The Winter Prince

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  “The earthworks cut off the wind,” I said.

  “I think I would rather freeze.”

  Agravain gazed at Lleu with amused derision. “They’re only stones,” he said. “You’re not going to be sacrificed.”

  “No.” Lleu shook himself free of my light hold and said, “How far are we from the road?”

  The road was less than a mile south of the circle, but I would not let him know this. “Close by,” I answered. “We will reach it tomorrow.”

  “How close?” he pressed.

  “I will not tell you,” I answered directly. “You have won this much, this far; but I will give you neither bearing nor hope.”

  We set camp beneath one of the angled stones. The air was very still. There was no wood for a fire and only the lanterns for light. Lleu took charge of these, appropriating all our steel and flint. He put out the lights but for one, which he set close by him. He kept a hand on the grated lid of a dark lantern, lightly drumming his fingers against it. I could not imagine how he would drive himself through the night.

  “He must try to sleep a little,” I said quietly to Agravain. “If you and I rest in turns, one of us should be able to take him at last.”

  But that night was almost as hard for me as it was for Lleu. My cough had grown deep and harsh; it hurt me to swallow, and sometimes even to breathe. Once, when Agravain woke me from a fitful sleep to take my turn at watching Lleu, I struck his hand aside storming, “Don’t touch me!”

  Agravain muttered with distaste, “I wouldn’t. I’m not your mother.”

  That brought me full awake. I said maliciously, “How you envy me!”

  Agravain answered with the fierce devotion that had driven him to serve you at the start. “I do. And I envy the Bright One, for I know how she’ll use him once he is under her sway.”

  Lleu glanced up in undisguised horror. “What does she want of me?” He ground his hands into his eyes and leaned back against the old stone, pale and miserable. “Ah, God, you are both damned.”

  “And you with us,” Agravain murmured bitterly.

  “No, my soul is my own responsibility,” Lleu replied, equally acid, glaring at me. “I have not sold it yet.”

  I heard in his clear voice an echo of your impatience, an echo of your disdain. Lleu gazed at me and Agravain, where the two of us crouched stiff and shivering in the shadow of the dark rock. “You hope to catch me unaware. I swear you will not do it.”

  In abrupt, unchecked anger, Agravain dealt his cousin so fierce a blow that Lleu fell sprawling in the snow, stunned. He pressed one hand to his face even as with the other he drew his hunting knife, an easier and less exacting defense than his bow. I uttered in a terrible voice, “Agravain!”

  I was so suddenly despising of his blind and adoring obedience to you, and so jealous of my brother’s strength of spirit, that I ignored Lleu’s disadvantage. What reason had Agravain to hate Lleu, other than that you desired he should?

  “Any hurt you deal the prince,” I said in quiet fury, “I will deal to you.” I struck Agravain carelessly across the face. He stared at me in astonished resentment. “Do you understand that?” I asked in the same voice.

  “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Don’t hit him again.”

  Lleu moved back to his place by the lantern, certain of the knife he held, and sure of nothing else. “What game do you play now? Whose side are you on?” he demanded angrily of me.

  “You must think that I answer to the queen of the Orcades as a dog answers to its master,” I said bitterly. “But I will not see you harmed without reason.”

  “You have threatened to kill me!” Lleu protested.

  “There is reason for that,” I answered.

  In the morning we came to the straight, paved Roman road that runs directly to Ratae Coritanorum. It was barely recognizable beneath the snow; around us the moorland was desolate as ever. Lleu gave a little sigh, trying to conceal his relief. But Agravain guided the horses to turn south along the road. Lleu shook his head. “What are you doing?”

  “I am leaving you,” Agravain explained with elaborate precision. “My mother is waiting for me, and I am taking the horses and continuing south. On foot it will take you two days to reach Camlan.”

  “All right,” said Lleu. “I will seek shelter and rest in Aquae Arnemetiae; it cannot be more than seven or eight miles north of here.” He turned as though to walk away, but I laid one hand lightly on his shoulder and said, “I will join you.”

  “Sir?” Agravain questioned stonily. “You will not come with me?”

  “What for?” I sneered. “It is no triumph to return from the hunt without having made a kill. I have no desire to journey to Ratae Coritanorum without the required trophy.”

  “What am I to tell the queen?” Agravain cried harshly. “Why would you come so far in such a venture and then turn back?”

  “But I am not turning back,” I answered, “merely aside, to follow my own will.”

  “Wait,” Lleu interrupted. “What do you mean? You can’t be following your own will if you take the road with me.”

  “I can. I can ransom you myself.”

  He glanced at my hand lightly resting on his shoulder, his expression agonized. “You would kill me yourself, if my father refused your demands?”

  “I would,” I said quietly.

  “I am still free.”

  I took his face between my hands. He did not try to turn away, but regarded me through dark, desolate eyes ringed with smudges of blue shadow. “Yes. You are still free,” I repeated in quiet.

  “Come with me, then, I don’t care,” he said with reckless, passionate courage. “I would rather die by your hand, I would rather have my death prey at your heart forever, than be instantly forgotten by your heartless mother.”

  “You must understand how defenseless you have left yourself,” I whispered. It was chilling to hear him speak so bluntly of his own death, he who was afraid of the dark.

  “I understand,” Lleu said with bleak clarity. “We are alone, and it is dead of winter; and only by my own faltering strength can I keep from falling prisoner to you. When finally I fail I will be yours, hated and envied, for you to use as you will. So I wait on your fury.”

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Agravain, here we leave you.”

  “How dare you!” Agravain said. He seemed suddenly as young as Lleu, and as desperate, about to be left alone in the wilderness in an unfamiliar land.

  “I dare because I have drunk my fill of the queen of the Orcades,” I said vehemently. “You can go back to your mother and you can tell her that I am no longer her ward. Tell her

  that I owe her nothing. Tell her that my treachery is of my own making. She drew me in and now I am up to my neck in it, but I am in it for myself and not as her minion.” I went to the horses, untied certain of the satchels and slung them over my shoulders, and then tied blankets and furs together in a bundle that I could carry on my back. “Take the horses, Agravain. We’ll walk.”

  I took Lleu by the elbow and started up the road through the snow, leaving Agravain staring after us in puzzlement and anger. Now I was alone in the wasteland with my young brother, and we walked slowly north toward the higher hills; or toward home, or toward death, into the wind.

  XIII

  Aquae Arnemetiae

  LLEU AND I WALKED without speaking, as we had for the last three days; except now our silence was mutual, shared, something that did not separate us but rather bound us together. The oppressive cold and silence never abated. Only the old road that we followed made the landscape different. Now and then the roof of a cottage or shepherd’s hut appeared huddled under the shadow of a low hill, or a stone wall marked off the boundary of a snow-covered field. Otherwise the barren white wasteland about us remained unaltered, the monotony of the moor unbroken.

  But once Lleu stopped, astonished, staring at the blank road before him. He blinked and put a hand to his temple. “What was
that?” he said.

  I watched him, intrigued. “What do you think it was?” There had been no sound, no movement, no sudden shaft of sunlight.

  “I thought—” He frowned, rubbing at his forehead. “It was a flash of color, across the road—a bird or butterfly, green and gold and scarlet. But it’s gone…” He hesitated, hearing the madness in his words. “You didn’t see.”

  “No.” I touched his shoulder lightly to set him walking again.

  We traveled seven or eight miles without stopping to rest. In the early afternoon the road led us down into a valley, to what had been the Roman city of Aquae Arnemetiae, a city of healing pools and mineral wells. The Roman baths lay crumbling into ruin now; the springs were beginning to break free of the shrines that had been built around them, though they ran clear and warm as they always had. The outer buildings of the old city lay as rubble, roofless and empty. But the heart of the town remained inhabited. On one of the streets that we passed through there was a public house with its door open, and from within, fragments of quiet conversation echoed in the street. I unslung the small black leather satchel that I carried and put a hand in, searching for the few coins I had brought with me. I said to Lleu, “Shall we eat here?”

  He watched in horror and amazement as I drew my hand out of the bag. I saw the fear in his look, but could not understand it. Disturbed and puzzled, I said, “What is it? You can’t be afraid to take a meal among other people.”

  Lleu whispered, “Why do you carry feathers in your bag?”

  “Feathers?” I asked, speaking low, and feeling curiously fearful myself. “Feathers…,” I repeated slowly. “Where did you see them?”

  We stood beneath the eaves of the low building, talking in quiet voices, as would any two traveling companions who might pass through the town and debate whether or not to take their midday meal in company of the townsmen.

  “You shook them out of your satchel just now,” Lleu said. “Didn’t you? A handful of black feathers, like snowflakes of shadow, they fluttered from your fingers and scattered across the street—”

  “Ai, God help you, Lleu,” I whispered. I stood a moment considering whether he had any idea of what was happening. Then I bent and reached down as though picking up some small thing near my boot, and held my hand before his face. “A feather like this one?”

  “There’s nothing there,” Lleu said.

  “Are you sure?” I slowly turned my hand.

  His face betrayed him. “What did you see?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lleu gasped quietly. “You’re not—holding anything.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not. But you saw something.”

  We both stood still and silent. Lleu looked at the white doves in the eaves of the building across the street, then closed his eyes with a small cry and quickly turned his face away.

  “Come, let’s eat here,” I said. “You must rest, Lleu. You will destroy yourself if you go on like this.”

  Lleu said carefully, “Suppose the folk in this place have heard that I have been abducted?”

  “That is a risk hatligI take.”

  “And if I cry to them for sanctuary?”

  “Will you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “This is our contest now, yours and mine alone, I will not force my father’s people to choose between us.”

  We stepped inside the small, dark shop. There were a dozen or so men there, shepherds and farmers from the nearby moors, and a few townsmen. I asked for bowls of porridge and mugs of warm ale for myself and Lleu, and the other patrons made room for us on one of the benches. Lleu looked up from his food to scan the faces around him, as though one might prove to be compassionate or even familiar; but he suddenly sank his face against his forearm, leaning on the table, his shoulders shaking. “Sit up, you little idiot,” I said in his ear, helping him to straighten. “What’s the matter?”

  “I thought one of the men was horned with stag’s antlers, like the lord of death and the Wild Hunt,” Lleu whispered despairingly. “Oh, God, I am so tired.” When he finally gathered the courage to pick up his mug his hands shook so much that he spilled a good deal on the table. The men sitting near threw him curious glances, but decently looked away when they saw me gently take the cup from Lleu’s hands and wipe the table.

  When I went to pay for our meal the keeper of the hostel remarked quietly to me, “It’s a bad time to travel far in open country. Is the boy simple?”

  Lleu heard, and flung up his head in defiance, but he said nothing. I answered, “He’s not simple. A bit of a fool, perhaps.” I beckoned Lleu with a nod of my head. “He could shape entertainment in a king’s court, couldn’t you, little one?” I said. “Give them the performance we had at Midwinter’s.”

  “You dare tempt me!” Lleu said aloud. He rose to stand before me and handed his bow and quiver to one of the patrons. Then in spite of his exhaustion, in spite of the tricks his eyes were playing him, in the small space between a table and a screen of woven rush he executed two fast, furious handsprings, forward and backward. Afterward he clung to the nearest table for support, blinking to clear his unreliable vision, as the astonished patrons burst into a roar of approval and admiration.

  “Hey, Maria,” the proprietor called into the inner room, pushing aside the wattled reeds. “Bring the children out here. There’s an acrobat.”

  A thin woman came out of the back room, dogged by two small boys; the elder looked about six years old, and the other, whose face and hands were covered with flour, was perhaps two years younger. The little one hid behind his mother’s skirts, peering out through his dusty fingers. “Come on, you lot,” the owner directed. “Stand back, clear some room.”

  They dragged the tables and benches aside and waited expectantly, all gazing at Lleu. He glanced around the dark room, biting his lip; then suddenly he laughed and ran a hand through his hair, and spoke in his clear, authoritative voice:

  “Under your green-girt beams I come

  Neither to beg nor borrow;

  Instead I play upon your hearth

  To speed away all sorrow.

  I am the sun lord’s namesake—

  blte>Cry welcome to me here!

Fortune I bring to field and fold

  At the closing of the year.”

  He looked at me and grinned and shrugged, while his small audience applauded and called encouragement. He turned a few more elegant handsprings, and the children watched with round eyes. Lleu suddenly knelt by the older boy and said, “Would you like to try?”

  The child nodded. Lleu stood and led his pupil to the center of the floor, then holding the small hands flipped the boy head over heels two or three times, back and forth. The child laughed in delight, until at last Lleu set him down. “Such talent!” he praised. He ruffled the boy’s hair and added, “I could teach you to use a sword, as well. But perhaps that is enough for today.”

  “One more stunt, then?” someone called. Lleu obligingly stood on one hand for a good half a minute before he flipped himself to his feet. Finally he breathed deeply and bowed, and moved to stand at my side.

  The men cheered and applauded and thumped their fists against the tables, and the hostel’s keeper poured another drink for Lleu in payment for his performance.

  “My thanks, master,” Lleu said as he reached for the cup, grinning still in exhausted pleasure; but instead of drinking he suddenly cried out, “Ah, no!” and threw the mug aside. He buried his face in my sleeve and mumbled incoherently, “The handle moved. I thought it was a snake.” I put my arm around his shoulders and stroked the back of his head.

  The townsfolk turned their faces away, hushed, and the woman said to the children, “Now away with you.” They ran back into the other room.

  The proprietor said to me in a low voice, “If I can help him in any way—do you need shelter for the night? You need not pay for it.”

  Lleu raised his head and answered for both of us, refusing the man’s offer with quiet finality. “Thank you, but
no. I am very tired, and we have a long way to go.”

  I loaded the blankets and satchels on my back, then drew Lleu’s cloak over his shoulders and fastened it for him. The man who held Lleu’s bow offered it up to me; Lleu stood before the little crowd and held out an open hand, his gaze demanding. I surrendered the bow to him.

  The other patrons moved aside so that we had a clear path to the door. As Lleu passed by the thin, tired-looking woman, she took his hand and held it to her lips in formal respect. She said quietly, “God go with you, fair one.”

  It cut at my heart mercilessly. What need had he to be any kind of warrior or administrator? He was instantly beloved of his people; all he must do is turn a somersault and pet a child, and he has won them to him body and soul.

  “Why did you not accept that offer?” I asked him as we left the city, following the road uphill and northward.

  “Because you are with me,” Lleu answered bitterly. He spoke as he walked, plowing through the snow with his head down, watching his feet. “Because they looked to you as my protector, my guide. You could see they thought me out of my senses; if I had fought to resist you they would have fought against me, and all with the best of intentions.”

  “Perhaps.” I halted, and he turned to look at me. I said, “Here we leave the road.”

  Lleu prsti" aligotested passionately, dreading to return to the forest and uninhabited moorland after the laughter and warmth of the town. “No! Why? Cross the moor yourself! I dare not depend on you to show me the way!”

  “You no longer have the strength to take the road alone,” I said patiently. “This way is more direct, and will bring us to Camlan sooner.”

  “Why would you want to get there sooner?”