Authors: Violette Malan
The Mirror Prince (31 page)
Blood nodded at the small group of purple-clad Riders on foot under the Trees. “Help my sister with the captured ones,” he said, smiling. “And do not fear, I will send for you when it is time.”
As a courtesy, Blood on the Snow and his Wild Pack Rode to the edge of
He’erid
before Moving. As they approached the ending of the trees, they were followed by the sound of hooves, and Star at Midnight overtook them.
He’erid
before Moving. As they approached the ending of the trees, they were followed by the sound of hooves, and Star at Midnight overtook them.
“My lord,” he called as he came within earshot. “My lord, there is news!”
Blood pulled up his horse and waited as his Pack gathered around him and the messenger.
“My lord, Solitaries have come. The Hunt is in Griffinhome.”
Blood shut his eyes and drew in air. So much loss. When he could trust his voice, he spoke again. “And the Lady Honor of Souls?”
“The Solitaries tell us that the fortress was empty when the Hunt arrived,” Star at Midnight said, “but the Lands on which it stood . . .”
Blood nodded very slowly. He hoped his old friend was safe—and that it was not her scent the Hunt was following. “Thank
He’erid
for giving us this message. Ask her to be so good as to make sure that Windwatcher receives it as well, and tell him to bring his Riders to the place we have spoken of.”
He’erid
for giving us this message. Ask her to be so good as to make sure that Windwatcher receives it as well, and tell him to bring his Riders to the place we have spoken of.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
Cassandra woke to see Moon’s silhouette outlined against the star-filled sky. Her muscles ached, and there was a dull pain under her left collar bone that she knew was the residue of Lightborn’s wound. She was sorely tempted to just roll over and go back to sleep. When she had this kind of feeling at home—and she was surprised to find that she missed her Toronto apartment, now that it would never be home to her again—she would have spent the day in front of the fire with books, newspapers, or maybe watching movies. Instead, she had to get up and take her turn at watch.
They had Moved past the carnivorous grass right into the Jade Ring, and from there in rapid succession to the Tourmaline and into the Hyacinth, where they were now camped in a shallow depression among the rocks, waiting for the sun to rise so they could approach the Tarn of Souls.
Cassandra rolled to a sitting position and stretched her arms up over her head, rotating her shoulders, and reached for her insteps with both hands. She held the position for a long slow count, until her muscles finally felt loose, before reaching for her boots. There was blood on the soles, she noticed as she pulled them on. They’d been far too slow to figure out what the grass was, and slower still to see any danger. That would have to stop.
As disturbing as the idea of change was, it was much more disturbing to think that it had come about through a deliberate act. Both Lightborn and Moon had disagreed with her suggestion that the cutting down of
Mara’id
had created the carnivorous grass. And yet she somehow knew she was right about the grass’ origin. As the Troll Diggory had said, she knew Truth when she heard it, even from her own mouth. The twinge of sadness and nostalgia she’d felt when she first realized the
Mara’id
Forest was gone had been her warning. If only she’d listened instead of wasting time feeling sorry for herself and what she didn’t have. What she’d felt was lack of health, lack of . . .
trueness
was the only real word. She’d felt the same kind of distortion in the very ill humans she’d Healed over the years in the Shadowlands, especially plague victims, and, more recently, those with HIV. And there was also a special feel to the beaten and the poisoned. She had never associated her revulsion at tainted water and polluted soil with that same lack of
trueness,
but it was the same, she now realized. When she had looked at the carnivorous grass, she had felt the injury to the Lands the same way she could feel it in a body.
Mara’id
had created the carnivorous grass. And yet she somehow knew she was right about the grass’ origin. As the Troll Diggory had said, she knew Truth when she heard it, even from her own mouth. The twinge of sadness and nostalgia she’d felt when she first realized the
Mara’id
Forest was gone had been her warning. If only she’d listened instead of wasting time feeling sorry for herself and what she didn’t have. What she’d felt was lack of health, lack of . . .
trueness
was the only real word. She’d felt the same kind of distortion in the very ill humans she’d Healed over the years in the Shadowlands, especially plague victims, and, more recently, those with HIV. And there was also a special feel to the beaten and the poisoned. She had never associated her revulsion at tainted water and polluted soil with that same lack of
trueness,
but it was the same, she now realized. When she had looked at the carnivorous grass, she had felt the injury to the Lands the same way she could feel it in a body.
Cassandra stood and settled her sword at her hip before drawing on her gauntlets and lifting her helm over her head, feeling it mold and form itself around her face. She had considered simply sleeping in all of her
gra’if
. She’d done it before, but only when there was no one to keep watch and the need for sleep had demanded it of her. Even so, after the grass, it had taken real discipline to remove the protection the
gra’if
gave her. She stepped silently around the banked fire, careful not to disturb either of the sleeping men. It would be Lightborn’s turn to watch in a couple of hours, even though she’d tried to persuade him to let her and Moon divide the night between them. He had lost a great deal of blood, and she would have preferred Lightborn to rest after so much Riding, but he’d pointed out that Max wouldn’t be able to take a turn, and that short as the night was, three to keep watch would give everyone more sleep.
gra’if
. She’d done it before, but only when there was no one to keep watch and the need for sleep had demanded it of her. Even so, after the grass, it had taken real discipline to remove the protection the
gra’if
gave her. She stepped silently around the banked fire, careful not to disturb either of the sleeping men. It would be Lightborn’s turn to watch in a couple of hours, even though she’d tried to persuade him to let her and Moon divide the night between them. He had lost a great deal of blood, and she would have preferred Lightborn to rest after so much Riding, but he’d pointed out that Max wouldn’t be able to take a turn, and that short as the night was, three to keep watch would give everyone more sleep.
As if he felt her gaze come to rest on him, Max’s eyes opened. He frowned, likely wondering what had woken him up, and then his focus narrowed, and his eyes fixed on Cassandra. He smiled, closed his eyes again, and fell back into sleep.
Cassandra felt her heart turn over and she looked away, pushing her feelings back to where she had tried to keep them tightly locked since she’d seen Max Ravenhill at that cocktail party and felt again all that she had always felt on seeing him. What she now knew she would continue to feel when even Max was gone.
She sighed. Time to concentrate on something she
could
do.
could
do.
Moon looked up at her as she sat down. Cassandra put her arm around her sister and hugged her, finding some relief from her feelings in the gesture. At first, Cassandra had felt nothing but joy at holding her sister once more in her arms, but she was finding it hard to think of this serious young woman who rarely smiled as the little girl who used to sit on her lap, begging for Songs and a ride on a Cloud Horse. That child had grown up in a strange world, and Cassandra would have to get to know her all over again. If events allowed.
“Do you think he will save us all?” Moon said. No need to ask her who she meant, Cassandra thought, glancing back over her shoulder at Max.
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” she said finally, more to herself than to Moon.
“We none of us know what the Prince Guardian will want done,” Moon said. “Unless Lightborn knows and does not tell. He is the only one of us who knew the Prince. Who knew both Princes, when they were but Riders.”
Both women looked at the sprawled heap of clothing that was Lightborn.
“We all assume that the Exile will fight the Basilisk Prince as he did before.” Moon’s words came as if from a great distance and lured Cassandra back from the circling of her own thoughts. “But do we really know what he thinks, or what he wants, now that he has been in Exile all this time?”
Cassandra looked at her sister’s profile, dark against the starlit sky. “Did we ever know?”
“His concerns are his own, his reasons his own. So it is with all Guardians. So the Songs tell us.” Moon shrugged, and then turned to Cassandra, laying both her hands on Cassandra’s arm. “This is all the world I have known,” she said. “Has anyone thought of that, I wonder? I do not remember the great and golden world that was before the Great War. I doubt very much that anyone does.”
“There were problems even then,” Cassandra allowed, “or the War would not have happened. There would have been no reason for anyone to seek a High Prince.”
“You see? So what will happen when the Banishment ends and the Guardian is restored? If he refuses to give the Talismans to the Basilisk, we will only have war again.”
Cassandra found Moon’s steady stare unsettling. “Perhaps the Talismans themselves will act,” she said.
Moon smiled sadly, folding her hands in her lap and swinging her feet. “They did not act before.”
“Why are
you
here?” This attitude seemed unaccountable in someone who was helping to bring the Prince Guardian back from Exile.
you
here?” This attitude seemed unaccountable in someone who was helping to bring the Prince Guardian back from Exile.
“I am here for you,” Moon said matter-of-factly. “Someone will be High Prince. Or not. Perhaps it will be the Basilisk, perhaps not. There is only one good, one sure thing that comes from restoring the Prince Guardian, my sister, and that is that you will be free of your Oath, and you shall be my sister again. That is all that concerns me in this.” Moon leaned over and kissed Cassandra’s cheek before rising and going to her bed.
I will be free,
Cassandra thought. She stared unseeing into the darkness before her. She hardly remembered what it was like to live unbound by her Oath. Had she been free then, she wondered, or merely bound in a different way? No wonder she hadn’t wanted to get up, she thought. Even back in Toronto, even when she was doing such a good job at avoiding the Exile that she could live in the same city as Max Ravenhill and never see him, her Oath had given her purpose, had shaped her life. What shape would her life have when that purpose was gone? It had been so long since that shape had been called “sister” or “daughter.”
Cassandra thought. She stared unseeing into the darkness before her. She hardly remembered what it was like to live unbound by her Oath. Had she been free then, she wondered, or merely bound in a different way? No wonder she hadn’t wanted to get up, she thought. Even back in Toronto, even when she was doing such a good job at avoiding the Exile that she could live in the same city as Max Ravenhill and never see him, her Oath had given her purpose, had shaped her life. What shape would her life have when that purpose was gone? It had been so long since that shape had been called “sister” or “daughter.”
It seemed only moments had passed when Cassandra heard Lightborn wake up and get to his feet, huffing and rubbing the sleep from his face, before he joined her on the outcrop of rock above their campfire. Lightborn had found very little to say to her since his Healing at the Turquoise Ring, but he’d been studying her out of the corners of his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking. He was good at it, very casual, but the light glinting off the small green jewel in his earring whenever his head turned toward her gave him away. Whenever she’d met his glance, however, he’d looked away, or made some other motion to show that he had only been accidentally looking in her direction. But Cassandra hadn’t been fooled. The only thing she hadn’t figured out was why he should want to look at her without catching her eye, why he seemed alternately puzzled and thoughtful.
She wondered whether it could be simply Lightborn’s lack of familiarity with the Healing itself, something he had likely never experienced before, given the rarity of Healers among the Riders. Max, child of penicillin, flu shots, and morphine, had taken it much more in his stride.
Still, she’d figured that Lightborn would come to speak to her as soon as he’d thought of a way to do so that wouldn’t sound as though he were thanking her. So when he sat down beside her, much as she had done with Moon, Cassandra made room for him on her rock and waited for him to begin.
“Would you have saved me, if
he
hadn’t asked it?” he finally said.
he
hadn’t asked it?” he finally said.
Cassandra looked at him sharply. The man had unexpected complexity. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I could say yes,” she shrugged, “but that’s easy to say now.”
“Moon would have left me without hesitation, and she has known me now for some time.”
“You aren’t needed,” Cassandra said. It wasn’t much, but it would do for an explanation.
“I think I would have left you, if the situation had been reversed,” he said, brushing something he could not possibly have seen in the darkness from the front of his cotte. “Is it a human thing?”
“Not leaving people to die?” Cassandra thought over all she knew of human behavior. All the years of war and pillage, Mongols and motorbikes, the Crusades and the Inquisition, the Holocaust and the Gulag Archipelago. Human history was full of examples of those who had abandoned their nearest and dearest—and of those who hadn’t. Human literature, on the other hand, that was full of stories of heroism and self-sacrifice. Maybe it wasn’t so much what humans
did,
but what they hoped they
would
do. “Yes, you could say so. I think humans don’t like to leave people to die.”
did,
but what they hoped they
would
do. “Yes, you could say so. I think humans don’t like to leave people to die.”
“You wouldn’t have been leaving me to die, had you left me there in my home. It is not our way to kill prisoners.”
Cassandra wished she could be as sure as Lightborn was. “Tell that to the thing that was stuck on the wall,” she said finally. “I would not leave anyone to the mercy of someone who would call the Hunt.”
Lightborn straightened, with a sharp intake of breath. “I did not think of that, Truthsheart. The Shadowlands must not be such a very pleasant place after all, to be putting such thoughts into your head.” He looked back down at his boots, as if he were admiring their polish. Something else he couldn’t see in the dark.
“Tomorrow will see the end of all this wondering,” she said.
Lightborn nodded. “Tomorrow. And half a Sunturn till the Banishment ends. I pray we have sufficient time.”
“He is not Dawntreader,” he added, after he had been silent for a while. “He is not my friend. And yet he is.” Lightborn looked up into Cassandra’s eyes. “He is like a shadow of the Prince that was. I cannot feel
dra’aj
in him, but it is more than that. It is rare to feel the
dra’aj
in anyone these days.” He looked away again. “I can feel yours.”
dra’aj
in him, but it is more than that. It is rare to feel the
dra’aj
in anyone these days.” He looked away again. “I can feel yours.”
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