“I am leaving you,” Agravain explained with elaborate precision. “My mother is waiting for me, and I am taking the horses and continuing south. On foot it will take you two days to reach Camlan.”
“All right,” said Lleu. “I will seek shelter and rest in Aquae Arnemetiae; it cannot be more than seven or eight miles north of here.” He turned as though to walk away, but I laid one hand lightly on his shoulder and said, “I will join you.”
“Sir?” Agravain questioned stonily. “You will not come with me?”
“What for?” I sneered. “It is no triumph to return from the hunt without having made a kill. I have no desire to journey to Ratae Coritanorum without the required trophy.”
“What am I to tell the queen?” Agravain cried harshly. “Why would you come so far in such a venture and then turn back?”
“But I am not turning back,” I answered, “merely aside, to follow my own will.”
“Wait,” Lleu interrupted. “What do you mean? You can’t be following your own will if you take the road with me.”
“I can. I can ransom you myself.”
He glanced at my hand lightly resting on his shoulder, his expression agonized. “You would kill me yourself, if my father refused your demands?”
“I would,” I said quietly.
“I am still free.”
I took his face between my hands. He did not try to turn away, but regarded me through dark, desolate eyes ringed with smudges of blue shadow. “Yes. You are still free,” I repeated in quiet.
“Come with me, then, I don’t care,” he said with reckless, passionate courage. “I would rather die by your hand, I would rather have my death prey at your heart forever, than be instantly forgotten by your heartless mother.”
“You must understand how defenseless you have left yourself,” I whispered. It was chilling to hear him speak so bluntly of his own death, he who was afraid of the dark.
“I understand,” Lleu said with bleak clarity. “We are alone, and it is dead of winter; and only by my own faltering strength can I keep from falling prisoner to you. When finally I fail I will be yours, hated and envied, for you to use as you will. So I wait on your fury.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “Agravain, here we leave you.”
“How dare you!” Agravain said. He seemed suddenly as young as Lleu, and as desperate, about to be left alone in the wilderness in an unfamiliar land.
“I dare because I have drunk my fill of the queen of the Orcades,” I said vehemently. “You can go back to your mother and you can tell her that I am no longer her ward. Tell her
that I owe her nothing. Tell her that my treachery is of my own making. She drew me in and now I am up to my neck in it, but I am in it for myself and not as her minion.” I went to the horses, untied certain of the satchels and slung them over my shoulders, and then tied blankets and furs together in a bundle that I could carry on my back. “Take the horses, Agravain. We’ll walk.”
I took Lleu by the elbow and started up the road through the snow, leaving Agravain staring after us in puzzlement and anger. Now I was alone in the wasteland with my young brother, and we walked slowly north toward the higher hills; or toward home, or toward death, into the wind.
XIII
Aquae Arnemetiae
LLEU AND I WALKED without speaking, as we had for the last three days; except now our silence was mutual, shared, something that did not separate us but rather bound us together. The oppressive cold and silence never abated. Only the old road that we followed made the landscape different. Now and then the roof of a cottage or shepherd’s hut appeared huddled under the shadow of a low hill, or a stone wall marked off the boundary of a snow-covered field. Otherwise the barren white wasteland about us remained unaltered, the monotony of the moor unbroken.
But once Lleu stopped, astonished, staring at the blank road before him. He blinked and put a hand to his temple. “What was that?” he said.
I watched him, intrigued. “What do you think it was?” There had been no sound, no movement, no sudden shaft of sunlight.
“I thought—” He frowned, rubbing at his forehead. “It was a flash of color, across the road—a bird or butterfly, green and gold and scarlet. But it’s gone…” He hesitated, hearing the madness in his words. “You didn’t see.”
“No.” I touched his shoulder lightly to set him walking again.
We traveled seven or eight miles without stopping to rest. In the early afternoon the road led us down into a valley, to what had been the Roman city of Aquae Arnemetiae, a city of healing pools and mineral wells. The Roman baths lay crumbling into ruin now; the springs were beginning to break free of the shrines that had been built around them, though they ran clear and warm as they always had. The outer buildings of the old city lay as rubble, roofless and empty. But the heart of the town remained inhabited. On one of the streets that we passed through there was a public house with its door open, and from within, fragments of quiet conversation echoed in the street. I unslung the small black leather satchel that I carried and put a hand in, searching for the few coins I had brought with me. I said to Lleu, “Shall we eat here?”
He watched in horror and amazement as I drew my hand out of the bag. I saw the fear in his look, but could not understand it. Disturbed and puzzled, I said, “What is it? You can’t be afraid to take a meal among other people.”
Lleu whispered, “Why do you carry feathers in your bag?”
“Feathers?” I asked, speaking low, and feeling curiously fearful myself. “Feathers…,” I repeated slowly. “Where did you see them?”
We stood beneath the eaves of the low building, talking in quiet voices, as would any two traveling companions who might pass through the town and debate whether or not to take their midday meal in company of the townsmen.