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Authors: Violette Malan

BOOK: The Mirror Prince
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She could slide over to him right now and slip a knife between his ribs. By the time Truthsheart finished with Lightborn, it would be too late to save the Exile. And her sister might not want to, Moon thought. After all, once the Exile was gone, her Oath to serve him was gone as well, and her sister would be free. Moon’s hand was on her dagger and she had taken a step toward the watching Exile before she stopped. If she killed him before the Basilisk’s men caught up with them, what would she have to trade the Basilisk for her sister’s life? She needed him alive. How could she buy back her
fara’ip
without the Exile?
 
 
By the time Cassandra looked up from the man in her arms, Max thought he would start to scream. He was conscious of every small noise, the rustle of grass, the creak of insects. He’d had time to rethink his decision several times, and he was glad that Moon’s presence prevented him from changing his mind. It was a lucky thing that she hadn’t pressed her point about betrayal. Max wasn’t sure that he would have been able to resist stopping the healing process and dragging the two women away.
 
Cassandra eased Lightborn off her lap and stretched him out on the ground. She joined her hands above her head and stretched until Max could hear the ligaments in her shoulders creak. She drew her legs under her and started to stand, only to lose her balance. Max’s longer legs let him reach Cassandra’s side before Moon could, and he slipped his arm around her waist to help her stand. She was shivering, and her skin was clammy to the touch. Without thinking, Max folded her into his arms.
 
“We should be going,” she said, her voice tired and muffled in his cotte.
 
“I know.”
 
Chapter Eleven
 
MAX ROLLED OVER and stretched, the muscles in his back and hips protesting. Riding a horse was like riding a bike, he thought. You didn’t forget how, but your muscles and your backside weren’t happy to be reminded. He rolled out of his bedding as quietly as he could; no point in waking everyone up. They had stayed together in the lodge’s great room, sleeping around the banked fire on the central hearth. The fire was large enough to keep the room warm despite its size and its vaulted ceilings sporting vast wooden beams. The lodge had plenty of sleeping chambers, but no one had felt like splitting up, and Max had helped Cassandra and Moon carry all the feather bedding they could find to this main room.
 
Cassandra opened her eyes as he tiptoed past her, but closed them again when he held a finger to his lips and pointed out through the open doorway to the passage that led to the windowed gallery outside.
 
Like the similar passageway in Honor of Souls’ fortress, this was an enclosed gallery, like a hallway in a house with arched windows cut out all along the exterior wall. Here the passage, walls, and floor were all of wood rather than the stone found in the fortress of Griffinhome. Even this part of the lodge was obviously meant for the pleasure of travelers, as the bench all along the wall under the archways made clear. Max eased the door to the great room shut behind him and went to the nearest unshuttered window. It took him a minute to realize there was no glass. He stretched out his hand, but nothing stopped it. There
was
a barrier, he thought, a point at which the relative warmth of the passage stopped and the cold winter air outside the window started, but what made the barrier he couldn’t tell. Max smiled, settling himself sideways on the wide bench. This was the first piece of magic he’d seen here in the Lands that wasn’t trying to kill him.
 
The snow they had ridden through from the Morganite Ring, fat flakes like white moths landing gently on the ground, had finally stopped falling. He thought the drifts were maybe a little deeper, the branches of the dark pines bowed a little closer to the ground, but on the whole, there was no more snow than there had been when they had arrived, guided to this travelers’ lodge by a weak-voiced but conscious Lightborn.
 
The moon was full, and the snow-covered landscape sparkled, sharp and clear. Max frowned, leaning forward on the broad window ledge to take a closer look at the scene outside. The moon had been full when they’d arrived, and Max could swear that it was even in the same position in the sky. How long had he been asleep? He couldn’t have slept through the whole day. For one thing, he didn’t feel anywhere near enough rested.
 
A noise made him look away from the moonlight.
 
“Should you be up?” he said, standing and taking a step toward Lightborn.
 
Lightborn waved him back. He still looked a little paler than he had before, his skin more pearl than almond, but other than the tears in his clothing and the dark bloodstain down the left side of his body, there was no other sign of his wound. It had taken Cassandra some time the night before to persuade the man that he wasn’t well enough to Ride. They had finally compromised and advanced only as far as the Morganite Ring, the next stop on the route Moon had worked out to the Tarn of Souls.
 
“I have told Truthsheart that I am not ready for a fencing lesson, but I am much better than I could have hoped. She looks as though she could give fully as thorough a lesson as your father used to give us.” Lightborn’s voice was light, precise, as if he was breathing very shallowly still.
 
Max sat down again, his back to the bright snow outside the window. “Did you know my father?”
 
Lightborn studied Max’s face a moment before answering. “I find it easy to forget, now that I see you in your
gra’if,
dressed to Ride, that you remember none of us.”
 
Max shook his head.
 
“I know Blood on the Snow,” Lightborn said, sitting down as Max shifted to give him room on the bench. “As well as anyone could be said to know him.”
 
“Did I know him better?”
 
The pale Rider made to draw up his left knee, winced, and set his foot down again. “There was a certain coolness between you and your father, and I am afraid to make too much of it in the telling. There was always a great love, and a great respect, but I believe it is easier to show respect than to show love.”
 
Max glanced at the other man, but Lightborn wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he seemed lost in his own thoughts, brows drawn in and mouth slightly twisted to one side. Somehow, this puzzled Max. Lightborn was a much more likable guy than the arrogant princeling he’d been before his injury.
 
“Tell me,” Max said.
 
“Your father was not present when you were born, and for many years it was thought that you had died along with your mother. Only your father did not believe it. He did not rest until he found you. I remember as a child watching this grim-faced Moonward stranger ride into Griffinhome, always at night, never in the day. Sometimes he would have other Wild Riders with him, and sometimes my mother could persuade him to stay a few days to rest. Not that he did—I remember him training with the guards and soldiers of our
fara’ip
. But usually he would be up and gone with the sun.”
 
“How did he know I was still alive?”
 
“He never spoke of it. My mother thought it was no more than guilt, from causing your mother’s death.”
 
“What?”
 
“No, no,” Lightborn said, waving the idea away with his long-fingered hand. “It is just that both parents must be present when a child is born, or the babe will drain the mother’s
dra’aj
completely.”
 
Great,
Max thought. He
didn’t kill my mother,
I
did.
“What happens if the father’s dead?”
 
“Usually, the mother stops the pregnancy.” Lightborn gave him a searching glance. “Your mother chose to save you.”
 
Max sighed. He supposed that should make him feel better, that she had chosen this, but . . .
 
“I do not think I ever knew
exactly
what it was that delayed your father,” Lightborn continued. “He had left his Wild
fara’ip
behind him for the love that he bore your mother. And, for her sake, he was about some business for the Council of Elders when her hour came unexpectedly. By the time your father knew of it and had returned to her, she was gone. She had tried to Move to him—no one knows why she could not do it—and was lost. As were you.”
 
“How long?”
 
“I cannot say. You are older than I. Blood on the Snow’s searching was a fact of my early years. He had always been searching, as far back as I could remember. And then one day, he brought you to my mother’s house.
 
“When he found you, you were not yet grown. But you wore
gra’if
already, and the white hair,” Lightborn gestured at Max’s head, “you had that as well.”
 
Max frowned, studying the other man carefully. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why your house?”
 
Lightborn looked sharply at him, mouth slightly open, eyebrows raised. “Again I forget,” he said. “Your mother is the sister of mine. Family by blood, as well as by
fara’ip
. As were we, in our time.”
 
Lightborn fell silent as footsteps approached and Cassandra entered the passage from the great room. She tossed each of them a small packet that turned out to have a rich cake heavy with fruit inside.
 
“I’d forgotten how Riders packed for a journey,” she said, tilting her head toward the room she had left, where the night before they’d dumped the leather-wrapped wicker panniers that formed the four packs carried by the extra Cloud Horses. There was exasperated amusement in her voice. “There’s food, but no spare clothing; wine, but no water. You’ll have to stay in your bloody clothes,” she said, turning to Lightborn.
 
“It is preferable to dying in them, I assure you,” Lightborn said, as they followed Cassandra back into the great room. There the fire had been built up, and Walks Under the Moon looked over from where she was repacking the panniers.
 
“Dawntreader—” she began.
 
“Just a second,” Max said, raising his hands. “Can we keep things simple for the human? I’m Max, she’s Cassandra,” he pointed at her. “You’re Lightborn, and you’re Moon. Okay?”
 
“Her name is not Cassandra,” Moon said, frowning.
 
“Indulge me.” Max was aware of a certain bitterness in his tone. “It won’t be for long.”
 
Moon nodded, but something about the stubborn set of her mouth gave Max the idea that she wasn’t happy.
 
“We should be on our way,” Moon said to Cassandra as she closed and retied the wicker lid, “before the snow begins again. This is time we cannot afford to lose.”
 
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning?” Max said around a mouthful of travel cake.
 
All three looked at him, Lightborn and Moon puzzled, Cassandra with the small smile he was beginning to find irritating.
 
“It’s always midnight here,” Cassandra said. “This is one of the unchanging Lands.”
 
Max decided not to ask.
 
Lightborn insisted on helping Max carry gear down to the stables, but Max suspected it was more to give the man an excuse to visit the Cloud Horses than for anything else. The animals recognized them both, but they were particularly affectionate with Lightborn, blowing air in his face and shaking their heads at him.
 
“They were born in Griffinhome,” Lightborn said, laughing, as he ran his hands along the flanks of the horse nearest him in evident delight. “My own horses.”
 
“Are they . . . magic somehow?”
 
“Many say they have no
dra’aj,
” Lightborn said, “but I am not of that mind. They have
dra’aj
in their own way, as does everything in the Lands. They are sensitive to Movement, and they take pleasure in the Ride. How could they do this, if they had no
dra’aj?
”
 
“In my world people argue over whether animals have souls,” Max said. “Over whether they should have some of the same rights as humans.”
 
“Perhaps I should visit the Shadowlands, when this is over.”
 
“I’ll take you,” Max said, “if I can.”
 
“When this is over,” Lightborn repeated, giving the horse’s flank a final stroke.
 
“Can you get us around the broken Ring?” Cassandra was saying to her sister as Max and Lightborn returned to the great room.
 
“I believe so,” the younger woman said. “The Songs tell many stories about the Lands around the Rings. I should be able to piece together a pathway, though I wish I had my Singers with me.”

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