The Mirror Prince Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Teaser chapter

  “Malan’s fantasy debut straddles two worlds, each detailed in vibrant colors and images. Believable characters and graceful storytelling make this a good addition to most fantasy collections.”—Library Journal

  “Blending the timeless enchantment of a Patricia A. McKillip fantasy and the epic narrative splendor of a Tad Williams work, Canadian author Violette Malan’s debut novel is nothing short of superb. The Mirror Prince is—like the Newford saga by fellow Canuck Charles de Lint—a kind of urban fantasy, taking place simultaneously in the Shadowlands of Earth and the magical realm of Faerie. The book’s surprising—and utterly satisfying—conclusion is well worth the buildup. Fantasy fans should brace themselves: the world is about to discover Violette Malan.”

  —The Barnes & Noble Review

  “Violette Malan’s debut novel is everything a fantasy novel should be. There is adventure, there is romance, there is magic, there is danger and loss, love and sacrifice. There is lovely writing, and again, the promise of more to come.”—The Washington Times

  “Elves get yet another remake in this fantasy first novel . . . it’s a good read.”—Locus

  VIOLETTE MALAN’S

  Spectacular Novels

  Now Available from DAW Books:

  THE MIRROR PRINCE

  THE SLEEPING GOD

  Copyright © 2006 by Violette Malan.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-29903-9

  All rights reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1368.

  DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Paperback Printing, July 2007

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

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  —MARCA REGISTRADA

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  For Paul

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank Joshua Bilmes, for asking questions until he was satisfied, thus making sure that I was satisfied as well, and Sheila Gilbert for welcoming me into the family. Tanya Huff and Fiona Patton, for setting such good examples, and for their support and friendship; Bill and Carol Mackillop for employing me when I needed money; special thanks to Sandra Beswetherick and Therese Greenwood for reading various versions of the manuscript; Steven Price for his support and advice, and his dad Charles Price for information about subways; David Ingham for his suggestions about apostrophes. Finally, my brother Oscar Malan for telling me, many years ago, to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was right.

  Prologue

  Seattle

  MALCOLM JONES TURNED his battered old Mercedes into his driveway and pulled up as close to Jenny’s Camry as he could get. It took him a couple of tries to get the emergency brake to engage, and he reminded himself—out loud this time, so he wouldn’t forget—to get the boys in the garage to look at it when he took the car in on Friday.

  Malcolm swung open the heavy car door, the chill, damp air almost a relief after the heat of the interior. He climbed out and reached back in for his briefcase, bending over to pick up his hat from where it had rolled off the front seat into the foot well on the far side of the stick shift. Suddenly he smelled oranges.

  “Stormbringer,” someone said.

  Malcolm stood up, striking his head on the roof of the car. He backed out, hands holding tightly to the crown of his head, trying not to hiss, trying to puff his breath out to ease the pain, as they had told Jenny to do when she was in labor.

  He squinted. The man next to the car was tall, as tall as Malcolm himself, though thicker through the shoulders, and with the ruddy skin, sun-bronzed hair, and soft hazel eyes of a friendly Viking.

  “Where is the Exile, Stormbringer?”

  “What are you talking about?” Malcolm glanced at his front doorway—just how close was it?—and saw that the house was dark. A cold hand squeezed his heart.

  “Do not know, will not say,” sang a liquid voice.

  Malcolm whirled around. There was another tall man on the far side of the car. This one was dark, but with a Celt’s fine-boned features, fair skin, and blue eyes. He smelled of freshly mown hay. He glanced up at the dark windows of the upper story and smiled.

  Malcolm dodged around the man in front of him and ran toward the house. He expected them to stop him, and when they didn’t, the chill holding his heart squeezed a little tighter.

  Jenny was not in the living room. Only a third man, this one as fair as straw, holding Jenny’s cell phone, punching in the buttons, holding it up to his ear and then smiling. The whole room smelled of hyacinths.

  “Where’s my wife?” He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were asking one of the twins.

  “So it is true,” the fair man said. “They have dra’aj enough for that, the Shadowfolk. That will be useful to us, by and by.”

  “The woman and the children are upstairs,” Oranges said to Malcolm. The man who smelled like mown hay closed the door to the street behind him and stood next to Oranges, blocking the front hallway. This time, as Malcolm tried to get around them to go upstairs, they stopped him, Mown Hay and Hyacinth, pulling his hands away from the railing, twisting his arms behind his back, their delicate, long-fingered hands as hard and as cold as talons. He would have bruises in the morning, if he lived. Oranges stood in front of him now, peering with cold interest into his face.

  “We don’t care about them,” Oranges said. “Tell us where the Exile is.”

  “Let me see my family,” Malcolm said. His whole body strained upward. If they had been human, he would have shrugged them off like old clothes, but he was not stronger than three of his own kind. Still, he tried to see some movement of shadows in the upstairs hallway. To hear some sound that would make the icy grip in his chest go away. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Let me see them.”

  “Later, perhaps.”

  A smile came and went on Hyacinth’s face, and Malcolm’s heart grew still. Too late, he thought, remembering Mown Hay’s smile outside, and the way his eyes had strayed up to the second floor. To the bedroom windows. Too late. No point now in trying to shield Jenny and the twins. No point in pretending that these people had made a mistake, that he was not what he was. That they were not what they were.

  No point in buying time while he decided whether his Oath was worth the lives of his family. He could see it in Hyacinth’s face. That decision had been made for him.

  “We do not want you, Stormbringer. We want the
Exile.”

  Malcolm shook his head. Their timing was badly off. Tragically off. It had been six years at least since the Exile had graduated from Seattle University, where Malcolm was a professor of history. “Why? Why now? The Banishment is close to ending—”

  Malcolm gasped as the one who smelled of oranges took a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back hard enough to snap his neck, if he had been human. “Because our Prince has need of him now, that’s why.”

  “You cannot . . .” But Malcolm could see from their faces that they thought they could. He shook his head, slowly at first until he found he could not stop. He Moved, Traveling away from the house that no longer held anything of value to him. Away from the life that was no longer his.

  But when he opened his eyes, he had not gone anywhere. He was still in his front hall. They still held him fast, their long-fingered hands still bruising his arms.

  “What are you trying, Stormbringer?” Oranges shook him a little. “Why not tell us? Your Oath is to protect him from humans during the Banishment.” Oranges leaned in close. “Do we look like humans to you?”

  Malcolm felt his lips stretch out in the parody of a smile. “Why don’t you bring my wife?” he sneered. “My children? Threaten to hurt them if I don’t tell you? Hmmm?” Their silence gave him the proof he had not needed. “You’ve made a mistake there, my brothers. You have no weapons now.”

  “Have we not?”

  Malcolm laughed. His throat was raw and he felt like choking, but he went on laughing until his legs gave out and the only thing holding him up was their hands. There was a sudden, sharp pain on the side of his face.

  “You’re fools,” he said finally. He tasted blood, and spat. “I would have told you,” he said. “Not just to buy the lives of my wife and my children. Not just for that.” He got his feet under him and tried to stand. Their hands tightened. “You could have stopped me on the street and asked me and I would have told you. I wouldn’t even have asked if you meant him harm. Why should I? I would have told you.”

  “Yes, yes. And now you will not tell us, is that it?”

  Malcolm laughed again, but stopped as Oranges raised his hand.

  “Perhaps you will kill him. But perhaps he’ll surprise you.” Malcolm’s arms didn’t hurt anymore, and he found he could stand upright. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you more than you wish to know. You have named me Bringer of Storm, and in that you speak truly, a storm comes. But this storm will break over your heads. This storm will come as a dragon and devour you. Here is my curse on you, my brothers. The man you seek is called Ravenhill. You will find him to sunward in the place the storm gathers. The place called Toronto.”

  “Do you think we free you now?” Mown Hay breathed in Malcolm’s ear. “Do you think you buy your life with this?”

  Malcolm shook his head. He bought nothing. Jenny was dead and they would kill him, and it did not matter. His children were dead, and his time in the Shadowlands was over. And that did not matter.

  He saw movement over Orange’s shoulder and the habit of living made him look. A rangy white dog with dark red markings came trotting out of the kitchen, smiling a toothy doggy smile, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.

  And even while part of him—the part that was still Malcolm Jones, Associate Professor of European History—wondered how so large a dog had managed to move so silently, the dog changed, growing grotesquely larger, its fur becoming scales, and its snout dripping. The part of him that was Stormbringer began at once to struggle in the iron hands that held him. That part of him recognized the dog. He was still ready to die. But not this way. He would rather live than feed the Hound.

  Stormbringer gathered himself and flung out all his dra’aj. As his power left him, and the final darkness covered him, he heard a howling.

  Chapter One

  CASSANDRA KENNABY REVERSED her rapier and placed it, swept hilt first, in her assistant’s waiting hand. She grinned at her opponent, giving the girl’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, before turning to where spectators’ chairs were set up a safe distance behind a sturdy mahogany railing. Her friend Barb was leaning on the barrier, shaking her head, half smiling.

  “You okay?” Cassandra asked, pulling off her mask. “You look a little pale.”

  Barb shook her head again. “For a minute there . . . the swords moved so fast . . . I thought you were going to kill her.”

  “That would defeat the lesson.” Cassandra wiped her face with her sleeve. Her silver hair clip clattered to the floor and, cursing mildly, she retrieved it, pushing her gold hair back from her face. “Sarita’s not fast enough to hurt me,” she added, turning to watch her young opponent receive the congratulations of the other students. “And I wasn’t planning to hurt her.”

  “I guess.” Barb shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fence with real swords before.”

  “Sarita’s reached the stage where she won’t learn anything further using foils and épées.” Cassandra spoke over her shoulder as she led her friend down the narrow corridor toward her office and her private shower. “Fencing’s an art, I grant you, but it’s a martial art.”

  “It’s not like watching a competition. I mean it is, but . . .” Barb waved her thought away with an impatient twitch of her hand.

  “We don’t teach that kind of fencing here,” Cassandra turned back to her friend. “Fencing isn’t a way to score points, it’s a way to kill people.”

  Barb laughed. “You tell the parents that?”

  Cassandra shook her head, trying unsuccessfully to hide her own smile. “Some people can’t handle the truth.”

  When all the students had gone for the day, and the street doors of the dojo were bolted, and even the practice swords had been locked away, Cassandra opened the long wooden chest that sat against the wall behind the old maple trestle table she used as a desk. The chest was made of ash wood and had been carved to her design by a master carver, long before she had come to Toronto with the old sensei to open a dojo in the western world. The carving showed a sleeping dragon, curled around a group of revelers feasting in a bright forest clearing, and was so detailed and so lifelike that occasionally people—including those who tried to open the chest for purposes of their own—found themselves unable to look away from the sight of the guests dancing, especially when the dragon winked and stretched out its curved claws like a lazy cat.

  Cassandra slipped the battered leather case containing her dueling swords into the space left for it at the back of the chest. Her fingers brushed against a larger bundle wrapped in heavy folds of raw red silk and she felt a sudden tug of longing deep in her chest.

  “You will need that, I’m thinking.”

  Heart in her mouth, Cassandra spun around, crouching to take advantage of the desk’s cover, a throwing knife already in her hand, and found what looked like an eleven-year-old boy standing in the open doorway of her office. Long practice kept her face calm, her expression one of neutral interest. She took in the layers of baggy clothing, the beanie cap, and the wide skateboard. But this was not some child who had stowed away in one of the locker rooms, waiting for a chance to play with the weapons—or steal the computers. In his eyes the centuries showed, turning his child’s face, his body, his clothing, and even the skateboard into parody. He would have fooled any adult human, but Cassandra knew that this boy had never been eleven. And never a boy.

  Under her surprise, a part of her was almost glad to see him, even if he was a Solitary. It had been over a hundred years since she’d seen or spoken to any others of her kind here in the Shadowlands. The Basilisk Prince had been discouraging travel between the worlds for centuries and had finally set a guard around the Portals—something that had turned out to be a good thing for humans, who were less plagued by Ogres, Trolls under bridges, kidnapped children, and demon lovers. But something that made life terribly lonely for those Riders whose duties kept them here.

  So a strange Rider would have been surprising enough, but a So
litary? And a strange Rider she would have felt behind her, would have sensed. A Solitary was like so much empty space. And there are no Solitaries anywhere, Cassandra reminded herself, who can be trusted.

  “I greet you, Younger Sister,” the Solitary said, his voice like shifting gravel. “You are Sword of Truth. Your mother was Clear of Light. The Dragon guides you. You are no kin to me, but I know you.”

  Cassandra inclined her head, once down, once up, slowly, careful to keep her eyes on the Old One’s face. She had no trouble recognizing the ritual greeting, though, to her knowledge, she’d only met one Solitary before. Riders like herself didn’t mix with Solitaries—not by choice anyway.

  “I ask your pardon, Elder Brother,” she said, giving one of the allowed ritual answers. “I do not know you.”