Cassandra found Moon’s steady stare unsettling. “Perhaps the Talismans themselves will act,” she said.
Moon smiled sadly, folding her hands in her lap and swinging her feet. “They did not act before.”
“Why are you here?” This attitude seemed unaccountable in someone who was helping to bring the Prince Guardian back from Exile.
“I am here for you,” Moon said matter-of-factly. “Someone will be High Prince. Or not. Perhaps it will be the Basilisk, perhaps not. There is only one good, one sure thing that comes from restoring the Prince Guardian, my sister, and that is that you will be free of your Oath, and you shall be my sister again. That is all that concerns me in this.” Moon leaned over and kissed Cassandra’s cheek before rising and going to her bed.
I will be free, Cassandra thought. She stared unseeing into the darkness before her. She hardly remembered what it was like to live unbound by her Oath. Had she been free then, she wondered, or merely bound in a different way? No wonder she hadn’t wanted to get up, she thought. Even back in Toronto, even when she was doing such a good job at avoiding the Exile that she could live in the same city as Max Ravenhill and never see him, her Oath had given her purpose, had shaped her life. What shape would her life have when that purpose was gone? It had been so long since that shape had been called “sister” or “daughter.”
It seemed only moments had passed when Cassandra heard Lightborn wake up and get to his feet, huffing and rubbing the sleep from his face, before he joined her on the outcrop of rock above their campfire. Lightborn had found very little to say to her since his Healing at the Turquoise Ring, but he’d been studying her out of the corners of his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking. He was good at it, very casual, but the light glinting off the small green jewel in his earring whenever his head turned toward her gave him away. Whenever she’d met his glance, however, he’d looked away, or made some other motion to show that he had only been accidentally looking in her direction. But Cassandra hadn’t been fooled. The only thing she hadn’t figured out was why he should want to look at her without catching her eye, why he seemed alternately puzzled and thoughtful.
She wondered whether it could be simply Lightborn’s lack of familiarity with the Healing itself, something he had likely never experienced before, given the rarity of Healers among the Riders. Max, child of penicillin, flu shots, and morphine, had taken it much more in his stride.
Still, she’d figured that Lightborn would come to speak to her as soon as he’d thought of a way to do so that wouldn’t sound as though he were thanking her. So when he sat down beside her, much as she had done with Moon, Cassandra made room for him on her rock and waited for him to begin.
“Would you have saved me, if he hadn’t asked it?” he finally said.
Cassandra looked at him sharply. The man had unexpected complexity. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I could say yes,” she shrugged, “but that’s easy to say now.”
“Moon would have left me without hesitation, and she has known me now for some time.”
“You aren’t needed,” Cassandra said. It wasn’t much, but it would do for an explanation.
“I think I would have left you, if the situation had been reversed,” he said, brushing something he could not possibly have seen in the darkness from the front of his cotte. “Is it a human thing?”
“Not leaving people to die?” Cassandra thought over all she knew of human behavior. All the years of war and pillage, Mongols and motorbikes, the Crusades and the Inquisition, the Holocaust and the Gulag Archipelago. Human history was full of examples of those who had abandoned their nearest and dearest—and of those who hadn’t. Human literature, on the other hand, that was full of stories of heroism and self-sacrifice. Maybe it wasn’t so much what humans did, but what they hoped they would do. “Yes, you could say so. I think humans don’t like to leave people to die.”
“You wouldn’t have been leaving me to die, had you left me there in my home. It is not our way to kill prisoners.”
Cassandra wished she could be as sure as Lightborn was. “Tell that to the thing that was stuck on the wall,” she said finally. “I would not leave anyone to the mercy of someone who would call the Hunt.”
Lightborn straightened, with a sharp intake of breath. “I did not think of that, Truthsheart. The Shadowlands must not be such a very pleasant place after all, to be putting such thoughts into your head.” He looked back down at his boots, as if he were admiring their polish. Something else he couldn’t see in the dark.
“Tomorrow will see the end of all this wondering,” she said.
Lightborn nodded. “Tomorrow. And half a Sunturn till the Banishment ends. I pray we have sufficient time.”
“He is not Dawntreader,” he added, after he had been silent for a while. “He is not my friend. And yet he is.” Lightborn looked up into Cassandra’s eyes. “He is like a shadow of the Prince that was. I cannot feel dra’aj in him, but it is more than that. It is rare to feel the dra’aj in anyone these days.” He looked away again. “I can feel yours.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “It is the Healing. Don’t be concerned, it will wear off.” Her words dried in her mouth. Was that what lay behind Max’s feelings for her, too? she wondered, stricken. Could he feel the connection the Healing had made in their dra’aj? Would it wear off? She squeezed her eyes shut. Not that it would matter after tomorrow. One more thing she could stop wondering about.
Lightborn was still nodding in response to her words.
“Will his life among the humans have changed him? From what you have told me, I believe it has changed you.”
“How do you know I’ve told you the truth?”
“Your sister says you always do.”
“My sister is concerned that the Prince’s plans may not match ours, that he may have some plot of his own.”
“Ah, but if you would use your influence on him—”
“You forget,” Cassandra said, standing up. “I have no influence on the Prince. If I have any influence at all, it is on Max Ravenhill, and we are doing our best to make that influence obsolete. As soon as the Prince is restored, my influence disappears.”
As she walked away, Lightborn called after her, his voice as soft as the moonlight, “Dawntreader would not have risked everything, his life, yours, the whole of the Lands, to save me.”
“ ‘Dawn, opens the Window of Day;
Sun, clears the Edge of Sky—’ ”
“Those lines are repeated three times,” Moon said, opening her eyes and looking around at them. “Marking their importance.” She frowned at the crest of the hills before them, her lower lip between her teeth. “The timing is important.” She glanced back at her sister.
Cassandra nodded, her face solemn. “Yes, I think that’s clear.” Max was careful not to catch her eye, sure that laughter showed in his own. Moon was as serious and as solemn as a twelve-year-old, and it would never do to laugh at her.
He took a deep breath of air filled with the scents of dawn, the warming limestone and scrub brush, the sharp animal smell of the horses. They stood on the crest of a small ridge, one of many surrounding the crystal-blue water Moon had said was the Tarn of Souls. Even from this small elevation, the Tarn was as surreal as a body of water seen from an airplane, preternaturally still, and the wind that tugged at Max’s cloak and blew his hair into his eyes did not disturb the glassy surface of the water. Now that the moment had come, Max was glad that everything looked so calm.
“From here it is best we go on foot. The Songs tell that the water may give madness to animals,” Moon said. “They do not, however, limit the numbers that may approach the Tarn of Souls, nor do they tell which of us may speak to the Lady.”
“My vote is for Moon to speak.” Cassandra’s voice was so quiet Max had to strain to hear it.
“As I am the eldest here,” Lightborn said, “I believe it should be my task.”
Max rolled his eyes to the heavens, whatever calm he’d fel
t slipping rapidly away. “Look, people, I’m willing to sit back and let you guys argue about it. But I understood there was a time element here.” He turned to Lightborn. “Were you the one out in front getting us here? Have you made a study of the Songs that deal with this?”
“No, however—”
“The ‘no’ suffices, as the judge said to the rapist. What do you want the rest of us to do, Moon?”
But the young Rider was still shaking her head. “I do not believe the choice is ours,” she said. “I believe we must all approach the water.”
“Done.” With more resolution than he really felt, Max dismounted, tossed the reins of his mount over its head in the way that said “stay here” in any land, and started down the grassy slope toward the water. After a few seconds, Cassandra was at his side. He smiled at her, but while her face lightened a little, he couldn’t really say that the look she gave him back was a smile.
“I guess this is good-bye,” he said under his breath, as soon as he could hope that the sounds Moon and Lightborn made in their own descent would lend them some privacy. “It’s been a great pleasure knowing you.”
Cassandra nodded, her jaw set, her gaze turned downward to watch her feet. Instead of speaking, she reached out and touched him on the arm with the tips of her fingers. Max nodded also, certain that she could see him, and made no move to touch her in return. What could he tell her that wouldn’t make both of them feel worse?
Not that he could imagine feeling worse.
When they were gathered at the edge of the water, Max watched as Moon knelt, lips moving as she repeated the critical Verses to herself. Finally she looked up, and at her sister’s nod, placed her palms three times, lightly, on the surface of the Tarn. There was no wind, Max decided, and no current; no ripples moved out from Moon’s hands, and yet her reflection dappled as if dancing to the splashing of an unseen fountain.
At the instant Moon lifted her hands from the water the third time, a woman’s head broke the surface far out in the center of the Tarn, as if Moon’s movement had drawn it up. The Lady rose as if she had been kneeling and was just getting to her feet, right foot, then left.
Max felt a sudden pressure on his left wrist and looked down to see Lightborn’s hand gripping him. His own hands were clenched and he flexed them, consciously willing himself to relax. Cassandra, several paces to his right, had drawn her sword, and pulled her helm down so that the dragon’s face looked out from between her brows, and the gra’if mail hung long enough to brush her shoulders.
Moon got to her feet, as if unwilling to meet the Natural kneeling. As the Lady approached, it became apparent that she was a small giantess, easily twice as tall as Max. Her eyes were a solid gray with no whites or pupils, like a mountain pool on a cloudy day, and her feet Max could not see, as she seemed to be walking ankle-deep through the water. Somehow, Max found the idea that there was something just under the surface that the ordinary eye could not see more frightening than if the Lady had been walking on the water’s surface. The Tarn of Souls was bottomless, Moon had told them.
The Lady stopped three paces from the edge of the water and folded her arms. She shimmered as if she were a reflection herself, and not a solid being. And yet she must be. Max could see droplets of water clinging to her skin, her hair, there was even one on her eyelashes.
Moon straightened even further and, her voice wavering for the first time, began. “I am one who comes—”
“I know.” The Natural’s voice was cold and clear as a stream in winter. “Thou art Walks Under the Moon. Thy mother was Clear of Light. Manticore is the Beast that guides thee. Your soul is burdened. Still I will not speak with thee, as thou art no kin to me, and I know thee not.” She turned her sightless eyes to Max. “Him I know well, Guardian Prince. I will speak with him.”
Max’s blood pounded in his ears, his mouth suddenly dry.
“What do you want of me, Dawntreader?”
The Basilisk Prince had asked him a similar question, Max thought. Would the Lady of Souls make him the same kind of promises?
“I want to be freed of the Chant of Oblivion,” Max said.
“Herra’aj, the Chant of the Moon,” the Lady said, inclining her head slightly. “You will pay my price?”
Max looked at Moon. She hadn’t said anything about a price, but even as he thought that, he realized she didn’t have to. This was the Lady of Souls, and suddenly Max was certain he knew what she was asking for.
The Natural cocked her head like an inquisitive bird. “Shall I take one of these you bring me?”
Max gripped his own sword hilt, the gra’if metal bruising the palm of his hand. This was why no one else knew how to get here. The Basilisk Prince had used whoever was with him to pay the price. Like a pirate captain killing the men who helped him bury the treasure.
“You can have mine,” he said. What the hell, he thought, I’m a goner either way. “If you’ll wait until I have helped these people.”
Max saw Cassandra step forward out of the corner of his eye. Moon made a moaning noise, but the Lady of Souls answered before anyone else spoke. “I must have my price today.”
“You may take mine!”
Max jerked round to Cassandra, his mouth frozen open, and whirled back to face the Lady.
“You may not,” he said. “I won’t trade anyone else’s soul.”
Without pupils, it was impossible to tell what she was looking at, but the Natural spoke to Max as if she simply hadn’t heard any other voices.
“I may take the souls of any who find their way here and offer them,” she said. “There are always those who do not wish to Fade. Who prefer to become one with me, with the Lake, and through me live from Cycle to Cycle.”
Max shuddered. Would it be immortality if you weren’t yourself? One thing to give up your identity to save the world, he thought, another to do it for that kind of forever.
“She retracts her offer.” He turned back to where Cassandra stood, a white-faced Moon hanging on her arm. “Tell the Lady you retract your offer. I’m still the Exile,” he said when she didn’t speak immediately. “You’re still my Warden, and you can’t . . . you can’t . . .” He shook his head. It was one thing for him to give up his life, but not Cassandra.
“I retract my offer,” she whispered.
“Name another price,” Max said.
“I care only for souls.” The Lady turned to go.
“Wait!” Shaking with reaction, the only thing Max could think of was Diggory’s dismembered body, glued with its own blood to the cold wall of the Basilisk’s dungeon room and turned to stone. What had happened to the Troll’s soul? “What will you do for souls if the Cycle is not renewed?”
The Lady stopped, as if moving against her will, and turned her head over her shoulder to listen.
“Though, of course,” Max used the voice he saved for first-year lectures, “that’s not the only thing you should consider.”
“What, then?”
“You’re not the only one who can give me what I want,” Max said. “I could go to the Basilisk Prince and get what you won’t give me. His bargain might be a little easier for my friends. Then again, if he gets the Talismans and makes himself the High Prince, what stops him from coming after you? What stops him from dealing with you the same way he’s dealing with other Solitaries and Naturals?”
“He would not dare.” But the Lady spoke speculatively, as if she was considering it.
“Oh, he’ll dare,” Max said. “He won’t like it that you can give to others what you’ve given to him. He’ll come here and drain your Lake.”
“He cannot. Even he has not dra’aj enough.”
“Really?” said Cassandra, stepping forward, her toes inches from the water. Max should have known she’d see where he was going. “Maybe there’s not dra’aj enough here, in this world, but what’s to stop him going to the Shadowlands and bringing heavy equipment that dra’aj can’t stop?”
Max didn’t know whether that was
possible. With any luck, the Lady wouldn’t know either.
“I do not know this ‘heavy equipment.’ ”
“And there again, the Shadowlands itself is full of dra’aj,” Cassandra said. Max was not the only person to look at her in surprise. “A whole world full, enough for the Basilisk to use against you, if we do not stop him.”
“And even if you strike some kind of bargain with him, and the Basilisk doesn’t come after you, that still doesn’t make him the true High Prince,” Max continued, “and that means the Cycle won’t be renewed, even if he does get the Talismans. That leaves my original question: What will you do for souls then?” Now it was Max’s turn to be looked at in surprise. He was a little surprised himself that none of them had thought of this.
“All Cycles end,” the Lady said, but she had turned to face him again, and her head was tilted, as if she listened to the whispering of someone Max could not see. Finally, she straightened.
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