Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The Holder looked startled. Iris murmured, “Really, Calyx.”

  “So Chrysom says.”

  The Holder cleared her throat. “All children? Or one, specifically?”

  “Nyx,” Rush said shortly.

  “No.” Calyx looked solemnly at her mother. “Always and inevitably the first.”

  They all gazed at Iris. She put down her needlework uncertainly, flushing. The Holder’s brows had risen. She pulled a pin out of her hair absently, her mind running down the past; a smile, reminiscent, wondering, touched her eyes.

  “Mother,” Iris said accusingly.

  “Well, I didn’t know,” the Holder said. “He seemed a very practical man.”

  “I can’t move this house.”

  “Chrysom says you can.”

  “He’s been dead for nine hundred years!”

  “Eight hundred and fifty,” Rush corrected.

  “I don’t have any gifts for magic! I never had any.”

  “You have one,” Calyx said. She sat back in her chair, smoothing a strand of hair back into place. She narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Iris Ro, you are not going to sit there and tell us you won’t even try! You must. For the sake of this House. It is your duty.”

  Iris stared back at her, mouth pinched. Then she looked at Meguet, standing motionless at the fire, her eyes enormous, dark with urgency in her pale face. She flung her needlework down and got to her feet.

  “It won’t work.”

  Calyx smiled.

  Iris was still protesting on the night before the last day of winter, but with less conviction. Midnight was the preferred time, Chrysom suggested, if possible, since people and animals would be less disturbed than by leaping in broad daylight from one Hold to another. Meguet and Rush spent the day finding merchants, guests and other assorted visitors, and persuading them to shelter somewhere in the city. At dusk, when the household was sorted out, and the last visitor had departed, she had climbed wearily to the Gatekeeper’s turret, sat with him silently, watching the sun go down over the grey, crumpled sea. She could smell spring now, from the swamps: a hint of perfume over the layered scents of still water and mold, all overlaid with the wash of brine from the outgoing tide. A single swan rose high above the lake; the Gatekeeper said drily, watching it, “This’ll save them a flight north.”

  Near midnight she stood on top of Chrysom’s tower, with Rush and the Holder and her children. The wind-whipped Cygnet flew above them on its black pennant. Above it the constellation itself flew in and out of thin, bright clouds. The full moon that had blinded the Lady of Withy Hold hung white as bone in the sky.

  Iris stood silently, apart from them. She must, Calyx instructed her endlessly, root herself as fast as Chrysom’s rose vines to every stone, mouse, dirty pot, child and chick, sleeping peacock, weed, swan and thousand-year-old tree within the rambling walls of Ro House. Iris had explained as endlessly that she couldn’t, no one could, it was not possible… But she said nothing now; her profile, under flickering light, looked unfamiliar in its calm. She was gazing down at the yard, one hand on the stones, as if she were watching a horse race, or children playing. She had stood like that for an hour.

  Clouds swarmed over the moon, swallowed it. Meguet, watching a fleet of night fishers on the sea, saw them vanish suddenly, as if they had all slid down into the black water. Her lips parted; she held the parapet stones, waiting for the wind to hit. She heard Rush’s sudden breath. But no wind came: There was only a dark like the darkness in dreams through which they floated, a quick scratch of light across the ground below now and then, and all the constellations shifting in a stately dance above. She smelled a hint of green from Withy Hold, no more than a thought of leaves in the quickening trees. In the charmed silence no one spoke. Meguet sensed stirrings behind her, a gathering that she dared not turn to see, as if the ghosts that frequented Chrysom’s tower—mages, guardians, the odd son or daughter drawn to sorcery—had come up to watch the stars. If she turned, she knew, she would see nothing: They might have been there, in the endlessly folded tissue of time, or they had never been there.

  She smelled snow. In a moment or two the wind struck: a blast as bare and merciless as frozen stone. A white peak loomed over Ro House like a jagged tooth. The stars had disappeared. Snow, torn like spindrift off the crest of the mountain, scattered over them. Calyx reached out to Iris, gripped her hand, and she lifted her head, startled. They all ran for the stairs.

  They huddled next to the fire, shivering, drinking wine. The shadowed, vulnerable expression in Iris’s eyes caused the Holder to say fretfully, “You will only have to do this once more. Then never again, I hope.”

  Iris, crouched close to the flames, looked at her. She said softly, “I carried everyone’s dreams…it was like moving the world in a bubble. I even saw my child’s dream. I know where that ring you lost is, Calyx. I know where all the mice live, in every crevice. I know what the peacocks see in the dark. I sensed those in the house that do not belong here. Only they were hidden. Only they… And the Gatekeeper. I had trouble keeping track of the Gatekeeper. I kept mistaking him for other things.”

  “The gate, most likely,” Meguet suggested. “Sometimes I think he himself gets lost in it.”

  “And you, Meguet. I kept mistaking you for ghosts.”

  “Ghosts,” Rush repeated. The wild winds fluting through the tower seemed to echo the word. Iris smiled at him tranquilly.

  “Oh, yes. They all came, too.”

  Meguet woke before dawn. She could scarcely see the Gatekeeper at the wall, though by the faint red glow of his brazier she knew that Iris had not forgotten him. She dressed swiftly, went down to the armory where she found Rush choosing a sword. Horses were already saddled, waiting for them. The household, considerably startled at finding itself snowbound, had not ceased its smooth operation. The early winds eased as the sun rose. A wave of fire washed down the mountain, splashed around them: the warning of the Fire Bear.

  The Gatekeeper opened the gate, his face impassive as Meguet rode through. She looked at him briefly, her own face settled into a stiff, deceptive calm. Neither spoke.

  The path up the mountain was narrow, rubble-filled, steep. The edge of the world fell away from them, it seemed, on one side; on the other, bare slabs of rock, the bones of the mountain, pushed upward toward the top of the sky. They rode until the path grew too rough for the horses. A gold, raging face sprang at them as they rounded a turn on foot, breathed fire over the white world below. Meguet, shielding her face from the sun, said breathlessly, “I can smell it. I can almost taste it.”

  “What?”

  “The end of winter.” A sudden panic seized her; she pulled herself over crumbled boulder, past the solitary, twisted, stunted trees. “Hurry, Rush.”

  “We’ll break our necks.”

  “Hurry.”

  Shadows were peeling off the mountain as the sun climbed higher. Meguet, sun in her face constantly, wondered if the Fire Bear had roared this golden light at the Cygnet. She increased her pace, breath tearing at her, and saw, from the very top of the mountain, a blinding flash of silver.

  She cried, “Rush!” He was beside her, then not, as she pulled herself up, clinging to anything solid: rock, icicle, even, she thought, the blinding surface of the snow, light, and shadow.

  Something bulky blocked the sun, hissed at her. She nearly slid down the mountain. The Fire Bear was white as snow, with red eyes and red claws; it paced just above her on a flat, bald slab of granite, shaking its shaggy head, trying to hiss fire. Then, fretfully, it turned away, its attention caught, and she pulled herself onto the stones, the breath running in and out of her like fire. She heard Rush call her name, but she could neither move nor speak.

  The Fire Bear was busy eating fire. It was a blue-black flame the Wayfolk man had laid on the snow, and it seemed to take its fuel from the snow. Corleu’s back was to her; the Fire Bear was between them. He stood looking down at a smooth ice sculpture that lay like a statue on
the top of the peak. He spoke.

  Meguet moved forward. The Fire Bear saw her move, but busily ate its fire. Corleu’s eyes were on the beautiful face trapped within the ice at his feet; he said, as Meguet stepped beside him, “Is that all you can tell me?”

  He was shivering, lightly clad; his face looked raw in the cold. Meguet wondered suddenly how he had climbed the mountain in those clothes, and what he had done with his footprints.

  “Ask the Blood Fox,” the Dancer murmured, her eyes open, but unseeing. “Take him a gift.”

  “What gift?” There was no answer; he raised his voice desperately. “What gift?” Then he saw Meguet, a tall, black-clad figure holding with both her hands a sword that hovered near his heart.

  He stepped back, his breath scraping in horror. He recognized her; she saw that in his eyes, as well as a reckless despair that made him tense to run, to attack. But there was nowhere to run, and Moro Ro’s sword was dogging his every move.

  “In the name of the Holder and the Cygnet, you must come with me.”

  The Fire Bear roared.

  Black flame washed over them. Blind, Meguet leaped, felt cloth, bone in her grasp. Then she stumbled; they both fell against the ice-statue, who turned under them, murmuring, then turned again. Corleu pulled free; Meguet, finding him again in the dispersing mist, saw him stop mid-pace, stare at the Dancer.

  She rose in a fluid, graceful movement. Smiling, she stepped out of the pool of melting ice. Her hair fell to her feet, one side white, the other black. She shook it back, laughing, and raised her hands to the sun.

  Corleu shouted, “No!” He backed a step, another. And then a silver circle floated around him, and he vanished into it. The Dancer turned a circle, faster and faster, until her hair whipped around her, black and white. The black and white blurred into snow and shadow.

  The Fire Bear blew a final breath of night and shambled over the edge of the world.

  Meguet stood alone, on the top of a mountain on the top of the world, listening to the spring wind.

  PART THREE

  HEART

  OF THE

  CYGNET

  One

  WHO is she?” Corleu demanded. “She stood in front of me with her eyes the only color in the world. She came out of nowhere to the top of that mountain like she knew I would be there, on that one day of all days in the year, she knew I would step across time from Delta to Berg Hold, and she came to meet me. I turned and there she was, holding that blade at my heart and all I could see was green, like the green of the cornfields of Withy Hold in late summer.” He was pacing; Nyx, curled in a chair, listened without moving, except her eyes, following him as he wove a convoluted path between chairs and book piles and the tiny round jar holding time. “Her eyes and her hair like when you tear the green leaves off corn and the pale silk holds to your fingers.”

  “Why,” Nyx asked curiously, “are you comparing my cousin Meguet to a corncob?”

  “Because that’s what I think of when I see her. My great-gran’s tale of Rider in the Corn. Green, she said, his eyes corn leaves and his hair corn silk. That’s all she ever said of him. He lay with her among the corn and then rode on.”

  Nyx gazed at him expressionlessly out of her colorless eyes. Her fingers found a loose button on her sleeve, toyed with it. “That’s a preposterous idea.”

  “I know.”

  “You and Meguet related.”

  “Moonbrained.”

  “She is a descendant of Moro Ro’s wife.”

  “And I’m nothing but Wayfolk. Almost nothing.”

  A thin line ran across her brow. “What I want to know is what she was doing on that mountain. Did she hear you speak to the Dancer?”

  He closed his eyes, sank into one of the chairs that for some reason were cluttering the workroom that morning. “I don’t know.” He dropped his hand over his eyes. “Dancer is freed.”

  “What did you expect when you gave that fire to the Fire Bear?” she asked. He stared at her, felt the blood leap furiously into his face.

  “You did—You knew—” He was on his feet suddenly, his fists clenched. Her cold eyes did not flicker. He whirled, found a door and let his fists slam into it. From within he heard the fluttering of startled birds. He dropped his face against the door, felt the sting of tears in the back of his eyes.

  “Corleu,” she said softly, “to get what you want, you must give what they want. What did the Dancer say?”

  “She said,” he whispered into the wood, “‘ask the Blood Fox.’” She was silent. He turned finally, found her gazing in conjecture at a twisted candle.

  “Blood Fox… Last of the Hold Signs.” She drew breath. “So. That is why Meguet went to meet you in Berg Hold. Those powers you are waking must be finding their way into Ro House.” She rose abruptly, turned to him; he saw a shadow of color the candlelight dragged into her eyes. “You ask the Blood Fox.”

  “That’ll be Warlock.” He swallowed drily. “I saw his shadow once.”

  “Did the Dancer say anything else?”

  “She said, ‘The thing sought lies always in the same place, but always in a different place, and that place is never far from the Cygnet.’ It’s no help.”

  “Of course it is. Something near the Cygnet…a web. The Cygnet flies above it day and night… What gift did she say to give the Blood Fox?”

  “She didn’t. But I figured out that one. Any smallfolk knows. ‘Shadow fox, fox shadow, hide your face, hide your shadow—’ It’s a hiding a game.”

  “Go on.”

  “‘Red star, blood star, find your eyes and see, find your—’”

  “The Blood Star.”

  “Cygnet broke the Warlock into pieces and trapped him in the Blood Star. What—what will happen—”

  “I don’t know.” Her face seemed colorless in the shadows. “But it’s too late to undo.”

  “How do I get the Blood Star to give it?” he asked her. “Hang on the horns of the moon and pick it out of the sky?”

  “You make it.” She began pacing then, her feet following an independent path of thought. “And you make it fast. I don’t know how Meguet got to Berg Hold, but I doubt that she took the long way. Rush helped her, maybe. When she returns to the Delta, she’ll come to this house. She knows where to find you. And she wants you.”

  “Why her? Why did she come for me?”

  “I don’t know. She’s a mystery to me. She never was before this. She was only Meguet.”

  “There’s nothing ‘only’ about her,” he said. “She nearly sent me diving off the mountain, with her eyes and her sword. How do I make a Blood Star? With a wish and an adage?”

  “Almost. It’s a very old, very primitive sorcery. The Blood Star does not threaten, foretell, defend. It is all but useless except as a kind of lantern or guide between separated lovers. The effort far exceeds the results, which is why the making is rarely heard of, now. There are much simpler ways of keeping track of people than fusing your heart’s blood into a glass ball.”

  “Mine.”

  “A drop or three.”

  “I can spare that, likely. Where do I take it, though? Where would Blood Fox be, in the Delta?”

  “There’s a place upriver, a strange place that resonates with ancient power. Long ago someone sensed the power, and carved statues among the trees there. One statue was of the Blood Fox as human. Or as warlock.”

  He nodded. “Trappers passed that place when they brought me here. I remember the Blood Fox.”

  “You’ll make the Blood Star there. The Blood Fox will find you.”

  He was silent, remembering the shift of tree into blood fox into man, all one, all rooted in the still water. “She’ll know this is the last of them.”

  “Meguet?”

  “Will she know this place?”

  “She has roamed in and out of the swamps since we were children. She’d know it, I think, but perhaps only as a garden of statues, not as a place of power.”

  “Because she has no
power,” he said evenly.

  She eyed him. “Maybe it’s not such a moonbrained idea after all. She does have some kin in Withy Hold. Do you want to see her again?”

  “No.”

  “Then I suggest we assume she will be at your heels like your shadow. Get something to eat. Then I will teach you how to make the Blood Star.”

  Later, he borrowed the boat from the silent ghost, who bestirred herself in her pearls and laces to fade into the afternoon. He placed a lit, shuttered lantern at the bow and rowed through slow, tangled paths where the hanging vines were just beginning to flush with green. On a sandy bank beside the statue grove, he pulled the boat ashore. In the dying light he gathered wood. The night fell quickly, a dense darkness unrelieved by stars or moon. The bitter cold that he felt did not disperse when he lit the fire with the boat lantern. The fire itself—made from odd things—was yellow as a hunter’s moon.

  He carried pale, damp, rough sand from the bank and added river water to it. He worked it into a ball the size of his fist. As he molded and smoothed it, he murmured under his breath, over and over, the old rhyme he had known since he could find his feet and walk. Sweating, fire-scorched, mesmerized by his own monotonous voice, he laid the ball of sand in the fire. He watched it thoughtlessly, still murmuring, as the gold fire licked it. When it had turned black, he lifted it out again and broke it in half.

  He slid a tough razor-edged piece of marsh grass over the forefinger of his left hand. Then he teased a bit of flame out of the fire onto the grass, laid the flame carefully in the center of one of the broken halves. He fed the flame three drops of his blood. The flame ran from gold to blood red. He closed the halves, laid the ball into the fire again. After a time, during which swamp animals came rustling to the edge of his light to watch, he pulled the ball out again. This time, with the heated blade of the silver knife he had taken from the house, he began to sculpt the sides of the ball. Molten silver from the blade, blood from his hand, streaked the dark sand as he worked. Sweat rolled into it from his face; words seeped into it, mingling with the river water. He layered the sphere with flat planes angling against one another. When he finished that, he was ringed with watching eyes.