The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She turned to go in, and coax breakfast out of the sleeping mage. Something blocked her way.

  It was as if the shadow in the doorway had become a sheet of night with a constellation flying across it, and once she stepped into that night there was no way out of it, no book of time, no gate, just the icy outline of a great dragon with eyes and teeth and talons of stars, breathing a pale, glittering cloud of stars into the dark. She stood transfixed, staring into the dragon’s fierce and empty eye, until, with terror and astonishment, she recognized the challenge.

  She made some noise. She was aware that, beyond the dark, something fought towards her. A hand reached through the stars where the dragon’s heart blazed, a furious, white-hot jewel pulsing with the fires it breathed. The hand caught her, pulled her into the dragon, and then into light.

  “Meguet?”

  She dropped the dragon’s heart. It shattered on the stone floor, shards of crystal flying everywhere. She stared down at it, sorrow for the old woman’s simple gift knotting the back of her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “She left it for you.”

  “Meguet.”

  She looked up finally, to meet the mage’s eyes. They were lucent as the morning sky, vast as the desert. She blinked, and was suddenly no longer in his hold, but on the other side of the room, watching expression break into his face. He seemed to hold himself upright with an effort, as if, caught in the wake of her movement, he had lost his balance. He looked less feverish, but the weariness dragged at his shoulders. He said finally, “You are a mage.”

  “No.”

  “There’s a power stirring in you. I can feel it. You hid your thoughts from me. You folded time as you moved.” He waited, then pleaded tiredly, “Trust me. Please.”

  She was silent, feeling the warnings of her heritage wash over her like a slow, endless tide. The Dragon hunts, the tide said. The Dragon hunts the Cygnet. Then the warnings passed and she could speak again. She said with rare bitterness, “All you care about is power. All of you.”

  He made a soft sound, shaking his head, the shadows deepening on his face as if she had somehow hurt him. “That’s not true. But I can sense it in you—something unusual, unnamed. The power that permitted you to see me when I cast the spell over Ro House. The power that forced you to guard the tower, to see through sorcery. But you aren’t a mage. What is the power?” She was silent, backed against the wall, splinters of the dragon’s heart glistening, sunlit, at her feet. He sat down finally, listening to her silence. He said to the table top, “It’s my fault. I have a mage’s habits. I wander where I have no business going. I won’t trouble you with my curiosity. You don’t have to be afraid of me. But you’re afraid of something, in a land that never even existed for you before yesterday.”

  It was a long time before she answered, and then because she had no other hope of understanding what she feared except for the mage she was afraid to trust. She whispered, “A dragon made of stars, hunting through the stars. A threat to Ro Holding. To the Cygnet.”

  His head went back; his face, stone-still, was white as bone. “How could you—” he breathed. “How could you know that?”

  She moved then in sudden fury, leaning over the table, her hands coming down flat, hard on the wood. “You knew.”

  “Listen to me.” He gripped her wrist. “Listen.”

  “You talk too much, Rad Ilex. You make me see dragons among the stars, but you don’t show me what they hunt. You say you want a key, only a key, just a small key to unlock the gate to an unarmed land that doesn’t even know the word dragon. You drag me here and I can’t even warn—” She lifted her hands again, let them fall helplessly, beating at her own futility. “I can’t even warn. But I can fight. This is where the danger begins. Where there are dragons.”

  “Meguet—the dragon—”

  “How far is Draken Saphier’s court? Is it close? If you won’t tell me, the villagers will. I’ll walk across the Luxour if I must. I’ll ride in that old woman’s cart.”

  “Gara. Her name is Gara.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Walk out of the door. I won’t stop you. The Luxour may stop you, or it may not; I won’t. But when you get to Draken Saphier’s court, the dragon there will stop you. He will sense the power in you, and he will test you and test you until you can’t call your own bones private. The Dragon of Saphier is dragon-born, a mage who trains mages. He trained me. What he wants more than anything is to find the path to the power within the dragon’s heart. His father’s power. For that he needs a certain key.”

  Meguet gazed at him. She began to tremble suddenly.She sat, her face hidden behind her unbound hair, behind her hands. “Nyx,” she whispered, so softly that not even the dragon’s heart broken at her feet could hear. The mage heard; his own voice was feather-soft.

  “Yes.”

  “You must get the key from Nyx. Then, with the key in Saphier, the danger to Ro Holding will no longer exist.”

  “The danger will still exist. And it may well be insurmountable.”

  She lifted her head, stared at him again, her own face pale, stunned with shock. “Then I will go to Draken Saphier’s court. If the danger must be fought there.”

  “You cannot fight Draken Saphier,” he said flatly. “Your power comes and goes apparently, and from what I’ve seen, when it goes you can’t even fight a dragon made of thread.”

  “If I must go there, I will be there.”

  “How—”

  “I will be there.” She linked her hands tightly, dropped her face against them, avoiding his curious, questioning eyes. “You must go back to Ro Holding and get that key.”

  “She won’t give it to me without you.”

  “And the Holder will never let me return if I go back now. The danger showed its face to me here, not there. If I leave Saphier, how will I recognize danger when it reaches Ro Holding?” She paused, trying to think. “I’ll give you a message for Nyx.”

  “You’ll trust me with a message?”

  She shook her head a little, wearily. “I trust you to get that key you want. Little more. Tell Nyx—”

  “She’ll never believe you chose to stay. She’ll think I coerced you. I did once before.”

  She frowned at the dust on the table, brushing at it, as if to find some message hidden in the wood. She felt drained, hollow, as if she had left her heart somewhere in Saphier and could not return home until she found it. Her finger shaped a swan’s wing in the dust; she saw the black swan flying through the tower window, just before she vanished into Saphier. She said abruptly, “Tell her to tell the Gatekeeper of Ro House that he is about to find a dragon at his gate and only the key she has will lock the gate.”

  He looked dubious. “You want me to give her a message for the Gatekeeper?”

  “He is no ordinary Gatekeeper.”

  “Is that so.” He leaned forward a little, caught her eyes, curious again. “A Gatekeeper,” he mused, and she felt her face warm. “And this will persuade Nyx not to fight me.”

  “I don’t know. I do know you’ll get the key any way you can. Tell her I had a vision of what the dragon is hunting.”

  “Come with me,” he said insistently. “Home to Ro Holding. It’s Saphier’s dragon. I’ll fight it.”

  “If that were true,” she said sharply, “I would not be seeing visions in your doorway. You love Saphier’s dragons too much to fight them.”

  He swallowed, said heavily, “Then promise me you will wait here for me. You will not cross the Luxour without me.”

  “I will go where I must,” she said. “I cannot promise anything.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it. He stood up, holding her eyes, as if the path to Ro Holding lay there, not within his memories. He closed his eyes at last, his face white as tallow, his shoulders straining against some enormous burden. She saw him vanish finally. And then he was back, no longer standing but fallen among the glittering fragments of the dragon’s heart.

  She made a sound, staring at
him, for he seemed, amid the light and stone and scattered crystals, another vision, a foretelling. But, touching him, she felt his weight, and heard his ragged breathing. He lifted one hand weakly, dropped it over his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Meguet. It was too far . . .” He fell asleep there within the broken heart. She closed her eyes, felt the long, dark tide of dread and warning well through her. Its ancient voices finally ebbed and she could move again. She picked shards of crystal from beneath the mage, and saw the Cygnet’s eye in every shattered piece.

  - Nine -

  In Chrysom’s tower, Nyx stood spellbound, exploring the gold key she held. The sunlight had faded some time ago; the long summer dusk had filled the tower room and darkened. She scarcely noticed light or lack of it; her mind had become the size and shape of the key. The key was the book; the book, she suspected, was the key to the paths of time in the little black-and-silver box. It would teach her how to pick one path, control its speed, follow its turns, focus its end. She could find a path to match the twists of time on Brand’s wrists, if she could find the spell, if she could open the book . . . The book remained stubbornly a key.

  Her thoughts turned around themselves, like the graceful lines of gold. The key is the book, the book is the key. The key is the key to itself, it unlocks itself.

  It might unlock a path to Saphier, she knew, for Chrysom had seen dragons. Had they been the elusive dreams of Saphier, becoming real as he looked at them?

  The key is the key. The key opens itself. Her mind roamed within its gold and ivory. Chrysom, it said at every touch. Power was implicit in it, like the power in a tuned, silent string. There was a way to touch it, make it sound. . . .

  Chrysom, she said within it, but the name did not change it. She tried other words from his ancient spells; none revealed the book. She tried her own name, and then Moro Ro’s name; the key ignored both of them. Time, she guessed. Book. Open. Mage. Unlock. Finally, she told it what it was, and what it must become. Key, she said within it, and the key blossomed like a flower in her mind.

  It remained a key in her hand; she was aware, in some distant place, of its shape and weight. But the spells, written in Chrysom’s clear, precise writing, turned slowly, page after page, in her mind. Some were labelled incomprehensibly; others dealt directly with the oddments that still survived after a thousand years to be recognized. The pages slowed under her scrutiny, stopped when she studied them, turned easily when she wished to go on. She found the box finally: the drawing of a dark cube scrolled on all sides with silver ink.

  Time-Paths, the spell said. Pages of miniscule explanation followed. Nyx, engrossed, wandered down path after path of spells, and found at last the one she wanted.

  Saphier, it said. Here Be Dragons. She followed it, memorizing its patterns. Other spells and paths, labelled strangely, wandered through Saphier; Chrysom, evidently, had found something there to fascinate him. But she concentrated on the path that ended at the ruler’s court, hoping that, after so long, it was still there, or that Chrysom’s journeys had led him into a time more recent in Saphier’s history than his own.

  She became aware, dimly, that stars had been burning in the dark around her for some time, a curiosity which coaxed her out of the key finally to investigate. She found candles lit throughout the room. Brand, his supper finished, sat in a window waiting for her.

  A moon-paring hung over his shoulder, high above the swamp. She slipped the key back into her pocket, rubbed her eyes tiredly. Movement felt strange; she tried to remember how long she had been standing there, bewitched with Chrysom’s knowledge. His taut, uneasy face told her: long enough.

  “What were you doing?” he asked. “You didn’t move, you wouldn’t speak. I thought some spell had been cast over you by that key.”

  “No.” She drifted to the table, her thoughts inlaid with winding paths of silver. She ate bits of cold peppered meat, and bread and a stew of mushrooms and leeks, until she felt she had climbed out of the little black cube into her own time again. She poured wine, drank a mouthful, then turned. In the candlelight her eyes held a trace of lavender. “I found Chrysom’s path to Saphier.”

  She heard his breath catch. He moved away from the window, relinquishing the bird’s familiar place. “I can go home?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “How?” His fingers twisted the blackened path on one wrist. “How?”

  “The black cube. You came into it once, to rescue me. Do you remember?”

  “No.” Then he shook his head a little. “Perhaps. It’s like a dream—”

  “It was real,” she said soberly. “I was lost and you led me out. That’s when you remembered your name.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, but for once with regret. He added, “I would like to remember that I did something for you.”

  “You will.” She nibbled pieces of slivered carrots and almonds with her fingers, thinking. “Where would Rad Ilex most likely have taken Meguet?”

  His face tightened at the name, but he did not retreat from it. “My father’s court,” he said after a moment. “It’s where he lives.”

  “He’d go there even after casting a spell over you?”

  “He wouldn’t expect to see me. He is still free to come and go from Saphier; my father must not suspect him.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s a place to start.”

  “My father will help you. He can send his mages searching across Saphier, even across the Luxour if need be. Not every mage can cross the Luxour. So I’ve heard. They say ancient magics, old as the beginning of the world, blow across it like wind. But some mages learn to anticipate the winds.”

  “Rad Ilex?”

  He was silent, struggled again; he nodded briefly. “Yes. And my father. And some others.”

  “It sounds fascinating.”

  “Perhaps. I never understood his love of the Luxour.”

  “Your father’s?”

  “Rad.” Blood streaked his face suddenly; he turned away from her, but she saw him tremble. She wondered uneasily what jagged edge of truth waited for him in Saphier. She dipped her fingers in orange-scented water, wiped them on a napkin, then pinned up a stray coil of hair. She said slowly,

  “I should tell my mother that I’m going.”

  “Will she let you go to a strange land?”

  “Most likely she’ll be so amazed I told her that she won’t ask where. But I don’t know how long it will take me to find Meguet, and I don’t want her thinking I’m in danger.”

  “My father will protect you,” he said swiftly. “Nothing will harm you in Saphier.”

  Absently she looked for her shoes, found them on her feet. She brushed a crumb off her skirt. “I’d better change. I can’t wear silk shoes across a desert, if it forces me to walk.”

  “There will be no need for you to go. The mages will search the Luxour.”

  She stared at him. “A desert full of magic, and you expect me to sit in your father’s house trying to watch my manners?”

  He blinked. “I forget,” he said, “how much freedom you have. You choose to come and go; my father’s er’s mages do his bidding. You also do things for love.” His face closed abruptly, before she could question him. She said to his set profile,

  “I’ll be back as soon as I speak to my mother.”

  His brow crooked anxiously. “It’s late,” he reminded her.

  “I’ll hurry. If Rad Ilex comes—”

  “Do you expect—”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Though it would be worth this key and more to find Meguet here instead of there. If he comes, tell him to wait for me. Don’t touch him. Don’t let the firebird break out of you.”

  “How can I stop the bird?” he demanded.

  “Find a way. Do anything to keep Rad Ilex here. The heart of sorcery is the clear and patient mind. So Chrysom says. I am trying to be patient and clear-headed, for once in my life. But if the mage vanishes again with Meguet, I am liable to lose my temper and do
something impulsive.”

  “My father says the heart of sorcery is the fire that forges the dragon’s heart.”

  “He does.”

  “So he teaches.”

  “Moro’s eyes. Just don’t fight.”

  She summoned one of the tower pages, sent him running to the Holder’s chambers to request a few moments’ privacy. Then she vanished, reappeared in front of her startled attendants, picking jewels out of her hair. She changed quickly, packed a few oddments of her own. She felt for the amber at her ear lobe, and tossed everything—earring and key and cloak, comb and little jewelled mirror, a few dried herbs—into an ivory ball so tiny it seemed invisible in her pocket. The key, now that she understood it, had consented, to her relief, to fit itself inside the ball.

  She didn’t bother with stairs and towers; she simply appeared in front of her mother. The Holder had dismissed her attendants and was pacing; seeing Nyx she barely changed expression, as if what she frowned at were only an extension of her thoughts. She said,

  “Where is Meguet?”

  “I believe, in a land called Saphier.”

  “Where is that?”

  “I have no idea. It’s not on any map I can find.”

  The Holder was silent. Her arms were folded tightly; she seemed too disturbed even to throw hairpins. “You said the mage would return for the key.”

  “So I thought,” Nyx said.

  “Then where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I have told the Holding Council that Meguet is guarding you, and that you are guarding Ro House against the return of the mage. Rumors are already—” She stopped, touched her eyes. “Rumors.”

  “They follow me, don’t they?” Nyx said softly. “The bog-witch alone in the tower with a bird . . .” Her own arms were folded; she was frowning, reflecting her mother, but pensively, at the problem itself. “The mage slowed time and fought me for that key. It seemed most reasonable to think he would return for it.”