Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Meguet Vervaine, Guardian. Put your hands to the Cygnet’s eye.”

  She reached out, placed her hands on the cold planes of the prism. Astor Ro’s face faded. Through the white fire that flooded the crystal, the black Cygnet flew, imprinting itself in her eye, in her mind. A whispering began, within the prism or her mind. The fierce light died. She held the night sky and the constellations between her hands. As the stars slowly revolved, she drank in knowledge with the night.

  The crystal vanished when she finally dropped her hands. The moment of time that had opened for her closed again, hid its treasure. In another moment, she saw Chrysom’s effigy on a tomb of black marble, the globe above it, the huge, strange guardians moving restlessly around it. And then that layer of time also hid itself. She stood in the dark at the center of the maze, and watched torchlight mold the stone animals out of the darkness at the top of the wall, before the torchbearer turned the final corner and illumined the moment around her.

  She stood in a small circular chamber. The guardians of Chrysom’s tomb no longer moved; they surrounded her, half-sculpted out of the marble wall and painted. There was no sign of globe or tomb or effigy. There was only a shadow slanting across the ceiling, which the busy torchlight searched and shaped into the Cygnet in flight.

  The Holder carried the torch.

  Seven

  SHE said softly, “I thought so.”

  Meguet felt the last, familiar layer of time slide into place; she stood again in her own present. “You know what I am.”

  “I know,” the Holder said. “The powers that protect the Cygnet do not keep the Holders ignorant of its guardian. For some time now I have wondered about you.” She paused. There was not a pin left in her hair; it flowed wildly down her back. Her eyes looked weary, bruised by conjecture. She added, “You would not have come down here, the Gatekeeper would not have left the gate, unless there was dire need.”

  Meguet put the back of her hand to her mouth. “The Blind Lady has entered.” Her voice trembled. “We looked for her. They were both here, in the maze. Blind Lady and tinker.”

  The Holder stepped closer; firelight ran over Meguet’s dishevelled hair, her singed skirt. “You found them,” she said harshly.

  “The Gate—Hew—I left him. He was hurt. Dead, maybe.” She swallowed, calmed her voice from habit, though she had begun to shake. “I must find him. I had to run—”

  “Yes.”

  “I ran—beyond time, I think. Into the heart of the maze.”

  “Here.”

  “Yes, only—within. Within this place. I must go back and find Hew. He fell on his knife.”

  The Holder closed her eyes. “Moro’s name. You cannot go back there.”

  “I must find him.”

  “No. I’ll send the guard.”

  “They won’t get far enough. They won’t get past the periphery. No one does. Except you.”

  “I came another way,” the Holder said obscurely. “Gatekeepers don’t kill themselves without regard for the gate.”

  “He didn’t—I knocked him down.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was walking into the tinker’s house. I—he might have been dead then, I don’t know. I tried to kill the tinker.”

  “It does seem futile.” She touched her eyes delicately with her fingers. “The powers you have inherited are formidable, but I don’t think you are able to use them to rescue a Gatekeeper. They rouse to protect the Cygnet.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Those two may be waiting for you.”

  Meguet felt a familiar stillness settle through her, as when she had chosen a path or an action and choice lay in the past, in another time. “Then,” she said, “I will meet them.”

  “Meguet Vervaine, I forbid you to do this!”

  “Will you let me take the torch, anyway?” She added, under the Holder’s outraged stare, “I am overly fond of your Gatekeeper.”

  “So you would leave me in the dark.”

  “I’ll light your way back first. It’s not far, is it? The way you came in?” She looked around, at the strange menacing figures surrounding them, wearing their bright masks of paint. She had seen them many times, she knew, through many centuries. “It’s quite close…” she said surprisedly. The Holder watched her, face impassive. Her fingers lifted, worried her hair for a phantom pin. She gave up, tossing her hand in the air.

  “I dislike changing Gatekeepers.” She gave Meguet the torch. “Lead.”

  Meguet bowed her head; the torch shook in her hand, then finally steadied. She turned, and, stepping forward, flung a circle of light around the Gatekeeper.

  She stopped, catching breath. He kept moving, slowly, with a weary, dragging persistence, until he was close enough to reach out, gather her against him with one arm. She whispered, “Hew.” She put her free arm around him tightly and felt him wince.

  She drew back, still holding him lightly. He carried his singed cloak under one arm; there was blood in his hair, a streak of blood along one torn side of his tunic. He smiled a little, then started as the Holder stepped into the light.

  They looked at each other for a long time. Then the Gatekeeper let go of Meguet, bent his head respectfully, and the Holder said, “Hew, what are you doing here? This place is for mages and Holders, not Gatekeepers.”

  “I heard Meguet’s voice, my lady. I followed it. Hours, it seems I followed.”

  “Are you badly hurt?”

  “I’ve been worse, my lady.”

  “I thought you were dead,” Meguet said numbly. “I saw you walking into the tinker’s house.”

  He looked at her wearily. “It’s not a tinker you were fighting, my lady Meguet. It’s not a tinker lives in that dark house. Down here, there’s no one to keep secrets from, unless this cheerful crowd around us.”

  “That may well be,” the Holder said grimly, “but until I know better what danger we’re in, I prefer to have only a tinker under my house.”

  “And a blind weaver, my lady. She got past my sleeping eye.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “How did you escape from them?” Meguet asked. He shook his head.

  “I didn’t. I woke up and it was dark and they were gone. So were you. I thought they had you. Then I began to hear your voice. Here, around this corner, there around that, words I couldn’t quite hear… I was circling you, I think, forever it felt. You never sounded frightened. Never troubled. You were safe, I thought, but I could never find you. It helped me, hearing you, kept me from sitting down and falling asleep.” He was holding his arm tightly against his side. Meguet saw him blink away sweat. The Holder said abruptly:

  “The house must be in a turmoil by now. Meguet, lead us back up.”

  Meguet raised the torch above her head, illumined the tall, still, half-human figures ringing them. A horned face, its human part blue, its horns gold, gazed back at her out of blue and gold eyes. She reached out impulsively, touched its clawed, jewelled hand.

  It swung gently aside, revealing steps. The Gatekeeper made a sudden noise, of recognition and wonder. “We came down those,” he breathed. “My lady Meguet, is there a maze or is there not? Or is this all in the mage’s mind?”

  “You should know; you walked as much of it as any of us.”

  “While you spoke, who were you speaking to all that time?”

  The lie came easily to her, she found, as they must come, she realized, for the rest of her life. “Only myself,” she said, “guiding myself, feeling my way…” She opened the small door at the top of the stairs, pushed the heavy, dark banner aside. Through the open doors of the tower, the Gatekeeper’s empty turret hung like a delicate carving against a blue-grey dusk.

  With the Holder’s permission, Meguet helped him back to his cottage. He sat stiffly on the hearth bench, the jagged tear in his side cleaned and dressed, watching her gaze dubiously at his pots.

  “I can cook what I have hunted,” she confessed finally. “But I’m no good in a kitche
n.”

  “Never mind,” he said. He stretched out his good arm. “Sit with me a little, Meguet.” She dropped beside him on the bench. Her skirt was torn at the knee where she had fallen; her braid was coming apart; there were, she was certain, smudges of sweat and dust on her face. He kissed her for a long time. Night laid dark wings against the windows; the world was oddly silent.

  “No wind,” she said at last, surprised. “No rain.”

  “Stars, maybe. Entire constellations…” But neither of them moved to look. “Spring, soon.”

  She leaned against him, watching the fire, thinking of the tinker’s fire. “What happened to you,” she asked, “in that gold ring of fire? I saw you walking toward the Gold King’s house. Do you remember the open door of his house? It was full of night and stars.”

  “All I remember is falling.”

  “That was after, when I pushed you away from the house.”

  “No, before. When I threw you away from the fire. You hit me with something.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. That sword you carried. I saw its pommel coming at me. That was that for me until I woke alone in the dark.”

  “Then you walked in your sleep. Or maybe it was an illusion of you, walking. Or a sending through time, like the Hunter Hold witches. The Blind Lady pulled a thread between her hands while you walked…”

  “They didn’t harm me.” He looked down at her wryly. “You did most of it.”

  “I did,” she said, startled.

  “They didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. I threw your knife at the Gold King. He was armed in gold, then, and crowned, and laughing at me. I hit him.”

  “Did he drop dead?”

  “Not noticeably.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I ran.”

  “Did they follow you?”

  “I don’t—I don’t think so.”

  He grunted. “They were in hiding. Waiting, it seems like. We disturbed them, they showed us a trick or two and then hid themselves again.”

  “Waiting.”

  “So it seems.”

  She was silent. A finger of fire caught color from sap and turned gold. She started. She turned abruptly, caught his arms so tightly he winced. “Hew. When is spring? When is the last day of winter?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  “How soon?” She shook him a little, when he didn’t answer. “That’s what they’re waiting for! The Dancer, the Blood Fox’s human shadow, the Warlock—”

  “The Warlock?”

  “The other Hold Signs!” She loosed him, sprang up to pace, thinking furiously. “How many weeks of winter left?”

  “Days, more like.” He watched her, nursing his side, his face hard, expressionless as always when he was disturbed. “I must watch for a Warlock now, at the gate. And all the Hold Councils themselves beginning to come soon. What do you see in all this, Meguet?”

  She whirled, her face white. “I have to stop him.”

  “Who?”

  “The Wayfolk man with Nyx. He’s going to Berg Hold, to wake the Dancer. On the last day of winter.”

  “He’d be gone by now,” Hew said, and brought her to a halt in front of him. “Unless he can fly across Ro Holding. Wayfolk don’t fly. But they’re not afraid to travel.”

  She swung to the hearth, brought her fist down on the stones. Then she dropped her face against her arm. “I’ll leave now. Tonight.”

  “You’ll never make it. Never to Berg Hold by winter’s end. You might make it past the Delta.”

  “Then what?” she said bitterly. “Will we stop the Dancer coming in the way we stopped the Blind Lady? I can’t do anything right. I try and try and only make things worse.”

  “Why is it you who should be trying? You, more than the Holder or Nyx or Rush Yarr? Why, Meguet? Why is it you must stop the Wayfolk man in Berg Hold?”

  Because I can! she said fiercely, but only to herself, her eyes still hidden in the crook of her arm. She felt him pull at her gently.

  “Don’t. Not twice in one day. I’ll watch, this time. I swear. Day and night.”

  She turned her head, gazed down at him, dry-eyed. “I must get to Berg Hold.”

  “But how?”

  “Rush. Maybe he learned something useful from Nyx. Or the witches of Hunter Hold. Maybe they know a way I could walk through time. I could get to Hunter Hold before winter’s end.”

  “Rush Yarr’s sorcery might land you in the middle of Wolfe Sea.”

  “I have to risk something! It’s because of the Wayfolk man these things are happening. I don’t know how or why, but he is dangerous, and I must stop him.”

  “With what?” he demanded. “With what power? Moro Ro’s sword that you have to hold steady with both hands? Why you? Why you that must fling yourself across Ro Holding into the endless snows of Berg Hold to keep the Dancer from dancing?”

  “For the same reason that you watch the gate, night and day, summer and winter. Because you must. I have old eyes in me, Hew. Old voices. They make me see, they make me do what I can. I was born rooted to the past in this house.” She added, “The Wayfolk man needs no power to be stopped. I could threaten him with Moro Ro’s sword and he would take it seriously. All I need to do is get there…”

  “Take the house,” he suggested. “It used to fly for Moro Ro.” She stared at him. “That way I wouldn’t have to fret about you.”

  “Chrysom moved it.”

  “Did he?”

  “During the Hold Wars.”

  “Well,” he said, “from the sound of it, that’s what we may be heading toward. Did he take that power with him when he died? Or did he leave something to the next Holder, in case of trouble in the Delta?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  “Who would know?”

  “I don’t know.” She pushed her hands against her eyes.

  “Rush Yarr?”

  Her hands dropped. She gazed down at him, then she bent swiftly and kissed him. “Calyx.”

  “You want to move my house where?” the Holder said incredulously.

  “The highest peak in Berg Hold,” Calyx said. She was at a table in Chrysom’s library, walling herself up with books.

  “It would fall off,” Iris said practically.

  “Well, then as close as possible to the top. Meguet could climb the rest of the way. If people are meant to consult the Dancer, there must be a way for them to get up.”

  “I’m coming with Meguet,” Rush said. “To protect her from the Fire Bear.”

  “This house hasn’t moved in centuries!”

  “Does everything go?” Iris wondered. “Barns, hen coops, the thousand-year-old wood?”

  “Tinker and Blind Lady?” Rush asked. The Holder, gazing at Meguet, toying with the amber around her neck, shook her head.

  “It’s no longer possible. Is it?”

  “The house was made to move.”

  “Across Ro Holding?”

  “Legend,” Calyx murmured with satisfaction, “says so. Legend says that during a siege by the Delta armies, the house moved to the northern fields of Withy Hold.”

  “Legend,” Iris said sharply and poked her needle through cloth. “It’s a thousand-year-old tale.”

  “So,” Rush said grimly, “is what we’ve got living beneath this tower.”

  “Either this house goes to Berg Hold,” Meguet said, “or Rush must find a way to send me there.”

  “If you want to get there, you’d better take the house,” Calyx said.

  “I think it’s safer to guard the gate against the Dancer,” Iris said. “What will people think if Ro House vanishes?”

  “We’ll bring it back,” Calyx said, flipping pages. “The question is: Who actually moved it, during Moro Ro’s time?”

  “Chrysom must have,” the Holder said.

  “Maybe he left a spell,” Rush suggested.

  “I’m looking,” Calyx said. She added, “You could help, instead of pacing aroun
d and shaking Chrysom’s things up.” Rush, tossing something iridescent in his hand, moved to her side. Meguet watched them turning pages in rhythm, their heads bowed over books, absorbed. She saw Iris watching also, a curious smile in her eyes. She threaded her needle through cloth and put it down.

  “If the witches warned of the Blind Lady, why didn’t they warn of the Dancer?”

  “The Blind Lady weaves time,” Meguet said. “The witches explore it. They consider the Blind Lady nothing more than a childish tale of life and death. Until she walked down one of their paths, and they saw the Lady’s face.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Iris sighed. “I don’t see how you could make any sense at all of a tinker in Chrysom’s maze.”

  “The house,” Calyx said suddenly, “was moved two hundred years after the Hold Wars.” Her face was suffused with a delicate rose; finding a footprint on the trail of some historical mystery gave her pleasure.

  “By Chrysom?” the Holder asked.

  “No. He had been dead for fifty years. By Brigen Ro’s oldest son. He moved it from the Delta to the black desert of Hunter Hold.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not clear… Brigen Ro was upset and made him bring it back immediately. There is a reference by Brigen’s son to one of Chrysom’s books.”

  “Nyx probably has it,” Iris said, picking up her needlework again.

  “No, it’s here. Brigen’s son, apparently, just moved the house to see if he could. He sounds like you, Rush.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But what,” Meguet asked, “made him think he could?”

  “Let’s find out,” Calyx said, picking up a small, frail book with letters on the cover in faded silver, “what Chrysom has to say.”

  They watched her, while she turned pages silently. Meguet, too restless to sit, moved next to the Holder beside the fire, and wished that, when she had changed out of her torn skirt, she had put on a string of beads to worry. But she stood with her usual calm, back against the hearth, hiding a terrible impatience.

  Calyx made a satisfied noise. “Here we are. According to Chrysom, the power to move Ro House is passed from generation to generation of Holders’ children, who are born with an innate ability, for the Holders instinctively seek out as mates those who may inspire the power within the child conceived.”