He couldn’t hope to stalk anything at this hour, but his feet took him unerringly down through the bracken and the marsh towards the burn. The air felt no warmer around him, but something had shifted or changed: under a frozen skin, the stream was now running fiercely with meltwater from the hills. Here and there it had carved out pools for itself, where it glimmered with a crystalline light.
In the first pool Lance came to, shining grey and brown, belly dappled with pale rainbows, a massive trout was circling beneath the ice. Instinctively Lance dropped low so as not to shadow the pool, but the fish was spiralling with such calm intent that he thought it wouldn’t have noticed him anyway. It barely flinched when Lance struck with the spear: quivered on the end of it like a strange flag when he raised it triumphantly high above his head.
When he got back, the cave was full of firelight, a flickering beacon across the moor. He didn’t know where the old woman had found the kindling, or the strength to gather it, but she was sitting between the rocks in the entrance, poking contentedly at the flames. She took the fish from him wordlessly, jerking it off the spear with her bare hands and spiking it through with a bronze cooking spit she had also procured from somewhere. She balanced the spit on two stones, nodded in satisfaction, and began to turn it, apparently oblivious to the heat.
Lance wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Barely a moment seemed to have passed, but a wonderful fragrance was filling the cave, and the trout’s skin had turned golden brown. Hunger racked him. He tried not to look or breathe. He watched the painted wall determinedly while she ate, pulling the fish apart with her fingers and attacking it indiscriminately, guts, bones and all.
She wasn’t the quietest eater. Lance kept his face politely expressionless, focussing his mind on the dance of the giant ox, the horses and hunters, reborn in the flames. Perhaps they were meant to be seen by firelight. He tried to lose himself in wondering what their makers had been like, what their loves and their wants must have been, and he almost succeeded…
“Well,” the old woman said to him, holding him out a big piece of trout on the spit, “what doyouthink they wanted?”
Lance stared at her. “The same things that I do,” he said without thinking, and waited for her to laugh at him.
But she only nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “A warm fire, company, and most importantly a full belly. Matters of the spirit should come first, I’m sure, but they seldom do. So eat this, before your britches slide off you entirely.”
He couldn’t believe there was anything left of the trout to be had. At his last glance, the old woman had reduced it to fins and tail. But here was a fair rich slice, dripping with grease from the fire. Lance, who had not yet learned to question gift horses, took the food and the mind-reading at face value, and began to eat.
He fell asleep almost immediately afterwards, hardly taking the trouble to wipe his mouth and lie down. It was a deep and dream-filled sleep, in which he turned into a hare and ran and ran after Elena and Ban’s departing spirits, but still could not catch up. Transforming back into his own flesh, he wept and mourned as he had never done while waking; lay down by the grass-covered Wall and howled, until a strange, low-pitched singing joined with his own sounds of grief, and he lifted his head.
A dragon was floating over the ridge. Enthralled, tears forgotten, Lance staggered to his feet and tried to run toward the dancing, glittering beast. But she opened her great jaws and sang to him that the time for their joining had not yet come, and then, absurdly, she placed the end of her tail in her mouth as if to end the discussion, and Lance woke smiling.
***
He was alone in the cave. He felt strangely bereft until he heard the old woman scuffling about outside. He got up stiffly, stretched, and went out into the weak daylight, noting to his astonishment that despite its shroud of misty clouds, the sun was nearing zenith. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”
She stopped pulling handfuls of greenery out of the rivulet that ran past the cave, and fixed him with a brightly sarcastic gaze. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I forgot all about your schedule of public engagements. Here, take these—we’ll have watercress soup for our breakfast. Boiling it should take the fluke-worm out.”
She looked much better this morning. Now she was just a grubby old woman, not an insect-puppet jerked around by unseen strings. Lance was bemused by the changes in her. She had put on weight overnight, disproportionate to the meal he’d been able to give her. Somehow she’d contrived to stitch the cobweb tatters of her robe back into one garment. It wasn’t overly clean and nor was she, but both had acquired a dignity. More mysteriously, her balding pate was now covered with steel-grey hair, which she had braided into a plait as thick as a tow rope.
She watched him alertly as they ate their soup, which was almost too bitter even for a courteous prince to swallow without pulling a face. “Disgusting, isn’t it?” she said cheerfully. “That’s its power—to cure you of dark thoughts. Tell me what such a fine young sprig of the White Fields aristocracy is doing out here, starving in the marshes.”
“We ran out of food in the village last night. I came out to hunt, and to bring back a deer that had frozen to death by the lough.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, ma’am. Except that I saw a hare, or I thought I did, and I chased her out here, or...” He hesitated at the golden gleam in the old woman’s eyes. “Or I thought I did.”
“And isthatall?”
What more did she want? “I dreamed about a dragon,” he said suddenly, not knowing why. “And I keep hearing a voice. He calls mePrince of Nowhere, and he says he’s on his way.”
She sat up alertly. “Ah. Pass me my scrying glass, boy.”
“Your...”
“My glass! Well, whatever I have these days—the cauldron will do. Let me see.”
Lance unhooked the bowl and handed it to her. She stared into the murky remains of their breakfast, swirled the liquid around, thrice to the right, thrice to the left, then uttered a raven-like squawk. “Aha! It is so. And so soon!”
“What is so, ma’am?”
“You’ll know soon enough. We must stir our shanks. No wonder the morning is brighter, the streams running clear.” She squinted into the cauldron. “Oh, this bowl’s a good one for scry. There’s Vindolanda, burning down. And there’s good King Ban, running for his life while Elena stayed and swung a sword and then a kitchen knife, and then a pan, to try and save her bairns.”
Lance recoiled. She was insane. He had to act accordingly. Instead of jumping the fire to strangle her, he said, tightly, “My father’s dead. Don’t dare to speak of him so.”
“It’s not the time to speak of him at all. We have important matters in hand.”
“I said don’tspeakof him so!”
