White Witch's stone knife

The White Witch's stone knife is the instrument of Aslan's sacrificial death on the Stone Table, the physical means by which the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time is appeased. It is a weapon of a strange and evil shape, made not of steel but of stone, and its appearance marks the climax of the Witch's power and the apparent triumph of her cruelty. The knife is first seen during the night of Aslan's execution, when the Witch bares her arms and begins to whet it, the gleam of torchlight falling on its unnatural form. She stands by Aslan's head, her face working and twitching with passion, and before delivering the blow she stoops down and taunts him, declaring that she will kill him instead of the human traitor Edmund, and that his death will not save the boy. The children do not see the actual moment of the killing, covering their eyes, but the knife's role is central to the narrative's deepest moral and magical reversal. Later, in the final battle at the Fords of Beruna, the Witch is seen fighting with the same stone knife, engaged in a desperate duel with Peter Pevensie. The two weapons flash so quickly that they appear as three knives and three swords, but the Witch's stone knife is ultimately rendered powerless when Aslan himself flings upon her, and the battle ends with her death. The stone knife thus serves as a symbol of the Witch's ancient, legalistic claim over traitors, a claim that is overturned by the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time, which the Witch did not know.