Daggers of Ice

Chapter 16

1010.

The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.

Edmund.

The journey north took three days.

Three days of silence broken only by the rhythm of hooves and the rasping whisper of cold wind through pine and snow. Edmund had thought he'd grown used to Narnia's winters, but the cold of the north was something else entirely. The cold here was older, heavier, steeped into the land like memory. The trees stood black and ancient beneath their burden of frost, and the mountains loomed jagged against a sky the colour of iron.

He'd ridden beside her for most of it, though "beside" felt generous. Arianna rode ahead more often than not, astride the great black gryphon that had carried her from the Cair. Seeing it in daylight – without the blur of chaos or the bite of battle – Edmund found himself at a rare loss for words.

The beast was magnificent.

Its feathers, sleek and glossy, drank in the morning light like oil, and the faint sheen of frost across its wings glimmered with every movement. Its eyes, a molten amber, tracked everything with the alert intensity of a predator that had never known fear. Not yet fully grown, perhaps, but already fierce – a creature born of wind and shadow, of loyalty and violence intertwined.

Arianna sat astride it as though she'd been carved from the same substance, her posture straight, her cloak sweeping behind her in a wake of grey fur and silver-threaded cloth. The gryphon moved with her, as if it could feel the pulse of her heartbeat, and when she glanced down at him from its back, her expression was unreadable.

They spoke little on the road. When they did, it was terse. She gave orders. He asked questions. Neither yielded much.

By the dawn of the third day, the snow gave way to a broad valley ringed with mountains and veined with streams that glimmered pale blue beneath the ice. Smoke rose from the distance – thin, lazy curls, not the black of burning but the white of hearth-fires.

The village came into view.

If he'd expected desolation, he was mistaken.

The houses were built from dark timber, sturdy and thick, their roofs steep and fur-lined against the snow. The air smelled of pine resin, iron, and peat. Children darted between the huts, laughing as they chased one another through the frost, their breath clouding the air in soft puffs.

And then they saw her.

The laughter ceased.

One by one, the villagers knelt. Heads bowed. Every man, woman, and child.

Arianna dismounted silently, her boots sinking into the snow with soft, deliberate steps. She said nothing – only lifted her hand slightly in acknowledgment.

Edmund followed, though the moment he stepped into view, the eyes that had once gazed adoringly upon their queen turned toward him with confusion. Suspicion.

He was foreign. Out of place in his southern leather and his Narnian crest, though he'd tried to disguise it beneath his cloak. Whispers rippled through the crowd, the words indistinct but the tone unmistakable.

They didn't know him. Didn't even recognize the emblem of Cair Paravel stitched into his gloves.

And then he understood.

That was why they hadn't gone to the Cair. A faraway place ruled by kings who had never set foot upon their soil, never seen the wild beauty or the quiet suffering of these lands.