He’s young, Max thought. Older and he’d hide his feelings better. Max propped his chin on his right fist and narrowed his eyes, studying the way the boy stood, the set of his shoulders, the cant of his eyebrows. Finally he sat up. “You’re angry,” he told the young Rider. “You might be angry because you backed the wrong horse and now you feel stupid. Or because you’re afraid that the High Prince won’t forgive you. Or maybe because it turns out your mother was right all along.” Here Max grinned at Falcondream before continuing. “But it’s also possible—just—that you’re angry because your mother is forcing you to be somewhere you don’t want to be. That you have no love for the High Prince, and don’t really wish to serve her.”
Visionflight would have thrown himself at Max’s feet, but the Guardian Prince stopped him in mid motion with a flick of his fingers. “I can’t be sure, but the High Prince can. You’ll have to wait until she returns.” He looked at Falcondream. “Is this acceptable to you? Truthsheart will know with certainty merely by speaking with him. My own methods are nowhere near as quick.”
“If you distrust him, Keeper of the Talismans, he has only himself to blame.” From the sharpness of Falcondream’s tongue, Max thought he could see a reason why her son had left home to take up service elsewhere as soon as he could.
Max nodded to the Wild Riders and watched them lead the boy and his mother away.
“Are there many like him?” Hawk followed the departing Riders with narrowed eyes.
“Quite a few, I’m happy to say, if I’m right about him. Just ordinary people with no evil in them, who happened to be on the wrong side.”
“How will you make sure he doesn’t escape? Do you have a Signed room somewhere?” Hawk’s question was reasonable. A Signed room, a room whose walls were spelled with darkwood and gra’if so that no Rider could Move either out or in, was the time-honored way to keep prisoners.
“It’s not possible to Sign a tent,” Max said. “Not even Cassandra’s pavilion. But those aren’t ordinary trees out there.” He indicated the woods, dark and thick, that lay behind the pavilion. “That’s Trere’if, the Eldest of the Tree Naturals. When we need it, he just makes us a nice comfortable clearing that can hold any Rider.”
Hawk nodded, but his amber eyes had lost their focus, as if he looked into the heart of Trere’if itself. After a few moments his gaze returned. “You set me a good example, Max. Not to judge too quickly, and not to condemn out of hand those who once stood at the sharp end of your sword. If the High Prince has cured a Hound, then I will trust in the skills, and in the judgment of my old comrade.”
Max smiled. “I’m sure she’ll be pleased to hear it.”
Hawk raised his right hand, index finger extended. “But I have other news.”
Max let himself fall once again against the leather back of his chair. From the look on Hawk’s face, the news wasn’t good.
“I sent her warning once before, my lord Guardian, and it seems I’m doing so again.” Hawk braced his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. “We’ve mentioned that some of the Basilisk’s Warriors are in the Shadowlands, but you may not know that the Hunt is there as well. And if they are still allies…”
Max felt like he’d swallowed a pool of ice. Allies wasn’t exactly the word, but—“They can Move the Hunt. Wings of Cloud!” he called, getting to his feet. “Find Walks Under the Moon and bring her here,” he said, when the young Wild Rider answered his call. He turned to Hawk. “Cassandra’s sister,” he explained. “We may need her.” He wrapped his hand around the dragon torque at his throat. “You’ll have to excuse me. I must find the High Prince.”
Chapter Four
CASSANDRA KENNABY, HIGH PRINCE of the Lands, pushed her hands through her hair and sighed, opening her eyes.
“Do you tire? Would you rest?” Trere’if sat just within the edge of Trees, where the dappled light that filtered through the moving branches obscured his true form.
Cassandra let her hands drop to her knees. The light in the clearing had not changed since the last time her eyes were open. In this particular clearing, the light would never change.
“I can feel every mar in the Lands,” she said, straightening her legs out of the lotus position and getting to her feet. “Like an itch I cannot scratch. I won’t be able to truly rest until the Lands are fully restored.”
Trere’if was the eldest of the Tree Naturals. Resting here in his very heart, Cassandra could feel the pattern and network of dra’aj that connected him to the younger Trees spread throughout the Lands, some dreaming under blankets of snow, some buffeted by wind, or rain, or baked by the hot sun of the tropics.
It was because she was High Prince that these connections were open to her, because she was bonded to the Lands through the Talismans, feeling—when she needed to—the ebb and flow of dra’aj as if it were the blood in her own veins.
“If you would continue, there is another place where a wood was cut down, where now only carnivorous grasses grow.” For a moment his voice was the rattling of dry leaves in a winter wind.
Cassandra drew her brows together. “I know that place, I have seen it.” She shivered. Trees lived so slowly, many, like Trere’if, lasting from Cycle to Cycle. The idea that some of these near-immortal beings had been cut down, destroyed forever—she rubbed at her eyes. The damage done by the Basilisk in his fear and his rage was near to overwhelming. It seemed that she had already spent a lifetime following the roots of the dra’aj that informed the Lands, like a physician, looking for flaws, for injuries, dangers, thin spots, so that she could redirect dra’aj to where it was needed.
“This last place, Trere’if, and then I will rest for today.”
The canopy above her head parted slightly, just enough, Cassandra noted with a wry grin, to let her pass. She leaped straight up into the air, spreading her wings and beating once, twice, thrice, and she was above the Trees. Feeling them lift high, higher, highest, until the Wood that was Trere’if looked small below her. For a moment she had the image—from Trere’if himself?—of the black-silver-and-red dragon erupting from the cool green of the trees, and she saw with pleasure how beautiful she was.
Cassandra laughed, and the fire roared from her throat. The wind held her, caressing her wings and belly. In her Dragonform she could see as well as feel the dra’aj that made up the Lands. See it as different bands of color, including some that only dragons could see, and Riders had no words for. Below her, the Lands spread like a crazy quilt woven of rainbows and the auroras. Not only the Lands, but all the different People, down to, if she concentrated, their individual threads. She resisted the impulse to look for the thread that was Max. She would see him soon enough.
Then she saw the dark spot Trere’if had spoken of, the break in the network, the hole in the quilt where rot and decay had damaged the Lands. Striking her wings, she plummeted, pulling up only when she hovered over the place where the flesh-eating grasses grew.
With her dragon fire she burned the grasses away, her dra’aj sending Healing with every searing breath, fresh greenery and even flowers springing up in the wake of her flames. Cassandra drew then upon her Binding, touching the bright colors of the Lands, teasing them to grow until the rot was gone and there was only life. She called along the bands and whorls and loops of dra’aj and Trere’if answered, sending her the shapes and colors of Trees willing to answer her summons. She felt the surge of dra’aj, the playfulness of some of the younger Saplings as they shifted, changed, and Walked toward her as she drew their threads along the paths she created. With them came older Trees as well, to anchor the new Wood.
The Trees left her a place, a dragon-sized clearing where she landed and took on her own form once more. The clearing shrank, until it was a comfortable size for a Rider. The Trees behind her rustled, and Cassandra turned just as a Green Lady stepped from between the trunks and vines.
“Greetings, High Prince,” she said. Her skin was smooth and silvered, mottled green here and there, her hair an odd
ly becoming mixture of mosses and long, tapering leaves. “We thank you with limb, and sap and leaf for the Wood you have made us.” The Tree Natural bowed, the Trees around her moved their branches with her.
“You are welcome,” Cassandra said. “I will ask among the Water Naturals displaced by the Basilisk whether any will come here, to gladden your groves with their liquid music.” I had better be off, she thought with a private grin. Much longer and she might not be able to stop talking like a Tree. “Have you chosen a name?” she asked.
“We have,” the Tree said. “We are Feena’en, High Prince.”
“I will tell the Singers,” Cassandra said. “And your name will be recorded.” Once again they bowed, and a sudden breeze shivered the branches around her.
Cassandra’s fingers strayed to the phoenix torque around her neck, caressing the fine pattern of feathers. It was Max’s, gra’if made from his blood, and at this moment strangely warm under her caress, tingling somehow, as if—a RUSH! of displaced air, and Max was standing next to her. He smiled, as he always did when he saw her, but his green eyes were clouded. She raised her brows.
“Nighthawk has returned from the Shadowlands, and has news you must hear.” For Max to speak so formally, the news must be serious indeed.
Cassandra turned to look around her. “Farewell, Feena’en, I will not forget the Water.” She took Max’s hand in hers, and they Moved.
“As I see it,” Alejandro began as he handed me an umbrella and picked up his walking stick. “There are two possible sources of danger. The Hunt, and a combination of the Hunt and the Basilisk Prince’s Riders. So we must take every precaution.
My stomach fluttered. I grounded the point of the umbrella firmly on the front hall carpet and stood up straighter. I reminded myself that what we were about to do was my idea. “Which do you think is more likely?”
Alejandro shrugged. “We must deal in possibilities, not likelihoods. No one has ever died of taking precautions. And you are my fara’ip.”
His family, he meant. His chosen family that is, not his family by blood, though the closest we humans have to it is what we call blood brotherhood. In his particular case it also meant “all I have left,” which some people might have found scary, or too clingy and controlling. With someone else it might have been, but with Alejandro all I’d ever felt was the love.
As we stepped out of our enclosed front porch onto the concrete front steps, we were greeted by the enthusiastic barking of a small dark gray dog. We found our right-hand neighbor, Barb, standing on her own front steps with an open letter in her hand. There was a crooked line between her eyebrows.
“Can we be of assistance, señora?” Alejandro at his most courtly.
Barb looked up and smiled. “Thanks, but no. It’s good news, really, though a bit screwy.” She waved the letter. “A friend I haven’t heard from in a while.”
“A Spanish stamp, if I am not mistaken.”
With her mind still on the letter, Barb glanced at the envelope and handed it over to Alejandro, who took it with genuine interest. Postmarked Madrid, I thought, brushing it with my fingertips. [Pale women with honey-gold hair and gray eyes; flashing blades; weird pen, weirder paper; two letters.] Barb was a little more relieved than her behavior indicated. Apparently, her friend had vanished about three months before without leaving much of a message, and this was the first time she’d heard from her.
“I’ll have to let them know at the dojo.” Barb stood there tapping the refolded letter against the edge of her hand, her gaze focused in the middle distance. Put together with what I’d gotten from the letter itself, it was obvious she was debating whether to call them. There was no way I could tell her a second letter had already reached the dojo.
“A dojo?” Alejandro recalled Barb’s attention by handing her back the envelope. “A martial arts academy?”
Barb waved the letter again. “My friend’s part owner. So it’s likely they’ve got a letter of their own, but she doesn’t say so.” Her forehead creased. “They’ll be needing another fencing master, that’s for sure.” She blinked, suddenly realizing that she’d been doing a lot of her thinking aloud, and with a roll of her eyes for apology and a smiling “seeya later,” she disappeared into her enclosed front porch, her small dog at her heels.
Alejandro and I checked our own mailbox (just flyers) and went down the walkway and across the street, angling to the corner so we could walk down Elmer to Queen, where we were planning to take the 501 streetcar. We were meeting Nik Polihronidis at the Union Station subway stop, and Alejandro wanted to use a route we hadn’t used before.
He was very quiet as we made our way to Queen Street, and I waited until we were standing at the streetcar stop before I asked him what was on his mind.
“You’d like to apply for that fencing job, wouldn’t you?” I said.
“That shows you the limits of English. Anyone would think I were a carpenter.” He kept his eyes focused down the street, as if he could make the streetcar materialize by force of will. On the other hand, maybe he could.
I shook my head and smiled. “You’ve got credentials, haven’t you?” The streetcar arrived and we left the sidewalk, crossing the short section of roadway between us and the opening doors. Rush hour was over, and we were able to get two seats together close to the rear doors.
“Alejandro Martín has no such credentials.” He tapped himself on the chest. “My fencing credentials are much older, and for a man who has not existed in over a century.” He spoke quietly, even though there was no one close enough to overhear us. “The international fencing community is smaller than you think. A psychologist like yourself, my dear, might be created out of thin air, but a fencing master must, at some point, have been seen physically.”
Over the years, Alejandro had used more identities than he could readily remember. So I wasn’t too surprised that every now and then he’d mention one I’d never heard of before.
“What will you do, then?”
“You mean, what would I do, if I were going to apply for this work?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, what would you do?”
“Offer to fence with whoever is currently the dojo champion.” His smile was a beautiful thing to see.
“And would that work?”
He shot me a look out of the side of his eyes. “You wound me, my angel, by even pretending to doubt it.”
I grinned, and hugged the backpack I had in my lap. “So why is it only what you would do, and not what you will do?”
He managed to shrug without brushing against me. His eyes were focused to the front again. I thought I was going to have to touch him to get an answer when he finally spoke.
“How can we undertake other commitments until we have discharged the one we have now before us?”
I pressed my lips together and stared out of the window. Other commitments. Alejandro was only in Toronto because of me, to help me find my family. I was a bit chagrined to find out it was only now occurring to me that I’d taken Alejandro away from his life and the place he loved.
I thought about how determined I’d felt when I’d seen that strange man on the subway, and I remembered how exhilarated I’d felt leaving the Christie Institute. I realized that was how I still felt, determined and exhilarated. Oh, yeah, and scared.
“I hope Alejandro knows what he’s doing,” Nik helped me shift my backpack to a more comfortable spot. “I don’t like using you as bait.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve been through that, and if you don’t have any better ideas now than you did last night, can we get on with it?”
Nik raised his eyebrows at me in such a way that I knew he guessed how nervous I was. I shrugged and looked away. We were standing just inside the subway station, below street level, with the entrance to Union Station’s food court across the lane from us. According to Nik, there were a lot of sightings of the Hunt around Union Station, which had made sense to Alejandro, considering both the crossroads and the Portal were there. There w
ere thousands of crossroads, but only nine Portals. Why they were where they were, was something even Alejandro didn’t know.
“We need to find out what we’re up against, so Alejandro can figure out which of the hidden People is most likely to help us. We already know the bad guys are showing interest in me,” I said. “So I’m the one they’re most likely to follow.”
“Yeah, yeah. And if they follow you, then we’ll know who and what they are. I know the plan, I just don’t like it.”
I bit my lip and eyed the station entrance. Alejandro was already inside. Nik would come in after me. Nik’s people—both people like him, and people with him—were inside as well, and though I didn’t know all of them, they’d seen photos of me.
“Got your umbrella?”
I hefted it. As if he couldn’t see perfectly well that I had.
“Don’t let anyone touch you,” Nik said. I remembered what I’d seen inside Elaine and nodded.
“What if no one follows me?” I said.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure someone will follow you.” I heard the smile in Nik’s voice and turned toward him in time to catch it on his face. “In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.”
I rolled my eyes. It was silly, I know, but I was feeling better as I set off.
Because he was looking for it, Alejandro saw almost immediately that half a dozen men and women were not wandering randomly through the concourse, but were casting back and forth through the crowd in a subtle pattern that left no entrance or exit unwatched. These would be Nik’s friends and followers, the ones he had called and made arrangements with the night before. Now that he had noticed them, it was clear they were equally aware of him, and that they were avoiding coming near.
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