The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  Honor of Souls turned back to him and her smile deepened as her eyes took on a soft glow. “From the look of Truthsheart,” she said, “I doubt it would be an accident.”

  “Cassandra . . .” Max began.

  “Who set the Signs on this room?” she said, ignoring him.

  “I did,” said Honor of Souls, her voice caressing. “For your own safety. My spies tell me that those who searched for you have returned to search the Shadowlands, not finding you here.”

  “There are not many still with dra’aj enough to Sign a room.” It was impossible not to recognize the pride in Lightborn’s voice.

  His mother waved away his words. “I would give all I had to keep safe the Prince Guardian, even were he not the child of my sister.”

  Max flashed a look at Cassandra, but she looked back with eyes wide, shaking her head minutely. If he read her right, this was news to her as well. He looked back at Lightborn. Not brothers then, but cousins.

  “You are not the ones who sent the Hound?” Cassandra’s dark chocolate voice was softly hoarse, as if tense throat muscles were only just beginning to loosen.

  “Indeed, we are not.” It was impossible not to recognize and believe the tremor of distaste in Honor’s voice.

  Cassandra studied the older woman’s face and nodded, satisfied. She took a step back, and lowered the sword. When Lightborn advanced with his hand out, however, Cassandra shook her head.

  “I will trade you, sword for sword,” she said, and Max jumped as Windwatcher tossed back his red hair and laughed out loud.

  “By the Wards, she is right,” he said, smiling and shaking his head, his voice rough and warm. “She knows none of us and we’ve taken her gra’if from her, helm and sword. Until we give it back she has no reason to trust or treat with us. And from what I see,” he said, nodding at Max, “at this moment she speaks for the Prince.”

  Honor of Souls gestured to the two men standing guard and one lifted his hand in casual salute before pushing his way through the folds of the arras. Honor turned back to Cassandra.

  “I give you my word on the love I bore your mother that your gra’if comes.”

  Cassandra sketched a bow, reversed her grip on the sword and held it out, ornate hilt first, to the older woman. Honor took it with a smile and handed it to her son.

  Once again Max found everyone, Cassandra included, looking at him, waiting for him. This time he wished he could make them look away. Max took another deep breath, and handed the older man his sword.

  “I thank you, my Prince,” Windwatcher said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Max said. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Where are your friends, Old One?”

  The Troll known as Diggory spat out a mouthful of rock-gray blood and wished that he could have stained Dreamer of Time’s pretty purple tunic with it. But that Basilisk spawn had already learned not to get too close. Diggory grinned.

  “You may not be smiling very much longer,” the Basilisk said, a hard edge showing through the melody of his voice.

  “Perhaps not,” the Troll agreed amiably. “But then I won’t care, will I?”

  “You will stop smiling long before you die, Son of Earth.”

  “So far, it seems I’m to die of boredom.” This was fun, in its way. Diggory shifted his shoulders as well as he could, considering that he was hanging suspended in front of a darkmetal wall. The Basilisk and his inquisition had found that, effective as hanging him in midair might be if they intended merely to keep him, it was impossible to really torture a person unless there was something to push against. The last twelve hours had had their painful moments, but the inquisitors were discovering that it took a great deal to hurt a Troll. Even the parts of him which were now dragging on the floor didn’t hurt. Much.

  “Tell me what I wish to know, and all I will do is kill you. Refuse me, and I can do much worse.”

  Diggory laughed, more because he knew it would annoy the Basilisk than because he found anything funny. Almost, he was beginning to be bored. “You are stupider than you look,” he finally said. “Nothing you wish to know can be learned from me. Where is the Prince Guardian? I don’t know. Where are the Talismans? I don’t know. Who does know? I don’t know. I’ve just come from the Shadowlands, you idiot, and I can’t tell you what I don’t know, no matter what you do.” He spat again, wincing at the sudden pull of a torn muscle in his chest. “You’d have been smarter to let me escape and then follow me.”

  “So you would know how to find him, if you were free?”

  Diggory fell silent. He had forgotten that the Basilisk had always boasted of his little knowledge of and less congress with Solitaries. He would not know, therefore, that, Earth-born, Diggory could find anything that touched the earth. Even in the Shadowlands he had been able to find Truthsheart and the Prince Guardian in the subways. If his friends had touched the earth anywhere here in the Lands, Diggory would have a starting point for his search.

  “If all I wanted was my freedom,” he said finally, “I could be still in the Shadowlands, eating prey and building bridges.”

  “I would give you safe conduct to return there.”

  “You talk a great deal of what you’d give me. So far, all you’ve given me is a look at my own bowels.”

  The Basilisk gestured at the floor. “You could be mended. Find me the Guardian and you would have a Healer and your safe conduct. You have my word.”

  This time Diggory stopped the smile before it reached his lips. He knew exactly what that word was worth. The heat he felt rising in his blood was not all due to the Basilisk’s lies, however. That was too old a story to fuel much fire. But that the ignorant spawn of a stone-faced Basilisk thought that he could trick a Solitary.

  As if Diggory didn’t know that if the Basilisk set him free it would be only for long enough to hang Max Ravenhill on a darkmetal wall. As if Diggory would trade his freedom, or anyone’s freedom, for that. Better they were all dead, as his fara’ip believed him to be. His fara’ip. Now the Troll did smile. The Basilisk thought himself a trickster, did he? Well two could play at that game.

  “What of my fara’ip?” he asked. “I would want them about me. Would you give them safe conduct as well?”

  “Your fara’ip?”

  Diggory could almost see the Basilisk’s thoughts turning, could almost see him examining the idea, looking for a flaw. Was it possible? Could the Basilisk Prince’s ignorance be deep enough to suppose that Solitaries were just that? Solitary?

  “Yes, of course,” the Sunward Rider said finally. “I would extend the safe conduct to your fara’ip.”

  Diggory stopped his by now unconscious struggle against his bonds and felt his abused muscles truly relax for the first time in hours.

  “All my fara’ip?”

  “All.

  “You let me go, I find him for you, and you give me and all my fara’ip safe conduct; we may go wheresoever we please?”

  “Yes.”

  “Done! IbindyouIbindyouIbindyou.” Diggory laughed aloud, his glee wiping out, for the moment, any pain he might feel. The look on the Basilisk’s face, half doubt, half suspicion, was tastier than many a human morsel had been.

  “Of course I am bound,” the Basilisk said smoothly, if with a trace of doubt in his voice. “I gave my word, did I not?”

  “Ah, but what did you give your word to? You said you would give my fara’ip safe conduct. Did you even ask what fara’ip I might have? Or did you, foolish Rider that you are, think I had none? Do you even know who I am?

  “I am Hearth of the Wind, you fool, the Last Born. The Earth is my fara’ip, and it is bound now, too, with your words. If you free me and go back on your word, you will never set safe foot to Earth again. The Prince Guardian is part of my fara’ip, and has been since I found him beside his dead mother. Free me, O Prince of Basilisks, and you free him. Give me safe conduct, and you give it to him.”

  Diggory laughed a
gain. Now he knew why the Basilisk chose purple for his colors. It was because he turned such a lovely shade of it when enraged.

  “. . . . . . . . . .” the Basilisk Prince said.

  Diggory waited for his laughter to subside, shaking his head. “What? You’re going to suck the dra’aj out of me like you did that poor Sunward fool yesterday? Why don’t you try it and see what it gets you?”

  The Basilisk turned an even darker shade of magenta. His skin seemed to swell and he grew taller, his breath escaping his lips in a hiss of foulness. His hair lifted, forming a crest, and his eyes grew red. Diggory did not even try to look away. Instead he spat again, and this time got the Basilisk right in its curving beak.

  Windwatcher slammed his palm down on the table with enough force to rattle the wine cups.

  “Everything is changed if he does not know who he is.”

  Max opened his mouth but held his tongue when Cassandra placed her cool fingers on his wrist. She was right, he supposed. His opinion wouldn’t change anything for these people. He might as well keep it to himself.

  Windwatcher turned to Cassandra, “How long has he been like this?” he growled. “When did he lose his memory?”

  “My lord,” Cassandra’s tone was chill, her courtesy sharp enough to cut. “He has always been as you see him, since the beginning. We Wardens assumed it was part of the Banishment,” she continued, outlining the theory she had already shared with Max.

  Max watched the three Riders look at each other as they took in what was evidently a surprising and unwelcome bit of news.

  Finally Lightborn spoke. “Could this be the Chant of Oblivion?”

  Honor nodded, eyes narrowed, her silver-white hair catching glints of light as she moved. “That, or some other binding, one we were not told of.” She looked up. “One of the many things, it seems, the Basilisk did not tell us.”

  “This is not the time to rehearse the Basilisk’s perfidy,” Windwatcher growled. “It will not take us any farther down our road.”

  After the initial outcry, Lightborn had persuaded everyone to sit down at the table and see what clarity nourishment might bring to the discussion. Cassandra’s gra’if had arrived, and everyone, including Max, had looked away as she had clutched at her battered shoulder bag, so ordinary and human looking in this perfect room. Other servants had arrived bringing platters of food. Honor of Souls had taken a seat at the center of one long side of the inlaid table, and had the two men to either side of her. Max sat facing her, with Cassandra on his right. Between them on the table lay the remains of yet more fruit, as well as spiced meats and sweet rolls. Max had tried something that looked like a chicken leg, and tasted like nothing he’d ever eaten. He found it difficult to keep his eyes away from platters which never seemed to empty, no matter how much people ate, and concentrate on the discussion.

  “None who know me will doubt that I have no love for the Basilisk Prince,” Windwatcher was saying, “nor have I reason to suppose that any here does. But I have a question. I did not know the Prince Guardian well—he was no intimate of mine,” the man added with a nod to Lightborn and his mother. “There are many others like me among our present allies, and so you may take my question in a good spirit. How sure are we that this is the Prince? Your pardon, Truthsheart,” he said with a small bow to Cassandra, “but I can suppose that in your zeal to protect the true Prince, it might occur to you to pass off another Rider, or even one of the Shadowfolk with a passable resemblance, to use as a lure for the Prince’s enemies.”

  Max sat back in his chair, exhaling sharply as a wave of—was it relief?—surged through him. Of course that’s what she’d done. That would explain everything, from his own certainty that he was no more or less than Max Ravenhill to her adamant refusal to even consider the possibility of a mistake. Not, he realized, sinking back down to earth, that he’d ever felt that Cassandra was lying to him. Mistaken, yes, but sincere.

  Cassandra leaned back in her chair, raising her head from her tented fingers. “An excellent idea. I wish I’d thought of it.” Her tone was one of speculation and interest. “But he has never had any memory of being the Prince Guardian, unless . . .”

  Everyone waited politely for her to finish her thought, but Max thought he knew what she was thinking. Unable to change his fundamental nature, she’d told him. But what would that prove?

  “What have you thought of, Sword of Truth?” Windwatcher was unable to contain his impatience.

  Cassandra shrugged, shaking her head in dismissal. “If we had his gra’if . . .”

  Lightborn clapped his hands and laughed. “That is what I call an excellent idea.” He leaped to his feet, his platinum braids swinging as he went to the entrance and spoke quietly to one of the guards standing there. He waited until the man had nodded and left before returning to the table.

  “If you give me but a moment, Windwatcher,” Lightborn said as he sat down again at his mother’s side, “I think I can provide the proof you need.”

  At first those at the table kept silent while they waited for the guard to bring Lightborn’s proof. Then Windwatcher turned to Honor of Souls and, in a voice too quiet for Max to catch, began speaking urgently to her. Clearly the redheaded man was disturbed. Lightborn smiled at Max and seemed about to speak, but Cassandra shifted, drawing the younger Rider’s eye, and he kept silent.

  Max found his hands had formed fists, and he forced them to open. They couldn’t have any proof, he told himself. He wasn’t the Prince, so they didn’t . . . But he couldn’t help wondering what kind of proof Lightborn believed he had. What kind of proof would these people find acceptable? And what, if it came down to it, would he accept as proof himself? Nothing, he thought. They were all making a mistake, Cassandra included, and with any luck, this little demonstration of Lightborn’s would convince everyone of that, and Max could . . .

  Could what? Go home? Somehow that wasn’t as attractive as it had seemed only a few hours ago. He looked to where Cassandra sat leaning back in her chair next to him, right ankle crossed over left knee, completely relaxed, as always. She’d saved his life—no, he thought, she saved the Prince’s life. If he wasn’t the Prince, she’d have no reason to stick around. But could he walk away from her? Did he want to? Say he could, and he wasn’t so sure about that, could he walk away without knowing what would happen? Warfare, the political stresses and social tensions that led to armed conflict, was his life’s work. Could he walk away from the chance to study it for real?

  He smiled at himself. Listen to him, was his interest really so purely academic? Max was too old to kid himself that way. Could he really just go home and not try to help these people? Go home and wait for this Basilisk Prince guy to win? Tell himself he was minding his own business? And then what, wait for the Basilisk to show up back home? The Nazis had names for people who stood back and minded their own business.

  “Your strategy’s wrong,” he said aloud. Everyone turned to look at him, but now he was in lecture mode, and thoroughly calm. “You need to get rid of this Basilisk Prince. Once he’s dealt with, it won’t matter where the Talismans are.”

  The three Riders across the table glanced at each other.

  “Two things wrong with that, my Prince,” Windwatcher said. “For one, we cannot, as you put it, ‘deal’ with the Basilisk. We are not strong enough. We need you, or the Talismans, or both, to rally support. Second, even should we rid ourselves of the Basilisk, the Lands need a High Prince, and for that, soon or late, we will need the Talismans.”

  “There’s a third thing,” Cassandra put in. “If it’s the Basilisk who used the Chant of Oblivion against the Guardian, we must get him to remove it before we ‘deal’ with him.”

  The return of the guard, accompanied by two unarmed servants carrying between them a small chest made of flame-colored wood, put a stop to Max’s reply. The chest was about five feet long, eighteen inches high, and two feet wide. Cassandra let out her breath in a slow whistle and stood as soon as she caught sight o
f it.

  Lightborn and Cassandra between them cleared a spot on the table, and the servants put the chest down in front of Max. He looked at the faces around him and saw nothing to indicate what he should do next. Windwatcher was entirely impassive—the man might have been watching a chess game between moves. Honor of Souls patted Lightborn on the arm, pleased approval apparent on her face. Lightborn wore a sardonic smile, as if he were waiting for Max to respond to a dare and was certain that he knew what the outcome would be.

  Only Cassandra looked at him with that same shadow of lingering sadness he’d seen in her face before, as if she knew that he was about to be made very unhappy. She had no doubts, Max thought, she never did have. For the first time since waking up, he began to wonder himself.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”

  Max turned back to the chest, giving it a good long look. Proof for them is proof for me, he decided, feeling the truth of it settle on him. I have to know. His hands were on the lid, and his thumbs on the catches, before he even knew he meant to move. The carving was intricate and deep, as if the chest were a solid block of wood. Max blinked to give his eyes a chance to focus and saw that the carving represented scenes, and not just geometrical patterns. In one part people appeared to be gathered at a feast around a great cauldron; among the feasters were a group of young men fencing, the crowd around them cheering them on. Farther over he saw another crowd, some watching and some participating in games of spear throwing, archery, and more fencing. At the center near the bottom, between where Max’s two hands rested on the catches, people and strange beasts looked on as a beautifully rendered bird rose out of its nest. As Max squinted, trying to see whether the nest was indeed made of flames as it appeared, the bird turned its head and slowly blinked one eye.