The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(65)

“He’s alive,” Goewin said coldly. “Stand back.” Not one of them, not the high king himself, stepped forward to disobey her command.

“Well, Medraut, there were two sets of footprints,” Goewin said. “We knew you had not killed him. We followed to where the snow was marked as though someone had lain there, and after that there were only your prints. I could not think what you had done to Lleu, though I knew you must be carrying him—there was no blood, no body.”

She had led them here. She was still their leader.

Her voice was calm, but she spoke through clenched teeth. “What have you done to him?”

It was I who faltered. I opened my mouth to speak, hesitated, and managed at last to whisper hoarsely, “I won’t say. I can’t tell you.”

She slid from her horse, her spear tilted at me. “You can’t tell me—can he? Will he? Dear God! I should—” Of a sudden she hit me furiously across my shins with the butt of her spear. I staggered abruptly to my knees.

Artos stepped forward and put a cautionary hand on Goewin’s shoulder, but gave no word of reprimand. I clung to Lleu, who raised his head wearily, awakened by the sudden jolt.

“Put him down,” Goewin said. Lleu stared at her and at his father, unbelieving, used to being tricked by what he saw. “Put him down!” Goewi&#xx201D; Gon cried again, her spear threatening. I gently set Lleu on his feet. He stood next to me a moment, balancing himself with one unsteady hand lightly resting on my shoulder; then he carefully crossed to stand beside his father. I faced Goewin, on my knees in the snow before her.

“You—you don’t even obey your precious mother!” Goewin said. “Whom do you serve—yourself? Some forgotten god of darkness?” And then with the staff of her spear she struck a tremendous blow to the side of my head. I reeled, falling sideways into the snow with all my weight against my wounded hand, and could not stifle a sharp cry of real pain. I said nothing, only raised my head a little to watch for the next attack; neither defiant nor afraid, resigned, fully aware of what she meant to do. But when Goewin drew back for another blow Lleu said suddenly, “Don’t.”

I turned my gaze on Lleu, wondering.

“He hasn’t hurt me,” Lleu said.

“He might yet,” Goewin said coldly.

“He won’t,” Lleu said. “You will kill him if you go on. There will be nothing won, nothing gained. You’ll break yourself, you’ll break us all, just as Morgause would have it. Oh, don’t be an idiot, Goewin, he is no traitor.”

“Oh, is he not!”

Lleu said calmly, “I am safe, I am whole: Don’t destroy me now.”

“Are you so bound to him?” Goewin sneered. “As he is to his mother?”

“I am not bound to anyone,” Lleu said readily. “But he is, after all, our brother.”

“Ai, Bright One,” Artos said. He took the boy by the shoulders so that they could see each other and then embraced him: they stood trembling in each other’s arms, both of them close to tears. Artos said, “He has changed you. He has done it.”

“Oh, God, no,” I said passionately. “I only tried to hurt him. He changed himself. He changed me.”

I sat in the snow, waiting. Lleu stood beneath his father’s heavy, loving hands, and said, “Ask again who it is that Medraut follows.”

Goewin asked without speaking, with her eyes and a small, questioning shrug.

I drew myself up onto one knee, my head held proudly, and whispered in honesty and pain: “I serve the prince of Britain.” And in a stronger voice I added, “The Bright One. Lleu son of Artos.

“My lord, my brother, I have hated and envied you…” Then my voice broke, and I could no longer speak formally. “Ah, Goewin, finish me if you must, I am sick to death of being feared and mistrusted.”

She looked at me and then at Lleu. Lleu’s face was impassive but set; his look was one of authority and fairness, adult and certain. “All right!” she said quietly, and threw down her spear. “All right.”

“Come, my marksman,” Artos said, my father also, forbidding and forgiving. He stepped forward to take my hands and raised me to my feet. “I told you once that you could always come back to me.”

That is why I cannot come back to you, Godmother.

Lleu sighed, shuddering with exhaustion and relief. Then he suddenly and softly laughed aloud, quietly but with elation. He covered his eyes with one hand, as though he asLleu sithought his laughter inappropriate; the joy in his half-hidden smile struck me like oblique sunlight.