The Mirror Prince (17 page)

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Authors: Violette Malan

BOOK: The Mirror Prince
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“
All
my
fara’ip?
”
 
“All.
 
“You let me go, I find him for you, and you give me and all my
fara’ip
safe conduct; we may go wheresoever we please?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Done! IbindyouIbindyouIbindyou.” Diggory laughed aloud, his glee wiping out, for the moment, any pain he might feel. The look on the Basilisk’s face, half doubt, half suspicion, was tastier than many a human morsel had been.
 
“Of course I am bound,” the Basilisk said smoothly, if with a trace of doubt in his voice. “I gave my word, did I not?”
 
“Ah, but what did you give your word to? You said you would give my
fara’ip
safe conduct. Did you even ask what
fara’ip
I might have? Or did you, foolish Rider that you are, think I had none? Do you even know who I am?
 
“I am Hearth of the Wind, you fool, the Last Born. The Earth is my
fara’ip
, and it is bound now, too, with your words. If you free me and go back on your word, you will never set safe foot to Earth again. The Prince Guardian is part of my
fara’ip,
and has been since I found him beside his dead mother. Free me, O Prince of Basilisks, and you free him. Give me safe conduct, and you give it to him.”
 
Diggory laughed again. Now he knew why the Basilisk chose purple for his colors. It was because he turned such a lovely shade of it when enraged.
 
“. . . . . . . . . .” the Basilisk Prince said.
 
Diggory waited for his laughter to subside, shaking his head. “What? You’re going to suck the
dra’aj
out of me like you did that poor Sunward fool yesterday? Why don’t you try it and see what it gets you?”
 
The Basilisk turned an even darker shade of magenta. His skin seemed to swell and he grew taller, his breath escaping his lips in a hiss of foulness. His hair lifted, forming a crest, and his eyes grew red. Diggory did not even try to look away. Instead he spat again, and this time got the Basilisk right in its curving beak.
 
 
Windwatcher slammed his palm down on the table with enough force to rattle the wine cups.
 
“Everything is changed if he does not know who he is.”
 
Max opened his mouth but held his tongue when Cassandra placed her cool fingers on his wrist. She was right, he supposed. His opinion wouldn’t change anything for these people. He might as well keep it to himself.
 
Windwatcher turned to Cassandra, “How long has he been like this?” he growled. “When did he lose his memory?”
 
“My lord,” Cassandra’s tone was chill, her courtesy sharp enough to cut. “He has always been as you see him, since the beginning. We Wardens assumed it was part of the Banishment,” she continued, outlining the theory she had already shared with Max.
 
Max watched the three Riders look at each other as they took in what was evidently a surprising and unwelcome bit of news.
 
Finally Lightborn spoke. “Could this be the Chant of Oblivion?”
 
Honor nodded, eyes narrowed, her silver-white hair catching glints of light as she moved. “That, or some other binding, one we were not told of.” She looked up. “One of the many things, it seems, the Basilisk did not tell us.”
 
“This is not the time to rehearse the Basilisk’s perfidy,” Windwatcher growled. “It will not take us any farther down our road.”
 
After the initial outcry, Lightborn had persuaded everyone to sit down at the table and see what clarity nourishment might bring to the discussion. Cassandra’s
gra’if
had arrived, and everyone, including Max, had looked away as she had clutched at her battered shoulder bag, so ordinary and human looking in this perfect room. Other servants had arrived bringing platters of food. Honor of Souls had taken a seat at the center of one long side of the inlaid table, and had the two men to either side of her. Max sat facing her, with Cassandra on his right. Between them on the table lay the remains of yet more fruit, as well as spiced meats and sweet rolls. Max had tried something that looked like a chicken leg, and tasted like nothing he’d ever eaten. He found it difficult to keep his eyes away from platters which never seemed to empty, no matter how much people ate, and concentrate on the discussion.
 
“None who know me will doubt that I have no love for the Basilisk Prince,” Windwatcher was saying, “nor have I reason to suppose that any here does. But I have a question. I did not know the Prince Guardian well—he was no intimate of mine,” the man added with a nod to Lightborn and his mother. “There are many others like me among our present allies, and so you may take my question in a good spirit. How sure are we that this is the Prince? Your pardon, Truthsheart,” he said with a small bow to Cassandra, “but I can suppose that in your zeal to protect the true Prince, it might occur to you to pass off another Rider, or even one of the Shadowfolk with a passable resemblance, to use as a lure for the Prince’s enemies.”
 
Max sat back in his chair, exhaling sharply as a wave of—was it relief?—surged through him. Of
course
that’s what she’d done. That would explain everything, from his own certainty that he was no more or less than Max Ravenhill to her adamant refusal to even consider the possibility of a mistake. Not, he realized, sinking back down to earth, that he’d ever felt that Cassandra was lying to him. Mistaken, yes, but sincere.
 
Cassandra leaned back in her chair, raising her head from her tented fingers. “An excellent idea. I wish I’d thought of it.” Her tone was one of speculation and interest. “But he has never had any memory of being the Prince Guardian, unless . . .”
 
Everyone waited politely for her to finish her thought, but Max thought he knew what she was thinking. Unable to change his fundamental nature, she’d told him. But what would that prove?
 
“What have you thought of, Sword of Truth?” Windwatcher was unable to contain his impatience.
 
Cassandra shrugged, shaking her head in dismissal. “If we had his
gra’if
. . .”
 
Lightborn clapped his hands and laughed. “That is what
I
call an excellent idea.” He leaped to his feet, his platinum braids swinging as he went to the entrance and spoke quietly to one of the guards standing there. He waited until the man had nodded and left before returning to the table.
 
“If you give me but a moment, Windwatcher,” Lightborn said as he sat down again at his mother’s side, “I think I can provide the proof you need.”
 
At first those at the table kept silent while they waited for the guard to bring Lightborn’s proof. Then Windwatcher turned to Honor of Souls and, in a voice too quiet for Max to catch, began speaking urgently to her. Clearly the redheaded man was disturbed. Lightborn smiled at Max and seemed about to speak, but Cassandra shifted, drawing the younger Rider’s eye, and he kept silent.
 
Max found his hands had formed fists, and he forced them to open. They couldn’t have any proof, he told himself. He wasn’t the Prince, so they didn’t . . . But he couldn’t help wondering what kind of proof Lightborn believed he had. What kind of proof would these people find acceptable? And what, if it came down to it, would he accept as proof himself?
Nothing,
he thought. They were all making a mistake, Cassandra included, and with any luck, this little demonstration of Lightborn’s would convince everyone of that, and Max could . . .
 
Could what? Go home? Somehow that wasn’t as attractive as it had seemed only a few hours ago. He looked to where Cassandra sat leaning back in her chair next to him, right ankle crossed over left knee, completely relaxed, as always. She’d saved his life—
no,
he thought,
she saved the Prince’s life.
If he wasn’t the Prince, she’d have no reason to stick around. But could
he
walk away from
her?
Did he want to? Say he could, and he wasn’t so sure about that, could he walk away without knowing what would happen? Warfare, the political stresses and social tensions that led to armed conflict, was his life’s work. Could he walk away from the chance to study it for real?
 
He smiled at himself. Listen to him, was his interest really so purely academic? Max was too old to kid himself that way. Could he really just go home and not try to help these people? Go home and wait for this Basilisk Prince guy to win? Tell himself he was minding his own business? And then what, wait for the Basilisk to show up back home? The Nazis had names for people who stood back and minded their own business.
 
“Your strategy’s wrong,” he said aloud. Everyone turned to look at him, but now he was in lecture mode, and thoroughly calm. “You need to get rid of this Basilisk Prince. Once he’s dealt with, it won’t matter where the Talismans are.”
 
The three Riders across the table glanced at each other.
 
“Two things wrong with that, my Prince,” Windwatcher said. “For one, we cannot, as you put it, ‘deal’ with the Basilisk. We are not strong enough. We need you, or the Talismans, or both, to rally support. Second, even should we rid ourselves of the Basilisk, the Lands need a High Prince, and for that, soon or late, we will need the Talismans.”
 
“There’s a third thing,” Cassandra put in. “If it’s the Basilisk who used the Chant of Oblivion against the Guardian, we must get him to remove it before we ‘deal’ with him.”
 
The return of the guard, accompanied by two unarmed servants carrying between them a small chest made of flame-colored wood, put a stop to Max’s reply. The chest was about five feet long, eighteen inches high, and two feet wide. Cassandra let out her breath in a slow whistle and stood as soon as she caught sight of it.
 
Lightborn and Cassandra between them cleared a spot on the table, and the servants put the chest down in front of Max. He looked at the faces around him and saw nothing to indicate what he should do next. Windwatcher was entirely impassive—the man might have been watching a chess game between moves. Honor of Souls patted Lightborn on the arm, pleased approval apparent on her face. Lightborn wore a sardonic smile, as if he were waiting for Max to respond to a dare and was certain that he knew what the outcome would be.
 
Only Cassandra looked at him with that same shadow of lingering sadness he’d seen in her face before, as if she knew that he was about to be made very unhappy. She had no doubts, Max thought, she never did have. For the first time since waking up, he began to wonder himself.
 
“Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”
 
Max turned back to the chest, giving it a good long look.
Proof for them is proof for me,
he decided, feeling the truth of it settle on him.
I have to know.
His hands were on the lid, and his thumbs on the catches, before he even knew he meant to move. The carving was intricate and deep, as if the chest were a solid block of wood. Max blinked to give his eyes a chance to focus and saw that the carving represented scenes, and not just geometrical patterns. In one part people appeared to be gathered at a feast around a great cauldron; among the feasters were a group of young men fencing, the crowd around them cheering them on. Farther over he saw another crowd, some watching and some participating in games of spear throwing, archery, and more fencing. At the center near the bottom, between where Max’s two hands rested on the catches, people and strange beasts looked on as a beautifully rendered bird rose out of its nest. As Max squinted, trying to see whether the nest was indeed made of flames as it appeared, the bird turned its head and slowly blinked one eye.
 
Max jerked his hands back as if from an electric shock. Cassandra closed her hand around his wrist. Her fingers warmed as if picking up heat from his body, and he turned to find her eyes fixed on his face.
 
“Is it supposed to do that?”
 
“When the right person touches it, yes.”
 
Max looked back at the chest. He told himself again that these were Faerie, making carvings move wasn’t beyond them. Yet he found there was a part of himself that wanted to be the right person, the person who could make this carving, this wood, live.
 
“Open it.” Cassandra repeated as she released his wrist, her fingers lingering.
 
Max took a deep breath, thumbed open the catches, and pushed back the lid of the chest. A smell like baking apples rose from the heavy flame-colored damask inside. Gingerly, he pushed aside the wrappings, using only the very tips of his fingers, but he could still feel a trickle of power tingle its way up his forearms.
 
The sudden light made him squint, and the first thing Max saw as his eyes adjusted was a sword. Without thinking, he lifted it out, hefting it in his right hand and feeling how perfectly the hilt fit his grip. It felt warm, like a living thing. He held the blade up to his face, tested the edge with his left thumb, and pulled it back, bleeding. He grinned at Cassandra over the edge of the blade as he stuck his cut finger in his mouth, tasting the clean copper taste of his own blood. He put the sword down in the lid of the chest and lifted out a mail shirt like the one Cassandra was wearing under her filthy T-shirt. Or not like hers. Max looked more closely at the tiny fitted plates. Where Cassandra’s were shaped to look like scales, these looked more like tiny feathers. He smoothed his hand along the metal and found it warm, like the feathers of a living bird.

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