TCN04 - Prince Caspian, Part 06 of 08

Focus on the Family: Last time on Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.
Guest (Female): Aslan! Oh, Aslan! Dear Aslan, at last!
Guest (Male): I am a plain dwarf who does not think there is much chance of finding a road by night where you could not find one by day. And I have no use for magic lions, which are talking lions and do not talk, and friendly lions, though they do not do us any good, and whopping big lions, though nobody can see them. It is all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can see.
Guest (Male): Wait! There he is! I see him now!
Guest (Female): Oh, Peter!
Guest (Male): And now, where is this little dwarf? Come here, son of earth.
Guest (Male): But, but, but...
Guest (Male): Come here! 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.
Guest (Female): Yes, Aslan.
Guest (Female): But what do you want us to do, Aslan?
Guest (Male): Wait and watch.
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Guest (Female): It is a magic wardrobe! There is a wood inside it, and it is snowing, and it is called Narnia! Look!
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Guest (Male): Oh, children!
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Guest (Male): Down at Miraz's camp, men woke, stared palely into one another's faces, and grasped their weapons. Down below that, in the Great River, 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 leapt 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 grass, then like the stormy caves 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 towards 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 oakmen, lean and melancholy elms, shock-headed hollies, and happy rowans, all bowed and rose again, shouting, "Aslan! Aslan!" in hilarious, husky, or creaky or wave-like voices. The crowd and the dance round Aslan grew so thick and rapid that Lucy was confused. She never saw where certain other people came from who were soon capering 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 if it had not looked so extremely wild. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild as he. There was even, unexpectedly, someone on a donkey, and everyone was laughing and everybody was shouting out at him. It was a romp! The man on the donkey, who was old and enormously fat, began calling out, "Refreshments! Refreshments! Come to your refreshments!" 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 that it was a bunch of grapes. After that, it was mostly grapes, overhead and underfoot and all around.
Guest (Female): Grapes! Wonderful! Come and dance with me! I say, Su, do you know who they are?
Guest (Female): Who?
Guest (Female): 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?
Guest (Female): Of course.
Guest (Male): Everyone began eating. Lovely, really good grapes, firm and tight on the outside but bursting into cool sweetness when you put them into your mouth. All of a sudden, everyone felt at the same moment that 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. But meanwhile...
Guest (Male): Halt! Who goes there?
Guest (Male): Trumpkin, bringing the High King of Narnia out of the far past!
Guest (Male): Yes, at last, at last! Give us a light, friend.
Guest (Male): Here. You lead, Trumpkin. We do not know our way about this place.
Guest (Male): Oh, yes, Your Majesty. This way. Come on.
Guest (Male): I say, Peter, look at all those carvings on the walls.
Guest (Male): I see. I wonder what all these strange characters and snaky patterns mean.
Guest (Male): Here is something that looks like a lion.
Guest (Male): It shows up again and again. It all seems to belong to an even older Narnia than the old Narnia we knew. How odd. When we were last here, they had not been made.
Guest (Male): Yes, that makes one think.
Guest (Male): Down these stairs and through the door at the bottom.
Guest (Male): I do not like the sound of that.
Guest (Male): Wait. Let's listen for a moment.
Guest (Male): You know well enough why the horn was not blown at sunrise this morning.
Guest (Male): That is King Caspian.
Guest (Male): King 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.
Guest (Male): And I am not likely to forget it.
Guest (Male): That is Nikabrik, the black dwarf.
Guest (Male): The dwarfs bore the brunt of the attack and one in five of them fell.
Guest (Male): For shame, dwarf. We all did as much as the dwarfs and none more than the King himself.
Guest (Male): Tell that tale your own way for all I care, but whether that 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 all to hang our hopes on Aslan and King Peter and all the rest of them?
Guest (Male): I must confess, I cannot deny it. I am deeply disappointed in the result of the operation.
Guest (Male): That will be Dr. Cornelius.
Guest (Male): Plainly, your wallet is empty, your egg is addled, your fish uncaught, your promises broken. Stand aside then and let others work.
Guest (Male): And that is?
Guest (Male): The help will come. I stand by Aslan. Have patience like us beasts. The help will come. It may be even now at the door.
Guest (Male): You badgers would have us wait until the sky falls and we can all catch larks. I tell you, we cannot wait. Food is running short. We lose more than we can afford at every encounter. I will 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 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.
Guest (Male): You had better have shoved your grey snout in a hornet's nest, badger, than suggest that I am the blab. Take it back!
Guest (Male): Oh, stop, both of you. 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.
Guest (Male): They are friends of mine.
Guest (Male): Friends? Then let them speak. You there, who and what are you?
Guest (Female): Worshipful master doctor, so please you, I am only a poor woman, I am, and very obliged to your worshipful dwarfship for his friendship, I am sure. His Majesty, bless his handsome face, he has no need to be afraid of an old woman that is nearly doubled up with the rheumatics and hasn't two sticks to put under the kettle. I have some poor little skill, oh, not like yours, master doctor, of course, in small spells that I would be glad to use against our enemies if it was agreeable to all concerned.
Guest (Male): This is all most interesting. I think I know now what you are, Madam. And perhaps your other friend, Nikabrik, would give some account of himself.
Guest (Male): I am hunger. I am thirst. Where I bite, I hold until 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 ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies.
Guest (Male): And it is in the presence of these two that you wish to disclose your plan, Nikabrik?
Guest (Male): Yes, and by their help I mean to execute it.
Guest (Male): Well, what is your plan?
Guest (Male): All said and done, 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.
Guest (Male): Or help is on the way.
Guest (Male): You can go on saying that until Miraz's feathers are to his dogs. As I was saying, we have tried one link in the chain of old legend and it has done us no good. Well, when your sword breaks, you draw your dagger. The stories tell of other powers besides the ancient king and queens. What if we could call them up?
Guest (Male): If you mean Aslan, it is all one calling on him and on the kings. They were his servants. If he will not send them, but I have no doubt he will, is he more likely to come himself?
Guest (Male): No, you are right there. 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 would be our friend? He was not always a good friend to the dwarfs, by all that is told, not even to all beasts. Ask the wolves! And anyway, he was in Narnia only once that I ever heard of, and he did not stay long. You may drop Aslan out of the reckoning. I was thinking of someone else.
Guest (Male): What do you mean?
Guest (Male): I mean a power so much greater than Aslan's that it held Narnia spellbound for years and years, if the stories are true.
Guest (Male): You mean the White Witch.
Guest (Male): You cannot mean her.
Guest (Male): Yes, I mean the Witch. But don't all take fright at the name as if you were children. We want power, and we want a power that will be on our side. As for power, don't the stories say that the Witch defeated Aslan, bound him and killed him on that very stone which is over there just beyond the light?
Guest (Male): But they also say that he came to life again.
Guest (Male): Yes, they say. But you will notice that we hear precious little about anything he did afterwards. 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?
Guest (Male): He established kings and queens.
Guest (Male): A king who has just won a great battle can usually establish himself without the help of a performing lion. And anyway, what came of the kings and their reign? They faded too. But it is very different with the Witch. They say she ruled for a hundred years, a hundred years of winter! There is something practical.
Guest (Male): But heaven and earth, haven't we always been told that she was the worst enemy of all? Wasn't she a tyrant ten times worse than Miraz?
Guest (Male): 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 am a dwarf and I stand by my own people. We are not afraid of the Witch.
Guest (Male): But you have joined us.
Guest (Male): Yes, and a lot of good it has done my people so far. Who is sent on all the dangerous raids? Dwarfs! Who goes short when the rations fail? The dwarfs, that's who!
Guest (Male): Lies! All lies!
Guest (Male): And so, if you cannot help my people, I will go to someone who can.
Guest (Male): Is this open treason, dwarf?
Guest (Male): Put that sword back in its sheath, Caspian. Don't be fool enough to try it. Do you think I am afraid of you? The three on my side and three on yours. If you want to make trouble now, you can try.
Guest (Male): Stop! Stop! Stop! You go on too fast. What does Nikabrik mean by calling on the Witch? The Witch is dead; all the stories agree on that.
Guest (Male): Is she dead?
Guest (Female): Oh, bless his heart, his dear little majesty needn't mind about the White Lady being dead. The worshipful master doctor is only making game of a poor old woman like me when he says that. Sweet master doctor, whoever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back.
Guest (Male): Call her up! We are all ready. Draw the circle and prepare the blue fire.
Guest (Male): So that is your plan, Nikabrik. Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost. Now I see what your companions are: a hag and a werewolf.
Guest (Male): We must go in now!
Guest (Male): Right, come on!
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Guest (Male): Edmund, are you all right?
Guest (Male): I think so. I have got that brute Nikabrik, but he is still alive.
Guest (Male): Weight and water bottles, it is me you are sitting on! Get off! You are like a young elephant.
Guest (Male): Sorry. Is that better?
Guest (Male): No, you have put in your boot in my mouth! Go away.
Guest (Male): Is King Caspian anywhere?
Guest (Male): I am here. Something bit me.
Guest (Male): Hang on, I have matches. There.
Guest (Male): You will find a candle on the table.
Guest (Male): Oh, good. That is better. I say, we do not seem to have any enemies left. There is the hag.
Guest (Male): I got her just before the light went out. I know that for certain.
Guest (Male): What about Nikabrik?
Guest (Male): He is dead too. Oh.
Guest (Male): I suppose this thing is a werewolf. It is so long since I have seen one. Wolf's head, man's body. That means he was just turning from man into wolf at the moment he was killed.
Guest (Male): So you are King Caspian.
Guest (Male): Yes, but I have no idea who you are.
Guest (Male): It is the High King, King Peter, and King Edmund.
Guest (Male): Your Majesties are very welcome. And so is your Majesty. We have not come to take your place, you know, but to put you into it.
Guest (Male): Well, I am sorry for Nikabrik, though he hated me from the first moment he saw me. He had gone sour inside from long suffering and hating. And if we had won quickly, he might have become a good dwarf in the days of peace.
Guest (Male): Caspian, you are bleeding.
Guest (Male): Yes, I am bitten. It was that wolf thing.
Guest (Male): We will dress your wound and send for someone to take away the bodies. Let the vermin be flung into a pit, but the dwarf we will give to his people to be buried in their own fashion. There is one other thing.
Guest (Male): Yes, King Edmund?
Guest (Male): Is there any chance of having some breakfast?
Guest (Male): Now, Aslan and the girls, I mean Queen Susan and Queen Lucy, are somewhere close. We do not 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.
Guest (Male): I am afraid not, High King.
Guest (Male): Very well then, I will send him a challenge to single combat.
Guest (Male): Single combat? I had not thought of that. Oh, please could it be me? I want to avenge my father.
Guest (Male): You are wounded. And anyway, wouldn't he just laugh at a challenge from you? I mean, we have seen that you are king and warrior, but he thinks of you as a kid.
Guest (Male): But sire, will he accept a challenge from even you? He knows he has the stronger army.
Guest (Male): Very likely he won't, but there is 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. Edmund, you will deliver it and work out the terms of the battle.
Guest (Male): Right.
Guest (Male): Two others should accompany Edmund. The giant you told me about?
Guest (Male): He is not very clever.
Guest (Male): Of course not, but any giant looks impressive if only he will keep quiet. But who for the other?
Guest (Male): Upon my word, if you want someone who can kill with looks, Reepicheep would be the best.
Guest (Male): He would indeed, from all I hear, if only he wasn't so small. They wouldn't even see him till he was close.
Guest (Male): Send Glenstorm, sire. No one ever laughed at a centaur.
Guest (Male): All right, bring them here while I write the challenge. Have you pen and ink, master doctor?
Guest (Male): A scholar is never without them, your Majesty.
Guest (Male): Very well. I will dictate. Ready now, sire? 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 and I challenge...
Guest (Male): Lord Glozelle, I saw three figures come from the enemy camp. What news? Have they come to surrender?
Guest (Male): No, my Lord Sopespian, but to issue a challenge to the King.
Guest (Male): A challenge? You jest. We hold the enemy in our fist here. Miraz would never be so hair-brained as to throw away his advantage on a combat.
Guest (Male): King Miraz is considering the challenge even now. He will seek our counsel shortly, I have no doubt.
Guest (Male): And our counsel he shall have. I would not venture to allow a sure victory, a sure victory, yes, but for whom?
Guest (Male): Softly, Lord Glozelle, lest the sentries hear us. If the king undertook a wager of battle, why, either he would kill or be killed. If he killed, we should have won the war, but if he were to be killed... Speak plainly, Lord Glozelle. I need not tell your Lordship that Miraz is no very great captain. We should be as able to win this war without the king's leadership as with it. If he were to die, we should be both victorious and kingless.
Guest (Male): Is your meaning, my lord, that you and I could hold this land quite as conveniently without a king as with one? Not forgetting 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?
Guest (Male): Lord Glozelle, Lord Sopespian, the King wishes your counsel immediately in his tent.
Guest (Male): Thank you. Courtier, where are the three messengers from the enemy camp?
Guest (Male): They are being entertained with food and drink outside of the King's tent.
Guest (Male): And who were they?
Guest (Male): A giant, a centaur, and one who calls himself King Edmund.
Guest (Male): Thank you, courtier. After you, Lord Glozelle.
Guest (Male): Thank you, Lord Sopespian. We shall play Miraz like a stringed instrument. Let the song begin.
Focus on the Family: Next time on Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.
Guest (Male): I mean no disrespect, but you cannot beat him.
Guest (Male): That is what I am fighting him to find out.
Guest (Male): Look behind you! Crowns and crockery! They are huge! Well done, Peter! Oh, well done! Now follow it up, quick! Treason! Treachery! To arms! To arms!
Focus on the Family: Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is a production of Focus on the Family. I am Doug Gresham. Thank you for listening.