The Mirror Prince (37 page)
Authors: Violette Malan
Moon sat down in the chair Cassandra leaned against. “The Basilisk Prince is not important?” she said, her eyes on Max’s back as he watched the flames.
“Time’s running short, and the Basilisk Prince isn’t our primary problem,” Max said, as he turned to face them. “I must go to the Talismans.”
Cassandra’s head snapped up when it became clear that Max wasn’t going to say why.
“So you know where they are?” Moon leaned forward.
Max nodded. “They’re in the Vale of
Trere’if
.”
Trere’if
.”
“Oh, fuck,” Cassandra said, her annoyance blown away. She glanced at Moon and saw her own fears confirmed by the look on her sister’s face.
“What is it?”
“Honor of Souls told us the first day,” Cassandra said. “Don’t you remember? The Basilisk has built his Citadel in the Vale of
Trere’if
.”
Trere’if
.”
“Oh, fuck,” the Prince Guardian said.
Lightborn picked up the little malachite Cauldron and held it a moment, considering his move, before he set it down on the square next to one of the Basilisk Prince’s Guidebeasts.
“Did you tell him?” he asked.
“Why would I tell him?” The Basilisk toyed with his glass of wine, swirling the liquid slowly and inhaling the bouquet. In the corner of the room a large white dog with liver-colored ears stopped scratching and watched them, head canted to one side as if it could understand their speech. Lightborn had the uneasy feeling that the dog changed shape when he was not looking.
“I would have wasted my great weapon, had I told him anything of you,” the Basilisk said, after reaching for his own Cauldron and withdrawing his hand without making a move. Lightborn was relieved to see the Basilisk’s hands were steady, and that his skin was bronze with health.
Lightborn waited while his opponent chose his piece and moved it. He saw that there was a way for him to win the game, and he wondered whether he should use it.
“He guessed,” the Basilisk Prince said, when he had moved his Spear and released it. “His instincts were always very sound.”
“And still you sent me to him?” Lightborn kept his voice light, watching the board, as if his only interest were the game.
“Is not the Griffin Lord mine to send?” The Basilisk’s voice was sweet and sharp. “And as it happens, he did not remember.”
Lightborn glanced up, and saw that the Basilisk still studied the board, smiling. “You knew,” he said. “You knew all along that his memory was gone. You sent me to speak to him without telling me. Was this a test?”
“Did you need to be tested?” The Basilisk narrowed his eyes and Lightborn felt his throat tighten. “Do you wish to be tested again?”
A servant entered, a Moonward Rider Lightborn had never seen before, and he breathed again, but not easily. It seemed that more and more of the Riders he saw around the Basilisk’s court were new to him.
“Your pardon, my lord Prince,” the young Rider said. “But Walks Under the Moon wishes to speak with you.”
Once in the room, Moon waited with unconcealed impatience for the Basilisk Prince to dismiss the servant. She was white as alabaster, her hands and lips trembled, and Lightborn felt his own tremor of fear. She would do well to control herself, he thought; in such a state, she could be a danger to herself . . . or to others.
“They are here,” she said, as the door swung shut behind the departing servant. “The Talismans are in the Vale.”
The Basilisk closed his eyes and smiled. In that smile lay all the sweetness and humor that Lightborn remembered from their youth, when they had been only three young Riders, before Dawntreader had become the Prince Guardian, before Dreamer of Time became the Basilisk Prince. Almost, Lightborn could forgive the Basilisk when he saw that smile.
“I can take you to him now. Give me a squad of men and we can kill him.”
“Do not be so hasty,” said the Basilisk.
“But what stops you? You no longer need him. The Talismans are here, and at the Sun’s turn they will manifest.” Her voice was thick, and Lightborn realized that she was very close to crying.
“So long as he is still alive,” Lightborn said.
They both turned, and looked at him.
“He must be alive for the Banishment to end.”
“But they are here, they can be found without him.” Moon reached her trembling hands toward the Basilisk. “Let me show your men, and we can take him as he sleeps.”
The Basilisk stood, nodding slowly, turning toward the window of the room.
“He will not wait for them to manifest,” Lightborn said.
The Basilisk left off staring into space and looked at him. “You have an idea?”
Lightborn shrugged. He knew better than to make too much of this. “Dawntreader knows where they are. Why should he wait for the Sun to finish turning?”
“That he might remove them is all the more reason for you to take him now, to hold him against the time it will be safe to kill him.” Moon looked between the two Riders.
Lightborn shook his head, focusing on the Guidebeast board, as if he didn’t particularly care, as if he were merely considering which piece to move. “In the Vale they may be, but if they were easily found, you would have them already. There is no part of the Vale where you or your people have not been. Let him find them for you,” he said. “If Moon returns to him, you can put your hand on him at any moment. Once he has them, you can easily take them from him. Before the Sun turns, they would already be yours.”
“I tell you—”
The Basilisk raised his hand and Moon subsided. When Lightborn leaned back in his chair, picking up his own glass of wine, the Basilisk came to stand close over him, staring into his face. When he saw the calculation begin in the Basilisk’s look, Lightborn spoke again.
“And there is still the matter of the Stone,” he said. “The Stone will not manifest because it was not hidden, except that it is always hidden. The Stone would proclaim you, given the chance to do so.” He leaned forward, and reached as if to take the Basilisk’s hands in his own without actually touching him. “Let us give the Stone that chance.”
Lightborn repressed a shudder as the Basilisk stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You were always the sentimental one,” the Basilisk said, his voice a soft murmur. “I shall give you your chance.”
“But, my lord, he still holds my sister, he speaks to her in a voice like the sun and she turns to him. She will not be free until he is dead, and you promised me this, you promised me.” Her hands had formed fists, but Lightborn could still see them trembling.
“Be patient, you must not blame your sister,” the Basilisk said, drawing Moon to his own vacant seat, and pouring wine for her into his own glass. “It may be that she has spent too much time in the company of the Exile, exposed to his own peculiar glamour. I well remember how convincing and persuasive he can be. He draws you in to him before you even know of it, until you are ready to stand with him forever.”
He could be speaking of himself,
Lightborn thought. The Basilisk, too, had his own peculiar glamour.
Lightborn thought. The Basilisk, too, had his own peculiar glamour.
“This he has done to my sister.”
“I will not lie to you,” the Basilisk said. “It may be more than her Oath that holds her. It may be that she cannot listen now to another’s voice. It may be that only death will free her.”
Moon’s face went very still, then hardened, the childlike softness that had always been there gone. Lightborn knew that look. It was the look of someone who steeled themselves for the hateful but necessary task. He had seen that look on Cassandra’s face when she had killed the horse in the carnivorous grass. He knew what it felt like, that look.
The Basilisk raised his hand. “Go back before they miss you. When the Exile has the Talismans, then we will come for him,” the Basilisk said, his eyes on the dog. “Then will everything be as you wish.”
“We’ll have to go after them.”
Cassandra looked up over her cup of wine and saw that he had turned from the fire and was watching her.
“You’re giving me that look again,” he said.
Cassandra smiled despite herself. “You only say that to show me that you remember.”
He held out his hand to her, but she sat down on the low chair to the right of the fireplace to stop herself from crossing the few paces of flagstone to join him. He let his hand drop.
“Here your sister has been tactful enough to leave us alone together, and all you can do is sit there looking grim.”
“Here I was thinking that you looked remarkably cheerful, all things considered.”
He crossed the short space between them in two strides, took her hand, and kissed it. “ ‘I were but little happy if I could say how much,’ ” he quoted. “If being human taught me nothing else, it taught me to enjoy today, for tomorrow may never come. You used to know this lesson very well yourself. Have you forgotten it?”
“Perhaps I’ve had less reason to be content with today.”
Max’s face became more serious and the light in his green eyes darkened, though it did not fade away entirely. “Perhaps so. Still, I would change nothing of the past, since it has brought us to this moment. And because we have this moment, I fear nothing from the future.”
Max released her hand and pulled the other chair forward, tugging at it until it faced her. He nodded his satisfaction and sat down. He’d left a little distance between them, but a hand outstretched by either of them would close it.
“Come,” he said, “our circumstances have not changed so much.”
“Haven’t they?”
Max exhaled noisily and sat back in his chair, pushing his hands through his hair. “I understand why you stopped telling me who you were. You did the right thing.”
Cassandra almost smiled. “You know, for a smart man, you can be remarkably dim. Perhaps
we
haven’t changed. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that we two people have never really met, despite all the past we’ve shared. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that you now have a whole life, a whole past, that I never shared with you. It isn’t those circumstances that have changed.”
we
haven’t changed. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that we two people have never really met, despite all the past we’ve shared. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that you now have a whole life, a whole past, that I never shared with you. It isn’t those circumstances that have changed.”
“What, then?”
Cassandra struggled to put into words what she’d been feeling since their arrival in the Keep. “In the past, we were just two wanderers, you and I. Now, you are the Prince Guardian, and I am . . . what? A soldier, perhaps. A Healer.” She shrugged. “I need to find out.”
Max leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared a long while into the flames, the dancing lights calling echoes from the green fire in his eyes. Cassandra began to think that he was meditating once again when he heaved in a sigh, like a man awakening.
“I am not forbidden,” he said, speaking to himself. Cassandra frowned, but before she could ask, he had turned to her again.
“If I had known you before the old Guardian came to me, I would have refused the Guardianship.”
Cassandra smiled at his certainty but shook her head. “We would have been different people,” she said. “You can’t know what you would have done.”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Fundamentally the same you found me always, and therefore always yours.” He leaned forward on his elbows, his fingers reaching out to touch her knee. “My mother didn’t wear
gra’if,
did you know that?”
gra’if,
did you know that?”
Cassandra blinked at the change of subject. “Not many do.”
Max looked at her, without raising his head. “If she had, my father would have been able to find her, he would have been able to Move to her.”
“Fewer still can Move to another’s
gra’if,
” Cassandra said.
gra’if,
” Cassandra said.
“I don’t offer you everything a man should offer, everything I offered you when we were just two wanderers together. I am not wholly my own to give you,” he continued, his voice showing more velvet now, “but I will give you all I can. Among the Wild Riders, when two who bear
gra’if
would marry, they exchange . . .” He lifted his hands to his neck and pulled off the Phoenix torque that circled his throat. He held it out to her.
gra’if
would marry, they exchange . . .” He lifted his hands to his neck and pulled off the Phoenix torque that circled his throat. He held it out to her.
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