The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(67)

“Now I have become—”

He hesitated, and Turunesh murmured without looking up from her deft hands: “Warrior, statesman, huntsman. Lion killer.” She raised her head from the coffee at last, and smiled, though she did not meet his eyes. No Aksumite had ever met his eyes. They would have considered it a great insolence to do so; he was the eldest son of Britain’s high king.

“And Christian,” Turunesh added, smiling still. “You were baptized here. What will Artos your father say to that?”

“He’ll say, Africa is always producing something new.”

They all three laughed together.

Kidane held out his hand again to Medraut. “Get off your knees, you sentimental boy,” he said.

Medraut took his seat, embarrassed. Turunesh handed him his coffee, bitter and black. He cupped the hot beaker between his hands, breathing in the strong steam.

“I’ve put a great dose of honey in it,” Turunesh said, “to sweeten it for you. I know you don’t really like it.”

“I like the smell.”

“You have to share a cup with us, this last night before you go.”

“I know.” Medraut sighed again. “If the kingship of Britain were offered to me tomorrow, I would throw it away for the promise that I will share another cup of coffee with you before I die.”

“Don’t,” Turunesh said softly. “You will set me to weeping.”

Medraut sipped gingerly at the steaming black liquor.

“Sweet enough?” she inquired.

‘“Out of the strong came something sweet,’” he murmured, quoting Samson’s riddle of bees and honey in the carcass of the slain lion.

“Lion killer,” Turunesh murmured in answer, teasing. “What did you mean, you have left us with nothing of yourself? I shall never pass your lion skin hanging in the reception hall without thinking of you.”

They drank the coffee. The lamps in the standards that stood about the garden court began to burn low. Turunesh lifted one down.

“‘Return, return,’” she whispered to the lamp, as though she were weaving an incantation. The flame burned steadily, pale white-gold and smoky blue, the color of Medraut’s hair and eyes. “‘Return, return.’”

Her father could not have heard her, but Medraut could. Turunesh whispered the words Kidane had read aloud earlier from the Song of Songs. “‘Return, return, that we may look upon you.’”

She held the lamp high and turned to face the young British ambassador.

“Come, Medraut,” she said aloud. “I’ll light you to your room.”





PART I SANCTUARYCHAPTER ONE

Naming the Animals


SIX YEARS AFTER MEDRAUT returned to Britain, and a bare season after he and my twin brother Lleu nearly killed each other over which of them should be the high king’s heir, our father’s estate at Camlan was destroyed in a battle that began by accident.

Camlan shattered Medraut. He began the battle: he drew his sword to kill an adder at my father’s heel, and the host mustered by Cynric of the West Saxons fell on our own soldiers at the flash of light on metal. When sickness attacked the nearby village of Elder Field in the battle’s wake, and my mother waited on the stricken without stint until she, too, was killed by the fever, Medraut blamed himself for not relieving her. Then Medraut killed our father. Artos asked it of him, rather than lie waiting to die of his battle wounds. Before that final damning act of courage and mercy, Medraut had spent a day and most of a night limping on a broken knee through the frozen, bloody fields around Camlan, searching for Lleu. It was not three months since Lleu had kissed and forgiven him his last winter’s betrayal. Medraut would have given his own life to spare our brother’s. All he found of my twin after Camlan was the golden circlet Lleu had worn.

Then Medraut disappeared. He lost himself in the caves at Elder Field, where we buried my parents and cousins. When I discovered he was gone, I felt my way in panic down the tunnel that led beyond the crypt, beyond the reach of the little light burning at my father’s head, until I was afraid to go any farther. I stood there, calling and calling my elder brother, until I had to shut up because I suddenly so hated the sound of my own voice in that deep, quiet dark.

I and my father’s soldiers searched and waited for Medraut for a month. But then came the rumor that the Saxon lord Cynric had offered a bounty for me, and my father’s treacherous sister Morgause announced she would pay my weight in silver for proof that I was dead. I knew she meant it. I had seen the scars she left on Medraut, and he and I had spent half of the last summer battling to keep her from poisoning Lleu. Now only I stood between my aunt and her lost sovereignty. I panicked like a hunkededraut,ted doe. In fear and grief I turned my back on my own kingdom, with all the forethought and resolution of a gazelle flying before a crouching lioness.