Lightborn waited while his opponent chose his piece and moved it. He saw that there was a way for him to win the game, and he wondered whether he should use it.
“He guessed,” the Basilisk Prince said, when he had moved his Spear and released it. “His instincts were always very sound.”
“And still you sent me to him?” Lightborn kept his voice light, watching the board, as if his only interest were the game.
“Is not the Griffin Lord mine to send?” The Basilisk’s voice was sweet and sharp. “And as it happens, he did not remember.”
Lightborn glanced up, and saw that the Basilisk still studied the board, smiling. “You knew,” he said. “You knew all along that his memory was gone. You sent me to speak to him without telling me. Was this a test?”
“Did you need to be tested?” The Basilisk narrowed his eyes and Lightborn felt his throat tighten. “Do you wish to be tested again?”
A servant entered, a Moonward Rider Lightborn had never seen before, and he breathed again, but not easily. It seemed that more and more of the Riders he saw around the Basilisk’s court were new to him.
“Your pardon, my lord Prince,” the young Rider said. “But Walks Under the Moon wishes to speak with you.”
Once in the room, Moon waited with unconcealed impatience for the Basilisk Prince to dismiss the servant. She was white as alabaster, her hands and lips trembled, and Lightborn felt his own tremor of fear. She would do well to control herself, he thought; in such a state, she could be a danger to herself . . . or to others.
“They are here,” she said, as the door swung shut behind the departing servant. “The Talismans are in the Vale.”
The Basilisk closed his eyes and smiled. In that smile lay all the sweetness and humor that Lightborn remembered from their youth, when they had been only three young Riders, before Dawntreader had become the Prince Guardian, before Dreamer of Time became the Basilisk Prince. Almost, Lightborn could forgive the Basilisk when he saw that smile.
“I can take you to him now. Give me a squad of men and we can kill him.”
“Do not be so hasty,” said the Basilisk.
“But what stops you? You no longer need him. The Talismans are here, and at the Sun’s turn they will manifest.” Her voice was thick, and Lightborn realized that she was very close to crying.
“So long as he is still alive,” Lightborn said.
They both turned, and looked at him.
“He must be alive for the Banishment to end.”
“But they are here, they can be found without him.” Moon reached her trembling hands toward the Basilisk. “Let me show your men, and we can take him as he sleeps.”
The Basilisk stood, nodding slowly, turning toward the window of the room.
“He will not wait for them to manifest,” Lightborn said.
The Basilisk left off staring into space and looked at him. “You have an idea?”
Lightborn shrugged. He knew better than to make too much of this. “Dawntreader knows where they are. Why should he wait for the Sun to finish turning?”
“That he might remove them is all the more reason for you to take him now, to hold him against the time it will be safe to kill him.” Moon looked between the two Riders.
Lightborn shook his head, focusing on the Guidebeast board, as if he didn’t particularly care, as if he were merely considering which piece to move. “In the Vale they may be, but if they were easily found, you would have them already. There is no part of the Vale where you or your people have not been. Let him find them for you,” he said. “If Moon returns to him, you can put your hand on him at any moment. Once he has them, you can easily take them from him. Before the Sun turns, they would already be yours.”
“I tell you—”
The Basilisk raised his hand and Moon subsided. When Lightborn leaned back in his chair, picking up his own glass of wine, the Basilisk came to stand close over him, staring into his face. When he saw the calculation begin in the Basilisk’s look, Lightborn spoke again.
“And there is still the matter of the Stone,” he said. “The Stone will not manifest because it was not hidden, except that it is always hidden. The Stone would proclaim you, given the chance to do so.” He leaned forward, and reached as if to take the Basilisk’s hands in his own without actually touching him. “Let us give the Stone that chance.”
Lightborn repressed a shudder as the Basilisk stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You were always the sentimental one,” the Basilisk said, his voice a soft murmur. “I shall give you your chance.”
“But, my lord, he still holds my sister, he speaks to her in a voice like the sun and she turns to him. She will not be free until he is dead, and you promised me this, you promised me.” Her hands had formed fists, but Lightborn could still see them trembling.
“Be patient, you must not blame your sister,” the Basilisk said, drawing Moon to his own vacant seat, and pouring wine for her into his own glass. “It may be that she has spent too much time in the company of the Exile, exposed to his own peculiar glamour. I well remember how convincing and persuasive he can be. He draws you in to him before you even know of it, until you are ready to stand with him forever.”
He could be speaking of himself, Lightborn thought. The Basilisk, too, had his own peculiar glamour.
“This he has done to my sister.”
“I will not lie to you,” the Basilisk said. “It may be more than her Oath that holds her. It may be that she cannot listen now to another’s voice. It may be that only death will free her.”
Moon’s face went very still, then hardened, the childlike softness that had always been there gone. Lightborn knew that look. It was the look of someone who steeled themselves for the hateful but necessary task. He had seen that look on Cassandra’s face when she had killed the horse in the carnivorous grass. He knew what it felt like, that look.
The Basilisk raised his hand. “Go back before they miss you. When the Exile has the Talismans, then we will come for him,” the Basilisk said, his eyes on the dog. “Then will everything be as you wish.”
“We’ll have to go after them.”
Cassandra looked up over her cup of wine and saw that he had turned from the fire and was watching her.
“You’re giving me that look again,” he said.
Cassandra smiled despite herself. “You only say that to show me that you remember.”
He held out his hand to her, but she sat down on the low chair to the right of the fireplace to stop herself from crossing the few paces of flagstone to join him. He let his hand drop.
“Here your sister has been tactful enough to leave us alone together, and all you can do is sit there looking grim.”
“Here I was thinking that you looked remarkably cheerful, all things considered.”
He crossed the short space between them in two strides, took her hand, and kissed it. “ ‘I were but little happy if I could say how much,’ ” he quoted. “If being human taught me nothing else, it taught me to enjoy today, for tomorrow may never come. You used to know this lesson very well yourself. Have you forgotten it?”
“Perhaps I’ve had less reason to be content with today.”
Max’s face became more serious and the light in his green eyes darkened, though it did not fade away entirely. “Perhaps so. Still, I would change nothing of the past, since it has brought us to this moment. And because we have this moment, I fear nothing from the future.”
Max released her hand and pulled the other chair forward, tugging at it until it faced her. He nodded his satisfaction and sat down. He’d left a little distance between them, but a hand outstretched by either of them would close it.
“Come,” he said, “our circumstances have not changed so much.”
“Haven’t they?”
Max exhaled noisily and sat back in his chair, pushing his hands through his hair. “I understand why you stopped telling me who you were. You did the right thing.”
Cassandra almost smi
led. “You know, for a smart man, you can be remarkably dim. Perhaps we haven’t changed. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that we two people have never really met, despite all the past we’ve shared. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that you now have a whole life, a whole past, that I never shared with you. It isn’t those circumstances that have changed.”
“What, then?”
Cassandra struggled to put into words what she’d been feeling since their arrival in the Keep. “In the past, we were just two wanderers, you and I. Now, you are the Prince Guardian, and I am . . . what? A soldier, perhaps. A Healer.” She shrugged. “I need to find out.”
Max leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared a long while into the flames, the dancing lights calling echoes from the green fire in his eyes. Cassandra began to think that he was meditating once again when he heaved in a sigh, like a man awakening.
“I am not forbidden,” he said, speaking to himself. Cassandra frowned, but before she could ask, he had turned to her again.
“If I had known you before the old Guardian came to me, I would have refused the Guardianship.”
Cassandra smiled at his certainty but shook her head. “We would have been different people,” she said. “You can’t know what you would have done.”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Fundamentally the same you found me always, and therefore always yours.” He leaned forward on his elbows, his fingers reaching out to touch her knee. “My mother didn’t wear gra’if, did you know that?”
Cassandra blinked at the change of subject. “Not many do.”
Max looked at her, without raising his head. “If she had, my father would have been able to find her, he would have been able to Move to her.”
“Fewer still can Move to another’s gra’if,” Cassandra said.
“I don’t offer you everything a man should offer, everything I offered you when we were just two wanderers together. I am not wholly my own to give you,” he continued, his voice showing more velvet now, “but I will give you all I can. Among the Wild Riders, when two who bear gra’if would marry, they exchange . . .” He lifted his hands to his neck and pulled off the Phoenix torque that circled his throat. He held it out to her.
“Fundamentally the same, I swear it.” Cassandra could not look away from the warmth in his green eyes. “I am the only person you’ve ever known. I feel the same thing every time I see you. I felt it as Max, and I feel it now. You are the still center. The world comes into focus around you. Be patient, trust me a little longer, you will see.”
“They say the Prince Guardian has a voice like the Sun. It would make all things turn toward him.”
“Of a certainty this was so. Until the day they all turned away.” His whisper had a wintry chill. “Look in your heart,” he said. “Don’t you know that I speak the truth?”
Cassandra shut her eyes. Wasn’t this how everything started, with Diggory the Troll coming into her office and asking her the same question? She knew the answer now just as well as she’d known it then. She knew the truth of her own heart.
She pulled the dragon torque from her own neck and held it out to him.
Some time later, when they lay together, her head tucked into the curve of his neck, Max could tell that Cassandra was still awake. He shifted, raised himself on one elbow, traced the edges of her lips with his fingers.
“I don’t think I ever heard Lightborn say anything that was not the truth,” she said.
“There is nothing more likely, sword of my heart. Tell me, did he know your lineage, your Guidebeast? No, never mind. Knowing Lightborn, he knew all this and more about every Warden.”
“So? A Rider’s lineage is no secret.”
“All Dragonborn are truth seers, though they may deny what they see. That is why you have the name you bear. Your parents were of the old lineage, even as I am myself, and kept up the old ways, even though no Guidebeast has been seen since my youth. Lightborn knows these things as well or better than I, growing up as he did in his mother’s house. He would know to be careful what he said to you.”
“Do all Guidebeasts have such meanings?”
“More than that, much more.”
She nodded and rolled over, snuggled into him.
“We’ll have to go after them,” she murmured into the dark.
Yet she might be right not to trust him, Max thought, as he felt her breathing slow, her muscles relax into sleep. Like Lightborn, he had spoken only the truth to her. But, like Lightborn, he had left many truths unsaid. He had almost told her, but he could not burden her with the weight of his fears. If the Cycles were ending, this might be the only bit of happiness they could have. The Talismans had not denied him, had not forbidden his joining with her, but no one could be told all the truths about the Talismans. And though it bruised him, heart and soul, he was Guardian of the Talismans first, and the man who loved her second.
Chapter Sixteen
MOON LIFTED THE CLOUD Horse’s saddle from its stand and tossed it over the back of her horse. The animal shied slightly, shifting its delicate hooves. Moon tried stroking its flanks as she had seen the others do, but her trembling hands only seemed to make the animal more skittish. She glanced to where her sister and the Exile stood, Truthsheart checking how he had stowed his weapons. Moon’s jaw clenched. It did not escape her that they were never more than an arm’s length apart. If the Talismans could be found without him . . .
“How is it the Basilisk Prince has not found the Talismans?” Moon asked, pleased with how smooth and easy the words sounded. “The Vale is not so large a place, and he has his artisans working everywhere.”
At least that made the Exile lift his eyes from her sister’s face. Still, he hesitated as if he did not want to answer.
“They are not hidden in the sense you mean,” he said finally in his rough velvet voice.
“In what sense, then?”
“On the morning of the final battle, I took them to Trere’if that they might be safe. When I submitted to the Banishment, it was on condition that they remained where I had left them.”
Submitted. Moon turned her face into her horse’s shoulder so that the Exile would not see the contempt she could not disguise. Submitted. As if he’d had a choice. He would not be so arrogant much longer. She would see to that.
“Were you so sure that it was the final battle?” Truthsheart left the Exile’s side and came to Moon, patting her on the shoulder and reaching around her to attend to the saddle leathers Moon had left dangling.
“I knew from the beginning that I couldn’t win a war.”
“But then why fight it?” Moon let Truthsheart help her into the saddle, finding herself calmed and comforted by the touch of her sister’s hands. Curiosity warred with caution. There were a few of the old Songs that excused the Prince Guardian on the basis of madness. Was it possible that they told true?
“I didn’t think I was fighting a war.” The Exile pulled the last buckle tight on his own saddle, pushing his Cloud Horse’s interested nose out of his face as he did so. “I thought I was safeguarding the Talismans. That’s my task as Guardian.”
“But you could have died at any time. How could you protect the Talismans then?”
The Exile stepped into the stirrup and pulled himself up into the saddle. For a moment it seemed that he would not speak, but finally he smiled, though Moon noticed that the smile did not touch his green eyes. “If I die, and the Talismans are safe, then I have succeeded.”
“That’s madness.” This time Moon spoke aloud, unable to contain her thoughts.
“Do you think so?” Clearly he now spoke to her sister. Moon held her breath, waiting for Truthsheart’s response.
“Once I may have done,” Truthsheart said. “But, ‘the way of the warrior is death,’ ” she quoted.
The Exile nodded. “I would—I will—destroy myself and the Talismans also, rather than have their use perverted. And thus, I would succeed.”
“The Talismans are not yours to destroy!”
The startled jerk of her hands caused her Cloud Horse to toss its head, whinnying.
“On the contrary,” the Exile said, “they are. People have always believed that I refused Dreamer of Time, the one you now call the Basilisk Prince, because there was bad blood between us—which there was.” This time the Prince’s smile did reach his eyes.
“And that wasn’t it?” Truthsheart leaned from her own seat on her mount’s back and tucked a curl of hair behind Moon’s ear. Again, Moon relaxed under the cool touch of her fingers, as she had done when she had been a child and her sister had soothed her. She is mine, Moon thought. I must save her. If I can.
The Mirror Prince Page 27