But it was already dead, he reminded himself. It was past. Memory. So he hoped. The wizard’s face began to surface, molding bone into more familiar curves and hollows. The darkness drained out of his eyes, left a hoarfrost behind, cold and barren, but remotely human.
“Where were we?”
Euan, freed, ducked back behind the thicket of words. “It tore my own heart in two,” he read tonelessly, and dipped the quill.
“Every memory, every scrap of power, every word I ever learned spilled out of me. I tried to hold them; they were birds, blood, sand, swirling endlessly away from me in that dark power, until I could not remember even the names for snow, or eyes. I could cling to the only things it could not yet take: my name, and its heart.
“So I put its heart where mine had been, and gave it my name.” The stranger’s voice, thin and dry as the scratching of words between nib and paper, paused. Euan lifted the quill, waited. He did not dare look up. Whatever lay there on the bed swallowed once or twice, then spoke again. “I looked out of its eyes. I knew all its past, its powers. I became it. And so I knew how to destroy it.”
He paused again. Euan waited, staring at the candle flames. The silence stretched, became unbearable. I will not look at him, he thought. I will not look…
He turned his head slowly, his eyes strained wide, unblinking. A frail, aged wizard lay quietly on the bed, his eyes open but unseeing, expressionless. Looking inward Euan guessed. He still breathed, so he hadn’t died. On impulse, Euan glanced behind him to where the wizard gazed.
He saw what stood in the shadows.
The book leaped off his knee; the quill went flying. He slid out of his chair, crouched, ostensibly feeling around him for book and quill, but shifting to put as much furniture as possible between himself and the monster that had come out of the wall beyond the bed. “Memory,” he whispered, trying to convince himself. “Illusion.” But as he stared at it, he felt himself begin to disappear into the dead void of its eyes. Flesh and bone seemed to be melting into air; all his thoughts shrivelled, rattled like seeds in a dry pod.
Then Unciel spoke and Euan heard his own breath again, felt his shuddering bones.
“Write,” the wizard said.
Euan pulled the quill out from under the bed, opened the book again, and drew the next word in a tear of ink out of the jar.
NINETEEN
Gyre watched the one-eyed king hunting through the forests of Serre for the monster more terrible than himself. His warriors were armed from head to foot in silver and steel. Some carried weapons so old that Gyre could not put names to them. His wizard’s eye saw the secret fires of magic within the massive blades, the painted, barbed spears, the studded balls and cones of iron. The warriors gathered closely beneath the tree where Gyre sat, then fanned out into smaller companies, each with a trumpeter to speak to one another at need. Gyre, invisible on a branch so high it seemed to overlook the entire forest, saw the birds wheel, startled, beneath him, marking the warriors’ paths.
He had no interest in them; they would circle themselves into a labyrinth before they laid eyes on him. His own eyes rose, turned to the dark palace on the cliff just across the air from him. The tree, jutting impossibly high out of the forest was magic, illusion, someone’s secret. He had glimpsed the spell that made it, and had climbed it out of curiosity. That high, he could see the glaziers and glassblowers rebuilding the shattered wall of glass in the great hall. Below them lined along the outer walls, a motley, unarmed guard stood watch. He could sense their terror, a roil of broken thoughts, nightmare images, regrets and longings for Dacia. He recognized them. I will not, he promised silently, let anyone harm you. Least of all the ogre who rules Serre.
All his thoughts turned then to the ogre’s son.
He nearly took the shortest way, a sparrow’s flight from the tree to an open casement in the palace. There, invisible, he would simply wait until he found the prince in an unguarded moment, trade faces with him, and send a bewildered and harmless wizard on his way out of Serre. But something caught his eye before he changed shape: a brush of fire, a glint of gold. The tree’s secret, he guessed, shifting a branch to see more clearly. A great, crazed nest fashioned out of vines and spiderweb and drying flowers hung across the crook of two boughs. The egg within it seemed to illumine the air around it with its jeweled, glowing hues.
The wizard’s throat closed; he swallowed dryly. Such beauty, such magic, must have come out of the very heart of Serre. He felt his hand warm as at the touch of that raw gold, those sweet fires, even before he thought of reaching out to it. What bird, he wondered dazedly, forming within that glittering shell could match its beauty? Then he knew, and felt his heart move, reshape itself at the memory of its song.
The firebird’s egg lay there at the top of the world, alone and unprotected. Where, he wondered, was the firebird, abandoning its egg to any passing predator? His mouth tightened as he remembered the bird-woman who had sung every thought out of his head. When last seen, it had crossed the witch’s threshold. Surely Brume, avid for firebirds, would not have let it escape easily. But Gyre had seen no sign of it, not a burning feather, not a hair. Even the voice that had melted the wizard’s power into dross had not left so much as an echo within Brume’s bones. Perhaps the firebird had hidden itself within the witch’s fire. Wherever it had gone, it was not in its nest, guarding its egg from rain, or snakes, or from the man crouched on the branch above it, staring at the egg and remembering what other mysteries and beauties he had reached out for in his life. A heart. A princess. A man’s name. A kingdom.
Because it is so beautiful, he told himself helplessly. Because if the firebird cannot return, it will die. Because if it dies, the firebird may never sing again in Serre. Because it melts my heart even now with its unborn song. Because I want.
He reached down and took the egg. He had time to hide it like a jewel within an invisible casket lined with a nest of warmth and power, and to slip that nest into his tunic over his heart, before the great tree shuddered and tossed him out of it like a bad fruit. Curious again, he kept his shape, but fell to earth gently and on his feet. Standing in oddly moving shadow, he looked up to find an enormous hand descending over him. It seized him by the hair, raised him with a sickening swoop through the air, and dangled him in front of what looked like the one-eyed King of Serre, but even uglier and multiplied by three.
“I saw the egg first!” the middle head shouted furiously at him.
“No, I did!” argued the head on the right.
“I did!” the left head wrangled, turning a pale, heated eye on its middle self. “And you got the last treasure.”
“That was only a book,” the middle head grunted disgustedly. A second hand caught Gyre’s boots and shook him upside-down over a huge and dirty palm, open to catch the egg when it fell. “And it wouldn’t open—I couldn’t even read it.”
“You can’t read,” the right head muttered.
“It was magical,” the left head fumed. “It was the oldest book in the world and it was magical and you could have kept the jewels on it. You just tossed it away instead of giving it. I would have taken it, lock and all, it was that beautiful. So the egg is mine.”
“What about me?”
“The jewels wouldn’t come off,” the middle head protested, shaking Gyre aggrievedly.
“Just bite his head off,” the right head said impatiently, “and give me the egg.”
“Wait!” Gyre shouted. His voice boomed and echoed through the trees; the heads went still, staring at him. “Wait,” he repeated more quietly, hanging limply with the blood singing in his ears. “What book?”
“What?” one of them ventured finally.
“What book? I might,” he suggested, “trade you something for the book.”
They considered themselves. The left head produced a verdict. “Just eat him.”
“Maybe I can open the book. Maybe I can show you its powers.”
The middle head snorted. But its eye wand
ered uncertainly, from right to left, then back to Gyre. “What are you, besides a thief?”
He paused, surprised at the word. “I suppose I am a thief,” he said slowly, trying to explain himself to a three-headed ogre as he dangled upside-down in its grip. “I’ve only tried to take what looks like my heart.”
“I wouldn’t touch what your heart must look like by now,” the middle head said fastidiously. “Stealing the likes of the firebird’s egg. What more have you stolen? Maybe we’d like that even better?”
“I’ll show you, if you tell me where the book is. The oldest book in Serre would contain secrets, powers, wonders greater than all the jewels covering it.”
“Tell him where you left it,” the right head said. “He can’t open it anyway. Then we’ll bargain.”
“I threw it in the cave behind the waterfall in the grove of the oldest trees in the forest. Where the hermit’s hut is. Him, I stole the book from. He couldn’t open it either. He’s dead,” the head added.
“Did you eat him?”
“No.” The head made a face. “He was too scrawny. And he was already dead.”
“Which way?”
“Oldest trees are tallest,” the right head said briefly. “You can’t miss them.” His mouth stretched in a lipless smile, revealing gaps Gyre could have crawled through. “Now give us the egg. Then show us what else you’ve stolen.”
Gyre twisted free, hit the earth again, and changed shape as he rose. This time, he was tall enough to look the ogre in all three eyes.
What had worked with the witch worked for the ogre. He saw stark horror multiplied by three. Then he saw the backs of the ogre’s heads as it lumbered away, trying to shrink into its bulk and put trees between itself and the dead-eyed monster as quickly and noiselessly as possible. The monster patted its tunic over its heart, feeling for the egg. Then it stood still a moment, thinking, while birds swirled out of the trees around it and fled.
Kingdom or book?
Ronan, he decided at last, could wait a little. There was nowhere the prince could hide from Gyre and the king would not give up his search for the monster until nightfall. The palace would be quiet and relatively empty until then. Gyre could spare a moment or two to find a book. After he became Ronan, he guessed, he would have few moments to spare for some time, especially for a book hidden within a cave within a waterfall within a grove of the oldest trees within the forest.
He turned himself into one of the fleeing birds and went to look for it.
The oldest book in Serre, he mused as he looked for the tallest trees, might explain the origins of the peculiar magic of Serre. Understanding it, he would possess it; possessing the magic of Serre, he would possess Serre itself, as though he had taken its heart. All its beauty would be his, its mystery, its treasures and secrets. He felt his own heart try to change shape again, grow to encompass such marvels. An echo of the firebird’s voice drifted through him then, as though the bird forming within the egg had begun to sing in its dreams.
He saw the huge trees below then, a cluster standing high above the younger forest, and he dropped.
He took his own shape beside a little waterfall as wide as he was tall, and barely twice as tall. A tiny, moldering hut stood near the stream below the falls. The hut was so overgrown with moss that it had begun to resemble an old stump. Its door hung open. Something wafted out of it like a good smell: a hint of power, beckoning, inviting. Gyre eyed it speculatively. In a moment, he answered, and went to investigate the waterfall. It had a silvery exuberant current that pounded over him as he ducked behind it. Clambering over broken slabs of slate in the hollow behind the falls, he saw a smolder of damp blue fire in the shadows.
He pulled the book out of the puddle where it had been tossed, and slipped through the falls again into light. He dried himself with an absent gesture, and studied the book. It was thick, heavy, and unmarked by water, mold, or age. Uncut jewels inlaid in melted pools of gold crusted its binding, front and back. It had no title. The words engraved on it in gold ink said only, succinctly: DO NOT OPEN ME. Gyre could see no lock, but the pages refused to part.
He took it with him into the hermit’s hovel. Perhaps the hermit had discovered some way to open it before he died, and had written it down. The hut, dropping a mossy tendril here and there between the ceiling slats, was damp and silent. The skeleton of a raven tied by one leg hung upside-down from its perch near the table. The hermit had died in the chair beside it. His hair, long and silver, still clung to what seemed more like tanned hide than moldering skin His eyes, a milky blue, startled Gyre. Surely something should have eaten them by now?
Then the hermit spoke and he nearly dropped the book.
“It didn’t get far, then.”
Gyre swallowed, feeling his heart thwanging like a bow string against his ribs. “It was just behind the waterfall. I thought—the ogre told me—”
The hermit shook his head, one eye narrowing in a smile. “I just pretend, sometimes. It makes living easier, especially when you’re visited by an ogre.”
“I see.”
“Or a stranger.” He rose creakily, still looking dead despite his movements, dried and brittle and full of dust. “What,” he wondered, “do I have to offer you?”
“What happened to your raven?”
“It died one winter. I forget which. I kept its bones for company.” He opened a cupboard; the door fell off, clattered to the floor. “A nice rosehip tea?”
“No,” Gyre said, uneasy without knowing why. “Thank you. I cannot stay. I only came in to see if you might have left some clue about how to open this.”
The hermit looked at him, surprised. “It says not to.”
“So you didn’t.”
“No. Do you go around opening things that you shouldn’t?”
“How else can I find out what’s in them?”
“It’s very dangerous,” the hermit said. His shaggy brows, either of which could have lined a bird’s nest, tried to weave themselves together. “That’s why it says not to.”
“Where did you find this book?”
“Its been here as long as I have,” the hermit answered vaguely, and kicked a three-legged stool beside the cold grate. It walked across the stone floor to the table, its sharp, precise steps hitting the slabs in wordless rebuke. “You have to,” the hermit whispered to Gyre, “sometimes, to get them started.” He cleared his throat, added normally, “I might have a key around somewhere.”
“A key?”
“To open the book. That’s why you came in here, isn’t it? Sit down. I’ll look for it.”
Gyre glanced uncertainly at the stool. But it was that or the hermit’s chair, which wore a dry whitewash of raven droppings. He put the book on the table and sat carefully, expecting the stool to pull itself out from under him and stalk off. It stayed put.
“The book,” he said, examining it again, “has no lock.”
The hermit stopped clattering through oddments on a shelf. “Oh. Then maybe I don’t have a key.”
“But,” Gyre breathed, inspired, “perhaps the key is in a jewel. If I press the right one, or the right pattern…” His fingers slid lightly over a small treasure of rough-hewn jewels, trying to shift them in their solid splashes of gold.
The hermit watched over his shoulder, his finger-bones knocking hollowly around each other. “Can’t you take it outside?” he pleaded. “I don’t want to see.”
“See what?”
“Whatever it’s hiding. Look at those jewels. You’re waking them. They’re seeing you.”
So it seemed: Gyre saw his face reflected in sapphire, in emerald, in diamond as clear as water. The gold letters among them seemed to burn more brightly, insistently, warning.
“But I want to know,” he told it, stretching his hand to touch five jewels at once, one beneath each finger, each finger covering his intent, curious, fearless face.
The book opened. Steadily and firmly, it pushed its cover back and separated its pages, chose one i
n the middle for Gyre and the hermit, breathing heavily in Gyre’s ear, to gaze at. The page was blank except for a single line of fine gold script across the middle of the parchment.
You have opened your heart, the book said. Now what will you do?
The hermit swallowed with a click of bone. Gyre felt his shock like a cold splash of water. The old bones sagged down in the chair, became still again, the filmy eyes wide and staring at what had come to visit him.
Gyre turned and saw the monster he had brought with him into Serre.
TWENTY
Sidonie sat in her chamber, ripping scallops of lace off a skirt. She had sent all her attendants away except for Auri. The girl stood mutely in front of her, thin face pinched with the habitual fear of the past days, her eyes enormous as she watched the princess ruthlessly parting threads, the lace coiling onto the floor at her feet.
“Tell me,” Sidonie commanded, “everything you know about Brume.”
Auri’s eyes grew impossibly larger. “My lady,” she whispered, “she is a terrible, ugly witch who eats people.”
“She didn’t eat Prince Ronan.”
“She can be outwitted,” Auri conceded reluctantly. “But only if you are very lucky.”
“What if I bring her something? Does she like presents?”
“Nobody ever—You must want to find someone, if you think to bring them a present. Nobody ever wants to find Brume.”
In the Forests of Serre Page 17