭射得太迟了，”苏珊的声音里带着几分尴尬，“我当时特别怕那会是一只，你们知道的——一只与我们同类的熊，一只会说话的熊。”她其实很讨厌杀害生灵。

“这可就麻烦了，”杜鲁普金说道，“大多数兽类都成了敌人，成了哑巴，但是另外还有一些有灵性的动物存活下来了。你没法辨别，也根本不敢等着去分辨。”

“可怜的老布鲁恩，”苏珊说道，“你们说不会是他吧？”

“不是他，”小矮人肯定地说道，“我看到了那张脸，也听到了咆哮声，它不过是想要这小姑娘当早餐。说到早餐，之前你们说希望凯斯宾国王能好好款待你们一顿丰盛的早餐，那时候我不想扫你们的兴。但是实话说，营地里的肉少得可怜。这熊肉的味道一定不赖。我们要是不带上点儿熊肉就走，可就太遗憾了。最多也就耽误我们半个小时的时间。我想你们这两个小伙子——我该说，国王陛下——知道怎么剥熊皮吧？”

“我们去别的地方坐一会儿吧，”苏珊对露西说道，“我知道这活儿又恐怖又脏。”露西哆嗦了一下，点头同意。当她们坐下来，露西说：“苏，我脑子里闪过一个可怕的念头。”

“什么？”

“如果有一天，在我们自己的世界里，人们内心变成了野兽，就像这儿的野兽一样，但是外表却仍然是人，你搞不清他究竟是人还是野兽，那岂不是很可怕？”

“此时此刻，我们在纳尼亚的麻烦已经够多的了，”苏珊非常务实地说道，“就别再想象那种事情了。”

她俩返回的时候，以为会看到血腥的画面，没想到熊肉已经都割好了。口袋里装满生肉并不是什么好事儿，但他们还是用新鲜的树叶将熊肉包起来，妥善处理。他们已经有了足够的经验，明白等到待会儿路走多了，肚子饿了的时候，这些湿湿软软、惹人反感的小包裹会派上用场的。

他们继续艰难前行（遇到第一条小溪，他们就停下来把手洗干净）。终于，旭日东升，鸟儿鸣唱，蕨木丛里苍蝇嗡嗡地飞，多得出乎他们的意料。昨天划船后的肌肉酸痛终于开始消退，大家的精神也重新振奋了起来。气温越来越高，他们摘下了头盔，拿在手上。

“我想我们没走错路吧？”一小时后，爱德蒙问道。

“我们并没有往左走太多，我想我们不会走错的，”彼得说道，“要是我们往右走太多，最坏也不过是浪费一点时间，因为那样我们会太早走到大河边，就得绕远路了。”

于是他们继续前进，一路都很安静，只有他们的脚步声和链甲衫的叮当声。

“那讨厌的河口到底在哪儿啊？”又过了好一阵子，爱德蒙问道。

“我刚才还以为现在就该走到了，”彼得说，“可现在我们除了继续向前走也无事可做了。”他俩都发现，那小矮人正焦急地望着他们，可是什么也没有说。

他们还是不停地前行，身上的链甲衫开始变得又热又沉。

“这是怎么回事儿？”彼得突然说道。

他们来到了一个悬崖的边缘，从这儿往下看，可以看到一条峡谷，谷底是一条河流。对面的峭壁要高得多。除了爱德蒙以外（也许还有杜鲁普金），其他人都没有攀岩的经验。

“对不起，”彼得惭愧地说道，“走到这里都怪我。我们迷路了，我以前从来没有见过这个地方。”

小矮人轻轻吹了声口哨表示遗憾。

“噢，我们折回去，从另一条路走吧，”苏珊说道，“我早就知道我们会在这树林里迷路的。”

“苏珊！”露西责备地说道，“别那样唠叨彼得了。情况这么糟糕，他已经尽力了。”

“你也别那样对苏珊吼了，”爱德蒙说道，“我觉得她的话有道理。”

“我的天哪！”杜鲁普金急了，大声说道，“要是过来的路不对，我们又怎么可能找到回去的路呢？何况即使我们回到岛上，重新开始找路——就算我们能找对路——我们还是放弃该念头为好。照这样下去，还没等我们到达，米拉兹早就已经把凯斯宾给打趴下了。”

“你觉得我们应该继续往前走吗？”露西问道。

“我不确定至尊国王有没有迷路，”杜鲁普金说道，“这条河流就不能是拉什河吗？”

“因为拉什河并不在峡谷里。”彼得边说，边极力忍住怒气。

“陛下您说‘不在峡谷里’，”小矮人回应道，“但是，难道不应该说‘过去不在峡谷里’吗？您所知晓的是几百年前——甚至千年之前——的纳尼亚。经年累月，难道它就不会改变吗？就比如，一次塌方可能就使那座山塌掉了一半，只留下光秃秃的岩石，于是就有了峡谷另一边的峭壁。自那以后，年复一年，拉什河在不断冲击之下，河床不断下沉，这一头也就有了我们所处的悬崖。也有可能这里曾经发生过一次地震，或者任何可能导致地形变化的事情。”

“我从来没有想过这些。”彼得说道。

“不管怎么说，”杜鲁普金接着说，“就算这条河流不是拉什河，它大致也是向北流淌的，必将汇入大河。我觉得之前我来的路上好像曾经路过这里。也就是说，如果我们朝着下游继续走，再往右转，我们就能到达那条大河。要是你们跟我走，或许不如我们原本的计划，但也不至于更糟。”

“杜鲁普金，你太棒了，”彼得说道，“那么，继续前进吧，就从峡谷这边往下走。”

“快看！快看！快看！”露西突然大喊。

“看哪儿？看什么？”大家问道。

“是狮王，”露西兴奋地说道，“是阿斯兰，你们没看见吗？”她激动得脸色都变了，眼睛闪闪发光。

“真的是指——？”彼得开始说道。

“你觉得你看到他在哪儿了？”苏珊问道。

“别用大人的那种腔调说话，”露西跺着脚说，“我不是‘觉得’我看到了他，我就是看到了他。”

“在哪儿，露？”彼得问道。

“就在上边，在那些花楸树之间。不对，是在峡谷的这一边，是在上面，不在下面。正好和你们想走的方向相反。他想让我们到他那儿去——就在上面。”

“你怎么知道他想让我们过去呢？”爱德蒙问道。

“他——我——我就是知道，”露西说道，“从他的面部表情看出来的。”

其他人默不作声，迷惑不解地面面相觑。

“女王陛下很可能确实看到了一头狮子，”杜鲁普金插嘴说道，“我听说，这片树林里是有狮子的。但它未必是一头友好的、会说话的狮子，就像刚才那头熊也不是一头友好的、会说话的熊一样。”

“噢，别这么无知了，”露西说道，“你觉得我看见阿斯兰会认不出来吗？”

“他现在应该是一头上了年纪的狮子了，”杜鲁普金说道，“如果他就是你们那位老朋友。再说，就算那就是他，谁又能保证他没有像其他那么多动物一样，变得又野蛮又愚蠢呢？”

露西的脸色一下子变得通红，如果不是彼得一把抓住了她的手臂，她肯定要冲杜鲁普金大发脾气的。“亲爱的小朋友根本不明白。他怎么会明白呢？你记好了，杜鲁普金，我们真的了解阿斯兰；我是指，我们对他是了解一点的。你不能再那么说他了。首先那么说一点都不吉利，其次那些全都是胡说八道。现在唯一的问题是弄清楚阿斯兰是不是真的在那里。”

“但我知道他刚才在那儿。”露西眼里含着泪水说道。

“话是没错，露。可是我们都没看见，只有你看见了。”彼得说道。

“没别的办法了，投票表决吧。”爱德蒙说道。

“好吧，”彼得回应道，“你最年长，亲爱的小朋友，你投什么票？往上走，还是往下走？”

“往下走，”小矮人说道，“我对阿斯兰一无所知。可我确定，如果我们向左转，再沿峡谷往上走，那可能得走一天才能找到一个可以过河的地方。而如果我们向右转，往下走，我们一定能在几小时内到达大河。更何况，要是附近真有狮子，我们也应该避开它们，而不是去走近它们。”

“你觉得如何，苏珊？”

“你别生气啊，露，”苏珊说道，“我确信我们应该往下走。我实在是筋疲力尽了。我们赶紧离开这片讨厌的树林，到开阔的平原上去吧。何况，除了你以外，我们都没看见阿斯兰。”

“爱德蒙，你觉得呢？”彼得说道。

“好吧，我是这么想的，”爱德蒙语速很快，脸色变得微红，“一年前，我们第一次发现纳尼亚的时候——或者是一千年前，无论是哪一年——露西是第一个发现的人，而当初我们没有一个人相信她。我是表现得最糟糕的那个，我知道。可是终究她才是正确的。那么这一次就应该相信她，这样才公平，对不对？我投票支持往上走。”

“噢，爱德！”露西抓住他的手说道。

“现在轮到你了，彼得，”苏珊说道，“我真希望——”

“噢，别说话，让别人自己思考，”彼得打断了她的话，“我不太想参与投票。”

“你是至尊国王。”杜鲁普金严肃地指出。

“往下走。”沉默了好一会儿之后，彼得终于说，“我知道露西很可能是对的，但是我也没有办法。我们必须在两者中做出选择。”

就这样，他们向右转，沿着悬崖朝下游出发了。露西走在最后面，哭得伤心极了。

第十章
狮王归来

沿着峡谷边缘行走并不像看上去那么轻松。没走多远，他们便被正好长在边儿上的小杉树林挡住了去路。他们只好弯着身子拨开树枝，试着向前移动，这么试了十分钟之后，他们很快就意识到，要是照这种走法，他们一个小时也走不了半英里路。于是他们转身后撤，退出杉树林，决定绕道而行。就这样，他们向右边绕了很远的路，渐渐地，悬崖也看不见了，水声也听不见了，终于他们开始担心是不是完全迷失了方向。谁都不知道现在是几点钟，只知道温度已经是一天里最高的了。

他们终于还是绕回到了峡谷边缘（大概是在他们出发地点下方一英里处），发现脚下的峭壁要低得多，塌陷的情况也严重得多。他们很快就找到了一条沿着峡谷往下游去的路，便沿着河边继续前进，但他们还是先休息了一会儿，痛饮了一番水。这下子，没有一个人再提起和凯斯宾共进早餐，乃至共进晚餐的话题了。

他们先前选择沿着拉什河向下走而不是向上走，也许到底还是明智的，至少他们前进的方向很明确。在绕过了杉树林之后，他们都很担心会再出现不得不绕远路的情况，害怕在林子里迷路。这里是一片古老的森林，没有道路，在里面根本不可能笔直往前走。一丛一丛无法走近的荆棘、倒下的大树、沼泽地、茂密的灌木丛，都会挡住去路。但是拉什河河谷也不是什么旅游的好去处，换句话说，它不适合匆忙赶路的旅客。不过，要是能在跋涉了一个下午后停下来野餐，倒是挺令人欢喜。游客们想要的景色，这里都有——水声轰鸣的大瀑布、银光闪闪的小瀑布、琥珀色的深水潭、长满青苔的岩石，还有岸边的泥沼，你要是踩进去，就会泥足深陷，一直没到脚踝。此外，还有各种蕨类植物，色如宝石的蜻蜓，头顶上有时还会掠过一头鹰，还有一次（彼得和杜鲁普金都觉得）是一只雕。当然，孩子们和小矮人想尽快看到的是他们下方的大河、柏卢纳以及通向阿斯兰堡垒的路。

再往前走，拉什河的河道变得越来越陡了，与其说他们在走路，倒不如说他们是在攀岩——有时甚至要冒险在光溜溜的岩石上攀爬，下面就是可怕又黑暗的深渊，谷底的河水仿佛是在怒吼。

他们紧紧盯着左侧的峭壁，不愿放过任何一个可以歇脚或能够攀缘的地方，但峭壁无情。大家咬牙继续前行，相信一旦走出峡谷，只要再走过一个平缓的山坡，就能很快抵达凯斯宾的总部了。

现在，男孩们和小矮人都想要生个火，烤些熊肉来吃。苏珊却不想吃，她一心想着“接着走，走到底，走出这可恶的林子”。露西眼下疲惫不堪，又很伤心，已经什么意见都不想提了。实际上，他们根本找不到烧火的干柴，所以就算再有想法也不过是空想。男孩们实在饿得慌，都开始考虑生肉到底是不是真像一直以来人们说的那么难以下咽。杜鲁普金告诉他们的确难以下咽。

当然，假设孩子们几天以前在英国经历了这样一段艰苦跋涉，他们早就被拖垮了。我想之前我已经解释过纳尼亚给他们带来的改变。就以露西为例，可以这么说，她现在只有三分之一是第一次上寄宿学校的小女孩，三分之二则是纳尼亚的露西女王。

“终于走出来了！”苏珊说道。

“哦，太好了！”彼得喊道。

河谷在这里转了个弯，一片崭新的天地展现在他们眼前——开阔的平原一直向前延伸，直至天边。横在大平原与他们之间的就是大河，它就像一条宽宽的银色缎带。有一处河面格外宽，地势也格外低，孩子们一下子都认出来那是柏卢纳渡口，但是现在那里架起了一座长长的多孔桥。桥的另一端通向一个小村镇。

“天哪！”爱德蒙说道，“我们就是在那个小村镇打的柏卢纳战役！”

没有什么比这更让男孩们振奋的了。当你看到几百年前自己曾经取得光辉胜利的地方，你就会不由自主地感到勇气倍增。彼得和爱德蒙对那场战役津津乐道，完全忘记了脚疼这回事儿，也忘记了肩上沉重的盔甲。小矮人也津津有味地听着。

此刻，所有人都加快了脚步。路也好走了一些。虽然左边还是悬崖峭壁，右边的地面却越来越低。不久，所处之地就由峡谷变成了山谷。瀑布也看不见了，他们又进入了一片茂密的树林。

这时——突然间——“嗖”的一声响，接着又是啄木鸟啄树似的声音。孩子们还在纳闷（多年以前）曾经在什么地方听到过这种声音，以及他们为什么讨厌这种声音，只听杜鲁普金大喊一声：“趴下！”同时一把将身边的露西按倒在灌木丛中。彼得本来正朝上看着，想看看有没有松鼠，结果却发现了声音的来源——一支无情的长箭，刚好掠过其头顶扎入身后的树干。他赶紧拉苏珊一把，让她卧倒，他自己刚刚趴下，另一支箭擦过他的肩膀，扎入了身边的地面。

“快！快！后退！趴到地上！”杜鲁普金喘着粗气吼道。

他们转身后撤，借助灌木丛的掩护，顶着无数苍蝇令人厌恶的嗡嗡声，往山上艰难前行。一支箭“砰”的一声打到了苏珊的头盔上，险险地擦过。他们加速前进，大汗淋漓。过了一会儿，他们把身子俯得更低，小跑起来。男孩们手里紧握着宝剑，以防敌人追踪过来。

这样奔跑简直累死人了——全是上坡路，而且就是他们之前下坡时走过的路。后来，他们感到哪怕为了逃命，也实在是跑不动了，便都瘫倒在瀑布旁的一块大石头后边，气喘吁吁。等到他们意识到自己居然已经跑到这么高的地方时，不由惊异不已。

他们静静听了半天，没有听到追赶的声音。

“已经安全了，”杜鲁普金长舒了一口气，说道，“他们没来树林里搜索，刚才估计只是哨兵。但这就意味着，米拉兹在那下边设了一个前哨站。真可恶！应该是最近才设的。”

“我简直该死，把大家带到了这条路上。”彼得十分自责地说道。

“不是这样的，陛下，”小矮人理智地说道，“首先，把大家带上这条路的不是你，而是你尊贵的弟弟，爱德蒙国王。是他先提议我们沿着清水河走的。”

“亲爱的小朋友说得没错。”爱德蒙说道。从事态开始恶化到现在，他一直没想起来这一点。

“其次，”杜鲁普金继续说道，“要是我们走我说的那条路，我们十有八九会直接走进新设的前哨站，或者在避开那个地方时，麻烦也一样难以避免。我觉得清水河这个路线实际上就是最佳路线。”

“塞翁失马，焉知非福。”苏珊说道。

“我们倒的可是大霉！”爱德蒙说道。

“我看我们现在也只好沿着峡谷重新往上走了。”露西说道。

“露，了不起啊！”彼得赞叹道，“本来这完全是你今天最有资格说‘谁让你们不听我的忠告’的时候。我们继续前行吧！”

“等我们一到森林，”杜鲁普金说道，“随便你们说什么，我都要生火做晚饭。但是我们得先离开这个地方。”

在此不必细数他们在回程中又吃了多少苦头。路途如此艰辛，奇怪的是，大家反而变得振奋得多，仿佛流失的活力重新回到了身上，看来“晚饭”这个字眼儿还真有奇效。

他们抵达那片给他们带来过不少麻烦的杉树林时，天还亮着，他们便在树林上头的一块空地前停下来，准备在此露营。捡柴火是一项乏味单调的活儿，可是篝火熊熊燃起的景象能令人精神一振。他们开始掏出那些湿答答、油腻腻的熊肉包裹，那些足不出户的人根本看不上这东西。小矮人却好好露了一手厨艺，他把剩下的那些苹果用熊肉包了起来——就像苹果馅的饺子，只不过是用熊肉而不是用面粉来做饺子皮，熊肉皮比面粉皮要厚得多——然后串在一根削尖的树枝上，用火来烤。苹果的汁水渗透熊肉，就像烤猪肉外面涂了一层苹果酱。那些基本食肉的熊，身上的肉并不怎么好吃，不过以蜂蜜、水果为主食的熊，它的肉则美味极了。他们的熊肉就属于后一种，所以这完全是一顿美味大餐。当然，饭后也用不着洗碗——大家都舒舒服服地躺着，望着杜鲁普金烟斗里冒出的袅袅白烟，四肢舒展，随意地聊天。每个人都相信，明天就能找到凯斯宾国王，要不了几天准能打败米拉兹。他们的这种想法可能并不理智，但他们确实是这么想的。

没过多久，他们就一个接一个地睡着了。

露西原本是酣睡着的，这会儿却醒了过来，她仿佛听到世上她最喜欢的声音在呼唤她的名字。开始她以为那是爸爸的声音，可是似乎不是；接着她以为那是彼得的声音，可是好像也不是。她不愿意起身，这倒不是因为她很疲倦——相反她休息得不错，浑身的酸疼都已经消退——而是因为她感到无比幸福和舒适。他们露营的地方十分开阔，她抬头望着纳尼亚夜空的明月——这月亮比我们世界的月亮要大，又望着满天的繁星。

“露西。”她再一次听到了那个呼唤声，不是爸爸，也不是彼得。她坐了起来，因为激动而浑身发颤，却一点都没感到害怕。月儿如此明亮，整个森林的景象就像白天时一样清晰可见，尽管看上去更显荒凉。她身后是杉树林，右边远处是峡谷对面参差不齐的峭壁顶峰，正前方一射的距离外，开阔的草地延伸至一片林间空地。露西凝视着那里的树林。

“哎呀，我真的觉得它们在移动，”她自言自语道，“它们正在走来走去呢。”

她站起身，心怦怦直跳，然后她慢慢地朝树的方向走去。今夜并没有风，可是那片空地确实传来了什么声响，树木像被大风刮过一样发出了沙沙声。而且那绝不是树林通常会发出来的声音。露西感到那沙沙声蕴含着一种旋律，可她辨不出那是怎样的旋律，如同前天夜里那些树几乎要开口和她交谈时她也没能听明白树的私语一样。但是，至少她听出那是一种欢快的节奏，她又走近了一些，双脚禁不住想要和着节拍跳起舞。毫无疑问，那些树真的在挪动，错落摇曳着，像在跳一种复杂的乡村舞蹈。（“我猜，”露西心想，“树要是翩翩起舞，那一定是非常非常乡土的舞蹈。”）此时她几乎已经身处其中。

她看到的第一棵树看上去根本不像树，而像个胡子蓬乱、毛发旺盛的巨人。她一点儿也不害怕，因为以前她见过这种东西。可是等她再看一眼，它还是一棵树，尽管仍然在移动。你看不到它的底下到底是脚还是树根，因为它不是踩在地面上，而是在地面以下移动，就像我们在水里走路时一样。她又看了看别的树，都是这样的。它们有时呈现出友善、可爱的巨人样貌，就像被施了一招魔法，有时则又恢复了树木的本来面目。当它们现出树形时，看上去就是样貌奇特的人形树；而当它们现出人形时，看起来又很像是某种古怪的，长着枝叶的树形人。与此同时，那奇异、轻快、窸窣、美妙又欢乐的沙沙声一直在响着。

“它们就要苏醒了。”露西自言自语道。她知道自己此刻非常清醒，比谁都清醒。

她走到它们中间，毫不害怕，一边舞动着，一边不停避让，以免撞上这些身材巨大的伙伴。但她此刻并不是全情投入。她只想穿过这些尽情舞动的树群，去搜寻别的什么；树林的另一头传来那个亲切的声音，声声呼唤着她的名字。

很快，她穿过了跳着舞的树群（说不清她是用手臂把树枝推开，还是拉住了那些向她弯下腰来的高大的树木舞者的手），它们围绕中央空地形成了一个大圈。她从那可爱的光影交替的迷局中走了出来。

眼前是一片草地，像草坪一样平整，漆黑的树木在周围舞动。瞧那边——天哪！是他：巨大的狮王折射着皎洁的月光，在地上投下一大片黑黑的影子。

要不是他的尾巴在摆动，他看起来简直像是一尊石狮子，可是露西没想过这一点。她根本没有想过他会不会是一头凶恶的狮子。她向他冲了过去，只觉得她那颗激动不已的心差点就要爆炸了。在那之后，她只记得自己不住地亲吻着他，用双臂紧紧搂住阿斯兰的脖子，把自己的脸埋进他那美丽的、缎子一般柔软光滑的鬃毛里。

“阿斯兰，阿斯兰，亲爱的阿斯兰，”露西哽咽着说道，“我终于见到你了。”

巨狮侧过身来，露西跟着他的动作俯下身去，半靠半躺在他两只前爪之间。阿斯兰的头凑了过来，用舌头轻轻触了触她的鼻子，他那温暖的呼吸立刻包围了她。她抬头望着他那张巨大的、充满智慧的脸庞。

“欢迎你，孩子。”他说道。

“阿斯兰，”露西叫着它，“你的个头变大了。”

“那是因为你长大了，小家伙。”他回答道。

“难道不是因为你的年龄增长了吗？”

“我的年龄没有增长。但是随着你一年年地长大，你会发现我的个头越来越大。”

露西真高兴啊，这会儿她什么话也不愿多说。但是阿斯兰打破了沉默。

“露西，”他说道，“我们不能在这里待太久。你还有事要做，今天已经浪费了不少时间了。”

“是啊，挺遗憾的，对吗？”露西说道，“我当时看见你了。可他们都不相信我，他们都太……”

一声低吼从阿斯兰体内传来。

“对不起，”露西明白他的心情，“我并不是想数落其他人，可是真的不是我的错，对吗？”

狮王直视着她的眼睛。

“噢，阿斯兰，”露西说道，“你该不会认为是我的错吧？我怎么能——我不应该离开他们几个，独自一人来找你，我怎么能呢？别这样看我……噢，好吧，我想我可以。是的，跟你在一起，我不会是一个人。但又有什么用呢？”

阿斯兰沉默不语。

“你的意思是，”露西小声说道，“一切都会好转——总归会好一点？可是怎么办呢？请告诉我，阿斯兰！我可以知道吗？”

“想知道可能发生却没有发生的事情吗，孩子？”阿斯兰说道，“不，没有人可以知道。”

“哦，亲爱的。”露西说道。

“但是任何人都可以知道将会发生什么，”阿斯兰说道，“如果你立即回到其他人身边，唤醒他们，告诉他们你又见到了我，你们必须立刻起身跟我走——想知道将会发生什么？这是唯一的办法。”

“你是说，要我马上去这么做吗？”露西吸了一口气，说道。

“是的，小家伙。”阿斯兰说道。

“其他人也看得到你吗？”露西问道。

“暂时肯定还不能，”阿斯兰说道，“晚一些吧，得看情况。”

“但是他们不会相信我的！”露西说道。

“没有关系。”阿斯兰说道。

“噢，亲爱的，噢，亲爱的，”露西说道，“我真高兴再次遇到你，我本来以为你会留我在你身边的。我还以为你会大吼一声，把所有敌人都吓跑——就像上次一样。可是现在一切都好可怕。”

“对你而言，的确很难，小家伙，”阿斯兰说道，“可同样的事情不会发生两次。这些年来，我们大家在纳尼亚都过得很艰难。”

露西把脑袋埋在狮王的鬃毛里，不去看他的脸。可是他的鬃毛一定有什么魔力，她感到狮子的力量渐渐传到了自己体内。她一下子坐了起来。

“对不起，阿斯兰，”她说道，“现在我准备好了。”

“现在，你已经拥有了狮子的力量，”阿斯兰说道，“整个纳尼亚马上就要恢复往日的荣光。来吧。我们已经没有时间可以浪费了。”

他站起身来，迈着庄严肃穆的步伐，静默无声地向舞动的树木走去。露西走在他旁边，将一只颤抖的小手搁在他的鬃毛上。大树分离开来，为他们让出一条路，而且有那么一会儿，完全呈现出了人的模样。露西瞥见了高大、可爱的林中仙子和仙女们，他们都向阿斯兰鞠躬致敬；转眼间，他们又恢复了树的模样，但是依然保持着鞠躬的仪态，树枝和树干摆动得如此优雅，这样的鞠躬也是一种舞蹈。

“现在，孩子，”走过了那些树之后，阿斯兰说道，“我在这儿等着你，你过去唤醒他们几个，让他们跟我来。要是他们不走，那么至少你得跟我走。”

唤醒四个睡着的人真不是件容易的事，何况他们都更年长，又都十分疲倦，再加上你是打算告诉他们一些他们可能不相信的话，让他们去做一件他们肯定不愿意做的事。“我不能想那么多，我非做不可。”露西心想。

她先走到彼得身边，摇了摇他。“彼得，”她在他耳边悄声说道，“醒醒啊，快点儿。阿斯兰在这儿呢。他说我们必须马上跟他走。”

“好的，露，你说什么就是什么。”彼得答应得这么爽快，真是叫她意外。露西大受鼓舞，没想到彼得翻了个身，又呼呼大睡了。于是第一次努力宣告失败。

她又去唤醒苏珊。苏珊醒是醒过来了，却只是以她那讨厌的大人腔调说：“你这是说什么梦话呢，露西，快接着睡觉吧。”

露西只好又去叫爱德蒙。想叫醒他可真不容易。但当她终于叫醒他时，他真的醒来了，还坐起身来。

“嗯？”他略显暴躁地说，“你说什么呢？”

她又解释了一遍。这真是她任务中最糟糕的部分。刚刚发生的事情，每多解释一次，她就觉得说服力少了一分。

“阿斯兰！”爱德蒙跳了起来，“好哇！在哪儿呢？”

露西转过身来，她能看见狮王在原处等待，正耐心地盯着她看。“在那儿。”她边说，边指向狮王。

“哪儿呢？”爱德蒙又问道。

“那儿，就在那儿啊。你看不见吗？就在树林的这一边。”

爱德蒙又使劲盯着看了一会儿，然后说，“没有啊，那儿什么都没有。一定是这月光晃花了你的眼，让你犯迷糊了吧。人有时候就是会这样。有那么一会儿我也觉得仿佛看到了什么，但那不过是光线引起的错觉。”

“我一直都看得到他，”露西说道，“他正看着我们呢。”

“那我怎么看不到？”

“他刚刚说了，你们也许看不到他。”

“为什么？”

“我不知道，他就是那么说的。”

“噢，真是的，”爱德蒙说道，“我真希望你不要一直看些奇怪的东西。不过我想，我们必须要把他们几个叫起来。”

第十一章
狮王长啸

终于，其他人都醒了过来。露西不得不第四遍重复她的话。话说完后是一阵沉默，令她感到十分沮丧。

“我什么都没看见，”彼得使劲儿盯着，眼睛都酸了，“你能看见吗，苏珊？”

“没看见，我当然什么也看不见，”苏珊厉声说道，“因为那儿本来就什么都没有，她这是在说梦话。快点躺下睡觉，露西。”

“我真的希望，”露西的声音有些颤抖，“你们都和我一起走。因为——因为不论你们来还是不来，我都必须跟他走。”

“别胡说了，露西，”苏珊说道，“你绝对不能独自离开。别让她去，彼得，她简直是在胡闹。”

“她如果一定要去，我跟她一块儿去，”爱德蒙说道，“之前那次她就是对的。”

“我知道，”彼得说道，“而且早上那会儿她也可能是正确的。从峡谷往下走显然走不通。可是——毕竟现在是深夜。再说，为什么我们看不到阿斯兰呢？他以前从未这样过，这不像他。DLF,你觉得呢？”

“噢，我没什么可说的，”小矮人回答道，“如果你们都去，我当然也和你们一起去。要是你们分成两路，我将跟随至尊国王，这是我对至尊国王和凯斯宾国王应尽的义务。至于我的个人意见，我只是一个普通的小矮人，我想如果大白天尚且找不到路，夜里找到路的机会就更渺茫了。而且我不喜欢有魔力的狮子，他们明明会说话，但总是沉默不言，看似很友善，可又不提供实际帮助，他们战无不胜，但又没人看得到他们。这一切让我感到非常荒谬，我只想说这么多。”

“他正用爪子拍打着草地，催我们快跟上他呢，”露西说道，“我们必须马上动身。你们要是还不走，我可要走了。”

“你没有权利强迫我们听你的。现在人数对比是四比一，你又是年纪最小的。”苏珊说道。

“噢，拜托了，”爱德蒙实在不耐烦了，“全都动身吧，待在这里也只会吵个不休。”他是想全力支持露西的，却又因为没能好好睡觉而高兴不起来，结果怎么看都好像透着一股怨气。

“那么出发吧。”彼得疲惫地套上盔甲，戴上头盔。如果换个场合，他会对露西说些安慰的话，毕竟她是他最喜欢的小妹妹。他明白露西现在一定十分难过，而且不论刚才发生了什么，也都不是她的过错。但他还是忍不住对她有点儿恼火。

最恼火的是苏珊。“如果我也像露西那么蛮不讲理，”她恼怒地说道，“我可以威胁说原地不动，随便你们爱上哪儿去！我断然以为我就该这么做！”

“请服从至尊国王，女王陛下，”杜鲁普金说道，“我们动身吧。要是不许我睡觉，那我宁愿快点动身上路，好过站在这儿白费唇舌。”

他们还是出发了。露西走在最前面，她咬紧嘴唇，把自己想对苏珊说的话都咽了下去。当她盯着阿斯兰，便把身后的人都忘了。阿斯兰在他们前面大约三十米开外，不慌不忙地领路。其他人只是跟着露西。他们不但看不到阿斯兰，也听不到他的声音。他那像猫爪似的巨爪走在草地上，悄无声息。

阿斯兰领着孩子们，从舞动着的树木右侧走过。没人知道那些树木是不是还在翩翩起舞，因为露西紧盯着阿斯兰，其他人又紧盯着露西，而且峡谷的边缘近在咫尺。“这叫什么事啊！”杜鲁普金心想，“但愿这疯狂的行为不要以月下攀岩、粉身碎骨告终。”

阿斯兰带领他们沿着崖顶峭壁走了很久，然后来到一个地方，那里有些小树丛长在悬崖的边缘。他一转身，消失在小树丛中。露西屏住呼吸，因为那情景就好像他从悬崖边跳了下去。可是她一心跟紧阿斯兰，来不及停下来细细思量。她加快步子，也一下子消失在小树丛中。向下望去，只见黑压压的巨大岩石之间有一条羊肠小道，通往峡谷底部，阿斯兰正沿着小道往下走。这时他转过身来，用欣喜的目光看着她。露西拍拍手，跟着他向下走去。其他人在她身后大喊：“喂！露西！当心，天哪，你就在悬崖边上呢！回来——”可是马上又传来爱德蒙的声音：“不，她是对的，确实有一条向下的路。”

半路上，爱德蒙从后面赶来，追上了露西。

“看！”他激动地说道，“看！我们前面那个往下走的黑影是谁？”

“是他的影子。”露西说道。

“我真的相信你是对的，露。”爱德蒙说道，“我不明白刚才我怎么就看不见他的影子。他在哪儿呢？”

“当然和影子在一起啦。你看不见他吗？”

“好吧，我想大概是看见了——就一会儿。光线太暗了。”

“快走，爱德蒙国王，快走。”身后传来杜鲁普金的声音。更远处，在靠近崖顶的地方，传来彼得的声音：“噢，勇敢些，苏珊。把你的手给我。哎呀，就算是个小娃娃也能下来。快别再发牢骚了。”

没过几分钟，他们都来到了峡谷的底部，耳畔响起汹涌澎湃的水声。阿斯兰像猫一样灵巧地跳过露出水面的石头。在河的中间，他停下脚步，低头喝水。喝完水，他昂起毛发蓬松的脑袋，毛发还滴着水，转过脸来面对着孩子们。这下爱德蒙看见他了。“噢，阿斯兰！”他大叫一声，向前扑去。可阿斯兰一下转过身，一下跃到了拉什河对岸，沿着河向上游走去。

“彼得，彼得，”爱德蒙大喊，“你看到了吗？”

“我看到了一些东西，”彼得说道，“不过在月光下，看得还不够清楚。继续走吧，我们都应该为露西喝彩。我现在都不怎么累了。

阿斯兰果断地带领他们向左边上游的方向走去。整个行程都有一种奇怪的感觉，大家仿佛走在梦境中——那奔流的河水、潮湿的草地、渐近的折射着月光的峭壁，还有在前方带路的威严，沉默的狮王。现在，除了苏珊和小矮人，其他人都可以看到阿斯兰了。

没过多久，他们走到了另一条陡峭的小路上，这条小路通往更远的山崖。这里比他们刚刚走下来的山崖还要高，路途遥远、单调而曲折。好在月亮正好照在峡谷的上方，把两边的山崖都照亮了。

当阿斯兰的尾巴和后腿在崖顶上消失的时候，露西已经筋疲力尽。她两腿打战，气喘吁吁，用尽最后一点力气，跟上了阿斯兰，终于来到了那座他们离开清水湾之后一直想去的小山丘。山坡长而缓（能看见石楠花、青草地，几块非常大的岩石在月光下泛着白光），向上延伸，直至数百米以外的一个小树林。露西知道，那就是石桌所在之处。

其他人也跟随她登上了崖顶，身上的盔甲叮当作响。阿斯兰默默走在前面，领着大家前进。

“露西。”苏珊非常小声地说道。

“怎么了？”露西说道。

“我现在看见他了。对不起。”

“没关系。”

“我比你所了解的要糟糕得多。昨天我其实相信那是他了。就是你说阿斯兰警告我们不要到下游杉树林去的时候，那时我就是相信的。而且今天夜里你叫醒我们的时候，我其实也相信是他来了。我是说，我内心是相信的。或者说如果我允许自己相信，我就应该相信的。可我一心只想着尽快离开树林，而且——而且——噢，我也不知道怎么搞的。可现在我该和他说什么好呢？”

“也许你不需要说什么的。”露西建议道。

很快，他们便抵达了树林，透过树木，孩子们看到了大土丘，也就是阿斯兰堡垒，那是在他们统治的时代之后在石桌上方建起来的。

“我方的人警戒不是很严啊，”小矮人低声说道，“否则早就该有人攻击我们了吧——”

“嘘！”其他四个人示意他不要说话，因为此刻，阿斯兰停下了脚步，转过身来，面向他们站立着。狮王看起来是那么雄伟庄严，他们的感受则有些复杂，又是胆怯又是喜悦。两个男孩朝他走去；露西给他俩让路；苏珊和小矮人却退缩不前。

“噢，阿斯兰，”彼得国王边说道，边单膝跪地，抬起狮王一只沉甸甸的爪子贴在了脸上，“我既高兴，又感到很抱歉。我们出发至今，尤其是昨天早晨以来，我领大家走了太多的弯路。”

“我亲爱的孩子。”阿斯兰说道。

接着他转身面向爱德蒙，“干得不错。”他夸奖道。话音落下后他没马上说话，这阵停顿让人心情沉重，然后，狮王用那深沉的声音唤了一声：“苏珊。”苏珊没有回答，可是其他孩子都感觉她在流泪。“你完全被恐惧支配了，孩子，”阿斯兰说，“过来，让我朝你吹一口气。忘记之前那些事吧。好了，你是不是又恢复了勇气？”

“恢复一点了，阿斯兰。”苏珊答道。

“那么，现在！”阿斯兰忽然提高了声音，孩子们感到了狮吼一般的气势，只见狮王用尾巴拍击着两侧的身体，“现在，那位小小的小矮人，有名的剑手和骑士，那位不相信狮王存在的朋友，他在哪里？过来吧，大地之子，过来吧！”——话到最后，已经不是狮吼一般了，简直就是狮王吼出来的。

“我的天哪！”杜鲁普金倒吸一口凉气，嘴里幽幽冒出这么一句。孩子们十分了解阿斯兰，看得出他其实挺喜欢杜鲁普金，于是并不为小矮人担心。杜鲁普金却难以做到像孩子们一样淡定。他此生连狮子都没见过，更何况眼前这头狮王。他做了眼下唯一能做的明智之举，那就是：不逃跑，而是踉踉跄跄地朝阿斯兰走去。

阿斯兰往前一扑。你有没有见过母猫嘴里衔着幼猫的情景？现在的情形就是那样。杜鲁普金被狮王衔在嘴里，把他吓得够呛，可怜巴巴地缩成了一团。阿斯兰晃了晃脑袋，小矮人身上的盔甲便发出丁零当啷的响声。接着——就像变戏法一样——小矮人被抛到了空中。其实他就像躺在床上一样安全，但是他自己肯定不是这么想的。小矮人往下掉的时候，阿斯兰抬起他柔软的爪子，就像母亲的手臂一样稳稳托住了他，把他放在了地上。

“大地之子，我们交个朋友如何？”阿斯兰问道。

“好——拗——拗——好啊。”小矮人气喘吁吁地说道。

“现在，”阿斯兰说道，“月亮就要落下了，看看你们的身后，不久就是黎明时分。我们没有时间了。你们三个，亚当之子和大地之子，即刻进入堡垒，摸清里面的情况。”

小矮人依然惊魂未定，一时都说不出话来，两个男孩也不敢问阿斯兰会不会跟着他们。他们仨都抽出了宝剑，向狮王致意，接着转身便消失在夜色中。露西注意到，他们脸上一丝倦意都没有，至尊国王和爱德蒙国王此刻都褪去了男孩的稚嫩，完全像是可靠的男子汉了。

两个女孩站在阿斯兰的边上，目送他们走出了视线。此时光线有了变化，阿拉维尔——纳尼亚的晨星——低低地悬挂在在东方的天空，它就像一个小小的月亮一样发出光亮。阿斯兰似乎比从前更加高大。他抬起头，摇晃起鬃毛，放声长啸起来。

狮王的长啸声深沉有力，好像是管风琴的乐声，先从低音起调，接着越升越高，声音越来越响亮，地面和空气都随之震动不休。狮王长啸于山岭之上，那样有力的声音很快就传遍了纳尼亚的土地。米拉兹的兵营里，士兵被惊醒了，面面相觑，脸色煞白，拿起了武器；大河下游，在一天中最清冷的时刻，水中仙女探出了头和肩膀，河神也冒出了长满胡子的脑袋。更遥远的纳尼亚大地上，田地里，森林中，警醒的兔子在洞穴里竖起了耳朵，熟睡的小鸟也把脑袋从翅膀下伸了出来；猫头鹰、狐狸、刺猬都发出了鸣叫，树木轻轻摇动。在城镇，在乡村，母亲把孩子紧紧地抱在怀里，睁大了眼睛聆听着。狗不停地汪汪叫。男人们起身去点灯。在遥远的北部边境，大山里，巨人们从城堡黑漆漆的大门向外窥视，想看看究竟发生了什么。

休。狮王长啸于山岭之上，那样有力的声音很快就传遍了纳尼亚的土地。米拉兹的兵营里，士兵被惊醒了，面面相觑，脸色煞白，拿起了武器；大河下游，在一天中最清冷的时刻，水中仙女探出了头和肩膀，河神也冒出了长满胡子的脑袋。更遥远的纳尼亚大地上，田地里，森林中，警醒的兔子在洞穴里竖起了耳朵，熟睡的小鸟也把脑袋从翅膀下伸了出来；猫头鹰、狐狸、刺猬都发出了鸣叫，树木轻轻摇动。在城镇，在乡村，母亲把孩子紧紧地抱在怀里，睁大了眼睛聆听着。狗不停地汪汪叫。男人们起身去点灯。在遥远的北部边境，大山里，巨人们从城堡黑漆漆的大门向外窥视，想看看究竟发生了什么。

露西和苏珊看得分明，一大群黑漆漆的东西正翻越山岭，从各个方向向她们跑来。一开始，她们还以为是大片黑雾掠过地面而来，再看又仿佛是黑色的海洋，风暴中的浪花，一浪更比一浪高地涌来。最终，她们终于看出来了，原来是整片树林在往这个方向移动。仿佛全世界的树都朝着阿斯兰奔驰而来。他们越来越近了，可他们的外形居然都起了变化，看起来不再是树了。他们向阿斯兰鞠躬、行礼、挥舞双臂，终于来到了露西的身边，她竟然发现他们看上去都是人的样貌！肤色白皙的白桦姑娘高昂着头；杨柳女郎们将长发撩到脑后，想要更清楚地看看阿斯兰；女王一般的山毛榉姑娘静静伫立，向阿斯兰行注目礼；毛发粗密的橡树老人、瘦削忧郁的榆树、蓬头乱发的冬青（他们自己皮肤黑，但是他们的太太个个肤色明亮，长着果子）和快乐的花楸也都鞠躬行礼，高声喊着“阿斯兰，阿斯兰！”，沙哑的、吱嘎的、波浪一般的喊声此起彼伏。

围在阿斯兰身边的人群越来越密，他们舞步的节奏（现在他们跳起了舞蹈）也越来越快，露西不由感到眼花缭乱。这时又来了几个人，也蹦蹦跳跳地加入树神中间，露西都不知道他们从何而来。其中一个年轻人，身穿树皮，头发卷卷，戴着一只葡萄叶子编织的草环。如果不是他的脸上充满了野性，那张脸漂亮得简直都不像是个男孩子。你从这张脸上可以看出（正如爱德蒙几天后见到他时所说），“这绝对是个什么都干得出来的家伙”。他似乎有许多名字——其中三个叫布罗米欧斯、巴萨雷乌斯和兰姆。有好多女孩子和他一起，她们都和他一样一身野性。想不到的是，还有一个骑着驴子的人。每个人都在大笑、欢呼：“噢依，噢依，噢——噢依——噢依——噢依。”

“这是在玩游戏吗，阿斯兰？”年轻人大声问道。显然是的。但是几乎每个人都对他们在做的事有着不同的想法。这可能是触碰捉人游戏，但是露西也不知道是谁要捉人。这也很像是在玩捉迷藏，只是每个人都好像是那个被蒙住眼睛的人。这还很像是在玩找拖鞋游戏，但是拖鞋总也找不到。一团混乱中，又来了一个骑着驴子的老者，身材极其肥胖，只听他大声嚷嚷：“茶点！茶点时间到了！”那头驴大概以为这是在马戏团里演出，决定给大家表演后腿行走。结果胖老人被颠得摔下了驴背，马上又被身边的人扶了上去。与此同时，大家周围出现了越来越多的葡萄叶子。很快，不光是叶子，还出现了很多葡萄藤，葡萄藤爬到人们身上，越爬越高。它们爬到了树神的腿上，还绕到了他们的脖子上。露西举起双手，想要把头发拢到后面，却发现她在拢的是葡萄藤。那驴子身上也都是葡萄藤，它的尾巴完全被葡萄藤给缠住了，它头顶的双耳之间还有什么东西在晃。露西仔细再看，发现那是一串葡萄。紧接着，葡萄在它身上越长越多，头上也有，脚下也有，全身都有。

“茶点！茶点！”老人吼道。大家都吃了起来。不论你有多棒的温室，你也不会吃到过这么好吃的葡萄。真是优质的葡萄，外表紧实，一到嘴巴里就爆出清凉甜美的汁水，两个女孩简直觉得吃不够。眼看着这么好吃的东西，大家也顾不得餐桌礼仪了，伸手就抓，眼前都是黏糊糊的手指，染上了葡萄汁的颜色。尽管人人嘴里都塞满了食物，但是欢笑声却没有断过，忽高忽低的小调也依旧没停：“噢依，噢依，噢——噢依——噢依——噢依——噢依！”突然，所有人同时意识到，游戏（不管这到底是什么游戏）和宴席都该结束了。于是所有人都气喘吁吁地扑通坐在了地上，纷纷面朝阿斯兰，听他要说的话。

此时此刻，太阳刚刚升起。露西突然想起了什么，她悄声对苏珊说：

“哎呀，苏，我知道他们是谁了。”

“是谁？”

“那个一脸野性的男孩是酒神巴克斯，骑驴的老人是森林之神西勒诺斯。你还记得图姆纳斯先生很久以前向我们提过他们吗？”

“我当然记得了。但是，露——”

“怎么了？”

“如果阿斯兰不在，我一定觉得和巴克斯还有他那些野性的姑娘在一起挺不安全。”

“我可不这么认为。”露西说道。

第十二章
巫术和复仇

与此同时，杜鲁普金和两个男孩已经抵达了一个幽暗又狭小的石拱门前，通过这扇门就能到达土丘内部。两只负责守卫的獾（周围太暗了，爱德蒙只能看到它们两侧脸颊上的白斑）跳了起来，露齿嗥叫道：“来者何人？”

“杜鲁普金，”小矮人回答道，“我把纳尼亚的至尊国王从远古时期带回来了。”

獾闻了闻孩子们的手。“终于来了，”他们说，“终于来了啊！”

“给点儿光，朋友们！”小矮人说道。

獾从门后取出一支火把，彼得点燃火把，把它交给杜鲁普金。“还是由DLF给我们领路吧，”他说，“我们对这里不熟。”

杜鲁普金接过火把，向黑暗的通道内前进。这地方阴冷又黑暗，散发出一股霉味，在火把的照耀下，偶尔能看到蝙蝠飞过，这里蛛网遍布。两个男孩从在火车站的那天清晨算起，大部分时间都待在户外，此时不由感到仿佛正走进一个陷阱或者监狱一般。

“喂，彼得，”爱德蒙悄声说道，“瞧瞧石墙上的那些雕刻，它们看起来很有年头了吧？可我们比它还大呢！上次来的时候，这儿还没有那些雕刻。”

“没错，”彼得说道，“真是让人思绪万千。”

小矮人继续往前走，接着向右转，然后向左转，朝下走了几级台阶，又向左转。最后，他们终于看到了前方有光亮——那是从门底下透出的光线。而且在这里走了这么久，他们第一次听到有人说话，这是因为他们已经接近堡垒中央的房间。房间里面讲话的人听起来很愤怒，由于说话音量太高，他们没有听到男孩们和小矮人到来的脚步声。

“我不喜欢讲话那么大声，”杜鲁普金轻声对彼得说道，“我们听一会儿他们在说些什么吧。”他们三人便一动不动地站在门外。

“你很清楚，”一个声音说道，（“这是国王。”小矮人轻声说道。）“为什么在黎明时分时我没有吹响号角。你难道忘了杜鲁普金几乎是刚刚动身，米拉兹就打过来了吗？为了自保，我们奋战了三个多小时。刚有了喘息的机会，我第一时间就吹响了号角。”

“我不可能忘啊，”那个愤怒的声音说道，“我的族人当时就在最危险的地方作战，每五个小矮人里就有一个倒下了。”（“是尼克布瑞克。”杜鲁普金小声说道。）

“亏你说得出来，小矮人！”一个嘶哑的声音传来（“是特鲁佛汉特。”杜鲁普金说道），“我们都和小矮人们一样在拼命奋战，而且没有一个能比得上国王陛下。”

“你爱怎么说就怎么说吧，与我无关，”尼克布瑞克回答说，“可是，不管是号角吹得太迟了，还是它根本没有什么魔力，结果就是援军没来。还有你，你这伟大的教士，强大的魔法师，自以为是的人！你还打算让我们把希望寄托在什么阿斯兰、彼得国王之类的人身上吗？”

“我必须承认——我无可否认——吹号角不起作用，我也深感失望。”一个人答道。（“是科尼利厄斯博士。”杜鲁普金说道。）

“不妨直说了吧，”尼克布瑞克说道，“你囊中羞涩，头脑糊涂，计策落空，违背诺言。你最好站一边去，看看别人怎么干。这就是为什么——”

“援军会来的，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“我支持阿斯兰。你要有耐心，这一点你该向我们兽族学习。援军会来的，也许现在已经在门口了。”

“呸！”尼克布瑞克咆哮道，“你们这些獾，只知道叫我们等啊等，等到天塌下来，最后大家一起倒霉！我告诉你们，我们不能再等了。眼看我们就要断粮了；每次交战，我们损失惨重；我们的队伍里，已经有人悄悄溜走了。”

“为什么呢？”特鲁佛汉特问道，“我来告诉你原因吧。这是因为他们议论纷纷，都在说我们已经召唤了古代的国王，可国王们却没有回应。杜鲁普金在临走之前（他这一走很可能就回不来了）说过，‘如果你非要吹那只号，千万不要让营地里其他人知道吹号角的原因，也不要让他们知道你许了什么愿’。可就在当天晚上，本该是秘密的内容已经无人不知。”

“闭上你的嘴！獾，你竟敢暗示是我泄的密！”尼克布瑞克恶狠狠地说道，“收回你说的话，否则——”

“噢，都安静点，你们两个！”凯斯宾国王说道，“我想知道尼克布瑞克一直暗示我们采取的措施到底是什么。不过在你说出措施之前，请你先告诉我们，你带来的这两个陌生人是谁。他们在这里站着听了这么久，可一句话都没说过呢。”

“他们是我的朋友，”尼克布瑞克说道，“要不是因为你是杜鲁普金和獾的朋友，你又凭什么站在这儿？还有那个穿黑袍子的老糊涂，要不是因为是你的朋友，他又凭什么能站在这儿？偏偏只有我不能带自己的朋友来这儿吗？”

“陛下是一国之君，你曾宣誓，将效忠于他。”特鲁佛汉特严肃地说道。

“君臣关系，还谈什么君臣关系呢，”尼克布瑞克满含嘲讽，“在这个土丘里，我们还是坦率些吧。你知道——当然，他也清楚——一周之内，要是我们还不能帮他脱离险境，到时候这个台尔马小子既没领地又没臣民，又算是哪门子的国王。”

“也许，”科尼利厄斯说道，“你那两个新朋友也想说几句？那边两位，你们是谁？是干什么的？”

“尊敬的博士阁下，”一个细细的、像是在哭泣的声音传来，“请听我说，我只是个可怜的老妇人，可敬的小矮人阁下把我当朋友，我万分感激，千真万确。国王陛下，赞美您英俊的面孔。您完全不必防备我，我不过是一个风湿病重到直不起腰、水壶下面连柴火都没有的老妇人。我的本领不过是会几段小咒语，几个小把戏——当然无法与您相比，尊敬的博士阁下——如果各位允许，我很乐意用我的本领来抗击我们共同的敌人。因为我恨他们，没错，没人比我恨得更深了。”

“很有意思，而且——呃——很令人满意，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“这位女士，我想我现在知道你是干什么的了。尼克布瑞克，也许你的另一位朋友也乐意介绍一下他自己吧？”

一个呆滞、阴沉的声音响起，彼得一听就起了一身的鸡皮疙瘩：“我饿，我渴。只要让我咬住敌人，我到死都不松嘴。就算我死了，也得把我咬着的肉从敌人的身上割下来，与我一起下葬。不吃不喝过上一百年，我照样死不了。冰面上躺一百个夜晚，我照样冻不坏。我还能喝下一条河那么多的血，肚子依旧撑不破。说吧，你们的敌人在哪里。”

“你带这两个人过来，就为了宣布你的计划，是不是？”凯斯宾问道。

“没错，”尼克布瑞克说道，“我要借助他们的力量来实施这个计划。”

接下来的一两分钟里，杜鲁普金和两个男孩只能听到凯斯宾和他的两位朋友在低声商议，但是听不清到底说了什么。然后，凯斯宾大声说了起来。

“那好，尼克布瑞克，”他说道，“说出你的计划吧。”

尼克布瑞克沉默了很久，直到孩子们开始怀疑他到底打不打算公布他的计划。终于，尼克布瑞克开口了，声音比之前还要低，就好像连他自己都不太愿意讲出下面一段话。

“所有该说和该做的，我们都试过了，”他低声喃喃道，“我们都不知道古纳尼亚到底是什么样子。杜鲁普金根本不相信那些传说，我倒还有意试试。我们先是吹响号角，但宣告失败。如果至尊国王彼得、苏珊女王、爱德蒙国王和露西女王真的存在，他们或者没听到我们的求助，或者没法儿赶来，或者他们也是我们的敌人——”

“或者他们正在赶来的路上。”特鲁佛汉特插嘴说道。

“你大可以继续这么说，直到米拉兹活捉我们所有人，丢去喂狗。我只想说，我们已经试过了古老传说中的一件宝物，结果根本不顶用。可是，宝剑折断了，还能用匕首。古老传说里，除了国王和女王，还有别的力量。我们为什么不试着向别的力量求助呢？”

“如果你是指阿斯兰，”特鲁佛汉特说，“召唤他和召唤古代的国王们是一回事儿。他们是他的臣仆。如果他不肯派他们来（但我还是相信他会派他们来的），也许他会亲自前来呢？”

“不。有一点你说对了，”尼克布瑞克说，“阿斯兰和古代国王们是一同行动的。也就是说，或者阿斯兰已经死了，或者他并不站在我们这边，又或者，某种更强大的势力导致他无法前来。就算他出现了，我们又怎么知道他一定就是我们的朋友呢？那么多古老传说里，他都和我们小矮人有过过节，对有些兽族来说也是一样，你可以去问野狼。再说，我听说，阿斯兰只来过纳尼亚一次，而且没有停留多久。所以你不用考虑阿斯兰。我想到的是别的人。”

没人接他的话，过了好几分钟，还是没响起任何声音，爱德蒙几乎可以听到獾呼哧呼哧的呼吸声和抽鼻子声。

“你想到的是谁？”凯斯宾终于问道。

“我是说那个比阿斯兰有能耐得多的人物。如果古老的传说所言不假，那么她下的咒语曾经束缚了纳尼亚许多年。”

“白女巫！”三个声音同时喊道。听着房间里的响动，彼得猜测有三个人一下跳了起来。

“是的，”尼克布瑞克慢条斯理地说，“我说的正是白女巫。坐回位子上，别像小孩子似的一听这个名字就吓蒙了。我们需要强者，而且这个强者必须站在我们这一边。要说强大，传说不是早就告诉我们了吗，白女巫打败了阿斯兰，把他捆了起来，就在那块大石头上把他杀掉了吗？”

“可传说还提到，他后来又复活了。”獾尖锐地说道。

“是的，传说的确这样说的，”尼克布瑞克答道，“可你会发现，从那以后就少有他的消息了。他再也没有出现在传说里。如果他真的活过来了，这点你如何解释呢？难道真相不是他根本没有复活吗？传说再也不曾提起他，那是因为没什么可讲的了，是不是？”了，是不是？”

“他册封了国王和女王们。”凯斯宾说道。

“一个刚刚赢得了一场大战的国王通常可以自立为王，不需要一头装模作样的狮子帮忙。”尼克布瑞克说。这时又传来一阵凶猛的低哮，大概是特鲁佛汉特。

“话又说回来，”尼克布瑞克接着说道，“那几个国王统治的结果又怎么样呢？他们也不见踪影了。可白女巫就不一样了。传说她统治了一百年：一百个寒冬。你不得不承认，这就是能耐！这可是实实在在的。”

“可是，我的天！”国王说道，“没人告诉过你她一直都是我们最大的敌人吗？她难道不是比米拉兹还要可怕十倍的暴君吗？”

“也许吧，”尼克布瑞克冷冷地说道，“如果那个时代有你们人类的话，那么对你们而言，她或许是暴君。对某些兽族来说，可能也是如此。我敢说是她打倒了海狸家族，如今在纳尼亚一只海狸都没有了。可是，她和我们小矮人一直相处得很好。我是个小矮人，我当然站在自己种族的立场上。我们并不害怕白女巫。”

“但是你已经加入了我们的队伍。”特鲁佛汉特说道。

“没错，到目前为止，我的人可真是得到了不少好处呢！”尼克布瑞克厉声说道，“谁被派去执行最危险的突袭任务？小矮人。粮食不够，谁的粮食变少了？小矮人。谁——”

“谎言！全是谎言！”獾叫道。

“所以说，”尼克布瑞克说道，用一种近乎尖叫的声音，“你们要是给不了我的族人任何好处，我就要去找别的人了。”

“这是要公然反叛吗，小矮人？”凯斯宾问道。

“把剑收回去，凯斯宾，”尼克布瑞克说道，“想在开会的时候谋害我，嗯？这就是你的打算？想都别想，那是犯傻。你以为我会怕你吗？你们是三个，我们一样是三个。”

“那就放马过来吧，”特鲁佛汉特咆哮道，可他的话立即被打断了。

“冷静，冷静，冷静，”科尼利厄斯博士说道，“你刚才话说得太快了。白女巫已经死了，所有的传说都是这么说的。可是尼克布瑞克想要召唤女巫，这是什么意思？”

那个之前只讲了一次话的阴沉可怖的声音又响了起来：“哦，她死了吗？”

那尖细的、哭泣一样的声音接着说：“噢！让上天保佑他的心吧，小陛下不必担心白夫人——我们都是这么尊称她的——已死的事情。阁下这么说，莫不是和我这可怜的老太婆开玩笑吧。亲爱的博士阁下，学识渊博的博士阁下，有谁听说过女巫会真的死掉吗？你随时都可以把她们召唤回来的。”

“召唤她吧，”那个阴沉的声音说道，“我们都准备好了，画一个圆圈，再准备蓝色的火。”

獾发出越来越响的怒吼，博士厉声喊道：“什么？”，可是凯斯宾雷鸣般的声音盖过了他们。

“所以这就是你的计划，尼克布瑞克！用黑魔法去召唤那可恨的鬼魂！现在我明白你的同伴都是谁了——一个巫婆和一个狼人！”

接着里面一阵混乱，有兽类的咆哮声，还有金属的撞击声。孩子们和杜鲁普金此时破门而入。彼得一眼瞥见一个面目可怖、身材枯瘦的灰色身影，一半是人，一半是狼，正扑向一个和自己差不多年纪的男孩；爱德蒙看见一只獾正和一个小矮人在地上翻滚扭打；杜鲁普金则一跃来到巫婆的面前。巫婆尖尖的鼻子和下巴凸出面部许多，活像一把胡桃钳子，她肮脏的白发披散在脸上，双手正紧紧扼住科尼利厄斯博士的脖子。杜鲁普金挥手辟出一剑，巫婆的脑袋霎时滚落在地。然后，灯也被打翻在地，屋里漆黑一片，宝剑、尖牙、利爪、拳头、靴子一通混战，大约持续了一分钟，一切沉寂了下来。

“你没事吧，爱德？”

“我——我觉得没事，”爱德蒙气喘吁吁地说道，“我逮住了尼克布瑞克那个混蛋，可他还活着呢。”

“你压着我了！”一个生气的声音传来，“你坐的是我啊！快起来，你重得像头大象！”

“抱歉，DLF,”爱德蒙说道，“这样好些了吗？”

“噢！不！”杜鲁普金大吼一声，“你的靴子踩到我嘴里了！快一边去！”

“凯斯宾国王在哪儿呢？”彼得问道。

“我在这儿，”一个虚弱无力的声音答道，“我被什么东西咬了一口。”

所有人都听到了划火柴的声音，是爱德蒙点了根火柴。微弱的火焰照亮了他的脸，只见他脸又苍白又脏。他略微摸索一番，发现一支蜡烛（他们早就不用油灯了，因为油都用光了）。爱德蒙把蜡烛放在桌子上，将它点燃。当火焰变得明亮时，有几个人赶紧爬了起来。借着烛光，六个人惊愕地打量着彼此。

“看来敌人都被干掉了，”彼得说道，“那是巫婆，死了（他迅速把目光从她身上移开）。这是尼克布瑞克，也死了。我猜这家伙就是狼人吧。我很久没见过狼人了。狼的头加上人的身体，这意味着他被杀的时候刚要从人变成狼。而你，我猜，应该就是凯斯宾国王吧？”

“是的，”对面的男孩答道，“但我还不知道你是谁。”

“他就是至尊国王彼得陛下。”杜鲁普金说道。

“热忱欢迎陛下。”凯斯宾说道。

“也同样欢迎你，陛下，”彼得说道，“你知道，我不是来取代你的地位的，而是来助你夺回王位的。”

“陛下。”彼得手肘旁响起了一声尊呼。他侧过身去，看到面前正是那只獾。彼得身体向前倾，伸出双臂抱住它，又亲了亲它那毛茸茸的头。彼得这个举动一点不带女孩子气，因为他是至尊国王。

“你是最好的獾！”他说道，“你从没对我们失去过信心。”

“陛下言重了，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“我是兽族，我们是不会三心二意的，更何况我还是只獾，我们总是坚定不移。”

“我为尼克布瑞克惋惜，”凯斯宾说道，“尽管第一次见面他就仇视我。多年的苦难和仇恨扭曲了他的内心。如果我们能在短时间内取得胜利，那么他是有可能变成一个很好的小矮人的。我不知道是我们当中的谁杀了他，我为此高兴。”

“你在流血。”彼得说道。

“是的，我被咬了，”凯斯宾说道，“是那个狼一样的家伙咬的。”清洁和包扎伤口耗费了很久。把该做的都做好了之后，杜鲁普金说，“行了。在做别的事之前，我们先吃点早餐吧。”

“但得出去吃。”彼得说道。

“对，”凯斯宾说道，打了个冷战，“我们必须叫人把这些尸体弄出去。”

“把这些祸害扔在一个坑里埋掉，”彼得说道，“只把那个小矮人的尸体交给他的同族，让他们按自己的风俗给他下葬。”

他们总算在阿斯兰的堡垒的另一个地窖里吃上了早餐。这不是他们想要的早餐：凯斯宾和科尼利厄斯想要的是鹿肉馅饼，彼得和爱德蒙想要黄油煎蛋和热咖啡。而现在每人只得到一小块冷冰冰的熊肉（是从两个男孩的口袋里掏出来的）、一小块硬邦邦的乳酪、一个洋葱，还有一杯水。不过看他们饿虎扑食的样子，任谁都会以为他们吃的是什么人间美味呢。

第十三章
至尊国王指挥作战

“现在，”大家吃完饭后，彼得说道，“阿斯兰和女孩子们（苏珊女王和露西女王，凯斯宾）就在附近。我们不知道他何时会行动。毫无疑问，这要看他的时间，而非我们的时间。与此同时，他希望我们靠自己做好我们能做的事情。凯斯宾，你说我们的力量还不足以与米拉兹决一死战，是吗？”

“恐怕还不行，至尊国王。”凯斯宾说道。他一直都很喜欢彼得，可他不善言辞。和彼得、爱德蒙见到他的自如态度相比，凯斯宾见到来自远古时期的国王们则感到陌生。

“那好吧，”彼得说道，“我将给他下一封双人决斗的挑战书。”还没有人想过这个办法。

“请问，”凯斯宾说道，“就不能让我去吗？我要为我的父亲报仇。”

“你受伤了，”彼得说道，“再说了，他也不会把你下的挑战书当回事儿吧？我是说，我们都知道你是一个国王，也是一位战士，但他只会把你看作小孩子。”

“可是，陛下，”獾说道，它紧挨着彼得并一直注视着他，“他会接受你的挑战吗？他知道他的兵力更强。”

“他很可能不会接受，”彼得说道，“但还是有机会的，即便他不接受我的挑战，我们也将照样派出使臣和他斡旋。届时阿斯兰就会有所行动的。至少我能借此视察军队，提高地位。这个战书是下定了。我这就着手书写。博士阁下，你有笔墨吗？”

“学者的身上永远少不了笔墨，陛下。”科尼利厄斯博士答道。

“太好了，我说你写。”彼得说道。博士铺开一张羊皮纸，打开墨水瓶，又削尖了笔。彼得往后一靠，半闭着眼睛，默默回忆着在很久以前纳尼亚的黄金时代时他写这类战书的语言风格。

“好了，”他终于开口道，“现在，你准备好了吗，博士？”

科尼利厄斯博士提起笔，等待着，彼得口述如下：

“纳尼亚的至尊国王、孤独群岛的国王、凯尔帕拉维尔城主、狮王麾下最高贵的骑士——彼得，凭着阿斯兰的赠礼，凭着臣民的选择，凭着王国的惯例，凭着辉煌的战功，向凯斯宾八世之子、纳尼亚从前的护国公、现自封为纳尼亚国王的米拉兹，致意。你记下来了吗？”

“米拉兹，逗号，致意，”博士低声说道，“记好了，陛下。”

“以下另起一段，”彼得说道，“为了避免无谓的流血牺牲，为了避免战争给纳尼亚带来更多的灾难，我皇室诸王谨代表值得依赖、深受爱戴、现已宣战的凯斯宾王子，向阁下证实：第一，根据天意和台尔马的法律，确定凯斯宾王子是我们所认可的纳尼亚的合法国王；第二，阁下犯有双重叛国罪行——篡夺应属凯斯宾王子的王位，并残忍谋杀了阁下的兄长凯斯宾九世。为此，我本人向阁下发出挑战，挑战形式为一对一的决斗。递交战书者乃纳尼亚曾经的国王、灯柱荒原公爵、西境公爵、石桌大骑士——我的皇室兄弟爱德蒙。如阁下欲就决斗提出任何条件，他将全权代表我做出决定。写于阿斯兰堡垒下榻屋舍，纳尼亚国王凯斯宾十世元年元月十二日。”

“应该差不多了，”彼得边说，边长舒了一口气，“我们现在必须挑选两名使者与爱德蒙同行。我认为巨人可以。”

“他——你知道的，他并不怎么聪明。”凯斯宾说道。

“确实不假，”彼得说道，“可是任何一个巨人，只要闭上嘴巴一句话不说，别人就一定会注意到他。再说，对他委以重任能够让他精神大振。只是第二个使者应该派谁呢？”

“依我看，”杜鲁普金说道，“如果要找一个用目光就能杀死对手的勇士，那么雷佩契普再合适不过了。”

“从我所听说的那些故事来看，他确实有这本事，”彼得笑着说道，“要是他的身材不是那么小，倒是可以——他不走近点儿，别人根本看不到他啊！”

“派格兰斯托姆去吧，陛下，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“没有谁会取笑半人马。”

一个小时之后，在米拉兹的阵营里，哥洛泽尔勋爵和索皮斯宾勋爵刚吃完早餐，正一边散着步，一边剔着牙。他们抬头一看，刚好看到以前在战争中见过的半人马和巨人从树林里向他们走来。可走在他们中间的那个人是谁，却一时辨认不出。确实，就算是那时在爱德蒙的学校见过他的其他男孩恐怕也不能一眼认出他来。爱德蒙在与阿斯兰相会并被他的呼吸吹拂过之后，身上就增添了一股庄严的气派。

“他们要干什么？”哥洛泽尔勋爵说道，“来攻击我们吗？”

“估计是来谈判的吧，”索皮斯宾说道，“你看，他们手持绿色的树枝。很可能是来投降的。”

“走在巨人和半人马中间的那个人，脸上可半点要投降的意思也没有啊。”哥洛泽尔说道，“他是谁？不像是凯斯宾那孩子。”

“的确不是，”索皮斯宾说道，“我担保，那是个勇猛的斗士，也不知道那帮叛贼们从哪儿找来的。他（这话也就咱俩私下说说）比米拉兹更有皇家气派。瞧他身上那套盔甲！我们的铁匠做不出那样的好东西。”

“我和你打赌，他是来下战书的，根本不是来投降的。”哥洛泽尔说道。

“此话怎讲？”索皮斯宾说道，“我们都已经把叛军攥在手心了，米拉兹不会轻率到放弃现在的优势，去搞什么决斗。”

“也许他会中计。”哥洛泽尔压低声音说道。

“轻点儿声，”索皮斯宾说道，“我们往边上去，别让那些哨兵听见。好了，你的意思和我想的一样吗？”

“要是国王接受挑战，”哥洛泽尔轻声说道，“哎呀，要么他杀死了对方，要么他被对方所杀。”

“对。”索皮斯宾边说，边点了点头。

“如果他杀死了对手，我们就赢了这场战争。”

“那当然。如若不然呢？”

“如若不然，不管国王在还是不在，我们一样稳操胜券。不用我多说，大家心知肚明，米拉兹可不是什么贤明君主。到了那时，我们就既打了胜仗，又没了国王。”

“阁下，你的意思是说，没了国王，更便于我们统治这个国家？”

哥洛泽尔的面孔一下子变得丑陋不堪。“可别忘了，”他说道，“最初是我们把他捧上王位的。这么多年下来，他自己倒是享用不尽，可我们拿到什么好处了吗？他对我们又有多少感激之情呢？”

“别再说了，”索皮斯宾回答道，“看，有人传我们到国王的帐篷里去。”

他们来到国王的帐前，看见爱德蒙和他那两个同伴正坐在帐外享用着蛋糕和美酒。显然，他们已经递上战书，退了出来，而国王正在考虑此事。这两个台尔马勋爵近距离观察一番之后，感到这三个人都不可小觑。

走进帐篷，他们看见了米拉兹，他没有穿戴盔甲，刚吃完早餐。只见他面色通红，眉头紧皱。

“你们看看！”他边咆哮，边从桌子的另一端朝他们扔来那份战书，“看看我那调皮的侄儿给我们送来了一堆什么乱七八糟的童话故事！”

“对不起，陛下，”哥洛泽尔说道，“如果我们在帐外见到的那个年轻人就是信中提到的爱德蒙国王的话，那我认为他是个危险的战士，可不是什么童话故事。”

“爱德蒙国王，呸！”米拉兹说道，“阁下莫非也相信那些老太婆嘴里的什么彼得啊爱德蒙之类的胡言乱语？”

“我相信自己的眼睛，陛下。”哥洛泽尔说道。

“好吧，这话毫无意义，”米拉兹说道，“至于挑战这件事，我想我们意见一致吧？”

“我的确这么认为，陛下。”哥洛泽尔说道。

“你意下如何呢？”国王问道。

“毫无疑问应当拒绝，”哥洛泽尔说道，“虽然我从来没被人叫过懦夫，但说句实话，如果要在战场上和那样一个年轻人交手，我的内心是承受不住的。如果（而且十分可能）他的哥哥，也就是至尊国王，比他还要危险，那么，陛下，为您的生命着想，您可千万别去和他决斗。”

“你真该死！”米拉兹大叫道，“这不是我想听的建言。你以为我在问你，我是不是该畏惧这个叫彼得的人（到底有没有这么个人还不知道呢）吗？你以为我会怕他？我不过想听听你们对这件事情的建议；在我们稳居上风的情况下，有没有冒险决斗的必要。”

“陛下，我唯一的忠告，”哥洛泽尔说道，“便是无论如何都要拒绝挑战，那陌生的骑士脸上有股杀气。”

“你还说！”这下米拉兹已经完全被激怒了，“你是不是想让我显得与你一样是个懦夫？”

“任凭陛下怎么说。”哥洛泽尔悻悻然道。

“哥洛泽尔，你讲话简直像个老太太，”米拉兹说道，“我的索皮斯宾勋爵，你有什么看法？”

“不予回应，陛下。”索皮斯宾回应道，“这就是最好的策略。这样陛下既达到了拒绝挑战的目的，别人也不会对陛下的荣誉和勇气产生任何怀疑。”

“天哪！”米拉兹一边大叫，一边跳了起来，“你今天也中邪了吗？你以为我在为拒绝挑战寻找借口吗？你还不如当面叫我懦夫呢。”

看着对话正按照他们预谋的方向发展，他俩都什么也不说了。

“我明白了，”米拉兹瞪了他们一会儿，仿佛眼珠子都要蹦出来的样子，随后，他说道：“你们这两个胆小如鼠的家伙，居然厚颜无耻地把我也当成与你们一样的胆小鬼！找拒绝的理由！找不战的借口！你们还是不是战士？你们还是不是台尔马人？你们还是不是男子汉？我要是拒绝挑战（尽管凭我的地位和军事经验，有充分的理由这么做），你们就会以为，并且还让别人以为，我是因为害怕才拒绝挑战的，对不对？”

“以陛下的年龄，”哥洛泽尔说道，“拒绝一个正值壮年的勇猛斗士的挑战，只要是有头脑的士兵都不会称您为懦夫的。”

“照这么说，我就是个半截入土的老糊涂，还是个老懦夫了吗？”米拉兹咆哮起来，“我要让你们亲眼看一看，阁下们！你们这种婆婆妈妈的劝告，结果根本适得其反！我之前本打算拒绝挑战，可现在我非接受不可。你们都给我听清楚，我接受挑战！你们一个个都中了邪了，感到羞耻的应该是你们。”

“我们恳请陛下——”哥洛泽尔的话还没说完，米拉兹已经快步走出帐篷，他们能听到他大声告知爱德蒙他答应决斗。

两人对视一眼，心照不宣地暗笑起来。

“我就知道，只要激怒他，他肯定会接受挑战的，”哥洛泽尔说道，“但我不会忘记他管我叫懦夫这回事儿。他会为此付出代价的。”

使臣带回了消息，这下大家都知道米拉兹应战了，这在阿斯兰堡垒引起了一阵轰动。爱德蒙和米拉兹手下的一个首领共同标出了决斗的场地，用木桩和绳子圈了起来。两个台尔马人会站在场地两端，还有一个会作为公证人站在一侧的正中间。至尊国王也同样会指定三个人来当公证人。这时候，彼得正在向凯斯宾解释，使他相信自己并不是孤军奋战，因为他们正是为了他的王位而战。这时，他们身边响起了一个还带有睡意的声音：“陛下，请您恩准。”彼得转过身来，看到了最年长的那只大棕熊。

“如果您愿意的话，陛下，”他说，“我是大棕熊，是我啊。”

“当然，你是大棕熊，而且是一只好熊，对此我毫无疑虑。”彼得说道。

“是的，”大棕熊说，“决斗的公证人向来是由我们熊族出任的。”

“别派他去，”杜鲁普金小声对彼得说，“他是个善良的家伙，但是他会丢我们所有人的脸。他会在决斗过程中呼呼大睡，他还会吮爪子，当着敌人的面他也会这么做。”

“我也没办法啊，”彼得说道，“因为他说的完全正确，这确实是熊族的特权。我对此印象很深，过去其他一些事情我倒是记不得了。”

“请陛下恩准。”棕熊说道。

“这是你们的权利，”彼得说道，“就委任你当公证人吧。不过你务必牢记，不要在那种场合吮爪子。”

“当然不会。”棕熊非常震惊地说。

“哎呀，你现在都还在吮呢！”杜鲁普金说道。

棕熊一下把爪子从嘴里抽出来，装作没听见的样子。

“陛下！”一个尖尖的声音从地面附近传来。

“啊——是雷佩契普！”和别人的反应一样，彼得四下找了半天才看到这只老鼠。

“陛下，”雷佩契普说道，“我的命随您支配，但我的荣誉只属于我自己。陛下，我的手下有我们军中唯一的小号手。本来我以为会被您选中去下战书的，结果没有。陛下，我的手下都很失落。也许您如果愿意选我当公证人，这样他们才会安心啊。”

这时，他们头顶上方突然响起一阵雷鸣般的声音，原来那是巨人韦姆布威热的傻笑声。直到雷佩契普发现笑声的来源，他才立刻停止傻笑，装作一脸严肃的样子。

“我恐怕不能这样做，”彼得严肃地说道，“有些人害怕老鼠——”

“我也注意到了，陛下。”雷佩契普说道。

“再说这对米拉兹不太公平，”彼得继续说道，“我们不能在决斗场上故意安排一名可能会影响他勇气的公证人。”

“陛下您真是荣誉的化身，”老鼠满怀敬意地鞠了一躬说道，“在这件事情上，我们考虑不周……刚才我听到有人在笑。在场诸位，要是有谁想拿我寻开心，我很乐意满足他——用我的剑——在他空闲的任何时候。”

他的这番话使大家陷入极端的沉默，彼得打破沉默说道：“巨人韦姆布威热、棕熊和半人马格兰斯托姆将作为此次决斗的公证人。决斗将于下午两点开始，正午准时开饭。”

“啊呀，”大家离开后，爱德蒙说道，“我想这样应该没问题。我是说，我想你能打败他吧？”

“我得和他打了才知道。”彼得说道。

第十四章
大家分头行动

将近两点的时候，杜鲁普金、獾和其他伙伴坐在树林的边缘，远远望着米拉兹的军队，他们在大约两个射程远的地方，身上的盔甲反射着寒光。为了决斗，两大阵营之间，一块平整的草地已经用桩子圈了起来。场地远处的两个角落站着哥洛泽尔和索皮斯宾，他们手持长剑；近处的两个角落站着巨人韦姆布威热和大棕熊。尽管同伴们已经再三警告，那熊还是不停地吮爪子，那副模样，实话说，显得分外愚蠢。好在站在场地右边的是格兰斯托姆，他只偶尔在草地上刨一刨后蹄，大多数时候都静静肃立，他的模样比站在他对面——场子左侧的那位台尔马男爵，要威严得多。彼得已同爱德蒙和博士分别握了手，此刻正往决斗场走去。现在就好比一场重要的比赛发令枪响之前的那一刻，只是还要紧张得多。

“我希望阿斯兰在决斗开始之前现身。”杜鲁普金说道。

“我也希望如此，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“可你往身后看看。”

“我的天哪！”小矮人转身一看，吃惊地叫道，“他们是什么人？高大——漂亮——像神灵、女神和巨人，成千上万，他们正朝我们身后走来。他们是什么人？”

“他们是林中仙子、树神和森林之神，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“是阿斯兰唤醒了他们。”

“哼！”小矮人说道，“要是敌人胆敢耍花招，他们正好能派上用场。不过一会儿要是米拉兹的剑法更胜一筹，那他们可就帮不上至尊国王什么忙了。”

獾没说什么，因为此时彼得和米拉兹已从场地两头走进了决斗场，两人都身着链甲衫，头戴头盔，手持盾牌。他们迈步向前，走近彼此。只见他们弯腰行礼，好像还交谈了几句，只是听不清具体说了些什么。刹那间，两把宝剑同时出了鞘，在太阳下闪闪发光。一开始，还能听见两剑相击的声音，但是很快，呐喊助威的声音就盖过了击剑声。两边的助威声都震耳欲聋，现场简直就像足球比赛的观众席那么热闹。

“干得漂亮，彼得，噢，干得漂亮！”看到米拉兹被逼得后退了一步半，爱德蒙不禁大声为哥哥喝彩，“接着攻击，快！”彼得乘胜追击，有那么一会儿简直好像马上就能战胜对手了。可米拉兹还是抢到了一个喘息的机会，接着，他开始充分发挥自己的身高和体重优势，攻势转凶。“米拉兹！米拉兹！国王！国王！”台尔马军队呼喊着。凯斯宾和爱德蒙极度紧张，脸都发白了。

“彼得这是痛下狠手了。”爱德蒙说道。

“喂！”雷佩契普说道，“现在怎么样了？”

“两人都退到边线了，”爱德蒙说道，“都需要喘口气。快看，啊，他们又开始了。现在两人都很谨慎，相互绕着圆圈走，都在等对方露出破绽。”

“恐怕米拉兹的剑术不错啊。”博士轻声咕哝道。话音刚落，突然响起一阵鼓掌声、叫嚷声，古纳尼亚的子民都往天上抛起了帽子，那架势简直震耳欲聋。

“怎么了？怎么了？”博士问道，“我老眼昏花，没看到啊！”

“至尊国王刺中了他的腋窝！”凯斯宾说着还在鼓掌，“剑从盔甲的袖孔里刺了进去，至尊国王首战告捷！”

“可是局面不对，”爱德蒙说道，“彼得拿盾牌的样子不对劲，他的左臂一定受伤了！”

这话果然不假，大家都注意到彼得的盾牌举得不稳。台尔马阵营的助威声一下响亮了一倍。

“你经历过的战斗比我多，”凯斯宾说道，“你说我们还有希望吗？”

“还有那么一点希望，”爱德蒙说道，“我想彼得还是有可能赢的，这就要看运气了。”

“噢，我们究竟为什么要让这场决斗发生呢？”凯斯宾说道。

两边的呐喊声突然都停了下来。爱德蒙先是一愣，接着就明白了：“噢，我明白了，场上双方都同意暂停，稍事休息。来吧，博士，我们一起想想能为至尊国王做些什么。”他们朝场边跑了过去。彼得跨过绳子朝他们走来。他满脸通红，大汗淋漓，胸膛剧烈地起伏着。

“你的左臂是不是受伤了？”爱德蒙问道。

“也不能算受伤，”彼得说道，“他整个肩膀都压到我的盾牌上——简直像一堆砖头那么重，盾牌的边缘深深地扎进了我的手腕。我想手腕没有骨折，但可能扭伤了。如果你们能给我包扎起来，我觉得我还能撑下去。”

他们给他包扎时，爱德蒙焦急地问：“你觉得他好对付吗，彼得？”

“难对付，”彼得说道，“相当难对付。如果我出的招能逼他不停跳跃，让他的重量和力量转而变成他自己的负担，再加上烈日炎炎，这样我还能有点机会。说实话，我没什么别的机会。爱德，如果他打倒了我，请代我转达家里每一个人，我爱他们。他又上场了。再见，老伙计。再见，博士。还有，爱德，记得特别安慰一下杜鲁普金，他一直是个不错的朋友。”

爱德蒙一时说不出话来。他和博士一起走回自己的阵营，只觉得胃里一阵难受。

不料第二个回合形势有所好转，彼得似乎能够发挥盾牌的作用，当然他的步伐也相当灵活。此刻他几乎是在戏弄米拉兹，一直保持着与对手之间的距离，不停地在场上移动着，逼得对手不得不跟着他转。

“懦夫！”台尔马人喝起了倒彩，“你怎么不与他大胆对抗？你不想打了吗，嗯？你可是来决斗的，不是来跳舞的啊。唷！”

“噢，我真希望他不要听他们的。”凯斯宾说道。

“他不会的，”爱德蒙说道，“你不了解他——噢！”这时米拉兹终于得手，他击中了彼得的头盔。彼得一个踉跄，滑到一边，单腿跪在了地上。台尔马人的叫声顿时如海潮汹涌一般响起。“是时候了，米拉兹，现在。快！快！杀掉他！”但事实上那个篡位小人根本不需要大家的怂恿，早就扑到了彼得的上方。他的剑闪着凶光一下子刺向彼得，爱德蒙紧张得把嘴唇都咬出了血。这一剑像是要砍下彼得的头。谢天谢地！这一剑最终劈在了彼得的右肩上。那由小矮人锻造的链甲衫很坚固，没有被剑劈开。

“好极了！”爱德蒙大叫起来，“他又站起来了。彼得，加油啊，彼得！”

“我没看清场上发生了什么，”博士急忙问道，“他是怎么做到的？”

“米拉兹的手臂落下来时，被彼得给抓住了。”杜鲁普金说道，一面兴奋地跳了起来，“真是条好汉！把敌人的手臂当梯子。至尊国王！至尊国王！上啊，古纳尼亚！”

“快看，”特鲁佛汉特说道，“米拉兹生气了。太好了。”

此时，显然决斗双方拼上了全部力量。一击接着一击，又狠又凶，看上去其中一方随时可能将另一方置于死地。场面紧张程度不断攀升，两边的呐喊声反而减弱了。观众都屏住呼吸，场面极其可怕而壮观。

古纳尼亚的阵营中突然响起一阵呼喊，原来是米拉兹倒下了——不是被彼得击倒的，而是被草丛绊了个嘴啃泥。彼得后退一步，等他重新爬起来。

“噢，可恶，可恶，可恶！”爱德蒙急坏了，自言自语道，“都什么时候了，他还有必要这么讲风度吗？我想他一定会这么做。这是一位骑士和至尊国王应有的风度。我想这是阿斯兰乐意看见的。但是那个畜生马上就会再站起来的，接着就会——”

谁知“那个畜生”再也没能站起来。哥洛泽尔和索皮斯宾勋爵已经打好了算盘。他们一看到米拉兹摔倒在地，立刻跃入场地内，大声叫嚷着：“阴谋！阴谋！纳尼亚的反贼趁着国王无助地躺在地上，刺中他的背部啦！战斗！战斗，台尔马！”

彼得简直无法理解眼前发生的事情。他看到两个大块头男人向他扑了过来，手里长剑出鞘。接着，第三个台尔马人也翻进了决斗场。“战斗，纳尼亚！这是阴谋！”彼得喊道。此时如果那三个台尔马人立刻攻击他，也许他就再也没有说话的机会了。可是哥洛泽尔径直冲到米拉兹的身边，将自己的国王一剑刺死了，并恶狠狠地说道：“这一剑，是回敬你早上对我的侮辱！”彼得转身对付索皮斯宾，他宝剑斜劈，劈在了索皮斯宾腿上，紧接着又一剑砍下了他的头。爱德蒙此时已飞奔到他身边，嘴里大声喊着：“纳尼亚，纳尼亚！狮王！”整个台尔马军队都向他们猛扑过来。好在巨人及时赶到，弯下身子，手持大棒扫向敌人。半人马也奋勇杀敌。小矮人弓箭手们上上下下射出一阵箭雨。杜鲁普金在他的左边杀敌。两军短兵相接，大打出手。

“雷佩契普，快退回去，你这小傻瓜！”彼得喊道，“你们去了只会送死，这不是老鼠们待的地方！”可那些小家伙根本不听，他们瞅准空子蹿来蹿去，挥着迷你宝剑奋力拼杀。还真有不少台尔马的士兵突然感到脚上被刺进了十几个针头，一边单脚蹦跳一边咒骂不停，不少人被刺得跌倒在地；台尔马士兵一跌倒，老鼠们就将其杀死；就算没跌倒，也会有其他纳尼亚人将其杀死。

但是古纳尼亚子民正杀得起劲儿时，却发现敌方突然放弃了抵抗。原本凶神恶煞的脸，一下子全部变得煞白，他们惊恐地盯着古纳尼亚子民身后的什么东西，一个个地放下武器，大声尖叫：“树林！树林！世界末日到啦！”

顷刻间，他们的惊叫声和武器的撞击声全都听不见了，淹没于醒来的树木们一阵阵海啸般的吼声之中。他们绕过彼得的军队，气势汹汹地向台尔马士兵扑了过去。你有没有在一个深秋的夜晚站在高高的山崖上的一大片树林的边缘感受过那最强劲的西南风？那风掠过树林，一路呼啸着向你刮来。想象一下那种声响！再想象一下那树林不再固定于一处，而是向你扑来；扑来的不再是一棵棵的树，而是一个个的巨人；但是依然和树相似，挥舞的手臂就像树枝，脑袋高高扬起，树叶如同雨点般落向四周。台尔马人的感受就是这样的。就连古纳尼亚子民也觉得这情景挺吓人的。没过几分钟，米拉兹手下的士兵已经开始朝着大河方向逃窜，打算越过柏卢纳大桥，到伯卢纳的小村镇去，躲在堡垒后头，然后闭门不出。

他们来到河边，却发现根本没有桥！原来那桥从昨天就消失不见了。极度的惊吓和恐惧攫住了他们的心，他们终于走投无路，跪地投降。

可是那座桥发生了什么？

那天清晨，睡了几个小时之后，露西和苏珊醒了过来，看到阿斯兰正站在她们身边，对她们说：“我们将度过美好的一天。”她们揉了揉眼睛，环顾四周。树神们已经离去，但是还可以看见那黑压压的一群大树正朝阿斯兰堡垒的方向移动。酒神巴克斯和那群女祭司们——他那些凶猛疯狂的姑娘——还有森林之神西勒诺斯也和他们在一起。露西恢复了体力，跳了起来。所有人都醒了过来，欢笑嬉戏、笛声四起、钹声震天。不会说话的动物们都被这欢乐气氛所感染，从四面八方向跑了过来，将他们围了起来。

“今天是什么日子，阿斯兰？”露西说着，激动地两眼放光，双脚也禁不住想跳起舞来。

“过来，孩子们，”他说道，“今天就让你们再次骑在我的背上。”

“噢，太棒啦！”露西叫道，两个女孩像多年前的那次一样，爬上了阿斯兰温暖的、金黄色的背。于是大家在阿斯兰的带领下出发了，巴克斯和他的祭司姑娘们又是跑，又是跳，甚至还翻起了跟头，动物们在他们身边欢快地跑着跳着，西勒诺斯骑着驴跟在队伍后头。

他们稍稍向右转了个弯，沿着一个陡峭的山坡奔驰而下，发现长长的柏卢纳大桥就在他们眼前。他们正要过河，突然水中冒出一个湿漉漉的、满是须发的大脑袋，比人类的脑袋还要大，头上顶着一个草做的王冠。它看着阿斯兰，嘴里发出低沉的声音：

“向阁下致敬，”它说道，“请解开我身上的枷锁吧。”

“那家伙到底是谁啊？”苏珊小声问道。

“我想是河神吧，别说话。”露西说道。

“巴克斯，”阿斯兰说道，“给他解开枷锁。”

“我希望它指的是那座大桥。”露西心想。的确如此。巴克斯和他的手下一路水花四溅来到一片浅水区。一分钟之后，奇迹发生了。巨大的、结实的常春藤缠绕了每一座桥墩，它生长的速度就像蹿起的火苗一样快，卷着那些石头，将它们劈开，破裂，使其分离。桥墙转眼就变成了山楂树枝做的篱笆，只听一声巨响，那桥已经轰然倒塌，落进了河水的漩涡里。河面上霎时溅起了巨大的水花。他们不禁尖叫出声，大笑起来，有的嬉水，有的游泳，还有的跳着舞蹈，就这样过了河（“好哇！这里现在又是当年的柏卢纳渡口了！”女孩们叫道），上了岸，朝小镇走去。

街上的人见到他们都纷纷逃走了。他们首先来到一所学校：一所女子学校。许多纳尼亚女孩都扎着又紧又僵直的小辫子，高高竖起的衣领卡在脖子上很难看，腿上套着厚厚的长筒袜。教室里正在上历史课，米拉兹统治下的纳尼亚，课堂上教授的“历史”比你读过的最真实的历史书还要枯燥乏味，比编得最精彩的探险故事书还要胡编乱造。

“你再不注意听讲，格温多伦，”女教师说道，“还要继续往窗外看的话，我就要扣你的分了！”

“可是，普瑞兹小姐——”格温多伦开始说道。

“你听见我的话了吗，格温多伦？”普瑞兹小姐说道。

“可是，普瑞兹小姐，”格温多伦说道，“外面有一头狮子！”

“胡说八道，扣两分！”普瑞兹小姐说道，“现在——”一声狮吼打断了她。常春藤从教室的窗外爬进了教室，教室的墙壁上一片绿意，长满绿叶的枝条覆满了天花板。普瑞兹小姐突然发现自己站在森林里的草地上。她连忙抓住讲桌站稳，却发现那桌子变成了玫瑰花丛。一群她根本想象不出来的野人正聚集在她的周围。随后她看到了阿斯兰，尖叫一声，逃开了，班上的那些矮矮胖胖、拘谨呆板的小姑娘也跟着她没命一样地逃走了，只有格温多伦还在犹豫不决。

“你要留下来和我们一起吗，亲爱的？”阿斯兰说道。

“噢，我可以吗？谢谢，谢谢您！”格温多伦喜出望外。她立刻和身边两个祭司姑娘拉起手来。她们牵着她转起了圈圈，欢快地跳起了舞蹈，又帮她换下了那身既不必要又不舒适的校服。

他们走进柏卢纳的小村镇，所到之处，皆是同样的情景。大多数人都逃走了，但也有一部分加入他们的队伍中。离开小镇时，他们的队伍人数更多了，也更加喜气洋洋。

他们在北边或左边河岸的平原上行走。每经过一个农场，就有不少动物出来加入他们。忧伤的老驴们，他们从来不知欢乐为何物，却突然变得年轻了；被锁链束缚的小狗挣脱了锁链；马儿将套在身上的拉车踢成了碎片，嘶鸣着朝他们小跑过来，蹄声嗒嗒，激起泥巴。

他们来到了一个小院子的井旁，看到一个人正在打一个男孩。突然，他手里的棍子变成了一朵花。他想扔掉那朵花，花却粘在了他的手上。他的手臂变成了树枝，他的身体变成了树干，他的脚生了根。刚才还在哭泣的男孩放声大笑，然后加入了他们的队伍。

在他们去河狸水坝的路上，还有一个小镇，正好位于两条河交汇处。他们又走进了一所学校，教室里，一位面容疲惫的姑娘正给一群男孩上算术课。那些男孩看上去像猪一样。姑娘望向窗外，看见这群欢乐的人们唱着歌儿在街上行走，她的内心一下变得愉悦。阿斯兰走到窗前停了下来，抬头看了看她。

“噢，不行，不行，”她说道，“我很乐意加入你们，可我不能。我必须安心上课。要是孩子们看到你，会害怕的。”

“害怕？”一个最像猪的男孩说道，“她在和窗外的什么人聊天？我们告诉校长去，说她原本该给我们上课，却在跟窗外的人聊天。”

“我们去瞧瞧那是谁吧。”另一个男孩说，说罢，他们便一起拥到窗子跟前。他们那刻薄的小脸刚露出窗口，巴克斯就“噢依——噢依——”地大叫起来，吓得他们一通嚎叫，一个踩着另一个地想要跑出教室、跳出窗户。据说从那之后（也不知是真是假），再也没人见过那帮小男孩，那个地区却凭空出现了一群讨人喜欢的小猪。

“这下没问题了，亲爱的。”阿斯兰跟那女教师说道，于是姑娘跳出了窗户，也加入了他们的队伍。

他们在河狸水坝又一次渡了河，然后沿着南岸往东走。他们很快就走到了一座小屋前面，在门口，一个小孩正放声大哭。“你为什么哭呀，亲爱的孩子？”阿斯兰问道。那孩子从未见过狮子的形象，所以看到阿斯兰并不害怕。“姨妈病得厉害，”她说道，“她快要死了。”阿斯兰想从那扇门走进屋里，可是门对他而言太小了。于是，他把头探进了门内，用肩膀的力量使劲一抬（这下子露西和苏珊都从他身上滑了下来），就把整个房子抬了起来，房子向后摔到了地上，碎成了一堆。再往原本的屋内一看，露天的床上躺着一个弱小的老妇人，看上去有着小矮人的血脉。她的生命危在旦夕，但当她睁开双眼，看到阿斯兰那毛茸茸的脑袋时，既没有惊讶也没有晕过去。她说：“噢，阿斯兰！我就知道这是真的。我等这一刻等了都有一辈子了。你是来带我走的吧？”

“是的，最亲爱的，”阿斯兰说道，“但这一次不是长途跋涉了。”阿斯兰说话间，就像日出时候云朵边上的红霞，老妇人那苍白的面颊恢复了血色，她的目光也明亮起来，只见她坐起身子，说：“奇怪，我感觉好多了，我觉得今天早上可以吃些早饭了。”

“吃点儿东西吧，老妈妈，”巴克斯说道，从小屋的井里提来一壶水，递给了她，奇怪的是壶里的水变成了最甘醇的美酒，像红浆果一样鲜红，像油一样光滑，像牛肉一样耐饥，像午茶一样温热，像晨露一样清凉。

“啊，准是您在我们的水井里施了什么法术，”老妇人说道，“这可真是太好啦，太好啦！”接着，她跳下床来。

“骑到我背上来，”阿斯兰说着，又对苏珊和露西说，“你们两位女王现在得自己走了。”

“我们正好想下来走走呢。”苏珊说道。于是，大家又动身出发了。

就这样，一路蹦蹦跳跳，跳舞唱歌，伴着音乐声、欢笑声、狮吼声、犬吠声、嘶鸣声，他们终于来到河边，正好看到米拉兹的军队纷纷放下武器，举手投降。彼得的军队站在一边，手持武器，呼吸急促，他们围着败军站着，脸上又庄严又喜悦。突然，老妇人从阿斯兰的背上跳下来，朝凯斯宾奔去，两人激动地相拥在了一起。原来她正是凯斯宾的老保姆！

第十五章
阿斯兰开启天门

看到阿斯兰来了，台尔马士兵们顿时吓得面如土色、两腿发抖，许多人甚至直接面伏于地。他们从不相信狮王的存在，而现在居然亲眼看到狮王阿斯兰威风凛凛地向他们走来，这就使他们的恐惧感倍增。红发小矮人们尽管知道阿斯兰是自己阵营的朋友，此时此刻也只是惊讶不已地傻站着，说不出话来。尼克布瑞克那一伙的一些黑发小矮人，则偷偷溜到了一边。但是所有能言兽都热情洋溢地围在了阿斯兰身边，欢乐地发出咕噜声、咕哝声、吱吱声、嘶嘶声，有的摇着尾巴以示臣服，有的蹭着狮王以示亲热，有的满是敬意地用鼻子拱着他，还有的激动地在他的肚子下面和爪子之间钻来钻去。如果你曾经看到过小猫见到一只它熟悉且信任的大狗时候的亲热劲儿，你就能很好地了解他们的举动了。这时，彼得带着凯斯宾，挤过兽群。

“这是凯斯宾王子，阁下。”他介绍说。凯斯宾跪下来，亲吻了狮王的爪子。

“欢迎你，王子，”阿斯兰说道，“你觉得自己有能力接管纳尼亚的王权吗？”

“我——我觉得自己不行，阁下，”凯斯宾说道，“我还只是个孩子。”

“很好，”阿斯兰赞许地说道，“如果你认为自己把握十足，那就只能证明你还很稚嫩。那么，继我们和至尊国王之后，你将成为纳尼亚的国王、凯尔帕拉维尔之主、孤独群岛的君主。只要你的宗族仍然在这里生活，你和你的继承人便是这里的君主。你的加冕仪式——嗯？是什么朝我们这儿来了？”原来就在此时，十一只老鼠组成的队伍正在慢慢靠近。其中六只正抬着一个用树枝做成的担架，那担架看起来比一本地图册大不了多少。老鼠战士们仿佛头顶一片愁云惨雾。他们身上全是泥浆，有几只还沾了血迹，耳朵都悲伤地耷拉下来，低垂的胡子再没了从前的神气劲儿，身后的尾巴低低地在草地上拖行。领队的老鼠手持一只小小的笛子，吹奏着凄凉的调子。担架上抬着一小堆湿漉漉的长着皮毛的东西，那竟然是雷佩契普。他的胸膛还在起伏，却也仅仅是一息尚存，只见他的身上布满无数大大小小的伤痕，一只爪子在战斗中被碾了个粉碎，身后的尾巴也不见了，只有一层又一层的绷带。

“露西，看你的了。”阿斯兰说道。

露西马上掏出她装着神水的钻石瓶子。尽管只需要在雷佩契普的每个伤口滴上一滴药水即可，但是他身上的伤口实在是太多了，大家焦急地期待着，露西处理了很久，终于给雷佩契普上完药，只见他一下子从担架上跳了下来。一只手马上握住了剑柄，另一只手捻着胡须转了转圈，神气地向阿斯兰鞠了一躬。

“阿斯兰万岁！”他尖细的声音再次响了起来，“我真是荣幸——”说到这里，他突然停了下来。

原来是他发现了自己依然没有尾巴——或许是露西把这件事给忘了，又或者她的神水虽能促使伤口愈合，却无法促使已经失去的部分重新生长。雷佩契普鞠躬时意识到自己没了尾巴，也许是因为少了尾巴多少改变了他的平衡感。他的目光略过右肩看向身后，没有看到尾巴，他又使劲扭转脖子，带动着肩膀和整个身子拧了过去，结果扭得太厉害了，连屁股都看不到了。于是他又一次转过脖子往肩膀后面看去，还是没能看到尾巴。这样反复转身看了三次，他终于意识到了这个可怕的事实。

“我可真糊涂了！”雷佩契普对阿斯兰说，“我完全惊慌失措了。我这副样子出现在您面前，还请多多包涵啊。”

“你看起来很好啊，小家伙。”阿斯兰说道。

“尽管您这么说，”雷佩契普回复道，“不过要是有什么办法能再长出来……也许女王陛下能再帮帮我？”说着，他向露西鞠了一躬。

“可是你要尾巴干什么呢？”阿斯兰问道。

“阁下，”雷佩契普答道，“没有尾巴，我也一样能吃、能睡、能为了我的国王出生入死。但是尾巴是一只老鼠的荣誉和荣耀。”

“朋友，我有时候会想，”阿斯兰说道，“你是不是对自身荣誉过分在意了。”

“至高无上的国王，”雷佩契普说道，“请允许我提醒您，我们老鼠被造化赋予了这样微小的体形，如果我们自己不去保卫自己的尊严，有那么一些（以体型大小衡量价值的）家伙，就会管不住他们自己，拿我们来寻开心。这也就是为什么我无数次地发出警告，要是不想知道宝剑穿胸而过是什么滋味，就别在我面前说什么老鼠夹、老鼠药、灯台这一类的话。谁都一样！就算是纳尼亚块头最大的傻大个儿也不行！”说着，他格外凶狠地瞪了巨人韦姆布威热一眼，谁知巨人的反应永远比其他人慢一拍，根本没有注意到他脚边的老鼠在说什么，因此错过了老鼠所说的重点。

“我想问问，为什么你的手下都把佩剑抽出了鞘呀？”阿斯兰说道。

“启禀陛下，”一位名叫雷佩希克的老鼠战士答道，“如果我们的领袖只能作为断尾的老鼠活下去，我们也将割掉自己的尾巴。如果我们的领袖不再享有留着尾巴的荣誉，我们必将放弃这种荣誉。”

“啊！”阿斯兰高声宣布，“你们让我钦佩。你们非常高尚。这与你所谓的尊严无关，雷佩契普，而是因为你与你的同族之间的友爱，更是因为你们的同族很久以前对我的帮助。当年，在大石桌，是你们咬断了绑在我身上的绳索（也许你们早忘了，也是在那时，你们蜕变成了能说话的老鼠）。因此，你将重新得到一条尾巴！”

阿斯兰还没说完，一条新的尾巴就出现在了雷佩契普的身上。其后，遵照阿斯兰的指示，彼得授予了凯斯宾“狮王骑士”的封号。凯斯宾获封骑士之后，立刻将特鲁佛汉特、杜鲁普金和雷佩契普也封为了狮王骑士，还将科尼利厄斯博士任命为大法官，并宣布由棕熊继承决斗公证官之职。大家顿时回以热烈的掌声。

至于被俘的台尔马士兵，他们既没挨打也没挨骂，只是被押着过了河，都被囚禁在柏卢纳镇上，还能吃到牛肉和啤酒。叫他们过个河可真够麻烦的，因为那些士兵对河流和对森林和动物的态度是一样的，这些都使他们又仇视又害怕。最后，一切纷扰归于平息，这长长的一天中最美好的时光到来了。

露西挨着阿斯兰坐着，感到愉快又舒适，她好奇那些树神在那儿干什么。起初她以为他们只是在跳舞。他们围成了两个圆圈，慢慢地转着圈；一个从左往右转圈，另一个从右往左转圈。很快她就注意到，他们一直往两个圈子的中心里丢东西。有时候，她以为他们在剪长头发；有时候，他们好像折断了自己的手指——可是，如果真是那样，他们还真是有多得数不清的手指，而且他们看上去居然一点也不像受伤的样子。但是不管他们往下扔了什么，那东西刚一落地，就变成了灌木丛或干树枝。三四个红发小矮人拿着打火匣走上前去，点燃了那堆树枝，那堆树枝上先有了一点火星，继而燃起了火焰，最后火势大涨，就像是仲夏夜晚的林中篝火那样。大家围成一个大圆圈在这堆篝火旁边坐下来。

接着，巴克斯、西勒诺斯和祭司姑娘们跳起舞来，跳得比树神们更狂野。那舞蹈不仅有趣优美（尽管也的确如此），而且还具有魔力。他们的手点到哪儿，脚落到哪儿，哪儿就凭空出现美味佳肴：烤肉的香味溢满了树林，有小麦蛋糕和燕麦蛋糕，有蜂蜜和五颜六色的糖果，还有粥一般厚重、水一般光滑的奶油，桃子、油桃、石榴、梨子、葡萄、草莓、树莓等各种各样的水果。而常春藤缠绕着的巨大的木杯、木碗、木盏中盛着各种奇异的美酒，有的如桑葚糖浆般黝黑醇厚，有的如融化的果冻般清透红艳，有黄色的酒，绿色的酒，绿中带黄的酒，黄中带绿的酒。

而提供给树神的是完全不同的宴席。露西看到克劳兹利·肖弗和手下的鼹鼠们从草地上不同的地方钻出来（是巴克斯指给他们的地方），意识到树神们要吃的东西是土，她霎时打了个哆嗦。但是她看到了那土的样子，一下子又觉得吃土也没有那么不可接受。先是棕色的壤土，看上去很像巧克力，正是因为它的外表有欺骗性，就连爱德蒙都跑过来尝了一点儿，但是口感太差了。树神们先吃了点儿棕色的壤土垫了垫肚子，接着又端起一种类似于你能在萨默塞特郡看到的土，几近于粉红色。他们说这种土更轻盈，也更甜美。到了一般的宴席该吃奶酪的时候，他们品尝的是白垩土，紧接着是另一种精致的甜点：撒上一层银色细沙的砂砾。他们只喝了一点酒，喝了酒的冬青树变得十分健谈：多数时间里，他们用露水和雨水混合而成的酒解渴，酒的调味料用的是林中百花和最轻最薄的云。

就这样，阿斯兰以盛宴来款待纳尼亚的子民，直到夜幕低垂，繁星高挂。那堆巨大的篝火温度更高了，声响却低了，像一座灯塔照亮了黑暗的树林，惊恐的台尔马人从远处看到了火光，想知道这火光意味着什么。这场盛宴最妙的一点就是，没有分别，也没有暂时的离开。渐渐地，谈话的声音低了下去，语速也越来越慢，困意袭来，大家都打起了盹，最终都睡着了，他们双脚朝向篝火，左右都是伙伴。最后，篝火的周围一片安静，柏卢纳渡口河水击石的声音又一次传来。然而，一整个夜晚，阿斯兰却一直都是清醒的，他和空中的月亮遥相对望，眼中满是欢乐，眨也不眨。

第二天，使者们（基本由松鼠和鸟儿出任）被派往纳尼亚全境，向溃败后逃散的台尔马人——包括柏卢纳镇上的那些俘虏传递了一个重要消息，那就是：凯斯宾已经加冕为纳尼亚的国王，此后，这片土地不仅属于人类，还属于所有能言兽、小矮人、林中仙女、半羊人和其他生灵。只要接受王国新规的人都可以留下来；至于不接受新规的人，阿斯兰也将给他们一个新的家园。想去新的家园，就必须第五天中午前往柏卢纳渡口去见阿斯兰和国王。显而易见，王国的新规让许多台尔马人非常伤神。他们之中，其实有许多人，主要是年轻人，像凯斯宾一样，从小就接触了许多关于古纳尼亚的故事，旧日的美好时光重新回来了，这使他们非常兴奋，有人已经开始和故事里听到过的生灵交朋友了。所有这样的年轻人都决意留在纳尼亚。但是，大部分年长的人，特别是那些曾经在米拉兹统治下颇有权势的人却都情绪低落。他们根本不愿意生活在一个他们无法享有统治地位的国度。“和那些用来表演马戏的愚蠢动物生活在一起！”他们说道，“还有那些鬼怪！”有人战栗地说，“什么林中仙女之类，都是妖魔鬼怪！有脑子的人都不会接受。”还有人持怀疑态度：“我无法信任他们，”他们说，“那狮子和他的属下。那家伙的狮爪很快就会伸向我们，等着瞧吧！”并且他们不相信阿斯兰会送他们去往新的家园：“十有八九是要把我们带回狮子洞里，一个接一个地吃掉呢！”就这样你一言我一语，大家变得更加低落消沉又满腹疑虑。不过，到了定好的那一天，还是来了半数以上的人。

在一片开阔的草地上，阿斯兰已经支起了两根木棍，有一人高，间隔一米左右。又把第三根比较轻一些的木棍给横过来，在那两根木棍的顶端将两头固定，这样三根木棍就成了一个整体，整个东西看来就像个门框，也不知道门里门外连接了哪里。门框的前面站着阿斯兰，右边站着彼得，左边站着凯斯宾。围着他们站着的，是苏珊、露西、杜鲁普金、特鲁佛汉特、科奈利厄斯大人、格兰斯托姆、雷佩契普和其他伙伴。此刻，孩子们和小矮人们都一身皇家盛装，这些衣服都是他们从皇室城堡里找来的，过去那是米拉兹的城堡，而现在已经是凯斯宾的城堡了。他们穿着绸缎和金色的布料做的衣服，从袖子往里看是雪白的麻布衣服，套着银色的链甲衫，宝剑的剑柄上镶嵌着珠宝，戴着镀金的头盔和带羽毛的软帽，他们全身都闪闪发亮。就连动物们的脖子上也戴着珍贵的项链。可是，大家的注意力都不在这方面。阿斯兰那柔滑的金色狮子鬃毛让人目眩神迷。其余纳尼亚旧臣也都站在空地两旁。远处的另一侧立着那些台尔马人。阳光如此明媚，微风中，旗帜在飘扬。

“台尔马的人民，”阿斯兰说道，“想去新的家园的人们，都听我说。我将把你们全部送回你们自己的国家，那个地方只有我知道，你们都不知道。”

“我们都不记得台尔马那个地方了，我们不知道它在哪儿，我们根本不知道那里是什么样子。”台尔马人纷纷嘟哝着。

“你们的确是从台尔马来到纳尼亚的，”阿斯兰说道，“但你们是从别的地方来到台尔马的。你们根本不属于这个世界。你们是几百年前才到这里的，你们真正所属的那个世界，其实正是至尊国王彼得的那个世界。”

听了这话，一半的台尔马人开始发起了牢骚：“怎么样，我没说错吧！他要把我们赶尽杀绝，把我们逐出这个世界！”另外一半人则挺起了胸，拍拍彼此的背，低声说道：“怎么样，早该猜出来，我们根本不属于这地方，本就不该和这些稀奇古怪、丑陋不堪的家伙混在一起。我们的血统是很高贵的，拭目以待吧！”就连凯斯宾、科尼利厄斯和孩子们也都一脸吃惊地转向阿斯兰。

“静一静！”阿斯兰嗓音低沉得近乎狮吼。大地仿佛都震颤了，大家都一下子像石头一样一动不动。

“凯斯宾国王，”阿斯兰说道，“你也许清楚这一点，除非是像古纳尼亚的国王一样，是亚当之子，而且来自亚当之子们所属的国家，否则是不可能成为真正的纳尼亚国王的。你正好符合条件。在那一个世界，很久以前，在一片被称作南海的海域，有一条载满海盗的船遇上了风暴，被吹到了一座小岛上。他们干了海盗会干的事情，杀光了当地的男人，强迫那里的妇女做了妻子。他们自打酿制了椰子酒之后，整天狂欢，常常喝得酩酊大醉，在椰子树下倒头就睡，睡醒了就争吵不休，乃至大开杀戒。有一次，海盗之中有六个人被其余的人追杀，慌忙带着女人出逃，逃到小岛中央地带的山顶上，逃进了一个山洞里。不料那竟然是个有魔力的山洞，是连接那个世界和这个世界之间的通道。在古代，类似的通道曾有很多，可以连接两边的世界，可惜如今通道的数目越来越少了。机缘巧合下，他们钻进了为数不多的通道之一。他们飞快地下落、上升，或者是撞进了，或者是笔直地掉进了通道，最后发现自己居然来到了另一个世界——台尔马国——一个没有人类居住的地方。个中原因说来话长，我现在就不讲了。从此，他们就在台尔马住了下来，繁衍生息，后代人数渐多，成了一个凶猛而又骄傲的民族。很多年过去了，有一次台尔马发生了饥荒，台尔马人就侵略了纳尼亚。当时的纳尼亚正处于一片混乱当中（这也说来话长），他们便攻占了这个国家，开始了统治。我说的这些你记好了吗，凯斯宾国王？”

“我记下了，陛下，”凯斯宾说道，“我希望自己生于一个更可敬的家族。”

“你是亚当和夏娃的后裔，”阿斯兰说道，“这既是一份荣耀，能让最潦倒的乞丐抬起头颅，也是一种羞耻，能让最伟大的国王羞愧地弯下肩膀。你该感到满足。”

凯斯宾鞠了一躬。

“现在，”阿斯兰说道，“你们这些台尔马的男男女女，想要返回人类世界里你们祖先早年居住的那个小岛吗？那是个好去处。岛上原本的海盗族人早已死绝，此后那里便没人居住。岛上有很多水质甘甜的井，有适宜耕种的沃土，有木材可以建造房子，湖里也都是鲜美的鱼儿。那个世界的其他人类至今也没有发现那个小岛，你们只要过了世界通道就能回去。但我也必须告诉你们，一旦你们走过了那个通道，你们身后的通道将永远关闭。两个世界再也不能通过那扇天门有所往来。”

沉默了片刻之后，其中一个体格魁梧、外表体面的台尔马士兵走上前来，说道：

“好，我愿意穿过通道。”

“真是明智之举，”阿斯兰说道，“因为你敢于第一个做决定，会有强大的魔法作用到你身上，你在那个世界的未来非常光明。上前来吧。”

此时，那人的脸有些发白，他走上前来。阿斯兰和他的部众退到了边上，给他让路，让他畅通无阻地到了木棍捆成的那个空空的门框前面。

“穿过这扇门吧，我的孩子。”阿斯兰说着，向他俯身，鼻子轻轻碰了碰那人的鼻子。就在狮王的气息包裹他的瞬间，那人的神色有了变化，他有点受惊，但却是快乐的，就好像他正使劲回忆着什么。接着他耸了耸肩，迈入了那个门框。

大家都紧紧盯着他。他们看见那扇由三根木棍组成的门框，门的那边是树林、草地和纳尼亚的天空。他们看着那人迈入门框，接着，一瞬间，他踪迹全无。

空地另一边，其余的台尔马人恸哭起来：“啊！他出什么事儿了？你就是想谋害我们吧？我们不去了！”接着，一个聪明的台尔马人说道：

“透过这几条棍子望过去，我们完全看不到另外一个世界。你想要我们相信它的存在，你们的人为什么一个都不过去？你的朋友们可都一个个远远地避开了那扇门呢。”

随即，雷佩契普大步跨了出来，向阿斯兰鞠了一躬。“阿斯兰，如果我以身作则能起作用的话，”他说道，“您只要下令，我将带着我的十一个兄弟，即刻跨过那扇门。”

“不，小家伙，”阿斯兰把柔软的爪子轻轻放在雷佩契普的头上，说道，“在那个世界里，他们会凶残地对待你们。他们会在集市上把你们展出。还是让别人去吧。”

“走吧！”彼得突然对爱德蒙和露西说，“我们的时间到了。”

“你这是什么意思？”爱德蒙很是不解地问道。

“走这边，”苏珊说道，她似乎知道所有事情，“回到树林里，我们必须先更换一下。”

“更换什么？”露西一头雾水地问道。

“当然是换我们的衣服啦，”苏珊说道，“要是穿着现在的衣服出现在英国的火车站，那岂不是会被别人当成大傻瓜了嘛！”

“可我们的行李都在凯斯宾城堡里呢。”爱德蒙说道。

“不，行李不在那儿，”彼得说，他还在领着大家朝树林深处走去，“都在这里。今天早晨包好了送来的，全都已经安排好了。”

“今天早晨阿斯兰跟你和苏珊说的就是这事儿吗？”露西问。

“没错——还有其他事儿，”彼得说道，他的神色很是严肃，“我不能全部讲给你听。有些事情他只希望我和苏珊知道，因为我们将不会重返纳尼亚了。”

“再也不回来了吗？”爱德蒙和露西都沮丧地叫道。

“噢，你们俩还会回来的，”彼得回答说，“至少根据他的话来判断，我相信你们俩今后总有一天还会回到这里来的。只是我和苏珊不会再回来了。他说我们俩都已经长大了。”

“噢，彼得，”露西说道，“这真不是什么好消息！你接受得了这样的事吗？”

“好吧，我想我能接受，”彼得说道，“这一切和我原来想的都不太一样，等到你的最后告别时刻来临时你也会明白的。不过现在，我们快点行动起来吧，我们的行李都在这儿了。”

孩子们不情愿地脱下华丽的贵族服装，换上了原本那身校服，然后又回到大家聚集的地方。有几个惹人厌的台尔马人发出了嘲笑声。但是所有的朋友都欢呼起来，站起身子向至尊国王彼得、神号女王苏珊、爱德蒙国王和露西女王致敬。他们依依不舍地和老朋友们互相道别，露西还掉了眼泪——小动物们送上了亲吻，大棕熊给了他们一人一个熊抱，杜鲁普金和他们紧紧地握手，特鲁佛汉特送来了胡子扎扎、痒痒无比的拥抱。凯斯宾想把神号还给苏珊，苏珊却决定还是将神号留给凯斯宾保管。最后，他们怀着悲喜交加的复杂心情，向阿斯兰道别。然后，彼得走在最前面，苏珊的手搭在彼得的肩上，爱德蒙的手搭在苏珊肩上，露西的手搭在爱德蒙的肩上，第一个台尔马人的手搭在露西的肩上，就这样，孩子们身后跟着长长一列台尔马人，他们向门框走去。接下来发生的事情难以用语言描述，孩子们似乎同时看到三幅图景：首先是一个山洞口，一眼望去是太平洋上一个岛屿，满眼都是岛上的绿意和蔚蓝的大海。台尔马人将从门框直接来到这里，开始他们新的生活；接着是在纳尼亚的一片林间空地，他们看到了小矮人和动物们的面庞，看到了阿斯兰深邃的眼神，还看到了獾两颊上的白色斑点；但是第三幅图景很快取代了前面的两幅，那是乡间火车站灰扑扑的、铺着碎石的站台，还有那个座椅，周围堆放的是他们的那些行李箱子。他们现在就坐在那个座椅上，就好像从一开始就没有挪过地方似的——在纳尼亚经历了那么多的事情，眼前的环境相比之下不由显得有些单调乏味，但是又感受到了熟悉的铁路的气味，看着英国的天空，想着即将开始的夏季学期，孩子们竟然产生了一种非常亲切的感觉。

“真好！”彼得说道，“我们度过了一段精彩的时光。”

“糟糕！”爱德蒙说道，“我把我的新手电筒落在纳尼亚了。”

CHAPTER ONE
THE ISLAND

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, and it has been told in another book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe how they had a remarkable adventure. They had opened the door of a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a quite different world from ours, and in that different world they had become Kings and Queens in a country called Narnia. While they were in Narnia they seemed to reign for years and years； but when they came back through the door and found themselves in England again, it all seemed to have taken no time at all. At any rate, no one noticed that they had ever been away, and they never told anyone except one very wise grown-up.

That had all happened a year ago, and now all four of them were sitting on a seat at a railway station with trunks and playboxes piled up round them. They were, in fact, on their way back to school. They had traveled together as far as this station, which was a junction； and here, in a few minutes, one train would arrive and take the girls away to one school, and in about half an hour another train would arrive and the boys would go off to another school. The first part of the journey, when they were all together, always seemed to be part of the holidays； but now when they would be saying good-bye and going different ways so soon, everyone felt that the holidays were really over and everyone felt their term-time feelings beginning again, and they were all rather gloomy and no one could think of anything to say. Lucy was going to boarding school for the first time.

It was an empty, sleepy, country station and there was hardly anyone on the platform except themselves. Suddenly Lucy gave a sharp little cry, like someone who has been stung by a wasp.

“What’s up, Lu?” said Edmund—and then suddenly broke off and made a noise like “Ow！”

“What on earth—”, began Peter, and then he too suddenly changed what he had been going to say. Instead, he said, “Susan, let go！ What are you doing? Where are you dragging me to?”

“I’m not touching you,” said Susan. “Someone is pulling me. Oh—oh—oh—stop it！”

Everyone noticed that all the others’faces had gone very white.

“I felt just the same,” said Edmund in a breathless voice. “As if I were being dragged along. A most frightful pulling—ugh！ it’s beginning again.”

“Me too,” said Lucy. “Oh, I can’t bear it.”

“Look sharp！” shouted Edmund. “All catch hands and keep together. This is magic—I can tell by the feeling. Quick！”

“Yes,” said Susan. “Hold hands. Oh, I do wish it would stop—oh！”

Next moment the luggage, the seat, the platform, and the station had completely vanished. The four children, holding hands and panting, found themselves standing in a woody place—such a woody place that branches were sticking into them and there was hardly room to move. They all rubbed their eyes and took a deep breath.

“Oh, Peter！” exclaimed Lucy. “Do you think we can possibly have got back to Narnia?”

“It might be anywhere,” said Peter. “I can’t see a yard in all these trees. Let’s try to get into the open—if there is any open.”

With some difficulty, and with some stings from nettles and pricks from thorns, they struggled out of the thicket. Then they had another surprise. Everything became much brighter, and after a few steps they found themselves at the edge of the wood, looking down on a sandy beach. A few yards away a very calm sea was falling on the sand with such tiny ripples that it made hardly any sound. There was no land in sight and no clouds in the sky. The sun was about where it ought to be at ten o’clock in the morning, and the sea was a dazzling blue. They stood sniffing in the sea-smell.

“By Jove！” said Peter. “This is good enough.”

Five minutes later everyone was barefooted and wading in the cool clear water.

“This is better than being in a stuffy train on the way back to Latin and French and Algebra！” said Edmund. And then for quite a long time there was no more talking, only splashing and looking for shrimps and crabs.

“All the same,” said Susan presently, “I suppose we’ll have to make some plans. We shall want something to eat before long.”

“We’ve got the sandwiches Mother gave us for the journey,” said Edmund. “At least I’ve got mine.”

“Not me,” said Lucy. “Mine were in my little bag.”

“So were mine,” said Susan.

“Mine are in my coat-pocket, there on the beach,” said Peter. “That’ll be two lunches among four. This isn’t going to be such fun.”

“At present,” said Lucy, “I want something to drink more than something to eat.”

Everyone else now felt thirsty, as one usually is after wading in salt water under a hot sun.

“It’s like being shipwrecked,” remarked Edmund. “In the books they always find springs of clear, fresh water on the island. We’d better go and look for them.”

“Does that mean we have to go back into all that thick wood?” said Susan.

“Not a bit of it,” said Peter. “If there are streams they’re bound to come down to the sea, and if we walk along the beach we’re bound to come to them.”

They all now waded back and went first across the smooth, wet sand and then up to the dry, crumbly sand that sticks to one’s toes, and began putting on their shoes and socks. Edmund and Lucy wanted to leave them behind and do their exploring with bare feet, but Susan said this would be a mad thing to do. “We might never find them again,” she pointed out, “and we shall want them if we’re still here when night comes and it begins to be cold.”

When they were dressed again they set out along the shore with the sea on their left hand and the wood on their right. Except for an occasional seagull it was a very quiet place. The wood was so thick and tangled that they could hardly see into it at all； and nothing in it moved—not a bird, not even an insect.

Shells and seaweed and anemones, or tiny crabs in rock-pools, are all very well, but you soon get tired of them if you are thirsty. The children’s feet, after the change from the cool water, felt hot and heavy. Susan and Lucy had raincoats to carry. Edmund had put down his coat on the station seat just before the magic overtook them, and he and Peter took it in turns to carry Peter’s greatcoat.

Presently the shore began to curve round to the right. About quarter of an hour later, after they had crossed a rocky ridge which ran out into a point, it made quite a sharp turn. Their backs were now to the part of the sea which had met them when they first came out of the wood, and now, looking ahead, they could see across the water another shore, thickly wooded like the one they were exploring.

“I wonder, is that an island or do we join on to it presently?” said Lucy.

“Don’t know,” said Peter, and they all plodded on in silence.

The shore that they were walking on drew nearer and nearer to the opposite shore, and as they came round each promontory the children expected to find the place where the two joined. But in this they were disappointed. They came to some rocks which they had to climb and from the top they could see a fairway ahead and-“Oh bother！” said Edmund, “it’s no good. We shan’t be able to get to those other woods at all. We’re on an island！”

It was true. At this point the channel between them and the opposite coast was only about thirty or forty yards wide； but they could now see that this was its narrowest place. After that, their own coast bent round to the right again and they could see open sea between it and the mainland. It was obvious that they had already come much more than half-way round the island.

“Look！” said Lucy suddenly. “What’s that?” She pointed to a long, silvery, snake-like thing that lay across the beach.

“A stream！ A stream！” shouted the others, and, tired as they were, they lost no time in clattering down the rocks and racing to the fresh water. They knew that the stream would be better to drink farther up, away from the beach, so they went at once to the spot where it came out of the wood. The trees were as thick as ever, but the stream had made itself a deep course between high mossy banks so that by stooping you could follow it up in a sort of tunnel of leaves. They dropped on their knees by the first brown, dimply pool and drank and drank, and dipped their faces in the water, and then dipped their arms in up to the elbow.

“Now,” said Edmund, “what about those sandwiches?”

“Oh, hadn’t we better have them?” said Susan. “We may need them far worse later on.”

“I do wish,” said Lucy, “now that we’re not thirsty, we could go on feeling as not-hungry as we did when we were thirsty.”

“But what about those sandwiches?” repeated Edmund. “There’s no good saving them till they go bad. You’ve got to remember it’s a good deal hotter here than in England and we’ve been carrying them about in pockets for hours.” So they got out the two packets and divided them into four portions, and nobody had quite enough, but it was a great deal better than nothing. Then they talked about their plans for the next meal. Lucy wanted to go back to the sea and catch shrimps, until someone pointed out that they had no nets. Edmund said they must gather gulls’eggs from the rocks, but when they came to think of it they couldn’t remember having seen any gulls’eggs and wouldn’t be able to cook them if they found any. Peter thought to himself that unless they had some stroke of luck they would soon be glad to eat eggs raw, but he didn’t see any point in saying this out loud. Susan said it was a pity they had eaten the sandwiches so soon. One or two tempers very nearly got lost at this stage. Finally Edmund said：

“Look here. There’s only one thing to be done. We must explore the wood. Hermits and knights-errant and people like that always manage to live somehow if they’re in a forest. They find roots and berries and things.”

“What sort of roots?” asked Susan.

“I always thought it meant roots of trees,” said Lucy.

“Come on,” said Peter, “Ed is right. And we must try to do something. And it’ll be better than going out into the glare and the sun again.”

So they all got up and began to follow the stream. It was very hard work. They had to stoop under branches and climb over branches, and they blundered through great masses of stuff like rhododendrons and tore their clothes and got their feet wet in the stream； and still there was no noise at all except the noise of the stream and the noises they were making themselves. They were beginning to get very tired of it when they noticed a delicious smell, and then a flash of bright color high above them at the top of the right bank.

“I say！” exclaimed Lucy. “I do believe that’s an apple tree.”

It was. They panted up the steep bank, forced their way through some brambles, and found themselves standing round an old tree that was heavy with large yellowish-golden apples as firm and juicy as you could wish to see.

“And this is not the only tree,” said Edmund with his mouth full of apple. “Look there—and there.”

“Why, there are dozens of them,” said Susan, throwing away the core of her first apple and picking her second. “This must have been an orchard—long, long ago, before the place went wild and the wood grew up.”

“Then this was once an inhabited island,” said Peter.

“And what’s that?” said Lucy, pointing ahead.

“By Jove, it’s a wall,” said Peter. “An old stone wall.”

Pressing their way between the laden branches they reached the wall. It was very old, and broken down in places, with moss and wallflowers growing on it, but it was higher than all but the tallest trees. And when they came quite close to it they found a great arch which must once have had a gate in it but was now almost filled up with the largest of all the apple trees. They had to break some of the branches to get past, and when they had done so they all blinked because the daylight became suddenly much brighter. They found themselves in a wide open place with walls all round it. In here there were no trees, only level grass and daisies, and ivy, and gray walls. It was a bright, secret, quiet place, and rather sad； and all four stepped out into the middle of it, glad to be able to straighten their backs and move their limbs freely.

CHAPTER TWO
THE ANCIENT TREASURE HOUSE

“This wasn’t a garden,” said Susan presently. “It was a castle and this must have been the courtyard.”

“I see what you mean,” said Peter. “Yes. That is the remains of a tower. And there is what used to be a flight of steps going up to the top of the walls. And look at those other steps—the broad, shallow ones—going up to that doorway. It must have been the door into the great hall.”

“Ages ago, by the look of it,” said Edmund.

“Yes, ages ago,” said Peter. “I wish we could find out who the people were that lived in this castle； and how long ago.”

“It gives me a queer feeling,” said Lucy.

“Does it, Lu?” said Peter, turning and looking hard at her. “Because it does the same to me. It is the queerest thing that has happened this queer day. I wonder where we are and what it all means?”

While they were talking they had crossed the courtyard and gone through the other doorway into what had once been the hall. This was now very like the courtyard, for the roof had long since disappeared and it was merely another space of grass and daisies, except that it was shorter and narrower and the walls were higher. Across the far end there was a kind of terrace about three feet higher than the rest.

“I wonder, was it really the hall?” said Susan. “What is that terrace kind of thing?”

“Why, you silly,” said Peter （who had become strangely excited）, “don’t you see? That was the dais where the High Table was, where the King and the great lords sat. Anyone would think you had forgotten that we ourselves were once Kings and Queens and sat on a dais just like that, in our great hall.”

“In our castle of Cair Paravel,” continued Susan in a dreamy and rather singsong voice, “at the mouth of the great river of Narnia. How could I forget?”

“How it all comes back！” said Lucy. “We could pretend we were in Cair Paravel now. This hall must have been very like the great hall we feasted in.”

“But unfortunately without the feast,” said Edmund. “It’s getting late, you know. Look how long the shadows are. And have you noticed that it isn’t so hot?”

“We shall need a camp-fire if we’ve got to spend the night here,” said Peter. “I’ve got matches. Let’s go and see if we can collect some dry wood.”

Everyone saw the sense of this, and for the next half-hour they were busy. The orchard through which they had first come into the ruins turned out not to be a good place for firewood. They tried the other side of the castle, passing out of the hall by a little side door into a maze of stony humps and hollows which must once have been passages and smaller rooms but was now all nettles and wild roses. Beyond this they found a wide gap in the castle wall and stepped through it into a wood of darker and bigger trees where they found dead branches and rotten wood and sticks and dry leaves and fir-cones in plenty. They went to and fro with bundles until they had a good pile on the dais. At the fifth journey they found the well, just outside the hall, hidden in weeds, but clean and fresh and deep when they had cleared these away. The remains of a stone pavement ran half-way round it. Then the girls went out to pick some more apples and the boys built the fire, on the dais and fairly close to the corner between two walls, which they thought would be the snuggest and warmest place. They had great difficulty in lighting it and used a lot of matches, but they succeeded in the end. Finally, all four sat down with their backs to the wall and their faces to the fire. They tried roasting some of the apples on the ends of sticks. But roast apples are not much good without sugar, and they are too hot to eat with your fingers till they are too cold to be worth eating. So they had to content themselves with raw apples, which, as Edmund said, made one realize that school suppers weren’t so bad after all—“I shouldn’t mind a good thick slice of bread and margarine this minute,” he added. But the spirit of adventure was rising in them all, and no one really wanted to be back at school.

Shortly after the last apple had been eaten, Susan went out to the well to get another drink. When she came back she was carrying something in her hand.

“Look,” she said in a rather choking kind of voice. “I found it by the well.” She handed it to Peter and sat down. The others thought she looked and sounded as if she might be going to cry. Edmund and Lucy eagerly bent forward to see what was in Peter’s hand—a little, bright thing that gleamed in the firelight.

“Well, I’m—I’m jiggered,” said Peter, and his voice also sounded queer. Then he handed it to the others.

All now saw what it was—a little chess-knight, ordinary in size but extraordinarily heavy because it was made of pure gold； and the eyes in the horse’s head were two tiny little rubies—or rather one was, for the other had been knocked out.

“Why！” said Lucy, “it’s exactly like one of the golden chessmen we used to play with when we were Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel.”

“Cheer up, Su,” said Peter to his other sister.

“I can’t help it,” said Susan. “It brought back—oh, such lovely times. And I remembered playing chess with fauns and good giants, and the mer-people singing in the sea, and my beautiful horse—and—and—”

“Now,” said Peter in a quite different voice, “it’s about time we four started using our brains.”

“What about?” asked Edmund.

“Have none of you guessed where we are?” said Peter.

“Go on, go on,” said Lucy. “I’ve felt for hours that there was some wonderful mystery hanging over this place.”

“Fire ahead, Peter,” said Edmund. “We’re all listening.”

“We are in the ruins of Cair Paravel itself,” said Peter.

“But, I say,” replied Edmund. “I mean, how do you make that out? This place has been ruined for ages. Look at all those big trees growing right up to the gates. Look at the very stones. Anyone can see that nobody has lived here for hundreds of years.”

“I know,” said Peter. “That is the difficulty. But let’s leave that out for the moment. I want to take the points one by one. First point：this hall is exactly the same shape and size as the hall at Cair Paravel. Just picture a roof on this, and a colored pavement instead of grass, and tapestries on the walls, and you get our royal banqueting hall.”

No one said anything.

“Second point,” continued Peter. “The castle well is exactly where our well was, a little to the south of the great hall, and it is exactly the same size and shape.”

Again there was no reply.

“Third point：Susan has just found one of our old chessmen—or something as like one of them as two peas.”

Still nobody answered.

“Fourth point. Don’t you remember—it was the very day before the ambassadors came from the King of Calormen—don’t you remember planting the orchard outside the north gate of Cair Paravel? The greatest of all the wood-people, Pomona herself, came to put good spells on it. It was those very decent little chaps the moles who did the actual digging. Can you have forgotten that funny old Lilygloves, the chief mole, leaning on his spade and saying,‘Believe me, your Majesty, you’ll be glad of these fruit trees one day.’And by Jove he was right.”

“I do！ I do！” said Lucy, and clapped her hands.

“But look here, Peter,” said Edmund. “This must be all rot. To begin with, we didn’t plant the orchard slap up against the gate. We wouldn’t have been such fools.”

“No, of course not,” said Peter. “But it has grown up to the gate since.”

“And for another thing,” said Edmund, “Cair Paravel wasn’t on an island.”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. But it was a what-do-you-call-it, a peninsula. Jolly nearly an island. Couldn’t it have been made an island since our time? Somebody has dug a channel.”

“But half a moment！” said Edmund. “You keep on saying since our time. But it’s only a year ago since we came back from Narnia. And you want to make out that in one year castles have fallen down, and great forests have grown up, and little trees we saw planted ourselves have turned into a big old orchard, and goodness knows what else. It’s all impossible.”

“There’s one thing,” said Lucy. “If this is Cair Paravel there ought to be a door at this end of the dais. In fact we ought to be sitting with our backs against it at this moment. You know—the door that led down to the treasure chamber.”

“I suppose there isn’t a door,” said Peter, getting up.

The wall behind them was a mass of ivy.

“We can soon find out,” said Edmund, taking up one of the sticks that they had laid ready for putting on the fire. He began beating the ivied wall. Tap-tap went the stick against the stone； and again, tap-tap； and then, all at once, boom-boom, with a quite different sound, a hollow, wooden sound.

“Great Scott！” said Edmund.

“We must clear this ivy away,” said Peter.

“Oh, do let’s leave it alone,” said Susan. “We can try it in the morning. If we’ve got to spend the night here I don’t want an open door at my back and a great big black hole that anything might come out of, besides the draught and the damp. And it’ll soon be dark.”

“Susan！ How can you?” said Lucy with a reproachful glance. But both the boys were too much excited to take any notice of Susan’s advice. They worked at the ivy with their hands and with Peter’s pocket-knife till the knife broke. After that they used Edmund’s. Soon the whole place where they had been sitting was covered with ivy, and at last they had the door cleared.

“Locked, of course,” said Peter.

“But the wood’s all rotten,” said Edmund. “We can pull it to bits in no time, and it will make extra firewood. Come on.”

It took them longer than they expected and, before they had done, the great hall had grown dusky and the first star or two had come out overhead. Susan was not the only one who felt a slight shudder as the boys stood above the pile of splintered wood, rubbing the dirt off their hands and staring into the cold, dark opening they had made.

“Now for a torch,” said Peter.

“Oh, what is the good?” said Susan. “And as Edmund said—”

“I’m not saying it now,” Edmund interrupted. “I still don’t understand, but we can settle that later. I suppose you’re coming down, Peter?”

“We must,” said Peter. “Cheer up, Susan. It’s no good behaving like kids now that we are back in Narnia. You’re a Queen here. And anyway no one could go to sleep with a mystery like this on their minds.”

They tried to use long sticks as torches but this was not a success. If you held them with the lighted end up they went out, and if you held them the other way they scorched your hand and the smoke got in your eyes. In the end they had to use Edmund’s electric torch； luckily it had been a birthday present less than a week ago and the battery was almost new. He went first, with the light. Then came Lucy, then Susan, and Peter brought up the rear.

“I’ve come to the top of the steps,” said Edmund.

“Count them,” said Peter.

“One—two—three,” said Edmund, as he went cautiously down, and so up to sixteen. “And this is the bottom,” he shouted back.

“Then it really must be Cair Paravel,” said Lucy. “There were sixteen.” Nothing more was said till all four were standing in a knot together at the foot of the stairway. Then Edmund flashed his torch slowly round.

“O—o—o—oh！” said all the children at once.

For now all knew that it was indeed the ancient treasure chamber of Cair Paravel where they had once reigned as Kings and Queens of Narnia. There was a kind of path up the middle （as it might be in a greenhouse）, and along each side at intervals stood rich suits of armor, like knights guarding the treasures. In between the suits of armor, and on each side of the path, were shelves covered with precious things—necklaces and arm rings and finger rings and golden bowls and dishes and long tusks of ivory, brooches and coronets and chains of gold, and heaps of unset stones lying piled anyhow as if they were marbles or potatoes—diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, emeralds, topazes, and amethysts. Under the shelves stood great chests of oak strengthened with iron bars and heavily padlocked. And it was bitterly cold, and so still that they could hear themselves breathing, and the treasures were so covered with dust that unless they had realized where they were and remembered most of the things, they would hardly have known they were treasures. There was something sad and a little frightening about the place, because it all seemed so forsaken and long ago. That was why nobody said anything for at least a minute.

Then, of course, they began walking about and picking things up to look at. It was like meeting very old friends. If you had been there you would have heard them saying things like, “Oh look！ Our coronation rings—do you remember first wearing this?—Why, this is the little brooch we all thought was lost—I say, isn’t that the armor you wore in the great tournament in the Lone Islands?—do you remember the dwarf making that for me?—do you remember drinking out of that horn?—do you remember, do you remember?”

But suddenly Edmund said, “Look here. We mustn’t waste the battery, goodness knows how often we shall need it. Hadn’t we better take what we want and get out again?”

“We must take the gifts,” said Peter. For long ago at a Christmas in Narnia he and Susan and Lucy had been given certain presents which they valued more than their whole kingdom. Edmund had had no gift, because he was not with them at the time. （This was his own fault, and you can read about it in the other book.）

They all agreed with Peter and walked up the path to the wall at the far end of the treasure chamber, and there, sure enough, the gifts were still hanging. Lucy’s was the smallest for it was only a little bottle. But the bottle was made of diamond instead of glass, and it was still more than half full of the magical cordial which would heal almost every wound and every illness. Lucy said nothing and looked very solemn as she took her gift down from its place and slung the belt over her shoulder and once more felt the bottle at her side where it used to hang in the old days. Susan’s gift had been a bow and arrows and a horn. The bow was still there, and the ivory quiver, full of well-feathered arrows, but—“Oh, Susan,” said Lucy. “Where’s the horn?”

“Oh bother, bother, bother,” said Susan after she had thought for a moment. “I remember now. I took it with me the last day of all, the day we went hunting the White Stag. It must have got lost when we blundered back into that other place—England, I mean.”

Edmund whistled. It was indeed a shattering loss, for this was an enchanted horn and, whenever you blew it, help was certain to come to you, wherever you were.

“Just the sort of thing that might come in handy in a place like this,” said Edmund.

“Never mind,” said Susan, “I’ve still got the bow.” And she took it.

“Won’t the string be perished, Su?” said Peter.

But whether by some magic in the air of the treasure chamber or not, the bow was still in working order. Archery and swimming were the things Susan was good at. In a moment she had bent the bow and then she gave one little pluck to the string. It twanged：a chirruping twang that vibrated through the whole room. And that one small noise brought back the old days to the children’s minds more than anything that had happened yet. All the battles and hunts and feasts came rushing into their heads together.

Then she unstrung the bow again and slung the quiver at her side.

Next, Peter took down his gift—the shield with the great red lion on it, and the royal sword. He blew, and rapped them on the floor, to get off the dust. He fitted the shield on his arm and slung the sword by his side. He was afraid at first that it might be rusty and stick to the sheath. But it was not so. With one swift motion he drew it and held it up, shining in the torchlight.

“It is my sword Rhindon,” he said, “with it I killed the Wolf.” There was a new tone in his voice, and the others all felt that he was really Peter the High King again. Then, after a little pause, everyone remembered that they must save the battery.

They climbed the stair again and made up a good fire and lay down close together for warmth. The ground was very hard and uncomfortable, but they fell asleep in the end.

CHAPTER THREE
THE DWARF

The worst of sleeping out of doors is that you wake up so dreadfully early. And when you wake you have to get up because the ground is so hard that you are uncomfortable. And it makes matters worse if there is nothing but apples for breakfast and you have had nothing but apples for supper the night before. When Lucy had said—truly enough—that it was a glorious morning, there did not seem to be anything else nice to be said. Edmund said what everyone was feeling, “We’ve simply got to get off this island.”

When they had drunk from the well and splashed their faces they all went down the stream again to the shore and stared at the channel which divided them from the mainland.

“We’ll have to swim,” said Edmund.

“It would be all right for Su,” said Peter （Susan had won prizes for swimming at school）. “But I don’t know about the rest of us.” By “the rest of us” he really meant Edmund who couldn’t yet do two lengths at the school baths, and Lucy, who could hardly swim at all.

“Anyway,” said Susan, “there may be currents. Father says it’s never wise to bathe in a place you don’t know.”

“But, Peter,” said Lucy, “look here. I know I can’t swim for nuts at home—in England, I mean. But couldn’t we all swim long ago—if it was long ago—when we were Kings and Queens in Narnia? We could ride then too, and do all sorts of things. Don’t you think—”

“Ah, but we were sort of grown-up then,” said Peter. “We reigned for years and years and learned to do things. Aren’t we just back at our proper ages again now?”

“Oh！” said Edmund in a voice which made everyone stop talking and listen to him.

“I’ve just seen it all,” he said.

“Seen what?” asked Peter.

“Why, the whole thing,” said Edmund. “You know what we were puzzling about last night, that it was only a year ago since we left Narnia but everything looks as if no one had lived in Cair Paravel for hundreds of years? Well, don’t you see? You know that, however long we seemed to have lived in Narnia, when we got back through the wardrobe it seemed to have taken no time at all?”

“Go on,” said Susan. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“And that means,” continued Edmund, “that, once you’re out of Narnia, you have no idea how Narnian time is going. Why shouldn’t hundreds of years have gone past in Narnia while only one year has passed for us in England?”

“By Jove, Ed,” said Peter. “I believe you’ve got it. In that sense it really was hundreds of years ago that we lived in Cair Paravel. And now we’re coming back to Narnia just as if we were Crusaders or Anglo-Saxons or Ancient Britons or someone coming back to modern England?”

“How excited they’ll be to see us—” began Lucy, but at the same moment everyone else said, “Hush！” or “Look！” For now something was happening.

There was a wooded point on the mainland a little to their right, and they all felt sure that just beyond that point must be the mouth of the river. And now, round that point there came into sight a boat. When it had cleared the point, it turned and began coming along the channel toward them. There were two people on board, one rowing, the other sitting in the stern and holding a bundle that twitched and moved as if it were alive. Both these people seemed to be soldiers. They had steel caps on their heads and light shirts of chain-mail. Their faces were bearded and hard. The children drew back from the beach into the wood and watched without moving a finger.

“This’ll do,” said the soldier in the stern when the boat had come about opposite to them.

“What about tying a stone to his feet, Corporal?” said the other, resting on his oars.

“Garn！” growled the other. “We don’t need that, and we haven’t brought one. He’ll drown sure enough without a stone, as long as we’ve tied the cords right.” With these words he rose and lifted his bundle. Peter now saw that it was really alive and was in fact a Dwarf, bound hand and foot but struggling as hard as he could. Next moment he heard a twang just beside his ear, and all at once the soldier threw up his arms, dropping the Dwarf into the bottom of the boat, and fell over into the water. He floundered away to the far bank and Peter knew that Susan’s arrow had struck on his helmet. He turned and saw that she was very pale but was already fitting a second arrow to the string. But it was never used. As soon as he saw his companion fall, the other soldier, with a loud cry, jumped out of the boat on the far side, and lie also floundered through the water （which was apparently just in his depth） and disappeared into the woods of the mainland.

“Quick！ Before she drifts！” shouted Peter. He and Susan, fully dressed as they were, plunged in, and before the water was up to their shoulders their hands were on the side of the boat. In a few seconds they had hauled her to the bank and lifted the Dwarf out, and Edmund was busily engaged in cutting his bonds with the pocket-knife. （Peter’s sword would have been sharper, but a sword is very inconvenient for this sort of work because you can’t hold it anywhere lower than the hilt.） When at last the Dwarf was free, he sat up, rubbed his arms and legs, and exclaimed：

“Well, whatever they say, you don’t feel like ghosts.”

Like most Dwarfs he was very stocky and deep-chested. He would have been about three feet high if he had been standing up, and an immense beard and whiskers of coarse red hair left little of his face to be seen except a beak-like nose and twinkling black eyes.

“Anyway,” he continued, “ghosts or not, you’ve saved my life and I’m extremely obliged to you.”

“But why should we be ghosts?” asked Lucy.

“I’ve been told all my life,” said the Dwarf, “that these woods along the shore were as full of ghosts as they were of trees. That’s what the story is. And that’s why, when they want to get rid of anyone, they usually bring him down here （like they were doing with me） and say they’ll leave him to the ghosts. But I always wondered if they didn’t really drown’em or cut their throats. I never quite believed in the ghosts. But those two cowards you’ve just shot believed all right. They were more frightened of taking me to my death than I was of going！”

“Oh,” said Susan. “So that’s why they both ran away.”

“Eh? What’s that?” said the Dwarf.

“They got away,” said Edmund. “To the mainland.”

“I wasn’t shooting to kill, you know,” said Susan. She would not have liked anyone to think she could miss at such a short range.

“Hm,” said the Dwarf. “That’s not so good. That may mean trouble later on. Unless they hold their tongues for their own sake.”

“What were they going to drown you for?” asked Peter.

“Oh, I’m a dangerous criminal, I am,” said the Dwarf cheerfully. “But that’s a long story. Meantime, I was wondering if perhaps you were going to ask me to breakfast? You’ve no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed.”

“There’s only apples,” said Lucy dolefully.

“Better than nothing, but not so good as fresh fish,” said the Dwarf. “It looks as if I’ll have to ask you to breakfast instead. I saw some fishing tackle in that boat. And anyway, we must take her round to the other side of the island. We don’t want anyone from the mainland coming down and seeing her.”

“I ought to have thought of that myself,” said Peter.

The four children and the Dwarf went down to the water’s edge, pushed off the boat with some difficulty, and scrambled aboard. The Dwarf at once took charge. The oars were of course too big for him to use, so Peter rowed and the Dwarf steered them north along the channel and presently eastward round the tip of the island. From here the children could see right up the river, and all the bays and headlands of the coast beyond it. They thought they could recognize bits of it, but the woods, which had grown up since their time, made everything look very different.

When they had come round into open sea on the east of the island, the Dwarf took to fishing. They had an excellent catch of pavenders, a beautiful rainbow-colored fish which they all remembered eating in Cair Paravel in the old days. When they had caught enough they ran the boat up into a little creek and moored her to a tree. The Dwarf, who was a most capable person （and, indeed, though one meets bad Dwarfs, I never heard of a Dwarf who was a fool）, cut the fish open, cleaned them, and said：

“Now, what we want next is some firewood.”

“We’ve got some up at the castle,” said Edmund.

The Dwarf gave a low whistle. “Beards and bedsteads！” he said. “So there really is a castle, after all?”

“It’s only a ruin,” said Lucy.

The Dwarf stared round at all four of them with a very curious expression on his face. “And who on earth—?” he began, but then broke off and said, “No matter. Breakfast first. But one thing before we go on. Can you lay your hand on your hearts and tell me I’m really alive? Are you sure I wasn’t drowned and we’re not all ghosts together?”

When they had all reassured him, the next question was how to carry the fish. They had nothing to string them on and no basket. They had to use Edmund’s hat in the end because no one else had a hat. He would have made much more fuss about this if he had not by now been so ravenously hungry.

At first the Dwarf did not seem very comfortable in the castle. He kept looking round and sniffing and saying, “H’m. Looks a bit spooky after all. Smells like ghosts, too.” But he cheered up when it came to lighting the fire and showing them how to roast the fresh pavenders in the embers. Eating hot fish with no forks, and one pocket-knife between five people, is a messy business and there were several burnt fingers before the meal was ended； but, as it was now nine o’clock and they had been up since five, nobody minded the burns so much as you might have expected. When everyone had finished off with a drink from the well and an apple or so, the Dwarf produced a pipe about the size of his own arm, filled it, lit it, blew a great cloud of fragrant smoke, and said, “Now.”

“You tell us your story first,” said Peter. “And then we’ll tell you ours.”

“Well,” said the Dwarf, “as you’ve saved my life it is only fair you should have your own way. But I hardly know where to begin. First of all I’m a messenger of King Caspian’s.”

“Who’s he?” asked four voices all at once.

“Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign！” answered the Dwarf. “That is to say, he ought to be King of Narnia and we hope he will be. At present he is only King of us Old Narnians—”

“What do you mean by old Narnians, please?” asked Lucy.

“Why, that’s us,” said the Dwarf. “We’re a kind of rebellion, I suppose.”

“I see,” said Peter. “And Caspian is the chief Old Narnian.”

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” said the Dwarf, scratching his head. “But he’s really a New Narnian himself, a Telmarine, if you follow me.”

“I don’t,” said Edmund.

“It’s worse than the Wars of the Roses,” said Lucy.

“Oh dear,” said the Dwarf. “I’m doing this very badly. Look here：I think I’ll have to go right back to the beginning and tell you how Caspian grew up in his uncle’s court and how he comes to be on our side at all. But it’ll be a long story.”

“All the better,” said Lucy. “We love stories.”

So the Dwarf settled down and told his tale. I shall not give it to you in his words, putting in all the children’s questions and interruptions, because it would take too long and be confusing, and, even so, it would leave out some points that the children only heard later. But the gist of the story, as they knew it in the end, was as follows.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE DWARF TELLS OF PRINCE CASPIAN

Prince Caspian lived in a great castle in the center of Narnia with his uncle, Miraz, the King of Narnia, and his aunt, who had red hair and was called Queen Prunaprismia. His father and mother were dead and the person whom Caspian loved best was his nurse, and though （being a prince） he had wonderful toys which would do almost anything but talk, he liked best the last hour of the day when the toys had all been put back in their cupboards and Nurse would tell him stories.

He did not care much for his uncle and aunt, but about twice a week his uncle would send for him and they would walk up and down together for half an hour on the terrace at the south side of the castle. One day, while they were doing this, the King said to him,

“Well, boy, we must soon teach you to ride and use a sword. You know that your aunt and I have no children, so it looks as if you might have to be King when I’m gone. How shall you like that, eh?”

“I don’t know, Uncle,” said Caspian.

“Don’t know, eh?” said Miraz. “Why, I should like to know what more anyone could wish for！”

“All the same, I do wish,” said Caspian.

“What do you wish?” asked the King.

“I wish—I wish—I wish I could have lived in the Old Days,” said Caspian. （He was only a very little boy at the time.）

Up till now King Miraz had been talking in the tiresome way that some grown-ups have, which makes it quite clear that they are not really interested in what you are saying, but now he suddenly gave Caspian a very sharp look.

“Eh? What’s that?” he said. “What old days do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t you know, Uncle?” said Caspian. “When everything was quite different. When all the animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees. Naiads and Dryads they were called. And there were Dwarfs. And there were lovely little Fauns in all the woods. They had feet like goats. And—”

“That’s all nonsense, for babies,” said the King sternly. “Only fit for babies, do you hear? You’re getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales.”

“Oh, but there were battles and adventures in those days,” said Caspian. “Wonderful adventures. Once there was a White Witch and she made herself Queen of the whole country. And she made it so that it was always winter. And then two boys and two girls came from somewhere and so they killed the Witch and they were made Kings and Queens of Narnia, and their names were Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy. And so they reigned for ever so long and everyone had a lovely time, and it was all because of Aslan—”

“Who’s he?” said Miraz. And if Caspian had been a very little older, the tone of his uncle’s voice would have warned him that it would be wiser to shut up. But he babbled on.

“Oh, don’t you know?” he said. “Aslan is the great Lion who comes from over the sea.”

“Who has been telling you all this nonsense?” said the King in a voice of thunder. Caspian was frightened and said nothing.

“Your Royal Highness,” said King Miraz, letting go of Caspian’s hand, which he had been holding till now, “I insist upon being answered. Look me in the face. Who has been telling you this pack of lies?”

“N—Nurse,” faltered Caspian, and burst into tears.

“Stop that noise,” said his uncle, taking Caspian by the shoulders and giving ham a shake. “Stop it. And never let me catch you talking—or thinking either—about all those silly stories again. There never were those Kings and Queens. How could there be two Kings at the same time? And there’s no such person as Aslan. And there are no such things as lions. And there never was a time when animals could talk. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Uncle,” sobbed Caspian.

“Then let’s have no more of it,” said the King. Then he called to one of the gentlemen-in-waiting who were standing at the far end of the terrace and said in a cold voice, “Conduct His Royal Highness to his apartments and send His Royal Highness’s nurse to me at once.”

Next day Caspian found what a terrible thing he had done, for Nurse had been sent away without even being allowed to say good-bye to him, and he was told he was to have a Tutor.

Caspian missed his nurse very much and shed many tears； and because he was so miserable, he thought about the old stories of Narnia far more than before. He dreamed of Dwarfs and Dryads every night and tried very hard to make the dogs and cats in the castle talk to him. But the dogs only wagged their tails and the cats only purred.

Caspian felt sure that he would hate the new Tutor, buy when the new Tutor arrived about a week later he turns out to be the sort of person it is almost impossible not to like. He was the smallest, and also the fattest, man Caspian had ever seen. He had a long, silvery, pointed beard which came down to his waist, and his face, which was brown and covered with wrinkles, looked very wise, very ugly, and very kind. His voice was grave and his eyes were merry so that, until you got to know him really well, it was hard to know when he was joking and when he was serious. His name was Doctor Cornelius.

Of all his lessons with Doctor Cornelius the one that Caspian liked best was History. Up till now, except for Nurse’s stories, he had known nothing about the History of Narnia, and he was very surprised to learn that the royal family were newcomers in the country.

“It was your Highness’s ancestor, Caspian the First,” said Doctor Cornelius, “who first conquered Narnia and made it his kingdom. It was he who brought all your nation into the country. You are not native Narnians at all. You are all Telmarines—that is, you all came from the Land of Telmar, far beyond the Western Mountains. That is why Caspian the First is called Caspian the Conqueror.”

“Please, Doctor,” asked Caspian one day, “who lived in Narnia before we all came here out of Telmar?”

“No men—or very few—lived in Narnia before the Telmarines took it,” said Doctor Cornelius.

“Then who did my great-great-grandcesters conquer?”

“Whom, not who, your Highness,” said Doctor Cornelius. “Perhaps it is time to turn from History to Grammar.”

“Oh please, not yet,” said Caspian. “I mean, wasn’t there a battle? Why is he called Caspian the Conqueror if there was nobody to fight with him?”

“I said there were very few men in Narnia,” said the Doctor, looking at the little boy very strangely through his great spectacles.

For a moment Caspian was puzzled and then suddenly his heart gave a leap. “Do you mean,” he gasped, “that there were other things? Do you mean it was like in the stories? Were there—?”

“Hush！” said Doctor Cornelius, laying his head very close to Caspian’s. “Not a word more. Don’t you know your Nurse was sent away for telling you about Old Narnia? The King doesn’t like it. If he found me telling you secrets, you’d be whipped and I should have my head cut off.”

“But why?” asked Caspian.

“It is high time we turned to Grammar now,” said Doctor Cornelius in a loud voice. “Will your Royal Highness be pleased to open Pulverulentus Siccus at the fourth page of his Grammatical garden or the Arbour of Accidence pleasantlie open’d to Tender Wits?”

After that it was all nouns and verbs till lunchtime, but I don’t think Caspian learned much. He was too excited. He felt sure that Doctor Cornelius would not have said so much unless he meant to tell him more sooner or later.

In this he was not disappointed. A few days later his Tutor said, “Tonight I am going to give you a lesson in Astronomy. At dead of night two noble planets, Tarva and Alambil, will pass within one degree of each other. Such a conjunction has not occurred for two hundred years, and your Highness will not live to see it again. It will be best if you go to bed a little earlier than usual. When the time of the conjunction draws near I will come and wake you.”

This didn’t seem to have anything to do with Old Narnia, which was what Caspian really wanted to hear about, but getting up in the middle of the night is always interesting and he was moderately pleased. When he went to bed that night, he thought at first that he would not be able to sleep； but he soon dropped off and it seemed only a few minutes before he felt someone gently shaking him.

He sat up in bed and saw that the room was full of moonlight. Doctor Cornelius, muffled in a hooded robe and holding a small lamp in his hand, stood by the bedside. Caspian remembered at once what they were going to do. He got up and put on some clothes. Although it was a summer night he felt colder than he had expected and was quite glad when the Doctor wrapped him in a robe like his own and gave him a pair of warm, soft buskins for his feet. A moment later, both muffled so that they could hardly be seen in the dark corridors, and both shod so that they made almost no noise, master and pupil left the room.

Caspian followed the Doctor through many passages and up several staircases, and at last, through a little door in a turret, they came out upon the leads. On one side were the battlements, on the other a steep roof； below them, all shadowy and shimmery, the castle gardens； above them, stars and moon. Presently they came to another door, which led into the great central tower of the whole castle. Doctor Cornelius unlocked it and they began to climb the dark winding stair of the tower. Caspian was becoming excited； he had never been allowed up this stair before.

It was long and steep, but when they came out on the roof of the tower and Caspian had got his breath, he felt that it had been well worth it. Away on his right he could see, rather indistinctly, the Western Mountains. On his left was the gleam of the Great River, and everything was so quiet that he could hear the sound of the waterfall at Beaversdam, a mile away. There was no difficulty in picking out the two stars they had come to see. They hung rather low in the southern sky, almost as bright as two little moons and very close together.

“Are they going to have a collision?” he asked in an awestruck voice.

“Nay, dear Prince,” said the Doctor （and he too spoke in a whisper）. “The great lords of the upper sky know the steps of their dance too well for that. Look well upon them. Their meeting is fortunate and means some great good for the sad realm of Narnia. Tarva, the Lord of Victory, salutes Alambil, the Lady of Peace. They are just coming to their nearest.”

“It’s a pity that tree gets in the way,” said Caspian. “We’d really see better from the West Tower, though it is not so high.”

Doctor Cornelius said nothing for about two minutes, but stood still with his eyes fixed on Tarva and Alambil. Then he drew a deep breath and turned to Caspian.

“There,” he said. “You have seen what no man now alive has seen, nor will see again. And you are right. We should have seen it even better from the smaller tower. I brought you here for another reason.”

Caspian looked up at him, but the Doctor’s hood concealed most of his face.

“The virtue of this tower,” said Doctor Cornelius, “is that we have six empty rooms beneath us, and a long stair, and the door at the bottom of the stair is locked. We cannot be overheard.”

“Are you going to tell me what you wouldn’t tell me the other day?” said Caspian.

“I am,” said the Doctor. “But remember. You and I must never talk about these things except here—on the very top of the Great Tower.”

“No. That’s a promise,” said Caspian. “But do go on, please.”

“Listen,” said the Doctor. “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts. It was against these that the first Caspian fought. It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them. The King does not allow them to be spoken of.”

“Oh, I do wish we hadn’t,” said Caspian. “And I am glad it was all true, even if it is all over.”

“Many of your race wish that in secret,” said Doctor Cornelius.

“But, Doctor,” said Caspian, “why do you say my race? After all, I suppose you’re a Telmarine too.”

“Am I?” said the Doctor.

“Well, you’re a Man anyway,” said Caspian.

“Am I?” repeated the Doctor in a deeper voice, at the same moment throwing back his hood so that Caspian could see his face clearly in the moonlight.

All at once Caspian realized the truth and felt that he ought to have realized it long before. Doctor Cornelius was so small, and so fat, and had such a very long beard. Two thoughts came into his head at the same moment. One was a thought of terror—“He’s not a real man, not a man at all, he’s a Dwarf, and he’s brought me up here to kill me.” The other was sheer delight—“There are real Dwarfs still, and I’ve seen one at last.”

“So you’ve guessed it in the end,” said Doctor Cornelius. “Or guessed it nearly right. I’m not a pure Dwarf. I have human blood in me too. Many Dwarfs escaped in the great battles and lived on, shaving their beards and wearing high-heeled shoes and pretending to be men. They have mixed with your Telmarines. I am one of those, only a half-Dwarf, and if any of my kindred, the true Dwarfs, are still alive anywhere in the world, doubtless they would despise me and call me a traitor. But never in all these years have we forgotten our own people and all the other happy creatures of Narnia, and the long-lost days of freedom.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Caspian. “It wasn’t my fault, you know.”

“I am not saying these things in blame of you, dear Prince,” answered the Doctor. “You may well ask why I say them at all. But I have two reasons. Firstly, because my old heart has carried these secret memories so long that it aches with them and would burst if I did not whisper them to you. But secondly, for this：that when you become King you may help us, for I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the Old Things.”

“I do, I do,” said Caspian. “But how can I help?”

“You can be kind to the poor remnants of the Dwarf people, like myself. You can gather learned magicians and try to find a way of awaking the trees once more. You can search through all the nooks and wild places of the land to see if any Fauns or Talking Beasts or Dwarfs are perhaps still alive in hiding.”

“Do you think there are any?” asked Caspian eagerly.

“I don’t know—I don’t know,” said the Doctor with a deep sigh. “Sometimes I am afraid there can’t be. I have been looking for traces of them all my life. Sometimes I have thought I heard a Dwarf-drum in the mountains. Sometimes at night, in the woods, I thought I had caught a glimpse of Fauns and Satyrs dancing a long way off； but when I came to the place, there was never anything there. I have often despaired； but something always happens to start me hoping again. I don’t know. But at least you can try to be a King like the High King Peter of old, and not like your uncle.”

“Then it’s true about the Kings and Queens too, and about the White Witch?” said Caspian.

“Certainly it is true,” said Cornelius. “Their reign was the Golden Age in Narnia and the land has never forgotten them.”

“Did they live in this castle, Doctor?”

“Nay, my dear,” said the old man. “This castle is a thing of yesterday. Your great-great-grandfather built it. But when the two sons of Adam and the two daughters of Eve were made Kings and Queens of Narnia by Aslan himself, they lived in the castle of Cair Paravel. No man alive has seen that blessed place and perhaps even the ruins of it have now vanished. But we believe it was far from here, down at the mouth of the Great River, on the very shore of the sea.”

“Ugh！” said Caspian with a shudder. “Do you mean in the Black Woods? Where all the—the—you know, the ghosts live?”

“Your Highness speaks as you have been taught,” said the Doctor. “But it is all lies. There are no ghosts there. That is a story invented by the Telmarines. Your Kings are in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget that in all stories Aslan comes from over the sea. They don’t want to go near it and they don’t want anyone else to go near it. So they have let great woods grow up to cut their people off from the coast. But because they have quarrelled with the trees they are afraid of the woods. And because they are afraid of the woods they imagine that they are full of ghosts. And the Kings and great men, hating both the sea and the wood, partly believe these stories, and partly encourage them. They feel safer if no one in Narnia dares to go down to the coast and look out to sea toward Aslan’s land and the morning and the eastern end of the world.”

There was a deep silence between them for a few minutes. Then Doctor Cornelius said, “Come. We have been here long enough. It is time to go down and to bed.”

“Must we?” said Caspian. “I’d like to go on talking about these things for hours and hours and hours.”

“Someone might begin looking for us, if we did that,” said Doctor Cornelius.

CHAPTER FIVE
CASPIAN’S ADVENTURE IN THE MOUNTAINS

After this, Caspian and his Tutor had many more secret conversations on the top of the Great Tower, and at each conversation Caspian learned more about Old Narnia, so that thinking and dreaming about the old days, and longing that they might come back, filled nearly all his spare hours. But of course he had not many hours to spare, for now his education was beginning in earnest. He learned sword-fighting and riding, swimming and diving, how to shoot with the bow and play on the recorder and the theorbo, how to hunt the stag and cut him up when he was dead, besides Cosmography, Rhetoric, Heraldry, Versification, and of course History, with a little Law, Physic, Alchemy, and Astronomy. Of Magic he learned only the theory, for Doctor Cornelius said the practical part was not proper study for princes. “And I myself,” he added, “am only a very imperfect magician and can do only the smallest experiments.” Of Navigation（“Which is a noble and heroical art,” said the Doctor） he was taught nothing, because King Miraz disapproved of ships and the sea.

He also learned a great deal by using his own eyes and ears. As a little boy he had often wondered why he disliked his aunt, Queen Prunaprismia； he now saw that it was because she disliked him. He also began to see that Narnia was an unhappy country. The taxes were high and the laws were stern and Miraz was a cruel man.

After some years there came a time when the Queen seemed to be ill and there was a great deal of bustle and pother about her in the castle and doctors came and the courtiers whispered. This was in early summertime. And one night, while all this fuss was going on, Caspian was unexpectedly wakened by Doctor Cornelius after he had been only a few hours in bed.

“Are we going to do a little Astronomy, Doctor?” said Caspian.

“Hush！” said the Doctor. “Trust me and do exactly as I tell you. Put on all your clothes； you have a long journey before you.”

Caspian was very surprised, but he had learned to have confidence in his Tutor and he began doing what he was told at once. When he was dressed the Doctor said, “I have a wallet for you. We must go into the next room and fill it with victuals from your Highness’s supper table.”

“My gentlemen-in-waiting will be there,” said Caspian.

“They are fast asleep and will not wake,” said the Doctor. “I am a very minor magician but I can at least contrive a charmed sleep.”

They went into the antechamber and there, sure enough, the two gentlemen-in-waiting were, sprawling on chairs and snoring hard. Doctor Cornelius quickly cut up the remains of a cold chicken and some slices of venison and put them, with bread and an apple or so and a little flask of good wine, into the wallet which he then gave to Caspian. It fitted on by a strap over Caspian’s shoulder, like a satchel you would use for taking books to school.

“Have you your sword?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes,” said Caspian.

“Then put this mantle over all to hide the sword and the wallet. That’s right. And now we must go to the Great Tower and talk.”

When they had reached the top of the tower （it was a cloudy night, not at all like the night when they had seen the conjunction of Tarva and Alambil） Doctor Cornelius said,

“Dear Prince, you must leave this castle at once and go to seek your fortune in the wide world. Your life is in danger here.”

“Why?” asked Caspian.

“Because you are the true King of Narnia：Caspian the Tenth, the true son and heir of Caspian the Ninth. Long life to your Majesty”—and suddenly, to Caspian’s great surprise, the little man dropped down on one knee and kissed his hand.

“What does it all mean? I don’t understand,” said Caspian.

“I wonder you have never asked me before,” said the Doctor, “why, being the son of King Caspian, you are not King Caspian yourself. Everyone except your Majesty knows that Miraz is a usurper. When he first began to rule he did not even pretend to be the King：he called himself Lord Protector. But then your royal mother died, the good Queen and the only Telmarine who was ever kind to me. And then, one by one, all the great lords, who had known your father, died or disappeared. Not by accident, either. Miraz weeded them out. Belisar and Uvilas were shot with arrows on a hunting party：by chance, it was pretended. All the great house of the Passarids he sent to fight giants on the northern frontier till one by one they fell. Arlian and Erimon and a dozen more he executed for treason on a false charge. The two brothers of Beaversdam he shut up as madmen. And finally he persuaded the seven noble lords, who alone among all the Telmarines did not fear the sea, to sail away and look for new lands beyond the Eastern Ocean, and, as he intended, they never came back. And when there was no one left who could speak a word for you, then his flatterers （as he had instructed them） begged him to become King. And of course he did.”

“Do you mean he now wants to kill me too?” said Caspian.

“That is almost certain,” said Doctor Cornelius.

“But why now?” said Caspian. “I mean, why didn’t he do it long ago if he wanted to? And what harm have I done him?”

“He has changed his mind about you because of something that happened only two hours ago. The Queen has had a son.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” said Caspian.

“Don’t see！” exclaimed the Doctor. “Have all my lessons in History and Politics taught you no more than that? Listen. As long as he had no children of his own, he was willing enough that you should be King after he died. He may not have cared much about you, but he would rather you should have the throne than a stranger. Now that he has a son of his own he will want his own son to be the next King. You are in the way. He’ll clear you out of the way.”

“Is he really as bad as that?” said Caspian. “Would he really murder me?”

“He murdered your Father,” said Doctor Cornelius.

Caspian felt very queer and said nothing.

“I can tell you the whole story,” said the Doctor. “But not now. There is no time. You must fly at once.”

“You’ll come with me?” said Caspian.

“I dare not,” said the Doctor. “It would make your danger greater. Two are more easily tracked than one. Dear Prince, dear King Caspian, you must be very brave. You must go alone and at once. Try to get across the southern border to the court of King Nain of Archenland. He will be good to you.”

“Shall I never see you again?” said Caspian in a quavering voice.

“I hope so, dear King,” said the Doctor. “What friend have I in the wide world except your Majesty? And I have a little magic. But in the meantime, speed is everything. Here are two gifts before you go. This is a little purse of gold—alas, all the treasure in this castle should be your own by rights. And here is something far better.”

He put in Caspian’s hands something which he could hardly see but which he knew by the feel to be a horn.

“That,” said Doctor Cornelius, “is the greatest and most sacred treasure of Narnia. Many terrors I endured, many spells did I utter, to find it, when I was still young. It is the magic horn of Queen Susan herself which she left behind her when she vanished from Narnia at the end of the Golden Age. It is said that whoever blows it shall have strange help—no one can say how strange. It may have the power to call Queen Lucy and King Edmund and Queen Susan and High King Peter back from the past, and they will set all to rights. It may be that it will call up Asian himself. Take it, King Caspian, but do not use it except at your greatest need. And now, haste, haste, haste. The little door at the very bottom of the Tower, the door into the garden, is unlocked. There we must part.”

“Can I get my horse Destrier?” said Caspian.

“He is already saddled and waiting for you just at the corner of the orchard.”

During the long climb down the winding staircase Cornelius whispered many more words of direction and advice. Caspian’s heart was sinking, but he tried to take it all in. Then came the fresh air in the garden, a fervent handclasp with the Doctor, a run across the lawn, a welcoming whinny from Destrier, and so King Caspian the Tenth left the castle of his fathers. Looking back, he saw fireworks going up to celebrate the birth of the new prince.

All night he rode southward, choosing by-ways and bridle paths through woods as long as he was in country that he knew； but afterward he kept to the high road. Destrier was as excited as his master at this unusual journey, and Caspian, though tears had come into his eyes at saying good-bye to Doctor Cornelius, felt brave and, in a way, happy, to think that he was King Caspian riding to seek adventures, with his sword on his left hip and Queen Susan’s magic horn on his right. But when day came, with a sprinkle of rain, and he looked about him and saw on every side unknown woods, wild heaths, and blue mountains, he thought how large and strange the world was and felt frightened and small.

As soon as it was full daylight he left the road and found an open grassy place amid a wood where he could rest. He took off Destrier’s bridle and let him graze, ate some cold chicken and drank a little wine, and presently fell asleep. It was late afternoon when he awoke. He ate a morsel and continued his journey, still southward, by many unfrequented lanes. He was now in a land of hills, going up and down, but always more up than down. From every ridge he could see the mountains growing bigger and blacker ahead. As the evening closed in, he was riding their lower slopes. The wind rose. Soon rain fell in torrents. Destrier became uneasy； there was thunder in the air. And now they entered a dark and seemingly endless pine forest, and all the stories Caspian had ever heard of trees being unfriendly to Man crowded into his mind. He remembered that he was, after all, a Telmarine, one of the race who cut down trees wherever they could and were at war with all wild things； and though he himself might be unlike other Telmarines, the trees could not be expected to know this.

Nor did they. The wind became a tempest, the woods roared and creaked all round them. There came a crash. A tree fell right across the road just behind him. “Quiet, Destrier, quiet！” said Caspian, patting his horse’s neck； but he was trembling himself and knew that he had escaped death by an inch. Lightning flashed and a great crack of thunder seemed to break the sky in two just overhead. Destrier bolted in good earnest. Caspian was a good rider, but he had not the strength to hold him back. He kept his seat, but he knew that his life hung by a thread during the wild career that followed. Tree after tree rose up before them in the dusk and was only just avoided. Then, almost too suddenly to hurt （and yet it did hurt him too） something struck Caspian on the forehead and he knew no more.

When he came to himself he was lying in a firelit place with bruised limbs and a bad headache. Low voices were speaking close at hand.

“And now,” said one, “before it wakes up we must decide what to do with it.”

“Kill it,” said another. “We can’t let it live. It would betray us.”

“We ought to have killed it at once, or else let it alone,” said a third voice. “We can’t kill it now. Not after we’ve taken it in and bandaged its head and all. It would be murdering a guest.”

“Gentlemen,” said Caspian in a feeble voice, “whatever you do to me, I hope you will be kind to my poor horse.”

“Your horse had taken flight long before we found you,” said the first voice—a curiously husky, earthy voice, as Caspian now noticed.

“Now don’t let it talk you round with its pretty words,” said the second voice. “I still say—”

“Horns and halibuts！” exclaimed the third voice. “Of course we’re not going to murder it. For shame, Nikabrik. What do you say, Trufflehunter? What shall we do with it?”

“I shall give it a drink,” said the first voice, presumably Trufflehunter’s. A dark shape approached the bed. Caspian felt an arm slipped gently under his shoulders—if it was exactly an arm. The shape somehow seemed wrong. The face that bent toward him seemed wrong too. He got the impression that it was very hairy and very long nosed, and there were odd white patches on each side of it. “It’s a mask of some sort,” thought Caspian. “Or perhaps I’m in a fever and imagining it all.” A cupful of something sweet and hot was set to his lips and he drank. At that moment one of the others poked the fire. A blaze sprang up and Caspian almost screamed with the shock as the sudden light revealed the face that was looking into his own. It was not a man’s face but a badger’s, though larger and friendlier and more intelligent than the face of any badger he had seen before. And it had certainly been talking. He saw, too, that he was on a bed of heather, in a cave. By the fire sat two little bearded men, so much wilder and shorter and hairier and thicker than Doctor Cornelius that he knew them at once for real Dwarfs, ancient Dwarfs with not a drop of human blood in their veins. And Caspian knew that he had found the Old Narnians at last. Then his head began to swim again.

In the next few days he learned to know them by names. The Badger was called Trufflehunter； he was the oldest and kindest of the three. The Dwarf who had wanted to kill Caspian was a sour Black Dwarf （that is, his hair and beard were black, and thick and hard like horsehair）. His name was Nikabrik. The other Dwarf was a Red Dwarf with hair rather like a Fox’s and he was called Trumpkin.

“And now,” said Nikabrik on the first evening when Caspian was well enough to sit up and talk, “we still have to decide what to do with this Human. You two think you’ve done it a great kindess by not letting me kill it. But I suppose the upshot is that we have to keep it a prisoner for life. I’m certainly not going to let it go alive—to go back to its own kind and betray us all.”

“Bulbs and bolsters！ Nikabrik,” said Trumpkin. “Why need you talk so unhandsomely? It isn’t the creature’s fault that it bashed its head against a tree outside our hole. And I don’t think it looks like a traitor.”

“I say,” said Caspian, “you haven’t yet found out whether I want to go back. I don’t. I want to stay with you—if you’ll let me. I’ve been looking for people like you all my life.”

“That’s a likely story,” growled Nikabrik. “You’re a Telmarine and a Human, aren’t you? Of course you want to go back to your own kind.”

“Well, even if I did, I couldn’t,” said Caspian. “I was flying for my life when I had my accident. The King wants to kill me. If you’d killed me, you’d have done the very thing to please him.”

“Well now,” said Trufflehunter, “you don’t say so！”

“Eh?” said Trumpkin. “What’s that? What have you been doing, Human, to fall foul of Miraz at your age?”

“He’s my uncle,” began Caspian, when Nikabrik jumped up with his hand on his dagger.

“There you are！” he cried. “Not only a Telmarine but close kin and heir to our greatest enemy. Are you still mad enough to let this creature live?” He would have stabbed Caspian then and there, if the Badger and Trumpkin had not got in the way and forced him back to his seat and held him down.

“Now, once and for all, Nikabrik,” said Trumpkin. “Will you contain yourself, or must Trufflehunter and I sit on your head?”

Nikabrik sulkily promised to behave, and the other two asked Caspian to tell his whole story. When he had done so there was a moment’s silence.

“This is the queerest thing I ever heard,” said Trumpkin.

“I don’t like it,” said Nikabrik. “I didn’t know there were stories about us still told among the Humans. The less they know about us the better. That old nurse, now. She’d better have held her tongue. And it’s all mixed up with that Tutor：a renegade Dwarf. I hate’em. I hate’em worse than the Humans. You mark my words—no good will come of it.”

“Don’t you go talking about things you don’t understand, Nikabrik,” said Truff lehunter. “You Dwarfs are as forgetful and changeable as the Humans themselves. I’m a beast, I am, and a Badger what’s more. We don’t change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we’ve got here：a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.”

“Whistles and whirligigs！ Trufflehunter,” said Trumpkin. “You don’t mean you want to give the country to Humans?”

“I said nothing about that,” answered the Badger. “It’s not Men’s country （who should know that better than me?） but it’s a country for a man to be King of. We badgers have long enough memories to know that. Why, bless us all, wasn’t the High King Peter a Man?”

“Do you believe all those old stories?” asked Trumpkin.

“I tell you, we don’t change, we beasts,” said Trufflehunter. “We don’t forget. I believe in the High King Peter and the rest that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I believe in Aslan himself.”

“As firmly as that, I dare say,” said Trumpkin. “But who believes in Aslan nowadays?”

“I do,” said Caspian. “And if I hadn’t believed in him before, I would now. Back there among the Humans the people who laughed at Aslan would have laughed at stories about Talking Beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan：but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are.”

“That’s right,” said Trufflehunter. “You’re right, King Caspian. And as long as you will be true to Old Narnia you shall be my King, whatever they say. Long life to your Majesty.”

“You make me sick, Badger,” growled Nikabrik. “The High King Peter and the rest may have been Men, but they were a different sort of Men. This is one of the cursed Telmarines. He has hunted beasts for sport. Haven’t you, now?” he added, rounding suddenly on Caspian.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I have,” said Caspian. “But they weren’t Talking Beasts.”

“It’s all the same thing,” said Nikabrik.

“No, no, no,” said Trufflehunter. “You know it isn’t. You know very well that the beasts in Narnia nowadays are different and are no more than the poor dumb, witless creatures you’d find in Calormen or Telmar. They’re smaller too. They’re far more different from us than the half-Dwarfs are from you.”

There was a great deal more talk, but it all ended with the agreement that Caspian should stay and even the promise that, as soon as he was able to go out, he should be taken to see what Trumpkin called “the Others”； for apparently in these wild parts all sorts of creatures from the Old Days of Narnia still lived on in hiding.

CHAPTER SIX
THE PEOPLE THAT LIVED IN HIDING

Now began the happiest times that Caspian had ever known. On a fine summer morning when the dew lay on the grass he set off with the Badger and the two Dwarfs, up through the forest to a high saddle in the mountains and down on to their sunny southern slopes where one looked across the green wolds of Archenland.

“We will go first to the Three Bulgy Bears,” said Trumpkin.

They came in a glade to an old hollow oak tree covered with moss, and Trufflehunter tapped with his paw three times on the trunk and there was no answer. Then he tapped again and a woolly sort of voice from inside said, “Go away. It’s not time to get up yet.” But when he tapped the third time there was a noise like a small earthquake from inside and a sort of door opened and out came three brown bears, very bulgy indeed and blinking their little eyes. And when everything had been explained to them （which took a long time because they were so sleepy） they said, just as Trufflehunter had said, that a son of Adam ought to be King of Narnia and all kissed Caspian—very wet, snuffly kisses they were—and offered him some honey. Caspian did not really want honey, without bread, at that time in the morning, but he thought it polite to accept. It took him a long time afterward to get unsticky.

After that they went on till they came among tall beech trees and Trufflehunter called out, “Pattertwig！ Pattertwig！ Pattertwig！” and almost at once, bounding down from branch to branch till he was just above their heads, came the most magnificent red squirrel that Caspian had ever seen. He was far bigger than the ordinary dumb squirrels which he had sometimes seen in the castle gardens； indeed he was nearly the size of a terrier and the moment you looked in his face you saw that he could talk. Indeed the difficulty was to get him to stop talking, for, like all squirrels, he was a chatterer. He welcomed Caspian at once and asked if he would like a nut and Caspian said thanks, he would. But as Pattertwig went bounding away to fetch it, Trufflehunter whispered in Caspian’s ear, “Don’t look. Look the other way. It’s very bad manners among squirrels to watch anyone going to his store or to look as if you wanted to know where it was.” Then Pattertwig came back with the nut and Caspian ate it and after that Pattertwig asked if he could take any messages to other friends. “For I can go nearly everywhere without setting foot to ground,” he said. Trufflehunter and the Dwarfs thought this a very good idea and gave Pattertwig messages to all sorts of people with queer names telling them all to come to a feast and council on Dancing Lawn at midnight three nights ahead. “And you’d better tell the three Bulgies too,” added Trumpkin. “We forgot to mention it to them.”

Their next visit was to the Seven Brothers of Shuddering Wood. Trumpkin led the way back to the saddle and then down eastward on the northern slope of the mountains till they came to a very solemn place among rocks and fir trees. They went very quietly and presently Caspian could feel the ground shake under his feet as if someone were hammering down below. Trumpkin went to a flat stone about the size of the top of a water-butt, and stamped on it with his foot. After a long pause it was moved away by someone or something underneath, and there was a dark, round hole with a good deal of heat and steam coming out of it and in the middle of the hole the head of a Dwarf very like Trumpkin himself. There was a long talk here and the dwarf seemed more suspicious than the Squirrel or the Bulgy Bears had been, but in the end the whole party were invited to come down. Caspian found himself descending a dark stairway into the earth, but when he came to the bottom he saw firelight. It was the light of a furnace. The whole place was a smithy. A subterranean stream ran past on one side of it. Two Dwarfs were at the bellows, another was holding a piece of red-hot metal on the anvil with a pair of tongs, a fourth was hammering it, and two, wiping their horny little hands on a greasy cloth, were coming forward to meet the visitors. It took some time to satisfy them that Caspian was a friend and not an enemy, but when they did, they all cried—“Long live the King,” and their gifts were noble—mail shirts and helmets and swords for Caspian and Trumpkin and Nikabrik. The Badger could have had the same if he had liked, but he said he was a beast, he was, and if his claws and teeth could not keep his skin whole, it wasn’t worth keeping. The workmanship of the arms was far finer than any Caspian had ever seen, and he gladly accepted the Dwarf-made sword instead of his own, which looked, in comparison, as feeble as a toy and as clumsy as a stick. The seven brothers （who were all Red Dwarfs） promised to come to the feast at Dancing Lawn.

A little farther on, in a dry, rocky ravine they reached the cave of five Black Dwarfs. They looked suspiciously at Caspian, but in the end the eldest of them said, “If he is against Miraz, we’ll have him for King.” And the next oldest said, “Shall we go farther up for you, up to the crags? There’s an Ogre or two and a Hag that we could introduce you to, up there.”

“Certainly not,” said Caspian.

“I should think not, indeed,” said Trufflehunter. “We want none of that sort on our side.” Nikabrik disagreed with this, but Trumpkin and the Badger overruled him. It gave Caspian a shock to realize that the horrible creatures out of the old stories, as well as the nice ones, had some descendants in Narnia still.

“We should not have Aslan for friend if we brought in that rabble,” said Trufflehunter as they came away from the cave of the Black Dwarfs.

“Oh, Aslan！” said Trumpkin, cheerily but contemptuously. “What matters much more is that you wouldn’t have me.”

“Do you believe in Aslan?” said Caspian to Nikabrik.

“I’ll believe in anyone or anything,” said Nikabrik, “that’ll batter these cursed Telmarine barbarians to pieces or drive them out of Narnia. Anyone or anything, Aslan or the White Witch, do you understand?”

“Silence, silence,” said Trufflehunter. “You do not know what you are saying. She was a worse enemy than Miraz and all his race.”

“Not to Dwarfs, she wasn’t,” said Nikabrik.

Their next visit was a pleasanter one. As they came lower down, the mountains opened out into a great glen or wooded gorge with a swift river running at the bottom. The open places near the river’s edge were a mass of foxgloves and wild roses and the air was buzzing with bees. Here Trufflehunter called again, “Glenstorm！ Glenstorm！” and after a pause Caspian heard the sound of hoofs. It grew louder till the valley trembled and at last, breaking and trampling the thickets, there came in sight the noblest creatures that Caspian had yet seen, the great Centaur Glenstorm and his three sons. His flanks were glossy chestnut and the beard that covered his broad chest was golden-red. He was a prophet and a star-gazer and knew what they had come about.

“Long live the King,” he cried. “I and my sons are ready for war. When is the battle to be joined?”

Up till now neither Caspian nor the others had really been thinking of a war. They had some vague idea, perhaps, of an occasional raid on some Human farmstead or of attacking a party of hunters, if it ventured too far into these southern wilds. But, in the main, they had thought only of living to themselves in woods and caves and building up an attempt at Old Narnia in hiding. As soon as Glenstorm had spoken everyone felt much more serious.

“Do you mean a real war to drive Miraz out of Narnia?” asked Caspian.

“What else?” said the Centaur. “Why else does your Majesty go clad in mail and girt with sword?”

“Is it possible, Glenstorm?” said the Badger.

“The time is ripe,” said Glenstorm. “I watch the skies, Badger, for it is mine to watch, as it is yours to remember. Tarva and Alambil have met in the halls of high heaven, and on earth a son of Adam has once more arisen to rule and name the creatures. The hour has struck. Our council at the Dancing Lawn must be a council of war.” He spoke in such a voice that neither Caspian nor the others hesitated for a moment：it now seemed to them quite possible that they might win a war and quite certain that they must wage one.

As it was now past the middle of the day, they rested with the Centaurs and ate such food as the centaurs provided-cakes of oaten meal, and apples, and herbs, and wine, and cheese.

The next place they were to visit was quite near at hand, but they had to go a long way round in order to avoid a region in which Men lived. It was well into the afternoon before they found themselves in level fields, warm between hedgerows. There Trufflehunter called at the mouth of a little hole in a green bank and out popped the last thing Caspian expected—a Talking Mouse. He was of course bigger than a common mouse, well over a foot high when he stood on his hind legs, and with ears nearly as long as （though broader than） a rabbit’s. His name was Reepicheep and he was a gay and martial mouse. He wore a tiny little rapier at his side and twirled his long whiskers as if they were a moustache. “There are twelve of us, Sire,” he said with a dashing and graceful bow, “and I place all the resources of my people unreservedly at your Majesty’s disposal.” Caspian tried hard （and successfully） not to laugh, but he couldn’t help thinking that Reepicheep and all his people could very easily be put in a washing basket and carried home on one’s back.

It would take too long to mention all the creatures whom Caspian met that day-Clodsley Shovel the Mole, the three Hardbiters （who were badgers like Trufflehunter）, Camillo the Hare, and Hogglestock the Hedgehog. They rested at last beside a well at the edge of a wide and level circle of grass, bordered with tall elms which now threw long shadows across it, for the sun was setting, the daisies closing, and the rooks flying home to bed. Here they supped on food they had brought with them and Trumpkin lit his pipe （Nikabrik was not a smoker）.

“Now,” said the Badger, “if only we could wake the spirits of these trees and this well, we should have done a good day’s work.”

“Can’t we?” said Caspian.

“No,” said Trufflehunter. “We have no power over them. Since the Humans came into the land, felling forests and defiling streams, the Dryads and Naiads have sunk into a deep sleep. Who knows if ever they will stir again? And that is a great loss to our side. The Telmarines are horribly afraid of the woods, and once the Trees moved in anger, our enemies would go mad with fright and be chased out of Narnia as quick as their legs could carry them.”

“What imaginations you Animals have！” said Trumpkin, who didn’t believe in such things. “But why stop at Trees and Waters? Wouldn’t it be even nicer if the stones started throwing themselves at old Miraz?”

The Badger only grunted at this, and after that there was such a silence that Caspian had nearly dropped off to sleep when he thought he heard a faint musical sound from the depth of the woods at his back. Then he thought it was only a dream and turned over again； but as soon as his ear touched the ground he felt or heard （it was hard to tell which） a faint beating or drumming. He raised his head. The beating noise at once became fainter, but the music returned, clearer this time. It was like flutes. He saw that Trufflehunter was sitting up staring into the wood. The moon was bright； Caspian had been asleep longer than he thought. Nearer and nearer came the music, a tune wild and yet dreamy, and the noise of many light feet, till at last, out from the wood into the moonlight, came dancing shapes such as Caspian had been thinking of all his life. They were not much taller than dwarfs, but far slighter and more graceful. Their curly heads had little horns, the upper part of their bodies gleamed naked in the pale light, but their legs and feet were those of goats.

“Fauns！” cried Caspian, jumping up, and in a moment they were all round him. It took next to no time to explain the whole situation to them and they accepted Caspian at once. Before he knew what he was doing he found himself joining in the dance. Trumpkin, with heavier and jerkier movements, did likewise and even Trufflehunter hopped and lumbered about as best he could. Only Nikabrik stayed where he was, looking on in silence. The Fauns footed it all round Caspian to their reedy pipes. Their strange faces, which seemed mournful and merry all at once, looked into his； dozens of Fauns, Mentius and Obentinus and Dumnus, Voluns, Voltinus, Girbius, Nimienus, Nausus, and Oscuns. Pattertwig had sent them all.

When Caspian awoke next morning he could hardly believe that it had not all been a dream； but the grass was covered with little cloven hoof-marks.

CHAPTER SEVEN
OLD NARNIA IN DANGER

The place where they had met the Fauns was, of course, Dancing Lawn itself, and here Caspian and his friends remained till the night of the great Council. To sleep under the stars, to drink nothing but well water and to live chiefly on nuts and wild fruit, was a strange experience for Caspian after his bed with silken sheets in a tapestried chamber at the castle, with meals laid out on gold and silver dishes in the anteroom, and attendants ready at his call. But he had never enjoyed himself more. Never had sleep been more refreshing nor food tasted more savoury, and he began already to harden and his face wore a kinglier look.

When the great night came, and his various strange subjects came stealing into the lawn by ones and twos and threes or by sixes and sevens—the moon then shining almost at her full—his heart swelled as he saw their numbers and heard their greetings. All whom he had met were there：Bulgy Bears and Red Dwarfs and Black Dwarfs, Moles and Badgers, Hares and Hedgehogs, and others whom he had not yet seen—five Satyrs as red as foxes, the whole contingent of Talking Mice, armed to the teeth and following a shrill trumpet, some Owls, the Old Raven of Ravenscaur. Last of all （and this took Caspian’s breath away）, with the Centaurs came a small but genuine Giant, Wimbleweather of Deadman’s Hill, carrying on his back a basketful of rather sea-sick Dwarfs who had accepted his offer of a lift and were now wishing they had walked instead.

The Bulgy Bears were very anxious to have the feast first and leave the council till afterward：perhaps till tomorrow. Reepicheep and his Mice said that councils and feasts could both wait, and proposed storming Miraz in his own castle that very night. Pattertwig and the other Squirrels said they could talk and eat at the same time, so why not have the council and feast all at once? The Moles proposed throwing up entrenchments round the Lawn before they did anything else. The Fauns thought it would be better to begin with a solemn dance. The Old Raven, while agreeing with the Bears that it would take too long to have a full council before supper, begged to be allowed to give a brief address to the whole company. But Caspian and the Centaurs and the Dwarfs overruled all these suggestions and insisted on holding a real council of war at once.

When all the other creatures had been persuaded to sit down quietly in a great circle, and when （with more difficulty） they had got Pattertwig to stop running to and fro and saying “Silence！ Silence, everyone, for the King’s speech”, Caspian, feeling a little nervous, got up. “Narnians！” he began, but he never got any further, for at that very moment Camillo the Hare said, “Hush！ There’s a Man somewhere near.”

They were all creatures of the wild, accustomed to being hunted, and they all became still as statues. The beasts all turned their noses in the direction which Camillo had indicated.

“Smells like Man and yet not quite like Man,” whispered Trufflehunter.

“It’s getting steadily nearer,” said Camillo.

“Two badgers and you three Dwarfs, with your bows at the ready, go softly off to meet it,” said Caspian.

“We’ll settle ’un,” said a Black Dwarf grimly, fitting a shaft to his bowstring.

“Don’t shoot if it is alone,” said Caspian. “Catch it.”

“Why?” asked the Dwarf.

“Do as you’re told,” said Glenstorm the Centaur.

Everyone waited in silence while the three Dwarfs and two Badgers trotted stealthily across to the trees on the northwest side of the Lawn. Then came a sharp dwarfish cry, “Stop！ Who goes there?” and a sudden spring. A moment later a voice, which Caspian knew well, could he heard saying, “All right, all right, I’m unarmed. Take my wrists if you like, worthy Badgers, but don’t bite right through them. I want to speak to the King.”

“Doctor Cornelius！” cried Caspian with joy, and rushed forward to greet his old tutor. Everyone else crowded round.

“Pah！” said Nikabrik. “A renegade Dwarf. A half-and-halfer！ Shall I pass my sword through its throat?”

“Be quiet, Nikabrik,” said Trumpkin. “The creature can’t help its ancestry.”

“This is my greatest friend and the savior of my life,” said Caspian. “And anyone who doesn’t like his company may leave my army：at once. Dearest doctor, I am glad to see you again. How ever did you find us out?”

“By a little use of simple magic, your Majesty,” said the Doctor, who was still puffing and blowing from having walked so fast. “But there’s no time to go into that now. We must all fly from this place at once. You are already betrayed and Miraz is on the move. Before midday tomorrow you will be surrounded.”

“Betrayed！” said Caspian. “And by whom?”

“Another renegade Dwarf, no doubt,” said Nikabrik.

“By your horse Destrier,” said Doctor Cornelius. “The poor brute knew no better. When you were knocked off, of course, he went dawdling back to his stable in the castle. Then the secret of your flight was known. I made myself scarce, having no wish to be questioned about it in Miraz’s torture chamber. I had a pretty good guess from my crystal as to where I should find you. But all day—that was the day before yesterday—I saw Miraz’s tracking parties out in the woods. Yesterday I learned that his army is out. I don’t think some of your—um—pure-blooded Dwarfs have as much woodcraft as might be expected. You’ve left tracks all over the place. Great carelessness. At any rate something has warned Miraz that Old Narnia is not so dead as he had hoped, and he is on the move.”

“Hurrah！” said a very shrill and small voice from somewhere at the Doctor’s feet. “Let them come！ All I ask is that the King will put me and my people in the front.”

“What on earth?” said Doctor Cornelius. “Has your Majesty got grasshoppers—or mosquitoes—in your army?” Then after stooping down and peering carefully through his spectacles, he broke into a laugh.

“By the Lion,” he swore, “it’s a mouse. Signior Mouse, I desire your better acquaintance. I am honored by meeting so valiant a beast.”

“My friendship you shall have, learned Man,” piped Reepicheep. “And any Dwarf—or Giant—in the army who does not give you good language shall have my sword to reckon with.”

“Is there time for this foolery?” asked Nikabrik. “What are our plans? Battle or flight?”

“Battle if need be,” said Trumpkin. “But we are hardly ready for it yet, and this is no very defensible place.”

“I don’t like the idea of running away,” said Caspian.

“Hear him！ Hear him！” said the Bulgy Bears. “Whatever we do, don’t let’s have any running. Especially not before supper； and not too soon after it neither.”

“Those who run first do not always run last,” said the Centaur. “And why should we let the enemy choose our position instead of choosing it ourselves? Let us find a strong place.”

“That’s wise, your Majesty, that’s wise,” said Trufflehunter.

“But where are we to go?” asked several voices.

“Your Majesty,” said Doctor Cornelius, “and all you variety of creatures, I think we must fly east and down the river to the great woods. The Telmarines hate that region. They have always been afraid of the sea and of something that may come over the sea. That is why they have let the great woods grow up. If traditions speak true, the ancient Cair Paravel was at the river-mouth. All that part is friendly to us and hateful to our enemies. We must go to Aslan’s How.”

“Aslan’s How?” said several voices. “We do not know what it is.”

“It lies within the skirts of the Great Woods and it is a huge mound which Narnians raised in very ancient times over a very magical place, where there stood—and perhaps still stands—a very magical Stone. The Mound is all hollowed out within into galleries and caves, and the Stone is in the central cave of all. There is room in the mound for all our stores, and those of us who have most need of cover and are most accustomed to underground life can be lodged in the caves. The rest of us can lie in the wood. At a pinch all of us （except this worthy Giant） could retreat into the Mound itself, and there we should be beyond the reach of every danger except famine.”

“It is a good thing we have a learned man among us,” said Trufflehunter； but Trumpkin muttered under his breath, “Soup and celery！ I wish our leaders would think less about these old wives’tales and more about victuals and arms.” But all approved of Cornelius’s proposal and that very night, half an hour later, they were on the march. Before sunrise they arrived at Aslan’s How.

It was certainly an awesome place, a round green hill on top of another hill, long since grown over with trees, and one little, low doorway leading into it. The tunnels inside were a perfect maze till you got to know them, and they were lined and roofed with smooth stones, and on the stones, peering in the twilight, Caspian saw strange characters and snaky patterns, and pictures in which the form of a Lion was repeated again and again. It all seemed to belong to an even older Narnia than the Narnia of which his nurse had told him.

It was after they had taken up their quarters in and around the How that fortune began to turn against them. King Miraz’s scouts soon found their new lair, and he and his army arrived on the edge of the woods. And as so often happens, the enemy turned out stronger than they had reckoned. Caspian’s heart sank as he saw company after company arriving. And though Miraz’s men may have been afraid of going into the wood, they were even more afraid of Miraz, and with him in command they carried battle deeply into it and sometimes almost to the How itself. Caspian and other captains of course made many sorties into the open country. Thus there was fighting on most days and sometimes by night as well； but Caspian’s party had on the whole the worst of it.

At last there came a night when everything had gone as badly as possible, and the rain which had been falling heavily all day had ceased at nightfall only to give place to raw cold. That morning Caspian had arranged what was his biggest battle yet, and all had hung their hopes on it. He, with most of the Dwarfs, was to have fallen on the King’s right wing at daybreak, and then, when they were heavily engaged, Giant Wimbleweather, with the Centaurs and some of the fiercest beasts, was to have broken out from another place and endeavoured to cut the King’s right off from the rest of the army. But it had all failed. No one had warned Caspian （because no one in these later days of Narnia remembered） that Giants are not at all clever. Poor Wimbleweather, though as brave as a lion, was a true Giant in that respect. He had broken out at the wrong time and from the wrong place, and both his party and Caspian’s had suffered badly and done the enemy little harm. The best of the Bears had been hurt, a Centaur terribly wounded, and there were few in Caspian’s party who had not lost blood. It was a gloomy company that huddled under the dripping trees to eat their scanty supper.

The gloomiest of all was Giant Wimbleweather. He knew it was all his fault. He sat in silence shedding big tears which collected on the end of his nose and then fell off with a huge splash on the whole bivouac of the Mice, who had just been beginning to get warm and drowsy. They all jumped up, shaking the water out of their ears and wringing their little blankets, and asked the Giant in shrill but forcible voices whether he thought they weren’t wet enough without this sort of thing. And then other people woke up and told the Mice they had been enrolled as scouts and not as a concert party, and asked why they couldn’t keep quiet. And Wimbleweather tiptoed away to find some place where he could be miserable in peace and stepped on somebody’s tail and somebody （they said afterward it was a fox） bit him. And so everyone was out of temper.

But in the secret and magical chamber at the heart of the How, King Caspian, with Cornelius and the Badger and Nikabrik and Trumpkin, were at council. Thick pillars of ancient workmanship supported the roof. In the center was the Stone itself—a stone table, split right down the center, and covered with what had once been writing of some kind, but ages of wind and rain and snow had almost worn them away in old times when the Stone Table had stood on the hilltop, and the Mound had not yet been built above it. They were not using the Table nor sitting round it：it was too magic a thing for any common use. They sat on logs a little way from it, and between them was a rough wooden table, on which stood a rude clay lamp lighting up their pale faces and throwing big shadows on the walls.

“If your Majesty is ever to use the Horn,” said Trufflehunter, “I think the time has now come.” Caspian had of course told them of his treasure several days ago.

“We are certainly in great need,” answered Caspian. “But it is hard to be sure we are at our greatest. Supposing there came an even worse need and we had already used it?”

“By that argument,” said Nikabrik, “your Majesty will never use it until it is too late.”

“I agree with that,” said Doctor Cornelius.

“And what do you think, Trumpkin?” asked Caspian.

“Oh, as for me,” said the Red Dwarf, who had been listening with complete indifference, “your Majesty knows I think the Horn—and that bit of broken stone over there and your great King Peter—and your Lion Aslan—are all eggs in moonshine. It’s all one to me when your Majesty blows the Horn. All I insist on is that the army is told nothing about it. There’s no good raising hopes of magical help which （as I think） are sure to be disappointed.”

“Then in the name of Aslan we will wind Queen Susan’s Horn,” said Caspian.

“There is one thing, Sire,” said Doctor Cornelius, “that should perhaps be done first. We do not know what form the help will take. It might call Aslan himself from oversea. But I think it is more likely to call Peter the High King and his mighty consorts down from the high past. But in either case, I do not think we can be sure that the help will come to this very spot—”

“You never said a truer word,” put in Trumpkin.

“I think,” went on the learned man, “that they—or he—will come back to one or other of the Ancient Places of Narnia. This, where we now sit, is the most ancient and most deeply magical of all, and here, I think, the answer is likeliest to come. But there are two others. One Lantern Waste, up-river, west of Beaversdam, where the Royal Children first appeared in Narnia, as the records tell The other is down at the river-mouth, where their castle of Cair Paravel once stood. And if Aslan himself comes, that would be the best place for meeting him too, for every story says that he is the son of the great Emperor-over-the-Sea, and over the sea he will pass. I should like very much to send messengers to both places, to Lantern Waste and the river-mouth, to receive them—or him—or it.”

“Just as I thought,” muttered Trumpkin. “The first result of all this foolery is not to bring us help but to lose us two fighters.”

“Who would you think of sending, Doctor Cornelius?” asked Caspian.

“Squirrels are best for getting through enemy country without being caught,” said Trufflehunter.

“All our squirrels （and we haven’t many）,” said Nikabrik, “are rather flighty. The only one I’d trust on a job like that would be Pattertwig.”

“Let it be Pattertwig, then,” said King Caspian. “And who for our other messenger? I know you’d go, Trufflehunter, but you haven’t the speed. Nor you, Doctor Cornelius.”

“I won’t go,” said Nikabrik. “With all these Humans and beasts about, there must be a Dwarf here to see that the Dwarfs are fairly treated.”

“Thimbles and thunderstorms！” cried Trumpkin in a rage. “Is that how you speak to the King? Send me, Sire, I’ll go.”

“But I thought you didn’t believe in the Horn, Trumpkin,” said Caspian.

“No more I do, your Majesty. But what’s that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here. You are my King. I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders. You’ve had my advice, and now it’s the time for orders.”

“I will never forget this, Trumpkin,” said Caspian. “Send for Pattertwig, one of you. And when shall I blow the Horn?”

“I would wait for sunrise, your Majesty,” said Doctor Cornelius. “That sometimes has an effect in operations of White Magic.”

A few minutes later Pattertwig arrived and had his task explained to him. As he was, like many squirrels, full of courage and dash and energy and excitement and mischief （not to say conceit）, he no sooner heard it than he was eager to be off. It was arranged that he should run for Lantern Waste while Trumpkin made the shorter journey to the river-mouth. After a hasty meal they both set off with the fervent thanks and good wishes of the King, the Badger, and Cornelius.

CHAPTER EIGHT
HOW THEY LEFT THE ISLAND

“And so,” said Trumpkin （for, as you have realized, it was he who had been telling all this story to the four children, sitting on the grass in the ruined hall of Cair Paravel）—“and so I put a crust or two in my pocket, left behind all weapons but my dagger, and took to the woods in the gray of the morning. I’d been plugging away for many hours when there came a sound that I’d never heard the like of in my born days. Eh, I won’t forget that. The whole air was full of it, loud as thunder but far longer, cool and sweet as music over water, but strong enough to shake the woods. And I said to myself,‘If that’s not the Horn, call me a rabbit.’And a moment later I wondered why he hadn’t blown it sooner—”

“What time was it?” asked Edmund.

“Between nine and ten of the clock,” said Trumpkin.

“Just when we were at the railway station！” said all the children, and looked at one another with shining eyes.

“Please go on,” said Lucy to the Dwarf.

“Well, as I was saying, I wondered, but I went on as hard as I could pelt. I kept on all night—and then, when it was half light this morning, as if I’d no more sense than a Giant, I risked a short cut across open country to cut off a big loop of the river, and was caught. Not by the army, but by a pompous old fool who has charge of a little castle which is Miraz’s last stronghold toward the coast. I needn’t tell you they got no true tale out of me, but I was a Dwarf and that was enough. But, lobsters and lollipops！ it is a good thing the seneschal was a pompous fool. Anyone else would have run me through there and then. But nothing would do for him short of a grand execution：sending me down‘to the ghosts’in the full ceremonial way. And then this young lady” （he nodded at Susan）“does her bit of archery—and it was pretty shooting, let me tell you—and here we are. And without my armor, for of course they took that.” He knocked out and refilled his pipe.

“Great Scott！” said Peter. “So it was the horn—your own horn, Su—that dragged us all off that seat on the platform yesterday morning！ I can hardly believe it； yet it all fits in.”

“I don’t know why you shouldn’t believe it,” said Lucy, “if you believe in magic at all. Aren’t there lots of stories about magic forcing people out of one place—out of one world—into another? I mean, when a magician in The Arabian Nights calls up a Jinn, it has to come. We had to come, just like that.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I suppose what makes it feel so queer is that in the stories it’s always someone in our world who does the calling. One doesn’t really think about where the Jinn’s coming from.”

“And now we know what it feels like for the Jinn,” said Edmund with a chuckle. “Golly！ It’s a bit uncomfortable to know that we can be whistled for like that. It’s worse than what Father says about living at the mercy of the telephone.”

“But we want to be here, don’t we,” said Lucy, “if Aslan wants us?”

“Meanwhile,” said the Dwarf, “what are we to do? I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”

“No help?” said Susan. “But it has worked. And here we are.”

“Um—um—yes, to be sure. I see that,” said the Dwarf, whose pipe seemed to be blocked （at any rate he made himself very busy cleaning it）. “But—well—I mean—”

“But don’t you yet see who we are?” shouted Lucy. “You are stupid.”

“I suppose you are the four children out of the old stories,” said Trumpkin. “And I’m very glad to meet you of course. And it’s very interesting, no doubt. But—no offence?’—and he hesitated again.

“Do get on and say whatever you’re going to say,” said Edmund.

“Well, then—no offence,” said Trumpkin. “But, you know, the King and Trufflehunter and Doctor Cornelius were expecting—well, if you see what I mean, help. To put it in another way, I think they’d been imagining you as great warriors. As it is—we’re awfully fond of children and all that, but just at the moment, in the middle of a war—but I’m sure you understand.”

“You mean you think we’re no good,” said Edmund, getting red in the face.

“Now pray don’t be offended,” interrupted the Dwarf. “I assure you, my dear little friends—”

“Little from you is really a bit too much,” said Edmund, jumping up. “I suppose you don’t believe we won the Battle of Beruna? Well, you can say what you like about me because I know—”

“There’s no good losing our tempers,” said Peter. “Let’s fit him out with fresh armor and fit ourselves out from the treasure chamber, and have a talk after that.”

“I don’t quite see the point—” began Edmund, but Lucy whispered in his ear, “Hadn’t we better do what Peter says? He is the High King, you know. And I think he has an idea.” So Edmund agreed and by the aid of his torch they all, including Trumpkin, went down the steps again into the dark coldness and dusty splendour of the treasure house.

The Dwarf’s eyes glistened as he saw the wealth that lay on the shelves （though he had to stand on tiptoes to do so） and he muttered to himself, “It would never do to let Nikabrik see this； never.” They found easily enough a mail shirt for him, a sword, a helmet, a shield, a bow and quiverful of arrows, all of dwarfish size. The helmet was of copper, set with rubies, and there was gold on the hilt of the sword：Trumpkin had never seen, much less carried, so much wealth in all his life. The children also put on mail shirts and helmets； a sword and shield were found for Edmund and a bow for Lucy—Peter and Susan were of course already carrying their gifts. As they came back up the stairway, jingling in their mail, and already looking and feeling more like Narnians and less like schoolchildren, the two boys were behind, apparently making some plan. Lucy heard Edmund say, “No, let me do it. It will be more of a sucks for him if I win, and less of a let-down for us all if I fail.”

“All right, Ed,” said Peter.

When they came out into the daylight Edmund turned to the Dwarf very politely and said, “I’ve got something to ask you. Kids like us don’t often have the chance of meeting a great warrior like you. Would you have a little fencing match with me? It would be frightfully decent.”

“But, lad,” said Trumpkin, “these swords are sharp.”

“I know,” said Edmund. “But I’ll never get anywhere near you and you’ll be quite clever enough to disarm me without doing me any damage.”

“It’s a dangerous game,” said Trumpkin. “But since you make such a point of it, I’ll try a pass or two.”

Both swords were out in a moment and the three others jumped off the dais and stood watching. It was well worth it. It was not like the silly fighting you see with broad swords on the stage. It was not even like the rapier fighting which you sometimes see rather better done. This was real broad-sword fighting. The great thing is to slash at your enemy’s legs and feet because they are the part that have no armor. And when he slashes at yours you jump with both feet off the ground so that his blow goes under them. This gave the Dwarf an advantage because Edmund, being much taller, had to be always stooping. I don’t think Edmund would have had a chance if he had fought Trumpkin twenty-four hours earlier. But the air of Narnia had been working upon him ever since they arrived on the island, and all his old battles came back to him, and his arms and fingers remembered their old skill. He was King Edmund once more. Round and round the two combatants circled, stroke after stroke they gave, and Susan （who never could learn to like this sort of thing） shouted out, “Oh, do be careful.” And then, so quickly that no one （unless they knew, as Peter did） could quite see how it happened, Edmund flashed his sword round with a peculiar twist, the Dwarf’s sword flew out of his grip, and Trumpkin was wringing his empty hand as you do after a “sting” from a cricket-bat.

“Not hurt, I hope, my dear little friend?” said Edmund, panting a little and returning his own sword to its sheath.

“I see the point,” said Trumpkin drily. “You know a trick I never learned.”

“That’s quite true,” put in Peter. “The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that’s new to him. I think it’s only fair to give Trumpkin a chance at something else. Will you have a shooting match with my sister? There are no tricks in archery, you know.”

“Ah, you’re jokers, you are,” said the Dwarf. “I begin to see. As if I didn’t know how she can shoot, after what happened this morning. All the same, I’ll have a try.” He spoke gruffly, but his eyes brightened, for he was a famous bowman among his own people.

All five of them came out into the courtyard.

“What’s to be the target?” asked Peter.

“I think that apple hanging over the wall on the branch there would do,” said Susan.

“That’ll do nicely, lass,” said Trumpkin. “You mean the yellow one near the middle of the arch?”

“No, not that,” said Susan. “The red one up above—over the battlement.”

The Dwarf’s face fell. “Looks more like a cherry than an apple,” he muttered, but he said nothing out loud.

They tossed up for first shot （greatly to the interest of Trumpkin, who had never seen a coin tossed before） and Susan lost. They were to shoot from the top of the steps that led from the hall into the courtyard. Everyone could see from the way the Dwarf took his position and handled his bow that he knew what he was about.

Twang went the string. It was an excellent shot. The tiny apple shook as the arrow passed, and a leaf came fluttering down. Then Susan went to the top of the steps and strung her bow. She was not enjoying her match half so much as Edmund had enjoyed his； not because she had any doubt about hitting the apple but because Susan was so tender-hearted that she almost hated to beat someone who had been beaten already. The Dwarf watched her keenly as she drew the shaft to her ear. A moment later, with a little soft thump which they could all hear in that quiet place, the apple fell to the grass with Susan’s arrow in it.

“Oh, well done, Su,” shouted the other children.

“It wasn’t really any better than yours,” said Susan to the Dwarf. “I think there was a tiny breath of wind as you shot.”

“No, there wasn’t,” said Trumpkin. “Don’t tell me. I know when I am fairly beaten. I won’t even say that the scar of my last wound catches me a bit when I get my arm well back—”

“Oh, are you wounded?” asked Lucy. “Do let me look.”

“It’s not a sight for little girls,” began Trumpkin, but then he suddenly checked himself. “There I go talking like a fool again,” he said. “I suppose you’re as likely to be a great surgeon as your brother was to be a great swordsman or your sister to be a great archer.” He sat down on the steps and took off his hauberk and slipped down his little shirt, showing an arm hairy and muscular （in proportion） as a sailor’s though not much bigger than a child’s. There was a clumsy bandage on the shoulder which Lucy proceeded to unroll. Underneath, the cut looked very nasty and there was a good deal of swelling. “Oh, poor Trumpkin,” said Lucy. “How horrid.” Then she carefully dripped on to it one single drop of the cordial from her flask.

“Hullo. Eh? What have you done?” said Trumpkin. But however he turned his head and squinted and whisked his beard to and fro, he couldn’t quite see his own shoulder. Then he felt it as well as he could, getting his arms and fingers into very difficult positions as you do when you’re trying to scratch a place that is just out of reach. Then he swung his arm and raised it and tried the muscles, and finally jumped to his feet crying, “Giants and junipers！ It’s cured！ It’s as good as new.” After that he burst into a great laugh and said, “Well, I’ve made as big a fool of myself as ever a Dwarf did. No offence, I hope? My humble duty to your Majesties all—humble duty. And thanks for my life, my cure, my breakfast—and my lesson.”

The children all said it was quite all right and not to mention it.

“And now,” said Peter, “if you’ve really decided to believe in us—”

“I have,” said the Dwarf.

“It’s quite clear what we have to do. We must join King Caspian at once.”

“The sooner the better,” said Trumpkin. “My being such a fool has already wasted about an hour.”

“It’s about two days’journey, the way you came,” said Peter. “For us, I mean. We can’t walk all day and night like you Dwarfs.” Then he turned to the others. “What Trumpkin calls Aslan’s How is obviously the Stone Table itself. You remember it was about half a day’s march, or a little less, from there down to the Fords of Beruna—”

“Beruna’s Bridge, we call it,” said Trumpkin.

“There was no bridge in our time,” said Peter. “And then from Beruna down to here was another day and a bit. We used to get home about teatime on the second day, going easily. Going hard, we could do the whole thing in a day and a half perhaps.”

“But remember it’s all woods now,” said Trumpkin, “and there are enemies to dodge.”

“Look here,” said Edmund, “need we go by the same way that Our Dear Little Friend came?”

“No more of that, your Majesty, if you love me,” said the Dwarf.

“Very well,” said Edmund. “May I say our D. L. F.?”

“Oh, Edmund,” said Susan. “Don’t keep on at him like that.”

“That’s all right, lass—I mean your Majesty,” said Trumpkin with a chuckle. “A jibe won’t raise a blister.” （And after that they often called him the D. L. F. till they’d almost forgotten what it meant.）

“As I was saying,” continued Edmund, “we needn’t go that way. Why shouldn’t we row a little south till we come to Glasswater Creek and row up it? That brings us up behind the Hill of the Stone Table, and we’ll be safe while we’re at sea. If we start at once, we can be at the head of Glasswater before dark, get a few hours’sleep, and be with Caspian pretty early tomorrow.”

“What a thing it is to know the coast,” said Trumpkin. “None of us knows anything about Glasswater.”

“What about food?” asked Susan.

“Oh, we’ll have to do with apples,” said Lucy. “Do let’s get on. We’ve done nothing yet, and we’ve been here nearly two days.”

“And anyway, no one’s going to have my hat for a fish-basket again,” said Edmund.

They used one of the raincoats as a kind of bag and put a good many apples in it. Then they all had a good long drink at the well （for they would meet no more fresh water till they landed at the head of the Creek） and went down to the boat. The children were sorry to leave Cair Paravel, which, even in ruins, had begun to feel like home again.

“The D. L. F. had better steer,” said Peter, “and Ed and I will take an oar each. Half a moment, though. We’d better take off our mail：we’re going to be pretty warm before we’re done. The girls had better be in the bows and shout directions to the D. L. F. because he doesn’t know the way. You’d better get us a fair way out to sea till we’ve passed the island.”

And soon the green, wooded coast of the island was falling away behind them, and its little bays and headlands were beginning to look flatter, and the boat was rising and falling in the gentle swell. The sea began to grow bigger around them and, in the distance, bluer, but close round the boat it was green and bubbly. Everything smelled salt and there was no noise except the swishing of water and the clop-clop of water against the sides and the splash of the oars and the jolting noise of the rowlocks. The sun grew hot.

It was delightful for Lucy and Susan in the bows, bending over the edge and trying to get their hands in the sea which they could never quite reach. The bottom, mostly pure, pale sand but with occasional patches of purple seaweed, could be seen beneath them.

“It’s like old times,” said Lucy. “Do you remember our voyage to Terebinthia—and Galma—and Seven Isles—and the Lone Islands?”

“Yes,” said Susan, “and our great ship the Splendor Hyaline, with the swan’s head at her prow and the carved swan’s wings coming back almost to her waist?”

“And the silken sails, and the great stern lanterns?”

“And the feasts on the poop and the musicians.”

“Do you remember when we had the musicians up in the rigging playing flutes so that it sounded like music out of the sky?”

Presently Susan took over Edmund’s oar and he came forward to join Lucy. They had passed the island now and stood closer in to the shore—all wooded and deserted. They would have thought it very pretty if they had not remembered the time when it was open and breezy and full of merry friends.

“Phew！ This is pretty grueling work,” said Peter.

“Can’t I row for a bit?” said Lucy.

“The oars are too big for you,” said Peter shortly, not because he was cross but because he had no strength to spare for talking.

CHAPTER NINE
WHAT LUCY SAW

Susan and the two boys were bitterly tired with rowing before they rounded the last headland and began the final pull up Glasswater itself, and Lucy’s head ached from the long hours of sun and the glare on the water. Even Trumpkin longed for the voyage to be over. The seat on which he sat to steer had been made for men, not Dwarfs, and his feet did not reach the floor-boards； and everyone knows how uncomfortable that is even for ten minutes. And as they all grew more tired, their spirits fell. Up till now the children had only been thinking of how to get to Caspian. Now they wondered what they would do when they found him, and how a handful of Dwarfs and woodland creatures could defeat an army of grown-up Humans.

Twilight was coming on as they rowed slowly up the windings of Glasswater Creek—a twilight which deepened as the banks drew closer together and the overhanging trees began almost to meet overhead. It was very quiet in here as the sound of the sea died away behind them； they could even hear the trickle of the little streams that poured down from the forest into Glasswater.

They went ashore at last, far too tired to attempt lighting a fire； and even a supper of apples （though most of them felt that they never wanted to see an apple again） seemed better than trying to catch or shoot anything. After a little silent munching they all huddled down together in the moss and dead leaves between four large beech trees.

Everyone except Lucy went to sleep at once. Lucy, being far less tired, found it hard to get comfortable. Also, she had forgotten till now that all Dwarfs snore. She knew that one of the best ways of getting to sleep is to stop trying, so she opened her eyes. Through a gap in the bracken and branches she could just see a patch of water in the Creek and the sky above it. Then, with a thrill of memory, she saw again, after all those years, the bright Narnian stars. She had once known them better than the stars of our own world, because as a Queen in Narnia she had gone to bed much later than as a child in England. And there they were-at least, three of the summer constellations could be seen from where she lay：the Ship, the Hammer, and the Leopard. “Dear old Leopard,” she murmured happily to herself.

Instead of getting drowsier she was getting more awake—with an odd night-time, dreamish kind of wakefulness. The Creek was growing brighter. She knew now that the moon was on it, though she couldn’t see the moon. And now she began to feel that the whole forest was coming awake like herself. Hardly knowing why she did it, she got up quickly and walked a little distance away from their bivouac.

“This is lovely,” said Lucy to herself. It was cool and fresh, delicious smells were floating everywhere. Somewhere close by she heard the twitter of a nightingale beginning to sing, then stopping, then beginning again. It was a little lighter ahead. She went toward the light and came to a place where there were fewer trees, and whole patches or pools of moonlight, but the moonlight and the shadows so mixed that you could hardly be sure where anything was or what it was. At the same moment the nightingale, satisfied at last with his tuning up, burst into full song.

Lucy’s eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a silver birch：it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak：he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah！—she would be the best of all. She would be a gracious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.

“Oh Trees, Trees, Trees,” said Lucy （though she had not been intending to speak at all）. “Oh Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come to me.”

Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words. The nightingale stopped singing as if to listen to it. Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say. But the moment did not come. The rustling died away. The nightingale resumed its song. Even in the moonlight the wood looked more ordinary again. Yet Lucy had the feeling （as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do） that she had just missed something：as if she had spoken to the trees a split second too soon or a split second too late, or used all the right words except one, or put in one word that was just wrong.

Quite suddenly she began to feel tired. She went back to the bivouac, snuggled down between Susan and Peter, and was asleep in a few minutes.

It was a cold and cheerless waking for them all next morning, with a gray twilight in the wood （for the sun had not yet risen） and everything damp and dirty.

“Apples, heigh-ho,” said Trumpkin with a rueful grin. “I must say you ancient kings and queens don’t overfeed your courtiers！”

They stood up and shook themselves and looked about. The trees were thick and they could see no more than a few yards in any direction.

“I suppose your Majesties know the way all right?” said the Dwarf.

“I don’t,” said Susan. “I’ve never seen these woods in my life before. In fact I thought all along that we ought to have gone by the river.”

“Then I think you might have said so at the time,” answered Peter, with pardonable sharpness.

“Oh, don’t take any notice of her,” said Edmund. “She always is a wet blanket. You’ve got that pocket compass of yours, Peter, haven’t you? Well, then, we’re as right as rain. We’ve only got to keep on going northwest—cross that little river, the what-do-you-call-it?—the Rush—”

“I know,” said Peter. “The one that joins the big river at the Fords of Beruna, or Beruna’s Bridge, as the D. L. F. calls it.”

“That’s right. Cross it and strike uphill, and we’ll be at the Stone Table （Aslan’s How, I mean） by eight or nine o’clock. I hope King Caspian will give us a good breakfast！”

“I hope you’re right,” said Susan. “I can’t remember all that at all.”

“That’s the worst of girls,” said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. “They never carry a map in their heads.”

“That’s because our heads have something inside them,” said Lucy.

At first things seemed to be going pretty well. They even thought they had struck an old path； but if you know anything about woods, you will know that one is always finding imaginary paths. They disappear after about five minutes and then you think you have found another （and hope it is not another but more of the same one） and it also disappears, and after you have been well lured out of your right direction you realize that none of them were pats at all. The boys and the Dwarf, however, were used to woods and were not taken in for more than a few seconds.

They had plodded on for about half an hour （three of them very stiff from yesterday’s rowing） when Trumpkin suddenly whispered, “Stop.” They all stopped. “There’s something following us,” he said in a low voice. “Or rather, something keeping up with us：over there on the left.” They all stood still, listening and staring till their ears and eyes ached. “You and I’d better each have an arrow on the string,” said Susan to Trumpkin. The Dwarf nodded, and when both bows were ready for action the party went on again.

They went a few dozen yards through fairly open woodland, keeping a sharp look-out. Then they came to a place where the undergrowth thickened and they had to pass nearer to it. Just as they were passing the place, there came a sudden something that snarled and flashed, rising out from the breaking twigs like a thunderbolt. Lucy was knocked down and winded, hearing the twang of a bowstring as she fell. When she was able to take notice of things again, she saw a great grim-looking gray bear lying dead with Trumpkin’s arrow in its side.

“The D. L. F. beat you in that shooting match, Su,” said Peter, with a slightly forced smile. Even he had been shaken by this adventure.

“I—I left it too late,” said Susan, in an embarrassed voice. “I was so afraid it might be, you know—one of our kind of bears, a talking bear.” She hated killing things.

“That’s the trouble of it,” said Trumpkin, “when most of the beasts have gone enemy and gone dumb, but there are still some of the other kind left. You never know, and you daren’t wait to see.”

“Poor old Bruin,” said Susan. “You don’t think he was?”

“Not he,” said the Dwarf. “I saw the face and I heard the snarl. He only wanted Little Girl for his breakfast. And talking of breakfast, I didn’t want to discourage your Majesties when you said you hoped King Caspian would give you a good one：but meat’s precious scarce in camp. And there’s good eating on a bear. It would be a shame to leave the carcass without taking a bit, and it won’t delay us more than half an hour. I dare say you two youngsters—Kings, I should say—know how to skin a bear?”

“Let’s go and sit down a fair way off,” said Susan to Lucy. “I know what a horrid messy business that will be.” Lucy shuddered and nodded. When they had sat down she said：“Such a horrible idea has come into my head, Su.”

“What’s that?”

“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day, in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which were which?”

“We’ve got enough to bother about here and now in Narnia,” said the practical Susan, “without imagining things like that.”

When they rejoined the boys and the Dwarf, as much as they thought they could carry of the best meat had been cut off. Raw meat is not a nice thing to fill one’s pockets with, but they folded it up in fresh leaves and made the best of it. They were all experienced enough to know that they would feel quite differently about these squashy and unpleasant parcels when they had walked long enough to be really hungry.

On they trudged again （stopping to wash three pairs of hands that needed it in the first stream they passed） until the sun rose and the birds began to sing, and more flies than they wanted were buzzing in the bracken. The stiffness from yesterday’s rowing began to wear off. Everybody’s spirits rose. The sun grew warmer and they took their helmets off and carried them.

“I suppose we are going right?” said Edmund about an hour later.

“I don’t see how we can go wrong as long as we don’t bear too much to the left,” said Peter. “If we bear too much to the right, the worst that can happen is wasting a little time by striking the great River too soon and not cutting off the corner.”

And again they trudged on with no sound except the thud of their feet and the jingle of their chain shirts.

“Where’s this bally Rush got to?” said Edmund a good deal later.

“I certainly thought we’d have struck it by now,” said Peter. “But there’s nothing to do but keep on.” They both knew that the Dwarf was looking anxiously at them, but he said nothing.

And still they trudged on and their mail shirts began to feel very hot and heavy.

“What on earth?” said Peter suddenly.

They had come, without seeing it, almost to the edge of a small precipice from which they looked down into a gorge with a river at the bottom. On the far side the cliffs rose much higher. None of the party except Edmund （and perhaps Trumpkin） was a rock climber.

“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “It’s my fault for coming this way. We’re lost. I’ve never seen this place in my life before.”

The Dwarf gave a low whistle between his teeth.

“Oh, do let’s go back and go the other way,” said Susan. “I knew all along we’d get lost in these woods.”

“Susan！” said Lucy, reproachfully, “don’t nag at Peter like that. It’s so rotten, and he’s doing all he can.”

“And don’t you snap at Su like that, either,” said Edmund. “I think she’s quite right.”

“Tubs and tortoiseshells！” exclaimed Trumpkin. “If we’ve got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back? And if we’re to go back to the Island and begin all over again—even supposing we could—we might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at that rate.”

“You think we ought to go on?” said Lucy.

“I’m not sure the High King is lost,” said Trumpkin. “What’s to hinder this river being the Rush?”

“Because the Rush is not in a gorge,” said Peter, keeping his temper with some difficulty.

“Your Majesty says is,” replied the Dwarf, “but oughtn’t you to say was? You knew this country hundreds—it may be a thousand—years ago. Mayn’t it have changed? A landslide might have pulled off half the side of that hill, leaving bare rock, and there are your precipices beyond the gorge. Then the Rush might go on deepening its course year after year till you get the little precipices this side. Or there might have been an earthquake, or anything.”

“I never thought of that,” said Peter.

“And anyway,” continued Trumpkin, “even if this is not the Rush, it’s flowing roughly north and so it must fall into the Great River anyway. I think I passed something that might have been it, on my way down. So if we go downstream, to our right, we’ll hit the Great River. Perhaps not so high as we’d hoped, but at least we’ll be no worse off than if you’d come my way.”

“Trumpkin, you’re a brick,” said Peter. “Come on, then. Down this side of the gorge.”

“Look！ Look！ Look！” cried Lucy.

“Where? What?” said everyone.

“The Lion,” said Lucy. “Aslan himself. Didn’t you see?” Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.

“Do you really mean—?” began Peter.

“Where did you think you saw him?” asked Susan.

“Don’t talk like a grown—up,” said Lucy, stamping her foot. “I didn’t think I saw him. I saw him.”

“Where, Lu?” asked Peter.

“Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was-up there.”

“How do you know that was what he wanted?” asked Edmund.

“He—I—I just know,” said Lucy, “by his face.”

The others all looked at each other in puzzled silence.

“Her Majesty may well have seen a lion,” put in Trumpkin. “There are lions in these woods, I’ve been told. But it needn’t have been a friendly and talking lion any more than the bear was a friendly and talking bear.”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” said Lucy. “Do you think I don’t know Aslan when I see him?”

“He’d be a pretty elderly lion by now,” said Trumpkin, “if he’s one you knew when you were here before！ And if it could be the same one, what’s to prevent him having gone wild and witless like so many others?”

Lucy turned crimson and I think she would have flown at Trumpkin, if Peter had not laid his hand on her arm. “The D. L. F. doesn’t understand. How could he? You must just take it, Trumpkin, that we do really know about Aslan； a little bit about him, I mean. And you mustn’t talk about him like that again. It isn’t lucky for one thing, and it’s all nonsense for another. The only question is whether Aslan was really there.”

“But I know he was,” said Lucy, her eyes filling with tears.

“Yes, Lu, but we don’t, you see,” said Peter.

“There’s nothing for it but a vote,” said Edmund.

“All right,” replied Peter. “You’re the eldest, D. L. F. What do you vote for? Up or down?”

“Down,” said the Dwarf. “I know nothing about Aslan. But I do know that if we turn left and follow the gorge up, it might lead us all day before we found a place where we could cross it. Whereas if we turn right and go down, we’re bound to reach the Great River in about a couple of hours. And if there are any real lions about, we want to go away from them, not toward them.”

“What do you say, Susan?”

“Don’t be angry, Lu,” said Susan, “but I do think we should go down. I’m dead tired. Do let’s get out of this wretched wood into the open as quick as we can. And none of us except you saw anything.”

“Edmund?” said Peter.

“Well, there’s just this,” said Edmund, speaking quickly and turning a little red. “When we first discovered Narnia a year ago—or a thousand years ago, whichever it is—it was Lucy who discovered it first and none of us would believe her. I was the worst of the lot, I know. Yet she was right after all. Wouldn’t it be fair to believe her this time? I vote for going up.”

“Oh, Ed！” said Lucy, and seized his hand.

“And now it’s your turn, Peter,” said Susan, “and I do hope—”

“Oh, shut up, shut up and let a chap think,” interrupted Peter. “I’d much rather not have to vote.”

“You’re the High King,” said Trumpkin sternly.

“Down,” said Peter after a long pause. “I know Lucy may be right after all, but I can’t help it. We must do one or the other.”

So they set off to their right along the edge, downstream. And Lucy came last of the party, crying bitterly.

CHAPTER TEN
THE RETURN OF THE LION

To keep along the edge of the gorge was not so easy as it had looked. Before they had gone many yards they were confronted with young fir woods growing on the very edge, and after they had tried to go through these, stooping and pushing for about ten minutes, they realized that, in there, it would take them an hour to do half a mile. So they came back and out again and decided to go round the fir wood. This took them much farther to their right than they wanted to go, far out of sight of the cliffs and out of sound of the river, till they began to be afraid they had lost it altogether. Nobody knew the time, but it was getting to the hottest part of the day.

When they were able at last to go back to the edge of the gorge （nearly a mile below the point from which they had started） they found the cliffs on their side of it a good deal lower and more broken. Soon they found a way down into the gorge and continued the journey at the river’s edge. But first they had a rest and a long drink. No one was talking any more about breakfast, or even dinner, with Caspian.

They may have been wise to stick to the Rush instead of going along the top. It kept them sure of their direction, and ever since the fir wood they had all been afraid of being forced too far out of their course and losing themselves in the wood. It was an old and pathless forest, and you could not keep anything like a straight course in it. Patches of hopeless brambles, fallen trees, boggy places and dense undergrowth would be always getting in your way. But the gorge of the Rush was not at all a nice place for traveling either. I mean, it was not a nice place for people in a hurry. For an afternoon’s ramble ending in a picnic tea it would have been delightful. It had everything you could want on an occasion of that sort—rrumbling waterfalls, silver cascades, deep, amber-colored pools, mossy rocks, and deep moss on the banks in which you could sink over your ankles, every kind of fern, jewel-like dragon flies, sometimes a hawk overhead and once （Peter and Trumpkin both thought） an eagle. But of course what the children and the Dwarf wanted to see as soon as possible was the Great River below them, and Beruna, and the way to Aslan’s How.

As they went on, the Rush began to fall more and more steeply. Their journey became more and more of a climb and less and less of a walk—in places even a dangerous climb over slippery rock with a nasty drop into dark chasms, and the river roaring angrily at the bottom.

You may be sure they watched the cliffs on their left eagerly for any sign of a break or any place where they could climb them； but those cliffs remained cruel. It was maddening, because everyone knew that if once they were out of the gorge on that side, they would have only a smooth slope and a fairly short walk to Caspian’s headquarters.

The boys and the Dwarf were now in favour of lighting a fire and cooking their bear-meat. Susan didn’t want this； she only wanted, as she said, “to get on and finish it and get out of these beastly woods.” Lucy was far too tired and miserable to have any opinion about anything. But as there was no dry wood to be had, it mattered very little what anyone thought. The boys began to wonder if raw meat was really as nasty as they had always been told. Trumpkin assured them it was.

Of course, if the children had attempted a journey like this a few days ago in England, they would have been knocked up. I think I have explained before how Narnia was altering them. Even Lucy was by now, so to speak, only one-third of a little girl going to boarding school for the first time, and two-thirds of Queen Lucy of Narnia.

“At last！” said Susan.

“Oh, hurray！” said Peter.

The river gorge had just made a bend and the whole view spread out beneath them. They could see open country stretching before them to the horizon and, between it and them, the broad silver ribbon of the Great River. They could see the specially broad and shallow place which had once been the Fords of Beruna but was now spanned by a long, many-arched bridge. There was a little town at the far end of it.

“By Jove,” said Edmund. “We fought the Battle of Beruna just where that town is！”

This cheered the boys more than anything. You can’t help feeling stronger when you look at a place where you won a glorious victory not to mention a kingdom, hundreds of years ago. Peter and Edmund were soon so busy talking about the battle that they forgot their sore feet and the heavy drag of their mail shirts on their shoulders. The Dwarf was interested too.

They were all getting on at a quicker pace now. The going became easier. Though there were still sheer cliffs on their left, the ground was becoming lower on their right. Soon it was no longer a gorge at all, only a valley. There were no more waterfalls and presently they were in fairly thick woods again.

Then—all at once—whizz, and a sound rather like the stroke of a woodpecker. The children were still wondering where （ages ago） they had heard a sound just like that and why they disliked it so, when Trumpkin shouted, “Down,” at the same moment forcing Lucy （who happened to be next to him） flat down into the bracken. Peter, who had been looking up to see if he could spot a squirrel, had seen what it was-a long cruel arrow had sunk into a tree trunk just above his head. As he pulled Susan down and dropped himself, another came rasping over his shoulder and struck the ground at his side.

“Quick！ Quick！ Get back！ Crawl！” panted Trumpkin.

They turned and wriggled along uphill, under the bracken amid clouds of horribly buzzing flies. Arrows whizzed round them. One struck Susan’s helmet with a sharp ping and glanced off. They crawled quicker. Sweat poured off them. Then they ran, stooping nearly double. The boys held their swords in their hands for fear they would trip them up.

It was heart—breaking work—all uphill again, back over the ground they had already traveled. When they felt that they really couldn’t run any more, even to save their lives, they all dropped down in the damp moss beside a waterfall and behind a big boulder, panting. They were surprised to see how high they had already got.

They listened intently and heard no sound of pursuit.

“So that’s all right,” said Trumpkin, drawing a deep breath. “They’re not searching the wood. Only sentries, I expect. But it means that Miraz has an outpost down there. Bottles and battledores！ Though, it was a near thing.”

“I ought to have my head smacked for bringing us this way at all,” said Peter.

“On the contrary, your Majesty,” said the Dwarf. “For one thing it wasn’t you, it was your royal brother, King Edmund, who first suggested going by Glasswater.”

“I’m afraid the D. L. F.’s right,” said Edmund, who had quite honestly forgotten this ever since things began going wrong.

“And for another,” continued Trumpkin, “if we’d gone my way, we’d have walked straight into that new outpost, most likely； or at least had just the same trouble avoiding it. I think this Glasswater route has turned out for the best.”

“A blessing in disguise,” said Susan.

“Some disguise！” said Edmund.

“I suppose we’ll have to go right up the gorge again now,” said Lucy. now,” said Lucy.

“Lu, you’re a hero,” said Peter. “That’s the nearest you’ve got today to saying I told you so. Let’s get on.”

“And as soon as we’re well up into the forest,” said Trumpkin, “whatever anyone says, I’m going to light a fire and cook supper. But we must get well away from here.”

There is no need to describe how they toiled back up the gorge. It was pretty hard work, but oddly enough everyone felt more cheerful. They were getting their second wind； and the word supper had had a wonderful effect.

They reached the fir wood which had caused them so much trouble while it was still daylight, and bivouacked in a hollow just above it. It was tedious gathering the firewood； but it was grand when the fire blazed up and they began producing the damp and smeary parcels of bear-meat which would have been so very unattractive to anyone who had spent the day indoors. The Dwarf had splendid ideas about cookery. Each apple （they still had a few of these） was wrapped up in bear’s meat—as if it was to be apple dumpling with meat instead of pastry, only much thicker—and spiked on a sharp stick and then roasted. And the juice of the apple worked all through the meat, like apple sauce with roast pork. Bear that has lived too much on other animals is not very nice, but bear that has had plenty of honey and fruit is excellent, and this turned out to be that sort of bear. It was a truly glorious meal. And, of course, no washing up—only lying back and watching the smoke from Trumpkin’s pipe and stretching one’s tired legs and chatting. Everyone felt quite hopeful now about finding King Caspian tomorrow and defeating Miraz in a few days. It may not have been sensible of them to feel like this, but they did.

They dropped off to sleep one by one, but all pretty quickly.

Lucy woke out of the deepest sleep you can imagine, with the feeling that the voice she liked best in the world had been calling her name. She thought at first it was her father’s voice, but that did not seem quite right. Then she thought it was Peter’s voice, but that did not seem to fit either. She did not want to get up； not because she was still tired—on the contrary she was wonderfully rested and all the aches had gone from her bones—but because she felt so extremely happy and comfortable. She was looking straight up at the Narnian moon, which is larger than ours, and at the starry sky, for the place where they had bivouacked was comparatively open.

“Lucy,” came the call again, neither her father’s voice nor Peter’s. She sat up, trembling with excitement but not with fear. The moon was so bright that the whole forest landscape around her was almost as clear as day, though it looked wilder. Behind her was the fir wood； away to her right the jagged cliff-tops on the far side of the gorge； straight ahead, open grass to where a glade of trees began about a bow-shot away. Lucy looked very hard at the trees of that glade.

“Why, I do believe they’re moving,” she said to herself. “They’re walking about.”

She got up, her heart beating wildly, and walked toward them. There was certainly a noise in the glade, a noise such as trees make in a high wind, though there was no wind tonight. Yet it was not exactly an ordinary tree-noise either. Lucy felt there was a tune in it, but she could not catch the tune any more than she had been able to catch the words when the trees had so nearly talked to her the night before. But there was, at least, a lilt； she felt her own feet wanting to dance as she got nearer. And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving—moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance.（“And I suppose,” thought Lucy, “when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.”） She was almost among them now.

The first tree she looked at seemed at first glance to be not a tree at all but a huge man with a shaggy beard and great bushes of hair. She was not frightened：she had seen such things before. But when she looked again he was only a tree, though he was still moving. You couldn’t see whether he had feet or roots, of course, because when trees move they don’t walk on the surface of the earth； they wade in it as we do in water. The same thing happened with every tree she looked at. At one moment they seemed to be the friendly, lovely giant and giantess forms which the tree-people put on when some good magic has called them into full life：next moment they all looked like trees again. But when they looked like trees, it was like strangely human trees, and when they looked like people, it was like strangely branchy and leafy people-and all the time that queer lilting, rustling, cool, merry noise.

“They are almost awake, not quite,” said Lucy. She knew she herself was wide awake, wider than anyone usually is.

She went fearlessly in among them, dancing herself as she leaped this way and that to avoid being run into by these huge partners. But she was only half interested in them. She wanted to get beyond them to something else； it was from beyond them that the dear voice had called.

She soon got through them （half wondering whether she had been using her arms to push branches aside, or to take hands in a Great Chain with big dancers who stooped to reach her） for they were really a ring of trees round a central open place. She stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows.

A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all round it. And then—oh joy！ For he was there：the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.

But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Lucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

For a time she was so happy that she did not want to speak. But Aslan spoke.

“Lucy,” he said, “we must not lie here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.”

“Yes, wasn’t it a shame?” said Lucy. “I saw you all right. They wouldn’t believe me. They’re all so—”

From somewhere deep inside Aslan’s body there came the faintest suggestion of a growl.

“I’m sorry,” said Lucy, who understood some of his moods. “I didn’t mean to start slanging the others. But it wasn’t my fault anyway, was it?”

The Lion looked straight into her eyes.

“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “You don’t mean it was? How could I—I couldn’t have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don’t look at me like that ... oh well, I suppose I could. Yes, and it wouldn’t have been alone, I know, not if I was with you. But what would have been the good?”

Aslan said nothing.

“You mean,” said Lucy rather faintly, “that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan！ Am I not to know?”

“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”

“Oh dear,” said Lucy.

“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan. “If you go back to the others now, and wake them up； and tell them you have seen me again； and that you must all get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”

“Do you mean that is what you want me to do?” gasped Lucy.

“Yes, little one,” said Aslan.

“Will the others see you too?” asked Lucy.

“Certainly not at first,” said Aslan. “Later on, it depends.”

“But they won’t believe me！” said Lucy.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Aslan.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Lucy. “And I was so pleased at finding you again. And I thought you’d let me stay. And I thought you’d come roaring in and frighten all the enemies away—like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid.”

“It is hard for you, little one,” said Aslan. “But things never happen the same way twice. It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now.”

Lucy buried her head in his mane to hide from his face. But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up.

“I’m sorry, Aslan,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

“Now you are a lioness,” said Aslan. “And now all Narnia will be renewed. But come. We have no time to lose.”

He got up and walked with stately, noiseless paces back to the belt of dancing trees through which she had just come：and Lucy went with him, laying a rather tremulous hand on his mane. The trees parted to let them through and for one second assumed their human forms completely. Lucy had a glimpse of tall and lovely wood-gods and wood-goddesses all bowing to the Lion； next moment they were trees again, but still bowing, with such graceful sweeps of branch and trunk that their bowing was itself a kind of dance.

“Now, child,” said Aslan, when they had left the trees behind them, “I will wait here. Go and wake the others and tell them to follow. If they will not, then you at least must follow me alone.”

It is a terrible thing to have to wake four people, all older than yourself and all very tired, for the purpose of telling them something they probably won’t believe and making them do something they certainly won’t like. “I mustn’t think about it, I must just do it,” thought Lucy.

She went to Peter first and shook him. “Peter,” she whispered in his ear, “wake up. Quick. Aslan is here. He says we’ve got to follow him at once.”

“Certainly, Lu. Whatever you like,” said Peter unexpectedly. This was encouraging, but as Peter instantly rolled round and went to sleep again it wasn’t much use.

Then she tried Susan. Susan did really wake up, but only to say in her most annoying grown-up voice, “You’ve been dreaming, Lucy. Go to sleep again.”

She tackled Edmund next. It was very difficult to wake him, but when at last she had done it he was really awake and sat up.

“Eh?” he said in a grumpy voice. “What are you talking about?”

She said it all over again. This was one of the worst parts of her job, for each time she said it, it sounded less convincing.

“Aslan！” said Edmund, jumping up. “Hurray！ Where?”

Lucy turned back to where she could see the Lion waiting, his patient eyes fixed upon her. “There,” she said, pointing.

“Where?” asked Edmund again.

“There. There. Don’t you see? Just this side of the trees.”

Edmund stared hard for a while and then said, “No. There’s nothing there. You’ve got dazzled and muddled with the moonlight. One does, you know. I thought I saw something for a moment myself. It’s only an optical what-do-you-call-it.”

“I can see him all the time,” said Lucy. “He’s looking straight at us.”

“Then why can’t I see him?”

“He said you mightn’t be able to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he said.”

“Oh, bother it all,” said Edmund. “I do wish you wouldn’t keep on seeing things. But I suppose we’ll have to wake the others.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE LION ROARS

When the whole party was finally awake Lucy had to tell her story for the fourth time. The blank silence which followed it was as discouraging as anything could be.

“I can’t see anything,” said Peter after he had stared his eyes sore. “Can you, Susan?”

“No, of course I can’t,” snapped Susan. “Because there isn’t anything to see. She’s been dreaming. Do lie down and go to sleep, Lucy.”

“And I do hope,” said Lucy in a tremulous voice, “that you will all come with me. Because—because I’ll have to go with him whether anyone else does or not.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Lucy,” said Susan. “Of course you can’t go off on your own. Don’t let her, Peter. She’s being downright naughty.”

“I’ll go with her, if she must go,” said Edmund. “She’s been right before.”

“I know she has,” said Peter. “And she may have been right this morning. We certainly had no luck going down the gorge. Still—at this hour of the night. And why should Aslan be invisible to us? He never used to be. It’s not like him. What does the D. L. F. say?”

“Oh, I say nothing at all,” answered the Dwarf. “If you all go, of course, I’ll go with you； and if your party splits up, I’ll go with the High King. That’s my duty to him and King Caspian. But, if you ask my private opinion, I’m a plain dwarf who doesn’t think there’s much chance of finding a road by night where you couldn’t find one by day. And I have no use for magic lions which are talking lions and don’t talk, and friendly lions though they don’t do us any good, and whopping big lions though nobody can see them. It’s all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can see.”

“He’s beating his paw on the ground for us to hurry,” said Lucy. “We must go now. At least I must.”

“You’ve no right to try to force the rest of us like that. It’s four to one and you’re the youngest,” said Susan.

“Oh, come on,” growled Edmund. “We’ve got to go. There’ll be no peace till we do.” He fully intended to back Lucy up, but he was annoyed at losing his night’s sleep and was making up for it by doing everything as sulkily as possible.

“On the march, then,” said Peter, wearily fitting his arm into his shield-strap and putting his helmet on. At any other time he would have said something nice to Lucy, who was his favourite sister, for he knew how wretched she must be feeling, and he knew that, whatever had happened, it was not her fault. But he couldn’t help being a little annoyed with her all the same.

Susan was the worst. “Supposing I started behaving like Lucy,” she said. “I might threaten to stay here whether the rest of you went on or not. I jolly well think I shall.”

“Obey the High King, your Majesty,” said Trumpkin, “and let’s be off. If I’m not to be allowed to sleep, I’d as soon march as stand here talking.”

And so at last they got on the move. Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan. He turned and walked at a slow pace about thirty yards ahead of them. The others had only Lucy’s directions to guide them, for Aslan was not only invisible to them but silent as well. His big cat-like paws made no noise on the grass.

He led them to the right of the dancing trees—whether they were still dancing nobody knew, for Lucy had her eyes on the Lion and the rest had their eyes on Lucy—and nearer the edge of the gorge. “Cobbles and kettledrums！” thought Trumpkin. “I hope this madness isn’t going to end in a moonlight climb and broken necks.”

For a long way Aslan went along the top of the precipices. Then they came to a place where some little trees grew right on the edge. He turned and disappeared among them. Lucy held her breath, for it looked as if he had plunged over the cliff； but she was too busy keeping him in sight to stop and think about this. She quickened her pace and was soon among the trees herself. Looking down, she could see a steep and narrow path going slantwise down into the gorge between rocks, and Aslan descending it. He turned and looked at her with his happy eyes. Lucy clapped her hands and began to scramble down after him. From behind her she heard the voices of the others shouting, “Hi！ Lucy！ Look out, for goodness’sake. You’re right on the edge of the gorge. Come back—” and then, a moment later, Edmund’s voice saying, “No, she’s right. There is a way down.”

Half-way down the path Edmund caught up with her.

“Look！” he said in great excitement. “Look！ What’s that shadow crawling down in front of us?”

“It’s his shadow,” said Lucy.

“I do believe you’re right, Lu,” said Edmund. “I can’t think how I didn’t see it before. But where is he?”

“With his shadow, of course. Can’t you see him?”

“Well, I almost thought I did—for a moment. It’s such a rum light.”

“Get on, King Edmund, get on,” came Trumpkin’s voice from behind and above, and then, farther behind and still nearly at the top, Peter’s voice saying, “Oh, buck up, Susan. Give me your hand. Why, a baby could get down here. And do stop grousing.”

In a few minutes they were at the bottom and the roaring of water filled their ears. Treading delicately, like a cat, Aslan stepped from stone to stone across the stream. In the middle he stopped, bent down to drink, and as he raised his shaggy head, dripping from the water, he turned to face them again. This time Edmund saw him. “Oh, Aslan！” he cried, darting forward. But the Lion whisked round and began padding up the slope on the far side of the Rush.

“Peter, Peter,” cried Edmund. “Did you see?”

“I saw something,” said Peter. “But it’s so tricky in this moonlight. On we go, though, and three cheers for Lucy. I don’t feel half so tired now, either.”

Aslan without hesitation led them to their left, farther up the gorge. The whole journey was odd and dream-like the roaring stream, the wet gray grass, the glimmering cliffs which they were approaching, and always the glorious, silently pacing Beast ahead. Everyone except Susan and the Dwarf could see him now.

Presently they came to another steep path, up the face of the farther precipices. These were far higher than the ones they had just descended, and the journey up them was a long and tedious zig-zag. Fortunately the Moon shone right above the gorge so that neither side was in shadow.

Lucy was nearly blown when the tail and hind legs of Aslan disappeared over the top：but with one last effort she scrambled after him and came out, rather shaky-legged and breathless, on the hill they had been trying to reach ever since they left Glasswater. The long gentle slope （heather and grass and a few very big rocks that shone white in the moonlight） stretched up to where it vanished in a glimmer of trees about half a mile away. She knew it. It was the hill of the Stone Table.

With a jingling of mail the others climbed up behind her. Aslan glided on before them and they walked after him.

“Lucy,” said Susan in a very small voice.

“Yes?” said Lucy.

“I see him now. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“But I’ve been far worse than you know. I really believed it was him—he, I mean—yesterday. When he warned us not to go down to the fir wood. And I really believed it was him tonight, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I’d let myself. But I just wanted to get out of the woods and—and—oh, I don’t know. And what ever am I to say to him?”

“Perhaps you won’t need to say much,” suggested Lucy.

Soon they reached the trees and through them the children could see the Great Mound, Aslan’s How, which had been raised over the Table since their days.

“Our side don’t keep very good watch,” muttered Trumpkin. “We ought to have been challenged before now—”

“Hush！” said the other four, for now Aslan had stopped and turned and stood facing them, looking so majestic that they felt as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad. The boys strode forward； Lucy made way for them； Susan and the Dwarf shrank back.

“Oh, Aslan,” said King Peter, dropping on one knee and raising the Lion’s heavy paw to his face, “I’m so glad. And I’m so sorry. I’ve been leading them wrong ever since we started and especially yesterday morning.”

“My dear son,” said Aslan.

Then he turned and welcomed Edmund. “Well done,” were his words.

Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, “Susan.” Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. “You have listened to fears, child,” said Aslan. “Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?”

“A little, Aslan,” said Susan.

“And now！” said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of roar in it, while his tail lashed his flanks. “And now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn’t believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth, come here！”—and the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing.

“Wraiths and wreckage！” gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice. The children, who knew Aslan well enough to see that he liked the Dwarf very much, were not disturbed； but it was quite another thing for Trumpkin, who had never seen a lion before, let alone this Lion. He did the only sensible thing he could have done； that is, instead of bolting, he tottered toward Aslan.

Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armor rattled like a tinker’s pack and then-hey-presto—the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him （right way up, too） on the ground.

“Son of Earth, shall we be friends?” asked Aslan.

“Ye—he—he—hes,” panted the Dwarf, for it had not yet got its breath back.

“Now,” said Aslan. “The Moon is setting. Look behind you：there is the dawn beginning. We have no time to lose. You three, you sons of Adam and son of Earth, hasten into the Mound and deal with what you will find there.”

The Dwarf was still speechless and neither of the boys dared to ask if Aslan would follow them. All three drew their swords and saluted, then turned and jingled away into the dusk. Lucy noticed that there was no sign of weariness in their faces：both the High King and King Edmund looked more like men than boys.

The girls watched them out of sight, standing close beside Aslan. The light was changing. Low down in the east, Aravir, the morning star of Narnia, gleamed like a little moon. Aslan, who seemed larger than before, lifted his head, shook his mane, and roared.

The sound, deep and throbbing at first like an organ beginning on a low note, rose and became louder, and then far louder again, till the earth and air were shaking with it. It rose up from that hill and floated across all Narnia. Down in Miraz’s camp men woke, stared palely in one another’s faces, and grasped their weapons. Down below that in the Great River, now at its coldest hour, the heads and shoulders of the nymphs, and the great weedy-bearded head of the river-god, rose from the water. Beyond it, in every field and wood, the alert ears of rabbits rose from their holes, the sleepy heads of birds came out from under wings, owls hooted, vixens barked, hedgehogs grunted, the trees stirred. In towns and villages mothers pressed babies close to their breasts, staring with wild eyes, dogs whimpered, and men leaped up groping for lights. Far away on the northern frontier the mountain giants peered from the dark gateways of their castles.

What Lucy and Susan saw was a dark something coming to them from almost every direction across the hills. It looked first like a black mist creeping on the ground, then like the stormy waves of a black sea rising higher and higher as it came on, and then, at last, like what it was—woods on the move. All the trees of the world appeared to be rushing toward Aslan. But as they drew nearer they looked less like trees； and when the whole crowd, bowing and curtsying and waving thin long arms to Aslan, were all around Lucy, she saw that it was a crowd of human shapes. Pale birch-girls were tossing their heads, willow-women pushed back their hair from their brooding faces to gaze on Aslan, the queenly beeches stood still and adored him, shaggy oak-men, lean and melancholy elms, shockheaded hollies （dark themselves, but their wives all bright with berries） and gay rowans, all bowed and rose again, shouting, “Aslan, Aslan！” in their various husky or creaking or wave-like voices.

The crowd and the dance round Aslan （for it had become a dance once more） grew so thick and rapid that Lucy was confused. She never saw where certain other people came from who were soon capering about among the trees. One was a youth, dressed only in a fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed in his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy’s, if it had not looked, so extremely wild. You felt, as Edmund said when he saw him a few days later, “There’s a chap who might do anything—absolutely anything.” He seemed to have a great many names—Bromios, Bassareus, and the Ram were three of them. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild as he. There was even, unexpectedly, someone on a donkey. And everybody was laughing, and everybody was shouting out, “Euan, euan, eu-oi-oi-oi.”

“Is it a Romp, Aslan?” cried the youth. And apparently it was. But nearly everyone seemed to have a different idea as to what they were playing. It may have been Tig, but Lucy never discovered who was It. It was rather like Blind Man’s Buff, only everyone behaved as if they were blindfolded. It was not unlike Hunt the Slipper, but the slipper was never found. What made it more complicated was that the man on the donkey, who was old and enormously fat, began calling out at once, “Refreshments！ Time for refreshments,” and falling off his donkey and being bundled on to it again by the others, while the donkey was under the impression that the whole thing was a circus and tried to give a display of walking on its hind legs. And all the time there were more and more vine leaves everywhere. And soon not only leaves but vines. They were climbing up everything. They were running up the legs of the tree people and circling round their necks. Lucy put up her hands to push back her hair and found she was pushing back vine branches. The donkey was a mass of them. His tail was completely entangled and something dark was nodding between his ears. Lucy looked again and saw it was a bunch of grapes. After that it was mostly grapes—overhead and underfoot and all around.

“Refreshments！ Refreshments,” roared the old man. Everyone began eating, and whatever hothouses your people may have, you have never tasted such grapes. Really good grapes, firm and tight on the outside, but bursting into cool sweetness when you put them into your mouth, were one of the things the girls had never had quite enough of before. Here, there were more than anyone could possibly want, and rib table-manners at all. One saw sticky and stained fingers everywhere, and, though mouths were full, the laughter never ceased nor the yodeling cries of Euan, euan, eu-oi-oi-oi-oi, till all of a sudden everyone felt at the same moment that the game （whatever it was）, and the feast, ought to be over, and everyone flopped down breathless on the ground and turned their faces to Aslan to hear what he would say next.

At that moment the sun was just rising and Lucy remembered something and whispered to Susan,

“I say, Su, I know who they are.”

“Who?”

“The boy with the wild face is Bacchus and the old one on the donkey is Silenus. Don’t you remember Mr. Tumnus telling us about them long ago?”

“Yes, of course. But I say, Lu—”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan.”

“I should think not,” said Lucy.

CHAPTER TWELVE
SORCERY AND SUDDEN VENGEANCE

Meanwhile Trumpkin and the two boys arrived at the dark little stone archway which led into the inside of the Mound, and two sentinel badgers （the white patches on their cheeks were all Edmund could see of them） leaped up with bared teeth and asked them in snarling voices, “Who goes there?”

“Trumpkin,” said the Dwarf. “Bringing the High King of Narnia out of the far past.”

The badgers nosed at the boys’hands. “At last,” they said. “At last.”

“Give us a light, friends,” said Trumpkin.

The badgers found a torch just inside the arch and Peter lit it and handed it to Trumpkin. “The D. L. F. had better lead,” he said. “We don’t know our way about this place.”

Trumpkin took the torch and went ahead into the dark tunnel. It was a cold, black, musty place, with an occasional bat fluttering in the torchlight, and plenty of cobwebs. The boys, who had been mostly in the open air since that morning at the railway station, felt as if they were going into a trap or a prison.

“I say, Peter,” whispered Edmund. “Look at those carvings on the walls. Don’t they look old? And yet we’re older than that. When we were last here, they hadn’t been made.”

“Yes,” said Peter. “That makes one think.”

The Dwarf went on ahead and then turned to the right, and then to the left, and then down some steps, and then to the left again. Then at last they saw a light ahead—light from under a door. And now for the first time they heard voices, for they had come to the door of the central chamber. The voices inside were angry ones. Someone was talking so loudly that the approach of the boys and the Dwarf had not been heard.

“Don’t like the sound of that,” whispered Trumpkin to Peter. “Let’s listen for a moment.” All three stood perfectly still on the outside of the door.

“You know well enough,” said a voice（“That’s the King,” whispered Trumpkin）, “why the Horn was not blown at sunrise this morning. Have you forgotten that Miraz fell upon us almost before Trumpkin had gone, and we were fighting for our lives for the space of three hours and more? I blew it when first I had a breathing space.”

“I’m not likely to forget it,” came the angry voice, “when my Dwarfs bore the brunt of the attack and one in five of them fell.”（“That’s Nikabrik,” whispered Trumpkin.）

“For shame, Dwar f,” came a th ick voice（“Trufflehunter’s,” said Trumpkin）. “We all did as much as the Dwarfs and none more than the King.”

“Tell that tale your own way for all I care,” answered Nikabrik. “But whether it was that the Horn was blown too late, or whether there was no magic in it, no help has come. You, you great clerk, you master magician, you know-all； are you still asking us to hang our hopes on Aslan and King Peter and all the rest of it?”

“I must confess—I cannot deny it—that I am deeply disappointed in the result of the operation,” came the answer.（“That’ll be Doctor Cornelius,” said Trumpkin.）

“To speak plainly,” said Nikabrik, “your wallet’s empty, your eggs addled, your fish uncaught, your promises broken. Stand aside then and let others work. And that is why—”

“The help will come,” said Trufflehunter. “I stand by Aslan. Have patience, like us beasts. The help will come. It may be even now at the door.”

“Pah！” snarled Nikabrik. “You badgers would have us wait till the sky falls and we can all catch larks. I tell you we can’t wait. Food is running short； we lose more than we can afford at every encounter； our followers are slipping away.”

“And why?” asked Trufflehunter. “I’ll tell you why. Because it is noised among them that we have called on the Kings of old and the Kings of old have not answered. The last words Trumpkin spoke before he went （and went, most likely, to his death） were,‘If you must blow the Horn, do not let the army know why you blow it or what you hope from it.’But that same evening everyone seemed to know.”

“You’d better have shoved your gray snout in a hornets’nest, Badger, than suggest that I am the blab,” said Nikabrik. “Take it back, or—”

“Oh, stop it, both of you,” said King Caspian. “I want to know what it is that Nikabrik keeps on hinting we should do. But before that, I want to know who those two strangers are whom he has brought into our council and who stand there with their ears open and their mouths shut.”

“They are friends of mine,” said Nikabrik. “And what better right have you yourself to be here than that you are a friend of Trumpkin’s and the Badger’s? And what right has that old dotard in the black gown to be here except that he is your friend? Why am I to be the only one who can’t bring in his friends?”

“His Majesty is the King to whom you have sworn allegiance,” said Trufflehunter sternly.

“Court manners, court manners,” sneered Nikabrik. “But in this hole we may talk plainly. You know—and he knows—that this Telmarine boy will be king of nowhere and nobody in a week unless we can help him out of the trap in which he sits.”

“Perhaps,” said Cornelius, “your new friends would like to speak for themselves? You there, who and what are you?”

“Worshipful Master Doctor,” came a thin, whining voice. “So please you, I’m only a poor old woman, I am, and very obliged to his Worshipful Dwarfship for his friendship, I’m sure. His Majesty, bless his handsome face, has no need to be afraid of an old woman that’s nearly doubled up with the rheumatics and hasn’t two sticks to put under her kettle. I have some poor little skill—not like yours, Master Doctor, of course—in small spells and cantrips that I’d be glad to use against our enemies if it was agreeable to all concerned. For I hate’em. Oh yes. No one hates better than me.”

“That is all most interesting and—er—satisfactory,” said Doctor Cornelius. “I think I now know what you are, Madam. Perhaps your other friend, Nikabrik, would give some account of himself?”

A dull, gray voice at which Peter’s flesh crept replied, “I’m hunger. I’m thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my enemy’s body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.”

“And it is in the presence of these two that you wish to disclose your plan?” said Caspian.

“Yes,” said Nikabrik. “And by their help that I mean to execute it.”

There was a minute or two during which Trumpkin and the boys could hear Caspian and his two friends speaking in low voices but could not make out what they were saying. Then Caspian spoke aloud.

“Well, Nikabrik,” he said, “we will hear your plan.”

There was a pause so long that the boys began to wonder if Nikabrik was ever going to begin； when he did, it was in a lower voice, as if he himself did not much like what he was saying.

“All said and done,” he muttered, “none of us knows the truth about the ancient days in Narnia. Trumpkin believed none of the stories. I was ready to put them to the trial. We tried first the Horn and it has failed. If there ever was a High King Peter and a Queen Susan and a King Edmund and a Queen Lucy, then either they have not heard us, or they cannot come, or they are our enemies—”

“Or they are on the way,” put in Trufflehunter.

“You can go on saying that till Miraz has fed us all to his dogs. As I was saying, we have tried one link in the chain of old legends, and it has done us no good. Well. But when your sword breaks, you draw your dagger. The stories tell of other powers beside the ancient Kings and Queens. How if we could call them up?”

“If you mean Aslan,” said Trufflehunter, “it’s all one calling on him and on the Kings. They were his servants. If he will not send them （but I make no doubt he will）, is he more likely to come himself?”

“No. You’re right there,” said Nikabrik. “Aslan and the Kings go together. Either Aslan is dead, or he is not on our side. Or else something stronger than himself keeps him back. And if he did come—how do we know he’d be our friend? He was not always a good friend to Dwarfs by all that’s told. Not even to all beasts. Ask the Wolves. And anyway, he was in Narnia only once that I ever heard of, and he didn’t stay long. You may drop Aslan out of the reckoning. I was thinking of someone else.”

There was no answer, and for a few minutes it was so still that Edmund could hear the wheezy and snuffling breath of the Badger.

“Who do you mean?” said Caspian at last.

“I mean a power so much greater than Aslan’s that it held Narnia spellbound for years and years, if the stories are true.”

“The White Witch！” cried three voices all at once, and from the noise Peter guessed that three people had leaped to their feet.

“Yes,” said Nikabrik very slowly and distinctly, “I mean the Witch. Sit down again. Don’t all take fright at a name as if you were children. We want power, and we want a power that will be on our side. As for power, do not the stories say that the Witch defeated Aslan, and bound him, and killed him on that very stone which is over there, just beyond the light?”

“But they also say that he came to life again,” said the Badger sharply.

“Yes, they say,” answered Nikabrik, “but you’ll notice that we hear precious little about anything he did afterward. He just fades out of the story. How do you explain that, if he really came to life? Isn’t it much more likely that he didn’t, and that the stories say nothing more about him because there was nothing more to say?”

“He established the Kings and Queens,” said Caspian.

“A King who has just won a great battle can usually establish himself without the help of a performing lion,” said Nikabrik. There was a fierce growl, probably from Trufflehunter.

“And anyway,” Nikabrik continued, “what came of the Kings and their reign? They faded too. But it’s very different with the Witch. They say she ruled for a hundred years：a hundred years of winter. There’s power, if you like. There’s something practical.”

“But, heaven and earth！” said the King, “haven’t we always been told that she was the worst enemy of all? Wasn’t she a tyrant ten times worse than Miraz?”

“Perhaps,” said Nikabrik in a cold voice. “Perhaps she was for you humans, if there were any of you in those days. Perhaps she was for some of the beasts. She stamped out the Beavers, I dare say； at least there are none of them in Narnia now. But she got on all right with us Dwarfs. I’m a Dwarf and I stand by my own people. We’re not afraid of the Witch.”

“But you’ve joined with us,” said Trufflehunter.

“Yes, and a lot of good it has done my people, so far,” snapped Nikabrik. “Who is sent on all the dangerous raids? The Dwarfs. Who goes short when the rations fail? The Dwarfs. Who—?”

“Lies！ All lies！” said the Badger.

“And so,” said Nikabrik, whose voice now rose to a scream, “if you can’t help my people, I’ll go to someone who can.”

“Is this open treason, Dwarf?” asked the King.

“Put that sword back in its sheath, Caspian,” said Nikabrik. “Murder at council, eh? Is that your game? Don’t be fool enough to try it. Do you think I’m afraid of you? There’s three on my side, and three on yours.”

“Come on, then,” snarled Trufflehunter, but he was immediately interrupted.

“Stop, stop, stop,” said Doctor Cornelius. “You go on too fast. The Witch is dead. All the stories agree on that. What does Nikabrik mean by calling on the Witch?”

That gray and terrible voice which had spoken only once before said, “Oh, is she?”

And then the shrill, whining voice began, “Oh, bless his heart, his dear little Majesty needn’t mind about the White Lady—that’s what we call her—being dead. The Worshipful Master Doctor is only making game of a poor old woman like me when he says that. Sweet Mastery Doctor, learned Master Doctor, who ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back.”

“Call her up,” said the gray voice. “We are all ready. Draw the circle. Prepare the blue fire.”

Above the steadily increasing growl of the Badger and Cornelius’s sharp “What?” rose the voice of King Caspian like thunder.

“So that is your plan, Nikabrik！ Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost. And I see who your companions are—a Hag and a Wer-Wolf！”

The next minute or so was very confused. There was an animal roaring, a clash of steel； the boys and Trumpkin rushed in； Peter had a glimpse of a horrible, grey, gaunt creature, half man and half wolf, in the very act of leaping upon a boy about his own age, and Edmund saw a badger and a Dwarf rolling on the floor in a sort of cat fight. Trumpkin found himself face to face with the Hag. Her nose and chin stuck out like a pair of nutcrackers, her dirty gray hair was flying about her face and she had just got Doctor Cornelius by the throat. At one slash of Trumpkin’s sword her head rolled on the floor. Then the light was knocked over and it was all swords, teeth, claws, fists, and boots for about sixty seconds. Then silence.

“Are you all right, Ed?”

“I—I think so,” panted Edmund. “I’ve got that brute Nikabrik, but he’s still alive.”

“Weights and water-bottles！” came an angry voice. “It’s me you’re sitting on. Get off. You’re like a young elephant.”

“Sorry, D. L. F.,” said Edmund. “Is that better?”

“Ow！ No！” bellowed Trumpkin. “You’re putting your boot in my mouth. Go away.”

“Is King Caspian anywhere?” asked Peter.

“I’m here,” said a rather faint voice. “Something bit me.”

They all heard the noise of someone striking a match. It was Edmund. The little flame showed his face, looking pale and dirty. He blundered about for a little, found the candle （they were no longer using the lamp, for they had run out of oil）, set it on the table, and lit it. When the flame rose clear, several people scrambled to their feet. Six faces blinked at one another in the candlelight.

“We don’t seem to have any enemies left,” said Peter. “There’s the Hag, dead.” （He turned his eyes quickly away from her.）“And Nikabrik, dead too. And I suppose this thing is a Wer-Wolf. It’s so long since I’ve seen one. Wolf’s head and man’s body. That means he was just turning from man into wolf at the moment he was killed. And you, I suppose, are King Caspian?”

“Yes,” said the other boy. “But I’ve no idea who you are.”

“It’s the High King, King Peter,” said Trumpkin.

“Your Majesty is very welcome,” said Caspian.

“And so is your Majesty,” said Peter. “I haven’t come to take your place, you know, but to put you into it.”

“Your Majesty,” said another voice at Peter’s elbow. He turned and found himself face to face with the Badger. Peter leaned forward, put his arms round the beast and kissed the furry head：it wasn’t a girlish thing for him to do, because he was the High King.

“Best of badgers,” he said. “You never doubted us all through.”

“No credit to me, your Majesty,” said Trufflehunter. “I’m a beast and we don’t change. I’m a badger, what’s more, and we hold on.”

“I am sorry for Nikabrik,” said Caspian, “though he hated me from the first moment he saw me. He had gone sour inside from long suffering and hating. If we had won quickly he might have become a good Dwarf in the days of peace. I don’t know which of us killed him. I’m glad of that.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Peter.

“Yes, I’m bitten,” said Caspian. “It was that—tthat wolf thing.” Cleaning and bandaging the wound took a long time, and when it was done Trumpkin said, “Now. Before everything else we want some breakfast.”

“But not here,” said Peter.

“No,” said Caspian with a shudder. “And we must send someone to take away the bodies.”

“Let the vermin be flung into a pit,” said Peter. “But the Dwarf we will give to his people to be buried in their own fashion.”

They breakfasted at last in another of the dark cellars of Aslan’s How. It was not such a breakfast as they would have chosen, for Caspian and Cornelius were thinking of venison pasties, and Peter and Edmund of buttered eggs and hot coffee, but what everyone got was a little bit of cold bear-meat （out of the boys’pockets）, a lump of hard cheese, an onion, and a mug of water. But, from the way they fell to, anyone would have supposed it was delicious.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE HIGH KING IN COMMAND

“Now,” said Peter, as they finished their meal, “Aslan and the girls （that’s Queen Susan and Queen Lucy, Caspian） are somewhere close. We don’t know when he will act. In his time, no doubt, not ours. In the meantime he would like us to do what we can on our own. You say, Caspian, we are not strong enough to meet Miraz in pitched battle?”

“I’m afraid not, High King,” said Caspian. He was liking Peter very much, but was rather tongue-tied. It was much stranger for him to meet the great Kings out of the old stories than it was for them to meet him.

“Very well, then,” said Peter, “I’ll send him a challenge to single combat.” No one had thought of this before.

“Please,” said Caspian, “could it not be me? I want to avenge my father.”

“You’re wounded,” said Peter. “And anyway, wouldn’t he just laugh at a challenge from you? I mean, we have seen that you are a king and a warrior but he thinks of you as a kid.”

“But, Sire,” said the Badger, who sat very close to Peter and never took his eyes off him. “Will he accept a challenge even from you? He knows he has the stronger army.”

“Very likely he won’t,” said Peter, “but there’s always the chance. And even if he doesn’t, we shall spend the best part of the day sending heralds to and fro and all that. By then Aslan may have done something. And at least I can inspect the army and strengthen the position. I will send the challenge. In fact I will write it at once. Have you pen and ink, Master Doctor?”

“A scholar is never without them, your Majesty,” answered Doctor Cornelius.

“Very well, I will dictate,” said Peter. And while the Doctor spread out a parchment and opened his ink-horn and sharpened his pen, Peter leant back with half-closed eyes and recalled to his mind the language in which he had written such things long ago in Narnia’s golden age.

“Right,” he said at last. “And now, if you are ready, Doctor?”

Doctor Cornelius dipped his pen and waited. Peter dictated as follows：

“Peter, by the gift of Aslan, by election, by prescription, and by conquest, High King over all Kings in Narnia, Emperor of the Lone Islands and Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion, to Miraz, Son of Caspian the Eighth, sometime Lord Protector of Narnia and now styling himself King of Narnia, Greeting. Have you got that?”

“Narnia, comma, greeting,” muttered the Doctor. “Yes, Sire.”

“Then begin a new paragraph,” said Peter. “For to prevent the effusion of blood, and for the avoiding all other inconveniences likely to grow from the wars now levied in our realm of Narnia, it is our pleasure to adventure our royal person on behalf of our trusty and well-beloved Caspian in clean wager of battle to prove upon your Lordship’s body that the said Caspian is lawful King under us in Narnia both by our gift and by the laws of the Telmarines, and your Lordship twice guilty of treachery both in withholding the dominion of Narnia from the said Caspian and in the most abhominable—don’t forget to spell it with an H, Doctor—bloody, and unnatural murder of your kindly lord and brother King Caspian Ninth of that name. Wherefore we most heartily provoke, challenge, and defy your Lordship to the said combat and monomachy, and have sent these letters by the hand of our well beloved and royal brother Edmund, sometime King under us in Narnia, Duke of Lantern Waste and Count of the Western March, Knight of the Noble Order of the Table, to whom we have given full power of determining with your Lordship all the conditions of the said battle. Given at our lodging in Aslan’s How this XII day of the month Greenroof in the first year of Caspian Tenth of Narnia.

“That ought to do,” said Peter, drawing a deep breath. “And now we must send two others with King Edmund. I think the Giant ought to be one.”

“He’s—he’s not very clever, you know,” said Caspian.

“Of course not,” said Peter. “But any giant looks impressive if only he will keep quiet. And it will cheer him up. But who for the other?”

“Upon my word,” said Trumpkin, “if you want someone who can kill with looks, Reepicheep would be the best.”

“He would indeed, from all I hear,” said Peter with a laugh. “If only he wasn’t so small. They wouldn’t even see him till he was close！”

“Send Glenstorm, Sire,” said Trufflehunter. “No one ever laughed at a Centaur.”

An hour later two great lords in the army of Miraz, the Lord Glozelle and the Lord Sopespian, strolling along their lines and picking their teeth after breakfast, looked up and saw coming down to them from the wood the Centaur and Giant Wimbleweather, whom they had seen before in battle, and between them a figure they could not recognize. Nor indeed would the other boys at Edmund’s school have recognized him if they could have seen him at that moment. For Aslan had breathed on him at their meeting and a kind of greatness hung about him.

“What’s to do?” said the Lord Glozelle. “An attack?”

“A parley, rather,” said Sopespian. “See, they carry green branches. They are coming to surrender most likely.”

“He that is walking between the Centaur and the Giant has no look of surrender in his face,” said Glozelle. “Who can he be? It is not the boy Caspian.”

“No indeed,” said Sopespian. “This is a fell warrior, I warrant you, wherever the rebels have got him from. He is （in your Lordship’s private ear） a kinglier man than ever Miraz was. And what mail he wears！ None of our smiths can make the like.”

“I’ll wager my dappled Pomely he brings a challenge, not a surrender,” said Glozelle.

“How then?” said Sopespian. “We hold the enemy in our fist here. Miraz would never be so hair-brained as to throw away his advantage on a combat.”

“He might be brought to it,” said Glozelle in a much lower voice.

“Softly,” said Sopespian. “Step a little aside here out of earshot of those sentries. Now. Have I taken your Lordship’s meaning aright?”

“If the King undertook wager of battle,” whispered Glozelle, “why, either he would kill or be killed.”

“So,” said Sopespian, nodding his head.

“And if he killed we should have won this war.”

“Certainly. And if not?”

“Why, if not, we should be as able to win it without the King’s grace as with him. For I need not tell your Lordship that Miraz is no very great captain. And after that, we should be both victorious and kingless.”

“And it is your meaning, my Lord, that you and I could hold this land quite as conveniently without a King as with one?”

Glozelle’s face grew ugly. “Not forgetting,” said he, “that it was we who first put him on the throne. And in all the years that he has enjoyed it, what fruits have come our way? What gratitude has he shown us?”

“Say no more,” answered Sopespian. “But look—herd comes one to fetch us to the King’s tent.”

When they reached Miraz’s tent they saw Edmund and his two companions seated outside it and being entertained with cakes and wine, having already delivered the challenge, and withdrawn while the King was considering it. When they saw them thus at close quarters the two Telmarine lords thought all three of them very alarming.

Inside, they found Miraz, unarmed and finishing his breakfast. His face was flushed and there was a scowl on his brow.

“There！” he growled, flinging the parchment across the table to them. “See what a pack of nursery tales our jackanapes of a nephew has sent us.”

“By your leave, Sire,” said Glozelle. “If the young warrior whom we have just seen outside is the King Edmund mentioned in the writing, then I would not call him a nursery tale but a very dangerous knight.”

“King Edmund, pah！” said Miraz. “Does your Lordship believe those old wives’fables about Peter and Edmund and the rest?”

“I believe my eyes, your Majesty,” said Glozelle.

“Well, this is to no purpose,” said Miraz, “but as touching the challenge, I suppose there is only one opinion between us?”

“I suppose so, indeed, Sire,” said Glozelle.

“And what is that?” asked the King.

“Most infallibly to refuse it,” said Glozelle. “For though I have never been called a coward, I must plainly say that to meet that young man in battle is more than my heart would serve me for. And if （as is likely） his brother, the High King, is more dangerous than he why, on your life, my Lord King, have nothing to do with him.”

“Plague on you！” cried Miraz. “It was not that sort of council I wanted. Do you think I am asking you if I should be afraid to meet this Peter （if there is such a man）? Do you think I fear him? I wanted your counsel on the policy of the matter； whether we, having the advantage, should hazard it on a wager of battle.”

“To which I can only answer, your Majesty,” said Glozelle, “that for all reasons the challenge should be refused. There is death in the strange knight’s face.”

“There you are again！” said Miraz, now thoroughly angry. “Are you trying, to make it appear that I am as great a coward as your Lordship?”

“Your Majesty may say your pleasure,” said Glozelle sulkily.

“You talk like an old woman, Glozelle,” said the King. “What say you, my Lord Sopespian?”

“Do not touch it, Sire,” was the reply. “And what your Majesty says of the policy of the thing comes in very happily. It gives your Majesty excellent grounds for a refusal without any cause for questioning your Majesty’s honor or courage.”

“Great Heaven！” exclaimed Miraz, jumping to his feet. “Are you also bewitched today? Do you think I am looking for grounds to refuse it? You might as well call me coward to my face.”

The conversation was going exactly as the two lords wished, so they said nothing.

“I see what it is,” said Miraz, after staring at them as if his eyes would start out of his head, “you are as lily-livered as hares yourselves and have the effrontery to imagine my heart after the likeness of yours！ Grounds for a refusal, indeed！ Excuses for not fighting！ Are you soldiers? Are you Telmarines? Are you men? And if I dog refuse it （as ail good reasons of captaincy and martial policy urge me to do） you will think, and teach others tan think, I was afraid. Is it not so?”

“No man of your Majesty’s age,” said Glozelle, “would be called coward by any wise soldier for refusing the combat with a great warrior in the flower of his youth.”

“So I’m to be a dotard with one foot in the grave, as well as a dastard,” roared Miraz. “I’ll tell you what it is, my Lords. With your womanish counsels （ever shying from the true point, which is one of policy） you have done the very opposite of your intent. I had meant to refuse it. But I’ll accept it. Do you hear, accept it！ I’ll not be shamed because some witchcraft or treason has frozen both your bloods.”

“We beseech your Majesty—” said Glozelle, but Miraz had flung out of the tent and they could hear him bawling out his acceptance to Edmund.

The two lords looked at one another and chuckled quietly.

“I knew he’d do it if he were properly chafed,” said Glozelle. “But I’ll not forget he called me coward. It shall be paid for.”

There was a great stirring at Aslan’s How when the news came back and was communicated to the various creatures. Edmund, with one of Miraz’s captains, had already marked out the place for the combat, and ropes and stakes had been put round it. Two Telmarines were to stand at two of the corners, and one in the middle of one side, as marshals of the lists. Three marshals for the other two corners and the other side were to be furnished by the High King. Peter was just explaining to Caspian that he could not be one, because his right to the throne was what they were fighting about, when suddenly a thick, sleepy voice said, “Your Majesty, please.” Peter turned and there stood the eldest of the Bulgy Bears. “If you please, your Majesty,” he said, “I’m a bear, I am.”

“To be sure, so you are, and a good bear too, I don’t doubt,” said Peter.

“Yes,” said the Bear. “But it was always a right of the, bears to supply one marshal of the lists.”

“Don’t let him,” whispered Trumpkin to Peter. “He’s a good creature, but he’ll shame us all. He’ll go to sleep and he will suck his paws. In front of the enemy too.”

“I can’t help that,” said Peter. “Because he’s quite right. The Bears had that privilege. I can’t imagine how it has been remembered all these years, when so many other things have been forgotten.”

“Please, your Majesty,” said the Bear.

“It is your right,” said Peter. “And you shall be one of the marshals. But you must remember not to suck your paws.”

“Of course not,” said the Bear in a very shocked voice.

“Why, you’re doing it this minute！” bellowed Trumpkin.

The Bear whipped his paw out of his mouth and pretended he hadn’t heard.

“Sire！” came a shrill voice from near the ground.

“Ah—Reepicheep！” said Peter after looking up and down and round as people usually did when addressed by the Mouse.

“Sire,” said Reepicheep. “My life is ever at your command, but my honor is my own. Sire, I have among my people the only trumpeter in your Majesty’s army. I had thought, perhaps, we might have been sent with the challenge. Sire, my people are grieved. Perhaps if it were your pleasure that I should be a marshal of the lists, it would content them.”

A noise not unlike thunder broke out from somewhere overhead at this point, as Giant Wimbleweather burst into one of those not very intelligent laughs to which the nicer sorts of Giant are so liable. He checked himself at once and looked as grave as a turnip by the time Reepicheep discovered where the noise came from.

“I am afraid it would not do,” said Peter very gravely. “Some humans are afraid of mice—”

“I had observed it, Sire,” said Reepicheep.

“And it would not be quite fair to Miraz,” Peter continued, “to have in sight anything that might abate the edge of his courage.”

“Your Majesty is the mirror of honor,” said the Mouse with one of his admirable bows. “And on this matter we have but a single mind ... I thought I heard someone laughing just now. If anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service—with my sword—whenever he has leisure.”

An awful silence followed this remark, which was broken by Peter saying, “Giant Wimbleweather and the Bear and the Centaur Glenstorm shall be our marshals. The combat will be at two hours after noon. Dinner at noon precisely.”

“I say,” said Edmund as they walked away, “I suppose it is all right. I mean, I suppose you can beat him?”

“That’s what I’m fighting him to find out,” said Peter.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HOW ALL WERE VERY BUSY

A little before two o’clock Trumpkin and the Badger sat with the rest of the creatures at the wood’s edge looking across at the gleaming line of Miraz’s army which was about two arrow-shots away. In between, a square space of level grass had been staked for the combat. At the two far corners stood Glozelle and Sopespian with drawn swords. At the near corners were Giant Wimbleweather and the Bulgy Bear, who in spite of all their warnings was sucking his paws and looking, to tell the truth, uncommonly silly. To make up for this, Glenstorm on the right of the lists, stock-still except when he stamped a hind hoof occasionally on the turf, looked much more imposing than the Telmarine baron who faced him on the left. Peter had just shaken hands with Edmund and the Doctor, and was now walking down to the combat. It was like the moment before the pistol goes at an important race, but very much worse.

“I wish Aslan had turned up before it came to this,” said Trumpkin.

“So do I,” said Trufflehunter. “But look behind you.”

“Crows and crockery！” muttered the Dwarf as soon as he had done so. “What are they? Huge people—beautiful people—like gods and goddesses and giants. Hundreds and thousands of them, closing in behind us. What are they?”

“It’s the Dryads and Hamadryads and Silvans,” said Trufflehunter. “Aslan has waked them.”

“Humph！” said the Dwarf. “That’ll be very useful if the enemy try any treachery. But it won’t help the High King very much if Miraz proves handier with his sword.”

The Badger said nothing, for now Peter and Miraz were entering the lists from opposite ends, both on foot, both in chain shirts, with helmets and shields. They advanced till they were close together. Both bowed and seemed to speak, but it was impossible to hear what they said. Next moment, the two swords flashed in the sunlight. For a second the clash could be heard but it was immediately drowned because both armies began shouting like crowds at a football match.

“Well done, Peter, oh, well done！” shouted Edmund as he saw Miraz reel back a whole pace and a half. “Follow it up, quick！” And Peter did, and for a few seconds it looked as if the fight might be won. But then Miraz pulled himself together—began to make real use of his height and weight. “Miraz！ Miraz！ The King！ The King！” came the roar of the Telmarines. Caspian and Edmund grew white with sickening anxiety.

“Peter is taking some dreadful knocks,” said Edmund.

“Hullo！” said Caspian. “What’s happening now?”

“Both falling apart,” said Edmund. “A bit blown, I expect. Watch. Ah, now they’re beginning again, more scientifically this time. Circling round and round, feeling each other’s defences.”

“I’m afraid this Miraz knows his work,” muttered the Doctor. But hardly had he said this when there was such a clapping and baying and throwing up of hoods among the Old Narnians that it was nearly deafening.

“What was it? What was it?” asked the Doctor. “My old eyes missed it.”

“The High King has pricked him in the arm-pit,” said Caspian, still clapping. “Just where the arm-hole of the hauberk let the point through. First blood.”

“It’s looking ugly again now, though,” said Edmund. “Peter’s not using his shield properly. He must be hurt in the left arm.”

It was only too true. Everyone could see that Peter’s shield hung limp. The shouting of the Telmarines redoubled.

“You’ve seen more battles than I,” said Caspian. “Is there any chance now?”

“Precious little,” said Edmund. “I suppose he might just do it. With luck.”

“Oh, why did we let it happen at all?” said Caspian.

Suddenly all the shouting on both sides died down. Edmund was puzzled for a moment. Then he said, “Oh, I see. They’ve both agreed to a rest. Come on, Doctor. You and I may be able to do something for the High King.” They ran down to the lists and Peter came outside the ropes to meet them, his face red and sweaty, his chest heaving.

“Is your left arm wounded?” asked Edmund.

“It’s not exactly a wound,” Peter said. “I got the weight of his shoulder on my shield—like a load of bricks—and the rim of the shield drove into my wrist. I don’t think it’s broken, but it might be a sprain. If you could tie it up very tight I think I could manage.”

While they were doing this, Edmund asked anxiously. “What do you think of him, Peter?”

“Tough,” said Peter. “Very tough. I have a chance if can keep him on the hop till his weight and short wind come against him—in this hot sun too. To tell the truth, I haven’t much chance else. Give my love to—to everyone at home, Ed, if he gets me. Here he comes into the lists again. So long, old chap. Good-bye, Doctor. And I say, Ed, say something specially nice to Trumpkin. He’s been a brick.”

Edmund couldn’t speak. He walked back with the Doctor to his own lines with a sick feeling in his stomach.

But the new bout went well. Peter now seemed to be able to make some use of his shield, and he certainly made good use of his feet. He was almost playing Tig with Miraz now, keeping out of range, shifting his ground, making the enemy work.

“Coward！” booed the Telmarines. “Why don’t you stand up to him? Don’t you like it, eh? Thought you’d come to fight, not dance. Yah！”

“Oh, I do hope he won’t listen to them,” said Caspian.

“Not he,” said Edmund. “You don’t know him—Oh！”—for Miraz had got in a blow at last, on Peter’s helmet. Peter staggered, slipped sideways, and fell on one knee. The roar of the Telmarines rose like the noise of the sea. “Now, Miraz,” they yelled. “Now. Quick！ Quick！ Kill him.” But indeed there was no need to egg the usurper on. He was on top of Peter already. Edmund bit his lips till the blood came, as the sword flashed down on Peter. It looked as if it would slash off his head. Thank heavens！ It had glanced down his right shoulder. The Dwarf-wrought mail was sound and did not break.

“Great Scott！” cried Edmund. “He’s up again. Peter, go it, Peter.”

“I couldn’t see what happened,” said the Doctor. “How did he do it?”

“Grabbed Miraz’s arm as it came down,” said Trumpkin, dancing with delight. “There’s a man for you！ Uses his enemy’s arm as a ladder. The High King！ The High King！ Up, Old Narnia！”

“Look,” said Trufflehunter. “Miraz is angry. It is good.”

They were certainly at it hammer and tongs now：such a flurry of blows that it seemed impossible for either not to be killed. As the excitement grew, the shouting almost died away. The spectators were holding their breath. It was most horrible and most magnificent.

A great shout arose from the Old Narnians. Miraz was a down—not struck by Peter, but face downwards, having tripped on a tussock. Peter stepped back, waiting for him to rise.

“Oh bother, bother, bother,” said Edmund to himself. “Need he be as gentlemanly as all that? I suppose he must. Comes of being a Knight and a High King. I suppose it is what Aslan would like. But that brute will be up again in a minute and then—”

But “that brute” never rose. The Lords Glozelle and Sopespian had their own plans ready. As soon as they saw their King down they leaped into the lists crying, “Treachery！ Treachery！ The Narnian traitor has stabbed him in the back while he lay helpless. To arms！ To arms, Telmar！”

Peter hardly understood what was happening. He saw two big men running toward him with drawn swords. Then the third Telmarine had leaped over the ropes on his left. “To arms, Narnia！ Treachery！” Peter shouted. If all three had set upon him at once he would never have spoken again. But Glozelle stopped to stab his own King dead where he lay：“That’s for your insult, this morning,” he whispered as the blade went home. Peter swung to face Sopespian, slashed his legs from under him and, with the back-cut of the same stroke, walloped off his head Edmund was now at his side crying, “Narnia, Narnia！ The Lion！” The whole Telmarine army was rushing toward them. But now the Giant was stamping forward, stooping low and swinging his club. The Centaurs charged. Twang, twang behind and hiss, hiss overhead came the archery of Dwarfs. Trumpkin was fighting at his left. Full battle was joined.

“Come back, Reepicheep, you little ass！” shouted Peter. “You’ll only be killed. This is no place for mice.” But the ridiculous little creatures were dancing in and out among the feet of both armies, jabbing with their swords. Many a Telmarine warrior that day felt his foot suddenly pierced as if by a dozen skewers, hopped on one leg cursing the pain, and fell as often as not. If he fell, the mice finished him off； if he did not, someone else did.

But almost before the Old Narnians were really warmed to their work they found the enemy giving way. Tough-looking warriors turned white, gazed in terror not on the Old Narnians but on something behind them, and then flung down their weapons, shrieking, “The Wood！ The Wood！ The end of the world！”

But soon neither their cries nor the sound of weapons could be heard any more, for both were drowned in the ocean-like roar of the Awakened Trees as they plunged through the ranks of Peter’s army, and then on, in pursuit of the Telmarines. Have you ever stood at the edge of a great wood on a high ridge when a wild south-wester broke over it in full fury on an autumn evening? Imagine that sound. And then imagine that the wood, instead of being fixed to one place, was rushing at you； and was no longer trees but huge people； yet still like trees because their long arms waved like branches and their heads tossed and leaves fell round them in showers. It was like that for the Telmarines. It was a little alarming even for the Narnians. In a few minutes all Miraz’s followers were running down to the Great River in the hope of crossing the bridge to the town of Beruna and there defending themselves behind ramparts and closed gates.

They reached the river, but there was no bridge. It had disappeared since yesterday. Then utter panic and horror fell upon them and they all surrendered.

But what had happened to the bridge?

Early that morning, after a few hours’sleep, the girls had waked, to see Aslan standing over them and to hear his voice saying, “We will make holiday.” They rubbed their eyes and looked round them. The trees had all gone but could still be seen moving away toward Aslan’s How in a dark mass. Bacchus and the Maenads—his fierce, madcap girls-and Silenus were still with them. Lucy, fully rested, jumped up. Everyone was awake, everyone was laughing, flutes were playing, cymbals clashing. Animals, not Talking Animals, were crowding in upon them from every direction.

“What is it, Aslan?” said Lucy, her eyes dancing and her feet wanting to dance.

“Come, children,” said he. “Ride on my back again today.”

“Oh, lovely！” cried Lucy, and both girls climbed on to the warm golden back as they had done no one knew how many years before. Then the whole party moved off Aslan leading, Bacchus and his Maenads leaping, rushing, and turning somersaults, the beasts frisking round them, and Silenus and his donkey bringing up the rear.

They turned a little to the right, raced down a steep hill, and found the long Bridge of Beruna in front of them. Before they had begun to cross it, however, up out of the water came a great wet, bearded head, larger than a man’s, crowned with rushes. It looked at Aslan and out of its mouth a deep voice came.

“Hail, Lord,” it said. “Loose my chains.”

“Who on earth is that?” whispered Susan.

“I think it’s the river-god, but hush,” said Lucy.

“Bacchus,” said Aslan. “Deliver him from his chains.”

“That means the bridge, I expect,” thought Lucy. And so it did. Bacchus and his people splashed forward into the shallow water, and a minute later the most curious things began happening. Great, strong trunks of ivy came curling up all the piers of the bridge, growing as quickly as a fire grows, wrapping the stones round, splitting, breaking, separating them. The walls of the bridge turned into hedges gay with hawthorn for a moment and then disappeared as the whole thing with a rush and a rumble collapsed into the swirling water. With much splashing, screaming, and laughter the revellers waded or swam or danced across the ford（“Hurrah！ It’s the Ford of Beruna again now！” cried the girls） and up the bank on the far side and into the town.

Everyone in the streets fled before their faces. The first house they came to was a school：a girls’school, where a lot of Narnian girls, with their hair done very tight and ugly tight collars round their necks and thick tickly stockings on their legs, were having a history lesson. The sort of “History” that was taught in Narnia under Miraz’s rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story.

“If you don’t attend, Gwendolen,” said the mistress, “and stop looking out of the window, I shall have to give you an order-mark.”

“But please, Miss Prizzle—” began Gwendolen.

“Did you hear what I said, Gwendolen?” asked Miss Prizzle.

“But please, Miss Prizzle,” said Gwendolen, “there’s a lion！”

“Take two order-marks for talking nonsense,” said Miss Prizzle. “And now—” A roar interrupted her. Ivy came curling in at the windows of the classroom. The walls became a mass of shimmering green, and leafy branches arched overhead where the ceiling had been. Miss Prizzle found she was standing on grass in a forest glade. She clutched at her desk to steady herself, and found that the desk was a rose-bush. Wild people such as she had never even imagined were crowding round her. Then she saw the Lion, screamed and fled, and with her fled her class, who were mostly dumpy, prim little girls with fat legs. Gwendolen hesitated.

“You’ll stay with us, sweetheart?” said Aslan.

“Oh, may I? Thank you, thank you,” said Gwendolen. Instantly she joined hands with two of the Maenads, who whirled her round in a merry dance and helped her take off some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes that she was wearing.

Wherever they went in the little town of Beruna it was the same. Most of the people fled, a few joined them. When they left the town they were a larger and a merrier company.

They swept on across the level fields on the north bank, or left bank, of the river. At every farm animals came out to join them. Sad old donkeys who had never known joy grew suddenly young again； chained dogs broke their chains； horses kicked their carts to pieces and came trotting along with them—clop-clop—kicking up the mud and whinnying.

At a well in a yard they met a man who was beating a boy. The stick burst into flower in the man’s hand. He tried to drop it, but it stuck to his hand. His arm became a branch, his body the trunk of a tree, his feet took root. The boy, who had been crying a moment before, burst out laughing and joined them.

At a little town half-way to Beaversdam, where two rivers met, they came to another school, where a tired-looking girl was teaching arithmetic to a number of boys who looked very like pigs. She looked out of the window and saw the divine revelers singing up the street and a stab of joy went through her heart. Aslan stopped right under the window and looked up at her.

“Oh, don’t, don’t,” she said. “I’d love to. But I mustn’t. I must stick to my work. And the children would be frightened if they saw you.”

“Frightened?” said the most pig-like of the boys. “Who’s she talking to out of the window? Let’s tell the inspector she talks to people out of the window when she ought to be teaching us.”

“Let’s go and see who it is,” said another boy, and they all came crowding to the window. But as soon as their mean little faces looked out, Bacchus gave a great cry of Euan, euoi-oi-oi-oi and the boys all began howling with fright and trampling one another down to get out of the door and jumping out of the windows. And it was said afterward （whether truly or not） that those particular little boys were never seen again, but that there were a lot of very fine little pigs in that part of the country which had never been there before.

“Now, Dear Heart,” said Aslan to the Mistress, and she jumped down and joined them.

At Beaversdam they re-crossed the river and came east again along the southern bank. They came to a little cottage where a child stood in the doorway crying. “Why are you crying, my love?” asked Aslan. The child, who had never seen a picture of a lion, was not afraid of him. “Auntie’s very ill,” she said. “She’s going to die.” Then Aslan went to go in at the door of the cottage, but it was too small for him. So, when he had got his head through, he pushed with his shoulders （Lucy and Susan fell off when he did this） and lifted the whole house up and it fell backwards and apart. And there, still in her bed, though the bed was now in the open air, lay a little old woman who looked as if she had Dwarf blood in her. She was at death’s door, but when she opened her eyes and saw the bright, hairy head of the lion staring into her face, she did not scream or faint. She said, “Oh, Aslan！ I knew it was true. I’ve been waiting for this all my life. Have you come to take me away?”

“Yes, Dearest,” said Aslan. “But not the long journey yet.” And as he spoke, like the flush creeping along the underside of a cloud at sunrise, the color came back to her white face and her eyes grew bright and she sat up and said, “Why, I do declare I feel that better. I think I could take a little breakfast this morning.”

“Here you are, mother,” said Bacchus, dipping a pitcher in the cottage well and handing it to her. But what was in it now was not water but the richest wine, red as red-currant jelly, smooth as oil, strong as beef, warming as tea, cool as dew.

“Eh, you’ve done something to our well,” said the old woman. “That makes a nice change, that does.” And she jumped out of bed.

“Ride on me,” said Aslan, and added to Susan and Lucy, “You two queens will have to run now.”

“But we’d like that just as well,” said Susan. And off they went again.

And so at last, with leaping and dancing and singing, with music and laughter and roaring and barking and neighing, they all came to the place where Miraz’s army stood flinging down their swords and holding up their hands, and Peter’s army, still holding their weapons and breathing hard, stood round them with stern and glad faces. And the first thing that happened was that the old woman slipped off Aslan’s back and ran across to Caspian and they embraced one another； for she was his old nurse.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ASLAN MAKES A DOOR IN THE AIR

At the sight of Aslan the cheeks of the Telmarine soldiers became the color of cold gravy, their knees knocked together, and many fell on their faces. They had not believed in lions and this made their fear greater. Even the Red Dwarfs, who knew that he came as a friend, stood with open mouths and could not speak. Some of the Black Dwarfs, who had been of Nikabrik’s party, began to edge away. But all the Talking Beasts surged round the Lion, with purrs and grunts and squeaks and whinnies of delight, fawning on him with their tails, rubbing against him, touching him reverently with their noses and going to and fro under his body and between his legs. If you have ever seen a little cat loving a big dog whom it knows and trusts, you will have a pretty good picture of their behaviour. Then Peter, leading Caspian, forced his way through the crowd of animals.

“This is Caspian, Sir,” he said. And Caspian knelt and kissed the Lion’s paw.

“Welcome, Prince,” said Aslan. “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?”

“I—I don’t think I do, Sir,” said Caspian. “I’m only a kid.”

“Good,” said Aslan. “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not. Therefore, under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands. You and your heirs while your race lasts. And your coronation—but what have we here?” For at that moment a curious little procession was approaching—eleven Mice, six of whom carried between them something on a litter made of branches, but the litter was no bigger than a large atlas. No one has ever seen mice more woebegone than these. They were plastered with mud—some with blood too—and their ears were down and their whiskers drooped and their tails dragged in the grass, and their leader piped on his slender pipe a melancholy tune. On the litter lay what seemed little better than a damp heap of fur； all that was left of Reepicheep. He was still breathing, but more dead than alive, gashed with innumerable wounds, one paw crushed, and, where his tail had been, a bandaged stump.

“Now, Lucy,” said Aslan.

Lucy had her diamond bottle out in a moment. Though only a drop was needed on each of Reepicheep’s wounds, the wounds were so many that there was a long and anxious silence before she had finished and the Master Mouse sprang from the litter. His hand went at once to his sword hilt, with the other he twirled his whiskers. He bowed.

“Hail, Aslan！” came his shrill voice. “I have the honor—” But then he suddenly stopped.

The fact was that he still had no tail-whether that Lucy had forgotten it or that her cordial, though it could heal wounds, could not make things grow again. Reepicheep became aware of his loss as he made his bow； perhaps it altered something in his balance. He looked over his right shoulder. Failing to see his tail, he strained his neck further till he had to turn his shoulders and his whole body followed. But by that time his hind-quarters had turned too and were out of sight. Then he strained his neck looking over his shoulder again, with the same result. Only after he had turned completely round three times did he realize the dreadful truth.

“I am confounded,” said Reepicheep to Aslan. “I am completely out of countenance. I must crave your indulgence for appearing in this unseemly fashion.”

“It becomes you very well, Small One,” said Aslan.

“All the same,” replied Reepicheep, “if anything could be done ... Perhaps her Majesty?” and here he bowed to Lucy.

“But what do you want with a tail?” asked Aslan.

“Sir,” said the Mouse, “I can eat and sleep and die for my King without one. But a tail is the honor and glory of a Mouse.”

“I have sometimes wondered, friend,” said Aslan, “whether you do not think too much about your honor.”

“Highest of all High Kings,” said Reepicheep, “permit me to remind you that a very small size has been bestowed on us Mice, and if we did not guard our dignity, some （who weigh worth by inches） would allow themselves very unsuitable pleasantries at our expense. That is why I have been at some pains to make it known that no one who does not wish to feel this sword as near his heart as I can reach shall talk in my presence about Traps or Toasted Cheese or Candles：no, Sir—not the tallest fool in Narnia！” Here he glared very fiercely up at Wimbleweather, but the Giant, who was always a stage behind everyone else, had not yet discovered what was being talked about down at his feet, and so missed the point.

“Why have your followers all drawn their swords, may I ask?” said Aslan.

“May it please your High Majesty,” said the second Mouse, whose name was Peepiceek, “we are all waiting to cut off our own tails if our Chief must go without his. We will not bear the shame of wearing an honor which is denied to the High Mouse.”

“Ah！” roared Aslan. “You have conquered me. You have great hearts. Not for the sake of your dignity, Reepicheep, but for the love that is between you and your people, and still more for the kindness your people showed me long ago when you ate away the cords that bound me on the Stone Table （and it was then, though you have long forgotten it, that you began to be Talking Mice）, you shall have your tail again.”

Before Aslan had finished speaking the new tail was in its place. Then, at Aslan’s command, Peter bestowed the Knighthood of the Order of the Lion on Caspian, and Caspian, as soon as he was knighted, himself bestowed it on Trufflehunter and Trumpkin and Reepicheep, and made Doctor Cornelius his Lord Chancellor, and confirmed the Bulgy Bear in his hereditary office of Marshal of the Lists. And there was great applause.

After this the Telmarine soldiers, firmly but without taunts or blows, were taken across the ford and all put under lock and key in the town of Beruna and given beef and beer. They made a great fuss about wading in the river, for they all hated and feared running water just as much as they hated and feared woods and animals. But in the end the nuisance was over, and then the nicest parts of that long day began.

Lucy, sitting close to Aslan and divinely comfortable, wondered what the trees were doing. At first she thought they were merely dancing； they were certainly going round slowly in two circles, one from left to right and the other from right to left. Then she noticed that they kept throwing something down in the center of both circles. Sometimes she thought they were cutting off long strands of their hair； at other times it looked as if they were breaking off bits of their fingers—but, if so, they had plenty of fingers to spare and it did not hurt them. But whatever they were throwing down, when it reached the ground, it became brushwood or dry sticks. Then three or four of the Red Dwarfs came forward with their tinder boxes and set light to the pile, which first crackled, and then blazed, and finally roared as a woodland bonfire on midsummer night ought to do. And everyone sat down in a wide circle round it.

Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees； not merely a dance for fun and beauty （though it was that too） but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence-sides of roasted meat that filled the grove with delicious smell, and wheaten cakes and oaten cakes, honey and many-colored sugars and cream as thick as porridge and as smooth as still water, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, pears, grapes, strawberries, raspberries—pyramids and cataracts of fruit. Then, in great wooden cups and bowls and mazers, wreathed with ivy, came the wines； dark, thick ones like syrups of mulberry juice, and clear red ones like red jellies liquefied, and yellow wines and green wines and yellow-green and greenish-yellow.

But for the tree people different fare was provided. When Lucy saw Clodsley Shovel and his moles scuffling up the turf in various places （which Bacchus had pointed out to them） and realized that the trees were going to eat earth it gave her rather a shudder. But when she saw the earths that were actually brought to them she felt quite different. They began with a rich brown loam that looked almost exactly like chocolate； so like chocolate, in fact, that Edmund tried a piece of it, but he did not find it at all nice. When the rich loam had taken the edge off their hunger, the trees turned to an earth of the kind you see in Somerset, which is almost pink. They said it was lighter and sweeter. At the cheese stage they had a chalky soil, and then went on to delicate confections of the finest gravels powdered with choice silver sand. They drank very little wine, and it made the Hollies very talkative：for the most part they quenched their thirst with deep draughts of mingled dew and rain, flavored with forest flowers and the airy taste of the thinnest clouds.

Thus Aslan feasted the Narnians till long after the sunset had died away, and the stars had come out； and the great fire, now hotter but less noisy, shone like a beacon in the dark woods, and the frightened Telmarines saw it from far away and wondered what it might mean. The best thing of all about this feast was that there was no breaking up or going away, but as the talk grew quieter and slower, one after another would begin to nod and finally drop off to sleep with feet toward the fire and good friends on either side, till at last there was silence all round the circle, and the chattering of water over stone at the Ford of Beruna could be heard once more. But all night Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.

Next day messengers （who were chiefly squirrels and birds） were sent all over the country with a proclamation to the scattered Telmarines—including, of course, the prisoners in Beruna. They were told that Caspian was now King and that Narnia would henceforth belong to the Talking Beasts and the Dwarfs and Dryads and Fauns and other creatures quite as much as to the men. Any who chose to stay under the new conditions might do so； but for those who did not like the idea, Aslan would provide another home. Anyone who wished to go there must come to Aslan and the Kings at the Ford of Beruna by noon on the fifth day. You may imagine that this caused plenty of head-scratching among the Telmarines. Some of them, chiefly the young ones, had, like Caspian, heard stories of the Old Days and were delighted that they had come back. They were already making friends with the creatures. These all decided to stay in Narnia. But most of the older men, especially those who had been important under Miraz, were sulky and had no wish to live in a country where they could not rule the roost. “Live here with a lot of blooming performing animals！ No fear,” they said. “And ghosts too,” some added with a shudder. “That’s what those there Dryads really are. It’s not canny.” They were also suspicious. “I don’t trust’em,” they said. “Not with that awful Lion and all. He won’t keep his claws off us long, you’ll see.” But then they were equally suspicious of his offer to give them a new home. “Take us off to his den and eat us one by one most likely,” they muttered. And the more they talked to one another the sulkier and more suspicious they became. But on the appointed day more than half of them turned up.

At one end of the glade Aslan had caused to be set up two stakes of wood, higher than a man’s head and about three feet apart. A third, and lighter, piece of wood was bound across them at the top, uniting them, so that the whole thing looked like a doorway from nowhere into nowhere. In front of this stood Aslan himself with Peter on his right and Caspian on his left. Grouped round them were Susan and Lucy, Trumpkin and Trufflehunter, the Lord Cornelius, Glenstorm, Reepicheep, and others. The children and the Dwarfs had made good use of the royal wardrobes in what had been the castle of Miraz and was now the castle of Caspian, and what with silk and cloth of gold, with snowy linen glancing through slashed sleeves, with silver mail shirts and jewelled swordhilts, with gilt helmets and feathered bonnets, they were almost too bright to look at. Even the beasts wore rich chains about their necks. Yet nobody’s eyes were on them or the children. The living and strokable gold of Aslan’s mane outshone them all. The rest of the Old Narnians stood down each side of the glade. At the far end stood the Telmarines. The sun shone brightly and pennants fluttered in the light wind.

“Men of Telmar,” said Aslan, “you who seek a new land, hear my words. I will send you all to your own country, which I know and you do not.”

“We don’t remember Telmar. We don’t know where it is. We don’t know what it is like,” grumbled the Telmarines.

“You came into Narnia out of Telmar,” said Aslan. “But you came into Telmar from another place. You do not belong to this world at all. You came hither, certain generations ago, out of that same world to which the High King Peter belongs.”

At this, half the Telmarines began whimpering, “There you are. Told you so. He’s going to kill us all, send us right out of the world,” and the other half began throwing out their chests and slapping one another on the back and whispering, “There you are. Might have guessed we didn’t belong to this place with all its queer, nasty, unnatural creatures. We’re of royal blood, you’ll see.” And even Caspian and Cornelius and the children turned to Aslan with looks of amazement on their faces.

“Peace,” said Aslan in the low voice which was nearest to his growl. The earth seemed to shake a little and every living thing in the grove became still as stone.

“You, Sir Caspian,” said Aslan, “might have known that you could be no true King of Narnia unless, like the Kings of old, you were a son of Adam and came from the world of Adam’s sons. And so you are. Many years ago in that world, in a deep sea of that world which is called the South Sea, a shipload of pirates were driven by storm on an island. And there they did as pirates would：killed the natives and took the native women for wives, and made palm wine, and drank and were drunk, and lay in the shade of the palm trees, and woke up and quarrelled, and sometimes killed one another. And in one of these frays six were put to flight by the rest and fled with their women into the center of the island and up a mountain, and went, as they thought, into a cave to hide. But it was one of the magical places of that world, one of the chinks or chasms between chat world and this. There were many chinks or chasms between worlds in old times, but they have grown rarer. This was one of the last. I do not say the last. And so they fell, or rose, or blundered, or dropped right through, and found themselves in this world, in the Land of Telmar which was then unpeopled. But why it was unpeopled is a long story. I will not tell it now. And in Telmar their descendants lived and became a fierce and proud people； and after many generations there was a famine in Telmar and they invaded Narnia, which was then in some disorder （but that also would be a long story）, and conquered it and ruled it. Do you mark all this well, King Caspian?”

“I do indeed, Sir,” said Caspian. “I was wishing that I came of a more honorable lineage.”

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

Caspian bowed.

“And now,” said Aslan, “you men and women of Telmar, will you go back to that island in the world of men from which your fathers first came? It is no bad place. The race of those pirates who first found it has died out, and it is without inhabitants. There are good wells of fresh water, and fruitful soil, and timber for building, and fish in the lagoons； and the other men of that world have not yet discovered it. The chasm is open for your return； but this I must warn you, that once you have gone through, it will close behind you for ever. There will be no more commerce between the worlds by that door.”

There was silence for a moment. Then a burly, decent-looking fellow among the Telmarine soldiers pushed forward and said：

“Well, I’ll take the offer.”

“It is well chosen,” said Aslan. “And because you have spoken first, strong magic is upon you. Your future in that world shall be good. Come forth.”

The man, now a little pale, came forward. Aslan and his court drew aside, leaving him free access to the empty doorway of the stakes.

“Go through it, my son,” said Aslan, bending toward him and touching the man’s nose with his own. As soon as the Lion’s breath came about him, a new look came into the man’s eyes—startled, but not unhappy—as if he were trying to remember something. Then he squared his shoulders and walked into the Door.

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on him. They saw the three pieces of wood, and through them the trees and grass and sky of Narnia. They saw the man between the doorposts, then, in one second, he had vanished utterly.

From the other end of the glade the remaining Telmarines set up a wailing. “Ugh！ What’s happened to him? Do you mean to murder us? We won’t go that way.” And then one of the clever Telmarines said：

“We don’t see any other world through those sticks. If you want us to believe in it, why doesn’t one of you go? All your own friends are keeping well away from the sticks.”

Instantly Reepicheep stood forward and bowed. “If my example can be of any service, Aslan,” he said, “I will take eleven mice through that arch at your bidding without a moment’s delay.”

“Nay, little one,” said Aslan, laying his velvety paw ever so lightly on Reepicheep’s head. “They would do dreadful things to you in that world. They would show you at fairs. It is others who must lead.”

“Come on,” said Peter suddenly to Edmund and Lucy. “Our time’s up.”

“What do you mean?” said Edmund.

“This way,” said Susan, who seemed to know all about it. “Back into the trees. We’ve got to change.”

“Change what?” asked Lucy.

“Our clothes, of course,” said Susan. “Nice fools we’d look on the platform of an English station in these.”

“But our other things are at Caspian’s castle,” said Edmund.

“No, they’re not,” said Peter, still leading the way into the thickest wood. “They’re all here. They were brought down in bundles this morning. It’s all arranged.”

“Was that what Aslan was talking to you and Susan about this morning?” asked Lucy.

“Yes—that and other things,” said Peter, his face very solemn. “I can’t tell it to you all. There were things he wanted to say to Su and me because we’re not coming back to Narnia.”

“Never?” cried Edmund and Lucy in dismay.

“Oh, you two are,” answered Peter. “At least, from what he said, I’m pretty sure he means you to get back some day. But not Su and me. He says we’re getting too old.”

“Oh, Peter,” said Lucy. “What awful bad luck. Can you bear it?”

“Well, I think I can,” said Peter. “It’s all rather different from what I thought. You’ll understand when it comes to your last time. But, quick, here are our things.”

It was odd, and not very nice, to take off their royal clothes and to come back in their school things （not very fresh now） into that great assembly. One or two of the nastier Telmarines jeered. But the other creatures all cheered and rose up in honor of Peter the High King, and Queen Susan of the Horn, and King Edmund, and Queen Lucy. There were affectionate and （on Lucy’s part） tearful farewells with all their old friends-animal kisses, and hugs from Bulgy Bears, and hands wrung by Trumpkin, and a last tickly, whiskerish embrace with Trufflehunter. And of course Caspian offered the Horn back to Susan and of course Susan told him to keep it. And then, wonderfully and terribly, it was farewell to Aslan himself, and Peter took his place with Susan’s hands on his shoulders and Edmund’s on hers and Lucy’s on his and the first of the Telmarine’s on Lucy’s, and so in a long line they moved forward to the Door. After that came a moment which is hard to describe, for the children seemed to be seeing three things at once. One was the mouth of a cave opening into the glaring green and blue of an island in the Pacific, where all the Telmarines would find themselves the moment they were through the Door. The second was a glade in Narnia, the faces of Dwarfs and Beasts, the deep eyes of Aslan, and the white patches on the Badger’s cheeks. But the third （which rapidly swallowed up the other two） was the grey, gravelly surface of a platform in a country station, and a seat with luggage round it, where they were all sitting as if they had never moved from it—a little flat and dreary for a moment after all they had been through, but also, unexpectedly, nice in its own way, what with the familiar railway smell and the English sky and the summer term before them. and Beasts, the deep eyes of Aslan, and the white patches on the Badger’s cheeks. But the third （which rapidly swallowed up the other two） was the grey, gravelly surface of a platform in a country station, and a seat with luggage round it, where they were all sitting as if they had never moved from it-a little flat and dreary for a moment after all they had been through, but also, unexpectedly, nice in its own way, what with the familiar railway smell and the English sky and the summer term before them.

“Well！” said Peter. “We have had a time.”

“Bother！” said Edmund. “I’ve left my new torch in Narnia.”

纳尼亚传奇：黎明踏浪号（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5853-9

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目录

第一章 卧室里的画

第二章 登上“黎明踏浪”号

第三章 孤独岛

第四章 了不起的凯斯宾

第五章 风暴来袭

第六章 尤斯塔斯历险记

第七章 冒险结束了

第八章 两次死里逃生

第九章 声音岛

第十章 魔法师的神奇书

第十一章 单腿蠢人皆大欢喜

第十二章 黑暗岛

第十三章 三个沉睡者

第十四章 世界尽头的开端

第十五章 末海奇遇记

第十六章 世界最尽头

CHAPTER ONE THE PICTURE IN THE BEDROOM

CHAPTER TWO ON BOARD THE DAWN TREADER

CHAPTER THREE THE LONE ISLANDS

CHAPTER FOUR WHAT CASPIAN DID THERE

CHAPTER FIVE THE STORM AND WHAT CAME OF IT

CHAPTER SIX THE ADVENTURES OF EUSTACE

CHAPTER SEVEN HOW THE ADVENTURE ENDED

CHAPTER EIGHT TWO NARROW ESCAPES

CHAPTER NINE THE ISLAND OF THE VOICES

CHAPTER TEN THE MAGICIAN’S BOOK

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE DUFFLEPUDS MADE HAPPY

CHAPTER TWELVE THE DARK ISLAND

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE THREE SLEEPERS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE WONDERS OF THE LAST SEA

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE VERY END OF THE WORLD

第一章
卧室里的画

话说从前有个小男孩，名字叫作尤斯塔斯·克拉伦斯·斯科拉博，不过也活该他有这么个拗口的名字。他爸妈叫他尤斯塔斯·克拉伦斯，老师们则称呼他斯科拉博。不过我没法告诉你他的朋友是怎么叫他的，因为他独来独往，一个朋友也没有。对自己的爸爸妈妈，他也不叫“爸爸”和“妈妈”，而是直呼大名，叫他们“哈罗德”和“艾尔波塔”。他的父母都十分前卫入时，奉行素食主义，且烟酒不沾，连穿的贴身衣物也十分特别。在他们家里，家居摆设少得可怜，床上只有一两件衣物，而且窗户也是常年大开着。

尤斯塔斯·克拉伦斯很喜欢动物，尤其对甲壳虫情有独钟，不过前提是这些虫子都已经死了，而且钉在了卡片上。他也爱看书，不过只爱看那些科普知识类的书籍，且书中得有谷物升降机的图片，或是在模范学校里胖胖的外国小孩儿做晨操的图片。

尤斯塔斯·克拉伦斯不太待见佩文西家的四个表亲——彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙及露西。不过当他得知爱德蒙和露西要来自己家里住一阵子时，心里还是挺高兴的，因为其实在内心深处，他很喜欢对别人发号施令，喜欢欺负捉弄别人。再说了，尽管他瘦瘦弱弱、矮矮小小的，真要打起架来可能连露西都不一定打得过，更别提打赢爱德蒙了，不过只要是在自己家里，就有的是办法让客人不好过，这一点他清楚得很。

爱德蒙和露西一点儿都不愿意过来同哈罗德姨父和艾尔波塔姨母一起住，不过实在也没有别的办法。这个夏天他们的父亲要去美国讲学，一去便是十六个星期，母亲也一同前往，趁此机会权当度假，因为她十年来都没有好好休过一次假了。彼得要刻苦学习，准备考试，他假期里要去老教授科克那儿补习。很久以前还在战争时期，四个孩子曾在这位老教授的家中寄宿过一段日子，经历了十分奇妙的冒险之旅。倘若他还住在那幢大屋子里，那么他一定会欣然邀请四个孩子都一同来小住一阵，不过这么多年过去了，他的境况也不那么宽裕了，如今日子已十分拮据，他只能住在一栋小农舍里，只有一间空余的卧室。要是带上其他三个孩子一起去美国，开销就太大了，所以爸妈只带了苏珊一个人去。

大人们都认为苏珊是家里出落得最漂亮的，不过她在学业上并不出类拔萃（但是她在其他方面都表现出了超越年龄的老成），妈妈说她“相比其他两个小的，能从此次美国之行中收获更多”。爱德蒙和露西尽力不去嫉妒苏珊的好运气，不过要在姨母家里度过暑假实在是太煎熬了。“但我还更惨呢，”爱德蒙哀叹道，“至少你自己一个人住一间房，而我呢，我得和那个出了名的讨厌鬼尤斯塔斯住一间房。”

我们要讲的故事从一个午后正式拉开序幕。那天下午，爱德蒙和露西难得两人独处一会儿，不必受讨厌鬼表弟的打扰，他们自然是在谈论纳尼亚，那是属于他们独有的秘密国度。我猜想我们中的大多数人都有一个属于自己的秘密国度，不过对很多人而言，那只不过是存在于想象之中的。爱德蒙和露西在这方面就比其他人要幸运一些了——他们的秘密国度是真实存在的。他们已经去过那里两次了，不是在游戏中或睡梦里，而是在现实生活中。当然了，他们需要通过魔法才能进入纳尼亚，除此之外别无他法。纳尼亚曾给过他们一个可以算作是诺言的诺言，许诺他们有一天能够再次回去。所以你可以想象，他们一有机会便会经常谈论纳尼亚。

两人在露西的房间里，坐在她的床边，看着对面墙上挂着的一幅画。这是整个屋子里他们唯一喜欢的一幅画。可艾尔波塔姨母一点儿都不喜欢这幅画（这也就是为什么这幅画被挂到了楼上的一个小密室里），不过她又不能就这么把画处理掉，因为这是别人送给她的结婚礼物，她不想得罪那个人。

那幅画上是一艘船——径直朝你驶来的一艘船。船头镀了金，形状宛若张开大口的龙头；船上只有一根桅杆和一张巨大的深紫色方形帆，船身两侧是绿色的——你能看到龙头镀金的双翼在那里隐没。船正行驶到一个蓝色巨浪的浪头上，海浪波纹分明，挟着海沫，斜斜坠下，仿佛要直直地朝人压下来。显然船正顺风疾行，向着左舷一侧微微倾斜。（顺便提一句，如果你打算要读这个故事，并且还不知道这些概念的话，那么你最好先了解一下，那就是你往前看时，船的左侧就叫左舷，右侧就叫右舷。）大好的阳光都从左侧倾泻而下，那一侧的海水呈一片幽绿深紫。而在另一侧，在船身投影的笼罩下，海水则呈深蓝色。

“问题是，”爱德蒙说道，“这样是不是会更煎熬呢，看着一幅纳尼亚的船，却不能到那儿去。”

“有得看总比没得看要好啊。”露西说道，“而且这艘船真是太像纳尼亚的船了。”

“你们还在玩那些老把戏吗？”尤斯塔斯·克拉伦斯突然插嘴道，他一直在门外偷听，此刻咧嘴笑着走了进来。去年他待在佩文西一家时，曾经听见他们几个都在说什么“纳尼亚”，所以他很喜欢拿这个开他们的玩笑。他觉得那些肯定是他们自己编出来，而因为他自己太笨了又编不出，所以他对那些故事不屑一顾。

“这儿不欢迎你。”爱德蒙很不客气地说道。

“我在构思一首打油诗，”尤斯塔斯说，“像这样的：

孩子们玩着游戏纳尼亚，

一天天变得越来越古怪——”

“首先‘纳尼亚’和‘古怪’根本都不押韵好嘛。”露西说道。

“那是谐音，不行吗？”尤斯塔斯说。

“别问他‘学音’是什么，”爱德蒙说，“他正巴不得你问呢。你什么都别说，或许他自己就会走开了。”

大多数男孩子遇到这样的情况，要么就直接走开了，要么就被激怒了，可是尤斯塔斯偏偏是个例外，他只是待在那儿傻笑，这会儿又开口了。

“你们喜欢那幅画吗？”他问道。

“看在老天爷的分上，饶了我吧，可别再让他开始大谈特谈艺术什么的了。”爱德蒙赶紧出言阻止，可是露西太过实诚，已经开口道：“是啊，我喜欢，我很喜欢这幅画。”

“这幅画简直太烂了。”尤斯塔斯说道。

“你出去就看不着了。”爱德蒙说道。

“你为什么喜欢这幅画呢？”尤斯塔斯问露西。

“嗯……首先呢，”露西说，“我喜欢这幅画是因为这艘船看起来好像真的在动一样，还有这海水看起来就好像真的是湿湿的，还有那些海浪，看上去就好像真的在上下起伏似的。”

尤斯塔斯自然有一套一套的说辞可以回答这个问题，不过他什么都没有说。因为就在他看向画中海浪的那一刻，他真真切切地看到了那些海浪确实像是在上下起伏一般。他只乘过一次船（而且最远也只不过行驶到了怀特岛），而就在那唯一的一次，他还晕船晕得厉害。现在他看着画中的海浪，似乎又有些犯恶心了。他面如菜色，又试着瞥了一眼。这下三个孩子一起瞪着画看，不禁都张大了嘴。

他们所看到的，这会儿写成文字让你读起来可能觉得难以置信，不过即便你亲眼看见，恐怕也很难相信。画中的一切确实是在动，而且颜色都过于真实清晰，就好像在现实世界中，看上去一点都不像是电影。船头向下撞入海浪，激起浪花四溅。接着船后又升起浪头，船尾和甲板第一次出现在他们面前，随后又隐匿在第二个浪头之下，船首再度昂起。与此同时，坐在床上的爱德蒙身边原本有一本练习簿，此刻书页翻飞着，不一会儿竟飞了起来，顺着风被吸进了他身后的墙里，而一旁的露西觉得自己的长发都在飞舞着，就像在大风天里那样。这天确实也刮着风，不过，现在的风显然是从画中冲着他们刮出来的。突然，风声里还传来了阵阵浪涛声、海水的击船声、嘎吱的行船声，还有风咆水啸声。不过真正让露西确信自己不是在做梦的，还是那扑面而来的浓郁咸湿的海水气息。

“快住手！”尤斯塔斯叫道，他的声音因恐惧和恼怒而变得尖细起来，“这一定是你们俩玩的什么蠢把戏，快住手！否则我就去告诉艾尔波塔——哎哟！”

另外两个孩子早已视冒险为家常便饭了，可是就在尤斯塔斯嚷着“哎哟”的时候，他们俩也不约而同地“哎哟”了一声。原来从画框里溅出了一阵咸冷的水花，将他们淋了个正着，他们浑身都湿透了，一下子几乎喘不上气来。

“我非把这鬼东西砸烂不可！”尤斯塔斯嚷道。接下来的几件事，几乎是在电光石火间同时发生的：尤斯塔斯朝墙上的画冲了过去，爱德蒙稍懂一些魔法，赶忙跳下床紧随其后，警告他要小心别犯傻；露西从另一边拉住了他，也被拽着向前冲去。这时候，不是他们的身子缩小了，就是画变大了。尤斯塔斯跃起来想要把墙上的画扯下来，却发现自己正站在画框上，眼前不是裱画玻璃，而是真正的大海，海风与海浪拍打着画框，就好似拍打着礁石。他一下子慌了神，手足无措，如抓住救命稻草般牢牢抓住了身边跳上来的两人。一时间只见三人挣扎着、喊叫着，而就在他们以为自己保持住了平衡之际，身旁又升起一个蓝色巨浪，猛地将他们扑倒，一并拽入了海水中。海水涌进了尤斯塔斯的嘴里，他绝望的哭喊声戛然而止。

露西深深地庆幸自己在去年夏季学期的游泳课上认真学了，此刻正派上了用场。的确，如果她划水再慢一些的话，她可能会游得更好，而且海水也远比画中所见的要冷得多。不过她还是保持头脑冷静，踢掉了鞋子，正如每一个穿着衣服落入深水的人都应当做的那样。她甚至还不忘闭上嘴巴并睁开双眼。他们落水的地方离船还很近，她看见他们上方那高高的绿色船身，船上的人正围在甲板上看着她。然后，也许你能猜得到，尤斯塔斯在恐慌之中紧紧抓住了她，两人一起沉了下去。

他们再度浮上来时，露西看见一个白色的身影从船侧纵身跃下。此时爱德蒙就在她近旁，正踩着水，拉住号叫着的尤斯塔斯的胳膊。接着，有一个人从另一边伸手托住了她，他的脸看起来似乎有些眼熟。船上传来此起彼伏的叫喊声，舷墙上人头攒动，有人抛下了救生绳。爱德蒙和这个陌生人合力将绳子绕在她身上并系紧。接着便是等待，露西感觉时间似乎很漫长，她的脸色渐渐发青，牙齿也开始打战，但实际上并没有过去很久，船上的人在等一个恰当的时机，可以将她拉上船而不至于撞到船身。尽管他们尽了最大的努力，可是当她最终浑身滴着水、瑟瑟发抖地站在甲板上时，膝盖上还是多了一大块淤青。她上来之后，爱德蒙也被拉了上来，然后是惨兮兮的尤斯塔斯。最后上来的是那个陌生人，一个看上去要比露西大几岁的金发少年。

“凯……凯……凯斯宾！”露西一调顺呼吸便立马气喘吁吁地叫道。因为那正是凯斯宾，纳尼亚的少年国王，正是他们几个上一次来到纳尼亚时帮助凯斯宾登上了王位。爱德蒙随即也认出了他，久别重逢，三人激动地握了握手，十分高兴地拍了拍彼此的后背。

“不过你们的这位朋友是谁呢？”凯斯宾很快便问道，他转向尤斯塔斯，笑容开朗灿烂。可尤斯塔斯还在没出息地哭着鼻子，明明只是湿了衣服，其他别无大碍，他这个年龄的男孩子就因为这点小事哭成这样实在不应该。他只会叫着：“让我走！让我回去！我不喜欢这样！”

“让你走？”凯斯宾不解地说，“可是你能去哪儿呢？”

尤斯塔斯冲到船边，似乎还期待着能看到海上悬挂着画框，或许还能透过画框瞥见露西的卧室。然而他眼前所见的，唯有泛着白沫的蓝色海浪与浅蓝色的天空，水天相接，一望无垠，别无他物。如果他见此情景心一沉，或许我们不应该对他太过苛责，毕竟他一看见海就犯恶心。

“嘿！莱纳尔夫！”凯斯宾对其中一名水手说，“去取一些加了辛料的葡萄酒给两位陛下饮用。你们落了水，得喝点东西暖暖身子。”凯斯宾称爱德蒙和露西为“陛下”，因为他们两个以及彼得和苏珊，在他登基的很久之前，也都曾是纳尼亚的国王和女王。在纳尼亚，时间的流逝和我们人类的世界大不相同。如果你在纳尼亚度过了一百年再回来，你会发现时间依然是当年你离开的那一天、那个时刻，毫无变化；而如果你在这里过了一周后又回到纳尼亚，你可能会发现纳尼亚已经过去了一千年，或者只过去了一天，又或者仍是原来的时间。你永远也没法确定，只有去了才能知道。因此，正如人们所坚信的那样，上一次佩文西家的四个孩子二度回到纳尼亚时，对纳尼亚的子民而言，就好像见到了传说中的亚瑟王重回不列颠王国。而要我说，那自然是越快越好。

莱纳尔夫端着酒壶和四个银杯回来了，酒壶里盛放着热气腾腾的加料葡萄酒。这正是落水者所想要的。露西和爱德蒙小口啜着酒，顿时感觉一股暖流涌入全身，连脚趾都暖和了起来。不过尤斯塔斯苦着脸，一口酒都吐了出来，又犯起了恶心。他忍不住又哭了起来，边哭边问他们有没有普郎普特里牌的维生素强化神经营养品，能不能用蒸馏水给他做一份，他还坚持要船员在航行的下一站把他送上岸。

“兄弟，你可真给我们带来了一位有意思的船伴啊。”凯斯宾偷笑着对爱德华悄声说。不过还没等他再开口，尤斯塔斯又爆发出一声惊叫。

“啊！哎哟！那究竟是什么玩意儿啊！快把它弄走，太吓人了！”

这一回他如此惊讶倒也情有可原。因为一个模样奇特的东西从尾楼的一间舱房里出来，正缓缓朝他们走来。你可以称它为一只老鼠——而它确确实实就是一只老鼠。不过这只老鼠后腿站立着，大约有两英尺高。一条细细的金带绕过一只耳朵下面和另一只耳朵上面，绑在脑袋上，上面还插着一根长长的深红色羽毛（由于这只老鼠长着一身暗色皮毛，近乎浑黑，因而这个头饰的效果十分震撼突出）。它的左爪放在剑柄上，剑身几乎和它的尾巴一般长。即便是在摇摇晃晃的行船上，它依然保持着绝佳的平衡，迈着稳健的步伐，仪态威武。露西和爱德蒙立刻就认出了它——雷佩契普，是纳尼亚所有能言兽中最为英勇的战士，也是一名老鼠首领。它在第二次贝鲁娜之战中奋勇抗敌，赢得了不朽的战绩荣光。露西总是渴望能够把雷佩契普抱在怀里搂一搂，不过她深知自己永远也不能这么做，因为这样会极大地冒犯雷佩契普的。于是她单膝跪地，和它说话。

雷佩契普左腿前伸，右腿后收，弯下腰吻了吻她的手背，随后直起身子，捻着胡须，用它那尖利的嗓音说道：

“很荣幸能为陛下与爱德华国王效劳。”（说着它又鞠了一躬。）“此次光荣的冒险征程就差两位殿下的到来了。”

“哎哟，快把它弄走！”尤斯塔斯哀号着，“我讨厌老鼠，更不能忍受那些表演节目的动物，它们又蠢又俗气，而且还……还多愁善感。”

“恕我冒昧，”雷佩契普盯着尤斯塔斯看了很久，然后对露西说道，“这个极其无礼之人是否受到陛下的庇护？因为如果不是的话，那我就——”

这时露西和爱德蒙不约而同地打了个喷嚏。

“我真是太傻了，怎么能让你们还穿着湿衣服站在这儿呢。”凯斯宾说道，“快下去换一身衣服吧。当然了，露西，你住在我的船舱里，不过恐怕我们船上没有女人的衣物，你得将就着穿我的衣服了。雷佩契普，就由你帮忙带路吧。”

“看在女王陛下的分上，”雷佩契普说道，“即便事关勇士的荣誉，也可以暂且放一放——只是暂时——”说到这里，它狠狠地看了一眼尤斯塔斯。不过凯斯宾催促着他们快走，几分钟后露西便发现自己正穿过门来到船尾的舱房里。她立刻便爱上了这里——船尾开着三扇方形窗户，正对着蔚蓝的、波涛涌动的大海；桌子的三面都围着矮矮的加垫长椅；天花板上还吊着左右摇摆的银灯（露西一看到吊灯精巧细致的做工，便知道那是矮人族的作品）；前壁门上还挂着一幅狮王阿斯兰的金像。所有这些露西只来得及瞟上一眼，因为凯斯宾立刻就打开了靠近右舷一侧的房门，说：“这就是你的房间，露西。我去拿几件换洗的干衣物，”说这话时，他正在一个柜子里翻寻着，“然后我就出去让你换衣服。你可以把湿衣服扔在门外，我会让人拿去厨房里烘干的。”

露西发现自己在凯斯宾的舱房里感到十分舒适自在，就好像她已经在这里住了好几个星期了，行船的晃动并未带来什么不适，因为在过去她还是纳尼亚的女王时，可没少在外航海。舱房很小，但墙上画有镶饰，显得十分亮堂（画的都是飞鸟走兽、红龙青藤之类），而且收拾得干干净净，纤尘不染。凯斯宾的衣服对她来说有些太宽松了，不过她能凑合着穿，但他的便鞋、凉鞋和橡胶长靴对她来说实在是太大了，还好她一点儿也不介意在船上光着脚。她换上衣服后朝窗外看去，看着海水奔腾涌过，深深地吸了一口气。她心里很确信他们会在这里度过一段美好的时光。

第二章
登上“黎明踏浪”号

“啊，你在这儿呢，露西，”凯斯宾说道，“我们都在等你呢。这位是我们的船长，德里宁勋爵。”

一名黑发男子单膝跪下，吻了吻她的手背。一旁除了凯斯宾，只有雷佩契普和爱德蒙。

“尤斯塔斯去哪儿了？”露西问道。

“在床上躺着呢，”爱德蒙回答，“我觉得咱们也没有什么能为他做的。你要是想对他好一点，他反而会越难受呢。”

“而且，”凯斯宾补充道，“我们得好好聊聊。”

“天哪，我们是得好好聊聊。”爱德蒙表示赞同，“首先就是关于时间的问题。我们上次正好是在你的加冕礼之前离开的，照我们的时间来算，已经过去一年了。在纳尼亚过去多久了？”

“正好是三年整。”凯斯宾回答道。

“一切都还好吗？”爱德蒙关切地问。

“一切自然都好，否则我不会离开我的王国来航海啊。”这位年轻的国王回答道，“纳尼亚好极了，现在台尔马人、矮人族、能言兽、半羊人族以及其他部落之间都相安无事。而且去年夏天我们在边境战场上将那些爱找麻烦的巨人族打得落花流水，现在他们都要向我们进贡了。我不在的这段时间里，把纳尼亚托付给了一个十分优秀的人，让他担任摄政王，他就是矮人族的杜鲁普金，不知道你们还记不记得？”

“可亲可爱的杜鲁普金，”露西说道，“我当然记得啦。你的选择很明智，再没有比他更合适的人选了。”

“没错，他像獾一样忠诚，和——和老鼠一样英勇。”德里宁说道。他本打算说“和狮子一样英勇”的，不过他注意到雷佩契普的眼睛正盯着自己，于是便改了口。

“那么我们现在要往哪儿去呢？”爱德蒙问道。

“哦，”凯斯宾回答道，“这可说来话长了。或许你们还记得，当我还是个孩子的时候，我的叔叔米拉兹篡夺王位，还赶走了我父亲的七个朋友（他们或许会拥护我为王），把他们都打发去探索孤独岛以外的、未知的东方海域。”

“是的，”露西说道，“之后他们就再也没有回来。”

“没错。在我加冕礼的那天，在我获得了阿斯兰的准许之后，我立下誓言，一旦我将纳尼亚一统和平，就要亲自下海向东航行，用一年的时间去寻找我父亲的朋友。要是他们已经过世了，我便要尽自己所能为他们报仇雪恨。他们的名字分别叫作：莱维廉勋爵、伯恩勋爵、阿尔戈兹勋爵、玛威拉莫恩勋爵、奥克塔西恩勋爵、莱斯提玛勋爵，还有——哦，还有一个人的名字我总是记不住。”

“是鲁珀勋爵，陛下。”德里宁替他补充道。

“是的，当然，鲁珀，鲁珀。”凯斯宾说，“这就是我此行的主要目的。不过雷佩契普还有一个更为宏大的目标。”于是所有人的目光都应声转向了那名老鼠首领。

“或许我的体型比较矮小，”雷佩契普说道，“但是我的志气还是很高昂的。我们何不前往世界最东边的尽头呢？想想我们可能在那里找到什么？我想我们或许能够抵达阿斯兰自己的国度。因为伟大的狮王每次总是从东边越过海洋，来到纳尼亚。”

“哎呀，这个主意可真不错！”爱德蒙惊叹道。

“但你觉得，”露西说道，“阿斯兰的国度会是那种——我是说，会是那种你通过航行就能到达的国度吗？”

“这我并不清楚，女士，”雷佩契普回答道，“不过有这么一回事，当我还是个襁褓中的婴儿时，一个森林中的女人，一个树精，曾对我吟过这样一首诗：

“在水天相接之处，

在浪水变甘之地，

不必怀疑，雷佩契普，

去寻找你所苦苦追寻的一切，

那儿便是东方尽头。

“我不知道那是什么意思，可是这首诗仿佛有种魔力，至今还萦绕在我的脑海里。”

短暂的沉默后，露西问道：“那么我们现在在哪儿呢，凯斯宾？”

“这一点船长可比我知道得清楚。”凯斯宾说。于是德里宁掏出了一幅海图，在桌上摊开。

“那就是我们现在所处的位置，”他说着，用手指点在海图上的某处，“其实准确来说，这里是今天中午我们所在的位置。在航行之初，从凯尔帕拉维尔刮来了顺风，我们在盖尔马靠北一点的位置，第二天便抵达了盖尔马。我们在那里的港口停泊了一周，因为盖尔马的公爵专门为陛下举办了一场盛大的比赛，陛下可打败了不少骑士呢，把他们打下了马——”

“我自己也摔了几下子，德里宁。直到现在还有几块淤青没消下去呢。”凯斯宾插话道。

“但陛下还是打败了不少骑士的。”德里宁咧嘴笑着，又重复了一遍，“我们都认为公爵很乐意陛下能够娶她的女儿为妻，不过这事最后不了了之了——”

“她是个斜眼儿，而且一脸的雀斑。”凯斯宾补充道。

“噢，可怜的姑娘。”露西说。

“然后我们就从盖尔马再度起航，”德里宁继续道，“接下来的两天里大部分时间都风平浪静，所以我们只好划船前行。之后终于起风了，直到第四天我们才从盖尔马抵达泰瑞宾西亚。那里的国王派人送来消息，警告我们不要登陆，因为泰瑞宾西亚正有流行病肆虐，不过我们绕过了海角，驶进了距离城市较远的一处小湾，在那儿补给了一些淡水。之后我们又在附近停泊了三天，直到刮起了东南风，我们这才又朝着七岛出发了。到了第三天，一个海盗（看她的服装打扮应该是泰瑞宾西亚人）追上了我们，不过她见我们全副武装，还是颇为忌惮，双方射了几箭后她便逃走了——”

“我们就应该乘胜追击，把她绑到船上，还要把那些海盗都绞死才好呢。”雷佩契普道。

“又过了五天，我们终于见到了缪尔岛，您知道，那是七岛之中最靠西的岛屿。然后我们划船渡过了海峡，大约在日落时分驶进了布伦岛的莱德港，那儿的人们热情地款待了我们，食物和水也是应有尽有，随我们享用。六天前我们才离开莱德港，风很顺，因而航速极快，所以我想大约后天我们便可以看到孤独岛了。总结一下上述所说的，我们目前已在海上航行了将近三十天，已驶出纳尼亚四百多里格（译者注：里格为长度单位，相当于三英里左右）。”

“那么孤独岛之后又是哪里呢？”露西问。

“这个无人知晓，陛下。”德里宁回答道，“除非孤独岛的居民能告诉我们。”

“在我们统治纳尼亚的那个年代，他们是无法告诉我们的。”爱德蒙说道。

“那么，”雷佩契普说，“真正的冒险之旅便是从孤独岛之后才拉开序幕的。”

凯斯宾提议让爱德蒙和露西在晚餐之前在船上参观一下，不过露西的良心感到不安，她说：“我想我真的得去瞧瞧尤斯塔斯了。要知道，晕船是很难受的。要是我原来的魔酒还在的话，我就能治好他了。”

“还在的呀！”凯斯宾说，“我都差点忘记了。你把魔酒留下了，我想那可以算得上是王室的财宝之一，于是就带上了——如果你不觉得拿魔酒治疗晕船有些大材小用的话，就拿去用吧。”

“只需要一滴就好了。”露西说。

凯斯宾打开了长椅底下的一个柜子，拿出了一只玲珑漂亮的钻石酒瓶，那是露西再熟悉不过的了。“现在物归原主了，女王陛下。”他说。接着他们便离开了舱房，走到了阳光下。

在甲板上有两个长长的大舱口，桅杆的前后靠近船头船尾处各一个，两个舱口都敞开着，因为天气晴好时水手们总是将舱口打开，好让阳光和新鲜空气都进入船舱。凯斯宾领着他们爬37下梯子来到后舱口。在这里他们看到了两侧都是划船时坐的长凳，阳光从船桨孔里透进来，在船顶上自由自在地舞蹈着。当然了，凯斯宾的船可不是那种可怕残酷的、让奴隶来划桨的船。船桨只有在没有风或者是在进出港口时才会用到，而且人人（除了雷佩契普的腿太短够不到以外）都会轮流划桨。在船的两侧，长凳下方的位置是空出来让划桨手放脚的，不过船中间的地方有一个凹陷处，一直延伸到船底，里面都堆满了各种各样的物品——成袋成袋的面粉、一桶一桶的水和啤酒、大桶盛装的猪肉、一罐一罐的蜂蜜、兽皮馕灌装的葡萄酒，还有苹果、坚果、奶酪、饼干、芜菁和一片一片的培根等，不一而足。在船顶上——其实就是甲板的下层——悬挂着火腿和一串串的洋葱，还有不当班的看守人睡在吊床里。凯斯宾带着他们跨过一条条长凳到船尾去——至少对凯斯宾而言只需要迈开腿跨过去便可，露西则得连跨带跳，而对雷佩契普而言，就真的好比跳远了。就这样，他们来到了一个有门的隔间，凯斯宾打开门，领着他们进入了船尾甲板下的一个舱房。这里自然就不那么舒适了，房内十分低矮，他们往下走着，只见两边倾斜着，底部合拢在一起，因此几乎没有平整的地板；尽管房内装有厚玻璃窗户，但由于是在水下，所以也无法打开。此时，随着船上下颠簸，窗外一会儿是金灿灿的阳光，一会儿是暗绿色的海水。

“我们俩得住在这儿了，爱德蒙。”凯斯宾说，“我们把床铺留给你的亲戚，我们就睡在吊床上好了。”

“我恳请陛下——”德里宁想要劝阻他。

“不，不能让船员睡在这儿。”凯斯宾不为所动，“我们已经讨论过这个问题了。你和莱恩斯（莱恩斯是一名船员）负责驾驶这艘船，很多时候夜里都要起来干活，有许多事要操心，而我们只是唱唱歌、讲讲故事，所以你和他必须住在甲板上的左舷舱房里。爱德蒙国王和我可以在下面舒舒服服地躺着。可是不知这位陌生人意下如何呢？”

尤斯塔斯面如菜色，皱着眉头问风暴有无变小的迹象。但是凯斯宾疑惑地问：“什么风暴啊？”德里宁则爆发出了一阵大笑。

“风暴！这位小先生，”他的嗓门很大，仿佛在咆哮，“现在的天气再好不过了。”

“是谁在说话？”尤斯塔斯不耐烦地说，“快把他打发走。他的声音震得我头都大了。”

“我给你带了点东西，尤斯塔斯，它会让你好受一些。”露西说道。

“噢，快走开，让我一个人待一会儿。”尤斯塔斯暴躁地吼道。不过他还是从露西的酒瓶里喝了一滴，尽管他嘴里说着这玩意儿难喝得要命（她一打开酒瓶盖子，整个舱房里便弥漫着醉人的香甜气息），但无疑很管用，因为他喝下去没多久，脸色便恢复了正常。他自己也一定感觉好多了，因为他不再哀号着念叨风暴和自己的头疼，而是开始要求他们把他带到岸上去，还扬言自己一到港口就要去找英国领事馆，向领事馆提出来“处置”他们所有人。不过当雷佩契普问他什么是处置，处置又应该如何提出时（雷佩契普还以为那是一种进行单挑的新方法呢），尤斯塔斯只会回答：“真没想到你连这个都不知道”。最后他们终于成功说服了尤斯塔斯——他们已经在向着所知的最近的岛屿全速前进了，而且他们的燃料也不够再把他送回哈罗德姨父生活的剑桥去，那简直等同于把他送到月球那么遥远。于是尤斯塔斯只好闷闷不乐地答应，先把为他准备好的干净衣服换上，然后一起到甲板上去。

凯斯宾又带着他们在船上参观了起来，不过他们其实已经看得差不多了。他们走到艏楼上，看见放哨员站在镀金龙头脖颈里的一个小搁板上，正透过大张的龙嘴往外看。艏楼里面是厨房，还有水手长、木匠、厨师以及主弓箭手等人的屋子。如果你觉得把厨房布置在船头很奇怪，脑海里想象着厨房烟囱里的炊烟都向后飘散，弥漫在整个船上，那是因为你在想的是汽船，汽船总是有顶头风，向后吹。但是在帆船上，风是从后面刮过来的，因此凡是有难闻味道的东西都尽可能地放在越前面越好。接着他们又往上来到了战斗桅楼，起初大家摇摇晃晃地站在上面，看着下方的甲板显得这样小，又这样远，总难免感到胆战心惊。你很清楚，要是不慎失足跌落下去，很有可能你就掉进海里去了，而非落在甲板上。之后他们又来到了船尾的尾楼，莱恩斯和另一名同伴在这里当值掌舵，后面的龙尾翘了起来，也镀了一层金，里面放有一个长凳。这艘船的名字叫作“黎明踏浪”号，不过与我们现在的船相比起来，她着实有些太不起眼了，甚至都无法与在露西和爱德蒙以及至尊国王彼得的共同统治时期，纳尼亚所拥有的那些大帆船相提并论。那是因为在凯斯宾祖先的统治时期，近乎所有的航海活动都销声匿迹了。当凯斯宾的叔叔，也就是篡夺王位的米拉兹，将七位勋爵派遣出海时，他们不得不买来一艘盖尔马造的船，雇用盖尔马水手来掌舵。不过现在，凯斯宾已经开始着手教授纳尼亚子民再度成为航海好手了，而“黎明踏浪”号则是目前为止他所造出的最好的船。船很小，除却桅杆以外，甲板上的中央舱口和一边的备用艇以及另一边的鸡笼（露西不忘给母鸡喂食）之间几乎没有多余的空间。不过话又说回来，“黎明踏浪”号有其独特的美丽之处，用水手们的话来说，她是一位“淑女”，线条柔和完美，颜色纯洁无瑕，每一处桅、桁、绳索与轴钉的做工都精细漂亮。不过尤斯塔斯自然是看什么都不顺眼，他一直在吹嘘班轮、摩托艇、飞机和潜水艇之类的（“说得好像他自己很了解一样。”爱德蒙嘟囔着），不过其他两个孩子对“黎明踏浪”号十分满意，当他们回到船尾的舱房里用晚餐时，看着西边整片天空都被红彤彤的落日点亮，感受着船体的微微摇晃，品尝着舌尖上的咸味，想着世界东边尽头的未知大陆，露西只觉得自己高兴得近乎发不出声来了。

至于尤斯塔斯是怎么想的，最好还是由他自己来说。当他们第二天一早都换上了干爽的衣服时，他便迫不及待地掏出了一本小小的黑色笔记本和一支铅笔，开始写日记。他总是随身带着这本笔记本，上面记录着他的分数，尽管他并不是真的有多么在意任何一门课程本身，但他很在乎分数，甚至还会专门去和别人说：“我得了这么多分呢。你得了多少？”不过现在看来，他在“黎明踏浪”号上也得不了什么分数了，于是他便转而开始写起了日记。下面就是第一则日记：

“8月7日。如果这一切都不是在做梦的话，那么我现在已经在这艘可怕的船上待了二十四个小时了。吓人的风暴一直都没有停过（我这次倒没有晕船，真是件好事）。常常有巨大的浪头从前面打过来，好多次我都看到船几乎就要沉了。其他所有人都假装没有注意到，要么是为了虚张声势，要么就是像哈罗德说的那样，普通人最为懦弱的表现之一就是对事实视而不见。乘着这么一个破破烂烂的玩意儿出海，他们简直是疯了。这船还没有一艘救生艇大呢。还有，当然了，船里面也简陋原始得很。没有像样的大堂，没有电台广播，没有浴室，就连甲板躺椅都没有。昨天傍晚我被拖着在船上到处逛，凯斯宾一直喋喋不休地炫耀自己这艘滑稽可笑的小玩具船，就好像这艘船是‘玛丽女王’号似的，任谁听了都想吐。我想告诉他真正的船是什么样子的，可他实在太蠢了。当然了，爱德蒙和露西也没有替我说几句话。我想，露西这孩子可能还没有意识到其中的危险，而爱德蒙则是在讨好凯斯宾，就像这里的所有人一样。他们都管他叫国王。我说了我是一个共和主义者，可他居然问我那是什么意思！他好像根本什么都不知道。不用说，他们把我安置在了船上最差的舱房里，那简直是一个十足的地牢，露西倒好，可以一个人独占甲板上的一整间房，和船上的其他地方比起来，那间房已经很不错了。凯斯宾说那是因为她是个女孩。我想让他明白艾尔波塔说的话，就是做这些搞特殊的事情只会贬低女孩的地位，不过他真的太蠢了。我要是继续待在这个洞窟里，恐怕又要生病了。爱德蒙说我们不应该怨三道四的，因为凯斯宾为了给露西腾出房间，自己也在这里和我们一起住。说得好像他住进来没有把这里搞得更挤、更糟糕似的。差点忘记了，这里还有一只长得像老鼠一样的怪东西，把大家都搞得人心惶惶。其他人愿意忍着就忍着吧，不过它要是敢欺负到我头上来，我立马就拧断它的尾巴。还有，这里的食物也难吃透顶。”

尤斯塔斯和雷佩契普之间的冲突，比想象中来得更早。第二天晚餐前，其他人都已经围着餐桌就座，等着开饭了（在海上人们的胃口好得要命），这时尤斯塔斯冲了进来，双手紧握着拳头，大声嚷道：

“那个小畜生差点要了我的命！我坚决要求你们好好管制它。我可以起诉你的，凯斯宾，我有权命令你把它处理掉。”

与此同时，雷佩契普也出现了。只见它剑已出鞘，胡须上扬，看上去十分凶狠，不过它还是一如既往地彬彬有礼。

“请各位原谅，”它说道，“尤其是女王陛下，请不要受惊吓。我要是知道他会逃来这里避难，我一定会另择时机来规劝他的。”

“究竟发生了什么事啊？”爱德蒙问道。

事情是这样的。雷佩契普从不觉得船开得有多快，它喜欢坐在龙头边的舷墙上，遥望着东方的海平线，吱吱地柔声唱着树精为它写的歌谣。它向来什么也不用抓，任凭船怎样起伏颠簸，它都能轻轻松松保持平衡；也许是它垂在舷墙里甲板上的长尾巴帮了大忙。船上的每个人都知道它的习惯，水手们挺高兴的，因为这样一来，轮到他们当值放哨的时候，就有人能陪他们说说话了。至于尤斯塔斯为什么会一路打着滑、跌跌撞撞地走到了艏楼（他还没有适应在船上走路），其中的原因我也不得而知。也许他期盼着能见到陆地，又或者他想去厨房里转转，找些吃的。总之，当他看到有条长长的尾巴垂下来时——或许那尾巴看着相当诱人——他便觉得，要是抓着雷佩契普的尾巴，将它头朝下甩个一两圈，然后大笑着跑开，应当是件很有趣的事儿。起初这个计划似乎进行得很顺利。这只老鼠比一只大猫重不了多少，尤斯塔斯把它在空中甩了三次，它的身子都飞出了舷栏外，小小的四肢摊开，嘴也大张着，看上去很傻（至少尤斯塔斯是这么认为的）。不过，雷佩契普一生多次征战，一刻都没有慌张，也没有忘掉自己的本领。通常，如果尾巴被人拎着在空中甩来甩去时，是很难拔出剑来的，但它做到了。接着尤斯塔斯只觉得自己的手被狠狠地戳了两下，于是他松开了尾巴；再接着，只见那只老鼠已经重新站了起来，如同一只球一般从甲板上弹起来，直直冲他而来，手里还来回挥舞着一根又长又亮、又尖又吓人的类似串肉扦一样的东西，离他的肚子只有一英寸远。（刺向腰带以下部位对纳尼亚的老鼠而言不能算是犯规，因为它们够不到更高的地方了。）

“快住手，”尤斯塔斯语无伦次地说，“走开！把那个东西拿开！太危险了，停下！我要告诉凯斯宾去，我要让人把你的嘴巴套起来，把你五花大绑！”

“你为何不拔出自己的剑来和我一决高下呢？懦夫！”雷佩契普吱吱地说，“快拔出剑来和我决斗，否则别怪我把你打得鼻青脸肿。”

“我没有剑啊，”尤斯塔斯说道，“我是个和平主义者，我不相信打打斗斗能解决问题。”

“我是不是可以理解为，”雷佩契普暂且收回了它的剑，一字一顿地严肃地说，“你不打算应战呢？”

“我不知道你在说什么。”尤斯塔斯小心翼翼地朝手吹着气，“如果你开不起玩笑的话，那我下次不和你开玩笑就是了。”

“那么你就好好记住这一下，”雷佩契普说，“还有这一下——要学会礼貌——学会尊重骑士——和老鼠——还有老鼠的尾巴——”每说一句，它就用长剑抽打尤斯塔斯一下。长剑是矮人族用钢铁铸造的，纤薄精巧，如同桦条鞭一般灵活实用。尤斯塔斯在学校里从来没有接受过这样的体罚（那是自然），这种感觉对他来说是头一回。因此，尽管他还没能适应在船上行走，但他只花了不到一分钟便跑下艏楼，奔过整个甲板冲进了舱房里——不过他还是被雷佩契普紧追不舍。的确，尤斯塔斯觉得雷佩契普就在身后咫尺之遥，而那长剑仿佛发烫，或许是因为抽打在身上疼得发烫吧。

不过尤斯塔斯很快便意识到，这里的人们对待决斗是认真的，他还听见凯斯宾说要借给他一把剑，德里宁和爱德蒙则在讨论着是不是应该给他额外加一些不利条件，毕竟他在体型上比雷佩契普大出许多，占了优势——这样一来，问题就解决了——他沉着脸向雷佩契普赔礼道歉，随后便跟着露西去清理并包扎手上的伤口，然后回到了自己的床上。一晚上他都小心翼翼地侧身躺着。

第三章
孤独岛

“发现陆地了。”船头的人喊道。

露西正在尾楼和莱恩斯说话，听到这喊声便急忙爬下了梯子，往船头跑去，半路上遇到了同样向船头走去的爱德蒙，随后他们发现凯斯宾、德里宁和雷佩契普都已经在艏楼上了。这天清晨有些凉，天色略显黯淡，大海则是幽深的蓝色，海面零零星星地漂浮着白色海沫。就在靠近右舷一侧船头的不远处，便是孤独岛中离他们最近的一座岛屿，弗里玛斯岛，如同海中一座低矮的绿色山丘。而在它后面更远一些的地方，有一座灰色的岛屿，那便是弗里玛斯岛的姐妹岛，多尔恩岛。

“弗里玛斯岛！多尔恩岛！都还是老样子，一点儿也没变。”露西惊喜地拍着手叫道，“哦，爱德蒙，我们俩都有多久没见到这两座岛了！”

“我一直不明白为什么它们会属于纳尼亚，”凯斯宾问道，“是不是至尊国王彼得占领了它们？”

“噢，不是的，”爱德蒙回答，“早在我们之前，这里就是纳尼亚的领土了——在白女巫那个年代。”

（另外，我还从未听说过这些偏远岛屿是为何并入了纳尼亚王国的。倘若我弄明白过去发生了什么样的故事，而且那故事又有趣的话，或许我会在别的书里记录下来告诉你们。）

“我们是否就在这里靠岸呢，陛下？”德里宁征询道。

“我觉得在弗里玛斯靠岸不是个好主意。”爱德蒙说，“我们还在位的时候，这里几乎无人居住，现在看起来似乎也并无不同。人们大多住在多尔恩岛上，艾维拉岛上也有一些住民，那是第三座岛，你们现在还看不见。人们只在弗里玛斯岛上养羊。”

“那我想，我们就得绕过海角，”德里宁说，“然后在多尔恩岛靠岸。这就意味着我们要划桨前进了。”

“真可惜我们不能在弗里玛斯岛登陆了。”露西遗憾地说，“我很想再去那儿走走呢。小岛上孤独极了——不过是那种很宜人的孤独静谧，有柔和的海风，到处绿草如茵，还有三叶草。”

“我现在也挺想好好舒展一下腿脚的。”凯斯宾附和道，“听着，我们不如一起乘坐小船上岛吧，然后再把小船顺水送回去，这样我们可以在弗里玛斯岛上走走，让‘黎明踏浪’号在小岛另一头等我们。”

倘若凯斯宾这时候能像之后那么经验丰富，他一定不会提出这样的建议。不过眼下这听起来似乎真是个不错的主意。“噢，那真是太好了，就这么办吧！”露西欣喜地说。

“你也会一起来，对吗？”凯斯宾对刚走上甲板、手上绑着绷带的尤斯塔斯说。

“只要能离开这艘破船，去哪儿都行。”尤斯塔斯说道。

“破船？”德里宁反问道，“你这话什么意思？”

“我是从一个文明国家来的，”尤斯塔斯高傲地说，“那儿的船大得很，你坐在里面都不会意识到自己在海上。”

“这样的话你还不如待在岸上呢，何必出海。”凯斯宾说，“德里宁，你能让他们把小船放下去吗？”

于是国王、老鼠骑士、两个佩文西家的孩子以及尤斯塔斯一行人全都坐到了小船上，前往弗里玛斯岛。船员将他们放在了岸上，便划着小船回去了。他们转过身四下望去，惊讶地发现不远处的“黎明踏浪”号看上去竟如此渺小。

露西自然是光着脚的，她游泳时已经把鞋子踢掉了，不过在柔软的草坪上走起来也不费力。能再次踏上陆地，嗅到泥土和青草的清香，他们都觉得很快乐，即便起初脚下的地面似乎像船一样，也在上下颠簸着——这很正常，在船上待久了就会这样。岛上比船上暖和得多。他们经过一片沙地，露西感觉到脚趾间的细沙是那样温暖舒适。还有一只云雀在放声歌唱。

他们往小岛腹地走去，攀上了一座不怎么高却相当陡峭的小山丘。爬到山顶时，他们自然又回头看了一眼，只见“黎明踏浪”号在阳光下熠熠生辉，如同一只色泽光艳的大昆虫，以桨为足，慢腾腾地朝西北方向爬行着。随后他们越过了山脊，便看不见船了。

眼前便可望见多尔恩岛，一道约一英里宽的海峡将它与弗里玛斯岛阻隔开来；多尔恩岛的左后方便是艾维拉岛。此刻他们能很清楚地看见多尔恩岛上白色的奈洛港小镇。

“嗨！这是怎么回事呀？”爱德蒙突然说道。

原来，在他们下山方向的绿色山谷里有六七个长相凶悍的男人，他们都全副武装，靠树坐着。

“别向他们透露我们的真实身份。”凯斯宾嘱咐道。

“恳请您告诉我，陛下，这是为什么呢？”雷佩契普问道。在岛上爬山时，它答应坐在露西的肩上，以便集体行动。

“我刚想到，”凯斯宾回答，“这里已经很久没有人收到过来自纳尼亚的消息了。很有可能他们已经不再承认我们的统治了。如果真是这样的话，贸然亮出国王的身份，或许会招致危险。”

“我们可是带了剑的，陛下。”雷佩契普不以为意。

“没错，雷佩，我知道我们有剑，”凯斯宾说，“但如果事关重新占领这三座岛屿，我希望能带着一支规模更大的军队杀回来。”

说话间，他们已经走得离这些陌生人很近了，其中一个黑头发的大块头冲他们喊道：“你们早上好啊。”

“你也早上好啊。”凯斯宾说，“孤独岛现在还有统治官吗？”

“当然有，”那人回答，“冈帕斯先生便是我们的统治官。他住在奈洛港，不过你们可以在这儿歇歇脚，同我们喝上一杯。”

凯斯宾谢过了他，尽管他和他的朋友们都不怎么喜欢这位新朋友的长相，但他们还是都坐下了。不过还没等他们举起酒杯碰到嘴唇，只见那个黑发男人朝他的同伴一点头，接着，电光石火之间，五位来客便发现自己都被结结实实地架住了。他们挣扎了一会儿，不过优势完全是一边倒的。很快他们都被收缴了武器，手也被绑在了身后，只有雷佩契普还在同抓他的人扭打着，发了疯似的猛咬对方。

“小心那只野兽，塔克斯，”领头的人说，“别弄伤了他，我敢肯定他能卖出个好价钱。”

“胆小鬼！懦夫！”雷佩契普气得牙痒痒，吱吱地叫唤道，“有本事你就松开我的爪子，把剑还给我！”

“唷！”这个奴隶贩（这才是他的真正身份）吹了声口哨，“小家伙还会说话呢！真没料到。要是他的卖价低于两百新月币，我就不是人。”卡乐门新月币是这一带通用的主要硬币，一枚新月币大约相当于三分之一英镑。

“所以这才是你的真面目吧，”凯斯宾说道，“绑架犯，奴隶贩。但愿你以此为荣，良心不会作痛。”

“好了好了，消停消停吧，”这个奴隶贩说，“收起你的那套说教吧。你们看开一些，大家都好过，懂了吗？我可不是为了找乐子才这么干的，我得像其他人一样谋生。”

“你要把我们带到哪里？”露西有些艰难地吐出了几个字。

“到奈洛港去，”奴隶贩说道，“明天那儿有集市。”

“那儿有英国领事馆吗？”尤斯塔斯不死心地问。

“你刚说那儿有什么？”那人一头雾水。

不过尤斯塔斯还没解释完，奴隶贩便打断了他：“得了，我不想听你在这儿瞎扯了。那只老鼠能卖个好价钱，但这一个实在太唠叨了。好了伙计们，我们出发吧。”

四个“人类囚犯”被绳子捆在了一起，虽勒得不算太紧，但也很牢固，一路被赶着向海岸走去。雷佩契普则被人扛着，他不再咬人了，因为奴隶贩威胁他说要是再咬的话，就把他的嘴绑起来。不过他一路上吱吱地说个不停，露西真心觉得，任何一个人都无法忍受这个老鼠骑士对奴隶贩说的这些话。可是这个奴隶贩却一点也不恼火，也毫不反驳，只在雷佩契普停下来歇口气的时候催促他“继续啊”，偶尔加几句，“就像在看节目表演似的，真有意思”，或者“哎呀，你都忍不住以为这小家伙真的知道自己在说些什么呢！”又或者“是不是你们中的谁训练他说话的？”这番挑衅让雷佩契普更加怒火中烧，以至于他一下想说的太多，差点噎过气去，最后便干脆保持沉默了。

当他们来到正对着多尔恩岛的海岸时，他们看见了一个小小的村庄，沙滩上停着一艘长长的小船，稍远处则是一艘脏兮兮的、破破烂烂的船。

“好了，年轻人，”奴隶贩说道，“别白费力气挣扎，就能少吃点苦头。都上船吧。”

这时一个面容英俊、蓄着胡须的男人从一间屋子里走出来（我想那应当是一间客栈），说道：

“帕格，又弄到不少货？”

这个看样子名叫“帕格”的奴隶贩低低地鞠了一躬，声音带有哄骗意味地说：“是的，大人，请来瞧瞧吧。”

“这个男孩你想卖多少？”那个男人指着凯斯宾问。

“啊呀，”帕格说，“我就知道大人您眼光好，挑的都是最上乘的。我可不敢拿些次等货色来糊弄您。唔，这个男孩子嘛，我自己也喜欢得紧，挺中意他的。像我心肠这么软的人压根就不应该接这种活儿。不过，为了大人这样的主顾，我还是——”

“少废话，赶紧报个价，臭家伙，”这位大人板着脸说道，“你觉得我想听你在这儿长篇大论地说你那肮脏的勾当吗？”

“看在大人您尊贵的面子上，那就三百新月币吧，要是卖给其他人——”

“我出一百五。”

“哦，求您了，”露西突然插嘴道，“无论您想怎么样，请别把我们分开。您不知道——”她没再说下去，她看了看凯斯宾，即便是身处现在的境地，他还是不想让人知道自己的身份。

“那么就一百五成交了。”那位大人说，“至于你，小姑娘，很抱歉我不能把你们所有人都买下来。帕格，把我要的那个男孩解开。还有，你听好了，其他几个人卖出去以前，你要好生对待他们，否则让你吃不了兜着走。”

“哎呀！”帕格说道，“有谁听说过干我们这一行的还有比我更善待货物的吗？嗯？我待他们就像待自己的孩子一样好。”

“这话倒是不假。”那位大人沉着脸说道。

接着，令人心碎的时刻到来了。凯斯宾被人松了绑，他的新主人说：“这边走，小伙子。”露西不禁落下泪来，而爱德蒙亦是一脸恍惚。不过凯斯宾回过头来冲他们说：“振作起来，我保证最后一切都会好起来的。再见了。”

“好了，小丫头，”帕格说，“别哭鼻子，把脸哭花了，明天还得上集市呢。你乖乖听话，做个好姑娘，就不必吃苦头，明白了吗？”

随后他们被推搡着上了奴隶船，带去了甲板下面一处狭长、昏暗又脏乱的地方，他们在那儿看见了许多被抓来囚禁的其他人。不必说，帕格是一个海盗，他刚去几座岛屿巡行一圈后回来，把能掳夺的都掳夺了。孩子们没见到自己认识的人，关在这里的大多是盖尔马人和泰瑞宾西亚人。于是他们也像其他人一样坐在稻草上，想着不知凯斯宾现在怎么样了，同时他们还得想办法让尤斯塔斯别再一个劲儿地抱怨了，他说得就好像这一切都是别人的错。

此时此刻，凯斯宾的经历显然比其他几人要有趣一些。买下他的人领着他穿过两幢村舍之间的小巷子，来到了村庄后的一片空地上。随后他转过身面朝凯斯宾说道：

“孩子，你不必害怕我，我会善待你的。我把你买下来是因为你的长相让我想起了一个人。”

“我可否问问是谁呢，大人？”凯斯宾问道。

“你让我想起了我的主人，纳尼亚的凯斯宾国王。”

听到这话凯斯宾便决定冒险一试。

“大人，”他开口道，“我正是你的主人，我就是纳尼亚的凯斯宾国王。”

“你说得倒是轻巧，”那人说，“我怎么知道你的话是不是真的呢？”

“首先我的长相便是证据，”凯斯宾说，“其次，我最多猜六次，就能说出你是谁来。你是纳尼亚的七位勋爵之一，我叔叔米拉兹把你们流放到海外，我此番出海也正是要寻找你们的下落。那七位勋爵分别叫作阿尔戈兹、伯恩、奥克塔西恩、莱斯提玛、玛威拉莫恩，还有，还有——其他两个我一下子想不起来了。最后，若是您给我一把剑，我会光明磊落地在决斗中证明我就是凯斯宾，你主人的儿子，也是纳尼亚合法的国王、凯尔帕拉维尔的统治者以及孤独岛的君主。”

“哦，天哪！”那人惊叫道，“这声音，还有说话的方式，和他父亲简直如出一辙。我的王——陛下——”他说着便跪了下去，亲吻着国王的手背。

“你为我出的钱，到时候我自会补偿给你的。”凯斯宾说道。

“钱还没落到帕格的口袋里呢，陛下，”说话的人正是七位勋爵之一的伯恩勋爵，“我相信他永远也不会得逞的。我已经多次和这里的统治官提议要扼制这种走私奴隶的行当了。”

“伯恩勋爵，”凯斯宾说道，“我们得谈谈这三座岛屿目前的情况。但首先请告诉我这些年您自己的经历吧。”

“我的故事三言两语便能说完了，陛下。”伯恩说道，“我和其他六位同伴到了这里之后，我爱上了岛上的一位姑娘，而且我也受够了整日在海上颠簸。何况那时纳尼亚由陛下您的叔叔统治，我回去也无济于事。于是我干脆与心爱的姑娘成了婚，此后便一直在这儿住下了。”

“那么这里的统治官，那个冈帕斯，他是个什么样的人呢？他还承认纳尼亚的国王是他的主人吗？”

“口头上他自然是承认的，凡事也确实是打着国王的名号。不过要是纳尼亚的国王真的亲自来到这里对他加以干涉，恐怕他也不会高兴的。而且如果陛下您只身一人、手无寸铁地出现在他面前——虽然他还是会口口声声表明自己的忠心，但是他会假装不相信您是国王，到时候您将会有性命之忧。陛下您在海上还有人手吗？”

“我的船就停在海岬那儿，”凯斯宾说道，“要是真打起来，我们大约有三十人可以作战。要不要让我的船去拦下帕格，然后把我的朋友们救出来呢？”

“我不建议您这么做，”伯恩思忖道，“一旦他们交起手来，奈洛港会驶出两三艘船去支援帕格。陛下您必须表现得好像自己拥有远远不止这些数量的人马，还要用您国王的名号震慑住他。你们千万不能正面交锋。冈帕斯是个软弱的人，很容易就会被吓住的。”

凯斯宾与伯恩商议了片刻后便走到了村庄西边的海岸，凯斯宾吹响了他的号角（这并非纳尼亚苏珊女王的魔法号角，凯斯宾将魔法号角留给了杜鲁普金，这样的话，国王不在时万一纳尼亚出了什么事，可备不时之需）。德里宁正在船上留意着国王的指示，此刻立即辨认出了王室号角的声音，于是下令将“黎明踏浪”号驶向岸边。随后他们再度放下小船，凯斯宾和伯恩勋爵很快便登上了甲板，把情况原原本本地向德里宁解释了一番。德里宁和凯斯宾一开始的反应一样，也想立刻就把“黎明踏浪”号开到奴隶船边上，冲上船去把人救下来，可是伯恩再次提出了反对意见。

“船长，请您驾船径直通过这道海峡，”伯恩说道，“然后开到我所居住的艾维拉岛去。不过首先，得把国王陛下的旗帜升起来，摆开所有的盾牌，派人到战斗桅楼上去，越多越好。从这里再驶出大约五个射程之后，左舷一侧的船头便会面向开阔海域，到时候你就发几枚信号弹。”

“信号弹？发给谁呢？”德里宁一下子没反应过来。

“当然是发给我们的其他船只啦，虽然子虚乌有，但说不定能让冈帕斯信以为真呢！”

“噢，我明白了，”德里宁恍然大悟，搓着手跃跃欲试道，“他们会读到我们的信号。那我应该怎么说呢？全体舰船驶向艾维拉岛南部，集合位置为——？”

“伯恩庄。”伯恩勋爵答道，“这样一来便无后顾之忧了，船一路航行过去——要是真有舰队的话——都会在奈洛港的视线范围之外。”

凯斯宾由衷地为被帕格抓去奴隶船上受难的其他人感到难过，不过他还是忍不住觉得，这一天的后半部分还是过得很愉快的。将近傍晚时分（他们一路上都是靠划桨前进的），他们将船的右舷面向多尔恩岛的东北端，左舷面向艾维拉岛的海岬，驶进了艾维拉岛南海岸一个不错的港口。在那儿，伯恩勋爵的领地倾斜着一直延伸到海边来。他的子民都是自由人，大多数都在田野里劳作，这片封地呈现出一派欣欣向荣、舒适安乐的景象。他们在此上了岸，在海湾上方一幢用柱子搭建的矮房子里暂且住下，受到了热情的款待。伯恩和他美丽的妻子与讨人喜欢的女儿同他们做伴，欢声笑语不断，着实度过了美好的时光。不过天黑之后，伯恩不忘正事，派遣了一个信使坐船去多尔恩岛，命人着手准备第二天的行动（他并没有透露具体要准备什么）。

第四章
了不起的凯斯宾

第二天一大早，伯恩勋爵便叫醒了他的客人们。早餐过后，他请凯斯宾下令让所有人都全副武装。“最重要的是，”他补充道，“所有的铠甲武器都得擦得锃亮，就好像今天早晨的这场战争是打响两位尊贵的君王之间战争的第一炮，而且全世界都在屏息注目着这一战事。”一切都准备完毕后，三艘船载着凯斯宾和他的部下，以及伯恩和他的几个手下，驶向了奈洛港。国王的旗帜在船尾飘扬着，他的号兵也一同前往。

当他们抵达奈洛港的码头时，凯斯宾看见那儿聚集了许多人，等着迎接他们。“这就是我昨晚派人来传话安排的，”伯恩告诉他，“他们都是我的朋友，忠实可靠。”凯斯宾一踏上岸，人群里便爆发出了阵阵欢呼声，人们高声喊着“纳尼亚！纳尼亚！国王万岁！”同时——当然这也是伯恩的信使安排的——小镇上各处都响起钟声来。随后，凯斯宾命人举起他的旗帜，吹响号角，接着所有人都拔出剑，一脸肃容又透着喜悦，他们在街上大步走着，震得整条街都在颤动；他们的盔甲熠熠生辉（因为这天早晨恰好阳光明媚），旁人几乎很难直视。

起初欢呼的只有伯恩的信使通知过的知情人，他们知道即将发生什么，也希望事情按计划进展。不过随后，孩子们也加入了进来，因为他们很喜欢看行军列队，在岛上也很少有机会看到；接着所有的男学生也加入了他们，因为他们也喜欢列队，而且觉得外头越是吵吵闹闹的，他们今天早晨就越有可能不用上学了；再接着，所有的老妇人也都从门里、窗户里探出头来，絮絮叨叨地说着话、欢呼喝彩着，因为这可是国王驾到了，哪里是区区一个统治官可以相提并论的呢？所有的年轻姑娘出于同样的原因也跟着一起欢呼起来，更何况凯斯宾、德里宁还有其他几人实在是太英俊了，让她们转不开眼；而所有的年轻小伙子也忍不住出来瞧瞧姑娘们都在看什么。所以当凯斯宾终于走到了城堡大门口时，几乎整座小镇都充斥着欢呼声和呐喊声。而在城堡里，冈帕斯正在为一堆账本、表格、规章制度忙得不可开交，这时，他也听到了外面的喧闹声。

在城堡大门口，凯斯宾的号兵吹了一下手中的号角，大声叫道：“为纳尼亚的国王打开城门吧，他远道而来，拜访他那忠诚而受爱戴的仆人，孤独岛的统治官。”一直以来，岛上的一切事务都是懒懒散散的，所以当时只有一道边门打开了，走出来一个模样乱糟糟的老头儿，戴着一顶脏兮兮的帽子，连头盔也没有，手里握着一根生了锈的旧长矛。眼前来人的铠甲闪得他直眨眼睛。“甭能见同志官人。”他嘟囔着只有自己才能听懂的话（说的是“你们不能见统治官大人”）。“没有提前‘逾约’（预约）不得会见，每月的第二个周六晚上九点到十点‘出外’（除外）。”

“纳尼亚国王来了，还不快躲开，你这个老家伙！”伯恩勋爵大喝一声，抬起他那戴着护甲的手便在看门人的头上锤了一下，把他的帽子都打飞了。

“哎呀？这都是咋回事儿啊？”看门人嚷嚷着，不过没人再去搭理他了，凯斯宾的两个部下径直穿过了边门，稍稍摆弄了一会儿栅栏和门闩之后（因为都早已生锈了），便轻轻松松地将城堡大门打开了。随后国王和侍从们昂首阔步地走进了庭院，那儿有几个守卫在闲逛着，还有几个（都在抹着嘴）踉踉跄跄地从几个走道里晃出来。尽管他们的铠甲散乱不整，但这些人如果有长官带领或者事先知道会发生事变，还是可以作战的，所以不容小觑。因此眼下便是一个危险的紧要关头，而凯斯宾没有给他们思考的时间。

“你们的首领在哪儿？”他肃声问道。

“我就是，算是吧，你知道我的意思吧。”一个没穿盔甲、打扮得花里胡哨的年轻人懒懒散散地说。

“我们希望，”凯斯宾严肃地说，“此番王室出访孤独岛应当是愉快的；如果可能的话，我们不希望给忠诚的臣民带来恐惧。若非看在这一点的分上，我一定要数落一下你们属下身穿铠甲和佩带武器的面貌状态。不过既然如此，我便赦免你们一回。开一桶葡萄酒，大家一起为我们的健康喝一杯吧。不过明天中午我希望看到每一个守卫都在庭院集合，士兵就要有士兵的样子，不要像个流浪汉似的。务必要做到，如有违反，我们会非常不高兴的。”

那首领吃惊地张大了嘴，还未等他说些什么，伯恩便立刻高声道：“将士们饮三杯酒，恭迎国王的到来！”那些士兵纵使对其他一窍不通，但是对喝酒还是很在行的，于是便纷纷斟酒干杯。随后凯斯宾命令自己的大队人马留在庭院里待命，自己连同伯恩、德里宁以及另外四个部下一齐步入了宫殿大堂。

大堂那一头的一张桌子后面，坐着的便是孤独岛的统治官，身边还围着许多分管不同部门的书记大臣。冈帕斯一脸凶相，看着似乎脾气很暴躁，头发原本是红色的，如今已大多灰白。他抬头瞥了一眼进来的陌生人，随后便又低下头看文件了，口中习惯性地说道：“没有提前预约不得会见，每月的第二个周六晚上九点到十点除外。”

凯斯宾朝伯恩点点头，随后站到了一边。伯恩和德里宁上前一步，分别抓住了桌子的一端，用力抬起来往大堂一边扔去，桌子被掀翻了，信纸、卷宗、墨水瓶、钢笔、封蜡还有文件都如落雨般纷飞散落一地。随后，他们的双手如同钢钳一般，虽不粗暴但也是牢牢地抓住冈帕斯，将他拽出了座椅，把他放在了面朝椅子大约四英尺远的地方。凯斯宾则立刻坐到了座椅上，将出鞘的剑横放在膝上。

“这位大人，”他紧盯着冈帕斯说道，“我们可没想到您就是用这种方式欢迎我们的。我是纳尼亚的国王。”

“来信从没提过有这等事。”统治官说，“纪要中也未有提及。我们从没接到过这样的通知。太不寻常了。若事先有过申请，我们自当欣然——”

“我们来这里是想检查一下你的工作进展。”凯斯宾继续说道，“其中有两点，我尤其想听你好好解释一下。首先，我发现孤独岛向纳尼亚王国应行的进贡，已经有约一百五十年没有记载过了。”

“这个问题应当在下个月的理事会上提出来，”冈帕斯一副公事公办的模样，“如果有人在明年第一次会议上提出，要成立调查委员会来汇报孤独岛过往的财政明细，那么何不……”

“我还发现，我们的法律中白纸黑字地写着，”凯斯宾继续说道，“倘若未能及时进贡，所有欠款必须得由孤独岛的统治官自掏腰包偿付。”

听到这里冈帕斯才开始认真起来。“噢，那怎么可能呢！”他说，“我绝无这样的经济能力啊——呃，陛下您一定是在说笑吧。”

可他心里却在想有没有什么办法能够摆脱这些不速之客。要是知道凯斯宾只有一艘舰船和一艘船的人马，他眼下就会先好声好气地哄着他们，然后夜里便将他们包围起来暗杀掉。不过昨天他见到了一艘战舰驶过海峡，还看见船上发出了信号，他猜想那应当是发给同伴的。当时他还不知道那就是国王的船，因为那时候风不够大，船上旗帜没有飘扬起来，他看不见上面的金狮标志，于是他决定静候其变。现在他揣测凯斯宾的整个舰队都已停靠在伯恩庄，等候他发号施令了。冈帕斯压根儿不会想到，会有人只带着不足五十名人手，便敢大摇大摆地走进奈落港想要拿下孤独岛；这样的事他自己是连想也不敢想的。

“其次，”凯斯宾又说，“我还想知道，你为什么会允许如此恶劣而又毫无人性的奴隶走私活动在此猖狂盛行？这与我们王国一直以来所奉行的古老传统与习俗严重相悖。”

“因为的确有这个必要，不可避免。”统治官答道，“那是岛上经济发展的命脉，我向您保证。我们如今的繁荣全依赖奴隶走私。”

“你需要奴隶来做什么呢？”

“为了出口啊，陛下。大多是卖给卡乐门了，当然我们还有其他市场。我们这儿可是贸易的中心。”

“换句话说，”凯斯宾道，“你并不需要奴隶。你告诉我，奴隶们除了能够给像帕格这样的走私犯带来生财之路，源源不断地将钱送进他们的口袋以外，还有什么用处呢？”

“陛下您还涉世未深，”冈帕斯挂着一脸慈父般的笑容说道，“很难理解这其中牵涉的经济问题。我有统计数据，也有图表，我还有——”

“我年纪虽轻，”凯斯宾不客气地反驳道，“却也很了解奴隶贸易，相信不比大人您差半分。但我并不认为奴隶贸易会给孤独岛带来肉、面包、啤酒、葡萄酒、木材、卷心菜、书、乐器、马匹、盔甲，或是任何有价值的东西。但是无论能否获益，我们都必须立刻停止奴隶贸易。”

“但是这样做会使岛上经济倒退的！”统治官倒吸一口气道，“您是否考虑过进步？考虑过发展？”

“这两样我在鸡蛋上倒是见过，”凯斯宾道，“在纳尼亚我们称之为‘变臭’。总之奴隶贸易必须马上停止。”

“这么做我可担不起责任。”冈帕斯道。

“很好，那么，”凯斯宾接话道，“我们便要罢免你统治官一职。伯恩勋爵，请到这儿来。”冈帕斯还没意识到发生了什么事，伯恩就已经跪下，将双手交与国王手中，并起誓，将秉承纳尼亚的古老传统、权利、习俗与法律，尽心尽力治理孤独岛。接着，凯斯宾说：“我认为我们的统治官已经够多了。”于是他赐予伯恩公爵之衔，让伯恩成了孤独岛的公爵。

“至于你，大人，”他又对冈帕斯说，“我赦免你的贡礼之债，不过明日午时之前，你和你的人必须离开城堡，这里如今已是公爵大人的府邸了。”

“您看，这一切都很不错，”冈帕斯的一位大臣说道，“不过各位大人不如别再口是心非了，我们来做一笔小小的交易如何？现在真正摆在我们面前的问题是——”

“问题是，”新封任的公爵打断他道，“你和你的那帮乌合之众是想就这么爽快地走，还是想讨一顿打再走。随你们的便。”

当一切都妥善处理好后，凯斯宾便命人备马。城堡中虽有几匹马，不过无人好好看管喂养，马儿都是病恹恹的。凯斯宾和伯恩、德里宁以及其他几名部下一同策马奔出了小镇，赶往奴隶市场。那是一座低矮狭长的临港建筑，里面的景象与其他一般的拍卖会无异；换句话说，里面乌泱泱挤满了人，而帕格则站在台子上粗声粗气地吼着：

“好了先生们，二十三号。上乘的泰瑞宾西亚农民，适合在矿场或者船上工作。不足二十五岁，一口的好牙。很不错的壮小伙儿。把他的衣服脱了，塔克斯，让各位先生瞧瞧。瞧这一身肌肉！看看他的胸口。角落里的那位先生出价十新月币，先生您一定是在开玩笑吧。十五！十八！二十三号现在的拍卖价是十八。还有人出更高的价吗？二十一！谢谢您，先生。现在拍卖价是二十一——”

帕格戛然而止，瞠目结舌地看着一群披盔戴甲的人丁零当啷地走上了高台。

“全体下跪，拜见纳尼亚国王。”公爵说道。人人都听到了门外马鞍叮当声与马蹄跺地声，很多人也都听说了早晨有舰船靠岸、城堡里发生了“逼宫”这些事件。于是大多数人都乖乖照做了，那些没有下跪的也被身边的人拉着跪下了。有几个人还发出了欢呼声。

“帕格，你犯了死罪，昨日竟敢对我们的王族成员下手！”凯斯宾说道，“不过不知者无罪。就在一刻钟前，我们纳尼亚领土上的一切奴隶贸易都被严令禁止了。我宣布，现在市场上的每一个奴隶都自由了！”

奴隶们爆发出了一阵欢呼声，凯斯宾抬手向他们致意，随后继续说道：“我的朋友们在哪儿？”

“您是说那位可爱的小姑娘和那位俊秀的年轻人吗？”帕格谄媚地赔着笑说，“哎呀，他们一出来就被抢着拍走啦——”

“我们在这儿！我们在这儿，凯斯宾！”露西和爱德蒙齐声呼喊道。“随时愿为陛下效命！”另一个角落里雷佩契普也尖声叫道。虽然他们都被买下来了，不过买下他们的人仍待在这儿想要继续竞拍其他奴隶，所以他们还没有被带走。人群中自发地让出一条路来，容他们三人通过，他们来到凯斯宾面前，互相好一阵击掌拥抱，十分激动。两名卡乐门商人旋即也跟了上来。卡乐门人都肤色黝黑，蓄着长长的胡须，身穿飘逸长袍，头戴橘色无檐帽，卡乐门民族十分古老，向来以智慧、富有、彬彬有礼而又心狠手辣著称。他们毕恭毕敬地向凯斯宾鞠躬，长篇累牍地赞美了他一番，称赞纳尼亚繁荣昌盛的源泉灌溉着谨慎与美德——当然了，他们无非是想要回自己已经付了的钱。

“那是自然了，先生们。”凯斯宾说道，“今天所有买了奴隶的人都必须拿回自己的钱。帕格，你得把自己赚来的不义之财统统交出来，连一米尼姆也不许剩！”（一米尼姆币相当于一新月币的四十分之一。）

“我的好陛下，您这是要让我倾家荡产，去讨饭吗？”帕格哀号着抱怨道。

“你这一辈子干的营生不知祸害了多少人，”凯斯宾唾弃道，“就算你沦为乞丐，那也比当奴隶强吧。不过话又说回来，我的另一个朋友去哪儿了？”

“哦，你说他？”帕格露出一脸厌恶，“行行好，把他带走吧，我巴不得他走呢。我这辈子还从没在市场上见过这样卖不出去的货呢。最后我出价五新月币，就连这样都没人要买他。把他作为附赠品和其他奴隶一起卖吧，还是没人愿意买。别人连碰都不愿意碰他一下，看都不愿意看他一眼。塔克斯，你把那个‘哭丧脸’带出来吧。”

于是尤斯塔斯终于又露面了，他看上去的确哭丧着一张脸——尽管没人愿意当奴隶被卖来卖去，但当个连卖都卖不出去的奴隶或许更叫人难堪吧。他走上前对凯斯宾没好气地说：“我就知道，你准是自己上哪儿逍遥快活去了，完全不管我们还在这儿当阶下囚。我猜你压根儿没去打听英国大使馆的下落，肯定没去，问都不用问。”

这天晚上，他们在奈洛港的城堡中好好享用了一顿宴席，之后雷佩契普说了句：“明天，我们真正的冒险就开始啦！”说完，它向大家鞠了一躬便回屋睡觉了。不过冒险也不会真的从明天就开始，这只是因为他们从现在起就要离开所有已知的陆地和海域了，所以必须做好万全的准备。船员将“黎明踏浪”号全部清空，并垫了滚筒，由八匹马将船拉上了岸，船上的角角落落都经由手艺最好的造船匠人细心检查过。随后“黎明踏浪”号又下了水，里头满满当当地贮藏了食物和水——足够船员在海上生活二十八天。不过爱德蒙有些失望地发现，即便如此，算上来回，他们最多只能再向东航行两周，之后便不得不放弃探索了。

准备事宜正在紧锣密鼓地进行中，凯斯宾抓紧机会找来了奈洛港所有年迈的船长，询问他们是否知道或是听说过东边尽头的大陆。他拿出了城堡中的许多麦芽啤酒，款待这些饱经风霜的老人，他们蓄着灰色短胡须，长着清澈的蓝色眼睛。作为回报，他听到了许多稀奇古怪的故事。不过那些看上去最为真诚老实的船长，却对孤独岛以外的陆地一无所知，有不少还相信，要是往东边航行太远，就会被卷进世界边缘那永不停歇地打着旋儿的海浪里去。“我想，那儿便是陛下您的朋友们沉海罹难的地方。”其他人只知道些古怪荒诞的故事，比如无头人岛、漂浮岛、喷水岛与水边燃烧的火焰。让雷佩契普感到欣慰的是，其中一人说道：“再过去就是阿斯兰的国度了，不过那儿比世界尽头更远，你们到不了的。”可是当他们继续追问下去时，他只说这是从他父亲那里听来的。

伯恩也只能告诉他们，自己当时看见六个同伴往东航行了，此后便没了他们的下落。说这些时，他和凯斯宾正站在艾维拉岛的最高处，俯瞰着东边的海洋。“早晨我经常到这儿来，”公爵说道，“看着太阳从海上升起。有时候太阳好像就在几英里之外。我会想到我的朋友们，不知他们现在如何，也不知海平线的后面究竟是什么，很可能什么都没有。但我总是有些惭愧自己留在了这里，没有和他们一起继续航行。不过我希望陛下您别去，我们这里也许需要您的帮助。这次您禁闭了奴隶市场，很有可能会改变世界局势：我能预见，我们和卡乐门之间的战争不可避免。我的陛下，请三思啊。”

“我曾立过誓言，公爵大人，”凯斯宾说道，“而且退一步说，我又该如何向雷佩契普交代呢？”

第五章
风暴来袭

距离登陆过去了将近三周后，“黎明踏浪”号被拖出了奈洛港。他们彼此郑重地道了别，许多人都聚在码头上目送“黎明踏浪”号离开。凯斯宾对孤独岛上的居民作了最后一次演讲，与公爵及其家人作别，人群中有欢呼，亦有泪水。不过当“黎明踏浪”号渐渐驶离岸边，紫色的帆微微拍动着，船尾凯斯宾号兵的号角声隔着水飘来，越发微弱，此时人人都静默了。随后“黎明踏浪”号驶进了风里，船帆鼓张开来，绳索也解开了，开始向后划去，第一个大浪头从船头下升起，于是“黎明踏浪”号再次生龙活虎起来，雄赳赳地朝前驶去。不当值的船员都下去了，德里宁在尾楼站第一轮岗。“黎明踏浪”号绕过艾维拉岛南端，向东驶去。

接下来的几天日子十分快活。露西感觉自己简直就是世界上最幸运的女孩儿了，每天早晨她醒来，一睁眼便能看见阳光照耀下的海面闪着粼粼波光，投到了舱房的天花板上，摇曳舞动着。她环顾四周，看看自己从孤独岛得来的漂亮新衣物——橡胶长靴、中筒靴、斗篷、无袖外套和围巾。随后她会走上甲板，爬到艏楼上眺望清晨更加明亮的蓝色大海，深深呼吸一下日益温暖起来的新鲜空气。接着便到了早餐时间，她能吃下很多，人在海上才会有这么好的胃口。

她常常坐在船尾的小长凳上和雷佩契普下象棋，一下便是很久。雷佩契普移棋子的模样十分令人捧腹，因为棋子对它而言实在太大了，若是要把棋子移到靠近棋盘中间的位置，它还得两爪并用，踮着脚尖儿才行。雷佩契普是个很不错的棋手，只要它还能记住自己在做什么，就能经常赢得比赛。不过有时候则是露西成了赢家，因为老鼠会做出一些荒唐之举，比如下了一枚马，却弄巧成拙将自己的王后和城堡置于危险之中。那是因为老鼠一时间忘记了这是一场象棋比赛，还以为是真正的战争，于是便让马做了换作是自己在此情境下会做的事。在它这个勇士的脑子里，满是孤注一掷、虽死犹荣、背水一战之类的想法。

然而好景不长。一天傍晚，露西正懒懒地看着船后海面上留下的长长的尾迹，突然，她注意到西边天空正积聚起层层叠叠的云，速度快得惊人。随后云间裂开了一道口子，黄色的夕阳余晖从中倾泻而下，身后的海浪似乎都扭曲成奇异的形状，大海成了黄褐般的颜色，如同脏兮兮的画布，空气也变得凉飕飕的。“黎明踏浪”号航行得颇有些不稳，就好像船自己也感觉到身后的危险，前一秒还行驶得平稳缓慢，下一秒便疾行颠簸起来。露西目睹眼前的一切，感到了山雨欲来风满楼的不妙形势，只听德里宁喊道：“全体船员来甲板集合！”不一会儿，人人都好似上了发条，忙得团团转——舱口封住了，厨房里的灶火扑灭了，还有船员爬上桅杆收帆。可是还没等他们忙完，风暴就来了。露西看过去，就好像船头前方的海面上裂开了一道深渊，他们乘着船就这么坠了下去，下沉之深令她难以置信。一道灰色的、远比船桅高出许多的滔天巨浪，如山一般朝他们压了下来。看起来他们似乎必死无疑了，可下一秒他们又被抛至浪尖。接着船似乎开始原处打转，海水如同瀑布般倾泻在甲板上，尾楼与艏楼就好像两座被分隔开来的小岛，在其中间的海水激流奔腾。水手爬上高处，伏在帆桁上，拼命想控制住船帆。一条断了的绳子从一侧垂下来，在风中依然笔直而僵硬，好似一根拨火棍。

“女士！快到甲板下面去。”德里宁大喊道。露西明白未出过海的新手——无论男女——对船员而言都是麻烦和负担，于是她闻言便照做了，但这并非易事。此刻“黎明踏浪”号向右舷一侧倾斜得厉害，甲板如同屋顶一般陡。她不得不爬到梯子顶端，牢牢抓住舷栏，等另外两人爬上来后，再尽自己所能往下跑。起初一切还算顺利，她已经紧紧抓住了梯子底部，然而这时又一阵大浪打在了甲板上，结结实实浇到了她的肩膀上。尽管她原本已被溅起的水花和雨水淋得全身湿透了，但浪水更冰冷刺骨。随后她猛冲向舱房门，进了舱房，暂时将眼前一切迅速陷入黑暗的骇人景象挡在了门外，但却阻隔不了耳边传来的嘎吱作响声、啪嗒断裂声、丁零当啷声、咆哮呼啸声、嗡嗡隆隆声，这些响动在甲板下比在尾楼上听起来更加清晰可怖，困惑与忧惧也格外放大了。

到了第二天，暴风雨依然没有停歇，此后接连几天都是如此，久到人们几乎都想不起来暴风雨来袭之前是什么光景了。船舵处时刻得有三个人操控着，方能掌住舵航行；抽水泵也需要有人时刻操作排水。没有人能好好休息，厨房里什么也烧不了，一切都是湿漉漉的；有一个船员不幸落水了；而且，他们一直见不到太阳出现。

当这一切都结束之后，尤斯塔斯就在他的日记里记录了如下事项：

“九月三号。过了这么久，今天我终于可以重新开始写日记了。我们遇上了飓风，持续了整整十三个日夜。我之所以知道是十三天，是因为我一直在认真地数日子，尽管其他人都说只过去了十二天。船上的同行者连日子都不会数，同这些人踏上这段危难重重的航海之旅，还真让人开心啊！这段日子太可怕了，大浪接连不断，我也跟着上上下下颠簸，常常浑身都浇个湿透，甚至没人愿意好好烧顿饭给我们吃。更别提这里没有无线电了，甚至焰火弹也没有，所以没法儿发信号向别人求助。这一切都证明，我一直在告诉他们的话是对的，他们一定是疯了才会乘着这么一艘小破老爷船就出海了。就算身边不是这些人模人样的恶魔，而是正派的好人，这种情况也已经够糟糕的了。凯斯宾和爱德蒙对我又粗暴又冷酷。船桅被风刮断（现在只剩下一截木桩了）的那天夜里，尽管我自己身体也不舒服，他们还是逼我到甲板上去，让我像个奴隶一样干活。露西一边推着船桨一边说，雷佩契普也很想来帮忙，但是它太小了划不动桨。我就纳闷她怎么就看不出来，那个小东西所做的一切都是为了显摆自己。即便是在她这个年纪，也应该有点基本的判断力了。今天这艘讨人厌的船终于平稳了，太阳也出来了，我们都在讨论接下来应该怎么办。食物还够我们吃十六天的，不过大多都难吃得要命。（家禽都被冲到海里去了，即便没被冲到海里，这暴风雨天里它们也下不出蛋来了。）真正的难题在于水，两个装水的桶好像被撞出了洞，水都漏空了。（这又是所谓纳尼亚人的办事水平。）省着点喝，每人一天半品脱，还能够我们喝十二天。（船上还剩许多朗姆酒和葡萄酒，不过喝酒只会越喝越渴，这个道理就连他们也都知道。）

“当然了，要是可以的话，最明智的选择应该是立刻掉头向西，回到孤独岛去。不过我们花了整整十八天的时间才到了这里，而且后面一直有大风，所以船速快得像是发了疯。即便现在刮起了东风，我们返航的时间可能也不止十八天，况且现在压根儿连东风的影子都没有——其实现在海上一丝风也没有。要是划船回去的话，时间就太久了。凯斯宾还说水手们一天只喝半品脱的水，划船肯定吃不消。我觉得他说得完全没有道理。我试着向他解释，出汗其实能帮助人体降温，所以在劳作时他们需要摄入的水分反而更少，可是他听都不听一句。这就是他的作风，每次自己想不出答案，就无视别人的劝告。其他人都赞成继续向前航行，期望能发现新的岛屿。我觉得我有责任向他们指出，我们根本不知道前方是否还有陆地，要让他们明白痴心妄想很危险，是要不得的。可是他们非但自己拿不出一个更好的方案，还厚着脸皮问我有什么提议。于是我就很淡定地向他们解释说我是被绑架来的，踏上这场愚蠢的航程绝非我自愿，所以我可没有义务替他们收拾这烂摊子。

“九月四号。还是老样子，没有风。晚餐的配给很少，而且我的比其他人都要少。凯斯宾自己倒是很精怪，吃了不少，还以为我不会发现呢！露西不知怎么地，想要补偿我，主动说要把自己的食物让给我一些，可是爱德蒙那个多管闲事的假正经不让她给我。太阳挺晒的。整个晚上都渴得要命。

“九月五号。依旧无风，依旧很热。人一整天都觉得虚飘飘的，我肯定发烧了。当然了，他们是不会想到在船上备一个体温计的。

“九月六号。今天糟透了。半夜醒过来，我能感觉到自己在发热，必须得喝点水——随便哪个医生都会这么说的。老天作证，我绝对不是那种会占便宜的人，可是我做梦也想不到这种限量饮水的规矩对病人也适用。其实我也想过把其他人叫醒，向他们要些水喝，只是我觉得把他们叫醒有点太自私了。于是我就起床拿上水杯，踮着脚尖走出了我们睡觉的小黑洞，尽量小心不打扰凯斯宾和爱德蒙睡觉，因为自从持续高温和缺水以来，这些天以来他们睡得都不太好。不管别人对我好不好，我总是替他们着想。我顺利地走进了大房间——如果那称得上是房间的话——里面是划桨坐的长凳，还摆着行李。盛水的地方在房间尽头。一切进行得很顺利，不过还没等我倒上一杯水，就被雷佩那只鬼鬼祟祟的老鼠发现了。我试图解释我是要到甲板上去透透气（划桨根本都没有它什么事儿），但它问我为什么手里还拿着杯子。它闹出的动静太大了，整个船上的人都被吵醒了。他们对待我的态度就好像我犯了什么了不得的大错似的。我就问了——我觉得在当时的情况下任何人都理应问一句——为什么雷佩契普大半夜的在水桶旁边鬼鬼祟祟地转悠呢？它说因为自己太小了，在甲板上帮不了什么忙，所以每天夜里都会在水桶旁站岗放哨，这样就能换下一个人去睡觉了。接下来发生的事就很不公平、很龌龊了：大家都相信了它说的话。这下我还有什么可说的呢？

“我不得不道歉，否则的话这只危险的小耗子又要拔剑指着我了。随后凯斯宾出现了，这回他露出了他暴君的真面目，大声地宣布，以后凡是再有人被发现‘偷’水喝，就要‘罚两沓’，声音响得所有人都能听见。我都不知道他说的是什么意思，还是爱德蒙和我解释的，这个词出自佩文西家几个孩子读的那些书里。

“像个懦夫似的、不痛不痒地威胁了我一番之后，凯斯宾又语气一变，开始装大圣人说教起来，自以为高人一等似的。他说他为我感到难过，还说什么其实每一个人都像我一样觉得发烧难受，但我们必须克服困难，全力以赴什么什么的。简直是个自以为是的假正经，真讨厌！今天我就在床上躺了一天。

“九月七号。今天稍微起了点风，但仍然是西风。往东开了几英里，全靠仅剩的部分船帆，那船帆系在木杆上，德里宁称之为应急桅杆——其实就是把船首斜桁竖起来，系（他们管那叫作‘绑’）到原来桅杆的木桩上。我还是渴得要命。

“九月八号。船仍旧向东航行。我一整天都待在自己的床铺上，除了露西谁也没见，直到晚上那两个大坏人回屋睡觉。露西把自己的那份水分给了我一些。她说女孩子不像男孩子似的总口渴。我也经常这么想，但是这一点在出海时应该让更多的人知道。

“九月九号。能看见陆地了，一座很高的山在远处的东南方向。

“九月十号。眼前的山更大更清晰了，不过还有很长一段距离。今天第一次看见海鸥了，我已经记不清有多久没见到海鸥了。

“九月十一号。抓到了几条鱼，晚饭的时候吃了。晚上七点左右，我们在这座多山岛屿的海湾里三英寻深处抛下了锚。那个白痴凯斯宾不让我们上岸，因为天色已经不早了，而他担心岛上会有凶残的野人部落或者野兽。我今晚多得了一份水。”

不料在岛上等着他们的，对尤斯塔斯而言比对其他人而言，是一件更头疼的事，不过我们没法儿再从他的日记里读到了，因为九月十一日过后的很长一段时间里，他都忘了写日记了。

第二天清晨，天空灰蒙蒙的，云压得很低，但十分炎热，探险家们发现自己身处一围海湾，四周悬崖峭壁环抱，就像是挪威的峡湾似的。在他们面前的湾头，有一处平地，密密丛丛长满了树，看起来像是雪松，树林间涌出一条快速奔流的小溪。再过去，地面陡然上升，一直延伸到锯齿般凹凸不平的山脊，其后群山影影绰绰，山尖耸入暗色的阴云里，望不见顶。稍近一些，海湾两侧的悬崖上有道道白痕，旁人一见便知那是瀑布，不过从这个距离看过去，瀑布似乎一动不动，也毫无声响。确实，整个地方都十分寂静，海湾的水面平滑如镜，映出了悬崖山壁的每一处细节。眼前的景象若是在画中应当是十分漂亮的，但在现实中看起来却隐隐有些压迫感。这并不是一个适合游玩的地方。

整艘船上的船员分两批乘坐小船，都上了岸，人人都在河里尽情喝水，恣意洗澡，又好好吃了一顿饭，休息了一阵子。接着凯斯宾派了四名船员回到船上守着，然后一天的工作就正式开始了。他们要做的事情多得数不过来：要把水桶搬到岸上，要是能修的话，破了洞的地方要修补起来，所有的水桶都要再装满水；要砍下一棵树——要是能找到松树就最好了——重新做一根桅杆；船帆必须得修补好；要去打猎，凡是这块陆地上有的猎物务必一概捕杀回去；还得洗衣服、缝补衣服；船上不计其数的小破洞也得修好才行。至于“黎明踏浪”号——现在隔得远一些，他们能看得更清楚了——早已不复当初离开奈落港时那般神气模样，看上去破破烂烂的，黯然失色，任谁都会把它当成是一堆残骸。船上的长官和船员也好不到哪儿去——个个瘦削而苍白，双眼因睡眠不足而布满血丝，衣衫褴褛。

尤斯塔斯躺在树下，听着他们讨论着这些计划，一颗心沉入了谷底。难道就这么一直干活没有休息吗？看来他们到了期盼已久的陆地上以后的第一天，还是会像在海上一样忙忙碌碌。接着他突然想到了一个好主意。现在反正也没人在看——他们都在一心一意地谈论着那艘船，就好像真的很喜欢那个破烂玩意儿似的。为什么他不能就这么悄悄地溜走呢？他可以到岛内腹地溜达一圈，在山里找一个凉快通风的地方好好睡上一觉，直到一天的活儿都干完了再回去找大家。他觉得这个主意不赖，但他得千万小心，要时刻留意，确保海湾和船在视线范围之内，这样才能原路返回。他可不想孤零零地一个人留在这个地方。

他说行动就行动，轻手轻脚地站起身，离开了人群，往树林里走去，小心翼翼地走得慢些、随意些，这样要是有人看见他，也会以为他只是在活动筋骨、放松腿脚。他惊讶地发现，人群嘈杂的交谈声很快就消失在了身后，树林也变得格外静谧、温暖而又墨绿。很快他便觉得自己可以大胆果决地加快速度往前走了。

于是他很快就走出了林子。眼前的地面开始陡然上倾，草地干燥却很滑，不过他若是手脚并用，还是可以爬上去的。尽管一路上他气喘吁吁，还不停地抹额头上的汗，但他还是坚持向上爬着，并未心生怯意。这么看起来，虽然尤斯塔斯自己都没料到，但他的新生活已经在对他起了些有益的作用——过去的尤斯塔斯，那个哈罗德和艾尔波塔的儿子尤斯塔斯，大概爬十分钟就会放弃了。

他爬得不快，中间休息了几次，最后终于抵达了山脊。他原本以为在这儿能看到岛屿中央，不过此时云层压得更低更近了，又腾起一片雾来，望不到尽头。他席地而坐，回望自己方才上来的地方。现在他身处的位置很高，方才的海湾在下面显得很渺小，他还能看见几英里的海面。随后，山间起的雾渐渐将他围裹住，厚重却并不冰冷。他躺了下来，辗转着找到最舒服的姿势，打算好好享受这段美妙的时光。

不过他没能好好享受，或者说，快乐的时光并未维持多久。几乎是生平第一次，他开始感到孤独。一开始这种感觉总是慢慢地、不经意地发酵，随后他开始担心起时间来。四周一点声音都没有。突然他想到自己可能已经在这里躺了几个小时了。或许其他人都已经走了！或许他们是故意任由自己闲逛的，目的就是为了把他留在这里！他骤然感到一阵惊慌，赶紧一跃而起，匆忙往山下去。

一开始他跑得太快了些，踩在陡峭的草地上不小心滑了一跤，滑出几英尺远。然后他想这样就太往左偏了——他爬上山时见到悬崖就在那一边。于是他又往上爬了爬，爬到了他大致猜测是自己摔跤前开始下山的地方后，便又重新往下走，这次则靠右走。此后一切看起来似乎都在变好。他走得很小心，因为他最多只能看见前方一码那么远，四周仍然是完完全全的寂静。他这么亦步亦趋地走着，心里却仿佛有个声音在一直催促着“快点，快点，再快点”，这种感觉很不好受，因为每过去一分钟，他那被抛弃的可怕念头便会加深一分。但凡他稍稍了解凯斯宾和佩文西家几个孩子的为人，他就会知道，他们绝对不会做出这样的事来。不过他总是觉得他们几个都是披着人皮的恶魔。

“总算到了！”尤斯塔斯欢呼一声，从一堆松散的小石子儿（他们管那叫作“岩屑堆”）上滑了下来，落到平地上。“好了，现在让我来看看，那些树去哪儿了？前面怎么黑黢黢的，明明雾已经散了呀。”

没错，雾确实已经散了。光线越来越强，他忍不住直眨眼睛，大雾已升腾上去。此刻他身处一片全然陌生的山谷，连大海的影子都看不到。

第六章
尤斯塔斯历险记

此时此刻，其他人正在河里洗手洗脸，准备吃吃晚饭、休息休息了。三名最优秀的弓箭手之前去了海湾北边的山里，已扛着一对野山羊满载而归，此时的猎物正在火上炙烤着。凯斯宾命人带一桶葡萄酒上岸，那是亚钦兰王国产的烈葡萄酒，喝之前必须得掺水，因而一桶酒足够所有人享用了。一天的工作完成得颇为顺利，晚餐时亦其乐融融。直到第二份羊肉端上来时，爱德蒙才说道：“尤斯塔斯那个讨厌的家伙去哪儿了？”

此时尤斯塔斯正呆呆地四下望着这个陌生的山谷。山谷极其狭窄幽深，四周的崖壁极其陡峭，让这里看起来就像一个巨大的深坑或是沟渠。地上长满青草，却也布满了小碎石，尤斯塔斯能看见地上到处是一块块烧焦的黑色印迹，就好像干燥夏日里在铁路路堤两边能见到的焦黑斑块一样。离他大约十五码处，有一汪清澈平滑的池塘。起初山谷里空无一物——一只动物也没有，一只飞鸟也没看见，就连一只虫子都看不见。阳光直射下来，山峰与山角肃穆冷峻，俯瞰着山谷。

尤斯塔斯意识到自己肯定是在大雾中不小心走到了山脊的另一侧，于是他立即转身打算回去。可是他不看倒也罢，一看简直吓得浑身发抖。看来他是走了奇运，才找到了唯一一条能够下山的路——一条长长的绿色小径，出奇地陡峭狭窄，两边都是悬崖峭壁。除了这条小径，根本不可能有其他回去的路了。可是现在看清了这条路的险峻之后，他还能爬得上去吗？光是想想，他便已经头晕目眩了。

他又转过身去，想着不管怎么样，最好还是先从池塘里喝一口水再说。可正当他转过身去，准备往山谷里走时，他听见身后传来一声响动。那声音十分微弱，可是在这一片完全的静谧之中便显得很响。他吓得一动不动，化石般呆立了一会儿。随后他慢慢扭过脖子，看向身后。

他左手边稍过去一点的悬崖脚下有一个低矮的幽暗小洞——可能是某个洞穴的入口。从洞口飘出了两缕轻烟。昏暗的山洞下方有一些松散的石子，这会儿正在移动着（他刚才听见的响动正是从这里传来的），就好像石头后面的阴影之中有东西正在爬动似的。

有东西正在爬动。更可怕的是，那东西正在向外爬。爱德蒙和露西，或者正在看书的你或许一眼就能认出那是什么，可尤斯塔斯从没看过这方面的书籍。从洞穴里爬出来的生物他甚至无论如何都想象不出来——长长的铅灰色鼻子，呆愣愣的红眼睛，全身没有羽毛也没有毛皮，柔软的长身体在地上拖着，四肢的关节部位竖起来，比后背还高，就像是蜘蛛的毒肢一般；它还长着蝙蝠似的翅膀，刮着石壁发出“刺啦刺啦”的声音；一根尾巴有几码长。那两缕烟正是从它的鼻孔里喷出来的。尤斯塔斯从没想过“龙”这个词儿，不过就算他想到过，也不会对眼下的情形有什么帮助。

不过，如果他事先真的对龙有所了解，此时见到这条龙的动作，或许又会感到有些惊讶。因为这条龙既没有坐直了身子拍打着翅膀，嘴里也没有喷出火焰来，而从它鼻孔里冒出的烟，就像是将熄之火冒出的烟一样淡。它似乎并没有注意到尤斯塔斯，兀自缓缓地朝池塘爬去——爬得很慢，中间还停了好几次。即便尤斯塔斯十分恐惧，但也能感觉到这条龙的老迈与悲伤。他思索着自己是否有胆量赶紧冲上山去，不过他担心要是自己发出了声音，龙就会转过身来，或许它会变得更有精神和力气。又或者它只是在假装，预备伺机而动。不管怎么说，这家伙会飞，往高处逃跑又有什么用呢？

这条龙爬到了池塘边上，伸出了它那可怖的、长满了鳞片的下巴，越过碎砾石去喝水，可是不等它喝上一口，便只听得它“呱呱”叫着发出一声很响的哀鸣，抽搐着痉挛了几下之后，便翻身侧倒下去，一只爪子竖在半空中，躺着一动也不动了。它大张着的嘴里流出一些暗色的血来，鼻孔里冒出来的烟有那么一会儿变成了黑色，随后便飘散开去而没了踪影。之后便再也没有其他动静了。

尤斯塔斯久久不敢动。这也许是野兽的骗人伎俩，用以引诱丛林旅客落入万劫不复的圈套。但他总不能一直这么干等下去。他往前走近了一步，接着又走了两步，然后又停住了。那条龙还是一动不动，他还注意到龙眼睛里的红色火焰也消失不见了。最后他终于鼓足勇气走到了龙身边，此时他很确定龙已经死了。他战战兢兢地伸出手去摸了摸它，什么事都没有发生。

尤斯塔斯大大地松了口气，几乎要大笑出声来。他开始扬扬自得起来，就好像是他自己在搏斗中把龙杀死了，而非仅仅在一旁看着它死去。炎热实在难以抵挡，于是他跨过龙的尸体，到池塘边去喝水。当他听到一阵雷声隆隆传来时，他也并不感到惊讶。雷声过后，太阳几乎立刻匿了踪影，他还没喝完水，豆大的雨点已经砸了下来。

这座岛屿上的气候很不宜人。不一会儿，尤斯塔斯已经全身湿透了，眼睛也被雨淋得几乎睁不开了，他在欧洲从没见过这么大的雨。下着这么大的雨，想要爬出山谷也是白费力气。他冲向了视野之内唯一的避雨处——龙的洞穴。他冲进洞内，躺在地上平复呼吸。

我们大多数人都知道在龙的巢穴里一般会有什么，可是，正如我之前所说的，尤斯塔斯看的书都不对路，他看的都是些关于进出口、政府、排水管道之类的书，很少有提到龙的，这就是为什么他感到很困惑，不知道自己躺在了什么上面——有的地方比石头硌人，比荆棘又要硬，而且似乎还有很多圆圆的、平平的东西，他一动便叮当作响。洞口处的光线很充足，可以让他看清洞穴内的景象。不必说，尤斯塔斯看到的都是我们本可以事先告诉他的——里头尽是宝藏，有王冠（这就是刚才他感觉硌人的东西），钱币、戒指、手镯、金锭、银杯、金盘、宝石，不一而足。

尤斯塔斯（和大多数男孩不同）一向不怎么热衷于金银财宝，他从家里露西房间内的一幅画一不小心来到了这个新的世界，而他意识到在这里宝藏可大有用处。“这里的财宝可不用纳税，”他自言自语道，“而且也不用把宝物上缴给政府。这些宝贝我只要拿上一点，便足够在这里舒舒服服地过日子了——也许可以到卡乐门去，这个国家听起来比其他几个要靠谱一些，不像是假的。就是不知道我能带走多少呢？就说那些手镯吧——上面镶着的很有可能是钻石——我可以戴在自己的手腕上试试。唔，太大了，不过我可以把它捋到手肘，这样就不会太松了。然后衣服口袋里可以装满钻石——这比装金子要容易些。真不晓得这要命的大雨要下到什么时候才能停啊？”他挪到了一堆不那么硌人的钱币上，等着雨停。不过，受了严重惊吓，尤其是走了山路又受了严重惊吓过后，人是会感到异常疲惫的。于是尤斯塔斯睡着了。

尤斯塔斯在洞里打着鼾、睡得正香时，其他人已吃完了晚饭，但还不见他的踪影，便开始真的担心起他的安危来。他们呼喊着他的名字，“尤斯塔斯！尤斯塔斯！咕咿！”直到他们喊得嗓子也哑了，凯斯宾便吹响了他的号角。

“他肯定不在附近，不然早就听见了。”露西脸色苍白地说。

“这家伙真是讨厌，”爱德蒙说道，“他到底为什么要这样偷偷地溜走啊？”

“但我们必须做点什么，”露西说道，“他可能迷路了，或者掉进了洞里，又或者被野人捉去了。”

“也有可能被野兽吃掉了。”德里宁补充道。

“若果真是那样倒好了，甩掉了个大包袱。”莱恩斯咕哝道。

“莱恩斯大人，”雷佩契普说道，“您从未说过一句有损您身份的话。那人虽不是我的朋友，却也是女王陛下的亲人，只要他还是我们的同伴，那么我们就应该找到他，他若是遭遇了不测，我们就应该替他报仇，这事关我们的荣誉。”

“我们当然要找到他（如果可以的话），”凯斯宾疲倦地说，“麻烦就麻烦在这里。这就意味着我们要开始搜寻，有无穷无尽的烦事。尤斯塔斯真是个惹事精。”

与此同时，山洞里的尤斯塔斯一直酣睡着，睡得昏天黑地。最后还是手臂上传来的刺痛让他醒了过来。此时月光从洞口照了进来，身下的宝藏床似乎也变得越来越舒服了——实际上他几乎一点儿也不觉得硌人了。起初他还纳闷手臂怎么会疼，不过现在他能感觉被自己推到手肘处的手镯不知怎么变得异常紧，他心想一定是因为睡着的时候手臂肿起来了的缘故（他感到疼的是他的左臂）。

他动了动右臂，想去碰碰自己的左臂，可还未移动一点便赶紧停下了，他惊恐万分地咬住了嘴唇。因为就在他眼前靠右一些的地方，清澈如水的月光洒在洞穴地上，他看见一个可怕的东西在动。他认出了那是什么：那是一只龙爪！他的手动一动，那爪子便跟着动一动，他停下了，那爪子也不动了。

“噢，我真是个大傻瓜！”尤斯塔斯懊恼地想，“还用说吗，那家伙自然有配偶，这会儿它正躺在我边上呢。”

有那么几分钟他一动都不敢动。他看见两缕细细的轻烟在眼前升起，在月光的映衬下呈黑色，就和之前那条龙还没死的时候鼻孔里冒出的烟一模一样。他吓坏了，赶紧屏住呼吸。然后那烟消失了。后来他实在憋不住气了，悄悄地吐出一口气，可那两股烟也立刻又出现了。不过即便是这样，他还是不知道这究竟是怎么一回事。

眼下他决定万分小心地慢慢往左边挪移，争取偷偷爬出洞去。也许这家伙已经睡着了呢——不管怎么说，这是他唯一的机会了。不过他往左边挪动之前，自然免不了先往左看一看，可这一看又把他吓得不轻，那儿也有一只龙爪呢！

这时候尤斯塔斯若是哭了，也没人会责怪他。不过当眼泪溅在眼前的珠宝上时，他诧异地看见自己的泪珠竟如此之大，而且似乎异常烫——都冒出蒸汽了。

但现在哭也无济于事，他必须得尽力从这两条龙中间爬出去。于是他开始伸出右臂，而他右边那条龙的前肢和爪子也伸了出去，和他的动作一模一样。接着他又决定试试左臂，可他左边那条龙的前肢也跟着动了。

他身边的两条龙都在学他的动作！这下他完全崩溃了，索性豁出去，迅速冲向了洞口。

他冲出洞口时听见一阵哗啦的刺耳声、金子的叮当碰撞声、石子的嘎吱摩擦声，吓得他以为两条龙都在后头追他。他不敢往后看，一口气冲到了池塘边。月色下那条死去的龙躺在那儿，身子扭曲着，任谁看了都会吓得魂飞魄散，可此时，他却压根儿没怎么注意到它。他脑子里只有一个念头，那就是赶紧冲进水里去。

但就在他快要跑到池塘边时，发生了两件事情。首先，他发现自己竟然在地上手脚并用地爬着奔跑，这一发现有如晴天霹雳——他究竟为什么会这样呢？其次，当他弯下身倾向水面时，眼前所见让他有那么一瞬间还以为又有一条龙在池塘外盯着他看。不过他马上就反应过来了，池塘里那张龙的脸其实就是他自己的倒影，毋庸置疑了。他动，它也动；他张开嘴又合上，它也张开嘴又合上。

他睡着的时候变成了一条龙。他睡在龙的宝藏上，心里存着贪婪的、龙一般的想法，于是自己也就变成了一条龙了。

这样一切就解释得通了。洞里压根儿就没有两条龙躺在他身边。向左和向右抬起的爪子也都是他自己的。那两缕轻烟是从他自己的鼻孔里冒出来的。至于他左臂（或者应该说他曾经的左臂）上的疼痛，他现在斜着左眼一看就知道是怎么一回事了。手镯套在原来男孩的上臂正好，可对于一条龙的粗短的前肢而言就太小太紧了，于是手镯便深深嵌进了他鳞片覆盖着的肉里。手镯的两侧各鼓起一块一跳一跳的凸起物，他试着用他现在的龙牙去扯咬，但还是没办法弄掉。

尽管手臂上仍有疼痛，但他的第一反应是如释重负。他不必再感到害怕了，因为现在他自己就是恐惧的来源，这世界上除了骑士（而且还不是所有的骑士都可以），再没有旁人敢攻击他了。他现在甚至可以轻而易举地打败凯斯宾和爱德蒙——

可是这个念头刚一闪过，他便意识到自己并不想这么做。他想和他们成为朋友，他想回到人类中去，和他们谈天说笑，有什么都可以一起分享。他意识到自己成了一个可怕的怪物，同人类隔绝了开来。一阵可怕的孤独感袭上心头，他开始明白其他人其实根本就不是恶魔，也开始怀疑自己是否真的像自己一直以为的那么好。他渴望能听到他们的声音，此时哪怕是雷佩契普能和他说句话，他都会感激涕零。

想到这里，这条曾经是尤斯塔斯的龙不禁放声哭泣起来。月色下，在一个渺无人烟的山谷里，一条强壮威猛的龙哭得稀里哗啦，撕心裂肺，这幅情形任谁都想象不到。

最后，他决定自己想办法回到海岸边去。他现在明白，凯斯宾是绝对不会丢下他开船离去的，而且他相信自己总会有办法让他们明白自己就是尤斯塔斯。

他又在池塘里猛喝了一大口水，随后（我知道这听上去有点让人震惊，但如果你仔细想想，也会觉得合情合理）他把那条死去的龙几乎全吃了。他吃了一半才意识到自己在做什么，因为，你要知道，尽管他的头脑神志还是尤斯塔斯的，但他的口味和消化功能已经与一条龙无异了。而龙最喜欢吃的便是新鲜的龙肉了。这就是为什么你很少会在一个地方同时看到两条龙。

接着他转过身去，准备爬出山谷。他先跳了一下，可这么一跳，他就发现自己已经飞了起来。他全然忘记自己还有翅膀了，突然感觉十分惊喜——这是这么长时间以来他第一次感到惊喜。他飞到了高空中，在月色中看到下方盘踞着不计其数的山峰。他能看见海湾如同一轮银盘，“黎明踏浪”号抛了锚停泊着，海滩边的森林里闪烁着篝火。于是他从高空滑翔着俯冲了下去。

露西睡得很沉。她很晚才睡，一直等到搜救队回来，期盼着他们能找回尤斯塔斯。搜救队由凯斯宾带领着，找到很晚才回来，一个个都累坏了。然而他们带回来的消息却令人不安。他们没有找到尤斯塔斯的下落，但是在山谷里发现了一条死去的龙。他们试着往好的方面想，互相安慰彼此说，这附近不太可能会再有其他的龙了，而那条大约下午三点时死去的龙（他们是在那时候发现它的）几乎不太有可能在死去几小时前再杀死人。

“除非这条龙是吃了那个小混蛋以后才死的；他可是能毒死任何东西的。”莱恩斯低声说道，声音极小，所以并没有人听见。

不过到了深夜，露西被一阵很轻的声音吵醒了，她发现其他人都紧紧围坐在一起，悄声谈论着什么。

“发生什么事了？”露西困惑地问道。

“这是一场持久战，我们不能有一丝一毫的松懈。”凯斯宾说，“刚才有一条龙从树顶飞过，落在了海滩上。没错，恐怕它现在正在我们和船之间的位置。箭对龙来说也没有什么用，而且它们一点也不怕火。”

“若是陛下您首肯——”雷佩契普开口道。

“不行，雷佩契普，”凯斯宾国王非常坚定地打断了他，“你不能单枪匹马去和它决斗，你一定要保证不能违背这条命令，否则我就只能把你绑起来了。我们只能密切关注它的一举一动，不可轻举妄动。等天一亮，我们就冲到海滩上去，同它搏斗。到时候我来打头阵，爱德蒙国王在我的右边，德里宁勋爵在我的左边。除此之外便没有其他部署了。再过几个小时天就要亮了。一小时之后我们就开饭，把剩下的葡萄酒也拿上来。一切都务必悄悄进行。”

“也许它自己会离开呢。”露西说道。

“它要是飞走就更糟糕了，”爱德蒙说道，“因为那样的话，我们就不知道它在哪里了。打个比方，要是房间里有一只黄蜂的话，我总是希望能看得到它。”

这天夜里接下来的时间很难熬，人人都是在恐惧不安中度过的，到了吃饭的时间，尽管他们知道应该吃点东西，但很多人都没什么胃口。仿佛过了无数个小时，黑暗才渐渐褪去，林中到处传来鸟儿的啁啾鸣唱声，周遭变得比夜里更寒冷潮湿了。凯斯宾开口道：“朋友们，我们准备行动吧。”

他们都站了起来，拔出剑，排成一个牢固紧密的列队，露西站在中间，雷佩契普则站在她的肩头。行动比漫长煎熬的等待好多了，大家也比以往更能感受到彼此间的深情厚谊。片刻后他们便出发了。当他们走到树林边缘时，天色更亮了。在沙滩上正躺着一条龙，体型庞大，形状可怖，周身隆起一个个鼓包，好似一只巨大的蜥蜴，又像是一条灵活的鳄鱼，或是一条长了脚的大蟒蛇。

不过当这条龙看见他们时，它非但没有起身冲他们喷火冒烟，而是向后退了几步——你甚至可以说它是跌跌撞撞地后退的——一直退到了海湾的浅滩里。

“它为什么摇头呢？”爱德蒙说道。

“现在它又点头了。”凯斯宾说道。

“它眼睛里好像有什么东西流出来了。”德里宁说道。

“噢，你们难道看不出来吗？”露西叫道，“它在哭呢。那些是它的眼泪。”

“我不会相信它的眼泪的，女王陛下。”德里宁说，“那就像是鳄鱼的眼泪，是故意迷惑你，让你放松警惕的。”

“你看，你说这话的时候它摇头了。”爱德蒙说，“就好像它在说‘不’似的。看，它又来了。”

“你们觉得它是不是听得懂我们在说什么啊？”露西问道。

听到这话，那条龙如捣蒜般狠狠地点起头来。

雷佩契普从露西的肩膀上滑下去，走到了最前面。

“龙，”它用尖细的嗓音说，“你能听懂我们的话语吗？”

那条龙点点头。

“你会说话吗？”

它又摇了摇头。

“既然是这样的话，”雷佩契普说，“也没有必要再问你其他事情了。不过如果你发誓同我们和平友好地相处，就把你的左前腿举过头顶。”

它照做了，不过动作有些笨拙，因为它的左前腿被金手镯紧紧箍住了，又酸又胀。

“噢，快看啊，”露西说，“它的前腿好像有些不对劲儿。可怜的家伙——也许它就是因为这个才哭的。也许它是来找我们疗伤的，就像之前在安德罗克利斯，还有那头受伤的狮子那样。

“要小心，露西，”凯斯宾警告道，“这条龙很聪明，不过它也有可能在撒谎。”

然而露西已经跑上前去了，雷佩契普紧随其后，撒开它的小短腿拼命跑着，之后两个男孩同德里宁自然也跟了上去。

“小可怜，给我看看你的爪子，”露西说道，“或许我能有办法治好它。”

这条尤斯塔斯变成的龙十分欢欣地伸出了它疼痛的前腿，它还记得在自己还没有变成龙的时候，露西的魔酒曾治好了自己的晕船。不过这回让他失望了。那神奇的魔酒替他消了肿，稍稍缓解了疼痛，但却未能熔化金镯子。

大家都围了上来，看着露西替龙治疗，突然凯斯宾惊呼道：“看！”他正盯着那个手镯。

第七章
冒险结束了

“看什么？”爱德蒙说道。

“看那个金镯子上面的挂饰。”凯斯宾说道。

“是个小锤子，上方还悬着一颗钻石，就像星星一样。”德里宁说道，“哎呀，我以前在哪儿见过这个。”

“见到过的！”凯斯宾突然灵光一现，“哈，你当然见到过啦！这是纳尼亚一个名门望族的徽志，这是奥克塔西恩勋爵的臂环。”

“你这个坏家伙，”雷佩契普冲着龙喊道，“你是不是把一位纳尼亚勋爵给吃了？”但龙拼命摇头。

“或者有可能，”露西猜测道，“这就是奥克塔西恩勋爵本人，只是变成了一条龙的样子——你懂的，被人施了法。”

“两种推测都不可能，”爱德蒙说道，“凡是龙都会收集金子，但我认为应当可以肯定的是，奥克塔西恩勋爵最远也就航行到了这座岛屿。”

“你是奥克塔西恩勋爵吗？”露西问龙，可它仍然悲伤地摇了摇头，于是她又接着问：“那么你是被施了法变成龙的吗？我是说，你是不是人类？”

它激动地拼命点头。

随后有人说道——事后人们都在争论究竟是露西还是爱德蒙头一个说的——“你该不会、该不会是尤斯塔斯吧？”

尤斯塔斯闻言，拼命地点着他那可怕的大龙头，尾巴也重重地拍打在海里，眼睛里喷溅出了滚烫的泪水，人们都闪避到一旁（有几个水手发出了惊呼声，在这里我就略过不提了）。

露西尽力安慰他，甚至还鼓起勇气去亲吻他那布满鳞片的脸，而在场的几乎所有人都纷纷表示同情，说道：“真是太不幸了！”有几个人向尤斯塔斯保证，他们都会一直支持他，还有许多人说一定会有办法替他消除魔法的，而且可能就这一两天他就能恢复原样。当然了，他们都迫不及待地想知道他究竟发生了什么，不过尤斯塔斯现在不能开口说话。随后的很多天里，他几次试图在沙滩上写字同他们交流，不过从没成功过。首先，尤斯塔斯（从没读过相关的书籍）不知道该怎么好好地把发生的事讲清楚；其次，他不得不将就着用龙爪来写字，可这龙爪的肌肉和神经从没学习过写字，生来的构造也不适合写字。所以他一次都没有写完过，每次都是还没写到故事快结尾的时候，涨起的浪潮便把他写的字都卷没了，当然还有一些是他自己踩掉的，或是他的尾巴不小心扫没的。其他人能看到的只有像如下这样含糊不清的内容（省略号代表的是他自己涂抹掉了的地方）：

“我去看见……很多可怕的尤……我是说很多龙……洞穴……因为它死掉……太可怕了……醒过来……不能……从手臂上脱下来……哦天……”

不过人人都能看出来，尤斯塔斯自从变成一条龙以后，性格倒是变好了许多。他迫不及待地要尽自己一份力帮忙。他飞遍了整座岛屿，发现这里群山密布，除了野山羊与成群的野猪之外，便再无其他“居民”了。他带回了许多这些动物的尸体，贮藏在船上作为日后存粮。他捕杀猎物时也十分仁慈，因为在捕猎时他总是用龙尾击扫过去，因此猎物当时都不知道（直到最后也还不知道）自己已经丧了命。他自己当然也吃了些，不过总是独自偷偷摸摸地吃，因为现在他成了一条龙以后，喜欢吃生肉，茹毛饮血，所以不愿让别人看见自己进食时候的一片狼藉。有一天，他拖着疲惫的身子缓缓飞回营地，却满载而归，原来他从远处山谷里将一棵高大的松树连根拔起，带回来可以做成船的主桅杆。到了夜里，若是刚下过一场大雨，天气转凉了，他便成了众人的慰藉，因为大家都去找他，坐在他身边，背靠着他那烫热的身子，便觉得暖洋洋的，衣服也变干了；他只要喷出一口灼热的气，即便是再难燃烧起来的火苗也能够熊熊燃起。有时候他会带上几个人让他们坐在自己的龙背上，带他们飞上天转一圈，这样一来，他们便能看见底下的绿色山坡、嶙峋群山和如小坑一般窄窄的山谷，尤斯塔斯还带他们向东飞到海上，他们便能看到远处蓝色的海平线上有一处深蓝色的小点，那或许是陆地也说不定。

这种被人喜欢（这对他而言很是新奇）以及喜欢别人的感觉，给尤斯塔斯带来了欣喜和快乐，使他不至于陷入无助和绝望之中，毕竟成为一条龙是件很可怕的事情。每次飞过山间湖泊看见自己的倒影时，他都会忍不住颤抖起来。他讨厌自己那对巨大的蝙蝠似的翅膀，讨厌自己锯齿般凹凸不平的龙脊，讨厌自己尖利佝偻的爪子。他甚至害怕独处，可又不好意思和其他人待在一起。在那些他不必充当热水袋的夜晚，他便默默地离开营地，像一条大蛇一般盘踞起来，卧在树林与湖水之间。不过令他大为惊喜的是，每到这时候，雷佩契普总是给他带来莫大的安慰。这只高贵的老鼠会从营地篝火边欢声笑语的人群中悄悄溜走，坐到龙的脑袋边上，迎着风避开他喷出的呛人鼻息。它会向尤斯塔斯解释说，发生在他身上的这一切，说明命运之轮发生了旋转，又说如果尤斯塔斯到它在纳尼亚的屋子里去做客（那其实都算不上是一间屋子，只能称得上是一个洞穴，别说是尤斯塔斯的身子，就连他的龙头都不一定能伸得进去），它就会给他展示过去一百多例这样类似的情况，帝王、国君、公爵、骑士、诗人、恋人、天文学家、哲学家、魔术师……他们都曾从繁华富贵的云巅跌落至最为悲惨的谷底，但他们中的大多数人后来都恢复了原状，并从此过上了幸福快乐的生活。或许这话此时听起来并不十分慰藉人心，但满含了善意，令尤斯塔斯终生难忘。

不过始终悬在众人心上的头等大事，自然是等到他们准备再次出航时，应该如何处理这条龙。他在的时候，大家尽量不去提及这个话题，可他总能在无意中听到大家说着“甲板的一侧够他容身吗？可以的话我们就得把所有的货物都移到另一侧去，才能保持平衡”，或者“如果拖着他走会不会好一点呢？”又或者“你们说他能一直飞在天上吗？”不过最常听到的还是“可我们应该拿什么喂他呢？”可怜的尤斯塔斯，现在他越来越意识到，从他上船的第一天起，他就是一个大麻烦精，如今依然在给别人添麻烦。这个想法深深地嵌进了他的脑海里，就如同那个手镯深深地嵌进了他的前肢里一样。他知道，如果再用自己的大牙去扯手镯，只会让情况变得更糟糕，可他就是忍不住时不时地去扯咬，尤其是在炎热难耐的夏夜。

在他们登陆龙岛大约六天过后，这天清晨，爱德蒙恰好很早就醒了过来。这时天色渐转青灰，因而能看见长在人与海湾之间的树干，不过要是在另一边就看不清了。爱德蒙醒来时感觉好像听到有什么东西在动，于是他支起一只手肘撑坐起来，朝四周张望着，一时间他以为自己看到海边的树林里有个黑影在动。他脑海里闪过的第一个念头就是：“我们真的确定这座岛上没有土著居住吗？”接着他又以为那是凯斯宾——看上去身材体型相差不多——不过他知道凯斯宾一直就睡在自己身边，也能看出他没有动过。爱德蒙检查了一下，确定自己带好了佩剑后，便起身前去一探究竟。

他轻手轻脚地走到了树林边上，看到那个黑影还在那儿。现在他能看出那个身影比凯斯宾要小一点，比露西又要大一些，见来了人也不逃开。爱德蒙拔出剑来，就在他准备向这个陌生人发起挑战时，那人低声说：“是你吗，爱德蒙？”

“没错，你是谁？”爱德蒙说道。

“你不认识我了吗？”那人说道，“是我啊，尤斯塔斯。”

“天哪，”爱德蒙说道，“还真是你。亲爱的朋友——”

“嘘！”尤斯塔斯说道，他身子摇晃了一下，看上去好像就快要摔倒了。

“嗨！”爱德蒙扶稳了他，说道，“怎么了？你病了吗？”

尤斯塔斯默不作声，过了很久都没有回答，爱德蒙都怀疑他要晕倒了，但最后他终于开口道：“这一切太可怕了。你都不知道……不过现在都好了。我们能去别的地方说话吗？我现在还不想见到其他人。”

“好啊，当然可以，你想去哪儿都行。”爱德蒙说，“我们可以去那边的石头上坐着说话。哎呀，见到你真高兴——我是说见到你恢复人身真的太好了。你这段日子一定很不好过。”

他们走到石堆上，坐下来眺望着海湾，天色越发泛白了，星星都不见了，但只剩一颗尤为明亮的，还在海平面上低低地悬着。

“我不想告诉你我是怎么变成一条——一条龙的，等到我做好准备了，自然会向大家解释清楚的。”尤斯塔斯说道，“而且我起初甚至都不知道我变成的是一条龙，直到那天早上我回来的时候听见你们都在这么说，我才知道。我想告诉你我是怎么恢复人身的。”

“你尽管说吧。”爱德蒙说道。

“唔，昨晚我难受得尤其厉害。那个该死的臂环勒得我疼得要命。”

“那你现在好些了吗？”

尤斯塔斯笑了——这笑声和爱德蒙以往听到的都不一样——只见他毫不费力地将手镯摘了下来。“喏，”他说道，“谁爱要谁拿去。就像我说的，我昨晚正躺在那儿睡不着，想着我今后究竟应该怎么办。接着——不过我得先提醒你，这可能完全是一场梦，我也不知道。”

“你继续说下去。”爱德蒙很有耐心地说。

“好吧，我一抬头，看见了最不愿意见到的东西：一头大狮子正缓缓朝我而来。很奇怪的是，昨晚其实根本看不见月亮，但那头狮子所在的地方却有月光。它离我越来越近了，我害怕极了。你可能会觉得，我既然是一条龙，应该可以将任何一头狮子轻而易举地撂倒。可是我并不是那种意义上的害怕。我不是怕它吃了我，我就是觉得怕它——不知道你能不能理解那种感受。总之，它来到了我跟前，直直地看着我的眼睛，于是我把眼睛紧紧闭了起来，可是那并不管用，因为那头狮子让我跟它走。”

“你的意思是它会说话？”

“我也不知道。你现在这么一说，我还真有些怀疑，可能它没说吧。但不管怎么说，它告诉我要跟它走，我知道我得照它说的做，于是我就爬起来跟了上去。它带我走了很长一段路，走进了山里，无论我们走到哪儿，那头狮子的周身总有月光相随。最后我们来到了一座山的顶上，之前我从未见过那座山，在山顶有一个公园——里面有树木啊，水果啊之类的。公园中央有一口井。

“我之所以知道那是一口井，是因为能看见从井底冒上来的水泡，那井比大多数井都要大许多——就像一个巨大的圆形浴缸，还有一条鹅卵石铺就的小路通往那里。里面的井水十分清澈，我那时就在想，要是能进去洗个澡，说不定可以减轻我前腿的疼痛。可那头狮子告诉我必须先把衣服都脱了。听着，我还是不知道它到底说话了还是没说话。

“我刚想说我不能脱衣服，因为我压根儿就没穿衣服，可这时我突然想起来，龙就和蛇差不多，而蛇是可以蜕皮的。于是我想狮子指的一定就是这个意思。于是我开始抓挠我的身子，很快我身上的鳞片开始脱落下来，掉得满地都是。接着我抓得更深了，鳞片没有落得到处都是，我的整层皮肤反而脱落下来了，就像是生了什么病之后开始蜕皮，又或者就像我成了一根香蕉似的。没过一会儿，我的整层皮都已经脱落下来了，摊在地上，看着怪恶心的。蜕掉这层皮后，我感觉整个人都舒服了不少。于是我就准备下到井里去洗澡了。

“可是我刚要把脚伸进井水里的时候，低头一看，却发现我的脚还是和以前一样又硬又粗糙，皱皱巴巴的，还布满了鳞片。哦，好吧，我对自己说，这只能说明最外面一层皮下面还有一层小一点的皮，我得把这一层也剥掉才行。于是我又开始抓扯，把下面的这层皮也整个剥掉了，地上原来的皮旁边又多了一摊。这下我又走到井里去准备洗澡了。

“可是呢，和刚才一模一样的情况再次发生了。我心里就想，老天哪，我到底还要蜕几层皮啊？我已经等不及想要泡一泡我的前腿了。于是我又开始抓扯，就像前两次一样，然后把第三层皮也给剥掉，扔在了地上。可是我一看水里自己的倒影，就知道还是无济于事。

“然后那头狮子说——但我不确定它到底有没有说话——它说：‘你得让我来替你脱。’不瞒你说，我有点害怕它的爪子，不过当时我都快绝望了，别无他法。于是我乖乖地仰面躺在了地上，让它给我蜕皮。

“它开始扯了，第一下扯得极重，我感觉简直都要扯到我的心脏了。它开始扯的时候，我感到前所未有的疼痛，唯一让我坚持下去的，就是感觉到皮都被剥掉后的开心。你知道的——要是你曾经试过剥掉伤口的结痂，你就会明白我的意思了。那感觉实在太疼了，可是看着那层皮落下来，我心里就感觉很高兴。”

“我完全明白你的感受。”爱德蒙说道。

“嗯，它把那层讨厌的皮一股脑儿都剥了下来——我想那就和我前三次剥皮一样，只不过那几次都不疼罢了——最后那层皮也摊在了草地上，比之前那几层更厚，颜色更深，布满了很多疙瘩。没了外皮后，我全身光滑柔软得不可思议，好似一根剥了皮的柔软枝条，而且身体也比以前小了。接着，它抓住了我——我不喜欢它这样用爪子抓着我，因为没了龙皮，我的身子变得很柔弱——然后它就把我扔进了水里。我一下子觉得剧痛难忍，不过还好没持续多久。一阵疼痛过后就变得非常舒服了，我一游开去，溅起浪花，便觉得手臂上所有的疼痛都消失了。随后我便知道这是怎么一回事了——我又变回男孩儿了！要是我告诉你我对自己手臂的感情，你可能会觉得我有点小题大做。我也知道和凯斯宾的手臂比起来，我的手臂上没什么肌肉，也没发挥什么太大用处，但我就是很高兴它们又变回来了。

“又过了一会儿，那狮子把我捞了出来，替我穿上了衣服——”

“替你穿上了衣服？它用爪子替你穿衣服吗？”

“唔，我记不太清了。不过它确实不知怎么地就做到了，替我穿上了新衣服——其实就是我现在身上穿的这一套。接着我突然就回到了这里，所以我才觉得之前发生的一切肯定是在做梦。”

“不，那不是做梦。”爱德蒙肯定地说。

“为什么呢？”

“首先你确确实实穿着这身新衣服；其次，你已经——嗯，已经不再是一条龙了。”

“那你觉得这是怎么回事呢？”尤斯塔斯问道。

“我觉得你一定是见到了阿斯兰。”爱德蒙说。

“阿斯兰！”尤斯塔斯轻声叫道，“我们登上‘黎明踏浪’号以后，我已经好几次听到人们提起这个名字了。我觉得——我也不知道为什么——我有点讨厌这个名字。不过那时候我见到什么都怨声载道的。对了，我想向你们道歉。那段时间我大概挺招人讨厌的。”

“没关系啦。”爱德蒙说，“我们俩比起来，你还没有我第一次来纳尼亚时那么令人讨厌呢。你只是糊涂了点，我那时可是个叛徒。”

“好吧，那你还是别让我知道了。”尤斯塔斯说道，“不过阿斯兰到底是谁呢？你认识他吗？”

“唔——他认识我。”爱德蒙说道，“他是伟大的狮王，是海外之域帝王的儿子，以前救过我，也拯救了纳尼亚。我们都见过他，露西见得最多。我们现在航海的目的地或许就是阿斯兰的国度。”

接着两人都沉默了一会儿。天空里最后一颗明亮的星星也消失不见了，尽管他们的视线被右边的山挡住了，看不见日出，但他们知道太阳已经升起来了，因为头顶的天空和眼前的海湾都映成了玫瑰色。接着他们身后的林间传来鹦鹉一般的鸟鸣声，他们听见树林里人的走动声，最后凯斯宾的号角吹响了。营地又变得热闹了。

爱德蒙和恢复人身的尤斯塔斯回到了营地，人们正围着篝火吃早餐，见此情形都激动雀跃，好一阵庆祝。这下人人都听到了他早先的冒险故事，纷纷猜测，不知道是之前的那条龙在几年前杀了奥克塔西恩勋爵，还是那条龙本来就是奥克塔西恩勋爵变的。先前尤斯塔斯在口袋里塞满了珠宝，如今已随着身上的旧衣物一同消失了，但没有人还想回到那个山谷里去再多拿些金银财宝，尤其是尤斯塔斯自己。

几天后，“黎明踏浪”号已经整修一新，桅杆重新装上了，船身也重新上了漆，各处破损均已修补完毕，可以再度航行了。他们上船起航之前，凯斯宾命人在面朝海湾的一处光滑崖壁上刻下了如下文字：

“此座龙岛由纳尼亚国王凯斯宾十世一行人于其执政第四年发现。我们沉痛推测奥克塔西恩勋爵逝世于此。”

可以毫不为过地说，“从那以后尤斯塔斯就变成了一个截然不同的人”。准确地来说，应该是他开始变得不一样了，偶尔也会犯老毛病，很多时候他也会有点烦人，但大多情况下旁人都察觉不到。他的的确确开始变好了。

奥克塔西恩勋爵的臂环最后的结局倒有些神奇。尤斯塔斯不想要它，于是给了凯斯宾，凯斯宾又给了露西，可露西也不喜欢它。“好吧，那就扔到哪儿便是哪儿吧。”凯斯宾说着，把臂环抛向了空中。这时大家正站在那儿看崖壁上的铭文，只见那臂环在阳光下闪烁着一道弧线，随后，就好像是在投掷游戏中一发命中似的，那臂环牢牢地套在了石壁上的一处凸起上。没人能从下面爬上去够到它，也没人能从上面爬下去拿到它。据我所知，那个臂环至今仍旧挂在那儿，或许还将一直挂在那儿，直到天荒地老。

第八章
两次死里逃生

“黎明踏浪”号终于驶离了龙岛，人人都欢欣鼓舞。一出海湾便遇上了顺风，第二天清晨便已抵达另一座未知的岛屿。尤斯塔斯还是一条龙的时候，载着几个人飞跃群山，曾见到过这座岛屿。那是一座低矮的小岛，覆着绿色植被，岛上除了兔子和几头山羊之外，便没有其他活物了，不过从几处石屋的废墟和大火烧焦的黑色痕迹来看，他们可以断定这里不久前还有人居住。这里还有一些尸骨和坏了的武器。

“海盗干的。”凯斯宾说道。

“也有可能是龙。”爱德蒙补充道。

他们唯一还能找到的东西就是沙滩上的一艘小皮艇，或者说是小圆舟，是由兽皮撑在柳条框架外做成的。那是一艘很小的船，仅四英尺长，船桨也在里面，和船一样都很小。他们认为，要么这艘船是给小孩子造的，要么岛上的人都是矮人族。雷佩契普决定把这艘船留着，因为和它大小正合适，于是他们把这艘船带到了“黎明踏浪”号上。他们称这座岛为焦岛，中午之前便驶离了。

此后大约有五天的时间都刮着东南风，他们航行着，一路上没有见到任何陆地，也看不见一条海鱼或一只海鸥。接着有一天又下起大雨来，一直下到下午。尤斯塔斯本来和雷佩契普下棋，因为输了两盘，又开始有点变回原来那个不讨人喜欢的尤斯塔斯了。爱德蒙则说，他真希望他们和苏珊一起去了美国。这时露西从船尾的窗户向外望去，说道：

“嗨！我觉得雨停了。你们看那是什么？”

他们闻言，都跌跌撞撞爬上了尾楼，发现雨确实停了，而正在当值的德里宁也在盯着船尾的某个东西看，确切地说，应该是在盯着几样东西看。它们看上去有点像光滑的圆石，排成一排，每个圆石之间隔了大约四十英尺。

“但这不可能是石头啊，”德里宁说道，“因为五分钟前还没有呢。”

“而且有一个刚刚不见了。”露西注意到。

“没错，你们看，现在又有一个上来了。”爱德蒙也发现了。

“而且越来越近了。”尤斯塔斯补充道。

“该死！”凯斯宾说道，“这东西正朝着这个方向来呢！”

“而且它的移动速度比我们的航行速度快得多，陛下。”德里宁忧心忡忡地说道，“要不了一分钟，它就赶上我们了。”

众人都紧张地屏住了呼吸，毕竟无论是在陆地上，还是在海里，被未知的东西紧追身后总不是什么好事。不过实际情况比所有人预想的都要严重得多。突然，在距离船的左舷一侧大约仅有一个板球场长度的海面上，冒出了一个可怖的大脑袋，全是红红绿绿的，布满了紫色的疙瘩——还有几只贝壳吸附其上——形状和马的头有点像，就是没有耳朵。它的眼睛很大，生来便适合在深海中洞察黑暗；它的嘴大张着，露出两排鱼一样锋利的牙齿。它浮上来时，人们一开始以为脑袋下面是一截粗大的脖子，不过随着它慢慢浮出海面，大家都知道那不是脖子，而是它的身体。现在他们终于见到了许多人都眼巴巴、蠢兮兮地想要看的生物——海蛇怪。它那巨大尾巴上的褶皱在老远处就能看见了，时不时从海面上浮现出来。此刻它的脑袋高高耸起，已经高过了桅杆。

所有人赶忙去拿武器，可是却无能为力，因为怪兽离得不够近，武器对它根本没有杀伤力。“射击！射击！”弓箭长喊道，有几个弓箭手听令射击了，可射出去的箭擦着海蛇怪的身子都落下来了，就好像它是块厚钢板似的。接着，人人都忐忑万分，有那么一会儿，大家一动也不敢动，都死死地盯着海蛇怪的眼睛和嘴巴，猜测它会从哪里开始进攻。

可它并没有如人们预料的那样发起进攻。它竖起脑袋，从船上穿过来，和桅杆的帆桁一样高。这会儿它的脑袋已经伸到战斗桅楼的旁边了，但它仍在往前伸脑袋，一直伸到了右舷墙，随后便往下探去——不是伸到人头攒动的甲板上，而是伸进了海水里，这样一来整艘船都被大蛇形成的环拱围住了，紧接着那拱形开始越缩越小，眼看海蛇怪的身子几乎要碰到“黎明踏浪”号的右舷一侧了。

此时的尤斯塔斯（他之前真的非常努力地在好好表现，不过后来这场大雨，还有和雷佩契普的下棋比赛又让他稍稍变回了原来的样子）做了生平第一件勇敢的事。他恰好佩带着凯斯宾借给他的剑，当大蛇的身子靠得离右舷足够近时，他一跃而起，跳上舷墙，用尽全身力气朝它砍去。尽管他这么做并没有多大用处，反倒把凯斯宾第二好的剑砍得断成了碎片，但对于一个新手而言，已是非常了不起了。

其他人本想上前加入尤斯塔斯的，可就在这时，雷佩契普突然叫道：“别打了！快推啊！”雷佩契普竟然让他们别打了，这实在太不寻常了，于是，即便是在如此紧张危急的时刻，人们也都纷纷朝它看去。只见雷佩契普跳上舷墙，站在大蛇前面，他用小小的、毛茸茸的后背抵着那巨大黏滑、布满鳞片的蛇背，开始使出全力向前推去，不少人看出了它想做什么，于是也跑到船的两侧，照着雷佩契普的样子向前推。过了一会儿，海蛇怪的脑袋又冒出来了，不过这一次是从左舷一侧出来的，而且背对着他们了，于是大家都明白了这个怪物的目的。

原来这个怪物把自己绕成一个环，圈住了“黎明踏浪”号，开始一点点收紧。等这个环越来越小，越缠越紧，然后“啪嗒”！原本的船就会被绞成碎片，到处漂浮在海面上，到时候它就可以不紧不慢地一个个把他们从水里捞起来享用了。现在他们只能赶紧把这个环往后推，直到推出船尾，或者说是（换一种说法）把船往前推，推出这个环。这是他们唯一的机会了。

当然了，仅凭雷佩契普自己是不可能做到的，对它而言，这无异于独自抬起一座大教堂，不过它还是拼尽了全力，差点没把自己累死，其他人见状，赶紧把它推到一边去。很快整艘船的人（除了露西和雷佩契普，后者已经快要晕倒了）都在两侧舷墙上排成长长的两列，拼命往前推着，前一个人的后背抵着后一个人的前胸，整列的重量都压在最后一个人的身上。煎熬的几秒钟过去了，如几小时那样漫长，可似乎什么都没有发生，船好像纹丝不动。紧紧实实的队列有些松垮了，汗水滑落下来，人人都累得直哼，大口喘着粗气。突然，他们感觉船动起来了，还看见蛇环离桅杆的距离比刚才要远一些了，不过同时他们也发现这个环越来越小了。当下迫在眉睫的问题在于：他们能否顺利把蛇环推出船尾？还是说现在环已经缠得太紧了？没错，现在正好。蛇身正倚在尾楼的栏杆上，大约有十多层栏杆横在尾楼上方。这样一来，事情就好办多了。现在海蛇怪的身子已经足够低了，他们可以在尾楼再排一列队，两边一起合力推。大家重新又燃起了希望，不过他们很快便想到，“黎明踏浪”号的船尾还有雕刻的高高竖起的龙尾，想要把那么高的龙尾也推出蛇环，几乎是不可能的。

“拿把斧子来！”凯斯宾声音嘶哑地喊道，“继续用力推！”露西正站在主甲板上看着船尾，她知道东西都放在哪里，听到凯斯宾的话便赶紧跑下去，不一会儿便拿着斧子跑上来，爬上梯子到了尾楼。不过她刚爬到楼顶，突然传来一阵撞击声，就好像树倒下的声响，接着船摇晃了一下，便迅速向前滑去。原来此时，不知是因为人们推海蛇怪推得太猛，还是它自己太愚蠢，决定缠得更紧，总之整个雕刻的船尾都断了，船也从环里挣脱了出来。

大家一个个都累趴下了，只有露西看见，在他们身后几码远处，那海蛇怪套起来的环猛地变小，随后落入海里，溅起一阵浪花后便消失不见了。露西后来总是说（不过她自己当时太过于激动了，所以这也有可能都是她自己臆想出来的）她看见大蛇的脸上露出了蠢兮兮的得意表情。不过可以肯定的是，那家伙的确很笨，因为它非但没有去追船，反而摇头晃脑，身子转来转去四处找，就好像指望能找到“黎明踏浪”号的残骸似的。不过“黎明踏浪”号此时早已乘着风开出去好远了，人们都横七竖八地在甲板上休息，有的躺着，有的坐着，大口喘着粗气，累得直哼哼，休息够了才开始谈论方才的险事，随后一笑置之。等朗姆酒端上桌时，他们还干杯庆祝，人人都称赞尤斯塔斯（虽然也没起到什么实质性作用）和雷佩契普的英武勇猛。

此后他们又航行了三天，目光所及除了蓝天长海别无他物。到了第四天，风向变为北风，海平面也上涨了；到了下午的时候，已是狂风大作，不过这时他们已经能看见左舷的一边出现了陆地。

“请原谅，陛下，”德里宁说道，“我们要划桨前行到那座岛上，停到港口去避避风雨，可能得等到雨停了才能走。”凯斯宾同意了，然而顶着风划行很不容易，划了一下午都没有到岸边。趁天色全黑之前，他们终于驶进了一处天然的港口停泊了下来，不过那天晚上没有人下船上岸。到了第二天一早，他们才发现自己在一个绿色的海湾里，小岛看上去破落而冷清，斜坡向上延伸，顶上岩石嶙峋。风从北边吹过来，山顶那边的流云都快速飘了过来。他们把小船放下，把凡是空着的水桶都装进了小船。

“德里宁，我们从哪条小溪舀水呢？”凯斯宾在船尾席地而坐，问道，“好像有两条小溪汇聚到海湾里。”

“这并没有什么区别，陛下。”德里宁答道，“不过我认为从右舷那边舀水更近一些——就是东边的那一条。”

“下雨了！”露西说。

“你说得没错！”爱德蒙说道，此时雨点已经砸了下来，“要我说，我们还是去另一条小溪吧，那儿有树，我们可以躲躲雨。”

“是啊，我们就去那儿吧。”尤斯塔斯附和道，“我们也没必要淋成落汤鸡嘛。”

可是德里宁还在一直朝右舷方向打着船舵，就和那些疲倦的驾驶员一样，尽管你告诉他们开错路了，但他们还是会以每小时四十英里的速度继续开下去。

“他们说得没错，德里宁，”凯斯宾开口道，“你不如把船掉个头，开到西边那条小溪去吧？”

“如几位陛下所愿。”德里宁有些直截了当地说道。他的心情因为昨日的天气变得很是烦闷，而且他也不喜欢从未出过海的新手所提出的建议。不过他还是改变了航线——后来他们才知道，这真是一个明智之举。

等他们装完了水，雨已经停了。凯斯宾、尤斯塔斯、佩文西家的两兄妹，还有雷佩契普一行决定走到山丘顶上去，看看都能见到什么。这段山路布满了粗乱的杂草和石南，爬起来相当费劲，一路上他们没见到人，连野兽都没有，只有些海鸥。爬到山顶后，他们发现这原来是一座很小的岛屿，不超过二十英亩；从这里看去，大海比从“黎明踏浪”号甲板上甚至战斗桅楼上看去显得更辽阔，也更荒寂。

“简直是疯了，你知道的，”尤斯塔斯凝望着东方的海平线，低声对露西说，“就这么一直航行下去，都不知道我们究竟要去哪儿。”不过他只是习惯性地说了这么一句，倒并不是像过去那样存心招人讨厌。

风还在不停地从北边刮来，在山脊上站久了，人就会觉得有些冷。

“我们还是不要就这么原路返回吧，”他们转身准备回去时，露西提议道，“不如再往前走走，然后下山到德里宁原本想去的那条小溪那儿看看。”

大家一致同意了这个提议。大约十五分钟后，他们已经来到了另一条溪流的源头。这里比他们预想的要更有趣，这是一片小小的山间深湖，四周悬崖围绕，仅在靠海的一侧有一条窄窄的河道，湖水由此流向大海。走到这里，他们终于吹不到风了，于是都坐到悬崖上的石南丛中歇歇脚。

大家都坐下了，可其中一个（就是爱德蒙）立马又跳了起来。

“这岛上的石子还真锋利啊！”他说着，在屁股下的石南丛中翻找起来，“那破石头哪儿去了？……啊，我找到了……嗨！那根本就不是石头，是个剑柄啊。哦，天哪，这是一整把剑！看看都锈成什么样了。这把剑肯定在这儿躺了很久很久了。”

“而且看上去是把纳尼亚的剑。”其他人都围了上来，凯斯宾看了看说道。

“我也感觉身下有什么东西，”露西叫道，“硬硬的东西。”她一看，原来是一件残破的铠甲。这时大家都跪到了地上，开始在茂密的石南丛中四处翻找摸索起来。最后他们陆续找到了一顶头盔、一把匕首，还有几枚硬币，不是卡乐门新月币，而是货真价实的纳尼亚“狮币”和“树币”，在比佛坝或者贝鲁娜的市场上随时随地都可以看见这样的货币。

“这些看起来可能都是我们七位勋爵其中的一位留下的。”爱德蒙推测道。

“你和我想到一块儿去了，”凯斯宾说道，“就是不知道是哪一位勋爵。匕首上也没有什么标记徽章。不知道他是怎么去世的。”

“也不知道我们应该如何为他报仇。”雷佩契普补充道。

爱德蒙是他们当中唯一读过几本侦探小说的人，此时，他正在思考着。

“你们想想，”他开口道，“这件事情有点可疑。他不可能是在决斗中被人杀死的。”

“为什么不可能？”凯斯宾问道。

“因为没有尸骨。”爱德蒙答道，“照理说敌人应该会把盔甲作为战利品带走，而把尸体留下。谁听说过有人赢了决斗之后会把尸体带走，却把盔甲留下呢？”

“也许他是被野兽吃了呢？”露西猜测道。

“那么这个野兽得很聪明才行，”爱德蒙说，“还会脱掉人的铠甲。”

“会不会是龙？”凯斯宾说道。

“不可能。”尤斯塔斯说道，“龙是做不到的，这一点我应该最有发言权了。”

“好吧，不管怎么说，我们还是离开这儿吧。”露西说道，爱德蒙提出尸骨下落的问题后，她就不太想再坐下了。

“你想走的话我们就走吧，”凯斯宾说着站了起来，“我觉得这些东西也没有带回去的必要了。”

他们绕着山往下走，来到了溪流涌出湖泊的开口处，站在那儿看着被悬崖所环抱的深湖。若是这天很炎热的话，无疑有人会忍不住想要在湖里洗个凉快澡，大家也都会下去喝点水解解渴。事实上，尤斯塔斯已经准备俯下身子去掬把水喝了，可这时雷佩契普和露西不约而同地叫出声来：“看啊！”于是尤斯塔斯连水也忘记了喝，便抬头看去。

只见湖底铺满了大块霭蓝色的石头，湖水清澈见底，而湖底竟躺着一尊真人大小的雕像，看起来是用金子打造的，面朝下趴着，双臂举过头顶。巧的是，他们看过去时，恰好天上云层拨散，太阳露了头，于是这尊金像从头到脚都熠熠生辉，焕发着夺目光彩。露西觉得那是她有生以来见过的最美丽的雕像了。

“哎呀！”凯斯宾吹了声口哨，“我们得去看看！不知道我们能不能把这座雕像搬出来呢？”

“我们可以跳到水里去把它弄出来，陛下。”雷佩契普说道。

“不行，”爱德蒙说道，“如果雕像真的是用金子做的——而且是纯金——的话，肯定重得根本抬不上来。而且这个湖大概有十二到十五英尺深。等一下，我正好带了一把狩猎长矛，我们可以看看水到底有多深。凯斯宾，你抓紧我的手，我要朝水面倾斜一点。”凯斯宾拉住了爱德蒙的手，而爱德蒙往前倾着身子，开始把矛枪伸进水里。

还没等长矛伸进去一半，露西便说道：“我觉得那尊雕像肯定不是用金子造的，应该只是光线的缘故。你看你的长矛在水下看起来就和雕像颜色一样。

“怎么了？”几个人异口同声地问道，因为这时爱德蒙突然松开了长矛。

“我拿不住它了，”爱德蒙喘息道，“它好像很重很重。”

“现在它也沉到湖底去了。”凯斯宾说，“露西说得没错，它现在看起来就和雕像颜色一样。”

可是爱德蒙的靴子这时似乎也有些不对劲，他弯下腰去检查靴子，突然，他猛地直起身子大叫道：“退后！从水边离开！所有人立刻退后！”他声音尖厉而又不容置疑，所以其他几人都照做了，并纷纷朝他看去。

“你们快看，”爱德蒙说道，“看我靴子的尖头。”

“看起来好像有点黄。”尤斯塔斯说道。

“我的靴尖变成金子了，变成货真价实的金子了！”爱德蒙打断他道，“你们看看这里，摸摸看。原本的皮已经脱落了，而且现在鞋子变得像灌了铅一样沉。”

“老天哪！”凯斯宾惊呼道，“你该不会是说——？”

“没错，”爱德蒙说道，“这里的水能把任何东西都变成金子。水已经把我的长矛变成了金子，所以它才会变得那么重。而且刚才水稍微拍打到了我的脚（所幸我没有光着脚），于是就把我的靴尖变成了金子。而那个躺在湖底的可怜伙计——你们也能看出来是怎么回事了。”

“所以那根本就不是一尊雕像。”露西低声说道。

“没错。现在一切都很明白了。他来到这里的时候是个大热天，于是他在崖顶——也就是我们刚才坐的地方——把衣服脱了。那些衣服有的已经烂了，有的已经被鸟儿衔去筑巢了；只剩盔甲还留在那儿。随后他跳进了水里，然后就——”

“别说下去了，”露西听不下去了，“简直太可怕了。”

“那我们刚才真是死里逃生啊。”爱德蒙感慨道。

“的确，”雷佩契普也说道，“刚才我们任何一个人的手指、脚、胡须或者是尾巴随时都有可能伸进水里去。”

“话虽如此，”凯斯宾说道，“我们不妨再试验一下。”他俯下身子，拽了一簇石南。接着，他小心翼翼地跪到了湖边，慢慢地把石南伸进了水里。他伸进水里的是石南，可再拿出来时却已经成了一个造型完美的纯金石南，像铅一样沉重而柔软。

“哪个国王拥有这座小岛，”凯斯宾缓缓地说，说话时脸有些红，“很快就会成为世界上最富有的国王。我宣布，从即刻起，这座小岛将永远属于纳尼亚。我要将这座岛命名为金湖岛。我命令你们保守秘密，不得有旁人知道这件事，即便是德里宁也不行——违者格杀勿论，你们听到了吗？”

“你这是在和谁放肆？”爱德蒙说道，“我可不必服从于你，真要算起来，你听我的命令还差不多呢。我是纳尼亚四位上古君王之一，而你要效忠于我的哥哥至尊国王。”

“所以最后我们还是要走到这个地步，是吗，爱德蒙国王？”凯斯宾说着，手已经按在了剑柄上。

“噢，快停下，你们俩别这样！”露西着急地说，“你们男孩就是这样，都是些自以为是、喜欢用武力的笨蛋——噢！”她惊呼一声，声音戛然而止。其他人也都看见了露西所见到的。

在他们上方的灰色山坡那边——山坡之所以是灰色的，是因为石南还没有盛开——一头狮子缓缓踱步走来，体型是前所未有的庞大，它无声无息地出现，甚至都没有朝他们看一眼，周身闪耀着光芒，仿佛笼罩在明艳的阳光之中，尽管此时太阳已经掩映在云层后了。事后描述当时的场景时，露西说“它的个头就和大象一样”，不过另一回她只说“和拉车的马一般大小”。可是重要的并不是它的体型有多大，至于是什么，没人敢问。他们知道，那是阿斯兰来了。

没人看到它是怎么离开的，往哪里去了。他们面面相觑，好像大梦初醒。

“我们刚才在说什么呢？”凯斯宾问道，“我刚刚是不是闹什么笑话了？”

“陛下，”雷佩契普说道，“依我看这个地方受了诅咒。我们还是赶紧回到船上去吧。如果我能有幸替这个小岛取个名字，我要叫它死水岛。”

“我觉得这个名字起得很恰如其分啊，雷佩。”凯斯宾点头道，“我也不知道我为什么会这么觉得。现在天气看起来好像变好了，我敢打赌德里宁已经迫不及待想要开船出发了。我们有好多故事可以告诉他呢！”

不过事实上，他们也没有什么可说的，因为所有人过去一个小时里的记忆都变得十分模糊而混乱。

“几位陛下出去了一趟，回来以后就好像有点着了魔似的。”“黎明踏浪”号驶离小岛几个小时后，德里宁对莱恩斯说道。这时死水岛早已看不见了。“他们在岛上的时候肯定发生了什么事。我唯一能弄清楚的一点就是，他们找到了我们要找的七位勋爵其中一位的尸骨。”

“的确如此，船长。”莱恩斯答道，“好，这下已经找到三位，只剩下四位了。照这个速度，新年之后我们就可以回家了，真好。我的烟草快要不够了。晚安，船长。”

第九章
声音岛

原本一直从西北方向吹来的风，如今从西边吹来了，所以每天早晨太阳从海面上升起时，“黎明踏浪”号雕刻成龙头模样的船头恰好竖立在一轮太阳的中间。有人觉得这里的太阳比在纳尼亚看到的要更大，其他人则不觉得。他们乘着温和而又稳健的海风前行，一路上既不见游鱼也不见飞鸟，没有其他船只，更望不到岸。船上的存粮又变少了，他们开始暗自揣测，也许这片大海会一直就这么延伸下去，永无尽头。然而就在他们继续冒险东航的最后一天的黎明，在前方初升朝阳的映衬下，一片如云般躺卧的低地出现在他们眼前。

在下午时分，他们在一个宽阔的海湾停泊靠岸了。这座岛屿和他们此前见过的都不同，当他们穿过沙滩后，发现四周一片寂静无声，空空荡荡，好像这里是一座无人岛似的，可眼前却又是一片平坦的草坪，青草平滑齐短，就好像过去英国大宅门前十名园丁一齐打理过的草坪一样；树木林立，一棵棵地间隔开来，树下的草地上也没有断枝落叶；偶尔有鸽子咕咕叫着，除此之外便没有其他声响了。

此时他们走到了一条长长的、笔直的沙路上，两边都长着树，路上一根杂草都没有。远远地，他们看见在大道的另一头有一栋房子——在午后的阳光下，这幢灰色的房子显得很长，也很安静。

他们刚走到这条大道上，露西就感觉自己的鞋子里进了一颗小石子。在这样一个陌生的地方，或许应该让别人等自己把石子拿出来再走，才是明智之举。可她并没有这么做，而是悄悄走到了队伍后头，坐下来准备把鞋脱了。不过她的鞋带缠成了一个死结。

她还没来得及把结打开，其他人已经往前走出很远了。等她把石子拿出来，再把鞋穿上时，她已经听不到同伴们的声音了。不过就在这时，她听到了别的声音，那声音却不是从房子的那个方向传来的。

她听见的是“砰砰”的击打声，就好像十多个强壮的工人用大木槌在使劲砸地一样。这声音移动得很快，离她越来越近了。她已经坐到了树前，背紧紧靠着树干，无奈这树她爬不上去，因而什么都做不了，只能坐着一动不敢动，紧贴着大树，在心里祈祷自己不会被发现。

“砰、砰、砰……”无论那是什么东西发出的声音，那东西一定已经离她很近了，因为她能够感觉到地面在震动。可她什么都看不到，她觉得这个东西——或者这些东西——一定就在她身后，可接着从她右前方又传来“砰”的一声。她知道这东西就在大道上，不仅是因为那声音，还因为她看见地上的沙子散开了，就好像有什么重重砸上去一样。可她看不见有什么东西砸了上去。随后所有的“砰砰”声都集中到了离她大约二十英尺远的地方，然后突然停住了。接着传来了说话的声音。

这很恐怖，因为她压根连个人影都没见着。整个公园似的小岛看上去就和他们刚刚着陆时一样寂静空旷。然而，就在离她几英尺开外的地方，有个声音在说话，它在说：

“伙计们，我们的机会到了。”

其他几个声音立刻异口同声地说：“听听，听听，他说‘我们的机会到了’。真不错，首领，您这话说得简直太对了。”

“我想说的是，”第一个声音继续道，“我们都走到海滩上去，埋伏在他们和船之间，叫上所有的弟兄，带上家伙，等他们要出海的时候就把他们一举拿下。”

“嗯，就是这个法子，”其他声音纷纷喊道，“您这个法子真是再好不过啦，首领。就照您说的办，首领。再没有比这更好的法子了。”

“那么都行动起来，伙计们，都行动起来，”第一个声音说道，“我们走。”

“太对了，首领，”其他声音又附和道，“再没有比这更好的指令了。我们自己也正准备这么说呢。我们走。”

于是“砰砰”的声音立刻又响了起来——起初震耳欲聋，但很快就变得越来越微弱了，直到最后消失在大海的方向。

露西知道自己没时间继续坐在这里琢磨这些看不见的隐形生物到底是什么了，所以一等到这些“砰砰”的动静消失了，她就爬起来顺着大道一路狂奔，拼命去追赶其他人。无论如何她都要赶紧把听到的消息告诉大家，给他们提个醒。

与此同时，其他人这时候已经走到了那栋房子跟前。这栋建筑很矮——只有两层楼高——由漂亮的圆石筑成，屋子开了许多扇窗，有些角落覆盖着常春藤。到处都是一片寂静，尤斯塔斯说道：“我觉得房子里没人。”不过凯斯宾悄悄指了指一个烟囱里冒出的烟。

他们发现有一扇很宽的门正好敞开着，于是穿过门走进了一座铺了石子的庭院。在这里他们第一次感觉到这座岛有些怪怪的。在庭院中央有一个水泵，水泵下方有一个水桶。这没有什么奇怪的。可奇怪的是，水泵的把手正在上下移动着，但他们却没看到有人在动把手。

“看来这里还有些魔法呢。”凯斯宾说道。

“机器！”尤斯塔斯说道，“我们终于到了一个文明国度了！”

此时露西跑得满身发热、气喘吁吁，也跟在他们身后跑进了庭院。她压低了嗓音，试图向他们解释自己方才偷听到的对话。差不多听明白了以后，他们中间即便是最为勇敢的人也愁容满布。

“看不见的敌人，”凯斯宾喃喃道，“还要切断我们回船上的路。这下可真难办了。”

“你不知道他们到底是哪种东西吗，露西？”爱德蒙问道。

“我怎么会知道呢，爱德蒙？我都看不见他们。”

“他们的脚步声听起来像是人类的吗？”

“我都没听到什么脚步的声音，只能听见说话声，还有“砰砰”的声音，很可怕，就像大木槌似的。”

“我在想，”雷佩契普说道，“要是你把剑刺进他们的身子里，是不是就能看见他们了呢？”

“看来我们要弄清楚这些敌人，”凯斯宾说道，“但我们还是离开这里吧。这里的水泵边上可一直有个这样的人在听我们说话呢。”

他们走了出来，回到刚才的那条路上，两边有树遮挡，或许可以让他们不那么显眼。“如果是想躲开那些看不见的人的话，”尤斯塔斯说道，“这样做其实也没有什么用，真的。他们有可能就在我们旁边呢。”

“听着，德里宁，”凯斯宾说道，“你看这样如何，我们不要原路返回上船，而是下到海湾的另一处去，然后给‘黎明踏浪’号发信号，让船在那里待命接我们？”

“那里的水深不合适，船没法停泊，陛下。”德里宁答道。

“我们可以游过去。”露西提议。

“陛下们，”雷佩契普开口道，“请听我说。想这么偷偷摸摸地躲避看不见的敌人，着实是一件很傻的事。如果这些家伙想要和我们一决高下，那就如他们所愿。无论会遇到怎样的情况，我宁愿与他们面对面正面交锋，也不愿逃跑的时候被他们抓住。”

“我真的觉得雷佩这次说得对。”爱德蒙说道。

“没错，”露西说道，“而且如果莱恩斯和‘黎明踏浪’号上的其他人看到我们在岸上和敌人搏斗，会想办法做些什么的。”

“可是如果他们看不见有敌人，就不会觉得我们是在搏斗啊。”尤斯塔斯忧心忡忡地说，“他们会以为我们只不过是在挥着剑找乐子。”

一时间谁也没有再说话，空气中有片刻令人不安的沉默。

“既然是这样，”凯斯宾终于开口道，“那我们就不要退缩，继续原路返回。我们必须面对敌人。来，我们一起击掌！露西，把弓箭放到弦上做好准备；其他人，拔出剑来各就各位！好了，我们前进吧。说不定他们愿意和我们谈判呢。”

他们大步走着回到沙滩上，一路上见到的草坪绿树都是一派平和宁静的景象，看着真觉得怪异。他们回到了沙滩，看到自己的船就停泊在原来的地方，沙地依旧平滑，一个人影儿也见不着，人们都开始怀疑露西说的究竟是真的还是她自己幻想出来的。可他们还没踩到沙子上，一个声音突然凭空响起。

“不能再往前走了，各位，不能再往前了，”那个声音说，“我们得和你们谈谈。我们这里有五十多个人，手里可都拿着武器呢。”

“听听，听听，”其他声音齐齐道，“这是我们的首领，他说话算话。他可没骗你们，都是实话。”

“我看不到这里有五十个战士啊。”雷佩契普说道。

“没错，没错，”首领的声音又说道，“你看不见我们。想知道为什么吗？因为我们是隐形人。”

“继续说，首领，继续说，”其他声音纷纷道，“您说得太对了。没有比这更好的答案了。”

“雷佩，你不要说话，”凯斯宾对雷佩契普说，随后又更大声地补充道，“你们这些隐形人，想拿我们怎么样？我们做了什么和你们结仇了呢？”

“我们想要那个小姑娘帮我们做件事。”首领的声音说道。（其他声音纷纷说这话正是他们自己想说的。）

“什么小姑娘！”雷佩契普愤愤道，“这位女士可是我们的女王！”

“我们不知道什么女王。”首领的声音说。（“不知道，不知道。”其他声音齐齐应和道。）“但是我们想要的，她可以帮我们完成。”

“你们想要什么？”露西问。

“如果这件事有损女王殿下的荣誉或安全，”雷佩契普补充道，“你们便等着瞧，我们就算是死，也要与你们同归于尽。”

“好吧，”首领的声音说道，“这事就说来话长了。不如我们都坐下说吧？”

这个提议一出，其他声音纷纷称赞叫好，可纳尼亚一行人依然站着。

“好吧，”首领的声音说，“事情是这样的。这座小岛从很久以前起就属于一位伟大的魔法师。而我们都是——或者我应该说，我们曾经都是——他的仆人。嗯，长话短说，我刚才说的这位魔法师呢，他吩咐我们做一些我们不喜欢的事情。为什么不喜欢呢？因为我们不想做。然后这个魔法师就大发雷霆。我应该告诉你们，他是这座小岛的主人，不习惯别人违抗自己的命令。他非常非常生气，你知道的。不过，我想想，刚才说到哪儿了？哦，对了，于是这个魔法师就上楼去了（你要知道，他把所有和魔法有关的东西都放在楼上，而我们仆人都住在楼下），我是说，他到楼上去，给我们施了咒语，把我们都变得很丑。如果你们现在能看见我们——不过在我看来，你们真该感谢老天不让你们看不见我们——你们根本不会相信我们被施咒以前长什么模样。你们真的不会相信的。所以说我们都变得很丑很丑，丑到都不忍看彼此。于是我们做了什么呢？好吧，让我来告诉你们我们做了什么。我们等啊等，等到下午我们觉得魔法师睡着了的时候，偷偷上楼去翻看他的魔法书，壮着胆子，想看看有没有办法消除这个变丑的魔咒。我们都忙活得满头大汗、浑身发抖了，所以我不会骗你们的。信不信由你，不过我们在书里找不到任何可以消除变丑咒语的方法，千真万确。时间一分一秒地过去了，我们担心那位魔法师随时都会醒来——我当时满身都是汗，所以我不会骗你们的——长话短说，无论我们做得对还是不对，总之，最后我们看到了一个咒语可以把人变成隐形的。我们就想，与其一直这么丑下去，倒不如变成隐形人呢。为什么呢？因为我们更喜欢别人看不见我们。于是我的小女儿——大概就和你们这位小姑娘差不多年纪，被施咒变丑之前是个很可爱的孩子，不过现在——唉，多说无益——我是说，于是我的小女儿念出了咒语，因为必须得由小女孩或是魔法师自己念咒语，如果你明白我的意思的话，因为否则咒语就不管用了。为什么说不管用呢？因为什么都不会发生。于是我的克丽普希念出了咒语，我得告诉你们，她念得很不错，于是我们都变得隐形了，如你们现在所见。我可以很肯定地告诉你们，不用再看到彼此的脸真的是一种解脱。不管怎么说，至少一开始是这样。不过简而言之，现在我们已经厌倦了这样隐形的生活了。而且还有一件事。我们从没想到这位魔法师（也就是我之前和你说的那位）也会变成隐形的。不过自那以后我们再也没有见到过他了。所以我们也不知道他究竟是死了，还是离开了，又或者他隐形了之后只是坐在楼上，也有可能待在楼下。而且，相信我，靠听根本没用，因为他总是赤着脚到处走，发出的动静还不及一只大猫。我就和你们直截了当地说吧，我们已经忍受不了了。”

这就是首领的声音所讲述的故事，不过删减了许多，因为其他声音说的话我都没有写进去。实际上首领每次总是说了不超过六七个字，其他人就打断了他，纷纷表示赞同和鼓励，纳尼亚一行人都快要被烦死了。故事讲完以后有一阵长长的沉默。

“不过，”露西最终说道，“我们能做什么呢？我不明白。”

“哎呀，老天保佑，难道我没有把重点说清楚吗？”首领的声音说道。

“说清楚了，说清楚了！”其他声音热烈地高喊道，“没人能解释得更清楚明了了。继续说，首领，继续说。”

“嗯，那我不必再把故事都重复一遍了。”首领的声音说道。

“不用不用，当然不用。”凯斯宾和爱德蒙同时说道。

“好吧，那么概括起来说，”首领的声音说道，“我们等了很久了，等有小姑娘从别的地方来到这里，就像您这位小姐一样，能到楼上去，找到那本魔法书，替我们找出可以消除隐形的咒语，然后念出来。我们都立下了誓言，如果有陌生人到小岛上来（我是说如果其中有小女孩的话，否则又是另外一回事了），我们绝不会让他们活着离开这里，除非他们帮我们这个忙。所以说，先生们，如果你们的小姑娘不能帮我们的话，我们就不得不把你们都杀了。这只是公事公办，你们可以这么说，我希望不会冒犯到你们。”

“我看不见你们有武器，”雷佩契普说，“难道武器也变得隐形了吗？”它这话刚说出口，便听见“嗖”的一声，下一秒一支长矛已经刺进了他们身后的一棵树里，还微微颤抖着。

“那是一支矛，没错。”首领的声音说道。

“正是，正是，首领。”其他声音附和道，“您做得太好了。”

“是从我手里扔出去的。”首领的声音继续道，“一旦离开了我们，武器就看得见了。”

“可是你们为什么要让我来做呢？”露西问道，“为什么你们自己不能念咒语呢？难道你们中间没有女孩子吗？”

“我们不能，我们不能！”所有的声音齐声道，“我们再也不要上楼了。”

“换句话说，”凯斯宾说道，“你们不愿意让自己的姊妹和女儿去冒风险，却让这位小姑娘独自去面对危险！”

“不错，不错。”所有的声音雀跃地说，“你说得再好不过了。哎，你是个文化人，没错，谁都看得出来。”

“你们这群胆大包天的——”爱德蒙怒道，可露西打断了他。

“我需要在夜里去楼上吗，还是白天去也可以？”

“哦，白天去，自然是白天去。”首领的声音说道，“不必在晚上，没人让你这么做。难道让你摸着黑上楼？不会的。”

“那好吧，我会帮你们的。”露西说。“别阻止我，”她回头对其他人说，“你们难道看不出来你们阻止不了我吗？他们有几十个人呢，我们打不过他们的。要是帮帮他们的话说不定还有机会。”

“可那里有个魔法师啊！”凯斯宾担忧不已。

“我知道，”露西说，“可他也许没有他们说得那么坏呢。你们难道看不出来，这些人其实并不勇敢吗？”

“他们不怎么聪明倒是真的。”尤斯塔斯说道。

“听着，露西，”爱德蒙严肃地说，“我们真的不能让你去冒这个险。你去问雷佩契普，我保证他也会这么说。”

“可是这不仅是在救大家的命，也是在救我自己的命呀，”露西说，“我和大家一样，都不想被看不见的剑捅成马蜂窝。”

“女王陛下说得对，”雷佩契普说道，“倘若我们有一丝希望可以赢得决斗，使陛下免于受难，我们自然万死不辞。可是在我看来，我们没有什么胜算。况且他们请陛下帮的忙并无损她的荣誉，反而可以称得上是高尚英勇之举。如果女王陛下有心试险，愿意去会一会那个魔法师，那么我不会阻止她的。”

人人都知道雷佩契普什么都不怕，他可以坦坦荡荡地说出这番话，不觉丝毫局促。可男孩儿们经常会怕这怕那，此时脸也涨红了。不过道理摆在眼前，他们只得妥协。听到他们宣布这个决定，隐形人群中爆发出了如雷般的欢呼声，首领的声音（其他声音也纷纷热情附和）邀请纳尼亚一行人去他们那里吃晚饭留宿。尤斯塔斯不想答应，可是露西说：“我能肯定他们没有恶意，他们一点都不像坏人。”其他人也表示同意。于是，伴随着震耳欲聋的“砰砰”声（走到铺着石板、响着回声的庭院里时，那砰砰声变得更响了），他们都回到了那栋房子里。

第十章
魔法师的神奇书

这些隐形人盛情款待了来自纳尼亚的客人。只见盘盘碟碟飞落到了桌子上，却看不见有谁在端着，真是一幅滑稽的画面。那些杯盘即便是像你们想象的那样，在看不见的手中同地面平行着移动，也已经够搞笑了；可事实并不是这样的。那些盘盘碟碟在长长的餐厅里弹跳着往前移动。盘子跳得最高时约有十五英尺之高；接着又落下来，然后突然在离地大概三英尺的地方停住了。盘子里盛的是汤水或者炖菜时，后果就相当严重了。

“我开始有点儿好奇这些人到底是什么样子的。”尤斯塔斯悄声对爱德蒙说，“你觉得他们是人类吗？我觉得更有可能是大蚱蜢或者巨型青蛙。”

“看起来确实挺像的，”爱德蒙说道，“不过别让露西觉得可能是蚱蜢。她不太喜欢虫子，尤其是大虫子。”

要是场面不是那么混乱不堪、谈话也没有充斥着附和声的话，这顿晚饭原本可以更愉快。这些隐形人听到什么都表示同意。诚然，他们说的话本来也很难引起异议：“我总是说，一个人饿了的时候，就想吃点东西”，或者“现在天变黑了，每次到了夜里天色就变黑”，甚至“啊，你走过了水塘，水还真是湿得厉害啊，不是吗？”露西忍不住朝楼梯脚下那个黑漆漆的入口处张望着——从她坐的位子上正好能看见——不知第二天一早她上楼时都会看到些什么。不过这顿饭本身还是相当不错的，有蘑菇汤、煮鸡肉、烫过的火腿、醋栗、红醋栗、凝乳、奶油、牛奶和蜂蜜酒。其他人都很喜欢蜂蜜酒，不过尤斯塔斯事后却后悔自己喝了蜂蜜酒。

第二天早晨露西醒来时，感觉就好像这天有考试，或者要去看牙医似的。天气十分晴好，房间的窗户敞开着，传来了蜜蜂的嗡嗡声，屋外的草坪看上去就像身处英国的某个地方。她起了床，穿好衣服，吃早餐时勉强像往常一样说话、吃东西。接着，首领的声音告诉她要在楼上做什么后，她便同大家告了别，一言不发地走到楼梯脚下，头也不回地上楼了。

上楼的路挺亮堂的，这是件好事。她前方第一段台阶顶上便有一扇窗户。她踏上这段台阶时，能听见楼下大厅里老爷钟发出的“嘀嗒”声。然后她走上了楼梯平台处，往左拐又走上了第二段台阶；接下来她便听不见钟声了。

现在露西已经走到了台阶最上面的一级，她看到面前有一条长长的宽过道，过道尽头有一扇大窗户。很显然，这条过道和这栋房子是一样的长度。过道雕刻着花纹，镶了木板，还铺了地毯，两边开了多扇门。她一动不动地站着，听不见老鼠的吱吱声、苍蝇的嗡嗡声或者窗帘的摆动声，除了自己的心跳如擂鼓，她什么也听不见。

“左边最后一扇门。”她在心里默念。要走到最后一扇门确实是个不小的挑战，她得经过一个又一个房间。而那个魔法师可能就在其中任何一个房间里——醒着，或睡着，或隐形着，甚至有可能已经死了。可光是瞎想也无济于事，于是她踏上了这段冒险之途。地毯很厚，她踩上去没有发出一点动静。

“现在还没有什么可怕的。”露西对自己说。这条过道很安静，沐浴在阳光下；可能有些过于安静了。要是门上没有奇怪的猩红色符号就更好了，那些弯弯曲曲、形状繁杂的符号显然隐藏着什么寓意，而且有可能也不是什么好的寓意；要是墙上没有挂着面具那就再好不过了，倒也不是说它们很丑——或者说不是特别丑——不过那些空洞洞的眼窝看上去确实很怪异，如果你大胆设想的话，就会开始想象自己转过身去的时候，这些面具会开始动起来。

走过了第六扇门时，她开始第一次真正感到害怕。有那么一瞬间，她几乎能肯定自己看到一张小小的、蓄着胡子的邪恶面孔从墙上弹了出来，冲她做着鬼脸。她逼着自己停下脚步，定睛看一看。原来那根本不是一张脸，而是一面小小的镜子，和她自己脸的大小和形状一模一样，顶上有头发，下面还有胡子垂下来，这样人在照镜子的时候，脸正好落在头发和胡子之间，看上去就好像那是自己的头发和胡子一样。“我刚才经过的时候，正好用余光扫到了镜子里自己的脸而已。”露西心想，“仅此而已，没有什么好害怕的。”不过她不喜欢看到那头发和胡子在自己脸上的样子，于是继续走下去。（不过我不是魔法师，所以我也不知道这面长了胡子的镜子是干什么用的。）

露西走到左边最后一扇门口之前，她甚至都开始想，不知道是自己踏上这条走廊以后，走廊就开始变长了，还是这原本就是房子里的魔法。不过最后她终于还是走到了。房门开着。

这是一个很宽敞的房间，有三扇窗户，从地板到天花板都堆满了书，露西从来没见到过这么多的书，小小的袖珍书、厚重的大部头书，还有的书比你所见过的任何一本教堂圣经都要大，封面都是皮革装订，散发着古老博学而又神秘奇妙的气息。不过隐形人给过她指示，让她不必在意这些书。因为他们要找的那本书，那本魔法书，是放在房间中央的一个斜面书桌上的。她发现自己得站着看书（反正这里也没有椅子），而这就意味着她看书的时候要背对着门口。于是她赶紧转身去把门关上。

可门却关不上。

也许有人会不赞成露西的做法，但我觉得她做得挺对的。她说，如果门可以关上的话，她倒也不会介意，可是要让她站在这里，背对着敞开的门，总归还是有点忐忑不安的。换作是我的话，我也会这么觉得。可她也没有别的办法。

还有一件事令她很忧心，那就是这本书的大小。首领的声音之前并没有告诉她，那个能让物体变得可见的咒语在书中什么位置，他那时甚至有些惊讶她会问出这个问题。他指望着她能从头开始一点点翻找，直到找到咒语为止；很显然，他从没想到过除此之外还能有别的方法在书里找到咒语。“但这样我有可能得找上几天甚至几个星期啊！”露西看着这么一本庞然大物，喃喃说道，“我感觉自己已经在这里待了好几个小时了。”

她走到书桌前，把手放到书上，她的手指一碰到书便感觉一阵刺痛，就好像这本书带了电似的。她想翻开书，可一开始却翻不开；不过这只是因为书被两只铅制搭扣系住了，她打开搭扣以后很容易便把书打开了。打开后她眼前一亮：这本书多么不可思议啊！

这本书是手写的，不是印刷出来的；字迹清晰工整，向下的笔画粗重，向上的笔画轻细，字写得很大，比印刷出来的更易读。那书写实在太漂亮了，露西盯着字看了足足有一分钟，连书上在写什么都忘了读。纸张又薄又脆，光滑平整，还散发着一股好闻的味道；在书页边上空白处，每一个咒语开头大大的彩色大写字母旁边，都配有图片。

书上没有标题页，也没有标题；一开篇便直接是咒语，开头没有什么太重要的内容，无非就是治疣子的咒语（在月光下用银水槽洗手）、治牙疼和抽筋的咒语，还有一个能赶走成群蜜蜂的咒语。那幅画着牙疼男人的插图看上去太逼真了，看得久了，你自己的牙齿好像也会开始隐隐作痛；而第四个咒语周围画着的金黄小蜜蜂看上去好像真的在飞一样。

露西好不容易才将视线从第一页上移开，可她翻过这一页后，发现第二页同样也十分有趣。“不过我必须得加快速度了！”她告诉自己。之后她又翻看了将近三十页，要是能记住这些咒语的话，她应当已经学会了如何找到深埋的宝藏、找回遗忘的记忆、忘掉自己想忘掉的东西、辨别他人是否在说实话、召唤（或阻止）风雾雪雹雨、施法使人入眠，以及如何让人长出一颗驴脑袋（就像他们对可怜的鲍特姆所做的那样）。她读的时间越久，那些图片就变得越奇妙逼真。

接着她翻到的一页上画着许多图，十分炫目，读者几乎很难注意到上面的文字。不过露西还是勉强看到了前面几个字，写的是一个绝对有效的咒语，能够让她变得比所有凡人都美丽。露西把脸凑到书页前仔细端详图片，尽管图片之前看上去很拥挤逼仄，一团乱糟糟，但她现在却能看得挺清楚了。第一幅图上有个小女孩站在一个斜面书桌前，读着一本很大的书，这个女孩的穿着打扮与露西一模一样；第二幅图上露西（因为画中的女孩正是露西）正张着嘴站着，表情很可怕，口中念念有词；第三幅图上她已经得到了超越凡人的美貌。奇怪的是，起初图片看上去那么小，而现在画中的露西已经和真人一般大小了。她们看着彼此的眼睛，过了几分钟后真露西别开了眼去，她对另一个露西的美貌感到十分目眩神迷，尽管她依稀还能从那张绝美的脸上看到与自己的相似之处。此时这一张张图片目不暇接地铺盖在她眼前。在卡乐门盛大的骑士比武大赛上，她看到自己坐在高高的宝座上，全世界的国王都因她的美貌而厮杀；随后比武大赛演变成了真正的战争，无论是纳尼亚、亚钦兰、台尔马、卡乐门，还是盖尔马、泰瑞宾西亚，王公贵族们都争相博她青睐，相互打斗，于是到处都成了废墟，尸横遍野。接着图片又变了，此时依旧绝美无比的露西已经回到了英国，而苏珊（她一直是家中最漂亮的一个）也从美国回来了。图片中的苏珊看上去就和现实生活中一样，只不过更普通了，脸色也不怎么好看。苏珊很嫉妒露西那夺目的美貌，可那并不要紧，因为现在已经没人在意苏珊了。

“我要念这个咒语。”露西对自己说，“我不管，我就是要念。”她说“我不管”，是因为她有一种很强烈的感觉告诉自己，她不能这么做。

可当她再回过头去看咒语时，文字的中央——她很确定之前这里是没有图片的——出现了一头狮子的脸，是狮王阿斯兰的脸，正看着她。这幅图金光熠熠，明艳夺目，仿佛要冲出书页，直逼她而来；甚至她事后也没法肯定这幅图究竟有没有动过。不管怎么说，她很熟悉它的表情，它在咆哮着，露出一大排牙齿。露西很害怕，于是赶紧把这页翻了过去。

过了一会儿她又看到一个咒语，可以让你知道朋友对你是什么看法。现在露西真的很想试试之前那个可以让人变美的咒语，于是出于一种弥补刚才没能念那个咒语的心理，她决定一定要念这个咒语。她担心自己会改变主意，于是着急忙慌地念了出来（说什么我也不会告诉你们这个咒语是怎么念的）。接着她静静等待会发生什么。

但是什么也没有发生，于是她开始看书上的图片。她一下便瞧见了自己最不想看到的画面——图上画的是火车上的一个三等车厢，里面坐着两个女学生。露西一眼便认出了她们，分别是玛乔丽·普雷斯顿和安妮·费瑟斯通。只是现在那已不仅仅是一幅图了，画面真的动了起来，她能看见窗外的电线杆一个个一闪而过。渐渐地（就像是广播的声音一点一点在调大似的），她能听见她们俩在说什么了。

“这学期我还能见到你吗？”安妮问道，“还是说你依旧打算整天和露西·佩文西黏在一起？”

“我不知道你说的‘黏在一起’是什么意思。”玛乔丽回答道。

“你明明知道，”安妮酸溜溜地说，“上学期你不是还很迷她的嘛。”

“我哪里有啊，”玛乔丽否认道，“我还是有点理智的。她人不坏，可是上学期结束前我就已经厌倦她了。”

“好啊，你以后都别再想见到我了！”露西大喊道，“你这个两面派！”可她刚喊出声，立刻便意识到自己是在对着一幅图说话，而真正的玛乔丽还远在另一个世界呢。

“哼，”露西心想，“反正我也不觉得她有什么好的。上学期我为她做了那么多事，很多其他的女生都不理她了，就我还和她交朋友。她自己也知道的。我对安妮·费瑟斯通也算是够朋友了！真不知道是不是我所有的朋友都一个样子？这里还有很多图片呢。不，不行，我不能再看了。我不看了，不看了！”她下了好大的决心才把这一页翻过去，可一滴豆大的、愤怒的泪水已经溅落在了那页上面。

她在下一页看到了一个能够“舒缓心灵”的咒语，这个咒语的图片少一些，可都描画得十分美丽动人。露西觉得自己不像在读咒语，而更像在看故事咒语。一共有三页，可她还没看到一页的最后，之前看的就已经全忘记了。她觉得这个故事就像真的一样，而自己就生活在其中，所有的图片也都是真的。读到第三页的结尾时，她说：“这是我读过的最动人的故事了，可能也是我这一辈子会读到的最动人的故事了。噢，真希望我可以一直读下去，读个十年。至少我要再读一遍。”

可是这本魔法书神奇的地方就在于，你没法往回翻：右手边的书页可以往后翻动，而左手边的却翻不了。

“噢，真是太遗憾了！”露西说道，“我真的很想再读一遍。好吧，那么至少我得记住这个故事，让我想想……故事是关于……是关于……噢，老天哪，我全忘光了！现在就连这最后一页都变空白了。这本书真是奇怪。我怎么能忘记了呢？我只知道那是关于一只杯子、一把剑、一棵树和一座苍山的故事，可其他的我怎么也想不起来了，我该怎么办呢？”

她再也没有想起来这个故事。从那天起，但凡露西说一个故事很不错，意思就是这个故事能让她想起这本魔法书里自己忘记了的那个故事。

她继续翻下去，惊讶地发现有一页上连一张图片都没有，不过这页一开头的文字便是“一个能够让隐藏起来的东西变得可见的咒语”。她通读了一遍，确保拗口的生僻字自己都会念了，这才大声地读了出来。咒语一说出口，她立刻就知道灵验了，因为她在念的时候，书页顶上的大写字母变成了彩色，页边的图片也渐渐浮现了出来。这就好像你把用隐形墨水写就的东西拿到火边一样，文字会慢慢显示出来；只不过现在出现的文字并不是柠檬汁般暗淡的颜色（柠檬汁是最简易的隐形墨水），而全是金色、蓝色和红色的。这些图片看着很怪异，里面许多人物的长相露西也都不太喜欢。随后她心想：“我觉得我已经把一切隐形的东西都变得可见了，不仅仅是那些走路‘砰砰’响的人。在这样的地方，可能还有很多看不见的东西在晃来晃去呢，我不确定我想见到所有这些东西。”

就在这时，她听见身后的走廊里传来了轻柔而又沉重的脚步声，她当然记得那些隐形人告诉过她，魔法师总是赤着脚走来走去，发出的动静还不如一只大猫。这种时候最好还是转过身去，免得有什么东西出现在背后。于是露西就转过身去了。

随后她的脸上现出惊喜之情，以至于有那么一刻（不过当然她自己并不知道），她看上去就像画中的另一个露西一样光彩照人。她欢喜地惊呼一声，张开双臂向前奔去。原来门口站着的正是至尊国王之首，狮王阿斯兰，这次不是画也不是幻觉，而是有血有肉、真真切切的阿斯兰。他任由露西亲吻着自己，还把身子埋进自己金光闪闪的鬣毛里。露西听见他的身体里传来低低的、地震一般的声音，还大胆地猜测那是阿斯兰发出的呼噜声。

“噢，阿斯兰！”她说道，“你能来真是太好了！”

“我一直都在这里的，”他说，“只不过你刚刚把我变得可见了。”

“阿斯兰！”露西几乎有些责备地说，“你就不要取笑我啦。说得好像我有本事把你变得可见似的！”

“确实是你啊，”阿斯兰说道，“难不成你觉得我会违反自己的规矩吗？”

过了一会儿他又开口了。

“孩子，”他说，“我觉得你刚才在偷听别人说话。”

“偷听？”

“你在听学校里的两个朋友谈论关于你的事。”

“噢，你说那个？我从没觉得自己是在偷听呀，阿斯兰。难道那不是魔法吗？”

“用魔法偷听别人说话和用其他方式偷听是一回事。而且你错怪了你的朋友。她虽然有些软弱，但她爱你。她只是有些害怕那个年长些的女孩，所以才说了违心的话。”

“我觉得我永远也忘不了自己听到她说的那些话了。”

“没错，你不会忘记的。”

“哦，天哪，”露西说道，“我是不是把事情搞砸了？你的意思是不是说，要不是因为这件事，我们本可以一直做朋友——很要好的那种，甚至有可能成为一辈子的知己——可是现在我们再也不可能如此了。”

“孩子，”阿斯兰说道，“我以前难道没有告诉过你吗？没有人能够知晓未来可能会发生什么事。”

“是的，阿斯兰，你跟我说过的，”露西说，“对不起。可是求求你了——”

“你尽管说，亲爱的。”

“我还能再读一次那个故事吗？就是那个我怎么也想不起来的故事。你能给我讲讲那个故事吗，阿斯兰？求你了，答应我吧，答应吧。”

“当然可以了，我可以一直一直给你讲下去。不过现在你得跟我来。我们得去见见这栋房子的主人了。”

第十一章
单腿蠢人皆大欢喜

露西跟着阿斯兰来到走廊上，一眼便瞧见了一位老人朝他们走过来。只见他赤着脚，穿着一件红色的长袍，他那白色的头发上戴着橡树叶结成的头环，长长的胡须拖到了腰带处，他还拄着一根雕刻得十分奇特的拐杖。他看到阿斯兰便深深鞠了一躬，说道：

“欢迎来到您的房子，先生，寒舍招待不周。”

“柯瑞金，我把这些愚蠢不成气候的东西交由你看管，你有没有厌倦啊？”

“没有，”魔法师恭恭敬敬地回答道，“虽然他们十分蠢笨，不过也没有什么害处。我开始越来越喜欢这些家伙了。不过有时候我可能有些着急了，等着他们有一天能够拥有智慧，而非仅仅受魔法支配。”

“一切皆有时，柯瑞金。”阿斯兰说。

“不错，先生，一切皆有时。”魔法师答道，“您打算在他们面前现身吗？”

“不了，”阿斯兰说着，微微轻吼着，相当于在笑了（露西是这么认为的），“我会把他们吓坏的。你的子民还没有准备好，还得等上很久很久，等天上许多星星都老了，落到岛上休憩，时机方才成熟。今天日落之前，我得去拜访矮人杜鲁普金，他一直坐在凯尔帕拉维尔的城堡里掰着指头数日子，盼着他的凯斯宾主人回家呢。我会把你们的故事都告诉他的，露西。别太难过了，我们很快就会再见面的。”

“请告诉我，阿斯兰，”露西恳盼道，“你说的很快是多久？”

“任何时候都有可能。”阿斯兰说完这句话便立刻消失不见了，只留下露西与魔法师两人。

“又走了！”他说道，“只有我们俩在这儿垂头丧气的。每次都是这样，你留不住他；他可不是一头驯服的狮子。对了，你觉得我的书如何？喜欢吗？”

“我确实很喜欢其中的某些部分。”露西说道，“你一直都知道我在这里吗？”

“好吧，我当然知道了，从我任由那些蠢人把自己变得隐形时起，我就知道你们会来把咒语解除。不过我不太确定具体的日子，今天早晨也没有格外留意。你瞧，他们把我也变得隐形了，而隐形的时候我总是觉得瞌睡。嗨——哎——我又打哈欠了。你饿了吗？”

“嗯，也许有一点点。”露西说道，“我不知道现在几点了。”

“来吧，”魔法师说道，“也许对阿斯兰而言，所有时间都称得上很快，可在我家里，但凡饿了就是一点钟。”

魔法师领着露西顺着走廊走了一会儿，然后打开了一扇门。露西走了进去，发现自己来到了一个十分舒适宜人的房间，房间里洒满阳光，摆满鲜花。他们进去时，桌上本空空如也，可不必说这张桌子也是有魔法的，只见老人念了一句咒语，桌上便出现了桌布、银制餐具、盘子、杯子和食物。

“希望你还吃得惯，”他说，“我试着准备与你家乡口味相近的食物，和你最近吃的可能不同。”

“看上去太棒了。”露西说道。这些食物确实很丰盛：一份热气腾腾的煎蛋卷、冷羊肉配绿豌豆、草莓冰、配饭的柠檬汁，饭后还有一杯巧克力。不过魔法师自己却只喝了点葡萄酒，吃了点面包。他看上去并不吓人，露西和他聊着天，就像两个老朋友一样。

“这个咒语什么时候会生效呢？”露西问道，“那些蠢人马上就可以变得可见了吗？”

“噢，是的，你现在就可以看见他们了。不过这会儿他们估计还在睡觉呢，他们中午的时候总是会打个盹。”

“既然现在他们不再隐形了，那你打算把他们变回原来的模样吗？变得不那么丑？”

“嗯，这真是个好问题，”魔法师说道，“你看，只有他们自己觉得以前的样子挺好看的，他们说自己被魔法变丑了，可是我不会这么说。可能很多人都会说现在这样看起来还更好一些。”

“他们有那么严重的狂想症吗？”

“没错，至少蠢人首领是这样的。他把其他所有人都教坏了，他们总是对他言听计从。”

“我们也发现了。”露西点头道。

“是啊——从某种程度上来说，没有他更好，当然了，我可以把他变成别的东西，甚至可以施个咒让其他人再也不相信他说的话。不过我不会这么做，他们有人可以崇拜总比没人崇拜要好。”

“他们难道不崇拜你吗？”露西问道。

“噢，当然不会，”魔法师摆摆手，“他们不会崇拜我的。”

“那你为什么把他们变丑了呢？我是指按照他们所认为的变丑了。”

“因为他们不听从命令。他们的工作是打理庭院、种植食物——可这工作并不是像他们想的那样为我做的，而是为他们自己做的。如果我不盯着他们，他们一点都不肯干活。打理庭院肯定需要水。在大约半英里远处的山上有一汪十分漂亮的泉水，而泉水流出的小溪正好流经庭院。我让他们做的只是从小溪里取水，不必再拎着水桶一天两三次大老远地跑到泉水那里去打水了，这样不光累，而且打的水在回程的半路上还会洒出来。不过他们就想不明白。到最后他们索性就撂摊子不干了。”

“他们真有这么愚蠢吗？”露西问。

魔法师叹了一口气道：“说了你都不会相信，我吃尽了他们的苦头。几个月前他们吵着非要在吃晚饭之前洗碗洗餐具，他们说这样之后就可以节约时间了；有一次我还抓到他们把煮熟的土豆种进地里，这样挖出来以后就不用再烧了。有一天一只猫跑进了牛奶棚，他们二十几个人忙着把所有的牛奶都搬了出来，却没有一个人想到把猫抱出来。哦，我看你已经吃完了。我们去看看那些蠢人吧，现在你可以看到他们了。”

他们走进了另一个房间，里面摆满了令人不解的精密仪器——比如天体观测仪、太阳系仪、极微时间测定器、压强计、经纬仪，等等——他们走到了窗边，魔法师指着窗外说：“看那儿，那里就是你的蠢人们。”

“我一个人也没看见呀。”露西说道，“那些蘑菇一样的东西又是什么呢？”

她指的东西正遍布在草地上。那些东西看起来确实像蘑菇，不过比蘑菇要大得多——根茎差不多有三英尺高，顶上的伞状物每条边都一样长。她仔细看了看，发现根茎并没有连接到伞状物的中间，而是偏向了一边，因此看上去有些不平衡。每个根茎的底部还有东西——像是一捆什么东西——横在草地上。事实上，她盯着这些东西看得越久，就越觉得它们不像蘑菇。顶上的伞状物并没有她一开始以为的那样圆，它们的长度要大于宽度，而且一端要更宽一些。草地上有很多这样的东西，大概有五十多个。

时钟敲响了三下。

这时一件十分不可思议的事发生了。一棵棵“蘑菇”突然都倒立了过来，根茎底部的一捆捆的东西原来是他们的脑袋和身体，而这些根茎其实是他们的腿，但一个身子底下不再有两条腿，而是只有单条腿（也不像只有一边的单条腿的人那样），腿的底部有一只巨大的脚——脚趾宽宽的，微微蜷起，所以看起来非常像小独木舟。她看了一会儿便知道为什么他们刚才看起来像蘑菇了。原来他们一直是仰面躺着睡觉的，背贴着地，唯一的一条腿直直地竖在空中，大脚则摊开着横在半空。后来她才知道原来他们平时就是这么睡觉的，因为大脚可以替他们遮阳挡雨，对于单腿人而言，躺在自己的脚下面就好比躺在帐篷里一样安全舒适。

“噢，这太好玩儿了，太滑稽了！”露西大笑着叫出声来，“是你把他们变成这副模样的吗？”

“是的，没错，我把这群蠢人变成了单腿人。”魔法师说道。他也在笑，笑得眼泪都顺着脸颊流了下来。“但你看那儿！”他又说。

那画面确实值得一看。当然了，这些单条腿的人和我们不一样，他们既不能走也不能跑。他们只能像跳蚤或者青蛙那样，跳着到别的地方去。他们跳起来多么利索呀！一个个都好像大弹簧似的。他们弹起来又重重地砸下来，昨天困扰了露西半天的“砰砰”响声，正是这样发出来的。此时他们正四处蹦来蹦去，呼朋引伴，“嗨，伙计们！我们又变得可见啦！”

“我们变得可见了，”一个戴着红色流苏边帽子的人说道，听声音显然是单腿人首领，“我的意思是说，当人们变得可见时，他们就可以看见彼此啦。”

“啊，说得不错，说得不错，首领，”其他人纷纷应和道，“就是这个道理。没人比您头脑更清醒了。您说得再明白不过了。”

“那个小姑娘正好撞上老头儿睡觉的时候了，肯定是这样的，”单腿人首领说道，“这一回我们可打败他了。”

“我们也正想这么说呢。”其他人齐声说道，“您今天格外厉害，首领，继续保持，继续保持。”

“但是他们应该不敢这么和你说话吧？”露西说道，“他们昨天看起来好像很怕你的样子。难道他们没想过你可能在一旁听着吗？”

“这正是那些蠢人搞笑的地方之一，”魔法师说道，“前一分钟他们还说得好像我主宰着一切，什么都逃不过我的耳朵，好像我是个非常危险的人。下一秒他们又会觉得自己可以用一些小孩子都能看穿的把戏糊弄我——上帝保佑他们！”

“他们非要变回原来的样子不可吗？”露西问道，“噢，我希望如果就这么由他们去的话，不至于太残忍。他们真的有那么介意吗？他们看起来还是挺开心的呀。我说，看看他们蹦得多欢快！他们以前长什么样子呢？”

“就是普通的矮人罢了，”他回答道，“但是不像你们纳尼亚的矮人那么周正。”

“他们要是变回原状那就真是太遗憾了，”露西说道，“他们太有趣了，而且人也挺不错的。你觉得如果我把这话告诉他们，会不会起什么作用呢？”

“我敢肯定会有用的——只要你有办法让他们把话听进去。”

“你愿意和我一起去试试吗？”

“不了，不了。我不去你会做得更好。”

“真的太感谢你的午餐了！”露西说完便迫不及待地飞快转身走了。她跑下楼梯——今天早晨她上楼时还紧张不已——朝楼下的爱德蒙奔去。所有人都在楼下和爱德蒙一起等待着，当露西看到他们一脸焦灼的神情时，她意识到自己已经很久没有想起过他们了，她的良心因此感到了不安。

“我没事，”她大喊道，“一切都好！那个魔法师人心肠很好——而且我还见到他了，我见到阿斯兰了！”

语毕，她又像一阵风一样跑到了庭院里。在院子里，大地因那些单腿人的蹦跳而颤动着，空气也因他们的喊叫声而震动着。他们看到露西的出现，蹦得更欢，叫得更响了。

“她来了，她来了！”他们叫道，“替我们的小姑娘欢呼三声。啊！她把老魔法师顺利应付过去了，她做到了！”

“我们真心觉得遗憾，”单腿人首领说道，“现在没办法让你见到我们变丑以前的样子，你不会相信前后发生了多么大的变化，真的，因为不可否认，我们现在实在是太丑了，所以我们是不会骗你的。”

“哎，是啊，首领，没错，”其他人纷纷附和道，跳得就像一个个玩具气球似的，“您说得对，您说得对！”

“但我并不这么认为啊，”露西大声喊着，努力让他们听见自己的声音，“我觉得你们现在看上去就很不错啦！”

“听听，听听她说的话，”单腿人们喜滋滋地说，“你说对了，小姐。我们看上去很不错，你上哪儿能找到这么好看的一群人呢。”他们说这话时毫无半点惊讶诧异，好像一点也没有注意到自己刚刚已经改变了主意。

“她是在说，”单腿人首领开口道，“我们变丑之前看上去很不错！”

“您说得对，首领，您说得对！”其他人高声喊道，“她说的就是这个意思。我们听得清清楚楚。”

“我不是这个意思，”露西大喊道，“我说的是，你们现在看上去很不错！”

“她说了，她说了，”单腿人首领自顾自地继续说道，“她说我们以前看着很不错。”

“听听，听听他们俩，”其他单腿人说道，“你们说的总是对的。他们说的再好不过了。”

“可我们说的根本就截然不同呀。”露西说着，不耐烦地跺着脚。

“没错，没错，绝不会有错的。”单腿人们又说道，“你们说的压根儿不一样。继续呀，你们俩继续呀！”

“你们真有本事把人给逼疯。”露西无奈只能放弃了。可单腿人们看上去却心满意足，于是她认为，这次对话总体上来说还是成功的。

那天晚上单腿人都上床休息之前，又发生了一件事，让他们对目前单只脚的状态更为满意了。凯斯宾和其他纳尼亚人都尽快赶回岸边了，去把这个消息告诉莱恩斯和“黎明踏浪”号上的其他人，他们现在早就等着急了。当然了，单腿人们也跟着一起去了，像皮球一样弹跳着，大声地相互赞同应和着，直到最后尤斯塔斯实在受不了了，说：“我真希望魔法师能把他们变得听不见，而不是看不见。”（他很快就后悔自己多了嘴，因为他还得向他们解释一样东西若是听不见，就是说你不能听见它的声音，可是尽管他费了很大的口舌，却还是没法确定单腿人是不是真的听懂了，而尤其让他恼火的是，他们最后还说，“哎，他没法儿像我们的首领那样把话说明白。不过你能学会的，年轻人。你听听我们首领，他会教你怎么说话的。好好向这位演讲家学习学习！”）他们走到海湾时，雷佩契普想到了一个绝妙的点子。他把自己的小圆舟放进了水里，坐到上面开始划起桨来，单腿人们一个个看得聚精会神，十分感兴趣。接着他站了起来，说道：“聪明而又可敬的单腿人，你们连船都不需要，你们的脚便足以代劳了。轻轻跳到水上来，看看会发生什么吧。”

单腿人首领犹豫了，他警告其他人水是很湿的，可一两个年纪轻的单腿人按捺不住，当即下了水；接着又有几个也学着前面人的样子跳了进去，最后所有人都下水了。果然这个办法管用得很。单腿人的大脚掌就如同一个天然的筏子或是小船，雷佩契普教会他们如何砍出简易的船桨后，他们纷纷跃跃欲试，在海湾里、在“黎明踏浪”号周围划起水来，看上去就像一个独木舟队似的，每条小舟的船尾都站着一个胖胖的矮人。他们互相比赛谁划得最快，从“黎明踏浪”号上不时放下一瓶瓶葡萄酒来，给赢得比赛的人作为战利品，船上的水手们倚着船沿观赛，直笑得肋骨发疼。

蠢人们也很喜欢“单腿人”这个新名字，觉得听上去很了不起，尽管自己从没叫对过。“说的正是我们，”他们大声喊道，“单脚人、蛋腿人、火腿人。我们也正想这么称呼自己呢。”不过很快他们就把新名字和旧名字“蠢人”混在一起了，最后便决定叫自己“单腿蠢人”，而“单腿蠢人”这个名字将流传下去，伴随他们一个又一个世纪。

这天傍晚，纳尼亚人都在楼上与魔法师共进晚餐，而此时的露西已不再害怕这里，于是注意到此刻的顶楼看起来与早晨是那么的不同。门上神秘的符号依旧神秘如故，不过现在看来似乎包含着和善喜人的寓意；甚至那面贴着胡须的镜子现在也不吓人了，反而有些滑稽逗趣。晚餐时每个人都享用到了由魔法变出的、自己最喜爱的食物和饮料。酒足饭饱之后，魔法师又施了一个十分实用而又美轮美奂的魔法。他在桌上摊开了两张空白的羊皮纸，让德里宁给他提供此番航行的准确描述，而德里宁一边说着，他所描述的一切就一边栩栩如生地出现在了羊皮纸上，直到最后每一张羊皮纸都是一份绘制精美的东部海域地图，上面有盖尔马、泰瑞宾西亚、七岛、孤独岛、龙岛、焦岛、死水岛，还有他们身处的蠢人岛，就连大小和位置也都准确无误。这是为那些海域绘制的第一幅地图，而且比任何不施魔法的普通地图都要好。因为在这幅地图上，尽管乍一看去，城镇群山就和普通地图上看到的一样，不过当魔法师拿出放大镜让他们看时，他们便能看见那些其实是实物的缩小照片，十分精细，因此你可以看见奈洛港的那座城堡、奴隶市场和街道，一切都十分清晰，不过也很遥远，就好像从拿反了的望远镜看出去一样。唯一美中不足的是，大多数岛屿的海岸线都不完整，那是因为这幅地图只能显示出德里宁双眼所见的画面。地图完成后，魔法师自己留了一幅，把另一幅送给了凯斯宾——这幅地图直到如今依然挂在凯斯宾在凯尔帕拉维尔的器材室里。但魔法师无法告诉他们任何有关更东边的海域或陆地的事。不过他说，大约七年前，有一艘纳尼亚的船驶进了他的海域，船上有莱维廉勋爵、阿尔戈兹勋爵、玛威拉莫恩勋爵和鲁珀勋爵。据此他们判断，在死水岛见到的金人一定就是莱斯提玛勋爵了。

第二天，魔法师施法替“黎明踏浪”号修好了海蛇怪毁坏的船尾，还在船上装了许多能派上用场的礼物。大家友好地道了别，下午两点，“黎明踏浪”号扬帆启航，所有的单腿蠢人都划着桨，一直送到海港口，欢呼着，直到最后船上的人再也听不见他们的声音了。

第十二章
黑暗岛

这番冒险过后，他们乘着和风又朝着南边偏东方向航行了十二天，天空十分澄澈明净，空气也很温煦，依旧不见鱼鸟，除了有一次他们看见在右舷侧很远的地方有些鲸鱼在喷水。这几天露西和雷佩契普经常下棋打发时间。接着，在第十三天的时候，爱德蒙站在战斗桅楼上看到左舷船头前方的海面上屹立着一座深色的大山。

于是他们改变了航线，朝那座岛驶去。他们大多时候是划桨前进，因为风向不适合他们往东北方向航行。到了傍晚，他们离岛还有很长一段距离，于是众人又连夜划桨，到了第二天早晨，天气晴好，不过风平浪静，无益驶船。前方暗色一团，更近也更大了，不过仍旧十分模糊朦胧的样子，所以有人觉得陆地还在很远处，也有人觉得他们驶进了一片迷雾里。

那时大概是早晨九点，那一团暗色突然变得离他们很近了，他们能看见，那压根儿不是陆地，甚至都不是寻常意义上的雾，而是完完全全的黑暗。很难用语言描述那是什么样的景象，不过你可以想象自己在向一个铁路隧道大张的洞口里张望——隧道不是太长就是太蜿蜒，所以你看不见远处那一头透进来的光。你知道那会是一种怎样的感觉。刚开始的几英尺，明亮的日光照进来，你还能看见铁路、枕木和砂砾；接着所见的一切都隐入了一片昏暗之中；再接着，虽然没有明显分界，但一切都突然消失在平静而密实的黑暗之中。此时在这里也正是如此。起初船头驶进几英尺，他们还能看见蓝绿色的浪涌；再驶进一段后，他们只见海水变得暗暗的、灰蒙蒙的，就像日落后稍晚一些的水面看上去的样子；可再往前驶一段，便沉入了无边的黑暗之中，仿佛他们进入了无月亦无星的夜晚。

凯斯宾冲水手长大喊，让他往回划，而此时除了划桨手，其他人都跑到船头来仔细朝前张望着。不过即便睁大了眼睛也什么都看不到。身后是大海和太阳，眼前则是一片黑暗。

“我们要驶进去吗？”凯斯宾终于问道。

“我不建议这么做。”德里宁说道。

“船长说得对。”几个水手也点头道。

“我也这么觉得。”爱德蒙也说。

露西和尤斯塔斯没有说话，不过他们心里很高兴目前事态发展的走向。可突然间，雷佩契普清脆的嗓音打破了沉默。

“为什么不呢？”他说，“有谁能给我解释一下，为什么我们不继续前进吗？”

没人急着想要解释，于是雷佩契普继续道：

“如果我现在面对的是一群农民或者奴隶，”他说，“我可能会以为这个建议是懦夫提出来的。不过我希望今后在纳尼亚不会有传言说，一群正值盛年的高贵皇族仅仅因为害怕黑暗就落荒而逃了。”

“可是费力地在这片黑暗之中前进又会有什么用处呢？”德里宁问道。

“用处？”雷佩契普反问道，“您说用处，船长？倘若您所说的用处指的是填饱肚子或塞满钱袋，我承认这一点用处都没有。不过据我所知，我们此番出海并不是为了寻找什么有用处的东西，而是为了追寻荣誉和冒险。如今有一场伟大的冒险摆在我们眼前，而如果我们现在回头，便没有荣誉可言了。”

有几个水手低声嘟哝了几句，像是在说“去他的荣誉吧”，可凯斯宾开口道：

“噢，雷佩契普，你真是讨厌。我都有点后悔当初没把你留在纳尼亚了。好吧！既然你都这么说了，我想我们只好继续前进了。除非露西不愿意？”

露西心里真有一百个不情愿，不过她还是大声地说：“我很乐意。”

“那么陛下您至少下令掌灯吧？”德里宁说道。

“当然，当然，”凯斯宾说道，“你看着办吧，船长。”

于是挂在船尾、船头和桅顶的三盏挂灯都点亮了，德里宁又命人在船中点燃了两把火炬，不过在阳光下显得微弱无力。接着，除了在下面划桨的人，其他人都全副武装在甲板上集合，拔出剑来摆成战斗的队列各就各位；露西和两名弓箭手站在战斗桅楼上，拉着弓，箭也已在弦上，做好了准备；莱纳尔夫站在船头，准备好了线绳测量水深；雷佩契普、爱德蒙、尤斯塔斯和凯斯宾身披熠熠生辉的铠甲，同他站在一起；德里宁则掌着船舵。

“现在，以阿斯兰之名，向前进发吧！”凯斯宾高声喊道，“划得慢一些，稳一些。每个人都保持安静，仔细听好命令。”

人们开始划桨，“黎明踏浪”号发出了“嘎吱”的声音，随后便开始缓缓向前行驶了。露西高高地站在战斗桅楼上，这里的视野很好，她能够准确地看到他们是何时驶入黑暗之中的。阳光还没有离开船尾，船头就已经消失在了黑暗中。露西看着“黎明踏浪”号驶入黑暗之中，前一刻镀金的船尾、蓝色的海洋和天空都还在一片明媚的阳光之中，而下一刻大海与天空都消匿不见了，而船尾原本几乎可以忽略不计的灯光，现在却成了唯一可以指示船身尽头的光源。露西可以看见德里宁黑色的身影蹲伏在挂灯前掌舵，在她的下方，两把火炬照亮了甲板的两小块，火光闪烁着，映在了剑和头盔上，在前头的水手舱处还有一个挂灯亮着光。除了甲板上的灯光，战斗桅楼也为正上方桅顶处的灯光所照亮，看起来就好像一个小小的明亮世界，孤独地飘在茫茫黑暗之中。而这些灯光本身，就像你偏偏在不恰当的时间点了灯一样，看上去有点怪异，让人毛骨悚然。她还觉得有些刺骨的冰冷。

他们究竟在黑暗中航行了多久，没有人知道。要不是桨架发出的“嘎吱”声与船桨划水所产生的溅浪声，他们甚至都不觉得船在移动。爱德蒙站在船头凝望着前方，可是除了眼前水面上挂灯的倒影，其他什么也看不见。倒影看上去有些虚渺，掀起的细浪使前进的船头显得沉重、狭小而又死气沉沉。时间在一分一秒地流逝，除了一直在干活的划桨手，其他人都冷得开始瑟瑟发抖了。

突然，从某个地方——此时大家都没有了方向感，分不清东南西北——传来了一声叫喊，听那声音，要么不是人类发出来的，要么这个人正处于极度恐惧之中，几乎丧失了人性。

凯斯宾还试图说些什么——他的嘴实在太干了——就在这时，响起了雷佩契普尖细的声音，在这一片寂静中听起来比往常更响亮。

“谁在叫喊？”他尖声道，“来者是敌是友？如果你是敌人，我们并不惧怕；如果你是朋友，我们就会让你的敌人领教我们的厉害。”

“发发慈悲吧！”那个声音喊道，“发发慈悲吧！哪怕这只是又一个梦境，也请赐我一些快乐吧！带我上船吧，带上我，哪怕你会把我杀死。看在诸神的分上，不要就此消散，留下我一个人在这个可怕的地方。”

“你在哪儿？”凯斯宾喊道，“欢迎你上船来。”

又传来了一声叫喊，不知是出于快乐还是恐惧，接着他们能听见有人在朝着船游来。

“伙计们，准备好把他拉上来。”凯斯宾下令道。

“遵命，陛下。”水手们应道。几个人拿着绳子围在左舷墙，其中一人举着火把，探出舷墙外很远。在黑暗之中，水里浮现出一张胡子拉碴的苍白的脸来，接着，十几个人一道合力，又是拉又是扯，终于将这个陌生人拉了上来。

爱德蒙觉得自己从没见过这么落魄的人。尽管他看上去年纪并不老迈，可却顶着一头乱蓬蓬的白发，脸庞瘦削而憔悴，至于衣服，不过是身上挂了几块湿漉漉的破布。可最引人注目的还是他的一双眼睛，睁得极大，看上去就好像连眼睑都没有了，只是瞪大了，仿佛恐惧至极而倍受煎熬。他刚在甲板上立定，便说道：

“飞吧！快飞吧！带着你们的船一起飞走吧！快划桨，划得再快些，用尽全力划，赶紧离开这个受诅咒的不祥之地。”

“你冷静一些，”雷佩契普说道，“告诉我们这里到底有什么危险。我们可不会飞啊。”

这个陌生人听到雷佩契普的声音吓了一跳，因为之前他没注意到身边竟有一只老鼠。

“不过你们在这里可以飞，”他喘着气说道，“在这座岛上，人们的梦境都会成真。”

“啊，我找这座岛找了很久很久了，”一个水手说道，“我想要是我们能登上这座岛，我就能和南希结婚了。”

“我的汤姆也能活过来了。”另一个人说道。

“愚蠢！”这个男人说道，生气地跺着脚，“我就是听信了这种话才来到这里的，现在我倒宁愿自己淹死在海里，或者从没出生过。你们听清楚我说的了吗？在这里，梦境——梦境，你们明白吗——变成现实，都变成真的了。不是白日梦，是梦境。”

这话说完后，人群中有大概半分钟的沉默，接着只听见盔甲碰撞的“哐哐”响动，船员们以最快的速度跌跌撞撞地向主舱口跑去，奔向船桨，铆足了劲儿划桨；德里宁跑到船尾去转动船舵，而水手长则以前所未闻的节奏飞快地喊着口号。因为就在刚才的半分钟里，人人都想起了自己做过的一些梦——那些让人从此不敢入眠的梦境——由此意识到，登上这样一个梦境变为现实的小岛意味着什么。

只有雷佩契普不为所动。

“陛下呀陛下，”它说道，“难道您就打算容忍他们这样胆小怯懦、违抗圣命吗？瞧瞧，大家都恐慌得溃不成军了。”

“快划，使劲划，”凯斯宾大喊道，“使出全身的劲儿来划。船头的方向对吗，德里宁？随你怎么说，雷佩契普。有些东西就是人所无法面对的。”

“那么，我还真得庆幸自己不是人类。”雷佩契普生硬地鞠了一躬。

露西站在高处，下面所有的动静她都听得一清二楚。她立刻想起了自己的一个梦，她曾费了好大力气想忘记这个梦，可现在它又回到了脑海里，挥之不去，而且栩栩如生，仿佛她刚刚从梦中醒过来似的。原来在他们身后的小岛和这一片黑暗竟是这个梦！有那么一刻，她很想跑下去到甲板上和爱德蒙还有凯斯宾待在一起。可这又有什么用呢？如果梦境真的会成为现实，等她跑到他们那里时，恐怕爱德蒙和凯斯宾自己也会变得很可怕。她抓紧了战斗桅楼的栏杆，努力让自己镇静下来。人们都在拼命往有光的地方划回去——再过一小会儿就好了。可是，倘若此刻能回去就最好了！

虽然划桨声很大，却依然无法掩盖船身周遭的死寂。

人人都知道最好什么都别听，不要伸长了耳朵捕捉黑暗中的任何动静。可是没人能忍得住。很快人人都听到了声音，而且每个人听到的声音都是不一样的。

“你有没有听到那里有……像是……像是一把大剪刀在一开一合的声音？”尤斯塔斯颤颤巍巍地问莱纳尔夫。

“嘘！”莱纳尔夫说道，“我听见他们正从船两边爬上来。”

“它就快要落到桅杆上了。”凯斯宾说道。

“哎哟！”一个水手说，“开始敲锣了。我就知道他们会敲锣。”

凯斯宾试着什么都不去看（尤其不能一直回头看），他走到船尾去找德里宁。

“德里宁，”他压低了声音说道，“我们划进来多久了？我是说，划到我们救起那个陌生人的地方，用了多久时间？”

“五分钟，也许吧。”德里宁悄声回答道，“怎么了？”

“因为我们现在已经往回划了不止五分钟了。”

德里宁掌舵的手颤抖着，一滴冷汗顺着他的脸庞划了下来。同样的想法在船上的每个人心里蔓延着。“我们应该永远都出不去了，永远都出不去了。”划桨手们抱怨道，“他行驶的方向不对。我们一直在原地打转呢。我们永远也出不去了。”那个陌生人一直蜷缩成一团躺在甲板上，此时他坐了起来，爆发出一阵可怕的尖笑声。

“永远也出不去了！”他叫喊道，“没错。这还用说吗？我们再也出不去了。我真是傻呀，还以为他们会这样轻易放我走呢。不，不，我们永远也出不去了！”

露西把头靠在战斗桅楼的墙边，悄声说道：“阿斯兰，阿斯兰，如果你真的爱我们，就请帮帮我们吧。”虽然黑暗并未消退半分，可她开始感觉有一点儿——一丁点儿的——好受些了。“不管怎么说，现在我们都还没事。”她心想。

“看啊！”莱纳尔夫那粗哑的嗓音从船头传来。前方出现了一个微弱的小光斑，他们都在看的时候，从那儿投来了一大束光，落在了船上。这束光芒并没有改变周遭的黑暗，可是整艘船都被点亮了，就好像是探照灯打在了上面一样。凯斯宾眨了眨眼，朝四周仔细地张望，他看到同伴的脸上都是一副狂喜而又发愣的表情。人人都盯着一个方向看；每个人身后都拖着黑色的、轮廓分明的影子。

露西循着光束向前看去，看到里面有什么东西。它起初看上去像一个十字架，接着又像一架飞机，再后来像一只风筝，最后“嗡嗡”拍打着翅膀飞到了他们头顶，露西这才看清原来是一只信天翁。它绕着桅杆飞了三圈，接着在船头镀金龙首的头冠上栖息了片刻。它鸣叫着，嗓音嘹亮甜美，仿佛在说着什么话，可是没人能听得懂。随后它展开双翼，升了起来，开始慢慢往前飞，朝右舷方向飞去。德里宁随即转舵跟了上去，丝毫不怀疑那信天翁的指引会有错误。可是除了露西，没人知道那信天翁在绕着桅杆盘旋的时候，悄声对她说：“要有勇气，亲爱的。”她敢肯定，那是阿斯兰的声音，还有一阵芬芳的吐息伴着声音拂在她的脸上。

过了一会儿，前方那深不见底的黑暗转变成了灰蒙蒙的一片，接着，他们还没敢开始抱什么希望，“黎明踏浪”号便已经冲出了黑暗，回到了阳光下那个温暖碧蓝的世界里。在那一刹那，所有人都明白再也没有什么好害怕的了，也从未有过什么可害怕的。他们眨巴着眼睛，四下张望着。“黎明踏浪”号的光彩明艳令他们感到诧异，他们还以为方才的黑暗会如同污垢一般附着在白色、绿色和金色的船身上呢。随后他们一个个都开始笑逐颜开了。

“我想我们刚才还真是庸人自扰啊。”莱纳尔夫说道。

露西赶紧跑下去，来到了甲板上，发现大家都围在那个新来的人身旁。只见他欣喜若狂，高兴得半天说不出话来，只能深深凝望着大海和太阳，抚摸着舷墙和绳子，就好像是在确定自己真的清醒着，任由喜悦的泪水划下脸庞。

“谢谢你们，”他终于开口道，“你们把我从……算了，我不想再提起那个地方。你们救了我，现在请告诉我你们是谁吧。我是纳尼亚的一个台尔马人，在我还有些名声的时候，人们都叫我鲁珀勋爵。

“而我，”凯斯宾说道，“则是纳尼亚的国王凯斯宾，我此番出海正是为了寻找你和你的同伴们，你们都是我父亲的朋友。”

鲁珀勋爵随即跪倒在地，亲吻着国王的手。“陛下，”他说，“您是我在这个世界上最想见到的人。请您答应我一个恳求。”

“什么恳求？”凯斯宾问道。

“再也不要把我带到那儿去了。”他说着指了指船尾。大家纷纷回头看去。可眼前只有一片碧蓝的海洋，连着碧蓝的天空。黑暗岛和那一片黑暗永远地消失了。

“哎呀！”鲁珀勋爵失声喊道，“你们把它摧毁了！”

“我想这功劳不在我们。”露西说道。

“陛下，”德里宁说道，“现在风向正适合往东南航行。我能否召集伙计们把船帆扬起来？他们也忙活半天了，扬起帆来之后，大家就可以回到吊床上休息休息了。”

“当然，”凯斯宾说道，“把格罗格酒也端上来，大家一起喝吧。嗨——哎——我觉得我能睡上一整天。”

于是这天下午，他们一路欢声笑语，乘着风朝东南方向驶去。不过没人注意到那只信天翁是什么时候消失的。

第十三章
三个沉睡者

风一直没有停歇，不过却是一天天地变小，直到最后海浪成了微微的涟漪，船缓缓滑行，如同航行在湖泊中。每天夜里，他们能看到东方升起新的星座，这些此前在纳尼亚从未见到过。露西怀着喜悦与恐惧交织的心情想，或许此前从未有人见过这些新星座。那些新的星星又大又明亮，这些日子的夜晚也十分温暖。大多数人都在甲板上席地而睡，谈天说地直至夜深，也有人趴在船边上，看着船头掀起海浪，泡沫闪烁着舞蹈。

在一个美得令人窒息的傍晚，身后的落日泼洒着明艳无比的红色和紫色，晕染开很大一片去，天空仿佛也因此显得更加广袤无垠了。他们看见右舷船头前方出现了一处陆地。慢慢地，陆地离他们越来越近了，身后的落日余晖将这座新岛屿的海角和岬角染得好似着了火一般。不过此时他们正沿着小岛的海岸线航行，西边的海角出现在船尾，在红色天空的映衬下呈黑色，轮廓分明犀利，仿佛是从硬纸板上裁下来的剪影。随后他们便能看清这座小岛的模样了，这里没有高山，唯有许多平缓如枕的山坡。从岛上飘来一股十分动人的香气——露西形容那是“一种若有似无的、紫色的味道”，爱德蒙说她在胡说（莱恩斯心里也是这么想的），不过凯斯宾却说：“我明白你的意思。”

他们稳稳地笔直航行着，经过了一个又一个岬角，希望能找到一处够深的海港，不过最后却只能在一个宽阔而低浅的海湾里将就着停泊。尽管海上波平浪静，不过难免有海浪冲刷到沙地上，他们没办法如愿将“黎明踏浪”号停泊在更靠里面的地方。他们只好在离沙滩较远处抛了锚，随后搭乘小船颠簸着上了岸，弄得浑身湿淋淋的。鲁珀勋爵待在“黎明踏浪”号上没有下去，因为他不太想再看见岛屿了。人们在这个岛上逗留的时候，一直都能听见海浪拍岸的声音。

除了两个人留下来守着小船，其余的人都跟着凯斯宾朝小岛内陆进发了，不过走得并不远，因为这会儿时间已经不早了，天色很快就会变暗，如果要探索小岛就有些太晚了。不过也着实没有必要走得太远去冒险。海湾口一处平坦的山谷里没有小路或者小径，也没有任何居住的迹象。脚下到处是纤细的、富有弹性的草，长得不高却十分茂密，爱德蒙和露西都以为那是石南，不过精通植物学的尤斯塔斯却说那不是石南，他很有可能是对的。不过这草和石南应当是同一种类的。

他们离开海岸走了不到一箭之遥，德里宁说道：“看！那是什么？”大家便都停下了脚步。

“那些是大树吗？”凯斯宾说道。

“我觉得是塔。”尤斯塔斯说道。

“有可能是巨人。”爱德蒙低声说道。

“要想弄清楚到底是什么，过去一看便知。”雷佩契普说着，抽出佩剑，身姿矫健地跑到众人前面了。

“我觉得那是一处废墟。”当他们走近些时，露西说道，而她的猜测是目前几个人当中最准的。此刻出现在他们眼前的是一个很宽敞的长方形建筑，地上铺着光滑的石头，四周灰柱环绕，不过没有屋顶。一张长长的餐桌横贯其间，从这一头一直到那一头，鲜红色的桌布垂下来几乎拖到地面。餐桌两边各有许多石椅，雕刻繁复，上面还铺着丝制坐垫。不过桌子上却摆着宴席——他们从未见到过如此丰盛的宴席，即便是至尊国王彼得在凯尔帕拉维尔的宫殿里设宴，也不及这里丰盛。桌上有火鸡、鹅肉、孔雀肉，有猪头和切片鹿肉，还有做成扬起满帆的船，或者龙和大象模样的派，有冰激凌布丁、色泽鲜艳的龙虾和肉质晶亮的三文鱼，还有各种坚果、葡萄、菠萝、桃子、石榴、西瓜和番茄。桌上还摆着金银制的酒壶和形状新奇古怪的杯子；水果的芬芳和葡萄酒的馥郁萦绕在他们鼻间，仿佛承诺着一切美好和幸福。

“我的天哪！”露西惊叹道。

他们慢慢走过去，谁都没有出声。

“可是客人在哪儿呢？”尤斯塔斯突然问道。

“我们可以做客，先生。”莱恩斯说道。

“快看！”爱德蒙尖声说道。此时他们已经来到了石柱之间，站在石板上。大家纷纷朝爱德蒙指的方向看去。那些椅子并不都是空的，桌头以及两边的椅子上坐着什么东西——准确地说，坐着三个东西。

“那些是什么？”露西悄声说道，“看上去好像三只河狸坐在桌边。”

“也有可能是个大鸟窝。”爱德蒙说道。

“我看更像一大堆干草。”凯斯宾说道。

雷佩契普跑上前去，跳上了一张椅子，接着又跳上桌子，从桌尾一路向前奔去，在镶着宝石的杯子、水果高叠起的三角塔和象牙白的盐盅之间灵活地穿行着，如同一名舞者。它径直奔向桌头那几堆神秘的灰色东西，仔细看了看，摸了摸，随后大喊道：

“我觉得他们没有战斗力了。”

此时大家都走近了，这才看见原来坐在这三张椅子里的是三个男人，不过得仔细端详才能看出是人。他们灰色的头发长得遮住了眼睛，几乎盖住了整张脸；而他们的胡须已经长得铺满了桌子，朝四周蔓延开来，如同黑莓灌木一般缠住了盘子和高脚杯，相互缠结着，最终汇聚成一堆毛发，顺着桌沿垂到地上；而他们身后的头发从后脑勺一直垂下来遮过了椅背，将他们整个人都包藏住了。事实上，这三个人几乎都被毛发覆盖了。

“死了吗？”凯斯宾问道。

“我觉得没有，陛下。”雷佩契普答道，他用两只爪子拨开一缕毛发，捧起了他们的一只手，“这个人的身子还是温热的，还有脉搏呢。”

“这个也是，还有这个。”德里宁也说道。

“啊，原来他们只是睡着了！”尤斯塔斯恍然大悟。

“不过这个觉睡得还真够久的。”爱德蒙说道，“他们的头发和胡须都长成这样了。”

“他们肯定是中了魔法睡着的。”露西说，“我们一踏上这座岛，我就感觉这里充满了魔法。噢！你们觉不觉得，我们来到这里就是为了解除魔法的呢？”

“我们可以试试。”凯斯宾说着，开始摇晃离他最近的那个人。有那么一刻，大家都觉得他就要成功了，因为这个人的呼吸变得沉重起来，咕哝道：“我不要再往东走了。我们划桨回纳尼亚去。”可他说完这句话便又接着睡得更沉了。他重重的脑袋朝桌面又垂下了几英寸，任凭旁人再怎么叫他也没用了。第二个人也是同样的情形。“生来不能像动物那样活着。趁你还有机会，到东方去吧——那是太阳升起的陆地。”说完便又睡着了。第三个人只说了句“请给我一些芥末，谢谢”，便又沉沉睡去了。

“划桨回纳尼亚去，是吗？”德里宁说。

“是的，”凯斯宾点点头，“你说得对，德里宁。我想我们的寻人之旅可以就此画上句号了。我们来找找他们的指环吧。没错了，这些是他们的纹饰。这位是莱维廉勋爵，这位是阿尔戈兹勋爵，而这位是玛威拉莫恩勋爵。

“可我们带不走他们啊。”露西说，“我们应该如何是好呢？”

“请各位陛下见谅，”莱恩斯开口道，“不过几位为什么不坐下边吃边谈呢？这样的晚餐可不是每天都能看见的。”

“说什么也不行！”凯斯宾制止道。

“没错，没错！”几个水手也应和道，“这里有太多魔法了。我们还是越早回到船上越好。”

“照现在这样子看来，”雷佩契普分析道，“这三位勋爵正是吃了这些食物才睡着的，一睡就是七年。”

“为了活命，这些吃的我可是碰都不想碰。”德里宁说道。

“天色好像暗得太快了些。”莱纳尔夫说道。

“快回到船上去吧，快回去吧。”其他人纷纷嘟囔道。

“我真的觉得，”爱德蒙也说，“他们说得有道理。我们可以明天再决定应当拿这三个长睡不醒的人怎么办。既然我们都不敢吃这些食物，那么今晚待在这里也没有什么意义了。整座小岛都笼罩着一股魔法——和危险的气息。”

“我完全赞同爱德蒙陛下的看法，”雷佩契普说道，“这样做是考虑到全体船员的安危。不过我自己打算坐在桌边，直到太阳升起。”

“可这究竟是为什么呢？”尤斯塔斯说道。

“因为，”老鼠跃跃欲试地说，“这是一场十分伟大的冒险，而对我而言，再大的危险也不足为惧，我可不想因为一时的恐惧而留下未解之谜，就这么不明不白地回到纳尼亚去。”

“我和你一起留在这里，雷佩。”爱德蒙被打动了。

“我也是。”凯斯宾说。

“还有我。”露西说。随后尤斯塔斯也自愿报名要留下来。这对他而言是很难得的勇敢之举，因为他在踏上“黎明踏浪”号之前从未看过相关书籍，也没有听说过相关的故事，这使得他的境遇比其他人更艰难些。

“我恳请陛下——”德里宁开口道，可话未说完，凯斯宾便打断了他。

“不行，我的船长，”凯斯宾说道，“你的使命是与‘黎明踏浪’号同在。更何况你已经辛苦劳作了一天，而我们五个都在休息。”他们又争了好一会儿，不过最后还是遂了凯斯宾的意。船员们在一片暮色中走回岸边，而留在这里守夜的五个人都忍不住觉得饥肠辘辘，或许只有雷佩契普除外。

他们花了些时间在这张充满危险的桌子前挑选座位。或许人人都想着同一个理由，只不过没人大声说出来。因为这的确是个很棘手的抉择。一方面他们没法忍受一整晚坐在那几个毛茸茸的人旁边，虽然他们没死，可是却也与寻常活人截然不同。另一方面，要是坐在桌尾，离他们很远，这样越到夜深就越看不清他们了，也不知道他们有没有动，甚至有可能到了午夜两点就一点儿都看不见他们了，这样可不行。于是他们绕着桌子转呀转，有的说，“这里怎么样？”有的说，“要不再往前挪挪”或者“为什么不坐到对面去呢？”直到最后他们在靠近桌子中间的位置坐下了，这样比坐在桌尾离那三个人更近些。这时大约是晚上十点钟，天已近乎全黑了。那些陌生的新星座在东边闪耀着光芒。露西更希望那些是猎豹座、船座以及纳尼亚天空的其他老星座。

他们穿着航海披风，将自己包裹得严严实实，然后便坐着等待黎明。起初还有人试图说说话，不过未能聊上几句。他们就这么一直坐着，坐了很久。一整晚，他们都听见海浪拍打在沙滩上，发出“沙沙”的声音。

接下来的几个小时漫长如同几个世纪，他们都打了会儿盹，接着又全都一下子惊醒过来。天上星星的排列位置已经变得与他们先前看的时候大不一样了。天空黑到极致，唯有东边冒出了些许极其微弱的灰色。他们很冷，而且口干舌燥，身体僵硬。不过他们谁都没有说话，因为此时终于有事情发生了。

在他们面前，在石柱之外，有一座矮山丘。此时，山坡上打开了一扇门，门口透出光来，接着一个人走了出来，门在其身后又合上了。这个人手里提着光，他们几人在黑夜里唯一能看清的也就是那束光了。这个人影缓缓走近，最后隔着桌子在他们对面站定。现在他们能看清了，那是一个高挑的少女，身上单穿了一件淡蓝色长袍，双臂露在外面。她头上什么也没有戴，一头金色长发披在后背。他们呆呆地看着她，仿佛生平第一次知道何为真正的美丽。

她手中托着一个银烛台，里面一根长长的蜡烛闪着烛光，她将烛台放在了桌子上。无论夜里早些时候是否有海风从海边吹来，现在也一定都停了，因为烛火笔直而静止地燃烧着，就好像在一个门窗紧闭，连窗帘都拉得严严实实的房间里一样。桌子上的金盘银碟在烛光中闪耀着。

露西现在才注意到桌子上有个和桌子一样长的物件，她此前一直忽略了。那是一把用石头打造而成的刀，钢铁一般锋利，看上去如此冷冽而又古老。

他们都没有说话。接着——先是雷佩契普，随后是凯斯宾——他们俩都站了起来，因为他们觉得这位少女一定不是普通人。

“从远方来到阿斯兰之桌的客人们，”少女说道，“你们为何不饮不食呢？”

“女士，”凯斯宾说道，“我们对这些食物心怀畏惧，因为我们猜想正是这些食物使得我们的朋友中了魔法，长眠不醒。”

“他们从未尝过这些食物。”少女说道。

“请告诉我们，”露西说，“他们怎么了？”

“七年前，”少女娓娓道来，“他们乘船来到这里，船已破败不堪，船帆已成破布，木架摇摇欲坠。一同来的还有其他一些人，是一些水手，当他们走到餐桌前，有一个人说，‘这里是个好地方。我们不如卷起帆布，不要再划桨前进了，就在这里安安稳稳度过余生吧！’第二个人说，‘不，我们应该再度启航往西行进，回到纳尼亚去，说不定米拉兹已经死了呢。’可第三个人颇有些专横，跳起来说，‘绝对不行。我们是台尔马的勇士，不是粗鄙的野人。除了不断追寻冒险，我们还应做什么呢？而且不管怎么说，我们的人生已过大半，就用余生探索日出之后的无人世界吧。’他们三人起了争执，相持不下之际，他抓起了桌子上的石之刃，意欲和同伴搏斗。不过石之刃并不是他可以随便碰的。他的手指刚握上刀柄，三人便陷入了沉沉的长眠。除非魔法被解除，否则他们永远也不会醒过来。”

“石之刃是什么？”尤斯塔斯问道。

“你们没人知道石之刃吗？”少女说道。

“我——我觉得，”露西开口道，“我以前好像见到过类似的。很久很久以前，白女巫正是用一把和石之刃很像的刀在石桌边杀死了阿斯兰。”

“那正是这把石之刃，”少女说道，“这把刃被带到了这里永久地保管起来，直至世界末日。”

爱德蒙从刚才起便看上去越来越不适，此时他开口说话了。

“是这样的，”他说，“我希望自己不是个懦夫——我是指在吃这些食物方面——我敢保证我不是有意要这样无礼。不过我们航行这一路上经历过许多奇奇怪怪的冒险，很多事情并非表面上看起来的那样。我看着您的脸时，情不自禁地想要相信您所说的话；可那也有可能是女巫在蛊惑人心。我们怎么知道您是我们的朋友而非敌人呢？”

“你没法知道，”少女淡淡说道，“你只能选择相信或不相信。”

片刻沉默后，传来了雷佩契普细细的声音。

“陛下，”他对凯斯宾说，“劳烦您替我倒些那个酒壶里的葡萄酒，斟满我的酒杯。酒壶太大了，我提不动。我想敬这位女士一杯酒。”

凯斯宾照办了，而雷佩契普站在桌子上，用两只小爪子捧着一只金酒杯，说道：“女士，我向您表示忠诚。”接着他便开始对着冷孔雀肉大快朵颐起来。很快其他人便纷纷效仿。大家都饥肠辘辘，而这些食物，虽然未必适合一大清早当早饭吃，不过深夜当夜宵却是再合适不过了。

“为什么这个叫作阿斯兰之桌呢？”露西不解地问。

“因为这是受阿斯兰之命摆在这里的。”少女回答道，“为来自远方的客人而准备。有人称这座岛屿为‘世界尽头’，因为尽管你们还可以继续航行下去，这里却是尽头的开端。”

“可是这些食物是怎么保存下来的呢？”一向务实的尤斯塔斯问道。

“每天食物吃完了又烹饪新鲜的，日日反复如此。”少女说道，“稍后你们会亲眼看见的。”

“那么我们应该拿他们几个长眠不醒的人如何是好呢？”凯斯宾犯愁地问，“在我的朋友们所处的世界（说到这里他朝尤斯塔斯和佩文西两兄妹扬了扬头），他们有一个童话故事，讲的是一位王子或是国王的人来到了一座城堡，那里的人都中了魔法长眠不醒。在故事里他苦苦想要解除魔法未果，最后还是亲吻了公主才打破了诅咒。”

“不过在这儿可不一样，”少女说道，“在这儿，王子只有解开了魔法才能亲吻公主。”

“那么，”凯斯宾说道，“以阿斯兰之名，请告诉我如何能够解除魔法吧！”

“我的父亲会教你的。”少女说道。

“您的父亲！”众人说道，“他是谁？他在哪儿？”

“你们看。”少女说着，转身指向山坡上的那扇门。现在他们可以看得更清楚一些了，因为方才他们说话的时候，星星渐渐消淡了些，东边灰蒙蒙的天际显出道道白光来。

第十四章
世界尽头的开端

那扇门缓缓打开了，走出了一个人来，身形与这个少女一般高挑挺直，不过没有她那么苗条。那人没有举烛火，可是光芒似乎从他周身散发出来。那人走近时，露西发现那是一位老者。他蓄着银色胡须，那胡须一直垂到了他赤裸的双足上；一头银色的长发披散下来垂到了后脚跟；而他身上的长袍看起来就像是由银色绵羊身上的绒毛编织而成。他看上去那么温和而又肃穆，于是所有来客再一次起身，静静站着。

不过老人一言未发，没有和来客们说话，而是走到了桌子另一边，和他女儿面对面站着。随后两人都抬起了手臂举到身前，脸齐齐地面向东方，然后保持着这样的姿势，开始唱起歌来。我真希望我能把这首歌也写下来，不过在场没有一个人记得歌词。露西后来回忆说，那是一首调子高得近乎刺耳，却又十分优美缥缈的歌谣，十分适合清晨天蒙蒙亮时歌唱。他们唱着歌时，东边天际灰色的云层慢慢拨散开去，耀眼的白色区域越变越大，直到整片天空都泛了白，大海如同银盘，闪烁着璀璨光芒。又过了很久（不过那父女俩还一直在唱歌），东方开始变为红色，最后天空澄净无云，朝阳从海面上升起来，射出万丈光芒，落在长条形餐桌的金盘银碟上，落在石之刃上。

曾经有那么一两次，这些纳尼亚人还在思考，在这片海域见到的旭日是不是比在家乡见到的更大。这一次他们能够确定了。在东部海域见到的朝阳确实比在纳尼亚见到的更大。阳光照射在晨露和餐桌上，反射并闪耀着明艳的光芒，比他们生平所见的所有晨光都要耀眼夺目。正如事后爱德蒙所说的那样：“尽管在那次旅途中发生了很多听起来刺激惊险的事情，可是那次的日出真的是最为惊心动魄的时刻了。”因此，此刻他们知道自己真正抵达了“世界尽头”的开端。

随后，似乎有什么东西从冉冉升起的太阳中心朝他们飞来，不过他们自然无法直视那个方向去仔细辨认。这时候，天空中突然充满了歌声，那些声音哼唱着那个少女和她父亲吟唱歌谣的旋律，不过调子更为凌乱随意，语言也叫人听不懂。很快，他们便看见了歌声的来源。那是一群鸟，体型庞大，羽翼洁白，有成百上千只，它们飞落在各个角落：草地上、石板上、餐桌上，还有人们的肩膀上、手上、脑袋上，最后看上去就好像下了一场大雪似的。而且就像雪一样，这些白鸟不仅将一切变成了白色，还模糊了一切的形状和棱角。不过，露西透过停在身上白鸟的羽翼缝隙向外看去，发现一只鸟的喙中衔着一个小水果似的东西，朝老人飞去——除非那是块燃烧着的煤炭，那也不是没有可能，因为那东西看上去亮得叫人无法直视。这只鸟把那样东西放进了老人的口中。

接着鸟儿们停止了歌唱，开始在餐桌上忙活起来。当鸟儿们从杯盘狼藉的餐桌上再一次飞起来时，桌上的一切食物和饮料都消失了。成百上千只鸟还带走了所有不能吃也不能喝的东西，比如骨头、果皮还有瓜壳，原路朝着太阳的方向飞回去了。不过，因为这时候它们没有在唱歌，“嗡嗡”的振翅声便显得异常响亮，震得空气都在颤抖。此时的餐桌上已被鸟儿收拾得干干净净，空无一物，那三位来自纳尼亚的勋爵依然在沉沉睡着。

此时老人终于转过身来面朝着来客们，欢迎他们的到来。

“先生，”凯斯宾说道，“您能否告诉我们，应当如何解除让这三位纳尼亚勋爵长睡不起的魔法呢？”

“我很乐意告诉你，我的孩子。”老人说道，“要想解除魔法，你们必须航行到‘世界尽头’，或者到你们所能到达的最遥远处，而且你们当中至少有一个人得留在那儿，不能和其他人一起回来。”

“那么留下来的那个人会怎么样呢？”雷佩契普问道。

“他必须待在远东尽头，再也不能回到原来的世界。”

“这正合我的心意。”雷佩契普说道。

“先生，请问我们现在接近‘世界尽头’了吗？”凯斯宾问道，“您是否了解比这里再往东去的大海和陆地是怎样一副光景呢？”

“很久以前我见过那里，”老人说道，“不过是从很远的地方看过去的。我恐怕没办法告诉你们水手们需要知道的事情了。”

“您是说，那时候您在空中飞吗？”尤斯塔斯脱口而出。

“我那会儿所在的地方可远比空中还要往上呢，孩子。”老人回答道，“我是拉曼度。不过我看到你们面面相觑，看来是没听说过这个名字。也难怪，我很久以前起就不再是天上的一颗星星了，那时候你们都还没有出生呢。如今所有的星座都变了。”

“我的天哪！”爱德蒙低声喃喃道，“他是一颗退休了的星星！”

“您已经不再是一颗星星了吗？”露西问道。

“我还是一颗星星，只是在休息罢了，我的小姑娘。”拉曼度回答道，“我最后一次完成使命之后，我的衰老年迈之态你们完全无法想象，于是我被带到了这座岛上来。我现在已经不像过去那样衰老了。每天早晨鸟儿都会从太阳谷中替我衔来一颗火莓，而每吃下一颗火莓，我的岁数就会减少一些。等到我变得如同初生婴儿一般年轻时，我就又要变成一颗星星升到天上去了（因为我们现在正处于地球的东部边沿位置），然后再一次跳起很棒的舞蹈来。”

“在我们的世界，”尤斯塔斯说道，“星星就是一团巨大的燃烧着的气体球。”

“即便是在你的世界，我的孩子，那也不是星星本身，而仅仅是星星的构成。在这里的世界，你们已经见过某颗星星了，因为我想你们应该都见过柯瑞金了吧。”

“他也是一颗退休了的星星吗？”露西问道。

“哦，并非如此。”拉曼度说道，“与其说他是在休假，不如说他是被发配去看管蠢人的。你们可以管这叫作惩罚。如果当初一切顺利、没出乱子的话，他本可以继续在南部的冬季天空中做一颗星星，再发光发热几千年。”

“他做了什么呢，先生？”凯斯宾问道。

“我的孩子，”拉曼度说道，“你是人类之子，不应当知道星星能够犯什么错。好了，我们说这些不过是在浪费时间。你们决定好了吗？是继续向东航行，留下一个人待在那里，然后其他人再回到小岛上来，如此解除魔法呢？还是你们就此西行返航？”

“陛下，”雷佩契普开口道，“这还有什么问题吗？很显然，替这三位勋爵解除魔法是我们此番出海的任务之一。”

“我也是这么想的，雷佩契普。”凯斯宾回答道，“即便不是为了解救勋爵，如果不能乘着‘黎明踏浪’号驶向‘世界尽头’，我自己也会感到十分遗憾的。不过我在想的是船员们，他们当初只是答应一同出海寻找七位勋爵，而不是前往地球的边缘。如果我们从这里出发继续向东，我们就要寻找世界的边缘，也就是东方的尽头。没人知道那儿有多远。他们都是勇敢的人，可我也能看得出来，其中有些人已经对航行感到十分疲惫了，心里渴望着船头能够朝向纳尼亚返航。我觉得要是没征得他们的同意，就不应该继续带着他们再往东去了。而且还有那个可怜的鲁珀勋爵。他的身心都已经经受过很大的摧残了。”

“我的孩子，”星星拉曼度说，“即便你希望如此，带着一群不情不愿或者被蒙在鼓里的人去‘世界尽头’，也是徒劳。这么做是没有办法解除魔法、完成伟大使命的。他们必须知道自己要去往何处以及为什么去。不过你所说的那个饱受摧残的人又是谁呢？”

凯斯宾将鲁珀的故事告诉了拉曼度。

“我可以为他提供他最需要的东西。”拉曼度说道，“在这座岛上，有着无休无止的沉睡，在沉睡中可以一夜无梦。就让他坐在这三人旁边，喝得不省人事，沉睡无梦，直至你们回来。”

“噢，就这么办吧，凯斯宾。”露西说，“我敢肯定这正是他想要的。”

就在这时，一阵嘈杂的脚步声和说话声打断了他们，原来是德里宁和船上的其他人走过来了。他们看到拉曼度和他女儿时，惊讶地停住了脚步，由于两人一看上去便不是普通人，他们纷纷摘下帽子表示敬意。有几个水手颇有些懊恼地看着桌子上的空盘子和空酒壶。

“船长，”国王对德里宁说，“请派两个人回到‘黎明踏浪’号上去给鲁珀勋爵带个信儿，告诉他剩下的三位勋爵在这里睡着了——他们睡觉时一个梦都不会做——而他可以过来一起好好睡上一觉。

这件事交代完毕后，凯斯宾便让其他人都坐下，将整件事一五一十地告诉了他们。他说完后有一阵长长的沉默，有几人在窃窃私语，最后水手长站起来，说道：

“陛下，我们几个一直有个问题，就是等我们准备返航的时候，无论是从这里还是从别的地方返航，我们应该如何回到纳尼亚。一路上除了偶尔风平浪静，其余时候吹的都是西风和西北风，如果风向不变的话，我想知道我们有多大的希望能再次见到纳尼亚。如果我们一路划桨前进，那么粮食储备肯定也会不够的。”

“你这一听就是新手说的话，”德里宁说道，“夏天的时候这些海域总有西风盛行，这是很正常的，而过了新年以后情况就变了，会有许多东风，适合我们向西航行，据很多人所说，到时候东风多得我们都不想要了。”

“是这样的，水手长。”一个出生在盖尔马的老水手说道，“一月和二月的时候，东边的天气总是不太好。请勿见怪，陛下，如果这船是由我来指挥的话，我会让大家在这里过冬，等到三月再返航。”

“你们在这里过冬的话都吃些什么呢？”尤斯塔斯问道。

“这张餐桌，”拉曼度开口道，“每天日落时分都会摆满国宴一般丰盛的美食。”

“这才对嘛！”几个水手说道。

“各位陛下、先生们、女士们，”莱纳尔夫说道，“我只想说一件事。大家没有一个人是被迫踏上这趟旅程的。我们都是自愿而来。我知道现在有些人正盯着餐桌看，心里想着国宴，而这些人在我们离开凯尔帕拉维尔的那一天也曾高声阔谈冒险，发誓不找到世界尽头就不回家。那时候还有好些人站在码头上，愿意倾尽所有和我们一起上路。我们都想着，即便是在‘黎明踏浪’号上睡在随船侍者的舱房里，也比留在家乡当一个骑士好。我不知道各位是否明白我在说什么。但我的意思是，我觉得像我们这样出海探险的人，如果回到家乡说我们去到了世界尽头的开端，却没有勇气继续往前，到时候恐怕会显得我们很愚蠢，就像——像那些单腿蠢人一样愚蠢。”

听到这话，一些水手激动地欢呼起来，不过有一些则说这样也无妨。

“看样子可不太妙，”爱德蒙悄声对凯斯宾说，“要是有一半人畏缩不前，我们该怎么办呢？”

“别着急，”凯斯宾悄声回答道，“我还有一招。”

“你不打算说点什么吗，雷佩契普？”露西悄声问道。

“不，陛下您为什么这么问呢？”雷佩契普回答的声音很大，大多数人都能听见，“我自己已经想好了计划。如果‘黎明踏浪’号还可继续航行，我便乘船向东；等到船崩坏了散架了，我就划着我的小圆舟继续向东；如果我的小圆舟也沉了，我就用四只爪子游到东边去；等到我游也游不动了，如果那时候我还没有到达阿斯兰的国度，或者随着大瀑布流到世界的边缘，那么那时候我将面朝日出的方向沉入海底，皮普西克将成为纳尼亚能言鼠的首领。”

“听听，听听，”一个水手说，“我也想这么说，除了划小圆舟那部分，因为我坐不进去。”随后他又压低了声音补充道，“我可不要被一只老鼠给比下去。”

这时凯斯宾突然站了起来。“朋友们，”他说，“我想你们可能没有完全理解我们的意思。你们说的好像我们是在低声下气乞求同行的船伴。可事实并非如此。我和我们皇室的兄弟姐妹以及他们的亲人、英勇的骑士雷佩契普，还有德里宁勋爵，我们几人现在将要踏上前往世界最边缘的旅程，我们很高兴能够从你们愿意去的人当中，挑选我们认为能够胜任这项伟大事业的人。我们可没有说任何人都可以来。因此我们现在将委派德里宁勋爵和莱恩斯船员来好好决定你们当中，谁是战场上最勇敢的战士，谁是技术最娴熟的水手，谁是血统最纯正、对国王最忠诚的臣民，谁是品行最端正、行为最清白的高尚之士。你们谨慎定夺，将名单列出来。”他顿了顿，接着又以更快的语速说，“以阿斯兰之鬣起誓！”他高喊道，“你们难道以为人人都能随便享有特权、见证‘世界尽头’吗？每个随我们前去的人，他的子孙将世世代代继承‘黎明踏浪’号的光荣头衔；我们回到凯尔帕拉维尔之后，他将得到金银珠宝或是连城封地，一辈子享受荣华富贵。好了，现在你们都散了吧。半小时之后，德里宁勋爵会把名单交给我。”

人们颇有些赫然，沉默着，随后船员们鞠了一躬，各自四散开去，不过大多三三两两地聚在一起讨论着。

“现在该轮到鲁珀勋爵了。”凯斯宾说。

不过他转身看向桌头时，却发现鲁珀已经坐在那里了。他们还在讨论时，他就已经到了，安静低调地坐在阿尔戈兹勋爵旁边。拉曼度的女儿站在他身侧，就好像刚刚才带他坐到座位上一样，而拉曼度则站在他的身后，双手放在鲁珀灰白的脑袋上。即便是在明亮的白昼，人们还是可以看见从星星拉曼度的手中发出了淡淡的银光。鲁珀憔悴的脸上浮现出了笑容，他一只手朝露西伸去，另一只手朝凯斯宾伸去。有那么一会儿，他好像想说些什么，接着他的笑容绽得更欢了，就好像他浑身感到很舒服，唇间溢出一声满足的长叹，他的脑袋朝前倾去，接着便沉沉地睡去了。

“可怜的鲁珀，”露西说道，“真高兴他现在可以好好睡一觉了。他之前一定吃了不少苦头。”

“我们还是别去想了。”尤斯塔斯哀叹一声。

与此同时，兴许是这座岛上的魔法在冥冥之中助他一臂之力，凯斯宾的一番讲话起到了他正想要的效果。许多原本急着想退出的人，此刻又不太想就这么被排除在外。而且每当有一个人宣布自己决定报名参加，没有发言的人就觉得自己一方的人越来越少，越来越坐立难安了。所以半小时还没到，已经有几个人开始围着德里宁和莱恩斯“拍马屁”了（至少在我的学校人们是这么形容的），想要留下个好印象。很快，不想去的就只剩下三个人了，而这三个人正努力说服其他人和他们待在一起。没过一会儿就只剩下一个人了。

最后剩下的那个人害怕自己被抛下，一个人留在这里，于是也改变了主意。

半小时到了以后，他们都回到了阿斯兰之桌，站到一头，而德里宁和莱恩斯则走到凯斯宾身旁坐下，开始汇报情况。凯斯宾接受了所有人的报名，唯独拒绝了那个在最后一刻改变主意的人。那人名叫皮顿克利姆，其他人出海寻找“世界尽头”期间，他一直待在这座拉曼度星岛上，心里却很希望自己能和他们一起去。他不太愿意和拉曼度父女俩聊天（拉曼度父女俩也不怎么和他说话），而且这里经常下雨，尽管每晚餐桌上都有丰盛无比的美味佳肴，他却胃口不佳，无心享用。他说一个人坐在那儿，看着那四个沉睡着的勋爵坐在桌头，心里总有些发毛（晴天雨天都是如此）。待其他人都回来时，他感觉自己与众人格格不入，以至于“黎明踏浪”号航行到孤独岛时，他没有继续跟着大家一起回去，而是留在了卡乐门，逢人便说自己在“世界尽头”遇到的冒险经历，说到最后连自己都开始相信了。所以在某种意义上，你也可以说他从此以后过上了幸福的生活。不过只有一点，他见了老鼠总是受不了。

踏上寻找“世界尽头”旅程的那天晚上，他们都坐在石柱间的大餐桌边上，一同享用了由魔法变出来的盛宴。到了第二天清早，当那些神奇的鸟儿飞来又飞走时，“黎明踏浪”号也再一次起航了。

“女士，”凯斯宾说道，“待我解除了魔法回到这里时，希望还能有幸见到您。”拉曼度的女儿看着他微微一笑。

第十五章
末海奇遇记

他们驶离拉曼度的岛屿之后不久，便开始感觉自己已经驶出了世界之外。一切看上去都不同了。首先，他们都发现自己所需要的睡眠越来越少了。他们不想上床睡觉，吃得也不多，甚至连话也不愿多说，即使说也是轻声低语。另一个不寻常的地方就是光，实在是太亮了。太阳在每天早晨升起时，看上去像是平常的两倍，甚至三倍大小。而每天早晨（露西对一点感觉最奇怪），成百上千只大白鸟飞过他们的头顶，用人类的声音唱着他们听不懂的歌谣，消失在船后，前往阿斯兰之桌赴早宴。过了一会儿它们又飞了回来，最后消失在东边的天际。

第二天下午早些时候，露西倚着左舷探出身子。“这海水多么清澈，多么美丽啊！”她自言自语道。

的确如此。突然，一个小小的黑色物体吸引了她的注意力，那个物体大概和一只鞋子大小相当，向前移动着，和船行速度一样。有那么一会儿，她以为那是什么东西漂浮在海面上。可是过了一会儿又漂来一小块变了质的面包，那是厨师刚刚从厨房里扔出来的。那一小块面包看上去就快要和这个黑色的东西撞上了，可是并没有，而是从上面漂了过去。于是露西现在知道这个黑色的东西不可能是漂浮在海面上的。突然这个黑色的东西一下子变得很大，过了一会儿又缩回了原来的大小。

露西知道自己以前一定在哪里见过这种现象——可她一时想不起是在哪里见到的了。她抬手揉着自己的脸，吐着舌头，努力回想。最后她终于想起来了。没错！那就像是在一个阳光明媚的大晴天，你坐在火车里看到的情景。你看见自己车厢的黑色影子在田野中穿梭，速度和火车一样快。接着火车驶进了一处路堑，那影子便立刻跃至你的眼前，变得很大，沿着路堑堤上的草地朝前奔着。然后火车驶出了路堑——看啊！只见那黑色影子又变回了原来大小，又继续沿着田野穿梭了。

“那是我们的影子！——是‘黎明踏浪’号的影子！”露西惊呼道，“我们的影子正在海底往前航行。刚才影子变大的时候，它正好从海底一处山丘上经过。但如果真是这样的话，海水一定比我想象得还要清澈！老天哪，我现在一定是看到了海底，深不可测的海底。”

她一说出这话来，便立刻意识到自己有段时间一直看到（不过没怎么注意到）的一大片银色，其实是海床上的白沙，而上面各种或明或暗的斑块并非海面上的光影，而是真实存在于海底的各种东西。比如说，现在他们的下方是一片柔软的紫绿色，中间有一道弯弯曲曲的浅灰色宽条纹。不过现在她已经知道这是海底的真实图像，她就看得更仔细了。她能看见上面深色的部分比其他部分要高出许多，而且还在微微摆动着。“就像风中的树一样。”露西说道，“我觉得那就是树。那是海底的森林。

他们从那片森林上方驶过，现在又有另一道浅色条纹加入了刚才那道浅色条纹。“要是我在下面的海底，”露西心想，“那道条纹就会像一条穿过树林的马路一样。而两道条纹相接的地方就会是一个十字路口。噢，我真希望自己能在海底。嘿！森林要到头了。我真的觉得那道条纹就是一条路！我还能看见那条路穿过了开阔的沙滩。就是颜色有些不同，而且边缘好像有什么标记出了边线——是条虚线。也许是石头组成的。现在路又变宽了。”

不过其实路并没有变宽，只是离得近了。她意识到这一点是因为，她注意到船的影子看起来似乎朝她冲上来了。而这条路——现在她能肯定那是条路了——开始变得蜿蜒曲折起来。显然这条路开始攀上一座陡峭的山丘。她把头偏过去回看刚才的海底，所见的画面很像你从山顶俯瞰蜿蜒公路的情景。她甚至能看见道道阳光照进深深的海水，落在海底森林覆盖的谷底——从那么遥远的高处看去，一切都消融在那一片幽绿中。不过有些地方——应该是阳光照耀的地方，她想——则是碧蓝碧蓝的颜色。

不过她没有花很多时间回看之前的海底，因为前方映入眼帘的画面更为激动人心。显然那条路现在已经延伸到了山顶，又笔直往前，上面还有小小的斑点在来回移动。此时她的眼前出现了一幅极其壮丽的景象——有幸阳光十分充足，或者说那已经是数千英寻海水之下最为充足的光线了，她才能看得这样真切。那是一个凹凸不平、棱角有致的东西，呈珍珠白，或者说是象牙白色。她几乎是在这个东西的正上方，所以起初她都没能辨认出那是什么。不过当她注意到这个东西的影子时，心里便了然了。此时阳光正从露西肩后落下来，因此这个东西的影子长长地拖在其后的沙滩上。露西看得很清楚，那影子的形状是一簇高塔尖峰、圆顶琼楼。

“哎呀！那是一座城，或者是一幢大城堡。”露西自言自语道，“不过我不明白，他们为什么要把它造在这么高的山顶上呢？”

很久以后，当她回到英国和爱德蒙讨论起这些冒险经历的时候，他们想出了一个可以解释这个问题的理由，我很肯定这个理由应该是正确的。在大海里，越是深的地方，越是黑暗寒冷，而危险的生物恰恰是生活在海底又黑又冷的地方——比如大鱿鱼怪、海蛇怪和克拉肯海怪之类的。山谷里十分荒凉，也不适宜居住。生活在海里的人们看待山谷就好比我们看待野外深山一样，而他们看待高山就好比我们看待山谷。只有在高处（或者，像我们通常所说的，“在浅一些的地方”）才比较温暖安全。海中不畏艰险的猎手和英武的骑士会到海底深处去探险寻宝，不过他们的家都建在高处，人们在那里安居乐业，处理行政事务，进行体育运动，载歌载舞。

“黎明踏浪”号已经驶离了海底城市，而海床依然在上升，现在海底离船仅有几百英尺了。那条路已经不见了，此刻他们正在一个空旷的公园上航行——像是在村野郊外，四下布满了一小丛一小丛颜色鲜艳的植被。接着——露西几乎要激动地大叫出声了——她看见了海里的人！

那儿大概有十五到二十个人，都骑在海马上——并非你可能在博物馆里看到的那些极小的海马，而是比人还要大一些的马。他们一定是高贵的王公贵族，露西心想，因为她可以看到他们当中有些人的额头上金光闪闪，他们肩上佩戴着翡翠色或是橘黄色的装饰，在水流中飘荡着。接着：

“噢！这些鱼真烦人！”露西说道，因为此时有一大群肥肥胖胖的小鱼从海面下的较浅处游过，挡在了她和海族人中间。不过尽管这些鱼遮住了她的视线，却因此发生了一件十分有趣的事。突然一条不知是什么种类的、十分凶猛的小鱼从下方直冲上来，摇头甩尾，扯拉撕咬着，咬住了一条小胖鱼，很快又游了下去。与此同时，所有的海族人都坐在马上看着这一幕。他们似乎还在谈笑风生。还没等这条叼着猎物的捕猎鱼回到他们那里去，海族人又放出来一条一模一样的鱼。露西几乎能肯定，这条鱼是这群人中央坐在马上的那个高大男人放出来的，就好像这鱼之前一直停在他的手里或者腕上一样。

“啊，我敢说这是一场狩猎行动，”露西说道，“或者更像是一场鹰猎行动。对的，没错了。他们骑马出行，腕上停着这些凶猛的小鱼，就好像很多年以前，我们还是凯尔帕拉维尔的国王和女王那会儿，常常骑着马，腕上停着隼，外出捕猎。然后他们让这些鱼飞过去——我想我应该说让这些鱼游过去——抓住猎物。怎么——”

她突然停下了，因为眼前的情形又出现了变化。这些海族人已经注意到了“黎明踏浪”号。那群小胖鱼四处游开，而现在海族人亲自游上来了，打算看看这个挡在他们和太阳之间的巨大的黑色东西到底是什么。此时他们已经离海面很近了，要不是他们在水中，现在露西都已经可以和他们说话了。他们中有男人也有女人，所有人头顶都戴着皇冠一样的头饰，还有许多人戴着珍珠项链，除此之外他们身上不着一物。他们全身的皮肤是旧象牙色，头发则是深紫色。人群中间的国王（他一看便是国王，旁人决不会认错）看着露西的脸，眼神傲慢而又凶狠，一边还晃了晃手中的长矛。他身后的骑士们也跟着晃了晃手中的长矛。而那些女人的脸上则满是惊讶之情，露西敢肯定她们此前从未见到过船只或是人类——说的也是，在世界尽头之外的海域，从没有船只到达这里，她们怎么可能见到呢？

“你在看什么呢，露西？”突然近旁有人出声道。

露西看得太专心了，听到声音吓了一跳。她转过身子去，这才发现自己一直以同一个姿势靠在栏杆上太久了，手臂都麻了。德里宁和爱德蒙正在她身边。

“你们看！”她说。

他们俩朝海里看了看，可是德里宁立刻压低了声音说：

“快回过头去，两位陛下——这就对了，赶紧背对着大海。别回头看，假装我们在讨论重要的事情。”

“哎，这是怎么回事呢？”露西一边照做了，一边不解地问道。

“水手们绝不能看到这些。”德里宁严肃地说道，“他们可能会爱上里面的海女，或者喜欢上那个海底王国，然后受了蛊惑跳下水去。我以前听说过在陌生的海域曾有这样的事情发生。见到这些海族人是件不吉利的事。”

“但是我们过去和他们是朋友呀，”露西说道，“以前在凯尔帕拉维尔，我哥哥彼得还是至尊国王的时候，他们还游出海面，在我们的加冕典礼上唱歌呢。”

“我想那应该是另一种海族，露西。”爱德蒙说道，“他们既可以生活在海上，也能生活在海下。但我觉得这些海族人可能不行。看他们这架势，要是可以的话，他们早就跳出水面来攻击我们了。他们看上去很凶残。”

“不管怎么说，”德里宁刚开口，这时却传来了两个声音。首先是“扑通”一声，接着是有人从战斗桅楼上喊道：“有人落水啦！”随后人人都忙活开了，有的水手匆匆忙忙爬上桅杆去收起船帆；其他人急忙跑下甲板去划桨；莱恩斯在尾楼上当值，此时也开始用力扳转船舵，转到方才有人落水的地方。不过这时候大家都知道了，原来刚才落水的严格意义上来说不算人——落水的是雷佩契普！

“这只老鼠真是见鬼！”德里宁说道，“它惹出的麻烦比船上所有人的都要多。但凡是有闯祸的机会，它总不会放过的！它就该被关进铁笼里，锁在船底，哪儿都去不了！还要把它的胡子都给剪了！有谁看见那个讨嫌的小家伙了吗？”

德里宁说这番话并不意味着他不喜欢雷佩契普。恰好相反，他很欣赏雷佩契普，因此很担心它会出事，而这份担惊受怕使他的脾气变得很暴躁——就好像每次你在马路上乱跑，跑到车前面差点出事的时候，你妈妈会比陌生人对你更生气，是一个道理。当然了，没人担心雷佩契普会溺水，因为它是一个出色的游泳健将；不过露西、爱德蒙和德里宁三人知道，水下的海族人手中正持着又长又锋利的矛枪，因此他们很担心雷佩契普会有危险。

没过几分钟，“黎明踏浪”号已经转了向，大家都看到有一小团黑色漂浮在海面上，那正是雷佩契普。它正异常激动地喋喋不休着，不过它的嘴里灌满了水，所以没人能听清它在说什么。

“要是不阻止它，它会把一切都说出来的！”德里宁叫道。为了防止雷佩契普走漏了海族人的事，德里宁一个箭步冲到了船边，一边放下一根绳子，一边冲水手们喊道：“好了好了，你们都回到自己的位子上去吧。我凭一己之力拉起一只老鼠还是绰绰有余的。”于是雷佩契普顺着绳子往上爬，它身上的毛全湿透了，因而身子怪沉的，动作也不那么灵便，这时德里宁前倾着身子悄声对它说：

“别告诉他们，一个字也不准说。”

不过等到这只浑身湿答答滴着水的老鼠爬到甲板上时，德里宁发现它对海族人压根儿一点兴趣都没有。

“甜的！”它“吱吱”叫唤着说，“甜的！是甜的！”

“你在说些什么呀？”德里宁恼火地说，“还有，你抖毛也用不着甩得我一身都是水吧！”

“我告诉你们，海水是甜的！”雷佩契普兴奋地说，“又甜又清凉。不是咸的。”

一时半会儿，没人完全理解这件事有什么重要性。不过随后雷佩契普又重复了一遍那个古老的预言：

“在浪水变甘之地，

不必怀疑，雷佩契普，

那儿便是东方尽头。”

最后大家终于明白了。

“给我一个水桶，莱纳尔夫。”德里宁说道。

他接过了递来的水桶，放下去舀满了水，又提了上来。里面的水如同玻璃一样闪着光。

“陛下，您想先尝尝吗？”德里宁对凯斯宾说。

只见凯斯宾双手接过了水桶，举到嘴边抿了一小口，接着猛灌下去一大口，抬起了头。人们顿时发现他的脸变得不一样了。不仅仅眼睛亮得发光，浑身上下都容光焕发。

“没错，”他宣布道，“水是甜的。真的是甜的水，没错。我不敢确定这水会不会要了我的命，不过就算是这么死去了我也心甘情愿——要是我早点了解这水就好了。”

“你这是什么意思呀？”爱德蒙问。

“这水就像，就像是光一样。”凯斯宾思索着答道。

“正是如此，”雷佩契普说道，“可以喝的光。我们现在一定离世界尽头非常近了。”

人群中有片刻的安静，接着露西跪坐到甲板上，也喝了口桶里的水。

“我从没喝过这么好喝的东西！”她喘了口气说道，“哦哟——不过这水劲头挺大的。我们现在什么都不用吃了。”

随后，船上的人一个接一个地都喝了水。喝完了水以后，他们许久没有说话。他们觉得这水实在太甘甜了，劲头也大，几乎叫人无法承受。此时他们开始察觉到了另一个变化。正如我之前所说，自从他们离开了拉曼度星岛之后，光线便异常充足起来——太阳变得异常大（不过倒也不是太热），大海变得异常明亮，天空也异常耀眼。而现在，光非但没有减弱，反而增强了，不过人们却能够承受了。他们可以一眼不眨地直视太阳，可以看见比以前更多的光。甲板、船帆，还有他们的脸和身子，都变得越来越亮，就连船上的每一根绳子都在闪着光芒。而第二天一早太阳升起时——那太阳已经是原来大小的五六倍了——他们深深凝望着太阳，可以看清从那里飞出的鸟儿身上纯白无瑕的羽毛。

那一整天，船上都没人说话，直到大约晚饭时间（不过没人想要吃晚饭，因为饮水已经足够了），德里宁说道：

“我不能理解。明明海上一丝风都没有，帆也只是静静垂着纹丝不动，海面就和池塘一样平静，可是船行驶得就好像后面刮着大风一样快。”

“我也在思考这个问题。”凯斯宾说道，“我们肯定是遇到了一股很汹涌的水流。”

“嗯，”爱德蒙说道，“要是世界真的有边缘，而我们正在朝那儿驶去的话，那可不太妙啊。”

“你的意思是说，”凯斯宾说道，“我们有可能会和大海一起倾泻而下？”

“没错，没错！”雷佩契普拍着爪子叫道，“在我的想象中也总是这样的——世界就好像一个大圆桌，而所有海洋的水一直在不停歇地从边缘倾泻而下。到了尽头的时候，船会头朝下翘起来——有那么一刻我们会看到世界的边缘——接着就往下落去，一直往下，往下，和水一起冲下去，速度——”

“那你觉得底下会有什么等着我们呢，嗯？”德里宁说。

“也许是阿斯兰的国度，”雷佩契普两眼闪着光说道，“又或者压根儿就没有底。或许我们会永远往下落呀，落呀。不过无论结局如何，能够看上一眼世界的边缘，一切都是值得的。”

“可是，听着，”尤斯塔斯忍不住开口道，“这些都是胡扯。世界是圆的——我是说像一颗球一样圆，而不是像一张桌子。”

“我们的世界确实如此，”爱德蒙说，“可这个世界是吗？”

“你的意思是说，”凯斯宾问道，“你们三个人是从一个圆（就和球一样圆）的世界来的吗？你们从没告诉过我！真是太不够意思了。因为我们这儿的童话故事里有提到过圆的世界，我一直很喜欢。虽然我从不相信那样的世界真的存在，可我心里总希望那是真的，我一直渴望能在那里生活。噢，要是能去那儿，我愿意付出一切——我就是不明白，为什么你们可以进入我们的世界，而我们却从来不能到你们的世界去呢？要是我能去该有多好呀！居住在一颗球上一定很刺激。你们有没有去过人们都是头朝下走路的地方呢？”

爱德蒙摇了摇头。“不是那么回事。”他又补充道，“等你真正到了那里，你就会发现其实圆的世界也没有什么特别激动人心的。”

第十六章
世界最尽头

除了德里宁和佩文西两兄妹，雷佩契普是船上唯一一个注意到海族人的。他看到海族国王晃了晃手中的长矛，便认定此举是一种威胁或是挑衅，于是就毫不犹豫地跳入了水中，想当场同他们决一高下。但当他发现海水是清冽甘甜的时候，他兴奋不已，便转移了注意力，然后还没等他再一次想起海族人的事，露西和德里宁就已经把他拉到了一边，提醒他对刚才所见到的一个字都别提。

不过事实上他们已经不必过多担心，因为这时候“黎明踏浪”号已经行驶到了一片看似没有海族人居住的海域。除了露西以外，旁人再也没有见到过海族人的踪影了，而就连露西也只不过是短暂的一瞥。第二天一整个上午，“黎明踏浪”号都在相当浅的水中航行，水下海草丛生。快到中午时分，露西看见有一大群鱼正在啃食海草。它们井然有序地进着食，而且都朝同一个方向游着。“就好像牧场上的一群绵羊。”露西心想。突然，她看见鱼群中有一个海族小女孩，和自己差不多年纪。那女孩看上去安安静静，有些孤独，手中还拿着一根杖状物。露西觉得这个女孩一定是个牧羊女——或者应该说是个牧鱼女，而这群鱼其实就像是草原上的畜群一样。鱼群和这个女孩离水面都很近。女孩在浅水里滑行，露西倚在舷墙上，正当两人相向而过时，女孩抬头直视露西的脸。两人都不能和彼此说话，不一会儿工夫，那个海族小女孩便远远落在了船后。不过露西永远都忘不了她的脸。她看上去不像其他海族人那样惊恐或是愤怒。露西挺喜欢那个女孩的，而且她能肯定那个女孩也喜欢自己。在那一瞬间她们已经成了朋友。无论是在这个世界，抑或是在任何其他世界，她们似乎都没什么机会再相见了。不过，倘若能再见面，她们一定会伸出双手，欢快地朝彼此奔去。

此后的很多天里，波平浪静，桅杆察不到一丝微风，船头激不起一点浪沫，“黎明踏浪”号平稳地向东驶去。每时每刻，阳光都越发明亮夺目，不过他们依旧能够承受。没人吃东西，没人睡觉，也没人想这么做，不过他们舀了一桶桶甘甜绝伦的海水饮用，那海水的劲头比葡萄酒还大，但不知怎地又比一般的水还更湿润解渴。他们会默默向彼此致意，然后大口喝起来。最早开始航行时一两个已经上了些年纪的水手，如今竟日益年轻了。船上每个人心中都充溢着喜悦与激动，不过却不是那种让人想说出来的激动。他们航行得越远，说的话便越少，再后来说起话来也几近悄声耳语了。这片世界最末端的大海如此平静，使得他们也“身”如止水了。

“船长，”有一天，凯斯宾对德里宁说，“你看到前面有什么？”

“回陛下，”德里宁说道，“我看到了白茫茫的一片，从北到南铺满了整个海平线，我目之所及都是一片白色。

“我看见的也是，”凯斯宾点头道，“我想象不出那是什么东西。”

“陛下，要是我们在高纬度的地方，”德里宁说道，“我会说那些是冰，不过在这里不可能会有冰，不可能结冰。不管怎么说，我们最好让大家伙儿都拿起船桨，不要让船完全顺着水流前行。不管那一片白色到底是什么，我们可不想以这么快的速度撞上去！”

水手们都按德里宁的吩咐做了，于是船行得越来越慢。可即便他们越来越靠近，那白茫茫的一片依旧神秘莫测。如果那是陆地的话，也一定是一片很奇怪的陆地，因为那里看上去就和水面一样平滑，高度也和水面差不多。等到他们离得很近了，德里宁用力扳转船舵，将“黎明踏浪”号转向南边，这样船便横在了水流中，沿着那片白色的边缘向南划行了一段距离。这么一来，他们在无意当中有了一个重要的发现，那就是原来疾行的水流只有大约四十英尺宽，大海中其余的地方都静止如池水。这对船员而言真是个好消息，因为他们此前很担心，如果返回拉曼度星岛一路上都要逆流划桨前行，该有多么费劲。（这也就解释了为什么先前那个牧鱼女很快就远远地落在了船后。因为她不在这股水流中。要是她也在水流中的话，就会和船一样快速朝东漂流了。）

此时还是没人能看出那片白色的东西究竟是什么。随后他们把小船放下水，划出去探查情况。留在“黎明踏浪”号上的人看见小船直直驶进了那片白色中，接着他们隔着静止的海水，能够清楚地听见小船上人们的说话声，声音很尖，仿佛充满了惊讶。随后说话声停顿了一会儿，莱纳尔夫在船头测量水深，之后小船又划了回来，里面似乎装了很多白色的东西。大家纷纷涌到船侧去听他们带回来的消息。

“陛下，是莲花！”莱纳尔夫站在船头喊道。

“你说什么？”凯斯宾问道。

“陛下，那是一片盛开的莲花，”莱纳尔夫回答道，“就和我们纳尼亚的池塘里或者花园里的莲花一样。”

“你们看！”露西站在船尾说道。她举起湿漉漉的双臂，怀里抱着很多白色的莲花与宽大扁平的莲叶。

“水有多深，莱纳尔夫？”德里宁问道。

“这就很有趣了，船长，”莱纳尔夫说道，“那里的水还是很深的，有三英寻半。”

“那不可能是真的莲花——至少不是我们所说的莲花。”尤斯塔斯说道。

也许那些花确实不是莲花，不过与莲花十分相像。一番商讨过后，“黎明踏浪”号又回到了水流中，开始向东航行，穿过“莲湖”，或者应该叫“银海”（他们试了这两个名字，不过最后还是决定用“银海”，于是如今凯斯宾的地图上记录着的便是“银海”），正是从这里开始，他们见到了航海旅途中最为奇怪的现象。很快他们驶离的那片开阔海域便成了西边地平线上一条细细的蓝边，渐渐消失在了身后。“黎明踏浪”号的四周是满满的一片白色，夹杂着极淡极淡的金色，唯独船尾没有，船开过时，将莲花分拨到两边，开辟出了一条水道，闪着光，如同深绿色的玻璃。这片末海看上去很像北冰洋，此时要不是他们的眼睛已经变得如同鹰眼一般锐利，照射在这片纯白花海上的阳光——尤其是在早晨太阳最大的时候——便会让人难以忍受。而每天傍晚，这片纯白使日光持续的时间更久。这片莲花海似乎永远没有尽头。莲花日复一日地散发着一种香气，露西不知道该如何去形容——这香气无疑是香甜的，可是一点都不会让人昏昏欲睡，也不会浓烈得刺鼻，而是清冽的、奔放的、又有些孤独的香气，仿佛能够直抵你的心神，让你觉得身心振奋，有使不完的力气，能一口气跑上山巅，或者与大象来一场搏斗。她和凯斯宾对彼此说：“我觉得我有些受不了了，不能再闻下去了，可是我又不想离开这香气。”

他们经常测量水深，不过一直等到几天以后水才变得浅了些。此后海水越来越浅。直到有一天他们不得不划离水流，如同蜗牛爬一般缓慢地划桨前行。很快他们便清楚“黎明踏浪”号已经不能再往东航行了。而且，他们已经行驶得十分有技巧，否则早就搁浅了。

“把小船放下水去，”凯斯宾喊道，“把大家伙儿都召集到船尾来。我有话和大家说。”

“他打算做什么？”尤斯塔斯悄声对爱德蒙说，“他的眼神看上去怪怪的。”

“我想可能我们现在看上去都差不多吧。”爱德蒙说道。

他们俩上了尾楼，来到凯斯宾身边，很快船上所有人都聚集在了爬梯脚下听国王讲话。“朋友们，”凯斯宾说道，“现在我们已经完成了当初登船时的使命，我们已经知道了七位勋爵的下落，而雷佩契普也已立誓留在世界尽头永不返回，所以你们回到拉曼度星岛时一定会发现莱维廉勋爵、阿尔戈兹勋爵和玛威拉莫恩勋爵已经醒过来了。而你，德里宁勋爵，我将“黎明踏浪”号托付于你，命你全速驶回纳尼亚，而且千万不能登陆死水岛。回去以后向摄政王矮人杜鲁普金转达我的命令，按照我所承诺的，封赏所有的船员。那是他们应得的。如果我回不来了，我愿意由摄政王、科尼利厄斯大师、獾熊特鲁夫汉特以及德里宁勋爵一同选定新的纳尼亚国王，并且得到——”

“可是，陛下，”德里宁打断他道，“您是打算退位了吗？”

“我要和雷佩契普一起去看一看世界尽头。”凯斯宾宣布道。

水手们大为惊愕，纷纷窃窃私语起来。

“我们会搭乘小船前往，”凯斯宾继续说道，“在这些平静的海域上你们也不需要用到小船，不过等你们到了拉曼度星岛后一定要再造一艘新的。好了，现在——”

“凯斯宾！”爱德蒙突然严厉说道，“你不能这么做。”

“没错！”雷佩契普也说，“陛下不能这么做。”

“确实不能。”德里宁说道。

“不能？”凯斯宾语气尖锐地说道，有那么一瞬间和他叔叔米拉兹有几分相像。

“请陛下原谅，”下面甲板上的莱纳尔夫也说道，“不过如果换作是我们水手中有谁这么做了，那就叫作擅离职守。”

“我可不是你能管的，莱纳尔夫。”凯斯宾冷冷地说道。

“不，陛下！他说得一点都没错。”德里宁说道。

“看在阿斯兰之鬣的分上，”凯斯宾不悦地说道，“我把你们都当作我的臣民，而非我的老师。”

“我可不是你的臣民，”爱德蒙毫不退缩，“我说你不能这么做。”

“又是不能，”凯斯宾说道，“你到底什么意思？”

“我们的意思是您不应该这么做，如果这能让陛下您不那么生气的话。”雷佩契普深深鞠了一躬，说道，“您是纳尼亚的国王。倘若您不回去，那便是失信于您的臣民，尤其是杜鲁普金。您不能像一个自由人那样随心所欲地冒险，只图自己开心。如果陛下您实在不听劝阻，那么为表最真诚的忠心，船上每个人都应该跟随我一同将您缴械捆绑起来，直到您恢复理智为止。”

“说得没错，”爱德蒙说道，“当初尤利西斯想去找海妖塞壬时，人们用的就是这个办法。”

凯斯宾的手已经按在了剑柄上，这时露西开口说道：“而且你还和拉曼度的女儿保证过你会回去的。”

凯斯宾顿住了。“噢，对，我差点忘了。”他说。他犹疑不决地站了一会儿，随后冲全船的人高声喊道：

“好了，就照你们说的办吧。探险到此结束了，所有人都原路返回。把小船拉上来。”

“陛下！”雷佩契普说道，“并不是所有人都回去。就像我刚才说过的，我——”

“住嘴！”凯斯宾怒喝道，“我已经听过你的说教了，可我不允许你一而再再而三地激怒我。就没人能让这只老鼠闭上嘴吗？”

“陛下您保证过的，”雷佩契普说道，“您保证过会善待纳尼亚的能言兽。”

“没错，是能言兽族，”凯斯宾没好气地说道，“可不是一天到晚说个不停的兽族！”说完他便怒气冲冲地跑下梯子，回到自己的舱房，重重地摔上了门。

可是过了一会儿人们再见到他时，却发现他变了——他脸色苍白，眼里还噙着泪水。

“我把一切都搞砸了，”他说，“本来我的表现一直很体面，可是我发脾气又目中无人，把一切都搞砸了。阿斯兰和我谈过了。不，我的意思不是说他真的来过了——他的体型本来也不可能进得去舱房——不过刚才墙上的金色狮头像活了过来，对我开口说话了。他的眼睛太吓人了。也不是说他对我很凶——只是一开始有些严厉，不过也很可怕。他说，他说——噢，我承受不住那样的话。那是他会说出的最重的话了。你们继续走吧——雷佩、爱德蒙，还有露西和尤斯塔斯。我回去。一个人回去。立刻就回去。这一切还有什么意义呢？”

“凯斯宾，亲爱的，”露西安慰他道，“你知道的，我们迟早都得回到我们自己的世界去。”

“我知道，”凯斯宾抽泣着说道，“不过这样也太早了一些。”

“等你回到拉曼度星岛，就会开心一点了。”露西说道。

过了一会儿，凯斯宾稍微振作起来一些，不过到了双方分别的时刻，气氛很是伤感，我就不再详述了。大约下午两点钟，人们给小船上装了许多食物和水（虽然他们觉得自己既不需要吃东西，也不需要喝水），又把雷佩契普的小圆舟也放上了船，就此驶离了“黎明踏浪”号，几人划着桨，进入了一片无尽的莲花海中。“黎明踏浪”号飘起了所有的旗帜，挂出了所有的盾牌徽章，纪念他们的离开。低矮的小船被莲花包围着，从这里看去，“黎明踏浪”号高大威武，如同家一般让人安心。他们看到“黎明踏浪”号调转了方向，开始慢慢朝西划行，随后便消失在了视线中。不过，尽管露西掉了几滴眼泪，可她甚至都没怎么察觉到自己哭了。那异常明亮的光芒、那肃穆神圣的静谧、那莲花银海中升腾起的醉人香气，甚至还有那摄人心魄的孤独本身（这或许有些令人费解），都太激动人心了。

此时他们已经没有必要划桨了，小船正顺着水流平稳地向东漂去。没有人睡觉，也没有人吃东西。这天一整夜以及第二天的一整天，他们都在水流中向东滑行，到了第三天黎明时分，前方突然亮了起来——你我即便是戴着墨镜也无法直视那光亮——他们看见眼前出现了一幅不可思议的景象。仿佛有一堵墙横在了他们与天空之间，一堵灰绿色的墙，轻轻晃动着，微微闪烁着。接着太阳升起来了，他们透过这堵墙看到太阳初升，随后反射出绚烂的彩虹七色。于是他们才发现原来那堵墙其实是一道长长的、高高的海浪——海浪的一端永恒不变地固定在一个地方，就好像你经常能在瀑布的一边看到的那样。海浪看上去大约有三十英尺高，而小船正顺着水流快速地朝海浪冲去。你可能猜想他们会感到害怕，担忧自己的安危，但他们没有。我想，任何人处在他们的位置，都会无暇关心前方是否有危险。因为此时他们不仅能看到海浪后面的景象，还能看到太阳后面的景象。要不是他们在末海喝了甘甜的海水，眼睛变得异于常人，此时他们连太阳都看不了。但现在他们不仅能直视初升的朝阳，而且看得一清二楚，甚至还能看清太阳后面的景象。在更往东的地方，在太阳的后面，他们看见了连绵的群山。那山极高，至于有多高，谁也说不上来，要么就是他们一直没能望到顶，要么就是他们忘记去看了。他们没人记得在太阳的后面看见过天空。他们觉得那些山脉一定不属于这个世界，因为正常情况下，哪怕是只有那些山脉高度八十分之一的山，上面也应该会覆盖一些冰雪。可是这些山脉却温暖如春，无论你往上看多高，都是一片绿油油的，森林密布，瀑布纵横。突然从东边吹来一阵微风，吹得那浪尖泛起白沫，也吹皱了小船周围的水面。那阵微风大概只持续了一两秒，可在那一两秒里随微风一起飘来的气味和声音，却让这三个孩子永生难忘。之后爱德蒙和尤斯塔斯从来也不愿意说起那音乐声，而露西也只是说：“那音乐会让你心碎的。”“为什么呢？”我追问道，“很悲伤吗？”“悲伤？才不是呢。”露西回答道。

小船上所有人都坚信，他们看到的“世界尽头”之外的那片陆地是阿斯兰的国度。

就在这时，伴随着“嘎吱”一声响，小船搁浅了。此时这里的水已经变得太浅了，小船无法继续航行。“好了，就到这里吧。”雷佩契普说道，“接下来的路就该我独自走了。”

其他三人甚至都没有阻拦他，因为现在所发生的一切似乎都是命中注定，又或者似曾相识，就好像过去发生过似的。他们帮它把小圆舟放下水，随后它拿出了自己的佩剑（说着“我已经不再需要它了！”），远远地扔进了那片无波无浪的莲花海。剑落下去，直直地倒插在海里，剑柄露在外面。接着它同几个孩子道了别，它想为这离别心生出一些伤感，可却抑制不住内心的喜悦和激动，连身子都颤抖着。露西，第一次也是最后一次，终于做了自己一直以来都想做的一件事——她把雷佩契普搂进了怀里，抚摸着它。随后雷佩契普匆匆忙忙跨进了自己的小圆舟里，划起船桨，水流将小舟带走了，雷佩契普就这么渐行渐远，它那黑色的身影在一片莲花中格外醒目。不过在那道海浪上没有莲花，而是十分平滑的绿浪，斜斜地向上升高。小圆舟前行得越来越快，接着冲上了海浪的一侧，划出一个漂亮的弧度。有那么一瞬间，他们看见了小圆舟和雷佩契普在浪尖上，随后便消失不见了。从那一刻起，没人能确凿地说自己见过老鼠雷佩契普。不过我相信，它一定安全地抵达了阿斯兰的国度，并且直到今天还活着。

太阳渐渐升起，世界之外的群山也渐渐地看不见了。那道海浪还在原处，可是现在后面只能看见一片碧蓝的天空。

孩子们下了船，涉水而行——不是朝着海浪走去，而是往南行，那道水墙就在他们的左边。不过他们自己也没法告诉你为什么要这么做，那是命运已经替他们做好了安排。尽管他们觉得踏上“黎明踏浪”号这段日子以来，自己已经长大了不少——事实也确实如此——不过现在他们却感觉正相反，仿佛回到了很小、很朦胧的时候。他们互相拉着手，一起蹚过那片莲花海。他们从未感到疲惫。海水很温暖，而且越来越浅。最后他们走到了干燥的沙滩上，接着是草地——那是一大片齐整的草地，短短的青草几乎与银海齐平，朝四周延伸开去，连一处鼹鼠洞都不曾有。

当然了，就和其他十分平坦又没有树的地方一样，眼前的天空看上去就好像与草地相接了。不过他们走着走着，突然萌生出一种很奇怪的感觉，就好像天空在这里终于垂了下来，与大地交汇了——好似一堵碧蓝的墙，很明亮，不过是切切实实存在的，就像玻璃一样。很快他们便能够确定了，此时天空已经离他们很近了。

不过在他们和穹顶脚下之间的绿地上，有一个白得发亮的东西，即便他们目光锐利如鹰，也无法直视。他们走了过去，才看清原来是一只小羊羔。

“过来吃早餐吧。”羊羔柔和地说，嗓音甜美。

这时候他们第一次注意到草地上生着一堆火，上面正烤着鱼。孩子们席地而坐，大口吃着鱼，这么多天以来他们头一回觉得饥饿难耐。这是他们吃过的最美味的食物了。

“请你告诉我们，小羊羔，”露西问道，“这是通往阿斯兰国度的路吗？”

“这条路不是为你们准备的，”羊羔回答道，“你们通往阿斯兰国度的路在你们自己的世界中。”

“什么！”爱德蒙说道，“从我们自己的世界也能去阿斯兰国度吗？”

“所有的世界都有路通往我的国度。”羊羔说道，不过正说着，它那雪白的身子一下子变成了褐金色，体型也变了，原来它是阿斯兰变的。此刻阿斯兰正俯看着他们，鬣毛闪着光辉。

“噢，阿斯兰！”露西叫道，“你能告诉我们怎样才能从我们的世界进入你的国度吗？”

“我会一直告诉你们、引导你们的。”阿斯兰说道，“不过我不会告诉你们那路有多长或者有多短，我只能告诉你们路在河对面。不过别害怕，我很擅长造桥。好了，现在你们跟我来吧，我会在天空中打开一扇门，把你们送回自己的世界去。”

“请告诉我们吧，阿斯兰，”露西说道，“我们走之前，你能告诉我们，我们何时能再回到纳尼亚吗？求你了。请让我们早一点回来吧，早一点吧！”

“最最亲爱的孩子，”阿斯兰说道，语气十分温柔，“你和你的哥哥永远都不会再回到纳尼亚了。”

“噢，阿斯兰！”爱德蒙和露西同时绝望地说道。

“你们已经长大了，孩子们，”阿斯兰温和地说，“现在你们必须多多接触自己的世界了。”

“你知道的，我们想要见的不是纳尼亚，”露西抽泣道，“而是你。可我们在自己的世界就见不到你了。要是再也见不到你了，我们该怎么活下去呀？”

“但你们还是能见到我的，好孩子。”阿斯兰说道。

“你——你也在我们的世界里吗？”爱德蒙问道。

“是的，我在。”阿斯兰回答道，“不过在那里我有另外一个名字。你们必须学会通过那个名字来认识我。这正是你们被带来纳尼亚的原因——你们在这里认识了我，才有可能在另一个世界更好地了解我。”

“那尤斯塔斯也永远不能回到这里来了吗？”露西又问。

“好孩子，”阿斯兰说道，“你真的需要知道吗？来吧，我在天空里给你们打开一扇门。”接着那堵蓝色的墙突然裂开了（就好像窗帘被拉开了似的），从里面射出了一道极为刺眼的白光，他们能感觉到阿斯兰的鬣毛抚在他们脸上，之后狮子在他们的额头印下一吻，再然后——他们就回到剑桥艾尔波塔姨母家里间的那个卧室了。

另外还有两件事需要交代一下。一件事是凯斯宾和他的船员们都安全地回到了拉曼度星岛，三位勋爵也从长眠中苏醒了过来。凯斯宾娶了拉曼度的女儿为妻，最后他们都一起回到了纳尼亚，她成了一位伟大的王后，两人的子孙也均成了伟大的国王。另一件事是在我们自己的世界里，很快人人都开始说尤斯塔斯有长进了，“和以前相比简直变了个人”；所有人都这么说，唯独艾尔波塔姨母不那么认为，她总说尤斯塔斯变得既平庸又无聊，一定是被佩文西家的几个孩子带坏了。

CHAPTER ONE
THE PICTURE IN THE BEDROOM

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn’t call his Father and Mother “Father” and “Mother,” but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on beds and the windows were always open.

Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.

Eustace Clarence disliked his cousins the four Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. But he was quite glad when he heard that Edmund and Lucy were coming to stay. For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn’t have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors.

Edmund and Lucy did not at all want to come and stay with Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta. But it really couldn’t be helped. Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn’t had a real holiday for ten years. Peter was working very hard for an exam and he was to spend the holidays being coached by old Professor Kirke in whose house these four children had had wonderful adventures long ago in the war years. If he had still been in that house he would have had them all to stay. But he had somehow become poor since the old days and was living in a small cottage with only one bedroom to spare. It would have cost too much money to take the other three all to America, and Susan had gone.

Grown-ups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work （though otherwise very old for her age） and Mother said she “would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters.” Edmund and Lucy tried not to grudge Susan her luck, but it was dreadful having to spend the summer holidays at their Aunt’s. “But it’s far worse for me,” said Edmund, “because you’ll at least have a room of your own and I shall have to share a bedroom with that record stinker, Eustace.”

The story begins on an afternoon when Edmund and Lucy were stealing a few precious minutes alone together. And of course they were talking about Narnia, which was the name of their own private and secret country. Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than other people in that respect. Their secret country was real. They had already visited it twice; not in a game or a dream but in reality. They had got there of course by Magic, which is the only way of getting to Narnia. And a promise, or very nearly a promise, had been made them in Narnia itself that they would some day get back. You may imagine that they talked about it a good deal, when they got the chance.

They were in Lucy’s room, sitting on the edge of her bed and looking at a picture on the opposite wall. It was the only picture in the house that they liked. Aunt Alberta didn’t like it at all （that was why it was put away in a little back room upstairs）, but she couldn’t get rid of it because it had been a wedding present from someone she did not want to offend.

It was a picture of a ship—a ship sailing straight toward you. Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide—open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship-what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended—were green. She had just run up to the top of one glorious blue wave, and the nearer slope of that wave came down toward you, with streaks and bubbles on it. She was obviously running fast before a gay wind, listing over a little on her port side. （By the way, if you are going to read this story at all, and if you don’t know already, you had better get it into your head that the left of a ship when you are looking ahead, is port, and the right is starboard.） All the sunlight fell on her from that side, and the water on that side was full of greens and purples. On the other, it was darker blue from the shadow of the ship.

“The question is,” said Edmund, “whether it doesn’t make things worse, looking at a Narnian ship when you can’t get there.”

“Even looking is better than nothing,” said Lucy. “And she is such a very Narnian ship.”

“Still playing your old game?” said Eustace Clarence, who had been listening outside the door and now came grinning into the room. Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.

“You’re not wanted here,” said Edmund curtly.

“I’m trying to think of a limerick,” said Eustace. “Something like this：

“Some kids who played games about Narnia

Got gradually balmier and balmier—”

“Well Narnia and balmier don’t rhyme, to begin with,” said Lucy.

“It’s an assonance,” said Eustace.

“Don’t ask him what an assy-thingummy is,” said Edmund. “He’s only longing to be asked. Say nothing and perhaps he’ll go away.”

Most boys, on meeting a reception like this, would either have cleared out or flared up. Eustace did neither. He just hung about grinning, and presently began talking again.

“Do you like that picture?” he asked.

“For heaven’s sake don’t let him get started about Art and all that,” said Edmund hurriedly, but Lucy, who was very truthful, had already said, “Yes, I do. I like it very much.”

“It’s a rotten picture,” said Eustace.

“You won’t see it if you step outside,” said Edmund.

“Why do you like it?” said Eustace to Lucy.

“Well, for one thing,” said Lucy, “I like it because the ship looks as if it was really moving. And the water looks as if it was really wet. And the waves look as if they were really going up and down.”

Of course Eustace knew lots of answers to this, but he didn’t say anything. The reason was that at that very moment he looked at the waves and saw that they did look very much indeed as if they were going up and down. He had only once been in a ship （and then only as far as the Isle of Wight） and had been horribly seasick. The look of the waves in the picture made him feel sick again. He turned rather green and tried another look. And then all three children were staring with open mouths.

What they were seeing may be hard to believe when you read it in print, but it was almost as hard to believe when you saw it happening. The things in the picture were moving. It didn’t look at all like a cinema either; the colors were too real and clean and out-of-doors for that. Down went the prow of the ship into the wave and up went a great shock of spray. And then up went the wave behind her, and her stern and her deck became visible for the first time, and then disappeared as the next wave came to meet her and her bows went up again. At the same moment an exercise book which had been lying beside Edmund on the bed flapped, rose and sailed through the air to the wall behind him, and Lucy felt all her hair whipping round her face as it does on a windy day. And this was a windy day; but the wind was blowing out of the picture toward them. And suddenly with the wind came the noises—the swishing of waves and the slap of water against the ship’s sides and the creaking and the overall high steady roar of air and water. But it was the smell, the wild, briny smell, which really convinced Lucy that she was not dreaming.

“Stop it,” came Eustace’s voice, squeaky with fright and bad temper. “It’s some silly trick you two are playing. Stop it. I’ll tell Alberta—Ow！”

The other two were much more accustomed to adventures, but, just exactly as Eustace Clarence said “Ow,” they both said “Ow” too. The reason was that a great cold, salt splash had broken right out of the frame and they were breathless from the smack of it, besides being wet through.

“I’ll smash the rotten thing,” cried Eustace; and then several things happened at the same time. Eustace rushed toward the picture. Edmund, who knew something about magic, sprang after him, warning him to look out and not to be a fool. Lucy grabbed at him from the other side and was dragged forward. And by this time either they had grown much smaller or the picture had grown bigger. Eustace jumped to try to pull it off the wall and found himself standing on the frame; in front of him was not glass but real sea, and wind and waves rushing up to the frame as they might to a rock. He lost his head and clutched at the other two who had jumped up beside him. There was a second of struggling and shouting, and just as they thought they had got their balance a great blue roller surged up round them, swept them off their feet, and drew them down into the sea. Eustace’s despairing cry suddenly ended as the water got into his mouth.

Lucy thanked her stars that she had worked hard at her swimming last summer term. It is true that she would have got on much better if she had used a slower stroke, and also that the water felt a great deal colder than it had looked while it was only a picture. Still, she kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everyone ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes. She even kept her mouth shut and her eyes open. They were still quite near the ship; she saw its green side towering high above them, and people looking at her from the deck. Then, as one might have expected, Eustace clutched at her in a panic and down they both went.

When they came up again she saw a white figure diving off the ship’s side. Edmund was close beside her now, treading water, and had caught the arms of the howling Eustace. Then someone else, whose face was vaguely familiar, slipped an arm under her from the other side. There was a lot of shouting going on from the ship, heads crowding together above the bulwarks, ropes being thrown. Edmund and the stranger were fastening ropes round her. After that followed what seemed a very long delay during which her face got blue and her teeth began chattering. In reality the delay was not very long; they were waiting till the moment when she could be got on board the ship without being dashed against its side. Even with all their best endeavors she had a bruised knee when she finally stood, dripping and shivering, on the deck. After her Edmund was heaved up, and then the miserable Eustace. Last of all came the stranger—a golden-headed boy some years older than herself.

“Ca—Ca—Caspian！” gasped Lucy as soon as she had breath enough. For Caspian it was; Caspian, the boy king of Narnia whom they had helped to set on the throne during their last visit. Immediately Edmund recognized him too. All three shook hands and clapped one another on the back with great delight.

“But who is your friend?” said Caspian almost at once, turning to Eustace with his cheerful smile. But Eustace was crying much harder than any boy of his age has a right to cry when nothing worse than a wetting has happened to him, and would only yell out, “Let me go. Let me go back. I don’t like it.”

“Let you go?” said Caspian. “But where?”

Eustace rushed to the ship’s side, as if he expected to see the picture frame hanging above the sea, and perhaps a glimpse of Lucy’s bedroom. What he saw was blue waves flecked with foam, and paler blue sky, both spreading without a break to the horizon. Perhaps we can hardly blame him if his heart sank. He was promptly sick.

“Hey！ Rynelf,” said Caspian to one of the sailors. “Bring spiced wine for their Majesties. You’ll need something to warm you after that dip.” He called Edmund and Lucy their Majesties because they and Peter and Susan had all been Kings and Queens of Narnia long before his time. Narnian time flows differently from ours. If you spent a hundred years in Narnia, you would still come back to our world at the very same hour of the very same day on which you left. And then, if you went back to Narnia after spending a week here, you might find that a thousand Narnian years had passed, or only a day, or no time at all. You never know till you get there. Consequently, when the Pevensie children had returned to Narnia last time for their second visit, it was （for the Narnians） as if King Arthur came back to Britain, as some people say he will. And I say the sooner the better.

Rynelf returned with the spiced wine steaming in a flagon and four silver cups. It was just what one wanted, and as Lucy and Edmund sipped it they could feel the warmth going right down to their toes. But Eustace made faces and spluttered and spat it out and was sick again and began to cry again and asked if they hadn’t any Plumptree’s Vitaminized Nerve Food and could it be made with distilled water and anyway he insisted on being put ashore at the next station.

“This is a merry shipmate you’ve brought us, Brother,” whispered Caspian to Edmund with a chuckle; but before he could say anything more Eustace burst out again.

“Oh！ Ugh！ What on earth’s that！ Take it away, the horrid thing.”

He really had some excuse this time for feeling a little surprised. Something very curious indeed had come out of the cabin in the poop and was slowly approaching them. You might call it—and indeed it was—a Mouse. But then it was a Mouse on its hind legs and stood about two feet high. A thin band of gold passed round its head under one ear and over the other and in this was stuck a long crimson feather. （As the Mouse’s fur was very dark, almost black, the effect was bold and striking.） Its left paw rested on the hilt of a sword very nearly as long as its tail. Its balance, as it paced gravely along the swaying deck, was perfect, and its manners courtly. Lucy and Edmund recognized it at once-Reepicheep, the most valiant of all the Talking Beasts of Narnia, and the Chief Mouse. It had won undying glory in the second Battle of Beruna. Lucy longed, as she had always done, to take Reepicheep up in her arms and cuddle him. But this, as she well knew, was a pleasure she could never have; it would have offended him deeply. Instead, she went down on one knee to talk to him.

Reepicheep put forward his left leg, drew back his right, bowed, kissed her hand, straightened himself, twirled his whiskers, and said in his shrill, piping voice：

“My humble duty to your Majesty. And to King Edmund, too.”（Here he bowed again.）“Nothing except your Majesties’presence was lacking to this glorious venture.”

“Ugh, take it away,” wailed Eustace. “I hate mice. And I never could bear performing animals. They’re silly and vulgar and—and sentimental.”

“Am I to understand,” said Reepicheep to Lucy after a long stare at Eustace, “that this singularly discourteous person is under your Majesty’s protection? Because, if not—”

At this moment Lucy and Edmund both sneezed.

“What a fool I am to keep you all standing here in your wet things,” said Caspian. “Come on below and get changed. I’ll give you my cabin of course, Lucy, but I’m afraid we have no women’s clothes on board. You’ll have to make do with some of mine. Lead the way, Reepicheep, like a good fellow.”

“To the convenience of a lady,” said Reepicheep, “even a question of honor must give way—at least for the moment—” and here he looked very hard at Eustace. But Caspian hustled them on and in a few minutes Lucy found herself passing through the door into the stern cabin. She fell in love with it at once—the three square windows that looked out on the blue, swirling water astern, the low cushioned benches round three sides of the table, the swinging silver lamp overhead （Dwarfs’work, she knew at once by its exquisite delicacy） and the flat gold image of Aslan the Lion on the forward wall above the door. All this she took in in a flash, for Caspian immediately opened a door on the starboard side, and said, “This’ll be your room, Lucy. I’ll just get some dry things for myself”—he was rummaging in one of the lockers while he spoke—“and then leave you to change. If you’ll fling your wet things outside the door I’ll get them taken to the galley to be dried.”

Lucy found herself as much at home as if she had been in Caspian’s cabin for weeks, and the motion of the ship did not worry her, for in the old days when she had been a queen in Narnia she had done a good deal of voyaging. The cabin was very tiny but bright with painted panels （all birds and beasts and crimson dragons and vines） and spotlessly clean. Caspian’s clothes were too big for her, but she could manage. His shoes, sandals and sea-boots were hopelessly big but she did not mind going barefoot on board ship. When she had finished dressing she looked out of her window at the water rushing past and took a long deep breath. She felt quite sure they were in for a lovely time.

CHAPTER TWO
ON BOARD THE DAWN TREADER

“Ah, there you are, Lucy,” said Caspian. “We were just waiting for you. This is my captain, the Lord Drinian.”

A dark-haired man went down on one knee and kissed her hand. The only others present were Reepicheep and Edmund.

“Where is Eustace?” asked Lucy.

“In bed,” said Edmund, “and I don’t think we can do anything for him. It only makes him worse if you try to be nice to him.”

“Meanwhile,” said Caspian, “we want to talk.”

“By Jove, we do,” said Edmund. “And first, about time. It’s a year ago by our time since we left you just before your coronation. How long has it been in Narnia?”

“Exactly three years,” said Caspian.

“All going well?” asked Edmund.

“You don’t suppose I’d have left my kingdom and put to sea unless all was well,” answered the King. “It couldn’t be better. There’s no trouble at all now between Telmarines, Dwarfs, Talking Beasts, Fauns and the rest. And we gave those troublesome giants on the frontier such a good beating last summer that they pay us tribute now. And I had an excellent person to leave as Regent while I’m away—Trumpkin, the Dwarf. You remember him?”

“Dear Trumpkin,” said Lucy, “of course I do. You couldn’t have made a better choice.”

“Loyal as a badger, Ma’am, and valiant as—as a Mouse,” said Drinian. He had been going to say “as a lion” but had noticed Reepicheep’s eyes fixed on him.

“And where are we heading for?” asked Edmund.

“Well,” said Caspian, “that’s rather a long story. Perhaps you remember that when I was a child my usurping uncle Miraz got rid of seven friends of my father’s （who might have taken my part） by sending them off to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands.”

“Yes,” said Lucy, “and none of them ever came back.”

“Right. Well, on my coronation day, with Aslan’s approval, I swore an oath that, if once I established peace in Narnia, I would sail east myself for a year and a day to find my father’s friends or to learn of their deaths and avenge them if I could. These were their names： the Lord Revilian, the Lord Bern, the Lord Argoz, the Lord Mavramorn, the Lord Octesian, the Lord Restimar, and—oh, that other one who’s so hard to remember.”

“The Lord Rhoop, Sire,” said Drinian.

“Rhoop, Rhoop, of course,” said Caspian. “That is my main intention. But Reepicheep here has an even higher hope.” Everyone’s eyes turned to the Mouse.

“As high as my spirit,” it said. “Though perhaps as small as my stature. Why should we not come to the very eastern end of the world? And what might we find there? I expect to find Aslan’s own country. It is always from the east, across the sea, that the great Lion comes to us.”

“I say, that is an idea,” said Edmund in an awed voice.

“But do you think,” said Lucy, “Aslan’s country would be that sort of country—I mean, the sort you could ever sail to?”

“I do not know, Madam,” said Reepicheep. “But there is this. When I was in my cradle, a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me：

“Where sky and water meet,

Where the waves grow sweet,

Doubt not, Reepicheep,

To find all you seek,

There is the utter East.

“I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all my life.”

After a short silence Lucy asked, “And where are we now, Caspian?”

“The Captain can tell you better than I,” said Caspian, so Drinian got out his chart and spread it on the table.

“That’s our position,” he said, laying his finger on it. “Or was at noon today. We had a fair wind from Cair Paravel and stood a little north for Galma, which we made on the next day. We were in port for a week, for the Duke of Galma made a great tournament for His Majesty and there he unhorsed many knights—”

“And got a few nasty falls myself, Drinian. Some of the bruises are there still,” put in Caspian.

“—And unhorsed many knights,” repeated Drinian with a grin. “We thought the Duke would have been pleased if the King’s Majesty would have married his daughter, but nothing came of that—”

“Squints, and has freckles,” said Caspian.

“Oh, poor girl,” said Lucy.

“And we sailed from Galma,” continued Drinian, “and ran into a calm for the best part of two days and had to row, and then had wind again and did not make Terebinthia till the fourth day from Galma. And there their King sent out a warning not to land for there was sickness in Terebinthia, but we doubled the cape and put in at a little creek far from the city and watered. Then we had to lie off for three days before we got a southeast wind and stood out for Seven Isles. The third day out a pirate （Terebinthian by her rig） overhauled us, but when she saw us well armed she stood off after some shooting of arrows on either part—”

“And we ought to have given her chase and boarded her and hanged every mother’s son of them,” said Reepicheep.

“—And in five days more we were in sight of Muil, which, as you know, is the westernmost of the Seven Isles. Then we rowed through the straits and came about sundown into Redhaven on the isle of Brenn, where we were very lovingly feasted and had victuals and water at will. We left Redhaven six days ago and have made marvellously good speed, so that I hope to see the Lone Islands the day after tomorrow. The sum is, we are now nearly thirty days at sea and have sailed more than four hundred leagues from Narnia.”

“And after the Lone Islands?” said Lucy.

“No one knows, your Majesty,” answered Drinian. “Unless the Lone Islanders themselves can tell us.”

“They couldn’t in our days,” said Edmund.

“Then,” said Reepicheep, “it is after the Lone Islands that the adventure really begins.”

Caspian now suggested that they might like to be shown over the ship before supper, but Lucy’s conscience smote her and she said, “I think I really must go and see Eustace. Seasickness is horrid, you know. If I had my old cordial with me I could cure him.”

“But you have,” said Caspian. “I’d quite forgotten about it. As you left it behind I thought it might be regarded as one of the royal treasures and so I brought it—if you think it ought to be wasted on a thing like seasickness.”

“It’ll only take a drop,” said Lucy.

Caspian opened one of the lockers beneath the bench and brought out the beautiful little diamond flask which Lucy remembered so well. “Take back your own, Queen,” he said. They then left the cabin and went out into the sunshine.

In the deck there were two large, long hatches, fore and aft of the mast, and both open, as they always were in fair weather, to let light and air into the belly of the ship. Caspian led them down a ladder into the after hatch. Here they found themselves in a place where benches for rowing ran from side to side and the light came in through the oarholes and danced on the roof. Of course Caspian’s ship was not that horrible thing, a galley rowed by slaves. Oars were used only when wind failed or for getting in and out of harbor and everyone （except Reepicheep whose legs were too short） had often taken a turn. At each side of the ship the space under the benches was left clear for the rowers’feet, but all down the center there was a kind of pit which went down to the very keel and this was filled with all kinds of things—sacks of flour, casks of water and beer, barrels of pork, jars of honey, skin bottles of wine, apples, nuts, cheeses, biscuits, turnips, sides of bacon. From the roof—that is, from the under side of the deck—hung hams and strings of onions, and also the men of the watch off-duty in their hammocks. Caspian led them aft, stepping from bench to bench; at least, it was stepping for him, and something between a step and a jump for Lucy, and a real long jump for Reepicheep. In this way they came to a partition with a door in it. Caspian opened the door and led them into a cabin which filled the stern underneath the deck cabins in the poop. It was of course not so nice. It was very low and the sides sloped together as they went down so that there was hardly any floor; and though it had windows of thick glass, they were not made to open because they were under water. In fact at this very moment, as the ship pitched they were alternately golden with sunlight and dim green with the sea.

“You and I must lodge here, Edmund,” said Caspian. “We’ll leave your kinsman the bunk and sling hammocks for ourselves.”

“I beseech your Majesty—” said Drinian.

“No, no shipmate,” said Caspian, “we have argued all that out already. You and Rhince （Rhince was the mate） are sailing the ship and will have cares and labors many a night when we are singing catches or telling stories, so you and he must have the port cabin above. King Edmund and I can lie very snug here below. But how is the stranger?”

Eustace, very green in the face, scowled and asked whether there was any sign of the storm getting less. But Caspian said, “What storm?” and Drinian burst out laughing.

“Storm, young master！” he roared. “This is as fair weather as a man could ask for.”

“Who’s that?” said Eustace irritably. “Send him away. His voice goes through my head.”

“I’ve brought you something that will make you feel better, Eustace,” said Lucy.

“Oh, go away and leave me alone,” growled Eustace. But he took a drop from her flask, and though he said it was beastly stuff （the smell in the cabin when she opened it was delicious） it is certain that his face came the right color a few moments after he had swallowed it, and he must have felt better because, instead of wailing about the storm and his head, he began demanding to be put ashore and said that at the first port he would “lodge a disposition” against them all with the British Consul. But when Reepicheep asked what a disposition was and how you lodged it （Reepicheep thought it was some new way of arranging a single combat） Eustace could only reply, “Fancy not knowing that.” In the end they succeeded in convincing Eustace that they were already sailing as fast as they could toward the nearest land they knew, and that they had no more power of sending him back to Cambridge—which was where Uncle Harold lived—than of sending him to the moon. After that he sulkily agreed to put on the fresh clothes which had been put out for him and come on deck.

Caspian now showed them over the ship, though indeed they had seen most it already. They went up on the forecastle and saw the look-out man standing on a little shelf inside the gilded dragon’s neck and peering through its open mouth. Inside the forecastle was the galley （or ship’s kitchen） and quarters for such people as the boatswain, the carpenter, the cook and the master-archer. If you think it odd to have the galley in the bows and imagine the smoke from its chimney streaming back over the ship, that is because you are thinking of steamships where there is always a headwind. On a sailing ship the wind is coming from behind, and anything smelly is put as far forward as possible. They were taken up to the fighting-top, and at first it was rather alarming to rock to and fro there and see the deck looking small and far away beneath. You realized that if you fell there was no particular reason why you should fall on board rather than in the sea. Then they were taken to the poop, where Rhince was on duty with another man at the great tiller, and behind that the dragon’s tail rose up, covered with gilding, and round inside it ran a little bench. The name of the ship was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian’s ancestors. When his uncle, Miraz the usurper, had sent the seven lords to sea, they had had to buy a Galmian ship and man it with hired Galmian sailors. But now Caspian had begun to teach the Narnians to be sea-faring folk once more, and the Dawn Treader was the finest ship he had built yet. She was so small that, forward of the mast, there was hardly any deck room between the central hatch and the ship’s boat on one side and the hen-coop （Lucy fed the hens） on the other. But she was a beauty of her kind, a “lady” as sailors say, her lines perfect, her colors pure, and every spar and rope and pin lovingly made. Eustace of course would be pleased with nothing, and kept on boasting about liners and motorboats and aeroplanes and submarines （“As if he knew anything about them,” muttered Edmund）, but the other two were delighted with the Dawn Treader, and when they returned aft to the cabin and supper, and saw the whole western sky lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the Eastern rim of the world, Lucy felt that she was almost too happy to speak.

What Eustace thought had best be told in his own words, for when they all got their clothes back, dried, next morning, he at once got out a little black notebook and a pencil and started to keep a diary. He always had this notebook with him and kept a record of his marks in it, for though he didn’t care much about any subject for its own sake, he cared a great deal about marks and would even go to people and say, “I got so much. What did you get?” But as he didn’t seem likely to get many marks on the Dawn Treader he now started a diary. This was the first entry.

“August 7th. Have now been twenty-four hours on this ghastly boat if it isn’t a dream. All the time a frightful storm has been raging （it’s a good thing I’m not seasick）. Huge waves keep coming in over the front and I have seen the boat nearly go under any number of times. All the others pretend to take no notice of this, either from swank or because Harold says one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts. It’s madness to come out into the sea in a rotten little thing like this. Not much bigger than a lifeboat. And, of course, absolutely primitive indoors. No proper saloon, no radio, no bathrooms, no deck-chairs. I was dragged all over it yesterday evening and it would make anyone sick to hear Caspian showing off his funny little toy boat as if it was the Queen Mary. I tried to tell him what real ships are like, but he’s too dense. E. and L., of course, didn’t back me up. I suppose a kid like L. doesn’t realize the danger and E. is buttering up C. as everyone does here. They call him a King. I said I was a Republican but he had to ask me what that meant！ He doesn’t seem to know anything at all. Needless to say I’ve been put in the worst cabin of the boat, a perfect dungeon, and Lucy has been given a whole room on deck to herself, almost a nice room compared with the rest of this place. C. says that’s because she’s a girl. I tried to make him see what Alberta says, that all that sort of thing is really lowering girls but he was too dense. Still, he might see that I shall be ill if I’m kept in that hole any longer. E. says we mustn’t grumble because C. is sharing it with us himself to make room for L. As if that didn’t make it more crowded and far worse. Nearly forgot to say that there is also a kind of Mouse thing that gives everyone the most frightful cheek. The others can put up with it if they like but I shall twist his tail pretty soon if he tries it on me. The food is frightful too.”

The trouble between Eustace and Reepicheep arrived even sooner than might have been expected. Before dinner next day, when the others were sitting round the table waiting （being at sea gives one a magnificent appetite）, Eustace came rushing in, wringing his hand and shouting out：

“That little brute has half killed me. I insist on it being kept under control. I could bring an action against you, Caspian. I could order you to have it destroyed.”

At the same moment Reepicheep appeared. His sword was drawn and his whiskers looked very fierce but he was as polite as ever.

“I ask your pardons all,” he said, “and especially her Majesty’s. If I had known that he would take refuge here I would have awaited a more reasonable time for his correction.”

“What on earth’s up?” asked Edmund.

What had really happened was this. Reepicheep, who never felt that the ship was getting on fast enough, loved to sit on the bulwarks far forward just beside the dragon’s head, gazing out at the eastern horizon and singing softly in his little chirruping voice the song the Dryad had made for him. He never held on to anything, however the ship pitched, and kept his balance with perfect ease; perhaps his long tail, hanging down to the deck inside the bulwarks, made this easier. Everyone on board was familiar with this habit, and the sailors liked it because when one was on look-out duty it gave one somebody to talk to. Why exactly Eustace had slipped and reeled and stumbled all the way forward to the forecastle （he had not yet got his sea-legs） I never heard. Perhaps he hoped he would see land, or perhaps he wanted to hang about the galley and scrounge something. Anyway, as soon as he saw that long tail hanging down—and perhaps it was rather tempting—he thought it would be delightful to catch hold of it, swing Reepicheep round by it once or twice upside-down, then run away and laugh. At first the plan seemed to work beautifully. The Mouse was not much heavier than a very large cat. Eustace had him off the rail in a trice and very silly he looked （thought Eustace） with his little limbs all splayed out and his mouth open. But unfortunately Reepicheep, who had fought for his life many a time, never lost his head even for a moment. Nor his skill. It is not very easy to draw one’s sword when one is swinging round in the air by one’s tail, but he did. And the next thing Eustace knew was two agonizing jabs in his hand which made him let go of the tail; and the next thing after that was that the Mouse had picked itself up again as if it were a ball bouncing off the deck, and there it was facing him, and a horrid long, bright, sharp thing like a skewer was waving to and fro within an inch of his stomach. （This doesn’t count as below the belt for mice in Narnia because they can hardly be expected to reach higher.）

“Stop it,” spluttered Eustace, “go away. Put that thing away. It’s not safe. Stop it, I say. I’ll tell Caspian. I’ll have you muzzled and tied up.”

“Why do you not draw your own sword, poltroon！” cheeped the Mouse. “Draw and fight or I’ll beat you black and blue with the flat.”

“I haven’t got one,” said Eustace. “I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in fighting.”

“Do I understand,” said Reepicheep, withdrawing his sword for a moment and speaking very sternly, “that you do not intend to give me satisfaction?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Eustace, nursing his hand. “If you don’t know how to take a joke I shan’t bother my head about you.”

“Then take that,” said Reepicheep, “and that—to teach you manners—and the respect due to a knight—and a Mouse—and a Mouse’s tail—” and at each word he gave Eustace a blow with the side of his rapier, which was thin, fine, dwarf-tempered steel and as supple and effective as a birch rod. Eustace （of course） was at a school where they didn’t have corporal punishment, so the sensation was quite new to him. That was why, in spite of having no sea-legs, it took him less than a minute to get off that forecastle and cover the whole length of the deck and burst in at the cabin door—still hotly pursued by Reepicheep. Indeed it seemed to Eustace that the rapier as well as the pursuit was hot. It might have been red-hot by the feel.

There was not much difficulty in settling the matter once Eustace realized that everyone took the idea of a duel seriously and heard Caspian offering to lend him a sword, and Drinian and Edmund discussing whether he ought to be handicapped in some way to make up for his being so much bigger than Reepicheep. He apologized sulkily and went off with Lucy to have his hand bathed and bandaged and then went to his bunk. He was careful to lie on his side.

CHAPTER THREE
THE LONE ISLANDS

“Land in sight,” shouted the man in the bows.

Lucy, who had been talking to Rhince on the poop, came pattering down the ladder and raced forward. As she went she was joined by Edmund, and they found Caspian, Drinian and Reepicheep already on the forecastle. It was a coldish morning, the sky very pale and the sea very dark blue with little white caps of foam, and there, a little way off on the starboard bow, was the nearest of the Lone Islands, Felimath, like a low green hill in the sea, and behind it, further off, the gray slopes of its sister Doorn.

“Same old Felimath！ Same old Doorn,” said Lucy, clapping her hands. “Oh—Edmund, how long it is since you and I saw them last！”

“I’ve never understood why they belong to Narnia,” said Caspian. “Did Peter the High King conquer them?”

“Oh no,” said Edmund. “They were Narnian before our time—in the days of the White Witch.”

（By the way, I have never yet heard how these remote islands became attached to the crown of Narnia; if I ever do, and if the story is at all interesting, I may put it in some other book.）

“Are we to put in here, Sire?” asked Drinian.

“I shouldn’t think it would be much good landing on Felimath,” said Edmund. “It was almost uninhabited in our days and it looks as if it was the same still. The people lived mostly on Doorn and a little on Avra-that’s the third one; you can’t see it yet. They only kept sheep on Felimath.”

“Then we’ll have to double that cape, I suppose,” said Drinian, “and land on Doorn. That’ll mean rowing.”

“I’m sorry we’re not landing on Felimath,” said Lucy. “I’d like to walk there again. It was so lonely—a nice kind of loneliness, and all grass and clover and soft sea air.”

“I’d love to stretch my legs now too,” said Caspian. “I tell you what. Why shouldn’t we go ashore in the boat and send it back, and then we could walk across Felimath and let the Dawn Treader pick us up on the other side?”

If Caspian had been as experienced then as he became later on in this voyage he would not have made this suggestion; but at the moment it seemed an excellent one. “Oh do let’s,” said Lucy.

“You’ll come, will you?” said Caspian to Eustace, who had come on deck with his hand bandaged.

“Anything to get off this blasted boat,” said Eustace.

“Blasted?” said Drinian. “How do you mean?”

“In a civilized country like where I come from,” said Eustace, “the ships are so big that when you’re inside you wouldn’t know you were at sea at all.”

“In that case you might just as well stay ashore,” said Caspian. “Will you tell them to lower the boat, Drinian?”

The King, the Mouse, the two Pevensies, and Eustace all got into the boat and were pulled to the beach of Felimath. When the boat had left them and was being rowed back they all turned and looked round. They were surprised at how small the Dawn Treader looked.

Lucy was of course barefoot, having kicked off her shoes while swimming, but that is no hardship if one is going to walk on downy turf. It was delightful to be ashore again and to smell the earth and grass, even if at first the ground seemed to be pitching up and down like a ship, as it usually does for a while if one has been at sea. It was much warmer here than it had been on board and Lucy found the sand pleasant to her feet as they crossed it. There was a lark singing.

They struck inland and up a fairly steep, though low, hill. At the top of course they looked back, and there was the Dawn Treader shining like a great bright insect and crawling slowly northwestward with her oars. Then they went over the ridge and could see her no longer.

Doorn now lay before them, divided from Felimath by a channel about a mile wide; behind it and to the left lay Avra. The little white town of Narrowhaven on Doorn was easily seen.

“Hullo！ What’s this?” said Edmund suddenly.

In the green valley to which they were descending six or seven rough-looking men, all armed, were sitting by a tree.

“Don’t tell them who we are,” said Caspian.

“And pray, your Majesty, why not?” said Reepicheep who had consented to ride on Lucy’s shoulder.

“It just occurred to me,” replied Caspian, “that no one here can have heard from Narnia for a long time. It’s just possible they may not still acknowledge our over-lordship. In which case it might not be quite safe to be known as the King.”

“We have our swords, Sire,” said Reepicheep.

“Yes, Reep, I know we have,” said Caspian. “But if it is a question of re-conquering the three islands, I’d prefer to come back with a rather larger army.”

By this time they were quite close to the strangers, one of whom—a big black-haired fellow—shouted out, “A good morning to you.”

“And a good morning to you,” said Caspian. “Is there still a Governor of the Lone Islands?”

“To be sure there is,” said the man, “Governor Gumpas. His Sufficiency is at Narrowhaven. But you’ll stay and drink with us.”

Caspian thanked him, though neither he nor the others much liked the look of their new acquaintance, and all of them sat down. But hardly had they raised their cups to their lips when the black-haired man nodded to his companions and, as quick as lightning, all the five visitors found themselves wrapped in strong arms. There was a moment’s struggle but all the advantages were on one side, and soon everyone was disarmed and had their hands tied behind their backs—except Reepicheep, writhing in his captor’s grip and biting furiously.

“Careful with that beast, Tacks,” said the Leader. “Don’t damage him. He’ll fetch the best price of the lot, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Coward！ Poltroon！” squeaked Reepicheep. “Give me my sword and free my paws if you dare.”

“Whew！” whistled the slave merchant （for that is what he was）. “It can talk！ Well I never did. Blowed if I take less than two hundred crescents for him.” The Calormene crescent, which is the chief coin in those parts, is worth about a third of a pound.

“So that’s what you are,” said Caspian. “A kidnapper and slaver. I hope you’re proud of it.”

“Now, now, now, now,” said the slaver. “Don’t you start any jaw. The easier you take it, the pleasanter all round, see? I don’t do this for fun. I’ve got my living to make same as anyone else.”

“Where will you take us?” asked Lucy, getting the words out with some difficulty.

“Over to Narrowhaven,” said the slaver. “For market day tomorrow.”

“Is there a British Consul there?” asked Eustace.

“Is there a which?” said the man.

But long before Eustace was tired of trying to explain, the slaver simply said, “Well, I’ve had enough of this jabber. The Mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind leg off a donkey. Off we go, mates.”

Then the four human prisoners were roped together, not cruelly but securely, and made to march down to the shore. Reepicheep was carried. He had stopped biting on a threat of having his mouth tied up, but he had a great deal to say, and Lucy really wondered how any man could bear to have the things said to him which were said to the slave dealer by the Mouse. But the slave dealer, far from objecting, only said “Go on” whenever Reepicheep paused for breath, occasionally adding, “It’s as good as a play,” or, “Blimey, you can’t help almost thinking it knows what it’s saying！” or “Was it one of you what trained it?” This so infuriated Reepicheep that in the end the number of things he thought of saying all at once nearly suffocated him and he became silent.

When they got down to the shore that looked toward Doorn they found a little village and a long-boat on the beach and, lying a little further out, a dirty bedraggled looking ship.

“Now, youngsters,” said the slave dealer, “let’s have no fuss and then you’ll have nothing to cry about. All aboard.”

At that moment a fine-looking bearded man came out of one of the houses （an inn, I think） and said：

“Well, Pug. More of your usual wares?”

The slaver, whose name seemed to be Pug, bowed very low, and said in a wheedling kind of voice, “Yes, please your Lordship.”

“How much do you want for that boy?” asked the other, pointing to Caspian.

“Ah,” said Pug, “I knew your Lordship would pick on the best. No deceiving your Lordship with anything second rate. That boy, now, I’ve taken a fancy to him myself. Got kind of fond of him, I have. I’m that tender-hearted I didn’t ever ought to have taken up this job. Still, to a customer like your Lordship—”

“Tell me your price, carrion,” said the Lord sternly. “Do you think I want to listen to the rigmarole of your filthy trade?”

“Three hundred crescents, my Lord, to your honorable Lordship, but to anyone else—”

“I’ll give you a hundred and fifty.”

“Oh please, please,” broke in Lucy. “Don’t separate us, whatever you do. You don’t know—” But then she stopped for she saw that Caspian didn’t even now want to be known.

“A hundred and fifty, then,” said the Lord. “As for you, little maiden, I am sorry I cannot buy you all. Unrope my boy, Pug. And look—treat these others well while they are in your hands or it’ll be the worse for you.”

“Well！” said Pug. “Now who ever heard of a gentleman in my way of business who treated his stock better than what I do? Well? Why, I treat’em like my own childen.”

“That’s likely enough to be true,” said the other grimly.

The dreadful moment had now come. Caspian was untied and his new master said, “This way, lad,” and Lucy burst into tears and Edmund looked very blank. But Caspian looked over his shoulder and said, “Cheer up. I’m sure it will come all right in the end. So long.”

“Now, missie,” said Pug. “Don’t you start taking on and spoiling your looks for the market tomorrow. You be a good girl and then you won’t have nothing to cry about, see?”

Then they were rowed out to the slave-ship and taken below into a long, rather dark place, none too clean, where they found many other unfortunate prisoners; for Pug was of course a pirate and had just returned from cruising among the islands and capturing what he could. The children didn’t meet anyone whom they knew; the prisoners were mostly Galmians and Terebinthians. And there they sat in the straw and wondered what was happening to Caspian and tried to stop Eustace talking as if everyone except himself was to blame.

Meanwhile Caspian was having a much more interesting time. The man who had bought him led him down a little lane between two of the village houses and so out into an open place behind the village. Then he turned and faced him.

“You needn’t be afraid of me, boy,” he said. “I’ll treat you well. I bought you for your face. You reminded me of someone.”

“May I ask of whom, my Lord?” said Caspian.

“You remind me of my master, King Caspian of Narnia.”

Then Caspian decided to risk everything on one stroke.

“My Lord,” he said, “I am your master. I am Caspian King of Narnia.”

“You make very free,” said the other. “How shall I know this is true?”

“Firstly by my face,” said Caspian. “Secondly because I know within six guesses who you are. You are one of those seven lords of Narnia whom my Uncle Miraz sent to sea and whom I have come out to look for—Argoz, Bern, Octesian, Restimar, Mavramorn, or—or—I have forgotten the others. And finally, if your Lordship will give me a sword I will prove on any man’s body in clean battle that I am Caspian the son of Caspian, lawful King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands.”

“By heaven,” exclaimed the man, “it is his father’s very voice and trick of speech. My liege—your Majesty—” And there in the field he knelt and kissed the King’s hand.

“The moneys your Lordship disbursed for our person will be made good from our own treasury,” said Caspian.

“They’re not in Pug’s purse yet, Sire,” said the Lord Bern, for he it was. “And never will be, I trust. I have moved His Sufficiency the Governor a hundred times to crush this vile traffic in man’s flesh.”

“My Lord Bern,” said Caspian, “we must talk of the state of these Islands. But first what is your Lordship’s own story?”

“Short enough, Sire,” said Bern. “I came thus far with my six fellows, loved a girl of the islands, and felt I had had enough of the sea. And there was no purpose in returning to Narnia while your Majesty’s uncle held the reins. So I married and have lived here ever since.”

“And what is this governor, this Gumpas, like? Does he still acknowledge the King of Narnia for his lord?”

“In words, yes. All is done in the King’s name. But he would not be best pleased to find a real, live King of Narnia coming in upon him. And if your Majesty came before him alone and unarmed—well he would not deny his allegiance, but he would pretend to disbelieve you. Your Grace’s life would be in danger. What following has your Majesty in these waters?”

“There is my ship just rounding the point,” said Caspian. “We are about thirty swords if it came to fighting. Shall we not have my ship in and fall upon Pug and free my friends whom he holds captive?”

“Not by my counsel,” said Bern. “As soon as there was a fight two or three ships would put out from Narrowhaven to rescue Pug. Your Majesty must work by a show of more power than you really have, and by the terror of the King’s name. It must not come to plain battle. Gumpas is a chicken-hearted man and can be over-awed.”

After a little more conversation Caspian and Bern walked down to the coast a little west of the village and there Caspian winded his horn. （This was not the great magic horn of Narnia, Queen Susan’s Horn; he had left that at home for his regent Trumpkin to use if any great need fell upon the land in the King’s absence.） Drinian, who was on the lookout for a signal, recognized the royal horn at once and the Dawn Treader began standing in to shore. Then the boat put off again and in a few moments Caspian and the Lord Bern were on deck explaining the situation to Drinian. He, just like Caspian, wanted to lay the Dawn Treader alongside the slave-ship at once and board her, but Bern made the same objection.

“Steer straight down this channel, captain,” said Bern, “and then round to Avra where my own estates are. But first run up the King’s banner, hang out all the shields, and send as many men to the fighting-top as you can. And about five bowshots hence, when you get open sea on your port bow, run up a few signals.”

“Signals? To whom?” said Drinian.

“Why, to all the other ships we haven’t got but which it might be well that Gumpas thinks we have.”

“Oh, I see,” said Drinian, rubbing his hands. “And they’ll read our signals. What shall I say? Whole fleet round the South of Avra and assemble at—?”

“Bernstead,” said the Lord Bern. “That’ll do excellently. Their whole journey—if there were any ships—would be out of sight from Narrowhaven.”

Caspian was sorry for the others languishing in the hold of Pug’s slave-ship, but he could not help finding the rest of that day enjoyable. Late in the afternoon （for they had to do all by oar）, having turned to starboard round the northeast end of Doorn and port again round the point of Avra, they entered into a good harbor on Avra’s southern shore where Bern’s pleasant lands sloped down to the water’s edge. Bern’s people, many of whom they saw working in the fields, were all freemen and it was a happy and prosperous fief. Here they all went ashore and were royally feasted in a low, pillared house overlooking the bay. Bern and his gracious wife and merry daughters made them good cheer. But after dark Bern sent a messenger over by boat to Doorn to order some preparations （he did not say exactly what） for the following day.

CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT CASPIAN DID THERE

Next morning the Lord Bern called his guests early, and after breakfast he asked Caspian to order every man he had into full armor. “And above all,” he added, “let everything be as trim and scoured as if it were the morning of the first battle in a great war between noble kings with all the world looking on.” This was done; and then in three boatloads Caspian and his people, and Bern with a few of his, put out for Narrowhaven. The King’s flag flew in the stern of his boat and his trumpeter was with him.

When they reached the jetty at Narrowhaven, Caspian found a considerable crowd assembled to meet them. “This is what I sent word about last night,” said Bern. “They are all friends of mine and honest people.” And as soon as Caspian stepped ashore the crowd broke out into hurrahs and shouts of, “Narnia！ Narnia！ Long live the King.” At the same moment—and this was also due to Bern’s messengers—bells began ringing from many parts of the town. Then Caspian caused his banner to be advanced and his trumpet to be blown and every man drew his sword and set his face into a joyful sternness, and they marched up the street so that the street shook, and their armor shone （for it was a sunny morning） so that one could hardly look at it steadily.

At first the only people who cheered were those who had been warned by Bern’s messenger and knew what was happening and wanted it to happen. But then all the children joined in because they liked a procession and had seen very few. And then all the schoolboys joined in because they also liked processions and felt that the more noise and disturbance there was the less likely they would be to have any school that morning. And then all the old women put their heads out of doors and windows and began chattering and cheering because it was a king, and what is a governor compared with that? And all the young women joined in for the same reason and also because Caspian and Drinian and the rest were so handsome. And then all the young men came to see what the young women were looking at, so that by the time Caspian reached the castle gates, nearly the whole town was shouting; and where Gumpas sat in the castle, muddling and messing about with accounts and forms and rules and regulations, he heard the noise.

At the castle gate Caspian’s trumpeter blew a blast and cried, “Open for the King of Narnia, come to visit his trusty and well-beloved servant the governor of the Lone Islands.” In those days everything in the islands was done in a slovenly, slouching manner. Only the little postern opened, and out came a tousled fellow with a dirty old hat on his head instead of a helmet, and a rusty old pike in his hand. He blinked at the flashing figures before him. “Carn—seez—fishansy,” he mumbled （which was his way of saying, “You can’t see His Sufficiency”）. “No interviews without ’pointments ’cept ’tween nine ’n’ ten p.m. second Saturday every month.”

“Uncover before Narnia, you dog,” thundered the Lord Bern, and dealt him a rap with his gauntleted hand which sent his hat flying from his head.

“’Ere? Wot’s it all about?” began the doorkeeper, but no one took any notice of him. Two of Caspian’s men stepped through the postern and after some struggling with bars and bolts （for everything was rusty） flung both wings of the gate wide open. Then the King and his followers strode into the courtyard. Here a number of the governor’s guards were lounging about and several more （they were mostly wiping their mouths） came tumbling out of various doorways. Though their armor was in a disgraceful condition, these were fellows who might have fought if they had been led or had known what was happening; so this was the dangerous moment. Caspian gave them no time to think.

“Where is the captain?” he asked.

“I am, more or less, if you know what I mean,” said a languid and rather dandified young person without any armor at all.

“It is our wish,” said Caspian, “that our royal visitation to our realm of the Lone Islands should, if possible, be an occasion of joy and not of terror to our loyal subjects. If it were not for that, I should have something to say about the state of your men’s armor and weapons. As it is, you are pardoned. Command a cask of wine to be opened that your men may drink our health. But at noon tomorrow I wish to see them here in this courtyard looking like men-at-arms and not like vagabonds. See to it on pain of our extreme displeasure.”

The captain gaped but Bern immediately cried, “Three cheers for the King,” and the soldiers, who had understood about the cask of wine even if they understood nothing else, joined in. Caspian then ordered most of his own men to remain in the courtyard. He, with Bern and Drinian and four others, went into the hall.

Behind a table at the far end with various secretaries about him sat His Sufficiency, the Governor of the Lone Islands. Gumpas was a bilious-looking man with hair that had once been red and was now mostly gray. He glanced up as the strangers entered and then looked down at his papers saying automatically, “No interviews without appointments except between nine and ten p. m. on second Saturdays.”

Caspian nodded to Bern and then stood aside. Bern and Drinian took a step forward and each seized one end of the table. They lifted it, and flung it on one side of the hall where it rolled over, scattering a cascade of letters, dossiers, ink-pots, pens, sealing-wax and documents. Then, not roughly but as firmly as if their hands were pincers of steel, they plucked Gumpas out of his chair and deposited him, facing it, about four feet away. Caspian at once sat down in the chair and laid his naked sword across his knees.

“My Lord,” said he, fixing his eyes on Gumpas, “you have not given us quite the welcome we expected. I am the King of Narnia.”

“Nothing about it in the correspondence,” said the governor. “Nothing in the minutes. We have not been notified of any such thing. All irregular. Happy to consider any applications—”

“And we are come to inquire into your Sufficiency’s conduct of your office,” continued Caspian. “There are two points especially on which I require an explanation. Firstly I find no record that the tribute due from these Islands to the crown of Narnia has been received for about a hundred and fifty years.”

“That would be a question to raise at the Council next month,” said Gumpas. “If anyone moves that a commission of enquiry be set up to report on the financial history of the islands at the first meeting next year, why then...”

“I also find it very clearly written in our laws,” Caspian went on, “that if the tribute is not delivered the whole debt has to be paid by the Governor of the Lone Islands out of his private purse.”

At this Gumpas began to pay real attention. “Oh, that’s quite out of the question,” he said. “It is an economic impossibility—er—your Majesty must be joking.”

Inside, he was wondering if there were any way of getting rid of these unwelcome visitors. Had he known that Caspian had only one ship and one ship’s company with him, he would have spoken soft words for the moment, and hoped to have them all surrounded and killed during the night. But he had seen a ship of war sail down the straits yesterday and seen it signalling, as he supposed, to its consorts. He had not then known it was the King’s ship for there was not wind enough to spread the flag out and make the golden lion visible, so he had waited further developments. Now he imagined that Caspian had a whole fleet at Bernstead. It would never have occurred to Gumpas that anyone would walk into Narrowhaven to take the islands with less than fifty men; it was certainly not at all the kind of thing he could imagine doing himself.

“Secondly,” said Caspian, “I want to know why you have permitted this abominable and unnatural traffic in slaves to grow up here, contrary to the ancient custom and usage of our dominions.”

“Necessary, unavoidable,” said His Sufficiency. “An essential part of the economic development of the islands, I assure you. Our present burst of prosperity depends on it.”

“What need have you of slaves?”

“For export, your Majesty. Sell’em to Calormen mostly; and we have other markets. We are a great center of the trade.”

“In other words,” said Caspian, “you don’t need them. Tell me what purpose they serve except to put money into the pockets of such as Pug?”

“Your Majesty’s tender years,” said Gumpas, with what was meant to be a fatherly smile, “hardly make it possible that you should understand the economic problem involved. I have statistics, I have graphs, I have—”

“Tender as my years may be,” said Caspian, “I believe I understand the slave trade from within quite as well as your Sufficiency. And I do not see that it brings into the islands meat or bread or beer or wine or timber or cabbages or books or instruments of music or horses or armor or anything else worth having. But whether it does or not, it must be stopped.”

“But that would be putting the clock back,” gasped the governor. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”

“I have seen them both in an egg,” said Caspian. “We call it ‘Going Bad’ in Narnia. This trade must stop.”

“I can take no responsibility for any such measure,” said Gumpas.

“Very well, then,” answered Caspian, “we relieve you of your office. My Lord Bern, come here.” And before Gumpas quite realized what was happening, Bern was kneeling with his hands between the King’s hands and taking the oath to govern the Lone Islands in accordance with the old customs, rights, usages and laws of Narnia. And Caspian said, “I think we have had enough of governors,” and made Bern a Duke, the Duke of the Lone Islands.

“As for you, my Lord,” he said to Gumpas, “I forgive you your debt for the tribute. But before noon tomorrow you and yours must be out of the castle, which is now the Duke’s residence.”

“Look here, this is all very well,” said one of Gumpas’s secretaries, “but suppose all you gentlemen stop play-acting and we do a little business. The question before us really is—”

“The question is,” said the Duke, “whether you and the rest of the rabble will leave without a flogging or with one. You may choose which you prefer.”

When all this had been pleasantly settled, Caspian ordered horses, of which there were a few in the castle, though very ill-groomed, and he, with Bern and Drinian and a few others, rode out into the town and made for the slave market. It was a long low building near the harbor and the scene which they found going on inside was very much like any other auction; that is to say, there was a great crowd and Pug, on a platform, was roaring out in a raucous voice：

“Now, gentlemen, lot twenty-three. Fine Terebinthian agricultural laborer, suitable for the mines or the galleys. Under twenty-five years of age. Not a bad tooth in his head. Good, brawny fellow. Take off his shirt, Tacks, and let the gentlemen see. There’s muscle for you！ Look at the chest on him. Ten crescents from the gentleman in the corner. You must be joking, sir. Fifteen！ Eighteen！ Eighteen is bidden for lot twenty-three. Any advance on eighteen? Twenty-one. Thank you, sir. Twenty-one is bidden—”

But Pug stopped and gaped when he saw the mail-clad figures who had clanked up to the platform.

“On your knees, every man of you, to the King of Narnia,” said the Duke. Everyone heard the horses jingling and stamping outside and many had heard some rumor of the landing and the events at the castle. Most obeyed. Those who did not were pulled down by their neighbors. Some cheered.

“Your life is forfeit, Pug, for laying hands on our royal person yesterday,” said Caspian. “But your ignorance is pardoned. The slave trade was forbidden in all our dominions quarter of an hour ago. I declare every slave in this market free.”

He held up his hand to check the cheering of the slaves and went on, “Where are my friends?”

“That dear little girl and the nice young gentleman?” said Pug with an ingratiating smile. “Why, they were snapped up at once—”

“We’re here, we’re here, Caspian,” cried Lucy and Edmund together and, “At your service, Sire,” piped Reepicheep from another corner. They had all been sold but the men who had bought them were staying to bid for other slaves and so they had not yet been taken away. The crowd parted to let the three of them out and there was great hand-clasping and greeting between them and Caspian. Two merchants of Calormen at once approached. The Calormen have dark faces and long beards. They wear flowing robes and orange-colored turbans, and they are a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people. They bowed most politely to Caspian and paid him long compliments, all about the fountains of prosperity irrigating the gardens of prudence and virtue—and things like that—but of course what they wanted was the money they had paid.

“That is only fair, sirs,” said Caspian. “Every man who has bought a slave today must have his money back. Pug, bring out your takings to the last minim.”（A minim is the fortieth part of a crescent.）

“Does your good Majesty mean to beggar me?” whined Pug.

“You have lived on broken hearts all your life,” said Caspian, “and if you are beggared, it is better to be a beggar than a slave. But where is my other friend?”

“Oh him?” said Pug. “Oh take him and welcome. Glad to have him off my hands. I’ve never seen such a drug in the market in all my born days. Priced him at five crescents in the end and even so nobody’d have him. Threw him in free with other lots and still no one would have him. Wouldn’t touch him. Wouldn’t look at him. Tacks, bring out Sulky.”

Thus Eustace was produced, and sulky he certainly looked; for though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy. He walked up to Caspian and said, “I see. As usual. Been enjoying yourself somewhere while the rest of us were prisoners. I suppose you haven’t even found out about the British Consul. Of course not.”

That night they had a great feast in the castle of Narrowhaven and then, “Tomorrow for the beginning of our real adventures！” said Reepicheep when he had made his bows to everyone and went to bed. But it could not really be tomorrow or anything like it. For now they were preparing to leave all known lands and seas behind them and the fullest preparations had to be made. The Dawn Treader was emptied and drawn on land by eight horses over rollers and every bit of her was gone over by the most skilled shipwrights. Then she was launched again and victualed and watered as full as she could hold—that is to say for twenty-eight days. Even this, as Edmund noticed with disappointment, only gave them a fortnight’s eastward sailing before they had to abandon their quest.

While all this was being done Caspian missed no chance of questioning all the oldest sea captains whom he could find in Narrowhaven to learn if they had any knowledge or even any rumors of land further to the east. He poured out many a flagon of the castle ale to weather-beaten men with short gray beards and clear blue eyes, and many a tall yarn he heard in return. But those who seemed the most truthful could tell of no lands beyond the Lone Islands, and many thought that if you sailed too far east you would come into the surges of a sea without lands that swirled perpetually round the rim of the world—“And that, I reckon, is where your Majesty’s friends went to the bottom.” The rest had only wild stories of islands inhabited by headless men, floating islands, waterspouts, and a fire that burned along the water. Only one, to Reepicheep’s delight, said, “And beyond that, Aslan country. But that’s beyond the end of the world and you can’t get there.” But when they questioned him he could only say that he’d heard it from his father.

Bern could only tell them that he had seen his six companions sail away eastward and that nothing had ever been heard of them again. He said this when he and Caspian were standing on the highest point of Avra looking down on the eastern ocean. “I’ve often been up here of a morning,” said the Duke, “and seen the sun come up out of the sea, and sometimes it looked as if it were only a couple of miles away. And I’ve wondered about my friends and wondered what there really is behind that horizon. Nothing, most likely, yet I am always half ashamed that I stayed behind. But I wish your Majesty wouldn’t go. We may need your help here. This closing the slave market might make a new world; war with Calormen is what I foresee. My liege, think again.”

“I have an oath, my lord Duke,” said Caspian. “And anyway, what could I say to Reepicheep?”

CHAPTER FIVE
THE STORM AND WHAT CAME OF IT

It was nearly three weeks after their landing that the Dawn Treader was towed out of Narrowhaven harbor. Very solemn farewells had been spoken and a great crowd had assembled to see her departure. There had been cheers, and tears too, when Caspian made his last speech to the Lone Islanders and parted from the Duke and his family, but as the ship, her purple sail still flapping idly, drew further from the shore, and the sound of Caspian’s trumpet from the poop came fainter across the water, everyone became silent. Then she came into the wind. The sail swelled out, the tug cast off and began rowing back, the first real wave ran up under the Dawn Treader’s prow, and she was a live ship again. The men off duty went below, Drinian took the first watch on the poop, and she turned her head eastward round the south of Avra.

The next few days were delightful. Lucy thought she was the most fortunate girl in the world, as she woke each morning to see the reflections of the sunlit water dancing on the ceiling of her cabin and looked round on all the nice new things she had got in the Lone Islands—seaboots and buskins and cloaks and jerkins and scarves. And then she would go on deck and take a look from the forecastle at a sea which was a brighter blue each morning and drink in an air that was a little warmer day by day. After that came breakfast and such an appetite as one only has at sea.

She spent a good deal of time sitting on the little bench in the stern playing chess with Reepicheep. It was amusing to see him lifting the pieces, which were far too big for him, with both paws and standing on tiptoes if he made a move near the center of the board. He was a good player and when he remembered what he was doing he usually won. But every now and then Lucy won because the Mouse did something quite ridiculous like sending a knight into the danger of a queen and castle combined. This happened because he had momentarily forgotten it was a game of chess and was thinking of a real battle and making the knight do what he would certainly have done in its place. For his mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-or-glory charges, and last stands.

But this pleasant time did not last. There came an evening when Lucy, gazing idly astern at the long furrow or wake they were leaving behind them, saw a great rack of clouds building itself up in the west with amazing speed. Then a gap was torn in it and a yellow sunset poured through the gap. All the waves behind them seemed to take on unusual shapes and the sea was a drab or yellowish color like dirty canvas. The air grew cold. The ship seemed to move uneasily as if she felt danger behind her. The sail would be flat and limp one minute and wildly the next. While she was noting these things and wondering at a sinister change which had come over the very noise of the wind, Drinian cried, “All hands on deck.” In a moment everyone became frantically busy. The hatches were battened down, the galley fire was put out, men went aloft to reef the sail. Before they had finished the storm struck them. It seemed to Lucy that a great valley in the sea opened just before their bows, and they rushed down in it, deeper down than she would have believed possible. A great gray hill of water, far higher than the mast, rushed to meet them; it looked certain death but they were tossed to the top of it. Then the ship seemed to spin round. A cataract of water poured over the deck; the poop and forecastle were like two islands with a fierce sea between them. Up aloft the sailors were lying out along the yard desperate trying to get control of the sail. A broken rope stood out sideways in the wind as straight and stiff as if it was poker.

“Get below, Ma’am,” bawled Drinian. And Lucy, knowing that landsmen—and landswomen—are a nuisance to the crew, began to obey. It was not easy. The Dawn Treader was listing terribly to starboard and the deck sloped like the roof of a house. She had to clamber round to the top of the ladder, holding on to the rail, and then stand by while two men climbed up it, and then get down it as best as she could. It was well she was already holding on tight for at the foot of the ladder another wave roared across the deck, up to her shoulders. She was already almost wet through with spray and rain but this was colder. Then she made a dash for the cabin door and got in and shut out for a moment the appalling sight of the speed with which they were rushing into the dark, but not of course the horrible confusion of creakings, groanings, snappings, clatterings, roarings and boomings which only sounded more alarming below than they had done on the poop.

And all next day and all the next it went on. It went on till one could hardly even remember a time before it had begun. And there always had to be three men at the tiller and it was as much as three could do to keep any kind of a course. And there always had to be men at the pump. And there was hardly any rest for anyone, and nothing could be cooked and nothing could be dried, and one man was lost overboard, and they never saw the sun.

When it was over Eustace made the following entry in his diary：

“September 3. The first day for ages when I have been able to write. We had been driven before a hurricane for thirteen days and nights. I know that because I kept a careful count, though the others all say it was only twelve. Pleasant to be embarked on a dangerous voyage with people who can’t even count right！ I have had a ghastly time, up and down enormous waves hour after hour, usually wet to the skin, and not even an attempt at giving us proper meals. Needless to say there’s no wireless or even a rocket, so no chance of signaling anyone for help. It all proves what I keep on telling them, the madness of setting out in a rotten little tub like this. It would be bad enough even if one was with decent people instead of fiends in human form. Caspian and Edmund are simply brutal to me. The night we lost our mast （there’s only a stump left now）, though I was not at all well, they forced me to come on deck and work like a slave. Lucy shoved her oar in by saying that Reepicheep was longing to go only he was too small. I wonder she doesn’t see that everything that little beast does is all for the sake of showing off. Even at her age she ought to have that amount of sense. Today the beastly boat is level at last and the sun’s out and we have all been jawing about what to do. We have food enough, pretty beastly stuff most of it, to last for sixteen days. （The poultry were all washed overboard. Even if they hadn’t been, the storm would have stopped them laying.） The real trouble is water. Two casks seem to have got a leak knocked in them and are empty. （Narnian efficiency again.） On short rations, half a pint a day each, we’ve got enough for twelve days. （There’s still lots of rum and wine but even they realize that would only make them thirstier.）

“If we could, of course, the sensible thing would be to turn west at once and make for the Lone Islands. But it took us eighteen days to get where we are, running like mad with a gale behind us. Even if we got an east wind it might take us far longer to get back. And at present there’s no sign of an east wind—in fact there’s no wind at all. As for rowing back, it would take far too long and Caspian says the men couldn’t row on half a pint of water a day. I’m pretty sure this is wrong. I tried to explain that perspiration really cools people down, so the men would need less water if they were working. He didn’t take any notice of this, which is always his way when he can’t think of an answer. The others all voted for going on in the hope of finding land. I felt it my duty to point out that we didn’t know there was any land ahead and tried to get them to see the dangers of wishful thinking. Instead of producing a better plan they had the cheek to ask me what I proposed. So I just explained coolly and quietly that I had been kidnapped and brought away on this idiotic voyage without my consent, and it was hardly my business to get them out of their scrape.

“September 4. Still becalmed. Very short rations for dinner and I got less than anyone. Caspian is very clever at helping and thinks I don’t see！ Lucy for some reason tried to make up to me by offering me some of hers but that interfering prig Edmund wouldn’t let her. Pretty hot sun. Terribly thirsty all evening.

“September 5. Still becalmed and very hot. Feeling rotten all day and am sure I’ve got a temperature. Of course they haven’t the sense to keep a thermometer on board.

“September 6. A horrible day. Woke up in the night knowing I was feverish and must have a drink of water. Any doctor would have said so. Heaven knows I’m the last person to try to get any unfair advantage but I never dreamed that this water-rationing would be meant to apply to a sick man. In fact I would have woken the others up and asked for some only I thought it would be selfish to wake them. So I just got up and took my cup and tiptoed out of the Black Hole we slept in, taking great care not to disturb Caspian and Edmund, for they’ve been sleeping badly since the heat and the short water began. I always try to consider others whether they are nice to me or not. I got out all right into the big room, if you can call it a room, where the rowing benches and the luggage are. The thing of water is at this end. All was going beautifully, but before I’d drawn a cupful who should catch me but that little spy Reep. I tried to explain that I was going on deck for a breath of air （the business about the water had nothing to do with him） and he asked me why I had a cup. He made such a noise that the whole ship was roused. They treated me scandalously. I asked, as I think anyone would have, why Reepicheep was sneaking about the water cask in the middle of the night. He said that as he was too small to be any use on deck, he did sentry over the water every night so that one more man could go to sleep. Now comes their rotten unfairness： they all believed him. Can you beat it?

“I had to apologize or the dangerous little brute would have been at me with his sword. And then Caspian showed up in his true colors as a brutal tyrant and said out loud for everyone to hear that anyone found ‘stealing’ water in future would ‘get two dozen.’ I didn’t know what this meant till Edmund explained to me. It comes in the sort of books those Pevensie kids read.

“After this cowardly threat Caspian changed his tune and started being patronizing. Said he was sorry for me and that everyone felt just as feverish as I did and we must all make the best of it, etc., etc. Odious stuck-up prig. Stayed in bed all day today.

“September 7. A little wind today but still from the west. Made a few miles eastward with part of the sail, set on what Drinian calls the jury-mast—that means the bowsprit set upright and tied （they call it ‘lashed’） to the stump of the real mast. Still terribly thirsty.

“September 8. Still sailing east. I stay in my bunk all day now and see no one except Lucy till the two fiends come to bed. Lucy gives me a little of her water ration. She says girls don’t get as thirsty as boys. I had often thought this but it ought to be more generally known at sea.

“September 9. Land in sight; a very high mountain a long way off to the southeast.

“September 10. The mountain is bigger and clearer but still a long way off. Gulls again today for the first time since I don’t know how long.

“September 11. Caught some fish and had them for dinner. Dropped anchor at about 7 p. m. in three fathoms of water in a bay of this mountainous island. That idiot Caspian wouldn’t let us go ashore because it was getting dark and he was afraid of savages and wild beasts. Extra water ration tonight.”

What awaited them on this island was going to concern Eustace more than anyone else, but it cannot be told in his words because after September 11 he forgot about keeping his diary for a long time.

When morning came, with a low, gray sky but very hot, the adventurers found they were in a bay encircled by such cliffs and crags that it was like a Norwegian fjord. In front of them, at the head of the bay, there was some level land heavily overgrown with trees that appeared to be cedars, through which a rapid stream came out. Beyond that was a steep ascent ending in a jagged ridge and behind that a vague darkness of mountains which ran into dull-colored clouds so that you could not see their tops. The nearer cliffs, at each side of the bay, were streaked here and there with lines of white which everyone knew to be waterfalls, though at that distance they did not show any movement or make any noise. Indeed the whole place was very silent and the water of the bay as smooth as glass. It reflected every detail of the cliffs. The scene would have been pretty in a picture but was rather oppressive in real life. It was not a country that welcomed visitors.

The whole ship’s company went ashore in two boatloads and everyone drank and washed deliciously in the river and had a meal and a rest before Caspian sent four men back to keep the ship, and the day’s work began. There was everything to be done. The casks must be brought ashore and the faulty ones mended if possible and all refilled; a tree—a pine if they could get it—must be felled and made into a new mast; sails must be repaired; a hunting party organized to shoot any game the land might yield; clothes to be washed and mended; and countless small breakages on board to be set right. For the Dawn Treader herself—and this was more obvious now that they saw her at a distance—could hardly be recognized as the same gallant ship which had left Narrowhaven. She looked a crippled, discolored hulk which anyone might have taken for a wreck. And her officers and crew were no better—lean, pale, red-eyed from lack of sleep, and dressed in rags.

As Eustace lay under a tree and heard all these plans being discussed his heart sank. Was there going to be no rest? It looked as if their first day on the longed-for land was going to be quite as hard work as a day at sea. Then a delightful idea occurred to him. Nobody was looking—they were all chattering about their ship as if they actually liked the beastly thing. Why shouldn’t he simply slip away? He would take a stroll inland, find a cool, airy place up in the mountains, have a good long sleep, and not rejoin the others till the day’s work was over. He felt it would do him good. But he would take great care to keep the bay and the ship in sight so as to be sure of his way back. He wouldn’t like to be left behind in this country.

He at once put his plan into action. He rose quietly from his place and walked away among the trees, taking care to go slowly and in an aimless manner so that anyone who saw him would think he was merely stretching his legs. He was surprised to find how quickly the noise of conversation died away behind him and how very silent and warm and dark green the wood became. Soon he felt he could venture on a quicker and more determined stride.

This soon brought him out of the wood. The ground began sloping steeply up in front of him. The grass was dry and slippery but manageable if he used his hands as well as his feet, and though he panted and mopped his forehead a good deal, he plugged away steadily. This showed, by the way, that his new life, little as he suspected it, had already done him some good; the old Eustace, Harold and Alberta’s Eustace, would have given up the climb after about ten minutes.

Slowly, and with several rests, he reached the ridge. Here he had expected to have a view into the heart of the island, but the clouds had now come lower and nearer and a sea of fog was rolling to meet him. He sat down and looked back. He was now so high that the bay looked small beneath him and miles of sea were visible. Then the fog from the mountains closed in all round him, thick but not cold, and he lay down and turned this way and that to find the most comfortable position to enjoy himself.

But he didn’t enjoy himself, or not for very long. He began, almost for the first time in his life, to feel lonely. At first this feeling grew very gradually. And then he began to worry about the time. There was not the slightest sound. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might have been lying there for hours. Perhaps the others had gone！ Perhaps they had let him wander away on purpose simply in order to leave him behind！ He leaped up in a panic and began the descent.

At first he tried to do it too quickly, slipped on the steep grass, and slid for several feet. Then he thought this had carried him too far to the left—and as he came up he had seen precipices on that side. So he clambered up again, as near as he could guess to the place he had started from, and began the descent afresh, bearing to his right. After that things seemed to be going better. He went very cautiously, for he could not see more than a yard ahead, and there was still perfect silence all around him. It is very unpleasant to have to go cautiously when there is a voice inside you saying all the time, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.” For every moment the terrible idea of being left behind grew stronger. If he had understood Caspian and the Pevensies at all he would have known, of course, that there was not the least chance of their doing any such thing. But he had persuaded himself that they were all fiends in human form.

“At last！” said Eustace, as he came slithering down a slide of loose stones （scree, they call it） and found himself on the level. “And now, where are those trees? There is something dark ahead. Why, I do believe the fog is clearing.”

It was. The light increased every moment and made him blink. The fog lifted. He was in an utterly unknown valley and the sea was nowhere in sight.

CHAPTER SIX
THE ADVENTURES OF EUSTACE

At that very moment the others were washing hands and faces in the river and generally getting ready for dinner and a rest. The three best archers had gone up into the hills north of the bay and returned laden with a pair of wild goats which were now roasting over a fire. Caspian had ordered a cask of wine ashore, strong wine of Archenland which had to be mixed with water before you drank it, so there would be plenty for all. The work had gone well so far and it was a merry meal. Only after the second helping of goat did Edmund say, “Where’s that blighter Eustace?”

Meanwhile Eustace stared round the unknown valley. It was so narrow and deep, and the precipices which surrounded it so sheer, that it was like a huge pit or trench. The floor was grassy though strewn with rocks, and here and there Eustace saw black burnt patches like those you see on the sides of a railway embankment in a dry summer. About fifteen yards away from him was a pool of clear, smooth water. There was, at first, nothing else at all in the valley; not an animal, not a bird, not an insect. The sun beat down and grim peaks and horns of mountains peered over the valley’s edge.

Eustace realized of course that in the fog he had come down the wrong side of the ridge, so he turned at once to see about getting back. But as soon as he had looked he shuddered. Apparently he had by amazing luck found the only possible way down—a long green spit of land, horribly steep and narrow, with precipices on either side. There was no other possible way of getting back. But could he do it, now that he saw what it was really like? His head swam at the very thought of it.

He turned round again, thinking that at any rate he’d better have a good drink from the pool first. But as soon as he had turned and before he had taken a step forward into the valley he heard a noise behind him. It was only a small noise but it sounded loud in that immense silence. It froze him dead-still where he stood for a second. Then he slewed round his neck and looked.

At the bottom of the cliff a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole—the entrance to a cave perhaps. And out of this two thin wisps of smoke were coming. And the loose stones just beneath the dark hollow were moving （that was the noise he had heard） just as if something were crawling in the dark behind them.

Something was crawling. Worse still, something was coming out. Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books. The thing that came out of the cave was something he had never even imagined—a long lead-colored snout, dull red eyes, no feathers or fur, a long lithe body that trailed on the ground, legs whose elbows went up higher than its back like a spider’s, cruel claws, bat’s wings that made a rasping noise on the stones, yards of tail. And the lines of smoke were coming from its two nostrils. He never said the word Dragon to himself. Nor would it have made things any better if he had.

But perhaps if he had known something about dragons he would have been a little surprised at this dragon’s behavior. It did not sit up and clap its wings, nor did it shoot out a stream of flame from its mouth. The smoke from its nostrils was like the smoke of a fire that will not last much longer. Nor did it seem to have noticed Eustace. It moved very slowly toward the pool—slowly and with many pauses. Even in his fear Eustace felt that it was an old, sad creature. He wondered if he dared make a dash for the ascent. But it might look round if he made any noise. It might come more to life. Perhaps it was only shamming. Anyway, what was the use of trying to escape by climbing from a creature that could fly?

It reached the pool and slid its horrible scaly chin down over the gravel to drink, but before it had drunk there came from it a great croaking or clanging cry and after a few twitches and convulsions it rolled round on its side and lay perfectly still with one claw in the air. A little dark blood gushed from its wide-opened mouth. The smoke from its nostrils turned black for a moment and then floated away. No more came.

For a long time Eustace did not dare to move. Perhaps this was the brute’s trick, the way it lured travelers to their doom. But one couldn’t wait forever. He took a step nearer, then two steps, and halted again. The dragon remained motionless; he noticed too that the red fire had gone out of its eyes. At last he came up to it. He was quite sure now that it was dead. With a shudder he touched it; nothing happened.

The relief was so great that Eustace almost laughed out loud. He began to feel as if he had fought and killed the dragon instead of merely seeing it die. He stepped over it and went to the pool for his drink, for the heat was getting unbearable. He was not surprised when he heard a peal of thunder. Almost immediately afterward the sun disappeared and before he had finished his drink big drops of rain were falling.

The climate of this island was a very unpleasant one. In less than a minute Eustace was wet to the skin and half blinded with such rain as one never sees in Europe. There was no use trying to climb out of the valley as long as this lasted. He bolted for the only shelter in sight-the dragon’s cave. There he lay down and tried to get his breath.

Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. That is why he was so puzzled at the surface on which he was lying. Parts of it were too prickly to be stones and too hard to be thorns, and there seemed to be a great many round, flat things, and it all clinked when he moved. There was light enough at the cave’s mouth to examine it by. And of course Eustace found it to be what any of us could have told him in advance—treasure. There were crowns （those were the prickly things）, coins, rings, bracelets, ingots, cups, plates and gems.

Eustace （unlike most boys） had never thought much of treasure but he saw at once the use it would be in this new world which he had so foolishly stumbled into through the picture in Lucy’s bedroom at home. “They don’t have any tax here,” he said, “and you don’t have to give treasure to the government. With some of this stuff I could have quite a decent time here—perhaps in Calormen. It sounds the least phony of these countries. I wonder how much I can carry? That bracelet now—those things in it are probably diamonds—I’ll slip that on my own wrist. Too big, but not if I push it right up here above my elbow. Then fill my pockets with diamonds—that’s easier than gold. I wonder when this infernal rain’s going to let up?” He got into a less uncomfortable part of the pile, where it was mostly coins, and settled down to wait. But a bad fright, when once it is over, and especially a bad fright following a mountain walk, leaves you very tired. Eustace fell asleep.

By the time he was sound asleep and snoring the others had finished dinner and became seriously alarmed about him. They shouted, “Eustace！ Eustace！ Coo-ee！” till they were hoarse and Caspian blew his horn.

“He’s nowhere near or he’d have heard that,” said Lucy with a white face.

“Confound the fellow,” said Edmund. “What on earth did he want to slink away like this for?”

“But we must do something,” said Lucy. “He may have got lost, or fallen into a hole, or been captured by savages.”

“Or killed by wild beasts,” said Drinian.

“And a good riddance if he has, I say,” muttered Rhince.

“Master Rhince,” said Reepicheep, “you never spoke a word that became you less. The creature is no friend of mine but he is of the Queen’s blood, and while he is one of our fellowship it concerns our honor to find him and to avenge him if he is dead.”

“Of course we’ve got to find him （if we can）,” said Caspian wearily. “That’s the nuisance of it. It means a search party and endless trouble. Bother Eustace.”

Meanwhile Eustace slept and slept—and slept. What woke him was a pain in his arm. The moon was shining in at the mouth of the cave, and the bed of treasures seemed to have grown much more comfortable; in fact he could hardly feel it at all. He was puzzled by the pain in his arm at first, but presently it occurred to him that the bracelet which he had shoved up above his elbow had become strangely tight. His arm must have swollen while he was asleep （it was his left arm）.

He moved his right arm in order to feel his left, but stopped before he had moved it an inch and bit his lip in terror. For just in front of him, and a little on his right, where the moonlight fell clear on the floor of the cave, he saw a hideous shape moving. He knew that shape： it was a dragon’s claw. It had moved as he moved his hand and became still when he stopped moving his hand.

“Oh, what a fool I’ve been,” thought Eustace. “Of course, the brute had a mate and it’s lying beside me.”

For several minutes he did not dare to move a muscle. He saw two thin columns of smoke going up before his eyes, black against the moonlight; just as there had been smoke coming from the other dragon’s nose before it died. This was so alarming that he held his breath. The two columns of smoke vanished. When he could hold his breath no longer he let it out stealthily; instantly two jets of smoke appeared again. But even yet he had no idea of the truth.

Presently he decided that he would edge very cautiously to his left and try to creep out of the cave. Perhaps the creature was asleep—and anyway it was his only chance. But of course before he edged to the left he looked to the left. Oh horror！ There was a dragon’s claw on that side too.

No one will blame Eustace if at this moment he shed tears. He was surprised at the size of his own tears as he saw them splashing on to the treasure in front of him. They also seemed strangely hot; steam went up from them.

But there was no good crying. He must try to crawl out from between the two dragons. He began extending his right arm. The dragon’s foreleg and claw on his right went through exactly the same motion. Then he thought he would try his left. The dragon limb on that side moved too.

Two dragons, one on each side, mimicking whatever he did！ His nerve broke and he simply made a bolt for it.

There was such a clatter and rasping, and clinking of gold, and grinding of stones, as he rushed out of the cave that he thought they were both following him. He daren’t look back. He rushed to the pool. The twisted shape of the dead dragon lying in the moonlight would have been enough to frighten anyone but now he hardly noticed it. His idea was to get into the water.

But just as he reached the edge of the pool two things happened. First of all, it came over him like a thunder-clap that he had been running on all fours—and why on earth had he been doing that? And secondly, as he bent toward the water, he thought for a second that yet another dragon was staring up at him out of the pool. But in an instant he realized the truth. The dragon face in the pool was his own reflection. There was no doubt of it. It moved as he moved; it opened and shut its mouth as he opened and shut his.

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

That explained everything. There had been no two dragons beside him in the cave. The claws to right and left had been his own right and left claws. The two columns of smoke had been coming from his own nostrils. As for the pain in his left arm （or what had been his left arm） he could now see what had happened by squinting with his left eye. The bracelet which had fitted very nicely on the upper arm of a boy was far too small for the thick, stumpy foreleg of a dragon. It had sunk deeply into his scaly flesh and there was a throbbing bulge on each side of it. He tore at the place with his dragon’s teeth but could not get it off.

In spite of the pain, his first feeling was one of relief. There was nothing to be afraid of any more. He was a terror himself and nothing in the world but a knight （and not all of those） would dare to attack him. He could get even with Caspian and Edmund now—

But the moment he thought this he realized that he didn’t want to. He wanted to be friends. He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things. He realized that he was a monster cut off from the whole human race. An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see that the others had not really been fiends at all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed. He longed for their voices. He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.

When he thought of this the poor dragon that had been Eustace lifted up its voice and wept. A powerful dragon crying its eyes out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined.

At last he decided he would try to find his way back to the shore. He realized now that Caspian would never have sailed away and left him. And he felt sure that somehow or other he would be able to make people understand who he was.

He took a long drink and then （I know this sounds shocking, but it isn’t if you think it over） he ate nearly all the dead dragon. He was halfway through it before he realized what he was doing; for, you see, though his mind was the mind of Eustace, his tastes and his digestion were dragonish. And there is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon. That is why you so seldom find more than one dragon in the same country.

Then he turned to climb out of the valley. He began the climb with a jump and as soon as he jumped he found that he was flying. He had quite forgotten about his wings and it was a great surprise to him—the first pleasant surprise he had had for a long time. He rose high into the air and saw innumerable mountain-tops spread out beneath him in the moonlight. He could see the bay like a silver slab and the Dawn Treader lying at anchor and camp fires twinkling in the woods beside the beach. From a great height he launched himself down toward them in a single glide.

Lucy was sleeping very soundly for she had sat up till the return of the search party in hope of good news about Eustace. It had been led by Caspian and had come back late and weary. Their news was disquieting. They had found no trace of Eustace but had seen a dead dragon in a valley. They tried to make the best of it and everyone assured everyone else that there were not likely to be more dragons about, and that one which was dead at about three o’clock that afternoon （which was when they had seen it） would hardly have been killing people a very few hours before.

“Unless it ate the little brat and died of him; he’d poison anything,” said Rhince. But he said this under his breath and no one heard it.

But later in the night Lucy was wakened, very softly, and found the whole company gathered close together and talking in whispers.

“What is it?” said Lucy.

“We must all show great constancy,” Caspian was saying. “A dragon has just flown over the tree-tops and lighted on the beach. Yes, I am afraid it is between us and the ship. And arrows are no use against dragons. And they’re not at all afraid of fire.”

“With your Majesty’s leave—” began Reepicheep.

“No, Reepicheep,” said the King very firmly, “you are not to attempt a single combat with it. And unless you promise to obey me in this matter I’ll have you tied up. We must just keep close watch and, as soon as it is light, go down to the beach and give it battle. I will lead. King Edmund will be on my right and the Lord Drinian on my left. There are no other arrangements to be made. It will be light in a couple of hours. In an hour’s time let a meal be served out and what is left of the wine. And let everything be done silently.”

“Perhaps it will go away,” said Lucy.

“It’ll be worse if it does,” said Edmund, “because then we shan’t know where it is. If there’s a wasp in the room I like to be able to see it.”

The rest of the night was dreadful, and when the meal came, though they knew they ought to eat, many found that they had very poor appetites. And endless hours seemed to pass before the darkness thinned and birds began chirping here and there and the world got colder and wetter than it had been all night and Caspian said, “Now for it, friends.”

They got up, all with swords drawn, and formed themselves into a solid mass with Lucy in the middle and Reepicheep on her shoulder. It was nicer than the waiting about and everyone felt fonder of everyone else than at ordinary times. A moment later they were marching. It grew lighter as they came to the edge of the wood. And there on the sand, like a giant lizard, or a flexible crocodile, or a serpent with legs, huge and horrible and humpy, lay the dragon.

But when it saw them, instead of rising up and blowing fire and smoke, the dragon retreated—you could almost say it waddled—back into the shallows of the bay.

“What’s it wagging its head like that for?” said Edmund.

“And now it’s nodding,” said Caspian.

“And there’s something coming from its eyes,” said Drinian.

“Oh, can’t you see,” said Lucy. “It’s crying. Those are tears.”

“I shouldn’t trust to that, Ma’am,” said Drinian. “That’s what crocodiles do, to put you off your guard.”

“It wagged its head when you said that,” remarked Edmund. “Just as if it meant No. Look, there it goes again.”

“Do you think it understands what we’re saying?” asked Lucy.

The dragon nodded its head violently.

Reepicheep slipped off Lucy’s shoulder and stepped to the front.

“Dragon,” came his shrill voice, “can you understand speech?”

The dragon nodded.

“Can you speak?”

It shook its head.

“Then,” said Reepicheep, “it is idle to ask you your business. But if you will swear friendship with us raise your left foreleg above your head.”

It did so, but clumsily because that leg was sore and swollen with the golden bracelet.

“Oh look,” said Lucy, “there’s something wrong with its leg. The poor thing—that’s probably what it was crying about. Perhaps it came to us to be cured like in Androcles and the lion.”

“Be careful, Lucy,” said Caspian. “It’s a very clever dragon but it may be a liar.”

Lucy had, however, already run forward, followed by Reepicheep, as fast as his short legs could carry him, and then of course the boys and Drinian came too.

“Show me your poor paw,” said Lucy. “I might be able to cure it.”

The dragon that had been Eustace held out its sore leg gladly enough, remembering how Lucy’s cordial had cured him of seasickness before he became a dragon. But he was disappointed. The magic fluid reduced the swelling and eased the pain a little but it could not dissolve the gold.

Everyone had now crowded round to watch the treatment, and Caspian suddenly exclaimed, “Look！” He was staring at the bracelet.

CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW THE ADVENTURE ENDED

“Look at what?” said Edmund.

“Look at the device on the gold,” said Caspian.

“A little hammer with a diamond above it like a star,” said Drinian. “Why, I’ve seen that before.”

“Seen it！” said Caspian. “Why, of course you have. It is the sign of a great Narnian house. This is the Lord Octesian’s arm-ring.”

“Villain,” said Reepicheep to the dragon, “have you devoured a Narnian lord?” But the dragon shook his head violently.

“Or perhaps,” said Lucy, “this is the Lord Octesian, turned into a dragon—under an enchantment, you know.”

“It needn’t be either,” said Edmund. “All dragons collect gold. But I think it’s a safe guess that Octesian got no further than this island.”

“Are you the Lord Octesian?” said Lucy to the dragon, and then, when it sadly shook its head, “Are you someone enchanted—someone human, I mean?”

It nodded violently.

And then someone said—people disputed afterward whether Lucy or Edmund said it first—“You’re not—not Eustace by any chance?”

And Eustace nodded his terrible dragon head and thumped his tail in the sea and everyone skipped back （some of the sailors with ejaculations I will not put down in writing） to avoid the enormous and boiling tears which flowed from his eyes.

Lucy tried hard to console him and even screwed up her courage to kiss the scaly face, and nearly everyone said “Hard luck” and several assured Eustace that they would all stand by him and many said there was sure to be some way of disenchanting him and they’d have him as right as rain in a day or two. And of course they were all very anxious to hear his story, but he couldn’t speak. More than once in the days that followed he attempted to write it for them on the sand. But, this never succeeded. In the first place Eustace （never having read the right books） had no idea how to tell a story straight. And for another thing, the muscles and nerves of the dragon-claws that he had to use had never learned to write and were not built for writing anyway. As a result he never got nearly to the end before the tide came in and washed away all the writing except the bits he had already trodden on or accidentally swished out with his tail. And all that anyone had seen would be something like this—the dots are for the bits he had smudged out：

I WNET TO SLEE ... RGOS AGRONS I MEAN DRANGONS CAVE CAUSE IT WAS DEAD AND AINING SO HAR ... WOKE UP AND COU ... GET OFFF MI ARM OH BOTHER...

It was, however, clear to everyone that Eustace’s character had been rather improved by becoming a dragon. He was anxious to help. He flew over the whole island and found that it was all mountainous and inhabited only by wild goats and droves of wild swine. Of these he brought back many carcasses as provisions for the ship. He was a very humane killer too, for he could dispatch a beast with one blow of his tail so that it didn’t know （and presumably still doesn’t know） it had been killed. He ate a few himself, of course, but always alone, for now that he was a dragon he liked his food raw but he could never bear to let others see him at his messy meals. And one day, flying slowly and wearily but in great triumph, he bore back to camp a great tall pine tree which he had torn up by the roots in a distant valley and which could be made into a capital mast. And in the evening if it turned chilly, as it sometimes did after the heavy rains, he was a comfort to everyone, for the whole party would come and sit with their backs against his hot sides and get well warmed and dried; and one puff of his fiery breath would light the most obstinate fire. Sometimes he would take a select party for a fly on his back, so that they could see wheeling below them the green slopes, the rocky heights, the narrow pit-like valleys and far out over the sea to the eastward a spot of darker blue on the blue horizon which might be land.

The pleasure （quite new to him） of being liked and, still more, of liking other people, was what kept Eustace from despair. For it was very dreary being a dragon. He shuddered whenever he caught sight of his own reflection as he flew over a mountain lake. He hated the huge bat-like wings, the saw-edged ridge on his back, and the cruel, curved claws. He was almost afraid to be alone with himself and yet he was ashamed to be with the others. On the evenings when he was not being used as a hot-water bottle he would slink away from the camp and lie curled up like a snake between the wood and the water. On such occasions, greatly to his surprise, Reepicheep was his most constant comforter. The noble Mouse would creep away from the merry circle at the camp fire and sit down by the dragon’s head, well to the windward to be out of the way of his smoky breath. There he would explain that what had happened to Eustace was a striking illustration of the turn of Fortune’s wheel, and that if he had Eustace at his own house in Narnia （it was really a hole not a house and the dragon’s head, let alone his body, would not have fitted in） he could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, lovers, astronomers, philosophers, and magicians, who had fallen from prosperity into the most distressing circumstances, and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever afterward. It did not, perhaps, seem so very comforting at the time, but it was kindly meant and Eustace never forgot it.

But of course what hung over everyone like a cloud was the problem of what to do with their dragon when they were ready to sail. They tried not to talk of it when he was there, but he couldn’t help overhearing things like, “Would he fit all along one side of the deck? And we’d have to shift all the stores to the other side down below so as to balance,” or, “Would towing him be any good?” or “Would he be able to keep up by flying?” and （most often of all）, “But how are we to feed him?” And poor Eustace realized more and more that since the first day he came on board he had been an unmitigated nuisance and that he was now a greater nuisance still. And this ate into his mind, just as that bracelet ate into his foreleg. He knew that it only made it worse to tear at it with his great teeth, but he couldn’t help tearing now and then, especially on hot nights.

About six days after they had landed on Dragon Island, Edmund happened to wake up very early one morning. It was just getting gray so that you could see the tree-trunks if they were between you and the bay but not in the other direction. As he woke he thought he heard something moving, so he raised himself on one elbow and looked about him： and presently he thought he saw a dark figure moving on the seaward side of the wood. The idea that at once occurred to his mind was, “Are we so sure there are no natives on this island after all?” Then he thought it was Caspian—it was about the right size—but he knew that Caspian had been sleeping next to him and could see that he hadn’t moved. Edmund made sure that his sword was in its place and then rose to investigate.

He came down softly to the edge of the wood and the dark figure was still there. He saw now that it was too small for Caspian and too big for Lucy. It did not run away. Edmund drew his sword and was about to challenge the stranger when the stranger said in a low voice, “Is that you, Edmund?”

“Yes. Who are you?” said he.

“Don’t you know me?” said the other. “It’s me—Eustace.”

“By jove,” said Edmund, “so it is. My dear chap—”

“Hush,” said Eustace and lurched as if he were going to fall.

“Hello！” said Edmund, steadying him. “What’s up? Are you ill?”

Eustace was silent for so long that Edmund thought he was fainting; but at last he said, “It’s been ghastly. You don’t know ... but it’s all right now. Could we go and talk somewhere? I don’t want to meet the others just yet.”

“Yes, rather, anywhere you like,” said Edmund. “We can go and sit on the rocks over there. I say, I am glad to see you—er—looking yourself again. You must have had a pretty beastly time.”

They went to the rocks and sat down looking out across the bay while the sky got paler and paler and the stars disappeared except for one very bright one low down and near the horizon.

“I won’t tell you how I became a—a dragon till I can tell the others and get it all over,” said Eustace. “By the way, I didn’t even know it was a dragon till I heard you all using the word when I turned up here the other morning. I want to tell you how I stopped being one.”

“Fire ahead,” said Edmund.

“Well, last night I was more miserable than ever. And that beastly arm-ring was hurting like anything—”

“Is that all right now?”

Eustace laughed—a different laugh from any Edmund had heard him give before—and slipped the bracelet easily off his arm. “There it is,” he said, “and anyone who likes can have it as far as I’m concerned. Well, as I say, I was lying awake and wondering what on earth would become of me. And then—but, mind you, it may have been all a dream. I don’t know.”

“Go on,” said Edmund, with considerable patience.

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected： a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it—if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”

“You mean it spoke?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden—trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.

“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it： but it was a lot bigger than most wells—like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy—oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass： only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.

“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me—”

“Dressed you. With his paws?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other： in new clothes—the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”

“No. It wasn’t a dream,” said Edmund.

“Why not?”

“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been—well, un-dragoned, for another.”

“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.

“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.

“Aslan！” said Eustace. “I’ve heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. And I felt—I don’t know what—I hated it. But I was hating everything then. And by the way, I’d like to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been pretty beastly.”

“That’s all right,” said Edmund. “Between ourselves, you haven’t been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”

“Well, don’t tell me about it, then,” said Eustace. “But who is Aslan? Do you know him?”

“Well—he knows me,” said Edmund. “He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, who saved me and saved Narnia. We’ve all seen him. Lucy sees him most often. And it may be Aslan’s country we are sailing to.”

Neither said anything for a while. The last bright star had vanished and though they could not see the sunrise because of the mountains on their right, they knew it was going on because the sky above them and the bay before them turned the color of roses. Then some bird of the parrot kind screamed in the wood behind them, they heard movements among the trees, and finally a blast on Caspian’s horn. The camp was astir.

Great was the rejoicing when Edmund and the restored Eustace walked into the breakfast circle round the camp fire. And now of course everyone heard the earlier part of his story. People wondered whether the other dragon had killed the Lord Octesian several years ago or whether Octesian himself had been the old dragon. The jewels with which Eustace had crammed his pockets in the cave had disappeared along with the clothes he had then been wearing; but no one, least of all Eustace himself, felt any desire to go back to that valley for more treasure.

In a few days now the Dawn Treader, remasted, re-painted, and well stored, was ready to sail. Before they embarked Caspian caused to be cut on a smooth cliff facing the bay the words：

DRAGON ISLAND discovered by CASPIAN X, KING OF NARNIA, etc. in the fourth year of his reign. Here, as we suppose, THE LORD OCTESIAN had his death.

It would be nice, and fairly true, to say that “from that time forth Eustace was a different boy”. To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.

The Lord Octesian’s arm ring had a curious fate. Eustace did not want it and offered it to Caspian and Caspian offered it to Lucy. She did not care about having it. “Very well, then, catch as catch can,” said Caspian and flung it up in the air. This was when they were all standing looking at the inscription. Up went the ring, flashing in the sunlight, and caught, and hung, as neatly as a well-thrown quoit, on a little projection on the rock. No one could climb up to get it from below and no one could climb down to get it from above. And there, for all I know, it is hanging still and may hang till that world ends.

CHAPTER EIGHT
TWO NARROW ESCAPES

Everyone was cheerful as the Dawn Treader sailed from Dragon Island. They had fair winds as soon as they were out of the bay and came early next morning to the unknown land which some of them had seen when flying over the mountains while Eustace was still a dragon. It was a low green island inhabited by nothing but rabbits and a few goats, but from the ruins of stone huts, and from blackened places where fires had been, they judged that it had been peopled not long before. There were also some bones and broken weapons.

“Pirates’work,” said Caspian.

“Or the dragon’s,” said Edmund.

The only other thing they found there was a little skin boat, or coracle, on the sands. It was made of hide stretched over a wicker framework. It was a tiny boat, barely four feet long, and the paddle which still lay in it was in proportion. They thought that either it had been made for a child or else that the people of that country had been Dwarfs. Reepicheep decided to keep it, as it was just the right size for him; so it was taken on board. They called that land Burnt Island, and sailed away before noon.

For some five days they ran before a southeast wind, out of sight of all lands and seeing neither fish nor gull. Then they had a day when it rained hard till the afternoon. Eustace lost two games of chess to Reepicheep and began to get like his old and disagreeable self again, and Edmund said he wished they could have gone to America with Susan. Then Lucy looked out of the stern windows and said：

“Hello！ I do believe it’s stopping. And what’s that?”

They all tumbled up to the poop at this and found that the rain had stopped and that Drinian, who was on watch, was also staring hard at something astern. Or rather, at several things. They looked a little like smooth rounded rocks, a whole line of them with intervals of about forty feet in between.

“But they can’t be rocks,” Drinian was saying, “because they weren’t there five minutes ago.”

“And one’s just disappeared,” said Lucy.

“Yes, and there’s another one coming up,” said Edmund.

“And nearer,” said Eustace.

“Hang it！” said Caspian. “The whole thing is moving this way.”

“And moving a great deal quicker than we can sail, Sire,” said Drinian. “It’ll be up with us in a minute.”

They all held their breath, for it is not at all nice to be pursued by an unknown something either on land or sea. But what it turned out to be was far worse than anyone had suspected. Suddenly, only about the length of a cricket pitch from their port side, an appalling head reared itself out of the sea. It was all greens and vermilions with purple blotches—except where shellfish clung to it—and shaped rather like a horse’s, though without ears. It had enormous eyes, eyes made for staring through the dark depths of the ocean, and a gaping mouth filled with double rows of sharp fish-like teeth. It came up on what they first took to be a huge neck, but as more and more of it emerged everyone knew that this was not its neck but its body and that at last they were seeing what so many people have foolishly wanted to see—the great Sea Serpent. The folds of its gigantic tail could be seen far away, rising at intervals from the surface. And now its head was towering up higher than the mast.

Every man rushed to his weapon, but there was nothing to be done—the monster was out of reach. “Shoot！ Shoot！” cried the Master Bowman, and several obeyed, but the arrows glanced off the Sea Serpent’s hide as if it was iron-plated. Then, for a dreadful minute, everyone was still, staring up at its eyes and mouth and wondering where it would pounce.

But it didn’t pounce. It shot its head forward across the ship on a level with the yard of the mast. Now its head was just beside the fighting-top. Still it stretched and stretched till its head was over the starboard bulwark. Then down it began to come—not onto the crowded deck but into the water, so that the whole ship was under an arch of serpent. And almost at once that arch began to get smaller： indeed on the starboard the Sea Serpent was now almost touching the Dawn Treader’s side.

Eustace （who had really been trying very hard to behave well, till the rain and the chess put him back） now did the first brave thing he had ever done. He was wearing a sword that Caspian had lent him. As soon as the serpent’s body was near enough on the starboard side he jumped on to the bulwark and began hacking at it with all his might. It is true that he accomplished nothing beyond breaking Caspian’s second-best sword into bits, but it was a fine thing for a beginner to have done.

Others would have joined him if at that moment Reepicheep had not called out, “Don’t fight！ Push！” It was so unusual for the Mouse to advise anyone not to fight that, even in that terrible moment, every eye turned to him. And when he jumped up on to the bulwark, forward of the snake, and set his little furry back against its huge scaly, slimy back, and began pushing as hard as he could, quite a number of people saw what he meant and rushed to both sides of the ship to do the same. And when, a moment later, the Sea Serpent’s head appeared again, this time on the port side, and this time with its back to them, then everyone understood.

The brute had made a loop of itself round the Dawn Treader and was beginning to draw the loop tight. When it got quite tight—snap！—there would be floating matchwood where the ship had been and it could pick them out of the water one by one. Their only chance was to push the loop backward till it slid over the stern; or else （to put the same thing another way） to push the ship forward out of the loop.

Reepicheep alone had, of course, no more chance of doing this than of lifting up a cathedral, but he had nearly killed himself with trying before others shoved him aside. Very soon the whole ship’s company except Lucy and the Mouse （which was fainting） was in two long lines along the two bulwarks, each man’s chest to the back of the man in front, so that the weight of the whole line was in the last man, pushing for their lives. For a few sickening seconds （which seemed like hours） nothing appeared to happen. Joints cracked, sweat dropped, breath came in grunts and gasps. Then they felt that the ship was moving. They saw that the snake-loop was further from the mast than it had been. But they also saw that it was smaller. And now the real danger was at hand. Could they get it over the poop, or was it already too tight? Yes. It would just fit. It was resting on the poop rails. A dozen or more sprang up on the poop. This was far better. The Sea Serpent’s body was so low now that they could make a line across the poop and push side by side. Hope rose high till everyone remembered the high carved stern, the dragon tail, of the Dawn Treader. It would be quite impossible to get the brute over that.

“An axe,” cried Caspian hoarsely, “and still shove.” Lucy, who knew where everything was, heard him where she was standing on the main deck staring up at the poop. In a few seconds she had been below, got the axe, and was rushing up the ladder to the poop. But just as she reached the top there came a great crashing noise like a tree coming down and the ship rocked and darted forward. For at that very moment, whether because the Sea Serpent was being pushed so hard, or because it foolishly decided to draw the noose tight, the whole of the carved stern broke off and the ship was free.

The others were too exhausted to see what Lucy saw. There, a few yards behind them, the loop of Sea Serpent’s body got rapidly smaller and disappeared into a splash. Lucy always said （but of course she was very excited at the moment, and it may have been only imagination） that she saw a look of idiotic satisfaction on the creature’s face. What is certain is that it was a very stupid animal, for instead of pursuing the ship it turned its head round and began nosing all along its own body as if it expected to find the wreckage of the Dawn Treader there. But the Dawn Treader was already well away, running before a fresh breeze, and the men lay and sat panting and groaning all about the deck, till presently they were able to talk about it, and then to laugh about it. And when some rum had been served out they even raised a cheer; and everyone praised the valour of Eustace （though it hadn’t done any good） and of Reepicheep.

After this they sailed for three days more and saw nothing but sea and sky. On the fourth day the wind changed to the north and the seas began to rise; by the afternoon it had nearly become a gale. But at the same time they sighted land on their port bow.

“By your leave, Sire,” said Drinian, “we will try to get under the lee of that country by rowing and lie in harbor, maybe till this is over.” Caspian agreed, but a long row against the gale did not bring them to the land before evening. By the last light of that day they steered into a natural harbor and anchored, but no one went ashore that night. In the morning they found themselves in the green bay of a rugged, lonely-looking country which sloped up to a rocky summit. From the windy north beyond that summit clouds came streaming rapidly. They lowered the boat and loaded her with any of the water casks which were now empty.

“Which stream shall we water at, Drinian?” said Caspian as he took his seat in the stern-sheets of the boat. “There seem to be two coming down into the bay.”

“It makes little odds, Sire,” said Drinian. “But I think it’s a shorter pull to that on the starboard—the eastern one.”

“Here comes the rain,” said Lucy.

“I should think it does！” said Edmund, for it was already pelting hard. “I say, let’s go to the other stream. There are trees there and we’ll have some shelter.”

“Yes, let’s,” said Eustace. “No point in getting wetter than we need.”

But all the time Drinian was steadily steering to the starboard, like tiresome people in cars who continue at forty miles an hour while you are explaining to them that they are on the wrong road.

“They’re right, Drinian,” said Caspian. “Why don’t you bring her head round and make for the western stream?”

“As your Majesty pleases,” said Drinian a little shortly. He had had an anxious day with the weather yesterday, and he didn’t like advice from landsmen. But he altered course; and it turned out afterward that it was a good thing he did.

By the time they had finished watering, the rain was over and Caspian, with Eustace, the Pevensies, and Reepicheep, decided to walk up to the top of the hill and see what could be seen. It was a stiffish climb through coarse grass and heather and they saw neither man nor beast, except seagulls. When they reached the top they saw that it was a very small island, not more than twenty acres; and from this height the sea looked larger and more desolate than it did from the deck, or even the fighting-top, of the Dawn Treader.

“Crazy, you know,” said Eustace to Lucy in a low voice, looking at the eastern horizon. “Sailing on and on into that with no idea what we may get to.” But he only said it out of habit, not really nastily as he would have done at one time.

It was too cold to stay long on the ridge for the wind still blew freshly from the north.

“Don’t let’s go back the same way,” said Lucy as they turned;“let’s go along a bit and come down by the other stream, the one Drinian wanted to go to.”

Everyone agreed to this and after about fifteen minutes they were at the source of the second river. It was a more interesting place than they had expected; a deep little mountain lake, surrounded by cliffs except for a narrow channel on the seaward side out of which the water flowed. Here at last they were out of the wind, and all sat down in the heather above the cliff for a rest.

All sat down, but one （it was Edmund） jumped up again very quickly.

“They go in for sharp stones on this island,” he said, groping about in the heather. “Where is the wretched thing? ... Ah, now I’ve got it ... Hullo！ It wasn’t a stone at all, it’s a sword-hilt. No, by jove, it’s a whole sword; what the rust has left of it. It must have lain here for ages.”

“Narnian, too, by the look of it,” said Caspian, as they all crowded round.

“I’m sitting on something too,” said Lucy. “Something hard.” It turned out to be the remains of a mail shirt. By this time everyone was on hands and knees, feeling in the thick heather in every direction. Their search revealed, one by one, a helmet, a dagger, and a few coins; not Calormen crescents but genuine Narnian “Lions” and “Trees” such as you might see any day in the market-place of Beaversdam or Beruna.

“Looks as if this might be all that’s left of one of our seven lords,” said Edmund.

“Just what I was thinking,” said Caspian. “I wonder which it was. There’s nothing on the dagger to show. And I wonder how he died.”

“And how we are to avenge him,” added Reepicheep.

Edmund, the only one of the party who had read several detective stories, had meanwhile been thinking.

“Look here,” he said, “there’s something very fishy about this. He can’t have been killed in a fight.”

“Why not?” asked Caspian.

“No bones,” said Edmund. “An enemy might take the armor and leave the body. But who ever heard of a chap who’d won a fight carrying away the body and leaving the armor?”

“Perhaps he was killed by a wild animal,” Lucy suggested.

“It’d be a clever animal,” said Edmund, “that would take a man’s mail shirt off.”

“Perhaps a dragon?” said Caspian.

“Nothing doing,” said Eustace. “A dragon couldn’t do it. I ought to know.”

“Well, let’s get away from the place, anyway,” said Lucy. She had not felt like sitting down again since Edmund had raised the question of bones.

“If you like,” said Caspian, getting up. “I don’t think any of this stuff is worth taking away.”

They came down and round to the little opening where the stream came out of the lake, and stood looking at the deep water within the circle of cliffs. If it had been a hot day, no doubt some would have been tempted to bathe and everyone would have had a drink. Indeed, even as it was, Eustace was on the very point of stooping down and scooping up some water in his hands when Reepicheep and Lucy both at the same moment cried, “Look,” so he forgot about his drink and looked into the water.

The bottom of the pool was made of large grayish-blue stones and the water was perfectly clear, and on the bottom lay a life-size figure of a man, made apparently of gold. It lay face downwards with its arms stretched out above its head. And it so happened that as they looked at it, the clouds parted and the sun shone out. The golden shape was lit up from end to end. Lucy thought it was the most beautiful statue she had ever seen.

“Well！” whistled Caspian. “That was worth coming to see！ I wonder, can we get it out?”

“We can dive for it, Sire,” said Reepicheep.

“No good at all,” said Edmund. “At least, if it’s really gold—solid gold—it’ll be far too heavy to bring up. And that pool’s twelve or fifteen feet deep if it’s an inch. Half a moment, though. It’s a good thing I’ve brought a hunting spear with me. Let’s see what the depth is like. Hold on to my hand, Caspian, while I lean out over the water a bit.” Caspian took his hand and Edmund, leaning forward, began to lower his spear into the water.

Before it was half-way in Lucy said, “I don’t believe the statue is gold at all. It’s only the light. Your spear looks just the same color.”

“What’s wrong?” asked several voices at once; for Edmund had suddenly let go of the spear.

“I couldn’t hold it,” gasped Edmund, “it seemed so heavy.”

“And there it is on the bottom now,” said Caspian, “and Lucy is right. It looks just the same color as the statue.”

But Edmund, who appeared to be having some trouble with his boots—at least he was bending down and looking at them—straightened himself all at once and shouted out in the sharp voice which people hardly ever disobey：

“Get back！ Back from the water. All of you. At once！”

They all did and stared at him.

“Look,” said Edmund, “look at the toes of my boots.”

“They look a bit yellow,” began Eustace.

“They’re gold, solid gold,” interrupted Edmund. “Look at them. Feel them. The leather’s pulled away from it already. And they’re as heavy as lead.”

“By Aslan！” said Caspian. “You don’t mean to say—?”

“Yes, I do,” said Edmund. “That water turns things into gold. It turned the spear into gold, that’s why it got so heavy. And it was just lapping against my feet （it’s a good thing I wasn’t barefoot） and it turned the toe-caps into gold. And that poor fellow on the bottom—well, you see.”

“So it isn’t a statue at all,” said Lucy in a low voice.

“No. The whole thing is plain now. He was here on a hot day. He undressed on top of the cliff—where we were sitting. The clothes have rotted away or been taken by birds to line nests with; the armor’s still there. Then he dived and—”

“Don’t,” said Lucy. “What a horrible thing.”

“And what a narrow shave we’ve had,” said Edmund.

“Narrow indeed,” said Reepicheep. “Anyone’s finger, anyone’s foot, anyone’s whisker, or anyone’s tail, might have slipped into the water at any moment.”

“All the same,” said Caspian, “we may as well test it.” He stooped down and wrenched up a spray of heather. Then, very cautiously, he knelt beside the pool and dipped it in. It was heather that he dipped; what he drew out was a perfect model of heather made of the purest gold, heavy and soft as lead.

“The King who owned this island,” said Caspian slowly, and his face flushed as he spoke, “would soon be the richest of all the Kings of the world. I claim this land for ever as a Narnian possession. It shall be called Goldwater Island. And I bind all of you to secrecy. No one must know of this. Not even Drinian—on pain of death, do you hear?”

“Who are you talking to?” said Edmund. “I’m no subject of yours. If anything it’s the other way round. I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother.”

“So it has come to that, King Edmund, has it?” said Caspian, laying his hand on his sword-hilt.

“Oh, stop it, both of you,” said Lucy. “That’s the worst of doing anything with boys. You’re all such swaggering, bullying idiots—oooh！—” Her voice died away into a gasp. And everyone else saw what she had seen.

Across the gray hillside above them—gray, for the heather was not yet in bloom—without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest lion that human eyes have ever seen. In describing the scene Lucy said afterward, “He was the size of an elephant,” though at another time she only said, “The size of a cart-horse.” But it was not the size that mattered. Nobody dared to ask what it was. They knew it was Aslan.

And nobody ever saw how or where he went. They looked at one another like people waking from sleep.

“What were we talking about?” said Caspian. “Have I been making rather an ass of myself?”

“Sire,” said Reepicheep, “this is a place with a curse on it. Let us get back on board at once. And if I might have the honor of naming this island, I should call it Deathwater.”

“That strikes me as a very good name, Reep,” said Caspian, “though now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why. But the weather seems to be settling and I dare say Drinian would like to be off. What a lot we shall have to tell him.”

But in fact they had not much to tell for the memory of the last hour had all become confused.

“Their Majesties all seemed a bit bewitched when they came aboard,” said Drinian to Rhince some hours later when the Dawn Treader was once more under sail and Deathwater Island already below the horizon. “Something happened to them in that place. The only thing I could get clear was that they think they’ve found the body of one of these lords we’re looking for.”

“You don’t say so, Captain,” answered Rhince. “Well, that’s three. Only four more. At this rate we might be home soon after the New Year. And a good thing too. My baccy’s running a bit low. Good night, Sir.”

CHAPTER NINE
THE ISLAND OF THE VOICES

And now the winds which had so long been from the northwest began to blow from the west itself and every morning when the sun rose out of the sea the curved prow of the Dawn Treader stood up right across the middle of the sun. Some thought that the sun looked larger than it looked from Narnia, but others disagreed. And they sailed and sailed before a gentle yet steady breeze and saw neither fish nor gull nor ship nor shore. And stores began to get low again, and it crept into their hearts that perhaps they might have come to a sea which went on for ever. But when the very last day on which they thought they could risk continuing their eastward voyage dawned, it showed, right ahead between them and the sunrise, a low land lying like a cloud.

They made harbor in a wide bay about the middle of the afternoon and landed. It was a very different country from any they had yet seen. For when they had crossed the sandy beach they found all silent and empty as if it were an uninhabited land, but before them there were level lawns in which the grass was as smooth and short as it used to be in the grounds of a great English house where ten gardeners were kept. The trees, of which there were many, all stood well apart from one another, and there were no broken branches and no leaves lying on the ground. Pigeons sometimes cooed but there was no other noise.

Presently they came to a long, straight, sanded path with not a weed growing on it and trees on either hand. Far off at the other end of this avenue they now caught sight of a house—very long and gray and quiet-looking in the afternoon sun.

Almost as soon as they entered this path Lucy noticed that she had a little stone in her shoe. In that unknown place it might have been wiser for her to ask the others to wait while she took it out. But she didn’t; she just dropped quietly behind and sat down to take off her shoe. Her lace had got into a knot.

Before she had undone the knot the others were a fair distance ahead. By the time she had got the stone out and was putting the shoe on again she could no longer hear them. But almost at once she heard something else. It was not coming from the direction of the house.

What she heard was a thumping. It sounded as if dozens of strong workmen were hitting the ground as hard as they could with great wooden mallets. And it was very quickly coming nearer. She was already sitting with her back to a tree, and as the tree was not one she could climb, there was really nothing to do but to sit dead still and press herself against the tree and hope she wouldn’t be seen.

Thump, thump, thump ... and whatever it was must be very close now for she could feel the ground shaking. But she could see nothing. She thought the thing—or things—must be just behind her. But then there came a thump on the path right in front of her. She knew it was on the path not only by the sound but because she saw the sand scatter as if it had been struck a heavy blow. But she could see nothing that had struck it. Then all the thumping noises drew together about twenty feet away from her and suddenly ceased. Then came the Voice.

It was really very dreadful because she could still see nobody at all. The whole of that park-like country still looked as quiet and empty as it had looked when they first landed. Nevertheless, only a few feet away from her, a voice spoke. And what it said was：

“Mates, now’s our chance.”

Instantly a whole chorus of other voices replied, “Hear him. Hear him.‘Now’s our chance,’ he said. Well done, Chief. You never said a truer word.”

“What I say,” continued the first voice, “is, get down to the shore between them and their boat, and let every mother’s son look to his weapons. Catch ’em when they try to put to sea.”

“Eh, that’s the way,” shouted all the other voices. “You never made a better plan, Chief. Keep it up, Chief. You couldn’t have a better plan than that.”

“Lively, then, mates, lively,” said the first voice. “Off we go.”

“Right again, Chief,” said the others. “Couldn’t have a better order. Just what we were going to say ourselves. Off we go.”

Immediately the thumping began again—very loud at first but soon fainter and fainter, till it died out in the direction of the sea.

Lucy knew there was no time to sit puzzling as to what these invisible creatures might be. As soon as the thumping noise had died away she got up and ran along the path after the others as quickly as her legs would carry her. They must at all costs be warned.

While this had been happening the others had reached the house. It was a low building—only two stories high—made of a beautiful mellow stone, many-windowed, and partially covered with ivy. Everything was so still that Eustace said, “I think it’s empty,” but Caspian silently pointed to the column of smoke which rose from one chimney.

They found a wide gateway open and passed through it into a paved courtyard. And it was here that they had their first indication that there was something odd about this island. In the middle of the courtyard stood a pump, and beneath the pump a bucket. There was nothing odd about that. But the pump handle was moving up and down, though there seemed to be no one moving it.

“There’s some magic at work here,” said Caspian.

“Machinery！” said Eustace. “I do believe we’ve come to a civilized country at last.”

At that moment Lucy, hot and breathless, rushed into the courtyard behind them. In a low voice she tried to make them understand what she had overheard. And when they had partly understood it even the bravest of them did not look very happy.

“Invisible enemies,” muttered Caspian. “And cutting us off from the boat. This is an ugly furrow to plough.”

“You’ve no idea what sort of creatures they are, Lu?” asked Edmund.

“How can I, Ed, when I couldn’t see them?”

“Did they sound like humans from their footsteps?”

“I didn’t hear any noise of feet—only voices and this frightful thudding and thumping—like a mallet.”

“I wonder,” said Reepicheep, “do they become visible when you drive a sword into them?”

“It looks as if we shall find out,” said Caspian. “But let’s get out of this gateway. There’s one of these gentry at that pump listening to all we say.”

They came out and went back on to the path where the trees might possibly make them less conspicuous. “Not that it’s any good really,” said Eustace, “trying to hide from people you can’t see. They may be all round us.”

“Now, Drinian,” said Caspian. “How would it be if we gave up the boat for lost, went down to another part of the bay, and signaled to the Dawn Treader to stand in and take us aboard?”

“Not depth for her, Sire,” said Drinian.

“We could swim,” said Lucy.

“Your Majesties all,” said Reepicheep, “hear me. It is folly to think of avoiding an invisible enemy by any amount of creeping and skulking. If these creatures mean to bring us to battle, be sure they will succeed. And whatever comes of it I’d sooner meet them face to face than be caught by the tail.”

“I really think Reep is in the right this time,” said Edmund.

“Surely,” said Lucy, “if Rhince and the others on the Dawn Treader see us fighting on the shore they’ll be able to do something.”

“But they won’t see us fighting if they can’t see any enemy,” said Eustace miserably. “They’ll think we’re just swinging our swords in the air for fun.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Well,” said Caspian at last, “let’s get on with it. We must go and face them. Shake hands all round—arrow on the string, Lucy—swords out, everyone else—and now for it. Perhaps they’ll parley.”

It was strange to see the lawns and the great trees looking so peaceful as they marched back to the beach. And when they arrived there, and saw the boat lying where they had left her, and the smooth sand with no one to be seen on it, more than one doubted whether Lucy had not merely imagined all she had told them. But before they reached the sand, a voice spoke out of the air.

“No further, masters, no further now,” it said. “We’ve got to talk with you first. There’s fifty of us and more here with weapons in our fists.”

“Hear him, hear him,” came the chorus. “That’s our Chief. You can depend on what he says. He’s telling you the truth, he is.”

“I do not see these fifty warriors,” observed Reepicheep.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said the Chief Voice. “You don’t see us. And why not? Because we’re invisible.”

“Keep it up, Chief, keep it up,” said the Other Voices. “You’re talking like a book. They couldn’t ask for a better answer than that.”

“Be quiet, Reep,” said Caspian, and then added in a louder voice, “You invisible people, what do you want with us? And what have we done to earn your enmity?”

“We want something that little girl can do for us,” said the Chief Voice. （The others explained that this was just what they would have said themselves.）

“Little girl！” said Reepicheep. “The lady is a queen.”

“We don’t know about queens,” said the Chief Voice.（“No more we do, no more we do,” chimed in the others.）“But we want something she can do.”

“What is it?” said Lucy.

“And if it is anything against her Majesty’s honor or safety,” added Reepicheep, “you will wonder to see how many we can kill before we die.”

“Well,” said the Chief Voice. “It’s a long story. Suppose we all sit down?”

The proposal was warmly approved by the other voices but the Narnians remained standing.

“Well,” said the Chief Voice. “It’s like this. This island has been the property of a great magician time out of mind. And we all are—or perhaps in a manner of speaking, I might say, we were—his servants. Well, to cut a long story short, this magician that I was speaking about, he told us to do something we didn’t like. And why not? Because we didn’t want to. Well, then, this same magician he fell into a great rage; for I ought to tell you he owned the island and he wasn’t used to being crossed. He was terribly downright, you know. But let me see, where am I? Oh yes, this magician then, he goes upstairs （for you must know he kept all his magic things up there and we all lived down below）, I say he goes upstairs and puts a spell on us. An uglifying spell. If you saw us now, which in my opinion you may thank your stars you can’t, you wouldn’t believe what we looked like before we were uglified. You wouldn’t really. So there we all were so ugly we couldn’t bear to look at one another. So then what did we do? Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We waited till we thought this same magician would be asleep in the afternoon and we creep upstairs and go to his magic book, as bold as brass, to see if we can do anything about this uglification. But we were all of a sweat and a tremble, so I won’t deceive you. But, believe me or believe me not, I do assure you that we couldn’t find anything in the way of a spell for taking off the ugliness. And what with time getting on and being afraid that the old gentleman might wake up any minute—I was all of a muck sweat, so I won’t deceive you—well, to cut a long story short,whether we did right or whether we did wrong, in the end we see a spell for making people invisible. And we thought we’d rather be invisible than go on being as ugly as all that. And why? Because we’d like it better. So my little girl, who’s just about your little girl’s age, and a sweet child she was before she was uglified, though now—but least said soonest mended—I say, my little girl she says the spell, for it’s got to be a little girl or else the magician himself, if you see my meaning, for otherwise it won’t work. And why not? Because nothing happens. So my Clipsie says the spell, for I ought to have told you she reads beautifully, and there we all were as invisible as you could wish to see. And I do assure you it was a relief not to see one another’s faces. At first, anyway. But the long and the short of it is we’re mortal tired of being invisible. And there’s another thing. We never reckoned on this magician （the one I was telling you about before） going invisible too. But we haven’t ever seen him since. So we don’t know if he’s dead, or gone away, or whether he’s just sitting upstairs being invisible, and perhaps coming down and being invisible there. And, believe me, it’s no manner of use listening because he always did go about with his bare feet on, making no more noise than a great big cat. And I’ll tell all you gentlemen straight, it’s getting more than what our nerves can stand.”

Such was the Chief Voice’s story, but very much shortened, because I have left out what the Other Voices said. Actually he never got out more than six or seven words without being interrupted by their agreements and encouragements, which drove the Narnians nearly out of their minds with impatience. When it was over there was a very long silence.

“But,” said Lucy at last, “what’s all this got to do with us? I don’t understand.”

“Why, bless me, if I haven’t gone and left out the whole point,” said the Chief Voice.

“That you have, that you have,” roared the Other Voices with great enthusiasm. “No one couldn’t have left it out cleaner and better. Keep it up, Chief, keep it up.”

“Well, I needn’t go over the whole story again,” began the Chief Voice.

“No. Certainly not,” said Caspian and Edmund.

“Well, then, to put it in a nutshell,” said the Chief Voice, “we’ve been waiting for ever so long for a nice little girl from foreign parts, like it might be you, Missie—that would go upstairs and go to the magic book and find the spell that takes off the invisibleness, and say it. And we all swore that the first strangers as landed on this island （having a nice little girl with them, I mean, for if they hadn’t it’d be another matter） we wouldn’t let them go away alive unless they’d done the needful for us. And that’s why, gentlemen, if your little girl doesn’t come up to scratch, it will be our painful duty to cut all your throats. Merely in the way of business, as you might say, and no offence, I hope.”

“I don’t see all your weapons,” said Reepicheep. “Are they invisible too?” The words were scarcely out of his mouth before they heard a whizzing sound and next moment a spear had stuck, quivering, in one of the trees behind them.

“That’s a spear, that is,” said the Chief Voice.

“That it is, Chief, that it is,” said the others. “You couldn’t have put it better.”

“And it came from my hand,” the Chief Voice continued. “They get visible when they leave us.”

“But why do you want me to do this?” asked Lucy. “Why can’t one of your own people? Haven’t you got any girls?”

“We dursen’t, we dursen’t,” said all the Voices. “We’re not going upstairs again.”

“In other words,” said Caspian, “you are asking this lady to face some danger which you daren’t ask your own sisters and daughters to face！”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said all the Voices cheerfully. “You couldn’t have said it better. Eh, you’ve had some education, you have. Anyone can see that.”

“Well, of all the outrageous—” began Edmund, but Lucy interrupted.

“Would I have to go upstairs at night, or would it do in daylight?”

“Oh, daylight, daylight, to be sure,” said the Chief Voice. “Not at night. No one’s asking you to do that. Go upstairs in the dark? Ugh.”

“All right, then, I’ll do it,” said Lucy. “No,” she said, turning to the others, “don’t try to stop me. Can’t you see it’s no use? There are dozens of them there. We can’t fight them. And the other way there is a chance.”

“But a magician！” said Caspian.

“I know,” said Lucy. “But he mayn’t be as bad as they make out. Don’t you get the idea that these people are not very brave?”

“They’re certainly not very clever,” said Eustace.

“Look here, Lu,” said Edmund. “We really can’t let you do a thing like this. Ask Reep, I’m sure he’ll say just the same.”

“But it’s to save my own life as well as yours,” said Lucy. “I don’t want to be cut to bits with invisible swords any more than anyone else.”

“Her Majesty is in the right,” said Reepicheep. “If we had any assurance of saving her by battle, our duty would be very plain. It appears to me that we have none. And the service they ask of her is in no way contrary to her Majesty’s honor, but a noble and heroical act. If the Queen’s heart moves her to risk the magician, I will not speak against it.”

As no one had ever known Reepicheep to be afraid of anything, he could say this without feeling at all awkward. But the boys, who had all been afraid quite often, grew very red. None the less, it was such obvious sense that they had to give in. Loud cheers broke from the invisible people when their decision was announced, and the Chief Voice （warmly supported by all the others） invited the Narnians to come to supper and spend the night. Eustace didn’t want to accept, but Lucy said, “I’m sure they’re not treacherous. They’re not like that at all,” and the others agreed. And so, accompanied by an enormous noise of thumpings （which became louder when they reached the flagged and echoing courtyard） they all went back to the house.

CHAPTER TEN
THE MAGICIAN’S BOOK

The invisible people feasted their guests royally. It was very funny to see the plates and dishes coming to the table and not to see anyone carrying them. It would have been funny even if they had moved along level with the floor, as you would expect things to do in invisible hands. But they didn’t. They progressed up the long dining-hall in a series of bounds or jumps. At the highest point of each jump a dish would be about fifteen feet up in the air; then it would come down and stop quite suddenly about three feet from the floor. When the dish contained anything like soup or stew the result was rather disastrous.

“I’m beginning to feel very inquisitive about these people,” whispered Eustace to Edmund. “Do you think they’re human at all? More like huge grasshoppers or giant frogs, I should say.”

“It does look like it,” said Edmund. “But don’t put the idea of the grasshoppers into Lucy’s head. She’s not too keen on insects; especially big ones.”

The meal would have been pleasanter if it had not been so exceedingly messy, and also if the conversation had not consisted entirely of agreements. The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with：“What I always say is, when a chap’s hungry, he likes some victuals,” or “Getting dark now; always does at night,” or even “Ah, you’ve come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain’t it?” And Lucy could not help looking at the dark yawning entrance to the foot of the staircase—she could see it from where she sat—and wondering what she would find when she went up those stairs next morning. But it was a good meal otherwise, with mushroom soup and boiled chickens and hot boiled ham and gooseberries, redcurrants, curds, cream, milk, and mead. The others liked the mead but Eustace was sorry afterward that he had drunk any.

When Lucy woke up next morning it was like waking up on the day of an examination or a day when you are going to the dentist. It was a lovely morning with bees buzzing in and out of her open window and the lawn outside looking very like somewhere in England. She got up and dressed and tried to talk and eat ordinarily at breakfast. Then, after being instructed by the Chief Voice about what she was to do upstairs, she bid good-bye to the others, said nothing, walked to the bottom of the stairs, and began going up them without once looking back.

It was quite light, that was one good thing. There was, indeed, a window straight ahead of her at the top of the first flight. As long as she was on that flight she could hear the tick-tock-tick-tock of a grandfather clock in the hall below. Then she came to the landing and had to turn to her left up the next flight; after that she couldn’t hear the clock any more.

Now she had come to the top of the stairs. Lucy looked and saw a long, wide passage with a large window at the far end. Apparently the passage ran the whole length of the house. It was carved and paneled, and carpeted and very many doors opened off it on each side. She stood still and couldn’t hear the squeak of a mouse, or the buzzing of a fly, or the swaying of a curtain, or anything—except the beating of her own heart.

“The last doorway on the left,” she said to herself. It did seem a bit hard that it should be the last. To reach it she would have to walk past room after room. And in any room there might be the magician—asleep, or awake, or invisible, or even dead. But it wouldn’t do to think about that. She set out on her journey. The carpet was so thick that her feet made no noise.

“There’s nothing whatever to be afraid of yet,” Lucy told herself. And certainly it was a quiet, sunlit passage; perhaps a bit too quiet. It would have been nicer if there had not been strange signs painted in scarlet on the doors—twisty, complicated things which obviously had a meaning and it mightn’t be a very nice meaning either. It would have been nicer still if there weren’t those masks hanging on the wall. Not that they were exactly ugly—or not so very ugly—but the empty eye-holes did look queer, and if you let yourself you would soon start imagining that the masks were doing things as soon as your back was turned to them.

After about the sixth door she got her first real fright. For one second she felt almost certain that a wicked little bearded face had popped out of the wall and made a grimace at her. She forced herself to stop and look at it. And it was not a face at all. It was a little mirror just the size and shape of her own face, with hair on the top of it and a beard hanging down from it, so that when you looked in the mirror your own face fitted into the hair and beard and it looked as if they belonged to you. “I just caught my own reflection with the tail of my eye as I went past,” said Lucy to herself. “That was all it was. It’s quite harmless.” But she didn’t like the look of her own face with that hair and beard, and went on. （I don’t know what the Bearded Glass was for because I am not a magician.）

Before she reached the last door on the left, Lucy was beginning to wonder whether the corridor had grown longer since she began her journey and whether this was part of the magic of the house. But she got to it at last. And the door was open.

It was a large room with three big windows and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books; more books than Lucy had ever seen before, tiny little books, fat and dumpy books, and books bigger than any church Bible you have ever seen, all bound in leather and smelling old and learned and magical. But she knew from her instructions that she need not bother about any of these. For the Book, the Magic Book, was lying on a reading-desk in the very middle of the room. She saw she would have to read it standing （and anyway there were no chairs） and also that she would have to stand with her back to the door while she read it. So at once she turned to shut the door.

It wouldn’t shut.

Some people may disagree with Lucy about this, but I think she was quite right. She said she wouldn’t have minded if she could have shut the door, but that it was unpleasant to have to stand in a place like that with an open doorway right behind your back. I should have felt just the same. But there was nothing else to be done.

One thing that worried her a good deal was the size of the Book. The Chief Voice had not been able to give her any idea whereabouts in the Book the spell for making things visible came. He even seemed rather surprised at her asking. He expected her to begin at the beginning and go on till she came to it; obviously he had never thought that there was any other way of finding a place in a book. “But it might take me days and weeks！” said Lucy, looking at the huge volume, “and I feel already as if I’d been in this place for hours.”

She went up to the desk and laid her hand on the book; her fingers tingled when she touched it as if it were full of electricity. She tried to open it but couldn’t at first; this, however, was only because it was fastened by two leaden clasps, and when she had undone these it opened easily enough. And what a book it was！

It was written, not printed; written in a clear, even hand, with thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes, very large, easier than print, and so beautiful that Lucy stared at it for a whole minute and forgot about reading it. The paper was crisp and smooth and a nice smell came from it; and in the margins, and round the big colored capital letters at the beginning of each spell, there were pictures.

There was no title page or title; the spells began straight away, and at first there was nothing very important in them. They were cures for warts （by washing your hands in moonlight in a silver basin） and toothache and cramp, and a spell for taking a swarm of bees. The picture of the man with toothache was so lifelike that it would have set your own teeth aching if you looked at it too long, and the golden bees which were dotted all round the fourth spell looked for a moment as if they were really flying.

Lucy could hardly tear herself away from that first page, but when she turned over, the next was just as interesting. “But I must get on,” she told herself. And on she went for about thirty pages which, if she could have remembered them, would have taught her how to find buried treasure, how to remember things forgotten, how to forget things you wanted to forget, how to tell whether anyone was speaking the truth, how to call up （or prevent） wind, fog, snow, sleet or rain, how to produce enchanted sleeps and how to give a man an ass’s head （as they did to poor Bottom）. And the longer she read the more wonderful and more real the pictures became.

Then she came to a page which was such a blaze of pictures that one hardly noticed the writing. Hardly—but she did notice the first words. They were, An infallible spell to make beautiful her that uttereth it beyond the lot of mortals. Lucy peered at the pictures with her face close to the page, and though they had seemed crowded and muddlesome before, she found she could now see them quite clearly. The first was a picture of a girl standing at a reading-desk reading in a huge book. And the girl was dressed exactly like Lucy. In the next picture Lucy （for the girl in the picture was Lucy herself） was standing up with her mouth open and a rather terrible expression on her face, chanting or reciting something. In the third picture the beauty beyond the lot of mortals had come to her. It was strange, considering how small the pictures had looked at first, that the Lucy in the picture now seemed quite as big as the real Lucy; and they looked into each other’s eyes and the real Lucy looked away after a few minutes because she was dazzled by the beauty of the other Lucy; though she could still see a sort of likeness to herself in that beautiful face. And now the pictures came crowding on her thick and fast. She saw herself throned on high at a great tournament in Calormen and all the Kings of the world fought because of her beauty. After that it turned from tournaments to real wars, and all Narnia and Archenland, Telmar and Calormen, Galma and Terebinthia, were laid waste with the fury of the kings and dukes and great lords who fought for her favor. Then it changed and Lucy, still beautiful beyond the lot of mortals, was back in England. And Susan （who had always been the beauty of the family） came home from America. The Susan in the picture looked exactly like the real Susan only plainer and with a nasty expression. And Susan was jealous of the dazzling beauty of Lucy, but that didn’t matter a bit because no one cared anything about Susan now.

“I will say the spell,” said Lucy. “I don’t care. I will.” She said I don’t care because she had a strong feeling that she mustn’t.

But when she looked back at the opening words of the spell, there in the middle of the writing, where she felt quite sure there had been no picture before, she found the great face of a lion, of The Lion, Aslan himself, staring into hers. It was painted such a bright gold that it seemed to be coming toward her out of the page; and indeed she never was quite sure afterward that it hadn’t really moved a little. At any rate she knew the expression on his face quite well. He was growling and you could see most of his teeth. She became horribly afraid and turned over the page at once.

A little later she came to a spell which would let you know what your friends thought about you. Now Lucy had wanted very badly to try the other spell, the one that made you beautiful beyond the lot of mortals. So she felt that to make up for not having said it, she really would say this one. And all in a hurry, for fear her mind would change, she said the words （nothing will induce me to tell you what they were）. Then she waited for something to happen.

As nothing happened she began looking at the pictures. And all at once she saw the very last thing she expected—a picture of a third-class carriage in a train, with two schoolgirls sitting in it. She knew them at once. They were Marjorie Preston and Anne Featherstone. Only now it was much more than a picture. It was alive. She could see the telegraph posts flicking past outside the window. Then gradually （like when the radio is “coming on”） she could hear what they were saying.

“Shall I see anything of you this term?” said Anne, “or are you still going to be all taken up with Lucy Pevensie.”

“Don’t know what you mean by taken up,” said Marjorie.

“Oh yes, you do,” said Anne. “You were crazy about her last term.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Marjorie. “I’ve got more sense than that. Not a bad little kid in her way. But I was getting pretty tired of her before the end of term.”

“Well, you jolly well won’t have the chance any other term！” shouted Lucy. “Two-faced little beast.” But the sound of her own voice at once reminded her that she was talking to a picture and that the real Marjorie was far away in another world.

“Well,” said Lucy to herself, “I did think better of her than that. And I did all sorts of things for her last term, and I stuck to her when not many other girls would. And she knows it too. And to Anne Featherstone of all people！ I wonder are all my friends the same? There are lots of other pictures. No. I won’t look at any more. I won’t, I won’t”—and with a great effort she turned over the page, but not before a large, angry tear had splashed on it.

On the next page she came to a spell “for the refreshment of the spirit.” The pictures were fewer here but very beautiful. And what Lucy found herself reading was more like a story than a spell. It went on for three pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page she had forgotten that she was reading at all. She was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too. When she had got to the third page and come to the end, she said, “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years. At least I’ll read it over again.”

But here part of the magic of the Book came into play. You couldn’t turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left-hand pages could not.

“Oh, what a shame！” said Lucy. “I did so want to read it again. Well, at least I must remember it. Let’s see ... it was about ... about ... oh dear, it’s all fading away again. And even this last page is going blank. This is a very queer book. How can I have forgotten? It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can’t remember and what shall I do?”

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.

She turned on and found to her surprise a page with no pictures at all; but the first words were A Spell to make hidden things visible. She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colors came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. It was like when you hold to the fire something written in Invisible Ink and the writing gradually shows up; only instead of the dingy color of lemon juice （which is the easiest Invisible Ink） this was all gold and blue and scarlet. They were odd pictures and contained many figures that Lucy did not much like the look of. And then she thought, “I suppose I’ve made everything visible, and not only the Thumpers. There might be lots of other invisible things hanging about a place like this. I’m not sure that I want to see them all.”

At that moment she heard soft, heavy footfalls coming along the corridor behind her; and of course she remembered what she had been told about the Magician walking in his bare feet and making no more noise than a cat. It is always better to turn round than to have anything creeping up behind your back. Lucy did so.

Then her face lit up till, for a moment （but of course she didn’t know it）, she looked almost as beautiful as that other Lucy in the picture, and she ran forward with a little cry of delight and with her arms stretched out. For what stood in the doorway was Aslan himself, The Lion, the highest of all High Kings. And he was solid and real and warm and he let her kiss him and bury herself in his shining mane. And from the low, earthquake-like sound that came from inside him, Lucy even dared to think that he was purring.

“Oh, Aslan,” said she, “it was kind of you to come.”

“I have been here all the time,” said he, “but you have just made me visible.”

“Aslan！” said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. “Don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible！”

“It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”

After a little pause he spoke again.

“Child,” he said, “I think you have been eavesdropping.”

“Eavesdropping?”

“You listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you.”

“Oh that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn’t it magic?”

“Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean.”

“I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I heard her say.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Oh dear,” said Lucy. “Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn’t been for this—and been really great friends—all our lives perhaps—and now we never shall.”

“Child,” said Aslan, “did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?”

“Yes, Aslan, you did,” said Lucy. “I’m sorry. But please—”

“Speak on, dear heart.”

“Shall I ever be able to, read that story again; the one I couldn’t remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.”

“Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years. But now, come. We must meet the master of this house.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DUFFLEPUDS MADE HAPPY

Lucy followed the great Lion out into the passage and at once she saw coming toward them an old man, barefoot, dressed in a red robe. His white hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak leaves, his beard fell to his girdle, and he supported himself with a curiously carved staff. When he saw Aslan he bowed low and said,

“Welcome, Sir, to the least of your houses.”

“Do you grow weary, Coriakin, of ruling such foolish subjects as I have given you here?”

“No,” said the Magician, “they are very stupid but there is no real harm in them. I begin to grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic.”

“All in good time, Coriakin,” said Aslan.

“Yes, all in very good time, Sir,” was the answer. “Do you intend to show yourself to them?”

“Nay,” said the Lion, with a little half-growl that meant （Lucy thought） the same as a laugh. “I should frighten them out of their senses. Many stars will grow old and come to take their rest in islands before your people are ripe for that. And today before sunset I must visit Trumpkin the Dwarf where he sits in the castle of Cair Paravel counting the days till his master Caspian comes home. I will tell him all your story, Lucy. Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again.”

“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?”

“I call all times soon,” said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away and Lucy was alone with the Magician.

“Gone！” said he, “and you and I quite crestfallen. It’s always like that, you can’t keep him; it’s not as if he were a tame lion. And how did you enjoy my book?”

“Parts of it very much indeed,” said Lucy. “Did you know I was there all the time?”

“Well, of course I knew when I let the Duffers make themselves invisible that you would be coming along presently to take the spell off. I wasn’t quite sure of the exact day. And I wasn’t especially on the watch this morning. You see they had made me invisible too and being invisible always makes me so sleepy. Heigh-ho—there I’m yawning again. Are you hungry?”

“Well, perhaps I am a little,” said Lucy. “I’ve no idea what the time is.”

“Come,” said the Magician. “All times may be soon to Aslan; but in my home all hungry times are one o’clock.”

He led her a little way down the passage and opened a door. Passing in, Lucy found herself in a pleasant room full of sunlight and flowers. The table was bare when they entered, but it was of course a magic table, and at a word from the old man the tablecloth, silver, plates, glasses and food appeared.

“I hope that is what you would like,” said he. “I have tried to give you food more like the food of your own land than perhaps you have had lately.”

“It’s lovely,” said Lucy, and so it was; an omelette, piping hot, cold lamb and green peas, a strawberry ice, lemonsquash to drink with the meal and a cup of chocolate to follow. But the magician himself drank only wine and ate only bread. There was nothing alarming about him, and Lucy and he were soon chatting away like old friends.

“When will the spell work?” asked Lucy. “Will the Duffers be visible again at once?”

“Oh yes, they’re visible now. But they’re probably all asleep still; they always take a rest in the middle of the day.”

“And now that they’re visible, are you going to let them off being ugly? Will you make them as they were before?”

“Well, that’s rather a delicate question,” said the Magician. “You see, it’s only they who think they were so nice to look at before. They say they’ve been uglified, but that isn’t what I called it. Many people might say the change was for the better.”

“Are they awfully conceited?”

“They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, and he’s taught all the rest to be. They always believe every word he says.”

“We’d noticed that,” said Lucy.

“Yes-we’d get on better without him, in a way. Of course I could turn him into something else, or even put a spell on him which would make them not believe a word he said. But I don’t like to do that. It’s better for them to admire him than to admire nobody.”

“Don’t they admire you?” asked Lucy.

“Oh, not me,” said the Magician. “They wouldn’t admire me.”

“What was it you uglified them for—I mean, what they call uglified?”

“Well, they wouldn’t do what they were told. Their work is to mind the garden and raise food—not for me, as they imagine, but for themselves. They wouldn’t do it at all if I didn’t make them. And of course for a garden you want water. There is a beautiful spring about half a mile away up the hill. And from that spring there flows a stream which comes right past the garden. All I asked them to do was to take their water from the stream instead of trudging up to the spring with their buckets two or three times a day and tiring themselves out besides spilling half of it on the way back. But they wouldn’t see it. In the end they refused point blank.”

“Are they as stupid as all that?” asked Lucy.

The Magician sighed. “You wouldn’t believe the troubles I’ve had with them. A few months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner： they said it saved time afterward. I’ve caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat. But I see you’ve finished. Let’s go and look at the Duffers now they can be looked at.”

They went into another room which was full of polished instruments hard to understand—such as Astrolabes, Orreries, Chronoscopes, Poesimeters, Choriambuses and Theodolinds—and here, when they had come to the window, the Magician said, “There. There are your Duffers.”

“I don’t see anybody,” said Lucy. “And what are those mushroom things?”

The things she pointed at were dotted all over the level grass. They were certainly very like mushrooms, but far too big—the stalks about three feet high and the umbrellas about the same length from edge to edge. When she looked carefully she noticed too that the stalks joined the umbrellas not in the middle but at one side which gave an unbalanced look to them. And there was something—a sort of little bundle—lying on the grass at the foot of each stalk. In fact the longer she gazed at them the less like mushrooms they appeared. The umbrella part was not really round as she had thought at first. It was longer than it was broad, and it widened at one end. There were a great many of them, fifty or more.

The clock struck three.

Instantly a most extraordinary thing happened. Each of the “mushrooms” suddenly turned upside-down. The little bundles which had lain at the bottom of the stalks were heads and bodies. The stalks themselves were legs. But not two legs to each body. Each body had a single thick leg right under it （not to one side like the leg of a one-legged man） and at the end of it, a single enormous foot—a broad-toed foot with the toes curling up a little so that it looked rather like a small canoe. She saw in a moment why they had looked like mushrooms. They had been lying flat on their backs each with its single leg straight up in the air and its enormous foot spread out above it. She learned afterward that this was their ordinary way of resting; for the foot kept off both rain and sun and for a Monopod to lie under its own foot is almost as good as being in a tent.

“Oh, the funnies, the funnies,” cried Lucy, bursting into laughter. “Did you make them like that?”

“Yes, yes. I made the Duffers into Monopods,” said the Magician. He too was laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. “But watch,” he added.

It was worth watching. Of course these little one-footed men couldn’t walk or run as we do. They got about by jumping, like fleas or frogs. And what jumps they made！—as if each big foot were a mass of springs. And with what a bounce they came down; that was what made the thumping noise which had so puzzled Lucy yesterday. For now they were jumping in all directions and calling out to one another, “Hey, lads！ We’re visible again.”

“Visible we are,” said one in a tasseled red cap who was obviously the Chief Monopod. “And what I say is, when chaps are visible, why, they can see one another.”

“Ah, there it is, there it is, Chief,” cried all the others. “There’s the point. No one’s got a clearer head than you. You couldn’t have made it plainer.”

“She caught the old man napping, that little girl did,” said the Chief Monopod. “We’ve beaten him this time.”

“Just what we were, going to say ourselves,” chimed the chorus. “You’re going stronger than ever today, Chief. Keep it up, keep it up.”

“But do they dare to talk about you like that?” said Lucy. “They seemed to be so afraid of you yesterday. Don’t they know you might be listening?”

“That’s one of the funny things about the Duffers,” said the Magician. “One minute they talk as if I ran everything and overheard everything and was extremely dangerous. The next moment they think they can take me in by tricks that a baby would see through—bless them！”

“Will they have to be turned back into their proper shapes?” asked Lucy. “Oh, I do hope it wouldn’t be unkind to leave them as they are. Do they really mind very much? They seem pretty happy. I say—look at that jump. What were they like before?”

“Common little dwarfs,” said he. “Nothing like so nice as the sort you have in Narnia.”

“It would be a pity to change them back,” said Lucy. “They’re so funny, and they’re rather nice. Do you think it would make any difference if I told them that?”

“I’m sure it would—if you could get it into their heads.”

“Will you come with me and try?”

“No, no. You’ll get on far better without me.”

“Thanks awfully for the lunch,” said Lucy and turned quickly away. She ran down the stairs which she had come up so nervously that morning and cannoned into Edmund at the bottom. All the others were there with him waiting, and Lucy’s conscience smote her when she saw their anxious faces and realized how long she had forgotten them.

“It’s all right,” she shouted. “Everything’s all right. The Magician’s a brick—and I’ve seen Him—Aslan.”

After that she went from them like the wind and out into the garden. Here the earth was shaking with the jumps and the air ringing with the shouts of the Monopods. Both were redoubled when they caught sight of her.

“Here she comes, here she comes,” they cried. “Three cheers for the little girl. Ah！ She put it across the old gentleman properly, she did.”

“And we’re extremely regrettable,” said the Chief Monopod, “that we can’t give you the pleasure of seeing us as we were before we were uglified, for you wouldn’t believe the difference, and that’s the truth, for there’s no denying we’re mortal ugly now, so we won’t deceive you.”

“Eh, that we are, Chief, that we are,” echoed the others, bouncing like so many toy balloons. “You’ve said it, you’ve said it.”

“But I don’t think you are at all,” said Lucy, shouting to make herself heard. “I think you look very nice.”

“Hear her, hear her,” said the Monopods. “True for you, Missie. Very nice we look. You couldn’t find a handsomer lot.” They said this without any surprise and did not seem to notice that they had changed their minds.

“She’s a-saying,” remarked the Chief Monopod, “as how we looked very nice before we were uglified.”

“True for you, Chief, true for you,” chanted the others. “That’s what she says. We heard her ourselves.”

“I did not,” bawled Lucy. “I said you’re very nice now.”

“So she did, so she did,” said the Chief Monopod, “said we were very nice then.”

“Hear’em both, hear’em both,” said the Monopods. “There’s a pair for you. Always right. They couldn’t have put it better.”

“But we’re saying just the opposite,” said Lucy, stamping her foot with impatience.

“So you are, to be sure, so you are,” said the Monopods. “Nothing like an opposite. Keep it up, both of you.”

“You’re enough to drive anyone mad,” said Lucy, and gave it up. But the Monopods seemed perfectly contented, and she decided that on the whole the conversation had been a success.

And before everyone went to bed that evening something else happened which made them even more satisfied with their one-legged condition. Caspian and all the Narnians went back as soon as possible to the shore to give their news to Rhince and the others on board the Dawn Treader, who were by now very anxious. And, of course, the Monopods went with them, bouncing like footballs and agreeing with one another in loud voices till Eustace said, “I wish the Magician would make them inaudible instead of invisible.”（He was soon sorry he had spoken because then he had to explain that an inaudible thing is something you can’t hear, and though he took a lot of trouble he never felt sure that the Monopods had really understood, and what especially annoyed him was that they said in the end, “Eh, he can’t put things the way our Chief does. But you’ll learn, young man. Hark to him. He’ll show you how to say things. There’s a speaker for you！”） When they reached the bay, Reepicheep had a brilliant idea. He had his little coracle lowered and paddled himself about in it till the Monopods were thoroughly interested. He then stood up in it and said, “Worthy and intelligent Monopods, you do not need boats. Each of you has a foot that will do instead. Just jump as lightly as you can on the water and see what happens.”

The Chief Monopod hung back and warned the others that they’d find the water powerful wet, but one or two of the younger ones tried it almost at once; and then a few others followed their example, and at last the whole lot did the same. It worked perfectly. The huge single foot of a Monopod acted as a natural raft or boat, and when Reepicheep had taught them how to cut rude paddles for themselves, they all paddled about the bay and round the Dawn Treader, looking for all the world like a fleet of little canoes with a fat dwarf standing up in the extreme stern of each. And they had races, and bottles of wine were lowered down to them from the ship as prizes, and the sailors stood leaning over the ship’s sides and laughed till their own sides ached.

The Duffers were also very pleased with their new name of Monopods, which seemed to them a magnificent name though they never got it right. “That’s what we are,” they bellowed, “Moneypuds, Pomonods, Poddymons. Just what it was on the tips of our tongues to call ourselves.” But they soon got it mixed up with their old name of Duffers and finally settled down to calling themselves the Dufflepuds; and that is what they will probably be called for centuries.

That evening all the Narnians dined upstairs with the Magician, and Lucy noticed how different the whole top floor looked now that she was no longer afraid of it. The mysterious signs on the doors were still mysterious but now looked as if they had kind and cheerful meanings, and even the bearded mirror now seemed funny rather than frightening. At dinner everyone had by magic what everyone liked best to eat and drink, and after dinner the Magician did a very useful and beautiful piece of magic. He laid two blank sheets of parchment on the table and asked Drinian to give him an exact account of their voyage up to date： and as Drinian spoke, everything he described came out on the parchment in fine clear lines till at last each sheet was a splendid map of the Eastern Ocean, showing Galma, Terebinthia, the Seven Isles, the Lone Islands, Dragon Island, Burnt Island, Deathwater, and the land of the Duffers itself, all exactly the right sizes and in the right positions. They were the first maps ever made of those seas and better than any that have been made since without magic. For on these, though the towns and mountains looked at first just as they would on an ordinary map, when the Magician lent them a magnifying glass you saw that they were perfect little pictures of the real things, so that you could see the very castle and slave market and streets in Narrowhaven, all very clear though very distant, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The only drawback was that the coastline of most of the islands was incomplete, for the map showed only what Drinian had seen with his own eyes. When they were finished the Magician kept one himself and presented the other to Caspian： it still hangs in his Chamber of Instruments at Cair Paravel. But the Magician could tell them nothing about seas or lands further east. He did, however, tell them that about seven years before a Narnian ship had put in at his waters and that she had on board the lords Revilian, Argoz, Mavramorn and Rhoop： so they judged that the golden man they had seen lying in Deathwater must be the Lord Restimar.

Next day, the Magician magically mended the stern of the Dawn Treader where it had been damaged by the Sear Serpent and loaded her with useful gifts. There was a most friendly parting, and when she sailed, two hours after noon, all the Dufflepuds paddled out with her to the harbour mouth, and cheered until she was out of sound of their cheering.

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DARK ISLAND

After this adventure they sailed on south and a little east for twelve days with a gentle wind, the skies being mostly clear and the air warm, and saw no bird or fish, except that once there were whales spouting a long way to starboard. Lucy and Reepicheep played a good deal of chess at this time. Then on the thirteenth day, Edmund, from the fighting-top, sighted what looked like a great dark mountain rising out of the sea on their port bow.

They altered course and made for this land, mostly by oar, for the wind would not serve them to sail northeast. When evening fell they were still a long way from it and rowed all night. Next morning the weather was fair but a flat calm. The dark mass lay ahead, much nearer and larger, but still very dim, so that some thought it was still a long way off and others thought they were running into a mist.

About nine that morning, very suddenly, it was so close that they could see that it was not land at all, nor even, in an ordinary sense, a mist. It was a Darkness. It is rather hard to describe, but you will see what it was like if you imagine yourself looking into the mouth of a railway tunnel—a tunnel either so long or so twisty that you cannot see the light at the far end. And you know what it would be like. For a few feet you would see the rails and sleepers and gravel in broad daylight; then there would come a place where they were in twilight; and then, pretty suddenly, but of course without a sharp dividing line, they would vanish altogether into smooth, solid blackness. It was just so here. For a few feet in front of their bows they could see the swell of the bright greenish-blue water. Beyond that, they could see the water looking pale and gray as it would look late in the evening. But beyond that again, utter blackness as if they had come to the edge of moonless and starless night.

Caspian shouted to the boatswain to keep her back, and all except the rowers rushed forward and gazed from the bows. But there was nothing to be seen by gazing. Behind them was the sea and the sun, before them the Darkness.

“Do we go into this?” asked Caspian at length.

“Not by my advice,” said Drinian.

“The Captain’s right,” said several sailors.

“I almost think he is,” said Edmund.

Lucy and Eustace didn’t speak but they felt very glad inside at the turn things seemed to be taking. But all at once the clear voice of Reepicheep broke in upon the silence.

“And why not?” he said. “Will someone explain to me why not.”

No one was anxious to explain, so Reepicheep continued：

“If I were addressing peasants or slaves,” he said, “I might suppose that this suggestion proceeded from cowardice. But I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age turned tail because they were afraid of the dark.”

“But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that blackness?” asked Drinian.

“Use?” replied Reepicheep. “Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honor and adventure. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and here, if we turn back, no tittle impeachment of all our honors.”

Several of the sailors said things under their breath that sounded like “Honor be blowed”, but Caspian said：

“Oh, bother you, Reepicheep. I almost wish we’d left you at home. All right！ If you put it that way, I suppose we shall have to go on. Unless Lucy would rather not?”

Lucy felt that she would very much rather not, but what she said out loud was, “I’m game.”

“Your Majesty will at least order lights?” said Drinian.

“By all means,” said Caspian. “See to it, Captain.”

So the three lanterns, at the stern, and the prow and the masthead, were all lit, and Drinian ordered two torches amidships. Pale and feeble they looked in the sunshine. Then all the men except some who were left below at the oars were ordered on deck and fully armed and posted in their battle stations with swords drawn. Lucy and two archers were posted on the fighting-top with bows bent and arrows on the string. Rynelf was in the bows with his line ready to take soundings. Reepicheep, Edmund, Eustace and Caspian, glittering in mail, were with him. Drinian took the tiller.

“And now, in Aslan’s name, forward！” cried Caspian. “A slow, steady stroke. And let every man be silent and keep his ears open for orders.”

With a creak and a groan the Dawn Treader started to creep forward as the men began to row. Lucy, up in the fighting-top, had a wonderful view of the exact moment at which they entered the darkness. The bows had already disappeared before the sunlight had left the stern. She saw it go. At one minute the gilded stern, the blue sea, and the sky, were all in broad daylight： next minute the sea and sky had vanished, the stern lantern—which had been hardly noticeable before—was the only thing to show where the ship ended. In front of the lantern she could see the black shape of Drinian crouching at the tiller. Down below her the two torches made visible two small patches of deck and gleamed on swords and helmets, and forward there was another island of light on the forecastle. Apart from that, the fighting-top, lit by the masthead light which was only just above her, seemed to be a little lighted world of its own floating in lonely darkness. And the lights themselves, as always happens with lights when you have to have them at the wrong time of day, looked lurid and unnatural. She also noticed that she was very cold.

How long this voyage into the darkness lasted, nobody knew. Except for the creak of the rowlocks and the splash of the oars there was nothing to show that they were moving at all. Edmund, peering from the bows, could see nothing except the reflection of the lantern in the water before him. It looked a greasy sort of reflection, and the ripple made by their advancing prow appeared to be heavy, small, and lifeless. As time went on everyone except the rowers began to shiver with cold.

Suddenly, from somewhere—no one’s sense of direction was very clear by now—there came a cry, either of some inhuman voice or else a voice of one in such extremity of terror that he had almost lost his humanity.

Caspian was still trying to speak—his mouth was too dry—when the shrill voice of Reepicheep, which sounded louder than usual in that silence, was heard.

“Who calls?” it piped. “If you are a foe we do not fear you, and if you are a friend your enemies shall be taught the fear of us.”

“Mercy！” cried the voice. “Mercy！ Even if you are only one more dream, have merry. Take me on board. Take me, even if you strike me dead. But in the name of all mercies do not fade away and leave me in this horrible land.”

“Where are you?” shouted Caspian. “Come aboard and welcome.”

There came another cry, whether of joy or terror, and then they knew that someone was swimming toward them.

“Stand by to heave him up, men,” said Caspian.

“Aye, aye, your Majesty,” said the sailors. Several crowded to the port bulwark with ropes and one, leaning far out over the side, held the torch. A wild, white face appeared in the blackness of the water, and then, after some scrambling and pulling, a dozen friendly hands had heaved the stranger on board.

Edmund thought he had never seen a wilder-looking man. Though he did not otherwise look very old, his hair was an untidy mop of white, his face was thin and drawn, and, for clothing, only a few wet rags hung about him. But what one mainly noticed were his eyes, which were so widely opened that he seemed to have no eyelids at all, and stared as if in an agony of pure fear. The moment his feet reached the deck he said：

“Fly！ Fly！ About with your ship and fly！ Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore.”

“Compose yourself,” said Reepicheep, “and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying.”

The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before.

“Nevertheless you will fly from here,” he gasped. “This is the Island where Dreams come true.”

“That’s the island I’ve been looking for this long time,” said one of the sailors. “I reckoned I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.”

“And I’d find Tom alive again,” said another.

“Fools！” said the man, stamping his foot with rage. “That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I’d better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams—dreams, do you understand—come to life, come real. Not daydreams; dreams.”

There was about half a minute’s silence and then, with a great clatter of armor, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before; and Drinian was swinging round the tiller, and the boatswain was giving out the quickest stroke that had ever been heard at sea. For it had taken everyone just that half-minute to remember certain dreams they had had—dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again—and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.

Only Reepicheep remained unmoved.

“Your Majesty, your Majesty,” he said, “are you going to tolerate this mutiny, this poltroonery? This is a panic, this is a rout.”

“Row, row,” bellowed Caspian. “Pull for all our lives. Is her head right, Drinian? You can say what you like, Reepicheep. There are some things no man can face.”

“It is, then, my good fortune not to be a man,” replied Reepicheep with a very stiff bow.

Lucy from up aloft had heard it all. In an instant that one of her own dreams which she had tried hardest to forget came back to her as vividly as if she had only just woken from it. So that was what was behind them, on the island, in the darkness！ For a second she wanted to go down to the deck and be with Edmund and Caspian. But what was the use? If dreams began coming true, Edmund and Caspian themselves might turn into something horrible just as she reached them. She gripped the rail of the fighting-top and tried to steady herself. They were rowing back to the light as hard as they could： it would be all right in a few seconds. But oh, if only it could be all right now！

Though the rowing made a good deal of noise it did not quite conceal the total silence which surrounded the ship.

Everyone knew it would be better not to listen, not to strain his ears for any sound from the darkness. But no one could help listening. And soon everyone was hearing things. Each one heard something different.

“Do you hear a noise like ... like a huge pair of scissors opening and shutting ... over there?” Eustace asked Rynelf.

“Hush！” said Rynelf. “I can hear them crawling up the sides of the ship.”

“It’s just going to settle on the mast,” said Caspian.

“Ugh！” said a sailor. “There are the gongs beginning. I knew they would.”

Caspian, trying not to look at anything （especially not to keep looking behind him）, went aft to Drinian.

“Drinian,” he said in a very low voice. “How long did we take rowing in?—I mean rowing to where we picked up the stranger.”

“Five minutes, perhaps,” whispered Drinian. “Why?”

“Because we’ve been more than that already trying to get out.”

Drinian’s hand shook on the tiller and a line of cold sweat ran down his face. The same idea was occurring to everyone on board. “We shall never get out, never get out,” moaned the rowers. “He’s steering us wrong. We’re going round and round in circles. We shall never get out.” The stranger, who had been lying in a huddled heap on the deck, sat up and burst out into a horrible screaming laugh.

“Never get out！” he yelled. “That’s it. Of course. We shall never get out. What a fool I was to have thought they would let me go as easily as that. No, no, we shall never get out.”

Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little—a very, very little—better. “After all, nothing has really happened to us yet,” she thought.

“Look！” cried Rynelf’s voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight. Caspian blinked, stared round, saw the faces of his companions all with wild, fixed expressions. Everyone was staring in the same direction： behind everyone lay his black, sharply-edged shadow.

Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

In a few moments the darkness turned into a grayness ahead, and then, almost before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in the warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been. They blinked their eyes and looked about them. The brightness of the ship herself astonished them; they had half expected to find that the darkness would cling to the white and the green and the gold in the form of some grime or scum. And then first one, and then another, began laughing.

“I reckon we’ve made pretty good fools of ourselves,” said Rynelf.

Lucy lost no time in coming down to the deck, where she found the others all gathered round the newcomer. For a long time he was too happy to speak, and could only gaze at the sea and the sun and feel the bulwarks and the ropes, as if to make sure he was really awake, while tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “You have saved me from ... but I won’t talk of that. And now let me know who you are. I am a Telmarine of Narnia, and when I was worth anything men called me the Lord Rhoop.”

“And I,” said Caspian, “am Caspian, King of Narnia, and I sail to find you and your companions who were my father’s friends.”

Lord Rhoop fell on his knees and kissed the King’s hand. “Sire,” he said, “you are the man in all the world I most wished to see. Grant me a boon.”

“What is it?” asked Caspian.

“Never to bring me back there,” he said. He pointed astern. They all looked. But they saw only bright blue sea and bright blue sky. The Dark Island and the darkness had vanished for ever.

“Why！” cried Lord Rhoop. “You have destroyed it！”

“I don’t think it was us,” said Lucy.

“Sire,” said Drinian, “this wind is fair for the southeast. Shall I have our poor fellows up and set sail? And after that, every man who can be spared, to his hammock.”

“Yes,” said Caspian, “and let there be grog all round. Heigh-ho, I feel I could sleep the clock round myself.”

So all afternoon with great joy they sailed southeast with a fair wind. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE THREE SLEEPERS

The wind never failed but it grew gentler every day till at length the waves were little more than ripples, and the ship glided on hour after hour almost as if they were sailing on a lake. And every night they saw that there rose in the east new constellations which no one had ever seen in Narnia and perhaps, as Lucy thought with a mixture of joy and fear, no living eye had seen at all. Those new stars were big and bright and the nights were warm. Most of them slept on deck and talked far into the night or hung over the ship’s side watching the luminous dance of the foam thrown up by their bows.

On an evening of startling beauty, when the sunset behind them was so crimson and purple and widely spread that the very sky itself seemed to have grown larger, they came in sight of land on their starboard bow. It came slowly nearer and the light behind them made it look as if the capes and headlands of this new country were all on fire. But presently they were sailing along its coast and its western cape now rose up astern of them, black against the red sky and sharp as if it was cut out of cardboard, and then they could see better what this country was like. It had no mountains but many gentle hills with slopes like pillows. An attractive smell came from it—what Lucy called “a dim, purple kind of smell”, which Edmund said （and Rhince thought） was rot, but Caspian said, “I know what you mean.”

They sailed on a good way, past point after point, hoping to find a nice deep harbour, but had to content themselves in the end with a wide and shallow bay. Though it had seemed calm out at sea there was of course surf breaking on the sand and they could not bring the Dawn Treader as far in as they would have liked. They dropped anchor a good way from the beach and had a wet and tumbling landing in the boat. The Lord Rhoop remained on board the Dawn Treader. He wished to see no more islands. All the time that they remained in this country the sound of the long breakers was in their ears.

Two men were left to guard the boat and Caspian led the others inland, but not far because it was too late for exploring and the light would soon go. But there was no need to go far to find an adventure. The level valley which lay at the head of the bay showed no road or track or other sign of habitation. Underfoot was fine springy turf dotted here and there with a low bushy growth which Edmund and Lucy took for heather. Eustace, who was really rather good at botany, said it wasn’t, and he was probably right; but it was something of very much the same kind.

When they had gone less than a bowshot from the shore, Drinian said, “Look！ What’s that?” and everyone stopped.

“Are they great trees?” said Caspian.

“Towers, I think,” said Eustace.

“It might be giants,” said Edmund in a lower voice.

“The way to find out is to go right in among them,” said Reepicheep, drawing his sword and pattering off ahead of everyone else.

“I think it’s a ruin,” said Lucy when they had got a good deal nearer, and her guess was the best so far. What they now saw was a wide oblong space flagged with smooth stones and surrounded by gray pillars but unroofed. And from end to end of it ran a long table laid with a rich crimson cloth that came down nearly to the pavement. At either side of it were many chairs of stone richly carved and with silken cushions upon the seats. But on the table itself there was set out such a banquet as had never been seen, not even when Peter the High King kept his court at Cair Paravel. There were turkeys and geese and peacocks, there were boars’heads and sides of venison, there were pies shaped like ships under full sail or like dragons and elephants, there were ice puddings and bright lobsters and gleaming salmon, there were nuts and grapes, pineapples and peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes. There were flagons of gold and silver and curiously-wrought glass; and the smell of the fruit and the wine blew toward them like a promise of all happiness.

“I say！” said Lucy.

They came nearer and nearer, all very quietly.

“But where are the guests?” asked Eustace.

“We can provide that, Sir,” said Rhince.

“Look！” said Edmund sharply. They were actually within the pillars now and standing on the pavement. Everyone looked where Edmund had pointed. The chairs were not all empty. At the head of the table and in the two places beside it there was something—or possibly three somethings.

“What are those?” asked Lucy in a whisper. “It looks like three beavers sitting on the table.”

“Or a huge bird’s nest,” said Edmund.

“It looks more like a haystack to me,” said Caspian.

Reepicheep ran forward, jumped on a chair and thence on to the table, and ran along it, threading his way as nimbly as a dancer between jewelled cups and pyramids of fruit and ivory salt-cellars. He ran right up to the mysterious gray mass at the end： peered, touched, and then called out：

“These will not fight, I think.”

Everyone now came close and saw that what sat in those three chairs was three men, though hard to recognize as men till you looked closely. Their hair, which was gray, had grown over their eyes till it almost concealed their, faces, and their beards had grown over the table, climbing pound and entwining plates and goblets as brambles; entwine a fence, until, all mixed in one great mat of hair, they flowed over the edge and down to the floor. And from their heads the hair hung over the backs of their chairs so that they were wholly hidden. In fact the three men were nearly all hair.

“Dead?” said Caspian.

“I think not, Sire,” said Reepicheep, lifting one of their hands out of its tangle of hair in his two paws. “This one is warm and his pulse beats.”

“This one, too, and this,” said Drinian.

“Why, they’re only asleep,” said Eustace.

“It’s been a long sleep, though,” said Edmund, “to let their hair grow like this.”

“It must be an enchanted sleep,” said Lucy. “I felt the moment we landed on this island that it was full of magic. Oh！ Do you think we have perhaps come here to break it?”

“We can try,” said Caspian, and began shaking the nearest of the three sleepers. For a moment everyone thought he was going to be successful, for the man breathed hard and muttered, “I’ll go eastward no more. Out oars for Narnia.” But he sank back almost at once into a yet deeper sleep than before： that is, his heavy head sagged a few inches lower toward the table and all efforts to rouse him again were useless. With the second it was much the same. “Weren’t born to live like animals. Get to the east while you’ve a chance—lands behind the sun,” and sank down. And the third only said, “Mustard, please,” and slept hard.

“Out oars for Narnia, eh?” said Drinian.

“Yes,” said Caspian, “you are right, Drinian. I think our quest is at an end. Let’s look at their rings. Yes, these are their devices. This is the Lord Revilian. This is the Lord Argoz： and this, the Lord Mavramorn.”

“But we can’t wake them,” said Lucy. “What are we to do?”

“Begging your Majesties’pardons all,” said Rhince, “but why not fall to while you’re discussing it? We don’t see a dinner like this every day.”

“Not for your life！” said Caspian.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said several of the sailors. “Too much magic about here. The sooner we’re back on board the better.”

“Depend upon it,” said Reepicheep, “it was from eating this food that these three lords came by a seven years’sleep.”

“I wouldn’t touch it to save my life,” said Drinian.

“The light’s going uncommon quick,” said Rynelf.

“Back to ship, back to ship,” muttered the men.

“I really think,” said Edmund, “they’re right. We can decide what to do with the three sleepers tomorrow. We daren’t eat the food and there’s no point in staying here for the night. The whole place smells of magic—and danger.”

“I am entirely of King Edmund’s opinion,” said Reepicheep, “as far as concerns the ship’s company in general. But I myself will sit at this table till sunrise.”

“Why on earth?” said Eustace.

“Because,” said the Mouse, “this is a very great adventure, and no danger seems to me so great as that of knowing when I get back to Narnia that I left a mystery behind me through fear.”

“I’ll stay with you, Reep,” said Edmund.

“And I too,” said Caspian.

“And me,” said Lucy. And then Eustace volunteered also. This was very brave of him because never having read of such things or even heard of them till he joined the Dawn Treader made it worse for him than for the others.

“I beseech your Majesty—” began Drinian.

“No, my Lord,” said Caspian. “Your place is with the ship, and you have had a day’s work while we five have idled.” There was a lot of argument about this but in the end Caspian had his way. As the crew marched off to the shore in the gathering dusk none of the five watchers, except perhaps Reepicheep, could avoid a cold feeling in the stomach.

They took some time choosing their seats at the perilous table. Probably everyone had the same reason but no one said it out loud. For it was really a rather nasty choice. One could hardly bear to sit all night next to those three terrible hairy objects which, if not dead, were certainly not alive in the ordinary sense. On the other hand, to sit at the far end, so that you would see them less and less as the night grew darker, and wouldn’t know if they were moving, and perhaps wouldn’t see them at all by about two o’clock—no, it was not to be thought of. So they sauntered round and round the table saying, “What about here?” and “Or perhaps a bit further on,” or, “Why not on this side?” till at last they settled down somewhere about the middle but nearer to the sleepers than to the other end. It was about ten by now and almost dark. Those strange new constellations burned in the east. Lucy would have liked it better if they had been the Leopard and the Ship and other old friends of the Narnian sky.

They wrapped themselves in their sea cloaks and sat still and waited. At first there was some attempt at talk but it didn’t come to much. And they sat and sat. And all the time they heard the waves breaking on the beach.

After hours that seemed like ages there came a moment when they all knew they had been dozing a moment before but were all suddenly wide awake. The stars were all in quite different positions from those they had last noticed. The sky was very black except for the faintest possible grayness in the east. They were cold, though thirsty, and stiff. And none of them spoke because now at last something was happening.

Before them, beyond the pillars, there was the slope of a low hill. And now a door opened in the hillside, and light appeared in the doorway, and a figure came out, and the door shut behind it. The figure carried a light, and this light was really all that they could see distinctly. It came slowly nearer and nearer till at last it stood right at the table opposite to them. Now they could see that it was a tall girl, dressed in a single long garment of clear blue which left her arms bare. She was bareheaded and her yellow hair hung down her back. And when they looked at her they thought they had never before known what beauty meant.

The light which she had been carrying was a tall candle in a silver candlestick which she now set upon the table. If there had been any wind off the sea earlier in the night it must have died down by now, for the flame of the candle burned as straight and still as if it were in a room with the windows shut and the curtains drawn. Gold and silver on the table shone in its light.

Lucy now noticed something lying lengthwise on the table which had escaped her attention before. It was a knife of stone, sharp as steel, a cruel-looking, ancient looking thing.

No one had yet spoken a word. Then—Reepicheep first, and Caspian next—they all rose to their feet, because they felt that she was a great lady.

“Travelers who have come from far to Aslan’s table,” said the girl. “Why do you not eat and drink?”

“Madam,” said Caspian, “we feared the food because we thought it had cast our friends into an enchanted sleep.

“They have never tasted it,” she said.

“Please,” said Lucy, “what happened to them?”

“Seven years ago,” said the girl, “they came here in a ship whose sails were rags and timbers ready to fall apart. There were a few others with them, sailors, and when they came to this table one said,‘Here is the good place. Let us set sail and reef sail and row no longer but sit down and end our days in peace！’And the second said,‘No, let us re-embark and sail for Narnia and the west; it may be that Miraz is dead.’ But the third, who was a very masterful man, leaped up and said,‘No, by heaven. We are men and Telmarines, not brutes. What should we do but seek adventure after adventure? We have not long to live in any event. Let us spend what is left in seeking the unpeopled world behind the sunrise.’ And as they quarreled he caught up the Knife of Stone which lies there on the table and would have fought with his comrades. But it is a thing not right for him to touch. And as his fingers closed upon the hilt, deep sleep fell upon all the three. And till the enchantment is undone they will never wake.”

“What is this Knife of Stone?” asked Eustace.

“Do none of you know it?” said the girl.

“I—I think,” said Lucy, “I’ve seen something like it before. It was a knife like it that the White Witch used when she killed Aslan at the Stone Table long ago.”

“It was the same,” said the girl, “and it was brought here to be kept in honor while the world lasts.”

Edmund, who had been looking more and more uncomfortable for the last few minutes, now spoke.

“Look here,” he said, “I hope I’m not a coward—about eating this food, I mean—and I’m sure I don’t mean to be rude. But we have had a lot of queer adventures on this voyage of ours and things aren’t always what they seem. When I look in your face I can’t help believing all you say; but then that’s just what might happen with a witch too. How are we to know you’re a friend?”

“You can’t know,” said the girl. “You can only believe or not.”

After a moment’s pause Reepicheep’s small voice was heard.

“Sire,” he said to Caspian, “of your courtesy fill my cup with wine from that flagon： it is too big for me to lift. I will drink to the lady.”

Caspian obeyed and the Mouse, standing on the table, held up a golden cup between its tiny paws and said, “Lady, I pledge you.” Then it fell to on cold peacock, and in a short while everyone else followed its example. All were very hungry and the meal, if not quite what you wanted for a very early breakfast, was excellent as a very late supper.

“Why is it called Aslan’s table?” asked Lucy presently.

“It is set here by his bidding,” said the girl, “for those who come so far. Some call this island the World’s End, for though you can sail further, this is the beginning of the end.”

“But how does the food keep?” asked the practical Eustace.

“It is eaten, and renewed every day,” said the girl. “This you will see.”

“And what are we to do about the Sleepers?” asked Caspian. “In the world from which my friends come （here, he nodded at Eustace and the Pevensies）, they have a story of a prince or a king coming to a castle where all the people lay in an enchanted sleep. In that story he could not dissolve the enchantment until he had kissed the Princess.”

“But here,” said the girl, “it is different. Here he cannot kiss the Princess till he has dissolved the enchantment.”

“Then,” said Caspian, “in the name of Aslan, show me how to set about that work at once.”

“My father will teach you that,” said the girl.

“Your father！” said everyone. “Who is he? And where?”

“Look,” said the girl, turning round and pointing at the door in the hillside. They could see it more easily now, for while they had been talking the stars had grown fainter and great gaps of white light were appearing in the grayness of the eastern sky.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE WORLD

Slowly the door opened again and out there came a figure as tall and straight as the girl’s but not so slender. It carried no light but light seemed to come from it. As it came nearer, Lucy saw that it was like an old man. His silver beard came down to his bare feet in front and his silver hair hung down to his heels behind and his robe appeared to be made from the fleece of silver sheep. He looked so mild and grave that once more all the travelers rose to their feet and stood in silence.

But the old man came on without speaking to the travelers and stood on the other side of the table opposite to his daughter. Then both of them held up their arms before them and turned to face the east. In that position they began to sing. I wish I could write down the song, but no one who was present could remember it. Lucy said afterward that it was high, almost shrill, but very beautiful, cold kind of song, an early morning kind of song. And they sang, the gray clouds lifted from the eastern sky and the white patches grew bigger and bigger till it was white, and the sea began to shine like silver. And long afterward （but those two sang all the time） the east began to turn red and at last, unclouded, the sun came up out the sea and its long level ray shot down the length of the table on the gold and silver sand on the Stone Knife.

Once or twice before, the Narnians had wondered whether the sun at its rising did not look bigger in these seas than it had looked at home. This time they we certain. There was no mistaking it. And the brightness its ray on the dew and on the table was far beyond any morning brightness they had ever seen. And as Edmund said afterward, “Though lots of things happened on that trip which sound more exciting, that moment was really the most exciting.” For now they knew that they had truly come to the beginning of the End of the World.

Then something seemed to be flying at them out of the very center of the rising sun： but of course one couldn’t look steadily in that direction to make sure. But presently the air became full of voices—voices which took up same song that the Lady and her Father were singing, but in far wilder tones and in a language which no one knew. And soon after that the owners of these voices could be seen. They were birds, large and white, and they came by hundreds and thousands and alighted on everything; on the grass, and the pavement, on the table, on your shoulders, your hands, and your head, till it looked as if heavy snow had fallen. For, like snow, they not only make everything white but blurred and blunted all shapes. But Lucy, looking out from between the wings of the birds that covered her, saw one bird fly to the Old Man with something in its beak that looked like a little fruit, unless it was a little live coal, which it might have been, for it was too bright to look at. And the bird laid it in the Old Man’s mouth.

Then the birds stopped their singing and appeared to be very busy about the table. When they rose from it again everything on the table that could be eaten or drunk had disappeared. These birds rose from their meal in their thousands and hundreds and carried away all the things that could not be eaten or drunk, such as bones, rinds, and shells, and took their flight back to the rising sun. But now, because they were not singing, the whir of their wings seemed to set the whole air a-tremble. And there was the table pecked clean and empty, and the three old Lords of Narnia still fast asleep.

Now at last the Old Man turned to the travelers and bade them welcome.

“Sir,” said Caspian, “will you tell us how to undo the enchantment which holds these three Narnian Lords asleep.”

“I will gladly tell you that, my son,” said the Old Man. “To break this enchantment you must sail to the World’s End, or as near as you can come to it, and you must come back having left at least one of your company behind.”

“And what must happen to that one?” asked Reepicheep.

“He must go on into the utter east and never return into the world.”

“That is my heart’s desire,” said Reepicheep.

“And are we near the World’s End now, Sir?” asked Caspian. “Have you any knowledge of the seas and lands further east than this?”

“I saw them long ago,” said the Old Man, “but it was from a great height. I cannot tell you such things as sailors need to know.”

“Do you mean you were flying in the air?” Eustace blurted out.

“I was a long way above the air, my son,” replied the Old Man. “I am Ramandu. But I see that you stare at one another and have not heard this name. And no wonder, for the days when I was a star had ceased long before any of you knew this world, and all the constellations have changed.”

“Golly,” said Edmund under his breath. “He’s a retired star.”

“Aren’t you a star any longer?” asked Lucy.

“I am a star at rest, my daughter,” answered Ramandu. “When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again （for we are at earth’s eastern rim） and once more tread the great dance.”

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of. And in this world you have already met a star, for I think you have been with Coriakin.”

“Is he a retired star, too?” said Lucy.

“Well, not quite the same,” said Ramandu. “It was not quite as a rest than he was set to govern the Duffers. You might call it a punishment. He might have shone for thousands of years more in the southern winter sky if all had gone well.”

“What did he do, Sir?” asked Caspian.

“My son,” said Ramandu, “it is not for you, a son of Adam, to know what faults a star can commit. But come, we waste time in such talk. Are you yet resolved? Will you sail further east and come again, leaving one to return no more, and so break the enchantment? Or will you sail westward?”

“Surely, Sire,” said Reepicheep, “there is no question about that? It is very plainly part of our quest to rescue these three lords from enchantment.”

“I think the same, Reepicheep,” replied Caspian. “And even if it were not so, it would break my heart not to go as near the World’s End as the Dawn Treader will take us. But I am thinking of the crew. They signed on to seek the seven lords, not to reach the rim of the Earth. If we sail east from here we sail to find the edge, the utter east. And not one knows how far it is. They’re brave fellows, but I set signs that some of them are weary of the voyage and long to have our prow pointing to Narnia again. I don’t think I should take them further without their knowledge and consent. And then there’s the poor Lord Rhoop. He’s broken man.”

“My son,” said the star, “it would be no use, even though you wished it, to sail for the World’s End with men unwilling or men deceived. That is not how great unenchantments are achieved. They must know where they go and why. But who is this broken man you speak of?”

Caspian told Ramandu the story of Rhoop.

“I can give him what he needs most,” said Ramandu. “In this island there is sleep without stint or measure, and sleep in which no faintest footfall of a dream was ever heard. Let him sit beside these other three and drink oblivion till you return.”

“Oh, do let’s do that, Caspian,” said Lucy. “I’m sure its just what he would love.”

At that moment they were interrupted by the sound of many feet and voices： Drinian and the rest of the ship company were approaching. They halted in surprise when they saw Ramandu and his daughter; and then, because these were obviously great people, every man uncovered his head. Some sailors eyed the empty dishes and flagons on the table filled with regret.

“My lord,” said the King to Drinian, “pray send two men back to the Dawn Treader with a message to the Lord Rhoop. Tell him that the last of his old shipmates are here asleep—a sleep without dreams—and that he can share it.”

When this had been done, Caspian told the rest to sit down and laid the whole situation before them. When he had finished there was a long silence and some whispering until presently the Master Bowman got to his feet, and said：

“What some of us have been wanting to ask for a long time, your Majesty, is how we’re ever to get home when we do turn, whether we turn here or somewhere else. It’s been west and northwest winds all the way, barring an occasional calm. And if that doesn’t change, I’d like to know what hopes we have of seeing Narnia again. There’s not much chance of supplies lasting while we row all that way.”

“That’s landsman’s talk,” said Drinian. “There’s always a prevailing west wind in these seas all through the late summer, and it always changes after the New Year. We’ll have plenty of wind for sailing westward; more than we shall like from all accounts.”

“That’s true, Master,” said an old sailor who was a Galmian by birth. “You get some ugly weather rolling up from the east in January and February. And by your leave, Sire, if I was in command of this ship I’d say to winter here and begin the voyage home in March.”

“What’d you eat while you were wintering here?” asked Eustace.

“This table,” said Ramandu, “will be filled with a king’s feast every day at sunset.”

“Now you’re talking！” said several sailors.

“Your Majesties and gentlemen and ladies all,” said Rynelf, “there’s just one thing I want to say. There’s not one of us chaps as was pressed on this journey. We’re volunteers. And there’s some here that are looking very hard at that table and thinking about king’s feasts who were talking very loud about adventures on the day we sailed from Cair Paravel, and swearing they wouldn’t come home till we’d found the end of the world. And there were some standing on the quay who would have given all they had to come with us. It was thought a finer thing then to have a cabin-boy’s berth on the Dawn Treader than to wear a knight’s belt. I don’t know if you get the hang of what I’m saying. But what I mean is that I think chaps who set out like us will look as silly as—as those Dufflepuds—if we come home and say we got to the beginning of the world’s end and hadn’t the heart to go further.”

Some of the sailors cheered at this but some said that that was all very well.

“This isn’t going to be much fun,” whispered Edmund to Caspian. “What are we to do if half those fellows hang back?”

“Wait,” Caspian whispered back. “I’ve still a card to play.”

“Aren’t you going to say anything, Reep?” whispered Lucy.

“No. Why should your Majesty expect it?” answered Reepicheep in a voice that most people heard. “My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek will be head of the talking mice in Narnia.”

“Hear, hear,” said a sailor, “I’ll say the same, barring the bit about the coracle, which wouldn’t bear me.” He added in a lower voice, “I’m not going to be outdone by a mouse.”

At this point Caspian jumped to his feet. “Friends,” he said, “I think you have not quite understood our purpose. You talk as if we had come to you with our hat in our hand, begging for shipmates. It isn’t like that at all. We and our royal brother and sister and their kinsman and Sir Reepicheep, the good knight, and the Lord Drinian have an errand to the world’s edge. It is our pleasure to choose from among such of you as are willing those whom we deem worthy of so high an enterprise. We have not said that any can come for the asking. That is why we shall now command the Lord Drinian and Master Rhince to consider carefully what men among you are the hardest in battle, the most skilled seamen, the purest in blood, the most loyal to our person, and the cleanest of life and manners; and to give their names to us in a schedule.” He paused and went on in a quicker voice, “Aslan’s mane！” he exclaimed. “Do you think that the privilege of seeing the last things is to be bought for a song? Why, every man that comes with us shall bequeath the title of Dawn Treader to all his descendants, and when we land at Cair Paravel on the homeward voyage he shall have either gold or land enough to make him rich all his life. Now—scatter over the island, all of you. In half an hour’s time I shall receive the names that Lord Drinian brings me.”

There was rather a sheepish silence and then the crew made their bows and moved away, one in this direction and one in that, but mostly in little knots or bunches, talking.

“And now for the Lord Rhoop,” said Caspian.

But turning to the head of the table he saw that Rhoop was already there. He had arrived, silent and unnoticed, while the discussion was going on, and was seated beside the Lord Argoz. The daughter of Ramandu stood beside him as if she had just helped him into his chair; Ramandu stood behind him and laid both his hands on Rhoop’s gray head. Even in daylight a faint silver light came from the hands of the star. There was a smile on Rhoop’s haggard face. He held out one of his hands to Lucy and the other to Caspian. For a moment it looked as if he were going to say something. Then his smile brightened as if he were feeling some delicious sensation, a long sigh of contentment came from his lips, his head fell forward, and he slept.

“Poor Rhoop,” said Lucy. “I am glad. He must have had terrible times.”

“Don’t let’s even think of it,” said Eustace.

Meanwhile Caspian’s speech, helped perhaps by some magic of the island, was having just the effect he intended. A good many who had been anxious enough to get out of the voyage felt quite differently about being left out of it. And of course whenever any one sailor announced that he had made up his mind to ask for permission to sail, the ones who hadn’t said this felt that they were getting fewer and more uncomfortable. So that before the half-hour was nearly over several people were positively “sucking up” to Drinian and Rhince （at least that was what they called it at my school） to get a good report. And soon there were only three left who didn’t want to go, and those three were trying very hard to persuade others to stay with them. And very shortly after that there was only one left.

And in the end he began to be afraid of being left behind all on his own and changed his mind.

At the end of the half-hour they all came trooping back to Aslan’s Table and stood at one end while Drinian and Rhince went and sat down with Caspian and made their report; and Caspian accepted all the man but that one who’d had changed his mind at the last moment. His name was Pittencream and he stayed on the Island of the Star all the time the others were away looking for the World’s End, and he very much wished he had gone with them. He wasn’t the sort of man who could enjoy talking to Ramandu and Ramandu’s daughter （nor they to him）, and it rained a good deal, and though there was a wonderful feast on the Table every night, he didn’t very much enjoy it. He said it gave him the creeps sitting there alone （and in the rain as likely as not） with those four Lords asleep at the end of the Table. And when the others returned he felt so out of things that he deserted on the voyage home at the Lone Islands, and went and lived in Calormen, where he told wonderful stories about his adventures at the End of the World, until at last he came to believe them himself. So you may say, in a sense, that he lived happily ever after. But he could never bear mice.

That night they all ate and drank together at the great table between the pillars where the feast was magically renewed, and next morning the Dawn Treader set sail once more just when the great birds had come and gone again.

“Lady,” said Caspian, “I hope to speak with you again when I have broken the enchantments.” And Ramandu’s daughter looked at him and smiled.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WONDERS OF THE LAST SEA

Very soon after they had left Ramandu’s country they began to feel that they had already sailed beyond the world. All was different. For one thing they all found that they were needing less sleep. One did not want to go to bed nor to eat much, nor even to talk except in low voices. Another thing was the light. There was too much of it. The sun when it came up each morning looked twice, if not three times, its usual size. And every morning （which gave Lucy the strangest feeling of all） the huge white birds, singing their song with human voices in a language no one knew, streamed overhead and vanished astern on their way to their breakfast at Aslan’s Table. A little later they came flying back and vanished into the east.

“How beautifully clear the water is！” said Lucy to herself, as she leaned over the port side early in the afternoon of the second day.

And it was. The first thing that she noticed was a little black object, about the size of a shoe, traveling along at the same speed as the ship. For a moment she thought it was something floating on the surface. But then there came floating past a bit of stale bread which the cook had just thrown out of the galley. And the bit of bread looked as if it were going to collide with the black thing, but it didn’t. It passed above it, and Lucy now saw that the black thing could not be on the surface. Then the black thing suddenly got very much bigger and flicked back to normal size a moment later.

Now Lucy knew she had seen something just like that happen somewhere else—if only she could remember where. She held her hand to her head and screwed up her face and put out her tongue in the effort to remember. At last she did. Of course！ It was like what you saw from a train on a bright sunny day. You saw the black shadow of your own coach running along the fields at the same pace as the train. Then you went into a cutting; and immediately the same shadow flicked close up to you and got big, racing along the grass of the cutting-bank. Then you came out of the cutting and—flick！—once more the black shadow had gone back to its normal size and was running along the fields.

“It’s our shadow！-the shadow of the Dawn Treader,” said Lucy. “Our shadow running along on the bottom of the sea. That time when it got bigger it went over a hill. But in that case the water must be clearer than I thought！ Good gracious, I must be seeing the bottom of the sea; fathoms and fathoms down.”

As soon as she had said this she realized that the great silvery expanse which she had been seeing （without noticing） for some time was really the sand on the sea-bed and that ail sorts of darker or brighter patches were not lights and shadows on the surface but real things on the bottom. At present, for instance, they were passing over a mass of soft purply green with a broad, winding strip of pale gray in the middle of it. But now that she knew it was on the bottom she saw it much better. She could see that bits of the dark stuff were much higher than other bits and were waving gently. “Just like trees in a wind,” said Lucy. “And do believe that’s what they are. It’s a submarine forest.”

They passed on above it and presently the pale streak was joined by another pale streak. “If I was down there,” thought Lucy, “that streak would be just like a road through the wood. And that place where it joins the other would be a crossroads. Oh, I do wish I was. Hallo！ the forest is coming to an end. And I do believe the streak really was a road！ I can still see it going on across the open sand. It’s a different color. And it’s marked out with something at the edges—dotted lines. Perhaps they are stones. And now it’s getting wider.”

But it was not really getting wider, it was getting nearer. She realized this because of the way in which the shadow of the ship came rushing up toward her. And the road—she felt sure it was a road now—began to go in zigzags. Obviously it was climbing up a steep hill. And when she held her head sideways and looked back, what she saw was very like what you see when you look down a winding road from the top of a hill. She could even see the shafts of sunlight falling through the deep water onto the wooded valley—and, in the extreme distance, everything melting away into a dim greenness. But some places—the sunny ones, she thought—were ultramarine blue.

She could not, however, spend much time looking back; what was coming into view in the forward direction was too exciting. The road had apparently now reached the top of the hill and ran straight forward. Little specks were moving to and fro on it. And now something most wonderful, fortunately in full sunlight—or as full as it can be when it falls through fathoms of water—flashed into sight. It was knobbly and jagged and of a pearly, or perhaps an ivory, color. She was so nearly straight above it that at first she could hardly make out what it was. But everything became plain when she noticed its shadow. The sunlight was falling across Lucy’s shoulders, so the shadow of the thing lay stretched out on the sand behind it. And by its shape she saw clearly that it was a shadow of towers and pinnacles, minarets and domes.

“Why！—it’s a city or a huge castle,” said Lucy to herself. “But I wonder why they’ve built it on top of a high mountain?”

Long afterward when she was back in England and talked all these adventures over with Edmund, they thought of a reason and I am pretty sure it is the true one. In the sea, the deeper you go, the darker and colder it gets, and it is down there, in the dark and cold, that dangerous things live—the squid and the Sea Serpent and the Kraken. The valleys are the wild, unfriendly places. The sea-people feel about their valleys as we do about mountains, and feel about their mountains as we feel about valleys. It is on the heights （or, as we would say, “in the shallows”） that there is warmth and peace. The reckless hunters and brave knights of the sea go down into the depths on quests and adventures, but return home to the heights for rest and peace, courtesy and council, the sports, the dances and the songs.

They had passed the city and the sea-bed was still rising. It was only a few hundred feet below the ship now. The road had disappeared. They were sailing above an open park-like country, dotted with little groves of brightly-colored vegetation. And then—Lucy nearly squealed aloud with excitement—she had seen People.

There were between fifteen and twenty of them, and all mounted on sea-horses—not the tiny little sea-horses which you may have seen in museums but horses rather bigger than themselves. They must be noble and lordly people, Lucy thought, for she could catch the gleam of gold on some of their foreheads and streamers of emerald or orange-colored stuff fluttered from their shoulders in the current. Then：

“Oh, bother these fish！” said Lucy, for a whole shoal of small fat fish, swimming quite close to the surface, had come between her and the Sea People. But though this spoiled her view it led to the most interesting thing of all. Suddenly a fierce little fish of a kind she had never seen before came darting up from below, snapped, grabbed, and sank rapidly with one of the fat fish in its mouth. And all the Sea People were sitting on their horses staring up at what had happened. They seemed to be talking and laughing. And before the hunting fish had got back to them with its prey, another of the same kind came up from the Sea People. And Lucy was almost certain that one big Sea Man who sat on his sea-horse in the middle of the party had sent it or released it; as if he had been holdng it back till then in his hand or on his wrist.

“Why, I do declare,” said Lucy, “it’s a hunting party. Or more like a hawking party. Yes, that’s it. They ride out with these little fierce fish on their wrists just as we used to ride out with falcons on our wrists when we were Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel long ago. And then they fly them—or I suppose I should say swim them—at the others. How—”

She stopped suddenly because the scene was changing. The Sea People had noticed the Dawn Treader. The shoal of fish hard scattered in every direction： the People themselves were coming up to find out the meaning of this big, black thing which had come between them and the sun. And now they were so close to the surface that if they had been in air, instead of water, Lucy could have spoken to them. There were men and women both. All wore coronets of some kind and many had chains of pearls. They wore no other clothes. Their bodies were the color of old ivory, their hair dark purple. The King in the center （no one could mistake him for anything but the King） looked proudly and fiercely into Lucy’s face and shook a spear in his hand. His knights did the same. The faces of the ladies were filled with astonishment. Lucy felt sure they had never seen a ship or a human before—and how should they, in seas beyond the world’s end where no ship ever came?

“What are you staring at, Lu?” said a voice close beside her.

Lucy had been so absorbed in what she was seeing that she started at the sound, and when she turned she found that her arm had gone “dead” from leaning so long on the rail in one position. Drinian and Edmund were beside her.

“Look,” she said.

They both looked, but almost at once Drinian said in a low voice：

“Turn round at once, your Majesties—that’s right, with our backs to the sea. And don’t look as if we were talking about anything important.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” said Lucy as she obeyed.

“It’ll never do for the sailors to see all that,” said Drinian. “We’ll have men falling in love with a sea-woman, or falling in love with the under-sea country itself, and jumping overboard. I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening before in strange seas. It’s always unlucky to see these people.”

“But we used to know them,” said Lucy. “In the old days at Cair Paravel when my brother Peter was High King. They came to the surface and sang at our coronation.”

“I think that must have been a different kind, Lu,” said Edmund. “They could live in the air as well as under water. I rather think these can’t. By the look of them they’d have surfaced and started attacking us long ago if they could. They seem very fierce.”

“At any rate,” said Drinian, but at that moment two sounds were heard. One was a plop. The other was a voice from the fighting-top shouting, “Man overboard！” Then everyone was busy. Some of the sailors hurried aloft to take in the sail; others hurried below to get to the oars; and Rhince, who was on duty on the poop, began to put the helm hard over so as to come round and back to the man who had gone overboard. But by now everyone knew that it wasn’t strictly a man. It was Reepicheep.

“Drat that mouse！” said Drinian. “It’s more trouble than all the rest of the ship’s company put together. If there is any scrape to be got into, in it will get！ It ought to be put in irons—keel-hauled—marooned—have its whiskers cut off. Can anyone see the little blighter?”

All this didn’t mean that Drinian really disliked Reepicheep. On the contrary he liked him very much and was therefore frightened about him, and being frightened put him in a bad temper—just as your mother is much angrier with you for running out into the road in front of a car than a stranger would be. No one, of course, was afraid of Reepicheep’s drowning, for he was an excellent swimmer; but the three who knew what was going on below the water were afraid of those long, cruel spears in the hands of the Sea People.

In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying.

“He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.” And as Reepicheep began climbing up the rope—not very nimbly because his wet fur made him heavy—Drinian leaned over and whispered to him,

“Don’t tell. Not a word.”

But when the dripping Mouse had reached the deck it turned out not to be at all interested in the Sea People.

“Sweet！” he cheeped. “Sweet, sweet！”

“What are you talking about?” asked Drinian crossly. “And you needn’t shake yourself all over me, either.”

“I tell you the water’s sweet,” said the Mouse. “Sweet, fresh. It isn’t salt.”

For a moment no one quite took in the importance of this. But then Reepicheep once more repeated the old prophecy：

“Where the waves grow sweet,

Doubt not, Reepicheep,

There is the utter East.”

Then at last everyone understood.

“Let me have a bucket, Rynelf,” said Drinian.

It was handed him and he lowered it and up it came again. The water shone in it like glass.

“Perhaps your Majesty would like to taste it first,” said Drinian to Caspian.

The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter.

“Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen—if I’d known about it till now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Edmund.

“It—it’s like light more than anything else,” said Caspian.

“That is what it is,” said Reepicheep. “Drinkable light. We must be very near the end of the world now.”

There was a moment’s silence and then Lucy knelt down on the deck and drank from the bucket.

“It’s the loveliest thing I have ever tasted,” she said with a kind of gasp. “But oh—it’s strong. We shan’t need to eat anything now.”

And one by one everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were all silent. They felt almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently they began to notice another result. As I have said before, there had been too much light ever since they left the island of Ramandu—the sun too large （though not too hot）, the sea too bright, the air too shining. Now, the light grew no less—if anything, it increased—but they could bear it. They could look straight up at the sun without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen before. And the deck and the sail and their own faces and bodies became brighter and brighter and every rope shone. And next morning, when the sun rose, now five or six times its old size, they stared hard into it and could see the very feathers of the birds that came flying from it.

Hardly a word was spoken on board all that day, till about dinner-time （no one wanted any dinner, the water was enough for them） Drinian said：

“I can’t understand this. There is not a breath of wind. The sail hangs dead. The sea is as flat as a pond. And yet we drive on as fast as if there were a gale behind us.”

“I’ve been thinking that, too,” said Caspian. “We must be caught in some strong current.”

“H’m,” said Edmund. “That’s not so nice if the World really has an edge and we’re getting near it.”

“You mean,” said Caspian, “that we might be just—well, poured over it?”

“Yes, yes,” cried Reepicheep, clapping his paws together. “That’s how I’ve always imagined it—the World like a great round table and the waters of all the oceans endlessly pouring over the edge. The ship will tip up—stand on her head—for one moment we shall see over the edge—and then, down, down, the rush, the speed—”

“And what do you think will be waiting for us at the bottom, eh?” said Drinian.

“Aslan’s country perhaps,” said the Mouse, its eyes shining. “Or perhaps there isn’t any bottom. Perhaps it goes down for ever and ever. But whatever it is, won’t it be worth anything just to have looked for one moment beyond the edge of the world.”

“But look here,” said Eustace, “this is all rot. The world’s round—I mean, round like a ball, not like a table.”

“Our world is,” said Edmund. “But is this?”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Caspian, “that you three come from a round world （round like a ball） and you’ve never told me！ It’s really too bad of you. Because we have fairytales in which there are round worlds and I always loved them. I never believed there were any real ones. But I’ve always wished there were and I’ve always longed to live in one. Oh, I’d give anything—I wonder why you can get into our world and we never get into yours? If only I had the chance！ It must be exciting to live on a thing like a ball. Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?”

Edmund shook his head. “And it isn’t like that,” he added. “There’s nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you’re there.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE VERY END OF THE WORLD

Reepicheep was the only person on board besides Drinian and the two Pevensies who had noticed the Sea People. He had dived in at once when he saw the Sea King shaking his spear, for he regarded this as a sort of threat or challenge and wanted to have the matter out there and then. The excitement of discovering that the water was now fresh had distracted his attention, and before he remembered the Sea People again Lucy and Drinian had taken him aside and warned him not to mention what he had seen.

As things turned out they need hardly have bothered, for by this time the Dawn Treader was gliding over a part of the sea which seemed to be uninhabited. No one except Lucy saw anything more of the People, and even she had only one short glimpse. All morning on the following day they sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same direction. “Just like a flock of sheep,” thought Lucy. Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them—a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a shepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy’s face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out.

After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, theDawn Treader glided smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.

“My Lord,” said Caspian to Drinian one day, “what do you see ahead?”

“Sire,” said Drinian, “I see whiteness. All along the horizon from north to south, as far as my eyes can reach.”

“That is what I see too,” said Caspian, “and I cannot imagine what it is.”

“If we were in higher latitudes, your Majesty,” said Drinian, “I would say it was ice. But it can’t be that; not here. All the same, we’d better get men to the oars and hold the ship back against the current. Whatever the stuff is, we don’t want to crash into it at this speed！”

They did as Drinian said, and so continued to go slower and slower. The whiteness did not get any less mysterious as they approached it. If it was land it must be a very strange land, for it seemed just as smooth as the water and on the same level with it. When they got very close to it Drinian put the helm hard over and turned the Dawn Treader south so that she was broadside on to the current and rowed a little way southward along the edge of the whiteness. In so doing they accidentally made the important discovery that the current was only about forty feet wide and the rest of the sea as still as a pond. This was good news for the crew, who had already begun to think that the return journey to Ramandu’s land, rowing against stream all the way, would be pretty poor sport. （It also explained why the shepherd girl had dropped so quickly astern. She was not in the current. If she had been she would have been moving east at the same speed as the ship.）

And still no one could make out what the white stuff was. Then the boat was lowered and it put off to investigate. Those who remained on the Dawn Treader could see that the boat pushed right in amidst the whiteness. Then they could hear the voices of the party in the boat （clear across the still water） talking in a shrill and surprised way. Then there was a pause while Rynelf in the bows of the boat took a sounding; and when, after that, the boat came rowing back there seemed to be plenty of the white stuff inside her. Everyone crowded to the side to hear the news.

“Lilies, your Majesty！” shouted Rynelf, standing up in the bows.

“What did you say?” asked Caspian.

“Blooming lilies, your Majesty,” said Rynelf. “Same as in a pool or in a garden at home.”

“Look！” said Lucy, who was in the stern of the boat. She held up her wet arms full of white petals and broad flat leaves.

“What’s the depth, Rynelf?” asked Drinian.

“That’s the funny thing, Captain,” said Rynelf. “It’s still deep. Three and a half fathoms clear.”

“They can’t be real lilies—not what we call lilies,” said Eustace.

Probably they were not, but they were very like them. And when, after some consultation, the Dawn Treader turned back into the current and began to glide eastward through the Lily Lake or the Silver Sea （they tried both these names but it was the Silver Sea that stuck and is now on Caspian’s map） the strangest part of their travels began. Very soon the open sea which they were leaving was only a thin rim of blue on the western horizon. Whiteness, shot with faintest color of gold, spread round them on every side, except just astern where their passage had thrust the lilies apart and left an open lane of water that shone like dark green glass. To look at, this last sea was very like the Arctic; and if their eyes had not by now grown as strong as eagles’the sun on all that whiteness—especially at early morning when the sun was hugest—would have been unbearable. And every evening the same whiteness made the daylight last longer. There seemed no end to the lilies. Day after day from all those miles and leagues of flowers there rose a smell which Lucy found it very hard to describe; sweet—yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an elephant. She and Caspian said to one another, “I feel that I can’t stand much more of this, yet I don’t want it to stop.”

They took soundings very often but it was only several days later that the water became shallower. After that it went on getting shallower. There came a day when they had to row out of the current and feel their way forward at a snail’s pace, rowing. And soon it was clear that the Dawn Treader could sail no further east. Indeed it was only by very clever handling that they saved her from grounding.

“Lower the boat,” cried Caspian, “and then call the men aft. I must speak to them.”

“What’s he going to do?” whispered Eustace to Edmund. “There’s a queer look in his eyes.”

“I think we probably all look the same,” said Edmund.

They joined Caspian on the poop and soon all the men were crowded together at the foot of the ladder to hear the King’s speech.

“Friends,” said Caspian, “we have now fulfilled the quest on which you embarked. The seven lords are all accounted for and as Sir Reepicheep has sworn never to return, when you reach Ramandu’s Land you will doubtless find the Lords Revilian and Argoz and Mavramorn awake. To you, my Lord Drinian, I entrust this ship, bidding you sail to Narnia with all the speed you may, and above all not to land on the Island of Deathwater. And instruct my regent, the Dwarf Trumpkin, to give to all these, my shipmates, the rewards I promised them. They have been earned well. And if I come not again it is my will that the Regent, and Master Cornelius, and Trufflehunter the Badger, and the Lord Drinian choose a King of Narnia with the consent—”

“But, Sire,” interrupted Drinian, “are you abdicating?”

“I am going with Reepicheep to see the World’s End,” said Caspian.

A low murmur of dismay ran through the sailors.

“We will take the boat,” said Caspian. “You will have no need of it in these gentle seas and you must build a new one in Ramandu’s island. And now—”

“Caspian,” said Edmund suddenly and sternly, “you can’t do this.”

“Most certainly,” said Reepicheep, “his Majesty cannot.”

“No indeed,” said Drinian.

“Can’t?” said Caspian sharply, looking for a moment not unlike his uncle Miraz.

“Begging your Majesty’s pardon,” said Rynelf from the deck below, “but if one of us did the same it would be called deserting.”

“You presume too much on your long service, Rynelf,” said Caspian.

“No, Sire！ He’s perfectly right,” said Drinian.

“By the Mane of Aslan,” said Caspian, “I had thought you were all my subjects here, not my schoolmasters.”

“I’m not,” said Edmund, “and I say you can not do this.”

“Can’t again,” said Caspian. “What do you mean?”

“If it please your Majesty, we mean shall not,” said Reepicheep with a very low bow. “You are the King of Narnia. You break faith with all your subjects, and especially with Trumpkin, if you do not return. You shall not please yourself with adventures as if you were a private person. And if your Majesty will not hear reason it will be the truest loyalty of every man on board to follow me in disarming and binding you till you come to your senses.”

“Quite right,” said Edmund. “Like they did with Ulysses when he wanted to go near the Sirens.”

Caspian’s hand had gone to his sword hilt, when Lucy said, “And you’ve almost promised Ramandu’s daughter to go back.”

Caspian paused. “Well, yes. There is that,” he said. He stood irresolute for a moment and then shouted out to the ship in general.

“Well, have your way. The quest is ended. We all return. Get the boat up again.”

“Sire,” said Reepicheep, “we do not all return. I, as I explained before—”

“Silence！” thundered Caspian. “I’ve been lessoned but I’ll not be baited. Will no one silence that Mouse?”

“Your Majesty promised,” said Reepicheep, “to be good lord to the Talking Beasts of Narnia.”

“Talking beasts, yes,” said Caspian. “I said nothing about beasts that never stop talking.” And he flung down the ladder in a temper and went into the cabin, slamming the door.

But when the others rejoined him a little later they found him changed; he was white and there were tears in his eyes.

“It’s no good,” he said. “I might as well have behaved decently for all the good I did with my temper and swagger. Aslan has spoken to me. No—I don’t mean he was actually here. He wouldn’t fit into the cabin, for one thing. But that gold lion’s head on the wall came to life and spoke to me. It was terrible—his eyes. Not that he was at all rough with me-only a bit stern at first. But it was terrible all the same. And he said—he said—oh, I can’t bear it. The worst thing he could have said. You’re to go on—Reep and Edmund, and Lucy, and Eustace; and I’m to go back. Alone. And at once. And what is the good of anything?”

“Caspian, dear,” said Lucy. “You knew we’d have to go back to our own world sooner or later.”

“Yes,” said Caspian with a sob, “but this is sooner.”

“You’ll feel better when you get back to Ramandu’s Island,” said Lucy.

He cheered up a little later on, but it was a grievous parting on both sides and I will not dwell on it. About two o’clock in the afternoon, well victualled and watered （though they thought they would need neither food nor drink） and with Reepicheep’s coracle on board, the boat pulled away from the Dawn Treader to row through the endless carpet of lilies. The Dawn Trader flew all her flags and hung out her shields to honor their departure. Tall and big and homelike she looked from their low position with the lilies all round them. And before she was out of sight they saw her turn and begin rowing slowly westward. Yet though Lucy shed a few tears, she could not feel it as much as you might have expected. The light, the silence, the tingling smell of the Silver Sea, even （in some odd way） the loneliness itself, were too exciting.

There was no need to row, for the current drifted them steadily to the east. None of them slept or ate. All that night and all next day they glided eastward, and when the third day dawned—with a brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on—they saw a wonder ahead. It was as if a wall stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-gray, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising they saw it through the wall and it turned into wonderful rainbow colors. Then they knew that the wall was really a long, tall wave—a wave endlessly fixed in one place as you may often see at the edge of a waterfall. It seemed to be about thirty feet high, and the current was gliding them swiftly toward it. You might have supposed they would have thought of their danger. They didn’t. I don’t think anyone could have in their position. For now they saw something not only behind the wave but behind the sun. They could not have seen even the sun if their eyes had not been strengthened by the water of the Last Sea. But now they could look at the rising sun and see it clearly and see things beyond it. What they saw—eastward, beyond the sun—was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remembers seeing any sky in that direction. And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterward. Lucy could only say, “It would break your heart.”“Why,” said I, “was it so sad?”“Sad！ No,” said Lucy.

No one in that boat doubted that they were seeing beyond the End of the World into Aslan’s country.

At that moment, with a crunch, the boat ran aground. The water was too shallow now for it. “This,” said Reepicheep, “is where I go on alone.”

They did not even try to stop him, for everything now felt as if it had been fated or had happened before. They helped him to lower his little coracle. Then he took off his sword （“I shall need it no more,” he said） and flung it far away across the lilied sea. Where it fell it stood upright with the hilt above the surface. Then he bade them goodbye trying to be sad for their sakes but he was quivering with happiness. Lucy, for the first and last time, did what she had always wanted to do, taking him in her arms and caressing him. Then hastily he got into his coracle and took his paddle, and the current caught it and away he went, very black against the lilies. But no lilies grew on the wave; it was a smooth green slope. The coracle went more and more quickly, and beautifully it rushed up the wave’s side. For one split second they saw its shape and Reepicheep’s on the very top. Then it vanished, and since that moment no one can truly claim to have seen Reepicheep the Mouse. But my belief is that he came safe to Aslan’s country and is alive there to this day.

As the sun rose the sight of those mountains outside the world faded away. The wave remained but there was only blue sky behind it.

The children got out of the boat and waded-not toward the wave but southward with the wall of water on their left. They could not have told you why they did this; it was their fate. And though they had felt—and been—very grown-up on the Dawn Treader, they now felt just the opposite and held hands as they waded through the lilies. They never felt tired. The water was warm and all the time it got shallower. At last they were on dry sand, and then on grass—a huge plain of very fine short grass, almost level with the Silver Sea and spreading in every direction without so much as a molehill.

And of course, as it always does in a perfectly flat place without trees, it looked as if the sky came down to meet the grass in front of them. But as they went on they got the strangest impression that here at last the sky did really come down and join the earth—a blue wall, very bright, but real and solid; more like glass than anything else. And soon they were quite sure of it. It was very near now.

But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles’eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb.

“Come and have breakfast,” said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice.

Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish, hungry now for the first time for many days. And it was the most delicious food they had ever tasted.

“Please, Lamb,” said Lucy, “is this the way to Aslan’s country?”

“Not for you,” said the Lamb. “For you the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.”

“What！” said Edmund. “Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?”

“There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.

“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?”

“I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.”

“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.”

“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”

“Oh, Aslan！” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.

“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”

“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”

“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.

“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.

“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

“And is Eustace never to come back here either?” said Lucy.

“Child,” said Aslan, “do you really need to know that? Come, I am opening the door in the sky.” Then all in one moment there was a rending of the blue wall （like a curtain being torn） and a terrible white light from beyond the sky, and the feel of Aslan’s mane and a Lion’s kiss on their foreheads and then—the back bedroom in Aunt Alberta’s home in Cambridge.

Only two more things need to be told. One is that Caspian and his men all came safely back to Ramandu’s Island. And the three lords woke from their sleep. Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. The other is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”, everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

纳尼亚传奇：银椅（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5589-7

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目录

第一章 在体育馆后面

第二章 吉尔接受任务

第三章 国王起航

第四章 猫头鹰会议

第五章 普德格伦

第六章 北方荒原

第七章 奇怪的壕沟

第八章 哈方城堡

第九章 真相大白

第十章 不见光日的旅行

第十一章 在黑暗城堡中

第十二章 地下世界女王

第十三章 没有女王的地下世界

第十四章 世界之底

第十五章 吉尔不见了

第十六章 皆大欢喜

CHAPTER ONE BEHIND THE GYM

CHAPTER TWO JILL IS GIVEN A TASK

CHAPTER THREE THE SAILING OF THE KING

CHAPTER FOUR A PARLIAMENT OF OWLS

CHAPTER FIVE PUDDLEGLUM

CHAPTER SIX THE WILD WASTE LANDS OF THE NORTH

CHAPTER SEVEN THE HILL OF THE STRANGE TRENCHES

CHAPTER EIGHT THE HOUSE OF HARFANG

CHAPTER NINE HOW THEY DISCOVERED SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING

CHAPTER TEN TRAVELS WITHOUT THE SUN

CHAPTER ELEVEN IN THE DARK CASTLE

CHAPTER TWELVE THE QUEEN OF UNDERLAND

CHAPTER THIRTEEN UNDERLAND WITHOUT THE QUEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JILL

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE HEALING OF HARMS

第一章
在体育馆后面

那是一个阴沉的秋日，吉尔·波尔躲在体育馆后面哭。

她哭的原因是有一群家伙总是欺负她。这里要讲述的不是校园故事，所以就不细谈吉尔的学校了，那也不是一个愉快的话题。吉尔所在的学校“男女同校”，也就是过去所说的“男女混合学校”。但有人说这所学校并非学校经营者眼里的男女混合制学校。这些人认为男生和女生在学校里应该随心所欲、不受管制。不走运的是，学校里有那么十几个年龄最大的孩子最爱干的事情就是欺负其他同学。各种各样可怕的事情在学校里频繁出现。若换在普通学校，这类事情不消半学期就会被查个水落石出，并被及时制止。但在吉尔的这所学校，情况就不一样了。就算学校查出这些事情是谁干的，也不会开除或处分作恶者。校长说这些都是很有趣的心理案例，派人把捣乱的学生叫过去，谈过几小时后就放他们走了。如果你和校长谈话时懂得投其所好，那么很有可能你就从此成为宠儿，与“坏学生”这个词一点也沾不上边了。

这就是吉尔在那个阴沉的秋日，躲在体育馆后面哭泣的原因。她正在体育馆与灌木丛中间一条潮湿的小道上，还没哭完，一个双手插口袋、吹着口哨的男生就从体育馆的墙角刺溜出来，差点撞到她。

“你走路就不能看着点吗？”吉尔·波尔说。

“好吧，”男孩说，“你用不着开始……”这时他注意到了吉尔的脸，“嗨，波尔，你怎么啦？”

吉尔没说话，只做了个鬼脸——就是那副想说些什么，但又怕说出来忍不住要哭的表情。

“我看，又是他们吧。”男孩脸色严峻起来，手往口袋里又插得更深了一些。

吉尔点点头。她不必开口，那是他们俩都知道的事情。

“行了，”男孩说，“我们这样可没什么用……”

他心眼不坏，只是他说起话来给人一种讲大道理的感觉。吉尔突然就恼了（如果你哭的时候被别人打断，十有八九也会这样）。

“啊呀，快走开，别多管闲事，”吉尔说，“没人叫你插手吧，你真是个大好人，竟然开始教育我们该怎么做了。我想你的意思是我们要像你一样，尽力讨好他们，做个马屁精，好生伺候他们。”

“哦，我的天！”男孩一屁股坐在了灌木丛边的草坡上，又很快站了起来——因为草湿透了。这个男孩有个不那么响亮的名字——尤斯塔斯·斯科拉博，但他人并不坏。

“波尔！”他叫喊道，“你这么说公平吗？这学期我有干过这类事吗？我不是为了那只兔子跟卡特对着干过吗？我不是为了守住斯皮文的秘密还遭到欺负了吗？我不是还……”

“我不——不知道，我也不在意。”吉尔抽泣着。

斯科拉博见吉尔情绪不太在状态，非常贴心地递给她一块薄荷糖。他自己也吃了一块。很快吉尔就思绪清晰了不少。

“对不起啊，斯科拉博，”过了一会她说，“我刚刚那么说不公平。这学期那些事情多亏了你。”

“那就尽量忘掉上学期的事吧。”尤斯塔斯说，“我都不认识那时候的自己。我那时候——天哪，我当时真是个讨厌鬼啊。”

“嗯，老实说，你当时确实很讨厌。”吉尔说。

“那你也觉得我现在变好喽？”尤斯塔斯问道。

“不单是我，”吉尔说，“大家都这么说。他们都注意到了你的变化。埃莉诺·布莱基斯顿昨天还在更衣室里听见阿黛拉·潘尼法瑟谈起你呢。她是这么说的，‘一定是什么人控制了斯科拉博那小子。这学期他相当不听话。接下来我们要把他照顾好了。’”

尤斯塔斯听得浑身打哆嗦。学校里每一个人都懂被那群家伙“照顾”是什么意思。

两个孩子都沉默了片刻，耳边是月桂树叶上的水珠滴落声。

“你上学期怎么与现在判若两人呢？”没过多久吉尔问道。

“假期里我碰上了好多怪事。”尤斯塔斯的语气带着神秘。

“碰上了什么事？”吉尔紧接着问。

尤斯塔斯久久没吭声。后来他终于开了口：“嗨，波尔，你和我一样都恨死了这个地方，要多恨有多恨吧？”

“我是很恨。”吉尔说。

“那我就可以对你和盘托出了。”

“你真是大好人。”吉尔说。

“是啊，不过这件事是个大秘密。听着，波尔，你相信神怪的存在吗？我是说这儿的人听了都会笑话的事？”

“我根本没有机会听说。”吉尔回答说，“不过我想我会相信。”

“如果我告诉你上个假期里我曾走出这个世界——去这个世界之外的空间走了一遭——你信吗？”

“我不懂你在说什么。”

“好吧，那就先别管世界不世界啦。假设说我告诉你，我到过一个地方，那里的动物都会说话，那里还有——呃——魔法和龙——还有——就是你从童话故事里听到的东西那里都有。”斯科拉博说这些话的时候表情有些别扭，脸变红了。

“你怎么到那儿的？”吉尔问道。她也觉得怪不好意思的。

“想去那里只能靠魔法，”尤斯塔斯低声说道，“我是跟着两个表兄妹去的。我们就是——一下子被带走了。他们以前去过。”

他们俩谈论这件事时声音压得很低，不知怎么就让人觉得这事听起来更像是真的了。之后吉尔又突然生起疑心，她说（气势汹汹的样子，看上去真像只母老虎）：

“要是我发现你是骗我的，我就永远也不和你说话了，永远，永远，永远！”

“我没骗你，”尤斯塔斯说，“我发誓我没有，我用一切发誓。”

“好吧，”吉尔说，“我就信你了。”

“你谁也不会告诉吧？”

“你把我当成什么人了？”

他们说这些的时候十分亢奋。可说完后，吉尔四下一看，只见秋日的天空阴沉沉的，耳边传来水从树叶滴落的声音，不由想到她在学校里的无助（一学期共十三周，眼下还有十一周），说道：

“可说了半天，有什么意义呢？我们又不在那儿，我们现在还是困在这儿呀。而且我们根本不可能到那儿去，你有办法吗？”

“我一直在想这事，”尤斯塔斯说，“我们从那地方回来时，听到一个声音说佩文西家那两个孩子（就是我两个表兄妹）不能再去了。要知道，那回是第三次去了。我看，他们的机会已经用尽了。但那个人没说我不能去。如果他的意思是说我也不能回去，他准早说了。所以我一直在想，我们能不能——可不可以回去呢？”

“你的意思是我们得想个办法实现这个想法？”

尤斯塔斯点点头。

“你的意思是我们可以在地上画一个圈，在圈里写些稀奇古怪的字母之类的，然后站在圈子里——再念上几段咒语？”

“嗯，”尤斯塔斯苦苦思索了一会儿才说，“我就是一直在想这类事儿，但我从来没试过。既然谈到了，我倒觉得画圈圈这类法子倒不必用了。我觉得他不见得会喜欢。那么做看起来就像是我们以为能使唤他。不过说真的，我们只能直接问他了。”

“你一直念叨的‘他’是谁啊？”

“在那个地方，大家都叫他阿斯兰。”尤斯塔斯说。

“多奇怪的名字！”

“这个名字远不及他本人奇怪呢，”尤斯塔斯郑重其事地说，“不过我们试试吧。问问也不妨。我们就像这样并肩站着。向前伸出双臂，掌心向下：模仿他们在拉曼杜岛那样——”

“那座岛属于谁？”

“那个我下回再告诉你。他可能喜欢我们面向东站着。我们看看，哪一面是东？”

“我不知道。”吉尔说。

“女生这点很特别，永远分不出指南针方位。”尤斯塔斯说。

“你不也一样。”吉尔愤愤不平。

“不，我能认清，只要你别老打断我就行。现在我知道了。我们来面朝月桂树，那边就是东面。嗨，你能跟着我念词儿吗？”

“念什么词？”吉尔问。

“当然就是我马上念的词儿，”尤斯塔斯答道，“来吧……”

然后他就开始念：“阿斯兰，阿斯兰，阿斯兰！”

“阿斯兰，阿斯兰，阿斯兰。”吉尔跟着他念一遍。

“请让我们俩进入……”

就在这时，体育馆另一边传来叫喊声：“波尔在吗？是的，我知道她在哪儿。准是躲在体育馆后面哭鼻子呢。要我把她拉出来吗？”

吉尔和尤斯塔斯相互看了一眼，就赶紧冲到月桂树下，以最快的速度爬上灌木丛陡峭的泥坡。（这个学校的古怪教学方式让学生没学懂多少法语、数学、拉丁文这类的课程，倒真学到了如何从那群坏家伙眼前迅速悄然脱身的好多办法。）

大约爬了一分钟，他们停住留神细听，从声音判断他们还是被盯上了。

他们继续爬，“只要那扇门能再打开！”斯科拉博说。吉尔点点头。灌木丛上方有一堵高高的石墙，墙上有扇门，通过它你就能到开阔的荒野去。这扇门几乎一直锁着，不过大家偶尔也见过门开着，也许只有过一次。不过可以想象，即便只有那么一次，也会让人抱有希望。大家想试着打开它碰碰运气，要是正巧没锁，那倒真是一个神不知鬼不觉逃出校园的绝妙办法。

吉尔和尤斯塔斯半蹲着从月桂树下一路走来，两人这会儿浑身又热又脏，气喘吁吁地爬到墙边。只见那扇门照常关着。

“准是打不开的，”尤斯塔斯一边拉着门把手，一边说着。然后，“哦——哦，老天爷！”他转动了门把手，门一下子开了。

片刻之前，他俩心里还想着，那扇门万一没上锁，就飞快地穿过它跑出去。可是等到这门真正开了，他俩却都站着一动不动。他们发愣的原因是眼前的景象跟他们料想中的完全不一样。

他们原以为会看见荒原上灰不溜秋、石南丛生的山坡会越来越高，一直通向头顶那方阴沉沉的天空。没想到耀眼的阳光直刺眼睛。阳光穿过那扇门，就像是六月的一天，你打开车库大门时光线照射进来。阳光下，草地上的水滴像珠子一样剔透发亮，吉尔那满是泪痕的脸上的污迹也照得清清楚楚。他们断定这缕光线一定来自另一个世界。他们看到无比柔嫩的草地，吉尔从没见过比这更平滑柔嫩、绿意盈人的草地。还有蓝天，还有一些耀眼的东西在空中闪来闪去，看起来很像珠宝或是大蝴蝶。

虽然这一直是吉尔梦寐以求的景象，但她还是感到有些惊恐。她看了看斯科拉博，显然他也有些害怕。

“来吧，波尔。”他说话时有些喘不过气来。

“我们能回来吗？那里安全吗？”吉尔问道。

正在那时，后面传来一句叫喊声，那人的语气有些卑鄙恶毒，叽叽喳喳地叫着：“行了，波尔，大家都知道你在那上面，你就下来吧。”这是伊迪丝·杰克尔的声音，她跟那群坏家伙不算一伙的，但也是个跟屁虫和爱嚼舌根的人。

“快！”斯科拉博说，“来，手拉紧，千万别松开！”波尔还没明白怎么回事，就被他抓住手拉出门外，离开了校园，离开了英国，离开了原来的世界，进入了斯科拉博口中的“那个地方”。

伊迪丝·杰克尔的声音突然没了，就如同你一关上收音机，里面的声音就戛然而止。顿时他们耳朵听到的是一种完全不同的声音。声音是他们头顶上那些发亮的东西发出来的，他们这会儿一看才发现是鸟。它们的嗓音虽有些喧闹，不过比起我们世界里鸟儿的歌声更像音乐——那是相当高级的音乐，乍一听你还不大能领会。然而，鸟鸣声背后却是一片寂静。寂静的周遭，混合着清新的空气，吉尔不由猜测他们一定是在高山顶上。

斯科拉博还拉着吉尔的手，他们向前继续走着，一边四下张望。吉尔看到四周长着一排排看似雪松、却比雪松更高大的树。它们挨得并不紧密，树下也没有矮树丛，无遮无拦，因此能透过间隙看到树林的老远处。吉尔放眼望去，看到的是清一色的景象——平坦的草地上，五颜六色的鸟儿飞来窜去，有黄的，有蜻蜓蓝的，有彩虹色的，还有些蓝色的光影，一片空寂。清凉明丽的空气中一丝风也没有。这片树林真是寂静。

视线正前方没有树木，只看到一片蓝天。他们没有说话，继续朝前走啊走。突然间吉尔听见斯科拉博说了声“小心！”，她感觉自己一下子猛退了几步。原来他们已经站在了悬崖边上。

碰巧吉尔不是一个恐高的人。站在悬崖边上的她一点也不怕。她对斯科拉博刚刚把她拉回来的举动相当反感——“就当我还是个小孩子似的。”她一边说着一边使劲挣脱了他的手。她看见他的脸色变得非常苍白，心里不由得有些嫌弃。

“这又怎么啦？”她说。为了表现出她并不害怕，吉尔接着向前跨了一步，站到了离悬崖最近的地方。事实上，这个位置已经大大超出了她的心理承受范围。然后她朝下看去。

她这才明白斯科拉博脸色发白的原因——在我们世界里没有一座悬崖能与它相提并论。想象一下你站在一座最高的悬崖顶上朝崖底看的情景。再想象一下悬崖一直下降、下降，先是降到这高度的十倍，接着再二十倍。你在高处往下看时，第一眼可能把那些小白点错认为羊群吧，但不久你就能看清那其实是白云——不是缭绕的云雾，而是一团团蓬松的大朵白云，堆积起来像一座座山。而透过这些云层，你才终于真真切切看到了崖底，离你那么远，远得你都看不清下面究竟是田野还是树林，是陆地还是水面。你与云朵之间的距离倒是比崖底离云层更近些。

吉尔就这样盯着下面，然后她突然想到也许自己该从悬崖边上往后退一两步，可她生怕斯科拉博认为她也害怕了，所以又不愿退。后来她在某一刻突然下定决心，不管他怎么想，她得赶快离开这可怕的崖边。她再也不会取笑别人恐高了。但当她想挪动脚步的时候，却发现自己压根动不了。她的两条腿似乎都被固定住了，眼前的一切天旋地转。

“你在干什么呀，波尔？快回来——你这不省心的小傻瓜！”斯科拉博大声喊道。可声音听起来却像是来自一个很远很远的地方。她感觉他抓住了自己，可这会儿她已经控制不了自己的手脚。就这样在悬崖边上挣扎了一会儿，吉尔心里十分害怕，头很晕，几乎失去了意识。不过有两件事是她这辈子都忘不了的（这两件事还时常在她的梦里重演）。一是她挣脱了斯科拉博的手，另一件事是与此同时，斯科拉博发出了一声惊恐的尖叫，失去平衡的他一头滚下深渊。

幸亏还没等到她来得及细想自己都干了些什么，一头皮毛鲜艳的巨兽就冲到了悬崖边上。它躺了下来，倾斜着身子，开始吹气（这可真是怪事）。它只是张大嘴巴吹气，不是在咆哮，也不是在喷鼻。它慢条斯理吹气的样子就和吸尘器工作时一样。吉尔躺在离这只动物很近的地方，居然能感受到这股气正在它身体里有节奏地震动。她躺着一动不动，没法站起来，刚刚差点就晕过去了。其实，吉尔倒宁愿自己真的晕过去，但她不是想晕倒就能晕倒的。后来她在下面很远的地方，看到一个小黑点从峭壁边上飘开，然后稍微往上飘了一点。黑点一边往上升，一边越飘越远。等到它飘到和崖顶差不多高的时候，已经离得足够远，吉尔就看不见了。很明显这个黑点飞离的速度很快，吉尔不禁认为就是她身边这动物把那个黑点吹走的。

于是她回过头一看，躺在她旁边的原来是一头狮子。

第二章
吉尔接受任务

狮子没看吉尔一眼就站起身来，吹了最后一口气。接着，它一副甚为满意的样子，转身踱步，回到树林里去了。

“这一定是个梦，一定是梦，一定是，”吉尔自言自语，“我一会儿就会醒过来了。”但这不是梦，她并没有醒过来。

“我们要是没到这个可怕的地方来就好了，”吉尔说，“我相信斯科拉博跟我一样，对这个地方也不了解。要是他了解的话，就不会事先不告诫我，就把我带到这儿来。他摔下悬崖也不能怪我呀。要是他当时不管我，我们俩就都没事了。”想到这里，她的耳边又响起斯科拉博摔下去时的叫喊，忍不住大哭起来。

大哭一场固然痛快，不过早晚得停下来，因为接下来还得决定眼下该怎么办。等吉尔不哭了，她发觉自己口渴得要命。她已经脸朝下趴着很久了，现在终于坐了起来。周围的鸟儿也停止歌唱了，四下一片寂静，只听到远处似乎传来一阵细微的声音，不绝于耳。她凝神细听，几乎能肯定那就是流水声。

吉尔站起来，小心翼翼地朝四周张望。狮子早没影了，但周围有这么多树，它很可能就藏在附近某个她看不见的地方。她猜想着，说不定那儿藏着不止一头狮子呢。但她这会儿实在口渴难忍，于是便鼓起勇气起身去寻找水源。她踮起脚，从一棵树偷偷溜到另一棵树，每走一步都要停下来四处张望。

林子里一片寂静，要确定水声的方向并不困难。水声越来越清晰，吉尔循声来到一片林间空地，看到了一条像玻璃一般明亮晶莹的小溪，就在离她不远的地方横穿草地。虽然看到水之后她的渴意放大到了十倍，但她并没有冲上前去猛灌。她就站在那儿，张大嘴巴，一动也不动，仿佛成了一块石头。她没有挪动的原因是——狮子就躺在小溪的这一侧。

狮子昂起头，伸出两只前爪，躺着的姿势就像特拉法尔加广场的狮像。吉尔立刻就知道狮子已经看见她了，因为它直直盯着她看了半天，才把视线转向他处——看起来它已经相当了解她，并不把她放在眼里。

“如果我跑掉，它肯定会来追我，”吉尔想，“如果我继续往前走，恐怕就要把自己送进它的嘴里了。”不管怎么说，她就是想动也动不了，而且也无法把视线从它身上移开。她也不知道这样僵持了多久，似乎有好几个小时。后来她实在渴到极点，只想着先喝上一口水，就算刚喝完水就被狮子活吞了也没关系。

“你要是渴了，就尽管喝吧。”

自从斯科拉博在悬崖边上与她说话以来，这可是她听到的第一句话。一时间她瞪大眼睛四处张望，心里纳闷到底是谁在说话。接着声音又响起“要是你渴了，就过来喝吧。”当然吉尔还记得斯科拉博曾说过那个世界的动物会说话的事，于是便明白了就是那头狮子在说话。这回她总算亲眼看见狮子的嘴唇在动了。它的声音和人的嗓音不太一样，狮子说起话来更深沉，更粗野，更加有力，那种声音厚重而洪亮。尽管得知了那句话出自狮子之口，吉尔的惧怕并没有减轻半毫，只是不一样的担心罢了。

“你不渴吗？”狮子问。

“我快渴死了。”吉尔说。

“那就来喝吧。”狮子说。

“我可不可以——我能不能有一个请求——我喝水的时候能不能请你走开一下？”吉尔说。

狮子只是看了她一眼，接着低吼了一声，算是回答。吉尔盯着它那庞大的、一动不动的身躯，心想着这种要求怕是比要求整座大山为她让路还难。

溪水潺潺作响，想必甘甜无比，吉尔快要疯了。

“如果我真的过去，你能答应不把我怎么样吗？”吉尔说。

“我不做承诺。”狮子说。

吉尔实在是太渴了，脚下竟不知不觉走近了一步。

“你吃女孩吗？”她问狮子。

“女孩和男孩，女人和男人，国王和皇帝，城市和王国都曾是我的腹中物。”狮子说。它说话的样子不像是在吹牛，也没有愧疚或愤怒之情，就只是在陈述事实而已。

“我不敢过去喝。”吉尔说。

“那你就只能渴死了。”狮子说。

“啊，天哪！”吉尔一边叫喊着，一边又走近了一步，“我看我得去另找一条小溪了。”

“没有别的小溪了。”狮子说。

吉尔根本没想着怀疑狮子说的话——但凡见过它那张神色严峻的脸的人都会这样。吉尔咬咬牙下定了决心。这恐怕是吉尔做过的最铤而走险的事了，但她还是鼓足勇气走到溪边，蹲下身子，用手捧起水来喝。啊！她从来没喝过这么清凉、提神的水。吉尔只才喝了一点，渴意就完全没了。吉尔本打算一喝完水就迅速跑开，但这会儿，她意识到那样做无疑是最危险的事。于是她直起身子，站在那儿。刚喝过水，她的嘴唇还是湿的。

“到我这儿来。”狮子说。吉尔只能从命。现在她几乎走到它的两只前爪之间了，直直看着它的脸。但她受不了一直盯着看，所以很快就垂下了眼睛。

“人类的孩子啊，”狮子说，“男孩上哪儿去了？”

“他从悬崖上摔下去了，”吉尔说完又加了一句，“阁下。”她不知道还有什么别的称呼，要是不加称呼又显得没礼貌。

“他怎么会摔下去的，孩子？”

“他当时想阻止我掉下去，阁下。”

“那你为什么会离悬崖边缘那么近呢，孩子？”

“我想炫耀自己不怕，阁下。”

“回答得很好，孩子。可别再炫耀了。好了，”（说到这儿，狮子的脸色才缓和了一点。）“男孩平安没事。我已经把他吹到纳尼亚去了。但由于你的过失，你要去完成一项比较难的任务。”

“请问我要完成什么任务，阁下？”吉尔说。

“就是我把你们从你们的世界召到这儿来，交给你们的任务。”

这下可把吉尔搞糊涂了。“它一定是把我错认成什么人了。”她心想。但她不敢对狮子说出这种想法，尽管她猜想如果不告诉它实情，事情会变得一团糟。

“把你的想法说出来，孩子。”狮子说。

“我刚刚在想——我想说，是不是出了什么差错？我们俩并没有受到召唤。是我们自己请求来到这儿的。斯科拉博说我们要呼唤一个名字——不过，那个名字我不记得了，然后那个人或许就会让我们来。我们喊完后，就看到门开了。”

“不经过我的召唤，你们是召唤不了我的。”狮子说。

“这么说来，您就是斯科拉博说的那个人，对吗？”吉尔说。

“没错。现在听好任务。在离这里很远的地方坐落着纳尼亚王国，那里有一位上了年纪的国王，他很伤心，因为没有亲生的王子来继承王位。他之所以没有继承人，是因为多年前他唯一的儿子被人偷走了。现在纳尼亚没人知道王子的去向，也不清楚他是否还活着。但王子确实活着。我命令你们去寻找失踪的王子，找到之后就把他带回王宫。要是你们完成不了，要么命丧半路，要么就回到你们自己的世界里去吧。”

“请问，我们要怎么找呢？”吉尔问。

“我会告诉你的，孩子，”狮子说，“下面几点就是我给你们的指示。第一，尤斯塔斯那孩子进入纳尼亚之后，就会遇见一位旧友。他一定得马上去跟那个朋友打招呼，只有这样才会对你们有利。第二，你们出了纳尼亚必须朝北走，一直走到那个有古老巨人的废墟之城。第三，在那里你们会找到一块刻有文字的石头，你们一定得照石头上的文字去做。第四，你们会由此找到那个失踪的王子，如果你们找到他的话，他将会是你们这一路上遇见的第一个要求你们以我之名，以阿斯兰之名去做事的人。”

看样子狮子似乎已经说完了，吉尔心想她也应该说点什么。于是她便说：“非常感谢，我明白了。”

“孩子，”阿斯兰的语气温和了一些，“也许你的理解没有你想象的那么透彻。但是首先你得要记住这些指示。你按顺序，把我刚刚说的四点再说来听听。”

吉尔试了一下，但说得不大对。狮子帮她纠正，又让她重复了几遍，直到完全记住。狮子教吉尔的时候特别耐心，学完之后，吉尔鼓起勇气问道：“请问，我该怎么去纳尼亚王国呢？”

“我吹口气送你，”狮子告诉她，“就像吹尤斯塔斯一样，我会把你吹往西面去。”

“我赶得上告诉他第一条指示吗？不过我觉得赶不上也没关系。他看见一个老朋友，准会过去跟人家打招呼的吧？”

“你已经没时间耽搁了，”狮子说，“所以我必须马上把你送去。来，来我前面，我们走到悬崖边上去。”

吉尔心里很清楚，要说时间不够，那都是她自己惹的祸。“要是我没干蠢事，我和斯科拉博本该一起过去的，那样他还可以和我一起听完全部指示。”她一边心想，一边按照狮子说的照做。走回悬崖边的这一路，吉尔心里忐忑不已，特别是狮子不在她身旁，而走在她后面。它那柔软的爪子着地几乎没有声音。

在她离悬崖边还有一段距离的时候，身后就传来声音：“就站那别动，我马上吹。你一定要保证牢牢记住指示，记住，记住。你每天早上醒来要在心里默念一遍，晚上躺下时也要温习一遍，半夜醒来时也是。不管碰到多么古怪的事，一定不要把指示抛在脑后。其次，我要警告你，在这山顶上，我已经跟你说得很清楚了，到了纳尼亚我可不会经常提醒你了。现在在这高山上，空气清新，你的头脑也清醒。等你被吹到纳尼亚去，那儿空气会混浊。你要小心，不要让脑子也变得混沌。等你在那儿遇到情况时，你刚刚学会的指示可能会跟你想象中完全不一样。所以你要在心里牢牢记熟指示，不要被事情的表象迷惑。牢记指示，并且相信指示。其他都无关紧要。好了，夏娃之女，再见……”

这番话说到后面，声音越来越轻，直到最后完全消失。吉尔往身后一看便目瞪口呆了，只见那座悬崖已经在她后面一百多码以外了，而狮子成了悬崖上一个金光闪闪的小点。她本来一直咬紧牙关，握紧拳头，准备迎接狮子那口气的可怕威力，但那一口气其实十分轻柔，她还没有注意到就已经离开了地面。而此刻，在降落地面之前，吉尔的眼前是万丈高空。

她内心的害怕并没有持续太久。一来，下面的世界离她那么遥远，似乎跟她毫无关系；二来，乘着狮子吹的气飘浮真是一件无比惬意的事。她发现她可以平躺着，也可以趴卧着，想怎么翻身就怎么来，就和在水里一样自在（当然前提是你的浮水功夫很棒）。而且由于她飘落的速度跟狮子的气息同步，感觉不到风，空气也变得怡人的暖和。这和乘飞机的感觉是完全不同的，既没有噪音也没有振动。要是吉尔乘坐过气球，她可能会觉得这两种体验更相似，而现在的感受只会更棒。

这时她再回头一看，才第一次看清了她正离开的这座山的实际规模。她不知道为什么这样一座雄伟的高山竟没有被冰雪覆盖——“我想可能是因为这个世界里的一切事物都不一样。”吉尔暗自想。然后她再朝下面望去，可是她飘得太高了，她还弄不清自己是飘在陆地还是海洋上方，也不知道自己飘得有多快。

“天哪，还有指示！”吉尔突然一惊，“我最好还是默念几遍吧。”她惊慌了一下，不过好在她还能一字不差地全背出来。“那就好。”她像躺在沙发上一样仰卧在空中，满意地长呼一口气。

“我要宣布，”过了几小时，吉尔自言自语道，“我睡着了。想想真怪，在空中睡觉。我真想知道有没有人做过这样的事。我觉得应该没有吧。哦，斯科拉博或许也在空中睡过觉！他和我经历了一样的旅程，只是在我之前一点点罢了。现在让我瞧瞧下面是什么样子。”

她看到下面是一片广阔无垠的深蓝色平原。视线里没有山丘，只有一些白白胖胖的东西缓慢地穿过平原。“那一定是云，”她想，“但比我们在悬崖上看到的大多了。我想，云看起来变大是因为离得近了。那我现在应该是在降落了。这太阳真烦人。”

吉尔刚上路时太阳还在头顶，如今阳光已经照进她眼睛了。这就意味着太阳跑在她前面，快要下山了。斯科拉博说得没错，吉尔（我不了解一般女孩子是不是都这样）不太能分得清指南针的方向。不然她就该知道，当太阳光照进她眼睛时，她就大致是朝正西方向飘行。

她注视着下面那片蓝色的平原，很快注意到平原上随处都是闪闪发光的浅色小点。“啊，如果下面是大海的话，”吉尔想，“我确定那些点点就是岛屿。”

确实如此。要是她得知斯科拉博曾站在甲板上观望过那些岛屿，并且甚至还去过其中几个岛，她肯定要无比嫉妒，幸好她不知道。又过了一会儿，她才看到那一片蓝色的平原上泛起些许小小的皱纹。要是在大海中航行，一定知道这些小小的皱纹就是巨大的海浪。这会儿，视野里出现了一道粗粗的黑线，很快变得越来越粗、颜色也在明显变深。她第一次知道她的飘行速度到底有多快，她也明白这条越来越粗的线一定就是陆地了。

突然间，一大朵白云从她的左边（风从南面吹来）直冲她飘来，这次的云差不多跟她在同一高度。她还没反应过来自己身在何处，就已经一头钻到凉飕飕、湿漉漉的云雾中去了。这差点让她喘不过气来，不过幸好她只在云层里待了一小会儿。等到出来时她对着阳光直眨眼睛，身上衣服都湿了。（她穿着运动衣、毛衫、短裤、长袜和很厚的鞋，英国那时节正是泥泞天。）她出云层时比进去前离海面更近了一些。她一出来就注意到耳边有了声响，我想这应该是她一直盼望的东西，然而突如其来的声音使她大吃一惊。

从狮子把她吹下悬崖的那一刻起，她一直是在无声的空气中飘行的。此刻，她终于听见了海浪的翻滚声和海鸥的叫声。同时她也闻到了海洋的气息。现在她更加确信了她飘行的速度。她看见两股海浪重击汇合在一起，随即升腾起一团泡沫，但还没等她看清，这些已经被抛在身后百码外的地方了。她降落的速度很快，陆地离她越来越近。现在她可以清楚地看见远在内陆的山峦，以及左面的其他山头。她看得见海湾和海岬、树林和田野、绵延不断的海滨沙滩。海浪拍打海岸的声音越来越响，几近淹没了海上的其他声音。

突然间，陆地出现在她的正前方。她飘到了河口上方，这会儿她已经很低很低了，离水面只有几英尺高。一波海浪溅到她脚趾上，卷起一大片泡沫，几乎把她腰部以下都打了个湿透。现在她的速度慢下来了，她没有向着河面降落，而是滑翔到左边的河岸上。眼前景色纷繁，吉尔的眼睛快应付不过来了——草地柔嫩繁盛，船只色彩缤纷，看上去就像一大块珠宝，还有高塔和城墙，迎风招展的旗帜，热闹的人群，华丽的服饰，盔甲、金饰、刀剑，还有不绝于耳的奏乐声。但这些全都乱成一团。她脑袋里最清楚的一件事是她已经降落了，此刻正站在靠近河边的一片灌木丛下，而斯科拉博正站在离她几英尺的地方。

她第一个反应就是，斯科拉博怎么如此邋遢啊，看着一点都不帅气！然后她才意识到，她自己身上也湿透了。

第三章
国王起航

斯科拉博之所以看上去如此衣冠不整（其实吉尔也是，只不过她看不到自己的模样），是因为他们周围的景象太华丽了。我还是先为大家描述一下这个世外人间吧。

吉尔快落地时，曾透过那些山峰间的间隙见过遥远的内陆，只见夕阳的余晖泻在一片平坦的草地上。在草地尽头，风向标在夕阳下闪闪发光，还矗立着一幢有很多尖塔和很多角楼的城堡。吉尔从没见过这么美丽的城堡。近处是一个大理石砌成的码头，一艘高高的船停泊在此处。船上有高高的首楼和尾楼，被漆成金色和深红色，榄杆顶上竖着一面大旗，甲板上旗帜迎风招展，沿着舷墙有一排银光闪闪的盾牌。跳板搁置在她的脚下。有一位白发苍苍的老人正准备走上跳板。他身披一件华贵的猩红色斗篷，前面敞开，露出里面银色的铠甲。老人的头上戴着一圈细细的金环。他的胡子白得像羊毛一样，长长的胡须垂落近腰部。他站得笔直，一只手搭在一个衣着华丽的贵族肩上。那人似于比他年轻一点，但也上了年纪，看起来弱不禁风，似乎一阵风就能把他吹走，他两眼噙着泪花。

国王趁上船之前，转过身朝他的百姓讲话。紧紧挨着国王的是一把小轮椅，前面套着一头小小的驴子，体型比大猎狗大不了多少。这把轮椅上坐着一个胖胖的小矮人，他的衣服和国王的一样华贵，但因为他是胖子，又弓起身子坐在软垫上，给人的印象就大不相同了。他看上去就像一小堆乱糟糟的毛皮和丝绸绒堆在一起。小矮人和国王一样上了年纪，但体格强健一些，精神更为饱满，目光也更加敏锐有神。他的大脑门上一根头发也不剩了，在夕阳的照耀下就像一颗特大号台球在闪闪发亮。

再往后有一群人排成半圈，吉尔一眼就认出是大臣们。光看他们的服饰和盔甲，那还是值得观赏一番的。实际上他们看上去更像一个花坛，而不像一群人。但真正让吉尔目瞪口呆的是那些百姓——如果用“百姓”这个词描述他们算合适的话。他们当中只有五分之一是人类，剩下的都是在人类世界里从来没见过的。吉尔曾见过这些怪物的图画，所以她能叫得出名字，比如有羊怪、树精和人头马，还有小矮人。当然了她还看到了很多熟悉的动物，包括熊、獾、鼹鼠、豹、老鼠和各种鸟儿，不过这些动物和英格兰的同名动物看起来差别还是很大的。有些动物体型要大得多，就比方说老鼠吧，它们用后腿站立，超过两英尺高。除了体型之外，动物的模样也不同。从它们脸上的表情就可以看得出，它们不仅会说话，还会像人一样思考。

“天哪！”吉尔心想，“这竟然是真的。”但过了一会儿她又想，“也不知道他们是否友好。”她刚刚注意到，人群外围有一两个身形庞大的动物和几个人站在一起，她叫不出名字。

正在此时，阿斯兰和他的指示突然蹦进了她的脑海中。着地后的半个小时里，她已经完全把这些抛在脑后了。

“斯科拉博！”她一面抓住他的胳膊，一面悄声说，“快点告诉我，你在这里碰到熟人没有？”

“原来你又钻出来了啊？”斯科拉博看起来不高兴（他这样当然是有原因的），“行了，安静点，好吗？我还想听听呢！”

“别犯傻了，”吉尔说，“我们没时间耽搁了。你在这儿没有见到什么老朋友吗？你要记得马上去跟他说话。”

“你在说些什么？”斯科拉博说。

“阿斯兰，就是狮王，说你一定得这么做。”吉尔有些无奈，“我见过他了。”。

“啊呀，你见过他了吗？他说什么了？”

“他说你在纳尼亚看见的第一个人就是你的一位老朋友，你一定得立马上前跟他说话。”

“唉，这儿可没有一个人是我以前认识的。再说了，我都不知道这究竟是不是纳尼亚。”

“我以为你说过你以前来过这儿的。”吉尔说。

“那只是你‘以为’而已。”

“哼，你别管我怎么以为。是你告诉我的……”

“看在老天的份上，快住口，我们来听听他们在说什么。”

国王正在跟小矮人说话，但吉尔听不见他在说什么，只看到那小矮人一个劲儿地点头或摇头，也不说话。接着就听到国王提高了嗓门对群臣讲话，但他的声音是如此苍老嘶哑，吉尔几乎听不懂他在说什么。特别是国王的发言全都是关于她从来没听见过的人名和地方。讲话完毕，国王弯下腰亲了亲小矮人的两颊，再站直身子，举起右手，似乎在祈福，然后拖着无力的步子慢慢走上跳板，登上了船。大臣们似乎都为这临行之别深受触动，好多人拿出了手帕，四处哭声不绝。随后跳板被撤掉了，船尾楼响起了号角声，船就这样离开了码头。（船是由一条划艇拖走的，不过吉尔没看见那划艇。）

“好了……”斯科拉博说了一半打住了，因为就在这时一个巨大的白色物体从空中划过，落在他的脚边。吉尔一开始还以为那是只风筝呢。他俩定睛一看，原来是一只白色的猫头鹰，个头超大，站在地面上竟有大个儿小矮人那么高。

它眨巴着双眼，像近视眼似的盯着他们看，脑袋侧歪在一边，轻轻地鸣叫说：“喔呼，喔呼！你们俩是谁？”

“我叫斯科拉博，这是波尔，”尤斯塔斯回答道，“你可以告诉我们，这是哪儿吗？”

“你们在纳尼亚王国，这里是国王住的凯尔帕拉维尔城堡。”

“刚刚上船的那位就是国王吗？”

“是啊，没错，”猫头鹰晃着大脑袋伤心地说，“可你们是谁呢？你们两个身上有魔法。我看见你们来的时候是飞来的。大伙都忙着为国王送行，没人注意到你们。我正好看到了你们，看着你们飞到这里。”

“我们是阿斯兰派到这儿来的。”尤斯塔斯低声说。

“喔呼，喔呼，”猫头鹰一边说，一边抖动了两下羽毛，“天色还早，我有点受不了。太阳下山前我总不太自在。”

“我们被派来寻找失踪的王子。”吉尔说，她一直等着插话。

“我还是头一回听说这件事，”尤斯塔斯问，“什么王子？”

“你们还是立即就找摄政王谈吧，”它说，“就是坐在驴车里的那位，矮人杜鲁普金。”猫头鹰转身给他们领路，一边喃喃自语，“喔呼，喔呼！也不知道是什么事，我的脑子真是一团乱！现在时间还太早。”

“国王叫什么名字？”尤斯塔斯问。

“凯斯宾十世。”猫头鹰告诉他。吉尔不明白为什么斯科拉博走着走着突然停下了，脸色也变得不太对劲。她心想还从来没见过他因为什么事情而这么难过呢。她还没来得及问为什么，他们就已经走到了摄政王身前。摄政王刚好在收起驴子的缰绳，准备驾车回城堡去。那群大臣也都散开了，三三两两地往同一个方向走去，就像人们看完运动会或比赛时散场一样。

“喔呼，喔呼！摄政王大人。”猫头鹰稍稍欠下身子，嘴巴凑近小矮人的耳朵。

“嗯？什么事？”小矮人问。

“来了两个陌生人，大人。”猫头鹰说。

“生人？你什么意思？”小矮人说，“这两个衣着邋遢的野小子，他们要什么？”

“我叫吉尔。”吉尔一边说着一边挤到前面。她急着想向摄政王说明此次前来的重要目的。

“这丫头叫吉尔。”猫头鹰尽量大声说道。

“你说什么？”小矮人说，“丫头们被杀了？我一个字也不信。是些什么姑娘？她们被谁杀了？”

“只有一个姑娘，大人，”猫头鹰纠正道，“她叫吉尔。”

“大点声，大点声，”小矮人说，“别站那儿像只蚊子似的在我耳边嗡嗡。谁被杀了？”

“没有谁被杀。”猫头鹰提高了嗓门。

“谁？”

“没！有！人！”

“好了，好了。你用不着吼这么大声。我还没聋到那个地步。你到这儿来告诉我没有谁被杀是什么意思？为什么该有人被杀呢？”

“你告诉他我是尤斯塔斯。”斯科拉博忍不住了。

“这个男孩是尤斯塔斯，大人。”猫头鹰尽量放大嗓门叫道。

“有事没事？”小矮人性急地说，“我敢说他是有事的。要是没事，你为什么要把他带到宫里来呢？嗯？”

“不是有事没事，”猫头鹰说，“是尤斯塔斯。”

“又是他吗？说真的，我不知道你在说些什么。格里姆费瑟大师，我来告诉你。当我还年轻的时候，我们国家就已经有了会说话的鸟兽，那些才是真正会说话的，跟你这种咕咕哝哝、叽叽喳喳、呢声呢气完全不是一回事。换作那时，你这样的说话方式一刻也不能容忍，一刻也不能。乌纳斯，把我的助听器拿来。”

一直默默站在摄政王身边的一只小羊怪递给他一只银制助听器，这东西做得就像一种蛇形的乐器，管子刚好可以盘在小矮人的脖子上。他正在戴助听器时，猫头鹰格里姆费瑟突然悄悄对两个孩子说：“我脑子现在清楚一点了。你们俩都别提任何有关失踪王子的事。回头我再解释。告诉他是不行的，绝对不行，喔呼！哦，我这是怎么了！”

“行了，”矮人摄政王说，“格里姆费瑟大师，你有什么事，说说看吧。先做个深呼吸，别说太快。”

在两个孩子的帮助下，虽然格里姆费瑟频繁被摄政王的咳嗽声打断，但最终总算解释清楚了两个孩子的来历。听说他俩是阿斯兰派来访问纳尼亚王宫的使者，矮人摄政王的神情有些变化，迅速瞄了他俩一眼。

“是狮王亲自派来的，嗯？”他说，“而且是从别的地方，这个世界之外的地方来的，嗯？”

“是的，大人。”尤斯塔斯对准助听器大声叫道。

“你们是亚当和夏娃的后代吧，嗯？”小矮人说。但吉尔和尤斯塔斯都没听说过亚当和夏娃，因此不知如何作答。不过小矮人似乎并没有在意。

“好了，我可爱的孩子们，”他依次拉起吉尔和尤斯塔斯的手，轻轻地点点头，“衷心欢迎你们的到来。要是我那可怜的陛下此时此刻没起航去七群岛的话，见到你们来，他也一定会很高兴。看到你们，他一定会有重返青春的感觉，哪怕只是片刻也好。好啦，现在该吃晚饭了。你们可以在明天早晨的廷会上告诉我你们此番来的要务。格里姆费瑟大人，务必为这两位贵宾准备好下榻之所，收拾几套贴身衣物，一切按照最高标准。还有啊，格里姆费瑟，你耳朵凑过来……”

说到这儿，小矮人嘴巴凑到猫头鹰脑袋旁边，无疑是打算悄悄说句话，但正像其他聋人一样，他对自己的音量完全没有概念。结果两个孩子都听见他说：“务必让他们好好洗洗干净。”

交代完最后一句，矮人摄政王拿鞭子轻轻抽打了一下小驴子，便向城堡出发了。拉车的小驴子很胖，它不紧不慢、摇摇摆摆地跑在前面，而羊怪、猫头鹰和两个孩子慢悠悠地跟在后面。这时太阳已经下山了，空气也凉快了许多。

他们穿过草地和果园，最后终于来到凯尔帕拉维尔的北门。大门敞开着，里面是一个长满青草的院子。只见右手边的大厅窗户里透出了灯光，正前方一大片结构复杂的建筑里也亮起了灯。猫头鹰领着他们走了进去，找了一个和蔼可亲的仆人来照顾吉尔。她的个头和吉尔差不多，身材纤瘦许多，但很显然已经成年了。她的仪态如杨柳一般优雅，垂肩的秀发柔软飘逸，发丝隐约还有些青苔色。她把吉尔带到其中一座塔楼上的一间圆形屋子，屋子里有一只小浴缸，壁炉里生着火，木柴的香气扑鼻而来，拱形屋顶上有一盏银链吊灯。透过那扇朝西的窗户可以看见纳尼亚奇异的全貌，远处的群山背后仍然残留着落日的余晖。吉尔不禁对接下来的探索之旅充满了期待，她坚信这仅仅是精彩的开始。

吉尔洗完澡，梳好头发，换上为她准备的衣服——这些衣服不仅摸上去格外舒服，看起来也很别致，甚至还有一股香味，你走动时它还会发出好听的声音。她本想再去窗口看一眼迷幻的景色，不料门“砰”的一声打断了她的思绪。

“进来吧。”吉尔说。斯科拉博推开门，他也洗过了澡，身穿华丽的纳尼亚服装。但他脸上的神情并不是太高兴。

“哦，总算找到你了。”他一脸愠怒，一屁股坐在椅子上，“我老早就在找你了。”

“好啦，你现在也找到了，”吉尔说，“哎呀，斯科拉博，你不觉得这里真的美如天堂吗？我已经不知道怎样表达我的心情了。”她已经把狮王的指示和失踪王子的事情忘得一干二净。

“哦，那只是你的想法吧？”斯科拉博说完停顿了一下，“我倒宁愿我们没来过。”

“你怎么会这样想呢？”

“我受不了，”斯科拉博说，“看到凯斯宾国王，看到他成了那样一个老态龙钟的老头儿。这真是，这真是太可怕了。”

“怎么啦，那碍你什么事？”

“哦，你不懂的。现在我想起来了，那是你没法想象的。我没告诉你这个世界的时间跟我们的时间是不一样的。”

“什么意思？”

“在我们待在这儿期间，我们世界里的时间并不会变。你懂吗？我是说，无论我们在这儿待多久，我们回到学校时还是回到我们离开的那一刻……”

“那就没意思了。”

“你快闭嘴，别老打断我。一旦你回到英格兰，回到我们自己的世界里，你就想不出这里的时间是怎么流逝的。我们在国内过上一年，在纳尼亚就不知道过去多少年了。佩文西家兄妹向我解释过的，瞧我像个傻子似的全都忘了。从我上回离开纳尼亚算起，按纳尼亚的年历来说，时间已经又过去了七十年。现在你懂了吧？我这次回来时，凯斯宾竟已经是个老头了。”

“这么说国王就是你的老朋友？！”吉尔的脑海中掠过了一丝恐惧。

“他在我的心里当然是朋友，”斯科拉博无比感伤地说，“他算是我最好的朋友了。上回来的时候，他只比我大几岁而已。看着那个白胡子老头，再回想起我们占领孤独群岛的那天早上，还有海蛇之战那次，啊，这太可怕了！这比我回来发现他死了更糟。”

“够了，别说了，”吉尔不耐烦地打断了他的话，“事情远比你想的糟糕多了，我们已经办砸了第一条指令。”

斯科拉博不明白吉尔在说什么，于是吉尔就把自己和阿斯兰之间的对话、狮王的四条指示，还有他们本次来寻找失踪王子的任务一一告诉了他。

“现在你明白了吧，”她紧张地说道，“正像阿斯兰所说的，你的确见到了一位老朋友，你本该立刻上前跟他说话的。而你却没去，从一开头一切就都乱了套。”

“可我怎么知道呢？”斯科拉博说。

“当我想跟你说这件事的时候，要是你不打断我认真听，我们就没事了。”吉尔说。

“是是是，要是你没在悬崖边胡闹，差点谋害了我的性命……我说的是‘谋害’哦，我爱说什么就说什么，你别恼火。要不是你，我们俩早就一块来了，也不至于我什么指示也没听到。”

“我看，他就是你看见的第一个人吧？”吉尔说，“你一定比我早到了好几小时。你确定没有先看见别人吗？”

“我也就只比你早到一分钟，”斯科拉博说，“阿斯兰一定把你吹得比我飘得快，补上耽搁的时间，就是因为你乱来而耽搁的时间。”

“别闹了，斯科拉博，”吉尔说，“嗨，你听听什么声音？”

城堡里响起了晚餐钟声，于是一场看似要升级为唇舌之战的争吵就此愉快地中断了。两个人到现在确实都饿了。

在城堡大厅里享用晚餐，可是他们俩从未见识过的豪华场面。尽管尤斯塔斯以前来过这个世界，可是他那时都在海上度过的，对纳尼亚王国的排场和礼节一无所知。屋顶上挂下一面面旗帜，每道菜上来时都要吹号击鼓。一道道叫人一想到就垂涎的汤羹，一种叫作帕文德的鱼，还有鹿肉、孔雀肉、馅饼、雪糕、果冻，还有各类水果和果仁，以及各种各样的美酒和果汁。就连尤斯塔斯也高兴起来，对这顿饭赞不绝口。等到晚宴全部结束，一位盲人诗人走上前来，开始吟诵一个经典的老故事《能言马与男孩》，讲的是科奥王子和娅拉维斯以及一匹叫布里的马之间的故事。那是彼得在凯尔帕拉维尔担任至尊国王的黄金时代，在纳尼亚和卡乐门土地上发生的一次奇遇。（虽然这个故事很值得一听，可我现在没时间再讲一遍了。）

等到他们俩拖着疲累的脚步上楼去睡觉，两个人都呵欠连天。吉尔说：“我打赌今晚我们俩都会睡个美觉。”这一天发生的事情已经够多了，然而没人知道接下来他们还将碰到什么事。

第四章
猫头鹰会议

说来倒有趣，你越困的时候，入睡所花的时间越长，尤其是当你的房间里还生着火的时候。吉尔要是不先在火边坐会儿暖暖身子，甚至不想脱衣服。而一旦坐下，她便不愿站起身来。当她大概是第五次自言自语说“我得上床了”的时候，有人在窗户上轻轻敲了一声，着实把她吓了一跳。

她起身拉开窗帘，但一眼望去除了一片黑暗，什么也看不见。然后她看到一个庞然大物冲过来抵在窗子上，在玻璃上猛地敲了一下，于是她立马跳了起来，朝后退了几步。她的脑海里闪现出一个不太好的念头——“是不是这个国家有巨型蛾子！啊！”谁知这东西又回来了，这一回她几乎可以肯定，刚刚敲窗的是一只尖尖的嘴。吉尔想，“这只大鸟会不会是鹰呢？”她可不太希望一头鹰找上门来，不过她还是开了窗，探出头，只听见呼呼的一阵声响。那只大鸟站在窗台上，它那庞大的身躯堵住了整扇窗户，吉尔只好后退几步为它腾出地方。那只大鸟原来是只猫头鹰。

“嘘！喔呼，喔呼，”猫头鹰说，“别出声。再确认一遍，你们俩是真心诚意想去完成你们的任务吗？”

“你说的是那失踪王子的事？”吉尔说，“是啊，我们一定会干。”这时她记起狮王的声音和面容，在晚宴和听故事时她几乎全忘了狮王嘱托之事。

“很好！”猫头鹰说，“你们没有多少时间了，你们必须立马离开这儿。我去叫醒那个男孩，然后我再回来接你。你最好脱下宫廷的衣服，换上方便赶路的衣服。我马上就带着那个男孩过来。喔呼！”还没等到吉尔回话，他就飞走了。

要是吉尔一向冒险惯了，她也许会怀疑猫头鹰的话，但是她从来没有过冒险的想法。半夜出逃实在是一件令人激动的事情，吉尔完全把困倦抛在脑后。她重新换上羊毛衫和短裤，在短裤裤带上别了一把刀，以备不时之需；又另外带上了几样东西，是先前那个长发飘逸的女仆留在她房间里的。她选了一件长到膝盖的连帽短斗篷，想着下雨时正好用得着。除此之外，还带了几块手帕和一把梳子。所有都准备好后，她坐下等猫头鹰。

等猫头鹰回来时，她又犯困了。

“咱们可以走啦。”他说。

“最好由你带路，”吉尔说，“我还不熟悉这些走廊。”

“喔呼，”猫头鹰说，“我们不从城堡大门出去，那样是绝对行不通的。你必须骑到我身上来，我们一起飞。”

“等等！”吉尔嘴巴张得老大，看起来不大喜欢这个主意，“你真能载得动我吗？”

“喔呼，喔呼！别犯傻了，我已经送走你的同伴啦。行啦，不过我们先得把灯灭了。”

灯一灭，从窗子里望出去，那片夜空就不那么黑了——天空不再是黑色，而更像是灰色。猫头鹰站在窗台上，背朝里，抬起了双翅。吉尔爬上他那又胖又矮的身体，膝盖抵在翅膀下面，双膝紧紧夹住。猫头鹰的羽毛温暖而柔软，就是没个抓处。

“真想知道斯科拉博觉得这次飞行怎么样！”吉尔正想着，猫头鹰就猛地向前一冲，转眼间他们就离开了窗台，翅膀在她耳边呼起一阵疾风，晚上的空气凉爽湿润，扑面而来。

这次飞行比她预想中轻松得多。尽管天空阴云密布，水汪汪的银光勾勒出躲在云层上面的月亮。往下看，田野灰蒙蒙，树林黑沉沉。耳边的风声簌簌直响，看来很快要下雨了。

猫头鹰调了个头，正对着城堡的方向。没几扇窗户亮着灯了。他们飞过城堡后向北，穿过了河。气温似乎变冷了一些，吉尔猜想如果低头一定能看见猫头鹰在水面白色的倒影。但不一会儿他们就已经飞到河的北岸，来到了林区上空。

猫头鹰突然猛地咬住了吉尔没看见的什么东西。

“天，请你别那样！”吉尔说，“别像那样颠簸，我差点就摔下去了。”

“不好意思，”猫头鹰向吉尔道歉，“我刚刚抓了一只蝙蝠，一只胖胖的小蝙蝠用来填饱肚子再好不过啦。要我给你抓一只吗？”

“不用了，谢谢。”吉尔打了个哆嗦。

猫头鹰这会儿飞得低些了，吉尔看到眼前隐约出现一个黑乎乎的庞然大物。看清后，发现原来是一座塔，塔身塌陷了一角，上面爬满了常春藤。还没有回过神来，猫头鹰已经带着她闯入蛛网密布的窗户，她赶忙弯下身子，免得撞上拱窗。从清冷灰蒙的夜空钻进黑咕隆咚的塔顶，一股霉味冲鼻而来。一从猫头鹰背上滑落下来，她就感觉到这地方很挤。只听见“喔呼，喔呼”的声音从各个黑暗的角落传来，原来这个屋子里全是猫头鹰。这时角落里传来一个不同的声音，吉尔顿时轻松了许多：“波尔，是你吗？”

“斯科拉博，是你吗？”吉尔寻声问道。

“好了”，格里姆费瑟说，“我想人都齐了吧。我们的猫头鹰会议就此开始吧。”

“喔呼，喔呼。没错，开始吧。”几个声音跟着应和。

“等等，”斯科拉博开了腔，“有件事情我要先告知各位。”

“说吧，说吧。”猫头鹰们齐声说道。“来吧。”吉尔也跟着说。

“我想你们大伙儿，我指的是猫头鹰家族，”斯科拉博说，“我想你们都知道国王凯斯宾十世年轻时，曾航行去过世界最东部。其实，那次航行我就跟他在一起，一路同行的人除了我与他之外，还有雷佩契普老鼠将军、德里宁勋爵等等。我知道这听起来不大可信，但在我们的世界里变老的速度跟你们在你们的世界里不一样。我要告诉你们的是，我是国王的人，要是这次猫头鹰会议有任何背叛国王的阴谋，我都不会参与其中。”

“喔呼，喔呼，我们也都听命于国王啊。”那些猫头鹰说。

“那这是怎么回事呢？”斯科拉博说。

“是这样的，”格里姆费瑟说，“要是摄政王，就是小矮人杜鲁普金听说你们要去找失踪的王子，他是绝不会同意的，他会把你们关起来。”

“天哪！”斯科拉博说，“你该不会是说杜鲁普金是个卖国贼吧？以前在海上的时候，我听说过很多他的事。凯斯宾国王对他非常信任。”

“当然不是，”一个声音说，“杜鲁普金不是卖国贼。但已有三十多位勇士（包括骑士、人头马、勇猛的巨人）先后出发去寻找失踪的王子，没有一位回来过。最后国王说他不会为了寻找他的儿子而让纳尼亚所有的勇士送命。如今，谁也不准去了。”

“但我敢保证，等他知道了我是谁，是谁派我来的时候，他肯定会让我们去的。”斯科拉博说。

“是派我们来的。”吉尔插了一句。

“是啊，”格里姆费瑟说，“我想他很可能会准许你们的计划。但国王不在，杜鲁普金会照章办事。他很忠诚，但他耳朵完全聋了，而且脾气又暴躁。你根本没法说服他这回可以破例办事。”

“你可能认为他多多少少会听取我们的意见，因为我们是猫头鹰，大家都知道我们很聪明。”一只猫头鹰说，“可他毕竟年高望重，他只会说，‘你只是只小鸟儿罢了，我可还记得你还是个鸟蛋的时候呢。别想来教导我，猫头鹰先生。多嘴多舌！’”

这只猫头鹰模仿杜鲁普金的腔调说话，真是学得惟妙惟肖，引得满堂的猫头鹰们都笑了。两个孩子明白了其实纳尼亚人对杜鲁普金的感觉就像学生们对一个爱发脾气的老师一样，大家有点怕他，人人都取笑他，但大家又不是真的不喜欢他。

“国王要去多长时间呢？”斯科拉博问。

“我们知道就好了！”格里姆费瑟说，“你们要知道，最近传出谣言说有人看见在特里宾西亚群岛上见到了阿斯兰。国王说在他咽下最后一口气前想再碰碰运气，看看能不能再见上阿斯兰一面，听听他的建议决定王位继承人。但我们都害怕，要是他在特里宾西亚岛上没见着阿斯兰，他就要一路向东，航行去七群岛和孤独群岛，然后再继续向东。虽然他从来没提起过，但我们都知道那次世界航行对他来说是多么难忘。我敢肯定在他内心深处，他一定是想再去一遭的。”

“这么说等他回来是指望不上了？”吉尔问。

“是啊，估计悬了”，猫头鹰说，“唉，怎么办呢！要是你们俩那天能一眼认出他，立即跟他说清就好了。他会把一切都安排好的，或许会拨一支军队跟着你们一起去找王子呢。”

吉尔不敢吱声，她希望斯科拉博够男子汉，别把真相全抖出来。斯科拉博还算是个男子汉吧，他只是小声嘀咕了一句：“那可不是我的错。”然后又提高了声音：“好吧，那我们只好在没有军队的情况下想办法了。但还有一件事我想知道。要是你们这个猫头鹰会议是绝对光明磊落的，那为什么要搞得这么神秘？你们为什么非要深更半夜在这鬼地方开会呢？”

“喔呼！喔呼！”几只猫头鹰齐声叫喊道，“除了这里，我们还能去哪儿碰头呢？除了半夜，还有什么时候能召集全员呢？”

“你可能不知道，”格里姆费瑟解释说，“在纳尼亚，大多数人都有不合自然规律的习惯。他们白天干活，在耀眼的太阳光下忙活。哼！那时应该用来睡觉的呀。结果呢，到了晚上，他们变得又瞎又笨，你别想从他们嘴里得到一句话。而我们猫头鹰一直保持着在最适宜的时间开会的习惯。当我们有什么事需要讨论的时候，我们就自己开会。”

“原来如此，”斯科拉博终于恍然大悟，“没问题了，那就继续开会吧。先跟我们说说王子失踪是怎么回事。”

另一只年迈的猫头鹰开了腔，讲述了这个故事。

大约十年前，那时凯斯宾的儿子瑞廉还是一位很年轻的骑士。五月的一天早晨，他陪王后一起骑马去纳尼亚北部。他们一行中还有好多乡绅和贵妇人，大家都头戴新鲜树叶编成的花环，身上都带着号角，但没有带猎狗同行，因为当时他们是在采花，不是打猎。白天稍暖些的时候，他们来到一片舒适的林中空地，一股清凉的喷泉从泥土里喷涌而出。他们在那儿下马，吃吃喝喝，快乐无比。过了一会儿，王后觉得困了，随从们把斗篷铺在草地上，好让王后休息，而瑞廉王子跟同行的其他人都走开了，免得他们的说笑声吵醒她。

过了没多久，密林里爬出一条大毒蛇，在王后手上咬了一口。听见王后的叫喊声，大家都跑过去，瑞廉第一个赶到她身边，他看见那条蛇正从王后身边溜走，就拔出剑追了过去。那是一条发亮的、青绿色的大蛇，很容易辨识。但它随即就溜到浓密的灌木丛中去了，王子进不去。于是他回到母亲身边，发现大家都围着王后忙得团团转。

可惜，这一切都是白费力气。瑞廉看见母后脸色的那一刹那，就知道任何医术都回天无力了。她临死前似乎拼命要告诉他什么事，但她已经口齿不清了，她的遗言没说出来就死了。王后咽气时，距离他们听见她的喊叫声还不到十分钟。

他们把死去的王后运回凯尔帕拉维尔，瑞廉和国王以及纳尼亚举国上下都痛哭悼念她。她是一位伟大的王后，智慧、和善、快乐，是凯斯宾从世界最东部娶回国的新娘。人们说她血管里流淌着星星的血。母亲的死让王子心痛不已。从那以后，他常骑马出没在纳尼亚北部沼泽地区，寻找那条毒蛇的踪迹，要杀了它为母后报仇。尽管每次王子归来时，总是一副神色疲劳、忧心忡忡的样子，但大家从不以为意。王后死后的一个月，一些人说，王子变了。他的眼神变得迷离，尽管他整天在外面，他的马看起来却不像是跑了很多路。在那些年长的大臣中，王子最贴心的朋友就是德里宁勋爵，勋爵曾在国王那次伟大的东部远航中担任船长。

一天傍晚，德里宁对王子说：“殿下一定得赶快放下寻找那条毒蛇的念头。对一只无知野兽的仇恨，不比对一个人的怨恨。您别白白把自己累坏了。”王子回答说：“爵爷，最近几天以来，我已忘掉那条毒蛇了。”德里宁问：“既然如此，那殿下为何还每天骑马到北部树林里去呢？”“爵爷，我在那儿看见了天底下最美的东西。”王子说。“请王子殿下恩准，”德里宁说，“老臣明天陪你走一遭，让我也瞧瞧那不凡之物。”“我很乐意带你随行。”瑞廉说。

第二天一早他们就跨上马，一路飞奔到北部森林，随后在王后遇难的喷泉附近下马。

德里宁觉得很奇怪，王子怎么就偏偏挑中这个地方歇息呢？他们一直在那歇到正午。就在正午时分，德里宁抬头一看，他生平见过的最美丽的女人就站在喷泉北面，一言不发，只对王子招手，好像要叫王子到她那儿去。她个子高高的，长得很美，光彩照人，身穿一件青绿色薄外套。王子失魂落魄地盯着她，但突然间那女人就消失得无影无踪，德里宁不知道她上哪儿去了。他们俩就此回到凯尔帕拉维尔，但德里宁心里总觉得那个绿衣女人是魔鬼。

德里宁拿不准自己是否应该把这次经历报告国王，但又不想做个多嘴的人，于是他把这件事埋在心里。可是不久后他就后悔了。瑞廉王子第二天一个人骑马外出，晚上竟没回来。从那天起不管是在纳尼亚，还是在邻近国家都无人发现他的踪影，就连他的马、帽子、斗篷和其他随行物品也都无影无踪。

德里宁心里实在痛苦难忍，于是他就去见凯斯宾国王：“陛下，赶紧杀了我这个大叛徒吧，都怪我没有及时告诉您真相，都是我害了王子。”然后他把前天跟着王子一起外出的见闻告诉了国王。凯斯宾听罢抓起一把战斧，对准德里宁勋爵冲过来要杀了他。可德里宁就像一根木头，一动不动，就等着国王一斧子砍下来。但是国王举起斧子的那一刹那，又突然把斧子一把扔开，哭喊道：“我已经失去了我的王后和儿子，难道我还要失去我的朋友吗？”他搂住德里宁的脖子，紧紧抱住他。两个人都哭了，就这样，他们的友谊没有破裂。

这就是失踪王子的故事。

听完故事，吉尔说：“我敢说那毒蛇和那个女人就是同一个人。”

“不错，不错，我们的想法和你一样。”猫头鹰都叫着附和。

“但我们觉得王子没死，”格里姆费瑟说，“因为我们没有找到骨头……”

“我们知道她没有杀死王子，”斯科拉博说，“阿斯兰告诉波尔说，王子现在还活着。”

“那事情就更糟了，”最老的一只猫头鹰说，“那就意味着王子对那个妖女有用处，她正在策划一场毁灭纳尼亚的阴谋。在很久很久以前，北方来了个白女巫，把我们这里都冻成冰天雪地，足足冻了有一百年。我们觉得这个妖女没准是同伙。”

“好吧，”斯科拉博说，“我和波尔下定决心去找这位王子。你们能帮助我们吗？”

“你们俩目前有什么线索吗？”格里姆费瑟问。

“有，”斯科拉博说，“我们要上北方去，然后去一个废弃的巨城寻找下落。”

一听到这句话，猫头鹰们喔呼喔呼的叫喊声、扑通的跳跃声、抖动羽毛的杂音炸开了锅，然后所有的猫头鹰都七嘴八舌说起话来。他们都解释说，不能陪这两个孩子去寻找失踪的王子实在太遗憾了。

“你们要在白天赶路，而我们得在晚上。”他们说，“这怎么行，这行不通的。”还有一两只猫头鹰又说，这个塔里没有刚开会时那么黑了，这次会也开得已经够长了。其实一提到要去废弃巨城，这些猫头鹰就有些泄气。

但格里姆费瑟说：“要是他们想走那条路——到艾丁斯荒原去——我们一定得把他们带到一个沼泽怪那儿去。沼泽怪是唯一能帮这两个孩子大忙的人。”

“没错，没错，去吧。”猫头鹰们说。

“那咱们赶紧走吧，”格里姆费瑟说，“我带一个孩子。另一个谁来带？这事一定得在今晚办成。”

“我愿意去，把孩子送到沼泽怪那儿。”另一只猫头鹰说。

“你准备好了吗？”格里姆费瑟问吉尔。

“我想波尔睡着了。”斯科拉博说。

第五章
普德格伦

吉尔确实睡着了。从猫头鹰会议一开始，她就呵欠连天，这会儿她睡得正香呢。于是她又一次被叫醒，睁开眼睛发现自己竟躺在一片漆黑、满是灰尘的钟楼里的一块光秃秃的木板上，周围挤满了猫头鹰，心里便有些不高兴。当她听到他和斯科拉博还得坐上猫头鹰出发去另外一个地方时（而且显然不是送过去睡觉的），她的心里就更不高兴了。

“喂，波尔，快点，打起精神来。”这是斯科拉博的声音，“这可是一次探险呀。”

“我讨厌探险。”吉尔发起了脾气。

不过，最终她还是乖乖爬到格里姆费瑟的背上。当他带着她飞进夜空时，空气中那股出乎意料的寒意使她完全清醒过来（只持续了一会儿）。此时月亮不见了，天上也没有星星。在她身后很远的地方，她能看见离地面有些距离的地方有一扇亮着灯的窗户，毫无疑问，那里就是凯尔帕拉维尔的一座塔楼。看着那灯光，她突然很渴望回到那间舒适的卧室，蜷缩在床上，看着墙上映着的火光。她把手放在斗篷下，用斗篷紧紧裹住身子。黑沉沉的夜空不远处传来两个声音，这不禁让吉尔毛骨悚然。斯科拉博和背着他的那只猫头鹰在说话。“听上去他倒是一点都不累。”吉尔心想。她不知道的是，斯科拉博之前在这个世界已经经历过几次大探险，再一次呼吸到纳尼亚的空气使他重获力量，这股力量是当初跟随凯斯宾国王去东部航海时获得的。

为了保持清醒，吉尔只好掐自己。要是她继续在格里姆费瑟背上打瞌睡，恐怕就会摔下去。等到两只猫头鹰终于把他们俩送到目的地，吉尔从格里姆费瑟身上爬下来，到达平地时，手脚已僵硬发麻。一股凉飕飕的风迎面吹来，看来四周没有树木。

“喔呼，喔呼！”只听到格里姆费瑟在呼唤，“醒醒，普德格伦，快醒醒。狮王有要事。”可是叫喊了半天也没有回音。后来，他们看到远处一圈暗淡的灯光渐渐靠近，随后传来一个声音。

“喂，是猫头鹰吗？”他说，“什么事情？国王死了？敌人在纳尼亚登陆了？还是发大水了？龙来了？”

等到灯光离得稍近些，他们才看清那原来是只大灯笼，却看不清提着灯笼的是谁。他看起来似乎只有胳臂和腿。吉尔只听到两只猫头鹰跟它说了些话，把事情解释了一遍，但她实在太累了，已经没有力气细听。后来她意识到它们在对自己说再见，她又强打精神，变得清醒些。但之后又发生了什么，她就再也记不清了。最后，她和斯科拉博弯腰进入一扇低矮的门，一下子躺在了一个柔软而暖和的东西上。这时，耳边传来一个声音：

“你们终于到了。这是我们所能给你们提供的最好的条件了，你们躺着可能会觉得又冷又硬，还有些潮湿。即使现在这儿没有电闪雷轰，也没有闹洪水，这棚屋不会坍塌，你们这一夜可能还是没法合眼。这些情况我以前可是都碰到过，你们要学会随遇而安……”不过话还没说完，她早已熟睡了。

第二天早上，两个孩子醒得很晚，他们发现自己躺在阴暗处干燥又暖和的草铺上。阳光透过一扇三角形的窗户照进来。

“我们到底在哪儿呀？”吉尔问。

“在一个沼泽怪的棚屋里。”尤斯塔斯告诉她。

“谁的棚屋里？”

“沼泽怪。别问它是什么。昨晚我也没看见它。我要起床了，一块去看看它吧。”

“穿着随身衣服睡觉真的太不舒服了。”吉尔一边说着一边坐了起来。

“我还觉得起床时不用穿衣服很棒呢。”尤斯塔斯不以为然。

“还不用洗脸呢。”吉尔语气嘲讽。但斯科拉博已经起床了，他打了个呵欠，提起精神，爬出了棚屋。吉尔跟在他后面。

放眼望去，这里与他们前一天看见的景象大不相同。此刻他们正在一大片平原上，无数水沟把平原分割为无数小岛。这些小岛上长满了野草，四周是芦苇和灯芯草，还有些地方是一片片一英亩大的灯芯草圃。成群的鸟儿在其间上下跳跃着——有鸭子、鹊，还有苍鹭。周围的岛上可以看到星罗棋布的棚屋，就和他们昨晚住的一个样儿。不过所有的棚屋之间都隔着相当一段距离，据说是因为沼泽怪都注重隐私。除了在西面和南面几英里以外可以看到森林边缘，这地方看不见一棵树。在东边，平坦的沼泽地一直伸展到地平线附近低矮的沙丘，从那个方向刮来的风有一股浓烈的咸味，由此知道那边有海。北面是灰白色的低矮的山丘，那里四处都是石堡。除此之外，其他地方都是平坦的沼泽地。要是碰上潮湿的夜晚，这地方便会让人闷得慌。现在阳光普照着大地，清风吹拂，空中鸟鸣不绝。这儿虽然荒凉，景色却相当奇异美丽，清新又干净。孩子们的兴致又高了。

“不知道那个……那个什么上哪儿去了？”吉尔说。

“那是沼泽怪。”斯科拉博提醒她，知道这个名字似乎让他很得意，“我想……嗨，那一定就是他。”他们俩都看见他了，在大约五十码以外的地方，沼泽怪正背对他们坐着钓鱼。起初他们看不清，因为它全身颜色几乎和沼泽一样，而且他坐着一动不动。

“我看我们最好去跟他谈一谈。”吉尔说。斯科拉博点点头。他俩都有点紧张。

当他们走近时，沼泽怪扭过头来，露出一张瘦长的脸，双颊凹陷，鼻子尖尖的，嘴唇紧闭，脸上没有胡子。他戴着一顶又高又尖的帽子，就像一座尖塔，帽檐很宽。他那披在大耳朵上的头发——要是能称为头发的话——是灰绿色的。他的每撮头发都是扁的，而不是圆的，因此更像小芦苇。他的表情很庄严，肤色跟泥巴一样。凭此你就能看出他的生活态度有多严肃了。

“早上好，我的两位小客人，”他发话了，“我说‘好’，并不是说今天不会下雨、下雪、有雾、打雷之类的。我敢说你们昨夜没睡着吧。”

“我们倒还真睡着了。”吉尔说，“我们昨晚过得很好。”

“啊，”沼泽怪摇了摇头，“我就知道你们能适应环境。很好，你们都是有教养的孩子，知道对事情要采取乐观态度。”

“不好意思，我们还不知道你的名字。”斯科拉博插了一句。

“我叫普德格伦。要是你们记不得也没关系，我可以再告诉你们。”

两个孩子分别在他的两边坐下。他们这才看见他的胳臂和腿到底有多长。尽管他的个头和小矮人差不多，但他站起来却比多数人高。他的手掌有蹼，就像青蛙的爪子，两只在泥浆水里晃荡的脚上也有蹼。土黄色的衣服松松垮垮地挂在他的身上。

“我正想抓几条鲤鱼来炖个鲤鱼当午饭，”普德格伦说，“可要是一条也抓不到，也不奇怪。再说你们也不大会像我一样喜欢吃鲤鱼。”

“为什么不喜欢？”斯科拉博问。

“你问为什么？虽然我知道你们肯定会装作对此毫不在乎，但是要你们喜欢我们爱吃的食物那也不合情理。对啦，我在捉鱼的时候，你们俩可以试试把火生起来，木柴就在棚屋后面，可能有些潮湿。随便你们在棚屋里面或者棚屋外面生火。在屋里生火嘛，烟雾会熏到我们的眼睛；在外头生火嘛，下雨就会把火淋灭了。这是我的打火匣，我猜你们不知道怎么用吧！”

但斯科拉博在上回探险时已经掌握了这项技能。两个孩子一起奔回棚屋，找到了木柴，发现那完全是干的，没费什么事就生起一堆火。于是斯科拉博坐下来照看火堆，吉尔跑到最近的水沟去洗脸，不过洗得不怎么痛快。洗好后轮到她照看火堆，斯科拉博也去洗了一下。洗完脸两个人都觉得清醒多了，但感觉肚子很饿。

不一会儿，沼泽怪来了。虽然他自己估计着一条鲤鱼也捉不到，但回来时居然捉了十多条，而且已经剥掉鱼皮，洗干净了。他在火上搁了一只大锅，添了柴火，点上了烟斗。沼泽怪抽着一种十分奇怪、味儿很浓的烟草（有人说他们在烟草里搀了泥巴）。两个孩子注意到普德格伦烟斗里的烟不往上升，而是从烟斗里一缕缕出来，往下飘，顺着地面像一层薄雾似的飘啊飘的。而且这烟很黑，熏得斯科拉博直咳嗽。

“好了，”普德格伦说，“那些鲤鱼要煮很长时间，估计还没烧熟你俩就饿昏了。我认识一个小姑娘——不过我还是别告诉你们那个故事的好。你们听了会扫兴的，那种事我可绝对不干。所以，为了让你们尽量别老想着肚子饿，我们还是先谈谈我们的计划吧。”

“好，那我们就谈谈吧。”吉尔说，“你能帮助我们找到瑞廉王子吗？”

沼泽怪咂着烟斗，他的两颊都凹陷下去，那副样子你怎么也想象不出来。

“哦？没想到你们把这称为帮助。”他说，“我不知道谁能帮这个忙。到了一年中这个时候，冬天很快就要到了，我们不大可能往北走太远。而且看形势，今年冬天来得早。不过你们不必为此垂头丧气。我们途中可能会碰到敌人，又要爬山，还要过河，可能经常迷路，几乎没东西可吃，再加上脚痛，你们不会注意到天气的。反正如果我们走不远也成不了什么事，不妨再走得远些，不用着急回来。”

两个孩子都注意到他用的是“我们”而不是“你们”，两人同时欢呼起来。“你是跟我们一起去吗？”

“是啊，我当然一块去啦。你们要去，那我干脆一起去。既然国王已经动身出国了，而且他走的时候咳嗽得很厉害，我想我们可能再也见不到国王回到纳尼亚了。再说杜鲁普金呢，他的身体也是一日不如一日。今年夏天大旱，之后庄稼就会歉收。此时如果有敌人进攻，也不奇怪。记住我的话。”

“那我们怎么去呢？”斯科拉博说。

沼泽怪慢吞吞地说：“之前所有去寻找瑞廉王子的人都是从德里宁勋爵看见的那个女人所在的喷泉出发的，大多数人都继续朝北走。因为没人回来过，我们也不知道到底发生了什么事情。”

“我们得先找到荒废的巨城，”吉尔说，“阿斯兰这么说过。”

“第一步就是找到它吧？”普德格伦说，“看样子不能只是随便找找看了。”

“当然啦，就是这个意思，”吉尔说，“然后，等我们找到以后……”

“还不知道什么时候能找到呢！”普德格伦冷淡地说。

“有谁认识这地方在哪儿吗？”斯科拉博问。

“我不知道有谁认识，”普德格伦说，“可我并没有说我没听说过那座废城。不过，你们不要从喷泉那出发，你们穿过艾丁斯荒原，要是废城确实存在的话，就应该在那儿。但我也曾和多数人一样朝那个方向走过，可我从来也没到过什么废墟，我绝对没有骗你们。”

“艾丁斯荒原在哪儿呢？”斯科拉博问。

“从这里往北边看，”普德格伦说着用烟斗一指，“看见那些小山和悬崖吗？那儿就是艾丁斯荒原的边界。不过那里和我们这儿还隔着一条河——斯力布河。当然了，没有桥可以过去。”

“我看我们可以蹚水过去。”斯科拉博说。

“没错，有人蹚水过去了。”沼泽怪说。

“也许我们会在艾丁斯荒原遇见什么人能给我们指路。”吉尔说。

“你算说对了。”普德格伦说。

“那儿住的是什么样的人呢？”她问。

“要是你们喜欢他们那一套的话，我也不能说他们那样过日子有什么不好。”普德格伦回答说。

“这么说是没错。可他们到底是什么呢？”吉尔紧追不舍，“这个地方到处都是奇禽怪兽。我是问他们是走兽还是飞禽，或者是小矮人之类的？”

沼泽怪吹了一声长长的口哨。“嘘！”他说，“你们不知道吗？我还以为猫头鹰已经告诉你们了呢。他们是巨人呀。”

吉尔畏缩了。巨人这种东西就算是出现在书本里，她也不会喜欢，有一次她还在噩梦里见过一个巨人呢。这时她瞥见斯科拉博的脸也已经发青了，心想：“我敢说他比我还要害怕昵。”这样想似乎能给她壮胆。

“国王很久以前给我讲过，”斯科拉博说，“那时我跟他一起在海上，他说他们在战争中打败了巨人，而且逼得他们进贡。”

“那倒一点不假，”普德格伦说，“从那以后他们跟我们和平相处。只要我们待在斯力布河自己这边，他们就不会伤害我们。不过，他们在荒原那边呢。我们还是有机会的。只要我们不接近他们，只要他们没有忘记当初的约定，而我们又没被他们看见，我们就可以赶一长段路。”

“听着，”斯科拉博突然发脾气了，人受惊之后很容易发脾气的，“我就不相信这件事有你说得那么吓人，就像你吓唬我们说棚屋里的床是硬的、火柴是湿的一样。要是这事真的希望渺茫，我认为阿斯兰就不会派我们来。”

他原以为沼泽怪也会怒气冲冲地回答他，但他只是说：“就是这种精神，斯科拉博。说话就要拿出这副气势，不过我们要学会控制脾气，确保遇到困难时能齐心面对。吵架是不行的，你知道的，不管怎么说，别刚开始就吵得不可开交。我知道很多探险队通常都是不欢而散：还没有达成目标，就开始争锋相对，也不奇怪。不过要是我们能够长久地保持和睦的气氛……”

“得了，要是你认为这事没什么希望，”斯科拉博打断了他的话，“我想你还是待着吧。我和波尔可以自己去，对不对，波尔？”

“闭嘴，别犯傻了，斯科拉博。”吉尔赶忙阻止，生怕沼泽怪把他的话当真了。

“别灰心，波尔，”普德格伦说，“我肯定会去的。我可不想失去这样一个机会，这对我有好处。很多人，我指的是很多沼泽怪都说，我太轻浮，对生活不够认真。这话他们不只说了一遍，而是反反复复地说。‘普德格伦，’他们总说，‘你夸夸其谈，精力过剩。你要知道生活并不全是油煎青蛙和鲤鱼馅饼，你需要做一点不一样的事清醒一下。我们这么说都是为你好，普德格伦。’眼下冬天就快到了，去北方走一遭，去寻找一个大概不在那儿的王子，去那个谁也没见过的废墟城游历一番，这样一项差事对我来说再好不过了。如果这种事还不能使我安定下来，那我就不知道还有什么办法了。”说着他搓搓那双像青蛙爪子似的大手，仿佛他是在谈去参加舞会或看哑剧的事情。“现在呢，”他接着补充了一句，“我们看看那些鲤鱼煮得怎样了。”

那道菜端上来时，让人垂涎欲滴，两个孩子都吃了双份。起初沼泽怪不相信他们真的喜欢吃，后来看他们吃了那么多，他只好信了，转而说这些东西和他们的口味相差太多。“沼泽怪吃的东西对人类来说可能就是毒药，也不奇怪。”他说。

午饭后，他们又喝了茶，茶装在铁皮罐里（就像你看见那些马路边干活的人喝的一样），普德格伦从一个方形黑瓶子里喝了好多口。他请两个孩子喝一点，但他们觉得那东西非常难喝。

饭后的半天都用来为第二天一早出发做准备。普德格伦在他们当中算是体型最大的，说他会带上三条毯子，里面还包上一大块熏肉。吉尔把吃剩的鲤鱼带上，还有一些饼干和引火盒。而斯科拉博则把他和吉尔不穿的斗篷带上。斯科拉博上次跟随凯斯宾国王去东面航行时曾学过一点箭术，所以又带上了普德格伦第二好的弓。最好的那把由普德格伦自己带着，可他又说，风力干扰，加上弓弦潮湿，光线不好，手指冰凉，他们俩射中目标的可能性只有百分之一。他和斯科拉博都带上剑——斯科拉博把凯尔帕拉维尔宫的房间里专门留下的那把剑带来了。可吉尔只能把她的那把刀带上。他们本来为此还吵了一架，但刚开始吵，沼泽怪就搓着手说：“嗨，你们俩又来，我就说吧。探险途中吵吵闹闹多得是。”听沼泽怪这么一说，他们俩就都住口了。

他们三个都早早在棚屋里上床歇息了。这一晚上两个孩子倒真的没睡好。都怪普德格伦。他说完一句“你们俩最好睡一会儿，我可不能保证大家今晚都能睡得着”之后，倒头就睡，屋子里随即鼾声如雷。吉尔好不容易才睡着，整晚一直梦见路面钻孔机、瀑布，以及隧道里的特快列车。

第六章
北方荒原

第二天早上九点左右，三个孤零零的人专拣浅滩，踩着垫脚石过河。斯力布河的水不深，河水欢快地向前奔流着，他们到达北岸时，连吉尔也不过只是膝盖以下湿了。前面大约五十码的地方，地面就高起来了，从那里开始就是一片荒原，地势陡峭，隔得不远就能看到峭壁。

“我看我们应该往那边走。”斯科拉博指指左面朝西的方向，那儿有一条小河穿过荒原，流经一座浅浅的峡谷。但沼泽怪摇摇头。

“巨人们主要就住在峡谷边上一带，”他说，“可以说，峡谷就像是他们的一条街。虽然这地方较陡，但一直往前走才是最好的选择。”

他们找到一个可以爬上去的地方，大约十分钟以后，大家就气喘吁吁地到达了山顶。他们回头看了一眼纳尼亚的山谷，眼里满是不舍，随即又转身面向北方。放眼望去，只见广阔的荒原绵延不绝，渺无人迹。左手边岩石重叠，吉尔想那一定是巨人的峡谷边，不大想往那边看。他们便就此出发了。

这里的土地走起来很舒服，松软惬意。阳光普照，就是冬日里很温和的阳光。等到他们深入荒原，那份荒凉感越发浓郁；耳边田凫的鸣叫声此起彼伏，眼前偶尔还能看见一只鹰飞过。临近中午时，他们停下来休息，在小河边的一个小水坑里喝了点水。吉尔这时发现她已经开始喜欢上了探险，激动之情难以掩饰。

“真正的探险还没有开始呢。”沼泽怪说。

休息完以后，感觉就不大一样了——就像学校里早晨休息过后，铁路旅行中途换乘后一样。他们重新上路时，吉尔注意到峡谷离得越来越近了。那些岩石看起来更加崎岖不平，更加垂直了。不夸张地说，它们就像一座座小小的岩塔，形状有趣极了！

“我敢确定，”吉尔想，“所有关于巨人的故事很可能就源于这些有趣的岩石。要是你在天快黑的时候来这里，很容易会把那些堆砌如山的石头当成巨人。你瞧那边的一块石头，顶上隆起的一块就像一个脑袋。虽然这脑袋看起来太大了些，跟身体不相称，但对丑陋的巨人来说就够好的了。还有那些茂密的丛林，我猜那些是石南和鸟窝吧，可以把它们想象成头发和胡子。至于两边高出的部分嘛，跟耳朵倒是很像。这耳朵大得吓人，不过我敢说巨人的耳朵肯定都很大，就像大象一样。还有……啊！”

她感觉血液凝固了。那东西居然动了，原来真的是一个巨人！一点没错，她已经看见他扭过头来了。她看见那张又大又蠢、腮帮子肿大的脸。所有的这些都是巨人，而不是岩石。大约有四五十个巨人，站成一排，他们脚抵峡谷底，手腕搁在峡谷边上，就像人们倚着墙站立的姿势，仿佛懒汉刚吃完早餐。

“往前走。”普德格伦悄声说。他也注意到这些巨人了，“别朝他们看。无论如何都别跑，不然他们会来追我们的。”

他们就这样继续往前走，装作没看见那些巨人。这种感觉就像走过一间门前有条恶狗的屋子，此刻的情景只会更吓人。那几十个巨人看起来既不凶狠也不和善，似乎对眼前的一切也没什么兴趣，看起来他们似乎并没有看见这些路人。

接着听到耳边传来“嗖嗖”几声，只见看起来很沉的什么东西被投向空中，随着一声巨响，一块大石头掉在他们面前大约二十步的地方。再接着“咚”的一声，又有一块石头掉在他们身后二十英尺的地方。

“他们的目标是我们吗？”斯科拉博问。

“不，要是他们想对准我们投，反而安全多了。他们只是想投向右边那个石堆。他们掷不中的，你们看看就知道了。我们很安全，他们个个都是水平烂到家的投手。天气好的上午，他们就喜欢玩掷石头打靶，凭他们那点智商只懂这种游戏。”

想想还挺可怕的，那排巨人似乎一眼望不到头，一直不停地掷石头，有几块甚至就落在脚边了。不谈被石头砸到的危险，单是看看他们的脸，听听那声音也够吓人的。吉尔尽量忍着不去看他们。过了大约二十五分钟，巨人们才停下，这时他们显然在吵架。吉尔他们站的位置离巨人还不到一英里，就这样看着他们唇枪舌剑这可不是一件愉快的事。一群巨人大发雷霆、互相讥讽，说些听不懂的词，每个词足足有二十来个音节。他们发脾气时唾沫四溅，嘴里叽里咕噜的，一跳八丈高。巨人跳起来时就像扔炸弹似的，撼动大地。他们互相用笨重的大石锤敲打对方的头，但由于他们的脑壳实在太硬，石锤一敲下去就会弹开，反而重重地压住敲石锤的怪物的手指，疼得他们嗷嗷直叫，直接把石锤抛在地上。但是没过多久，一群傻瓜巨人又开始重复同样的事情。这倒是件好事，就这样反反复复玩了近一个小时，所有巨人都疼得坐下哭了起来。他们坐下来的时候，脑袋就沉到峡谷边沿以下看不见了。即便距离一英里开外，吉尔还能听见他们像大娃娃一样发出哇啦哇啦的号啕大哭声。

那天晚上，他们就在光秃秃的荒原上露宿。普德格伦给两个孩子做示范，教他们怎么充分利用毯子，背靠背睡觉。背靠背睡时，大家都暖和，而且身上可以有两条毯子盖着。但即使如此，依旧是寒气逼人，而且地面硬邦邦的，粗糙不平。沼泽怪告诉他们，只要他们想想今后要再往北走，还要冷得多，他们就会感到舒服一点。不过这话一点也没能让他们振作起来。

他们在艾丁斯荒原走了好多天，省下熏肉，主要靠尤斯塔斯和沼泽怪在荒原上打来的野禽为生（他们当然不吃会说话的鸟）。尤斯塔斯是当初跟着凯斯宾国王航行时学会的射箭，这一点令吉尔颇有些眼红。荒原上随处都能看到小溪，所以他们倒一点也不缺水喝。吉尔心想，书里向来只会写人们靠打野物为生，却从来不会告诉你，给那些死鸟去毛、再洗净是一件又臭又脏而且费时费力的活儿，还会让你冻得手指冰冷。不过，还算幸运的是他们不太会碰见巨人。途中遇到过一个巨人，但他只是大笑了一阵，就跺着脚走开，去忙自己的事了。

大约到了第十天，他们到了另一个国家。他们来到荒原北部边缘，俯瞰陡峭的长坡，一直通向一片更深邃莫测的土地。山坡底下就是悬崖，只见那边高山重叠，峭壁黑沉沉一片，山谷乱石丛生，幽谷又深又狭，看不见底。几条河从回声隆隆的峡谷里倾泻而出，暗沉沉地冲入漆黑的深渊。普德格伦指着远处的山坡说，那上面有些积雪。

“不过山坡北面的雪会更多些，也不奇怪。”他又补充了一句。

他们费了好长时间才到达山坡脚下，到了那里他们从悬崖上往下看，只见有条河从西向东奔流而过。河流两岸远近都是峭壁，碧绿的河水自顾自地流淌着，照不到阳光。险滩、瀑布随处可见。咆哮的河水震撼着大地，连他们站的地方也在震动。

“值得高兴的是，”普德格伦说，“要是我们下悬崖时摔断了脖子，那我们就不会淹死在河里。”

“看那边！”斯科拉博突然叫喊着，一面指着他们左边那条河的上流。

于是大家都往那边看，意想不到的是竟然看到了一座桥。而且那座桥堪称鬼斧神工！那是一座巨大无比的单拱桥，从一边的悬崖顶，横跨峡谷，到另一边的悬崖顶，而桥拱顶端耸立在两边悬崖顶部上空，就像圣保罗教堂的圆形屋顶架空耸立在街道上空一样。

“咦，这一定是座巨人桥吧！”吉尔说。

“或者说，这八成是座巫师桥，”普德格伦说，“我们在这种地方得留神有没有魔法。我觉得这是个陷阱，等我们走到桥中央，桥就会化成雾，消失不见。”

“啊呀，别那么煞风景了。”斯科拉博说。“这桥为什么就不能是一座正儿八经的桥呢？”

“你们想想，这座桥像是我们见到的那些没头脑的巨人造出来的吗？”普德格伦反问道。

“但兴许是另外一种巨人造的呢？”吉尔说，“我是说，可能是几百年前生活在这的巨人们造的，那些巨人比现代巨人聪明得多。可能建桥的和建造我们正在寻找的巨人城的是同一种巨人。如果是这样的话，那么就说明我们这一路走对了，老桥肯定通往老城嘛。”

“你的脑袋瓜倒是灵活，”斯科拉博说，“肯定没错了，我们就这么走。”

于是他们转身向桥走去。走到桥边，只见那座桥的确够结实的。桥上的一块块石头大小堪比巨石阵的石头。当初一定是由能工巧匠切割成方块的，然而如今都已裂痕累累了。桥栏上显然之前就刻满了富丽的花纹，如今还留有一些痕迹，还能看到各种生物残破的脸部和身体结构，如巨人、牛头怪、大乌贼鱼、蜈蚣，还有一些面目狰狞的神像。普德格伦虽然心里还有些戒备，但最终答应跟着两个孩子一起过桥。

爬上桥顶的路既漫长又曲折。好多地方的大石块都掉了，只留下一道道吓人的裂口，透过裂口往下看，可以看到几千英尺以下的河中浪花四溅。他们还看见一只鹰从脚下飞过。越往上走越感到冷，风吹得他们几乎站也站不稳，似乎桥都在摇晃。

到达桥顶之后，他们才能往下看远处的桥坡，只见看上去像是遗迹的巨人古道在他们面前伸展开去，直至群山腹地。路面好多石头都没有了，残留的石头之间是大片大片的野草。而在这条古道上有两个正常体型的成年人正骑马向他们驰来。

“继续走，朝他们那儿走，”普德格伦说，“凡是在这种地方遇到的人很可能不是敌人，不过我们千万不能表现出害怕。”

等到他们终于走下了桥，走在草地上时，那两个陌生人离他们已经很近了。一个是骑士，穿着全套盔甲，戴着面罩。他的盔甲和马都是黑色的，他的盾上没有纹章，矛上也没有小旗。

另一个是位夫人，骑着匹白马。那马十分可爱，让人恨不得马上就去亲亲它的鼻子，喂它一块糖。而那位夫人侧坐在马上，身着一件绿得耀眼的长外套，看起来更是甜美可爱。

“你们好，旅——行——者们。”她说话的声音就像可爱的鸟儿在唱歌，拖长的颤音听了让人心情愉悦，“你们当中肯定有人是特地来这片荒原游玩的吧。”

“那倒不一定，夫人。”普德格伦语气很生硬，留神提防着。

“我们在找巨人城的废墟。”吉尔说。

“废……废墟？”那夫人说，“你们要找的倒是一个古怪的地方。找到了要做什么呢？”

“我们得……”吉尔刚开了口，就被普德格伦打断了。

“夫人请见谅，我们和您以及您这位朋友互相还不认识，看起来您的朋友是个不爱说话的家伙。我们不方便在陌生人面前透露太多，希望您不要介怀。您看这天像是要下雨了吧？”

夫人笑了，那笑声一定是世间最动听、悦耳的声音。“好啦，孩子们，”她说，“你们有一位聪明、庄重的老向导，虽然他守口如瓶，我不怪他，我倒愿意随意说两句。我经常听到巨人废城这个名字，但从来没有任何人告诉我怎么去往那里。你们现在这条路是通往哈方城堡的，那里住着一群巨人绅士。他们性情温和、举止文明、处世谨慎、待人有礼，而艾丁斯荒原那些巨人却是一群凶残、野蛮，而且兽性十足的傻子。虽然我不能保证你们在哈方一定能打听到去往废城的消息，但你们一定会找到舒服的住处和好客的主人。建议你们在那儿过冬，至少也要在那儿住上一段日子，放松一下，恢复体力。在那儿你们可以洗蒸汽澡，睡软绵舒服的床，用上明亮的壁炉。烘的烤的，甜的辣的，食物一应俱全，一天供应四顿。”

“哇！”斯科拉博兴奋地叫道，“想到又有床睡了，太棒了！”

“是啊，我们还可以洗热水澡，”吉尔说，“你觉得他们会留我们住下吗？要知道，我们可不认识他们。”

“你们只要对他们说，”那夫人回答说，“绿衣夫人派你们代她问好，给他们的秋季盛宴送来两个白白嫩嫩的南方孩子。”

“啊，真是太感谢你了，多谢！”吉尔和斯科拉博齐声说。

“但你们要切记，”夫人说，“无论你们哪天到达哈方，上门可别太晚。因为他们中午过后几小时就关上大门。那是他们的风俗，一旦他们上了门闩，再怎么敲门他们也不开的。”

两个孩子眼睛发亮，再次谢过了她。那夫人向他们挥手告别。沼泽怪脱下尖帽子，姿势僵硬地鞠了个躬。然后那一直没吭声的骑士和夫人便骑着马走上桥坡，马蹄嘚嘚响。

“呼，”普德格伦说，“我真想知道她从哪儿来，上哪儿去。巨人国的荒原上怎么会遇上她呢？我敢肯定，她不怀好意。”

“别胡说了，”斯科拉博不以为然，“我觉得她人很好啊。想想我们不久后就能吃到热饭热菜，还有暖和的房间住。我真希望这里离哈方不远。”

“我也觉得她不是坏人，”吉尔说，“她的衣服也是那么好看。还有那匹马，可爱极了！”

“话是这么说，”普德格伦说，“但我还是希望多了解一下。”

“我正打算问问她呢，”吉尔说，“但你不肯告诉她我们的事，我又怎么能问她呢？”

“是啊，”斯科拉博说，“还有你态度干吗那么生硬，简直煞风景，难道你不喜欢他们？”

“他们？”沼泽怪说，“你指谁？我可只看见一个。”

“你没看见那骑士？”吉尔问。

“我只看见一套盔甲，”普德格伦说，“他干吗不说话？”

“我想他是害羞吧，”吉尔说，“或许他只想看着她，听听她那悦耳的声音。换作是我，我敢说我也会那样的。”

“我很好奇，”普德格伦说，“拨开那人的面罩会看到什么。”

“这是什么鬼话，”斯科拉博说，“想想那盔甲的形状也知道，除了人还能是什么呀？”

“或许是一具骷髅呢？”沼泽怪用一副幸灾乐祸的语气问道。“要不然，”他又加了一句，“什么都没有。我的意思是你们什么也看不见。是个隐身人。”

“说真的，普德格伦，”吉尔说着打了个哆嗦，“你心里真有这么可怕的想法吗？你怎么想他们的啊？”

“啊呀，去它的鬼想法！”斯科拉博说，“他老是往坏里想，结果总是错的。我们还不如想想那些巨人绅士，赶快去哈方吧。要能知道这一路有多远就好了。”

这下子普德格伦先前预见到的争吵真的闹开了。倒不是说吉尔和斯科拉博这一路在之前没有斗嘴什么的，但这回他们仨可真的谈不到一块儿了。普德格伦根本不同意大家上哈方去。他说他不知道巨人成为绅士是怎么一个模样，而且，阿斯兰的指示里没提到去巨人那儿，不管他们到底是不是真的是绅士。但是两个孩子已经厌倦了风雨漂泊的日子，厌倦了每日在篝火上烤皮包骨的野禽、每晚睡在又冷又硬的地上这种生活，下定决心要去寻找巨人绅士。最后，普德格伦只好同意去了，但他提出了一个条件。他们必须保证，没有他的准许，不得告诉巨人们，他们打纳尼亚来，也不能说漏他们在寻找瑞廉王子。等到孩子们向他做出保证后，才答应继续往前走。

自从遇到那位夫人后，情况变得更糟了。一方面，前行更加艰难，那条路通向望不见尽头的峡谷，凛冽的北风呼呼地刮在他们脸上。这里不像之前在荒原时那样，没有木柴来烧火，也没有洞穴适合宿营，而且地上全是石头，白天走路让人脚痛，晚上枕着睡觉更是全身都痛。

另一方面，不管那夫人告诉两个孩子关于哈方的事情到底出于什么用意，可以肯定的是那对他们起了坏作用。他们现在把一门心思扑在舒适的床铺、热水澡和可口的饭菜上，简直乐不思蜀。他们再也没提起阿斯兰，对失踪王子的事情也只字不提。吉尔也抛却了她每天早晚默背指示的习惯。最初的时候，她给自己找借口说，我太累了。可是再到后来，她很快就把这事完全抛在脑后。你可能觉得他们一想到在哈方可以过上好日子，心里就会高兴一点，事实却相反。吉尔和斯科拉博彼此之间的关系也好，他俩对普德格伦的态度也好，都远不如从前。三个人变得异常暴躁，动不动就上火。

最终，有一天下午，他们一路走过的峡谷突然开阔起来，两边还出现了暗沉沉的冷杉。往前看，他们发现原来自己已经穿过了群山。眼前是一片满目荒凉、岩石丛生的平原。平原外，远处的群山顶上留有积雪。但他们和远处的群山之间有一座小山头，虽然山顶不是很规则，地势还算比较平坦。

“快看！快看哪！”吉尔叫道，指着平原对面。暮色中，大家都在那座平坦小山的另一边看见了灯光。是灯光！不是月光，不是火光，而是一排亮着灯火的窗户，温馨美好，令人宽慰。如果你从来没去过荒野，不曾几个星期日日夜夜待在荒野里，你就很难理解他们的心情。

“哈方！”斯科拉博和吉尔喜出望外。“哈方！”普德格伦也跟着重复了一遍，声音却是单调而阴郁的。过了一会他又说，“嗨！野鹅！”并立刻拿起了弓，打中了两只大肥鹅。那天已经够晚了，他们压根没想到还能到达哈方。但幸运的他们还是在当天吃了顿热饭菜，还生了一堆火。这天晚上倒还真比前一个多星期都暖和得多。火灭了以后，空气变得寒冷刺骨。等他们第二天早上醒来，毯子上全都是霜，冻得硬邦邦的。

“没关系！”吉尔一面说着，一面高兴地跺脚，“今晚就能洗上热水澡啦！”

第七章
奇怪的壕沟

这天气实在是糟透了。头顶上的那片天空看不见太阳，乌云密布，像是要下雪。低头看脚下，一层黑霜。一阵风吹来，寒气逼人，有种要把人身上的皮刮掉的感觉。等他们走到平原上，才发现那条古道比他们见过的任何一条路的破损程度都更严重。他们只好在断石上、卵石间和碎石堆上挑着路走。可他们双脚酸痛，这又加大了难度。尽管已经疲惫不堪，但由于天气太冷，他们片刻也不能停歇。

大约十点左右，天空中开始慢慢飘落小雪花，正好落在吉尔的手臂上。只过了十分钟，密密麻麻的雪就开始漫天飞舞。再过了二十分钟，大地就全白了。半小时之后，更是来了一场猛烈的暴风雪，看那样子一整天雪都不会停。暴风雪扑面而来，他们几乎什么也看不见。

在讲接下来发生的事情前，我还要再强调一遍，以免你们忘记——这时他们几乎什么也看不见了。

当他们走近那座挡住昨晚亮着灯火的人家的小山时，眼前几乎什么也看不见。就连看见距离几步之遥的地方还得眯起眼睛。很显然，他们三个人这会儿谁也没说话。等他们到达山脚下，他们往两边那些可能是岩石的东西看了一眼——仔细瞧瞧的话，就知道这是近似方形的岩石，但谁也没好好看。大家更关心的是正前方挡住去路的那块突出的石头，约有四英尺高。沼泽怪腿长，毫不费力就跳了上去，然后就拉着两个孩子上来。对他们两个来说，那块石头上的积雪已经很深了，爬上去弄得浑身湿漉漉，实在是够呛。不过对沼泽怪来说却是小事一桩。后来他们又在崎岖不平的路面往上爬了大约一百码，其间吉尔还摔下来一回，好不容易才爬上第二块石头。这种石头总共有四块，而且距离都不相等。

他们费了九牛二虎之力才爬上了第四块石头，原来已经到达扁平小山的山顶上了。刚刚在山坡上，倒是有地方避风；可这会儿在山顶，他们可算是领教了暴风的威力。说也奇怪，这座小山顶居然平坦得出奇，和在远处看没什么两样。暴风就在这一大片高地上无遮无拦地呼啸而过。几乎不太看得到积雪，因为狂风不断把雪卷离地面，成片成团地抛到他们脸上。还有一圈圈雪花在他们脚边打转转，就像有时候看到暴风雪刮过冰面那样。大多数路面确实像冰块一样光溜溜。更糟的是，这地方到处都是纵横交错、奇形怪状的堤坝，把这块地方分割成一块块正方形和长方形。所有的堤坝高度从二英尺到五英尺不等，厚度也有两三码，都得要爬上去。每道堤坝的北侧都已积起厚厚的雪，他们每爬过一道堤坝，就会陷到积雪里，弄得浑身湿透。

吉尔拉起风帽，低着头，把冻得麻木的双手藏在斗篷里，艰难地前行。在这可怕的高地上还看见了其他一些古怪的东西。她在右手边隐约看到一个工厂的烟囱，而左手边则看到一座陡峭无比的悬崖。但她对这些一点兴趣也没有，心里只惦记着她那双冰凉的手（还有冰凉的鼻子、下巴和耳朵），还向往着哈方的热水澡和床。

正在这时，她脚下一滑，这一路滑下去有五英尺深。她发现自己滑进了一个又黑又窄的坑，吓得半死。滑下去还没多久，转眼就发现已经滑到底了。她好像是掉进沟槽之类的里面了，宽度只有三英尺的样子。虽然刚刚那一刻让人魂飞魄散，但是这会儿终于不用饱受冷风之寒了，总算松了口气。沟壁比她高出一截，正好可以挡风。然后她就看到斯科拉博和普德格伦两人焦急地在沟边上望着她。

“你受伤了吗，波尔？”斯科拉博大声问道。

“两条腿全摔断也不奇怪。”普德格伦大声道。

吉尔站了起来，看来并无大碍，但他们得想办法把她拉出去。

“你掉进去的是个什么地方？”斯科拉博问。

“是条沟吧，也可能是暗道之类的，”吉尔说，“它是笔直的。”

“哦，天哪，”斯科拉博说，“这条沟通往正北面。不知道是不是一条路？如果真是这样的话，我们就不用在上面吹该死的冷风了。底下有雪吗？”

“几乎没有。我看雪全从顶上吹过去了。”

“再往里走是什么？”

“等一下，我去看看。”吉尔一边说，一边站起来，沿着沟走到里边去。但没走出多远，沟就向右来了个急转弯。她大声地把这个情况告诉了外面两个人。

“拐角那儿有什么？”斯科拉博问。

这会儿吉尔对地下的这些弯弯绕绕的通道和那些黑咕隆咚的暗道突然产生了恐惧，和斯科拉博在悬崖边的感觉类似。她可不想独自拐进去，特别是她还听见普德格伦在后面大声叫道：“小心点，波尔。这里可能正是那种通往龙洞的地方。在巨人国里，还可能有巨大的蚯蚓和巨大的甲虫呢。”

“我觉得这儿到哪儿也不通。”吉尔说着，赶紧往回走。

“我还是下去看看，”斯科拉博说，“我倒想知道哪儿也不通是什么意思。”于是他坐在沟边上（如今大家都浑身透湿，再湿一点也无所谓了），直接滑落到沟里。他挤到吉尔前面，尽管嘴上没说什么，但吉尔敢保证他肯定知道她是因为害怕才不过去的。她就小心翼翼地紧跟在他后面。

结果却令人大失所望。他们往右拐弯后，朝前只走了几步，面前就分了岔，一条路继续向前，向右有个急转弯。“行不通，”斯科拉博看了右转弯那条路一眼说，“从这儿走又回去了，这条路向南。”于是他继续往前走，但只走了几步，他们又一次发现了一条往右拐的路，但这回没有其他路好走了，这条沟到这儿就到头了。

“没用的沟。”斯科拉博咕哝说。

吉尔立刻转身带路回去。等他们回到吉尔掉下来的地方，沼泽怪用他的长胳膊毫不费力就把他们拉了出来。

再次回到上面实在是件可怕的事情。刚刚在下面那狭长的沟里，他们的耳朵几乎都开始回暖了，眼前也看清楚了许多，呼吸也轻松不少，互相对话不用嚷嚷也听得清。回到这刺骨的寒冷中简直是活受罪。更让人难堪的是，普德格伦在这时候突然冒出了一句：“波尔，你还记得狮王的指示吗？现在我们该照哪一条办呢？”

“啊呀，行了，去他的指示，”波尔说，“我记得是有人提到阿斯兰名字的事吧。不过我绝不在这儿背诵指示。”

正如你所看出来的，波尔已经把指示的次序搞混了。那是因为她早就丢了每晚背一遍指示的习惯。要是她肯认真回想一下，还是能够记起来的，但是现在那四条指示再也不是烂熟于心。突然一问的话，未必能不假思索一字不落地背出来。普德格伦这一问惹恼了她，因为在她内心深处，想想自己不那么熟悉狮王的交代本来已经很让人恼火了，再加上又冷又累，实在难熬，“去他的指示。”她竟说出了这样一句话。也许她并不是有意的。

“哦？那是下一句吧？”普德格伦说，“我想你是不是把指示弄混啦？也不奇怪。依我看，这座小山，这会儿我们所在的这块平地，看起来倒是值得我们停下来看一看。你们注意到没有……”

“哦，老天，”斯科拉博打断了他的话，“难道现在是停下来欣赏风景的时候吗？天哪，别乱折腾啦，我们走吧。”

“等等，瞧，快瞧，瞧那边！”吉尔叫着，用手一指。

大家都回过身来，看到北面再过去一点，比他们站着的这块高地还要高得多的地方，出现了一排灯。这一回看到的比昨晚看到的清晰很多。那些精美小巧的窗户不禁让人无比陶醉地想起舒适的卧室，而稍大点儿的窗户则让人想起壁炉里火光熊熊的柴堆，想起餐桌上的热汤和正冒着热气、油汪汪的牛腰肉。

“是哈方！”斯科拉博欢呼道。

“太好了，”普德格伦说，“但我刚才想说……”

“得了，住口，”吉尔有点要生气了，“我们没时间了。你不记得那夫人说过他们很早就锁门吗？我们一定要抓紧时间赶到那儿，一定要按时。要是我们在这种晚上被关在门外，我们会冻死的。”

“别急，现在还没到晚上呢，还早着呢。”普德格伦开口说，但两个孩子都等不了了，开始在滑溜溜的地上跌跌撞撞，使劲往前跑。沼泽怪一路跟着他们，嘴里还在念叨着，不过这会儿他们已经再次冲进了风里，怎么也听不见沼泽怪在说什么了，更何况他们也不想听。他们现在满脑袋都是热水澡、床铺和热饮料。一想起如果赶到哈方太晚，被关在门外就受不了。

尽管他们一路急匆匆的，但花了很久才走到小山边沿，而且他们还要从远处几块突出的石头爬下去。最终，他们好不容易才到了山下，这才看清了哈方的真面目。

城堡矗立在高高的峭壁上，虽然有好多尖塔，但看上去只是一座大宅，而不像一座城堡。显然这群巨人不怕受到攻击。离地面很近的外墙上有一些窗——正儿八经的城堡里可不会有这样的布置。随处都是一扇扇奇特的小门，所以进出城堡不用穿过院子，十分方便。吉尔和斯科拉博的兴致一下子就上来了。这样来看，整座城堡看上去很是亲和了，没那么阴森可怕。

刚到时，高耸的峭壁不禁让他们心惊胆战，但不久后他们就注意到左边有一条便捷的路可以上去，而那条路就绕着城堡楼盘旋而建。已经走了那么远的路，一想到还要再爬上去，实在是够呛，吉尔差点就要放弃了。斯科拉博和普德格伦在最后几百码的地方还拉了她一把。不过到最后他们还是来到了城堡大门口。城堡的吊闸吊上去了，大门敞开着。

不管你有多么疲惫不堪，来到一扇巨大的前门面前，人总是要提提神，打打气的。虽然普德格伦来之前多次警告过他们别来哈方，但现在他反而是最勇敢的那个。

“步子放稳点，”他说，“不管做什么事情，千万别显示出惊慌失措的样子。我们到这儿来就是干了一件头号大傻事。但既然来了这儿，就勇敢面对吧。”

说完，他就大步走到大门口，站在那里大声叫喊，借助回声壮壮声势。

“嗨，看门的！客人想借宿！”

在那里等候答复的时候，他脱下帽子，弹掉那宽大帽檐上的大片积雪。

“啊呀，”斯科拉博悄悄地对吉尔说，“虽然他专爱扫兴，胆子倒不小，脸皮也厚。”

门开了，透出一道诱人的炉火光，只见看门的走出来了。吉尔吓得咬住嘴唇，生怕自己尖叫出来。这看门的并不完全是个大个子巨人，只能说他比一棵苹果树高些，但还没有达到一根电线杆那样的高度。他长着一头又短又硬的红发，穿着一件无袖短皮上衣，上面钉着好多金属片，仿佛把上衣变成了一件铠甲；双膝光着（当然了那上面有好多汗毛），腿上像是打着绑带。他弯下腰，瞪大眼打量着普德格伦。

“你告诉我，你是什么生物。”他说。

吉尔鼓起勇气，“不好意思，”她对巨人大声喊道，“绿衣夫人托我们向巨人绅士国王问好，她派我们两个南方孩子和这个沼泽怪——他叫普德格伦——参加你们的秋季盛宴。当然啦，还是要看你们方便。”她最后自己加了一句。

“哦，”看门人说，“那就另当别论啦。进来吧，小不点儿们，都进来吧。我去给陛下传话，你们最好去门房里待着。”他用好奇的眼光瞧了瞧两个孩子。“你们脸色发青，”他说，“我不知道竟然会有这种脸色，我自己倒不会多想。但我说啊，你们自己互相瞧着挺舒服的，人家都说物以类聚嘛。”

“我们只是冻得发青，”吉尔告诉他，“我们原本的脸色不是这样的。”

“那么快进来取取暖吧。进来，小不点儿。”看门人招呼着。

他们跟着他进了门房。听见那么大一扇门在他们身后砰的关上，确实挺吓人的，但他们一看见从昨天晚饭时就一直想念的东西——一堆火，也就把这事忘了。多旺的一堆火啊！看上去像是四五棵树在熊熊燃烧。火堆那么热，他们只能站在好几码以外，不能再走近了。他们扑通一下坐在地上，离热气尽可能近，舒坦地呼了一口气。

“小子，”看门人对另一个巨人说，这人一直坐在房间后面，直盯着这些客人看，眼珠子瞪得都快掉下来了。“跑去给国王报个信。”他把吉尔的话又重复了一遍。那个年轻点的巨人又盯着他们看了一眼，大笑了一阵，才离开了房间。

“嗨，青蛙儿，”看门人对普德格伦说，“你看上去有点累，来提提神吧。”他拿了一个黑瓶子，样子和普德格伦的瓶子挺像，但尺寸比他大二十倍。“让我瞧瞧，让我瞧瞧，”看门人说，“我不能给你整杯，不然你会淹死。我看这个盐瓶大小正合适。你到了国王那儿可不必提到这事。今后还会有人继续送银器到这儿来的，而且这又不是我的错。”

那个盐瓶跟我们见过的盐瓶也不大一样，看起来更窄，也更笔直些，对普德格伦而言刚好合适，巨人把盐瓶放在普德格伦脚边。两个孩子以为普德格伦不信任巨人，会不肯喝，谁知他喃喃自语道：“既然我们已经进来了，门也关上了，再想提防人家也来不及了。”接着他闻了闻那酒。“味儿不错，”他说，“不过由此判断也未必准确，还是要尝一口才明白。”于是他喝了一小口。“口感也不错，”他说，“不过可能只是初次上口不错。再喝一口不知道会怎么样呢？”他又喝了一大口。“啊！”他说，“但是一直喝到底会不会都是一个味呢？”于是他又喝了一大口。“要是底下有什么叫人恶心的东西，也不奇怪。”他说着说着就把酒全部喝完了，舔舔嘴唇对两个孩子说：“我刚刚这叫试验，你们懂吗？要是我喝完倒下来，或是毒性发作了，再或是变成一条蜥蜴什么的，那么你们就知道凡是他们给你们的东西都不能碰。”

巨人站得远远的，虽然听不见普德格伦说了些什么，却哈哈大笑：“喂，青蛙儿，你真是个真男人。瞧瞧把酒都喝光了！”

“我才不是个男人，”普德格伦嘟囔着说，“也不是青蛙，我是沼泽怪。”

正在这时，他们身后的门打开了，那个年轻的巨人进来说：“让他们立刻到觐见厅去。”

两个孩子站了起来，但普德格伦仍然坐着，嘴里说着：“沼泽怪，沼泽怪。值得尊敬的沼泽怪，神怪。”

“给他们带路，小子，”看门的巨人说，“你最好带上青蛙儿。他喝多了。”

“我没事儿，”普德格伦说，“不是青蛙。我不是青蛙。我是一只神怪。”

但那个年轻的巨人不由分说，拦腰把他一把抓起，又示意两个孩子跟着走。他们就这样十分狼狈地穿过院子。被巨人抓在手里的普德格伦神志不清地在空中蹬着腿，看上去倒确实像只青蛙了。不过他们也没工夫注意这事，他们很快就走进了主城堡的大门口。这时，吉尔和斯科拉博的心都比平时跳得更快了，为了赶上巨人的步伐，他们一路小跑，蹬蹬地穿过好几条走廊。然后他们俩发现来到了一间宏伟的屋子，被里面的亮光照得直眨眼睛。屋里灯火辉煌，炉火熊熊燃烧着，所有的光都一齐反射在镀金的屋顶和飞檐上。两边是数不清的巨人，他们身穿华丽的袍子。屋子另一头有两个宝座，上面端坐着两个庞然大物，看来就是国王和王后了。

他们走到离宝座约二十英尺的地方，站定了。斯科拉博和吉尔尴尬地鞠了一躬（实验学校里没教过女孩子怎样行屈膝礼），那年轻的巨人把普德格伦轻轻地放在地板上，他就瘫坐在那儿。说实话，看着他长长的四肢，实在很像只大蜘蛛。

第八章
哈方城堡

“来吧，波尔，到你上场了。”斯科拉博悄声说。

吉尔觉得自己口干得厉害，一句话也说不出来。她拼命朝斯科拉博点头示意。

斯科拉博暗想着他永远也不会原谅她和普德格伦，一边舔了舔嘴唇，对巨人国王大声说：“请陛下听我说，绿衣夫人派我们代她向您致敬，她说你们会很乐意让我们参加你们的秋季盛宴。”

巨人国王和王后互相望望，彼此点点头，微微一笑。吉尔不大喜欢他们笑的样子。相比较而言，她更喜欢国王。他长着一把好看的卷胡子，一个笔直的鹰钩鼻，就巨人里面来看，算是相当帅气的了。王后胖得吓人，长着双下巴，长着一张擦着粉的胖脸。就算这张脸精致小巧一点，也不见得好看；更何况这张脸又大了十倍，看上去简直糟透了。这时国王伸出舌头，舔了舔嘴唇。虽然这一举动并不奇怪，但他的舌头又大又红，出其不意地伸出来，真把吉尔吓了一跳。

“啊，这些孩子多好！”王后说。

“说不定她会是个好人呢！”吉尔心想。

“是啊，说得一点不错，”国王说，“欢迎你们到我们宫里来。来，伸出你们的手。”

他伸出他那只巨大的右手，他的手非常干净，手指上还戴了数不清的戒指，指甲尖得可怕。他的手实在是太大了，没法和两个孩子握手，他只好握了握他们的胳膊。

“那是什么？”国王指着普德格伦问。

“神怪。”普德格伦说。

“我的天，”王后尖叫一声，一面收拢裙子，围住脚脖子，“原来是个怪物！还是个活的。”

“他的心不坏，陛下，真的，他心肠很好，”斯科拉博赶紧说，“等你和他更熟一点，就会喜欢他的。我保证你们会喜欢。”

要是我告诉你就在这时吉尔哭了起来，希望你们不要觉得吉尔扫兴了。她哭的原因可多着呢。她的手脚、脸蛋开始变软；融化的雪正慢慢从她衣服上淌下。当天她还没吃过、喝过什么东西，腿痛得再也站不住了。不管怎么说，她在这时候哭无疑是最好的决定。王后见状说：“啊呀，可怜的孩子！陛下，我们尽让我们的客人站着可不对啊。快，来人哪！把他们带下去吃点东西，喝点酒，让他们洗洗澡，再安慰安慰那个小女孩。给她棒棒糖、洋娃娃，要是实在难受喂她吃些药，凡是你们能想到的统统给她——牛乳酒、蜜饯、香料、催眠曲、玩具……别哭了，我的小姑娘，不然你就没法参加盛宴了。”

吉尔一听到什么玩具和娃娃，就气不打一处来。虽然正如他们所说的来点糖果和蜜饯或许也不错，可是她却更希望来点实惠的东西。不过王后这番蠢话倒产生了极好的结果，因为普德格伦和斯科拉博立刻被几个巨人男侍从抱起，吉尔也被一个女侍从抱走，各自送到房间里去了。

吉尔的房间有教堂那么大，要是壁炉里没有燃烧的旺火，地上没铺着厚厚的红地毯，屋里看上去就相当可怕。在这儿发生了一些很愉快的事情。吉尔被人交给了王后的老保姆，从巨人的角度看，她是个上了年纪、弯腰屈背的小老太婆；从人类的角度来看，她还算是个女巨人，只是身材稍微矮小一点，可以走进一间普通房间，脑袋不至于碰到天花板罢了。老保姆非常能干，可是吉尔更希望她不要喋喋不休，说什么“喔，啦啦，来抱抱”，要么就是“真是我的小宝贝儿”，再或者是“好，我们好了哦，小乖乖”之类的话。她在一只巨人的洗脚盆里倒上热水，扶着吉尔爬进去。要是你像吉尔一样会游泳，那么在巨人盆里洗澡真的是非常美妙的体验了。巨人的毛巾虽然有点粗糙，但很可爱。那毛巾足足有几英亩那么大，你完全不用动手擦干，只要从毛巾上滚过去，滚到炉火前就好了。洗完澡以后，吉尔换上了干净、鲜艳、暖和的衣服。衣服华丽无比，就是大了一点，但看得出这衣服是为正常身板的人做的，而不是为女巨人做的。

“我猜那个绿衣女人肯定经常来这，所以他们肯定习惯我们这种身材的人了。”吉尔想着。

吉尔发现果然是这样，因为一副普通成人用的桌椅已经为她摆放好了，刀、叉、汤匙也都是正常的规格。终于能够暖暖和和、干干净净地坐下来了，吉尔满心欢喜。她还光着两只脚，就这样踩在巨人的地毯上可真舒服。她可以把脚踝一直伸进地毯里，刚好可以缓解脚痛。我想咱们得把这顿饭称为午饭，虽然那时已接近下午茶时间了。这顿饭品种俱全，有韭菜鸡肉汤、烤火鸡，还有一道蒸布丁、烤栗子以及应有尽有的水果。

唯一让人有些厌烦的事是老保姆不停进进出出，每次进来手里都拿着一个巨型玩具。有一个比吉尔本人还大的洋娃娃，一匹大约有大象那么大的四轮木马，一只有小煤气罐那么大的鼓，还有一只毛茸茸的小羊羔。这些东西做工都很粗糙，颜色十分艳丽。吉尔一看见这些东西就不喜欢。她一直跟保姆说她不要这些东西，但保姆说：“啧啧啧。你过一会儿准会想要的，我知道！嘻嘻嘻，好啦，我可爱的小宝贝，快上床吧！”

那张床不是一张巨人床，而是一张由四根柱子支撑起来的大床，像老式旅馆里的那种，在这间奇大无比的屋子里看起来很小很小。吉尔非常兴奋地爬上了床。

“外面还在下雪吗，嬷嬷？”她睡眼惺忪地问。

“不下雪啦，现在在下雨，宝宝！”老保姆说，“雨水会把讨厌的大雪统统冲走。可爱的小宝贝明天就能去外面玩了！”她一边说着，一边给吉尔盖好了被子，道了晚安。

我想不出什么事能比让女巨人亲吻更让人厌恶的了，吉尔也有同感，但不到五分钟她就睡着了。

那天傍晚的雨一直没停，下了整整一夜。雨点噼里啪啦地砸在城堡的窗户上，但吉尔完全没听见，呼呼沉睡，睡过了晚饭时刻，也睡过了午夜。到了深夜，这座巨人的屋子里除了老鼠，什么动静也没有。就在这时吉尔做了一个梦。

梦里她似乎就在这间屋里醒来，看见那堆火，火苗的颜色变得微弱，有点发红了，火光中她看到一匹大木马。木马轮子自动转起来，滚过地毯，停在她床头。这会儿那又不是马，而变成了一头像马那么大的狮子了。接着它又不是玩具狮子，而变成了一头真正的狮子了。那是真正的狮王，就像她曾经在世界尽头外的高山上见过的一样。屋子里弥漫着各类香味儿。这时吉尔有些不对劲，尽管她想不出来是怎么回事，但眼泪还是刷刷地沿着她的脸蛋淌下，把枕头都弄湿了。狮王叫她背一遍指示，而她发现自己竟然已经忘光了指示。为此，她吓得要命。后来阿斯兰把她衔起来（她能感觉到他的嘴唇和呼吸，但感觉不到牙齿，）带到窗前，叫她往外看。外面月光明亮，只见不知道是天上还是地面有几个大字“在我下面”。随后，梦境就消失了。第二天早上她醒来时已经很晚了，这时她已完全不记得做过梦了。

她起来穿上衣服，在炉火前刚吃完早餐，就看到保姆推开门说：“可爱宝贝的小伙伴们来找你玩啦。”

斯科拉博和沼泽怪走了进来。

“嗨，早上好，”吉尔说，“不觉得很有意思吗？我已经足足睡了十五个小时了。我现在觉得好多了，你们呢？”

“我也好多了，”斯科拉博说，“不过普德格伦说他头痛。你这儿的窗户有窗座。要是我们站到上面去，就能看到外面啦。”

一说完，他们就都站了上去。吉尔只看了一眼：“哦，真是糟糕透了！”

外面阳光普照，除了还有几堆残雪以外，其他几乎被雨冲掉了。在下面，他们看到了昨天下午拼命爬过来的山顶，就像一张地图似的展开正对着他们。从城堡中望去，那分明是一座巨人城的废墟，千真万确。吉尔现在才看出，说山顶是平的，是因为那儿还铺着路面，虽然好多地方的路面已经裂开了。那些纵横交错的堤岸原来是那些庞大的建筑留下的遗迹，这里可能曾经是巨人的宫殿和庙宇吧。他们看到了一面大约有五百英尺高的墙，岿然不动，当初她就是把这堵墙当成是悬崖的。那些看来像工厂烟囱的是一些巨大的柱子，断裂成高低不一的残桩。堆在柱子底座旁边的一些碎片，就像是倒下的大石头树。他们从山北坡往下爬过的那些突出的石头，还有他们从南面往上爬过的那些石头，原来是巨型楼梯残留下来的梯级。最糟糕的是，他们在路面中央看到了四个大字：在我下面。

他们三个都惊愕地面面相觑，斯科拉博吹了声口哨，说出了他们的心理活动。“我们已经错过了第二点和第三点指示。”

这时吉尔才回想起她的梦。

“都怪我不好，”她的声音里满是绝望，“我后来没有坚持每晚背诵那些指示。要是我一直想着那些指示，即便在那么大的风雪里，我本该能看出那是一座城市的。”

“更是我的错，”普德格伦说，“我的确看见了，或者说差不多看见了。我还认为那地方只是看起来非常像一座废墟城呢。”

“不该怪你，”斯科拉博说，“你确实想尽力拉住我们。”

“可是我还是不够坚定，”沼泽怪说，“而且我也没必要尽力说服你们，我本来可以直接动手的。我一手拉一个，还阻拦不了你们吗？”

“可事实是，”斯科拉博说，“我们都一心向往着来到这个地方，别的事压根没放在心上。至少我自己是这样的。自从我们遇见那个女人和那个不说话的骑士，就一直没想过别的事，几乎已经忘了瑞廉王子了。”

“如果那正是她的目的，”普德格伦说，“也不奇怪。”

“我不大懂的是，”吉尔说，“我们怎么会没看见那些字呢？或者说，这字是不是昨晚才出现的？是不是阿斯兰晚上写在那儿的？昨天我做了个怪梦。”然后她就把梦全告诉了他们。

“你这个傻瓜！”斯科拉博说，“我们的确见过这些字的。我们还走到字里面去了，你还不明白吗？我们走到M E（英语中Me表示‘我’）的后一个字母E里去了，那就是你掉下去的那条沟。我们走在E字最下面一划进去，然后从右手边向正北走，然后再转到我们右边——那就是字母中间的一划，接着我们又继续往左上拐角走，也可以说是这个字母的东北角，再走回来，不就正好是在E字形里面走吗？我们都是大笨蛋。”他粗鲁地踢了窗座一脚，继续往下说：“所以说我们办糟了，波尔。我知道你在想什么，因为我跟你有同样的想法。你在想，要是阿斯兰是在我们走过这个废墟城之后再把这些指示写在石头上该有多好呀。这么想那就是他的错，不是我们的错了。你就是这么想的，对吗？这样不行，我们必须得坦白。现在我们只剩下第四点指示可以照办了，前面三点都已经错过了。”

“你意思是说这是我的错，”吉尔说，“这话不假。从你带我上这儿来以后，我就把一切都弄糟了。我真的对此十分抱歉，那指示是什么？‘在我下面’这几个字好像没有什么寓意吧。”

“有的，”普德格伦说，“意思是我们要到那个城市下面去寻找王子。”

“但我们要怎么过去呢？”吉尔问。

“问题就在这儿，”普德格伦一面说着，一面搓搓那双像青蛙爪子般的大手，“现在我们有什么办法呢？如果我们当初在废墟城的时候，能把心思全部放在要干的事上面，我们就会知道我们该怎么办了，比如发现一扇小门啊，一个山洞啊，或者一条地道啊，可能还会遇见什么人来帮助我们，比如阿斯兰本人（事情都很难说）。我们总有办法钻到那些铺路石下面去的。阿斯兰的指示一向管用，从不失手。但现在怎么办，现在是另外一回事了。”

“得了，我想我们只能回去了。”吉尔说。

“说得倒容易吧？”普德格伦说，“我们先不妨想想怎么打开那扇门。”

他们三个都看了那扇门一眼，发现谁也够不着门把，即使够得着也没人能转得动它。

“你们看，要是我们要求出去，他们会不让我们出去吗？”吉尔说。大家都不吭声，但每个人都在想：“如果他们不肯呢？”

这主意可不太妙。普德格伦坚决反对把他们此行真实的任务告诉巨人，也觉得直接要求出去这样的主意不可行。当然两个孩子也已经保证过没有得到他的许可不能透露他们的任务。他们仨都知道要在晚上逃出城堡是完全没有可能的。一旦他们被关在自己的房间里，他们就得一直等到早上再找机会了。当然了他们可以请求保姆开着房门，但那样会引起怀疑。

“我们只有一个办法，”斯科拉博说，“就是在白天偷偷溜走。下午会不会有个把小时巨人都睡着了呢？要是我们能偷偷到厨房里去看看，那里会不会有一扇后门开着？”

“这也说不上是一个办法，”沼泽怪说，“但我们很可能只能这么做了。”

事实上，斯科拉博的计划并不像你们想的那样希望渺茫。如果你要走出一所房子而不被发现，从某些方面看来，选择下午出去倒比半夜要更好。那时候门窗很可能都开着，万一被抓住，你总是可以装出并不是有意要走远，而且也没什么特别的打算。（要是深更半夜被人发现你正从卧室窗户往外爬，别说是巨人了，就是在普通成年人面前也很难蒙混过去。）

“但我们一定要趁他们没有防备的时候，”斯科拉博说，“我们得装出很喜欢在这里的样子，一心盼望着这次秋季盛宴。”

“盛宴就在明天晚上，”普德格伦说，“我听其中有人这么说。”

“哦，”吉尔说，“那我们得装出对秋季盛宴非常感兴趣，一直提问。反正他们当我们完全是小娃娃，这样事情也好办一些。”

“我们要装得开心点，”普德格伦深深叹了口气，“我们一定要高高兴兴的，就仿佛我们一点心事也没有，就爱闹着玩儿。我注意到了，你们两个孩子没有经常表现出兴奋的样子。你们得看看我，照着我做的去做。你们看，我高高兴兴的，就像这样——”他龇牙咧嘴，做出一副可怕的笑容，“还爱闹着玩儿——”说到这儿他又苦中作乐地蹦蹦跳跳，“要是你们一直看我，很快就学会了。你们瞧，他们已经把我当成有趣的家伙了。我敢说，你们俩都认为昨晚我有点喝醉了吧，你们放心，那是——大部分都是装出来的。我有预感，这样做总会派上用处的。”

当孩子们事后谈起这次探险时，他们都觉得普德格伦的最后一句话恐怕并不是那样靠谱，只有普德格伦自己信心十足。

“行啊，那咱们就装出兴奋的样子吧，”斯科拉博说，“好了，只要我们能让什么人打开这扇门就行。我们在四处闲逛，装作无比兴奋的时候，还要尽力摸清这座城堡的情况。”

碰巧此时，门打开了，巨人保姆急急忙忙跑进来：“嗨，我的宝贝儿。想去看国王和群臣出发去打猎吗？那场面可壮观啦！”

他们立刻从她身边挤过去，奔向第一段楼梯。顺着猎狗、号角和巨人的声音过去，没花几分钟他们就来到了院子里。巨人们全都步行，因为这个世界里没有巨型马，所以巨人打猎是走着去的，就像在英格兰打野兔那样。猎狗也是正常大小的狗。吉尔看见没有马，刚开始她非常失望，因为她确信那个胖王后是绝对不会跟在猎狗后面走的，而王后整天都待在宫里也是绝对不行的。不料看见王后原来坐在一个巨大的轿子里，由六个年轻的巨人抬着。那个蠢女人穿着一身绿，身边还放着一只号角。

二三十个巨人，包括国王，一行准备去打猎，他们说笑的声音简直要把人的耳朵震聋了。地面上，一条条同吉尔差不多高的猎狗摇摆着尾巴，汪汪直叫，半张着嘴，把潮乎乎的嘴和鼻子硬贴到你手里。普德格伦正准备装出一种极度兴奋的样子（要是有谁注意到他，可能一切都要毁了），这时吉尔就拿出她最动人的稚气笑容，冲到王后轿边，大声朝王后撒着娇：“哦，求求您了！您不是要走吧。您会回来吗？”

“我会回来的，亲爱的，”王后说，“我今天晚上就回来。”

“噢耶，真好！太棒啦！”吉尔说，“那我们能参加明晚的盛宴吧？我们都盼望着明天晚上呢！我们特别喜欢待在这儿。你们出去的时候我们能在城堡里四处看看吗？还请您说句‘可以’吧！”

王后果真照说了，群臣都哈哈大笑，笑声几乎把她的声音淹没了。

第九章
真相大白

事后，另外两位对吉尔那天的表现赞不绝口。国王和一块去打猎的大臣们一离开，她就开始了城堡探索之旅，还用那副天真烂漫、孩子气的腔调问了好多问题，所以没人会怀疑她有什么预谋。虽然她嘴巴一直没闲着，但她几乎没说什么，只是一直在咿咿呀呀，咯咯痴笑。她尽力迎合这里的每个人——男仆、看门人、女仆、女侍官，还有那些过了打猎年纪的老贵族们。她忍受着女巨人们的亲吻和爱抚，她们似乎都觉得她很可怜，叫她“可怜的小东西”，然而谁也没说清楚同情她什么。她跟厨子成了特别要好的朋友，并发现了最重要的秘密。厨房洗碗间有一扇门，从那里可以穿过外墙，而且不必经过院子或门房。她在厨房里装出一副嘴馋的样子，吃了厨子和厨房帮工热心给她准备的各类残渣。

而到了楼上，她就围着那些夫人问，在盛宴上她得怎么装扮自己啊，她可以坐多长时间啊，有没有机会跟最小的巨人跳舞啊等等。然后她还装出一副傻样儿，把脑袋歪在一边，那些成年巨人们看了这副模样都觉得十分迷人。她还故意拨动自己的头发，按捺不住激动的样子说：“哦，我真希望现在已经是明天晚上了，你们盼望盛宴吗？时间很快就到了是不是？”她后来回想起那日的举止，只觉得浑身发烫。所有的女巨人都夸她是个十全十美的小宝贝；有些人还拿出一块好大的手绢擦拭眼睛，好像快要哭了。

“她们这个年纪最可爱了，”一个女巨人对另一个说，“看起来实在叫人怜惜……”

斯科拉博和普德格伦也都使出浑身解数，不过撒娇这种事情总是女孩子最擅长，但男孩子比沼泽怪强一点。

午饭时的一件事情让他们更加焦急地想离开巨人的城堡了。他们在大厅里靠近火炉的一张小桌上用餐。大约二十码以外，六个老巨人围坐着一张大桌子用餐。他们说话的声音吵闹至极，两个孩子根本没去注意他们在说话，就像你往往也不会去注意窗外的汽笛声和街上的交通噪音。他们吃着冷鹿肉，虽然吉尔以前从来没吃过，但她倒觉得味道很不错。

正在这时，普德格伦转向他们，他的脸色煞白煞白的，那种苍白你能透过他那天然泥土色的皮肤看得清清楚楚。他说：“别吃了！”

“怎么啦？”两个孩子悄悄地问。

“你们没听见那些巨人的谈话吗？一个说，‘那是大块嫩鹿腿肉。’另一个说，‘这么说那只鹿刚刚说谎了。’第一个说话的人又问，‘为什么？’另外那个说，‘听说抓住这只鹿的时候，他说，别杀他，因为他的肉很老，大家不会喜欢’”。吉尔刚开始没能领会这句话的意思。听到斯科拉博目瞪口呆地说“原来我们正在吃一只会说话的鹿”，她才终于明白过来。

三个人发现了这一事实后的心情其实各不相同。吉尔初来这个世界，只是在心里为这只可怜的鹿感到难过，并认为杀了他的那些巨人很坏；而斯科拉博以前来过，他的好朋友中就有会说话的动物，因此不寒而栗，那种感觉就像是听说了一桩谋杀案；而一直生长在纳尼亚的普德格伦则觉得无比恶心，就像发现自己吃下了一个娃娃似的，几乎要昏厥过去。

“我们惹阿斯兰生气了，”他说，“这是我们不照指示做的后果。我想，这是阿斯兰对我们的诅咒。我们这会儿最好拿起这些刀，对着自己的心脏刺进去。”

吉尔慢慢地就理解到沼泽怪的感受。总之，这顿饭他们是一点也不想吃了，他们只想着一旦安全些，他们就悄悄溜出大厅。

现在那个决定他们能否逃离的重要时刻就快到了，大家都变得非常紧张。他们在过道里闲逛，等着周围一切都静下来。大厅里的巨人吃完饭还坐了很长时间。等到一个秃顶巨人讲完故事，他们三个就立马混到厨房里。可他们发现那里还有好多巨人，至少洗碗间里有好多人，忙着洗涮收拾餐具。等着这些人慢慢干完活，再一个个擦拭完手走开，真是一件漫长而极其痛苦的事。现在，厨房里只留下一个上了年纪的女巨人了。她东走走，西逛逛——他们三个这才明白了，她根本就没打算走。

“好了，宝贝儿，”她对他们说，“活儿都差不多干完了。我们来放上一只水壶，马上就可以煮上一杯好茶。我现在要休息一下。乖宝宝们，去洗碗间里头看看，告诉我那扇后门开着吗？”

“开着。”斯科拉博说。

“那就好，我一直让门敞开着，这样猫咪就能随便进出了，都是些可怜的小东西。”

接着她在一把椅子上坐下，把双脚搁在另一把椅子上。

“也不知道我能不能趁机打个盹儿，”女巨人说，“但愿那伙打猎的别那么快回来就好了。”

一听到她说要打盹儿，他们三个顿时情绪高涨；可再听到她提起打猎那伙人就要回来的事情，又开始垂头丧气了。

“他们通常什么时候回来？”吉尔问。

“没个准，”女巨人说，“好啦，宝贝儿，你们也去歇会儿吧。”

于是他们退到厨房尽头。若不是那女巨人突然又坐起来，睁开眼睛，挥开一只苍蝇，他们早就溜进洗碗间去了。“等到确定她真的睡着了咱们再溜，”斯科拉博小声说，“否则我们就完蛋了。”于是他们就蜷缩在厨房尽头一直等，观察情况。想到那些打猎的巨人随时都可能回来不免胆战心惊。但那个女巨人睡得又不安稳。每当他们以为她真睡着了，结果她又动了。

“这可让人受不了。”吉尔想道。为了分散注意力，她开始四处观望。面前正好有一张干净的大桌子，上面有两只放馅饼的干净盘子，还有一本打开的书。那显然是巨人用的盘子，吉尔幻想着躺进盘子里也是挺惬意的。于是她就爬到桌边的长凳上，准备看看那本书。她看到一行字：

野鸭：这种美味的鸟有很多种烹调方式。

“原来是一本烹饪书。”吉尔觉得有点无趣，又回头望了一眼女巨人。只见她眼睛闭着，但看上去似乎没睡熟。吉尔又回过头来继续看书。当她的目光移到下面一行，她的心脏似乎都要停止跳动了：

人：这种举止文雅的两足小动物一直以来被视为美味佳肴，也成为秋季盛宴的一道传统菜。上菜顺序应在鱼和带骨腿肉之间。每个人……

她实在是不忍再看下去了，只好转过身去。女巨人已经醒来，这会儿正咳嗽不止。吉尔轻轻推了推另外两个，指指那本书。于是他们俩也爬上长凳，弯腰开始读那本巨大的书。斯科拉博还在看人的烹调法时，普德格伦看到了下面一条，上面这样写着：

沼泽怪：专家不提倡吃这种动物，因其肉多筋坚韧，而且有泥土味，不适合巨人食用，不过有处理方法可以大大减少泥土味，只要……

吉尔这时轻轻碰了碰普德格伦和斯科拉博的脚。大家都回头朝女巨人看。只见她的嘴巴微微张开，鼻子里响起一阵对他们来说比任何音乐都更动听的声音：她在那打呼噜呢。那事情就好办了，只要踮起脚走路就可以了。他们不敢走太快，也不大敢呼吸，就这么走出了洗碗间（巨人的洗碗间味道挺难闻的），终于来到了冬日下午温和的阳光下。

他们走在一条崎岖不平的小路上，小路下坡十分陡峭。谢天谢地，废墟城就在城堡的右面。没过多久，他们就回到了城堡大门通下来的那条宽阔但陡峭的大路上。通过城堡那边的每扇窗户都能看得见他们。要是那边只有一两扇，或者就算有五扇窗户，都可以安慰自己说那会碰巧没人往外看。可那边毕竟有将近五十扇窗户。他们这才明白，原来他们走的这条路，他们到废墟城的这段路，连一只狐狸躲藏的地方都没有，尽是粗糙的野草、鹅卵石和扁平的石块。更糟糕的是两个孩子现在都穿着昨晚巨人给他们的衣服，只有沼泽怪不是，因为没有适合他穿的。吉尔穿了件老长的嫩绿色袍子，袍子外面罩了一件镶着白色毛皮的红色披风；斯科拉博则穿着猩红色长袜、蓝色紧身短上衣和一件斗篷，腰佩一把金柄的剑，还戴了一顶插着羽毛的帽子。

“你们俩的衣服颜色真不错，”普德格伦喃喃地说，“在冬日的阳光下显得特别耀眼。要是你们在射程以内，就连水平最糟的弓箭手也能射中你们俩。说起弓箭手，我们很快就要后悔当初没有带上弓箭了，也不奇怪。你们那些衣服也有点薄吧？”

“是啊，我现在冷极了。”吉尔说。

刚才在厨房里的时候，她还想着只要一逃出城堡，他们就差不多大功告成了。现在她才明白最危险的还在后面呢。

“沉住气，沉住气，”普德格伦说，“别往后看，另外别走太快。随便你怎么走，千万别跑。我们要装出一副正在散步的样子，那样要是有人看见我们，他才可能不阻止我们，我只是说可能。要是我们看起来就是一副落荒而逃的样子，就完了。”

到废墟城的那段路似乎比吉尔原本想象的更长，但他们离终点还是越来越近了。这时耳边传来一个声音，另外两个吓得大口喘气。吉尔问道：“那是什么呀？”

“打猎的号角声。”斯科拉博悄声说。

“即使在这种危急的时刻也千万别跑，”普德格伦说，“等我下了命令再跑。”

吉尔忍不住回头望了一眼。只见大约半英里以外，打猎的队伍回来了，就在他们的左后方。

他们继续往前走，吵吵嚷嚷的声音突然就响了起来，接着他们还听到了大喊大叫的声音。

“他们看见我们了，快跑。”普德格伦说。

吉尔提起长裙就跑，穿着长裙跑起来真够费劲的。此时情况十分危急。她能听清猎狗的叫声，耳边传来国王的咆哮：“抓住他们，快抓住他们，否则我们明天就没有人肉馅饼吃了。”

这会儿吉尔已经落在了最后面，被长裙绊住了手脚，磕倒在散落的石头上，头发飘进了嘴里，胸口跑得发疼。猎狗更近了。现在她得往山上跑，跑到通往最低一级大石阶的那个斜坡。她不知道到那儿之后该怎么办，也不知道到了坡顶情况会不会好一些。但她现在没法想那么多，她就像一只被追捕的动物，那群猎狗穷追不停，她就得一直跑下去，直到跑不动了倒地为止。

沼泽怪跑在最前面。他刚到最低一级石阶就停下了，朝斜右方看看，转眼间就窜进石阶底部的一个小洞或是裂缝里去了。他的长腿钻进去的样子，看上去真像一只蜘蛛。斯科拉博犹疑了一下，接着跟在他后头也不见人影了。吉尔气喘吁吁，跌跌撞撞，过了一会儿终于也到了这个地方。这洞一点也不起眼，只是泥地和石头之间的一条裂缝罢了。大约有三英尺长，不到一英尺高。你得扑在地上脸朝下爬进去，但是也不能爬得太快。她几乎确定的是，自己还没爬到洞里，狗就会来咬住她了。

“快，快，拿石头把口子堵上。”普德格伦的声音从她身边的暗处传来。

除了他们爬进来的那条裂缝透出一丝灰蒙蒙的光，里面一片漆黑。另外两个正忙得不可开交。只见斯科拉博那双小手和沼泽怪那双像青蛙爪子的大手，背着光看上去黑乎乎的，在拼命堆石头。这时她才明白了为什么要这样做，于是也开始摸着黑找大石头，递给他俩。他们总算赶在猎狗到达洞口之前把洞堵得严严实实。眼前，他们一丁点亮光都看不见了。

“往里走，快。”普德格伦说。

“我们大家手拉手吧。”吉尔提议道。

“这是一个好主意。”斯科拉博同意。

但他们费了好长时间才在黑乎乎的洞里找到彼此的手。猎狗这会儿正在石堆那头嗅气味呢。

“试试看能不能站起来。”斯科拉博建议道。他们试了一下，发现果真可以。于是，普德格伦伸出一只手拉着后面的斯科拉博，斯科拉博又伸出一只手拉住后面的吉尔（她真希望她站在他俩中间而不是最后），他们用脚探路，在黑暗中跌跌撞撞往前走。脚下到处都是散落的小石头。后来普德格伦走到一堵石墙前面，他们稍稍往右拐进去，然后继续走下去。这一路有好多弯道和拐角。吉尔已经晕头转向了，也不知道洞口在什么地方。

“现在的问题是，”普德格伦从前面的黑暗中传来了话，“要是我们往回走，回去成为巨人盛宴的款待之一，也不见得就比在小山沟里迷路好。这里十之八九有龙，有深洞，有沼气，还有深水沟，说不定还有——哎呀！放手！你们自己当心！我……”

说时迟，那时快，耳边只听到一声尖叫，一阵嗦嗦嚓嚓的声音，还有石头咕噜噜滚动时的声响。吉尔只觉得自己在往下滑，一直往下落，每滑到下一个更陡的斜坡，速度就更快。这不是一块光滑、结实的斜坡，它到处布满了小石子和碎屑。即便你能站住也无济于事。就算你踩在了斜坡上，脚下也会生滑，你还是会掉下去。吉尔其实不能算是站着，她更像是躺在坡上。他们一边往下滑，一边搅动了所有的石头和泥土，一切都跟着他们一齐往下冲，而且冲势越来越快，声音越来越响，尘土扬起愈烈，一切都变得脏兮兮的。听到另外两个伙伴的尖声叫喊和咒骂声，吉尔这才知道原来她踩掉的石头都重重地砸在了斯科拉博和普德格伦的身上。凭她下滑的速度来看，她几乎断定自己着底时准会摔得粉身碎骨。

出乎意料的是，他们居然没有粉身碎骨，只是浑身上下全都青一块、紫一块的，她脸上好像沾了血，又湿又黏。她被好大一堆碎土、砂石和大石块包围着，甚至快被淹没了，这使她没法站起来。这个地方黑咕隆咚，睁眼闭眼看起来都一样。也没有一点声音。这绝对是吉尔一生中最惨的时刻了。想想若只有她一个人，若其他两个……然后，她听见身边有了些动静。过了一会，他们三个就声音颤抖地说，看来他们都没有摔断骨头。

“我们再也没法上去了。”斯科拉博说。

“你们注意到这儿暖和多了吗？”普德格伦说，“这就意味着我们滑下了很长一段路了。也许有一英里左右吧。”

这句话说完后，三个人沉默了。过了一会儿，普德格伦又补充了一句：“我的引火盒不见了。”

又沉默了很长一段时间，吉尔终于说了一句：“我好渴。”

但谁也没有提议接下来做什么。很显然，被困在这个地方，什么事情也做不了。其实他们并没有绝望透顶，只是因为他们现在真的很累了。

长时间的沉默过后，大家没有想到的是，耳边居然传来了一个完全陌生的声音。他们立马就知道这绝不是大家心里暗暗盼望听到的声音，绝不是阿斯兰的声音。那个声音听起来阴沉又单调，几乎可以称得上暗黑至极。

那个声音说的是：“上面世界的人，是什么风把你们刮到这里来的？”

第十章
不见光日的旅行

“是谁？”他们三个大声问道。

“我是地下世界边境看守，跟我站在一起的有一百名全副武装的地下士兵，赶紧说，你们是何人，到地下世界来有何事？”有人回应道。

“我们是不小心掉下来的。”普德格伦实话实说了。

“掉下来的人很多，但能回到阳光世界的人很少。”那声音说，“快跟我走，到我们女王那儿去。”

“她会要我们干什么？”斯科拉博小心地问。

“这我不知道，”那人说，“她的意愿不容置疑，只能服从。”

他说这些话的时候，突然空气中传来一阵轻微的爆炸声，岩洞里顿时透进一片冷光，灰沉沉的光线中还有一缕蓝光。大家都希望那个刚刚一直在瞎吹牛、吓唬他们说这里有一百名武装士兵的看守立马灰飞烟灭。正想着的时候，吉尔发现眼前密密麻麻站了一群人。这些人个子高矮不一，有不到一英尺高的小精灵，也有比常人威武的大个子。他们手里全都拿着三叉长矛，个个脸上都是惨白惨白的。他们站着一动不动，活像一座座雕像。他们当中，有的长了尾巴，有的没有；有的脸上蓄着大胡子，还有的人脸上圆滚滚、光溜溜的，活像大南瓜；再说鼻子的形状，有的是长长的尖鼻子，有的是软绵绵的长鼻子，像小象鼻似的，还有的长着胖乎乎肉疙瘩似的大鼻子；还有几个前额正中长了只独角。他们虽然外貌各异，但有一点很相像，每张脸上都挂着无比伤心的神情。他们看起来是那么伤心，以至于吉尔看过一眼后，之前的恐惧立马消失了。她很想让他们高兴起来。

“得，”普德格伦搓搓手说，“这正是我想要的。如果这些家伙都没法教会我严肃对待生活，那我就不知道什么可以教会我了。看看那个长着一撮海象胡子的家伙，还有那个……”

“快起来。”看守声色俱厉地说。

他们三个只好手拉着手赶紧站起来。一个人在这种时候最需要挽着朋友的手了。那些地下人全都围在他们身边，一双双又大又软的脚在地上慢慢移动，他们有的长着十个脚趾，有的长着十二个，还有一些甚至连一个脚趾都没有。

“齐步走。”看守下令道。他们就乖乖走了。

那团冷光是从一根长杆顶上的一个大球里发出来的。最高的小精灵举着这根长杆，走在队伍最前面。在暗淡的光线下，他们看出自己正走在一个天然的大岩洞里；洞壁和洞顶上坑坑洼洼，歪歪扭扭，裂成千奇百怪的形状。脚下的石头地面往下倾斜。这对吉尔来说尤其糟糕，因为她讨厌黑暗的地下场所。他们走下去时，那山洞变得越来越低，也越来越窄，最后拿灯的那个精灵站在一边，其他小精灵一个个弯下腰（最小的几个不需要），走入一条又小又黑的裂缝里就消失不见了。吉尔再也受不了了。

“我不能进去，我不能！我不能！我不去！”她喘着粗气说。地下士兵们不说话，但全都把矛放低，用矛头对着她。

“沉住气，波尔，”普德格伦说，“这个洞之后会变宽些的，要不然那些大个子家伙根本就进不去。再说了，这地下世界里淋不到雨，不也挺好的吗？”

“哦不，你不懂的，我真的不能去。”吉尔哭喊着。

“想想我当初在悬崖上的那种感觉吧，波尔，”斯科拉博说，“你先走，普德格伦，我在她后面走。”

“好吧，”沼泽怪两手两膝着地，“波尔，你抓着我的脚后跟，斯科拉博再抓住你的，这样我们大家就都舒服了。”

“舒服？！”吉尔撇嘴，不过她还是趴下了。他们都用手肘撑着爬了进去。

这地方让人恶心，你得把脸趴在地上，你以为已经过去半小时了，其实可能只过去了五分钟。洞里很热，吉尔觉得自己都要闷死了。不过前面总算露出一丝微光，地道也变得更宽、更高了。走出来时他们又热又脏，浑身发抖，然后就来到了一个山洞里。山洞很大，简直完全不像一个山洞。洞里的光又昏又暗，地下精灵们也不需要举着奇怪的灯笼了。地上长着一种青苔，走在上面软软的。青苔上长出很多奇形怪状、有树那么高而长有分枝、又像蘑菇那么松软的东西。但这些东西隔得太远，看着不像是树林，倒更像个公园。洞里那灰绿色的光似乎就是从这些东西和青苔上发出来的，不过它们还不够亮，照不见洞顶，想必洞顶还隔着好远一段距离吧。被迫穿过这个不冷不热、让人昏昏欲睡的舒适地儿，真让人有些难过，只是像柔和的音乐那样，伤心中又带着恬静的味儿。

在这里他们又看到草地上躺着许许多多奇怪的动物，吉尔说不清它们究竟是死了还是睡着了。这些动物大部分像是龙或是蝙蝠一类，而普德格伦一种也不认识。

“这些动物一直都生长在这儿吗？”斯科拉博问那个看守。

听到有人搭话，他看起来着实惊讶，但还是回答了，“不，它们全是通过裂缝和山洞下来的动物，从上面的世界来的。但几乎没人能回到阳光世界。据说到了世界末日，它们才会醒来。”

说完这些，他就再次把嘴紧紧闭上。山洞里一派寂静，两个孩子都不敢再说话了。一只只小精灵光脚走在深厚的青苔上，没有发出一点脚步声。这里没有风声，没有鸟鸣，没有水声，也听不见那些奇怪动物的呼吸声。

他们就这样一直走了好几英里，最后来到一堵石墙面前。墙上有一道低低的拱门，通往另一个山洞。好在它不像上次那个入口那么糟，吉尔走进去时不用低头。穿过拱门，他们又进入一个略小的山洞。山洞又长又窄，像个教堂，里面躺着一个体型巨大的人，正在呼呼大睡，身子几乎塞满了整个山洞。他的个头比其他巨人都大得多，而脸也不像巨人那样丑陋，他是那样高贵而英俊。雪白的胡子一直垂到腰部，胡子下面的胸脯轻微地上下起伏，一缕纯银色的光照在他身上（谁也没看见光的来源）。

“那是谁？”普德格伦打破了长久的沉寂。吉尔暗暗想，沼泽怪居然有那么大的勇气。

“那是时间老人，他曾是地上世界的国王，”看守说，“如今他掉入地下世界，躺在那儿重梦上面经历过的一切。掉下来的人很多，但几乎没人能回到阳光世界，据说到世界末日才会醒来。”

出了那个山洞，他们又穿过另一个山洞，接着再穿过一个又一个。吉尔都数不清走过多少个山洞了，只知道他们一直是在下山，每个山洞都比前一个低。一想起头顶上有那么厚的土地，就让人窒息。最后他们来到一处，看守命令再点上那只暗淡的灯笼。然后他们走进了一个又宽又黑的山洞，里面什么都看不见，只看见一股灰白的沙子正泻入静止的水面。小小的码头旁，停着一条船，没有桅杆也没有帆，只有很多桨。他们被赶上船，带到船头。划船手的长凳前有一块空间，沿舷墙内侧有一排座位。

“我想打听一件事，”普德格伦说，“这里以前有没有来过一个从我们世界来的人——我指的是从上面那个世界到这儿？”

“在这个灰白色沙滩乘船的多，”看守回答说，“但……”

“哎呀，我都知道了，”普德格伦打断他，“但几乎没人能回到阳光世界。你不必再说了。你真是个死心眼儿，不是吗？”

两个孩子紧紧缩在普德格伦两旁。在上面的时候他们把他看成一个扫兴的家伙，但在下面他倒似乎成了他们唯一的安慰。然后那盏暗淡的灯笼被挂到船的中部，他们自己人坐下来划桨，船就这样动起来了。灯笼的光只能照亮一小段路，再往前他们就什么也看不见了，只见平静黑暗的水面消失在一片漆黑中。

“真不知道接下来会发生什么事情。”吉尔绝望地说。

“嗨，不要愁眉苦脸啦，波尔，”沼泽怪说，“你只要记住一件事，我们现在已经回到正轨。我们原本计划要到废墟城下面去，而我们现在来到城下面了，而且我们也再次按照指示做了。”

不久，他们被分到了一点食物——口味清淡又松软、几乎吃不出味道的饼。此后他们就慢慢睡着了。但等他们醒来时，一切照旧，小精灵依然在划桨，船依然在悄然前行，前面依然是一团漆黑。他们醒了又睡，睡了又吃，然后再继续睡，就这样不知道醒醒睡睡多少次，大家都记不清了。最糟糕的是，你开始觉得，以后要一直生活在这艘船上，生活在这片黑暗中，你似乎已经开始怀疑，是不是太阳、蓝天、风和鸟只能出现在梦里了。

当他们几乎已经不抱任何希望，不再惧怕的时候，前面终于出现了灯光，就像船上那盏灯笼一样黯淡。随后，突然有一盏灯在慢慢靠近，原来是另一艘船。之后他们又碰到了好几艘船。他们睁大眼睛，使出全部解数才看出前头有灯光的地方好像是码头、城墙、楼塔和来往的人群。只是仍然听不到什么声音。

“天哪，”斯科拉博说，“这是一座城市！”吉尔和沼泽怪也恍然大悟。

但这是一座奇怪的城市。灯那么少，灯与灯之间的距离又那么远，还比不上我们世界里零散的农舍呢。但在灯光下你能看清这一小块地方很像是一个大海港。你看得出在一边有好多船，正在装卸货物，在另一边你能看到一包包货物和一个个仓库，还有一边你看到了墙和柱子，不禁想起华丽的宫殿或庙宇。而且，只要是有灯的地方，就人山人海——狭窄的街道上，宽阔的广场上，还有巨大的石阶上，都挤满了成千上万的地下人。他们走动时脚步很轻，都在忙着自己的事儿。他们不断地走动，发出轻柔的沙沙声。船越靠越近，但四处听不到任何歌声、吆喝声或是钟声，也没有车轮声。这个城市静悄悄的，漆黑得就像钻进了一座蚁山。

最后他们这条船给拖到码头边拴牢。他们三个被带上岸，走进城去。成群的地下人，面貌各不相同，在拥挤的街头跟他们擦肩而过，暗淡的光照在许许多多悲哀、古怪的面孔上。但没人对陌生人表现出一点兴趣。每个小精灵似乎都是又忙碌又悲伤，虽然吉尔根本看不出他们那么忙忙碌碌在干什么。只是没完没了地走啊走、推推搡搡，匆匆忙忙，发出轻柔的脚步声。

他们终于来到了一座看似巨大的城堡前，可是里面几乎没有窗户亮着灯。他们被押进去，穿过一个院子，然后爬上了好多级楼梯，最后被带进了一间灯光昏暗的大房间。不料叫人忍不住雀跃的是，房间的一角有座拱门，里面亮着一种久违的灯光，就是人类用的那种正常的淡黄色的暖光。这光一直照到拱门里面的楼梯脚，楼梯绕着石墙不断向上，灯光似乎是从楼上照下来的。拱门两边各站着一个地下人，像是卫兵或是侍从。

看守走到这两个人身边，就像是在说口令：

“掉下来的人很多。”

“但几乎没人能回到阳光世界。”他们回答道，像是在对暗号。然后三个人脑袋凑在一起说话。最后听到其中一个侍从说，“女王陛下有要事出去了。我们最好把这些从上面来的人关在暗牢里等她回来，几乎没人能回到阳光世界。”

这时这段谈话被另一个声音打断了，在吉尔听来那简直就是天底下最可爱的声音，声音是从楼梯顶上传来的，那声音清脆、响亮，确确实实是人类的声音——一个年轻男人的声音。

“你们在下面嚷嚷什么呀，穆鲁古瑟伦？”那声音大声说道，“原来是上面世界的人！带到我这儿来，马上！”

“请殿下记住……”穆鲁古瑟伦刚开了口，就被那个声音打断了。

“要让殿下我高兴，你就要服从，别贫嘴。把他们带上来。”这个声音说道。

穆鲁古瑟伦只得摇摇头，对这三个做了个手势，让他们跟着上楼。每上一级楼梯，灯光就更亮。墙上挂着富丽的挂毯，楼梯顶头薄薄的帘子里透出金色的灯光。地下侍从拉开帘子，站在一边。吉尔他们三个就走了进去。那是一个十分漂亮的房间，挂满了挂毯，干净的壁炉里火光明亮，桌上的雕花玻璃杯和红酒闪闪发光。一个年轻的金发男人起身向他们问好。他长得一表人才，看上去为人勇敢又和善，不过脸上的神情有些异常。他一身黑衣，看上去有点像哈姆雷特。

“欢迎你们，阳光世界的人们，”他大声说道，“可是等一下！不好意思啊，我见过你们这两个漂亮的孩子，还有这位，你们这位古怪的向导。你们三个不是在艾丁斯荒原边界的桥上遇见过我的吗？我当时骑着马跟在夫人旁边。”

“哦？你就是那个一声没吭的黑骑士？”吉尔失声喊道。

“那位夫人就是地下世界的女王吧？”普德格伦很不客气，没好声气地问。斯科拉博也脱口而出：“要是真的是这么回事的话，我相信她完全是有意把我们打发到一个想以我们为食的巨人城堡去的。我倒想问问我们哪儿得罪她了？”

“怎么？”那黑骑士皱了皱眉，“小子，念在你还年轻的份上，我就不和你计较了，不然你我必须要决一死战。我不想听任何有损夫人名声的话。但有一点你们可以放心，不论她对你们说什么，她的用意都是好的。你们不了解她，她是集所有美德于一体的鲜花——她忠诚、仁慈、坚定、温柔、勇敢，她的优点不一而足。我知道什么就说什么，单凭她对我的好，我这辈子就没法报答她，几乎可以写就一段令世人惊叹的历史。不过你们今后就明白了，你们会喜欢她的。话说，你们来地下世界干什么？”

普德格伦还没来得及阻止，吉尔就已经脱口而出：“不好意思打搅了，我们是在寻找纳尼亚的瑞廉王子。”说罢她才明白自己冒了一个多大的险，这些人很可能是敌人。但那骑士听了竟毫无兴趣。

“瑞廉？纳尼亚？”他漫不经心地说，“纳尼亚？那是什么地方？我从来没听说过这个名字。依我看，那一定是在阳光世界中离这几千海里之外的地方了。这真是异想天开，你们竟会相信到这儿能找到一个……叫什么来着，比廉还是特里廉？据我所知，在夫人的王国里，并没有这么一个人。”说完后他哈哈大笑。吉尔暗暗想道：“真奇怪，他脸上的神情有些怪异，他该不会有点儿傻吧？”

“我们奉命来打探废墟城石头上的一则信息，”斯科拉博说，“我们看见了几个字：‘在我下面’。”

那骑士笑得更欢了。“你们又上当了，”他说，“那些字对你们此行目的毫无意义。你们不如问问夫人，她可能会给你们出更好的主意。因为那些字是一句古诗的残迹，她记得很清楚，原来的诗是这样的：

尽管如今我在地下，没有王位；但是等我活过来的时候，整个大地都在我下面。从这句诗看来，显然是古代某位巨人国王把这段自吹自擂的话刻在他墓地的石头上，只是一些石头已经断裂，还有一些被拿去盖新房子，缺口已经用碎石填上，但留下的几个字仍然可以看得见。你们竟然以为那些字是写给你们看的，岂不是天大的笑话？”

这话无异于给斯科拉博和吉尔浇了一盆冷水。按照这位骑士的说法，那些字很可能真的与他们此行目的毫不相关。要是真的如此，他们仅仅是意外被带到这儿来的了。

“你们别太在意他的话，”普德格伦说，“我相信这不是意外，我们的向导是阿斯兰，巨人国王叫人刻这些字的时候他就在场，他知道所有由此引发的事件；包括这件事。”

“你们这个向导一看就是活了很久啊。”骑士说完又是一阵大笑。

吉尔开始觉得这笑声有点让人讨厌了。

“阁下，我倒认为，”普德格伦回答说，“既然你们这位夫人记得最初刻在石头上的诗句，那她应该也活了很久吧。”

“你很聪明啊，青蛙怪，”骑士说着，拍拍普德格伦的肩膀，又一阵大笑，“你说对了。她是神族出身，长生不老。我这么个不幸的可怜虫能够得到她如此慷慨的礼遇，实属无上荣幸。诸位，不瞒你们说，我原本遭受极大的折磨，除了女王陛下，没有人有这般耐心对我悉心呵护。她是一个极有耐心的人，但她的好远远不止于此。她许诺给我一个上面世界的王国，等到我做了国王，我们俩就结婚。这个故事太长了，不能让你们饿着肚子，一直站着听。喂，来人，拿出酒和阳光世界的食物来给我的客人吃。诸位快请坐。小姐，你坐这张椅子吧。待会我来慢慢把事情的经过讲给你们听。”

第十一章
在黑暗城堡中

等到侍从端来了饭菜——有鸽肉馅饼、冷火腿、凉拌菜和糕饼，大家都把椅子拉到桌边吃了起来。骑士继续说道：“朋友们，你们要知道，我并不知道自己是谁，也不知道自己是什么时候来到这黑暗世界的。我不记得我在住进这位举世无双的女王的王宫前到底经历了什么。但我想，应该是她把我从邪恶的魔法中拯救出来，又非常慷慨地把我带到这儿。（青蛙怪，你的酒杯空了，我替你斟满吧。）我想这种情况的可能性大一些，因为即便到了现在，我还是受魔法的束缚，只有夫人才能使我解脱。每天晚上都会有一个小时，我的思想会发生可怕的变化，然后是我的身体。刚开始我会暴跳如雷，拼命挣扎，如果不把我绑起来，我很可能会冲到我最亲爱的朋友身边杀了他们。过后不久，我就要变成类似大毒蛇的生物，饥饿难忍，凶残无比，对任何人都是致命的威胁。（阁下，请你再吃一块鸽胸肉吧。）这些都是他们告诉我的，他们肯定说的是真话，因为夫人也这么说。而我自己对此却一无所知，因为这一个小时过后，等我醒来时就已经忘记了那一切，我的身体也会恢复原形，头脑也清楚了，只是有点儿累。（小姐，尝一块这种蜜糕吧，这是从很远的南方什么蛮荒地方运过来的。）女王陛下通过法术得知，一旦她让我成为上面世界的一个国王，为我加冕，我就能从魔法的诅咒里解脱出来了。那个国家已经选好了，我们也已经定好了突破口。女王的地下侍从日日夜夜忙着在那个国家的下面挖一条路，现在那条路已经挖得很远很高了，离那个国家上界居民的脚下已不到二十英尺了。不久那些百姓的命运就要发生翻天覆地的变化。女王今晚也亲自去挖了，我想给她送个信。到那时，我和我的王国之间隔开的这层薄薄的地面就会打通，前面有她为我带路，后面有一千地下侍从撑腰，我就要全副武装，骑马上阵，直接扑向我们的敌人，杀他个出其不意。杀掉他们的首领，再扫平他们的据点，无须等上二十四小时，我就能坐上国王的宝座。”

“这么做对百姓有些残酷了吧？”斯科拉博说。

“你这孩子很机敏，”骑士提高了嗓门说道，“凭良心说，我以前从来没有想到过，我明白你的意思。”他看起来有些苦恼；但他的脸色很快就明朗起来，又发出了一阵爆笑声。“呸，别这么认真了！想想看，他们都在各自忙着自己的事，做梦也没想到在他们那片宁静的大地下面，就有一支大军，和他们只相隔六英尺，正准备着像喷泉一样冲出来打他们。你们说这不是世界上最滑稽可笑的事吗？我敢说，这绝对是他们从来没有想过的事情！而且他们被击败之后就只能对我们这条妙计苦笑一阵了。”

“我一点儿都不觉得这个好笑，”吉尔说，“我觉得你会成为一个恶毒的暴君。”

“你说什么？”骑士还是笑个不停，一边带着些怒气拍拍吉尔的脑袋，“这位小姐竟是个深谋远虑的政治家？不过别害怕，小宝贝儿。在统治国家时，我一切都会跟夫人商量的，那时她也是我的王后了。她的话就是我的法律，就像我的话将成为我们征服的人民必须遵守的法律一样。”

“在我的家乡，”吉尔说，她越来越不喜欢他了，“人们可看不起被自己老婆指挥的男人。”

“等你有了自己的男人，我保证你就不会那样想了。”虽然，骑士觉得吉尔的这番话很有趣，“不过跟夫人在一起，那是另一回事。是我甘心情愿地听从她的命令，因为她把我从无数险境中拯救出来。没有一位母亲会像女王陛下那样视我为己出。即便她需要操劳那么多的事，她还是会常常陪我骑马到上面的世界去散心，让我的眼睛能够适应阳光。只是在上面的世界时，我必须披甲挂胄，拉下面罩，这样就没人能看见我的脸，而且我也绝对不能跟任何人说话。因为她通过法术得知，这会阻拦我从可恶的魔法下解脱。难道这样一位夫人，不值得男人全部的尊敬吗？”

“听起来，她确实是一位非常好的夫人。”普德格伦说话的语调带些讥讽。

还没等到吃完晚饭，他们就已经对骑士厌烦透了。普德格伦心想：“我真想知道那个女巫究竟在这个笨蛋身上施了什么鬼把戏。”斯科拉博心想：“他真是一个大活宝，居然被那个女人牵着鼻子走，实在是个笨蛋。”吉尔心想：“我好久没见过像他这么愚蠢、这么自负、这么自私的下等货色了。”不过等到他们吃过饭以后，骑士就一改之前的态度，再也不那样狂妄地大笑了。

“朋友们，”他说，“我的不幸时刻就要到来了，我没有脸面让你们看到自己那副样子，但是我又怕一个人待着。他们马上就要来把我手脚绑在那边的椅子上了。唉，每次都得那样做：他们告诉我，我一旦发起狂来会把够得到的所有东西都毁掉。”

“嗨，”斯科拉博说，“我们都很同情你的不幸，但那些家伙把你绑起来以后又会怎样对待我们呢？他们之前说要把我们关进牢里。我们都不大喜欢那种黑暗的地方。如果可以的话，我们更想待在这儿，直到你……好起来。”

“你考虑得很周到，”骑士说，“换作以前，我发作的时候只有女王留在我身边。她十分体贴我，不愿让我的名声受损。因此除了她本人，她不愿让任何人听见我癫狂状态下说的那些话。但要说服侍从让你们留在这儿陪我并不简单，而且我现在已经听见上楼梯的轻柔脚步声了。你们从那个门出去，那里通向我的其他房间。你们可以在那儿等到他们给我松绑以后再过来；或者，如果你们愿意，可以在我说胡话的时候回来坐下陪着我。”

他们按照他的指点，从一扇先前没见着打开的门里走出了房间。他们看到这扇门不是通向黑暗，而是通往一条亮着灯的走廊，心里十分欣慰。他们试着打开各扇门，找到了他们迫切需要的水用来洗脸，还找到了一面镜子。

“晚饭前他根本没请我们来洗一洗，”吉尔说着把脸擦干，“真是自私自利的粗人。”

“我们回去看他变身，还是待在这儿？”斯科拉博问。

“我主张待在这儿，”吉尔说，“我宁愿不看那种事情。”嘴上虽这样说，但她心里还是有点儿好奇。

“不，我们还是回去，”普德格伦说，“我们可能会打听到一些消息，我们现在要尽力搜索消息。我敢肯定那女王是个女巫，她是我们的敌人，而她的手下肯定一看见我们就会把我们打死。这地方充满了危险、谎言、魔法和背叛的气息，我从来没有过这么强烈的感觉。我们要多多提防着点儿。”

他们从走廊走回去，轻轻推开了门。“好了。”斯科拉博告诉后面两个伙伴，地下侍卫不在那里了。于是他们全都回到他们吃晚饭的那间房间里。

身后的大门随即合上，遮住了他们最初进去时走过的门帘。只见骑士坐在一张古怪的银椅上，他的脚踝、双膝、肘部、手腕和腰部都被绑在椅背上。他的前额全是汗，脸上十分痛苦。

“快来，朋友们，”他迅速地给他们递了一个眼神，“我现在还没开始发作。你们别出声，因为我告诉那些爱打听的侍从们说你们已经睡觉去了。现在……我能感觉到自己就要发作了。快，趁我还能控制得住自己，你们听我说。当我发作时，我很可能会哀求你们，恳求你们给我松绑，对你们软磨硬泡、各种央求。他们告诉我说，我会说尽所有最动听和最可怕的话请求你们给我松绑。但你们千万别听我的话，你们的心肠千万别软，堵住你们的耳朵别听。因为我只有被绑着的时候，你们才安全；相反，我一旦站起来，离开了这张椅子，我首先会雷霆大发，过后……”他浑身发抖着，“我就会变成一条可恶的毒蛇。”

“不用担心，我们不会给你松绑的，”普德格伦说，“我们不希望碰到疯子，也不希望碰到毒蛇。”

“我也不想。”斯科拉博和吉尔齐声说。

普德格伦悄悄说：“我们还是别太相信他的话，要多留神。你们也知道我们把之前的事都办砸了。一旦他发作起来，他会变得很狡猾，这一点都不奇怪。我们之间能互相信得过吗？我们大家都保证了无论他说什么，我们都不要碰那些绳子，无论他说什么都不要！”

“当然啦！”斯科拉博说。

“无论他说什么干什么都不能让我改变主意。”吉尔说。

“嘘，发生什么事了？”普德格伦说。

只见那骑士正在呻吟。他面如死灰，身子在绳子中扭动。吉尔不知是不是为他难过，还是为别的原因，竟觉得他比先前看上去更像个好人了。

“啊，”他呻吟着，“魔法，魔法……沉重、混乱、又冷又湿、邪恶的魔法网。活埋了。拖到地下，拖到黑暗里……有多少年了……我在这地狱里住了十年还是一千年？周围全是怪物。哦，可怜可怜我吧。让我出去，让我回去。让我感受到风吹，看看天空……那儿以前有一个小水塘。你往水塘里看，就能看见所有的树在水中的倒影，一片绿色，树的倒影深处可以看到蓝天。”

他一直在低声说话；这会儿他抬起头来，眼睛盯着他们，响亮而清楚地说：“快！我现在神志清醒了。每天晚上我都是清醒的。只要我能从这把有魔法的椅子上站起来，我就会一直清醒，我就又是一条好汉。但他们每天晚上都把我绑起来，因此我就没有机会了。但你们不是敌人，我不是你们的囚犯。快！快帮我砍掉这些绳子！”

“站好！沉住气。”普德格伦对两个孩子说。

“我恳求你们听我说，”骑士说，他强作镇定，“他们有没有告诉你们，要是把我从这把椅子上放开，我就要杀掉你们，而且变成一条毒蛇？从你们脸上的表情就知道他们已经说过了。那是谎言。实际上只有这一小时里我脑子才是清醒的，其余时间我都在魔法的迷惑下。你们不是地下人也不是女巫。你们为什么要站在他们一边？你们就行行好，给我松了绑吧。”

“沉住气！沉住气！沉住气！”他们三个相互提醒说。

“唉，你们真是铁石心肠，”骑士说，“相信我，你们面前是一个不幸的人，他经受的折磨几乎是任何一个凡人也忍受不了的。我有什么对不起你们的，你们竟和我的敌人站在一边，让我饱受这种痛苦？现在时间在一分一分地流逝，只有你们能救我。等这一个小时过去了，我又要变糊涂了，成为那个专门陷害男人的心地毒辣的女巫的玩具，成为她的哈巴狗，不，更像是狗腿子和工具。唯独今天晚上，趁她不在，这是一个千载难逢的救我的机会。”

“这太可怕了。我真希望我们此刻待在别的地方，等到他发作过后再来。”吉尔说。

“沉住气！”普德格伦说。

那个被绑着的人这会儿开始尖叫了。“我都说了放我走。把我的剑给我。我的剑呢！一旦我自由了，我就要找地下人报仇，我的复仇将成为地下世界千年万载的谈资！”

“他开始狂乱了，”斯科拉博说，“希望那些绳结都足够牢靠。”

“是啊，”普德格伦说，“要是现在放开他，他的力量会放大一倍。我的剑术不大好，他无疑会杀死我们两个；这一来波尔就得独自对付那条蛇了。”

那个被绑住的人这会儿开始拼命挣脱勒进他手腕和脚踝的绳索。他说，“你们听好了！有天晚上，我真的把绳子挣断了。但那时女巫在场。今晚你们可没有她帮你们。现在把我放了，我还是你们的朋友。否则我们就是不共戴天的敌人。”

“他是多么狡猾呀！”普德格伦说。

“我命令你们把我放了，”被绑住的人说，“爽快点。以所有恐惧和爱的名义，以上面世界明亮苍穹的名义，以伟大的狮王、以阿斯兰本人的名义，我命令你们——”

“啊呀！”他们三个像受了伤似的大叫起来。“这是指示。”普德格伦说。“这是指示里的话呀。”斯科拉博小心翼翼地说。“我们该怎么办呢？”吉尔也为难了。

这问题就难办了。要是因为他首次偶然提起一个他们关心的名字，就把骑士放开，那么刚才彼此保证无论如何都不放开又算什么呢？反过来说，要是他们不打算遵照指示，那当初学指示有什么用？不过，阿斯兰是否可能真的要让他们给以他的名义提出要求的任何人松绑呢——哪怕那人疯了？这会不会仅仅是偶然呢？如果地下世界的女王知道有关指示的一切，迫使骑士学说这个名字，就为了让他们落入圈套，那又怎么办呢？但是，如果这是真正的指示呢？他们已经错过了三点，可不敢办砸第四点了。

“哦，要是我们知道到底是怎么回事就好了！”吉尔说。

“我觉得我们是知道真相的。”普德格伦说。

“你是说假如我们救了他，一切都会好起来？”斯科拉博说。

“那个我不知道，”普德格伦说，“你瞧，阿斯兰并没告诉波尔会出什么事，他只告诉她干什么。那家伙一旦站起来，我们就死定了，这一点都不奇怪。但放了他，我们确实是在按照指示办事。”

听了这话他们都眼睛瞪得老大，站在那儿你看看我，我看看你。这真是一段难熬的时间。“好吧，”吉尔突然说，“让我们了结这件事吧。大家保重……”他们互相握握手。骑士这会儿正在尖声喊叫，满脸全是汗。

“来吧，斯科拉博。”普德格伦说。他和斯科拉博抽出剑走到那个被绑住的人身边。

“以阿斯兰的名义，”他们说着开始认真地割断绳子。那人刚刚获得自由，就跳到房间那边，抓起他自己那把剑（那剑从他身上解下后就放在桌上），利剑出鞘。

“我先对付你！”他边叫着，边对准银椅劈了下去。那一定是柄好剑，银椅刚碰到剑锋就像绳子一样碎了，一会儿工夫，地板上就只剩下几块弯曲的碎片在发亮。不过椅子碎裂时，发出亮晃晃的光，声音像打雷声，片刻间还有一种叫人恶心的味儿。

“可恶的魔法工具，你就躺在那儿吧，”他说，“免得你的女主人再拿你害人。”说着他转身打量他的救命恩人，脸上原本的那种不对劲的神情已经消失了。

“什么？”他转过身对普德格伦叫道，“我面前是一个沼泽怪吗？——不正是一个地地道道、活蹦乱跳的纳尼亚沼泽怪吗？”

“哦，原来你还是听说过纳尼亚的？”吉尔说。

“我中魔法的时候难道忘记了纳尼亚吗？”骑士问，“好了，所有蛊惑都过去了。你们完全可以相信我知道纳尼亚，因为我就是纳尼亚的王子瑞廉，伟大的凯斯宾国王就是我父亲。”

“殿下！”普德格伦单腿跪下，两个孩子也照做，“我们此行的目的就是来找你。”

“另外两位恩人，你们是什么人？”王子问斯科拉博和吉尔。

“我们是阿斯兰本人从世界尽头以外派来寻找殿下的，”斯科拉博说，“我叫尤斯塔斯，曾经跟他一起航海到拉曼杜岛。”

“我欠你们仨的情是还也还不清的。”瑞廉王子说，“不过我父亲怎么样？他还活着吗？”

“我们离开纳尼亚之前，他又乘船向东了，殿下，”普德格伦说，“但要知道国王已经很老了。十有八九陛下会倒在半路上。”

“你说他已经很老了。那我落到女巫手里有多久了呢？”

“距离殿下从纳尼亚北边森林里失踪，已经过去十年多了。”

“十年！”王子说，一手在脸上擦了一把，像是要擦去往事。“是啊，我相信你。现在我清醒了，我能记起那段中了邪的生活，虽然我中邪时记不得自己的本来面貌。行啦，好朋友们——慢着，等一下！我听见楼梯上那些地下人的脚步声了，那种轻轻的、隐约可听到的脚步声，让人听了真是作呕！呸，把门锁上，孩子！要不，还是待着吧。我有个更好的主意。要是阿斯兰能赐我一点智慧，我就来骗骗这些地下人。你们看我的暗示行事。”

他坚定地走到门口，把门打开。

第十二章
地下世界女王

两个地下人进了门，但他们没有再走进房间里面，而是在门口一边一个站好，然后深深鞠了一躬。紧跟在他们后面的正是他们任何人都最不愿意见到的人：那位绿衣夫人——地下世界的女王。她站在门口一动不动，他们看到她的眼珠转来转去，正在打量着眼前的这一切——三个陌生人，银椅毁了，王子自由了，他的手上还拿着剑。

她脸色发白，但吉尔认为这种白不是一般人受到惊吓时的那种苍白，而是愤怒时的那种煞白。女巫盯着王子看了一会儿，眼神杀气腾腾，随后她似乎改变了心意。

“下去吧，”她对两个地下人说，“不准让人来打扰我们，违反命令一律处死。”侍从听罢轻手轻脚地退下了，巫婆女王把门关上，锁好。

“你这是怎么了，王子殿下，”她说，“你每晚都要发作，现在还没发作吗？还是发了一阵就好了？你怎么没被绑好就站在这儿？这些外人是谁呀？是他们把你唯一的救命椅子毁了吗？”

她跟瑞廉王子说这话的时候，王子不禁打了个哆嗦。这一点都不奇怪，要在半小时之内摆脱一种将你束缚了十年的魔法可不容易。王子费了好大的劲才说出话来：“夫人，那把椅子现在已经没用了。你曾经千百次告诉过我，你是多么深切地怜悯我饱受魔法禁锢的痛苦，如今你要是听到那魔法已经永远解除，应该很高兴才是啊。看起来，夫人对这个消息的态度跟我想的不太一样。是我这些真朋友解救了我。我现在头脑已经清醒了，有两件事我要告诉你。第一，夫人计划让我率领一支地下人军队，破土而出到上面世界去，让我用武力争夺一个与我并无仇怨的国家王位，杀害他们原来的贵族，像个残忍的暴君那样霸占他们的王位。如今我清醒了，我对这种十足的罪恶勾当感到深深的厌弃。其次，我是纳尼亚国王的儿子瑞廉，是人称航海家凯斯宾——凯斯宾十世的独子。所以，夫人，即刻离开您的宫廷回到我自己的国家一直以来都是我的心愿，也是我应当承担的责任。请您为我和我的朋友授予安全通行证，并派一个向导领我们从这个地下世界出去。”

这会儿女巫一言不发，只是轻轻穿过房间，她的眼睛牢牢盯住王子。她走到火炉边不远处的一面墙附近，打开了墙上的小柜子，捧起一把绿色的粉末，把它撒在了火上。那粉末没发出什么光，只散发出一股让人昏昏欲睡的香味。在大家谈话时，那股气味变得越来越浓，弥漫了整个房间，让人的思维凝固起来。接着，她又拿出一件类似曼陀林的乐器，开始用手指拨弄乐器。乐器发出单调的噔噔声，一开始你并不会在意，但你越不去注意这声音，这声音却越是拼命钻到你的脑子里和血液里，越发使你的脑筋无法转动。她这么弹了一阵子，此时那股香味儿也变得更浓了，然后就开始用一副甜蜜、镇定的嗓音说话。

“纳尼亚？”她说，“纳尼亚？我常常听见殿下说胡话时提到这个名字。亲爱的王子，你病重了。根本没有一个叫作纳尼亚的地方。”

“夫人，纳尼亚确实存在！”普德格伦说，“我碰巧在那儿住了一辈子了。”

“哦，真的吗？”女巫说，“那么请你告诉我，那个国家在什么地方？”

“在这上面，”普德格伦倔强地指着头顶上，“我，我不知道具体在哪儿。”

“怎么？”女王说着，发出一串亲切、柔和、美妙动听的笑声，“在上面的石头和屋顶的灰泥当中有个国家？”

“我不是这个意思，”普德格伦努力让呼吸恢复正常，“是在上面那个世界。”

“那么请告诉我……你所说的上面世界，是怎么回事，是在哪儿？”

“哦，别装傻了，”斯科拉博说，他在那股迷幻的香味和乐器声中拼命挣扎，“好像你不知道似的！那世界在上面，在你能看得见天、看得见太阳和星星的地方。你自己也到上面去过，我们在那儿遇见过你。”

“小兄弟，请见谅。”女巫笑了，那样可爱的笑声真是闻所未闻，“我不记得我们见过。不过我们做梦时常常在稀奇古怪的地方遇见一些朋友。除非大家做的梦全都一样，不然你怎么能要求人家记住你的梦呢。”

“夫人，”王子语气坚决地说，“我已经告诉过你了，我就是纳尼亚国王的儿子。”

“将来会的，亲爱的朋友，”女巫用安慰的语气说，像是在哄孩子，“你将来也会成为幻想世界里的国王。”

“我们也去过纳尼亚！”吉尔厉声说。她能感觉到魔法正逐渐控制她的大脑，所以很生气。但从她还能明辨事实这点来看，魔法还没有完全起作用。

“我相信你就是纳尼亚的女王了，小美人。”女巫用同样哄骗的口吻，带着嘲弄的口气说。

“我可不是那里的人，”吉尔跺着脚说，“我们俩是另一个世界的人。”

“咦，这游戏越来越有趣了，”女巫说，“告诉我们，小姑娘，另一个世界在哪儿？你们的世界和我们的世界之间来往乘什么船和车？”

吉尔脑子里当然立刻就出现了好多东西：实验学校、阿黛拉·潘尼法瑟、她自己的家、收音机、电影院、汽车、飞机、配额供应本、排成长龙的队伍。但她对这些东西的记忆都有点模糊了，仿佛它们都在一个很远很远的地方（噔——噔——噔，女巫的乐器一直响个不停）。吉尔已经想不起我们世界里东西的名字了。她没想到自己真的中了魔法，而且魔法已经在她体内发挥作用了。当然，你入魔越深，你就越是感觉不到自己中了魔法。她下意识竟说出了一句话：“不。我想另一个世界一定完全是个梦。”说完这句话，她反而轻松了。

“是啊。那完全是个梦。”女巫说，手里继续噔噔地弹着。

“是啊，完全是个梦。”吉尔跟着说。

“从来没有那么个世界。”女巫又说。

“对，”吉尔和斯科拉博说，“从来没有那么个世界。”

“除了我的世界外再没有别的世界。”女巫说。

“除了你的世界外再没有别的世界。”他们跟着说。

普德格伦仍然在苦苦与魔法斗争。“我不大明白你们大家说的只有一个世界是什么意思，”他说话的模样就像一个人缺氧一样，“就算你弹琴弹到手指掉下来，我还是不会忘记纳尼亚，不会忘记上面的世界。反正我们再也看不见这些了，这一点都不奇怪。你或许会把那一切抹杀，让那一切记忆都变成一团黑暗，但我知道我曾经住在那儿。我看到过满是星星的天空，我见过早上太阳从海上升起，晚上在群山后面落下，我还看见过正午天空的太阳，亮得我不敢正眼看着它。”

普德格伦的话起到了振奋大脑的效果。另外三个人也都恢复了正常呼吸，彼此对望着，就像刚刚醒过来一样。

“咦，我们醒过来了！”王子叫道，“阿斯兰保佑着这只正直的沼泽怪呢。刚才这几分钟，我们全在做梦。我们怎么能忘记那一切呢？不可否认，我们都见过太阳。”

“没错，我们都见过的，”斯科拉博说，“好样的，普德格伦！我现在深信不疑，你是我们当中唯一有点头脑的。”

接着女巫开了口，声音很柔，就像在昏昏欲睡的夏日下午三点钟，野鸽站在老花园高高的榆树上发出的叫声一样低柔。

她说：“你们大家说的太阳是什么？那个词有什么含义吗？”

“有啊，当然有。”斯科拉博说。

“你能告诉我它是什么样子的吗？”女巫问道（噔，噔，噔，琴弦还在响）。

“遵命，陛下，”王子十分冷淡但不失礼貌地说，“你看看那盏灯。灯是圆的、黄色的，照亮了整个房间，它挂在屋顶上。我们刚刚称为太阳的东西正像这盏灯，只是太阳比它大得多，也亮得多。太阳照亮整个上面世界，挂在天上。”

“挂在哪里，殿下？”女巫问道，随后，大家还在想着怎么回答她的时候，她又发出一阵银铃似的温柔笑声，加了一句，“瞧，你们都拼命想弄明白太阳该是个什么，可你们却说不出来。你们只说太阳就像灯。你们的太阳是个梦；梦里的东西没有一样不像灯。灯才是真实存在的东西；太阳只是个故事，是童话。”

“是啊，现在我明白了，”吉尔说话声调沉重而绝望，“一定是这么回事。”她这么说的时候，似乎她觉得这话是很有道理的。

女巫沉着地慢慢重复道：“没有太阳。”他们都一声不吭。她用更柔和、更深沉的声音重复道，“没有太阳。”他们四个心里挣扎了好一番之后一起说道，“你说得对，没有太阳。”他们屈服了，说完这句话就松了一口气。

“从来就没有过太阳。”女巫说。

“对，从来就没有太阳。”王子、沼泽怪和两个孩子跟着说。

刚才这几分钟里吉尔一直觉得她在拼命想起什么事情。如今她终于想起来了，但很难说出口。她只觉得嘴唇上像是压着东西，好沉好沉。最后她终于用尽全身力量说道：“有阿斯兰。”

“阿斯兰？”女巫一边说着，一边稍稍加快了乐器拍子，“多好听的名字！那是什么意思？”

“他是伟大的狮王，他把我们从我们自己的世界里叫出来，”斯科拉博说，“派我们到这儿来找瑞廉王子。”

“狮子是什么？”女巫问。

“啊呀，真是见鬼！”斯科拉博说，“难道你真的不知道吗？我们怎么才能给她形容狮子呢？你见过猫吗？”

“那当然，”女王说，“我很喜欢猫。”

“那就好，狮子就有点……就有一点儿，像一只大猫。不过狮子还有鬃毛。狮子的鬃毛不像马鬃，更像法官的假发。它的鬃毛是黄色的，而且非常坚硬。”

女巫摇了摇头。“我明白了，”她说，“我看你们说的狮子跟太阳是一回事。你们看见过灯，于是你们想象出一个更大更好的灯，把它叫作太阳。你们见过猫，现在你们想要一只更大更好看的猫，你们就叫它狮子。好了，这些想象都很有趣。不过，老实说，要是你们年纪小一点，这样说说会更合适些。瞧，你们如果不从我这个真正的世界里偷学些什么，又怎么能进行想象，我这个世界才是唯一的世界。但即使是你们两个孩子玩这种游戏也显得太浮夸了。至于你，王子殿下，你是个成年人，真亏你做得出！你玩这种玩意儿就不害臊吗？你们都赶紧把这些孩子气的把戏收起来。在我这个真实的世界里，我有事情交给大家。根本就没有什么纳尼亚，没有上面的世界，没有天空，没有太阳，没有阿斯兰。现在大家都上床去吧。希望从明天开始你们可以变得聪明点。但现在咱们上床睡觉，睡个香香的美觉，枕着软软的枕头，好好睡一觉，不要做荒唐的梦了。”

王子和两个孩子站在那儿，耷拉着脑袋，脸蛋红红的，眼睛半闭着；他们浑身无力，魔法几乎就大功告成了。不料普德格伦拼命鼓起全身力量，走到火炉边，然后他干了一件非常勇敢的事。他知道火会烧伤他，但不会像烧伤人那么严重，因为他光着的脚像鸭子一样有蹼，又是硬的，而且又冷血。不过他知道火也会把他烧得够呛。果然如此。他光着脚就去踩火，于是浅浅的炉床里的大部分火都碾成了灰。这一来发生了三件事。

首先，那股又香又浓的气味大为减轻。虽然火还没完全熄灭，但已经灭了一大半，而且留下了沼泽怪烧伤的浓烈焦臭味，那就完全不是魔法的气味了。这一下每个人的脑子顿时都清醒多了。王子和两个孩子都抬起头，睁开了眼睛。

其次，女巫一反刚才那副甜蜜的声调，扯起嗓门，怪吓人地大声叫道，“你干什么？脏泥巴，再敢碰碰我的火，我要把你血管里的血烧起来。”

最后，大火的灼烧感让普德格伦的头脑一下子完全清醒了。看来，要解除魔法，再没有比疼痛的强烈刺激更管用的了。

“再说一句，夫人，”他一边说着，一边痛苦地从火炉边一瘸一拐地走回来，“我再说一句。你刚才说的一切都是对的，我毫不怀疑。但我这个家伙一向喜欢弄清最坏的情况，然后尽量往好处想。因此我不否认你说的一切。但即使如此，我还得再说上一句。假如我们说的那些只是梦到的，或者说只是捏造的——树木，草地，太阳，月亮，星星，还有阿斯兰狮王。假定这都是我们梦见的，那么我想说的是，既然如此，那捏造想象出来的东西似乎比真实的东西要重要得多。假定你这个黑洞王国就是唯一世界的话。咳，那我觉得这是一个挺可怜的世界。想起这点来倒也有趣。要是按你说的，我们只是些小娃娃，围在一起玩游戏。但四个小娃娃玩的游戏能组成一个游戏世界，把你这个‘真实世界’打得落花流水。那就是我忠于游戏世界的原因。即使没有阿斯兰来领导，我也站在阿斯兰一边。即使没有纳尼亚这个地方，我也要尽可能地像一个纳尼亚人那样生活。所以，感谢你好意招待我们吃晚饭，要是这两位先生和小姐准备好了，我们就即刻离开你的王宫，在黑暗中出发，一生只为寻找上面的世界。我并不是说我们这一生会长命百岁，但要是这个世界就像你说的这样沉闷，那么离开这里也不算什么大损失。”

“哇喔，普德格伦真是好样的！”斯科拉博和吉尔大声欢呼道。但旁边的王子突然叫起来：“大家小心！看女巫！”大家一看顿时毛骨悚然。

她的乐器已经从手里掉了下来。她两条胳臂似乎紧紧贴在身体两侧，两条腿缠在一起，脚已经看不见了。长长的绿裙裙摆慢慢变厚，变成了实心，跟两条连在一起的腿拧成一根蠕动的绿柱子。而那根蠕动的绿柱子正歪歪扭扭地四处摇摇摆摆，看起来仿佛浑身没有关节，要不然就是全身都是关节。她的脑袋朝后远远仰着，鼻子变得越来越长，脸上除了眼睛以外，其他部分似乎都看不见了，没有眉毛也没有睫毛，只剩下两只火红的大眼晴。所有这一切写下来似乎像是过了很久，但所有的这一切发生得如此之快，有迅雷不及掩耳之势。他们还没来得及做什么，就看见女巫变成了一条大毒蛇，像毒药一样闪着绿幽幽的光，身子有吉尔的腰那么粗，用它那令人恶心的身体在王子腿上绕了两三圈，还像闪电般冲上来，准备把王子拿剑的那条胳臂紧紧捆住。但幸好王子及时举起了双臂，才没被缠上。那活结只缠到他胸脯，准备收紧后把王子的肋骨当木柴般弄断。

王子左手抓住蛇颈，想拼命掐住它，让它没法呼吸。这一抓使得蛇脸（要是能称作脸的话）离他的脸大约只有五英寸了。那条吓人的开叉舌头不停吐出再缩进，但够不着王子。王子这时又举起右手，抽出剑，使劲劈下去。普德格伦和斯科拉博也同时都抽出武器，冲上去帮助他，于是蛇一连被刺中了三下。斯科拉博那一下正好刺在王子手下面的蛇身上，但他连蛇鳞也没刺穿，蛇毫发未伤，不过王子本人和普德格伦那一下都刺中了蛇颈。即使如此，也还没有杀死它，不过绕在瑞廉腿上和胸膛上的蛇身却开始松动了。他们又接连刺了好多下，才把蛇头砍下。那可怕的怪物死后还在继续盘绕扭动，就像一根电线一样。你们不难想象，地板上已经弄得一团糟了。

王子好久才缓过气来说了一句：“感谢诸位。”这三位胜利者站在那儿，面面相觑，喘着粗气，久久说不出一句话。吉尔很聪明地坐在一旁保持着沉默。她心里正在嘀咕：“我真希望自己别昏过去，也别哭，别干出什么傻事来。”

“我母后之仇已报，”瑞廉过了一会儿说，“这条蛇无疑就是多年前我在纳尼亚森林喷泉边追捕未遂的那条。这些年来我竟成了杀害我母亲的凶手的奴隶。可是我现在很欣慰，诸位，这恶毒的女巫最终现出了她毒蛇的原形。否则杀掉一个女人我实在过意不去，传出去的名声也不好听。你们别忘了安抚一下这位小姐。”他指的是吉尔。

“我没事儿，谢谢。”她说。

“小姐，”王子说着对她鞠了一躬，“你非常勇敢，我相信你一定出身于高贵门第。啊，来吧，朋友们，这儿还剩下一点酒，我们喝一点，为大伙儿的胜利干杯。然后我们再一起想想办法怎么出去。”

“好的，殿下。”斯科拉博应声说。

第十三章
没有女王的地下世界

正如斯科拉博所说，他们几个得到了片刻的休息。女巫之前锁上了门，而且吩咐过侍从别来打扰她，所以目前为止他们没有被人打扰的危险。他们首先要处理的事情当然是照料普德格伦烧伤的那只脚。他们从王子卧室里拿来了几件干净的衬衣，撕成条状，涂上晚饭桌上的黄油和色拉油，这些可以作为绝妙的敷料。敷好伤以后，他们都坐下吃了一些茶点，讨论逃出地下世界的计划。

瑞廉解释说这儿有很多通到地面的出口，他以前被带领着走过其中大部分出口。但他从来没有单独出去过，之前只跟着女巫去过；而且他记得每次去这些出口时都要乘船，穿过暗无天日的黑海。假如他到港口去，身边没有女巫，却是四个陌生人，开口就要一条船，真的说不准那些地下人会怎么猜疑。不过他们肯定会被盘问一些棘手的问题。除此之外，还有一个新的出口，就是为了进攻地上世界而挖的出口，它倒是在海的这头，而且只有几英里远。王子说那个出口已经快完工了，掘通的地方与外面的世界也就只相隔几英尺的土层了，甚至可能现在就已经完工了。也许女巫回来就是告诉他这件事，准备通知他发动进攻。即便还没完工，只要他们能够一路顺利地到达那里，只要那个地方现在没人看守着，他们自己顺着那条路花个几小时估计也能挖出去。这第二条路子也是困难重重。

“依我说呀……”普德格伦刚开口，斯科拉博就打断了它。

“喂，”他问，“那是什么声音？”

“我也纳闷了好一阵子了！”吉尔说。

事实上他们的耳边一直回荡着这种声音，但这声音是慢慢大起来的，所以他们并不记得声音从什么时候开始的。有一段时间，那只是一阵隐隐约约的骚动，像是轻轻的风声，或是远处传来的人来车往声；随后声音就渐渐增强为浪涛般的沙沙声；再接着又传来了隆隆声和哗啦啦的响声；现在这会儿似乎还有说话声，还夹杂着一种不像是说话声的持续不断的吼叫声。

“狮王在上，”瑞廉王子说，“看来这片沉默的土地开口了。”他站起来，走向窗边，拉开窗帘，其他几个都围在他身边往外看。

他们首先注意到的是一大片红光。红光在他们上面几千英尺高处的地下世界顶部反射过来，透过这道光他们能看见一片岩石天花板。也许天花板从这个世界造好以来一直就隐蔽在黑暗中，而那片红光来自城市的另一边，一排排阴森森的大房子在红光衬托下黑压压地立在那儿。红光也照到很多通向城堡的街道，街道上正出了些怪事。往日那些挤挤攘攘、沉默不言的地下人群已经消失了。只有三三两两的人影到处冲来冲去。他们一副不希望让人看见的模样：偷偷潜伏在扶壁后的阴影里或者门口，然后迅速穿过空地，到另一个隐蔽处去。不过只要对地下人足够了解的人都会知道，发出这种声音是多么奇怪的一件事情。四面八方传来吵吵嚷嚷的声音，不过从港口那边却传来一阵低沉的吼声，而且逐渐变得越来越响，并且撼动了整个城市。

“地下人出什么事了？”斯科拉博说，“是他们在喊叫吗？”

“这不大可能，”王子说，“在我被监禁的漫长岁月里，从来没听过哪个无赖这么大声地说话。我估计这又是什么新魔法。”

“那边的红光又是怎么回事呢？”吉尔说，“是着火了吗？”

“依我说呀，”普德格伦说，“那是地心的火喷出来形成的一个火山。我觉得我们就在火山的中央。”

“瞧那条船！”斯科拉博说，“为什么船行得那么快？也没人在船上划桨呀。”

“瞧，瞧！”王子说，“船已经开到港口这一边来了——船开到街上来了。瞧，所有的船都开进城了！啊呀，海水上涨了。要发洪水了。阿斯兰在上，虽说这个城堡造在高地上，但海水的涨势不容乐观啊。”

“啊，这里会出什么事呢？”吉尔叫道，“又是水，又是火的，还有一群人在街上躲躲闪闪的。”

“我告诉你是怎么回事吧。”普德格伦说，“那个女巫已经设下了一连串魔法咒语，因此无论什么时候她被杀了，她的王国也跟着崩塌了。要是她知道杀掉她的人五分钟以后就要被烧死，或活埋，或淹死，她就是死了也没有遗憾了。”

“沼泽怪说到点子上了，”王子说，“当我们的剑砍下了女巫的脑袋时，就结束了她的一切法术，如今地下世界正处在崩塌的边缘。我们现在正目睹着地下世界的末日呢。”

“没错，殿下，”普德格伦说，“此外就只有一种可能性不大的情况了——那就是此刻恰好就是整个世界的末日。”

“可我们就这么待在这儿，就这么等着？”吉尔喘着粗气问。

“依我之见，这样可不行，”王子说，“我要去救我的马，它叫黑炭，还有女巫的马，它叫雪花。雪花不坏，它值得找一位更好的女主人。这两匹马都在院子里的马厩里。这之后，我们赶快到高地上去，但愿我们能顺利找到出口。必要时，一匹马可以骑两个人，马可以带着我们蹚过洪水。”

“殿下不披上盔甲吗？”普德格伦问道，“我不喜欢那些东西的样子——”他朝街下指指，大家都朝下看。好多人正从港口方向走过来，现在他们走近了，很显然就是地下人。他们不像是胡乱走动的人群，他们的举止就像攻击中的现代士兵，一边向前冲，一边找隐蔽处，急于不让城堡窗户里的人看见。

“我不敢钻进那副盔甲里面，”王子说，“披上那副盔甲骑马时，就像被关在一个可以活动的土牢里，盔甲里尽是一股法术和奴役的恶臭。不过我要带上那面盾。”

说着，他便离开了房间。过了一会儿他回来了，眼睛里发出奇异的光。

“瞧，朋友们，”他说着把盾举起来对着他们，“一小时以前盾还是黑的，没有纹章；现在啊，你们瞧。”只见那盾已经变得银光闪闪，上面还有比血和樱桃更红的狮王图像。

“毫无疑问，”王子说，“阿斯兰将成为我们的主宰神，不论他叫我们死还是活。现在我劝大家都跪下，亲吻阿斯兰的神像，然后彼此握手，就像好朋友可能马上就要分别一样。接着我们一起下去，到城里去直面危险吧。”

他们全都照王子所说的办了。斯科拉博跟吉尔握手时，说了一句话，“别了，吉尔，我想跟你道个歉，从前我是个胆小鬼，而且十分讨人厌。希望你能平安回家。”吉尔说，“别了，尤斯塔斯，我也向你道歉，我过去那么蠢。”这是他们第一次彼此认真称呼名字，因为在学校里大家都不叫名字的。

王子打开了门，他们都走下楼去：三个人拿着剑，吉尔手里拿着刀。那些地下人都不见了，楼梯脚的那间大房间里空空荡荡的。那些灰沉沉、阴森森的灯仍然亮着，借着灯光他们毫不费力地走过一条条走廊，又走下一段段楼梯。城堡外面的声音在这儿倒不如他们在上面房间听得清楚。屋里一片寂静，空无一人。他们转了一个弯来到底层大厅时遇到了第一个地下人——一个面色苍白的胖子，长着一张猪样的脸，正大口大口吃着桌上的残羹剩饭。看到有人来了，它发出了猪一般的尖叫声，随即冲到一条长凳下，长尾巴往后一藏，正好没让普德格伦抓住。随后它飞快地从另一边门窜了出去，追也追不上了。

他们从门厅来到院子。因为吉尔在假日里上过骑马学校，她很快就闻出了一股马厩的味儿。在地下世界这种地方闻到这股味儿，可真是好闻，又纯正又亲切。这时尤斯塔斯叫了出来，“天哪！看那边！”

只见城堡墙后的某个地方升起了壮丽的烟火，散开变成很多绿色的星星。

“居然有烟火？”吉尔迷惑不解地说。

“是啊，”尤斯塔斯说，“但别以为那些地下人是放着玩的！那一定是信号。”

“我敢说，这对我们不是一件好事。”普德格伦说。

“朋友们，”王子说，“一个人一旦开始踏上冒险之旅，就必须把希望和恐惧抛在脑后，否则死亡或解脱都没法保全他的荣誉和理智。嗬，看看我的美人儿。”（他打开了马厩门）。“嗨，老朋友！黑炭，站稳了。别出声，雪花！没有忘记你。”

两匹马都被那些奇怪的亮光和闹声吓坏了。吉尔当初穿过山洞之间的黑洞时胆子那么小，现在却毫无畏惧地走到两匹又顿脚又喷鼻的牲口当中，不一会儿她和王子就给马装好鞍子和缰绳。两匹马牵出来时昂首阔步，看来十分神气。吉尔骑上雪花，普德格伦坐在她后面；尤斯塔斯跨上黑炭，坐在王子后面。然后就在“嘚嘚”的马蹄声中，他们出了大门，向街上驰去。

“幸亏只是烧伤了，没什么大碍。”普德格伦说着，一面指着他们右边。那里，不到一百码的距离，就已经看到海水在拍打着屋子的墙壁了。

“别怕！”王子说，“那边的下坡路陡，海水现在只上升到城里最大一座山的半山腰。刚开始半小时海水离我们可能很近，但后面两个小时我们就不用担心了。我更担心的倒是……”他用剑指着一个身高七英尺的大个子地下人，那人长着一口獠牙，后面跟着六个形状各异、高矮不一的地下人，他们刚从一条小街里冲出来，躲进人们看不见的屋子隐蔽处。

王子带领大家直奔那片红光的方向，但他们的路线稍稍偏左一点。他的计划是绕过那片看起来像火的区域，然后登上高地，试试能不能找到通往新挖出口的路。和同行的三个人不一样，王子看起来似乎有些悠然自得。他骑马时还吹着口哨，唱起了歌颂阿钦兰王国的霹雳拳击手柯林的一段老歌。事实上，他是因为长期受魔法幽禁，这会儿刚得到解脱，心情十分激动。相比之下，眼前的这一切危险似乎只是小把戏了。但其他三个人都觉得这段路程阴森可怕。

他们后面传来船只互相碰撞的声音和建筑物倒下发出的轰隆隆声。头顶是地下世界顶部那一大片火红的光，而眼前是神秘的红光，红光也没有扩大范围的趋势。此外，同一方向还不断传来吵闹、呼喊、尖叫、口哨、哄笑、惨叫、怒吼的声音，各种声音掺杂在一起闹成一片。黑夜中还升起各种各样的烟火，谁也猜不出这有什么含义。

离他们近一点的地方，城市有部分区域被那片红光照亮，另有部分地方被小精灵手上阴森森的灯笼照亮。不过还有很多地方两种光都照不到，仍然处在一片漆黑之中。就在那些地方不断地看到有地下人冲进去、再溜出来，他们虽然一直盯着这一行人看，但始终尽量避免与他们对视。那些人中有的是大脸，有的是小脸，有的长着鱼眼般的大眼睛，有的长着熊眼般的小眼睛，有长着羽毛的，有长着鬃毛的，有长角的，有长獠牙的，有的鼻子长得像鞭绳，有的下巴长得像胡子。有时遇上一大群拥挤的人或是他们靠得太近时，王子就挥舞宝剑，装出要打他们的架势。这些家伙就发出各种叫声，有的唬唬叫，有的叽叽叫，有的吱吱叫，然后四处窜到黑暗中去。

等他们爬上一条条陡峭的街道，已经离洪水很远了，而且几乎出了城到了内陆一边，但事态反而变得更严重了。这会儿他们已经离那片红光足够近了，几乎和红光处在同一高度，可是他们仍然看不出这光是什么。不过通过这片光，他们能把敌人看得一清二楚。只见成百上千个小精灵都在朝着红光的方向移动。但他们走起路来蜂拥而上，一旦停下，他们就转身面对着这一行人。

普德格伦说：“依我说，这些家伙是打算从正面把我们拦住。”

“我也是这么想的，普德格伦，”王子说，“从那么多人中杀出一条路来是不可能了。你们听好！我们往前骑到靠那边房子跟前。我们一到那儿，你就溜到阴影里。我和这位小姐就再往前走几步。我相信有些妖怪就会跟着我们；他们密密麻麻都躲在我们后面呢。你的手臂长，要是可能的话，要是哪个刚好经过你埋伏的地方，就抓一个活的。我们可以从他嘴里打听到真相，看看他们究竟跟我们有什么过不去的事。”

“可其他的人会不会全都朝我们冲过来救那个被我们抓住的呢？”吉尔说话的嗓音显然没有那么镇静，尽管她极力装作很冷静的样子。

“好了，小姐，”王子说，“我们将守护你浴血奋战，你必须要平安回到狮王身边去报到。我们上吧，勇敢的普德格伦。”

沼泽怪像只猫似的迅速溜到阴影里去。其余的人等了一两分钟后，又继续往前走。接着他们身后忽然传来一连串令人心惊胆战的尖叫声，还伴随着普德格伦那熟悉的声音在说，“行了，别叫了，免得伤着，不然就真的伤着你了，懂吗？人家听了还以为要杀猪呢。”

“抓得好。”王子一面喝彩，一面马上拉着黑炭转过身子，回到屋子的角落那去。“尤斯塔斯，”他说，“请你拉住黑炭的头。”

随后他下了马，三个人都默默注视着普德格伦把抓住的东西拉到亮处。一看原来是个可怜透顶的小精灵，大约只有三英尺高。头顶上有个像鸡冠似的脊，只不过硬邦邦的，它长着粉红的小眼睛，嘴巴和下巴又大又圆，那张脸看上去就像只小河马。如果他们不是处在这种困境中，看见这副模样准会捧腹大笑。

“好了，地下人，”王子说，一面监视着它，一面拿手里的剑直指它的脖子，“你要是老老实实说出来，就放你自由。敢跟我们耍花招，你就死定了。普德格伦，你这样紧紧抓住他的嘴，要他怎么能说话呢？”

“必须得这么做，这样它也咬不了人，”普德格伦说，“如果我也长了一双你们人类那样软绵绵的手，当然了尊贵的殿下您不是，这会儿我早就满手是血了。可即便如此，就是沼泽怪也不喜欢老被它嚼啊。”

“小家伙！”王子对小精灵说，“再咬一口，就叫你死。让他张嘴，普德格伦。”

“噫，噫，噫，”那地下人尖声叫喊，“让我走，让我走。不是我，我没干。”

“没干什么？”普德格伦问。

“凡是各位大人说是我干的，我都没干。”那家伙答道。

“告诉我，你叫什么名字，”王子说，“还有你们地下人今天都在干什么。”

“哦，求求你们各位大人，求求你们，好心的绅士们，”那小精灵哭着说，“答应我，可别把我说的任何事告诉女王陛下。”

“你所称呼的女王陛下，”王子严厉地说，“已经死了，我亲手杀了她。”

“什么？”那小精灵叫道，那张令人发笑的嘴巴惊奇地越张越大。“死了？女巫死了？是大人亲手杀的？”他放心地大大松了口气，又加了一句，“咦，那么说大人是朋友了！”

王子把剑抽回了一两英寸，普德格伦让这家伙坐起来。它那对发亮的红眼睛在大家脸上来回看了几遍，嘻嘻笑了两声，这才开始说话。

第十四章
世界之底

“我叫戈尔格，”小精灵说，“我会向你们和盘托出的。大约一小时前，我们都在忙着做自己的事情，准确来说是帮女王做事情。我们就这样，十年如一日地忙活着同样的事情，心里无比难过，但又只能默默忍受。接着我们听到了轰隆隆一声巨响。我们一听见这个声音，心里就忍不住纳闷了，我们已经很久没唱过歌、跳过舞，更没有玩过爆竹了，那到底是什么声音呢？我们都在想，一定是被魔法迷住了。接着每个人还对自己说，要是我知道自己为什么要搬这么重的东西，我就再也不干它了。于是我们纷纷把口袋、包裹和肩上扛的工具都扔下，随后一起转身去看那边一大片红光。我们都忍不住惊叹，那是什么啊？然后我们发现，原来有条裂缝或缺口似的东西豁开了，从几千英寻以下的深层地底照上来一股好暖和的光。”

“老天爷，”尤斯塔斯惊叫道，“还有其他地势更低的地方吗？”

“有的，大人，”戈尔格说。“那是个好地方。我们管它叫比斯姆国。现在所在的国家是女巫的国家，我们管它叫浅地。对我们来说，这儿离地面太近，不适合我们居住。呃！这地方也不适合你住，你还不如住在外面，住到地面上去。你瞧，我们都是从比斯姆国来的可怜小精灵，是女巫用魔法把我们招到这儿来为她干活的。可是我们把这些事全忘了，直到传来轰隆一响，魔法解除了才想起来。我们不知道自己是什么人，从哪儿来。除了女巫灌到我们头脑里的东西，我们其他什么也不能干，什么也不能想。这么多年来她灌到我们头脑里的全是些阴郁、愁闷的东西。我几乎已经忘掉了怎么说笑话、怎么跳快步舞了。不料刚刚轰隆一响，裂缝豁开了，海水开始涨起来了，一切记忆都苏醒过来了。我们现在都在赶忙出发，从裂缝下去，回到我们自己的家园去。你们能看见他们在那边放烟火，倒立闹着玩儿。要是你们能马上放我走，让我和大家一道回去，我会十分感激各位大人。”

“这真是再好不过了，”吉尔说，“我们砍下了女巫的头真是一举两得！既解救了我们自己，也解放了小精灵！看到他们其实并不那么可怕和忧郁，我心里真的好高兴，正如王子其实也并不是——不是他看上去这副模样。”

“要是果真如此，确实很好，”普德格伦一向很谨慎，“但那些小精灵在我看来并不像只是在逃跑。依我说，它们更像一支军队。看着我的脸，戈尔格先生，告诉我，你们确定不是在准备打仗吗？”

“我们当然是在准备打仗，大人，”戈尔格说，“不瞒你说，我们并不知道女巫死了。我们还以为她会从城堡里看着我们。我们正想方设法溜掉，不让她看见呢。后来你们四个出来了，拿着剑，骑着马，我们大家不免都在暗自嘀咕，这下可来了。我们不知道大人和女巫是敌人，所以我们决定宁可拼死战斗，也决不放弃回比斯姆的希望。”

“我相信它是个诚实的小精灵，”王子说，“放开它，我的朋友。至于我，戈尔格你听我说，我也曾像你和你的同胞一样被魔法迷住过，也是刚刚才想起我自己的本来面目。现在我再问一个问题。你知道那条到新挖坑道的路怎么走吗？就是女巫要领一支军队去攻打上面世界的那条地道？”

“噫，噫，噫，”戈尔格尖叫道，“是的，我知道那条可怕的路。我可以指给你们看那条路的入口。但如果大人要叫我陪你们上那儿去，那可绝对不行，我情愿死。”

“为什么？”尤斯塔斯好奇地问，“那儿有什么可怕的？”

“离上面、外面太近了，”戈尔格哆哆嗦嗦地说，“那是女巫对我们下的最狠的毒手。我们就要被带出去，带去世界外面。听说，那儿根本没有顶，只有一大块空白叫作天空。坑道已经挖得很远很远了，再挖几锹就可以到外面去了。我不敢走近那儿。”

“好哇，你终于说到点子上了。”尤斯塔斯喊道。吉尔说：“不过上面并没有那么恐怖。我们很喜欢那儿。我们就住在那儿。”

“我知道你们上面世界的人住在那儿，”戈尔格说，“但我认为这是因为你们找不到往地底下的路。你们对那儿才不是真正喜欢呢——像苍蝇似的在世界顶上爬来爬去。”

“你现在就给我们指指路好吗？”普德格伦说。

“赶得早不如赶得巧。”王子高兴地叫道。

一伙人就此出发。王子重新上马，普德格伦爬到吉尔后面，戈尔格在前头带路。他一面走一面叫喊着好消息，说女巫已经死了，这四个上面世界的人并不危险。听见他喊叫的小精灵又把消息传给更多的小精灵，所以一会儿工夫，整个地下世界都响起了欢呼声。成千上万的小精灵在蹦跳，翻筋斗，竖蜻蜒，玩跳背游戏，放大爆竹，还过来围着黑炭和雪花。王子只好把他自己中了魔法以及解脱苦难的经历讲了又讲，少说也讲了十遍。

他们就这样来到了缺口的边缘。这条缺口大约有一千英尺长，两百英尺宽。他们下了马，来到缺口边缘往下看。一股强烈的热浪扑面而来，还夹杂着一股他们从来没闻过的气味。这气味又浓又辣，又刺激，使人要打喷嚏。缺口深处很亮，刚开始他们的眼睛都闪瞎了，什么也看不见。等他们习惯了这么亮的光，才分辨出原来这是一条火河，河的两岸似乎是田野和发出刺眼的、热辣辣的光的小树林，可是这种光比起那条河来就黯然失色了。那儿五颜六色，蓝的、红的、绿的和白的光全都混在一起；这种效果就像是正午时分热带的阳光直射在一面美丽的彩色玻璃窗上。在那火红的光照下，成千上万的地下人看上去就像一片黑压压的苍蝇正顺着凹凸不平的裂缝边往下爬去。

“各位大人。”他们听到戈尔格的声音，回头看他时，一时眼前一片漆黑，什么都看不见，他们的眼睛都发花了。“各位大人，你们干吗不到比斯姆去呢？那里可要比在上面那个冷冰冰、光秃秃、没遮没拦的国家幸福多了。至少下去来个短途旅游也行。”

吉尔理所当然地认为绝不会有谁会理会这么个馊主意，谁知竟听到王子说：“说真的，戈尔格朋友，我也很想跟你一起下去，这会是一次极好的探险，也许还未有凡人去过呢。年复一年，我将来若是想起当年自己一度有能力去探索地球极深渊却避而不去，恐怕要叹息不已吧。但凡人能在那儿生活吗，你们不在那条火河里游泳吧？”

“哦，不，大人。我们当然不会。只有火蛇才生活在火里。”

“你说的火蛇是什么样的动物？”王子问。

“很难描述，大人。”戈尔格说，“因为它们太热太热了，看也看不得。不过它们大多像小龙。它们和我们说话时，会把头探出火焰外。它们的口才特别好，能说会道，滔滔不绝。”

吉尔匆匆看了尤斯塔斯一眼。她原来深信他对爬下裂缝的想法比她自己还要深恶痛绝。可她看见他的脸色已经大不相同，心里不禁一沉。看上去他更像一位王子而不像实验学校里过去那个胆小的斯科拉博了。因为此时他正在回想自己跟凯斯宾国王一起航海的日子里经历的奇遇。

“殿下，”他说，“要是我的老朋友老鼠雷佩契普在这儿，他就会说眼下我们要是不去比斯姆冒险，我们就免不了名誉扫地了。”

“跟我去下面，”戈尔格说，“我可以带你们看看真正的金子、银子和钻石。”

“胡说八道，”吉尔粗鲁地说，“说得就像我们不知道我们现在已经在矿层的最底部了。”

“是啊，”戈尔格说，“我听说过你们上界居民把地壳上小小的擦痕叫作矿，但你们得到的都是死的金银珠宝。在比斯姆，我们的金银珠宝都是活的，它们还在生长。在那儿我可以给你摘一束能吃的红宝石，给你挤满一杯钻石汁。一旦尝过比斯姆活的金银珠宝的滋味，你们肯定就不屑于抚摸浅矿里那些冷冰冰的、没有生命气息的金银珠宝了。”

“我父亲已经到过世界尽头了，”瑞廉沉思地说，“要是他的儿子到世界最深底去，想想也是挺奇妙的。”

“要是殿下想趁你父亲还活着的时候见他最后一面，”普德格伦说，“现在我们该上路了。”

“说什么我也不愿到那个洞里去。”吉尔又说。

“哎呀，要是各位大人真的要动身回上面世界去，”戈尔格说，“有一段路比这还低呢，说不定，要是洪水还在涨的话……”

“求求你们，我们快走吧！”吉尔恳求道。

“我们恐怕必须得走了，”王子深深叹了口气，“不过我的半颗心已经留在比斯姆了。”

“求求你了。”吉尔恳求着。

“路在哪儿？”普德格伦问道。

“那里一路上都有灯，”戈尔格说，“大人在裂缝尽头就看得见路的起点。”

“那些灯能点多少时间？”普德格伦问。

正在这时，从比斯姆最深处传来了一阵嘶嘶响、火辣辣的声音。事后他们回想起来，他们怀疑那就是火蛇的声音。

“快，快，快，到悬崖去，到悬崖去，到悬崖去！”他说，“裂缝关了。关了。关了。快！快！”与此同时，岩石在震耳欲聋的哗啦响声中慢慢移动。等他们再看时，裂缝已经变窄了。掉队的小精灵纷纷从两边朝里面冲去。他们来不及爬下岩石，就倒栽葱似的跳下去。不知是由于底层冒上来的那股热浪太强，还是别的什么原因，只见他们都像树叶一样朝下飘。小精灵们变得越来越密，直到他们黑压压的身子几乎把那条火河和活宝石的小树林都遮住了。

“各位大人再见。我先走一步啦。”戈尔格大声嚷着，跳了进去，只有少数几个还在后面随着它跳了进去。裂缝一会儿就没有小溪那么宽了，一会儿就变成邮筒的投信口那么窄了，再过了一会儿只剩下一条极亮的线。随后，砰的一声，就像千百节货车撞上了千百对缓冲器，岩石两边合拢了。那股灼热、让人发疯的气味也消失了。他们四个孤零零地待在地下世界里，现在这儿看上去比以前更黑了，只剩下那些苍白、暗淡、阴森森的灯标志着路的方向。

“好了，”普德格伦说，“十有八九是因为我们待着的时间太久了。不过我们不妨试一下。我觉得那些灯五分钟内就会灭。”

他们催着马一路小跑，伴随着马蹄声，神气十足地在昏暗的路上疾驰。但很快他们就开始走下坡路了，要不是他们看见山谷的另一边还有灯，而且放眼望去，灯的排列一直都是往上的，他们还以为戈尔格指错了路呢。不过到了谷底，就看到灯光照在了流水上。

“赶快！”王子叫道。

他们沿着斜坡飞驰而下。要是再晚五分钟，情况就严重了，因为潮水正像水车沟里的水似的滚滚流入山谷，要是非要游过去的话，两匹马恐怕就不行了。不过这时潮水还只有一两英尺深，尽管水流经过马腿边发出可怕的哗哗声，他们最终还是安全抵达了对面山坡。

接着就开始漫长而艰辛的爬山之路，前路除了一眼望不到头的苍白灯光，什么都看不见。他们回头看时，看得出潮水已经在四处蔓延了。地下世界的山头这时都变成了岛屿，只有那些岛上的灯还亮着，而且远处每时每刻都有灯会熄灭。很快，除了他们正在走的这条路，到处都变得一片漆黑。即使他们身后较低的那一段路上灯还没灭，可那灯光却照在水面上。

尽管他们的赶路时间很宝贵，但是马却没法一直不停歇。他们就此停下，周遭一片寂静，只听得见水的拍打声。

“我真想知道那个叫什么名字的——时间老人——现在是不是被大水冲出来了？”吉尔说，“还有那么多奇怪的睡着的动物？”

“我觉得我们还没到那么高，”尤斯塔斯说，“你不记得我们是怎么从山上来到那个暗无天日的大海上的吗？我觉得大水还没到时间老人那个洞呢。”

“那也可能，”普德格伦说，“我对这条路上的灯更感兴趣。看上去有点暗淡吧？”

“这些灯一直很暗淡。”吉尔说。

“是的，”普德格伦说，“不过这会儿灯更加暗得发绿了。”

“你不是想说这些灯要灭了吧？”尤斯塔斯叫道。

“嗯，无论如何，你总不能寄希望于灯永远亮下去啊，”沼泽怪回答说，“不过你也别垂头丧气，斯科拉博。我也留意着水呢，我发现水没有刚才涨得那么快了。”

“朋友们，”王子说，“要是我们找不到出路，请大家原谅我。都怪我自尊心太强，还异想天开，害得大家在比斯姆国入口耽搁了。好了，我们继续前进吧。”

此后的一个多小时里，吉尔一直在纠结普德格伦关于灯的看法到底是对的，还是这只是她的想象而已。同时她发现大地也慢慢有了变化。地下世界的顶层已经离得很近了，即使在暗淡的灯光下，他们也能看得清清楚楚。还有，可以看得出地下世界两边大片凹凸不平的岩壁也正在靠拢。事实上，这条路正把他们引进一条陡峭的地道。他们走过的路上开始出现铁镐、铁锹和手推车，以及其他等等，这说明挖坑道的刚刚还在干活。这时候要是有人来告诉他们肯定可以出得去，他们肯定会备受鼓舞。但只要一想到自己正走进一个变得越来越窄的洞，而且窄得难以转身，他们的心情就变得糟糕起来。

最后，顶层变得很低，普德格伦和王子脑袋都撞在顶上了。他们都下来牵着马走。这儿的路面高低不平，走路也要格外小心。吉尔就在这时才注意到周围越来越黑了。这一点毋庸置疑，伙伴们的脸在绿荧荧的光下看上去又古怪又可怕。随后，吉尔突然情不自禁地尖叫了一声。一盏灯，就是前面的那盏完全灭了。接着他们后面的那盏也灭了。于是他们完全陷入了黑暗中。

“不用怕，朋友们，”传来了瑞廉王子的声音，“不论我们是死是活，阿斯兰都是我们伟大的主宰。”

“说得对，殿下，”普德格伦说，“我们要知道掉在这儿的陷阱里还有一个好处：丧葬费给省下了。”

吉尔不吭声。要是你不想让别人知道你有多惊慌，保持沉默绝对是个聪明办法，一出声你就露馅了。

“我们与其待在这儿不动，还不如向前继续走。”尤斯塔斯说。当吉尔听见他的声音在颤抖时，吉尔内心窃喜着，觉得还是不吭声比较明智。

普德格伦和尤斯塔斯生怕碰上什么东西，把两手伸出来放在身前。吉尔和王子则拉着马在后面跟着。

“嗨，”过了好一会儿，尤斯塔斯说，“是我的眼睛作怪，还是那上面确实有片光？”

大家还来不及回答，普德格伦就叫了起来。“停下，我走到头了。这是泥土，不是岩石。你刚刚说什么来着，斯科拉博？”

“狮王在上，”王子说，“尤斯塔斯是对的。上面确实有……”

“但这不是太阳光，而是一种冷冷的蓝光。”吉尔说。

“但有光总比没光好，”尤斯塔斯说，“我们能上去吗？”

“那光并不在我们头顶上，”普德格伦说，“是在我们上面，不过就在我撞进来的这堵墙里。波尔，你爬到我肩膀上，看看能不能够到那儿，怎么样？”

第十五章
吉尔不见了

那片光并没照亮黑暗中的任何东西。其他人只是听到吉尔爬上了沼泽怪的背部，可是什么也看不见。因为他们听见他一会儿说，“你不要把手指塞到我眼睛里。”一会儿又听到说，“也别把脚塞到我嘴里。”再一会儿说，“这样才像话。”或者一会儿说，“行了，我要抓住你的腿。那样你两条胳臂就可以腾出来撑着泥地，稳住身子。”

接着，他们往上看时，就看见了在那片光的衬托下，吉尔脑袋的黑色轮廓。”

“怎么样？”他们都急切地嚷道。

“这里有个洞，”吉尔叫道，“要是我再高一点，我就能爬出去。”

“你从洞口看见什么了？”尤斯塔斯问。

“还没看见什么呢，”吉尔说，“嗨，普德格伦，放开我的腿，那样我就能站在你肩膀上啦，坐着看不到。我自己会靠着洞边稳住身子的。”

他们听得见她在动，随后就看见吉尔的大部分身子在洞口灰暗的亮光下，事实上她上半身都在外面了。

“嗨……”吉尔一开口就叫了一声，声音并不尖锐，听上去像是她的嘴被人蒙住了，要不就是塞进了什么东西。过后她的声音又恢复了，似乎在拼命地大声喊叫，但他们听不出她在叫什么。这时同时发生了两件事。一是有一会儿那片光完全被挡住了；二是他们都听见一阵扭打、挣扎的声音，还听见沼泽怪喘着气说：“快，帮帮忙，抓住她腿，有人在上面拉住她。那儿！不对，是这儿。来不及了，晚了！”

那个洞和洞口的那片冷光又完全露了出来。吉尔却已经不见了。

“吉尔，吉尔！”他们发疯似的大喊大叫，却没人回答。

“你为什么不抓住她的脚呢？”尤斯塔斯质问道。

“我不知道，斯科拉博，”普德格伦哼哼着说，“生来就时运不济，也不奇怪。一切都是命里注定的。命里注定了波尔的死。就像我命中注定在哈方吃了会说话的鹿。当然我不是说我就没错了。”

“这简直是我们遇到最耻辱、最痛苦的事情，”王子说，“我们把一位勇敢的小姐送到敌人手里，自己却安全地待在后方。”

“别尽往坏里说了，殿下，”普德格伦说，“我们在这也不一定安全，只能饿死在这个洞里。”

“我不知道我的体型是否能钻过吉尔出去的那个洞。”尤斯塔斯说。

吉尔真正遇到的事是这样的：她刚把脑袋伸出洞口，就发现自己是在往下看，正像从楼上一扇窗户往下看似的，而不是像从活板门里往外看。她在黑暗中待了很久，刚开始眼睛什么也看不清，只知道她眼前不是朝思暮想的阳光世界。空气似乎冷得要命，光线灰暗发青。还有不少声音环绕在耳边，许多白晃晃的东西在空中飞来飞去。她就是在这一瞬间对下面的普德格伦叫喊，叫他让自己站在他肩膀上。

她站起来以后，看也看得更清楚，听也听得更清楚。她听见的声音原来有两种，一是有节奏的顿脚，二是四把小提琴、三支笛子和一只鼓演奏的乐声。她也把自己所在的地方弄清楚了。她正从一片陡峭的山坡上的一个洞里往外看，山坡向下倾斜，她离下面平地大约有十四英尺。眼前是白茫茫的一片。好多人在那里不停走动。她看得眼花缭乱。那些人原来是些穿得整整齐齐的小羊怪，以及戴着花冠、长发飘飘的树精。有一阵子它们看上去好像是在走来走去，随后她看出它们实际上是在跳舞——跳的是一种由很多复杂的步子和姿势组成的舞蹈，看了半天才能看懂。再一看突然发现那灰暗发青的光是真正的月光，地上那些白的东西是真正的雪，顿时大吃一惊。当然头顶上还有星星在黑沉沉的寒夜中凝视着。而那些跳舞的人后面又高又黑的东西原来是树木。他们不仅终于回到了上面的世界，而且来到了纳尼亚中心。吉尔觉得她开心得要昏过去了。耳边还听到了音乐，那音乐粗犷热烈，同时也带一点怪诞，就像是充满了正义的魔法，正如女巫弹奏的噔噔声充满了邪恶的魔法一样——使她感到更快乐了。

这一切说起来似乎花了很长时间，但其实只有一小会儿工夫。吉尔随即转身打算往下告诉其他人，“嗨，好啦。我们已经出来啦！我们到家啦！”但她才说出“嗨”，就没再说下去，事情是这样的：在那群跳舞的人外面有一圈小矮人在打转，他们全都穿着节日盛装，多数穿戴着猩红的镶皮风帽、金色流苏和镶皮高筒靴。他们转圈子时还一个劲地扔雪球（这就是吉尔刚才看到在空中飞来飞去的白晃晃的东西）。他们并不像英国有些傻小子那样对准跳舞的人扔。他们扔雪球穿插在整个舞蹈中，与音乐完全合拍，对准目标，分毫不差扔过去，要是所有的舞蹈者都恰好在算准的时刻站在算准的位子上，那么谁也不会被打中。这就叫作大雪舞，在纳尼亚每年地上积雪以后第一个有月光的夜晚都要跳这种舞。当然这既是一种舞蹈也是一种游戏，因为不时会有哪个跳舞的出点小差错，脸上就挨上一个雪球，大家都大笑一场。不过，如果舞蹈者、小矮人和乐师配合得当，就能保持好几个小时挨不到雪球。碰到天气好的晚上，寒气阵阵，鼓声咚咚，猫头鹰唬唬啼叫，还有郎朗的月光，这一切便与它们那种林地人的狂野气质一拍即合，它们便会变得更加狂热，能够一直跳到天亮。但愿你们能亲眼看到这种场面。

吉尔刚刚说出“嗨”，就住了口，原因是小矮人扔的一个大雪球从另一边穿过舞蹈者，正好打在她的嘴里。她可一点也不在乎。那时就是扔来二十个雪球也扫不了她的兴。但无论如何，满口都是雪时你也说不了话。等她吐掉几口雪，又能说话了，却由于激动，忘记了其余的人还待在她身后下面的暗处，还不知道这个好消息呢。她干脆从洞里尽量探出身子，朝跳舞的人大声叫喊。

“救命！救命！我们被埋在这小山里，快把我们挖出来。”

那些纳尼亚人根本连山坡上有个小洞都没有注意到，他们显得十分惊讶。他们东张张，西望望，好不容易才发现声音是从哪儿来的。等他们看见吉尔，就全都朝她跑来；凡是爬得上山坡的都跑上去了，大约有十几双手伸出来帮助她出来。吉尔抓住他们的手，到了洞外，倒头从坡上滑下去，随后爬起来说：“哦，去把别人挖出来吧。除了马，还有三个。其中之一就是瑞廉王子。”

她说这些话的时候已经给一大群人围在当中了，因为除了跳舞的，还有各种各样的动物在场观看跳舞，她刚开始没看到，现在他们也跑了上来。小松鼠像阵雨似的纷纷从树上跳下来，猫头鹰也纷纷飞来。刺猬大摇大摆，撒开短腿急速跑来。熊和獾跟在后面，步子稍慢些。最后赶来的是一只大豹子，兴奋得直摇尾巴。

但等到他们听明白吉尔说的话，大家全都变得积极了。“铁镐和铁锹，孩子们，铁镐和铁锹。去拿工具来！”小矮人说着飞快冲进树林。“把鼹鼠叫醒，它们才是挖洞的能手，跟小矮人一样能干。”一个声音说。“她说瑞廉王子怎么了？”另一个问。“嘘，”豹子说，“可怜的孩子疯了，在山里迷了路，她都不知道自己在说些什么了。”“是啊，”老熊说，“咦，她还说瑞廉王子是一匹马呢！”

“不，她没说。”一只松鼠冒冒失失地说。

“是的，她说了。”另一只松鼠说话更冒失。

“我所说的千真万确！是真——真的，别——别——别犯傻了。”吉尔说。她说话这个调儿是因为这会儿她正冷得牙齿直打架。

一个树精立刻替她披上一件皮斗篷，那是其中一个小矮人奔去取他的挖掘工具时掉下的，一只热心助人的羊怪匆匆跑到树林中的一个地方去给她弄点热的喝，吉尔看见那地方的一个山洞口有火光。不过他还没回来，所有的小矮人都带着铲子和铁镐回来了，大家往山上冲去。接着吉尔听见七嘴八舌的喊声，有的喊道，“嗨，你要干什么？把剑放下。”有的喊道，“好了，小伙子，住手。”还有的喊道，“好啊，他是个恶毒的家伙吧？”吉尔急忙赶过去，正好看见脸色苍白又肮脏的尤斯塔斯从黑洞中冒出来，右手还挥舞着一把剑，要猛刺任何敢于接近他的人，一时真是让人哭笑不得。

尤斯塔斯在刚才这片刻间的经历和吉尔当然大不相同。他听见吉尔喊叫，看见她就此不知所踪。他跟王子和普德格伦一样，也以为是什么敌人把她抓去了。从下面往上看，他看不清那灰暗发青的光是月光。他还以为这个洞只通向另一个洞，那洞里亮着鬼火磷光，而且挤满了不知何种地下世界的妖魔鬼怪。因此当他说服普德格伦让自己爬到他背上，并抽出剑，再伸出头来，于他来说已经干了一件非常勇敢的事了。其余两个要是能先上去的话早就去了，但那个洞太小，他们爬不出去。尤斯塔斯个头比吉尔大一点点，但却比她笨拙得多，他往外张望时，脑袋撞在洞口顶上，撞得积雪崩落下来，掉在他脸上。因此当他又能看见时，只见好多人影拼命向他奔来，怪不得他拼命想抵挡了。

“住手，尤斯塔斯，住手，”吉尔叫道，“他们都是朋友。难道你看不出来吗？我们已经来到纳尼亚，我们平安无事啦。”

听这么一说，尤斯塔斯才真的看清楚了，就向小矮人道歉（小矮人说没关系），十几个小矮人伸出了粗壮多毛的手，就像他们刚才帮助吉尔那样，把他拉出了洞。接着吉尔趴在山坡上，脑袋凑到那个黑黑的洞口边，大声把好消息报告给还陷在里面的人。她转身时听见普德格伦喃喃地说，“啊呀，可怜的波尔，刚才这一会儿实在难为她了。她昏了头，这一点都不奇怪。她怕是活见鬼了。”

吉尔与尤斯塔斯重聚了，两人双手拉着对方，大口呼吸着半夜里清凉的空气。小矮人们给尤斯塔斯拿来一件暖和的斗篷，还给他俩端来了热饮。他们慢慢喝着饮料时，小矮人已经把山坡上原来那个洞周围的雪和草皮铲掉了一大片。他们欢快地挥舞铲子和铁镐，就像十分钟以前羊怪和树精的脚欢快地跳舞一样。虽然才出来了十分钟，但对吉尔和尤斯塔斯来说，他们已经觉得刚刚那个危险、炙热的黑暗世界一定只是一个梦罢了。在这儿外面，天气寒冷，月亮和星星就在头顶（纳尼亚的星星比我们世界的星星离得近些），周围全是和蔼可爱的脸，他们就不大相信有地下世界了。

他们还没喝完热饮料，就来了十多只鼹鼠，由于刚刚被叫醒，他们还一副睡眼惺忪的样子，而且不大高兴。但等他们了解到这是怎么回事，就起劲地一起干活了。就连羊怪也帮忙用小车子推走挖出来的土，松鼠兴奋得来回跳啊蹦的，而吉尔想来想去想不出他们自以为在干什么。熊和猫头鹰出出主意就算了，还不断问两个孩子要不要进山洞（就是吉尔看见有火光的那个山洞）去取暖和吃晚饭。不过两个孩子还没看到他们的朋友不忍心走。

在我们的世界里干这份活的，没一个能赶得上纳尼亚的小矮人和会说话的鼹鼠，不过，鼹鼠和小矮人当然也没把这看成是干活，因为他们就喜欢挖洞。所以没过多久他们就在山坡上打开一个黑洞洞的大缺口。只见两个身影从黑暗中走到月光下——要是人家不知道这两个是谁，那可怪吓人的。其中一个是细长腿、戴尖帽子的沼泽怪，随后拉着两匹大马的是瑞廉王子。

普德格伦出来时，四面八方都响起了叫喊声。“咦，是个怪——咦，原来是老普德格伦呀，你是东部沼泽地的老普德格伦吧，你都去干什么了呀，普德格伦，有好几批搜寻队去找你了。杜鲁普金爵爷出过告示，还出了赏金呢！”不过这些吵闹声很快就消失了，变成一片沉默。就像是在一个吵吵闹闹的宿舍里，突然校长推开了门，那些吵闹声一下子就消失了一样。因为他们这会儿看见王子了。

谁也没有怀疑他是谁。好多动物、树精、小矮人和羊怪都记得他中魔法以前的模样。有一些上了年纪的还记得凯斯宾国王年轻时的面容，看出了相像的地方。但我认为他们不管怎样都会认出他的，尽管他被监禁在地下世界里那么久，脸色苍白，又穿着黑衣服，灰头土脸的，一副衣冠不整、精神萎靡的样子，但他脸上的那种神情和气场是错不了的。那种神情是纳尼亚真正的国王才会有的，凡是按照阿斯兰意愿统治这个国家、坐在凯尔帕拉维尔至尊王彼得的宝座上的国王都是这种神情。

大家顿时脱下帽子跪下，过了一会儿四周就响起了热烈的欢呼声和喊叫声，大家互相握手、亲吻、拥抱。如此热烈的场面使吉尔不由地流下了热泪。他们费尽千辛万苦的征途是值得的。

“请用餐，殿下，”最老的那个小矮人说，“那边山洞刚刚开始做饭，准备大雪舞结束后吃的……”

“我随意的，前辈，”王子说，“我们四个迷路人今晚吃起东西来胃口比任何人都要好。”

大伙儿开始退场，穿过树林，走向山洞。吉尔听见普德格伦对那些挤在他周围的动物说：“不，不，我的事可以等等再说。关于我的遭遇不值一谈。我想要听听消息。可别一点一点儿透露给我，我想一口气都听完。国王的船有没有失事？有没有发生森林火灾？卡乐门边境打过仗吗？有没有来过两三条龙？就算有，也不奇怪。”

所有的动物都哈哈大笑道：“这不就是个沼泽怪吗？”

两个孩子又累又饿，差点快倒下了，但山洞里暖洋洋的，加上看见火光在墙上、食具柜上、杯子上、碟子上、盘子上和光滑的石头地板上跳跃，正如农家厨房里的情景，心里倒也振奋了一会儿。但等晚饭准备好的时候他们还是睡着了。

他们睡觉的时候，瑞廉王子在跟那些年长一些、聪明一些的动物和小矮人谈论冒险的全部经历。如今他们全明白这是怎么一回事了。一个恶毒的女巫（无疑跟很久以前给纳尼亚带来漫长冰雪岁月的那个白女巫是一路货色）策划了这整个事件，先是杀了瑞廉的母亲，再让瑞廉本人中了魔法。他们还明白了她在纳尼亚下面挖洞，准备破土而出，借瑞廉的名义来统治这个国家。而他万万不曾想到她要让他做国王（名义上的国王，实际上是她的奴隶）的那个国家竟然就是他自己的国家。而从两个孩子说的经历中，他们明白了女巫和哈方那些危险的巨人是相互勾结的。

“殿下，从这件事得出的教训是，”最老的那个小矮人说，“那些北部的女巫始终存着一个心眼儿，只不过在不同的时期，他们会想出不同的计划达到目的。”

第十六章
皆大欢喜

第二天早上，吉尔醒来发现自己在一个山洞里，一时吓坏了，以为又回到地下世界去了。不过她发现自己正躺在一张石楠铺成的床上，盖着一件皮斗篷，看见石头壁炉里的火正劈劈啪啪响得欢（像是刚刚生好的），而清晨的阳光正从山洞口照进来，她才回想起原来已经脱离苦海了。记得昨天的晚餐还没正式结束，她就困得要命，可是他们总算美美吃了一顿晚餐。大家都挤进那个山洞里，她隐隐约约记得好多小矮人围在炉火边，拿着比他们自己还大的煎锅，还有煎得嘶嘶响的、美味可口的香肠，有好多、好多、好多香肠呢。香肠不是那种里面一半都塞满面粉和黄豆的劣质香肠，而是肉多味辣、肥壮滚烫、煎得裂开、略微焦黄的纯正香肠。还有一大杯一大杯满是泡沫的巧克力、烤土豆、烤栗子、挖掉心子里面塞满葡萄干的苹果派。随后还有冰块，作为热餐之后的提神点心。

吉尔坐起来看看周围，普德格伦和尤斯塔斯就睡在离她不远的地方，两个都睡得很熟。

“嗨，你们两个！”吉尔大声叫道，“你们还不打算起来吗？”

“嘘，嘘，”她上面传来了一个睡意蒙眬的声音，“该休息一下了，好好睡一觉。睡吧，睡吧，别吵了。喔嗬！”

“咦，我敢打赌，”吉尔说着，朝山洞一角的落地大钟顶上雪白一团蓬蓬松松的羽毛看了一眼，“我就打赌那准是格里姆费瑟！”

“不错，不错，”猫头鹰呼噜呼噜说，脑袋从翅膀下伸出来，睁开一只眼睛，“我在两点钟左右给王子送了个信。是松鼠带来的好消息，是给王子的信。他走了，你们也要跟着去。再见……”说着脑袋又不见了。

看来是不可能从猫头鹰那儿再打听到什么消息了，吉尔起来到处看看能不能洗漱一下，吃点早饭。不料一只小羊怪刺溜一下小跑进了山洞，羊蹄子踩着石板地发出清脆的咔嗒咔嗒声。

“啊呀，你总算醒了，夏娃的女儿，”他说，“也许你应该叫醒亚当的儿子，你们一会儿工夫之后就要走了，两匹人头马送你们去凯尔帕拉维尔。”然后他放低声音接着说，“你们要知道，骑人头马可是一种闻所未闻的特殊荣誉。我就从来没听说过以前有谁骑过。让他们等着可不好。”

尤斯塔斯和普德格伦刚被叫醒就问：“王子到哪儿去了？”

“他到凯尔帕拉维尔去见他父王了，”那只名叫沃伦斯的羊怪回答说，“陛下的船随时都会进港。似乎是国王还没走远就遇见了阿斯兰——我不知道是在梦里看见，还是当面碰到——阿斯兰就叫他回来，还告诉他，他到达纳尼亚的时候，就会看到失踪已久的儿子在等着他。”

尤斯塔斯已经起来了，他和吉尔动手帮沃伦斯准备早餐。普德格伦按吩咐躺在床上。有匹名叫克劳德伯斯的人头马是有名的郎中，或者按照沃伦斯的称呼是“医师”，来给他治疗他那只烧伤的脚。

“啊！”普德格伦心满意足，“他要把我的腿齐膝截掉，也不奇怪。”不过他倒很高兴躺在床上。

早餐是炒蛋和烤面包片，尤斯塔斯那副吃相就像他半夜里并没有吃过一顿丰富的晚餐似的。

“嗨，亚当的儿子，”羊怪说，看着尤斯塔斯大口大口地吃，不免有点担心，“用不着那么匆忙，吃那么快。我想人头马这会儿还没吃好早餐呢。”

“那么他们一定起来得很晚，”尤斯塔斯说，“我敢说现在已经有十点多了。”

“哦，不，”沃伦斯说，“他们天不亮就起来了。”

“那么他们一定是在等早餐时间。”尤斯塔斯说。

“不，他们没等，”沃伦斯说，“他们一醒来就开始吃。”

“天哪，”尤斯塔斯说，“他们要吃一大份早餐吗？”

“怎么，亚当的儿子，难道你不明白？一匹人头马长着一个人的胃和一个马的胃。当然两个胃都要填上早餐。因此他先吃点粥、帕文德鱼、腰子、熏肉、煎蛋卷、冷火腿、烤面包片、果酱，喝点咖啡和啤酒。吃完后还要照顾自己身上马的那一部分，吃上一个多小时的青草，临了再来点热面糊、一些燕麦和一袋糖。这就是为什么说邀请人头马来过周末是件大事。的确是件天大的事。”

这时，山洞口传达了马蹄叩击岩石的声音，两个孩子抬头望去。两匹人头马，一匹是黑胡子，一匹是金黄色胡子，胡子飘拂在他们健壮的裸露的胸脯上，正站着等他们。人头马还把头低下来，往山洞里看。于是两个孩子变得很有礼貌，迅速解决了早餐。看见人头马时谁也不会觉得它可笑。他们是庄重而威严的动物，充满了古代智慧，那是从星星那儿学来的，他们不轻易流露喜怒，但他们发起火来就像海啸一样可怕。

“再见，亲爱的普德格伦，”吉尔走到沼泽怪床边说，“不好意思，我们以前叫你扫兴鬼。”

“我也是，”尤斯塔斯说，“你是世界上最好的朋友。”

“真希望我们能够再见。”吉尔又加了一句。

“我得说，这种机会不多，”普德格伦说，“我想我也很可能再也见不到自己的旧棚屋了，还有那位王子。尽管他是个好人，但你们认为他很健壮吗？地下世界的生活把他的身子骨毁了，也不奇怪。在我看来他随时都会丧命的。”

“普德格伦！”吉尔说，“你还是那个一成不变的鬼话大王。听上去你口气伤心得像在出席葬礼，而我相信你心里十分快活。你说话的感觉像是什么事都害怕，其实你勇敢得就像一头狮子。”

“好啦，说起葬礼……”普德格伦开始说，但吉尔听见人头马在她后面一个劲儿用蹄子叩击地面，就趁沼泽怪不注意时，伸出双臂搂住他的细脖子，亲了亲他那泥土色的脸。尤斯塔斯也趁此和他紧紧握手。接着他们都奔向人头马去了。沼泽怪倒在床上，自言自语道：“啊，就算我是个长相还不错的家伙，我做梦也没想到她会来这一手。”

骑上一匹人头马，虽然是份极大的光荣（除了吉尔和尤斯塔斯，现在在世的大概没有人有过这份光荣），但骑在上面十分不舒服。爱惜自己生命的人绝不会提出在人头马身上放个马鞍子，而骑光背的马可不是闹着玩的，尤其是像尤斯塔斯那种根本没学过骑马的人。人头马非常有礼貌，可以说庄重而优雅，像成年人一般成熟，他们慢慢跑过纳尼亚的树林时，头也不回就说开了，告诉两个孩子草药和根茎的性质、行星的影响、阿斯兰九个名字的意思等等。但不管这两个人当时一路上多颠多痛，如今回想起来他们却愿意不惜一切代价再来一趟：看看那些隔夜雪后闪闪发亮的林间空地和山坡，遇上兔子、松鼠和鸟儿向你道早安，再呼吸一口纳尼亚的空气，再听听纳尼亚树叶吹拂的声音。

他们来到河流下游，流淌的河水在冬天的阳光下显得晶莹碧蓝，在最后一座桥下面（桥位于舒适的红屋顶的小镇柏卢纳），乘上一艘平底船，由渡船工把他们送到对岸，或者说，由渡船怪送过去。在纳尼亚，大多数拖泥带水或沾点鱼腥的活儿都归沼泽怪。过河以后他们就沿着南岸一路飞驰，一会儿就到了凯尔帕拉维尔。他们刚到就看见他们第一次踏上纳尼亚时看见过的那条颜色鲜艳的船，正像一只大鸟在河里轻轻驶来。

满朝上下又一次聚集在城堡和码头之间的草坪上，欢迎凯斯宾国王再次归来。瑞廉王子已经换掉了黑衣服，在银色铠甲外面披了一件深红色斗篷，没戴头盔，站在河边迎接他的父亲。小矮人杜鲁普金就在他旁边，坐在那辆小驴车里。两个孩子看出他们没法穿过人群到王子身边去，而且这会儿他们也不太敢走上前去。因此他们请求人头马，是否可以在他们背上多坐一会儿，这样就可以越过大臣的脑袋看到一切景象了。人头马说尽坐不妨。

从水上传来船甲板上的一阵响亮的银号声，水手们把一根缆绳扔过去，老鼠（当然是会说话的老鼠）和沼泽怪把绳子紧紧拴在岸上；船就给拖进来了。躲在人群中的乐师开始演奏庄重的凯旋乐。国王的大帆船刚靠岸，老鼠就把跳板架上了。

吉尔原想着会看见老国王走下跳板。但那边似乎有什么事耽搁了。

一位脸色苍白的爵爷走上岸，对王子和杜鲁普金跪拜行礼。过后三个人把头凑在一起谈了一会儿，但没人能听见他们在谈什么。音乐还在继续，不过你能感受到大家都变得不安起来。接着是四位骑士，抬着什么东西，出现在甲板上，缓缓走来。当他们要走下跳板时你才看清他们抬的是什么：原来是躺在床上的老国王，脸色灰白，一动不动。他们把他放下。王子跪在他身边拥抱他。他们看得见凯斯宾国王举起手祝福他的儿子。大家都欢呼起来，不过这种欢呼有所保留，因为大家全都感到大事不妙。随后国王脑袋突然倒在枕头上，乐师们停下了，四下一片寂静。王子跪在国王床前，头挨着床，哭了起来。

人们交头接耳，来回走动。后来吉尔注意到所有戴帽子的——软帽、头盔、风帽，都摘下了——尤斯塔斯也跟着摘下了帽子。随后吉尔又听见城堡上方一阵窸窸窣窣、啪啦啪啦的声音；她抬眼望去，只见那面有金色狮王的大旗正降成半旗。此后，耳边又响起了无情悲凉的乐声，弦乐器在哭泣，号角在忧伤地哀号，这样的曲调令人心碎。

他们俩都从人头马身上溜了下来，但没有人注意到他们。

“真希望我能回家。”吉尔说。

尤斯塔斯点点头，咬着嘴唇一声不吭。

“我来了。”一个深沉的声音在他们身后响起。他们转过身来，看见了狮王，浑身闪光，威武雄壮，其他的一切跟他相比顿时显得黯然失色。转眼工夫，吉尔就忘记了纳尼亚国王去世的悲痛，只记得自己害得尤斯塔斯摔下悬崖、自己几乎错过了所有的指示，还记得途中的互相谩骂和吵架。她想说声“对不起”，但她说不出来。狮王用眼神把他们招呼到身边，弯下身子，用舌头舔舔他们苍白的脸，安慰道：“别再想那些了。我不会一直责怪你们的。你们已经完成了我让你们来纳尼亚办的事。”

“阿斯兰，请问，”吉尔说，“我们现在是不是可以回家了？”

“是啊，我就是来带你们回家的，”阿斯兰说。接着他又张大了嘴，吹了口气。不过这一次他们可不觉得自己在空中飞；相反，他们似乎留在原地不动，阿斯兰那口猛烈的气吹走了那艘船、死去的国王、城堡以及雪和冬日灰白的天空。这一切都像一团团烟圈那样在空中飘走了。突然间，他们站在了明亮的仲夏阳光下，站在了柔滑的草地上，周围有好多大树，旁边是一条清澈的小溪。

这时他们才看出自己又来到了阿斯兰大山，高高耸立在纳尼亚所在的那个世界的尽头之上和之外。奇怪的是耳边仍然听到持续不断的凯斯宾国王的哀乐，然而没人说得出音乐是从哪儿来的。他们在小溪边走着，狮王走在他们前面。他变得那么美，那音乐却是那么令人悲观绝望，吉尔也不知道为什么自己竟然眼泪汪汪。

后来阿斯兰停下了，两个孩子向溪水看去。在溪底的金色碎石上，躺着死去的凯斯宾国王，溪水就像流动的玻璃般流过他的身体。他那把长长的白胡子在水中像水草一样摇摇摆摆。他们三个，包括狮王，都站在那儿哭了。伟大狮王流下的眼泪，每颗泪珠都是一颗纯净钻石，比尘世间什么都珍贵。吉尔注意到尤斯塔斯哭的时候既不像一个小孩儿，也不像一个躲躲闪闪的男孩子，而是像个大人一样哭着。至少她认为那最接近尤斯塔斯那时的状态。不过，正像她说过的一样，在那座山上人们似乎不谈具体年龄。

“亚当之子，”阿斯兰说，“到那边灌木丛里去，看到刺就拔一根来给我。”

尤斯塔斯遵命去办。拿来的那根刺有一英尺长，像把双刃剑那么锐利。

“把刺扎进我爪子里，亚当之子。”阿斯兰说，一面伸出他的右前爪，向尤斯塔斯露出那一大块肉趾。

“我非扎不可吗？”尤斯塔斯说。

“对。”阿斯兰说。

于是尤斯塔斯咬紧牙齿，把刺扎进狮王的肉趾。肉趾上就流出了一大滴血，比你见过的或想象中的红色都更红。

这滴血溅到小溪里国王的尸体上。这时，哀乐停止了，国王的尸体也开始有了变化。他的白胡子变成了灰胡子，灰胡子又变为黄胡子，越变越短，直到完全消失。凹陷的双颊变得圆滚滚的，脸色也好起来，皱纹都变光滑了，他睁开眼睛，笑容满面，突然变成了一个很年轻的男人，或者说是一个男孩子，一下子跳起来站在他们面前。（不过吉尔分辨不出他的具体年龄，因为在阿斯兰的国家里人们没有年龄。当然，即便在这个世界里也是如此——最具孩子气的孩子最笨，最有成人气的成人最笨。）他冲向阿斯兰，张开双臂极力想搂住狮王那粗大的脖子，他给了阿斯兰一个国王的有力之吻，而阿斯兰给了他一个狮王的野性之吻。

最后凯斯宾转过身来对着那两个孩子，他又惊又喜地哈哈大笑。

“啊呀，尤斯塔斯！”他说，“尤斯塔斯！你到底还是回来了！你在海蛇身上砍断的我那把第二好的剑怎么样了？”

尤斯塔斯伸出双手向他迎上一步，但又吃惊地缩回来。“瞧，嗨，”他结结巴巴地说，“剑是好的，不过你不是……”

“哦孩子，别犯傻了。”凯斯宾说。

“只是，”尤斯塔斯看着阿斯兰说，“他不是，呃，不是死了吗？”

“是啊，”狮王十分平静地说，但吉尔觉得他几乎是在笑，“他确实是死了。你们也知道，大多数人都死过。甚至我也死过。没死过的人很少很少。”

“哦，”凯斯宾说，“我明白你为什么这样疑惑了。你当我是鬼，或什么歪门邪道的东西。不过你没看出来吗？要是我眼下出现在纳尼亚，我就会是鬼，因为我再也不属于那儿了。但一个人不能在自己的国家里做鬼啊。要是我到了你们的世界，我或许也可以做鬼。但我想那边也不是你们的世界了，你们现在是在这儿。”

两个孩子心里突然重新充满了希望。谁知阿斯兰却摇摇蓬松的脑袋。“不，亲爱的，”他说，“你们下次再遇到我时，你们就可以住下了。不过现在不行，你们必须回到你们自己的世界去过些日子。”

“大人，”凯斯宾说，“我一直想要看一眼他们的世界，我的要求不可以吗？”

“我的孩子，你既然已经死过一次了，那就再也不能随便提这些要求了。”阿斯兰说，“你可以去他们世界走一遭，按他们那里的时间在那里停留五分钟。待在那里时间若是再长一点，回来以后就乱套了。”接着阿斯兰向凯斯宾解释了吉尔和尤斯塔斯要回到什么地方去，还有实验学校的一切事情。他似乎跟两个孩子一样对那里的情况了如指掌。

“小姑娘，”阿斯兰对吉尔说，“到那边灌木林去摘一根树枝。”吉尔照做了，树枝刚到她手里就变成了一根新的马鞭。

“好了，亚当之子，抽出你的剑。”阿斯兰说，“但你只能用剑的平面，因为我派你去对付的是胆小鬼和孩子们，不是武士。”

“你跟我们一起去吗，阿斯兰？”吉尔说。

“嗯，但他们只能看见我的背。”阿斯兰说。

阿斯兰带他们迅速穿过树林，没走几步，实验学校的墙就出现在他们眼前。阿斯兰开始怒吼，吼得天上的太阳抖抖颤颤，他们眼前的墙也倒塌了三十英尺。他们从豁口往里看，看到学校的灌木丛，看到体育馆的屋顶，一切依旧，都还是他们冒险之前的模样。

阿斯兰转身对着吉尔和尤斯塔斯，朝他们吹了口气，用舌头舔舔他们的前额。接着他躺在自己震塌的豁口上，他那金色的背部对着英格兰，高贵的脸朝着自己的纳尼亚国。

就在这时，吉尔看见几个十分熟悉的身影正穿过月桂树向他们跑来。那一帮人都来了——阿黛拉·潘尼法瑟，乔蒙德利·梅杰，伊迪丝·温特布洛特，“雀斑”索纳，大个子班尼斯特，还有加勒特家两个讨厌的双胞胎。不料他们突然都停下了，脸色也变了，所有那些卑鄙、自负、残酷、诡诈的神情几乎都不见了，统统变成一种恐惧的神情。因为他们看到了倒塌的墙，一只像小象那么大的狮子正躺在豁口上，三个衣着华丽的身影手持武器正向他们冲来。

因为有了阿斯兰赋予他们的力量，吉尔拿马鞭抽向女孩子们，凯斯宾和尤斯塔斯得心应手地使劲挥舞着剑，用刀面对付男孩子，不到两分钟那些小恶霸就疯也似的逃命去了，一面还大喊大叫：“杀人了！一群法西斯！狮子！这不公平！”接着校长（顺便说说，校长是个女人）也跑出来看出了什么事。等她看到狮子和断墙、凯斯宾、吉尔和尤斯塔斯（她没认出他们）时，就歇斯底里了，只好回到屋里给警察打电话，编造出狮子逃出马戏团，以及逃犯砸倒了墙还持剑等一套鬼话。

吉尔和尤斯塔斯趁着一片混乱，悄悄溜进屋去，换掉鲜艳的衣服，穿上普通的服装，凯斯宾也回到他自己的世界去了。那堵墙按照阿斯兰的旨意也恢复了原状。等警察到达时，发现没有狮子，也没有断墙，更没有罪犯，而校长那副模样却像个疯子，就对整个事件做了调查。调查中实验学校的种种事情都败露了，大约有十个人被开除。校长的朋友看出校长当不了一校之长，就派她当个督学去监督其他校长。当他们发现她连这个工作都做不好时，干脆就把她送进议会，从此她就在议会里逍遥自在了。

在一天晚上，尤斯塔斯把他的好看衣服偷偷埋在校园里，但吉尔却偷偷把她的衣服带回家去，准备留着在接下来几个节日里的化装舞会上穿。从那天以后，实验学校的情况渐渐好转，学校办得越来越出色。吉尔和尤斯塔斯也成为了永远的朋友。

但在遥远的纳尼亚，瑞廉国王埋葬了他的父亲——航海家凯斯宾十世，并为他哀悼。瑞廉把纳尼亚治理得很好，他在位时可以说是国泰民安。还有那个普德格伦（他的脚在三个星期后就完全好了），他经常叨叨，天有不测风云，人有旦夕祸福，你不能指望好日子能一直过下去。山坡上那个裂口就一直开着，纳尼亚人常在炎热的夏天带着船和灯笼到里面去，在水面上来回航行，在阴凉黑暗的地下世界的海上唱歌，互相讲述在好多英寻下面深处那些城市的故事。

如果你有幸亲自到纳尼亚去，可别忘了去看看那些山洞啊。

CHAPTER ONE
BEHIND THE GYM

It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym.

She was crying because they had been bullying her. This is not going to be a school story, so I shall say as little as possible about Jill’s school, which is not a pleasant subject. It was “Co-educational,” a school for both boys and girls, what used to be called a “mixed” school; some said it was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it. These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked. And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked best was bullying the others. All sorts of things, horrid things, went on which at an ordinary school would have been found out and stopped in half a term; but at this school they weren’t. Or even if they were, the people who did them were not expelled or punished. The Head said they were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours. And if you knew the right sort of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favourite than otherwise.

That was why Jill Pole was crying on that dull autumn day on the damp little path which runs between the back of the gym and the shrubbery. And she hadn’t nearly finished her cry when a boy came round the corner of the gym whistling, with his hands in his pockets. He nearly ran into her.

“Can’t you look where you’re going?” said Jill Pole.

“All right,” said the boy, “you needn’t start —” and then he noticed her face. “I say, Pole,” he said, “what’s up?”

Jill only made faces; the sort you make when you’re trying to say something but find that if you speak you’ll start crying again.

“It’s Them, I suppose — as usual,” said the boy grimly, digging his hands farther into his pockets.

Jill nodded. There was no need for her to say anything, even if she could have said it. They both knew.

“Now, look here,” said the boy, “there’s no good us all —”

He meant well, but he did talk rather like someone beginning a lecture. Jill suddenly flew into a temper （which is quite a likely thing to happen if you have been interrupted in a cry）.

“Oh, go away and mind your own business,” she said. “Nobody asked you to come barging in, did they? And you’re a nice person to start telling us what we all ought to do, aren’t you? I suppose you mean we ought to spend all our time sucking up to Them, and currying favour, and dancing attendance on Them like you do.”

“Oh, Lor！” said the boy, sitting down on the grassy bank at the edge of the shrubbery and very quickly getting up again because the grass was soaking wet. His name unfortunately was Eustace Scrubb, but he wasn’t a bad sort.

“Pole！” he said. “Is that fair? Have I been doing anything of the sort this term? Didn’t I stand up to Carter about the rabbit? And didn’t I keep the secret about Spivvins — under torture too? And didn’t I —”

“I d-don’t know and I don’t care,” sobbed Jill.

Scrubb saw that she wasn’t quite herself yet and very sensibly offered her a peppermint. He had one too. Presently Jill began to see things in a clearer light.

“I’m sorry, Scrubb,” she said presently. “I wasn’t fair. You have done all that — this term.”

“Then wash out last term if you can,” said Eustace. “I was a different chap then. I was — gosh！ what a little tick I was.”

“Well, honestly, you were,” said Jill.

“You think there has been a change, then?” said Eustace.

“It’s not only me,” said Jill. “Everyone’s been saying so. They’ve noticed it. Eleanor Blakiston heard Adela Pennyfather talking about it in our changing room yesterday. She said, ‘Someone’s got hold of that Scrubb kid. He’s quite unmanageable this term. We shall have to attend to him next.’”

Eustace gave a shudder. Everyone at Experiment House knew what it was like being “attended to” by Them.

Both children were quiet for a moment. The drops dripped off the laurel leaves.

“Why were you so different last term?” said Jill presently.

“A lot of queer things happened to me in the hols,” said Eustace mysteriously.

“What sort of things?” asked Jill.

Eustace didn’t say anything for quite a long time. Then he said： “Look here, Pole, you and I hate this place about as much as anybody can hate anything, don’t we?”

“I know I do,” said Jill.

“Then I really think I can trust you.”

“Dam’ good of you,” said Jill.

“Yes, but this is a really terrific secret. Pole, I say, are you good at believing things? I mean things that everyone here would laugh at?”

“I’ve never had the chance,” said Jill, “but I think I would be.”

“Could you believe me if I said I’d been right out of the world — outside this world — last hols?”

“I wouldn’t know what you meant.”

“Well, don’t let’s bother about that then. Supposing I told you I’d been in a place where animals can talk and where there are — er — enchantments and dragons — and well, all the sorts of things you have in fairy-tales.” Scrubb felt terribly awkward as he said this and got red in the face.

“How did you get there?” said Jill. She also felt curiously shy.

“The only way you can — by Magic,” said Eustace almost in a whisper. “I was with two cousins of mine. We were just — whisked away. They’d been there before.”

Now that they were talking in whispers Jill somehow felt it easier to believe. Then suddenly a horrible suspicion came over her and she said （so fiercely that for the moment she looked like a tigress）：

“If I find you’ve been pulling my leg I’ll never speak to you again; never, never, never.”

“I’m not,” said Eustace. “I swear I’m not. I swear by everything.”

“All right,” said Jill, “I’ll believe you.”

“And tell nobody?”

“What do you take me for?”

They were very excited as they said this. But when they had said it and Jill looked round and saw the dull autumn sky and heard the drip off the leaves and thought of all the hopelessness of Experiment House （it was a thirteen-week term and there were still eleven weeks to come） she said：

“But after all, what’s the good? We’re not there：we’re here. And we jolly well can’t get there. Or can we?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering,” said Eustace. “When we came back from That Place, Someone said that the two Pevensie kids （that’s my two cousins） could never go there again. It was their third time, you see. I suppose they’ve had their share. But he never said I couldn’t. Surely he would have said so, unless he meant that I was to get back? And I can’t help wondering, can we — could we —?”

“Do you mean, do something to make it happen?”

Eustace nodded.

“You mean we might draw a circle on the ground — and write in queer letters in it — and stand inside it — and recite charms and spells?”

“Well,” said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. “I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.”

“Who is this person you keep on talking about?”

“They call him Aslan in That Place,” said Eustace.

“What a curious name！”

“Not half so curious as himself,” said Eustace solemnly. “But let’s get on. It can’t do any harm, just asking. Let’s stand side by side, like this. And we’ll hold out our arms in front of us with the palms down：like they did in Ramandu’s island —”

“Whose island?”

“I’ll tell you about that another time. And he might like us to face the east. Let’s see, where is the east?”

“I don’t know,” said Jill.

“It’s an extraordinary thing about girls that they never know the points of the compass,” said Eustace.

“You don’t know either,” said Jill indignantly.

“Yes I do, if only you didn’t keep on interrupting. I’ve got it now. That’s the east, facing up into the laurels. Now, will you say the words after me?''

“What words?” asked Jill.

“The words I’m going to say, of course,” answered Eustace. “Now —”

And he began, “Aslan, Aslan, Aslan！”

“Aslan, Aslan, Aslan,” repeated Jill.

“Please let us two go into —”

At that moment a voice from the other side of the gym was heard shouting out, “Pole? Yes. I know where she is. She’s blubbing behind the gym. Shall I fetch her out?”

Jill and Eustace gave one glance at each other, dived under the laurels, and began scrambling up the steep, earthy slope of the shrubbery at a speed which did them great credit. （Owing to the curious methods of teaching at Experiment House, one did not learn much French or Maths or Latin or things of that sort; but one did learn a lot about getting away quickly and quietly when They were looking for one.）

After about a minute’s scramble they stopped to listen, and knew by the noises they heard that they were being followed.

“If only the door was open again！” said Scrubb as they went on, and Jill nodded. For at the top of the shrubbery was a high stone wall and in that wall a door by which you could get out on to open moor. This door was nearly always locked. But there had been times when people had found it open; or perhaps there had been only one time. But you may imagine how the memory of even one time kept people hoping, and trying the door; for if it should happen to be unlocked it would be a splendid way of getting outside the school grounds without being seen.

Jill and Eustace, now both very hot and very grubby from going along bent almost double under the laurels, panted up to the wall. And there was the door, shut as usual.

“It’s sure to be no good,” said Eustace with his hand on the handle; and then, “O-o-oh. By Gum！” For the handle turned and the door opened.

A moment before, both of them had meant to get through that doorway in double quick time, if by any chance the door was not locked. But when the door actually opened, they both stood stock still. For what they saw was quite different from what they had expected.

They had expected to see the grey, heathery slope of the moor going up and up to join the dull autumn sky. Instead, a blaze of sunshine met them. It poured through the doorway as the light of a June day pours into a garage when you open the door. It made the drops of water on the grass glitter like beads and showed up the dirtiness of Jill’s tear-stained face. And the sunlight was coming from what certainly did look like a different world — what they could see of it. They saw smooth turf, smoother and brighter than Jill had ever seen before, and blue sky, and, darting to and fro, things so bright that they might have been jewels or huge butterflies.

Although she had been longing for something like this, Jill felt frightened. She looked at Scrubb’s face and saw that he was frightened too.

“Come on, Pole,” he said in a breathless voice.

“Can we get back? Is it safe?” asked Jill.

At that moment a voice shouted from behind, a mean, spiteful little voice. “Now then, Pole,” it squeaked. “Everyone knows you’re there. Down you come.” It was the voice of Edith Jackle, not one of Them herself but one of their hangers-on and tale-bearers.

“Quick！” said Scrubb. “Here. Hold hands. We mustn’t get separated.” And before she quite knew what was happening, he had grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door, out of the school grounds, out of England, out of our whole world into That Place.

The sound of Edith Jackle’s voice stopped as suddenly as the voice on the radio when it is switched off. Instantly there was a quite different sound all about them. It came from those bright things overhead, which now turned out to be birds. They were making a riotous noise, but it was much more like music — rather advanced music which you don’t quite take in at the first hearing — than birds’songs ever are in our world. Yet, in spite of the singing, there was a sort of background of immense silence. That silence, combined with the freshness of the air, made Jill think they must be on the top of a very high mountain.

Scrubb still had her by the hand and they were walking forward, staring about them on every side. Jill saw that huge trees, rather like cedars but bigger, grew in every direction. But as they did not grow close together, and as there was no undergrowth, this did not prevent one from seeing a long way into the forest to left and right. And as far as Jill’s eye could reach, it was all the same — level turf, darting birds with yellow, or dragonfly blue, or rainbow plumage, blue shadows, and emptiness. There was not a breath of wind in that cool, bright air. It was a very lonely forest.

Right ahead there were no trees：only blue sky. They went straight on without speaking till suddenly Jill heard Scrubb say, “Look out！” and felt herself jerked back. They were at the very edge of a cliff.

Jill was one of those lucky people who have a good head for heights. She didn’t mind in the least standing on the edge of a precipice. She was rather annoyed with Scrubb for pulling her back — “just as if I was a kid”, she said and she wrenched her hand out of his. When she saw how very white he had turned, she despised him.

“What’s the matter?” she said. And to show that she was not afraid, she stood very near the edge indeed; in fact, a good deal nearer than even she liked. Then she looked down.

She now realized that Scrubb had some excuse for looking white, for no cliff in our world is to be compared with this. Imagine yourself at the top of the very highest cliff you know. And imagine yourself looking down to the very bottom. And then imagine that the precipice goes on below that, as far again, ten times as far, twenty times as far. And when you’ve looked down all that distance imagine little white things that might, at first glance, be mistaken for sheep, but presently you realize that they are clouds — not little wreaths of mist but the enormous white, puffy clouds which are themselves as big as most mountains. And at last, in between those clouds, you get your first glimpse of the real bottom, so far away that you can’t make out whether it’s field or wood, or land or water：farther below those clouds than you are above them.

Jill stared at it. Then she thought that perhaps, after all, she would step back a foot or so from the edge; but she didn’t like to for fear of what Scrubb would think. Then she suddenly decided that she didn’t care what he thought, and that she would jolly well get away from that horrible edge and never laugh at anyone for not liking heights again. But when she tried to move, she found she couldn’t. Her legs seemed to have turned into putty. Everything was swimming before her eyes.

“What are you doing, Pole? Come back — blithering little idiot！” shouted Scrubb. But his voice seemed to he coming from a long way off. She felt him grabbing at her. But by now she had no control over her own arms and legs. There was a moment’s struggling on the cliff edge. Jill was too frightened and dizzy to know quite what she was doing, but two things she remembered as long as she lived （they often came back to her in dreams）. One was that she had wrenched herself free of Scrubb’s clutches; the other was that, at the same moment, Scrubb himself, with a terrified scream, had lost his balance and gone hurtling to the depths.

Fortunately, she was given no time to think over what she had done. Some huge, brightly coloured animal had rushed to the edge of the cliff. It was lying down, leaning over, and （this was the odd thing） blowing. Not roaring or snorting, but just blowing from its wideopen mouth; blowing out as steadily as a vacuum cleaner sucks in. Jill was lying so close to the creature that she could feel the breath vibrating steadily through its body. She was lying still because she couldn’t get up. She was nearly fainting：indeed, she wished she could really faint, but faints don’t come for the asking. At last she saw, far away below her, a tiny black speck floating away from the cliff and slightly upwards. As it rose, it also got farther away. By the time it was nearly on a level with the cliff-top it was so far off that she lost sight of it. It was obviously moving away from them at a great speed. Jill couldn’t help thinking that the creature at her side was blowing it away.

So she turned and looked at the creature. It was a lion.

CHAPTER TWO
JILL IS GIVEN A TASK

Without a glance at Jill the lion rose to its feet and gave one last blow. Then, as if satisfied with its work, it turned and stalked slowly away, back into the forest.

“It must be a dream, it must, it must,” said Jill to herself. “I’ll wake up in a moment.” But it wasn’t, and she didn’t.

“I do wish we’d never come to this dreadful place,” said Jill. “I don’t believe Scrubb knew any more about it than I do. Or if he did, he had no business to bring me here without warning me what it was like. It’s not my fault he fell over that cliff. If he’d left me alone we should both be all right.” Then she remembered again the scream that Scrubb had given when he fell, and burst into tears.

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. When Jill stopped, she found she was dreadfully thirsty. She had been lying face downward, and now she sat up. The birds had ceased singing and there was perfect silence except for one small, persistent sound, which seemed to come from a good distance away. She listened carefully, and felt almost sure it was the sound of running water.

Jill got up and looked round her very carefully. There was no sign of the lion; but there were so many trees about that it might easily be quite close without her seeing it. For all she knew, there might be several lions. But her thirst was very bad now, and she plucked up her courage to go and look for that running water. She went on tiptoes, stealing cautiously from tree to tree, and stopping to peer round her at every step.

The wood was so still that it was not difficult to decide where the sound was coming from. It grew clearer every moment and, sooner than she expected, she came to an open glade and saw the stream, bright as glass, running across the turf a stone’s throw away from her. But although the sight of the water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she didn’t rush forward and drink. She stood as still as if she had been turned into stone, with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason; just on this side of the stream lay the lion.

It lay with its head raised and its two fore-paws out in front of it, like the lions in Trafalgar Square. She knew at once that it had seen her, for its eyes looked straight into hers for a moment and then turned away — as if it knew her quite well and didn’t think much of her.

“If I run away, it’ll be after me in a moment,” thought Jill. “And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth.” Anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she had tried, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first.

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”

They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear！” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion — no one who had seen his stern face could do that — and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all. She got up and stood there with her lips still wet from drinking.

“Come here,” said the Lion. And she had to. She was almost between its front paws now, looking straight into its face. But she couldn’t stand that for long; she dropped her eyes.

“Human Child,” said the Lion. “Where is the Boy?”

“He fell over the cliff,” said Jill, and added, “Sir.” She didn’t know what else to call him, and it sounded cheek to call him nothing.

“How did he come to do that, Human Child?”

“He was trying to stop me from falling, Sir.”

“Why were you so near the edge, Human Child?”

“I was showing off, Sir.”

“That is a very good answer, Human Child. Do so no more. And now” （here for the first time the Lion’s face became a little less stern）“the boy is safe. I have blown him to Narnia. But your task will be the harder because of what you have done.”

“Please, what task, Sir?” said Jill.

“The task for which I called you and him here out of your own world.”

This puzzled Jill very much. “It’s mistaking me for someone else,” she thought. She didn’t dare to tell the Lion this, though she felt things would get into a dreadful muddle unless she did.

“Speak your thought, Human Child,” said the Lion.

“I was wondering — I mean — could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to — to Somebody — it was a name I wouldn’t know — and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open.'

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.

“Then you are Somebody, Sir?” said Jill.

“I am. And now hear your task. Far from here in the land of Narnia there lives an aged king who is sad because he has no prince of his blood to be king after him. He has no heir because his only son was stolen from him many years ago, and no one in Narnia knows where that prince went or whether he is still alive. But he is. I lay on you this command, that you seek this lost prince until either you have found him and brought him to his father’s house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back into your own world.”

“How, please?” said Jill.

“I will tell you, Child,” said the Lion. “These are the signs by which I will guide you in your quest. First; as soon as the Boy Eustace sets foot in Narnia, he will meet an old and dear friend. He must greet that friend at once; if he does, you will both have good help. Second; you must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third; you shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you. Fourth; you will know the lost prince （if you find him） by this, that he will be the first person you have met in your travels who will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan.”

As the Lion seemed to have finished, Jill thought she should say something. So she said, “Thank you very much. I see.”

“Child,” said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, “perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.”

Jill tried, and didn’t get them quite right. So the Lion corrected her, and made her repeat them again and again till she could say them perfectly. He was very patient over this, so that, when it was done, Jill plucked up courage to ask： “Please, how am I to get to Narnia?”

“On my breath,” said the Lion. “I will blow you into the west of the world as I blew Eustace.”

“Shall I catch him in time to tell him the first sign? But I suppose it won’t matter. If he sees an old friend, he’s sure to go and speak to him, isn’t he?”

“You will have no time to spare,” said the Lion. “That is why I must send you at once. Come. Walk before me to the edge of the cliff.”

Jill remembered very well that if there was no time to spare, that was her own fault. “If I hadn’t made such a fool of myself, Scrubb and I would have been going together. And he’d have heard all the instructions as well as me,” she thought. So she did as she was told. It was very alarming walking back to the edge of the cliff, especially as the Lion did not walk with her but behind her — making no noise on his soft paws.

But long before she had got anywhere near the edge, the voice behind her said, “Stand still. In a moment I will blow. But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly：I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. And now, daughter of Eve, farewell —”

The voice had been growing softer towards the end of this speech and now it faded away altogether. Jill looked behind her. To her astonishment she saw the cliff already more than a hundred yards behind her, and the Lion himself a speck of bright gold on the edge of it. She had been setting her teeth and clenching her fists for a terrible blast of lion’s breath; but the breath had really been so gentle that she had not even noticed the moment at which she left the earth. And now, there was nothing but air for thousands upon thousands of feet below her.

She felt frightened only for a second. For one thing, the world beneath her was so very far away that it seemed to have nothing to do with her. For another, floating on the breath of the Lion was so extremely comfortable. She found she could lie on her back or on her face and twist any way she pleased, just as you can in water （if you’ve learned to float really well）. And because she was moving at the same pace as the breath, there was no wind, and the air seemed beautifully warm. It was not in the least like being in an aeroplane, because there was no noise and no vibration. If Jill had ever been in a balloon she might have thought it more like that; only better.

When she looked back now she could take in for the first time the real size of the mountain she was leaving. She wondered why a mountain so huge as that was not covered with snow and ice — “but I suppose all that sort of thing is different in this world,” thought Jill. Then she looked below her; but she was so high that she couldn’t make out whether she was floating over land or sea, nor what speed she was going at.

“By Jove！ The signs！” said Jill suddenly. “I’d better repeat them.” She was in a panic for a second or two, but she found she could still say them all correctly. “So that’s all right,” she said, and lay back on the air as if it was a sofa, with a sigh of contentment.

“Well, I do declare,” said Jill to herself some hours later, “I’ve been asleep. Fancy sleeping on air. I wonder if anyone’s done it before. I don’t suppose they have. Oh bother — Scrubb probably has！ On this same journey, a little bit before me. Let’s see what it looks like down below.”

What it looked like was an enormous, very dark blue plain. There were no hills to be seen; but there were biggish white things moving slowly across it. “Those must be clouds,” she thought. “But far bigger than the ones we saw from the cliff. I suppose they’re bigger because they’re nearer. I must be getting lower. Bother this sun.”

The sun which had been high overhead when she began her journey was now getting into her eyes. This meant that it was getting lower, ahead of her. Scrubb was quite right in saying that Jill （I don’t know about girls in general） didn’t think much about points of the compass. Otherwise she would have known, when the sun began getting in her eyes, that she was travelling pretty nearly due west.

Staring at the blue plain below her, she presently noticed that there were little dots of brighter, paler colour in it here and there. “It’s the sea！” thought Jill. “I do believe those are islands.”

And so they were. She might have felt rather jealous if she had known that some of them were islands which Scrubb had seen from a ship’s deck and even landed on; but she didn’t know this. Then, later on, she began to see that there were little wrinkles on the blue flatness：little wrinkles which must be quite big ocean waves if you were down among them. And now, all along the horizon there was a thick dark line which grew thicker and darker so quickly that you could see it growing. That was the first sign she had had of the great speed at which she was travelling. And she knew that the thickening line must be land.

Suddenly from her left （for the wind was in the south） a great white cloud came rushing towards her, this time on the same level as herself. And before she knew where she was, she had shot right into the middle of its cold, wet fogginess. That took her breath away, but she was in it only for a moment. She came out blinking in the sunlight and found her clothes wet. （She had on a blazer and sweater and shorts and stockings and pretty thick shoes; it had been a muddy sort of day in England.） She came out lower than she had gone in; and as soon as she did so she noticed something which, I suppose, she ought to have been expecting, but which came as a surprise and a shock. It was Noises.

Up till then she had travelled in total silence. Now, for the first time, she heard the noise of waves and the crying of seagulls. And now, too, she smelled the smell of the sea. There was no mistake about her speed now. She saw two waves meet with a smack and a spout of foam go up between them; but she had hardly seen it before it was a hundred yards behind her. The land was getting nearer at a great pace. She could see mountains far inland, and other nearer mountains on her left. She could see bays and headlands, woods and fields, stretches of sandy beach. The sound of waves breaking on the shore was growing louder every second and drowning the other sea noises.

Suddenly the land opened right ahead of her. She was coming to the mouth of a river. She was very low now, only a few feet above the water. A wave-top came against her toe and a great splash of foam spurted up, drenching her nearly to the waist. Now she was losing speed. Instead of being carried up the river she was gliding in to the river bank on her left. There were so many things to notice that she could hardly take them all in; a smooth, green lawn, a ship so brightly coloured that it looked like an enormous piece of jewellery, towers and battlements, banners fluttering in the air, a crowd, gay clothes, armour, gold, swords, a sound of music. But this was all jumbled. The first thing that she knew clearly was that she had alighted and was standing under a thicket of trees close by the river side, and there, only a few feet away from her, was Scrubb.

The first thing she thought was how very grubby and untidy and generally unimpressive he looked. And the second was “How wet I am！”

CHAPTER THREE
THE SAILING OF THE KING

What made Scrubb look so dingy （and Jill too, if she could only have seen herself） was the splendour of their surroundings. I had better describe them at once.

Through a cleft in those mountains which Jill had seen far inland as she approached the land, the sunset light was pouring over a level lawn. On the far side of the lawn, its weather-vanes glittering in the light, rose a many-towered and many-turreted castle; the most beautiful castle Jill had ever seen. On the near side was a quay of white marble and, moored to this, the ship：a tall ship with high forecastle and high poop, gilded and crimson, with a great flag at the mast-head, and many banners waving from the decks, and a row of shields, bright as silver, along the bulwarks. The gang-plank was laid to her, and at the foot of it, just ready to go on board, stood an old, old man. He wore a rich mantle of scarlet which opened in front to show his silver mail shirt. There was a thin circlet of gold on his head. His beard, white as wool, fell nearly to his waist. He stood straight enough, leaning one hand on the shoulder of a richly dressed lord who seemed younger than himself：but you could see he was very old and frail. He looked as if a puff of wind could blow him away, and his eyes were watery.

Immediately in front of the King — who had turned round to speak to his people before going on board the ship — there was a little chair on wheels, and, harnessed to it, a little donkey：not much bigger than a big retriever. In this chair sat a fat little dwarf. He was as richly dressed as the King, but because of his fatness and because he was sitting hunched up among cushions, the effect was quite different：it made him look like a shapeless little bundle of fur and silk and velvet. He was as old as the King, but more hale and hearty, with very keen eyes. His bare head, which was bald and extremely large, shone like a gigantic billiard ball in the sunset light.

Farther back, in a half-circle, stood what Jill at once knew to be the courtiers. They were well worth looking at for their clothes and armour alone. As far as that went, they looked more like a flower-bed than a crowd. But what really made Jill open her eyes and mouth as wide as they would go, was the people themselves. If “people” was the right word. For only about one in every five was human. The rest were things you never see in our world. Fauns, satyrs, centaurs：Jill could give a name to these, for she had seen pictures of them. Dwarfs too. And there were a lot of animals she knew as well; bears, badgers, moles, leopards, mice, and various birds. But then they were so very different from the animals which one called by the same names in England. Some of them were much bigger — the mice, for instance, stood on their hind legs and were over two feet high. But quite apart from that, they all looked different. You could see by the expression in their faces that they could talk and think just as well as you could.

“Golly！” thought Jill. “So it’s true after all.” But next moment she added, “I wonder are they friendly?” For she had just noticed, on the outskirts of the crowd, one or two giants and some people whom she couldn’t give a name to at all.

At that moment Aslan and the signs rushed back into her mind. She had forgotten all about them for the last half-hour.

“Scrubb！” she whispered, grabbing his arm. “Scrubb, quick！ Do you see anyone you know?”

“So you’ve turned up again, have you?” said Scrubb disagreeably （for which he had some reason）.“Well, keep quiet, can’t you? I want to listen.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Jill. “There isn’t a moment to lose. Don’t you see some old friend here? Because you’ve got to go and speak to him at once.”

“What are you talking about?” said Scrubb.

“It’s Aslan — the Lion — says you’ve got to,” said Jill despairingly. “I’ve seen him.”

“Oh, you have, have you? What did he say?”

“He said the very first person you saw in Narnia would be an old friend, and you’d got to speak to him at once.”

“Well, there’s nobody here I’ve ever seen in my life before; and anyway, I don’t know whether this is Narnia.”

“Thought you said you’d been here before,” said Jill.

“Well, you thought wrong then.”

“Well, I like that！ You told me —”

“For heaven’s sake dry up and let’s hear what they’re saying.”

The King was speaking to the Dwarf, but Jill couldn’t hear what he said. And, as far as she could make out, the Dwarf made no answer, though he nodded and wagged his head a great deal. Then the King raised his voice and addressed the whole court：but his voice was so old and cracked that she could understand very little of his speech — especially since it was all about people and places she had never heard of. When the speech was over, the King stooped down and kissed the Dwarf on both cheeks, straightened himself, raised his right hand as if in blessing, and went, slowly and with feeble steps, up the gangway and on board the ship. The courtiers appeared to be greatly moved by his departure. Handkerchiefs were got out, sounds of sobbing were heard in every direction. The gangway was cast off, trumpets sounded from the poop, and the ship moved away from the quay. （It was being towed by a rowing-boat, but Jill didn’t see that.）

“Now —” said Scrubb, but he didn’t get any farther, because at that moment a large white object — Jill thought for a second that it was a kite — came gliding through the air and alighted at his feet. It was a white owl, but so big that it stood as high as a good-sized dwarf.

It blinked and peered as if it were short-sighted, and put its head a little on one side, and said in a soft, hooting kind of voice： “Tu-whoo, tu-whoo！ Who are you two?”

“My name’s Scrubb, and this is Pole,” said Eustace. “Would you mind telling us where we are?”

“In the land of Narnia, at the King’s castle of Cair Paravel.”

“Is that the King who’s just taken ship?”

“Too true, too true,” said the Owl sadly, shaking its big head. “But who are you? There’s something magic about you two. I saw you arrive：you flew. Everyone else was so busy seeing the King off that nobody knew. Except me. I happened to notice you, you flew.”

“We were sent here by Aslan,” said Eustace in a low voice.

“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo！” said the Owl, ruffling out its feathers. “This is almost too much for me, so early in the evening. I’m not quite myself till the sun’s down.”

“And we’ve been sent to find the lost Prince,” said Jill, who had been anxiously waiting to get into the conversation.

“It’s the first I’ve heard about it,” said Eustace. “What prince?”

“You had better come and speak to the Lord Regent at once,” it said. “That’s him, over there in the donkey carriage; Trumpkin the Dwarf.” The bird turned and began leading the way, muttering to itself, “Whoo！ Tu-whoo！ What a to-do！ I can’t think clearly yet. It’s too early.”

“What is the King’s name?” asked Eustace.

“Caspian the Tenth,” said the Owl. And Jill wondered why Scrubb had suddenly pulled up short in his walk and turned an extraordinary colour. She thought she had never seen him look so sick about anything. But before she had time to ask any questions they had reached the dwarf, who was just gathering up the reins of his donkey and preparing to drive back to the castle. The crowd of courtiers had broken up and were going in the same direction, by ones and twos and little knots, like people coming away from watching a game or a race.

“Tu-whoo！ Ahem！ Lord Regent,” said the Owl, stooping down a little and holding its beak near the Dwarf’s ear.

“Heh? What’s that?” said the Dwarf.

“Two strangers, my lord,” said the Owl.

“Rangers！ What d’ye mean?” said the Dwarf. “I see two uncommonly grubby man-cubs. What do they want?”

“My name’s Jill,” said Jill, pressing forward. She was very eager to explain the important business on which they had come.

“The girl’s called Jill,” said the Owl, as loud as it could.

“What’s that?” said the Dwarf. “The girls are all killed！ I don’t believe a word of it. What girls? Who killed‘em?”

“Only one girl, my lord,” said the Owl. “Her name is Jill.”

“Speak up, speak up,” said the Dwarf. “Don’t stand there buzzing and twittering in my ear. Who’s been killed?”

“Nobody’s been killed,” hooted the Owl.

“Who?”

“NOBODY.”

“All right, all right. You needn’t shout. I’m not so deaf as all that. What do you mean by coming here to tell me that nobody’s been killed? Why should anyone have been killed?”

“Better tell him I’m Eustace,” said Scrubb.

“The boy’s Eustace, my lord,” hooted the Owl as loud as it could.

“Useless?” said the Dwarf irritably. “I dare say he is. Is that any reason for bringing him to court? Hey?”

“Not useless,” said the Owl. “EUSTACE.”

“Used to it, is he? I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sure. I tell you what it is, Master Glimfeather; when I was a young Dwarf there used to be talking beasts and birds in this country who really could talk. There wasn’t all this mumbling and muttering and whispering. It wouldn’t have been tolerated for a moment. Not for a moment, Sir. Urnus, my trumpet please —”

A little Faun who had been standing quietly beside the Dwarf’s elbow all this time now handed him a silver eartrumpet. It was made like the musical instrument called a serpent, so that the tube curled right round the Dwarf’s neck. While he was getting it settled the Owl, Glimfeather, suddenly said to the children in a whisper： “My brain’s a bit clearer now. Don’t say anything about the lost Prince. I’ll explain later. It wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do, Tu-Whoo！ Oh what a to-do！”

“Now,” said the Dwarf, “if you have anything sensible to say, Master Glimfeather, try and say it. Take a deep breath and don’t attempt to speak too quickly.”

With help from the children, and in spite of a fit of coughing on the part of the Dwarf, Glimfeather explained that the strangers had been sent by Aslan to visit the court of Narnia. The Dwarf glanced quickly up at them with a new expression in his eyes.

“Sent by the Lion Himself, hey?” he said. “And from m’m — from that other Place — beyond the world’s end, hey?”

“Yes, my lord,” bawled Eustace into the trumpet.

“Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve, hey?” said the Dwarf. But people at Experiment House haven’t heard of Adam and Eve, so Jill and Eustace couldn’t answer this. But the Dwarf didn’t seem to notice.

“Well, my dears,” he said, taking first one and then the other by the hand and bowing his head a little. “You are very heartily welcome. If the good King, my poor Master, had not this very hour set sail for Seven Isles, he would have been glad of your coming. It would have brought back his youth to him for a moment — for a moment. And now, it is high time for supper. You shall tell me your business in full council tomorrow morning. Master Glimfeather, see that bedchambers and suitable clothes and all else are provided for these guests in the most honourable fashion. And — Glimfeather — in your ear —”

Here the Dwarf put his mouth close to the Owl’s head and, no doubt, intended to whisper：but, like other deaf people, he wasn’t a very good judge of his own voice, and both children heard him say, “See that they’re properly washed.”

After that, the Dwarf touched up his donkey and it set off towards the castle at something between a trot and a waddle （it was a very fat little beast）, while the Faun, the Owl, and the children followed at a rather slower pace. The sun had set and the air was growing cool.

They went across the lawn and then through an orchard and so to the North Gate of Cair Paravel, which stood wide open. Inside, they found a grassy courtyard. Lights were already showing from the windows of the great hall on their right and from a more complicated mass of buildings straight ahead. Into these the Owl led them, and there a most delightful person was called to look after Jill. She was not much taller than Jill herself, and a good deal slenderer, but obviously full grown, graceful as a willow, and her hair was willowy too, and there seemed to be moss in it. She brought Jill to a round room in one of the turrets, where there was a little bath sunk in the floor and a fire of sweetsmelling woods burning on the flat hearth and a lamp hanging by a silver chain from the vaulted roof. The window looked west into the strange land of Narnia, and Jill saw the red remains of the sunset still glowing behind distant mountains. It made her long for more adventures and feel sure that this was only the beginning.

When she had had her bath, and brushed her hair, and put on the clothes that had been laid out for her — they were the kind that not only felt nice, but looked nice and smelled nice and made nice sounds when you moved as well — she would have gone back to gaze out of that exciting window, but she was interrupted by a bang on the door.

“Come in,” said Jill. And in came Scrubb, also bathed and splendidly dressed in Narnian clothes. But his face didn’t look as if he were enjoying it.

“Oh, here you are at last,” he said crossly, flinging himself into a chair. “I’ve been trying to find you for ever so long.”

“Well, now you have,” said Jill. “I say, Scrubb, isn’t it all simply too exciting and scrumptious for words.” She had forgotten all about the signs and the lost Prince for the moment.

“Oh！ That’s what you think, is it?” said Scrubb：and then, after a pause, “I wish to goodness we’d never come.”

“Why on earth?”

“I can’t bear it,” said Scrubb. “Seeing the King Caspian — a doddering old man like that. It’s — it’s frightful.”

“Why, what harm does it do you?”

“Oh, you don’t understand. Now that I come to think of it, you couldn’t. I didn’t tell you that this world has a different time from ours.”

“How do you mean?”

“The time you spend here doesn’t take up any of our time. Do you see? I mean, however long we spend here, we shall still get back to Experiment House at the moment we left it —”

“That won’t be much fun.”

“Oh, dry up！ Don’t keep interrupting. And when you’re back in England — in our world — you can’t tell how time is going here. It might be any number of years in Narnia while we’re having one year at home. The Pevensies explained it all to me, but, like a fool, I forgot about it. And now apparently it’s been about seventy years Narnian years — since I was here last. Do you see now? And I come back and find Caspian an old, old man.”

“Then the King was an old friend of yours！” said Jill. A horrid thought had struck her.

“I should jolly well think he was,” said Scrubb miserably. “About as good a friend as a chap could have. And last time he was only a few years older than me. And to see that old man with a white beard, and to remember Caspian as he was the morning we captured the Lone Islands, or in the fight with the Sea Serpent — oh, it’s frightful. It’s worse than coming back and finding him dead.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Jill impatiently. “It’s far worse than you think. We’ve muffed the first Sign.”

Of course Scrubb did not understand this. Then Jill told him about her conversation with Aslan and the four signs and the task of finding the lost prince which had been laid upon them.

“So you see,” she wound up, “you did see an old friend, just as Aslan said, and you ought to have gone and spoken to him at once. And now you haven’t, and everything is going wrong from the very beginning.”

“But how was I to know?” said Scrubb.

“If you’d only listened to me when I tried to tell you, we’d be all right,” said Jill.

“Yes, and if you hadn’t played the fool on the edge of that cliff and jolly nearly murdered me — all right, I said murder, and I’ll say it again as often as I like, so keep your hair on — we’d have come together and both known what to do.”

“I suppose he was the first person you saw?” said Jill. “You must have been here hours before me. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone else first?”

“I was only here about a minute before you,” said Scrubb. “He must have blown you quicker than me. Making up for lost time：the time you lost.”

“Don’t be a perfect beast, Scrubb,” said Jill. “Hallo！ What’s that?”

It was the castle bell ringing for supper, and thus what looked like turning into a first-rate quarrel was happily cut short. Both had a good appetite by this time.

Supper in the great hall of the castle was the most splendid thing either of them had ever seen; for though Eustace had been in that world before, he had spent his whole visit at sea and knew nothing of the glory and courtesy of the Narnians at home in their own land. The banners hung from the roof, and each course came in with trumpeters and kettledrums. There were soups that would make your mouth water to think of, and the lovely fishes called pavenders, and venison and peacock and pies, and ices and jellies and fruit and nuts, and all manner of wines and fruit drinks. Even Eustace cheered up and admitted that it was “something like”. And when all the serious eating and drinking was over, a blind poet came forward and struck up the grand old tale of Prince Cor and Aravis and the horse Bree, which is called The Horse and his Boy and tells of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Cair Paravel. （I haven’t time to tell it now, though it is well worth hearing.）

When they were dragging themselves upstairs to bed, yawning their heads off, Jill said, “I bet we sleep well, tonight”；for it had been a full day. Which just shows how little anyone knows what is going to happen to them next.

CHAPTER FOUR
A PARLIAMENT OF OWLS

It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed; especially if you are lucky enough to have a fire in your room. Jill felt she couldn’t even start undressing unless she sat down in front of the fire for a bit first. And once she had sat down, she didn’t want to get up again. She had already said to herself about five times, “I must go to bed”, when she was startled by a tap on the window.

She got up, pulled the curtain, and at first saw nothing but darkness. Then she jumped and started backwards, for something very large had dashed itself against the window, giving a sharp tap on the glass as it did so. A very unpleasant idea came into her head — “Suppose they have giant moths in this country！ Ugh！” But then the thing came back, and this time she was almost sure she saw a beak, and that the beak had made that tapping noise. “It’s some huge bird,” thought Jill. “Could it be an eagle?” She didn’t very much want a visit even from an eagle, but she opened the window and looked out. Instantly, with a great whirring noise, the creature alighted on the window-sill and stood there filling up the whole window, so that Jill had to step back to make room for it. It was the Owl.

“Hush, hush！ Tu-whoo, tu-whoo,” said the Owl. “Don’t make a noise. Now, are you two really in earnest about what you’ve got to do?”

“About the lost Prince, you mean?” said Jill. “Yes, we’ve got to be.” For now she remembered the Lion’s voice and face, which she had nearly forgotten during the feasting and story-telling in the hall.

“Good！” said the Owl. “Then there’s no time to waste. You must get away from here at once. I’ll go and wake the other human. Then I’ll come back for you. You’d better change those court clothes and put on something you can travel in. I’ll be back in two twos. Tu-whoo！” And without waiting for an answer, he was gone.

If Jill had been more used to adventures, she might have doubted the Owl’s word, but this never occurred to her：and in the exciting idea of a midnight escape she forgot her sleepiness. She changed back into sweater and shorts there was a guide’s knife on the belt of the shorts which might come in useful — and added a few of the things that had been left in the room for her by the girl with the willowy hair. She chose a short cloak that came down to her knees and had a hood （“just the thing, if it rains,” she thought）, a few handkerchiefs and a comb. Then she sat down and waited.

She was getting sleepy again when the Owl returned.

“Now we’re ready,” it said.

“You’d better lead the way,” said Jill. “I don’t know all these passages yet.”

“Tu-whoo！” said the Owl. “We’re not going through the castle. That would never do. You must ride on me. We shall fly.”

“Oh！” said Jill, and stood with her mouth open, not much liking the idea. “Shan’t I be too heavy for you?”

“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo！ Don’t you be a fool. I’ve already carried the other one. Now. But we’ll put out that lamp first.”

As soon as the lamp was out, the bit of the night which you saw through the window looked less dark — no longer black, but grey. The Owl stood on the window-sill with his back to the room and raised his wings. Jill had to climb on to his short fat body and get her knees under the wings and grip tight. The feathers felt beautifully warm and soft but there was nothing to hold on by.

“I wonder how Scrubb liked his ride！” thought Jill. And just as she was thinking this, with a horrid plunge they had left the window-sill, and the wings were making a flurry round her ears, and the night air, rather cool and damp, was flying in her face.

It was much lighter than she expected, and though the sky was overcast, one patch of watery silver showed where the moon was hiding above the clouds. The fields beneath her looked grey, and the trees black. There was a certain amount of wind — a hushing, ruffling sort of wind which meant that rain was coming soon.

The Owl wheeled round so that the castle was now ahead of them. Very few of the windows showed lights. They flew right over it, northwards, crossing the river：the air grew colder, and Jill thought she could see the white reflection of the Owl in the water beneath her. But soon they were on the north bank of the river, flying above wooded country.

The Owl snapped at something which Jill couldn’t see.

“Oh, don’t, please！” said Jill. “Don’t jerk like that. You nearly threw me off.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Owl. “I was just nabbing a bat. There’s nothing so sustaining, in a small way, as a nice plump little bat. Shall I catch you one?”

“No, thanks,” said Jill with a shudder.

He was flying a little lower now and a large, black looking object was looming up towards them. Jill had just time to see that it was a tower — a partly ruinous tower, with a lot of ivy on it, she thought — when she found herself ducking to avoid the archway of a window, as the Owl squeezed with her through the ivied cobwebby opening, out of the fresh, grey night into a dark place inside the top of the tower. It was rather fusty inside and, the moment she slipped off the Owl’s back, she knew （as one usually does somehow） that it was quite crowded And when voices began saying out of the darkness from every direction “Tuwhoo！ Tu-whoo！” she knew it was crowded with owls. She was rather relieved when a very different voice said： “Is that you, Pole?”

“Is that you, Scrubb?” said Jill.

“Now,” said Glimfeather, “I think we’re all here. Let us hold a parliament of owls.”

“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo. True for you. That’s the right thing to do,” said several voices.

“Half a moment,” said Scrubb’s voice. “There’s something I want to say first.”

“Do, do, do,” said the owls; and Jill said, “Fire ahead.”

“I suppose all you chaps-owls, I mean,” said Scrubb, “I suppose you all know that King Caspian the Tenth, in his young days, sailed to the eastern end of the world. Well, I was with him on that journey：with him and Reepicheep the Mouse, and the Lord Drinian and all of them. I know it sounds hard to believe, but people don’t grow older in our world at the same speed as they do in yours. And what I want to say is this, that I’m the King’s man; and if this parliament of owls is any sort of plot against the King, I’m having nothing to do with it.”

“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo, we’re all the King’s owls too,” said the owls.

“What’s it all about then?” said Scrubb.

“It’s only this,” said Glimfeather. “That if the Lord Regent, the Dwarf Trumpkin, hears you are going to look for the lost Prince, he won’t let you start. He’d keep you under lock and key sooner.”

“Great Scott！” said Scrubb. “You don’t mean that Trumpkin is a traitor? I used to hear a lot about him in the old days, at sea. Caspian — the King, I mean — trusted him absolutely.”

“Oh no,” said a voice. “Trumpkin’s no traitor. But more than thirty champions （knights, centaurs, good giants, and all sorts） have at one time or another set out to look for the lost Prince, and none of them have ever come back. And at last the King said he was not going to have all the bravest Narnians destroyed in the search for his son. And now nobody is allowed to go.”

“But surely he’d let us go,” said Scrubb. “When he knew who I was and who had sent me.”

“Sent both of us,” put in Jill.

“Yes,” said Glimfeather, “I think, very likely, he would. But the King’s away. And Trumpkin will stick to the rules. He’s as true as steel, but he’s deaf as a post and very peppery. You could never make him see that this might be the time for making an exception to the rule.”

“You might think he’d take some notice of us, because we’re owls and everyone knows how wise owls are,” said someone else. “But he’s so old now he’d only say, ‘You’re a mere chick. I remember you when you were an egg. Don’t come trying to teach me, Sir. Crabs and crumpets！ ’”

This owl imitated Trumpkin’s voice rather well, and there were sounds of owlish laughter all round. The children began to see that the Narnians all felt about Trumpkin as people feel at school about some crusty teacher, whom everyone is a little afraid of and everyone makes fun of and nobody really dislikes.

“How long is the King going to be away?” asked Scrubb.

“If only we knew！” said Glimfeather. “You see, there has been a rumour lately that Aslan himself has been seen in the islands — in Terebinthia, I think it was. And the King said he would make one more attempt before he died to see Aslan face to face again, and ask his advice about who is to be King after him. But we’re all afraid that, if he doesn’t meet Aslan in Terebinthia, he’ll go on east, to Seven Isles and Lone Islands — and on and on. He never talks about it, but we all know he has never forgotten that voyage to the world’s end. I’m sure in his heart of hearts he wants to go there again.”

“Then there’s no good waiting for him to come back?” said Jill.

“No, no good,” said the Owl. “Oh, what a to-do！ If only you two had known and spoken to him at once！ He’d have arranged everything — probably given you an army to go with you in search of the Prince.”

Jill kept quiet at this and hoped Scrubb would be sporting enough not to tell all the owls why this hadn’t happened. He was, or very nearly. That is, he only muttered under his breath, “Well, it wasn’t my fault,” before saying out loud： “Very well. We’ll have to manage without it. But there’s just one thing more I want to know. If this owls’parliament, as you call it, is all fair and above board and means no mischief, why does it have to be so jolly secret — meeting in a ruin in dead of night, and all that?”

“Tu-whoo！ Tu-whoo！” hooted several owls. “Where should we meet? When would anyone meet except at night?”

“You see,” explained Glimfeather, “most of the creatures in Narnia have such unnatural habits. They do things by day, in broad blazing sunlight （ugh！ ） when everyone ought to be asleep. And, as a result, at night they’re so blind and stupid that you can’t get a word out of them. So we owls have got into the habit of meeting at sensible hours, on our own, when we want to talk about things.”

“I see,” said Scrubb. “Well now, let’s get on. Tell us all about the lost Prince.”

Then an old owl, not Glimfeather, related the story.

About ten years ago, it appeared, when Rilian, the son of Caspian, was a very young knight, he rode with the Queen his mother on a May morning in the north parts of Narnia. They had many squires and ladies with them and all wore garlands of fresh leaves on their heads, and horns at their sides; but they had no hounds with them, for they were maying, not hunting. In the warm part of the day they came to a pleasant glade where a fountain flowed freshly out of the earth, and there they dismounted and ate and drank and were merry. After a time the Queen felt sleepy, and they spread cloaks for her on the grassy bank, and Prince Rilian with the rest of the party went a little way from her, that their tales and laughter might not wake her.

And so, presently, a great serpent came out of the thick wood and stung the Queen in her hand. All heard her cry out and rushed towards her, and Rilian was first at her side. He saw the worm gliding away from her and made after it with his sword drawn. It was great, shining, and as green as poison, so that he could see it well：but it glided away into thick bushes and he could not come at it. So he returned to his mother, and found them all busy about her.

But they were busy in vain, for at the first glance of her face Rilian knew that no physic in the world would do her good. As long as the life was in her she seemed to be trying hard to tell him something. But she could not speak clearly and, whatever her message was, she died without delivering it. It was then hardly ten minutes since they had first heard her cry.

They carried the dead Queen back to Cair Paravel, and she was bitterly mourned by Rilian and by the King, and by all Narnia. She had been a great lady, wise and gracious and happy, King Caspian’s bride whom he had brought home from the eastern end of the world. And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins. The Prince took his mother’s death very hardly, as well he might. After that, he was always riding on the northern marches of Narnia, hunting for that venomous worm, to kill it and be avenged. No one remarked much on this, though the Prince came home from these wanderings looking tired and distraught. But about a month after the Queen’s death, some said they could see a change in him. There was a look in his eyes as of a man who has seen visions, and though he would be out all day, his horse did not bear the signs of hard riding. His chief friend among the older courtiers was the Lord Driman, he who had been his father’s captain on that great voyage to the east parts of the earth.

One evening Drinian said to the Prince, “Your Highness must soon give over seeking the worm. There is no true vengeance on a witless brute as there might be on a man. You weary yourself in vain.” The Prince answered him, “My Lord, I have almost forgotten the worm this seven days.” Drinian asked him why, if that were so, he rode so continually in the northern woods. “My lord,” said the Prince, “I have seen there the most beautiful thing that was ever made.”“Fair Prince,” said Drinian, “of your courtesy let me ride with you tomorrow, that I also may see this fair thing.”“With a good will,” said Rilian.

Then in good time on the next day they saddled their horses and rode a great gallop into the northern woods and alighted at that same fountain where the Queen got her death.

Drinian thought it strange that the Prince should choose that place of all places, to linger in. And there they rested till it came to high noon：and at noon Drinian looked up and saw the most beautiful lady he had ever seen; and she stood at the north side of the fountain and said no word but beckoned to the Prince with her hand as if she bade him come to her. And she was tall and great, shining, and wrapped in a thin garment as green as poison. And the Prince stared at her like a man out of his wits. But suddenly the lady was gone, Driman knew not where; and the two returned to Cair Paravel. It stuck in Drinian’s mind that this shining green woman was evil.

Drinian doubted very much whether he ought not to tell this adventure to the King, but he had little wish to be a blab and a tale-bearer and so he held his tongue. But afterwards he wished he had spoken. For next day Prince Rilian rode out alone. That night he came not back, and from that hour no trace of him was ever found in Narnia nor any neighbouring land, and neither his horse nor his hat nor his cloak nor anything else was ever found.

Then Drinian in the bitterness of his heart went to Caspian and said, “Lord King, slay me speedily as a great traitor：for by my silence I have destroyed your son.” And he told him the story. Then Caspian caught up a battle-axe and rushed upon the Lord Drinian to kill him, and Drinian stood still as a stock for the death blow. But when the axe was raised, Caspian suddenly threw it away and cried out, “I have lost my queen and my son：shall I lose my friend also?” And he fell upon the Lord Drinian’s neck and embraced him and both wept, and their friendship was not broken.

Such was the story of Rilian.

And when it was over, Jill said, “I bet that serpent and that woman were the same person.”

“True, true, we think the same as you,” hooted the owls.

“But we don’t think she killed the Prince,” said Glimfeather, “because no bones —”

“We know she didn’t,” said Scrubb. “Aslan told Pole he was still alive somewhere.”

“That almost makes it worse,” said the oldest owl. “It means she has some use for him, and some deep scheme against Narnia. Long, long ago, at the very beginning, a White Witch came out of the North and bound our land in snow and ice for a hundred years. And we think this may be some of the same crew.”

“Very well, then,” said Scrubb. “Pole and I have got to Find this Prince. Can you help us?”

“Have you any clue, you two?” asked Glimfeather.

“Yes,” said Scrubb. “We know we’ve got to go north. And we know we’ve got to reach the ruins of a giant city.”

At this there was a greater tu-whooing than ever, and noise of birds shifting their feet and ruffling their feathers, and then all the owls started speaking at once. They all explained how very sorry they were that they themselves could not go with the children on their search for the lost Prince.

“You’d want to travel by day, and we’d want to travel by night,” they said. “It wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do.” One or two owls added that even here in the ruined tower it wasn’t nearly so dark as it had been when they began, and that the parliament had been going on quite long enough. In fact, the mere mention of a journey to the ruined city of giants seemed to have damped the spirits of those birds.

But Glimfeather said： “If they want to go that way — into Ettinsmoor — we must take them to one of the Marshwiggles. They’re the Only people who can help them much.”

“'True, true. Do,” said the owls.

“Come on, then,” said Glimfeather. “I’ll take one.

Who’ll take the other? It must be done tonight.”

“I will：as far as the Marsh-wiggles,” said another owl.

“Are you ready?” said Glimfeather to Jill.

“I think Pole’s asleep,” said Scrubb.

CHAPTER FIVE
PUDDLEGLUM

Jill. was asleep. Ever since the owls’parliament began she had been yawning terribly and now she had dropped off. She was not at all pleased at being waked again, and at finding herself lying on bare boards in a dusty belfry sort of place, completely dark, and almost completely full of owls. She was even less pleased when she heard that they had to set off for somewhere else — and not, apparently, for bed — on the Owl’s back.

“Oh, come on, Pole, buck up,” said Scrubb’s voice. “After all, it is an adventure.”

“I’m sick of adventures,” said Jill crossly.

She did, however, consent to climb on to Glimfeather’s back, and was thoroughly waked up （for a while） by the unexpected coldness of the air when he flew out with her into the night. The moon had disappeared and there were no stars. Far behind her she could see a single lighted window well above the ground; doubtless, in one of the towers of Cair Paravel. It made her long to be back in that delightful bedroom, snug in bed, watching the firelight on the walls. She put her hands under her cloak and wrapped it tightly round her. It was uncanny to hear two voices in the dark air a little distance away; Scrubb and his owl were talking to one another. “He doesn’t sound tired,” thought Jill. She did not realize that he had been on great adventures in that world before and that the Narnian air was bringing back to him a strength he had won when he sailed the Eastern Seas with King Caspian.

Jill had to pinch herself to keep awake, for she knew that if she dozed on Glimfeather’s back she would probably fall off. When at last the two owls ended their flight, she climbed stiffly off Glimfeather and found herself on flat ground. A chilly wind was blowing and they appeared to be in a place without trees.

“Tu-whoo, tu-whoo！” Glimfeather was calling. “Wake up, Puddleglum. Wake up. It is on the Lion’s business.” For a long time there was no reply. Then, a long way off, a dim light appeared and began to come nearer. With it came a voice.

“Owls ahoy！” it said. “What is it? Is the King dead? Has an enemy landed in Narnia? Is it a flood? Or dragons?”

When the light reached them, it turned out to be that of a large lantern. She could see very little of the person who held it. He seemed to be all legs and arms. The owls were talking to him, explaining everything, but she was too tired to listen. She tried to wake herself up a bit when she realized that they were saying goodbye to her. But she could never afterwards remember much except that, sooner or later, she and Scrubb were stooping to enter a low doorway and then （oh, thank heavens） were lying down on something soft and warm, and a voice was saying：

“There you are. Best we can do. You’ll lie cold and hard. Damp too, I shouldn’t wonder. Won’t sleep a wink, most likely; even if there isn’t a thunderstorm or a flood or the wigwam doesn’t fall down on top of us all, as I’ve known them do. Must make the best of it —” But she was fast asleep before the voice had ended.

When the children woke late next morning they found that they were lying, very dry and warm, on beds of straw in a dark place. A triangular opening let in the daylight.

“Where on earth are we?” asked Jill.

“In the wigwam of a Marsh-wiggle,” said Eustace.

“A what?”

“A Marsh-wiggle. Don’t ask me what it is. I couldn’t see it last night. I’m getting up. Let’s go and look for it.”

“How beastly one feels after sleeping in one’s clothes,” said Jill, sitting up.

“I was just thinking how nice it was not to have to dress,” said Eustace.

“Or wash either, I suppose,” said Jill scornfully. But Scrubb had already got up, yawned, shaken himself, and crawled out of the wigwam. Jill did the same.

What they found outside was quite unlike the bit of Narnia they had seen on the day before. They were on a great flat plain which was cut into countless little islands by countless channels of water. The islands were covered with coarse grass and bordered with reeds and rushes. Sometimes there were beds of rushes about an acre in extent. Clouds of birds were constantly alighting in them and rising from them again-duck, snipe, bitterns, herons. Many wigwams like that in which they had passed the night could be seen dotted about, but all at a good distance from one another; for Marsh-wiggles are people who like privacy. Except for the fringe of the forest several miles to the south and west of them, there was not a tree in sight. Eastward the flat marsh stretched to low sandhills on the horizon, and you could tell by the salt tang in the wind which blew from that direction that the sea lay over there. To the North there were low pale-coloured hills, in places bastioned with rock. The rest was all flat marsh. It would have been a depressing place on a wet evening. Seen under a morning sun, with a fresh wind blowing, and the air filled with the crying of birds, there was something fine and fresh and clean about its loneliness. The children felt their spirits rise.

“Where has the thingummy got to, I wonder?” said Jill.

“The Marsh-wiggle,” said Scrubb, as if he were rather proud of knowing the word. “I expect-hullo, that must be him.” And then they both saw him, sitting with his back to them, fishing, about fifty yards away. He had been hard to see at first because he was nearly the same colour as the marsh and because he sat so still.

“I suppose we’d better go and speak to him,” said Jill. Scrubb nodded. They both felt a little nervous.

As they drew nearer, the figure turned its head and showed them a long thin face with rather sunken cheeks, a tightly shut mouth, a sharp nose, and no beard. He was wearing a high, pointed hat like a steeple, with an enormously wide flat brim. The hair, if it could be called hair, which hung over his large ears was greeny-grey, and each lock was flat rather than round, so that they were like tiny reeds. His expression was solemn, his complexion muddy, and you could see at once that he took a serious view of life.

“Good morning, Guests,” he said. “Though when I say good I don’t mean it won’t probably turn to rain or it might he snow, or fog, or thunder. You didn’t get any sleep, I dare say.

“Yes we did, though,” said Jill. “We had a lovely night.”

“Ah,” said the Marsh-wiggle, shaking his head. “I see you’re making the best of a bad job. That’s right. You’ve been well brought up, you have. You’ve learned to put a good face on things.”

“Please, we don’t know your name,” said Scrubb.

“Puddleglum’s my name. But it doesn’t matter if you forget it. I can always tell you again.”

The children sat down on each side of him. They now saw that he had very long legs and arms, so that although his body was not much bigger than a dwarf’s, he would be taller than most men when he stood up. The fingers of his hands were webbed like a frog’s, and so were his bare feet which dangled in the muddy water. He was dressed in earthcoloured clothes that hung loose about him.

“I’m trying to catch a few eels to make an eel stew for our dinner,” said Puddleglum. “Though I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t get any. And you won’t like them much if I do.”

“Why not?” asked Scrubb.

“Why, it’s not in reason that you should like our sort of victuals, though I’ve no doubt you’ll put a bold face on it. All the same, while I am a catching of them, if you two could try to light the fire — no harm trying —！The wood’s behind the wigwam. It may be wet. You could light it inside the wigwam, and then we’d get all the smoke in our eyes. Or you could light it outside, and then the rain would come and put it out. Here’s my tinder-box. You won’t know how to use it, I expect.”

But Scrubb had learned that sort of thing on his last adventure. The children ran back together to the wigwam, found the wood （which was perfectly dry） and succeeded in lighting a fire with rather less than the usual difficulty. Then Scrubb sat and took care of it while Jill went and had some sort of wash — not a very nice one — in the nearest channel. After that she saw to the fire and he had a wash. Both felt a good deal fresher, but very hungry.

Presently the Marsh-wiggle joined them. In spite of his expectation of catching no eels, he had a dozen or so, which he had already skinned and cleaned. He put a big pot on, mended the fire, and lit his pipe. Marsh-wiggles smoke a very strange, heavy sort of tobacco （some people say they mix it with mud） and the children noticed the smoke from Puddleglum’s pipe hardly rose in the air at all. It trickled out of the bowl and downwards and drifted along the ground like a mist. It was very black and set Scrubb coughing.

“Now,” said Puddleglum. “Those eels will take a mortal long time to cook, and either of you might faint with hunger before they’re done. I knew a little girl — but I’d better not tell you that story. It might lower your spirits, and that’s a thing I never do. So, to keep your minds off your hunger, we may as well talk about our plans.”

“Yes, do let’s,” said Jill. “Can you help us to find Prince Rilian?”

The Marsh-wiggle sucked in his cheeks till they were hollower than you would have thought possible.

“Well, I don’t know that you’d call it help,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone can exactly help. It stands to reason we’re not likely to get very far on a journey to the North, not at this time of the year, with the winter coming on soon and all. And an early winter too, by the look of things. But you mustn’t let that make you down-hearted. Very likely, what with enemies, and mountains, and rivers to cross, and losing our way, and next to nothing to eat, and sore feet, we’ll hardly notice the weather. And if we don’t get far enough to do any good, we may get far enough not to get back in a hurry.”

Both children noticed that he said “we”, not “you”, and both exclaimed at the same moment. “Are you coming with us?”

“Oh yes, I’m coming of course. Might as well, you see. I don’t suppose we shall ever see the King back in Narnia, now that he’s once set off for foreign parts; and he had a nasty cough when he left. Then there’s Trumpkin. He’s failing fast. And you’ll find there’ll have been a bad harvest after this terrible dry summer. And I shouldn’t wonder if some enemy attacked us. Mark my words.”

“And how shall we start?” said Scrubb.

“Well,” said the Marsh-wiggle very slowly, “all the others who ever went looking for Prince Rilian started from that same fountain where the Lord Drinian saw the lady. They went north, mostly. And as none of them ever came back, we can’t exactly say how they got on.”

“We’ve got to start by finding a ruined city of giants,” said Jill. “Aslan said so.”

“Got to start by finding it, have we?” answered Puddleglum. “Not allowed to start by looking for it, I suppose?”

“That’s what I meant, of course,” said Jill. “And then, when we’ve found it —”

“Yes, when！” said Puddleglum very drily.

“Doesn’t anyone know where it is?” asked Scrubb.

“I don’t know about Anyone,” said Puddleglum. “And I won’t say I haven’t heard of that Ruined City. You wouldn’t start from the fountain, though. You’d have to go across Ettinsmoor. That’s where the Ruined City is, if it’s anywhere. But I’ve been as far in that direction as most people and I never got to any ruins, so I won’t deceive you.”

“Where’s Ettinsmoor?” said Scrubb.

“Look over there northward,” said Puddleglum, pointing with his pipe. “See those hills and bits of cliff? That’s the beginning of Ettinsmoor. But there’s a river between it and us; the river Shribble. No bridges, of course.”

“I suppose we can ford it, though,” said Scrubb.

“Well, it has been forded,” admitted the Marsh-wiggle.

“Perhaps we shall meet people on Ettinsmoor who can tell us the way,” said Jill.

“You’re right about meeting people,” said Puddleglum.

“What sort of people live there?” she asked.

“It’s not for me to say they aren’t all right in their own way,” answered Puddleglum. “If you like their way.”

“Yes, but what are they?” pressed Jill. “There are so many queer creatures in this country. I mean, are they animals, or birds, or dwarfs, or what?”

The Marsh-wiggle gave a long whistle. “Phew！” he said. “Don’t you know? I thought the owls had told you. They’re giants.”

Jill winced. She had never liked giants even in books, and she had once met one in a nightmare. Then she saw Scrubb’s face, which had turned rather green, and thought to herself, “I bet he’s in a worse funk than I am.” That made her feel braver.

“The King told me long ago,” said Scrubb — “that time when I was with him at sea — that he’d jolly well beaten those giants in war and made them pay him tribute.”

“That’s true enough,” said Puddleglum. “They’re at peace with us all right. As long as we stay on our own side of the Shribble, they won’t do us any harm. Over on their side, on the Moor — Still, there’s always a chance. If we don’t get near any of them, and if none of them forget themselves, and if we’re not seen, it’s just possible we might get a long way.”

“Look here！” said Scrubb, suddenly losing his temper, as people so easily do when they have been frightened. “I don’t believe the whole thing can be half as bad as you’re making out; any more than the beds in the wigwam were hard or the wood was wet. I don’t think Aslan would ever have sent us if there was so little chance as all that.”

He quite expected the Marsh-wiggle to give him an angry reply, but he only said, “That’s the spirit, Scrubb. That’s the way to talk. Put a good face on it. But we all need to be very careful about our tempers, seeing all the hard times we shall have to go through together. Won’t do to quarrel, you know. At any rate, don’t begin it too soon. I know these expeditions usually end that way：knifing one another, I shouldn’t wonder, before all’s done. But the longer we can keep off it —”

“Well, if you feel it’s so hopeless,” interrupted Scrubb, “I think you’d better stay behind. Pole and I can go on alone, can’t we, Pole?”

“Shut up and don’t be an ass, Scrubb,” said Jill hastily, terrified lest the Marsh-wiggle should take him at his word.

“Don’t you lose heart, Pole,” said Puddleglum. “I’m coming, sure and certain. I’m not going to lose an opportunity like this. It will do me good. They all say — I mean, the other wiggles all say — that I’m too flighty; don’t take life seriously enough. If they’ve said it once, they’ve said it a thousand times.‘Puddleglum,’they’ve said, ‘you’re altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You’ve got to learn that life isn’t all fricasseed frogs and eel pie. You want something to sober you down a bit. We’re only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.’That’s what they say. Now a job like this — a journey up north just as winter’s beginning, looking for a Prince that probably isn’t there, by way of a ruined city that no one has ever seen — will be just the thing. If that doesn’t steady a chap, I don’t know what will.” And he rubbed his big frog-like hands together as if he were talking of going to a party or a pantomime. “And now,” he added, “let’s see how those eels are getting on.”

When the meal came it was delicious and the children had two large helpings each. At first the Marsh-wiggle wouldn’t believe that they really liked it, and when they had eaten so much that he had to believe them, he fell back on saying that it would probably disagree with them horribly. “What’s food for wiggles may be poison for humans, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.

After the meal they had tea, in tins （as you’ve seen men having it who are working on the road）, and Puddleglum had a good many sips out of a square black bottle. He offered the children some of it, but they thought it very nasty.

The rest of the day was spent in preparations for an early start tomorrow morning. Puddleglum, being far the biggest, said he would carry three blankets, with a large bit of bacon rolled up inside them. Jill was to carry the remains of the eels, some biscuit, and the tinder-box. Scrubb was to carry both his own cloak and Jill’s when they didn’t want to wear them. Scrubb （who had learned some shooting when he sailed to the East under Caspian） had Puddleglum’s secondbest bow, and Puddleglum had his best one; though he said that what with winds, and damp bowstrings, and bad light, and cold fingers, it was a hundred to one against either of them hitting anything. He and Scrubb both had swords Scrubb had brought the one which had been left out for him in his room at Cair Paravel, but Jill had to be content with her knife. There would have been a quarrel about this, but as soon as they started sparring the wiggle rubbed his hands and said, “Ah, there you are. I thought as much. That’s what usually happens on adventures.” This made them both shut up.

All three went to bed early in the wigwam. This time the children really had a rather bad night. That was because Puddleglum, after saying, “You’d better try for some sleep, you two; not that I suppose any of us will close an eye tonight,” instantly went off into such a loud, continuous snore that, when Jill at last got to sleep, she dreamed all night about road-drills and waterfalls and being in express trains in tunnels.

CHAPTER SIX
THE WILD WASTE LANDS OF THE NORTH

At about nine o’clock next morning three lonely figures might have been seen picking their way across the Shribble by the shoals and stepping-stones. It was a shallow, noisy stream, and even Jill was not wet above her knees when they reached the northern bank. About fifty yards ahead, the land rose up to the beginning of the moor, everywhere steeply, and often in cliffs.

“I suppose that’s our way！” said Scrubb, pointing left and west to where a stream flowed down from the moor through a shallow gorge. But the Marsh-wiggle shook his head.

“The giants mainly live along the side of that gorge,” he said. “You might say the gorge was like a street to them. We’ll do better straight ahead, even though it’s a bit steep.”

They found a place where they could scramble up, and in about ten minutes stood panting at the top. They cast a longing look back at the valley-land of Narnia and then turned their faces to the North. The vast, lonely moor stretched on and up as far as they could see. On their left was rockier ground. Jill thought that must be the edge of the giants’gorge and did not much care about looking in that direction. They set out.

It was good, springy ground for walking, and a day of pale winter sunlight. As they got deeper into the moor, the loneliness increased：one could hear peewits and see an occasional hawk. When they halted in the middle of the morning for a rest and a drink in a little hollow by a stream, Jill was beginning to feel that she might enjoy adventures after all, and said so.

“We haven’t had any yet,” said the Marsh-wiggle.

Walks after the first halt — like school mornings after break or railway journeys after changing trains — never go on as they were before. When they set out again, Jill noticed that the rocky edge of the gorge had drawn nearer. And the rocks were less flat, more upright, than they had been. In fact they were like little towers of rock. And what funny shapes they were！

“I do believe,” thought Jill, “that all the stories about giants might have come from those funny rocks. If you were coming along here when it was half dark, you could easily think those piles of rock were giants. Look at that one, now！ You could almost imagine that the lump on top was a head. It would be rather too big for the body, but it would do well enough for an ugly giant. And all that bushy stuff — I suppose it’s heather and birds’nests, really — would do quite well for hair and beard. And the things sticking out on each side are quite like ears. They’d be horribly big, but then I dare say giants would have big ears, like elephants. And-o-o-o-h！”

Her blood froze. The thing moved. It was a real giant. There was no mistaking it; she had seen it turn its head. She had caught a glimpse of the great, stupid, puffcheeked face. All the things were giants, not rocks. There were forty or fifty of them, all in a row; obviously standing with their feet on the bottom of the gorge and their elbows resting on the edge of the gorge, just as men might stand leaning on a wall — lazy men, on a fine morning after breakfast.

“Keep straight on,” whispered Puddleglum, who had noticed them too. “Don’t look at them. And whatever you do, don’t run. They’d be after us in a moment.”

So they kept on, pretending not to have seen the giants. It was like walking past the gate of a house where there is a fierce dog, only far worse. There were dozens and dozens of these giants. They didn’t look angry — or kind or interested at all. There was no sign that they had seen the travellers.

Then — whizz-whizz-whizz — some heavy object came hurtling through the air, and with a crash a big boulder fell about twenty paces ahead of them. And then — thud！ - another fell twenty feet behind.

“Are they aiming at us?” asked Scrubb.

“No,” said Puddleglum. “We’d be a good deal safer if they were. They’re trying to hit that — that cairn over there to the right. They won’t hit it, you know. It’s safe enough; they’re such very bad shots. They play cock-shies most fine mornings. About the only game they’re clever enough to understand.”

It was a horrible time. There seemed no end to the line of giants, and they never ceased hurling stones, some of which fell extremely close. Quite apart from the real danger, the very sight and sound of their faces and voices were enough to scare anyone. Jill tried not to look at them. After about twenty-five minutes the giants apparently had a quarrel. This put an end to the cock-shies, but it is not pleasant to be within a mile of quarrelling giants. They stormed and jeered at one another in long, meaningless words of about twenty syllables each. They foamed and gibbered and jumped in their rage, and each jump shook the earth like a bomb. They lammed each other on the head with great, clumsy stone hammers; but their skulls were so hard that the hammers bounced off again, and then the monster who had given the blow would drop his hammer and howl with pain because it had stung his fingers. But he was so stupid that he would do exactly the same thing a minute later. This was a good thing in the long run, for by the end of an hour all the giants were so hurt that they sat down and began to cry. When they sat down, their heads were below the edge of the gorge, so that you saw them no more; but Jill could hear them howling and blubbering and boo-booing like great babies even after the place was a mile behind.

That night they bivouacked on the bare moor, and Puddleglum showed the children how to make the best of their blankets by sleeping back to back. （The backs keep each other warm and you can then have both blankets on top.） But it was chilly even so, and the ground was hard and lumpy. The Marsh-wiggle told them they would feel more comfortable if only they thought how very much colder it would be later on and farther north; but this didn’t cheer them up at all.

They travelled across Ettinsmoor for many days, saving the bacon and living chiefly on the moor-fowl （they were not, of course, talking birds） which Eustace and the wiggle shot. Jill rather envied Eustace for being able to shoot; he had learned it on his voyage with King Caspian. As there were countless streams on the moor, they were never short of water. Jill thought that when, in books, people live on what they shoot, it never tells you what a long, smelly, messy job it is plucking and cleaning dead birds, and how cold it makes your fingers. But the great thing was that they met hardly any giants. One giant saw them, but he only roared with laughter and stumped away about his own business.

About the tenth day, they reached a place where the country changed. They came to the northern edge of the moor and looked down a long, steep slope into a different, and grimmer, land. At the bottom of the slope were cliffs：beyond these, a country of high mountains, dark precipices, stony valleys, ravines so deep and narrow that one could not see far into them, and rivers that poured out of echoing gorges to plunge sullenly into black depths. Needless to say, it was Puddleglum who pointed out a sprinkling of snow on the more distant slopes.

“But there’ll be more on the north side of them, I shouldn’t wonder,” he added.

It took them some time to reach the foot of the slope and, when they did, they looked down from the top of the cliffs at a river running below them from west to east. It was walled in by precipices on the far side as well as on their own, and it was green and sunless, full of rapids and waterfalls. The roar of it shook the earth even where they stood.

“The bright side of it is,” said Puddleglum, “that if we break our necks getting down the cliff, then we’re safe from being drowned in the river.”

“What about that?” said Scrubb suddenly, pointing upstream to their left.

Then they all looked and saw the last thing they were expecting — a bridge. And what a bridge, too！ It was a huge, single arch that spanned the gorge from cliff-top to cliff-top; and the crown of that arch was as high above the cliff-tops as the dome of St Paul’s is above the street.

“Why, it must be a giants’bridge！” said Jill.

“Or a sorcerer’s, more likely,” said Puddleglum. “We’ve got to look out for enchantments in a place like this. I think it’s a trap. I think it’ll turn into mist and melt away just when we’re out on the middle of it.”

“Oh, for goodness’sake, don’t be such a wet blanket,” said Scrubb. “Why on earth shouldn’t it be a proper bridge?”

“Do you think any of the giants we’ve seen would have sense to build a thing like that?” said Puddleglum.

“But mightn’t it have been built by other giants?” said Jill. “I mean, by giants who lived hundreds of years ago, and were far cleverer than the modern kind. It might have been built by the same ones who built the giant city we’re looking for. And that would mean we were on the right track — the old bridge leading to the old city！”

“That’s a real brain-wave, Pole,” said Scrubb. “It must be that. Come on.”

So they turned and went to the bridge. And when they reached it, it certainly seemed solid enough. The single stones were as big as those at Stonehenge and must have been squared by good masons once, though now they were cracked and crumbled. The balustrade had apparently been covered with rich carvings, of which some traces remained; mouldering faces and forms of giants, minotaurs, squids, centipedes, and dreadful gods. Puddleglum still didn’t trust it, but he consented to cross it with the children.

The climb up to the crown of the arch was long and heavy. In many places the great stones had dropped out, leaving horrible gaps through which you looked down on the river foaming thousands of feet below. They saw an eagle fly through under their feet. And the higher they went, the colder it grew, and the wind blew so that they could hardly keep their footing. It seemed to shake the bridge.

When they reached the top and could look down the farther slope of the bridge, they saw what looked like the remains of an ancient giant road stretching away before them into the heart of the mountains. Many stones of its pavement were missing and there were wide patches of grass between those that remained. And riding towards them on that ancient road were two people of normal grown-up human size.

“Keep on. Move towards them,” said Puddleglum. “Anyone you meet in a place like this is as likely as not to be an enemy, but we mustn’t let them think we’re afraid.”

By the time they had stepped off the end of the bridge on to the grass, the two strangers were quite close. One was a knight in complete armour with his visor down. His armour and his horse were black; there was no device on his shield and no banneret on his spear.

The other was a lady on a white horse, a horse so lovely that you wanted to kiss its nose and give it a lump of sugar at once. But the lady, who rode side-saddle and wore a long, fluttering dress of dazzling green, was lovelier still.

“Good day, t-r-r-avellers,” she cried out in a voice as sweet as the sweetest bird’s song, trilling her R’s delightfully. “Some of you are young pilgrims to walk this rough waste.”

“That’s as may be, Ma’am,” said Puddleglum very stiffly and on his guard.

“We’re looking for the ruined city of the giants,” said Jill.

“The r-r-ruined city?” said the Lady. “That is a strange place to be seeking. What will you do if you find it?”

“We’ve got to —” began Jill, but Puddleglum interrupted.

“Begging your pardon, Ma’am. But we don’t know you or your friend — a silent chap, isn’t he?- and you don’t know us. And we’d as soon not talk to strangers about our business, if you don’t mind. Shall we have a little rain soon, do you think?”

The Lady laughed：the richest, most musical laugh you can imagine. “Well, children,” she said, “you have a wise, solemn old guide with you. I think none the worse of him for keeping his own counsel, but I’ll be free with mine. I have often heard the name of the giantish City Ruinous, but never met any who would tell me the way thither. This road leads to the burgh and castle of Harfang, where dwell the gentle giants. They are as mild, civil, prudent, and courteous as those of Ettinsmoor are foolish, fierce, savage, and given to all beastliness. And in Harfang you may or may not hear tidings of the City Ruinous, but certainly you shall find good lodgings and merry hosts. You would be wise to winter there, or, at the least, to tarry certain days for your ease and refreshment. There you shall have steaming baths, soft beds, and bright hearths; and the roast and the baked and the sweet and the strong will be on the table four times in a day.”

“I say！” exclaimed Scrubb. “That’s something like！ Think of sleeping in a bed again.”

“Yes, and having a hot bath,” said Jill. “Do you think they’ll ask us to stay? We don’t know them, you see.”

“Only tell them,” answered the Lady, “that She of the Green Kirtle salutes them by you, and has sent them two fair Southern children for the Autumn Feast.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you ever so much,” said Jill and Scrubb.

“But have a care,” said the Lady. “On whatever day you reach Harfang, that you come not to the door too late. For they shut their gates a few hours after noon, and it is the custom of the castle that they open to none when once they have drawn bolt, how hard so ever he knock.”

The children thanked her again, with shining eyes, and the Lady waved to them. The Marsh-wiggle took off his steeple-hat and bowed very stiffly. Then the silent Knight and the Lady started walking their horses up the slope of the bridge with a great clatter of hoofs.

“Well！” said Puddleglum. “I’d give a good deal to know where she’s coming from and where she’s going. Not the sort you expect to meet in the wilds of Giantland, is she? Up to no good, I’ll be bound.”

“Oh rot！” said Scrubb. “I thought she was simply super. And think of hot meals and warm rooms. I do hope Harfang isn’t a long way off.”

“Same here,” said Jill. “And hadn’t she a scrumptious dress. And the horse！”

“All the same,” said Puddleglum, “I wish we knew a bit more about her.”

“I was going to ask her all about herself,” said Jill. “But how could I when you wouldn’t tell her anything about us?”

“Yes,” said Scrubb. “And why were you so stiff and unpleasant. Didn’t you like them?”

“Them?” said the wiggle. “Who’s them? I only saw one.”

“Didn’t you see the Knight?” asked Jill.

“I saw a suit of armour,” said Puddleglum. “Why didn’t he speak?”

“I expect he was shy,” said Jill. “Or perhaps he just wants to look at her and listen to her lovely voice. I’m sure I would if I was him.”

“I was wondering,” remarked Puddleglum, “what you’d really see if you lifted up the visor of that helmet and looked inside.”

“Hang it all,” said Scrubb. “Think of the shape of the armour！ What could be inside it except a man?”

“How about a skeleton?” asked the Marsh-wiggle with ghastly cheerfulness. “Or perhaps,” he added as an afterthought, “nothing at all. I mean, nothing you could see. Someone invisible.”

“Really, Puddleglum,” said Jill with a shudder, “you do have the most horrible ideas. How do you think of them all?”

“Oh, bother his ideas！” said Scrubb. “He’s always expecting the worst, and he’s always wrong. Let’s think about those Gentle Giants and get on to Harfang as quickly as we can. I wish I knew how far it is.”

And now they nearly had the first of those quarrels which Puddleglum had foretold：not that Jill and Scrubb hadn’t been sparring and snapping at each other a good deal before, but this was the first really serious disagreement. Puddleglum didn’t want them to go to Harfang at all. He said that he didn’t know what a giant’s idea of being “gentle” might be, and that, anyway, Aslan’s signs had said nothing about staying with giants, gentle or otherwise. The children, on the other hand, who were sick of wind and rain, and skinny fowl roasted over campfires, and hard, cold earth to sleep on, were absolutely dead set to visit the Gentle Giants. In the end, Puddleglum agreed to do so, but only on one condition. The others must give an absolute promise that, unless he gave them leave, they would not tell the Gentle Giants that they came from Narnia or that they were looking for Prince Rilian. And they gave him this promise, and went on.

After that talk with the Lady things got worse in two different ways. In the first place the country was much harder. The road led through endless, narrow valleys down which a cruel north wind was always blowing in their faces. There was nothing that could be used for firewood, and there were no nice little hollows to camp in, as there had been on the moor. And the ground was all stony, and made your feet sore by day and every bit of you sore by night.

In the second place, whatever the Lady had intended by telling them about Harfang, the actual effect on the children was a bad one. They could think about nothing but beds and baths and hot meals and how lovely it would be to get indoors. They never talked about Aslan, or even about the lost prince, now. And Jill gave up her habit of repeating the signs over to herself every night and morning. She said to herself, at first, that she was too tired, but she soon forgot all about it. And though you might have expected that the idea of having a good time at Harfang would have made them more cheerful, it really made them more sorry for themselves and more grumpy and snappy with each other and with Puddleglum.

At last they came one afternoon to a place where the gorge in which they were travelling widened out and dark firwoods rose on either side. They looked ahead and saw that they had come through the mountains. Before them lay a desolate, rocky plain：beyond it, further mountains capped with snow. But between them and those further mountains rose a low hill with an irregular flattish top.

“Look！ Look！” cried Jill, and pointed across the plain; and there, through the gathering dusk, from beyond the flat hill, everyone saw lights. Lights！ Not moonlight, nor fires, but a homely cheering row of lighted windows. If you have never been in the wild wilderness, day and night, for weeks, you will hardly understand how they felt.

“Harfang！” cried Scrubb and Jill in glad, excited voices; and “Harfang,” repeated Puddleglum in a dull, gloomy voice. But he added, “Hullo！ Wild geese！” and had the bow off his shoulder in a second. He brought down a good fat goose. It was far too late to think of reaching Harfang that day. But they had a hot meal and a fire, and started the night warmer than they had been for over a week. After the fire had gone out, the night grew bitterly cold, and when they woke next morning, their blankets were stiff with frost.

“Never mind！” said Jill, stamping her feet. “Hot baths tonight！”

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HILL OF THE STRANGE TRENCHES

There is no denying it was a beast of a day. Overhead was a sunless sky, muffled in clouds that were heavy with snow; underfoot, a black frost; blowing over it, a wind that felt as if it would take your skin off. When they got down into the plain they found that this part of the ancient road was much more ruinous than any they had yet seen. They had to pick their way over great broken stones and between boulders and across rubble：hard going for sore feet. And, however tired they got, it was far too cold for a halt.

At about ten o’clock the first tiny snow flakes came loitering down and settled on Jill’s arm. Ten minutes later they were falling quite thickly. In twenty minutes the ground was noticeably white. And by the end of half an hour a good steady snowstorm, which looked as if it meant to last all day, was driving in their faces so that they could hardly see.

In order to understand what followed, you must keep on remembering how little they could see.

As they drew near the low hill which separated them from the place where the lighted windows had appeared, they had no general view of it at all. It was a question of seeing the next few paces ahead, and, even for that, you had to screw up your eyes. Needless to say, they were not talking. When they reached the foot of the hill they caught a glimpse of what might be rocks on each side — squarish rocks, if you looked at them carefully, but no one did. All were more concerned with the ledge right in front of them which barred their way. It was about four feet high. The Marsh-wiggle, with his long legs, had no difficulty in jumping onto the top of it, and he then helped the others up. It was a nasty wet business for them, though not for him, because the snow now lay quite deep on the ledge. They then had a stiff climb — Jill fell once — up very rough ground for about a hundred yards, and came to a second ledge. There were four of these ledges altogether, at quite irregular intervals.

As they struggled on to the fourth ledge, there was no mistaking the fact that they were now at the top of the flat hill. Up till now the slope had given them some shelter; here, they got the full fury of the wind. For the hill, oddly enough, was quite as flat on top as it had looked from a distance：a great level tableland which the storm tore across without resistance. In most places the snow was still hardly lying at all, for the wind kept catching it up off the ground in sheets and clouds, and hurling it in their faces. And round their feet little eddies of snow ran about as you sometimes see them doing over ice. And, indeed, in many places, the surface was almost as smooth as ice. But to make matters worse it was crossed and crisscrossed with curious banks or dykes, which sometimes divided it up into squares and oblongs. All these of course had to be climbed; they varied from two to five feet in height and were about a couple of yards thick. On the north side of each bank the snow already lay in deep drifts; and after each climb you came down into a drift and got wet.

Fighting her way forward with hood up and head down and numb hands inside her cloak, Jill had glimpses of other odd things on that horrible tableland — things on her right that looked vaguely like factory chimneys, and, on her left, a huge cliff, straighter than any cliff ought to be. But she wasn’t at all interested and didn’t give them a thought. The only things she thought about were her cold hands （and nose and chin and ears） and hot baths and beds at Harfang.

Suddenly she skidded, slid about five feet, and found herself to her horror sliding down into a dark, narrow chasm which seemed that moment to have appeared in front of her. Half a second later she had reached the bottom. She appeared to be in a kind of trench or groove, only about three feet wide. And though she was shaken by the fall, almost the first thing she noticed was the relief of being out of the wind; for the walls of the trench rose high above her. The next thing she noticed was, naturally, the anxious faces of Scrubb and Puddleglum looking down at her from the edge.

“Are you hurt, Pole?” shouted Scrubb.

“Both legs broken, I shouldn’t wonder,” shouted Puddleglum.

Jill stood up and explained that she was all right, but they’d have to help her out.

“What is it you’ve fallen into?” asked Scrubb.

“It’s a kind of trench, or it might be a kind of sunken lane or something,” said Jill. “It runs quite straight.”

“Yes, by Jove,” said Scrubb. “And it runs due north！ I wonder is it a sort of road? If it was, we’d be out of this infernal wind down there. Is there a lot of snow at the bottom?”

“Hardly any. It all blows over the top, I suppose.”

“What happens farther on?”

“Half a sec. I’ll go and see,” said Jill. She got up and walked along the trench; but before she had gone far, it turned sharply to the right. She shouted this information back to the others.

“What’s round the corner?” asked Scrubb.

Now it happened that Jill had the same feeling about twisty passages and dark places underground, or even nearly underground, that Scrubb had about the edges of cliffs. She had no intention of going round that corner alone; especially when she heard Puddleglum bawling out from behind her： “Be careful, Pole. It’s just the sort of place that might lead to a dragon’s cave. And in a giant country, there might be giant earth-worms or giant beetles.”

“I don’t think it goes anywhere much,” said Jill, coming hastily back.

“I’m jolly well going to have a look,” said Scrubb. “What do you mean by anywhere much, I should like to know?” So he sat down on the edge of the trench （everyone was too wet by now to bother about being a bit wetter） and then dropped in. He pushed past Jill and, though he didn’t say anything, she felt sure that he knew she had funked it. So she followed him close, but took care not to get in front of him.

It proved, however, a disappointing exploration. They went round the right-hand turn and straight on for a few paces. Here there was a choice of ways：straight on again, or sharp to the right. “That’s no good,” said Scrubb, glancing down the right-hand turn, “that would be taking us back — south.” He went straight on, but once more, in a few steps, they found a second turn to the right. But this time there was no choice of ways, for the trench they had been following here came to a dead end.

“No good,” grunted Scrubb.

Jill lost no time in turning and leading the way back. When they returned to the place where Jill had first fallen in, the Marsh-wiggle with his long arms had no difficulty in pulling them out.

But it was dreadful to be out on top again. Down in those narrow slits of trenches, their ears had almost begun to thaw. They had been able to see clearly and breathe easily and hear each other speak without shouting. It was absolute misery to come back into the withering coldness. And it did seem hard when Puddleglum chose that moment for saying： “Are you still sure of those signs, Pole? What’s the one we ought to be after, now?”

“Oh, come on！ Bother the signs,” said Pole. “Something about someone mentioning Aslan’s name, I think. But I’m jolly well not going to give a recitation here.”

As you see, she had got the order wrong. That was because she had given up saying the signs over every night. She still really knew them, if she troubled to think：but she was no longer so “pat” in her lesson as to be sure of reeling them off in the right order at a moment’s notice and without thinking. Puddleglum’s question annoyed her because, deep down inside her, she was already annoyed with herself for not knowing the Lion’s lesson quite so well as she felt she ought to have known it. This annoyance, added to the misery of being very cold and tired, made her say, “Bother the signs.” She didn’t perhaps quite mean it.

“Oh, that was next, was it?” said Puddleglum. “Now I wonder, are you right? Got‘em mixed, I shouldn’t wonder. It seems to me, this hill, this flat place we’re on, is worth stopping to have a look at. Have you noticed —”

“Oh Lor！” said Scrubb, “is this a time for stopping to admire the view? For goodness’sake let’s get on.”

“Oh, look, look, look,” cried Jill and pointed.

Everyone turned, and everyone saw. Some way off to the north, and a good deal higher up than the tableland on which they stood, a line of lights had appeared. This time, even more obviously than when the travellers had seen them the night before, they were windows：smaller windows that made one think deliciously of bedrooms, and larger windows that made one think of great halls with fires roaring on the hearth and hot soup or juicy sirloins smoking on the table.

“Harfang！” exclaimed Scrubb.

“That’s all very well,” said Puddleglum. “But what I was saying was —”

“Oh, shut up,” said Jill crossly. “We haven’t a moment to lose. Don’t you remember what the Lady said about their locking up so early? We must get there in time, we must, we must. We’ll die if we’re shut out on a night like this.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly a night, not yet,” began Puddleglum; but the two children both said, “Come on,” and began stumbling forward on the slippery tableland as quickly as their legs would carry them. The Marsh-wiggle followed them：still talking, but now that they were forcing their way into the wind again, they could not have heard him even if they had wanted to. And they didn’t want. They were thinking of baths and beds and hot drinks; and the idea of coming to Harfang too late and being shut out was almost unbearable.

In spite of their haste, it took them a long time to cross the flat top of that hill. And even when they had crossed it, there were still several ledges to climb down on the far side. But at last they reached the bottom and could see what Harfang was like.

It stood on a high crag, and in spite of its many towers was more a huge house than a castle. Obviously, the Gentle Giants feared no attack. There were windows in the outside wall quite close to the ground — a thing no one would have in a serious fortress. There were even odd little doors here and there, so that it would be quite easy to get in and out of the castle without going through the courtyard. This raised the spirits of Jill and Scrubb. It made the whole place look more friendly and less forbidding.

At first the height and steepness of the crag frightened them, but presently they noticed that there was an easier way up on the left and that the road wound up towards it. It was a terrible climb, after the journey they had already had, and Jill nearly gave up. Scrubb and Puddleglum had to help her for the last hundred yards. But in the end they stood before the castle gate. The portcullis was up and the gate open.

However tired you are, it takes some nerve to walk up to a giant’s front door. In spite of all his previous warnings against Harfang, it was Puddleglum who showed most courage.

“Steady pace, now,” he said. “Don’t look frightened, whatever you do. We’ve done the silliest thing in the world by coming at all：but now that we are here, we’d best put a bold face on it.”

With these words he strode forward into the gateway, stood still under the arch where the echo would help his voice, and called out as loud as he could.

“Ho！ Porter！ Guests who seek lodging.”

And while he was waiting for something to happen, he took off his hat and knocked off the heavy mass of snow which had gathered on its wide brim.

“I say,” whispered Scrubb to Jill. “He may be a wet blanket, but he has plenty of pluck — and cheek.”

A door opened, letting out a delicious glow of firelight, and the Porter appeared. Jill bit her lips for fear she should scream. He was not a perfectly enormous giant; that is to say, he was rather taller than an apple tree but nothing like so tall as a telegraph pole. He had bristly red hair, a leather jerkin with metal plates fastened all over it so as to make a kind of mail shirt, bare knees （very hairy indeed） and things like puttees on his legs. He stooped down and goggled at Puddleglum.

“And what sort of creature do you call yourself,” he said.

Jill took her courage in both hands. “Please,” she said, shouting up at the giant. “The Lady of the Green Kirtle salutes the King of the Gentle Giants, and has sent us two Southern children and this Marsh-wiggle （his name’s Puddleglum） to your Autumn Feast. If it’s quite convenient, of course,” she added.

“Oho！” said the Porter. “That’s quite a different story. Come in, little people, come in. You’d best come into the lodge while I’m sending word to his Majesty.” He looked at the children with curiosity. “Blue faces,” he said. “I didn’t know they were that colour. Don’t care about it myself. But I dare say you look quite nice to one another. Beetles fancy other beetles, they do say.”

“Our faces are only blue with cold,” said Jill. “We’re not this colour really.”

“Then come in and get warm. Come in, little shrimps,” said the Porter.

They followed him into the lodge. And though it was rather terrible to hear such a big door clang shut behind them, they forgot about it as soon as they saw the thing they had been longing for ever since supper time last night — a fire. And such a fire！ It looked as if four or five whole trees were blazing on it, and it was so hot they couldn’t go within yards of it. But they all flopped down on the brick floor, as near as they could bear the heat, and heaved great sighs of relief.

“Now, youngster,” said the Porter to another giant who had been sitting in the back of the room, staring at the visitors till it looked as if his eyes would start out of his head, “run across with this message to the House.” And he repeated what Jill had said to him. The younger giant, after a final stare, and a great guffaw, left the room.

“Now, Froggy,” said the Porter to Puddleglum, “you look as if you wanted some cheering up.” He produced a black bottle very like Puddleglum’s own, but about twenty times larger. “Let me see, let me see,” said the Porter. “I can’t give you a cup or you’ll drown yourself. Let me see. This salt-cellar will be just the thing. You needn’t mention it over at the House. The silver will keep on getting over here, and it’s not my fault.”

The salt-cellar was not very like one of ours, being narrower and more upright, and made quite a good cup for Puddleglum, when the giant set it down on the floor beside him. The children expected Puddleglum to refuse it, distrusting the Gentle Giants as he did. But he muttered, “It’s rather late to be thinking of precautions now that we’re inside and the door shut behind us.” Then he sniffed at the liquor. “Smells all right,” he said. “But that’s nothing to go by. Better make sure,” and took a sip. “Tastes all right, too,” he said. “But it might do that at the first sip. How does it go on?” He took a larger sip. “Ah！” he said. “But is it the same all the way down?” and took another. “There’ll be something nasty at the bottom, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, and finished the drink. He licked his lips and remarked to the children, “This’ll be a test, you see. If I curl up, or burst, or turn into a lizard, or something, then you’ll know not to take anything they offer you.”

But the giant, who was too far up to hear the things Puddleglum had been saying under his breath, roared with laughter and said, “Why, Froggy, you’re a man. See him put it away！”

“Not a man ... Marsh-wiggle,” replied Puddleglum in a somewhat indistinct voice. “Not frog either：Marshwiggle.”

At that moment the door opened behind them and the younger giant came in saying, “They’re to go to the throne-room at once.”

The children stood up but Puddleglum remained sitting and said, “Marsh-wiggle. Marshwiggle. Very respectable Marsh-wiggle. Respectowiggle.”

“Show them the way, young‘un,” said the giant Porter. “You’d better carry Froggy. He’s had a drop more than’s good for him.”

“Nothing wrong with me,” said Puddleglum. “Not a frog. Nothing frog with me. I’m a respectabiggle.”

But the young giant caught him up by the waist and signed to the children to follow. In this undignified way they crossed the courtyard. Puddleglum, held in the giant’s fist, and vaguely kicking the air, did certainly look very like a frog. But they had little time to notice this, for they soon entered the great doorway of the main castle — both their hearts beating faster than usual — and, after pattering along several corridors at a trot to keep up with the giant’s paces, found themselves blinking in the light of an enormous room, where lamps glowed and a fire roared on the hearth and both were reflected from the gilding of roof and cornice. More giants than they could count stood on their left and right, all in magnificent robes; and on two thrones at the far end, sat two huge shapes that appeared to be the King and Queen.

About twenty feet from the thrones, they stopped. Scrubb and Jill made an awkward attempt at a bow （girls are not taught how to curtsey at Experiment House） and the young giant carefully put Puddleglum down on the floor, where he collapsed into a sort of sitting position. With his long limbs he looked, to tell the truth, uncommonly like a large spider.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HOUSE OF HARFANG

“Go on, Pole, do your stuff,” whispered Scrubb.

Jill found that her mouth was so dry that she couldn’t speak a word. She nodded savagely at Scrubb.

Thinking to himself that he would never forgive her （or Puddleglum either）, Scrubb licked his lips and shouted up to the King giant. “If you please, Sire, the Lady of the Green Kirtle salutes you by us and said you’d like to have us for your Autumn Feast.”

The giant King and Queen looked at each other, nodded to each other, and smiled in a way that Jill didn’t exactly like. She liked the King better than the Queen. He had a fine, curled beard and a straight eagle-like nose, and was really rather good-looking as giants go. The Queen was dreadfully fat and had a double chin and a fat, powdered face — which isn’t a very nice thing at the best of times, and of course looks much worse when it is ten times too big. Then the King put out his tongue and licked his lips. Anyone might do that：but his tongue was so very large and red, and came out so unexpectedly, that it gave Jill quite a shock.

“Oh, what good children！” said the Queen.

“Perhaps she’s the nice one after all,” thought Jill.

“Yes indeed,” said the King. “Quite excellent children. We welcome you to our court. Give me your hands.”

He stretched down his great right hand — very clean and with any number of rings on the fingers, but also with terrible pointed nails. He was much too big to shake the hands which the children, in turn, held up to him; but he shook the arms.

“And what’s that?” asked the King, pointing to Puddleglum.

“Reshpeckobiggle,” said Puddleglum.

“Oh！” screamed the Queen, gathering her skirts close about her ankles. “The horrid thing！ It’s alive.”

“He’s quite all right, your Majesty, really, he is,” said Scrubb hastily. “You’ll like him much better when you get to know him. I’m sure you will.”

I hope you won’t lose all interest in Jill for the rest of the book if I tell you that at this moment she began to cry. There was a good deal of excuse for her. Her feet and hands and ears and nose were still only just beginning to thaw; melted snow was trickling off her clothes; she had had hardly anything to eat or drink that day; and her legs were aching so that she felt she could not go on standing much longer. Anyway, it did more good at the moment than anything else would have done, for the Queen said： “Ah, the poor child！ My lord, we do wrong to keep our guests standing. Quick, some of you！ Take them away. Give them food and wine and baths. Comfort the little girl. Give her lollipops, give her dolls, give her physics, give her all you can think of — possets and comfits and caraways and lullabies and toys. Don’t cry, little girl, or you won’t be good for anything when the feast comes.”

Jill was just as indignant as you and I would have been at the mention of toys and dolls; and, though lollipops and comfits might be all very well in their way, she very much hoped that something more solid would be provided. The Queen’s foolish speech, however, produced excellent results, for Puddleglum and Scrubb were at once picked up by gigantic gentlemen-in-waiting, and Jill by a gigantic maid of honour, and carried off to their rooms.

Jill’s room was about the size of a church, and would have been rather grim if it had not had a roaring fire on the hearth and a very thick crimson carpet on the floor. And here delightful things began to happen to her. She was handed over to the Queen’s old Nurse, who was, from the giants’point of view, a little old woman almost bent double with age, and, from the human point of view, a giantess small enough to go about an ordinary room without knocking her head on the ceiling. She was very capable, though Jill did wish she wouldn’t keep on clicking her tongue and saying things like “Oh la, la！ Ups-adaisy” and “There’s a duck” and “Now we’ll be all right, my poppet”. She filled a giant foot-bath with hot water and helped Jill into it. If you can swim （as Jill could） a giant bath is a lovely thing. And giant towels, though a bit rough and coarse, are lovely too, because there are acres of them. In fact you don’t need to dry at all, you just roll about on them in front of the fire and enjoy yourself. And when that was over, clean, fresh, warmed clothes were put on Jill：very splendid clothes and a little too big for her, but clearly made for humans not giantesses.

“I suppose if that woman in the green kirtle comes here, they must be used to guests of our size,” thought Jill.

She soon saw that she was right about this, for a table and chair of the right height for an ordinary grown-up human were placed for her, and the knives and forks and spoons were the proper size too. It was delightful to sit down, feeling warm and clean at last. Her feet were still bare and it was lovely to tread on the giant carpet. She sank in it well over her ankles and it was just the thing for sore feet. The meal — which I suppose we must call dinner, though it was nearer tea time — was cock-a-leekie soup, and hot roast turkey, and a steamed pudding, and roast chestnuts, and as much fruit as you could eat.

The only annoying thing was that the Nurse kept coming in and out, and every time she came in, she brought a gigantic toy with her — a huge doll, bigger than Jill herself, a wooden horse on wheels, about the size of an elephant, a drum that looked like a young gasometer, and a woolly lamb. They were crude, badly made things, painted in very bright colours, and Jill hated the sight of them. She kept on telling the Nurse she didn’t want them, but the Nurse said： “Tut-tut-tut-tut. You’ll want‘em all right when you’ve had a bit of a rest, I know！ Te-hehe！ Beddy bye, now. A precious poppet！”

The bed was not a giant bed but only a big four-poster, like what you might see in an oldfashioned hotel; and very small it looked in that enormous room. She was very glad to tumble into it.

“Is it still snowing, Nurse?” she asked sleepily.

“No. Raining now, ducky！” said the giantess. “Rain’ll wash away all the nasty snow. Precious poppet will be able to go out and play tomorrow！” And she tucked Jill up and said good night.

I know nothing so disagreeable as being kissed by a giantess. Jill thought the same, but was asleep in five minutes.

The rain fell steadily all the evening and all the night, dashing against the windows of the castle, and Jill never heard it but slept deeply, past supper time and past midnight. And then came the deadest hour of the night and nothing stirred but mice in the house of the giants. At that hour there came to Jill a dream.

It seemed to her that she awoke in the same room and saw the fire, sunk low and red, and in the firelight the great wooden horse. And the horse came of its own will, rolling on its wheels across the carpet, and stood at her head. And now it was no longer a horse, but a lion as big as the horse. And then it was not a toy lion, but a real lion, The Real Lion, just as she had seen him on the mountain beyond the world’s end. And a smell of all sweet-smelling things there are filled the room. But there was some trouble in Jill’s mind, though she could not think what it was, and the tears streamed down her face and wet the pillow. The Lion told her to repeat the signs, and she found that she had forgotten them all. At that, a great horror came over her. And Aslan took her up in his jaws （she could feel his lips and his breath but not his teeth） and carried her to the window and made her look out. The moon shone bright; and written in great letters across the world or the sky （she did not know which） were the words UNDER ME. After that, the dream faded away, and when she woke, very late next morning, she did not remember that she had dreamed at all.

She was up and dressed and had finished breakfast in front of the fire when the Nurse opened the door and said： “Here’s pretty poppet’s little friends come to play with her.”

In came Scrubb and the Marsh-wiggle.

“Hullo！ Good morning,” said Jill. “Isn’t this fun? I’ve slept about fifteen hours, I believe. I do feel better, don’t you?”

“1 do,” said Scrubb, “but Puddleglum says he has a headache. Hullo！ - your window has a window seat. If we got up on that, we could see out.”

And at once they all did so：and at the first glance Jill said, “Oh, how perfectly dreadful！”

The sun was shining and, except for a few drifts, the snow had been almost completely washed away by the rain. Down below them, spread out like a map, lay the flat hill-top which they had struggled over yesterday afternoon; seen from the castle, it could not be mistaken for anything but the ruins of a gigantic city. It had been flat, as Jill now saw, because it was still, on the whole, paved, though in places the pavement was broken. The criss-cross banks were what was left of the walls of huge buildings which might once have been giants’palaces and temples. One bit of wall, about five hundred feet high, was still standing; it was that which she had thought was a cliff. The things that had looked like factory chimneys were enormous pillars, broken off at unequal heights; their fragments lay at their bases like felled trees of monstrous stone. The ledges which they had climbed down on the north side of the hill — and also, no doubt the other ledges which they had climbed up on the south side — were the remaining steps of giant stairs. To crown all, in large, dark lettering across the centre of the pavement, ran the words UNDER ME.

The three travellers looked at each other in dismay, and, after a short whistle, Scrubb said what they were all thinking, “The second and third signs muffed.”

And at that moment Jill’s dream rushed back into her mind.

“It’s my fault,” she said in despairing tones. “I — I’d given up repeating the signs every night. If I’d been thinking about them I could have seen it was the city, even in all that snow.”

“I’m worse,” said Puddleglum. “I did see, or nearly. I thought it looked uncommonly like a ruined city.”

“You’re the only one who isn’t to blame,” said Scrubb. “You did try to make us stop.”

“Didn’t try hard enough, though,” said the Marshwiggle. “And I’d no call to be trying. I ought to have done it. As if I couldn’t have stopped you two with one hand each！”

“The truth is,” said Scrubb, “we were so jolly keen on getting to this place that we weren’t bothering about anything else. At least I know I was. Ever since we met that woman with the knight who didn’t talk, we’ve been thinking of nothing else. We’d nearly forgotten about Prince Rilian.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Puddleglum, “if that wasn’t exactly what she intended.”

“What I don’t quite understand,” said Jill, “is how we didn’t see the lettering? Or could it have come there since last night. Could he — Aslan — have put it there in the night? I had such a queer dream.” And she told them all about it.

“Why, you chump！” said Scrubb. “We did see it. We got into the lettering. Don’t you see? We got into the letter E in ME. That was your sunk lane. We walked along the bottom stroke of the E, due north — turned to our right along the upright — came to another turn to the right — that’s the middle stroke — and then went on to the top left-hand corner, or （if you like） the north-eastern corner of the letter, and came back. Like the bally idiots we are.” He kicked the window seat savagely, and went on, “So it’s no good, Pole. I know what you were thinking because I was thinking the same. You were thinking how nice it would have been if Aslan hadn’t put the instructions on the stones of the ruined city till after we’d passed it. And then it would have been his fault, not ours. So likely, isn’t it? No. We must just own up. We’ve only four signs to go by, and we’ve muffed the first three.”

“You mean I have,” said Jill. “It’s quite true. I’ve spoiled everything ever since you brought me here. All the same — I’m frightfully sorry and all that — all the same, what are the instructions? UNDER ME doesn’t seem to make much sense.”

“Yes it does, though,” said Puddleglum. “It means we’ve got to look for the Prince under that city.”

“But how can we?” asked Jill.

“That’s the question,” said Puddleglum, rubbing his big, frog-like hands together. “How can we now? No doubt, if we’d had our minds on our job when we were at the Ruinous City, we’d have been shown how — found a little door, or a cave, or a tunnel, met someone to help us. Might have been （you never know） Aslan himself. We’d have got down under those paving-stones somehow or other. Aslan’s instructions always work：there are no exceptions. But how to do it now — that’s another matter.”

“Well, we shall just have to go back, I suppose,” said Jill.

“Easy, isn’t it?” said Puddleglum. “We might try opening that door to begin with.”

And they all looked at the door and saw that none of them could reach the handle, and that almost certainly no one could turn it if they did.

“Do you think they won’t let us out if we ask?” said Jill. And nobody said, but everyone thought, “Supposing they don’t.”

It was not a pleasant idea. Puddleglum was dead against any idea of telling the giants their real business and simply asking to be let out; and of course the children couldn’t tell without his permission, because they had promised. And all three felt pretty sure that there would be no chance of escaping from the castle by night. Once they were in their rooms with the doors shut, they would be prisoners till morning. They might, of course, ask to have their doors left open, but that would rouse suspicions.

“Our only chance,” said Scrubb, “is to try to sneak away by daylight. Mightn’t there be an hour in the afternoon when most of the giants are asleep?- and if we could steal down into the kitchen, mightn’t there be a back door open?”

“It’s hardly what I call a Chance,” said the Marshwiggle. “But it’s all the chance we’re likely to get.”

As a matter of fact, Scrubb’s plan was not quite so hopeless as you might think. If you want to get out of a house without being seen, the middle of the afternoon is in some ways a better time to try it than the middle of the night. Doors and windows are more likely to be open; and if you are caught, you can always pretend you weren’t meaning to go far and had no particular plans. （It is very hard to make either giants or grown-ups believe this if you’re found climbing out of a bedroom window at one o’clock in the morning.）

“We must put them off their guard, though,” said Scrubb. “We must pretend we love being here and are longing for this Autumn Feast.”

“That’s tomorrow night,” said Puddleglum. “I heard one of them say so.”

“I see,” said Jill. “We must pretend to be awfully excited about it, and keep on asking questions. They think we’re absolute infants anyway, which will make it easier.”

“Gay,” said Puddleglum with a deep sigh. “That’s what we’ve got to be. Gay. As if we hadn’t a care in the world. Frolicsome. You two youngsters haven’t always got very high spirits, I’ve noticed. You must watch me, and do as I do. I’ll be gay. Like this”- and he assumed a ghastly grin. “And frolicsome”- here he cut a most mournful caper. “You’ll soon get into it, if you keep your eyes on me. They think I’m a funny fellow already, you see. I dare say you two thought I was a trifle tipsy last night, but I do assure you it was — well, most of it was — put on. I had an idea it would come in useful, somehow.”

The children, when they talked over their adventures afterwards, could never feel sure whether this last statement was quite strictly true; but they were sure that Puddleglum thought it was true when he made it.

“All right. Gay’s the word,” said Scrubb. “Now, if we could only get someone to open this door. While we’re fooling about and being gay, we’ve got to find out all we can about this castle.”

Luckily, at that very moment the door opened, and the giant Nurse bustled in saying, “Now, my poppets. Like to come and see the King and all the court setting out on the hunting? Such a pretty sight！”

They lost no time in rushing out past her and climbing down the first staircase they came to. The noise of hounds and horns and giant voices guided them, so that in a few minutes they reached the courtyard. The giants were all on foot, for there are no giant horses in that part of the world, and the giants’hunting is done on foot; like beagling in England. The hounds were also of normal size. When Jill saw that there were no horses she was at first dreadfully disappointed, for she felt sure that the great fat Queen would never go after hounds on foot; and it would never do to have her about the house all day. But then she saw the Queen in a kind of litter supported on the shoulders of six young giants. The silly old creature was all got up in green and had a horn at her side.

Twenty or thirty giants, including the King, were assembled, ready for the sport, all talking and laughing fit to deafen you：and down below, nearer Jill’s level, there were wagging tails, and barking, and loose, slobbery mouths and noses of dogs thrust into your hand. Puddleglum was just beginning to strike what he thought a gay and gamesome attitude （which might have spoiled everything if it had been noticed） when Jill put on her most attractively childish smile, rushed across to the Queen’s litter and shouted up to the Queen. “Oh, please！ You’re not going away, are you? You will come back?”

“Yes, my dear,” said the Queen. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Oh, good. How lovely！” said Jill. “And we may come to the feast tomorrow night, mayn’t we? We’re so longing for tomorrow night！ And we do love being here. And while you’re out, we may run over the whole castle and see everything, mayn’t we? Do say yes.”

The Queen did say yes, but the laughter of all the courtiers nearly drowned her voice.

CHAPTER NINE
HOW THEY DISCOVERED SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING

The others admitted afterwards that Jill had been wonderful that day. As soon as the King and the rest of the hunting party had set off, she began making a tour of the whole castle and asking questions, but all in such an innocent, babyish way that no one could suspect her of any secret design. Though her tongue was never still, you could hardly say she talked：she prattled and giggled. She made love to everyone — the grooms, the porters, the housemaids, the ladies-in-waiting, and the elderly giant lords whose hunting days were past. She submitted to being kissed and pawed about by any number of giantesses, many of whom seemed sorry for her and called her “a poor little thing” though none of them explained why. She made especial friends with the cook and discovered the allimportant fact there was a scullery door which let you out through the outer wall, so that you did not have to cross the courtyard or pass the great gatehouse. In the kitchen she pretended to be greedy, and ate all sorts of scraps which the cook and scullions delighted to give her.

But upstairs among the ladies she asked questions about how she would be dressed for the great feast, and how long she would be allowed to sit up, and whether she would dance with some very, very small giant. And then （it made her hot all over when she remembered it afterwards） she would put her head on one side in an idiotic fashion which grown-ups, giant and otherwise, thought very fetching, and shake her curls, and fidget, and say, “Oh, I do wish it was tomorrow night, don’t you? Do you think the time will go quickly till then?” And all the giantesses said she was a perfect little darling; and some of them dabbed their eyes with enormous handkerchiefs as if they were going to cry.

“They’re dear little things at that age,” said one giantess to another. “It seems almost a pity...”

Scrubb and Puddleglum both did their best, but girls do that kind of thing better than boys. Even boys do it better than Marsh-wiggles.

At lunchtime something happened which made all three of them more anxious than ever to leave the castle of the Gentle Giants. They had lunch in the great hall at a little table of their own, near the fireplace. At a bigger table, about twenty yards away, half a dozen old giants were lunching. Their conversation was so noisy, and so high up in the air, that the children soon took no more notice of it than you would of hooters outside the window or traffic noises in the street. They were eating cold venison, a kind of food which Jill had never tasted before, and she was liking it.

Suddenly Puddleglum turned to them, and his face had gone so pale that you could see the paleness under the natural muddiness of his complexion. He said： “Don’t eat another bite.”

“What’s wrong?” asked the other two in a whisper.

“Didn’t you hear what those giants were saying?‘That’s a nice tender haunch of venison,'said one of them.‘Then that stag was a liar,'said another.‘Why?'said the first one.‘Oh,’said the other.‘They say that when he was caught he said, Don’t kill me, I’m tough. You won’t like me.’” For a moment Jill did not realize the full meaning of this. But she did when Scrubb’s eyes opened wide with horror and he said： “So we’ve been eating a Talking stag.”

This discovery didn’t have exactly the same effect on all of them. Jill, who was new to that world, was sorry for the poor stag and thought it rotten of the giants to have killed him. Scrubb, who had been in that world before and had at least one Talking beast as his dear friend, felt horrified; as you might feel about a murder. But Puddleglum, who was Narnian born, was sick and faint, and felt as you would feel if you found you had eaten a baby.

“We’ve brought the anger of Aslan on us,” he said. “That’s what comes of not attending to the signs. We’re under a curse, I expect. If it was allowed, it would be the best thing we could do, to take these knives and drive them into our own hearts.”

And gradually even Jill came to see it from his point of view. At any rate, none of them wanted any more lunch. And as soon as they thought it safe they crept quietly out of the hall.

It was now drawing near to that time of the day on which their hopes of escape depended, and all became nervous. They hung about in passages and waited for things to become quiet. The giants in the hall sat on a dreadfully long time after the meal was over. The bald one was telling a story. When that was over, the three travellers dawdled down to the kitchen. But there were still plenty of giants there, or at least in the scullery, washing up and putting things away. It was agonizing, waiting till these finished their jobs and, one by one, wiped their hands and went away. At last only one old giantess was left in the room. She pottered about, and pottered about, and at last the three travellers realized with horror that she did not intend to go away at all.

“Well, dearies,” she said to them. “That job’s about through. Let’s put the kettle there. That’ll make a nice cup of tea presently. Now I can have a little bit of a rest. Just look into the scullery, like good poppets, and tell me if the back door is open.”

“Yes, it is,” said Scrubb.

“That’s right. I always leave it open so as Puss can get in and out, the poor thing.”

Then she sat down on one chair and put her feet up on another.

“I don’t know as I mightn’t have forty winks,” said the giantess. “If only that blarney hunting party doesn’t come back too soon.”

All their spirits leaped up when she mentioned forty winks, and flopped down again when she mentioned the return of the hunting party.

“When do they usually come back?” asked Jill.

“You never can tell,” said the giantess. “But there; go and be quiet for a bit, my dearies.”

They retreated to the far end of the kitchen, and would have slipped out into the scullery there and then if the giantess had not sat up, opened her eyes, and brushed away a fly. “Don’t try it till we’re sure she’s really asleep,” whispered Scrubb. “Or it’ll spoil everything.” So they all huddled at the kitchen end, waiting and watching. The thought that the hunters might come back at any moment was terrible. And the giantess was fidgety. Whenever they thought she had really gone to sleep, she moved.

“I can’t bear this,” thought Jill. To distract her mind, she began looking about her. Just in front of her was a clean wide table with two clean pie-dishes on it, and an open book. They were giant pie-dishes of course. Jill thought that she could lie down just comfortably in one of them. Then she climbed up on the bench beside the table to look at the book. She read：

MALLARD. This delicious bird can be cooked in a variety of ways.

“It’s a cookery book,” thought Jill without much interest, and glanced over her shoulder. The giantess’s eyes were shut but she didn’t look as if she were properly asleep. Jill glanced back at the book. At the very next entry her heart seemed to stop beating; It ran：

MAN. This elegant little biped has long been valued as a delicacy. It forms a traditional part of the Autumn Feast, and is served between the fish and the joint. Each Man...

But she could not bear to read any more. She turned round. The giantess had wakened up and was having a fit of coughing. Jill nudged the other two and pointed to the book. They also mounted the bench and bent over the huge pages. Scrubb was still reading about how to cook Men when Puddleglum pointed to the next entry below it. It was like this：

MARSH-WIGGLE. Some authorities reject this animal altogether as unfit for giants’consumption because of its stringy consistency and muddy flavour. The flavour can, however, be greatly reduced if —

Jill touched his feet, and Scrubb’s, gently. All three looked back at the giantess. Her mouth was slightly open and from her nose there came a sound which at that moment was more welcome to them than any music; she snored. And now it was a question of tiptoe work, not daring to go too fast, hardly daring to breathe, out through the scullery （giant sculleries smell horrid）, out at last into the pale sunlight of a winter afternoon.

They were at the top of a rough little path which ran steeply down. And, thank heavens, on the right side of the castle; the City Ruinous was in sight. In a few minutes they were back on the broad, steep road which led down from the main gate of the castle. They were also in full view from every single window on that side. If it had been one, or two, or five windows there’d be a reasonable chance that no one might be looking out. But there were nearer fifty than five. They now realized, too, that the road on which they were, and indeed all the ground between them and the City Ruinous, didn’t offer as much cover as would hide a fox; it was all coarse grass and pebbles and flat stones. To make matters worse, they were now in the clothes that the giants had provided for them last night：except Puddleglum, whom nothing would fit. Jill wore a vivid green robe, rather too long for her, and over that a scarlet mantle fringed with white fur. Scrubb had scarlet stockings, blue tunic and cloak, a gold-hilted sword, and a feathered bonnet.

“Nice bits of colour, you two are,” muttered Puddleglum. “Show up very prettily on a winter day. The worst archer in the world couldn’t miss either of you if you were in range. And talking of archers, we’ll be sorry not to have our own bows before long, I shouldn’t wonder. Bit thin, too, those clothes of yours, are they?”

“Yes, I’m freezing already,” said Jill.

A few minutes ago when they had been in the kitchen, she had thought that if only they could once get out of the castle, their escape would be almost complete. She now realized that the most dangerous part of it was still to come.

“Steady, steady,” said Puddleglum. “Don’t look back. Don’t walk too quickly. Whatever you do, don’t run. Look as if we were just taking a stroll, and then, if anyone sees us, he might, just possibly, not bother. The moment we look like people running away, we’re done.”

The distance to the City Ruinous seemed longer than Jill would have believed possible. But bit by bit they were covering it. Then came a noise. The other two gasped. Jill, who didn’t know what it was, said, “What’s that?”

“Hunting horn,” whispered Scrubb.

“But don’t run even now,” said Puddleglum. “Not until I give the word.”

This time Jill couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. There, about half a mile away, was the hunt returning from behind them on the left.

They walked on. Suddenly a great clamour of giant voices arose：then shouts and hollas.

“They’ve seen us. Run,” said Puddleglum.

Jill gathered up her long skirts — horrible things for running in — and ran. There was no mistaking the danger now. She could hear the music of the hounds. She could hear the King’s voice roaring out, “After them, after them, or we’ll have no man-pies tomorrow.”

She was last of the three now, cumbered with her dress, slipping on loose stones, her hair getting in her mouth, running-pains across her chest. The hounds were much nearer. Now she had to run uphill, up the stony slope which led to the lowest step of the giant stairway. She had no idea what they would do when they got there, or how they would be any better off even if they reached the top. But she didn’t think about that. She was like a hunted animal now; as long as the pack was after her, she must run till she dropped.

The Marsh-wiggle was ahead. As he came to the lowest step he stopped, looked a little to his right, and all of a sudden darted into a little hole or crevice at the bottom of it. His long legs, disappearing into it, looked very like those of a spider. Scrubb hesitated and then vanished after him. Jill, breathless and reeling, came to the place about a minute later. It was an unattractive hole — a crack between the earth and the stone about three feet long and hardly more than a foot high. You had to fling yourself flat on your face and crawl in. You couldn’t do it so very quickly either. She felt sure that a dog’s teeth would close on her heel before she had got inside.

“Quick, quick. Stones. Fill up the opening,” came Puddleglum’s voice in the darkness beside her.

It was pitch black in there, except for the grey light in the opening by which they had crawled in. The other two were working hard. She could see Scrubb’s small hands and the Marshwiggle’s big, frog-like hands black against the light, working desperately to pile up stones. Then she realized how important this was and began groping for large stones herself, and handing them to the others. Before the dogs were baying and yelping at the cave mouth, they had it pretty well filled; and now, of course, there was no light at all.

“Farther in, quick,” said Puddleglum’s voice.

“Let’s all hold hands,” said Jill.

“Good idea,” said Scrubb.

But it took them quite a long time to find one another’s hands in the darkness. The dogs were sniffing at the other side of the barrier now.

“Try if we can stand up,” suggested Scrubb. They did and found that they could. Then, Puddleglum holding out a hand behind him to Scrubb, and Scrubb holding a hand out behind him to Jill （who wished very much that she was the middle one of the party and not the last）, they began groping with their feet and stumbling forwards into the blackness. It was all loose stones underfoot. Then Puddleglum came up to a wall of rock. They turned a little to their right and went on. There were a good many more twists and turns. Jill had now no sense of direction at all, and no idea where the mouth of the cave lay.

“The question is,” came Puddleglum’s voice out of the darkness ahead, “whether, taking one thing with another, it wouldn’t be better to go back （if we can） and give the giants a treat at that feast of theirs, instead of losing our way in the guts of a hill where, ten to one, there’s dragons and deep holes and gases and water and — Ow！ Let go！ Save yourselves. I’m —”

After that all happened quickly. There was a wild cry, a swishing, dusty, gravelly noise, a rattle of stones, and Jill found herself sliding, sliding, hopelessly sliding, and sliding quicker every moment down a slope that grew steeper every moment. It was not a smooth, firm slope, but a slope of small stones and rubbish. Even if you could have stood up, it would have been no use. Any bit of that slope you had put your foot on would have slid away from under you and carried you down with it. But Jill was more lying than standing. And the farther they all slid, the more they disturbed all the stones and earth, so that the general downward rush of everything （including themselves） got faster and louder and dustier and dirtier. From the sharp cries and swearing of the other two, Jill got the idea that many of the stones which she was dislodging were hitting Scrubb and Puddleglum pretty hard. And now she was going at a furious rate and felt sure she would be broken to bits at the bottom.

Yet somehow they weren’t. They were a mass of bruises, and the wet sticky stuff on her face appeared to be blood. And such a mass of loose earth, shingle, and larger stones was piled up round her （and partly over her） that she couldn’t get up. The darkness was so complete that it made no difference at all whether you had your eyes open or shut. There was no noise. And that was the very worst moment Jill had ever known in her life. Supposing she was alone：supposing the others ... Then she heard movements around her. And presently all three, in shaken voices, were explaining that none of them seemed to have any broken bones.

“We can never get up that again,” said Scrubb’s voice.

“And have you noticed how warm it is?” said the voice of Puddleglum. “That means we’re a long way down. Might be nearly a mile.”

No one said anything. Some time later Puddleglum added： “My tinder-box has gone.”

After another long pause Jill said, “I’m terribly thirsty.”

No one suggested doing anything. There was so obviously nothing to be done. For the moment, they did not feel it quite so badly as one might have expected; that was because they were so tired.

Long, long afterwards, without the slightest warning, an utterly strange voice spoke. They knew at once that it was not the one voice in the whole world for which each had secretly been hoping; the voice of Aslan. It was a dark, flat voice — almost, if you know what that means, a pitch-black voice. It said：

“What make you here, creatures of the Overworld?”

CHAPTER TEN
TRAVELS WITHOUT THE SUN

“Who’s there?” shouted the three travellers.

“I am the Warden of the Marches of Underland, and with me stand a hundred Earthmen in arms,” came the reply. “Tell me quickly who you are and what is your errand in the Deep Realm?”

“We fell down by accident,” said Puddleglum, truthfully enough.

“Many fall down, and few return to the sunlit lands,” said the voice. “Make ready now to come with me to the Queen of the Deep Realm.”

“What does she want with us?” asked Scrubb cautiously.

“I do not know,” said the voice. “Her will is not to be questioned but obeyed.”

While he said these words there was a noise like a soft explosion and immediately a cold light, grey with a little blue in it, flooded the cavern. All hope that the speaker had been idly boasting when he spoke of his hundred armed followers died at once. Jill found herself blinking and staring at a dense crowd. They were of all sizes, from little gnomes barely a foot high to stately figures taller than men. All carried three-pronged spears in their hands, and all were dreadfully pale, and all stood as still as statues. Apart from that, they were very different; some had tails and others not, some wore great beards and others had very round, smooth faces, big as pumpkins. There were long, pointed noses, and long, soft noses like small trunks, and great blobby noses. Several had single horns in the middle of their foreheads. But in one respect they were all alike：every face in the whole hundred was as sad as a face could be. They were so sad that, after the first glance, Jill almost forgot to be afraid of them. She felt she would like to cheer them up.

“Well！” said Puddleglum, rubbing his hands. “This is just what I needed. If these chaps don’t teach me to take a serious view of life, I don’t know what will. Look at that fellow with the walrus moustache — or that one with the —”

“Get up,” said the leader of the Earthmen.

There was nothing else to be done. The three travellers scrambled to their feet and joined hands. One wanted the touch of a friend’s hand at a moment like that. And the Earthmen came all round them, padding on large, soft feet, on which some had ten toes, some twelve, and others none. travellers scrambled to their feet and joined hands. One wanted the touch of a friend’s hand at a moment like that. And the Earthmen came all round them, padding on large, soft feet, on which some had ten toes, some twelve, and others none.

“March,” said the Warden：and march they did.

The cold light came from a large ball on the top of a long pole, and the tallest of the gnomes carried this at the head of the procession. By its cheerless rays they could see that they were in a natural cavern; the walls and roof were knobbed, twisted, and gashed into a thousand fantastic shapes, and the stony floor sloped downward as they proceeded. It was worse for Jill than for the others, because she hated dark, underground places. And when, as they went on, the cave got lower and narrower, and when, at last, the lightbearer stood aside, and the gnomes, one by one, stooped down （all except the very smallest ones） and stepped into a little dark crack and disappeared, she felt she could bear it no longer.

“I can’t go in there, I can’t！ I can’t！ I won’t,” she panted. The Earthmen said nothing but they all lowered their spears and pointed them at her.

“Steady, Pole,” said Puddleglum. “Those big fellows wouldn’t be crawling in there if it didn’t get wider later on. And there’s one thing about this underground work, we shan’t get any rain.”

“Oh, you don’t understand. I can’t,” wailed Jill.

“Think how I felt on that cliff, Pole,” said Scrubb. “You go first, Puddleglum, and I’ll come after her.”

“That’s right,” said the Marsh-wiggle, getting down on his hands and knees. “You keep a grip of my heels, Pole, and Scrubb will hold on to yours. Then we’ll all be comfortable.”

“Comfortable！” said Jill. But she got down and they crawled in on their elbows.

It was a nasty place. You had to go flat on your face for what seemed like half an hour, though it may really have been only five minutes. It was hot. Jill felt she was being smothered. But at last a dim light showed ahead, the tunnel grew wider and higher, and they came out, hot, dirty, and shaken, into a cave so large that it scarcely seemed like a cave at all. It was full of a dim, drowsy radiance, so that here they had no need of the Earthmen’s strange lantern. The floor was soft with some kind of moss and out of this grew many strange shapes, branched and tall like trees, but flabby like mushrooms. They stood too far apart to make a forest; it was more like a park. The light （a greenish grey） seemed to come both from them and from the moss, and it was not strong enough to reach the roof of the cave, which must have been a long way overhead. Across the mild, soft, sleepy place they were now made to march. It was very sad, but with a quiet sort of sadness like soft music.

Here they passed dozens of strange animals lying on the turf, either dead or asleep, Jill could not tell which. These were mostly of a dragonish or bat-like sort; Puddleglum did not know what any of them were.

“Do they grow here?” Scrubb asked the Warden.

He seemed very surprised at being spoken to, but replied, “No. They are all beasts that have found their way down by chasms and caves, out of Overland into the Deep Realm. Many come down, and few return to the sunlit lands. It is said that they will all wake at the end of the world.”

His mouth shut like a box when he had said this, and in the great silence of that cave the children felt that they would not dare to speak again. The bare feet of the gnomes, padding on the deep moss, made no sound. There was no wind, there were no birds, there was no sound of water. There was no sound of breathing from the strange beasts.

When they had walked for several miles, they came to a wall of rock, and in it a low archway leading into another cavern. It was not, however, so bad as the last entrance and Jill could go through it without bending her head. It brought them into a smaller cave, long and narrow, about the shape and size of a cathedral. And here, filling almost the whole length of it, lay an enormous man fast asleep. He was far bigger than any of the giants, and his face was not like a giant’s, but noble and beautiful. His breast rose and fell gently under the snowy beard which covered him to the waist. A pure, silver light （no one saw where it came from） rested upon him.

“Who’s that?” asked Puddleglum. And it was so long since anyone had spoken, that Jill wondered how he had the nerve.

“That is old Father Time, who once was a King in Overland,” said the Warden. “And now he has sunk down into the Deep Realm and lies dreaming of all the things that are done in the upper world. Many sink down, and few return to the sunlit lands. They say he will wake at the end of the world.”

And out of that cave they passed into another, and then into another and another, and so on till Jill lost count, but always they were going downhill and each cave was lower than the last, till the very thought of the weight and depth of earth above you was suffocating. At last they came to a place where the Warden commanded his cheerless lantern to be lit again. Then they passed into a cave so wide and dark that they could see nothing of it except that right in front of them a strip of pale sand ran down into still water. And there, beside a little jetty, lay a ship without mast or sail but with many oars. They were made to go on board and led forward to the bows where there was a clear space in front of the rowers’benches and a seat running round inside the bulwarks.

“One thing I’d like to know,” said Puddleglum, “is whether anyone from our world — from up-a-top, I mean has ever done this trip before?”

“Many have taken ship at the pale beaches,” replied the Warden, “and —”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Puddleglum. “And few return to the sunlit lands. You needn’t say it again. You are a chap of one idea, aren’t you?”

The children huddled close together on each side of Puddleglum. They had thought him a wet blanket while they were still above ground, but down here he seemed the only comforting thing they had. Then the pale lantern was hung up amidships, the Earthmen sat to the oars, and the ship began to move. The lantern cast its light only a very short way. Looking ahead, they could see nothing but smooth, dark water, fading into absolute blackness.

“Oh, whatever will become of us?” said Jill despairingly.

“Now don’t you let your spirits down, Pole,” said the Marsh-wiggle. “There’s one thing you’ve got to remember. We’re back on the right lines. We were to go under the Ruined City, and we are under it. We’re following the instructions again.”

Presently they were given food — flat, flabby cakes of some sort which had hardly any taste. And after that, they gradually fell asleep. But when they woke, everything was just the same; the gnomes still rowing, the ship still gliding on, still dead blackness ahead. How often they woke and slept and ate and slept again, none of them could ever remember. And the worst thing about it was that you began to feel as if you had always lived on that ship, in that darkness, and to wonder whether sun and blue skies and wind and birds had not been only a dream.

They had almost given up hoping or being afraid about anything when at last they saw lights ahead：dreary lights, like that of their own lantern. Then, quite suddenly, one of these lights came close and they saw that they were passing another ship. After that they met several ships. Then, staring till their eyes hurt, they saw that some of the lights ahead were shining on what looked like wharfs, walls, towers, and moving crowds. But still there was hardly any noise.

“By Jove,” said Scrubb. “A city！” and soon they all saw that he was right.

But it was a queer city. The lights were so few and far apart that they would hardly have done for scattered cottages in our world. But the little bits of the place which you could see by the lights were like glimpses of a great seaport. You could make out in one place a whole crowd of ships loading or unloading; in another, bales of stuff and warehouses; in a third, walls and pillars that suggested great palaces or temples; and always, wherever the light fell, endless crowds — hundreds of Earthmen, jostling one another as they padded softly about their business in narrow streets, broad squares, or up great flights of steps. Their continued movement made a sort of soft, murmuring noise as the ship drew nearer and nearer; but there was not a song or a shout or a bell or the rattle of a wheel anywhere. The City was as quiet, and nearly as dark, as the inside of an ant-hill.

At last their ship was brought alongside a quay and made fast. The three travellers were taken ashore and marched up into the City. Crowds of Earthmen, no two alike, rubbed shoulders with them in the crowded streets, and the sad light fell on many sad and grotesque faces. But no one showed any interest in the strangers. Every gnome seemed to be as busy as it was sad, though Jill never found what they were so busy about. But the endless moving, shoving, hurrying, and the soft pad-pad-pad went on.

At last they came to what appeared to be a great castle, though few of the windows in it were lighted. Here they were taken in and made to cross a courtyard, and to climb many staircases. This brought them in the end to a great murkily lit room. But in one corner of it — oh joy！ - there was an archway filled with a quite different sort of light; the honest, yellowish, warm light of such a lamp as humans use. What showed by this light inside the archway was the foot of a staircase which wound upward between walls of stone. The light seemed to come from the top. Two Earthmen stood one on each side of the arch like sentries, or footmen.

The Warden went up to these two, and said, as if it were a password：

“Many sink down to the Underworld.”

“And few return to the sunlit lands,” they answered, as if it were the countersign. Then all three put their heads together and talked. At last one of the two gnomes-in-waiting said, “I tell you the Queen’s grace is gone from hence on her great affair. We had best keep these top dwellers in strait prison till her homecoming. Few return to the sunlit lands.”

At that moment the conversation was interrupted by what seemed to Jill the most delightful noise in the world. It came from above, from the top of the staircase; and it was a clear, ringing, perfectly human voice, the voice of a young man.

“W hat coil a re you keepi ng dow n there, Mullugutherum?” it shouted. “Overworlders, ha！ Bring them up to me, and that presently.”

“Please it your Highness to remember,” began Mullugutherum, but the voice cut him short.

“It pleases my Highness principally to be obeyed, old mutterer. Bring them up,” it called.

Mullugutherum shook his head, motioned to the travellers to follow and began going up the staircase. At every step the light increased. There were rich tapestries hanging on the walls. The lamplight shone golden through thin curtains at the staircase-head. The Earthmen parted the curtains and stood aside. The three passed in. They were in a beautiful room, richly tapestried, with a bright fire on a clean hearth, and red wine and cut glass sparkling on the table. A young man with fair hair rose to greet them. He was handsome and looked both bold and kind, though there was something about his face that didn’t seem quite right. He was dressed in black and altogether looked a little bit like Hamlet.

“Welcome, Overworlders,” he cried. “But stay a moment！ I cry you mercy！ I have seen you two fair children, and this, your strange governor, before. Was it not you three that met me by the bridge on the borders of Ettinsmoor when I rode there by my Lady’s side?”

“Oh ... you were the black knight who never spoke?” exclaimed Jill.

“And was that lady the Queen of Underland?” asked Puddleglum, in no very friendly voice. And Scrubb, who was thinking the same, burst out, “Because if it was, I think she was jolly mean to send us off to a castle of giants who intended to eat us. What harm had we ever done her, I should like to know?”

“How?” said the Black Knight with a frown. “If you were not so young a warrior, Boy, you and I must have fought to the death on this quarrel. I can hear no words against my Lady’s honour. But of this you may be assured, that whatever she said to you, she said of a good intent. You do not know her. She is a nosegay of all virtues, as truth, mercy, constancy, gentleness, courage, and the rest. I say what I know. Her kindness to me alone, who can in no way reward her, would make an admirable history. But you shall know and love her hereafter. Meanwhile, what is your errand in the Deep Lands?”

And before Puddleglum could stop her, Jill blurted out, “Please we are trying to find Prince Rilian of Narnia.” And then she realized what a frightful risk she had taken; these people might be enemies. But the Knight showed no interest.

“Rilian? Narnia?” he said carelessly. “Narnia? What land is that? I have never heard the name. It must be a thousand leagues from those parts of the Overworld that I know. But it was a strange fantasy that brought you seeking this — how do you call him?- Billian? Trillian? in my Lady’s realm. Indeed, to my certain knowledge, there is no such man here.” He laughed very loudly at this, and Jill thought to herself, “I wonder is that what’s wrong with his face? Is he a bit silly?”

“We had been told to look for a message on the stones of the City Ruinous,” said Scrubb. “And we saw the words UNDER ME.”

The Knight laughed even more heartily than before. “You were the more deceived,” he said. “Those words meant nothing to your purpose. Had you but asked my Lady, she could have given you better counsel. For those words are all that is left of a longer script, which in ancient times, as she well remembers, expressed this verse：

Though under Earth and throneless now I be, Yet, while I lived, all Earth was under me. From which it is plain that some great king of the ancient giants, who lies buried there, caused this boast to be cut in the stone over his sepulchre; though the breaking up of some stones, and the carrying away of others for new buildings, and the filling up of the cuts with rubble, has left only two words that can still be read. Is it not the merriest jest in the world that you should have thought they were written to you?”

This was like cold water down the back to Scrubb and Jill; for it seemed to them very likely that the words had nothing to do with their quest at all, and that they had been taken in by a mere accident.

“Don’t you mind him,” said Puddleglum. “There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan; and he was there when the giant King caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that would come of them; including this.”

“This guide of yours must be a long liver, friend,” said the Knight with another of his laughs.

Jill began to find them a little irritating.

“And it seems to me, Sir,” answered Puddleglum, “that this Lady of yours must be a long liver too, if she remembers the verse as it was when they first cut it.”

“Very shrewd, Frog-face,” said the Knight, clapping Puddleglum on the shoulder and laughing again. “And you have hit the truth. She is of divine race, and knows neither age nor death. I am the more thankful to her for all her infinite bounty to such a poor mortal wretch as I. For you must know, Sirs, I am a man under most strange afflictions, and none but the Queen’s grace would have had patience with me. Patience, said I? But it goes far beyond that. She has promised me a great kingdom in Overland, and, when I am king, her own most gracious hand in marriage. But the tale is too long for you to hear fasting and standing. Hi there, some of you！ Bring wine and Updwellers’food for my guests. Please you, be seated, gentlemen. Little maiden, sit in this chair. You shall hear it all.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN THE DARK CASTLE

When the meal （which was pigeon pie, cold ham, salad, and cakes） had been brought, and all had drawn their chairs up to the table and begun, the Knight continued： “You must understand, friends, that I know nothing of who I was and whence I came into this Dark World. I remember no time when I was not dwelling, as now, at the court of this all but heavenly Queen; but my thought is that she saved me from some evil enchantment and brought me hither of her exceeding bounty. （Honest Frogfoot, your cup is empty. Suffer me to refill it.） And world.） Now the Queen’s majesty knows by her art that I shall be freed from this enchantment when once she has made me king of a land in the Overworld and set its crown upon my head. The land is already chosen and the very place of our breaking out. Her Earthmen have worked day and night digging a way beneath it, and have now gone so far and so high that they tunnel not a score of feet beneath the very grass on which the Updwellers of that country walk. It will be very soon now that those Uplanders’fate will come upon them. She herself is at the diggings tonight, and I expect a message to go to her. Then the thin roof of earth which still keeps me from my kingdom will be broken through, and with her to guide me and a thousand Earthmen at my back, I shall ride forth in arms, fall suddenly on our enemies, slay their chief men, cast down their strong places, and doubtless be their crowned king within four and twenty hours.”

“It’s a bit rough luck on them, isn’t it?” said Scrubb.

“Thou art a lad of a wondrous, quick-working wit！” exclaimed the Knight. “For, on my honour, I had never thought of it so before. I see your meaning.” He looked slightly, very slightly troubled for a moment or two; but his face soon cleared and he broke out, with another of his loud laughs, “But fie on gravity！ Is it not the most comical and ridiculous thing in the world to think of them all going about their business and never dreaming that under their peaceful fields and floors, only a fathom down, there is a great army ready to break out upon them like a fountain！ And they never to have suspected！ Why, they themselves, when once the first smart of their defeat is over, can hardly choose but laugh at the thought！”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” said Jill. “I think you’ll be a wicked tyrant.”

“What?” said the Knight, still laughing and patting her head in a quite infuriating fashion. “Is our little maid a deep politician? But never fear, sweetheart. In ruling that land, I shall do all by the counsel of my Lady, who will then be my Queen too. Her word shall be my law, even as my word will be law to the people we have conquered.”

“Where I come from,” said Jill, who was disliking him more every minute, “they don’t think much of men who are bossed about by their wives.”

“Shalt think otherwise when thou hast a man of thine own, I warrant you,” said the Knight, apparently thinking this very funny. “But with my Lady, it is another matter. I am well content to live by her word, who has already saved me from a thousand dangers. No mother has taken pains more tenderly for her child, than the Queen’s grace has for me. Why, look you, amid all her cares and business, she rideth out with me in the Overworld many a time and oft to accustom my eyes to the sunlight. And then I must go fully armed and with visor down, so that no man may see my face, and I must speak to no one. For she has found out by art magical that this would hinder my deliverance from the grievous enchantment I lie under. Is not that a lady worthy of a man’s whole worship?”

“Sounds a very nice lady indeed,” said Puddleglum in a voice which meant exactly the opposite.

They were thoroughly tired of the Knight’s talk before they had finished supper. Puddleglum was thinking, “I wonder what game that witch is really playing with this young fool.” Scrubb was thinking, “He’s a great baby, really：tied to that woman’s apron strings; he’s a sap.” And Jill was thinking, “He’s the silliest, most conceited, selfish pig I’ve met for a long time.” But when the meal was over, the Knight’s mood had changed. There was no more laughter about him.

“Friends,” he said, “my hour is now very near. I am ashamed that you should see me yet I dread being left alone. They will come in presently and bind me hand and foot to yonder chair. Alas, so it must be：for in my fury, they tell me, I would destroy all that I could reach.”

“I say,” said Scrubb, “I’m awfully sorry about your enchantment of course, but what will those fellows do to us when they come to bind you? They talked of putting us in prison. And we don’t like all those dark places very much. We’d much rather stay here till you’re ... better ... if we may.”

“It is well thought of,” said the Knight. “By custom none but the Queen herself remains with me in my evil hour. Such is her tender care for my honour that she would not willingly suffer any ears but her own to hear the words I utter in that frenzy. But I could not easily persuade my attendant gnomes that you should be left with me. And I think I hear their soft feet even now upon the stairs. Go through yonder door：it leads into my other apartments. And there, either await my coming when they have unbound me; or, if you will, return and sit with mein my ravings.”

They followed his directions and passed out of the room by a door which they had not yet seen opened. It brought them, they were pleased to see, not into darkness but into a lighted corridor. They tried various doors and found （what they very badly needed） water for washing and even a looking glass.

“He never offered us a wash before supper,” said Jill, drying her face. “Selfish, self-centred pig.”

“Are we going back to watch the enchantment, or shall we stay here?” said Scrubb.

“Stay here, I vote,” said Jill. “I’d much rather not see it.” But she felt a little inquisitive all the same.

“No, go back,” said Puddleglum. “We may pick up some information, and we need all we can get. I am sure that Queen is a witch and an enemy. And those Earthmen would knock us on the head as soon as look at us. There’s a stronger smell of danger and lies and magic and treason about this land than I’ve ever smelled before. We need to keep our eyes and ears open.”

They went back down the corridor and gently pushed the door open. “It’s all right,” said Scrubb, meaning that there were no Earthmen about. Then they all came back into the room where they had supped.

The main door was now shut, concealing the curtain between which they had first entered. The Knight was seated in a curious silver chair, to which he was bound by his ankles, his knees, his elbows, his wrists, and his waist. There was sweat on his forehead and his face was filled with anguish.

“Come in, friends,” he said, glancing quickly up. “The fit is not yet upon me. Make no noise, for I told that prying chamberlain that you were in bed. Now ... I can feel it coming. Quick！ Listen while I am master of myself. When the fit is upon me, it well may be that I shall beg and implore you, with entreaties and threatenings, to loosen my bonds. They say I do. I shall call upon you by all that is most dear and most dreadful. But do not listen to me. Harden your hearts and stop your ears. For while I am bound you are safe. But if once I were up and out of this chair, then first would come my fury, and after that”- he shuddered — “the change into a loathsome serpent.”

“There’s no fear of our loosing you,” said Puddleglum. “We’ve no wish to meet wild men; or serpents either.”

“I should think not,” said Scrubb and Jill together.

“All the same,” added Puddleglum in a whisper. “Don’t let’s be too sure. Let’s be on our guard. We’ve muffed everything else, you know. He’ll be cunning, I shouldn’t wonder, once he gets started. Can we trust one another? Do we all promise that whatever he says we don’t touch those cords? Whatever he says, mind you?”

“Rather！” said Scrubb.

“There’s nothing in the world he can say or do that’ll make me change my mind,” said Jill.

“Hush！ Something’s happening,” said Puddleglum.

The Knight was moaning. His face was as pale as putty, and he writhed in his bonds. And whether because she was sorry for him, or for some other reason, Jill thought that he looked a nicer sort of man than he had looked before.

“Ah,” he groaned. “Enchantments, enchantments ... the heavy, tangled, cold, clammy web of evil magic. Buried alive. Dragged down under the earth, down into the sooty blackness ... how many years is it? ... Have I lived ten years, or a thousand years, in the pit? Maggotmen all around me. Oh, have mercy. Let me out, let me go back. Let me feel the wind and see the sky ... There used to be a little pool. When you looked down into it you could see all the trees growing upside-down in the water, all green, and below them, deep, very deep, the blue sky.”

He had been speaking in a low voice; now he looked up, fixed his eyes upon them, and said loud and clear： “Quick！ I am sane now. Every night I am sane. If only I could get out of this enchanted chair, it would last. I should be a man again. But every night they bind me, and so every night my chance is gone. But you are not enemies. I am not your prisoner. Quick！ Cut these cords.”

“Stand fast！ Steady,” said Puddleglum to the two children.

“I beseech you to hear me,” said the Knight, forcing himself to speak calmly. “Have they told you that if I am released from this chair I shall kill you and become a serpent? I see by your faces that they have. It is a lie. It is at this hour that I am in my right mind：it is all the rest of the day that I am enchanted. You are not Earthmen nor witches. Why should you be on their side? Of your courtesy, cut my bonds.”

“Steady！ Steady！ Steady！” said the three travellers to one another.

“Oh, you have hearts of stone,” said the Knight. “Believe me, you look upon a wretch who has suffered almost more than any mortal can bear. What wrong have I ever done you, that you should side with my enemies to keep me in such miseries? And the minutes are slipping past. Now you can save me; when this hour has passed, I shall be witless again — the toy and lap-dog, nay, more likely the pawn and tool, of the most devilish sorceress that ever planned the woe of men. And this night, of all nights, when she is away！ You take from me a chance that may never come again.”

“This is dreadful. I do wish we’d stayed away till it was over,” said Jill.

“Steady！” said Puddleglum.

The prisoner’s voice was now rising into a shriek. “Let me go, I say. Give me my sword. My sword！ Once I am free I shall take such revenge on Earthmen that Underland will talk of it for a thousand years！”

“Now the frenzy is beginning,” said Scrubb. “I hope those knots are all right.”

“Yes,” said Puddleglum. “He’d have twice his natural strength if he got free now. And I’m not clever with my sword. He’d get us both, I shouldn’t wonder; and then Pole on her own would be left to tackle the snake.”

The prisoner was now so straining at his bonds that they cut into his wrists and ankles. “Beware,” he said. “Beware. One night I did break them. But the witch was there that time. You will not have her to help you tonight. Free me now, and I am your friend. I’m your mortal enemy else.”

“Cunning, isn’t he?” said Puddleglum.

“Once and for all,” said the prisoner, “I adjure you to set me free. By all fears and all loves, by the bright skies of Overland, by the great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you.”

“Oh！” cried the three travellers as though they had been hurt. “It’s the sign,” said Puddleglum. “It was the words of the sign,” said Scrubb more cautiously. “Oh, what are we to do?” said Jill.

It was a dreadful question. What had been the use of promising one another that they would not on any account set the Knight free, if they were now to do so the first time he happened to call upon a name they really cared about? On the other hand, what had been the use of learning the signs if they weren’t going to obey them? Yet could Aslan have really meant them to unbind anyone even a lunatic — who asked it in his name? Could it be a mere accident? Or how if the Queen of the Underworld knew all about the signs and had made the Knight learn this name simply in order to entrap them? But then, supposing this was the real sign? ... They had muffed three already; they daren’t muff the fourth.

“Oh, if only we knew！” said Jill.

“I think we do know,” said Puddleglum.

“Do you mean you think everything will come right if we do untie him?” said Scrubb.

“I don’t know about that,” said Puddleglum. “You see, Aslan didn’t tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the sign.”

They all stood looking at one another with bright eyes. It was a sickening moment. “All right！” said Jill suddenly. “Let’s get it over. Good-bye, everyone ...！” They all shook hands. The Knight was screaming by now; there was foam on his cheeks.

“Come on, Scrubb,” said Puddleglum. He and Scrubb drew their swords and went over to the captive.

“In the name of Aslan,” they said and began methodically cutting the cords. The instant the prisoner was free, he crossed the room in a single bound, seized his own sword （which had been taken from him and laid on the table）, and drew it.

“You first！” he cried and fell upon the silver chair. That must have been a good sword. The silver gave way before its edge like string, and in a moment a few twisted fragments, shining on the floor, were all that was left. But as the chair broke, there came from it a bright flash, a sound like small thunder, and （for one moment） a loathsome smell.

“Lie there, vile engine of sorcery,” he said, “lest your mistress should ever use you for another victim.” Then he turned and surveyed his rescuers; and the something wrong, whatever it was, had vanished from his face.

“What?” he cried, turning to Puddleglum. “Do I see before me a Marsh-wiggle — a real, live, honest, Narnian Marsh-wiggle?”

“Oh, so you have heard of Narnia after all?” said Jill.

“Had I forgotten it when I was under the spell?” asked the Knight. “Well, that and all other bedevilments are now over. You may well believe that I know Narnia, for I am Rilian, Prince of Narnia, and Caspian the great King is my father.”

“Your Royal Highness,” said Puddleglum, sinking on one knee （and the children did the same）, “we have come hither for no other end than to seek you.”

“And who are you, my other deliverers?” said the Prince to Scrubb and Jill.

“We were sent by Aslan himself from beyond the world’s end to seek your Highness,” said Scrubb. “I am Eustace who sailed with him to the island of Ramandu.”

“I owe all three of you a greater debt than I can ever pay,” said Prince Rilian. “But my father? Is he yet alive?”

“He sailed east again before we left Narnia, my lord,” said Puddleglum. “But your Highness must consider that the King is very old. It is ten to one his Majesty must die on the voyage.”

“He is old, you say. How long then have I been in the power of the witch?”

“It is more than ten years since your Highness was lost in the woods at the north side of Narnia.”

“Ten years！” said the Prince, drawing his hand across his face as if to rub away the past. “Yes, I believe you. For now that I am myself I can remember that enchanted life, though while I was enchanted I could not remember my true self. And now, fair friends — but wait！ I hear their feet （does it not sicken a man, that padding woolly tread！ faugh！ ） on the stairs. Lock the door, boy. Or stay. I have a better thought than that. I will fool these Earthmen, if Aslan gives me the wit. Take your cue from me.”

He walked resolutely to the door and flung it wide open.

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE QUEEN OF UNDERLAND

Two Earthmen entered, but instead of advancing into the room, they placed themselves one on each side of the door, and bowed deeply. They were followed immediately by the last person whom anyone had expected or wished to see：the Lady of the Green Kirtle, the Queen of Underland. She stood dead still in the doorway, and they could see her eyes moving as she took in the whole situation — the three strangers, the silver chair destroyed, and the Prince free, with his sword in his hand.

She turned very white; but Jill thought it was the sort of whiteness that comes over some people’s faces not when they are frightened but when they are angry. For a moment the Witch fixed her eyes on the Prince, and there was murder in them. Then she seemed to change her mind.

“Leave us,” she said to the two Earthmen. “And let none disturb us till I call, on pain of death.” The gnomes padded away obediently, and the Witch-queen shut and locked the door.

“How now, my lord Prince,” she said. “Has your nightly fit not yet come upon you, or is it over so soon? Why stand you here unbound? Who are these aliens? And is it they who have destroyed the chair which was your only safety?”

Prince Rilian shivered as she spoke to him. And no wonder：it is not easy to throw off in half an hour an enchantment which has made one a slave for ten years. Then, speaking with a great effort, he said： “Madam, there will be no more need of that chair. And you, who have told me a hundred times how deeply you pitied me for the sorceries by which I was bound, will doubtless hear with joy that they are now ended for ever. There was, it seems, some small error in your Ladyship’s way of treating them. These, my true friends, have delivered me. I am now in my right mind, and there are two things I will say to you. First — as for your Ladyship’s design of putting me at the head of an army of Earthmen so that I may break out into the Overworld and there, by main force, make myself king over some nation that never did me wrong — murdering their natural lords and holding their throne as a bloody and foreign tyrant — now that I know myself, I do utterly abhor and renounce it as plain villainy. And second：I am the King’s son of Narnia, Rilian, the only child of Caspian, Tenth of that name, whom some call Caspian the Seafarer. Therefore, Madam, it is my purpose, as it is also my duty, to depart suddenly from your Highness’s court into my own country. Please it you to grant me and my friends safe conduct and a guide through your dark realm.”

Now the Witch said nothing at all, but moved gently across the room, always keeping her face and eyes very steadily towards the Prince. When she had come to a little ark set in the wall not far from the fireplace, she opened it, and took out first a handful of a green powder. This she threw on the fire. It did not blaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger, and filled the room, and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers — a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn’t notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think. After she had thrummed for a time （and the sweet smell was now strong） she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

“Narnia?” she said. “Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia.”

“Yes there is, though, Ma’am,” said Puddleglum. “You see, I happen to have lived there all my life.”

“Indeed,” said the Witch. “Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?”

“Up there,” said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. “I — I don’t know exactly where.”

“How?” said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. “Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?”

“No,” said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. “It’s in Overworld.”

“And what, or where, pray is this ... how do you call it ... Overworld?”

“Oh, don’t be so silly,” said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. “As if you didn’t know！ It’s up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you’ve been there yourself. We met you there.”

“I cry you mercy, little brother,” laughed the Witch （you couldn’t have heard a lovelier laugh）.“I have no memory of that meeting. But we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream. And unless all dreamed alike, you must not ask them to remember it.”

“Madam,” said the Prince sternly, “I have already told your Grace that I am the King’s son of Narnia.”

“And shalt be, dear friend,” said the Witch in a soothing voice, as if she was humouring a child, “shalt be king of many imagined lands in thy fancies.”

“We’ve been there, too,” snapped Jill. She was very angry because she could feel enchantment getting hold of her every moment. But of course the very fact that she could still feel it, showed that it had not yet fully worked.

“And thou art Queen of Narnia too, I doubt not, pretty one,” said the Witch in the same coaxing, half-mocking tone.

“I’m nothing of the sort,” said Jill, stamping her foot. “We come from another world.”

“Why, this is a prettier game than the other,” said the Witch. “Tell us, little maid, where is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?”

Of course a lot of things darted into Jill’s head at once：Experiment House, Adela Pennyfather, her own home, radio-sets, cinemas, cars, aeroplanes, ration-books, queues. But they seemed dim and far away. （Thrum thrum — thrum — went the strings of the Witch’s instrument.） Jill couldn’t remember the names of the things in our world. And this time it didn’t come into her head that she was being enchanted, for now the magic was in its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all. She found herself saying （and at the moment it was a relief to say）：“No. I suppose that other world must be all a dream.”

“Yes. It is all a dream,” said the Witch, always thrumming.

“Yes, all a dream,” said Jill.

“There never was such a world,” said the Witch.

“No,” said Jill and Scrubb, “never was such a world.”

“There never was any world but mine,” said the Witch.

“There never was any world but yours,” said they.

Puddleglum was still fighting hard. “I don’t know rightly what you all mean by a world,” he said, talking like a man who hasn’t enough air. “But you can play that fiddle till your fingers drop off, and still you won’t make me forget Narnia; and the whole Overworld too. We’ll never see it again, I shouldn’t wonder. You may have blotted it out and turned it dark like this, for all I know. Nothing more likely. But I know I was there once. I’ve seen the sky full of stars. I’ve seen the sun coming up out of the sea of a morning and sinking behind the mountains at night. And I’ve seen him up in the midday sky when I couldn’t look at him for brightness.”

Puddleglum’s words had a very rousing effect. The other three all breathed again and looked at one another like people newly awaked.

“Why, there it is！” cried the Prince. “Of course！ The blessing of Aslan upon this honest Marsh-wiggle. We have all been dreaming, these last few minutes. How could we have forgotten it? Of course we’ve all seen the sun.”

“By Jove, so we have！” said Scrubb. “Good for you, Puddleglum！ You’re the only one of us with any sense, I do believe.”

Then came the Witch’s voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood-pigeon from the high elms in an old garden at three o’clock in the middle of a sleepy, summer afternoon; and it said：

“What is this sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?”

“Yes, we jolly well do,” said Scrubb.

“Can you tell me what it’s like?” asked the Witch （thrum, thrum, thrum, went the strings）.

“Please it your Grace,” said the Prince, very coldly and politely. “You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room; and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky.”

“Hangeth from what, my lord?” asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs： “You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children’s story.”

“Yes, I see now,” said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. “It must be so.” And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

Slowly and gravely the Witch repeated, “There is no sun.” And they all said nothing. She repeated, in a softer and deeper voice. “There is no sun.” After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together. “You are right. There is no sun.” It was such a relief to give in and say it.

“There never was a sun,” said the Witch.

“No. There never was a sun,” said the Prince, and the Marsh-wiggle, and the children.

For the last few minutes Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs. And now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said： “There’s Aslan.”

“Aslan?” said the Witch, quickening ever so slightly the pace of her thrumming. “What a pretty name！ What does it mean?”

“He is the great Lion who called us out of our own world,” said Scrubb, “and sent us into this to find Prince Rilian.”

“What is a lion?” asked the Witch.

“Oh, hang it all！” said Scrubb. “Don’t you know? How can we describe it to her? Have you ever seen a cat?”

“Surely,” said the Queen. “I love cats.”

“Well, a lion is a little bit — only a little bit, mind you like a huge cat — with a mane. At least, it’s not like a horse’s mane, you know, it’s more like a judge’s wig. And it’s yellow. And terrifically strong.”

The Witch shook her head. “I see,” she said, “that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your sun. You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to be called a lion. Well, ‘tis a pretty makebelieve, though, to say truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world, this world of mine, which is the only world. But even you children are too old for such play. As for you, my lord Prince, that art a man full grown, fie upon you！ Are you not ashamed of such toys? Come, all of you. Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world. There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan. And now, to bed all. And let us begin a wiser life tomorrow. But, first, to bed; to sleep; deep sleep, soft pillows, sleep without foolish dreams.”

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn’t hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet （which were bare） were webbed and hard and coldblooded like a duck’s. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

First, the sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone’s brain far clearer. The Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.

Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different from all the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, “What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I’ll turn the blood to fire inside your veins.”

Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum’s head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic.

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things — trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

“Oh, hurrah！ Good old Puddleglum！” cried Scrubb and Jill. But the Prince shouted suddenly, “Ware！ Look to the Witch.” When they did look their hair nearly stood on end.

The instrument dropped from her hands. Her arms appeared to be fastened to her sides. Her legs were intertwined with each other, and her feet had disappeared. The long green train of her skirt thickened and grew solid, and seemed to be all one piece with the writhing green pillar of her interlocked legs. And that writhing green pillar was curving and swaying as if it had no joints, or else were all joints. Her head was thrown far back and while her nose grew longer and longer, every other part of her face seemed to disappear, except her eyes. Huge flaming eyes they were now, without brows or lashes. All this takes time to write down; it happened so quickly that there was only just time to see it. Long before there was time to do anything, the change was complete, and the great serpent which the Witch had become, green as poison, thick as Jill’s waist, had flung two or three coils of its loathsome body round the Prince’s legs. Quick as lightning another great loop darted round, intending to pinion his sword-arm to his side. But the Prince was just in time. He raised his arms and got them clear：the living knot closed only round his chest — ready to crack his ribs like firewood when it drew tight.

The Prince caught the creature’s neck in his left hand, trying to squeeze it till it choked. This held its face （if you could call it a face） about five inches from his own. The forked tongue flickered horribly in and out, but could not reach him. With his right hand he drew back his sword for the strongest blow he could give. Meanwhile Scrubb and Puddleglum had drawn their weapons and rushed to his aid. All three blows fell at once：Scrubb’s （which did not even pierce the scales and did no good） on the body of the snake below the Prince’s hand, but the Prince’s own blow and Puddleglum’s both on its neck. Even that did not quite kill it, though it began to loosen its hold on Rilian’s legs and chest. With repeated blows they hacked off its head. The horrible thing went on coiling and moving like a bit of wire long after it had died; and the floor, as you may imagine, was a nasty mess.

The Prince, when he had breath, said, “Gentlemen, I thank you.” Then the three conquerors stood staring at one another and panting, without another word, for a long time. Jill had very wisely sat down and was keeping quiet; she was saying to herself, “I do hope I don’t faint or blub — or do anything idiotic.”

“My royal mother is avenged,” said Rilian presently. “This is undoubtedly the same worm that I pursued in vain by the fountain in the forest of Narnia, so many years ago. All these years I have been the slave of my mother’s slayer. Yet I am glad, gentlemen, that the foul Witch took to her serpent form at the last. It would not have suited well either with my heart or with my honour to have slain a woman. But look to the lady.” He meant Jill.

“I’m all right, thanks,” said she.

“Damsel,” said the Prince, bowing to her. “You are of a high courage, and therefore, I doubt not, you come of a noble blood in your own world. But come, friends. Here is some wine left. Let us refresh ourselves and each pledge his fellows. After that, to our plans.”

“A jolly good idea, Sir,” said Scrubb.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
UNDERLAND WITHOUT THE QUEEN

All felt that they had earned what Scrubb called a “breather”. The Witch had locked the door and told the Earthmen not to disturb her, so there was no danger of interruption for the present. Their first business was, of course, Puddleglum’s burnt foot. A couple of clean shirts from the Prince’s bedroom, torn into strips, and well greased on the inside with butter and salad oil off the supper table, made a fairly good dressing. When this had been applied, they all sat down and had a little refreshment, and discussed plans for escaping from the Underworld.

Rilian explained that there were quite a lot of outlets by which one could get to the surface; he had been taken out through most of them at one time or another. But he had never gone out alone, only with the Witch; and he had always reached these outlets by going in a ship across the Sunless Sea. What the Earthmen would say if he went down to the harbour without the Witch, and with four strangers, and simply ordered a ship, no one could guess. But most likely they would ask awkward questions. On the other hand the new outlet, the one for the invasion of Overworld, was on this side of the sea, and only a few miles away. The Prince knew that it was nearly finished; only a few feet of earth divided the diggings from the outer air. It was even possible that it had now been quite finished. Perhaps the Witch had come back to tell him this and to start the attack. Even if it was not, they could probably dig themselves out by that route in a few hours — if they could only get there without being stopped, and if only they found the diggings unguarded. But those were the difficulties.

“If you ask me —” began Puddleglum, when Scrubb interrupted.

“I say,” he asked, “what’s that noise?”

“I’ve been wondering that for some time！” said Jill.

They had all, in fact, been hearing the noise but it had begun and increased so gradually that they did not know when they had first noticed it. For a time it had been only a vague disquiet like gentle winds, or traffic very far away. Then it swelled to a murmur like the sea.

Then came rumblings and rushings. Now there seemed to be voices as well and also a steady roaring that was not voices.

“By the Lion,” said Prince Rilian, “it seems this silent land has found a tongue at last.” He rose, walked to the window, and drew aside the curtains. The others crowded round him to look out.

The very first thing they noticed was a great red glow. Its reflection made a red patch on the roof of the Underworld thousands of feet above them, so that they could see a rocky ceiling which had perhaps been hidden in darkness ever since the world was made. The glow itself came from the far side of the city so that many buildings, grim and great, stood up blackly against it. But it also cast its light down many streets that ran from it towards the castle. And in those streets something very strange was going on. The closely-packed, silent crowds of Earthmen had vanished. Instead, there were figures darting about by ones, or twos, or threes. They behaved like people who do not want to be seen：lurking in shadow behind buttresses or in doorways, and then moving quickly across the open into fresh places of hiding. But the strangest thing of all, to anyone who knew the gnomes, was the noise. Shouts and cries came from all directions. But from the harbour there came a low, rumbling roar which grew steadily louder and was already shaking the whole city.

“What’s happened to the Earthmen?” said Scrubb. “Is it them shouting?”

“'Tis hardly possible,” said the Prince. “I never heard one of the rascals so much as speak with a loud voice in all the weary years of my bondage. Some new devilry, I don’t doubt.”

“And what is that red light over there?” asked Jill. “Is something on fire?”

“If you ask me,” said Puddleglum, “I should say that was the central fires of the Earth breaking out to make a new volcano. We’ll be in the middle of it, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Look at that ship！” said Scrubb. “Why’s it coming on so quickly? No one’s rowing it.”

“Look, look！” said the Prince. “The ship is already far this side of the harbour — it is in the street. Look！ All the ships are driving into the city！ By my head, the sea’s rising. The flood is upon us. Aslan be praised, this castle stands on high ground. But the water comes on grimly fast.”

“Oh, what can be happening?” cried Jill. “Fire and water and all those people dodging about the streets.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Puddleglum. “That Witch has laid a train of magic spells so that whenever she was killed, at that same moment her whole kingdom would fall to pieces. She’s the sort that wouldn’t so much mind dying herself if she knew that the chap who killed her was going to be burned, or buried, or drowned five minutes later.”

“Hast hit it, friend wiggle,” said the Prince. “When our swords hacked off the Witch’s head, that stroke ended all her magic works, and now the Deep Lands are falling to pieces. We are looking on the end of Underworld.”

“That’s it, Sir,” said Puddleglum. “Unless it should happen to be the end of the whole world.”

“But are we just going to stay here and — wait?” gasped Jill.

“Not by my counsel,” said the Prince. “I would save my horse, Coalblack, and the Witch’s Snowflake （a noble beast and worthy of a better mistress） which are both stabled in the courtyard. After that, let us make shift to get out to high ground and pray that we shall find an outlet. The horses can carry two each at need, and if we put them to it they may outstrip the flood.”

“Will your Highness not put on armour?” asked Puddleglum. “I don’t like the look of those”- and he pointed down to the street. Everyone looked down. Dozens of creatures （and now that they were close, they obviously were Earthmen） were coming up from the direction of the harbour. But they were not moving like an aimless crowd. They behaved like modern soldiers in an attack, making rushes and taking cover, anxious not to be seen from the castle windows.

“I dare not see the inside of that armour again,” said the Prince. “I rode in it as in a movable dungeon, and it stinks of magic and slavery. But I will take the shield.”

He left the room and returned with a strange light in his eyes a moment later.

“Look, friends,” he said, holding out the shield towards them. “An hour ago it was black and without device; and now, this.” The shield had turned bright as silver, and on it, redder than blood or cherries, was the figure of the Lion.

“Doubtless,” said the Prince, “this signifies that Aslan will be our good lord, whether he means us to live or die. And all’s one, for that. Now, by my counsel, we shall all kneel and kiss his likeness, and then all shake hands one with another, as true friends that may shortly be parted. And then, let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us.”

And they all did as the Prince had said. But when Scrubb shook hands with Jill, he said, “So long, Jill. Sorry I’ve been a funk and so ratty. I hope you get safe home,” and Jill said, “So long, Eustace. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a pig.” And this was the first time they had ever used Christian names, because one didn’t do it at school.

The Prince unlocked the door and they all went down the stairs：three of them with drawn swords, and Jill with drawn knife. The attendants had vanished and the great room at the foot of the Prince’s stairs was empty. The grey, doleful lamps were still burning and by their light they had no difficulty in passing gallery after gallery and descending stairway after stairway. The noises from outside the castle were not so easily heard here as they had been in the room above. Inside the house all was still as death, and deserted. It was as they turned a corner into the great hall on the ground floor that they met their first Earthman — a fat, whitish creature with a very piglike face who was gobbling up all the remains of food on the tables. It squealed （the squeal also was very like a pig’s） and darted under a bench, whisking its long tail out of Puddleglum’s reach in the nick of time. Then it rushed away through the far door too quickly to be followed.

From the hall they came out into the courtyard. Jill, who went to a riding school in the holidays, had just noticed the smell of a stable （a very nice, honest, homely smell it is to meet in a place like Underland） when Eustace said, “Great Scott！ Look at that！”

A magnificent rocket had risen from somewhere beyond the castle walls and broken into green stars.

“Fireworks！” said Jill in a puzzled voice.

“Yes,” said Eustace, “but you can’t imagine those Earth people letting them off for fun！ It must be a signal.”

“And means no good to us, I’ll be bound,” said Puddleglum.

“Friends,” said the Prince, “when once a man is launched on such an adventure as this, he must bid farewell to hopes and fears, otherwise death or deliverance will both come too late to save his honour and his reason. Ho, my beauties” （he was now opening the stable door）.“Hey cousins！ Steady, Coalblack！ Softly now, Snowflake！ You are not forgotten.”

The horses were both frightened by the strange lights and the noises. Jill, who had been so cowardly about going through a black hole between one cave and another, went in without fear between the stamping and snorting beasts, and she and the Prince had them saddled and bridled in a few minutes. Very fine they looked as they came out into the courtyard, tossing their heads. Jill mounted Snowflake, and Puddleglum got up behind her. Eustace got up behind the Prince on Coalblack. Then with a great echo of hoofs, they rode out of the main gateway into the street.

“Not much danger of being burnt. That’s the bright side of it,” observed Puddleglum, pointing to their right. There, hardly a hundred yards away, lapping against the walls of the houses, was water.

“Courage！” said the Prince. “The road there goes down steeply. That water has climbed only half up the greatest hill in the city. It might come so near in the first half-hour and come no nearer in the next two. My fear is more of that —” and he pointed with his sword to a great tall Earthman with boar’s tusks, followed by six others of assorted shapes and sizes who had just dashed out of a side street and stepped into the shadow of the houses where no one could see them.

The Prince led them, aiming always in the direction of the glowing red light but a little to the left of it. His plan was to get round the fire （if it was a fire） on to high ground, in hope that they might find their way to the new diggings. Unlike the other three, he seemed to be almost enjoying himself. He whistled as he rode, and sang snatches of an old song about Corin Thunder-fist of Archenland. The truth is, he was so glad at being free from his long enchantment that all dangers seemed a game in comparison. But the rest found it an eerie journey.

Behind them was the sound of clashing and entangled ships, and the rumble of collapsing buildings. Overhead was the great patch of lurid light on the roof of the Underworld. Ahead was the mysterious glow, which did not seem to grow any bigger. From the same direction came a continual hubbub of shouts, screams, cat-calls, laughter, squeals, and bellowings; and fireworks of all sorts rose in the dark air. No one could guess what they meant.

Nearer to them, the city was partly lit up by the red glow, and partly by the very different light of the dreary Gnome lamps. But there were many places where neither of these lights fell, and those places were jet-black. And in and out of those places the shapes of Earthmen were darting and slipping all the time, always with their eyes fixed on the travellers, always trying to keep out of sight themselves. There were big faces and little faces, huge eyes like fishes’eyes and little eyes like bears’. There were feathers and bristles, horns and tusks, noses like whipcord, and chins so long that they looked like beards. Every now and then a group of them would get too big or come too near. Then the Prince would brandish his sword and make a show of charging them. And the creatures, with all manner of hootings, squeakings, and cluckings, would dive away into the darkness.

But when they had climbed many steep streets and were far away from the flood, and almost out of the town on the inland side, it began to be more serious. They were now close to the red glow and nearly on a level with it, though they still could not see what it really was. But by its light they could see their enemies more clearly. Hundreds — perhaps a few thousands — of gnomes were all moving towards it. But they were doing so in short rushes, and whenever they stopped, they turned and faced the travellers.

“If your Highness asked me,” said Puddleglum, “I’d say those fellows were meaning to cut us off in front.”

“That was my thought too, Puddleglum,” said the Prince. “And we can never fight our way through so many. Hark you！ Let us ride forth close by the edge of yonder house. And even as we reach it, do you slip off into its shadow. The Lady and I will go forward a few paces. Some of these devils will follow us, I doubt not; they are thick behind us. Do you, who have long arms, take one alive if you may, as it passes your ambush. We may get a true tale of it or learn what is their quarrel against us.”

“But won’t the others all come rushing at us to rescue the one we catch,” said Jill in a voice not so steady as she tried to make it.

“Then, Madam,” said the Prince, “you shall see us die fighting around you, and you must commend yourself to the Lion. Now, good Puddleglum.”

The Marsh-wiggle slipped off into the shadow as quickly as a cat. The others, for a sickening minute or so, went forward at a walk. Then suddenly from behind them there broke out a series of blood-curdling screams, mixed with the familiar voice of Puddleglum, saying, “Now then！ Don’t cry out before you’re hurt, or you will be hurt, see? Anyone would think it was a pig being killed.”

“That was good hunting,” exclaimed the Prince, immediately turning Coalblack and coming back to the corner of the house. “Eustace,” he said, “of your courtesy, take Coalblack’s head.”

Then he dismounted, and all three gazed in silence while Puddleglum pulled his catch out into the light. It was a most miserable little gnome, only about three feet long. It had a sort of ridge, like a cock’s comb （only hard）, on the top of its head, little pink eyes, and a mouth and chin so large and round that its face looked like that of a pigmy hippopotamus. If they had not been in such a tight place, they would have burst into laughter at the sight of it.

“Now, Earthman,” said the Prince, standing over it and holding his sword point very near the prisoner’s neck, “speak, up, like an honest gnome, and you shall go free. Play the knave with us, and you are but a dead Earthman. Good Puddleglum, how can it speak while you hold its mouth tight shut?”

“No, and it can’t bite either,” said Puddleglum. “If I had the silly soft hands that you humans have （saving your Highness’s reverence） I’d have been all over blood by now. Yet even a Marsh-wiggle gets tired of being chewed.”

“Sirrah,” said the Prince to the gnome, “one bite and you die. Let its mouth open, Puddleglum.”

“Oo-ee-ee,” squealed the Earthman, “let me go, let me go. It isn’t me. I didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what?” asked Puddleglum.

“Whatever your Honours say I did do,” answered the creature.

“Tell me your name,” said the Prince, “and what you Earthmen are all about today.”

“Oh please, your Honours, please, kind gentlemen,” whimpered the gnome. “Promise you will not tell the Queen’s grace anything I say.”

“The Queen’s grace, as you call her,” said the Prince sternly, “is dead. I killed her myself.”

“What！” cried the gnome, opening its ridiculous mouth wider and wider in astonishment. “Dead? The Witch dead? And by your Honour’s hand?” It gave a huge sigh of relief and added, “Why then your Honour is a friend！”

The Prince withdrew his sword an inch or so. Puddleglum let the creature sit up. It looked round on the four travellers with its twinkling, red eyes, chuckled once or twice, and began.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

“My name is Golg,” said the gnome. “And I’ll tell your Honours all I know. About an hour ago we were all going about our work — her work, I should say — sad and silent, same as we’ve done any other day for years and years. Then there came a great crash and bang. As soon as they heard it, everyone says to himself, I haven’t had a song or a dance or let off a squib for a long time; why’s that? And everyone thinks to himself, Why, I must have been enchanted. And then everyone says to himself, I’m blessed if I know why I’m carrying this load, and I’m not going to carry it any farther：that’s that. And down we all throw our sacks and bundles and tools. Then everyone turns and sees the great red glow over yonder. And everyone says to himself, What’s that? and everyone answers himself and says, There’s a crack or chasm split open and a nice warm glow coming up through it from the Really Deep Land, a thousand fathom under us.”

“Great Scott,” exclaimed Eustace, “are there other lands still lower down?”

“Oh yes, your Honour,” said Golg. “Lovely places; what we call the Land of Bism. This country where we are now, the Witch’s country, is what we call the Shallow Lands. It’s a good deal too near the surface to suit us. Ugh！ You might almost as well be living outside, on the surface itself. You see, we’re all poor gnomes from Bism whom the Witch has called up here by magic to work for her. But we’d forgotten all about it till that crash came and the spell broke. We didn’t know who we were or where we belonged. We couldn’t do anything, or think anything, except what she put into our heads. And it was glum and gloomy things she put there all those years. I’ve nearly forgotten how to make a joke or dance a jig. But the moment the bang came and the chasm opened and the sea began rising, it all came back. And of course we all set off as quick as we could to get down the crack and home to our own place. And you can see them over there all letting off rockets and standing on their heads for joy. And I’ll be very obliged to your Honours if you’ll soon let me go and join in.”

“I think this is simply splendid,” said Jill. “I’m so glad we freed the gnomes as well as ourselves when we cut off the Witch’s head！ And I’m so glad they aren’t really horrid and gloomy any more than the Prince really was well, what he seemed like.”

“That’s all very well, Pole,” said Puddleglum cautiously. “But those gnomes didn’t look to me like chaps who were just running away. It looked more like military formations, if you ask me. Do you look me in the face, Mr Golg, and tell me you weren’t preparing for battle?”

“Of course we were, your Honour,” said Golg. “You see, we didn’t know the Witch was dead. We thought she’d be watching from the castle. We were trying to slip away without being seen. And then when you three came out with swords and horses, of course everyone says to himself, Here it comes：not knowing that his Honour wasn’t on the Witch’s side. And we were determined to fight like anything rather than give up the hope of going back to Bism.”

“I’ll be sworn‘tis an honest gnome,” said the Prince. “Let go of it, friend Puddleglum. As for me, good Golg, I have been enchanted like you and your fellows, and have but newly remembered myself. And now, one question more. Do you know the way to those new diggings, by which the sorceress meant to lead out an army against Overland?”

“Ee-ee-ee！” squeaked Golg. “Yes, I know that terrible road. I will show you where it begins. But it is no manner of use your Honour asking me to go with you on it. I’ll die rather.”

“Why?” asked Eustace anxiously. “What’s so dreadful about it?”

“Too near the top, the outside,” said Golg, shuddering. “That was the worst thing the Witch did to us. We were going to be led out into the open — on to the outside of the world. They say there’s no roof at all there; only a horrible great emptiness called the sky. And the diggings have gone so far that a few strokes of the pick would bring you out to it. I wouldn’t dare go near them.”

“Hurrah！ Now you’re talking！” cried Eustace, and Jill said, “But it’s not horrid at all up there. We like it. We live there.”

“I know you Overlanders live there,” said Golg. “But I thought it was because you couldn’t find your way down inside. You can’t really like it — crawling about like flies on the top of the world！”

“What about showing us the road at once?” said Puddleglum.

“In a good hour,” cried the Prince.

The whole party set out. The Prince remounted his charger, Puddleglum climbed up behind Jill, and Golg led the way. As he went, he kept shouting out the good news that the Witch was dead and that the four Overlanders were not dangerous. And those who heard him shouted it on to others, so that in a few minutes the whole of Underland was ringing with shouts and cheers, and gnomes by hundreds and thousands, leaping, turning cart-wheels, standing on their heads, playing leap-frog, and letting off huge crackers, came pressing round Coalblack and Snowflake. And the Prince had to tell the story of his own enchantment and deliverance at least ten times.

In this way they came to the edge of the chasm. It was about a thousand feet long and perhaps two hundred wide. They dismounted from their horses and came to the edge, and looked down into it. A strong heat smote up into their faces, mixed with a smell which was quite unlike any they had ever smelled. It was rich, sharp, exciting, and made you sneeze. The depth of the chasm was so bright that at first it dazzled their eyes and they could see nothing. When they got used to it they thought they could make out a river of fire, and, on the banks of that river, what seemed to be fields and groves of an unbearable, hot brilliance — though they were dim compared with the river. There were blues, reds, greens, and whites all jumbled together：a very good stained-glass window with the tropical sun staring straight through it at midday might have something the same effect. Down the rugged sides of the chasm, looking black like flies against all that fiery light, hundreds of Earthmen were climbing.

“Your honours,” said Golg （and when they turned to look at him they could see nothing but blackness for a few minutes, their eyes were so dazzled）.“Your honours, why don’t you come down to Bism? You’d be happier there than in that cold, unprotected, naked country out on top. Or at least come down for a short visit.”

Jill took it for granted that none of the others would listen to such an idea for a moment. To her horror she heard the Prince saying： “Truly, friend Golg, I have half a mind to come down with you. For this is a marvellous adventure, and it may be no mortal man has ever looked into Bism before or will ever have the chance again. And I know not how, as the years pass, I shall bear to remember that it was once in my power to have probed the uttermost pit of Earth and that I forbore. But could a man live there? You do not swim in the fire-river itself?”

“Oh no, your Honour. Not we. It’s only salamanders live in the fire itself.”

“What kind of beast is your salamander?” asked the Prince.

“It is hard to tell their kind, your Honour,” said Golg. “For they are too white-hot to look at. But they are most like small dragons. They speak to us out of the fire. They are wonderfully clever with their tongues：very witty and eloquent.”

Jill glanced hastily at Eustace. She had felt sure that he would like the idea of sliding down that chasm even less than she did. Her heart sank as she saw that his face was quite changed. He looked much more like the Prince than like the old Scrubb at Experiment House. For all his adventures, and the days when he had sailed with King Caspian, were coming back to him.

“Your Highness,” he said. “If my old friend Reepicheep the Mouse were here, he would say we could not now refuse the adventures of Bism without a great impeachment to our honour.”

“Down there,” said Golg, “I could show you real gold, real silver, real diamonds.”

“Bosh！” said Jill rudely. “As if we didn’t know that we’re below the deepest mines even here.”

“Yes,” said Golg. “I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Topdwellers call mines. But that’s where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism we have them alive and growing. There I’ll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cup full of diamond-juice. You won’t care much about fingering the cold, dead treasures of your shallow mines after you have tasted the live ones of Bism.”

“My father went to the world’s end,” said Rilian thoughtfully. “It would be a marvellous thing if his son went to the bottom of the world.”

“If your Highness wants to see your father while he’s still alive, which I think he’d prefer,” said Puddleglum, “it’s about time we were getting on to that road to the diggings.”

“And I won’t go down that hole, whatever anyone says,” added Jill.

“Why, if your Honours are really set to go back to Overworld,” said Golg, “there is one bit of the road that’s rather lower than this. And perhaps, if that flood’s still rising —”

“Oh, do, do, do come on！” begged Jill.

“I fear it must be so,” said the Prince with a deep sigh. “But I have left half of my heart in the land of Bism.”

“Please！” begged Jill.

“Where is the road?” asked Puddleglum.

“There are lamps all the way,” said Golg. “Your Honour can see the beginning of the road on the far side of the chasm.”

“How long will the lamps burn for?” asked Puddleglum.

At that moment a hissing, scorching voice like the voice of Fire itself （they wondered afterwards if it could have been a salamander’s） came whistling up out of the very depths of Bism.

“Quick！ Quick！ Quick！ To the cliffs, to the cliffs, to the cliffs！” it said. “The rift closes. It closes. It closes. Quick！ Quick！” And at the same time, with ear-shattering cracks and creaks, the rocks moved. Already, while they looked, the chasm was narrower. From every side belated gnomes were rushing into it. They would not wait to climb down the rocks. They flung themselves headlong and, either because so strong a blast of hot air was beating up from the bottom, or for some other reason, they could be seen floating downwards like leaves. Thicker and thicker they floated, till their blackness almost blotted out the fiery river and the groves of live gems.

“Good-bye to your Honours. I’m off,” shouted Golg, and dived. Only a few were left to follow him. The chasm was now no broader than a stream. Now it was narrow as the slit in a pillarbox. Now it was only an intensely bright thread. Then, with a shock like a thousand goods trains crashing into a thousand pairs of buffers, the lips of rock closed. The hot, maddening smell vanished. The travellers were alone in an Underworld which now looked far blacker than before. Pale, dim, and dreary, the lamps marked the direction of the road.

“Now,” said Puddleglum, “it’s ten to one we’ve already stayed too long, but we may as well make a try. Those lamps will give out in five minutes, I shouldn’t wonder.”

They urged the horses to a canter and thundered along the dusky road in fine style. But almost at once it began going downhill. They would have thought Golg had sent them the wrong way if they had not seen, on the other side of the valley, the lamps going on and upwards as far as the eye could reach. But at the bottom of the valley the lamps shone on moving water.

“Haste,” cried the Prince.

They galloped down the slope. It would have been nasty enough at the bottom even five minutes later for the tide was running up the valley like a mill-race, and if it had come to swimming, the horses could hardly have won over. But it was still only a foot or two deep, and though it swished terribly round the horses’legs, they reached the far side in safety.

Then began the slow, weary march uphill with nothing ahead to look at but the pale lamps which went up and up as far as the eye could reach. When they looked back they could see the water spreading. All the hills of Underland were now islands, and it was only on those islands that the lamps remained. Every moment some distant light vanished. Soon there would be total darkness everywhere except on the road they were following; and even on the lower part of it behind them, though no lamps had yet gone out, the lamplight shone on water.

Although they had good reason for hurrying, the horses could not go on for ever without a rest. They halted：and in silence they could hear the lapping of water.

“I wonder is what’s his name — Father Time — flooded out now,” said Jill. “And all those queer sleeping animals.”

“I don’t think we’re as high as that,” said Eustace. “Don’t you remember how we had to go downhill to reach the sunless sea? I shouldn’t think the water has reached Father Time’s cave yet.”

“That’s as may be,” said Puddleglum. “I’m more interested in the lamps on this road. Look a bit sickly, don’t they?”

“They always did,” said Jill.

“Aye,” said Puddleglum. “But they’re greener now.”

“You don’t mean to say you think they’re going out?” cried Eustace.

“Well, however they work, you can’t expect them to last for ever, you know,” replied the Marsh-wiggle. “But don’t let your spirits down, Scrubb. I’ve got my eye on the water too, and I don’t think it’s rising so fast as it did.”

“Small comfort, friend,” said the Prince. “If we cannot find our way out. I cry you mercy, all. I am to blame for my pride and fantasy which delayed us by the mouth of the land of Bism. Now, let us ride on.”

During the hour or so that followed Jill sometimes thought that Puddleglum was right about the lamps, and sometimes thought it was only her imagination. Meanwhile the land was changing. The roof of Underland was so near that even by that dull light they could now see it quite distinctly. And the great, rugged walls of Underland could be seen drawing closer on each side. The road, in fact, was leading them up into a steep tunnel. They began to pass picks and shovels and barrows and other signs that the diggers had recently been at work. If only one could be sure of getting out, all this was very cheering. But the thought of going on into a hole that would get narrower and narrower, and harder to turn back in, was very unpleasant.

At last the roof was so low that Puddleglum and the Prince knocked their heads against it. The party dismounted and led the horses. The road was uneven here and one had to pick one’s steps with some care. That was how Jill noticed the growing darkness. There was no doubt about it now. The faces of the others looked strange and ghastly in the green glow. Then all at once （she couldn’t help it） Jill gave a little scream. One light, the next one ahead, went out altogether. The one behind them did the same. Then they were in absolute darkness.

“Courage, friends,” came Prince Rilian’s voice. “Whether we live or die Aslan will be our good lord.”

“That’s right, Sir,” said Puddleglum’s voice. “And you must always remember there’s one good thing about being trapped down here：it’ll save funeral expenses.”

Jill held her tongue. （If you don’t want other people to know how frightened you are, this is always a wise thing to do; it’s your voice that gives you away.）

“We might as well go on as stand here,” said Eustace; and when she heard the tremble in his voice, Jill knew how wise she’d been not to trust her own.

Puddleglum and Eustace went first with their arms stretched out in front of them, for fear of blundering into anything; Jill and the Prince followed, leading the horses.

“I say,” came Eustace’s voice much later, “are my eyes going queer or is there a patch of light up there?”

Before anyone could answer him, Puddleglum called out： “Stop. I’m up against a dead end. And it’s earth, not rock. What were you saying, Scrubb?”

“By the Lion,” said the Prince, “Eustace is right. There is a sort of —”

“But it’s not daylight,” said Jill. “It’s only a cold blue sort of light.”

“Better than nothing, though,” said Eustace. “Can we get up to it?”

“It’s not right overhead,” said Puddleglum. “It’s above us, but it’s in this wall that I’ve run into. How would it be, Pole, if you got on my shoulders and saw whether you could get up to it?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JILL

The patch of light did not show up anything down in the darkness where they were standing. The others could only hear, not see, Jill’s efforts to get on to the Marsh-wiggle’s back. That is, they heard him saying, “You needn’t put your finger in my eye,” and, “Nor your foot in my mouth either,” and, “That’s more like it,” and, “Now, I’ll hold on to your legs. That’ll leave your arms free to steady yourself against the earth.”

Then they looked up and soon they saw the black shape of Jill’s head against the patch of light.

“Well?” they all shouted up anxiously.

“It’s a hole,” called Jill’s voice. “I could get through it if I was a little bit higher.”

“What do you see through it?” asked Eustace.

“Nothing much yet,” said Jill. “I say, Puddleglum, let go my legs so that I can stand on your shoulders instead of sitting on them. I can steady myself all right against the edge.”

They could hear her moving and then much more of her came into sight against the greyness of the opening; in fact all of her down to the waist.

“I say —” began Jill, but suddenly broke off with a cry：not a sharp cry. It sounded more as if her mouth had been muffled up or had something pushed into it. After that she found her voice and seemed to be shouting out as loud as she could, but they couldn’t hear the words. Two things then happened at the same moment. The patch of light was completely blocked up for a second or so; and they heard both a scuffling, struggling sound and the voice of the Marsh-wiggle gasping： “Quick！ Help！ Hold on to her legs. Someone’s pulling her. There！ No, here. Too late！”

The opening, and the cold light which filled it, were now perfectly clear again. Jill had vanished.

“Jill！ Jill！” they shouted frantically, but there was no answer.

“Why the dickens couldn’t you have held her feet?” said Eustace.

“I don’t know, Scrubb,” groaned Puddleglum. “Born to be a misfit, I shouldn’t wonder. Fated. Fated to be Pole’s death, just as I was fated to eat Talking Stag at Harfang. Not that it isn’t my own fault as well, of course.”

“This is the greatest shame and sorrow that could have fallen on us,” said the Prince. “We have sent a brave lady into the hands of enemies and stayed behind in safety.”

“Don’t paint it too black, Sir,” said Puddleglum. “We’re not very safe except for death by starvation in this hole.”

“I wonder am I small enough to get through where Jill did?” said Eustace.

What had really happened to Jill was this. As soon as she got her head out of the hole she found that she was looking down as if from an upstairs window, not up as if through a trap-door. She had been so long in the dark that her eyes couldn’t at first take in what they were seeing：except that she was not looking at the daylit, sunny world which she so wanted to see. The air seemed to be deadly cold, and the light was pale and blue. There was also a good deal of noise going on and a lot of white objects flying about in the air. It was at that moment that she had shouted down to Puddleglum to let her stand up on his shoulders.

When she had done this, she could see and hear a good deal better. The noises she had been hearing turned out to be of two kinds：the rhythmical thump of several feet, and the music of four fiddles, three flutes, and a drum. She also got her own position clear. She was looking out of a hole in a steep bank which sloped down and reached the level about fourteen feet below her. Everything was very white. A lot of people were moving about. Then she gasped！ The people were trim little Fauns, and Dryads with leafcrowned hair floating behind them. For a second they looked as if they were moving anyhow; then she saw that they were really doing a dance — a dance with so many complicated steps and figures that it took you some time to understand it. Then it came over her like a thunderclap that the pale, blue light was really moonlight, and the white stuff on the ground was really snow. And of course！ There were the stars staring in a black frosty sky overhead. And the tall black things behind the dancers were trees. They had not only got out into the upper world at last, but had come out in the heart of Narnia. Jill felt she could have fainted with delight; and the music — the wild music, intensely sweet and yet just the least bit eerie too, and full of good magic as the Witch’s thrumming had been full of bad magic — made her feel it all the more.

All this takes a long time to tell, but of course it took a very short time to see. Jill turned almost at once to shout down to the others, “I say！ It’s all right. We’re out, and we’re home.” But the reason she never got further than “I say” was this. Circling round and round the dancers was a ring of Dwarfs, all dressed in their finest clothes; mostly scarlet with fur-lined hoods and golden tassels and big furry top-boots. As they circled round they were all diligently throwing snowballs. （Those were the white things that Jill had seen flying through the air.） They weren’t throwing them at the dancers as silly boys might have been doing in England. They were throwing them through the dance in such perfect time with the music and with such perfect aim that if all the dancers were in exactly the right places at exactly the right moments, no one would be hit. This is called the Great Snow Dance and it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong and get a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musicians will keep it up for hours without a single hit. On fine nights when the cold and the drumtaps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves.

What had stopped Jill when she got as far as the say of “I say” was of course simply a fine big snowball that came sailing through the dance from a Dwarf on the far side and got her fair and square in the mouth. She didn’t in the least mind; twenty snowballs would not have damped her spirits at that moment. But however happy you are feeling, you can’t talk with your mouth full of snow. And when, after considerable spluttering, she could speak again, she quite forgot in her excitement that the others, down in the dark, behind her, still didn’t know the good news. She simply leaned as far out of the hole as she could, and yelled to the dancers.

“Help！ Help！ We’re buried in the hill. Come and dig us out.”

The Narnians, who had not even noticed the little hole in the hillside, were of course very surprised, and looked about in several wrong directions before they found out where the voice was coming from. But when they caught sight of Jill they all came running towards her, and as many as could scrambled up the bank, and a dozen or more hands were stretched up to help her. And Jill caught hold of them and thus got out of the hole and came slithering down the bank head first, and then picked herself up and said： “Oh, do go and dig the others out. There are three others, besides the horses. And one of them is Prince Rilian.”

She was already in the middle of a crowd when she said this, for besides the dancers all sorts of people who had been watching the dance, and whom she had not seen at first, came running up. Squirrels came out of the trees in showers, and so did Owls. Hedgehogs came waddling as fast as their short legs would carry them. Bears and Badgers followed at a slower pace. A great Panther, twitching its tail in excitement, was the last to join the party.

But as soon as they understood what Jill was saying, they all became active. “Pick and shovel, boys, pick and shovel. Off for our tools！” said the Dwarfs, and dashed away into the woods at top speed. “Wake up some Moles, they’re the chaps for digging. They’re quite as good as Dwarfs,” said a voice. “What was that she said about Prince Rilian?” said another. “Hush！” said the Panther. “The poor child’s crazed, and no wonder after being lost inside the hill. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”“That’s right,” said an old Bear. “Why, she said Prince Rilian was a horse！”

“No, she didn’t,” said a Squirrel, very pert.

“Yes, she did,” said another Squirrel, even perter.

“It’s quite t-t-t-true. D-d-don’t be so silly,” said Jill. She spoke like that because her teeth were now chattering with the cold.

Immediately one of the Dryads flung round her a furry cloak which some Dwarf had dropped when he rushed to fetch his mining tools, and an obliging Faun trotted off among the trees to a place where Jill could see firelight in the mouth of a cave, to get her a hot drink. But before it came, all the Dwarfs reappeared with spades and pick-axes and charged at the hillside. Then Jill heard cries of “Hi！ What are you doing? Put that sword down,” and “Now, young‘un：none of that,” and, “He’s a vicious one, now, isn’t he?” Jill hurried to the spot and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she saw Eustace’s face, very pale and dirty, projecting from the blackness of the hole, and Eustace’s right hand brandishing a sword with which he made lunges at anyone who came near him.

For of course Eustace had been having a very different time from Jill during the last few minutes. He had heard Jill cry out and seen her disappear into the unknown. Like the Prince and Puddleglum, he thought that some enemies had caught her. And from down below he didn’t see that the pale, blueish light was moonlight. He thought the hole would lead only into some other cave, lit by some ghostly phosphorescence and filled with goodness-knows-what evil creatures of the Underworld. So that when he had persuaded Puddleglum to give him a back, and drawn his sword, and poked out his head, he had really been doing a very brave thing. The others would have done it first if they could, but the hole was too small for them to climb through. Eustace was a little bigger, and a lot clumsier, than Jill, so that when he looked out he bumped his head against the top of the hole and brought a small avalanche of snow down on his face. And so, when he could see again, and saw dozens of figures coming at him as hard as they could run, it is not surprising that he tried to ward them off.

“Stop, Eustace, stop,” cried Jill. “They’re all friends. Can’t you see? We’ve come up in Narnia. Everything’s all right.”

Then Eustace did see, and apologized to the Dwarfs （and the Dwarfs said not to mention it）, and dozens of thick, hairy, dwarfish hands helped him out just as they had helped Jill out a few minutes before. Then Jill scrambled up the bank and put her head in at the dark opening and shouted the good news in to the prisoners. As she turned away she heard Puddleglum mutter. “Ah, poor Pole. It’s been too much for her, this last bit. Turned her head, I shouldn’t wonder. She’s beginning to see things.”

Jill rejoined Eustace and they shook one another by both hands and took in great deep breaths of the free midnight air. And a warm cloak was brought for Eustace and hot drinks, for both. While they were sipping it, the Dwarfs had already got all the snow and all the sods off a large strip of the hillside round the original hole, and the pickaxes and spades were now going as merrily as the feet of Fauns and Dryads had been going in the dance ten minutes before. Only ten minutes！ Yet already it felt to Jill and Eustace as if all their dangers in the dark and heat and general smotheriness of the earth must have been only a dream. Out here, in the cold, with the moon and the huge stars overhead （Narnian stars are nearer than stars in our world） and with kind, merry faces all round them, one couldn’t quite believe in Underland.

Before they had finished their hot drinks, a dozen or so Moles, newly waked and still very sleepy, and not well pleased, had arrived. But as soon as they understood what it was all about, they joined in with a will. Even the Fauns made themselves useful by carting away the earth in little barrows, and the Squirrels danced and leaped to and fro in great excitement, though Jill never found out exactly what they thought they were doing. The Bears and Owls contented themselves with giving advice, and kept on asking the children if they wouldn’t like to come into the cave （that was where Jill had seen the firelight） and get warm and have supper. But the children couldn’t bear to go without seeing their friends set free.

No one in our world can work at a job of that sort as Dwarfs and Talking Moles work in Narnia; but then, of course, Moles and Dwarfs don’t look on it as work. They like digging. It was therefore not really long before they had opened a great black chasm in the hillside. And out from the blackness into the moonlight — this would have been rather dreadful if one hadn’t known who they were came, first, the long, leggy, steeple-hatted figure of the Marsh-wiggle, and then, leading two great horses, Rilian the Prince himself.

As Puddleglum appeared shouts broke out on every side： “Why, it’s a Wiggle — why, it’s old Puddleglum — old Puddleglum from the Eastern Marshes — what ever have you been doing, Puddleglum?- there’ve been search-parties out for you — the Lord Trumpkin has been putting up notices there’s a reward offered！” But all this died away, all in one moment, into dead silence, as quickly as the noise dies away in a rowdy dormitory if the Headmaster opens the door. For now they saw the Prince.

No one doubted for a moment who he was. There were plenty of Beasts and Dryads and Dwarfs and Fauns who remembered him from the days before his enchanting. There were some old ones who could just remember how his father, King Caspian, had looked when he was a young man, and saw the likeness. But I think they would have known him anyway. Pale though he was from long imprisonment in the Deep Lands, dressed in black, dusty, dishevelled, and weary, there was something in his face and air which no one could mistake. That look is in the face of all true kings of Narnia, who rule by the will of Aslan and sit at Cair Paravel on the throne of Peter the High King.

Instantly every head was bared and every knee was bent; a moment later such cheering and shouting, such jumps and reels of joy, such hand-shakings and kissings and embracings of everybody by everybody else broke out that the tears came into Jill’s eyes. Their quest had been worth all the pains it cost.

“Please it your Highness,” said the oldest of the Dwarfs, “there is some attempt at a supper in the cave yonder, prepared against the ending of the snow-dance —”

“With a good will, Father,” said the Prince. “For never had any Prince, Knight, Gentleman, or Bear so good a stomach to his victuals as we four wanderers have tonight.”

The whole crowd began to move away through the trees towards the cave. Jill heard Puddleglum saying to those who pressed round him. “No, no, my story can wait. Nothing worth talking about has happened to me. I want to hear the news. Don’t try breaking it to me gently, for I’d rather have it all at once. Has the King been shipwrecked? Any forest fires? No wars on the Calormen border? Or a few dragons, I shouldn’t wonder?”

And all the creatures laughed aloud and said, “Isn’t that just like a Marshwiggle?”

The two children were nearly dropping with tiredness and hunger, but the warmth of the cave, and the very sight of it, with the firelight dancing on the walls and dressers and cups and saucers and plates and on the smooth stone floor, just as it does in a farmhouse kitchen, revived them a little. All the same they went fast asleep while supper was being got ready.

And while they slept Prince Rilian was talking over the whole adventure with the older and wiser Beasts and Dwarfs. And now they all saw what it meant; how a wicked Witch （doubtless the same kind as that White Witch who had brought the Great Winter on Narnia long ago） had contrived the whole thing, first killing Rilian’s mother and enchanting Rilian himself. And they saw how she had dug right under Narnia and was going to break out and rule it through Rilian：and how he had never dreamed that the country of which she would make him king （king in name, but really her slave） was his own country. And from the children’s part of the story they saw how she was in league and friendship with the dangerous giants of Harfang.

“And the lesson of it all is, your Highness,” said the oldest Dwarf, “that those Northern Witches always mean the same thing, but in every age they have a different plan for getting it.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE HEALING OF HARMS

When Jill woke next morning and found herself in a cave, she thought for one horrid moment that she was back in the Underworld. But when she noticed that she was lying on a bed of heather with a furry mantle over her, and saw a cheery fire crackling （as if newly lit） on a stone hearth and, farther off, morning sunlight coming in through the cave’s mouth, she remembered all the happy truth. They had had a delightful supper, all crowded into that cave, in spite of being so sleepy before it was properly over. She had a vague impression of Dwarfs crowding round the fire with frying-pans rather bigger than themselves, and the hissing, and delicious smell of sausages, and more, and more, and more sausages. And not wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt. And great mugs of frothy chocolate, and roast potatoes and roast chestnuts, and baked apples with raisins stuck in where the cores had been, and then ices just to freshen you up after all the hot things.

Jill sat up and looked around. Puddleglum and Eustace were lying not far away, both fast asleep.

“Hi, you two！” shouted Jill in a loud voice. “Aren’t you ever going to get up?”

“Shoo, shoo！” said a sleepy voice somewhere above her. “Time to be settling down. Have a good snooze, do, do. Don’t make a to-do. Tu-whoo！”

“Why, I do believe,” said Jill, glancing up at a white bundle of fluffy feathers which was perched on top of a grandfather clock in one corner of the cave, “I do believe it’s Glimfeather！”

“True, true,” whirred the Owl, lifting its head out from under its wing and opening one eye. “I came up with a message for the Prince at about two. The squirrels brought us the good news. Message for the Prince. He’s gone. You’re to follow too. Good-day —” and the head disappeared again.

As there seemed no further hope of getting any information from the Owl, Jill got up and began looking round for any chance of a wash and some breakfast. But almost at once a little Faun came trotting into the cave with a sharp click-clack of his goaty hoofs on the stone floor.

“Ah！ You’ve woken up at last, Daughter of Eve,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better wake the Son of Adam. You’ve got to be off in a few minutes and two Centaurs have very kindly offered to let you ride on their backs down to Cair Paravel.” He added in a lower voice. “Of course, you realize it is a most special and unheard-of honour to be allowed to ride a Centaur. I don’t know that I ever heard of anyone doing it before. It wouldn’t do to keep them waiting.”

“Where’s the Prince?” was the first question of Eustace and Puddleglum as soon as they had been wakened.

“He’s gone down to meet the King, his father, at Cair Paravel,” answered the Faun, whose name was Orruns. “His Majesty’s ship is expected in harbour any moment. It seems that the King met Aslan — I don’t know whether it was in a vision or face to face — before he had sailed far, and Aslan turned him back and told him he would find his long-lost son awaiting him when he reached Narnia.”

Eustace was now up and he and Jill set about helping Orruns to get the breakfast. Puddleglum was told to stay in bed. A Centaur called Cloudbirth, a famous healer, or （as Orruns called it） a‘leech’, was coming to see to his burnt foot.

“Ah！” said Puddleglum in a tone almost of contentment, “he’ll want to have the leg off at the knee, I shouldn’t wonder. You see if he doesn’t.” But he was quite glad to stay in bed.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and toast and Eustace tackled it just as if he had not had a very large supper in the middle of the night.

“I say, Son of Adam,” said the Faun, looking with a certain awe at Eustace’s mouthfuls. “There’s no need to hurry quite so dreadfully as that. I don’t think the Centaurs have quite finished their breakfasts yet.”

“Then they must have got up very late,” said Eustace. “I bet it’s after ten o’clock.”

“Oh no,” said Orruns. “They got up before it was light.”

“Then they must have waited the dickens of a time for breakfast,” said Eustace.

“No, they didn’t,” said Orruns. “They began eating the minute they awoke.”

“Golly！” said Eustace. “Do they eat a very big breakfast?”

“Why, Son of Adam, don’t you understand? A Centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he attends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That’s why it’s such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed.”

At that moment there was a sound of horse-hoofs tapping on rock from the mouth of the cave, and the children looked up. The two Centaurs, one with a black and one with a golden beard flowing over their magnificent bare chests, stood waiting for them, bending their heads a little so as to look into the cave. Then the children became very polite and finished their breakfast very quickly. No one thinks a Centaur funny when he sees it. They are solemn, majestic people, full of ancient wisdom which they learn from the stars, not easily made either merry or angry; but their anger is terrible as a tidal wave when it comes.

“Good-bye, dear Puddleglum,” said Jill, going over to the Marsh-wiggle’s bed. “I’m sorry we called you a wet blanket.”

“So’m I,” said Eustace. “You’ve been the best friend in the world.”

“And I do hope we’ll meet again,” added Jill.

“Not much chance of that, I should say,” replied Puddleglum. “I don’t reckon I’m very likely to see my old wigwam again either. And that Prince — he’s a nice chap — but do you think he’s very strong? Constitution ruined with living underground, I shouldn’t wonder. Looks the sort that might go off any day.”

“Puddleglum！” said Jill. “You’re a regular old humbug. You sound as doleful as a funeral and I believe you’re perfectly happy. And you talk as if you were afraid of everything, when you’re really as brave as — as a lion.”

“Now, speaking of funerals,” began Puddleglum, but Jill, who heard the Centaurs tapping with their hoofs behind her, surprised him very much by flinging her arms round his thin neck and kissing his muddy-looking face, while Eustace wrung his hand. Then they both rushed away to the Centaurs, and the Marsh-wiggle, sinking back on his bed, remarked to himself, “Well, I wouldn’t have dreamt of her doing that. Even though I am a goodlooking chap.”

To ride on a Centaur is, no doubt, a great honour （and except Jill and Eustace there is probably no one alive in the world today who has had it） but it is very uncomfortable. For no one who valued his life would suggest putting a saddle on a Centaur, and riding bareback is no fun; especially if, like Eustace, you have never learned to ride at all. The Centaurs were very polite in a grave, gracious, grown-up kind of way, and as they cantered through the Narnian woods they spoke, without turning their heads, telling the children about the properties of herbs and roots, the influences of the planets, the nine names of Aslan with their meanings, and things of that sort. But however sore and jolted the two humans were, they would now give anything to have that journey over again：to see those glades and slopes sparkling with last night’s snow, to be met by rabbits and squirrels and birds that wished you good morning, to breathe again the air of Narnia and hear the voices of the Narnian trees.

They came down to the river, flowing bright and blue in winter sunshine, far below the last bridge （which is at the snug, red-roofed little town of Beruna） and were ferried across in a flat barge by the ferryman; or rather, by the ferry-wiggle, for it is Marsh-wiggles who do most of the watery and fishy kinds of work in Narnia. And when they had crossed they rode along the south bank of the river and presently came to Cair Paravel itself. And at the very moment of their arrival they saw that same bright ship which they had seen when they first set foot in Narnia, gliding up the river like a huge bird.

All the court were once more assembled on the green between the castle and the quay to welcome King Caspian home again. Rilian, who had changed his black clothes and was now dressed in a scarlet cloak over silver mail, stood close to the water’s edge, bare-headed, to receive his father; and the Dwarf Trumpkin sat beside him in his little donkey-chair. The children saw there would be no chance of reaching the Prince through all that crowd, and, anyway, they now felt rather shy. So they asked the Centaurs if they might go on sitting on their backs a little longer and thus see everything over the heads of the courtiers. And the Centaurs said they might.

A flourish of silver trumpets came over the water from the ship’s deck：the sailors threw a rope; rats （Talking Rats, of course） and Marsh-wiggles made it fast ashore; and the ship was warped in. Musicians, hidden somewhere in the crowd, began to play solemn, triumphal music. And soon the King’s galleon was alongside and the Rats ran the gangway on board her.

Jill expected to see the old King come down it. But there appeared to be some hitch.

A Lord with a pale face came ashore and knelt to the Prince and to Trumpkin. The three were talking with their heads close together for a few minutes, but no one could hear what they said. The music played on, but you could feel that everyone was becoming uneasy. Then four Knights, carrying something and going very slowly, appeared on deck. When they started to come down the gangway you could see what they were carrying：it was the old King on a bed, very pale and still. They set him down. The Prince knelt beside him and embraced him. They could see King Caspian raising his hand to bless his son. And everyone cheered, but it was a half-hearted cheer, for they all felt that something was going wrong. Then suddenly the King’s head fell back upon his pillows, the musicians stopped and there was a dead silence. The Prince, kneeling by the King’s bed, laid down his head upon it and wept.

There were whisperings and goings to and fro. Then Jill noticed that all who wore hats, bonnets, helmets, or hoods were taking them off — Eustace included. Then she heard a rustling and flapping noise up above the castle; when she looked she saw that the great banner with the golden Lion on it was being brought down to half-mast. And after that, slowly, mercilessly, with wailing strings and disconsolate blowing of horns, the music began again：this time, a tune to break your heart.

They both slipped off their Centaurs （who took no notice of them）.

“I wish I was at home,” said Jill.

Eustace nodded, saying nothing, and bit his lip.

“I have come,” said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him. And in less time than it takes to breathe Jill forgot about the dead King of Narnia and remembered only how she had made Eustace fall over the cliff, and how she had helped to muff nearly all the signs, and about all the snappings and quarrellings. And she wanted to say “I’m sorry” but she could not speak. Then the Lion drew them towards him with his eyes, and bent down and touched their pale faces with his tongue, and said： “Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.”

“Please, Aslan,” said Jill, “may we go home now?”

“Yes. I have come to bring you Home,” said Aslan. Then he opened his mouth wide and blew. But this time they had no sense of flying through the air：instead, it seemed that they remained still, and the wild breath of Aslan blew away the ship and the dead King and the castle and the snow and the winter sky. For all these things floated off into the air like wreaths of smoke, and suddenly they were standing in a great brightness of midsummer sunshine, on smooth turf, among mighty trees, and beside a fair, fresh stream.

Then they saw that they were once more on the Mountain of Aslan, high up above and beyond the end of that world in which Narnia lies. But the strange thing was that the funeral music for King Caspian still went on, though no one could tell where it came from. They were walking beside the stream and the Lion went before them：and he became so beautiful, and the music so despairing, that Jill did not know which of them it was that filled her eyes with tears.

Then Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept：great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. And Jill noticed that Eustace looked neither like a child crying, nor like a boy crying and wanting to hide it, but like a grownup crying. At least, that is the nearest she could get to it; but really, as she said, people don’t seem to have any particular ages on that mountain.

“Son of Adam,” said Aslan, “go into that thicket and pluck the thorn that you will find there, and bring it to me.”

Eustace obeyed. The thorn was a foot long and sharp as a rapier.

“Drive it into my paw, Son of Adam,” said Aslan, holding up his right fore-paw and spreading out the great pad towards Eustace.

“Must I?” said Eustace.

“Yes,” said Aslan.

Then Eustace set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion’s pad. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all redness that you have ever seen or imagined.

And it splashed into the stream over the dead body of the King. At the same moment the doleful music stopped. And the dead King began to be changed. His white beard turned to grey, and from grey to yellow, and got shorter and vanished altogether; and his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them — a very young man, or a boy. （But Jill couldn’t say which, because of people having no particular ages in Aslan’s country. Even in this world, of course, it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grownup.） And he rushed to Aslan and flung his arms as far as they would go round the huge neck; and he gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.

At last Caspian turned to the others. He gave a great laugh of astonished joy.

“Why！ Eustace！” he said. “Eustace！ So you did reach the end of the world after all. What about my second-best sword that you broke on the sea-serpent?”

Eustace made a step towards him with both hands held out, but then drew back with a somewhat startled expression. “Look here！ I say,” he stammered. “It’s all very well. But aren’t you?- I mean didn’t you?”

“Oh, don’t be such an ass,” said Caspian.

“But,” said Eustace, looking at Aslan. “Hasn’t he — er died?”

“Yes,” said the Lion in a very quiet voice, almost （Jill thought） as if he were laughing. “He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are very few who haven’t.”

“Oh,” said Caspian. “I see what’s bothering you. You think I’m a ghost, or some nonsense. But don’t you see? I would be that if I appeared in Narnia now：because I don’t belong there any more. But one can’t be a ghost in one’s own country. I might be a ghost if I got into your world. I don’t know. But I suppose it isn’t yours either, now you’re here.”

A great hope rose in the children’s hearts. But Aslan shook his shaggy head. “No, my dears,” he said. “When you meet me here again, you will have come to stay. But not now. You must go back to your own world for a while.”

“Sir,” said Caspian, “I’ve always wanted to have just one glimpse of their world. Is that wrong?”

“You cannot want wrong things any more, now that you have died, my son,” said Aslan. “And you shall see their world — for five minutes of their time. It will take no longer for you to set things right there.” Then Aslan explained to Caspian what Jill and Eustace were going back to and all about Experiment House：he seemed to know it quite as well as they did.

“Daughter,” said Aslan to Jill, “pluck a switch off that bush.” She did; and as soon as it was in her hand it turned into a fine new riding crop.

“Now, Sons of Adam, draw your swords,” said Aslan. “But use only the flat, for it is cowards and children, not warriors, against whom I send you.”

“Are you coming with us, Aslan?” said Jill.

“They shall see only my back,” said Aslan.

He led them rapidly through the wood, and before they had gone many paces, the wall of Experiment House appeared before them. Then Aslan roared so that the sun shook in the sky and thirty feet of the wall fell down before them. They looked through the gap, down into the school shrubbery and on to the roof of the gym, all under the same dull autumn sky which they had seen before their adventures began.

Aslan turned to Jill and Eustace and breathed upon them and touched their foreheads with his tongue. Then he lay down amid the gap he had made in the wall and turned his golden back to England, and his lordly face towards his own lands.

At the same moment Jill saw figures whom she knew only too well running up through the laurels towards them. Most of the gang were there Adela Pennyfather and Cholmondely Major, Edith Winterblott, Spotty’Sorrier, big Bannister, and the two loathsome Garrett twins. But suddenly they stopped. Their faces changed, and all the meanness, conceit, cruelty, and sneakishness almost disappeared in one single expression of terror. For they saw the wall fallen down, and a lion as large as a young elephant lying in the gap, and three figures in glittering clothes with weapons in their hands rushing down upon them.

For, with the strength of Aslan in them, Jill plied her crop on the girls and Caspian and Eustace plied the flats of their swords on the boys so well that in two minutes all the bullies were running like mad, crying out, ‘Murder！ Fascists！ Lions！ It isn’t fair.' And then the Head （who was, by the way, a woman） came running out to see what was happening. And when she saw the lion and the broken wall and Caspian and Jill and Eustace （whom she quite failed to recognize） she had hysterics and went back to the house and began ringing up the police with stories about a lion escaped from a circus, and escaped convicts who broke down walls and carried drawn swords.

In the midst of all this fuss Jill and Eustace slipped quietly indoors and changed out of their bright clothes into ordinary things, and Caspian went back into his own world. And the wall, at Aslan’s word, was made whole again. When the police arrived and found no lion, no broken wall, and no convicts, and the Head behaving like a lunatic, there was an inquiry into the whole thing. And in the inquiry all sorts of things about Experiment House came out, and about ten people got expelled. After that, the Head’s friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn’t much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after.

Eustace buried his fine clothes secretly one night in the school grounds, but Jill smuggled hers home and wore them at a fancy-dress ball next holidays. And from that day forth things changed for the better at Experiment House, and it became quite a good school. And Jill and Eustace were always friends.

But far off in Narnia, King Rilian buried his father, Caspian the Navigator, Tenth of that name, and mourned for him. He himself ruled Narnia well and the land was happy in his days, though Puddleglum （whose foot was as good as new in three weeks） often pointed out that bright mornings brought on wet afternoons, and that you couldn’t expect good times to last. The opening into the hillside was left open, and often in hot summer days the Narnians go in there with ships and lanterns and down to the water and sail to and fro, singing, on the cool, dark underground sea, telling each other stories of the cities that lie fathoms deep below.

If ever you have the luck to go to Narnia yourself, do not forget to have a look at those caves.

纳尼亚传奇：能言马与男孩（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5730-3

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目录

第一章 沙斯塔启程

第二章 路边奇遇

第三章 抵达塔什班

第四章 沙斯塔邂逅纳尼亚人

第五章 科林王子

第六章 沙斯塔在古国王墓

第七章 娅拉维斯在塔什班

第八章 蒂斯罗克的密室

第九章 穿越沙漠

第十章 南征隐士

第十一章 不受欢迎的同行者

第十二章 沙斯塔在纳尼亚

第十三章 安瓦德之战

第十四章 布里如何成为更聪明的马

第十五章 可笑的拉巴达斯

CHAPTER ONE HOW SHASTA SET OUT ON HIS TRAVELS

CHAPTER TWO A WAYSIDE ADVENTURE

CHAPTER THREE AT THE GATES OF TASHBAAN

CHAPTER FOUR SHASTA FALLS IN WITH THE NARNIANS

CHAPTER FIVE PRINCE CORIN

CHAPTER SIX SHASTA AMONG THE TOMBS

CHAPTER SEVEN ARAVIS IN TASHBAAN

CHAPTER EIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF THE TISROC

CHAPTER NINE ACROSS THE DESERT

CHAPTER TEN THE HERMIT OF THE SOUTHERN MARCH

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE UNWELCOME FELLOW TRAVELLER

CHAPTER TWELVE SHASTA IN NARNIA

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE FIGHT AT ANVARD

CHAPTER FOURTEEN HOW BREE BECAME A WISER HORSE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN RABADASH THE RIDICULOUS

第一章
沙斯塔启程

这个冒险故事发生在纳尼亚与卡乐门还有这两国的交界处。在至尊国王彼得和他的弟弟与两个妹妹的统治下，那时的纳尼亚正处于黄金时代。

当时在卡乐门遥远南方的小海湾住着一个名叫阿什伊什的穷苦渔夫，有个男孩与他同住并称呼他为父亲，男孩名叫沙斯塔。大多时候，阿什伊什在上午出海捕鱼，下午则套好驴车，载着一车鱼去往南边一两英里处的村庄卖鱼。若是卖得不错，他脾气就会好些，回家也不会对沙斯塔说什么，可若是卖得不好，他就会对沙斯塔百般挑剔，甚至毒打他。沙斯塔要干的活儿不少，修补、清洗渔网，准备晚餐，打扫他们居住的这间小屋，要挑刺总是不难的。

沙斯塔对于自家南边的任何事物都毫无兴趣。他曾和阿什伊什去过一两次村庄，所以他知道那儿没什么有趣的。在村子里，他只见到了一些像他父亲那样的男人，他们身穿脏兮兮的长袍，脚踩露出脚趾的木屐，脑袋上缠了头巾，脸上蓄着胡子，慢吞吞地和别人聊些索然无味的东西。但是对于自家北边的一切事物，沙斯塔都兴趣盎然，因为从未有人去过那里，而他自己也不被允许单独前往。独自坐在门外修补渔网时，他总会眼巴巴地看着北方。在那里，山坡郁郁葱葱地向上延伸至平坦的山脊，山脊之外便是天空，也许会有些飞鸟，可除此以外什么都望不见了。

有时阿什伊什在的话，沙斯塔会问：“父亲，山的后边有什么？”撞上渔夫脾气糟糕的时候，渔夫便会揪起沙斯塔的耳朵命令他专心干活，而若是渔夫心境正平和，则会说：“儿子，不要分心去想这些没用的问题。一位诗人曾经说过，‘专注于事业乃繁荣之本源，提出无关于此的问题之人皆是驾驶愚昧之舟向贫穷之礁驶去’。”

沙斯塔认定山后面绝对有些会令人兴奋的秘密，只是父亲想瞒住不告诉他。事实上，渔夫这么说是因为他并不知道北边有什么。不过他也不在乎，他的想法可是相当务实。

有一天，一个陌生男人从南方过来，他和沙斯塔之前见过的任何人都不一样。他骑着一匹强壮的花斑马，骏马套着镶银的马镫与缰绳，鬃尾飞扬。他身着锁子甲，头盔的尖端从他丝绸头巾的中间突了出来，一柄短弯刀挂在身侧，身后背着一块镶嵌黄铜的圆盾，右手持一杆长矛。他的脸黝黑黝黑的，卡乐门的人都这样，所以沙斯塔对此不以为意。令他感到惊奇的是这人卷曲的胡子，被染成了深红色，还闪耀着香油的光泽。但阿什伊什一看到那陌生人裸露手臂上的金饰便明白了他是一位塔尔坎，或是大勋爵，于是他弯腰跪倒在陌生人面前，胡子都触到了地面，同时还示意沙斯塔也下跪。

陌生人希望能够借宿一晚，渔夫当然不敢拒绝。他们把最好的食物全都拿了出来作为晚餐招待塔尔坎（不过对方并不喜欢），而沙斯塔，与以往家中有来客时一样，被父亲扔了一大块面包打发出门。每到这时，他通常都会去茅草棚和小毛驴一同睡觉。不过现在睡觉实在太早了。鉴于沙斯塔并不知道偷听他人讲话是错的，他便坐下来，耳朵紧贴小木屋墙上的一道裂缝，听大人们在谈些什么。如下便是他所听见的内容。

“现在，这屋子的主人，”塔尔坎说，“我打算买下你儿子。”

“哦，大人，”渔夫回应道（凭这阿谀奉承的语气，沙斯塔都能想象出说这话时阿什伊什脸上贪婪的表情），“尽管您的仆人十分贫穷，可他怎会为金钱引诱卖了他唯一的骨肉？有位诗人不是曾经说过吗，‘亲情浓于高汤，儿女贵于红玉’？”

“即使如此，”客人冷言道，“另一位诗人同样也说过，‘意欲欺骗智者之人，已然袒其背于鞭笞之下’。别再腆着老脸满嘴胡言了，这男孩显然不是你亲生的。你的脸颊同我一样黝黑，而那男孩的皮肤却白皙明亮，和遥远北方那些令人生厌却美丽动人的野蛮人别无二致。”

“有句话说得好，”渔夫答道，“‘利剑或许无法刺穿盾牌，但智慧之眼却能洞察一切防御！’啊，令人敬畏的客人啊，我因穷困潦倒，未曾娶妻也膝下无子。但在蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）开始他无上尊贵、泽被苍生的统治的那一年，某天夜里圆月高挂，众神以剥夺我的睡眠取乐，于是我便起床离开屋子去往沙滩，想要欣赏海水与明月，呼吸清凉的空气，好让我打起精神。正在此时，我听见海上传来船桨滑动的声音，那声音向我而来，随后我又听见了一声微弱的啼哭。很快，海浪推着一条小船来到岸边，船里别无他物，只有一个饥渴至极的男人、一个空水袋和一个孩子。男人看起来刚死，因为他的身体还存有余温，孩子倒还活着。‘毫无疑问，’我自言自语道，‘两个不幸的人定是从失事的巨轮上逃出来的，不过遵循令人敬畏的神意，年长者选择了确保孩子能够活下来，自己却在看到陆地时死了。’相应地，众神也不曾忘记嘉奖那些善待穷人、充满同情心的人（您的仆人我正是一个心地善良的人）——”

“省去那套吹捧自己的废话吧，”塔尔坎打断了他，“这些已经足够让我知道这孩子是你收养的了，而且谁都看得出来，你从他的劳动中获取的利益是他每天吃的面包的价值的十倍。现在，我已经听烦你的废话了，告诉我出多少钱你才肯卖他。”

“智慧的您自己已经提及，”阿什伊什回答，“对我而言，这男孩劳动力的价值大得不可估量，我若是把他卖了，显然得再买或再雇一个人来干他的活儿。所以在定价时，这一点也必须纳入考虑范围。”

“我出十五个新月币。”塔尔坎说。

“十五！”阿什伊什喊道，那声音介于哀号与尖叫之间，“十五！他可是我老年的倚靠和目光所及的欢悦！即使你是塔尔坎也不能如此愚弄我这样的老人。我要七十个新月币。”

听到这儿，沙斯塔便起身蹑手蹑脚地溜走了，他已经听到了想知道的全部。他听过村子里的人们讨价还价，也知道之后会如何。他非常确定，阿什伊什最终会以远高于十五又远低于七十个新月币的价格把他卖出去，不过要与塔尔坎达成一致，还得耗上几小时。

想象一下你我若是无意中听见父母要将自己卖身为奴会是什么感受，但沙斯塔与你我都不同。一方面，他现在的生活不见得比奴隶好些，就他所知，这位骑着高大骏马的贵族陌生人或许对他会比阿什伊什更仁慈；另一方面，得知自己是从船上被捡回来的，他也满心欢喜，如释重负。他知道孩子理应爱自己的父亲，可无论他如何尝试，他都无法爱这个渔夫，这时常令他心神不定。不过现在，很显然，他和阿什伊什没有任何血缘关系，这就令他卸下了压在心头的重担。“哈！我可以是任何人！”他想，“我可能是塔尔坎或者蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的儿子，说不定还可能是神的儿子呢！”

他站在小屋前的草地上想着这些。暮色迅速笼罩大地，零星的一两颗星星已然探头闪烁，而西边的天空仍染有夕阳的余晖。不远处，陌生人的骏马正嚼着草，缰绳松松地系在茅草棚墙上的一个铁环上。沙斯塔踱步来到马儿边上，轻拍它的脖颈，不过马儿只是继续嚼着草，并没有注意到他。

沙斯塔的脑袋里又冒出来另一个想法。“我很好奇那个塔尔坎是个怎样的人，”他大声说了出来，“他若是个仁慈的人，那就很好。有些大勋爵的奴隶们几乎不用干活，而且每天都能穿着体面的衣服，还有肉吃。也许之后他会带着我去打仗，而我在战争中救了他一命，他便会还我自由、收养我，还会给我一座宫殿，赠我战车和盔甲。但如果他是个可怕残忍的人，那我可能就要被扣上铁链送去田里干活了。我好想知道他是个怎样的人啊，可我怎么才能知道呢？我敢打赌这匹马一定知道，可惜它不能告诉我。”

马儿仰起了脑袋，沙斯塔轻抚它那绸缎般顺滑的鼻子说：“老伙计，要是你能说话就好了。”

接着，一瞬间沙斯塔以为自己是在做梦，那声音虽然低沉，可他却清晰地听见马儿说：“我会说话。”

沙斯塔惊奇地盯着马儿的大眼睛，自己的眼睛也瞪得几乎和马儿的眼睛一样大了。

“你是怎么学会说话的？”他问道。

“嘘！轻点声儿！”马儿回答说，“在我原来生活的地方，几乎所有动物都会说话。”

“那是哪儿？”沙斯塔问。

“纳尼亚，”马儿答道，“乐土纳尼亚！那儿有石南丛生的高山，百里香遍布的开阔丘陵；那儿百川奔流，幽谷中流水淙淙，山洞里爬满青苔，一望无际的森林深处，小矮人们的锤子碰撞发出叮叮咚咚的回响。啊，纳尼亚的空气是那么香甜！在那儿生活一小时远胜于在卡乐门待一千年。”说完他发出了嘶鸣，宛若一声叹息。

“那你怎么到这儿来了？”沙斯塔说。

“被绑架来的，”马儿回答，“或者说是被偷来的、被捕来的，随你怎么说。那时我还只是个幼崽。我妈妈警告我不要越过南边的山坡去亚钦兰及其以南地区，可是我并没放在心上，于是，以狮王的鬃毛起誓，我为自己的愚蠢付出了代价。这些年来，我沦为人类的奴仆，藏起本性，假装不会说话，和他们那些愚钝的马一样。”

“你为什么不告诉他们你的真实身份呢？”

“我可不傻。一旦他们发现我会说话，他们就会要我在集市上表演，然后百般看守我，那我可就真逃不掉了。”

“那为什么——”沙斯塔刚开口，马儿就打断了他。

“现在，”他说，“不要再浪费时间问那些没用的问题了。你想知道我的主人安拉丁塔尔坎是个怎样的人。他可不是个好人。他对我不算太坏，毕竟对战马过于严苛的话，可能得付出极大代价。但若是要到他府上当奴隶，你不如今晚就一死了之吧。”

“所以，我最好赶快逃走。”沙斯塔脸色惨白地说。

“没错，赶快逃。”马儿说，“不如带着我一起逃跑？”

“你也打算逃走吗？”沙斯塔问。

“对，如果你愿意和我一起的话。”马儿回答，“这对我俩来说都是个机会。你想，如果我背上没有骑手独自逃走，那看到我的人都会认为我是一匹‘野马’，然后他们会第一时间追赶我。如果你愿意帮我，我背上有了骑手，那我就能轻松地离开了。另一方面，只靠你自己的那两条小短腿（人类的腿真是蠢极了！）你跑不了多远就会被追上了，但是如果有我帮你，骑在我身上，你就能远远甩开这个国家的所有马。顺便问一句，你会骑马吧？”如果你愿意帮我，我背上有了骑手，那我就能轻松地离开了。另一方面，只靠你自己的那两条小短腿（人类的腿真是蠢极了！）你跑不了多远就会被追上了，但是如果有我帮你，骑在我身上，你就能远远甩开这个国家的所有马。顺便问一句，你会骑马吧？”

“啊，当然，”沙斯塔说，“至少我骑过驴子。”

“骑过什么？”马儿极其不屑地反问道。（至少，马儿表达的就是这个意思。事实上，他说话时带有一些马嘶声——“骑过什——什——什——什么”。能言马在生气的时候说话的腔调总会更像马一些。）

“也就是说，”他继续道，“你不会骑马，这可不妙。我得一边走一边教你。如果你不会骑马的话，你会摔下来吗？”

“我想任何人都会摔下来的吧。”沙斯塔说。

“我的意思是你能不能做到摔下来以后不哭不闹地站起来，重新爬到我背上，并且毫不畏惧再次摔下来？”

“我、我尽力。”沙斯塔说。“可怜的小家伙，”马儿的语气温和了些，“我忘了你只是个小孩儿而已。我会尽快让你成为一名优秀的骑手的。现在——我们得等到那俩人都睡着才能出发，我们可以趁这段时间制订一下计划。我的塔尔坎主人此次要北上到大城市塔什班，他要去蒂斯罗克的宫廷——”

“我说，”沙斯塔的语气中满是震惊，“你不说一句‘愿他万寿无疆’吗？”

“为什么要说呢？”马儿反问，“我是自由的纳尼亚子民，为什么我要说那些奴隶们和傻子们才说的话？我并不希望他万寿无疆，而且无论我是否希望，他都不可能长命百岁。我看得出你也属于自由的北方，你我之间不需要这种南方套话了！现在，专注于我们的计划。刚刚我说了，我的主人要北上去塔什班。”

“这是不是意味着我们南下会更好？”

“我不这么认为，”马儿说，“你看，他认为我不会说话，和他那些愚钝的马一样。如果我真是那样，缰绳一松我就会踏上归途回家或者回牧场。往南两天路程就能到他的宫殿，他会去那儿找我。他做梦也不会想到我会独自去北方。而且，他也可能认为是前一个村子有人盯上了他，并且跟到了这儿把我偷走。”

“哇，好棒！”沙斯塔说，“那我们去北方。我一直都想去北方看看。”

“那当然，”马儿说，“你的身体里流淌着北方的血。我确定你一定是个北方人。说话轻一点儿，我想他们马上就要睡着了。”

“我还是溜回去看一眼吧。”沙斯塔提议。

“好主意。”马儿说，“不过小心别被抓住。”

好在天色暗了许多，四周鸦雀无声，只有海浪拍在沙滩上的声音，不过沙斯塔从记事起便日日夜夜听着海浪声，并未留意。他悄悄靠近小屋，屋子里并没有光。他把耳朵凑到前门，没有听见任何声音；他又绕到了屋后唯一的窗户那儿，每隔一两秒他就能听见老渔夫那熟悉的鼾声。如果一切顺利他就再也不用听这鼾声了，一想到这点他就感到开心。带着一丝歉意——不过他心中的喜悦可比歉意要多得多——他屏住呼吸溜过草坪，跑到了拴毛驴的茅草屋，摸索着到了藏钥匙的地方，打开茅草棚的门找到了被锁起来的马鞍和缰绳。他倾身向前吻了下小毛驴的鼻子。“抱歉，我们不能带上你一起。”他说。

“终于来了，”他回来时马儿说，“我都开始担心你是不是出事儿了。”

“我去茅草棚那儿拿你的东西了，”沙斯塔回应道，“现在，你能告诉我这些要怎么弄吗？”

接下来的几分钟，沙斯塔便小心翼翼地尽量不出声地按照马儿的指示操作了，“把肚带再收紧些”“你会在下面找到一个搭扣”或者“你得把马镫再弄短一些”。全部搞定后，他说：

“现在，出于表面功夫的考虑，我们需要戴上缰绳，不过你用不到它们。把它们系到鞍头上，松一点儿，这样我就能随意转动我的头了。记住，不要动它们。”

“那它们是用来做什么的呢？”沙斯塔问。

“通常是用来控制我的行进方向的。”马儿回答，“不过既然本次旅程的方向将由我来决定，你就可以解放双手了。还有一件事，你不要揪住我的鬃毛。”

“但是，”沙斯塔哀求道，“如果我不能握缰绳也不能揪你的鬃毛，那我该怎么才能坐稳？”

“靠你的膝盖，”马儿回答，“这是优秀骑手的秘诀。双膝用力夹紧我的身体，坐直了，像一根棍子那样笔笔直，然后手肘向内收。另外，你打算怎么处理马刺？”

“当然是放在脚后跟上，”沙斯塔说，“我知道这个。”

“还是把它们拿下来装进挂包里吧。到了塔什班，也许可以把它们卖了。准备好了吗？你现在该上来了。”

“噢，你实在太高了。”初次上马以失败告终后，沙斯塔喘着粗气道。

“我是一匹马，就是这样。”马儿回应道，“你刚才上马的动作只会让人觉得我是一堆干草！再来一次，好多了。现在，上身坐直，记得我告诉你膝盖要怎么做吗？想当年在骑兵队我可是领头的马，我还拿过赛马比赛的冠军呢，结果现在背上却是像个土豆袋儿一样的你，真是滑稽！好吧，无论如何，出发啦。”马儿一阵轻笑，不过听起来并无恶意。

万分谨慎的夜逃之旅就此启程。第一步是直奔渔夫小屋南侧那条流向大海的小河，马儿小心地在泥土上留下了些指向南方的脚印。然而一到小河浅滩中部，他便掉头逆流而上，涉水前行，直到比那渔夫的小屋还要深入内陆大约一百码的地方才停下。他精挑细选了一块布满碎石的河岸确保不会留下任何脚印，从北侧上了岸，以走路的速度慢步向北行进，直到小屋、小屋前的树、小毛驴的茅草棚，这些沙斯塔所熟悉的一切事物全部消失在了夏日灰暗的夜色之中。他们一路向坡上走，现在已经到达了山脊的顶部——一直以来，这山脊都是沙斯塔所知世界的边界。除了芳草丛生的开阔土地，他再也望不见其他，面前的土地一望无际，如此狂放，如此孤寂，如此自由。

“哇，”马儿看着这片草地说，“这里多适合纵情奔跑呀！”

“啊，不要，”沙斯塔说，“现在先别，我还没学会呢，拜托了，马儿。哎，我还不知道你的名字。”

“布里希——西尼——布里尼——霍奇——汉。”马儿说。

“我绝对记不住那么长的名字，”沙斯塔说，“我可以叫你布里吗？”

“好吧，如果你只能记住这个的话，你就这样叫吧，”马儿说，“那我该怎么称呼你呢？”

“我叫沙斯塔。”

“呃，”布里说，“好吧，你的名字才难念呢。现在我们来考虑一下飞奔的事儿吧。这其实比你知道的小跑要简单多了，你也不用再饱受马背上的颠簸之苦。夹紧你的膝盖，双眼直直地从我双耳之间望向前方，别看地面。如果你觉得你要摔下去了，就更用力地夹紧膝盖，坐得更直一些。准备好了吗？现在，让我们一路向北，向纳尼亚进发！

第二章
路边奇遇

第二天接近中午时，沙斯塔在睡梦中感到脸上有温暖柔软的东西在动。他睁开双眼，发现自己的视线正对着一张长长的马脸，马儿的鼻子和嘴唇几乎都要碰到他了。他回想起昨晚那段激动人心的旅程，坐了起来，可这动作却让他忍不住呻吟起来。

“嗷，布里，”他喘息道，“我浑身上下哪儿都好痛，我要动不了了。”

“早上好呀，小家伙。”布里说，“我想你可能会感觉身体有些僵硬，不过这和摔下去关系不大，你只摔了十几次而已，而且都是摔在柔软可爱的草地上，这样摔下去应该算是愉快的体验。只有摔进金雀花丛、被划破皮的那次可能会感觉比较糟糕。没办法，刚开始骑马都是这样的。早餐你要吃些什么？我已经吃过了。”

“别管早餐了，什么都别管了。”沙斯塔说，“我说了我现在动弹不了。”而马儿只是用鼻子亲昵地蹭着他，同时用蹄子轻轻拍打他，让他不得不坐起来。他打量了四周才看清现在身在何处。他们的身后有一丛灌木，面前则是柔软的草地，上面零星点缀着白色的野花，草坡斜斜向下延伸至断崖的边缘。远处是大海，细碎的海浪声若有似无地从那儿传来。沙斯塔从未在这么高的地方看过如此辽阔的大海，也从未想到过大海的颜色竟是这般多彩。海岸线向两侧延伸远去，岬角接连出现，由于距离太过遥远，所以只能看见海浪倾尽全力撞向石块化为纯白的泡沫，却听不见浪花拍岸的声音。海鸥在头顶盘旋，热浪撼动地面的空气，这是一个炎炎夏日。但沙斯塔却被空气吸引了注意力，他感觉空气中似乎缺了些什么，直到最后他才蓦然发现空气中没有鱼腥味。从小到大，无论是在小屋中还是在渔网旁，在他的生活中这气息从不曾缺席。如今这不同往常的清新空气让他觉得如此美妙，过去的生活似乎也变得那么遥远，有一瞬间他甚至忘却了蹭破的伤口和酸痛的肌肉，他说：

“嘿，布里，你刚刚是不是在说早餐的事？”

“是的，没错，”布里回答，“或许你可以在挂包里找到些吃的，昨晚，或者不如说凌晨的时候，你把它们挂到那棵树上了。”

他们翻了翻挂袋，结果令人欣喜万分——里面有一块肉馅饼（稍微有些不新鲜）、一大堆无花果干和绿奶酪、一小瓶酒，还有一些钱，大概有四十个新月币，沙斯塔从没见过那么多钱呢。

沙斯塔费力地坐下，背部倚靠在树上，动作十分小心。然后他吃起了馅饼，而布里陪在他身边又嚼了几口草。

“用这些钱会被算作偷吗？”沙斯塔问。

“哦，”马儿抬起头，嘴里塞满了草，回答说，“我从没考虑过这个。当然，一匹自由的能言马不该行窃。不过我想这次应该无所谓。我俩是身处敌国的囚徒、俘虏，这笔钱算是我们缴获的战利品。而且，没有钱你去哪儿买食物？我猜你和所有的人类一样，都不吃诸如青草、燕麦之类的纯天然食物。”

“我吃不了。”

“你试过？”

“对，我试过，根本无法下咽。如果你是我，你也做不到。”

“你们人类可真是奇怪的生物。”布里评价道。

沙斯塔吃完他有生以来最美味的一顿早餐后，布里开口道：“在重新套上马鞍前，我想先美滋滋地打个滚儿。”语毕，他便打了个滚儿。“好舒服，真是棒极了！”说着，他在空中扑腾起四条腿，用背使劲儿蹭着草地。“沙斯塔，你也该试一下。”他哼哼道，“真是令人神清气爽呀。”

而沙斯塔却笑出了声，说：“你四脚朝天的样子看起来好滑稽。”

“我的样子一点也不滑稽。”布里反驳道。然而紧接着他便突然翻身侧躺，扬起了他的脑袋，认真地盯着沙斯塔，微微喘息。

“我看起来真的很滑稽吗？”他急切地问道。

“嗯，是的，”沙斯塔回答，“不过这又有什么关系呢？”

“你会不会觉得，”布里说，“你会不会觉得这个愚蠢而又滑稽的动作是我从不会说话的马那儿学来的？等回到纳尼亚，要是被发现我养成了这么多低俗不雅的坏习惯，就太可怕了。沙斯塔，你怎么看？实话实说吧，不用顾虑我的感受。你认为真正自由的、会说话的马，会在地上打滚吗？”

“我怎么知道？如果我是你，我才不会烦心这种事。我们首先要解决的问题是怎么才能回到纳尼亚，你认识路吗？”

“我认识去塔什班的路。过了塔什班以后会有一片沙漠，不用担心，我们可以成功穿过沙漠的。原因？到那儿我们就能看到北方的山脉啦。想想我们要一路北上，向纳尼亚进发！什么都阻挡不了我们前进的步伐。但要是能绕过塔什班就好了，远离城市你我都会更安全些。”

“我们不能绕路吗？”

“除非我们向内陆走很远，要穿过耕地与大路，但问题是我不认识那儿的路。不行，我们还是沿海岸线走吧。从这儿一直上到丘陵地区，除了绵羊、兔子、海鸥和几个牧羊人，我们什么都不会遇到。好啦，我们现在出发吧？”

脚踩马镫、跨上马鞍的过程中，沙斯塔的腿疼极了，不过这一下午马儿的步伐倒是十分轻柔，非常体贴。暮色降临时，他们沿着陡峭的山路进入山谷，并且在那儿找到了一个村庄。进村子前，沙斯塔翻下马背，然后徒步进村买了一条面包和一些洋葱、萝卜；而马儿则在夜色的掩护下绕过田野，小步跑到村子的另一头与沙斯塔汇合。这也成了他们之后每夜的惯用招数。

这些天对于沙斯塔来说可谓是刻骨铭心，每天他的肌肉都变得愈发结实，与此同时他从马背上摔下来的次数也越来越少了。然而在骑术训练结束时，布里仍然评价他像是摆在马鞍上的一袋面粉。“年轻人，即使那是安全的，在大路被人看见你骑在我背上，我还是会觉得很丢脸。”虽说言辞犀利，但布里确实是一位有耐心的好老师，没有任何人能比马更擅长教骑术了。沙斯塔学会了如何应对马儿小跑、慢跑、跳跃时的情况，甚至布里突然刹车后仰或者急转弯时他也能稳稳地骑在马背上，按布里的说法，在战争中这些情况随时都有可能出现。说到这儿，沙斯塔顺理成章地请求布里多说说他载着塔尔坎在战场上厮杀的故事。于是布里给他讲了在急行军中、激流征战中还有两军对阵激烈交锋时的故事。在那些战事中，战马像士兵一样英勇作战，成年的勇猛骏马经过严苛训练，能咬会踢，善于掌握时机高高仰起，集自己与骑兵的全部体重，助力骑兵高举利剑或手握战斧，以不可抵挡之势击垮敌人。不过布里讲战争故事的欲望可没沙斯塔想听故事的欲望那么强。“年轻人，别说那些了，”他说，“那不过是蒂斯罗克的战争罢了，我只是作为一个奴隶和不会说话的畜生参与了战争。我只愿和我的同伴们一起作为自由的马儿参与纳尼亚的战争！那样的战争才值得说。纳尼亚！北方！唔——哈——哈！布呼！”

沙斯塔很快就明白了一件事——但凡听到布里这样说话，便准备好面对疾奔吧。

他们走了好几周，沙斯塔已记不清他们经过了多少海湾、岬角、河流、村庄。在一个月色如银的夜晚，休息了一整个白天的沙斯塔和布里再次出发踏上旅程。丘陵早已被他们甩在身后，现在的他们正行走在广阔无垠的平原上，左侧大约半英里处是茂密的森林，而右侧同样距离的地方，大海正藏匿于低低的沙丘背后。他们时而小跑时而漫步，就这样跑跑走走了一个小时，布里突然停了下来。

“怎么了？”沙斯塔问。

“嘘！”布里转动脖子看了看四周，竖起了耳朵，轻声道，“仔细听，听见声音了吗？”

“听起来这里似乎有另一匹马——就在我们和树林之间。”沙斯塔凝神细听近一分钟后说。

“另一匹马，”布里说，“希望不是我想的那样。”

“说不定只是个晚归的农夫骑马经过呢？”沙斯塔说着打了个哈欠。

“不可能！”布里反驳，“骑马的人绝不是农夫，那马也不可能只是普通农户的马。听听那马蹄声，分辨不出吗？沙斯塔，我来告诉你，那是匹上乘的好马，骑马人也是个真正的好骑手。树林边上有个塔尔坎，马蹄声听起来不重，可以判断他没有骑在马背上。我可以确定，那是一匹血统纯正的好马。”

“打住，先不管那些，他们停下来了。”沙斯塔说。

“没错，”布里说，“问题是为什么我们一停他们也跟着停了下来。沙斯塔，恐怕我们被人跟踪了。”

“那怎么办？”沙斯塔压低音量耳语道，“你觉得他会看到或听到我们吗？”

“只要我们保持安静不要动弹，这样的光线下应该不会。”布里回答，“看！有一朵云飘过来了，等到它遮住月亮，我们就往右边逃到下面的海岸去，动作越轻越好。万一最糟的情况发生，我们还能躲在沙丘间。”

他们静静等到那朵云遮住了明月，不紧不慢地行进了一段路后，轻声小跑奔向海岸。

那朵云比初看时来得更大更厚实，很快夜色便更浓了，沙斯塔正自言自语着“我们就快到沙丘那儿了”，恰在此时，一个骇人的声音冲破前方的黑暗，沙斯塔的心一下子便提到了嗓子眼儿，那是长长的一声如雷咆哮，饱含忧郁与无尽荒蛮。布里立刻掉头，拼尽全力风驰电掣地向内陆跑去。

“那是什么？”沙斯塔喘着粗气问。

“狮子！”布里脚下不敢松懈一分，头也不回地答道。

接下来的时间中，他们只专心做一件事——飞速狂奔，直到他们淌过一条虽浅但宽的小溪，到达了河对岸，布里才终于停了下来。沙斯塔这才发现他浑身冷汗，战栗不止。

“这水能盖住我们的气息。”布里略微重新缓过气来，轻喘道，“现在可以走慢点儿了。”

布里一边走着，一边说：“沙斯塔，我真是为自己感到羞耻，我很害怕，和卡乐门那些不会说话的普通的马别无二致，真的，我觉得自己不配为一匹能言马。面对利剑、长矛、飞箭我毫不畏惧，可是我却不敢面对那些野兽。我想小跑一会儿。”

然而，仅仅约一分钟后，布里再一次撒开蹄子狂奔起来。也怪不得他，一阵咆哮再次响起，这回是从他们左边的森林里传来的。

“两头狮子！”布里哀号道。

又疾跑了数分钟，他们终于摆脱了狮子的咆哮声，沙斯塔说：“呀！另一匹马正在我们边上跑呢，离我们仅有一箭之遥。”

“很好，”布里喘息着说，“塔尔坎有剑，骑在马上，能保护我们。”

“可是，布里！”沙斯塔说，“无论是被狮子吃了还是被塔尔坎抓到，我们都会死的。或者说我一定会死，他们会判我偷马罪然后把我绞死。”对于狮子他没有那么恐惧，毕竟布里曾遇见过狮子，可他没有。

布里只是哼哼了一声作为回应，但他还是向右边跑去了。奇怪的是，另一匹马似乎也转向了左边，不一会儿他们之间距离便拉开了。可他们才刚分开，身后便又接连传来了两声狮吼，一左一右，两匹马儿只能彼此靠近。显然，狮子也因此往中间靠近。两边狮子发出咆哮，那声音听起来离他们近得可怕，似乎它们不费吹灰之力便能追上飞奔的马儿。云朵飘向别处，月光出奇的清明，四周景象全被照亮，好似白天一样。两匹马儿和骑手并驾齐驱，仿佛在进行一场赛马。不过（后来）布里确实表示卡乐门从没有过如此精彩的一场比赛。

沙斯塔已经放弃了，他开始思考狮子会怎么对待猎物。是会迅速咬死，还是会像猫咪玩弄老鼠那样玩弄猎物？会有多疼呢？与此同时他还观察了周围的一切（有时候人在极度恐惧时会这么做）。他注意到另一位骑手身着盔甲（月光洒在盔甲上），身材并不算高，体型瘦削，骑术精湛。而且他没有蓄胡子。

前方一片平坦而又耀眼的景色映入眼帘，沙斯塔甚至还没来得及思考这是什么，溅起的水花便叫他喝了一大口咸水。闪耀着的是一条狭长的海湾。水深及膝，两匹马儿在水中游起来。身后传来愤怒的咆哮声，沙斯塔回头看见岸边蹲伏着一个庞大的身影，那轮廓杂乱毛糙，可怕极了。不过那身影只有一个，他心里琢磨：“另一头狮子一定被甩在了后头。”

显然，这头狮子觉得为了猎物弄湿自己并不值得，至少它都没有表现出任何涉水追捕的意图。两匹马儿现在并肩游在海湾中央，对岸已清晰可见。塔尔坎还一言未发。“他肯定会开口的，”沙斯塔想，“一上岸他就会说些什么了。我该怎么解释？我得赶紧编个故事了。”

突然，两个声音在他的身侧响起。

“啊，我好累呀。”一个声音说。“闭嘴，赫温，别干蠢事儿。”另一个声音道。

“我一定是在做梦，”沙斯塔心想，“我发誓我听见另一匹马也在说话。”

不一会儿，马儿便不再游水而改为漫步前行，随后海水从他们身体两侧和尾巴流下，发出哗哗的声响，鹅卵石在八只马蹄的踩踏下嘎吱作响，接着他们便出了海湾到达远处的沙滩。令沙斯塔惊讶的是，这位塔尔坎并不打算问他问题，他甚至都没正眼瞧过沙斯塔，只急切地想要骑马离开。然而布里却立刻用肩挡住了那匹马的路。

“布鲁——呼——哈！”布里哼哼道，“别走！我都听见了！女士，别再装了，我听见了，你是一匹能言马，和我一样，是属于纳尼亚的马。”

“就算她是，那又与你何干？”那位陌生骑手恶狠狠地说道，手顺势放在刀柄上。不过沙斯塔已经从言语间的音色中听出了些端倪。

“啊，是个小姑娘！”他惊讶地说。

“我是不是小姑娘和你有什么关系？”陌生骑手厉声道，“你也不过是个小男孩儿罢了，一个既平凡又粗鲁的小男孩儿，说不定是个奴隶，还偷走了主人的马。”

“你就只知道这些东西。”沙斯塔说。

“这位小塔坎娜，他可不是小偷，”布里说，“如果你一定要说有什么被偷了的话，那也是我把他给偷走了。至于是否与我有关，在陌生国度遇见了与我同一种族的女士，你却要求我缄口不言，这可不合适吧？与她交谈才符合常情。”

“我也如此认为。”母马如是说。

“我真希望你从没开过口，赫温。”女孩儿说，“看看你都给我们惹了些什么麻烦。”

“我不认为这很麻烦，”沙斯塔说，“只要你想你就走呗，我们又不会拦你。”

“对，你们就不该拦。”女孩儿说。

“人类可真会吵架啊，”布里对那匹母马说，“和骡子一样招人嫌。我们来聊些有意义的吧，女士，我猜你的经历和我一样？幼年被捕，沦为奴隶，在卡乐门侍奉了他们好些年？”

“先生，你说的没错。”母马忧郁地嘶鸣。

“现在，或许——正在逃跑？”

“让他管好自己的事儿，赫温。”女孩儿道。

“不，娅拉维斯，”母马的耳朵向后折去，“你在逃跑，我也是。我相信像他这样高尚的战马是不会背叛我们的。我们在想办法逃跑，逃去纳尼亚。”

“当然，我们也是，”布里接过话，“你一定立刻就猜到了。夜深人静之时，一个衣衫褴褛的小男孩儿骑着（或者说试图骑着）战马在外，他必然是在逃，没有其他可能。然而，要我说，一位出身高贵的塔坎娜在深夜身穿她哥哥的盔甲独自策马外出，还分外焦虑地想让所有人别管闲事、别问她问题——好的，如果这都称不上可疑，我就是匹傻马！”

“行吧，”娅拉维斯说，“你猜得没错，我和赫温确实在逃。我们打算去纳尼亚。所以现在，你想怎样？”

“啊，既然如此，我们何不相伴而行呢？”布里说，“赫温女士，我相信你不会拒绝接受这一路上我能给予的帮助与保护吧？”

“你为什么总是和我的马说话而不和我说？”女孩儿问。

“不好意思，这位塔坎娜，”布里说（他的耳朵稍稍向后折了些），“你那是卡乐门式对话，而我和赫温属于自由的纳尼亚。并且，我认为如果你打算去纳尼亚，那你也是渴望自由的。既然如此，赫温就不再是属于你的马了，也可以说你是属于赫温的人类。”

女孩开口想要说些什么，但又闭了嘴。显然，她从未从这个角度出发考虑过问题。

“但是，”她停顿片刻后再度开口说，“我仍然不懂结伴同行有什么意义。这样不是更引人注目吗？”

“不会。”布里说。母马开口道：“啊，就一起走吧，我觉得那样会好受得多。况且我们连路都认不清。我确信他这样的战马比我们懂得多。”

“算了吧，布里，”沙斯塔说，“让她们自己走吧。你看不出她们不想和我们一起吗？”

“我们非常希望和你们一起。”赫温说。

“那么，”女孩说，“战马先生，我不介意与你一起走，但这个男孩儿怎么说？万一他是个间谍呢？你要我如何确信？”

“你怎么不直接说你觉得我配不上和你同行呢？”沙斯塔说。

“沙斯塔，安静，”布里说，“这位塔坎娜的疑问非常合理。塔坎娜，我可以为他担保，他是我的好朋友，对我相当真诚。而且，我确定他不是纳尼亚人就是亚钦兰人。”

“那就这样吧，我们一起走吧。”不过她没对沙斯塔说任何话，显然她只想和布里一起，而不是和他。

“棒极了！”布里说，“既然海水把我们和那些可怕的猛兽隔开了，你们两个人类不如把马鞍卸下吧，咱们都休整一会儿，听听对方的遭遇。”

两个孩子都卸下了马背上的鞍，马儿吃了些草，娅拉维斯从她的挂袋里拿出了些精致的食物，但沙斯塔还在生闷气便拒绝了，声称自己并不饿。他试图表现出高傲的姿态，然而作为渔夫的儿子他哪儿能学来这种贵气，于是这番伪装相当糟糕。他自己隐约也明白他装得不太成功，于是便更气了，心里满是前所未有的尴尬。与此同时，两匹马儿倒是相处融洽。他们回忆着纳尼亚比佛坝上的草地，那是他们共同记得的地方，并且他们还发现彼此是失散的远房亲戚。这令在场的人类感觉更加无所适从。最后，布里说：“好了，塔坎娜，来说说你的故事吧。不用急，慢慢说，我现在感觉舒服极了。”

娅拉维斯立刻纹丝不动地坐在那儿开始了叙述，说话的语调和风格与平时截然不同。就像英国的孩子们需要学习论文写作，在卡乐门，讲故事（不管故事是真实的或是捏造的）同样是一项需要学习的技能。两者的区别在于从未听说过有人爱读论文，但是故事，人们往往都是爱听的。

第三章
抵达塔什班

“我是娅拉维斯塔坎娜，”小女孩儿立刻说了起来，“是基德拉斯塔尔坎的独生女。从阿尔迪布蒂斯罗克开始，一直到伊尔桑贝蒂斯罗克、老基德拉斯塔尔坎、利什提塔尔坎和我的父亲基德拉斯塔尔坎，我的家族成员都是塔什神的正统后裔。我父亲是掌管卡拉瓦尔省的勋爵，也是一个有资格穿着鞋站在蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）面前的人物；我母亲已经过世了（愿众神保佑她灵魂安息），父亲续弦了。我哥哥在镇压西部偏远地区叛乱时战死沙场，而我弟弟尚且年幼。我的继母，也就是父亲新娶的女人，她对我恨之入骨，在她眼里，但凡我还生活在这个家里，太阳也会失去光芒，所以她一直在劝我父亲早早把我嫁出去，嫁给亚霍斯塔塔尔坎。这家伙出身低贱，但他阴损伎俩可不少，还善于溜须拍马，靠着这些，近几年他成了蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的宠臣，不仅成为塔尔坎，而且掌管着许多城市。等现任总理大臣逝世后，他极有可能被推选为下一任总理大臣。另外，他起码也有六十多岁了，长得像只大猩猩，还驼背。即使如此，考虑到亚霍斯塔位高权重、腰缠万贯，再加上我继母的极力劝说父亲便派了信使提出这门亲事，亚霍斯塔很高兴地接受了，还说要在今年夏天完婚。”

“听到这个消息，我感觉天都要塌了，躲在床上哭了整整一天。但第二天，我便起床洗脸，给赫温安上马鞍，带着我哥哥西征时曾用过的锋利匕首独自骑马出门了。视野里看不到父亲的宅邸时，我进入了一片渺无人迹的树林，林中有块开阔的绿地，我在那儿下马，解开衣服露出我认为最接近心脏的地方，拿出了匕首，心中向众神祈祷让我死后能与哥哥团聚。就在我闭上双眼、咬紧牙关打算将匕首刺入心脏时，一个人类女孩儿的声音响起，是马儿开口说话了：‘我的女主人，无论如何你也不该自杀。你若是活着，或许还有转机，可你若是死了，那就真的结束了。’”

“我口才应该没那么好吧。”赫温低声喃喃道。

“嘘，女士，安静些，”布里正沉浸于故事的氛围中，“她故事讲得可真好，非常卡乐门式，比蒂斯罗克宫殿里的所有人讲得都要好。请继续讲吧，塔坎娜。”

“听到马儿竟然说起了人话，”娅拉维斯继续说道，“我还以为对死亡的恐惧已然让我失去理智，陷入幻觉，这令我羞愧难当，对于我的族人们来说，面对死亡应该与被虫咬毫无区别，没有人会畏惧死亡。于是，我再次举起了匕首，赫温却在此时来到我身边，用脑袋将我和匕首隔开，接着就像母亲对待女儿那样严厉地训斥我，给我讲许多深刻的道理。我心中只剩下了万般惊奇，无论是自杀还是亚霍斯塔全被抛之脑后，我开口问道：‘马儿，你是怎么学会像人类女孩儿一样说话的？’赫温的回答想必在座各位也都清楚，在纳尼亚会说话的动物一点儿也不稀奇；她还是个幼崽时就被偷了出来。她还给我描述了纳尼亚的森林、河流、城堡与大船，最后我开口说：‘我以塔什神、亚扎罗素神与暗夜女神扎蒂娜之名起誓，我殷切盼望生活在纳尼亚。’赫温回答我说：‘我的女主人，在纳尼亚，没有任何人会违背女孩儿的个人意愿强迫她嫁与别人，在那儿你一定会生活得幸福无比。’”

“我们聊了许久，我内心再次燃起希望，庆幸自己自杀未果。而且，我与赫温达成一致，打算共同逃离卡乐门。按照制订的计划，我们首先回到宅邸，我穿上了最漂亮的衣服在父亲面前载歌载舞，装作很满意这门亲事的样子。之后我对父亲说：‘啊，亲爱的父亲，我非常开心，但是按照习俗，女孩儿出嫁前必须向少女与暗夜之女神扎蒂娜曾给予的庇护表达感谢并告别，请您允许我带上一位女仆到森林中住三天，完成向扎蒂娜的献祭仪式。’父亲回答我说：‘我亲爱的女儿，当然没问题，我也很高兴。’”

“不过我从父亲那儿离开后，便径直去找他的大臣，也是跟随他最久的一位仆人。小时候他就经常把我放在他的膝头哄我玩，他对我的关爱远胜空气与阳光。我请求他发誓为我保密，并替我写一封信。他老泪纵横地恳求我改变主意，但最终他还是说：‘遵命。’并且他也替我写了信，我把信封上后揣在怀中。”

“信里写了什么呢？”沙斯塔提问道。

“年轻人，保持安静，”布里说，“打断故事可是很扫兴的。她会在恰当的时机告诉我们信的内容。塔坎娜，继续讲吧。”

“随后，我叫来那个要和我一同去林中向扎蒂娜献祭的女仆，要她一早就叫我起床。之后我便与她一同嬉戏打闹，还拿来酒给她喝。不过我在酒里掺了些东西，她喝下后必定要睡上一天一夜才会醒来。等到家里人全部入睡后，我就穿上哥哥的盔甲——因为想记住哥哥，我一直把他的盔甲放在我卧室中——把所有钱都藏进腰带中，再带上些上品珠宝和食物，亲手套好马鞍后，到了下半夜便策马出逃了。我父亲认为我会去森林，但我的路线却是北上后往东走，去往塔什班。”

“我父亲并没有怀疑我，至少有三天左右的时间他不会搜查我的下落。第四天，我们抵达雅津博达城。雅津博达是许多大路的交汇处，蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的信使们从那儿快马加鞭奔赴王国的每寸土地，一些位高权重的塔尔坎拥有特权让信使们送信。于是我便进城到帝国邮政大厅见信使长，对他说：‘信使长，这儿有一封信，是我叔叔亚霍斯塔塔尔坎写给卡拉瓦尔省勋爵基德拉斯塔尔坎的。给你五个新月币，替我把信送去。’信使长领命照办。”

“信是以亚霍斯塔的名义伪造的，大意如下：‘亚霍斯塔以所向披靡、势不可挡的塔什神的名义，向基德拉斯塔尔坎致以问候。敬启，在下奔赴尊府以期订下与令爱娅拉维斯塔坎娜的婚约，众神庇佑，半途与令爱在林中不期而遇，彼时令爱已按照少女习俗完成向扎蒂娜的献祭仪式。获知其身份，在下被令爱的美貌与灵动深深吸引，难掩钦慕之情，若不能立刻完婚，便觉得往后的日子实在暗无天日。因此，我预备了必需的祭品，与令爱相逢的那刻便结为夫妻，将她带回舍下。在下与令爱皆盼望您能尽快赶赴舍下，与您共叙佳话；另外由于花费甚多，期待您能同时带来夫人的嫁妆，切勿耽误良辰。虽然在下与令爱仓促成婚，但这皆是因为爱得深沉。你我两人情同手足，想必您不会生气。愿诸神保佑您。’”

“寄完信我便快马加鞭离开雅津博达，我倒并不担心会有人追来，父亲收到信后，应该会给亚霍斯塔回信或亲自前往他的宅邸。这样一来，事情败露时我也早已离开塔什班。在今晚被狮子追赶、海中游泳并遇到你们之前，这便是我的故事里最主要的部分了。”

“那个被你下了药的女孩儿会怎么样？”沙斯塔问。

“毫无疑问会因晚起而挨打，”娅拉维斯冷声说道，“不过她是我继母派来的密探，被继母利用了。她被打了我才高兴呢。”

“我觉得这并不公平。”沙斯塔说。

“我做这些事儿又不是要取悦你。”娅拉维斯道。

“还有一个问题我不太理解，”沙斯塔提问，“你还没成年呢，我不信你年纪比我还大，我也不信你和我一样大。你这年纪，怎么能结婚呢？”

娅拉维斯一言不发，不过布里立刻接了话：“沙斯塔，别再丢人现眼了。这年纪的贵族塔尔坎们一般都结婚了。”

沙斯塔感觉自己受到了斥责，脸涨得通红（虽然光线很暗，别人也看不清）。娅拉维斯请布里讲讲他的故事，布里讲了，不过沙斯塔认为，布里添油加醋讲了过多有关他拙劣骑术与连连摔倒的事儿。显然布里觉得这段非常有趣，但娅拉维斯并没有笑。布里讲完故事，大家便都睡下了。

次日两人两马便结伴出发了。不过沙斯塔认为，之前他和布里一同走的时光要愉快得多，现在基本上只有布里和娅拉维斯在谈天说地。毕竟布里在卡乐门生活了许久，又总是与塔尔坎和他们的马在一起，所以顺理成章地知道不少娅拉维斯也认识的地方与人。娅拉维斯总是会谈起类似的话题，比如：“如果你也参加了祖林德雷之战，那你应该见过我的表兄亚利麦什。”布里便会接过话茬说：“哦，亚利麦什，他是管战车的吧。我其实不太喜欢战车以及那些拉战车的马，那称不上是真正的骑兵。不过他确实是位值得尊重的贵族。攻下提贝斯城后，他给我装了满满一粮袋的糖呢。”又或者布里会提起说：“那年夏天我去了米兹里尔湖。”然后娅拉维斯便会接着说道：“啊，米兹里尔！我朋友拉莎若琳塔坎娜就住在那里。那儿可真是个好地方，想想那些花园，还有千馥芳谷！”沙斯塔时常感觉自己被刻意冷落了，尽管布里绝无此意。如果好些事儿大家都知道，他们便会情不自禁地讨论起来，而你刚好在场的话，总会忍不住感觉被隔绝在外了。

母马赫温在布里这般骁勇的战马面前显得异常害羞，很少开口说话；而娅拉维斯若非必要，绝不开口与沙斯塔交谈。

然而，他们很快便要面临更重要的问题了。他们逐渐靠近塔什班城，这一路上村庄更多更大了，路上的人也越来越多。他们现在几乎都是夜间赶路，白天则尽可能找地方藏起来。抵达塔什班后要做些什么也成了他们每次停下歇息时争论不休的问题。这个难题就这样被拖到了现在，但是眼下，他们必须着手解决了。相较于泛泛空谈，人们在商定计划时总会相处得更为融洽，因此，在讨论过程中，娅拉维斯对沙斯塔也稍微友好了一点，就一点点。

布里认为当务之急是要决定位于塔什班城另一头的汇合点，倘若穿越城市的时候他们非常不走运地走散了，那么他们也可以在事先约定的地方碰面。他提出最合适的汇合点是在沙漠边缘处的古国王墓。“那里有些类似巨型石蜂房一样的东西，”布里说，“你们一定能看到的。最大的优点是卡乐门人认为那里是食尸鬼的地盘，出于恐惧他们都不会去那儿。”娅拉维斯问是不是真的有食尸鬼，布里表示自己是一匹自由的纳尼亚马，他不相信这些卡乐门传说。于是沙斯塔顺着话说他也不是卡乐门人，所以他一点儿也不在意这些俗套的食尸鬼故事。这不完全是实话，但是这话倒是给娅拉维斯留下了深刻印象（虽然当时她也被这话惹恼了），她反击说来多少食尸鬼她都不会害怕。就这样，他们敲定古国王墓为汇合点，大家感觉事情解决得非常顺利，直到赫温弱弱地提出他们真正面对的问题并非穿过塔什班后该去哪儿，而是他们应该如何穿过塔什班。

“女士，这个问题就留到明天解决吧，”布里说，“现在，我们都该小睡片刻了。”

但这问题的确有些棘手。娅拉维斯首先提议大家干脆不要进城，趁着夜色从城南的河里游过去。但布里给出了两条反对理由：其一，河口过宽，赫温无法承受如此长距离的游水，尤其是她背上还坐着一个骑手（他认为自己也坚持不了，不过对此他没多说）；其二，河上船只来来往往，甲板上的人若是看见两匹马在渡河必定会刨根问底。

沙斯塔认为他们应该沿河绕到塔什班北部，从河面相对窄一些的地方渡河。但布里解释说河流沿岸好几英里尽是些花园和娱乐场所，贵族们可能会住在那儿，骑着马在路上转悠，还会在河上举办派对。实际上，那儿可能是娅拉维斯，甚至他自己，在这个世界上最可能被人认出来的地方。

“那我们只能变装了。”沙斯塔说。

赫温表示大家混在人群中反而不会被注意到，所以在她看来，从一个城门走到另一个城门直接穿过整个城市才是最安全的办法。不过她也同意乔装打扮一下。她说：“两个孩子都换上破破烂烂的衣服吧，装作农民或奴隶的样子。马具、其他东西还有娅拉维斯的盔甲都要捆起来，放在我们背上。孩子们一定要装出在赶马的样子，这样人们就会以为我们是普通的驮马了。”

“我亲爱的赫温，”娅拉维斯颇为不屑地说，“不管布里怎么伪装，谁都能轻易看出他是匹战马！”

“确实，我也这么认为。”布里从鼻子中喷出一团气，耳朵稍稍往后折了一些。

“我知道这个计划并不完美，”赫温说，“但我们别无选择。我们已经很久没有梳理过毛发了，模样与之前有所不同（至少我已经变了样）。我们往身上涂些泥巴，走路时装作疲惫懒散的样子，垂着脑袋，蹄子也别抬起来，也许这样我们就不会被注意到了。我们的尾巴也应该剪短一些，看上去不能太整洁，要弄得乱七八糟才好。”

“这位亲爱的女士，”布里说，“您有想像以那副尊容回到纳尼亚，我们会有多尴尬吗？”

“唔，”赫温柔声说（她是一匹相当明事理的母马），“能回到纳尼亚才是最主要的事。”

虽然大家都不太乐意，但最终还是不得不采用赫温的计划。计划实施起来并不简单，其中一些环节被沙斯塔称为“偷窃”，而布里则认为是“抢劫”。某个农场在那天夜里丢了些麻袋；第二天晚上，另一个农场又丢了一卷绳子。不过，给娅拉维斯穿的男孩儿的破衣服，他们还是去村子里花钱买来了。黄昏将近，沙斯塔开心地带着破衣服回来，其他伙伴们正在树林间等他，这树林在一片植被茂密的矮山坡下，山坡边便是他们要走的路。想到这是他们要翻过的最后一个山坡，大家都有些激动，爬到坡顶他们便能够俯瞰塔什班城。“但愿我们能够安全通过塔什班。”沙斯塔低声对赫温说。“是的，我也希望。”赫温热忱地附和道。

那天夜里他们沿着伐木工人走过的曲折小径穿过树林抵达坡顶。从林中走出的那一刻，他们望向脚下的山谷，万千灯火闪耀其中。沙斯塔从不知晓大城市的模样，眼前的景象着实吓到了他。吃过晚餐后孩子们便睡了，不过第二天马儿们一大早便把他们叫醒。

身下的草地冰冷潮湿，繁星尚未隐去，而右边相去甚远的海平面上已渐渐泛出黎明的曙光。娅拉维斯走了几步钻进林子，回来时她已经套上那身破破烂烂的新衣服，看起来有些古怪。原先的衣服已经捆好了，连同她的盔甲、短弯刀、两个挂袋还有质量上乘的其他马具一起扔进了麻袋中。布里与赫温已经尽力把自己弄得满身污泥脏乱不堪了，剩下的工作便是把尾巴剪短。唯一能用来完成这项工作的只有娅拉维斯的短弯刀，于是他们只能再次打开其中一个麻袋把短弯刀拿出来。割尾巴相当费时，对马儿来说也相当难受。

“天哪！”布里喊道，“要不是因为我是能言马，我一定会狠狠地踹你的脸！我以为你在剪尾巴，可我感觉你现在就是在生拉硬扯！”

虽说他们的手指被冻得冰凉，天色也尚未完全亮起，最终一切都大功告成了。马儿们驮着大麻袋，孩子们手中攥着勒绳（他们现在用普通的绳子代替缰绳与马鞍），就这样他们踏上了征途。

“记着，”布里说，“尽量一起行动。如果走散了就在古国王墓汇合；不管谁先到，一定要等其他人和马。”

“还要记住，”沙斯塔补充，“无论发生什么，你们两匹马千万记住自己的身份，不要开口说话。”

第四章
沙斯塔邂逅纳尼亚人

最初，沙斯塔只能望见一片雾海中露出的影影绰绰的穹顶与塔尖。随着阳光增强，薄雾散尽，更多景象浮现在他眼前：宽阔的河流在此分为两支，世界名胜之一的塔什班城矗立于两条支流间的岛屿之上。高高的城墙沿着岛屿的轮廓拔地而起，海浪拍打着石墙；墙上有数不尽的高塔用以加固城墙，沙斯塔数了一会儿便放弃将它数清了；在城墙内，小岛上耸起一个小山坡，从坡底向上至坡顶蒂斯罗克的宫殿与宏伟的塔什神殿，每一寸土地上都立满了建筑——阡陌交通，露台毗邻，道路弯弯曲曲，阶梯层层堆叠，橙子树与柠檬树排列两旁，有屋顶花园、阳台、拱门、柱廊、尖塔与城垛，还有清真寺的塔尖与哥特式的尖顶。太阳终于跃出海平面，神殿巨大的银色圆顶反射出耀眼的光芒，令沙斯塔头晕目眩。

“跟上，沙斯塔！”布里不断提醒着。

山谷两侧遍布河岸花园，初看时恍若一片森林，靠近仔细看才会发现无数房屋的白墙悄悄从树林后露出。不一会儿，沙斯塔便嗅到了鲜花与水果的香甜气味。大约十五分钟后，他们便被花园包围了，走在路上，两侧都是白墙，树枝从墙内伸出，压出一个弧度。

“要我说，”沙斯塔惊叹道，“这可真是个好地方呀！”

“的确如此，”布里接道，“但我更希望我们能平安通过塔什班到达城市另一头，然后北上回到纳尼亚！”

就在此时，一个令人心悸的低沉声音逐渐响起，声音愈发响亮，整个山谷似乎都随之颤动。那声音优美动听，却又气势磅礴、庄严肃穆，叫人不禁有些害怕。

“那是示意城门开启的号角，”布里说，“我们马上就要到了，娅拉维斯，你一会儿让肩垮下来，脚步重一些，试着让自己看起来不那么像位公主。想象着你这辈子，总是被人拳打脚踢、恶语相向。”

“既然说到这个，”娅拉维斯说，“那你也把脑袋垂下来，别老挺着脖子，努力装得不那么像一匹战马行吗？”

“嘘，”布里说，“我们到了。”

他们确实到了。站在河边时，一座多孔拱桥映入眼帘。河水在晨曦中雀跃地泛着波光，右边靠近河口处也立着不少船桅。一些路人已经赶在他们前头上了桥，大多都是些农民，或赶着骡子、毛驴，或头顶篮筐运货进城。孩子们与马儿便跟着汇入人流。

“怎么了？”沙斯塔见娅拉维斯脸色不对，便悄声问道。

“你是觉得挺好，”娅拉维斯语气有些冲，“塔什班对你来说也许不算什么，但对我呢？我本该舒舒服服地坐在轿子上去蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的宫殿参加宴会，有士兵和仆人前呼后拥，而不是像现在这样狼狈躲藏！和你可不一样！”

沙斯塔觉得这话真是愚蠢透顶。

城墙高高耸立在拱桥遥远的另一端，黄铜城门大开着，城门其实很宽，但在城墙高度的映衬下显得有些窄。六名士兵倚着长矛守在城门两侧，娅拉维斯忍不住想道：“他们要是知道我父亲是谁，一定会立刻站好向我行礼的。”而其他人都在考虑该如何进城，满心希望士兵不要提问。他们运气不错，士兵确实没发问，不过其中一个士兵从农民的篮子里拿了根胡萝卜扔向沙斯塔，粗鲁地大笑起来，说：

“嘿！小马夫！要是你的主人发现你竟然用他的坐骑运货，你可就倒霉咯！”

沙斯塔被吓得够呛，显然，但凡对马略知一二的人都看得出布里是匹战马。

“我主人命令我这么干的，就是这样！”沙斯塔说。如果他闭上嘴巴也就没事儿了，可他偏偏要顶嘴，于是士兵给了沙斯塔的侧脸一拳，差点就把他打趴了，士兵说：“小屁孩儿，受着吧，让我用拳头教教你该怎么和自由人说话！”不过他们还是顺利溜进了塔什班城，未受阻拦。沙斯塔只落了几滴泪，对他来说挨打简直是家常便饭。

进了城，塔什班看起来不如初次远眺时那般繁华喧嚣了。第一条街并不宽阔，沿街的墙上也没什么窗户，街上比沙斯塔预想的更为拥挤，不仅挤满了与他们一同进城、要去市场上的农民，还有不少卖水产的、卖蜜饯的、搬运工、士兵、乞丐、衣衫褴褛的小孩儿、母鸡、走失的狗、赤脚的奴隶也随处可见。走在这条街上，最引人注意的还是这里的气味，混杂了没洗过澡的人与狗的体味、大蒜味、洋葱味、臭气还有四处堆积的垃圾的腐臭味。

沙斯塔装作带路的样子，实际上布里才是领路人，他轻轻耸动鼻子来暗示沙斯塔。没过多久，他们便左转开始往一个陡坡上走，这儿的空气可谓沁人心脾，景色也更优美。树木沿着大路种在两侧，只有右边盖了房子，往左看去则是下边城镇的屋顶，还能看见更远处的河流。接着，他们向右转了个U形弯继续爬坡，一路沿着蜿蜒曲折的上坡向塔什班的中心进发。很快他们便走到了路况更好的街上，众神与卡乐门英雄的巨型雕像矗立在闪闪发光的底座上，不过与其说这些雕像赏心悦目，倒不如说是令人印象深刻才对。棕榈树与柱廊在烫脚的人行道上投下阴影，穿过无数宫殿的拱门后，翠绿的树枝、清凉的喷泉与柔软的草坪映入沙斯塔的眼帘，他猜想那里头一定很舒服。

每次转弯，沙斯塔都希望他们可以摆脱拥挤的人群，然而事与愿违。他们因此走得很慢，时不时还得完全停下，因为总有人用刺耳的声音大喊着“让路，让路，快给塔尔坎让路”，又或者是“给塔坎娜让路”“给第十五任总理大臣让路”“给大使让路”，诸如此类，听到声音，人群就把道让开，一窝蜂地挤到墙边。有时沙斯塔越过人群就能看到那些大勋爵和夫人们，他们懒懒地倚在轿中，四个或六个上身赤裸的奴隶抬轿走过，把人群搅得乱七八糟。在塔什班，唯一的交通规则便是地位低的人必须给地位高的人让路，否则就会被鞭子抽打或被长矛手柄猛戳。

这条街道十分繁华，距离山顶很近（再往上去便只有蒂斯罗克的宫殿了），也是在这儿，倒霉的事发生了。

“让开！让开！让开！”喊声传来，“快给白皮肤的外族国王、蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的贵客让路！都把路给纳尼亚的勋爵们让开！”

沙斯塔努力想要让开，并把布里牵回来。但这种情况下，无论是普通的马还是纳尼亚的能言马都无法轻易地全身而退。一个挎着棱角分明的篮子的妇人正站在沙斯塔身后，她用篮子使劲儿地推搡着沙斯塔的肩膀，嚷道：“够了！你别再推了！”随后，边上又有人向他挤来，一片混乱中他没能握住牵着布里的绳子。接着，他身后的人群全都紧紧挤作一团，沙斯塔根本动弹不得，然后他发现自己不知不觉地被挤到了最前面，可以清晰地看见即将经过大街的贵宾们。

这群人与他当天见到的其他人截然不同。整个队伍共有六人，他们没有乘轿，所有人都在步行，除了在最前方嚷着“闪开，闪开”的是卡乐门人，其他人都有着与沙斯塔如出一辙的白皙皮肤，而且大多都有一头金发。他们的穿着打扮也与卡乐门人不同，大多数人都光着小腿，束腰外衣有草绿色的、明黄色的还有亮蓝色的，色彩明艳动人。他们头上也不裹头巾，大多数人都戴着钢盔或银帽，有些人在帽子上镶了珠宝，还有一人帽子的两侧装饰着翅膀，也有少部分人没戴帽子。他们身侧的佩剑又长又直，与卡乐门的弯刀大不相同。一路上，他们谈笑风生，随意晃动着身体，舒展他们的肩膀与手臂，丝毫没有大多数卡乐门人那般神秘肃穆的模样，有个人甚至在吹口哨。谁都看得出，他们愿意和任何友好的人成为朋友，即使有些人不太友好，他们也不会有所介怀。沙斯塔觉得他们是他有生以来见过的最可爱的人。

然而欣赏这一场景的时间并未持续太久，令人窒息的事情便发生了。那些金发人的首领突然指着沙斯塔大喊起来：“在那里！从我们这儿逃走的人就在那里！”接着他一把抓住沙斯塔的肩膀扇了他一巴掌——虽然这巴掌不会让人疼哭，但着实能让挨巴掌的人认识到自己犯了错——他摇晃着沙斯塔说道：

“天哪，你可真丢人现眼，我的殿下！你没有羞耻心吗！苏珊女王为你哭红了双眼，而你！竟然在外游荡了整整一夜！你跑哪儿去了？”

若是还有机会，沙斯塔真想一头钻到布里身下就此消失在人群中，可是那些金发的人已经把他团团围住，禁锢了他。

当然，他的第一反应是想坦白，告诉这些外国贵族们，自己不过是贫穷的渔夫阿什伊什的儿子，他们一定是认错人了。可是这里人山人海，他完全不想在这儿向大家坦白自己的身份，解释自己在做什么事。一旦开口，人们一定会问他许多问题，诸如马是从哪儿来的，娅拉维斯又是谁，等等等等，那他就再也不用妄想穿过塔什班城逃走了。之后他又望向布里，希望他能帮忙，可是布里也不愿让人们知道他会说话，于是他便呆愣地站在那儿，和一匹普通的马一样。至于娅拉维斯，沙斯塔担心会引起人们注意，连看都不敢看她一眼。不过沙斯塔也没有时间想办法了，纳尼亚人的首领紧接着便开口道：

“帕利丹，搀着小王子的手，尊敬些，另一只手我来搀。现在走吧，我们的王姐看到小淘气安然无恙地回来一定会很高兴。”

至此，他们穿越塔什班城的计划实施尚未过半便毁于一旦，他甚至都没机会与伙伴们告别。沙斯塔被夹在陌生人中带走，并不知晓将会面临什么情况。纳尼亚国王——依据其他人对他的说话方式，沙斯塔可以断定他是国王——不停地向他问话，比如：他去哪儿了？怎么跑出去的？他的衣服是怎么回事儿？是否认识到自己太过调皮？不过国王没说他“调皮”，只是说他“皮”。

沙斯塔默不作声，他实在想不出应该怎样回答才会安全。

“怎么？哑了吗？”国王问道，“王子，我明确告诉你，比起调皮捣蛋，这样狡猾的沉默不语更不符合你的身份。溜走可以解释为闹着玩儿，也能算作出于男孩子的探险精神。可是作为亚钦兰的国王之子，你必须敢作敢当，决不能像卡乐门的奴隶一样耷拉着脑袋。”

沙斯塔一直认为这位年轻的国王是最友善的大人，他想要给对方留下一个好印象，但这话听起来相当令人难过。

陌生人们紧紧抓住他的双手，带着他穿过一条窄街，下了一段小台阶后又从另一段台阶上去，走到一面白墙上的门廊前，门廊很宽，左右分别栽着一棵高大茂盛的柏树。沙斯塔穿过拱门，便进入到庭院里，这里也够称得上是一座花园了。正中间有一个大理石水池，清澈的喷泉潺潺流下落入其中；水池边是柔软的草地，草地上橘子树围绕着水池生长；四面白墙把草坪围起，墙上攀着不少玫瑰。喧嚣熙攘的街道与外界的尘埃似乎突然消逝不见了。他被人迅速带离花园，进入一个黑洞洞的门廊，而卡乐门的领路人被留在门外等候。他们带着他穿过一条走廊，阴凉的石头地板缓解了他脚底的热度，之后他们又上了楼，不一会儿他便眨着眼睛，发现自己已经在一个风凉宽敞又亮堂的房间里了，房间的窗大开着，因为窗户都朝北，所以没有阳光照入房间。地上铺着地毯，色彩如此艳丽，沙斯塔从未见过，他双脚陷入柔软的地毯中，仿佛踩着厚实的青苔。墙边摆满了矮矮的沙发，沙发上有许多靠垫，整个房间似乎有许多人，其中有些人看起来相当奇怪。但他已无暇细思，一位他所见过的最美丽的女士起身伸出手臂环抱住他，并亲吻了他，开口说道：

“科林啊科林，你怎么能这样呢？你母亲过世后我们关系那么好，若是找不到你，我回去后又该如何向你的父王交代？亚钦兰和纳尼亚自古以来都是友好邻邦，可你若出了意外，两国是否会因此开战呢？我的小伙伴啊，你这样对我们可就太皮了，非常皮。”

“很明显，”沙斯塔心想，“先不管亚钦兰在哪儿，这些人肯定都是纳尼亚人，我被他们误认为亚钦兰的王子了，可是真正的科林王子去哪儿了？”但是光想这些也无法帮助他大声作答。

“科林，你去哪儿了？”女士问道，双手依然搭在沙斯塔的肩头。

“我、我不知道。”沙斯塔结结巴巴地回答。

“苏珊，这就是问题所在，”国王说，“无论真话还是假话，我什么都问不出。”

“苏珊女王！爱德蒙国王！”一个声音响起。沙斯塔转身看向说话人时被吓得心惊胆战，说话的人正是他走进房间时瞥见的怪人之一。他大致和沙斯塔一样高，从腰部往上长着人的身体，可是他的腿却长得像羊，上面有许多羊毛，他甚至还长着羊蹄与羊尾巴。他皮肤极红，头发卷卷的，蓄着又短又尖的小胡子，脑袋上还顶着两只羊角。实际上他是个半人羊，但沙斯塔从未见过这种生物的画像，甚至从未听人提起过。如果你读过《狮子、女巫和魔衣橱》这本书，你或许会知道他正是苏珊女王的妹妹露西第一次进入纳尼亚时遇见的半人羊图姆纳斯。不过那是很久以前的事儿了，毕竟现在的彼得、苏珊、爱德蒙和露西已经成为纳尼亚的国王、女王好些年了。

“陛下，”他说道，“小王子或许是中暑了，你看他晕晕乎乎的样子，大概连自己在哪儿都不知道了。”

于是顺理成章地，所有人都没再责怪他，也没继续追问。他们小心地让他躺在沙发上，往他头下垫了些靠枕，又用金杯子装来冰镇果汁给他喝，还让他先别说话好好歇会儿。

沙斯塔平生从未享受过这样的礼遇。他从未想过，有朝一日竟能躺在如此舒适的沙发上，喝着美味可口的果汁。他还在思索他的伙伴们现在如何，他究竟要怎样逃去古国王墓与他们汇合，真正的科林现身后又会发生什么。不过现在这么舒服，这些烦恼似乎也不那么要紧了。说不定一会儿还能吃上一些好吃的呢！

与此同时，身处这个宽敞风凉的房间里的人也十分有趣，除了半人羊，还有两个他从未见过的小矮人和一只巨大的乌鸦。

其余都是些年轻的大人，他们无论男女，声音和容貌都胜过大部分卡乐门人。很快他们的谈话就引起了沙斯塔的兴趣。“现在，女王，”国王对苏珊女王（也就是那位亲吻沙斯塔的女士）说，“我们已经在这座城市住了三周了，你考虑得怎样？你决定好是否要嫁给那个脸很黑的追求者——拉巴达斯王子了吗？”

苏珊女王摇了摇头，说：“弟弟，我不嫁了。即使他愿意赠我塔什班所有的珠宝，我也不嫁。”（“哇哦！”沙斯塔心想，“虽说他们是国王与女王，可他们不是夫妻关系而是姐弟关系呀。”）

“姐姐，坦白说，”国王说，“你要是选择了他，我就不会那样爱戴你了。当初蒂斯罗克的大使首次来访纳尼亚商讨婚事时，还有之后拉巴达斯王子来凯尔帕拉维尔做客时，我便想不明白你究竟为何如此倾心于他。”

“这事是我太过愚昧了，爱德蒙，”苏珊女王说，“我恳求你能原谅我。当时他来纳尼亚时表现出的风度与如今在塔什班截然不同。我请大家为我作证，在我们的哥哥至尊国王彼得为他举办的马术比赛与长矛竞赛中，他所展现的技艺是多么出众；与他共度的七天时光中，他也是那么温柔体贴、文质彬彬。可如今，在他的城市里，他露出了自己的真实面目。”

“哇！”乌鸦叫道，“俗话说得好：不入熊窝则不知其真面目。”

“萨罗佩德说得没错，”一个小矮人说，“还有另一句呢：来吧，与我共同生活，你便能真正了解我。”

“是的，”国王开口，“我们现在已经认清了他的真面目，他就是一个狂妄自大、嗜杀成性、穷奢极欲、心狠手辣而且自命不凡的暴君。”

“狮王在上，”苏珊说，“让我们今日就启程离开塔什班吧。”

“姐姐，难处就在这儿，”爱德蒙说，“现在我要开诚布公地告诉大家这两三天盘旋在我脑中的想法。帕利丹，麻烦你到门那儿确认一下是否有人在监视我们。一切正常？好的，接下来的一切请诸位务必保密。”

所有人的神色都严肃起来。苏珊女王跳起来，奔向她的弟弟。“天哪，爱德蒙，”她喊道，“你的表情看起来相当可怕，怎么回事？”

第五章
科林王子

“我亲爱的姐姐，好心的女士，”爱德蒙国王说，“坦白告诉你，我们现在的处境相当危险，所以你一定要拿出勇气来。”

“爱德蒙，到底怎么了？”女王问。

“事情是这样的，”爱德蒙说，“我认为我们要离开塔什班并非轻而易举。当王子觉得你有希望选择他时，我们是他的贵宾；然而，以狮王的鬃毛起誓，倘若他被你拒绝了，我们便形同狱中囚徒。”

其中一个小矮人吹了声闷闷的口哨。

“我警告过您的，陛下，我警告过您，”乌鸦萨罗佩德说，“正如瓮中之鳖所言，进来容易出去难啊！”

“今天早上我同王子会面交谈，”爱德蒙继续说，“很遗憾，他非常不习惯有人违抗他的意愿。而且由于你态度模棱两可，又拖了许久，他已经火冒三丈了。今天早上他步步紧逼，想知道你的想法。我没有正面回答，给他讲了些女性幻想相关的玩笑话，希望能让他不要执着于此，同时也暗示他可能会追求未果，他便生气了，散发出危险的气息。尽管他表面上仍然温和有礼，但是他说的每个字都包含威胁之意。”

“是啊，”图姆纳斯说，“昨晚我同总理大臣共进晚餐时，情况也是如此。他问我对塔什班城的感受，我没法告诉他这里的每块石头都令人生厌，但我又不能撒谎，于是我告诉他，炎炎夏日即将到来，我有些怀念纳尼亚那凉爽的树林和露水晶莹的山坡了。他不怀好意地微微一笑，说：‘小羊蹄，没什么能阻止你重回纳尼亚尽情舞蹈，只要把王子的新娘留下，你随时都能离开。’”

“你是说他会强迫我成为他的妻子？”苏珊嚷道。

“苏珊，这正是我所担心的。”爱德蒙说，“倘若不愿做他的妻子，沦为奴隶可就更糟了。”

“他怎么能这样？难道蒂斯罗克认为我们的哥哥至尊国王会容忍如此暴行吗？”

“陛下，”帕利丹对国王说，“他们应该不会如此疯狂。莫非他们认为纳尼亚没有利剑、长矛吗？”

“哎，”爱德蒙叹道，“我猜蒂斯罗克并不把纳尼亚放在眼里。我们只是个小国，而帝国君主往往对帝国周边的小国充满敌意。他一心想除掉这些小国，吞并它们的国土。姐姐，恐怕最初他派王子以追求者的身份来访凯尔帕拉维尔，就是为了找机会下手对付我们。他很可能打算一口吞下纳尼亚和亚钦兰。”

“那就让他放马过来，”另一个小矮人说，“我们的海军力量不比他们差。他若是走陆路进攻，那还有沙漠挡着呢。”

“没错，我的朋友，”爱德蒙说，“但我们真的能完全倚仗沙漠来阻挡吗？萨罗佩德，你怎么看？”

“我非常了解那片沙漠，”乌鸦说道，“早些年我曾在沙漠上空四处翱翔，”（听到这儿，沙斯塔立即竖起耳朵）“我可以确定，倘若蒂斯罗克打算从宽阔绿洲进军，他绝不可能成功率领一支庞大的军队穿越沙漠入侵亚钦兰。即使他们第一天能够行军抵达绿洲，那儿的泉水也无法满足所有士兵与牲口的饮水需求。不过，他还有另一条路可走。”

沙斯塔一动不动，聚精会神地听着。

乌鸦说：“想要找到那条路，就必须从古国王墓出发，往西北方向走，径直奔赴派尔山双峰。骑马大约需要一天或略久一些，然后就会抵达石头山谷。这山谷相当狭窄，入口也很隐蔽，即使路过一千次都不容易发现。若是从山谷往下看，什么好东西都没，既没有水也没有草。可若是沿着山谷继续前行，就会有一条河出现，沿着河走便能抵达亚钦兰。”

“那卡乐门人是否知道西边这条路？”女王问道。

“我的朋友们，”爱德蒙说，“现在讨论这些有用吗？我们要考虑的并非纳尼亚与卡乐门哪一方能赢得战争，我们的当务之急是在讨论如何在保全女王名誉与自己性命的同时，逃离这个罪恶之都。就算我的哥哥至尊国王彼得能够打败蒂斯罗克若干次，可在那之前我们的喉咙早就被割断了，而女王也已成为拉巴达斯王子的妻子，更有可能沦为他的奴隶。”

“国王，我们还是有武器的，”第一个小矮人说，“而且这座房子也很牢固，可以抵挡进攻。”

“至于这点，”国王说，“我坚信在场所有人都会守在门口殊死抵抗，除非踩着我们的尸体，他们休想接近女王。可即使如此，我们也不过同陷阱中的老鼠一样，是在垂死挣扎罢了。”

“相当正确，”乌鸦扯着嗓子叫道，“在这座房子里最后一搏听起来很美，但这根本无济于事。敌人几次被击退后便会纵火烧了这房子。”

“都是我的错，”苏珊哭了起来，“要是我没有离开凯尔帕拉维尔该多好。卡乐门大使来访之前竟是我们最后的美好时光。摩尔人还在为我们建造花园呢……哦……天哪……”

苏珊掩面抽泣起来。

“勇敢些，苏珊，拿出勇气，”爱德蒙说，“记住——图姆纳斯大师你怎么了？”半人羊双手握住头上的角，仿佛想要以此固定住自己的脑袋一样；他身体内部似乎也很疼，全身抽搐起来。

“不要和我说话，不要和我说话，”图姆纳斯说，“我在想办法，所以喘不过气，我正在想呢，等一下，等等，再等一下。”

令人困惑的沉静持续片刻后，半人羊抬起头，深吸一口气，抓了抓额头说道：

“唯一的困难就是，我们需要做到在不被任何人发现或阻止的前提下，带着储备物品回到我们的船上去。”

“没错，”一个小矮人干巴巴地说，“就好像乞丐要是想骑马，而没有马就是他唯一的困难。”

“等等，别着急，”图姆纳斯不耐烦地说，“我们今天只要找个借口带着东西上船就行了。”

“然后呢？”爱德蒙国王将信将疑。

“那么，接下来，”半人羊说，“劳烦您邀请王子明晚到我们的大船‘绚烂晶莹’号参加一个盛大的晚宴，行吗？要注意措辞，不能压上女王的名誉，但要传达给王子我们女王的态度有所软化这一信息。”

“陛下，这听起来非常可行。”乌鸦叫道。

“然后，”图姆纳斯激动地往下讲，“所有人都会以为我们一整天都在船上为晚宴做准备。我们派些人去集市上买水果、糖果和酒，把钱全都用光，装作真的要宴请贵宾一样。再去请些魔术师、玩杂耍的，还有舞女与长笛演奏家，让他们明晚到船上来。”

“不错，不错，”爱德蒙国王搓着手说道。

“接着，”图姆纳斯说，“我们今晚就登船，天色一暗——”

“立刻扬帆起航——”国王说。

“把船开到海上——”图姆纳斯一边高呼一边蹦跶起来开始跳舞。

“我们鼻子向北——”一个小矮人说道。

“奔向家园！一路向北，直奔纳尼亚！”另一个小矮人接着说。

“等王子第二天早上醒来，就会发现他的鸟儿全飞走啦！”帕利丹拍着双手说。

“啊，图姆纳斯大师，我亲爱的图姆纳斯大师，”女王握住他的双手，摇晃身体与他一同翩翩起舞，“是你救了我们所有人！”

“王子会来追我们的。”另一个勋爵说道，沙斯塔没听到他叫什么名字。

“我倒不担心这个，”爱德蒙说，“我仔细看过河上的所有船，他们既没有高大战舰，也没有高速帆船。我倒希望他来追我们呢！就算我们被追上了，随便他派来什么船只，‘绚烂晶莹’号都可以把它们击沉。”

“陛下，”乌鸦说道，“我们在这儿商议七天了，不会再有比半人羊的计划更棒的了。我们鸟儿有句俗语，‘先筑巢再孵蛋’，也就是说，我们大家都先去吃饭吧，然后立刻着手实施计划。”

话音刚落，所有人都站了起来，房门也打开了，勋爵们和其他随从站在一旁，让国王与女王先行离开。沙斯塔正有些不知所措，图姆纳斯说：“小王子，您就躺在那儿吧，我一会儿就准备些美食给您送来。在我们万事俱备准备登船之前，您无须行动。”

沙斯塔重新将头枕在靠垫上，很快屋里就只剩他一人了。

“这回可真完蛋了。”沙斯塔心想。他从来都没有考虑过把真相向纳尼亚人全盘托出，然后再请求他们帮助。从小被阿什伊什那样铁石心肠、自私自利的人养大，他早已养成这样的习惯，凡是自己能够解决的问题，就一星半点儿也不让大人知道，他觉得这些大人总是在破坏、阻碍他想做的事。他认为，即使纳尼亚国王会因为赫温和布里都是纳尼亚的能言马而善待他们，他也会讨厌娅拉维斯的，毕竟娅拉维斯是卡乐门人，他们要不就会把她卖作奴隶，要不就会把她送回她父亲那儿。至于他自己，“我现在不能让他们知道我其实不是科林王子，”沙斯塔想，“我已经听到了他们的全部计划，要是被发现我和他们不是一伙儿的，他们绝不会让我活着走出这座房子。他们会担心我向蒂斯罗克出卖他们，我会被杀的。可要是真正的科林出现了，真相败露，他们还是会杀了我！”你看，品格高尚、生而自由的人是如何为人处世的，沙斯塔对此毫无概念。

“怎么办呢？我该怎么办呢？”他自言自语个不停，“怎么——啊，那个山羊似的小家伙又来了。”

半人羊手上捧着几乎同他身体一般大的托盘，跑跑跳跳地进了房间。他把托盘放在沙斯塔坐着的沙发边的桌上，然后盘着自己的羊腿在地毯上坐了下来。

“好啦，我的小王子，”他说，“好好饱餐一顿吧，这是您在塔什班的最后一餐啦。”

这些美食都是卡乐门风味的，你不一定欣赏，但沙斯塔很喜欢。托盘上有龙虾，有沙拉，和一只肚子里塞满杏仁与松露的鹅；还有一个什锦拼盘，里面有鸡肝、米饭、葡萄干和一些坚果；另外还有冰镇过的甜瓜、醋栗果泥、桑葚果泥和许多其他冰镇美食；除此以外还有一小壶酒，叫作“白酒”，不过颜色却是黄色的。

沙斯塔吃饭时，好心的小半人羊以为他还因中暑晕乎着，就不断给他描述回家后的幸福生活，给他讲善良的亚钦兰国王、他的好爸爸卢恩，给他讲南面山坡上他所居住的小城堡。“别忘了，”图姆纳斯说，“等到您下一个生日，您就能得到承诺给您的第一套盔甲与第一匹战马啦。到那时，王子您就要开始学习策马飞奔与持矛竞技了。彼得国王已经答应了您父王，再过几年，只要一切顺利，他就会亲自封您为凯尔帕拉维尔的骑士。同时，纳尼亚与亚钦兰也会跨过群山互相往来。对啦，您可别忘了，您答应过我要抽出一周时间陪我过夏日祭，到时候半人羊和树精会燃起篝火，整夜都在森林里翩翩起舞。谁知道会发生什么呢？说不定我们还会看见阿斯兰本尊呢！”

吃完饭，半人羊叮嘱沙斯塔乖乖在这儿休息。“您再睡一会儿也无妨，”他补充道，“过段时间我会来叫您登船的，然后我们就回家，一路向北，直奔纳尼亚！”

沙斯塔吃得相当满足，图姆纳斯告诉他的一切也令他十分着迷。当他再次被独自留在屋里时，他的想法发生了巨大变化。他现在只希望真正的科林王子晚些出现，这样他就可以登船去往纳尼亚了。恐怕他根本没有考虑过真正的科林被独自抛在塔什班会遭遇什么。想到娅拉维斯和布里还在古国王墓等他，他也有些担心。但接着他就对自己说“哎呀，我有什么办法呢？”以及“算啦，反正娅拉维斯觉得我不配与她同行，这下刚好，她可以一个人开开心心地走了”。与此同时，他又忍不住觉得，比起辛辛苦苦穿越沙漠，还是坐船走海路去纳尼亚更舒服些。

沙斯塔想着想着便陷入了沉睡。倘若你也曾很早起床，走过一长段路，心情大起大落，之后又享用了一顿美餐，躺在凉爽房间中的沙发上，除了从大开的窗户外飞进的一只蜜蜂在嗡嗡地叫，四周鸦雀无声，这样的环境下，你也会睡着的。

一声巨响把沙斯塔吓醒了，他从沙发上一跃而下，瞪大眼睛看着四周，屋里的光线与影子都有所不同，他由此判断自己一定睡了好几个小时。他发现声音是从窗台那儿传来的，那里原本立着一件贵重瓷器，而现在瓷器摔在了地上，成了三十来片碎片，但沙斯塔并没在意这些，他发现有两只手正扒在窗台外，那双手不断发力（关节都变白了），紧接着一个脑袋和一双肩膀便冒了出来。不一会儿，一个同沙斯塔年龄相仿的男孩儿就出现了，他一条腿垂在屋里，跨坐在窗台上。

沙斯塔从没照过镜子。即使他照过，他可能也没有发现眼前的男孩（作平常打扮时）和他长得几乎一模一样。因为此时此刻，这男孩和谁都不像。眼圈被打得发青，牙齿缺了一颗，衣服破破烂烂的（刚穿上时想必还十分华美），脸上满是血渍与污泥。

“你是谁？”男孩儿轻声问道。

“你是科林王子吗？”沙斯塔说。

“当然是了，”男孩说，“可你又是谁？”

“我谁也不是，我是说，我是谁一点儿也不重要，”沙斯塔答道，“爱德蒙国王在街上逮到了我，我猜我俩一定长得很像，所以他把我误认作你了。我能从你进来的地方溜走吗？”

“当然，只要你会爬就行。”科林说，“可你为什么这样着急？要我说，既然他们分不清咱俩，我们就该好好捉弄一下他们。”

“别，别，”沙斯塔拒绝说，“我们必须立刻恢复身份。要是图姆纳斯回来发现我们都在这儿，那就糟了。我之前只能假冒成你。今夜你们就要出发——悄悄地。这段时间你都去哪儿了？”

“路上遇到了个男孩儿，他居然敢拿苏珊女王开粗俗的玩笑，”科林王子说，“所以我就揍了他一顿。他哭着跑回家，然后他哥哥就出来了，我把他哥哥也打了一顿。之后他们就一直追我，直到我们撞上三个手持长矛的老警卫。我就和他们打了起来，结果被他们按倒在地。天色将晚时，他们打算把我带走找个地方关起来。于是我便问他们要不要喝酒，他们表示这样也行。我带他们去了一家酒馆，要了些酒，他们喝着喝着就睡着了。我觉得是时候逃跑了，于是我悄悄离开了酒馆，没想到又发现了最先遇到的那个男孩儿，就是他给我惹了那么多麻烦。看他还在街上游荡，我就又去揍他了。完事儿后，我顺着一座房子的水管爬到了屋顶上，在那儿静静地躺着，直到天明。之后我便一直在找回家的路了。对了，有什么喝的吗？”

“没了，被我喝完了。”沙斯塔说，“现在，告诉我你是怎么进来的吧，我赶时间。你最好躺到沙发上去假装——哦，我忘了，你脸上都是伤，眼圈被打得发青，怎么装都没用。等我安全离开后你就把真相告诉他们吧。”

“你以为我还会告诉他们别的什么吗？”科林王子看上去相当气愤，“还有，你到底是谁呀？”

“没时间了，”沙斯塔飞快地轻声说，“我相信我是纳尼亚人，至少是北方人。但我在卡乐门长大。我现在要穿过沙漠逃跑，有一匹名为布里的能言马和我一起。快！告诉我怎么出去。”

“你看，”科林说，“从这个窗户下到游廊屋顶上，一定要踮起脚尖轻轻走，不然会被人听见的。然后顺着左边一直走，你会看到一堵墙。如果你爬墙功夫不错，你就往上爬，之后沿着墙头到角落那儿，看准垃圾堆往下跳，你就成功出去了。”

“多谢。”沙斯塔一边说，一边坐上了窗台。两个男孩儿望向对方的脸，突然发觉他们已然成了朋友。

“再见了，”科林说。“祝你好运，但愿你能安全离开。”

“再见了，”沙斯塔说，“要我说，你的冒险可够刺激的。”

“没你的刺激，”科林说。“现在下去吧，注意动作轻点儿。”沙斯塔往下爬的时候，他又开口道，“希望能在亚钦兰与你重逢。到时候去找我父王卢恩，告诉他你是我朋友就行。万事小心！我听见有人来了。”

第六章
沙斯塔在古国王墓

沙斯塔踮起脚尖，轻轻沿着屋顶溜走，对于他赤裸的脚而言，屋顶实在太烫了。不一会儿他便攀爬至尽头的墙顶上，来到墙角。他低头看向底下散发着恶臭的狭窄街道，正如科林所言，墙的外侧的确有个垃圾堆。跳下去之前，沙斯塔迅速环顾四周来确定自己所在的位置。显然，他已经翻过了塔什班城所在山头的山顶。眼前的一切都斜斜向下，平坦的屋顶一个低过一个，一直到北面城墙上的城垛与塔楼，全都连成了一片斜坡。城墙之外便是河流，河流之外有个短短的斜坡，斜坡上是花园。如果再向外去便是沙斯塔从未见过的美景了。黄灰色的大海波澜不惊，海面绵延数千英里，一望无际。遥远的另一端立着蓝色的庞然大物，高低起伏，轮廓也参差不齐，其中一些还有着白皑皑的顶。“沙漠！大山！”沙斯塔心想。

沙斯塔纵身一跃，跳到垃圾堆上，尽可能快地沿着狭窄的小巷往坡下走。不一会儿他便转到另一条更宽的街上，行人也多了一些。虽说并没有人分神留意这个衣衫褴褛、赤脚飞奔的男孩儿，可他还是非常紧张，万分焦虑，直到他转了个弯，发现城门近在眼前才终于松了口气。出城的人可不少，沙斯塔在这儿好几次被人推搡。城门外的桥上，人们走得特别慢，看起来不像是人群，反倒像是排着的一列长队。沙斯塔在塔什班闻到了恶臭，感受了热浪，也听见了喧闹，现在终于出城了，桥两侧的河流显得那么清澈，城外的空气也变得无比清新甘甜。

过了长长的拱桥后，沙斯塔便发现人群逐渐散开，人们要不就沿着河岸往左走，要不就往右拐。沙斯塔沿着面前花园之间的大路径直往前走去，似乎很少有人往这儿走。没走多久路上便独剩他一人，再往前走几步他就到了坡顶。他在那儿驻足凝望，感觉自己似是来到了世界的尽头。草地在几英尺外戛然而止，只有沙子从那儿蔓延开来，如同海边的沙滩一样平坦而又无边无际，不过由于干燥，这儿的沙粒更为粗糙。群山在前方隐约可见，却比以往看起来更为遥远。沙斯塔望向左边，看见了墓地，大约五分钟就能走到，这让他精神一振。他确定那一定是古国王墓，和布里所描述的快崩裂的巨型蜂房状石块一样，不过这石块比布里描述中的稍窄些。逆着夕阳的余晖，这些石块显得相当阴冷灰暗。

他面朝西方，向墓地快步走去。尽管夕阳照在他脸上，他几乎什么都看不见，可他还是忍不住瞪大眼睛四处张望，期待能够找到伙伴们的踪迹。“无论如何，”他心想，“他们都会绕到墓地的另一头去，要是等在这儿，谁都能从城里看见他们。”

一共有十二个墓，每个墓前都有条低低的门廊通往绝对的黑暗。坟墓星罗棋布，排列无序。沙斯塔只好东绕一圈西绕一圈，确保自己把每个坟墓的每一边都找过了。这费了他不少时间，但他也只能这么做。墓地里一个人都没有。

这儿已经是沙漠边缘了，四处寂静无声。此时，太阳已经完全沉入西山。

突然，一个恐怖的声音从他身后传来，沙斯塔的心猛然一震，他拼命咬住自己的舌头以免自己惊声尖叫起来。很快，他便反应过来那是示意关闭城门的号角声。“别当个愚蠢的懦夫！”沙斯塔对自己说，“啊，那不过是和早上一样的声音而已。”可早上晚上听起来，心里感受却大有不同，早上听着这声音的时候，他正和伙伴们一同进城，可晚上再听，却是独自一人被关在城外。如今城门紧闭，沙斯塔料想今晚是无法与同伴们汇合了。“或许他们是被关在塔什班城里了，”沙斯塔心想，“也可能是他们丢下我走了。娅拉维斯是做得出这事儿的，不过布里才不会这样做。没错，他不会——啊，他会这样干吗？”

关于这点，沙斯塔又把娅拉维斯想错了。她的确骄傲，也够决绝，可对待同伴她忠诚如钢，无论她是否喜欢沙斯塔，她都绝不会抛下他不管。

现在沙斯塔确定自己要独自过夜了（天色越来越暗），墓地的氛围愈发让他觉得这地方令人生厌。这些巨大的石块静默而立，让沙斯塔很不舒服。他一直在努力让自己尽量别去想那些食尸鬼的传闻，可现在他终于挺不住了。

突然他感觉有什么东西碰了一下他的腿，于是他放声大喊：“啊！啊！救命啊！”我想，任何人感到身后有什么东西碰到了自己，都会大叫起来，这并不丢脸，尤其是当他深夜身处墓地时，会惊声尖叫也很正常。无论如何，沙斯塔已经害怕得连跑都不敢了。他已经被吓得不敢回头，要是还得被那玩意儿追着在古国王墓里一圈又一圈跑个没完，那就真的糟糕透顶了。他没跑，而是做出了当下最明智的举动。他望向四周，心终于安定下来。刚才碰到他的不过是只猫罢了。

光线太暗，沙斯塔看不清那只猫，只知道它体型不小，而且看起十分庄严肃穆。它看上去仿佛已经在这墓地独自生活了很久很久。它的双瞳令人不禁觉得它知道许多秘密，可它却不会告诉你。

“猫咪，小猫咪，”沙斯塔说道，“我想你应该不会说人话吧。”

那只猫狠狠瞪了他一眼后就走了，沙斯塔当然要跟着它走。猫带着他穿过墓地到了靠近沙漠那侧。随后它便笔挺地坐下，尾巴绕在脚边，它的脸朝向沙漠，对着北方和纳尼亚的方向。它的身体纹丝不动，仿佛在戒备敌人。沙斯塔背靠着那只猫躺下，脸朝着墓地的方向。人紧张时总会选择面朝危险的方向，背靠温暖而又结实的东西。你也许会觉得躺在沙子上很不舒服，不过沙斯塔已经在地上睡了好几周了，所以对此并不在意。很快他就陷入沉睡，可就算是在梦境中，他也依然在担心布里、娅拉维斯还有赫温会不会遇上麻烦。

突然，他被一个从没听过的声音惊醒了。“我可能是在做噩梦。”沙斯塔对自己说。被惊醒时，他多希望那只猫还在，可是它已经离开了。他依然静静地躺在那儿，甚至不敢睁开双眼。他坚信，倘若他坐起来环顾四周，看到那一片死寂的墓地，感受到那深切的孤独，他只会更加害怕。这道理就和大家都宁可用衣服蒙住脑袋一动不动地躺着一样。然而，声音再次传来——那声音尖锐刺耳，从沙斯塔背后的沙漠中而来。他只能睁开双眼坐了起来。

月色如银，墓地在月光的笼罩下微微泛着灰色，沙斯塔发现这墓地比他想象中更大，离他也更近。事实上，那些坟墓看起来就像是一个个遮住了脸庞与脑袋的可怕巨人，身上还裹着灰色的长袍。在陌生的地方独自过夜时，边上还有这些东西，实在令人感觉糟糕透顶。但由于那声音是从背后的沙漠传来的，尽管沙斯塔不太愿意，可他也只能转身背对坟墓，凝视面前这片广阔的沙漠。那粗犷的叫声再次响起。

“但愿别又碰上一头狮子。”沙斯塔心想。事实上，那声音与他遇上赫温和娅拉维斯那晚听到的狮吼不太一样，其实那是胡狼的吼声。不过沙斯塔当然不知道。他就算知道，也定然不愿遇到一头胡狼。

那胡狼长嗥不止。“不管那到底是什么，反正不止一头，”沙斯塔想，“而且就要过来了。”

我认为如果沙斯塔聪明的话，他就该穿过墓地回到河边，至少那儿有房屋，野兽不太会过去。但那里会有（或者说他认为会有）食尸鬼。穿过墓地意味着他还要经过坟头前那些黑洞洞的门廊，万一有什么东西从那里钻出来怎么办？虽然听起来很愚蠢，但沙斯塔宁可冒险面对野兽。然而，随着叫声越来越靠近，他渐渐改变了主意。

就在他打算逃跑时，一个体型庞大的动物突然出现在他与沙漠之间。它逆着月光，看上去黑乎乎的，沙斯塔认不出这是哪种动物，只知道它有个长着杂乱毛发的大脑袋，用四条腿行走。它突然停下，扭头冲着沙漠大吼一声，似乎并没注意到沙斯塔的存在。那吼叫声在墓地中回荡，沙斯塔脚下的沙土似乎也被撼动了。其他动物的叫声戛然而止，沙斯塔觉得自己甚至能听见它们仓皇逃窜时的脚步声。接着，那头硕大的猛兽转身打量起沙斯塔。

“是狮子，我就知道是狮子，”沙斯塔心想，“我完了，不知道会不会很疼。赶快结束吧。人死后会发生什么呢？啊——啊啊！它过来了！”他闭上双眼，咬紧牙关。

然而预想中的尖牙利爪并没有刺入他的身体，他只感到一个温热的东西在他脚边躺了下来。他睁开双眼道：“哎？它比我想象中要小得多！才一半大！不对，连四分之一都不到。我敢保证这就是只猫！我刚刚竟以为它和马一样大，我一定是在做梦！”

无论是否只是个梦，现在躺在他脚边、透过那双翠绿的大眼睛目不转睛地凝视着他、盯得他心里发毛的，确实是只猫，一只他有生以来见过的最大的猫。

“是你呀，猫咪，”沙斯塔松了口气，“很高兴能再次见到你，我梦见了许多可怕的事情。”接着，他便立即同最开始一样与猫背靠背躺下了。大猫温热的身体令他全身都暖和起来了。

“我这辈子再也不会对猫不好了，”也不知沙斯塔是对自己还是对猫说，“我伤过一次猫，你知道，我向一只骨瘦嶙峋的老流浪猫扔过石头。哎呀，停下！”猫回过身挠了他一下。“我再也不会做伤害猫的事了。”沙斯塔说，“搞得好像你能听懂我在说什么似的。”随后他便打起瞌睡了。

第二天早上沙斯塔醒来时，猫已经走了。太阳挂在空中，把沙子烤得热乎乎的。沙斯塔感觉渴极了，他坐起来揉了揉眼睛，这沙漠白得晃眼。他能隐约听见身后城市的喧哗，但他的身边却悄无声息。他稍稍往左，看向西面，使眼睛不受阳光直射，这样他才能看见远方沙漠尽头处的群山，山峦轮廓分明，清晰可见，仿佛他们之间仅有一箭之遥。他特别注意到一处有着两座山峰的蓝色高地，那应该就是派尔山了。“根据那只乌鸦的话，我们要往那个方向走，”他想，“我得弄清楚，这样其他人来了的话就不用再耽误时间去确认了。”于是他便对着派尔山的方向，用双脚踩出了一条笔直清晰的深沟。

显然，沙斯塔接下来需要准备些食物和饮品。往回穿过古墓时，他感到有些奇怪，现在看来这些坟墓非常普通，可自己先前为何如此害怕？他走到河岸旁的耕地边，城门几小时前就开了，赶早的人群已经进了城，所以这里人并不多，他“抢劫”（布里是这么说的）起来也毫无难度。他翻了堵墙进入花园，偷摘了三个橘子、一个甜瓜、一两个无花果和一个石榴。之后沙斯塔来到离拱桥有些距离的河岸，喝了些水。感觉这水还不错，他便脱下那身又闷又脏的衣服，在河里泡了一会儿。作为在海边长大的孩子，沙斯塔几乎在刚会走路时便学会游泳了。从河里出来，他躺在草坪上眺望河对岸壮丽辉煌、固若金汤的塔什班城，但他也没有忘记这座城市有多危险。他突然意识到，或许在他泡澡时其他人已经赶到古国王墓了（“而且很可能抛下我就走了”），于是他惊恐地穿上衣服以最快速度飞奔而去，赶回墓地时他又热又渴，沐浴后的清爽感也消失不见了。

独自等待的时光大多都是这样，这一天似乎有一百个小时那么长。虽然沙斯塔要考虑很多事情，可是这样孑然一身坐着思考，时间过得也相当缓慢。他想了许多有关那些纳尼亚人的事，尤其是关于科林的。他有些好奇，当他们得知那个躺在沙发上听完他们全部秘密的人并非科林时，会发生些什么。一想到那些可爱的纳尼亚人会把他看作叛徒，他就有些难过。

当太阳慢慢地升至天空最高处，然后慢慢地向西山下沉时，沙斯塔愈发焦躁不安起来。什么事都没发生，也没有任何人来过。他终于意识到当时大家只是约定了要在古国王墓等人到齐，却没有说清要等多久。他总不能在这儿等一辈子！马上就要天黑了，他不想再经历一次昨晚的事儿。十几个不同的计划浮现在他的脑海中，一个像样的都没，而他最终选择的，竟是其中最糟糕的计划。他打算等到天黑以后回河边偷甜瓜，尽可能多偷一些，然后独自向派尔山进发，他相信自己早上在沙子里留下的记号是正确的。这主意太疯狂了。倘若他和你一样，读过许多有关沙漠之旅的书，他绝不会这样做。可惜，沙斯塔根本没读过书。

不过，在太阳下山前，发生了一件事。当时沙斯塔正坐在一个坟墓的阴影中，一抬头便看见两匹马正向他跑来。他的心猛地跳了一下，那两匹马正是布里和赫温。可随即他的心又坠入谷底，娅拉维斯不在。在前头领着两匹马儿的是一个衣着华丽、配有武器的陌生人，看样子应该是名门望族里的高等奴仆。布里与赫温不再作驮马打扮，而是套着马鞍与缰绳。这意味着什么？“这是个圈套，”沙斯塔心想，“说不定娅拉维斯被人抓住了，在严刑拷打之下，她把我们的计划全盘托出。他们想用布里把我引出去，一旦我跑过去和布里说话，他们就会把我也抓起来！可我要是不去，那与他们会面的唯一机会就没了。天哪，我要是知道他们经历了什么就好了。”沙斯塔躲在坟墓背后，每隔几分钟便探头观察一下情况，同时考虑着如何行动才能把风险降到最低。

第八章
蒂斯罗克的密室

“哦！我的父亲。哦！我心中的喜悦。”年轻人低声喃喃道，他语速飞快，闷闷不乐地念完了这句话，毫无蒂斯罗克就是他心中喜悦的模样，“愿您万寿无疆。然而我已经被您毁了。日出时我看见那些该死的野蛮人已然乘船离去，倘若那时您愿意给我最快的帆船，我或许已经追上他们了。可是您却劝我先派人去探个究竟，看看他们是否只是想要找个更好的位置泊船，白白浪费了一整天的时间。他们现在已经逃走了，我们追不上了！那个虚伪的女人，那个——”他说了苏珊女王许多坏话，在这儿写出来不太合适。毫无疑问这个年轻男子就是拉巴达斯王子，而他口中的虚伪女人自然是指纳尼亚的苏珊女王。

“冷静一点，我的儿子，”蒂斯罗克说，“英明的主人能够轻松平复心中那因客人离去而留下的伤痕。”

“但是我想要她，”王子喊道，“我一定要得到她。如果无法将她占有，我会死的。这个虚伪又骄傲的狗养的歹毒女人！她的美貌令我夜不能寐，食不知味，双眼发黑。我一定要把这个蛮族女王占为己有。”

“有位天才诗人说得好，”总理大臣从地毯上抬起他那沾着灰尘的脸，察言观色道，“熄灭年轻的爱情之火，需要依靠理智之喷泉。”

这话似乎激怒了王子。“狗东西，”他大喊道，一连踹了总理大臣的屁股好几下，“你竟敢用诗人的话来指责我。成天冲着我甩出一堆格言、诗句，我受够了！”不过，我猜娅拉维斯一点儿都不会同情总理大臣。

显然蒂斯罗克已经陷入沉思，当他意识到发生了什么时，已经过了很长时间，他平静地说：

“儿子啊，无论如何，不要再踢我们德高望重、博学开明的总理大臣了。昂贵珠宝即使身在粪堆也应保有它的价值，而年迈又谨慎的总理大臣即使在我们微不足道的子民中也应得到尊重。所以，别再踢了，告诉我们你的愿望与计划。”

“我的父亲啊，我的愿望与计划便是，”拉巴达斯说，“立刻召集您无往而不胜的军队，入侵那该死的纳尼亚，用战火与剑影摧毁它，吞并它，扩充您无边无际的帝国疆土；之后再把至尊国王和那些皇亲国戚杀了，留下苏珊女王就行。我要好好教训她，然后娶她为妻。”

“儿子啊，希望你能理解，”蒂斯罗克说，“无论你说什么我们都不能与纳尼亚开战。”

“万寿无疆的蒂斯罗克啊，倘若您不是我父亲，”王子咬牙切齿地说，“我必定认为这是懦夫才会说的话。”

“易怒的拉巴达斯啊，倘若你不是我儿子，”蒂斯罗克回复道，“说出这话你就离死不远了，我会让你缓慢而痛苦地死去。”（说这话时，他的语气平静却又毫无温度，娅拉维斯吓得全身血都凉了。）

“可这是为什么呢，我的父亲？”王子的语气谦恭了不少，“惩罚纳尼亚而已，我们为何要再三思量呢？这和绞死一个懒散的奴隶、把无用的老马杀了给狗吃一样简单啊。您最小的省面积都是纳尼亚的四倍还多。千杆长矛短短五周便足以把它攻下。这是一个污点，还就在您帝国的边上。”

“毋庸置疑，”蒂斯罗克说，“这些荒蛮小国崇尚自由（或者说懒惰、无序、无为），众神与有眼力的人都不喜欢这些小国。”

“那么为何长久以来我们都不去征服纳尼亚这样的国家呢？”

“开明的王子啊，你要知道，”总理大臣说，“纳尼亚由一位法力高强的女巫统治，那儿常年被冰雪覆盖，在您父亲开启他永垂不朽、惠泽天下的统治前，纳尼亚就是这个样子了。”

“总理大臣，我很清楚这些，还要你多嘴吗？”王子说，“但我听说女巫已经死了，冰雪也早已融化，现在的纳尼亚可谓美丽富饶。”

“见多识广的王子啊，这些变化毫无疑问是由那些坏人的强大魔力引起的，他们现在自封为纳尼亚的国王与女王。”

“我可不这么想，”拉巴达斯说，“我认为这改变是由星宿变化、自然更迭引起的。”

“这些，”蒂斯罗克说，“都是博学多识的人该研究的问题。那老女巫能被杀死，纳尼亚有了如此大的改变，我绝不相信他们没有强大魔力相助就能做到这些。那片土地上之所以会发生这样的事，主要因为那里居住着恶魔，他们长着野兽的模样却会说人话；还有些怪物，身体一半是动物的样子，一半是人的样子。人们普遍都说纳尼亚的至尊国王（愿诸神抛弃他）身后，有一个外貌丑陋、罪不可赦的恶魔鼎力相助，那恶魔总以狮子的形象示人。因此，进攻纳尼亚可能非常危险，无法保证全身而退我就绝不轻举妄动。”

“众神庇佑的卡乐门啊，”总理大臣再次抬头说，“心头欢喜的众神赐予他们如此审慎细心的君主！正如贤明睿智的蒂斯罗克所言，双手受限无法向纳尼亚这样的美味下手，真是相当可惜。天才诗人曾经——”然而这时，亚霍斯塔发现王子不耐烦地动了动脚趾，于是他蓦然便不作声了。

“确实叫人扼腕叹息，”蒂斯罗克的嗓音平静而又深沉，“一想到纳尼亚仍未归顺于我，每天早上我眼中的太阳都会变暗一分，夜里的睡眠也越来越差了。”

“父亲啊，”拉巴达斯说，“我有一个办法可以让您伸手触及纳尼亚，即使不幸失败，也能让您毫发无损地把手缩回来。”

“拉巴达斯，如果你真有这样的办法，”蒂斯罗克说，“那你就是我最优秀的儿子。”

“父亲您看，今夜再过些时候，我便率领两百人马穿过沙漠。不过表面上一定要让大家以为您对我的行动并不知情。明天早上我便能抵达亚钦兰，到卢恩国王所在的安瓦德堡门口。一直以来我们都同亚钦兰保持着睦邻友好的关系，所以他们不对我们设防。趁他们还没能开始行动，我就先攻下安瓦德，随即纵马穿过安瓦德的关卡，直奔纳尼亚，袭击凯尔帕拉维尔。我从纳尼亚做客回来时，至尊国王正在为突袭北方边界的巨人做准备，所以他不会出现在凯尔帕拉维尔。那儿很有可能城门大开，我便能策马闯入城内。我会表现得温和礼貌一些，尽量让纳尼亚人少流些血。之后我就静静坐在原地，等待苏珊女王乘坐的‘绚烂晶莹’号靠岸。当她下船踏上海岸，我就立刻逮住我这迷途的小鸟，把她扔到马鞍上，一路策马奔腾，奔赴安瓦德。”

“然而，儿子啊，”蒂斯罗克说，“要带走这女人，你和爱德蒙国王之间，可能总有一个人要死的，不是吗？”

“他们人不多，”拉巴达斯说，“我会先命令十个人卸下爱德蒙的武器，绑住他。尽管我很想杀了他，但我会克制自己，这样您与至尊国王就不会有不共戴天之仇，非要斗个你死我活了。”

“要是‘绚烂晶莹’号先你一步抵达凯尔帕拉维尔，那又该怎么办？”

“父亲，看这风速我认为不太可能。”

“最后，我足智多谋的儿子啊，”蒂斯罗克说，“你已经完全阐明要如何将那蛮族女人弄到手，可是这对我吞并纳尼亚又有何帮助呢？”

“父亲，虽然我带着士兵们如同离弦的箭一般在纳尼亚来去匆匆，但我们可是永久占领了安瓦德，您可别漏了这一点。占据了安瓦德，就相当于稳坐纳尼亚的国门口，您可以逐步扩充在安瓦德的驻军，形成绝对优势。”

“你的话很有道理，也充满远见。然而，万一计划失败，我又该如何收手呢？”

“您就说这是我因年少轻狂、被爱情冲昏了头脑而犯下的蠢事，您对此毫不知情，这事完全违背了您的意愿，也并未得到您的支持。”

“倘若至尊国王要求我们把那女人、他的亲妹妹送回去，又该如何是好？”

“我的父亲啊，他绝不会提出这样的要求。虽说那女人不愿接受这桩婚事，但至尊国王彼得是一个谨慎而又明理的人。与我族联姻只会给他带去好处，等到他的外甥、外孙坐上卡乐门的王位，他也脸上有光，所以无论如何他都不会错过这个机会。”

“我若真能长命百岁，他可就看不到这场景了。不过我猜，你是挺希望他能看到的。”蒂斯罗克的语气较之平常更加冷淡。

“另外，我的父亲，我心中的喜悦啊，”一阵尴尬的沉默过后，王子开口道，“我们可以冒充女王写信，就说她很爱我，不想回纳尼亚了。众所周知，女人总是如风标一般善变。就算他们全然不信信中所言，他们也不敢全副武装来塔什班把她带走。”

“博学的总理大臣啊，”蒂斯罗克说，“关于这个奇特的提议，请你谈谈有何高见吧。”

“不朽的蒂斯罗克啊，”亚霍斯塔应声答道，“我无从知晓父爱的力量究竟多么强大，但我常听人说，在父亲眼中，亲生儿子比红玉更为珍贵。此事关乎王子尊贵的生命，我怎敢随意发表拙见呢？”

“毫无疑问，你当然敢说，”蒂斯罗克说，“你会发现即使不这么做，我们面临的危险也同样巨大。”

“遵命，”可怜的老头儿哀叹道，“最最明智的蒂斯罗克啊，首先您要知道，王子带来的危险并不如表面看上去那么大。众神并未赐予那些野蛮人慎重的品格，我们的诗歌中有许多精妙且实用的箴言警句，而他们的诗中却只有和爱情、战争相关的内容。因此，在他们眼中，没有什么能比疯狂的行为更加高尚令人崇敬的了——嗷！”在说到“疯狂”两字时，王子又踹了他一脚。

“儿子，停下，”蒂斯罗克说，“尊敬的总理大臣，无论他是否踢你，不许中断你那滔滔不绝的雄辩。对于庄严端正的人而言，坚定地忍耐小小的不便，才是最为合适的做法。”

“遵命，”总理大臣稍稍挪了挪身体，让自己的屁股离王子的脚远些，然后缩成一团继续说道，“依我之见，为博得女人的爱冒如此风险，在他们眼里即使不令人起敬——呃——也绝非不可饶恕。故而，就算王子不幸落入他们手中，他们也定然不会杀死他。甚至可能会这样，尽管他没能成功带走女王，但她看到了王子的英勇气概与浓烈至极的爱意，芳心自然会被王子虏获。”

“这点说得不错嘛，老头儿，”拉巴达斯说，“你这丑陋的脑袋里竟有如此高见，很好。”

“主人的赞扬便是我心中的光亮。”亚霍斯塔说，“其次，伟大的蒂斯罗克，您的统治必将永垂不朽。我认为在诸神的帮助下，王子极有可能攻下安瓦德。如此一来，我们便扼住了纳尼亚的喉咙。”

谈话在这儿停下，屋里沉静了许久，两个女孩儿几乎不敢呼吸。最后，蒂斯罗克终于开口了。

“去吧，我的孩子，”他说，“按你说的做吧，不过不要指望我会支持、帮助你。你若是被那些野蛮人关进监狱，我是不会营救你的；就算你被杀死，我也不会为你报仇雪恨。另外，无论成败，你胆敢让那些纳尼亚贵族多流一滴血，并因此导致两国公然交战，那你就永远失去了我的宠爱，你在卡乐门的地位也将被你弟弟取代。现在，去吧。一定要谨慎、秘密，祝你顺利。愿所向披靡、势不可挡的塔什神之力与你的利剑长矛同在。”

“遵命。”拉巴达斯高呼，他跪下亲吻了一会儿父亲的手，匆匆离开密室。可蒂斯罗克与总理大臣还留在屋内，令深陷恐惧之中的娅拉维斯大失所望。

“总理大臣，”蒂斯罗克说，“今夜我们三人在此谈话，你能确定没有任何活物知道吗？”

“我的主人，”亚霍斯塔说，“我提议在老王宫会面正是出于该考量，而英明如您也批准了。从未有会议在此举办过，宫里的人也没有任何机缘来到这里，所以不可能有人知道的。”

“很好，”蒂斯罗克说，“倘若有人知道了，我要他一小时内就去死。另外，谨慎的总理大臣，希望你也忘掉刚刚的事。我要把你我心中关于王子计划的记忆统统抹去。他既没告知我，也未征得我的允许便离开了，我也不知道他是去向何处。他的暴行都是因为他年轻气盛、叛逆轻率。听闻安瓦德落入他手中，你我比任何人都感到惊讶。”

“遵命。”亚霍斯塔说。

“即使在你内心深处，你也不会料到我是如此铁石心肠的父亲，竟然派我的长子去完成几乎等于送命的任务，你一定很高兴吧，毕竟你不喜欢王子，我从你心底看得出来。”

“完美的蒂斯罗克啊，”总理大臣道，“同对您的爱相比，我既不爱王子也不爱我自己的生命，不爱阳光，也不爱水与面包。”

“你的情操高尚而且正确。”蒂斯罗克说，“同王权与荣耀相比，我也不爱这些东西。王子若是成功了，我们能占领亚钦兰，往后攻占纳尼亚也将如同探囊取物。如果他失败了，反正我还有十八个儿子，而且依照历代国王长子的作风，拉巴达斯开始具有威胁性了。塔什班至少有过五位蒂斯罗克大限未至便因他们的长子早早逝去，这些博学的王子虎视眈眈，迫不及待想要坐上王位。与其等着拉巴达斯在这儿搅起风波，还是让他去外国冷静一下比较好。啊，优秀的总理大臣啊，作为父亲我真是心力憔悴，现在我要就寝了。吩咐乐师来我房间。对了，你睡之前，先去收回我们为第三个厨师写的特赦令，我感觉我有消化不良的迹象。”

“遵命。”总理大臣说。他双膝跪地，手臂也贴在地面上，倒退着爬至门口，这才站起身来鞠躬离开。而蒂斯罗克直到此时仍静静地坐在沙发上，娅拉维斯甚至开始担心他是不是已经睡着了。好在，伴随着一声叹息与一阵嘎吱嘎吱的声音，他撑起自己庞大的身躯，示意奴隶拿着蜡烛为他引路，随后离开了密室。房门在他身后合上，屋内再次陷入黑暗，两个女孩儿终于能够再次自由地呼吸了。

第九章
穿越沙漠

“太可怕了！实在太可怕了！”拉莎若琳低声呜咽道，“天哪，亲爱的，我真的好害怕。你摸摸我，我浑身都在发抖。”

“我们走吧，”娅拉维斯自己也在颤抖，“他们回新宫殿了。离开这个房间我们就很安全了。但我们已经浪费了很多时间，尽快把我带到水门那儿去。”

“亲爱的，你怎么这样呢？”拉莎若琳尖声叫道，“我现在什么都做不了。哦，我那脆弱的神经！不行，我们必须静静躺一会儿然后回家。”

“为什么要回家？”娅拉维斯问。

“天哪，你理解我一下吧，你太没同情心了。”拉莎若琳说着便哭了起来。娅拉维斯认为这种情况下，她不能再心软了。

“看着我！”她抓住拉莎若琳猛摇一阵，说道，“如果你再提一次要回家，没有立刻带我去水门那儿，你猜我会怎么做？我要冲到走廊上大声尖叫，然后我们俩就都被逮住了。”

“那我们俩就都会、会死、死的！”拉莎若琳说，“你没听见刚刚蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）说了什么吗？”

“听见了。不过比起嫁给亚霍斯塔，我宁可去死。现在我们能走了吗？”

“天哪，你真残忍，”拉莎若琳说，“我竟落入如此困境！”

不过最终她还是向娅拉维斯屈服了。她带路走下她们刚刚走过的台阶，沿着另一条走廊终于走到外面。现在她们到了御花园，层层台阶依着山势向坡下延伸直至城墙。今夜月色清亮。冒险中的一大憾事便是，当你来到非常漂亮的地方时，你往往会因过于焦虑匆忙而无法欣赏眼前的美景，所以娅拉维斯（不过多年以后她也依然没忘）只隐约记得那些银灰色的草地、静静冒泡的喷泉水还有松柏树长长的影子。

她们到达山脚，面前矗立着城墙。拉莎若琳浑身颤抖，实在无法打开门闩。于是娅拉维斯便把门打开，终于看见了月色下波光粼粼的河流，几艘游船靠在河边的小码头上。

“再见了，”娅拉维斯说，“谢谢你。我很抱歉刚刚表现得如此无礼。但请设身处地想想，我是在逃亡啊！”

“哦，我亲爱的娅拉维斯，”拉莎若琳说，“你真的不改变主意吗？你已经亲眼看到亚霍斯塔是多么伟大了！”

“真伟大啊！”娅拉维斯说，“一个卑躬屈膝、面目可憎的奴隶！被人踢打还满脸谄媚，只在心中暗自记仇，怂恿可怕的蒂斯罗克设计将王子置于死地，好给自己一雪前耻！呸！我宁可嫁给我父亲的帮厨也不要嫁给他！”

“天哪，娅拉维斯呀娅拉维斯！你怎么能说出这样可怕的话？还有蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆），他做什么都一定是正确的！”

“再见了，”娅拉维斯说，“你的裙子很可爱，房子也很漂亮。你的生活一定会幸福美满——只不过这样的生活不适合我。等我出去了，把门轻轻关上吧。”

她挣开拉莎若琳的深情拥抱，踏上一条平底船，把绳子解开，不一会儿船就漂到了河流中央。天空中的一轮明月倒映在河水深处。空气凉爽清新，快到河对岸时，她听见一只猫头鹰的鸣叫。“啊，真是太棒了！”娅拉维斯心想。一直以来她都住在乡村，在塔什班的每分每秒都叫她生厌。

上岸后，由于地势上升、树木遮住了月光，娅拉维斯发现自己置身于一片黑暗之中。不过她成功找到了沙斯塔之前走的那条路，同他一样走到了草地与荒漠的交界处，（也同他一样）望向左边，看见了漆黑一片的巨大坟墓。尽管她是个勇敢的女孩儿，她心中却还是生出一股畏惧。万一同伴们不在那儿呢？万一真有食尸鬼出现怎么办？但她还是扬起下巴（还稍稍吐了下舌头）径直走向墓地。

但还没走到墓地，她便看见了布里、赫温，还有那个男仆。

“现在你可以回去主人那儿了，”娅拉维斯说（她完全忘了男仆要回去也得等到明早城门打开才行），“这是给你的酬劳。”

“遵命。”话音刚落，男仆便以惊人的速度奔往城市的方向，他一直在想那些食尸鬼的故事，根本无须催促他尽快回府。

接下来的几秒，娅拉维斯不断亲吻布里和赫温的鼻子，像对待普通的马儿一样轻抚他们的脖子。

“狮王在上！沙斯塔来了！”布里说。

娅拉维斯环顾四周，发现沙斯塔正从右边跑来。马夫一走他便立刻从藏身之处跑过来了。

“现在，”娅拉维斯说，“我们一刻也不能耽误。”她匆匆把拉巴达斯的进攻计划告诉了伙伴们。

“这奸诈的混蛋！”布里一边抖着鬃毛一边跺着马蹄说道，“竟然在和平时期连战书都不下便发起突袭！不过我们可以赶在他之前，把他的计划搞砸。”

“我们来得及吗？”娅拉维斯轻盈地跳上赫温的马鞍，问道。沙斯塔希望他也能做到这样上马。

“布噜——嚯！”布里喷出鼻息，“沙斯塔，快上来。我们当然来得及！况且我们开局不错！”

“他说他要立刻出发。”娅拉维斯说。

“人类总爱这么说，”布里说，“可是一共有两百人马要整顿呢。他们得先吃饱喝足、给马套上马鞍、带着武器才能出发，这么多步骤不可能立即完成。好了，我们该往哪儿走？正北吗？”

“不是，”沙斯塔说，“我画了条指示线。我知道该往哪儿走，之后再给你们具体解释。你们两匹马往左边走点儿。啊，就是这里！”

“对了，”布里说，“像故事里那样连续飞奔一天一夜是绝对无法办到的。我们必须小跑与慢走相结合，轻快地跑上一段就得短时间慢走一下，我和赫温慢走的时候，你们两人也下马走走。赫温，准备好了吗？我们出发吧。奔向北方，奔赴纳尼亚！”

旅程的开头是令人愉悦的。此时已经入夜许久了，白天里沙子吸收的热量已经基本散尽，空气凉爽而又清新。无论望向何处，月光下的沙漠都好似平静的湖水、巨大的银盘，处处闪着银白的微光。沙漠中万籁俱寂，只有布里与赫温的蹄声。要不是因为需要时常下马走走，沙斯塔几乎就要睡着了。

这样持续了好几小时，然后月亮的踪迹便消失了。他们像在死气沉沉的黑暗中行进了一个小时又一个小时。接着，沙斯塔发现他能看见眼前布里的脑袋和脖子了，比先前清晰一些。然后慢慢地，慢慢地，他开始看到身边广阔平坦的灰色沙漠。荒漠呈现出绝对的死寂，仿佛冥界一般。沙斯塔疲惫不堪，身体开始发冷，嘴唇也干裂了。耳边只有皮革嘎吱嘎吱的摩擦声、马具丁零当啷的碰撞声，还有马蹄落在干沙上的扑簌扑簌的声音，与平常在路面上走时的啪塔啪塔声有所不同。

骑行了若干小时后，右侧终于现出长长一道灰白，低低地贴在远方的地平线上，随即又出现了一道红线。终于要到早晨了，但却没有鸟鸣歌颂日出。沙斯塔感觉冷极了，非常高兴能现在下马走走。

太阳突然升起来了，周围的一切瞬间转变。灰蒙蒙的沙漠变为黄色，明晃晃的，仿佛里面撒满了碎钻。两人两马长长的影子伴在他们左侧，像是在同他们赛跑。阳光照耀下，派尔山的双峰在前方闪着光芒，沙斯塔发觉大家有些偏离既定路线了，便喊道：“左边点儿，往左边点儿。”更鼓舞人心的是，回头眺望时，塔什班看起来与大家相距很远，显得非常渺小。蒂斯罗克的城池就像是个轮廓参差不齐的驼峰，将古国王墓完全吞没。众人感觉舒服多了。

然而愉悦的心情并未持续很久。尽管初次回头眺望塔什班城时，他们觉得它已经离得很远，可随着他们继续行进，那城市却始终在那里，没有进一步远去。沙斯塔不再回望塔什班，那只会让他觉得他们在原地踏步。随后，阳光也成为令人生厌的存在。沙漠里的强光刺得他眼睛生疼，可他却绝不能闭眼。他只好眯起双眼盯住前方的派尔山，大声告诉大家前进方向。再然后，热浪来袭。在他需要下马走路时，他第一次感到了这份炙热。当时他从马背滑落到沙地上，热气扑面而来，那热气就好像是从火炉门里冲出来的一样；再次落地时情况更加糟糕；第三次，他光着的脚才刚一触地，他就痛得叫出了声，电光火石之间，一只脚猛然缩到马镫上，另一只脚半跨在布里的背上。

“抱歉，布里，”沙斯塔喘着气说，“我实在走不了，沙子太烫了。”“这是当然的！”布里也气喘吁吁，“我应该考虑到这点的。没办法了，待在我背上吧。”

“你应该还好吧，”沙斯塔对娅拉维斯说，后者正在赫温身旁步行，“毕竟你有鞋子。”

娅拉维斯没有回答，看起来一本正经。但愿她不是故意这样做的，虽然这确实是她的本意。

大家继续赶路，小跑、慢走、再小跑，嘎吱作响的皮革，丁零当啷的马具，马儿热出的一身汗味，自己的满身汗味，刺眼炫目的光芒，头昏脑涨。走了一英里又一英里，没有任何变化。塔什班看起来始终没有变得更远，前方的群山看起来也未曾变得更近。丁零当啷的马具、嘎吱作响的皮革、马儿热出的一身汗味、自己的满身汗味——似乎永远都在循环往复。

当然了，他们也曾尝试用各种游戏来打发时间，但并未奏效。他们努力控制自己不去想塔什班城宫殿里的冰镇果汁、潺潺流淌的清澈泉水，还有细腻的冰牛奶，口感刚好，不会太腻——可越是希望自己别想，越是忍不住要想。

前方终于有了一些变化，一大块石头从沙地中冒了出来，大约五十码宽，三十英尺高。现在已是日上三竿，所以石头下的阴影面积不大，不过好歹也算是一片阴影。他们一同挤在那片阴影中，吃了些东西，喝了几口水。要让马儿喝到囊袋里的水可不容易，不过布里与赫温灵活运用嘴唇喝到了水。谁都没有吃够、喝够。谁都没有开口说话。马儿嘴边还残有白沫，呼吸粗重；两个孩子面色苍白。

短暂休息过后，他们继续赶路。同样的声音，同样的气味，同样炫目的光芒。终于，影子渐渐落到他们右边，越拉越长，仿佛要延向世界极东的尽头。太阳徐徐下落，逐步贴近西边的地平线。现在太阳完全落入西山，谢天谢地，虽然沙漠还是散发着热气，但那无情、刺眼的光芒终于消失了。四双眼睛左顾右盼，急切地寻找乌鸦萨罗佩德口中的山谷。可是走了一英里又一英里，眼前依然只有平坦辽阔的沙漠。天已经彻底黑了，大部分星星已经缀在夜空中。马儿依旧向前奔跑着，马鞍上孩子们随之起伏，又累又渴，苦不堪言。月亮尚未升起的时候，沙斯塔突然大喊一声——他口渴至极，发出的声音难免粗哑怪异：

“就在那儿！”

这次总算没有找错。前方略微偏右边的地方出现了一个向下的斜坡，两侧都是石岗。马儿精疲力竭，话都说不出来，但他们还是摇摇晃晃地奔向前方，一两分钟后他们进到沟壑之中。刚开始时，沟壑里头比外边开阔的沙漠更不好受，他们困在闷热的石壁间简直喘不过气，而且只有少量月光能照进沟壑。斜坡越往下越陡峭，两边的岩石高高耸立，形成悬崖峭壁。接着他们眼前出现了植物，一些仙人掌似的多刺植物，还有些会把人手指扎伤的野草。很快马蹄便落在了石块与鹅卵石上，再没有沙子了。山谷蜿蜒曲折，每次转弯他们都急切地找水。马儿已经接近虚脱，赫温喘着粗气、磕磕绊绊地跟在布里身后。他们几乎要绝望了，就在这时，他们终于来到一片泥泞的土地上，柔软的青草间冒出一条极细的涓流。那涓涓细流逐渐变为一条小溪，小溪又变成两侧灌木丛生的小河，小河又变为大河。经历了数次文字无法写尽的失望，沙斯塔已经昏昏欲睡，他突然发现布里停下了脚步，而他自己也已滑落在地。眼前的小瀑布倾泻而下，落入宽阔水池，两匹马儿早已进入水池，低头喝个不停。“哦——哦——哦！”沙斯塔叫嚷着纵身跃入水池。水不算深，大约到他膝盖，沙斯塔弯腰把脑袋送入瀑布。这或许是他有生以来最愉悦的时刻了。

大约十分钟后，两个孩子几乎浑身湿透，两人两马从水池中出来，开始打量起四周。月亮高高挂在空中，足以把月光洒入山谷。大河两岸芳草萋萋，柔软的草地外是倾斜至峭壁之底的小坡，坡上满是大树与灌木。黑漆漆的灌木丛中一定藏有些许似锦繁花，毕竟此处满是那甜美清凉的芳香气息。林间最为幽暗隐秘处传来沙斯塔从未听过的声音，那是夜莺在歌唱。

大家实在是太累了，不想说话，也不想吃东西。马儿连鞍都没卸便躺倒在地，娅拉维斯和沙斯塔也躺了下来。

大约过了十分钟，谨慎的赫温说：“我们决不能睡着，我们一定要赶在拉巴达斯之前。”

“没错，”布里缓缓开口说道，“就休息一会儿，决不能睡着。”

某一刻沙斯塔意识到如果他不起身做些什么，大家都会陷入沉睡，他觉得自己应该这么做。实际上，他下定决心要起来劝大家继续赶路，不过现在还不是时候，等一会儿，再等一会儿……

很快，在月色的照耀下，在夜莺的歌声中，两匹马儿与两个孩子都睡着了。

娅拉维斯第一个醒来，此时太阳已经高高挂起，凉爽的清晨时光已被他们在睡梦中挥霍掉了。“都是我的错，”她一边跳起来叫醒大家，一边生气地自言自语，“马儿可是辛苦地跑了整整一天，就算他们是能言马，也不能指望他们不睡。当然我也不该指望这男孩儿，他又没受过正规教育。但是我该表现得更成熟些。”

两匹马与沙斯塔从熟睡中醒来，脑袋还昏昏沉沉的，不太清醒。

“诶嚯——布噜——呼！”布里开口，“我竟然连马鞍都没卸就睡着了？难怪不舒服，以后可不能再这样。”

“好了，都快点儿，快点儿，”娅拉维斯说，“大半个早上都被我们浪费了，再也经不起耽搁了。”

“那也得让我先吃口草吧。”布里说。

“所剩的时间恐怕不多了。”娅拉维斯说。

“这么着急干吗？”布里说，“我们不是已经穿过沙漠了吗？”

“但我们还没到亚钦兰境内，”娅拉维斯说，“我们必须赶在拉巴达斯之前到那儿。”

“没事儿，我们肯定把他甩开了好几英里，”布里说，“我们不是抄了近道吗？沙斯塔，你那乌鸦朋友不是说这是条捷径吗？”

“他没说走这条路是不是更近，”沙斯塔回答，“他只是说走这条路更好，因为这边有河。如果绿洲在塔什班的正北方向，那恐怕我们这条路更远一些。”

“好吧，但我一定得吃些东西才跑得动。”布里说，“沙斯塔，帮我把马鞍卸下来。”

“抱、抱歉，”赫温怯声说，“和布里一样，我也感觉跑不动了。但如果马儿的背上坐着人（人手里还有马刺什么的）的话，他们就算跑不动了也会被迫继续向前，不是吗？然后他们就会发现自己还能继续前进。我、我是说，既然我们都自由了，而且这一切都是为了纳尼亚，我们不该更努力些吗？”

“女士，我认为，”布里蛮横地说道，“关于作战、急行军还有马儿的承受能力，我想我比你更清楚。”

赫温没有回应，同大多数出身高贵的母马一样，她温和而又敏感，很容易就被扳倒。可实际上她说得非常正确，如果此刻布里身上坐着个塔尔坎，只要塔尔坎命令他继续跑，他便会发现自己还能飞奔好几小时。沦为奴隶、被人逼迫的最坏结局便是，一旦没人再逼你干活，你便失去自我逼迫的意志力。

于是他们只能等到布里吃完点心、喝饱水，当然，赫温与孩子们也吃了点东西、喝了些水。当他们终于能再次出发赶路时，已经接近十一点了。即使这样，布里的动作相较昨天还是慢了不少。反而是两者中更弱小、更疲惫的赫温在前领路。

山谷里清凉的棕褐色河流、芳草、绿苔、野花、杜鹃花，还有这山谷本身，都是如此赏心悦目、令人愉悦，不自觉地便让人想放慢脚步。

第七章
娅拉维斯在塔什班

事情其实是这样的。娅拉维斯眼睁睁地看着沙斯塔被纳尼亚人匆忙带走，只剩两匹一言不发的马（这样做其实非常明智）和她在一起。但她时时刻刻都保证了自己头脑清醒。她抓住布里的缰绳，牵着两匹马，冷静地站定不动。虽然表面上她不动声色，可心却在扑通扑通地狂跳。纳尼亚的贵族们全都走了以后，她便打算继续前进。可还没等她迈开步子，又有人大声喊道（娅拉维斯心想：这些人真是烦死了）：“让路，让路，让路！快给拉莎若琳塔坎娜让路！”话音刚落，四个佩有武器的奴隶就走了过来，四个轿夫抬着一顶轿子紧随其后，轿上的丝绸帘子随风四处飘扬，银色的铃儿叮当作响，街上满是香氛与鲜花的甜美气息。衣着华美的女仆跟在轿子后面，此外还有些男仆、跑腿的侍从和其他一些人。娅拉维斯就是在这儿犯下了第一个错误。

她同拉莎若琳关系相熟（几乎像是在一起上学的同伴），她们经常住在一起，参加同样的聚会。如今拉莎若琳娅已经结婚了，成了一个大人物。娅拉维斯情不自禁地抬起头，想看看拉莎若琳现在是什么样子。

这可要命了。两个女孩儿的目光才刚相接，拉莎若琳便立刻从轿子里坐了起来，扯起嗓子便大声喊道：

“娅拉维斯！你到底在这里干些什么？你父亲——”

事不宜迟，娅拉维斯一秒都不敢耽搁。她松开马儿，抓住轿子的边缘便翻身跃到拉莎若琳身边，在她耳边飞快地低声说道：

“安静！听见了吗，别再嚷嚷了！你一定要帮我藏起来，让你的人——”

“可是亲爱的——”拉莎若琳说话还是和刚才一样大声。（她毫不在意别人有没有盯着她看，事实上，她很享受别人的关注。）

“照我说的做，不然我就再也不理你了，”娅拉维斯嘘道，“快一点儿，拉莎，拜托了，就当是我求求你，这事至关重要。让你的人去牵好那两匹马。把所有帘子都放下来，到一个谁都找不到我的地方去。动作快一点儿。”

“好吧，亲爱的，”拉莎若琳懒懒地应道，“喂，你们俩去牵塔坎娜的马。（这句话是对奴隶说的。）现在，回家吧。我说亲爱的，这样的好天气，我们真的要把帘子都放下来吗？我是说——”

然而娅拉维斯已经放下了所有帘子，把自己和拉莎若琳闷在了这个芬芳华丽却又闷热的小帐篷里。

“我不能被人看到，”她说，“我正在逃呢，我父亲不知道我在这儿。”

“亲爱的，这可够惊险的，”拉莎若琳说，“我真想知道故事的全部。呀，亲爱的，你坐在我裙子上了，你介意挪一下吗？这样好多了。这条裙子是我新买的，你喜欢吗？我在——”

“拉莎，严肃些。”娅拉维斯说，“你知道我父亲在哪儿吗？”

“你不知道吗？”拉莎若琳说，“他当然在这里了。昨天他就来了，四处打听你的下落。现在你我就在一起，而他却毫不知情，这真可是太有趣了！”她咯咯地笑个不停。娅拉维斯想起来了，她总是喜欢这样笑。

“这一点儿都不好笑，”她说，“这是个非常严肃的问题，你能找地方把我藏起来吗？”

“我亲爱的小姑娘，这事儿轻而易举。”拉莎若琳说，“来我家吧，我丈夫不在家，谁都不会发现你的。啧，把帘子放下了就很无趣了。我想看看街上的人。要是只能这样闷在轿子里，那我穿着新裙子出门还有什么意思呢？”

“我希望刚才没有人听见你像那样大声叫我。”娅拉维斯说。

“不会的，亲爱的，当然不会有人听见啦，”拉莎若琳心不在焉地说，“你还没告诉我你觉得这条裙子怎么样呢。”

“还有一件事，”娅拉维斯说，“让你的仆从对那两匹马客气一些。他们其实是纳尼亚的能言马，这是个秘密。”

“难以置信！”拉莎若琳说，“这可太激动人心了！对了，亲爱的，你看到纳尼亚的那个野蛮女王了吗？她现在也在塔什班。听说拉巴达斯王子疯狂地爱上了她。这两周以来，他们一直在举办盛大的宴会，还有打猎一类的。我个人认为那女王也不是很美，不过那些纳尼亚男子倒是都挺俊俏。前天我去参加一个水上派对，穿着我——”

“一个乞丐似的小孩到你家做客，我们该怎么确保这件事不会被仆人们传出去呢？我父亲轻轻松松就会知道了。”

“亲爱的，别再大惊小怪了，”拉莎若琳说，“我一会儿就给你准备些合适的衣服。好了，我们到了！”

轿夫停了下来，放下轿子。拉开帘子后，娅拉维斯发现自己已经在一个庭院花园里了，样子和几分钟前沙斯塔在城市另一处被带进去的那个花园差不多。拉莎若琳本想尽快进去，但娅拉维斯着急地小声提醒她，要她吩咐仆人不要告诉别人有一个奇怪的客人前来拜访女主人。

“抱歉，亲爱的，我完全忘了这回事儿。”拉莎若琳说，“喂，你们几个，还有你，那个看门的，今天谁也不许出去。要是有人说起关于这位年轻女士的事情，我就立马把他活活打死、烧死，要是还有人说，那接下来的六周就别想吃饭喝水了。就这样。”

尽管拉莎若琳宣称自己非常想听娅拉维斯的故事，可行动上她根本就没有表现出任何想听的意思。实际上，比起倾听，她更擅长于讲个不停。她坚持想要娅拉维斯先花上许久时间泡个奢侈的澡（卡乐门式泡澡相当著名），穿上最华丽的裙子，然后再来解释一切。然而选条裙子又被她弄得复杂烦琐，娅拉维斯简直要被逼疯了。她可算想起来了，拉莎若琳一直都是这样的人，热衷于折腾衣服、参加派对，还喜欢同别人说长道短。而娅拉维斯却对弓箭、游泳、狗还有马儿更感兴趣。你应该能猜到她们互相都觉得对方愚蠢透顶。当她们终于用餐完毕（主要包括奶油、果冻、水果还有冰块一类的），在一间装饰着圆柱的华美房间（拉莎若琳那被宠坏了的宠物猴总在那儿爬来爬去，要是没有那只猴子，娅拉维斯会对这间屋子更满意些）坐下后，拉莎若琳才终于开口问起她从家里逃走的原因。

娅拉维斯说完自己的故事以后，拉莎若琳说：“可是，亲爱的，你为什么不嫁给亚霍斯塔塔尔坎呢？大家都疯狂着迷于他。我丈夫说，他就要成为卡乐门最伟大的人物之一了。你知道吗？老艾克萨沙已经过世了，亚霍斯塔刚刚被封为总理大臣。”

“我才不在乎，我压根儿就不想看到他。”娅拉维斯说。

“可是，亲爱的，你就想想！他有三座宫殿呢，其中一座华美的宫殿就在伊尔金城的湖边。听说，他还有大串大串的珍珠，还能用驴奶沐浴。而且，那样我们就能经常见面了。”

“我看这些珍珠和宫殿就让他留着自己用吧。”娅拉维斯说。

“你真是个奇怪的姑娘，”拉莎若琳说，“你还想要些什么？”

不过，娅拉维斯最终还是成功地让她的朋友相信自己是真心想要逃走，两人甚至还讨论起了计划。想要把两匹马从北城门带出去到古国王墓，这并不困难。身穿华服的男仆带着一匹战马和一位女士的坐骑到河边去，想必没人会阻止或者质询。拉莎若琳家有的是男仆可以供她差遣。比较麻烦的是娅拉维斯该怎么办。她提出自己可以坐着轿子出城，只要把帘子放下来就行。然而拉莎若琳告诉她，轿子的使用范围仅限于塔什班城内，一顶轿子若是被抬出城外，必定会引起怀疑。

她们讨论了很久（主要因为拉莎若琳说着说着就跑题），最终拉莎若琳双手一拍说道：“我有个主意，我知道一条不过城门便能出城的路。蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）的花园和河流相通，那儿有一扇小水门，仅供王宫里的人使用——不过，亲爱的，你知道的（说到这儿，她轻笑一声），我们也算是宫里的人。你来找我可真是走运了。尊贵的蒂斯罗克（愿他万寿无疆）是多么仁慈，几乎每天都召唤我们进宫，那儿就像是我们的第二个家了。我喜爱每位亲爱的王子与公主，对拉巴达斯王子更是无比崇拜。我随时都可以去拜访王宫里的贵族女士，无论是在白天还是黑夜。不如天黑以后我把你悄悄带入王宫吧？然后你可以从水门溜走，那边一直都系着些平底船什么的。就算被人逮到——”

“那就全完了。”娅拉维斯说。

“亲爱的，别激动，”拉莎若琳说，“我是说，就算被逮到，他们也只会认为我开了个疯狂的玩笑。我可是出了名的爱开玩笑呢。前几天——亲爱的，就听我说嘛，真的非常有趣——”

“我是说，对我来说就彻底完了。”娅拉维斯有些生气地说。

“哦，嗯……是的，我明白你的意思了，宝贝儿。那么，你有其他更好的办法吗？”

娅拉维斯想不出更好的办法，回答说：“没有，那我们只能冒险了。什么时候行动？”

“不，今晚不行，”拉莎若琳说，“肯定不行。今晚王宫里要举办盛宴（我得赶紧盘好头发去赴宴，没剩几分钟了），处处都灯火通明，人也很多。只能明晚行动了。”

对娅拉维斯而言，这可不是个好消息，但她必须充分利用这个机会。下午的时光过得相当缓慢，不过拉莎若琳出门赴宴对她来说也算是种解脱。娅拉维斯已经受够了，她不想再听拉莎若琳咯咯地傻笑，没完没了地谈论那些裙子、宴会、婚礼、订婚还有丑闻。她早早地上床了，能够再次躺在床单上枕着枕头入睡，令她感觉非常愉悦。

然而第二天过得非常慢。拉莎若琳想要整个推翻原来的计划。她不断告诉娅拉维斯，纳尼亚终年冰雪覆盖，巫师与恶魔常驻在那儿，她一定是疯了才想去纳尼亚。“还和一个农村男孩儿一起去！”拉莎若琳说，“亲爱的，再想想！那儿不是个好地方。”娅拉维斯想了许多，终于对拉莎若琳的愚昧感到厌倦了，她第一次感到与沙斯塔结伴同行，比在塔什班上流社会生活要有趣得多。于是她回应说：“你别忘了，到纳尼亚后，我只是个名不见经传的小人物了，和他没有区别。而且，我都承诺与他同行了。”

“再考虑一下吧，”拉莎若琳几乎是在大喊了，“你要是理智一点，你就能成为总理大臣的夫人了！”娅拉维斯离开了，她要和两匹马单独谈谈。

“你们一定要在日落之前跟着男仆赶到古国王墓，”她说，“不用背这些麻袋了，重新套上马鞍与缰绳。赫温的挂袋用来装食物，布里，你得背上整整一袋水。我会吩咐男仆让你们在桥边多喝些水。”

“然后，我们就一路向北，直奔纳尼亚！”布里轻声说，“可如果沙斯塔不在墓地，那该怎么办？”

“当然是等他，”娅拉维斯说。“你们在这儿过得还舒服吗？”

“这是我住过的最棒的马厩，”布里说，“不过，你那位总是咯咯笑的塔坎娜朋友，如果她的丈夫是给够男仆总管钱，要他买最好的燕麦的话，那我想这位男仆总管肯定欺骗他了。”

娅拉维斯与拉莎若琳在那个装饰着圆柱的房间吃了晚饭。

大约两个小时后她们就出发了。娅拉维斯打扮成名门望族里的高等女佣，并用面纱遮住了脸。她们商量好要是被人问起，拉莎若琳就假装娅拉维斯是她要作为礼物送给某位公主的奴隶。

两个女孩步行几分钟后，便抵达宫门。门口当然是有士兵站岗的，不过他们的长官对拉莎若琳非常熟悉，他让他的士兵们立正行礼。她们立刻进入了黑色大理石大厅，大厅里仍有不少大臣、奴隶和其他人在走动，这倒使得两个女孩不那么扎眼了。她们继续前行，先后穿过圆柱大厅与雕像之堂，接着她们沿着柱廊，路过了觐见室的铜制大门。在朦胧的灯光下，她们所见的一切都是如此富丽堂皇，只言片语根本无法形容。

现在她们出了宫殿，进入御花园，层层台阶依着山势向坡下延伸而去。她们来到花园另一头的老宫殿。夜色已经很深了，她们发现自己正身处于一个由回廊构成的迷宫中，墙上偶尔才有几个插着火把的支架照亮回廊。拉莎若琳在一个非左即右的岔路口停下脚步。

“继续走呀，别停下来，”娅拉维斯轻声说，心脏怦怦狂跳，她总觉得自己会在任意一个转角撞见她的父亲。

“我在想呢……”拉莎若琳说，“我不太确定我们该往哪儿走。我猜是左边，没错，我记得应该就是左边。这可真有趣！”

她们拐进左边的走廊，这条通道中几乎没有灯光照明，而且很快就变成了一级级向下的台阶。

“没错，”拉莎若琳说，“我确定我们走对了，我记得这些台阶。”然而就在此时，前方出现了一个移动的光点，一秒钟后，远处的角落出现了两个黑漆漆的人影，他们手持高高的蜡烛，倒退着走来。当然了，只有在王族面前人们才会倒退着走路。娅拉维斯发觉拉莎若琳抓住了她的手臂——这样突然一抓，力气几乎等同于是在掐了，只能说明拉莎若琳感到非常恐惧。娅拉维斯有些奇怪，如果蒂斯罗克当真与拉莎若琳是朋友的话，她不该这么害怕才是，但她已经没有时间去细细思考了。拉莎若琳催促她快上台阶，踮起脚尖沿着墙往前摸索。

“这里有扇门，”她轻声说，“快进来。”

进去以后，她们轻轻合上门，发现自己置身于一片黑暗之中。娅拉维斯可以听见拉莎若琳惊恐的呼吸声。

“塔什神保佑，”拉莎若琳小声说，“他们要是进来了我们该如何是好？有地方能让我们躲起来吗？”

她们踩着柔软的地毯，摸索着进了一间房间，跌倒在一个沙发上。

“我们躺到沙发后面去吧，”拉莎若琳轻声说，“啊，要是我们没来该多好。”

沙发与挂着窗帘的墙之间空隙不算很大，两个女孩儿躺了下来。拉莎若琳成功占据到了更好的位置，整个人完全被挡住了；而娅拉维斯的上半张脸却露在沙发外，只要有人举着灯进入房间，又恰好望向这里，那娅拉维斯一定会被看见。当然，由于她戴着面纱，他们乍一看也不会立刻意识到这是额头和眼睛。娅拉维斯拼命推搡，想要拉莎若琳再给她腾点儿地方。可是惊恐中的拉莎若琳变得极其自私，她把娅拉维斯推了回去，还掐她的脚。接着她们放弃了，一动不动地躺着，微微喘息。她们的呼吸声听起来响极了，而房间里也没有其他声音。

“安全吗？”最终娅拉维斯用微乎其微的声音问道。

“我——我猜是安全的，”拉莎若琳开口，“哦，我脆弱的神经——”但紧接着便传来了此时此刻让她们最为恐惧的声音——开门声。然后亮起了灯光。娅拉维斯无法进一步将自己的脑袋向沙发后缩，于是她看清了一切。

两个手持蜡烛的奴隶（娅拉维斯没有猜错，他们又聋又哑，在开最为机密的会议时往往都是用这些奴隶）首先倒退着进入房间，分别站到沙发两侧去了。这是件好事，有一个奴隶站在她前面，她就不会被轻易发现了。娅拉维斯透过奴隶两腿之间的缝隙，看见一个很胖的老人跟着走了进来，他戴着一顶奇怪的尖顶帽，娅拉维斯由此得知这正是蒂斯罗克。他身上最小的一枚珠宝，恐怕都比整个纳尼亚王族的全部服饰与武器更为昂贵。可他那么胖，衣服上却还有一大堆荷叶边、裤褶、绒球、纽扣、流苏还有护身符，娅拉维斯不禁觉得还是纳尼亚人的服装审美更胜一筹。他身后跟了一位高个儿的年轻人，头上缠着个装饰着羽毛和珠宝的头巾，身侧佩一把象牙刀鞘的弯刀。他看上去非常激动，眼睛与牙齿在烛光下泛着凶狠的光。最后进来的是一个矮小枯槁的驼背老头儿，她颤抖了一下，认出那老头儿正是她的未婚夫、新任总理大臣，亚霍斯塔塔尔坎。

三人一进房间便关上了门。蒂斯罗克坐在沙发上，满足地叹了口气。年轻人站在他的面前，总理大臣双膝跪下，手肘触地，俯身把脸贴在地毯上。

第十章
南征隐士

在山谷中骑行了几小时后，山谷豁然开朗，他们能看清前方的景物了。他们一路沿着河走，而今这条小河汇入了一条更加宽阔、湍急的大河，大河从他们的左面往右面去了，向东奔流。在这条新的大河后，矮矮的山丘绵延至北方山脉，山脊外还是山脊，一个美丽的国度就坐落于山丘之间。右边是些岩石尖峰，其中一两座的岩壁上还有积雪。左边则是长满松树的山坡、仿佛眉头紧蹙的峭壁，还有狭窄的嶂谷，双眼所及之处，青蓝的山峰绵延万里，沙斯塔再分辨不出哪处才是派尔山了。笔直的前方，植被茂密的山脉陷了下去，看起来宛如一个马鞍，那自然是从亚钦兰往纳尼亚去的入口了。

“布噜——嚯——嚯！北方，绿色的北方！”布里马嘶起来。诚然，对于看惯南方景色的娅拉维斯与沙斯塔而言，这些低矮的山丘比他们想象中更加清新、苍翠。他们精神振奋了不少，谈笑着地走到两河交汇处。

河水从遥远西侧的高山上倾泻而下，汇成他们眼前这条向东奔腾而去的大河。河水湍急，多处险滩，他们不敢贸然游过去。不过跑上跑下地在附近河岸搜寻过后，他们找到了一处较浅的地方，涉水而过。河水咆哮着奔流，马蹄踏出一个个漩涡，被河水搅动的空气清爽凉快，蜻蜓飞舞，沙斯塔心中莫名升出一股激动。

“朋友们，我们到亚钦兰了！”踩着水花上岸时，布里骄傲地说，“我们刚刚横渡的那条河应该是叫旋箭河。”

“希望我们还赶得上。”赫温喃喃说道。

山坡陡峭，山路曲折，他们只能慢慢往上走去。这儿是如同公园一般的开阔乡野地区，视野范围内既没有路也没有房子。树木稀稀疏疏，四处都是，不过却没密集到能被称之为森林。沙斯塔过去住在一片几乎没有树木生长的草原上，他从没见过这么多、这么种类丰富的树。倘若你也在那儿，你或许会认出他正在看的有橡树、山毛榉、白桦、花楸还有栗子树，不过他可不认识。他们的行路上，野兔四处乱窜，而现在他们眼前的树林中，一大群扁角鹿匆忙逃开。

“真是美极了！”娅拉维斯说。

行至第一个山脊时，沙斯塔坐在马鞍上回头望去，已经望不到塔什班了，荒漠绵延至天边，刚刚一路走过的绿油油的窄道堪堪将沙漠与他们隔开。

“啊！”他突然嚷道，“那是什么？”

“什么那是什么呀？”布里说着转过了身，娅拉维斯与赫温也一同转过身来。

“那儿，”沙斯塔指着某一处说，“看起来有烟，是火吗？”

“我觉得是沙尘暴。”布里说。

“现在风可不大，不够卷起沙尘暴。”娅拉维斯说。

“天哪！”赫温惊呼，“看！那儿还有东西在闪光！快看！应该是头盔和盔甲在反光，他们在动呢，往这边来了！”

“塔什神在上！”娅拉维斯说，“是拉巴达斯，还有他的军队。”

“肯定没错，”赫温说，“我担心的就是这个。快，我们必须赶在他们之前到安瓦德。”赫温二话不说，猛一转身便向北疾跑而去。布里同样扭头向北飞奔。

“快点，布里，快！”娅拉维斯回头大喊。

这是一场非常折磨人的激烈赛跑。他们跑到每个山脊顶上，都会发现前面还有另一个山谷与山脊；他们只知道自己的行进方向大致正确，却没人知道离安瓦德究竟还有多远。到了第二个山脊顶时，沙斯塔再次回头望去。沙漠中早已没了扬起的烟尘，黑压压的军团像一群蚂蚁一样，已经移动到旋箭河的岸边了。毫无疑问他们正在寻找一片适合渡河的浅滩。

“他们到河边了！”他疯狂地喊道。

“快！快！”娅拉维斯大叫，“要是我们不能及时赶到安瓦德，这一趟就白来了。快跑，布里，快跑！你可是匹战马。”

沙斯塔能做的只有克制自己不要喊出这样的指令，他心想：“可怜的布里已经用上所有力气了”。的确，两匹马哪怕实际上还有潜力，至少也在以自认最大的力气奔跑了，虽然这两者可能有些微的不同。布里追上赫温，两匹马儿踏着草地并驾齐驱。赫温看起来似乎坚持不了多久了。

身后传来一个声音，大家全都感觉不太妙了。那不是他们预想中会听到的声音——马蹄声、盔甲丁零当啷的碰撞声，或许还夹杂着卡乐门人的战吼声。沙斯塔立刻就认出了那声音。他们遇见娅拉维斯与赫温的那个月夜，听到的正是与此相同的咆哮声。布里也听出来了。他的眼睛布满血丝，耳朵朝后平贴在脑袋上。布里这才发现刚刚的速度并非他的极限，他还能跑得更快。沙斯塔立刻就感觉到了不同，现在他们是当真在全力狂奔了。短短几秒，他们就超过了赫温不少。

“这不公平！”沙斯塔心想，“我还以为这儿很安全呢，没想到又有狮子！”

他回过头，把一切看得清清楚楚，一头黄褐色的庞然大物，身体贴近地面尾随着他们，就像有陌生的狗闯入花园时，飞奔穿过草坪、蹿到树上去的猫一样。每一秒它都在逼近。

他又望向前方，看见了之前没注意到、甚至没想过的东西。面前的路被一堵约十英尺高的平滑绿墙挡住了，墙正中有一扇敞开的门，门里站着个赤脚的高大男人，他身着秋叶色的及踝长袍，倚靠在一根笔直的棍子上。他的胡须很长，几乎及膝。

沙斯塔匆匆一瞥，看清了一切，随后再次回头。那狮子几乎要抓住赫温了，它扑向赫温的后腿，赫温满是汗渍、双眼大睁的脸上只剩绝望。

“停下，”沙斯塔在布里耳边大吼，“回去！必须去救她们！”

布里后来总是说他当时根本没听到这话，或者说没听懂意思。鉴于他通常是一匹诚实的马，我们应该相信他的说辞。

沙斯塔从马镫里抽出脚，两腿都挪到了左侧，犹豫了可耻的百分之一秒后跳了下去。他摔得很疼，差点就扭伤了，但还没来得及看一眼伤到哪儿了，便踉跄着往回走去救娅拉维斯。他过去从没做过类似的事，而现在为什么会这样做，自己也不明白。

马儿的尖叫声从赫温口里爆出，那简直是世界上最恐怖的声音。娅拉维斯弯腰护住赫温的脖子，似乎是在努力拔剑。赫温、娅拉维斯还有那头狮子就在沙斯塔眼前。可她们还没来得及靠近沙斯塔，狮子就靠后肢立起来，身躯庞大得令人难以置信，它的右掌狠狠拍向娅拉维斯。沙斯塔眼睁睁地看着那可怕的兽爪往前伸去，撕扯娅拉维斯的肩膀，娅拉维斯惊叫着蜷在马鞍里。沙斯塔吓疯了，但还是想方设法扑向那野兽。他没有武器，甚至连棍子或石头都没有，像傻子一样冲着狮子大吼：“回去！滚回去！”人们往往只对狗这样喊。有那么片刻，他直面着狮子张开的血盆大口。接下来的事情让他感到惊奇，那仍用后腿直立着的狮子，突然停住所有的动作，摔了个倒栽葱，随即爬起来，匆忙逃跑了。

沙斯塔还不能确定那狮子是不是真的跑了。他转身跑向绿墙里的那扇门，忽然想起他应该见到过这墙。赫温快晕倒了，跌跌撞撞地走进了大门。娅拉维斯仍然坐在马上，后背满是鲜血。

“快进来，我的女儿，进来。”身着长袍的长须老人说。沙斯塔气喘吁吁地跑向他时，他又说：“进来吧，我的儿子。”沙斯塔听见大门在他身后合上了。蓄着长须的陌生人已经在帮娅拉维斯下马。

他们在一个宽阔的圆形圈地里，周围有草皮堆砌而成的高墙护着。他们面前有个水池，水面平静，几乎与地面齐平。沙斯塔从未见过的高大美丽的树木投下阴影，遮住水池的另一端。水池后有一间低矮古旧的石砌小屋，屋顶上满是厚厚的茅草。远处有个羊圈，咩咩声从那儿传来。土地平坦，芳草萋萋。

“你……你……你是……”沙斯塔喘着粗气问，“你是亚钦兰的卢恩国王吗？”

老人摇摇头。“不，”他声音平静，“我是个南征隐士。现在，我的儿子，不要再浪费时间问这些问题了，听我说。这姑娘受伤了，两匹马也已筋疲力尽。拉巴达斯这会儿正在旋箭河寻找浅滩，如果你现在就一刻不停地赶路，还来得及去提醒卢恩国王。”

沙斯塔听到这话，心里有些没底，他也没力气了。对他而言，这实在太残忍、太不公平了。他还不明白呢，你若做了件好事，回报往往是要求你去做一件更难的好事。不过他还是大声问：

“国王在哪里？”

隐士转身用手杖指向一处。“看，”他说，“在你进来的门的正对面还有另一扇门。你把门打开，笔直地往前跑，无论前路平坦或陡峭、易行或崎岖、干燥或湿润，始终笔直向前。我用法术算过，你一定能见到卢恩国王，只要你往前跑，一直跑下去。”

沙斯塔点了点头，跑向北面，随后消失在北门之外。接着，隐士扶起他先前一直用左臂撑着的娅拉维斯，半拖半搀地带她进了石屋。过了很久他才出来。

“现在，朋友，”他对马儿说，“轮到你们了。”

没等马儿作答——事实上他们也累得发不出声了——老人便替他们卸下马鞍与挂袋，为他们按摩全身，国王马厩里的男仆都没他按得那么好。

“好了，朋友，”他说，“把一切都忘了，好好放松一下，吃些草，喝点儿水。一会儿我给那些山羊挤完奶，你们就可以吃些暖和的东西了。”

“先生，”赫温终于缓了过来，“塔坎娜能活下去吗？狮子没把她杀死吧？”

“我用法术卜过许多当下的事情，”他微笑着回答，“可对于未来我尚且无从知晓。我无法预知今天太阳落山时，这世界上的男男女女还有动物能否继续活下去。但你要心怀希望，相信这女孩儿一定能长寿。”

娅拉维斯醒来时发现自己正身处凉爽的房间中，趴在一张非常柔软的床上，房间空空荡荡，石墙也未经粉饰。她不懂自己为何要脸朝下，于是她翻了个身，背上传来火辣辣的痛感，这才明白过来。她没能辨别出这张弹性十足、柔软舒适的床究竟是用什么材料做的，因为这床其实是用石南（最好的一种床垫）制成的，一种她既没见过也没听说过的植物。

门开了，隐士手捧一只大大的木碗走进来。他小心翼翼地把碗放下，走到床边，问道：

“我的女儿，你感觉如何？”

“前辈，我的背非常疼，”娅拉维斯说，“不过其他部位都没问题。”

老人跪在床边，伸手探了探她的额头，还给她把了脉。

“没有发烧，”他说，“你会好起来的。明天你就一定能起床了。不过现在，先把这个喝了。”

他拿起木碗送到娅拉维斯唇边。娅拉维斯把它喝下去的时候脸不禁皱了起来，还没喝惯羊奶的话，确实很难接受那味道。但她实在口干舌燥，所以还是尽力把羊奶都喝完了，这下她感觉舒服多了。

“好了，我的女儿，想睡就睡吧。”隐士说，“我已经替你把伤口清洗过包扎好了。这伤是有些疼，但还不及被鞭打来得严重。这头狮子非常奇怪，它竟没有把你拖出马鞍，用牙咬你，反而只用爪子挠了你的背，留下十条挠痕，虽说会痛，不过挠得不深，也不危险。”

“哈！”娅拉维斯说，“那我运气不错。”

“女儿啊，”隐士说，“我已在这世上活过了一百零九个春秋，可从未听说过运气这种东西。这件事里有些东西我不太明白，但只要我们需要搞清楚，那我们就一定可以搞清楚。”

“拉巴达斯和他那两百人马怎么样了？”娅拉维斯问。

“我猜他们不会从这儿走，”隐士说，“他们现在远在我们东面，已经找到了浅滩。他们会从那儿直奔安瓦德。”

“可怜的沙斯塔！”娅拉维斯说，“他要跑很远吗？会比他们先到吗？”

“希望很大。”老人说。

娅拉维斯再次躺下，这次是侧身躺的，她问道：“天好像暗下来了，我是不是睡了很久？”

隐士透过屋里唯一一扇朝北的窗户看了看外面。“这暗色并非夜晚到来，”他说，“是有乌云从风暴峰飘来了。这里的糟糕天气都是从那地方来的。看来今晚会有浓雾。”

次日，除了背还有些疼，娅拉维斯感觉身体恢复良好。早餐是奶油与粥，吃完早餐后，隐士说她可以下床活动了。她立刻起床出门，当然了，是去和马儿说说话。天空放晴，整片绿色圈地仿佛巨大的翠绿杯子，里头盛满阳光。这个地方非常平和，寂寞而又静谧。

赫温立刻跑向娅拉维斯，给了她一个马儿的亲吻。

两人相互关心过对方的身体状况与昨晚睡眠状况后，娅拉维斯问：“布里哪儿去了？”

“在那儿呢，”赫温用鼻子指了指圈地的另一头，“希望你能去和他聊聊。他情绪不太对，但我一个字都没能问出来。”

她们一同散步过去，布里正脸朝墙壁躺在草地上。他肯定听到她们过来了，但却没有回头，也没有说任何话。

“布里，早上好，”娅拉维斯说，“你感觉如何？”

布里小声嘀咕了些什么，但没人能听清。

“隐士说，沙斯塔可能已经及时赶到卢恩国王那儿了，”娅拉维斯继续说，“所以，咱们的麻烦似乎都已经解决了。布里，我们终于要去纳尼亚了！”

“我永远都不会再见到纳尼亚了。”布里闷声说道。

“亲爱的布里，你是身体不舒服吗？”娅拉维斯问。

布里终于转过身来，脸上满是最为浓重的哀伤。

“我要回卡乐门去。”他说。

“为什么？”娅拉维斯道，“再回去当奴隶吗？”

“没错，”布里说，“我只配当个奴隶。我有何颜面去面对纳尼亚那些自由的马呢？我抛下了一匹母马、一个女孩、一个男孩，让狮子吃掉他们，自己却为了活命拼尽全力逃跑了。”

“我们都在飞奔逃跑呀。”赫温说。

“可沙斯塔没有！”布里喷出鼻息，说，“至少他跑向了正确的方向，他往回跑了。这一点最叫我羞愧难当。我自称是一匹战马，吹嘘自己身经百战，却比不上一个人类小男孩——他一个孩子，不过是只幼崽，而且从未拿起过剑，也没有受过良好教育，没见过任何榜样！”

“我明白，”娅拉维斯说，“我也感同身受。沙斯塔非常了不起。布里，我和你一样糟糕。自从与你们相遇，我一直看不起他、对他冷眼相待，可事实上，他却是我们之中最杰出的人。但我还是建议你留下表达自己的歉意，而非回到卡乐门。”

“对你而言这方法不错，”布里说，“你没有侮辱自己的声名，可我已经失去了一切。”

“我的乖马儿，”隐士开口道，他光脚踩在沾着晨露的柔软草地上，几乎没发出声响，所以谁都没有发现他已悄悄到来，“我的好马儿啊，除了你的自负，你什么都没有失去。好啦，朋友。不要把耳朵折到脑后去，也别对着我抖你的鬃毛。如果你真像刚才那样所说的谦卑，你就应当听听理智的声音。长期与可怜的哑巴马儿生活在一起，你也许并不如自己想象得那么了不起。当然，你确实比它们聪明、勇敢一些，这是很自然的事。可这并不意味着在纳尼亚你也能够超绝群伦。但是只要你能认识到自己的平凡，那么总体而言，你就是一匹很正派的马了。好了，如果你和我的这位四足朋友愿意绕回厨房门口，我们就可以料理另外半份饲料了。”

第十一章
不受欢迎的同行者

沙斯塔穿过门，看见一个草坡向上延伸到树木边上，草坡上还缀有一些石南。如今他不再需要思考，也不用制订计划；他只需向前飞奔，只要跑就可以了。他的四肢都颤抖起来，体内像针扎一样疼得可怕。汗水不断流入眼睛，刺得眼睛生疼，视线变得模糊不清。脚步也不那么稳了，不止一次，他不慎踩到松动的石块，差点扭到脚踝。

比起刚才，树林变得更浓密了，空旷些的草地上长着蕨类植物。阳光被遮住，但这也没能让天气更凉快些，反倒是变得又灰暗又闷热，苍蝇也是平常的两倍多。沙斯塔脸上爬了不少苍蝇，但他根本没去搭理它们——他还有很多其他事情要做。

突然，他听见了号角声，不同于塔什班那让人心悸的号角声，这号角声非常欢快。嘀——啰——嘟——嘟——嚯！紧接着，他走进了一块宽阔的林中空地，发现身边聚着不少人。

至少在他看来，这儿站着不少人。实际上也就只有十五或二十个人，都是些身着绿色猎装的绅士们，有些人骑在马上，有些人站在马头旁边。人群中央，有人正拉着马镫以便于另一人上马，兴高采烈准备上马的那人，正是胖嘟嘟、面色红润、眼睛亮闪闪的亚钦兰国王。

国王一看到沙斯塔，便完全忘记了上马，他神采奕奕地向沙斯塔伸出双臂，洪亮深沉的声音仿佛来自胸腔深处，他大喊道：

“科林！我的儿子！你怎么在步行，还穿得破破烂烂的！发生什么——”

“不，”沙斯塔摇摇头，气喘吁吁地说，“我不是科林王子。我——我知道我和他长得很像……在塔什班见过殿下……替他问候您。”

国王直勾勾地盯着沙斯塔，露出耐人寻味的神色。

“您是卢——卢恩国王吗？”沙斯塔喘个不停，不等国王回答便继续说道，“国王陛下——快——安瓦德、关上城门——敌人冲过来了——拉巴达斯还有两百人马。”

“孩子，你确定这是真的吗？”另一位绅士问道。

“亲眼所见，”沙斯塔说，“我看到他们了。我从塔什班城，和他们一路赛跑过来的。”

“步行？”绅士说道，眉毛微微向上挑起。

“骑马——在隐士那儿。”沙斯塔说。

“戴林，不用再问了，”卢恩国王说，“从他脸上我能看出这是真的。绅士们，我们必须快马加鞭赶回去了。把备用的马牵来给这孩子。孩子，你能骑马快跑吧？”

有人牵来一匹马，作为回应，沙斯塔一脚踩上马镫，利落地翻身跨上马鞍。过去与布里同行的几周中，这个动作他已经重复了上百次。还记得第一天晚上，布里说他的上马动作看起来像是在往一堆干草上爬，而如今他的上马姿势已大有不同。

他开心地听见戴林勋爵对国王说：“陛下，这孩子很有骑士风范。我敢保证他一定有贵族血统。

“他的血统，是的，这是关键。”国王说。他再次深深注视沙斯塔，灰色的双眸中透出一丝古怪的、如饥似渴的神色。

现在，大家都骑着马轻快地慢跑着向前移动起来。沙斯塔的马鞍相当精良，但由于坐在布里背上时他从不去碰缰绳，所以他不知道该如何运用，这令他有些沮丧。他用眼角的余光悄悄看向别人的动作（就像参加一场宴会，而我们不太确定刀叉的使用方式时会做的那样），试图让手指姿势看起来正确无误。但他并不敢尝试真正把控马的行进方向，他相信它会跟着其他马跑的。当然，这只是一匹普普通通的马，并不会说人话；但以它的智慧也足够判断出，自己背上的这个陌生男孩儿既没有马鞭也没有马刺，而且无法真正把控局势。因此，沙斯塔很快便发现自己落在整个队伍的末端了。

即使如此，他的速度还是很快。现在，没有了苍蝇的骚扰，清新的空气扑面而来，他终于缓过气了，而且他已经完成了他的使命。这是他抵达塔什班以后（仿佛已经过去了许久），他第一回感到如此舒适。

他抬头想看看距离山顶有没有更近一些，但却不见山顶的踪影，这令他有些失望。视野中只有一抹朦朦胧胧的灰色向他们翻滚而来，以前他从未进过山野地带，因而有些惊诧。“这是朵云，”他自言自语道，“一朵云飘下来了。我明白了，在这样高高的群山中，人就好像真的升到天空中去了一样。让我看看云朵里边是什么模样。真是太有趣了！我一直都很好奇呢。”在他身后、左侧很远的地方，太阳就要下山了。

现在他们踏上了一条崎岖的山路，依然保持着高速骑行。但沙斯塔的马儿远远落在后头。有一两次拐弯时（现在山路两边尽是连绵不绝的森林），他差点就跟丢了。

然后大家一头钻进雾中，或者说浓雾吞没了他们。世界变得灰蒙蒙的，沙斯塔未曾想到云雾里如此寒冷潮湿，也不知道里头原来一片灰暗。紧接着，这片灰以令人惊恐的速度转变为黑。

在纵队前领头的人时不时吹响号角。每一次号角声都越来越远。沙斯塔现在看不见其他人了，不过他知道再拐个弯就又能看到他们了。但是拐弯后，他仍然没有看见其他人。事实上，他什么都看不见。现在他的马在慢走。“跑起来，马儿，追上去。”沙斯塔说。号角声再次传来，但已经十分微弱了。布里以前总是告诉他要脚跟朝外，所以沙斯塔一直以为脚跟要是戳到马的身体，就会有非常可怕的事情发生。眼下的情况似乎刚好可以让他试试。“听着，马儿，”他说，“如果你还不提速，知道我要对你干什么吗？我会用脚跟戳你的身体。我真会这么做的。”然而马儿并未把他的威胁放在心上。于是沙斯塔在马鞍上稳稳坐正，夹紧膝盖，咬紧牙关，竭尽全力地用脚跟猛戳马儿的身体。

唯一的成效便是这匹马装模作样地跑了五六步，随后又开始慢走起来。天已经很黑了，他们似乎没有再吹号了。四周只剩水滴接连不断地从树枝上滴落下来发出的声响。

“行吧，就这样走也总能走到个地方。”沙斯塔对自己说，“但愿不要撞上拉巴达斯和他的人马就好。”

他继续前行了貌似很长一段时间，始终都是慢步的节奏。他开始讨厌这匹马了，同时他也开始感觉饥肠辘辘。

不久，他走到了一个岔路口，有两条路可选，他正琢磨哪条路会通往安瓦德时，被身后传来的声音吓了一跳。那是战马奔跑的声音。“拉巴达斯！”沙斯塔心想。他无从猜测拉巴达斯会选择哪条路。“我如果选这一条路，”沙斯塔自言自语道，“他有可能会选另一条；但我要是在这岔路口原地不动，我一定会被逮到的。”他翻身下马，牵着马儿尽可能快地沿着右手边的路前进。

骑兵队的声音迅速逼近，一两分钟后，他们就赶到了岔路口。沙斯塔屏气凝神，等着看他们选择了哪条路。

低沉的命令声传来：“停！”接着是一阵马儿的喧嚣声——马儿喷出的鼻息声、马蹄刨地的声音、马嘴咬着马嚼子的声音还有士兵轻拍马儿脖子的声音。接着，一个人声响起：

“全体注意，”那人说道，“现在我们离城堡只有两百米了。牢记命令。我们预计日出时分抵达纳尼亚，一旦到纳尼亚境内，你们必须尽可能少杀人。本次行动中，你们必须把纳尼亚人的每一滴血看得比自己的一加仑血更加珍贵。仅限于本次行动。众神将会赐予我们一个更好的时机，到那时，你们就能把凯尔帕拉维尔与西部荒原之间的区域杀个片甲不留。不过现在还没进入纳尼亚，在这亚钦兰境内就另当别论了。此次突袭卢恩国王的城堡，最重要的就是速度，其他都无所谓。拿出你们的勇气，我们必须一小时内攻下城堡。成功后，我不会给自己留任何战利品，这里的一切属于你们。给我杀光城墙里的所有蛮族男人，哪怕是昨天才出生的孩子也不能放过。其余的一切——女人，金子，珠宝，武器，还有美酒——你们想怎么分就怎么分。要是有人被我发现进城时畏缩不前，我就把他活活烧死。所向披靡、势不可挡的塔什神在上，前进！”

伴着马蹄响亮的嘚嘚踏步声，队伍开始移动。沙斯塔松了一口气，他们选了另一条路。

沙斯塔觉得他们花了很长时间才通过，尽管他一整天都在想着、叨着“两百人马”，他并不清楚真实数量。最终，骑兵的声音渐渐消失，他再次独身一人，只有树枝上的水滴嘀嗒落下。

虽然他已经知道怎么去安瓦德了，但他现在当然不能往那儿去，不然注定是往拉巴达斯军队的利剑长矛上撞。“我到底该怎么办呢？”沙斯塔对自己说。他重新跨上马背，沿着他选定的路继续前行，心怀侥幸，希望能够找到一间农舍讨口吃食，休息一下。他当然考虑过回隐士那儿去找娅拉维斯、布里还有赫温，但目前来说他根本认不清方向了。

“归根结底，”沙斯塔说，“这条路总能通向某个地方。”

不过这完全取决于你怎么定义“某个地方”。这条路继续延伸向“某个地方”，一路上树越来越多，全都黑黑的，到处都是水滴滴落的声音，空气也愈发寒冷。怪异而又凛冽的风不断吹着迷雾，却总也无法将雾气吹散。如果沙斯塔对山野有所了解，他就该意识到自己身在海拔很高的地方了，甚至可能已经到达山顶。可惜他对高山一无所知。

“我真的觉得，”沙斯塔说道，“我一定是这个世界上最倒霉的男孩儿。除我以外，其他人都很顺利。那些纳尼亚的少爷小姐们都顺利离开了塔什班，我却被抛在后头；娅拉维斯、布里还有赫温舒舒服服地和那老隐士待在一起，而我却得来通风报信；拉巴达斯到这儿之前，卢恩国王和其他人肯定已经安全抵达城堡，早早关好了城门，而我却被关在外头了。”

沙斯塔又累又饿，他为自己感到难过，泪水滑过了脸颊。

突如其来的惊吓打断了一切。沙斯塔感觉有东西或者有人正在他身边走动，可身处漆黑之中他什么也看不见。那东西（或人）动作很轻，他几乎听不见脚步声，只能听到有呼吸声传来。这位隐身的同伴呼吸幅度听起来很大，沙斯塔感觉它应该是个庞然大物。他是逐渐才注意到这呼吸声的，所以他完全不知道那东西在这儿待了多久。这个认知深深吓到了他。

沙斯塔突然想了起来，很久以前他曾听说过北方国度有巨人存在。恐惧中，他咬住自己的嘴唇。现在是真有值得落泪的原因了，而他反倒停止了哭泣。

那东西（或人）继续静静地在他身边走动，沙斯塔开始祈祷这一切都是幻觉。就在他快要确信这一点的时候，他身旁的黑暗中突然传出一声深沉的叹息。不是幻觉！不管怎么说，他冰凉的左手已经感觉到那声叹息散出的温热气息了。

要是那匹马表现得好——或者说如果他知道让那马表现得好些的方式——他就会不顾一切地冒险策马狂奔，逃离这里。但他知道他没法让马跑起来。于是他只能慢慢走着，那看不见的同伴如影随形，在他身边呼吸着。直到最后他再也忍不住了。

“你是谁？”他说，声音没比耳语时响多少。

“我一直都在等你开口，等了很久了。”那东西说。他说话声不响，但却非常深沉。

“你是——你是巨人吗？”沙斯塔问。

“你可以称我为巨人。”那个浑厚的声音说，“不过我和你们所说的巨人不一样。”

沙斯塔努力瞪了一会儿，说：“我根本看不见你。”接着，一个更为恐怖的想法出现在他脑海中，他几乎是惊声尖叫着说：“你不会——你不会是什么已经死了的东西吧？哦，拜托——拜托你走开吧。我可曾伤害过你吗？啊，我真是世上最倒霉的人啊！”

他再一次感到那东西温热的气息扑在他的手上和脸上。“感受一下，”它说，“这可不是鬼魂的气息。告诉我你为什么伤心吧。”

那气息让沙斯塔稍稍安心了一些，于是他便讲起他被一个严苛的渔夫养大，连自己父母是谁都不知道；然后又讲了他出逃的事以及他们被狮子追赶，不得不游水保命；还有他们在塔什班遇到的所有危险，比如他在墓地度过的那一夜，沙漠里的野兽冲着他咆哮。接着他还讲到他们穿越沙漠时饱受热浪与口渴折磨，还有他们接近终点时却被另一头狮子追赶，娅拉维斯还受了伤。当然，他也讲到自己已经很久没有吃过东西了。

“我不认为你很倒霉。”浑厚的声音说道。

“遇见那么多狮子还不够倒霉吗？”沙斯塔反问。

“只有一头狮子。”那声音道。

“你到底想表达什么？我都告诉你至少第一天晚上就有两头狮子了，而且——”

“只有一头狮子，但他跑得很快。”

“你怎么知道？”

“我就是那头狮子。”沙斯塔瞠目结舌，张开了嘴却什么都没说。那声音继续说道：“迫使你和娅拉维斯走到一起的那头狮子是我；在逝者的家园安抚你的那只猫也是我；在你熟睡时为你赶走胡狼的那头狮子也是我；为了让你能及时赶到卢恩国王身边，使两匹马在恐惧中激发出新的力量、跑完最后一程的那头狮子还是我。当年你还很小，躺在船上奄奄一息，你后来能被坐在海边、深夜仍然醒着的渔夫收养，是因为有头狮子推动小船让它漂到了海滩上，而那头狮子依然是我。”

“是你伤了娅拉维斯？”

“是我。”

“可这是为什么？”

“孩子，”那声音说，“我在讲述的是你的故事，而不是她的。我只对别人讲述他自己的故事。”

“你是谁？”沙斯塔问。

“我自己。”那声音低沉浑厚，大地也为之颤动；接着，声音再次响起：“我自己。”更加响亮、清晰而又愉悦；最后是第三遍：“我自己。”轻声细语，几乎难以用双耳捕获，却又无比温柔，似乎是从四面八方穿行而来，树叶也随之簌簌有声。

沙斯塔不再畏惧，因为那声音的主人不是幽灵，也不会吃掉他。一阵全新不同的颤抖传遍他的全身，而他为此感到高兴。

迷雾从黑色转为灰色，又从灰色变为白色。这个变化定是好久之前开始的，可当他与那个东西交谈时他什么都没注意到。此时，环绕在他身边的白色闪耀着光芒，他眨了眨眼睛，前方不知何处的鸟儿开始歌唱，沙斯塔知道黑夜就要结束了。现在，他可以轻松地看到马儿的脑袋、耳朵还有鬃毛。一道金色的光芒落在他们左侧，他以为那是阳光。

他转身看见一头比马还高的狮子正在他身侧踱步。那马似乎并不怕它，又或许是看不见它。狮子身上闪着金色的光芒，那是世界上最可怕又最美丽的东西了。

幸亏沙斯塔住在卡乐门南方的偏远地区，所以他从未听说过在塔什班广为流传的故事，一个关于化身为狮子的纳尼亚恶魔的故事。当然他也不知道关于阿斯兰的真正故事：他是伟大的狮王，是海洋之王的儿子，是纳尼亚众王之王。沙斯塔只看了一眼狮子的脸便跳下马鞍，跪倒在狮子脚边。他什么都说不出来，他也什么都不想说，他知道自己什么都不需要说。

众王之王朝沙斯塔俯下身来，它的鬃毛垂落在他身边，散发出奇异而又庄重的气息。狮王舔舐他的前额，沙斯塔仰起脸来，他们眼神相接。蓦然之间，迷雾苍白的光芒与狮王耀眼的金光交织在一起，化为不断旋转的光芒，最终聚拢消失。蔚蓝的苍穹之下，绿草如茵的山坡上只剩沙斯塔独自一人与马儿在一起。鸟儿在吟唱。

第十二章
沙斯塔在纳尼亚

“这一切都是梦？”沙斯塔有些疑惑。但眼前草地上又大又深的狮子右前掌爪印，昭示着这一切绝非梦境。能留下如此爪印的庞然大物，光是想想就让人感到窒息。但这巨大的爪印已不足为奇，沙斯塔看见那爪印底部已经被水填满，不一会儿爪印里便清水满溢，水溢了出来形成一条小溪，经过沙斯塔身旁，穿过草地，流向山脚。

沙斯塔俯身喝了很久水，然后把脸浸入水中，往头上泼水。那水冰凉透骨，澄澈宛如玻璃，令沙斯塔感觉神清气爽。他站起身来，把耳朵里的水甩出来，又把垂在前额的湿发撩到后面，然后开始打量周围的环境。

现在显然还是清晨。茂密森林在离他很远的右侧山下，太阳刚从那儿探出了头。眼前的国度对他来说完全陌生。苍翠的山谷中点缀着棵棵良木，透过树林，他看到波光粼粼的河流蜿蜒曲折，往西北方向延伸而去。山谷远处有岩石高高耸立，只比昨天他所看到的群山略矮一些。他开始琢磨自己身在何方。他转身看向身后，他所在的山坡属于远处一座更高的山脉。

“我知道了，”沙斯塔自言自语道，“那些就是介于亚钦兰与纳尼亚之间的大山。昨天我还在山的另一头。我肯定是在昨晚走过了这些山路。真是走大运了！——其实不能说是我运气好，而是有他的引领。我现在已经在纳尼亚了。”

沙斯塔转身替那匹马卸下马鞍与缰绳，念叨着：“虽说你是一匹特别招人嫌的马。”不过马儿压根儿没搭理他，立刻开始吃起草来，看来它也并不待见沙斯塔。

“真希望我也能吃草充饥。”沙斯塔心想，“现在的安瓦德可是四面楚歌，回那里毫无意义。还不如先去下面的山谷，找找有没有东西能吃。”

于是他一路向下（浓浓的晨露对光着脚的他而言真是寒冷刺骨），走进了一片树林。林中有条小径，沿着小径还没走多久，他便听见一声呼哧呼哧的问候：

“邻居，早上好。”

沙斯塔环顾四周，迫切地想要知道是谁在说话。很快，他便看见有个浑身长满刺的小家伙从树木间走出来了，脸上黑黑的。相比人来说，他很小；但作为一只刺猬而言，他已经很大了。没错，就是一只刺猬。

“早上好。”沙斯塔说，“不过我并不是你的邻居，事实上，我对这一片还很陌生。”

“什么？”刺猬好奇地问道。

“我刚翻过山到这里——从亚钦兰，你可能知道。”

“哦，亚钦兰呀。”刺猬说，“那可真是够远的，我从没去过那里。”

“我认为，或许，”沙斯塔说，“我应该告诉这儿的谁，卡乐门的野蛮军队此刻正在对安瓦德发起进攻。”

“不会吧！”刺猬道，“你想，据说卡乐门可是在千里之外的世界尽头，与这里隔着一片大沙漠呢！”

“其实并没有你所想的那么遥远，”沙斯塔说，“安瓦德被人进攻，总该有人做些什么吧？不用告知你们的至尊国王吗？”

“确实应该为此做些什么，”刺猬说，“不过我正打算好好睡上一整天呢。嘿，邻居！”

最后几个字是对一只硕大的黄褐色兔子说的，那兔子刚从小径边上的某处探出头来。刺猬立刻告诉兔子他从沙斯塔那儿听来的消息。兔子认为这是条大新闻，应该要有人去告知其他人，以便做些准备。

于是消息就这样传开了。每隔几分钟就会有别的生物参与进来。有些是从头顶的树枝里出现的，有些则从脚底的地下小屋冒了出来，最终这儿一共聚集了五只兔子、一只松鼠、两只喜鹊、一个半人羊，还有一只老鼠。他们一同讨论着这个话题，并且都赞同刺猬的观点。事实就是，女巫与寒冬已经一去不复返，在这黄金时代，凯尔帕拉维尔由至尊国王彼得统治。纳尼亚小小森林里的居民们过着幸福安宁的日子，已经没有了忧患意识。

然而过了一会儿，小树林里又来了两个更加务实的人。一个名为达夫尔，是一个红发小矮人；另一个则是一头高贵美丽的牡鹿，一双水灵灵的大眼睛，身上布满斑纹，四条优雅的腿非常细，仿佛用两根手指便能把它们折断。

“狮王永存！”小矮人一听到这消息便大声咆哮道，“要真是这样，我们还在这儿聊天做什么？敌人已经在安瓦德了！必须现在就把消息送去凯尔帕拉维尔。组织军队，纳尼亚必须去那儿帮助卢恩国王。”

“啊！”刺猬说，“可是至尊国王不在凯尔帕拉维尔，他去北方讨伐巨人了。对了邻居们，说到巨人，我就想起——”

“谁去送信？”小矮人打断了他的话，“在场有人跑得比我更快吗？”

“我跑得很快，”牡鹿说，“我要说些什么？有多少卡乐门人？”

“两百人马，由拉巴达斯王子率领。另外——”然而牡鹿已经跑开了。他一转眼便四脚腾空，立刻撒开蹄子跑了，白花花的背影很快便消失在远处的树林间。

“好奇他要去哪儿。”兔子说，“你们知道的，至尊国王不在凯尔帕拉维尔。”

“他可以去找露西女王，”达夫尔说，“接下来，喂！这个人类怎么了？脸色这么青。天啊，我觉得他要晕倒了。说不定，他是饿着了。年轻人，你上一顿饭是什么时候吃的？”

“昨天早上。”沙斯塔虚弱无力地答道。

“来吧，快来吧，”小矮人说着，立刻用他胖胖的小手臂环抱住沙斯塔的腰，把他扶稳，“嘿！邻居们，这可真是太羞人了！小伙子，跟我来。吃些早餐吧！总比说个不停好。”

一阵忙碌过后，小矮人嘀嘀咕咕地责怪着自己，飞快地半拉半搀着沙斯塔进了树林，往坡下走了几步。这段路比沙斯塔此刻愿意走的距离要长得多，没等走出树林到达光秃秃的山坡上，沙斯塔的腿便软了。山坡上有一座小房子，烟囱里炊烟袅袅，房门也开着，他们走到门口后，达夫尔喊道：

“嘿，兄弟们！有客人要来吃些早餐了！”

屋里立刻飘出一股饭香，还伴着煎炸食物时的滋滋声。虽然你应该闻到过，可沙斯塔从未闻过这样的香味。其实，那是平底锅里煎培根、煎鸡蛋和煎蘑菇的香味。

“小伙子，注意头顶。”达夫尔说。不过他说晚了，沙斯塔的额头已经撞上了低矮的门框。“好了，”小矮人继续说道，“请坐。这桌椅对你来说有点太低了，不过别在意。这是粥——对了，这里有罐奶油——还有勺子。”

沙斯塔喝完粥后，小矮人的两个兄弟（名字分别是罗金和布里克桑姆）便把培根、鸡蛋、煎蘑菇、咖啡壶、热牛奶还有吐司都端上了桌。

对沙斯塔而言，这些食物新奇而又美妙，与卡乐门的食物完全不同。他甚至不知道这一片片棕色的是什么东西，他以前可从没见过吐司；他也不知道小矮人们抹在吐司上那黄色的软软的东西又是什么玩意儿，因为卡乐门人几乎不用黄油，用的都是植物油。这间小屋本身也与卡乐门的房子完全不同：阿什伊什的小屋黑咕隆咚的，散发着霉臭和鱼腥味；塔什班的宫殿内则满是柱廊，四处铺着地毯。而这座小屋却是木制的，屋顶很低，屋子里有一座会报时的布谷鸟时钟、一块红白格桌布、一碗野花还有挂在厚厚的玻璃窗上的小窗帘。要用小矮人们的杯碟刀叉也很麻烦，虽然准备了许多份食物，但每份量都不大，所以沙斯塔总是需要不断往自己的杯子、盘子里添食物，而小矮人们也一直在说“来点儿黄油吧”“再来杯咖啡”“我还要些蘑菇”或者是“再来个煎蛋吗”。等他们终于吃撑了，三个小矮人便抓阄决定谁来洗碗，罗金成了那个倒霉蛋。达夫尔与布里克桑姆带沙斯塔来到室外的长椅上，长椅紧挨着小屋的墙壁。他们伸直了腿，心满意足地呼了口气，两个小矮人还点起了烟斗。阳光暖暖地洒下来，草地上的露珠已经不见了。如果没有微风吹过，天气着实会有些太热。

“好了，陌生人，”达夫尔说，“我来给你介绍一下地形分布吧。从这里，你几乎可以把整个纳尼亚南部尽收眼底，这也是我们引以为傲的美景。在你左手边，越过近处的小山，你就能看见西部群山了。你右手边那座圆圆的小山名为石桌山，在它后面——”

就在这时，他的介绍被沙斯塔的鼾声打断了，沙斯塔奔波了一整夜，享用完美味的早餐后，很快便陷入沉睡。发现他睡着了，善良的小矮人们比画着手势，互相示意别把他吵醒了。实际上，他们低声交谈、点头示意了好一会儿，然后才起身踮脚离开，沙斯塔要是没这么累，早被他们吵醒了。

沙斯塔几乎睡了一天，睡得很香，醒来时正好是晚餐时间。屋里的床对他而言都太小了，不过小矮人们用石南给他铺了一张舒适的地铺，沙斯塔一夜无梦，都没翻身。第二天早上，他们刚吃完早餐，便听到外面传来一个尖锐而又激动人心的声音。

“是小号！”小矮人们齐声说道，与沙斯塔一同跑到了屋外。

号声再次响起：这对沙斯塔而言又是一个全新的声音。这声音不像塔什班的号角声那样庄严响亮，也不像卢恩国王狩猎时的号角声那般轻快愉悦。这个号角声从树林的东侧传来，听起来清晰、尖锐而又勇敢，随后又有些马蹄声夹杂其中。不一会儿，纵队的领头人便出现在他们眼前。

帕利丹勋爵骑着枣红马，扛着纳尼亚的绿底红狮大旗率先过来了，沙斯塔立刻就认出了他。然后并排来了三人，两人坐在高大的战马上，另一人骑着一匹矮小的马。骑在战马上的是爱德蒙国王和一位金发女士，那位女士戴着头盔，身披盔甲，背着一张弓，身侧放着装满箭的箭筒，她看起来非常愉悦。（达夫尔轻声说道：“那是露西女王。”）一边骑着矮小马儿的则是科林。他们身后是大军：骑着普通马儿的人、骑着能言马的人（只要有正当理由，比如说作战，他们并不介意被人骑着）、半人马、严肃顽强的熊、巨大的能言犬还有站在最后的六个巨人，纳尼亚还是有一些善良的巨人的。尽管知道他们都是正义一方的，刚开始时，沙斯塔还是不敢直视他们。很多事情他还需要再花上些时间才能习惯。

女王与国王抵达小屋后，小矮人们弯腰行礼。爱德蒙国王开口道：

“好了，朋友们！大家停下吃些东西吧！”接着一大群人便翻身下马，打开粮袋，开始闲聊。就在这时，科林跑向沙斯塔，抓住他的双手喊道：

“天哪！你在这儿呀！看来你顺利抵达了？我真高兴。现在我们又能一起去打仗了，真是太走运了！我们昨天早上才到凯尔帕拉维尔的码头，第一个遇见我们的就是牡鹿彻维，他捎来消息说安瓦德遭到进攻。你不觉得——”

“是殿下的朋友吗？”爱德蒙国王问道，他刚刚才下马。

“陛下，看出来了吗？”科林说，“长得很像吧。这就是你们在塔什班错认成我的那个男孩儿。”

“是的，确实很像，”露西女王道，“简直就是一对双胞胎，真是太神奇了。”

“陛下，请您原谅，”沙斯塔对爱德蒙国王说，“我没有出卖你们，真的没有。我不小心听到了你们的计划，但我从没想过要把计划告诉你们的敌人。”

“我现在知道你不是叛徒了，孩子，”爱德蒙国王说着摸了摸沙斯塔的头，“但不要再有下次了，这样别人才不会把你当作叛徒。如今一切顺利，那便没问题了。”

接下来又一阵忙碌，大家走来走去、互相交谈，不一会儿沙斯塔就看不到科林、爱德蒙和露西了。不过科林是那种总能让人关注到的孩子，没过多久，沙斯塔就听见爱德蒙国王大声说：

“以狮王的鬃毛起誓，王子，你太过分了！我们尊敬的王子殿下就不能有点儿长进吗？整个军队加起来都没你单独一个更让人操心！我宁可去指挥一群黄蜂也管不动你。”

沙斯塔从人群中钻了过去，看见爱德蒙火冒三丈，科林看起来有些羞愧，一个陌生的小矮人坐在地上，脸皱成一团。显然，几个半人羊刚刚是在帮他脱下盔甲。

“如果我带了甘露，”露西女王说，“我很快就能治好他。但至尊国王不让我带去打仗，说那是要留在最危急的时候用的。”

事情是这样的。科林介绍完沙斯塔后，军队里一个名为索布特的小矮人就扯了一下科林的胳膊。

科林问：“怎么了，索布特？”

“尊贵的王子殿下，”索布特把他拽到一边，“我们今天就要穿过群山到达您父亲的城堡，天黑之前战争就会打响。”

“我知道，”科林说，“这不是很棒吗？”

“不管这是不是很棒，”索布特说，“爱德蒙国王下了最最严格的命令要我看好您，别让您参与到战争中。不过您可以旁观，以殿下您这么小的年纪，这待遇已经不错了。”

“简直一派胡言！”科林嚷道，“我当然要上战场。凭什么呀？露西女王都能与弓箭手一同作战了。”

“女王想做什么都可以，”索布特说，“但我要对您负责。希望您能以王子之名庄严起誓，除非我允许您离开，您保证会骑着小马同我比肩而行，半个脖子都不会超前。否则——陛下亲口说的——我俩就必须像犯人一样把手腕绑在一起才能走。”

“你要是想把我捆起来，我就揍你。”科林说。

“我倒是期待殿下试试看。”小矮人说。

这句话足够把科林这样的男孩激怒了，他和小矮人立刻扭打成一团。两人本该是势均力敌的，虽然科林长得更高、手臂更长，但小矮人却更为年长、更加强壮。但还没能真正打起来（山路崎岖，在路上打架实在不好受），索布特就不幸踩到一块松动的石头，然后脸朝下地摔了下去，鼻子磕到了地上。当他尝试站起身时，他发现自己的脚扭伤了，而且伤得非常严重，至少两个星期都不能走路或者骑马了。

“王子殿下，您看看您都做了些什么？”爱德蒙国王说，“在战争即将打响时，夺走了我们一位经验丰富的战士！”

“陛下，我可以替他上战场的。”科林说。

“哼，”爱德蒙说，“没人质疑你的勇气，但是在战场上，你一个小男孩只会给我们增加危险。”

这时，有人叫国王去处理一些其他事务。科林大方地向小矮人道过歉后，便跑到沙斯塔身边，轻声说道：

“快点，现在多出一匹小马了，小矮人的盔甲也在那儿，趁没人注意你赶紧穿上。”

“为什么呀？”沙斯塔说。

“哎呀，当然是为了你我能一起上战场了！你不想去吗？”

“呃——啊，当然，当然想去。”沙斯塔说。其实他压根儿没想过要去，他感觉自己的脊椎刺痛，难受极了。

“那不就行了。”科林说，“把这个戴在头上，然后系好佩剑腰带。我们得像老鼠一样安安静静，骑马跟在队伍最后。一旦战争打响，大家各忙各的，就没人管我们啦。”

第十三章
安瓦德之战

大约十一点，整个队伍再次开始行军，策马向西边进发，大山就在他们的左边。科林与沙斯塔骑马走在队伍末尾，巨人就在他们的前面。露西、爱德蒙和帕利丹正忙着讨论作战计划，虽然露西提了一句说：“咱们调皮捣蛋的王子殿下去哪儿了？”爱德蒙只是回答道：“反正没跑去打头阵就已经够好了，随他去吧。”

沙斯塔把自己的大部分冒险经历都告诉了科林，并解释说他的骑术都是从一匹马那儿学来的，他并不知道该如何使用缰绳。科林就教了他使用方式，顺便给他讲述从塔什班秘密出航回来的全过程。

“那么苏珊女王在哪儿呢？”

“在凯尔帕拉维尔，”科林说，“她和露西可不一样。你知道，露西非常优秀，和男人一样，或至少像个男孩子一样。而苏珊女王更像个普通的成年女性。虽说她是个优秀的弓箭手，但她不会骑着马儿去打仗。”

一路走来，山间小径越来越窄，右边的山坡也愈发陡峭。最终，他们只能调整成单列纵队沿着悬崖边缘继续前行。沙斯塔想到自己昨晚就这样无知无觉地走过了这样一条路，忍不住瑟瑟发抖。“当然啦，”他想，“我那时非常安全。难怪狮王一直走在我的左边，原来他自始至终都走在我和悬崖中间。”

然后山路拐向左边，背对悬崖向南边延伸而去。他们沿着陡峭的山路往上走，两侧都是茂密的树林。倘若这儿是块空地，那么鸟瞰此处景色一定十分壮丽。可惜这儿长满了树，除了偶尔能看见树顶上露出几块大石头或是一两只在天空高处盘旋的老鹰，其他什么都看不到。

“他们嗅到了战争的硝烟，”科林指着那些老鹰说，“他们知道我们正在给他们准备食物。”

沙斯塔非常不喜欢这样的话。

过了山关后，他们又往下走了很长一段路，来到一片开阔的空地，从这里远眺，沙斯塔将整个亚钦兰尽收眼底，雾蒙蒙的青蓝国度在他脚下展开，（他以为）他甚至望见了亚钦兰背后露出的少许沙漠。不过距离太阳下山还有约两个小时，明晃晃的阳光照进他的眼中，他很难看清东西。

军队在此停顿，一字排开后，进行了一番重新整编。整整一队长相凶残的能言兽咆哮着迈步走到左边，这支队伍里大多是些猫科动物（比如猎豹、花豹等），沙斯塔先前都没有注意到过。巨人们收到命令站到右边，走之前他们卸下一直背在身上的东西，在地上坐了一会儿。沙斯塔这才看到他们一直背着的原来是靴子，那及膝长靴又可怕又沉重，上面还有铆钉。穿上靴子，他们提起巨大的棍子扛在肩头走向他们的阵地。弓箭手们与露西女王被调到了后方，他们拉开了弓，试着拉弓时发出梆梆的声响。目光所及之处，大家都忙着收紧腰带、戴好头盔、试着拔剑、扔掉斗篷。基本没什么人还在说话了，气氛相当庄严可怖。“我竟然参与战争了——我竟然真的参与进来了。”沙斯塔心想。这时前方有吵吵嚷嚷的声音传来，那是人们的叫喊声与连续不断的砰砰声。

“破城槌，”科林轻声说，“敌人正在撞击城门。”

甚至连科林都神情严肃起来。

“爱德蒙国王为什么不下令出击呢？”他说，“我无法忍受就这样等下去。而且，我冷了。”

沙斯塔点点头，希望自己看起来不像心里那么害怕。

冲锋号终于响起！开始进攻了。马儿一路小跑，旗帜随风飘扬。他们爬上一个低矮的山脊，山下的全部景象突然呈现在他们眼前。一个多塔楼的小城堡，不幸的是周围并没有护城河；城门正对着他们，当然，城门紧闭，而吊闸则被放下。他们可以看见城墙上的守卫们好似一个个小白点的脸；城墙下约有五十个卡乐门人下了马，稳速晃动巨大的树根撞击着城门。然而紧接着，眼前的景象瞬间改变了。拉巴达斯的主力军本已全部下马站立着，准备攻入城门，但是发现纳尼亚人从山脊上冲下来后，训练有素的卡乐门部队立刻全都回到马背上，调转马头向他们扑了过来。这在沙斯塔看来，不过一秒发生的事。

马儿疾跑起来，两军之间的距离越来越近，速度也越来越快。拔出所有宝剑，举起所有盾牌，做完所有祷告，全体咬紧牙关。沙斯塔惊恐万分，但突然间他脑中闪现了一句话：“如果这次你退缩了，此后一生的战争中你都将止步不前。机会只有一次。”

然而最终两军短兵相接时，沙斯塔完全不知道到底发生了什么。四处都是骇人的叫喊，一片混乱，可怕极了。他的剑很快就被打掉了，手中的缰绳缠在一起，他发现自己坐不稳了，一柄长矛直直向他刺来，他低头躲避时从马背上滚落，左膝狠狠地砸到别人的盔甲上，再然后——从沙斯塔的角度根本无法描述这场战争，他本就对战争知之甚少，连自己在其中扮演了什么角色都不知道。了解这场战争的最佳方式就是去往几英里外的南征隐士所在之处，他正同布里、赫温和娅拉维斯一起坐在水池边，凝视着树影下波澜不惊的水面。

每当隐士希望知道他隐居的绿墙外正在发生什么事时，他都会望向这池清水。就像是透过镜子一样，在特定的时间，他能看见比塔什班更南边的城市里某条街道上正在发生的事，或者是什么船正在驶入远方七岛的莱德港，又或者灯柱荒原与台尔马之间的西部大森林中是哪些强盗或野兽打破了平静。那一天，隐士几乎没有离开水池，哪怕是吃饭喝水，因为他知道亚钦兰有重大事件发生了。娅拉维斯与马儿也看向水池中。他们看得出这池水具有魔力，水面上没有蓝天绿树的倒影，水的深处却映射着不断移动的云雾般的色彩。但他们什么也看不清楚，只有隐士能看清，他时不时把所见的情景转述给他们听。沙斯塔骑马开始他的首战之前，隐士开口如是说：

“我看见一只——两只——三只老鹰在风暴峰的深沟处盘旋。其中最老的那只鹰一般不出来，除非战争在即。我看见它往复盘旋，时而望向安瓦德，时而看着东边风暴峰的后方。啊——我现在终于知道拉巴达斯和他的人马一整天都在忙些什么了。吸取昨晚攻城失败的经验教训，他们砍下一棵大树，锯掉树枝做成破城槌，正在往外运呢。要是他能聪明一点，他就该让士兵做把梯子，不过那太费时间了，他没那么多耐心。愚蠢的人啊！第一次攻城失败后，他就该回到塔什班去，毕竟他的整个计划都依托于出其不意与速战速决。现在他们带着破城槌就位了，卢恩国王的士兵从城墙上竭力射箭。五个卡乐门人倒下了，他们已将盾牌高举过头，所以不会再有更多人因此倒下了。拉巴达斯正在下令。同他站在一起的都是他的亲信，来自东部各省的凶悍塔尔坎。我能看清他们的脸，分别是托木特堡的科拉丁，还有埃兹鲁和齐拉马斯，歪嘴巴的伊尔加默斯，还有一个深红胡子的高个儿塔尔坎——”

“以狮王的鬃毛起誓，那是我以前的主人，安拉丁！”布里说。

“嘘——轻点儿。”娅拉维斯说。

“现在开始用破城槌撞门了。如果我能看得见又听得见的话，那声音应该非常响了。一击又一击，没有城门在如此攻势下能永远屹立不倒。等一下！风暴峰上有什么东西把鸟儿吓着了，他们成群结队地往外飞。再等一下……我还是看不清……啊！现在看见了！东面整个山脊上乌压压地满是骑兵。要是风能够把他们的旗帜吹起来就好了。先不管他们是谁，现在他们冲下了山脊。啊！我看到旗子了，是纳尼亚，纳尼亚！红狮旗！他们正在全速冲下山坡，我看见爱德蒙国王了。还有一个女人在后方的弓箭手队里。啊——”

“怎么了？”赫温屏息问道。

“左边队列的猫全都冲出来了。”

“猫？”娅拉维斯说。

“大猫，比如猎豹一类的。”隐士不耐烦地解释道，“我懂了，我懂了。这些猫围成一圈要对那些没人骑的马发起围攻。好计谋。卡乐门的马已经吓疯了。猫现在已经冲了进去。但拉巴达斯已经重整战线，手上还有一百人马。他们骑马冲向纳尼亚人了。两军之间只有一百码了。五十码，我看见爱德蒙国王和帕利丹勋爵了。还有两个孩子也在纳尼亚的战线中，国王怎么会让他们进入战场呢？只剩十码——短兵相接！纳尼亚队伍右侧的巨人正在创造奇迹……不过有一人倒下了，我猜是被射中了眼睛。战地中央一片混乱。我现在左边看见更多一些了。啊，又是那两个男孩儿。天哪，狮王在上！是科林王子，另一个和科林长得很像，是你们的小沙斯塔。科林像个男子汉一般在战斗着，他杀了一个卡乐门人。我能看见些中央的情况了。拉巴达斯与爱德蒙几乎就要撞上了，不过又被人群分开了——”

“沙斯塔怎么样了？”娅拉维斯问。

“哦，那个小傻瓜！”隐士叹道，“这个可怜但却勇敢的小傻瓜啊，他真是对战斗一无所知。他完全没有发挥出盾牌的作用，身体整个暴露在外。他连剑最基本的用法都不会。啊，他终于想起来自己有一把剑了，他疯狂地挥着剑……他要是再不注意点儿，他自己骑的马的脑袋就要被他削掉了。现在他的剑被打落了。把这样一个孩子送上战场简直就是谋杀，他连五分钟都撑不下去。低头啊你这傻子——哦，他摔下去了。”

“活着吗？”三个声音屏息问道。

“我怎么知道？”隐士说，“那些猫完成了他们的使命。所有无主的马不是死了就是逃了，绝不给卡乐门人留下任何后路。那些猫现在回到主战场上，对撞门的敌人发起攻击。破城槌掉下来了，好！很好！城门从里面打开了，该突围了！先出来了三个人，卢恩国王走在中间，左右两边是戴尔和戴林两兄弟，身后是特兰、夏尔、柯尔和他的兄弟柯兰。现在有十人——二十人——将近三十人出来了。卡乐门的队伍正被他们击退。爱德蒙国王正挥舞着宝剑，刀光剑影间他砍下了科拉丁的脑袋。不少卡乐门人已丢盔弃甲逃往树林。剩下的那些人被死死压制着。巨人从右边逼近了——猫从左边——卢恩国王从他们背后包抄过去。卡乐门人没剩下多少了，他们在背靠背地作战。布里，你的塔尔坎倒下了。卢恩和埃兹鲁近身肉搏起来，看上去国王占了上风——国王很好地保持了优势——赢了！埃兹鲁倒下了！爱德蒙国王也倒下了，不，他又站起来了。他和拉巴达斯还在交战，就在城堡大门口。一些卡乐门人已经投降了。戴林杀死了伊尔加默斯。我看不清拉巴达斯是怎么了，他斜靠在城堡的墙上，我不知道，我猜他是死了。齐拉马斯和爱德蒙国王继续打斗，但其他地方的战斗都已经结束了。齐拉马斯投降了，战斗结束。卡乐门完败。”

沙斯塔摔下马后就自我放弃了。但即使在战斗中，马儿踩死人类的事情也比人们以为的要少得多。无比恐怖的十分钟过去了，沙斯塔突然意识到周围已经没有马儿在踏步了，而嘈杂的声音（现在还是有许多声音）听起来也不像是在战斗。他坐起身来看着四周。即使他对战争知之甚少，但还是能看出来亚钦兰与纳尼亚取得了最后的胜利。活着的卡乐门人都成了战俘，城门大开，卢恩国王与爱德蒙国王隔着破城槌握手。勋爵与战士们在他们身旁围成一个圈，大家气喘吁吁、激动不已地交谈着，欢喜之情溢于言表。然后突然间，所有的声音连成一片，大家全都哄然大笑起来。

沙斯塔爬了起来，全身异常僵硬，他跑向笑声的来源，想知道是闹了什么笑话。一幅奇怪的画面映入他的眼帘。倒霉的拉巴达斯被悬挂在城堡的外墙上，他的双脚离地大约两英尺，正在疯狂地乱踢乱踹。他的锁子甲因为吊起的缘故，胳膊下看起来非常紧，盔甲几乎遮住了他半张脸。实际上，他看起来就是一副有人试图穿上一件过小的硬领衬衫时的模样。根据后来的说法（大家把这事儿翻来覆去说了好多天），事情的经过大致是这样的：战斗刚开始时，一个巨人用他那钉鞋踩了拉巴达斯一脚，但没能把他踩死，只是用钉子掀开了他的锁子甲，就像你我掀开普通衬衫一样。这一脚是巨人故意而为之的。所以拉巴达斯与爱德蒙在城堡门口相遇时，盔甲后面有一个大洞。爱德蒙步步紧逼下，拉巴达斯与墙靠得越来越近，于是他跳上了一个高台，在爱德蒙上方胡乱挥着剑。可是很快他发现，站在这个位置上，他比任何人都高，很容易成为弓箭手的目标。他就决定要跳下来。他希望自己这一跳能够听起来或者看起来相当勇猛而有威慑力，所以他大喊道：“塔什神之雷电将从天而降！”有那么一瞬间他看上去是挺勇猛的。但他前面站满了人，没地方落脚，他就只能往边上跳。于是他行云流水地被墙上的钩子（那个其实是很多年前用来拴马的）钩住了盔甲上的洞。后来他就像一件挂在那儿等待风干的衣服一样接受着众人的嘲笑。

“爱德蒙，放我下来！”拉巴达斯吼道，“像个真正的男人、真正的国王那样把我放下来再打啊。如果你是个彻头彻尾的懦夫，不敢放我下来，那就立刻把我杀了！”

“当然可以。”爱德蒙国王说，不过卢恩国王打断了他。

“亲爱的陛下，请允许我说一句，”卢恩国王对爱德蒙说，“别这么做。”然后他转身对拉巴达斯说：“殿下，如果您是在一周前提出挑战，我敢保证在爱德蒙国王的统治下，上至至尊国王，下至最小的能言鼠，谁都不会拒绝你的请求。然而在和平时期，未下战书便突袭安瓦德堡，这只能表明你不是真正的骑士，而是一个背叛者，只配受到刽子手的鞭打，不配与任何心怀荣耀之人持剑交锋。把他放下来，捆起来带走，等我们先公布这个好消息再说。”

拉巴达斯的佩剑被一双强有力的手拽走，他被带进城堡，不断尖叫、威胁、咒骂，最后甚至哭了起来。在塔什班，人人都很敬重他，他宁愿受尽肉体折磨，也不想要被塑造出荒唐的形象遭人嘲笑。

这时，科林跑向沙斯塔，抓住他的手把他往卢恩国王的方向拖去：“他在这儿，父亲，他在这儿。”科林喊道。

“啊，你还是到这儿来了，”国王粗声粗气地说，“完全不听话，还卷入到战斗中。你这男孩可真是伤父亲的心啊！小小年纪的，比起手中握着剑，还是屁股上挨几棍子要合适得多，哈！”但是所有人，包括科林，都能看出国王是多么以他为傲。

“陛下，别再责怪他了，”戴林勋爵说，“殿下要是没能继承您的英勇气概，怎能算是您的儿子呢。他若是做出相反的错事，陛下您怕是要更加伤心了。”

“好吧，好吧，”国王嘟哝道，“这回姑且不追究了。现在——”

接下来所发生的事情令沙斯塔惊讶万分。他发现卢恩国王突然给了他一个大大的拥抱，还亲吻了他的双颊。接着国王把他重新放下，说：“孩子们，站到一起来，让朝臣们好好瞧瞧你俩。把脑袋抬起来。现在，各位绅士们，看看他们俩，还有任何人有疑问吗？”

沙斯塔仍然没能明白大家为什么都注视着他和科林，也没明白他们这是在欢呼些什么。

第十四章
布里如何成为更聪明的马

现在让我们回到娅拉维斯和马儿身边。隐士盯着水池，告诉他们沙斯塔既没有被杀也没受重伤。因为他看见沙斯塔站起身来，看见卢恩国王万分亲切地接见了他。但他只能看见画面，却听不见声音。他不知道人们都在说些什么，既然战争已经结束，大家开始交谈，那么继续通过水池观察就没意义了。

第二天早上，隐士还在屋内时，他们仨便讨论起下一步该怎么办了。

“我受够这种日子了。”赫温说，“隐士对我们很好，我确实相当感激他。但每天光吃草不运动，我都变得和宠物小马驹一样肥了。我们去纳尼亚吧。”

“别是今天，女士。”布里说，“我不喜欢这样匆忙仓促的计划。换一天怎么样？”

“我们必须先去见沙斯塔，向他道别——并且——道歉。”娅拉维斯说。

“没错！”布里满腔热情，“我正要说这个呢。”

“当然了，”赫温说，“我认为他在安瓦德。我们理应过去看看他，然后同他道别。不过这都是顺路的事儿，毕竟，我记得我们都打算去纳尼亚？我们为什么不立刻出发呢？”

“我也这么认为。”娅拉维斯说。她开始琢磨到纳尼亚后究竟能做什么，并且感到稍稍有些寂寞。

“当然，当然了。”布里急忙说道，“但没必要这么着急吧，你们懂我意思吗？”

“不，我不懂你的意思。”赫温说，“你为什么不愿意走？”

“唔——唔——嘛，布噜——嚯，”布里嘀咕着，“呃，女士，你不觉得——回到祖国是件很重要的事情吗——回归社会——回归上流社会——给人留下好印象是很有必要的——我们的模样似乎不太像话，呃，对吧？”

赫温爆发出一阵马笑声：“是因为你的尾巴吧，布里！我现在全明白了。你想等到你的尾巴重新长好再走！可我们甚至都不知道纳尼亚现在是不是崇尚把尾巴留长了。说真的，布里，你可真是和塔什班的那个塔坎娜一样虚荣。”

“布里，你可真蠢。”娅拉维斯说。

“以狮王的鬃毛起誓，我和那位塔坎娜绝非同类，”布里愤怒地说，“我只是对自己和其他马儿表示应有的尊重，就是这样。”

“布里，”娅拉维斯对他被剪短的尾巴并不感兴趣，“我想问你这个问题很久了。你为什么总是说‘狮王在上’或者‘以狮王的鬃毛起誓’？我以为你讨厌狮子。”

“我是讨厌狮子，”布里回答，“但我说到狮王的时候其实指的是阿斯兰，纳尼亚的大救星，是他赶走了女巫和寒冬。所有纳尼亚人都以他的名字起誓。”

“他是一头狮子吗？”

“不、不，当然不是。”布里震惊地说。

“塔什班城所有关于他的故事，都说他是头狮子。”娅拉维斯答道，“如果不是狮子的话，你为什么称他为狮王呢？”

“哎，你这个年纪自然是不能理解的。”布里说，“而我在还是个幼崽的时候就离开了纳尼亚，所以我自己也不是很清楚。”

（布里说这些时背对着绿墙，而另两人则面对着他。布里半闭着眼睛，语气中充满优越感，而这就是他没察觉到赫温与娅拉维斯脸上神色变化的原因。她俩瞠目结舌的样子确实事出有因，布里说话时，她们看见一头体型庞大的狮子从外面高高跃起，随即稳稳地落在那绿色墙头上。那头狮子比她们曾经见过的所有狮子都更为庞大，黄色的鬃毛更明亮，更美丽，也更令人恐惧。它立即跳入墙内，从后方悄无声息地逐步靠近布里。赫温与娅拉维斯仿佛冻僵了一般，发不出任何声音。）

“毫无疑问，”布里接着说，“大家将他称为狮王，只是为了表达他如同狮子一般强壮、凶猛（当然了，后者是形容他对敌人的态度），或者其他诸如此类的意思。娅拉维斯，即使是你这样的小姑娘也得明白，认为他是真正的狮子实在很荒谬，而且确实非常不尊重。如果他是一头狮子，那他就和我们其他的同类一样得是头野兽。天哪！”（说到这儿布里大笑起来，）“如果他是头狮子，就有四只爪子，一条尾巴，还有胡须！……诶呀，嗷，嚯——嚯！救命啊！”

正当他说到“胡须”两字时，阿斯兰的一根胡须恰好挠到了他的耳朵。布里如同离弦的箭一般蹿到圈地另一端然后转过身来，墙太高了，他跳不过去，无处可逃。娅拉维斯与赫温也开始后退。有那么一秒钟，空气紧张，寂静无声。

赫温虽然吓得浑身发抖，但她还是发出奇怪而又低沉的马嘶，慢跑到狮王面前。

“你太美了，”她说，“如果你打算吃我的话，我恳求你把我吃了。我宁愿尽早被你吃掉，而不愿被其他人饲养。”

“亲爱的女儿，”阿斯兰在她翕动的、天鹅绒般的鼻子上印下一吻，“我知道你不久便会来到我身边。欢愉必将与你同在。”

接着，他昂起头，说话的声音更为响亮。

“布里，”他说，“你这匹惊慌失措、骄傲而又可怜的马啊，靠过来些，我的儿子，再靠近些。该壮起胆子的时候就胆大些。过来摸摸我，好好闻一闻。这儿是我的爪子，这儿是尾巴，这些是我的胡须。我是一头真正的野兽。”

“阿斯兰，”布里的声音颤抖着，“我恐怕是愚蠢透顶了。”

“很高兴你在尚年轻之时就意识到这点了。人类，你也一样。靠近点儿，娅拉维斯，我的女儿。你看！我的爪子上有绒毛覆盖，这次不会抓伤你的。”

“先生，您说‘这次’的意思是？”娅拉维斯说。

“我就是伤了你的那头狮子，”阿斯兰说，“一路上你们只遇到过一头狮子，就是我。你可知我为何要伤你？”

“先生，我不知道。”

“你背部的抓痕，每块破皮、每道印记、每条血痕，都与你继母的女仆后背上的伤痕一一对应。你给她下了迷药，害她被鞭打，你必须清楚那是何种滋味。”

“先生，请问——”

“继续问吧，亲爱的。”

“我所犯下的错事还会给她带去更多伤害吗？”

“孩子，”狮王说，“我告诉你的是你的故事，而不是她的。我只对别人讲述他自己的故事。”他摇了摇头，开口时声音更轻了。

“小家伙，高兴点儿。”他说，“我们很快就会再次相见。不过在此之前，还会有另一位客人到访。”接着，他一跃跳上墙头，消失在他们的视野中。

说起来也很奇怪，狮王离开后，并没有人想与别人谈论他。草地上一片静谧，他们慢慢地往不同方向散去，来来回回地独自踱步，各自都在思考着什么。

大约半小时后，两匹马儿被唤到石屋后享用美食，隐士早些时候给他们准备好了。而娅拉维斯仍在一边踱步一边思考着，就在这时，门外忽然传来一阵刺耳的小号声，把她吓了一跳。

“是谁呀？”娅拉维斯问。

“亚钦兰尊贵的科奥王子殿下。”一个声音在外面说道。

娅拉维斯拉开门闩，打开门，后退了几步给陌生人让路。

两个手持长戟的士兵率先进门，一左一右站在入口两侧；传令官和小号手紧随其后。

“娅拉维斯小姐，亚钦兰尊贵的王子科奥殿下求见。”传令官说道。随后他与小号手退至一旁鞠躬，士兵行礼致敬——王子本人进来了。所有的随从都退了出去，关上身后的大门。

王子躬身行礼，不过以王子的标准来看，他的鞠躬姿势过于笨拙了。娅拉维斯以卡乐门的方式向他屈膝行礼（与我们的屈膝礼完全不像），动作相当优雅，毕竟她接受过礼仪训练。她抬起头想看看这王子是个怎样的人。

然而那只是个小男孩儿。他没戴帽子，一条不及电线粗的金色发带缠在他漂亮的金发上。他上身穿着一件白色束腰麻布外衣，如同丝绢一般，衬托出里层亮红色的紧身短上衣。他的左手缠着绷带，按在腰间宝剑的珐琅剑鞘上。

娅拉维斯再次凝视他的脸庞，倒吸了一口气，感叹道：“沙斯塔，是你呀。”

沙斯塔的脸一下子便涨得通红，他飞快地解释起来。“听着，娅拉维斯，”他说，“希望你不要认为我穿成这样（还带着那些小号手什么的）是为了给你留下深刻印象，彰显我的与众不同或者其他乱七八糟的念头。其实我更愿意穿着我那些破衣服过来，但它们都被烧掉了，我父亲说——”

“你父亲？”娅拉维斯道。

“显然，我父亲是卢恩国王。”沙斯塔说，“我早该猜到的，我和科林是如此相像。你知道吗，我们俩是双胞胎。啊，我的名字原来是科奥，不是沙斯塔。”

“科奥比沙斯塔听起来好多了。”娅拉维斯说。

“在亚钦兰，兄弟的名字都这样取。”沙斯塔（或者现在得称他为科奥王子了）说，“比如戴尔和戴林还有柯尔和柯兰等。”

“沙斯塔——我是说，科奥，”娅拉维斯说，“不是，你先别说话。有些事儿我一定得立刻告诉你。很抱歉我以前对你非常没礼貌，在知道你是王子之前我的想法就已经转变了，真的，在你转身直面狮王的那一刻，我就不那么想了。”

“狮王并没有真的想杀你。”

“我知道。”娅拉维斯点点头，说道。当发现彼此都知道阿斯兰的事情时，有那么一刻两人都沉默严肃起来。

突然娅拉维斯想起科奥的手上缠着绷带。“对了！”她喊道，“我都忘了你参与战斗了！那是当时受的伤吗？”

“只是小小的擦伤而已。”科奥说，第一次用上充满贵族作派的语气。不过片刻后他便笑出了声，说道：“你要是真想知道，这甚至算不上受伤。我只是关节处的皮被蹭破了些，随便一个笨蛋即使不靠近战场也会受这样的伤。”

“但你还是参加了战斗，”娅拉维斯说，“一定非常精彩吧。”

“它和我想象的完全不同。”科奥说。

“沙——我是说，科奥，你还没告诉我关于卢恩国王的事儿呢，他是怎么发现你的身份的？”

“来，我们坐下讲，”科奥说，“这是个很长的故事。顺便提一句，我父亲心肠特别好，就算他不是国王，我也会很高兴成为他的儿子。尽管我现在得开始面对接受教育还有其他各种可怕的事情了。不过，你要听的是故事。我和科林是双胞胎，我们出生一周后，被带到纳尼亚找一位智慧的半人马长者，接受祝福一类的。与大多优秀的半人马一样，他是一个预言家。或许你还没看到过半人马？昨天的战斗中有几个，他们都非常杰出，不过跟他们在一起时我总觉得不太自在。啊，娅拉维斯，在这些北方国度中还有很多东西，我们都得慢慢习惯起来才行。”

“是啊，还有很多。”娅拉维斯说，“不过，你继续讲下去呀。”

“似乎那半人马一见到我和科林，就看着我说，有一天这男孩将把亚钦兰从其未经历过的危急存亡之中拯救出来。我父母听了当然十分高兴。而在场的某人则不然。那家伙就是巴尔勋爵，他曾经是我父亲手下的一位大法官。显然，因为他犯了些错——好像是挪用公款一类的，我没太理解这部分——而被父亲革去职位。父亲并没有另外对他采取行动，还允许他在亚钦兰继续生活。可他实在是坏透了，后来事实证明他曾从蒂斯罗克那里收取贿赂，把不少机密情报传到了塔什班城。所以一听到我将拯救亚钦兰于危难中，他便决心要把我铲除。他成功绑架了我（不知道是如何做到的），骑马沿着旋箭河一路往前到达海边。一艘载着他的人的船正在那儿等他，万事俱备，他带着我登船驶入大海。父亲未能及时获知这个消息，但还是全速追赶。他刚到海滩时，巴尔勋爵已经在海上了，不过还未消失于视野中。二十分钟内，父亲便登上一艘战船。”

“那必定是一场精彩绝伦的追逐，他们花了六天的时间追赶巴尔的大帆船，第七天便与帆船展开战斗。这是一场浩大的海战（我昨天傍晚听了很多关于海战的事），从早上十点一直持续到日落，最终我们的人占领了船只。可我却不在那儿。巴尔勋爵在战斗中被杀了，不过一个他的随从说，清晨早些时候，巴尔预料到自己会被追上，于是就把我交给他的一位骑士，用小船把我们送走了。那条小船消失得无影无踪。当然了，是阿斯兰（所有的故事中他似乎都无处不在）把这条小船推向岸边，恰好被阿什伊什捡到。我真想知道那位骑士的名字，他一定是自己挨饿才让我活了下来。”

“我猜阿斯兰会说那部分是别人的故事。”娅拉维斯说。

“我差点儿忘了这一点。”科奥说。

“另外，我很好奇那个预言是如何实现的，”娅拉维斯说，“亚钦兰所面临的危难是什么，你又会如何拯救亚钦兰？”

“呃，”科奥非常尴尬地说，“看起来他们觉得我已经做到了。”

娅拉维斯拍手道：“啊，当然了！我可真蠢。还有什么比拉巴达斯带着他的两百人马跨过旋箭河，亚钦兰却尚未得到消息构成更大的危机呢？真是精彩！你不自豪吗？”

“我觉得有些害怕。”科奥说。

“你以后就要住在安瓦德了。”娅拉维斯颇为依依不舍地说。

“天啊！”科奥说，“我差点忘了我来这儿的目的了。父亲希望你能跟我回去，同我们一起生活。他说，自从我母亲去世后，宫里（不知道是为什么，他们称这为宫殿）就没有女性了。来吧，娅拉维斯。你会喜欢父亲还有科林的，他们和我不一样，他们都是被好好照料着长大的。所以你不用担心——”

“不用再继续说了，”娅拉维斯说，“否则我们非打起来不可。我当然会去的。”

“那我们现在去看看两匹马吧。”科奥说。

布里和科奥的会面相当有趣。虽说布里依然处在低沉的情绪中，但他答应了立刻出发去往安瓦德，次日他便会和赫温穿过群山回到纳尼亚。两人两马满怀深情地向隐士道别，承诺很快就会来再次拜访他。上午过半，他们一同出发了。马儿们以为科奥和娅拉维斯会骑在他们身上，但科奥解释说除非是在所有人必须全力以赴的战场上，纳尼亚与亚钦兰的任何人都绝不会想要骑能言马代步。

可怜的布里又一次被提醒了一个事实：他对纳尼亚的传统知之甚少，说不定会犯下可怕的错误。于是，当赫温在美梦中信步前行时，布里每走一步，紧张与扭捏便更深一层。

“布里，振作一点，”科奥说，“我比你惨多了。你都不需要接受教育。当你心满意足地在纳尼亚的草坡上驰骋、打滚儿时，我却要学习阅读、写作、纹章、舞蹈、历史还有音乐。”

“可那就是问题所在。”布里抱怨说，“能言马打滚儿吗？万一不呢？我可不愿意放弃这一大乐趣。赫温，你觉得呢？”

“无论如何我都会继续打滚儿的，”赫温说，“我并不认为他们会在意你打不打滚儿。”

“我们快到城堡了吗？”布里问科奥。

“再转个弯就到。”王子回答说。

“好吧，”布里说，“我现在要好好地打个滚儿，这或许是我最后一次这么做了。等我一分钟。”

五分钟后，他才重新站起，喷着剧烈的鼻息，浑身全是草屑。

“现在我准备好了，”布里的声音低沉而又忧郁，“带路吧，科奥王子。去北方，去纳尼亚。”

可是布里看上去不像是长期流落异乡后，终于能够回到家乡、拥抱自由的战俘，反倒像是正在奔向一场葬礼。

第十五章
可笑的拉巴达斯

转过下一个弯后他们从树林中走了出来，越过芳草萋萋的草地，安瓦德堡出现在他们眼前。那是一座非常古老的城堡，由温暖的红棕色石块砌成。城堡背后是树木丛生的山脊，山脊高高的，为城堡挡住从北方吹来的风。

还没到城门口，卢恩国王便出来迎接他们了。他和娅拉维斯脑海里对国王的印象完全不同。他穿着旧衣服里最旧的那件，这是因为先前他正同猎人们在一起巡视狗场，这会儿只来得及匆匆洗一下碰过小狗的手。不过他搀着娅拉维斯的手向她鞠躬示意时，看起来倒更有国王的风范。

“小姑娘，”他说，“非常欢迎你的到来。我亲爱的夫人若还在世，一定能让你感觉心情更加愉快，虽然我也希望能这样，但却有些力不从心了。对于你历经磨难、被令尊赶出府上一事，我深感遗憾，对你而言想必更是一桩伤心事儿了。我的儿子科奥给我讲述了你们一同经历的冒险，还有你的种种英勇事迹。”

“陛下，他才是英勇的人。”娅拉维斯说，“啊，是他冲向狮子并从狮子口中救下了我。”

“哦，那是什么？”卢恩国王神采飞扬地说，“我还没听过呢。”

于是娅拉维斯讲了起来。虽然科奥非常希望这段故事能够被人知晓，但又觉得不该由自己来讲。不过听娅拉维斯讲起时，他并没有感觉很高兴，事实上他感觉自己蠢极了。不过他父亲看上去还是很高兴的，接下来的几周里，他把这个故事不厌其烦地讲述给很多人，导致科奥现在真希望这事儿从未发生过。

国王转向赫温与布里，像对待娅拉维斯一样彬彬有礼地对待他们，问了许多关于他们家庭的问题以及被抓之前生活在纳尼亚的何处。两匹马儿还不习惯被大人们平等地对待，回答时都说得磕磕绊绊的。反而在娅拉维斯和科奥这样的孩子面前，它们倒比较放松。

不一会儿，露西女王从城堡中出来，加入了他们。卢恩国王对娅拉维斯说：“亲爱的，这是我们家的一位可爱的朋友。她已经在忙活着为你们安排合适的住处了，这一方面她做得可比我优秀得多。”

“你愿意跟我来看看吗？”露西说着便亲吻了娅拉维斯。她们立刻就喜欢上了对方，接着便一同走开，谈论起了娅拉维斯的卧室与闺房该如何布置，还有关于她的衣服和其他种种女孩子们会感兴趣的话题。

在阳台享用过午餐后（食物有冷盘鸡、冷野味派、葡萄酒、面包和奶酪），卢恩国王皱着眉毛叹气道：“嗨——哟！朋友们，拉巴达斯这个麻烦的家伙还在我们手里呢，必须决定一下该如何处置他了。”

露西坐在国王的右边，娅拉维斯坐在他的左边。爱德蒙国王与戴林勋爵面对面坐在桌子的两端。戴尔、帕利丹、科奥和科林都和国王坐在同一侧。

“陛下您完全有权利砍下他的脑袋，”帕利丹说，“他的此番突袭与暗杀者的行为没什么区别。”

“说得非常正确。”爱德蒙说，“但就算是叛徒也有洗心革面的可能。我知道有这样的一个人。”他看起来若有所思。

“杀了拉巴达斯几乎等于向蒂斯罗克宣战。”戴林说。

“蒂斯罗克其实不算什么。”卢恩国王说，“他只不过是人多势众罢了，而人数一多就绝对无法穿过沙漠。但即使他是个叛徒，我也不想冷血地把他杀了。我若是在战场上割开了他的喉咙，那我会感觉非常心安理得。可现在这情况不一样。

“依我看，”露西说，“陛下应该再给他一次机会，考验一下他。要他起誓从今往后做事光明磊落，然后放他自由。或许他能够信守承诺呢。”

“妹妹，那或许猿猴也能变得诚实可靠了吧。”爱德蒙说，“但是，狮王在上，他若再次违背誓言，那到时候，我们任何人都可以在光明磊落的战斗中砍下他的头。”

“可以一试。”国王说完，转向一个侍从，“朋友，把犯人押来。”

拴着锁链的拉巴达斯被带到众人面前。看他这模样，谁都会以为他是在充满恶臭的地牢里过了一夜，连食物和水都没有提供给他。而事实上，他被关在一间舒适的房间里，提供给他的晚餐也很精致。可是暴怒之下，他根本没碰那份晚餐，整夜都在跺着脚，不停地咆哮、咒骂，现在自然也就看起来状态不佳了。

“无须赘述，殿下您也明白，”卢恩国王说，“依据国家法律与相关审慎的政策原因，我们完全有权利砍下你的头，就像任何平凡的人对他的仇人那样。不过，考虑到你正年轻气盛，且天性顽劣，又生活在一个暴政的奴隶制国家，自然缺少良好教养，也不懂礼节。我们更倾向于不施刑罚、放你自由，不过我们提出如下条件：首先——”

“我诅咒你们这些野狗！”拉巴达斯气急败坏道，“你以为我还会听你们的条件？呸！你们大谈特谈教养和一些我不知道是什么玩意儿的东西。绑着我逼我听这些，哈，可真简单啊！给我把这些该死的镣铐拿下来，给我剑，我看你们谁还敢跟我继续扯！”

几乎所有勋爵贵族们都从座位上跳了起来，科林大喊道：

“父亲！我能揍他吗？拜托。”

“陛下，各位勋爵们，冷静！”卢恩国王说，“我们都是有修养的人，难道这么轻易就会被一个小丑的嘲讽给激怒？科林，坐下，不然就立刻离开。殿下，我再次要求你听听我们的条件。”

“我是不会听野蛮人和巫师提出的任何条件的。”拉巴达斯说，“我看你们谁敢碰我一根头发。你们对我的种种侮辱，我要你们用纳尼亚人和亚钦兰人的血海来还！即使现在我没死，蒂斯罗克的复仇也会叫你们惊恐万分。你们要是杀了我，那么在北国土地上的熊熊烈火与万般折磨在千年后也将惊骇整个世界。小心！小心！小心！塔什神之雷电将从天而降！”

“然后半途挂在钩子上？”科林问。

“科林，太不像话了，”国王说，“永远不要奚落他人，除非对方比你强大；他若比你强大，那就悉听尊便了。”

“哎，愚蠢的拉巴达斯啊。”露西叹道。

下一刻，科奥发现餐桌上的所有人不知为何都站起了身，纹丝不动。当然，他也照做了。随即他便找到了答案。阿斯兰出现在了他们身边，虽然没人发现他是何时到来的。拉巴达斯吓了一跳，体型庞大的狮王正在他与原告们之间轻轻地来回踱步。

“拉巴达斯，”阿斯兰说，“注意了。你厄运将至，不过或许还有机会逃脱。忘掉你的骄傲（你有什么可骄傲的呢？）和愤怒（有人冤枉你了吗？），接受这些好心的国王们对你的怜悯吧。”

拉巴达斯转动眼珠，咧开嘴巴露出牙齿，宛如鲨鱼一般恐怖阴沉地狞笑起来，同时上下晃动耳朵（只要肯努力练习，谁都能学会这个）。在卡乐门时，他这一招总能奏效。每当他摆出这副鬼脸，最勇敢的人也会浑身发抖，普通人都会跌倒在地，而神经敏感的人往往都会昏厥。然而拉巴达斯并没有意识到的是，当人们明白他一句话便能让他们被活活煮死时，他想要吓唬他们简直轻而易举。而在亚钦兰，这鬼脸根本无法吓到任何人；事实上，露西只觉得拉巴达斯可能要生病了。

“恶魔！恶魔！恶魔！”拉巴达斯尖叫道，“我知道你！你就是纳尼亚的魔王，是诸神的敌人。恐怖的幽灵，看看我是谁。我是所向披靡、势不可挡的塔什神的后代，塔什神的诅咒将降临于你。蝎子形的闪电将如雨水般落在你身上。纳尼亚的群山都将崩塌化为尘土。那——”

“留心，拉巴达斯。”阿斯兰静静地说，“厄运更近了，它已经来到门前，拉开了门闩。”

“让天空塌陷！”拉巴达斯尖叫，“让大地分裂！让鲜血与大火吞噬整个世界！我绝不善罢甘休，直到我扯住那蛮族女王的头发把她拖入我的宫殿，那野狗的女儿，那——”

“时辰到了。”阿斯兰说。拉巴达斯看到所有人都开始大笑，内心惊恐至极。

他们实在忍不住了。拉巴达斯一直晃动双耳，而阿斯兰一声“时辰到了”话音刚落，他的双耳就开始发生变化。耳朵越变越长、越变越尖，很快上面便长出了灰色毛发。大家还在想着这耳朵似曾相识的时候，拉巴达斯的脸也有了改变。他的脸长了许多，头顶也厚了，眼睛变大，而鼻子陷入脸中（又或是脸膨胀开来成了整个鼻子），毛发盖满了整张脸。他的双臂逐渐拉长，垂在身体前方，直到双手触及地面；只不过那两只现在已经不能称之为手了，而是变成了蹄子。他用四条腿站在地上，衣服消失不见了，所有人情不自禁地越笑越响，拉巴达斯现在完完全全地变成了一头驴子。更可怕的是，当他的身体不再是人形，声音也没保留多久。意识到自己身体发生的变化时，他尖声叫道：

“不！不要变成驴！求求你！变成一匹马也好——呃嗯——啊啊——嗷呜——嗷嗷！”他的话最终全都碎成驴叫。

“拉巴达斯，你听好，”阿斯兰说，“正义与仁慈同在。你不会永远都是一头驴的。”

一听到这，驴子抽动着耳朵往前凑去。这模样也相当滑稽，众人笑得更欢了。他们也试过克制笑意，不过都是徒劳。

“你曾求助于塔什神，”阿斯兰说，“那你便将在塔什神庙得到救赎。今年秋日祭，你必须站在塔什班的塔什神祭坛前，在塔什班众人的注视下，你的驴形将脱离，所有人都将认出你就是拉巴达斯王子。而你在有生之年，只要你去到塔什班的神庙十英里外的地方，你都会立刻变回现在这模样。第二次变为驴子后，你就永远都变不回人形了。”

短暂的安静过后，大家面面相觑，然后动了起来，如梦初醒。阿斯兰已经离开了。但四散在空气中与草地上的光芒，还有他们心中的愉悦，都向他们证明了那并不是梦。无论如何，那头驴子就在他们眼前。

最最好心肠的卢恩国王看见敌人落入此番可悲的境地，便将自己的愤怒都抛之脑后了。

“殿下，”他说，“事情发展至如此极端的地步我深感遗憾，但你也亲眼看到这一切并非我们所为。当然，我们愿意为你提供船只回到塔什班，去阿斯兰所说的地方——呃——休养。你将得到当前境况下的最舒适的待遇，我们会给你准备最好的载牲口的船，最新鲜的胡萝卜还有野蓟——”

然而驴子发出一声震耳欲聋的驴叫，盯准一个守卫狠狠踢去。很明显，对方一点也不感激这些好心优待。

为了之后不再提及拉巴达斯，在这儿，我先把他故事的后续说完。他（或者说“它”）被船只及时送回塔什班，在盛大的秋日祭被带进塔什神庙，重新变回了人。然而，由于当时有四五千人目睹了他的变身，这事儿自然就压不住了。老蒂斯罗克去世后，拉巴达斯继位，最终成为卡乐门有史以来最和平的蒂斯罗克。因为他不敢去到距离塔什班十英里以外的地方，他便无法挂帅亲征；而他又不想手下的塔尔坎们因此赢得美誉，继而把身为蒂斯罗克的他推翻。尽管这一切都是因为他的自私，但这也让卡乐门周边小国的日子好过了不少。他的子民们也从未忘记他曾是头驴子。在他统治期间，当着他的面，人们称呼他“和平者拉巴达斯”，而在他死后和他不知道的时候，人们称他为“可笑的拉巴达斯”。你若在一本写得不错的《卡乐门史》（可以去当地图书馆找找）里查询他的资料，你便会发现他就被归在这个名号之下。如今在卡乐门的学校里，你要是干了一件异常愚蠢的事，就很有可能被喊作“第二个拉巴达斯”。

与此同时，安瓦德城内的每个人都很开心，那天晚上他们将在城堡前的绿地上举办盛大的晚宴，能在真正的乐事开始前把拉巴达斯解决掉真是再好不过了。草坪上布了几十盏灯，与月光交相辉映，觥筹交错间，人们讲着故事，说着玩笑话。然后国王的诗人和两位提琴手步入人群围成的圈，大家安静下来。娅拉维斯和科奥已经做好忍受枯燥朗读的准备，他们知道的仅有的诗都是卡乐门的那种，你应该知道那些诗是什么样子。可当第一声提琴声响起时，他们脑内似是有火箭升起。诗人吟唱着伟大古老的诗篇，那是关于美丽的奥尔威的，诉说着他如何与巨人派尔搏斗，又如何把那巨人变成了石头（这便是派尔山的由来，一个双头巨人），进而虏获莉尔恩小姐的芳心与其成婚。当诗篇吟诵完后，他们都希望能够从头再来一遍。虽然布里不会唱歌，但他讲述了关于祖林德雷之战的故事。露西又讲了（除了娅拉维斯和科奥，其他人都听过好几遍了，但他们还想再听）魔衣橱的故事以及她、爱德蒙国王、苏珊女王还有至尊国王彼得最初进入纳尼亚时发生的故事。

不久，卢恩国王便开口表示年轻人们是时候该去睡觉了。他早晚会这么做的。“科奥，”他补充道，“明天跟我在城堡里走走吧，看看这城堡的情况，找出它所有的优势与劣势，等我死后，这座城堡就要由你来守护了。”

“可是，父亲，到那时科林就是国王了呀。”科奥说。

“不，孩子，”卢恩国王说，“你是我的长子，王位由你继承。”

“可我不想当国王。”科奥说，“我宁可——”

“这并不是你想不想的问题，科奥，也不是我想不想的问题。这是法律规定的。”

“但我们是双胞胎，我们肯定是同岁。”

“不，”国王笑着说，“必定是有一人先出来的。你是科林的哥哥，比他早了整整二十分钟出来。他比你更适合，尽管他的统治能力还不够好。”他看向科林，眼中闪着亮晶晶的光芒。

“但是，父亲，你不可以选择你喜欢的来当下一任国王吗？”

“不行，国王是受法律制约的，也是法律给予了国王权力。国王不能脱离王权的制约，就像哨兵无权脱离自己的岗位。”

“天哪，”科奥说，“我一点儿也不想当国王。科林，我真的很抱歉。我从没想过我的出现会竟然把你挤下你的王座。”

“太棒了！太棒了！”科林喊道，“我不用当国王了！我不用当国王了！我可以一直当个王子。王子才能享尽所有快乐。”

“科奥，相比你弟弟所言更重要的是，”卢恩国王说，“成为国王的意义就在于，无论情况有多绝望，进攻时永远要冲在前头，撤退时永远要留在最后；面对饥荒（那比你们所知的更频繁），要穿得好一些，即使吃不饱也要比国土上的所有人都笑得更响亮。”

两个男孩上楼去睡觉时，科奥又问了科林是否真的没有办法了。科林说：

“你再提这事儿，我就——我就把你打倒。”

故事的美好结局该是两兄弟再未就任何事情产生分歧，不过恐怕事实并非如此。实际上，他们就和其他男孩儿一样常常争吵、打架，结果总是科奥被打倒在地。当他们双双长大，都成为了剑士，尽管科奥在战场上是个更加危险的人物，但说到拳击，无论是科奥也好，北国的任何人也好，谁都无法与科林相提并论，他也因此得到了“雷拳科林”这一称号。在与风暴峰的堕落之熊（那其实是只回归野熊习性的会说话的熊）搏斗时，科林爆发出了神力。那是一个冬日里，山上满是积雪，科林登上风暴峰朝着纳尼亚的那侧进入熊窝。在连个计时器也没有的情况下，科林挥拳与那头熊大战三十三个回合，到最后那熊什么都看不清了，被科林打回了原形。

娅拉维斯也总是和科奥吵架（有时恐怕还会打架），但他们总能和好。多年以后，他们长大成人，都已习惯了与对方吵架再和好，于是他们结了婚，好让吵完和好更方便些。卢恩国王逝世后，他们成为亚钦兰出色的国王与王后，而亚钦兰最著名的国王莱姆大帝，正是他们的儿子。布里与赫温幸福地生活在纳尼亚，两匹马都各自结了婚，尽享天年。隔三差五的，布里或赫温或他俩会一路小跑着，穿过山口来到安瓦德拜访他们的老朋友。

CHAPTER ONE
HOW SHASTA SET OUT ON HIS TRAVELS

This is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queens under him.

In those days, far south in Calormen on a little creek of the sea, there lived a poor fisherman called Arsheesh, and with him there lived a boy who called him Father. The boy’s name was Shasta. On most days Arsheesh went out in his boat to fish in the morning, and in the afternoon he harnessed his donkey to a cart and loaded the cart with fish and went a mile or so southward to the village to sell it. If it had sold well he would come home in a moderately good temper and say nothing to Shasta, but if it had sold badly he would find fault with him and perhaps beat him. There was always something to find fault with for Shasta had plenty of work to do, mending and washing the nets, cooking the supper, and cleaning the cottage in which they both lived.

Shasta was not at all interested in anything that lay south of his home because he had once or twice been to the village with Arsheesh and he knew that there was nothing very interesting there. In the village he only met other men who were just like his father — men with long, dirty robes, and wooden shoes turned up at the toe, and turbans on their heads, and beards, talking to one another very slowly about things that sounded dull. But he was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there himself. When he was sitting out of doors mending the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North. One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it.

Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, “O my Father, what is there beyond that hill?” And then if the fisherman was in a bad temper he would box Shasta’s ears and tell him to attend to his work. Or if he was in a peaceable mood he would say, “O my son, do not allow your mind to be distracted by idle questions. For one of the poets has said, ‘Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly towards the rock of indigence’.”

Shasta thought that beyond the hill there must be some delightful secret which his father wished to hide from him. In reality, however, the fisherman talked like this because he didn’t know what lay to the North. Neither did he care. He had a very practical mind.

One day there came from the South a stranger who was unlike any man that Shasta had seen before. He rode upon a strong dappled horse with flowing mane and tail and his stirrups and bridle were inlaid with silver. The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar, a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark, but this did not surprise Shasta because all the people of Calormen are like that; what did surprise him was the man’s beard which was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil. But Arsheesh knew by the gold on the stranger’s bare arm that he was a Tarkaan or great lord, and he bowed kneeling before him till his beard touched the earth and made signs to Shasta to kneel also.

The stranger demanded hospitality for the night which of course the fisherman dared not refuse. All the best they had was set before the Tarkaan for supper （and he didn’t think much of it） and Shasta, as always happened when the fisherman had company, was given a hunk of bread and turned out of the cottage. On these occasions he usually slept with the donkey in its little thatched stable. But it was much too early to go to sleep yet, and Shasta, who had never learned that it is wrong to listen behind doors, sat down with his ear to a crack in the wooden wall of the cottage to hear what the grown-ups were talking about. And this is what he heard.

“And now, O my host,” said the Tarkaan, “I have a mind to buy that boy of yours.”

“O my master,” replied the fisherman （and Shasta knew by the wheedling tone the greedy look that was probably coming into his face as he said it）, “what price could induce your servant, poor though he is, to sell into slavery his only child and his own flesh? Has not one of the poets said, ‘Natural affection is stronger than soup and offspring more precious than carbuncles?’”

“It is even so,” replied the guest dryly. “But another poet has likewise said, ‘He who attempts to deceive the judicious is already baring his own back for the scourge.’ Do not load your aged mouth with falsehoods. This boy is manifestly no son of yours, for your cheek is as dark as mine but the boy is fair and white like the accursed but beautiful barbarians who inhabit the remote North.”

“How well it was said,” answered the fisherman, “that Swords can be kept off with shields but the Eye of Wisdom pierces through every defence！ Know then, O my formidable guest, that because of my extreme poverty I have never married and have no child. But in that same year in which the Tisroc （may he live forever） began his august and beneficent reign, on a night when the moon was at her full, it pleased the gods to deprive me of my sleep. Therefore I arose from my bed in this hovel and went forth to the beach to refresh myself with looking upon the water and the moon and breathing the cool air. And presently I heard a noise as of oars coming to me across the water and then, as it were, a weak cry. And shortly after, the tide brought to the land a little boat in which there was nothing but a man lean with extreme hunger and thirst who seemed to have died but a few moments before （for he was still warm）, and an empty water-skin, and a child, still living.‘Doubtless,’ said I, ‘these unfortunates have escaped from the wreck of a great ship, but by the admirable designs of the gods, the elder has starved himself to keep the child alive and has perished in sight of land.’ Accordingly, remembering how the gods never fail to reward those who befriend the destitute, and being moved by compassion （for your servant is a man of tender heart）—”

“Leave out all these idle words in your own praise,” interrupted the Tarkaan. “It is enough to know that you took the child — and have had ten times the worth of his daily bread out of him in labour, as anyone can see. And now tell me at once what price you put on him, for I am wearied with your loquacity.”

“You yourself have wisely said,” answered Arsheesh, “that the boy’s labour has been to me of inestimable value. This must be taken into account in fixing the price. For if I sell the boy I must undoubtedly either buy or hire another to do his work.”

“I’ll give you fifteen crescents for him,” said the Tarkaan.

“Fifteen！” cried Arsheesh in a voice that was something between a whine and a scream. “Fifteen！ For the prop of my old age and the delight of my eyes！ Do not mock my grey beard, Tarkaan though you be. My price is seventy.”

At this point Shasta got up and tiptoed away. He had heard all he wanted, for he had open listened when men were bargaining in the village and knew how it was done. He was quite certain that Arsheesh would sell him in the end for something much more than fifteen crescents and much less than seventy, but that he and the Tarkaan would take hours in getting to an agreement.

You must not imagine that Shasta felt at all as you and I would feel if we had just overheard our parents talking about selling us for slaves. For one thing, his life was already little better than slavery; for all he knew, the lordly stranger on the great horse might be kinder to him than Arsheesh. For another, the story about his own discovery in the boat had filled him with excitement and with a sense of relief. He had often been uneasy because, try as he might, he had never been able to love the fisherman, and he knew that a boy ought to love his father. And now, apparently, he was no relation to Arsheesh at all. That took a great weight off his mind. “Why, I might be anyone！” he thought. “I might be the son of a Tarkaan myself — or the son of the Tisroc （may he live for ever） or of a god！”

He was standing out in the grassy place before the cottage while he thought these things. Twilight was coming on apace and a star or two was already out, but the remains of the sunset could still be seen in the west. Not far away the stranger’s horse, loosely tied to an iron ring in the wall of the donkey’s stable, was grazing. Shasta strolled over to it and patted its neck. It went on tearing up the grass and took no notice of him.

Then another thought came into Shasta’s mind. “I wonder what sort of a man that Tarkaan is,” he said out loud. “It would be splendid if he was kind. Some of the slaves in a great lord’s house have next to nothing to do. They wear lovely clothes and eat meat every day. Perhaps he’d take me to the wars and I’d save his life in a battle and then he’d set me free and adopt me as his son and give me a palace and a chariot and a suit of armour. But then he might be a horrid cruel man. He might send me to work on the fields in chains. I wish I knew. How can I know? I bet this horse knows, if only he could tell me.”

The Horse had lifted its head. Shasta stroked its smooth-as-satin nose and said, “I wish you could talk, old fellow.”

And then for a second he thought he was dreaming, for quite distinctly, though in a low voice, the Horse said, “But I can.”

Shasta stared into its great eyes and his own grew almost as big, with astonishment.

“How ever did you learn to talk?” he asked.

“Hush！ Not so loud,” replied the Horse. “Where I come from, nearly all the animals talk.”

“Wherever is that?” asked Shasta.

“Narnia,” answered the Horse. “The happy land of Narnia — Narnia of the heathery mountains and the thymy downs, Narnia of the many rivers, the plashing glens, the mossy caverns and the deep forests ringing with the hammers of the Dwarfs. Oh the sweet air of Narnia！ An hour’s life there is better than a thousand years in Calormen.” It ended with a whinny that sounded very like a sigh.

“How did you get here?” said Shasta.

“Kidnapped,” said the Horse. “Or stolen, or captured whichever you like to call it. I was only a foal at the time. My mother warned me not to range the Southern slopes, into Archenland and beyond, but I wouldn’t heed her. And by the Lion’s Mane I have paid for my folly. All these years I have been a slave to humans, hiding my true nature and pretending to be dumb and witless like their horses.”

“Why didn’t you tell them who you were?”

“Not such a fool, that’s why. If they’d once found out I could talk they would have made a show of me at fairs and guarded me more carefully than ever. My last chance of escape would have been gone.”

“And why —” began Shasta, but the Horse interrupted him.

“Now look,” it said, “we mustn’t waste time on idle questions. You want to know about my master the Tarkaan Anradin. Well, he’s bad. Not too bad to me, for a war horse costs too much to be treated very badly. But you’d better be lying dead tonight than go to be a human slave in his house tomorrow.”

“Then I’d better run away,” said Shasta, turning very pale.

“Yes, you had,” said the Horse. “But why not run away with me?”

“Are you going to run away too?” said Shasta.

“Yes, if you’ll come with me,” answered the Horse. “This is the chance for both of us. You see if I run away without a rider, everyone who sees me will say‘Stray horse’and be after me as quick as he can. With a rider I’ve a chance to get through. That’s where you can help me. On the other hand, you can’t get very far on those two silly legs of yours （what absurd legs humans have！） without being overtaken. But on me you can outdistance any other horse in this country. That’s where I can help you. By the way, I suppose you know how to ride?”

“Oh yes, of course,” said Shasta. “At least, I’ve ridden the donkey.”

“Ridden the what?” retorted the Horse with extreme contempt.（At least, that is what he meant. Actually it came out in a sort of neigh —“Ridden the wha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Talking horses always become more horsy in accent when they are angry.）

“In other words,” it continued, “you can’t ride. That’s a drawback. I’ll have to teach you as we go along. If you can’t ride, can you fall?”

“I suppose anyone can fall,” said Shasta.

“1 mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?”

“I — I’ll try,” said Shasta. “Poor little beast,” said the Horse in a gentler tone. “I forget you’re only a foal. We’ll make a fine rider of you in time. And now — we mustn’t start until those two in the but are asleep. Meantime we can make our plans. My Tarkaan is on his way North to the great city, to Tashbaan itself and the court of the Tisroc —”

“I say,” put in Shasta in rather a shocked voice, “oughtn’t you to say‘May he live forever’?”

“Why?” asked the Horse. “I’m a free Narnian. And why should I talk slaves’and fools’talk? I don’t want him to live forever, and I know that he’s not going to live forever whether I want him to or not. And I can see you’re from the free North too. No more of this Southern jargon between you and me！ And now, back to our plans. As I said, my human was on his way North to Tashbaan.”

“Does that mean we’d better go to the South?”

“I think not,” said the Horse. “You see, he thinks I’m dumb and witless like his other horses. Now if I really were, the moment I got loose I’d go back home to my stable and paddock; back to his palace which is two days’journey South. That’s where he’ll look for me. He’d never dream of my going on North on my own. And anyway he will probably think that someone in the last village who saw him ride through has followed us here and stolen me.”

“Oh hurrah！” said Shasta. “Then we’ll go North. I’ve been longing to go to the North all my life.”

“Of course you have,” said the Horse. “That’s because of the blood that’s in you. I’m sure you’re true Northern stock. But not too loud. I should think they’d be asleep soon now.”

“I’d better creep back and see,” suggested Shasta.

“That’s a good idea,” said the Horse. “But take care you’re not caught.”

It was a good deal darker now and very silent except for the sound of the waves on the beach, which Shasta hardly noticed because he had been hearing it day and night as long as he could remember. The cottage, as he approached it, showed no light. When he listened at the front there was no noise. When he went round to the only window, he could hear, after a second or two, the familiar noise of the old fisherman’s squeaky snore. It was funny to think that if all went well he would never hear it again. Holding his breath and feeling a little bit sorry, but much less sorry than he was glad, Shasta glided away over the grass and went to the donkey’s stable, groped along to a place he knew where the key was hidden, opened the door and found the Horse’s saddle and bridle which had been locked up there for the night. He bent forward and kissed the donkey’s nose. “I’m sorry we can’t take you,” he said.

“There you are at last,” said the Horse when he got back to it. “I was beginning to wonder what had become of you.”

“I was getting your things out of the stable,” replied Shasta. “And now, can you tell me how to put them on?”

For the next few minutes Shasta was at work, very cautiously to avoid jingling, while the Horse said things like, “Get that girth a bit tighter,” or “You’ll find a buckle lower down,” or “You’ll need to shorten those stirrups a good bit.” When all was finished it said：

“Now; we’ve got to have reins for the look of the thing, but you won’t be using them. Tie them to the saddle-bow： very slack so that I can do what I like with my head. And, remember — you are not to touch them.”

“What are they for, then?” asked Shasta.

“Ordinarily they are for directing me,” replied the Horse. “But as I intend to do all the directing on this journey, you’ll please keep your hands to yourself. And there’s another thing. I’m not going to have you grabbing my mane.”

“But I say,” pleaded Shasta. “If I’m not to hold on by the reins or by your mane, what am I to hold on by?”

“You hold on with your knees,” said the Horse. “That’s the secret of good riding. Grip my body between your knees as hard as you like; sit straight up, straight as a poker; keep your elbows in. And by the way, what did you do with the spurs?”

“Put them on my heels, of course,” said Shasta. “I do know that much.”

“Then you can take them off and put them in the saddlebag. We may be able to sell them when we get to Tashbaan. Ready? And now I think you can get up.”

“Ooh！ You’re a dreadful height,” gasped Shasta after his first, and unsuccessful, attempt.

“I’m a horse, that’s all,” was the reply. “Anyone would think I was a haystack from the way you’re trying to climb up me！ There, that’s better. Now sit up and remember what I told you about your knees. Funny to think of me who has led cavalry charges and won races having a potato-sack like you in the saddle！ However, off we go.” It chuckled, not unkindly.

And it certainly began their night journey with great caution. First of all it went just south of the fisherman’s cottage to the little river which there ran into the sea, and took care to leave in the mud some very plain hoof-marks pointing South. But as soon as they were in the middle of the ford it turned upstream and waded till they were about a hundred yards farther inland than the cottage. Then it selected a nice gravelly bit of bank which would take no footprints and came out on the Northern side. Then, still at a walking pace, it went Northward till the cottage, the one tree, the donkey’s stable, and the creek — everything, in fact, that Shasta had ever known — had sunk out of sight in the grey summer-night darkness. They had been going uphill and now were at the top of the ridge — that ridge which had always been the boundary of Shasta’s known world. He could not see what was ahead except that it was all open and grassy. It looked endless： wild and lonely and free.

“I say！” observed the Horse. “What a place for a gallop, eh！”

“Oh don’t let’s,” said Shasta. “Not yet. I don’t know how to — please, Horse. I don’t know your name.”

“Breehy-hinny-brinny-hooky-hah,” said the Horse.

“I’ll never be able to say that,” said Shasta. “Can I call you Bree?”

“Well, if it’s the best you can do, I suppose you must,” said the Horse. “And what shall I call you?”

“I’m called Shasta.”

“H’m,” said Bree. “Well, now, there’s a name that’s really hard to pronounce. But now about this gallop. It’s a good deal easier than trotting if you only knew, because you don’t have to rise and fall. Grip with your knees and keep your eyes straight ahead between my ears. Don’t look at the ground. If you think you’re going to fall just grip harder and sit up straighter. Ready? Now： for Narnia and the North.”

CHAPTER TWO
A WAYSIDE ADVENTURE

It was nearly noon on the following day when Shasta was wakened by something warm and soft moving over his face. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the long face of a horse; its nose and lips were almost touching his. He remembered the exciting events of the previous night and sat up. But as he did so he groaned.

“Ow, Bree,” he gasped. “I’m so sore. All over. I can hardly move.”

“Good morning, small one,” said Bree. “I was afraid you might feel a bit stiff. It can’t be the falls. You didn’t have more than a dozen or so, and it was all lovely, soft springy turf that must have been almost a pleasure to fall on. And the only one that might have been nasty was broken by that gorse bush. No： it’s the riding itself that comes hard at first. What about breakfast? I’ve had mine.”

“Oh bother breakfast. Bother everything,” said Shasta. “I tell you I can’t move.” But the horse nuzzled at him with its nose and pawed him gently with a hoof till he had to get up. And then he looked about him and saw where they were. Behind them lay a little copse. Before them the turf, dotted with white flowers, sloped down to the brow of a cliff. Far below them, so that the sound of the breaking waves was very faint, lay the sea. Shasta had never seen it from such a height and never seen so much of it before, nor dreamed how many colours it had. On either hand the coast stretched away, headland after headland, and at the points you could see the white foam running up the rocks but making no noise because it was so far off. There were gulls flying overhead and the heat shivered on the ground; it was a blazing day. But what Shasta chiefly noticed was the air. He couldn’t think what was missing, until at last he realized that there was no smell of fish in it. For of course, neither in the cottage nor among the nets, had he ever been away from that smell in his life. And this new air was so delicious, and all his old life seemed so far away, that he forgot for a moment about his bruises and his aching muscles and said：

“I say, Bree, didn’t you say something about breakfast?”

“Yes, I did,” answered Bree. “I think you’ll find something in the saddle-bags. They’re over there on that tree where you hung them up last night — or early this morning, rather.”

They investigated the saddle-bags and the results were cheering — a meat pasty, only slightly stale, a lump of dried figs and another lump of green cheese, a little flask of wine, and some money; about forty crescents in all, which was more than Shasta had ever seen.

While Shasta sat down — painfully and cautiously — with his back against a tree and started on the pasty, Bree had a few more mouthfuls of grass to keep him company.

“Won’t it be stealing to use the money?” asked Shasta.

“Oh,” said the Horse, looking up with its mouth full of grass, “I never thought of that. A free horse and a talking horse mustn’t steal, of course. But I think it’s all right. We’re prisoners and captives in enemy country. That money is booty, spoil. Besides, how are we to get any food for you without it? I suppose, like all humans, you won’t eat natural food like grass and oats.”

“I can’t.”

“Ever tried?”

“Yes, I have. I can’t get it down at all. You couldn’t either if you were me.”

“You’re rum little creatures, you humans,” remarked Bree.

When Shasta had finished his breakfast （which was by far the nicest he had ever eaten）, Bree said, “I think I’ll have a nice roll before we put on that saddle again.” And he proceeded to do so. “That’s good. That’s very good,” he said, rubbing his back on the turf and waving all four legs in the air. “You ought to have one too, Shasta,” he snorted. “It’s most refreshing.”

But Shasta burst out laughing and said, “You do look funny when you’re on your back！”

“I look nothing of the sort,” said Bree. But then suddenly he rolled round on his side, raised his head and looked hard at Shasta, blowing a little.

“Does it really look funny?” he asked in an anxious voice.

“Yes, it does,” replied Shasta. “But what does it matter?”

“You don’t think, do you,” said Bree, “that it might be a thing talking horses never do — a silly, clownish trick I’ve learned from the dumb ones? It would be dreadful to find, when I get back to Narnia, that I’ve picked up a lot of low, bad habits. What do you think, Shasta? Honestly, now. Don’t spare my feelings. Should you think the real, free horses — the talking kind — do roll?”

“How should I know? Anyway I don’t think I should bother about it if I were you. We’ve got to get there first. Do you know the way?”

“I know my way to Tashbaan. After that comes the desert. Oh, we’ll manage the desert somehow, never fear. Why, we’ll be in sight of the Northern mountains then. Think of it！ To Narnia and the North！ Nothing will stop us then. But I’d be glad to be past Tashbaan. You and I are safer away from cities.”

“Can’t we avoid it?”

“Not without going a long way inland, and that would take us into cultivated land and main roads; and I wouldn’t know the way. No, we’ll just have to creep along the coast. Up here on the downs we’ll meet nothing but sheep and rabbits and gulls and a few shepherds. And by the way, what about starting?”

Shasta’s legs ached terribly as he saddled Bree and climbed into the saddle, but the Horse was kindly to him and went at a soft pace all afternoon. When evening twilight came they dropped by steep tracks into a valley and found a village. Before they got into it Shasta dismounted and entered it on foot to buy a loaf and some onions and radishes. The Horse trotted round by the fields in the dusk and met Shasta at the far side. This became their regular plan every second night.

These were great days for Shasta, and every day better than the last as his muscles hardened and he fell less often. Even at the end of his training Bree still said he sat like a bag of flour in the saddle. “And even if it was safe, young‘un, I’d be ashamed to be seen with you on the main road.” But in spite of his rude words Bree was a patient teacher. No one can teach riding so well as a horse. Shasta learned to trot, to canter, to jump, and to keep his seat even when Bree pulled up suddenly or swung unexpectedly to the left or the right — which, as Bree told him, was a thing you might have to do at any moment in a battle. And then of course Shasta begged to be told of the battles and wars in which Bree had carried the Tarkaan. And Bree would tell of forced marches and the fording of swift rivers, of charges and of fierce fights between cavalry and cavalry when the war horses fought as well as the men, being all fierce stallions, trained to bite and kick, and to rear at the right moment so that the horse’s weight as well as the rider’s would come down on a enemy’s crest in the stroke of sword or battle-axe. But Bree did not want to talk about the wars as often as Shasta wanted to hear about them. “Don’t speak of them, youngster,” he would say. “They were only the Tisroc’s wars and I fought in them as a slave and a dumb beast. Give me the Narnian wars where I shall fight as a free Horse among my own people！ Those will be wars worth talking about. Narnia and the North！ Bra-ha-ha！ Broo hoo！”

Shasta soon learned, when he heard Bree talking like that, to prepare for a gallop.

After they had travelled on for weeks and weeks past more bays and headlands and rivers and villages than Shasta could remember, there came a moonlit night when they started their journey at evening, having slept during the day. They had left the downs behind them and were crossing a wide plain with a forest about half a mile away on their left. The sea, hidden by low sandhills, was about the same distance on their right. They had jogged along for about an hour, sometimes trotting and sometimes walking, when Bree suddenly stopped.

“What’s up?” said Shasta.

“S-s-ssh！” said Bree, craning his neck round and twitching his ears. “Did you hear something? Listen.”

“It sounds like another horse — between us and the wood,” said Shasta after he had listened for about a minute.

“It is another horse,” said Bree. “And that’s what I don’t like.”

“Isn’t it probably just a farmer riding home late?” said Shasta with a yawn.

“Don’t tell me！” said Bree. “That’s not a farmer’s riding. Nor a farmer’s horse either. Can’t you tell by the sound? That’s quality, that horse is. And it’s being ridden by a real horseman. I tell you what it is, Shasta. There’s a Tarkaan under the edge of that wood. Not on his war horse — it’s too light for that. On a fine blood mare, I should say.”

“Well, it’s stopped now, whatever it is,” said Shasta.

“You’re right,” said Bree. “And why should he stop just when we do? Shasta, my boy, I do believe there’s someone shadowing us at last.”

“What shall we do?” said Shasta in a lower whisper than before. “Do you think he can see us as well as hear us?”

“Not in this light so long as we stay quite still,” answered Bree. “But look！ There’s a cloud coming up. I’ll wait till that gets over the moon. Then we’ll get off to our right as quietly as we can, down to the shore. We can hide among the sandhills if the worst comes to the worst.”

They waited till the cloud covered the moon and then, first at a walking pace and afterwards at a gentle trot, made for the shore.

The cloud was bigger and thicker than it had looked at first and soon the night grew very dark. Just as Shasta was saying to himself, “We must be nearly at those sandhills by now,” his heart leaped into his mouth because an appalling noise had suddenly risen up out of the darkness ahead; a long snarling roar, melancholy and utterly savage. Instantly Bree swerved round and began galloping inland again as fast as he could gallop.

“What is it?” gasped Shasta.

“Lions！” said Bree, without checking his pace or turning his head.

After that there was nothing but sheer galloping for some time. At last they splashed across a wide, shallow stream and Bree came to a stop on the far side. Shasta noticed that he was trembling and sweating all over.

“That water may have thrown the brute off our scent,” panted Bree when he had partly got his breath again. “We can walk for a bit now.”

As they walked Bree said, “Shasta, I’m ashamed of myself. I’m just as frightened as a common, dumb Calormene horse. I am really. I don’t feel like a Talking Horse at all. I don’t mind swords and lances and arrows but I can’t bear — those creatures. I think I’ll trot for a bit.”

About a minute later, however, he broke into a gallop again, and no wonder. For the roar broke out again, this time on their left from the direction of the forest.

“Two of them,” moaned Bree.

When they had galloped for several minutes without any further noise from the lions Shasta said, “I say！ That other horse is galloping beside us now. Only a stone’s throw away.”

“All the b — better,” panted Bree. “Tarkaan on it — will have a sword — protect us all.”

“But, Bree！” said Shasta. “We might just as well be killed by lions as caught. Or I might. They’ll hang me for horsestealing.” He was feeling less frightened of lions than Bree because he had never met a lion; Bree had.

Bree only snorted in answer but he did sheer away to his right. Oddly enough the other horse seemed also to be sheering away to the left, so that in a few seconds the space between them had widened a good deal. But as soon as it did so there came two more lions’roars, immediately after one another, one on the right and the other on the left, the horses began drawing nearer together. So, apparently, did the lions. The roaring of the brutes on each side was horribly close and they seemed to be keeping up with the galloping horses quite easily. Then the cloud rolled away. The moonlight, astonishingly bright, showed up everything almost as if it were broad day. The two horses and two riders were galloping neck to neck and knee to knee just as if they were in a race. Indeed Bree said （afterwards） that a finer race had never been seen in Calormen.

Shasta now gave himself up for lost and began to wonder whether lions killed you quickly or played with you as a cat plays with a mouse and how much it would hurt. At the same time （one sometimes does this at the most frightful moments） he noticed everything. He saw that the other rider was a very small, slender person, mail-clad （the moon shone on the mail） and riding magnificently. He had no beard.

Something flat and shining was spread out before them. Before Shasta had time even to guess what it was there was a great splash and he found his mouth half full of salt water. The shining thing had been a long inlet of the sea. Both horses were swimming and the water was up to Shasta’s knees. There was an angry roaring behind them and looking back Shasta saw a great, shaggy, and terrible shape crouched on the water’s edge; but only one. “We must have shaken off the other lion,” he thought.

The lion apparently did not think its prey worth a wetting; at any rate it made no attempt to take the water in pursuit. The two horses, side by side, were now well out into the middle of the creek and the opposite shore could be clearly seen. The Tarkaan had not yet spoken a word. “But he will,” thought Shasta. “As soon as we have landed. What am I to say? I must begin thinking out a story.”

Then, suddenly, two voices spoke at his side.

“Oh, I am so tired,” said the one. “Hold your tongue, Hwin, and don’t be a fool,” said the other.

“I’m dreaming,” thought Shasta. “I could have sworn that other horse spoke.”

Soon the horses were no longer swimming but walking and soon with a great sound of water running off their sides and tails and with a great crunching of pebbles under eight hoofs, they came out on the farther beach of the inlet. The Tarkaan, to Shasta’s surprise, showed no wish to ask questions. He did not even look at Shasta but seemed anxious to urge his horse straight on. Bree, however, at once shouldered himself in the other horse’s way.

“Broo-hoo-hah！” he snorted. “Steady there！ I heard you, I did. There’s no good pretending, Ma’am. I heard you. You’re a Talking Horse, a Narnian horse just like me.”

“What’s it got to do with you if she is?” said the strange rider fiercely, laying hand on sword-hilt. But the voice in which the words were spoken had already told Shasta something.

“Why, it’s only a girl！” he exclaimed.

“And what business is it of yours if I am only a girl?” snapped the stranger. “You’re probably only a boy： a rude, common little boy — a slave probably, who’s stolen his master’s horse.”

“That’s all you know,” said Shasta.

“He’s not a thief, little Tarkheena,” said Bree. “At least, if there’s been any stealing, you might just as well say I stole him. And as for its not being my business, you wouldn’t expect me to pass a lady of my own race in this strange country without speaking to her? It’s only natural I should.”

“I think it’s very natural too,” said the mare.

“I wish you’d held your tongue, Hwin,” said the girl. “Look at the trouble you’ve got us into.”

“I don’t know about trouble,” said Shasta. “You can clear off as soon as you like. We shan’t keep you.”

“No, you shan’t,” said the girl.

“What quarrelsome creatures these humans are,” said Bree to the mare. “They’re as bad as mules. Let’s try to talk a little sense. I take it, ma’am, your story is the same as mine? Captured in early youth — years of slavery among the Calormenes?”

“Too true, sir,” said the mare with a melancholy whinny.

“And now, perhaps — escape?”

“Tell him to mind his own business, Hwin,” said the girl.

“No, I won’t, Aravis,” said the mare putting her ears back. “This is my escape just as much as yours. And I’m sure a noble war-horse like this is not going to betray us. We are trying to escape, to get to Narnia.”

“And so, of course, are we,” said Bree. “Of course you guessed that at once. A little boy in rags riding （or trying to ride） a war-horse at dead of night couldn’t mean anything but an escape of some sort. And, if I may say so, a highborn Tarkheena riding alone at night — dressed up in her brother’s armour — and very anxious for everyone to mind their own business and ask her no questions — well, if that’s not fishy, call me a cob！”

“All right then,” said Aravis. “You’ve guessed it. Hwin and I are running away. We are trying to get to Narnia. And now, what about it?”

“Why, in that case, what is to prevent us all going together?” said Bree. “I trust, Madam Hwin, you will accept such assistance and protection as I may be able to give you on the journey?”

“Why do you keep talking to my horse instead of to me?” asked the girl.

“Excuse me, Tarkheena,” said Bree （with just the slightest backward tilt of his ears）, “but that’s Calormene talk. We’re free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you’re running away to Narnia, you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn’t your horse any longer. One might just as well say you’re her human.”

The girl opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. Obviously she had not quite seen it in that light before.

“Still,” she said after a moment’s pause, “I don’t know that there’s so much point in all going together. Aren’t we more likely to be noticed?”

“Less,” said Bree; and the mare said, “Oh do let’s. I should feel much more comfortable. We’re not even certain of the way. I’m sure a great charger like this knows far more than we do.”

“Oh come on, Bree,” said Shasta, “and let them go their own way. Can’t you see they don’t want us?”

“We do,” said Hwin.

“Look here,” said the girl. “I don’t mind going with you, Mr War-Horse, but what about this boy? How do I know he’s not a spy?”

“Why don’t you say at once that you think I’m not good enough for you?” said Shasta.

“Be quiet, Shasta,” said Bree. “The Tarkheena’s question is quite reasonable. I’ll vouch for the boy, Tarkheena. He’s been true to me and a good friend. And he’s certainly either a Narnian or an Archenlander.”

“All right, then. Let’s go together.” But she didn’t say anything to Shasta and it was obvious that she wanted Bree, not him.

“Splendid！” said Bree. “And now that we’ve got the water between us and those dreadful animals, what about you two humans taking off our saddles and our all having a rest and hearing one another’s stories.”

Both the children unsaddled their horses and the horses had a little grass and Aravis produced rather nice things to eat from her saddle-bag. But Shasta sulked and said No thanks, and that he wasn’t hungry. And he tried to put on what he thought very grand and stiff manners, but as a fisherman’s hut is not usually a good place for learning grand manners, the result was dreadful. And he half knew that it wasn’t a success and then became sulkier and more awkward than ever. Meanwhile the two horses were getting on splendidly. They remembered the very same places in Narnia —“the grasslands up above Beaversdam” and found that they were some sort of second cousins once removed. This made things more and more uncomfortable for the humans until at last Bree said, “And now, Tarkheena, tell us your story. And don’t hurry it — I’m feeling comfortable now.”

Aravis immediately began, sitting quite still and using a rather different tone and style from her usual one. For in Calormen, story-telling （whether the stories are true or made up） is a thing you’re taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.

CHAPTER THREE
AT THE GATES OF TASHBAAN

“Mr name,” said the girl at once, “is Aravis Tarkheena and I am the only daughter of Kidrash Tarkaan, the son of Rishti Tarkaan, the son of Kidrash Tarkaan, the son of Ilsombreh Tisroc, the son of Ardeeb Tisroc who was descended in a right line from the god Tash. My father is the lord of the province of Calavar and is one who has the right of standing on his feet in his shoes before the face of Tisroc himself （may he live forever）. My mother （on whom be the peace of the gods） is dead and my father has married another wife. One of my brothers has fallen in battle against the rebels in the far west and the other is a child. Now it came to pass that my father’s wife, my step-mother, hated me, and the sun appeared dark in her eyes as long as I lived in my father’s house. And so she persuaded my father to promise me in marriage to Ahoshta Tarkaan. Now this Ahoshta is of base birth, though in these latter years he has won the favour of the Tisroc （may he live for ever） by flattery and evil counsels, and is now made a Tarkaan and the lord of many cities and is likely to be chosen as the Grand Vizier when the present Grand Vizier dies. Moreover he is at least sixty years old and has a hump on his back and his face resembles that of an ape. Nevertheless my father, because of the wealth and power of this Ahoshta, and being persuaded by his wife, sent messengers offering me in marriage, and the offer was favourably accepted and Ahoshta sent word that he would marry me this very year at the time of high summer.”

“When this news was brought to me the sun appeared dark in my eyes and I laid myself on my bed and wept for a day. But on the second day I rose up and washed my face and caused my mare Hwin to be saddled and took with me a sharp dagger which my brother had carried in the western wars and rode out alone. And when my father’s house was out of sight and I was come to a green open place in a certain wood where there were no dwellings of men, I dismounted from Hwin my mare and took out the dagger. Then I parted my clothes where I thought the readiest way lay to my heart and I prayed to all the gods that as soon as I was dead I might find myself with my brother. After that I shut my eyes and my teeth and prepared to drive the dagger into my heart. But before I had done so, this mare spoke with the voice of one of the daughters of men and said, ‘O my mistress, do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike.’”

“I didn’t say it half so well as that,” muttered the mare.

“Hush, Ma’am, hush,” said Bree, who was thoroughly enjoying the story. “She’s telling it in the grand Calormene manner and no story-teller in a Tisroc’s court could do it better. Pray go on, Tarkheena.”

“When I heard the language of men uttered by my mare,” continued Aravis, “I said to myself, the fear of death has disordered my reason and subjected me to delusions. And I became full of shame for none of my lineage ought to fear death more than the biting of a gnat. Therefore I addressed myself a second time to the stabbing, but Hwin came near to me and put her head in between me and the dagger and discoursed to me most excellent reasons and rebuked me as a mother rebukes her daughter. And now my wonder was so great that I forgot about killing myself and about Ahoshta and said, ‘O my mare, how have you learned to speak like one of the daughters of men?’ And Hwin told me what is known to all this company, that in Narnia there are beasts that talk, and how she herself was stolen from thence when she was a little foal. She told me also of the woods and waters of Narnia and the castles and the great ships, till I said, ‘In the name of Tash and Azaroth and Zardeenah Lady of the Night, I have a great wish to be in that country of Narnia.’‘O my mistress,’ answered the mare, ‘if you were in Narnia you would be happy, for in that land no maiden is forced to marry against her will.’”

“And when we had talked together for a great time, hope returned to me and I rejoiced that I had not killed myself. Moreover it was agreed between Hwin and me that we should steal ourselves away together and we planned it in this fashion. We returned to my father’s house and I put on my gayest clothes and sang and danced before my father and pretended to be delighted with the marriage which he had prepared for me. Also I said to him, ‘O my father and O the delight of my eyes, give me your license and permission to go with one of my maidens alone for three days into the woods to do secret sacrifices to Zardeenah, Lady of the Night and of Maidens, as is proper and customary for damsels when they must bid farewell to the service of Zardeenah and prepare themselves for marriage.’ And he answered, ‘O my daughter and O the delight of my eyes, so shall it be.’”

“But when I came out from the presence of my father I went immediately to the oldest of his slaves, his secretary, who had dandled me on his knees when I was a baby and loved me more than the air and the light. And I swore him to be secret and begged him to write a certain letter for me. And he wept and implored me to change my resolution but in the end he said, ‘To hear is to obey,’ and did all my will. And I sealed the letter and hid it in my bosom.”

“But what was in the letter?” asked Shasta.

“Be quiet, youngster,” said Bree. “You’re spoiling the story. She’ll tell us all about the letter in the right place. Go on, Tarkheena.”

“Then I called the maid who was to go with me to the woods and perform the rites of Zardeenah and told her to wake me very early in the morning. And I became merry with her and gave her wine to drink; but I had mixed such things in her cup that I knew she must sleep for a night and a day. As soon as the household of my father had committed themselves to sleep I arose and put on an armour of my brother’s which I always kept in my chamber in his memory. I put into my girdle all the money I had and certain choice jewels and provided myself also with food, and saddled the mare with my own hands and rode away in the second watch of the night. I directed my course not to the woods where my father supposed that I would go but north and east to Tashbaan.”

“Now for three days and more I knew that my father would not seek me, being deceived by the words I had said to him. And on the fourth day we arrived at the city of Azim Balda. Now Azim Balda stands at the meeting of many roads and from it the posts of the Tisroc （may he live forever） ride on swift horses to every part of the empire： and it is one of the rights and privileges of the greater Tarkaans to send messages by them. I therefore went to the Chief of the Messengers in the House of Imperial Posts in Azim Balda and said, ‘O dispatcher of messages, here is a letter from my uncle Ahoshta Tarkaan to Kidrash Tarkaan lord of Calavar. Take now these five crescents and cause it to be sent to him.’ And the Chief of the Messengers said, ‘To hear is to obey.’”

“This letter was feigned to be written by Ahoshta and this was the signification of the writing： ‘ Ahoshta Tarkaan to Kidrash Tarkaan, salutation and peace. In the name of Tash the irresistible, the inexorable. Be it known to you that as I made my journey towards your house to perform the contract of marriage between me and your daughter Aravis Tarkheena, it pleased fortune and the gods that I fell in with her in the forest when she had ended the rites and sacrifices of Zardeenah according to the custom of maidens. And when I learned who she was, being delighted with her beauty and discretion, I became inflamed with love and it appeared to me that the sun would be dark to me if I did not marry her at once. Accordingly I prepared the necessary sacrifices and married your daughter the same hour that I met her and have returned with her to my own house. And we both pray and charge you to come hither as speedily as you may that we may be delighted with your face and speech; and also that you may bring with you the dowry of my wife, which, by reason of my great charges and expenses, I require without delay. And because thou and I are brothers I assure myself that you will not be angered by the haste of my marriage which is wholly occasioned by the great love I bear your daughter. And I commit you to the care of all the gods.’”

“As soon as I had done this I rode on in all haste from Azim Balda, fearing no pursuit and expecting that my father, having received such a letter, would send messages to Ahoshta or go to him himself, and that before the matter was discovered I should be beyond Tashbaan. And that is the pith of my story until this very night when I was chased by lions and met you at the swimming of the salt water.”

“And what happened to the girl — the one you drugged?” asked Shasta.

“Doubtless she was beaten for sleeping late,” said Aravis coolly. “But she was a tool and spy of my stepmother’s. I am very glad they should beat her.”

“I say, that was hardly fair,” said Shasta.

“I did not do any of these things for the sake of pleasing you,” said Aravis.

“And there’s another thing I don’t understand about that story,” said Shasta. “You’re not grown up, I don’t believe you’re any older than I am. I don’t believe you’re as old. How could you be getting married at your age?”

Aravis said nothing, but Bree at once said, “Shasta, don’t display your ignorance. They’re always married at that age in the great Tarkaan families.”

Shasta turned very red （though it was hardly light enough for the others to see this） and felt snubbed. Aravis asked Bree for his story. Bree told it, and Shasta thought that he put in a great deal more than he needed about the falls and the bad riding. Bree obviously thought it very funny, but Aravis did not laugh. When Bree had finished they all went to sleep.

Next day all four of them, two horses and two humans, continued their journey together. Shasta thought it had been much pleasanter when he and Bree were on their own. For now it was Bree and Aravis who did nearly all the talking. Bree had lived a long time in Calormen and had always been among Tarkaans and Tarkaans’horses, and so of course he knew a great many of the same people and places that Aravis knew. She would always be saying things like, “But if you were at the fight of Zulindreh you would have seen my cousin Alimash,” and Bree would answer, “Oh, yes, Alimash, he was only captain of the chariots, you know. I don’t quite hold with chariots or the kind of horses who draw chariots. That’s not real cavalry. But he is a worthy nobleman. He filled my nosebag with sugar after the taking of Teebeth.” Or else Bree would say, “I was down at the lake of Mezreel that summer,” and Aravis would say, “Oh, Mezreel！ I had a friend there, Lasaraleen Tarkheena. What a delightful place it is. Those gardens, and the Valley of the Thousand Perfumes！” Bree was not in the least trying to leave Shasta out of things, though Shasta sometimes nearly thought he was. People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them, and if you’re there you can hardly help feeling that you’re out of it.

Hwin the mare was rather shy before a great war-horse like Bree and said very little. And Aravis never spoke to Shasta at all if she could help it.

Soon, however, they had more important things to think of. They were getting near Tashbaan. There were more, and larger, villages, and more people on the roads. They now did nearly all their travelling by night and hid as best they could during the day. And at every halt they argued and argued about what they were to do when they reached Tashbaan. Everyone had been putting off this difficulty, but now it could be put off no longer. During these discussions Aravis became a little, a very little, less unfriendly to Shasta; one usually gets on better with people when one is making plans than when one is talking about nothing in particular.

Bree said the first thing now to do was to fix a place where they would all promise to meet on the far side of Tashbaan even if, by any ill luck, they got separated in passing the city. He said the best place would be the Tombs of the Ancient Kings on the very edge of the desert. “Things like great stone beehives,” he said, “you can’t possibly miss them. And the best of it is that none of the Calormenes will go near them because they think the place is haunted by ghouls and are afraid of it.” Aravis asked if it wasn’t really haunted by ghouls. But Bree said he was a free Narnian horse and didn’t believe in these Calormene tales. And then Shasta said he wasn’t a Calormene either and didn’t care a straw about these old stories of ghouls. This wasn’t quite true. But it rather impressed Aravis （though at the moment it annoyed her too） and of course she said she didn’t mind any number of ghouls either. So it was settled that the Tombs should be their assembly place on the other side of Tashbaan, and everyone felt they were getting on very well till Hwin humbly pointed out that the real problem was not where they should go when they had got through Tashbaan but how they were to get through it.

“We’ll settle that tomorrow, Ma’am,” said Bree. “Time for a little sleep now.”

But it wasn’t easy to settle. Aravis’s first suggestion was that they should swim across the river below the city during the night and not go into Tashbaan at all. But Bree had two reasons against this. One was that the river-mouth was very wide and it would be far too long a swim for Hwin to do, especially with a rider on her back.（He thought it would be too long for himself too, but he said much less about that）. The other was that it would be full of shipping and of course anyone on the deck of a ship who saw two horses swimming past would be almost certain to be inquisitive.

Shasta thought they should go up the river above Tashbaan and cross it where it was narrower. But Bree explained that there were gardens and pleasure houses on both banks of the river for miles and that there would be Tarkaans and Tarkheenas living in them and riding about the roads and having water parties on the river. In fact it would be the most likely place in the world for meeting someone who would recognize Aravis or even himself.

“We’ll have to have a disguise,” said Shasta.

Hwin said it looked to her as if the safest thing was to go right through the city itself from gate to gate because one was less likely to be noticed in the crowd. But she approved of the idea of disguise as well. She said, “Both the human will have to dress in rags and look like peasants or slaves. And all Aravis’s armour and our saddles and things must be made into bundles and put on our backs, and the children must pretend to drive us and people will think we’re only pack-horses.”

“My dear Hwin！” said Aravis rather scornfully. “As anyone could mistake Bree for anything but a war-horse however you disguised him！”

“I should think not, indeed,” said Bree, snorting and letting his ears go ever so little back.

“I know it’s not a very good plan,” said Hwin. “But I think it’s our only chance. And we haven’t been groomed for ages and we’re not looking quite ourselves （at least, I’m sure I’m not）. I do think if we get well plastered with mud and go along with our heads down as if we’re tired and lazy — and don’t lift our hooves hardly at all — we might not be noticed. And our tails ought to be cut shorter： not neatly, you know, but all ragged.”

“My dear Madam,” said Bree. “Have you pictured to yourself how very disagreeable it would be to arrive in Narnia in that condition?”

“Well,” said Hwin humbly （she was a very sensible mare）, “the main thing is to get there.”

Though nobody much liked it, it was Hwin’s plan which had to be adopted in the end. It was a troublesome one and involved a certain amount of what Shasta called stealing, and Bree called “raiding”. One farm lost a few sacks that evening and another lost a coil of rope the next： but some tattered old boy’s clothes for Aravis to wear had to be fairly bought and paid for in a village. Shasta returned with them in triumph just as evening was closing in. The others were waiting for him among the trees at the foot of a low range of wooded hills which lay right across their path. Everyone was feeling excited because this was the last hill; when they reached the ridge at the top they would be looking down on Tashbaan. “I do wish we were safely past it,” muttered Shasta to Hwin. “Oh I do, I do,” said Hwin fervently.

That night they wound their way through the woods up to the ridge by a wood-cutter’s track. And when they came out of the woods at the top they could see thousands of lights in the valley down below them. Shasta had had no notion of what a great city would be like and it frightened him. They had their supper and the children got some sleep. But the horses woke them very early in the morning.

The stars were still out and the grass was terribly cold and wet, but daybreak was just beginning, far to their right across the sea. Aravis went a few steps away into the wood and came back looking odd in her new, ragged clothes and carrying her real ones in a bundle. These, and her armour and shield and scimitar and the two saddles and the rest of the horses’fine furnishings were put into the sacks. Bree and Hwin had already got themselves as dirty and bedraggled as they could and it remained to shorten their tails. As the only tool for doing this was Aravis’s scimitar, one of the packs had to be undone again in order to get it out. It was a longish job and rather hurt the horses.

“My word！” said Bree, “if I wasn’t a Talking Horse what a lovely kick in the face I could give you！ I thought you were going to cut it, not pull it out. That’s what it feels like.”

But in spite of semi-darkness and cold fingers all was done in the end, the big packs bound on the horses, the rope halters （which they were now wearing instead of bridles and reins） in the children’s hands, and the journey began.

“Remember,” said Bree. “Keep together if we possibly can. If not, meet at the Tombs of the Ancient Kings, and whoever gets there first must wait for the others.”

“And remember,” said Shasta. “Don’t you two horses forget yourselves and start talking, whatever happens.”

CHAPTER FOUR
SHASTA FALLS IN WITH THE NARNIANS

At first Shasta could see nothing in the valley below him but a sea of mist with a few domes and pinnacles rising from it; but as the light increased and the mist cleared away he saw more and more. A broad river divided itself into two streams and on the island between them stood the city of Tashbaan, one of the wonders of the world. Round the very edge of the island, so that the water lapped against the stone, ran high walls strengthened with so many towers that he soon gave up trying to count them. Inside the walls the island rose in a hill and every bit of that hill, up to the Tisroc’s palace and the great temple of Tash at the top, was completely covered with buildings — terrace above terrace, street above street, zigzag roads or huge flights of steps bordered with orange trees and lemon trees, roof-gardens, balconies, deep archways, pillared colonnades, spires, battlements, minarets, pinnacles. And when at last the sun rose out of the sea and the great silver-plated dome of the temple flashed back its light, he was almost dazzled.

“Get on, Shasta,” Bree kept saying.

The river banks on each side of the valley were such a mass of gardens that they looked at first like forest, until you got closer and saw the white walls of innumerable houses peeping out from beneath the trees. Soon after that, Shasta noticed a delicious smell of flowers and fruit. About fifteen minutes later they were down among them, plodding on a level road with white walls on each side and trees bending over the walls.

“I say,” said Shasta in an awed voice. “This is a wonderful place！”

“I daresay,” said Bree. “But I wish we were safely through it and out at the other side. Narnia and the North！”

At that moment a low, throbbing noise began which gradually swelled louder and louder till the whole valley seemed to be swaying with it. It was a musical noise, but so strong and solemn as to be a little frightening.

“That’s the horns blowing for the city gates to be open,” said Bree. “We shall be there in a minute. Now, Aravis, do droop your shoulders a bit and step heavier and try to look less like a princess. Try to imagine you’ve been kicked and cuffed and called names all your life.”

“If it comes to that,” said Aravis, “what about you drooping your head a bit more and arching your neck a bit less and trying to look less like a war-horse?”

“Hush,” said Bree. “Here we are.”

And they were. They had come to the river’s edge and the road ahead of them ran along a many-arched bridge. The water danced brightly in the early sunlight; away to the right nearer the river’s mouth, they caught a glimpse ships’masts. Several other travellers were before them on the bridge, mostly peasants driving laden donkeys and mules or carrying baskets on their heads. The children and horses joined the crowd.

“Is anything wrong?” whispered Shasta to Aravis, who had an odd look on her face.

“Oh it’s all very well for you,” whispered Aravis rather savagely. “What would you care about Tashbaan? But I ought to be riding in on a litter with soldiers before me and slaves behind, and perhaps going to a feast in the Tisroc’s palace （may he live forever） — not sneaking in like this. It’s different for you.”

Shasta thought all this very silly.

At the far end of the bridge the walls of the city towered high above them and the brazen gates stood open in the gateway which was really wide but looked narrow because it was so very high. Half a dozen soldiers, leaning on their spears, stood on each side. Aravis couldn’t help thinking, “They’d all jump to attention and salute me if they knew whose daughter I am.” But the others were only thinking of how they’d get through and hoping the soldiers would not ask any questions. Fortunately they did not. But one of them picked a carrot out of a peasant’s basket and threw it at Shasta with a rough laugh, saying：

“Hey！ Horse-boy！ You’ll catch it if your master finds you’ve been using his saddle-horse for pack work.”

This frightened him badly for of course it showed that no one who knew anything about horses would mistake Bree for anything but a charger.

“It’s my master’s orders, so there！” said Shasta. But it would have been better if he had held his tongue for the soldier gave him a box on the side of his face that nearly knocked him down and said, “Take that, you young filth, to teach you how to talk to freemen.” But they all slunk into the city without being stopped. Shasta cried only a very little; he was used to hard knocks.

Inside the gates Tashbaan did not at first seem so splendid as it had looked from a distance. The first street was narrow and there were hardly any windows in the walls on each side. It was much more crowded than Shasta had expected： crowded partly by the peasants （on their way to market） who had come in with them, but also with watersellers, sweetmeat sellers, porters, soldiers, beggars, ragged children, hens, stray dogs, and barefooted slaves. What you would chiefly have noticed if you had been there was the smells, which came from unwashed people, unwashed dogs, scent, garlic, onions, and the piles of refuse which lay everywhere.

Shasta was pretending to lead but it was really Bree, who knew the way and kept guiding him by little nudges with his nose. They soon turned to the left and began going up a steep hill. It was much fresher and pleasanter, for the road was bordered by trees and there were houses only on the right side; on the other they looked out over the roofs of houses in the lower town and could see some way up the river. Then they went round a hairpin bend to their right and continued rising. They were zigzagging up to the centre of Tashbaan. Soon they came to finer streets. Great statues of the gods and heroes of Calormen — who are mostly impressive rather than agreeable to look at — rose on shining pedestals. Palm trees and pillared arcades cast shadows over the burning pavements. And through the arched gateways of many a palace Shasta caught sight of green branches, cool fountains, and smooth lawns. It must be nice inside, he thought.

At every turn Shasta hoped they were getting out of the crowd, but they never did. This made their progress very slow, and every now and then they had to stop altogether. This usually happened because a loud voice shouted out “Way, way, way, for the Tarkaan”, or “for the Tarkheena”, or “for the fifteenth Vizier”, or “for the Ambassador”, and everyone in the crowd would crush back against the walls; and above their heads Shasta would sometimes see the great lord or lady for whom all the fuss was being made, lolling upon a litter which four or even six gigantic slaves carried on their bare shoulders. For in Tashbaan there is only one traffic regulation, which is that everyone who is less important has to get out of the way for everyone who is more important; unless you want a cut from a whip or punch from the butt end of a spear.

It was in a splendid street very near the top of the city （the Tisroc’s palace was the only thing above it） that the most disastrous of these stoppages occurred.

“Way！ Way！ Way！” came the voice. “Way for the White Barbarian King, the guest of the Tisroc （may he live forever）！ Way for the Narnian lords.”

Shasta tried to get out of the way and to make Bree go back. But no horse, not even a Talking Horse from Narnia, backs easily. And a woman with a very edgy basket in her hands, who was just behind Shasta, pushed the basket hard against his shoulders, and said, “Now then！ Who are you shoving！” And then someone else jostled him from the side and in the confusion of the moment he lost hold of Bree. And then the whole crowd behind him became so stiffened and packed tight that he couldn’t move at all. So he found himself, unintentionally, in the first row and had a fine sight of the party that was coming down the street.

It was quite unlike any other party they had seen that day. The crier who went before it shouting “Way, way！” was the only Calormene in it. And there was no litter; everyone was on foot. There were about half a dozen men and Shasta had never seen anyone like them before. For one thing, they were all as fair-skinned as himself, and most of them had fair hair. And they were not dressed like men of Calormen. Most of them had legs bare to the knee. Their tunics were of fine, bright, hardy colours — woodland green, or gay yellow, or fresh blue. Instead of turbans they wore steel or silver caps, some of them set with jewels, and one with little wings on each side of it. A few were bare-headed. The swords at their sides were long and straight, not curved like Calormene scimitars. And instead of being grave and mysterious like most Calormenes, they walked with a swing and let their arms and shoulders free, and chatted and laughed. One was whistling. You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly and didn’t give a fig for anyone who wasn’t. Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

But there was not time to enjoy it for at once a really dreadful thing happened. The leader of the fair-headed men suddenly pointed at Shasta, cried out, “There he is！ There’s our runaway！” and seized him by the shoulder. Next moment he gave Shasta a smack — not a cruel one to make you cry but a sharp one to let you know you are in disgrace and added, shaking：

“Shame on you, my lord！ Fie for shame！ Queen Susan’s eyes are red with weeping because of you. What！ Truant for a whole night！ Where have you been?”

Shasta would have darted under Bree’s body and tried to make himself scarce in the crowd if he had had the least chance; but the fair-haired men were all round him by now and he was held firm.

Of course his first impulse was to say that he was only poor Arsheesh the fisherman’s son and that the foreign lord must have mistaken him for someone else. But then, the very last thing he wanted to do in that crowded place was to start explaining who he was and what he was doing. If he started on that, he would soon be asked where he had got his horse from, and who Aravis was — and then, goodbye to any chance of getting through Tashbaan. His next impulse was to look at Bree for help. But Bree had no intention of letting all the crowd know that he could talk, and stood looking just as stupid as a horse can. As for Aravis, Shasta did not even dare to look at her for fear of drawing attention. And there was no time to think, for the leader of the Narnians said at once：

“Take one of his little lordship’s hands, Peridan, of your courtesy, and I’ll take the other. And now, on. Our royal sister’s mind will be greatly eased when she sees our young scapegrace safe in our lodging.”

And so, before they were half-way through Tashbaan, all their plans were ruined, and without even a chance to say good-bye to the others Shasta found himself being marched off among strangers and quite unable to guess what might be going to happen next. The Narnian King — for Shasta began to see by the way the rest spoke to him that he must be a king — kept on asking him questions; where he had been, how he had got out, what he had done with his clothes, and didn’t he know that he had been very naughty. Only the king called it “naught” instead of naughty.

And Shasta said nothing in answer, because he couldn’t think of anything to say that would not be dangerous.

“What！ All mum?” asked the king. “I must plainly tell you, prince, that this hangdog silence becomes one of your blood even less than the scape itself. To run away might pass for a boy’s frolic with some spirit in it. But the king’s son of Archenland should avouch his deed; not hang his head like a Calormene slave.”

This was very unpleasant, for Shasta felt all the time that this young king was the very nicest kind of grown-up and would have liked to make a good impression on him.

The strangers led him — held tightly by both hands — along a narrow street and down a flight of shallow stairs and then up another to a wide doorway in a white wall with two tall, dark cypress trees, one on each side of it. Once through the arch, Shasta found himself in a courtyard which was also a garden. A marble basin of clear water in the centre was kept continually rippling by the fountain that fell into it. Orange trees grew round it out of smooth grass, and the four white walls which surrounded the lawn were covered with climbing roses. The noise and dust and crowding of the streets seemed suddenly fad away. He was led rapidly across the garden and then into a dark doorway. The crier remained outside. After that they took him along a corridor, where the stone floor felt beautifully cool to his hot feet, and up some stairs. A moment later he found himself blinking in the light of a big, airy room with wide open windows, all looking North so that no sun came in. There was a carpet on the floor more wonderfully coloured than anything he had ever seen and his feet sank down into it as if he were treading in thick moss. All round the walls there were low sofas with rich cushions on them, and the room seemed to be full of people; very queer people some of them, thought Shasta. But he had no time to think of that before the most beautiful lady he had ever seen rose from her place and threw her arms round him and kissed him, saying：

“Oh Corin, Corin, how could you? And thou and I such close friends ever since thy mother died. And what should I have said to thy royal father if I came home without thee? Would have been a cause almost of war between Archenland and Narnia which are friends time out of mind. It was naught, playmate, very naught of thee to use us so.”

“Apparently,” thought Shasta to himself, “I’m being mistaken for a prince of Archenland, wherever that is. And these must be the Narnians. I wonder where the real Corin is?” But these thoughts did not help him say anything out loud.

“Where hast been, Corin?” said the lady, her hands still on Shasta’s shoulders.

“I — I don’t know,” stammered Shasta.

“There it is, Susan,” said the King. “I could get no tale out of him, true or false.”

“Your Majesties！ Queen Susan！ King Edmund！” said a voice： and when Shasta turned to look at the speaker he nearly jumped out of his skin with surprise. For this was one of these queer people whom he had noticed out of the corner of his eye when he first came into the room. He was about the same height as Shasta himself. From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his legs were hairy like a goat’s, and shaped like a goat’s and he had goat’s hooves and a tail. His skin was rather red and he had curly hair and a short pointed beard and two little horns. He was in fact a Faun, which is a creature Shasta had never seen a picture of or even heard of. And if you’ve read a book called##The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe$$you may like to know that this was the very same Faun, Tumnus by name, whom Queen Susan’s sister Lucy had met on the very first day when she found her way into Narnia. But he was a good deal older now for by this time Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy had been Kings and Queens of Narnia for several years.

“Your Majesties,” he was saying, “His little Highness has had a touch of the sun. Look at him！ He is dazed. He does not know where he is.”

Then of course everyone stopped scolding Shasta and asking him questions and he was made much of and laid on a sofa and cushions were put under his head and he was given iced sherbet in a golden cup to drink and told to keep very quiet.

Nothing like this had ever happened to Shasta in his life before. He had never even imagined lying on anything so comfortable as that sofa or drinking anything so delicious as that sherbet. He was still wondering what had happened to the others and how on earth he was going to escape and meet them at the Tombs, and what would happen when the real Corin turned up again. But none of these worries seemed so pressing now that he was comfortable. And perhaps, later on, there would be nice things to eat！

Meanwhile the people in that cool airy room were very interesting. Besides the Faun there were two Dwarfs （a kind of creature he had never seen before） and a very large Raven.

The rest were all humans; grown-ups, but young, and all of them, both men and women, had nicer faces and voices than most Calormenes. And soon Shasta found himself taking an interest in the conversation. “Now, Madam,” the King was saying to Queen Susan （the lady who had kissed Shasta）. “What think you? We have been in this city fully three weeks. Have you yet settled in your mind whether you will marry this dark-faced lover of yours, this Prince Rabadash, or no?”

The lady shook her head. “No, brother,” she said, “not for all the jewels in Tashbaan.”（“Hullo！” thought Shasta. “Although they’re king and queen, they’re brother and sister, not married to one another.”）

“Truly, sister,” said the King, “I should have loved you the less if you had taken him. And I tell you that at the first coming of the Tisroc’s ambassadors into Narnia to treat of this marriage, and later when the Prince was our guest at Cair Paravel, it was a wonder to me that ever you could find it in your heart to show him so much favour.”

“That was my folly, Edmund,” said Queen Susan, “of which I cry you mercy. Yet when he was with us in Narnia, truly this Prince bore himself in another fashion than he does now in Tashbaan. For I take you all to witness what marvellous feats he did in that great tournament and hastilude which our brother the High King made for him, and how meekly and courteously he consorted with us the space of seven days. But here, in his own city, he has shown another face.”

“Ah！” croaked the Raven. “It is an old saying： see the bear in his own den before you judge of his conditions.”

“That’s very true, Sallowpad,” said one of the Dwarfs. “And another is, Come, live with me and you’ll know me.”

“Yes,” said the King. “We have now seen him for what he is： that is, a most proud, bloody, luxurious, cruel, and self-pleasing tryant.”

“Then in the name of Aslan,” said Susan, “let us leave Tashbaan this very day.”

“There’s the rub, sister,” said Edmund. “For now I must open to you all that has been growing in my mind these last two days and more. Peridan, of your courtesy look to the door and see that there is no spy upon us. All well? So. For now we must be secret.”

Everyone had begun to look very serious. Queen Susan jumped up and ran to her brother. “Oh, Edmund,” she cried. “What is it? There is something dreadful in your face.”

CHAPTER FIVE
PRINCE CORIN

“My dear sister and very good Lady,” said King Edmund, “you must now show your courage. For I tell you plainly we are in no small danger.”

“What is it, Edmund?” asked the Queen.

“It is this,” said Edmund. “I do not think we shall find it easy to leave Tashbaan. While the Prince had hope that you would take him, we were honoured guests. But by the Lion’s Mane, I think that as soon as he has your flat denial we shall be no better than prisoners.”

One of the Dwarfs gave a low whistle.

“I warned your Majesties, I warned you,” said Sallowpad the Raven. “Easily in but not easily out, as the lobster said in the lobster pot！”

“I have been with the Prince this morning,” continued Edmund. “He is little used （more’s the pity） to having his will crossed. And he is very chafed at your long delays and doubtful answers. This morning he pressed very hard to know your mind. I put it aside — meaning at the same time to diminish his hopes — with some light common jests about women’s fancies, and hinted that his suit was likely to be cold. He grew angry and dangerous. There was a sort of threatening, though still veiled under a show of courtesy, in every word he spoke.”

“Yes,” said Tumnus. “And when I supped with the Grand Vizier last night, it was the same. He asked me how I like Tashbaan. And I （for I could not tell him I hated every stone of it and I would not lie） told him that now, when high summer was coming on, my heart turned to the cool woods and dewy slopes of Narnia. He gave a smile that meant no good and said, ‘There is nothing to hinder you from dancing there again, little goatfoot; always provided you leave us in exchange a bride for our prince.’”

“Do you mean he would make me his wife by force?” exclaimed Susan.

“That’s my fear, Susan,” said Edmund. “Wife： or slave which is worse.”

“But how can he? Does the Tisroc think our brother the High King would suffer such an outrage?”

“Sire,” said Peridan to the King. “They would not be so mad. Do they think there are no swords and spears in Narnia?”

“Alas,” said Edmund. “My guess is that the Tisroc has very small fear of Narnia. We are a little land. And little lands on the borders of a great empire were always hateful to the lords of the great empire. He longs to blot them out, gobble them up. When first he suffered the Prince to come to Cair Paravel as your lover, sister, it may be that he was only seeking an occasion against us. Most likely he hopes to make one mouthful of Narnia and Archenland both.”

“Let him try,” said the second Dwarf. “At sea we are as big as he is. And if he assaults us by land, he has the desert to cross.”

“True, friend,” said Edmund. “But is the desert a sure defence? What does Sallowpad say?”

“I know that desert well,” said the Raven. “For I have flown above it far and wide in my younger days.”（you may be sure that Shasta pricked up his ears at this point）“And this is certain; that if the Tisroc goes by the great oasis he can never lead a great army across it into Archenland. For though they could reach the oasis by the end of their first day’s march, yet the springs there would be too little for the thirst of all those soldiers and their beasts. But there is another way.”

Shasta listened more attentively still.

“He that would find that way,” said the Raven, “must start from the Tombs of the Ancient Kings and ride northwest so that the double peak of Mount Pire is always straight ahead of him. And so, in a day’s riding or a little more, he shall come to the head of a stony valley, which is so narrow that a man might be within a furlong of it a thousand times and never know that it was there. And looking down this valley he will see neither grass nor water nor anything else good. But if he rides on down it he will come to a river and can ride by the water all the way into Archenland.”

“And do the Calormenes know of this Western way?” asked the Queen.

“Friends, friends,” said Edmund, “what is the use of all this discourse? We are not asking whether Narnia or Calormen would win if war arose between them. We are asking how to save the honour of the Queen and our own lives out of this devilish city. For though my brother, Peter the High King, defeated the Tisroc a dozen times over, yet long before that day our throats would be cut and the Queen’s grace would be the wife, or more likely, the slave, of this prince.”

“We have our weapons, King,” said the first Dwarf. “And this is a reasonably defensible house.”

“As to that,” said the King, “I do not doubt that every one of us would sell our lives dearly in the gate and they would not come at the Queen but over our dead bodies. Yet we should be merely rats fighting in a trap when all’s said.”

“Very true,” croaked the Raven. “These last stands in a house make good stories, but nothing ever came of them. After their first few repulses the enemy always set the house on fire.”

“I am the cause of all this,” said Susan, bursting into tears. “Oh, if only I had never left Cair Paravel. Our last happy day was before those ambassadors came from Calormen. The Moles were planting an orchard for us ... oh ... oh.”

And she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

“Courage, Su, courage,” said Edmund. “Remember — but what is the matter with you, Master Tumnus?” For the Faun was holding both his horns with his hands as if he were trying to keep his head on by them and writhing to and fro as if he had a pain in his inside.

“Don’t speak to me, don’t speak to me,” said Tumnus. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking so that I can hardly breathe. Wait, wait, do wait.”

There was a moment’s puzzled silence and then the Faun looked up, drew a long breath, mopped its forehead and said：

“The only difficulty is how to get down to our ship — with some stores, too — without being seen and stopped.”

“Yes,” said a Dwarf dryly. “Just as the beggar’s only difficulty about riding is that he has no horse.”

“Wait, wait,” said Mr Tumnus impatiently. “All we need is some pretext for going down to our ship today and taking stuff on board.”

“Yes,” said King Edmund doubtfully.

“Well, then,” said the Faun, “how would it be if your majesties bade the Prince to a great banquet to be held on board our own galleon, the Spendour Hyaline, tomorrow night? And let the message be worded as graciously as the Queen can contrive without pledging her honour： so as to give the Prince a hope that she is weakening.”

“This is very good counsel, Sire,” croaked the Raven.

“And then,” continued Tumnus excitedly, “everyone will expect us to be going down to the ship all day, making preparations for our guests. And let some of us go to the bazaars and spend every minim we have at the fruiterers and the sweetmeat sellers and the wine merchants, just as we would if we were really giving a feast. And let us order magicians and jugglers and dancing girls and flute players, all to be on board tomorrow night.”

“I see, I see,” said King Edmund, rubbing his hands.

“And then,” said Tumnus, “we’ll all be on board tonight. And as soon as it is quite dark —”

“Up sails and out oars —！” said the King.

“And so to sea,” cried Tumnus, leaping up and beginning to dance.

“And our nose Northward,” said the first Dwarf.

“Running for home！ Hurrah for Narnia and the North！” said the other.

“And the Prince waking next morning and finding his birds flown！” said Peridan, clapping his hands.

“Oh Master Tumnus, dear Master Tumnus,” said the Queen, catching his hands and swinging with him as he danced. “You have saved us all.”

“The Prince will chase us,” said another lord, whose name Shasta had not heard.

“That’s the least of my fears,” said Edmund. “I have seen all the shipping in the river and there’s no tall ship of war nor swift galley there. I wish he may chase us！ For the Splendour Hyaline could sink anything he has to send after her — if we were overtaken at all.”

“Sire,” said the Raven. “You shall hear no better plot than the Faun’s though we sat in council for seven days. And now, as we birds say, nests before eggs. Which is as much as to say, let us all take our food and then at once be about our business.”

Everyone arose at this and the doors were opened and the lords and the creatures stood aside for the King and Queen to go out first. Shasta wondered what he ought to do, but Mr Tumnus said, “Lie there, your Highness, and I will bring you up a little feast to yourself in a few moments. There is no need for you to move until we are all ready to embark.”

Shasta laid his head down again on the pillows and soon he was alone in the room.

“This is perfectly dreadful,” thought Shasta. It never came into his head to tell these Narnians the whole truth and ask for their help. Having been brought up by a hard, closefisted man like Arsheesh, he had a fixed habit of never telling grown-ups anything if he could help it： he thought they would always spoil or stop whatever you were trying to do. And he thought that even if the Narnian King might be friendly to the two horses, because they were Talking Beasts of Narnia, he would hate Aravis, because she was a Calormene, and either sell her for a slave or send her back to her father. As for himself, “I simply daren’t tell them I’m not Prince Corin now,” thought Shasta. “I’ve heard all their plans. If they knew I wasn’t one of themselves, they’d never let me out of this house alive. They’d be afraid I’d betray them to the Tisroc. They’d kill me. And if the real Corin turns up, it’ll all come out, and they will！” He had, you see, no idea of how noble and free-born people behave.

“What am I to do? What am I to do?” he kept saying to himself. “What — hullo, here comes that goaty little creature again.”

The Faun trotted in, half dancing, with a tray in its hands which was nearly as large as itself. This he set on an inlaid table beside Shasta’s sofa, and sat down himself on the carpeted floor with his goaty legs crossed.

“Now, princeling,” he said. “Make a good dinner. It will be your last meal in Tashbaan.”

It was a fine meal after the Calormene fashion. I don’t know whether you would have liked it or not, but Shasta did. There were lobsters, and salad, and snipe stuffed with almonds and truffles, and a complicated dish made of chicken livers and rice and raisins and nuts, and there were cool melons and gooseberry fools and mulberry fools, and every kind of nice thing that can be made with ice. There was also a little flagon of the sort of wine that is called “white” though it is really yellow.

While Shasta was eating, the good little Faun, who thought he was still dazed with sunstroke, kept talking to him about the fine times he would have when they all got home; about his good old father King Lune of Archenland and the little castle where he lived on the southern slopes of the pass. “And don’t forget,” said Mr Tumnus, “that you are promised your first suit of armour and your first war horse on your next birthday. And then your Highness will begin to learn how to tilt and joust. And in a few years, if all goes well, King Peter has promised your royal father that he himself will make you Knight at Cair Paravel. And in the meantime there will be plenty of comings and goings between Narnia and Archenland across the neck of the mountains. And of course you remember you have promised to come for a whole week to stay with me for the Summer Festival, and there’ll be bonfires and all-night dances of Fauns and Dryads in the heart of the woods and, who knows?—we might see Aslan himself！”

When the meal was over the Faun told Shasta to stay quietly where he was. “And it wouldn’t do you any harm to have a little sleep,” he added. “I’ll call you in plenty of time to get on board. And then, Home. Narnia and the North！”

Shasta had so enjoyed his dinner and all the things Tumnus had been telling him that when he was left alone his thoughts took a different turn. He only hoped now that the real Prince Corin would not turn up until it was too late and that he would be taken away to Narnia by ship. I am afraid he did not think at all of what might happen to the real Corin when he was left behind in Tashbaan. He was a little worried about Aravis and Bree waiting for him at the Tombs. But then he said to himself, “Well, how can I help it?” and, “Anyway, that Aravis thinks she’s too good to go about with me, so she can jolly well go alone,” and at the same time he couldn’t help feeling that it would be much nicer going to Narnia by sea than toiling across the desert.

When he had thought all this he did what I expect you would have done if you had been up very early and had a long walk and a great deal of excitement and then a very good meal, and were lying on a sofa in a cool room with no noise in it except when a bee came buzzing in through the wide open windows. He fell asleep.

What woke him was a loud crash. He jumped up off the sofa, staring. He saw at once from the mere look of the room — the lights and shadows all looked different — that he must have slept for several hours. He saw also what had made the crash： a costly porcelain vase which had been standing on the windowsill lay on the floor broken into about thirty pieces. But he hardly noticed all these things. What he did notice was two hands gripping the windowsill from outside. They gripped harder and harder （getting white at the knuckles） and then up came a head and a pair of shoulders. A moment later there was a boy of Shasta’s own age sitting astride the sill with one leg hanging down inside the room.

Shasta had never seen his own face in a looking-glass. Even if he had, he might not have realized that the other boy was （at ordinary times） almost exactly like himself. At the moment this boy was not particularly like anyone for he had the finest black eye you ever saw, and a tooth missing, and his clothes （which must have been splendid ones when he put them on） were torn and dirty, and there was both blood and mud on his face.

“Who are you?” said the boy in a whisper.

“Are you Prince Corin?” said Shasta.

“Yes, of course,” said the other. “But who are you?”

“I’m nobody, nobody in particular, I mean,” said Shasta. “King Edmund caught me in the street and mistook me for you. I suppose we must look like one another. Can I get out the way you’ve got in?”

“Yes, if you’re any good at climbing,” said Corin. “But why are you in such a hurry? I say： we ought to be able to get some fun out of this being mistaken for one another.”

“No, no,” said Shasta. “We must change places at once. It’ll be simply frightful if Mr Tumnus comes back and finds us both here. I’ve had to pretend to be you. And you’re starting tonight — secretly. And where were you all this time?”

“A boy in the street made a beastly joke about Queen Susan,” said Prince Corin, “so I knocked him down. He ran howling into a house and his big brother came out. So I knocked the big brother down. Then they all followed me until we ran into three old men with spears who are called the Watch. So I fought the Watch and they knocked me down. It was getting dark by now. Then the Watch took me along to lock me up somewhere. So I asked them if they’d like a stoup of wine and they said they didn’t mind if they did. Then I took them to a wine shop and got them some and they all sat down and drank till they fell asleep. I thought it was time for me to be off so I came out quietly and then I found the first boy — the one who had started all the trouble — still hanging about. So I knocked him down again. After that I climbed up a pipe on to the roof of a house and lay quiet till it began to get light this morning. Ever since that I’ve been finding my way back. I say, is there anything to drink?”

“No, I drank it,” said Shasta. “And now, show me how you got in. There’s not a minute to lose. You’d better lie down on the sofa and pretend — but I forgot. It’ll be no good with all those bruises and black eye. You’ll just have to tell them the truth, once I’m safely away.”

“What else did you think I’d be telling them?” asked the Prince with a rather angry look. “And who are you?”

“There’s no time,” said Shasta in a frantic whisper. “I’m a Narnian, I believe; something Northern anyway. But I’ve been brought up all my life in Calormen. And I’m escaping： across the desert; with a talking Horse called Bree. And now, quick！ How do I get away?”

“Look,” said Corin. “Drop from this window onto the roof of the verandah. But you must do it lightly, on your toes, or someone will hear you. Then along to your left and you can get up to the top of that wall if you’re any good at all as a climber. Then along the wall to the corner. Drop onto the rubbish heap you will find outside, and there you are.”

“Thanks,” said Shasta, who was already sitting on the sill. The two boys were looking into each other’s faces and suddenly found that they were friends.

“Good-bye,” said Corin. “And good luck. I do hope you get safe away.”

“Good-bye,” said Shasta. “I say, you have been having some adventures.”

“Nothing to yours,” said the Prince. “Now drop; lightly I say,” he added as Shasta dropped. “I hope we meet in Archenland. Go to my father King Lune and tell him you’re a friend of mine. Look out！ I hear someone coming.”

CHAPTER SIX
SHASTA AMONG THE TOMBS

Shasta ran lightly along the roof on tiptoes. It felt hot to his bare feet. He was only a few seconds scrambling up the wall at the far end and when he got to the corner he found himself looking down into a narrow, smelly street, and there was a rubbish heap against the outside of the wall just as Corin had told him. Before jumping down he took a rapid glance round him to get his bearings. Apparently he had now come over the crown of the island-hill on which Tashbaan is built. Everything sloped away before him, flat roofs below flat roofs, down to the towers and battlements of the city’s Northern wall. Beyond that was the river and beyond the river a short slope covered with gardens. But beyond that again there was something he had never seen the like of — a great yellowish-grey thing, flat as a calm sea, and stretching for miles. On the far side of it were huge blue things, lumpy but with jagged edges, and some of them with white tops. “The desert！ the mountains！” thought Shasta.

He jumped down onto the rubbish and began trotting along downhill as fast as he could in the narrow lane, which soon brought him into a wider street where there were more people. No one bothered to look at a little ragged boy running along on bare feet. Still, he was anxious and uneasy till he turned a corner and there saw the city gate in front of him. Here he was pressed and jostled a bit, for a good many other people were also going out; and on the bridge beyond the gate the crowd became quite a slow procession, more like a queue than a crowd. Out there, with clear running water on each side, it was deliciously fresh after the smell and heat and noise of Tashbaan.

When once Shasta had reached the far end of the bridge he found the crowd melting away; everyone seemed to be going either to the left or right along the river bank. He went straight ahead up a road that did not appear to be much used, between gardens. In a few paces he was alone, and a few more brought him to the top of the slope. There he stood and stared. It was like coming to the end of the world for all the grass stopped quite suddenly a few feet before him and the sand began： endless level sand like on a sea shore but a bit rougher because it was never wet. The mountains, which now looked further off than before, loomed ahead. Greatly to his relief he saw, about five minutes’walk away on his left, what must certainly be the Tombs, just as Bree had described them; great masses of mouldering stone shaped like gigantic beehives, but a little narrower. They looked very black and grim, for the sun was now setting right behind them.

He turned his face West and trotted toward the Tombs. He could not help looking out very hard for any sign of his friends, though the setting sun shone in his face so that he could see hardly anything. “And anyway,” he thought, “of course they’ll be round on the far side of the farthest Tomb, not this side where anyone might see them from the city.”

There were about twelve Tombs, each with a low arched doorway that opened into absolute blackness. They were dotted about in no kind of order, so that it took a long time, going round this one and going round that one, before you could be sure that you had looked round every side of every tomb. This was what Shasta had to do. There was nobody there.

It was very quiet here out on the edge of the desert; and now the sun had really set.

Suddenly from somewhere behind him there came a terrible sound. Shasta’s heart gave a great jump and he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from screaming. Next moment he realized what it was： the horns of Tashbaan blowing for the closing of the gates. “Don’t be a silly little coward,” said Shasta to himself. “Why, it’s only the same noise you heard this morning.” But there is a great difference between a noise heard letting you in with your friends in the morning, and a noise heard alone at nightfall, shutting you out. And now that the gates were shut he knew there was no chance of the others joining him that evening. “Either they’re shut up in Tashbaan for the night,” thought Shasta, “or else they’ve gone on without me. It’s just the sort of thing that Aravis would do. But Bree wouldn’t. Oh, he wouldn’t.—now, would he?”

In this idea about Aravis Shasta was once more quite wrong. She was proud and could be hard enough but she was as true as steel and would never have deserted a companion, whether she liked him or not.

Now that Shasta knew he would have to spend the night alone （it was getting darker every minute） he began to like the look of the place less and less. There was something very uncomfortable about those great, silent shapes of stone. He had been trying his hardest for a long time not to think of ghouls： but he couldn’t keep it up any longer.

“Ow！ Ow！ Help！” he shouted suddenly, for at that very moment he felt something touch his leg. I don’t think anyone can be blamed for shouting if something comes up from behind and touches him; not in such a place and at such a time, when he is frightened already. Shasta at any rate was too frightened to run. Anything would be better than being chased round and round the burial places of the Ancient Kings with something he dared not look at behind him. Instead, he did what was really the most sensible thing he could do. He looked round; and his heart almost burst with relief. What had touched him was only a cat. sensible thing he could do. He looked round; and his heart almost burst with relief. What had touched him was only a cat.

The light was too bad now for Shasta to see much of the cat except that it was big and very solemn. It looked as if it might have lived for long, long years among the Tombs, alone. Its eyes made you think it knew secrets it would not tell.

“Puss, puss,” said Shasta. “I suppose you’re not a talking cat.”

The cat stared at him harder than ever. Then it started walking away, and of course Shasta followed it. It led him right through the tombs and out on the desert side of them. There it sat down bolt upright with its tail curled round its feet and its face set towards the desert and towards Narnia and the North, as still as if it were watching for some enemy. Shasta lay down beside it with his back against the cat and his face towards the Tombs, because if one is nervous there’s nothing like having your face towards the danger and having something warm and solid at your back. The sand wouldn’t have seemed very comfortable to you, but Shasta had been sleeping on the ground for weeks and hardly noticed it. Very soon he fell asleep, though even in his dreams he went on wondering what had happened to Bree and Aravis and Hwin.

He was wakened suddenly by a noise he had never heard before. “Perhaps it was only a nightmare,” said Shasta to himself. At the same moment he noticed that the cat had gone from his back, and he wished it hadn’t. But he lay quite still without even opening his eyes because he felt sure he would be more frightened if he sat up and looked round at the Tombs and the loneliness： just as you or I might lie still with the clothes over our heads. But then the noise came again — a harsh, piercing cry from behind him out of the desert. Then of course he had to open his eyes and sit up.

The moon was shining brightly. The Tombs — far bigger and nearer than he had thought they would be — looked grey in the moonlight. In fact, they looked horribly like huge people, draped in grey robes that covered their heads and faces. They were not at all nice things to have near you when spending a night alone in a strange place. But the noise had come from the opposite side, from the desert. Shasta had to turn his back on the Tombs （he didn’t like that much） and stare out across the level sand. The wild cry rang out again.

“I hope it’s not more lions,” thought Shasta. It was in fact not very like the lion’s roars he had heard on the night when they met Hwin and Aravis, and was really the cry of a jackal. But of course Shasta did not know this. Even if he had known, he would not have wanted very much to meet a jackal.

The cries rang out again and again. “There’s more than one of them, whatever they are,” thought Shasta. “And they’re coming nearer.”

I suppose that if he had been an entirely sensible boy he would have gone back through the Tombs nearer to the river where there were houses, and wild beasts would be less likely to come. But then there were （or he thought there were） the ghouls. To go back through the Tombs would mean going past those dark openings in the Tombs; and what might come out of them? It may have been silly, but Shasta felt he would rather risk the wild beasts. Then, as the cries came nearer and nearer, he began to change his mind.

He was just going to run for it when suddenly, between him and the desert, a huge animal bounded into view. As the moon was behind it, it looked quite black, and Shasta did not know what it was, except that it had a very big, shaggy head and went on four legs. It did not seem to have noticed Shasta, for it suddenly stopped, turned its head towards the desert and let out a roar which re-echoed through the Tombs and seemed to shake the sand under Shasta’s feet. The cries of the other creatures suddenly stoppd and he thought he could hear feet scampering away. Then the great beast turned to examine Shasta.

“It’s a lion, I know it’s a lion,” thought Shasta. “I’m done. I wonder will it hurt much. I wish it was over. I wonder does anything happen to people after they’re dead. O-o-oh！ Here it comes！” And he shut his eyes and his teeth tight.

But instead of teeth and claws he only felt something warm lying down at his feet. And when he opened his eyes he said, “Why, it’s not nearly as big as I thought！ It’s only half the size. No, it isn’t even quarter the size. I do declare it’s only the cat！ I must have dreamed all that about its being as big as a horse.”

And whether he really had been dreaming or not, what was now lying at his feet, and staring him out of countenance with its big, green, unwinking eyes, was the cat; though certainly one of the largest cats he had ever seen.

“Oh, Puss,” gasped Shasta. “I am so glad to see you again. I’ve been having such horrible dreams.” And he at once lay down again, back to back with the cat as they had been at the beginning of the night. The warmth from it spread all over him.

“I’ll never do anything nasty to a cat again as long as I live,” said Shasta, half to the cat and half to himself. “I did once, you know. I threw stones at a half-starved mangy old stray. Hey！ Stop that.” For the cat had turned round and given him a scratch. “None of that,” said Shasta. “It isn’t as if you could understand what I’m saying.” Then he dozed off.

Next morning when he woke, the cat was gone, the sun was already up, and the sand hot. Shasta, very thirsty, sat up and rubbed his eyes. The desert was blindingly white and, though there was a murmur of noises from the city behind him, where he sat everything was perfectly still. When he looked a little left and west, so that the sun was not in his eyes, he could see the mountains on the far side of the desert, so sharp and clear that they looked only a stone’s throw away. He particularly noticed one blue height that divided into two peaks at the top and decided that it must be Mount Pire. “That’s our direction, judging by what the Raven said,” he thought, “so I’ll just make sure of it, so as not to waste any time when the others turn up.” So he made a good, deep straight furrow with his foot pointing exactly to Mount Pire.

The next job, clearly, was to get something to eat and drink. Shasta trotted back through the Tombs — they looked quite ordinary now and he wondered how he could ever have been afraid of them — and down into the cultivated land by the river’s side. There were a few people about but not very many, for the city gates had been open several hours and the early morning crowds had already gone in. So he had no diffculty in doing a little “raiding”（as Bree called it）. It involved a climb over a garden wall and the results were three oranges, a melon, a fig or two, and a pomegranate. After that, he went down to the river bank, but not too near the bridge, and had a drink. The water was so nice that he took off his hot, dirty clothes and had a dip; for of course Shasta, having lived on the shore all his life, had learned to swim almost as soon as he had learned to walk. When he came out he lay on the grass looking across the water at Tashbaan — all the splendour and strength and glory of it. But that made him remember the dangers of it too. He suddenly realized that the others might have reached the Tombs while he was bathing （“and gone on without me, as likely as not”）, so he dressed in a fright and tore back at such a speed that he was all hot and thirsty when he arrived and so the good of his bathe was gone.

Like most days when you are alone and waiting for something this day seemed about a hundred hours long. He had plenty to think of, of course, but sitting alone, just thinking, is pretty slow. He thought a good deal about the Narnians and especially about Corin. He wondered what had happened when they discovered that the boy who had been lying on the sofa and hearing all their secret plans wasn’t really Corin at all. It was very unpleasant to think of all those nice people imagining him a traitor.

But as the sun slowly, slowly climbed up to the top of the sky and then slowly, slowly began going downwards to the West, and no one came and nothing at all happened, he began to get more and more anxious. And of course he now realized that when they arranged to wait for one another at the Tombs no one had said anything about How Long. He couldn’t wait here for the rest of his life！ And soon it would be dark again, and he would have another night just like last night. A dozen different plans went through his head, all wretched ones, and at last he fixed on the worst plan of all. He decided to wait till it was dark and then go back to the river and steal as many melons as he could carry and set out for Mount Pire alone, trusting for his direction to the line he had drawn that morning in the sand. It was a crazy idea and if he had read as many books as you have about journeys over deserts he would never have dreamed of it. But Shasta had read no books at all.

Before the sun set something did happen. Shasta was sitting in the shadow of one of the Tombs when he looked up and saw two horses coming towards him. Then his heart gave a great leap, for he recognized them as Bree and Hwin. But the next moment his heart went down into his toes again. There was no sign of Aravis. The Horses were being led by a strange man, an armed man pretty handsomely dressed like an upper slave in a great family. Bree and Hwin were no longer got up like pack-horses, but saddled and bridled. And what could it all mean?“It’s a trap,” thought Shasta. “Somebody has caught Aravis and perhaps they’ve tortured her and she’s given the whole thing away. They want me to jump out and run up and speak to Bree and then I’ll be caught too！ And yet if I don’t, I may be losing my only chance to meet the others. Oh I do wish I knew what had happened.” And he skulked behind the Tomb, looking out every few minutes, and wondering which was the least dangerous thing to do.

CHAPTER SEVEN
ARAVIS IN TASHBAAN

What had really happened was this. When Aravis saw Shasta hurried away by the Narnians and found herself alone with two horses who （very wisely） wouldn’t say a word, she never lost her head even for a moment. She grabbed Bree’s halter and stood still, holding both the horses; and though her heart was beating as hard as a hammer, she did nothing to show it. As soon as the Narnian lords had passed she tried to move on again. But before she could take a step, another crier （“Bother all these people” thought Aravis） was heard shouting out, “Way, way, way！ Way for the Tarkheena Lasaraleen！” and immediately, following the crier, came four armed slaves and then four bearers carrying a litter which was all a-flutter with silken curtains and all a-jingle with silver bells and which scented the whole street with perfumes and flowers. After the litter, female slaves in beautiful clothes, and then a few grooms, runners, pages, and the like. And now Aravis made her first mistake.

She knew Lasaraleen quite well — almost as if they had been at school together — because they had often stayed in the same houses and been to the same parties. And Aravis couldn’t help looking up to see what Lasaraleen looked like now that she was married and a very great person indeed.

It was fatal. The eyes of the two girls met. And immediately Lasaraleen sat up in the litter and burst out at the top of her voice.

“Aravis！ What on earth are you doing here? Your father —”

There was not a moment to lose. Without a second’s delay Aravis let go the Horses, caught the edge of the litter, swung herself up beside Lasaraleen and whispered furiously in her ear.

“Shut up！ Do you hear！ Shut up. You must hide me. Tell your people —”

“But darling —” began Lasaraleen in the same loud voice.（She didn’t in the least mind making people stare; in fact she rather liked it.）

“Do what I tell you or I’ll never speak to you again,” hissed Aravis. “Please, please be quick, Las. It’s frightfully important. Tell your people to bring those two horses along. Pull all the curtains of the litter and get away somewhere where I can’t be found. And do hurry.”

“All right, darling,” said Lasaraleen in her lazy voice. “Here. Two of you take the Tarkheena’s horses.”（This was to the slaves.）“And now home. I say, darling, do you think we really want the curtains drawn on a day like this? I mean to say —”

But Aravis had already drawn the curtains, enclosing Lasaraleen and herself in a rich and scented, but rather stuffy, kind of tent.

“I mustn’t be seen,” she said. “My father doesn’t know I’m here. I’m running away.”

“My dear, how perfectly thrilling,” said Lasaraleen. “I’m dying to hear all about it. Darling, you’re sitting on my dress. Do you mind? That’s better. It is a new one. Do you like it? I got it at —”

“Oh, Las, do be serious,” said Aravis. “Where is my father?”

“Didn’t you know?” said Lasaraleen. “He’s here, of course. He came to town yesterday and is asking about you everywhere. And to think of you and me being here together and his not knowing anything about it！ It’s the funniest thing I ever heard.” And she went off into giggles. She always had been a terrible giggler, as Aravis now remembered.

“It isn’t funny at all,” she said. “It’s dreadfully serious. Where can you hide me?”

“No difficulty at all, my dear girl,” said Lasaraleen. “I’ll take you home. My husband’s away and no one will see you. Phew！ It’s not much fun with the curtains drawn. I want to see people. There’s no point in having a new dress on if one’s to go about shut up like this.”

“I hope no one heard you when you shouted out to me like that,” said Aravis.

“No, no, of course, darling,” said Lasaraleen absentmindedly. “But you haven’t even told me yet what you think of the dress.”

“Another thing,” said Aravis. “You must tell your people to treat those two horses very respectfully. That’s part of the secret. They’re really Talking Horses from Narnia.”

“Fancy！” said Lasaraleen. “How exciting！ And oh, darling, have you seen the barbarian queen from Narnia? She’s staying in Tashbaan at present. They say Prince Rabadash is madly in love with her. There have been the most wonderful parties and hunts and things all this last fortnight. I can’t see that she’s so very pretty myself. But some of the Narnian men are lovely. I was taken out on a river party the day before yesterday, and I was wearing my —”

“How shall we prevent your people telling everyone that you’ve got a visitor — dressed like a beggar’s brat — in your house? It might so easily get round to my father.”

“Now don’t keep on fussing, there’s a dear,” said Lasaraleen. “We’ll get you some proper clothes in a moment. And here we are！”

The bearers had stopped and the litter was being lowered. When the curtains had been drawn Aravis found that she was in a courtyard-garden very like the one that Shasta had been taken into a few minutes earlier in another part of the city. Lasaraleen would have gone indoors at once but Aravis reminded her in a frantic whisper to say something to the slaves about not telling anyone of their mistress’s strange visitor.

“Sorry, darling, it had gone right out of my head,” said Lasareleen. “Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.”

Although Lasaraleen had said she was dying to hear Aravis’s story, she showed no sign of really wanting to hear it at all. She was, in fact, much better at talking than at listening. She insisted on Aravis having a long and luxurious bath （Calormene baths are famous） and then dressing her up in the finest clothes before she would let her explain anything. The fuss she made about choosing the dresses nearly drove Aravis mad. She remembered now that Lasaraleen had always been like that, interested in clothes and parties and gossip. Aravis had always been more interested in bows and arrows and horses and dogs and swimming. You will guess that each thought the other silly. But when at last they were both seated after a meal （it was chiefly of the whipped cream and jelly and fruit and ice sort） in a beautiful pillared room （which Aravis would have liked better if Lasaraleen’s spoiled pet monkey hadn’t been climbing about it all the time） Lasaraleen at last asked her why she was running away from home.

When Aravis had finished telling her story, Lasaraleen said, “But, darling, why don’t you marry Ahoshta Tarkaan? Everyone’s crazy about him. My husband says he is beginning to be one of the greatest men in Calormen. He has just been made Grand Vizier now old Axartha has died. Didn’t you know?”

“I don’t care. I can’t stand the sight of him,” said Aravis.

“But, darling, only think！ Three palaces, and one of them that beautiful one down on the lake at Ilkeen. Positively ropes of pearls, I’m told. Baths of asses’milk. And you’d see such a lot of me.”

“He can keep his pearls and palaces as far as I’m concerned,” said Aravis.

“You always were a queer girl, Aravis,” said Lasaraleen. “What more do you want?”

In the end, however, Aravis managed to make her friend believe that she was in earnest and even to discuss plans. There would be no difficulty now about getting the two horses out of the North gate and then on to the Tombs. No one would stop or question a groom in fine clothes leading a war horse and a lady’s saddle horse down to the river, and Lasaraleen had plenty of grooms to send. It wasn’t so easy to decide what to do about Aravis herself. She suggested that she could be carried out in the litter with the curtains drawn. But Lasaraleen told her that litters were only used in the city and the sight of one going out through the gate would be certain to lead to questions.

When they had talked for a long time — and it was all the longer because Aravis found it hard to keep her friend to the point — at last Lasaraleen clapped her hands and said, “Oh, I have an idea. There is one way of getting out of the city without using the gates. The Tisroc’s garden （may he live forever！） runs right down to the water and there is a little water-door. Only for the palace people of course — but then you know, dear （here she tittered a little） we almost are palace people. I say, it is lucky for you that you came to me. The dear Tisroc （may he live for ever！） is so kind. We’re asked to the palace almost every day and it is like a second home. I love all the dear princes and princesses and I positively adore Prince Rabadash. I might run in and see any of the palace ladies at any hour of the day or night. Why shouldn’t I slip in with you, after dark, and let you out by the water-door? There are always a few punts and things tied up outside it. And even if we were caught —”

“All would be lost,” said Aravis.

“Oh darling, don’t get so excited,” said Lasaraleen. “I was going to say, even if we were caught everyone would only say it was one of my mad jokes. I’m getting quite well known for them. Only the other day — do listen, dear, this is frightfully funny —”

“I meant, all would be lost for me,” said Aravis a little sharply.

“Oh — ah — yes — I do see what you mean, darling. Well, can you think of any better plan?”

Aravis couldn’t, and answered, “No. We’ll have to risk it. When can we start?”

“Oh, not tonight,” said Lasaraleen. “Of course not tonight. There’s a great feast on tonight （I must start getting my hair done for it in a few minutes） and the whole place will be a blaze of lights. And such a crowd too！ It would have to be tomorrow night.”

This was bad news for Aravis, but she had to make the best of it. The afternoon passed very slowly and it was a relief when Lasaraleen went out to the banquet, for Aravis was very tired of her giggling and her talk about dresses and parties, weddings and engagements and scandals. She went to bed early and that part she did enjoy： it was so nice to have pillows and sheets again.

But the next day passed very slowly. Lasaraleen wanted to go back on the whole arrangement and kept on telling Aravis that Narnia was a country of perpetual snow and ice inhabited by demons and sorcerers, and she was mad to think of going there. “And with a peasant boy, too！” said Lasaraleen. “Darling, think of it！ It’s not Nice.” Aravis had thought of it a good deal, but she was so tired of Lasaraleen’s silliness by now that, for the first time, she began to think that travelling with Shasta was really rather more fun than fashionable life in Tashbaan. So she only replied, “You forget that I’ll be nobody, just like him, when we get to Narnia. And anyway, I promised.”

“And to think,” said Lasaraleen, almost crying, “that if only you had sense you could be the wife of a Grand Vizier！” Aravis went away to have a private word with the horses.

“You must go with a groom a little before sunset down to the Tombs,” she said. “No more of those packs. You’ll be saddled and bridled again. But there’ll have to be food in Hwin’s saddle-bags and a full water-skin behind yours, Bree. The man has orders to let you both have a good long drink at the far side of the bridge.”

“And then, Narnia and the North！” whispered Bree. “But what if Shasta is not at the Tombs.”

“Wait for him of course,” said Aravis. “I hope you’ve been quite comfortable.”

“Never better stabled in my life,” said Bree. “But if the husband of that tittering Tarkheena friend of yours is paying his head groom to get the best oats, then I think the head groom is cheating him.”

Aravis and Lasaraleen had supper in the pillared room.

About two hours later they were ready to start. Aravis was dressed to look like a superior slave-girl in a great house and wore a veil over her face. They had agreed that if any questions were asked Lasaraleen would pretend that Aravis was a slave she was taking as a present to one of the princesses.

The two girls went out on foot. A very few minutes brought them to the palace gates. Here there were of course soldiers on guard but the officer knew Lasaraleen quite well and called his men to attention and saluted. They passed at once into the Hall of Black Marble. A fair number of courtiers, slaves and others were still moving about here but this only made the two girls less conspicuous. They passed on into the Hall of Pillars and then into the Hall of Statues and down the colonnade, passing the great beatencopper doors of the throne room. It was all magnificent beyond description; what they could see of it in the dim light of the lamps.

Presently they came out into the garden-court which sloped downhill in a number of terraces. On the far side of that they came to the Old Palace. It had already grown almost quite dark and they now found themselves in a maze of corridors lit only by occasional torches fixed in brackets to the walls. Lasaraleen halted at a place where you had to go either left or right.

“Go on, do go on,” whispered Aravis, whose heart was beating terribly and who still felt that her father might run into them at any corner.

“I’m just wondering ... ” said Lasaraleen. “I’m not absolutely sure which way we go from here. I think it’s the left. Yes, I’m almost sure it’s the left. What fun this is！”

They took the left hand way and found themselves in a passage that was hardly lighted at all and which soon began going down steps.

“It’s all right,” said Lasaraleen. “I’m sure we’re right now. I remember these steps.” But at that moment a moving light appeared ahead. A second later there appeared from round a distant corner, the dark shapes of two men walking backwards and carrying tall candles. And of course it is only before royalties that people walk backwards. Aravis felt Lasaraleen grip her arm — that sort of sudden grip which is almost a pinch and which means that the person who is gripping you is very frightened indeed. Aravis thought it odd that Lasaraleen should be so afraid of the Tisroc if he were really such a friend of hers, but there was no time to go on thinking. Lasaraleen was hurrying her back to the top of the steps, on tiptoes, and groping wildly along the wall.

“Here’s a door,” she whispered. “Quick.”

They went in, drew the door very softly behind them, and found themselves in pitch darkness. Aravis could hear by Lasaraleen’s breathing that she was terrified.

“Tash preserve us！” whispered Lasaraleen. “What shall we do if he comes in here. Can we hide?”

There was a soft carpet under their feet. They groped forward into the room and blundered onto a sofa.

“Let’s lie down behind it,” whimpered Lasaraleen. “Oh, I do wish we hadn’t come.”

There was just room between the sofa and the curtained wall and the two girls got down. Lasaraleen managed to get the better position and was completely covered. The upper part of Aravis’s face stuck out beyond the sofa, so that if anyone came into that room with a light and happened to look in exactly the right place they would see her. But of course, because she was wearing a veil, what they saw would not at once look like a forehead and a pair of eyes. Aravis shoved desperately to try to make Lasaraleen give her a little more room. But Lasaraleen, now quite selfish in her panic, fought back and pinched her feet. They gave it up and lay still, panting a little. Their own breath semed dreadfully noisy, but there was no other noise.

“Is it safe?” said Aravis at last in the tiniest possible whisper.

“I — I —think so,” began Lasaraleen. “But my poor nerves —” and then came the most terrible noise they could have heard at that moment： the noise of the door opening. And then came light. And because Aravis couldn’t get her head any further in behind the sofa, she saw everything.

First came the two slaves （deaf and dumb, as Aravis rightly guessed, and therefore used at the most secret councils） walking backwards and carrying the candles. They took up their stand one at each end of the sofa. This was a good thing, for of course it was now harder for anyone to see Aravis once a slave was in front of her and she was looking between his heels. Then came an old man, very fat, wearing a curious pointed cap by which she immediately knew that he was the Tisroc. The least of the jewels with which he was covered was worth more than all the clothes and weapons of the Narnian lords put together： but he was so fat and such a mass of frills and pleats and bobbles and buttons and tassels and talismans that Aravis couldn’t help thinking the Narnian fashions （at any rate for men） looked nicer. After him came a tall young man with a feathered and jewelled turban on his head and an ivory-sheathed scimitar at his side. He seemed very excited and his eyes and teeth flashed fiercely in the candlelight. Last of all came a little hump-backed, wizened old man in whom she recognized with a shudder the new Grand Vizier and her own betrothed husband, Ahoshta Tarkaan himself.

As soon as all three had entered the room and the door was shut, the Tisroc seated himself on the divan with a sigh of contentment, the young man took his place, standing before him, and the Grand Vizier got down on his knees and elbows and laid his face flat on the carpet.

CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE HOUSE OF THE TISROC

“Oh-my-father-and-oh-the-delight-of-my-eyes,” began the young man, muttering the words very quickly and sulkily and not at all as if the Tisroc were the delight of his eyes. “May you live forever, but you have utterly destroyed me. If you had given me the swiftest of the galleys at sunrise when I first saw that the ship of the accursed barbarians was gone from her place I would perhaps have overtaken them. But you persuaded me to send first and see if they had not merely moved round the point into better anchorage. And now the whole day has been wasted. And they are gone — gone — out of my reach！ The false jade, the —” and here he added a great many descriptions of Queen Susan which would not look at all nice in print. For of course this young man was Prince Rabadash and of course the false jade was Susan of Narnia.

“Compose yourself, O my son,” said the Tisroc. “For the departure of guests makes a wound that is easily healed in the heart of a judicious host.”

“But I want her,” cried the Prince. “I must have her. I shall die if I do not get her — false, proud, black-hearted daughter of a dog that she is！ I cannot sleep and my food has no savour and my eyes are darkened because of her beauty. I must have the barbarian queen.”

“How well it was said by a gifted poet,” observed the Vizier, raising his face （in a somewhat dusty condition） from the carpet, “that deep draughts from the fountain of reason are desirable in order to extinguish the fire of youthful love.”

This seemed to exasperate the Prince. “Dog,” he shouted, directing a series of well-aimed kicks at the hindquarters of the Vizier, “do not dare to quote the poets to me. I have had maxims and verses flung at me all day and I can endure them no more.” I am afraid Aravis did not feel at all sorry for the Vizier.

The Tisroc was apparently sunk in thought, but when, after a long pause, he noticed what was happening, he said tranquilly：

“My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier： for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.”

“I desire and propose, O my father,” said Rabadash, “that you immediately call out your invincible armies and invade the thrice-accursed land of Narnia and waste it with fire and sword and add it to your illimitable empire, killing their High King and all of his blood except the queen Susan. For I must have her as my wife, though she shall learn a sharp lesson first.”

“Understand, O my son,” said the Tisroc, “that no words you can speak will move me to open war against Narnia.”

“If you were not my father, O ever-living Tisroc, “said the Prince, grinding his teeth, “I should say that was the word of a coward.”

“And if you were not my son, O most inflammable Rabadash,” replied his father, “your life would be short and your death slow when you had said it.”（The cool, placid voice in which he spoke these words made Aravis’s blood run cold.）

“But why, O my father,” said the Prince — this time in a much more respectful voice, “why should we think twice about punishing Narnia any more than about hanging an idle slave or sending a worn-out horse to be made into dog’s meat? It is not the fourth size of one of your least provinces. A thousand spears could conquer it in five weeks. It is an unseemly blot on the skirts of your empire.”

“Most undoubtedly,” said the Tisroc. “These little barbarian countries that call themselves free （which is as much as to say, idle, disordered, and unprofitable） are hateful to the gods and to all persons of discernment.”

“Then why have we suffered such a land as Narnia to remain thus long unsubdued?”

“Know, O enlightened Prince,” said the Grand Vizier, “that until the year in which your exalted father began his salutary and unending reign, the land of Narnia was covered with ice and snow and was moreover ruled by a most powerful enchantress.”

“This I know very well, O loquacious Vizier,” answered the Prince. “But I know also that the enchantress is dead. And the ice and snow have vanished, so that Narnia is now wholesome, fruitful, and delicious.”

“And this change, O most learned Prince, has doubtless been brought to pass by the powerful incantations of those wicked persons who now call themselves kings and queens of Narnia.”

“I am rather of the opinion,” said Rabadash, “that it has come about by the alteration of the stars and the operation of natural causes.”

“All this,” said the Tisroc, “is a question for the disputations of learned men. I will never believe that so great an alteration, and the killing of the old enchantress, were effected without the aid of strong magic. And such things are to be expected in that land, which is chiefly inhabited by demons in the shape of beasts that talk like men, and monsters that are half man and half beast. It is commonly reported that the High King of Narnia （whom may the gods utterly reject） is supported by a demon of hideous aspect and irresistible maleficence who appears in the shape of a Lion. Therefore the attacking of Narnia is a dark and doubtful enterprise, and I am determined not to put my hand out farther than I can draw it back.”

“How blessed is Calormen,” said the Vizier, popping up his face again, “on whose ruler the gods have been pleased to bestow prudence and circumspection！ Yet as the irrefutable and sapient Tisroc has said it is very grievous to be constrained to keep our hands off such a dainty dish as Narnia. Gifted was that poet who said —” but at this point Ahoshta noticed an impatient movement of the Prince’s toe and became suddenly silent.

“It is very grievous,” said the Tisroc in his deep, quiet voice. “Every morning the sun is darkened in my eyes, and every night my sleep is the less refreshing, because I remember that Narnia is still free.”

“O my father,” said Rabadash. “How if I show you a way by which you can stretch out your arm to take Narnia and yet draw it back unharmed if the attempt prove unfortunate?”

“If you can show me that, O Rabadash,” said the Tisroc, “you will be the best of sons.”

“Hear then, O father. This very night and in this hour I will take but two hundred horses and ride across the desert. And it shall seem to all men that you know nothing of my going. On the second morning I shall be at the gates of King Lune’s castle of Anvard in Archenland. They are at peace with us and unprepared and I shall take Anvard before they have bestirred themselves. Then I will ride through the pass above Anvard and down through Narnia to Cair Paravel. The High King will not be there; when I left them he was already preparing a raid against the giants on his northern border. I shall find Cair Paravel, most likely with open gates, and ride in. I shall exercise prudence and courtesy and spill as little Narnian blood as I can. And what then remains but to sit there till the Splendour Hyaline puts in, with Queen Susan on board, catch my strayed bird as she sets foot ashore, swing her into the saddle, and then, ride, ride, ride back to Anvard?”

“But is it not probable, O my son,” said the Tisroc, “that at the taking of the woman either King Edmund or you will lose his life?”

“They will be a small company,” said Rabadash, “and I will order ten of my men to disarm and bind him： restraining my vehement desire for his blood so that there shall be no deadly cause of war between you and the High King.”

“And how if the Splendour Hyaline is at Cair Paravel before you?”

“I do not look for that with these winds, O my father.”

“And lastly, O my resourceful son,” said the Tisroc, “you have made clear how all this might give you the barbarian woman, but not how it helps me to the over-throwing of Narnia.”

“O my father, can it have escaped you that though I and my horsemen will come and go through Narnia like an arrow from a bow, yet we shall have Anvard forever? And when you hold Anvard you sit in the very gate of Narnia, and your garrison in Anvard can be increased by little and little till it is a great host.”

“It is spoken with understanding and foresight. But how do I draw back my arm if all this miscarries?”

“You shall say that I, did it without your knowledge and against your will, and without your blessing, being constrained by the violence of my love and the impetuosity of youth.”

“And how if the High King then demands that we send back the barbarian woman, his sister?”

“O my father, be assured that he will not. For though the fancy of a woman has rejected this marriage, the High King Peter is a man of prudence and understanding who will in no way wish to lose the high honour and advantage of being allied to our House and seeing his nephew and grand nephew on the throne of Calormen.”

“He will not see that if I live forever as is no doubt your wish,” said the Tisroc in an even drier voice than usual.

“And also, O my father and O the delight of my eyes,” said the Prince, after a moment of awkward silence, “we shall write letters as if from the Queen to say that she loves me and has no desire to return to Narnia. For it is well known that women are as changeable as weathercocks. And even if they do not wholly believe the letters, they will not dare to come to Tashbaan in arms to fetch her.”

“O enlightened Vizier,” said the Tisroc, “bestow your wisdom upon us concerning this strange proposal.”

“O eternal Tisroc,” answered Ahosta, “the strength of paternal affection is not unknown to me and I have often heard that sons are in the eyes of their fathers more precious than carbuncles. How then shall I dare freely to unfold to you my mind in a matter which may imperil the life of this exalted Prince?”

“Undoubtedly you will dare,” replied the Tisroc. “Because you will find that the dangers of not doing so are at least equally great.”

“To hear is to obey,” moaned the wretched man. “Know then, O most reasonable Tisroc, in the first place, that the danger of the Prince is not altogether so great as might appear. For the gods have withheld from the barbarians the light of discretion, as that their poetry is not, like ours, full of choice apophthegms and useful maxims, but is all of love and war. Therefore nothing will appear to them more noble and admirable than such a mad enterprise as this of — ow！” For the Prince, at the word “mad”, had kicked him again.

“Desist, O my son,” said the Tisroc. “And you, estimable Vizier, whether he desists or not, by no means allow the flow of your eloquence to be interrupted. For nothing is more suitable to persons of gravity and decorum than to endure minor inconveniences with constancy.”

“To hear is to obey,” said the Vizier, wriggling himself round a little so as to get his hinder parts further away from Rabadash’s toe. “Nothing, I say, will seem as pardonable, if not estimable, in their eyes as this — er — hazardous attempt, especially because it is undertaken for the love of a woman. Therefore, if the Prince by misfortune fell into their hands, they would assuredly not kill him. Nay, it may even be, that though he failed to carry off the queen, yet the sight of his great valour and of the extremity of his passion might incline her heart to him.”

“That is a good point, old babbler,” said Rabadash. “Very good, however it came into your ugly head.”

“The praise of my masters is the light of my eyes,” said Ahoshta. “And secondly, O Tisroc, whose reign must and shall be interminable, I think that with the aid of the gods it is very likely that Anvard will fall into the Prince’s hands. And if so, we have Narnia by the throat.”

There was a long pause and the room became so silent that the two girls hardly dared to breathe. At last the Tisroc spoke.

“Go, my son,” he said. “And do as you have said. But expect no help nor countenance from me. I will not avenge you if you are killed and I will not deliver you if the barbarians cast you into prison. And if, either in success or failure, you shed a drop more than you need of Narnian noble blood and open war arises from it, my favour shall never fall upon you again and your next brother shall have your place in Calormen. Now go. Be swift, secret, and fortunate. May the strength of Tash the inexorable, the irresistible be in your sword and lance.”

“To hear is to obey,” cried Rabadash, and after kneeling for a moment to kiss his father’s hands he rushed from the room. Greatly to the disappointment of Aravis, who was now horribly cramped, the Tisroc and Vizier remained.

“O Vizier,” said the Tisroc, “is it certain that no living soul knows of this council we three have held here tonight?”

“O my master,” said Ahoshta, “it is not possible that any should know. For that very reason I proposed, and you in your wisdom agreed, that we should meet here in the Old Palace where no council is ever held and none of the household has any occasion to come.”

“It is well,” said the Tisroc. “If any man knew, I would see to it that he died before an hour had passed. And do you also, O prudent Vizier, forget it. I sponge away from my own heart and from yours all knowledge of the Prince’s plans. He is gone without my knowledge or my consent, I know not whither, because of his violence and the rash and disobedient disposition of youth. No man will be more astonished than you and I to hear that Anvard is in his hands.”

“To hear is to obey,” said Ahoshta.

“That is why you will never think even in your secret heart that I am the hardest hearted of fathers who thus send my first-born son on an errand so likely to be his death; pleasing as it must be to you who do not love the Prince. For I see into the bottom of your mind.”

“O impeccable Tisroc,” said the Vizier. “In comparison with you I love neither the Prince nor my own life nor bread nor water nor the light of the sun.”

“Your sentiments,” said the Tisroc, “are elevated and correct. I also love none of these things in comparison with the glory and strength of my throne. If the Prince succeeds, we have Archenland, and perhaps hereafter Narnia. If he fails — I have eighteen other sons and Rabadash, after the manner of the eldest sons of kings, was beginning to be dangerous. More than five Tisrocs in Tashbaan have died before their time because their eldest sons, enlightened princes, grew tired of waiting for their throne. He had better cool his blood abroad than boil it in inaction here. And now, O excellent Vizier, the excess of my paternal anxiety inclines me to sleep. Command the musicians to my chamber. But before you lie down, call back the pardon we wrote for the third cook. I feel within me the manifest prognostics of indigestion.”

“To hear is to obey,” said the Grand Vizier. He crawled backwards on all fours to the door, rose, bowed, and went out. Even then the Tisroc remained seated in silence on the divan till Aravis almost began to be afraid that he had dropped asleep. But at last with a great creaking and sighing he heaved up his enormous body, signed to the slaves to precede him with the lights, and went out. The door closed behind him, the room was once more totally dark, and the two girls could breathe freely again.

CHAPTER NINE
ACROSS THE DESERT

“How dreadful！ How perfectly dreadful！” whimpered Lasaraleen. “Oh darling, I am so frightened. I’m shaking all over. Feel me.”

“Come on,” said Aravis, who was trembling herself. “They’ve gone back to the new palace. Once we’re out of this room we’re safe enough. But it’s wasted a terrible time. Get me down to that water-gate as quick as you can.”

“Darling, how can you?” squeaked Lasaraleen. “I can’t do anything — not now. My poor nerves！ No： we must just lie still a bit and then go back.”

“Why back?” asked Aravis.

“Oh, you don’t understand. You’re so unsympathetic,” said Lasaraleen, beginning to cry. Aravis decided it was no occasion for mercy.

“Look here！” she said, catching Lasaraleen and giving her a good shake. “If you say another word about going back, and if you don’t start taking me to that water-gate at once — do you know what I’ll do? I’ll rush out into that passage and scream. Then we’ll both be caught.”

“But we shall both be k-k-killed！” said Lasaraleen. “Didn’t you hear what the Tisroc （may he live forever） said?”

“Yes, and I’d sooner be killed than married to Ahoshta. So come on.”

“Oh you are unkind,” said Lasaraleen. “And I in such a state！”

But in the end she had to give in to Aravis. She led the way down the steps they had already descended, and along another corridor and so finally out into the open air. They were now in the palace garden which sloped down in terraces to the city wall. The moon shone brightly. One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them; so that Aravis （though she remembered them years later） had only a vague impression of grey lawns, quietly bubbling fountains, and the long black shadows of cypress trees.

When they reached the very bottom and the wall rose frowning above them, Lasaraleen was shaking so that she could not unbolt the gate. Aravis did it. There, at last, was the river, full of reflected moonlight, and a little landing stage and a few pleasure boats.

“Good-bye,” said Aravis, “and thank you. I’m sorry if I’ve been a pig. But think what I’m flying from！”

“Oh Aravis darling,” said Lasaraleen. “Won’t you change your mind? Now that you’ve seen what a very great man Ahoshta is！”

“Great man！” said Aravis. “A hideous grovelling slave who flatters when he’s kicked but treasures it all up and hopes to get his own back by egging on that horrible Tisroc to plot his son’s death. Faugh！ I’d sooner marry my father’s scullion than a creature like that.”

“Oh Aravis, Aravis！ How can you say such dreadful things; and about the Tisroc （may he live for ever） too. It must be right if he’s going to do it！”

“Good-bye,” said Aravis, “and I thought your dresses lovely. And I think your house is lovely too. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely life — though it wouldn’t suit me. Close the door softly behind me.”

She tore herself away from her friend’s affectionate embraces, stepped into a punt, cast off, and a moment later was out in midstream with a huge real moon overhead and a huge reflected moon down, deep down, in the river. The air was fresh and cool and as she drew near the farther bank she heard the hooting of an owl. “Ah！ That’s better！” thought Aravis. She had always lived in the country and had hated every minute of her time in Tashbaan.

When she stepped ashore she found herself in darkness for the rise of the ground, and the trees, cut off the moonlight. But she managed to find the same road that Shasta had found, and came just as he had done to the end of the grass and the beginning of the sand, and looked （like him） to her left and saw the big, black Tombs. And now at last, brave girl though she was, her heart quailed. Supposing the others weren’t there！ Supposing the ghouls were！ But she stuck out her chin （and a little bit of her tongue too） and went straight towards them.

But before she had reached them she saw Bree and Hwin and the groom.

“You can go back to your mistress now,” said Aravis （quite forgetting that he couldn’t, until the city gates opened next morning）. “Here is money for your pains.”

“To hear is to obey,” said the groom, and at once set off at a remarkable speed in the direction of the city. There was no need to tell him to make haste： he also had been thinking a good deal about ghouls.

For the next few seconds Aravis was busy kissing the noses and patting the necks of Hwin and Bree just as if they were quite ordinary horses.

“And here comes Shasta！ Thanks be to the Lion！” said Bree.

Aravis looked round, and there, right enough, was Shasta who had come out of hiding the moment he saw the groom going away.

“And now,” said Aravis. “There’s not a moment to lose.” And in hasty words she told them about Rabadash’s expedition.

“Treacherous hounds！” said Bree, shaking his mane and stamping with his hoof. “An attack in time of peace, without defiance sent！ But we’ll grease his oats for him. We’ll be there before he is.”

“Can we?” said Aravis, swinging herself into Hwin’s saddle. Shasta wished he could mount like that.

“Brooh-hoo！” snorted Bree. “Up you get, Shasta. Can we！ And with a good start too！”

“He said he was going to start at once,” said Aravis.

“That’s how humans talk,” said Bree. “But you don’t get a company of two hundred horse and horsemen watered and victualled and armed and saddled and started all in a minute. Now： what’s our direction? Due North?”

“No,” said Shasta. “I know about that. I’ve drawn a line. I’ll explain later. Bear a bit to our left, both you horses. Ah here it is！”

“Now,” said Bree. “All that about galloping for a day and a night, like in stories, can’t really be done. It must be walk and trot： but brisk trots and short walks. And whenever we walk you two humans can slip off and walk too. Now. Are you ready, Hwin? Off we go. Narnia and the North！”

At first it was delightful. The night had now been going on for so many hours that the sand had almost finished giving back all the sun-heat it had received during the day, and the air was cool, fresh, and clear. Under the moonlight the sand, in every direction and as far as they could see, gleamed as if it were smooth water or a great silver tray. Except for the noise of Bree’s and Hwin’s hoofs there was not a sound to be heard. Shasta would nearly have fallen asleep if he had not had to dismount and walk every now and then.

This seemed to last for hours. Then there came a time when there was no longer any moon. They seemed to ride in the dead darkness for hours and hours. And after that there came a moment when Shasta noticed that he could see Bree’s neck and head in front of him a little more clearly than before; and slowly, very slowly, he began to notice the vast grey flatness on every side. It looked absolutely dead, like something in a dead world; and Shasta felt quite terribly tired and noticed that he was getting cold and that his lips were dry. And all the time the squeak of the leather, the jingle of the bits, and the noise of the hoofs — not Propputtypropputty as it would be on a hard road, but Thubbudythubbudy on the dry sand.

At last, after hours of riding, far away on his right there came a single long streak of paler grey, low down on the horizon. Then a streak of red. It was the morning at last, but without a single bird to sing about it. He was glad of the walking bits now, for he was colder than ever.

Then suddenly the sun rose and everything changed in a moment. The grey sand turned yellow and twinkled as if it was strewn with diamonds. On their left the shadows of Shasta and Hwin and Bree and Aravis, enormously long, raced beside them. The double peak of Mount Pire, far ahead, flashed in the sunlight and Shasta saw they were a little out of the course. “A bit left, a bit left,” he sang out. Best of all, when you looked back, Tashbaan was already small and remote. The Tombs were quite invisible： swallowed up in that single, jagged-edged hump which was the city of the Tisroc. Everyone felt better.

But not for long. Though Tashbaan looked very far away when they first saw it, it refused to look any further away as they went on. Shasta gave up looking back at it, for it only gave him the feeling that they were not moving at all. Then the light became a nuisance. The glare of the sand made his eyes ache： but he knew he mustn’t shut them. He must screw them up and keep on looking ahead at Mount Pire and shouting out directions. Then came the heat. He noticed it for the first time when he had to dismount and walk： as he slipped down to the sand the heat from it struck up into his face as if from the opening of an oven door. Next time it was worse. But the third time, as his bare feet touched the sand he screamed with pain and got one foot back in the stirrup and the other half over Bree’s back before you could have said knife.

“Sorry, Bree,” he gasped. “I can’t walk. It burns my feet.”“Of course！” panted Bree. “Should have thought of that myself. Stay on. Can’t be helped.”

“It’s all right for you,” said Shasta to Aravis who was walking beside Hwin. “You’ve got shoes on.”

Aravis said nothing and looked prim. Let’s hope she didn’t mean to, but she did.

On again, trot and walk and trot, jingle-jingle-jingle, squeak-squeak-squeak, smell of hot horse, smell of hot self, blinding glare, headache. And nothing at all different for mile after mile. Tashbaan would never look any further away. The mountains would never look any nearer. You felt this had been going on for always — jingle-jingle-jingle, squeak-squeak-squeak, smell of hot horse, smell of hot self.

Of course one tried all sorts of games with oneself to try to make the time pass： and of course they were all no good. And one tried very hard not to think of drinks — iced sherbet in a palace in Tashbaan, clear spring water tinkling with a dark earthy sound, cold, smooth milk just creamy enough and not too creamy — and the harder you tried not to think, the more you thought.

At last there was something different — a mass of rock sticking up out of the sand about fifty yards long and thirty feet high. It did not cast much shadow, for the sun was now very high, but it cast a little. Into that shade they crowded. There they ate some food and drank a little water. It is not easy giving a horse a drink out of a skin bottle, but Bree and Hwin were clever with their lips. No one had anything like enough. No one spoke. The Horses were flecked with foam and their breathing was noisy. The children were pale.

After a very short rest they went on again. Same noises, same smells, same glare, till at last their shadows began to fall on their right, and then got longer and longer till they seemed to stretch out to the Eastern end of the world. Very slowly the sun drew nearer to the Western horizon. And now at last he was down and, thank goodness, the merciless glare was gone, though the heat coming up from the sand was still as bad as ever. Four pairs of eyes were looking out eagerly for any sign of the valley that Sallowpad the Raven had spoken about. But, mile after mile, there was nothing but level sand. And now the day was quite definitely done, and most of the stars were out, and still the Horses thundered on and the children rose and sank in their saddles, miserable with thirst and weariness. Not till the moon had risen did Shasta — in the strange, barking voice of someone whose mouth is perfectly dry — shout out：

“There it is！”

There was no mistaking it now. Ahead, and a little to their right, there was at last a slope： a slope downward and hummocks of rock on each side. The Horses were far too tired to speak but they swung round towards it and in a minute or two they were entering the gully. At first it was worse in there than it had been out in the open desert, for there was a breathless stuffiness between the rocky walls and less moonlight. The slope continued steeply downwards and the rocks on either hand rose to the height of cliffs. Then they began to meet vegetation — prickly cactus-like plants and coarse grass of the kind that would prick your fingers. Soon the horse-hoofs were falling on pebbles and stones instead of sand. Round every bend of the valley — and it had many bends — they looked eagerly for water. The Horses were nearly at the end of their strength now, and Hwin, stumbling and panting; was lagging behind Bree. They were almost in despair before at last they came to a little muddiness and a tiny trickle of water through softer and better grass. And the trickle became a brook, and the brook became a stream with bushes on each side, and the stream became a river and there came （after more disappointments than I could possibly describe） — a moment when Shasta, who had been in a kind of doze, suddenly realized that Bree had stopped and found himself slipping off. Before them a little cataract of water poured into a broad pool： and both the Horses were already in the pool with their heads down, drinking, drinking, drinking. “O-o-oh,” said Shasta and plunged in — it was about up to his knees — and stooped his head right into the cataract. It was perhaps the loveliest moment in his life.

It was about ten minutes later when all four of them （the two children wet nearly all over） came out and began to notice their surroundings. The moon was now high enough to peep down into the valley. There was soft grass on both sides of the river, and beyond the grass, trees and bushes sloped up to the bases of the cliffs. There must have been some wonderful flowering shrubs hidden in that shadowy undergrowth for the whole glade was full of the coolest and most delicious smells. And out of the darkest recess among the trees there came a sound Shasta had never heard before — a nightingale.

Everyone was much too tired to speak or to eat. The Horses, without waiting to be unsaddled, lay down at once. So did Aravis and Shasta.

About ten minutes later the careful Hwin said, “But we mustn’t go to sleep. We’ve got to keep ahead of that Rabadash.”

“No,” said Bree very slowly. “Mustn’t go sleep. Just a little rest.”

Shasta knew （for a moment） that they would all go to sleep if he didn’t get up and do something about it, and felt that he ought to. In fact he decided that he would get up and persuade them to go on. But presently; not yet： not just yet...

Very soon the moon shone and the nightingale sang over two horses and two human children, all fast asleep.

It was Aravis who awoke first. The sun was already high in the heavens and the cool morning hours were already wasted. “It’s my fault,” she said to herself furiously as she jumped up and began rousing the others. “One wouldn’t expect Horses to keep awake after a day’s work like that, even if they can talk. And of course that Boy wouldn’t; he’s had no decent training. But I ought to have known better.”

The others were dazed and stupid with the heaviness of their sleep.

“Neigh-ho — broo-hoo,” said Bree. “Been sleeping in my saddle, eh? I’ll never do that again. Most uncomfortable —”

“Oh come on, come on,” said Aravis. “We’ve lost half the morning already. There isn’t a moment to spare.”

“A fellow’s got to have a mouthful of grass,” said Bree.

“I’m afraid we can’t wait,” said Aravis.

“What’s the terrible hurry?” said Bree. “We’ve crossed the desert, haven’t we?”

“But we’re not in Archenland yet,” said Aravis. “And we’ve got to get there before Rabadash.”

“Oh, we must be miles ahead of him,” said Bree. “Haven’t we been coming a shorter way? Didn’t that Raven friend of yours say this was a short cut, Shasta?”

“He didn’t say anything about shorter,” answered Shasta. “He only said better, because you got to a river this way. If the oasis is due North of Tashbaan, then I’m afraid this may be longer.”

“Well I can’t go on without a snack,” said Bree. “Take my bridle off, Shasta.”

“P-please,” said Hwin, very shyly, “I feel just like Bree that I can’t go on. But when Horses have humans （with spurs and things） on their backs, aren’t they often made to go on when they’re feeling like this? And then they find they can. I m-mean — oughtn’t we to be able to do even more, now that we’re free? It’s all for Narnia.”

“I think, Ma’am,” said Bree very crushingly, “that I know a little more about campaigns and forced marches and what a horse can stand than you do.”

To this Hwin made no answer, being, like most highly bred mares, a very nervous and gentle person who was easily put down. In reality she was quite right, and if Bree had had a Tarkaan on his back at that moment to make him go on, he would have found that he was good for several hours’hard going. But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.

So they had to wait while Bree had a snack and a drink, and of course Hwin and the children had a snack and a drink too. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock in the morning before they finally got going again. And even then Bree took things much more gently than yesterday. It was really Hwin, though she was the weaker and more tired of the two, who set the pace.

The valley itself, with its brown, cool river, and grass and moss and wild flowers and rhododendrons, was such a pleasant place that it made you want to ride slowly.

CHAPTER TEN
THE HERMIT OF THE SOUTHERN MARCH

After they had ridden for several hours down the valley, it widened out and they could see what was ahead of them. The river which they had been following here joined a broader river, wide and turbulent, which flowed from their left to their right, towards the east. Beyond this new river a delightful country rose gently in low hills, ridge beyond ridge, to the Northern Mountains themselves. To the right there were rocky pinnacles, one or two of them with snow clinging to the ledges. To the left, pine-clad slopes, frowning cliffs, narrow gorges, and blue peaks stretched away as far as the eye could reach. He could no longer make out Mount Pire. Straight ahead the mountain range sank to a wooded saddle which of course must be the pass from Archenland into Narnia.

“Broo-hoo-hoo, the North, the green North！” neighed Bree： and certainly the lower hills looked greener and fresher than anything that Aravis and Shasta, with their southern-bred eyes, had ever imagined. Spirits rose as they clattered down to the water’s-meet of the two rivers.

The eastern-flowing river, which was pouring from the higher mountains at the western end of the range, was far too swift and too broken with rapids for them to think of swimming it; but after some casting about, up and down the bank, they found a place shallow enough to wade. The roar and clatter of water, the great swirl against the horses’fetlocks, the cool, stirring air and the darting dragon-flies, filled Shasta with a strange excitement.

“Friends, we are in Archenland！” said Bree proudly as he splashed and churned his way out on the Northern bank. “I think that river we’ve just crossed is called the Winding Arrow.”

“I hope we’re in time,” murmured Hwin.

Then they began going up, slowly and zigzagging a good deal, for the hills were steep. It was all open park-like country with no roads or houses in sight. Scattered trees, never thick enough to be a forest, were everywhere. Shasta, who had lived all his life in an almost tree-less grassland, had never seen so many or so many kinds. If you had been there you would probably have known （he didn’t） that he was seeing oaks, beeches, silver birches, rowans, and sweet chestnuts. Rabbits scurried away in every direction as they advanced, and presently they saw a whole herd of fallow deer making off among the trees.

“Isn’t it simply glorious！” said Aravis.

At the first ridge Shasta turned in the saddle and looked back. There was no sign of Tashbaan; the desert, unbroken except by the narrow green crack which they had travelled down, spread to the horizon.

“Hullo！” he said suddenly. “What’s that！”

“What’s what?” said Bree, turning round. Hwin and Aravis did the same.

“That,” said Shasta, pointing. “It looks like smoke. Is it a fire?”

“Sand-storm, I should say,” said Bree.

“Not much wind to raise it,” said Aravis.

“Oh！” exclaimed Hwin. “Look！ There are things flashing in it. Look！ They’re helmets — and armour. And it’s moving： moving this way.”

“By Tash！” said Aravis. “It’s the army. It’s Rabadash.”

“Oh course it is,” said Hwin. “Just what I was afraid of. Quick！ We must get to Anvard before it.” And without another word she whisked round and began galloping North. Bree tossed his head and did the same.

“Come on, Bree, come on,” yelled Aravis over her shoulder.

The race was very gruelling for the Horses. As they topped each ridge they found another valley and another ridge beyond it; and though they knew they were going in more or less the right direction, no one knew how far it was to Anvard. From the top of the second ridge Shasta looked back again. Instead of a dust-cloud well out in the desert he now saw a black, moving mass, rather like ants, on the far bank of the Winding Arrow. They were doubtless looking for a ford.

“They’re on the river！” he yelled wildly.

“Quick！ Quick！” shouted Aravis. “We might as well not have come at all if we don’t reach Anvard in time. Gallop, Bree, gallop. Remember you’re a war-horse.”

It was all Shasta could do to prevent himself from shouting out similar instructions; but he thought, “The poor chap’s doing all he can already,” and held his tongue. And certainly both Horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could; which is not quite the same thing. Bree had caught up with Hwin and they thundered side by side over the turf. It didn’t look as if Hwin could possibly keep it up much longer.

At that moment everyone’s feelings were completely altered by a sound from behind. It was not the sound they had been expecting to hear — the noise of hoofs and jingling armour, mixed, perhaps, with Calormene battle-cries. Yet Shasta knew it at once. It was the same snarling roar he had heard that moonlit night when they first met Aravis and Hwin. Bree knew it too. His eyes gleamed red and his ears lay flat back on his skull. And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast — not quite as fast — as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were really going all out. In a few seconds they were well ahead of Hwin.

“It’s not fair,” thought Shasta. “I did think we’d be safe from lions here！”

He looked over his shoulder. Everything was only too clear. A huge tawny creature, its body low to the ground, like a cat streaking across the lawn to a tree when a strange dog has got into the garden, was behind them. And it was nearer every second and half second.

He looked forward again and saw something which he did not take in, or even think about. Their way was barred by a smooth green wall about ten feet high. In the middle of that wall there was a gate, open. In the middle of the gateway stood a tall man dressed, down to his bare feet, in a robe coloured like autumn leaves, leaning on a straight staff. His beard fell almost to his knees.

Shasta saw all this in a glance and looked back again. The lion had almost got Hwin now. It was making snaps at her hind legs, and there was no hope now in her foam-flecked, wide-eyed face.

“Stop,” bellowed Shasta in Bree’s ear. “Must go back. Must help！”

Bree always said afterwards that he never heard, or never understood this; and as he was in general a very truthful horse we must accept his word.

Shasta slipped his feet out of the stirrups, slid both his legs over the left side, hesitated for one hideous hundredth of a second, and jumped. It hurt horribly and nearly winded him; but before he knew how it hurt him he was staggering back to help Aravis. He had never done anything like this in his life before and hardly knew why he was doing it now.

One of the most terrible noises in the world, a horse’s scream, broke from Hwin’s lips. Aravis was stooping low over Hwin’s neck and seemed to be trying to draw her sword. And now all three — Aravis, Hwin, and the lion were almost on top of Shasta. Before they reached him the lion rose on its hind legs, larger than you would have believed a lion could be, and jabbed at Aravis with its right paw. Shasta could see all the terrible claws extended. Aravis screamed and reeled in the saddle. The lion was tearing her shoulders. Shasta, half mad with horror, managed to lurch towards the brute. He had no weapon, not even a stick or a stone. He shouted out, idiotically, at the lion as one would at a dog. “Go home！ Go home！” For a fraction of a second he was staring right into its wide-opened, raging mouth. Then, to his utter astonishment, the lion, still on its hind legs, checked itself suddenly, turned head over heels, picked itself up, and rushed away.

Shasta did not for a moment suppose it had gone for good. He turned and raced for the gate in the green wall which, now for the first time, he remembered seeing. Hwin, stumbling and nearly fainting, was just entering the gate： Aravis still kept her seat but her back was covered with blood.

“Come in, my daughter, come in,” the robed and bearded man was saying, and then, “Come in, my son” as Shasta panted up to him. He heard the gate closed behind him; and the bearded stranger was already helping Aravis off her horse.

They were in a wide and perfectly circular enclosure, protected by a high wall of green turf. A pool of perfectly still water, so full that the water was almost exactly level with the ground, lay before him. At one end of the pool, completely overshadowing it with its branches, there grew the hugest and most beautiful tree that Shasta had ever seen. Beyond the pool was a little low house of stone roofed with deep and ancient thatch. There was a sound of bleating and over at the far side of the enclosure there were some goats. The level ground was completely covered with the finest grass.

“Are — are — are you,” panted Shasta. “Are you King Lune of Archenland?”

The old man shook his head. “No,” he replied in a quiet voice, “I am the Hermit of the Southern March. And now, my son, waste no time on questions, but obey. This damsel is wounded. Your horses are spent. Rabadash is at this moment finding a ford over the Winding Arrow. If you run now, without a moment’s rest, you will still be in time to warn King Lune.”

Shasta’s heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. But all he said out loud was：

“Where is the King?”

The Hermit turned and pointed with his staff. “Look,” he said. “There is another gate, right opposite to the one you entered by. Open it and go straight ahead： always straight ahead, over level or steep, over smooth or rough, over dry or wet. I know by my art that you will find King Lune straight ahead. But run, run： always run.”

Shasta nodded his head, ran to the northern gate and disappeared beyond it. Then the Hermit took Aravis, whom he had all this time been supporting with his left arm, and half led, half carried her into the house. After a long time he came out again.

“Now, cousins,” he said to the Horses. “It is your turn.”

Without waiting for an answer — and indeed they were too exhausted to speak — he took the bridles and saddles off both of them. Then he rubbed them both down, so well that a groom in a King’s stable could not have done it better.

“There, cousins,” he said, “dismiss it all from your minds and be comforted. Here is water and there is grass. You shall have a hot mash when I have milked my other cousins, the goats.”

“Sir,” said Hwin, finding her voice at last, “will the Tarkheena live? Has the lion killed her?”

“I who know many present things by my art,” replied the Hermit with a smile, “have yet little knowledge of things future. Therefore I do not know whether any man or woman or beast in the whole world will be alive when the sun sets tonight. But be of good hope. The damsel is likely to live as long as any of her age.”

When Aravis came to herself she found that she was lying on her face on a low bed of extraordinary softness in a cool, bare room with walls of undressed stone. She couldn’t understand why she had been laid on her face; but when she tried to turn and felt the hot, burning pains all over her back, she remembered, and realized why. She couldn’t understand what delightfully springy stuff the bed was made of, because it was made of heather （which is the best bedding） and heather was a thing she had never seen or heard of.

The door opened and the Hermit entered, carrying a large wooden bowl in his hand. After carefully setting this down, he came to the bedside, and asked：

“How do you find yourself, my daughter?”

“My back is very sore, father,” said Aravis, “but there is nothing else wrong with me.”

He knelt beside her, laid his hand on her forehead, and felt her pulse.

“There is no fever,” he said. “You will do well. Indeed there is no reason why you should not get up tomorrow. But now, drink this.”

He fetched the wooden bowl and held it to her lips. Aravis couldn’t help making a face when she tasted it, for goats’milk is rather a shock when you are not used to it. But she was very thirsty and managed to drink it all and felt better when she had finished.

“Now, my daughter, you may sleep when you wish,” said the Hermit. “For your wounds are washed and dressed and though they are smart they are no more serious than if they had been the cuts of a whip. It must have been a very strange lion; for instead of catching you out of the saddle and getting his teeth into you, he has only drawn his claws across your back. Ten scratches： sore, but not deep or dangerous.”

“I say！” said Aravis. “I have had luck.”

“Daughter,” said the Hermit, “I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. Them is something about all this that I do not understand： but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall.”

“And what about Rabadash and his two hundred horse?” asked Aravis.

“They will not pass this way, I think,” said the Hermit. “They must have found a ford by now well to the east of us. From there they will try to ride straight to Anvard.”

“Poor Shasta！” said Aravis. “Has he far to go? Will he get there first?”

“There is good hope of it,” said the old man.

Aravis lay down again （on her side this time） and said, “Have I been asleep for a long time? It seems to be getting dark.”

The Hermit was looking out of the only window, which faced north. “This is not the darkness of night,” he said presently. “The clouds are falling down from Stormness Head. Our foul weather always comes from there in these parts. There will be thick fog tonight.”

Next day, except for her sore back, Aravis felt so well that after breakfast （which was porridge and cream） the Hermit said she could get up. And of course she at once went out to speak to the Horses. The weather had changed and the whole of that green enclosure was filled, like a great green cup, with sunlight. It was a very peaceful place, lonely and quiet.

Hwin at once trotted across to Aravis and gave her a horse-kiss.

“But where’s Bree?” said Aravis when each had asked after the other’s health and sleep.

“Over there,” said Hwin, pointing with her nose to the far side of the circle. “And I wish you’d come and talk to him. There’s something wrong, I can’t get a word out of him.”

They strolled across and found Bree lying with his face towards the wall, and though he must have heard them coming, he never turned his head or spoke a word.

“Good morning, Bree,” said Aravis. “How are you this morning?”

Bree muttered something that no one could hear.

“The Hermit says that Shasta probably got to King Lune in time,” continued Aravis, “so it looks as if all our troubles are over. Narnia, at last, Bree！”

“I shall never see Narnia,” said Bree in a low voice.

“Aren’t you well, Bree dear?” said Aravis.

Bree turned round at last, his face mournful as only a horse’s can be.

“I shall go back to Calormen,” he said.

“What?” said Aravis. “Back to slavery！”

“Yes,” said Bree. “Slavery is all I’m fit for. How can I ever show my face among the free Horses of Narnia?—I who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin！”

“We all ran as hard as we could,” said Hwin.

“Shasta didn’t！” snorted Bree. “At least he ran in the right direction： ran back. And that is what shames me most of all. I, who called myself a war-horse and boasted of a hundred fights, to be beaten by a little human boy — a child, a mere foal, who had never held a sword nor had any good nurture or example in his life！”

“I know,” said Aravis. “I felt just the same. Shasta was marvellous. I’m just as bad as you, Bree. I’ve been snubbing him and looking down on him ever since you met us and now he turns out to be the best of us all. But I think it would be better to stay and say we’re sorry than to go back to Calormen.”

“It’s all very well for you,” said Bree. “You haven’t disgraced yourself. But I’ve lost everything.”

“My good Horse,” said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. “My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another. And now, if you and my other four-footed cousin will come round to the kitchen door we’ll see about the other half of that mash.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE UNWELCOME FELLOW TRAVELLER

When Shasta went through the gate he found a slope of grass and a little heather running up before him to some trees. He had nothing to think about now and no plans to make： he had only to run, and that was quite enough. His limbs were shaking, a terrible stitch was beginning in his side, and the sweat that kept dropping into his eyes blinded them and made them smart. He was unsteady on his feet too, and more than once he nearly turned his ankle on a loose stone.

The trees were thicker now than they had yet been and in the more open spaces there was bracken. The sun had gone in without making it any cooler. It had become one of those hot, grey days when there seem to be twice as many flies as usual. Shasta’s face was covered with them; he didn’t even try to shake them off — he had too much else to do.

Suddenly he heard a horn — not a great throbbing horn like the horns of Tashbaan but a merry call, Ti-ro-to-to-ho！ Next moment he came out into a wide glade and found himself in a crowd of people.

At least, it looked a crowd to him. In reality there were about fifteen or twenty of them, all gentlemen in green hunting-dress, with their horses; some in the saddle and some standing by their horses’heads. In the centre someone was holding the stirrup for a man to mount. And the man he was holding it for was the jolliest, fat, apple-cheeked, twinkling-eyed King you could imagine.

As soon as Shasta came in sight this King forgot all about mounting his horse. He spread out his arms to Shasta, his face lit up, and he cried out in a great, deep voice that seemed to come from the bottom of his chest：

“Corin！ My son！ And on foot, and in rags！ What —”

“No,” panted Shasta, shaking his head. “Not Prince Corin. I — I —know I’m like him ... saw his Highness in Tashbaan ... sent his greetings.”

The King was staring at Shasta with an extraordinary expression on his face.

“Are you K-King Lune?” gasped Shasta. And then, without waiting for an answer, “Lord King — fly — Anvard shut the gates — enemies upon you — Rabadash and two hundred horse.”

“Have you assurance of this, boy?” asked one of the other gentlemen.

“My own eyes,” said Shasta. “I’ve seen them. Raced them all the way from Tashbaan.”

“On foot?” said the gentleman, raising his eyebrows a little.

“Horses — with the Hermit,” said Shasta.

“Question him no more; Darrin,” said King Lune. “I see truth in his face. We must ride for it, gentlemen. A spare horse there, for the boy. You can ride fast, friend?”

For answer Shasta put his foot in the stirrup of the horse which had been led towards him and a moment later he was in the saddle. He had done it a hundred times with Bree in the last few weeks, and his mounting was very different now from what it had been on that first night when Bree had said that he climbed up a horse as if he were climbing a haystack.

He was pleased to hear the Lord Darrin say to the King, “The boy has a true horseman’s seat, Sire. I’ll warrant there’s noble blood in him.”

“His blood, aye, there’s the point,” said the King. And he stared hard at Shasta again with that curious expression, almost a hungry expression, in his steady, grey eyes.

But by now — the whole party was moving off at a brisk canter. Shasta’s seat was excellent but he was sadly puzzled what to do with his reins, for he had never touched the reins while he was on Bree’s back. But he looked very carefully out of the corners of his eyes to see what the others were doing （as some of us have done at parties when we weren’t quite sure which knife or fork we were meant to use） and tried to get his fingers right. But he didn’t dare to try really directing the horse; he trusted it would follow the rest. The horse was of course an ordinary horse, not a Talking Horse; but it had quite wits enough to realize that the strange boy on its back had no whip and no spurs and was not really master of the situation. That was why Shasta soon found himself at the tail end of the procession.

Even so, he was going pretty fast. There were no flies now and the air in his face was delicious. He had got his breath back too. And his errand had succeeded. For the first time since the arrival at Tashbaan （how long ago it seemed！） he was beginning to enjoy himself.

He looked up to see how much nearer the mountain tops had come. To his disappointment he could not see them at all： only a vague greyness, rolling down towards them. He had never been in mountain country before and was surprised. “It’s a cloud,” he said to himself, “a cloud coming down. I see. Up here in the hills one is really in the sky. I shall see what the inside of a cloud is like. What fun！ I’ve often wondered.” Far away on his left and a little behind him, the sun was getting ready to set.

They had come to a rough kind of road by now and were making very good speed. But Shasta’s horse was still the last of the lot. Once or twice when the road made a bend （there was now continuous forest on each side of it） he lost sight of the others for a second or two.

Then they plunged into the fog, or else the fog rolled over them. The world became grey. Shasta had not realized how cold and wet the inside of a cloud would be; nor how dark. The grey turned to black with alarming speed.

Someone at the head of the column winded the horn every now and then, and each time the sound came from a little farther off. He couldn’t see any of the others now, but of course he’d be able to as soon as he got round the next bend. But when he rounded it he still couldn’t see them. In fact he could see nothing at all. His horse was walking now. “Get on, Horse, get on,” said Shasta. Then came the horn, very faint. Bree had always told him that he must keep his heels well turned out, and Shasta had got the idea that something very terrible would happen if he dug his heels into a horse’s sides. This seemed to him an occasion for trying it. “Look here, Horse,” he said, “if you don’t buck up, do you know what I’ll do? I’ll dig my heels into you. I really will.” The horse, however, took no notice of this threat. So Shasta settled himself firmly in the saddle, gripped with his knees, clenched his teeth, and punched both the horse’s sides with his heels as hard as he could.

The only result was that the horse broke into a kind of pretence of a trot for five or six paces and then subsided into a walk again. And now it was quite dark and they seemed to have given up blowing that horn. The only sound was a steady drip-drip from the branches of the trees.

“Well, I suppose even a walk will get us somewhere sometime,” said Shasta to himself. “I only hope I shan’t run into Rabadash and his people.”

He went on for what seemed a long time, always at a walking pace. He began to hate that horse, and he was also beginning to feel very hungry.

Presently he came to a place where the road divided into two. He was just wondering which led to Anvard when he was startled by a noise from behind him. It was the noise of trotting horses. “Rabadash！” thought Shasta. He had no way of guessing which road Rabadash would take. “But if I take one,” said Shasta to himself, “he may take the other： and if I stay at the cross-roads I’m sure to be caught.” He dismounted and led his horse as quickly as he could along the right-hand road.

The sound of the cavalry grew rapidly nearer and in a minute or two Shasta realized that they were at the crossroads. He held his breath, waiting to see which way they would take.

There came a low word of command “Halt！” then a moment of horsey noises — nostrils blowing, hoofs pawing, bits being champed, necks being patted. Then a voice spoke.

“Attend, all of you,” it said. “We are now within a furlong of the castle. Remember your orders. Once we are in Narnia, as we should be by sunrise, you are to kill as little as possible. On this venture you are to regard every drop of Narnian blood as more precious than a gallon of your own. On this venture, I say. The gods will send us a happier hour and then you must leave nothing alive between Cair Paravel and the Western Waste. But we are not yet in Narnia. Here in Archenland it is another thing. In the assault on this castle of King Lune’s, nothing matters but speed. Show your mettle. It must be minewithin an hour. And if it is, I give it all to you. I reserve no booty for myself. Kill me every barbarian male within its walls, down to the child that was born yesterday, and everything else is yours to divide as you please — the women, the gold, the jewels, the weapons, and the wine. The man that I see hanging back when we come to the gates shall be burned alive. In the name of Tash the irresistible, the inexorable — forward！”

With a great cloppitty-clop the column began to move, and Shasta breathed again. They had taken the other road.

Shasta thought they took a long time going past, for though he had been talking and thinking about “two hundred horse” all day, he had not realized how many they really were. But at last the sound died away and once more he was alone amid the drip-drip from the trees.

He now knew the way to Anvard but of course he could not now go there： that would only mean running into the arms of Rabadash’s troopers. “What on earth am I to do?” said Shasta to himself. But he remounted his horse and continued along the road he had chosen, in the faint hope of finding some cottage where he might ask for shelter and a meal. He had thought, of course, of going back to Aravis and Bree and Hwin at the hermitage, but he couldn’t because by now he had not the least idea of the direction.

“After all,” said Shasta, “this road is bound to get to somewhere.”

But that all depends on what you mean by somewhere. The road kept on getting to somewhere in the sense that it got to more and more trees, all dark and dripping, and to colder and colder air. And strange, icy winds kept blowing the mist past him though they never blew it away. If he had been used to mountain country he would have realized that this meant he was now very high up — perhaps right at the top of the pass. But Shasta knew nothing about mountains.

“I do think,” said Shasta, “that I must be the most unfortunate boy that ever lived in the whole world. Everything goes right for everyone except me. Those Narnian lords and ladies got safe away from Tashbaan; I was left behind. Aravis and Bree and Hwin are all as snug as anything with that old Hermit： of course I was the one who was sent on. King Lune and his people must have got safely into the castle and shut the gates long before Rabadash arrived, but I get left out.”

And being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks.

What put a stop to all this was a sudden fright. Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him. It was pitch dark and he could see nothing. And the Thing （or Person） was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls. What he could hear was breathing. His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale, and Shasta got the impression that it was a very large creature. And he had come to notice this breathing so gradually that he had really no idea how long it had been there. It was a horrible shock.

It darted into his mind that he had heard long ago that there were giants in these Northern countries. He bit his lip in terror. But now that he really had something to cry about, he stopped crying.

The Thing （unless it was a Person） went on beside him so very quietly that Shasta began to hope he had only imagined it. But just as he was becoming quite sure of it, there suddenly came a deep, rich sigh out of the darkness beside him. That couldn’t be imagination！ Anyway, he had felt the hot breath of that sigh on his chilly left hand.

If the horse had been any good — or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse — he would have risked everything on a breakaway and a wild gallop. But he knew he couldn’t make that horse gallop. So he went on at a walking pace and the unseen companion walked and breathed beside him. At last he could bear it no longer.

“Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.

“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

“Are you — are you a giant?” asked Shasta.

“You might call me a giant,” said the Large Voice. “But I am not like the creatures you call giants.”

“I can’t see you at all,” said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then （for an even more terrible idea had come into his head） he said, almost in a scream, “You’re not — not something dead, are you? Oh please — please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world！”

Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. “There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”

Shasta was a little reassured by the breath： so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.

“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.

“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.

“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.

“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and —”

“There was only one： but he was swift of foot.”

“How do you know?”

“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”

“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”

“It was I.”

“But what for?”

“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

“Who are you?” asked Shasta.

“Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook： and again “Myself”, loud and clear and gay： and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too.

The mist was turning from black to grey and from grey to white. This must have begun to happen some time ago, but while he had been talking to the Thing he had not been noticing anything else. Now, the whiteness around him became a shining whiteness; his eyes began to blink. Somewhere ahead he could hear birds singing. He knew the night was over at last. He could see the mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now. A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun.

He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful.

Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion. And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-over-the-sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia. But after one glance at the Lion’s face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn’t say anything but then he didn’t want to say anything, and he knew he needn’t say anything.

The High King above all kings stooped towards him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.

CHAPTER TWELVE
SHASTA IN NARNIA

“Was it all a dream?” wondered Shasta. But it couldn’t have been a dream for there in the grass before him he saw the deep, large print of the Lion’s front right paw. It took one’s breath away to think of the weight that could make a footprint like that. But there was something more remarkable than the size about it. As he looked at it, water had already filled the bottom of it. Soon it was full to the brim, and then overflowing, and a little stream was running downhill, past him, over the grass.

Shasta stooped and drank — a very long drink — and then dipped his face in and splashed his head. It was extremely cold, and clear as glass, and refreshed him very much. After that he stood up, shaking the water out of his ears and flinging the wet hair back from his forehead, and began to take stock of his surroundings.

Apparently it was still very early morning. The sun had only just risen, and it had risen out of the forests which he saw low down and far away on his right. The country which he was looking at was absolutely new to him. It was a green valley-land dotted with trees through which he caught the gleam of a river that wound away roughly to the NorthWest. On the far side of the valley there were high and even rocky hills, but they were lower than the mountains he had seen yesterday. Then he began to guess where he was. He turned and looked behind him and saw that the slope on which he was standing belonged to a range of far higher mountains.

“I see,” said Shasta to himself. “Those are the big mountains between Archenland and Narnia. I was on the other side of them yesterday. I must have come through the pass in the night. What luck that I hit it！—at least it wasn’t luck at all really, it was Him. And now I’m in Narnia.”

He turned and unsaddled his horse and took off its bridle — “Though you are a perfectly horrid horse,” he said. It took no notice of this remark and immediately began eating grass. That horse had a very low opinion of Shasta.

“I wish I could eat grass！” thought Shasta. “It’s no good going back to Anvard, it’ll all be besieged. I’d better get lower down into the valley and see if I can get anything to eat.”

So he went on downhill （the thick dew was cruelly cold to his bare feet） till he came into a wood. There was a kind of track running through it and he had not followed this for many minutes when he heard a thick and rather wheezy voice saying to him.

“Good morning, neighbour.”

Shasta looked round eagerly to find the speaker and presently saw a small, prickly person with a dark face who had just come out from among the trees. At least, it was small for a person but very big indeed for a hedgehog, which was what it was.

“Good morning,” said Shasta. “But I’m not a neighbour. In fact I’m a stranger in these parts.”

“Ah?” said the Hedgehog inquiringly.

“I’ve come over the mountains — from Archenland, you know.”

“Ha, Archenland,” said the Hedgehog. “That’s a terrible long way. Never been there myself.”

“And I think, perhaps,” said Shasta, “someone ought to be told that there’s an army of savage Calormenes attacking Anvard at this very moment.”

“You don’t say so！” answered the Hedgehog. “Well, think of that. And they do say that Calormen is hundreds and thousands of miles away, right at the world’s end, across a great sea of sand.”

“It’s not nearly as far as you think,” said Shasta. “And oughtn’t something to be done about this attack on Anvard? Oughtn’t your High King to be told?”

“Certain sure, something ought to be done about it,” said the Hedgehog. “But you see I’m just on my way to bed for a good day’s sleep. Hullo, neighbour！”

The last words were addressed to an immense biscuit-coloured rabbit whose head had just popped up from somewhere beside the path. The Hedgehog immediately told the Rabbit what it had just learned from Shasta. The Rabbit agreed that this was very remarkable news and that somebody ought to tell someone about it with a view to doing something.

And so it went on. Every few minutes they were joined by other creatures, some from the branches overhead and some from little underground houses at their feet, till the party consisted of five rabbits, a squirrel, two magpies, a goat-foot faun, and a mouse, who all talked at the same time and all agreed with the Hedgehog. For the truth was that in that golden age when the Witch and the Winter had gone and Peter the High King ruled at Cair Paravel, the smaller woodland people of Narnia were so safe and happy that they were getting a little careless.

Presently, however, two more practical people arrived in the little wood. One was a Red Dwarf whose name appeared to be Duffle. The other was a stag, a beautiful lordly creature with wide liquid eyes, dappled flanks and legs so thin and graceful that they looked as if you could break them with two fingers.

“Lion alive！” roared the Dwarf as soon as he had heard the news. “And if that’s so, why are we all standing still, chattering? Enemies at Anvard！ News must be sent to Cair Paravel at once. The army must be called out. Narnia must go to the aid of King Lune.”

“Ah！” said the Hedgehog. “But you won’t find the High King at the Cair. He’s away to the North trouncing those giants. And talking of giants, neighbours, that puts me in mind —”

“Who’ll take our message?” interrupted the Dwarf. “Anyone here got more speed than me?”

“I’ve got speed,” said the Stag. “What’s my message? How many Calormenes?”

“Two hundred： under Prince Rabadash. And —” But the Stag was already away — all four legs off the ground at once, and in a moment its white stern had disappeared among the remoter trees.

“Wonder where he’s going,” said a Rabbit. “He won’t find the High King at Cair Paravel, you know.”

“He’ll find Queen Lucy,” said Duffle. “And then hullo！ What’s wrong with the Human? It looks pretty green. Why, I do believe it’s quite faint. Perhaps it’s mortal hungry. When did you last have a meal, youngster?”

“Yesterday morning,” said Shasta weakly.

“Come on, then, come on,” said the Dwarf, at once throwing his thick little arms round Shasta’s waist to support him. “Why, neighbours, we ought all to be ashamed of ourselves！ You come with me, lad. Breakfast！ Better than talking.”

With a great deal of bustle, muttering reproaches to itself, the Dwarf half led and half supported Shasta at a great speed further into the wood and a little downhill. It was a longer walk than Shasta wanted at that moment and his legs had begun to feel very shaky before they came out from the trees on to bare hillside. There they found a little house with a smoking chimney and an open door, and as they came to the doorway Duffle called out,

“Hey, brothers！ A visitor for breakfast.”

And immediately, mixed with a sizzling sound, there came to Shasta a simply delightful smell. It was one he had never smelled in his life before, but I hope you have. It was, in fact, the smell of bacon and eggs and mushrooms all frying in a pan.

“Mind your head, lad,” said Duffle a moment too late, for Shasta had already bashed his forehead against the low lintel of the door. “Now,” continued the Dwarf, “sit you down. The table’s a bit low for you, but then the stool’s low too. That’s right. And here’s porridge — and here’s a jug of cream — and here’s a spoon.”

By the time Shasta had finished his porridge, the Dwarf’s two brothers （whose names were Rogin and Bricklethumb） were putting the dish of bacon and eggs and mushrooms, and the coffee pot and the hot milk, and the toast, on the table.

It was all new and wonderful to Shasta for Calormene food is quite different. He didn’t even know what the slices of brown stuff were, for he had never seen toast before. He didn’t know what the yellow soft thing they smeared on the toast was, because in Calormen you nearly always get oil instead of butter. And the house itself was quite different from the dark, frowsty, fish-smelling but of Arsheesh and from the pillared and carpeted halls in the palaces of Tashbaan. The roof was very low, and everything was made of wood, and there was a cuckoo-clock and a red-and-white checked table-cloth and a bowl of wild flowers and little curtains on the thick-paned windows. It was also rather troublesome having to use dwarf cups and plates and knives and forks. This meant that helpings were very small, but then there were a great many helpings, so that Shasta’s plate or cup was being filled every moment, and every moment the Dwarfs themselves were saying, “Butter please”, or “Another cup of coffee,” or “I’d like a few more mushrooms,” or “What about frying another egg or so?” And when at last they had all eaten as much as they possibly could the three Dwarfs drew lots for who would do the washing-up, and Rogin was the unlucky one. Then Duffle and Bricklethumb took Shasta outside to a bench which ran against the cottage wall, and they all stretched out their legs and gave a great sigh of contentment and the two Dwarfs lit their pipes. The dew was off the grass now and the sun was warm; indeed, if there hadn’t been a light breeze, it would have been too hot.

“Now, Stranger,” said Duffle, “I’ll show you the lie of the land. You can see nearly all South Narnia from here, and we’re rather proud of the view. Right away on your left, beyond those near hills, you can just see the Western Mountains. And that round hill away on your right is called the Hill of the Stone Table. Just beyond —”

But at that moment he was interrupted by a snore from Shasta who, what with his night’s journey and his excellent breakfast, had gone fast asleep. The kindly Dwarfs, as soon as they noticed this, began making signs to each other not to wake him, and indeed did so much whispering and nodding and getting up and tiptoeing away that they certainly would have waked him if he had been less tired.

He slept pretty well — nearly all day but woke up in time for supper. The beds in that house were all too small for him but they made him a fine bed of heather on the floor, and he never stirred nor dreamed all night. Next morning they had just finished breakfast when they heard a shrill, exciting sound from outside.

“Trumpets！” said all the Dwarfs, as they and Shasta all came running out.

The trumpets sounded again： a new noise to Shasta, not huge and solemn like the horns of Tashbaan nor gay and merry like King Lune’s hunting horn, but clear and sharp and valiant. The noise was coming from the woods to the East, and soon there was a noise of horse-hoofs mixed with it. A moment later the head of the column came into sight.

First came the Lord Peridan on a bay horse carrying the great banner of Narnia v a red lion on a green ground. Shasta knew him at once. Then came three people riding abreast, two on great chargers and one on a pony. The two on the chargers were King Edmund and a fair-haired lady with a very merry face who wore a helmet and a mail shirt and carried a bow across her shoulder and a quiver full of arrows at her side.（“The Queen Lucy,” whispered Duffle.） But the one on the pony was Corin. After that came the main body of the army： men on ordinary horses, men on Talking Horses （who didn’t mind being ridden on proper occasions, as when Narnia went to war）, centaurs, stern, hardbitten bears, great Talking Dogs, and last of all six giants. For there are good giants in Narnia. But though he knew they were on the right side Shasta at first could hardly bear to look at them; there are some things that take a lot of getting used to.

Just as the King and Queen reached the cottage and the Dwarfs began making low bows to them, King Edmund called out,

“Now, friends！ Time for a halt and a morsel！” and at once there was a great bustle of people dismounting and haversacks being opened and conversation beginning when Corm came running up to Shasta and seized both his hands and cried,

“What！ You here！ So you got through all right? I am glad. Now we shall have some sport. And isn’t it luck！ We only got into harbour at Cair Paravel yesterday morning and the very first person who met us was Chervy the Stag with all this news of an attack on Anvard. Don’t you think —”

“Who is your Highness’s friend?” said King Edmund who had just got off his horse.

“Don’t you see, Sire?” said Corin. “It’s my double： the boy you mistook me for at Tashbaan.”

“Why, so he is your double,” exclaimed Queen Lucy. “As like as two twins. This is a marvellous thing.”

“Please, your Majesty,” said Shasta to King Edmund, “I was no traitor, really I wasn’t. And I couldn’t help hearing your plans. But I’d never have dreamed of telling them to your enemies.”

“I know now that you were no traitor, boy,” said King Edmund, laying his hand on Shasta’s head. “But if you would not be taken for one, another time try not to hear what’s meant for other ears. But all’s well.”

After that there was so much bustle and talk and coming and going that Shasta for a few minutes lost sight of Corin and Edmund and Lucy. But Corin was the sort of boy whom one is sure to hear of pretty soon and it wasn’t very long before Shasta heard King Edmund saying in a loud voice：

“By the Lion’s Mane, prince, this is too much！ Will your Highness never be better? You are more of a heart’s-scald than our whole army together！ I’d as lief have a regiment of hornets in my command as you.”

Shasta wormed his way through the crowd and there saw Edmund, looking very angry indeed, Corin looking a little ashamed of himself, and a strange Dwarf sitting on the ground making faces. A couple of fauns had apparently just been helping it out of its armour.

“If I had but my cordial with me,” Queen Lucy was saying, “I could soon mend this. But the High King has so strictly charged me not to carry it commonly to the wars and to keep it only for great extremities！”

What had happened was this. As soon as Corin had spoken to Shasta, Corin’s elbow had been plucked by a Dwarf in the army called Thornbut.

“What is it, Thornbut?” Corin had said.

“Your Royal Highness,” said Thornbut, drawing him aside, “our march today will bring us through the pass and right to your royal father’s castle. We may be in battle before night.”

“I know,” said Corin. “Isn’t it splendid！”

“Splendid or not,” said Thornbut, “I have the strictest orders from King Edmund to see to it that your Highness is not in the fight. You will be allowed to see it, and that’s treat enough for your Highness’s little years.”

“Oh what nonsense！” Corin burst out. “Of course I’m going to fight. Why, the Queen Lucy’s going to be with the archers.”

“The Queen’s grace will do as she pleases,” said Thornbut. “But you are in my charge. Either I must have your solemn and princely word that you’ll keep your pony beside mine — not half a neck ahead — till I give your Highness leave to depart： or else — it is his Majesty’s word — we must go with our wrists tied together like two prisoners.”

“I’ll knock you down if you try to bind me,” said Corm.

“I’d like to see your Highness do it,” said the Dwarf.

That was quite enough for a boy like Corin and in a second he and the Dwarf were at it hammer and tongs. It would have been an even match for, though Corin had longer arms and more height, the Dwarf was older and tougher. But it was never fought out （that’s the worst of fights on a rough hillside） for by very bad luck Thornbut trod on a loose stone, came flat down on his nose, and found when he tried to get up that he had sprained his ankle： a real excruciating sprain which would keep him from walking or riding for at least a fortnight.

“See what your Highness has done,” said King Edmund. “Deprived us of a proved warrior on the very edge of battle.”

“I’ll take his place, Sire,” said Corin.

“Pshaw,” said Edmund. “No one doubts your courage. But a boy in battle is a danger only to his own side.”

At that moment the King was called away to attend to something else, and Corin, after apologizing handsomely to the Dwarf, rushed up to Shasta and whispered,

“Quick. There’s a spare pony now, and the Dwarf’s armour. Put it on before anyone notices.”

“What for?” said Shasta.

“Why, so that you and I can fight in the battle of course！ Don’t you want to?”

“Oh — ah, yes, of course,” said Shasta. But he hadn’t been thinking of doing so at all, and began to get a most uncomfortable prickly feeling in his spine.

“That’s right,” said Corin. “Over your head. Now the sword-belt. But we must ride near the tail of the column and keep as quiet as mice. Once the battle begins everyone will be far too busy to notice us.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FIGHT AT ANVARD

By about eleven o’clock the whole company was once more on the march, riding westward with the mountains on their left. Corin and Shasta rode right at the rear with the Giants immediately in front of them. Lucy and Edmund and Peridan were busy with their plans for the battle and though Lucy once said, “But where is his goosecap Highness?” Edmund only replied, “Not in the front, and that’s good news enough. Leave well alone.”

Shasta told Corin most of his adventures and explained that he had learned all his riding from a horse and didn’t really know how to use the reins. Corin instructed him in this, besides telling him all about their secret sailing from Tashbaan.

“And where is the Queen Susan?”

“At Cair Paravel,” said Corin. “She’s not like Lucy, you know, who’s as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy. Queen Susan is more like an ordinary grown-up lady. She doesn’t ride to the wars, though she is an excellent archer.”

The hillside path which they were following became narrower all the time and the drop on their right hand became steeper. At last they were going in single file along the edge of a precipice and Shasta shuddered to think that he had done the same last night without knowing it. “But of course,” he thought, “I was quite safe. That is why the Lion kept on my left. He was between me and the edge all the time.”

Then the path went left and south away from the cliff and there were thick woods on both sides of it and they went steeply up and up into the pass. There would have been a splendid view from the top if it were open ground but among all those trees you could see nothing — only, every now and then, some huge pinnacle of rock above the tree-tops, and an eagle or two wheeling high up in the blue air.

“They smell battle,” said Corin, pointing at the birds. “They know we’re preparing a feed for them.”

Shasta didn’t like this at all.

When they had crossed the neck of the pass and come a good deal lower they reached more open ground and from here Shasta could see all Archenland, blue and hazy, spread out below him and even （he thought） a hint of the desert beyond it. But the sun, which had perhaps two hours or so to go before it set, was in his eyes and he couldn’t make things out distinctly.

Here the army halted and spread out in a line, and there was a great deal of rearranging. A whole detachment of very dangerous-looking Talking Beasts whom Shasta had not noticed before and who were mostly of the cat kind （leopards, panthers, and the like） went padding and growling to take up their positions on the left. The giants were ordered to the right, and before going there they all took off something they had been carrying on their backs and sat down for a moment. Then Shasta saw that what they had been carrying and were now putting on were pairs of boots: horrid, heavy, spiked boots which came up to their knees. Then they sloped their huge clubs over their shoulders and marched to their battle position.The archers, with Queen Lucy, fell to the rear and you could first see them bending their bows and then hear the twangtwang as they tested the strings. And wherever you looked you could see people tightening girths, putting on helmets, drawing swords, and throwing cloaks to the ground. There was hardly any talking now. It was very solemn and very dreadful. “I’m in for it now — I really am in for it now,” thought Shasta. Then there came noises far ahead: the sound of many men shouting and a steady thud-thud-thud.

“Battering ram,” whispered Corin. “They’re battering the gate.”

Even Corin looked quite serious now.

“Why doesn’t King Edmund get on?” he said. “I can’t stand this waiting about. Chilly too.”

Shasta nodded： hoping he didn’t look as frightened as felt.

The trumpet at last！ On the move now — now trotting the banner streaming out in the wind. They had topped low ridge now, and below them the whole scene suddenly opened out; a little, many-towered castle with its gate towards them. No moat, unfortunately, but of course the gate shut and the portcullis down. On the walls they could see, like little white dots, the faces of the defenders. Down below, about fifty of the Calormenes, dismounted, were steadily swinging a great tree trunk against the gate. But at once the scene changed. The main bulk of Rabadash’s men had been on foot ready to assault the gate. But now he had seen the Narnians sweeping down from the ridge. There is no doubt those Calormenes are wonderfully trained. It seemed to Shasta only a second before a whole line of the enemy were on horseback again, wheeling round to meet them, swinging towards them.

And now a gallop. The ground between the two armies grew less every moment. Faster, faster. All swords out now, all shields up to the nose, all prayers said, all teeth clenched. Shasta was dreadfully frightened. But it suddenly came into his head, “If you funk this, you’ll funk every battle all your life. Now or never.”

But when at last the two lines met he had really very littler idea of what happened. There was a frightful confusion; and an appalling noise. His sword was knocked clean out of his hand pretty soon. And he’d got the reins tangled somehow. Then he found himself slipping. Then a spear came straight at him and as he ducked to avoid it he rolled right off his horse, bashed his left knuckles terribly against someone else’s armour, and then —

But it is no use trying to describe the battle from Shasta’s point of view; he understood too little of the fight in general and even of his own part in it. The best way I can tell you what really happened is to take you some miles away to where the Hermit of the Southern March sat gazing into the smooth pool beneath the spreading tree, with Bree and Hwin and Aravis beside him.

For it was in this pool that the Hermit looked when he wanted to know what was going on in the world outside the green walls of his hermitage. There, as in a mirror, he could see, at certain times, what was going on in the streets of cities far farther south than Tashbaan, or what ships were putting into Redhaven in the remote Seven Isles, or what robbers or wild beasts stirred in the great Western forests between Lantern Waste and Telmar. And all this day he had hardly left his pool, even to eat or drink, for he knew that great events were on foot in Archenland. Aravis and the Horses gazed into it too. They could see it was a magic pool： instead of reflecting the tree and the sky it revealed cloudy and coloured shapes moving, always moving, in its depths. But they could see nothing clearly. The Hermit could and from time to time he told them what he saw. A little while before Shasta rode into his first battle, the Hermit had begun speaking like this：

“I see one — two — three eagles wheeling in the gap by Stormness Head. One is the oldest of all the eagles. He would not be out unless battle was at hand. I see him wheel to and fro, peering down sometimes at Anvard and sometimes to the east, behind Stormness. Ah — I see now what Rabadash and his men have been so busy at all day. They have felled and lopped a great tree and they are now coming out of the woods carrying it as a ram. They have learned something from the failure of last night’s assult. He would have been wiser if he had set his men to making ladders： but it takes too long and he is impatient. Fool that he is！ He ought to have ridden back to Tashbaan as soon as the first attack failed, for his whole plan depended on speed and surprise. Now they are bringing their ram into position. King Lune’s men are shooting hard from the walls. Five Calormenes have fallen： but not many will. They have their shields above their heads. Rabadash is giving his orders now. With him are his most trusted lords, fierce Tarkaans from the eastern provinces. I can see their faces. There is Corradin of Castle Tormunt, and Azrooh, and Chlamash, and Ilgamuth of the twisted lip, and a tall Tarkaan with a crimson beard —”

“By the Mane, my old master Anradin！” said Bree.

“S-s-sly,” said Aravis.

“Now the ram has started. If I could hear as well as see, what a noise that would make！ Stroke after stroke： and no gate can stand it for ever. But wait！ Something up by Stormness has scared the birds. They’re coming out in masses. And wait again ... I can’t see yet ... ah！ Now I can. The whole ridge, up on the east, is black with horsemen. If only the wind would catch that standard and spread it out. They’re over the ridge now, whoever they are. Aha！ I’ve seen the banner now. Narnia, Narnia！ It’s the red lion. They’re in full career down the hill now. I can see King Edmund. There’s a woman behind among the archers. Oh！—”

“What is it?” asked Hwin breathlessly.

“All his Cats are dashing out from the left of the line.”

“Cats?” said Aravis.

“Great cats, leopards and such,” said the Hermit impatiently. “I see, I see. The Cats are coming round in a circle to get at the horses of the dismounted men. A good stroke. The Calormene horses are mad with terror already. Now the Cats are in among them. But Rabadash has reformed his line and has a hundred men in the saddle. They’re riding to meet the Narnians. There’s only a hundred yards between the two lines now. Only fifty. I can see King Edmund, I can see the Lord Peridan. There are two mere children in the Narnian line. What can the King be about to let them into battle? Only ten yards — the lines have met. The Giants on the Narnian right are doing wonders ... but one’s down ... shot through the eye, I suppose. The centre’s all in a muddle. I can see more on the left. There are the two boys again. Lion alive！ one is Prince Corin. The other, like him as two peas. It’s your little Shasta. Corin is fighting like a man. He’s killed a Calormene. I can see a bit of the centre now. Rabadash and Edmund almost met then, but the press has separated them —”

“What about Shasta?” said Aravis.

“Oh the fool！” groaned the Hermit. “Poor, brave little fool. He knows nothing about this work. He’s making no use at all of his shield. His whole side’s exposed. He hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with his sword. Oh, he’s remembered it now. He’s waving it wildly about ... nearly cut his own pony’s head off, and he will in a moment if he’s not careful. It’s been knocked out of his hand now. It’s mere murder sending a child into the battle; he can’t live five minutes. Duck you fool — oh, he’s down.”

“Killed?” asked three voices breathlessly.

“How can I tell?” said the Hermit. “The Cats have done their work. All the riderless horses are dead or escaped now： no retreat for the Calormenes on them. Now the Cats are turning back into the main battle. They’re leaping on the rams-men. The ram is down. Oh, good！ good！ The gates are opening from the inside： there’s going to be a sortie. The first three are out. It’s King Lune in the middle： the brothers Dar and Darrin on each side of him. Behind them are Tran and Shar and Cole with his brother Colin. There are ten — twenty — nearly thirty of them out by now. The Calormen line is being forced back upon them. King Edmund is dealing marvellous strokes. He’s just slashed Corradin’s head off. Lots of Calormenes have thrown down their arms and are running for the woods. Those that remain are hard pressed. The Giants are closing in on the right — Cats on the left — King Lune from their rear. The Calormenes are a little knot now, fighting back to back. Your Tarkaan’s down, Bree. Lune and Azrooh are fighting hand to hand; the King looks like winning — the King is keeping it up well — the King has won. Azrooh’s down. King Edmund’s down — no, he’s up again： he’s at it with Rabadash. They’re fighting in the very gate of the castle. Several Calormenes have surrendered. Darrin has killed Ilgamuth. I can’t see what’s happened to Rabadash. I think he’s dead, leaning against the castle wall, but I don’t know. Chlamash and King Edmund are still fighting but the battle is over everywhere else. Chlamash has surrendered. The battle is over. The Calormenes are utterly defeated.”

When Shasta fell off his horse he gave himself up for lost. But horses, even in battle, tread on human beings very much less than you would suppose. After a very horrible ten minutes or so Shasta realized suddenly that there were no longer any horses stamping about in the immediate neighbourhood and that the noise （for there were still a good many noises going on） was no longer that of a battle. He sat up and stared about him. Even he, little as he knew of battles, could soon see that the Archenlanders and Narnians had won. The only living Calormenes he could see were prisoners, the castle gates were wide open, and King Lune and King Edmund were shaking hands across the battering ram. From the circle of lords and warriors around them there arose a sound of breathless and excited, but obviously cheerful conversation. And then, suddenly, it all united and swelled into a great roar of laughter.

Shasta picked himself up, feeling uncommonly stiff, and ran towards the sound to see what the joke was. A very curious sight met his eyes. The unfortunate Rabadash appeared to be suspended from the castle walls. His feet, which were about two feet from the ground, were kicking wildly. His chain-shirt was somehow hitched up so that it was horribly tight under the arms and came half way over his face. In fact he looked just as a man looks if you catch him in the very act of getting into a stiff shirt that is a little too small for him. As far as could be made out afterwards （and you may be sure the story was well talked over for many a day） what happened was something like this. Early in the battle one of the Giants had made an unsuccessful stamp at Rabadash with his spiked boot： unsuccessful because it didn’t crush Rabadash, which was what the Giant had intended, but not quite useless because one of the spikes tore the chain mail, just as you or I might tear an ordinary shirt. So Rabadash, by the time he encountered Edmund at the gate, had a hole in the back of his hauberk. And when Edmund pressed him back nearer and nearer to the wall, he jumped up on a mounting block and stood there raining down blows on Edmund from above. But then, finding that this position, by raising him above the heads of everyone else, made him a mark for every arrow from the Narnian bows, he decided to jump down again. And he meant to look and sound — no doubt for a moment he did look and sound — very grand and very dreadful as he jumped, crying, “The bolt of Tash falls from above.” But he had to jump sideways because the crowd in front of him left him no landing place in that direction. And then, in the neatest way you could wish, the tear in the back of his hauberk caught on a hook in the wall.（Ages ago this hook had had a ring in it for tying horses to.） And there he found himself, like a piece of washing hung up to dry, with everyone laughing at him.

“Let me down, Edmund,” howled Rabadash. “Let me down and fight me like a king and a man; or if you are too great a coward to do that, kill me at once.”

“Certainly,” began King Edmund, but King Lune interrupted.

“By your Majesty’s good leave,” said King Lune to Edmund. “Not so.” Then turning to Rabadash he said, “Your royal Highness, if you had given that challenge a week ago, I’ll answer for it there was no one in King Edmund’s dominion, from the High King down to the smallest Talking Mouse, who would have refused it. But by attacking our castle of Anvard in time of peace without defiance sent, you have proved yourself no knight, but a traitor, and one rather to be whipped by the hangman than to be suffered to cross swords with any person of honour. Take him down, bind him, and carry him within till our pleasure is further known.”

Strong hands wrenched Rabadash’s sword from him and he was carried away into the castle, shouting, threatening, cursing, and even crying. For though he could have faced torture he couldn’t bear being made ridiculous. In Tashbaan everyone had always taken him seriously.

At that moment Corin ran up to Shasta, seized his hand and started dragging him towards King Lune. “Here he is, Father, here he is,” cried Corin.

“Aye, and here thou art, at last,” said the King in a very gruff voice. “And bast been in the battle, clean contrary to your obedience. A boy to break a father’s heart！ At your age a rod to your breech were fitter than a sword in your fist, ha！” But everyone, including Corin, could see that the King was very proud of him.

“Chide him no more, Sire, if it please you,” said Lord Darrin. “His Highness would not be your son if he did not inherit your conditions. It would grieve your Majesty more if he had to be reproved for the opposite fault.”

“Well, well,” grumbled the King. “We’ll pass it over for this time. And now —”‘

What came next surprised Shasta as much as anything that had ever happened to him in his life. He found himself suddenly embraced inn bear-like hug by King Lune and kissed on both cheeks. Then the King set him down again and said, “Stand here together, boys, and let all the court see you. Hold up your heads. Now, gentlemen, look on them both. Has any man any doubts?”

And still Shasta could not understand why everyone stared at him and at Corin nor what all the cheering was about.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HOW BREE BECAME A WISER HORSE

We must now return to Aravis and the Horses. The Hermit, watching his pool, was able to tell them that Shasta was not killed or even seriously wounded, for he saw him get up and saw how affectionately he was greeted by King Lune. But as he could only see, not hear, he did not know what anyone was saying and, once the fighting had stopped and the talking had begun, it was not worth while looking in the pool any longer.

Next morning, while the Hermit was indoors, the three of them discussed what they should do next.

“I’ve had enough of this,” said Hwin. “The Hermit has been very good to us and I’m very much obliged to him I’m sure. But I’m getting as fat as a pet pony, eating all day and getting no exercise. Let’s go on to Narnia.”

“Oh not today, Ma’am,” said Bree. “I wouldn’t hurry things. Some other day, don’t you think?”

“We must see Shasta first and say good-bye to him — and — and apologize,” said Aravis.

“Exactly！” said Bree with great enthusiasm. “Just what I was going to say.”

“Oh, of course,” said Hwin. “I expect he is in Anvard. Naturally we’d look in on him and say good-bye. But that’s on our way. And why shouldn’t we start at once? After all, I thought it was Narnia we all wanted to get to?”

“I suppose so,” said Aravis. She was beginning to wonder what exactly she would do when she got there and was feeling a little lonely.

“Of course, of course,” said Bree hastily. “But there’s no need to rush things, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean,” said Hwin. “Why don’t you want to go?”

“M-m-m, broo-hoo,” muttered Bree. “Well, don’t you see, Ma’am — it’s an important occasion — returning to one’s country — entering society — the best society — it is so essential to make a good impression — not perhaps looking quite ourselves, yet, eh?”

Hwin broke out into a horse-laugh. “It’s your tail, Bree！ I see it all now. You want to wait till your tail’s grown again！ And we don’t even know if tails are worn long in Narnia. Really, Bree, you’re as vain as that Tarkheena in Tashbaan！”

“You are silly, Bree,” said Aravis.

“By the Lion’s Mane, Tarkheena, I’m nothing of the sort,” said Bree indignantly. “I have a proper respect for myself and for my fellow horses, that’s all.”

“Bree,” said Aravis, who was not very interested in the cut of his tail, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time. Why do you keep on swearing By the Lion and By the Lion’s Mane? I thought you hated lions.”

“So I do,” answered Bree. “But when I speak of the Lion of course I mean Aslan, the great deliverer of Narnia who drove away the Witch and the Winter. All Narnians swear by him.”

“But is he a lion?”

“No, no, of course not,” said Bree in a rather shocked voice.

“All the stories about him in Tashbaan say he is,” replied Aravis. “And if he isn’t a lion why do you call him a lion?”

“Well, you’d hardly understand that at your age,” said Bree. “And I was only a little foal when I left so I don’t quite fully understand it myself.”

（Bree was standing with his back to the green wall while he said this, and the other two were facing him. He was talking in rather a superior tone with his eyes half shut; that was why he didn’t see the changed expression in the faces of Hwin and Aravis. They had good reason to have open mouths and staring eyes; because while Bree spoke they saw an enormous lion leap up from outside and balance itself on the top of the green wall; only it was a brighter yellow and it was bigger and more beautiful and more alarming than any lion they had ever seen. And at once it jumped down inside the wall and began approaching Bree from behind. It made no noise at all. And Hwin and Aravis couldn’t make any noise themselves, no more than if they were frozen.）

“No doubt,” continued Bree, “when they speak of him as a Lion they only mean he’s as strong as a lion or （to our enemies, of course） as fierce as a lion. Or something of that kind. Even a little girl like you, Aravis, must see that it would be quite absurd to suppose he is a real lion. Indeed it would be disrespectful. If he was a lion he’d have to be a Beast just like the rest of us. Why！”（and here Bree began to laugh）“If he was a lion he’d have four paws, and a tail, and Whiskers！ ... Aie, ooh, hoo-hoo！ Help！”

For just as he said the word Whiskers one of Aslan’s had actually tickled his ear. Bree shot away like an arrow to the other side of the enclosure and there turned; the wall was too high for him to jump and he could fly no farther. Aravis and Hwin both started back. There was about a second of intense silence.

Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion.

“Please,” she said, “you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”

“Dearest daughter,” said Aslan, planting a lion’s kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, “I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.”

Then he lifted his head and spoke in a louder voice.

“Now, Bree,” he said, “you poor, proud frightened Horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast.”

“Aslan,” said Bree in a shaken voice, “I’m afraid I must be rather a fool.”

“Happy the Horse who knows that while he is still young. Or the Human either. Draw near, Aravis my daughter. See！ My paws are velveted. You will not be torn this time.”

“This time, sir?” said Aravis.

“It was I who wounded you,” said Aslan. “I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?”

“No, sir.”

“The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.”

“Yes, sir. Please —”

“Ask on, my dear,” said Aslan.

“Will any more harm come to her by what I did?”

“Child,” said the Lion, “I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.” Then he shook his head and spoke in a lighter voice.

“Be merry, little ones,” he said. “We shall meet soon again. But before that you will have another visitor.” Then in one bound he reached the top of the wall and vanished from their sight.

Strange to say, they felt no inclination to talk to one another about him after he had gone. They all moved slowly away to different parts of the quiet grass and there paced to and fro, each alone, thinking.

About half an hour later the two Horses were summoned to the back of the house to eat something nice that the Hermit had got ready for them and Aravis, still walking and thinking, was startled by the harsh sound of a trumpet outside the gate.

“Who is there?” asked Aravis.

“His Royal Highness Prince Cor of Archenland,” said a voice from outside.

Aravis undid the door and opened it, drawing back a little way to let the strangers in.

Two soldiers with halberds came first and took their stand at each side of the entry. Then followed a herald, and the trumpeter.

“His Royal Highness Prince Cor of Archenland desires an audience of the Lady Aravis,” said the Herald. Then he and the trumpeter drew aside and bowed and the soldiers saluted and the Prince himself came in. All his attendants withdrew and closed the gate behind them.

The Prince bowed, and a very clumsy bow for a Prince it was. Aravis curtsied in the Calormene style （which is not at all like ours） and did it very well because, of course, she had been taught how. Then she looked up and saw what sort of person this Prince was.

She saw a mere boy. He was bare-headed and his fair hair was encircled with a very thin band of gold, hardly thicker than a wire. His upper tunic was of white cambric, as fine as a handkerchief, so that the bright red tunic beneath it showed through. His left hand, which rested on his enamelled sword hilt, was bandaged.

Aravis looked twice at his face before she gasped and said, “Why！ It’s Shasta！”

Shasta all at once turned very red and began speaking very quickly. “Look here, Aravis,” he said, “I do hope you won’t think I’m got up like this （and the trumpeter and all） to try to impress you or make out that I’m different or any rot of that sort. Because I’d far rather have come in my old clothes, but they’re burnt now, and my father said —”

“Your father?” said Aravis.

“Apparently King Lune is my father,” said Shasta. “I might really have guessed it. Corin being so like me. We were twins, you see. Oh, and my name isn’t Shasta, it’s Cor.”

“Cor is a nicer name than Shasta,” said Aravis.

“Brothers’names run like that in Archenland,” said Shasta （or Prince Cor as we must now call him）. “Like Dar and Darrin, Cole and Colin and so on.”

“Shasta — I mean Cor,” said Aravis. “No, shut up. There’s something I’ve got to say at once. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pig. But I did change before I knew you were a Prince, honestly I did： when you went back, and faced the Lion.”

“It wasn’t really going to kill you at all, that Lion,” said Cor.

“I know,” said Aravis, nodding. Both were still and solemn for a moment as each saw that the other knew about Aslan.

Suddenly Aravis remembered Cor’s bandaged hand. “I say！” she cried, “I forgot！ You’ve been in a battle. Is that a wound?”

“A mere scratch,” said Cor, using for the first time a rather lordly tone. But a moment later he burst out laughing and said, “If you want to know the truth, it isn’t a proper wound at all. I only took the skin off my knuckles just as any clumsy fool might do without going near a battle.”

“Still you were in the battle,” said Aravis. “It must have been wonderful.”

“It wasn’t at all like what I thought,” said Cor.

“But Sha — Cor, I mean — you haven’t told me anything yet about King Lune and how he found out who you were.”

“Well, let’s sit down,” said Cor. “For it’s rather a long story. And by the way, Father’s an absolute brick. I’d be just as pleased — or very nearly — at finding he’s my father even if he wasn’t a king. Even though Education and all sorts of horrible things are going to happen to me. But you want the story. Well, Corin and I were twins. And about a week after we were both born, apparently, they took us to a wise old Centaur in Narnia to be blessed or something. Now this Centaur was a prophet as a good many Centaurs are. Perhaps you haven’t seen any Centaurs yet? There were some in the battle yesterday. Most remarkable people, but I can’t say I feel quite at home with them yet. I say, Aravis, there are going to be a lot of things to get used to in these Northern countries.”

“Yes, there are,” said Aravis. “But get on with the story.”

“Well, as soon as he saw Corin and me, it seems this Centaur looked at me and said, A day will come when that boy will save Archenland from the deadliest danger in which ever she lay. So of course my Father and Mother were very pleased. But there was someone present who wasn’t. This was a chap called the Lord Bar who had been Father’s Lord Chancellor. And apparently he’d done something wrong — bezzling or some word like that — I didn’t understand that part very well — and Father had had to dismiss him. But nothing else was done to him and he was allowed to go on living in Archenland. But he must have been as bad as he could be, for it came out afterwards he had been in the pay of the Tisroc and had sent a lot of secret information to Tashbaan. So as soon as he heard I was going to save Archenland from a great danger he decided I must be put out of the way. Well, he succeeded in kidnapping me （I don’t exactly know how） and rode away down the Winding Arrow to the coast. He’d had everything prepared and there was a ship manned with his own followers lying ready for him and he put out to sea with me on board. But Father got wind of it, though not quite in time, and was after him as quickly as he could. The Lord Bar was already at sea when Father reached the coast, but not out of sight. And Father was embarked in one of his own warships within twenty minutes.”

“It must have been a wonderful chase. They were six days following Bar’s galleon and brought her to battle on the seventh. It was a great sea-fight （I heard a lot about it yesterday evening） from ten o’clock in the morning till sunset. Our people took the ship in the end. But I wasn’t there. The Lord Bar himself had been killed in the battle. But one of his men said that, early that morning, as soon as he saw he was certain to be overhauled, Bar had given me to one of his knights and sent us both away in the ship’s boat. And that boat was never seen again. But of course that was the same boat that Aslan （he seems to be at the back of all the stories） pushed ashore at the right place for Arsheesh to pick me up. I wish I knew that knight’s name, for he must have kept me alive and starved himself to do it.”

“I suppose Aslan would say that was part of someone else’s story,” said Aravis.

“I was forgetting that,” said Cor.

“And I wonder how the prophecy will work out,” said Aravis, “and what the great danger is that you’re to save Archenland from.”

“Well,” said Cor rather awkwardly, “they seem to think I’ve done it already.”

Aravis clapped her hands. “Why, of course！” she said. “How stupid I am. And how wonderful！ Archenland can never be in much greater danger than it was when Rabadash had crossed the Arrow with his two hundred horse and you hadn’t yet got through with your message. Don’t you feel proud?”

“I think I feel a bit scared,” said Cor.

“And you’ll be living at Anvard now,” said Aravis rather wistfully.

“Oh！” said Cor, “I’d nearly forgotten what I came about. Father wants you to come and live with us. He says there’s been no lady in the court （they call it the court, I don’t know why） since Mother died. Do, Aravis. You’ll like Father — and Corin. They’re not like me; they’ve been properly brought up. You needn’t be afraid that —”

“Oh stop it,” said Aravis, “or we’ll have a real fight. Of course I’ll come.”

“Now let’s go and see the Horses,” said Cor.

There was a great and joyous meeting between Bree and Cor, and Bree, who was still in a rather subdued frame of mind, agreed to set out for Anvard at once： he and Hwin would cross into Narnia on the following day. All four bade an affectionate farewell to the Hermit and promised that they would soon visit him again. By about the middle of the morning they were on their way. The Horses had expected that Aravis and Cor would ride, but Cor explained that except in war, where everyone must do what he can do best, no one in Narnia or Archenland ever dreamed of mounting a Talking Horse.

This reminded poor Bree again of how little he knew about Narnian customs and what dreadful mistakes he might make. So while Hwin strolled along in a happy dream, Bree got more nervous and more self-conscious with every step he took.

“Buck up, Bree,” said Cor. “It’s far worse for me than for you. You aren’t going to be educated. I shall be learning reading and writing and heraldry and dancing and history and music while you’ll be galloping and rolling on the hills of Narnia to your heart’s content.”

“But that’s just the point,” groaned Bree. “Do Talking Horses roll? Supposing they don’t? I can’t bear to give it up. What do you think, Hwin?”

“I’m going to roll anyway,” said Hwin. “I don’t suppose any of them will care two lumps of sugar whether you roll or not.”

“Are we near that castle?” said Bree to Cor.

“Round the next bend,” said the Prince.

“Well,” said Bree, “I’m going to have a good one now： it may be the last. Wait for me a minute.”

It was five minutes before he rose again, blowing hard and covered with bits of bracken.

“Now I’m ready,” he said in a voice of profound gloom. “Lead on, Prince Cor, Narnia and the North.”

But he looked more like a horse going to a funeral than a long-lost captive returning to home and freedom.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RABADASH THE RIDICULOUS

The next turn of the road brought them out from among the trees and there, across green lawns, sheltered from the north wind by the high wooded ridge at its back, they saw the castle of Anvard. It was very old and built of a warm, reddish-brown stone.

Before they had reached the gate King Lune came out to meet them, not looking at all like Aravis’s idea of a king and wearing the oldest of old clothes; for he had just come from making a round of the kennels with his Huntsman and had only stopped for a moment to wash his doggy hands. But the bow with which he greeted Aravis as he took her hand would have been stately enough for an Emperor.

“Little lady,” he said, “we bid you very heartily welcome. If my dear wife were still alive we could make you better cheer but could not do it with a better will. And I am sorry that you have had misfortunes and been driven from your father’s house, which cannot but be a grief to you. My son Cor has told me about your adventures together and all your valour.”

“It was he who did all that, Sir,” said Aravis. “Why, he rushed at a lion to save me.”

“Eh, what’s that?” said King Lune, his face brightening. “I haven’t heard that part of the story.”

Then Aravis told it. And Cor, who had very much wanted the story to be known, though he felt he couldn’t tell it himself, didn’t enjoy it so much as he had expected, and indeed felt rather foolish. But his father enjoyed it very much indeed and in the course of the next few weeks told it to so many people that Cor wished it had never happened.

Then the King turned to Hwin and Bree and was just as polite to them as to Aravis, and asked them a lot of questions about their families and where they had lived in Narnia before they had been captured. The Horses were rather tongue-tied for they weren’t yet used to being talked to as equals by Humans — grown-up Humans, that is. They didn’t mind Aravis and Cor.

Presently Queen Lucy came out from the castle and joined them and King Lune said to Aravis, “My dear, here is a loving friend of our house, and she has been seeing that your apartments are put to rights for you better than I could have done it.”

“You’d like to come and see them, wouldn’t you?” said Lucy, kissing Aravis. They liked each other at once and soon went away together to talk about Aravis’s bedroom and Aravis’s boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion.

After lunch, which they had on the terrace （it was cold birds and cold game pie and wine and bread and cheese）, King Lune ruffled up his brow and heaved a sigh and said, “Heigh-ho！ We have still that sorry creature Rabadash on our hands, my friends, and must needs resolve what to do with him.”

Lucy was sitting on the King’s right and Aravis on his left. King Edmund sat at one end of the table and the Lord Darrin faced him at the other. Dar and Peridan and Cor and Corin were on the same side as the King.

“Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head,” said Peridan. “Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins.”

“It is very true,” said Edmund. “But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.” And he looked very thoughtful.

“To kill this Rabadash would go near to raising war with the Tisroc,” said Darrin.

“A fig for the Tisroc,” said King Lune. “His strength is in numbers and numbers will never cross the desert. But I have no stomach for killing men （even traitors） in cold blood. To have cut his throat in the battle would have eased my heart mightily, but this is a different thing.”

“By my counsel,” said Lucy, “your Majesty shall give him another trial. Let him go free on strait promise of fair dealing in the future. It may be that he will keep his word.”

“Maybe Apes will grow honest, Sister,” said Edmund. “But, by the Lion, if he breaks it again, may it be in such time and place that any of us could swap off his head in clean battle.”

“It shall be tried,” said the King, and then to one of the attendants, “Send for the prisoner, friend.”

Rabadash was brought before them in chains. To look at him anyone would have supposed that he had passed the night in a noisome dungeon without food or water; but in reality he had been shut up in quite a comfortable room and provided with an excellent supper. But as he was sulking far too furiously to touch the supper and had spent the whole night stamping and roaring and cursing, he naturally did not now look his best. but in reality he had been shut up in quite a comfortable room and provided with an excellent supper. But as he was sulking far too furiously to touch the supper and had spent the whole night stamping and roaring and cursing, he naturally did not now look his best.

“Your royal Highness needs not to be told,” said King Lune, “that by the law of nations as well as by all reasons of prudent policy, we have as good right to your head as ever one mortal man had against another. Nevertheless, in consideration of your youth and the ill nurture, devoid of all gentilesse and courtesy, which you have doubtless had in the land of slaves and tyrants, we are disposed to set you free, unharmed, on these conditions： first, that —”

“Curse you for a barbarian dog！” spluttered Rabadash. “Do you think I will even hear your conditions? Faugh！ You talk very largely of nurture and I know not what. It’s easy, to a man in chains, ha！ Take off these vile bonds, give me a sword, and let any of you who dares then debate with me.”

Nearly all the lords sprang to their feet, and Corin shouted：

“Father！ Can I box him? Please.”

“Peace！ Your Majesties！ My Lords！” said King Lune. “Have we no more gravity among us than to be so chafed by the taunt of a pajock? Sit down, Corin, or shaft leave the table. I ask your Highness again, to hear our conditions.”

“I hear no conditions from barbarians and sorcerers,” said Rabadash. “Not one of you dare touch a hair of my head. Every insult you have heaped on me shall be paid with oceans of Narnian and Archenlandish blood. Terrible shall the vengeance of the Tisroc be： even now. But kill me, and the burnings and torturings in these northern lands shall become a tale to frighten the world a thousand years hence. Beware！ Beware！ Beware！ The bolt of Tash falls from above！”

“Does it ever get caught on a hook half-way?” asked Corin.

“Shame, Corin,” said the King. “Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you： then, as you please.”

“Oh you foolish Rabadash,” sighed Lucy.

Next moment Cor wondered why everyone at the table had risen and was standing perfectly still. Of course he did the same himself. And then he saw the reason. Aslan was among them though no one had seen him coming. Rabadash started as the immense shape of the Lion paced softly in between him and his accusers.

“Rabadash,” said Aslan. “Take heed. Your doom is very near, but you may still avoid it. Forget your pride （what have you to be proud of?） and your anger （who has done you wrong?） and accept the mercy of these good kings.”

Then Rabadash rolled his eyes and spread out his mouth into a horrible, long mirthless grin like a shark, and wagged his ears up and down （anyone can learn how to do this if they take the trouble）. He had always found this very effective in Calormen. The bravest had trembled when he made these faces, and ordinary people had fallen to the floor, and sensitive people had often fainted. But what Rabadash hadn’t realized is that it is very easy to frighten people who know you can have them boiled alive the moment you give the word. The grimaces didn’t look at all alarming in Archenland; indeed Lucy only thought Rabadash was going to be sick.

“Demon！ Demon！ Demon！” shrieked the Prince. “I know you. You are the foul fiend of Narnia. You are the enemy of the gods. Learn who I am, horrible phantasm. I am descended from Tash, the inexorable, the irresistible. The curse of Tash is upon you. Lightning in the shape of scorpions shall be rained on you. The mountains of Narnia shall be ground into dust. The —”

“Have a care, Rabadash,” said Aslan quietly. “The doom is nearer now： it is at the door： it has lifted the latch.”

“Let the skies fall,” shrieked Rabadash. “Let the earth gape！ Let blood and fire obliterate the world！ But be sure I will never desist till I have dragged to my palace by her hair the barbarian queen, the daughter of dogs, the —”

“The hour has struck,” said Aslan, and Rabadash saw, to his supreme horror, that everyone had begun to laugh.

They couldn’t help it. Rabadash had been wagging his ears all the time and as soon as Aslan said, “The hour has struck！” the ears began to change. They grew longer and more pointed and soon were covered with grey hair. And while everyone was wondering where they had seen ears like that before, Rabadash’s face began to change too. It grew longer, and thicker at the top and larger eyed, and the nose sank back into the face （or else the face swelled out and became all nose） and there was hair all over it. And his arms grew longer and came down in front of him till his hands were resting on the ground： only they weren’t hands, now, they were hoofs. And he was standing on all fours, and his clothes disappeared, and everyone laughed louder and louder （because they couldn’t help it） for now what had been Rabadash was, simply and unmistakably, a donkey. The terrible thing was that his human speech lasted just a moment longer than his human shape, so that when he realized the change that was coming over him, he screamed out：

“Oh, not a Donkey！ Mercy！ If it were even a horse — e’en — a hor — eeh — auh, eeh — auh.” And so the words died away into a donkey’s bray.

“Now hear me, Rabadash,” said Aslan. “Justice shall be mixed with mercy. You shall not always be an Ass.”

At this of course the Donkey twitched its ears forward - and that also was so funny that everybody laughed all the more. They tried not to, but they tried in vain.

“You have appealed to Tash,” said Aslan. “And in the temple of Tash you shall be healed. You must stand before the altar of Tash in Tashbaan at the great Autumn Feast this year and there, in the sight of all Tashbaan, your ass’s shape will fall from you and all men will know you for Prince Rabadash. But as long as you live, if ever you go more than ten miles away from the great temple in Tashbaan you shall instantly become again as you now are. And from that second change there will be no return.”

There was a short silence and then they all stirred and looked at one another as if they were waking from sleep. Aslan was gone. But there was a brightness in the air and on the grass, and a joy in their hearts, which assured them that he had been no dream： and anyway, there was the donkey in front of them.

King Lune was the kindest-hearted of men and on seeing his enemy in this regrettable condition he forgot all his anger.

“Your royal Highness,” he said. “I am most truly sorry that things have come to this extremity. Your Highness will bear witness that it was none of our doing. And of course we shall be delighted to provide your Highness with shipping back to Tashbaan for the — er — treatment which Aslan has prescribed. You shall have every comfort which your Highness’s situation allows： the best of the cattleboats — the freshest carrots and thistles —”

But a deafening bray from the Donkey and a well-aimed kick at one of the guards made it clear that these kindly offers were ungratefully received.

And here, to get him out of the way, I’d better finish off the story of Rabadash. He （or it） was duly sent back by boat to Tashbaan and brought into the temple of Tash at the great Autumn Festival, and then he became a man again. But of course four or five thousand people had seen the transformation and the affair could not possibly be hushed up. And after the old Tisroc’s death when Rabadash became Tisroc in his place he turned out the most peaceable Tisroc Calormen had ever known. This was because, not daring to go more than ten miles from Tashbaan, he could never go on a war himself： and he didn’t want his Tarkaans to win fame in the wars at his expense, for that is the way Tisrocs get overthrown. But though his reasons were selfish, it made things much more comfortable for all the smaller countries round Calormen. His own people never forgot that he had been a donkey. During his reign, and to his face, he was called Rabadash the Peacemaker, but after his death and behind his back he was called Rabadash the Ridiculous, and if you look him up in a good History of Calormen （try the local library） you will find him under that name. And to this day in Calormene schools, if you do anything unusually stupid, you are very likely to be called “a second Rabadash”.

Meanwhile at Anvard everyone was very glad that he had been disposed of before the real fun began, which was a grand feast held that evening on the lawn before the castle, with dozens of lanterns to help the moonlight. And the wine flowed and tales were told and jokes were cracked, and then silence was made and the King’s poet with two fiddlers stepped out into the middle of the circle. Aravis and Cor prepared themselves to be bored, for the only poetry they knew was the Calormene kind, and you know now what that was like. But at the very first scrape of the fiddles a rocket seemed to go up inside their heads, and the poet sang the great old lay of Fair Olvin and how he fought the Giant Pire and turned him into stone （and that is the origin of Mount Pire — it was a two-headed Giant） and won the Lady Liln for his bride; and when it was over they wished it was going to begin again. And though Bree couldn’t sing he told the story of the fight at Zalindreh. And Lucy told again （they had all, except Aravis and Cor, heard it many times but they all wanted it again） the tale of the Wardrobe and how she and King Edmund and Queen Susan and Peter the High King had first come into Narnia.

And presently, as was certain to happen sooner or later, King Lune said if was time for young people to be in bed. “And tomorrow, Cor,” he added, “shalt come over all the castle with me and see the estres and mark all its strength and weakness： for it will be thine to guard when I’m gone.”

“But Corin will be the King then, Father,” said Cor.

“Nay, lad,” said King Lune, “thou art my heir. The crown comes to thee.”

“But I don’t want it,” said Cor. “I’d far rather —”

“’Tis no question what thou wantest, Cor, nor I either.‘Tis in the course of law.”

“But if we’re twins we must be the same age.”

“Nay,” said the King with a laugh. “One must come first. Art Corin’s elder by full twenty minutes. And his better too, let’s hope, though that’s no great mastery.” And he looked at Corin with a twinkle in his eyes.

“But, Father, couldn’t you make whichever you like to be the next King?”

“No. The king’s under the law, for it’s the law makes him a king. Hast no more power to start away from thy crown than any sentry from his post.”

“Oh dear,” said Cor. “I don’t want to at all. And Corin — I am most dreadfully sorry. I never dreamed my turning up was going to chisel you out of your kingdom.”

“Hurrah！ Hurrah！” said Corin. “I shan’t have to be King. I shan’t have to be King. I’ll always be a prince. It’s princes have all the fun.”

“And that’s truer than thy brother knows, Cor,” said King Lune. “For this is what it means to be a king： to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land （as must be now and then in bad years） to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

When the two boys were going upstairs to bed Cor again asked Corin if nothing could be done about it. And Corin said：

“If you say another word about it, I’ll — I’ll knock you down.”

It would be nice to end the story by saying that after that the two brothers never disagreed about anything again, but I am afraid it would not be true. In reality they quarrelled and fought just about as often as any other two boys would, and all their fights ended （if they didn’t begin） with Cor getting knocked down. For though, when they had both grown up and become swordsmen, Cor was the more dangerous man in battle, neither he nor anyone else in the North Countries could ever equal Corin as a boxer. That was how he got his name of Corin Thunder-Fist; and how he performed his great exploit against the Lapsed Bear of Stormness, which was really a Talking Bear but had gone back to Wild Bear habits. Corin climbed up to its lair on the Narnian side of Stormness one winter day when the snow was on the hills and boxed it without a time-keeper for thirty-three rounds. And at the end it couldn’t see out of its eyes and became a reformed character.

Aravis also had many quarrels （and, I’m afraid, even fights） with Cor, but they always made it up again： so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently. And after King Lune’s death they made a good King and Queen of Archenland and Ram the Great, the most famous of all the kings of Archenland, was their son. Bree and Hwin lived happily to a great age in Narnia and both got married but not to one another. And there weren’t many months in which one or both of them didn’t come trotting over the pass to visit their friends at Anvard.

纳尼亚传奇：魔法师的外甥（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

责任编辑/王心怡

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5729-7

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目录

第一章 错开的门

第二章 狄格雷和舅舅

第三章 世界之间的树林

第四章 钟与锤

第五章 亡语

第六章 安德鲁舅舅的麻烦降临

第七章 前门发生的事

第八章 灯柱下的战斗

第九章 纳尼亚的诞生

第十章 第一个笑料和其他事情

第十一章 狄格雷和舅舅双双再临险境

第十二章 “草莓”的远征

第十三章 不期而遇

第十四章 种下神树

第十五章 这个故事的结尾与其他故事的开端

CHAPTER ONE THE WRONG DOOR

CHAPTER TWO DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE

CHAPTER THREE THE WOOD BETWEEN THE WORLDS

CHAPTER FOUR THE BELL AND THE HAMMER

CHAPTER FIVE THE DEPLORABLE WORD

CHAPTER SIX THE BEGINNING OF UNCLE ANDREW’S TROUBLES

CHAPTER SEVEN WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FRONT DOOR

CHAPTER EIGHT THE FIGHT AT THE LAMP-POST

CHAPTER NINE THE FOUNDING OF NARNIA

CHAPTER TEN THE FIRST JOKE AND OTHER MATTERS

CHAPTER ELEVEN DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE ARE BOTH IN TROUBLE

CHAPTER TWELVE STRAWBERRY’S ADVENTURE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE PLANTING OF THE TREE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE END OF THIS STORY AND THE BEGINNING OF ALL THE OTHERS

第一章
错开的门

这个故事发生在很久以前，那时候，你的爷爷还只是个孩子。这个故事之所以重要，是因为它告诉了人们，我们的世界和纳尼亚大陆间的一切故事最初是如何发生的。

那时候，夏洛克·福尔摩斯先生还住在贝克街，巴斯塔布尔一家还在路易斯海姆路上寻找财宝。那时候，如果你是一个小男孩，你每天都得戴着硬邦邦的伊顿领；至于学校的条件嘛，大多都比现在的要糟糕。但是，那时候的伙食要比现在好；至于糖果呢，我是不会告诉你它们是多么的物美价廉，那只会让你白白地口舌生津。还有啊，那时候，在伦敦住着一个名叫波莉·普卢默的女孩。

波莉的家在一长排房子之中，这些房子彼此相连。一天早上，她正在后花园中玩耍，突然，她看到有一个男孩从隔壁的花园里爬到了围墙上，正朝着波莉家的后花园张望。波莉十分惊讶，因为迄今为止，她还从没有见过隔壁的房子里有任何一个小孩；那里只住着年迈的凯特利兄妹，而且两人都没结过婚。波莉满心好奇地抬头看去，只见那个陌生男孩的脸脏极了，哪怕他先是用双手在泥土里翻动，然后大哭一场，再用双手擦干眼泪，他的脸也不可能比现在更脏。而事实上，这几乎就是他刚才做过的事。

“你好啊！”波莉说。

“你好！”男孩回应道，“你叫什么名字？”

“我叫波莉，你叫什么啊？”波莉回答道。

“狄格雷。”男孩说。

“要我说，这可真是个滑稽的名字！”波莉说道。

“这可不及‘波莉’这个名字半点好笑。”狄格雷反驳道。

“真的很好笑。”波莉说。

“才没有呢。”狄格雷说。

“好吧，不管怎样，我可是会把脸洗干净的。”波莉说，“你也应该去洗把脸，尤其是当你——”波莉没有继续说下去，她本来想说“当你哭过之后”，但是她觉得这样太没礼貌了。

“好吧，我是哭过。”狄格雷提高了嗓门说道，好像已经难过至极，以至于毫不在意被别人知道自己刚才哭过。“要是你本来一直住在乡下，与一匹小马和花园尽头的小溪为伴，后来却被带到这样一个鬼地方来住，你也会哭的。”他接着说道。

“伦敦才不是鬼地方呢！”波莉愤愤地说。但是狄格雷实在是太激动了，他根本没有留意她的话，只是自顾自地接着讲：

“如果你爸爸远在印度，你不得不过来跟姨妈和发了疯的舅舅同住（谁会喜欢这样的生活呢？），因为他们会照顾你妈妈，而你妈妈生了病，马上就要——就要死了。”说到这里，男孩的脸痛苦得几乎变了形，因他正努力地抑制自己的眼泪。

“真是抱歉，之前我什么都不知道。”波莉内疚地说。可她实在不知道该说什么，又想将狄格雷的注意力转移到开心的事情上去，于是便问道：

“凯特利先生真的疯了吗？”

“依我看，他要么是一个疯子，”狄格雷说，“要么就藏着别的秘密。他在顶楼有一间书房，莱蒂姨妈叫我永远也不要上去。你看，这事多可疑啊。还有，每当他想在餐桌上对我说些什么的时候——他从来不跟姨妈说话——姨妈总是让他打住。她会说‘不要吓坏了孩子，安德鲁’或者‘我相信狄格雷不想听这些’之类的话，又或者是‘好了，狄格雷，你想到花园里去玩会儿吗？’”

“你的舅舅，他究竟想要说些什么呢？”

“我也不知道。他从来没有成功地说出口过。可奇怪的事还不止这些，有一天晚上——其实就是昨晚——当我经过阁楼的楼梯底下准备去上床睡觉的时候（我一向都是漫不经心地经过这个楼梯口的），我很确定我听到了一声喊叫。”

“有可能他把自己的疯媳妇关在了楼上。”

“是啊，我也这么想过。”

“也有可能他是一个造假币的。”

“或者他可能曾是一个海盗，就像《金银岛》开头的那个人一样，一直躲着过去和他同船的船员。”

“太刺激了！”波莉说，“我从没想到你家竟然这么有趣！”

“你可能会觉得我家很有趣，”狄格雷说，“但如果要你睡在那里，你就不会喜欢我家了。你愿意躺在床上听着安德鲁舅舅的脚步声无法入睡吗？他会顺着走廊来到你的房中，而且他的眼睛特别可怕。”

这就是波莉与狄格雷的初次见面。因为这时暑假才刚刚开始，而他们两个那年都没有到海边去，所以他们几乎天天见面。

他们之所以展开冒险，主要是因为这是几年来最为潮湿和寒冷的一个夏天。这使得他们只能进行一些室内活动，或者你可以称之为“室内探险”。在一幢大房子里或是一排房子之中，只需点上一支蜡烛便可以展开无穷无尽的探索，这真是太棒了。波莉在很久以前就发现，如果在她家房子的储藏室阁楼上打开某扇小门，你就会找到水箱，在那后面有一个暗处，你可以小心翼翼地爬进去。那个暗处像是一条长长的隧道，一边是砖墙，另一边是倾斜的屋顶。屋顶与石板之间几乎没有什么光亮。这条隧道里没有地板，你必须从一根椽条踏向另一根椽条，而椽条之间只有灰泥。如果你踩到灰泥，就会从脚下房间的天花板上掉下去。

波莉将水箱旁边的一部分隧道当作“走私者的洞穴”。她把一些旧的包装箱和坏了的厨房椅子上的坐垫之类的东西都搬了过来，把它们在椽条之间铺开，就这样搭出了一小块地板。在这里，她保存着一个装满了各种宝贝的盒子和一个她正在写的故事，通常还会有几个苹果。她经常在那里静静地喝上一瓶姜汁啤酒，而这些旧瓶子让这里看起来更像一个走私者的洞穴了。

狄格雷很喜欢这个洞穴（当然，波莉不会让他看自己写的故事），但他对探险更感兴趣。

“看这里。”他说，“这条隧道向前还有多长？我是说，它一直通到你家房子的尽头为止吗？”

“不是的。”波莉说道，“房子的围墙又不会围到屋顶上来，所以这条隧道还会继续向前延伸，我也不知道它有多长。”

“那么我们就可以知道整排房子的长度了。”

“的确是的。”波莉说，“嘿，听我说！”

“什么？”

“我们可以钻到别人家的房子里去。”

“是啊，然后被当作小偷逮住！还是算了吧。”

“别那么自作聪明。我说的是你家后面的那幢房子。”

“那幢房子怎么了？”

“哎呀，那房子是空的。爸爸说自从我们搬到这儿，那里就一直是空的。”

“既然如此，我想我们应该去看一眼。”狄格雷说。

他此刻的心情远比话里所表现出来的要激动。当然，他此刻正在想，为什么这幢房子空了这么久。就像你听到那样的话时心里的想法一样，波莉也是这样想的。他们俩都没说出“闹鬼”这个词，而且两人都觉得，一旦闹鬼这件事被提出来了，那么不试着去验证一下可就太没劲了。

“要不我们现在就去试试？”狄格雷说。

“好呀。”波莉说道。

“如果你不想去的话，那就别去了。”狄格雷说。

“你敢我也敢。”波莉说。

“我们怎么知道已经到隔壁的房子里了呢？”

于是他们决定先走到外面的储藏室里，一边穿过储藏室，一边数数经过了几根椽条。这样他们就能知道一间房间里有几根椽条了。然后，他们会加上四根椽条——这是波莉家中两个阁楼之间的距离，再加上跟储藏室同样数量的椽条，也就是女佣的房间里的椽条。这样一来，他们就能知道房屋的全长。当他们经过了两倍于此的距离时，他们就会到达狄格雷家的尽头。在那之后，他们打开任何一扇门，都能进入那幢空房子的阁楼里。

“但愿是空的。”狄格雷说。

“你估计那里有什么？”

“我估计有人秘密地住在那里，只在夜间进出，提着一盏灯光微弱的灯笼。我们可能会发现一帮走投无路的罪犯，还能因此得到奖励呢。要说一幢房子荒废多年还没有半点儿秘密，我才不信呢。”

“爸爸认为那里一定是下水道。”波莉说。

“算了吧！大人总是做一些无趣的解释。”狄格雷说。现在他们正借着阁楼中的日光谈话，而不是在走私者洞穴里的烛光下谈话，所以看样子那空房子闹鬼的可能性并不大。

测量完阁楼的长度，他们需要用一支铅笔计算总长度。起初他们算出了不同的答案，后来他们达成一致，但我还是不敢确定他们算的结果是否正确。毕竟他们都急着想要开始探险。

“我们不能发出声音。”波莉边说边和狄格雷一起又爬到了水箱后面。因为这次行动非常关键，他们俩各拿了一根蜡烛（波莉在她的走私者洞穴里存放了好多蜡烛）。

这里又黑又脏，而且透风。他们一言不发地从一根椽条踏到另一根上，除了偶尔耳语几句，比如“我们现在在你家阁楼对面了”或者“我们已经走过我家房子的一半啦”，大多数时间都保持沉默。他们俩都没有跌倒，蜡烛也没有熄灭。最后，在右手边的砖墙上，他们看到了一扇小门。门的这一边没有门闩或把手，很显然，这扇门是只进不出的；但是上面有一个锁钩（就像在橱柜门内侧通常会有的那种钩子一样），他们确信可以转动它。

“那我可转了哦。”狄格雷说。

“你敢我也敢。”波莉重复了一遍她之前说过的那句话。两人都想到这事已经不再是儿戏了，但谁也不愿意退缩。狄格雷费了一番劲才把锁钩扭开。门开了，突如其来的日光晃得他们睁不开眼。接着，他们惊讶地发现，面前不是废弃的阁楼，而是一间装饰精美的房间。但是屋内确实空空如也，而且死一般的沉寂。在好奇心的驱使下，波莉吹灭了蜡烛，踏入了这间陌生的房间。她的脚步很轻，几乎没有弄出什么声响，活像只鬼鬼祟祟的小老鼠。

当然了，房间的结构形状还是一间阁楼，但却装饰得如起居室一般。沿墙靠满了书架，书架上则摆满了书籍。壁炉里生着火（还记得之前说过那年夏天可是又冷又湿），壁炉前面，一把高背扶椅背对他们两人放着。

在波莉所站的地方和椅子之间，放着一张大桌子。这张桌子占据了房间中央的大部分空间，上面堆着各式各样的物件：印刷版的书、笔记本、墨水瓶、钢笔、封蜡，还有一台显微镜。然而，波莉首先注意到的是一只亮红色的木托盘，上面摆着一些戒指。这些戒指成对地放着：一枚黄的和一枚绿的摆在一起；隔了一点距离，又是一枚黄的和一枚绿的。它们和普通的戒指一般大，但由于实在太亮了，让人很难忽视它们。这是你能想象到的最漂亮、最闪亮的小物件了。如果波莉的年纪再小那么一丁点儿，她指不定就会把这些漂亮闪耀的小玩意儿放到嘴里了呢。

房间里安静得连钟表的滴答声也清晰可辨。然而波莉同时发现，这里并非绝对寂静。房间里有一种极其微弱的嗡嗡声。假如那时已经发明了真空吸尘器的话，波莉肯定会认为这是一台吸尘器在几个房间以外或几层楼之下工作时发出的声音。但是此刻她所听到的声音更为动听，更像是音乐，只不过由于太过微弱，让人难以听到罢了。

“没事儿，放轻松，这儿没人。”波莉扭过头去，用略高于耳语的声音对狄格雷说道。狄格雷从隧道里钻出来，眨着眼睛。他看上去脏兮兮的，波莉也是如此。

“这可不太妙。”他说，“这压根不是一幢空房子。我们最好在有人来之前赶快溜走。”

“你觉得那些是什么？”波莉指着那些上了色的戒指问道。

“噢，快别问了，我们赶紧——”

狄格雷的话音未落，他们就看见壁炉前的高背椅子突然动了起来，安德鲁舅舅那可怕的身影从椅背后面探了出来，就像哑剧里的鬼怪从活动门中钻出一样。他们根本不是在那幢空房子里，而是在狄格雷家那间禁止进入的书房里！两个孩子异口同声地喊了一句“噢，天哪”，同时意识到他们犯了一个严重的错误。他们觉得自己早该发现在隧道里走得根本不够远。

安德鲁舅舅长得又高又廋，一张长脸刮得干干净净，鼻子尖尖的，还有一双发亮的眼睛和一头蓬乱的灰发。

狄格雷吓得说不出话来，因为此时的安德鲁舅舅看起来要比以往任何时候都可怕一千倍。波莉一开始还不太害怕，但不久她也怕了。因为安德鲁舅舅看到他们之后做的第一件事便是穿过房间走到门口，关上门，还转动钥匙把门锁上了。然后，他转过身，用他那发亮的眼睛盯着孩子们，咧嘴笑了起来。

“太棒了！”他说，“现在我那傻妹妹可找不到你们了！”

这等可怕之事可不像任何一个大人所为。波莉的心提到了嗓子眼。她和狄格雷开始背朝他们进来的那扇小门退去。但是安德鲁舅舅以迅雷不及掩耳之势抢在他们之前，把那扇门也关上了。然后，他站在门前，兴奋地搓着手，弄得关节咯咯作响。他长长的手指又白又漂亮。

“看到你们可真高兴。”他说，“我正好需要两个孩子。”

“凯特利先生，”波莉说，“我要回家吃饭了，请你放我们出去，好吗？”

“现在还不行。机会难得，不能错过。我刚好需要两个孩子。你们看，我正在做一项伟大的实验。我已经用豚鼠实验过了，看起来似乎有效。但豚鼠什么也不能告诉你，而你也不能向它解释该怎么回来。”安德鲁舅舅说。

“嘿，安德鲁舅舅，”狄格雷说，“我们真的该回去吃饭了，不然他们待会儿就该来找我们了。你必须放我们出去。”

“必须？”安德鲁舅舅反问道。

狄格雷和波莉互相瞅了一眼。他们不敢开口，但彼此的眼神却在说“这实在太可怕了，我们只能骗骗他”。

于是波莉说：“如果你现在放我们去吃饭，我们吃完就会回来。”

“好吧，可是我怎么知道你们真的会回来呢？”安德鲁舅舅露出了狡黠的微笑，接着他好像改变了主意。

“那好吧。”他说，“如果你们真的非走不可，我也不再勉强。我不指望你们这两个孩子会觉得跟我这样一个老家伙说话有多有趣。”他叹了口气，继续说道：“你们不会明白的，我有时候特别孤独。不过没关系，你们快回去吃饭吧。但在你们临走之前，我想我一定要送你们一份礼物。我可不是每天都能在这间脏兮兮的旧书房里见到小姑娘的，尤其是像你这样迷人的年轻姑娘，我这话一点都不夸张。”

听了这话，波莉开始觉得眼前的安德鲁舅舅可能并不是一个疯子。

“亲爱的，你想要一枚戒指吗？”他问波莉。

“你是说那些黄色和绿色的戒指吗？那实在是太好了！”波莉很高兴。

“绿色的不行。”安德鲁舅舅说，“恐怕我不能把绿色的戒指送给你，但我很乐意送你一枚黄色的戒指。我将把它连同我对你的爱一起送给你。来，试着戴上一枚。”

波莉此时已经克服了恐惧，她相信这位老先生并没有疯；而且那些闪亮的戒指好似有种神奇的魔力，吸引她向托盘走去。

“噢！要我说，嗡嗡声在这儿更响了，这或许就是这些戒指发出的声音吧。”波莉说。

“亲爱的，你的幻想真有趣。”安德鲁舅舅笑着说。他的笑声听来十分自然，但狄格雷却从他的脸上看到一副急切而近乎贪婪的神情。

“波莉，不要犯傻！”他喊道，“别碰那些戒指！”

可是已经太晚了。就在狄格雷说话的时候，波莉已经伸手碰到了一枚戒指。眨眼间，没有半点闪光，没有一丝声音，没有任何警告，波莉就这样消失了。屋子里只剩下狄格雷和安德鲁舅舅两个人。

第二章
狄格雷和舅舅

这一切来得太过突然，即使在一场梦魇中，狄格雷也从未见过如此恐怖的事情，他不禁尖叫了一声。安德鲁舅舅赶紧捂住了他的嘴。“别乱叫！”他在狄格雷的耳边悄悄说道，“你要是喊出声来，你母亲就会听到的。你知道，她受不起惊吓。”

正如狄格雷后来所说的那样，这种卑劣的诱骗手段实在使他感到恶心。不过当然，他也没再尖叫。

“这样就好多了。”安德鲁舅舅说，“也许你是控制不住才尖叫的吧。头一回看见一个人消失，肯定会大吃一惊。说实在的，那天夜里，当那只豚鼠消失的时候，我也着实吓到了呢。”

“你就是在那时候叫了一声吗？”狄格雷问。

“噢，所以你听见了，是吗？我想你不会一直在暗中监视我吧？”

“我才没有。”狄格雷愤愤地说，“但波莉到底怎么了？”

“快祝贺我吧，我亲爱的孩子。”安德鲁舅舅搓着手说道，“我的实验成功了。那个小女孩已经走了——消失了——从这个世界上消失了。”

“你把她怎么了？”

“我把她送到——呃——另一个地方去了。”

“这话是什么意思？”狄格雷问。

安德鲁舅舅坐了下来，说道：“好吧，我把一切都告诉你吧。你听说过老勒费夫人吗？”

“她是不是我的一个舅婆或是别的什么亲戚？”狄格雷说。

“嗯，不完全是。”安德鲁舅舅说，“她是我的教母。看那边，墙上的就是她。”

狄格雷朝墙上望去，看见一张褪色的照片，照片上是一位戴着软帽的老太太。他想起自己曾经在乡下家里的一个旧抽屉里见过这个人。那时他问妈妈这个人是谁，但妈妈好像不太愿意谈论这个话题。狄格雷想，虽然不能单凭几张旧照片来判断，但那位女士确实长得不好看。

“她是不是——她不会是有什么不正常的吧，安德鲁舅舅？”狄格雷问道。

“这个嘛，”安德鲁舅舅轻笑一声，说道，“这要看你说的‘不正常’指的是什么了。人们的思想太狭隘了。她到了晚年，的确行为古怪，也做了许多不明智的事情。因此他们把她关了起来。”

“你的意思是，把她关在疯人院里？”

“噢，不，不是，不是这样的。”安德鲁舅舅惊讶地说，“根本不是那样的地方，他们只是把她关在监狱里而已。”

“天哪！”狄格雷说，“她究竟干了什么？”

“唉，可怜的女人。”安德鲁舅舅说，“她实在是太愚蠢了，做了许多不寻常的事情。我们没必要细究那些。她一直对我很好。”

“可是，这些事和波莉又有什么关系呢？我真心希望你能——”

“别着急，我的孩子，现在还不是时候。”安德鲁舅舅说，“临死前，勒费太太被放了出来。在弥留之际，她只让极少数的几个人去看她，我便是其中之一。她厌倦无知的庸人，我也不喜欢，希望你能理解这一点。而且，她和我兴趣相投。在她去世的前几天里，她让我到她家中，打开一张旧书桌上的一个秘密抽屉，将其中的一个小盒子取出来交给她。刚拿起盒子，我便感到手指有些许刺痛，我马上意识到，自己手里捧着的是一个天大的秘密。她把盒子给了我，并要我发誓，她一死，我就会通过特定的仪式将盒子原封不动地烧掉。结果我没能履行我的承诺。”

“既然如此，那你可真是个差劲的人。”狄格雷说。

“差劲？”安德鲁舅舅露出疑惑的神情，说道，“哦，我明白了。你的意思是，小男孩应该信守承诺。确实如此，我相信这是最正确、最恰当的做法，我很欣慰你能认识到这一点。不过你也必须懂得，有些规矩，尽管对于小男孩、仆人、女士，乃至所有的普通人来说都是正确无误的，但它们并不适用于知识渊博的学者以及伟大的思想家和圣人。不合适，狄格雷。像我这样拥有隐秘智慧的人从来不受普通规矩的约束，正如我们不会从俗事中觅得快乐一般。孩子，我们的命运注定是高贵且孤独的。”

说着，他叹了口气。此时的他看上去那么认真、那么高尚、那么神秘，以至于有一刻，狄格雷信以为真，还以为他在谈论什么十分美妙的事情。但一想起波莉消失前舅舅脸上那副丑恶的神态，狄格雷马上就明白了他那些大话的真正含义。“他的意思就是，”他自言自语道，“为达目的可以不择手段。”

“当然了。”安德鲁舅舅说，“我有好长一段时间都没敢打开那个盒子。我心里清楚，盒子里面可能装着非常危险的东西，因为我的教母是一位了不起的女性。事实上，在这个国家里，她是最后几个体内流淌着仙女血液的凡人之一。（据她所说，和她同时代的还有两位这样的人，分别是一位女公爵和一个女佣人。）说真的，狄格雷，你也许正在和最后一个有仙女教母的人谈话。呵，这些事还是等你老了以后再自己回忆吧。”

“我猜她这个仙女也不怎么样。”狄格雷心想。接着，他高声说道：“你到底把波莉怎么了？”

“别唠叨个没完了！”安德鲁舅舅说，“好像她不见了对你而言真的很重要似的。拿到盒子后，我的首要任务就是研究它。那可是个古老的盒子。甚至在那时我就知道，它不是希腊的、古埃及的、巴比伦的、赫梯帝国的或是中国的，它的历史比这些国家更久远。啊——我发现真相的那一天堪称是伟大的一天。这个盒子来自亚特兰蒂斯，那个已经消失的岛屿亚特兰蒂斯。这就意味着这个盒子比那些欧洲出土的石器时代的文物还要古老数百年，而且它也不像那些文物那般粗糙原始。因为亚特兰蒂斯在很久以前就已经是一个发达的城市，那里有许多宫殿、寺庙和学者。”

他顿了一下，好像在期待狄格雷说些什么。但是随着时间一分一秒地流逝，狄格雷对他越发厌恶，所以他选择了沉默。

“与此同时，”安德鲁舅舅接着说道，“我通过其他手段学到了不少魔法知识（向一个孩子解释这些手段并不合适）。于是，我大概知道了盒子里可能有些什么东西。随后，我又借助各项实验缩小了猜测范围。为了弄清楚盒子里到底装着什么，我不得不去结识一些异常古怪的人，还要去做一些令人不适的实验，我灰白的头发就是这样来的。一个人不付出点什么，是成不了魔法师的。再后来，我的身体彻底吃不消了，不过我的魔力却大有长进，我最终领会了其中的奥秘。”

尽管此时根本不可能有人在一旁偷听，他还是朝狄格雷斜靠过来，用几乎是耳语的声音说道：

“那个亚特兰蒂斯盒子里装着的是从另一个世界带过来的东西，而它被带过来的时候，我们的世界才刚刚诞生。”

“什么？”狄格雷忍不住提起了兴趣问道。

“不过是泥土罢了。”安德鲁舅舅说，“精细、干燥的泥土。你可能觉得，倾尽一生只为了这点泥土，太不划算了。但是当我看着这些泥土时（我小心翼翼，尽量避免碰到它），我想的是，每一粒土都来自另一个世界——我不是指另一颗星球，你明白的；那些星球是我们这个世界的一部分，只要你走得够远就能到达——但那的确是另一个世界——另一个大自然——另一个宇宙——即使你在这个宇宙的空间里永不停歇地走下去也无法到达，只有运用魔法才能到达那里——这真是太妙了！”说到这里，安德鲁舅舅把指关节揉得噼啪作响，像柴火燃烧的声音似的。

“我很清楚，”他继续说，“只要找到正确的方法，这些泥土就会把我带往它所在的世界。但是要找到正确的方法，实在是不容易。我之前的尝试都以失败告终。我曾拿豚鼠来做实验，可它们有些死了，有些直接炸开了，像小炸弹一样——”

“这么做实在是太残忍了。”狄格雷说。他自己就曾经养过一只豚鼠。

“你怎么老是打岔！”安德鲁舅舅说，“这些动物本来就是用来做实验的，我可是自己出钱把它们买回来的。让我想想——我刚刚讲到哪儿了？哦，对了，我最终成功地做好了戒指——那些黄色的戒指。但是现在，我又遇到了新的难题。我敢肯定，不论哪种生物，只要碰到黄戒指，就会被送到另一个世界去。可是如果我不能让他们回来向我汇报那边的情况，那又有什么意义呢？”

“那他们又该怎么办啊？”狄格雷说，“如果他们回不来，就会陷入十分危险的境地！”

“你看问题的角度总是不对。”安德鲁舅舅不耐烦地说，“你还不明白吗，这是一项伟大的实验！我送他们过去，就是为了弄清楚那边的情况。”

“既然如此，你自己怎么不去？”

狄格雷从未见过有谁像他舅舅那样，在听到这个简单的问题时会表现得那么惊讶、那么气愤。“我吗？你让我去？”他大声喊道，“这孩子肯定是疯了！我都一把老骨头了，身体又差，要是突然被丢到另一个世界，能经得住那样的震颤和危险吗？我这辈子从没听过比这更荒唐的事了！你清楚自己在说什么吗？好好想一想吧，另一个世界究竟意味着什么——在那里你可能会遇到任何事——任何事。”

“那么我想你一定是把波莉送到那里去了！”狄格雷气得满脸通红。他接着说道：“哪怕你是我舅舅，我也要说——你简直是一个懦夫，才会把一个小女孩送到你自己都不敢去的地方。”

“闭嘴，你这个自以为是的小家伙！”安德鲁舅舅把手拍在桌上，怒斥道，“一个脏兮兮的小男孩怎么能这样对我说话。你是不会明白的。我是一名伟大的学者、魔法师，是这方面的行家。我正在做一项实验，而这项实验需要实验品。天哪，我想你接下来会向我指出，我在用豚鼠做实验前应该先征得它们的同意！没有牺牲怎么能取得伟大的智慧？但是要我自己去就太荒谬了，这就好比要求一个将军像普通士兵那样冲锋陷阵。设想一下，如果我死了，这宏大的事业该交给谁呢？”

“够了，别再啰唆了。”狄格雷说，“你打算让波莉回来吗？”

“方才你粗鲁地打断我时，我正想要告诉你，”安德鲁舅舅说，“我最终找到了返程的方法——绿戒指可以把你带回来。”

“但波莉没有绿戒指。”

“确实如此。”安德鲁舅舅边说边残忍地笑了笑。

“那她岂不是回不来了。”狄格雷叫喊起来，“这简直就是谋杀！”

“她可以回来，”安德鲁舅舅说，“只要有人肯去找她——戴上一枚黄戒指，再揣上两枚绿戒指——一枚绿戒指留给自己，另一枚给她。”

直到这时，狄格雷才明白自己陷入了安德鲁舅舅设下的圈套里。他大张着嘴，一言不发地瞪着安德鲁舅舅，脸气得惨白。

“我希望，”安德鲁舅舅使劲地高声说道，好像他是个大方正直的舅舅，刚刚给过谁一笔可观的小费或是什么善意的忠告似的，“我希望，狄格雷，你不会退缩。一想到我们家族的人竟会因缺乏足够的责任心和骑士精神而不去拯救一位深陷困境的小姐，我就感到十分遗憾。”

“得了吧！”狄格雷说，“要是你有半点责任心和骑士精神，你就会自己去。但我知道你是不会去的。好吧，我知道我必须去。不过你的确是个禽兽，我想这一切都是你安排好的：你先让波莉稀里糊涂地消失了，然后我就不得不跟过去救她。”

“说得没错。”安德鲁舅舅奸笑着说。

“很好，我会去的。但是有件事，我一定要说在前头。原来我一直不相信魔法，直到今天，我才知道那是真的。既然如此，我想那些古老的神话故事或多或少也都是真的。而且我觉得，故事里那些阴险歹毒的魔法师，说的就是你这样的人。在我读过的所有故事里，像你这样的人终究会受到惩罚。我敢打赌，你也不例外，你罪有应得。”

说了那么多，狄格雷的这番话终于第一次说到了点子上。只见安德鲁舅舅大吃一惊，脸上流露出惊恐的神色。虽然他没有良心，但这副样子让人不禁有些同情他。可是，他很快收起了这副神情，勉强地挤出几声大笑。他说：“真是可怜，对于一个像你这样从小在女人堆里长大的孩子来说，这么想是很正常的。那些只不过是老妇人们茶余饭后讲的故事，对吧？你不必为我担心，狄格雷。有这心思还不如担心担心你的小伙伴呢，她不见已经有好一会儿了，要是那边有什么危险的话——唉，哪怕晚到一秒钟也会万分遗憾的。”

“你考虑得可真周到。”狄格雷愤怒地说，“但我已经厌倦了你的谎言，你想让我怎么样？”

“你实在该学学如何控制自己的脾气，我的孩子。”安德鲁舅舅冷冷地说，“否则，你长大以后就会像你莱蒂姨妈一样。好了，现在仔细听我说。”

他站起身来，戴上一副手套，向装有戒指的托盘走去。

“只有在你的皮肤直接接触到这些戒指时，它们才会发挥魔力。”他说，“像我这样戴上手套去拿，什么事也不会发生。如果你把它们装在口袋里，也不会发生任何事。不过，你可一定要小心，千万别无意中把手伸进口袋，然后不小心碰到戒指。一旦你碰到黄戒指，你就会从这个世界上消失。当你到了另一个世界，我猜——当然了，这还没经过实验证明，只是我的猜想——一旦你碰到绿戒指，你就会立刻离开那个世界，重新回到这里。现在看好了，我把这两枚绿戒指放进你右边的口袋。记清楚绿戒指在哪个口袋：G代表绿色，R代表右边，而且G和R恰好是‘绿色’一词的头两个字母。这两枚绿戒指一枚给你，另一枚给那个小女孩。现在，你自己去拿一枚黄戒指吧。如果我是你，我就会把它戴在手指上，这样不容易掉。”

狄格雷正要去拿黄戒指，却突然停住了。

“可是，”他说，“我妈妈怎么办呢？要是她问起我去哪儿了该怎么办？”

“早去早回啊，孩子。”安德鲁舅舅不无得意地说。

“但实际上你也不确定我能不能回来。”

安德鲁舅舅耸耸肩，走过去打开了门，说道：

“既然如此，就依你说的，下楼去吃饭吧。要是你乐意，就让那个小女孩在那个世界里被野兽吃掉，或者淹死，或者饿死，或者永远迷失在那个世界里吧。反正这些对我来说都是一样的。也许你该赶在茶点时间之前先去拜访一下普卢默夫人，向她解释她再也见不到自己的女儿了，就因为你害怕戴上一枚戒指。”

“我的天哪，”狄格雷说，“真希望我力气够大，好打扁你的脑袋！”

说完，他扣上了外衣，深吸一口气，拿起了戒指。当时他想，这是自己做过的最正义、最体面的事了。他后来也总是这么想。

第三章
世界之间的树林

安德鲁舅舅和他的书房立刻消失了，一切霎时变得混沌、晦暗。紧接着，狄格雷感到一束柔和的绿光朝头顶上射来，可脚下却是一片漆黑。他似乎既没有站在什么上面，也没有坐在或躺在什么上面，周围只有一片虚无。“我想我一定在水中。”狄格雷说，“要么就在水下。”他被这样的想法吓了一跳，之后便立即觉得身体在快速向上升。突然，他的脑袋接触到了空气，他发现自己从先前的虚无之中钻了出来，正趴在水潭边一片平坦的草地上。

当狄格雷站起来时，他发现自己并不像是从水里出来的：身上没有浸湿，呼吸也没有半点急促的感觉，衣服完全是干的。他正站在树林中一个不足十英尺宽的小水潭边。林中的树木密集地长在一起，枝繁叶茂，令他根本看不见天空。唯一的光亮是从树叶的缝隙间穿过的绿光。这绿光明亮而温暖，所以树林上方必定骄阳似火。这是你所能想象到的最安静的一片树林。这里没有鸟叫，没有虫鸣，没有任何动物，连风也没有。你甚至能觉察到身边的树木正在生长。除了狄格雷方才钻出的那个水潭外，树林里还有不少其他的水潭——远远望去，每隔几步就有一个。你几乎可以感觉到树木正在用根部喝水。这是一片生机勃勃的树林。后来当狄格雷试着描述这里时，他总是说：“那是一个富饶的地方，富饶得像一块葡萄干蛋糕。”

然而最奇怪的是，还没来得及东张西望，狄格雷就已经差不多忘了自己是如何来到这里的。他无论如何也记不起波莉，记不起安德鲁舅舅，甚至记不起他的妈妈。他没有一点害怕、激动或是好奇的感觉。若是有人问他：“你从哪儿来？”他大概会说：“我一直都在这儿呀。”就是这样的感觉——尽管什么也没发生，你却好像在这个地方待了很久了，而且从来没有感到厌倦。正如狄格雷很久以后说的：“那里什么事也不会发生，只有树木不知疲倦地生长。”

狄格雷久久地盯着眼前的这片树林。这时，他注意到不远处有一个女孩正躺在一棵树下，微闭着眼，一副半梦半醒的模样。狄格雷默不作声地注视了她很久。最后，那女孩睁开眼睛，盯着他看了很久，没有说话。然后她开口了，用的是一种梦呓般的满足的口吻。

“我好像在哪里见过你。”她说。

“我也有这种感觉。”狄格雷说，“你来这儿很久了吗？”

“是的，我一直在这儿。”女孩说，“起码有——我也说不清——应该很久了吧。”

“我也是，我也一直在这儿。”狄格雷说。

“不对。”她说，“我刚才明明看见你从那边的水潭里出来。”

“对，我想是这样的。”狄格雷迷迷糊糊地说，“我记不太清了。”

接着，两人陷入了沉默，久久没有作声。

“真是的，”女孩开口说，“我好想知道，我们之前是不是见过？我有种印象——我的脑袋里像是有幅画面——是关于一个男孩和一个女孩的，就像我们俩一样——他们住在一个跟这儿完全不一样的地方，做着各种各样的事。或许那只是一场梦吧。”

“我好像也做过同样的梦。”狄格雷说，“也是关于一个男孩和一个女孩的，他们是邻居。梦里他们好像在椽条之间爬行。我记得那个女孩的脸很脏。”

“你记错了吧？在我的梦里，男孩的脸才是脏的。”

“我可记不得男孩的脸了。”狄格雷说。接着，他又补充道：“快看！那是什么？”

“哇！是一只豚鼠！”女孩说。那是一只肥肥的豚鼠，正在草地里东嗅西闻。只见豚鼠的腰间缠着一根带子，上面系着一枚闪闪发光的黄色戒指。

“看！快看！”狄格雷大叫，“戒指！你手上戴着一枚戒指呢！我也是！”

那女孩终于提起了兴趣，坐起身来。两人互相注视着对方，努力回忆着究竟发生了什么。紧接着，两人几乎同时喊出声来，女孩喊的是“凯特利先生”，男孩喊的是“安德鲁舅舅”，他们都记起了自己的身份，并开始回想事情的来龙去脉。经过几分钟艰难的对话，他们完全弄明白了。狄格雷还向波莉讲述了安德鲁舅舅禽兽一般的行为。

“那我们现在怎么办？”波莉说，“要带上这只豚鼠一块儿回去吗？”

“不用着急。”狄格雷说着，大大地打了一个哈欠。

“我觉得我们得快点回去。”波莉说，“这里太安静了，像——嗯，就像梦境一样，总让人觉得昏昏欲睡。一旦我们撑不住了，就会躺下来，永远睡过去。”

“可这儿多棒啊！”狄格雷说。

“是啊，的确如此。”波莉说，“但我们还是得回去。”她站起身来，蹑手蹑脚地向那只豚鼠走去，但接着，她又改变了主意。

“我们还是把它留在这儿吧。”她说，“它在这里自在快活，如果我们把它带回去，你舅舅只会伤害它。”

“我想也是。”狄格雷回答道，“看看他是怎样对待我们的！不过话说回来，我们该怎么回去呢？”

“我想，只要回到水潭里去就行了。”

他们一起走过去，站在水潭边，望着平静的水面。水中倒映着潭边葱茏的树木，潭水因此显得深不见底。

“我们没带泳衣。”波莉说。

“才不需要呢，傻瓜。”狄格雷说，“我们可以穿着衣服进去。难道你忘了我们升上来的时候衣服没湿吗？”

“那你会游泳吗？”

“会一点儿，你呢？”

“呃，不太会。”

“我觉得我们不需要游泳。”狄格雷说，“我们就是想要沉下去，不是吗？”

其实他们俩都不太想跳进水潭，但两人都没说什么。他们手拉着手，一面喊着“一——二——三——跳”，一面跳了进去。潭中水花四溅，他们顺势闭上了双眼。但当两人睁开眼时，发现他们仍然手拉着手，站在那片绿色的树林里，而潭里的水几乎还没有没过他们的脚踝。显然，那潭水只有几寸深。于是他们又涉水回到了陆地上。

“到底是哪里出了问题？”波莉有些害怕地说，但也没有如你想象的那么害怕。因为在那片林子里，谁也不可能真正感到害怕，那儿实在是太静谧祥和了。

“嘿！我明白了！”狄格雷说，“我们当然不会成功了，我们还戴着黄戒指呢。是它们把我们送到了这里，知道了吧。绿色的戒指才能带我们回去。我们必须换上绿色的戒指。你有口袋吗？太好了，先把黄戒指放在你左边的口袋里。我这儿有两枚绿戒指，给你一枚。”

他们各自戴上了绿戒指，又回到潭边。可还没等他们往下跳，狄格雷就“哦——”地喊了一声。

“怎么了？”波莉问道。

“我有一个超棒的点子。”狄格雷说，“其他的水潭又是用来做什么的呢？”

“什么意思？”

“我是说，如果我们跳进这个水潭就可以回去，那么，跳进别的水潭岂不是可以到其他的地方去了？说不定每个水潭底下都藏着不同的世界呢！”

“可是我觉得我们已经到了你舅舅所说的‘另一个世界’或者‘另一个地方’或者——别管它叫什么了。你的意思是——”

“唉，烦人的安德鲁舅舅，”狄格雷打断了波莉的话，说道，“我就不相信他什么都知道，他根本不敢亲自到这儿来。他只是说了存在一个‘另一个世界’，但也许还有许多这样的世界呢！”

“你是说，这片树林可能只是众多‘另一个世界’中的一个？”

“不，我觉得这片树林根本称不上是一个世界。我猜，它只是一片用来连接各个世界的中间地带。”

波莉彻底糊涂了。“你怎么还不明白？”狄格雷说，“听我说，想想我们家里那条石板下的隧道吧。它压根就不是任何一幢房子里的房间，在某种程度上，它并不是任何一幢房子的一部分。但是只要你爬进去了，就可以顺着隧道，走进那一整排房子中的任何一幢。同样的道理，这片树林其实可能不属于任何一个世界，但是只要你找到这个地方，就可以去往所有的世界。”

“好吧，就算你可以——”波莉刚开口，狄格雷就像没听见似的接着说：

“这样的话，一切就都说得通了。为什么这里寂静得让人想要入睡，原因就在于此：这里不会有任何事情发生。就好像在家里，我们在屋子里讲话、做家务、吃东西，但是在中间地带，比如墙后面、天花板上、地板底下，或者在我们的隧道里，什么事情也没有。但如果你爬出隧道，就会发现自己来到了一幢房子里。依我看，我们可以以这里为起点，去往任何地方！我们完全没必要跳回来的那个水潭里去，起码现在不用。”

“不同世界之间的树林。”波莉像梦呓似的喃喃自语道，“听起来真是太奇妙了。”

“来吧。”狄格雷说，“跳哪个水潭好呢？”

“嘿，”波莉说，“首先，我们要弄清楚是不是可以从原来的水潭回去，不然我可不去跳别的水潭。我们还不确定是否能回去呢。”

“也对。”狄格雷说，“哪儿也没去就给舅舅抓住，再把戒指拿走，那也太倒霉了。”

“要不我们跳回原来的水潭，但半路返回？”波莉说，“看看这个绿戒指能否带我们回去。如果可以的话，我们就在回到凯特利先生的书房之前换下戒指，再回到这里。”

“这样可行吗？”

“当然了，来的时候只花了一会儿工夫，我想回去自然也是很快的。”

狄格雷抱怨了一阵，但最终不得不同意了。要是不这么做的话，波莉便会拒绝去任何新世界探险。在某些危险面前（比如遇到黄蜂），波莉和他一样勇敢，但她对探索全新的事物并不十分感兴趣。而狄格雷呢，他是那种想了解一切的人。长大以后，他成了另外几本书里提到的赫赫有名的科克教授。

两人争执了好一会儿，终于同意戴上各自的绿戒指，手拉着手跳下去。（“绿色代表着安全。”狄格雷说，“这样，你肯定能分清楚这两种戒指的用途。”）在快到安德鲁舅舅的书房，也就是他们自己的世界时，波莉会喊一声“换”，然后他们就会摘掉绿戒指，换上黄戒指。狄格雷想要喊这一声“换”，但波莉不同意。

于是，他们戴上绿戒指，手拉着手，又一次喊道：“一——二——三——跳。”这次他们成功了。很难描述这到底是一种怎样的感觉，因为一切都发生得太快了。起初，夜空中闪烁着明亮的光芒；狄格雷坚持认为那是星星散发的光芒，他甚至发誓，自己近距离地观察到了木星，近到连它的卫星都看得一清二楚。接着，他们周围立刻出现了一排排屋顶和烟囱的管帽，他们还看见了圣保罗大教堂，并由此推知已经到了伦敦。他们甚至能够透过墙壁，看见房子里面的景象。这时，他们看到了安德鲁舅舅模糊的背影，那背影正变得越发清晰而确切，似乎正逐渐变为视线的焦点。就在安德鲁舅舅的背影即将变得完全清晰的时候，波莉大喊一声“换”，两人便换上了黄戒指。之后，我们的世界如梦一般渐渐淡去，而两人头上的绿光则越来越强。最后，他们再一次钻出水潭，爬到了岸边。眼前的这片树林仍是那样的葱茏、明亮和静谧。整个过程只用了不到一分钟的时间。

“好啦！”狄格雷说，“一切都很顺利，现在该探险了。挑一个水潭吧。来吧，试试那个好了。”

“等等！”波莉说，“难道我们不应该在这个水潭边上做个标记吗？”

两人面面相觑。幸好狄格雷还没跳下去，否则后果不堪设想。想到这里，两人吓得脸都白了。因为林子里有太多水潭，它们的外表十分相似，而周围的树木长得也几乎一模一样，所以一旦他们离开了通向自己世界的那个水潭，又没有留下任何标记，那么再想找到这个水潭的可能性就微乎其微。

狄格雷用颤抖的手打开了削笔刀，在水潭边割下一块长长的草皮。草皮下散发着清香的泥土是红褐色的，在绿色的草地中十分显眼。“还好我们俩有一个人头脑清醒。”波莉说。

“得了，别吹牛了。”狄格雷说，“来吧，我真想看看别的水潭里有什么。”一听这话，波莉立即尖刻地回应，而狄格雷的回击更为刺耳。双方争执不下，足足吵了好几分钟。但如果把他们的对话记录下来就太无趣了，所以让我们跳过那些吧。终于，他们戴上了黄戒指，手拉着手站在另一个水潭边，害怕得心怦怦直跳，再次喊道：“一——二——三——跳！”

只听啪的一声，周围水花四溅。可是他们又一次失败了。这个水潭看上去只是一个小水坑。他们没能到达新的世界，唯一的“收获”便是在一个早上两次弄湿了脚，腿上也溅了水（如果那的确是一个早晨的话，因为在这片世界之间的树林里，时间似乎并不会流逝）。

“烦死了！”狄格雷大声说，“这回又是哪里出了问题？我们明明已经戴上了黄戒指呀。舅舅说过，黄戒指是把人送到外面去的。”

事实上，问题在于安德鲁舅舅对世界之间的这片树林一无所知，而他对于两种颜色的戒指的认识也是错的。黄戒指并非是“送你出去”的戒指，绿戒指也并非是“带你回来”的戒指；起码，不是他所理解的那样。两种戒指均取材自这片树林。制作黄戒指的材料能够将你带往树林，回归它原本所属的中间地带。而制作绿戒指的材料总是企图离开本土，因而能将人送出树林，去往某一个具体的世界。看到了吧，安德鲁舅舅连自己在做什么都没有弄清楚，而大多数魔法师也是如此。当然，狄格雷也没有完全弄清楚真相，起码他是到后来才明白这一点的。两人讨论之后，决定戴上绿戒指，再跳入水潭试试，看看会发生什么。

“你敢我也敢。”波莉说。她之所以这样说，是因为她已经在内心深处确信，无论哪种颜色的戒指都不会在新的水潭里起作用，顶多再溅起一阵水花，没什么好担心的。我不太确定狄格雷是否也抱着同样的想法。但不管怎样，他们还是戴上了绿戒指，手拉着手，站在潭边。这一次，他们表现得轻松愉快，远没有第一次来得严肃。

“一——二——三——跳！”狄格雷说完，他们就跳了下去。

第四章
钟与锤

毫无疑问，这回魔法生效了。他们径直跌了下去，先是穿过一片漆黑的区域，然后又穿过一团说不上是什么的模糊而且旋转着的东西。周围渐渐亮了起来。他们感觉自己踏到了某种坚实的东西上面。又过了一会儿，一切都变得清晰了，两人开始四处观察。

“这真是个奇怪的地方！”狄格雷说。

“我不太喜欢这里。”波莉像是打了个颤似的说道。

他们首先注意到的是这里的光。那光既不像太阳光，也不像电灯光、煤油灯光、烛光，或是任何一种他们所见过的光。这是一种接近红色的毫无生气的光，让人感到十分压抑。光线很稳定，没有闪烁。此时，他们正站在一块平地上，被高耸的建筑物包围着。抬头看不到屋顶，因此他们正处在一个庭院里。头顶上的天空颜色异常暗淡，呈现出一种近乎于黑的蓝色。看到这样的天空，你一定会纳闷这里竟然还有光线。

“这儿的天气可真滑稽。”狄格雷说，“我们大概正赶上了一场暴风雨或是日食。”

“我一点儿也不喜欢这样的天气。”波莉说。

不知为什么，他们两人一直在很小声地说着话。虽然跳入水潭之后就不需要再拉着手了，但是他们还是没有松开对方的手。

庭院四面的围墙非常高。墙上开了许多大窗户，窗户上没镶玻璃，里面黑漆漆的，什么也看不到。窗户下面有一些巨大的拱门，像铁轨隧道的入口一般，张着黑暗而幽深的大口。这里冷极了。

这里所有的建筑都是用一种看起来是红色的石头筑成的，不过这也可能只是那种古怪的光线所致。这种石头显然已经有些年头了。院子里许多用来铺地的石板都已经开裂；石板的排列参差不齐，棱角也早已磨损；其中还有一扇拱门被碎石挡住了一大半。两个孩子一刻不停地旋转着环顾四周，因为他们害怕有人——或是其他什么东西——趁他们背过身去的时候从窗户里窥视他们。

“你觉得有人住在这儿吗？”狄格雷终于开口了，但还是压低了声音。

“我想没有。”波莉说，“这里只剩废墟了。自打我们到这里以来，还没听到过一点儿声音呢。”

“嗯，那我们就站定了，再好好地听一听。”狄格雷提议道。

于是两人站定，仔细聆听，但听到的只有自己怦怦的心跳声。这里甚至比世界之间的那片树林更为安静，不过这是一种与树林里截然不同的静。树林里的静令人感到温暖而充满生机（你几乎可以听见树木生长的声音）；而这里则呈现出一派冰冷空虚的死寂，让人很难想象这里会有生命。

“我们还是回家吧。”波莉说。

“可是我们还什么都没看呢。”狄格雷说，“既然来了，起码也要四处转转吧。”

“我敢肯定，这儿没什么好玩的。”

“来都来了，你还不敢四处看看。要真是这样的话，用魔戒把你带到‘另一个世界’还有什么意义呢？”

“谁说我不敢？”波莉边说边甩开了狄格雷的手。

“我只是觉得你好像对探索这个地方缺乏热情。”

“你去哪里，我就去哪里。”

“放心，我们想走的时候就能走。”狄格雷说，“现在，把我们的绿戒指取下来，放进右边的口袋里。你只要记住一点，黄戒指在左边口袋里。你可以把手放在离口袋比较近的位置，但是千万不要伸进去，否则，一碰到黄戒指你就会消失的。”

一切准备就绪，他们便向着通往其中一幢建筑内部的巨大拱门走去。当他们站在门槛上朝里看时，发现里面并没有他们之前所想的那么黑。里面是一个宽阔而昏暗的大厅，大厅里空荡荡的；远处有一排拱门柱，半圆拱间照射出更多令人感到困倦的光束。他们小心翼翼地穿过大厅，生怕地上有暗洞或其他什么东西将他们绊倒。他们接着往前走，穿过柱子间的拱门，发现自己来到了另一个更大的庭院里。

“这里看上去不太安全。”波莉边说边指着一面看起来摇摇欲坠的向外凸出的墙。有两扇拱门之间的承重处少了一根柱子，原本应由柱子支撑的部位只留下一点儿痕迹，正毫无依靠地悬在半空中。很显然，这里已经荒废了上百年甚至上千年了。

“既然这片废墟能够保留至今，我想它还能这样维持下去。”狄格雷说，“不过我们要保持安静。你也知道，有时声音会震得东西塌下来——就像引发阿尔卑斯山的雪崩一样。”

他们接着朝前走，出了庭院，又进了另一扇门。他们登上一大段台阶，穿过一个又一个大房间，终于被这个地方的宏大规模弄得头晕目眩。他们每经过一个庭院时都想着可能就要走出去了，终于可以看看这巨大宫殿之外的田园风光了，但是他们每次都只是走进一个新的庭院。这里还有人住的时候，一定是一派雄伟壮观的景象。有一个庭院里曾有过一眼喷泉。喷泉旁是一只巨大的石兽，只见它张着羽翼，咧着大嘴，雄踞在此；在石兽的大嘴中，你还能依稀看见当年出水的管道。石兽下面是一个用来接水的宽大的石台，但此时已如枯骨一般干涸了。在别处，他们发现了攀缘植物的枯藤，这些藤蔓曾经缠绕在柱子上，还一度使得几根柱子轰然倒塌。但这株植物早就死了。这里没有蚂蚁、蜘蛛的动静，也见不到其他废墟中的常客。开裂的石板间既没有草，也没有青苔，只有干燥的泥土。

周围的一切都十分单调，甚至有些瘆人。就连狄格雷也认为，还不如戴上黄戒指，回到世界之间那片温暖而充满生机的树林中去呢。就在这时，他们来到了两扇巨大的门前。大门像是用金子做的，其中一扇半开着。他们顺势向里面望去，不由得倒吸了一口气，惊得退了回来——终于找到值得一看的地方了。

起初，他们以为屋子里全是人——看那阵势，足有好几百人，都一动不动地坐着。正如你想象的那样，波莉和狄格雷也一动不动地站着朝里面张望了许久。但他们很快便意识到，眼前这些可能并非真人。他们纹丝不动地坐在那里，连喘气的声音都没有，就像是两人所见过的最逼真的蜡像。

这一回，波莉走在了狄格雷前头。屋子里有些东西对她更具吸引力：所有的蜡像都穿着华贵的服饰。稍微对服装有一点兴趣的人，都会忍不住凑到跟前去看上几眼。那些蜡像身上光鲜华丽的服饰尽管没有那么赏心悦目，但经过了那么多空荡灰暗的房间之后，两人觉得这倒也让这整间屋子显得富丽堂皇。而且这里的窗户更多，因此也明亮多了。

这些蜡像的服饰很难形容。他们都身穿长袍，头戴王冠。长袍颜色各异，有绯红、银灰、深紫，还有鲜绿色的；上面还绣着各式各样的花纹，比如花卉和异兽。蜡像头上的王冠与脖颈间的项链闪着耀眼的光芒，上面镶嵌着硕大的宝石，他们浑身都星光熠熠、珠光宝气的。

“都过了这么久，这些衣服不会腐烂吗？”波莉问。

狄格雷压低声音回答道：“是魔法，你感觉不到吗？我敢说，这间屋子被施了魔法，一进来的时候我就觉察到了。”

“那些衣服随便哪一件都价值好几百英镑吧。”波莉说。

不过狄格雷显然对这些蜡像的面容更感兴趣，而这也的确值得一看。蜡像端坐在屋内四周的石椅上，屋子中间反倒空了出来，可以让人走过去近距离地观察他们。

“要我说，他们长得可真好看。”狄格雷说。

波莉点点头。他们见到的蜡像都有着讨人喜欢的面容。无论是男是女，都显得聪慧且友善，这些人应当是一个面相俊美的种族的后裔。不过再往房间中心移动几步，他们看到的面容就不太一样了。这些面容异常严肃，要是你在生活中遇到这样的人，你就立马会注意自己的言行举止。再向前走一点儿，他们发现自己已经不再喜欢此时看到的那些面容了，而这里已接近屋子的中间了。这些面容看起来强势、高傲又得意，还透着冷酷。越往前走，他们看到的面容就越发冷酷。再往前走，得意的神情也不见了，甚至显露出绝望，就好像这些面容的主人做了什么可怕的事情，同时也遭受了恐怖的事情。最后一个蜡像是最有趣的，那是一位衣着更加华丽的女士，身材极为高挑（不过屋里的任何一个蜡像都比我们这个世界的人要高）。她脸上所显露出的冷酷与傲慢简直令人窒息。许多年后，当年迈的狄格雷再次想起那副面孔，他仍说那是他此生见过的最美的女人。公平起见，我们需要补充一下，波莉一直说那个女人并没有什么特别好看的地方。

正如我所说的，这位女士是最后一个蜡像，但在她身后还放着许多空椅子，好像这间房间原本准备容纳更多的蜡像。

“真想知道这一切背后的故事。”狄格雷说，“我们回去看看屋子中央那个长得像桌子的东西吧。”

确切地说，屋子中央的东西并不是一张桌子。那其实是一根约有四尺高的方形柱子，柱子上方架着一扇金色的小拱门，门上悬着一只金色的小钟，小钟旁还摆着一把敲钟用的金色小锤。

“我想……我想……我想……”狄格雷结结巴巴地说。

“这儿好像写了什么。”波莉弯下腰，观察着柱子的侧面说道。

“可不是嘛，就写在这儿。”狄格雷说，“可是我们肯定读不懂写的是什么。”

“读不懂吗？我觉得未必。”波莉说。

于是两人端详了起来。你大概已经想象到，刻在石头上的那些字母奇怪极了。但就在此时，奇迹发生了：尽管在他们细细端详的时候，那些奇怪的字母没有发生任何变化，但是他们却发现自己可以理解这些符号所表示的意义。如果狄格雷还记得自己几分钟前说过这个房间被施了魔法，他就能猜到此时发生了什么——魔法开始灵验了。不过此时此刻，他的心中只有好奇，没有半点别的想法。他迫切地想要知道柱子上到底写了些什么，而两人很快就都明白了。柱子上的话内容如下，至少大意如下，尽管你要是在那儿，定会觉得原诗更好：

请做出你的选择，热爱冒险的陌生人；

用锤敲响钟，然后等待危险降临，

或者只是苦苦冥想，你究竟会有何下场，

直到这一切把你逼疯。

“绝不！”波莉说，“我们可不想招来任何危险。”

“可你还不明白吗？我们已经别无选择了。”狄格雷说，“不然我们就会一直好奇，敲响了钟之后究竟会发生什么。我可受不了回家以后被这个念头逼得发疯，我可受不了！”

“别傻了。”波莉说，“好像真有谁会揪住这念头一直想到发疯为止！敲钟之后究竟会发生什么真有那么重要吗？”

“依我看，任何一个走到这一步的人一定都会止不住地这样想，直到整个人都癫狂为止。看到了吧，这就是这段话的魔力，我感觉到它已经在我身上起作用了。”

“我可没觉得。”波莉愤愤地说，“我才不信你真的感觉到什么了，你不过是在演戏罢了。”

“可不是嘛。”狄格雷说，“那是因为你是个女孩，而女孩们只想聊八卦，成天谈论的只有谁和谁订婚了这种事情。”

“你说这话的语气和你舅舅一模一样。”波莉说。

“你能不能不要岔开话题？”狄格雷说，“我们现在讨论的是——”

“你这样可真像一个男子汉！”波莉学着大人的口气说道。但她很快又用自己的声音补充了一句：“别说我就像个女人，不然你就是一个只会学别人说话的讨厌鬼！”

“我可从来也没有想过把你这样的小毛孩儿叫作女人。”狄格雷傲慢地说。

“所以我是个小毛孩儿，是吗？”这下波莉真生气了，她接着说道，“太好了，你再也用不着让一个孩子陪你冒险了。我要走了，我受够这里了，我也受够你了——你这个讨厌透顶的、顽固不化的、自命不凡的猪头！”

眼看波莉把手伸进口袋去摸她那枚黄色的戒指，狄格雷用一种连他自己都想不到的难听的声音喊道：“快住手！”我无法为狄格雷接下来的行为做任何辩解，我只能说，他事后感到十分抱歉（就像许多人一样）。就在波莉把手伸进口袋的那一瞬间，狄格雷一把揪住了她的手腕，身体向前一倾，用后背顶住了她的前胸，又用另一只手的肘关节挡开了她的另一条胳膊。狄格雷斜着身子，一把捡起金色小锤，飞快地在钟上敲了一下。之后，他松开了波莉，两个人都摔倒在地上，一边喘着粗气，一边还恶狠狠地盯着对方。波莉哭了起来，倒不是出于恐惧，也不是因为她的手腕被扭疼了，而是因为愤怒。不过，他们很快就忘记了方才的不愉快，因为又有新的危机出现了。

钟被敲响后发出了一个音调，声音不大，但正如你所想的那样，音调悦耳动人。但之后，这个声音并没有变小，反而不断地响着，而且越来越响，在不到一分钟的时间里，它就比刚开始的时候响了一倍。不一会儿，这声音已经响到让孩子们听不到对方说话的程度了（不过他们当时并不想说话，他们只是瞠目结舌地呆站着）。很快，声音变得更响了，即使他们大声呼喊也听不到彼此了。这悦耳的声音还在继续变响，只是在这动听的声音之中竟开始有了些恐怖诡异的味道。到后来，屋子里的空气开始与声音一同振动起来，他们感到脚下的石头地面也在颤动。之后，又一种模糊的、灾难般的噪声夹杂了进来。这种声音一开始像远处火车的轰鸣，后来又像树木倒下折断的声音。他们仿佛听见有什么重物倒了下来。最后，一阵突如其来的剧烈震颤几乎将他们震倒。伴随着隆隆作响的震动声，屋内一角上方大约四分之一的屋顶坍塌了，大块的砖石砸在他们脚边，墙壁也开始晃动。这时，钟声戛然而止，灰尘也飘散不见，一切又归于平静。

我们永远也无法弄清楚屋顶为何坍塌——究竟是魔法的作用，还是因为那破旧不堪的墙体承受不住巨大的钟声引起的震动？

“这下可好了！现在你满意了吧。”波莉气喘吁吁地说。

“不管怎样，这一切都结束了。”狄格雷说。

他们两个都以为如此，然而他们两个都想错了。

第五章
亡语

波莉和狄格雷隔着那根挂着小钟的柱子面对面站着。尽管已经听不见钟声了，但那金色的小钟依然在颤动。突然，从屋子尚未坍塌的那一端传来了一阵轻微的声音，他们立马转过身去看发生了什么事。只见离他们最远的一尊身着长袍的蜡像，就是狄格雷觉得有着非凡魅力的那个女人，正从椅子上站起来。他们立马意识到，她比想象中的还要高。不仅如此，当你看到她的王冠、长袍以及眼神、唇形时，你就会明白，她是一位不凡的女王。她环视着四周的破败景象，看到了两个孩子，但单凭她脸上的表情，你无法判断她此时的想法，也看不出她是否对此感到意外。就在这时，她大步流星地走上前来。

“是何人唤醒了我，又是何人打破了魔咒？”她问道。

“我想应该是我。”狄格雷说。

“是你！”女王若有所思地说道，一边把手搭在了狄格雷肩上。那是一只白皙、漂亮的手，但狄格雷却觉得它像铁钳一般沉重。“你？可你只是个孩子，一个普通的孩子。不论是谁，只要瞧上一眼，就能知道你的血脉里哪怕一滴皇家或贵族的血也没有。你这样的人怎么敢走进这间屋子？”

“我们是从另一个世界来到这里的，而且是凭借魔法。”波莉说。她认为是时候让女王注意到自己了，就像女王注意到狄格雷一样。

“是吗？”女王说，可眼睛仍然紧盯着狄格雷，甚至不瞟波莉一眼。

“没错。”狄格雷说。

女王用另一只手抬起狄格雷的下巴，以便仔细观察他的脸。狄格雷死死地瞪着她，但很快就垂下了眼。女王眼神中的某种东西制服了他。她仔细端详了足有一分多钟才放开狄格雷的下巴，说道：

“你不是什么魔法师，因为你脸上没有魔法师的标记。你一定只是某个魔法师的仆人，是别人的魔法把你送到这儿来的。”

“是我舅舅安德鲁的魔法。”狄格雷说。

就在此时，从屋子外面的不远处传来了一阵响动。先是轰隆轰隆的声音，而后是崩裂声，随后是石块坠落的声音，地板也随之晃动起来。

“亡祸来了。”女王说，“这座宫殿就要倒了。如果我们不在几分钟内出去，就会被埋在宫殿的废墟之中。”她表现得十分平静，好像只是在谈论现在几点钟了一样。“来。”她一边说着，一边将双手伸向两个孩子。波莉不喜欢这个女王，而且她现在还在气头上，若非情势所迫，波莉绝不会让她拉自己的手。女王虽然说话时不紧不慢，但动作却像她的思维一样敏捷。还没等波莉反应过来，她的左手就被一只更大、更有力的手抓住了。她只好乖乖接受了。

“真是个可怕的女人。”波莉心想，“她的力气可真大，稍一使劲就能弄断我的胳膊。现在可好，我的左手被她抓住了，我也摸不到黄戒指了。要是我试着把右手伸到左边的口袋里去摸戒指，在她察觉之前，我可能也摸不到。不管怎么样，我们绝对不能让她知道戒指的事。但愿狄格雷不会说漏嘴。要是我能单独跟他说句话就好了。”

女王带他们走出了陈列蜡像的大厅，来到一条长廊里；接着，他们又在台阶上上上下下，连续穿过许多大厅和庭院。他们听见建筑坍塌的声音不断地从身后的宫殿里传来。有一次，他们刚经过一扇巨大的拱门，它就轰隆一声倒下了。女王走得飞快，并且自始至终未曾露出半点惧色，孩子们不得不一路小跑着跟上她。狄格雷心想：“她可真是勇敢，还很强壮。这正是我心目中的女王！真希望能听她讲讲这里发生的故事！”

而一路上，她确实告诉了他们一些事情。

她一会儿说“那扇门通往地牢”，一会儿又说“那条路通向主行刑室”，或者说“这里以前是宴客厅，我的曾祖父曾在这里大宴七百贵族，没等他们吃饱喝足就把他们全杀了，他们原本想要造反”。

最后，他们走进了一间比先前看到的都要更大、更高的厅堂。从它的规模和尽头处的巨门来看，狄格雷推断他们一定来到了主入口。这次他总算猜对了。这些门是死气沉沉的黑色，材质要不就是乌木，要不就是一种在我们这个世界找不到的黑色金属。门上紧紧地挂着许多巨大的门闩，大多又高又沉，根本够不到，也抬不起来。狄格雷开始想着他们究竟该如何脱身。

女王松开了狄格雷的手，举起自己的手臂，身体尽量直立，使重心上抬。然后，她说了几句他们根本无法理解的话（但听起来十分恐怖），朝着门的方向摆出了一个投掷的动作，那些又高又重的门便如同丝织品一样颤抖着立刻坍塌了，只留下门槛上的一堆灰尘。

“吁！”狄格雷吹了一声口哨。

“你那位魔法大师舅舅，他有我这般的魔力吗？”女王又攥住了狄格雷的手，说道，“不过我以后就会知道的。记住你们今日所见，我对物如此，对挡住我去路的人也是如此。”

更多光线从豁开的门洞中洒了进来。自从来到这个世界，他们尚未见过这么充足的光线。女王带着他们穿过门洞来到了室外，对此他们并不感到意外。此时，他们正站在一个高起的平台上，俯瞰着脚下壮阔的景致。

只见一轮比我们这个世界的太阳大得多的红日悬垂在略高于地平线的地方。狄格雷立马就觉得这个太阳的年岁长于我们的太阳，而且这即将燃尽的太阳已经疲于俯瞰下面的世界。太阳的左上方有一颗又大又亮的星，两者在这黑暗的天幕上构成了一幅阴郁的画面。地面上是一座无论从何处都望不到头的巨大城市。城里不见活物，在渐衰的太阳光芒照射下，所有的庙宇、高塔、宫殿、金字塔和桥梁都拖着长长的、悲壮的影子。曾经有一条大河流经这座城市，不过如今它早已干涸，只剩下一条极宽的灰色土沟。

“瞧仔细了，否则以后再也没机会看到了。”女王说，“这就是恰恩——一座伟大的城市，一座属于王中王的城市。它是这个世界乃至所有世界的奇迹。你的舅舅也统治着跟恰恩一样伟大的城市吗，孩子？”

“没有。”狄格雷说。他正想解释安德鲁舅舅没有统治任何城市，但女王继续说道：

“现在可真安静。想当年，当这里各种声音鼎沸之时，我也曾站在这个地方，听着脚步声、车轮声、挥鞭声和奴隶的呻吟声，还有马车经过时的轰响以及献祭时寺庙里的击鼓声。后来，战争开始了，杀声震天，响彻全城。当恰恩长河被鲜血染红之时，我也站在这儿（但那时战争已经快要结束了）。”她顿了一下，接着说：“电光石火之间，一个女人使这一切灰飞烟灭。”

“这个女人是谁？”狄格雷低声问道，但他几乎已经猜到了答案。

“是我。”女王说，“我，嘉蒂丝，最后一位女王，也是世界之王。”

两个孩子静静地站着，在寒风中瑟瑟发抖。

“要怪就怪我姐姐。”嘉蒂丝说，“是她逼我这样做的。但愿众神诅咒她！想当初，我已做好了和解的准备。没错，只要她愿意把王位让给我，我就会饶她不死。可她不愿意，所以真正毁了整个世界的其实是她的傲慢。甚至在开战后不久，尽管我们都承诺不使用魔法，可她背弃了诺言，我又能怎么办呢？她太蠢了，好像不知道我的法力比她更强一样！她甚至知道我已经掌握了亡语的秘密。她难道以为——她一直都是我们两人中实力较弱的那一个——我真的不会使用亡语吗？”

“这到底是什么咒语呢？”狄格雷问。

“那是最高机密。”嘉蒂丝女王说，“长久以来，我们民族那些高贵的国王们都知道这个咒语。它只有一个字，只要配合恰当的仪式将其讲出，除了说话人自己，所有生灵都将覆灭。可是彼时的国王们心肠都太软，他们不仅自我约束，同时也约束他们的后人，让他们立下誓言，永不探究那个字的秘密。然而，我在一个隐秘之地付出了沉重的代价，学会了这个咒语。我本来不想使用咒语，但我姐姐逼得我走投无路，只能动用秘咒。为了击败她，我用尽了一切办法。我的战士们也为此血流成河——”

“畜生！”波莉嘀咕了一声。

“还记得最后一战。”女王说，“这场仗在恰恩城打了三天。整整三天，我就站在现在这个地方俯视着战场上的一切。我一直没有使用魔法，直到我的最后一批将士倒下。那可憎的女人，也就是我的姐姐，已经带着叛军在从城镇通向这个台地的大台阶上爬了一半。我一直等着她，等到我们能互相看清对方的脸。她用那双可怕又邪恶的眼睛紧盯着我，说道：‘赢了。’‘是啊。’我说，‘赢了，但不是你赢。’接着，我说出了亡语。顷刻间，我便成了太阳底下仅存的活物。”

“但是那些人呢？”狄格雷气喘吁吁地问。

“什么人，我的孩子？”女王问。

“所有那些普通人。”波莉说，“他们并没有伤害过你，那些妇女、儿童，还有动物。”

“难道你还不明白吗？”女王仍然对着狄格雷说道，“我是女王，他们是我的臣民，服从我的意志就是他们存在的意义呀！”

“看来无论如何，他们都是很不幸的了。”狄格雷说。

“差点儿忘了，你不过是个普通的男孩，你又怎么会理解执政的逻辑呢？可是你要知道，孩子，对你或者对其他凡人来说错误的事，对我这样伟大的女王而言是不算错的。天下的重担都压在我们肩上。我们必须从所有规则的约束中解脱出来。我们的命运是高贵而孤独的。”

狄格雷突然想起安德鲁舅舅也说过一模一样的话，但这些话由嘉蒂丝女王说出来，就显得庄严得多。这可能是因为安德鲁舅舅个头矮小，也没有惊人的美貌吧。

“再后来呢？”狄格雷问道。

“我事先对摆放祖先蜡像的大厅下了魔咒。这些魔咒有强大的魔力，使我自己也变成了一尊蜡像，沉睡在他们中间，千年不寒，千年无饥。直到有人进来，敲钟唤醒了我。”

“所以太阳的这副样子是亡语造成的吗？”狄格雷问。

“什么样子？”嘉蒂丝问。

“这么大，这么红，这么冷。”

“这里的太阳一直都是这样的。”嘉蒂丝说，“千百年来，始终如此。你们世界的太阳不一样吗？”

“没错。它要小一些，黄一些，散发出的热量则要多得多。”

“啊——”女王发出一声长长的叹息。狄格雷从她脸上看到了他不久前在安德鲁舅舅脸上看到过的那种贪婪的神情。“这么说来，”她说，“你们的世界要年轻一些。”

她顿了顿，又望了一眼这座荒凉的城市。如果说她当真为自己的恶行感到内疚，那么从她的神情中丝毫看不出这种内疚。她接着说道：

“好了，我们该走了。这儿是世纪的末日，实在太冷了。”

“去哪儿？”两个孩子同时问道。

“去哪儿？”嘉蒂丝惊讶地重复道，“当然是去你们的世界。”

波莉和狄格雷对看了一眼，眼中充满了诧异。波莉从一开始就讨厌这个女王，而狄格雷则是在听了那段故事以后，才觉得对她有了充分的了解——这是一位暴君。显然，没有谁愿意带这样的人回去。哪怕他们真的愿意，也不知道怎么带她回去，更何况此时他们只想自己脱身。但波莉摸不到戒指，狄格雷自然也不能丢下她单独离去。他急得满脸通红，连说话都结巴了。

“噢——噢——我们的世界，我——我不知道你想到那儿去。”

“难道你们不是来接我的吗？”嘉蒂丝反问道。

“我敢说，你一定不会喜欢我们那里的。”狄格雷说，“那地方不适合她，是吧，波莉？那儿可无趣了，一点儿也不值得看，真的。”

“等我去统治那里，它就会值得一看了。”女王回答。

“啊，但你不能那样做。”狄格雷说，“一切不像你想的这样。他们不会答应的，你知道的。”

女王傲慢地笑着说道：“很多伟大的国王都以为自己能和恰恩王朝作对，但他们都没有得逞，甚至连名字也被人遗忘了。傻孩子！你觉得，凭我的美貌和魔力，难道还不足以在一年之内征服你们的世界吗？准备好你们的魔法，我们即刻启程。”

“这实在是太可怕了。”狄格雷对波莉说。

“也许你是害怕你的舅舅。”嘉蒂丝说，“但只要他对我表示出适当的尊敬，我可以饶他不死，也可以留住他的王位。我不会跟他作对的。既然他知道怎么把你们送到这儿来，那他一定是个非常了不起的魔法师。他是你们那个世界的王呢，还是某片区域的统治者？”

“他哪里的王都不是。”狄格雷说。

“你撒谎！”女王说，“只有拥有皇家血统的人才懂魔法，不是吗？谁听说过普通人也能当魔法师？不管你承认与否，我都知道，你舅舅一定是你们世界的一个伟大的国王，也是一位了不起的魔法师。他已经凭他的魔法看到了我的容貌，就在某面魔镜或是某个魔池之中。他瞬间爱上了我的美貌，因此施展了一种足以动摇你们那个世界的强大咒语，让你们穿越世界之间的鸿沟，来这里救我，并将我带回他的身边。现在，回答我，难道不是这样吗？”

“这个嘛，好像不是这样的。”狄格雷说。

“根本不是这样的。”波莉叫了起来，“从头到尾都是瞎说。”

“愚臣！”女王喊道。她怒火中烧，一把揪住波莉的头发，而且刚好抓在头顶，那里的痛觉最为明显。但这样一来，孩子们的手就自由了。“就是现在！”狄格雷大叫道。波莉也喊了一声：“快！”于是，他们把左手伸进口袋里，根本不用戴上戒指，就在碰到戒指的那一瞬，这个可怕的世界就从他们眼前完完全全地消失了。他们又一次向上冲去，离头顶那一缕温暖的绿光越来越近。

第六章
安德鲁舅舅的麻烦降临

“松手！松手！”波莉尖声喊着。

“我可没碰你！”狄格雷说。

脑袋一出水潭，他们便回到了世界之间的那片树林，回到了明媚的阳光与宁静之中。在他们眼中，此时的这片树林似乎比以往任何时候都更茂密、温暖与静谧，因为他们终于远离了那个荒芜、破败的地方。我想，如果条件允许的话，他们又会忘记自己是谁、从哪儿来，然后躺下，聆听树木的生长，在半睡半醒中享受快乐的时光。然而这次，他们不得不保持清醒。因为一到草地上，他们就发现，这里并不只有他们两人。那个女王，或者女巫（你想叫她什么都可以），也跟来了，还紧紧地抓着波莉的头发。难怪波莉方才大喊“松手”。

顺便说一下，这也显示了戒指的另一个功用，而这一点安德鲁舅舅并没有告诉狄格雷，因为他自己也不知道。那就是，只要触碰到一个正在触摸戒指的人，你不必亲手戴上或触摸戒指，便可以通过那些戒指从一个世界来到另一个世界。这就像磁铁的工作原理一样：我们都知道，如果用一块磁铁去吸一枚别针，碰到这枚别针的其他别针也会被吸起来。

此时，置身于树林中的嘉蒂丝女王看上去和之前很不一样：她的脸色要比之前苍白得多，美貌也几乎不复存在了。她弯下腰去，表现出一副呼吸困难的样子，好像这里的空气令她窒息。两个孩子现在一点儿也不怕她了。

“松手！放开我的头发。”波莉说，“你究竟想干什么？”

“听着！放开她的头发，就是现在！”狄格雷说。

两人转过身，与女王扭打在一起。他们比她强壮，不一会儿就迫使她松开了手。她摇晃着向后退去，大口喘着粗气，眼里满是恐惧。

“快，狄格雷！”波莉说，“换戒指，跳进回家的水潭！”

“救救我！救救我！老天呀！”女巫蹒跚着跟随在他们身后，有气无力地喊着，“带上我。你们不能把我留在这个可怕的地方，这会让我没命的。”

“这就是执政的逻辑。”波莉愤愤地说，“就像你让你的世界里那些无辜的人丧生一样。快点，狄格雷。”他们此时已经戴上了绿戒指，但狄格雷说：

“真烦人！我们该怎么办？”他不由自主地对女王产生了一丝怜悯之情。

“别犯傻。”波莉说，“她十有八九是装的。快来吧。”于是，两个孩子都跳进了回家的水潭里。“还好我们事先做了标记。”波莉想。但是，就在他们往下跳时，狄格雷感到有两根冰冷的手指揪住了他的耳朵。他们开始向下沉。随着我们的世界逐渐显现出来，揪住他耳朵的手指也越来越有力。毫无疑问，女巫嘉蒂丝的元气正在慢慢恢复。狄格雷连打带踢，想要挣脱，却无济于事。不一会儿，他们便回到了安德鲁舅舅的书房中。安德鲁舅舅目瞪口呆地看着狄格雷从另一个世界带回的奇妙生物。

他这样呆望着是有理由的。狄格雷和波莉也目瞪口呆。毫无疑问，女巫已经恢复了她的元气。此时，她正站在我们的世界里，和周围的普通事物一比，简直高大得令人胆战心惊。在恰恩，她就已经够让人惊讶了；而如今在伦敦，她使人感到惊恐。我在这里就说一点，他们到此刻才意识到她到底有多么高大。

“简直不是人类。”狄格雷看着她时，心里是这样想的。他的看法也许是对的，因为据说恰恩皇族有着巨人血统。但她的高大远不及她的美丽、残暴与狂野来得耀眼。她看上去比伦敦大街上的大多数行人都要多出十倍的精力。安德鲁舅舅搓着手、弓着背；说实话，他看起来害怕极了。在女巫身边，他就像是一只小虾米。而且，就像波莉后来所说的，他和女巫的表情有某种相似之处；那是一种专属于所有邪恶的魔法师的表情，也就是嘉蒂丝说她在狄格雷脸上找不到的“记号”。看见这两个人站在一起有一种好处：你不会再怕安德鲁舅舅，就好像见过响尾蛇后就不再怕蚯蚓，见过发疯的公牛后就不再怕母牛一样。

“真可笑！”狄格雷想，“他也算是魔法师！他根本不够格。她才是货真价实的。”

安德鲁舅舅仍不停地搓着手、鞠着躬。他想说几句客套话，但口干得实在说不出来。他那所谓的用戒指做的“实验”，如今看来，比他盼望的还要成功。虽然他与魔法打了多年的交道，但他总是尽己所能地把危险留给他人。类似今天这样的事还从未发生过。

这时，嘉蒂丝开口了。她的声音不大，却使整间屋子都震了起来。

“那个把我召来这个世界的魔法师在哪儿？”

“噢——噢——尊敬的夫人，”安德鲁舅舅喘息着说，“我感到莫大的荣幸——非常高兴——最最意想不到的快乐。要是我有机会准备一下就好了，我——我——”

“那个魔法师在哪儿，蠢蛋？”嘉蒂丝问。

“我——是我，夫人。我希望你能原谅——呃——这些调皮的孩子在你面前的失礼。我向你保证，他们不是故意的——”

“你？”女王的声音愈加可怕。说着，她一步横跨了整间屋子，一把抓住安德鲁舅舅的灰发，将他的头朝后一拧，使他面向自己。接着，她像在恰恩王宫里端详狄格雷的脸一样仔细端详起了他的脸。安德鲁舅舅紧张得不停地眨眼睛、舔嘴唇。最后，她松开他，他一下向后倒去，摇摇晃晃地撞在墙上。

“我知道了，”她轻蔑地说，“你是个魔法师——算是吧。起来，你这条狗，别像跟你的同类说话时一样蜷缩在那儿。你是如何掌握魔法的？我敢发誓，你没有皇族血统。”

“这——嗯——严格来说，也许我没有皇族血统。”安德鲁舅舅支支吾吾地说，“我不算纯正的皇族，夫人。不过话说回来，凯特利家族历史悠久，是多塞特郡一个古老的家族，夫人。”

“肃静！”女巫说，“我知道你是什么货色。你离不开规则和书本，是个只会自卖自夸的小魔法师。你的血液和心脏里没有真正的魔力。像你这样的魔法师，早在一千年前就在我们的世界被灭绝了。但在这儿，我允许你做我的仆人。”

“我向您保证，能为您服务，我感到荣幸至极——这真是一件幸事。”

“住嘴！你说得太多了。听清楚了，下面是你的第一个任务。我看得出这是个大城市，马上设法给我弄一辆马车或一张飞毯或一条温驯的龙，也可以是任何一样你们这里的皇家贵族常用的出行工具。然后，带我去能弄到符合我身份地位的服饰、珠宝和奴隶的地方。明天起，我就要开始征服这个世界了。”

“我——我——我这就去叫一辆出租马车。”安德鲁舅舅大口大口地喘着气。

“站住。”他刚走到门口，女巫就叫住了他，“别想耍花招。我的目光可以穿透墙壁，直达人的内心。你走到哪儿都逃不出我的眼睛。只要你稍稍露出不服从我的苗头，我就会诅咒你：你坐的任何东西都会像烧红的铁块一般炙热；任何时候你躺上床，脚边都会有看不见的冰块。好了，现在走吧。”

那老家伙像一条夹着尾巴的落水狗一样灰溜溜地出去了。

孩子们害怕嘉蒂丝向他们问起树林中的事。然而，她什么都没有说，后来也没再提起这件事。我想（狄格雷也这样觉得），她根本记不住那片宁静的地方，即便你经常带她去，或者把她长时间地留在那里，她仍然对那里一无所知。安德鲁舅舅出去后，她便单独与孩子们在一起，但她对他们不闻不问。在恰恩，她根本没有注意过波莉（直到最后才注意到她），因为她当时只想利用狄格雷。现在她有了安德鲁舅舅，便不再理会狄格雷了。我认为大多数女巫都是这样：她们信奉极致的实用主义，只对可利用的人和物感兴趣。所以，屋子里有一阵子安静极了。但是，从嘉蒂丝用脚拍打地板的方式上看得出，她越来越不耐烦了。

不一会儿，她仿佛自言自语地说道：“这老傻瓜干什么去了？我真该带根鞭子来。”她看也不看孩子们一眼，就冲出门去追安德鲁舅舅。

“吁！”波莉长长地舒了口气，说道，“我想我该回家了。已经很晚了，我回去会受罚的。”

“好，尽快回来。”狄格雷说，“把她带到这儿来实在是太糟糕了。我们必须订个什么计划，把她送回去。”

“这是你舅舅的事。”波莉说，“是他用魔法造成了这混乱的局面。”

“不管怎么说，你一定会回来的，是吗？你不能让我一个人来收拾这个烂摊子，那也太说不过去了吧。”

“我会钻进隧道，然后回家。”波莉冷冷地说道，“这是最快的方法。要是你当真希望我回来，是不是最好说声‘对不起’？”

“对不起？”狄格雷叫道，“这么说我不就像个小女孩一样了吗？我做了什么？”

“可不是嘛，你什么也没做。”波莉讥讽道，“不过是早些时候在那间蜡像厅里，某些人像个懦弱的恶霸一样差点把我的手腕拧断；不过是像一个傻瓜似的用小锤去敲钟；不过是在树林里准备跳进水潭前又转过身去，好让她有机会抓住你。就是这些。”

“噢。”狄格雷惊讶地说，“好了，我说对不起，而且我对蜡像厅里发生的事真的感到非常抱歉。那么，既然我已经说了对不起，你就应该回来，否则可就太不像样了。如果你不回来，那就无异于把我推进了一个可怕的深渊里。”

“我觉得你不用担心接下来的事。毕竟，是凯特利先生要坐在烫人的椅子上，是他的床边会有冰，不是吗？”

“不是那回事儿。”狄格雷说，“我是担心我妈妈。假如那怪物进了她的房间，这会把她吓死的。”

“噢，我明白了。”波莉换了一种语调说道，“好吧，此次行动代号为‘和平女神’。如果可以的话，我会回来的。不过现在我必须走了。”于是，她钻出小门，进入隧道。在几小时前，房梁之间那片黑漆漆的地方还那么令人激动、那么充满冒险色彩，如今却显得稀松平常了。

我们现在再回头讲讲安德鲁舅舅。他从阁楼上跌跌撞撞地跑下去时，那颗可怜的老心脏害怕得怦怦直跳。他用手帕在额头上不断地擦着汗。一来到楼下的卧室，他便把自己锁在里面。接着，他先是从衣柜里摸出了一个瓶子和一个酒杯（他总是把这些东西藏在柜子里，以防被莱蒂姨妈发现），又给自己斟满了一杯气味刺鼻的大人喝的酒，一饮而尽。然后，他长长地舒了一口气。

“说真的，”他喃喃自语道，“真是吓坏我了。烦死人了！我都这岁数了，还会出这样的事！”

第二杯酒下肚之后，他开始换衣服。你从未见过这样的衣服，但我还记得。他戴上一个硬邦邦的闪着光的高领子——这种领子能使你的下巴长时间地高高抬起。然后，他套上了一件绘有图案的白色马甲，并把金表链挂在胸前。接着，他穿上了婚丧仪式上才会用到的最好的大衣，拿出了他最好的高筒礼帽并掸去灰尘。他又从梳妆桌上的花瓶（这瓶花是莱蒂姨妈放在那儿的）中取出一朵插在扣眼里，并从左边的小抽屉里掏出一块手帕（这块手帕漂亮极了，现在很难买到），还在上面喷了几滴香水。最后，他戴上了系着黑色粗绸带的眼镜，对着镜子欣赏起自己的模样来。

如你所知，孩子们有时会犯傻，大人们也会，但他们犯的是另一种傻。这时，安德鲁舅舅开始犯大人的傻气了。女巫不在他的房里，他便很快忘了刚才自己是如何被她恐吓的，并开始对她的美貌想入非非。他不断地自言自语着：“一个异常漂亮的女人，先生，一个异常漂亮的女人。一个超级美人。”他不知不觉地忘了那个“超级美人”是孩子们找到的；此刻，他反倒觉得是自己用魔法将她从未知的世界里召唤来的。

“安德鲁，小伙子，”他边照镜子边对自己说，“到这个年纪，你算保养得不错了。先生，你长得俊极了。”

你看，这愚蠢的老家伙竟然真的开始妄想女巫会爱上他。当然，这很可能是那两杯酒和他那一身漂亮衣服带给他的幻觉。不过，不管怎么说，他都和孔雀一样爱慕虚荣，而这就是他成为魔法师的原因。

他打开门，下了楼，打发一个女佣去叫一辆配有双轮双座的马车（那时候，人人都有许多仆人），然后向着客厅的方向张望，并如愿看到了莱蒂姨妈。只见莱蒂姨妈正在修补一块垫子。这块垫子就铺在窗户旁边，她正双膝跪在上面。

“噢，我亲爱的莱蒂娅，”安德鲁舅舅说，“我——呃——我要出趟门。借我大概五英镑吧，这儿有个很不错的谷娘。”（他总是将“姑娘”说成“谷娘”。）

“不，亲爱的安德鲁，”莱蒂姨妈头都不抬，用坚定而平静的口气说，“我绝不会借钱给你，我已经说过很多次了。”

“别捣乱，我亲爱的谷娘。”安德鲁舅舅说，“这事很重要。你如果不借，我会无比难堪的。”

“安德鲁，”莱蒂姨妈直勾勾地盯着他说道，“其实我觉得奇怪的是，你向我借钱，居然不会感到羞耻。”

这些话背后是一段又长又枯燥的、专属于大人之间的往事。你只需知道，安德鲁舅舅曾打着“为亲爱的莱蒂照管财产”的幌子，却什么也不干，还喝白兰地、抽雪茄，因此欠下了一屁股债（莱蒂姨妈曾一次一次地为他买单），这使得莱蒂姨妈比三十年前穷了很多。

“我亲爱的谷娘，”安德鲁舅舅说，“你不知道，我今天会有一些预期之外的开销。我不得不用这些钱来招待客人。借给我吧，别这么讨厌。”

“所以你到底要招待谁，安德鲁？”莱蒂姨妈问。

“来了一个——尊贵的客人。”

“尊贵的客人？”莱蒂姨妈说，“这一个小时里根本就没有响过门铃声。”

就在此时，门突然被撞开了。莱蒂姨妈一回头，大吃一惊，她看到的是一个女巨人。只见她衣着华丽，裸露着手臂，目光炯炯地立在门口。这正是女巫本人。

第七章
前门发生的事

“狗奴才，我的马车还有多久才会到？”女巫开口道，声音大得如雷鸣一般。安德鲁舅舅哆嗦着避开了她，站到一边。女巫一出现，他照镜子时产生的所有滑稽可笑的想法都消失不见了。倒是莱蒂姨妈见状立马站起身来，走到了屋子中间。

“这个年轻女人是谁，安德鲁？我可以问一下吗？”莱蒂姨妈冷冷地说道。

“是尊贵的外国客人——一位非——非常重要的人物。”他支支吾吾地回答道。

“胡说八道！”说着，莱蒂姨妈转身冲女巫喊道，“立刻离开我的家，你这无耻的荡妇，不然我可报警了。”她断定女巫是从马戏团跑出来的，而且她不允许别人光着臂膀。

“这女人是谁？”嘉蒂丝说，“跪下，你这个奴才，在我把你撕成碎片之前。”

“请不要在这幢房子里讲粗话，女士。”莱蒂姨妈说。

就在那一刹那，安德鲁舅舅觉得女王似乎挺直了腰板，显得更加高大。只见她眼中迸出火焰，同时伸出手臂，做了一个她在将恰恩宫门捣成灰烬时一样的动作，口中念出亡语。然而，什么事情也没有发生。莱蒂姨妈想，那些可怕的话大概也是英语，于是说道：

“看来我没猜错，这女人一定喝醉了。她醉了！连话也说不清楚了。”

这时，女巫突然意识到，她那种能把人变成灰烬的魔力在她的世界里那么管用，而在我们这里却毫无用处。在那个瞬间，她感觉简直糟糕透顶。但她丝毫没有心慌意乱、沮丧失望，而是毫不犹豫地纵身向前，抓住莱蒂姨妈的脖子和膝盖，将她高高地举过头顶，像举起一个轻巧的玩具娃娃似的，朝屋子那头用力一甩。莱蒂姨妈还没落地，女佣（她正在享受一个美好的、激动人心的早晨）就探进头来说：“先生，你的马车到了，请上车。”

“给我带路，狗奴才。”女巫对安德鲁舅舅说。安德鲁舅舅口中咕哝着“我必须对这令人遗憾的暴力行为提出抗议”之类的话，但嘉蒂丝瞟了他一眼，他便住口了。她赶着他离开了客厅，随后走出了房子。狄格雷跑下楼时刚好看见前门在他们身后关上了。

“不好，出事了！”他说，“她要把伦敦掀个底朝天了。而且她还跟安德鲁舅舅在一起，真不知道会出什么乱子。”

“噢，狄格雷少爷，”女佣说（她那天的确开心极了），“恐怕凯特利小姐把自己弄伤了。”于是两人一起冲进客厅，去看那里发生了什么事。

我想，如果莱蒂姨妈掉在光秃秃的地板上，或者哪怕是掉在地毯上，她也铁定会摔得粉身碎骨，但她十分走运地掉在了垫子上。而且莱蒂姨妈是个强壮的老妇人——那时候的姨妈们大都如此。她吃了一点定心丸，静坐了几分钟，说自己只是身上有几处摔伤的瘀青，并无大碍。很快，她便开始处理眼前的混乱局面了。

“莎拉，”她对女佣说（这个女佣从未遇到过像今天这样的日子），“你立刻赶往警局，告诉他们有个极其危险的精神病人出逃了。我会亲自打点科克夫人的午饭。”她所说的科克夫人，当然就是狄格雷的母亲。

照顾妈妈吃完午饭后，狄格雷和莱蒂姨妈也吃了午饭。随后，他便绞尽脑汁地思考起来。

解决问题的关键在于如何尽快把女巫弄回她自己的世界去，或者至少得想个办法，把她赶出我们的世界。不管怎样，绝不能让她在这幢房子里乱来，更不能让妈妈看见她。如果可能的话，不准她在伦敦的大街小巷胡作非为。她企图“摧毁”莱蒂姨妈的时候，狄格雷不在客厅里，但他确曾见过她“摧毁”恰恩的宫门，所以，他只知道她有惊人的魔力，并不知道自打到了我们的世界后，她就完全失去了魔力。他还知道，她想征服我们的世界。他开始想象，女巫很可能已经在破坏白金汉宫或议会大厦了；而且几乎可以肯定的是，许多警察已经化为一堆灰烬了。然而，他却束手无措。

“可是，那些戒指的作用原理似乎很像磁铁。”狄格雷想，“只要我能够碰到她，再悄悄戴上我的黄戒指，她和我便都会回到世界之间的树林中去。她在那儿会不会再一次变得虚弱无力呢？这是因为那地方对她产生了抑制作用，还是仅仅因为她从自己的世界被拉出来时受到了惊吓？但我不得不冒险去尝试一番。可我到哪儿去找这怪物呢？我想，除非我能说出我要去哪儿，否则莱蒂姨妈是不会让我出门的。况且，我口袋里就只有两便士。如果在伦敦四处寻找，一定需要坐公共汽车和电车，那得花不少钱。再说，我压根儿就不知道上哪儿去找，也不知道安德鲁舅舅是否还跟她在一起。”

最后，他觉得自己唯一能做的，似乎就是等待，盼望着安德鲁舅舅和女巫会自己回来。要是他们回来了，他一定会冲出去抓住女巫，趁她还没踏入这幢房子之前就戴上黄戒指。而这就意味着他必须像猫守着老鼠洞一样监视着前门，在自己的岗位上寸步不离。于是，他进了餐室，就像人们常说的那样，把脸“粘”在窗户上。那是一扇凸肚窗，可以从中看见通向前门的台阶，而且能够看清整条街道，因此任何走到前门的人都逃不出你的视线。“这时候波莉在做什么呢？”狄格雷想。

好不容易半个小时过去了，他在这段时间里一直思考着这个问题。但你不必揣测问题的答案，因为我正要告诉你。波莉回到家已经很晚了，鞋子和袜子都湿漉漉的，她已经错过了饭点。当被问到她去了哪里、干了些什么时，她说自己和狄格雷·科克出去了。在家人们的追问下，她解释说自己是在一个水潭里弄湿了脚，水潭则在一片树林里。当被问及树林在哪儿时，她说自己也不知道。家人们又问那树林是否在一个公园里，她老老实实地说，那里也许算是一个公园。波莉的妈妈由此得出结论：波莉未经允许，就悄悄跑到了伦敦某个陌生的地方，进到一个陌生的公园，跳到水潭里玩水。最后，他们说波莉实在太调皮了，如果以后再有类似的事，便不准她和“那个姓科克的男孩”一块儿玩了。然后，吃过一些残羹冷炙后，她便被赶到床上，要待整整两小时后才能下床。这样的事情在那时候是很常见的。

所以，当狄格雷从餐厅的窗户向外看时，波莉正被迫躺在床上。两人都在想，时间过得可真慢啊。不过我个人认为，在当时的情况下，我宁可自己是波莉。她只需要静候那两小时结束；而狄格雷呢，每过几分钟，只要他听到马车声、面包师傅送货车的声音或肉铺小伙计经过街角的声音，他都会以为“她来了”，结果却是一场空。除了这般令人心寒的落差外，其余时间里，与狄格雷为伴的只有滴滴答答的钟声，这对他来讲简直像熬过了无数个小时一般漫长。在他头顶上方根本够不到的地方，有一只大苍蝇嗡嗡地在窗边乱飞乱撞。这幢住宅在下午时分往往变得十分安静，令人感到索然无味。此外，这里还老是有一股淡淡的羊肉味。

在漫长的监视与等待中，发生了一桩小事。之所以要提到这件事，是因为它与之后发生的一件重要的事情有关。一位女士带着一些葡萄来看狄格雷的妈妈。由于餐厅的门敞开着，狄格雷便很自然地听到了莱蒂姨妈和那位女士在门厅里的谈话。

“多好的葡萄啊！”门厅里传来莱蒂姨妈的声音，“我想，这些葡萄一定会对她的身体有好处的。唉，可怜的小玛贝尔！恐怕现在只有青春之壤上结出的果子才能治得好她的病。我们这个世界里已没有什么东西可以帮到她了。”之后，两人都压低了声音，又讲了许多话，但狄格雷什么也没听清。

如果他在前几天听到“青春之壤”这个说法，他可能会以为莱蒂姨妈只是随口一说罢了，她的话里并没有什么特别的意义。大人往往会这样说话，而这并不会引起他的兴趣。就在他这样觉得的时候，他的脑海里忽然闪过一个念头：世上并不只有一个世界（尽管莱蒂姨妈并不知道），他自己就到过别的世界。那么，也许真有一片“青春之壤”也说不定呢，一切都是有可能发生的。在别的世界里，也许真有某种果子能治好妈妈的病！

唉——你知道渴望得到某件东西是什么滋味吗？因为你曾经失望过太多回了，同时也因为那种希望美好得不真实，你几乎要和它势不两立了。这就是狄格雷当时的感觉。不过试图扼杀这种希望是毫无益处的。也许真的，真的就有那种可能性呢。那么多稀奇古怪的事都已经发生了，更何况他还有魔法戒指呢。每个水潭都通往一个世界，狄格雷可以借此寻遍所有的世界。然后——妈妈的病就治好了，一切都将重回正轨。那一刻，他忘记了窥伺女巫的事，并且已经将手伸进了放黄戒指的口袋里。然而就在此时，他突然听到一阵急促的马蹄声。

“嗯，那是什么？”狄格雷想，“是消防车吗？不知道哪家起火了。天哪，来了。啊，是她。”

我已不用告诉你狄格雷口中的“她”是谁了。

首先映入眼帘的是一辆双轮马车。车夫的座位上并没有人，而且一只车轮高高悬起，但整辆马车保持着极佳的平衡，飞快地拐弯，疾驰而来。车顶上站着——不是坐着——女王中的女王，恰恩的噩梦嘉蒂丝。只见她露出满口牙齿，目光如火一般闪动着，长发则像彗星尾巴似的拖在脑后。她毫不留情地鞭笞着驾车的马。马的鼻孔大开，鼻子涨得通红，两侧沾满了泡沫。它疯狂地冲向狄格雷家的前门，在灯柱边擦身而过，然后用两条后腿支撑着地面站了起来，马车则在灯柱上撞得粉碎。女巫优雅地一跳，恰好落在了马背上。她分腿坐好，又俯下身去，对马耳语了几句。显然，那些话只会激怒这匹马，而不会使其平静。于是它再次后腿站立，抬起前腿，马鸣声如同尖叫一般，蹄子、牙齿、眼睛和飞舞的鬃毛全都立刻晃作一团。只有极为出色的骑手才有可能在它的背上坐定。

狄格雷还来不及松口气，便又闹出了新的乱子。只见第二辆马车紧接着第一辆飞驰过来，一个穿礼服的胖子和一名警察从车上跳了下来。随后，第三辆马车也载着两名警察尾随而至。伴随着一阵嘘声与喝彩声，大约二十个人（大多数是年轻侍仆）骑着自行车，一路鸣着铃跟了上来。最后是一群步行过来的人，虽然一个个跑得很热，但显然都乐在其中。所有临街的窗户都打开了。每一幢房子的前门处都站着一个女佣或男仆，他们也想看热闹。

与此同时，一位老绅士正从第一辆马车的残骸里挣扎着往外爬。有几个人跑过去帮他，但他们这个扯腿那个拉胳膊，使劲的方向并不一致；或许，要是没人帮忙，他早已经出来了。狄格雷猜那位老绅士一定是安德鲁舅舅，但他的脸被塌下来的高筒礼帽遮住了，根本瞧不见。

狄格雷冲了出去，钻到了人群中。

“就是这个女人！就是这个女人！”那个胖子指着嘉蒂丝大声喊道，“警察，你快管管吧！她从我店里抢了价值成百上千英镑的东西。看见她脖子上的珍珠项链了吗？那是我的。而且她还把我的眼睛打青了！”

“看来她确实打了，长官。”人群中有人说道，“不过这样一只青眼睛不是挺有趣的吗？干得漂亮！哈，她该有多强壮啊！”

“你就该在青眼睛上放上一块好吃的生牛排，先生，那才是真正的有趣。”一个肉店的小伙计说。

“所以，”最管事的那个警察说，“这里究竟发生了什么事啊？”

“我告诉你，她——”那个胖子刚开口，就有人叫了起来：

“别让马车里的那个老家伙跑了，都是他让那女人这么做的。”

那位老绅士——当然就是安德鲁舅舅——此刻已经站稳了，他正在揉着身上摔肿的地方。“那么，告诉我，”警察转身问他，“到底出了什么事？”

“唔——呼——吁——”安德鲁舅舅的声音从帽子里传了出来。

“别装蒜了。”警察正色道，“这可不是什么搞笑的事。把帽子摘掉，听见了吗？”

但要他摘下帽子，可没想象的那么容易。安德鲁舅舅挣扎了一番，却是徒劳。另两名警察抓住他的帽边，硬是把帽子从他头上扯了下来。

“谢谢，谢谢。”安德鲁舅舅用微弱的声音说道，“谢谢。我的天，可把我吓坏了。要是谁能给我一小杯白兰地——”

“现在，请你听我说。”那名警察掏出一本大笔记本和一支小铅笔，说道，“那边的那个年轻女人归你管吗？”

“小心！”几个人同时喊道。警察及时朝后跳了一步，那匹马差点儿一脚将他踏死。紧接着，女巫掉转马头，面向人群，马的后腿踏上了人行道。她手中握着一把明晃晃的长刀，使劲地砍着套索，企图把马和马车的残骸分开。

在这段时间里，狄格雷一直在找机会接近女巫，以便能碰到她。可这实在不容易，因为他附近的人太多了，而要想绕到另一边，就必须从马蹄和房子围栏之间的“区域”穿过去，因为凯特利家的房子有一间地下室。如果你对马有所了解，尤其是看到那匹马当时所处的情形，就会知道这很棘手。狄格雷很了解马，但他仍咬紧牙关，伺机冲过去。

这时，有一个戴着圆顶硬礼帽的、脸蛋红扑扑的人用肩膀撞开一条路，挤到了人群前面。

“你好呀，警官。”他说，“她骑的是我的马，那辆被摔烂的马车也是我的。”

“一件一件来，请一件一件来。”警察说。

“可是已经来不及了。”这个马车夫说，”我比你更了解这匹马。它与普通的马不一样，它的父亲曾是一名骑兵军官的战马。噢，没错，要是这年轻女人再激它，可是会出人命的。唉，还是让我来吧。”

警察正想找个理由站得离马远些。一听这话，他很高兴。于是，马车夫向前走了一步，抬头看着嘉蒂丝，友好地说：

“这位女士，现在我抓住马头，好让你下来。你是位女士，你不想惹任何麻烦，对吧？你只想要回家，美美地喝上一杯茶，然后静静地躺下，这样你就会觉得舒服得多。”与此同时，他边伸手逮住马头边说，“淡定，草莓，我的老伙计。淡定。”

就在这时，女巫第一次开口讲话了。

“狗奴才！”她清亮冰冷的嗓音盖过了其他所有声音，“狗奴才，放开我的皇家战马！我可是女王嘉蒂丝。”

第八章
灯柱下的战斗

“哦！你是女王？那我们走着瞧。”一个声音说道。接着，只听另一个声音说道：“让我们为疯人院的女王三呼万岁！”不少人跟着喊了起来。女巫脸上泛起潮红，朝人群微微地鞠了一躬。但随着欢呼声渐渐变成耻笑声，她便知道自己被愚弄了，于是脸色一变，将刀换到左手，不动声色地做了一件极其可怕的事：她伸出右手，不费吹灰之力便把灯柱上的一根铁条扭了下来，这对她来说仿佛是一件稀松平常的事情。如果说她的某些魔力在我们的世界消失了，但她的力气却依然存在：她可以像折断麦芽糖的棒子一样把一根铁棒折断。她将自己的新武器向空中一抛，又一把接住，一边振臂挥舞着，一边策马向前。

“机会来了。”狄格雷想。他连忙奔到马与围栏之间，接着向前冲，伺机接近女巫。只要那牲口稍作停留，他就能够抓住女巫的脚跟。正当他往前冲时，突然听到咣当一下的重击声。原来，女巫将铁棒敲在了那名警官的头盔上，警官随即歪斜着倒了下去。

“快，狄格雷，我们必须阻止她。”这时，一个声音在狄格雷身边响起。说这话的正是波莉。时间一到，她就跳下床，冲到了街上。

“好样的！”狄格雷说，“抓紧我。你来负责戒指，黄的，记住了。我一喊你就把它戴上。”

又是一声重击，另一名警察应声倒地。人群中传来愤怒的吼声：“把她拉下来，拿铺路石砸她，去把军队叫来！”但大多数人都尽量躲得远远的。马车夫无疑是在场的人中最勇敢也最善良的那个。只见他左右闪躲，避开铁棒，试着靠近“草莓”并抓住它的头。

人群中又是一阵骚动，一块石头呼啸着从狄格雷头上飞过。接着，女巫洪钟般清亮的声音传来，听起来颇为得意。

“一群废物！一旦我征服了你们这个世界，你们就要为今天所做的一切付出沉重的代价。我会像毁掉恰恩、费林达、索罗瓦和布拉满丁一样毁掉你们这里，连一块石头也不会留下。”

狄格雷终于抓到了她的脚踝。她向后一踢，恰好踢在狄格雷的嘴上，痛得他松开了手，嘴唇也被踢破了，鲜血流了一嘴。这时，附近传来了安德鲁舅舅颤巍巍的尖细的声音：“夫人——我亲爱的年轻女士——看在上帝的分上——请你冷静点儿吧。”狄格雷再次抓住她的脚后跟，但又被甩开了。越来越多的人倒在她的铁棒下。他第三次冲了上去，死命地抓住她的脚后跟，对着波莉大喊一声“快走”。接着——噢，谢天谢地——愤怒、惊恐的表情和声音都渐渐消失了。黑暗之中，狄格雷只听见安德鲁舅舅在近处呜咽着：“噢，噢，我这是昏过去了吗？这下完了，我受不了了。这不公平。我从没想过要当魔法师。这一切都是误会，都是我教母的错，我必须表示抗议。我还把自己的身体搞坏了。噢，古老的多塞特郡家族。”

“真讨厌！”狄格雷想。“我们没想把他带来。呵，这下可好。你在吗，波莉？”他问道。

“我在这儿呢，别推推挤挤的。”

“我没推。”狄格雷的话还没有说完，他们便又来到了那片温暖的、充满绿色阳光的树林里。一出水潭，波莉就大喊道：

“快看！我们把那匹老马也带来了，还有凯特利先生，还有那个马车夫。这下可乱套了！”

女巫一看自己又回到了那片树林里，脸刷的一下白了。她慢慢地弯下腰来，直到脸贴着马的鬃毛。看得出来，她此时痛不欲生。安德鲁舅舅则正在发抖。但“草莓”，就是那匹马，却摇头晃脑地发出了一声快活的嘶叫，似乎觉得比刚才舒服了许多。自打狄格雷看见它以来，它还是头一次这么安静。只见它那先前一直贴着脑袋的耳朵此时恢复到正常的位置，眼睛里也不见了凶气。

“这就对啦，老伙计。”马车夫说着，拍了拍“草莓”的脖子，“这样就好多了，放轻松。”

这时，“草莓”做了一件世界上最自然的事情：因为它太渴了（这一点儿也不奇怪），便踏入离它最近的水潭里喝水。狄格雷还抓着女巫的脚后跟，波莉则拉着狄格雷的手。马车夫一只手搭在“草莓”身上，一直颤巍巍的安德鲁舅舅则刚好抓住了他的另一只手。

“快！”波莉看着狄格雷喊道，“绿戒指！”

就这样，“草莓”没有喝上水。相反，一行人再一次坠入了黑暗之中。“草莓”嘶鸣着，安德鲁舅舅在啜泣，而狄格雷说：“可算是走运了。”

一阵短暂的停顿过后，波莉说：“我们还没有到那里吗？”

“我们好像的确到了某个地方。”狄格雷说，“至少我现在站在什么硬邦邦的东西上了。”

“我也这么觉得。”波莉说，“可是，为什么这么黑呢？嘿，你说我们是不是跳错了水潭？”

“也许这儿就是恰恩。”狄格雷说，“只不过我们回来的时候，这里刚好是半夜。”

“这里不是恰恩。”女巫说道，“这个世界空无一物，只有虚无。”

这里确实非同寻常，只有虚无。天空中没有星星，四下一片漆黑。在这样的环境里，谁也看不见谁，眼睛睁开或者闭上都是一样的。他们脚下凉爽、平坦的东西肯定不是草地或者木头，但可能是泥土。这里空气寒冷、干燥，连一丝风也没有。

“我的末日降临了。”女巫说道，她的声音里有一种可怕的冷静。

“噢，可别这么说。”安德鲁舅舅叨叨起来，“我亲爱的年轻的女士，求求你别这么说。事情没有那么糟糕。啊——马车夫——我的好兄弟——你身上没带着酒瓶吗？我正需要一口烈酒来提提气。”

“行了，行了。”马车夫用他那坚决的声音说，“我想说，大家都冷静下来好吗？没有人摔断骨头吧？很好，这实在应该感到欣慰。像这样摔下来，结果本应不堪设想，但现在的情况比我们预计的都要好。假如我们现在掉进了某个大坑——这可能是个新建的地铁站台——那么很快就会有人来把我们救出去的，等着瞧吧！如果我们死了——我并不否认有这种可能——那么，你们就得记着，有时海上会发生比这更坏的事，而人也终有一死。如果一个人曾体面地生活过，那么死亡便没什么可怕的。你们如果问我怎么办，我觉得此时打发时间最好的办法就是唱一首圣歌。”

他的确这样做了。他马上就唱起了一首收获时节感恩的圣歌，歌颂的是庄稼被“圆满地收入谷仓”。在这样一个似乎从来没有生长过任何东西的地方唱这种歌并不合适，但这是他记得最清楚的一首圣歌。他的嗓音动人，孩子们也跟着唱了起来，气氛鼓舞人心。不过安德鲁舅舅和女巫并没有加入。

当圣歌接近尾声时，狄格雷觉得有人在扯他的胳膊。通过那一股白兰地和雪茄的气味以及那身好衣服可以判断，这一定是安德鲁舅舅。安德鲁舅舅小心地将他拉到一旁。两人走出一段距离后，这老家伙便把嘴巴凑到狄格雷的耳边，直到弄得他耳朵发痒。他对狄格雷耳语道：

“现在，我的孩子，戴上戒指，我们走吧。”

但女巫的听觉十分敏锐。“蠢货！”她边说边跳下马，“你难道忘了我能听见人的想法吗？放开那孩子。如果你想耍什么花招，我会用任何世界都闻所未闻的残酷手段来报复你。”

“而且，”狄格雷补充道，“如果你以为我是一头卑鄙的猪，忍心把波莉、马车夫和那匹马丢在这样的地方然后自己逃走，那你就大错特错了。”

“你可真是个调皮又没有礼貌的小孩。”安德鲁舅舅说。

“嘘！”马车夫示意要他们安静。于是，他们都竖起了耳朵仔细听。

黑暗中终于有了动静，一个声音开始歌唱。这个声音很遥远，狄格雷难以分辨它究竟来自哪个方向。有时，它似乎从四面八方同时传过来，有时又好像就在他们的脚下。那些较低的音符十分低沉，犹如大地本身发出的声音。尽管没有歌词，也几乎没有旋律，但这却是狄格雷听到过的最美妙的声音。那声音如此动人，几乎使他难以承受。那匹马似乎也很喜欢，它低声嘶叫着，仿佛拉了多年马车以后，重新回到了童年时代嬉戏的那片田野上，看见它所记得的与所爱的人正穿过田野向它走来，还给它带了一块糖。

“天哪！”马车夫感叹道，“真好听啊！”

就在此时，两个奇迹同时发生了。第一个奇迹是，数不清的声音突然融入了之前的那个声音，它们和谐相融，但是音调高了许多。那些声音清冷，微微颤抖，如银铃般清脆。另一个奇迹则是，头顶黑暗的天空中突然群星闪烁——不是像夏夜中的星星一颗接着一颗缓缓出现，而是从一团漆黑之中骤然跳出成千上万颗星星，有恒星、星群与行星，远比在我们的世界里看到的星星更大、更亮。天上没有一朵云，新的星星和新的声音同时出现。如果你像狄格雷一样身临其境，便会确信这是星星自己在唱歌，而使它们出现并一展歌喉的正是那低沉的第一个声音。

“多么神奇啊！”马车夫说，“要是早知道世上还有这般美好的事，我这辈子铁定会成为一个更好的人。”

此时，地上的那个声音变得更加响亮和激昂了，但天上的那些声音在与它合唱了一阵后，渐渐变得微弱了。就在这时，另一件事发生了。

在远处的地平线附近，天空开始渐渐变成灰色。一阵清风袭来，天空缓缓地越变越白，远处群山黑色的轮廓也得以显现。而那声音自始至终在歌唱。

很快，天色已经亮得使他们能互相看见对方的脸了。马车夫和两个孩子张着嘴巴，目光闪烁，沉浸在美妙的歌声之中；那歌声仿佛使他们忆起了往事。安德鲁舅舅也张着嘴，但并非出于高兴；他那副神情看上去更像是下巴从脸上脱落了。他的上半身此刻完全僵住了，膝盖不停地抖动着。他并不喜欢那种声音。如果可以钻进老鼠洞来避一避的话，他一定会那么做的。至于女巫，她看上去似乎比谁都更能理解这歌声。只见她紧闭着嘴唇，还捏着拳头。自打这歌声一开始，她就感到这个世界被一种与她的魔力不同且强大得多的魔力笼罩着。她恨之入骨。只要能够阻止那个声音，她会把这个世界甚至所有的世界都撕成碎片。马站在那里，耳朵前倾并不断地抽动，还时不时地用蹄子敲打地面或是打几声响鼻。它看上去不再是一匹疲惫不堪、上了年纪的驾车老马；你现在完全可以相信它的父亲曾征战沙场。

东边的天空由鱼肚白变成了粉红色，继而泛出了金色。那声音不断地升高，直到空气都随之震颤。当声音达到最有力、最雄壮的程度时，太阳升了起来。

狄格雷从未见过这样的太阳。恰恩废墟上空的太阳看上去比我们世界的太阳要老，而这轮太阳却显得比我们的太阳更年轻。你甚至可以想象，它是开怀大笑着升起来的。当阳光洒满大地时，他们才第一次看清自己所站的是怎样一个地方。那是一片谷地，一条宽阔、湍急的河流蜿蜒其间，向着太阳升起的东方奔涌而去。南边有大山，北边有丘陵。河谷里没有树，也没有灌木，连一片草叶都见不到，有的只是岩石、泥土和流水。泥土是五颜六色的，新鲜、温热，富有生气。这些景致会令人心潮澎湃，而当你亲眼看见那位歌唱者时，你又会忘了其他的一切。

那是一头毛发浓密、精神抖擞的巨狮，正站在离他们约三百码的地方，面向太阳，张着大口在歌唱。

“这是一个可怕的世界。”女巫说，“我们必须马上飞离这里。准备好你的魔法。”

“我完全同意你的看法，夫人。”安德鲁舅舅说，“这里令人厌恶，野蛮至极。要是我再年轻一些，还有一杆枪——”

“什么？”马车夫说，“你不会以为你能开枪打中它吧？”

“可谁会想要开枪打它呢？”波莉问道。

“准备好你的魔法，老傻瓜。”嘉蒂丝说。

“当然了，夫人。”安德鲁舅舅狡黠地说，“我必须让两个孩子都碰到我。狄格雷，立刻戴上返程的戒指。”他想丢下女巫自己溜掉。

“哦，是戒指，是吗？”嘉蒂丝高喊道。眼看她的手就要伸进狄格雷的口袋里了，狄格雷一把拉住波莉，高声喊道：

“注意点儿！假如你们再敢靠近半步，我们两个就会消失，你们就将永远留在这里。没错，我这儿有一枚戒指，可以带我和波莉回家。看！我的手随时都够得到它。所以，离我远点儿。（他看了看马车夫）我为你和那匹马感到遗憾，但我没有办法。至于你们两位（他又看了看安德鲁舅舅和女王），你们都是魔法师，应该会喜欢生活在一起的。”

“大家都安静点儿。”马车夫说，“我想听听这音乐。”

而此时，歌声已经发生了变化。

第九章
纳尼亚的诞生

那头狮子正唱着它的新歌，在空旷的大地上来回踱步。这歌声比刚才唤起星星和太阳的歌声更柔和，也更轻快，如潺潺流水般和缓。随着它的移动与歌唱，山谷中长出了青青绿草。这些绿草像池水一样从狮子身旁蔓延开去，又如浪花一般爬上小山坡。不一会儿，绿草就爬上了远处大山的缓坡，逐渐将这年轻的世界点缀得越发柔美。你甚至可以听到微风沙沙拂动青草的声音。很快，又出现了绿草之外的东西。只见高高的山坡上长出了深色的石楠属植物，山谷里冒出了一片片参差不齐的绿色。狄格雷刚开始不知道这些是什么，直到其中一个来到他的附近。那是一种长而尖的小东西，浑身上下长着几十条手臂，手臂上覆盖着绿色的东西，大约每两秒钟便长大一寸。此刻，他周围满是这样的东西。等它们长到和他差不多高了，他才认出那是什么。“是树！”他大叫道。

就像波莉后来说的，令人讨厌的是，你并不能安安静静地观赏这一切。就在狄格雷大喊一声“是树！”的时候，安德鲁舅舅又悄悄地靠了过来，企图偷他口袋里的戒指，于是狄格雷不得不跳开。不过，即使安德鲁舅舅得手了也无济于事，因为他仍然以为绿戒指是负责返回的，便把注意力集中在狄格雷右边的口袋上。当然了，狄格雷也并不想让他得逞。

“住手！”女巫大叫道，“退回去。不，再往后退。谁要是走到离这两个小孩十步以内的距离，我就敲碎他的脑袋。”她挥舞着那根从灯柱上扭下来的铁棒，随时准备将它扔出去。不知为什么，每个人都相信她会扔得很准。

“所以，”她说，“你想带着这男孩溜回你们的世界，而把我留在这儿。”

安德鲁舅舅的脾气终于战胜了他的恐惧。“是的，夫人。”他说，“毫无疑问，我就想这么干。这是我的权利。我已经蒙受了巨大的耻辱，遭受了极坏的对待。我尽全力尊敬你、讨好你，但我得到了什么呢？你抢劫——我一定要重复这两个字——抢劫了一位十分受人尊敬的珠宝商。你坚持让我带你去享用一顿极其昂贵的午餐，别提有多铺张了。这样一来，我不得不当掉我的手表和表链（让我告诉你，夫人，我们家族没人有经常光顾当铺的习惯，除了我的表哥爱德华，他曾是义勇骑兵队的一员）。吃那顿根本消化不了的午饭时——现在回想起这事我更难受了——你的言行举止引起了在场每个人的反感。我觉得自己在公众面前颜面尽失，以后我再没有脸去那家饭店了。你袭击了警察，你甚至还偷了——”

“噢，别说了，先生，请别说了。”马车夫打断了他的话，说道，“看一看、听一听此时此刻所发生的一切吧，别说话了。”

的确，此刻值得一看和值得一听的太多了。狄格雷刚才注意到的那棵树已经长成了一棵粗壮的山毛榉，这棵山毛榉的树枝正在他的头顶上优雅地舒展开来。他们所站的那片凉爽的青草地上点缀着雏菊和毛茛属植物。不远处，沿河生长着柳树。河的对岸，红醋栗、丁香花、野玫瑰和杜鹃花争奇斗艳。那匹马则大口大口地撕咬着美味的嫩草。

在这段时间里，那头狮子一刻不停地唱着歌，并庄严地徘徊着。令人惊讶的是，它每转一次身，都离他们更近一些。波莉发觉那歌声变得越发有趣了，因为她觉得自己已经开始领悟到狮子的歌声与眼前发生的事之间的联系。当一排墨色的杉树从百码外的山脊上冒出来时，她感到这与方才狮子唱的一组深沉、绵长的曲调紧密相关。随着狮子唱出一组轻快的旋律，她看到迎春花从四面八方长了出来，不过她一点也不感到惊讶。怀着难以名状的激动之情，她肯定所有这些都是（用她自己的话说）“从狮子脑袋里蹦出来的”。当你聆听它的歌声时，你就听见了它所创造的事物；而当你环顾四周，你便能看见它们。这太令人激动了，波莉根本无暇感到害怕。但狄格雷和马车夫不免感到有些紧张，因为狮子每转一次身都离他们更近一些。安德鲁舅舅则牙关打战，双膝发抖，根本无法逃走。

突然，女巫大胆地向狮子冲了过去。狮子仍然唱着歌，缓慢而沉稳地前进，与女巫相距只有十几步远。这时，女巫抬起手臂，瞄准它的头，将铁棒直直地掷了过去。

距离这么近，任何人都不会打偏，更不用说是嘉蒂丝。铁棒不偏不倚地打在了狮子的两眼之间，然后迅速弹开，砰的一声落在草地上。但狮子继续走着，它的步伐并未受到丝毫影响，你甚至难以判断它是否知道自己被攻击了。虽然它柔软的爪子在走路时没有发出任何声响，你却能感到大地在它的脚下震颤。

女巫尖叫着跑开了，很快就消失在树林之中。安德鲁舅舅也转身跟着跑，却绊倒在一根树桩上，脸朝下跌进了一条流向大河的小溪中。孩子们无法动弹，他们甚至不能肯定自己是否想跑。狮子根本没有注意他们。它张着血红的大口，只是歌唱，而非咆哮。它与他们擦身而过，他们甚至可以摸到它的鬃毛。两人害怕极了，担心它转过身来注视他们；但奇怪的是，他们又希望它转过身来。自始至终，他们就像是看不见闻不着的东西，丝毫没有引起狮子的注意。它从他们身边经过，走了几步，又折回来，接着再次从他们身边经过，继续向东方走去。

安德鲁舅舅爬了起来，一边咳嗽一边慌张地和狄格雷商量。

“狄格雷，”他说，“我们终于摆脱了那个女人，那头狮子也走了。把你的手伸过来，赶紧戴上戒指。”

“走开。”狄格雷说着，后退几步避开了他，“离他远点儿，波莉，到我这边来。我现在警告你，安德鲁舅舅，一步也不要靠近我们，否则我们立刻消失不见。”

“立刻照我的话做，老兄。”安德鲁舅舅说，“你这孩子太不听话了，表现很差。”

“我偏不。”狄格雷说，“我们要在这儿待着，看看会发生什么。我原以为你想了解别的世界。难道你现在不喜欢这地方吗？

“喜欢？！”安德鲁舅舅大叫着，“看看我现在沦落到了什么地步！这还是我最好的外套和背心！”他现在看上去的确很狼狈。当然，你开始时打扮得越漂亮、越精致，从撞烂的马车下钻出来再掉进一条泥泞的小溪后，模样就越惨不忍睹。他接着说道：“我不是说这个地方没有意思。如果我年轻一些，我现在或许可以先去找一个充满活力的小伙子到这儿来，一个专猎大型动物的猎手。这个地方确实不错，气候宜人，我过去从来没有呼吸过这样新鲜的空气。我相信，这对我的身体是有好处的，如果——如果境况更加有利的话。要是我们有杆枪就更好了。”

“枪又有什么用呢？”马车夫说，“我想我要去看看是不是该帮草莓梳理一下了。那匹马比有些人还有灵性。”他走到“草莓”身边，嘴里发出马车夫惯用的那种嘶嘶声。

“你还认为那头狮子能被枪打死吗？”狄格雷问道，“它对那根铁棒根本不屑一顾。”

“这全是她的错，”安德鲁舅舅说，“那个胆大包天的谷娘，我的孩子。她太粗暴了。”他把指关节捏得噼啪作响，似乎又忘了只要女巫在场，自己会有多害怕。

“这么做实在是恶毒极了。”波莉说，“那头狮子哪里伤害她了？”

“嗨！快看那是什么？”狄格雷说着冲向前去，想看看不远处究竟是什么东西。“我说，波莉，”他朝身后的波莉喊道，“你快过来看看。”

安德鲁舅舅也跟了过来，并不是因为好奇，而是因为他想紧跟着孩子们——这样就有机会从他们那里偷走戒指。但是，当他看见狄格雷正在观察的东西时，自己也来了兴趣。那是一个完美且小巧的灯柱模型，大约有三英尺高。就在他们盯着它看的时候，它正在按比例变高变宽；事实上，它正在像那些树一样生长。

“它是活的——我是说，它正亮着。”狄格雷说。的确如此；不过当然了，在阳光底下，微弱的灯光几乎是看不见的，除非你的影子落在灯下。

“不得了，太不得了了。”安德鲁舅舅喃喃地说，“我做梦也想不到会有这样的魔法。我们现在所在的这个世界里，所有的东西都是有生命的，都会生长，甚至连一根灯柱也是如此。现在，我好奇的是，这灯柱是从什么种子里长出来的？”

“你还不明白吗？”狄格雷说，“这里正是那根铁棒掉落的地方，就是嘉蒂丝从我们家门前的灯柱上扭下来的那根铁棒。它掉进土里就长成了一根小灯柱。”（但它此刻已经算不上是小灯柱了，因为就在说话间，它已经长到和狄格雷一样高了。）

“是啊！这简直不可思议，不可思议！”安德鲁舅舅更起劲地搓了搓手，说道，“哼哼，他们还嘲笑我的魔法。我那傻瓜妹妹还以为我是个疯子。这下，看他们怎么说？我已经发现了一个充满生机、万物皆可以生长的世界。哥伦布，他们现在崇拜的是哥伦布。但与这里相比，美洲又算得了什么？这里的商业潜力无穷无尽。带一些废铜烂铁到这儿来，把它们埋下去，就会长出崭新的火车引擎、军舰，或者任何你想要的东西。不费吹灰之力，我就能在英国以高价将这些东西转卖掉，这样我将会成为一个百万富翁。还有这气候！我已经感到自己年轻了好几岁。我可以在这里经营一个疗养胜地，运气好的话，一年就可以挣两万。当然，这样的话，我就不得不让一些人知道这个秘密。现在，当务之急就是要拿枪射死那头猛兽。”

“你和那女巫一模一样。”波莉说，“满脑子只想着屠杀。”

“再来说说我自己。”安德鲁舅舅继续做着他的白日梦，“如果我就定居在这儿，天知道我能活多久。对一个年逾花甲的人来说，这当然很值得考虑。在这里，我也许永远不会老。太棒了！青春之壤呵！”

“噢！”狄格雷大喊，“青春之壤！你认为这里真的是青春之壤吗？”他当然记得莱蒂姨妈对那个送葡萄的女人说过的话。那甜美的愿景在他的脑海中迅速地再次浮现出来。“安德鲁舅舅，”他说，“所以你觉得这儿有什么东西可以治好妈妈的病吗？”

“你究竟在说什么？”安德鲁舅舅说，“这里又不是药店。但就像我说的——”

“你一点儿也不关心她。”狄格雷气愤地说，“我本以为你不是这样的；毕竟她是我的母亲，也是你的妹妹。不过没关系，我不如直接去问问狮子，看它能不能帮上忙。”然后他转过身，飞快地走了。波莉迟疑了一下，也跟着狄格雷去了。

“嘿！停下！快回来！这孩子简直是疯了。”安德鲁舅舅说。他小心翼翼地跟在孩子们后面，与他们保持着一段距离。因为他既不想离绿戒指太远，也不想离狮子太近。

几分钟后，狄格雷走到树林边上，在那里停下来站定了。狮子仍在歌唱，但歌声又变了。这次的歌声与我们所说的“小调”更为相似，但要来得狂野不少。这歌声使你想跑，想跳，想去攀登，想大喊大叫，想冲向他人，与之拥抱或是搏斗。狄格雷听得脸上又红又热。安德鲁舅舅似乎也受此影响，因为狄格雷听见他说：“一个活泼的谷娘，老兄。她的脾气着实让人感到惋惜，但总的来说，她是个异常漂亮的女人，一个漂亮异常的女人。”不过，歌声对他们两人的影响根本无法与它对这片土地的影响相提并论。

你可以想象一小块草地像壶中的水一样沸腾吗？因为这样描述此刻发生的事真是再合适不过了。只见草地的四周都鼓了起来，形成大大小小的圆丘，有的像鼹鼠穴那么大，有的则和手推车相差无几，其中两个小丘和农舍一样大。这些圆丘移动着，膨胀着，直到它们向四面八方炸开，泥土从中迸出，每个圆丘里都钻出了一种动物。

鼹鼠出来时就和你在英国见到的鼹鼠出洞的情形一模一样。狗一伸出脑袋就开始快活地吠起来，随后就像钻过篱笆间的窄缝时那样挣扎着。雄鹿最为奇怪，因为它们的角比其他身体部位先出来，后者过了很长时间之后才出来，所以一开始狄格雷还以为那是树。青蛙都从河岸边钻出来，呱呱地叫着，然后一蹦一跳地到河里去了。黑豹、猎豹一类的动物出来之后就马上坐下来，抖掉后腿上沾的松土，然后站起来在树上磨前爪。漫天的小鸟和蝴蝶从林里振翅飞来。蜜蜂开始辛勤地采蜜了，仿佛一分一秒都不想浪费。不过最壮观的时刻莫过于当其中最大的那个圆丘崩裂时，从中隆起大象斜坡般的脊背、聪明的大脑袋和四条像穿着宽松裤子一般的大腿。这个圆丘崩裂时的威力就像一场小型地震。现在，你几乎已经听不见狮子的歌唱了，到处都是动物们各种各样的叫声：牛叫、马嘶、犬吠、鸟鸣……

尽管狄格雷听不见狮子唱歌了，但仍然能看见它。它身形高大，闪着亮光，将狄格雷牢牢地吸引住了。其他动物面对它时也并没有露出惧色。就在这时，狄格雷听见身后传来一阵蹄声；再过了一会儿，那匹拉车的老马一路小跑着经过他的身边，和其他动物站到了一起。（很显然，这里的空气不但适合安德鲁舅舅也适合它，它看上去不再是伦敦街头那可怜的老奴隶，此时它正提起前腿，昂着头颅。）这时，狮子头一次安静下来。它在动物群中来回踱步，不时走到其中的两个面前（每次总是两个），用自己的鼻子触碰它们的鼻子。它在众河狸中挑出两只，在众花豹中挑出两头，在鹿群中挑出一头雄鹿和一头雌鹿，然后撇下其余的。对有些种类的动物，它只是走过它们身边；但被它碰过的动物立马成双成对地离开自己的群体，跟在它后面。最后，它站住了，它碰过的动物也走过来，围着它站成了一个大大的圈。它没有碰过的动物则开始四处游荡，叫声逐渐消失在远方。它选出来的那些动物此时异常安静，它们的目光都紧紧地盯着狮子。猫科动物偶尔摆摆自己的尾巴，其他的动物则一动也不动。这是那一天里头一回这般寂静，你只能听见淙淙的流水声。狄格雷的心在猛烈地跳动，因为他知道即将发生的事庄严而神圣。他没有忘记妈妈的事；但他非常清楚，就算是为了她，他也不能打扰这样的时刻。

那头狮子目不转睛地凝视着动物们，目光如炬。渐渐地，那些动物身上开始发生变化。那些小动物——兔子、鼹鼠之类的动物——变大了不少。那些身形庞大的动物变得小了一些——这一点在大象身上最为明显。许多动物坐在自己的后腿上，其中大多数都侧着头，似乎正在努力地去理解什么。狮子张着嘴，却没有发出任何声音。它呼出绵长而温暖的气息，这气息就像风刮起整排树一样，可以将所有的动物都席卷而去。头顶上方遥远的空中，躲在如薄纱般的蓝色天幕后的星星又开始了新一轮的歌唱。那是一种纯洁、冰冷且艰涩难懂的音乐。紧接着，不知是从天上还是狮子身上闪出一股火光（不过没有烧着任何人）。孩子们身体里的每一滴血都激荡起来，只听一个他们从未听到过的最低沉、最粗犷的声音说道：

“纳尼亚，纳尼亚，纳尼亚，从沉睡中醒来吧。去爱，去思索，去说话。让树木行走起来，让野兽说话，让流水变得神圣。”

第十章
第一个笑料和其他事情

当然了，这是狮子的声音。孩子们早就觉得狮子会说话，但当它真的开口时，他们还是感到了不小的惊喜。

原住民们从林中走了出来，包括树神、农牧神、森林之神和小矮人。河神和他的仙女女儿们从河中缓缓升起。他们和所有的野兽及鸟儿用或高或低、或浑厚或清晰的各不相同的声音回答道：

“万岁，阿斯兰！我们听见了，并将服从于你。我们醒了。我们将去爱，我们将去思索，我们将会说话，我们明白了。”

“但是，我们还不是太懂。”一个带着鼻音的声音说。孩子们听见这声音几乎跳了起来，因为说话的正是那匹拉车的马。

“好样的，草莓。”波莉说，“我很高兴它被选作会说话的野兽之一。”站在孩子们身边的马车夫说：“这真令我感到吃惊。不过，我以前就老觉得这匹马很有灵性。”

“动物们，我赐予了你们自我。”阿斯兰用愉悦、有力的声音说，“我把纳尼亚这片土地永久地赐予你们。我赐予你们树木、果实和河流，赐予你们星星以及我自己。那些我没有挑选的哑兽也是你们的。你们要善待它们，也要珍惜它们；但请不要回到它们之中去，以免你们当不成会说话的野兽。因为你们是从它们中选出来的，回到它们中就意味着你们又变得和它们一样了。请不要这么做。”

“不，阿斯兰，我们不会的。”众动物齐声答道。但一只鲁莽的寒鸦又高声补充了一句：“你放心吧，绝对不会！”因为大伙儿都说完了它才说出这句话，所以在一片寂静中，它的声音格外清楚。你大概也知道，这种行为要是在一个聚会上会有多尴尬。寒鸦尴尬极了，它把头埋在翅膀里，好像正要进入梦乡。其他的动物开始发出各种奇异的笑声，而这些声音在我们的世界里自然谁也未曾听到过。起先，它们还想憋住不笑，但阿斯兰说：

“别怕，放声大笑吧，动物们。既然你们不再是哑巴，也有了智慧，就不该总是沉默不语。因为有了语言，就会有公平正义，也自然会有玩笑。”

于是动物们便无拘无束地笑了起来。在这种活跃、愉快的气氛中，那只寒鸦又鼓起勇气，跳上“草莓”的头，停在它的两耳间，拍着翅膀说道：

“阿斯兰！阿斯兰！我是不是开了第一个玩笑？是不是以后大伙儿都会知道我是怎样开了第一个玩笑的？”

“不，我的朋友。”狮子说，“你没有开第一个玩笑，你只是成了第一个笑料。”其他的动物笑得比之前更厉害了。但寒鸦并不在意，也跟着大笑起来，直到马一摇头，让它失去平衡掉了下来。但它在落地之前想起自己还有翅膀，便振翅飞了起来（于它而言，翅膀还是新鲜的玩意儿呢）。

“现在，”阿斯兰说，“纳尼亚建立了。下一步，我们要竭力保卫它的安全。我将从你们之中挑选几位组成我的议事委员会。你，到我这儿来，小矮人首领。还有你，河神。还有你们，橡树神和雄猫头鹰，两只渡鸦，还有公象。我们必须一同议事。虽然这个世界建立还不满五小时，但已经有一个恶魔进来了。”

被它叫到名字的生灵走上前来，随着它向东走去。其余的动物们则开始议论纷纷：“它刚才说什么已经进入我们这个世界了？什么‘魔’？到底是什么？不，不是什么‘魔’，它说的是什么‘墨’——哎呀，到底是什么？”

“看来，”狄格雷对波莉说，“我得跟着它去——阿斯兰，我是说那头狮子。我必须和它谈谈。”

“你觉得我们能做到吗？”波莉说，“我有些怕。”

“我必须去。”狄格雷说，“为了我妈妈。如果真有谁可以给我治愈妈妈的病的良药，那么肯定是那头狮子。”

“我和你们一起去。”马车夫说，“我很喜欢它的样子。我不认为其他那些动物会把我们怎么样，而且我还想和我的老伙计草莓说句话。”

他们三人大胆地——或者说，鼓足了十二分的勇气——向着动物群走去。动物们正忙着互相交谈和认识新朋友，它们没有注意到这三个人，直到他们离得很近时才发现。它们当然也没有注意到安德鲁舅舅。他穿着带扣的皮靴，正浑身发抖地站在远处大叫（虽然没有用尽全力尖叫）。

“狄格雷！快回来！你听见我说话了，快回来。我不许你再往前走一步。”

当他们最后走进动物群时，动物们都停止了说话，注视着这三个人。

“唔，”公河狸终于开口道，“这些——我以阿斯兰的名义发问——是什么东西？”

“真对不起。”狄格雷气喘吁吁地刚想说下去，就听见一只兔子接嘴道：“他们是一种大型莴苣，我相信是这样的。”

“我们真的不是莴苣。”波莉急忙说，“我们一点都不好吃。”

“看到了吧！”鼹鼠说，“他们能说话！有谁听说过莴苣能说话？”

“也许他们就是第二个笑料。”寒鸦说。

一头一直在洗脸的黑豹停顿了一下，说道：“呃，即便是的话，他们也没有第一个好笑。至少，我可看不出他们有什么滑稽之处。”它打了一个呵欠，又继续洗脸。

“噢，真是对不起。”狄格雷说，“我有急事——我想见见雄狮阿斯兰。”

与此同时，马车夫一直在试着吸引“草莓”的目光，这下他终于成功了。“草莓，老伙计，”他说，“我们认识的。你该不会往那儿一站就说不认识我了吧。”

“那东西正在说什么，马？”有几个声音问道。

“嗯，”“草莓”慢条斯理地说，“我不太清楚。我想我们中的大多数都还不知道多少事情。但我总觉得，我以前见过类似的这种玩意儿。我有种感觉，自己过去住在别的什么地方——或者说，我曾有过别的什么身份——就在阿斯兰几分钟前将我们唤醒之前。一切都混沌不清，就像一场梦，但梦里有三个很像他们的玩意儿。”

“什么？”马车夫说，“你竟说不认识我？是我啊，在你晚上不舒服时端来热麦芽浆给你当晚餐的人，给你梳理鬃毛的人，你竟说不认识我？你站在冷风中时我从没忘记给你盖上布匹来保暖，没想到你会说出这种话，草莓。”

“我的确开始想起来了。”马若有所思地说道，“是的。让我再想想，让我想想。对了，你过去老是把一个可怕的黑乎乎的东西绑在我的身后，然后就打我，让我往前跑。无论我跑多远，那黑乎乎的东西都一直拖在我后面，哐当哐当地响着。”

“你看，我们得挣钱过日子啊。”马车夫说，“你我可是同病相怜。要是不干活儿不挨鞭子，便不会有马厩和干草，也不会有麦芽浆和燕麦。我买得起燕麦的时候，你的确就能尝到一点儿。这一点谁也不能否认。”

“燕麦？”马竖起耳朵说，“对，我记得有那种东西。的确有。我记得的事儿越来越多了。你以前总是坐在我后面的一个地方，而我总跑在前头，拉着你和那黑乎乎的东西。我知道，我干了所有的活儿。”

“夏天，我承认。”马车夫说，“夏天让你干活儿确实很热，而我坐在凉快的地方。可冬天呢，老兄，你有抵御寒风的鬃毛，而我却坐在那儿，脚冻得冰凉，鼻子都快让寒风给刮掉了，手也冻僵了，甚至差点儿抓不住缰绳。”

“那真是个令人难以忍受的残酷的国家。”“草莓”说，“那儿没有草，只有硬硬的石头。”

“太对了，伙计，太对了！”马车夫说，“那确实是个令人难以忍受的世界。我过去总说那些铺路石对任何一匹马来说都太残忍了，但那就是伦敦。我和你一样不喜欢那里。你是匹乡下马，我是个乡下人。我过去曾是教堂唱诗班的一员。我的确唱过，在老家。但那样根本没法儿糊口。”

“行了，行了。”狄格雷说，“我们继续往前走好吗？狮子越走越远了，我真的很想跟它说话。”

“听我说，草莓。”马车夫说，“这位小先生有些心里话想对狮子讲，就是你们的阿斯兰。我想请你驮着他去找狮子（对此他会不胜感激的）。我和这个小女孩会在后头跟着。”

“驮着？”“草莓”说，“噢，我想起来了。这就是说，坐在我的背上。我记得很久以前，经常有一个像你这样的两条腿的小家伙坐在我背上。他常常给我吃一种坚硬的、白白的小方块。那种小方块吃起来——噢，味道真不赖，比草可要甜多了。”

“哈，那一定是糖了。”马车夫说。

“草莓，求你了，”狄格雷央求道，“请让我上去吧，然后带我去找阿斯兰。”

“好吧，我不介意。”“草莓”说，“我不介意驮你一次。你上来吧。”

“好样的，草莓。”马车夫说，“来，小伙子，我托你一把。”狄格雷很快就骑到了“草莓”的背上。他觉得这样很舒服，因为他以前也曾骑在自己那匹小马驹光溜溜的背上。

“好了，我们走吧，草莓。”他说。

“我猜，你身上没带那种白白的小方块吧？”马说。

“恐怕我没有带。”狄格雷说。

“唉，那就没办法了。”“草莓”说着，迈步向前走。

就在那时，一条大公狗认真地嗅了好一会儿，又朝着远方注视了很久后，终于说道：

“快瞧，那儿是不是还有一个这种奇怪的生物？就在那儿——河旁边，树底下。”

所有的动物都放眼望去，只见安德鲁舅舅一动不动地站在杜鹃花丛中，祈祷着自己不被发现。

“快来！”有几个声音说，“让我们过去一探究竟。”因此，正当“草莓”驮着狄格雷轻快地向东边跑去时（波莉和马车夫徒步跟在后头），绝大多数动物朝着安德鲁舅舅奔去。它们一路咆哮着、狂吠着、咕哝着，发出各式各样兴高采烈的声音。

现在，我们必须回过头去，从安德鲁舅舅的角度来解释眼前发生的事。他见到狮子和动物们时的感受跟马车夫和孩子们的感受全然不同，因为一个人的所见所闻很大程度上取决于他的立场，以及他是一个怎样的人。

自打动物们从小丘中钻出来后，安德鲁舅舅就一步步地朝灌木丛退去。当然，他也仔细地观察着它们，不过并不是对它们所做的事感兴趣，而是想看看它们会不会冲向自己。就像女巫一样，他信奉极致的实用主义，根本没注意到阿斯兰从每一种动物里选出一对；他只看见，或者自以为他只看见，有许多危险的野兽走来走去，乱作一团。而他一直想不通的是，为什么那些动物不从那头巨狮身边逃开。

出于一个十分可笑的原因，他完全错过了野兽们开口说话的伟大时刻。就在天还很黑，狮子刚开始唱歌时，他也意识到那声音是一首歌。只不过他很不喜欢那首歌，那使他想到并感觉到了他不愿想也不愿去感觉的事情。后来，当太阳升起时，他看见歌者是一头狮子。（“不过是一头狮子罢了。”他这样对自己说。）他努力使自己相信狮子不是在唱歌，并且从来就没有唱过歌——它只是在吼叫而已，就像在我们世界的动物园里，任何狮子都会吼叫一样。

“它当然不可能是在唱歌。”他想，“这都是我想象出来的。我的神经出了些问题。谁听见过狮子唱歌？”狮子唱得越久、越动听，他就愈加努力地使自己相信他听到的不过是狮吼声。不过麻烦的是，当你想使自己显得比实际上更蠢一些时，往往很容易成功。安德鲁舅舅就是这样。很快，阿斯兰的歌声对他而言就只是狮吼了。即使他想听，也听不出别的什么来了。最后，当狮子开口唤醒纳尼亚时，除了一声咆哮，他什么也没听见。当动物们齐声回答时，他也只听见一阵各种走兽发出的叫声。而当它们放声大笑时——你可以想象，这对安德鲁鲁舅来说真是可怕极了——他觉得自己这辈子都没有听见过愤怒且饥饿的野兽发出这般恐怖且嗜血的喧嚣声。接着，令他感到极度愤怒和恐惧的是，他看到另外那三个人居然朝着开阔平地上的动物们走去。

“蠢货！”他自言自语道，“这下，那些畜生会把戒指和孩子们一块儿吃掉，我再也不能回家了。狄格雷这个小家伙多么自私啊！其他那几个也好不到哪儿去。如果他们想送命，那是他们的事。但我可怎么办呢？他们好像从来就没有考虑过我的感受。没有人为我考虑过。”

于是最后，当一大群动物朝他跑去时，他便转身逃命去了。现在，任何人都看得出，年轻的纳尼亚世界的空气确实对这位老先生大有裨益。在伦敦，他已经老得跑不动了；而现在，他飞快地跑着，速度快得足以摘下英格兰任何一所预备学校的百米赛桂冠。衣摆在他身后荡来荡去，好看极了，但这当然帮不上什么忙。追赶他的动物中有不少跑步健将，而这又是它们有生以来第一次奔跑，所以它们都迫不及待地想练练自己新的肌肉。“追！追上他！”它们大叫着，“也许他就是那个什么‘魔’！哈！快跑！拦住他！包围他！快跟上！冲啊！”

没过几分钟，一些动物就超过了他。它们排成一排，拦住了他的去路，其他动物则从后面追上来将他包围。安德鲁舅舅陷入了四面楚歌的境地：大麋鹿的角和大象巨大的脸就在他面前；那些笨重又态度严肃的熊和公野猪在他身后咕咕地叫着；表情冷漠的黑豹和花豹嘲讽地（他是这么想的）盯着他，摇着尾巴。最令他心惊肉跳的是无数大张的嘴——其实动物们张口是为了喘气，他却认为它们想要吃掉他。

安德鲁舅舅东倒西歪地站在那儿，浑身发抖。他从没喜欢过动物——即使在最安全的情况下，他也不喜欢它们；他总是很害怕它们。而且长年累月地用动物做实验，自然使他更加憎恨与害怕它们。

“好啦，阁下，”那条公狗用公事公办的口吻问道，“你是动物、植物，还是矿物呢？”这就是它说的话，可安德鲁舅舅听见的却是“汪汪汪”的狗吠声。

第十一章
狄格雷和舅舅双双再临险境

你可能会认为，这些动物真是蠢极了，竟没能一眼看出安德鲁舅舅和那两个孩子以及马车夫是同类的物种。但你要知道，动物们对衣服一无所知。在它们看来，波莉的外衣、狄格雷的诺福克套装以及马车夫的圆顶帽是他们身体的一部分，就像它们自己的皮毛和羽翼一样。如果它们不与这三个人交谈，如果“草莓”也没有那样想，它们就不会知道他们三个是同类。而且安德鲁舅舅比孩子们高得多，又比马车夫瘦得多。他穿着一身黑色的衣服，除了那件白背心（尽管现在也已经不怎么白了）。在动物们眼里，安德鲁舅舅的灰发（现在很凌乱）与那三个人身上的任何东西都不相似。它们自然感到迷惑。最糟糕的是，他看上去并不会说话。

他曾试过开口。当公狗对他说话时（或者按他所认为的，先是咆哮，后是对他狂吠），他举起发抖的手，喘着粗气说：“好狗狗，噢，可怜的老朋友。”但动物们根本无法理解他的话，正如他也听不懂它们的话一样。除了含混不清的咝咝声外，它们什么也没听见。也许还是听不懂的好，因为我从未见过哪条狗愿意被人喊作“好狗狗”，更不用说是纳尼亚世界里会说话的狗了，这就像你不愿被叫成“小乖乖”一样。

接着，安德鲁舅舅一下就昏死过去。

“看到了吧！”一头野猪说，“它不过是棵树。我一直都这么想的。”（记住，它们还从未见过昏厥，甚至连摔倒也没有见过。）

那公狗将安德鲁舅舅全身上下嗅了个遍，抬头说道：“它是动物，肯定是动物，而且很可能是那几只的同类。”

“我不同意。”其中一头熊说，“动物可不会像那样翻倒在地上。我们是动物，我们就不会翻倒。我们是站着的，就像这样。”它用后腿支撑着身体站起来，向后走了一步，结果被低处的一根树枝绊倒了，仰面朝天跌倒在地上。

“第三个笑料，第三个笑料，第三个笑料！”那只寒鸦无比激动地说。

“我仍然认为它是一棵树。”野猪说。

“它要是树的话，”另一头熊说，“上头可能会有蜂巢。”

“我敢肯定它不是树。”一头獾说，“我感觉它在倒下之前有什么话想说。”

“那只是风吹过了它的树枝。”野猪说。

“你不会真的认为，”寒鸦对獾说道，“认为它是一个会说话的动物吧！它可什么话也没说。”

“不过，你们要知道，”大象（这当然是母象，它的丈夫——你应该还记得——被阿斯兰叫走了）说，“你们要知道，它可能是某种动物。这隆起的发白的一块难道不像是脸吗？那些洞不是眼睛和嘴吗？没鼻子，当然了。但话说回来——噢——我们不必苛求，确切地说，我们当中只有极少数长着那种可以确切地被称为鼻子的东西。”它斜睨着自己的长鼻子，带着一副情有可原的骄傲神情。

“我强烈反对这种说法。”公狗说。

“大象说得没错。”貘说。

“我来告诉你吧！”驴子自作聪明地说，“也许它是一种不能说话却觉得自己能说话的动物。”

“我们可以让它站起来吗？”大象若有所思地说。它用鼻子将安德鲁舅舅柔软的身体轻轻一卷，并把他竖在地上，只是很不幸地放反了，两枚半镑金币、三枚半克朗银币和一枚六便士硬币从他的口袋里掉了出来。但把他竖起来没有用，安德鲁舅舅只是又一次倒了下去。

“啊哈！”几个声音说，“它根本不是动物。它根本不是活的。”

“我来告诉你们，它是动物。”公狗说，“你们自己闻闻吧！”

“气味并不能说明一切。”大象说。

“哎呀，”公狗说，“如果一只动物连自己的鼻子都不相信，它还能去相信什么？”

“或许应该相信自己的脑子吧。”大象温和地答道。

“我强烈反对这种观点。”公狗说。

“嗯，我们必须有所行动。”大象说，“因为它也许就是那个‘魔’，我们必须把它交给阿斯兰。大家是怎么看的？认为它是动物还是树一类的东西？”

“是树！是树！”十几个声音齐声答道。

“很好。”大象说，“那么，如果它是树，它一定想被栽在土里。我们必须挖一个坑。”

两只鼹鼠很快便完成了挖坑的任务。但对于哪一头该栽到土里这个问题，动物们产生了分歧，安德鲁舅舅差点儿就被头朝下种进土里了。有几个动物说他的腿一定是树枝，因此那团灰色的、蓬松的东西（指他的头）就一定是根。但其他动物说，叉开的那一端沾了更多的泥土，而且更长一些，更像根部。所以最后，他还是被头朝上栽了起来。动物们将泥土埋到他膝盖以上的地方，然后把泥土拍实。

“它看上去就要枯死了。”驴子说。

“当然，它需要浇水。”大象说，“我想我可以这么说（并非要冒犯在场的各位），也许对于这项工作，我的这种鼻子——”

“对此我强烈反对。”公狗说。但大象已经静静地走到河边，用鼻子吸满水，回来浇在安德鲁舅舅的身上。这头聪明的动物不断地浇水，直到好多好多水浇到他身上，又顺着他外套的边缘流下来，他仿佛穿着衣服洗了个澡。最后，他恢复了意识，从昏迷中醒了过来，彻彻底底地清醒了！但我们必须先把他放在一边，让他好好想想自己干过的坏事（如果他还有可能做出如此明智的事的话），现在我们必须讲讲更重要的事情。

“草莓”驮着狄格雷一路小跑，直到其他动物的声音渐渐淡出耳畔，这时他们也离阿斯兰和它的动物议员们越来越近。狄格雷知道自己不能去打断这样一个严肃的会议，但其实他也没必要这样做。阿斯兰好像说了句什么，公象、渡鸦以及所有其他的动物就都退到一边。狄格雷翻身下马，发现阿斯兰正与他面对面站着，比他想象的更大、更美，更金光闪闪，也更加可怕。他甚至不敢去看那双深邃的眼睛。

“很抱歉打扰您——狮子先生——阿斯兰——阁下，”狄格雷说，“您能否——能否请您——请您赐给我一些这里的神奇果实，好让我治好我妈妈的病？”

他很希望狮子说“没问题”，他非常害怕它说“不行”。但狮子既没有答应也没有拒绝他，这令狄格雷很是惊讶。

“这就是那个男孩。”阿斯兰说，它没有看狄格雷，而是看着它的议员们，“就是这个男孩做了这些。”

“噢，天哪，”狄格雷想，“我又做了些什么？”

“亚当之子。”狮子说，“有个邪恶至极的女巫踏上了我新建立的纳尼亚大陆，请你告诉这些亲爱的动物们，她是如何到这儿的。”

关于此事的种种不同说辞在狄格雷脑海中闪过，但他的直觉告诉他，这时候只能实话实说。

“是我带她来的，阿斯兰。”他低声回答。

“为什么呢，我的孩子？”

“我想把她带出我们的世界，把她送回她自己的世界。我以为我把她带回她自己的世界了。”

“她怎么会到你们的世界去呢，亚当之子？”

“通过——通过魔法。”

狮子一言不发。狄格雷知道自己还没有把事情讲清楚。

“是我的舅舅，阿斯兰。”他说，“他用魔法戒指把我们送出了我们自己的世界。我不得不离开我们的世界，因为他把波莉先送走了。后来，我们在一个叫恰恩的地方遇见了女巫，她恰好抓住了我们，就在——”

“你们遇见了女巫？”阿斯兰用低沉的嗓音问道，似乎行将咆哮。

“她醒过来了。”狄格雷自责地说。然后，他变得面色苍白，继续道：“我的意思是，是我唤醒了她。因为我想知道，如果我敲了钟会有什么事情发生。波莉是反对我这样做的。这不是她的错。我——我还和她起了争执。我知道我不应该这样的。我想，我当时是被钟底下的铭文给迷惑了。”

“是吗？”阿斯兰问，声音仍然很低沉。

“不。”狄格雷说，“我现在知道其实不是这样的。我只是在找借口。”

阿斯兰许久都没有说话。狄格雷则一直在想：“我把一切都搞砸了。现在再也没有机会为妈妈要到治愈疾病的灵药了。”

当狮子再次开口时，它已不是在对狄格雷说话了。

“你们看，朋友们，”它说，“我赐予你们这个崭新的、洁净的世界还不到七小时，一股邪恶的力量就已经进来了，并且就是由这个亚当之子唤醒并带到这里的。”

那些野兽，甚至包括“草莓”，全都把眼光投向狄格雷，他真希望地上有一条缝可以钻进去。“不过我们要振作起来。”阿斯兰说，仍然面朝那些野兽，“那个恶魔会给我们带来邪恶，但那很久以后才会发生。我也会格外留意，让最坏的事情冲着我来。现在，我们要建立秩序，确保在未来的数百年内，这里都会是快乐世界里的一片乐土。尽管亚当的族人给我们带来了灾祸，但他们也将帮助我们摆脱灾祸。走上来，你们另外两位。”

最后一句是对刚刚到达的波莉和马车夫说的。波莉此时正紧紧地拉着马车夫的手，目瞪口呆地盯着阿斯兰。马车夫看了狮子一眼，然后摘下帽子；谁也没有见过他不戴帽子的模样。他不戴帽子的时候看上去更年轻一些，也更好看一些，并且更像一个乡下人而非伦敦的马车夫了。

“孩子，”阿斯兰对马车夫说，“我知道你很久了，那么你认识我吗？”

“不，阁下，我不认识你。”马车夫说，“至少，不是人们一般所说的那种认识。不过我觉得，如果这么说不会冒犯到你的话，我们以前好像是见过。”

“很不错。”狮子说，“你比自己想象中知道得多，同时你也会越来越了解我的。你喜欢这片土地吗？”

“这儿可真不错，阁下。”马车夫说。

“你想永远都住在这儿吗？”

“你知道的，阁下，我已经结婚了。”马车夫说，“要是我妻子也在这儿，我想，我们谁也不愿意再回到伦敦了。我们都是地地道道、本本分分的乡下人。”

阿斯兰昂起它毛发浓密的头，张开大嘴，长长地呼了一声，声音不是十分响亮，但充满力量。波莉听到它的声音后，心跳都明显加快了。她十分肯定，那是一种呼唤，而且任何人听到这声呼唤，不管与之相隔多少世界、相差多少年岁，都想去顺从它，并且都能够去顺从它。正因如此，虽然她此时心中充满好奇，但当一个看上去善良又诚恳的年轻女人不知从哪儿冒出来并站在她身边时，她并没有被吓一跳或者感到震惊。波莉立刻明白，那就是马车夫的妻子。她不是被什么折磨人的魔法戒指从我们的世界硬生生地拖过去的，而是如小鸟回巢一般，迅捷、简单、舒适地来到了这里。显然，那个年轻女子刚才正在洗衣服，因为她身上系着围裙，袖子卷起挽到肘部，手上还沾着肥皂泡。如果有时间换一身好衣服（她最好的帽子上有樱桃饰物），她看上去准不会讨人喜欢。但此刻，这身朴实无华的衣服却使她显得可爱动人。

当然了，她以为自己正在做梦，因此并没有马上跑到丈夫身边，去问他到底发生了什么。但当她看见狮子时，她开始怀疑自己并不是在做梦，但不知什么原因，她并没有表现得十分恐惧。然后，她微微行了一个屈膝礼——彼时，一些农村的女孩儿也知道如何行屈膝礼。之后，她便走过去，牵住马车夫的手，站在那里，有点儿害羞地看着四周。

“我的孩子们，”阿斯兰看着他们两人说，“你们将成为纳尼亚的第一任国王和王后。”

马车夫吃惊地张大了嘴，他妻子的脸也涨得通红。

“你们将统治这些动物，并且为它们取名。你们要替它们伸张正义。当敌人来犯时，你们要保卫它们的安全。敌人终将到来，因为这个世界里已经有了一个邪恶至极的女巫。”

马车夫用力地咽了几次口水，清了清嗓子。

“我请求您的宽赦，阁下。”他说，“非常感谢你（我的妻子也很感谢你），但我不是当统治者的料。你看，我从来没有受过什么教育。”

“那么，”阿斯兰说，“你会使用铲子和犁吗？你会种地吗？”

“是的，阁下，我会做这些。可以说，我从小就是干这些长大的。”

“那么，你能友善地、公正地对待这些动物吗？记住，它们不像你出生的世界里那些不会说话的牲畜，更不是奴隶，它们是会说话的野兽，有着绝对自由的灵魂。”

“我十分清楚，阁下。”马车夫回答，“我会公正平等地对待所有的动物。”

“你会教导你的子子孙孙也这么做吗？”

“我会试着教他们这样做，阁下，我会尽全力而为的。我们都会尽力的，是吧，奈莉？”

“你也不会格外偏袒自己的某个孩子或者某种动物，让他们欺压或是奴役别的孩子和动物吧？”

“我是无论如何都不会容忍这种行为的，阁下，我说的都是真话。如果我瞧见谁干这种事，我一定会好好惩罚他们。”马车夫说。（在这场谈话中，他的声音变得越来越柔和，也愈加坚定有力。这声音更像他小时候在乡下时说话的声音，而不是他成为伦敦佬之后那种尖锐急促的喊声。）

“如果敌人来犯（因为敌人终将来犯），如果有一日这里爆发了战争，你会带头冲锋、为子民殿后吗？”

“这个嘛，阁下，”马车夫慢悠悠地说，“没有亲身经历过，我也很难下结论。我敢说，我归根结底还是个性情温和的人，最多也只抡起过自己的拳头。但我会努力——我是说——我希望努力地去尽自己的职责。”

“这样的话，”阿斯兰说，“你就会做好一个国王该做的一切事情了。你的加冕仪式即刻举行。你和你的子子孙孙都会得到祝福，他们有的将成为纳尼亚的国王，其余的将成为南山那边的亚钦兰大地的国王。至于你，小姑娘（说到这里，它转向波莉），我们欢迎你。这个小男孩先前在恰恩废墟中的蜡像厅里伤害了你，你此刻是否已经原谅了他？”

“是的，阿斯兰，我们已经和好了。”波莉说。

“很好。”阿斯兰说，“现在，轮到这个小伙子了。”

第十二章
“草莓”的远征

狄格雷紧闭着嘴唇，他感到越来越不自在。他希望无论发生什么，自己都不会哭出来，或者做出什么可笑的事情来。

“亚当之子，”阿斯兰说，“你是否已经准备好弥补你在美好的纳尼亚王国诞生首日便犯下的错误？”

“可是我不知道我能做什么。”狄格雷说，“你也知道，那个女王已经跑了，更何况——”

“我的问题是，你是否准备好了？”狮子说。

“我准备好了。”狄格雷说。有那么一瞬间，他脑中萌生出一个疯狂的念头，他想说“只要你答应帮忙治我妈妈的病，我就竭力帮你”，但他马上意识到，狮子不是那种可以与之讨价还价的人。然而，当他说“准备好了”的时候，他还是想起了妈妈，还想到自己曾经有过的美好愿景如今都化为了泡影。他哽咽着，含着眼泪，脱口而出道：

“可是，求你了，求你了，你能否——能否给我什么东西来治好我妈妈的病？”说出这句话之前，他一直看着狮子巨大的前腿和狮掌；现在，在无比绝望中，他抬起头看着它的脸。他看到了此生最令他感到惊奇的一幕：狮子低下自己棕黄色的脸，凑近了他的脸，（更令人疑惑不解的是）眼里噙着大颗大颗的闪亮的泪珠。与狄格雷的泪珠相比，它的泪珠更大，也更闪亮。此刻，狄格雷觉得，狮子似乎比他自己更加为妈妈感到难过。

“我的孩子，我的孩子。”阿斯兰说，“我可以理解你的苦痛。到现在为止，在这片土地上，只有你和我明白苦痛是什么，所以我们要善待彼此。但我必须为纳尼亚的无数生灵数百年后的未来着想。你带来的那个女巫还会回来，但不一定是现在。我希望在纳尼亚种一棵她不敢靠近的树——一棵能在很多年之内都保卫纳尼亚不受她侵犯的树。这样，在乌云遮住太阳之前，这片国土将会迎来一个明亮而长久的早晨。而你必须去为我取得树种。”

“好的，阁下。”狄格雷说。他不知道应该如何去做，但他觉得自己一定可以完成这项任务。狮子深吸了一口气，低下头来，给了狄格雷一个狮王之吻。与此同时，狄格雷感受到有一股全新的力量与勇气注入了他的身体。

“亲爱的孩子，”阿斯兰说，“我来告诉你要做什么。转身看看西边，告诉我，你看见了什么？”

“我看见巍峨的群山，阿斯兰。”狄格雷说，“我看见有一条河从悬崖上向下流，形成了一道瀑布。悬崖后面是高高的小山，山上种着郁郁葱葱的树木。在这些小山后面，是深色的、更高的山峦。在更遥远的地方，有连绵的大雪山——就像照片里的阿尔卑斯山。雪山后面，除了天空什么也没有了。”

“你看得很清楚。”狮子说，“纳尼亚大陆就止于那瀑布发端的地方。一旦你到达悬崖顶上，你就离开纳尼亚，进入西方原始区了。你必须翻越那些高山，直到找到一个被冰山环抱的绿色山谷，山谷中有一片蓝色的湖泊。在湖的尽头，有一座绿色的、陡峭的小山。山顶有座花园，花园中心有棵树。你所要做的，就是从那棵树上摘下一个苹果，并把它带回来给我。”

“好的，阁下。”狄格雷再次答应道。他根本不知道究竟如何才能翻越那些高山和峭壁，但他不想这么说，因为他担心这样听起来像是在找借口。但他还是说：“我希望，阿斯兰，你并不急着要苹果。我来回一趟可要花好久的工夫。”

“小小的亚当之子，你会得到一些帮助的。”说着，阿斯兰转向那匹马。它一直静静地站在他们旁边，摆着尾巴驱赶苍蝇，偏着头听他们交谈，似乎他们的对话有点儿令它难以理解。

“亲爱的，”阿斯兰对马说，“你愿意成为一匹飞马吗？”

你真该看看当时“草莓”抖着鬃毛，张大鼻孔，用一只后蹄轻轻踏着地面的样子。很明显，它非常愿意成为一匹飞马。但它只是说：

“如果你希望如此，阿斯兰——如果你是认真的——我不明白你为何会选择我——我并不是一匹很聪明的马。”

“生出双翼，成为所有飞马之父。”阿斯兰咆哮一声，声音震天动地，“从今往后，你的名字就叫弗兰奇。”

那匹马惊得直倒退，在它过去拉车的悲惨日子里，它也曾有过这样的表现。然后，它嘶鸣一声，使劲扭着脖子，仿佛是肩膀上停了苍蝇，而它想去抓痒似的。随后，就像动物们之前从地里突然蹦出来一样，弗兰奇的肩上突然长出了一对翅膀。这对翅膀宽大无比，比鹰的翅膀、天鹅的翅膀，甚至绘在教堂窗户上的天使的翅膀还要大。翅膀的羽毛呈栗色与铜色。马振翅一跃，便飞向了空中。在离阿斯兰和狄格雷头顶二十多英尺高的空中，它打着响鼻，不断嘶鸣、跳跃。在绕着他们转了一圈后，它返回了地面，并起四只蹄子，看上去有些笨拙与惊讶，但快活极了。

“感觉好吗，弗兰奇？”阿斯兰说。

“简直好极了，阿斯兰。”弗兰奇说。

“那么你愿意驮着这个小小的亚当之子到我所说的山谷去吗？”

“什么？现在？立刻就去？”“草莓”——或是弗兰奇，我们现在必须这么称呼它了——说道，“哈！来吧，小个子，我以前也驮过像你这样的东西。很久以前，那时还有绿色的田野，以及糖块。”

“这两个夏娃之女在耳语些什么？”阿斯兰说着，突然转向波莉和马车夫的妻子。事实上，她们两人已经成了朋友。

“噢，阁下，”海伦王后（这是马车夫的妻子奈莉当前的身份）说，“我想，要是不麻烦的话，请让这个小姑娘和他们一道前往。”

“弗兰奇觉得如何呢？”阿斯兰问。

“噢，我是不介意驮两个人的，毕竟只是两个小孩子。”弗兰奇说，“但我真心希望大象不会也想要一起来。”

大象可没有这样的想法。纳尼亚的新国王帮两个孩子骑上了马背。确切地说，他将狄格雷草草地一举，而把波莉温柔和缓地托了上去，仿佛她是一件易碎的瓷器。“好了，他们准备好了，草莓——我是说，弗兰奇。这次旅程可不轻松哦。”

“不要飞得太高。”阿斯兰说，“不要想飞越那些高大的冰山。穿过山谷和绿地时要格外小心，不过你总会找到路的。现在，请带着我的祝福离开吧。”

“噢，弗兰奇！”狄格雷身子前倾，拍打着它毛茸茸的脖子，说道，“这可太有趣了。抓紧我，波莉。”

不一会儿，那片国土就被他们远远地抛在了下面。随着弗兰奇像巨大的鸽子般一圈两圈地盘旋，下面的大地似乎也跟着转了起来。然后，弗兰奇面向西方，开始了它漫长的飞行。波莉低头看去，她几乎瞧不见国王和王后了，就连阿斯兰也变成了绿草之上一个亮亮的黄点。不一会儿便有风吹在他们的脸上，弗兰奇的翅膀也富有节奏地扇动起来。

整个纳尼亚在他们下方展开：大地在草地、岩石、石楠属植物和各种各样的树木的点缀下显得五彩缤纷，蜿蜒的河流像一条流动的水银丝带。右望北方，孩子们已经可以看到小山的另一边，那里有一大片沼地，平缓地斜升至地平线处。左边的山则高得多，你不时可以见到一个个峡谷。从峡谷间望去，在挺拔的松树林间，是南方蓝色的土地，绵延不绝。

“那儿就是亚钦兰吧。”波莉说。

“是的，快看前面！”狄格雷说。

这时，眼前的悬崖峭壁拦住了他们的去路。阳光经过大瀑布的反射，越发令人目眩。从西边高地上奔流而下的河水咆哮着流入纳尼亚境内，溅起阵阵水花。他们已经飞得很高了，以至于瀑布雷鸣般的巨响在他们听来变得微弱无比。但他们飞得还不够高，难以越过悬崖。

“我们要在这里做一组‘之’字飞行。”弗兰奇说，“抓紧了。”

它开始来来回回地飞，每一次转身都飞得比之前更高一些。空气越发寒冷，他们甚至可以听见脚下传来的鹰啼。

“喂，快看后头！快看后头！”波莉说。

从他们现在所处的高度可以看见纳尼亚向东延伸，直到地平线的尽头，那里有一片波光粼粼的大海。他们还能看见北方沼泽地后面参差不齐的群山，山显得很小。在极远的南边，则是沙地一样的平原。

“真希望有人告诉我们那些都是什么地方。”狄格雷说。

“我觉得那里还什么地方都不是。”波莉说，“我的意思是，那儿没有人，也没有什么事发生。这个世界是今天才诞生的。”

“确实如此，但总会有人去的。”狄格雷说，“历史就是这样产生的，知道吧。”

“幸好还没产生。”波莉说，“因为没人会想去学那些东西，什么战争啊、日期啊，还有那些通篇的废话。”

这时，他们已经飞越了悬崖的顶峰；又过了几分钟，纳尼亚的谷地也从他们身后的视野中消失了。他们沿着河流，在一片荒无人烟的土地上空飞行，下面则是陡峭的山坡和深色的树林。雄伟的高山在前方隐隐浮现出来。阳光则从正前方射来，晃得他们看不清前面的景物。太阳开始落山，西方的天空被映得像一个巨大的熔炉，炉子里装满了熔化的金子。终于，夕阳消失在锯齿状的山峰背后，落日的余晖遍洒在群山之上。山的轮廓清晰却丝毫没有立体感，犹如纸片一般。

“这儿可真冷。”波莉说。

“我的翅膀也开始隐隐作痛了。”弗兰奇说，“我们还没看见阿斯兰所说的那个有湖的山谷呢。这样吧，我们降下去找一个舒服的地方过夜如何？我们今晚到不了那个山谷。”

“我想也是，而且我们现在该吃晚饭了吧？”狄格雷说。

于是弗兰奇开始下降。他们离地面越来越近，身处小山之中，空气也逐渐暖和起来。在连续几小时的漫长飞行中，除了弗兰奇扇动翅膀的声音，他们什么也听不见。现在，当再次听到大自然的声音，他们倍感亲切和愉悦：水潺潺地从石头河床上缓缓流过，树林在微风的吹拂下沙沙作响。被太阳炙烤过的泥土、青草和鲜花散发的清香扑鼻而来。弗兰奇最终降落了。狄格雷翻身下来后，又帮助波莉下了马。两人都很高兴，他们终于能活动活动自己坐得僵硬的腿了。

他们着陆的山谷正处于群山中心，高耸的雪山环绕着他们，其中一座被夕阳染成了玫瑰色。

“我饿了。”狄格雷说。

“这样啊，快来一起吃吧。”弗兰奇边说边大口享用着青草。然后，它抬起头，继续嚼着，几根草粘在嘴边，就像胡须一样。“快来呀，你们俩。别害羞，这些草足够我们吃了。”

“可是我们不吃草。”狄格雷说。

“嗯，嗯。”弗兰奇嚼着满口的青草，说道，“嗯，既然这样，那我就不知道你们该怎么办了。这些草鲜美极了。”

波莉和狄格雷看着对方，失落极了。

“其实，我想可能已经有人为我们准备了晚餐。”狄格雷说。

“我敢打赌，如果你们请求阿斯兰，它会为你们准备晚餐的。”

“要是我们不去请求，它就不知道要给我们准备晚餐吗？”波莉说。

“毫无疑问，它还是会的。”马说，嘴里塞满了青草，“但我总感觉它喜欢别人请求它。”

“那我们究竟该怎么办？”狄格雷问。

“我肯定是没办法了。”弗兰奇说，“除非你们试着吃点儿草，味道还不赖，也许你们会喜欢的。”

“唉，别犯傻了。”波莉跺着脚说，“人类当然不能够吃草，就像你不会吃羊排一样。”

“看在老天爷的分上，别再提羊排什么的了。”狄格雷说，“说这个只会让我更饿。”

他说，波莉最好碰一碰戒指，然后回家去弄点吃的。可他不能回去，因为他已经答应阿斯兰要直接去完成任务，而如果他返回家中，指不定会被什么事情缠住，这样他就回不来了。但波莉说她不会丢下他，狄格雷说她实在太仗义了。

“我想到了，”波莉说，“我的上衣口袋里有袋太妃糖还剩了些。吃点这个总比什么都不吃好吧。”

“确实好多了。”狄格雷说，“不过你伸手进口袋的时候要小心，别碰着戒指。”

这可是一个困难而细致的活儿，但最后他们还是成功了。他们最终拿出来的小纸袋被压得又软又黏，所以，与其说是把糖从纸袋里拿出来，不如说是把纸袋从糖上撕下来。有些大人（你也是知道的，他们老是会瞎操心），他们宁愿不吃晚饭也不会吃那些太妃糖。袋里一共有九颗糖。狄格雷想出了一个好点子：一人吃四颗，然后将第九颗种下去。正如他所说：“如果一根离了灯柱的铁棒都能长成一根小灯柱，那么这颗糖为什么不能长成一棵太妃糖树呢？”于是，他们在草皮上挖了个小洞，然后埋下了最后一颗太妃糖。接着，他们开始吃剩下的八颗，并尽可能让糖在嘴巴里待得久一点。这是一顿很糟糕的饭，即使糖和糖纸紧紧地粘在一块儿，他们也不忍浪费，都吃了下去。

弗兰奇吃过它绝佳的晚餐后，便躺了下来。孩子们凑过来坐在它的两边，靠在它温暖的身体上。当它展开双翼盖在孩子们的身上时，他们感到舒服极了。当新世界年轻而明亮的星星出来时，他们彻底打开了话匣子：狄格雷是多么希望为他妈妈弄到良药，结果却阴错阳差地接了这差事。接着，他们反复提醒彼此此行的目的地的特征——蓝色的湖泊和小山，山顶有座花园。直到睡意袭来，他们谈话的兴致才渐渐退去。突然，波莉一骨碌坐了起来，嘴里发出“嘘！”的一声。

他们三个都竖起耳朵听了起来。

“可能只是风吹过树林的声音吧。”狄格雷听了一会儿说道。

“很难说。”弗兰奇说，“无论如何——等等！又有动静了。我以阿斯兰之名起誓，这一定是什么东西发出的声音。”

弗兰奇的四肢猛地一颤，然后它急忙站起身来，发出了巨大的响声；孩子们则早已站了起来。弗兰奇来来回回地跑着，四处嗅着，不时发出嘶鸣声。孩子们蹑手蹑脚地四下探查，不放过任何一丛灌木或任何一棵树。他们始终相信自己看到了什么东西。波莉甚至一度非常肯定地说，她看见一个身形高大的黑影飞快地向西边溜去。但他们什么也没有找到，于是最后，弗兰奇又躺下了，孩子们则重新舒服地蜷伏（如果这个词足够恰当的话）在马的翅膀下。他们不久便入睡了。弗兰奇是最晚睡着的，它的耳朵在黑暗中来来回回地移动，身体有时会微微颤动，仿佛有只苍蝇落在了它身上。不过最后，它也睡着了。

第十三章
不期而遇

“快醒醒，狄格雷；快醒醒，弗兰奇。”波莉喊道，“太妃糖树已经长出来了，多么美好的一个早晨啊。”

曙光照进树林，露珠静静地躺在草叶上，折射出灰白色的光，蜘蛛网银光闪闪。就在他们身旁，长出了一棵与苹果树一样大小的、颜色并不鲜艳的树。白白的树叶形似纸张，很像一种名为缎花的草药，树上挂着褐色的、海枣一般的果实。

“哈！”狄格雷说，“我可要先去痛痛快快地洗个澡。”

他跑着穿过几丛开花的灌木，来到了河边。你可曾在这样的河里洗过澡：在阳光的照射下，这条深山里的河流一路流淌，河水撞在红、蓝、黄三种颜色的石头上，形成许多小瀑布倾泻而下。在这里洗澡就像在海里一样美妙，从某种程度上讲，甚至比在海里洗澡更舒服。当然，狄格雷没法弄干身子就要再次穿上衣服，但即便如此也是值得的。他回来后，波莉也下河洗了个澡；至少她自己是这样说的，但就我们所知，她水性很差，所以她到底洗没洗，我们最好不要再过问。弗兰奇也跑去河边看了看，但它只是站在水流之中，低下头汲了好长时间的水，然后甩了一下鬃毛，又嘶鸣了几声。

洗完澡后，波莉和狄格雷便开始摘取太妃糖树上的果实。果实很好吃，但口感跟太妃糖不尽相同。它比太妃糖更软一些，而且多汁，就好像是一种吃了便令人联想到太妃糖的水果。弗兰奇也享用了自己的早餐：它尝了一颗太妃糖树的果实，喜欢极了，但又说在早晨的那个时间，它更喜欢吃草。然后，孩子们有点儿艰难地爬上了马，第二天的旅程开始了。

今天的情况比昨天好多了，一方面是因为大家都精神饱满，另一方面则因为初升的太阳就在他们背后，周围的景致自然显得更加动人。这是一段非凡的体验：高大的雪山耸立在他们周围，脚下的深谷里一片苍翠，蓝色的溪水从冰山上流下来，汇入大河。他们就像飞行在一块块巨大的宝石上，同时盼望着这样美妙的旅程能持续得久一些。然而，过了一会儿，他们便闻到一股气味。“那是什么？”“你闻到了吗？”“这味道是从哪儿来的？”他们一下就提了好几个问题。从他们前方飘来一股温暖、醇厚、奇异的香味，似乎是世上最香甜的果实和花卉散发出来的。

“是从那个有湖泊的山谷里飘来的。”弗兰奇说。

“的确如此。”狄格雷说，“快看！湖的另一边有座绿色的小山。你们看，湖水多蓝啊。”

“一定就是那里了。”他们三个异口同声地说道。

弗兰奇盘旋而下，越飞越低。与此同时，冰峰则逐渐升高。上升的气流渐渐变得更加暖和与甜美，几乎令人激动得流泪。弗兰奇一边保持平衡，一边张开巨大的双翼在空中滑行，马蹄则随时准备着陆。那座陡峭的绿色小山飞快地朝他们靠近。很快，弗兰奇就落在了斜坡上，尽管它的降落动作还有一点儿不熟练。孩子们翻身下了马，毫发未损地站在温暖、柔软的草地上，轻轻地喘着气。

他们距离山顶还有四分之一的路程，于是便立刻启程攀登。（我总觉得，如果没有那对翅膀不时地扇动一下来帮助弗兰奇维持平衡的话，它是很难爬上去的。）山顶被一圈绿色的草墙围了起来；墙内栽满了绿树，树枝伸到墙外。一阵风吹过，叶子闪着绿色、蓝色和银色的光。当这三位旅行者到达山顶时，他们在墙外几乎绕了整整一圈，才找到面向正东方向的、紧闭着的、高高的金门。

直到现在，我还认为弗兰奇和波莉曾经有过要和狄格雷一起进去的念头，但他们很快就不这么想了。很明显，这里是绝对私密的地方。你只要稍稍瞥一眼，就会知道这是别人的地盘。除非负有特殊使命，否则只有傻瓜才会想要走到里面去。狄格雷马上就意识到波莉和弗兰奇不会也不能和他一起进去，于是他独自向门走去。

他走到门前，看见金门上写着一些银色的字，大意是这样的：

从此处进入，或者止步在外，

为别人摘下果实，否则就抑制欲望，

因为所有偷窃与翻墙之人

会得偿所愿，也会丧气失望。

“为别人摘下果实。”狄格雷自言自语道，“好，这就是我要做的事。我想，这意味着我自己一点儿也不能吃。可是后两行字是什么意思呢？从此处进入。既然有门，谁会愿意爬墙呢？但这门怎么开？”他把手按在门上，门一下子就朝里面打开了，铰链转动时竟没发出一点儿响声。

现在他可以看到里面的布局了，而这样一看，这里就显得更为私密了。他一边四下观察，一边庄严地走了进去。里面静得出奇，就连花园中心的喷泉也只是发出极其微弱的声音。狄格雷沉浸在一股香气之中，这是一个令人愉悦但十分严肃的地方。

他立刻就认出了自己要找的树，一方面因为那棵树就在正中央的位置，另一方面因为树上银色的大苹果熠熠发光，光芒投射到了日光所不及的阴暗之处。他径直朝那棵树走去，摘下一个苹果，并将它放进自己的诺福克上衣贴胸的口袋里。但在他把苹果放进去之前，他忍不住看了看，闻了闻。

若是他没有这样做就好了。就在此刻，一阵极度的饥渴感向他袭来，他突然迫切地想尝上一口。他急忙把苹果放进口袋；但树上还有那么多苹果，尝一个又何妨呢？他想，门上的告示不一定就是禁令，它很可能只是一则忠告，而又有谁会去在意一则忠告呢？或者即使是禁令，那他吃了一个苹果就算违抗指令了吗？毕竟他都已经做到“为别人取苹果”的那部分要求了。

想着想着，狄格雷不经意地抬起头，透过树枝一直看到树冠。他发现有一只奇特的大鸟正在他头顶上的一根树枝上栖息。说是“栖息”，是因为它看上去几乎睡着了，但也许并没有真正睡着。它眯缝着一只眼睛，上下眼皮之间留出一条极细的缝。那只鸟的体格比鹰还大，胸部呈橘黄色，头上的羽毛是猩红色的，尾巴是紫色的。

“这充分说明了，”狄格雷后来对别人讲起这个故事时说，“在这种有魔法的地方，小心驶得万年船。你永远也无法知道有什么东西正监视着你。”但我总觉得，无论如何，狄格雷是不会为自己摘苹果的。对那时候的男孩们来说，“不行窃”之类的观念在他们心中要比在现在的男孩们心中根深蒂固得多，尽管对此我们不能完全确定。

狄格雷转身向大门走去，但又停下来，朝周围看了最后一眼。他大吃一惊，原来他不是一个人在这儿，那个女巫就站在离他几步远的地方。她正打算丢掉自己吃剩下的苹果核。那苹果的汁水颜色比你所料想的要深，还在她的嘴边留下了一圈讨人嫌的污渍。狄格雷立马就猜到她一定是翻墙进来的。而且，他开始对门上的最后一行话有了理解：“会得偿所愿，也会丧气失望”可能并不是没有任何意义的。他之所以这样想，是因为女巫此刻看上去更为强壮，也更为傲慢了，甚至在某种程度上说，她的态度极为傲慢，但她的脸色却是惨白的，像盐一样。

所有这些念头在狄格雷的脑中一闪而过，紧接着他便抬起脚后跟，尽全力冲向大门，女巫紧随其后。他一出来，大门就自动合上了。这使他稍稍领先，但好景不长。当他喊着“快，快上马，波莉！我们走，弗兰奇！”冲到同伴们身边时，女巫已爬过了墙，或者说，跳过墙追了上来，她又紧咬着狄格雷不放了。

“站着别动，”狄格雷高喊道，转过身面对着她，“不然我们就全部消失。别再跟上来半步。”

“傻孩子。”女巫说，“你有什么好跑的呀？我又不会害你。如果你不停下来，不听听我所说的话，你就不会知道能使你一辈子都快快乐乐的秘诀。”

“谢谢，但我并不想听什么秘诀。”狄格雷说，但其实他很想听。

“我知道你此行的目的。”女巫接着说，“因为昨天夜里藏在林中听你们对话的人就是我。你已经从那边的花园中摘得了果实，装在胸前的口袋里了。你想原封不动地把它带回去交给狮子，让它来吃，让它来用。傻孩子！你知道这是什么果子吗？我来告诉你，这是青春之果，是生命之果。我心里清楚，因为我已经吃过了，而且也感到身上发生了变化。我知道我从此不会衰老，也不会死亡。吃了它吧，孩子；吃了它，你和我都会获得永生，然后成为这个世界的国王和王后——或者成为你们世界的国王和王后也可以，如果我们决定回去的话。”

“不，不必了。”狄格雷说，“我不知道在每一个我认识的人都死了以后，我是否还想一直活下去。我宁可像普通人一样生老病死，然后进入天堂。”

“那你妈妈怎么办呢？你可是假装很爱她呢。”

“这和她又有什么关系呢？”狄格雷说。

“你难道还不明白吗，笨蛋？只要吃上一口这种苹果，你妈妈的病立马就会好了，而这苹果就在你胸前的口袋里。这儿只有我们几个，狮子离得那么远。用你的魔法回到你自己的世界去吧，一分钟后你就可以回到你妈妈的床边，把苹果喂给她吃了。五分钟后，你就会看到她的脸上出现血色，她还会告诉你疼痛都不见了。再过一会儿，她又会告诉你说感觉身体有劲儿了，然后便能安然入睡。你自己好好想想吧，好几个小时的自然的、香甜的睡眠，不觉得疼痛，也用不着吃药。到了第二天，所有人都会说她的恢复就是一个奇迹。她马上就会痊愈，一切都会变好，你又会有一个幸福的家庭，就像别的孩子一样。”

“噢！”狄格雷像受了伤似的喘着气，用手摸着头。因为他知道，此时最可怕的选择正摆在他面前。

“狮子究竟给了你什么好处，让你心甘情愿地受它奴役？”女巫说，“一旦你回到自己的世界，它便拿你一点办法也没有。要是你妈妈知道你本有机会让她远离痛苦，让她的生命再一次焕发活力，而且可以让你的爸爸不再心碎，可你却不愿意这样做，宁可为一个陌生世界里的与你们毫不相干的野蛮动物跑腿，她会怎么想呢？”

“我——我不觉得它是一只野蛮的动物。”狄格雷说，他的嗓音变得有些沙哑，“它是——我也不知道——”

“那它就更坏了。”女巫说，“看看到目前为止它都对你做了些什么吧；看看它把你变得这样忘恩负义。对于任何听从它的人，它都会这么做。残忍的、绝情的孩子啊！你宁可让自己的妈妈死也不愿意——”

“啊，快住嘴。”狄格雷悲痛地用沙哑的嗓音说，“你以为我不明白其中的道理吗？可是我——我已经做出了承诺。”

“啊，可你当时并不知道自己究竟承诺了什么。在这里，没有人可以阻止你。”

“妈妈她，”狄格雷无比困难地挤出几句话，“她是不会喜欢这样的。她对我极其严格，教导我要遵守诺言，而且不能偷窃。她给我提出了这样一系列的要求。她不会允许我这么做的，如果她在这儿的话。”

“但她永远也不必知道。”女巫故作甜蜜地说，你无论如何也想不到一个长相如此凶恶的人竟会这样说话，“你不需要告诉她你是如何得到这个苹果的。你爸爸也不必知道。你的世界里没有人需要知道整件事的来龙去脉。而且，你知道的，你实在不用带那个小女孩一同回去。”

就在女巫这样说的时候，她犯了一个致命的错误。狄格雷当然知道波莉可以用她自己的戒指回去，就像他可以用自己的戒指轻而易举地回去一样。但显然，女巫并不知道这一点。她诱骗狄格雷丢下波莉，这卑鄙的建议使她刚才说过的一切都成了假话和空话。即使狄格雷正沉浸在悲伤之中，女巫的这句话也令他瞬间清醒。他用和刚才大为不同且更为洪亮的声音说道：

“喂，你是如何知道这么多事情的？为什么突然之间对我妈妈这么关心？这跟你有什么关系？你在耍什么把戏？”

“说得好，狄格雷。”波莉在他耳边悄声说，“快！马上走。”在狄格雷和女巫争论的整个过程中，波莉都不敢说什么，因为你明白的，病重将死的不是她的妈妈。

“上马吧。”狄格雷说着，将波莉托上了马背，然后他自己也尽快爬了上去。与此同时，弗兰奇展开了双翼。

“愚蠢的人们，你们走吧！”女巫大叫着，“当你垂垂老矣的时候就会想到我所说的了，小男孩。记住你是怎样把青春永驻的机会扔掉的，这样的机会可不会再有了。”

而此时，他们已经飞上了高空。他们只听见女巫在叫喊，但听不清她具体在说什么。女巫也不愿浪费时间，眼巴巴地看着他们离开，他们看见她动身向北边的山坡下走去了。

那天早上，他们出发得很早，花园里发生的事也没有耽误太多的时间，因此弗兰奇和波莉都认为在天黑前赶回纳尼亚是不成问题的。在回去的路上，狄格雷一句话也没有说，其他两位也不好意思与他说什么。他沉浸在悲伤中，甚至始终无法判断自己这样做对不对。但只要他想起阿斯兰眼中晶莹的泪花，他便坚信自己做出了正确的选择。

这一整天，弗兰奇都不知疲倦地扇动着翅膀，稳稳地飞行着。它沿着河流向东飞行，越过高山，飞过森林覆盖的原始山区，又飞过大瀑布，越飞越低，一直飞到被巨大岩壁投下的阴影所笼罩的纳尼亚森林。最后，他们背后的天空被残阳染成了血红色。弗兰奇看见河边聚集了许多动物；不久，阿斯兰的身影也映入眼帘。弗兰奇敛起双翼，伸开四条腿降了下来，慢跑着落在地上。在它停下之后，孩子们便下来了。狄格雷看见所有的动物、小矮人、森林之神、河泽仙女等都向两边退去，为阿斯兰留出一条通道。他径直走到阿斯兰跟前，将苹果递给它，说道：

“阁下，我把你想要的苹果摘来了。”

第十四章
种下神树

“做得好。”阿斯兰用足以撼动大地的声音说。

狄格雷知道所有的纳尼亚公民都听到了这句话，也知道他们的事迹将在这个新世界里流传几百年，甚至永远流传下去。但他并没有陷入自满这种危险的情绪中，因为他正面对着阿斯兰，根本没有往这方面想。这次，他发现自己可以正视狮子的眼睛了。他已经忘了自己的难处，内心感到全然的满足。

“做得好，亚当之子。”狮子又说了一遍，“你曾经渴望得到这只苹果，并为其流泪。只有你的双手可以栽下这颗用以守卫纳尼亚的树种。将苹果朝河边的松土扔过去吧。”

狄格雷照做了。大家都安静下来，静得连苹果掉进泥土里时发出的轻柔响声都能听得一清二楚。

“扔得好。”阿斯兰说，“现在，让我们为纳尼亚的弗兰克国王和他的海伦王后举行加冕仪式。”

孩子们这才注意到这对夫妻。他们穿着奇异而美丽的衣服，华贵的长袍从肩上一直拖到地上。四个小矮人托起国王长袍的下摆，四个河泽仙女则托起王后的裙摆。他们的头上没有任何装饰，海伦只是把头发披了下来，却显得尤为美丽动人。然而，使他们看起来与之前不一样的，不是头发和华服，而是他们脸上所显现的一种崭新的神情，尤其是国王的神情。他在伦敦当马车夫时养成的尖酸、狡诈与好斗的脾气尽数消失，取而代之的是勇敢与善良。也许，是这个新生世界的空气，或是与阿斯兰的谈话使他身上发生了这样的变化。或者可能是这两者共同作用的结果。

“天哪。”弗兰奇悄悄对波莉说，“我的老主人几乎就像我一般大变样了！他现在是这个世界真正的统治者了。”

“是的，但别在我耳边窸窸窣窣地说。”波莉说，“我的耳朵好痒。”

“现在，”阿斯兰说，“你们几个去把那几棵缠在一起的树分开。让我们来看看那里到底藏着什么。”

狄格雷这才看见，有四棵树紧紧地长在一起，它们的枝干也纠缠在了一起，从而形成了一个小笼子。两头大象用鼻子，几个小矮人用小斧子，他们很快就分开了那些树枝。那里藏着三样东西：一棵小树，似乎是金子做的；另一棵小树，像是银子做的；但第三样东西看上去惨极了，只见这东西弓着背缩在两棵树之间，衣服上挂满了泥浆。

“天哪！”狄格雷低低地喊了一声，“是安德鲁舅舅！”

我们必须回过头去，才能把这事解释清楚。你还记得动物们曾试着把他栽进土里，并且浇了水吧？当他终于被水淋醒时，他发现自己已经成了落汤鸡，大腿以下全部埋在土里（土很快变成了泥浆）。他做梦也想不到自己会被这么多野兽包围，于是自然开始放声尖叫。从某种意义上讲，这是一件好事，因为这就使动物们（甚至是野猪）确信他是活的。于是，它们又把他挖了出来（这时候他的长裤已经脏得不成样子）。双腿一自由，他就想跑，但大象用鼻子在他腰上轻轻一卷，便拦住了他的去路。所有动物都认为必须将他安全地关在什么地方，直到阿斯兰有空过来决定如何处置他。所以，它们造了一个笼子，或者说棚子，将他围了起来。然后，它们用自己所能想到的各种食物来喂他。

驴子找了好几捆蓟丢进笼子里，但安德鲁舅舅似乎并不买账。松鼠们则像发射连珠炮似的砸下许多坚果，但他只是用手遮头，想着法儿避开。几只鸟儿辛勤地飞来飞去，向笼子里投下虫子。熊则表现得尤其善良：下午，它发现了一个野蜂巢，高尚的熊自己舍不得吃（其实它非常想吃），带回来给了安德鲁舅舅。然而，这却是最失败的一次投食。那团黏糊糊的东西被熊挂在了笼子的顶上，可不幸的是，它正巧砸中了安德鲁舅舅的脸（并非所有的蜂都死了）。熊根本不会在乎自己的脸给蜂巢打一下，因此它自然也就无法理解安德鲁舅舅为什么会蹒跚着往后退，还跌了一跤，坐到了地上。更不幸的是，他恰好坐在了那堆蓟上。“不管怎样，”正如那头野猪说的，“不少蜂蜜流进了那东西的嘴巴里，这肯定对他有好处。”它们开始由衷地喜欢上了这只奇怪的宠物，并希望阿斯兰能够允许它们饲养他。其中一些较聪明的动物已经可以肯定，他所发出的声音至少有一部分是有意义的。它们给他取名叫“白兰地”，因为他常常发出那个声音。

然而最后，它们不得不把他留在那里过夜。因为当天阿斯兰一直忙着指导新国王和新王后，以及其他重要的事情，无暇过问“可怜的老白兰地”。他的晚餐相当丰盛——那么多坚果、梨子、苹果和香蕉都被扔了进去——但要说他度过了一个愉快的夜晚，那一定不是真的。

“把那东西带出来。”阿斯兰说。其中一头大象用鼻子将安德鲁舅舅卷了起来，放在狮子脚边，他吓得一动也不敢动。

“阿斯兰，”波莉说，“求求你说点儿什么来——来安抚他吧。然后再说点儿什么，让他以后再也别回到这里来了。”

“你觉得他会想回到这里来吗？”阿斯兰说。

“这个嘛，阿斯兰，”波莉说，“他可能会派别人来。他很喜欢看从灯柱上扭下来的铁棒长成小灯柱，而且他还想——”

“他的想法蠢极了，孩子。”阿斯兰说，“这个世界之所以在这几天里充盈着生命的活力，是因为我所唱响的为它注入活力的歌声还在空中和地上回荡。可这不会持续很久。但我不能跟这老无赖说这些，我也无法安慰他。他的恐惧使他无法理解我的话。如果我对他说话，他顶多只会听到咕哝和咆哮的声音。啊，亚当的孩子们，你们抵抗了所有诱惑，你们是多么明智啊！但我会把他尚且能够接受的唯一一份礼物给他的。”

狮子神情悲痛地低下巨大的头颅，朝魔法师受惊的脸上吹了一口气。“睡。”它说，“睡吧，与你自找的烦恼分开几小时吧。”狮子的话音刚落，安德鲁舅舅便立即合上眼皮，倒在地上，气息也平稳了。

“把他背到旁边，让他躺着。”阿斯兰说，“现在，小矮人们，施展你们的铁匠手艺吧！让我看着你们为你们的国王和王后做两顶王冠。”

许许多多的小矮人朝那棵金树奔去，数量多得你连做梦也想不到。眨眼间，小矮人们就把树上全部的叶子和一些枝干摘下来了。这时，孩子们终于知道，那棵树不光是金色的，而且的的确确是由柔软的金子组成的。当然了，它就是从安德鲁舅舅倒立时口袋里的金币掉落下来的地方长出来的，正如银币落地后便长成了银树一样。小矮人不知从哪儿弄来了一堆干灌木用作燃料；此外，还有一块小铁砧、几把铁锤，以及钳子和风箱。没过一会儿（小矮人们很享受自己的工作），火就烧旺了，风箱呼呼作响，金子熔化了，铁锤叮叮当当地响了起来。刚才被阿斯兰派去掘地的两只鼹鼠（这是它们最喜欢做的事）把珍贵的宝石一股脑儿地倒在小矮人的脚边。终于，小矮人们用灵巧的双手做出了两顶王冠——这王冠不像现代欧洲的王冠那样丑陋与笨重，而是十分轻巧、精致、美观。当你戴上这圆圆的东西后，会显得更加好看。国王的王冠上镶着红宝石，王后的王冠上则镶着绿宝石。

王冠在河水中冷却后，阿斯兰让弗兰克和海伦跪在它面前，给他们戴上王冠。接着，它说道：“起来吧，纳尼亚的国王和王后，你们将会成为纳尼亚、各个岛屿及亚钦兰的许多国王的父母。请你们保持公正、仁慈与勇敢。我祝福你们。”

之后，大家全都欢呼、狂吠、嘶鸣，或拍打翅膀，或像喇叭一般鸣叫。国王夫妇站了起来，神情肃穆，但略带羞涩，不过这反倒使他们看上去更加高贵。狄格雷还在欢呼，就在这时，耳边响起了阿斯兰低沉的声音：

“看！”

每个人和动物都转过头去，惊奇而又喜悦地深吸了一口气。就在离他们几步之外的地方，一棵大树傲然挺立，它显然是才长出来的，但枝干此时已覆盖到他们头上。那棵树一定是趁着他们给国王和王后举行加冕仪式时悄悄长起来的，可它的生长速度就像挂在旗杆上的旗子升上去那般迅捷。树枝四处伸展，在地面上洒下了一束光，而不是一片阴影。每一片叶子下都可以隐隐约约地看见银色的苹果，就像若隐若现的星星。除去这等壮景，这棵树发出的气味更使他们都深吸了一口气。此时此刻，你很难再去想别的事了。

“亚当之子，”阿斯兰说，“你栽得很好。纳尼亚的公民们，你们的首要任务便是守护此树，因为它就是你们的盾牌。我所说的那个女巫此时已经逃到北边的山里去了；她将在那儿住下来，依靠邪恶的魔法使自己变得更强大。但只要这棵树枝繁叶茂，她就绝对不敢进入纳尼亚，更不敢走进这棵树一百里以内的范围，因为这棵树的气味虽然能给你们带来欢乐、生命和健康，对她却意味着死亡、惊惧与绝望。”

大家都庄严地凝视着那棵树。突然，阿斯兰甩过头来（就在它甩头的时候，它的毛发金光闪闪），紧紧地盯着孩子们。“什么事，孩子们？”它说，因为它看见他们在说悄悄话，并用肘部互相推挤。

“啊——阿斯兰，阁下，”狄格雷红着脸说，“我忘了告诉你，女巫其实已经吃了一个苹果，那个苹果跟这树上结的果实一模一样。”他没有完全说出自己心里真实的想法，但波莉立马替他讲出了他的顾虑。（和波莉相比，狄格雷更害怕被人看成傻瓜。）

“所以我们认为，阿斯兰，”她说，“一定是哪里出了问题，女巫并不会在乎那些苹果的气味。”

“你为何这么想，夏娃之女？”狮子问。

“唔，因为她已经吃了一个了。”

“孩子，”阿斯兰回答说，“如此一来，剩下的所有苹果都会使她恐惧。对于那些在错误的时间、用错误的方法摘下苹果并自己吃掉的人，他们就会面临这样的后果。果子虽好，但他们将永远憎恶并远离这种果子。”

“嗯，我明白了。”波莉说，“我想，因为她的摘法不对，所以苹果对她没有效用。我是说，就不会使她青春永驻吧。”

“唉。”阿斯兰摇着头说，“依然会的。事物本身的运行规律不会改变。她如愿以偿了，就像神灵一样拥有了不竭的力量与无尽的生命。但如果一个人的本性是恶的，那么他活多久就会烦恼多久，女巫已经开始有所体会了。他们这样的人想要什么就有什么，但他们未必一直喜欢这样。”

“我——我自己也差点儿吃了一个，阿斯兰。”狄格雷说，“那么我会不会也——”

“你会的，孩子。”阿斯兰说，“因为苹果总能发挥作用，而且也必须发挥作用，但那些为了一己私欲而摘它的人是不会有好下场的。如果任何一位纳尼亚公民不听劝告，偷偷摘下一个苹果，然后栽在这里来守卫纳尼亚，那么这苹果虽然也会守卫纳尼亚，但是它会把纳尼亚变成第二个恰恩——一个强盛却残酷的帝国——而不是我所希望的一片和乐的土地。女巫还诱骗你去做另一件事，不是吗，我的孩子？”

“是的，阿斯兰。她想要我摘一个苹果带回家给妈妈。”

“你要知道，这样做可以治好你妈妈的病，但你们两个并不会因此而快乐。如果你当真那样做了，终究会有那么一天，当你和她回想起这事时会说，当初还不如病死的好。”

狄格雷伤心地哭得说不出话来，他已经放弃了挽救妈妈生命的全部希望；但同时他也明白，狮子很清楚将会发生什么事，也许有些事情比眼见挚爱离世还要可怕。但这时，阿斯兰又发话了，几乎是在狄格雷耳边低语：

“如果这个苹果是你偷来的，那么后果就像我刚刚说的那样。但现在不会了，我现在给你的苹果将带来欢乐。在你们的世界里，它虽不能使人长生不老，但能够治愈绝症。去吧，孩子，从树上摘一个苹果给你妈妈。”

一时间，狄格雷简直被弄糊涂了，好像整个世界都骤然颠倒。然后，他仿佛做梦一般，朝着那棵树走去。与此同时，国王和王后为他欢呼，动物们也为他欢呼。他摘下苹果并放进了口袋，然后回到了阿斯兰身边。

“求求你，”他说，“可以让我们回家了吗？”他忘了说“谢谢”，但他确有此意，而阿斯兰明白他的心意。

第十五章
这个故事的结尾与其他故事的开端

“有我在，你们不需要借助任何戒指就能回来。”阿斯兰说。孩子们眨眨眼睛，四下张望了一番，他们又一次回到了世界之间的树林中。安德鲁舅舅躺在草地上，仍在熟睡。阿斯兰则站在他们旁边。

“来，”阿斯兰说，“你们该回去了。但我要请你们注意两件事：一件是警告，另一件是命令。看这里，孩子们。”

他们看见草地中有个小坑，坑底长着温暖而干燥的草。

“你们上次来这里的时候，”阿斯兰说，“这个坑还是一个水潭。你们跳进去后，到了恰恩，也就是那个有一轮垂死的太阳照在废墟上的世界。现在水潭没有了，那个世界也终结了，就如同它从来没有存在过一样。就让亚当和夏娃的族人将此视为一种警告吧。”

“好的，阿斯兰。”两个孩子齐声说道。但波莉又补充了一句：“可我们的世界总没有恰恩那么糟糕吧，阿斯兰？”

“目前还没有，夏娃之女。”它说，“还没有。但你们的世界正在朝那个方向发展，指不定哪天就会有一个你们种族中的坏人发现像亡语那样邪恶的秘密，并用它来毁灭所有的生命。过不了多久，在你们变成老头子老太婆之前，你们世界中的大国就将被暴君统治，他们跟嘉蒂丝女王一样，不把愉悦、正义与仁慈当回事儿。让你们世界里的人们小心些吧。这就是那个警告。下面是命令：尽快拿到你们这位舅舅的魔法戒指，并把它们埋到地下去，以确保没有人能再使用它们。”

当狮子说这番话时，两个孩子都抬起头，凝视着它的脸。顷刻间（他们一点儿也不知道接下来的事是怎么发生的），那张脸变成了一汪流动的金色海洋。孩子们漂浮在海中，一种充满力量与甜蜜的感觉缠绕着他们，淹没了他们，并渗透到他们体内，使他们意识到自己此前从来没有感受过真正的愉悦、智慧和幸福，甚至在这之前从没有活过、醒过。那一瞬间的记忆一直陪伴着他们，在他们的有生之年里，只要心中感到悲哀、害怕或者愤怒，他们就会想起那一刻金色的美好，而且那种感觉一直存在着，离他们很近，就在某个拐角处或者某一扇门后，随时会重新回来，使他们发自心底地相信，一切安好。不一会儿，三个人（安德鲁舅舅此时也醒了）就跌跌撞撞地回到了伦敦的喧嚣、热浪与刺鼻的气味中。

他们回到了凯特利家前门外的人行道上，除了女巫、马和马车夫消失了以外，一切如初。灯柱还在，只是缺了一根横杆；马车的残骸和人群也都还在。大伙儿议论纷纷，人们跪在被打伤的警察身边，说着“他醒过来了”“你现在感觉怎么样，老兄？”或者“救护车马上就到了”之类的话。

“噢，天哪！”狄格雷想，“我想此次历险根本没花多少时间。”

大多数人还在着急地四下寻找嘉蒂丝和那匹马，谁也没有注意到孩子们，因为没有人看见他们离去，也没有人看见他们回来。至于安德鲁舅舅，他那身乱糟糟的衣服和满脸的蜂蜜使他不可能被人认出来。前门恰好开着，女佣正站在门廊里看热闹。（那姑娘这一天该有多开心啊！）所以，在别人问起来之前，孩子们就轻而易举地催促着安德鲁舅舅进了门。

安德鲁舅舅抢在他们前头冲上了楼。起先，孩子们还怕他一头扎进阁楼，把剩下的魔法戒指藏起来，但他们的担心是多余的。他惦记的是他柜子里的白兰地。只见他马上进了卧室，锁上了门。当他再出来时（他没过多久就出来了），已经换上了自己的浴衣，径直向浴室走去。

“你能去找其他的戒指吗，波莉？”狄格雷说，“我想去看妈妈。”

“好的，我们待会儿见。”波莉说着，嗒嗒嗒地跑上了阁楼。

狄格雷花了好一会儿才使自己的气息平稳下来，然后他轻轻地走进了妈妈的房间。妈妈依旧靠着枕头躺在那里，那没有血色的、瘦削的脸让人看后不禁潸然泪下。狄格雷从口袋里拿出了那颗生命之果。

就像嘉蒂丝在她自己的世界里和在我们的世界里看起来不一样那样，山中花园里的果实看上去也有了变化。诚然，卧室里本就有不少颜色各异的东西：床罩、墙纸、从窗口射进来的阳光，以及妈妈那件漂亮的淡蓝色短上衣。但狄格雷一从口袋里取出果实，所有的东西都黯然失色，甚至连阳光也不再明亮。明亮的生命之果在天花板上投射出奇异的光芒，使你觉得别的东西都不值得一看，而你确实也无法再看任何别的东西。那颗青春之果的香气使你觉得房间里似乎有一扇向着天堂打开的窗户。

“哦，亲爱的，这果实多可爱啊。”狄格雷的妈妈说。

“把它吃下去，好吗？请把它吃下去，妈妈，求你了。”狄格雷说。

“我不知道医生会怎么说。”她回答，“但是真的——我觉得我好像可以吃。”

狄格雷把果实削了皮切开，一片一片地喂给妈妈吃。刚一吃完，妈妈就笑了，接着头向后一靠枕头，酣然入睡——那是不需要借助任何药物的真正的、自然的、温和的睡眠。狄格雷知道，在世上所有的东西中，这是妈妈最想要的。而且他能肯定，她的脸上也起了一点儿变化。他俯下身去，轻轻地吻了她一下，然后拿着果核，心情激动地悄悄走出了房间。在那一天剩下的时间里，不管他看见什么，都觉得它们极其普通，丝毫不具有魔力。他几乎不敢再奢望别的事情了，但当他想起阿斯兰的脸，心中就又充满了希望。

当天晚上，他将苹果核埋在了后花园里。

次日清晨，当医生照例来访的时候，狄格雷靠在楼梯的扶手上，听见医生和莱蒂姨妈一起走出来时说：

“凯特利小姐，这是我行医生涯中见过的最不寻常的病例。这——这就像是一个奇迹。不过我现在不想告诉那孩子任何情况，我不愿给人以任何错误的希冀。但是，依我看——”随后，他的声音便低得听不见了。

那天下午，狄格雷来到花园里，用口哨向波莉发出他们约定的暗语（前一天她没能过来）。

“有好消息吗？”波莉趴在墙头上说，“我是说，你妈妈怎么样了？”

“我想——我想她正在好转。”狄格雷说，“但如果你不介意，我还真不想再提这件事了。戒指的事怎么样了？”

“我全拿到了。”波莉说，“看，什么事都没发生，因为我戴着手套呢。我们去埋了它们吧。”

“好，我们走。我已经在昨天埋苹果核的地方做了记号。”

波莉翻过墙，两人一起朝那里走去。但事实上，狄格雷根本不需要做记号，因为那里已经长出了什么东西。他们不是像在纳尼亚看见新树生长那样看着它不断生长，而是看到它已经长出了地面。他们拿了一把铲子，绕着那东西，把所有的魔法戒指埋成一圈，也包括他们自己的几枚。

大约一周以后，狄格雷的妈妈已经很明显地恢复了健康。两周后，她便能坐在花园里了。过了一个月，整幢房子都变了样。凡是妈妈喜欢的事，莱蒂姨妈都做了：窗户打开了；脏窗帘被拉开了，房间里一片明亮；屋子里到处都摆上了新采的鲜花；食物也更美味了。旧钢琴调好音后，妈妈重新唱起了歌，并且会和狄格雷以及波莉一起玩耍。看到这番场景，莱蒂姨妈忍不住说：“我敢说，玛贝尔，你是三个孩子中最大的那个。”

当事情不顺心时，你会发现在一段时间里，情况只会越变越糟；但一旦事态开始好转，情况又常常变得越来越好。这种好日子大约过了六周，狄格雷身在印度的爸爸写来一封长信，信里有很多惊人的好消息。老叔祖父科克去世了，这当然就意味着爸爸现在非常富有。他即将从印度退休回家，再也不去那里了。那幢狄格雷打生下来就听说过但从未见过的乡下的大房子现在成了他们的家。大房子里有几套盔甲，有马厩、养狗场，有河流、公园、暖房、葡萄园和树林，后面还有山。所以，狄格雷和你们一样，确信他们从此将过上幸福快乐的生活。但也许你还想知道另外一两件事情。

波莉和狄格雷一直是非常要好的朋友，而且几乎每个假期她都会到乡下去，和他们一起住在那幢漂亮的房子里。在那儿，她学会了骑马、游泳、挤奶、烘焙和爬山。

在纳尼亚，动物们生活在和平与喜乐之中。几百年间，女巫和其他任何敌人都没来骚扰过那片乐土。弗兰克国王与海伦王后以及他们的孩子也在纳尼亚快乐地生活着，而且他们的第二个儿子当了亚钦兰的国王。儿子们娶了仙女，女儿们则嫁给了河神和树神。女巫栽下的路灯柱日日夜夜地照耀着纳尼亚的森林（她自己并不知道此事），灯柱所在的地方后来被叫作灯柱荒原。多年之后，另一个来自我们世界的孩子在一个下雪的夜晚走进纳尼亚，发现那盏灯依然亮着。而她的这次冒险，在某种意义上讲，与我刚刚告诉你们的故事有着紧密的联系。

事情是这样的。狄格雷埋在后花园里的果核长成了一棵壮硕的大树。因为这棵树长在我们这个世界的土壤里，远离了阿斯兰的歌声与纳尼亚新鲜的空气，所以它没有结出有魔力的果实，不能再像救活狄格雷的妈妈一样使一个将死之人复生，但它的果实远比英国其他地方的苹果要漂亮且营养丰富。但是，就这棵果树的内在而言，在它的汁液中，这棵树（就这样称呼它吧）仍然“记得”它的原生所在的在纳尼亚的那棵树。有时，在没有刮风的时候，它也会神秘地摇动。我想，这时候纳尼亚一定正在刮大风，而这棵远在异乡的树之所以摇动，是因为它在纳尼亚的母树正在强劲的西南风中摇曳。然而，之后的事证明了这棵树的木材中仍然存在着魔法。当狄格雷到了中年（彼时，他已成了知名的学者、教授和旅行家，凯特利家的老房子也归他所有），一场席卷英格兰南部的风暴吹倒了那棵树。他不忍心让人把它砍了当柴火，便用一部分木料做了一个大衣柜，并把衣柜放在了他乡下的大房子里。尽管他自己没有发现那衣柜的魔力，别人却发现了。这就是发生在我们的世界和纳尼亚之间的所有故事的开端，你可以在其他的故事中读到。

当狄格雷和他的家人搬到乡下的大房子去住时，他们把安德鲁舅舅也带了过去，与他们一起生活，因为狄格雷的爸爸说：“我们必须阻止这老家伙再作乱。可怜的莱蒂始终要照看着他，这对她来说实在是太不公平了。”安德鲁舅舅此后再也没有做过任何魔法实验。他已经吸取了教训，而且到了晚年，他也不再像从前那么自私，反而友善了不少。但他总是喜欢在球房里单独会客，给他的客人们讲有关一个神秘女人和一个外国王族的故事，说他曾和这个女人一起驾着马车在伦敦的街上驰骋。“她脾气很坏。”他老是说，“可她是一个异常漂亮的女人，先生，一个异常漂亮的女人。”

CHAPTER ONE
THE WRONG DOOR

This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.

In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer； and as for sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.

She lived in one of a long row of houses which were all joined together. One morning she was out in the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the garden next door and put his face over the wall. Polly was very surprised because up till now there had never been any children in that house, but only Mr. Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old bachelor and old maid, living together. So she looked up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was very grubby. It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As a matter of fact, this was very nearly what he had been doing.

“Hullo,” said Polly.

“Hullo,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”

“Polly,” said Polly. “What’s yours?”

“Digory,” said the boy.

“I say, what a funny name！” said Polly.

“It isn’t half so funny as Polly,” said Digory.

“Yes it is,” said Polly.

“No, it isn’t,” said Digory.

“At any rate I do wash my face,” said Polly, “which is what you need to do, especially after—” and then she stopped. She had been going to say “After you’ve been blubbing,” but she thought that wouldn’t be polite.

“All right, I have then,” said Digory in a much louder voice, like a boy who was so miserable that he didn’t care who knew he had been crying. “And so would you,” he went on, “if you’d lived all your life in the country and had a pony, and a river at the bottom of the garden, and then been brought to live in a beastly Hole like this.”

“London isn’t a Hole,” said Polly indignantly. But the boy was too wound up to take any notice of her, and he went on—

“And if your father was away in India—and you had to come and live with an Aunt and an Uncle who’s mad （who would like that?）—and if the reason was that they were looking after your Mother—and if your Mother was ill and was going to—going to—die.” Then his face went the wrong sort of shape as it does if you’re trying to keep back your tears.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” said Polly humbly. And then, because she hardly knew what to say, and also to turn Digory’s mind to cheerful subjects, she asked：

“Is Mr. Ketterley really mad?”

“Well either he’s mad,” said Digory, “or there’s some other mystery. He has a study on the top floor and Aunt Letty says I must never go up there. Well, that looks fishy to begin with. And then there’s another thing. Whenever he tries to say anything to me at meal times—he never even tries to talk to her—she always shuts him up. She says,‘Don’t worry the boy, Andrew’or‘I’m sure Digory doesn’t want to hear about that’or else‘Now, Digory, wouldn’t you like to go out and play in the garden?’”

“What sort of things does he try to say?”

“I don’t know. He never gets far enough. But there’s more than that. One night—it was last night in fact—as I was going past the foot of the attic-stairs on my way to bed （and I don’t much care for going past them either） I’m sure I heard a yell.”

“Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that.”

“Or perhaps he’s a coiner.”

“Or he might have been a pirate, like the man at the beginning of Treasure Island, and be always hiding from his old shipmates.”

“How exciting！” said Polly. “I never knew your house was so interesting.”

“You may think it interesting,” said Digory. “But you wouldn’t like it if you had to sleep there. How would you like to lie awake listening for Uncle Andrew’s step to come creeping along the passage to your room? And he has such awful eyes.”

That was how Polly and Digory got to know one another； and as it was just the beginning of the summer holidays and neither of them was going to the sea that year, they met nearly every day.

Their adventures began chiefly because it was one of the wettest and coldest summers there had been for years. That drove them to do indoor things； you might say, indoor exploration. It is wonderful how much exploring you can do with a stump of candle in a big house, or in a row of houses. Polly had discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little door in the box-room attic of her house you would find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you could get into by a little careful climbing. The dark place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one side and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there were little chunks of light between the slates. There was no floor in this tunnel； you had to step from rafter to rafter, and between them there was only plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself falling through the ceiling of the room below.

Polly had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern as a smugglers’cave. She had brought up bits of old packing cases and the seats of broken kitchen chairs, and things of that sort, and spread them across from rafter to rafter so as to make a bit of floor. Here she kept a cash-box containing various treasures, and a story she was writing and usually a few apples. She had often drunk a quiet bottle of ginger-beer in there； the old bottles made it look more like a smugglers’cave.

Digory quite liked the cave （she wouldn’t let him see the story） but he was more interested in exploring.

“Look here,” he said. “How long does this tunnel go on for? I mean, does it stop where your house ends?”

“No,” said Polly. “The walls don’t go out to the roof. It goes on. I don’t know how far.”

“Then we could get the length of the whole row of houses.”

“So we could,” said Polly. “And oh, I say！”

“What?”

“We could get into the other houses.”

“Yes, and get taken up for burglars！ No thanks.”

“Don’t be so jolly clever. I was thinking of the house beyond yours.”

“What about it?”

“Why, it’s the empty one. Daddy says it’s always been empty since we came here.”

“I suppose we ought to have a look at it then,” said Digory.

He was a good deal more excited than you’d have thought from the way he spoke. For of course he was thinking, just as you would have been, of all the reasons why the house might have been empty so long. So was Polly. Neither of them said the word “haunted.” And both felt that once the thing had been suggested, it would be feeble not to do it.

“Shall we go and try it now?” said Digory.

“All right,” said Polly.

“Don’t if you’d rather not,” said Digory.

“I’m game if you are,” said she.

“How are we to know we’re in the next house but one?”

They decided they would have to go out into the box-room and walk across it taking steps as long as the steps from one rafter to the next. That would give them an idea of how many rafters went to a room. Then they would allow about four more for the passage between the two attics in Polly’s house, and then the same number for the maid’s bedroom as for the box-room. That would give them the length of the house. When they had done that distance twice they would be at the end of Digory’s house； any door they came to after that would let them into an attic of the empty house.

“But I don’t expect it’s really empty at all,” said Digory.

“What do you expect?”

“I expect someone lives there in secret, only coming in and out at night, with a dark lantern. We shall probably discover a gang of desperate criminals and get a reward. It’s all rot to say a house would be empty all those years unless there was some mystery.”

“Daddy thought it must be the drains,” said Polly.

“Pooh！ Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations,” said Digory. Now that they were talking by daylight in the attic instead of by candlelight in the Smugglers’Cave it seemed much less likely that the empty house would be haunted.

When they had measured the attic they had to get a pencil and do a sum. They both got different answers to it at first, and even when they agreed I am not sure they got it right. They were in a hurry to start on the exploration.

“We mustn’t make a sound,” said Polly as they climbed in again behind the cistern. Because it was such an important occasion they took a candle each （Polly had a good store of them in her cave）.

It was very dark and dusty and drafty and they stepped from rafter to rafter without a word except when they whispered to one another, “We’re opposite your attic now” or “this must be halfway through our house.” And neither of them stumbled and the candles didn’t go out, and at last they came where they could see a little door in the brick wall on their right. There was no bolt or handle on this side of it, of course, for the door had been made for getting in, not for getting out； but there was a catch （as there often is on the inside of a cupboard door） which they felt sure they would be able to turn.

“Shall I?” said Digory.

“I’m game if you are,” said Polly, just as she had said before. Both felt that it was becoming very serious, but neither would draw back. Digory pushed round the catch with some difficulty. The door swung open and the sudden daylight made them blink. Then, with a great shock, they saw that they were looking, not into a deserted attic, but into a furnished room. But it seemed empty enough. It was dead silent. Polly’s curiosity got the better of her. She blew out her candle and stepped out into the strange room, making no more noise than a mouse.

It was shaped, of course, like an attic, but furnished as a sitting-room. Every bit of the walls was lined with shelves and every bit of the shelves was full of books. A fire was burning in the grate （you remember that it was a very cold wet summer that year） and in front of the fireplace with its back toward them was a high-backed armchair.

Between the chair and Polly, and filling most of the middle of the room, was a big table piled with all sorts of things—printed books, and books of the sort you write in, and ink bottles and pens and sealing-wax and a microscope. But what she noticed first was a bright red wooden tray with a number of rings on it. They were in pairs—a yellow one and a green one together, then a little space, and then another yellow one and another green one. They were no bigger than ordinary rings, and no one could help noticing them because they were so bright. They were the most beautifully shiny little things you can imagine. If Polly had been a very little younger she would have wanted to put one in her mouth.

The room was so quiet that you noticed the ticking of the clock at once. And yet, as she now found, it was not absolutely quiet either. There was a faint—a very, very faint—humming sound. If vacuum cleaners had been invented in those days Polly would have thought it was the sound of a Hoover being worked a long way off—several rooms away and several floors below. But it was a nicer sound than that, a more musical tone； only so faint that you could hardly hear it.

“It’s all right； there’s no one here,” said Polly over her shoulder to Digory. She was speaking above a whisper now. And Digory came out, blinking and looking extremely dirty—as indeed Polly was too.

“This is no good,” he said. “It’s not an empty house at all. We’d better leave before anyone comes.”

“What do you think those are?” said Polly, pointing at the colored rings.

“Oh come on,” said Digory. “The sooner—”

He never finished what he was going to say for at that moment something happened. The high-backed chair in front of the fire moved suddenly and there rose up out of it—like a pantomime demon coming up out of a trapdoor—the alarming form of Uncle Andrew. They were not in the empty house at all； they were in Digory’s house and in the forbidden study！ Both children said “O-o-oh” and realized their terrible mistake. They felt they ought to have known all along that they hadn’t gone nearly far enough.

Uncle Andrew was tall and very thin. He had a long clean-shaven face with a sharply-pointed nose and extremely bright eyes and a great tousled mop of gray hair.

Digory was quite speechless, for Uncle Andrew looked a thousand times more alarming than he had ever looked before. Polly was not so frightened yet； but she soon was. For the very first thing Uncle Andrew did was to walk across to the door of the room, shut it, and turn the key in the lock. Then he turned round, fixed the children with his bright eyes, and smiled, showing all his teeth.

“There！” he said. “Now my fool of a sister can’t get at you！”

It was dreadfully unlike anything a grown-up would be expected to do. Polly’s heart came into her mouth, and she and Digory started backing toward the little door they had come in by. Uncle Andrew was too quick for them. He got behind them and shut that door too and stood in front of it. Then he rubbed his hands and made his knuckles crack. He had very long, beautifully white, fingers.

“I am delighted to see you,” he said. “Two children are just what I wanted.”

“Please, Mr. Ketterley,” said Polly. “It’s nearly my dinner time and I’ve got to go home. Will you let us out, please?”

“Not just yet,” said Uncle Andrew. “This is too good an opportunity to miss. I wanted two children. You see, I’m in the middle of a great experiment. I’ve tried it on a guinea-pig and it seemed to work. But then a guinea-pig can’t tell you anything. And you can’t explain to it how to come back.”

“Look here, Uncle Andrew,” said Digory, “it really is dinner time and they’ll be looking for us in a moment. You must let us out.”

“Must?” said Uncle Andrew.

Digory and Polly glanced at one another. They dared not say anything, but the glances meant “Isn’t this dreadful?” and “We must humor him.”

“If you let us go for our dinner now,” said Polly, “we could come back after dinner.”

“Ah, but how do I know that you would?” said Uncle Andrew with a cunning smile. Then he seemed to change his mind.

“Well, well,” he said, “if you really must go, I suppose you must. I can’t expect two youngsters like you to find it much fun talking to an old buffer like me.” He sighed and went on. “You’ve no idea how lonely I sometimes am. But no matter. Go to your dinner. But I must give you a present before you go. It’s not every day that I see a little girl in my dingy old study； especially, if I may say so, such a very attractive young lady as yourself.”

Polly began to think he might not really be mad after all.

“Wouldn’t you like a ring, my dear?” said Uncle Andrew to Polly.

“Do you mean one of those yellow or green ones?” said Polly. “How lovely！”

“Not a green one,” said Uncle Andrew. “I’m afraid I can’t give the green ones away. But I’d be delighted to give you any of the yellow ones, with my love. Come and try one on.”

Polly had now quite got over her fright and felt sure that the old gentleman was not mad； and there was certainly something strangely attractive about those bright rings. She moved over to the tray.

“Why！ I declare,” she said. “That humming noise gets louder here. It’s almost as if the rings were making it.”

“What a funny fancy, my dear,” said Uncle Andrew with a laugh. It sounded a very natural laugh, but Digory had seen an eager, almost a greedy, look on his face.

“Polly！ Don’t be a fool！” he shouted. “Don’t touch them.”

It was too late. Exactly as he spoke, Polly’s hand went out to touch one of the rings. And immediately, without a flash or a noise or a warning of any sort, there was no Polly. Digory and his Uncle were alone in the room.

CHAPTER TWO
DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE

It was so sudden, and so horribly unlike anything that had ever happened to Digory even in a nightmare, that he let out a scream. Instantly Uncle Andrew’s hand was over his mouth. “None of that！” he hissed in Digory’s ear. “If you start making a noise your Mother’ll hear it. And you know what a fright might do to her.”

As Digory said afterward, the horrible meanness of getting at a chap in that way, almost made him sick. But of course he didn’t scream again.

“That’s better,” said Uncle Andrew. “Perhaps you couldn’t help it. It is a shock when you first see someone vanish. Why, it gave even me a turn when the guinea-pig did it the other night.”

“Was that when you yelled?” asked Digory.

“Oh, you heard that, did you? I hope you haven’t been spying on me?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Digory indignantly. “But what’s happened to Polly?”

“Congratulate me, my dear boy,” said Uncle Andrew, rubbing his hands. “My experiment has succeeded. The little girl’s gone—vanished—right out of the world.”

“What have you done to her?”

“Sent her to—well—to another place.”

“What do you mean?” asked Digory.

Uncle Andrew sat down and said, “Well, I’ll tell you all about it. Have you ever heard of old Mrs. Lefay?”

“Wasn’t she a great-aunt or something?” said Digory.

“Not exactly,” said Uncle Andrew. “She was my godmother. That’s her, there, on the wall.”

Digory looked and saw a faded photograph； it showed the face of an old woman in a bonnet. And he could now remember that he had once seen a photo of the same face in an old drawer, at home, in the country. He had asked his Mother who it was and Mother had not seemed to want to talk about the subject much. It was not at all a nice face, Digory thought, though of course with those early photographs one could never really tell.

“Was there—wasn’t there—something wrong about her, Uncle Andrew?” he said.

“Well,” said Uncle Andrew with a chuckle, “it depends what you call wrong. People are so narrow-minded. She certainly got very queer in later life. Did very unwise things. That was why they shut her up.”

“In an asylum, do you mean?”

“Oh no, no, no,” said Uncle Andrew in a shocked voice. “Nothing of that sort. Only in prison.”

“I say！” said Digory. “What had she done?”

“Ah, poor woman,” said Uncle Andrew. “She had been very unwise. There were a good many different things. We needn’t go into all that. She was always very kind to me.”

“But look here, what has all this got to do with Polly? I do wish you’d—”

“All in good time, my boy,” said Uncle Andrew. “They let old Mrs. Lefay out before she died and I was one of the very few people whom she would allow to see her in her last illness. She had got to dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself. But she and I were interested in the same sort of things. It was only a few days before her death that she told me to go to an old bureau in her house and open a secret drawer and bring her a little box that I would find there. The moment I picked up that box I could tell by the pricking in my fingers that I held some great secret in my hands. She gave it me and made me promise that as soon as she was dead I would burn it, unopened, with certain ceremonies. That promise I did not keep.”

“Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you,” said Digory.

“Rotten?” said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. “Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true； most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys—and servants—and women—and even people in general, can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.”

As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle’s face the moment before Polly had vanished； and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew’s grand words. “All it means,” he said to himself, “is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”

“Of course,” said Uncle Andrew, “I didn’t dare to open the box for a long time, for I knew it might contain something highly dangerous. For my godmother was a very remarkable woman. The truth is, she was one of the last mortals in this country who had fairy blood in her. （She said there had been two others in her time. One was a duchess and the other was a charwoman.） In fact, Digory, you are now talking to the last man （possibly） who really had a fairy godmother. There！ That’ll be something for you to remember when you are an old man yourself.”

“I bet she was a bad fairy,” thought Digory； and added out loud, “But what about Polly?”

“How you do harp on that！” said Uncle Andrew. “As if that was what mattered！ My first task was of course to study the box itself. It was very ancient. And I knew enough even then to know that it wasn’t Greek, or Old Egyptian, or Babylonian, or Hittite, or Chinese. It was older than any of those nations. Ah—that was a great day when I at last found out the truth. The box was Atlantean； it came from the lost island of Atlantis. That meant it was centuries older than any of the stone-age things they dig up in Europe. And it wasn’t a rough, crude thing like them either. For in the very dawn of time Atlantis was already a great city with palaces and temples and learned men.”

He paused for a moment as if he expected Digory to say something. But Digory was disliking his Uncle more every minute, so he said nothing.

“Meanwhile,” continued Uncle Andrew, “I was learning a good deal in other ways （it wouldn’t be proper to explain them to a child） about Magic in general. That meant that I came to have a fair idea what sort of things might be in the box. By various tests I narrowed down the possibilities. I had to get to know some—well, some devilish queer people, and go through some very disagreeable experiences. That was what turned my head gray. One doesn’t become a magician for nothing. My health broke down in the end. But I got better. And at last I actually knew.”

Although there was not really the least chance of anyone overhearing them, he leaned forward and almost whispered as he said：

“The Atlantean box contained something that had been brought from another world when our world was only just beginning.”

“What?” asked Digory, who was now interested in spite of himself.

“Only dust,” said Uncle Andrew. “Fine, dry dust. Nothing much to look at. Not much to show for a lifetime of toil, you might say. Ah, but when I looked at that dust （I took jolly good care not to touch it） and thought that every grain had once been in another world—I don’t mean another planet, you know； they’re part of our world and you could get to them if you went far enough—but a really Other World—another Nature—another universe—somewhere you would never reach even if you traveled through the space of this universe forever and ever—a world that could be reached only by Magic—well！” Here Uncle Andrew rubbed his hands till his knuckles cracked like fireworks.

“I knew,” he went on, “that if only you could get it into the right form, that dust would draw you back to the place it had come from. But the difficulty was to get it into the right form. My earlier experiments were all failures. I tried them on guinea-pigs. Some of them only died. Some exploded like little bombs—”

“It was a jolly cruel thing to do,” said Digory who had once had a guinea-pig of his own.

“How do you keep getting off the point！” said Uncle Andrew. “That’s what the creatures were for. I’d bought them myself. Let me see—where was I? Ah yes. At last I succeeded in making the rings： the yellow rings. But now a new difficulty arose. I was pretty sure, now, that a yellow ring would send any creature that touched it into the Other Place. But what would be the good of that if I couldn’t get them back to tell me what they had found there?”

“And what about them?” said Digory. “A nice mess they’d be in if they couldn’t get back！”

“You will keep on looking at everything from the wrong point of view,” said Uncle Andrew with a look of impatience. “Can’t you understand that the thing is a great experiment? The whole point of sending anyone into the Other Place is that I want to find out what it’s like.”

“Well why didn’t you go yourself then?”

Digory had hardly ever seen anyone look so surprised and offended as his Uncle did at this simple question. “Me? Me?” he exclaimed. “The boy must be mad！ A man at my time of life, and in my state of health, to risk the shock and the dangers of being flung suddenly into a different universe? I never heard anything so preposterous in my life！ Do you realize what you’re saying? Think what Another World means—you might meet anything-anything.”

“And I suppose you’ve sent Polly into it then,” said Digory. His cheeks were flaming with anger now. “And all I can say,” he added, “even if you are my Uncle—is that you’ve behaved like a coward, sending a girl to a place you’re afraid to go to yourself.”

“Silence, sir！” said Uncle Andrew, bringing his hand down on the table. “I will not be talked to like that by a little, dirty, schoolboy. You don’t understand. I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on. Bless my soul, you’ll be telling me next that I ought to have asked the guinea-pigs’permission before I used them！ No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. But the idea of my going myself is ridiculous. It’s like asking a general to fight as a common soldier. Supposing I got killed, what would become of my life’s work?”

“Oh, do stop jawing,” said Digory. “Are you going to bring Polly back?”

“I was going to tell you, when you so rudely interrupted me,” said Uncle Andrew, “that I did at last find out a way of doing the return journey. The green rings draw you back.”

“But Polly hasn’t got a green ring.”

“No,” said Uncle Andrew with a cruel smile.

“Then she can’t get back,” shouted Digory. “And it’s exactly the same as if you’d murdered her.”

“She can get back,” said Uncle Andrew, “if someone else will go after her, wearing a yellow ring himself and taking two green rings, one to bring himself back and one to bring her back.”

And now of course Digory saw the trap in which he was caught； and he stared at Uncle Andrew, saying nothing, with his mouth wide open. His cheeks had gone very pale.

“I hope,” said Uncle Andrew presently in a very high and mighty voice, just as if he were a perfect Uncle who had given one a handsome tip and some good advice, “I hope, Digory, you are not given to showing the white feather. I should be very sorry to think that anyone of our family had not enough honor and chivalry to go to the aid of—er—a lady in distress.”

“Oh shut up！” said Digory. “If you had any honor and all that, you’d be going yourself. But I know you won’t. All right. I see I’ve got to go. But you are a beast. I suppose you planned the whole thing, so that she’d go without knowing it and then I’d have to go after her.”

“Of course,” said Uncle Andrew with his hateful smile.

“Very well. I’ll go. But there’s one thing I jolly well mean to say first. I didn’t believe in Magic till today. I see now it’s real. Well if it is, I suppose all the old fairy tales are more or less true. And you’re simply a wicked, cruel magician like the ones in the stories. Well, I’ve never read a story in which people of that sort weren’t paid out in the end, and I bet you will be. And serve you right.”

Of all the things Digory had said this was the first that really went home. Uncle Andrew started and there came over his face a look of such horror that, beast though he was, you could almost feel sorry for him. But a second later he smoothed it all away and said with a rather forced laugh, “Well, well, I suppose that is a natural thing for a child to think—brought up among women, as you have been. Old wives’tales, eh? I don’t think you need worry about my danger, Digory. Wouldn’t it be better to worry about the danger of your little friend? She’s been gone some time. If there are any dangers Over There—well, it would be a pity to arrive a moment too late.”

“A lot you care,” said Digory fiercely. “But I’m sick of this jaw. What have I got to do?”

“You really must learn to control that temper of yours, my boy,” said Uncle Andrew coolly. “Otherwise you’ll grow up to be just like your Aunt Letty. Now. Attend to me.”

He got up, put on a pair of gloves, and walked over to the tray that contained the rings.

“They only work,” he said, “if they’re actually touching your skin. Wearing gloves, I can pick them up—like this—and nothing happens. If you carried one in your pocket nothing would happen； but of course you’d have to be careful not to put your hand in your pocket and touch it by accident. The moment you touch a yellow ring, you vanish out of this world. When you are in the Other Place I expect—of course this hasn’t been tested yet, but I expect—that the moment you touch a green ring you vanish out of that world and—I expect—reappear in this. Now. I take these two greens and drop them into your right-hand pocket. Remember very carefully which pocket the greens are in. G for green and R for right. G. R. you see, which are the first two letters of green. One for you and one for the little girl. And now you pick up a yellow one for yourself. I should put it on—on your finger—if I were you. There’ll be less chance of dropping it.”

Digory had almost picked up the yellow ring when he suddenly checked himself.

“Look here,” he said. “What about Mother? Supposing she asks where I am?”

“The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back,” said Uncle Andrew cheerfully.

“But you don’t really know whether I can get back.”

Uncle Andrew shrugged his shoulders, walked across to the door, unlocked it, threw it open, and said：

“Oh very well then. Just as you please. Go down and have your dinner. Leave the little girl to be eaten by wild animals or drowned or starved in Otherworld or lost there for good, if that’s what you prefer. It’s all one to me. Perhaps before tea time you’d better drop in on Mrs. Plummer and explain that she’ll never see her daughter again； because you were afraid to put on a ring.”

“By gum,” said Digory, “don’t I just wish I was big enough to punch your head！”

Then he buttoned up his coat, took a deep breath, and picked up the ring. And he thought then, as he always thought afterward too, that he could not decently have done anything else.

CHAPTER THREE
THE WOOD BETWEEN THE WORLDS

Uncle Andrew and his study vanished instantly. Then, for a moment, everything became muddled. The next thing Digory knew was that there was a soft green light coming down on him from above, and darkness below. He didn’t seem to be standing on anything, or sitting, or lying. Nothing appeared to be touching him. “I believe I’m in water,” said Digory. “Or under water.” This frightened him for a second, but almost at once he could feel that he was rushing upward. Then his head suddenly came out into the air and he found himself scrambling ashore, out on to smooth grassy ground at the edge of a pool.

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side—in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves； but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterward Digory always said, “It was a rich place, as rich as plumcake.”

The strangest thing was that, almost before he had looked about him, Digory had half forgotten how he had come there. At any rate, he was certainly not thinking about Polly, or Uncle Andrew, or even his Mother. He was not in the least frightened, or excited, or curious. If anyone had asked him “Where did you come from?” he would probably have said, “I’ve always been here.” That was what it felt like-as if one had always been in that place and never been bored although nothing had ever happened. As he said long afterward, “It’s not the sort of place where things happen. The trees go on growing, that’s all.”

After Digory had looked at the wood for a long time he noticed that there was a girl lying on her back at the foot of a tree a few yards away. Her eyes were nearly shut but not quite, as if she were just between sleeping and waking. So he looked at her for a long time and said nothing. And at last she opened her eyes and looked at him for a long time and she also said nothing. Then she spoke, in a dreamy, contented sort of voice.

“I think I’ve seen you before,” she said.

“I rather think so too,” said Digory. “Have you been here long?”

“Oh, always,” said the girl. “At least—I don’t know—a very long time.”

“So have I,” said Digory.

“No you haven’t,” said she. “I’ve just seen you come up out of that pool.”

“Yes, I suppose I did,” said Digory with a puzzled air. “I’d forgotten.”

Then for quite a long time neither said any more.

“Look here,” said the girl presently, “I wonder did we ever really meet before? I had a sort of idea—a sort of picture in my head—of a boy and a girl, like us—living somewhere quite different—and doing all sorts of things. Perhaps it was only a dream.”

“I’ve had that same dream, I think,” said Digory. “About a boy and a girl, living next door—and something about crawling among rafters. I remember the girl had a dirty face.”

“Aren’t you getting it mixed? In my dream it was the boy who had the dirty face.”

“I can’t remember the boy’s face,” said Digory； and then added, “Hullo！ What’s that?”

“Why, it’s a guinea-pig,” said the girl. And it was—a fat guinea-pig, nosing about in the grass. But round the middle of the guinea-pig there ran a tape, and, tied on to it by the tape, was a bright yellow ring.

“Look！ Look,” cried Digory. “The ring！ And look！ You’ve got one on your finger. And so have I.”

The girl now sat up, really interested at last. They stared very hard at one another, trying to remember. And then, at exactly the same moment, she shouted out “Mr. Ketterley” and he shouted out “Uncle Andrew,” and they knew who they were and began to remember the whole story. After a few minutes of hard talking they had got it straight. Digory explained how beastly Uncle Andrew had been.

“What do we do now?” said Polly. “Take the guinea-pig and go home?”

“There’s no hurry,” said Digory with a huge yawn.

“I think there is,” said Polly. “This place is too quiet. It’s so—so dreamy. You’re almost asleep. If we once give in to it we shall just lie down and drowse forever and ever.”

“It’s very nice here,” said Digory.

“Yes, it is,” said Polly. “But we’ve got to get back.” She stood up and began to go cautiously toward the guinea-pig. But then she changed her mind.

“We might as well leave the guinea-pig,” she said. “It’s perfectly happy here, and your uncle will only do something horrid to it if we take it home.”

“I bet he would,” answered Digory. “Look at the way he’s treated us. By the way, how do we get home?”

“Go back into the pool, I expect.”

They came and stood together at the edge looking down into the smooth water. It was full of the reflection of the green, leafy branches； they made it look very deep.

“We haven’t any bathing things,” said Polly.

“We shan’t need them, silly,” said Digory. “We’re going in with our clothes on. Don’t you remember it didn’t wet us on the way up?”

“Can you swim?”

“A bit. Can you?”

“Well—not much.”

“I don’t think we shall need to swim,” said Digory. “We want to go down, don’t we?”

Neither of them much liked the idea of jumping into that pool, but neither said so to the other. They took hands and said “One—Two—Three—Go” and jumped. There was a great splash and of course they closed their eyes. But when they opened them again they found they were still standing, hand in hand, in the green wood, and hardly up to their ankles in water. The pool was apparently only a couple of inches deep. They splashed back onto the dry ground.

“What on earth’s gone wrong?” said Polly in a frightened voice； but not quite so frightened as you might expect, because it is hard to feel really frightened in that wood. The place is too peaceful.

“Oh！ I know,” said Digory. “Of course it won’t work. We’re still wearing our yellow rings. They’re for the outward journey, you know. The green ones take you home. We must change rings. Have you got pockets? Good. Put your yellow ring in your left. I’ve got two greens. Here’s one for you.”

They put on their green rings and came back to the pool. But before they tried another jump Digory gave a long “O-o-oh！”

“What’s the matter?” said Polly.

“I’ve just had a really wonderful idea,” said Digory. “What are all the other pools?”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn’t we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool.”

“But I thought we were already in your Uncle Andrew’s Other World or Other Place or whatever he called it. Didn’t you say—”

“Oh bother Uncle Andrew,” interrupted Digory. “I don’t believe he knows anything about it. He never had the pluck to come here himself. He only talked of one Other World. But suppose there were dozens?”

“You mean, this wood might be only one of them?”

“No, I don’t believe this wood is a world at all. I think it’s just a sort of in-between place.”

Polly looked puzzled. “Don’t you see?” said Digory. “No, do listen. Think of our tunnel under the slates at home. It isn’t a room in any of the houses. In a way, it isn’t really part of any of the houses. But once you’re in the tunnel you can go along it and come into any of the houses in the row. Mightn’t this wood be the same?—a place that isn’t in any of the worlds, but once you’ve found that place you can get into them all.”

“Well, even if you can—” began Polly, but Digory went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

“And of course that explains everything,” he said. “That’s why it is so quiet and sleepy here. Nothing ever happens here. Like at home. It’s in the houses that people talk, and do things, and have meals. Nothing goes on in the in-between places, behind the walls and above the ceilings and under the floor, or in our own tunnel. But when you come out of our tunnel you may find yourself in any house. I think we can get out of this place into jolly well Anywhere！ We don’t need to jump back into the same pool we came up by. Or not just yet.”

“The Wood between the Worlds,” said Polly dreamily. “It sounds rather nice.”

“Come on,” said Digory. “Which pool shall we try?”

“Look here,” said Polly, “I’m not going to try any new pool till we’ve made sure that we can get back by the old one. We’re not even sure if it’ll work yet.”

“Yes,” said Digory. “And get caught by Uncle Andrew and have our rings taken away before we’ve had any fun. No thanks.”

“Couldn’t we just go part of the way down into our own pool,” said Polly. “Just to see if it works. Then if it does, we’ll change rings and come up again before we’re really back in Mr. Ketterley’s study.”

“Can we go part of the way down?”

“Well, it took time coming up. I suppose it’ll take a little time going back.”

Digory made rather a fuss about agreeing to this, but he had to in the end because Polly absolutely refused to do any exploring in new worlds until she had made sure about getting back to the old one. She was quite as brave as he about some dangers （wasps, for instance） but she was not so interested in finding out things nobody had ever heard of before； for Digory was the sort of person who wants to know everything, and when he grew up he became the famous Professor Kirke who comes into other books.

After a good deal of arguing they agreed to put on their green rings （“Green for safety,” said Digory, “so you can’t help remembering which is which”） and hold hands and jump. But as soon as they seemed to be getting back to Uncle Andrew’s study, or even to their own world, Polly was to shout “Change” and they would slip off their greens and put on their yellows. Digory wanted to be the one who shouted “Change” but Polly wouldn’t agree.

They put on the green rings, took hands, and once more shouted, “One—Two—Three—Go.” This time it worked. It is very hard to tell you what it felt like, for everything happened so quickly. At first there were bright lights moving about in a black sky； Digory always thinks these were stars and even swears that he saw Jupiter quite close-close enough to see its moon. But almost at once there were rows and rows of roofs and chimney pots about them, and they could see St. Paul’s and knew they were looking at London. But you could see through the walls of all the houses. Then they could see Uncle Andrew, very vague and shadowy, but getting clearer and more solid-looking all the time, just as if he were coming into focus. But before he became quite real Polly shouted “Change,” and they did change, and our world faded away like a dream, and the green light above grew stronger and stronger, till their heads came out of the pool and they scrambled ashore. And there was the wood all about them, as green and bright and still as ever. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.

“There！” said Digory. “That’s all right. Now for the adventure. Any pool will do. Come on. Let’s try that one.”

“Stop！” said Polly. “Aren’t we going to mark this pool?”

They stared at each other and turned quite white as they realized the dreadful thing that Digory had just been going to do. For there were any number of pools in the wood, and the pools were all alike and the trees were all alike, so that if they had once left behind the pool that led to our own world without making some sort of landmark, the chances would have been a hundred to one against their ever finding it again.

Digory’s hand was shaking as he opened his penknife and cut out a long strip of turf on the bank of the pool. The soil （which smelled nice） was of a rich reddish brown and showed up well against the green. “It’s a good thing one of us has some sense,” said Polly.

“Well don’t keep on gassing about it,” said Digory. “Come along, I want to see what’s in one of the other pools.” And Polly gave him a pretty sharp answer and he said something even nastier in reply. The quarrel lasted for several minutes but it would be dull to write it all down. Let us skip on to the moment at which they stood with beating hearts and rather scared faces on the edge of the unknown pool with their yellow rings on and held hands and once more said “One—Two—Three—Go！”

Splash！ Once again it hadn’t worked. This pool, too, appeared to be only a puddle. Instead of reaching a new world they only got their feet wet and splashed their legs for the second time that morning （if it was a morning： it seems to be always the same time in the Wood between the Worlds）.

“Blast and botheration！” exclaimed Digory. “What’s gone wrong now? We’ve put our yellow rings on all right. He said yellow for the outward journey.”

Now the truth was that Uncle Andrew, who knew nothing about the Wood between the Worlds, had quite a wrong idea about the rings. The yellow ones weren’t “outward” rings and the green ones weren’t “homeward” rings； at least, not in the way he thought. The stuff of which both were made had all come from the wood. The stuff in the yellow rings had the power of drawing you into the wood； it was stuff that wanted to get back to its own place, the in-between place. But the stuff in the green rings is stuff that is trying to get out of its own place； so that a green ring would take you out of the wood into a world. Uncle Andrew, you see, was working with things he did not really understand； most magicians are. Of course Digory did not realize the truth quite clearly either, or not till later. But when they had talked it over, they decided to try their green rings on the new pool, just to see what happened.

“I’m game if you are,” said Polly. But she really said this because, in her heart of hearts, she now felt sure that neither kind of ring was going to work at all in the new pool, and so there was nothing worse to be afraid of than another splash. I am not quite sure that Digory had not the same feeling. At any rate, when they had both put on their greens and come back to the edge of the water, and taken hands again, they were certainly a good deal more cheerful and less solemn than they had been the first time.

“One—Two—Three—Go！” said Digory. And they jumped.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE BELL AND THE HAMMER

There was no doubt about the Magic this time. Down and down they rushed, first through darkness and then through a mass of vague and whirling shapes which might have been almost anything. It grew lighter. Then suddenly they felt that they were standing on something solid. A moment later everything came into focus and they were able to look about them.

“What a queer place！” said Digory.

“I don’t like it,” said Polly with something like a shudder.

What they noticed first was the light. It wasn’t like sunlight, and it wasn’t like electric light, or lamps, or candles, or any other light they had ever seen. It was a dull, rather red light, not at all cheerful. It was steady and did not flicker. They were standing on a flat paved surface and buildings rose all around them. There was no roof overhead； they were in a sort of courtyard. The sky was extraordinarily dark—a blue that was almost black. When you had seen that sky you wondered that there should be any light at all.

“It’s very funny weather here,” said Digory. “I wonder if we’ve arrived just in time for a thunderstorm, or an eclipse.”

“I don’t like it,” said Polly.

Both of them, without quite knowing why, were talking in whispers. And though there was no reason why they should still go on holding hands after their jump, they didn’t let go.

The walls rose very high all round that courtyard. They had many great windows in them, windows without glass, through which you saw nothing but black darkness. Lower down there were great pillared arches, yawning blackly like the mouths of railway tunnels. It was rather cold.

The stone of which everything was built seemed to be red, but that might only be because of the curious light. It was obviously very old. Many of the flat stones that paved the courtyard had cracks across them. None of them fitted closely together and the sharp corners were all worn off. One of the arched doorways was half filled up with rubble. The two children kept on turning round and round to look at the different sides of the courtyard. One reason was that they were afraid of somebody—or something—looking out of those windows at them when their backs were turned.

“Do you think anyone lives here?” said Digory at last, still in a whisper.

“No,” said Polly. “It’s all in ruins. We haven’t heard a sound since we came.”

“Let’s stand still and listen for a bit,” suggested Digory.

They stood still and listened, but all they could hear was the thump-thump of their own hearts. This place was at least as quiet as the Wood between the Worlds. But it was a different kind of quietness. The silence of the Wood had been rich and warm （you could almost hear the trees growing） and full of life； this was a dead, cold, empty silence. You couldn’t imagine anything growing in it.

“Let’s go home,” said Polly.

“But we haven’t seen anything yet,” said Digory. “Now we’re here, we simply must have a look round.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing at all interesting here.”

“There’s not much point in finding a magic ring that lets you into other worlds if you’re afraid to look at them when you’ve got there.”

“Who’s talking about being afraid?” said Polly, letting go of Digory’s hand.

“I only thought you didn’t seem very keen on exploring this place.”

“I’ll go anywhere you go.”

“We can get away the moment we want to,” said Digory. “Let’s take off our green rings and put them in our right-hand pockets. All we’ve got to do is to remember that our yellows are in our left-hand pockets. You can keep your hand as near your pocket as you like, but don’t put it in or you’ll touch your yellow and vanish.”

They did this and went quietly up to one of the big arched doorways which led into the inside of the building. And when they stood on the threshold and could look in, they saw it was not so dark inside as they had thought at first. It led into a vast, shadowy hall which appeared to be empty； but on the far side there was a row of pillars with arches between them and through those arches there streamed in some more of the same tired-looking light. They crossed the hall, walking very carefully for fear of holes in the floor or of anything lying about that they might trip over. It seemed a long walk. When they had reached the other side they came out through the arches and found themselves in another and larger courtyard.

“That doesn’t look very safe,” said Polly, pointing at a place where the wall bulged outward and looked as if it were ready to fall over into the courtyard. In one place a pillar was missing between two arches and the bit that came down to where the top of the pillar ought to have been hung there with nothing to support it. Clearly, the place had been deserted for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.

“If it’s lasted till now, I suppose it’ll last a bit longer,” said Digory. “But we must be very quiet. You know a noise sometimes brings things down—like an avalanche in the Alps.”

They went on out of that courtyard into another doorway, and up a great flight of steps and through vast rooms that opened out of one another till you were dizzy with the mere size of the place. Every now and then they thought they were going to get out into the open and see what sort of country lay around the enormous palace. But each time they only got into another courtyard. They must have been magnificent places when people were still living there. In one there had once been a fountain. A great stone monster with wide-spread wings stood with its mouth open and you could still see a bit of piping at the back of its mouth, out of which the water used to pour. Under it was a wide stone basin to hold the water； but it was as dry as a bone. In other places there were the dry sticks of some sort of climbing plant which had wound itself round the pillars and helped to pull some of them down. But it had died long ago. And there were no ants or spiders or any of the other living things you expect to see in a ruin； and where the dry earth showed between the broken flagstones there was no grass or moss.

It was all so dreary and all so much the same that even Digory was thinking they had better put on their yellow rings and get back to the warm, green, living forest of the In-between place, when they came to two huge doors of some metal that might possibly be gold. One stood a little ajar. So of course they went to look in. Both started back and drew a long breath： for here at last was something worth seeing.

For a second they thought the room was full of people—hundreds of people, all seated, and all perfectly still. Polly and Digory, as you may guess, stood perfectly still themselves for a good long time, looking in. But presently they decided that what they were looking at could not be real people. There was not a movement nor the sound of a breath among them all. They were like the most wonderful waxworks you ever saw.

This time Polly took the lead. There was something in this room which interested her more than it interested Digory： all the figures were wearing magnificent clothes. If you were interested in clothes at all, you could hardly help going in to see them closer. And the blaze of their colors made this room look, not exactly cheerful, but at any rate rich and majestic after all the dust and emptiness of the others. It had more windows, too, and was a good deal lighter.

I can hardly describe the clothes. The figures were all robed and had crowns on their heads. Their robes were of crimson and silvery gray and deep purple and vivid green； and there were patterns, and pictures of flowers and strange beasts, in needlework all over them. Precious stones of astonishing size and brightness stared from their crowns and hung in chains round their necks and peeped out from all the places where anything was fastened.

“Why haven’t these clothes all rotted away long ago?” asked Polly.

“Magic,” whispered Digory. “Can’t you feel it? I bet this whole room is just stiff with enchantments. I could feel it the moment we came in.”

“Any one of these dresses would cost hundreds of pounds,” said Polly.

But Digory was more interested in the faces, and indeed these were well worth looking at. The people sat in their stone chairs on each side of the room and the floor was left free down the middle. You could walk down and look at the faces in turn.

“They were nice people, I think,” said Digory.

Polly nodded. All the faces they could see were certainly nice. Both the men and women looked kind and wise, and they seemed to come of a handsome race. But after the children had gone a few steps down the room they came to faces that looked a little different. These were very solemn faces. You felt you would have to mind your P’s and Q’s, if you ever met living people who looked like that. When they had gone a little further, they found themselves among faces they didn’t like； this was about the middle of the room. The faces here looked very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel. A little further on they looked crueller. Further on again, they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy. They were even despairing faces, as if the people they belonged to had done dreadful things and also suffered dreadful things. The last figure of all was the most interesting-a woman even more richly dressed than the others, very tall （but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world）, with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterward when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful. It is only fair to add that Polly always said she couldn’t see anything specially beautiful about her.

This woman, as I said, was the last； but there were plenty of empty chairs beyond her, as if the room had been intended for a much larger collection of images.

“I do wish we knew the story that’s behind all this,” said Digory. “Let’s go back and look at that table sort of thing in the middle of the room.”

The thing in the middle of the room was not exactly a table. It was a square pillar about four feet high and on it there rose a little golden arch from which there hung a little golden bell； and beside this there lay a little golden hammer to hit the bell with.

“I wonder ... I wonder ... I wonder...” said Digory.

“There seems to be something written here,” said Polly, stooping down and looking at the side of the pillar.

“By gum, so there is,” said Digory. “But of course we shan’t be able to read it.”

“Shan’t we? I’m not so sure,” said Polly.

They both looked at it hard and, as you might have expected, the letters cut in the stone were strange. But now a great wonder happened； for, as they looked, though the shape of the strange letters never altered, they found that they could understand them. If only Digory had remembered what he himself had said a few minutes ago, that this was an enchanted room, he might have guessed that the enchantment was beginning to work. But he was too wild with curiosity to think about that. He was longing more and more to know what was written on the pillar. And very soon they both knew. What it said was something like this—at least this is the sense of it though the poetry, when you read it there, was better：

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger；

Strike the bell and bide the danger,

Or wonder, till it drives you mad,

What would have followed if you had.

“No fear！” said Polly. “We don’t want any danger.”

“Oh but don’t you see it’s no good！” said Digory. “We can’t get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I’m not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that. No fear！”

“Don’t be so silly,” said Polly. “As if anyone would！ What does it matter what would have happened?”

“I expect anyone who’s come as far as this is bound to go on wondering till it sends him dotty. That’s the Magic of it, you see. I can feel it beginning to work on me already.”

“Well I don’t,” said Polly crossly. “And I don’t believe you do either. You’re just putting it on.”

“That’s all you know,” said Digory. “It’s because you’re a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.”

“You looked exactly like your Uncle when you said that,” said Polly.

“Why can’t you keep to the point?” said Digory. “What we’re talking about is—”

“How exactly like a man！” said Polly in a very grown-up voice； but she added hastily, in her real voice, “And don’t say I’m just like a woman, or you’ll be a beastly copy-cat.”

“I should never dream of calling a kid like you a woman,” said Digory loftily.

“Oh, I’m a kid, am I?” said Polly who was now in a real rage. “Well you needn’t be bothered by having a kid with you any longer then. I’m off. I’ve had enough of this place. And I’ve had enough of you too—you beastly, stuck-up, obstinate pig！”

“None of that！” said Digory in a voice even nastier than he meant it to be； for he saw Polly’s hand moving to her pocket to get hold of her yellow ring. I can’t excuse what he did next except by saying that he was very sorry for it afterward （and so were a good many other people）. Before Polly’s hand reached her pocket, he grabbed her wrist, leaning across her with his back against her chest. Then, keeping her other arm out of the way with his other elbow, he leaned forward, picked up the hammer, and struck the golden bell a light, smart tap. Then he let her go and they fell apart staring at each other and breathing hard. Polly was just beginning to cry, not with fear, and not even because he had hurt her wrist quite badly, but with furious anger. Within two seconds, however, they had something to think about that drove their own quarrels quite out of their minds.

As soon as the bell was struck it gave out a note, a sweet note such as you might have expected, and not very loud. But instead of dying away again, it went on； and as it went on it grew louder. Before a minute had passed it was twice as loud as it had been to begin with. It was soon so loud that if the children had tried to speak （but they weren’t thinking of speaking now-they were just standing with their mouths open） they would not have heard one another. Very soon it was so loud that they could not have heard one another even by shouting. And still it grew： all on one note, a continuous sweet sound, though the sweetness had something horrible about it, till all the air in that great room was throbbing with it and they could feel the stone floor trembling under their feet. Then at last it began to be mixed with another sound, a vague, disastrous noise which sounded first like the roar of a distant train, and then like the crash of a falling tree. They heard something like great weights falling. Finally, with a sudden rush and thunder, and a shake that nearly flung them off their feet, about a quarter of the roof at one end of the room fell in, great blocks of masonry fell all round them, and the walls rocked. The noise of the bell stopped. The clouds of dust cleared away. Everything became quiet again.

It was never found out whether the fall of the roof was due to Magic or whether that unbearably loud sound from the bell just happened to strike the note which was more than those crumbling walls could stand.

“There！ I hope you’re satisfied now,” panted Polly.

“Well, it’s all over, anyway,” said Digory.

And both thought it was； but they had never been more mistaken in their lives.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE DEPLORABLE WORD

The children were facing one another across the pillar where the bell hung, still trembling, though it no longer gave out any note. Suddenly they heard a soft noise from the end of the room which was still undamaged. They turned quick as lightning to see what it was. One of the robed figures, the furthest-off one of all, the woman whom Digory thought so beautiful, was rising from its chair. When she stood up they realized that she was even taller than they had thought. And you could see at once, not only from her crown and robes, but from the flash of her eyes and the curve of her lips, that she was a great queen. She looked round the room and saw the damage and saw the children, but you could not guess from her face what she thought of either or whether she was surprised. She came forward with long, swift strides.

“Who has awaked me? Who has broken the spell?” she asked.

“I think it must have been me,” said Digory.

“You！” said the Queen, laying her hand on his shoulder—a white, beautiful hand, but Digory could feel that it was strong as steel pincers. “You? But you are only a child, a common child. Anyone can see at a glance that you have no drop of royal or noble blood in your veins. How did such as you dare to enter this house?”

“We’ve come from another world, by Magic,” said Polly, who thought it was high time the Queen took some notice of her as well as Digory.

“Is this true?” said the Queen, still looking at Digory and not giving Polly even a glance.

“Yes, it is,” said he.

The Queen put her other hand under his chin and forced it up so that she could see his face better. Digory tried to stare back but he soon had to let his eyes drop. There was something about hers that overpowered him. After she had studied him for well over a minute, she let go of his chin and said：

“You are no magician. The Mark of it is not on you. You must be only the servant of a magician. It is on another’s Magic that you have traveled here.”

“It was my Uncle Andrew,” said Digory.

At the moment, not in the room itself but from somewhere very close, there came, first a rumbling, then a creaking, and then a roar of falling masonry, and the floor shook.

“There is great peril here,” said the Queen. “The whole palace is breaking up. If we are not out of it in a few minutes we shall be buried under the ruin.” She spoke as calmly as if she had been merely mentioning the time of day. “Come,” she added, and held out a hand to each of the children. Polly, who was disliking the Queen and feeling rather sulky, would not have let her hand be taken if she could have helped it. But though the Queen spoke so calmly, her movements were as quick as thought. Before Polly knew what was happening her left hand had been caught in a hand so much larger and stronger than her own that she could do nothing about it.

“This is a terrible woman,” thought Polly. “She’s strong enough to break my arm with one twist. And now that she’s got my left hand I can’t get at my yellow ring. If I tried to stretch across and get my right hand into my left pocket I mightn’t be able to reach it, before she asked me what I was doing. Whatever happens we mustn’t let her know about the rings. I do hope Digory has the sense to keep his mouth shut. I wish I could get a word with him alone.”

The Queen led them out of the Hall of Images into a long corridor and then through a whole maze of halls and stairs and courtyards. Again and again they heard parts of the great palace collapsing, sometimes quite close to them. Once a huge arch came thundering down only a moment after they had passed through it. The Queen was walking quickly—the children had to trot to keep up with her—but she showed no sign of fear. Digory thought, “She’s wonderfully brave. And strong. She’s what I call a Queen！ I do hope she’s going to tell us the story of this place.”

She did tell them certain things as they went along：

“That is the door to the dungeons,” she would say, or “That passage leads to the principal torture chambers,” or “This was the old banqueting hall where my great-grandfather bade seven hundred nobles to a feast and killed them all before they had drunk their fill. They had had rebellious thoughts.”

They came at last into a hall larger and loftier than any they had yet seen. From its size and from the great doors at the far end, Digory thought that now at last they must be coming to the main entrance. In this he was quite right. The doors were dead black, either ebony or some black metal which is not found in our world. They were fastened with great bars, most of them too high to reach and all too heavy to lift. He wondered how they would get out.

The Queen let go of his hand and raised her arm. She drew herself up to her full height and stood rigid. Then she said something which they couldn’t understand （but it sounded horrid） and made an action as if she were throwing something toward the doors. And those high and heavy doors trembled for a second as if they were made of silk and then crumbled away till there was nothing left of them but a heap of dust on the threshold.

“Whew！” whistled Digory.

“Has your master magician, your uncle, power like mine?” asked the Queen, firmly seizing Digory’s hand again. “But I shall know later. In the meantime, remember what you have seen. This is what happens to things, and to people, who stand in my way.”

Much more light than they had yet seen in that country was pouring in through the now empty doorway, and when the Queen led them out through it they were not surprised to find themselves in the open air. The wind that blew in their faces was cold, yet somehow stale. They were looking from a high terrace and there was a great landscape out below them.

Low down and near the horizon hung a great, red sun, far bigger than our sun. Digory felt at once that it was also older than ours： a sun near the end of its life, weary of looking down upon that world. To the left of the sun, and higher up, there was a single star, big and bright. Those were the only two things to be seen in the dark sky； they made a dismal group. And on the earth, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, there spread a vast city in which there was no living thing to be seen. And all the temples, towers, palaces, pyramids, and bridges cast long, disastrous-looking shadows in the light of that withered sun. Once a great river had flowed through the city, but the water had long since vanished, and it was now only a wide ditch of gray dust.

“Look well on that which no eyes will ever see again,” said the Queen. “Such was Charn, that great city, the city of the King of Kings, the wonder of the world, perhaps of all worlds. Does your uncle rule any city as great as this, boy?”

“No,” said Digory. He was going to explain that Uncle Andrew didn’t rule any cities, but the Queen went on：

“It is silent now. But I have stood here when the whole air was full of the noises of Charn： the trampling of feet, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of the whips and the groaning of slaves, the thunder of chariots, and the sacrificial drums beating in the temples. I have stood here （but that was near the end） when the roar of battle went up from every street and the river of Charn ran red.” She paused and added, “All in one moment one woman blotted it out forever.”

“Who?” said Digory in a faint voice； but he had already guessed the answer.

“I,” said the Queen. “I, Jadis, the last Queen, but the Queen of the World.”

The two children stood silent, shivering in the cold wind.

“It was my sister’s fault,” said the Queen. “She drove me to it. May the curse of all the Powers rest upon her forever！ At any moment I was ready to make peace—yes and to spare her life too, if only she would yield me the throne. But she would not. Her pride has destroyed the whole world. Even after the war had begun, there was a solemn promise that neither side would use Magic. But when she broke her promise, what could I do? Fool！ As if she did not know that I had more Magic than she！ She even knew that I had the secret of the Deplorable Word. Did she think—she was always a weakling—that I would not use it?”

“What was it?” said Digory.

“That was the secret of secrets,” said the Queen Jadis. “It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought to overcome her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water—”

“Beast！” muttered Polly.

“The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said,‘Victory.’‘Yes,’said I.‘Victory, but not yours.’Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”

“But the people?” gasped Digory.

“What people, boy?” asked the Queen.

“All the ordinary people,” said Polly, “who’d never done you any harm. And the women, and the children, and the animals.”

“Don’t you understand?” said the Queen （still speaking to Digory）. “I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?”

“It was rather hard luck on them, all the same,” said he.

“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”

Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them； perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.

“And what did you do then?” said Digory.

“I had already cast strong spells on the hall where the images of my ancestors sit. And the force of those spells was that I should sleep among them, like an image myself, and need neither food nor fire, though it were a thousand years, till one came and struck the bell and awoke me.”

“Was it the Deplorable Word that made the sun like that?” asked Digory.

“Like what?” said Jadis.

“So big, so red, and so cold.”

“It has always been so,” said Jadis. “At least, for hundreds of thousands of years. Have you a different sort of sun in your world?”

“Yes, it’s smaller and yellower. And it gives a good deal more heat.”

The Queen gave a long drawn “A—a—ah！” And Digory saw on her face that same hungry and greedy look which he had lately seen on Uncle Andrew’s. “So,” she said, “yours is a younger world.”

She paused for a moment to look once more at the deserted city—and if she was sorry for all the evil she had done there, she certainly didn’t show it—and then said：

“Now, let us be going. It is cold here at the end of all the ages.”

“Going where?” asked both the children.

“Where?” repeated Jadis in surprise. “To your world, of course.”

Polly and Digory looked at each other, aghast. Polly had disliked the Queen from the first； and even Digory, now that he had heard the story, felt that he had seen quite as much of her as he wanted. Certainly, she was not at all the sort of person one would like to take home. And if they did like, they didn’t know how they could. What they wanted was to get away themselves； but Polly couldn’t get at her ring and of course Digory couldn’t go without her. Digory got very red in the face and stammered.

“Oh—oh—our world. I d-didn’t know you wanted to go there.”

“What else were you sent here for if not to fetch me?” asked Jadis.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t like our world at all,” said Digory. “It’s not her sort of place, is it, Polly? It’s very dull； not worth seeing, really.”

“It will soon be worth seeing when I rule it,” answered the Queen.

“Oh, but you can’t,” said Digory. “It’s not like that. They wouldn’t let you, you know.”

The Queen gave a contemptuous smile. “Many great kings,” she said, “thought they could stand against the House of Charn. But they all fell, and their very names are forgotten. Foolish boy！ Do you think that I, with my beauty and my Magic, will not have your whole world at my feet before a year has passed? Prepare your incantations and take me there at once.”

“This is perfectly frightful,” said Digory to Polly.

“Perhaps you fear for this Uncle of yours,” said Jadis. “But if he honors me duly, he shall keep his life and his throne. I am not coming to fight against him. He must be a very great Magician, if he has found how to send you here. Is he King of your whole world or only of part?”

“He isn’t King of anywhere,” said Digory.

“You are lying,” said the Queen. “Does not Magic always go with the royal blood? Who ever heard of common people being Magicians? I can see the truth whether you speak it or not. Your Uncle is the great King and the great Enchanter of your world. And by his art he has seen the shadow of my face, in some magic mirror or some enchanted pool； and for the love of my beauty he has made a potent spell which shook your world to its foundations and sent you across the vast gulf between world and world to ask my favor and to bring me to him. Answer me： is that not how it was?”

“Well, not exactly,” said Digory.

“Not exactly,” shouted Polly. “Why, it’s absolute bosh from beginning to end.”

“Minions！” cried the Queen, turning in rage upon Polly and seizing her hair, at the very top of her head where it hurts most. But in so doing she let go of both the children’s hands. “Now,” shouted Digory； and “Quick！” shouted Polly. They plunged their left hands into their pockets. They did not even need to put the rings on. The moment they touched them, the whole of that dreary world vanished from their eyes. They were rushing upward and a warm green light was growing nearer overhead.

CHAPTER SIX
THE BEGINNING OF UNCLE ANDREW’S TROUBLES

“Let go！ Let go！” screamed Polly.

“I’m not touching you！” said Digory.

Then their heads came out of the pool and, once more, the sunny quietness of the Wood between the Worlds was all about them, and it seemed richer and warmer and more peaceful than ever after the staleness and ruin of the place they had just left. I think that, if they had been given the chance, they would again have forgotten who they were and where they came from and would have lain down and enjoyed themselves, half asleep, listening to the growing of the trees. But this time there was something that kept them as wide-awake as possible； for as soon as they had got out on to the grass, they found that they were not alone. The Queen, or the Witch （whichever you like to call her） had come up with them, holding on fast by Polly’s hair. That was why Polly had been shouting out “Let go！”

This proved, by the way, another thing about the rings which Uncle Andrew hadn’t told Digory because he didn’t know it himself. In order to jump from world to world by one of those rings you don’t need to be wearing or touching it yourself； it is enough if you are touching someone who is touching it. In that way they work like a magnet； and everyone knows that if you pick up a pin with a magnet, any other pin which is touching the first pin will come too.

Now that you saw her in the wood, Queen Jadis looked different. She was much paler than she had been； so pale that hardly any of her beauty was left. And she was stooped and seemed to be finding it hard to breathe, as if the air of that place stifled her. Neither of the children felt in the least afraid of her now.

“Let go！ Let go of my hair,” said Polly. “What do you mean by it?”

“Here！ Let go of her hair. At once,” said Digory.

They both turned and struggled with her. They were stronger than she and in a few seconds they had forced her to let go. She reeled back, panting, and there was a look of terror in her eyes.

“Quick, Digory！” said Polly. “Change rings and into the home pool.”

“Help！ Help！ Mercy！” cried the Witch in a faint voice, staggering after them. “Take me with you. You cannot mean to leave me in this horrible place. It is killing me.”

“It’s a reason of State,” said Polly spitefully. “Like when you killed all those people in your own world. Do be quick, Digory.” They had put on their green rings, but Digory said：

“Oh bother！ What are we to do?” He couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the Queen.

“Oh don’t be such an ass,” said Polly. “Ten to one she’s only shamming. Do come on.” And then both children plunged into the home pool. “It’s a good thing we made that mark,” thought Polly. But as they jumped Digory felt that a large cold finger and thumb had caught him by the ear. And as they sank down and the confused shapes of our own world began to appear, the grip of that finger and thumb grew stronger. The Witch was apparently recovering her strength. Digory struggled and kicked, but it was not of the least use. In a moment they found themselves in Uncle Andrew’s study；and there was Uncle Andrew himself, staring at the wonderful creature that Digory had brought back from beyond the world.

And well he might stare. Digory and Polly stared too. There was no doubt that the Witch had got over her faintness； and now that one saw her in our own world, with ordinary things around her, she fairly took one’s breath away. In Charn she had been alarming enough； in London, she was terrifying. For one thing, they had not realized till now how very big she was.

“Hardly human” was what Digory thought when he looked at her； and he may have been right, for some say there is giantish blood in the royal family of Charn. But even her height was nothing compared with her beauty, her fierceness, and her wildness. She looked ten times more alive than most of the people one meets in London. Uncle Andrew was bowing and rubbing his hands and looking, to tell the truth, extremely frightened. He seemed a little shrimp of a creature beside the Witch. And yet, as Polly said afterward, there was a sort of likeness between her face and his, something in the expression. It was the look that all wicked Magicians have, the “Mark” which Jadis had said she could not find in Digory’s face. One good thing about seeing the two together was that you would never again be afraid of Uncle Andrew, any more than you’d be afraid of a worm after you had met a rattlesnake or afraid of a cow after you had met a mad bull.

“Pooh！” thought Digory to himself. “Him a Magician！ Not much. Now she’s the real thing.”

Uncle Andrew kept on rubbing his hands and bowing. He was trying to say something very polite, but his mouth had gone all dry so that he could not speak. His “experiment” with the rings, as he called it, was turning out more successful than he liked； for though he had dabbled in Magic for years he had always left all the dangers （as far as one can） to other people. Nothing at all like this had ever happened to him before.

Then Jadis spoke； not very loud, but there was something in her voice that made the whole room quiver.

“Where is the Magician who has called me into this world?”

“Ah—ah—Madam,” gasped Uncle Andrew, “I am most honored-highly gratified-a most unexpected pleasure-if only I had had the opportunity of making any preparations—I—I—”

“Where is the Magician, Fool?” said Jadis.

“I—I am, Madam. I hope you will excuse any—er—liberty these naughty children may have taken. I assure you, there was no intention—”

“You?” said the Queen in a still more terrible voice. Then, in one stride, she crossed the room, seized a great handful of Uncle Andrew’s gray hair and pulled his head back so that his face looked up into hers. Then she studied his face just as she had studied Digory’s face in the palace of Charn. He blinked and licked his lips nervously all the time. At last she let him go； so suddenly that he reeled back against the wall.

“I see,” she said scornfully, “you are a Magician—of a sort. Stand up, dog, and don’t sprawl there as if you were speaking to your equals. How do you come to know Magic? You are not of royal blood, I’ll swear.”

“Well—ah—not perhaps in the strict sense,” stammered Uncle Andrew. “Not exactly royal, Ma’am. The Ketterleys are, however, a very old family. An old Dorsetshire family, Ma’am.”

“Peace,” said the Witch. “I see what you are. You are a little, peddling Magician who works by rules and books. There is no real Magic in your blood and heart. Your kind was made an end of in my world a thousand years ago. But here I shall allow you to be my servant.”

“I should be most happy—delighted to be of any service—a p-pleasure, I assure you.”

“Peace！ You talk far too much. Listen to your first task. I see we are in a large city. Procure for me at once a chariot or a flying carpet or a well-trained dragon, or whatever is usual for royal and noble persons in your land. Then bring me to places where I can get clothes and jewels and slaves fit for my rank. Tomorrow I will begin the conquest of the world.”

“I—I—I’ll go and order a cab at once,” gasped Uncle Andrew.

“Stop,” said the Witch, just as he reached the door. “Do not dream of treachery. My eyes can see through walls and into the minds of men. They will be on you wherever you go. At the first sign of disobedience I will lay such spells on you that anything you sit down on will feel like red hot iron and whenever you lie in a bed there will be invisible blocks of ice at your feet. Now go.”

The old man went out, looking like a dog with its tail between its legs.

The children were now afraid that Jadis would have something to say to them about what had happened in the wood. As it turned out, however, she never mentioned it either then or afterward. I think （and Digory thinks too） that her mind was of a sort which cannot remember that quiet place at all, and however often you took her there and however long you left her there, she would still know nothing about it. Now that she was left alone with the children, she took no notice of either of them. And that was like her too. In Charn she had taken no notice of Polly （till the very end） because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them； they are terribly practical. So there was silence in the room for a minute or two. But you could tell by the way Jadis tapped her foot on the floor that she was growing impatient.

Presently she said, as if to herself, “What is the old fool doing? I should have brought a whip.” She stalked out of the room in pursuit of Uncle Andrew without one glance at the children.

“Whew！” said Polly, letting out a long breath of relief. “And now I must get home. It’s frightfully late. I shall catch it.”

“Well do, do come back as soon as you can,” said Digory. “This is simply ghastly, having her here. We must make some sort of plan.”

“That’s up to your Uncle now,” said Polly. “It was he who started all this messing about with Magic.”

“All the same, you will come back, won’t you? Hang it all, you can’t leave me alone in a scrape like this.”

“I shall go home by the tunnel,” said Polly rather coldly. “That’ll be the quickest way. And if you want me to come back, hadn’t you better say you’re sorry?”

“Sorry?” exclaimed Digory. “Well now, if that isn’t just like a girl！ What have I done?”

“Oh nothing of course,” said Polly sarcastically. “Only nearly screwed my wrist off in that room with all the waxworks, like a cowardly bully. Only struck the bell with the hammer, like a silly idiot. Only turned back in the wood so that she had time to catch hold of you before we jumped into our own pool. That’s all.”

“Oh,” said Digory, very surprised. “Well, all right, I’ll say I’m sorry. And I really am sorry about what happened in the waxworks room. There, I’ve said I’m sorry. And now, do be decent and come back. I shall be in a frightful hole if you don’t.”

“I don’t see what’s going to happen to you. It’s Mr. Ketterley who’s going to sit on red hot chairs and have ice in his bed, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t that sort of thing,” said Digory. “What I’m bothered about is Mother. Suppose that creature went into her room. She might frighten her to death.”

“Oh, I see,” said Polly in rather a different voice. “All right. We’ll call it Pax. I’ll come back—if I can. But I must go now.” And she crawled through the little door into the tunnel； and that dark place among the rafters which had seemed so exciting and adventurous a few hours ago, seemed quite tame and homely now.

We must now go back to Uncle Andrew. His poor old heart went pit-a-pat as he staggered down the attic stairs and he kept on dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. When he reached his bedroom, which was the floor below, he locked himself in. And the very first thing he did was to grope in his wardrobe for a bottle and a wine-glass which he always kept hidden there where Aunt Letty could not find them. He poured himself out a glassful of some nasty, grown-up drink and drank it off at one gulp. Then he drew a deep breath.

“Upon my word,” he said to himself. “I’m dreadfully shaken. Most upsetting！ And at my time of life！”

He poured out a second glass and drank it too； then he began to change his clothes. You have never seen such clothes, but I can remember them. He put on a very high, shiny, stiff collar of the sort that made you hold your chin up all the time. He put on a white waistcoat with a pattern on it and arranged his gold watch chain across the front. He put on his best frock-coat, the one he kept for weddings and funerals. He got out his best tall hat and polished it up. There was a vase of flowers （put there by Aunt Letty） on his dressing table； he took one and put it in his button-hole. He took a clean handkerchief （a lovely one such as you couldn’t buy today） out of the little left-hand drawer and put a few drops of scent on it. He took his eye-glass, with the thick black ribbon, and screwed it into his eye； then he looked at himself in the mirror.

Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind. At this moment Uncle Andrew was beginning to be silly in a very grown-up way. Now that the Witch was no longer in the same room with him he was quickly forgetting how she had frightened him and thinking more and more of her wonderful beauty. He kept on saying to himself, “A dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman. A superb creature.” He had also somehow managed to forget that it was the children who had got hold of this “superb creature”； he felt as if he himself by his Magic had called her out of unknown worlds.

“Andrew, my boy,” he said to himself as he looked in the glass, “you’re a devilish well preserved fellow for your age. A distinguished-looking man, sir.”

You see, the foolish old man was actually beginning to imagine the Witch would fall in love with him. The two drinks probably had something to do with it, and so had his best clothes. But he was, in any case, as vain as a peacock； that was why he had become a Magician.

He unlocked the door, went downstairs, sent the housemaid out to fetch a hansom （everyone had lots of servants in those days） and looked into the drawing-room. There, as he expected, he found Aunt Letty. She was busily mending a mattress. It lay on the floor near the window and she was kneeling on it.

“Ah, Letitia, my dear,” said Uncle Andrew, “I—ah—have to go out. Just lend me five pounds or so, there’s a good gel.”（“Gel” was the way he pronounced girl.）

“No, Andrew dear,” said Aunt Letty in her firm, quiet voice, without looking up from her work. “I’ve told you times without number that I will not lend you money.”

“Now pray don’t be troublesome, my dear gel,” said Uncle Andrew. “It’s most important. You will put me in a deucedly awkward position if you don’t.”

“Andrew,” said Aunt Letty, looking him straight in the face, “I wonder you are not ashamed to ask me for money.”

There was a long, dull story of a grown-up kind behind these words. All you need to know about it is that Uncle Andrew, what with “managing dear Letty’s business matters for her,” and never doing any work, and running up large bills for brandy and cigars （which Aunt Letty had paid again and again） had made her a good deal poorer than she had been thirty years ago.

“My dear gel,” said Uncle Andrew, “you don’t understand. I shall have some quite unexpected expenses today. I have to do a little entertaining. Come now, don’t be tiresome.”

“And who, pray, are you going to entertain, Andrew?” asked Aunt Letty.

“A—a most distinguished visitor has just arrived.”

“Distinguished fiddlestick！” said Aunt Letty. “There hasn’t been a ring at the hell for the last hour.”

At that moment the door was suddenly flung open. Aunt Letty looked round and saw with amazement that an enormous woman, splendidly dressed, with bare arms and flashing eyes, stood in the doorway. It was the Witch.

CHAPTER SEVEN
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FRONT DOOR

“Now, Slave, how long am I to wait for my chariot?” thundered the Witch. Uncle Andrew cowered away from her. Now that she was really present, all the silly thoughts he had had while looking at himself in the glass were oozing out of him. But Aunt Letty at once got up from her knees and came over to the center of the room.

“And who is this young person, Andrew, may I ask?” said Aunt Letty in icy tones.

“Distinguished foreigner—v-very important p-person,” he stammered.

“Rubbish！” said Aunt Letty, and then, turning to the Witch, “Get out of my house this moment, you shameless hussy, or I’ll send for the police.” She thought the Witch must be someone out of a circus and she did not approve of bare arms.

“What woman is this?” said Jadis. “Down on your knees, minion, before I blast you.”

“No strong language in this house if you please, young woman,” said Aunt Letty.

Instantly, as it seemed to Uncle Andrew, the Queen towered up to an even greater height. Fire flashed from her eyes； she flung out her arm with the same gesture and the same horrible-sounding words that had lately turned the palace-gates of Charn to dust. But nothing happened except that Aunt Letty, thinking that those horrible words were meant to be ordinary English, said：

“I thought as much. The woman is drunk. Drunk！ She can’t even speak clearly.”

It must have been a terrible moment for the Witch when she suddenly realized that her power of turning people into dust, which had been quite real in her own world, was not going to work in ours. But she did not lose her nerve even for a second. Without wasting a thought on her disappointment, she lunged forward, caught Aunt Letty round the neck and the knees, raised her high above her head as if she had been no heavier than a doll, and threw her across the room. While Aunt Letty was still hurtling through the air, the housemaid （who was having a beautifully exciting morning） put her head in at the door and said, “If you please, sir, the’ansom’s come.”

“Lead on, Slave,” said the Witch to Uncle Andrew. He began muttering something about “regrettable violence—must really protest,” but at a single glance from Jadis he became speechless. She drove him out of the room and out of the house； and Digory came running down the stairs just in time to see the front door close behind them.

“Jiminy！” he said. “She’s loose in London. And with Uncle Andrew. I wonder what on earth is going to happen now.”

“Oh, Master Digory,” said the housemaid （who was really having a wonderful day）, “I think Miss Ketterley’s hurt herself somehow.” So they both rushed into the drawing-room to find out what had happened.

If Aunt Letty had fallen on bare boards or even on the carpet, I suppose all her bones would have been broken； but by great good luck she had fallen on the mattress. Aunt Letty was a very tough old lady； aunts often were in those days. After she had had some sal volatile and sat still for a few minutes, she said there was nothing the matter with her except a few bruises. Very soon she was taking charge of the situation.

“Sarah,” she said to the housemaid （who had never had such a day before）, “go around to the police station at once and tell them there is a dangerous lunatic at large. I will take Mrs. Kirke’s lunch up myself.” Mrs. Kirke was, of course, Digory’s mother.

When Mother’s lunch had been seen to, Digory and Aunt Letty had their own. After that he did some hard thinking.

The problem was how to get the Witch back to her own world, or at any rate out of ours, as soon as possible. Whatever happened, she must not be allowed to go rampaging about the house. Mother must not see her. And, if possible, she must not be allowed to go rampaging about London either. Digory had not been in the drawing-room when she tried to “blast” Aunt Letty, but he had seen her “blast” the gates at Charn； so he knew her terrible powers and did not know that she had lost any of them by coming into our world. And he knew she meant to conquer our world. At the present moment, as far as he could see, she might be blasting Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament； and it was almost certain that quite a number of policemen had by now been reduced to little heaps of dust. And there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about that.

“But the rings seem to work like magnets,” thought Digory. “If I can only touch her and then slip on my yellow, we shall both go into the Wood between the Worlds. I wonder will she go all faint again there? Was that something the place does to her, or was it only the shock of being pulled out of her own world? But I suppose I’ll have to risk that. And how am I to find the beast? I don’t suppose Aunt Letty would let me go out, not unless I said where I was going. And I haven’t got more than twopence. I’d need any amount of money for buses and trams if I went looking all over London. Anyway, I haven’t the faintest idea where to look. I wonder if Uncle Andrew is still with her.”

It seemed in the end that the only thing he could do was to wait and hope that Uncle Andrew and the Witch would come back. If they did, he must rush out and get hold of the Witch and put on his yellow ring before she had a chance to get into the house. This meant that he must watch the front door like a cat watching a mouse’s hole； he dared not leave his post for a moment. So he went into the dining-room and “glued his face” as they say, to the window. It was a bow-window from which you could see the steps up to the front door and see up and down the street, so that no one could reach the front door without your knowing. “I wonder what Polly’s doing?” thought Digory.

He wondered about this a good deal as the first slow half-hour ticked on. But you need not wonder, for I am going to tell you. She had got home late for her dinner, with her shoes and stockings very wet. And when they asked her where she had been and what on earth she had been doing, she said she had been out with Digory Kirke. Under further questioning she said she had got her feet wet in a pool of water, and that the pool was in a wood. Asked where the wood was, she said she didn’t know. Asked if it was in one of the parks, she said truthfully enough that she supposed it might be a sort of park. From all of this Polly’s mother got the idea that Polly had gone off, without telling anyone, to some part of London she didn’t know, and gone into a strange park and amused herself jumping into puddles. As a result she was told that she had been very naughty indeed and that she wouldn’t be allowed to play with “that Kirke boy” any more if anything of the sort ever happened again. Then she was given dinner with all the nice parts left out and sent to bed for two solid hours. It was a thing that happened to one quite often in those days.

So while Digory was staring out of the dining-room window, Polly was lying in bed, and both were thinking how terribly slowly the time could go. I think, myself, I would rather have been in Polly’s position. She had only to wait for the end of her two hours； but every few minutes Digory would hear a cab or a baker’s van or a butcher’s boy coming round the corner and think “Here she comes,” and then find it wasn’t. And in between these false alarms, for what seemed hours and hours, the clock ticked on and one big fly—high up and far out of reach—buzzed against the window. It was one of those houses that get very quiet and dull in the afternoon and always seem to smell of mutton.

During his long watching and waiting one small thing happened which I shall have to mention because something important came of it later on. A lady called with some grapes for Digory’s Mother； and as the dining-room door was open, Digory couldn’t help overhearing Aunt Letty and the lady as they talked in the hall.

“What lovely grapes！” came Aunt Letty’s voice. “I’m sure if anything could do her good these would. But poor, dear little Mabel！ I’m afraid it would need fruit from the land of youth to help her now. Nothing in this world will do much.” Then they both lowered their voices and said a lot more that he could not hear.

If he had heard that bit about the land of youth a few days ago he would have thought Aunt Letty was just talking without meaning anything in particular, the way grown-ups do, and it wouldn’t have interested him. He almost thought so now. But suddenly it flashed upon his mind that he now knew （even if Aunt Letty didn’t） that there really were other worlds and that he himself had been in one of them. At that rate there might be a real Land of Youth somewhere. There might be almost anything. There might be fruit in some other world that would really cure his mother！

And oh, oh—Well, you know how it feels if you begin hoping for something that you want desperately badly； you almost fight against the hope because it is too good to be true； you’ve been disappointed so often before. That was how Digory felt. But it was no good trying to throttle this hope. It might—really, really, it just might be true. So many odd things had happened already. And he had the magic rings. There must be worlds you could get to through every pool in the wood. He could hunt through them all. And then—Mother well again. Everything right again. He forgot all about watching for the Witch. His hand was already going into the pocket where he kept the yellow ring, when all at once he heard a sound of galloping.

“Hullo！ What’s that?” thought Digory. “Fire-engine? I wonder what house is on fire. Great Scott, it’s coming here. Why, it’s Her.”

I needn’t tell you who he meant by Her.

First came the hansom. There was no one in the driver’s seat. On the roof-not sitting, but standing on the roof—swaying with superb balance as it came at full speed round the corner with one wheel in the air—was Jadis the Queen of Queens and the Terror of Charn. Her teeth were bared, her eyes shone like fire, and her long hair streamed out behind her like a comet’s tail. She was flogging the horse without mercy. Its nostrils were wide and red and its sides were spotted with foam. It galloped madly up to the front door, missing the lamp-post by an inch, and then reared up on its hind legs. The hansom crashed into the lamp-post and shattered into several pieces. The Witch, with a magnificent jump, had sprung clear just in time and landed on the horse’s back. She settled herself astride and leaned forward, whispering things in its ear. They must have been things meant not to quiet it but to madden it. It was on its hind legs again in a moment, and its neigh was like a scream； it was all hoofs and teeth and eyes and tossing mane. Only a splendid rider could have stayed on its back.

Before Digory had recovered his breath a good many other things began to happen. A second hansom dashed up close behind the first； out of it there jumped a fat man in a frock-coat and a policeman. Then came a third hansom with two more policemen in it. After it, came about twenty people （mostly errand boys） on bicycles, all ringing their bells and letting out cheers and cat-calls. Last of all came a crowd of people on foot： all very hot with running, but obviously enjoying themselves. Windows shot up in all the houses of that street and a housemaid or a butler appeared at every front door. They wanted to see the fun.

Meanwhile an old gentleman had begun to struggle shakily out of the ruins of the first hansom. Several people rushed forward to help him； but as one pulled him one way and another another, perhaps he would have got out quite as quickly on his own. Digory guessed that the old gentleman must be Uncle Andrew but you couldn’t see his face； his tall hat had been bashed down over it.

Digory rushed out and joined the crowd.

“That’s the woman, that’s the woman,” cried the fat man, pointing at Jadis. “Do your duty, Constable. Hundreds and thousands of pounds’worth she’s taken out of my shop. Look at that rope of pearls round her neck. That’s mine. And she’s given me a black eye too, what’s more.”

“That she’as, guv’nor,” said one of the crowd. “And as lovely a black eye as I’d wish to see. Beautiful bit of work that must’ave been. Gor, ain’t she strong then！”

“You ought to put a nice raw beefsteak on it, Mister, that’s what it wants,” said a butcher’s boy.

“Now then,” said the most important of the policemen, “what’s all this’ere?”

“I tell you she—” began the fat man, when someone else called out：

“Don’t let the old cove in the cab get away.’E put’er up to it.”

The old gentleman, who was certainly Uncle Andrew, had just succeeded in standing up and was rubbing his bruises. “Now then,” said the policeman, turning to him, “what’s all this?”

“Womfle—pomfy—shomf,” came Uncle Andrew’s voice from inside the hat.

“None of that now,” said the policeman sternly. “You’ll find this is no laughing matter. Take that’at off, see?”

This was more easily said than done. But after Uncle Andrew had struggled in vain with the hat for some time, two other policemen seized it by the brim and forced it off.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Uncle Andrew in a faint voice. “Thank you. Dear me, I’m terribly shaken. If someone could give me a small glass of brandy—”

“Now you attend to me, if you please,” said the policeman, taking out a very large notebook and a very small pencil. “Are you in charge of that there young woman?”

“Look out！” called several voices, and the policeman jumped a step backward just in time. The horse had aimed a kick at him which would probably have killed him. Then the Witch wheeled the horse round so that she faced the crowd and its hind legs were on the footpath. She had a long, bright knife in her hand and had been busily cutting the horse free from the wreck of the hansom.

All this time Digory had been trying to get into a position from which he could touch the Witch. This wasn’t at all easy because, on the side nearest to him, there were too many people. And in order to get round to the other side he had to pass between the horse’s hoofs and the railings of the “area” that surrounded the house； for the Ketterleys’house had a basement. If you know anything about horses, and especially if you had seen what a state that horse was in at the moment, you will realize that this was a ticklish thing to do. Digory knew lots about horses, but he set his teeth and got ready to make a dash for it as soon as he saw a favorable moment.

A red-faced man in a bowler hat had now shouldered his way to the front of the crowd.

“Hi！ P’leeceman,” he said, “that’s my’orse what she’s sitting on, same as it’s my cab what she’s made matchwood of.”

“One at a time, please, one at a time,” said the policeman.

“But there ain’t no time,” said the Cabby. “I know that’orse better’n you do.’Tain’t an ordinary’orse.’Is father was a hofficer’s charger in the cavalry,’e was. And if the young woman goes on hexcitin’’im, there’ll be murder done.’Ere, let me get at him.”

The policeman was only too glad to have a good reason for standing further away from the horse. The Cabby took a step nearer, looked up at Jadis, and said in a not unkindly voice：

“Now, Missie, let me get at’is’ead, and just you get off. You’re a Lidy, and you don’t want all these roughs going for you, do you? You want to go’ome and’ave a nice cup of tea and a lay down quiet like； then you’ll feel ever so much better.” At the same time he stretched out his hand toward the horse’s head with the words, “Steady, Strawberry, old boy. Steady now.”

Then for the first time the Witch spoke.

“Dog！” came her cold, clear voice, ringing loud above all the other noises. “Dog, unhand our royal charger. We are the Empress Jadis.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FIGHT AT THE LAMP-POST

“Ho！ Hempress, are you? We’ll see about that,” said a voice. Then another voice said, “Three cheers for the Hempress of Colney’Atch” and quite a number joined in. A flush of color came into the Witch’s face and she bowed ever so slightly. But the cheers died away into roars of laughter and she saw that they had only been making fun of her. A change came over her expression and she changed the knife to her left hand. Then, without warning, she did a thing that was dreadful to see. Lightly, easily, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, she stretched up her right arm and wrenched off one of the cross-bars of the lamp-post. If she had lost some magical powers in our world, she had not lost her strength： she could break an iron bar as if it were a stick of barley-sugar. She tossed her new weapon up in the air, caught it again, brandished it, and urged the horse forward.

“Now’s my chance,” thought Digory. He darted between the horse and the railings and began going forward. If only the brute would stay still for a moment he might catch the Witch’s heel. As he rushed, he heard a sickening crash and a thud. The Witch had brought the bar down on the chief policeman’s helmet； the man fell like a nine-pin.

“Quick, Digory. This must be stopped,” said a voice beside him. It was Polly, who had rushed down the moment she was allowed out of bed.

“You are a brick,” said Digory. “Hold on to me tight. You’d have to manage the ring. Yellow, remember. And don’t put it on till I shout.”

There was a second crash and another policeman crumpled up. There came an angry roar from the crowd：“Pull her down. Get a few paving-stones. Call out the Military.” But most of them were getting as far away as they could. The Cabby, however, obviously the bravest as well as the kindest person present, was keeping close to the horse, dodging this way and that to avoid the bar, but still trying to catch Strawberry’s head.

The crowd booed and bellowed again. A stone whistled over Digory’s head. Then came the voice of the Witch, clear like a great bell, and sounding as if, for once, she were almost happy.

“Scum！ You shall pay dearly for this when I have conquered your world. Not one stone of your city will be left. I will make it as Charn, as Felinda, as Sorlois, as Bramandin.”

Digory at last caught her ankle. She kicked back with her heel and hit him in the mouth. In his pain he lost hold. His lip was cut and his mouth full of blood. From somewhere very close by came the voice of Uncle Andrew in a sort of trembling scream. “Madam—my dear young lady—for heaven’s sake—compose yourself.” Digory made a second grab at her heel, and was again shaken off. More men were knocked down by the iron bar. He made a third grab, caught the heel, held on like grim death, shouting to Polly “Go！” then—Oh, thank goodness. The angry, frightened faces had vanished. The angry, frightened voices were silenced. All except Uncle Andrew’s. Close beside Digory in the darkness, it was wailing on “Oh, oh, is this delirium? Is it the end? I can’t bear it. It’s not fair. I never meant to be a Magician. It’s all a misunderstanding. It’s all my godmother’s fault； I must protest against this. In my state of health too. A very old Dorsetshire family.”

“Bother！” thought Digory. “We didn’t want to bring him along. My hat, what a picnic. Are you there, Polly?”

“Yes, I’m here. Don’t keep on shoving.”

“I’m not,” began Digory, but before he could say anything more, their heads came out into the warm, green sunshine of the wood. And as they stepped out of the pool Polly cried out：

“Oh look！ We’ve brought the old horse with us too. And Mr. Ketterley. And the Cabby. This is a pretty kettle of fish！”

As soon as the Witch saw that she was once more in the wood she turned pale and bent down till her face touched the mane of the horse. You could see she felt deadly sick. Uncle Andrew was shivering. But Strawberry, the horse, shook his head, gave a cheerful whinny, and seemed to feel better. He became quiet for the first time since Digory had seen him. His ears, which had been laid flat back on his skull, came into their proper position, and the fire went out of his eyes.

“That’s right, old boy,” said the Cabby, slapping Strawberry’s neck. “That’s better. Take it easy.”

Strawberry did the most natural thing in the world. Being very thirsty （and no wonder） he walked slowly across to the nearest pool and stepped into it to have a drink. Digory was still holding the Witch’s heel and Polly was holding Digory’s hand. One of the Cabby’s hands was on Strawberry； and Uncle Andrew, still very shaky, had just grabbed on the Cabby’s other hand.

“Quick,” said Polly, with a look at Digory. “Greens！”

So the horse never got his drink. Instead, the whole party found themselves sinking into darkness. Strawberry neighed； Uncle Andrew whimpered. Digory said, “That was a bit of luck.”

There was a short pause. Then Polly said, “Oughtn’t we to be nearly there now?”

“We do seem to be somewhere,” said Digory. “At least I’m standing on something solid.”

“Why, so am I, now that I come to think of it,” said Polly. “But why’s it so dark? I say, do you think we got into the wrong Pool?”

“Perhaps this is Charn,” said Digory. “Only we’ve got back in the middle of the night.”

“This is not Charn,” came the Witch’s voice. “This is an empty world. This is nothing.”

And really it was uncommonly like Nothing. There were no stars. It was so dark that they couldn’t see one another at all and it made no difference whether you kept your eyes shut or open. Under their feet there was a cool, flat something which might have been earth, and was certainly not grass or wood. The air was cold and dry and there was no wind.

“My doom has come upon me,” said the Witch in a voice of horrible calmness.

“Oh don’t say that,” babbled Uncle Andrew. “My dear young lady, pray don’t say such things. It can’t be as bad as that. Ah—Cabman—my good man—you don’t happen to have a flask about you? A drop of spirits is just what I need.”

“Now then, now then,” came the Cabby’s voice, a good firm, hardy voice. “Keep cool everyone, that’s what I say. No bones broken, anyone? Good. Well there’s something to be thankful for straight away, and more than anyone could expect after falling all that way. Now, if we’ve fallen down some diggings—as it might be for a new station on the Underground—someone will come and get us out presently, see！ And if we’re dead—which I don’t deny it might be—well, you got to remember that worse things’appen at sea and a chap’s got to die sometime. And there ain’t nothing to be afraid of if a chap’s led a decent life. And if you ask me, I think the best thing we could do to pass the time would be sing a’ymn.”

And he did. He struck up at once a harvest thanksgiving hymn, all about crops being “safely gathered in.” It was not very suitable to a place which felt as if nothing had ever grown there since the beginning of time, but it was the one he could remember best. He had a fine voice and the children joined in； it was very cheering. Uncle Andrew and the Witch did not join in.

Toward the end of the hymn Digory felt someone plucking at his elbow and from a general smell of brandy and cigars and good clothes he decided that it must be Uncle Andrew. Uncle Andrew was cautiously pulling him away from the others. When they had gone a little distance, the old man put his mouth so close to Digory’s ear that it tickled, and whispered：

“Now, my boy. Slip on your ring. Let’s be off.”

But the Witch had very good ears. “Fool！” came her voice and she leaped off the horse. “Have you forgotten that I can hear men’s thoughts? Let go the boy. If you attempt treachery I will take such vengeance upon you as never was heard of in all worlds from the beginning.”

“And,” added Digory, “if you think I’m such a mean pig as to go off and leave Polly—and the Cabby—and the horse—in a place like this, you’re well mistaken.”

“You are a very naughty and impertinent little boy,” said Uncle Andrew.

“Hush！” said the Cabby. They all listened.

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too； he gave the sort of whinny a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.

“Gawd！” said the Cabby. “Ain’t it lovely?”

Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices； more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale： cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness； next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out—single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

“Glory be！” said the Cabby. “I’d ha’been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.”

The Voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant； but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter. And now something else was happening.

Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn gray. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing.

There was soon light enough for them to see one another’s faces. The Cabby and the two children had open mouths and shining eyes； they were drinking in the sound, and they looked as if it reminded them of something. Uncle Andrew’s mouth was open too, but not open with joy. He looked more as if his chin had simply dropped away from the rest of his face. His shoulders were stooped and his knees shook. He was not liking the Voice. If he could have got away from it by creeping into a rat’s hole, he would have done so. But the Witch looked as if, in a way, she understood the music better than any of them. Her mouth was shut, her lips were pressed together, and her fists were clenched. Ever since the song began she had felt that this whole world was filled with a Magic different from hers and stronger. She hated it. She would have smashed that whole world, or all worlds, to pieces, if it would only stop the singing. The horse stood with its ears well forward, and twitching. Every now and then it snorted and stamped the ground. It no longer looked like a tired old cab-horse； you could now well believe that its father had been in battles.

The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose.

Digory had never seen such a sun. The sun above the ruins of Charn had looked older than ours； this looked younger. You could imagine that it laughed for joy as it came up. And as its beams shot across the land the travelers could see for the first time what sort of place they were in. It was a valley through which a broad, swift river wound its way, flowing eastward toward the sun. Southward there were mountains, northward there were lower hills. But it was a valley of mere earth, rock and water； there was not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass to be seen. The earth was of many colors； they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited； until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.

It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright, it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away.

“This is a terrible world,” said the Witch. “We must fly at once. Prepare the Magic.”

“I quite agree with you, Madam,” said Uncle Andrew. “A most disagreeable place. Completely uncivilized. If only I were a younger man and had a gun—”

“Garn！” said the Cabby. “You don’t think you could shoot’im, do you?”

“And who would?” said Polly.

“Prepare the Magic, old fool,” said Jadis.

“Certainly, Madam,” said Uncle Andrew cunningly. “I must have both the children touching me. Put on your homeward ring at once, Digory.” He wanted to get away without the Witch.

“Oh, it’s rings, is it?” cried Jadis. She would have had her hands in Digory’s pocket before you could say knife, but Digory grabbed Polly and shouted out：

“Take care. If either of you come half an inch nearer, we two will vanish and you’ll be left here for good. Yes, I have a ring in my pocket that will take Polly and me home. And look！ My hand is just ready. So keep your distance. I’m sorry about you” （he looked at the Cabby） “and about the horse, but I can’t help that. As for you two” （he looked at Uncle Andrew and the Queen） “you’re both magicians, so you ought to enjoy living together.”

“ ’Old your noise, everyone,” said the Cabby. “I want to listen to the moosic.”

For the song had now changed.

CHAPTER NINE
THE FOUNDING OF NARNIA

The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song. It was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun： a gentle, rippling music. And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. The light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass. Soon there were other things besides grass. The higher slopes grew dark with heather. Patches of rougher and more bristling green appeared in the valley. Digory did not know what they were until one began coming up quite close to him. It was a little, spiky thing that threw out dozens of arms and covered these arms with green and grew larger at the rate of about an inch every two seconds. There were dozens of these things all round him now. When they were nearly as tall as himself he saw what they were. “Trees！” he exclaimed.

The nuisance of it, as Polly said afterward, was that you weren’t left in peace to watch it all. Just as Digory said “Trees！” he had to jump because Uncle Andrew had sidled up to him again and was just going to pick his pocket. It wouldn’t have done Uncle Andrew much good if he had succeeded, for he was aiming at the right-hand pocket because he still thought the green rings were “homeward” rings. But of course Digory didn’t want to lose either.

“Stop！” cried the Witch. “Stand back. No, further back. If anyone goes within ten paces of either of the children, I will knock out his brains.” She was poising in her hand the iron bar that she had torn off the lamp-post, ready to throw it. Somehow no one doubted that she would be a very good shot.

“So！” she said. “You would steal back to your own world with the boy and leave me here.”

Uncle Andrew’s temper at last got the better of his fears. “Yes, Ma’am, I would,” he said. “Most undoubtedly I would. I should be perfectly in my rights. I have been most shamefully, most abominably treated. I have done my best to show you such civilities as were in my power. And what has been my reward? You have robbed—I must repeat the word—robbed a highly respectable jeweler. You have insisted on my entertaining you to an exceedingly expensive, not to say ostentatious, lunch, though I was obliged to pawn my watch and chain in order to do so （and let me tell you, Ma’am, that none of our family have been in the habit of frequenting pawnshops, except my cousin Edward, and he was in the Yeomanry）. During that indigestible meal—I’m feeling the worse for it at this very moment—your behavior and conversation attracted the unfavorable attention of everyone present. I feel I have been publicly disgraced. I shall never be able to show my face in that restaurant again. You have assaulted the police. You have stolen—”

“Oh stow it, Guv’nor, do stow it,” said the Cabby. “Watchin’and listenin’s the thing at present； not talking.”

There was certainly plenty to watch and to listen to. The tree which Digory had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above his head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the river bank, willows were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, and rhododendron closed them in. The horse was tearing up delicious mouthfuls of new grass.

All this time the Lion’s song, and his stately prowl, to and fro, backward and forward, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn he came a little nearer. Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming （as she said） “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up； when you looked round you, you saw them. This was so exciting that she had no time to be afraid. But Digory and the Cabby could not help feeling a bit nervous as each turn of the Lion’s walk brought him nearer. As for Uncle Andrew, his teeth were chattering, but his knees were shaking so that he could not run away.

Suddenly the Witch stepped boldly out toward the Lion. It was coming on, always singing, with a slow, heavy pace. It was only twelve yards away. She raised her arm and flung the iron bar straight at its head.

Nobody, least of all Jadis, could have missed at that range. The bar struck the Lion fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The Lion came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before； you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.

The Witch shrieked and ran； in a few moments she was out of sight among the trees. Uncle Andrew turned to do likewise, tripped over a root, and fell flat on his face in a little brook that ran down to join the river. The children could not move. They were not even quite sure that they wanted to. The Lion paid no attention to them. Its huge red mouth was open, but open in song not in a snarl. It passed by them so close that they could have touched its mane. They were terribly afraid it would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished it would. But for all the notice it took of them they might just as well have been invisible and unsmellable. When it had passed them and gone a few paces further it turned, passed them again, and continued its march eastward.

Uncle Andrew, coughing and spluttering, picked himself up.

“Now, Digory,” he said, “we’ve got rid of that woman, and the brute of a lion is gone. Give me your hand and put on your ring at once.”

“Keep off,” said Digory, backing away from him. “Keep clear of him, Polly. Come over here beside me. Now I warn you, Uncle Andrew, don’t come one step nearer, we’ll just vanish.”

“Do what you’re told this minute, sir,” said Uncle Andrew. “You’re an extremely disobedient, ill-behaved little boy.”

“No fear,” said Digory. “We want to stay and see what happens. I thought you wanted to know about other worlds. Don’t you like it now you’re here?”

“Like it！” exclaimed Uncle Andrew. “Just look at the state I’m in. And it was my best coat and waistcoat, too.” He certainly was a dreadful sight by now； for of course, the more dressed up you were to begin with, the worse you look after you’ve crawled out of a smashed hansom cab and fallen into a muddy brook. “I’m not saying,” he added, “that this is not a most interesting place. If I were a younger man, now—perhaps I could get some lively young fellow to come here first. One of those big-game hunters. Something might be made of this country. The climate is delightful. I never felt such air. I believe it would have done me good if—if circumstances had been more favorable. If only we’d had a gun.”

“Guns be blowed,” said the Cabby. “I think I’ll go and see if I can give Strawberry a rub down. That horse’as more sense than some’umans as I could mention.” He walked back to Strawberry and began making the hissing noises that grooms make.

“Do you still think that Lion could be killed by a gun?” asked Digory. “He didn’t mind the iron bar much.”

“With all her faults,” said Uncle Andrew, “that’s a plucky gel, my boy. It was a spirited thing to do.” He rubbed his hands and cracked his knuckles, as if he were once more forgetting how the Witch frightened him whenever she was really there.

“It was a wicked thing to do,” said Polly. “What harm had he done her?”

“Hullo！ What’s that?” said Digory. He had darted forward to examine something only a few yards away. “I say, Polly,” he called back. “Do come and look.”

Uncle Andrew came with her； not because he wanted to see but because he wanted to keep close to the children—there might be a chance of stealing their rings. But when he saw what Digory was looking at, even he began to take an interest. It was a perfect little model of a lamp-post, about three feet high but lengthening, and thickening in proportion, as they watched it； in fact growing just as the trees had grown.

“It’s alive too—I mean, it’s lit,” said Digory. And so it was； though of course, the brightness of the sun made the little flame in the lantern hard to see unless your shadow fell on it.

“Remarkable, most remarkable,” muttered Uncle Andrew. “Even I never dreamed of Magic like this. We’re in a world where everything, even a lamp-post, comes to life and grows. Now I wonder what sort of seed a lamp-post grows from?”

“Don’t you see?” said Digory. “This is where the bar fell—the bar she tore off the lamp-post at home. It sank into the ground and now it’s coming up as a young lamp-post.” （But not so very young now； it was as tall as Digory while he said this.）

“That’s it！ Stupendous, stupendous,” said Uncle Andrew, rubbing his hands harder than ever. “Ho, ho！ They laughed at my Magic. That fool of a sister of mine thinks I’m a lunatic. I wonder what they’ll say now? I have discovered a world where everything is bursting with life and growth. Columbus, now, they talk about Columbus. But what was America to this? The commercial possibilities of this country are unbounded. Bring a few old bits of scrap iron here, bury’em, and up they come as brand new railway engines, battleships, anything you please. They’ll cost nothing, and I can sell’em at full prices in England. I shall be a millionaire. And then the climate！ I feel years younger already. I can run it as a health resort. A good sanatorium here might be worth twenty thousand a year. Of course I shall have to let a few people into the secret. The first thing is to get that brute shot.”

“You’re just like the Witch,” said Polly. “All you think of is killing things.”

“And then as regards oneself,” Uncle Andrew continued, in a happy dream. “There’s no knowing how long I might live if I settled here. And that’s a big consideration when a fellow has turned sixty. I shouldn’t be surprised if I never grew a day older in this country！ Stupendous！ The land of youth！”

“Oh！” cried Digory. “The land of youth！ Do you think it really is?” For of course he remembered what Aunt Letty had said to the lady who brought the grapes, and that sweet hope rushed back upon him. “Uncle Andrew,” he said, “do you think there’s anything here that would cure Mother?”

“What are you talking about?” said Uncle Andrew. “This isn’t a chemist’s shop. But as I was saying—”

“You don’t care twopence about her,” said Digory savagely. “I thought you might； after all, she’s your sister as well as my Mother. Well, no matter. I’m jolly well going to ask the Lion himself if he can help me.” And he turned and walked briskly away. Polly waited for a moment and then went after him.

“Here！ Stop！ Come back！ The boy’s gone mad,” said Uncle Andrew. He followed the children at a cautious distance behind； for he didn’t want to get too far away from the green rings or too near the Lion.

In a few minutes Digory came to the edge of the wood and there he stopped. The Lion was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at other people and either hug them or fight them. It made Digory hot and red in the face. It had some effect on Uncle Andrew, for Digory could hear him saying, “A spirited gel, sir. It’s a pity about her temper, but a dem fine woman all the same, a dem fine woman.” But what the song did to the two humans was nothing compared with what it was doing to the country.

Can you imagine a stretch of grassy land bubbling like water in a pot? For that is really the best description of what was happening. In all directions it was swelling into humps. They were of very different sizes, some no bigger than mole-hills, some as big as wheelbarrows, two the size of cottages. And the humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal.

The moles came out just as you might see a mole come out in England. The dogs came out, barking the moment their heads were free, and struggling as you’ve seen them do when they are getting through a narrow hole in a hedge. The stags were the queerest to watch, for of course the antlers came up a long time before the rest of them, so at first Digory thought they were trees. The frogs, who all came up near the river, went straight into it with a plop-plop and a loud croaking. The panthers, leopards and things of that sort, sat down at once to wash the loose earth off their hind quarters and then stood up against the trees to sharpen their front claws. Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered. Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn’t a second to lose. But the greatest moment of all was when the biggest hump broke like a small earthquake and out came the sloping back, the large, wise head, and the four baggy-trousered legs of an elephant. And now you could hardly hear the song of the Lion； there was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting.

But though Digory could no longer hear the Lion, he could see it. It was so big and so bright that he could not take his eyes off it. The other animals did not appear to be afraid of it. Indeed, at that very moment, Digory heard the sound of hoofs from behind； a second later the old cab-horse trotted past him and joined the other beasts. （The air had apparently suited him as well as it had suited Uncle Andrew. He no longer looked like the poor, old slave he had been in London； he was picking up his feet and holding his head erect.） And now, for the first time, the Lion was quite silent. He was going to and fro among the animals. And every now and then he would go up to two of them （always two at a time） and touch their noses with his. He would touch two beavers among all the beavers, two leopards among all the leopards, one stag and one deer among all the deer, and leave the rest. Some sorts of animal he passed over altogether. But the pairs which he had touched instantly left their own kinds and followed him. At last he stood still and all the creatures whom he had touched came and stood in a wide circle around him. The others whom he had not touched began to wander away. Their noises faded gradually into the distance. The chosen beasts who remained were now utterly silent, all with their eyes fixed intently upon the Lion. The cat-like ones gave an occasional twitch of the tail but otherwise all were still. For the first time that day there was complete silence, except for the noise of running water. Digory’s heart beat wildly； he knew something very solemn was going to be done. He had not forgotten about his Mother； but he knew jolly well that, even for her, he couldn’t interrupt a thing like this.

The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller ones—the rabbits, moles, and such-like—grew a good deal larger. The very big ones—you noticed it most with the elephants—grew a little smaller. Many animals sat up on their hind legs. Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand. The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it； he was breathing out, a long, warm breath； it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again： a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire （but it burnt nobody） either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying：

“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

CHAPTER TEN
THE FIRST JOKE AND OTHER MATTERS

It was of course the Lion’s voice. The children had long felt sure that he could speak； yet it was a lovely and terrible shock when he did.

Out of the trees wild people stepped forth, gods and goddesses of the wood； with them came Fauns and Satyrs and Dwarfs. Out of the river rose the river god with his Naiad daughters. And all these and all the beasts and birds in their different voices, low or high or thick or clear, replied：

“Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.”

“But please, we don’t know very much yet,” said a nosey and snorty kind of voice. And that really did make the children jump, for it was the cab-horse who had spoken.

“Good old Strawberry,” said Polly. “I am glad he was one of the ones picked out to be a Talking Beast.” And the Cabby, who was now standing beside the children, said, “Strike me pink. I always did say that’oss’ad a lot of sense, though.”

“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. “I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.”

“No, Aslan, we won’t, we won’t,” said everyone. But one perky jackdaw added in a loud voice, “No fear！” and everyone else had finished just before he said it so that his words came out quite clear in a dead silence； and perhaps you have found out how awful that can be—say, at a party. The Jackdaw became so embarrassed that it hid its head under its wings as if it was going to sleep. And all the other animals began making various queer noises which are their ways of laughing and which, of course, no one has ever heard in our world. They tried at first to repress it, but Aslan said：

“Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”

So they all let themselves go. And there was such merriment that the Jackdaw himself plucked up courage again and perched on the cab-horse’s head, between its ears, clapping its wings, and said：

“Aslan！ Aslan！ Have I made the first joke? Will everybody always be told how I made the first joke?”

“No, little friend,” said the Lion. “You have not made the first joke； you have only been the first joke.” Then everyone laughed more than ever； but the Jackdaw didn’t mind and laughed just as loud till the horse shook its head and the Jackdaw lost its balance and fell off, but remembered its wings （they were still new to it） before it reached the ground.

“And now,” said Aslan, “Narnia is established. We must next take thought for keeping it safe. I will call some of you to my council. Come hither to me, you the chief Dwarf, and you the River-god, and you Oak and the He-Owl, and both the Ravens and the Bull-Elephant. We must talk together. For though the world is not five hours old an evil has already entered it.”

The creatures he had named came forward and he turned away eastward with them. The others all began talking, saying things like “What did he say had entered the world?—A Neevil—What’s a Neevil?—No, he didn’t say a Neevil, he said a weevil—Well, what’s that?”

“Look here,” said Digory to Polly, “I’ve got to go after him—Aslan, I mean, the Lion. I must speak to him.”

“Do you think we can?” said Polly. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“I’ve got to,” said Digory. “It’s about Mother. If anyone could give me something that would do her good, it would be him.”

“I’ll come along with you,” said the Cabby. “I liked the looks of’im. And I don’t reckon these other beasts will go for us. And I want a word with old Strawberry.”

So all three of them stepped out boldly—or as boldly as they could—toward the assembly of animals. The creatures were so busy talking to one another and making friends that they didn’t notice the three humans until they were very close； nor did they hear Uncle Andrew, who was standing trembling in his buttoned boots a good way off and shouting （but by no means at the top of his voice）.

“Digory！ Come back！ Come back at once when you’re told. I forbid you to go a step further.”

When at last they were right in among the animals, the animals all stopped talking and stared at them.

“Well,” said the He-Beaver at last, “what, in the name of Aslan, are these?”

“Please,” began Digory in rather a breathless voice, when a Rabbit said, “They’re a kind of large lettuce, that’s my belief.”

“No, we’re not, honestly we’re not,” said Polly hastily. “We’re not at all nice to eat.”

“There！” said the Mole. “They can talk. Who ever heard of a talking lettuce?”

“Perhaps they’re the Second Joke,” suggested the Jackdaw.

A Panther, which had been washing its face, stopped for a moment to say, “Well, if they are, they’re nothing like so good as the first one. At least, I don’t see anything very funny about them.” It yawned and went on with its wash.

“Oh, please,” said Digory. “I’m in such a hurry. I want to see the Lion.”

All this time the Cabby had been trying to catch Strawberry’s eye. Now he did. “Now, Strawberry, old boy,” he said. “You know me. You ain’t going to stand there and say as you don’t know me.”

“What’s the Thing talking about, Horse?” said several voices.

“Well,” said Strawberry very slowly, “I don’t exactly know, I think most of us don’t know much about anything yet. But I’ve a sort of idea I’ve seen a thing like this before. I’ve a feeling I lived somewhere else—or was something else—before Aslan woke us all up a few minutes ago. It’s all very muddled. Like a dream. But there were things like these three in the dream.”

“What?” said the Cabby. “Not know me? Me what used to bring you a hot mash of an evening when you was out of sorts? Me what rubbed you down proper? Me what never forgot to put your cloth on you if you was standing in the cold? I wouldn’t’ave thought it of you, Strawberry.”

“It does begin to come back,” said the Horse thoughtfully. “Yes. Let me think now, let me think. Yes, you used to tie a horrid black thing behind me and then hit me to make me run, and however far I ran this black thing would always be coming rattle-rattle behind me.”

“We’ad our living to earn, see,” said the Cabby. “Yours the same as mine. And if there’adn’t been no work and no whip there’d’ave been no stable, no hay, no mash, and no oats. For you did get a taste of oats when I could afford’em, which no one can deny.”

“Oats?” said the Horse, pricking up his ears. “Yes, I remember something about that. Yes. I remember more and more. You were always sitting up somewhere behind, and I was always running in front, pulling you and the black thing. I know I did all the work.”

“Summer, I grant you,” said the Cabby.“ ’Ot work for you and a cool seat for me. But what about winter, old boy, when you was keeping yourself warm and I was sitting up there with my feet like ice and my nose fair pinched off me with the wind, and my’ands that numb I couldn’t’ardly’old the reins?”

“It was a hard, cruel country,” said Strawberry. “There was no grass. All hard stones.”

“Too true, mate, too true！” said the Cabby. “A ’ard world it was. I always did say those paving-stones weren’t fair on any’oss. That’s Lunn’on, that is. I didn’t like it no more than what you did. You were a country’oss, and I was a country man. Used to sing in the choir, I did, down at’ome. But there wasn’t a living for me there.”

“Oh please, please,” said Digory. “Could we get on? The Lion’s getting further and further away. And I do want to speak to him so dreadfully badly.”

“Look’ere, Strawberry,” said the Cabby. “This young gen’leman’as something on his mind that he wants to talk to the Lion about；’im you call Aslan. Suppose you was to let’im ride on your back （which’e’d take it very kindly） and trot’im over to where the Lion is. And me and the little girl will be following along.”

“Ride?” said Strawberry. “Oh, I remember now. That means sitting on my back. I remember there used to be a little one of you two-leggers who used to do that long ago. He used to have little hard, square lumps of some white stuff that he gave me. They tasted—oh, wonderful, sweeter than grass.”

“Ah, that’d be sugar,” said the Cabby.

“Please, Strawberry,” begged Digory, “do, do let me get up and take me to Aslan.”

“Well, I don’t mind,” said the Horse. “Not for once in a way. Up you get.”

“Good old Strawberry,” said the Cabby.“ ’Ere, young’un, I’ll give you a lift.” Digory was soon on Strawberry’s back, and quite comfortable, for he had ridden bare-back before on his own pony.

“Now, do gee up, Strawberry,” he said.

“You don’t happen to have a bit of that white stuff about you, I suppose?” said the Horse.

“No. I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Digory.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Strawberry, and off they went.

At that moment a large Bulldog, who had been sniffing and staring very hard, said：

“Look. Isn’t there another of these queer creatures—over there, beside the river, under the trees?”

Then all the animals looked and saw Uncle Andrew, standing very still among the rhododendrons and hoping he wouldn’t be noticed.

“Come on！” said several voices. “Let’s go and find out.” So, while Strawberry was briskly trotting away with Digory in one direction （and Polly and the Cabby were following on foot） most of the creatures rushed toward Uncle Andrew with roars, barks, grunts, and various noises of cheerful interest.

We must now go back a bit and explain what the whole scene had looked like from Uncle Andrew’s point of view. It had not made at all the same impression on him as on the Cabby and the children. For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing； it also depends on what sort of person you are.

Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course； but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn’t notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn’t run away from the big Lion.

When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point, for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion （“only a lion,” as he said to himself） he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing-only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.

“Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought. “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words； he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed—well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life. Then, to his utter rage and horror, he saw the other three humans actually walking out into the open to meet the animals.

“The fools！” he said to himself. “Now those brutes will eat the rings along with the children and I’ll never be able to get home again. What a selfish little boy that Digory is！ And the others are just as bad. If they want to throw away their own lives, that’s their business. But what about me? They don’t seem to think of that. No one thinks of me.”

Finally, when a whole crowd of animals came rushing toward him, he turned and ran for his life. And now anyone could see that the air of that young world was really doing the old gentleman good. In London he had been far too old to run； now, he ran at a speed which would have made him certain to win the hundred yards’race at any Prep school in England. His coat-tails flying out behind him were a fine sight. But of course it was no use. Many of the animals behind him were swift ones； it was the first run they had ever taken in their lives and they were all longing to use their new muscles. “After him！ After him！” they shouted. “Perhaps he’s that Neevil！ Tally-ho！ Tantivy！ Cut him off！ Round him up！ Keep it up！ Hurrah！”

In a very few minutes some of them got ahead of him. They lined up in a row and barred his way. Others hemmed him in from behind. Wherever he looked he saw terrors. Antlers of great elks and the huge face of an elephant towered over him. Heavy, serious-minded bears and boars grunted behind him. Cool-looking leopards and panthers with sarcastic faces （as he thought） stared at him and waved their tails. What struck him most of all was the number of open mouths. The animals had really opened their mouths to pant； he thought they had opened their mouths to eat him.

Uncle Andrew stood trembling and swaying this way and that. He had never liked animals at the best of times, being usually rather afraid of them； and of course years of doing cruel experiments on animals had made him hate and fear them far more.

“Now, sir,” said the Bulldog in his business-like way, “are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?” That was what it really said； but all Uncle Andrew heard was “Gr-r-r-arrh-ow！”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
DIGORY AND HIS UNCLE ARE BOTH IN TROUBLE

You may think the animals were very stupid not to see at once that Uncle Andrew was the same kind of creature as the two children and the Cabby. But you must remember that the animals knew nothing about clothes. They thought that Polly’s frock and Digory’s Norfolk suit and the Cabby’s bowler hat were as much parts of them as their own fur and feathers. They wouldn’t have known even that those three were all of the same kind if they hadn’t spoken to them and if Strawberry had not seemed to think so. And Uncle Andrew was a great deal taller than the children and a good deal thinner than the Cabby. He was all in black except for his white waistcoat （not very white by now）, and the great gray mop of his hair （now very wild indeed） didn’t look to them like anything they had seen in the three other humans. So it was only natural that they should be puzzled. Worst of all, he didn’t seem to be able to talk.

He had tried to. When the Bulldog spoke to him （or, as he thought, first snarled and then growled at him） he held out his shaking hand and gasped “Good Doggie, then, poor old fellow.” But the beasts could not understand him any more than he could understand them. They didn’t hear any words； only a vague sizzling noise. Perhaps it was just as well they didn’t, for no dog that I ever knew, least of all a Talking Dog of Narnia, likes being called a Good Doggie then； any more than you would like being called My Little Man. least of all a Talking Dog of Narnia, likes being called a Good Doggie then； any more than you would like being called My Little Man.

Then Uncle Andrew dropped down in a dead faint.

“There！” said a Warthog. “It’s only a tree. I always thought so.” （Remember, they had never yet seen a faint or even a fall.）

The Bulldog, who had been sniffing Uncle Andrew all over, raised its head and said, “It’s an animal. Certainly an animal. And probably the same kind as those other ones.”

“I don’t see that,” said one of the Bears. “An animal wouldn’t just roll over like that. We’re animals and we don’t roll over. We stand up. Like this.” He rose to his hind legs, took a step backward, tripped over a low branch and fell flat on his back.

“The Third Joke, the Third Joke, the Third Joke！” said the Jackdaw in great excitement.

“I still think it’s a sort of tree,” said the Warthog.

“If it’s a tree,” said the other Bear, “there might be a bees’nest in it.”

“I’m sure it’s not a tree,” said the Badger. “I had a sort of idea it was trying to speak before it toppled over.”

“That was only the wind in its branches,” said the Warthog.

“You surely don’t mean,” said the Jackdaw to the Badger, “that you think it’s a talking animal！ It didn’t say any words.”

“And yet, you know,” said the Elephant （the She-Elephant, of course； her husband, as you remember, had been called away by Aslan）. “And yet, you know, it might be an animal of some kind. Mightn’t the whitish lump at this end be a sort of face? And couldn’t those holes be eyes and a mouth? No nose, of course. But then—ahem—one mustn’t be narrow-minded. Very few of us have what could exactly be called a Nose.” She squinted down the length of her own trunk with pardonable pride.

“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog.

“The Elephant is quite right,” said the Tapir.

“I tell you what！” said the Donkey brightly. “Perhaps it’s an animal that can’t talk but thinks it can.”

“Can it be made to stand up?” said the Elephant thoughtfully. She took the limp form of Uncle Andrew gently in her trunk and set him up on end； upside down, unfortunately, so that two half-sovereigns, three half-crowns, and a sixpence fell out of his pocket. But it was no use. Uncle Andrew merely collapsed again.

“There！” said several voices. “It isn’t an animal at all. It’s not alive.”

“I tell you, it is an animal,” said the Bulldog. “Smell it for yourself.”

“Smelling isn’t everything,” said the Elephant.

“Why,” said the Bulldog, “if a fellow can’t trust his nose, what is he to trust?”

“Well, his brains, perhaps,” she replied mildly.

“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog.

“Well, we must do something about it,” said the Elephant. “Because it may be the Neevil, and it must be shown to Aslan. What do most of us think? Is it an animal or something of the tree kind?”

“Tree！ Tree！” said a dozen voices.

“Very well,” said the Elephant. “Then, if it’s a tree it wants to be planted. We must dig a hole.”

The two Moles settled that part of the business pretty quickly. There was some dispute as to which way up Uncle Andrew ought to be put into the hole, and he had a very narrow escape from being put in head foremost. Several animals said his legs must be his branches and therefore the gray, fluffy thing （they meant his head） must be his root. But then others said that the forked end of him was the muddier and that it spread out more, as roots ought to do. So finally he was planted right way up. When they had patted down the earth it came up above his knees.

“It looks dreadfully withered,” said the Donkey.

“Of course it wants some watering,” said the Elephant. “I think I might say （meaning no offence to anyone present） that, perhaps, for that sort of work, my kind of nose—”

“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog. But the Elephant walked quietly to the river, filled her trunk with water, and came back to attend to Uncle Andrew. The sagacious animal went on doing this till gallons of water had been squirted over him, and water was running out of the skirts of his frock-coat as if he had been for a bath with all his clothes on. In the end it revived him. He awoke from his faint. What a wakening it was！ But we must leave him to think over his wicked deed （if he was likely to do anything so sensible） and turn to more important things.

Strawberry trotted on with Digory on his back till the noise of the other animals died away, and now the little group of Aslan and his chosen councillors was quite close. Digory knew that he couldn’t possibly break in on so solemn a meeting, but there was no need to do so. At a word from Aslan, the He-Elephant, the Ravens, and all the rest of them drew aside. Digory slipped off the horse and found himself face to face with Aslan. And Aslan was bigger and more beautiful and more brightly golden and more terrible than he had thought. He dared not look into the great eyes.

“Please—Mr. Lion—Aslan—Sir,” said Digory, “could you-may I-please, will you give me some magic fruit of this country to make Mother well?”

He had been desperately hoping that the Lion would say “Yes”； he had been horribly afraid it might say “No”. But he was taken aback when it did neither.

“This is the Boy,” said Aslan, looking, not at Digory, but at his councillors. “This is the Boy who did it.”

“Oh dear,” thought Digory, “what have I done now?”

“Son of Adam,” said the Lion. “There is an evil Witch abroad in my new land of Narnia. Tell these good Beasts how she came here.”

A dozen different things that he might say flashed through Digory’s mind, but he had the sense to say nothing except the exact truth.

“I brought her, Aslan,” he answered in a low voice.

“For what purpose?”

“I wanted to get her out of my own world back into her own. I thought I was taking her back to her own place.”

“How came she to be in your world, Son of Adam?”

“By—by Magic.”

The Lion said nothing and Digory knew that he had not told enough.

“It was my Uncle, Aslan,” he said. “He sent us out of our own world by magic rings, at least I had to go because he sent Polly first, and then we met the Witch in a place called Charn and she just held on to us when—”

“You met the Witch?” said Asian in a low voice which had the threat of a growl in it.

“She woke up,” said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, “I mean, I woke her. Because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn’t want to. It wasn’t her fault. I-I fought her. I know I shouldn’t have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the bell.”

“Do you?” asked Aslan, still speaking very low and deep.

“No,” said Digory. “I see now I wasn’t. I was only pretending.”

There was a long pause. And Digory was thinking all the time, “I’ve spoiled everything. There’s no chance of getting anything for Mother now.”

When the Lion spoke again, it was not to Digory.

“You see, friends,” he said, “that before the new, clean world I gave you is seven hours old, a force of evil has already entered it； waked and brought hither by this son of Adam.”

The Beasts, even Strawberry, all turned their eyes on Digory till he felt that he wished the ground would swallow him up. “But do not be cast down,” said Aslan, still speaking to the Beasts. “Evil will come of that evil, but it is still a long way off, and I will see to it that the worst falls upon myself. In the meantime, let us take such order that for many hundred years yet this shall be a merry land in a merry world. And as Adam’s race has done the harm, Adam’s race shall help to heal it. Draw near, you other two.”

The last words were spoken to Polly and the Cabby who had now arrived. Polly, all eyes and mouth, was staring at Aslan and holding the Cabby’s hand rather tightly. The Cabby gave one glance at the Lion, and took off his bowler hat； no one had yet seen him without it. When it was off, he looked younger and nicer, and more like a countryman and less like a London cabman.

“Son,” said Aslan to the Cabby, “I have known you long. Do you know me?”

“Well, no, sir,” said the Cabby. “Leastways, not in an ordinary manner of speaking. Yet I feel somehow, if I may make so free, as’ow we’ve met before.”

“It is well,” said the Lion. “You know better than you think you know, and you shall live to know me better yet. How does this land please you?”

“It’s a fair treat, sir,” said the Cabby.

“Would you like to live here always?”

“Well you see sir, I’m a married man,” said the Cabby. “If my wife was here neither of us would ever want to go back to London, I reckon. We’re both country folks, really.”

Aslan threw up his shaggy head, opened his mouth, and uttered a long, single note； not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it. She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and （what’s more） would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between. And so, though she was filled with wonder, she was not really astonished or shocked when all of a sudden a young woman, with a kind, honest face stepped out of nowhere and stood beside her. Polly knew at once that it was the Cabby’s wife, fetched out of our world not by any tiresome magic rings, but quickly, simply and sweetly as a bird flies to its nest. The young woman had apparently been in the middle of a washing day, for she wore an apron, her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and there were soapsuds on her hands. If she had had time to put on her good clothes （her best hat had imitation cherries on it） she would have looked dreadful； as it was, she looked rather nice.

Of course she thought she was dreaming. That was why she didn’t rush across to her husband and ask him what on earth had happened to them both. But when she looked at the Lion she didn’t feel quite so sure it was a dream, yet for some reason she did not appear to be very frightened. Then she dropped a little half curtsey, as some country girls still knew how to do in those days. After that, she went and put her hand in the Cabby’s and stood there looking round her a little shyly.

“My children,” said Aslan, fixing his eyes on both of them, “you are to be the first King and Queen of Narnia.”

The Cabby opened his mouth in astonishment, and his wife turned very red.

“You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them, and protect them from their enemies when enemies arise. And enemies will arise, for there is an evil Witch in this world.”

The Cabby swallowed hard two or three times and cleared his throat.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “and thanking you very much I’m sure （which my Missus does the same） but I ain’t no sort of a chap for a job like that. I never’ad much eddycation, you see.”

“Well,” said Aslan, “can you use a spade and a plough and raise food out of the earth?”

“Yes, sir, I could do a bit of that sort of work； being brought up to it, like.”

“Can you rule these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in, but Talking Beasts and free subjects?”

“I see that, sir,” replied the Cabby. “I’d try to do the square thing by them all.”

“And would you bring up your children and grandchildren to do the same?”

“It’d be up to me to try, sir. I’d do my best； wouldn’t we, Nellie?”

“And you wouldn’t have favorites either among your own children or among the other creatures or let any hold another under or use it hardly?”

“I never could abide such goings on, sir, and that’s the truth. I’d give’em what for if I caught’em at it,” said the Cabby. （All through this conversation his voice was growing slower and richer. More like the country voice he must have had as a boy and less like the sharp, quick voice of a cockney.）

“And if enemies came against the land （for enemies will arise） and there was war, would you be the first in the charge and the last in the retreat?”

“Well, sir,” said the Cabby very slowly, “a chap don’t exactly know till he’s been tried. I dare say I might turn out ever such a soft’un. Never did no fighting except with my fists. I’d try—that is, I’ope I’d try—to do my bit.”

“Then,” said Aslan, “you will have done all that a King should do. Your coronation will be held presently. And you and your children and grandchildren shall be blessed, and some will be Kings of Narnia, and others will be Kings of Archenland which lies yonder over the Southern Mountains. And you, little Daughter” （here he turned to Polly） “are welcome. Have you forgiven the Boy for the violence he did you in the Hall of Images in the desolate palace of accursed Charn?”

“Yes, Aslan, we’ve made it up,” said Polly.

“That is well,” said Aslan. “And now for the Boy himself.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
STRAWBERRY’S ADVENTURE

Digory kept his mouth very tight shut. He had been growing more and more uncomfortable. He hoped that, whatever happened, he wouldn’t blub or do anything ridiculous.

“Son of Adam,” said Aslan. “Are you ready to undo the wrong that you have done to my sweet country of Narnia on the very day of its birth?”

“Well, I don’t see what I can do,” said Digory. “You see, the Queen ran away and—”

“I asked, are you ready?” said the Lion.

“Yes,” said Digory. He had had for a second some wild idea of saying “I’ll try to help you if you’ll promise to help my Mother,” but he realized in time that the Lion was not at all the sort of person one could try to make bargains with. But when he had said “Yes,” he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out：

“But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them； now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and （wonder of wonders） great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another. But I have to think of hundreds of years in the life of Narnia. The Witch whom you have brought into this world will come back to Narnia again. But it need not be yet. It is my wish to plant in Narnia a tree that she will not dare to approach, and that tree will protect Narnia from her for many years. So this land shall have a long, bright morning before any clouds come over the sun. You must get me the seed from which that tree is to grow.”

“Yes, sir,” said Digory. He didn’t know how it was to be done but he felt quite sure now that he would be able to do it. The Lion drew a deep breath, stooped its head even lower and gave him a Lion’s kiss. And at once Digory felt that new strength and courage had gone into him.

“Dear son,” said Aslan, “I will tell you what you must do. Turn and look to the West and tell me what do you see?”

“I see terribly big mountains, Aslan,” said Digory. “I see this river coming down cliffs in a waterfall. And beyond the cliff there are high green hills with forests. And beyond those there are higher ranges that look almost black. And then, far away, there are big snowy mountains all heaped up together—like pictures of the Alps. And behind those there’s nothing but the sky.”

“You see well,” said the Lion. “Now the land of Narnia ends where the waterfall comes down, and once you have reached the top of the cliffs you will be out of Narnia and into the Western Wild. You must journey through those mountains till you find a green valley with a blue lake in it, walled round by mountains of ice. At the end of the lake there is a steep, green hill. On the top of that hill there is a garden. In the center of that garden is a tree. Pluck an apple from that tree and bring it back to me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Digory again. He hadn’t the least idea of how he was to climb the cliff and find his way among all the mountains, but he didn’t like to say that for fear it would sound like making excuses. But he did say, “I hope, Aslan, you’re not in a hurry. I shan’t be able to get there and back very quickly.”

“Little son of Adam, you shall have help,” said Aslan. He then turned to the Horse who had been standing quietly beside them all this time, swishing his tail to keep the flies off, and listening with his head on one side as if the conversation were a little difficult to understand.

“My dear,” said Aslan to the Horse, “would you like to be a winged horse?”

You should have seen how the Horse shook its mane and how its nostrils widened, and the little tap it gave the ground with one back hoof. Clearly it would very much like to be a winged horse. But it only said：

“If you wish, Aslan—if you really mean—I don’t know why it should be me—I’m not a very clever horse.”

“Be winged. Be the father of all flying horses,” roared Aslan in a voice that shook the ground. “Your name is Fledge.”

The horse shied, just as it might have shied in the old, miserable days when it pulled a hansom. Then it roared. It strained its neck back as if there were a fly biting its shoulders and it wanted to scratch them. And then, just as the beasts had burst out of the earth, there burst out from the shoulders of Fledge wings that spread and grew, larger than eagles’, larger than swans’, larger than angels’wings in church windows. The feathers shone chestnut color and copper color. He gave a great sweep with them and leaped into the air. Twenty feet above Aslan and Digory he snorted, neighed, and curvetted. Then, after circling once round them, he dropped to the earth, all four hoofs together, looking awkward and surprised, but extremely pleased.

“Is it good, Fledge?” said Aslan.

“It is very good, Aslan,” said Fledge.

“Will you carry this little son of Adam on your back to the mountain-valley I spoke of?”

“What? Now? At once?” said Strawberry—or Fledge, as we must now call him—“Hurrah！ Come, little one, I’ve had things like you on my back before. Long, long ago. When there were green fields, and sugar.”

“What are the two daughters of Eve whispering about?” said Aslan, turning very suddenly on Polly and the Cabby’s wife, who had in fact been making friends.

“If you please, sir,” said Queen Helen （for that is what Nellie the cabman’s wife now was）, “I think the little girl would love to go too, if it weren’t no trouble.”

“What does Fledge say about that?” asked the Lion.

“Oh, I don’t mind two, not when they’re little ones,” said Fledge. “But I hope the Elephant doesn’t want to come as well.”

The Elephant had no such wish, and the new King of Narnia helped both the children up； that is, he gave Digory a rough heave and set Polly as gently and daintily on the horse’s back as if she were made of china and might break. “There they are, Strawberry—Fledge, I should say. This is a rum go.”

“Do not fly too high,” said Aslan. “Do not try to go over the tops of the great ice-mountains. Look out for the valleys, the green places, and fly through them. There will always be a way through. And now, be gone with my blessing.”

“Oh Fledge！” said Digory, leaning forward to pat the Horse’s glossy neck. “This is fun. Hold on to me tight, Polly.”

Next moment the country dropped away beneath them, and whirled round as Fledge, like a huge pigeon, circled once or twice before setting off on his long westward flight. Looking down, Polly could hardly see the King and the Queen, and even Aslan himself was only a bright yellow spot on the green grass. Soon the wind was in their faces and Fledge’s wings settled down to a steady beat.

All Narnia, many-colored with lawns and rocks and heather and different sorts of trees, lay spread out below them, the river winding through it like a ribbon of quicksilver. They could already see over the tops of the low hills which lay northward on their right； beyond those hills a great moorland sloped gently up and up to the horizon. On their left the mountains were much higher, but every now and then there was a gap when you could see, between steep pine woods, a glimpse of the southern lands that lay beyond them, looking blue and far away.

“That’ll be where Archenland is,” said Polly.

“Yes, but look ahead！” said Digory.

For now a great barrier of cliffs rose before them and they were almost dazzled by the sunlight dancing on the great waterfall by which the river roars and sparkles down into Narnia itself from the high western lands in which it rises. They were flying so high already that the thunder of those falls could only just be heard as a small, thin sound, but they were not yet high enough to fly over the top of the cliffs.

“We’ll have to do a bit of zig-zagging here,” said Fledge. “Hold on tight.”

He began flying to and fro, getting higher at each turn. The air grew colder, and they heard the call of eagles far below them.

“I say, look back！ Look behind,” said Polly.

There they could see the whole valley of Narnia stretched out to where, just before the eastern horizon, there was a gleam of the sea. And now they were so high that they could see tiny-looking jagged mountains appearing beyond the northwest moors, and plains of what looked like sand far in the south.

“I wish we had someone to tell us what all those places are,” said Digory.

“I don’t suppose they’re anywhere yet,” said Polly. “I mean, there’s no one there, and nothing happening. The world only began today.”

“No, but people will get there,” said Digory. “And then they’ll have histories, you know.”

“Well, it’s a jolly good thing they haven’t now,” said Polly. “Because nobody can be made to learn it. Battles and dates and all that rot.”

Now they were over the top of the cliffs and in a few minutes the valley land of Narnia had sunk out of sight behind them. They were flying over a wild country of steep hills and dark forests, still following the course of the river. The really big mountains loomed ahead. But the sun was now in the travelers’eyes and they couldn’t see things very clearly in that direction. For the sun sank lower and lower till the western sky was all like one great furnace full of melted gold； and it set at last behind a jagged peak which stood up against the brightness as sharp and flat as if it were cut out of cardboard.

“It’s none too warm up here,” said Polly.

“And my wings are beginning to ache,” said Fledge. “There’s no sign of the valley with a Lake in it, like what Aslan said. What about coming down and looking out for a decent spot to spend the night in? We shan’t reach that place tonight.”

“Yes, and surely it’s about time for supper?” said Digory.

So Fledge came lower and lower. As they came down nearer to the earth and among the hills, the air grew warmer and after traveling so many hours with nothing to listen to but the beat of Fledge’s wings, it was nice to hear the homely and earthy noises again—the chatter of the river on its stony bed and the creaking of trees in the light wind. A warm, good smell of sun-baked earth and grass and flowers came up to them. At last Fledge alighted. Digory rolled off and helped Polly to dismount. Both were glad to stretch their stiff legs.

The valley in which they had come down was in the heart of the mountains； snowy heights, one of them looking rose-red in the reflections of the sunset, towered above them.

“I am hungry,” said Digory.

“Well, tuck in,” said Fledge, taking a big mouthful of grass. Then he raised his head, still chewing and with bits of grass sticking out on each side of his mouth like whiskers, and said, “Come on, you two. Don’t be shy. There’s plenty for us all.”

“But we can’t eat grass,” said Digory.

“H’m, h’m,” said Fledge, speaking with his mouth full. “Well—h’m—don’t know quite what you’ll do then. Very good grass too.”

Polly and Digory stared at one another in dismay.

“Well, I do think someone might have arranged about our meals,” said Digory.

“I’m sure Aslan would have, if you’d asked him,” said Fledge.

“Wouldn’t he know without being asked?” said Polly.

“I’ve no doubt he would,” said the Horse （still with his mouth full）. “But I’ve a sort of idea he likes to be asked.”

“But what on earth are we to do?” asked Digory.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Fledge. “Unless you try the grass. You might like it better than you think.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Polly, stamping her foot. “Of course humans can’t eat grass, any more than you could eat a mutton chop.”

“For goodness’sake don’t talk about chops and things,” said Digory. “It only makes it worse.”

Digory said that Polly had better take herself home by ring and get something to eat there； he couldn’t himself because he had promised to go straight on his message for Aslan, and, if once he showed up again at home, anything might happen to prevent his getting back. But Polly said she wouldn’t leave him, and Digory said it was jolly decent of her.

“I say,” said Polly, “I’ve still got the remains of that bag of toffee in my jacket. It’ll be better than nothing.”

“A lot better,” said Digory. “But be careful to get your hand into your pocket without touching your ring.”

This was a difficult and delicate job but they managed it in the end. The little paper bag was very squashy and sticky when they finally got it out, so that it was more a question of tearing the bag off the toffees than of getting the toffees out of the bag. Some grown-ups （you know how fussy they can be about that sort of thing） would rather have gone without supper altogether than eaten those toffees. There were nine of them all told. It was Digory who had the bright idea of eating four each and planting the ninth； for, as he said, “if the bar off the lamp-post turned into a little light-tree, why shouldn’t this turn into a toffee-tree?” So they dibbled a small hole in the turf and buried the piece of toffee. Then they ate the other pieces, making them last as long as they could. It was a poor meal, even with all the paper they couldn’t help eating as well.

When Fledge had quite finished his own excellent supper he lay down. The children came and sat one on each side of him leaning against his warm body, and when he had spread a wing over each they were really quite snug. As the bright young stars of that new world came out they talked over everything： how Digory had hoped to get something for his Mother and how, instead of that, he had been sent on this message. And they repeated to one another all the signs by which they would know the places they were looking for—the blue lake and the hill with a garden on top of it. The talk was just beginning to slow down as they got sleepy, when suddenly Polly sat up wide awake and said “Hush！”

Everyone listened as hard as they could.

“Perhaps it was only the wind in the trees,” said Digory presently.

“I’m not so sure,” said Fledge. “Anyway—wait！ There it goes again. By Aslan, it is something.”

The horse scrambled to its feet with a great noise and a great upheaval； the children were already on theirs. Fledge trotted to and fro, sniffing and whinnying. The children tiptoed this way and that, looking behind every bush and tree. They kept on thinking they saw things, and there was one time when Polly was perfectly certain she had seen a tall, dark figure gliding quickly away in a westerly direction. But they caught nothing and in the end Fledge lay down again and the children re-snuggled （if that is the right word） under his wings. They went to sleep at once. Fledge stayed awake much longer moving his ears to and fro in the darkness and sometimes giving a little shiver with his skin as if a fly had lighted on him； but in the end he too slept.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

“Wake up, Digory； wake up, Fledge,” came the voice of Polly. “It has turned into a toffee tree. And it’s the loveliest morning.”

The low early sunshine was streaming through the wood and the grass was gray with dew and the cobwebs were like silver. Just beside them was a little, very dark-wooded tree, about the size of an apple tree. The leaves were whitish and rather papery, like the herb called honesty, and it was loaded with little brown fruits that looked rather like dates.

“Hurrah！” said Digory. “But I’m going to have a dip first.”

He rushed through a flowering thicket or two down to the river’s edge. Have you ever bathed in a mountain river that is running in shallow cataracts over red and blue and yellow stones with the sun on it? It is as good as the sea； in some ways almost better. Of course, he had to dress again without drying but it was well worth it. When he came back, Polly went down and had her bathe； at least she said that was what she’d been doing, but we know she was not much of a swimmer and perhaps it is best not to ask too many questions. Fledge visited the river too but he only stood in midstream, stooping down for a long drink of water and then shaking his mane and neighing several times.

Polly and Digory got to work on the toffee-tree. The fruit was delicious； not exactly like toffee—softer for one thing, and juicy—but like fruit which reminded one of toffee. Fledge also made an excellent breakfast； he tried one of the toffee fruits and liked it but said he felt more like grass at that hour in the morning. Then with some difficulty the children got on his back and the second journey began.

It was even better than yesterday, partly because everyone was feeling so fresh, and partly because the newly risen sun was at their backs and, of course, everything looks nicer when the light is behind you. It was a wonderful ride. The big snowy mountains rose above them in every direction. The valleys, far beneath them, were so green, and all the streams which tumbled down from the glaciers into the main river were so blue, that it was like flying over gigantic pieces of jewelry. They would have liked this part of the adventure to go on longer than it did. But quite soon they were all sniffing the air and saying “What is it?” and “Did you smell something?” and “Where’s it coming from?” For a heavenly smell, warm and golden, as if from all the most delicious fruits and flowers of the world, was coming up to them from somewhere ahead.

“It’s coming from that valley with the lake in it,” said Fledge.

“So it is,” said Digory. “And look！ There’s a green hill at the far end of the lake. And look how blue the water is.”

“It must be the Place,” said all three.

Fledge came lower and lower in wide circles. The icy peaks rose up higher and higher above. The air came up warmer and sweeter every moment, so sweet that it almost brought the tears to your eyes. Fledge was now gliding with his wings spread out motionless on each side, and his hoofs pawing for the ground. The steep green hill was rushing toward them. A moment later he alighted on its slope, a little awkwardly. The children rolled off, fell without hurting themselves on the warm, fine grass, and stood up panting a little.

They were three-quarters of the way up the hill, and set out at once to climb to the top. （I don’t think Fledge could have managed this without his wings to balance him and to give him the help of a flutter now and then.） All round the very top of the hill ran a high wall of green turf. Inside the wall trees were growing. Their branches hung out over the wall； their leaves showed not only green but also blue and silver when the wind stirred them. When the travelers reached the top they walked nearly all the way round it outside the green wall before they found the gates： high gates of gold, fast shut, facing due east.

Up till now I think Fledge and Polly had had the idea that they would go in with Digory. But they thought so no longer. You never saw a place which was so obviously private. You could see at a glance that it belonged to someone else. Only a fool would dream of going in unless he had been sent there on very special business. Digory himself understood at once that the others wouldn’t and couldn’t come in with him. He went forward to the gates alone.

When he had come close up to them he saw words written on the gold with silver letters； something like this：

Come in by the gold gates or not at all,

Take of my fruit for others or forbear,

For those who steal or those who climb my wall

Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.

“Take of my fruit for others,” said Digory to himself. “Well, that’s what I’m going to do. It means I mustn’t eat any myself, I suppose. I don’t know what all that jaw in the last line is about. Come in by the gold gates. Well who’d want to climb a wall if he could get in by a gate！ But how do the gates open?” He laid his hand on them and instantly they swung apart, opening inward, turning on their hinges without the least noise.

Now that he could see into the place it looked more private than ever. He went in very solemnly, looking about him. Everything was very quiet inside. Even the fountain which rose near the middle of the garden made only the faintest sound. The lovely smell was all round him； it was a happy place but very serious.

He knew which was the right tree at once, partly because it stood in the very center and partly because the great silver apples with which it was loaded shone so and cast a light of their own down on the shadowy places where the sunlight did not reach. He walked straight across to it, picked an apple, and put it in the breast pocket of his Norfolk jacket. But he couldn’t help looking at it and smelling it before he put it away.

It would have been better if he had not. A terrible thirst and hunger came over him and a longing to taste that fruit. He put it hastily into his pocket； but there were plenty of others. Could it be wrong to taste one? After all, he thought, the notice on the gate might not have been exactly an order； it might have been only a piece of advice-and who cares about advice? Or even if it were an order, would he be disobeying it by eating an apple? He had already obeyed the part about taking one “for others.”

While he was thinking of all this he happened to look up through the branches toward the top of the tree. There, on a branch above his head, a wonderful bird was roosting. I say “roosting” because it seemed almost asleep； perhaps not quite. The tiniest slit of one eye was open. It was larger than an eagle, its breast saffron, its head crested with scarlet, and its tail purple.

“And it just shows,” said Digory afterward when he was telling the story to the others, “that you can’t be too careful in these magical places. You never know what may be watching you.” But I think Digory would not have taken an apple for himself in any case. Things like Do Not Steal were, I think, hammered into boys’heads a good deal harder in those days than they are now. Still, we can never be certain.

Digory was just turning to go back to the gates when he stopped to have one last look round. He got a terrible shock. He was not alone. There, only a few yards away from him, stood the Witch. She was just throwing away the core of an apple which she had eaten. The juice was darker than you would expect and had made a horrid stain round her mouth. Digory guessed at once that she must have climbed in over the wall. And he began to see that there might be some sense in that last line about getting your heart’s desire and getting despair along with it. For the Witch looked stronger and prouder than ever, and even, in a way, triumphant； but her face was deadly white, white as salt.

All this flashed through Digory’s mind in a second； then he took to his heels and ran for the gates as hard as he could pelt, the Witch after him. As soon as he was out, the gates closed behind him of their own accord. That gave him the lead but not for long. By the time he had reached the others and was shouting out “Quick, get on, Polly！ Get up, Fledge,” the Witch had climbed the wall, or vaulted over it, and was close behind him again.

“Stay where you are,” cried Digory, turning round to face her, “or we’ll all vanish. Don’t come an inch nearer.”

“Foolish boy,” said the Witch. “Why do you run from me? I mean you no harm. If you do not stop and listen to me now, you will miss some knowledge that would have made you happy all your life.”

“Well I don’t want to hear it, thanks,” said Digory. But he did.

“I know what errand you have come on,” continued the Witch. “For it was I who was close beside you in the woods last night and heard all your counsels. You have plucked fruit in the garden yonder. You have it in your pocket now. And you are going to carry it back, untasted, to the Lion； for him to eat, for him to use. You simpleton！ Do you know what that fruit is? I will tell you. It is the apple of youth, the apple of life. I know, for I have tasted it； and I feel already such changes in myself that I know I shall never grow old or die. Eat it, Boy, eat it； and you and I will both live forever and be king and queen of this whole world—or of your world, if we decide to go back there.”

“No thanks,” said Digory, “I don’t know that I care much about living on and on after everyone I know is dead. I’d rather live an ordinary time and die and go to Heaven.”

“But what about this Mother of yours whom you pretend to love so?”

“What’s she got to do with it?” said Digory.

“Do you not see, Fool, that one bite of that apple would heal her? You have it in your pocket. We are here by ourselves and the Lion is far away. Use your Magic and go back to your own world. A minute later you can be at your Mother’s bedside, giving her the fruit. Five minutes later you will see the color coming back to her face. She will tell you the pain is gone. Soon she will tell you she feels stronger. Then she will fall asleep-think of that： hours of sweet natural sleep, without pain, without drugs. Next day everyone will be saying how wonderfully she has recovered. Soon she will be quite well again. All will be well again. Your home will be happy again. You will be like other boys.”

“Oh！” gasped Digory as if he had been hurt, and put his hand to his head. For he now knew that the most terrible choice lay before him.

“What has the Lion ever done for you that you should be his slave?” said the Witch. “What can he do to you once you are back in your own world? And what would your Mother think if she knew that you could have taken her pain away and given her back her life and saved your Father’s heart from being broken, and that you wouldn’t-that you’d rather run messages for a wild animal in a strange world that is no business of yours?”

“I—I don’t think he is a wild animal,” said Digory in a dried-up sort of voice. “He is—I don’t know—”

“Then he is something worse,” said the Witch. “Look what he has done to you already； look how heartless he has made you. That is what he does to everyone who listens to him. Cruel, pitiless boy！ You would let your own Mother die rather than—”

“Oh shut up,” said the miserable Digory, still in the same voice. “Do you think I don’t see? But I—I promised.”

“Ah, but you didn’t know what you were promising. And no one here can prevent you.”

“Mother herself,” said Digory, getting the words out with difficulty, “wouldn’t like it—awfully strict about keeping promises—and not stealing—and all that sort of thing. She’d tell me not to do it—quick as anything—if she was here.”

“But she need never know,” said the Witch, speaking more sweetly than you would have thought anyone with so fierce a face could speak. “You wouldn’t tell her how you’d got the apple. Your Father need never know. No one in your world need know anything about this whole story. You needn’t take the little girl back with you, you know.”

That was where the Witch made her fatal mistake. Of course Digory knew that Polly could get away by her own ring as easily as he could get away by his. But apparently the Witch didn’t know this. And the meanness of the suggestion that he should leave Polly behind suddenly made all the other things the Witch had been saying to him sound false and hollow. And even in the midst of all his misery, his head suddenly cleared, and he said （in a different and much louder voice）：

“Look here, where do you come into all this? Why are you so precious fond of my Mother all of a sudden? What’s it got to do with you? What’s your game?”

“Good for you, Digs,” whispered Polly in his ear. “Quick！ Get away now.” She hadn’t dared to say anything all through the argument because, you see, it wasn’t her Mother who was dying.

“Up then,” said Digory, heaving her on to Fledge’s back and then scrambling up as quickly as he could. The horse spread its wings.

“Go then, Fools,” called the Witch. “Think of me, Boy, when you lie old and weak and dying, and remember how you threw away the chance of endless youth！ It won’t be offered you again.”

They were already so high that they could only just hear her. Nor did the Witch waste any time gazing up at them； they saw her set off northward down the slope of the hill.

They had started early that morning and what happened in the garden had not taken very long, so that Fledge and Polly both said they would easily get back to Narnia before nightfall. Digory never spoke on the way back, and the others were shy of speaking to him. He was very sad and he wasn’t even sure all the time that he had done the right thing； but whenever he remembered the shining tears in Aslan’s eyes he became sure.

All day Fledge flew steadily with untiring wings： eastward with the river to guide him, through the mountains and over the wild wooded hills, and then over the great waterfall and down, and down, to where the woods of Narnia were darkened by the shadow of the mighty cliff, till at last, when the sky was growing red with sunset behind them, he saw a place where many creatures were gathered together by the riverside. And soon he could see Aslan himself in the midst of them. Fledge glided down, spread out his four legs, closed his wings, and landed cantering. Then he pulled up. The children dismounted. Digory saw all the animals, dwarfs, satyrs, nymphs, and other things drawing back to the left and right to make way for him. He walked up to Aslan, handed him the apple and said：

“I’ve brought you the apple you wanted, sir.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE PLANTING OF THE TREE

“Well done,” said Aslan in a voice that made the earth shake.

Then Digory knew that all the Narnians had heard those words and that the story of them would be handed down from father to son in that new world for hundreds of years and perhaps forever. But he was in no danger of feeling conceited for he didn’t think about it at all now that he was face to face with Aslan. This time he found he could look straight into the Lion’s eyes. He had forgotten his troubles and felt absolutely content.

“Well done, Son of Adam,” said the Lion again. “For this fruit you have hungered and thirsted and wept. No hand but yours shall sow the seed of the Tree that is to be the protection of Narnia. Throw the apple toward the river bank where the ground is soft.”

Digory did as he was told. Everyone had grown so quiet that you could hear the soft thump where it fell into the mud.

“It is well thrown,” said Aslan. “Let us now proceed to the coronation of King Frank of Narnia and Helen his Queen.”

The children now noticed these two for the first time. They were dressed in strange and beautiful clothes, and from their shoulders rich robes flowed out behind them to where four dwarfs held up the King’s train and four river-nymphs the Queen’s. Their heads were bare； but Helen had let her hair down and it made a great improvement in her appearance. But it was neither hair nor clothes that made them look so different from their old selves. Their faces had a new expression, especially the King’s. All the sharpness and cunning and quarrelsomeness which he had picked up as a London cabby seemed to have been washed away, and the courage and kindness which he had always had were easier to see. Perhaps it was the air of the young world that had done it, or talking with Aslan, or both.

“Upon my word,” whispered Fledge to Polly. “My old master’s been changed nearly as much as I have！ Why, he’s a real master now.”

“Yes, but don’t buzz in my ear like that,” said Polly. “It tickles so.”

“Now,” said Aslan, “some of you undo that tangle you have made with those trees and let us see what we shall find there.”

Digory now saw that where four trees grew close together their branches had all been laced together or tied together with switches so as to make a sort of cage. The two Elephants with their trunks and a few dwarfs with their little axes soon got it all undone. There were three things inside. One was a young tree that seemed to be made of gold； the second was a young tree that seemed to be made of silver； but the third was a miserable object in muddy clothes, sitting hunched up between them.

“Gosh！” whispered Digory. “Uncle Andrew！”

To explain all this we must go back a bit. The Beasts, you remember, had tried planting and watering him. When the watering brought him to his senses, he found himself soaking wet, buried up to his thighs in earth （which was quickly turning into mud） and surrounded by more wild animals than he had ever dreamed of in his life before. It is perhaps not surprising that he began to scream and howl. This was in a way a good thing, for it at last persuaded everyone （even the Warthog） that he was alive. So they dug him up again （his trousers were in a really shocking state by now）. As soon as his legs were free he tried to bolt, but one swift curl of the Elephant’s trunk round his waist soon put an end to that. Everyone now thought he must be safely kept somewhere till Aslan had time to come and see him and say what should be done about him. So they made a sort of cage or coop all round him. They then offered him everything they could think of to eat.

The Donkey collected great piles of thistles and threw them in, but Uncle Andrew didn’t seem to care about them. The Squirrels bombarded him with volleys of nuts but he only covered his head with his hands and tried to keep out of the way. Several birds flew to and fro diligently dropping worms on him. The Bear was especially kind. During the afternoon he found a wild bees’nest and instead of eating it himself （which he would very much like to have done） this worthy creature brought it back to Uncle Andrew. But this was in fact the worst failure of all. The Bear lobbed the whole sticky mass over the top of the enclosure and unfortunately it hit Uncle Andrew slap in the face （not all the bees were dead）. The Bear, who would not at all have minded being hit in the face by a honeycomb himself, could not understand why Uncle Andrew staggered back, slipped, and sat down. And it was sheer bad luck that he sat down on the pile of thistles. “And anyway,” as the Warthog said, “quite a lot of honey has got into the creature’s mouth and that’s bound to have done it some good.” They were really getting quite fond of their strange pet and hoped that Aslan would allow them to keep it. The cleverer ones were quite sure by now that at least some of the noises which came out of his mouth had a meaning. They christened him Brandy because he made that noise so often.

In the end, however, they had to leave him there for the night. Aslan was busy all that day instructing the new King and Queen and doing other important things, and could not attend to “poor old Brandy.” What with the nuts, pears, apples, and bananas that had been thrown in to him, he did fairly well for supper； but it wouldn’t be true to say that he passed an agreeable night.

“Bring out that creature,” said Aslan. One of the Elephants lifted Uncle Andrew in its trunk and laid him at the Lion’s feet. He was too frightened to move.

“Please, Aslan,” said Polly, “could you say something to—to unfrighten him? And then could you say something to prevent him from ever coming back here again?”

“Do you think he wants to?” said Aslan.

“Well, Aslan,” said Polly, “he might send someone else. He’s so excited about the bar off the lamp-post growing into a lamp-post tree and he thinks—”

“He thinks great folly, child,” said Aslan. “This world is bursting with life for these few days because the song with which I called it into life still hangs in the air and rumbles in the ground. It will not be so for long. But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either； he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good！ But I will give him the only gift he is still able to receive.”

He bowed his great head rather sadly, and breathed into the Magician’s terrified face. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep and be separated for some few hours from all the torments you have devised for yourself.” Uncle Andrew immediately rolled over with closed eyes and began breathing peacefully.

“Carry him aside and lay him down,” said Aslan. “Now, dwarfs！ Show your smith-craft. Let me see you make two crowns for your King and Queen.”

More Dwarfs than you could dream of rushed forward to the Golden Tree. They had all its leaves stripped off, and some of its branches torn off too, before you could say Jack Robinson. And now the children could see that it did not merely look golden but was of real, soft gold. It had of course sprung up from the half-sovereigns which had fallen out of Uncle Andrew’s pocket when he was turned upside down； just as the silver had grown up from the half-crowns. From nowhere, as it seemed, piles of dry brushwood for fuel, a little anvil, hammers, tongs, and bellows were produced. Next moment （how those dwarfs loved their work！） the fire was blazing, the bellows were roaring, the gold was melting, the hammers were clinking. Two Moles, whom Aslan had set to dig （which was what they liked best） earlier in the day, poured out a pile of precious stones at the dwarfs’feet. Under the clever fingers of the little smiths two crowns took shape—not ugly, heavy things like modern European crowns, but light, delicate, beautifully shaped circles that you could really wear and look nicer by wearing. The King’s was set with rubies and the Queen’s with emeralds.

When the crowns had been cooled in the river, Aslan made Frank and Helen kneel before him and he placed the crowns on their heads. Then he said, “Rise up King and Queen of Narnia, father and mother of many kings that shall be in Narnia and the Isles and Archenland. Be just and merciful and brave. The blessing is upon you.”

Then everyone cheered or bayed or neighed or trumpeted or clapped its wings and the royal pair stood looking solemn and a little shy, but all the nobler for their shyness. And while Digory was still cheering he heard the deep voice of Aslan beside him, saying：

“Look！”

Everyone in that crowd turned its head, and then everyone drew a long breath of wonder and delight. A little way off, towering over their heads, they saw a tree which had certainly not been there before. It must have grown up silently, yet swiftly as a flag rises when you pull it up on a flagstaff, while they were all busied about the coronation. Its spreading branches seemed to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stars from under every leaf. But it was the smell which came from it, even more than the sight, that had made everyone draw in their breath. For a moment one could hardly think about anything else.

“Son of Adam,” said Aslan, “you have sown well. And you, Narnians, let it be your first care to guard this Tree, for it is your Shield. The Witch of whom I told you has fled far away into the North of the world； she will live on there, growing stronger in dark Magic. But while that Tree flourishes she will never come down into Narnia. She dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her.”

Everyone was staring solemnly at the Tree when Aslan suddenly swung round his head （scattering golden gleams of light from his mane as he did so） and fixed his large eyes on the children. “What is it, children?” he said, for he caught them in the very act of whispering and nudging one another.

“Oh—Aslan, sir,” said Digory, turning red, “I forgot to tell you. The Witch has already eaten one of those apples, one of the same kind that Tree grew from.” He hadn’t really said all he was thinking, but Polly at once said it for him. （Digory was always much more afraid than she of looking a fool.）

“So we thought, Aslan,” she said, “that there must be some mistake, and she can’t really mind the smell of those apples.”

“Why do you think that, Daughter of Eve?” asked the Lion.

“Well, she ate one.”

“Child,” he replied, “that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”

“Oh I see,” said Polly. “And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won’t work for her. I mean it won’t make her always young and all that?”

“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire； she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want； they do not always like it.”

“I—I nearly ate one myself, Aslan,” said Digory. “Would I—”

“You would, child,” said Aslan. “For the fruit always works—it must work—but it does not work happily for any who pluck it at their own will. If any Narnian, unbidden, had stolen an apple and planted it here to protect Narnia, it would have protected Narnia. But it would have done so by making Narnia into another strong and cruel empire like Charn, not the kindly land I mean it to be. And the Witch tempted you to do another thing, my son, did she not?”

“Yes, Aslan. She wanted me to take an apple home to Mother.”

“Understand, then, that it would have healed her, but not to your joy or hers. The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness.”

And Digory could say nothing, for tears choked him and he gave up all hopes of saving his Mother’s life； but at the same time he knew that the Lion knew what would have happened, and that there might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death. But now Aslan was speaking again, almost in a whisper：

“That is what would have happened, child, with a stolen apple. It is not what will happen now. What I give you now will bring joy. It will not, in your world, give endless life, but it will heal. Go. Pluck her an apple from the Tree.”

For a second Digory could hardly understand. It was as if the whole world had turned inside out and upside down. And then, like someone in a dream, he was walking across to the Tree, and the King and Queen were cheering him and all the creatures were cheering too. He plucked the apple and put it in his pocket. Then he came back to Aslan.

“Please,” he said, “may we go home now?” He had forgotten to say “Thank you,” but he meant it, and Aslan understood.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE END OF THIS STORY AND THE BEGINNING OF ALL THE OTHERS

“You need no rings when I am with you,” said the voice of Aslan. The children blinked and looked about them. They were once more in the Wood between the Worlds： Uncle Andrew lay on the grass, still asleep； Aslan stood beside them.

“Come,” said Aslan, “it is time that you went back. But there are two things to see to first： a warning, and a command. Look here, children.”

They looked and saw a little hollow in the grass, with a grassy bottom, warm and dry.

“When you were last here,” said Aslan, “that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came to the world where a dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.”

“Yes, Aslan,” said both the children. But Polly added, “But we’re not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?”

“Not yet, Daughter of Eve,” he said. “Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning. Now for the command. As soon as you can, take from this Uncle of yours his magic rings and bury them so that no one can use them again.”

Both the children were looking up into the Lion’s face as he spoke these words. And all at once （they never knew exactly how it happened） the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well. Next minute all three of them （Uncle Andrew now awake） came tumbling into the noise, heat, and hot smells of London.

They were on the pavement outside the Ketterleys’front door, and except that the Witch, the Horse, and the Cabby were gone, everything was exactly as they had left it. There was the lamp-post, with one arm missing； there was the wreck of the hansom cab； and there was the crowd. Everyone was still talking and people were kneeling beside the damaged policeman, saying things like, “He’s coming round” or “How do you feel now, old chap?” or “The Ambulance will be here in a jiffy.”

“Great Scott！” thought Digory. “I believe the whole adventure’s taken no time at all.”

Most people were wildly looking round for Jadis and the horse. No one took any notice of the children for no one had seen them go or noticed them coming back. As for Uncle Andrew, what between the state of his clothes and the honey on his face, he could not have been recognized by anyone. Fortunately the front door of the house was open and the housemaid was standing in the doorway staring at the fun （what a day that girl was having！） so the children had no difficulty in bustling Uncle Andrew indoors before anyone asked any questions.

He raced up the stairs before them and at first they were very afraid he was heading for his attic and meant to hide his remaining magic rings. But they needn’t have bothered. What he was thinking about was the bottle in his wardrobe, and he disappeared at once into his bedroom and locked the door. When he came out again （which was not for a long time） he was in his dressing-gown and made straight for the bathroom.

“Can you get the other rings, Poll?” said Digory. “I want to go to Mother.”

“Right. See you later,” said Polly and clattered up the attic stairs.

Then Digory took a minute to get his breath, and then went softly into his Mother’s room. And there she lay, as he had seen her lie so many other times, propped up on the pillows, with a thin, pale face that would make you cry to look at it. Digory took the Apple of Life out of his pocket.

And just as the Witch Jadis had looked different when you saw her in our world instead of in her own, so the fruit of that mountain garden looked different too. There were of course all sorts of colored things in the bedroom： the colored counterpane on the bed, the wallpaper, the sunlight from the window, and Mother’s pretty, pale blue dressing jacket. But the moment Digory took the Apple out of his pocket, all those things seemed to have scarcely any color at all. Every one of them, even the sunlight, looked faded and dingy. The brightness of the Apple threw strange lights on the ceiling. Nothing else was worth looking at； you couldn’t look at anything else. And the smell of the Apple of Youth was as if there was a window in the room that opened on Heaven.

“Oh, darling, how lovely,” said Digory’s Mother.

“You will eat it, won’t you? Please,” said Digory.

“I don’t know what the Doctor would say,” she answered. “But really—I almost feel as if I could.”

He peeled it and cut it up and gave it to her piece by piece. And no sooner had she finished it than she smiled and her head sank back on the pillow and she was asleep： a real, natural, gentle sleep, without any of those nasty drugs, which was, as Digory knew, the thing in the whole world that she wanted most. And he was sure now that her face looked a little different. He bent down and kissed her very softly and stole out of the room with a beating heart, taking the core of the apple with him. For the rest of that day, whenever he looked at the things about him, and saw how ordinary and unmagical they were, he hardly dared to hope； but when he remembered the face of Aslan he did hope.

That evening he buried the core of the Apple in the back garden.

Next morning when the Doctor made his usual visit, Digory leaned over the banisters to listen. He heard the Doctor come out with Aunt Letty and say：

“Miss Ketterley, this is the most extraordinary case I have known in my whole medical career. It is—it is like a miracle. I wouldn’t tell the little boy anything at present； we don’t want to raise any false hopes. But in my opinion—” then his voice became too low to hear.

That afternoon he went down the garden and whistled their agreed secret signal for Polly （she hadn’t been able to get back the day before）.

“What luck?” said Polly, looking over the wall. “I mean, about your Mother?”

“I think—I think it is going to be alright,” said Digory. “But if you don’t mind I’d really rather not talk about it yet. What about the rings?”

“I’ve got them all,” said Polly. “Look, it’s all right, I’m wearing gloves. Let’s bury them.”

“Yes, let’s. I’ve marked the place where I buried the core of the Apple yesterday.”

Then Polly came over the wall and they went together to the place. But, as it turned out, Digory need not have marked the place. Something was already coming up. It was not growing so that you could see it grow as the new trees had done in Narnia； but it was already well above ground. They got a trowel and buried all the magic rings, including their own ones, in a circle round it.

About a week after this it was quite certain that Digory’s Mother was getting better. About a fortnight later she was able to sit out in the garden. And a month later that whole house had become a different place. Aunt Letty did everything that Mother liked： windows were opened, frowsy curtains were drawn back to brighten up the rooms, there were new flowers everywhere, and nicer things to eat, and the old piano was tuned and Mother took up her singing again, and had such games with Digory and Polly that Aunt Letty would say “I declare, Mabel, you’re the biggest baby of the three.”

When things go wrong, you’ll find they usually go on getting worse for some time； but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better. After about six weeks of this lovely life there came a long letter from Father in India, which had wonderful news in it. Old Great-Uncle Kirke had died and this meant, apparently, that Father was now very rich. He was going to retire and come home from India forever and ever. And the great big house in the country, which Digory had heard of all his life and never seen would now be their home； the big house with the suits of armor, the stables, the kennels, the river, the park, the hot-houses, the vineries, the woods, and the mountains behind it. So that Digory felt just as sure as you that they were all going to live happily ever after. But perhaps you would like to know just one or two things more.

Polly and Digory were always great friends and she came nearly every holiday to stay with them at their beautiful house in the country； and that was where she learned to ride and swim and milk and bake and climb.

In Narnia the Beasts lived in great peace and joy and neither the Witch nor any other enemy came to trouble that pleasant land for many hundred years. King Frank and Queen Helen and their children lived happily in Narnia and their second son became King of Archenland. The boys married nymphs and the girls married wood-gods and river-gods. The lamp-post which the Witch had planted （without knowing it） shone day and night in the Narnian forest, so that the place where it grew came to be called Lantern Waste； and when, many years later, another child from our world got into Narnia, on a snowy night, she found the light still burning. And that adventure was, in a way, connected with the ones I have just been telling you.

It was like this. The tree which sprang from the Apple that Digory planted in the back garden, lived and grew into a fine tree. Growing in the soil of our world, far out of the sound of Aslan’s voice and far from the young air of Narnia, it did not bear apples that would revive a dying woman as Digory’s Mother had been revived, though it did bear apples more beautiful than any others in England, and they were extremely good for you, though not fully magical. But inside itself, in the very sap of it, the tree （so to speak） never forgot that other tree in Narnia to which it belonged. Sometimes it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing； I think that when this happened there were high winds in Narnia and the English tree quivered because, at that moment, the Narnian tree was rocking and swaying in a strong south-western gale. However, that might be, it was proved later that there was still magic in its wood. For when Digory was quite middle-aged （and he was a famous learned man, a Professor, and a great traveler by that time） and the Ketterleys’old house belonged to him, there was a great storm all over the south of England which blew the tree down. He couldn’t bear to have it simply chopped up for firewood, so he had part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country. And though he himself did not discover the magic properties of that wardrobe, someone else did. That was the beginning of all the comings and goings between Narnia and our world, which you can read of in other books.

When Digory and his people went to live in the big country house, they took Uncle Andrew to live with them； for Digory’s Father said, “We must try to keep the old fellow out of mischief, and it isn’t fair that poor Letty should have him always on her hands.” Uncle Andrew never tried any Magic again as long as he lived. He had learned his lesson, and in his old age he became a nicer and less selfish old man than he had ever been before. But he always liked to get visitors alone in the billiard-room and tell them stories about a mysterious lady, a foreign royalty, with whom he had driven about London. “A devilish temper she had,” he would say. “But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.”

纳尼亚传奇：最后一战（中英双语）

作　　者/（英）C.S.路易斯

策划编辑/芮建芬

制作发行/华东理工大学出版社有限公司

书　　号/ISBN 978-7-5628-5697-9

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目录

第一章 大锅潭边

第二章 国王轻举妄动

第三章 无尾猿耀武扬威

第四章 那天夜里发生的事

第五章 营救国王

第六章 漂亮的夜袭

第七章 关于小矮人

第八章 老鹰带来的讯息

第九章 马厩山上的大会

第十章 谁将进马厩？

第十一章 战斗进入白热化

第十二章 穿过马厩大门

第十三章 矮人族拒绝被统治

第十四章 夜幕降临在纳尼亚

第十五章 继续前行

第十六章 与幻境告别

CHAPTER ONE BY CALDRON POOL

CHAPTER TWO THE RASHNESS OF THE KING

CHAPTER THREE THE APE IN ITS GLORY

CHAPTER FOUR WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT

CHAPTER FIVE HOW HELP CAME TO THE KING

CHAPTER SIX A GOOD NIGHT’S WORK

CHAPTER SEVEN MAINLY ABOUT DWARFS

CHAPTER EIGHT WHAT NEWS THE EAGLE BROUGHT

CHAPTER NINE THE GREAT MEETING ON STABLE HILL

CHAPTER TEN WHO WILL GO INTO THE STABLE?

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE PACE QUICKENS

CHAPTER TWELVE THROUGH THE STABLE DOOR

CHAPTER THIRTEEN HOW THE DWARFS REFUSED TO BE TAKEN IN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN NIGHT FALLS ON NARNIA

CHAPTER FIFITEEN FURTHER UP AND FURTHER IN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN FAREWELL TO SHADOWLANDS

第一章
大锅潭边

在纳尼亚犹存的最后几日，远在灯柱荒原外的西边，临近大瀑布的地方，住着一只无尾猿。他活得年头太久，没人能想起他是什么时候开始住在那儿的，你能想到的最聪明、最丑陋、脸上最皱巴的无尾猿准是他。他的名字叫作诡谲，他有一个小木屋，屋顶盖着叶子，就筑在一棵大树的树杈上。他住的那片林子能言兽很少，人族、矮人族也少，也没什么其他部族出没。但是诡谲有一个朋友，同时也是他的邻居，那是一头名叫迷糊的驴子。虽然双方都以朋友相称，但是从他们相处的点滴来看，与其说是朋友，你会感觉迷糊更像诡谲的仆人。所有的活儿都是迷糊在做。他们俩一起去河边的时候，诡谲把大皮壶都灌满水，却打发迷糊扛着回来；要是想到下游远处镇上弄点儿东西了，也是迷糊挑着空筐下去，然后挑着又满又沉的筐子回来，可是迷糊带回来的最美味的食物全都被诡谲吃了。诡谲这么做是有原因的，正如他对迷糊所说的那样，“你看看，我就没法像你似的吃草和蓟菜花，所以总要通过其他方式补偿我一下才算公平。”这个时候迷糊总是说，“当然可以，诡谲，你说得对，我全明白。”迷糊从不抱怨，因为他知道诡谲比他聪明得多，他觉得诡谲能和他交朋友是看得起他。只要迷糊一想和诡谲理论点什么，诡谲就会说，“听着，迷糊，该做什么我比你心里有数。你知道自己不聪明。”这时迷糊便会说，“是的，诡谲，你说得对，我是不聪明。”然后叹口气，对诡谲言听计从。

年初的一天早晨，他俩结伴沿着大锅潭的岸边散步。大锅潭是纳尼亚西端悬崖正下方的一汪大潭。大瀑布湍急的水流倾泻而下，注入潭中，掀起连绵不断的巨响，宛如一阵阵惊雷，纳尼亚河从另外一端奔流而出。汹涌的瀑布使得潭水常年水花飞溅、气泡蒸腾、翻涌不息，就好像潭里煮着一大锅沸水，大锅潭也正是由此得名。初春之际，潭水最为生机勃勃。纳尼亚境外西部荒原群山上的融雪充盈着瀑布水力，那里是纳尼亚河的源头。就在他们盯着大锅潭的时候，诡谲突然用他那骨瘦如柴的黝黑手指指着说：

“看！那是什么？”

“什么是什么？”迷糊问。

“顺着瀑布冲下来的那块黄色的东西。你看，它又出来了，浮在水面上呢！我们必须得弄清楚那是什么玩意儿。”

“我们非得这么做吗？”迷糊又问。

“当然了，”诡谲说，“那东西兴许有用呢，你就乖乖地跳进去，然后把那东西捞上来，这样我们就能好好看看它了。”

“往潭里跳啊？”迷糊边抖动着长耳朵边问道。

“如果你不跳的话，我们怎么把它拿到手啊？”无尾猿说。

“可是——可是，”迷糊支吾道，“你自己跳下去捞不是更好吗？因为，你看啊，想知道那东西是什么的是你，我其实不是很想知道。况且，你看，你长着手，抓握东西的时候，你能和人族或矮人族一样轻巧。可我呢？我只有驴蹄。”

“说真的，迷糊啊，”诡谲说，“我可真没想到你能说出这种话！真是没想到啊！”

“怎么了，我说错什么了吗？”看到诡谲被深深地触犯的样子，迷糊低声下气地嘟囔着，“我的意思是——”

“你的意思就是让我往水里跳，”无尾猿说，“你好像完全不知道我们无尾猿的小胸脯是多么脆弱，也不知道我们沾了水有多容易着凉！好吧，那我跳，虽然我已经在残酷的寒风中被吹得够冷了，不过我还是要跳，我八成会把命给搭上的，到时候你就后悔去吧。”诡谲的声音听起来就像马上要哭出来似的。

“别，别，别，”迷糊的话里急出了驴叫，“诡谲，我不是那意思，真不是！你知道我有多蠢，也知道我多么不擅长同时考虑一件以上的事情。我把你小胸脯的这码事给忘了。必须是我下水！你可坚决不能再有自己下水的念头！诡谲，答应我别下水！”

于是诡谲便答应了他。迷糊嘚儿哒地迈着驴蹄，绕着岩石林立的河岸转悠了一圈，想找个能下水的地方。潭水不仅冷得刺骨，而且泡沫汹涌，令人胆寒，下水可不是闹着玩的！迷糊伫立在岸边哆嗦了整整一分钟才下定决心跳下去。但这时，诡谲从他身后喊了一句：“迷糊啊，也许终究还得我来跳！”迷糊听到后立刻说：“不，不，你刚才答应过我不下水的。我现在就下水。”说着他就跳进了水里。

一大堆泡沫拍在他脸上，灌进他嘴里，眯住了他的眼睛。坠入水中总共好几秒后，待到他再一次浮出水面，已然来到了潭水的另一边。正巧，一个旋涡将他席卷在内，一圈又一圈翻滚，越来越快，倏地就把他裹挟至大瀑布的正下方。瀑布的激流又猛一下子深深把他打入潭底。在他浮出水面之前就别想屏息静气了。好不容易他露出头来，目标就在他身侧，正要抓住，可不巧这东西却漂到了瀑布下，被激流压进水底里去了。它重新浮起来时，距离迷糊已经更远了。但最终，尽管精疲力竭，遍体鳞伤，冻到失去知觉，迷糊还是成功地用牙齿紧紧咬住了那个东西。总算上了岸，迷糊是用前蹄缠住那玩意儿，把它从身前运上来的。因为它像壁炉地毯那么大，浸在水里又沉又冰，而且黏滑。

迷糊把它丢在诡谲面前，落汤鸡一样站在那儿瑟瑟发抖，费劲地想把气喘匀。可是无尾猿看都不看他一眼，也没关心他的感受。因为诡谲此时正忙着绕“战利品”一圈一圈地巡查，把它铺开来，这儿拍拍，那儿闻闻。他的眼中闪过一缕邪光，说道：

“这是一张狮子皮。”

“啊呃——啊——啊——哦，是吗？”迷糊上气不接下气地说道。

“现在我想……让我想想……我想知道。”诡谲自说自话，拼命思索着。

“我想知道是谁杀了这头可怜的狮子，”迷糊脱口说道，“应该把他埋了，我们必须得给他举行一个葬礼。”

“得了吧，这不是一头会说话的狮子，”诡谲说，“你何必自找麻烦，在西部荒原里，大瀑布以外，就没有能言兽。这张皮的主人一定是一只不会说话的野狮子。”

顺带告诉你，无尾猿这话说得不假。一个人族猎手几个月前在西部荒原里的某个地方捕杀了这头狮子，而且剥了他的皮。但那事与我们要讲的这个故事并不相干。

“都一样，诡谲，”迷糊说，“就算这张皮是从一头不会说话的野狮子身上剥下来的，我们是不是也该为它举行体面的葬礼呀？我的意思是，狮子，不都是很——好，很威严的吗？我说的是谁，你难道不知道吗？”

“你是不是又开始胡思乱想了，迷糊？”诡谲说，“你知道，动脑子不是你的强项。我们可以用这张皮给你做件暖和的大衣过冬。”

“哦，我想我不会喜欢的，”这头驴子说，“穿上这个的话，看起来——我的意思是说，其他兽族会以为——也就是说，我不该感到——”

“你在说什么呢？”诡谲边说边在身上乱抓，只有无尾猿才会这么干。

“像我这样的驴子披上狮子的皮，我觉得对伟大的狮王阿斯兰是种不敬。”迷糊说。

“请你别站在这儿胡说八道了，”诡谲说，“像这种事，你这蠢驴懂个啥？迷糊啊，都说了你在动脑子这方面不行，这种脑力活儿你为啥不让我代劳呢？你为啥就不能像我待你那样待我呢？我并不觉得自己是无所不能的，我知道你在有些事情上比我强，这就是我让你下水的原因。因为我知道你在这方面比我厉害。但是，那些你做不了而我擅长的事情为什么就轮不到我做呢？难道永远不许我做任何事情吗？咱们要公平一点，取长补短，轮流互助嘛。”

“哦，好吧，你要这么说的话，那当然可以啦。”迷糊说。

“说点正经的，”诡谲说，“你最好顺着下游小跑到碎屑浅滩去，看看那儿有没有橘子和香蕉。”

“可是诡谲，我真的好累。”迷糊恳求道。

“我知道，但是你现在浑身湿漉漉、冷冰冰的，”无尾猿说，“你需要让身体暖和起来，所以跑两步正合适。再说了，今天是碎屑浅滩的集市日。”结果可想而知，迷糊只好答应去了。

迷糊刚走远，诡谲便摇摇晃晃地朝自己那棵树走去，时而两爪着地，时而四爪并用。他在树枝间荡来荡去，一路钻进他的小屋里，口中念念叨叨，还咧开嘴乐个不停。他是一只聪明的无尾猿，还跟矮人族学过缝纫，于是他在屋里找来针线和一把大剪刀，把线团（这团线太粗了，与其说是线，不如说是绳索）塞进嘴里，腮帮子鼓鼓的，就好像他在吮吸太妃糖那样。他用嘴唇抿住针，左爪拿着剪刀，从树上下来，一路摇摇晃晃回到狮子皮所在地，然后蹲了下来，在狮子皮上忙活了起来。

他一眼就看出，要给驴子做外套的话，这块狮子皮的躯体部分太大了，而脖子部分又太短了。于是他就从太大的那部分裁下一块好皮，给迷糊的长脖子做了个长脖领。然后，又剪下狮子脑袋的毛皮，把长脖领缝在脑袋和肩膀之间的部位上。诡谲把这张皮的两边都用线缝上，这样一来，迷糊的胸膛和腹部就都能被裹得严严实实了。时不时会有鸟儿从头顶飞过，每当这个时候，诡谲都会停下手头的活儿，焦虑地望向天空。他不想让任何飞禽走兽看到他所做的事情。好在他所见的鸟都不是能言鸟，所以并不打紧。

迷糊挨到傍晚才回来。他一路上不是小跑，而是像寻常的驴子那样迈着沉重的步子，不紧不慢地回来的。

“没找着橘子，”迷糊说，“也没看见香蕉，我要累死了。”说完，他躺在了地上。

“快来试试你那漂亮的新狮子皮大衣吧！”诡谲说。

“噢，去他的旧皮，”迷糊说，“明早再试，我今晚太累了。”

“你这么说就不厚道了，迷糊，”诡谲说，“你要是累的话，那我呢？你是美滋滋地走在乡间的小路上了，可我费了老大的劲儿才给你缝了一整天的衣服。累得我的小爪子连剪刀都拿不动了。你连声谢谢都不说也就算了，我给你缝的衣服你看都不看一眼。你都不关心——你——你——”

“我亲爱的诡谲啊，”迷糊立刻起身说道，“真抱歉，我刚才又讨你嫌了。我当然想试试这身衣服啦，它看上去简直光彩夺目，快帮我试试吧，麻烦您了！”

“好吧，那站直了别动。”无尾猿说。皮料对他来说太重了，他拎不动，但是最终在一阵生拉硬拽，呼哧带喘之后，总算把衣服给驴子穿上了。他先套进身子，绑住，然后把腿的部分对准并系好，最后是尾巴。穿好之后，透过狮子头部张开的嘴，能看见迷糊大部分的灰鼻子灰脸。只要见过狮子，没人会被他这副打扮唬住；但你要是没见过狮子，如果离得不太近，光线不太好，迷糊的驴叫没露馅，驴蹄也没出怪声，还真有可能把披着狮子皮的迷糊当成狮子。

“你看起来棒极了，棒极了，”无尾猿说，“要是现在有谁看见你，绝对会把你当成伟大的狮王阿斯兰的。”

“那就太可怕了。”迷糊说。

“可怕什么呀，”诡谲说，“这样所有人才会对你唯命是从。”

“可是我不想命令别人什么啊。”

“想想我们俩联手能做的好事吧！”诡谲说，“你身边有我给你出主意呢，我给你拟出靠谱的指令，然后由你来下命令。这样一来所有人都得对咱俩言听计从，连国王也是！我们要让纳尼亚的一切都步入正轨！”

“可是一切不都已经步入正轨了吗？”迷糊说道。

“什么！”诡谲大吼道，“一切都步入正轨了？——可你连橘子和香蕉都找不到？”

“好吧，你知道的，”迷糊说，“没有什么人——实际上除了你，没有人想吃那些东西的。”

“糖也没有啊。”诡谲愤愤地说道。

“嗯，你说的是啊，”驴子说，“咱们纳尼亚要是糖多点就好了。”

“好，那咱们就这么说定了，”无尾猿说，“你装扮成阿斯兰，我会告诉你该说什么话。”

“不，不，不，”诡谲连声说，“别提这么吓人的事情！诡谲，咱们这是犯错误啊！我可能不是很聪明，但是这点事儿我还是心中有数的。要是真正的阿斯兰现了身，咱们俩会是什么下场？”

“我想他一定会非常高兴的，”诡谲说，“很可能是狮王有意让我们拾到狮子皮的，这样一来我们就可以使一切步入正轨了。不管怎么样，你知道的，狮王确实是不会现身的，时下是不会的。”

就在那时，一个巨雷当头劈下，大地都为之颤抖。他俩一下子失去平衡，摔了个嘴啃泥。

“你瞧！”迷糊才缓过一口气就气喘吁吁地说，“这是不祥之兆，是一个警告。我就知道我们做的事情是十恶不赦的。赶紧把这身破衣服从我身上脱下来！”

“不，不，”无尾猿说（他的脑袋瓜儿转得特别快），“这恰恰是个大吉之兆，我刚刚正想说的是，如果正如你所称呼他的那样，真正的狮王阿斯兰有意让我们继续这么干，那么他就会用雷声大作，地动山摇示意我们。刚刚话就在我嘴边，还没说出来，这些吉兆便先出现了。迷糊，你现在就得按我说的做。咱们别再继续争论下去了。你心里清楚这些事情你搞不明白。一头蠢驴对天象能有什么了解啊？”

第二章
国王轻举妄动

大概三周后，纳尼亚的最后一位国王正坐在他那狩猎小屋门旁的大橡树下。春意盎然的时节，他常常在那儿一坐就是十几天。狩猎小屋是一个低矮的茅草屋，距灯柱荒原东界不远，就在两条河流交汇处靠上一些的位置。国王喜欢在林间过简单安逸的生活，远离皇城凯尔帕拉维尔的朝政与浮华。人们叫他缇利安国王，他的年龄在二十到二十五岁之间，他的肩膀已然宽厚强壮，四肢肌肉健硕，但胡子却还是稀稀拉拉的。他长着一双蓝色的眼睛和一张正直无畏的面庞。

那个春日的清晨，陪伴在国王身边的只有他最亲密的好伙伴：独角兽珠儿。他们如同兄弟手足般相亲相爱，在战场上还互相救过对方的性命。这头雍容华贵的独角兽站在国王御座旁边，弯下脖子，在白如奶油的胁腹上擦亮蓝色的角。

“我今天没办法让自己静下来做任何工作或运动，珠儿，”国王说，“除了这天大的好消息，我都没心思想别的事情了。你说我们今天还会听到更多的好消息吗？”

“如果消息属实，”珠儿说，“那会是我们这辈，甚至是我们父辈、祖辈所能听到的最精彩的消息了，陛下。”

“这个消息怎么看都是真的，”国王说，“一个多星期以前，先是一群鸟从我们这儿的上空飞过，说着‘阿斯兰来了，阿斯兰重回纳尼亚了。’接着是松鼠，虽然他们没亲眼看到阿斯兰，但是他们说阿斯兰的确在林中。后来牡鹿说他在灯柱荒原亲眼见到阿斯兰了，只不过当时是在月光下，而且离得挺远。然后，那个有胡须的黑人族也能做证，他是来自卡乐门的商人。卡乐门人虽然不像咱们那么关心阿斯兰，但是听他的口气，说的确实是阿斯兰无疑。还有，獾昨晚也说自己看见阿斯兰了。”

“的确，陛下，”珠儿说，“您说的这一切我都相信，若是我看起来不大相信，只是因为我内心的喜悦太盛而让相信无处安放了。这些消息简直美妙得难以置信。”

“是啊，”国王一声长叹，欣喜到几近发抖，“这比我毕生所求还令人振奋。”

“听！”珠儿把头侧向一边，耳朵朝前竖了起来。

“是什么声音？”国王问道。

“是马蹄声，陛下，”珠儿说，“是一匹疾驰的重型马。它一定是匹半人马。看！他来了。”

那是一匹身体硕大，长着金色鬓毛的半人马，他前额上流着人的汗珠，栗色的胁腹上淌着马的汗水，朝国王奔来。近驾后，他停下来，俯首下拜。“国王万岁！”声音像公牛那般低沉。

“嗨，你好！”国王边说，边转过头向狩猎小屋门口的侍卫吩咐道，“给尊贵的半人马来一碗上好的红酒。欢迎你，龙威特。先把气喘匀再禀报你的见闻也不迟。”

侍卫从小屋里出来，手里端着一只雕刻奇巧的大木碗，把它递给了半人马。半人马高举木碗，说：

“陛下，我先敬狮王阿斯兰和真理，再敬陛下。”

他将杯中酒（足够六个壮汉喝的量）一饮而尽，然后把空碗还给了侍卫。

“龙威特，现在请你告诉我，”国王问，“你给我们带来更多有关阿斯兰的消息了吗？”

龙威特神色凝重，眉头微皱。

“陛下，”他说，“我在这世上活了有些年头，并且长期研习星象，这您是知道的。我们半人马的寿命比你们人族长，甚至比你的独角兽长。我这辈子都没有见过像今年这样夜夜满天凶兆的情况。按星象所示，没有任何阿斯兰归来的迹象，和平、喜乐也均无迹可寻。凭我的经验，五百年间从未有过像这样灾难性的行星交汇之象。我早就想好要来提醒陛下，邪恶的力量正笼罩着纳尼亚大地。昨晚有谣言传到我这里，说狮王阿斯兰重降纳尼亚王国。陛下，切不可听信这番鬼话，这是万万不可能的。人族兽族都会说谎，但是星象不会。如果阿斯兰真的降临，天空早就该有所预兆了。阿斯兰真要降临，所有最谦恭有礼的星星都会聚拢来向他致敬的。那是彻头彻尾的谎言。”

“谎言！”国王声色俱厉，“纳尼亚的子民乃至这世间万物有谁敢在这件事情上撒谎？”他不知不觉把手按在了剑柄上。

“这我就不清楚了，陛下，”半人马说，“但是我清楚的是，地上撒谎的骗子比比皆是，而天上的星星永远忠诚。”

“我在想，”珠儿说，“天上的星象预示阿斯兰不会出现，那阿斯兰是否就可能不来了呢？他不是群星的奴仆，而是他们的创造者。并不是所有古书上都说，他不是一头桀骜不驯的雄狮。”

“说得好，说得好，珠儿，”国王高呼道，“桀骜不驯这几个字太到位了，很多传说故事里都是这么说的。”

龙威特抬起手，身体正欲前倾，对国王恳切地说点什么，一阵哭泣声愈传愈近，引得他们仨侧耳倾听。西界的树木太过茂密，他们看不清来者何人，但他们很快就听到了哭喊的话语。

“灾难！灾难！灾难！”那个声音呼喊着，“我的兄弟姐妹惨遭荼毒！圣树之殇！森林被夷为荒地，大斧正向我们砍来，我们要被砍倒。大树正在倒下，倒下，倒下。”

随着最后一声“倒下”，说话者步入视线。她像是个女人，但是高高大大，和半人马一般个头，可她也像棵树。你从未见过树精的话，她的样貌很难名状，但是你只要一见便绝不会认错，因为她从肤色、声音和头发上都与众不同。缇利安国王和两头野兽立刻认出她是山毛榉树的精灵。

“国王陛下！请您为我们主持正义！”树精哭诉道，“请您帮帮我们，保护您的子民。他们正在灯柱荒原上砍伐我们。我的兄弟姐妹四十棵巨大树王已经被砍倒在地。”

“树精夫人，您说什么？砍伐灯柱荒原？谋害会说话的树木？”国王气急败坏，一跃而起，拔剑呵斥，“他们好大的胆子？是谁如此胆大包天？现在以阿斯兰的神鬃起誓——”

“啊——啊——啊，”树精在颤抖中奄奄一息，仿佛忍着剧痛——她的身体又接连抖动了多次，仿佛遭受着一次次重创。突然，她一下子跌倒在道旁，就像双脚都被砍断了一样。他们眼睁睁地看着她倒在草地上死去，顷刻间尸体便消失不见了。发生的事情已不言而喻。她的主树已经在几英里开外被砍倒了。

国王悲痛不已，怒不可遏，气得半晌说不出话来。定了定神，他开了言：

“来吧，朋友们，我们必须赶到河的上游，用最快的速度找到干此坏事的暴徒。我会把他们斩尽杀绝。”

“悉听尊便，陛下。”珠儿说。

但龙威特却说：“陛下，切莫被盛怒冲昏了头脑啊。现在事态诡异，如果在山谷深处遇到全副武装的歹徒，我们三个势单力薄，怕是招架不住啊，您如果乐意等待片刻——”

“我一刻也等不了，”国王说，“我和珠儿上阵杀敌的同时，我命你全速奔赴皇城凯尔帕拉维尔，以我给你的指环作为凭证，给我调来二十个全副武装的精锐骑兵，二十条能言烈犬，十个矮人（要求射术精湛），再来几头猎豹和巨石怪。让这批支援部队以最快的速度赶上我们。”

“遵命，陛下。”龙威特接旨，旋即转身向东界山谷飞驰而去。

国王快步流星，时而喃喃自语，时而紧握双拳。珠儿与其同行，缄默不语。所以两人在行进过程中是没有什么声响的。除了华贵的金链在独角兽脖子上隐隐叮当作响，就只剩他俩的脚步声了。

没过多久，他们就来到了纳尼亚大河边，转而向上，踏上一条长满青草的道路。他们的左边是河水，右边是森林。不一会儿，路面越来越崎岖不平，茂密的树林绵延至河水的尽头。眼前的路断了，要到河的南岸才继续铺展开来，所以他们不得不涉水前行。河水没过缇利安腋下，珠儿（他有四条腿，因此在水中走得更稳当）一直走在他右侧，这样可以挡住水流的冲击。缇利安有力的臂膀搭在珠儿强壮的脖子上，他俩都安全地过了河。国王还在怒火中烧，以至于都没意识到河水有多凉。一上岸，他便小心翼翼地把宝剑在自己的斗篷肩部擦干，那是他全身唯一没有被浸湿的地方了。

此刻，他们正沿着右边的河岸向西界行进，灯柱荒原就在他们正前方。还没走出一英里路，他俩就同时停下脚步又同时开口。国王说：“这是什么东西？”珠儿惊呼：“看！”

“是个木筏。”缇利安国王说道。

他说得没错。六根上好的树干是新伐的，刚刚裁去旁支侧桠，被捆扎成了木筏。木筏顺着河流轻快而下，筏头有只河鼠撑筏。

“喂！河鼠！你干什么去呀？”国王喊道。

“陛下，我要把木材运到下游去，然后卖给卡乐门人。”河鼠边说边摸了摸自己的耳朵，他要是戴上帽子八成也会这样摸自己的帽子。

“卡乐门人！”缇利安大怒，“你这话什么意思？谁下令叫你们砍树的？”

一年当中的这个时节水流速度特别快，木筏已然从国王和珠儿身边漂过。河鼠回过头来大声答道：

“是狮王下的命令，陛下！是阿斯兰本尊！”河鼠又说了些什么，但他们已经听不见了。

国王和独角兽面面相觑，任何一场战役都不曾让他们如此惊恐过。

“阿斯兰，”国王终于开口了，他的声音十分低沉，“阿斯兰。这是真的吗？难道真是他下令砍伐圣树，谋害树精的吗？”

“除非树精真的犯下不可饶恕的错误——”珠儿喃喃着。

“可是把圣树卖给卡乐门人？”国王不解，“这怎么可能？”

“我不知道，”珠儿迷惘地说，“毕竟阿斯兰是头桀骜不驯的雄狮啊。”

“好吧，”国王终于说道，“不管前方是多大的劫难，我们都必须去一探究竟。”

“我们没有退路了，陛下。”独角兽说。此刻，他没有参透两人独去是多么愚蠢的决定；国王也没有。这一刻的愤怒让他们丧失了理智，轻举妄动最后招来了诸多灾难。

突然，国王倚靠在珠儿的脖子上，埋下了头。

“珠儿，”他说，“前方的路会有多么凶险？我心中有种不祥的预感。你说要是我们早早死了，会不会痛快许多呢？”

“是啊，”珠儿说，“我们在这世上活得太久，世间最不幸的事情落在我们头上了。”他们俩就这样怅然地站了一两分钟，然后继续赶路。

没过多久，他们就听到大斧落在木头上“咔咔咔”的砍树声，然而前方地势隆起，他们尚不能看清砍树的景象。抵达最高点后，他们终于把灯柱荒原尽收眼底。国王看在眼里，气得脸色发白。

远古森林的正中央，一条宽阔的道路被生生开辟了出来。这片森林曾经生长着金银之树，来自我们这个世界的一个孩子也曾在这里种下“守护之树”。道路丑陋不堪，就像土地里新裂开的豁口。一棵棵大树被砍倒，拽入河中，留下一地的泥泞印痕。一大群人劳作着，奋力抽打着皮鞭，马儿死命拖拽着木头。吸引国王和独角兽注意的第一件事情是，这群忙碌的身影中，有半数不是能言兽，而是人族。第二件事情是，这群人并非金发碧眼的纳尼亚人，而是皮肤黝黑、胡子拉碴的卡乐门人。卡乐门坐落在亚钦兰之外，纵贯大漠以南，是个残暴的大国。纳尼亚境内遇到一两个卡乐门人不足为奇，毕竟那段日子纳尼亚和卡乐门和平共处，时有卡乐门商人或使节出没。然而令缇利安不解的是，为什么眼下卡乐门人如此之多？他们为什么在砍伐纳尼亚的森林？他把剑攥得更紧了，将斗篷往左臂上一卷，和独角兽迅速朝这群人走去。

两个卡乐门人正在驱赶一匹拉着木头的马儿。国王赶到时，木头正陷在一团烂泥里。

“给我走啊！混蛋！拉啊，懒猪！”卡乐门人一边怒吼，一边挥动着鞭子。马儿已经用尽浑身的力气，拼命地拉，他眼睛通红，口吐白沫。

“给我卖力！懒货！”一个卡乐门人咆哮着，狠狠抽了马儿一鞭。就在这个时候，真正可怕的事情发生了。

直到此刻缇利安理所当然地认为卡乐门人抽打的是他们自己的马。卡乐门的马不会说话，和咱们这个世界的马一样蠢。虽说他不愿看到一匹不会说话的马被虐待压榨，但他心里着实更挂牵圣树被谋害的惨剧。他可是一丁点也想不到有哪个人胆敢束缚纳尼亚王国会说话的自由之马，更别提拿鞭子抽了！但是，一记鞭子抽下来，马儿暴跳起来，半嘶半叫道：

“愚蠢的暴君！我已经尽全力了，你难道没看到吗？”

当缇利安得知被蹂躏的马儿来自纳尼亚后，他和珠儿已无法抑制心中的怒火，行为也已不受控制。国王剑拔出鞘，珠儿俯下身来，把角对准敌人准备冲锋。他们一起向前冲去。转眼间，两个卡乐门人倒地身亡。一个被缇利安利剑斩首，另一个被珠儿的尖角刺穿了心脏。

第三章
无尾猿耀武扬威

“马儿师傅，马儿师傅，”缇利安连忙割断束住马儿的缰绳，“你是怎么被这群异邦人俘虏的？纳尼亚被攻占了吗？还是发生了什么战乱？”

“并没有，陛下，”马儿气喘吁吁地说，“阿斯兰降临了。这一切都是拜他所赐，是他下令——”

“陛下，我们现在的处境很危险。”珠儿说道。缇利安抬起头来，看到卡乐门人（其中夹杂着几头能言兽）开始从四面八方朝着他们冲来。那两个卡乐门人死的时候无声无息，所以当时没什么人察觉。但是此时他们知道了，一个个抄着明晃晃的弯刀狂奔而来。

“快！骑上来！”珠儿说。

国王飞身跨上老朋友的背脊，独角兽即刻转身，飞驰而去。他们把敌人甩出视线之外后变换了两三次方向。越过小溪，珠儿丝毫没有放慢脚步，高声问：“陛下，我们往哪里去？是去皇城凯尔帕拉维尔吗？”

“朋友，快停下来，”缇利安说，“让我下来。”国王从独角兽背上滑下，面朝着他。

“珠儿，”国王说，“我们刚才做了一件可怕的事情。”

“我们是逼不得已。”珠儿说。

“可是我们趁他们手无寸铁而攻其不备，没有堂堂正正地向他们发起挑战！呸！我们俩都是杀人犯，珠儿！这会让我一世蒙羞的。”

珠儿垂下了脑袋，他同样感到耻辱。

“马儿说一切都是阿斯兰的旨意，河鼠也说过同样的话，他们都说阿斯兰已经降临，这会不会是真的？”国王问。

“但是陛下，阿斯兰怎么会下令做如此可怕的事呢？”

“他可是一头桀骜不驯的狮子啊，”缇利安说，“他要做的事情我们怎么会知道？珠儿，现在我们俩是杀人犯，我要回去。这剑我也不要了，让这些卡乐门人把我捉了去吧，我会求他们把我带到阿斯兰的面前，让狮王给予我最公正的裁决。”

“那会要了你的命啊！”珠儿说。

“如果阿斯兰要我死的话，你以为我会苟且偷生吗？”国王说，“生命对我来说什么也不算！什么也不算！要是降临的阿斯兰并不是那个我们所拥护并且盼望的阿斯兰，还不如死了好。这感觉就和天空中升起黑色的太阳一样恐怖。”

“我明白了，”珠儿说，“你想喝水，却发现水是干的，也是同样的滋味。陛下，您说得对。到这儿，一切该有个了断了。我们认罪吧。”

“我们俩没有必要都去走这条不归路啊。”

“只要我们还心心相印，现在就让我随你同去，”独角兽说，“如果你死了，如果这个阿斯兰是个冒牌货，我活着还有什么意义呢？”

他们落下苦涩的眼泪，一起转身往回走。

他们刚回到伐运圣树的地方，就听到一声呐喊，随即，卡乐门人手持武器朝他们冲来。国王剑柄对外，举剑说道：

“我本是纳尼亚之王，但我此刻是一个丢脸的骑士。我把我自己交由阿斯兰处置。带我去见他。”

“我也认罪，请带我同去。”珠儿说。

卡乐门人凑了上来，把他俩围了个严严实实，周遭全是他们身上的味道，闻起来像大蒜、洋葱。白色眼睛在他们棕色皮肤的映衬下闪着凶光。他们用缰绳捆住珠儿的脖子，夺去国王的剑，将他双手反缚在背后。其中有一个卡乐门人，他不像其他人戴着长头巾，而是头戴钢盔，看上去像是个首领。这个人一把夺走国王头上的金皇冠，急急忙忙就揣进了自己怀里。卡乐门人带着两个俘虏上山，来到一大片空地中，这片空地在俘虏眼中是这样的景象。

空地中央，也就是山头的最高点，有一个像马厩似的小茅屋。小屋的门紧闭着。门前的草地上坐着一只无尾猿。缇利安和珠儿本来想见的是阿斯兰，无尾猿的出现让他们疑惑不解。关于这只无尾猿，他俩闻所未闻。这只无尾猿当然就是诡谲，不过，现在的他打扮了一番，这让他看起来比住在大锅潭那会儿要丑十倍。他身穿一件并不合身的猩红色夹克，这衣服本来是给矮人穿的。后爪上趿着镶满珠宝的拖鞋，但拖鞋在他爪上根本待不住，因为正如你所知，无尾猿的后爪和人的手差不多。他头上还戴着一顶似乎是用纸片做的王冠。成堆的坚果簇拥着他，他下巴一动一动咔嚓咔嚓地咀嚼着坚果，把壳吐了一地，还不停地掀起猩红色夹克来瘙痒。成群的能言兽面朝他而立，他们都看起来忧心忡忡，疑惑万千。当看清俘虏的真面目后，兽群里一片呻吟呜咽声。

“噢！尊敬的诡谲大人，阿斯兰的喉舌，”卡乐门首领说，“我们给您带来了俘虏。凭着我们的技艺和胆识，以伟大的塔什神的名义，我们活捉了这两个穷凶极恶的歹徒。”

“把他的剑给我。”无尾猿说。卡乐门人遵令夺下国王的剑，连同剑带一整套装备全部呈给了无尾猿。这猴子把剑挂在自己脖子上，让他看起来更傻了。

“我们待会儿再收拾这两个家伙，”无尾猿边说边朝两个俘虏的方向吐坚果壳，“我得先办点正事。这事儿十万火急，可耽误不得。现在，所有人听着。这头等大事就是坚果。松鼠队长何在？”

“在这儿呢，陛下。”一只红松鼠上前说道，他局促地鞠了一个躬。

“哦，你就是松鼠队长啊？”无尾猿面带凶相地说，“现在你给我听好了，我想——不，是阿斯兰想再多要些坚果。你拿来的这点根本不够。你必须再给我多弄些来，听懂了吗？照现在的量再多上一倍，明天日落之前给我送到，不许有坏的，果仁小的也不行。”

其他松鼠之间传出一阵不情愿的嘟囔声，松鼠队长鼓足勇气问：

“要是阿斯兰允许我们觐见的话，能不能请他亲口吩咐我们这件事情？”

“你们不能见他，”无尾猿说，“他今天晚上可能会大发慈悲（虽然你们当中大多数都消受不起），出来个几分钟。到时候你们就能看到他了，不过谁也不许围着他看，也不许缠住他问任何问题。你们想对他说的任何话都由我代为传达，前提是你们的话值得他一听。好了，你们这会儿还是都去给我张罗坚果吧，要是天黑之前交不出来，有你们的好果子吃，我说一不二！”

听完这话，可怜的松鼠们都像身后有狗追一样慌忙跑开了。这条新令对他们来说简直就是噩耗。到目前为止，他们辛辛苦苦囤来过冬的坚果已经差不多全部被吃完了，剩下的绝大部分都给了无尾猿，他们自己根本周转不开。

接着，一个低沉的声音从另一个族群当中传来，是一头体型庞大、浑身粗毛、长着獠牙的野猪。

“可我们为什么就不能光明正大地面见阿斯兰，直接与他对话呢？”野猪说道，“早先时候，在纳尼亚，所有人都能和阿斯兰面对面交谈。”

“这套你也信？”无尾猿说，“就算这是真的，现在时代也变了。阿斯兰说他此前对你们太仁慈了，你明白吗？这种仁慈今后不会再有了。他会好好整治你们，谁觉得他好说话他就要好好教训谁！”

兽群中又是一片低声的哀怨；这之后是死一般的沉寂，更令人感到悲戚不已。

“第二件事情你们给我听好了，”无尾猿说，“我听到你们当中有些人说我是无尾猿。告诉你们，我不是猿，我是人。我看起来像是无尾猿，那是因为我的年事已经很高很高了，得有个几千几百岁。正是因为我年纪大，我才这么有智慧。而也正是因为我如此有智慧，阿斯兰才会向我吐露心声。他不能和你们这些愚蠢的动物交谈，这会打扰到他的。他会把吩咐你们做的事情告诉我，然后我再传达给你们。我劝你们把我的话记在心里，做事的时候效率高些，阿斯兰的眼睛里可容不得半点儿沙子。”

一只小獾哭了起来，他的妈妈赶紧让他安静下来。除此之外，又是一片死寂。

“还有一件事，”无尾猿往嘴里塞了一颗新鲜坚果，接着说，“我听到有几匹马说‘咱们赶快把这拉木头的活儿干完吧，这样我们就能重获自由了。’你们立刻统统给我打消这个念头。不单单是马，所有族群，只要能干得动活，今后全部都要继续工作下去。阿斯兰已经与卡乐门国王蒂斯罗克，正如我们黑脸的卡乐门朋友称呼他的那样，达成了协议。你们所有这些马儿、公牛、驴子都会被送去卡乐门卖苦力谋生，你们干的活和其他国家的牛马差不多，无非是拉货、驮重物之类的。还有你们这些能挖洞的族群，比如鼹鼠、兔子和矮人，你们要下到蒂斯罗克的矿井里工作。然后——”

“不，不，不，”兽群中一片哀号，“这不是真的！阿斯兰绝不会把我们卖给卡乐门国王做奴隶的。”

“你们说什么呢！快住嘴！”无尾猿厉声喝道，“没人说让你们做奴隶啊！你们不是被卖去做奴隶，你们是有报酬的，而且薪水还很不错。更确切地说，你们的薪水会被纳入阿斯兰的金库，他会把钱财用于为所有纳尼亚子民谋福利上。”说完，他瞥了卡乐门首领一眼，那样子几乎是在使眼色。卡乐门人鞠躬致意，以那种浮夸的卡乐门腔调应声答道：

“最睿智贤明的阿斯兰喉舌，蒂斯罗克（祝他万寿无疆）在这条治国的灼见上完全与您勠力同心。”

“看见没有！”无尾猿说，“都定好了，我这都是为了你们好。有了你们挣来的钱，我们就能把纳尼亚建造成一个宜居的国家。届时橘子和香蕉会向我们涌来，大马路啊、大城市啊、学校啊、办公室啊，还有皮鞭、嚼子、马鞍子、笼子、狗窝和监狱什么的——噢，应有尽有。”

“但是你说的这些我们都不想要，”一只年迈的熊说，“我们想要自由，我们想听阿斯兰亲口对我们说话。”

“我警告你不要开始争辩，”无尾猿说，“因为这是一件我无法容忍的事情。我是人，而你只不过是一只又老又肥的蠢熊。你懂什么自由？你以为做你喜欢的事就是自由吗？你错了，那不是真正的自由。真正的自由是听我的指令行事。”

“哼呃呃哼，”大熊搔着头嘴里咕哝着；这种事情让他难以理解。

“请，请问一下。”一只毛茸茸的小羊高声说。这只羊太年幼了，所有人都没想到他竟然敢在这个时候讲话。

“又怎么了？”无尾猿问，“快说！”

“请问，”小羊说，“我不明白，我们跟卡乐门人有什么关系？我们属于阿斯兰，他们属于塔什。他们的神不是叫塔什吗？人们说他有四条胳膊和一个秃鹫的脑袋。我听说他还在祭坛上杀人呢。我不相信这世上会有塔什这样的人。就算真的有，阿斯兰怎么会和这种人做朋友呢？”

听完这话，所有动物都抬起脑袋，朝着无尾猿那一侧，报之以灼灼目光。他们知道，这是到目前为止最有力的一个问题。

无尾猿暴跳起来，朝小羊身上啐了一口。

“小娃娃！”无尾猿口中嘶嘶咒骂，“乳臭未干的小羊崽子！还不回家找你妈吃奶去！这种事情你懂什么？不过你们其他人给我听好了！塔什是阿斯兰的另外一个名字。‘我们是正义的，卡乐门是邪恶的’，这种想法是荒唐的。我们现在认识得更清楚了，虽然卡乐门人用的词儿不同，但我们说的都是一个意思。阿斯兰和塔什只不过是两个不同的名字，说的是谁，你们心里还没数吗？正是因为这样他们之间才从不争吵。把我的话好好记牢了，你们这群蠢货。塔什就是阿斯兰，阿斯兰就是塔什。”

想想你自己家小狗难受时候的表情，此刻那些能言兽——那些忠厚老实、谦卑恭顺、一头雾水的鸟儿、熊、獾、兔子、鼹鼠和老鼠，他们的表情要远比你家宠物的更痛苦。他们的尾巴都低垂着，胡须也都耷拉着。看到他们的脸，你一定会心生怜悯，你的心也一定会被刺痛。只有一只动物看上去一点都不忧伤。

那是一只姜黄色的猫——一只正值盛年的大脸猫，他笔直地盘坐在所有走兽的最前排，尾巴绕在脚趾头上。他一直死死盯着无尾猿和卡乐门首领，眼睛眨都不眨一下。

“麻烦问一下，”那只猫非常客气地问道，“让我感兴趣的是，您卡乐门的朋友也这么说吗？”

“千真万确，”卡乐门人说，“贤明的无尾猿——哦不，我的意思是人——是站在真理这一边的。阿斯兰比塔什不多一分也不少一毫。”

“您说阿斯兰比塔什一分也不多吗？”那只猫问道。

“一点也不。”卡乐门人直勾勾地看着猫的脸答道。

“这个回答你满意吗，大黄猫？”无尾猿问。

“噢，当然了，”黄猫冷冷地说，“非常感谢你们。我只是想把事情搞清楚，现在我了解了。”

到这会儿国王和珠儿还是一言未发。他们在等无尾猿命令他们说话，毕竟中途打断是没用的。而现在，缇利安看到四周纳尼亚子民一张张凄苦的脸，看到他们无不深信着阿斯兰和塔什本是同一个人的鬼话，他再也忍不下去了。

“无尾猿，”国王大声叫道，“你这挨千刀的谎话精，你就像卡乐门人那样谎话连篇，你撒起谎来就像是无尾猿！”

他本想继续质问无尾猿，以人民鲜血为食的邪神塔什怎么能够和用热血救人民于水火的善神狮王阿斯兰相提并论。要是当时缇利安获准说话，无尾猿的统治也就在那天终结了，走兽们亦会认清真相，把无尾猿推翻。可是缇利安的话还没说出来，两个卡乐门人就用尽浑身解数，几记重拳打在了他的嘴上，第三个人从后面抄底踢他的双脚。缇利安倒地，无尾猿在盛怒和惊恐中尖叫着。

“把他带走！把他带走！找一个他听不到我们说话，我们也听不见他说话的地方，把他捆在树上。之后我会——我的意思是——阿斯兰会给予他公正的裁决。”

第四章
那天夜里发生的事

国王还没有从重击过后的眩晕感中缓过神来。直到卡乐门人给他的手腕松绑，让他的双臂垂在身体两侧，背靠在一棵白蜡树上的时候，他才有些知觉。紧接着，卡乐门人又用绳子捆住他的脚踝、膝盖、腰部和胸部，五花大绑着扔在了那儿。人们常说，最难以忍受的往往是不起眼的小事，确实，此刻最让他受不了的是被打伤的嘴唇。他唇上淌着鲜血，他没法擦拭，痒得要命。

从缇利安所在之处可以看见山顶上的小马厩和坐在马厩前面的无尾猿。他也依稀能够听见无尾猿的声音，隐隐约约，此起彼伏，兽群中亦有些应答的声音，不过具体说的是什么，他却一个字也没有听清。

“我想知道他们对珠儿做了什么。”国王心想。

不一会儿，兽群一哄而散，他们向各个方向散开。有一些走兽和缇利安擦肩而过。看到国王被缚住手脚，他们战战兢兢，报之以惋惜的神情，可是没有谁言语一声。很快，兽群全都消失在了视线之外，林中一片静寂。好几个小时过去了，缇利安先是感到十分口渴，然后饥饿的感觉也来作祟。好不容易挨过下午，到了晚上，他又开始觉得寒冷，而且背上很是酸痛。太阳落山了，夜幕开始降临。

天色已几近昏暗，缇利安听到了一阵窸窸窣窣的脚步声，他看见几只小家伙朝着他赶来。左边那三只是老鼠，一只兔子走在中间，走在右侧的是两只鼹鼠。他们身上背着小袋子，这让他们在夜色中的轮廓看起来挺奇怪，缇利安第一眼都没认出他们是什么动物。不一会儿，几只小兽用后腿站了起来，把他们凉凉的爪子放在国王的膝盖上，小鼻子在他的双膝上蹭来蹭去，献给他轻轻的吻。（他们之所以能够到他的膝盖，是因为纳尼亚的能言兽比英国不会说话的同类物种个头大些。）

“国王陛下！敬爱的国王陛下，”小兽们用尖细的声音说着，“眼看着您落到如此境地，我们很是伤心，我们不敢给您松绑，因为阿斯兰准会怪罪我们。但是我们给您带来了晚餐。”

说罢，第一只老鼠立刻敏捷地跳上了绑在缇利安胸前的那根绳子，站稳后正对着他的脸，皱了皱扁圆的小鼻子。紧接着，第二只老鼠爬了上来，把自己挂在了第一只老鼠的正下方。其他的小兽站在地面上，开始往上递食物。

“喝吧，陛下，多喝点水您就吃得下东西了。”最上面的小鼠说。一只小木杯抵住了缇利安的嘴唇。那杯子简直就像蛋壳那么小，国王甚至还没尝到酒味儿，杯中就空空如也了。然后老鼠把空杯递给下面的小兽，让他们把酒满上再递上来，缇利安再次饮尽杯中酒。循环往复，他们就这样让国王喝得心满意足，其实这种少量多次的喝法要比一饮而尽更解渴。

“给您奶酪，陛下，”打头的老鼠说道，“不过您别吃太多啊，吃多了容易口渴。”吃完奶酪，小兽们还喂国王吃了燕麦饼和新鲜黄油，这之后又给他饮了几杯酒。

“你们把水递上来，”打头的老鼠说，“我给陛下洗洗脸，他脸上有血迹。”

缇利安感到有块小小的海绵，轻轻地在他脸上拍抚，那感觉别提多舒爽了。

“我的小朋友啊，”缇利安说，“我该怎样感谢你们为我所做的这一切啊？”

“不用客气，不用客气，”细小的声音说道，“我们还能做些什么呢？除了您，我们不要其他人做国王，我们是您的子民。如果只是无尾猿和卡乐门人勾结在一起和您作对，我们就算冒着被他们撕碎的风险也要斗争到最后一刻，让您免受束缚之苦。我们会的，我们一定会这样去做的。但是我们无法违抗阿斯兰的旨意。”

“你们真的认为那是阿斯兰吗？”国王问。

“噢，是的，是的，”兔子说，“他昨天晚上从马厩里出来了，我们大家伙儿都瞧见了！”

“他是什么样的？”国王问。

“真的像一头可怕的大狮子。”其中一只老鼠回答道。

“你真的认为杀死树精，并把你们卖到卡乐门做奴隶的人是阿斯兰吗？”

“啊，真是太坏了，不是吗？”第二只老鼠说，“要知道会赶上这些事儿，我还不如早早死了呢。可是大家对此都毫无疑问。所有人都说这是阿斯兰的指令，我们也亲眼见过他。我们其实打心里并不认为阿斯兰是这样的，哎呀，我们——我们想让他回到纳尼亚。”

“他这次回来好像格外愤怒，”第一只老鼠说，“我们一定是不经意做了大错特错的事情惹恼了他，他也一定是因为某件事情在惩罚我们。可我们到底做错什么了，他应该告诉我们啊！”

“我想我们现在做的事情可能就是错的吧。”兔子说。

“我才不管是对是错，”其中一只鼹鼠说道，“为了陛下，我在所不辞。”

但是其他小兽赶紧让他安静下来：“嘘，小点声。”然后他们纷纷转而对国王说：“对不起，亲爱的陛下，我们现在必须得回去了。要是被他们抓了个现行，我们可就没有好果子吃了。”

“亲爱的小兽，别管我，你们快回去吧，”缇利安说，“为了全体纳尼亚人，我不会让你们任何一人陷入危险境地的。”

“晚安陛下，”小兽们用鼻子蹭着国王的膝盖，纷纷说，“如果我们办得到的话，我们还会回来的。”说罢，他们便一溜烟儿跑开了。此刻，林中比小兽们来之前更加晦暗冷清了。

空中现出点点繁星，时间缓缓流逝。纳尼亚最后一位国王，全身僵硬酸痛，就这么被直挺挺地绑在树上。想想看，对他来说，时间过得该有多慢呀。但是最后，总算有了点动静。

只见远处现出一道红光，隐去片刻后又重现，光亮更大、更强。他看到一些黑色的身影在光的一侧来来回回走动，抱起成捆的东西，扔在地上。他这才明白过来，刚刚看到的光亮是新点燃的篝火，人们是在一捆一捆往火里添柴呢。缇利安能看见篝火生在了山顶，火烧得正旺。他还能清晰地看到火堆后面的马厩，被红红的火光照得通明。在他和篝火之间聚集了一大群的人和兽。那个在火边佝偻着身子的小小身影，肯定就是无尾猿了，无尾猿在对人群说着什么，但是离得太远，国王听不清楚。接着，无尾猿来到马厩的前门对着地面连鞠三躬，然后起身把门打开。只见一个长着四条腿的东西走出马厩，面向众生，他走起路来四肢有些僵硬。

一阵阵哀号和咆哮声响起，声响太大致使缇利安能听清他们说的一些的话。

“阿斯兰！阿斯兰！阿斯兰！”兽群喊叫着，“请您对我们讲话！慰藉我们！不要再生我们的气了！”

缇利安离得太远，看不太清那究竟是个什么东西，只看出它周身黄色，并且毛发旺盛。他从未见过伟大的狮王，寻常狮子也未曾见过，所以不能确定他看见的这个东西到底是不是真正的狮王，他脑海中的狮王并不是这个杵在地上一言不发的呆物。可谁又说得准呢？有那么一刻，他头脑中闪过不祥的感觉，他又想起了塔什和阿斯兰本是一体的鬼话，突然明白，这件事从头到尾肯定是个骗局。

无尾猿把自己的脑袋往黄色东西的脑袋上凑，就好像在仔细听他说悄悄话似的。耳语之后，无尾猿转而面向大家说了些什么，兽群中又是一阵哀号。尔后，那个黄色的大物笨拙地转过身往回走，与其说是走，不如说他是摇摇晃晃地颠回了马厩里。无尾猿把他身后的门关上了。这之后，火被熄灭，光亮瞬间消逝，缇利安重新陷入冷寂和黑暗中。

他追忆起历任在纳尼亚生活和逝世的先王，好像没有哪位国王像他这般不幸。他想起曾祖父的曾祖父瑞利安国王，在还是小王子的时候被女巫偷走，在北方巨人大陆地下的黑暗洞穴中关押了数年。最终却逢凶化吉，两个来自世界尽头之外的神秘孩子突然现身，把瑞利安救下，使他得以重回纳尼亚王国。在他统治时期，纳尼亚长治久安，繁荣富强。“我就没这么好运。”缇利安喃喃自语道。接着他又回想起瑞利安的父亲——航海家凯斯宾。他当时被邪恶的叔父米拉兹国王追杀，只好到丛林中逃命，与矮人住在一起。但是这个故事也有一个遇难成祥的结局。凯斯宾同样得到了世界尽头之外的孩子们的帮助，不过这次是四个。孩子们赢得了一场大战，并且帮助凯斯宾继承了王位。“不过那都是很久以前的事了，”缇利安自言自语着，“这种好事现在可不会发生。”他记起（因其小的时候历史就一直很好）帮助过凯斯宾的那四个孩子，曾在一千年以前来纳尼亚创造了非凡的功绩，他们打败了可怕的白女巫，终结了百年严寒，这之后他们（这四个孩子一起）统治了凯尔帕拉维尔。他们一直统治着纳尼亚，从四个少年成长为可敬的国王和可爱的女王。他们统治的时期曾是纳尼亚的黄金时代。这段时期，阿斯兰常常出现；他在其他所有故事当中也有出现。缇利安心想：“最凶险的时刻，阿斯兰和世界尽头之外的孩子们总会现身，唉，要是他们现在能出现该多好啊！”

于是他大声呼喊：“阿斯兰！阿斯兰！阿斯兰！快来救救我们啊！”

然而黑暗依旧，寒意不减，寂静如初。

“杀了我吧，”国王哭喊道，“我可以什么都不要，但是请救救整个纳尼亚王国吧！”

夜色下的林间依旧毫无动静。但是缇利安的心底开始起了些许变化。不知为何，他隐约感到一丝微弱的希望，自己内心亦强大了一些。“哦，阿斯兰，阿斯兰，”他默念着，“就算你不亲自现身，也至少请派你的帮手从世界尽头之外过来。请让我呼唤他们吧，让我的声音传到世界尽头之外吧！”突然，缇利安自己可能都意识不到，他以震天响的声音呐喊道：

“孩子们！孩子们！纳尼亚之友！快到我身边来吧！我在世界的这头呼唤你们！我是缇利安！我是孤岛大帝，凯尔帕拉维尔的君主，纳尼亚之王！”

说时迟那时快，缇利安瞬间坠入一场梦境之中（如果是梦境的话），远比他做过的任何一场梦都更加真切。

他仿若是站在一间灯火通明的屋子里，七个人围坐在一张桌子旁，看起来像刚吃完饭的样子。这七个人当中有两个年事已高，一位是胡子花白的老汉，另一位是老妇人，她的眼眸明亮如星辰，闪着睿智和喜悦的光芒。坐在老汉右手边的男子还没成年，显然要比缇利安年纪轻，不过男孩的脸庞已经出落得如武士般坚毅，有帝王之相。这番描述适用于老妇人右手边的那位青年。坐在缇利安对面的金发姑娘比上述两位都要年轻，而她左右两边的少男少女比她还要年轻。在缇利安看来，这群人身上穿的衣服再古怪不过了。

但是他无暇去想诸如此类的细节，因为那个小男孩和两个少女吓得跳了起来，其中一人还尖叫了一声。老妇人猛地倒吸了一口凉气，老汉的反应也挺激烈，致使他右手边的红酒杯被打翻在地。缇利安能够听到杯子在地板上破碎的清脆声音。

于是他意识到这些人能看见他；他们一个个盯着他看，就像看见了鬼似的。不过那个坐在老者右侧有帝王相的青年只是紧紧攥住自己的手，并没有惊慌失措（虽说他脸色变得有些苍白）。随后他说道：

“如果你不是幽灵或梦魇，那就说话。你长着一副纳尼亚人的面孔，我们是纳尼亚七友。”

缇利安好想开口说话啊，他真想大声亮明自己纳尼亚之王的身份，并且告诉他们自己有要事求助。但是，他却发现（我有时在梦中也会有同样的经历）自己一点儿声音都发不出来。

刚刚说话的青年站了起来。“不管你是幽灵还是什么，”他的双眼死死地盯着缇利安，“如果你当真来自纳尼亚，我以阿斯兰的名义命令你，开口对我讲话。我是至尊国王彼得。”

房间开始在彼得眼前旋转起来，他听到那七个人的声音同时在耳旁嗡嗡作响，越来越微弱。“看！它在褪去。”“在融化。”“在逝去。”这些声音不绝于耳。下一刻，他已经完全清醒过来，他还是被绑在树上，身体比之前更冷、更僵。林间充斥着日出前熹微冷寂的光，缇利安浑身被露水浸湿，此时已几近清晨了。

这番梦醒时分是他生命中最糟糕的时刻。

第五章
营救国王

然而痛苦并未持续很久。几乎是一眨眼之间，他迎面感到一波撞击，紧接着又是一波，两个孩子已然站在他面前了。上一秒他面前的林子还是杳无人烟的，他知道这两个孩子不可能从他身后过来，因为这样的话他肯定会听到脚步声。简而言之，不知道他们从何而来。国王瞥了一眼就看出来了，他们俩古怪陈旧的穿着打扮和他在梦里面见到的一样。再看第二眼，他意识到面前这两个孩子正是纳尼亚七友当中最年轻的那对少男少女。

“老天哪，”男孩说，“这一下我都喘不上气来了！我觉得吧——”

“快点给他松绑，”女孩说，“有什么话，我们后面再说。”她转而对缇利安补充道，“对不起，让您久等了，不过我们也是第一时间赶到的。”

女孩说话的工夫，男孩从口袋里掏出一把刀，迅速砍断了缚住国王的绳子。男孩动作太快，再加上国王被绑之后僵硬麻木的时间太长，当最后一根绳被砍断时，国王直接手和膝盖着地栽了下去。他把双腿揉搓了好一会儿，才恢复知觉站起身来。

“要我说啊，”女孩说，“那天夜里我们吃晚饭的时候，突然出现在我们面前的人就是你吧？大概一周前。”

“一周前吗，美丽的少女？”缇利安说，“我的梦是在短短十分钟之前引我进入你们的世界的。”

“时差总是这么混乱不清，波尔。”男孩说。

“我想起来了，”缇利安说，“古老传说中也是这么说的。你们那奇特世界里的时间和我们这里不一样。说到时间，是时候离开这儿了，因为敌人近在咫尺。你们和我一起走吗？”

“当然，”女孩说，“我们就是来帮你的。”

缇利安站起身来，迈开大步，领着他们迅速下了山，往南而行，离那马厩远远的。他心里知道自己要往哪儿去，不过他的首要目标是先踏上一片石头地，这样就留不下脚印。第二件事是涉水而行，这样就不会留下气味。历经了一个小时的攀爬跋涉，他们连说话的力气都没有了。即便累成这样，缇利安还是不时打量着和他同行的小伙伴，走在异星来客身边的那种惊诧让他有些眩晕，但那些古老的传说在此时远比在任何时候更加真实……会有什么事情发生吗？

“好了，”说话间，缇利安面前铺展开一条掩映在幼嫩桦树条中的小山谷，“我们终于甩开了那群恶棍，脱离了险境。我们现在可以慢慢走了。”太阳升起来了，露珠挂在枝头闪着晶莹的光，鸟儿在欢唱。

“来点儿吃的吗？——我的意思是给您吃，先生，我俩吃过早饭啦。”男孩说。

缇利安仔细思忖了一下“吃的”究竟是什么意思，当男孩从他身上鼓鼓囊囊的挎包里掏出一个又湿又软的小油包的时候，他即刻明白了。他饿极了，虽然他直到此时才想起自己已是饥肠辘辘。男孩带着两个煎熟的鸡蛋三明治、两个乳酪三明治和两个涂着某种肉酱的三明治。如果他不是那么饿的话，他不会对肉酱感兴趣。因为在纳尼亚，没人吃这种食物。等六个三明治下了肚，他们已经走到了谷底，在那里发现了一座布满青苔的峭壁，一眼小泉汩汩冒出，三人停步，饮了些泉水，用凉水拍在发烫的脸上。

“现在，”女孩边说着，边把额头上湿漉漉的头发往后甩，“你还不打算告诉我们你是谁，为什么被绑，以及这一切都是怎么回事儿吗？”

“我乐意全数告诉你，姑娘，”缇利安说，“不过我们得接着赶路。”路上，缇利安把自己的身份和事情的前因后果讲给了他们听。最后，他说：“现在，我要带你们去一座堡垒，我祖父那个年代建了三座堡垒来保卫灯柱荒原，以抵御附近凶恶的亡命之徒。我们要去的就是其中一座。阿斯兰保佑，钥匙还在我身上，没被抢走。堡垒里储存着不少武器和铠甲，还有食物，不过比干制饼干好不到哪里去。那里很安全，我们可以好好制订计划。现在，你们俩也可以告诉我你们的身份了吧，请把你们的故事讲给我听。”

“我是尤斯塔斯∙斯科拉博，她是吉尔∙波尔，”男孩说，“我们很久很久之前曾经来过这里，换算成我们的时间大概是一年多以前，当时有个家伙叫瑞利安王子，他被关在了地牢里，沼泽人帕多格鲁姆还把脚踩进——”

“哈！”缇利安惊呼，“你们俩就是当时打破魔咒，解救了瑞利安国王的尤斯塔斯和吉尔吗？”

“没错，就是我们，”吉尔说，“照这么说瑞利安现在都当国王了，是吗？噢，当然了，我都忘了——”

“不，”缇利安说，“我是他的第七代后裔，他已经去世两百多年了。”

吉尔做了个鬼脸。“呃，”她说，“回到纳尼亚来，就是这档子事儿叫人不好受。”但是尤斯塔斯继续说了下去。

“陛下，您现在知道我们是谁了，”他说，“事情是这样的，当时老教授和波莉姨妈把我们所有纳尼亚之友聚在了一起——”

“尤斯塔斯，我不认识你说的这些人。”缇利安说。

“这两个人是最先来到纳尼亚境内的，那个时候所有的动物都还在学说话。”

“以阿斯兰的神鬃为鉴，”缇利安激动地呐喊道，“真是这两个人！狄格雷勋爵和波莉夫人！他们是来自我们世界之初的伟人啊！是黎明的曙光！他们仍然活在你们的世间？真是无上的福泽与荣耀啊！接着说，接着说！”

“她并不是我们的亲姨妈，”尤斯塔斯说，“她是普卢默小姐，但是我们都管她叫波莉姨妈。他们两个老人把我们叫在一块儿的一部分原因是想热闹热闹，我们可以好好聊聊纳尼亚的往事（毕竟纳尼亚的事情没法对别人说），但是另一部分原因是，老教授有预感，一股冥冥之中的力量驱使着我们相聚在那里。然后您就像鬼一样或者天知道像什么一样出现在我们面前，我们吓得都快掉魂儿了，然后您一言不发就消失了。那之后我们心里就明白了，一定是出什么事了。接下来的问题是我们怎么到这儿来。你不能单凭意念过来，我们合计了好一会儿，最终老教授说，唯一的办法是通过魔戒的力量过来。很久很久以前，早在我们这些小年轻出生之前，他和波莉姨妈就是通过魔戒来到纳尼亚的，当时他俩还都是孩子。但是魔戒被埋在伦敦一幢房子的花园里（伦敦是我们那边的一座大都市，陛下），可房子已经被卖掉了。所以问题就变成了怎么找魔戒。你绝对猜不到我们最后是怎么干的。彼得和爱德蒙——彼得就是那天和你讲话的至尊国王彼得——一大早就赶到伦敦去，趁人们还没起床，从后院溜进了花园。他们穿上了管道工的衣服，这样一来，旁人看到会以为他们是修下水道的。我真希望跟他们一块儿去，那得多好玩啊！他俩的行动成功了，第二天，彼得发电报说——电报就是一种通信方式，陛下，我改天再跟您解释——他找到魔戒了。第二天正好是我和波尔返校的日子——纳尼亚七友里还在上学的只有我们俩，我们上的是同一所学校。彼得和爱德蒙决定在我们上学的路上找个地方把魔戒转交给我们。去纳尼亚的只能是我们俩，因为比我们年长的人不能再去了。就这样，我们登上了火车——火车是我们那个世界的人旅行乘坐的一种交通工具，很多节小车厢被链条连在一起——老教授、波莉姨妈和露西与我们同行。只要能不分开，我们大家就尽可能聚在一块儿。正当火车快要到站那会儿，彼得和爱德蒙和我们约好了在那儿会面，我正透过窗户找寻他们的身影，突然，我感到一阵极其猛烈的震颤，同时还伴随着一声巨响，之后我们就来到了纳尼亚，看到陛下您被绑在树上。”

“所以你们没有用过魔戒？”缇利安问。

“没有，”尤斯塔斯说，“我们甚至从未见过魔戒。是阿斯兰以他自己的方式指引我们来到这里，并未借助任何魔戒的神力。”

“可魔戒在至尊国王彼得手上。”缇利安说。

“没错，”吉尔说，“但我们认为他不会使用魔戒。上次，另外一对佩文西家的兄妹——爱德蒙国王和露西女王到这里来的时候，阿斯兰嘱托他们不要再回纳尼亚来，他更早以前对至尊国王也是这么说的。您要相信，如果彼得获准前来的话，他一定会像离弦的箭一样冲到您面前。”

“天哪！”尤斯塔斯说，“太阳晒得好热啊，我们快到了吗，陛下？”

“看！”缇利安指着前方说道。不远处，灰色的城墙已然在树冠上方竖起，步行几分钟后，他们来到了一片开阔的草地。一条小溪从中淌过，溪流远处一侧，矗立着一座低矮结实的方形堡垒，只有几扇狭窄的窗户，面朝他们的墙上有一扇敦实的门。

缇利安机警地左右看了看，确保视线之内没有敌人，便登上堡垒，站定了一会儿，掏出一串钥匙。这串钥匙被他放进狩猎服里面，用一根细细的银链串起系在脖子上。整串钥匙十分精美，其中两把是用黄金铸成的，还有不少钥匙装饰华贵，你一看就知道，这些钥匙要么是用来开启庄严的宫殿密室，要么就是用来打开盛满皇家珠宝、用气味香甜的木头铸造的金库宝箱。但是，他此刻插进门锁里的钥匙很大，却平凡无奇，做工十分粗糙。锁眼很是生涩，缇利安刚开始都有点担心打不开门，但最终，随着一声沉闷的吱呀声，门摇摇晃晃地开了。

“欢迎光临！朋友们，”缇利安说，“恐怕这是纳尼亚国王目前能够提供给各位贵客的最好的宫殿了。”

见两位来客都很有教养，缇利安也算宽了心。他俩让国王别把简陋的环境放在心上，还说敢肯定这个地方会很好。

事实上，这个地方并不是“很好”。四下都黑漆漆的，闻起来还有一股潮湿的味道。偌大的堡垒只有一个房间，直通石头房顶；角落里的一段木楼梯通向一扇活板门，门外便是墙垛。房间里只有几个粗陋的铺位可以睡人，不过储物柜的数量倒是不少，一捆捆杂物散落在地上。另外，屋子里还有个灶台，不过看起来好像很多年都没有人在里面生过火了。

“我们是不是得先去外面拣点柴火来？”吉尔问道。

“现在别去，我的伙伴。”缇利安说。他一心不想让自己人在手无寸铁的情况下被抓住。国王转而开始翻箱倒柜，幸亏自己每年都抽出时间，小心谨慎地把防御塔视察一番，以确保塔内存够必要的物资。只见弓弦被油绸布包得好好的，为了避免生锈，剑和长矛上都涂了油，铠甲亦被包裹得严严实实，光亮如新。然而更棒的还在后头。“看看吧！”缇利安说话间便抽出了一件样式稀奇的盔甲上装，在孩子们的眼前炫耀。

“这一身儿看起来真逗，陛下。”尤斯塔斯说。

“是啊，小伙子，”缇利安说，“这一身儿可不是咱们纳尼亚的矮人锻造出来的，这是卡乐门人的铠甲，外国玩意儿。我自己存了几套以备不时之需，谁知道哪天我或者我的朋友们需要潜行在蒂斯罗克的大地上呢，这些铠甲到时候会派上用场。你们再看看这个小石瓶，这里面装着一种汁水，只要把它涂在手上和脸上，我们看起来就和卡乐门人一样黑黢黢的了。”

“哇！太酷了！”吉尔欢呼着，“伪装术啊！我喜欢伪装术。”

缇利安给他们示范了如何伪装。先把汁水倒一点在手掌上，然后匀开，涂满整张脸，整个颈部也要涂上，一直要涂到肩膀，接着要涂双手，把汁水一直涂到手肘。他也用这种方式给自己上了妆。

“待其变干，”他说，“我们用水就洗不掉了，只有用油和灰才能把我们变成本来的模样。可爱的吉尔，现在就让我看看你穿上这件铠甲是什么样子吧！这里好像太长了，不过也没有我想的那么长。这身盔甲的主人准是一个塔尔坎老爷侍从中的小卒。”

穿好了铠甲，他们又戴上了卡乐门人的头盔。这些圆圆的小钢盔箍在头上有点紧，头盔顶上还插着一根钉。接着，缇利安又从储物柜里抻出一卷长长的类似白布的东西，把它缠在头盔上，弄得像长头巾一样，但是盔顶上那根小钢钉还是卡在当中。他和尤斯塔斯拿的是卡乐门弯刀和小圆盾。剑都太重了，吉尔一把都拿不动，不过，缇利安还是给她配了一把又长又直的猎刀，紧要关头也能当剑用。

“小姑娘，你会用弓箭吗？”缇利安问道。

“我用得不太好，”吉尔红着脸说，“斯科拉博的箭术挺不错的。”

“陛下，您别听她的，”尤斯塔斯说，“自打我们上次从纳尼亚回来，就一直在练习射箭，现在吉尔的水平和我差不多。不过我俩的技术都算不上高超。”

于是缇利安给了吉尔一把弓箭和一个插满了箭的箭筒。下面要做的就是生火了，这个堡垒里简直就像山洞一样，冷得让人瑟瑟发抖，根本不像是人住的地方。但当他们去捡柴火的时候身体已经暖和起来了——那会儿太阳正在中天——当火苗蹿上烟囱的那一刻，这个地方才开始有了些人气。可晚饭却不怎么体面，这儿能找到的最好的东西就是从储物柜里翻出来的硬饼干了。他们把饼干倒进沸水里，撒点盐，就这样做成了一种像粥一样的糊糊。当然了，在这儿除了水也没有什么可以喝的了。

“我们要是带包茶叶来就好了。”吉尔说。

“一罐可可粉也行啊。”尤斯塔斯说。

“每座防御塔里要是存几桶美酒的话倒也不错。”缇利安说。

第六章
漂亮的夜袭

大概四个小时之后，缇利安一头倒在铺盖上，想抓紧时间补个觉。两个熟睡的孩子已经起了鼾声。在自己睡觉之前，他早早地让两个孩子先睡下，是因为今天夜里的行动基本上需要全程清醒，照他们的年纪，睡眠不足是撑不住的。还有个原因，那就是他今天把两个孩子折腾得够呛。他先是带吉尔练了练射箭，虽然吉尔的表现尚达不到纳尼亚的标准，但是她的水平确实不错。她成功地射死了一只兔子（当然，并不是一只能言兔，纳尼亚西部有很多不会说话的动物出没），这只兔子已经被她剥了皮，洗得干干净净后挂了起来。他发现这两个孩子对打猎之后血腥刺鼻的脏活累活一点也不怵，熟练得很。原来这些本领是他们在瑞利安王子时期穿越巨人大陆的那次大冒险中学会的。接着他又去教尤斯塔斯用剑与盾。尤斯塔斯在之前的冒险当中已经学会了在战斗中用剑，不过他熟悉的是纳尼亚的直剑，他从来没用过卡乐门的弯刀。弯刀对他来说有点麻烦，毕竟不少刀法都与剑有所不同，以前学长剑养成的一些习惯，现在需要抛掉从头来过。即便如此，缇利安发现尤斯塔斯这孩子眉目中透着机灵，脚下动作非常敏捷。他惊异于两个孩子的长进，从初次见面到现在短短几个小时的时间里，他俩都似乎变得更加强大、健壮和成熟了。纳尼亚的空气对从我们这个世界来的人就有这种效用。

三个人都已达成共识，现在要做的头等大事就是回到马厩山，救出独角兽珠儿。这之后，如果计划成功，他们就设法向东界突围，与半人马龙威特从凯尔帕拉维尔调遣的援兵小队会合。

像缇利安这样富有经验的战士和猎人是能够在任何时间醒来的。所以他给自己定好晚上九点起床，然后便把一切烦恼丢在脑后，倒头睡着了。他似乎没睡多大会儿就起来了。不过，凭着周遭的光线和自己独特的直觉，他判断自己醒来的时间刚刚好。起床后，他迅速戴上了钢盔和长头巾（为了行动方便，他睡觉时是穿着铠甲的），然后把两个孩子摇醒。说真的，这俩孩子从床上爬起来的时候还是一副脸色苍白、神情忧郁的样子，哈欠也是打个没完。

“现在，”缇利安说，“我们要从这里开始往北界行进——今天晚上繁星满天，运气不错——我们接下来要走的路程比早上来的时候要短得多，白天我们绕远了，现在我们要直走。如果沿路有人盘问我们，你俩不要作声，我会尽我所能假装成一个残暴自大的卡乐门勋爵来应付他们。只要我一拔剑，尤斯塔斯，你就赶紧照着我做，吉尔，你就跑到我们身后去，拉弓引弦准备射箭。但是，只要你们一听见我喊‘回家’，就赶紧朝着堡垒的方向跑。千万不要恋战——我下达撤退的命令之后，就不要再打了；要知道逞一时之勇在战争中葬送了多少大好计划呀！好了，朋友们，现在让我们以阿斯兰之名，前进！”

于是他们在寒夜中出发了，北界的星辰在树冠之上一片璀璨，点燃了夜空。在纳尼亚，北界的那颗星叫矛头星，它比我们的北极星更加明亮。

靠着矛头星的指引，他们笔直走了一段，但是步入一片茂密的灌木丛之后，他们不得不先绕开树丛，脱离了既定路线。走了一会儿，前方的道路依旧被树枝掩映着，找路越发艰难。后来，是吉尔带大家再次回到正路上去的。她在英国一直是一名出色的向导，而且她也完全谙熟纳尼亚的星象，毕竟她在北界大地的荒野上来来回回走了那么多遭，甚至当矛头星隐去不见时，她也能通过其他星星的方位，推断出正确路线。缇利安一看，敢情这小丫头是他们三人中最厉害的探路者，于是干脆就让她带路了。吉尔带路时脚步非常轻，她的身影在夜色下几乎看不见，这使得缇利安大为吃惊。

“以阿斯兰的神鬃之名，”缇利安悄悄对尤斯塔斯说，“这个姑娘简直就是森林仙女下凡，就算树精附体也没有她这么厉害吧。”

“她个头小，这是她的优势。”尤斯塔斯悄声附和着。“嘘！小声点！”前面的吉尔示意他们别出声。

林中四下一片静寂，但也太安静了。一个寻常纳尼亚之夜，本该有动静的——小刺猬偶尔会甜甜地对你道声晚安，猫头鹰在头顶盘旋号叫，远处半羊人的舞蹈飘来的阵阵笛声，或是地下矮人跳来跳去敲敲打打的响动。不过此刻，这些声音一概没有，有的只是一片死寂。幽暗和恐惧笼罩着纳尼亚。

走了一会儿，他们便开始攀爬陡峭的山路，眼前的树木也变得稀稀拉拉。一片昏暗中，缇利安能够依稀辨认出那人尽皆知的山顶和那座马厩。吉尔此时走得越来越小心，她不停做手势，示意其他人也要小心行路。突然，只见她站定了，一动不动。缇利安见她缓缓蹲下身子，没入草丛中，一声不响地消失在视线中。不一会儿，她站起身来，贴在缇利安耳边，用最轻最轻的声音对他说：“趴下来，‘暗’得更清楚。”她把“看”说成“暗”并不是因为她口齿不清，而是因为“看”这个字的发音最容易被偷听到。缇利安听罢立即卧倒，动作几乎和吉尔一样轻，但还是弄出了些响动，毕竟他身体更沉，年纪也更大。他们刚一卧倒，缇利安便发现从他们所在的位置看去，山的轮廓在满天繁星的映衬下显得格外分明。星空还衬出两团黑影：其中一团是马厩，距其几英尺开外的另外一团是一个卡乐门哨兵。这个人可以说是玩忽职守，他没有四处巡逻，甚至也不站岗。只见他瘫坐在地上，长矛架在肩头，下巴抵在胸口，一副懒懒散散的样子。“好极了。”缇利安对吉尔说。她让缇利安看到的一切正是他需要知道的。

他们起身接着往前走，现在换作缇利安带路。他们一路走上一片小树丛，走得很慢很慢，连大气都不敢喘。这里离哨兵所在的位置不过四十英尺远。

“在这儿等我回来，”他小声叮嘱两个孩子，“如果我行动失败，立刻逃命。”说完，他闲庭信步地走了出去，在敌人视线之内暴露无遗。哨兵见了他被吓得一激灵，他以为缇利安是他的一位长官，因为自己坐在地上没好好值班来找自己麻烦的。正想起身，可还没等他起来，缇利安一个箭步单膝着地蹲在他身边，说：

“你是蒂斯罗克的勇士吗？愿他万寿无疆。能在这群纳尼亚的野兽和恶魔中遇见你，真是太让我高兴了！朋友，把你的手给我。”

卡乐门哨兵还没反应过来这一切是怎么回事儿，他的右手已被紧紧抓住，下一瞬，他的双腿也已被人压跪在地，一把匕首抵住了他的脖子。

“敢出声，我就要了你的命，”缇利安在他耳边说道，“告诉我独角兽的下落，我就饶你不死。”

“后——后面，马厩的后面，我的主啊。”这个不幸的人结结巴巴地说道。

“好，起来，带我去见他。”

哨兵起身的过程中，缇利安在他身后，一刻也没将匕首从他的脖子上移开。刀刃（让他感觉又冰又痒）在他颈上游移，最终架在了他耳朵下方一处于缇利安方便的地方。他一路哆哆嗦嗦领着缇利安绕到了马厩的后面。

虽然夜色很暗，缇利安还是一眼就认出了珠儿雪白的身躯。

“别出声！”他说，“不，别叫。是的，珠儿，是我！他们是怎么绑住你的？”

“他们用缰绳把我的四条腿全捆住了，拴在马厩墙壁的铁环上。”传来珠儿的声音。

“背靠墙给我站好了，放哨的。珠儿，用你的尖角对准这卡乐门人的胸脯。”

“遵命，陛下！”珠儿听命。

“如果他敢动，就刺穿他的心脏。”缇利安三下两下就砍断了缰绳，他用剩余的绳头缚住了哨兵的手脚。然后，他往哨兵的嘴里塞满了草，还把他的头顶连同下巴系得紧紧的，这样他就发不出声音了。最后，他把哨兵放低，保持一个坐的姿态靠在了墙上。

“哨兵，我对你做了些不怎么光彩的事，”缇利安说，“但是我也是没办法才出此下策，如果有幸能再次相见，我会对你好些的。珠儿，我们现在悄悄离开吧。”

他把左臂搭在独角兽的脖子上，蹲下来轻轻亲吻他的鼻子，喜悦洋溢在他们俩的心头。他们尽可能以最轻的脚步赶回两个孩子所在的地方。树影之下，四周显得更加漆黑，缇利安都没看清楚尤斯塔斯的身影，差点和他撞了个满怀。

“一切都摆平了，”缇利安低声耳语，“这场夜袭打得漂亮，现在咱们回堡垒去。”

他们便转身返营，没走几步，尤斯塔斯突然说：“波尔，你在哪儿？”无人回答。“陛下，吉尔在你身旁吗？”他问道。

“什么？”缇利安一惊，“她不是一直在你旁边吗？”

那一刻太可怕了，他们不敢喊出声来，却又压低嗓子，用尽可能大的音量呼唤着吉尔的名字。然而还是没有回音。

“刚才我不在的时候，她离开过你吗？”缇利安问。

“我没见她离开过，也没听到她离开的动静，”尤斯塔斯说，“但她有可能是趁我不注意溜走的，你亲眼看到的，她的脚步轻得像猫一样。”

忽然，远处传来了一阵鼓点声，珠儿把耳朵往前探。“是小矮人。”他说。

“小矮人不可靠，他们有可能是敌人，也有可能不是。”缇利安轻声细语地说道。

“还有一只长着蹄子的什么东西朝我们这边过来，越走越近了。”珠儿说。

独角兽、缇利安和尤斯塔斯一动不动地站在原地。此刻，需要担心的事情太多了，他们仨一时有些不知所措。蹄声稳步接近，愈来愈近，就在这时，在很靠近他们的地方，有声音说道：

“你们好呀！全都在呢？”

谢天谢地，原来是吉尔。

“你到底去哪儿了啊？”尤斯塔斯气愤地低声质问她，因为他刚刚真被吓坏了。

“我到马厩里去了。”吉尔喘着气说。喘气是因为她在努力憋着不让自己笑出来。

“哼，”尤斯塔斯低声吼道，“你还觉得挺有意思的，是吧？我只能说——”

“陛下，你们找到珠儿了吗？”吉尔问。

“找到了，他就在这儿。跟你在一起的是个什么动物啊？”

“反正是他就对啦，”吉尔说，“咱们先趁别人醒来之前赶紧回堡垒去。”她又扑哧一声差点笑出声来。

大家都立即照她说的做了，毕竟他们已经在这个危险的地方逗留了太长时间，小矮人的鼓点声也越来越近。往南没走几分钟，尤斯塔斯还是忍不住问吉尔：

“你抓到他了吗？你刚才说的话是啥意思？”

“是冒牌的阿斯兰。”吉尔说。

“什么？”缇利安说，“你刚刚去哪儿了？你都做了什么啊？”

“好吧，陛下，我给您讲讲，”吉尔说，“我看到您把哨兵撂倒的时候，心里就在想，我应该好好把马厩看个仔细，看看里面到底有些什么玩意儿。于是我就一路爬了过去，三下五除二就把门闩给拉开了。那里面当然是黑黢黢的，闻起来也跟其他马厩没什么两样，然后我就划了一根火柴——你们相不相信？——我在马厩里发现了这么一头老驴，他背上系着一捆狮子皮。除此以外，马厩里再无其他东西。于是我就用刀架着那头驴子让他跟我走。事实上，我都没有威胁他的必要，他已经受够了马厩，迫不及待地就钻了出来。——我没说错吧？亲爱的迷糊？”

“我的天哪，”尤斯塔斯说，“好吧，我刚刚真的挺生你气的，到现在我都觉得你撇开大家一个人偷偷溜了，太不厚道。但我必须承认——好吧，我的意思是说——你刚才这件事做得简直太漂亮了！如果她是个男孩，会因此加官晋爵的，你说是吗，陛下？”

“如果她是个男孩，”缇利安说，“就会被狠狠鞭打，谁叫她不听指挥呢？”夜色中，谁也没看清他说这句话的时候是皱着眉头，还是带着微笑。不一会儿，他们听到刺耳的金属声。

“陛下，您在做什么？”珠儿警惕地问道。

“我要拔剑，好砍下这头蠢驴的脑袋，”缇利安的声音中似乎带着千仇万恨，“小姑娘，站远点！”

“哦，不，请别杀他，”吉尔请求道，“真的，您万万不可杀他。这一切并不是他的错，全怪无尾猿！这头驴自己都不明白出了什么事，他感到抱歉极了。他是头可爱的驴子，他叫迷糊，我还拿手臂搂过他的脖子呢。”

“吉尔啊，”缇利安说，“你是我见过最勇敢、最有智慧的姑娘，但你同时也是最大大咧咧、最不安分的。好吧，我就饶这驴子一命。驴子，你还有什么话说？”

“我吗，陛下？”驴子发了声，“要是我做了什么错事，我真的感到很抱歉，无尾猿告诉我是阿斯兰要我打扮成这样的。我以为他说的话是靠谱的呢，我不如他聪明，他让我干啥我就干啥。住在那个破马厩里一点也不好玩，我都不知道外面发生了什么事。每天夜里他只让我出来一两分钟，其余时间都把我关在里面。有时候他们还忘记给我水喝呢。”

“陛下，”珠儿说，“那些小矮人离我们越来越近，我们要不要与他们碰面啊？”

缇利安思忖了片刻，突然，他忍不住，大声笑了出来。他这回可不是压着嗓子轻声细语了，他用洪亮的声音说：“狮王在上，我真是脑子越来越慢了！要不要碰面？我们当然要和他们碰面！现在来什么人我们就见什么人。我们就牵着这头驴子给他们好好看看，看看他们曾经是对什么东西又敬又怕，卑躬屈膝！我们要在他们面前拆穿无尾猿卑鄙的诡计，现在他的秘密暴露了，他大势已去。明天我们就把那只该死的无尾猿吊在纳尼亚最高的树上示众！再也不用忍气吞声、偷偷摸摸、躲躲藏藏了！这些忠诚的小矮人在哪里？我们把好消息带给他们。”

低声下气太久，要是有个人突然高声讲话，打破僵局，那效果绝对振奋人心！欢声笑语在所有人当中蔓延开来，就连迷糊也兴奋地抬起头，来了两声“哼哈哼哈哈”的驴叫，要知道这可是无尾猿几日以来对他明令禁止的。接着，他们朝着鼓点的方向出发，鼓声越来越响，不一会儿，小矮人举得火炬也映入眼帘。他们走在一条贯穿灯柱荒原、崎岖不平的路上（在英国，我们几乎不能把这叫作路）。约莫三十来个小矮人，扛着他们小小的铁锹和锄头，迈着坚实有力的步子沿路往前行进。两个全副武装的卡乐门人在前面领路，队尾亦有两个断后。

“停！”缇利安大喝一声，挺身而出，“停步！将士们。敢问你们领着这一队纳尼亚小矮人要去哪里？是谁给你们下的指令？”

第七章
关于小矮人

这两个卡乐门领队，以为面前拦路的是塔尔坎勋爵或是其他什么大人，而旁边两个手持武器的人是他的侍从。于是，他们停下了脚步，举起长矛，敬礼致意。

“大人，”其中一个领队说，“我们奉命带这些小矮人去蒂斯罗克的矿井工作，愿他万寿无疆。”

“伟大的塔什神保佑，这些小矮人非常顺从。”缇利安说。突然，他转而面向小矮人们。他们当中每六个就有一个手持火把，正是通过闪烁的火光，他看到小矮人们蓄满胡须的脸上那副阴森顽固的神情。“小矮人们，难道是蒂斯罗克在一场大战中夺去了你们的家园吗？”他问，“是什么让你们这么心甘情愿地去帕格拉罕的盐矿中送死？”

诧异中，两个士兵怒视着他，可小矮人们却异口同声地回话：“是阿斯兰的命令，是阿斯兰的命令，是他把我们卖去做苦力的，我们怎么能违抗他的旨意呢？”

“该死的蒂斯罗克！”有个小矮人生气地往地上啐了一口，“脏活累活他来干一个试试。”

“闭嘴，你们这群狗奴才！”领队的长官大骂道。

“你们看，”缇利安将迷糊一把推到众人的目光之下，“这一切都是个谎言，阿斯兰根本就没来纳尼亚！你们统统被无尾猿骗了！他从马厩里带出来的那个玄乎其玄的东西其实就是这头驴啊，你们好好看看！”

近距离一看，此情此景，足以让小矮人们明白过来他们是怎么被骗的。由于迷糊被长期圈在马厩里，那张狮子皮早已脏兮兮的了。再加上一路上在黑漆漆的林中磕磕碰碰，整张皮皱皱巴巴的。这张皮基本上全部团在一起，堆在了驴子一侧的肩膀上；而狮子头那块呢，除了被挤到一边之外还特别靠后，大家都能看到迷糊那张又傻又好欺负的驴脸从中露了出来。只见他嘴角还挂着两根草，这是因为他来的一路上，没干别的，一直都在默默地啃草。嘴里还不忘念念叨叨：“这不是我的错，我就是不聪明，我从没说过我聪明啊。”

有那么一刻，所有小矮人张大了嘴巴齐刷刷地盯着迷糊。其中一个卡乐门士兵气急败坏地说：“大人，您疯了吗？您对我们的奴隶做了些什么！”另一个士兵亦有所觉察，说道：“你究竟是谁？”刚刚那两根高举致敬的长矛都已放下，进入备战状态。

“报上通关密语。”士兵首领厉声说。

“那我就让你听听我的通关密语，”国王说着，拔剑而出，“黎明即将破晓，谎言已被揭穿。你们要当心了，恶棍，因为我缇利安乃纳尼亚之王！”

他疾如闪电般地飞身一跃来到士兵面前。看到缇利安拔剑，尤斯塔斯也效仿着拔了剑，向另一个卡乐门士兵冲去。他此刻面无血色，但我并不会因此而责怪他。而且他运气不错，初次参加战斗的人有时总会被幸运女神眷顾。他把那天下午缇利安教给他的招式全部丢在脑后，冲着敌人乱砍一气（我都怀疑他是闭着眼杀敌的），让他大吃一惊的是，那个卡乐门人竟然死在了他的脚下。虽然胜利大快人心，不过杀人的那一刻还是挺吓人的。国王结束打斗比尤斯塔斯多用了一两秒时间，敌人倒地后，缇利安对尤斯塔斯大喊：“小心另外两个！”

还没等尤斯塔斯出手，小矮人已经把剩下的两个卡乐门人给解决了。敌人被打了个全军覆灭。

“太棒了，尤斯塔斯！”缇利安激动地拍着尤斯塔斯的背，“小矮人们，你们现在自由了！明天我就带你们去解放整个纳尼亚！让我们连呼三声阿斯兰万岁！”

但是随之而来的结果着实令人失望。听完缇利安这番话，只有几个小矮人（大概五个）发出了微弱的欢呼，但是他们积极的劲头很快就减弱了。还有那么几个愤愤不平地嘟哝着什么，很多人干脆一句话都没说。

“他们听不懂人话吗？”吉尔有些不耐烦了，“你们这群小矮人怎么回事儿啊？你们没听见国王说的话吗？苦日子到头了，纳尼亚再也不用受无尾猿的统治了。所有人都可以回到正常的生活轨迹上，你们也可以重新找乐子了呀！难道你们不开心吗？”

足足近一分钟的停顿过后，一个相貌不是那么和善、须发黑若煤灰的小矮人开口问：“这位小姐，你是谁啊？”

“我叫吉尔”，她应声回答，“就是从魔咒当中救出瑞利安国王的那个吉尔，他是尤斯塔斯，人是我们俩一起救的。几百年后，我们从另外一个世界而来，是阿斯兰派我们过来的。”

小矮人相互之间咧着嘴笑成一片，那是讥讽之笑，而非善意之笑。

“好吧，”小黑人说（他的名字叫格力弗），“我不管你们是怎么想的，反正阿斯兰这个名字我是听得够够的了，这辈子都不想再听到了。”

“说得对！说得对！”另一个小矮人低吼着，“这一切都是一场骗局，彻头彻尾的骗局。”

“你什么意思？”缇利安与敌人激战的时候，脸色都没有发白，反倒是小矮人的一席话令他脸色苍白。他本以为这一刻应该是很美好的，但没想到结果却如同噩梦一般。

“你肯定是以为我们脑子进水了吧，”格力弗说，“我们已经被耍过一次了，你们现在还想让我们马上就再上一次当吗？阿斯兰的破故事对我们不管用了！看看他这傻样子，还阿斯兰呢，不就是头长耳朵的老驴吗？”

“天哪，你简直是要把我逼疯，”缇利安说，“我们谁说他是阿斯兰了吗？是无尾猿用他来假冒真正的阿斯兰。你们难道不明白吗？”

“我想，你们一定是找到了一个比他更像的冒牌货，”格力弗说，“别编了，我谢谢你，我们已经被骗过一次了，所以不会再次被骗。”

“我没有骗你，”缇利安愤怒地说道，“我是为真正的阿斯兰效力的。”

“那他在哪儿呢？他是谁啊？让他来见我们啊！”几个小矮人七嘴八舌地说。

“你们还以为阿斯兰在我钱袋子里不成，一群蠢货，”缇利安说，“我哪有那么厉害，阿斯兰怎么可能说出现就出现呢？他可是一头桀骜不驯的雄狮啊！”

这句话刚脱口而出，他就意识到自己这一步走错了。“桀骜不驯的雄狮，桀骜不驯的雄狮。”小矮人们立刻用一种嘲弄的口吻把这句话编成歌儿，嘻嘻哈哈地闹开了。“所有人都这么说，听都听腻了。”一个小矮人说。

“你的意思是你不相信真实的阿斯兰存在于世？”吉尔问道，“可我亲眼见过他，是他把我们从另一个世界召唤过来的。”

“啊哈，”格力弗咧着大嘴说道，“你开口说话了。你这套说辞都是他们教你的，你在这背书呢，是不是？”

“混账！”缇利安怒斥一声，“当着一位淑女的面，你竟敢满嘴谎言。”

“先生，您嘴巴放干净点，”小矮人应声说道，“我看我们才不需要什么国王哩——就算你是缇利安又怎么样呢，再说了你长得也不像啊——同样道理，我们也不需要什么阿斯兰。从现在开始，我们小矮人自己的路自己走，不再对任何人俯首称臣。听明白了吗？”

“说得对，”其他小矮人纷纷嚷道，“我们现在就靠自己。再也不靠阿斯兰，再也不靠国王，也不再相信那些其他世界的鬼花样了。我们矮人自力更生。”于是他们开始各就各位准备出发，回到当初被叫来的地方。

“一群小畜生，”尤斯塔斯说，“你们不用去盐矿卖苦力还不都是我们的功劳？对救命恩人，你们连一句感谢也没有吗？”

“呵呵，你以为我们不知道是怎么回事儿吗？”格力弗回过头来说，“你们救我们还不是想利用我们？你们这是在自娱自乐呢。伙计们，我们走。”

于是小矮人们和着鼓点，唱响了那支古怪的行军歌，一行人踢着正步，列队消失在了黑暗中。

缇利安和他的朋友们盯着小矮人们离去的背影，而后，他只说了一个字“走”，他们便继续赶路了。

一路上大家都沉默不语。迷糊老是觉得自己做错了事很丢脸，但他搞不明白事情的状况。而吉尔呢，刚刚被小矮人气得够呛，但她却对尤斯塔斯大败卡乐门人印象深刻，感到有点自愧不如。尤斯塔斯直到现在心跳还非常快。缇利安和珠儿兴致不高地在队尾走着。国王的手臂搭在独角兽的肩膀上，有时，独角兽还会用他软软的鼻子去蹭蹭国王的脸颊。他们俩都没有选择用语言相互宽慰，因为此刻，找到一句听上去舒心的话很难。缇利安做梦都没有想到无尾猿用冒牌的阿斯兰混淆视听这件事会撼动民众对真阿斯兰的信心。他一度十分确信，只要他当众揭穿真相，小矮人们必定会站在他这一边。第二天晚上他就可以带小矮人上马厩山，然后把迷糊的样子给所有纳尼亚子民看，接着，大家揭竿而起，推翻无尾猿，或许还会和卡乐门人来一场混战，最终一切都会结束，归于安宁。而现在呢，他似乎已经没什么指望了。他的纳尼亚子民还会有多少人像小矮人一样，弃他而去呢？

“我感觉有人跟着我们。”迷糊突然说。

他们停下来，仔细听了听，确实，身后传来一阵小脚砰砰跑步的声音。

“是谁在那儿！”国王喊道。

“是我，陛下，”一个声音响起，“我是矮人波金。我才从他们那儿溜出来，我跟陛下您站在一边，跟阿斯兰站在一边！如果您赐我一把矮人专用剑，那么我很乐意在您大功告成之前，站在正义的那一边挥上两剑。”

大家簇拥着他，欢迎他加入阵营，连连拍着他的后背，对他赞不绝口。虽然，区区一个小矮人并不会对形势带来多大的改变，但是哪怕正义的道路上只多了一个人，也是一件值得欢呼雀跃的事情。大家的士气都很高涨，但是吉尔和尤斯塔斯还没高兴多久就哈欠连天了，他们此刻除了想睡觉啥也不想。

他们回到堡垒时已几近黎明，那是夜里最冷的时刻。如果此时给他们备好饭菜，那他们简直再乐意不过，可是做饭既麻烦又耽误时间，他们想都不愿想。于是，几个人干脆喝几口溪水，往脸上拍两下水，便回屋倒头睡去。倒是迷糊和珠儿觉得睡外面更舒服。其实他们俩在外面正合适，否则一只独角兽和一头又肥又老的驴子同时窝在屋里得多挤啊。

纳尼亚的小矮人，虽说只有不到四英尺的个头，但是在他们这个量级里可谓是最为强悍有力的族群了。这一点在波金身上完美体现。虽说这一天长途跋涉，睡得也晚，但是他在一行人当中醒得最早，而且活力满满。他起床之后，挎上吉尔的弓箭，出门就射下几只林中的野鸽子。然后他坐在门槛上一边拔鸽子毛，一边跟迷糊和珠儿聊天。迷糊看起来比昨天精神了不少，他自己感觉到了。而珠儿呢，作为独角兽，因而也具有最华贵精致的品性，他待迷糊非常好，跟他聊些双方都熟悉的话题，比如草料、甜食以及对蹄子的保养，等等。等到吉尔和尤斯塔斯揉着睡眼，哈欠连连地走出堡垒时，已经将近十点半了，波金知道去哪里可以采集到野生弗雷斯尼，也就是一种纳尼亚最茂密的野草，便带着他们去找。这种野草看起来有点类似我们的酢浆草，但是煮熟后的味道要好很多。（如果煮的时候能放点黄油和胡椒就完美了，可惜这些原料他们都没有。）他们的饭是怎么做的——掺和点儿这个，再勾兑点儿那个，一来二去就做出了一锅乱炖，早饭也是它，晚饭也是它，随便怎么都成。缇利安带着斧子往林中深处又走了走，砍了些树枝做柴火。这一大锅总能够炖个没完，越炖越香，总觉得马上就起锅还差点火候。菜在灶上炖着，趁这个当儿，国王给波金找了一套小矮人的装备，铁甲、头盔、盾牌、佩剑、腰带和匕首，一样不落。接着，他又检查了一下尤斯塔斯的剑，发现他杀敌之后没有清洁剑上的污物就把剑插回剑鞘。尤斯塔斯因为这件事挨了骂，缇利安罚他把剑清理整洁并抛光磨亮。

这工夫吉尔可没闲着，她来回走动着，时而搅搅锅里的食物，时而艳羡地看着驴子和独角兽心满意足地吃草。那天早上，有多少次吉尔盼望着自己也能像他们那样吃草啊！

终于，这顿大餐端上桌来，所有人都认为此前的等待很值得，大家吃完手头这份，纷纷都去盛了第二份。饱餐一顿之后，两条腿的坐在门槛上歇息，四条腿的面向他们卧着。（同时经由缇利安和吉尔的允许后）小矮人抽起了烟斗，接着国王说道：

“我的朋友波金，好像你对敌人的情况比我们掌握得更多，把你知道的给我们讲讲吧。首先，他们对我的脱逃是怎么说的？”

“陛下，他们的说辞真的是狡诈到你想象不到，”波金说，“全是那只大黄猫老姜说的，十有八九是他乱编一气。我跟您说吧，陛下，这老姜是猫里面鬼心眼儿最多的，他说他路过陛下被恶人绑住的那棵树，还说（您听了可千万别生气）听见您用那种我都不愿重复的语言痛斥、咒骂着阿斯兰，他当时一副道貌岸然的样子，您知道的，猫一高兴了就是那副嘴脸。还有更离谱的呢，老姜说，阿斯兰在一道闪电当中现了真身，一口把您吞下了肚。当时所有动物听他讲完都吓得直颤抖，有些当场就晕了过去。无尾猿怎么能放过这么好的时机？他接着煽风点火说，‘看看那些不敬畏阿斯兰的人是什么下场，这就是给你们所有人的警告！’可怜的动物们一片悲鸣哀号，连声说着‘遵命，遵命。’结果，纳尼亚的子民根本没想到您忠诚的朋友会来解救您，相反，他们听信了奸人的谗言，对无尾猿愈来愈畏惧和屈服。”

“这招真阴啊！”缇利安说，“这老姜怕是参与了无尾猿的密谋。”

“陛下，现在更有可能的问题是无尾猿是否参与了老姜的密谋。”矮人应声说，“要知道，如今无尾猿沉湎于饮酒。依我看，这些鬼点子要么是老姜出的，要么就是卡乐门首领里什达出的。其他小矮人对您卑鄙的报复也大都归咎于老姜在他们当中散布的谣言。我来告诉您是怎么回事儿吧，前天晚上我们那烦人的午夜例会刚散，我就往家走，没走几步，突然发现我把烟斗落在开会的地方了。我这烟斗可是个好玩意儿，陪着我好些年头了，于是我就回去找。我正要回我刚才的座位那里看看（四周一片漆黑），这个时候我听见喵的一声猫叫，还有一个卡乐门人的声音说着‘过来……小点儿声说话’，于是我站在那里一动不动，像冻住了似的。这两个家伙就是老姜和塔尔坎贵族里什达。‘我尊敬的塔尔坎，’大黄猫用他那柔滑的声音说，‘我就是想明确一下，关于阿斯兰和塔什分毫不差这件事，咱们各是什么意图。’‘最睿智的猫咪，毫无疑问，’另一方说，‘你已经了解我的用意。’‘那你的意思是’，老姜说，‘阿斯兰和塔什压根儿就不存在？’‘这事只要有点见识的都知道，’塔尔坎说，‘这样我们就能达成共识了吧。’大黄猫咕噜了一声，‘你有没有像我一样，对这只无尾猿有点烦了？’‘那贪婪的蠢货，’另一方说，‘不过我们目前必须得利用他，你和我要把所有事秘密地准备好，确保无尾猿按照我们的意愿行事。’‘从纳尼亚挑一些更有见识的人加入我们的阵营岂不是更好，只要有点苗头，我们就一个一个把他们拉拢过来’，老姜说，‘无尾猿的秘密一旦暴露，那些信仰阿斯兰的动物随时会倒戈。反倒是那些既不信仰阿斯兰，也不信仰塔什，眼睛只盯着自身利益的人和那些借着纳尼亚成为卡乐门属国，想从蒂斯罗克那儿捞一笔的人最为牢靠。’‘机智的猫咪，’那位首领说，‘但是选人的时候要多加小心啊。’”

小矮人讲着讲着，天色似乎变了。他们坐下来的时候还是一片晴朗，而此时，迷糊冻得瑟瑟发抖，珠儿不安地转过头，吉尔抬头看着天空。

“乌云密布啊。”吉尔说。

“而且还特别冷！”迷糊说。

“以狮王之名，真是冷得要命啊！”缇利安边说边朝手上哈气，“呸，什么东西这么难闻？”

“唷！”尤斯塔斯倒吸了一口气，“闻着像什么东西死了，附近有只死鸟吗？我们之前怎么没有发觉呢？”

珠儿猛地从地上站了起来，用他头上的角一边指一边大叫道：

“看啊！快看！快看！”

随后他们六个都看到了，大家脸上都露出极度惊慌的表情。

第八章
老鹰带来的讯息

林中空地远处，树影之间有个东西在动，正慢慢地往北方滑翔。第一眼看到时，你想必会错把它当成烟，因为那团东西是灰白色的，而且透过它还能看到其他东西。但那腐尸般的气味并不是烟味。还有，它的形状是保持不变的，并不像烟那样起伏翻涌、曲折缭绕。粗略看上去，那东西通体是人形，不过它长了个鸟头，而且是那种用弯形利喙捕食的猎鸟。它的四条手臂高高举过头顶，齐齐向北方伸展着，好像要把整个纳尼亚攥进掌心。它的手指，一共二十根，统统像他的喙一样弯，而且上面长得不是人的指甲，而是又尖又长的鸟的利爪。它并不是在草地上行走，而是在草地上空盘旋，所经之处，身下的草似乎都枯萎了。

只看了那东西一眼，迷糊就吓得惊声尖叫起来，撒腿就往堡垒跑。连吉尔（你们都知道，她胆子可不小）也连忙用手遮住双眼，不敢再看。其他人目视着它进入右边浓密的树林，直到消失，足足有一分钟。后来太阳出来了，鸟儿又开始了欢唱。

他们一行也陆续回过神来，原地活动了一下。刚才那东西尚在视野之内的时候，大家都像雕像一样一动不动。

“那是个什么东西？”尤斯塔斯低语道。

“我以前看见过一次，”缇利安说，“不过它当时是刻在石头上的，而且表面镀金，眼睛的位置镶着纯质钻石。我那会儿是去蒂斯罗克在塔什班的宫殿做客，当时比你们也大不了多少。蒂斯罗克带我去了塔什的神庙，我亲眼看到这个东西被刻在了祭坛上。”

“那……那东西难道是塔什？”尤斯塔斯问。

缇利安没有回答他，而是轻轻把手臂搭在吉尔肩头，说道：“你没事吧，小姑娘？”

“没……没事，”吉尔说着把手从苍白的脸上移开，尝试着微笑，“我真没事，刚刚只不过是觉得有点恶心。”

“那也就是说，”独角兽说道，“塔什真的存在。”

“没错，”那个小矮人说，“无尾猿这个傻蛋，他并不相信塔什，他造下的孽一定会被加倍奉还的。他不是想找塔什吗？塔什这不就来了。”

“他——我是说——那个东西，去哪儿了？”吉尔问。

“到北面纳尼亚腹地去了，”缇利安说，“它是冲我们来的，他们召唤了它，它就真的来了。”

“哈哈，哈哈，哈哈！”小矮人一边咯咯乐，一边搓着他毛茸茸的双手，“这对无尾猿可是重磅惊喜，人们不该召唤出恶魔，除非他们的心和嘴巴一样恶毒。”

“可谁知道无尾猿能不能看见塔什呢？”珠儿说。

“迷糊跑哪儿去了？”尤斯塔斯突然问。

大家呼喊着迷糊的名字，吉尔还绕到堡垒的另一面去看看他到底在不在。

大家实在都找累了，这个时候，只见门口小心翼翼地探出迷糊的大灰脑袋，他说：“那东西真走了吗？”最后大家把他拽出来的时候，他还是浑身打着哆嗦，就像雷暴前受惊的小狗。

“现在我明白了，”迷糊说，“我真是一头大坏驴，我就不该听诡谲的，我从没想过会发生这样的事。”

“但凡你用自怨自艾的工夫做点聪明事儿——”尤斯塔斯刚一开口就被吉尔打断了。

“行了，你就放过可怜的迷糊吧，”她说，“错了就错了，好吗，亲爱的迷糊？”说完，她亲了亲他的鼻子。

尽管刚刚所见令大家胆战心惊，不过现在大家又重新坐下来，继续聊了起来。

珠儿知之甚微，毕竟他被俘获后，一直都被绑在马厩后面，敌人的密谋他自然听不到。为了逼他承认每天夜里从马厩里出来的是阿斯兰，敌人们狠命踢他（他有时也踢回去），对他严刑拷打，甚至威胁他的生命。若不是成功获救，第二天早上他本该被处决的，所以他并不知道那只小羊最后怎么样了。

现在需要他们定夺的问题是，到底是重回马厩山，把迷糊的样貌公之于众，让纳尼亚子民都看看自己是怎么被骗的，还是悄悄东行，与半人马龙威特从皇城凯尔帕拉维尔调来的精锐部队会合，从而用武力镇压无尾猿和卡乐门人。缇利安自己更倾向于选第一个计划，他实在看不得自己的子民任由无尾猿肆意蹂躏。但是，另一方面，昨天夜里小矮人们的反应对他来说是个警告，他也不敢轻举妄动。目前看来，就算把迷糊亮出来，谁也拿不准民众会有何反应。况且，还要对付那些卡乐门士兵，波金说他们差不多有三十个人呢。缇利安可以肯定的是，如果纳尼亚子民全数加入他的战队，那么他、珠儿、孩子们加上波金（迷糊可能出不了什么力）就会有很大希望战胜卡乐门人；可如果包括那些矮人在内，要是半数的纳尼亚人都坐视不管该怎么办？或者甚至与他为敌呢？风险太大了，还有那个云状的塔什，它又会搞什么鬼呢？

后来，波金提出来说，把无尾猿晾在那里一两天收拾这个烂摊子也未尝不可。迷糊不在，他也就没办法带出来给大家看了。不管是无尾猿还是老姜，想圆这个谎都不容易。一旦动物们连着好几夜反复要求见阿斯兰，而他又带不出来阿斯兰，那么即便是头脑最简单的动物，也能感觉出不对劲。

最终，他们一致决定，眼下最好的方法是去和龙威特会合。

大家达成共识之后，所有人都更加精神抖擞。我认为这并不是因为他们害怕开战，他们不怕打仗（吉尔和尤斯塔斯可能有点怕）。但是我猜想那只忽隐忽现的恐怖鸟头怪现在十有八九在马厩山上空出没，能躲开他一会儿，在每个人内心深处着实是件幸事。不管怎么样，下定决心是一件让人高兴的事。

缇利安提议让大家最好卸掉伪装，因为他们这会儿也不想被别人误以为是卡乐门人，搞不好遇上纳尼亚良民还会遭到攻击。于是小矮人就从灶台里抠出一团煤灰，从油罐子里掏出点给剑和矛头润滑的油，搅在一起搞出了一团看上去让人很反胃的东西。然后，他们卸下卡乐门的铠甲，走到溪边。那团脏兮兮的东西揉在脸上也会像肥皂一样起泡。缇利安和两个孩子跪在水边，用力擦洗着后脖子，一边把泡沫冲洗掉，一边呼呼地喘气，这其乐融融的一幕，充满了家一般的温馨。他们回堡垒的时候，脸上都是粉扑扑、亮闪闪的，就像参加派对之前精心梳洗过一样。他们以纳尼亚的行头重新武装齐整，配上了直剑和三角盾。“这才是我，”缇利安不禁感叹，“感觉舒服多了，真正的我又回来了，这样才像个顶天立地的人。”

迷糊一个劲儿地求大家能不能把狮子皮从它身上扒下来，他说捂着这张皮太热了，而且堆在他后背上很不舒服，让它看起来特别傻。不过大家都说他还得再穿一会儿，虽然说现在要先去与龙威特会合，不过早晚还是要他穿着这一身在所有动物面前亮个相的。

吃剩下的鸽肉和兔肉没有拿走的必要，他们就带了些饼干上路。缇利安把门一锁，他们在堡垒的休整时光也就到此为止了。

下午两点刚过，他们便出发了，那一天称得上是那年春天里第一个非常温暖的日子。树木的嫩芽和昨天相比冒出了好长一截，雪莲花虽已凋落，可几朵迎春花吐露着芬芳。斜阳穿过林间，鸟儿唱着喜悦的歌，流水声依旧潺潺不绝于耳（虽然常常看不见流水）。此情此景下，你很难联想到塔什这种恐怖的东西，孩子们都感觉这才是真正的纳尼亚。缇利安走在前头，心情也渐渐放松了下来，哼唱起一支古老的纳尼亚行军歌的副歌部分：

嗬，隆隆响，隆隆响，

响鼓隆咚锵。

走在国王身后的是尤斯塔斯和小矮人波金。波金正给尤斯塔斯介绍纳尼亚花草树木和鸟类的名称，这些尤斯塔斯都还没听说过。他也会给波金讲讲它们在英国都叫什么名。

迷糊走在他俩身后，驴子后面是吉尔和珠儿，他俩并排走得很近。吉尔可以说是爱上了独角兽。她觉得独角兽是她见过的最华贵、最精致、最优雅得体的动物了，事实也差不多是这样。他讲起话来温柔、细腻，让你很难相信他在战场上能有多么强悍威猛。

“真不错！”吉尔说，“就这么走走真好，真希望咱们会有更多类似的历险。可惜纳尼亚最近发生了太多事，不太平啊。”

听完这话，独角兽觉得吉尔是被最近接二连三的意外误导了，于是就给她讲起纳尼亚的往昔。他说只有在纳尼亚动荡不安之时，亚当和夏娃的后代才会从他们自己的奇异世界进入纳尼亚，但是她不能认定纳尼亚总是处于危机动乱之中。在他们两次到访之间，纳尼亚历经了成百上千年的和平岁月，国王更迭，国家在他们的统治下长治久安。国王们的名字和年号或许被遗忘，他们在任期间也没有发生什么值得被载入史册的事件。接着，独角兽又对她讲起了曾经的女王和英雄，这一切她闻所未闻。他说起那位生活在白女巫和百年寒冬时代以前的白天鹅女王，她的美丽是那么夺目，她的脸庞但凡倒映在林间湖水中，就会射出璀璨如星辰的光，把黑夜照亮一年零一天。他说起木月兔的长耳朵是多么灵敏，就算坐在大锅潭边，大瀑布倾泻而下，掀起一阵如雷的响动，木月兔依然能够听清楚远在凯尔帕拉维尔的人们在讲什么悄悄话。他还说起万王之祖弗兰克大帝的第九代后裔盖尔国王，讲他如何去东海远航，从恶龙手中夺下孤独岛，作为回报，那里的百姓把孤独岛赠予盖尔国王，永远成为纳尼亚版图的一部分。整整一个世纪，纳尼亚王国洋溢着幸福，唯一能记得的尽是盛大的舞蹈、宴席和骑士比武，日子过得一天比一天好。珠儿一边讲着，纳尼亚绵延千年的祥和图景一点点地在吉尔脑海里架构起来。那感觉就像你站在一座高山上，俯瞰一片满是森林、河流和玉米田的富饶平原。这片平原在你眼前不断地延伸，直到远处才渐渐变得黯淡、模糊。吉尔说：

“噢，真希望咱们能尽快收拾这只无尾猿，这样我们就能回到以前的好日子了。我还希望欢乐能在纳尼亚一直延续下去，直到永远。我们的那个世界，有一天会走到尽头，而纳尼亚或许不会。珠儿，你说纳尼亚如果能像你讲的那样生生不息，该多好啊！”

“小妹妹，不是这样的，”珠儿说，“除了阿斯兰自己的世界，所有世界都会走向陨灭。”

“唉，无论如何，”吉尔说，“我希望那是几千几万几亿年之后的事——哎？怎么回事儿？我们停下来干吗？”

国王、尤斯塔斯和矮人同时望向天空。吉尔不禁一阵胆寒，她想起不久前看过的恐怖东西。然而这次天上飞过的可不是塔什，他身形不大，在蓝天的映衬下通体是黑色的。

“我敢发誓，”独角兽说，“看他飞行的样子，肯定是一只能言鸟。”

“我也这么想，”国王说，“不过他是朋友，还是无尾猿派来的探子啊？”

“陛下，依我看”，矮人说，“他看起来像是老鹰千里眼。”

“我们要不要躲到树底下去？”尤斯塔斯问。

“别，”缇利安说，“我们最好站得像石头一样纹丝不动，只要我们稍微动一下，他从远处立马就能看到。”

“看啊！他转身过来了，他已经发现我们了，”吉尔说着，“他正打着大圈朝我们俯冲下来。”

“小姑娘，张弓搭箭，”缇利安对吉尔说，“我不下令千万别放箭，他有可能是我们的朋友。”

如果已经有谁知道接下来会发生什么，看着这只巨大的鸟优雅从容地从上空滑翔而下本是件挺好的事。他降落在距缇利安几英尺开外的峭壁上，低下他的羽冠，用那种老鹰的奇特声音说：“见过陛下。”

“你好，千里眼，”缇利安说，“既然你以‘陛下’敬我，那么我就有理由相信你不是无尾猿和那个冒牌阿斯兰的追随者。对你的到来我非常高兴。”

“陛下，”老鹰开口说，“听了我带来的讯息，您就不会那么高兴了。这件事比您经历过的任何劫难都还要惨重。”

听到老鹰的这番话，缇利安的心跳仿佛停止了，他咬紧牙关说出了三个字：“接着说。”

“我亲见了两件事，”千里眼说，“这头一件事，卡乐门人占领了凯尔帕拉维尔，四处都是纳尼亚人的尸体。你们皇都的城垛上升起了蒂斯罗克的旗帜，纳尼亚的子民已经弃城逃往林中，凯尔帕拉维尔是被海上来的敌人攻陷的，前天夜里，二十艘卡乐门巨舰已经排布在城头。”

谁也说不出一句话来。

“第二件事，我在距凯尔帕拉维尔十五英里的地方，看到了半人马龙威特的尸体，他身侧中了一支卡乐门箭。我伴他度过了生命中的最后时刻，他让我给陛下您带一句话：所有世界都会走向毁灭，而光荣的牺牲这份宝藏，没有人会穷得买不起。”

缄默良久，缇利安一声叹息：“纳尼亚覆灭了。”

第九章
马厩山上的大会

许久，他们都讲不出一句话，也没有流下一滴眼泪。直至独角兽跺了跺蹄子，晃动了鬃毛，才打破了沉默。

“陛下，”他说，“现在没有必要商议下去了，看来无尾猿的计划比我们预料的要周密得多。不可否认的是，他一直暗中勾结蒂斯罗克。计划一旦狮子皮到手，便发信号示意蒂斯罗克，让他的海军随时准备攻打凯尔帕拉维尔，直至占领整个纳尼亚王国。现在我们七个别无他法，只能暂返马厩山，向大家宣布这一真相，并且接受阿斯兰赋予我们的这一场试炼。若伟大的奇迹幸而降临，我们将击败那些跟诡谲在一块的三十个卡乐门士兵，然后再次作战，与凯尔帕拉维尔派出的更多敌人死战到底。”

缇利安点点头。他转向孩子们，说：“现在，朋友们，你们该返回自己的世界了。毫无疑问，你们已经完成了你们的使命。”

“可……可是我们也没做什么啊。”吉尔颤抖着答道。这绝非是恐惧所引起的战栗，只是一切都显得那么糟糕。

“不，”国王说，“当我昨天晚上被绑在树上，你像一条蛇似的一路潜行至我的面前，解开了我的绳索，并解救了迷糊。而你，尤斯塔斯，也手刃了一个士兵。但你们太过年轻，远不能像其他人一样，参与这场发生在今晚或者三天后的残酷战斗。我恳求你们——不，我命令你们——回到自己的地方。如果让这样年轻的勇士与我并肩战斗，我会感到羞愧的。”

“不，不，不，”吉尔说道（一脸煞白的她，开口时突然涨红了脸，然后脸色又恢复至原先的煞白），“我们不会逃离的，我不在乎您怎么说。不管发生什么事，我们会一直伴您左右。你说是吗，尤斯塔斯？”

“那是当然，而您也没必要为此而烦恼，”尤斯塔斯答道，双手插兜（他已无从注意披着盔甲做出这个动作有多奇怪），“因为，你瞧，我们也没有选择的余地，讨论回去有什么好处呢？我们怎么回？我们可不会回去的魔法呀！”

这句话很有说服力，但此时此刻，尤斯塔斯的这套说辞让吉尔很是恼火。他就喜欢在别人激动的时候摆出一副很明白事理的样子。

缇利安也意识到这两个年轻人已无法返乡（除非阿斯兰突然降临将他们带回去），下一步他本计划让他们穿越南部山脉暂避于亚钦兰，在那儿他们可能会安全一点。但他们并不知晓回去的路，而且也没有人能护送他们。另外，正如波金所说，一旦卡乐门人占据了整个纳尼亚，他们一定会在一个星期左右将战火烧至亚钦兰，而蒂斯洛克一直希望这些北方国家臣服于他。最后，在尤斯塔斯和吉尔的恳求下，缇利安同意了让他们加入这场战斗，或者称之为“阿斯兰赋予他们的这场冒险”更为明智。

国王首先思考的是大家在夜晚降临之前不应先回到马厩山——提到这座山的名字他们就觉得厌恶。但是矮人告诉他们，如果他们在白天抵达那里，那个地方可能早已荒无人烟，除了驻扎在那儿的卡乐门哨兵。动物们早已被诡谲（和老姜）口中怒火滔天的阿斯兰或塔什神吓破了胆，他们不敢接近马厩山——除非被召集参加这些可怕的午夜大会。卡乐门人从不擅长居于林中。波金认为，即使在白天，他们也可以轻松地在马厩后面的某个地方走动而不被发现。当夜幕降临，就是无尾猿召集所有的野兽开会和卡乐门人当值守夜的时间了，那时要藏起来就难多了。大会开始时，他们可以悄悄地把迷糊留在马厩后面，这样完全不会有人看见他，直到他们揭露真相的那一刻再把他牵出来示众。这显然是最好的办法，因为他们唯一的机会就是突然在纳尼亚的子民面前点破这一谎言。

大家都对这个计划表示赞成。一行人迈上了新的路线——由西北方向行进到那座让人反感的山。老鹰时而盘旋在队伍的上空，时而待在迷糊的背上。没有谁——包括国王在内（除非情势所迫）——会想着骑在独角兽身上。

这一次，吉尔和尤斯塔斯走在一起。他们恳求加入时，勇气充盈了他们的全身，但现在他们不再像之前那样无畏了。

“波尔，”尤斯塔斯低声说，“不妨告诉你，我还是有点紧张的。”

“哦，你没有事的，斯科拉博，”吉尔说，“你是一位杰出的战士，可是我——如果你想知道真相的话，我在发抖。”

“哦，发抖这种事很正常啊，”尤斯塔斯说道，“我感觉我可能会得病。”

“拜托你，不要再说这样的话了。”吉尔说。

他们沉默了一两分钟。

过了一会儿尤斯塔斯又开了口：“波尔”。

“怎么了？”她说。

“如果我们在这个世界阵亡了会怎么样？”

“我想我们会死吧。”

“但我的意思是，我们自己的世界会发生什么？我们醒来之后是会发现自己重新回到那列火车上，还是会消失得悄无声息？或者我们在英格兰也成了死人了？”

“天哪，我从来没有想过这些。”

“如果彼得和其他人看到我向窗外挥手，然后当火车进站时却找不到我们，那该多奇怪呀！或者到时候他们发现两个——我的意思是，我们在英格兰那里也死了。”

“啊！”吉尔说，“这么想太可怕了。”

“对我们来说这没什么吧，”尤斯塔斯说，“我们应该不会在那儿的。”

“我其实希望——不，我不该这么想。”吉尔说。

“你要说什么？”

“我本来想说，我希望我们压根儿就没来过这里。但我现在不这么想了，就算战死也不这么想了。我宁愿为了纳尼亚而战死，也不愿待在家里直至又老又蠢，也许还得坐轮椅。最后还不是一样死掉。”

“或者死在英国铁路上！”

“为什么这么说呢？”

“那个可怕的混蛋出现时——就是那个把我们扔到纳尼亚的混蛋，我还以为要出一桩铁路事故呢。所以我发现我们到了这儿的时候还蛮开心的。”

当吉尔和尤斯塔斯沉浸在讨论中时，其他人也在商量他们的计划。他们振奋多了，因为他们现在只想着今晚要采取什么行动，而纳尼亚王国发生了什么——她所有的荣耀和欢乐都一去不复返这件事——被他们抛在了脑后。尽管不说话时，这种想法会再次占据他们的脑海，让他们又变得愁苦万分，但他们继续不停地说着话。波金对他们晚上的行动真的感到很高兴。他确信野猪和大熊都会立刻站回他们的阵营，或许所有的狗也会支持他们。他也不相信所有其他的小矮人都会附和格力弗。以火光为信号在树丛中打游击，对处在下风的他们来说是一个优势。再往下想，如果今晚能够获胜，那么几天后在与卡乐门的主力军作战时也就不至丧命了。

为什么不隐蔽在树林里，甚或在大瀑布以外的西部荒原中居住，像法外之徒一般生活呢？然后他们会变得越来越强大，因为每天都会有新的能言兽和亚钦兰人加入他们的军队。到了最后，他们从隐蔽之处进发，将所有卡乐门人（那时候他们早已放松警惕）扫荡出国，纳尼亚将会复国。毕竟，米拉兹国王在位期间就发生过这样的事情！

缇利安听到了这一切，他心想：“那么怎么对付塔什呢？”他本能地觉得这些事情没一样会实现，但他嘴上却没这么说。

他们离马厩山又近了一步，所有人都十分自觉地保持安静。真正的丛林隐蔽时刻开始了。从整个山林映入眼帘的那一刻起，他们足足花了两个多小时才绕至马厩后面。人们无从准确还原这段路程到底发生了什么，除非有人一页一页详尽地记下来。从每一处隐蔽到下一处隐蔽都可称作一段单独的冒险，而每段中间都伴随很长的等待以及几次虚惊。如果你是一个敏锐的侦察兵或者一个尽职的丛林向导，你会十分清楚这种感觉。大约日落时分，他们在马厩后面十五码处的一丛冬青树下歇息，这个地方非常安全。嚼了几块饼干之后，他们全都躺下稍事休息了。

接下来就是最难熬的阶段——静待时机。幸运的是，孩子们还能睡上几个钟头，但晚上一冷下来他们就醒了。更糟糕的是，他们渴得不行，却连口水都喝不上。迷糊还能撑着站起来，他紧张不安地颤抖着，什么也没说。缇利安的脑袋靠在珠儿的肚子上，安睡得像在凯尔帕拉维尔寝宫里的床上一样，直到一阵敲锣声响起，他才醒过来。国王坐起身来，远远看到马厩的另一侧有些许火光。他知道，时机到了。

“亲吻我，珠儿，”他说，“这就是我们一起度过的最后一个夜晚了。如果之前——不管大事小事——我有冒犯你的举动，现在请你原谅我好吗？”

“我亲爱的陛下，”独角兽说，“我倒希望您有过，而我现在就可以原谅您的过错了。别了，我们俩有过太多的欢乐时刻，如果阿斯兰让我选择的话，生，我亦是此生；死，我亦将和大家一同赴死。”

他们叫醒了千里眼，他睡觉的时候把脑袋缩在翅膀下面（这让他看起来好像根本没有脑袋）。一行人悄悄地爬向马厩，并把迷糊留在了马厩后面（这一过程大家都是好声好气的，因为没人再迁怒于他），告诉他在有人来接他之前不要乱动，然后他们埋伏在马厩的一个角落里。

篝火点着不久，刚刚才烧得旺了些，离他们的位置只有几步之遥。一大群纳尼亚野兽都聚集在火光的另一侧，所以缇利安一开始看得不是很清楚。尽管他能看到许多双反射着火光的眼睛，就像你开车时兔子或猫的眼睛反射着汽车的灯光。正当缇利安站定，锣声便停止了，在他左边某处出现了三个黑影。其中一位是卡乐门的里什达·塔尔坎上尉。紧接其后的是无尾猿。他用一只爪子抓着塔尔坎的手，不停地呜咽着，喃喃地说：“不要走那么快，走那么快干什么，我可不舒服了。哦，我头痛欲裂！半夜里开大会真是太过分了，我们猿类晚上可起不来。我又不是老鼠或蝙蝠。哦，我的脑袋好疼。”在猿另一侧的那位走得优雅又庄严，他的尾巴直接翘了起来，看来是大黄猫老姜没错了。他们朝篝火走去，离缇利安很近，以至于如果他们朝这个方向看，立刻就会看到缇利安。幸运的是，他们没有发现。国王听到里什达低声对老姜说：

“现在，老猫，到你的位置上去，做好你分内的事。”

“喵呜，喵呜，包在我身上！”老姜应道。然后他走过篝火，坐在集合完毕的兽群中的第一排；坐在观众中间，就像你想的那样。

实际上，让旁人看的话，整个过程不如说像在剧院里看戏。纳尼亚的兽群就像坐在座位上的观众；马厩前的小草地就像是舞台，那是篝火燃烧着的地方，也是无尾猿和卡乐门向兽群训话的地方；而马厩就像舞台后面的布景，缇利安和他的朋友们就像演员从后台窥视观众一样。这是一个绝佳的位置。如果他们当中任何一个人走入火光中，所有的目光都会立刻聚焦在他身上；从另一角度来说，只要他们悄悄站在马厩墙壁的阴影中，别人绝不会注意到的。

里什达·塔尔坎拽着无尾猿走近篝火。他们俩转身面对兽群，这就意味着他们的背影是朝着缇利安和他的朋友们的。

“现在，猴子，”里什达·塔尔坎低声说道，“从你的聪明脑瓜里找点聪明词儿，然后把头抬起来。”他边说着，边用脚尖从后面戳了戳诡谲。

“别碰我，”诡谲小声说道。但是他坐起身来，用一个更响亮的声音打破了寂静——“你们都听着，现在发生了一件可怕的事情，一件邪恶的事情，那是在纳尼亚从未发生过的最邪恶的事情，阿斯兰对此——”

“笨蛋，是塔什兰。”里什达·塔尔坎低声说。

“当然，我是说塔什兰，”无尾猿补充道，“对此非常生气。”

现场安静得可怕，大家都在等待无尾猿说下去，等着听是什么大麻烦。马厩墙边的小分队也屏住了呼吸。到底是什么事呢？

“是的，”无尾猿接着讲了下去，“就在此刻，这个麻烦精就在我们中间——在我身后的马房里——一个邪恶的野兽竟然做了一件大坏事。这种事即使是在千里之外，也没有人敢做。它披上了狮子皮，在树林里游荡，假装自己是阿斯兰。”

在那一瞬间吉尔在想，无尾猿是不是疯了？难道他会坦白所有的真相吗？野兽群中传来恐慌和愤怒的骚动。“该死！”他们咆哮起来，“他是谁？他在哪里？让我一口咬死他！”

“就在昨晚发现的，”无尾猿尖叫道，“但他逃走了，他是一头驴！一头普通又卑鄙的驴！如果你们当中有谁看到了那头驴——”

“该死！”野兽们咆哮着，“我们会抓住他，我们会把他逮起来，最好别让我们看见他。”

吉尔看着国王：他的嘴巴张开着，脸上写满了恐惧。然后，她明白了这群魔鬼般狡猾的敌人所设下的诡计。用一点点真相把水搅浑，他们的谎言就更加密不透风了。现在要是告诉野兽们，敌人用被装扮成狮子的驴来欺骗他们，没有半点好处。那只无尾猿只会说，“这正是我所说的。”向他们展示狮子皮下的迷糊又能怎么样呢？他们只会把迷糊撕成碎片。“这招不就是釜底抽薪吗？”尤斯塔斯低声说道。缇利安说：“这简直抽走了我们的立锥之地。”“鬼才，真是魔鬼般的狡猾！”波金补上一句，“我敢发誓，这个新的谎言准是老姜的杰作。”

第十章
谁将进马厩？

吉尔觉得耳朵有些痒痒的。原来是独角兽珠儿正在用它的宽马嘴对她悄声说着什么。她听清珠儿说的事情后马上点了点头，然后蹑手蹑脚地回到迷糊所在的地方。她迅速而平静地切断了将狮子皮绑在他身上的最后几根绳子。在无尾猿又编了一个弥天大谎之后，他可不能被逮住！她想将狮子皮藏远一点，但它实在是太重了。她唯一能做的是用脚将它踢进最茂密的灌木丛中。然后，她做了个手势，让迷糊跟紧她。他们随即加入大部队中。

诡谲再次发言了。

“就在这样一件可怕的事情之后，阿斯兰——塔什兰——比以往任何时候都更加愤怒。他说他已经赐予你们太多的福祉——他每天晚上都会出来巡视一番。看吧，他以后不会出来了。”

对无尾猿的这番说法，动物们无不是报以怒号和大哭，并伴有痛苦的尖叫和低吟，但突然间兽群里爆发出一阵不太合群的大笑声。

“听听这猴子说的话，”有声音喊道，“我们现在明白了，为什么他不把尊贵的阿斯兰请出来，我来告诉你们原因：因为这猴子从来没有见过阿斯兰，除了那头披着狮子皮的老驴，他啥也没有。现在连那头驴也没了，他根本不知道该咋办了。”

缇利安看不清火焰另一侧的那副面孔，但他猜测是格力弗，也就是矮人族的首领在发声。一秒钟后国王对这一点确信无疑，因为所有矮人的声音都加入进来，他们唱道：“不知道咋办！不知道咋办！不知道咋办，咋办！”

“肃静！”里什达·塔尔坎怒喝道，“肃静，泥土的子孙们！听我说，你们这些纳尼亚子民，要不然我就要吩咐我的战士们用刀剑让你们肃静了。诡谲大人已经告诉过你们那头恶驴的可怕行径了。你们难道认为，就因为他的缘故马厩里没有真正的塔什兰吗？你们真的相信吗？小心你们的脑袋！”

“不，我们相信你。”大多数野兽都喊道。但是小矮人们说：“好吧，大老黑，就算你说得对。来吧，猴子，给我们看看马厩里有什么，眼见为实嘛。”

动物们纷纷安静下来，无尾猿说：“你们小矮人自认为你们很聪明，是吗？但你们的脑袋还是转得不够快啊，我从来没说你们就见不到塔什兰了，谁想见，谁就能见到他。”

整个会场又陷入了沉默。过了差不多一分钟，有一只熊缓慢而困惑地问道：

“我不太明白这一切，”它抱怨道，“我以为你说——”

“你以为！”诡谲重复了一遍，“就像任何人回想的时候都会曲解到底发生了什么事。其他人，你们也听着。任何人都可以看到塔什兰，但他不会现身，你们必须走进马厩去看他。”

“哦，谢谢，谢谢，谢谢，”一大群动物喊道，“我们想要的就是这样，我们可以进去面对面地看看他了，然后他就会像以往一样仁慈了。”鸟儿们叽叽喳喳，狗群兴奋地吠着。一瞬间场面陷入混乱，大家都吵吵嚷嚷，好像他们要在一秒钟之内冲上前去，一起挤进马厩。但诡谲大叫道：

“回去！肃静！还没那么快。”

野兽们停了下来，有些野兽将爪子举到半空中，有的摇着尾巴，他们的脑袋都转向了诡谲。

“我以为你说。”那只熊又发话了，但是诡谲打断了他。

“任何人都可以进去，”他说，“但是，一次一个，谁先进去呢？他可没说他现在非常仁慈，自从他前几天晚上吞下了邪恶的国王，就老是舔着嘴唇，今天早晨他一直在怒吼，我今晚可不太想走进这个马厩。但你们要是愿意的话，谁想第一个进去呢？如果他将你整个吞下，或者用他眼中的恐怖能量将你炸成灰烬，可别怪在我头上。得了，谁第一个进去？你们矮人先进去一个吧？

“太好了，实在是太棒了，进去就被弄死了！”格里弗冷笑着说，“我们怎么知道你在里面做了什么手脚？”

“荒谬！”诡谲大声叫道，“所以你开始觉得那里有别的什么东西，是吗？就在一分钟以前，你们这些野兽闹得够响的，现在怎么哑巴了？谁要第一个进去？”

野兽们面面相觑，开始从马厩周围后退。现在只有几条尾巴还在晃动。诡谲大摇大摆地走了过来，嘲笑他们。“哈哈哈！”他尖声笑了起来，“我以为你们都很想面对面地见到塔什兰本尊！又改主意了，对吗？”

缇利安低下头，试图听清吉尔在他耳边说的悄悄话。“您觉得马厩里到底有什么？”她问。“谁知道呢？”缇利安答道，“两个手持利刃的卡乐门武士，说不定大门两边各一个吧。”“您就没想过，”吉尔说，“它可能……你知道的……是那个我们见过的恐怖怪物吗？”“塔什神他本人吗？”缇利安耳语道，“搞不清楚，但你要勇敢起来，孩子，我们就在真阿斯兰的爪子之间，被他庇护着呢。”

令人惊讶的事发生了，大黄猫老姜用他那冷静而透彻的声音，就像他对此毫不兴奋似的说道：“你们要是愿意的话，我进去看看。”

每只动物都转过身来，将目光对准了猫。“这就是他们的狡猾之处，陛下，”波金对国王说，“这只天杀的猫就是这一出阴谋的核心人物。无论马厩里有什么，都不会伤害到他，我敢担保，然后这老猫出来时，就会说他看到了一些奇迹。”

缇利安腾不出时间回答他。无尾猿假意叫猫上前来。“哟呵！”诡谲说，“所以，你，一只无礼的老猫，竟然想当面一睹圣颜。那就上来吧，我会为你打开门，如果你脸上的胡须吓掉了，不要怪我没提醒你，那是你自己的问题。”

猫站起身，迈着谨慎而优雅的脚步走出兽群，尾巴翘在空中，每一根毛都在他柔滑的皮毛上应在的位置。经过篝火时，他离缇利安如此之近——缇利安的肩膀就靠在马厩那端的墙壁上，他能清楚地看到老猫的脸。他那双绿色的大眼睛一眨也不眨。（“镇定自若，”尤斯塔斯嘟囔着，“他知道自己没有什么可害怕的。”）无尾猿咯咯笑着，扮着鬼脸，移步到猫身旁，举起爪子，转动门闩打开了门。缇利安以为能听到猫通过门口走入黑暗时咕噜咕噜的叫声。

“啊咿啊咿嗷呜噫！”那是你所听过的最惊悚的猫叫声，足以让每个人都吓得跳起来。就像那种能让你在半夜被吓醒的猫在屋顶上打闹或者发情时的声音一般，你知道那有多么吓人。

更可怕的一幕发生了。老姜以他最快的速度从马厩里仓皇逃出，将无尾猿撞了个四脚朝天。如果你事先不知道他是一只猫的话，你会以为那是一道姜黄色的闪电。他跃过开阔的草地，回到兽群中。大家都不想被这个状态下的老姜撞着，赶紧往左右闪开。猫冲向一棵树，急速地围着树打转，身体便倒挂在了树上。他的尾巴倒竖了起来，几乎和他的身子一般大小了。老姜的眼睛像是能射出青色的火焰，他背上的每一根毛都竖了起来。

“我想以我的胡子打赌，”波金小声嘀咕，“我想要知道那个畜生到底是在演戏，还是真的在那里边被什么东西吓破了胆！”

“别出声，我的朋友。”缇利安说道，因为卡乐门上尉和老猿也在窃窃私语，他想听听他们在说什么。他啥都没听见，除了听到诡谲又一次呻吟着“我的脑袋，我头疼”，但他觉得，这两个家伙也被猫的这番做法搞糊涂了。

“现在，老姜，”卡乐门上尉开口了，“别再乱喊乱叫了，告诉他们你看到了什么。”

“啊咿——啊咿——嗷呜——嗷哇！”猫大叫道。

“你不是能开口讲话吗？”卡乐门上尉说，“停止你的鬼叫，给我好好说话。”

形势更加糟糕了。缇利安非常确定（其他人也一样）那只猫试图诉说着什么，但是除了平常的难听的猫叫声，就像英格兰后院里随便一只生气或受惊的老猫所发出的叫声一样，他的嘴里再没发出其他声音。他哀号得越久，就越不像一只能言兽的样子。其他动物中也爆发出不安的呜咽声和尖叫声。

“看，看！”那只大熊说道，“他讲不出话来，他已经忘记了如何说话！他已经变成了一只哑巴畜生，看看他的脸就知道了。”每个人都觉得确实如此。然后，巨大的恐怖降临在了这些纳尼亚子民中间。因为他们都知道——世界起源之时，当他们还只是一只小鸡、一只小狗或别的什么幼崽时，阿斯兰将纳尼亚的野兽教化为能言兽，并且警告他们如果行为不端，某一天就会退化成原来的样子，就像其他国家里的那些可怜而又无知的禽兽一样。“现在惩罚就要降临到我们头上了！”他们呻吟道。

“开恩啊！开恩啊！”那是野兽们在哭号，“救救我们吧，诡谲大人，您是我们和阿斯兰之间的代言人，您得进去为我们求求情啊。我们不敢了，我们再不敢进去了。”

老姜就这么消失在了树林中。谁也没有再见过他。

缇利安用手扶着他的剑柄，头低垂着。当晚发生的恐怖景象让他不知所措。某一瞬间他想自己最好还是立刻拿起剑来，冲向那群卡乐门人。但转念间他又觉得还是先等等为好，看看会等到什么新的变化。就像现在，一个转折点出现了。

“我的父亲大人。”兽群的左边传出一个清晰而响亮的声音。缇利安马上就知道这是一个卡乐门人，因为在蒂斯罗克的军队里，普通士兵称军官为“我的主人”，但军官称更高级别的将领为“我的父亲大人”。吉尔和尤斯塔斯并不知道这一点，他们就这么看过去，便找到了讲话的人，因为站在兽群边上的缘故，视线要比在兽群中间要好很多，特别是在火光的掩护下他们隐藏在一片黑暗中。那位年轻的武士看起来强壮而高大，其卡乐门式的阴冷傲慢气质中甚至还透出几分英气。

“我的父亲大人，”他对上尉说道，“我也想进马厩看看。”

“肃静，艾梅思，”上尉说道，“谁叫你上前进言的？这种事是你一个孩子可以妄言的吗？”

“我的父亲大人，”艾梅思说，“我的确年少，但我骨子里也流着塔尔坎人的血液，就像您一样，我也是塔什忠诚的仆人，所以就请您……”

“肃静，”里什达·塔尔坎打断了他，“你还当我是你的长官吗？你跟这个马厩没有任何关系，那是为纳尔尼亚的子民而设的。”

“不，我的父亲大人，”艾梅思回答说，“您说他们的阿斯兰和我们的塔什同为一体，如果情况属实的话，那么塔什神也供奉于此，那您怎么说我跟他没有任何关系呢？若能一睹塔什的圣颜，我虽九死亦心向往之。”

“你这个傻瓜，你对此事一无所知，”里什达·塔尔坎回应道，“此事甚为机要。”

艾梅思的神色变得更为坚定。“那塔什和阿斯兰同为一体的事是否属实？”他问道，“难道无尾猿骗了我们吗？”

“当然，他们就是同一位神灵。”无尾猿说。

“猴子，你敢发誓吗？”艾梅思斯说。

“噢，我的天哪！”无尾猿抱怨道，“我希望你们不要再生出事端了，我的脑袋又开始疼了。是的，是的，我可以发誓。”

“那么，我的父亲大人，”艾梅思说，“我决心已定。”

“傻瓜，”上尉刚开口，矮人们立刻喊道：“来吧，黑鬼，你为什么不让他进去？你为什么准许纳尼亚人进去，却让自己的人留在外面？马厩里究竟有什么东西，使得你不想让自己人见上一见？”

缇利安和他的朋友们只能看到里什达·塔尔坎的背影，所以当他耸耸肩膀时，国王他们看不见他脸上的神色如何。他只能说：“请大家做证，我与这个傻瓜的生死并无瓜葛，那你进去吧，莽撞小子，动作快点。”

然后，重复着老姜刚才的动作，艾梅思踏入篝火和马厩之间的草地。他的眼睛闪闪发亮，神情相当庄重，手扶剑柄，矫首昂视。吉尔盯着他的脸时，感觉自己好像快要哭了。珠儿在国王的耳边低声说道：“以阿斯兰圣鬃为名，我几乎喜欢上了这位年轻的战士了，即使他是卡乐门的人。他配得上一位比塔什更仁慈的神灵。”

“我真希望我们知道那里面究竟为何物。”尤斯塔斯说。

艾梅思打开大门，踏进黑暗的马厩。他关上了身后的门。只过了片刻——但感觉上要更久一些——门才再次开启。一个身着卡乐门铠甲的身影摇摇晃晃地闪了出来，向前倾倒在地上，一动不动，门紧接着又关上了。上尉朝他跳了过去，弯下身去盯着他的脸。他起初一脸惊诧，然后恢复了平静，转向兽群，大声呼喊：

“这个莽撞小子完成了他的心愿，他见到了塔什，但现已死去。你们听着，这就是教训。”

“我们听着呢，我们会听话的。”可怜的动物们回应道。但缇利安和他的朋友们盯着那个死去的卡乐门人，然后又面面相觑。因为他们站得如此之近，可以看到远在火堆之后的兽群所看不到的景象：这个死人不是艾梅思。他完全是另外一个人，年龄稍长，身材较为短小臃肿，还留着大胡子。

“哈哈哈，”无尾猿笑道，“还有谁胆敢一试吗？有吗？好吧，因为你们一个个唯唯诺诺的，我来选择下一个。你，野猪！你来吧，卡乐门的兄弟们，快把他请上来，就由他去觐见塔什兰。”

“哦，哼！”野猪哼了一声，直立着站了起来，“你们来啊，试试我的獠牙是否还锋利。”

缇利安看到那头勇敢的能言兽准备为自己一战，而卡乐门的士兵拔出弯刀，一步步向野猪逼近，但是没有人去帮助这位勇士。缇利安内心突然爆发出一股气焰，他不再盘算这是否是出击的最佳时机。

“拔剑出鞘，”他对其他人低声说，“箭在弦上，跟我来。”

就在下一刻，已被吓坏了的纳尼亚子民看到七个黑影在马厩前跳了出来，其中四人身着闪闪发光的盔甲。国王的剑在他的头顶上挥舞着，在火焰的照耀下闪闪发光。他大声呼喊着：

“我是纳尼亚国王缇利安，以阿斯兰的名义，我谨在此以我之行揭露塔什之魔鬼本质和这只恶猿哗众叛国之罪行，以及宣告这些卡乐门人赴死之日。所有真正的纳尼亚人，请与我并肩战斗。难道你们要等着被新主子一个一个地宰杀吗？”

第十一章
战斗进入白热化

里什达·塔尔坎像一道闪电似的跳了回去，以防国王的剑砍到自己。他可不是胆小鬼，如果需要的话，他会独自对阵缇利安和小矮人。但老鹰和独角兽加进来他就打不过了。塔尔坎知道老鹰会飞到他的脸上，啄击他的眼睛，并扑扇翅膀挡住他的视线。他听他的父亲（曾经同纳尼亚人打过仗）讲起过，除了用箭或者长矛，没有人能够与独角兽相匹敌，因为它会借助后腿奋力一跳，然后落到你身上，这样你就得同时对付它的角、蹄子和牙齿的三面进攻。于是他冲进兽群中，站起来大声喊道：

“向我靠拢，向我靠拢，蒂斯罗克的战士，愿我们的君主永存。所有忠诚的纳尼亚人，你们快靠过来，要不然塔什兰的愤怒就要降临在你们头上了！”

他喊的时候，同时发生了另外两件事。无尾猿没有像塔尔坎那么快就觉察到自己身处险境之中。就这一会儿，他一直蹲在火旁，盯着这些跳出来的不速之客。直到缇利安跃上前去，揪住这只狡猾动物的脖子，然后冲回马厩门前，大喊道：“开门！”波金打开了大门。“去喝你的头疼药吧，诡谲！”缇利安说着，把无尾猿投入黑暗中。但是当小矮人再次关上门时，马厩内发出一道耀眼的蓝绿色光芒，大地开始震动，一种奇怪的声音响了起来——那中间混杂着咕噜声和尖叫声，仿佛里面有一只鸣叫不止、声音嘶哑的奇怪大鸟。兽群哀求着，喊道：“塔什兰！挡住我们，别让他看见！”许多野兽倒下身子，还有的用爪子或者翅膀掩住了他们的脸。除了视力绝佳的老鹰千里眼，没有注意到里什达·塔尔坎的脸色。千里眼看见里什达和其他人一样惊讶，露出几近恐惧之色。“看来他也吃了一惊，”千里眼想着，“他呼唤出了他本不相信的神灵。如果神灵当真降临，他会怎么办呢？”

几乎发生在同一时刻的第三件事——当晚唯一一件有利胜局的事情。大会中所有的能言狗（共有十五只）发出欢呼，不停地在国王的身边狂吠。他们大多肩膀壮实、下颚有力。他们的到来就像在海滩上掀起了一阵巨浪，几乎具有把你掀倒的威力。尽管他们会说话，但他们依然具有别的狗所具有的野蛮兽性，并且他们都站起身来，把前爪搭在人们的肩膀上，舔了舔他们的脸，全都喊道：“恭迎国王驾到！恭迎国王驾到！我们会帮助应战的，我们要帮忙，帮忙，帮忙。请陛下明示我们该怎么办，明示我们该怎么做，怎么做，怎么做？”

这精彩的一幕会让你感动得想流泪。他们一直所希冀的事情终于实现了。又过了一会儿，几只小动物（老鼠、鼹鼠和一只松鼠等）也开始嚷了起来。他们欢呼雀跃着说：“这边，这边，还有我们。”然后，熊和野猪也加入了他们的队伍。尤斯塔斯甚至开始觉得，一切都会好起来的。但缇利安观察着四周，注意到只有很少的动物倒戈。

“向我靠拢，向我靠拢啊！”他呼喊道，“我当了你们的国王，你们都变成懦夫了吗？”

“我们不敢，”几十个动物呜咽着，“塔什兰会发怒的，请您替我们挡住塔什兰吧。”

“所有的能言马在哪里？”缇利安对野猪说。

“我们见过，我们见过的，”老鼠们大声叫道，“无尾猿让他们一直干活，他们全部被绑在山脚下。”

“那么你们所有的小家伙，”缇利安说道，“你们这些牙尖齿利的啮齿类朋友，赶紧以最快的速度跑到那儿，帮我看看马儿是否愿意归顺我们这边。如果他们愿意的话，用你们的牙齿啃断绳索，放出马儿并把他们领到这儿来。”

“遵命，陛下。”小小的声音传来，那些眼尖牙利的小家伙摆动着尾巴纷纷离去。缇利安看到他们离去时，露出了慈爱的微笑。但现在该考虑其他事情了，里什达·塔尔坎也在发号施令。

“给我上，”他命令道，“尽量抓活的，把他们扔进或者赶进马厩中。等他们全部进去，用火把马厩点着，作为祭品献给伟大的塔什。”

“哈！”千里眼自说自话，“所以他想通过这种办法让塔什赦免他不虔诚的举动。”

敌方阵营——大约有一半里什达的士兵——现在正在向前逼近，而缇利安几乎没有时间下达命令。

“吉尔，你去左边，在他们上来之前尽可能地射倒他们。野猪和熊，你们俩护着她。波金到我左边，尤斯塔斯来我右边。珠儿，你也来掩护。迷糊，协防右边，用你的蹄子攻击。千里眼，你盘旋而击。你们这些狗就紧随我们身后。在我们交战后进入敌人中间伺机待动。阿斯兰会守护我们的！”

尤斯塔斯站在那里，心跳得很厉害，他希望自己能鼓起勇气。除了这一排面色阴暗、目光炯炯的卡乐门士兵，从来没有任何东西（尽管他见过一条龙和一条水蛇）能让他的血液如此冰冷。那一边是十五个卡乐门人，加上一头纳尼亚公牛，以及一只名叫斯灵诡的狐狸和半兽人锐格。紧接着，他听见左边啪的一声，一个卡乐门士兵摔倒了，然后又是一声，半兽人也倒下了。“哦，干得漂亮，好姑娘！”缇利安说，然后敌人又向他们逼近。

尤斯塔斯记不起接下来的两分钟内发生了什么——简直如同做梦一般（那是你的体温超过三十七度八时的那种感觉），直到他听到里什达·塔尔坎的声音从远处传来：

“收兵，退回到这边来，重新列阵。”

然后尤斯塔斯恢复了知觉，看着卡乐门人匆匆回到他们同伙身边。但不是全部的士兵，因为有两个已被珠儿的角刺穿，倒下了，还有一个倒在了缇利安的剑下。狐狸横尸在自己脚下，尤斯塔斯也不知道是不是自己杀了他。公牛也死了，吉尔的箭头射中了他的一只眼睛，野猪的獠牙也撕开了他的身体。但国王一方也有伤亡。三条狗在战斗中死去，还有一条只剩下三条腿，他痛苦地呜咽着。熊倒在地上，无力地挣扎着。他只能用从喉咙发出的声音低吟着，直到最后他还迷惑不解：“我——我不明白。”他像一个孩子要睡觉时一样，脑袋缓缓倒在草地上，再也不动弹了。

事实上，敌人的第一次进攻失败了。尤斯塔斯对此似乎并不满意。他口干舌燥，胳膊痛得要命。

败退的卡乐门人回到他们的指挥官那边时，小矮人们开始嘲笑他们。

“被打够了，大老黑？”他们大声嚷着，“这种滋味怎么样？为什么你们伟大的塔尔坎不亲自上阵，而是让你们来送死呢？可怜的大老黑们！”

“矮人族的兄弟们，”缇利安喊道，“快来这边，用你们的剑来效力，而不是光嘴上卖气。时机尚好，纳尼亚的小矮人们！我知道你们骁勇善战，现在是你们效忠的时候了。”

“耶！”小矮人们发笑了，“才不呢，你和其他人一样谎话连篇，我们不想要任何国王，矮人族是为矮人效力的。呸！”

然后，鼓点敲响了，不是矮人族的鼓点，而是一头大公牛敲着卡乐门的战鼓。孩子们刚一听到就觉得刺耳。那声音砰砰作响。但如果知道这意味着什么，他们会更加痛恨这声音。缇利安知道这鼓声代表什么。看来还有其他的卡乐门军队驻扎在附近的某个地方，而里什达·塔尔坎就是用这种方式叫他们前来援助的。缇利安和珠儿悲伤地看着对方。他们刚开始以为他们当天晚上会大获全胜，但是如果出现了新的敌人，他们都会葬身于此。

缇利安绝望地打量着四周。几个纳尼亚人站在卡乐门人身旁，无论出于背叛还是对“塔什兰”的十足恐惧。其他动物则坐着不动，紧盯着战局变化，他们不太可能加入任何一方。动物的数量显然变少了，因为兽群看着规模更小了。显然，他们当中有好几个在战斗中悄悄地逃走了。

那砰砰作响的可怕的鼓点又敲了起来。然后另一种声音混杂其中。“快听！”珠儿说。“看那边！”老鹰接着说。过了一会儿一切都明了了。随着一阵马蹄声，二十多匹能言马高昂着头颅、张大着鼻孔、甩动着鬃毛，冲上了山顶。啮齿类朋友已经完成了他们的工作。

矮人波金和孩子们咧开嘴巴欢呼，但却没喊出声来。突然，弓弦和箭头的嗖嗖声划破天际。正是那些小矮人拉开了弓弦，吉尔难以相信她看到了什么，他们的箭射向了马群。小矮人是致命的弓箭手。那些马一匹匹朝后翻倒了，这些高贵的动物中没有一匹能够到达国王的身旁。

“无耻猪猡，”尤斯塔斯尖叫着，他愤怒地跳起来，“肮脏、无耻、奸诈的小野蛮人。”甚至珠儿也说：“让我去对付那些小矮人，陛下，让我一次刺穿十个小矮人的胸膛！”但缇利安的面色如岩石般坚毅，他说道：“原地不动，珠儿。亲爱的，如果你非哭不可，”（这话是对吉尔说的）“把你的脸转向一边，不要弄湿你的弓弦。冷静点，尤斯塔斯。不要像厨娘一样漫骂，大家都不要骂了。彬彬有礼抑或奋力一搏才应该是你们唯一的姿态。”

但是小矮人们却嘲笑起尤斯塔斯来：“小男孩，让你吃了一惊，对吗？以为我们会帮助你们，是吗？不要害怕，我们不会让任何能言马加入你们的，我们也不希望你们赢了他们。你不能统治我们。矮人族是为矮人效力的。”

里什达·塔尔坎仍在和他的手下交谈，他们无疑是在为下一次袭击做安排，并可能打算在第一次冲锋就使出全力。鼓点又响起来了。然后令缇利安和他的朋友们惊恐的是，他们听见远处有模糊的鼓声回应。卡乐门人另一支小队已经听到了里什达的信号，并将前来驰援。但从缇利安脸上读不出任何绝望的迹象。

“听着，”他冷静地低声说道，“在那伙歹徒的援军到来之前，我们现在必须发起攻击。”

“陛下，您看，”波金说，“在这里，我们的背后有稳固的木墙作为掩护，如果我们前进的话，难道我们不会被包围其中四面受敌吗？”

“我一开始和你想的一样，小矮人，”缇利安说，“但这样不就应验了他们把我们逼进马厩的计划吗？我们离那扇致命的门越远越好。”

“陛下说得对，”千里眼说，“远离这个可恶的马厩，无论是哪个妖精在里面，我们都要不惜一切代价远离它。”

“是啊，就这么办吧，”尤斯塔斯说，“我看见它就无比厌恶。”

“好，”缇利安说，“现在看向我们的左边，你们会看到一块巨大的岩石，它在火光中像大理石一样闪闪发亮。首先我们要袭击那些卡乐门人。小姑娘，你从左翼前进，并且尽可能快速射向他们的阵队。而千里眼，你从右边包抄过来，直击他们的脸，同时我们其他人也会向他们冲过去，等我们离他们更近一点，吉尔，你就停止向他们射击，因为我怕你会射到我们身上。你要回到这块白色巨石旁耐心等待。其他人，你们即使在战斗中也要注意听周围的动静，我们必须在几分钟内将他们撂倒，因为我们人数比他们少。只要我下达撤退的命令，抓紧回到吉尔旁边的白色岩石这边，这样我们的背后有掩护，而我们也能喘口气。现在行动吧，吉尔。”

吉尔向前跑出了大约二十英尺，顿时觉得孤零零的。她右腿在后，左腿弓向前，拿起箭来绷紧弓弦。她希望自己双手不会晃动。她的第一支箭射向了敌人，从他们的头顶飞过。“这一发射得太糟糕了！”但下一秒钟她就往弓弦上放了第二支箭——因为她知道战场上最关键的就是作战速度。她看到巨大的黑影直击卡乐门人的脸颊，那是千里眼在发动攻击。士兵一个接一个地放下剑，用双手捂住眼睛。然后她一箭击中了一个人，另一支射中了一匹纳尼亚狼，那只狼似乎已经加入了敌人的阵营。但她刚射击了几秒后就不得不停止了。随着一束剑光，野猪的獠牙和珠儿的角也加入了战斗，狗群也在狠狠撕咬着。缇利安和他的军队正冲向敌人中间，速度之快就像在参加百米赛跑一样。看到卡乐门人似乎毫无准备，吉尔惊讶不已。她没有意识到这是她和鹰攻击的结果。一方面脸上有中箭的危险，另一方面会被鹰嘴狠狠击啄，这种情况下很少有军队能够稳稳地目视前方。

“哦，干得漂亮，好极了！”吉尔喊道。国王的小分队在敌人中间杀出一条血路。独角兽刺杀着卡乐门士兵，就像用草叉刺向干草的动作那样。在尤斯塔斯眼里，吉尔（她对剑术知之甚少）表现得极其出色。狗群攻击着卡乐门人的喉咙。胜利正在倒向他们！这是最终的胜利，紧接着一件骇人的事情发生了，吉尔发觉事态不对劲。尽管卡乐门军队每次与纳尼亚作战都处于下风，但他们的人数似乎未曾减少过。事实上，他们的实际人数比战斗开始时还要多。每秒钟都有更多士兵加入。他们从四面八方跑来。他们是卡乐门的援军。这些新来的士兵个个装备着长矛。几乎有一群士兵包围着他们，她几乎看不到自己的战友了。然后，她听到缇利安大喊着：

“撤退！回到岩石那里！”

敌人援军已到。停止了击鼓。

第十二章
穿过马厩大门

吉尔这会儿本该退回到白色岩石旁边，但她在兴奋地观战时，已经完全忘记了后半部分的指令。现在她想起来了。她马上转身跑了过去，几乎在其他人到达几秒钟前才赶回那里。这一过程中他们所有人都暂时背对着敌人。他们跑回到巨石时，转过身来，眼前是一幅可怕的景象。

一个卡乐门士兵奔向马厩的大门，肩上扛着一个连踢带打的东西。当他走到他们和火堆中间的时候，他们可以清楚地看到那个士兵的身影和所扛之物。那是尤斯塔斯。

缇利安和独角兽冲出来救尤斯塔斯，但卡乐门人离门更近。等他们冲到半路时，那个士兵已经把尤斯塔斯扔进了马厩，并关上了门。有六个卡乐门士兵跟在其身后，他们在马厩前的空地上排成一列。现在没有营救的机会了。

即使那样吉尔依然记得要将她的脸扭向一边，远离她的弓弦。“即使我忍不住哭起来，我也不会弄湿我的弓弦。”她说。

“小心飞箭。”波金突然叫道。

大家都躲过了，并把他们的头盔拉至鼻子的位置。狗蹲在他们身后。但是，只有几个箭头朝他们飞了过来，他们很快就明白了他们并不是被攻击的目标。格力弗和他的小矮人们又在射箭了。这一次他们冷静地射杀卡乐门士兵。

“坚持下去，孩子们！”这是格力弗的声音，“集中到一块儿，小心一点。我们讨厌猴子，更不需要这些大老黑统治我们，或者狮子，或者国王，矮人族是为矮人效力的。”

无论你怎么评价这群矮人，你都得承认他们确实勇敢。他们本可以很容易地走到安全的角落。但他们宁愿尽可能多地绞杀两方势力，除非那两方通过互相残杀省得矮人动手，那最好不过了。他们要纳尼亚成为自己的纳尼亚。

他们可能没有想到的是那些卡乐门人全身披甲，不像马一样暴露在他们的弓箭之下，而卡乐门人当中还有人坐镇指挥。里什达·塔尔坎大叫道：

“你们这三十人去对付白色岩石上的那些笨蛋，其余的人，跟在我身后，让我们好好教训教训这些孩子。”

缇利安和他的朋友们仍然喘不过气来，还好他们休息了几分钟。他们站起身，看着塔尔坎带领他的手下向矮人族发起攻击。眼下是一个奇怪的场景。火势小了很多，现在几乎火光全无，投射出暗红色。就像他们所看到的，除了矮人和卡乐门人之外，整个会场没有其他人了。在暗淡的火光里，人们弄不清楚发生了什么。听起来好像矮人们正在激烈地战斗。缇利安能听见格力弗用最下流的语言在咒骂，时不时地还伴有塔尔坎的命令，“把他们全抓住！抓活的！”

无论这场战斗现在呈现出何种景象，它很快就结束了，噪音也消失了。然后吉尔看到塔尔坎重返马厩，十一个手下跟着他，拖着十一个被绑起来的小矮人。（其他小矮人是死是逃，缇利安他们无从得知。）

“把他们扔进塔什神殿里去。”里什达·塔尔坎说。

十一个小矮人一个接一个地被扔进或踢进那个黑暗的门里，大门又被关上了，这时塔尔坎向马厩俯身鞠躬说道：

“这些也是您的祭品，我主塔什。”

所有的卡乐门人一边用剑猛击他们的盾牌，一边大喊：“塔什！塔什！天神塔什！不可撼动的塔什！”（他们再也没说什么荒唐的“塔什兰”了。）

白色岩石这一边的人看到了这些举动，互相窃窃私语。他们发现有水从岩石上涓涓流下，所有人都兴奋地喝起了水。吉尔、波金和国王用手捧着，而四足动物们俯下身冲着岩石下方汇成的一小泊狂饮着。对他们来说，这似乎是他们生命中最甘醇的饮品，以至于他们喝着水时，一个个极为开心，什么都不去想了。

“我有预感，”波金说，“天亮之前，我们要一个接一个地穿过那道黑暗的门，我们要留在这儿的话，我都能想象到有一百种死法等着我们。”

“这确实是一扇可怕的门，”缇利安说，“它更像一张吞人的嘴。”

“哦，我们就不能做点什么来阻止它吗？”吉尔声音颤抖地问道。

“不行的，我的朋友，”珠儿一边说，一边用鼻子温柔地触着她，“这可能是通往阿斯兰神域的大门，我们今晚将在他的桌前大快朵颐。”

里什达·塔尔坎背对马厩，缓缓移步到白色岩石前方。

“听着，”他说，“如果野猪、狗和独角兽过来求饶的话，我们可以对他们法外开恩，饶他们不死。野猪可以去蒂斯罗克花园的笼子，狗儿们可以去蒂斯罗克的狗舍，还有独角兽，在我锯掉他的角后，可以去拉车。但是老鹰、那些孩子和国王今晚都得作为祭品献给塔什。”

士兵们以咆哮声回应指令。

“上吧，勇士们，”塔尔坎说，“杀死那群野兽，活捉两只脚的。”

于是，纳尼亚最后一位国王的最后一战打响了。

除了敌人的庞大数量，他们全都手持长矛这件事让大家倍感绝望。一开始跟无尾猿在一起的那帮卡乐门人并没有长矛，那是因为他们都是三三两两地来到纳尼亚王国，假装他们是崇尚和平的商人。他们没有携带长矛，因为这东西藏不住。而新来的士兵都带着一根，因为诡谲的势力已经足够庞大，他们不用再偷偷摸摸地带进来了。长矛确实给战局带来很大的变数。在野猪的獠牙和独角兽的角还没碰到敌方之前，一根长矛就足以让他们丧命。前提是行动迅速，并且头脑清醒。现在所有的矛头都指向缇利安和他仅存不多的朋友们，包围圈正在收缩。下一刻，他们将为自己的生命而战。

但在某种程度上，情况并不像想象的那么糟糕。当你绷紧全身每一块肌肉，试着躲过矛头的刺击时——你跳来跳去，又向前倾，又往后躲，转过身来——你根本没有时间恐惧或者难过。缇利安知道现在他对此毫无办法，大家都死定了。视线模糊间他看到野猪在他旁边倒下，而珠儿在另一边激烈地厮杀着。他的余光瞥到——仅仅是瞥到，一个壮实的卡乐门士兵正揪着吉尔往某处走着。但他几乎无法思考这些事情。他现在唯一的想法就是竭尽全力与敌人拼命。最糟糕的是，他无法守住他在白色岩石下的这个位置。一个同时与十几个敌人作战的人必须尽可能抓住机会，必须抓住空档，刺向敌人毫无防备的胸膛或者脖子。刚战了几个来回，就可能使人远离原来的位置。缇利安很快发现他越来越靠近马厩，越来越靠右。他脑海中有一个模糊的想法，觉得能以一个绝妙的方法来避开它。但他现在不知道那方法是什么了。无论如何，他已经无法思考了。

片刻，一切都变得明了了。他发现与他对阵的是塔尔坎。火堆（剩余的那点火焰）就在他的前方。原来他已经打到马厩的门前了。大门已经打开，两个卡乐门人正守着门，准备在他被逼进去的一瞬间把门关上。此刻所有的事情他都想起来了，并且他意识到自从战斗打响以来，敌人一直在故意将他往马厩这边引。而当他想到这一点时，他仍然尽可能地努力对付着塔尔坎的攻势。

缇利安的脑子中闪现了一个新的想法。他丢下剑，向前冲过去，在塔尔坎的弯刀下来了一记扫堂腿，双手抓住敌人的腰带并跳进马厩大门，大喊：

“进去吧，你自己去见塔什吧！”

他听见震耳欲聋的噪声。当无尾猿被扔进去的时候，大地就震了一下，并伴有一道炫目的光线射出。

外面的卡乐门士兵大声喊叫起来：“塔什，塔什！”他们敲击着大门。如果塔什想要他们的队长服侍他的话，塔什必将收走他。无论如何，他们才不想见到塔什呢。

有那么一两秒钟，缇利安不知自己身处何方，甚至不知道自己是谁。然后他稳住了自己，眨了眨眼睛并环顾一下四周。如他所料，马厩内并不黑暗。那道强光正好照射着他，这就是他为什么要眨眼。

他转过头去看里什达·塔尔坎，但里什达没有看他。里什达指着国王大声哀号，然后他将双手挡在他的脸前，面朝地倒下。缇利安看着塔尔坎指向的地方。然后他什么都明白了。

一个可怕的身影正在向他们走来。那身影远比他们在塔楼看到的那个影子要小，但仍然比一个人大得多，而且样子同在塔楼看到的一样。他有一只秃鹫的头和四只手臂。他的喙微张，眼睛闪闪发光，嘴里发出嘶哑的声音：

“是你让我来纳尼亚的，里什达·塔尔坎。我现在就在这儿，你还有什么可说的？”

但是塔尔坎既没敢抬起头来，也没敢说一句话。战战兢兢的他像个打嗝的人。作战时的他的确足够勇武，但当他第一次开始怀疑塔什可能真的存在时，就吓跑了他一半的勇气，而剩下的勇气现在也已经消失殆尽。

塔什突然一阵急促行进，就像一只母鸡弯腰啄一只虫子一样，扑到了可怜巴巴的里什达身上，并用上面两只胳膊卷紧了他。然后，塔什侧过头，一只骇人的眼睛盯着缇利安，当然啦，他有一个鸟头，是不能直视你的。

紧接着塔什的身后传来一个如夏日的大海那样有力而冷静的声音：

“以阿斯兰和阿斯兰之父众海之王的名义，我命令你快走开，你这个怪物，把你的合法猎物带到你自己的巢穴里去。”

那个可怖的怪物消失了，走的时候塔尔坎仍然被夹在它的胳膊下。缇利安回过头来看到底是谁在说话。然后他看到的这一幕让他的心比在任何一次战斗中跳得都要快。

七位国王和女王站在他面前，头上戴着冠冕，身穿闪闪发光的衣服，而国王们还披着精致的盔甲，手持宝剑。缇利安彬彬有礼地弯腰致意，正打算开口询问。他看见最小的女王笑个不停。缇利安仔细地打量着她的面容，然后惊讶地倒吸了一口气——因为他认识她。她是吉尔，但不是他最后所见的吉尔——那时她的脸上沾满了灰尘和泪水，而且一件旧裙子从肩膀滑落下来。现在，她看起来容光焕发，如同刚刚出浴般光彩照人。起初他把她看作一位较为年长的皇后，但后来他还是认了出来。他现在无法集中注意力，然后他看到最小的国王是尤斯塔斯，但他也像吉尔那样脱胎换骨了。

缇利安突然感到一阵尴尬，因为见到这些人时，战斗中留下的血迹、灰尘和汗水仍在他身上。而下一秒钟，他就意识到他也进入了崭新的状态——生机勃勃而清爽整洁，并且身着华服，如同他在凯尔帕拉维尔出席一场盛大的晚宴时所穿的那样。（但是在纳尼亚，好衣服从来都不是穿着不舒服的那些，他们知道如何缝制看起来精致、穿起来也舒服的衣服，从纳尼亚的这端到那端没有带有浆粉、法兰绒、橡皮筋或者诸如此类东西的衣服。）

“陛下，”吉尔站出来优雅地给缇利安行了屈膝礼，说道，“让我向您介绍掌管纳尼亚所有君主的至尊国王。”

缇利安不需要问至尊国王是哪一位，因为自己在梦中记下了他的面容（尽管在这里至尊国王显得更为高贵）。他走上前去，单膝跪下，吻了彼得的手。

“至尊国王，”他说，“拜见吾王。”

然后至尊国王扶他起身，并以至尊之礼亲吻了他的双颊，然后带他去觐见最为年长的那位女王——但是她根本不老，头上没有灰白的头发，脸颊上也没有皱纹。至尊国王说道：“陛下，这就是那位创世日时来到纳尼亚的波莉夫人。正是创世日那天，阿斯兰滋润着树木长高长大，教动物们如何说话。”接着彼得把他带到另一位国王面前——他的金色胡须长到了胸部，他看起来满腹经纶。“这位，”他介绍道，“是当天和她一同前来的狄格雷勋爵。这位是我的兄弟爱德蒙国王，这位是我的妹妹露西女王。”

“陛下，”缇利安和每一位都打了招呼，他说道，“如果编年史中记得不假的话，应该还有一位女王。陛下不是有两个姐妹吗？苏珊女王在哪里呢？”

“我的妹妹苏珊，”彼得简短而严肃地回答道，“不再是纳尼亚的朋友。”

“是的，”尤斯塔斯说，“每当你跟她谈论纳尼亚的现状或者为纳尼亚做点什么的时候，她都会说：‘你们还想着那些美妙的记忆啊！你们还想着我们还是小孩时玩的那些游戏真是太可笑了啊。’”

“哦，苏珊！”吉尔说，“除了尼龙长袜、口红和舞会邀请，她现在对什么都不感兴趣。她总是热衷于做个大人。”

“确实长大了，”波莉夫人说，“我希望她心智也能成熟，她虚度了整个学校时光，想要长成现在这样，并且她又将荒废一辈子，试图保持在这个年纪。她就是想尽可能快地长到那个犯傻的年纪，然后停留在那个年纪要多久有多久。”

“好了，现在不要谈论这件事了，”彼得说，“看，这里有丰收的果树，我们尝尝吧。”

随后，缇利安第一次仔细打量着彼得，接着他意识到这趟旅程有多么奇幻。

第十三章
矮人族拒绝被统治

缇利安思考着——或者他有足够时间思考的话——他们本来在一个矮小的，用茅草堆成的约十二英尺长，六英尺宽的马厩里。而事实上，他们却是站在草地上，头顶蔚蓝的天空，脸上轻轻拂过初夏才能感受到的微风。离他们不远的地方是一丛果树，巨大的树叶下都藏着或为金黄淡黄、或为深紫亮红的奇异水果——在我们的世界中未曾见过的水果。这些水果让缇利安觉得金秋已至，但空气中的某种味道告诉他，现在仍在六月前。他们都朝着果树走去。

每个人都伸手去挑选自己最喜欢的水果，然后每个人都犹豫了一下。果子都漂亮极了，每个人都觉得“如此奇妙的果实不属于我……我们当然不能采摘。”

“没关系的，”彼得说，“我知道你们都在想什么，但我确信，我们不需要这么想。我感觉我们来到了一个做什么都被准许的国度。”

“那就摘吧！”尤斯塔斯说，随后他们都开始吃了。

那水果是什么样的呢？遗憾的是，没有人能准确地描述它的味道。我只能说，与这些奇异之果相比，你曾经吃过的最新鲜的柚子也会平淡无奇，汁水最多的橘子也是干涩的，最美味的梨会发硬到咬不动，最甜的草莓会显得又涩又酸。而这些果实既没有籽，也没有核，也不会招来黄蜂。如果你曾经吃过这种水果，那么这个世界上最美味的佳肴尝起来都如同喝药一般。但我无法形容它的味道。除非你自己可以去到那个国度并亲口品尝，否则你无法弄清它究竟是何滋味。

当他们吃得差不多了，尤斯塔斯对彼得说：“您还没有告知我们您是怎么来到这里的，缇利安国王刚出现那会儿，您本来打算讲的。”

“我没有什么可说的，”彼得说，“我和爱德蒙本来在站台上，我们看到你的那列火车进站了。我记得那列火车拐弯的时候有点快了，而且我记得最可笑的是，我们的人可能跟我们同在一列火车上，但是露西不知道这一点——”

“你们的人，陛下是指？”缇利安问道。

“我的意思是我的父母，当然也是爱德蒙和露西的父母。”

“他们为什么也在？”吉尔问道，“难道你的意思是他们知道纳尼亚的事？”

“哦，不，与纳尼亚没什么关系，他们是去布里斯托的。我只听说他们那天早上要去，但爱德蒙说他们肯定会坐那列火车去的。”（爱德蒙了解火车的运行情况。）

“那接着发生了什么呢？”吉尔说。

“呃，描述起来并不容易，你说是吗，爱德蒙？”至尊国王回答说。

“可不是嘛，”爱德蒙说，“这跟那股魔法把我们从自己的世界里拉出来可太不一样了。我听见了可怕的轰鸣声，有个东西砰的一声撞了我一下，但我一点事都没有，而且与其说我是害怕，不如说我一直处于兴奋之中。哦，还有件奇怪的事情，我之前摔了一跤，膝盖老是酸痛。我突然发现那股疼痛也随之消失了。身体一阵轻飘飘的，然后，我们就到这儿了。”

“我们是从火车的车厢里过来的，情况也差不多，”狄格雷勋爵边说，边抹去挂在他金色胡须上的果粒，“波莉，只有我知道，你我的身体灵活了很多。你们这些年轻人不会明白的，我们的身体确实停止了老化。”

“我们确实是年轻人！”吉尔说，“但我觉得你们俩没比我们在场的大多少。”

“好吧，就算我们现在看起来不像，我们以前要比你们大不少。”波莉夫人说。

“那你们来到这里以后发生了什么呢？”尤斯塔斯问道。

“这个嘛，”彼得说，“很长一段时间（至少我觉得过了好长一段时间）什么也没发生，然后那扇门就开了——”

“那扇门？”缇利安说。

“是的，”彼得回答道，“就是你进来的门或者出来的那扇门，你忘了吗？”

“但是它现在在哪里呢？”

“看！”彼得指着说。

缇利安瞧了一眼，他看到了他能想象到的最奇怪、最荒谬的一幕。几码远的那一边有一扇粗糙的木门，在阳光下看得清清楚楚的。除了门和门框之外，什么都没有——没有墙壁，没有屋顶。他走向那扇门，看起来困惑不已。其他人紧随其后，他们想看看缇利安要做什么。他绕到门的另一边。但从这一面来看也是一样：他依然处在夏日早晨的郊外。这扇门像一棵树一样，直立于此。

“好极了，陛下，”缇利安对至尊国王说，“这真是一个奇迹。”

“这就是你五分钟前跟那个卡乐门人一同跨过的门。”彼得笑着说。

“但我不是从树林出来后才进到马厩的吗？而这看起来像是一扇不知从哪儿来也不知到哪儿去了的门。”

“你要是光绕着它转悠，的确如此，”彼得说，“但是你注意一下两块木板间的那条缝隙，然后仔细看看。”

缇利安把眼睛对准了那条缝隙。起初，他只能看到黑漆漆的一片。然后他的眼睛渐渐适应了，他看到几近熄灭的篝火发出暗红色的光芒，而火光之上是黑色的天空和群星。然后他可以看到黑暗的身影在他和火之间或走动或站定。他可以听到他们讲话，他们的声音听着像是卡乐门人的声音。所以缇利安现在知道了，他正在通过马门窥探着夜色下的灯柱荒原，就是他最后一战的地方。那些人正在讨论要不要进来寻找里什达·塔尔坎（但没人愿意干这个活），或者放火把马厩烧了算了。

缇利安再次环顾四周，他几乎不敢相信自己的眼睛。他头顶蓝天，绿油油的乡村田野向四面八方伸展，他的新朋友们则欢笑不已。

“这么看起来，”缇利安说道，自嘲着之前的无知，“从内部看到的马厩和从外面看到的是两个完全不同的地方。”

“是的，”狄格雷勋爵说，“它的里面可比外面大多了。”

“当然如此，”露西女王说，“在我们的世界里，一个马厩装下点东西就比整个世界要大。”这是她第一次发言。从她声音中流露出的兴奋之情，缇利安知道了她为什么才开口讲话。她的感受比其他人要深得多，欣喜之极忘于言说。缇利安还想听听她讲话，于是他说：

“给您行礼了，女士，您接着说，请告诉我您全部的经历。”

“在起初的惊诧和喧闹声之后，”露西说，“我们发现自己到了这儿，像你一样，我们在门口也踌躇了一会儿，然后门第一次打开的时候（我们在门口看到外面一片漆黑），进来一个大块头，手持出鞘利剑。通过观察他的胳膊，我们判定是卡乐门人。他站在门边，举起剑靠在肩膀上，准备砍向进来的人。我们想上前同他交谈，但他看不到我们，也听不到我们讲话。他也从来没有抬头仰望天空和阳光，或是驻足远眺这片草地，我估计他连这些也看不见。于是，我们等了好久，又听到另一侧的门闩被打开，但是那个人在看清来人是谁之前，并没有挥剑砍下去。所以我们推断出，他应该只针对某些特定目标，而其他人进来他就什么也不做。但就在门打开的那一刻，塔什突然在门的这边现身，我们没有看清他是从哪里过来的。接着从门口走来一只大猫，他看了一眼塔什，就慌里慌张地逃了出去，正好逃出了魔爪。因为塔什刚扑向猫时，关上的大门就给了他迎头一击，砸到了他的喙上。这个人也看见了塔什，在这只怪物面前他神色苍白，跪地求饶，但塔什自己又消失了。

“然后我们又等了很久很久，最后，门第三次打开，进来的是个年轻的卡乐门士兵，我喜欢他的模样。门口的哨兵吓了一跳，但他看到来人的脸时显得很惊讶，我想他可能一直在等另一个人进来——”

“我现在全都弄明白了，”尤斯塔斯说（他有打断别人讲故事的坏习惯），“猫先假模假样地进去，哨兵奉令不动。然后，猫就会出去说，他看到了野蛮的塔什兰，并假装惊慌失措，以吓倒其他动物。但诡谲从来没有想到真正的塔什会现身，所以老姜出来时真的害怕极了。之后，诡谲会把任何他想除掉的人关进去，而哨兵会杀了他们。

而且——”

“朋友，”缇利安温柔地提醒着，“你妨碍这位女士讲她的故事了。”

“我接着说，”露西补充道，“哨兵惊讶之时，恰好给了另一个人可乘之机。他们进行了一场搏杀，新来的人杀了哨兵，把他扔到了门外。然后他慢慢地踱到我们所处的位置，他可以看到我们，还有其他的一切。我们试图与他交谈，但他就像神情恍惚了一般，他一直念着“塔什，塔什，塔什在哪里，我是来觐见塔什的。”所以我们就放弃了与他交流。然后他就往那边去了——在那边。我喜欢他，然后呢……啊！”露西做了个鬼脸。

“之后，”爱德蒙补充道，“有人把一只猴子从大门口扔了出来，塔什又回到那里，我的妹妹心肠软得很，她不想告诉你，塔什啄了他一下，那只猴子当场就丧命了！”

“他活该！”尤斯塔斯说，“反正都一样，我估计他跟塔什也不是一路人。”

“之后呢，”爱德蒙说，“来了十几个小矮人，然后吉尔和尤斯塔斯也进来了，最后是你自己。”

“我希望塔什把矮人也吞了，”尤斯塔斯说，“一群臭猪猡。”

“不，那倒没有，”露西说，“不要紧张，他们现在还在这里，事实上你能见到他们的。我试着同他们交朋友，但都是徒劳。”

“同他们交朋友！”尤斯塔斯喊道，“如果你知道这些小矮人干了什么，你就不会这么说了！”

“哦，别这样，尤斯塔斯，”露西说，“来看看他们吧，缇利安国王，或许你可以做点什么。”

“我今天对小矮人实在没什么好感，”缇利安说，“但是既然您要求了，女士，我会贡献出更大的力量。”

露西在前面带路，不久他们就看到了矮人族一行。他们样子古怪，既不是在逍遥漫步，也没有享受片刻好心情（尽管捆绑他们的绳索已经消失）。小矮人们也没有躺下休息，只是坐在一起，面对面围成一个小圈子。直到露西和缇利安几乎触碰到他们之前，他们也不打量四周或者注意人类。小矮人们歪着脑袋，仿佛目空一切，但他们其实在努力倾听，试图靠声音猜测发生了什么。

“当心点！”其中一个小矮人显得很是生气，“看好路，不要踩到我们脸上来！”

“行了！”尤斯塔斯愤愤地说，“我们不瞎，我们长眼睛了。”

“如果在这里还能看得见，眼睛一定不瞎。”还是那个叫狄格的小矮人说道。

“在哪里？”爱德蒙问道。

“你这个榆木脑袋，当然是在这里了，”狄格说，“在这个暗无天日、臭气熏天的小马厩里。”

“你瞎了吗？”缇利安说。

“谁在黑暗中不瞎呢！”狄格反驳道。

“但这里边根本就不黑，你这个可怜的小矮人。”露西说，“你看不见吗？抬头看看！你看不见天空、树木和花朵吗？你看不到我吗？”

“以所有骗人精的名义，我怎么能看到不存在的东西？在黑暗中，你看不见我，我怎么可能看得见你呢？”

“但我可以看到你，”露西说，“我会证明我能看见你，你的嘴巴叼着一根烟斗。”

“任何熟悉烟草香气的人都能推断出来。”狄格说。

“哦，可怜的家伙！这太可怕了。”露西说。然后她思忖出一个想法。她停下来，摘了几朵紫罗兰。“听着，小矮人，”她说，“即使你的眼睛有问题，也许你的鼻子没问题啊。你能闻到吗？”她靠过去，把新鲜潮湿的花朵拿到狄格那丑陋的鼻子上。怕他那坚硬的小拳头打过来，她不得不迅速跳回来。

“拿远点！”他喊道，“你胆子可真大啊！把脏兮兮的马厩垫草往我脸上凑，你想干什么？里面还有朵蓟花，就像你的酱汁一样难闻！你们究竟是谁？”

“大地之子，”缇利安说，“她是露西女王，从很久以前的时代被阿斯兰传送至此。看在她的分上，我缇利安——你们的合法国王，不会杀你们的头，你们这些一而再再而三叛变的卖国贼！”

“或者你的剑根本砍不下任何东西吧！”狄格叫道，“你又在谈论这些陈芝麻烂谷子的事，你仁慈的狮子没有来帮助你，是吗？别再妄想了。现在，跟我们其他人一样，即使现在你已经一败涂地，并被人推进这个黑洞了，你还沉浸在老生常谈中，开始编造一个新的谎言，试图让我们相信我们没被关起来，这里边不黑的鬼话，以及其他只有天知道的事。”

“这根本就不是个黑洞，都是你自己的幻想，傻瓜，”缇利安喊道，“赶紧出来吧。”同时，他俯下身，扯住狄格的头巾和皮带，将他从矮人族的圈子中揪了出来。但缇利安刚把他放下，狄格又匆匆跑回原来的位置，揉了揉鼻子大叫道：

“噢！噢！你干吗要这么做！把我的脸顶在墙上，你把我的鼻子都撞坏了。”

“哦，天哪！”露西说，“我们到底要怎么做呢？”

“随他们去吧。”尤斯塔斯说道。但是当他说话的时候，地面颤抖了起来。甜美的空气突然变得更加甘醇。他们身后闪过一道亮光，所有人都转过身来。缇利安因为害怕最后才转过身来。他看到了内心渴望之神——巨大而真实的金狮，是阿斯兰没错了。其他人则跪在阿斯兰的前爪周围，把手和脸埋在他的鬃毛里，因为他弯下了他的大脑袋，用舌头舔舐着每一个人。然后他盯着缇利安，缇利安全身颤抖着走上前来。他跪倒在狮子脚下，狮子吻了他一下，说道：“纳尼亚最后的国王能在最黑暗的时刻站稳脚跟，干得好啊！”

“阿斯兰，”露西泪流满面，“你能——你会为这些可怜的小矮人做点什么吗？”

“亲爱的，”阿斯兰说，“我会向你展示我可以做到什么，以及做不到什么。”他靠近小矮人，低声地咆哮着，声音虽低，却让周遭的空气发生震动。但是小矮人彼此互相说道：“听到动静了吗？那是马厩另一端的那帮人在试图吓唬我们。他们用某种机器伪造的这声音，不要理会他们，他们休想再骗我们！”

阿斯兰抬起头，甩了甩他的鬃毛。一瞬间每个小矮人的膝盖上立刻出现了一道盛宴：馅饼、牛舌、乳鸽、蛋糕和冰沙，而每个人右手边都有一杯美酒。但还是没什么用。他们开始狼吞虎咽——显然，他们不会好好品尝。他们觉得只是在拿马厩里能找到的东西来充饥。一个人说他嚼的是干草，另一个说他找到了一点老萝卜，第三个人说他吃到了一片生白菜叶。然后他们把金色的高脚红酒杯举到唇边，说：“呸！想象一下，这就是驴子喝的槽子里的脏水！从来没有想过我们也会尝到这滋味。”但是很快，每个小矮人都开始怀疑其他人找到了比自己更好的东西，于是他们开始互相扭打抢夺，然后先是争吵，几分钟后竟演变成一场混战。他们把所有美食都抹在了脸上和衣服上，或者被他们踩在了脚下。但是当他们最后坐下来，揉着黑眼圈和流血的鼻子时，他们都说：

“好吧，最起码这里没有骗人精，我们没有上任何人的当。矮人族是为了矮人而效力的。”

“你们看，”阿斯兰说，“他们不会寻求我们的帮助的。比起信仰，他们选择了狡猾。他们的监狱建在自己的头脑之中，但他们仍然身陷囹圄。害怕被欺骗，他们也不能被救赎。你们上前来吧，孩子们，我还有其他事情要做。”

他径直走向大门，其他人紧随其后。他抬起头，吼道：“现在时间已到！”接着以更加响亮的声音喊道：“时间已到！”最后这声足以撼动星辰，“时间已到。”大门就打开了。

第十四章
夜幕降临在纳尼亚

所有人都站在阿斯兰的右侧，朝门外望去。

篝火早已熄灭。大地一片漆黑：事实上，若非群星升起而树影矗立，就不会察觉视线所及之处乃一片森林。当阿斯兰再次吼叫时，在他们左侧，他们发现了另一个黑色的身影。就在星光照耀不到之处，他们看见某个与周围环境不相称的黑影。它越来越高，并且变成了一个人的形状，是巨人中最大的巨人。大家都熟知纳尼亚的每一片土地，因而他们清楚那个东西所处的位置，就是在施瑞博河以北的高沼地上。紧接着吉尔和尤斯塔斯想起来，在很久以前，在这些荒野下的深邃洞穴里，他们看到过一个呼呼大睡的巨人。有人告诉他们巨人的名字叫时间老人，他将一直沉睡，直到世界末日那一天才会苏醒。

“没错，”阿斯兰说，尽管他们并没有讲出来，“沉睡时的他叫作‘时间’，现在他醒了，他将有一个崭新的名字。”

然后这个高大的巨人将一个喇叭放到他的嘴上。在他背后星光的衬托下，他的这一举动被国王一行人看得清清楚楚。之后，中间停了一会儿（因为声音传播得很慢），他们听到了号角声：这声音高耸入云，令人胆战心惊，奇特而又不失华美。

一瞬间，天空中满是流星。平时能看见一颗流星就是好事一桩了，但现在十几颗、二十几颗乃至成百颗流星一同划过天际，像是下了一场银色的光雨，并且仍在继续。过了一会儿，他们中有一两个人看见空中还有另外一团同巨人一般大小的黑影。它在另一处我们可能称之为“天空顶端”的位置，就高挂在他们头顶。“也许那是一片云。”爱德蒙想。那一块怎么都看不见星星，徒留一片黑暗。但是在那一块周围，流星雨继续下着。它开始扩展，延伸至离天空中心的位置。现在天空的四分之一都处在暗色之下，然后蔓延至一半，最后那些流星下降至接近地平线的位置了。

一阵惊喜过后（也给他们平添了几分恐惧），他们突然意识到出事了。不断扩展的黑暗根本不是一片云朵，它只是虚空一片。那一片黑域根本待不下任何一颗星。所有的星星都在坠落。是阿斯兰把他们召回了家。

星雨消失前的最后一会儿令人兴奋不已。星星绕着他们降落，这个世界上的恒星并不像我们世界中的燃烧状球体。他们都是人（爱德蒙和露西曾经见过一个）。所以现在他们发现了这些闪闪发光的人群。所有人的长发好像融化的白银，而那些如同加热后的乳白色金属的长矛从黑色的虚空中冲到他们这边，比落石还要快。他们降落时发出嘶嘶的声音，还烧焦了一块草地。接着所有的星星都从他们身边穿了过去，然后站在后面稍微靠右的某个地方。

这一点倒不错，要不然天上没有星星的话，一切都会完全笼罩在漆黑之中，你什么都看不到。就在这时候，他们身后的繁星射出一道凌厉的白光。他们可以看到不断向前蔓延的纳尼亚树林，看起来就像泛光灯一般。每一片灌木丛和几乎每一片草叶后面都有延伸的黑影。每一片叶子的边缘都非常锋利，摸上去甚至会划伤你的手指。

他们自己的影子打在面前的草地上。但阿斯兰的影子更亮眼些。他的影子延展至他们左侧，大得吓人。而所有这一切都发生在这片永远不会再有星辰的天空之下。

他们身后的光线（稍稍偏右侧）亮极了，甚至照亮了北部沼泽的山坡。有东西在那里移动，巨大的动物或飞或爬，进入纳尼亚的国界：那是巨龙、大型蜥蜴和长着像蝙蝠翅膀的无羽鸟。他们的身影消失在树林里，几分钟后又恢复了平静。然后，先是远方响起了恸哭声，接着各个方向上都传来沙沙作响、啪嗒啪嗒的响声和扇动翅膀的声音。这几股声音越来越近。很快，人们就可以区分小爪子和大爪子分别轻踏地面的声音，以及巨大马蹄发出的雷霆般的动静和小蹄子的啪嗒声。接着他们看到，上千双眼睛炯炯发光。出了树林，他们一路迈向山顶。他们足足有成千上万只，各种各样什么都有——能言兽、小矮人、半兽人、半羊人和巨人，以及来自卡乐门、亚钦兰和莫洛坡的子民，还有来自西界无名岛屿的奇怪生物。所有这些动物都跑向阿斯兰所站立的门口。

这一历程看起来就像做梦一样，而且之后也很难回忆得清楚。尤其是，他们无法描述这种情况到底持续了多久。看着好像只持续了几分钟，但是从其他角度来看，又像是过去了几年光阴。显然，除非门洞扩大或者这些动物突然变得像昆虫般大小，这么庞大的兽群连挤都挤不进去。但当时没有人想过这种事情。

兽群继续走上前来，越来越靠近站立在后侧的星星，他们的眼睛越发明亮了。但是当他们走到阿斯兰面前时，都会经历两桩事情中的一桩，不是这桩，就是那桩。他们都直勾勾地盯着阿斯兰的脸，我觉得他们也没得选。有些人的脸色变了——又有恐惧，又有仇恨。除了那些能言熊，那种情绪在他们脸上只停留了几分之一秒。他们突然不再是能言兽，而是变成了普通的动物。所有那样看着阿斯兰的动物都滑到了他们右边，也就是阿斯兰的左侧，然后消失在了马厩门口左侧那个巨大的黑洞中（你刚听说的那个黑洞）。孩子们再也看不到他们了，我也不知道他们成了什么。但其他人瞻仰着阿斯兰的脸，心怀对神的爱戴，尽管其中一些人还是有些害怕。这些动物来到门口，站在阿斯兰的右手边。他们中间也混杂了些奇怪的人。尤斯塔斯甚至认出了一个曾帮着射杀马群的小矮人，但是他没时间把那些事弄清楚了（而且无论如何这也不是他该管的），因为周围的一片欢腾打断了他的思绪。现在走过来围在缇利安与他的那些朋友们周围的快乐的兽群中，都是那些早已被认为战死的战友：半人马龙威特、独角兽珠儿、野猪、大熊、老鹰千里眼，还有狗群和马群，当然还有小矮人波金。

“继续前行，往高处去！”龙威特喊着，向西边疾驰而去。虽然他们不理解他这一举动，但这些话还是让他们莫名地激动。野猪高兴地哼了一声。当熊看到他们身后的果树时，他只是嘟囔着自己还是啥也不明白。他赶紧摇摇摆摆地走到那些果树前，当然，他发现了一些他非常熟悉的东西。而狗群摇着尾巴留了下来，波金也留了下来，和大家一一握手示意，憨厚的脸上始终笑意盈盈。珠儿把雪白的脑袋靠在国王的肩膀上，国王在他耳边小声说着什么。然后大家再次把注意力转向门外的风景。

巨龙和大型蜥蜴在纳尼亚肆意玩耍。他们跑来跑去，把树木连根拔起，还把它们嘎吱嘎吱地嚼碎，好像它们是大黄似的。时间一分一秒地过去了，森林消失殆尽。整个国家变得光秃秃的，你可以看清土地上每样东西的样子——所有你以前从未注意过的小丘和地洞。所有的草也枯死了。不久缇利安发现他正在凝视着一个只剩下光秃秃的岩石和泥土的世界。你几乎不会相信那里曾经是个万物生长的地方。怪物逐渐老去，躺在地上不动了。他们的肉瘪了下去，露出白骨，不久之后，他们就成了几具巨大的骷髅，躺在死寂的岩石之上，看起来就好像他们已经死了有几千年了。过了很长一段时间，万籁俱寂。

最后，一道白色的光——从星光中分离出来的长长的白色光线——从世界的东端向他们移动过来。

嘈杂声四起，打破了沉寂：首先是一阵杂音，接着是隆隆声，然后是一阵咆哮声。现在他们看出来正在涌来的是什么了，以及它袭来的速度之快。那是一堵满是泡沫的水墙。海洋正在升起。由于没有树丛遮挡视线，可以清楚地看到这一变化。看到所有的河流越来越宽，湖泊越来越大。分散的小水泊汇集成一个大湖，山谷化成了新的湖泊，山丘先是变成一座座岛屿，然后这些岛屿也沉在水面以下了。他们左面的高沼泽和右边的高山也全部崩塌，伴随巨大的轰鸣声和飞溅声倾泻至积水之中。水流打着转流到门槛处（但没有流过去）。扬起的泡沫溅到了阿斯兰的前襟。现在他们的立足之地与水面平齐，而水也在那里升至天际线的位置。

世界开始变亮了。一道沉闷而刺眼的晨光在水平线上蔓延开来，然后变得越来越亮，直到盖过了他们背后的星光。最后太阳升起来了。这一过程开始时，狄格雷勋爵和波莉女士互相看了一眼，并点了点头；这两个人在各自的世界也曾目睹过垂死的太阳，所以他们立马就知道这个太阳也即将燃烧殆尽。太阳是正常时的三倍，然后是二十倍，呈现出暗红色的光芒。当它的光芒洒在时间巨人身上时，巨人身上也红通通的。在阳光的照耀下，无边无际的水看上去如血水一般。

然后，月亮也升了起来，处于它不该在的位置，离太阳咫尺之近，而且也是通红一片。于它所至之处，太阳开始向它喷发出巨大的火焰，如晶须抑或是深红色的火蛇一般，就像一只试图用触手将月亮拉向自己位置的章鱼。也许太阳确实吸住了月亮，无论如何，月亮起初缓慢接近，但随后越来越快，直到最后长长的火焰包裹住了整个月亮。两者并成了一个像烧着的煤球似的巨大球体。大块的火焰掉落在海平面上，一大片水蒸气升了起来。

接着，阿斯兰说：“现在让这一切都结束吧！”

巨人把喇叭扔进海里。然后他伸出一只胳膊——看起来很黑，足足有数千英里之长——横过天空，直到他的手触碰到太阳。他捏了捏太阳，就像我们挤压手中的橙子那样。一瞬间又是无尽的黑暗。

除了阿斯兰之外，所有人都被现在门口的冰冷空气冻得跳了回来。门框上已经被冰凌覆盖。

“纳尼亚的至尊国王彼得，”阿斯兰说，“关上大门。”

彼得冷得发抖，他向黑暗中探出身子，将门拉了回来。他拉门时，门刮过地上的碎冰。然后，他相当笨拙地（那一会儿，他的手已经僵得没有血色了）摸出一把金钥匙并锁上门。

他们在门口目睹的这一幕已经够神奇的了。但是令他们每一个人都更惊奇的是，他们在四处张望之时，竟然发现自己这边依然是和风丽日。他们头顶蓝天，身处鲜花之中，阿斯兰的眼中透露着笑意。

阿斯兰迅速转身蹲下，用尾巴拍打着自己，像一支金箭那样窜了出去。

“继续前行！往高处去！”他转过身大喊着。但是谁能跟得上他那么快的步伐呢？他们开始跟着他一路向西前行。

“所以，”彼得说，“夜幕降临在纳尼亚。不是吧，露西，你没有在哭吧？阿斯兰在前方，我们大家也都在呢。”

“不要试图阻止我，彼得，”露西说，“我相信阿斯兰不会这样做，我相信为纳尼亚哀悼是没有错的，想想所有死在这扇门后面的生灵。”

“是的，我希望这一切没有发生，”吉尔说，“可能永远都是这样了，但我知道我们的世界不会陷入这般境地，但是纳尼亚也许不一样。”

“我见证这一切如何开始，”狄格雷勋爵说，“我觉得在我有生之年，我看不见它如何结束了。”

“先生们，”缇利安说，“女士们流泪是有道理的。我自己也会这样做，我曾看着我母亲离世，而我熟悉的纳尼亚离去了我该怎么样呢？如果我们不悼念它的话，既与美德不符，也不为礼节所尚。”

他们离开了大门的位置，也离开了仍旧坐在原地想象自己是坐在马厩里的小矮人们。他们边走着，边彼此谈起了往日的战争与和平年代，以及过去的国王们和纳尼亚所有的荣光。

狗群仍然和他们走在一块儿，也加入了这场对话，但他们没多插嘴。因为他们忙于跑到队伍前头，然后再折回来。他们会冲出去闻闻草地上的香气，直到打起了喷嚏。他们好像突然间嗅到了一股刺激性的气味。他们争了起来——“它就是——不，不是——这就是我说的那样嘛——谁都闻得出来那是什么——把你的大鼻子挪开，让别的狗也闻闻。”

“到底是什么东西呀，兄弟们？”彼得问。

“是一个卡乐门人，陛下。”几条狗立刻说道。

“你们再往那边探上一探，”彼得说，“无论他是敌是友，他理应受到欢迎。”

狗群冲到前面去，过一会儿又绕了回来，仿佛他们的生命就在于跑来跑去。然后他们大声宣告那确实是一个卡乐门人。（这些能言狗就像普通人一样，显得他们正忙着一件极其重要之事。）

其他人跟随着狗的引导，发现一个年轻的卡乐门人正坐在一棵栗树下，他旁边是清澈的溪水。这正是艾梅思。看到来人他立即站了起来，严肃地鞠了一躬。

“先生，”他对彼得说，“我不知道你是我的朋友还是敌人，但是见到您是我的荣幸。记得一位诗人曾说过，高尚的朋友是天之最佳馈赠，而高尚的敌人仅次于他。”

“先生，”彼得说，“我觉得我们之间不存在任何敌意。”

“务必告诉我们你是谁，发生了什么。”吉尔说。

“如果有故事要讲的话，让我们先喝口水再坐下来听可好？”狗儿们叫道，“我们喘得厉害。”

“你们要是还和刚才似的东奔西跑的话，不喘气才怪呢。”尤斯塔斯说。

于是所有人围坐在草地上，而狗儿们欢脱地在溪边狂饮了起来。喝完他们直挺挺地坐了下来，一边舌头耷拉喘着粗气，一边听着故事。只有珠儿还站在那儿，朝身体一侧磨着自己的角。

第十五章
继续前行

“容我向您慢慢道来，英武的国王们，”艾梅思说道，“还有你们，女士们，你们的美丽容颜照亮了整个宇宙。我是位于沙漠之西的塔什班城哈尔法·塔尔坎的第七个儿子。我是最近来到纳尼亚的，在里什达·塔尔坎的指挥下和二十九个同伴一起来的。当我第一次听到我们要进军纳尼亚的时候，我欢欣鼓舞，因为我听说过这个国家的好多事情，并希望能在战场上与你们较量一番。但是当我发现我们要伪装成商人的模样（这对一个战士和塔尔坎之子来说简直可耻），还要用谎言来愚弄大众，然后我就不再那么兴奋了。最关键的是，我们必须听从一个猴子的命令。当他说塔什和阿斯兰就是同一个神的时候，那个世界在我眼中已归于黑暗。因为从孩提时起，我就一直效忠于塔什。我的一大愿望就是更多地了解他，如果可能的话，还能一睹他的圣颜，而阿斯兰的名字对我来说是可憎的。

“而且，正如你所看到的那样，我们夜复一夜地在稻草屋顶的马厩外集合，然后点起篝火，那只无尾猿从马厩里牵出了一个四条腿的玩意儿，我也看不清楚那是什么。但是我觉得塔尔坎被骗了，因为这个从马厩里出来的东西既不是塔什，也不是别的什么神。但是当我观察到塔尔坎的脸色，并且仔细分析了他对那只猿说的每一句指令，我就改变了主意，因为我觉得塔尔坎自己也不相信它。然后我就想明白了，他根本不相信塔什，要不然的话，他敢这么玩弄神灵吗？

“当我想通这一点时，我非常愤怒。我想知道为什么真正的塔什没有降下天火，给那只猿和塔尔坎一点颜色瞧瞧。但我掩饰住了自己的愤怒，什么也没说，等着看会如何收场。昨天晚上，你们当中的一些人已经看见了，那只猿没有请出那位金色的神灵，而是对所有想要瞻仰塔什兰的人——他们把这两个词混为一谈，假装他们两位是同一个神——必须一个接一个地通过大门。然后我就知道，这毫无疑问又是一场欺骗。但是有只猫也跟着进去了，他出来时恐惧至极，几近疯狂。我对自己说，虽然在他们口中对真正的塔什毫无概念，更无信仰，但现在他已经来到我们中间，并将发起报复。出于对塔什的尊敬和恐惧，我的心思散了，但我要见他的愿望远比我的恐惧更强烈。因而我努力让膝盖不再发抖，我的牙齿也不再上下打战。我决心瞧瞧塔什的脸，尽管他可能会要了我的性命。所以我主动要求进入马厩，而塔尔坎虽然一百个不情愿，但还是让我进去了。

“我一进门，第一件事就大大出乎我所料。我发现自己身处这和煦的阳光下（就像我们现在这样），尽管屋内从外面看起来很暗。但我没时间对此发出惊叹，因为我接着就陷入了一场和我们自己人的搏斗。当我看到他的时候，我明白了猴子和塔尔坎早已把他安置于此，以杀死任何不在他们秘密谋划下进来的人。所以这个人也欺骗并愚弄了塔什，他也绝非真正虔诚的神之仆从。于是我更有信心同他作战了，我杀死了那个恶棍，把他扔出了门外。

“然后，我环顾四周，看到了天空和广阔的土地，闻到一阵甜蜜的花香。然后我说：‘以神之名，这真是一个令人愉快的地方，我可能来到了塔什的国度。’然后我开始探索这个陌生的国家，寻找塔什的踪迹。

“我越过一大片芳草与鲜花，穿过长满奇异树木的森林，走到两块岩石间的一个狭窄之处，来到了一头巨大的狮子面前。他移动时像鸵鸟一样风驰电掣，体型如大象般雄伟高大，鬃毛色如纯金，他的目光也如熔炉内的液体黄金一般透彻明亮。他有着比拉古尔火山喷发还猛烈的能量，而且他的英姿让世间一切都黯然失色，连沙漠荒尘中盛开的玫瑰都要稍逊他几分。然后我伏倒在他的脚下，想着此刻我非死不可，因为狮子（他无疑配得上所有的赞美与荣誉）一定知道我一直效忠于塔什。尽管如此，我宁愿见到他然后马上死去，也不愿坐在那个蒂斯罗克的位置上苟活于世，而不曾见过这位伟大的神灵。但是这头受人爱戴的金狮低下他的金色头颅，用舌头舔舐我的额头，说道：‘孩子，欢迎你来到这里。’但我说：‘唉，主啊，我不是你的儿子，而是塔什的仆人。’他回答说：‘孩子，你对塔什所做的一切服务，我也看作是在为我效力。’然后，出于对智慧与领悟力的极度渴求，我克服了心中的恐惧，问荣耀之神：‘主啊，是不是真的就像那只猿说的那样，你和塔什是同一个神？’狮子的咆哮使得整个大地为之震动（但他的愤怒并非因我而生）。他说：‘不是这样的。他和我并非同根同源，我们更像是相互对立的关系，所以我把你对他付出的一切也看作是为我服务。因为我和他秉性各异，因而我不会被怠慢，而他也得不到什么优待。因此，如果任何人以塔什为誓并付诸实践，那便是真正的誓言，尽管他不知道我会因此嘉奖他一番。如果有人以我的名义行暴戾之事，那么，虽然他说是以阿斯兰为名，但是他实际上服务于塔什，而后者会暗自默许他的行为。你明白吗，孩子？’我说：‘主啊，您是了解我的。但我不得不说（因为真相使我不得不吐露真言），我一直在追随塔什的脚步。’‘亲爱的，’无上之神说道，‘除非你是为了寻找我的足迹，否则你不会如此虔诚地费尽周折，坚持了这么长时间。因为所有人都想找到他们真正寻求的东西。

“然后他对着我吐了一口气，我的四肢就不颤抖了，我能站起来了。接着他只留下短短几句话，但他说我们会再见面的，而我必须继续前行。然后，他化身成一阵暴雨雷鸣，像一阵金色的疾风突然间就消失了。

“从那以后，亲爱的国王和女王们，我就一直在四处寻找他的踪迹。我感到如此之幸福，有时这种幸福感甚至像一道伤口一般让我陷入惶恐。这真是天大的奇迹，他竟然叫我‘亲爱的’，可我只是一条狗而已——”

“呃，那称呼是什么意思呢？”一条狗问道。

“先生，”艾梅思说，“这只不过是我们卡乐门人的一句俗语。”

“好吧，不得不说，我不怎么喜欢这个称呼。”那只狗回应道。

“他并没有什么恶意。”一条老狗说，“毕竟，当我们的小狗不听话的时候，我们也会管他们叫‘小崽子’。”

“我们的确是这样叫的，”刚才那条狗讲道，“或者叫‘小妮子’。”

“嘘！”老狗说，“这可不是一个得体的称呼，想想你们现在在哪儿。”

“看！”吉尔突然说道。有只兽走过来了，身影颤颤巍巍的，足有四英尺高，全身银灰色。他们盯着他整整十秒钟，然后五六个人立刻异口同声地说：“天哪，是老迷糊！”他们从来没有在白天见他脱下狮子皮，他现在的模样跟之前截然不同。他现在就是自己：一头漂亮的驴子，他的灰色毛皮如此柔软，面容诚实而温柔。如果你看到他现在的模样，你会像吉尔和露西那样——冲上前去，双臂搂住他的脖子，吻他的鼻子，抚摸他的耳朵。

当他们问他去了哪儿时，他回答说他和其他所有的动物一起进了门。但他们从他嘴里得知，他尽可能绕着那些动物走，也没有跟在阿斯兰后头。因为见了真正的狮神一眼，就让他对之前披着狮子皮招摇撞骗的行为感到羞愧，他不知道该如何面对任何人。但是当他看到所有的朋友都要向西部进发，他吞了一大口草之后（“我从来没有尝过这么鲜美的草。”迷糊说），便鼓起勇气跟在他们后面。“但是如果我真的见到阿斯兰了，我该怎么做，对此，我一无所知。”他补充道。

“当你见到他时，你会发现这没什么的。”露西女王说。

于是他们一起前行，一直朝西边行进，看起来阿斯兰之前大声呼喊“继续前行，往高处去”时，便是示意前往这个方向。许多其他动物也在往相同的方向缓缓而行。这个国度绿草如茵、一望无垠，因此也没有出现拥挤的现象。

天色看起来依然是初晨，空气十分清新。他们止不住地四处看看，又瞅了瞅身后的风景。一方面是因为这里景色宜人，但另一方面也是由于他们难以理解此处为什么会是这样。

“彼得，”露西说，“你觉得我们是在哪里？”

“我不知道，”至尊国王回答道，“这让我想起某个地方，但我说不出它的名字。这会不会是我们很小的时候一起度假的某个地方？”

“若真是这样，那绝对是一个非常愉快的假期。”尤斯塔斯说，“我敢打赌，在我们那个世界的任何角落都不存在这样的国家，看看这五彩斑斓的景色！我们那个世界的山绝不会像这里的山一样蓝。”

“这不是阿斯兰自己的国家吗？”缇利安说。

“不是，他的国家在世界东界的那座山上，”吉尔说，“我曾经去过那里。”

“如果你问我的话，”爱德蒙说，“我会说，它就像是在纳尼亚王国的某个地方，看看前面的几处山峰以及比它们更高的雪山，它们确实就像我们曾经在纳尼亚看到的山脉，就像瀑布以西的那些群山吗？”

“是的，看着确实很像，”彼得说，“只是这几座更加雄伟。”

“我觉得这些与纳尼亚的大山不尽相同，”露西说，“但是你们看看那里。”她指向她左手边的南方地带，所有人都停下来扭头去看。“看那些丘陵上边，”露西说，“那片茂密的树林和后面的蓝色的山，是不是很像纳尼亚南部边界？”

“是的！”沉默了一小会儿之后，爱德蒙大声说道，“它们简直是一模一样。看，那不是皮雷山的点点山峰，还有通往亚钦兰的山下走廊，一切都像极了纳尼亚！”

“但又不大一样，”露西说，“它们还是稍有不同的，比如颜色更加丰富了，离我们也比想象中的要远，而且它们还更……还更……哦，我说不上来了……”

“更像真实的景象。”狄格雷勋爵轻声说道。

老鹰千里眼突然展开翅膀，飞到三四十英尺高的上空，四处盘旋，然后落回地面。

“国王陛下，女王陛下，”他喊道，“我们的眼睛都出问题了，我们刚才看到的只是这里的风景。从天上我可什么都看到了——埃廷斯穆尔、比弗斯坦、凯旋之河和凯尔帕拉维尔依然闪耀在东海的边缘。纳尼亚没有覆灭，这就是纳尼亚。”

“但是怎么会呢？”彼得说，“阿斯兰早已告诫我们这些老人，说我们永远不会再回到纳尼亚，而现在我们就在这里。”

“是的，”尤斯塔斯说，“我们亲眼看到一切都化为乌有以及太阳熄灭的一幕。”

“这跟现在完全两样了。”露西说。

“千里眼说得对，”狄格雷勋爵说，“听着，彼得。当阿斯兰说我们永远不会再回到纳尼亚时，他的意思是你想象中的纳尼亚，但那不是真正的纳尼亚。那个世界有起止的时间，它只是一个影子或副本，而真正的纳尼亚一直都在这里，而且永远都会在这里，就像我们的世界，英格兰和其他地区，它们也只是阿斯兰所创造的真实世界的一个影子或替代品。露西，你不必为了过去的纳尼亚而难过。过去的纳尼亚王国以及生活在纳尼亚的所有生灵都已经通过那扇大门来到了真正的纳尼亚，当然这与原来不同；这种虚幻同真实的比较，就像你的梦境同现实生活相比较一样。”当他讲出这些话时，他的声音就像冲锋号一样鼓舞了每一个人，然后他喘了口气，补充道：“这一切都如同柏拉图所说，一切都像他说的那样：我的天哪，学校都在教他们什么啊！”那些年长者全都笑了起来。这跟他很久以前在另一个世界所讲的话如出一辙，那个时候他的金色胡子还是花白的。他知道他们在笑什么，自己也加入其中。但是很快他们变得严肃起来：因为，如你所知，有些好事的发生反而让你更严肃，把时间消磨在笑话上显然太过欢乐了。

很难解释这片阳光福地与过去的纳尼亚有何不同，就像描述这个国家的果实有多美味一样。这样想的话，也许你会对其成因有所了解。你可能会在某个房间，透过窗户远眺着某个美丽的海湾或蜿蜒于群山之间的绿色溪涧。在窗户对面的墙上可能挂着一面镜子，当你转身，视线离开窗户，你突然会在镜子里看见相同的景色。镜子里的大海和群山在某种意义上与真实的别无两样，与此同时，它们在某种程度上也不尽相同——它们要更加立体，更加迷人，它们更像是故事中的王国。这个故事你从未听说过，但又迫不及待地想要了解。过去的纳尼亚和现在的纳尼亚的区别就在于此。新的纳尼亚被赋予更多意义：每块岩石、每朵花和每根草看起来都意味无穷。我无法形容这种区别，如果你曾到过那里，你会明白我的意思。

最后是独角兽概括了每个人心中的感受。他跺了一下右前蹄，嘶叫了一声，然后大声说道：

“我终于回到家了，这才是我真正的国家！我属于这里，这是我穷尽一生所追寻的国度，尽管直到现在我才知道这个地方。我们喜欢古纳尼亚王国，不就是因为它像极了这里的风景吗？嘿嘿嘿！往高处去，继续前行！”

他甩了甩鬃毛，飞奔了起来——那是独角兽的疾驰。在我们的世界里，它会在一瞬间消失不见。但是现在最奇怪的是，其他人也跑了起来。每个人都惊奇地发现，他们可以跟上独角兽的步伐：除了狗群和人类，胖嘟嘟的迷糊和小短腿波金也跟了上来。疾风略过他们的脸颊，仿佛他们正驾驶着没有挡风玻璃的汽车急速行进。这个国家像特快列车窗外的风景一样一闪而过。他们跑得更快了，但没有谁觉得热或疲倦，或者喘不过气来。

第十六章
与幻境告别

如果一个人可以永无疲倦地奔跑，我想他不会再想做其他什么事了。也许会有什么特殊情况让他停下脚步，而现在就是这样，尤斯塔斯大声喊道：

“我说！大伙儿放慢一点！看看我们到哪儿了！”

他已经停了下来，现在映入他们眼帘的是大锅潭，而潭外侧是高耸入云的悬崖，每一秒都会涌下数千吨的水流。有的水域波光粼粼如钻石一般，而其他处呈现出光亮透明的深绿色。大瀑布倾泻而下，他们耳中响起惊雷般的水流声。

“不要停下来！往高处去，继续前行。”千里眼叫道，歪斜着向上空飞去。

“这对他来说挺轻松的。”尤斯塔斯嘟囔着，但是珠儿也喊着：

“不要停下来，往高处去，继续前行！大步迈上前去。”

他的声音盖过巨大的水流声，但下一刻，大家看见他已经驰入水池。其他人急忙跟在他后面，一个水花接着一个水花，他们全都跳了进去。水并不像大家（尤其是迷糊）想的那么冷，那种感觉像是惬意地洗着凉爽的泡泡浴。他们发觉自己径直游向了瀑布。

“这真是太疯狂了。”尤斯塔斯对爱德蒙说。

“我知道，但是——”爱德蒙说。

“这不是很棒吗？”露西说。“你有没有注意到大家现在都已经无忧无虑了？即使有谁想要徒增烦恼，他们也做不到了，不信你试试。”

“天哪，我敢说任何人都不会自寻烦恼了。”尤斯塔斯试过后说道。

珠儿首先抵达大瀑布下，而缇利安紧随其后。吉尔是最后一个，所以她比其他人看得更清楚。她看到有个白色的东西在瀑布的水面上稳步上升。那个白色的东西是独角兽。你无法分辨他是在游泳还是在攀爬，但他继续前进，并且越攀越高。他的角把他头顶上的水从中间分开，而那两道彩虹颜色的水流从他肩膀两旁流了过去。国王缇利安在他后面，四肢做出游泳的姿态，但他是径直向上游动，就好像人们可以在房间的墙上游泳一样。

最有趣的是狗儿们。在一块儿朝这里疾驰的时候，他们根本就没有上气不接下气的感觉。而现在他们蜂拥而上并向上移动时，好多都打起了喷嚏。那是因为他们老是狂吠不止，而每次他们吠叫时，都弄得满嘴满鼻子的水。没等吉尔停下来观察整个过程，她自己也登上了瀑布。这是在我们这个世界里完全不可能做到的。即使你没有淹死，撞到暗礁而转向的强劲水流也会把你击成碎片。但在这个世界，你却可以做到。继续前行，随着你越爬越高，水面反射光线向你射过来，水底的彩色宝石闪闪发光，看起来好像你在攀登一道光柱——直到越升越高，直到那种站在高处的感觉让你担惊受怕（如果那时你还会感到害怕的话），但这之后过程令人兴奋不已。最后来到美丽而平和的绿色水湾。那就是水流倾泻而下的地方，然后发现你已经到达和瀑布上端平齐的那条河流之中。水流在你身后涌动，而你是一位游泳健将，足以逆流而上。不久他们就游上河岸，浑身上下滴水不止，却很快乐。

前方迎来一条长长的山谷，近处的雪山高耸入云。

“往高处去，继续前行。”珠儿大声喊着，他们立刻又出发了。

他们现在离开了纳尼亚王国，进入了西部荒原。不仅缇利安和彼得未曾涉足于此，甚至连老鹰也没有见过这个地方。但是狄格雷勋爵和波莉女士曾经到过这里。“你还记得吗？你还记得吗？”他们互相问起。他们的声音无比平稳，没有一个人气喘吁吁，尽管大家现在跑得比飞箭还快。

“真的吗，勋爵？”缇利安问，“你们俩真的像故事里说的那样在创世之初的那一天就来过这里吗？”

“是的，”狄格雷说，“在我看来，这好像就发生在昨天一般。”

“在一匹飞驰的骏马上？”缇利安接着问道，“这部分是真的吗？”

“当然。”狄格雷说。但狗儿们大声吠道：“再快点，再快点！”

所以他们跑得越来越快，直到更像是在飞行，而非奔跑了。甚至在上空翱翔的老鹰也不比他们快几分。他们穿过蜿蜒的山谷，越过陡峭的山坡，跑得比以往任何时候都更快，很快就到了山谷的另一端。他们一直沿着河流的方向，有时得下河蹚水，像快艇一般急速掠过山中的湖泊，最后到达一个长湖的岸边——湖水时而湛蓝时而蓝绿。他们看到了一片光滑的绿色山丘。它的两侧像金字塔的两侧一样陡峭，顶端围着几堵绿墙。墙壁上的树枝上长着银白色的树叶和黄金般的果实。

“往高处去，继续前行！”独角兽咆哮了起来，大家都毫不退缩。他们径直冲向山脚，然后发现自己就像在海湾触礁后的海浪般奔跑不止。虽然这山坡几乎同屋顶一样陡峭，草坪像保龄球场地一样光滑，但没有人滑倒在地。当他们攀登到最高点时，他们放慢了脚步，因为面前是一道金色大门。一时之间，没有一个人敢上前查看门是不是开着的。他们都跟之前看到那些奇异果实的时候一样——“谁敢试试啊？我们应该上前吗？这门是为我们准备的吗？”

当他们站在那里时，只听一声响彻云霄的号角，声音响亮而甜美。号角声是从围墙后面的花园的某个角落传来的，接着大门敞开了。

缇利安屏住呼吸，想知道谁会从里面出来。最后他怎么也没想到是一只小巧而圆滑、眼睛闪闪发亮的能言鼠。他的头箍别着一根红色的羽毛，左爪放在长剑上。他鞠了一躬，动作优雅从容，他用尖锐的嗓音说：

“以狮王的名义，欢迎你们来到这里。请你们往高处去，继续前行。”

然后缇利安就看见国王彼得、爱德蒙和露西女王冲上前去，他们都跪下来迎接老鼠，高喊着“雷佩契普！”这一切实在令人惊叹，缇利安倒吸了一口凉气，因为现在他知道自己看到的是纳尼亚的伟大英雄之一。他就是曾经在贝鲁纳战役中英勇作战的老鼠雷佩契普，后来他还与凯斯宾国王一同驾船驶往世界尽头。还没等他消化一下这件事，他就感觉到两只强壮的胳膊抱紧了他，长着胡须的人亲吻了他的脸颊。然后他听到一个熟悉的声音说道：

“怎么样，孩子？你比我上一次见的时候更高了，也更强壮了！”

这是他自己的父亲，也就是至尊国王埃利安，但并不像缇利安最后一次见到的那般模样。当年他父亲同巨人族作战，被抬回家时已经脸色惨白、身受重伤。缇利安甚至回想起了父亲晚年时的光景，那时他已经是个头发花白的武士。现在他的父亲年轻而愉悦，就像记忆中他年幼时候那样，当时他自己还是一个小男孩。夏天夜里睡觉前，在凯尔帕拉维尔的城堡花园内，他总是要和父亲玩了游戏才能睡下。父亲曾经吃过的面包和牛奶的味道好像也回到了他的身上。

珠儿暗想：“同他们聊一会儿，我再去拜见老国王。当我还很小的时候，他喂了我多少鲜艳的苹果。”但下一刻，他就想着别的什么，因为门外又出现了一匹结实而高贵的骏马，即使独角兽在它面前也会倍感汗颜：一匹健壮的飞马。看到狄格雷勋爵和波莉女士的那一刻，他大声嘶鸣“这不是我的老朋友吗！”那两个人都喊着“弗莱德！我们的好弗莱德！”并冲上去亲吻了他。

这时，老鼠再次催促他们进来。他们踏入那扇金色的大门，一股宜人的芳香从花园里迎面扑来。一行人来到树荫下，看着阳光下树影斑驳，漫步在点缀着白色花朵的松软草地上。让所有人感到震惊的是这个地方比从外面看起来要大得多。但是没有人来得及思考这个问题，因为接着就从四面八方涌现出了一大批人迎接这些新来的客人。

你曾听过的每个人（如果你了解这些国家的历史）似乎都来了。猫头鹰格里姆费瑟、沼泽怪普德格伦、瑞廉国王、他的母亲星辰之女和他的伟大父亲凯斯宾都位列其中。在他身旁的是德里宁勋爵、伯尔尼勋爵、小矮人杜鲁普金和獾熊特鲁夫汉特。同时还有半人马战士格伦斯托姆以及在伟大的解放战争中功勋卓著的另外一百名英雄。然后另一边是亚钦兰的国王科林、他的父亲、皇后娅拉维斯和勇敢的王子科林·雷拳，当然还有他的兄弟，以及老马布里和母驴赫温。接下来的一幕对缇利安来说简直是奇迹中的奇迹——从更远处来了两只海狸和半羊人图姆纳斯。他们有的轻声问候，有的亲吻握手，讲起了过去的老笑话（你不知道在五六百年后再把它拿出来讲时，一个老笑话听起来有多好玩）。众人行至果园中间，有一只凤凰坐在树杈上，俯视着这一切。那棵树的底下是两个宝座，宝座上的国王和王后看起来如此英武而美丽，每个人都在他们面前鞠躬示意。这两个人应是弗兰克国王和海伦皇后了，所有纳尼亚和亚钦兰地区的国王都是他们的后裔。缇利安当时的感觉就好像被带到了容光焕发的亚当和夏娃面前一样。

大约半个小时后——或者过了五十来年后，因为这里的时间不像我们的世界那样。露西站在她朋友身旁，就是她在纳尼亚最先结识的半羊人图姆纳斯。她越过花园的墙头俯视，看着纳尼亚全境像卷轴般展开。但是向下看时，发现这座山比想象的要险峻得多。它脚下是高达几千英尺、闪耀着金光的悬崖，下方世界里的点点树木看起来还没有食盐的颗粒那么大。然后，她再一次转身，背靠着墙观察着整个花园。

“我明白了，”短暂沉思过后，她终于说，“我现在看到了，这个花园就像马厩一样，里面比外面要大得多。”

“当然，夏娃的女儿，”半羊人说，“你越是往高处深处走，所有的东西就变得更大了，里面别有洞天呢。”

露西看着花园，发现它不是一个真正的花园，而是一个拥有自己的河流、树林、海洋和山脉的完整的世界。但他们对此并不陌生，这下她全都明白了。

“我明白了，”她说，“这里仍然是纳尼亚，比下面的纳尼亚更加真实，更加美丽，而它比马厩门外的纳尼亚王国也更加真实，更加美丽！我知道了……世界内部的真正世界，纳尼亚内部真正的纳尼亚……”

“是的，”图姆纳斯说道，“就像洋葱一样，不断地往里剥，你会发现每一圈都比上一圈要大。”

露西东张西望，很快就发现了一件新奇的事情。无论她看的是距离多么遥远的东西，只要她紧盯着，它就会变得清晰可见，仿佛她是通过望远镜观看的。她可以看到整个南部沙漠，沙漠之外，矗立着一座巨大城市——塔什班。她又向东部望去，映入眼帘的是海边的凯尔帕拉维尔，以及她曾经待过的那个房间的窗户。接着看远处的大海，她看得清每一个岛屿，和群岛后面的世界尽头，以及尽头之外，是他们称之为“阿斯兰的国家”的巨大山峰。现在她知道那座山不过是环绕在整个世界的一系列山脉中的一部分。在她面前，那些山脉似乎触手可及。然后，她向左望去，看到一朵色彩鲜艳的云，它与他们隔开了一段距离。但等她看得更仔细些，她发现那不是一朵云彩，而是一片土地。当她凝视着某个特定位置时，她立刻喊道：“彼得，爱德蒙，快来看看，快来啊。”他们过来瞅了几眼，其他人的眼睛现在也如她一般可以一目千里了。

“怎么会这样！”彼得大声喊道，“那不是英格兰吗？那是科克教授在英国的老宅子，也是我们一切冒险开始的地方啊！”

“我还以为那所房子早就塌了呢。”爱德蒙说。

“的确是的，”法恩说，“但你现在所看到的是英格兰之中的英格兰，那是真正的英格兰。就像这是真正的纳尼亚，而在英格兰的内部，是没有什么东西会被摧毁的。”

突然间，他们把目光移向了另一个地方，彼得、爱德蒙和露西惊愕地大叫起来，并开始挥着手，因为他们看到了自己的父母正在又大又深的山谷另一边向他们打着招呼。就像当你在码头等候，而你看到来客在一艘大船的甲板上向你挥手一样。

“我们怎样才能见到他们？”露西说。

“这很容易，”图姆纳斯说，“那个国家和这个国家——所有真正的国家——只是位于阿斯兰之山的某处凸起的山坡上。我们只能沿着山脊，向上攀爬，然后向山里行进，直到相汇的地方。听！是弗兰克国王的号角。我们现在必须都要上去了。”

很快，他们发现大家在一起就是一支庞大的队伍，他们欢愉地朝着山顶行进。尽管视野可及这些山峰，但它们比你所见到过的所有山峰都要高。但那些山顶上却没有积雪，只是一大片森林和翠绿的山坡，还有瓜果飘香的果园和闪闪发亮的瀑布。一处接着一处，往上走永远是新的风景。他们行走的道路越来越窄，两边各有一个深谷。越过那个山谷，他们离真正的英格兰越来越近了。

前方的光线越来越强了。露西看到颜色各异的一排悬崖像巨人的楼梯一样呈现在他们面前。然后她把其他一切都抛在脑后，因为阿斯兰来了，像壮丽而饱含能量的大瀑布一样一级又一级地跃下悬崖。

阿斯兰首先召唤的就是老驴迷糊。他走近阿斯兰，你从未见过其他驴比他更虚弱无力且摸不着头脑。他目视着阿斯兰，就像一只小猫在圣伯纳德面前那般渺小。狮王低下头，低声说着什么。迷糊长长的耳朵先是耷拉下来，然后阿斯兰又叮嘱了几句，迷糊的耳朵再次竖了起来。大家都听不到阿斯兰到底说了些什么。然后阿斯兰转向他们，说道：

“你们看起来并不像我所希望的那般开心。”

露西说：“我们害怕被你打发走，阿斯兰，而且你把我们送回我们自己的世界已经不是一次两次了。”

“不用担心，”阿斯兰说，“难道你们没有猜到吗？”

他们的心扑通地跳着，内心涌起了狂野的希望。

“这里的确发生过一起铁路事故，”阿斯兰轻声说，“你们的父亲、母亲和你们所有人——就像你们曾经在幻境里所宣称的那样——都已经死了。这段尘世已经结束，美好假期已经开始。你们不再做梦，而是在今天这个美妙的早晨苏醒了。

当他说出这些时，他不再像狮王那样看着他们，但之后所发生的每件事情都如此重大而美好，而我无法将这些事情记载下来。对我们而言，这就是整个故事的终结了。我们可以发自内心地说，他们都过上了幸福的生活。但对他们来说，这只是真实故事的序幕。他们在这个世界的一辈子和在纳尼亚的所有冒险都只不过是这个故事的封面和扉页。现在他们终于写下了第一个章节。虽然未曾有人读过，但故事本身也无比有趣，并将永远续写下去，而它的每一个章节都比之前更加精彩。

CHAPTER ONE
BY CALDRON POOL

In the last days of Narnia, far up to the west beyond Lantern Waste and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape. He was so old that no one could remember when he had first come to live in those parts, and he was the cleverest, ugliest, most wrinkled Ape you can imagine. He had a little house, built of wood and thatched with leaves, up in the fork of a great tree, and his name was Shift. There were very few Talking Beasts or Men or Dwarfs, or people of any sort, in that part of the wood, but Shift had one friend and neighbour who was a donkey called Puzzle. At least they both said they were friends, but from the way things went on you might have thought Puzzle was more like Shift’s servant than his friend. He did all the work. When they went together to the river, Shift filled the big skin bottles with water but it was Puzzle who carried them back. When they wanted anything from the towns further down the river it was Puzzle who went down with empty panniers on his back and came back with the panniers full and heavy. And all the nicest things that Puzzle brought back were eaten by Shift; for as Shift said, “You see, Puzzle, I can’t eat grass and thistles like you, so it’s only fair I should make it up in other ways.” And Puzzle always said, “Of course, Shift, of course. I see that.” Puzzle never complained, because he knew that Shift was far cleverer than himself and he thought it was very kind of Shift to be friends with him at all. And if ever Puzzle did try to argue about anything, Shift would always say, “Now, Puzzle, I understand what needs to be done better than you. You know you’re not clever, Puzzle.” And Puzzle always said, “No, Shift. It’s quite true. I’m not clever.” Then he would sigh and do whatever Shift had said.

One morning early in the year the pair of them were out walking along the shore of Caldron Pool. Caldron Pool is the big pool right under the cliffs at the western end of Narnia. The great waterfall pours down into it with a noise like everlasting thunder, and the River of Narnia flows out on the other side. The waterfall keeps the Pool always dancing and bubbling and churning round and round as if it were on the boil, and that of course is how it got its name of Caldron Pool. It is liveliest in the early spring when the waterfall is swollen with all the snow that has melted off the mountains from up beyond Narnia in the Western Wild from which the river comes. And as they looked at Caldron Pool Shift suddenly pointed with his dark, skinny finger and said,

“Look！ What’s that?”

“What’s what?” said Puzzle.

“That yellow thing that’s just come down the waterfall. Look！ There it is again, it’s floating. We must find out what it is.”

“Must we?” said Puzzle.

“Of course we must,” said Shift. “It may be something useful. Just hop into the Pool like a good fellow and fish it out. Then we can have a proper look at it.”

“Hop into the Pool?” said Puzzle, twitching his long ears.

“Well how are we to get it if you don’t?” said the Ape.

“But-but,” said Puzzle, “wouldn’t it be better if you went in? Because, you see, it’s you who wants to know what it is, and I don’t much. And you’ve got hands, you see. You’re as good as a Man or a Dwarf when it comes to catching hold of things. I’ve only got hoofs.”

“Really, Puzzle,” said Shift, “I didn’t think you’d ever say a thing like that. I didn’t think it of you, really.”

“Why, what have I said wrong?” said the Ass, speaking in rather a humble voice, for he saw that Shift was very deeply offended. “All I meant was—”

“Wanting me to go into the water,” said the Ape. “As if you didn’t know perfectly well what weak chests Apes always have and how easily they catch cold！ Very well. I will go in. I’m feeling cold enough already in this cruel wind. But I’ll go in. I shall probably die. Then you’ll be sorry.” And Shift’s voice sounded as if he was just going to burst into tears.

“Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t,” said Puzzle, half braying, and half talking. “I never meant anything of the sort, Shift, really I didn’t. You know how stupid I am and how I can’t think of more than one thing at a time. I’d forgotten about your weak chest. Of course I’ll go in. You mustn’t think of doing it yourself. Promise me you won’t, Shift.”

So Shift promised, and Puzzle went cloppety-clop on his four hoofs round the rocky edge of the Pool to find a place where he could get in. Quite apart from the cold it was no joke getting into that quivering and foaming water, and Puzzle had to stand and shiver for a whole minute before he made up his mind to do it. But then Shift called out from behind him and said：“Perhaps I’d better do it after all, Puzzle.” And when Puzzle heard that he said, “No, no. You promised. I’m in now,” and in he went.

A great mass of foam got him in the face and filled his mouth with water and blinded him. Then he went under altogether for a few seconds, and when he came up again he was in quite another part of the Pool. Then the swirl caught him and carried him round and round and faster and faster till it took him right under the waterfall itself, and the force of the water plunged him down, deep down, so that he thought he would never be able to hold his breath till he came up again. And when he had come up and when at last he got somewhere near the thing he was trying to catch, it sailed away from him till it too got under the fall and was forced down to the bottom. When it came up again it was further from him than ever. But at last, when he was almost tired to death, and bruised all over and numb with cold, he succeeded in gripping the thing with his teeth. And out he came carrying it in front of him and getting his front hoofs tangled up in it, for it was as big as a large hearthrug, and it was very heavy and cold and slimy.

He flung it down in front of Shift and stood dripping and shivering and trying to get his breath back. But the Ape never looked at him or asked him how he felt. The Ape was too busy going round and round the thing and spreading it out and patting it and smelling it. Then a wicked gleam came into his eye and he said：

“It is a lion’s skin.”

“Ee—auh—auh—oh, is it?” gasped Puzzle.

“Now I wonder ... I wonder ... I wonder,” said Shift to himself, for he was thinking very hard.

“I wonder who killed the poor lion,” said Puzzle presently. “It ought to be buried. We must have a funeral.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a Talking Lion,” said Shift. “You needn’t bother about that. There are no Talking Beasts up beyond the Falls, up in the Western Wild. This skin must have belonged to a dumb, wild lion.”

This, by the way, was true. A Hunter, a Man, had killed and skinned this lion somewhere up in the Western Wild several months before. But that doesn’t come into this story.

“All the same, Shift,” said Puzzle, “even if the skin only belonged to a dumb, wild lion, oughtn’t we to give it a decent burial? I mean, aren’t all lions rather-well, rather solemn? Because of you know Who. Don’t you see?”

“Don’t you start getting ideas into your head, Puzzle,” said Shift. “Because, you know, thinking isn’t your strong point. We’ll make this skin into a fine warm winter coat for you.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’d like that,” said the Donkey. “It would look—I mean, the other Beasts might think—that is to say, I shouldn’t feel—”

“What are you talking about?” said Shift, scratching himself the wrong way up as Apes do.

“I don’t think it would be respectful to the Great Lion, to Aslan himself, if an ass like me went about dressed up in a lion-skin,” said Puzzle.

“Now don’t stand arguing, please,” said Shift. “What does an ass like you know about things of that sort? You know you’re no good at thinking, Puzzle, so why don’t you let me do your thinking for you? Why don’t you treat me as I treat you? I don’t think I can do everything. I know you’re better at some things than I am. That’s why I let you go into the Pool; I knew you’d do it better than me. But why can’t I have my turn when it comes to something I can do and you can’t? Am I never to be allowed to do anything? Do be fair. Turn and turn about.”

“Oh, well, of course, if you put it that way,” said Puzzle.

“I tell you what,” said Shift. “You’d better take a good brisk trot down river as far as Chippingford and see if they have any oranges or bananas.”

“But I’m so tired, Shift,” pleaded Puzzle.

“Yes, but you are very cold and wet,” said the Ape. “You want something to warm you up. A brisk trot would be just the thing. Besides, it’s market day at Chippingford today.” And then of course Puzzle said he would go.

As soon as he was alone Shift went shambling along, sometimes on two paws and sometimes on four, till he reached his own tree. Then he swung himself up from branch to branch, chattering and grinning all the time, and went into his little house. He found needle and thread and a big pair of scissors there; for he was a clever Ape and the Dwarfs had taught him how to sew. He put the ball of thread （it was very thick stuff, more like cord than thread） into his mouth so that his cheek bulged out as if he were sucking a big bit of toffee. He held the needle between his lips and took the scissors in his left paw. Then he came down the tree and shambled across to the lion-skin. He squatted down and got to work.

He saw at once that the body of the lion-skin would be too long for Puzzle and its neck too short. So he cut a good piece out of the body and used it to make a long collar for Puzzle’s long neck. Then he cut off the head and sewed the collar in between the head and the shoulders. He put threads on both sides of the skin so that it would tie up under Puzzle’s chest and stomach. Every now and then a bird would pass overhead and Shift would stop his work, looking anxiously up. He did not want anyone to see what he was doing. But none of the birds he saw were Talking Birds, so it didn’t matter.

Late in the afternoon Puzzle came back. He was not trotting but only plodding patiently along, the way donkeys do.

“There weren’t any oranges,” he said, “and there weren’t any bananas. And I’m very tired.” He lay down.

“Come and try on your beautiful new lion-skin coat,” said Shift.

“Oh bother that old skin,” said Puzzle. “I’ll try it on in the morning. I’m too tired tonight.”

“You are unkind, Puzzle,” said Shift. “If you’re tired what do you think I am? All day long, while you’ve been having a lovely refreshing walk down the valley, I’ve been working hard to make you a coat. My paws are so tired I can hardly hold these scissors. And you won’t say thank you—and you won’t even look at the coat—and you don’t care—and—and—”

“My dear Shift,” said Puzzle getting up at once, “I am so sorry. I’ve been horrid. Of course I’d love to try it on. And it looks simply splendid. Do try it on me at once. Please do.”

“Well, stand still then,” said the Ape. The skin was very heavy for him to lift, but in the end, with a lot of pulling and pushing and puffing and blowing, he got it on to the donkey. He tied it underneath Puzzle’s body and he tied the legs to Puzzle’s legs and the tail to Puzzle’s tail. A good deal of Puzzle’s grey nose and face could be seen through the open mouth of the lion’s head. No one who had ever seen a real lion would have been taken in for a moment. But if someone who had never seen a lion looked at Puzzle in his lion-skin he just might mistake him for a lion, if he didn’t come too close, and if the light was not too good, and if Puzzle didn’t let out a bray and didn’t make any noise with his hoofs.

“You look wonderful, wonderful,” said the Ape. “If anyone saw you now, they’d think you were Aslan, the Great Lion, himself.”

“That would be dreadful,” said Puzzle.

“No it wouldn’t,” said Shift. “Everyone would do whatever you told them.”

“But I don’t want to tell them anything.”

“But you think of the good we could do！” said Shift. “You’d have me to advise you, you know. I’d think of sensible orders for you to give. And everyone would have to obey us, even the King himself. We would set everything right in Narnia.”

“But isn’t everything right already?” said Puzzle.

“What！” cried Shift. “Everything right?—when there are no oranges or bananas?”

“Well, you know,” said Puzzle, “there aren’t many people—in fact, I don’t think there’s anyone but yourself who wants those sort of things.”

“There’s sugar too,” said Shift.

“H’m yes,” said the Ass. “It would be nice if there was more sugar.”

“Well then, that’s settled,” said the Ape. “You will pretend to be Aslan, and I’ll tell you what to say.”

“No, no, no,” said Puzzle. “Don’t say such dreadful things. It would be wrong, Shift. I maybe not very clever but I know that much. What would become of us if the real Aslan turned up?”

“I expect he’d be very pleased,” said Shift. “Probably he sent us the lion-skin on purpose, so that we could set things to right. Anyway, he never does turn up, you know. Not nowadays.”

At that moment there came a great thunderclap right overhead and the ground trembled with a small earthquake. Both the animals lost their balance and were flung on their faces.

“There！” gasped Puzzle, as soon as he had breath to speak. “It’s a sign, a warning. I knew we were doing something dreadfully wicked. Take this wretched skin off me at once.”

“No, no,” said the Ape （whose mind worked very quickly）. “It’s a sign the other way. I was just going to say that if the real Aslan, as you call him, meant us to go on with this, he would send us a thunderclap and an earth-tremor. It was just on the tip of my tongue, only the sign itself came before I could get the words out. You’ve got to do it now, Puzzle. And please don’t let us have any more arguing. You know you don’t understand these things. What could a donkey know about signs?”

CHAPTER TWO
THE RASHNESS OF THE KING

About three weeks later the last of the Kings of Narnia sat under the great oak which grew beside the door of his little hunting lodge, where he often stayed for ten days or so in the pleasant spring weather. It was a low, thatched building not far from the Eastern end of Lantern Waste and some way above the meeting of the two rivers. He loved to live there simply and at ease, away from the state and pomp of Cair Paravel, the royal city. His name was King Tirian, and he was between twenty and twenty-five years old; his shoulders were already broad and strong and his limbs full of hard muscle, but his beard was still scanty. He had blue eyes and a fearless, honest face.

There was no one with him that spring morning except his dearest friend, Jewel the Unicorn. They loved each other like brothers and each had saved the other’s life in the wars. The lordly beast stood close beside the King’s chair, with its neck bent round polishing its blue horn against the creamy whiteness of its flank.

“I cannot set myself to any work or sport today, Jewel,” said the King. “I can think of nothing but this wonderful news. Think you we shall hear any more of it today?”

“They are the most wonderful tidings ever heard in our days or our fathers’or our grandfathers’days, Sire,” said Jewel, “if they are true.”

“How can they choose but be true?” said the King. “It is more than a week ago that the first birds came flying over us saying, Aslan is here, Aslan has come to Narnia again. And after that it was the squirrels. They had not seen him, but they said it was certain he was in the woods. Then came the Stag. He said he had seen him with his own eyes, a great way off, by moonlight, in Lantern Waste. Then came that dark Man with the beard, the merchant from Calormen. The Calormenes care nothing for Aslan as we do; but the man spoke of it as a thing beyond doubt. And there was the Badger last night; he too had seen Aslan.”

“Indeed, Sire,” answered Jewel, “I believe it all. If I seem not to, it is only that my joy is too great to let my belief settle itself. It is almost too beautiful to believe.”

“Yes,” said the King with a great sigh, almost a shiver, of delight. “It is beyond all that I ever hoped for in all my life.”

“Listen！” said Jewel, putting his head on one side and cocking his ears forward.

“What is it?” asked the King.

“Hoofs, Sire,” said Jewel. “A galloping horse. A very heavy horse. It must be one of the Centaurs. And look, there he is.”

A great, golden bearded Centaur, with man’s sweat on his forehead and horse’s sweat on his chestnut flanks, dashed up to the King, stopped, and bowed low. “Hail, King,” it cried in a voice as deep as a bull’s.

“Ho, there！” said the King, looking over his shoulder toward the door of the hunting lodge. “A bowl of wine for the noble Centaur. Welcome, Roonwit. When you have found your breath you shall tell us your errand.”

A page came out of the house carrying a great wooden bowl, curiously carved, and handed it to the Centaur. The Centaur raised the bowl and said,

“I drink first to Aslan and truth, Sire, and secondly to your Majesty.”

He finished the wine （enough for six strong men） at one draught and handed the empty bowl back to the page.

“Now, Roonwit,” said the King. “Do you bring us more news of Aslan?”

Roonwit looked very grave, frowning a little.

“Sire,” he said. “You know how long I have lived and studied the stars; for we Centaurs live longer than you Men, and even longer than your kind, Unicorn. Never in all my days have I seen such terrible things written in the skies as there have been nightly since this year began. The stars say nothing of the coming of Aslan, nor of peace, nor of joy. I know by my art that there have not been such disastrous conjunctions of the planets for five hundred years. It was already in my mind to come and warn your Majesty that some great evil hangs over Narnia. But last night the rumour reached me that Aslan is abroad in Narnia. Sire, do not believe this tale. It cannot be. The stars never lie, but Men and Beasts do. If Aslan were really coming to Narnia the sky would have foretold it. If he were really come, all the most gracious stars would be assembled in his honour. It is all a lie.”

“A lie！” said the King fiercely. “What creature in Narnia or all the world would dare to lie on such a matter?” And, without knowing it, he laid his hand on his sword hilt.

“That I know not, Lord King,” said the Centaur. “But I know there are liars on earth; there are none among the stars.”

“I wonder,” said Jewel, “whether Aslan might not come though all the stars foretold otherwise. He is not the slave of the stars but their Maker. Is it not said in all the old stories that He is not a tame lion.”

“Well said, well said, Jewel,” cried the King. “Those are the very words： not a tame lion. It comes in many tales.”

Roonwit had just raised his hand and was leaning forward to say something very earnestly to the King when all three of them turned their heads to listen to a wailing sound that was quickly drawing nearer. The wood was so thick to the West of them that they could not see the newcomer yet. But they could soon hear the words.

“Woe, woe, woe！” called the voice. “Woe for my brothers and sisters！ Woe for the holy trees！ The woods are laid waste. The axe is loosed against us. We are being felled. Great trees are falling, falling, falling.”

With the last “falling” the speaker came in sight. She was like a woman but so tall that her head was on a level with the Centaur’s yet she was like a tree too. It is hard to explain if you have never seen a Dryad but quite unmistakable once you have-something different in the color, the voice, and the hair. King Tirian and the two Beasts knew at once that she was the nymph of a beech tree.

“Justice, Lord King！” she cried. “Come to our aid. Protect your people. They are felling us in Lantern Waste. Forty great trunks of my brothers and sisters are already on the ground.”

“What, Lady！ Felling Lantern Waste? Murdering the talking trees?” cried the King, leaping to his feet and drawing his sword. “How dare they? And who dares it? Now by the Mane of Aslan—”

“A-a-a-h,” gasped the Dryad shuddering as if in pain—shuddering time after time as if under repeated blows. Then all at once she fell sideways as suddenly as if both her feet had been cut from under her. For a second they saw her lying dead on the grass and then she vanished. They knew what had happened. Her tree, miles away, had been cut down.

For a moment the King’s grief and anger were so great that he could not speak. Then he said：

“Come, friends. We must go up river and find the villains who have done this, with all the speed we may. I will leave not one of them alive.”

“Sire, with a good will,” said Jewel.

But Roonwit said, “Sire, be wary in your just wrath. There are strange doings on foot. If there should be rebels in arms further up the valley, we three are too few to meet them. If it would please you to wait while—”

“I will not wait the tenth part of a second,” said the King. “But while Jewel and I go forward, do you gallop as hard as you may to Cair Paravel. Here is my ring for your token. Get me a score of men-at-arms, all well mounted, and a score of Talking Dogs, and ten Dwarfs （let them all be fell archers）, and a Leopard or so, and Stonefoot the Giant. Bring all these after us as quickly as may be.”

“With a good will, Sire,” said Roonwit. And at once he turned and galloped Eastward down the valley.

The King strode on at a great pace, sometimes muttering to himself and sometimes clenching his fists. Jewel walked beside him, saying nothing; so there was no sound between them but the faint jingle of a rich gold chain that hung round the Unicorn’s neck and the noise of two feet and four hoofs.

They soon reached the River and turned up it where there was a grassy road： they had the water on their left and the forest on their right. Soon after that they came to the place where the ground grew rougher and thick wood came down to the water’s edge. The road, what there was of it, now ran on the Southern bank and they had to ford the River to reach it. It was up to Tirian’s arm-pits, but Jewel （who had four legs and was therefore steadier） kept on his right so as to break the force of the current, and Tirian put his strong arm round the Unicorn’s strong neck and they both got safely over. The King was still so angry that he hardly noticed the cold of the water. But of course he dried his sword very carefully on the shoulder of his cloak, which was the only dry part of him, as soon as they came to shore.

They were now going Westward with the River on their right and Lantern Waste straight ahead of them. They had not gone more than a mile when they both stopped and both spoke at the same moment. The King said “What have we here?” and Jewel said “Look！”

“It is a raft,” said King Tirian.

And so it was. Half a dozen splendid tree-trunks, all newly cut and newly lopped of their branches, had been lashed together to make a raft, and were gliding swiftly down the river. On the front of the raft there was a water rat with a pole to steer it.

“Hey！ Water-Rat！ What are you about?” cried the King.

“Taking logs down to sell to the Calormenes, Sire,” said the Rat, touching his ear as he might have touched his cap if he had had one.

“Calormenes！” thundered Tirian. “What do you mean? Who gave order for these trees to be felled?”

The River flows so swiftly at that time of the year that the raft had already glided past the King and Jewel. But the Water-Rat looked back over its shoulder and shouted out：

“The Lion’s orders, Sire. Aslan himself.” He added something more but they couldn’t hear it.

The King and the Unicorn stared at one another and both looked more frightened than they had ever been in any battle.

“Aslan,” said the King at last, in a very low voice. “Aslan. Could it be true? Could he be felling the holy trees and murdering the Dryads?”

“Unless the Dryads have all done something dreadfully wrong—” murmured Jewel.

“But selling them to Calormenes！” said the King. “Is it possible?”

“I don’t know,” said Jewel miserably. “He’s not a tame lion.”

“Well,” said the King at last, “we must go on and take the adventure that comes to us.”

“It is the only thing left for us to do, Sire,” said the Unicorn. He did not see at the moment how foolish it was for two of them to go on alone; nor did the King. They were too angry to think clearly. But much evil came of their rashness in the end.

Suddenly the King leaned hard on his friend’s neck and bowed his head.

“Jewel,” he said, “what lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy.”

“Yes,” said Jewel. “We have lived too long. The worst thing in the world has come upon us.” They stood like that for a minute or two and then went on.

Before long they could hear the hack-hack-hack of axes falling on timber, though they could see nothing yet because there was a rise of the ground in front of them. When they had reached the top of it they could see right into Lantern Waste itself. And the King’s face turned white when he saw it.

Right through the middle of that ancient forest—that forest where the trees of gold and of silver had once grown and where a child from our world had once planted the Tree of Protection—a broad lane had already been opened. It was a hideous lane like a raw gash in the land, full of muddy ruts where felled trees had been dragged down to the river. There was a great crowd of people at work, and a cracking of whips, and horses tugging and straining as they dragged at the logs. The first thing that struck the King and the Unicorn was that about half the people in the crowd were not Talking Beasts but Men. The next thing was that these men were not the fair-haired men of Narnia： they were dark, bearded men from Calormen, that great and cruel country that lies beyond Archenland across the desert to the south. There was no reason, of course, why one should not meet a Calormene or two in Narnia—a merchant or an ambassador—for there was peace between Narnia and Calormen in those days. But Tirian could not understand why there were so many of them： nor why they were cutting down a Narnian forest. He grasped his sword tighter and rolled his cloak round his left arm. They came quickly down among the men.

Two Calormenes were driving a horse which was harnessed to a log. Just as the King reached them the log had got stuck in a bad muddy place.

“Get on, son of sloth！ Pull, you lazy pig！” cried the Calormenes, cracking their whips. The horse was already straining himself as hard as he could; his eyes were red and he was covered with foam.

“Work, lazy brute,” shouted one of the Calormenes, and as he spoke he struck the horse savagely with his whip. It was then that the really dreadful thing happened.

Up till now Tirian had taken it for granted that the horses which the Calormenes were driving were their own horses： dumb, witless animals like the horses of our own world. And though he hated to see even a dumb horse overdriven, he was of course thinking more about the murder of the Trees. It had never crossed his mind that anyone would dare to harness one of the free Talking Horses of Narnia, much less to use a whip on it. But as that savage blow fell the horse reared up and said, half screaming：

“Fool and tyrant！ Do you not see I am doing all I can?”

When Tirian knew that the Horse was one of his own Narnians, there came over him and over Jewel such a rage that they did not know what they were doing. The King’s sword went up, the Unicorn’s horn went down. They rushed forward together. Next moment both the Calormenes lay dead, the one beheaded by Tirian’s sword and the other gored through the heart by Jewel’s horn.

CHAPTER THREE
THE APE IN ITS GLORY

“Master Horse, Master Horse,” said Tirian as he hastily cut its traces, “how came these aliens to enslave you? Is Narnia conquered? Has there been a battle?”

“No, Sire,” panted the horse, “Aslan is here. It is all by his orders. He has commanded—”

“’Ware danger, King,” said Jewel. Tirian looked up and saw that Calormenes （mixed with a few Talking Beasts） were beginning to run toward them from every direction. The two dead men had died without a cry and so it had taken a moment before the rest of the crowd knew what had happened. But now they did. Most of them had naked scimitars in their hands.

“Quick. On my back,” said Jewel.

The King flung himself astride of his old friend who turned and galloped away. He changed direction twice or thrice as soon as they were out of sight of their enemies, crossed a stream, and shouted without slackening his pace, “Whither away, Sire? To Cair Paravel?”

“Hold hard, friend,” said Tirian. “Let me off.” He slid off the Unicorn’s back and faced him.

“Jewel,” said the King. “We have done a dreadful deed.”

“We were sorely provoked,” said Jewel.

“But to leap on them unawares—without defying them while they were unarmed—faugh！ We are two murderers, Jewel. I am dishonoured forever.”

Jewel drooped his head. He too was ashamed.

“And then,” said the King, “the Horse said it was by Aslan’s orders. The Rat said the same. They all say Aslan is here. How if it were true?”

“But, Sire, how could Aslan be commanding such dreadful things?”

“He is not a tame lion,” said Tirian. “How should we know what he would do? We, who are murderers. Jewel, I will go back. I will give up my sword and put myself in the hands of these Calormenes and ask that they bring me before Aslan. Let him do justice on me.”

“You will go to your death, then,” said Jewel.

“Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?” said the King. “That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”

“I know,” said Jewel. “Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up.”

“There is no need for both of us to go.”

“If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now,” said the Unicorn. “If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me?”

They turned and walked back together, shedding bitter tears.

As soon as they came to the place where the work was going on the Calormenes raised a cry and came toward them with their weapons in hand. But the King held out his sword with the hilt toward them and said：

“I who was King of Narnia and am now a dishonoured knight give myself up to the justice of Aslan. Bring me before him.”

“And I give myself up too,” said Jewel.

Then the dark men came round them in a thick crowd, smelling of garlic and onions, their white eyes flashing dreadfully in their brown faces. They put a rope halter round Jewel’s neck. They took the King’s sword away and tied his hands behind his back. One of the Calormenes, who had a helmet instead of a turban and seemed to be in command, snatched the gold circlet off Tirian’s head and hastily put it away somewhere among his clothes. They led the two prisoners uphill to a place where there was a big clearing. And this was what the prisoners saw.

At the center of the clearing, which was also the highest point of the hill, there was a little hut like a stable, with a thatched roof. Its door was shut. On the grass in front of the door there sat an Ape. Tirian and Jewel, who had been expecting to see Aslan and had heard nothing about an Ape yet, were very bewildered when they saw it. The Ape was of course Shift himself, but he looked ten times uglier than when he lived by Caldron Pool, for he was now dressed up. He was wearing a scarlet jacket which did not fit him very well, having been made for a dwarf. He had Jewelled slippers on his hind paws which would not stay on properly because, as you know, the hind paws of an Ape are really like hands. He wore what seemed to be a paper crown on his head. There was a great pile of nuts beside him and he kept cracking nuts with his jaws and spitting out the shells. And he also kept on pulling up the scarlet jacket to scratch himself. A great number of Talking Beasts stood facing him, and nearly every face in that crowd looked miserably worried and bewildered. When they saw who the prisoners were they all groaned and whimpered.

“O Lord Shift, mouthpiece of Aslan,” said the chief Calormene. “We bring you prisoners. By our skill and courage and by the permission of the great god Tash we have taken alive these two desperate murderers.”

“Give me that man’s sword,” said the Ape. So they took the King’s sword and handed it, with the sword-belt and all, to the monkey. And he hung it round his own neck： and it made him look sillier than ever.

“We’ll see about those two later,” said the Ape, spitting out a shell in the direction of the two prisoners. “I got some other business first. They can wait. Now listen to me, everyone. The first thing I want to say is about nuts. Where’s that Head Squirrel got to?”

“Here, Sir,” said a red squirrel, coming forward and making a nervous little bow.

“Oh you are, are you?” said the Ape with a nasty look. “Now attend to me. I want—I mean, Aslan wants—some more nuts. These you’ve brought aren’t anything like enough. You must bring some more, do you hear? Twice as many. And they’ve got to be here by sunset tomorrow, and there mustn’t be any bad ones or any small ones among them.”

A murmur of dismay ran through the other squirrels, and the Head Squirrel plucked up courage to say：

“Please, would Aslan himself speak to us about it? If we might be allowed to see him—”

“Well you won’t,” said the Ape. “He may be very kind （though it’s a lot more than most of you deserve） and come out for a few minutes tonight. Then you can all have a look at him. But he will not have you all crowding round him and pestering him with questions. Anything you want to say to him will be passed on through me： if I think it’s worth bothering him about. In the meantime all you squirrels had better go and see about the nuts. And make sure they are here by tomorrow evening or, my word！ you’ll catch it.”

The poor squirrels all scampered away as if a dog were after them. This new order was terrible news for them. The nuts they had carefully hoarded for the winter had nearly all been eaten by now; and of the few that were left they had already given the Ape far more than they could spare.

Then a deep voice—it belonged to a great tusked and shaggy Boar—spoke from another part of the crowd.

“But why can’t we see Aslan properly and talk to him?” it said. “When he used to appear in Narnia in the old days everyone could talk to him face to face.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said the Ape. “And even if it was true, times have changed. Aslan says he’s been far too soft with you before, do you see? Well, he isn’t going to be soft any more. He’s going to lick you into shape this time. He’ll teach you to think he’s a tame lion！”

A low moaning and whimpering was heard among the Beasts; and, after that, a dead silence which was more miserable still.

“And now there’s another thing you got to learn,” said the Ape. “I hear some of you are saying I’m an Ape. Well, I’m not. I’m a Man. If I look like an Ape, that’s because I’m so very old： hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it’s because I’m so old that I’m so wise. And it’s because I’m so wise that I’m the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to. He can’t be bothered talking to a lot of stupid animals. He’ll tell me what you’ve got to do, and I’ll tell the rest of you. And take my advice, and see you do it in double quick time, for he doesn’t mean to stand any nonsense.”

There was a dead silence except for the noise of a very young badger crying and its mother trying to make it keep quiet.

“And now here’s another thing,” the Ape went on, fitting a fresh nut into its cheek, “I hear some of the horses are saying, Let’s hurry up and get this job of carting timber over as quickly as we can, and then we’ll be free again. Well, you can get that idea out of your heads at once. And not only the Horses either. Everybody who can work is going to be made to work in future. Aslan has it all settled with the King of Calormen—the Tisroc, as our dark faced friends the Calormenes call him. All you Horses and Bulls and Donkeys are to be sent down into Calormen to work for your living—pulling and carrying the way horses and such-like do in other countries. And all you digging animals like Moles and Rabbits and Dwarfs are going down to work in the Tisroc’s mines. And—”

“No, no, no,” howled the Beasts. “It can’t be true. Aslan would never sell us into slavery to the King of Calormen.”

“None of that！ Hold your noise！” said the Ape with a snarl. “Who said anything about slavery? You won’t be slaves. You’ll be paid very good wages too. That is to say, your pay will be paid into Aslan’s treasury and he will use it all for everybody’s good.” Then he glanced, and almost winked, at the chief Calormene. The Calormene bowed and replied, in the pompous Calormene way：

“Most sapient Mouthpiece of Aslan, the Tisroc （may-he-live-forever） is wholly of one mind with your lordship in this judicious plan.”

“There！ You see！” said the Ape. “It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in-and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons—Oh, everything.”

“But we don’t want all those things,” said an old Bear. “We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.”

“Now don’t you start arguing,” said the Ape, “for it’s a thing I won’t stand. I’m a Man： you’re only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.”

“H-n-n-h,” grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.

“Please, please,” said the high voice of a woolly lamb, who was so young that everyone was surprised he dared to speak at all.

“What is it now?” said the Ape. “Be quick.”

“Please,” said the Lamb, “I can’t understand. What have we to do with the Calormenes? We belong to Aslan. They belong to Tash. They have a god called Tash. They say he has four arms and the head of a vulture. They kill Men on his altar. I don’t believe there’s any such person as Tash. But if there was, how could Aslan be friends with him?”

All the animals cocked their heads sideways and all their bright eyes flashed toward the Ape. They knew it was the best question anyone had asked yet.

The Ape jumped up and spat at the Lamb.

“Baby！” he hissed. “Silly little bleater！ Go home to your mother and drink milk. What do you understand of such things? But the others, listen. Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That’s why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan： Aslan is Tash.”

You know how sad your own dog’s face can look sometimes. Think of that and then think of all the faces of those Talking Beasts—all those honest, humble, bewildered Birds, Bears, Badgers, Rabbits, Moles, and Mice—all far sadder than that. Every tail was down, every whisker drooped. It would have broken your heart with very pity to see their faces. There was only one who did not look at all unhappy.

It was a ginger Cat—a great big Tom in the prime of life—who sat bolt upright with his tail curled round his toes, in the very front row of all the Beasts. He had been staring hard at the Ape and the Calormene captain all the time and had never once blinked his eyes.

“Excuse me,” said the Cat very politely, “but this interests me. Does your friend from Calormen say the same?”

“Assuredly,” said the Calormene. “The enlightened Ape—Man, I mean—is in the right. Aslan means neither less nor more than Tash.”

“Especially, Aslan means no more than Tash?” suggested the Cat.

“No more at all,” said the Calormene, looking the Cat straight in the face.

“Is that good enough for you, Ginger?” said the Ape.

“Oh certainly,” said Ginger coolly. “Thank you very much. I only wanted to be quite clear. I think I am beginning to understand.”

Up till now the King and Jewel had said nothing： they were waiting until the Ape should bid them speak, for they thought it was no use interrupting. But now, as Tirian looked round on the miserable faces of the Narnians, and saw how they would all believe that Aslan and Tash were one and the same, he could bear it no longer.

“Ape,” he cried with a great voice, “you lie damnably. You lie like a Calormene. You lie like an Ape.”

He meant to go on and ask how the terrible god Tash who fed on the blood of his people could possibly be the same as the good Lion by whose blood all Narnia was saved. If he had been allowed to speak, the rule of the Ape might have ended that day; the Beasts might have seen the truth and thrown the Ape down. But before he could say another word two Calormenes struck him in the mouth with all their force, and a third, from behind, kicked his feet from under him. And as he fell, the Ape squealed in rage and terror.

“Take him away. Take him away. Take him where he cannot hear us, nor we hear him. There tie him to a tree. I will—I mean, Aslan will—do justice on him later.”

CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT

The King was so dizzy from being knocked down that he hardly knew what was happening until the Calormenes untied his wrists and put his arms straight down by his sides and set him with his back against an ash tree. Then they bound ropes round his ankles and his knees and his waist and his chest and left him there. What worried him worst at the moment—for it is often little things that are hardest to stand—was that his lip was bleeding where they had hit him and he couldn’t wipe the little trickle of blood away although it tickled him.

From where he was he could still see the little stable on the top of the hill and the Ape sitting in front of it. He could just hear the Ape’s voice still going on and, every now and then, some answer from the crowd, but he could not make out the words.

“I wonder what they’ve done to Jewel,” thought the King.

Presently the crowd of beasts broke up and began going away in different directions. Some passed close to Tirian. They looked at him as if they were both frightened and sorry to see him tied up but none of them spoke. Soon they had all gone and there was silence in the wood. Then hours and hours went past and Tirian became first very thirsty and then very hungry; and as the afternoon dragged on and turned into evening, he became cold too. His back was very sore. The sun went down and it began to be twilight.

When it was almost dark Tirian heard a light pitter-patter of feet and saw some small creatures coming toward him. The three on the left were Mice, and there was a Rabbit in the middle： on the right were two Moles. Both these were carrying little bags on their backs which gave them a curious look in the dark so that at first he wondered what kind of beasts they were. Then, in a moment, they were all standing up on their hind legs, laying their cool paws on his knees and giving his knees snuffly animal kisses. （ They could reach his knees because Narnian Talking Beasts of that sort are bigger than the dumb beasts of the same kind in England.）

“Lord King！ Dear Lord King,” said their shrill voices, “we are so sorry for you. We daren’t untie you because Aslan might be angry with us. But we’ve brought you your supper.”

At once the first Mouse climbed nimbly up till he was perched on the rope that bound Tirian’s chest and was wrinkling his blunt nose in front of Tirian’s face. Then the second Mouse climbed up and hung on just below the first Mouse. The other beasts stood on the ground and began handing things up.

“Drink, Sire, and then you’ll find you are able to eat,” said the topmost Mouse, and Tirian found that a little wooden cup was being held to his lips. It was only the size of an egg cup so that he had hardly tasted the wine in it before it was empty. But then the Mouse passed it down and the others refilled it and it was passed up again and Tirian emptied it a second time. In this way they went on till he had quite a good drink, which was all the better for coming in little doses, for that is more thirst-quenching than one long draught.

“Here is cheese, Sire,” said the first Mouse, “but not very much, for fear it would make you too thirsty.” And after the cheese they fed him with oat-cakes and fresh butter, and then with some more wine.

“Now hand up the water,” said the first Mouse, “and I’ll wash the King’s face. There is blood on it.”

Then Tirian felt something like a tiny sponge dabbing his face, and it was most refreshing.

“Little friends,” said Tirian, “how can I thank you for all this?”

“You needn’t, you needn’t,” said the little voices. “What else could we do? We don’t want any other King. We’re your people. If it was only the Ape and the Calormenes who were against you we would have fought till we were cut into pieces before we’d let them tie you up. We would, we would indeed. But we can’t go against Aslan.”

“Do you think it really is Aslan?” asked the King.

“Oh yes, yes,” said the Rabbit. “He came out of the stable last night. We all saw him.”

“What was he like?” said the King.

“Like a terrible, great Lion, to be sure,” said one of the Mice.

“And you think it is really Aslan who is killing the Wood-Nymphs and making you all slaves to the King of Calormen?”

“Ah, that’s bad, isn’t it?” said the second Mouse. “It would have been better if we’d died before all this began. But there’s no doubt about it. Everyone says it is Aslan’s orders. And we’ve seen him. We didn’t think Aslan would be like that. Why, we—we wanted him to come back to Narnia.”

“He seems to have come back very angry this time,” said the first Mouse. “We must all have done something dreadfully wrong without knowing it. He must be punishing us for something. But I do think we might be told what it was！”

“I suppose what we’re doing now may be wrong,” said the Rabbit.

“I don’t care if it is,” said one of the Moles. “I’d do it again.”

But the others said, “Oh hush,” and “Do be careful,” and then they all said, “We’re sorry, dear King, but we must go back now. It would never do for us to be caught here.”

“Leave me at once, dear Beasts,” said Tirian. “I would not for all Narnia bring any of you into danger.”

“Goodnight, goodnight,” said the Beasts, rubbing their noses against his knees. “We will come back if we can.” Then they all pattered away and the wood seemed darker and colder and lonelier than it had been before they came.

The stars came out and time went slowly on—imagine how slowly—while that last King of Narnia stood stiff and sore and upright against the tree in his bonds. But at last something happened.

Far away there appeared a red light. Then it disappeared for a moment and came back again, bigger and stronger. Then he could see dark shapes going to and fro on this side of the light and carrying bundles and throwing them down. He knew now what he was looking at. It was a bonfire, newly lit, and people were throwing bundles of brushwood on to it. Presently it blazed up and Tirian could see that it was on the very top of the hill. He could see quite clearly the stable behind it, all lit up in the red glow, and a great crowd of Beasts and Men between the fire and himself. A small figure, hunched up beside the fire, must be the Ape. It was saying something to the crowd, but he could not hear what. Then it went and bowed three times to the ground in front of the door of the stable. Then it got up and opened the door. And something on four legs—something that walked rather stiffly—came out of the stable and stood facing the crowd.

A great wailing or howling went up, so loud that Tirian could hear some of the words.

“Aslan！ Aslan！ Aslan！” cried the Beasts. “Speak to us. Comfort us. Be angry with us no more.”

From where Tirian was he could not make out very clearly what the thing was; but he could see that it was yellow and hairy. He had never seen the Great Lion. He had never seen a common lion. He couldn’t be sure that what he saw was not the real Aslan. He had not expected Aslan to look like that stiff thing which stood and said nothing. But how could one be sure? For a moment horrible thoughts went through his mind： then he remembered the nonsense about Tash and Aslan being the same and knew that the whole thing must be a cheat.

The Ape put his head close up to the yellow thing’s head as if he were listening to something it was whispering to him. Then he turned and spoke to the crowd, and the crowd wailed again. Then the yellow thing turned clumsily round and walked—you might almost say, waddled—back into the stable and the Ape shut the door behind it. After that the fire must have been put out for the light vanished quite suddenly, and Tirian was once more alone with the cold and the darkness.

He thought of other Kings who had lived and died in Narnia in old times and it seemed to him that none of them had ever been so unlucky as himself. He thought of his great-grandfather’s great-grandfather King Rilian who had been stolen away by a Witch when he was only a young prince and kept hidden for years in the dark caves beneath the land of the Northern Giants. But then it had all come; right in the end, for two mysterious children had suddenly appeared from the land beyond the world’s end and had rescued him so that he came home to Narnia and had a long and prosperous reign. “It’s not like that with me,” said Tirian to himself. Then he went further back and thought about Rilian’s father, Caspian the Seafarer, whose wicked uncle King Miraz had tried to murder him and how Caspian had fled away into the woods and lived among the Dwarfs. But that story too had all come right in the end： for Caspian also had been helped by children—only there were four of them that time—who came from somewhere beyond the world and fought a great battle and set him on his father’s throne. “But it was all long ago,” said Tirian to himself. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen now.” And then he remembered （for he had always been good at history when he was a boy） how those same four children who had helped Caspian had been in Narnia over a thousand years before; and it was then that they had done the most remarkable thing of all. For then they had defeated the terrible White Witch and ended the Hundred Years of Winter, and after that they had reigned （all four of them together） at Cair Paravel, till they were no longer children but great Kings and lovely Queens, and their reign had been the golden age of Narnia. And Aslan had come into that story a lot. He had come into all the other stories too, as Tirian now remembered. “Aslan—and children from another world,” thought Tirian. “They have always come in when things were at their worst. Oh, if only they could now.”

And he called out “Aslan！ Aslan！ Aslan！ Come and help us now.”

But the darkness and the cold and the quietness went on just the same.

“Let me be killed,” cried the King. “I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.”

And still there was no change in the night or the wood, but there began to be a kind of change inside Tirian. Without knowing why, he began to feel a faint hope. And he felt somehow stronger. “Oh Aslan, Aslan,” he whispered. “If you will not come yourself, at least send me the helpers from beyond the world. Or let me call them. Let my voice carry beyond the world.” Then, hardly knowing that he was doing it, he suddenly cried out in a great voice：

“Children！ Children！ Friends of Narnia！ Quick. Come to me. Across the worlds I call you; I Tirian, King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands！”

And immediately he was plunged into a dream （if it was a dream） more vivid than any he had had in his life.

He seemed to be standing in a lighted room where seven people sat round a table. It looked as if they had just finished their meal. Two of those people were very old, an old man with a white beard and an old woman with wise, merry, twinkling eyes. He who sat at the right hand of the old man was hardly full grown, certainly younger than Tirian himself, but his face had already the look of a king and a warrior. And you could almost say the same of the other youth who sat at the right hand of the old woman. Facing Tirian across the table sat a fair-haired girl younger than either of these, and on either side of her a boy and girl who were younger still. They were all dressed in what seemed to Tirian the oddest kind of clothes.

But he had no time to think about details like that, for instantly the younger boy and both the girls started to their feet, and one of them gave a little scream. The old woman started and drew in her breath sharply. The old man must have made some sudden movement too for the wine glass which stood at his right hand was swept off the table： Tirian could hear the tinkling noise as it broke on the floor.

Then Tirian realized that these people could see him; they were staring at him as if they saw a ghost. But he noticed that the king-like one who sat at the old man’s right never moved （though he turned pale） except that he clenched his hand very tight. Then he said：

“Speak, if you’re not a phantom or a dream. You have a Narnian look about you and we are the seven friends of Narnia.”

Tirian was longing to speak, and he tried to cry out aloud that he was Tirian of Narnia, in great need of help. But he found （as I have sometimes found in dreams too） that his voice made no noise at all.

The one who had already spoken to him rose to his feet. “Shadow or spirit or whatever you are,” he said, fixing his eyes full upon Tirian. “If you are from Narnia, I charge you in the name of Aslan, speak to me. I am Peter the High King.”

The room began to swim before Tirian’s eyes. He heard the voices of those seven people all speaking at once, and all getting fainter every second, and they were saying things like, “Look！ It’s fading.”“It’s melting away.”“It’s vanishing.” Next moment he was wide awake, still tied to the tree, colder and stiffer than ever. The wood was full of the pale, dreary light that comes before sunrise, and he was soaking wet with dew; it was nearly morning.

That waking was about the worst moment he had ever had in his life.

CHAPTER FIVE
HOW HELP CAME TO THE KING

But his misery did not last long. Almost at once there came a bump, and then a second bump, and two children were standing before him. The wood in front of him had been quite empty a second before and he knew they had not come from behind his tree, for he would have heard them. They had in fact simply appeared from nowhere. He saw at a glance that they were wearing the same queer, dingy sort of clothes as the people in his dream; and he saw, at a second glance, that they were the youngest boy and girl out of that party of seven.

“Gosh！” said the boy, “that took one’s breath away！ I thought—”

“Hurry up and get him untied,” said the girl. “We can talk, afterward.” Then she added, turning to Tirian, “I’m sorry we’ve been so long. We came the moment we could.”

While she was speaking the boy produced a knife from his pocket and was quickly cutting the King’s bonds： too quickly, in fact, for the King was so stiff and numb that when the last cord was cut he fell forward on his hands and knees. He couldn’t get up again till he had brought some life back into his legs by a good rubbing.

“I say,” said the girl. “It was you, wasn’t it, who appeared to us that night when we were all at supper? Nearly a week ago.”

“A week, fair maid?” said Tirian. “My dream led me into your world scarce ten minutes since.”

“It’s the usual muddle about times, Pole,” said the boy.

“I remember now,” said Tirian. “That too comes in all the old tales. The time of your strange land is different from ours. But if we speak of Time,’ tis time to be gone from here： for my enemies are close at hand. Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” said the girl. “It’s you we’ve come to help.”

Tirian got to his feet and led them rapidly down hill, Southward and away from the stable. He knew where he meant to go but his first aim was to get to rocky places where they would leave no trail, and his second to cross some water so that they would leave no scent. This took them about an hour’s scrambling and wading and while that was going on nobody had any breath to talk. But even so, Tirian kept on stealing glances at his companions. The wonder of walking beside the creatures from another world made him feel a little dizzy, but it also made all the old stories seem far more real than they had ever seemed before ... anything might happen now.

“Now,” said Tirian as they came to the head of a little valley which ran down before them among young birch trees, “we are out of danger of those villains for a space and may walk more easily.” The sun had risen, dew-drops were twinkling on every branch, and birds were singing.

“What about some grub?—I mean for you, Sir, we two have had our breakfast,” said the boy.

Tirian wondered very much what he meant by “grub,” but when the boy opened a bulgy satchel which he was carrying and pulled out a rather greasy and squashy packet, he understood. He was ravenously hungry, though he hadn’t thought about it till that moment. There were two hard-boiled egg sandwiches, and two cheese sandwiches, and two with some kind of paste in them. If he hadn’t been so hungry he wouldn’t have thought much of the paste, for that is a sort of food nobody eats in Narnia. By the time he had eaten all six sandwiches they had come to the bottom of the valley and there they found a mossy cliff with a little fountain bubbling out of it. All three stopped and drank and splashed their hot faces.

“And now,” said the girl as she tossed her wet hair back from her forehead, “aren’t you going to tell us who you are and why you were tied up and what it’s all about?”

“With a good will, damsel,” said Tirian. “But we must keep on the march.” So while they went on walking he told them who he was and all the things that had happened to him. “And now,” he said at the end, “I am going to a certain tower, one of three that were built in my grandsire’s time to guard Lantern Waste against certain perilous outlaws who dwelled there in his day. By Aslan’s good will I was not robbed of my keys. In that tower we shall find stores of weapons and mail and some victuals also, though no better than dry biscuit. There also we can lie safe while we make our plans. And now, prithee, tell me who you two are and all your story.”

“I’m Eustace Scrubb and this is Jill Pole,” said the boy. “And we were here once before, ages and ages ago, more than a year ago by our time, and there was a chap called Prince Rilian, and they were keeping this chap underground, and Puddleglum put his foot in—”

“Ha！” cried Tirian, “are you then that Eustace and that Jill who rescued King Rilian from his long enchantment?”

“Yes, that’s us,” said Jill. “So he’s King Rilian now, is he? Oh of course he would be. I forgot—”

“Nay,” said Tirian, “I am the seventh in descent from him. He has been dead over two hundred years.”

Jill made a face. “Ugh！” she said. “That’s the horrid part about coming back to Narnia.” But Eustace went on.

“Well now you know who we are, Sire,” he said. “And it was like this. The Professor and Aunt Polly had got all us friends of Narnia together—”

“I know not these names, Eustace,” said Tirian.

“They’re the two who came into Narnia at the very beginning, the day all the animals learned to talk.”

“By the Lion’s Mane,” cried Tirian. “Those two！ The Lord Digory and the Lady Polly！ From the dawn of the world！ And still in your place? The wonder and the glory of it！ But tell me, tell me.”

“She isn’t really our aunt, you know,” said Eustace. “She’s Miss Plummer, but we call her Aunt Polly. Well those two got us all together partly just for fun, so that we could all have a good jaw about Narnia （for of course there’s no one else we can ever talk to about things like that）, but partly because the Professor had a feeling that we were somehow wanted over here. Well then you came in like a ghost or goodness-knows-what and nearly frightened the lives out of us and vanished without saying a word. After that, we knew for certain there was something up. The next question was how to get here. You can’t go just by wanting to. So we talked and talked and at last the Professor said the only way would be by the Magic Rings. It was by those Rings that he and Aunt Polly got here long, long ago when they were only kids, years before we younger ones were born. But the Rings had all been buried in the garden of a house in London （that’s our big town, Sire） and the house had been sold. So then the problem was how to get at them. You’ll never guess what we did in the end！ Peter and Edmund—that’s the High King Peter, the one who spoke to you—went up to London to get into the garden from the back, early in the morning before people were up. They were dressed like workmen so that if anyone did see them it would look as if they’d come to do something about the drains. I wish I’d been with them; it must have been glorious fun. And they must have succeeded for next day Peter sent us a wire—that’s a sort of message, Sire, I’ll explain about it some other time—to say he’d got the Rings. And the day after that was the day Pole and I had to go back to school—we’re the only two who are still at school and we’re at the same one. So Peter and Edmund were to meet us at a place on the way down to school and hand over the Rings. It had to be us two who were to go to Narnia, you see, because the older ones couldn’t come again. So we got into the train that’s a kind of thing people travel in in our world： a lot of wagons chained together—and the Professor and Aunt Polly and Lucy came with us. We wanted to keep together as long as we could. Well there we were in the train. And we were just getting to the station where the others were to meet us, and I was looking out of the window to see if I could see them when suddenly there came a most frightful jerk and a noise, and there we were in Narnia and there was your Majesty tied up to the tree.”

“So you never used the Rings?” said Tirian.

“No,” said Eustace. “Never even saw them. Aslan did it all for us in his own way without any Rings.”

“But the High King Peter has them,” said Tirian.

“Yes,” said Jill. “But we don’t think he can use them. When the two other Pevensies—King Edmund and Queen Lucy—were last here, Aslan said they would never come to Narnia again. And he said something of the same sort to the High King, only longer ago. You may be sure he’ll come like a shot if he’s allowed.”

“Gosh！” said Eustace. “It’s getting hot in this sun. Are we nearly there, Sire?”

“Look,” said Tirian and pointed. Not many yards away grey battlements rose above the tree-tops, and after a minute’s more walking they came out in an open grassy space. A stream ran across it and on the far side of the stream stood a squat, square tower with very few and narrow windows and one heavy-looking door in the wall that faced them.

Tirian looked sharply this way and that to make sure that no enemies were in sight. Then he walked up to the tower and stood still for a moment fishing up his bunch of keys which he wore inside his hunting-dress on a narrow silver chain that went round his neck. It was a nice bunch of keys that he brought out, for two were golden and many were richly ornamented; you could see at once that they were keys made for opening solemn and secret rooms in palaces, or chests and caskets of sweet-smelling wood that contained royal treasures. But the key which he now put into the lock of the door was big and plain and more rudely made. The lock was stiff and for a moment Tirian began to be afraid that he would not be able to turn it, but at last he did and the door swung open with a sullen creak.

“Welcome friends,” said Tirian. “I fear this is the best palace that the King of Narnia can now offer to his guests.”

Tirian was pleased to see that the two strangers had been well brought up. They both said not to mention it and that they were sure it would be very nice.

As a matter of fact it was not particularly nice. It was rather dark and smelled very damp. There was only one room in it and this room went right up to the stone roof; a wooden staircase in one corner led up to a trap door by which you could get out on the battlements. There were a few rude bunks to sleep in, and a great many lockers and bundles. There was also a hearth which looked as if nobody had lit a fire in it for a great many years.

“We’d better go out and gather some firewood first thing, hadn’t we?” said Jill.

“Not yet, comrade,” said Tirian. He was determined that they should not be caught unarmed, and began searching the lockers, thankfully remembering that he had always been careful to have these garrison towers inspected once a year and to make sure that they were stocked with all things needful. The bow strings were there in their coverings of oiled silk, the swords and spears were greased against rust, and the armour was kept bright in its wrappings. But there was something even better. “Look you！” said Tirian as he drew out a long mail shirt of a curious pattern and flashed it before the children’s eyes.

“That’s funny-looking mail, Sire,” said Eustace.

“Aye, lad,” said Tirian. “No Narnian Dwarf smithied that.’Tis mail of Calormen, outlandish gear. I have ever kept a few suits of it in readiness, for I never knew when I or my friends might have reason to walk unseen in the Tisroc’s land. And look on this stone bottle. In this there is a juice which, when we have rubbed it on our hands and faces, will make us brown as Calormenes.”

“Oh hurrah！” said Jill. “Disguise！ I love disguises.”

Tirian showed them how to pour out a little of the juice into the palms of their hands and then rub it well over their faces and necks, right down to the shoulders, and then on their hands, right up to the elbows. He did the same himself.

“After this has hardened on us,” he said, “we may wash in water and it will not change. Nothing but oil and ashes will make us white Narnians again. And now, sweet Jill, let us go see how this mail shirt becomes you.’Tis something too long, yet not so much as I feared. Doubtless it belonged to a page in the train of one of their Tarkaans.”

After the mail shirts they put on Calormene helmets, which are little round ones fitting tight to the head and having a spike on top. Then Tirian took long rolls of some white stuff out of the locker and wound them over the helmets till they became turbans, but the little steel spike still stuck up in the middle. He and Eustace took curved Calormene swords and little round shields. There was no sword light enough for Jill, but he gave her a long, straight hunting knife which might do for a sword at a pinch.

“Hast any skill with the bow, maiden?” said Tirian.

“Nothing worth talking of,” said Jill, blushing. “Scrubb’s not bad.”

“Don’t you believe her, Sire,” said Eustace. “We’ve both been practising archery ever since we got back from Narnia last time, and she’s about as good as me now. Not that either of us is much.”

Then Tirian gave Jill a bow and a quiver full of arrows. The next business was to light a fire, for inside that tower it still felt more like a cave than like anything indoors and set one shivering. But they got warm gathering wood—the sun was now at its highest—and once the blaze was roaring up the chimney the place began to look cheerful. Dinner was, however, a dull meal, for the best they could do was to pound up some of the hard biscuit which they found in a locker and pour it into boiling water, with salt, so as to make a kind of porridge. And of course there was nothing to drink but water.

“I wish we’d brought a packet of tea,” said Jill.

“Or a tin of cocoa,” said Eustace.

“A firkin or so of good wine in each of these towers would not have been amiss,” said Tirian.

CHAPTER SIX
A GOOD NIGHT’S WORK

About four hours later Tirian flung himself into one of the bunks to snatch a little sleep. The two children were already snoring; he had made them go to bed before he did because they would have to be up most of the night and he knew that at their age they couldn’t do without sleep. Also, he had tired them out. First he had given Jill some practice in archery and found that, though not up to Narnian standards, she was really not too bad. Indeed she had succeeded in shooting a rabbit （not a Talking rabbit, of course, there are lots of the ordinary kind about in Western Narnia） and it was already skinned, cleaned, and hanging up. He had found that both the children knew all about this chilly and smelly job; they had learned that kind of thing on their great journey through Giant Land in the days of Prince Rilian. Then he had tried to teach Eustace how to use his sword and shield. Eustace had learned quite a lot about sword fighting on his earlier adventures but that had been all with a straight Narnian sword. He had never handled a curved Calormene scimitar and that made it hard, for many of the strokes are quite different and some of the habits he had learned with the long sword had now to be unlearned again. But Tirian found that he had a good eye and was very quick on his feet. He was surprised at the strength of both children： in fact they both seemed to be already much stronger and bigger and more grown-up than they had been when he first met them a few hours ago. It is one of the effects which Narnian air often has on visitors from our world.

All three of them agreed that the very first thing they must do was to go back to Stable Hill and try to rescue Jewel the Unicorn. After that, if they succeeded, they would try to get away Eastward and meet the little army which Roonwit the Centaur would be bringing from Cair Paravel.

An experienced warrior and huntsman like Tirian can always wake up at the time he wants. So he gave himself till nine o’clock that night and then put all worries out of his head and fell asleep at once. It seemed only a moment later when he woke but he knew by the light and the very feel of things that he had timed his sleep exactly. He got up, put on his helmet and turban （he had slept in his mail shirt）, and then shook the other two till they woke up. They looked, to tell the truth, very grey and dismal as they climbed out of their bunks and there was a good deal of yawning.

“Now,” said Tirian, “we go due North from here—by good fortune’tis a starry night—and it will be much shorter than our journey this morning, for then we went round-about but now we shall go straight. If we are challenged, then do you two hold your peace and I will do my best to talk like a curst, cruel, proud lord of Calormen. If I draw my sword then thou, Eustace, must do likewise and let Jill leap behind us and stand with an arrow on the string. But if I cry‘Home,’ then fly for the Tower both of you. And let none try to fight on—not even one stroke—after I have given the retreat; such false valour has spoiled many notable plans in the wars. And now, friends, in the name of Aslan let us go forward.”

Out they went into the cold night. All the great Northern stars were burning above the tree-tops. The North-Star of that world is called the Spear-Head; it is brighter than our Pole Star.

For a time they could go straight toward the Spear-Head but presently they came to a dense thicket so that they had to go out of their course to get round it. And after that—for they were still overshadowed by branches—it was hard to pick up their bearings. It was Jill who set them right again; she had been an excellent guide in England. And of course she knew her Narnian stars perfectly, having traveled so much in the wild Northern Lands, and could work out the direction from other stars even when the Spear-Head was hidden. As soon as Tirian saw that she was the best pathfinder of the three of them he put her in front. And then he was astonished to find how silently and almost invisibly she glided on before them.

“By the Mane！” he whispered to Eustace. “This girl is a wondrous wood-maid. If she had Dryad’s blood in her she could scarce do it better.”

“She’s so small, that’s what helps,” whispered Eustace. But Jill from in front said：“S-s-s-h, less noise.”

All round them the wood was very quiet. Indeed it was far too quiet. On an ordinary Narnia night there ought to have been noises—an occasional cheery “Goodnight” from a Hedgehog, the cry of an Owl overhead, perhaps a flute in the distance to tell of Fauns dancing, or some throbbing, hammering noises from Dwarfs underground. All that was silenced; gloom and fear reigned over Narnia.

After a time they began to go steeply uphill and the trees grew further apart. Tirian could dimly make out the well-known hilltop and the stable. Jill was now going with more and more caution： she kept on making signs to the others with her hand to do the same. Then she stopped dead still and Tirian saw her gradually sink down into the grass and disappear without a sound. A moment later she rose again, put her mouth close to Tirian’s ear, and said in the lowest possible whisper, “Get down. Thee better.” She said thee for see not because she had a lisp but because she knew the hissing letter S is the part of a whisper most likely to be overheard. Tirian at once lay down, almost as silently as Jill, but not quite, for he was heavier and older. And once they were down, he saw how from that position you could see the edge of the hill sharp against the star-strewn sky. Two black shapes rose against it： one was the stable, and the other, a few feet in front of it, was a Calormene sentry. He was keeping very ill watch; not walking or even standing but sitting with his spear over his shoulder and his chin on his chest. “Well done,” said Tirian to Jill. She had shown him exactly what he needed to know.

They got up and Tirian now took the lead. Very slowly, hardly daring to breathe, they made their way up to a little clump of trees which was not more than forty feet away from the sentinel.

“Wait here till I come again,” he whispered to the other two. “If I miscarry, fly.” Then he sauntered out boldly in full view of the enemy. The man started when he saw him and was just going to jump to his feet; he was afraid Tirian might be one of his own officers and that he would get into trouble for sitting down. But before he could get up Tirian had dropped on one knee beside him, saying：

“Art thou a warrior of the Tisroc’s, may he live for ever? It cheers my heart to meet thee among all these beasts and devils of Narnians. Give me thy hand, friend.”

Before he well knew what was happening the Calormene sentry found his right hand seized in a mighty grip. Next instant someone was kneeling on his legs and a dagger was pressed against his neck.

“One noise and thou art dead,” said Tirian in his ear. “Tell me where the Unicorn is and thou shalt live.”

“B—behind the stable, O My Master,” stammered the unfortunate man.

“Good. Rise up and lead me to him.”

As the man got up the point of the dagger never left his neck. It only traveled round （cold and rather ticklish） as Tirian got behind him and settled it at a convenient place under his ear. Trembling he went round to the back of the stable.

Though it was dark Tirian could see the white shape of Jewel at once.

“Hush！” he said. “No, do not neigh. Yes, Jewel, it is I. How have they tied thee?”

“Hobbled by all four legs and tied with a bridle to a ring in the stable wall,” came Jewel’s voice.

“Stand here, sentry, with your back to the wall. So. Now, Jewel, set the point of your horn against this Calormene’s breast.”

“With a good will, Sire,” said Jewel.

“If he moves, rive him to the heart.” Then in a few seconds Tirian cut the ropes. With the remains of them he bound the sentry hand and foot. Finally he made him open his mouth, stuffed it full of grass and tied him up from scalp to chin so that he could make no noise, lowered the man into a sitting position and set him against the wall.

“I have done thee some discourtesy, soldier,” said Tirian. “But such was my need. If we meet again I may happen to do thee a better turn. Now, Jewel, let us go softly.”

He put his left arm round the beast’s neck and bent and kissed its nose and both had great joy. They went back as quietly as possible to the place where he had left the children. It was darker in there under the trees and he nearly ran into Eustace before he saw him.

“All’s well,” whispered Tirian. “A good night’s work. Now for home.”

They turned and had gone a few paces when Eustace said, “Where are you, Pole?” There was no answer. “Is Jill on the other side of you, Sire?” he asked.

“What?” said Tirian. “Is she not on the other side of you?”

It was a terrible moment. They dared not shout but they whispered her name in the loudest whisper they could manage. There was no reply.

“Did she go from you while I was away?” asked Tirian.

“I didn’t see or hear her go,” said Eustace. “But she could have gone without my knowing. She can be as quiet as a cat; you’ve seen for yourself.”

At that moment a far off drum beat was heard. Jewel moved his ears forward. “Dwarfs,” he said.

“And treacherous Dwarfs, enemies, as likely as not,” muttered Tirian.

“And here comes something on hoofs, much nearer,” said Jewel.

The two humans and the Unicorn stood dead still. There were now so many different things to worry about that they didn’t know what to do. The noise of hoofs came steadily nearer. And then, quite close to them, a voice whispered：

“Hallo！ Are you all there?”

Thank heaven, it was Jill’s.

“Where the devil have you been to?” said Eustace in a furious whisper, for he had been very frightened.

“In the stable,” gasped Jill, but it was the sort of gasp you give when you’re struggling with suppressed laughter.

“Oh,” growled Eustace, “you think it funny, do you? Well all I can say is—”

“Have you got Jewel, Sire?” asked Jill.

“Yes. Here he is. What is that beast with you?”

“That’s him,” said Jill. “But let’s be off home before anyone wakes up.” And again there came little explosions of laughter.

The others obeyed at once for they had already lingered long enough in that dangerous place and the Dwarf drums seemed to have come a little nearer. It was only after they had been walking Southward for several minutes that Eustace said：

“Got him? What do you mean?”

“The false Aslan,” said Jill.

“What?” said Tirian. “Where have you been? What have you done?”

“Well, Sire,” said Jill. “As soon as I saw that you’d got the sentry out of the way I thought hadn’t I better have a look inside the stable and see what really is there? So I crawled along. It was as easy as anything to draw the bolt. Of course it was pitch black inside and smelled like any other stable. Then I struck a light and—would you believe it?—there was nothing at all there but this old donkey with a bundle of lion-skin tied on to his back. So I drew my knife and told him he’d have to come along with me. As a matter of fact I needn’t have threatened him with the knife at all. He was very fed up with the stable and quite ready to come—weren’t you, Puzzle dear?”

“Great Scott！” said Eustace. “Well I’m jiggered. I was jolly angry with you a moment ago, and I still think it was mean of you to sneak off without the rest of us, but I must admit—well, I mean to say—well it was a perfectly gorgeous thing to do. If she was a boy she’d have to be knighted, wouldn’t she, Sire?”

“If she was a boy,” said Tirian, “she’d be whipped for disobeying orders.” And in the dark no one could see whether he said this with a frown or a smile. Next minute there was a sound of rasping metal.

“What are you doing, Sire?” asked Jewel sharply.

“Drawing my sword to smite off the head of the accursed Ass,” said Tirian in a terrible voice. “Stand clear, girl.”

“Oh don’t, please don’t,” said Jill. “Really, you mustn’t. It wasn’t his fault. It was all the Ape. He didn’t know any better. And he’s very sorry. And he’s a nice Donkey. His name’s Puzzle. And I’ve got my arms round his neck.”

“Jill,” said Tirian, “you are the bravest and most wood-wise of all my subjects, but also the most malapert and disobedient. Well, let the Ass live. What have you to say for yourself, Ass?”

“Me, Sire?” came the Donkey’s voice. “I’m sure I’m very sorry if I’ve done wrong. The Ape said Aslan wanted me to dress up like that. And I thought he’d know. I’m not clever like him. I only did what I was told. It wasn’t any fun for me living in that stable. I don’t even know what’s been going on outside. He never let me out except for a minute or two at night. Some days they forgot to give me any water too.”

“Sire,” said Jewel. “Those Dwarfs are coming nearer and nearer. Do we want to meet them?”

Tirian thought for a moment and then suddenly gave a great laugh out loud. Then he spoke, not this time in a whisper. “By the Lion,” he said, “I am growing slow witted！ Meet them? Certainly we will meet them. We will meet anyone now. We have this Ass to show them. Let them see the thing they have feared and bowed to. We can show them the truth of the Ape’s vile plot. His secret’s out. The tide’s turned. Tomorrow we shall hang that Ape on the highest tree in Narnia. No more whispering and skulking and disguises. Where are these honest Dwarfs? We have good news for them.”

When you have been whispering for hours the mere sound of anyone talking out loud has a wonderfully stirring effect. The whole party began talking and laughing, even Puzzle lifted up his head and gave a grand Haw-hee-haw-hee-hee; a thing the Ape hadn’t allowed him to do for days. Then they set off in the direction of the drumming. It grew steadily louder and soon they could see torchlight as well. They came out on one of those rough roads （we should hardly call them roads at all in England） which ran through Lantern Waste. And there, marching sturdily along, were about thirty Dwarfs, all with their little spades and mattocks over their shoulders. Two armed Calormenes led the column and two more brought up the rear.

“Stay！” thundered Tirian as he stepped out on the road. “Stay, soldiers. Whither do you lead these Narnian Dwarfs and by whose orders?”

CHAPTER SEVEN
MAINLY ABOUT DWARFS

The two Calormene soldiers at the head of the column, seeing what they took for a Tarkaan or great lord with two armed pages, came to a halt and raised their spears in salute.

“O My Master,” said one of them, “we lead these manikins to Calormen to work in the mines of the Tisroc, may he live forever.”

“By the great god Tash, they are very obedient,” said Tirian. Then suddenly he turned to the Dwarfs themselves. About one in six of them carried a torch and by that flickering light he could see their bearded faces all looking at him with grim and dogged expressions. “Has the Tisroc fought a great battle, Dwarfs, and conquered your land?” he asked, “that thus you go patiently to die in the salt-pits of Pugrahan?”

The two soldiers glared at him in surprise but the Dwarfs all answered, “Aslan’s orders, Aslan’s orders. He’s sold us. What can we do against him?”

“Tisroc indeed！” added one and spat. “I’d like to see him try it！”

“Silence, dogs！” said the chief soldier.

“Look！” said Tirian, pulling Puzzle forward into the light. “It has all been a lie. Aslan has not come to Narnia at all. You have been cheated by the Ape. This is the thing he brought out of the stable to show you. Look at it.”

What the Dwarfs saw, now that they could see it close, was certainly enough to make them wonder how they had ever been taken in. The lion-skin had got pretty untidy already during Puzzle’s imprisonment in the stable and it had been knocked crooked during his journey through the dark wood. Most of it was in a big lump on one shoulder. The head, besides being pushed sideways, had somehow got very far back so that anyone could now see his silly, gentle, donkeyish face gazing out of it. Some grass stuck out of one corner of his mouth, for he’d been doing a little quiet nibbling as they brought him along. And he was muttering, “It wasn’t my fault, I’m not clever. I never said I was.”

For one second all the Dwarfs were staring at Puzzle with wide open mouths and then one of the soldiers said sharply, “Are you mad, My Master? What are you doing to the slaves?” and the other said, “And who are you?” Neither of their spears was at the salute now—both were down and ready for action.

“Give the password,” said the chief soldier.

“This is my password,” said the King as he drew his sword. “The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.”

He flew upon the chief soldier like lightning. Eustace, who had drawn his sword when he saw the King draw his, rushed at the other one; his face was deadly pale, but I wouldn’t blame him for that. And he had the luck that beginners sometimes do have. He forgot all that Tirian had tried to teach him that afternoon, slashed wildly （indeed I’m not sure his eyes weren’t shut） and suddenly found, to his own great surprise, that the Calormene lay dead at his feet. And though that was a great relief, it was, at the moment, rather frightening. The King’s fight lasted a second or two longer, then he too had killed his man and shouted to Eustace,“’Ware the other two.”

But the Dwarfs had settled the two remaining Calormenes. There was no enemy left.

“Well struck, Eustace！” cried Tirian, clapping him on the back. “Now, Dwarfs, you are free. Tomorrow I will lead you to free all Narnia. Three cheers for Aslan！”

But the result which followed was simply wretched. There was a feeble attempt from a few Dwarfs （about five） which died away all at once; from several others there were sulky growls. Many said nothing at all.

“Don’t they understand?” said Jill impatiently. “What’s wrong with all you Dwarfs? Don’t you hear what the King says? It’s all over. The Ape isn’t going to rule Narnia any longer. Everyone can go back to ordinary life. You can have fun again. Aren’t you glad?”

After a pause of nearly a minute a not very nice looking Dwarf with hair and beard as black as soot said：“And who might you be, Missie?”

“I’m Jill,” she said. “The same Jill who rescued King Rilian from the enchantment and this is Eustace who did it too—and we’ve come back from another world after hundreds of years. Aslan sent us.”

The Dwarfs all looked at one another with grins; sneering grins, not merry ones.

“Well,” said the Black Dwarf （whose name was Griffle）, “I don’t know how all you chaps feel, but I feel I’ve heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” growled the other Dwarfs. “It’s all a plant, all a blooming plant.”

“What do you mean?” said Tirian. He had not been pale when he was fighting but he was pale now. He had thought this was going to be a beautiful moment, but it was turning out more like a bad dream.

“You must think we’re blooming soft in the head, that you must,” said Griffle. “We’ve been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in again the next minute. We’ve no more use for stories about Aslan, see！ Look at him！ An old moke with long ears！”

“By heaven, you make me mad,” said Tirian. “Which of us said that was Aslan? That is the Ape’s imitation of the real Aslan. Can’t you understand?”

“And you’ve got a better imitation, I suppose！” said Griffle. “No, thanks. We’ve been fooled once and we’re not going to be fooled again.”

“I have not,” said Tirian angrily, “I serve the real Aslan.”

“Where’s he? Who’s he? Show him to us！” said several Dwarfs.

“Do you think I keep him in my wallet, fools?” said Tirian. “Who am I that I could make Aslan appear at my bidding? He’s not a tame lion.”

The moment those words were out of his mouth he realized that he had made a false move. The Dwarfs at once began repeating “not a tame lion, not a tame lion,” in a jeering sing-song. “That’s what the other lot kept on telling us,” said one.

“Do you mean you don’t believe in the real Aslan?” said Jill. “But I’ve seen him. And he has sent us two here out of a different world.”

“Ah,” said Griffle with a broad smile. “So you say. They’ve taught you your stuff all right. Saying your lessons, ain’t you?”

“Churl,” cried Tirian, “will you give a lady the lie to her very face?”

“You keep a civil tongue in your head, Mister,” replied the Dwarf. “I don’t think we want any more Kings—if you are Tirian, which you don’t look like him—no more than we want any Aslans. We’re going to look after ourselves from now on and touch our caps to nobody. See?”

“That’s right,” said the other Dwarfs. “We’re on our own now. No more Aslan, no more Kings, no more silly stories about other worlds. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.” And they began to fall into their places and to get ready for marching back to wherever they had come from.

“Little beasts！” said Eustace. “Aren’t you even going to say thank you for being saved from the salt-mines?”

“Oh, we know all about that,” said Griffle over his shoulder. “You wanted to make use of us, that’s why you rescued us. You’re playing some game of your own. Come on you chaps.”

And the Dwarfs struck up the queer little marching song which goes with the drum-beat, and off they tramped into the darkness.

Tirian and his friends stared after them. Then he said the single word “Come,” and they continued their journey.

They were a silent party. Puzzle felt himself to be still in disgrace, and also he didn’t really quite understand what had happened. Jill, besides being disgusted with the Dwarfs, was very impressed with Eustace’s victory over the Calormene and felt almost shy. As for Eustace, his heart was still beating rather quickly. Tirian and Jewel walked sadly together in the rear. The King had his arm on the Unicorn’s shoulder and sometimes the Unicorn nuzzled the King’s cheek with his soft nose. They did not try to comfort one another with words. It wasn’t very easy to think of anything to say that would be comforting. Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape’s setting up as a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one. He had felt quite sure that the Dwarfs would rally to his side the moment he showed them how they had been deceived. And then next night he would have led them to Stable Hill and shown Puzzle to all the creatures and everyone would have turned against the Ape and, perhaps after a scuffle with the Calormenes, the whole thing would have been over. But now, it seemed, he could count on nothing. How many other Narnians might turn the same way as the Dwarfs?

“Somebody’s coming after us, I think,” said Puzzle suddenly.

They stopped and listened. Sure enough, there was a thump-thump of small feet behind them.

“Who goes there！” shouted the King.

“Only me, Sire,” came a voice. “Me, Poggin the Dwarf. I’ve only just managed to get away from the others. I’m on your side, Sire, and on Aslan’s. If you can put a Dwarfish sword in my fist, I’d gladly strike a blow on the right side before all’s done.”

Everyone crowded round him and welcomed him and praised him and slapped him on the back. Of course one single Dwarf could not make a very great difference, but it was somehow very cheering to have even one. The whole party brightened up. But Jill and Eustace didn’t stay bright for very long, for they were now yawning their heads off and too tired to think about anything but bed.

It was at the coldest hour of the night, just before dawn, that they got back to the Tower. If there had been a meal ready for them they would have been glad enough to eat, but the bother and delay of getting one was not to be thought of. They drank from a stream, splashed their faces with water, and tumbled into their bunks, except for Puzzle and Jewel who said they’d be more comfortable outside. This perhaps was just as well, for a Unicorn and a fat, full-grown Donkey indoors always make a room feel rather crowded.

Narnian Dwarfs, though less than four feet high, are for their size about the toughest and strongest creatures there are, so that Poggin, in spite of a heavy day and a late night, woke fully refreshed before any of the others. He at once took Jill’s bow, went out and shot a couple of wood pigeons. Then he sat plucking them on the doorstep and chatting to Jewel and Puzzle. Puzzle looked and felt a good deal better this morning. Jewel, being a Unicorn and therefore one of the noblest and most delicate of beasts, had been very kind to him, talking to him about things of the sort they could both understand like grass and sugar and the care of one’s hoofs. When Jill and Eustace came out of the Tower yawning and rubbing their eyes at almost half past ten, the Dwarf showed them where they could gather plenty of a Narnian weed called Wild Fresney, which looks rather like our woodsorrel but tastes a good deal nicer when cooked. （ It needs a little butter and pepper to make it perfect, but they hadn’t got these.） So that what with one thing and another, they had the makings of a capital stew for their breakfast or dinner, whichever you choose to call it. Tirian went a little further off into the wood with an axe and brought back some branches for fuel. While the meal was cooking—which seemed a very long time, especially as it smelled nicer and nicer the nearer it came to being done—the King found a complete Dwarfish outfit for Poggin： mail shirt, helmet, shield, sword, belt, and dagger. Then he inspected Eustace’s sword and found that Eustace had put it back in the sheath all messy from killing the Calormene. He was scolded for that and made to clean and polish it.

All this while Jill went to and fro, sometimes stirring the pot and sometimes looking out enviously at the Donkey and the Unicorn who were contentedly grazing. How many times that morning she wished she could eat grass！

But when the meal came everyone felt it had been worth waiting for, and there were second helpings all round. When everyone had eaten as much as he could, the three humans and the Dwarf came and sat on the doorstep, the four-footed ones lay down facing them, the Dwarf （with permission both from Jill and from Tirian） lit his pipe, and the King said：

“Now, friend Poggin, you have more news of the enemy, belike, than we. Tell us all you know. And first, what tale do they tell of my escape?”

“As cunning a tale, Sire, as ever was devised,” said Poggin. “It was the Cat, Ginger, who told it, and most likely made it up too. This Ginger, Sire—oh, he’s a slyboots if ever a cat was—said he was walking past the tree to which those villains bound your Majesty. And he said （saving your reverence） that you were howling and swearing and cursing Aslan：‘language I wouldn’t like to repeat’were the words he used, looking ever so prim and proper—you know the way a Cat can when it pleases. And then, says Ginger, Aslan himself suddenly appeared in a flash of lightning and swallowed your Majesty up at one mouthful. All the Beasts trembled at this story and some fainted right away. And of course the Ape followed it up. There, he says, see what Aslan does to those who don’t respect him. Let that be a warning to you all. And the poor creatures wailed and whined and said, it will, it will. So that in the upshot your Majesty’s escape has not set them thinking whether you still have loyal friends to aid you, but only made them more afraid and more obedient to the Ape.”

“What devilish policy！” said Tirian. “This Ginger, then, is close in the Ape’s counsels.”

“It’s more a question by now, Sire, if the Ape is in his counsels,” replied the Dwarf. “The Ape has taken to drinking, you see. My belief is that the plot is now mostly carried on by Ginger or Rishda—that’s the Calormene captain. And I think some words that Ginger has scattered among the Dwarfs are chiefly to blame for the scurvy return they made you. And I’ll tell you why. One of those dreadful midnight meetings had just broken up the night before last and I’d gone a bit of the way home when I found I’d left my pipe behind. It was a real good’un, an old favourite, so I went back to look for it. But before I got to the place where I’d been sitting （it was black as pitch there） I heard a cat’s voice say Mew and a Calormene voice say‘here ... speak softly,’ so I just stood as still as if I was frozen. And these two were Ginger and Rishda Tarkaan as they call him.‘Noble Tarkaan,’ said the Cat in that silky voice of his, ‘I just wanted to know exactly what we both meant today about Aslan meaning no more than Tash.’ ‘Doubtless, most sagacious of cats,’ says the other, ‘you have perceived my meaning.’ ‘You mean,’ says Ginger, ‘that there’s no such person as either.’ ‘All who are enlightened know that,’ said the Tarkaan.‘Then we can understand one another,’ purrs the Cat.‘Do you, like me, grow a little weary of the Ape?’ ‘A stupid, greedy brute,’ says the other, ‘but we must use him for the present. Thou and I must provide for all things in secret and make the Ape do our will.’ ‘And it would be better, wouldn’t it,’ said Ginger, ‘to let some of the more enlightened Narnians into our counsels, one by one as we find them apt. For the Beasts who really believe in Aslan may turn at any moment, and will, if the Ape’s folly betrays his secret. But those who care neither for Tash nor Aslan but have only an eye to their own profit and such reward as the Tisroc may give them when Narnia is a Calormene province, will be firm.’ ‘Excellent Cat,’ said the Captain.‘But choose which ones carefully.”’

While the Dwarf had been speaking the day seemed to have changed. It had been sunny when they sat down. Now Puzzle shivered. Jewel shifted his head uneasily. Jill looked up.

“It’s clouding over,” she said.

“And it’s so cold,” said Puzzle.

“Cold enough, by the Lion！” said Tirian, blowing on his hands. “And faugh！ What foul smell is this?”

“Phew！” gasped Eustace. “It’s like something dead. Is there a dead bird somewhere about? And why didn’t we notice it before?”

With a great upheaval Jewel scrambled to his feet and pointed with his horn.

“Look！” he cried. “Look at it！ Look, look！”

Then all six of them saw; and over all their faces there came an expression of uttermost dismay.

CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT NEWS THE EAGLE BROUGHT

In the shadow of the trees on the far side of the clearing something was moving. It was gliding very slowly Northward. At a first glance you might have mistaken it for smoke, for it was grey and you could see things through it. But the deathly smell was not the smell of smoke. Also, this thing kept its shape instead of billowing and curling as smoke would have done. It was roughly the shape of a man but it had the head of a bird; some bird of prey with a cruel, curved beak. It had four arms which it held high above its head, stretching them out Northward as if it wanted to snatch all Narnia in its grip; and its fingers—all twenty of them—were curved like its beak and had long, pointed, bird-like claws instead of nails. It floated on the grass instead of walking, and the grass seemed to wither beneath it.

After one look at it Puzzle gave a screaming bray and darted into the Tower. And Jill （who was no coward, as you know） hid her face in her hands to shut out the sight of it. The others watched it for perhaps a minute, until it streamed away into the thicker trees on their right and disappeared. Then the sun came out again, and the birds once more began to sing.

Everyone started breathing properly again and moved. They had all been still as statues while it was in sight.

“What was it?” said Eustace in a whisper.

“I have seen it once before,” said Tirian. “But that time it was carved in stone and overlaid with gold and had solid diamonds for eyes. It was when I was no older than thou, and had gone as a guest to the Tisroc’s court in Tashbaan. He took me into the great temple of Tash. There I saw it, carved above the altar.”

“Then that—that thing—was Tash?” said Eustace.

But instead of answering him Tirian slipped his arm behind Jill’s shoulders and said, “How is it with you, Lady?”

“A-all right,” said Jill, taking her hands away from her pale face and trying to smile. “I’m all right. It only made me feel a little sick for a moment.”

“It seems, then,” said the Unicorn, “that there is a real Tash, after all.”

“Yes,” said the Dwarf. “And this fool of an Ape, who didn’t believe in Tash, will get more than he bargained for！ He called for Tash; Tash has come.”

“Where has it—he—the Thing—gone to?” said Jill.

“North into the heart of Narnia,” said Tirian. “It has come to dwell among us. They have called it and it has come.”

“Ho, ho, ho！” chuckled the Dwarf, rubbing his hairy hands together. “It will be a surprise for the Ape. People shouldn’t call for demons unless they really mean what they say.”

“Who knows if Tash will be visible to the Ape?” said Jewel.

“Where has Puzzle got to?” said Eustace.

They all shouted out Puzzle’s name and Jill went round to the other side of the Tower to see if he had gone there.

They were quite tired of looking for him when at last his large grey head peered cautiously out of the doorway and he said, “Has it gone away?” And when at last they got him to come out, he was shivering the way a dog shivers before a thunderstorm.

“I see now,” said Puzzle, “that I really have been a very bad donkey. I ought never to have listened to Shift. I never thought things like this would begin to happen.”

“If you’d spent less time saying you weren’t clever and more time trying to be as clever as you could—” began Eustace but Jill interrupted him.

“Oh leave poor old Puzzle alone,” she said. “It was all a mistake, wasn’t it, Puzzle dear?” And she kissed him on the nose.

Though rather shaken by what they had seen, the whole party now sat down again and went on with their talk.

Jewel had little to tell them. While he was a prisoner he had spent nearly all his time tied up at the back of the stable, and had of course heard none of the enemies’plans. He had been kicked （he’d done some kicking back too） and beaten and threatened with death unless he would say that he believed it was Aslan who was brought out and shown to them by firelight every night. In fact he was going to be executed this very morning if he had not been rescued. He didn’t know what had happened to the Lamb.

The question they had to decide was whether they would go to Stable Hill again that night, show Puzzle to the Narnians and try to make them see how they had been tricked, or whether they should steal away Eastward to meet the help which Roonwit the Centaur was bringing up from Cair Paravel and return against the Ape and his Calormenes in force. Tirian would very much like to have followed the first plan, he hated the idea of leaving the Ape to bully his people one moment longer than need be. On the other hand, the way the Dwarfs had behaved last night was a warning. Apparently one couldn’t be sure how people would take it even if he showed them Puzzle. And there were the Calormene soldiers to be reckoned with. Poggin thought there were about thirty of them. Tirian felt sure that if the Narnians all rallied to his side, he and Jewel and the children and Poggin （Puzzle didn’t count for much） would have a good chance of beating them. But how if half the Narnians—including all the Dwarfs—just sat and looked on? or even fought against him? The risk was too great. And there was, too, the cloudy shape of Tash. What might it do?

And then, as Poggin pointed out, there was no harm in leaving the Ape to deal with his own difficulties for a day or two. He would have no Puzzle to bring out and show now. It wasn’t easy to see what story he—or Ginger—could make up to explain that. If the Beasts asked night after night to see Aslan, and no Aslan was brought out, surely even the simplest of them would get suspicious.

In the end they all agreed that the best thing was to go off and try to meet Roonwit.

As soon as they had decided this, it was wonderful how much more cheerful everyone became. I don’t honestly think that this was because any of them was afraid of a fight （except perhaps Jill and Eustace）. But I daresay that each of them, deep down inside, was very glad not to go any nearer—or not yet—to that horrible bird-headed thing which, visible or invisible, was now probably haunting Stable Hill. Anyway, one always feels better when one has made up one’s mind.

Tirian said they had better remove their disguises, as they didn’t want to be mistaken for Calormenes and perhaps attacked by any loyal Narnians they might meet. The Dwarf made up a horrid-looking mess of ashes from the hearth and grease out of the jar of grease which was kept for rubbing on swords and spear-heads. Then they took off their Calormene armour and went down to the stream. The nasty mixture made a lather just like soft soap, it was a pleasant, homely sight to see Tirian and the two children kneeling beside the water and scrubbing the backs of their necks or puffing and blowing as they splashed the lather off. Then they went back to the Tower with red, shiny faces, like people who have been given an extra good wash before a party. They rearmed themselves in true Narnian style, with straight swords and three-cornered shields. “Body of me,” said Tirian. “That is better. I feel a true man again.”

Puzzle begged very hard to have the lion-skin taken off him. He said it was too hot and the way it was rucked up on his back was uncomfortable; also, it made him look so silly. But they told him he would have to wear it a bit longer, for they still wanted to show him in that get-up to the other Beasts, even though they were now going to meet Roonwit first.

What was left of the pigeon-meat and rabbit-meat was not worth bringing away but they took some biscuits. Then Tirian locked the door of the Tower and that was the end of their stay there.

It was a little after two in the afternoon when they set out, and it was the first really warm day of that spring. The young leaves seemed to be much further out than yesterday： the snow-drops were over, but they saw several primroses. The sunlight slanted through the trees, birds sang, and always （though usually out of sight） there was the noise of running water. It was hard to think of horrible things like Tash. The children felt, “This is really Narnia at last.” Even Tirian’s heart grew lighter as he walked ahead of them, humming an old Narnian marching song which had the refrain：

Ho, rumble, rumble, rumble,

Rumble drum belabored.

After the King came Eustace and Poggin the Dwarf. Poggin was telling Eustace the names of all the Narnian trees, birds, and plants which he didn’t know already. Sometimes Eustace would tell him about English ones.

After them came Puzzle, and after him Jill and Jewel walking very close together. Jill had, as you might say, quite fallen in love with the Unicorn. She thought—and she wasn’t far wrong—that he was the shiningest, delicatest, most graceful animal she had ever met, and he was so gentle and soft of speech that, if you hadn’t known, you would hardly have believed how fierce and terrible he could be in battle.

“Oh, this is nice！” said Jill. “Just walking along like this. I wish there could be more of this sort of adventure. It’s a pity there’s always so much happening in Narnia.”

But the Unicorn explained to her that she was quite mistaken. He said that the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve were brought out of their own strange world into Narnia only at times when Narnia was stirred and upset, but she mustn’t think it was always like that. In between their visits there were hundreds and thousands of years when peaceful King followed peaceful King till you couldhardly remember their names or count their numbers, and there was really hardly anything to put into the History Books. And he went on to talk of old Queens and heroes whom she had never heard of. He spoke of Swanwhite the Queen who had lived before the days of the White Witch and the Great Winter, who was so beautiful that when she looked into any forest pool the reflection of her face shone out of the water like a star by night for a year and a day afterward. He spoke of Moonwood the Hare who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel. He told how King Gale, who was ninth in descent from Frank the first of all Kings, had sailed far away into the Eastern seas and delivered the Lone Islanders from a dragon and how, in return, they had given him the Lone Islands to be part of the royal lands of Narnia for ever. He talked of whole centuries in which all Narnia was so happy that notable dances and feasts, or at most tournaments, were the only things that could be remembered, and every day and week had been better than the last. And as he went on, the picture of all those happy years, all the thousands of them, piled up in Jill’s mind till it was rather like looking down from a high hill on to a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. And she said： had given him the Lone Islands to be part of the royal lands of Narnia for ever. He talked of whole centuries in which all Narnia was so happy that notable dances and feasts, or at most tournaments, were the only things that could be remembered, and every day and week had been better than the last. And as he went on, the picture of all those happy years, all the thousands of them, piled up in Jill’s mind till it was rather like looking down from a high hill on to a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. And she said：

“Oh, I do hope we can soon settle the Ape and get back to those good, ordinary times. And then I hope they’ll go on for ever and ever and ever. Our world is going to have an end some day. Perhaps this one won’t. Oh Jewel—wouldn’t it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on—like what you said it has been?”

“Nay, sister,” answered Jewel, “all worlds draw to an end, except Aslan’s own country.”

“Well, at least,” said Jill, “I hope the end of this one is millions of millions of millions of years away—hallo！ what are we stopping for?”

The King and Eustace and the Dwarf were all staring up at the sky. Jill shuddered, remembering what horrors they had seen already. But it was nothing of that sort this time. It was small, and looked black against the blue.

“I dare swear,” said the Unicorn, “from its flight, that it is a Talking bird.”

“So think I,” said the King. “But is it a friend, or a spy of the Ape’s?”

“To me, Sire,” said the Dwarf, “it has a look of Far-sight the Eagle.”

“Ought we to hide under the trees?” said Eustace.

“Nay,” said Tirian, “best stand still as rocks. He would see us for certain if we moved.”

“Look！ He wheels, he has seen us already,” said Jewel. “He is coming down in wide circles.”

“Arrow on string, Lady,” said Tirian to Jill. “But by no means shoot till I bid you. He may be a friend.”

If one had known what was going to happen next it would have been a treat to watch the grace and ease with which the huge bird glided down. He alighted on a rocky crag a few feet from Tirian, bowed his crested head, and said in his strange eagle’s voice, “Hail, King.”

“Hail, Farsight,” said Tirian. “And since you call me King, I may well believe you are not a follower of the Ape and his false Aslan. I am right glad of your coming.”

“Sire,” said the Eagle, “when you have heard my news you will be sorrier of my coming than of the greatest woe that ever befell you.”

Tirian’s heart seemed to stop beating at these words, but he set his teeth and said, “Tell on.”

“Two sights have I seen,” said Farsight. “One was Cair Paravel filled with dead Narnians and living Calormenes. The Tisroc’s banner advanced upon your royal battlements, and your subjects flying from the city—this way and that, into the woods. Cair Paravel was taken from the sea. Twenty great ships of Calormen put in there in the dark of the night before last night.”

No one could speak.

“And the other sight, five leagues nearer than Cair Paravel, was Roonwit the Centaur lying dead with a Calormene arrow in his side. I was with him in his last hour and he gave me this message to your Majesty： to remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

“So,” said the King, after a long silence, “Narnia is no more.”

CHAPTER NINE
THE GREAT MEETING ON STABLE HILL

For a long time they could not speak nor even shed a tear. Then the Unicorn stamped the ground with his hoof, and shook his mane, and spoke.

“Sire,” he said, “there is now no need of counsel. We see that the Ape’s plans were laid deeper than we dreamed of. Doubtless he has been long in secret traffic with the Tisroc, and as soon as he had found the lion-skin he sent him word to make ready his navy for the taking of Cair Paravel and all Narnia. Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us. And if, by a great marvel, we defeat those thirty Calormenes who are with the Ape, then to turn again and die in battle with the far greater host of them that will soon march from Cair Paravel.”

Tirian nodded. But he turned to the children and said：“Now, friends, it is time for you to go hence into your own world. Doubtless you have done all that you were sent to do.”

“B—but we’ve done nothing,” said Jill who was shivering, not with fear exactly but because everything was so horrible.

“Nay,” said the King, “you loosed me from the tree; you glided before me like a snake last night in the wood and took Puzzle; and you, Eustace, killed your man. But you are too young to share in such a bloody end as we others must meet tonight or, it may be, three days hence. I entreat you—nay, I command you—to return to your own place. I should be put to shame if I let such young warriors fall in battle on my side.”

“No, no, no,” said Jill （very white when she began speaking and then suddenly very red and then white again）. “We won’t, I don’t care what you say. We’re going to stick to you whatever happens, aren’t we, Eustace?”

“Yes, but there’s no need to get so worked up about it,” said Eustace who had stuck his hands in his pockets （forgetting how very odd that looks when you are wearing a mail shirt）. “Because, you see, we haven’t any choice. What’s the good of talking about our going back！ How? We’ve got no magic for doing it！”

This was very good sense but, at the moment, Jill hated Eustace for saying it. He was fond of being dreadfully matter-of-fact when other people got excited.

When Tirian realized that the two strangers could not get home （unless Aslan suddenly whisked them away）, he next wanted them to go across the Southern mountains into Archenland where they might possibly be safe. But they didn’t know their way and there was no one to send with them. Also, as Poggin said, once the Calormenes had Narnia they would certainly take Archenland in the next week or so, the Tisroc had always wanted to have these Northern countries for his own. In the end Eustace and Jill begged so hard that Tirian said they could come with him and take their chance—or, as he much more sensibly called it, “the adventure that Aslan would send them.”

The King’s first idea was that they should not go back to Stable Hill—they were sick of the very name of it by now till after dark. But the Dwarf told them that if they arrived there by daylight they would probably find the place deserted, except perhaps for a Calormene sentry. The Beasts were far too frightened by what the Ape （and Ginger） had told them about this new angry Aslan—or Tashlan—to go near it except when they were called together for these horrible midnight meetings. And Calormenes are never good woodsmen. Poggin thought that even by daylight they could easily get round to somewhere behind the stable without being seen. This would be much harder to do when the night had come and the Ape might be calling the Beasts together and all the Calormenes were on duty. And when the meeting did begin they could leave Puzzle at the back of the stable, completely out of sight, till the moment at which they wanted to produce him. This was obviously a good thing, for their only chance was to give the Narnians a sudden surprise.

Everyone agreed and the whole party set off on a new line—Northwest—toward the hated Hill. The Eagle sometimes flew to and fro above them, sometimes he sat perched on Puzzle’s back. No one—not even the King himself except in some great need—would dream of riding on a Unicorn.

This time Jill and Eustace walked together. They had been feeling very brave when they were begging to be allowed to come with the others, but now they didn’t feel brave at all.

“Pole,” said Eustace in a whisper. “I may as well tell you I’ve got the wind up.”

“Oh you’re all right, Scrubb,” said Jill. “You can fight. But I—I’m just shaking, if you want to know the truth.”

“Oh shaking’s nothing,” said Eustace. “I’m feeling I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t talk about that, for goodness’sake,” said Jill.

They went on in silence for a minute or two.

“Pole,” said Eustace presently.

“What?” said she.

“What’ll happen if we get killed here?”

“Well we’ll be dead, I suppose.”

“But I mean, what will happen in our own world? Shall we wake up and find ourselves back in that train? Or shall we just vanish and never be heard of any more? Or shall we be dead in England?”

“Gosh. I never thought of that.”

“It’ll be rum for Peter and the others if they saw me waving out of the window and then when the train comes in we’re nowhere to be found！ Or if they found two—I mean, if we’re dead over there in England.”

“Ugh！” said Jill. “What a horrid idea.”

“It wouldn’t be horrid for us,” said Eustace. “We shouldn’t be there.”

“I almost wish—no I don’t, though,” said Jill.

“What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say I wished we’d never come. But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Even if we are killed. I’d rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath-chair and then die in the end just the same.”

“Or be smashed up by British Railways！”

“Why d’you say that?”

“Well when that awful jerk came—the one that seemed to throw us into Narnia—I thought it was the beginning of a railway accident. So I was jolly glad to find ourselves here instead.”

While Jill and Eustace were talking about this, the others were discussing their plans and becoming less miserable. That was because they were now thinking of what was to be done this very night and the thought of what had happened to Narnia—the thought that all her glories and joys were over—was pushed away into the back part of their minds. The moment they stopped talking it would come out and make them wretched again, but they kept on talking. Poggin was really quite cheerful about the night’s work they had to do. He was sure that the Boar and the Bear, and probably all the Dogs would come over to their side at once. And he couldn’t believe that all the other Dwarfs would stick to Griffle. And fighting by firelight and in and out among trees would be an advantage to the weaker side. And then, if they could win tonight, need they really throw their lives away by meeting the main Calormene army a few days later?

Why not hide in the woods, or even up in the Western Waste beyond the great waterfall and live like outlaws? And then they might gradually get stronger and stronger, for Talking Beasts and Archenlanders would be joining them every day. And at last they’d come out of hiding and sweep the Calormenes （who would have got careless by then） out of the country and Narnia would be revived. After all, something very like that had happened in the time of King Miraz！

And Tirian heard all this and thought “But what about Tash?” and felt in his bones that none of it was going to happen. But he didn’t say so.

When they got nearer to Stable Hill of course everyone became quiet. Then the real wood-work began. From the moment at which they first saw the Hill to the moment at which they all arrived at the back of the stable, it took them over two hours. It’s the sort of thing one couldn’t describe properly unless one wrote pages and pages about it. The journey from each bit of cover to the next was a separate adventure, and there were very long waits in between, and several false alarms. If you are a good Scout or a good Guide you will know already what it must have been like. By about sunset they were all safe in a clump of holly trees about fifteen yards behind the stable. They all munched some biscuit and lay down.

Then came the worst part, the waiting. Luckily for the children they slept for a couple of hours, but of course they woke up when the night grew cold, and what was worse, woke up very thirsty and with no chance of getting a drink. Puzzle just stood, shivering a little with nervousness, and said nothing. But Tirian, with his head against Jewel’s flank, slept as soundly as if he were in his royal bed at Cair Paravel, till the sound of a gong beating awoke him and he sat up and saw that there was firelight on the far side of the stable and knew that the hour had come.

“Kiss me, Jewel,” he said. “For certainly this is our last night on earth. And if ever I offended against you in any matter great or small, forgive me now.”

“Dear King,” said the Unicorn, “I could almost wish you had, so that I might forgive it. Farewell. We have known great joys together. If Aslan gave me my choice I would choose no other life than the life I have had and no other death than the one we go to.”

Then they woke up Farsight, who was asleep with his head under his wing （it made him look as if he had no head at all）, and crept forward to the stable. They left Puzzle （not without a kind word, for no one was angry with him now） just behind it, telling him not to move till someone came to fetch him, and took up their position at one end of the stable.

The bonfire had not been lit for long and was just beginning to blaze up. It was only a few feet away from them, and the great crowd of Narnian creatures were on the other side of it, so that Tirian could not at first see them very well, though of course he saw dozens of eyes shining with the reflection of the fire, as you’ve seen a rabbit’s or cat’s eyes in the headlights of a car. And just as Tirian took his place, the gong stopped beating and from somewhere on his left three figures appeared. One was Rishda Tarkaan the Calormene Captain. The second was the Ape. He was holding on to the Tarkaan’s hand with one paw and kept whimpering and muttering, “Not so fast, don’t go so fast, I’m not at all well. Oh my poor head！ These midnight meetings are getting too much for me. Apes aren’t meant to be up at night. It’s not as if I was a rat or a bat—oh my poor head.” On the other side of the Ape, walking very soft and stately, with his tail straight up in the air, came Ginger the Cat. They were heading for the bonfire and were so close to Tirian that they would have seen him at once if they had looked in the right direction. Fortunately they did not. But Tirian heard Rishda say to Ginger in a low voice：

“Now, Cat, to thy post. See thou play thy part well.”

“Miaow, miaow. Count on me！” said Ginger. Then he stepped away beyond the bonfire and sat down in the front row of the assembled Beasts; in the audience, as you might say.

For really, as it happened, the whole thing was rather like a theatre. The crowd of Narnians were like the people in the seats; the little grassy place just in front of the stable, where the bonfire burned and the Ape and the Captain stood to talk to the crowd, was like the stage; the stable itself was like the scenery at the back of the stage; and Tirian and his friends were like people peering round from behind the scenery. It was a splendid position. If any of them stepped forward into the full firelight, all eyes would be fixed on him at once; on the other hand, so long as they stood still in the shadow of the end-wall of the stable, it was a hundred to one against their being noticed.

Rishda Tarkaan dragged the Ape up close to the fire. The pair of them turned to face the crowd, and this of course meant that their backs were toward Tirian and his friends.

“Now, Monkey,” said Rishda Tarkaan in a low voice. “Say the words that wiser heads have put into thy mouth. And hold up thy head.” As he spoke he gave the Ape a little prod or kick from behind with the point of his toe.

“Do leave me alone,” muttered Shift. But he sat up straighter and began, in a louder voice—“Now listen, all of you. A terrible thing has happened. A wicked thing. The wickedest thing that ever was done in Narnia. And Aslan—”

“Tashlan, fool,” whispered Rishda Tarkaan.

“Tashlan I mean, of course,” said the Ape, “is very angry about it.”

There was a terrible silence while the Beasts waited to hear what new trouble was in store for them. The little party by the end-wall of the stable also held their breath. What on earth was coming now?

“Yes,” said the Ape. “At this very moment, when the Terrible One himself is among us—there in the stable just behind me—one wicked Beast has chosen to do what you’d think no one would dare to do even if He were a thousand miles away. It has dressed itself up in a lion-skin and is wandering about in these very woods pretending to be Aslan.”

Jill wondered for a moment if the Ape had gone mad. Was he going to tell the whole truth? A roar of horror and rage went up from the Beasts. “Grrr！” came the growls. “Who is he? Where is he? Just let me get my teeth into him！”

“It was seen last night,” screamed the Ape, “but it got away. It’s a Donkey！ A common, miserable Ass！ If any of you see that Ass—”

“Grrr！” growled the Beasts. “We will, we will. He’d better keep out of our way.”

Jill looked at the King： his mouth was open and his face was full of horror. And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger. What was the good, now, of telling the Beasts that an ass had been dressed up as a lion to deceive them? The Ape would only say, “That’s just what I’ve said.” What was the good of showing them Puzzle in his lion-skin? They would only tear him in pieces. “That’s taken the wind out of our sails,” whispered Eustace. “The ground is taken from under our feet,” said Tirian. “Cursed, cursed cleverness！” said Poggin. “I’ll be sworn that this new lie is of Ginger’s making.”

CHAPTER TEN
WHO WILL GO INTO THE STABLE?

Jill felt something tickling her ear. It was Jewel the Unicorn, whispering to her with the wide whisper of a horse’s mouth. As soon as she heard what he was saying she nodded and tiptoed back to where Puzzle was standing. Quickly and quietly she cut the last cords that bound the lion-skin to him. It wouldn’t do for him to be caught with that on, after what the Ape had said！ She would like to have hidden the skin somewhere very far away, but it was too heavy. The best she could do was to kick it in among the thickest bushes. Then she made signs to Puzzle to follow her and they both joined the others.

The Ape was speaking again.

“And after a horrid thing like that, Aslan—Tashlan—is angrier than ever. He says he’s been a great deal too good to you, coming out every night to be looked at, see！ Well, he’s not coming out any more.”

Howls and mewings and squeals and grunts were the Animals’answer to this, but suddenly a quite different voice broke in with a loud laugh.

“Hark what the monkey says,” it shouted. “We know why he isn’t going to bring his precious Aslan out. I’ll tell you why： because he hasn’t got him. He never had anything except an old donkey with a lion-skin on its back. Now he’s lost that and he doesn’t know what to do.”

Tirian could not see the faces on the other side of the fire very well, but he guessed this was Griffle the Chief Dwarf. And he was quite certain of it when, a second later, all the Dwarfs’voices joined in, singing：“Don’t know what to do！ Don’t know what to do！ Don’t know what to do-o-o！”

“Silence！” thundered Rishda Tarkaan. “Silence, children of mud！ Listen to me, you other Narnians, lest I give command to my warriors to fall upon you with the edge of the sword. The Lord Shift has already told you of that wicked Ass. Do you think, because of him that there is no real Tashlan in the stable！ Do you? Beware, beware.”

“No, no,” shouted most of the crowd. But the Dwarfs said, “That’s right, Darkie, you’ve got it. Come on, Monkey, show us what’s in the stable, seeing is believing.”

When next there was a moment’s quiet, the Ape said：“You Dwarfs think you’re very clever, don’t you? But not so fast. I never said you couldn’t see Tashlan. Anyone who likes can see him.”

The whole assembly became silent. Then, after nearly a minute, the Bear began in a slow, puzzled voice：

“I don’t quite understand all this,” it grumbled, “I thought you said—”

“You thought！” repeated the Ape. “As if anyone could call what goes on in your head thinking. Listen, you others. Anyone can see Tashlan. But he’s not coming out. You have to go in and see him.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” said dozens of voices. “That’s what we wanted！ We can go in and see him face to face. And now he’ll be kind and it will all be as it used to be.” And the Birds chattered, and the Dogs barked excitedly. Then suddenly, there was a great stirring and a noise of creatures rising to their feet, and in a second the whole lot of them would have been rushing forward and trying to crowd into the stable door all together. But the Ape shouted：

“Get back！ Quiet！ Not so fast.”

The Beasts stopped, many of them with one paw in the air, many with tails wagging, and all of them with heads on one side.

“I thought you said,” began the Bear, but Shift interrupted.

“Anyone can go in,” he said. “But, one at a time. Who’ll go first? He didn’t say he was feeling very kind. He’s been licking his lips a lot since he swallowed up the wicked King the other night. He’s been growling a good deal this morning. I wouldn’t much like to go into that stable myself tonight. But just as you please. Who’d like to go in first? Don’t blame me if he swallows you whole or blasts you into a cinder with the mere terror of his eyes. That’s your affair. Now then！ Who’s first? What about one of you Dwarfs?”

“Dilly, dilly, come and be killed！” sneered Griffle. “How do we know what you’ve got in there?”

“Ho-ho！” cried the Ape. “So you’re beginning to think there’s something there, eh? Well, all you Beasts were making noise enough a minute ago. What’s struck you all dumb? Who’s going in first?”

But the Beasts all stood looking at one another and began backing away from the stable. Very few tails were wagging now. The Ape waddled to and fro jeering at them. “Ho-ho-ho！” he chuckled. “I thought you were all so eager to see Tashlan face to face！ Changed your mind, eh?”

Tirian bent his head to hear something that Jill was trying to whisper in his ear. “What do you think is really inside the stable?” she said. “Who knows?” said Tirian. “Two Calormenes with drawn swords, as likely as not, one on each side of the door.”“You don’t think,” said Jill, “it might be ... you know ... that horrid thing we saw?”“Tash himself?” whispered Tirian. “There’s no knowing. But courage, child, we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”

Then a most surprising thing happened. Ginger the Cat said in a cool, clear voice, not at all as if he was excited, “I’ll go in, if you like.”

Every creature turned and fixed its eyes on the Cat. “Mark their subtleties, Sire,” said Poggin to the King. “This cursed cat is in the plot, in the very center of it. Whatever is in the stable will not hurt him, I’ll be bound. Then Ginger will come out again and say that he has seen some wonder.”

But Tirian had no time to answer him. The Ape was calling the Cat to come forward. “Ho-ho！” said the Ape. “So you, a pert Puss, would look upon him face to face. Come on, then！ I’ll open the door for you. Don’t blame me if he scares the whiskers off your face. That’s your affair.”

And the Cat got up and came out of its place in the crowd, walking primly and daintily, with its tail in the air, not one hair on its sleek coat out of place. It came on till it had passed the fire and was so close that Tirian, from where he stood with his shoulder against the end-wall of the stable, could look right into its face. Its big green eyes never blinked.（“Cool as a cucumber,” muttered Eustace. “It knows it has nothing to fear.”） The Ape, chuckling and making faces, shuttled across beside the Cat, put up his paw, drew the bolt and opened the door. Tirian thought he could hear the Cat purring as it walked into the dark doorway.

“Aii-aii-aouwee！—” The most horrible caterwaul you ever heard made everyone jump. You have been wakened yourself by cats quarrelling or making love on the roof in the middle of the night, you know the sound.

This was worse. The Ape was knocked head over heels by Ginger coming back out of the stable at top speed. If you had not known he was a cat, you might have thought he was a ginger-colored streak of lightning. He shot across the open grass, back into the crowd. No one wants to meet a cat in that state. You could see animals getting out of his way to left and right. He dashed up a tree, whisked around, and hung head downwards. His tail was bristled out till it was nearly as thick as his whole body; his eyes were like saucers of green fire; along his back every single hair stood on end.

“I’d give my beard,” whispered Poggin, “to know whether that brute is only acting or whether it has really found something in there that frightened it！”

“Peace, friend,” said Tirian, for the Captain and the Ape were also whispering and he wanted to hear what they said. He did not succeed, except that he heard the Ape once more whimpering “My head, my head,” but he got the idea that those two were almost as puzzled by the cat’s behaviour as himself.

“Now, Ginger,” said the Captain. “Enough of that noise. Tell them what thou hast seen.”

“Aii—Aii—Aaow—Awah,” screamed the Cat.

“Art thou not called a Talking Beast?” said the Captain. “Then hold thy devilish noise and talk.”

What followed was rather horrible. Tirian felt quite certain （and so did the others） that the Cat was trying to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth except the ordinary, ugly cat-noises you might hear from any angry or frightened old Tom in a backyard in England. And the longer he caterwauled the less like a Talking Beast he looked. Uneasy whimperings and little sharp squeals broke out from among the other Animals.

“Look, look！” said the voice of the Bear. “It can’t talk. It has forgotten how to talk！ It has gone back to being a dumb beast. Look at its face.” Everyone saw that it was true. And then the greatest terror of all fell upon those Narnians. For every one of them had been taught—when it was only a chick or a puppy or a cub—how Aslan at the beginning of the world had turned the beasts of Narnia into Talking Beasts and warned them that if they weren’t good they might one day be turned back again and be like the poor witless animals one meets in other countries. “And now it is coming upon us,” they moaned.

“Mercy！ Mercy！” wailed the Beasts. “Spare us, Lord Shift, stand between us and Aslan, you must always go in and speak to him for us. We daren’t, we daren’t.”

Ginger disappeared further up into the tree. No one ever saw him again.

Tirian stood with his hand on his sword-hilt and his head bowed. He was dazed with the horrors of that night. Sometimes he thought it would be best to draw his sword at once and rush upon the Calormenes, then next moment he thought it would be better to wait and see what new turn affairs might take. And now a new turn came.

“My Father,” came a clear, ringing voice from the left of the crowd. Tirian knew at once that it was one of the Calormenes speaking, for in the Tisroc’s army the common soldiers call the officers “My Master” but the officers call their senior officers “My Father.” Jill and Eustace didn’t know this but, after looking this way and that, they saw the speaker, for of course people at the sides of the crowd were easier to see than people in the middle where the glare of the fire made all beyond it look rather black. He was young and tall and slender, and even rather beautiful in the dark, haughty, Calormene way.

“My Father,” he said to the Captain, “I also desire to go in.”

“Peace, Emeth,” said the Captain, “Who called thee to counsel? Does it become a boy to speak?”

“My Father,” said Emeth. “Truly I am younger than thou, yet I also am of the blood of the Tarkaans even as thou art, and I also am the servant of Tash. Therefore...”

“Silence,” said Rishda Tarkaan. “Am not I thy Captain? Thou hast nothing to do with this stable. It is for the Narnians.”

“Nay, my Father,” answered Emeth. “Thou hast said that their Aslan and our Tash are all one. And if that is the truth, then Tash himself is in yonder. And how then sayest thou that I have nothing to do with him? For gladly would I die a thousand deaths if I might look once on the face of Tash.”

“Thou art a fool and understandest nothing,” said Rishda Tarkaan. “These be high matters.”

Emeth’s face grew sterner. “Is it then not true that Tash and Aslan are all one?” he asked. “Has the Ape lied to us?”

“Of course they’re all one,” said the Ape.

“Swear it, Ape,” said Emeth.

“Oh dear！” whimpered Shift, “I wish you’d all stop bothering me. My head does ache. Yes, yes, I swear it.”

“Then, my Father,” said Emeth, “I am utterly determined to go in.”

“Fool,” began Rishda Tarkaan, but at once the Dwarfs began shouting：“Come along, Darkie. Why don’t you let him in? Why do you let Narnians in and keep your own people out? What have you got in there that you don’t want your own men to meet?”

Tirian and his friends could only see the back of Rishda Tarkaan, so they never knew what his face looked like as he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Bear witness all that I am guiltless of this young fool’s blood. Get thee in, rash boy, and make haste.”

Then, just as Ginger had done, Emeth came walking forward into the open strip of grass between the bonfire and the stable. His eyes were shining, his face very solemn, his hand was on his sword-hilt, and he carried his head high. Jill felt like crying when she looked at his face. And Jewel whispered in the King’s ear, “By the Lion’s Mane, I almost love this young warrior, Calormene though he be. He is worthy of a better god than Tash.”

“I do wish we knew what is really inside there,” said Eustace.

Emeth opened the door and went in, into the black mouth of the stable. He closed the door behind him. Only a few moments passed—but it seemed longer—before the door opened again. A figure in Calormene armour reeled out, fell on its back, and lay still; the door closed behind it. The Captain leaped toward it and bent down to stare at its face. He gave a start of surprise. Then he recovered himself and turned to the crowd, crying out：

“The rash boy has had his will. He has looked on Tash and is dead. Take warning, all of you.”

“We will, we will,” said the poor Beasts. But Tirian and his friends stared at the dead Calormene and then at one another. For they, being so close, could see what the crowd, being further off and beyond the fire, could not see： this dead man was not Emeth. He was quite different： an older man, thicker and not so tall, with a big beard.

“Ho-ho-ho,” chuckled the Ape. “Any more? Anyone else want to go in? Well, as you’re all shy, I’ll choose the next. You, you Boar！ On you come. Drive him up, Calormenes. He shall see Tashlan face to face.”

“O-o-mph,” grunted the Boar, rising heavily to his feet. “Come on, then. Try my tusks.”

When Tirian saw that brave Beast getting ready to fight for its life—and Calormene soldiers beginning to close in on it with their drawn scimitars—and no one going to its help—something seemed to burst inside him. He no longer cared if this was the best moment to interfere or not.

“Swords out,” he whispered to the others. “Arrow on string. Follow.”

Next moment the astonished Narnians saw seven figures leap forth in front of the stable, four of them in shining mail. The King’s sword flashed in the firelight as he waved it above his head and cried in a great voice：

“Here stand I, Tirian of Narnia, in Aslan’s name, to prove with my body that Tash is a foul fiend, the Ape a manifold traitor, and these Calormenes worthy of death. To my side, all true Narnians. Would you wait till your new masters have killed you all one by one?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE PACE QUICKENS

Quick as lightning, Rishda Tarkaan leaped back out of reach of the King’s sword. He was no coward, and would have fought single-handed against Tirian and the Dwarf if need were. But he could not take on the Eagle and the Unicorn as well. He knew how Eagles can fly into your face and peck at your eyes and blind you with their wings. And he had heard from his father （who had met Narnians in battle） that no man, except with arrows, or a long spear, can match a Unicorn, for it rears on its hind legs as it falls upon you and then you have its hoofs and its horn and its teeth to deal with all at once. So he rushed into the crowd and stood calling out：

“To me, to me, warriors of the Tisroc, may-he-live-forever. To me, all loyal Narnians, lest the wrath of Tashlan fall upon you！”

While this was happening two other things happened as well. The Ape had not realized his danger as quickly as the Tarkaan. For a second or so he remained squatting beside the fire staring at the newcomers. Then Tirian rushed upon the wretched creature, picked it up by the scruff of the neck, and dashed back to the stable shouting, “Open the door！” Poggin opened it. “Go and drink your own medicine, Shift！” said Tirian and hurled the Ape through into the darkness. But as the Dwarf banged the door shut again, a blinding greenish-blue light shone out from the inside of the stable, the earth shook, and there was a strange noise—a clucking and screaming as if it was the hoarse voice of some monstrous bird. The Beasts moaned and howled and called out “Tashlan！ Hide us from him！” and many fell down, and many hid their faces in their wings or paws. No one except Farsight the Eagle, who has the best eyes of all living things, noticed the face of Rishda Tarkaan at that moment. And from what Farsight saw there he knew at once that Rishda was just as surprised, and nearly frightened, as everyone else. “There goes one,” thought Farsight, “who has called on gods he does not believe in. How will it be with him if they have really come?”

The third thing—which also happened at the same moment—was the only really beautiful thing that night. Every single Talking Dog in the whole meeting （there were fifteen of them） came bounding and barking joyously to the King’s side. They were mostly great big dogs with thick shoulders and heavy jaws. Their coming was like the breaking of a great wave on the sea-beach, it nearly knocked you down. For though they were Talking Dogs they were just as doggy as they could be, and they all stood up and put their front paws on the shoulders of the humans and licked their faces, all saying at once：“Welcome！ Welcome！ We’ll help, we’ll help, help, help. Show us how to help, show us how, how. How-how-how?”

It was so lovely that it made you want to cry. This, at last, was the sort of thing they had been hoping for. And when, a moment later, several little animals （mice and moles and a squirrel or so） came pattering up, squealing with joy, and saying “See, see. We’re here,” and when, after that, the Bear and the Boar came too, Eustace began to feel that perhaps, after all, everything might be going to come right. But Tirian gazed round and saw how very few of the animals had moved.

“To me！ To me！” he called. “Have you all turned cowards since I was your King?”

“We daren’t,” whimpered dozens of voices. “Tashlan would be angry. Shield us from Tashlan.”

“Where are all the Talking Horses?” said Tirian to the Boar.

“We’ve seen, we’ve seen,” squealed the Mice. “The Ape has made them work. They’re all tied down at the bottom of the hill.”

“Then all you little ones,” said Tirian, “you nibblers and gnawers and nutcrackers, away with you as fast as you can scamper and see if the Horses are on our side. And if they are, get your teeth into the ropes and gnaw till the Horses are free and bring them hither.”

“With a good will, Sire,” came the small voices, and with a whisk of tails those sharp-eyed and sharp-toothed folk were off. Tirian smiled for mere love as he saw them go. But it was already time to be thinking of other things. Rishda Tarkaan was giving his orders.

“Forward,” he said. “Take all of them alive if you can and hurl them into the stable or drive them into it. When they are all in we will put fire to it and make them an offering to the great god Tash.”

“Ha！” said Farsight to himself. “So that is how he hopes to win Tash’s pardon for his unbelief.”

The enemy line—about half of Rishda’s force—was now moving forward, and Tirian had barely time to give his orders.

“Out on the left, Jill, and try to shoot all you may before they reach us. Boar and Bear next to her. Poggin on my left, Eustace on my right. Hold the right wing, Jewel. Stand by him, Puzzle, and use your hoofs. Hover and strike, Farsight. You Dogs, just behind us. Go in among them after the sword-play has begun. Aslan to our aid！”

Eustace stood with his heart beating terribly, hoping and hoping that he would be brave. He had never seen anything （though he had seen both a dragon and a sea-serpent） that made his blood run so cold as that line of dark-faced bright-eyed men. There were fifteen Calormenes, a Talking Bull of Narnia, Slinkey the Fox, and Wraggle the Satyr. Then he heard twang-and-zipp on his left and one Calormene fell： then twang-and-zipp again and the Satyr was down. “Oh, well done, daughter！” came Tirian’s voice, and then the enemy were upon them.

Eustace could never remember what happened in the next two minutes. It was all like a dream （the sort you have when your temperature is over 100） until he heard Rishda Tarkaan’s voice calling out from the distance：

“Retire. Back hither and re-form.”

Then Eustace came to his senses and saw the Calormenes scampering back to their friends. But not all of them. Two lay dead, pierced by Jewel’s horn, one by Tirian’s sword. The Fox lay dead at his own feet, and he wondered if it was he who had killed it. The Bull also was down, shot through the eye by an arrow from Jill and gashed in his side by the Boar’s tusk. But our side had its losses too. Three dogs were killed and a fourth was hobbling behind the line on three legs and whimpering. The Bear lay on the ground, moving feebly. Then it mumbled in its throaty voice, bewildered to the last, “I—I don’t—understand,” laid its big head down on the grass as quietly as a child going to sleep, and never moved again.

In fact, the first attack had failed. Eustace didn’t seem able to be glad about it： he was so terribly thirsty and his arm ached so.

As the defeated Calormenes went back to their commander, the Dwarfs began jeering at them.

“Had enough, Darkies?” they yelled. “Don’t you like it? Why doesn’t your great Tarkaan go and fight himself instead of sending you to be killed? Poor Darkies！”

“Dwarfs,” cried Tirian. “Come here and use your swords, not your tongues. There is still time. Dwarfs of Narnia！ You can fight well, I know. Come back to your allegiance.”

“Yah！” sneered the Dwarfs. “Not likely. You’re just as big humbugs as the other lot. We don’t want any Kings. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs. Boo！”

Then the Drum began： not a Dwarf drum this time, but a big bull’s hide Calormene drum. The children from the very first hated the sound. Boom—boom—ba-ba-boom it went. But they would have hated it far worse if they had known what it meant. Tirian did. It meant that there were other Calormene troops somewhere near and that Rishda Tarkaan was calling them to his aid. Tirian and Jewel looked at one another sadly. They had just begun to hope that they might win that night, but it would be all over with them if new enemies appeared.

Tirian gazed despairingly round. Several Narnians were standing with the Calormenes, whether through treachery or in honest fear of “Tashlan.” Others were sitting still, staring, not likely to join either side. But there were fewer animals now： the crowd was much smaller. Clearly, several of them had just crept quietly away during the fighting.

Boom—boom—ba-ba-boom went the horrible drum. Then another sound began to mix with it. “Listen！” said Jewel; and then “Look！” said Farsight. A moment later there was no doubt what it was. With a thunder of hoofs, with tossing heads, widened nostrils, and waving manes, over a score of Talking Horses of Narnia came charging up the hill. The gnawers and nibblers had done their work.

Poggin the Dwarf and the children opened their mouths to cheer but that cheer never came. Suddenly the air was full of the sound of twanging bow-strings and hissing arrows. It was the Dwarfs who were shooting and—for a moment Jill could hardly believe her eyes-they were shooting the Horses. Dwarfs are deadly archers. Horse after Horse rolled over. Not one of those noble Beasts ever reached the King.

“Little Swine,” shrieked Eustace, dancing in his rage. “Dirty, filthy, treacherous little brutes.” Even Jewel said, “Shall I run after those Dwarfs, Sire, and spit ten of them on my horn at each plunge?” But Tirian with his face as stern as stone, said, “Stand fast, Jewel. If you must weep, sweetheart”（this was to Jill）, “turn your face aside and see you wet not your bow-string. And peace, Eustace. Do not scold, like a kitchen-girl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.”

But the Dwarfs jeered back at Eustace. “That was a surprise for you, little boy, eh? Thought we were on your side, did you? No fear. We don’t want any Talking Horses. We don’t want you to win any more than the other gang. You can’t take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

Rishda Tarkaan was still talking to his men, doubtless making arrangements for the next attack and probably wishing he had sent his whole force into the first. The drum boomed on. Then, to their horror, Tirian and his friends heard, far fainter as if from a long way off, an answering drum. Another body of Calormenes had heard Rishda’s signal and were coming to support him. You would not have known from Tirian’s face that he had now given up all hope.

“Listen,” he whispered in a matter-of-fact voice, “we must attack now, before yonder miscreants are strengthened by their friends.”

“Bethink you, Sire,” said Poggin, “that here we have the good wooden wall of the stable at our backs. If we advance, shall we not be encircled and get sword-points between our shoulders?”

“I would say as you do, Dwarf,” said Tirian. “Were it not their very plan to force us into the stable? The further we are from its deadly door, the better.”

“The King is right,” said Farsight. “Away from this accursed stable, and whatever goblin lives inside it, at all costs.”

“Yes, do let’s,” said Eustace. “I’m coming to hate the very sight of it.”

“Good,” said Tirian. “Now look yonder to our left. You see a great rock that gleams white like marble in the firelight. First we will fall upon those Calormenes. You, maiden, shall move out on our left and shoot as fast as ever you may into their ranks; and you, Eagle, fly at their faces from the right. Meanwhile we others will be charging them. When we are so close, Jill, that you can no longer shoot at them for fear of striking us, go back to the white rock and wait. You others, keep your ears wide even in the fighting. We must put them to flight in a few minutes or else not at all, for we are fewer than they. As soon as I call Back, then rush to join Jill at the white rock, where we shall have protection behind us and can breathe awhile. Now, be off, Jill.”

Feeling terribly alone, Jill ran out about twenty feet, put her right leg back and her left leg forward, and set an arrow to her string. She wished her hands were not shaking so. “That’s a rotten shot！” she said as her first arrow sped toward the enemy and flew over their heads. But she had another on the string next moment; she knew that speed was what mattered. She saw something big and black darting into the faces of the Calormenes.‘that was Farsight. First one man, and then another, dropped his sword and put up both his hands to defend his eyes. Then one of her own arrows hit a man, and another hit a Narnian wolf, who had, it seemed, joined the enemy. But she had been shooting only for a few seconds when she had to stop. With a flash of swords and of the Boar’s tusks and Jewel’s horn, and with deep baying from the dogs, Tirian and his party were rushing on their enemies, like men in a hundred yards’race. Jill was astonished to see how unprepared the Calormenes seemed to be. She did not realize that this was the result of her work and the Eagle’s. Very few troops can keep on looking steadily to the front if they are getting arrows in their faces from one side and being pecked by an eagle on the other.

“Oh well done. Well done！” shouted Jill. The King’s party were cutting their way right into the enemy. The Unicorn was tossing men as you’d toss hay on a fork. Even Eustace seemed to Jill （who after all didn’t know very much about swordsmanship） to be fighting brilliantly. The Dogs were at the Calormenes’throats. It was going to work！ It was victory at last-With a horrible, cold shock Jill noticed a strange thing. Though Calormenes were falling at each Narnian sword-stroke, they never seemed to get any fewer. In fact, there were actually more of them now than when the fight began. There were more every second. They were running up from every side. They were new Calormenes. These new ones had spears. There was such a crowd of them that she could hardly see her own friends. Then she heard Tirian’s voice crying：

“Back！ To the rock！”

The enemy had been reinforced. The drum had done its work.

CHAPTER TWELVE
THROUGH THE STABLE DOOR

Jill ought to have been back at the white rock already but she had quite forgotten that part of her orders in the excitement of watching the fight. Now she remembered. She turned at once and ran to it, and arrived there barely a second before the others. It thus happened that all of them, for a moment, had their backs to the enemy. They all wheeled round the moment they had reached it. A terrible sight met their eyes.

A Calormene was running toward the stable door carrying something that kicked and struggled. As he came between them and the fire they could see clearly both the shape of the man and the shape of what he carried. It was Eustace.

Tirian and the Unicorn rushed out to rescue him. But the Calormene was now far nearer to the door then they. Before they had covered half the distance he had flung Eustace in and shut the door on him. Half a dozen more Calormenes had run up behind him. They formed a line on the open space before the stable. There was no getting at it now.

Even then Jill remembered to keep her face turned aside, well away from her bow. “Even if I can’t stop blubbing, I won’t get my string wet,” she said.

“’Ware arrows,” said Poggin suddenly.

Everyone ducked and pulled his helmet well over his nose. The Dogs crouched behind. But though a few arrows came their way it soon became clear that they were not being shot at. Griffle and his Dwarfs were at their archery again. This time they were coolly shooting at the Calormenes.

“Keep it up, boys！” came Griffle’s voice. “All together. Carefully. We don’t want Darkies any more than we want Monkeys—or Lions—or Kings. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

Whatever else you may say about Dwarfs, no one can say they aren’t brave. They could easily have got away to some safe place. They preferred to stay and kill as many of both sides as they could, except when both sides were kind enough to save them trouble by killing one another. They wanted Narnia for their own.

What perhaps they had not taken into account was that the Calormenes were mail-clad and the Horses had had no protection. Also the Calormenes had a leader. Rishda Tarkaan’s voice cried out：

“Thirty of you keep watch on those fools by the white rock. The rest, after me, that we may teach these sons of earth a lesson.”

Tirian and his friends, still panting from their fight and thankful for a few minutes’rest, stood and looked on while the Tarkaan led his men against the Dwarfs. It was a strange scene by now. The fire had sunk lower： the light it gave was now less and of a darker red. As far as one could see, the whole place of assembly was now empty except for the Dwarf and the Calormenes. In that light one couldn’t make out much of what was happening. It sounded as if the Dwarfs were putting up a good fight. Tirian could hear Griffle using dreadful language, and every now and then the Tarkaan calling, “Take all you can alive！ Take them alive！”

Whatever that fight may have been like, it did not last long. The noise of it died away. Then Jill saw the Tarkaan coming back to the stable; eleven men followed him, dragging eleven bound Dwarfs. （ Whether the others had all been killed, or whether some of them had got away, was never known.）

“Throw them into the shrine of Tash,” said Rishda Tarkaan.

And when the eleven Dwarfs, one after the other, had been flung or kicked into that dark doorway and the door had been shut again, he bowed low to the stable and said：

“These also are for thy burnt offering, Lord Tash.”

And all the Calormenes banged the flats of their swords on their shields and shouted, “Tash！ Tash！ The great god Tash！ Inexorable Tash！”（There was no nonsense about “Tashlan” now.）

The little party by the white rock watched these doings and whispered to one another. They had found a trickle of water coming down the rock and all had drunk eagerly—Jill and Poggin and the King in their hands, while the four-footed ones lapped from the little pool which it had made at the foot of the stone. Such was their thirst that it seemed the most delicious drink they had ever had in their lives, and while they were drinking they were perfectly happy and could not think of anything else.

“I feel in my bones,” said Poggin, “that we shall all, one by one, pass through that dark door before morning. I can think of a hundred deaths I would rather have died.”

“It is indeed a grim door,” said Tirian. “It is more like a mouth.”

“Oh, can’t we do anything to stop it?” said Jill in a shaken voice.

“Nay, fair friend,” said Jewel, nosing her gently. “It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we shall sup at his table tonight.”

Rishda Tarkaan turned his back on the stable and walked slowly to a place in front of the white rock.

“Hearken,” he said. “If the Boar and the Dogs and the Unicorn will come over to me and put themselves in my mercy, their lives shall be spared. The Boar shall go to a cage in the Tisroc’s garden, the Dogs to the Tisroc’s kennels, and the Unicorn, when I have sawn his horn off, shall draw a cart. But the Eagle, the children, and he who was the King shall be offered to Tash this night.”

The only answer was growls.

“Get on, warriors,” said the Tarkaan. “Kill the beasts, but take the two-legged ones alive.”

And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.

What made it hopeless, even apart from the numbers of the enemy, was the spears. The Calormenes who had been with the Ape almost from the beginning had had no spears, that was because they had come into Narnia by ones and twos, pretending to be peaceful merchants, and of course they had carried no spears for a spear is not a thing you can hide. The new ones must have come in later, after the Ape was already strong and they could march openly. The spears made all the difference. With a long spear you can kill a boar before you are in reach of his tusks and a unicorn before you are in reach of his horn; if you are very quick and keep your head. And now the levelled spears were closing in on Tirian and his last friends. Next minute they were all fighting for their lives.

In a way it wasn’t quite so bad as you might think. When you are using every muscle to the full—ducking under a spear-point here, leaping over it there, lunging forward, drawing back, wheeling round—you haven’t much time to feel either frightened or sad. Tirian knew he could do nothing for the others now; they were all doomed together. He vaguely saw the Boar go down on one side of him, and Jewel fighting furiously on the other. Out of the corner of one eye he saw, but only just saw, a big Calormene pulling Jill away somewhere by her hair. But he hardly thought about any of these things. His only thought now was to sell his life as dearly as he could. The worst of it was that he couldn’t keep to the position in which he had started, under the white rock. A man who is fighting a dozen enemies at once must take his chances wherever he can; must dart in wherever he sees an enemy’s breast or neck unguarded. In a very few strokes this may get you quite a distance from the spot where you began. Tirian soon found that he was getting further and further to the right, nearer to the stable. He had a vague idea in his mind that there was some good reason for keeping away from it. But he couldn’t now remember what the reason was. And anyway, he couldn’t help it.

All at once everything came quite clear. He found he was fighting the Tarkaan himself. The bonfire （what was left of it） was straight in front. He was in fact fighting in the very doorway of the stable, for it had been opened and two Calormenes were holding the door, ready to slam it shut the moment he was inside. He remembered everything now, and he realized that the enemy had been edging him to the stable on purpose ever since the fight began. And while he was thinking this he was still fighting the Tarkaan as hard as he could.

A new idea came into Tirian’s head. He dropped his sword, darted forward, in under the sweep of the Tarkaan’s scimitar, seized his enemy by the belt with both hands, and jumped back into the stable, shouting：

“Come in and meet Tash yourself！”

There was a deafening noise. As when the Ape had been flung in, the earth shook and there was a blinding light.

The Calormene soldiers outside screamed. “Tash, Tash！” and banged the door. If Tash wanted their own Captain, Tash must have him. They, at any rate, did not want to meet Tash.

For a moment or two Tirian did not know where he was or even who he was. Then he steadied himself, blinked, and looked around. It was not dark inside the stable, as he had expected. He was in strong light, that was why he was blinking.

He turned to look at Rishda Tarkaan, but Rishda was not looking at him. Rishda gave a great wail and pointed; then he put his hands before his face and fell flat, face downward, on the ground. Tirian looked in the direction where the Tarkaan had pointed. And then he understood.

A terrible figure was coming toward them. It was far smaller than the shape they had seen from the Tower, though still much bigger than a man, and it was the same. It had a vulture’s head and four arms. Its beak was open and its eyes blazed. A croaking voice came from its beak.

“Thou hast called me into Narnia, Rishda Tarkaan. Here I am. What hast thou to say?”

But the Tarkaan neither lifted his face from the ground nor said a word. He was shaking like a man with a bad hiccup. He was brave enough in battle, but half his courage had left him earlier that night when he first began to suspect that there might be a real Tash. The rest of it had left him now.

With a sudden jerk—like a hen stooping to pick up a worm—Tash pounced on the miserable Rishda and tucked him under the upper of his two right arms. Then Tash turned his head sidewise to fix Tirian with one of his terrible eyes, for of course, having a bird’s head, he couldn’t look at you straight.

But immediately, from behind Tash, strong and calm as the summer sea, a voice said：

“Begone, Monster, and take your lawful prey to your own place in the name of Aslan and Aslan’s great Father the Emperor-over-the-Sea.”

The hideous creature vanished, with the Tarkaan still under its arm. And Tirian turned to see who had spoken. And what he saw then set his heart beating as it had never beaten in any fight.

Seven Kings and Queens stood before him, all with crowns on their heads and all in glittering clothes, but the Kings wore fine mail as well and had their swords drawn in their hands. Tirian bowed courteously and was about to speak when the youngest of the Queens laughed. He stared hard at her face, and then gasped with amazement, for he knew her. It was Jill, but not Jill as he had last seen her, with her face all dirt and tears and an old drill dress half slipping off one shoulder. Now she looked cool and fresh, as fresh as if she had just come from bathing. And at first he thought she looked older, but then didn’t, and he could never make up his mind on that point. And then he saw that the youngest of the Kings was Eustace, but he also was changed as Jill was changed.

Tirian suddenly felt awkward about coming among these people with the blood and dust and sweat of a battle still on him. Next moment he realized that he was not in that state at all. He was fresh and cool and clean, and dressed in such clothes as he would have worn for a great feast at Cair Paravel. （ But in Narnia your good clothes were never your uncomfortable ones. They knew how to make things that felt beautiful as well as looking beautiful in Narnia： and there was no such thing as starch or flannel or elastic to be found from one end of the country to the other.）

“Sire,” said Jill coming forward and making a beautiful curtsey, “let me make you known to Peter the High King over all Kings in Narnia.”

Tirian had no need to ask which was the High King, for he remembered his face （though here it was far nobler） from his dream. He stepped forward, sank on one knee and kissed Peter’s hand.

“High King,” he said. “You are welcome to me.”

And the High King raised him and kissed him on both cheeks as a High King should. Then he led him to the eldest of the Queens—but even she was not old, and there were no grey hairs on her head and no wrinkles on her cheek—and said, “Sir, this is that Lady Polly who came into Narnia on the First Day, when Aslan made the trees grow and the Beasts talk.” He brought him next to a man whose golden beard flowed over his breast and whose face was full of wisdom. “And this,” he said, “is the Lord Digory who was with her on that day. And this is my brother, King Edmund; and this my sister, the Queen Lucy.”

“Sir,” said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. “If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?”

“My sister Susan,” answered Peter shortly and gravely, “is no longer a friend of Narnia.”

“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, ‘What wonderful memories you have！ Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’”

“Oh Susan！” said Jill. “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.”

“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly. “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.”

“Well, don’t let’s talk about that now,” said Peter. “Look！ Here are lovely fruit-trees. Let us taste them.”

And then, for the first time, Tirian looked about him and realized how very queer this adventure was.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOW THE DWARFS REFUSED TO BE TAKEN IN

Tirian had thought—or he would have thought if he had time to think at all—that they were inside a little thatched stable, about twelve feet long and six feet wide. In reality they stood on grass, the deep blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of a day in early summer. Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly leaved, but under every leaf there peeped out the gold or faint yellow or purple or glowing red of fruits such as no one has seen in our world. The fruit made Tirian feel that it must be autumn but there was something in the feel of the air that told him it could not be later than June. They all moved toward the trees.

Everyone raised his hand to pick the fruit he best liked the look of, and then everyone paused for a second. This fruit was so beautiful that each felt “It can’t be meant for me ... surely we’re not allowed to pluck it.”

“It’s all right,” said Peter. “I know what we’re all thinking. But I’m sure, quite sure, we needn’t. I’ve a feeling we’ve got to the country where everything is allowed.”

“Here goes, then！” said Eustace. And they all began to eat.

What was the fruit like? Unfortunately no one can describe a taste. All I can say is that, compared with those fruits, the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was hard and woody, and the sweetest wild strawberry was sour. And there were no seeds or stones, and no wasps. If you had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicines after it. But I can’t describe it. You can’t find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste it for yourself.

When they had eaten enough, Eustace said to King Peter, “You haven’t yet told us how you got here. You were just going to, when King Tirian turned up.”

“There’s not much to tell,” said Peter. “Edmund and I were standing on the platform and we saw your train coming in. I remember thinking it was taking the bend far too fast. And I remember thinking how funny it was that our people were probably in the same train though Lucy didn’t know about it—”

“Your people, High King?” said Tirian.

“I mean my Father and Mother—Edmund’s and Lucy’s and mine.”

“Why were they?” asked Jill. “You don’t mean to say they know about Narnia?”

“Oh no, it had nothing to do with Narnia. They were on their way to Bristol. I’d only heard they were going that morning. But Edmund said they’d be bound to be going by that train.”（Edmund was the sort of person who knows about railways.）

“And what happened then?” said Jill.

“Well, it’s not very easy to describe, is it, Edmund?” said the High King.

“Not very,” said Edmund. “It wasn’t at all like that other time when we were pulled out of our own world by Magic. There was a frightful roar and something hit me with a bang, but it didn’t hurt. And I felt not so much scared as—well, excited. Oh—and this is one queer thing. I’d had a rather sore knee, from a hack at rugger. I noticed it had suddenly gone. And I felt very light. And then—here we were.”

“It was much the same for us in the railway carriage,” said the Lord Digory, wiping the last traces of the fruit from his golden beard. “Only I think you and I, Polly, chiefly felt that we’d been unstiffened. You youngsters won’t understand. But we stopped feeling old.”

“Youngsters, indeed！” said Jill. “I don’t believe you two really are much older than we are here.”

“Well if we aren’t, we have been,” said the Lady Polly.

“And what has been happening since you got here?” asked Eustace.

“Well,” said Peter, “for a long time （at least I suppose it was a long time） nothing happened. Then the door opened—”

“The door?” said Tirian.

“Yes,” said Peter. “The door you came in—or came out—by. Have you forgotten?”

“But where is it?”

“Look,” said Peter and pointed.

Tirian looked and saw the queerest and most ridiculous thing you can imagine. Only a few yards away, clear to be seen in the sunlight, there stood up a rough wooden door and, round it, the framework of the doorway： nothing else, no walls, no roof. He walked toward it, bewildered, and the others followed, watching to see what he would do. He walked round to the other side of the door. But it looked just the same from the other side： he was still in the open air, on a summer morning. The door was simply standing up by itself as if it had grown there like a tree.

“Fair Sir,” said Tirian to the High King, “this is a great marvel.”

“It is the door you came through with that Calormene five minutes ago,” said Peter smiling.

“But did I not come in out of the wood into the stable? Whereas this seems to be a door leading from nowhere to nowhere.”

“It looks like that if you walk round it,” said Peter. “But put your eye to that place where there is a crack between two of the planks and look through.”

Tirian put his eye to the hole. At first he could see nothing but blackness. Then, at his eyes grew used to it, he saw the dull red glow of a bonfire that was nearly going out, and above that, in a black sky, stars. Then he could see dark figures moving about or standing between him and the fire： he could hear them talking and their voices were like those of Calormenes. So he knew that he was looking out through the stable door into the darkness of Lantern Waste where he had fought his last battle. The men were discussing whether to go in and look for Rishda Tarkaan （but none of them wanted to do that） or to set fire to the stable.

He looked round again and could hardly believe his eyes. There was the blue sky overhead, and grassy country spreading as far as he could see in every direction, and his new friends all round him laughing.

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.”

“Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.”

“Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” It was the first time she had spoken, and from the thrill in her voice, Tirian now knew why. She was drinking everything in even more deeply than the others. She had been too happy to speak. He wanted to hear her speak again, so he said：

“Of your courtesy, Madam, tell on. Tell me your whole adventure.”

“After the shock and the noise,” said Lucy, “we found ourselves here. And we wondered at the door, as you did. Then the door opened for the first time （we saw darkness through the doorway when it did） and there came through a big man with a naked sword. We saw by his arms that he was a Calormene. He took his stand beside the door with his sword raised, resting on his shoulder, ready to cut down anyone who came through. We went to him and spoke to him, but we thought he could neither see nor hear us. And he never looked round on the sky and the sunlight and the grass. I think he couldn’t see them either. So then we waited a long time. Then we heard the bolt being drawn on the other side of the door. But the man didn’t get ready to strike with his sword till he could see who was coming in. So we supposed he had been told to strike some and spare others. But at the very moment when the door opened, all of a sudden Tash was there, on this side of the door; none of us saw where he came from. And through the door there came a big Cat. It gave one look at Tash and ran for its life just in time, for he pounced at it and the door hit his beak as it was shut. The man could see Tash. He turned very pale and bowed down before the Monster, but it vanished away.

“Then we waited a long time again. At last the door opened for the third time and there came in a young Calormene. I liked him. The sentinel at the door started, and looked very surprised, when he saw him. I think he’d been expecting someone quite different—”

“I see it all now,” said Eustace （he had the bad habit of interrupting stories）. “The Cat was to go in first and the sentry had orders to do him no harm. Then the Cat was to come out and say he’d seen their beastly Tashlan and pretend to be frightened so as to scare the other Animals. But what Shift never guessed was that the real Tash would turn up; so Ginger came out really frightened. And after that, Shift would send in anyone he wanted to get rid of and the sentry would kill them.

And—”

“Friend,” said Tirian softly, “you hinder the lady in her tale.”

“Well,” said Lucy, “the sentry was surprised. That gave the other man just time to get on guard. They had a fight. He killed the sentry and flung him outside the door. Then he came walking slowly forward to where we were. He could see us, and everything else. We tried to talk to him but he was rather like a man in a trance. He kept on saying Tash, Tash, where is Tash? I go to Tash. So we gave it up and he went away somewhere—over there. I liked him. And after that ... ugh！” Lucy made a face.

“After that,” said Edmund, “someone flung a monkey through the door. And Tash was there again. My sister is so tender-hearted she doesn’t like to tell you that Tash made one peck and the Monkey was gone！”

“Serve him right！” said Eustace. “All the same, I hope he’ll disagree with Tash too.”

“And after that,” said Edmund, “came about a dozen Dwarfs, and then Jill, and Eustace, and last of all yourself.”

“I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too,” said Eustace. “Little swine.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Lucy. “And don’t be horrid. Thery’re still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I’ve tried and tried to make friends with them but it’s no use.”

“Friends with them！” cried Eustace. “If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving！”

“Oh stop it, Eustace,” said Lucy. “Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them.”

“I can feel no great love for Dwarfs today,” said Tirian. “Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this.”

Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren’t strolling about or enjoying themselves （although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished） nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn’t see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening.

“Look out！” said one of them in a surly voice. “Mind where you’re going. Don’t walk into our faces！”

“All right！” said Eustace indignantly. “We’re not blind. We’ve got eyes in our heads.”

“They must be darn good ones if you can see in here,” said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.

“In where?” asked Edmund.

“Why you bone-head, in here of course,” said Diggle. “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”

“Are you blind?” said Tirian.

“Ain’t we all blind in the dark！” said Diggle.

“But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,” said Lucy. “Can’t you see? Look up！ Look round！ Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you see me?”

“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?”

“But I can see you,” said Lucy. “I’ll prove I can see you. You’ve got a pipe in your mouth.”

“Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that,” said Diggle.

“Oh the poor things！ This is dreadful,” said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. “Listen, Dwarf,” she said. “Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right. Can you smell that?” She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle’s ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.

“None of that！” he shouted. “How dare you！ What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It’s like your sauce！ And who are you anyway?”

“Earth-man,” said Tirian, “she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are.”

“Well if that doesn’t beat everything！” exclaimed Diggle. “How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn’t come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now—even now—when you’ve been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you’re still at your old game. Starting a new lie！ Trying to make us believe we’re none of us shut up, and it ain’t dark, and heaven knows what.”

“There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool,” cried Tirian. “Come out of it.” And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling：

“Ow！ Ow！ What d’you do that for！ Banging my face against the wall. You’ve nearly broken my nose.”

“Oh dear！” said Lucy, “What are we to do for them?”

“Let’em alone,” said Eustace, but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart’s desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion’s feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, “Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour.”

“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you—will you—do something for these poor Dwarfs?”

“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl, low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again！”

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’knees： pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh！ Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at！ Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said：

“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do.”

He went to the Door and they all followed him. He raised his head and roared, “Now it is time！” then louder, “Time！”； then so loud that it could have shaken the stars, “TIME.” The Door flew open.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NIGHT FALLS ON NARNIA

They all stood beside Aslan, on his right side, and looked through the open doorway.

The bonfire had gone out. On the earth all was blackness： in fact you could not have told that you were looking into a wood if you had not seen where the dark shapes of the trees ended and the stars began. But when Aslan had roared yet again, out on their left they saw another black shape. That is, they saw another patch where there were no stars, and the patch rose up higher and higher and became the shape of a man, the hugest of all giants. They all knew Narnia well enough to work out where he must be standing. He must be on the high moorlands that stretch away to the North beyond the River Shribble. Then Jill and Eustace remembered how once long ago, in the deep caves beneath those moors, they had seen a great giant asleep and been told that his name was Father Time, and that he would wake on the day the world ended.

“Yes,” said Aslan, though they had not spoken. “While he lay dreaming his name was Time. Now that he is awake he will have a new one.”

Then the great giant raised a horn to his mouth. They could see this by the change of the black shape he made against the stars. After that—quite a bit later, because sound travels so slowly—they heard the sound of the horn： high and terrible, yet of a strange, deadly beauty.

Immediately the sky became full of shooting stars. Even one shooting star is a fine thing to see; but these were dozens, and then scores, and then hundreds, till it was like silver rain, and it went on and on. And when it had gone on for some while, one or two of them began to think that there was another dark shape against the sky as well as the giant’s. It was in a different place, right overhead, up in the very roof of the sky as you might call it. “Perhaps it is a cloud,” thought Edmund. At any rate, there were no stars there, just blackness. But all around, the downpour of stars went on. And then the starless patch began to grow, spreading further and further out from the center of the sky. And presently a quarter of the whole sky was black, and then a half, and at last the rain of shooting stars was going on only low down near the horizon.

With a thrill of wonder （and there was some terror in it too） they all suddenly realized what was happening. The spreading blackness was not a cloud at all, it was simply emptiness. The black part of the sky was the part in which there were no stars left. All the stars were falling. Aslan had called them home.

The last few seconds before the rain of stars had quite ended were very exciting. Stars began falling all round them. But stars in that world are not the great flaming globes they are in ours. They are people （Edmund and Lucy had once met one）. So now they found showers of glittering people, all with long hair like burning silver and spears like white-hot metal, rushing down to them out of the black air, swifter than falling stones. They made a hissing noise as they landed and burnt the grass. And all these stars glided past them and stood somewhere behind, a little to the right.

This was a great advantage, because otherwise, now that there were no stars in the sky, everything would have been completely dark and you could have seen nothing. As it was, the crowd of stars behind them cast a fierce, white light over their shoulders. They could see mile upon mile of Narnian woods spread out before them, looking as if they were floodlit. Every bush and almost every blade of grass had its black shadow behind it. The edge of every leaf stood out so sharp that you’d think you could cut your finger on it.

On the grass before them lay their own shadows. But the great thing was Aslan’s shadow. It streamed away to their left, enormous and very terrible. And all this was under a sky that would now be starless forever.

The light from behind them （and a little to their right） was so strong that it lit up even the slopes of the Northern Moors. Something was moving there. Enormous animals were crawling and sliding down into Narnia： great dragons and giant lizards and featherless birds with wings like bats’wings. They disappeared into the woods and for a few minutes there was silence. Then there came—at first from very far off—sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling and a pattering and a sound of wings. It came nearer and nearer. Soon one could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones. And then one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming. And at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures—Talking Beasts, Dwarfs, Satyrs, Fauns, Giants, Calormenes, men from Archenland, Monopods, and strange unearthly things from the remote islands of the unknown Western lands. And all these ran up to the doorway where Aslan stood.

This part of the adventure was the only one which seemed rather like a dream at the time and rather hard to remember properly afterward. Especially, one couldn’t say how long it had taken. Sometimes it seemed to have lasted only a few minutes, but at others it felt as if it might have gone on for years. Obviously, unless either the Door had grown very much larger or the creatures had suddenly grown as small as gnats, a crowd like that couldn’t ever have tried to get through it. But no one thought about that sort of thing at the time.

The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly—it was fear and hatred, except that, on the faces of Talking Bears, the fear and hatred lasted only for a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased to the Talking Beasts. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which （as you have heard） streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. There were some queer specimens among them. Eustace even recognized one of those very Dwarfs who had helped to shoot the Horses. But he had no time to wonder about that sort of thing （and anyway it was no business of his） for a great joy put everything else out of his head. Among the happy creatures who now came crowding round Tirian and his friends were all those whom they had thought dead. There was Roonwit the Centaur and Jewel the Unicorn and the good Boar and the good Bear, and Farsight the Eagle, and the dear Dogs and the Horses, and Poggin the Dwarf.

“Further in and higher up！” cried Roonwit and thundered away in a gallop to the West. And though they did not understand him, the words somehow set them tingling all over. The Boar grunted at them cheerfully. The Bear was just going to mutter that he still didn’t understand, when he caught sight of the fruit-trees behind them. He waddled to those trees as fast as he could and there, no doubt, found something he understood very well. But the Dogs remained, wagging their tails, and Poggin remained, shaking hands with everyone and grinning all over his honest face. And Jewel leaned his snowy white head over the King’s shoulder and the King whispered in Jewel’s ear. Then everyone turned his attention again to what could be seen through the Doorway.

The Dragons and Giant Lizards now had Narnia to themselves. They went to and fro tearing up the trees by the roots and crunching them up as if they were sticks of rhubarb. Minute by minute the forests disappeared. The whole country became bare and you could see all sorts of things about its shape—all the little humps and hollows—which you had never noticed before. The grass died. Soon Tirian found that he was looking at a world of bare rock and earth. You could hardly believe that anything had ever lived there. The monsters themselves grew old and lay down and died. Their flesh shrivelled up and the bones appeared, soon they were only huge skeletons that lay here and there on the dead rock, looking as if they had died thousands of years ago. For a long time everything was still.

At last something white—a long, level line of whiteness that gleamed in the light of the standing stars—came moving toward them from the Eastern end of the world.

A widespread noise broke the silence： first a murmur then a rumble, then a roar. And now they could see what it was that was coming, and how fast it came. It was a foaming wall of water. The sea was rising. In that tree-less world you could see it very well. You could see all the rivers getting wider and the lakes getting larger, and separate lakes joining into one, and valleys turning into new lakes, and hills turning into islands, and then those islands vanishing. And the high moors to their left and the higher mountains to their right crumbled and slipped down with a roar and a splash into the mounting water; and the water came swirling up to the very threshold of the Doorway （but never passed it） so that the foam splashed about Aslan’s forefeet. All now was level water from where they stood to where the waters met the sky.

And out there it began to grow light. A streak of dreary and disastrous dawn spread along the horizon, and widened and grew brighter, till in the end they hardly noticed the light of the stars who stood behind them. At last the sun came up. When it did, the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly looked at one another and gave a little nod; those two, in a different world, had once seen a dying sun, and so they knew at once that this sun also was dying. It was three times—twenty times—as big as it ought to be, and very dark red. As its rays fell upon the great Time-giant, he turned red too, and in the reflection of that sun the whole waste of shoreless waters looked like blood.

Then the Moon came up, quite in her wrong position, very close to the sun, and she also looked red. And at the sight of her the sun began shooting out great flames, like whiskers or snakes of crimson fire, toward her. It is as if he were an octopus trying to draw her to himself in his tentacles. And perhaps he did draw her. At any rate she came to him, slowly at first, but then more and more quickly, till at last his long flames licked round her and the two ran together and became one huge ball like a burning coal. Great lumps of fire came dropping out of it into the sea and clouds of steam rose up.

Then Aslan said, “Now make an end.”

The giant threw his horn into the sea. Then he stretched out one arm—very black it looked, and thousands of miles long—across the sky till his hand reached the Sun. He took the Sun and squeezed it in his hand as you would squeeze an orange. And instantly there was total darkness.

Everyone except Aslan jumped back from the ice-cold air which now blew through the Doorway. Its edges were already covered with icicles.

“Peter, High King of Narnia,” said Aslan. “Shut the Door.”

Peter, shivering with cold, leaned out into the darkness and pulled the Door to. It scraped over ice as he pulled it. Then, rather clumsily （for even in that moment his hands had gone numb and blue） he took out a golden key and locked it.

They had seen strange things enough through that Doorway. But it was stranger than any of them to look round and find themselves in warm daylight, the blue sky above them, flowers at their feet, and laughter in Aslan’s eyes.

He turned swiftly round, crouched lower, lashed himself with his tail and shot away like a golden arrow.

“Come further in！ Come further up！” he shouted over his shoulder. But who could keep up with him at that pace? They set out walking Westward to follow him.

“So,” said Peter, “night falls on Narnia. What, Lucy！ You’re not crying? With Aslan ahead, and all of us here?”

“Don’t try to stop me, Peter,” said Lucy, “I am sure Aslan would not. I am sure it is not wrong to mourn for Narnia. Think of all that lies dead and frozen behind that door.”

“Yes and I did hope,” said Jill, “that it might go on for ever. I knew our world couldn’t. I did think Narnia might.”

“I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die.”

“Sirs,” said Tirian. “The ladies do well to weep. See, I do so myself. I have seen my mother’s death. What world but Narnia have I ever known? It were no virtue, but great discourtesy, if we did not mourn.”

They walked away from the Door and away from the Dwarfs who still sat crowded together in their imaginary stable. And as they went they talked to one another about old wars and old peace and ancient Kings and all the glories of Narnia.

The Dogs were still with them. They joined in the conversation but not much because they were too busy racing on ahead and racing back and rushing off to sniff at smells in the grass till they made themselves sneeze. Suddenly they picked up a scent which seemed to excite them very much. They all started arguing about it—“Yes it is—No it isn’t—That’s just what I said—anyone can smell what that is—Take your great nose out of the way and let someone else smell.”

“What is it, cousins?” said Peter.

“A Calormene, Sire,” said several Dogs at once.

“Lead on to him, then,” said Peter. “Whether he meets us in peace or war, he shall be welcome.”

The Dogs darted on ahead and came back a moment later, running as if their lives depended on it, and barking loudly to say that it really was a Calormene. （ Talking Dogs, just like the common ones, behave as if they thought whatever they are doing at the moment immensely important.）

The others followed where the Dogs led them and found a young Calormene sitting under a chestnut tree beside a clear stream of water. It was Emeth. He rose at once and bowed gravely.

“Sir,” he said to Peter, “I know not whether you are my friend or my foe, but I should count it my honour to have you for either. Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?”

“Sir,” said Peter, “I do not know that there need be any war between you and us.”

“Do tell us who you are and what’s happened to you,” said Jill.

“If there’s going to be a story, let’s all have a drink and sit down,” barked the Dogs. “We’re quite blown.”

“Well of course you will be if you keep tearing about the way you have done,” said Eustace.

So the humans sat down on the grass. And when the Dogs had all had a very noisy drink out of the stream they all sat down, bolt upright, panting, with their tongues hanging out of their heads a little on one side to hear the story. But Jewel remained standing, polishing his horn against his side.

CHAPTER FIFITEEN
FURTHER UP AND FURTHER IN

“Know, O Warlike Kings,” said Emeth, “and you, O ladies whose beauty illuminates the universe, that I am Emeth, the seventh son of Harpha Tarkaan of the city of Tehishbaan, Westward beyond the desert. I came lately into Narnia with nine and twenty others under the command of Rishda Tarkaan. Now when I first heard that we should march upon Narnia I rejoiced; for I had heard many things of your Land and desired greatly to meet you in battle. But when I found that we were to go in disguised as merchants （which is a shameful dress for a warrior and the son of a Tarkaan） and to work by lies and trickery, then my joy departed from me. And most of all when I found we must wait upon a Monkey, and when it began to be said that Tash and Aslan were one, then the world became dark in my eyes. For always since I was a boy I have served Tash and my great desire was to know more of him, if it might be, to look upon his face. But the name of Aslan was hateful to me.

“And, as you have seen, we were called together outside the straw-roofed hovel, night after night, and the fire was kindled, and the Ape brought forth out of the hovel something upon four legs that I could not well see. And the people and the Beasts bowed down and did honour to it. But I thought, the Tarkaan is deceived by the Ape, for this thing that comes out of the stable is neither Tash nor any other god. But when I watched the Tarkaan’s face, and marked every word that he said to the Monkey, then I changed my mind, for I saw that the Tarkaan did not believe in it himself. And then I understood that he did not believe in Tash at all, for if he had, how could he dare to mock him?

“When I understood this, a great rage fell upon me and I wondered that the true Tash did not strike down both the Monkey and the Tarkaan with fire from heaven. Nevertheless I hid my anger and held my tongue and waited to see how it would end. But last night, as some of you know, the Monkey brought not forth the yellow thing but said that all who desired to look upon Tashlan—for so they mixed the two words to pretend that they were all one—must pass one by one into the hovel. And I said to myself, Doubtless this is some other deception. But when the Cat had followed in and had come out again in a madness of terror, then I said to myself, Surely the true Tash, whom they called on without knowledge or belief, has now come among us, and will avenge himself. And though my heart was turned into water inside me because of the greatness and terror of Tash, yet my desire was stronger than my fear, and I put force upon my knees to stay them from trembling, and on my teeth that they should not chatter, and resolved to look upon the face of Tash though he should slay me. So I offered myself to go into the hovel, and the Tarkaan, though unwillingly, let me go.

“As soon as I had gone in at the door, the first wonder was that I found myself in this great sunlight （as we all are now） though the inside of the hovel had looked dark from outside. But I had no time to marvel at this, for immediately I was forced to fight for my head against one of our own men. As soon as I saw him I understood that the Monkey and the Tarkaan had set him there to slay any who came in if he were not in their secrets, so that this man also was a liar and a mocker and no true servant of Tash. I had the better will to fight him, and having slain the villain, I cast him out behind me through the door.

“Then I looked about me and saw the sky and the wide lands, and smelled the sweetness. And I said, By the Gods, this is a pleasant place, it may be that I am come into the country of Tash. And I began to journey into the strange country and to seek him.

“So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo！ in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant’s; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert. Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion （who is worthy of all honour） will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook （but his wrath was not against me） and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also （for the truth constrained me）, Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.

“Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much, but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.

“And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog—”

“Eh? What’s that?” said one of the Dogs.

“Sir,” said Emeth. “It is but a fashion of speech which we have in Calormen.”

“Well, I can’t say it’s one I like very much,” said the Dog.

“He doesn’t mean any harm,” said an older Dog. “After all, we call our puppies boys when they don’t behave properly.”

“So we do,” said the first Dog. “Or girls.”

“S-s-sh！” said the Old Dog. “That’s not a nice word to use. Remember where you are.”

“Look！” said Jill suddenly. Someone was coming, rather timidly, to meet them; a graceful creature on four feet, all silvery-grey. And they stared at him for a whole ten seconds before five or six voices said all at once, “Why, it’s old Puzzle！” They had never seen him by daylight with the lion-skin off, and it made an extraordinary difference. He was himself now： a beautiful donkey with such a soft, grey coat and such a gentle, honest face that if you had seen him you would have done just what Jill and Lucy did—rushed forward and put your arms round his neck and kissed his nose and stroked his ears.

When they asked him where he had been he said he had come in at the door along with all the other creatures but he had—well, to tell the truth, he had been keeping out of their way as much as he could; and out of Aslan’s way. For the sight of the real Lion had made him so ashamed of all that nonsense about dressing up in a lion-skin that he did not know how to look anyone in the face. But when he saw that all his friends were going away Westward, and after he had had a mouthful of grass （“And I’ve never tasted such good grass in my life,” said Puzzle）, he plucked up his courage and followed. “But what I’ll do if I really have to meet Aslan, I’m sure I don’t know,” he added.

“You’ll find it will be all right when you really do,” said Queen Lucy.

Then they went forward together, always Westward, for that seemed to be the direction Aslan had meant when he cried out, “Further up and futher in.” Many other creatures were slowly moving the same way, but that grassy country was very wide and there was no crowding.

It still seemed to be early, and the morning freshness was in the air. They kept on stopping to look round and to look behind them, partly because it was so beautiful but partly also because there was something about it which they could not understand.

“Peter,” said Lucy, “where is this, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know,” said the High King. “It reminds me of somewhere but I can’t give it a name. Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small?”

“It would have to have been a jolly good holiday,” said Eustace. “I bet there isn’t a country like this anywhere in our world. Look at the colors！ You couldn’t get a blue like the blue on those mountains in our world.”

“Is it not Aslan’s country?” said Tirian.

“Not like Aslan’s country on top of that mountain beyond the Eastern end of the world,” said Jill. “I’ve been there.”

“If you ask me,” said Edmund, “it’s like somewhere in the Narnian world. Look at those mountains ahead—and the big ice-mountains beyond them. Surely they’re rather like the mountains we used to see from Narnia, the ones up Westward beyond the Waterfall?”

“Yes, so they are,” said Peter. “Only these are bigger.”

“I don’t think those ones are so very like anything in Narnia,” said Lucy. “But look there.” She pointed Southward to their left, and everyone stopped and turned to look. “Those hills,” said Lucy, “the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind—aren’t they very like the Southern border of Narnia?”

“Like！” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. “Why, they’re exactly like. Look, there’s Mount Pire with his forked head, and there’s the pass into Archenland and everything！”

“And yet they’re not like,” said Lucy. “They’re different. They have more colors on them and they look further away than I remembered and they’re more ... more ... oh, I don’t know...”

“More like the real thing,” said the Lord Digory softly.

Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground.

“Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all—Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.”

“But how can it be?” said Peter. “For Aslan told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are.”

“Yes,” said Eustace. “And we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out.”

“And it’s all so different,” said Lucy.

“The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here, just as our world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.” His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words, but when he added under his breath “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools！” the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden. He knew why they were laughing and joined in the laugh himself. But very quickly they all became grave again： for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones, yet at the same time they were somehow different—deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story, in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country： every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that, if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried：

“I have come home at last！ This is my real country！ I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee！ Come further up, come further in！”

He shook his mane and sprang forward into a great gallop—a Unicorn’s gallop, which, in our world, would have carried him out of sight in a few moments. But now a most strange thing happened. Everyone else began to run, and they found, to their astonishment, that they could keep up with him： not only the Dogs and the humans but even fat little Puzzle and short-legged Poggin the Dwarf. The air flew in their faces as if they were driving fast in a car without a windscreen. The country flew past as if they were seeing it from the windows of an express train. Faster and faster they raced, but no one got hot or tired or out of breath.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FAREWELL TO SHADOWLANDS

If one could run without getting tired, I don’t think one would often want to do anything else. But there might be special reasons for stopping, and it was a special reason which made Eustace presently shout：

“I say！ Steady！ Look what we’re coming to！”

And well he might. For now they saw before them Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool the high unclimbable cliffs and, pouring down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every second, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall; and already the thunder of it was in their ears.

“Don’t stop！ Further up and further in,” called Farsight, tilting his flight a little upwards.

“It’s all very well for him,” said Eustace, but Jewel also cried out：

“Don’t stop. Further up and further in！ Take it in your stride.”

His voice could only just be heard above the roar of the water but next moment everyone saw that he had plunged into the Pool. And helter-skelter behind him, with splash after splash, all the others did the same. The water was not biting cold as all of them （and especially Puzzle） expected, but of a delicious foamy coolness. They all found they were swimming straight for the Waterfall itself.

“This is absolutely crazy,” said Eustace to Edmund.

“I know. And yet—” said Edmund.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Lucy. “Have you noticed one can’t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.”

“By Jove, neither one can,” said Eustace after he had tried.

Jewel reached the foot of the Waterfall first, but Tirian was only just behind him. Jill was last, so she could see the whole thing better than the others. She saw something white moving steadily up the face of the Waterfall. That white thing was the Unicorn. You couldn’t tell whether he was swimming or climbing, but he moved on, higher and higher. The point of his horn divided the water just above his head, and it cascaded out in two rainbow-colored streams all round his shoulders. Just behind him came King Tirian. He moved his legs and arms as if he were swimming but he moved straight upward, as if one could swim up the wall of a house.

What looked funniest was the Dogs. During the gallop they had not been at all out of breath, but now, as they swarmed and wriggled upwards, there was plenty of spluttering and sneezing among them; that was because they would keep on barking, and every time they barked they got their mouths and noses full of water. But before Jill had time to notice all these things fully, she was going up the Waterfall herself. It was the sort of thing that would have been quite impossible in our world. Even if you hadn’t been drowned, you would have been smashed to pieces by the terrible weight of water against the countless jags of rock. But in that world you could do it. You went on, up and up, with all kinds of reflected lights flashing at you from the water and all manner of colored stones flashing through it, till it seemed as if you were climbing up light itself-and always higher and higher till the sense of height would have terrified you if you could be terrified, but later it was only gloriously exciting. And then at last one came to the lovely, smooth green curve in which the water poured over the top and found that one was out on the level river above the Waterfall. The current was racing away behind you, but you were such a wonderful swimmer that you could make headway against it. Soon they were all on the bank, dripping but happy.

A long valley opened ahead and great snow-mountains, now much nearer, stood up against the sky.

“Further up and further in,” cried Jewel and instantly they were off again.

They were out of Narnia now and up into the Western Wild which neither Tirian nor Peter nor even the Eagle had ever seen before. But the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly had. “Do you remember? Do you remember?” they said—and said it in steady voices too, without panting, though the whole party was now running faster than an arrow flies.

“What, Lord?” said Tirian. “Is it then true, as stories tell, that you two journeyed here on the very day the world was made?”

“Yes,” said Digory, “and it seems to me as if it were only yesterday.”

“And on a flying horse?” asked Tirian. “Is that part true?”

“Certainly,” said Digory. But the Dogs barked, “Faster, faster！”

So they ran faster and faster till it was more like flying than running, and even the Eagle overhead was going no faster than they. And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and, faster than ever, down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountain lakes as if they were living speed-boats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as a turquoise, they saw a smooth green hill. Its sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall, but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked like silver and their fruit like gold.

“Further up and further in！” roared the Unicorn, and no one held back. They charged straight at the foot of the hill and then found themselves running up it almost as water from a broken wave runs up a rock out at the point of some bay. Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. They all felt just as they had felt about the fruit—“Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?”

But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open.

Tirian stood holding his breath and wondering who would come out. And what came was the last thing he had expected： a little, sleek, bright-eyed Talking Mouse with a red feather stuck in a circlet on its head and its left paw resting on a long sword. It bowed, a most beautiful bow, and said in its shrill voice：

“Welcome, in the Lion’s name. Come further up and further in.”

Then Tirian saw King Peter and King Edmund and Queen Lucy rush forward to kneel down and greet the Mouse and they all cried out “Reepicheep！” And Tirian breathed fast with the sheer wonder of it, for now he knew that he was looking at one of the great heroes of Narnia, Reepicheep the Mouse who had fought at the great Battle of Beruna and afterward sailed to the World’s end with King Caspian the Seafarer. But before he had had much time to think of this he felt two strong arms thrown about him and felt a bearded kiss on his cheeks and heard a well remembered voice saying：

“What, lad? Art thicker and taller since I last touched thee！”

It was his own father, the good King Erlian, but not as Tirian had seen him last when they brought him home pale and wounded from his fight with the giant, nor even as Tirian remembered him in his later years when he was a grey-headed warrior. This was his father, young and merry, as he could just remember him from very early days when he himself had been a little boy playing games with his father in the castle garden at Cair Paravel, just before bedtime on summer evenings. The very smell of the bread-and-milk he used to have for supper came back to him.

Jewel thought to himself, “I will leave them to talk for a little and then I will go and greet the good King Erlian. Many a bright apple has he given me when I was but a colt.” But next moment he had something else to think of, for out of the gateway there came a horse so mighty and noble that even a Unicorn might feel shy in its presence： a great winged horse. It looked a moment at the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly and neighed out “What, cousins！” and they both shouted “Fledge！ Good old Fledge！” and rushed to kiss it.

But by now the Mouse was again urging them to come in. So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew toward them out of that garden and into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees, walking on springy turf that was all dotted with white flowers. The very first thing which struck everyone was that the place was far larger than it had seemed from outside. But no one had time to think about that for people were coming up to meet the newcomers from every direction.

Everyone you had ever heard of （if you knew the history of these countries） seemed to be there. There was Glimfeather the Owl and Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle, and King Rilian the Disenchanted, and his mother the Star’s daughter and his great father Caspian himself. And close beside him were the Lord Drinian and the Lord Berne and Trumpkin the Dwarf and Truffle-hunter the good Badger with Glenstorm the Centaur and a hundred other heroes of the great War of Deliverance. And then from another side came Cor the King of Archenland with King Lune his father and his wife Queen Aravis and the brave prince Corin Thunder-Fist, his brother, and Bree the Horse and Hwin the Mare. And then—which was a wonder beyond all wonders to Tirian—there came from further away in the past, the two good Beavers and Tumnus the Faun. And there was greeting and kissing and hand-shaking and old jokes revived,（you’ve no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years） and the whole company moved forward to the center of the orchard where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all, and at the foot of that tree were two thrones and in those two thrones a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them. And well they might, for these two were King Frank and Queen Helen from whom all the most ancient Kings of Narnia and Archenland are descended. And Tirian felt as you would feel if you were brought before Adam and Eve in all their glory.

About half an hour later—or it might have been half a hundred years later, for time there is not like time here—Lucy stood with her dear friend, her oldest Narnian friend, the Faun Tumnus, looking down over the wall of that garden, and seeing all Narnia spread out below. But when you looked down you found that this hill was much higher than you had thought. It sank down with shining cliffs, thousands of feet below them and trees in that lower world looked no bigger than grains of green salt. Then she turned inward again and stood with her back to the wall and looked at the garden.

“I see,” she said at last, thoughtfully. “I see now. This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside.”

“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange, she knew them all.

“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful then the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door！ I see ... world within world, Narnia within Narnia...”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion, except that as you go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”

And Lucy looked this way and that and soon found that a new and beautiful thing had happened to her. Whatever she looked at, however far away it might be, once she had fixed her eyes steadily on it, became quite clear and close as if she were looking through a telescope. She could see the whole Southern desert and beyond it the great city of Tashbaan; to Eastward she could see Cair Paravel on the edge of the sea and the very window of the room that had once been her own. And far out to sea she could discover the islands, islands after islands to the end of the world, and, beyond the end, the huge mountain which they had called Aslan’s country. But now she saw that it was part of a great chain of mountains which ringed round the whole world. In front of her it seemed to come quite close. Then she looked to her left and saw what she took to be a great bank of brightly-colored cloud, cut off from them by a gap. But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter！ Edmund！ Come and look！ Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes also had become like hers.

“Why！” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself—Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began！”

“I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

“So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”

Suddenly they shifted their eyes to another spot, and then Peter and Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and shouted out and began waving, for there they saw their own father and mother, waving back at them across the great, deep valley. It was like when you see people waving at you from the deck of a big ship when you are waiting on the quay to meet them.

“How can we get at them?” said Lucy.

“That is easy,” said Mr. Tumnus. “That country and this country—all the real countries—are only spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan. We have only to walk along the ridge, upward and inward, till it joins on. And listen！ There is King Frank’s horn. We must all go up.”

And soon they found themselves all walking together—and a great, bright procession it was—up toward mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on those mountains; there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the other, going up forever. And the land they were walking on grew narrower all the time, with a deep valley on each side： and across that valley the land which was the real England grew nearer and nearer.

The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-colored cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty.

And the very first person whom Aslan called to him was Puzzle the Donkey. You never saw a donkey look feebler and sillier than Puzzle did as he walked up to Aslan, and he looked, beside Aslan, as small as a kitten looks beside a St Bernard. The Lion bowed down his head and whispered something to Puzzle at which his long ears went down, but then he said something else at which the ears perked up again. The humans couldn’t hear what he had said either time. Then Aslan turned to them and said：

“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion, but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Table of Contents

总封面

纳尼亚传奇：狮子、女巫和魔衣柜（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：凯斯宾王子（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：黎明踏浪号（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：银椅（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：能言马与男孩（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：魔法师的外甥（中英双语）

纳尼亚传奇：最后一战（中英双语）