As Cassandra headed for the exit at the far end of platform, Max edged closer to her. Maybe there were some questions that could be answered now.
“Why does he look like a little boy?” Max kept his voice whisper quiet.
“The better to lure my prey, my lord Prince.” Though he’d reverted to his boy shape, Diggory’s voice was still gravelly and booming.
“What kind of . . . oh.” It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what could be lured into dark alleys by a young child. “So is it children or child molesters?”
“Ah, I had not thought of that.” Max could swear the Troll was laughing. “Has to be the one or the other, does it?” The Troll made a gusty sound that Max realized was a chuckle, but said nothing more.
“Ignore him,” Cassandra advised. “That’s all the answer you’re going to get. He’s trying to distract you.”
“And he’s good at it,” Max said, shaking away the images in his head.
Cassandra had almost reached the exit, with Max close on her heels, when she skidded to a stop, reversed her direction, grabbed Max by the elbow, and propelled him back the way they’d come.
“What the—” Max looked back over his shoulder, and what he saw encouraged him to run faster.
“Go,” Diggory growled as they passed him. “These are mine.” As he spoke, he was already changing, and by the time Max looked back again, the little boy was gone, and the Troll was back.
They rounded the corner on the platform’s other exit and were pounding up the stairs when the screaming started.
Max stopped, hesitated, and took two steps back.
“Max.”
He looked up to Cassandra, above him on the stairs. She was smiling a grim smile.
“Trust me, that’s not his voice.” When Max still didn’t move to follow her, she added, “He’s buying us time to get away. Let’s not waste it.”
It didn’t seem right to run away. Smart, but not right.
Max followed Cassandra up the stairs to the street level, and through the one-way turnstiles. She banged through the plate glass street doors so fast he almost didn’t realize they’d been locked. They ran across the deserted street, and, watching now, he saw the locks “pop” as Cassandra wrenched open the doors to Union Station. This end of the station was the shopping level, and they ran past closed and darkened storefronts, heading for the exits on the far side that led to the train levels.
Now it was Cassandra’s turn to hesitate.
“What?”
“This should be close enough, but . . .” She closed her eyes, forehead wrinkling in concentration. “We’ll have to go up another level.” She headed for an escalator, motionless now, and once again Max followed, by this time thoroughly confused. Street level at the subway end of the train station wasn’t street level through the whole station, he realized as they went up.
They had reached the top of the escalators and passed into the lower level of the train station proper when they heard the howling, and the skittery sound of paws with ragged nails against the terrazzo floor. Max glanced back in time to see a large, light-colored dog with liver markings come into sight at the bottom of the motionless stairs. Behind it, incredibly quickly and silently, moved the Troll. When he saw Max looking at him, Diggory grinned and placed his huge clawed finger against his lips. The Troll then reached forward and grabbed the Hound by its tail, exactly as a small child might grab a pet dog that was trying to get away from it.
Max hoped never to see a child do to a pet dog what the Troll did to the Hound.
“Max, over here.”
Max was happy to turn his eyes away. Cassandra was beckoning from behind an ornate marble counter, once part of the original ticket booth and now, from the evidence, used as a combination condiment and lunch counter by the nearby fast food outlet.
Cassandra had sheathed her sword once more, and held out both her hands to him. “Quickly, look into my eyes.”
Max clasped her offered hands and waited while Cassandra took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw a flash of movement just as Cassandra pulled him roughly to the left. A long dark arrow pinged off the marble next to Cassandra’s elbow and fell to the ground. Max was still staring at it, open mouthed, when Cassandra dragged him away.
They ran, crouching over, to the end of the marble counter. Any farther and they would lose what cover it was giving them. Ahead of them on the right the marble floor became an inclined ramp, leading down in a gentle slope that was easy on travelers’ legs and luggage. Still holding on to his arm, Cassandra looked first toward the incline, then back toward the far end of the counter, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“How bad is it?” Max asked her. And where was Diggory, he thought, just as the Troll dived around the counter to join them. He had shrunk to fit, but there was still uncomfortably little room. Max wondered if the arrow shaft protruding from the Troll’s leg was impeding him at all.
“Are you familiar with the expression ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’?”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You must use the Portal, Truthsheart. It is your only chance. Even you cannot Move here.”
“There are Riders with them,” Cassandra said. “The Hunt can follow.”
“I will create a diversion,” the Troll said. “By the time I am finished, you will be gone.” Diggory smiled, and Max looked away from what was stuck between his teeth.
Cassandra looked at the Troll, her brow creased and the corners of her mouth turned down. Finally, she nodded. “I thank you, Hearth of the Wind, Last Born.”
“You are my fara’ip now, Truthsheart, truly my sister. Tell the others what became of me.”
“I will, Brother,” she smiled stiffly, “so long as the same fate does not befall me.” She turned to Max. “This way, my lord Prince.”
Max didn’t move. “We can’t leave him.”
“Do not take this from me, my lord.” Diggory sketched a sign in the air between them and without another word, leaped up on the counter, cracking the marble and scattering boxes of straws and stir sticks.
As the Troll began to roar, Cassandra grabbed Max’s hand and, still doubled over, dragged him running for the ramp. When another arrow shot past them, Cassandra drew her sword again and used it to knock two more arrows out of the air before they could reach them. Then they were down on the lower level, where short passages along each side of the concourse held the escalators that led to the train platforms.
They did not take any of the escalators, however; they ran straight down the center of the vast hallway, their footsteps echoing loudly on the granite floor. A set of tall double doors with the words “Panorama Lounge” etched into their frosted glass panels blocked off the far end of the concourse. Cassandra ran toward them, and Max thought that she intended for them to make their stand there, with the doors behind them, or perhaps in the lounge itself. But she didn’t slow. When she raised her sword, Max realized that she was planning to cut them a way through the glass, and his steps faltered.
Cassandra tightened her hold, and Max felt the bruising grip of her fingers just as a giant fist grabbed him around his middle, crushing the air from his chest, and threw him toward the door.
The air was sucked out of his lungs until they ached and the world around him blackened and the blood began to roar in his ears. A great pressure squeezed him like a snowball in the hands of a giant, smaller, smaller, until suddenly the pressure released and he soared free.
Then he was lying on a flat, cold surface, stars impossibly bright and impossibly high overhead. The air was warm and humid, nothing like as cold as it should be for the stars to be so bright, and Max could smell flowers. Cassandra was pulling herself to her knees and crawling over to him. Max heard the sound of pounding feet, and the last thing he saw was the shadow above her, knocking Cassandra on the head, and the last thing he felt was the weight of her body as it fell on top
of him.
Chapter Three
THE BASILISK PRINCE, Dreamer of Time, looked to his left just as a shaft of sunlight warmed the small golden bell enough to make it ring. He smiled and pushed away from the worktable and its layers of drawings. The Singer across from him—a Starward Rider, as it happened, her carefully braided golden hair three shades lighter than the color of the bell—relaxed back into her chair. The Basilisk Prince smiled again, and the Singer dropped her eyes.
“That will be all for today,” he told her. “You will remember where to begin tomorrow?” He stood up and walked over to the window without waiting for her to answer what had not really been a question. Of course she would remember, that was what Singers were for. He found his workroom warm again today, despite the opened windows. He looked down at the Garden below, laid out to match the drawings on his table, each section with its own peculiar character. Almost finished. In the years since the War, he’d had every Rider who visited his court—not that they’d known then that it was his court—interviewed by a Singer. And he’d sent Singers out to interview other Riders, whether influential or unimportant, Sunward, Moonward, or Starward. He had given each Singer precise instructions, to use his or her unique ability to record, from each Rider met with, descriptions of the parts of the Lands they knew, the places they’d visited, passed through, lived in.
And while these descriptions were being collected, synthesized, and refined, the Prince had asked his Warriors, those Riders who had fought for him against the Exile, to cleanse the Vale of Trere’if for him. And then, he smiled, he had sent for the most renowned Builders to come and create his Garden. The Lands in miniature he had told them the Garden was to be. From his vantage point, the Prince could see how neatly each section was divided from the rest by white pebble paths. The final touch, the Dedication, only waited for him to be declared High Prince. Then, as a symbol of his new power, he would use those pebbled paths as guides to create walls of dra’aj, his dra’aj, and from that moment visitors to his court would have to Move from section to section. Only he would be able to walk through the Garden like an ordinary Rider. It would be ordinary only for him. It was important, he thought, that all the People who came to his Citadel, especially the Solitaries and the Naturals who came to what would then be the court of the High Prince, be reminded of who and what commanded here. Riders. The only race of the People who could Move unhindered through the Lands. This place, this Garden, would be a symbol of that Power.
Almost finished. Just the last few pieces to fall into place.
A little tune played its way through the back of his thoughts just as the shaft of sunlight rang the second golden bell on his worktable.
He turned back into the room and clapped his hands sharply, making the Starward Singer jump. “Come!” he said. “It is time to visit the Garden. You will accompany me.”
“I thank you, my lord Prince,” the Singer said, rising to her feet, “but my other duties—”
“You have no other duties but to serve your Prince.” The Basilisk found it hard to talk around the sudden constriction in his throat, and the tug in his viscera. Normally he could be patient with these small annoyances, but lately . . . perhaps he was tired. The Griffin Lord had told him to rest, and he should have heeded his friend’s advice. He could feel, almost see, the glow of dra’aj in the Singer, luminous and thick as cream. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip, and he willed them away before they would be noticed. He motioned her to precede him through the room’s arched doorway, careful to stay far enough from her to resist the pull of her dra’aj, watched her cross the landing and let her get two steps down the wide staircase before following.
He needed her alive, he chided himself, unfaded. Would need her until at least tomorrow, when she could tell him where they had left off today. After tomorrow? Well, he would see.
He waited until they were passing the empty Council Chamber before he trusted his voice enough to ask her about a detail that had caught his notice. “What do you know of the discipline called ‘writing’?”
The Singer put her hand out to the railing as she turned her head to answer him.
“A tool of the Shadowfolk,” the Singer said. “I believe there have been attempts to create a written form of our language, but none have succeeded.”
“Why?”
The Singer walked down several more steps away from him before she realized he had stopped. The knuckles on the hand holding the rail had turned white, and he nodded, waiting.
“It is not known, my lord Prince.” Her blue eyes were so beautiful, almost dark in her suddenly pale face. “We can read and write in the Shadowtongues very easily, once we are taught. We need not even be taught the different tongues, it is as if they were all the same for us. It is only our own tongue that we cannot ‘write.’ It is thought that our language is too pure to be physically reproduced.”
“Yes, that is likely,” the Basilisk Prince smiled as a new thought occurred to him. “From our tongue came all other tongues. We are the seed, the beginning.” That fit what he had long believed about the Shadowlands and its connection to the Lands. He signaled to her and continued his descent. “Still, it is not possible that the Shadowfolk have a skill we cannot match,” he told her. “When the Garden has been Dedicated, this will be your new task.”
“Yes, my lord Prince.” This time, the Singer did not turn around.
Almost immediately, he regretted his impulsive words. The project was much too important to leave in the hands of a Starward Rider. Surely there must be a Sunward Singer among the many Singers of the People. But, if he chose a Sunward, would there not be discontent? Once or twice his friend the Griffin Lord had advised that he divide his tasks and responsibilities more evenly among the three Wards. The Griffin had many failings, but for all that he had an excellent understanding.
Nevertheless, good advice could be hard to follow. Though it was only natural, it would not do to show too much favor to Riders of his own Ward. His purpose was to unite Riders against Solitaries and Naturals, to put an end to the petty squabbles that traditionally arose among Moon, Sun, and Stars—not to add to the factiousness. They were all Riders, after all, and had much more in common with each other than they had with any other beings. They were not so much at odds when Guidebeasts were still seen, the Songs told, when Riders still had dra’aj enough for their Beasts to manifest. Then there was less talk about which Ward a Rider claimed. Then honor and status came from the strength of your Beast, not from the color of your skin, hair, and eyes.
Still another proof, if he needed it, that Riders had fallen, another sign that the end of the Cycle was near, that changes had to come. He had done all he could, more, he thought, than anyone else could have done to solve this final problem, to restore Riders and all the Lands to their proper glory. There was only one thing lacking, one missing piece to the puzzle, and that would be supplied by the Exile.
The Starward Singer had waited for him in the entrance hall at the foot of the tower. Now was not the time to be thinking about all he had left to do. This was his time for relaxation, for recreation. At his gesture, the Singer turned and opened the doors into the Garden.
Several of the Riders assembled outside the Basilisk Tower, most in the deep magenta colors of the Basilisk Prince, tried to catch her eye as she came through the doors, but the Prince was much too close behind for Twilight Falls Softly to risk any kind of signal. There were those present who might betray her for even a change of expression, even a frown due to too bright a sun. It was hard to be in the Basilisk Prince’s fara’ip, difficult to win a place, more difficult still to keep it. None here had anything to fear or gain from her; as a Singer she had her own fara’ip, the bonding closer than blood, and wanted none of the Basilisk’s, but there were many who would not believe it.
She moved quickly down the wide stone steps and turned when she reached the flagstones at the bottom, turned in time to bow with the others as the Basilisk Prince appeared in the doorway at the
top of the steps. The doors closed behind him of their own accord, framing him in brightness as their golden wood caught the rays of the sun and gave a special glow to the burgundy of his hair.
Twilight discreetly edged backward, hoping to lose herself in the group of waiting Riders. It wasn’t unusual, she’d been told, to feel uncomfortable in the Basilisk Prince’s presence—that was the price of exposure to great power—but his direct regard was beginning to terrify her. Too many people who’d received that regard were seen no more, as if the weight of the Prince’s notice removed you from the notice of all other Riders. Once or twice she was sure she’d seen a look of hunger in his eye. She’d learned to identify the danger signals, the sudden pallor, the minute trembling of the hands, the almost imperceptible dampness of brow and upper lip.
The Mirror Prince Page 6
