Shadowlands (27 page)

Moon tilted her head back, staring up at him, her gray eyes speculative. “That is what you were doing now, in the Shadowlands, isn’t it? Not just your mission, but trying to save them. Your old Pack.”

He shrugged, unwilling to put it into words, but equally unwilling to lie to his only friend, especially in the face of her loss. Her smile was a small thing, but a true one.

He smiled back. “I must go to the High Prince now and give her my news.”

Moon shot to her feet, gripping his arm in both hands.

“Wait? You
did
come to me first? Then tell me, do you wish to return to the Shadowlands? To help your old Pack mates? Then you must
not
go to her!”

“What do you mean?” Wolf felt as if he had been turned to stone. Would the Prince take his task from him, withdraw her favor? It
burned him like acid that he could only serve the High Prince with what remained to him of his Hound self, but to not have even those skills of value to her—he now found that much worse. He had done everything she asked. He did not deserve to be turned away, useless and alone.

What would become of his brother if this task was given to another? He could not fail Fox again. The pressure of Moon’s hands on his arm brought him back.

“Wolf, when she sent you to the Shadowlands, my sister did not know the Hunt was there, that she would be putting you in the path of your old Pack.” Moon shook him. “Do you not see? She thinks it too much to ask of you, too difficult for you to bear.”

“What of the missing People?” He heard his voice as though it came from far away.

“She plans to ask Graycloud if he will undertake the task. Nighthawk can assist him. Both have a great knowledge of the Shadowlands. And both bear
gra’if
,” she added.

“You say ‘plans,’ so she is already resolved?” Fear gave Wolf a strange courage, and he found he was shaking his head. “Graycloud at Moonrise can find only the People he already knows of,” he said. “What of those in hiding even from him? He will not be able to track down these unknowns. And what, then, of the Hunt?”

“Surely even this one encounter has shown you that it is too difficult for you—oh!” Moon released his arm, and sank slowly into the window seat. “It was there before me and I did not see it. ‘Some remained in the Shadowlands,’ you said.
She
did not know, my sister did not know, but
you
did. Even before you went, you knew the Hunt was there.”

“Moon, listen to me.” Wolf flung himself down before her, his hands on her knees. “Do you not see? I did not fear to meet with them, I
hoped
that I would. I hope that when they see me, they will see what their own futures might hold—futures they could never have imagined possible. If others are sent, the Hunt will only be killed.” He rested his head in his hands. “And the
dra’aj
they carry would be lost forever.” He looked up again. Moon’s gray eyes were worried in her Starward-pale face. “Valory Martin told me that the
dra’aj
I took was restored to the Lands when your sister
Healed me. The same would be true of others. Is this not worth the risk?”

“You believe that others would come to be cured?”

“I believe they must be given the chance,” he said. “I am proof that a cure is possible.”

“A way to undo the evil you have done.” It was not a question, but Wolf nodded just the same. He knew Moon would understand. She was nodding, and her mouth became firm as she gave a final, decisive nod.

“Then you must
not
go to my sister.” Moon stood and began pacing, as if activity somehow lent weight to her words. “She would forbid you to return.”

Wolf got to his feet. “Wings of Cloud has seen me.” He remembered the supercilious Starward Rider at the entrance to the pavilion. “And others.”

Moon waved this away. “I will account for it, so leave it to me. But go, now, before someone mentions to the High Prince that you are here.”

“Wolf?” The note of worry in her voice stopped him at the door. “What if they will not accept the chance, the hope that you will offer them?”

Wolf knew what she was really asking him. Which was his true Pack? The Hunt, that he had been a part of for so long? Or the Riders? He remembered the chase, and the glorious hot rush of stolen
dra’aj
as it filled him until he thought he would burst. But he also remembered the hollowness, the starvation, when there was no more
dra’aj
to be had. The constant awareness of the void, of the itch that the
flickering
could not scratch, of the cold and of how alone he was, always, even in the middle of the Pack, in the midst of his brothers who at any moment could become his killers, if the temptation of his
dra’aj
became too much for them.

Here, now, he was part of the Lands once more, aware of all its spaces and places. A Rider, relieved of the terrible hunger. And more, part of a
fara’ip
, not a Pack. Even if he was still asked to chase, to Hunt, it was without that terrible hunger, that need to feed.

He raised his eyes to Moon’s.

“You did not choose to free yourself of the Hunt, Wolf,” Moon
said. “My sister forced that freedom on you.”
I cannot lose you, too,
were the unspoken words that lay under her questions.

“But I am grateful for it.” If ever he had doubted, Wolf knew now that this was true. “I would not have it undone, not for anything.”

“And if the others do not choose what you now embrace?”

Wolf considered. River had turned away from him, would the others do the same?

And if they did?

“I would give them the chance, but they are the Hunt,” he said at last, surprised at how steady his voice was. “If they will not be cured, they must be dealt with as we deal with Those Who Hunt.”

Moon took a deep breath, and her throat moved as she swallowed. She came to him, and held him firmly by the shoulders, a wrinkle of concern between her flaxen brows.

“If they must be killed, you do not need to be the one. Let my sister send others to do it. Only take care. I would not lose you.” Her voice trembled as she said the words aloud.

“You will not.”

Moon’s smile twisted a bit as she stroked his cheek, but it was genuine. Her expression changed as she glanced at the door, and she retained her hold on his arm. “You have already been seen by so many…” She smiled again, and this time it was an unalloyed expression of delight. “The window,” she said, turning toward it. “Go through it, and Move from there.”

Wolf stood for a moment in the surf, letting the cold water soak the cuffs of his trousers. He thought about Moon’s concern, and her championing of him. Then he thought of the offer Wings of Cloud had made him, and realized that he would have to reject it. If he could not even tell Moon about his brother, and the debt that he owed him, how could he dream of one day telling others exactly what he had been?

He scrubbed at his face with his hands. He could still feel the comfort of Moon’s presence, the warmth of her affection—and the proof of it she had given him by warning him of the High Prince’s intentions. How much stronger those would have been, if she had known that the new Pack Leader of the Hunt was Wolf’s own brother. If Truthsheart already questioned whether he could survive
an encounter with the Hunt, she would be sure a meeting with his brother would be too much for him.

Wolf could only hope she was not right.

Max Ravenhill Moved into the clearing that
Trere’if
left free just outside the pavilions and tents of the High Prince’s court. He didn’t Move directly into the pavilion itself, precisely because it
was
her court. It might be his home as well, but protocol was protocol.

Trere’if
filled the whole Vale where the Basilisk Prince had created his citadel and capital. The Tree Natural’s restoration to his own place had been Cassandra’s very first action as High Prince. If anyone, including
Trere’if
, had asked him where he was coming from, he’d have said the Jade Ring, though that wasn’t exactly true. He was Guardian of the Talismans. The Sword, the Spear, the Cauldron and the Stone, symbols of the Lands, and the
dra’aj
that formed it. There were very few people who knew that the Guardian Prince was the only person who could Move to
Ma’at
, the Stone of Virtue, that it was impossible for anyone else, even if they had visited there, to hold the place firmly enough in their minds to Move. Cassandra, as High Prince, could fly there, in her Dragonform, but not even she could simply Move there.

Max walked through the camp quickly, nodding at some, raising his hand to others. The Wild Riders were gone, he noticed, every Rider in the clearing was wearing someone’s colors—most of them Cassandra’s own, of course.

He didn’t stop until he heard voices through the drape of tent that was the door of her private sitting room, and didn’t go in until he recognized the second voice as Moon’s.

“What’s this you’re saying about Stormwolf?”

Cassandra looked at him and smiled. “Do you know I can’t feel your
dra’aj
when you’re on
Ma’at
? Did you find the Horn?”

Max threw himself onto the padded stool nearest her and took her hand. “I regret to say I did not.”

“Destroyed, do you think?”

“If the Basilisk was wearing it—and I’m sure he was, just as Moon thought—” he gave the younger Rider a nod. “Then it must have been destroyed when he was.” He kissed her hand and got to his feet, heading for the table and the carafe of cool water that sat on it.

Cassandra stood, stretching her arms above her head, and came to join him. “So there’s no chance of controlling the Hunt that way.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.” Max handed her a glass of sparkling water. “I’ve got little stomach for simply summoning them and putting them to the sword.”

Cassandra smiled at him over the rim of her glass, and her gray eyes glinted. “You were always more sentimental than I.”

“Goblins are more sentimental than you.”

She smiled again, putting her free hand flat on his chest. Max took her hand in his and kissed her palm. “What were you two arguing about when I came in? What’s happened?”

Cassandra arched her golden eyebrows. “We were not arguing.”

Max started to grin, but stopped when he saw that Moon was genuinely distressed. “What were you discussing, then?”

“Moon tells me that Wolf came to see her.”

Cassandra had turned until he had her in profile. It was like looking at an old Roman coin. Moon looked down at her feet in a way he hadn’t seen since the Basilisk had still been alive. “Nothing unusual in that, surely? He would have come as soon as he’d heard about Lightborn.”

“Except that he did not know until he arrived, and Wings of Cloud told him,” Cass said quietly, glancing at her sister.

“Then that wasn’t the reason he came.”

Cassandra turned toward him, the corner of her mouth lifting for a moment. “Apparently there is some quality in human
dra’aj
that allows the Hunt to remain in one shape for a long—or at least a long
er
period of time.” She looked up at him. “They can look like their original selves, like Riders.”

Max suddenly wished he was sitting down. More, that he was still the Exile, and that he and Cassandra were sitting in a sidewalk café in some Mediterranean seaside town, with none of this to worry them.

“Can they do anything else like Riders?” he asked.
My god, if they could Move.
“My sentimentality aside, is there really any doubt about what we should do?”

Cassandra stepped away from him, picking up a pawn from the Guidebeast game. “Moon told me none of this until he had returned
to the Shadowlands, where he plans to continue in his task.” She looked up from the small silver dragon with ruby eyes she was turning around in her fingers. “He also plans to track the Hunt.”

“He
what
?” Max couldn’t stop himself from turning on Moon, but he managed not to say anything else. Particularly not: “Are you insane?” She’d had a catastrophic loss, and he wouldn’t want to do that to her.

“It’s not what I wanted, certainly not what I would have allowed to happen, had I been consulted.” This last was definitely aimed at Moon, who only pressed her lips tighter together. Since the death of the Basilisk, Moon had been very meek, very docile—if anything, Max would have said she was too conscious of her own guilt. He knew he should be happy that she was finally able to disagree with her sister.
But did it have to be over this?

“However,” Cassandra was still speaking. “He
is
the only one I have with tracking abilities that come close to what the Hunt can do. He
would
be the only one who could find them, when they do not wish to be found. He also wishes to offer them the chance to be cured.”

“You’d do this?”

“They are of the People, they are ours. From the moment I first understood that they were Riders who have somehow become addicted to
dra’aj
, they became part of our responsibility.”

Max pulled up a chair and stood by it pointedly until Moon sat down. He turned to his wife, but she was already seating herself. He positioned his own seat where he could see them both easily. “Who else knows about this?” Cassandra’s eyes moved to Moon’s face.

“No one from me,” the younger Rider said. “When I think of what I said before—” She waved one hand in the air. “All the People who have never been to the Shadowlands…they will say we should close the Portals, and let the Hunt have the humans.”

Max whistled silently through his teeth. “So we’re keeping this all to ourselves for the moment?”

“Are we not stretched as it is, between the strange Binding of the Basilisk Warriors, and the restoration of the Lands?” Cassandra looked down at the pawn she still held in her hand and frowned.

“There is something else, a smaller thing, I hope.” Moon’s voice was certainly small enough.

“Honey, pretty well anything would be smaller than this.” Max was rewarded with a smile from each woman. Small, but smiles.

“There was something else Wolf wanted to tell me, but he could not bring himself to speak of it.”