Max took a deep breath. His father’s understanding was more comforting than he could have imagined, though it didn’t help him. It was easy to choose between right and wrong; it was much harder to choose between two things when both were right.
And what, after all, if he were wrong? Would Cassandra’s death buy the Talismans the time they needed for the Prince to appear? He had said, arrogantly he now saw, that they could ignore the Basilisk. But the Basilisk would not stop hunting him, would not stop killing his friends, there would always be someone dear to him—he looked through the tent opening to where Lightborn and Windwatcher had joined Blood on the Snow at the far side of the clearing. When they felt his stare and turned to look back at him, he shook his head minutely and lowered his face into his hands. This had to stop, and stop now.
He was in very great danger of making the same mistakes he’d made the first time around. When he’d let his own arrogance and his own pride make his decisions for him. This time he’d better think. All those years in the Shadowlands, planning other people’s campaigns, testing strategies. What had he learned? What were his goals? What did he want to happen?
He could not let the Basilisk have the Talismans. He could not let the Basilisk kill Cassandra.
He could kill the Basilisk.
Max’s laughter hurt his throat. It was so obvious he felt stupid. He saw exactly how he could do it, too. And if things went wrong, well, the Talismans would be where it seemed they wished to be. It was worth the risk.
He strode to the doorway of the tent, looked around the Riders outside until he caught the waiting Singer’s eye and nodded. He motioned toward his father and Lightborn and waited until they were all gathered around him.
“I have made my decision,” he said. “But I will tell it only to the Basilisk himself.”
The Basilisk’s Guidebeast set was the most intricate Cassandra had ever seen, each piece carefully carved and inlaid with stones of different colors to make them as lifelike as possible. The little ruby-and-bloodstone Dragons that were her pawns even seemed to feel warm. Cassandra picked up her Cauldron and moved it two spaces to the left, where it could protect her High Prince. The long sleeves of her red, silver, and black gown didn’t quite cover the darkmetal cuffs on her wrists, and the chain that shackled them together swung, tapping against the edge of the table.
Cassandra leaned back in her chair. They had taken all her weapons from her, but her gra’if mail shirt they could not remove without killing her, and she had deliberately left the high collar of the gown open at her throat to let it show. She didn’t worry about her lack of weapons. Even the manacles didn’t trouble her, though they were threaded through a darkmetal bolt on the floor at her feet. Eventually, the Basilisk would get careless, venture too close, and she would kill him. She looked around the small chamber at the Signs embedded in the walls, then back at the Rider across the table who had powered them. But perhaps she would save killing him for a last resort.
“What are your plans for my sister?”
“I have no plans,” the Basilisk said, studying the board. “I have fulfilled my bargain. I have taken you from the Prince Guardian.”
Cassandra looked around the room, at the darkmetal and onyx embedded in the walls. “Somehow I don’t think this is what Walks Under the Moon had in mind.”
“My dear,” the Basilisk looked up at her from under his brows. “I said she could have you. I never said she could keep you.”
Half an hour, more or less, they’d had together, in this room, before the Basilisk came to play Guidebeasts. No, Cassandra was sure that wasn’t what Moon had had in mind when she’d made her bargain. At first, when Moon had knelt at her feet and put her head in Cassandra’s lap, she’d held herself stiffly away from the younger Rider. But a memory of the little girl who’d sat like this so often relaxed her spine, and a half-forgotten habit brought up her hand to stroke Moon’s hair.
“Do you remember the Fair at Vareye’vo?”
“Hmmm.” Cassandra had kept stroking Moon’s hair.
“The pageants, the Cloud Horse races, the tournaments of fencing. Singing. That is what I want. I want us to have those days again.”
“Do you think the Basilisk Prince will give it to us?”
“He is the only one who makes an attempt.”
“But he is not the High Prince; what he’s attempting is wrong.”
Moon turned her face up to look Cassandra in the eye. “I am not so certain he is not the High Prince,” she said. “The Songs say the identity of the Prince will be as clear as a sound from a bell, and there is no other obvious candidate. It must be him.”
The “him” who sat across the table from Cassandra now.
“I would be interested to hear about your experiences in the Shadowlands, when we are both at more leisure,” the Basilisk said. He picked up his goblet of wine from the small side table next to his chair.
“I doubt there will be much leisure in my future.”
He raised his eyes to her as he set his wine down again. “It can be arranged. We must know more about them, and soon, if we are to assume our rightful rule over them. I know you could give me valuable insights into that world, and the value of its peoples.”
Cassandra lowered her eyes, pretending to study the board. Only years of discipline kept her from launching herself across the board at him. She couldn’t afford to show him her reaction to his words. She’d seen the effects of his interest in Malcolm Jones’ home—seen the remains of Mal’s human wife and children spread throughout his house. Did the Basilisk really expect her to help set the Hunt on humans who had not even the possibility of Moving to delay the inevitable? Who could never have gra’if? Nausea twisted through her stomach, and she forced herself to swallow.
The Basilisk made his move, pushing one of his own pawns, a small golden version of his Guidebeast, ahead one square. Cassandra slowly released the breath she’d been holding, sat forward, and took his Spear of War with her Prince Guardian.
“The people of the Shadowlands are not so very different from our People,” she said. “As thinking, feeling beings, we are motivated by similar things; we love for similar reasons, and we hate for similar reasons as well. We fear different things, but we fear.”
“This does not surprise me, though I believe it would others.” The Basilisk leaned back from the game and picked up his wine again, turning the goblet in his fingers as he gazed into the air over her head. “There are Songs that say the humans may be our distant kin, debased and degenerate from living in the Shadowlands.” He took a sip of wine and nodded. “This may be so. It may be that brought here, as I plan to do for the deserving, they may recover their birthrights as Riders. Once I have restored the Lands, and we Riders are returned to our ancient glories, there may be much I can do for these poor cousins of ours.”
“Our ancient glories?”
“You are young, and it is possible that you do not know the Songs as well as you might, living for so long in the Shadowlands. Those Songs which claim that Guardians and Princes may come from the ranks of Solitaries and Naturals have been proven false.” By whom, Cassandra wondered. Or was this the result of more of Moon’s research? “It is clear that only Riders can be Princes of the Lands, since we alone among the three Peoples can Move.”
Cassandra carefully controlled her face. He doesn’t know, she realized, thinking of Water Sprites and Trees.
“In other Cycles we have been tolerant of the demands and foolish understanding of both Solitaries and Naturals, and it has made them arrogant, caused them to hold us in contempt, and to cheat us of our power. In their defiance and conceit, they drained the Lands of dra’aj, and brought about the lessening we see around us.”
Cassandra glanced up, and her fingertips froze on her High Prince’s dragon. For a moment, she had seen not the Basilisk Prince sitting across from her, but a Basilisk, its snaky cock’s head turned to one side to fix its eye on her, its dragon’s tail curving up over the back of his
chair, like a stinger on a scorpion. Then a flicker of something else, something darker, and then it had been the Basilisk Prince again, turning a captured Spear over in his hand as he watched the board. Cassandra dropped her gaze and forced her hand to finish moving her pawn. No one of her generation had ever seen this, few would believe it possible. A Guidebeast. Even the Basilisk Prince did not seem to be aware that he had transformed. It was true, then, she thought, the absence of the Beasts was due to insufficient dra’aj, a problem the Basilisk Prince evidently did not have. She’d seen something else, though, in the last moment, just before he had resumed his Rider’s shape. And that was something she had seen before. Not a Basilisk exactly, but something scaly and leathery, something familiar.
When she killed the Hound, she remembered, her stomach sinking, it had taken on the shape of a Rider, the last shape it had before it Faded.
“They cannot be allowed to continue,” the Basilisk was saying. Cassandra finished her move. “The Lands must be saved. Those who agree and will conform themselves will be allowed to do their parts to aid the efforts of restoration, as those who have helped me with the Garden. Those who do not are the enemies of all of us, and the enemies of the Lands.”
The most horrible thing, Cassandra thought, was that the Basilisk believed what he said was the truth. But so had Lightborn, and so had Moon, and she had been wrong about them. Max had said the Dragonborn could sense “trueness” in people, but surely there had to be more to it than just knowing when people believed what they said?
She shut her eyes and breathed deeply, as if she were preparing to Heal. Instead of touching the Basilisk, however, instead of looking at only his body, she looked deeper, trying to do consciously what she did without thought when Healing. When Lightborn had said he could sense her dra’aj, she had told him it was because she had Healed him. The Healing normally used the dra’aj of both parties. She had never bothered much with the dra’aj of humans; in most cases there was so little of it that it often had no effect on the health. But if she could see the Basilisk’s dra’aj . . . She could feel herself flushing, as flame began to rise in her. When she touched an addict, she thought, she touched more than the damage done to the body, she touched . . . there. She gripped the arms of her chair. This was like stepping to the edge of the sidewalk and instead finding yourself on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Vertigo, nausea, and—
“There are people like you in the Shadowlands,” she said, relaxing and opening her eyes. “They are called psychopaths.” She moved her Guardian into a space three squares from the Basilisk’s High Prince.
“I believe it’s my game,” she said.
Chapter Nineteen
“I UNDERSTAND YOU WISH to speak to me.” The Basilisk looked beyond Max at the Wild Riders spread out on the hill behind him. “You seem to have fewer followers than when we last met on the field.”
Max steeled himself to appear as calm and relaxed as the Basilisk seemed to be. Dreamer of Time had always been at his sunniest, his most expansive and generous when he thought that things were going his way. Max resisted the feeling that if he only explained once more, if he only tried again, the Basilisk would hear him, and this time it would be different. The time that he could have reached Dreamer by speech alone was long past.
“I wish to discuss your offer, and to make a counter-offer of my own.”
“I am happy that you would discuss this,” the Basilisk said. “I grow fond of Sword of Truth; I would prefer not to punish her for your stubbornness.”
Max took a deep breath and forced his fists to open. He didn’t need to be reminded that failure to comply would mean Cassandra’s death. Or worse. The Basilisk could use the Chant of Oblivion and leave Cassandra stranded in some inhospitable part of the Lands, helpless and immobile, or he could simply feed off her himself until she slowly Faded, feeling her dra’aj drain away, unable to prevent it.
“You say that if I give you the Talismans, you will free Sword of Truth, and let her go safe.”
“I do.”
“If I agree,” Max gritted his teeth against the murmur of sound behind him. “If I agree,” he said, raising his voice, “I would want further conditions.”
“The life of Sword of Truth is not sufficient?” The Basilisk Prince smiled. “Perhaps Walks Under the Moon was right after all.”
Don’t let him distract you, Max told himself. “I would want an amnesty,” he said. “I would want freedom and safety for all who have followed me, whether Rider, Natural, or Solitary.”
“I think not.” The Basilisk shook his head. “I think that is too much. I will kill your lover and take the Talismans from you another day.”
“What if I bring you to the Stone?” This time there was silence behind him.
“I do not need the Stone. I have the Chant of Binding.”
“But you claim to be the High Prince. If that is so, the Stone will proclaim you, and you will not need the Chant of Binding. Both Naturals and Solitaries must acknowledge and obey you, if the Stone proclaims you.”
Even the wind seemed to have died down; no leaves blew across the ground. Lightborn had said this might be enough. Was he right, Max wondered. Would the chance to be proclaimed tempt the Basilisk? Had he read the man right, finally, after all these years?
“This is all it takes?” The Basilisk’s voice was at its most musical. “All that time ago, all I had to do was find someone you loved? You would have given me the Talismans then?”
Max clenched his jaw tight, knowing that to answer would undo all his plans.
“Very well, I agree to your bargain, Dawntreader, Prince Guardian. You will give me the Talismans, and take me to the Stone of Virtue, in exchange for the lives and freedoms of all your followers.” The Basilisk Prince tilted his head coyly. “Your followers, Dawntreader, not you.”
Once again Max ignored the murmur of sound behind him. He was neither surprised nor concerned by this detail. His own freedom had never been part of his plan.
“Will you send me Sword of Truth now?” was all he said.
“I am not so trusting as that.”
Max nodded, it had been worth a try. “Once again, it is I who must trust you.”
“This is a small thing, Dawntreader, it costs me nothing to give it. Especially if I gain all.”
That was the difference between them, Max thought. The Basilisk could consider Cassandra’s life a small thing. He could give it up, and it would cost him nothing. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life regretting it, wondering if he’d done the right thing.
The Basilisk held out his hand. “You will not lose by this, Dawntreader. I will not shut you out of the great work. All that I promised you, I can still do, if you would but join me.”
Max kept his hands at his sides. “Be here at dawn.”
Later, he sat cross-legged beside the fire they had built in front of the tent that housed the Talismans.
“I’m not so sure what I would do in your place, but I believe that I know why you do this,” Lightborn said, his hand on Max’s shoulder. “You did it once for me. Better we all die, than that we desert one another.”
“What profits us if we all die, and the Basilisk has the Talismans?” Windwatcher said. “My Prince,” Max looked to where the Sunward Rider sat on the far side of the fire, “you cannot do this. No one honors Sword of Truth more than I. I would have welcomed her in my fara’ip, blood of my blood. But the price of her life is too high.”
Max nodded, his neck creaking with stiffness.
“No.” Blood’s voice cracked across the space between them like a whip. “The Talismans are his. It is not for us, and most especially, Watches the Wind, it is not for you, to tell the Prince Guardian what he can and cannot do.” He looked at Windwatcher with a face as cold as his name. “Do we forget so quickly how we came to be here? Do we forget so quickly what occurred the last time the Guardian told us what must be done and was not heeded?”
It was Windwatcher’s turn to nod his head. “You a
re right, Old One. I spoke out of fear and uncertainty.” The old warrior turned to Max. “I ask your pardon, my Prince.”
Max grinned. He only hoped he seemed more confident than he felt. “Trust me,” he said. “I have a plan.”
“He has a plan,” Blood said, his chuckle rusty. “Shall we do less than the Basilisk does? Let us trust him.”
The Mirror Prince Page 33
