The Silver Chair - C. S. Lewis [46]
“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.
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 forever. 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