door in a turret, they came out upon the leads. On one side were the battlements, on the other a steep roof; below them, all shadowy and shimmery, the castle gardens; above them, stars and moon. Presently they came to another door, which led into the great central tower of the whole castle: Doctor Cornelius unlocked it and they began to climb the dark winding stair of the tower. Caspian was becoming excited; he had never been allowed up this stair before.
It was long and steep, but when they came out on the roof of the tower and Caspian had got his breath, he felt that it had been well worth it. Away on his right he could see, rather indistinctly, the Western Mountains. On his left was the gleam of the Great River, and everything was so quiet that he could hear the sound of the waterfall at Beaversdam, a mile away. There was no difficulty in picking out the two stars they had come to see. They hung rather low in the southern sky, almost as bright as two little moons and very close together.
“Are they going to have a collision?” he asked in an awestruck voice.
“Nay, dear Prince,” said the Doctor (and he too spoke in a whisper). “The great lords of the upper sky know the steps of their dance too well for that. Look well upon them. Their meeting is fortunate and means some great good for the sad realm of Narnia. Tarva, the Lord of Victory, salutes Alambil, the Lady of Peace. They are just coming to their nearest.”
“It's a pity that tree gets in the way,” said Caspian. “We'd really see better from the West Tower, though it is not so high.”
Doctor Cornelius said nothing for about two minutes, but stood still with his eyes fixed on Tarva and Alambil. Then he drew a deep breath and turned to Caspian.
“There,” he said. “You have seen what no man now alive has seen, nor will see again. And you are right. We should have seen it even better from the smaller tower. I brought you here for another reason.”
Caspian looked up at him, but the Doctor's hood concealed most of his face.
“The virtue of this tower,” said Doctor Cornelius, “is that we have six empty rooms beneath us, and a long stair, and the door at the bottom of the stair is locked. We cannot be overheard.”
“Are you going to tell me what you wouldn't tell me the other day?” said Caspian.
“I am,” said the Doctor. “But remember. You and I must never talk about these things except here—on the very top of the Great Tower.”
“No. That's a promise,” said Caspian. “But do go on, please.”
“Listen,” said the Doctor. “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts. It was against these that the first Caspian fought. It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them. The King does not allow them to be spoken of.”
“Oh, I do wish we hadn't,” said Caspian. “And I am glad it was all true, even if it is all over.”
“Many of your race wish that in secret,” said Doctor Cornelius.
“But, Doctor,” said Caspian, “why do you say my race? After all, I suppose you're a Telmarine too.”
“Am I?” said the Doctor.
“Well, you're a Man anyway,” said Caspian.
“Am I?” repeated the Doctor in a deeper voice, at the same moment throwing back his hood so that Caspian could see his face clearly in the moonlight.
All at once Caspian realized the truth and felt that he ought to have realized it long before. Doctor Cornelius was so small, and so fat, and had such a very long beard. Two thoughts came into his head at the same moment. One was a thought of terror—“He's not a real man, not a man at all, he's a Dwarf, and he's brought me up here to kill me.” The other was sheer delight—“There are real Dwarfs still, and I've seen one at last.”
“So you've guessed it in the end,” said Doctor Cornelius. “Or guessed it nearly right. I'm not a pure Dwarf. I have human blood in me too. Many Dwarfs escaped in the great battles and lived on, shaving their beards and wearing highheeled shoes and pretending to be men. They have mixed with your Telmarines. I am one of those, only a halfDwarf, and if any of my kindred, the true Dwarfs, are still alive anywhere in the world, doubtless they would despise me and call me a traitor. But never in all these years have we forgotten our own people and all the other happy creatures of Narnia, and the long-lost days of freedom.”
“I'm—I'm sorry, Doctor,” said Caspian. “It wasn't my fault, you know.”
“I am not saying these things in blame of you, dear Prince,” answered the Doctor. “You may well ask why I say them at all. But I have two reasons. Firstly, because my old heart has carried these secret memories so long that it aches with them and would burst if I did not whisper them to you. But secondly, for this: that when you become King you may help us, for I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the Old Things.”
“I do, I do,” said Caspian. “But how can I help?”
“You can be kind to the poor remnants of the Dwarf people, like myself. You can gather learned magicians and try to find a way of awaking the trees once more. You can search through all the nooks and wild places of the land to see if any Fauns or Talking Beasts or Dwarfs are perhaps still alive in hiding.”
“Do you think there are any?” asked Caspian eagerly.
“I don't know—I don't know,” said the Doctor with a deep sigh. “Sometimes I am afraid there can't be. I have been looking for traces of them all my life. Sometimes I have thought I heard a Dwarf-drum in the mountains. Sometimes at night, in the woods, I thought I had caught a glimpse of Fauns and Satyrs dancing a long way off; but when I came to the place, there was never anything there. I have often despaired; but something always happens to start me hoping again. I don't know. But at least you can try to be a King like the High King Peter of old, and not like your uncle.”
“Then it's true about the Kings and Queens too, and about the White Witch?” said Caspian.
“Certainly it is true,” said Cornelius. “Their reign was the Golden Age in Narnia and the land has never forgotten them.”
“Did they live in this castle, Doctor?”
“Nay, my dear,” said the old man. “This castle is a thing of yesterday. Your great-great-grandfather built it. But when the two sons of Adam and the two daughters of Eve were made Kings and Queens of Narnia by Aslan himself, they lived in the castle of Cair Paravel. No man alive has seen that blessed place and perhaps even the ruins of it have now vanished. But we believe it was far from here, down at the mouth of the Great River, on the very shore of the sea.”
“Ugh!” said Caspian with a shudder. “Do you mean in the Black Woods? Where all the—the—you know, the ghosts live?”
“Your Highness speaks as you have been taught,” said the Doctor. “But it is all lies. There are no ghosts there. That is a story invented by the Telmarines. Your Kings are in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget that in all stories Aslan comes from over the sea. They don't want to go near it and they don't want anyone else to go near it. So they have let great woods grow up to cut their people off from the coast. But because they have quarrelled with the trees they are afraid of the woods. And because they are afraid of the woods they imagine that they are full of ghosts. And the Kings and great men, hating both the sea and the wood, partly believe these stories, and partly encourage them. They feel safer if no one in Narnia dares to go down to the coast and look out to sea towards Aslan's land and the morning and the eastern end of the world.”
There was a deep silence between them for a few minutes. Then Doctor Cornelius said, “Come. We have been here long enough. It is time to go down and to bed.”
“Must we?” said Caspian. “I'd like to go on talking about these things for hours and hours and hours.”
“Someone might begin looking for us, if we did that,” said Doctor Cornelius.
CHAPTER FIVE.
CASPIAN'S ADVENTURE IN THE MOUNTAINS
AFTER this, Caspian and his Tutor had many more secret conversations on the top of the Great Tower, and at each conversation Caspian learned more about Old Narnia, so that thinking and dreaming about the old days, and longing that they might come back, filled nearly all his spare hours. But of course he had not many hours to spare,
