The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “And this is the Rider who would be our High Prince.” Windwatcher’s voice was heavy.

  And there it was. The part of Max that was the history professor rubbed its hands in academic satisfaction. This is what made for interesting study. But most of him felt hollow and cold. Political ambition and savvy wedded with instability, perhaps even insanity. An Alexander would have been bad enough, but a Hitler?

  “We must go ourselves to the Tarn of Souls,” Moon was saying, leaning forward, “taking the Prince Guardian with us, and obtain there the Chant that will free him.”

  “Is this possible?” Cassandra asked.

  “How can we know, until we have the Chant?” Moon said. “The Basilisk learned how to use it; we may do the same.”

  “I do not see an alternative,” Lightborn said dryly in his light voice.

  “Where is the Tarn?” Windwatcher asked.

  “We cannot Move there,” Moon said. “The Songs tell of no one except the Basilisk Prince who has actually been there. But there are many Songs that tell of the Tarn of Souls, and how one might find it, who wishes to speak to the Lady there. We would have to Ride, but we should be able to find the Tarn before the next turning of the Moon.”

  “A small company of Riders,” Honor suggested. “Large enough to defend against those Solitaries and Naturals who may seek to attack us, but small enough that we may hope to pass unnoticed by the Basilisk’s men.”

  “Best if we do not Ride then,” Windwatcher said to Honor. “I have been summoned to court, to witness the dedication of the Basilisk’s Garden, as I am sure you have as well?” Honor of Souls agreed with a grimace of distaste. “Then I will think which of my Riders will not be missed.”

  “I will Ride.” Lightborn looked around the table. “The Basilisk will not think to see me for some days, knowing that I visit my home.”

  “See you be sure of that,” Windwatcher growled.

  Lightborn’s face hardened, and for a moment he looked as if he might speak, but the touch of his mother’s fingertips resting lightly on his hand kept him silent.

  “It does not matter which of us is willing, unless the Prince will go.” Lightborn finally said, turning to Max.

  A shock ran through Max as everyone at the table turned to look at him.

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” he said, raising his hands palms outward. There was a tightening in his chest as it was brought home to him where all this talk was leading. He’d let himself get distracted by the political puzzle, lost in thinking about these lives and their problems in a haze of academic abstraction. He’d forgotten that they were actually talking about him. About his going to this Tarn, about this Chant being used on him. He knew what his answer had to be.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Max—”

  “No!” Max flung away Cassandra’s reaching hand. He couldn’t believe this. Here they had been talking about him, deciding about his life, as if he weren’t even in the room. As if they didn’t realize what they were asking him to do.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. If you had even a clue what you were asking, you wouldn’t.” He pushed back his chair and stood, looking from Lightborn to Windwatcher and back. Would either of them try to stop him? He looked back at Cassandra. Would she? “You’re asking me to . . . to . . .” Fists clenched, shoulders hunched against the raised voices behind him, Max pushed past the guards in the doorway.

  Chapter Seven

  CASSANDRA WAS HALFWAY to the door when Lightborn grabbed her by the arm and spun her around.

  “What was done to him, there in the Shadowlands? That coward’s answer is not the Prince’s.”

  Muscles twitching with tension, Cassandra very slowly lifted her hand from the hilt of her shorter sword and held it open, fingers spread. She had seized it out of reflex, and she had to be certain everyone saw her letting it go. Lightborn, his face strained and pale, took a step back from her, though he rested his hand on his own sword seemingly by accident as he moved away.

  Cassandra waited for him to draw, released a deep breath when he did not. “Better you should ask the Basilisk what was done before we had him, or perhaps I should say what else was done. This is nothing of ours. He is no coward, but he is not the Prince you knew.”

  Honor of Souls and Windwatcher were both on their feet, both in their own way maneuvering to stand between her and Lightborn. Only Moon, her hand to her mouth, had not moved from her seat at the table.

  “Come, we must have peace,” Honor of Souls said, holding out a hand to each of them. “If we fight among ourselves, the Basilisk will win. Lightborn, that you would even pretend to draw on a Rider bearing gra’if shows you lack the sense your Guidebeast gave you. Truthsheart, for the love I bore your mother, take your seat again, I beseech you. Let us finish our council, and when we have a plan, that will be time to speak again with the Prince Guardian.”

  Cassandra squeezed her eyes shut against a stab of headache. She wished she could simply Move Max back to Toronto, away from all these people, give him back his life as Ravenhill, the life he wanted. But even if these people would let her do it, she knew the Basilisk would not. He would hunt Max down until he found him. What was it Max had said? In order to save his life, he had to become someone else? Well, it looked like he was right. They were out of options. They had to keep the Talismans from the Basilisk Prince. They couldn’t leave the Lands, and all the People in it—Rider, Solitary, and Natural—in the hands of an uncontrolled addict. She saw that clearly—but would he see it the same way?

  “I will speak with him,” she said. “Time for plans when he has agreed.”

  Lightborn left the council room as soon as he decently could, his face flaming hot at the memory of his exchange with the Warden. He made his way down to the stables, taking his time, walking more slowly as he calmed down, reluctant to take his temper and his anxiety—he swore by his Guidebeast that it was not fear—to disturb the Cloud Horses. The stables were his refuge, the calm of the great horses his balm, but there was more to his purpose now than the regaining of his own equilibrium. The Tarn of Souls was no ordinary place, and the journey would have its own perils. He had raised these horses from birth, and they would do whatever he wished without question. Still, it suited him to ask.

  After he had spoken to them, each one individually, using their secret names that only he knew, and receiving the answer he expected, Lightborn turned to the other tasks necessary for the Journey. He was checking equipment, testing the fastenings on each saddle, the buckles of the delicate bridles, when he heard Honor of Souls enter the stable behind him.

  “Did you make that?” she asked him, laying her long graceful fingers on the jeweled buckle in his hand.

  “Long ago,” he said. “It shines with a different brilliance when it is under the Sun, the Moon, or the Stars.”

  “Like the cloak pin you made for me?”

  Lightborn nodded, smiling.

  “So well you think of your mother, then, that you make her the same jewelry that you make for your horses?”

  Lightborn shook his head at the old joke.

  “Did you tell him?” she asked.

  “You were too quick, I had no time,” he said, turning away from her to set the buckle down.

  His mother waited.

  “He does not know me,” Lightborn said finally. “How can he trust me now if I tell him the truth of it?”

  “Better you should tell him now than that he learns of it from others.”

  “What others? There is only one other who can tell him.”

  The silence in the stable was broken only by the shuffle of hooves.

  “Not so,” Honor of Souls finally said. “I can tell him.”

  Lightborn covered his eyes with the heels of his hands. “What if he need never learn of it? How if it should come to pass that way?”

  For answer his mother took his wrists, gently pulling his hands away from his face. She stroked his cheek with her cool palm. Lightborn closed
his eyes.

  “The path you walk is so narrow, and the fall so very far should you misstep,” she said softly.

  “I will be careful,” Lightborn promised.

  His mother believed that he was through with all deceptions, Lightborn thought as he followed her across the starlit courtyard and back into Griffinhome. Lightborn wished that it were so. What if they could not restore the Prince? They could not let the Basilisk find him. A problem with only one solution is no problem, his father used to say.

  How could Lightborn tell his friend the truth, when he might have to kill him?

  Walks Under the Moon gripped the edge of the table she sat on and looked down at her swinging feet. The table trembled with her movement, but that was part of the fun. Her soft leather slippers were the same silver-gray color as her sister’s eyes, her gown the silver, red, and black of their fara’ip. She refused to wear the monochrome dress of the court dandies. Her lip curled back. Let everyone take her for a lesser house, unaware of court fashions; she knew her true value. Moon pointed her toes out, then in.

  She smiled, swinging her feet separately, feeling the table shift to accommodate the difference in her movement. She’d only had leisure for short visits home for, oh, many turnings of Sun, Moon, and Stars, but that would all be changed now. Now that Truthsheart was returned, and they were a fara’ip again, they would go home to Lightstead, and it would be their home once again, restored.

  Once Truthsheart was freed of her Oath.

  Moon sighed, disappointment pressing her lips together. She had seen her sister at last, that was something, and more than something. She closed her eyes and saw again that look of special sunny warmth that only Truthsheart had ever shown her. But Truthsheart was still bound. Moon frowned, her feet still.

  Surely once the Exile was restored, Truthsheart would be free, released from the Oath their father had forced her to take.

  They had found their father in his tower room. His favorite room since his wife, their mother, had died. Moon did not know where the room was, exactly—since her father’s Fading she had never been able to Move there again.

  They had stood, hand in hand, and watched quietly until their father turned from the window, which that day had looked out over a bank of clouds. When he faced them, Truthsheart spoke.

  “I will go, Father,” she had said. Little Moon had pressed her face into her older sister’s side, trying not to cry.

  “You may refuse, Truthsheart,” her father had answered. But not, Moon remembered, in a voice that said he wished her to refuse. And not, Moon supposed, that Truthsheart had really been able to refuse. Already a gra’if wearer, she was a Healer, after all, a rare Gift even among the Dragonborn. A good choice to accompany the Exile and his Wardens to the Shadowlands.

  “I will go, Father,” Truthsheart had repeated, and Moon felt again in memory how her sister had stroked her hair with her warm, gra’if-metaled hand. And he, who was their father, had nodded and turned back to his window.

  Moon had cried then, but she had managed, jaw clenched tightly, not to beg her sister to stay. She knew very well, even then, that Truthsheart would never have left her if their father’s illness, and worse, his indifference, had not made it necessary that someone act to secure their fara’ip’s future. Truthsheart’s actions had put all Riders into their debt, as they were in the debt of all three fara’ip that provided Wardens for the Exile. Everything Moon had now—her standing among Riders, her freedom to pursue her researches, Lightstead, the fortress of her fara’ip, even her unfashionable gown—had been bought by her sister’s sacrifice.

  Well, that had gone on long enough. Now the Banishment was ending, and there would be a High Prince, and she would get her sister back. So much fuss, she thought, looking back over the council in Griffinhome. What did it really matter who became High Prince? According to the old Songs that told of it, it was simple enough to tell who the chosen one would be—and it seemed to Moon now that there was only one obvious choice. A pity others did not study the Songs as thoroughly as she did. They asked her for the answers they wanted, never asking for her opinion. It was true that no one liked the Basilisk Prince, but who else could it be? Well, her feet stilled as she considered. What about the Griffin Lord? But after a moment she shook her head. The game he was playing was so deep not even Moon could make it out.

  A noise and she hopped down from the table, shook out her loose flaxen hair, and crossed the cold stone, inlaid with tiny basilisks, to the padded bench, where she sat, carefully arranging the folds of her red-and-silver gown, folding her hands neatly in her lap.

  The door opened and Moon rose to her feet, heart pounding. A Sunward Rider stood in the doorway, thinner than when she had last seen him, smiling a smile that shook her bones.

  “My child,” he said. “A great pleasure to see you.”

  “My lord Prince,” she said, as she felt the cool touch of his finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to look directly into his hazel eyes.

  He gestured, the fall of his hand as light as smoke on a breeze, and Walks Under the Moon followed the Basilisk Prince into his rooms.

  “So, that went well.” Even to herself, Cassandra’s voice sounded thick and tired.

  Max rounded on her from where he had been staring out the window, his skin paled to bone, dark smudges showing under his eyes. “What did they expect me to say? What did you expect me to say?”

  Cassandra ignored him, propped one hip on the edge of the table, and rolled her head back and forth, stretching the muscles in her neck.

  With her eyes closed, Cassandra linked her fingers and stretched out her arms, arching her back like a cat, rolling her shoulders individually, and then arching her back the opposite way. She swung her right leg completely onto the tabletop and reached for her instep. It was more important than ever that she stay relaxed and calm; if she couldn’t sleep, she could at least stay loose.

  “Well?” he said finally, stalking toward her.

  Cassandra turned her face enough to look at him, glanced pointedly at his fisted hands. “Put those away,” she said, her voice squeezed from the angle of her throat, “you might hurt yourself.”

  Max lowered his eyes and relaxed his hands. “Aren’t you going to try to persuade me? You know, appeal to my better nature, that sort of thing?”

  Cassandra let go of her right instep and stopped pressing her cheek into her kneecap. She looked up and wrinkled her nose.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, straightening until she could look him in the face. “So what now?”

  He shook his head minutely. “Now?”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re the military history expert? So I’m assuming you have some strategy to suggest?” Max opened his mouth, but when he said nothing, Cassandra turned to face him more squarely. She leaned back against the table, crossed her ankles and folded her arms, tilted her head, and smiled. The very image of the courteous underling awaiting instructions.

  The corners of Max’s mouth turned down. “Look,” he said, biting off the word. Cassandra raised her eyebrows and nodded brightly, stifling a smile when his hands balled into fists again . . . and then relaxed. “I’m no threat to this Basilisk Prince, not as I am anyway, not as me. If I disappeared, couldn’t we . . . wouldn’t he just let me go?”

  Cassandra straightened, pushed her shoulder bag out of the way, and pulled Max’s Phoenix-carved gra’if chest toward her. Her hands hovered over the lid for a moment, but when Max said nothing to stop her, she pushed it open. Max was wearing his mail shirt, but his helm, like hers only with a Phoenix’s face on the forehead piece, his torque, gauntlets, and both swords were still in the chest. She pulled out the torque, held it out to him.

  Max looked from the gra’if to her face and back again before taking the torque out of her hands. He slipped it around his throat one-handed, with a practiced motion, but clearly without being aware of the ease of his own actions, automatic, as though he’d done it hundred
s of times before, as indeed he had. Cassandra let out her breath; what she had to do would be easier the more he was touching his gra’if.

  “You may be no threat,” she agreed, “but the Basilisk may not see it that way. We’ll go if that’s what you want, but we’ll go armed—we may need to fight our way out.” She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out her greaves, propped her right foot on the edge of one of the armchairs, and began fitting the piece of gra’if to the front of her shin.

  “You don’t have to come.” Max tossed his helm back onto the table. Cassandra turned her head to look at him. He still wore the torque.