The Winter Prince

"I don’t," I answered shortly. "But she is."

"What hold has she over you besides that?"

I stared at her. "What hold?" I coughed again, near laughter, incredulous. "Isn’t that enough? You’re not blind, Goewin."

"But you don’t want to do this!"

"How could you know what I want?" I said. "Under her orders I can take vengeance on your beautiful brother and let the blame fall on her."

Goewin said forcefully, "Revenge for what?" Neither of us spoke for a few moments. At last Goewin ventured, "Then you’d torture Lleu and turn over what’s left to her? That would please her as much as if she did it herself, wouldn’t it? Either way you are seduced—"

"No!" I burst out, so violently that Agravain stirred in his sleep. My fingers had gone taut and white around the small horn cup Goewin had given me. "I follow my own will!"

"Then why are you doing this?" Goewin pressed.

I coughed and pushed my hair back from my face; it was dry now, and tangled. Goewin took the cup from me and watched me in apprehension. I said, "You of anyone should understand."

"I understand your mother," she said unexpectedly. "I understand her all too well. I live in constant fear that I will be kept prisoner as she is, because I am dangerous and powerful, and because I am a woman. I would not betray Lleu even if { Llstant f I wanted to; he is my sole ally, my one defense against such a fate. But you, Medraut, you have been offered the regency of his kingdom, you have power in your hand. So why?"

I drew my fingers across Lleu’s cheek and lips as though I were touching something beautiful and delicate, an exotic flower, a piece of old silk, the skeleton of a leaf. "For a word. For my father’s word. For something I want Artos to say. I want him to admit, before all, that it is his own iniquity that keeps me from the kingship. That the shame is his, not mine." I paused, my fingertips trembling above Lleu’s still face, and then went on speaking as though to myself, as though she were not there. "And I want Lleu to be afraid of me, to know and admit to my authority. I want—" I hesitated again, lost. I did not know what I wanted. "Lleu’s grown so confident and cruel."

"He’s not cruel!" Goewin said.

"He is," I said. "He is ever conscious of his beauty, his power. And he never quite stops sneering at me for my being so… scarred.

"I might end by killing him," I finished bitterly. "I would do it if I had a reason, if I were given the command. He would deserve it."

"He would not. You fret like a jealous child," Goewin whispered roughly. "I am as much in the way of your kingship as Lleu is. Take me in his place. Let him go."

"I couldn’t take you," I said slowly. "I am too much afraid of what I might do to you."

"What could be more terrible than anything you might do to Lleu?" she asked.

I looked at her hard and straight, perplexed, unable to believe her so naive. Then I took her face between my fevered palms and held her close, so that we must look directly at one another. My hands moved down her throat, across her shoulders, until at last they were cupped gently beneath her breasts; and then she knew what I might do to her. "I am your sister," she said.

"You see how it happens," I said, and let her go.

She sat still for a moment, her eyes lowered, as though in prayer. Then she carefully set the horn cup on the floor away from us, and moved back to her place between Lleu and the cave wall. She lay on her back with her eyes closed and said in an icy voice, "If you don’t bring Lleu back alive and unharmed I’ll kill you, I swear it, surely, I will find a way to kill you."

"I fear you as little as you fear me," I whispered.

XII

Peak and Forest

MORNING, NOW. LLEU WOKE up and was sick. I began to help him dress, but he shrank from the touch of my hot hands over his bare arms and back; Goewin, watching, barked out, "Let him go!" I glanced at her with half a grin, but shrugged and gave Lleu his dry shirt and jacket and then drew away. Afterward he crouched dejectedly next to the fire with his head in his hands, not yet able to eat or to stand. Goewin said to me severely, "You who never lie, have you thought what quarry you will bring away as proof of this week’s hunting?"

The young lion raised his head with an effort and answered in quiet, "Has he not?"

I took Goewin outside to speak to her alone. I wanted to be certain she knew her wa ~;

"Why would he wait," Goewin asked, "once he knows what you intend?"

"He won’t know that," I said. "I will not follow the road. I cannot risk a direct route."

"Oh, Medraut," she sighed. "Where will you go?"

The high moors and valley below us lay blanketed in snow, several inches deep. The clouds were thin, but covered the whole sky, so that the sun glinted weak and silver through a misty screen and gave neither warmth nor much light. It was enough, though. "Today I mean to strike out across open country."

"Where you can find your way by following the sun and the sound of water, and no one will be able to find you."

"Just so."

"Then all I can do—"

"Obey my word."

Goewin left before we did. I made her take Lleu’s horse as well as her own, so that she was forced to travel slowly, and so that Lleu must remain dependent on me. The Bright One, my prisoner, betrayed his fear only in the way he clung to his sister when she embraced him in farewell: his face hidden against her shoulder, his hands clenched in fierce and frantic fists.

After she had gone we too set out, descending through a narrow pass with steep, rocky sides as though we traveled among the bones of the land itself; rocks tore through the snow like dark, fleshless elbows and knees. After this stark gully we emerged onto a gently sloping moor, still in sight of the distinct black ridge called Shivering Mountain. Here I turned across the moor that spread before us, smooth and white and apparently endless. Beneath the snow the ground was treacherously uneven. We journeyed slowly, more slowly than we had the day before. When we lost sight of Shivering Mountain it was difficult to have any idea of where we were, for all directions led to the same seamless white horizon. We passed a high point on the barren slope and continued down a similar expanse of emptiness.

We stopped to eat in the shelter of the fallen entrance to a disused mine. Within our sight the horizon was at last broken by a few low, unnatural mounds of earth that rose from the level ground, ancient burial chambers or ruined huts. "Where are we?" Agravain asked. We had said little to each other during the morning’s journey; the wind made it difficult to speak when we were in the open.

"Are you lost too?" Lleu murmured. "I thought you were leading this venture."

"Where are we, Medraut?" Agravain repeated.

"Old Moor. This way is shorter."

Agravain said, "It’s more difficult."

Lleu looked up at me, silent. He frowned a little, as though he were trying to map his way through a fog, trying to fathom what I was thinking.

"It is more difficult," I acknowledged. "But also more beautiful."

"You make no sense," Lleu said.

I was too hot, arms and legs aching with fever. I longed to feel the cold I could see all around. Whenever we stohenense, pped to rest I faced the wind and stood gazing across the still, colorless plains, my back straight and my cloak and scarf loose. When we walked to let the horses rest, or when the ground grew rough and we dismounted to fight our way on foot through the concealed pockmarks in the land, Agravain and Lleu sheltered against the animals’ warm bodies; but I always moved to windward, facing the cold unafraid, desiring it. Once I plunged a hand into a snowdrift and rubbed the melting crystals over my forehead and through my hair. Agravain watched me curiously and then looked away, embarrassed by such eccentricity. But Lleu suddenly reached up to dry my forehead with the end of my scarf, and said quietly, "Don’t do that."

As the day wore on we left the moor and entered one of the narrow, forested dales, following a trickle of icy water that had somehow cut a cleft into the land. Snow clung to the stark and leafless twigs like blossom out of season. In the gray, dimming light I could not tell whether it was snowing yet again, or if the seldom flakes were only drifting from the branches overhead. Among the bare trees were tracts of pine that were once farmed for timber; here we stopped for the night, under the shelter of an evergreen whose heavy, snow-laden needles dragged the spreading limbs almost to the ground. There was little snow beneath the tree, and the ground was too frozen to be damp. When night fell we built a fire. The tree made a protective tent around us, and we were able to heat wine and toast bread, while the smoke drifted and curled into the dark branches above. When we had finished with eating Lleu huddled close to the fire, scowling at the frigid night with his cloak wrapped tightly about his shoulders and his scarf swathed over his head beneath his hood. "It’s too cold to sleep," he said.

Agravain responded in scorn and wonder, "You’re still cold?" We were well equipped, both with furs and with blankets of thick, good wool.

"Aren’t you?" Lleu snapped back at him. "I didn’t say I was cold. I said it’s too cold to sleep."

"Then don’t sleep," Agravain replied without sympathy.

Lleu started suddenly, as though a chill had passed over him; the shadow of a ghost or an idea. He rose and began to peel off the layers of wool in which he had shrouded himself, until he stood straight and shivering with his hands on his hips and his cloak thrown back over his shoulders. "If I’m lucky, maybe the two of you will freeze to death overnight."

"Never count on luck."

Agravain glanced at me and. held silent as I spoke, his eyes glinting in the firelight as he waited for me to deal in some crushing way with Lleu’s insurrection.

"I won’t," Lleu answered quietly. Then with the speed and sudden agility of all his training as dancer and swordsman, he vaulted toward the carefully stacked weapons and seized his own small bow and a fistful of arrows. We both leaped toward him, and he brandished the arrows at us as though he held a dagger or a flaming torch. By chance he scratched the back of Agravain’s outstretched hand, and as Agravain paused to curse and wince, I stumbled in his path.

Lleu dropped the arrows. In the moment of our hesitation he strung his bow; when I regained my balance he stood with the bow drawn and trained in our direction. The other bows and spears lay at his feet, as did the arrows. He burst out in fury, "Don’t either of you move. By God, Medraut, you taught me to kill, and I will do it, if I must, to save myself." His face was pallid, but his hands did not tremble. His bow was beHisod,nt to its extent, the bowstring taut as he could stretch it. He stood close enough to either of us that there was scarcely any need for him to take aim; all he must do is loose his arrow. Agravain reached for his hunting knife, and Lleu sent the arrow plowing into the hard earth near his cousin’s foot. He snatched for another and notched it to his bow with a speed and accuracy I never anticipated. "I cannot shoot like Medraut," he said, voice and hand steady, steady. "If I try to come closer than that I might hit you. Don’t force me to try." He was in desperate, deadly earnest.