The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought toovercome her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water—”
    “Beast!” muttered Polly.
    “The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”
    “But the people?” gasped Digory.
    “What people, boy?” asked the Queen.
    “All the ordinary people,” said Polly, “who’d never done you any harm. And the women, and the children, and the animals.”
    “Don’t you understand?” said the Queen (still speaking to Digory). “I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will?”
    “It was rather hard luck on them, all the same,” said he.
    “I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State?You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
    Digory suddenly remembered that Uncle Andrew had used exactly the same words. But they sounded much grander when Queen Jadis said them; perhaps because Uncle Andrew was not seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful.
    “And what did you do then?” said Digory.
    “I had already cast strong spells on the hall where the images of my ancestors sit. And the force of those spells was that I should sleep among them, like an image myself, and need neither food nor fire, though it were a thousand years, till one came and struck the bell and awoke me.”
    “Was it the Deplorable Word that made the sun like that?” asked Digory.
    “Like what?” said Jadis.
    “So big, so red, and so cold.”
    “It has always been so,” said Jadis. “At least, for hundreds of thousands of years. Have you a different sort of sun in your world?”
    “Yes, it’s smaller and yellower. And it gives a good deal more heat.”
    The Queen gave a long drawn “A—a—ah!” And Digory saw on her face that same hungry and greedy look which he had lately seen on UncleAndrew’s. “So,” she said, “yours is a younger world.”
    She paused for a moment to look once more at the deserted city—and if she was sorry for all the evil she had done there, she certainly didn’t show it—and then said:
    “Now, let us be going. It is cold here at the end of all the ages.”
    “Going where?” asked both the children.
    “Where?” repeated Jadis in surprise. “To your world, of course.”
    Polly and Digory looked at each other, aghast. Polly had disliked the Queen from the first; and even Digory, now that he had heard the story, felt that he had seen quite as much of her as he wanted. Certainly, she was not at all the sort of person one would like to take home. And if they did like, they didn’t know how they could. What they wanted was to get away themselves: but Polly couldn’t get at her ring and of course Digory couldn’t go without her. Digory got very red in the face and stammered.
    “Oh—oh—our world. I d-didn’t know you wanted to go there.”
    “What else were you sent here for if not to fetch me?” asked Jadis.
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t like our world at all,” said