Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Is he expected back?” he asked. “Or did she kill him?”

  “She doesn’t know. She told the Holder that if he is alive he might return, since he seemed that desperate.”

  “For a key? To what?”

  “Nyx thinks a book. Some secret magic book of Chrysom’s.”

  “I thought she had all his books.”

  “So did she.”

  He turned his head, tossed smoke downwind. “What kinds of things would a mage keep hidden?”

  “That,” she sighed, “is why Nyx refuses to let the stranger have what he wants, which is the advice that, at some length, the Holder gave her. If she knew, she might let him take it and stop threatening the house. But she is spellbound by this book that she can’t even find.”

  “So is the stranger, it sounds, stopping time and threatening to burn the house down for it.”

  “What was that like? Did you feel time stop?”

  He shook his head. “Your corn-silk hair caught my eye; I turned to look at you. I was hoping you would turn. Then I blinked, and there was your face. Then you vanished into the tower, and what caught my eye was the blade of silver light on the stones just inside the door. A moment later one of the tower guards ran for help. And I guessed what the light must be. I nearly left the gate. But I didn’t want to risk trouble letting itself out while I was gone, though it had wandered in without my help. So I waited. And the tales started flying like birds out of the tower, each one more colorful than the last.” He touched the rose in her hand. “They all said you were safe.” He paused, his eyes going seaward again, where white birds flashed over the water and dived. “I caught the gist of it: a mage, a key—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “And a blood-red rose.”

  She looked at him, said recklessly, “You were watching; you must have seen him pick it.”

  He blinked, wordless, then pulled her close suddenly; she heard his heartbeat. “What do you think? That I would have stood here sunning myself like a tortoise while you defended a sleeping Holding council alone against a mage who could have left you lying on your shadow as easily as the rose? Is that what you think?”

  “Yes.” she said, for there were gates within gates into the house, and she suspected he watched them all. “No. Yes. What I think is that you know exactly what comes and goes through that gate.”

  He was silent. His hold eased; he dropped a kiss on her hair, and said finally, “So I do. And in case the mage considers knocking at the gate next time, tell me what I should look for.”

  “A man,” she said. “taller than me, by a few inches. With hair a dusty golden-brown and light eyes like water. The animal is embroidered on his robe.” She paused, thinking back. “He wears silver at his wrists—”

  “Old?”

  “No older than you. Taller than me—”

  “You said that.”

  “And he moves like a man accustomed to space.”

  “You noticed a lot in an eye-blink,” he commented drily. She looked at him, her eyes still and clear as the sky where the sun had set and the memory of light lingered. He swallowed a word. His face dropped toward hers. Their lips touched. And then he turned abruptly, snatching her breath along with his, and she saw the firebird over his shoulder.

  It seemed to blow out of the sea like spume, so white it was, and so fast it flew; then, as it passed the turret, she saw the fiery wingtips and the long, graceful plumes that trailed behind it like flame. Its talons were silver. It gave a cry of such fierce fury and despair that it drove the blood from her face and brought the Gatekeeper to his feet. The busy yard stopped as if it were spellbound again. With the cry came fire: a forge-fire, and a hammer, and the hand holding the hammer froze into silver.

  Meguet hit the ground running before she realized she had moved. There were cottagers’ children transfixed by the swooping bird; there were animals everywhere, it seemed—horses, cows still coming in to be milked, chickens, hounds. The bird, crying again, turned a corner of a barn into bronze, and nicked a hounds ear. The hound bellowed, blundered into the cows; there was a small stampede toward the bewitched forge. Stable girls hurried to take in the horses, ducking their heads under their arms as at pelting hail. The bird wheeled above a group of barefoot children who had twisted themselves into a knot with a piece of harness. Meguet and several of the cottagers ran toward them as they struggled frantically. The bird’s fire missed the children, hit a cat slinking away into the shadows and turned it into a jewelled sword. Meguet snatched it up. Wielding it above the children, she startled them into tears. She cut them free of each other; they scattered, wailing, then turned again, too fascinated to find shelter.

  She saw Rush Yarr and a few of the younger councilors on the tower wall with bows; household guards were racing to position themselves along the crenelation. She saw Rush fix an arrow, draw back and aim. She slowed, feeling a sudden, unreasonable dismay form like a shout in her throat. The bird, a swirl of white and red, cried its enraged sorrow; fire swept the wall, and all the archers ducked. The stones themselves turned gold.

  “Nyx,” she breathed. The Gatekeeper, struggling with a panicked cart horse, shouted at her.

  “Meguet!”

  “I’m going to get Nyx! Tell them not to shoot!”

  “It’s not the bird in danger,” he retorted, holding the horse as stablers unhitched the lurching cart. “It’s you standing there waiting to be turned into a silver rose.”

  “It cries so,” she said, puzzled, hearing it again, a sound that made her throat constrict. The horse reared, throwing the Gatekeeper; it elongated itself as the fire hit it. Its dark hide turned to wood; harness rustled through its still, shimmering leaves to the ground. Meguet, hand to her mouth, stifling a cry, stared at the Gatekeeper. He glittered no more than usual, and, rolling promptly under the cart, seemed unharmed.

  He shouted at her, “Go!”

  She went, still carrying the transformed cat, out of habit, and dragging her skirt high above her boots as she ran. Nyx, who seemed to have fallen like a rose off the vines, appeared abruptly in front of her outside the dark tower.

  “I’m here,” she said, putting a hand on Meguet’s shoulder to keep from being run over. The bird cried above them; transfixed, they followed it with their eyes. Calyx, hanging precipitously out a window, ducked suddenly inside. A shower of bronze apples scattered on the grass.

  “Roses,” Nyx said tersely, eyeing them. “Not Calyx.”

  “Moro’s name,” Meguet said, dragging at air. “What is it?”

  “A firebird.”

  “It cries like wood might cry in the fire. Why does it cry like that?”

  “They do, according to sources. The cry of the firebird is fierce, desperate, terrible. So Chrysom wrote of, he thought, a fabled bird.”

  “It sounds human,” Meguet said simply, and Nyx looked at her, a colorless, dispassionate gaze. A line ran between her dark brows; she opened her mouth to answer, then turned her head as the guard, followed by curious guests, fanned across the tower yard. The bird cried again, wheeled at them, and they retreated beneath the archways of the tower wall. Fire washed through the archway at their heels, glazed the cobbles with opal. “Nyx, can you do something?” Meguet pleaded. “Before it gets hurt?”

  Nyx glanced at her again. “You have a peculiar fondness for birds,” she said drily. She lifted her hand as to a falcon; the bird circled the dark tower, circled again. Meguet, watching, thought she saw a thread form between Nyx’s uplifted hand and the bird, a gossamer strand of air that shimmered faintly with light against the evening sky. The bird cried once again, spiralling down toward them. Onyx roses swayed on the vine, broke free. Something else flashed in the corner of Meguet’s eye: Rush Yarr’s blood-fox hair. She turned, running again across the yard as he crouched in an archway, following the bird with his arrow.

  “Rush!”

  She knew his aim; it was far better than the sorcery he was evidently breathing into his bow. Concentratin
g, he did not hear her. He shot. Behind Meguet, Nyx flung out another thread. It caught the arching arrow mid-flight; the bird, riding air to meet it, picked it up like prey and cried its fiery rage. The fall of red and gold streaked the dusk. Meguet, running headlong into it, felt a moment of complete astonishment before her eyes filled with gold and then with night.

  The evening was suddenly very quiet. The bird flew up the black tower and disappeared. Rush’s bow, dropping on the bespelled cobbles, seemed to echo within the tower ring. Nyx, motionless at the foot of the tower, met his stunned eyes. After a blank moment of shock, during which her brain seemed capable only of grappling with analogies, she regathered her attention and picked at the weavings of the force that had transformed Meguet. The spell, at first touch, seemed oddly seamless. Calyx, emerging breathlessly from the tower, bumped into Nyx; she stirred, blinking, overwhelmed again. As if the still emerald leaves had beckoned, they drew the three, along with guards and fascinated guests, to stand staring, speechless, trying to see Meguet among the leaves and roses.

  “Oh, Rush,” Calyx whispered reproachfully.

  “I didn’t—I swear I didn’t even see her!” He touched a glassy leaf tentatively; his eyes sought Nyx’s. “Can’t you do something?”

  “I was trying!” she flared, exasperated, and Rush flushed a dull red.

  “I’m sorry. I am so clumsy with sorcery. It makes me blind and deaf and extremely stupid.”

  Nyx did not bother to answer. She touched the rose-tree here, there, with her mind. It was a great jewel of malachite and emerald, with ruby, garnet, amber and moonstone blossoming among closed buds of paler jade. Within the jewel was Meguet; seeking her, Nyx found veil after veil of fire, and, at last, the face of the bird.

  It was masked, like a swan, with red plumage; its eyes were golden. Sensing her, it cried. The Cygnet in front of it, flying on a long triangle of night sky, melted into a strange vine with swan-shaped leaves.

  The bird was on the tower roof. Nyx spun her thread again, flung it like a message: I am the one you seek. The bird landed a moment later, noiseless, glowing faintly, its white and fiery red bruising the dusk, clinging, with silver talons, to the malachite leaves.

  The faces around Nyx resolved themselves again. The Gatekeeper’s was among them, pale, expressionless, hard as the jewel he stared at.

  “Apt,” he commented. His hand slid among the leaves and silver thorns, closed gently around the stem. Nyx saw him swallow. “It was me put the idea into its head,” he added, ten years of courtly smoothness swamped suddenly by his river-brat’s accent. “Me shouting at her like that.” Like Rush, he sought Nyx’s eyes. She said slowly, her arms folded tightly,

  “It’s an intriguing spell. I can’t seem to find her, only the bird. It should be simple, but it’s not.”

  “I’ll wait,” the Gatekeeper said.

  “The bird is waiting, too,” Calyx said wonderingly. “It’s not screaming now. Is it real? Or sorcery?”

  “I can’t tell yet,” Nyx said. She held its eyes, looking, with her smudged, jewel-framed face, as fey as the firebird. Voices disturbed her; they all turned, saw the Holder and her oldest daughter, surrounded by household guard, half the Hold councilors and their assorted families.

  “There it is!” someone cried, as they crossed the yard. They gathered in sudden, perplexed silence around what it clung to. The Holder, her hair nearly as dishevelled as her daughter’s, studied the firebird grimly. The guard ringed it, arrows poised; Calyx cried in horror,

  “Don’t shoot it! You’ll hit Meguet!”

  “Meguet,” the Holder exclaimed, then took in the truant Gatekeeper, his hand, and what he held. Her dark eyes widened; her voice, raised, caused even the firebird to shift. “Moro’s eyeteeth! I’ll wring its neck!”

  “Mother,” Nyx breathed.

  “That’s Meguet? Are you sure?”

  “Magic seems to follow her in that shape,” the Gatekeeper said.

  “Why,” Lauro Ro demanded of Nyx, “are you just standing there? Are you waiting for the roses to bloom?”

  “I’m waiting,” Nyx said tartly, “for some peace and quiet.”

  “After all that time in the bog, what you don’t know about birds, inside and out, you could thread a bead with. How could you let this happen? Can she breathe in there? Is she even alive?”

  Iris, her stately and practical eldest, glanced at Nyx’s frozen face, and then at the guests fascinated by the sorcery and by the threat of explosion between the Holder and her unpredictable heir. Troubled, she touched her mother’s arm. “Mother, Nyx knows what she needs to work with, and if it’s peace and quiet, you could at least stop shouting. How could anything possibly be Nyx’s fault? Do you think there is anything she wouldn’t do for Meguet?”

  The Holder looked at her dusty, barefoot heir, standing dark and still, with the first wash of light from the rising moon spilling over her shoulder. She gestured at the guard; they lowered their bows, but kept their tight, watchful circle. Nyx, her voice low, taut, said,

  “There is no reason to think she isn’t alive. But the bird’s magic is random, uncalculated, and very strong. What I need to know is if the bird is the sorcerer or the sorcery. The maker of the magic, or simply its bewitched object. For some reason, it’s difficult to tell. It shouldn’t be this difficult, but it is. I can’t find Meguet at all. You’ll have to be patient. Please. If you startle the bird, it may scream again, and I’ll have twice the mystery to undo.”

  The Holder sighed. Arms folded, pins dangling in her wild hair, she looked much like her magical daughter. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All this sorcery makes me edgy. It’s quiet, now. And not afraid of any of us. It didn’t, most likely, fly into my house to turn Meguet into a rose-tree. Was it looking for you?”

  “I think so.”

  “The guard say it snatches arrows out of midair.”

  “It caught mine,” Rush said. “Meguet was running to stop me; she got tangled in its cry.”

  “There’s a blacksmith in the yard with a silver hand,” the Holder said grimly. “If this bird is the sorcerer, it has much to account for. May we watch? If it turns you into a black rose-tree, may I wring its neck then?”

  Nyx smiled a little. “Please.” The smile faded; her brows twitched together again. “What intrigues me most is something Meguet said. She has no power of sorcery, but sometimes she can make very complicated things very simple, by looking at them from an angle I miss. She said about the bird: It has a human cry. That, I think, must be what makes its cry so terrible.”

  The bird had not stirred since the Holder startled it; it clung like something carved of marble to its spell. A curve of moon rising behind the east tower caught in its silver talons; they flashed like blades. Its eyes, flooding with moonlight, turned milky. Nyx looked at it, leaving her mind open, still, tranquil, an invitation for whatever violence or enchantments or speech it might be moved to. It gazed back at her, as still as she. She tried again to find some thought of Meguet within its spell: Leaves moved through her eyes, endless leaves and petals of carnelian and beaten gold, as if she wandered through an enchanted garden.

  Moonlight touched the jewelled leaves, spilled its cold fire over the bird. It roused abruptly, crying its fierce and terrible cry, but its fire only fell pale and spent, harmless as the risen moon’s light. As it moved, leaves trembled. The Gatekeeper, still holding a stem, found his hand at Meguet’s neck, her hair falling over his arm. For a moment her eyes were malachite, and then they were her own, blinking, surprised, at the Holder’s face. The bird landed at her feet in a flood of light. The cry it gave, as it transformed itself, was fully human.

  Three

  HE looked without expression at the arrows aimed at him, as if he did not recognize them, or as if such things, in his peculiar life, were commonplace. Meguet, stooping instinctively for the sword she had dropped, started as it slunk away under her hand. No one else moved; his cry held them spellbound. But nothing of its raw fury and despai
r lingered in his face; he did not seem to realize he had made a sound.

  He was oddly dressed, in a tattered dirty tunic of blue silk, and an embroidered belt of raw red silk. Beneath that he wore a close-fitting garment of gold thread or mail. His soft leather boots were torn and scuffed. He wore strange metal bands at his wrists, intricately fashioned, as if strands of molten metal had been poured over each other in a wide filigree. They looked fire-scorched, so blackened they might have been made of iron. His hair, thick, black, fell past his shoulders. The moon, striking his face at an angle, illumined half: a dark brow, long bones at cheek and jaw, skin drawn tightly across them. The other side of his face was dark.

  He did not speak; he seemed resigned to whatever impulses his actions might have inspired. Nyx, connecting moonlight with the pale fire that had come out of the bird before it changed, asked abruptly,

  “How long are you human?”

  He seemed surprised that she had thought to ask. “Until midnight.” His voice was nearly inaudible. “Then the bird hunts.”

  “What,” the Holder asked sharply, “does it hunt?”

  “I think mice.”

  “Who are you? What kind of outlandish place are you from, flying into my house, frightening my household, turning my niece into a rose-tree?”

  Meguet, glancing around for the niece in question, took a step backward suddenly, found her own shape against the Gatekeeper.

  “The bird cries. It changes things.” His voice held a hollow, haunted weariness. “I cannot stop it. Are you the mage?”

  “No. I am the Holder of Ro Holding.”

  “Ro Holding.” The blankness in his voice was stunning. Then he added, “The realm of the Cygnet. I have seen the black swan flying on warships’ sails. Or the bird has. One of us. Or perhaps it was only a picture. I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember your name?” Nyx asked. He looked at her for a long time before he answered.