The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(12)

One afternoon in deep July I rode north and east with Lleu and Goewin, straight across the green country toward the high moors on the horizon, through the forested park where the high king’s deer and boar grew fat, across one of the old, straight Roman roads paved with heavy flagstones. Beyond that we followed a little river between steep wooded hills, and left behind us the poppy-lit fields. The way grew steeper; behind and below us the oak and birch leaves shone green in the sun, and the river snaked away in runnels of diamond light. Above, the high, flat peak that one can just glimpse from the top of the Edge was shrouded in cloud and mist. I know the moors well enough, but Lleu and Goewin had never been here before.

“Shall I take your reins?” I asked Lleu as the steep land beneath the horses’ hooves grew stony and riddled with tufts of bracken. The trees about us thinned and dropped away.

“I can manage,” Lleu said fiercely. His riding had improved, but because of his broken arm the reins still gave him trouble. Caius, the high king’s steward, was teaching Lleu to ride in the Roman fashion so that he might control the horse more with his knees than his hands.

“The ground will get rougher,” I explained in apology. “Well, be careful.”

We left the trees behind. The ground cover was all heather and gorse, brilliant violet and gold. The air was still; foamy, scattered clouds swung low in the sky, sometimes blocking the sun, sometimes not. The lowest clouds tore on the summit of the hill we were climbing, making a shredded curtain of mist beyond which nothing was visible. “Where are we going?” Goewin asked.

“This is the highest of the peaks you can see on the horizon from Camlan,” I said. “Have you never climbed any of them?” I knew they had not. Looking straight ahead of me toward the crest of the peak, riding serenely a little forward of my young sister and brother, I said, “Well, you have already seen the dark below. This is perhaps the abyss inverted.”

Goewin, with a brief snort of indignation, pulled forward till she rode abreast of me, and said in a cold, inquisitive voice, “Sir? ‘The abyss inverted’? I don p o? I don19;t understand.”

“The dark above. Not literal darkness, as in the mines, but a place of mystery all the same. When we ride into the mist, look about you.”

We entered the fog. Beads of water hung like amethysts on the heather. Behind us where the ground fell away the cloud came down like a screen, hiding the countryside below. Only the river could be seen, a shining streak of light slashing through the white wall of fog at an incongruous angle. The mist hid the land between ourselves and the river, and the faraway line of water looked as though it were suspended in midair.

“Why does it glitter?” Lleu asked.

“The sun is shining down there,” Goewin told him. “It’s only we who are in cloud.”

We rode on. The heather gave way to bare peat now, and the country became strange. Even as little as ten miles to the south the moors are gentler than these reaches of bog. “We could get very lost,” Lleu said.

“We could,” I said. “The fog could be many times as thick. If it were we would stay in one place till it cleared. As it is, we keep the river in sight.” Behind us we could still see the river, a wire of pure silver suspended in the white, empty air.

Within our circle of mist the peat was black, the air gray. Sudden gullies of water gushed here and there over dark slides of earth. We no longer climbed; the peak flattens near the summit, and we rode on almost level ground along the edge of the top of the hill. Measures of bog stretched away from us toward the highest point, hidden by cloud; vast outcroppings of rock loomed out of the fog, looking at first like huts or groups of people or withered trees, then becoming stones again as we passed by. The horses stepped cautiously between low clots of turf that rose above the mud and were rooted together by clumps of short, coarse grass. Three gray birds flew off into the mist in a flurry of clapping and cracking wings, and twice we heard the loud, strident crying of some disturbed moor bird. That was all we encountered of other living beings. At last we came to a wide, flat, shallow stream with unexpectedly white sandy banks like the mouth of a river; on the near bank stood a cairn of piled loose rock. We dismounted and added a few pebbles to the cairn, drank from the stream, and ate a luncheon of honey, bread, cheese, and eggs. We talked while we ate, for when we were silent we were too much aware of how alone we were, and how lost we could be.

“On a clear day it might be lovely up here,” Goewin said.

“Then why should Medraut think it an evil place?” Lleu muttered.