The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(48)

“No!” he answered angrily. “What, then? It was two years ago, and I was half-asleep.”

Goewin spoke now in a dull, chill voice, staring at nothing as she accurately repeated the promise I had made. “He said he would never again send you to sleep at any time you might be ill or hurt. You aren’t ill or hurt.” She whispered through her teeth: “He keeps his promises.”

“But why do this? So I’ll sleep well? Medraut, it isn’t fair! I’m not an invalid.” He sat down heavily and suddenly, unable to keep his feet any longer.

“I have finished with fairness,” I said. “I have done this to put you at my mercy.”

“At your mercy?” Goewin echoed. Her face was gray. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

The four of us sat staring at one another. Agravain watched me fiercely through the screen of his unbound copp { undth="2eer hair, waiting for my word, and it was as though you watched me through another’s eyes. Goewin said in a high voice, “My lord and brother, give me a straight answer!”

“I am under command,” I said.

Agravain could no longer hold silent. “My mother means to use the prince of Britain as a hostage; we are to bring him to her in Ratae Coritanorum.”

“Me!” Lleu breathed.

“You are the prince of Britain,” Agravain uttered derisively.

Lleu sneered in return, “Why would I ever take you seriously, Agravain?”

I asked gently, “Can you lift your hands, Lleu?”

He could not. He turned to his sister with a look of horror, and turned too quickly; he lost his balance. Goewin caught him. “Medraut, you’re lying,” she said in desperation.

I replied quietly, “I never lie.”

“But why have you brought me?” she asked.

Agravain answered, “You are to carry the message back to your father.” He continued recklessly, “My mother hates her brother, she hates his children, the two of you. She hates the unspoken exile she is kept in. She wants freedom and power.”

I said in a still voice, “Lleu is freedom and power.”

“She will use the prince as a playing piece to bargain with,” Agravain continued. “His life, his body unharmed, for whatever she desires.”

“And why do you serve her in defiance of the high king?” Goewin challenged, her voice still high, but steady.

“I would serve her in defiance of anyone,” he told her with passionate fervor. “And the high king is not her master, after all, only her brother.”

“Oh, devotion!” Goewin scoffed, holding Lleu upright as he sagged against her shoulder. “Then is Gwalchmei in this as well?”

“Not he.” Agravain laughed. “Not the newest of the high king’s Comrades! He will be on his way back to Camlan by the time we reach Ratae Coritanorum.”

“But you, Medraut—” Goewin began. Then she and Lleu both began to speak at once, neither of them willing or perhaps even able to believe that I could fail them.

“Has Lleu betrayed you so terribly?”

“I have entrusted my life to you!”

“Are you not pledged to serve him?”

“You are my brother.”

“Why on earth would you do such a thing for Morgause?”

“Because,” I answered savagely, “she will demand that Artos make me king in place of Lleu.”

“Why would he do that?” Goewin said coldly.

“What will he do otherwise, with Lleu’s life in the balance?” I questioned. “I think he loves his youngest child too dearly to refuse. Besides, what has he to lose by complying? Pride, perhaps. It is his own error that keeps me from the kingship, not anything I have done. I am older, stronger, wiser than Lleu; I am liked and admired by the Comrades. If Artos refuses he will have lost both of us. He will not put Britain in such jeopardy.”

“He has me still, without either of you,” Goewin snarled, “and I am quite capable of reigning.”

“Do you hunger for the kingship too?” I laughed, too hard, and began to cough. “Join us, then. If Artos refuses, you and I can kill the prince together.”

Goewin hurled her drinking horn at my face; it glanced off my cheek and cracked against the stone wall. Agravain held her back, and Lleu fell forward with chest and cheek against the floor. He fought to right himself, and managed to bring his arms beneath him so that he could raise his head and shoulders.