Nimueh knew of the three Ancient Places of Narnia. The Dryads of Firesong had told her the origin stories of each, and whenever she had been called to the country, her help had always been needed at one of the three.
Cair Paravel was one of those Places. Leaving it would be hard, but there was nothing left for her there. Nothing but heartbreak and memories of a life she could never get back. The only thing for her to do was to travel to the next Place and hope she could find her purpose once more.
Slinging the bow and quiver across her chest, Nimueh headed away from the cliff side of the castle and down to where a beach had formed at the very edge of the forest. Across a wide channel was another beach and a forest on what she presumed to be the mainland of Narnia. Fixing her clothes to her quiver by the sleeves of her blouse and curling her hair back up into a bun, Nimueh waded into the water, bracing herself against the current. The water was warm, pleasant even, but she could only focus on keeping her clothes above the surface.
It was a struggle. Every few minutes, a wave of water would push her further towards the open sea, and whilst fighting to keep her back up, it took her far longer to get across the channel. As she dragged herself out of the water and into the trees, she held her breath and listened. The breeze rustled the tops of the tree, but nothing else seemed to be alive. And that scared her.
Nimueh slipped the dress from her shoulders. She hung it over a tree branch and untied her clothes from her quiver. Once dressed, she bound her leather armour as tightly as she could and laced up her boots. Intent on using her dress as an additional blanket, she wrapped it in rope, looped it across her chest and put on her cloak.
She would head southwest towards the Stone Table, the next of the Ancient Places in Narnia. It was the most sacred of them all and she got the feeling that there would be those who had called upon her. Unfortunately, she would have to travel all the way to Beruna in order to cross the river safely, and loop back east to where the Stone Table hopefully still stood.
The first few hours of the journey, Nimueh spent with an arrow on her string, her shoulders tense. As great a warrior as her reputation gave her credit for, she felt naked without her blades. Her archery had never been particularly strong and she hated that she was having to rely on it to keep her alive, especially when she had no idea what was going on.
♚
The sight of Beruna made Nimueh feel sick. Hundreds upon hundreds of men traipsed across the gravel, chopping and carrying wood across the pebbled shores. Sweat staining their clothes and brows, the red sunset painting them in a devilish light. There were soldiers too, in blue and black armour, the likes of which Nimueh had never seen before. She kept deep within the shadows of the trees, and waited.
As the sky grew increasingly dark, the workmen and soldiers started to retreat into the wooden carriages, and Nimueh shifted closer to the edge of the trees. When a particularly frail-looking man came a little too close to where she was hidden, she took hold of the back of his shirt and wrenched him into the trees. Pulling up her hood and loading her bow, Nimueh aimed the arrow right between his eyes and slowly shook her head. The man shuffled further and further backwards, too frightened to even breathe. Nimueh glanced over her shoulder. There were men staring into the forest, but none of them ventured in. Exchanging a few nervous looks, they hurried away and scrambled into the carriages.
Nimueh didn't move until all of the carriages within earshot had rolled away. The man, whose face was half-hidden in shadow, was shaking. When she stepped forwards, he let out a small cry and backed into a tree.
"Answer my questions, and I'll let you go," Nimueh whispered, deeply.
"What do you want?" His voice is high and rasping, but the twang of his accent was unmistakable.
"Telmarine," said Nimueh, more to herself than to the man. "What are you doing in Narnia? Slave trade?"
"I live here. We live here. We have done for three hundred years."
"And destroyed the castle?" Nimueh tensed her arm, the arrow dangerously ready to fly. "Cair Paravel on the Eastern Sea, did you destroy it?"
"We might have done, I don't know. It was years ago!" Even in the low light, she could see that the man had begun to cry.
"Tell me everything," she growled.
"Everything?" But when Nimueh dropped the bow, crouched, and held the tip of the arrow against his throat, he began spluttering. "Er...Caspian, Caspian the First, he came into this country and became King."
"What about the creatures who lived here? What about the Narnians?"
"What Narnians?"
"The Fauns, Satyrs, the Centaurs, what happened to them?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"The people who lived here before you invaded!" Nimueh could have screamed.
"I didn't...they never told us..." Panic-stricken, the man shook violently, the arrowhead making a shallow cut in his skin. "All I know is that the Prince has gone missing."
"The Prince?"
"He used to be the heir to the throne, Prince Caspian, would have been Caspian the Tenth. The King's wife had a son and on the same night, Caspian went missing."
"Caspian is not the King's eldest son?"
"No," the man swallowed. "Caspian is the son of the last King, Caspian the Ninth. The King, Miraz, is his uncle, and he took up the throne soon after the last King died, because Prince Caspian was too young to be King."
Nimueh knew enough about politics to very quickly figure out what was going on. "So you Telmarines slaughter the Narnians, take over the country, and now you can't even keep your monarchy together?" She hesitantly lowered the arrow and allowed the man to sit more comfortably. "You say it has been three hundred years since you invaded?" She didn't have a hope of figuring out how long it had been since she left.
"Is there anything else you want to know?" The man asked, though clearly more concerned with getting away from her than being helpful.
"Miraz hasn't killed Caspian yet?"
"Why would he want to kill his nephew?"
"Because," Nimueh sighed, lightly tapping the Telmarine on the forehead with the arrow tip, "Miraz is going to want his own son to be King after him. Caspian is the true heir to the throne and, thus, in the way."
As the realization dawned on her hostage, Nimueh tried to piece the puzzle together. Something, and she didn't know what, but something told her that this Caspian the Tenth, this usurped heir to the Narnian throne, and Telmarine though he may be, had called out for help. She didn't know how, but he had brought her, and the four Kings and Queens, out of their worlds and back into this. No matter who this Caspian was, his family, their origins, the only way she had washed up on the shore of the Eastern Sea was if it was the will of Aslan Himself. And Nimueh Firesong would be damned if she so much as thought of going against that.
Without a doubt, the Telmarine would cry out to his people if she let him go, and she needed to leave, to get to the Stone Table, and if that failed, to Lantern Waste. Sternly instructing the man to stay put, Nimueh restrung the arrow onto her bow and crept back towards the edge of the trees.
Many of the Telmarine soldiers and workmen had left the site, but there were still a few stragglers, loading things into carts and onto horses. If she could just get across the framework of the bridge and pick up one of the horses on the other side of the river, it wouldn't be difficult to escape the soldiers.
"Who are you?" The Telmarine had appeared a close behind her.
"Why are building that bridge?"
"King's orders," he answered dismissively. "Are you a ghost?"
Nimueh sniggered. "Something like that. Is that why your friends didn't come in after you?"
"No one goes near the forests. Full of ghosts, they tell us."
"Probably the souls of all the Dryads you've killed," but in her bitterness, something even more horrifying occurred to her. Were there any survivors of the Firesong family? Would there still be the descendants of someone she had known alive, even in hiding?
There was only one way to find out, and it started with finding Caspian.
Without so much as another word to the Telmarine, Nimueh took a firm grip on the stem of her loaded arrow and drove it into the gut of her hostage, taking with his life what little advantage she could. Then she bolted, bow raised with the bloodied arrow, across the bank towards the river. She placed her aim onto a soldier who was preparing the wade across the river from the other side, with a few horses in tow.
The river was several metres wide, a far larger distance than Nimueh was confident shooting over. Afraid she might hit the horses, she continued towards the unfinished bridge. Thankfully, with her lightness of foot, she could leap from one supporting beam to another without too much trouble. She was almost halfway across before any of the Telmarines spotted her. Many of the remaining soldiers had found crossbows and soon began firing at her. Nimueh fired a few arrows back towards the shore she had left, with no confidence that they would find their targets.
Her hood slipped from her head as she splashed down into the shallow waters of the other shore. The arrows stopped for a moment, giving her time to hurry behind a large pile of logs. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she slung her bow across her chest and gripped one arrow as she would a dagger. Nimueh left her hood down; it seemed the fact that she was a young woman had caught the Telmarines off guard.
Footsteps crunched unstably on the pebbles nearby, the crinkling and clinking of armour giving away the position of the soldier attempting to creep around the log pile. Nimueh didn't even hesitate – the air of Narnia had been working on her, flooding her system – launching herself forwards and plunging the arrow into the leg of the soldier. He howled in pain and, clutching his leg, he fell to the ground.
There was a saddled horse at the water's edge a few metres away. It looked as though the saddlebag was full, and any resources would surely be useful in some way. Nimueh didn't have time to properly befriend the animal as, doubtless, it wasn't a talking horse. Firing yet more arrows at the soldiers across the river, the shots stopped as Nimueh approached the horse; the Telmarines must have been stretched for resources if they were unwilling to sacrifice one horse to kill a thief. She caught the horse's reins in her hands, and hauled herself up onto the saddle. The horse didn't take well to this, but as she tugged on the reins and squeezed its sides, it obeyed.
The soldiers had begun to wade into the water, but she would be long gone before they could make it close enough to harm her with their swords. Kicking the horse forwards, they galloped into the trees, the horse clearly having missed the speech on the woods being full of ghosts.
Nimueh lifted her head to the sky, praising Aslan for the miracle of being able to avoid every shot that had been fired her way. Her heart pounded with the thud of hooves on the forest floor as they disappeared into the trees.