“Hear the second question.”
Max’s lungs stopped hurting as he released the breath he was holding.
“Who is the last man standing and the first to be seated?
“Who is the first man to eat and the last man fed?
“Who is not lost until found?”
Honor, courage—Max cursed under his breath and stopped mentally ticking off abstractions; there was no point in hoping to hit on the right one. He should have known it wouldn’t be this easy. These questions sounded more like regular riddles, the kind he’d never been any good at. He ran over the questions again in his mind, but got nothing—they were just words.
He took another deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to steady his spinning thoughts. Too many possibilities, that was always his problem with this kind of question. Without some hint, some nudge from instinct, how would he know which of the many possible pathways would lead him to the answer? All he needed was to answer one question, then he could compare his answer to the other questions and see if it fit.
Okay, who sits down first? Ladies, not men. The president? But why would he be the last man standing? Okay, so who was the last man standing? Bruce Willis in a mediocre movie—stop that and think! Last man to eat and the first one fed. That sounded familiar. Except the way he remembered it, it was the first man in battle and the last in retreat. Who was? Would it help if he could remember the battles he’d fought in when he was the Prince?
No, not the Prince. The King.
Would it fit? The King sits on his throne while everyone else stands, so he’s the first to sit down. But he’s the last to be standing on the battlefield, because when he goes down the battle’s over. The first to eat when there’s plenty, the last to be fed when there isn’t? Well, yes, if he was a really good king. But what about the last bit? Not lost until he’s found? Like the battle again? That wouldn’t be it, Max felt certain that he couldn’t use the same explanation for two different sections.
This just wasn’t his kind of game. He frowned. That was it, something . . . Max unclenched his fists and forced his shoulders to relax. He couldn’t go mentally haring off after the thought that just wouldn’t jell. In fox hunting, the fox didn’t lose until he was found, that would be true for anything that involved prey. But when was the King prey?
Oh.
“In my world, in the Shadowlands,” Max corrected, “the answer would be the land’s ruler. We call that a king, I think here you call it the High Prince.” He gave his explanations before she could ask, before she could tell him he was wrong.
Again he watched as the Lady closed her eyes, otherwise immobile on her water throne. When her eyes opened again, Max found that he was smiling, and he tried to stop. But he couldn’t help it. He’d answered two thirds of the questions successfully. There was only one set of questions left.
“Hear the third question,” the Lady said, still with her eyes closed. “Will you wear the smile or the veil?
“Will you hear the eyes or the tongue?
“Will you choose the Head or the Heart?”
Max felt suddenly cold and fragile as glass. All the confidence, all the hope emptied out of him. She had tricked them after all, the Lady of Souls. She had always meant the game to end this way, with an unanswerable question. He knew this kind of death-riddle; this was one of those “feathers or lead” questions. The kind the gods asked when there was no right answer, no answer that reason or logic could give you. The right answer was the one the god had decided it would be, and your only hope was that the god would play straight.
Who would ask such a question if they meant to play straight?
Well, he was going to play straight, goddamn it. At least he’d have that much, he thought, as the heat of his anger warmed him. Answer with the truth, just as Cassandra had said. He wished more than anything else that he could turn around and look at her right now. One last time. That’s what he would choose, if he had the chance. That’s what he’d been choosing all along, he realized. What he’d chosen when he walked across that crowded cocktail party to speak to her. What he’d always wanted. Cassandra. Truthsheart.
And just that easily, he knew what he would answer. All the choices the Lady of Souls had given him asked him to choose between reality and artifice. And he knew which he would choose, every time. And his choice would be a kind of pun, too, and so he might as well go out with his sense of humor intact. Max took a deep breath. He wished he wasn’t letting them down. He wished he could have become the Prince for them.
“Truth,” he said. “The answer to your question is Truth.”
The Lady put out her hand. Max felt a tingling in his hands and feet. Involuntarily, he took a step forward into the water and extended his own hand. As if from great distance he heard what might have been Cassandra’s voice. Heat spread from his skin inward, as if eating into his body. This was not the healing warmth of Cassandra’s breath, but a destructive flame, burning through his body, searing the air from his lungs. Max felt cold wetness and realized that he had fallen forward into the Tarn. His last thought was to wonder if he had at least disturbed the mirrorlike perfection of the water’s surface.
Chapter Fourteen
“FIND WALKS UNDER THE MOON. I need to know what this means.” The Basilisk Prince spoke through stiff lips. “And bring the Hound who waits.”
Only a very few moments passed before the guard escorted a Hound into the Basilisk’s presence and bowed his way out into the passage again. The Basilisk concentrated on the beast before him. He was no longer made uneasy by the way the creature flickered constantly from shape to shape, sometimes this, sometimes that, but always taking on the form of a Rider to speak. One day, the Basilisk thought, he would like to know why that was. One day, he would be at leisure to pursue that kind of interest again.
In front of the Hound he could relax, let his hands tremble if they would, let himself sink with shaking knees to the chaise where the Exile had lain. The strain of hiding his uneasiness from his servants was wearing on him. He had expected to be informed before this as to Dawntreader’s whereabouts. If one of his spies did not come quickly with the information he needed, he would have to loose the Hunt again.
Except now they said there was no scent.
The Hound flickered into the shape of a Rider casually leaning against the Basilisk’s map table. “We have not the scent,” it said in a voice like ground glass. “Among the ashes of the fortress of the one you call Honor of Souls there was his smell. The smell of one of the Shadowfolk. That smell we could find, did it exist in this Land, but it does not.”
“Is he dead?” The Basilisk’s hands formed into fists. If the Banishment did not end . . . He must have the Talismans, he must. The Chant of Binding pushed at him to be used. He had thought there was time in abundance, but now that there was nothing to distract him, no building, no planting, the Chant of Binding burned like a bonfire in his head. He had to have the Talismans and soon.
The thing lifted its shoulders and spread its hands in a grotesque parody of uncertainty.
“Give us a scent,” it said.
The Basilisk resisted the urge to smash the Hound across the mouth. It would only amuse the creature. He could not have Dawntreader dead. He it was who had been Banished, and the Banishment would not end without him. But if he was not . . . if they had reached the Tarn of Souls, if the Lady had helped them, and the Guardian was returned . . .
Then the Talismans were found. They would soon be his.
“My lord?”
It wasn’t the voice of the Hound. The Basilisk Prince looked up to find his guard had returned.
“Those who were felling the wood of He’erid have not returned.”
“And?”
“N-nothing, my lord.”
The Basilisk nodded. “Come here to me,” he said to his servant, whose eyes had focused on the flickering of the Hound.
With her soldier’s training, Cassandra had been aware of all the ambient noises of th
e Tarn, the twitters of unseen birds, the rustle of clothing as she breathed, the sound the wind made as it whispered through the heather, the soft whickers of the Cloud Horses as they spoke to one another up on the ridge, the click of their hooves on rock as they fidgeted, and the chink and ring of their jeweled harness. When Max took a step forward into the water and touched the Lady’s hand with his own, all sound stopped—snapped off like the sudden silence when someone touches the CD player’s OFF button in the middle of a piece of music. And if that piece of music was loud enough, the listener would be left for just a second with this numb feeling that she had lost the ability to hear. Except that now, the feeling didn’t go away. Lightborn touched her arm; his lips moved, but Cassandra heard nothing.
It’s shock, she thought. It must be.
She saw the Lady of Souls reach up to touch Max’s face and stepped forward herself, sword lifted. And again, when she called Max’s name she heard nothing, not even the sound being conducted to her ears through her own bones. It was as if she had never had ears. Max had fallen to his knees before the Lady’s watery throne. The Natural of the Lake was leaning forward now, her long-fingered hand on Max’s face, her own sightless eyes fixed on his, as if they looked into each other’s souls.
Cassandra threw herself toward the water, but straining as hard as she could, her muscles bunching, teeth gritting with concentration, it was as if the air around her had suddenly turned solid.
Abruptly, the Lady rose to her feet, and in one sweep of motion, deliquesced, disappearing completely as if she had never had solid substance, and Max fell face forward into the water.
Cassandra heard the splash.
She ran forward and with shaking hands pulled Max back from the edge of the Lake, until he was completely out of the water. His eyes were closed, and he did not seem to be breathing, but as soon as her hands touched his skin, her own heart, frozen in her chest, began beating once again.
“He’s alive,” she called over her shoulder.
While a young boy fans the flies away, he sits cross-legged in a loincloth on the shady side of the marketplace and tells how the dragon swallowed the sun on the day of creation, and people toss coins and handfuls of dried fruit into his bowl.
He sits on his heels on the sunbaked sand, listening to a Solitary, gray-skinned and gravel-voiced, explain where the water was hidden and how he might bring it forth.
He stands beside his king on a beach and draws a horse in the sand with the point of his sword.
He stands beside his king on a French hillside and argues with him about where the longbow men should be placed.
A very tall Rider with crow-black hair, bone-white face, and eyes the cold gray of iron touches his face. “I am Blood on the Snow,” the Rider says, “and you are my son.”
He sits behind the scenes at the theater and watches his friend Will’s play, thinking that his beloved would do a better job of the swordplay, and that he must suggest it to Will.
A Sunward Rider, hair and skin bleached colorless with age, puts Sto’in, the Cauldron of Plenty, into his hands and tells him to look within it.
He looks up from the scroll he’s painting and sees his beloved, naked under her dragon-patterned silk kimono, bringing him tea. He wishes they didn’t have to go to Kyoto tomorrow.
He climbs over the stone sill to where a woman, her golden hair turned amber by the torchlight, waits with a drawn sword in her hand, next to packed saddlebags, riding cloaks tossed on top. He’s been to check their horses. “You were right,” she says to him, “they didn’t listen to me.” “They never do,” he says, taking his cloak from the top of the packs. “We’d best be off.”
He feels the flutter of the Phoenix in his chest, its fires burning.
He swims frantically against the current, but it’s too strong for him. Any minute now he’ll run out of air, any minute now his screaming lungs will force him to open his mouth and inhale. He feels a warm hand on his face, his body, and he relaxes, allowing his lungs to breathe.
Cassandra ran her hands over Max’s body, checking for injuries. He was alive, but until—and unless—he recovered consciousness, they wouldn’t know whether he’d failed the test, whether the Lady had indeed taken his soul and left them only an animate shell. Just as she was beginning her examination for the third time, Max gasped for breath, drawing in air and coughing as if he had indeed been drowning.
He caught her searching hand in one of his.
“You’re always checking for broken bones,” he coughed nonexistent water out of his lungs, “and you never find any.”
Cassandra’s mouth was open, the words she’d used to answer him a hundred times already on her lips, when the realization of what he’d said struck her still and silent. She sat back on her heels, her hand still trapped in his. He knew what she always did. This wasn’t the first time during his long Banishment that Cassandra had checked him for injuries, and it wasn’t the first time she hadn’t found any. And he knew this. Nor was it the first time that he’d brushed away her examining hands and he knew that, too. Max Ravenhill couldn’t have known it. The Prince couldn’t have known it. Who was this?
Again she tried to pull away, but he held her.
“It’s me,” he said, sitting up and drawing the hand he still held to his lips, pressing his mouth to her palm in the way that always made the skin on her belly contract. “I’m here. I’m still here. I’m still here. I remember you. I remember . . . everything.” His lips smiled and his eyes danced.
Cassandra tried to draw air over the lump in her throat, to blink away the tears in her eyes. She found herself on her knees, held so tightly to his chest that even through her gra’if and his she could feel the thumping of his heart next to hers, the uneven shudder of his breath, the skin of his face on her lips, the taste of his tears mingled with her own.
Some inexpressible time later Max—she couldn’t think of him as the Prince, she’d never known the Prince—helped her to her feet, brushed the hair back from her face, tucked her hand through his arm, and turned with her to face the others.
Moon stood with her fingers on her mouth, her eyes wide open above them. She looked from Max’s face to Cassandra’s and back again. Cassandra smiled at her, and Moon slowly lowered her hands.
Lightborn had his hands outstretched, and stood with one foot in front of the other, as if he’d been coming to their aid. His face was a strange mixture of hope and fear, a smile trembled on his lips.
“Well, Lightborn. I asked you once if you were my brother, Cousin. I can answer that question myself now.” Max let Cassandra’s hand fall but didn’t move away from her.
Lightborn took another step forward, his hands still reaching out toward them. “Dawntreader—”
“Still my cousin but no longer my brother, isn’t that right? Not my fara’ip and not for some time. You know, I’m not surprised you’d work against me, Lightborn. But to bring the Basilisk’s men to your own mother’s house, that’s an act of betrayal few have the spine for.”
Cassandra looked between the two men, shocked.
Max stepped away from Cassandra, one pace closer to Lightborn. “Why look at me like that?” he said to his cousin. “Did you think I wouldn’t remember? Or did you think I didn’t know?”
Cassandra drew her sword.
“Small wonder you did not offer to give the Lady your soul to restore my memory,” the man who had been Max Ravenhill continued. “You knew that you had but to wait and your master would do it for you. How far behind us are they?”
As Max drew his sword, Lightborn took a quick step back, and CRACK! He was gone.
“You’re lucky he didn’t draw; that’s a sword you’re holding, not a dog’s leash,” Cassandra said, relieved to find her voice steady.
To her surprise, the Prince whirled around, laughing, and scooped her into his arms, somehow managing to avoid both her sword and his own.
“It’s better to be lucky than good.”
“So you’ve always
said.” Cassandra felt her lips trembling and tried her best to smile.
With one last kiss, he set her down and looked at the Lake, his eyes narrowed and his brows drawn down until a line formed between them. He inclined his head in a short bow before turning back to Cassandra and her sister.
“Let’s be off before he brings the Basilisk down on us.”
“Will he?” Even as she spoke, Cassandra started back up the hill to where the horses still stood. “Surely he could have brought them at any time in the last three days?”
“He had no need to. With Lightborn here, the Basilisk was already with us. But now, without a spy in our camp, they have no choice but to come after us.”
The Mirror Prince Page 25
