Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She was asleep when the Gatekeeper came up finally. He smoothed her hair from her face, in small, gentle touches; she woke dreaming of wings. Then she saw the burning sword fly at her again and she started. Sword turned to swan, swan to Gatekeeper’s taut, tired face.

  She caught her breath at the vision. Then she leaned forward, quickly, into the warm, familiar dark of his embrace. She slid one hand around his neck, where she could feel the blood beat. “It’s over,” she said finally. “The House is safe. They’ve all gone.”

  “Have they? Through which gate?”

  “The gate they came through.”

  “There is only one gate to this house.”

  She nodded against him, her eyes closed. “And you are the only Gatekeeper.”

  He was silent; she felt him begin to speak, hesitate. She lifted her head; he held her face between his hands, looked into her eyes. He said at last, very softly, “Why is there a swan in your eyes?”

  “There always is,” she answered. “Have you never noticed? A great wild black swan, who sometimes watches me sleep… The only swan that never leaves this house, summer or winter.” She smiled a little, at his stillness. “It’s only story.”

  His head dropped; his lips touched hers, feather-light. She closed her eyes and heard, from some distant corner of the yard, children’s voices, chanting to some game:

  In a wooden ring,

  Find a stone circle,

  In the stone ring

  Find a silver circle…

  She felt Hew move; sun spilled over her face. She saw the back of his head as he leaned out of the turret, looking over the wall.

  “What is it?”

  “We have a guest, it seems.”

  “Who now? The whole world just came in.”

  “Wayfolk by the look of her.”

  She caught breath, leaned across him to look down as he spoke to the visitor, as courteously as he would have spoken to a lord’s daughter. The girl was slight, with long, straight, heavy black hair, and wide-set dark eyes. Wayfolk to the bone, yet standing alone, and prepared to cross a threshold.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” she said, her voice, gentle and timid, barely carrying above the tide’s voice. “We came down from Withy Hold. A Wayfolk man named Corleu. We passed a tinker said he might be here.”

  The Gatekeeper got up to open the gate. Meguet, trembling, closed her eyes again, felt the sun lay its hand across her face, catch her sudden tears.

  Corleu, slumped against the wall, his eyes on the dark tower, turned his head at the sound of the opening gate. His heart saw before the light relinquished the dark, slender figure to his eyes: He felt the green timeless secret place bloom in him again, with all its scents and still pools and sweet, rustling shadows.

  Tiel crossed the threshold as he began to run. They met within walls, in a place with no walls.

  For Howard Morhaim,

  the Dark Knight of the Soul,

  with love (and no cholesterol)

  One

  MEGUET Vervaine stood at the threshold of Chrysom’s black tower, swans flying at her back and shoulder and wrists, swans soaring out of her hands. She had stood so for hours. Dressed in black silk with the Cygnet of Ro Holding spanning silver moons on mantle and tunic, she held the ancient broadsword of Moro Ro, unsheathed, tip to the floor, guarding against stray goose and cottage child’s ball and wandering butterfly, for within the broad, circular hall the councils from the four Holds had gathered to discuss their differences under the sign of the Cygnet and the formidable eye of Lauro Ro. In Moro Ro’s day, the threshold guards would have faced both chamber and yard, prepared for violence from any direction, not least from the volatile councils. Meguet, armed by tradition rather than necessity, faced the hall to keep the sun out of her eyes. She had gathered her long corn-silk hair into a severe braid; her eyes, green a shade lighter than the rose leaves that climbed the walls of the thousand-year-old tower, kept a calm and careful watch over the sometimes testy gathering. Members of the oldest families in Ro Holding had made long, uncomfortable journeys to meet for the Holding Council in a place where, not many weeks before, Meguet had found herself raising the sword in her hands to battle for her life. She did not expect trouble; it had come and gone, but some part of her still tensed at shadows, at unexpected voices.

  But only the councilors themselves had provided any excitement, and that was contingent upon such complexities as border taxes. There had been sharp debate earlier in the day between Hunter Hold and the Delta over mines in the border mountains, which had kept everyone awake on the ninth day of the long council. Now, the heavy late-afternoon light, the pigeons murmuring in the high windows, and Haf Berg’s young, pompous, querulous voice maundering endlessly about sheep, threw a stupor over the hall. Meguet heard a snore from one of the back tables. She stifled a yawn. A sudden wind tugged at her light mantle. The air was a heady mix of brine and sun-steeped roses on the tower vines; it seemed to blow from everywhere at once: from past and future, from unexplored countries where wooden flowers opened on tree boughs to reveal strange, rich spices, and sheep the colors of autumn leaves wandered through the hills…

  She felt herself drifting on the alien wind; a sound brought her back. The hall was silent; she wondered if she herself had made some noise. But it was only Haf Berg, sitting down at last, working his chair fussily across the flagstones. Lauro Ro watched him impassively. She sat at the crescent dais table, the Cygnet flying like a shadow through tarnished midnight stars on the vast, timeworn banner behind her. Her elegant face was unreadable, her wild dark hair so unnaturally tidy that Meguet suspected Nyx had bewitched it into submission. The Holder’s heir sat at her right, wearing her enigmatic reputation with composure. Lauro Ro asked, “Will anyone challenge Haf Berg’s painstaking examination of the problems of sheep pasturage on the south border of Berg Hold?” There was a daunting note in her voice. Only a pigeon challenged. Iris, on the Holder’s left, consulted a paper and whispered to her mother.

  Rush Yarr sat beside Iris, and Calyx beside Nyx. The two younger sisters, one fair and reclusive, the other dark and distinguished most of the time by extraordinary rumors, bore the intense scrutiny of the council members calmly. When Calyx spoke, pearls and doves did not fall from her lips. When Nyx spoke, toads did not fall, nor did lightning flash. But it had taken days for the anticipation to fade.

  The Holder spoke again. Linden Dacey of Withy Hold wished to bring up the matter of… Meguet tightened her shoulders, loosened them. A knot burned at the nape of her neck. She shifted slightly, easing some of her weight onto the blade she held. Across the room, the sorceress lifted her eyes at the flash of light.

  They looked at one another a moment: cousins bound by blood and by secret, ancient ways. Memories gathered between them in the sunlit air. The swans on the hilt and etched blade in Meguet’s hands had taken wing, Nyx had transformed herself from bog-witch into Cygnet’s heir so recently that the sorcery in that hidden time and place beneath their feet must still be rebounding against the labyrinth stones. The sorceress’s eyes, mist-pale in the light, seemed mildly speculative, as if, Meguet thought, she contemplated turning her cousin into a bat to liven up the tedium. Meguet, returning her attention to the proceedings, half-wished she would.

  Linden Dacey had brought up the matter of a border feud between Withy Hold and the Delta. A river had shifted, or been shifted; the south border, defined for centuries, was suddenly uncertain… The great Hold banners swayed and glittered above her head as she spoke; eyes caught at Meguet. The Blood Fox of the Delta prowled on starry pads; one eye glinted as if thought had flashed through its bright threads. The Gold King of Hunter Hold, the crowned and furious sun, glared out of his prison of night. Meguet, gazing back, felt a sudden chill, as if the face of spun gold thread were alive again and watching.

  Someone from the Delta interrupted Linden Dacey. There was an interesting squabble on the council floor. Old Maharis Kell je
rked mid-snore out of his nap. The Holder let it rage a moment, probably to wake everyone up. Then she cut through it in a voice that must have brought a few cottagers in the outer yard to a dead stop. Rush Yarr slid a hand over his mouth. Calyx, catching a tremor in the air, glanced at him. Rush, Meguet noted, had recovered his sense of humor—or discovered it, she wasn’t sure which, for he had loved a sorceress who was never home for so long that likely even he didn’t remember if he had one. Calyx had entered the doorless walls of the tower he had built around himself, and he found her inside his heart.

  Linden Dacey, finished finally, yielded debate to the chastened Delta councilor. Gold streaked suddenly through a west window. Meguet eyed her shadow, guessed at the time. Another hour. if that… The Delta councilor bit a word in half and was still. Meguet raised her eyes. On the dais, no one breathed. Behind her the yard was soundless. Not a child’s shout, a groaning wagon wheel, an iron blow from the smithy, disturbed the sudden, bewitched silence. Meguet stared at Nyx, wondering if, bored or day-dreaming, she had thrown some spell over the council. But Nyx was entranced by the table, it seemed; she gazed at it, wide-eyed, motionless.

  Someone had slowed time.

  In the weird stillness, Meguet heard a footfall in the grass behind her. She whirled, her heart hammering, and brought the broadsword up in both hands. A man stood within the tower ring, staring up at the solitary black tower. The flaring arc of silver from the door as the broadsword cut through light startled him; Meguet felt his attention riveted suddenly on her. In the brilliant, late light, the stranger cast no shadow.

  She drew a slow, noiseless breath, tightening her hold on the blade, trapped in a world out of time by his sorcery and by her peculiar heritage: the sleepless compulsion to guard what lay hidden within the tower’s heart. The man’s face, blurred by the dazzling light or perhaps by shifting time, was difficult to see. He seemed a profusion of colors: scarlet, gold, white, dust, blue, silver, that sorted itself out as he moved, crossing the yard with a strong, energetic stride.

  Tall as she was, Meguet was forced to look up at him. His hair and skin were the same color as the dust on the hem of his red robe and his scuffed yellow boots, as if the parched gold-brown earth of some vast desert blown constantly through sun-drenched air had seeped into him. A strange winged animal embroidered in white wound itself in and out of the folds of cloth at his chest. The robe was belted with a curious, intricate weave of silver; silver glinted also at his wrists beneath his sleeves. A pouch of dark blue leather was slung over his shoulder; another, of dusty yellow silk, hung beside that. He stopped in front of Meguet’s blade. She saw his face clearly then, as surprised by her as she was by him.

  His eyes flicked over her shoulder at the motionless hall, then back to her. His broad, spare face was young yet under its weathering; his eyes, a light, glinting blue, were flecked with gold.

  He said, amazed, “Who are you?”

  Meguet, abandoned, with only a broadsword to protect the house against sorcery, found her voice finally. “You are in the house of the Holders of Ro Holding. If you have business with the Holder, present yourself to the Gatekeeper.”

  He glanced behind him at the little turret above the gate, where the Gatekeeper leaned idly against the stones, a motionless figure in household black watching something in the yard. “Him.” He turned back. “He looks busy.” He touched the blade at his chest with one finger, but did not turn it. He grunted softly, his eyes going back to Meguet. “This is real.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what do you expect to do with it? You can’t keep me out of this tower with a sword. How can you have the power to see me through shifted time and still wave that under my nose? What are you? Are you a mage?”

  “You have no business in this tower, you have no business in this house, and you have no business questioning me.”

  “I’m curious,” he said. “You eluded my sorcery, and I had only thought to come and go so secretly no one would ever know.”

  “Why?” she asked sharply. “Why have you come here?”

  “I want something from this tower.”

  She felt herself grow so still that no light trembled on the blade. “You may not enter.”

  “There are a thousand ways to enter a tower. Every block of solid stone is an open doorway. You can’t guard every threshold.”

  All fear had left her voice; it was thin and absolute. “If I must, I can.”

  He was silent, puzzled again, at the certainty in her words. “It can’t be the sword,” he said at last. “The magic is in you, not that. True?” He caught the blade in one hand, so quickly that not the flick of an eyelash forewarned her. She wrenched at it; it might as well have been sunk in stone. “Not,” he mused, “the sword, then.” He loosed it as abruptly. She steadied herself, breathing audibly, while he studied her, his eyes quizzical, secret. “Perhaps,” he said finally, “it’s what you guard in this tower that gives you such power. Is that it?”

  She raised the blade again, swallowing drily. “No one may enter the tower at this time without permission from the Holder. Those are my instructions. You may not enter.”

  “But the Holder will never know,” he said softly. “What I want has been hidden for centuries. No one knows it is here, and no one will miss it when it is gone. I will never return to Ro Holding. Let me pass. If all you’re brandishing against me is a point of honor, you won’t be dishonored. No one will ever know.”

  “I will,” Meguet said succinctly. “And so will you. Honor is a word you would not bother to toss at me, if it meant nothing to you. You may not enter.”

  He was silent again, so still he might have put himself under his own mysterious spell. His eyes had narrowed; light or memory flashed through them. “What made you time or honor’s guardian?” he breathed. “You have seen a few of its back roads, its crooked lanes and alleyways. Haven’t you. But you are not a mage. Or are you?” She did not answer. He stepped closer, she did not move. He stepped so close that the blade snagged the golden eye of the winged beast across his chest. He said, “If you do not let me enter, I will turn every rose on this tower into flame.”

  “Then you will burn what you have come for.”

  He moved closer. The blade turned a little in her hands as if the animal had shifted under it, and she felt the sweat break out on her face.

  “I will seal every door and window in this tower, and turn it into a tomb for those you guard.”

  “It is already a tomb.” Her voice shook. He stepped so close the blade slid ghostlike into him. Her shoulders burned at the sudden weight, but she held the blade steady under his expressionless gaze.

  “If you do not let me enter, I will kill you.”

  “Then,” she said, as sweat and light burned into her eyes, and the clawed, airy animal whipped beneath the blade like a desperate thing, “one of us will die.”

  He stepped back then, as easily as if the great sword were made of smoke. The animal turned a smoldering eye at her and subsided into the cloth. The blade trembled in her hands; still she did not lower it. The mage’s face changed; the expression on it startled her.

  “You deserve better than a doorway,” he said abruptly. “What kind of upside-down house is this where no power but honor is pitted against the likes of me? You can’t stop me. You can barely hold that sword. It is shaking in your hands. It is so heavy it weighs like stone, it drags you down. It is heavier than old age, heavier than grief. It falls like the setting sun, slowly, slowly. Watch it fall. Watch the tiny flame of light on its tip shift, move down the blade toward your hands. Watch it. The light trembles among the silver swan wings. What is your name?”

  “Meguet Vervaine.”

  “Is it night or day?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Are you awake or dreaming?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Are you a mage?”

  “No.”

  “Have you a mage’s powers?”

  “No.”

>   “How do you have the power to see and move through shifted time?”

  “I have no power.”

  “Then who gives you power?”

  “No one.”

  “You have power. You are standing here talking to me when no one else in this house can move.”

  “I have no power.”

  “What gives you power?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are guarding something from me as steadfastly as you guard this door. I will enter this tower. Do you have the power to stop me?”

  “You may not enter.”

  “Do you have the power to stop me?”

  Meguet was silent. Wind brushed her face, a cool breeze smelling of twilight. For a moment she stared senselessly at what she saw: the inner yard, the towers, the outer yard through the arches, where cottagers’ children flung a ball back and forth, and the Gatekeeper on the ground, his back to her, opened the gate to a couple of riders. Then she looked down at her hands. They were locked so fiercely, so protectively around the hilt of Moro Ro’s sword that her fingers ached, loosening. The smell of roses teased her memory. I fell asleep, she thought surprisedly. I had a dream…

  Then the Holder’s voice snapped across the chamber. “Meguet!”

  She turned, startled. The sword slipped out of her hold, rang against the stones like a challenge, and she saw beside it the rose that had flung itself off the outer wall into the room to lie burning in her shadow. She dragged her eyes away from it to the dais.

  Nyx had vanished.

  Dream shifted into time, became memory; she felt the blood leap out of her face. She reached down, snatched up the rose and began to run.

  On the dais, the sorceress had felt the sudden shift of time.

  Intrigued, she simply sat still, not a difficult thing to do for one who had spent nights in the black deserts of Hunter Hold watching the constellations turn and the orange bitterthorn blossom open its fullest to the full moon. She saw Meguet bring up the sword in her hands, turn. The fair-haired stranger stopped at the threshold. Nyx’s attention focused, precise and fine-honed, on her cousin, who was waving a blade of sheep grass against the wind. Their voices carried easily across the eerie silence.