The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(51)

“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.