Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The rhythm of it transfixed Corleu; the action seemed of a world apart, a different time—small, silent movements he could draw out, he felt, if he wanted. In his mind, he changed one color trembling on the wall. The Cygnet flew, the hands grasped. He changed another color, made it a different reflection, in a different time. The hands grasped, closed, empty; the bird flew. He change a color. A different shadow, a different time, a different world. The hands closed. The bird flew.

  How many worlds? he wondered, fascinated. How many times?

  Then a blood fox’s shadow leaped across the wall. Corleu heard its bark. His mind, a sparkling prism, moved too slowly to shift into the Warlock’s time. Something struck him. He slid helplessly on a tide of splintered light. The wave broke, slammed him against the wall, then let him fall onto his back, half-stunned, blind, heaving for breath. He smelled blood fox, felt a warm, snarling weight on his chest. And then he felt its sharp claw over his heart.

  Meguet saw him fall. The Warlock was invisible, but its blood-fox shadow hunched over Corleu, clear on the wall. Her mind was tangled in the Blind Lady’s net, tracing its threads of fire and time one by one, breaking them. As fast as she broke, the Blind Lady wove. Nyx and the Dancer were fighting over Moro Ro’s sword. Birds flew, fell dead; the blade formed, turned to peacock feather; the blade formed again, made of fire, streaked the air toward Meguet. Flame crumpled against something invisible, blew out, re-formed. It was an idle but desperate game, to keep Nyx from freeing herself from the net. The time in its threads was slowing her movements, measuring them to its flow. Soon, Meguet knew, the sword would form, slip beyond her, strike.

  She glimpsed the Dancer’s chaos then: panic, nightmare. I cannot hold them, she thought, almost in wonder, for failure was unthinkable. She saw Corleu move under the blood fox, like a drowned man touched curiously by fingers of tide. Then he lay still again. The blood fox lifted its muzzle, barked.

  I need help! she cried down the centuries, then saw the Gold King’s hands close within the prism.

  No bird flew.

  Her desperate unweaving faltered; unravelled lines of time snarled in her mind. She heard Nyx cry, “Meguet!” The great, flaming blade flew at her again. Nyx’s hand, rising to stop it, was a scant moment late. It bore onward. Meguet, her attention snared between Nyx trapped in time, and the small bird trapped in the Gold King’s hands, hesitated, torn. Nyx turned to follow the sword’s path, tightening the net around her. She swayed, her face glistening, white with exhaustion, as if time were wearing at her. “Meguet!” Her voice was husky with weariness and horror. “Use your power! Save yourself!”

  But she had been given no time for herself: Time was divided between the Cygnet and its heart. She could only pick apart one final thread in the web of time around Nyx, and then the great sword severed the future in front of her eyes. She did not see it swerve; it impaled her breath as it flew past her, or through her, left a deadly edge of silver in her vision. She closed her eyes, shaken by her own heartbeat, and felt time knit itself again as she found her breath. Opening her eyes, she saw Corleu lift his head finally, groggy, bewildered. Silver caught his eye. He turned his head, saw it come.

  “No!” Nyx snapped. A thread in the fiery net snapped in response. She dredged a word from somewhere deep in her; Meguet did not recognize her voice. Another thread snapped. She threw both hands upward, shaped the word out of shadows, it seemed, and white fire torn across the air out of the shining prism. The starry fire fell over Nyx, dissolving the net of time. She reached up again, drew at air with her entire body. Air sculpted her, lifted her. Meguet saw her eyes as she flew past, pale lavender, strange in a swan’s face.

  Then the white wings shifted time as they fell; in a fractured movement, the swan was across the room, ahead of the flaming sword, swerving in the air to push it out of its deadly path. But the sword, searing the air in front of Corleu’s eyes, was faster. He caught a confused image of silver fire, white feathers; he heard Meguet’s voice, crying out with his own.

  The sword formed its own wings. A swan’s neck extended along the blade. It came so close that for an instant Corleu saw a night-black eye, with a pearl of light in it from the prism’s light. Then it pulled itself up, climbed the air, its black wings thundering past his face. He gasped. The swans wheeled together in the small chamber, one black, one white, turning and turning endless circles that gradually lost their frantic speed, slowed to an endless, timeless spiral, as if they had all the night and all the stars to fly through.

  Then there was only one swan, and its black shadow; one angled down to meet the other. The white swan touched its shadow; Nyx reappeared, standing beside Corleu.

  There was not a sound in the chamber; Gold King and Blind Lady might have been among the statues Chrysom had made. Meguet stood as still, feeling something build in the silence, like another wild, powerful, mysterious word. Nyx felt it, too. She looked around her, hands poised to work, her shadow falling protectively over Corleu. But no one moved; faces only stared back at her, wordless, motionless, masked.

  She began to tremble suddenly, gazing back, incredulously, at what she had been fighting. “What are you?” she breathed. “What is it you are looking for?” She looked at Corleu when they did not answer. The Blood Fox, its human shadow lying beneath Nyx’s feet, moved its paw from his chest. It sat back on its haunches, grinning its fox grin as Corleu pulled himself up. Even he could not stop staring at her.

  “You saved my life,” he said in wonder. “You did all that, became swan, just to save a muckerheaded Wayfolk man who brought all this on you—”

  “But what—” Her voice broke away from her, echoed off the high stones. “Corleu, what have you been searching for?”

  “The heart of the—” He paused. His eyes widened on her face, as all the threads of the tale they had made among them wove into place. She wavered under his sudden, burning tears. He whispered, “Your heart.”

  It was such a rare and startling sight, Nyx weeping, that Meguet felt her own throat tighten. Wordless, spellbound, she watched the Gold King loose what he held in his hands: A shaft of sunlight struck the prism. Color danced along the walls. Her eyes widened; she put her hands suddenly to her mouth.

  “Just story, you see,” he said to her, and was tinker again. “Just a piece of sky.” He reached up, snapped the gold chain around his neck. The sound it made as it hit the floor boomed ponderously against the walls, then faded into the rustling wings of small birds. The Blind Lady was busy reweaving her net, gathering its fiery, broken threads into a patch over a hole in one of her skirts. She whispered as she worked, whispered story, Corleu knew, all the story in the world.

  “But you always fight the Cygnet,” he said dazedly, as the tinker reached down, helped him to his feet. “In all the tales.”

  “Look again,” the tinker said, “and it’s Cygnet fighting us: whatever sun touches, whatever dreams, whatever works magic, whatever flies… When the heart casts a shadow instead of dancing light, there story begins.”

  The Blind Lady finished her weaving. She took the ring off her finger, tossed it in the air. The Ring of Time opened in the heart of the maze, a blinding silver that enclosed the night. She stepped back. The Fire Bear lumbered through it, sending a soundless roar of its black fire across the stars. The Blood Fox leaped through, dragging its tantalizing shadow. The shadow flung something behind it before night swallowed it. A small red prism cracked in two on the stone floor, a drop of darker red glistening within it.

  The Blind Lady’s sightless face turned toward Meguet before she left. “You have some talent,” she commented, “with my threads.” A white peacock feather drifted to the floor as she vanished.

  The tinker stepped toward the Ring. “Wait!” Corleu cried, and he turned, his eyes luminous, smiling his thin, equivocal smile.

  “Don’t fret, Wayfolk. I always pay my debts.” He put his hand over his heart, bowed his head to them both. “Thanks,” he said, and added to Meguet, “I’ll do a
bit of tinkering for you, when I go.”

  He walked through the Ring, into a darkness squared by stars, one gold star rising above it. The Ring dwindled; stone walls patched the night. The Ring fell to the floor, a tiny circle, then a stroke of silver, then wings and circling swans on a flawless, sun-forged blade.

  Corleu picked it up, held it out to Meguet. She met his stunned and weary gaze; she took the sword in one hand, and slipped her other arm around his shoulders. Their pale heads touched. Together they watched Nyx wipe her face on a threadbare velvet sleeve. She turned away from them without speaking, moved into some private vision under the Cygnet’s eye.

  The Holder and her children stood waiting beside Rush in. the black tower. It was morning, Meguet saw, startled, as she pushed aside the Cygnet banner. The rich spring light tumbled down from the high, narrow windows, lay in slabs across the stones. They all looked worn, fretted, sleepless. Even Calyx’s hair had tumbled down.

  Nyx went to the Holder. She said huskily, her head bowed, “In my house in the swamp, there was a room full of mirrors. I looked into them. I never saw what they reflected. Their reflections seemed to have brought me here, forced me to look again.”

  The Holder touched her hair, drew it back from her face. “I don’t understand,” she said wearily. “But you are safe and Meguet is safe, and that is all I need to know now.”

  “The House is safe.” She added, “The Wayfolk man fought for the Cygnet.”

  The Holder looked at Corleu. His face burned; he felt Wayfolk to his bones under that dark, powerful gaze. Then she moved it to Meguet and he could breathe again.

  “How?” she demanded.

  “It seems,” Meguet said, “my great-grandfather met his great-gran. In a cornfield.”

  The Holder made a blackbird’s noise. “It’s unprecedented.”

  “His hair is like yours, Meguet,” Calyx exclaimed. “Are we all related, then?”

  Corleu stared at her delicate face, which surely must bruise under a whisper. Iris said tiredly, “Work it out later, Calyx. What I want to know is how, when Meguet and Nyx went into the maze, Meguet and Nyx and a Wayfolk man came out of it.”

  “What I want to know,” Calyx said, “is will you take the spell off Rush, now?” She patted his arm soothingly as he stood there, silent and pale, looking, to Corleu’s startled eye, remarkably like the Warlock’s distant descendant. “I can understand why you didn’t want him wandering around in the maze, setting things on fire at random, but he’s harmless now.”

  A touch of color rose in Nyx’s face. “I forgot about Rush.” Her eyes flicked, troubled, to the Holder; the Holder’s eyes narrowed.

  “Now what have you done?”

  “I’m not sure…” She looked at Calyx, standing close to Rush, then hid her eyes behind her hand. “I’m very tired,” she sighed. “Calyx, just talk to him. I’m afraid he’ll shout at me.”

  “Rush,” Calyx said. She stood in front of him, her hands on his arms, her pale, weary, smiling face coaxing his bemused, distant gaze. “Rush, wake up. It’s morning and the house is still standing. Nyx is here.”

  He was looking at her suddenly, blinking, as if she had just wakened him out of a dream of nine years. “Calyx?” he said, and touched her face. Meguet heard Nyx’s faint sigh of relief, met her eyes a moment.

  “Nyx is here,” Calyx said again, her smile deepening; he lifted his face, jerking himself farther out of dreams.

  “Nyx,” he said. A long look passed between them. He drew breath. “You never wanted me to follow you,” he said ruefully. “But last night you went too far. Farther then I could ever go.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I hope you will forgive me. What happened—whatever happened down in the maze was my doing also. My fault. You were right: I wandered too far. Corleu and Meguet brought me back. That is how I would tell the story,” she said to Corleu, “if I were telling.”

  “If I were telling,” he said, “I would say you brought yourself back.”

  “What I would say,” Iris said, “is that someone should tell us what happened all night down there. Meguet?”

  She shook her head quickly. “No, not me,” she said, remembering the Gold King’s molten face swinging toward her, masked and furious, and the tinker in the woods, smiling as he picked out the lizard’s eye, and the sword flying at her, and then the swan… “I only saw pieces of it.”

  “Corleu, then.”

  “No,” he said with sudden intensity. “I’ll never tell. It’s not mine, not for me. I only want to find what I lost, which is,” he added, “near enough like what was almost lost in the maze.”

  They were silent; the blood fox eyes moved to Nyx. “Then you,” Rush said, “must tell.”

  She met his eyes. “It’s a very long story, Rush. And not yet over. I still have things to learn.”

  “Nyx,” the Holder breathed, “not again!”

  Nyx put a hand on her arm. “I have things to learn in this house,” she said gently. “You must teach me.”

  Horns sounded outside the gate, a startling fanfare that made the pigeons whirr outside the windows. The Holder closed her eyes, touched her wild hair.

  “Not Hunter Hold. Not now.”

  “Now,” Calyx sighed.

  “Meguet—” The Holder paused, eyeing Meguet’s stained uniform, her fraying braid, and flung up her hands. “At least you’re dressed and armed. Go to the gate and wait for us. Corleu, don’t leave this house. I want to talk to you. Nyx, did you come all the way from the swamp without shoes?”

  A stable girl led her horse out as Meguet ran across the yard. It was saddled and caparisoned; the Gatekeeper had seen the Council coming. She pulled herself up wearily, rode to the gate. The impatient, golden flurry sounded again. The Gatekeeper did not come down yet. But he looked down, and his impassive expression strained badly at the sight of her.

  The Holder joined Meguet finally, after the horns had sounded a third time. Her children and Rush Yarr sat mounted behind her, in such astonishingly tidy attire that Meguet suspected a sorceress’s hand in it. She looked for Corleu, saw him standing with some cottagers near the smithy. Too far, she judged, to slip through the gate unnoticed, in the tangle of entry.

  The Holder nodded. Meguet rode to one side of the gate, stood guard, according to ancient ritual, Moro Ro’s sword outstretched before the gate. The Gatekeeper opened the gate.

  The Gold King stood outside: the Hold Sign of Hunter Hold, the crowned King in his dark house on a field of dark blue, newly sewn, for the silver thread depicting the stars glittered like water in the sun. Cedar Kell’s two young children held it, one on each side, their faces immobile with terror at the sight of the Holder before them. The Holder began the ritual that in Moro Ro’s time had cost blood for every word.

  “Who speaks for Hunter Hold?”

  Cedar Kell stepped in front of the banner, looking tired, dusty from travelling, but cheerful.

  “Kell speaks for Hunter Hold,” she said in her booming voice, that must have laid threats on her children, for not a smile or a tear touched their faces.

  “Under what sign?”

  “The sign of the Gold King.”

  “Under what stars?”

  “The yellow star its lintel, the yellow star its roof, the four stars of red and pale its walls, the blue star marking its door latch. Under this sign the Gold King holds Hunter Hold.”

  “Does the Gold King recognize the Cygnet?”

  “The Gold King recognizes the Cygnet.”

  “Under the sign of the Cygnet, the Gold King holds Hunter Hold. For the end of time, the Cygnet holds the Gold King under its eye, beneath its wing, within its heart. None shall break this bond.”

  “The Gold King holds Hunter Hold, the Cygnet holds the Gold King. Under its eye, beneath its wing, within its heart. So bound are they, so bound are we. Truth in my words, peace in my heart, Lauro Ro.”

  “And peace in mine,” the Holder said, and smiled. “Welcome to my house, Cedar Ke
ll.”

  Meguet lifted the broadsword, turned her horse away to let what amounted to a small travelling village through the gate. She remained mounted, sword sheathed, until the Council members, families, kin, retinue had entered. When the baggage and supply carts started rumbling in, she dismounted, gave her horse to the stablers. She found Corleu again, looking tense and frayed in the crush.

  He seemed relieved when he saw her. “I must go,” he said. “Can you tell the Holder that? I’ll come back, but there’s only one thing in the world I want to do now—”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “I know. But you can’t leave. Not yet. You are half-Guardian—”

  “And all Wayfolk at this moment,” he said, his face turned to the open gate. “I’ve been in walls too long.”

  “Don’t be afraid. You have kin within these walls.”

  He looked at her, silent. Then he sighed, his body loosening finally under her touch. “Seems strange. Last night you nearly killed me. Now, you’re the only reason I might stay.”

  “You must do better than might. Be patient. You have a formidable inheritance. You’ll never be able to stray far from this house. The heart that brought you here will bind you here. Wait for the Holder.” His eyes moved to the black tower. She saw him draw breath and hold it. “Wait,” she said again. “The Holder will send for you soon.”

  “How much,” he asked abruptly, “do I tell her?”

  “You tell her everything. But only her. No one else in this world.”

  He nodded, his eyes still on the tower, with the Cygnet flying over it, by day and night. He sighed again, sagged against the smithy wall.

  She left him there, to watch him from the Gatekeeper’s turret. She felt, climbing the stairs, that there was no end to them. Then she was at the top, sitting thoughtlessly, watching the sea, and the Gatekeeper help ease a wagon through the gate. The sunlight touched her eyes gently, closed them.