The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “My lord,” Cassandra’s voice was as hollow as the emptiness in Max’s chest. “We did not know.”

  Blood on the Snow inclined his head once. “How did our brother die?”

  Cassandra hesitated long enough that Max knew she was seeing the same image that had flashed before his eyes. The image of the Troll’s remains on the wall of the Basilisk’s dungeon cell.

  “Fighting his Prince’s enemies,” Cassandra said.

  Max found himself nodding. Not just fighting, he thought. Winning.

  “As he would have wished,” Blood said. “One day I trust that we will have leisure enough for you to tell me more.”

  “As you say, my lord.” Cassandra bowed her head.

  Blood on the Snow and his followers saluted them with their spears before spinning their horses around in unison like dancers in a perfectly choreographed ballet and galloping off, gathering speed. They never reached the outside of the circle; the aurora flashed and they were gone.

  Max found he was holding his breath. Watching a dozen horsemen ride into nothing was a little more startling than doing it himself.

  “Who was that guy?” was all that he said aloud.

  Moon seemed about to speak, but she hesitated, looking at her sister. Cassandra had moved her horse next to Max’s and was feeling for the pulse in the side of Lightborn’s neck.

  “Your father,” she said, without looking up.

  Max stared into the empty space where Blood on the Snow and his Wild Riders had been. His father? His real father, he supposed he should say. He didn’t know much about his human father—and the few memories they had given him hadn’t inclined him to learn more. Obviously, Dawntreader, the Prince, had felt differently. The way Blood on the Snow had ridden right up to him, had taken hold of his arm, it looked as though they had been on good terms, the father and the son. Max wished Cassandra had said something in time, wished he had spoken to the older man while he had the chance. Blood had seemed like the kind of man Max would have liked to know.

  But what would be the point? Max pressed his lips together. Soon it wouldn’t matter what Max Ravenhill knew. It wasn’t much consolation that the Prince had had a life, people who cared about him.

  “He still lives,” Cassandra was saying to Moon, “but he is sunk very low. We must get out of the Ring if I’m to help him.”

  “There’s no time!” Moon looked at Lightborn and back at her sister. “We must away quickly. They will look for the Riders the Wild Ones killed. We must be gone from here before they come.”

  Cassandra hesitated, lower lip between her teeth. She looked up at Max. He knew what was going through her mind. They should run while they could, and yet—the image of the Troll’s death was too fresh—letting Lightborn die when they might have saved him . . . Okay, he thought, he might as well make some decisions while he still could.

  “Save him,” he said.

  “You’re sure?”

  Something in the way Cassandra asked the question told him he’d said the right thing. He nudged his horse toward the perimeter of the Ring. “You told me I was here to save people. Start with this one.”

  Once beyond the Ring of stones, Max found he had been holding Lightborn for so long that lowering the man into Cassandra’s outstretched arms was almost more than his stiffened muscles could manage. Good thing it hadn’t come to a fight after all, he thought. He dismounted slowly, carefully, stood holding his horse’s bridle, the light webbing as cold in his hand as if it were made of metal. Moon, her objections put aside, was helping Cassandra ease Lightborn to the ground.

  They hadn’t ridden far, just enough to be out of the circle of stones that marked the Turquoise Ring. The dolmens still towered over them, black against the star-filled sky. The auroras had fallen dark now that there was no one in the Ring to activate them, but the stars were bright enough to read by, if Max’d had anything to read. He looked up, expecting to see the full moon, but there were only the stars, more than he had ever seen. He had never been much of a stargazer, but even for him it was disorienting not to see any of the well-known constellations overhead.

  He looked down just in time to see Cassandra grasp what was left of the shaft of the arrow that transfixed Lightborn firmly in her right hand and, bracing him against her knee, draw it out with one smooth, steady pull. Blood gushed from the wound, and Cassandra placed her palm against it. With Moon to balance her, Cassandra shifted until she was sitting with Lightborn in her arms, his head on her shoulder, one hand on the entry wound, the other on the exit hole in his chest. Max found his fingers straying to his left side; he remembered what came next, and wondered whether he would be able to watch.

  Walks Under the Moon had never seen a Healer at work before; that it was Truthsheart who Healed only served to make it more interesting. Healers appeared only among the Dragonborn, and so were rare among Riders, who usually had to go to some Solitary, or even a Natural, for those few injuries and illnesses that their own dra’aj could not cope with—not that any did so openly now. And in these times there were very few people left with enough dra’aj to help others. That was one of the things the Basilisk Prince had told her he would change, when he became the High Prince, one of the ways they would all be turning back to the golden days the Songs told of.

  Moon frowned. Truthsheart had enough dra’aj for Healing, even without the help of the Basilisk. If her sister had never gone away, perhaps their father might have been saved, though there was no way to know whether his malady would have responded to Healing. One more question that would never be answered, thanks to the Exile.

  Who did not look altogether content himself, watching Truthsheart with Lightborn in her arms. Good, Moon thought, this was all his fault. If there were any way to make him even less content . . .

  “This may not be the best action for us to take,” she said, and waited for the Exile to drag his eyes away from Truthsheart’s Healing. “Someone betrayed us. Can we be sure it was not Lightborn? We could be bringing the source of our betrayal with us.”

  The Exile shrugged. “Then we’ll have to. I’m not starting out by doing something that I couldn’t live with.”

  Moon turned away, fighting to keep her face from showing her distaste. This person had none of the Prince Guardian’s memories, she reminded herself. There was irony but no hypocrisy in his saying that there were actions he could not live with. She must try not to be unfair.

  “Besides, if this Basilisk guy is as smart as you make him out to be, he had ambushes set up at every Ring along the Road in case we showed up. That’s what I would have done.”

  With a cold certainty, Moon believed him. The Guardian was more like the Basilisk Prince than anyone suspected, she thought, strings from the same harp, leaves from the same tree. Each determined to get their own way, each sure of his own correctness and the other’s error. Each willing to destroy everyone around him to gain his ends. After all, she realized, hugging herself, even now he was endangering everything, their whole plan, merely in order to satisfy his own image of himself. Max Ravenhill was no more than a thin veneer on the Exile. It was still his fault her sister had to go away, leaving her with their mad father.

  She could slide over to him right now and slip a knife between his ribs. By the time Truthsheart finished with Lightborn, it would be too late to save the Exile. And her sister might not want to, Moon thought. After all, once the Exile was gone, her Oath to serve him was gone as well, and her sister would be free. Moon’s hand was on her dagger and she had taken a step toward the watching Exile before she stopped. If she killed him before the Basilisk’s men caught up with them, what would she have to trade the Basilisk for her sister’s life? She needed him alive. How could she buy back her fara’ip without the Exile?

  By the time Cassandra looked up from the man in her arms, Max thought he would start to scream. He was conscious of every small noise, the rustle of grass, the creak of insects. He’d had time to rethink his decision several times, and he was glad that M
oon’s presence prevented him from changing his mind. It was a lucky thing that she hadn’t pressed her point about betrayal. Max wasn’t sure that he would have been able to resist stopping the healing process and dragging the two women away.

  Cassandra eased Lightborn off her lap and stretched him out on the ground. She joined her hands above her head and stretched until Max could hear the ligaments in her shoulders creak. She drew her legs under her and started to stand, only to lose her balance. Max’s longer legs let him reach Cassandra’s side before Moon could, and he slipped his arm around her waist to help her stand. She was shivering, and her skin was clammy to the touch. Without thinking, Max folded her into his arms.

  “We should be going,” she said, her voice tired and muffled in his cotte.

  “I know.”

  Chapter Eleven

  MAX ROLLED OVER and stretched, the muscles in his back and hips protesting. Riding a horse was like riding a bike, he thought. You didn’t forget how, but your muscles and your backside weren’t happy to be reminded. He rolled out of his bedding as quietly as he could; no point in waking everyone up. They had stayed together in the lodge’s great room, sleeping around the banked fire on the central hearth. The fire was large enough to keep the room warm despite its size and its vaulted ceilings sporting vast wooden beams. The lodge had plenty of sleeping chambers, but no one had felt like splitting up, and Max had helped Cassandra and Moon carry all the feather bedding they could find to this main room.

  Cassandra opened her eyes as he tiptoed past her, but closed them again when he held a finger to his lips and pointed out through the open doorway to the passage that led to the windowed gallery outside.

  Like the similar passageway in Honor of Souls’ fortress, this was an enclosed gallery, like a hallway in a house with arched windows cut out all along the exterior wall. Here the passage, walls, and floor were all of wood rather than the stone found in the fortress of Griffinhome. Even this part of the lodge was obviously meant for the pleasure of travelers, as the bench all along the wall under the archways made clear. Max eased the door to the great room shut behind him and went to the nearest unshuttered window. It took him a minute to realize there was no glass. He stretched out his hand, but nothing stopped it. There was a barrier, he thought, a point at which the relative warmth of the passage stopped and the cold winter air outside the window started, but what made the barrier he couldn’t tell. Max smiled, settling himself sideways on the wide bench. This was the first piece of magic he’d seen here in the Lands that wasn’t trying to kill him.

  The snow they had ridden through from the Morganite Ring, fat flakes like white moths landing gently on the ground, had finally stopped falling. He thought the drifts were maybe a little deeper, the branches of the dark pines bowed a little closer to the ground, but on the whole, there was no more snow than there had been when they had arrived, guided to this travelers’ lodge by a weak-voiced but conscious Lightborn.

  The moon was full, and the snow-covered landscape sparkled, sharp and clear. Max frowned, leaning forward on the broad window ledge to take a closer look at the scene outside. The moon had been full when they’d arrived, and Max could swear that it was even in the same position in the sky. How long had he been asleep? He couldn’t have slept through the whole day. For one thing, he didn’t feel anywhere near enough rested.

  A noise made him look away from the moonlight.

  “Should you be up?” he said, standing and taking a step toward Lightborn.

  Lightborn waved him back. He still looked a little paler than he had before, his skin more pearl than almond, but other than the tears in his clothing and the dark bloodstain down the left side of his body, there was no other sign of his wound. It had taken Cassandra some time the night before to persuade the man that he wasn’t well enough to Ride. They had finally compromised and advanced only as far as the Morganite Ring, the next stop on the route Moon had worked out to the Tarn of Souls.

  “I have told Truthsheart that I am not ready for a fencing lesson, but I am much better than I could have hoped. She looks as though she could give fully as thorough a lesson as your father used to give us.” Lightborn’s voice was light, precise, as if he was breathing very shallowly still.

  Max sat down again, his back to the bright snow outside the window. “Did you know my father?”

  Lightborn studied Max’s face a moment before answering. “I find it easy to forget, now that I see you in your gra’if, dressed to Ride, that you remember none of us.”

  Max shook his head.

  “I know Blood on the Snow,” Lightborn said, sitting down as Max shifted to give him room on the bench. “As well as anyone could be said to know him.”

  “Did I know him better?”

  The pale Rider made to draw up his left knee, winced, and set his foot down again. “There was a certain coolness between you and your father, and I am afraid to make too much of it in the telling. There was always a great love, and a great respect, but I believe it is easier to show respect than to show love.”

  Max glanced at the other man, but Lightborn wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he seemed lost in his own thoughts, brows drawn in and mouth slightly twisted to one side. Somehow, this puzzled Max. Lightborn was a much more likable guy than the arrogant princeling he’d been before his injury.

  “Tell me,” Max said.

  “Your father was not present when you were born, and for many years it was thought that you had died along with your mother. Only your father did not believe it. He did not rest until he found you. I remember as a child watching this grim-faced Moonward stranger ride into Griffinhome, always at night, never in the day. Sometimes he would have other Wild Riders with him, and sometimes my mother could persuade him to stay a few days to rest. Not that he did—I remember him training with the guards and soldiers of our fara’ip. But usually he would be up and gone with the sun.”

  “How did he know I was still alive?”

  “He never spoke of it. My mother thought it was no more than guilt, from causing your mother’s death.”

  “What?”

  “No, no,” Lightborn said, waving the idea away with his long-fingered hand. “It is just that both parents must be present when a child is born, or the babe will drain the mother’s dra’aj completely.”

  Great, Max thought. He didn’t kill my mother, I did. “What happens if the father’s dead?”

  “Usually, the mother stops the pregnancy.” Lightborn gave him a searching glance. “Your mother chose to save you.”

  Max sighed. He supposed that should make him feel better, that she had chosen this, but . . .

  “I do not think I ever knew exactly what it was that delayed your father,” Lightborn continued. “He had left his Wild fara’ip behind him for the love that he bore your mother. And, for her sake, he was about some business for the Council of Elders when her hour came unexpectedly. By the time your father knew of it and had returned to her, she was gone. She had tried to Move to him—no one knows why she could not do it—and was lost. As were you.”

  “How long?”

  “I cannot say. You are older than I. Blood on the Snow’s searching was a fact of my early years. He had always been searching, as far back as I could remember. And then one day, he brought you to my mother’s house.

  “When he found you, you were not yet grown. But you wore gra’if already, and the white hair,” Lightborn gestured at Max’s head, “you had that as well.”

  Max frowned, studying the other man carefully. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why your house?”

  Lightborn looked sharply at him, mouth slightly open, eyebrows raised. “Again I forget,” he said. “Your mother is the sister of mine. Family by blood, as well as by fara’ip. As were we, in our time.”

  Lightborn fell silent as footsteps approached and Cassandra entered the passage from the great room. She tossed each of them a small packet that turned out to have a rich cake heavy with fruit inside.

  “I’d
forgotten how Riders packed for a journey,” she said, tilting her head toward the room she had left, where the night before they’d dumped the leather-wrapped wicker panniers that formed the four packs carried by the extra Cloud Horses. There was exasperated amusement in her voice. “There’s food, but no spare clothing; wine, but no water. You’ll have to stay in your bloody clothes,” she said, turning to Lightborn.

  “It is preferable to dying in them, I assure you,” Lightborn said, as they followed Cassandra back into the great room. There the fire had been built up, and Walks Under the Moon looked over from where she was repacking the panniers.

  “Dawntreader—” she began.

  “Just a second,” Max said, raising his hands. “Can we keep things simple for the human? I’m Max, she’s Cassandra,” he pointed at her. “You’re Lightborn, and you’re Moon. Okay?”

  “Her name is not Cassandra,” Moon said, frowning.