The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  Windwatcher grunted. “Are you saying that your mother knows you are a traitor?”

  Good question, Max thought.

  “I did not think,” Lightborn said, gritting his teeth as the Wild Rider helping him tightened the bandage and tied it off, “that I was a traitor.” He frowned, looking up at Max. “Though it sounds trivial now, even self-serving, I never meant to choose between you. I never thought there was a need. You had always been at odds, you and Dreamer, when we were young. Too much alike. I thought your dispute with him a mere continuation of this. At first, I told myself I could reconcile you; I saw myself earning a place in the Songs as the great Peacemaker.” He shook his head, hissing softly as he let the Wild Rider draw a well-worn leather shirt over his arm.

  “I thought you should let the Talismans choose. Either they would choose him, or they would not.”

  Blood on the Snow looked as if he would speak, but Max held up his hand, and the older Rider relaxed once more. Lightborn needed to do this, Max knew, to purge himself.

  Lightborn continued, absorbed in what he was saying. “I did not consider the right or the wrong of the matter. I did not see that there was a right or a wrong. I only saw that you were acting willfully, denying something to Dreamer of Time because of old wrongs. I see now that I thought the Talismans would choose him. I see now that I always thought he had the right of it, that I let him lead me, decide for me, because I thought he would win. It is . . . easier to be on the winning side.

  “I never thought of what I was doing as betrayal. You were both my friends, almost my fara’ip. I thought you could speak to each other through me. I told myself I never chose him, you see, so I told myself that I never betrayed you.”

  “You betrayed them both,” Blood said.

  Lightborn nodded, his gaze fixed on that long ago, far away time, on the Rider he had been then.

  “You could say that finally the Basilisk chose for me,” Lightborn said. He looked up at Max, a ghost of his former grin appeared on his face. “One day I found that my ability to say ‘no’ to him had vanished. That my loyalty to you,” here Lightborn shook his head again, a spasm of pain crossing his features, “that what I saw as my loyalty to you, would cost my life, and more than my life. I began to be afraid. Is that when you knew?”

  “I guessed,” Max said, thinking back to that time.

  “Now, of course, many people know that disloyalty to the Basilisk can bring much worse than death. Now he has the Hunt.” Lightborn frowned. “The Basilisk Prince. People little understand how well he is named. His heart is a living stone. A hard reflection of a true prince, like an image in a mirror. The calling of the Hunt is not the greatest of the evils he has done. I began to understand, to learn, during the Banishment. You were right, all those years ago. He is a Basilisk, and he will make the Lands a brittle place, as smooth as glass. A reflection of his emptiness, his cruelty. Better we should not be, better we should Fade, if it is our time, than that we lose our nature. I believed myself changed when I became aware of what he really was, I confessed to my mother, but there was little then that we could do but wait for your return. Then came the rumor that the Basilisk had the Chant of Binding, and I was once more afraid. When we met at my mother’s house, when you did not know me . . .” Lightborn shrugged, hissing in his breath as his movement jostled his injured arm.

  “Once again you did not choose,” Blood said.

  Lightborn nodded. “How well you see me.” He straightened as much as he could, still sitting on the padded rock. “I think that even then I was telling myself I did not need to choose that neither of you knew.”

  “Have you chosen now?” Windwatcher’s growl was menacing, and Max saw that he was not the only one who’d had doubts about Lightborn. But unlike Windwatcher, Max had not seen the ruins of Griffinhome.

  Lightborn looked up at Max. “You saved me,” he said. “In peril of your life, and more than your life, you waited to save mine. You are the Prince Guardian, and you hold the Heart of the People. The Sword of Truth stood at your right hand. I was dying, and at your bidding, that same Sword touched me and restored to me my life. Whether you knew yourself or not, at that moment, you showed me what the Heart of the People truly is, you showed me your true nature. That you would risk everything to do what was right. What further signs did I need to direct my path? At that moment, truly, I chose.”

  Max searched Lightborn’s face, as if there would somehow be some mark. He found himself convinced, not by what was there but by what wasn’t there. Lightborn was relaxed, Max saw, completely relaxed without any of the brittle tension that had characterized him for so long. Max held out his hand, but when Lightborn took it in both of his and ducked his head to kiss it, Max pulled him to his feet, and into his arms.

  “I would have waited for dancing girls,” he said gruffly.

  “I would suggest that we wait no further,” Blood said, after a moment had passed. “This camp is known to Walks Under the Moon, and it cannot take her long to bring the Basilisk’s forces down upon us.”

  “I am not certain that Moon will continue to aid the Basilisk,” Lightborn said, “now that her sister has been separated from the Prince. Moon’s motivations are entirely personal; her purpose is to restore her fara’ip, not to help the Basilisk.”

  Max nodded, his hand on Lightborn’s shoulder. “As you’ve shown us, people don’t always get to choose whether they’ll help the Basilisk,” he said. “We have to plan for what she can do, not for what she might do. She has been here, she can bring others.” He lifted his hand to his throat and touched the dragon torque resting on his collarbone. “We’ll split up, and I’ll join you once I’ve found Cassandra.”

  “You cannot go, my lord,” Windwatcher said. “Send me, I will take some of my men—”

  Lightborn turned to speak to the older Rider but paused when Max held up his hand. “I am the only one who can go—”

  “My lords.” It was one of the Moonward twins. “My lords, Walks Under the Moon has brought the Singer Wait for the Dawn to have speech with you.”

  Max lowered his hand and looked at the Riders with him. Windwatcher had put his hand on his sword hilt without seeming aware of it; Blood pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

  Lightborn shrugged, grinning broadly. “As ever, you are proven correct, my lord Guardian.”

  Max knew from the borrowed motley that the young Singer Twilight Falls Softly wore in camp that Singers in the Basilisk Prince’s court were forced to wear his colors but it was still a shock to see this Starward Singer dressed in solid magenta.

  “Since when have Singers worn any colors but their own?” Max smiled pleasantly as the Starward Singer’s ivory cheeks reddened. It showed sense to send a Singer to parley. Even Solitaries and Naturals recognized the neutrality of Singers as the keepers of the People’s histories, teaching them their own Songs so that nothing would be lost. But to see a Singer in the Basilisk’s deep magenta livery rather than in the traditional multicolored clothing . . . Max shook his head. It only underscored what Lightborn had said of the Basilisk’s goals.

  “My lord Guardian,” the Singer said, bowing. His voice was well-modulated and pleasing, but his greater Gift lay in his memory, not in his singing voice. “The Basilisk Prince sends you greetings, and asks that you meet with him.”

  “No.” Windwatcher and Blood on the Snow spoke in unison. Lightborn merely laughed.

  “You see how I am counseled,” Max said, shrugging and spreading his hands. “I do not believe that the Basilisk has anything to say to me that he has not already said.”

  “My lord Guardian,” the Singer said. “I was instructed that if you refused, I was to tell you that the Basilisk holds Sword of Truth, and that he wishes to discuss with you how she might be set free.”

  “And does her sister, who stands with you, have nothing to say to her freedom?”

  The Singer turned with a courteous bow to Moon, but the young Rider looked away, studying her feet. It was impossib
le to tell from the way she shook her head whether she was under coercion herself, or whether she helped the Basilisk willingly. In spite of what she had said, Max found it hard to believe that Moon would actually stand by and let the Basilisk harm Cassandra.

  “Wait.” Lightborn stepped forward and put his hand on Max’s forearm. “What proof can you give us that Sword of Truth still lives?”

  Max touched the dragon torque at his throat, its warmth all the answer he needed. Still, let Lightborn’s question stand. What would the Basilisk’s answer be?

  “She has bid me to remind you, if I had speech of you, my lord Guardian, that it is better to be a dead lion than a live jackal.”

  Max cut off his laughter before the tears under it rose to the surface. He nodded at Lightborn’s questioning face. Only Cassandra would have thought of that.

  “Tell me his offer,” Max said, when he could trust his voice.

  “He will free Sword of Truth and allow her to live in peace wheresoever she chooses if you will give him the Talismans.”

  Max opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Strange how something could still shake you, even though you expected it. Some little part of him still believed, somehow, that the Basilisk would not dare to ask.

  “I tell you we waste our time.” Moon’s voice cut through the cold air between them. “He will not do it. He will let her die before he fails in his Guardianship,” Moon almost spit the word out. “Sword of Truth is nothing to him.”

  Max ignored this, though he wondered how he had never noticed just how much the younger Rider hated him. “You will give me some time to consider?”

  “If I may, I will stay and await your answer.”

  “In spite of the colors you wear, you may stay.” Max took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He pointed at Moon. “She may not.”

  Still not looking at him, Moon made a sneer of distaste, and with a CRACK! she was gone.

  Max stood alone in the tent they had put up to house the Talismans. He hadn’t looked beyond this moment, beyond having them with him again. Beyond saving them from the Basilisk. Everyone had thought that finding them, keeping them from the Basilisk, would be all that was needed. Did they seem more awake now? He couldn’t be sure. It may have been only that they were together now, and he with them. Four now, after so many turns of Sun, Moon, and Stars, instead of only three. He cupped his hands around the Cauldron, bent forward until his face was in the bowl, as if he were dipping his face into a basin of cool water. What if they were five, not four? What if he took them to the Stone? There could be no safer place for them . . .

  He felt a stirring, as flames within him rose, and he straightened, his hands still on the Cauldron.

  Clearly, this was what they wanted. Was it possible? Was there now a High Prince to be brought to the Stone? But what had changed in the last few sunwidths? Unless Lightborn . . . Max sat down heavily on the small folding stool that stood before the chest holding the Talismans. What about Lightborn? It was possible. Max grinned and shook his head. Lightborn had changed since the time before the Great War, when the Basilisk Prince had asked for the Testing. He had changed and grown even since Max’s own return to the Lands. Was that what the Talismans had been waiting for? Would they now Choose?

  Max closed his eyes, reached out again with his Phoenix heart, but this time there was no answering surge of flame. The Talismans had told him all they had to tell for now. Perhaps he grasped at straws. Perhaps, after all, there was to be no High Prince, and the Cycle would not turn . . . perhaps it was only that the Talismans wished to be joined with the last of their fara’ip. Well, then, he would do that much for them. And for himself. And if there should, after all, be more than that? Well and good, he would be ready.

  But there was something he had to do first. Max closed his eyes and curled his fingers around the dragon torque at his neck, the scales warm and pliant. She was alive. Alive and presumably safe, though unable to Move. Well, he could think of two reasons for that. Unconscious or Bound. Either way, even the Basilisk would not offer to trade him anything other than a live Cassandra. He hoped they were keeping her in the tower room and not the dungeon.

  He reached out to stroke the Dragon helm sitting next to the Talismans on an old piece of embroidered silk that Blood on the Snow had given him. The rest of the gra’if she couldn’t wear into the Citadel was here as well, her gauntlets and greaves, her swords and daggers. Cassandra had Moved to him using his own gra’if, but he didn’t think he could do that. Her ability to Move to him had more to do with her being a Healer, he knew, and specifically with having Healed him many times, than with her having used his gra’if.

  As he pulled his own gauntlets on, he remembered the darkmetal shackles, and tucked her thin mailed gloves into his belt.

  “You will go to her, then?”

  Max hadn’t heard Blood on the Snow enter the tent behind him. “I must,” he said without turning around. “She came for me.” Even if it was just the Oath that brought her, he thought, even if that was all it was, he had to go after her now. He touched the Dragon torque again. He had bound her to him the only way he could, so that the end of the Banishment wouldn’t separate them. He hoped it would be enough.

  He turned to face his father, unprepared to find the Wild Rider smiling.

  “I will not stop you, my son.” Blood’s voice was a soft thread of sound. “On the contrary. I came to be sure that you understood what this,” Blood touched the torque around Max’s neck with the tip of his index finger, “bound you to.”

  “I understand,” Max said. In the look he exchanged with his father, Max saw all the words that neither of them could say, as the ghost of the woman they had lost stood between them.

  “Go to her,” Blood whispered, stepping back from him.

  Max emptied his mind of everything except his missing torque. He knew where it was the same way the he knew where his feet were, where the tips of his fingers touched the inside of his gloves. It was a part of him, he had only to Move toward that part of his fire that was—There!

  He was in a broad passageway, a part of the Citadel he had never seen. The walls were paneled in darkwood, and the floors were dressed in reddish stone, polished mirror smooth. His Phoenix torque lay under his right hand, on top of a hall table. Of course. As it was really his gra’if, they would have been able to remove it. The table also held a vase filled with apple blossoms and the weapons Cassandra had been carrying, several daggers, a throwing knife, and a sword with blood hastily and poorly wiped off. Max hooked the Phoenix torque—he no longer thought of it as his—through his belt to leave both hands free.

  Next to the table was an ordinary darkwood chamber door, such as might lead to any bedroom or sitting room. This door, however, had a gleaming inlay, bright and silvery and hard to focus on. The door was Signed. Max knew who was behind the door, and even though he knew there was nothing he could do about it, he flattened himself against it, his cheek pressed to the door’s tooled surface, hands reaching as if he could force his fingers through the wood, as if his thoughts, his love, could pass through. He couldn’t move, unwilling to go without her; unwilling to face the decision he now had to make.

  He didn’t Move until he heard the sound of approaching feet.

  Max looked across the makeshift table at Blood on the Snow, Lightborn, and Windwatcher, studying each Rider in turn, assessing the different strengths he would find in them. Exactly as if they could help him. But they were Riders, he knew what they would say. He knew what he would have said himself, before he had lived his human lives. One Rider’s life was a small price to pay to keep the Talismans out of the Basilisk’s hands. A very small price when weighed against the good of the Lands and all the People. Cassandra would tell him the same thing herself. Everything they had done had been done with the purpose of keeping the Talismans away from the Basilisk. One Rider’s life.

  But Cassandra’s life?

  Even he might consider—for a moment—Cassandra’s life a fa
ir exchange if it bought the good of all the Lands and all the People. If sacrificing her life meant the start of a new Cycle. But if he were wrong about the possibility of a High Prince, if his hope about the change in Lightborn was nothing more than that, hope born of desperation . . . then giving up Cassandra wouldn’t buy them anything. If the Cycles were ended, if he was the last Guardian, Cassandra’s death at the hands of the Master of the Hunt would buy him and his followers nothing more than a little bit of time. Time they would spend running from Hounds.

  Max looked at the faces across the table again, but there were still no answers there for him.

  “My son,” Blood said, getting to his feet. He had always looked what he was, Max thought, the oldest among them, but this was the first time he’d seen Blood move like an old man. “I know what you are thinking. You are wondering whether you can live with yourself when you have chosen your duty over your love. I once made such a choice, and I tell you, you can. But I tell you this, also. While it is possible to live with the decision should you choose duty, you will wish it were not. Do not speak hastily. Weigh what you must do.” He gathered up the other two Riders with a sideways jerk of his head and led them out of the tent.