The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “What does that mean?” His voice trembled with the beating of his heart, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “According to the Songs which touch upon it,” Honor said, “the Chant of Binding goes back to the very first Cycle, or at the least to the Cycle when the Talismans were made, if they are not the same.” The elder hesitated, her eyes searched Max’s face. “It is for the Guardian only to know it, for it can be used to bind the Talismans.”

  “To bind the—” Cassandra’s voice climbed higher as she bit off her words. Max realized that the pain in his wrist was her hand, clamped so tight that he had reached across to grab at her fingers before he was consciously aware of moving. He forced himself to stop trying to pry her fingers loose and instead laid his hand gently on hers.

  “What? What is it?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “The Talismans cannot be bound by force,” she said, loosening her grip. “They cannot. They must not.”

  “Okay, okay. Take a deep breath and explain it to the human guy. What’s the real problem? The Talismans get bound anyway, don’t they?”

  A bit of color returned to Cassandra’s face as she breathed more slowly. “You don’t understand. These aren’t just symbols like a human king’s crown and scepter; the Talismans are the manifestation of the Lands themselves. The Guardian has the responsibility of protecting the Talismans, of preserving them and through them the Lands and all the People: Rider, Solitary, and Natural. When the time comes, and the High Prince is chosen, the Guardian binds the Prince to the Talismans, to the Lands, with mutual consent.” She shook his arm. “Do you see? The Prince is bound to the Talismans—not the other way around. What will happen if that binding is reversed, so that the Basilisk Prince became not the servant of the Talismans, but their master?”

  “That is what the Basilisk seeks,” Lightborn said, his tone for the first time without the lilt and archness of his courtier’s voice. Part of Max noted how much he preferred this voice. “Dominion over all the Lands. Not to lead, but to drag by the throat.”

  Max bit his lip. Part of him wanted to laugh, to say, “Ah, yes, the old world-domination trick,” but he remembered the Hound, the touch of its paws, the cold focus of its eyes. His fingers moved as if by themselves to touch his gra’if, rubbing until he could feel the tiny scales. It was all real. All of it.

  “That’s not all,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and strange to his ears. “You say the Talismans will manifest at the end of the Banishment. Will the Banishment end if the Prince Guardian dies?”

  “No,” Windwatcher said firmly. “Indeed, that was the very reason Banishment was chosen—to protect the Guardian’s life.”

  “But he doesn’t have to live beyond that.” Max looked up, seeing the truth in their faces.

  Windwatcher nodded. “If the Basilisk Prince succeeds, it means the end of the Lands as we know them. He is already making of them a twisted blight, and . . .” the old soldier looked as though he were about to spit, remembered where he was, and refrained. “There are no children of this generation, neither Rider nor Solitary nor Natural,” he said finally. “Without the Prince, if the Cycle does not turn, this will be the end of the People.” Windwatcher clamped his jaws tight.

  “We cannot have the Basilisk as High Prince, we cannot allow him to bond with the Talismans by force.” Honor’s voice sank to a thread of sound. “Better the Cycle turns without us. We must keep the Talismans out of his hands, we must take them now, ourselves, and destroy them, if need be.”

  “That is our purpose,” Windwatcher said. He leaned forward rapping the table with his knuckles, looking from Max to Cassandra and back again. “We bring back the Prince Guardian before his Banishment is ended, that he may serve his purpose. That he may protect the Talismans.”

  Cassandra sat back, patting the arms of her chair with her open palms, staring at some spot high up on the opposite wall. There was nothing there but a pattern in the paneling. “And that’s the reason for the Hound, and the others—no one is trying to kill him, just to bring him alive to the Basilisk.” She lowered her gaze and looked at the others, searching their faces in turn, her eyes narrowed. “To keep him until it’s time to kill him. Or even to make him tell where the Talismans are.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do we have?” Cassandra said.

  “One turn of the Sun,” Lightborn said.

  Cassandra gripped the arms of her chair.

  Max looked from face to face. “Explanations please.”

  Eyes lowered, Cassandra spoke through trembling lips. “A little more than a week,” she said, “and the Talismans will be revealed, and the Basilisk will simply take them . . .” Her voice faded away and she licked her lips.

  “Is there a way to restore him?” Windwatcher growled. Max’s heart jumped in his chest. This was the real question, wasn’t it? The one he was more than half afraid to hear answered.

  “I will not trouble to deny,” Windwatcher was saying, “that you did not have my support before the Great War, when Dreamer of Time asked to be Tested. Like many, I mistrusted that a Rider raised by Solitaries was a true Rider. Well, I will fight beside you now; I would fight beside even Solitaries, and I am not the only one whose heart has changed in this way.” The old Rider’s eyes narrowed, and such was the man’s focus that it seemed Max was alone in the room with him. “You would not give your reasons for refusing Dreamer of Time—an action we took to be a sign of your arrogance, and your holding yourself apart from Riders, your true people.” Windwatcher lowered his gaze and frowned before looking Max once more in the eye. “Many of us can guess at your reasons now. Since we are speaking truth,” Windwatcher looked at the other faces around the table, “I have said I would now give the Prince Guardian my backing, nor will I withdraw it, not for the Hunt, or any other peril.” Windwatcher touched his gra’if with the first two fingers of his right hand, and Max felt a sudden thickness in his throat, knowing that he’d just seen the man swear an oath. “But I know what others will say. Some who would give their support gladly to the Prince Guardian will not fight without him. So, I ask again, can he be restored?”

  “There may be a way,” Lightborn said.

  Cassandra looked up into the silence that greeted Lightborn’s words, aware of the sinking of her stomach, aware yet again of the imminence of loss. No, she reminded herself, this is good, this is what we want. Even though a part of her refused to believe it. Sure, she’d told herself years before that there could never again be anything but her Oath between her and the Exile, but . . . knowing that something was coming wasn’t the same as facing it. With the end of the Banishment, she would finally be free. And alone.

  “There is someone who knows a great deal about the Chant of Oblivion,” Lightborn said. “It is possible she might have a suggestion.”

  The others fell silent as Lightborn left the room. Max was flushed, and it was all Cassandra could do to stop herself from laying her hand against his cheek to check for fever. Instead, she rubbed her own face, her eyes feeling gritty with exhaustion. Maybe if this was really over, if her Wardenship was done, she could beg a bed of Honor of Souls and get some sleep.

  “You said he was touched by a Hound,” Windwatcher said. “What of that?”

  Cassandra roused herself, blinking. She should have known it would be the old warrior who would pick up that point. “I killed it,” she said, ignoring the challenge in the older man’s lifted eyebrow, “but if there are more—if the Basilisk Prince is using the Hunt . . .” she lifted her own brows, making it clear she was waiting for Windwatcher to tell her what he knew.

  “People have not wanted to believe it,” Windwatcher finally said, his baritone rumble almost too soft to hear.

  “I hear you,” Cassandra murmured, remembering the Hound’s blood on her jeans, still fresh and liquid, as it would always be. Liquid and fresh—

  Cassandra sat up straight. “Our clothes,” she said. “Where are they?”

  “Taken to
be burned, I hope,” Honor of Souls said.

  “No,” Cassandra said, sitting on the forward edge of her chair. “That was Hound’s blood, and we can use it to lure them here.”

  “For what possible purpose?”

  “To kill them,” Cassandra said.

  “Of course.” Max saw where Cassandra was going with this. “We’ve got to assume that they’ll be sent after us again, right? This way we control the when and the where. We can be ready for them when they come.”

  “Not possible.” Windwatcher shook his head.

  Cassandra knew what was behind the older Rider’s words. For most Riders, Hounds, indeed the Hunt itself, had been only something the Songs told of. Her own father had seen the Hunt once, years before she was born, and some said that Max’s mother had been killed by the Hunt, leaving him to be brought up by Solitaries.

  “I assure you they can be killed. I was taught by the Wild Rider Nighthawk, who was Warden with me in the Shadowlands. He had killed one in his youth, and he taught me the method, seeing that I bore gra’if, as he did.” It was Nighthawk who had warned her not to look it in the eye, stressing that she must keep striking, no matter what form it took. “Kill it, or make sure it kills you,” the grizzled veteran had said, “and whatever happens, do not let it feed while you still live.”

  “And where is your fellow Warden now?” Windwatcher asked.

  “I don’t know,” she was forced to answer. Had he followed his own advice? she wondered with a sudden shiver. Could she hope that the old warrior had killed the Hound that found him, and was even now somewhere in the Shadowlands, hiding from the rest of the Hunt?

  “I think we will burn your clothes, Truthsheart. Anything else is too dangerous.”

  She was marshaling her thoughts to continue the argument when Lightborn returned, ushering in with him a young female Rider. Another Starward, Cassandra noted without much interest. Once such things would have made a difference to her, but after years among humans, petty distinctions of coloring and—

  “Oh, god,” she said, her heart thumping. “Moon?” Exhaustion forgotten, Cassandra rose to her feet.

  The younger woman had stopped in her tracks, staring at Cassandra. The next moment she was in Cassandra’s arms sobbing out the words, “Sister, my sister.”

  Cassandra held Moon fiercely, breathing in the familiar poppy scent of her hair, having time to marvel that the girl was so much taller than she had been the last time Cassandra had held her in her arms.

  “Charming as this is, we are under a pressure of time.” Cassandra was sure that she could hear a whisper of real feeling under the rock-hard tone of command in Windwatcher’s voice. “Are we to understand, Lightborn that your expert is of our Warden’s fara’ip?”

  “Indeed, I am Walks Under the Moon,” the young Rider said. She loosened her hug only enough to turn and face the Sunward Rider. “My mother was Clear of Light, and the Manticore guides me. You may say, that my sister being a Warden is what made me an expert.” She inclined her head to Honor of Souls. “You will forgive me, my lady,” she said. “I was told there was a Warden with the Prince, and I hoped, but . . .” She turned back to Cassandra and this time gave her an almost shy smile. Cassandra took her sister by the shoulders and kissed her, once on each cheek, and once on the forehead.

  “We will talk later,” she said, unable to suppress a smile as she led her sister to the table.

  Walks Under the Moon took the vacant chair next to Cassandra, sat up straight, and folded her hands primly in front of her.

  “Lady Honor of Souls has provided me with Singers, and I have spent the last seven turns of Sun, Moon, and Stars searching through the Songs we have of this Cycle and the last, as well as those fragments we know to come from Cycles past, though we do not know how far past. I looked for the true Song of Chants that holds within its Choruses and Verses what we know of all the Chants of the People. I reasoned that if we could learn from it the source of the Chant of Oblivion—”

  “We could get the Chant ourselves,” Cassandra said, patting her sister on the girl’s folded hands. It had been long, so long she had thought herself forgotten, but it was good to know that when Max—when the Exile was lost to her, she would not be alone. She would have her fara’ip again.

  “Precisely. The Song of Chants is long, and some say as old as the Cycles themselves, and has as many versions as there are Singers,” Moon continued in a voice very like that of an old professor of medicine Cassandra had once heard lecturing. “It has obviously become vulgarized over time, mixed with other Songs, new verses added when the memories of the Singers grew faulty. I needed to compare hundreds of versions to finally unite all the true pieces of the Song. As many as seven Singers have taken the better part of three turns of the Moon to teach me these true Verses.”

  Cassandra saw Max nodding out of the corner of her eye. Of course, Moon’s words would make sense to him as a historian; even she had seen, over the years she’d spent in the Shadowlands, how even poems that were written down developed variations, and she’d seen how scholars’ research could sort out the true from the false.

  “Is there a point to this?” Max asked, chin in hand. He looked so much like a professor listening to someone’s research proposal that Cassandra could almost hear the rustle of paper and the coughing of students.

  “One Chorus of the Song of Chants tells us that, among others, the Chant of Oblivion can be found at the Tarn of Souls. Another Chorus tells that a journey was made to the Tarn four turns of the Moon before the Great War.”

  Cassandra felt a sudden chill, as if somewhere a door to winter had been opened, and an icy blast had entered the house. “By the Basilisk Prince?”

  “Is it possible?” There was something perilously close to admiration in Windwatcher’s voice. “Could he have laid his plans so early?”

  “So I believe,” Moon said, eyes fixed on her folded hands, “though the Song tells no names. If it was the Basilisk, however, he obtained three Chants in all, each of which works on the dra’aj in some way. One he used to bespell the dra’aj of the Prince Guardian; one is the Chant of Oblivion, which makes one forget the dra’aj, and with it oneself; the third one I am not so sure of, it appears to free the dra’aj, separating it and allowing it to be . . . harvested.”

  “What?” Cassandra could see from the elders’ faces that however diffident Moon was, this last possibility was not news to them.

  Windwatcher and Honor of Souls traded looks, but this time it was Lightborn who spoke. He cleared his throat and shot a glance at Max before turning to Cassandra, his mouth twisted a little to one side in an apologetic smile.

  He’s embarrassed, she thought, surprised.

  “The Basilisk keeps his fara’ip close about him.” Lightborn’s eyes finally found something to focus on at the far side of the room.

  Not embarrassed, Cassandra realized. Ashamed.

  “From time to time, a malady overtakes him. He becomes pale as the moon—he’s a Sunward, did you know that?—and his face is drawn, sweaty. Lately, his hands shake and jerk, and his lips tremble. He seems unable to eat.” Lightborn shook his head and took another breath. “Or uninterested. When this happens, he chooses someone, usually some servant, but not always. Not always,” the Rider cleared his throat. “When the Basilisk returns, alone, he is restored, stronger even, than he had been before. And the other Rider is never seen again.”

  Drug addict, Cassandra thought. No, dra’aj addict.

  “We think this third Chant allows the Basilisk to eat dra’aj,” Moon added, when it appeared that Lightborn would not continue. “It has even been said that a Basilisk has been seen in his Citadel.”

  Cassandra nodded stiffly, torn between horror and awe. Of course, his Guide was a Basilisk, that was the source of his title. If he were indeed eating dra’aj, it could be possible, she supposed, for him to become strong enough for his Guidebeast to manifest.

  Max knew from the pallor of their faces, the way Lightborn tore
apart the napkin he held in his hands, that this was bad, but it made no sense to him. “What is it? What does this mean?”

  Cassandra wet her lips before answering him. “No one has enough dra’aj for their Guidebeast to manifest. No one. Not in our time. If the Basilisk Prince can do this—”

  “There are some who swear,” Lightborn said, through stiff lips, “that they have seen it. That the Basilisk drinks the dra’aj of others, there is no doubt.”

  The silence was heavy enough to feel.

  “So he’s a kind of, what? Vampire?” Max asked, his brow furrowed.

  “I think it may be worse than that,” Cassandra said. “I’ve seen this type of behavior among humans,” she glanced at Max again, “we both have. The sweats, the shaking, the loss of appetite. He’s addicted now, dependent on eating dra’aj.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “He’ll go on needing more and more, just to feel normal.”