"Yes, your majesty," he says serenely.

"Go. They are at the Stone Table."

A nervous leopard startles at his approach, but doesn't run away immediately, since he isn't charging in with his sword drawn and the leopard may reasonably expect to be faster.

Lost son of...?

He spins and draws his sword with a snarl of rage—

—prompting James to draw hers, more calmly but no slower—

"There is no dispute about names for the time being," says Aslan, glancing at Bella. "Tell your mistress, lost Son of Adam, that I grant her safe conduct on the condition that she leaves her wand behind her at that great oak."

"I will deliver your reply, sir lion."

Aslan assigns two leopards, including the original one Winter met on the way in, to go with him and see that the wand is left as required. The leopards do not seem easy about this task - indeed, their fur is standing on end all along their spines - but they go.

"Lovely morning, isn't it?" he says conversationally as he leads them back to his queen. "Not that it wouldn't be prettier with some snow."

"I could tell you the story," Winter offers.

The leopards do not answer him, they just look at him warily.

He laughs.

More wariness from leopards!

"Nervous creatures, the pair of you," he says. "It's my reputation, isn't it."

They reaaaally don't seem to want to talk directly to Winter.

"Are you going to be like this the whole way?" he inquires, not particularly expecting an answer.

Such correct expectations. Gold star.

The leopards slow down, noticeably, in sight of the witch's house.

But that doesn't matter, because she strides out to meet them. She looks expectantly at Winter.

"I guess if you aren't going to come back out again time has to keep going without you," muses Bella. "I wonder what happened to him, though?"

"I'll just bet he came in and met the witch queen," says James. "And didn't have any friends for her to entice. So she did - that to him, instead."

"And he still knows his old name but he doesn't like it. It's peculiar."

"I'm not sure whether that reaction was offended dignity, or... something else," she says. "But my money's on something else, even if I don't know exactly what. And I definitely don't advise saying it to him again. I'm pretty sure he would've tried to kill you on the spot if he hadn't held back at the last second for the sake of diplomacy."

"Oh, yeah, I'm not going to repeat the experiment."

James smiles.

"Your sword seems really helpful."

"Yeah. It's sort of - compensating for the fact that I don't know how to use it, teaching me as I go along."

"Oh, it's teaching you, too? Nice."

"Yeah," she agrees. "It's a pretty great present."

(Does he? That's interesting.)

(Does he? Who?)

(Huh?)

"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?" asks the Witch.

"Let us say that I have forgotten it," suggests Aslan, grave. "Tell us of this Deep Magic."

"Tell you!" cries the Witch. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the very scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill."

Well, that's... interesting.

"What," says Bella.

"What!" says James, very nearly at the same time. She is about to go on, but visibly cuts herself off and settles for an indignant stare.

"It is very true. I do not deny it."

"Aslan! What is she even talking about? James isn't a traitor! Even if she was - couldn't you fix the magic somehow -"

"Work against the Emperor's magic?" says Aslan, distant, forbidding.

"The Faun," says the Witch viciously.

(It's a very good thing that Winter is standing behind his Queen, because he can't help a quick flash of a smile at James's outburst.)

"I know," James murmurs back, "I know - but if there really isn't anything he can do - better me than a whole country, or a whole world."

"She's cheating. If whoever the Emperor is that Aslan's so keen on cooperating with made rules that let her kill you when she magicked Tumnus's identity out of you in the first place I am so much less impressed."

"Of course she's cheating. I'm not that impressed that he ever put someone like that in charge of something like that at all," says James. "But it wasn't necessarily a free choice. Maybe she cheated then too."

"Yeah, maybe. Or maybe she used to be different?" hazards Bella. "Eternal Winter used to be a human. Now he's - not."

"Yeah, but I mean - why have a rule that says so-and-so gets to kill anyone who ever betrays anyone or the world ends, why do that in the first place unless so-and-so has something on you and you can't get around it? I wouldn't set up a position like that for the nicest most straightforward loyal responsible person in the world. I wouldn't set it up for you. The premise itself is flawed, and it's flawed in a way that says to me that somebody like Jadis had a hand in designing it."

"I don't think so either. I guess we'll see."

"Maybe he will just eat her. She did have to ask for safe passage, whatever that thing about not denying her her rights by force meant."

"I admit it would be pretty satisfying if he ate her," muses James.

"Of course, he went and actually promised her safe passage. Still."

"Yeah. I don't know."

"How do I know, though," says the Witch daringly, "that the promise will be kept?"

Her servant has a moment of visible terror at the lion's roar, too—but he still laughs as he turns away, not tarrying but not fleeing either.

As soon as they are gone, Aslan says, "We must move from this place at once. It will be wanted for other purposes. We shall encamp tonight at the Fords of Beruna."

"What did -" But there is an atmosphere suggesting that this would somehow be a deeply personal question to ask of Aslan. She swallows it after those two words, and goes unanswered.

James silently echoes Bella's curiosity, and similarly restrains herself.

Bella fills in her current best map when he mentions places, and takes notes as they walk - it turns out her staff still works tucked in her elbow even if she doesn't touch it to the ground step by step, so she has a hand for the notebook and a hand for the pen - but asks: "Aren't you going to be there to lead everyone? Are we going to be handling detachments and need to coordinate?"

As soon as Bella asks the question, James suspects she knows the answer. But she waits for Aslan to speak.

"I can give you no promise of my presence," says Aslan.

"I suppose there are a tremendous number of countries that need your attention or Narnia wouldn't have had such a long winter at all," says Bella. "And you might be called away. So if we can handle it we should, but it's only we have not actually commanded armies before. Are there more experienced creatures who could do it?"

"They will listen to you, children of Eve, and you have little innate fear of the Witch or her servants," says Aslan. "Find lieutenants if you can, but let us continue." And he goes on describing his campaign.

Yeah, James has her suspicions about that noncommittal answer. But presumably Aslan has reasons. She pays close attention to everything he says about the coming battles.

Eventually they come to the Fords of Beruna, and begin to make camp.

It occurs to James that making camp on this side of the river is an interesting choice, but she doesn't say anything.

"Hadn't we better go ahead and ford it," says Bella, "so if the Witch's people come at night we'll hear them splashing?"

It's highly informative.

Bella doesn't seem to be picking up on any inferences, she's just sort of moping on the reconstructed cushion heap, looking at her map in the dying daylight.

"I think Aslan's going to go let the Witch do something to him," James murmurs. "And he's bound to have some kind of plan that makes that a less obviously stupid idea than it sounds, but I have no idea what it is."

"...What - let her hurt him instead of you? I guess she'd take the bait, she hates him like nothing else, but - I hope you're right about the plan."

"I hope so too."

"It'd have to be something that she doesn't expect - or maybe she expects it, but the whole arrangement will still let her do something she can't resist?"

"Yeah. One of those. I don't know."

"I don't think he wants to talk about it," observes Bella after a silence.

"I definitely got that impression."

"I could probably manage it if I decided it was definitely a better idea than seeing what Aslan's up to for sure," she says. "I'm not sure I've decided that."

"Yeah. I mean - maybe he didn't want to worry us, but we're already worried, so that's wrecked."

"Yeah. Want to go see?"

"Kind of. Let's wait for everyone to settle down some more. I don't think Aslan's gone yet."

"Okay."

James follows, wearing her sword and shield on her back on an in-case basis.

"'Wanted for other purposes'," James murmurs. "That's what he said about the Table, before we left."

"Why would somebody make a table out of rocks with nasty bloody laws written on them, anyway?"

"I guess we'll see, maybe."

"Yeah."

"We're worried," says Bella in a small voice.

"Can we come with you?" James says quietly.

Aslan is quiet for a moment, then says: "Well. I should be glad of company tonight. Yes, you may come - if you promise to stop when I tell you, and after that leave me to go alone."

"Okay," says James.

"We will," agrees Bella.

Aslan continues walking, then, flanked by the human children. Slowly, ponderously, drooping more with each step. At one point he moans aloud, low and sad.

...James puts her hand in his mane.

Bella darkens her scepter and bursts into tears and buries her face in his mane.

James hugs the great lion too, although she isn't crying while she does it.

He lets them pet him and fuss over him for a minute, but then gently shakes them off and finishes his climb.

There is a great crowd of the Witch's people, all around the stone table, many carrying smoky torches. Wolves and ogres and minotaurs and hags and incubuses and wraiths and the spirits of wicked trees and -

- a lost son of Adam.

Winter is, by a considerable margin, the first of her creatures to set to this task. It's not that he's less afraid than they are; it's that he doesn't see why that should stop him.

Winter doesn't get caught up in the excitement with the rest of them. But when the Queen commands that the lion be shaved, he produces a knife and gets to it, quite carefully and gently so that not a single nick mars the skin under the mane as it falls away.

Pointless. Pointless and repulsive and cruel. But not, yet, injurious. Maybe this is all she wants to do. Maybe this was so irresistable that she'd give up her thread of a claim to James? Bella's holding her breath.

Winter assists in that effort, too. But he doesn't taunt or laugh. He's... quiet.

James is really not sure what to make of this Winter character.

(Perhaps no one will notice the way Winter puts his hand on Aslan's great shoulder, just for a moment, before he turns away to make room for the Witch at his head. Perhaps even Aslan won't notice. Jadis certainly won't; he is very careful to conceal it from her.)

Whether that is true or not - the knife plunges down.

And the lion dies.

"I think he decided not to see us," James murmurs. "Didn't you see him, that whole time? His heart couldn't have been less in it. I just can't figure out why."

"I don't know. I don't even know what he is, now he's not human quite."

"I almost wish I could just talk to him. But for all I'd know he'd just try to kill me, and even if he didn't, I don't think I'll get a chance before the battle."

"I don't know. I brought my sword, anyway, we're not completely defenseless. And they didn't seem like they were going to come back. Let's try it."

Bella nods and creeps up to the Stone Table and pulls the folding knife she brought from Earth out of the pocket that doesn't contain cordial - then stops, and carefully checks Aslan's pulse, in case the cordial might do it after all - then shakes her head and gets to work on the ropes.

James's only sharp implement is... her sword. Rather than try to use it, she surveys the cords for the loosest available knot and starts picking at it with her fingernails.

"Yeah," says James. She steps back, carefully, to give the mice room to work; they're much faster than she is.

It's almost morning by now; the sky is lightening by the moment. James glances eastward.

"It's been all night. And we haven't slept. That's probably not going to help, is it," sighs Bella. "I'm freezing. We can't carry him anywhere, maybe not even drag him, but maybe we should just walk back to the camp."

"Yeah," she says. "Whatever he was planning, I don't think we can make much difference to it from here."

Bella jumps about a foot in the air, knuckles whitening, and turns round to see.

Bella's right behind her, scepter ticking along with each step and keeping her upright.

There is no Lion on the Table. There is no longer a Table. It has cracked in half, split down the middle, broken and jagged.

She stops and leans on it to catch her breath. She can't really tell, just from looking at the broken stone and the absence of a lion, if something important and magic happened - but she has a strong feeling that it did.

"Some kind of magic, and I hope it was his," says Bella, squinting at the deserted ex-table.

"Yes!" exclaims a great voice from behind them. "It is magic." There, gleaming in the rising sun, tossing his restored mane, is Aslan.

"I knew it!" says James, and she runs up to hug him, flinging her arms around his neck and burying her face in his glorious golden mane so that her next words come out somewhat muffled. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

Bella is only a half-step behind her. "How does it work?" she exclaims into his fur. "What happened?"

"Although the Witch knew the Deep Magic," says Aslan, chuckling faintly, "there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed not even the most dubious treachery was killed in her prey's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself start working backward. And now - children," he says, with a smile of sorts growing on his face, "I feel my strength returning - catch me if you can!" He tosses his head to shake them off and makes a great leap over their heads to the other side of the table.

Well, Bella can run, now, though probably not to outrun Aslan, so she will try. After him she goes.

James, giggling, chases him too.

Bella giggles and does exactly that.

James too. But she watches. She bets Aslan roaring is going to be a sight.

Oh wow. Bella isn't going to second-guess him on that. Up she goes.

And up goes James behind her! This is logical, since if James were in front her sword and shield would make an uncomfortable surface for Bella to potentially bump her face on.

"Yes," says Aslan.

"Are you just going to - go for her directly without having to have the entire battle at all?"

"—Those are people," says James, almost as soon as she glances at one.

"They were and they will be again," says Aslan, kneeling to let the girls off of his back, and he breathes on a stone lion, then whirls around to see to a naiad, and then continues bounding about the courtyard attending to each statue great and small.

"Oh - look," says Bella, peering at his first subject, where color is bleeding into him from nose onward.

The stone lion is becoming an un-stone lion, in a gradual process reminiscent of fire spreading over a lit page. As soon as his head is free, he shakes it vigorously, restoring golden life to the stone fringe of his mane. He pauses for a yawn and a stretch as living colour works its way down his back, then shakes himself all over and bounds after Aslan to jump and dance and lick him with gratitude and happiness.

"Wow," breathes James.

"Show me, then," says Aslan, and he follows her.

She shows him directly to the faun-statue, tucked away in a corner.

And presently that Faun is awake and alive again, patting himself down in amazement.

"Are you okay?"

"I - I do believe I am!" says Tumnus, as Aslan bounds off again.

"Oh good," she says, and hugs him.

James heads for Aslan, figuring that if he's willing to let her ride him again, he'll be the fastest and she'll be needed at the battle as a visibly human commander with a magic sword.

Bella goes, too, and presently they are Aslan-mounted again while everyone else piles onto the larger creatures and the sniffers range out ahead to find a trail. A hound gives a loud bay and everyone's off in that direction.

"Off my back, children," says Aslan, and when they have dismounted he roars to shake the whole of Narnia end to end, distracting the witch as she is just about to knife some poor animal and rallying the portion of the army she has been, till this moment, soundly trouncing. All the statues she has made in the battle so far are restored to life and rejoin the fight.

The roar would probably be quite enough to inspire the troops, but Bella lifts her staff and lights it brightly and finds that it disagrees very much with some of the insubstantial Specters and such on the Witch's side who might have been difficult for James to run through.

James takes in the lay of the battlefield at a glance, and perceives immediately where she will be most useful. She heads for Eternal Winter at a dead run.

Winter is the only one of Jadis's army, Jadis included, who is not in the least bit shaken by Aslan's roar. The area immediately surrounding him is littered not with statues but with bodies. He laughs when he sees James coming; she, for her part, is the only one of Aslan's army who is nearly that eager to approach him.

Bella, meanwhile, has no offensive capacity; she speaks through her brilliantly glowing staff to a unicorn who's limping enough to have trouble running, but not immobilized nor prevented from using his fantastic horn, and calls him over to her to guard her back while she does battlefield triage and administers cordial to hurt creatures. They throw themselves at the Witches' army as soon as Bella has them up again; she is to start very careful with the cordial, as the bottle is small, but presently finds that the level isn't dropping at all, heals the unicorn too, and drips a bit into the mouth of any injured creature on their side she can reach.

She gets close enough to Winter to reach him with her sword, predicts that he mightn't give her a moment to catch her breath if she tries to take one, and attacks immediately.

Whether he would have or not, he's certainly not shy about defending himself and counterattacking. With James out of breath from her sprint, and Winter a little tired from the morning's slaughter, they start off roughly even. But he has more experience, and more weapons; he fights with sword and dagger against her sword and shield, and when she disarms him of the dagger early on, he produces a smaller one from seemingly nowhere.

She lets go with a hiss and looks around, hoping most sincerely that she won't have to fight anything else while her magic sword is otherwise occupied.

"I'm - I don't know," she says, a little breathlessly. "I'm okay, I think. I got Winter but I'm not sure he's actually dead."

"We'd better ask Aslan about him. I've got a few more creatures to fix -"

"If that's what you'd call him," she says. "I'd kind of like my sword back, in case I need it again, but I'm not sure I could get it out of him even if I tried. Or what would happen afterward."

"I think it could be got out," says Aslan. "As for what would happen - that would be for the lost Son of Adam to decide."

"So, not dead," she concludes. "Okay."

"No, it would be difficult indeed to kill this one. If you will stand back I will retrieve your sword," says Aslan.

"Thanks," she says, stepping back - and collecting Winter's fallen weapons along the way. His sword still has an icy hand wrapped around the hilt, but the ice is beginning to melt.

And Aslan wraps his paw around the sword and pulls.

Bella, having restored every living thing on the battlefield for their side, approaches.

Aslan returns James's sword to her.

James accepts it with a murmur of thanks, never taking her eyes off Winter.

...Who, after a brief wincing glance at Aslan, sinks to the ground and buries his face in his hands and sobs.

"I don't either," murmurs Bella.

He flinches from the sound of her approach.

"...I don't suppose you'd like to tell us what we should do with you?" she tries.

James holds her breath. She can tell something important is going on in there; she just can't tell what, or why, or how to affect it.

A low, soft growl starts in Aslan's chest.

"I hope so," sighs James.

"Oh, it was you with the cornucopia - you've done such a wonderful job," says Bella earnestly. "Making sure everyone was fed."

"Thank you," James adds, nodding agreement.

Food. Food is so awesome.

Bella notices too, but though she catches James's eye, she doesn't mention it aloud either. Aslan's the King and probably wouldn't have crowned subsidiary monarchs if he didn't have other things to do.