“I can leave, but what of you, my sister? Surely you will not stay?”
“Oh, no, but—will you manage? I must go quickly—I took so long to find you—” Twilight was ashamed to be so relieved, but if the Sprite had no further need of her . . .
“Wait, my sister, are you not afraid that the Hunt will follow you?”
“The Hunt is not here,” Twilight said. But her Singer’s ear heard the question in her words.
“Do not be willful, my sister, do not deny what you know to be true. Come with me, it is the only way.”
“If I Move us, the Prince will know—”
“But he cannot know if I go! And you are my fara’ip now, my sister, and so can travel with me. I will keep my waters flowing, and none shall see you. What is your name?”
“I am Twilight Falls Softly,” Twilight said. Sister to a Natural? Why not? “My mother was Stars Unchanging, and the Hydra guides me.”
“The Hydra? A water beast! You are well-named and we are well-matched, my sister. I am Tear of the Dragon, and Water is my guide. Come, take my hands, and we will go together from this place.”
Twilight drew in a deep breath and took Tear’s hands.
Cassandra added a palmful of fragrant leaves to the pot of water heating near the fire and remained there on her knees, as if the tea needed her supervision to steep. Like the stone carafe that was always full of wine, and the basket that was always full of fruit, the fire burned without benefit of added fuel. How strange, how miraculous after all this time; and yet, how ordinary, here in the Lands. She looked around. There wasn’t even a fireplace poker for her to play with. Which, now that she thought about it, was probably a good sign. That the poker was missing meant that someone—someone who didn’t want it to be used as a weapon against him—would be along to confront them.
Not that she was looking forward to the confrontation, exactly. Without turning her head, Cassandra stole a glance at the table where Max sat sound asleep, his head pillowed on his crossed arms. So far her confrontations weren’t going very well. Still, if she was lucky, enemies with weapons would show up and give her something easier to do.
She released her breath in a long sigh. There was no telling how much time they had before someone did show up, and past experience told Cassandra that she and Max needed to finish talking. She’d hoped the tea’s spicy smell would wake Max up, so she wouldn’t have to. She was perfectly aware that her reluctance to wake him had nothing to do with his needing his rest, and everything to do with not wanting to see that look on his face again. She shuddered. Had he ever looked at her with quite that mix of anger and disgust before? Come on, she told herself, it can’t get worse. If only she believed it. She stirred the pot. The tea was ready, too much longer and it would be stronger than Max liked it.
“Max.”
He came awake and alert immediately, as he always did, and Cassandra’s heart turned over. Too much the same . . . and not enough. His eyes narrowed as he saw her, but thank all gods the look she dreaded was no longer in them. She poured his tea, carried the delicate cup back to the table, and set it near him.
“Truce for now?” she said, sinking into the chair she’d used before.
He rubbed his face, shaking off sleep. “What you told me doesn’t change anything,” he said finally, the velvet of his voice rough and broken. “It’s not proof. I mean, you’re Sidhe, Faerie. Nothing’s beyond you, not even—”
Not even, Cassandra thought, seeing in the stiffness of his face what Max was unable to say, knowing what song Franny had been singing as she bled to death. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair under the edge of the table, where he could not see. She should have known he would have thought things over before he fell asleep, and he would have told himself that of course she knew secret things about his life. It would take him a while longer to reach the next conclusion, that if she was Sidhe, and could do anything, then it also followed that she could do what she had told him had been done, and that therefore everything she had said to him could be true.
“There’s no harm, then,” she said, keeping her voice carefully neutral, “in my telling you the rest of the story, the events that bring us to this room.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
Cassandra drew a goblet toward her. As she expected, it was clean, no residue of wine left dried to the bottom. As she put her hand on the pitcher, Max raised his eyebrows, warming his hands around his mug of tea.
“Wine for breakfast?”
“We don’t get drunk,” she said as she poured, her eyes carefully watching the dark red stream as it flowed from jug to goblet, “and as you pointed out, we’re not human.” She set the pitcher down slightly to the left of where it has been, so that it was no longer precisely between them. She leaned back in her chair, focused her attention on a bloodstain near the neck of Max’s T-SHIRT—SHE couldn’t quite make herself look into his eyes—and began.
“The Songs tell us,” she said, “that long ago, closer to what was probably the middle of this Cycle, you were called Dancer at Dawn, or Dawntreader. Your mother was Light at the Summit, and your father was Raven of the Law. The Phoenix guides you. It was said then that you always knew the why of things, understanding their beginnings in a way that others could not. Then the Choosing came, and you became the Prince Guardian, the Talisman Keeper.”
Max cautiously sniffed at the tea in his cup before taking a sip, apparently satisfied. “Wait a minute. What’s the choosing?”
Cassandra found she had to consciously stop from speaking in the rhythms of Song telling, “When a Guardian feels her dra’aj Fading, or his, of course, though it’s almost always a woman, she chooses an apprentice to be the next Guardian.”
“And what does that mean, to be a guardian?”
Cassandra studied the leaf pattern glazed into her wine goblet as she turned it around in her fingers. “Not a guardian, the Guardian. The People have four sacred Talismans. There is Ma’at, the Stone of Virtue, which cries out when the High Prince steps upon it. There is Porre’in, the Spear of War. Whoever holds it leads the People in battle. There is Sto’in, the Cauldron of Plenty, font of dra’aj, from which comes all life, and all living things in the Lands, and there is the Sword of Justice, Ti’ana, which is never defeated. The Guardian keeps these Talismans safe until the High Prince comes.”
“So he’s a kind of regent?”
Cassandra risked a glance at his face, but Max was not looking at her. Instead, his eyes were narrowed into a very familiar frown of concentration. His Bard’s look. What he would, no doubt, call his history teacher’s look.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “There’s been no High Prince in my time, or the time of my father. It’s possible for Riders to go their whole lives—and we live very long lives, by human terms—without ever knowing a High Prince. The times of these Princes are told of only in the Songs, and the Songs say these Princes come only toward the end of each Cycle, to guide the people into the new time. I doubt there are any now living who have seen the last High Prince.”
There were times, Cassandra thought, when she had sat across a campfire from this man and watched him tune his harp as she told him this story. At this point, he usually asked about the Songs of the People, recognizing that they were histories, as were the epics of the Bards, but not this time. This time he only nodded for her to continue.
“You had not been the Prince Guardian for long when the Lands began to . . . darken. This darkening was more than the Fading our parents had long spoken of, as they told us of the glories of their youth, the glories we young ones had never known, when the dra’aj was plentiful and Guidebeasts were still seen. The Hunt appeared and grew stronger, though no one knew who had called it, and with it other monsters and abominations. Heroes did not return from quests. Two of the Nine Portals collapsed and shut, and there was not dra’aj enough to restore them. Places, some of them well-known places, changed so that they could not be found by Moving, one had actually to Ride th
ere, only to find them blasted almost beyond recognition.
“A Rider called Dreamer of Time came to you saying that the Cycle was clearly turning, bringing with it the time for a High Prince. And Dreamer asked you to let the Talismans speak, certain that they would choose him. You refused.”
Max frowned in concentration, putting down his cup and leaning forward on his elbows. “Why?”
“So far as the Songs tell, you shared your reasons with no one. Many supported you, saying that the Guardian alone could offer the Talismans. And many supported Dreamer, saying that the times were turning dark, and that a High Prince was needed to save the Lands.”
“So came the war.”
Max sat back abruptly. “Typical. Country’s in trouble and the best thing these two idiots can think to do is have a war.”
Cassandra smiled. “You were one of those idiots, my Prince.”
“That’s what you say.” Max shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me. I lost, right?”
“You lost.” Cassandra couldn’t keep a small smile from escaping her control. Max had just spoken of himself as the Prince. It didn’t surprise her. He was the Prince, however much he denied it.
“Speaking hypothetically,” he added.
She nodded, his tone wiping the smile from her lips. Prince or not, Max Ravenhill was still a historian, trained to think objectively.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Some called for your death, calling you a traitor to the People, the cause of war since you refused Dreamer the Talismans. But the majority of Riders were against that. It was one thing to disagree with your decisions, they thought, quite another to kill you. After all, who could know what might come of it, if the Guardian was killed? Then Dreamer himself, now called the Basilisk Prince after his Guidebeast, spoke for your Banishment, and prevailed. And here was this other world, the Shadowlands, to which you could be sent.”
Max nodded, considering. “Okay, banishment. Good thinking. But it doesn’t explain why I don’t remember any of this.”
“How could they Banish one of the Traveling Folk? A Rider who can Move where he wills?” Cassandra shrugged. “The Basilisk Prince knew of a Chant that would remove your dra’aj. We Wardens were sent, under Oaths, to protect you, lest, in your changed state, you be killed by humans. As I’ve said, we found that your memory had gone with your dra’aj, and though it was unexpected, it made a horrid kind of sense. Without dra’aj you couldn’t return, without memory you couldn’t rally your followers or be used as a tool by them,” she pointed out sourly.
“But we’ve had very little to do over the years. You have some very powerful luck working for you. Hearth of the Wind, the Solitary who called himself Diggory, said that it was your dra’aj, awake inside you even though you did not feel it.”
“Today hasn’t felt very lucky, somehow.”
She smiled and shrugged. “We still live.”
Max waited, watching the warm firelight play across Cassandra’s ivory skin, until it became apparent that she had finished speaking. He shifted a little under her steady gaze. Though she’d avoided meeting his eye, all along she’d been looking at him with a teacher’s special patience, or as if she was taking him through his lines in a play she knew too well.
“So what’s changed now?” he said. “Why come after the Guardian now?”
She spread her hands. “Diggory said it was because of something that only you know. That can only be the location of the Talismans. And that makes no sense.” She frowned in concentration until Max coughed softly. “Your followers agreed not to oppose the Banishment so long as the Talismans remained safe, which is to say in hiding, until it was over. Only you know where they are.”
Max shook his head slowly, barely able to stop himself from laughing out loud. Only the look on Cassandra’s face stopped him. “But I don’t know where they are.”
For a moment Cassandra merely looked at him. “Then, regardless of what you believe, you’d better do your best to help me convince them you are the Prince Guardian. Otherwise, they may kill us out of hand as being of no use to them.”
Max rolled his eyes upward. “Great,” he said. “My life just might depend on my actually being someone else. So to save my life, I have to give up my life. You people are just charming, so glad I ran into you. Death by Hound is looking better and better.” He pushed aside his mug of tea, cold now, and sat forward, leaning his right forearm on the edge of the table. In this light Cassandra’s hair looked like old gold, and her eyes were dark as agates. Only her skin remained the palest of ivories. He could see where a fold of cloth had creased her cheek while she slept.
He knew nothing about her, Max realized, beyond that she had saved his life several times in the last day. No, not his life, he amended, the life of this Prince she claimed he was. This Prince she’d known for hundreds of years. The story she’d been telling explained what had brought him—if he was this Prince—to this room. She hadn’t really explained what had brought her to this place.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
She looked up, startled into finally meeting his eyes. “My Rider name is Sword of Truth, or Truthsheart. But Cassandra will do, if you don’t find it too ironic.”
Max frowned, but only for a second. Of course she would name herself after the Trojan princess who tricked Apollo, who then cursed her, saying she would always speak the truth, but never be believed. Of course she would find it ironic.
“Did you know him? Is that why you’re so sure about all this? Were you . . . friends?” Looking back, something in the way her voice changed at parts of the story told him this might be true. Even now, her face showed a subtle sadness as if it cost her some effort to answer him.
“I did not know the Prince Guardian,” she said, her eyes fixed on a pastry her fingers were pulling into crumbs. “We Wardens weren’t chosen from among those who knew you, my lord. We were from neutral families, small families, old, but with little dra’aj. My father withdrew from the conflict when my mother died. That was as much darkness as he was able to deal with. I don’t think he actually remembered that there was a war, unless he was reminded. The world and its concerns had stopped for him.”
Max’s next question went unasked.
A soft bell, like the note of a bird, heralded a change in the movement of the air around them. The smell of applewood faded as fresh air spun through the room. Cassandra rose to her feet and drew Max to the side of the table, so that they stood with the fireplace to their backs. She tried to edge herself in front of him, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“I would rather stand beside you, if I might.”
She gave him a careful stare, and nodded.
The tapestries on the far side of the room shifted, billowing out slightly to allow the passage of a young Rider dressed in green. Cassandra saw that he was a Starward Rider like herself, pale, blue-eyed, with hair so fair it was almost white.
Chapter Five
WHEN HE HEARD THE SOUND of axes, Windwatcher bit back on the curse that rose to his lips, and tried to ignore the chill spot just below his heart. The sudden tightening of his muscles made him jerk back on the reins, and his Cloud Horse swung her head in protest. But that was safe enough, he could always claim to have been startled by the noise.
“Coming here is not the cleverest thing we could have done, my lord,” Horse of Winter said quietly, shifting as if uncomfortable in his borrowed colors. “We should have Moved directly to Griffinhome.”
“So I believe you told me, Horse of Winter.” Would that I had listened, Windwatcher thought as he saluted with a casual wave of the hand the Sunward Captain of the Guard overseeing the men who wielded the darkmetal axes as they rode by. “You were right, this is a mistake, but I would have felt a coward if mere rumors had kept us away.” Curiosity could kill even so old a cat as himself, he acknowledged, worrying at the inside of his lip with his teeth, but when Horse of Winter had come to Windfast with his urgent summons to Griffinhome, Windwatcher h
ad been on horseback already, going to see with his own eyes what rumor had whispered to him. And it was true. The hollow cold spread until Windwatcher had to look down to make sure his hands still held his reins. The Stories told that Naturals lived through many Cycles, perhaps even through all of them, from the beginning of the world. This would be the last Cycle for the Natural of Ne’agal Wood.
Windwatcher forced his shoulders down and laid his left hand loosely on his leather-covered leg, not far from his sword hilt. The picture of idle curiosity—he hoped.
“What do you think it has done, the Natural of these Trees, to have merited this cleansing?” Horse asked.
“Who can tell? Undoubtedly committed some folly, real or imagined, which has forfeited the promised protection of the Basilisk Prince.”
“Perhaps it merely ventured too close to the citadel of whatever pet of the Basilisk’s has the disposal of this holding.” The younger Rider murmured between lips carefully smiling to hide the feelings Windwatcher saw in his eyes.
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