In the darkness of the How, barely lit by the dim torches, I could finally comprehend the size of the catastrophe that the night raid had been.
As far as I could see no one got killed, but that, even though probably the greatest luck anyone could dare ask for, was where the good news ended. At least half of our forces were hurt, nursing either arrow- or sword slashes, and even with Lucy’s magic cordial and all of our meagre medical supplies we would be lucky if we could get a third of them back into our ranks any time soon.
For others… even when physically they were whole, their morale had clearly suffered a severe blow. We had had our failures before, of course, but those were organised retreats or early cancellations, or losses in minor skirmishes at most, but nothing on this scale. Wherever I could look, the ears were drooped, the eyes cast downward, and even the voices of those who tried to sound brave rang hollow and forced.
The heavy air of defeat, even more suffocating than the smoke of fires, hung around the How.
***
As soon as the doors of the war room hid us from the sight and hearing of our troops I pounced to confront Caspian.
“What the hay was that? Why did you…”
“Why did I what?” Caspian cut me off, even angrier than I, “Why did I almost end this stupid war? Why was I holding at a sword a man who tried to hunt me down like an animal? Why did I almost murder my uncle?”
“Yes, all of it, Caspian! You promised! You swore to me back when we started that if I help you, nopony was going to die, not even your uncle! Why did you try to...” the word “murder” he used so casually but a second ago refused to leave my muzzle.
“Because he killed my father!” Caspian exploded “He murdered my family in their beds for the throne!”
I opened my mouth and found I had nothing to say.
“Caspian, I… am sorry, but, you shouldn’t… you can’t. Not like him...” I mumbled, struggling to find anything to say but the useless banalities.
“Don’t.” He pushed me away when I tried to nuzzle him for comfort. “Don’t talk to me. You… traitor!”
I would’ve ran after him, but Doctor stood in my way.
“Let him cool off miss Shimmer. There’s no point to talking to him as he is.”
***
I spent some time wandering among our wounded. I am no earth-pony, nor was I a doctor, so for all my magic I was not half as useful as our medics - to say nothing of Lucy. Still, my pain-numbing spells and sleeping charms could provide relief to the wounded, and save us some of our scant medicine supplies.
Soon, my usefulness exhausted, I retreated to the war room, hoping for some time to wallow in some self-pity and misery of our utter failure without anyone taking note of it further breaking our already struggling morale.
Edmund was - once again - ahead of me on this one, already sitting in the corner of the room, his eyes glazed with thought and his face sullen.
He twirled his dagger in his hand, on occasion stabbing it into the table between his fingers in a strange pattern, a staccato of steel against wood counterpointing the heavy silence of the war room.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, trying to lift Ed’s spirits up. “It’s...” Caspian’s, “...we just got unlucky”.
He chuckled unhappily. “Susan said the same thing. So did Peter”. The knife moved faster between his fingers, missing them by a hair's breadth. “They never blame me, you know. Even when it’s my fault. The privilege of a younger brother.”
I stayed silent. I never had siblings, so I couldn’t really relate to that.
“But they are counting on me. I’m the smart one, you know? Peter is the brave and charismatic, Susan is the kind and graceful, and I am the smart one.” His tone turned bitter, mocking. “Edmund, what are the answers for the quiz? Ed, can you figure out ancient precedents and laws for us, please? Ed, can you come up with the plan to win the war? Yes, yes I can. Or I can try. And try. And try again, and every failure… every single life and limb lost - it’s on me, not on them. It’s Peter who gets the spotlight… and all I ever get are regrets.”
“That hardly sounds fair.”
The knife thunked hard against the table, the blade embedded deeply into the wood between Ed’s fingers.
“That’s no more than I deserve.”
***
We sat there for a long time, silence only broken by Edmund's dagger against wood. There was no need for words, our quiet camaraderie in our common misery making it easier to bear.
The fire was starting to go out, and morn was soon to be upon us when we were troubled again. It were Edmund's siblings, dragged in insistently by Lucy. Both were in a state of disarray, clearly plucked from whatever they were doing when she snatched them - Peter trying to juggle his sword, shield and armor at the same time, Susan's hair still wet.
“By Jove, Lu, will you wait a second?” Peter wheezed, trying to untangle himself into a chain shirt he was donning.
"Edmund, tell them!" Lucy kept pulling her older sibling into the room with persistence and power of a tiny train engine, "Tell her that something's wrong! I can feel it down below."
"I don't know what's gotten into her." Susan said, "I think she had a night terror or something".
Ed looked up sharply, twisting his dagger out of the maimed table.
"The last time I didn't believe Lucy, I ended up looking pretty stupid." He said slowly. "We should go have a look."
The five of us descended the stairs to the hall below the barracks and the forges and the dining hall, to the room in the very roots of the How. The caves under the How were deep and dark, and the only room there was the one where the Stone lie. They said that Aslan died here once, sacrificed and resurrected, and in doing so saved Narnia. It made no sense to me, yet there was some sort of deep magic to this room and no one, save me or Caspian dared enter here.
With every step of the way, our urgency grew, Pevensies turning tense, and even I started to feel something horribly wrong brewing underneath until we were running towards our destination at full gallop.
It was there, at the end of the long, twisted hall, roughly hewn in the stone we have found the heavy doors barred and guarded. A figure, covered by the loose dark robe, crossed our path, stepping from the shadow of an alcove.
“We need to get through!”, I tried to get past it, without slowing down, when it exploded in a flash of teeth and claws, barely an inch from my face, as I only just managed to dodge the sudden attack.
Beneath the cloak a horrid figure, a half-human half-wolf abomination stood, snarling and baring his teeth.
“What are you?!” even among the weirdest half-human half-equine hybrids and sapient predators of this insane world, I would’ve noticed this rabid... thing.
“What am I, little pony?” he asked, his deformed, heavy jaw struggling with speech, “I am hunger. I am thirst”. A mad glint of his eyes scaring me and silencing even Pevensies, forced all of us to step back “I can drink a river of blood and not burst, I can…”
It was almost too late when I recognised that he was not just insane, his eyes twitching and staring past me - he was looking behind us as if expecting someone to appear. I spun around, only now spotting the dwarf clad in black and rust, swinging his short sword at Edmund’s back.
“Look out!”. Surprised, I only began to summon the magic to push him back, but I need not have worried.
Lucy stepped from the shadows, and her little toy dagger slipped into the dwarf’s armpit, finding a gap in his crude chainmail. He squealed in pain and surprise - a thin, grating sound.
Cold and almost medical, Lucy twisted the knife, pushing him to the ground and ripped it from the wound in a small fountain of blood. A savage backhand with a hilt of the dagger knocked dwarf out, and Lucy moved back, disappearing behind a column once again.
I shuddered. Of all the Pevensies the midget scared me the most.
Peter was less refined. With a cry of effort he smashed his shield into the wer-creature, pushing it clean through the doors of the Aslan’s Tomb, and over the splinters of the broken gate we rushed in.
In the twilight of the torch-lit cave, on the pedestal of the cracked Stone there was an arch of blue ice. And from within this gate, the White Witch looked at me, smiling.
Words fail to describe her. She was beautiful beyond measurement and horrifying beyond enduring. She was somehow wrong, unnatural - “inhuman” was the word that sprang to my mind, even though I was not a human myself.
And by Celestia she was powerful. Even bound within the portal as she was, her magic leaked through in an eerie blue light, creeping along the walls in the frosty patterns, holding my heart in the icy grip of fear. All it took was for her sight to touch me, and all the breath left my body as if I’d been bucked to the chest.
There, standing in the simple chalk circle in the epicentre of this nightmare, surrounded by abominations, was my friend.
“He is trying to summon her!” Lucy squealed, “He’s going to release the White Witch!”
“Stop him!” Peter commanded, jumping towards Caspian.
A spell hit him in the chest - a glob of blackest magic I've ever seen, sizzling and foaming on his chainmail.
The guardians of the Witch stood in our way. The wer-creature, his head twisted at an impossible angle, was already standing up, joints and vertebrae snapping back together with disgusting wet cracks and pops. A red-feathered arrow pinned him back down, and then another, as Susan shot without error stepping forward with every arrow she let loose.
The other one, the one who cast the first spell I've seen in this world aside from my own, was a crone - a human once, perhaps, clad in rags and tatters and so twisted by age and warped by dark magics she could barely be recognised as such. She screeched something and her deformed claw ripped into the air, summoning another spell.
Peter took it on his shield and charged the horrid hag with a battle cry.
Caspian began to to speak.
“Aslan abandoned His people,” Caspian said to the Witch, calm and clear. “The High King invited disaster on us.” A knife crossed his hand and his blood dripped on the floor. “The Red Witch has betrayed me. My allies are not enough. Will you come to my aid?”
“I will help you, my Prince”. Cold, harsh whispers rose from every shadow in the room, easily covering the noise of the battle. “For but a drop of your blood”.
Arrow after arrow kept piercing the Wer-Wolf, but the deformed creature refused to stay down, tainted flesh reknitting with tainted flesh, and warped bones rejoining with warped bones as quickly as Susan’s arrows would break them apart. It jumped towards Edward, teeth and claws bared in a rabid attack, and the young king grabbed, pivoted and turned, throwing the creature with the power of its own pounce. Before it could stand up, Edward raised his sword to pin the creature to the floor.
“Caspian, don’t!” Susan begged in between the shots she continued to rain on the creature.
Caspian ignored her… or perhaps he could not hear. He spoke again, straining his voice to be heard above our fighting “My father’s blood cries for vengeance. My throne is stolen by the usurper. My land is taken from me. Will you give me my justice?”
“Revenge shall be yours my Prince.” the Witch pushed through the ice wall, and her hand inched towards Caspian, moving slower the molasses. “For but a drop of your blood.”
“Caspian!” my spells evaporated as soon as they reached the chalk line on the floor. There was no barrier to crush, no defence I could overcome. It was the greatest law of the world, something that came from the beginning of the time itself and not even Celestia would have been able to intervene until the ritual was over.
“Strategy and steel have failed. Magic will not avail me. Aslan will not come. Will you give me the power I need?!” Caspian was shouting now, as Peter pushed the Hag back, swatting her black spellcraft aside with Rhindon.
“All the power of Night and Winter, every knowledge of Narnia and Charn, from the dawn of the time I will give you, my Prince.” her voice was like a silken snake, slithering into my ears and coiling inside my brain, sapping my strength and my magic. “For but a drop of your blood.”
Her hand opened up, and Caspian raised his bloodied palm to meet it.
“NO!”
Peter screamed his defiance. His sword flashed twice, criss-crossing the Hag, the long cuts of the sword erupting in fountains of the foul black blood, and he jumped towards Caspian, trying desperately to shatter the horrible handshake with Rhindon. But even as he jumped, in that frozen instant that seemed to last forever, we all could see that it was already too late.
...the Red touched the White and Blood of Adam flowed to nourish the Last Daughter of Charn. Her eyes shone with unearthly, malicious light, as Caspian’s hand grasped hers. I could see the muscles bulge on his back as he pulled the Witch out of her ice prison. Her hand extended and thinned as he pulled, turning into a metal staff with an ice diamond as its top.
With a sharp, crackling laughter that rolled around the cave, the ice exploded into million shards and the fabled sword merely glanced off the Staff of the White Witch grasped firmly in Caspian’s hand.
The Prince stood there for a second, panting heavily, and the ice crept up his hand from the staff, turning his eyes and hair snow white.
“I shall go have words with my uncle now.” he said calmly. A mere twirl of his staff deflected another Peter’s blows without him even looking. “Don’t try to stop me Sunset, Your Majesties. You cannot”.
Peter raised his shield and started to circle Caspian slowly. I could hear Susan nocking another arrow and drawing her bow. I saw Edmund crouched behind a rock reaching for his dagger - Pevensies were getting ready to fight, but I refused to attack my friend. Instead, I dug my hooves in the arch of the exit, looking in his now-white eyes.
“Caspian, it isn’t you. Stop now, please.” I begged.
“Or what?” he asked bitterly, walking slowly towards me. “Or you’ll throw me away again, like a little child? Attack me from behind? You’ll find it harder this time around.”
Fear boiling inside me like a poisonous fume, I summoned a shielding spell to bar the way and I could only repeat.
“Caspian, please. I’m your friend, I don’t want to hurt you… I never did.”
He merely looked at my spell, cocking his head to the side, as if seeing it for the first time.
“You know, I always was curious about your magic. It is such a wondrous thing, and you use it so easily. But I can see it now, I can recognise the patterns. It is so… simple.” his tone was casual, almost disappointed.
His fingers crooked into an impossible angled gesture and he snarled:
“isiк!”.
A blinding flash dazed me and the spell shattered my shield like a foam bubble throwing me to the side. There were sounds of battle and flashes of pale white light as the three Pevensies attacked him at once with blades and arrows, and an instant later there was nothing but silence.
He stopped by my side for a second, before leaving. His hand, once warm, was now so deadly cold as he checked me for wounds.
“For what it’s worth”, his eyes turned brown again, his face softened and I could almost see the Prince who was my friend, ”I never wanted to hurt you either.”
I tried to reach him with my hoof, to hold him back... And just like that, his face snapped back to the icy mask of cold fury, and in a few steps he was gone.
We struggled to our feet.
“Well, now we definitely need Aslan.” Peter said dryly, sheathing Rhindon.
“We always needed Him, Peter”, the little brat said with grave seriousness, “You just didn’t see it.”