The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “What now?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Cassandra said, taking a step back from them, her hands raised.

  Lightborn gave a bark of laughter. “Truthsheart, I did not expect you to succeed in bringing us here and yet you did . . . so why not this?”

  “It might be possible to Move him,” she said, sitting back on her heels after examining Max’s wrists again. “But I think he would lose his hands.”

  “Let’s try that last,” Max said, unconsciously flexing his hands in their metal prisons.

  “Show some backbone,” Lightborn said, still smiling. “She would be able to Heal you. You would, would you not?” he added, turning to Cassandra.

  “Probably,” she said, nodding slowly.

  Max glanced at the hideously decorated wall. He noticed for the first time that both Cassandra and Lightborn had positioned themselves with their backs to it. “If that’s my alternative,” he said, pointing with his chin, “I’m willing to try it.”

  Cassandra glanced over her shoulder, her eyes following his gesture. She stared for a moment before getting to her feet and crossing the stone floor, steps slow, lifting her hand and stretching out her fingers. Lightborn turned so that he, too, could watch her. How can she bear to look at it, Max thought, let alone stand so close . . . touch it?

  “He’s smiling,” she said when she was close to the wall; her voice broke a little and she cleared her throat. “He tricked the Basilisk somehow, the old Troll. He angered the Basilisk with his last act. This,” her nail ticked against a twisted dark gray limb, “this is stone now. True work of the Basilisk.”

  “So he went down fighting?” Max said, finding that he, too, could now look.

  “Oh, yes,” Cassandra breathed, still looking upward at the face.

  “Protecting us,” Lightborn whispered, his voice gentle and reverent.

  Cassandra bowed deeply at the thing on the wall, touched it once more with her fingertips, before turning back to face them. “I have an idea,” she said.

  “Truthsheart.” There was a warning note in Lightborn’s voice now. Max glanced away from Cassandra’s frowning concentration to find the pale Rider had moved a few steps nearer the door. “I think we must hurry.”

  “Wonderful.” Cassandra opened Max’s saddlebags and took out his gauntlets. “Can you get these on?”

  Max thought there was no way she could force the cuffs of the long metal gloves under the shackles on his wrists, but he was willing to try anything.

  “What do you think this will do?” he asked, holding out his right hand.

  “I’m hoping that the gra’if will form a barrier between the darkmetal and your hands. It is part of you, but it’s a part that’s supposed to protect you.”

  If the gra’if had been formed pieces of metal, like the armor used on Earth, they could never have done what was needed. But it was more supple, like stiff leather, or like the finest of chain mail. Max knew of several of his students who would have loved to have clothing made of it. Once Cassandra had forced the edge of the gauntlet under the darkmetal cuff, the rest followed smoothly, as if the gra’if understood what was wanted and was cooperating. Finally getting the actual glove on his hand was the easy part.

  “Quickly,” Lightborn said from the doorway.

  “I’m dancing as fast as I can.” Max and Cassandra exchanged thin smiles. Hers faded quickly, and Max thought he knew why. Once he became the Prince Guardian, these little human jokes and references, this special camaraderie would end. They would no longer have the common background of the human world. He reached out with the hand she’d finished and touched her face. For a moment she held perfectly still, then she moved her face away, bending over his left hand until she had worked the other gauntlet under the darkmetal cuff.

  Max stood up.

  “Where to?” Cassandra caught his eyes and held them.

  “If they have managed to leave the Signed Room, Walks Under the Moon awaits us in the stables of Griffinhome,” Lightborn said over his shoulder, thinking Cassandra had spoken to him, “but we must hurry.”

  Cassandra still held Max’s eyes with her own. In that moment he remembered that she still didn’t know what his decision was, that they’d been interrupted before he could tell her. His throat closed, and he drew in a deep breath through his nose. He knew the question she was really asking, and he knew that she was the only person who was actually leaving it up to him to decide.

  Max looked past her shoulder again, to what was left of the Troll Diggory on the wall. What was his real name? Hearth of the Wind, something like that. If he took Cassandra’s unspoken offer and ran, they’d be followed. Hunted down, he thought, tasting the ironic bitterness of the image. And he’d eventually end up like the Troll, stuck to the wall with his own blood and then turned to stone.

  And Cassandra would, too, if she lasted long enough. Along with everyone else who had something the Basilisk wanted.

  Even if the Basilisk Prince did love his old friend, and Max shuddered at the memory of that hot hand on his face—even if the Basilisk didn’t just kill him out of hand once he had the Talismans—Max couldn’t put more power into the hands of someone who could do such things.

  At that moment an armed soldier ran though the doorway—and impaled himself on Lightborn’s ready sword.

  “Now,” Lightborn said, pulling his sword free.

  Max caught Cassandra’s eyes with his. “Stables it is,” he said.

  Lightborn and Cassandra each took one of Max’s upper arms in their free hands. Cassandra turned to face the open doorway, her sword drawn. Just as Max nodded in response to Lightborn’s questioning look, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Cassandra swung up her sword and—

  A SLAM! of air and the sudden quiet told Max it was safe to open his eyes. The smell told him they had reached a stable. They were standing in a clear area between empty horse boxes.

  “Max, your hands?” Only when he heard Cassandra’s voice did he realize that he held Lightborn’s left arm in a tight grip. His gauntlets had dark dust around the wrists, but his hands were fine. He was about to say so, when he realized that Lightborn was sinking to his knees.

  The barbed head of an arrow jutted out through the left side of his chest.

  “Leave me, go!” Lightborn said, pushing at Max weakly with his hand.

  “Cassandra?”

  She was nodding at him when Walks Under the Moon came running in from outside. “Why are you—oh!” She froze, her hand halfway to her mouth.

  “Do you have the horses?” Cassandra sheathed her sword and took Lightborn’s dangling arm.

  “Outside, but—”

  “No time.”

  Cassandra helped Max maneuver Lightborn to where six horses were saddled and waiting just outside the wooden doors of the stable building. They were half again the size of the riding horses Max was used to, almost the size of workhorses, but as delicately boned and as daintily hoofed as Arabians. Clearly, these were Cloud Horses, all a soft dappled gray, their manes white, long and curling. They looked with interest at the Riders, one of them coming forward to snuffle at Lightborn with its delicate lips.

  Max’s heart sank a little. The saddles and bridles seemed to be made of jeweled cobwebs.

  “Mount,” Cassandra said. “I will pass him up to you.”

  “Can’t you Heal him now?”

  “The Basilisk’s Riders are in the fortress, maybe even another Hound.”

  Max stopped arguing, waited until Cassandra had the man firmly in her grasp before turning to the horse waiting for him. He placed his booted foot into the delicate stirrup and kicked off, lifting himself into the saddle as gently as he could. To his surprise, the gossamer threads held him as firmly as any leather saddle he’d ever used. He settled himself and turned back to Cassandra.

  She had broken off the arrowhead sticking out of Lightborn’s chest, and was
snapping off the fletched end as Max reached down to her. The shaft she left in the wound, Max knew, to prevent the gush of blood, and the loss of blood pressure, that would follow when she pulled it out. She was murmuring softly to Lightborn, who was paler than usual, but still conscious. She lifted him up to Max, and he took Lightborn under the arms, trying not to hurt the man further as he lifted him onto the saddle in front of him.

  When she and her sister were mounted, Cassandra turned to the younger woman. “Where?” she said.

  “The Turquoise Ring.”

  Cassandra nodded and held out a hand for Max. Making sure he had a firm grip on Lightborn, and that his knees were clamped as tightly around the horse as he could manage, Max extended his right hand. As soon as their fingers were linked, he was hit by the now familiar SLAM! of displaced air and they were outside, under a roof of stars. Max took a deep breath of air that didn’t smell of metal or blood or manure. They were in the center of a level field surrounded by huge dolmens, bands of light like auroras shimmering between the stones. Max glanced around, his eyes narrowing. He’d seen places like this on his way to the Basilisk’s strong-hold.

  His Cloud Horse shied, and Max fought to maintain his seat without dropping the man in his lap.

  In front of them were six men on horseback carrying spears.

  Chapter Ten

  “NEXT TIME CAN WE go someplace where people aren’t pointing weapons at us?” Max muttered, shifting Lightborn’s weight on the saddle in front of him. He hoped the Rider was unconscious. If it came to fighting, he thought, he’d sling Lightborn across his knees to get his weapon hand clear. Probably not the best thing for a man in Lightborn’s condition, but Max’s getting killed wouldn’t do him any good either.

  Max was surprised that Cassandra, usually so quick to draw a blade, or three, had made no aggressive move. Her hand was near her sword hilt, carefully and obviously not touching it, as she studied the horsemen as coolly as they appeared to be studying her.

  These Riders were a marked contrast to the men-at-arms Max had seen in Honor of Souls’ fortress. There, even the servants had a brightness about them, and the guards had worn more silk and brocade than armor. The people in front of him now were wearing plain leather, dusty and cracked, and looked as if they had been sleeping in their clothes. Their swords and spears and armor were mismatched and discolored with use, except for the man, clearly the leader, whose sword, gauntlets, and helm—shaped like a bird of prey—gleamed with that peculiar silvered light that Max recognized as gra’if. There were only a few other gra’if helms and weapons, and here and there a piece of armor, scattered throughout the small force. Their faces, male and female alike, were beautiful and cold, and though this band was less shining and polished, it seemed more like the Faerie of legend to Max. Inhuman, hard, and dangerous.

  The bird-helmed leader walked his horse a few paces closer to them and stopped. He pushed his helm back off his face and leaned forward on his raised saddlebow, wrists crossed—like any movie cowboy, Max thought with an inward grin—looking at them over his horse’s head. He was easily the tallest man Max had ever seen, towering over the rest of his company. He was also the first Rider Max had seen to show visible signs of age. His face was lined as if with exposure to the sun and wind, and his black hair was more than half silver. And he was thin, his flesh so pared away that only his inhuman beauty was left. There was something familiar about him, and Max wondered if he was one of the Faerie who had spent a great deal of time on Earth.

  “I do not know you.” The man’s voice was a whisper of rough silk, as if it had been very melodious once, and he had strained it by screaming. Looking at the man’s face, Max could well believe it. “I am Blood on the Snow,” the man said, looking between Moon and Cassandra. “I was once Raven of the Law, and the Simurgh guides me.”

  Moon drew in her breath in a small gasp, and Cassandra sat up straighter.

  “I am the Warden Sword of Truth,” she said, “and the Dragon guides me. My companions are—”

  “Dawntreader.” The tall man urged his horse closer, close enough that Max could see the gray of his eyes even in the uncertain light of the auroras. Cassandra did not answer. His Cloud Horse shifted under him as Max involuntarily tightened his knees.

  “We have a man dying here,” Max said, trying to keep his voice even. “If you’re not going to kill us right away, you might let us look after him.”

  Blood on the Snow rode his horse right up to Max, until their knees were almost touching. The old man gripped Max’s upper arm, his hand warm and hard even through the layers of metal and sleeve. There was a bedraggled bit of blue cloth tied above his left elbow, still showing metallic threads in the weave. It was the only color about him. Max looked up into the old man’s ash-gray eyes, and the impulse to pull away died before the light he saw in them. As he watched, however, the light dimmed, and the very slight smile on the old man’s face faded as he let his hand fall back to his saddle horn.

  “Your cousin will take some time to die yet,” Blood on the Snow said of Lightborn, before turning to face Cassandra.

  “He does not know me,” he said to her.

  “He knows no one,” Cassandra said. “His memory has been taken from him. We take him to the Tarn of Souls, where the Songs tell we may restore him.”

  Blood on the Snow nodded slowly, his shaggy hair floating around his face even though there was no wind.

  “I had heard that this Ring is one of the stations of that Road,” Blood said. “Though if the Carnelian Ring is on your route, take warning that you must travel around it. The Land has shaken there, and the Stones are fallen and broken.” One of the other Riders behind him made a murmur of sound, too low for Max’s ears to pick up the individual words.

  The old man lifted his hand in acknowledgment. “Take heed of this also. We Rode here to use this Ring ourselves and found in it a company of men, dressed in the colors of the Basilisk. We watched them, and they did not Ride, but stayed hidden in the Ring, plainly waiting to surprise the next ones who used it. We have no love for the things of the Basilisk, we Wild Ones, and so we took the company and killed them. It is hardly coincidence, I think, that you and the Exile were the next to appear.”

  “We thank you for your warning, and for the help you may have given us against our enemies,” Cassandra said. “Will you not come with us to the Tarn? We would benefit from your wise counsel.”

  Max looked at her, surprised. Just who was this guy?

  Blood on the Snow took his time to answer. “I cannot leave my people,” he said finally. He looked searchingly at Max, his face once again stern and unyielding, before turning back to Cassandra. “It is good that the Guardian has returned. When he is himself again, tell him he can call upon me, and all who are mine. He will know how to find me.”

  I’m right here, Max thought, you can tell me yourself. But with a sudden sinking of his stomach, he knew why the old man had spoken as he did. The Prince Guardian might not remember the things that Max Ravenhill knew.

  “I will do so, my lord,” Cassandra said.

  The old Rider nodded again, his eyes focused inward, before looking up at Cassandra once more. “What of the other Wardens?”

  “The Moonward, Stormbringer, is taken by the Hunt,” Cassandra said. “The Sunward, Nighthawk . . . I cannot say. He sent warning to me, and was not seen again.”

  Blood on the Snow sat so still that even his Cloud Horse seemed not to move. “The Nightflying Hawk is of my fara’ip. I will trust that he still lives, until I hear otherwise.”

  “Wait, my lord. I may yet have other news,” Cassandra said as Blood on the Snow turned his horse away. “Do you have, as Nighthawk has, acquaintance among the Solitaries? I have news to give the fara’ip of the Last Born Troll, Hearth of the Wind.”

  Once more the older man paused before answering, his gray eyes turned cold as iron. “I am myself of that fara’ip.”

  Cassandra nodded, as if hearing something she’d expected. “
As am I,” she said. “His final words to me were to name me his sister.”

  “Oh, my dear sister, do you say his final words?” The old Rider’s voice was a faded whisper on the night air. “Is the Last Born truly gone?”

  Max could see the gray eyes were tightly shut, the hand that held the delicate reins trembling.

  “My lord.” Cassandra edged her horse closer to Blood on the Snow, her hand stretched toward him. She stopped as the old Rider straightened, the cold gray eyes opening once more.

  “Our brother was the Last Born, do you understand?” Blood said. “Not the Last Born Troll, but the Last of the Solitaries born in this Cycle. The youngest of all, and the hope of all. Now there will be no more young ones among the Solitaries unless the High Prince comes, and the Cycle turns.”