The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “If all one had to do to become High Prince was offer oneself to the Talismans, there would be lineups around the block—people constantly vying for the privilege,” he added as Moon frowned at him. “But only the Talismans choose the High Prince. I would have turned down anyone who came, because the Talismans had not told me to seek anyone out.”

  “The humans say that the best leader is the one who doesn’t want the job,” Truthsheart said.

  “Humans are fond of speaking in metaphor, but in this instance they are right.”

  “But why was this not explained? Why start the War?” Moon found herself unable to hide her anger. Was he saying that none of this need have happened? That her sister could have been at home all along?

  “What makes you think I didn’t explain it?” The Prince looked at her with puzzlement, his brows drawn close together.

  Moon shook her head. The Exile could no more answer a question straightly than could the Basilisk. They were two of a kind, partners in a dance that would destroy everything. “But we Move to the Talismans now?”

  He gave a heavy sigh. “If they were exactly where I left them . . .” He closed his eyes. No,” he said, after a time. “The Vale has changed too much . . . and they might also have drifted in hiding themselves further.” He shook his head. “We’ll go to the Pass of Welu’un, and try entering the Basilisk’s Vale from there.”

  The Pass of Welu’un was high in the mountains to the windward of the Vale of Trere’if, and should have been a bare place of stunted heather and rocky outcrops. Max blinked back sudden tears when he saw the place thick with Trees and understood, from the strength of his relief at finding Trere’if alive if not whole and in his place, how much he had been dismayed by the news of the Natural’s destruction. It had been so large a blow, he now realized, that a part of him had simply put it aside, refusing to believe it. Naturals such as Trere’if were immeasurably old, living from Cycle to Cycle. The idea that Trere’if was gone had been too much for him to contemplate.

  Even from the one large rock he had used as his guide in Moving, Max could feel the dra’aj of the Wood, cool, thick, vibrant, and yet a mere shadow of what they would be able to feel once they Rode their Cloud Horses under the Trees.

  “Is this the Great Wood?” Moon seemed to be especially nervous this morning; even her hair refused to lay flat where she had combed it.

  “This is Trere’if,” he said. Something drew his eye upward and he saw, far overhead, an oddly familiar ribbon of motion as a flock of geese trailed across the sky, shifting leaders in midflight. The season was turning. More evidence, if he needed it, that the Cycle was reaching its cold end. Let this be the Winter that comes before Spring, he prayed, though he wasn’t sure to whom, and not the Winter of all things.

  A murmur of voices drew his attention back to Cassandra and her sister. The two sisters had been acting a little differently toward one another since they had shared their quick breakfasts that morning. Cassandra seemed more relaxed, smiling more easily, and touching her sister more than she had before, he thought, but Moon’s nervousness had increased, and her dislike of him seemed, if anything, worse. Contrary to what the Songs might tell about the effect of his voice, Max was used to finding that people disliked and distrusted him. His father had wanted him to know and understand his mother’s people, but often, as a young Rider, he’d thought that life would have been simpler if he had stayed with his father’s people, the Wild Riders, and kept to their ancient ways. At least, he thought with some amusement, they had a better understanding of what Solitaries really were, and he would not have been constantly explaining things.

  Though, of course, none of that had mattered after the old Guardian came.

  Max had thought that the Choosing would change everything for him. Before that, he hadn’t known what his place among his own people might be. His upbringing by Solitaries was too strange for most Riders to understand. His mother’s kin did not find it easy to accept him; no one doubted that he was his mother’s child—his dra’aj was proof of that—but his life was too sharp a reminder of her death. Even though most Riders did not actively distrust him, only a few, like Lightborn and the Basilisk himself before the Choosing, had been his friends, the beginnings of a fara’ip.

  At first, after years of living as the Solitaries do, it had been fun to have companions of his own age, of his own species, and he’d delighted in the similarities between himself and his friends, attitudes and abilities he had never found in the Solitary who had raised him, or the others he had met over the years of his early life. He remembered the special feeling of contentment that came from being within the group, a member of a troop. But it had taken him a while to realize that by such simple things as seeking solitude for his meditations, as he had been taught by his foster father, the Troll, he was regarded by his own people as eccentric at best, and deranged at worst. As time passed, these differences became more important to the other Riders, and Max found himself increasingly alone.

  He’d thought that being chosen as the Guardian would change all that, would give him a real place in the Rider world, allowing people to accept him, giving him position and responsibility, a voice in affairs. He’d found, on the contrary, that the Guardian was the one Rider who was truly set apart, the one Rider who could not share his soul with any other, because he shared it with the Talismans themselves, becoming one with them. For the Prince Guardian, his fara’ip was the Talismans.

  Except he’d changed that now, he thought, touching the dragon torque around his neck, and catching Cassandra’s eye as she turned to him and smiled. Hadn’t he?

  Walks under the Moon did have reason to dislike him, however, Max knew. He had all of the memories of his human personae, and many times Cassandra had told him of how she had left her family to become a Warden, of what she hoped to gain for them by that, of her father’s withdrawal and the need to provide for him and for the young child, her sister. Of course, it had meant leaving the child Moon behind with a man half mad with grief. It was obvious that the child had made an idol of the missing sister, longing for her return. Max wondered if Moon was aware that her present behavior most resembled that of a jealous lover. Even now, as they were riding in the dappled light to be found under the great Trees of Trere’if, Moon had managed to insinuate her horse between those of Max and Cassandra. Ah, well, he thought, she loved her sister, and resented that even now she did not have her for herself. From what Cassandra had told him over the years about the home she’d left, the child Moon could not have had an easy time of it, even with the privileges that Cassandra’s becoming a Warden would have brought them.

  And knowing the Basilisk, as perhaps few left in the Lands could know him, Max was certain that the Wardens’ families had not actually gained all that much.

  He couldn’t blame Moon for distrusting him; he did have his own agenda, or his fara’ip did. Marrying Cassandra by the code of the Wild Riders—permission or no permission—was the single most selfish thing he had ever done. Once more his fingers lifted to touch the torque. If this was the end of all things, then he’d wanted to bind her to him, and it seemed that the rest of his fara’ip had agreed. For the moment he would not examine the reasons for that agreement too closely.

  “Where go we now?” Moon was whispering to Cassandra, but Max answered her.

  “We must find Trere’if.”

  Moon slowed her horse. “But you said this is Trere’if.”

  “Not the part we can speak to.” Max stood on his stirrups and tried to get a view through the Trees. They were thicker here, cutting off his line of sight. “Trere’if is a who as well as a what and a where. Be warned, he is perhaps the oldest living being in the Lands, and his ways may seem very strange to you.”

  “How can he be the eldest?” Moon asked. “The Lands were made for Riders.”

  “Riders don’t live all that long—a little over a Cycle at the most. Naturals,” Max shrugged, “no one know how long a Natural can live. Each segment
of the People thinks itself the oldest and believes that it understands the true nature of the Lands, what lives, what changes, what ages, and what does none of these things. None have all the answers—neither Rider, nor Solitary, nor Natural.”

  “And you are the only being that does, I suppose?”

  “No, not even I.”

  “Max.”

  Something in Cassandra’s voice made Max put his hand on his sword hilt before he looked around to her. “Yes?”

  “I don’t think we’re going any deeper in. The trees have closed in behind us. We’re trapped.”

  “Steady,” Max said. “Wait for it.”

  Pathways disappeared, and the clearing shrank until the Cloud Horses began to snort, realizing that they no longer had the space to turn. Only Max, expecting it, was not startled by the sudden appearance of a Green Man. This was a Tree Natural, tall, thick of limb and body, his skin mottled shades of green, brown, and black, resembling nothing so much as the bark of an oak. His fingers and toes were long, tapering to delicate threads, and his hair was made up of mosses and oak leaves, tiny and delicate as if just opening in the spring. Max was only mildly disappointed when he did not recognize this particular member of Trere’if’s fara’ip.

  “I am Dawntreader,” he told the Treeman, “the Prince Guardian. My mother was Light at the Summit, my father is Blood on the Snow. The Phoenix guides me.”

  “You are welcome, Prince of Guardians.” The Natural’s voice was a whisper of wind in branches, with a hint of the creaking of boughs. A young one indeed. “Your father warned us of your coming and we have been on the watch. Who are these others? It has been long since Riders had the freedom of Trere’if.”

  “These are my companions. Where I go, there must they go also.”

  The Green Man shook his head, hair rustling. “That is for Trere’if to decide. If they would be brought to him, they must be bound.”

  “Your hospitality has greatly changed,” Max said, trying to keep the anger from showing in his voice.

  “That also is for Trere’if to decide, Guardian. If you wish to come to him, your companions must be bound.”

  “Don’t worry, Max,” Cassandra said, laying her hand on his arm. “We won’t be offended, I promise you.” Cassandra turned to the Green Man. “Is it a long journey?”

  “By our ways, it is not far,” the Green Man said.

  Before he had finished speaking, the wood around them transformed; more than half of the Trees and Bushes disappeared, replaced by Naturals, until they were standing not in a forest glade, but in a crowd of Tree people, though at first there seemed little difference. The Naturals were all like the Green Man, more than half Tree, their skin bark of every texture and color, their hair the same mixture of leaves and branches. There were few smiles among them, Max noticed, though some of the younger ones looked at him with interest and sketched bows in his direction.

  The Green People bound Moon’s wrists with no trouble using vines they pulled free from their bodies. They held her gently in their delicate long-fingered hands, treating her with great courtesy, but the strictures on her wrists were tight and sure enough for all that. Cassandra presented more of a problem, for the forest people seemed unwilling to touch any part of her gra’if. They let her keep her sword and other weapons, sheathed, but managed to bind her wrists only because she willingly removed her gauntlets. Cassandra caught Max’s eye and raised an eyebrow, lightly shrugging her shoulders. His frown relaxed. Of course, so long as one of them was free, they were all as good as free.

  Or so he told himself, as the forest formed once again around them.

  They hadn’t gone more than another mile or so, following the slow walk of the Green Man, when the trees began to thin again, the sunlight shining strongly through the branches.

  “Is it you, Dawntreader?” the voice was the growl of green wood twisting and tearing, the rubbing together of branches, the hint of falling leaves. Cassandra could just make out an enormous shape in the shadows, made larger somehow by the sudden stillness of the air.

  “It is, Trere’if, and more than glad to see you. When I heard the Basilisk held your Vale, I feared the worst. I cannot say, however, that I think your hospitality much improved since we last met.”

  “I had heard it said you were captive. I do not know the ones you bring with you. Are you captive, still?” Trees shivered where the voice was coming from, as if something moved toward them. Cassandra wondered how long it had been since Trere’if had taken on a form that could speak to Riders.

  “I am not. These are friends and companions.”

  “Let them speak for themselves, that I may hear and judge of their spirits.” The Natural of the Wood finally stepped clear of the other Trees. He was smaller, more delicately built, than Cassandra had expected. Slim, slight, his skin pale green, with the faintest, almost imperceptible mottling; silver-gray hair made up of long, thin leaves, fine and flexible. But then she saw that his size, his coloring, even his shape altered between one step and the next, indeed between one breath and the next, as if he were a ghost seen in a light that filtered through leaves blowing in a fitful wind. He was not a tree man, but the Treeman.

  Cassandra cleared her throat and, lifting her right leg over the saddle horn, slid off her horse to the ground. She took a short step forward and bowed from the waist, as she would have done to her sensei. Her hands were still bound, but that was the least of her worries. It looked as if they were all standing in a pretty forest glade, but she already knew better than to trust what her eyes told her.

  “I am Sword of Truth,” she said, her voice sounding soft and hollow in the wood-smelling air. “My mother was Clear of Light and my father Moon upon Water. The Dragon guides me. I was one of the Wardens of the Exile in the Shadowlands, and now I follow the Prince.”

  “Well-named thou art, Truthsheart. I hear the Dragon in thy voice, though I see you wear a Phoenix torque.”

  Moon stepped forward until she stood elbow to elbow with Cassandra. “I am called Walks Under the Moon,” she said, her voice trembling in the twilight under the trees. “I am the full sister of the Sword of Truth, and the Manticore guides me.”

  “I hear thee, Moonwalker. Thy spirit is heavy. May I lighten it for thee?”

  Cassandra felt Moon’s barely repressed shudder against her arm. The Lady of Souls had commented on Moon’s spirit as well, she remembered.

  “I thank you, but no, Old One,” Moon said.

  “At thy wish, then, but I fear that without this lightening thou may’st not bide within the Great Wood.”

  “I do not wish to bide here, Old One.” Moon’s polite inclination of her head made her words less harsh.

  “So long as this is so, thou may’st be unbound with thy sister.” More of the long-fingered, pointy-nosed people came gliding out of the trees to stroke their bonds until they loosened.

  The Natural of the Wood turned its head to Max. “I see that your spirit is also heavy, Dawntreader. Would you be lightened?”

  “I am surprised by my reception, Trere’if. Are we not welcome here?”

  “You are welcome, Guardian Prince. But none but the Wild Riders may enter here, or any other Wood, without hindrance and explanation. Do you not know that now and for many turns past, the one we fought, the Basilisk Prince, has drained Lakes and cut down Woods, in his ignorance turning the Cycle faster?”

  Max’s thoughts spun. If the actions of the Basilisk were speeding up the Cycle, that could explain why the Talismans weren’t ready. There might be a High Prince after all, if only he could buy more time. A knot of tension in the back of his neck that he hadn’t been aware of loosened.

  “I have been in Exile, Elder Brother. There is much I do not know.”

  “Then you must marvel to see the People gathered here,” the Old One continued. “So many, all in Trere’if? They have come from long distances throughout the Lands, fled from their own places before the axes could come. Those who could. Ah,” he turned as Moon made
a sound in her throat, “thou did’st not know that this was possible? Many do not remember the lessons of the Great War, when my people fought at the side of the Guardian against the would-be prince.” He turned back to Max. “Many among my people regret the day they joined you, Guardian, thinking that their ills began at that time, or that present ills come as a consequence of that conflict, saying that we should not have involved ourselves in the affairs of Riders.”

  “Are you among those?”

  “What affects the Talismans affects us all, Dawntreader. That is as true now as it was when first I gave you my aid. But you must know, that since he has come to power, the Basilisk has turned many of my kind against your people. Few will now help you willingly—even you who are Guardian for us all—and there has been talk that we should rid the Lands of Riders once and for all.”

  “An action, and indeed an attitude, that will persuade many that the Basilisk’s actions against you are justified,” Cassandra observed as neutrally as she could.