The Silver Chair recap

Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, hiding from the bullies at their school, call on Aslan and are let into Narnia to find Prince Rilian, King Caspian's son, who vanished ten years earlier. Aslan gives Jill four signs to follow, and they mishandle the first almost at once. With the pessimistic Marsh-wiggle Puddleglum as their guide, they travel north into giant country, are advised by a lady in green to seek comfort at the castle of Harfang, and, distracted by the promise of hot baths and beds, walk straight over the ruined giant city they were meant to search and miss the message written on it. At Harfang they discover they are on the menu and escape underground, where they are taken through a sunless country to a city ruled by a queen and meet a young man who is bound nightly to a silver chair. When he calls on Aslan's name they free him: he is Rilian. The Witch's attempt to enchant them all is broken by Puddleglum, she is killed in her serpent form, and her kingdom falls. Rilian reaches his dying father in time; Caspian is restored to life in Aslan's country, and the children are returned to their school with Aslan at their back.

Narnia is another world, reached from ours only at Aslan's invitation. Four English children, the Pevensies, once came there through a wardrobe, ended the White Witch's hundred-year winter with the Lion Aslan's help, and reigned at Cair Paravel; later they returned to help Prince Caspian win back his throne from his usurping uncle. On a third journey, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie sailed east with the grown King Caspian aboard the Dawn Treader, together with their cousin Eustace Scrubb, who arrived a thoroughly disagreeable boy, was turned into a dragon by his own greed, and was painfully restored by Aslan and much improved by it. On that voyage the mouse Reepicheep passed over the world's end, and Caspian came home to marry the daughter of the star Ramandu. Aslan has since told the older Pevensies that they are too old to return; Eustace has told his schoolfellow Jill Pole nothing about any of it, until now. Time in Narnia runs at its own rate: decades may pass there between one English term and the next.

At Experiment House, a school where the staff indulge the bullies, Jill Pole is crying behind the gymnasium when Eustace Scrubb finds her and tells her, cautiously, about the other world he visited in the holidays. Hunted by the school gang, they try calling on Aslan, and a door in the wall that is normally locked opens onto a bright, cold country. Jill, showing off at the edge of a cliff of enormous height, causes Eustace to fall; a Lion blows him away over the sea. Left alone and thirsty, Jill finds a stream with the Lion lying beside it, and is told she may drink, since there is no other stream. Aslan explains why they were called: she and Eustace are to find the lost prince of Narnia. He gives Jill four signs to remember and repeat daily. Eustace will meet an old friend as soon as he lands and must greet him at once; they must travel north to the ruined city of the ancient giants; they must do what the writing on a stone in that city tells them; and they will know the prince because he will be the first person to ask them to do something in Aslan's name. Then Aslan blows her to Narnia.

Jill lands at Cair Paravel among a cheerful crowd seeing a ship off. Eustace, who arrived earlier, does not recognise the very old king going aboard until it is too late, and the first sign is lost: the old friend was King Caspian himself, whom Eustace had sailed with only a few months ago in English time, and who is leaving to ask Aslan who should rule after him. The Lord Regent, the ancient and stone-deaf dwarf Trumpkin, welcomes them but will not hear of a search for the prince. An owl, Glimfeather, carries Jill by night to a parliament of owls, where they hear the story of Prince Rilian: his mother was killed by a great green serpent, he hunted it obsessively, spoke of a beautiful woman in green he had seen at the same place, and one day rode out and never returned. Everyone who went looking for him died, and the Regent has forbidden further searches. The owls take the children to the marshes, where a Marsh-wiggle named Puddleglum, expecting disaster from the outset, agrees to guide them north.

The three cross the wild lands north of Narnia in worsening weather, skirt a party of stupid, quarrelsome giants throwing stones at a river gorge, and cross an enormous bridge. On the road they meet a beautiful lady in a green dress riding beside a knight in black armour who never speaks. She is delighted to hear where they are going, and recommends that they turn aside to the castle of Harfang for the Autumn Feast, promising gentle giants, hot baths and soft beds. From that point the thought of comfort begins to crowd out the signs, which Jill repeats less and less often. Struggling through a blizzard on the last stretch, they cross a flat plateau cut with strange square trenches and low ledges, fall into several of them, and stumble on to the castle, where they are let in and made much of. They have walked over the ruined city of the giants without recognising it.

At Harfang the travellers are washed, fed and petted, and Jill in particular enjoys it. From a high window the next morning she looks out over the plateau in clear weather and sees what the trenches are: the streets and foundations of the ruined giant city, with the words UNDER ME cut across it in enormous letters, the message of the third sign. Worse follows in the kitchen, where a cookery book lists both Man and Marsh-wiggle among the dishes for the feast: they have been fattened as the main course. During the giants' Autumn hunt the three slip out through the scullery, run for the ruins with the castle roused behind them, and take cover in a dark opening under one of the ledges. The floor gives way and they slide down a long slope into the dark, far below the surface of Narnia.

They land in Underland, a country of caverns lit by a dull glow, and are taken prisoner by silent, sorrowful gnomes who tell them only that many sink down to the Deep Realm and few return to the sunlit lands. They are marched for days, ferried across a sunless sea, and brought to a city under the ground and into the presence of a young man who is charming, talkative and entirely dependent on the Queen who rules there. She is away. He explains that he was rescued by her from a great enchantment, that he is to be made king of an overworld country she is preparing for him, and that for one hour every night he goes raving mad and must be bound into a silver chair until the fit passes. The travellers stay to watch, and when the hour comes he pleads with them, first reasonably, then desperately, to cut him free, and at last begs them to do it in Aslan's name. That is the fourth sign, and none of them wants to obey it, but they cut his bonds.

The freed man is Prince Rilian, in his right mind; the enchantment was the other way round, and the hour in the chair was the only hour he was himself. He destroys the chair. The Queen returns, throws a green powder on the fire and plays a steady thrumming instrument, and argues in a soft, reasonable voice that there is no sun, no Aslan, no Narnia, and that they have invented all of it out of the lamps and cats of the only world there is. All four are nearly talked out of their own memories. Puddleglum stamps out the fire with his bare foot, and the pain and the smell break the spell; he tells her that even if her dark kingdom is the only real one, he means to live as a Narnian and look for the country he has dreamed of. The Queen turns into a great green serpent, the same that killed Rilian's mother, and Rilian, with Eustace and Puddleglum, kills her. Her magic dies with her: the roof of the cavern country begins to break and the sunless sea rises, and the earthmen, who were her slaves and not her subjects, are freed.

In the collapsing caverns they meet Golg, an earthman of Bism, the truly deep land far below, who explains that his people were dragged up by the Witch's magic and are delighted to be going home. Rilian's party climbs instead toward the surface and digs out through a hole in a hillside into Narnia, in the middle of a midnight snow dance of dryads, fauns and dwarfs. Rilian is recognised, and rides for Cair Paravel, arriving as his father's ship comes in; Caspian, brought ashore dying, sees his son once more and dies. Aslan takes Jill and Eustace to his own country, where Caspian lies dead in a stream and is restored to life by a drop of the Lion's blood, young again, and is granted a few minutes in England before staying in Aslan's country for good. Aslan then brings the three of them into the grounds of Experiment House, breaks down the wall, and puts the school gang to flight; the Head has hysterics, and the resulting inquiry ends with her removed from the school and given a post as an Inspector, and later a seat in Parliament. Eustace and Jill go back to a school much improved, and remain friends for the rest of their lives.

The travellers free Prince Rilian at the fourth sign, and he destroys the silver chair that held his enchantment. The Witch nearly talks all four of them back into believing that Narnia, the sun and Aslan are only dreams; Puddleglum stamps out her enchanted fire and declares that he will live as a Narnian even if there is no Narnia, which breaks her spell. She takes her true shape as a great green serpent, the same that killed Rilian's mother, and Rilian kills her. Her collapsing kingdom floods, but the earthmen she had enslaved are freed and go gladly back down to their own country of Bism, and the travellers dig their way out into Narnia in the middle of a midnight snow dance. Rilian rides to Cair Paravel and reaches his father just as the old king comes ashore; Caspian sees his son again and dies. Aslan takes Jill and Eustace to his own country, where Caspian is restored to life in a stream by a drop of the Lion's blood and is allowed a few minutes in England before staying there. Aslan then brings the two children back to Experiment House with him, breaks down the wall and routs the school gang, and the resulting scandal ends with the Head removed from the school and eventually made an Inspector, and then a Member of Parliament. Eustace and Jill remain friends for life.