The Mirror Prince

by Malan, Violette

  “He will trade for your life.”

  Her first feeling was elation. He loved her that much, he would give up everything, the world itself, for her. But following close behind that elation, so close that it was almost the same feeling, was horror at what he had done. Her knees gave way and she sank down into the cushioned seat next to the gaming table, now with its board reset for a new game. Max would save her, but at what cost? No matter how much he loved her, how could he do this? Didn’t he realize that this was proof of love she would spend her whole life regretting? Did she have no say in this?

  Get a hold of yourself, woman, she thought grimly, gripping the arms of her chair. He’s got a plan. She almost smiled. He’s always got a plan.

  “You have no reason for so much fear, Sword of Truth. It is not only his agreement that could save you. I will not harm you unless I must. You have other uses.”

  She should have seen that coming. Why kill her when keeping her alive would be so much more useful? Amazing that he thought this would reassure her. As long as she was alive, she was a warranty for Max’s good behavior. As long as she was alive, the Prince Guardian was vulnerable.

  And that was the real problem, wasn’t it? Because Max’s plans had been known to go wrong in the past. There was that time in Florence, when they’d had to let themselves down the castle walls at the ends of knotted sheets, minutes ahead of the men coming to put them in the dungeons. If there was any way, any way at all that the Basilisk could end up with the Talismans . . .

  It was too risky. She couldn’t let Max risk everything to free her.

  The Troll Diggory had been bound rather more than Cassandra was, at least at this moment. His only option had been to force the Basilisk to kill him. She could do that, too. Or she might have another option. Hers was not the only death that would free them. Psychopath she’d called him, and the thing with psychos was . . .

  “I find myself disinclined to part with you,” the Basilisk was saying. “Once I have the Talismans, why should you not stay and help me?”

  “Help you?” she said, her voice as sharp as she could make it. “You don’t even know how badly you need help.” She turned up her eyes and shook her head. “Fool! You stink of Hound. You transform into your Guidebeast without even being aware of it. Do you even know what that means? Or maybe you have a Chant to fix it?”

  The Basilisk gripped the back of his chair, his knuckles white against his bronze skin. “If I change into my Guidebeast, it is a sign of my dra’aj. It is a proof that I am what I intend to be, High Prince over all the People.”

  “Your dra’aj? Really?” Cassandra pitched her voice to its most sarcastic. If she could get him angry enough . . . “You think stealing it makes it yours? And is your Guidebeast twisted and scaly? Are its eyes filmed over with webbing? Does poison ooze from its joints?” Cassandra took a deep breath while he looked at her in shock, disbelief warring with fear in his eyes. “You are draining the dra’aj from others, everyone knows this. I don’t know how or why you started, but now you can’t stop, and you need more and more of it.” She stopped to take a breath. “It’s turning you into a Hound, you stupid fool. And what good will your Talismans do you then?

  “Let me help you,” she said, holding out her hands to him. “Let me Heal you. You have fallen from the True, but it may not be too late.” Come a little closer, she thought. I’ll help you all right. It would mean her death either way. The Basilisk might kill her, or he might come close enough that she could kill him. Since the Room was Signed, killing the Basilisk would lock her into it forever. But she told herself that death from starvation was an easy price if she killed the Basilisk first.

  “You should not say such things to me, Dragon spawn.”

  “Why? What are you going to do? Kill me?” she said with a sneer, looking him up and down and curling her lip. “You can’t, you need me for your little trade. So go ahead and threaten me, Hound spit, see if you can frighten me.”

  White-faced, the Basilisk picked up the Guidebeast board, scattering the pieces over the floor, and struck her across the face. She had meant to let him hit her, to lure him closer, but her reflexes for once betrayed her. They had her arms up in time to take the sharp edge of the board on her forearm, but not fast enough to grab the board while he still held it. She felt the sharp pain of the bone snapping. Just the ulna, she said to herself as she allowed momentum to carry her to the floor, softening the blow. The Basilisk aimed several kicks at her ribs. Her gra’if shirt hardened, saving her from the worst of it. She rolled into him, hoping to knock him down and get her hands around his throat, but her chains stopped her short, allowing the Basilisk time to grab the small table that held his wine and stun her with a blow to the head.

  He grabbed her by the hair and shook her. The pain was tight and hot, but pain alone would not kill her.

  “You are wrong,” he said. “I can frighten you.” She did not see what he did, but even with her eyes shut, and even with the throb of pain in her arm and head, she could feel the difference in the room as he deactivated the Signs. He stomped to the door and threw it open, lifted the bone ornament he wore on a darkmetal chain around his neck to his lips and blew.

  Here, so close to the Horn, Cassandra felt the call pulse through her body like the blast wave of an explosion. Only the manacles prevented her from being flung against the wall with the fury of the sound. Did she feel the bolt which fastened her chains to the floor give a little?

  The Basilisk came back to where she lay and grabbed her by the hair again, giving her head another shake. “You know so much about Hounds, you will enjoy the company of one. Perhaps you could try to Heal it.”

  The sun was long gone, the moon had risen, and the fire had died down to coals. Soon they would have to either go to sleep or put more wood on the fire. Scattered throughout the clearing were other fires, around which other small groups of Riders were equally wakeful, talking, eating, polishing weapons. A few were singing softly. They all knew that the Basilisk would be back at dawn, and it was as if no one wanted to spend what might be their last hours asleep.

  “You should not go alone,” Lightborn said, as if continuing a conversation.

  Max sat up and poked a branch into the fire, watched as it flared up before adding another. “Don’t worry,” he said, “that’s not the plan.” He turned to where Blood on the Snow’s profile was limned by the flickering firelight. “The Troll Hearth of the Wind, was part of your fara’ip. Have you any other Solitary that you can call on?”

  The Wild Rider’s gray eyes sparkled. “I do. The Ogre Thunder Under the Mountain is a part of the same fara’ip. What is your need of her?”

  “It is customary, when a candidate is taken to the Stone, that it be witnessed by representatives from all the People. As he has Singers with him, there could be quite a few among the Basilisk’s followers who would know this, and we should be prepared, or he may think we’re bluffing. I think we can be sure the Basilisk won’t be bringing any Naturals or Solitaries with him. We’ll have to provide the witnesses ourselves.”

  “But the Stone will not Sound? You have said the Basilisk is not the true Prince. We do bluff?” Lightborn sat at attention, straightening from where he had been lounging on his elbow, looking back and forth between Max and Blood.

  “Witnesses witness,” Max said. “That’s what we want them for.”

  “What of Trere’if?” Blood said. “You must have a Natural as well, and there are few within dawn’s distance of us that can Walk.”

  “Good. Can the Moonward twins call him?”

  Blood nodded. “Trere’if will carry my message to Thunder Under the Mountain as well.”

  Blood rose smoothly to his feet, crossed to where the twin Riders lounged beside their own fire, and hunkered down to speak to them. Max waited until he saw them nod and Blood returned.

  “Father, can you choose ten of your Riders, all gra’if wearers, to go the Stone?”

  “I can choose any number. Any and a
ll of them will stand with us.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But I don’t think more than ten will fit where I need them to be.” Max smiled at his father. “You’ll understand when you see it.”

  Blood nodded, lips thinned, considering. “I would choose the Moonward twins.”

  “No problem. There’s time for them to get back from Trere’if before dawn.” “And the others?”

  Max added another piece of tree branch to the fire. This time the wood, too green to burn properly, smoked until he’d pushed it to one side.

  “Windwatcher, will you take charge of the remaining Riders?”

  “Willingly. How shall we attend upon you?” The gruff soldier showed his pleasure in his smile.

  Max laid his hand on the older Rider’s shoulder. “Take the remaining Wild Riders, your own people, and any others who will follow you. Go to the Portals. If you do not hear from any of us before the Sun rises again in this place, destroy them.”

  “But, my lord—”

  Max held up his hand. “The Solitaries will show you how; there are those among them who saw the Portals made. There is dra’aj in the Shadowlands. In this, Sword of Truth was correct,” he said aside to Lightborn, “and if the worst should come, if we should fail, I would like to keep that dra’aj from the Basilisk.” And perhaps, he said to himself, the Shadowlands will survive the end of the Cycle.

  “It shall be as you wish, my lord Prince,” Windwatcher said. “Lady Honor of Souls awaits with the greater part of my people. She will aid in this.”

  “When you see my mother,” said Lightborn, looking fixedly into the fire, “give her my heart, tell her . . .”

  “I will tell her you have chosen,” Windwatcher said.

  Lightborn smiled, and for a moment Max saw again the friend of his boyhood. He would make a good Prince, that boy, now that he’s back.

  Windwatcher bowed to Max and followed Blood on the Snow through the camp, going from Wild Rider to Wild Rider, speaking to each one, sending some for their Horses, returning others to their interrupted tasks.

  Max turned back to Lightborn. The Starward Rider was leaning forward, frowning, his eyes full of a question.

  “Go ahead and ask,” Max said, “while there’s still time.”

  “Why did you not take the Basilisk to the Stone before? If you knew the Stone would not proclaim him?”

  Max leaned back and squeezed his eyes shut. “Humans have a saying: ‘Hindsight is twenty-twenty.’ ” Lightborn went on looking at him and Max sighed. “I thought I shouldn’t have to prove it. And I was right, I shouldn’t have. I speak for the Talismans in this and all things. He is not the High Prince.” The words he could use to tell Lightborn what he suspected leaped into Max’s brain, but again he kept silent. “I might not know who the High Prince is,” he said instead, “but I do know who he isn’t. My word should have been enough. So all my critics are right. The Great War was not the Basilisk’s fault. It was mine. I hadn’t yet learned that there are more important things than my pride.”

  “And you have learned this now.”

  Max looked up again, but Lightborn was watching the fire. It hadn’t been a question, Max realized. He wished he could be as sure as Lightborn seemed to be.

  “These witnesses—others have been to the Stone in the past, then? Other Riders?” Lightborn was thinking again, his brows drawn together over eyes made sapphire by the glow of the fire.

  Max nodded. “The Songs tell of Riders who have witnessed the proclamations.”

  “Moon is a Scholar of the Songs,” Lightborn said, grasping Max’s arm. “And if others have been there, she will know of them, and how to find them. They may be there already.”

  Max patted the other Rider’s shoulder. “There can’t be anyone waiting for us, if that’s what’s worrying you. The Stone isn’t part of the Lands.”

  “But then how do we Move there?”

  “You can’t Move there,” Max said. “Any more than you can Move to the Shadowlands without a Portal.”

  “Then how . . . ah, you are the Portal to the Stone,” Lightborn said, his voice soft. Max nodded. Was Lightborn’s quick understanding a good sign? Or was he still just clutching at straws?

  “Without you, the Basilisk could never be proclaimed.”

  “I want him to know that.”

  “And I said you had learned to do without your pride.”

  Max grinned, holding up his hands. “Wait a minute. He thinks the Stone will Sound. And if it doesn’t? Well, I think he’ll take the Talismans and use the Chant of Binding on them as he intended to do all along. And tell the People that the Stone did proclaim him.”

  “But then why take him there? What is your purpose?”

  Once again the words, the explanation hovered on Max’s lips. Once again he kept silent. If he was wrong, if Lightborn was not the High Prince . . . Max couldn’t raise anyone’s hopes that way. This might be their only chance to kill the Basilisk, and he didn’t want anyone distracted from that. Better they all thought they Rode to their deaths.

  “I’ll get him away from his followers. The Stone is the only place in all of the Lands, and even the Shadowlands, where I alone control who Moves there. The only place we can outnumber him.”

  “And if that is not enough?”

  Max looked down. “No one has ever been to the Stone, or left it, without a Guardian to Move them.”

  “So, if you are dead . . . ?”

  Max inclined his head once, his eyes fixed on Lightborn’s.

  “So this is a trick?” Lightborn’s smile was joyous. “We will lure him to the Stone, and we will kill him.”

  “Or die ourselves, yes.”

  “A simple plan. I like it.”

  Cassandra smelled the Hound the moment it entered the room and redoubled her efforts to pry loose the ring that fastened her darkmetal shackles to the floor. Using the chair leg was awkward, especially with her broken arm, but she thought she felt some give to the bolts that held the ring in place. What she did not feel was the distinctive movement the air would make as the Signs reactivated, and for a moment her heart leaped and the adrenaline surge gave her strength enough to pull the bolts free. She brought her concentration to bear, pushing aside the pain in her head and the throbbing in her arm. Even if the Hound followed her through the Move, if she could focus enough—

  —a bruising grip on her ankle jerked her leg up and swung her around, letting go not when she was in the air as she half expected, but back on the floor so that she only slid across the flagstones and came to a jarring stop against the hearth of the fireplace, the chains of her manacles bruising her ribs and back. Damn, she thought, fighting the urge to clear her head by shaking it. Leaving the Signs open had been no oversight on the Basilisk’s part, but a calculated ploy. She couldn’t both defend herself and Move. And the distraction of freedom would be enough to make her defense a poor one. Or so the Basilisk might think.

  She couldn’t hope to kill the Hound. The Basilisk Prince she could have managed, even with the cracked ulna, but the Hound was a different matter. She wasn’t even sure that it could be killed without gra’if, and her mail shirt made a poor offensive weapon. If she couldn’t solve Max’s dilemma by killing the Basilisk, she had to do it by dying herself. Normally, you could count on a Hound for that. But this time . . .

  He’s been told to scare me, Cassandra thought, drawing in slow careful breaths to save her ribs. So how can I get him to kill me instead? She could start out by seeming more injured than she was. Because it had to be a kill, a clean kill. No sane person would choose death by Hound as a good method of suicide. She remembered very clearly Nighthawk’s advice when he’d taught her how to kill Hounds. “Don’t let them feed,” he had said to her, “if it seems to you that you will not prevail, kill yourself before it begins to feed.” Good advice, she was sure. Sound. She shut her eyes tight against the throbbing in her arm, a counterpoint against the ringing in her head.

  Forcing air out of her lungs, she u
sed the hearthstone and then the mantel of the fireplace to pull herself to her feet, kicking the heavy skirt of her gown out of the way. She was just straightening her knees when the Hound swept her feet out from under her and pounced on her, landing lightly on all four clawed feet, crouching over her with jerky flaps of its stunted wings. She managed to get her arms up to protect her head, but the strain on the broken bone, weighed down by her manacles, was telling. Her forearm moved as if it was not a part of her, but a dead weight. If only it were as numb as dead weight usually was, then at least it wouldn’t cost her so much effort to ignore the pain.

  If she couldn’t concentrate enough to Move, could she concentrate enough to Heal herself? In the past, she had often Healed humans with little more than a touch, almost without thinking of it. She wasn’t human, but perhaps she could Heal enough—ooof!

  The Hound had pounced again, this time giving her a savage bite that might have broken ribs, except that under her clothes her gra’if mail shirt hardened, protecting her from the Hound’s teeth. Frustrated, the Hound batted her with its spiked tail, sending her sliding partway across the room until she came up against the divan with a jarring thump.