“Don’t I?”
Max’s lip curled back. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about your Oath. Well, you can go home, I release you. Hell, you are home.”
Cassandra felt heat rise into her face and turned away, concentrating on the laces of the greave on her shin. It didn’t help that she’d often wondered how much of her love for him was an effect of her Oath. What better way to make sure that she would keep him safe? No, she told herself for what felt like the hundredth time. None of the other Wardens had felt this way.
“Look,” Max said, his voice so soft he must have meant it as an apology, “you don’t understand. You’re asking me to . . . to agree to abandon my self. You tell me that I’ve done this before, that I’ve been other people, and it isn’t that I don’t believe you. Not anymore anyway. But, you’re asking me—the only me I’ve ever known—to die.”
“This isn’t about you,” she said, tying off the lace and switching legs.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Max said, color rushing to his face.
“Not about you, not about me. Not about what you want, or what I want.” Cassandra took a deep breath and straightened to her feet, mouth open to tell him. Serve him right, the arrogant, self-centered son of a bitch. Oh, she could explain to him she knew intimately what loss was, knew it down to the last tear, down to the echo that sounds months, even years later and shows you that what you thought was the last tear wasn’t even close. Yes, it was hard to die, but each person only does it once. She’d had to watch him die over and over. Watch the self that knew her, that loved her, die out of his face. To have him look at her—as he was looking at her now—with a stranger’s eyes. She felt a thickness in her throat, and the stinging burn of tears behind her eyes. She told herself that the trembling in her muscles was exhaustion, not frustration. She took a deeper breath, and then another. Because she couldn’t indulge her anger. She couldn’t tell him all that they had once been to each other, that they had spent almost half a millennium together, eighteen of his human lives. That they had been lovers, not once, but many times, and that she had lost him over and over again.
The first time had been an accident.
It was back in the early days, when the Prince Exile was in his fifth or sixth human life. His Wardens had already started taking turns watching over him, secure in the knowledge that his luck protected him as well as they could, but unable to leave him completely because of their Oaths. Cassandra had been paying her usual visit to Stormbringer, then playing the part of a country lordling, acting as the Exile’s patron. On Stormbringer’s advice, she had come down to the great hall to watch the Exile’s performance. He had been a Bard then, keeper of his people’s history and traditions, witness to their great events and adviser to their lords. Curious, she had stayed to hear him sing, to watch the audience watch him, and to find to her amusement that he watched not the audience, but her. And curiosity, she told herself, had kept her with him for that night, and the next. Eventually, she had told him what she was, what he was, and he’d believed her, and laughed, and made a song of the exiled prince and his demon lover. He had made her swear to come and find him again, in his new life. He made her swear every time. And she had sworn, every time, until the last.
At first, it had been wondrous. She had known, over and over, the best of love, from the first intoxicating euphoria, through to the strong sustaining passions. Who would not want the person they loved to fall in love with them, over and over? But every time it became less joyful, every time less magical, as every meeting was colored by her awareness that the parting must come. And every parting grew more painful. Every first meeting, when he looked at her without recognition, without love, without any memory of their lives together, less bearable.
Until at last, that final time, she had made no vows to him, and when the Wardens met again to give him the dreams that would shape his new life, she had walked away, promising herself that she would watch, she would keep her Oath, but she would never meet the Prince again. And for his last six lives, until the Troll Diggory had appeared in her dojo, she had kept her promise. No, she couldn’t tell him. Because she was about to betray all that they had once meant to each other, though Max Ravenhill would not know it, would feel no sense of betrayal. She was going to use all that she knew about him, all that their many human lifetimes together had taught her about how the Prince’s mind and soul—the parts that never changed no matter what life the Wardens gave him—about how that part of him worked. She was going to use what their love had given her to persuade Max Ravenhill to become the Prince Guardian while there was still time.
And if he knew afterward what she had done, well, she was prepared to pay for it then.
She pulled her hair back off her face and began braiding it behind her head; it seemed to be longer now that she was back in the Lands.
“Do you remember,” she said, “in the subway tunnels, you asked me why I was annoyed with you?”
“You didn’t answer.”
She started to smile, and froze. Even her face muscles hurt. “It used to be a lot easier to convince you that you were someone else, and that in twenty or thirty years’ time you’d stop being Homer, or Musashi, or Bacon, and you’d become someone else again. It didn’t use to frighten you so much then. Maybe in those days people expected to die and be reborn as someone else.” Cassandra found she couldn’t look him in the face after all. She stood up, turned to face the table, and began sorting through the gra’if still lying there. Having something to occupy her hands would help her do what she had to do. Max’s Phoenix helm had become mixed in with some of her gra’if, she saw, her heart sinking with the irony of it.
“You forget,” she said, concentrating on the familiar motions of her own hands as they repacked her weapons. “You will stop being Max Ravenhill, whether you choose it or not. I believe the Chant of Oblivion will go on working, even here, until your own dra’aj is restored.” All the daggers on the table were hers, marked with the dragon’s scales. The Prince Guardian must not have any. As she began to set them to one side, Max took her wrist firmly in his hand. She looked up.
“Just tell me,” he said.
“Threat or no threat, the Basilisk Prince will find you. The Hunt will go on looking for you, feeding on those who get in their way, until you are found. That is the cost of Max Ravenhill’s remaining life, my lord, and whatever new life I might be able to give you. Will you pay it?” she said coolly, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes, seeing the stubborn skepticism on his face.
She turned to face him fully, leaning her hips against the edge of the table, crossing her arms. “The Basilisk wants you, and he will never rest until he has you. Even after he’s taken and bound the Talismans, he’ll still look for you. You will always be a danger to him. But then it will be too late to help these people. Too late to stop the destruction of the Solitaries and the Naturals, to save the Lands that give us all—even you, my lord—life. So perhaps the real question here is not whether Max Ravenhill will die—that death is coming, whatever we might do. The real question is whether that death will have meaning.”
The silence that fell when Cassandra’s rough rich voice stopped was the deepest Max had ever known.
“Nice to have everything clear,” he said, more to break that silence than anything else. He rubbed his face with his hands, looked with longing at the bed, where the soft covers were still thrown aside as he’d left them when he woke up. The pillows still showed the imprint of his head. Maybe the whole thing was a dream and he would wake up. Were these really his options? Disregard the cost and spend the rest of his life on the run? Or give up his identity entirely? Die, and stop this world’s Holocaust, this world’s Gulag? Seemed simple, looked at that way. His fingers strayed once more as if on their own to touch the torque at his throat, his gra’if, feeling its warm and almost feathery texture. He felt calmer somehow, and sat down in the window seat, his back to the sun setting outside. He was barely aware of Cassandra, leaning against the ta
ble, her arms crossed, both swords within reach.
“Tell me something,” he said finally. “What will you do if I say no?”
Cassandra nodded, frowning, as if she was thinking his question over, thinking through her options. The slight movement emphasized the blue shadows under her eyes. She looked at her sword, at the weapons still on the table, and nodded again.
“The Banishment won’t end unless you’re alive. Killing you would keep the Talismans hidden,” she said finally. Max’s heart stopped beating. “It won’t take long for someone else to think of that, if they haven’t already. Lightborn probably has—he looks like he’s hiding something. So we wouldn’t be safe even here, we’d have to go into hiding.”
“Just like that?” Max’s heart started beating again.
Now a ghost of a grin flitted over her features. “Well, it won’t be easy, but yes, just like that. This room isn’t Signed. We could Move from here, though passing through a Portal might be a bit more difficult. We couldn’t count on anyone tricking the guards for us again.”
“No, I meant, ‘just like that’ for you.” He didn’t know why it mattered so much what she thought, but it did.
“As you have reminded me, my lord, I have my Oath.” Her face was bleak, and she turned away from him as she said it.
His restoration would liberate her, he realized, among all the other things it would do. Until then she was bound to him, whether she wanted it or not. She would never just be with him, he would always wonder. Max opened his mouth to say the words that would free her and his breath was sucked away as the air CRACKED! and a dark-haired, purple-clad woman carrying a sword appeared directly in front of him.
Chapter Eight
BEFORE MAX COULD DO more than take a step backward, Cassandra’s long sword was sing-ing through the air, and the strange Rider’s head rolled into a corner as the body collapsed to the floor like a wet paper sack. Max swallowed and looked away from the blood spreading over the parquet floor.
“You sure that wasn’t a friend?”
“Want me to wait and ask next time?” Cassandra didn’t sound particularly concerned as she wiped off her sword on the dead woman’s sleeve.
Max shrugged, a little surprised at how steady he felt, how calm. Swim or drown, he thought, too late to worry about getting into the water. His nose wrinkled as he edged around the dead Rider’s spreading blood and joined Cassandra at the table, where she was stowing his gra’if into a pair of leather saddlebags. Besides the helm, and the torque and mail shirt he was wearing, there were greaves, gauntlets, two swords, and one or two pieces whose use he wasn’t sure of. Max was reaching for his sword when Cassandra picked up his gauntlets and began to roll the fine mesh into a compact bundle. Shivering, Max felt the ghost of her fingers on his own hands and wrists.
“Cassandra,” he started, but a raised finger stopped him from going any further. She was right, he thought. Whatever his decision might be, they’d need their weapons just the same.
Max glanced at the dead Rider and stepped back fast enough to bang jarringly against the table. The floor was empty. No body, No head. No blood.
“Cassandra,” he managed through stiff lips, but she had already whirled around in the direction he was facing, clearly expecting, from the look on his face, to see another enemy.
“Oh,” she said, turning back to him. “It’s all right. I forgot that would happen, it’s been so long.”
“What would happen?”
“She Faded,” Cassandra said. “Her dra’aj returned to the Lands.” She made a face. “At least, I hope it did. I have an idea the whole process used to take longer.”
“Oh-kay.” Max slipped to the far side of the table and picked up his long sword, felt again the buzz of warmth as it fit into his hand, and gave it an experimental swing. It in no way resembled the smooth arc of Cassandra’s stroke, but it made him feel better all the same.
Cassandra shook her head and offered him the shorter sword.
“Take this one,” she said, “we’ll be in close quarters out there, and the long one will only get in your way.” She took the longer sword from him and, crossing behind him, slipped it into the back of his harness, where the weapon hung, swaying slightly, the long hilt just visible out of the corner of his eye. Her own long sword flickered in her hand as she sheathed it through her harness so that it, too, hung down her back, handy, but out of the way. “The long sword is for battlefields and for keeping people at a distance. The shorter sword is for fighting indoors and on horseback. Watch out with it, it’s sharpened at the point and along the edge of the blade as well.”
Max held the shorter sword and felt the same almost sentient response.
Cassandra reached out and changed the position of his thumb on the hilt. His grip was instantly more comfortable; the sword had felt alive before, now it felt awake.
“You’ve done this before,” she said, drawing her own short sword and turning to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, “and wearing your gra’if will make your body remember its old skill, if you give it a chance. So relax, try not to think. Aim at the midline of your opponent’s body, and try to cut straight down, or straight sideways. When you defend, keep your movements to small, short arcs,” she swung her blade to demonstrate, “tap away your opponent’s blade without taking yours too far from the central point. Use both hands whenever possible.” She showed him the grip, and he did his best to imitate it. “There is a snap to the wrists, see? You’ve got the reach on most people, even here, but be careful just the same.”
“Never would have thought of that,” he muttered under his breath as he hooked the sword on the belt loop in his harness.
Noise and movement at the door caused them both to turn around. While Max was pleased to see that his own sword was up and ready almost as quickly as Cassandra’s, the relief when he saw that it was Lightborn proved that he wasn’t as ready for slaughter as he thought. The pale Rider made a quick face, as if he smelled the body and the blood that were no longer there to be seen.
“Are you safe?” he said. “Warriors have been appearing throughout the keep. Who would have thought so many of the Basilisk’s Riders knew Griffinhome well enough to Move here?”
Cassandra shrugged, closing the zipper on her shoulder bag. She adjusted the strap to its full extent, and slipped her head and shoulders into it, making sure the strap passed under the long sword hanging down her back. The bag hung low behind her left hip, where it would stay out of the way of her sword arm.
“Come, my mother holds the main stairs, but we must make our way quickly to the stables before more of the Basilisk’s warriors arrive.” Lightborn opened the door and looked out, keeping flat against the wall.
“Can’t we Move there?” Max said. He picked up his own saddlebags, and Cassandra helped him balance them over his left shoulder. For all that they were full of metal, they seemed very light.
“We must rejoin my mother first, my Prince,” Lightborn said, “I cannot leave her to defend Griffinhome alone, not even for you. Do you follow me, Warden, and the Prince can be eyes-behind.”
“Lead by all means, my lord. But the Prince will be safer between us.” The look on her face was exactly the thinly disguised irritation of any professional who had been given instructions by an amateur. Max had often seen that look on the guy who did work around his house. Lightborn looked astonished—like a teacher corrected by a student. He covered up quickly, but not before Max noticed, and started wondering how much he actually liked the man. Max stepped into position between them to forestall any further discussion. He was ready to get moving; all this talking was just delaying things.
“Were we betrayed?” Cassandra murmured as she motioned Max to follow Lightborn through the door. Her voice was a mere breath in the relative darkness of the castle passage. “Where is Windwatcher?”
Good question, Max thought, but his attention was drawn by the sounds of fighting in the distance. It amazed him how quickly the room behind them had c
ome to seem a refuge, even though the sudden appearance of the woman soldier proved that doors and walls weren’t much of a sanctuary where Riders were concerned. Still, being in the passage made the fine hairs on the back of his neck lift up.
“I would not think it possible,” Lightborn said firmly.
Cassandra shrugged. “He has changed sides once already,” she pointed out.
“Many have done so, since the Great War—time you have spent safely in the Shadowlands, Warden.”
Cassandra’s only answer was a nod that Lightborn couldn’t see.
Before they had gone more than halfway toward the corner of the passage, they were struck by a blast of cold air. Lightborn put a hand to the wall as another wave struck them. Caught in midstep, Max overbalanced, and only Cassandra’s arm kept him upright. As they clung to each other, yet another wave came, bringing with it a sound so low it seemed to resonate in his bones. He smelled a fleeting but familiar whiff of old blood and rot. His stomach twisted, and he felt a sudden sharp pain low on his left side, where a scar marked his encounter with the Hound.
He looked at Cassandra once the sound wave had passed them, but she shook her head, eyes wide.
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