He sat awake and watched all through that night.
The morning came gray and changeless. We traveled on foot through still more bare, deserted forest; Lleu walked in a private haze of exhaustion. Snow covered the trees and forest floor as far as could be seen, and drifted across our vision. There was only soft light, the ft u walkedlight one dreams by, gray clouds, or snow, or blue shadows, but never the true light of the sun. In the afternoon we left the dale and struck out over another stretch of empty moorland. Lleu rode behind me as he had the first day, but now I gave him no support or help. He kept himself upright in the saddle through sheer strength of will, riding doggedly, dazed with weariness.
Before dark we came upon a small, round hill, wider and lower than the mounds we had passed earlier. Here we dismounted. Lleu did not resist when I laid my hands on his shoulders to rub gently at the tense muscles across the back of his neck. “Will we stop here?” Agravain asked. At the bottom of the slope the rise of land cut off some of the wind, though it was still cold and could not compare to the protection the forest had offered us.
“Climb,” I said. “There’s better shelter back of this ridge.”
Agravain led the horses, and I guided Lleu the little way to the top. The mound was not a hill but an earthen rampart around a bowl-shaped trough. The outer ridge formed a wall about the hollow of the hill, and sheltered there an ancient ring of stones. Those that were fallen now squatted balefully, but a few still stood upright or pointed at drunken angles to the sky. Lleu stood shivering beneath my hands at the top of the ridge, staring at this old and forgotten shrine. He murmured, with something like despair in his voice, “We are to shelter here?”
“The earthworks cut off the wind,” I said.
“I think I would rather freeze.”
Agravain gazed at Lleu with amused derision. “They’re only stones,” he said. “You’re not going to be sacrificed.”
“No.” Lleu shook himself free of my light hold and said, “How far are we from the road?”
The road was less than a mile south of the circle, but I would not let him know this. “Close by,” I answered. “We will reach it tomorrow.”
“How close?” he pressed.
“I will not tell you,” I answered directly. “You have won this much, this far; but I will give you neither bearing nor hope.”
We set camp beneath one of the angled stones. The air was very still. There was no wood for a fire and only the lanterns for light. Lleu took charge of these, appropriating all our steel and flint. He put out the lights but for one, which he set close by him. He kept a hand on the grated lid of a dark lantern, lightly drumming his fingers against it. I could not imagine how he would drive himself through the night.
“He must try to sleep a little,” I said quietly to Agravain. “If you and I rest in turns, one of us should be able to take him at last.”
But that night was almost as hard for me as it was for Lleu. My cough had grown deep and harsh; it hurt me to swallow, and sometimes even to breathe. Once, when Agravain woke me from a fitful sleep to take my turn at watching Lleu, I struck his hand aside storming, “Don’t touch me!”
Agravain muttered with distaste, “I wouldn’t. I’m not your mother.”
That brought me full awake. I said maliciously, “How you envy me!”
Agravain answered with the fierce devotion that had driven him to serve you at the start. “I do. And I envy the Bright One, for I know how she’ll use him once he is under her sway.”
Lleu glanced up in undisguised horror. “What does she want of me?” He ground his hands into his eyes and leaned back against the old stone, pale and miserable. “Ah, God, you are both damned.”
“And you with us,” Agravain murmured bitterly.
“No, my soul is my own responsibility,” Lleu replied, equally acid, glaring at me. “I have not sold it yet.”
I heard in his clear voice an echo of your impatience, an echo of your disdain. Lleu gazed at me and Agravain, where the two of us crouched stiff and shivering in the shadow of the dark rock. “You hope to catch me unaware. I swear you will not do it.”
In abrupt, unchecked anger, Agravain dealt his cousin so fierce a blow that Lleu fell sprawling in the snow, stunned. He pressed one hand to his face even as with the other he drew his hunting knife, an easier and less exacting defense than his bow. I uttered in a terrible voice, “Agravain!”
I was so suddenly despising of his blind and adoring obedience to you, and so jealous of my brother’s strength of spirit, that I ignored Lleu’s disadvantage. What reason had Agravain to hate Lleu, other than that you desired he should?
“Any hurt you deal the prince,” I said in quiet fury, “I will deal to you.” I struck Agravain carelessly across the face. He stared at me in astonished resentment. “Do you understand that?” I asked in the same voice.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered.
“Perfect,” I said. “Don’t hit him again.”
Lleu moved back to his place by the lantern, certain of the knife he held, and sure of nothing else. “What game do you play now? Whose side are you on?” he demanded angrily of me.
“You must think that I answer to the queen of the Orcades as a dog answers to its master,” I said bitterly. “But I will not see you harmed without reason.”
“You have threatened to kill me!” Lleu protested.
“There is reason for that,” I answered.
In the morning we came to the straight, paved Roman road that runs directly to Ratae Coritanorum. It was barely recognizable beneath the snow; around us the moorland was desolate as ever. Lleu gave a little sigh, trying to conceal his relief. But Agravain guided the horses to turn south along the road. Lleu shook his head. “What are you doing?”