The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(30)

“Medraut, it’s me,” Goewin said. “Goewin. Goewin—not who you think.”

I stared, only half-awake. Goewin stood a few steps away from me; when I woke she had shrunk back, startled. The little earthen lamp she held quivered in her hands, and lamp oil, cool now, was smeared across my shoulder. I thought she had burned me on purpose, to waken me. “You grow ruthless at last,” I breathed. “I had not thought I must answer to two sphinxes: there is only supposed to be one.”

Goewin asked unsteadily, “What is a sphinx?”

“A teller of riddles,” I murmured as I examined the burn, “with a lion’s body and a woman’s head. She devours young men.”

“I’m sorry,” Goewin pleaded, a guilty Psyche unsure of what she had awakened. She knelt by my cot and said in a low and fervent voice, “You were sleeping curled with your back against the wall and your fists in knots, so deep in a dream I could not wake you. Ai, Medraut, you sleep as though you are in pain! I moved too quickly, and the lamp spilled, but it was an accident. I would never hurt you, never.”

“Pass me the robe hanging over the chair,” I said. She handed it to me, and looked away as I put it on.

“Is the burn all right?” she asked.

“Don’t apologize again,” I said, almost amused at her distress. I stood up and went to the open window to press my shoulder against the cold and soothing stone. The night outside smelled cool. Goewin stood behind me in the dark, trying to hold her little lamp steady. “What did you come here for?” I asked.

“Lleu is poisoned again,” she said. “He woke me on his knees by my bed in such agony as I have never seen him. I could not make him get up. He thinks he is on fire.”

I turned to face her. “How? What does he mean?”

“His mouth, his eyes, he says they burn. All inside him—”

“It will be spurge,” I said. “I need milk. And get a better light.” Automatically I began to ransack my shelves for an appropriate antidote, though I am ill supplied against anything so sinister and incomprehensible as your mind working in idleness and anger.

Lleu was in Goewin’s chamber, crumpled on the floor next to her bed just as she had left him. He clung to the tapestry that hung there as though he were trying to support his weight against it. I had to pry the woolen folds from his fingers. When I forced him to let go he clutched at my own hands with the iron grip of desperation, and I could hardly shake him off long enough to set down the armful of bottles that I c ctlewitarried. I finally had to tie his hands. Then he managed to gasp in protest, “Oh: no.” It seemed unspeakable that he should be made to endure such anguish, whatever the crime.

When the worst of the night was over Lleu cried out softly, “What is happening to me? I am being used as a pawn, a plaything—”

“How could it have happened?” Goewin said. “You had nothing to drink at supper.”

“I had water afterward,” Lleu said. “I may not have watched my cup closely enough.”

“Surely you could taste spurge in water?” I said in wonder. “Ah, never mind. You’d already been bemused by aconite. Can you sleep now, little one?”

“I will try,” Lleu said.

“Then good night,” I said, gathering the vials littering the floor. “I will tell your father tomorrow. This—this is beyond my control.”

I saw Lleu to his room, then went back to my own and scattered the debris of bottles and herbs in a disordered pile on my desk. The night was half gone. I was supposed to be at the copper mines just after sunrise, but I was determined I should speak to Artos before the day began. Sleep held only the promise of another nightmare. Instead of going back to bed I sat in the corridor before the door to my father’s chambers, to be there when he woke. The stone floor was cold, the door hard against my back; the little burn on my shoulder had blistered so that now it stung and smarted. I drew my knees up against my chest and imagined I could watch there until morning.

Another dream.

I am alone in an abandoned garden. The stone walks are cracked and decaying; sweet flowering vines trail among the ruined roses, verdant beneath a sky of distant sapphire. But beyond the garden walls the land stretches cracked and desolate, sere earth and red rock. An arid river courses down the slope below the garden. I am in the south of Egypt, I think; if I follow the riverbed, I will find the Blue Nile and the high slopes and thin, clear air of Aksum. There is a figure sitting cross-legged on the bank of the dry river, the desert at his back, and I am surprised that in this land of dark-skinned people he is almost fair as I. When I approach to ask my way I find it is my brother. “This is not Africa,” he tells me. “Do you not recognize the Mercian plain?”