Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “You are the mage.”

  “I am Nyx Ro. And mage, sorceress, bog-witch, something of everything.” She was holding his eyes, speaking slowly, calmly, using words like tiny grappling hooks to draw and fix his attention. “You are ensorcelled. You came for help.”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “The bird cries for help—it transforms its cries to jewels, gold, anything precious to catch the eye.”

  “How did you know to find help here?”

  “The bird knew.”

  “You are the bird.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it. His face changed suddenly, like shifting flame: For a moment he was going to scream. And then it changed again, forgetting. “No. The bird is the sorcery.”

  “How long have you been ensorcelled?”

  “I do not know. A week. A month. A century. I do not know.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “I have forgotten.”

  “What is your name?”

  “I have forgotten,” he whispered. Nyx was silent; her own eyes, catching the moon’s pale fire, turned misty, inhuman. Meguet, resigned to the expression in them, knew she had ensorcelled herself by her own curiosity. After a moment, Nyx loosed the man, turned her gaze to the Holder. Her brows crooked questioningly. The Holder, equally resigned, flung up a hand.

  “All right. I am curious, too. But I will have no more sorcery from that bird. Keep it out of sight, and in Moro’s name give the man something to eat besides mice.”

  The man slid to his knees. His head bowed; he held his arms together as if they were bound, elbow to upturned wrists that the strange, latticed metal protected. His fingers spread wide and flat, a gesture that riveted Nyx’s attention. “This to the Cygnet,” he said. “All the time I hold.”

  The Holder sent him, under guard, to be fed, washed, clothed and presented to Nyx’s scrutiny in the mage’s tower before the bell in the north tower changed night into morning. Nyx returned to what a hasty eye might have deemed the disaster in the library. So orderly was her chaos that she saw at a glance Calyx’s futile attempts to straighten things. Musing, the stranger’s gesture repeating itself in her mind, she stared into the eye of the Cygnet flying through black marble above the mantel. Beneath the Cygnet, things glinted in candle and torchlight: tiny opaque bottles, dark glass boxes that refused to open, mysterious things carved in amber, wood, gold, that had no openings yet when shaken moved from the liquid rolling within them. She fingered a seamless cobalt box; something buzzed in it like a furious insect. She still did not know, after years of wandering, study, work, what magic lay within that tiny box. What she had finally learned was why she was still ignorant.

  The door opened; Meguet, about to enter, stopped in the doorway with an amazed face peering over her shoulder. She turned with barely a flicker of expression, and took the tray that had followed her up. The door closed; she stood, with more expression, looking for a place to set Nyx’s supper.

  “Just let it go,” Nyx said. Meguet, who had been transformed into a rose-tree with less notice, yielded calmly to the whims of sorcery and left the tray hanging in midair. “Thank you.”

  “Your mother asked me to bring it. She said you hadn’t eaten all day.”

  “How could she remember that? I didn’t.” She waved the tray across the room. Meguet, glancing around, caught sight of ancient weapons hanging like icicles above her head. She moved promptly, joined Nyx at the hearth, where nothing hung overhead but a faded tapestry. Nyx, bread in one hand, cold chicken in the other, asked,

  “Where is he?”

  “In a bath, I think. What is it in you that causes furniture to behave in such a peculiar fashion?”

  “I prefer a world in a constant state of transmutation,” Nyx said with her mouth full.

  “Is that what you will tell the Holder?”

  “Is she coming up?”

  “She’s hardly in the mood to leave you alone up here with a man who turns cart horses into trees by breathing.”

  “Oh.”

  “So she said.”

  Nyx shrugged. “The bird’s spells wear away by moonlight. Luckily. You made a beautiful rose-tree.”

  “A rose-tree,” Meguet said with feeling. “In front of half the household. Why did you wait for the moon to rescue me? You could have spared me some dignity.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Meguet gazed at her. She folded her arms, leaned against the mantel. She rarely made unnecessary movements; the heel of her boot ticked uneasy questions against the hearthstones. “You mean you couldn’t.”

  “I couldn’t.” She put down a chicken bone, eyed it with a bog-witch’s speculation, then licked a finger. “That’s what fascinates me so. To break a spell, you simply unweave it, strand by strand, until the spell does not exist. Of course, doing this, you are liable to catch the attention of the sorcerer who cast the spell, who may look askance at your meddling. I couldn’t undo the spell over you because I couldn’t find a single strand. It was of a piece, that magic, like a single jewel. Very beautiful.”

  “You mean if the moon hadn’t risen—”

  “Eventually I would have worked it through. There is always a way. Always. But the moon worked faster.”

  Meguet was silent. A night breeze drifted through the windows, scented with roses; she saw in memory the rose on her shadow. She asked slowly, her fingers gripping hard on her arms, “Is there a connection between the mage and the firebird?”

  “I don’t know.” Nyx poured wine, stared into it without drinking, her dark brows knit. “Is there a connection between a mage looking for a key and a firebird flying over a wall? If the mage had come a month ago and the firebird tomorrow, I would say no. But they came one after another, and both from lands beyond Ro Holding.”

  “He spoke of warships.”

  “Then the spell may be very old and the mage dead. Which may make it easier for me. Or more difficult, if the spell is archaic. How long has it been since warships sailed under the Cygnet on Wolfe Sea?”

  “Centuries.” Meguet shivered suddenly, envisioning time. “Ensorcelled so long, no wonder he cries like that. But will the mage or sorcerer be dead? Didn’t Chrysom live for centuries before he even built this house for Moro Ro?”

  “Legend says.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Chrysom said very little about himself; he hid his life behind his spells. And apparently he hid a few spells as well, locked away in a secret place… Meguet, if you had something to hide in this room, where would you hide it?”

  “Up the chimney. Under a hearthstone. In a table leg. Unless I were a mage. Then—” She shook her head helplessly, blind to sorcery. “I don’t know how mages think.”

  “I do. I want to know what you think.”

  “What am I hiding?”

  “A spellbook. It may not look like a book; it may look like a doorknob. It might even be a book within a book, lines hidden between lines, words within words, but I’ve searched every book in here that was made before Chrysom died.”

  “Someone took it.”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the spells would have become common knowledge by now. I’ve suspected for some time that a book had been lost or hidden. What gave the visiting mage a clue to look for the key, I have no idea. Perhaps he will come back and I can ask him. Perhaps he realized what I did: that Chrysom hints now and then at spells which are unknown, even to the mage Diu, for he never told me.”

  Meguet nodded blankly. The ancient mage Diu, a descendant of Chrysom’s, was such a legendary figure it was difficult to conceive of him still alive and swapping spells. “Why? What made you suspect?”

  “These,” Nyx said, touching the mysteries on the mantel. “He never makes use of them in any book I’ve ever seen, and I thought I had all his books. And because I came across an odd mark now and then at random, in the margins of his spellbook: a
C or a crescent moon holding an M in its arms. The key has the same design on its handle. I’ve always thought the spells he marked with that sign were incomplete, or so old they are little more than curiosities. But now I know he completed them in another place. A secret place, locked by the key he hid.”

  “But why would he hide them?”

  “That,” Nyx said softly, “intrigues me most of all. What kinds of spells did he feel compelled to hide?”

  Meguet recognized the gleam of compulsion in her eye: the sorceress in pursuit of the unknown. It had led her most recently into a morass, and the house into turmoil. Meguet said resignedly, “So you tore the room apart searching for this secret book that may or may not exist.”

  Nyx nodded, unperturbed, chewing again. “Every crack, every glass rose, every stone and every stone bird in this hearth. I’ve searched as a mage searches, and I’ve searched with nothing more than my eyes and my bare hands.”

  “Then it’s not here.”

  “I think it is here… Chrysom kept everything he used in this room. He lived here; his bones are still here, buried beneath this tower. Even after a thousand years, these old stones are saturated with his magic. They send a signal like a beacon, a ghostly signal, but visible to those who can see the imprint of power…”

  “Like the bird? Is that what drew it?”

  Nyx was silent, her eyes on Meguet while she mused, using the calm in her cousin’s face to focus her thoughts. “I still don’t know,” she said at last, “where that bird’s sorcery comes from. Perhaps it was simply made to find this place. Or any place of power.”

  “For yet another mage?” Meguet looked shaken. “Nyx, how many mages will we have to contend with?”

  Nyx shrugged. “It’s only speculation. I’ll worry when I find something to worry about.” She paused, listening, the wine halfway to her lips. She put it down abruptly. “Like now. My mother is coming.”

  The room composed itself in an eye-blink, as if, Meguet thought, its tidy self had been simply waiting in abeyance around the moment of time Nyx searched through. Carpets and skins lay underfoot, weapons and tapestries hung on the walls, books surrounded them on shelves and pedestals. The account books Calyx had been studying lay open on a table, her pen angled on a page to mark a place. The mound of chairs that had been balanced in an impossible pyramid on the wine table fanned around the hearth; not a shadow or a flame had been misplaced. Nyx picked her supper out of the air and set it on a table. The door opened.

  The Holder entered, followed by her two older daughters, and Rush Yarr; a pair of armed guards flanked the stranger. Even dressed in more civilized fashion, he looked formidable, tall and muscular, something of the bird’s wildness about him. Meguet, remembering the rage and desolation in his cry, wished she had thought to arm herself, for he was a man unaware of his own anger. The bird’s fury shaped itself into jewelled leaves; what form the man’s might take was as yet unknown, perhaps even to himself.

  But, entering, he seemed quiet enough. He barely glanced around himself; his eyes found Nyx and clung. Nyx gestured at a chair; he sat hesitantly, as if he had forgotten how. Meguet moved unobtrusively to a table near him, leaned against it. Rush joined her. The guards stood behind the Holder and her daughters, silent, watchful. Nyx, at the hearth, studied him, fingering a strand of tiny pearls sliding down over one ear.

  “Is there a name I can call you?” she asked. “One you might remember to answer to?”

  He was silent, dredging unknown fathoms of memory. He said finally, “Every name I reach for eludes me. It might be anything. Or nothing.”

  His face formed suddenly, clearly, under Nyx’s absent gaze, as if, until then, she had only seen the firebird. His eyes reminded her of something. She slid the strand of pearls behind her ear and remembered what: the little cobalt box on the mantel behind her. She blinked; the entire room was still, everyone fascinated, it seemed, by her silence. She gathered her thoughts, which had been fragmented by a color. “Two things I must do first. I want the bird’s fire and I want its cry.”

  His lips parted; he whispered, “How?”

  “I’ll tell you how after I have done it. I don’t want to be turned into a gaudy pile of leaves every time it looks at me. And the cry that bird makes is like the crying of every bird I have ever tormented in my sorcery. It would wear me to the heart.”

  He was staring at her, transfixed, as if she had just changed shape, or taken shape, in his eyes. He made a sudden movement, muscles gathering, his hands closing on the chair arms. The cry came and went like lightning in his face. Silver flashed from behind the Holder as one of the guards moved. Meguet caught his eyes, held him still. Nyx continued, her voice grim but deliberate, “Mages find themselves sometimes on strange roads, in strange places. You can trust me, but you don’t know that. My past casts a shadow. If you want a mage without a shadow, you must fly farther north, to a mage called Diu, who is very old and tired, but would do a favor for me if I asked. You must—”

  “The bird found you,” the man said. He was still gripping his chair, but he had made no other movement. Nyx waited; he added, some feeling breaking into his low voice, “I don’t know how long the bird flew to find you. But, entering this house, it cried its magic until you listened. You must do what you can. What you want. The bird will choose to stay or go. It’s no question of trust. Or of choice, for me. I have no choice.”

  The Holder opened her mouth, closed it as the sorceress’s eyes flicked at her. Nyx said, answering her unspoken question, “I cannot know how the bird found me, or why, or if it was sent until I begin to work. I suspect that the spell was cast very long ago, and that the bird came here simply because it sensed a thousand years of magic in this tower. So I will assume that, for now, all I have to do is remove a spell.”

  “And if the bird was sent?” the Holder asked. “Perhaps by the mage who appeared yesterday? You may put the entire house in danger.”

  “Well,” Nyx said softly, “it won’t be the first time.”

  “But—”

  “You have heard that bird cry. Is there anything you would not do to stop it, if you could?” The Holder was silent; jewels sparked on her hands as they clasped, containing a mute argument. Nyx added, “I can stop it. I can help. If I bring down sorcery on this house, then we will find a way to deal with that. But now, the bird is here and the sorcerer is only a possibility. I must begin with the magic I see, not with the ghosts and shadows conjured up by fear.” She looked at the man again. He had not moved a muscle or an eyelash while she spoke; still she was not certain how much he understood besides hope. “So,” she said, toying with an earring, a circle of amber ringed with pearls, “we will wait for the bird to return. Tell me what you remember of your wanderings.”

  “I remember sea. I remember the bird flying through a storm of burning arrows. I remember the face of a small boy just before he was caught in the bird’s fire. I remember waking in snow, in mud, sometimes in trees, sometimes falling out of the air and running from hunters.”

  “And before you were spellbound?” The earring fell off; she caught it in her palm. She dropped her other hand toward the metal on his wrist, but did not touch it. “What are these?”

  He gazed at them without a flicker of recognition. “Armor, of some kind, I think.”

  “May I see?”

  “They don’t come off.”

  “Do you remember any place? A city? A house?”

  He paused, made an effort. “I remember a doorway.”

  “A doorway?”

  He shrugged slightly. “Nothing more. A marble doorway, with a marble pot of flowers beside it.”

  “What was inside the door?”

  “A noonday shadow. That’s all I remember, except that I saw it, not the bird, because I remember the scent of the flowers and the soft air. It could be any door, anywhere. It means nothing.”

  “What did you mean when you said to the Holder, ‘All the time I hold’?”

  He was on his fee
t, then, with no warning. Meguet, pushing away from the table, saw the cry beginning in his face. Then she heard the midnight bells, and saw the fiery plumage streak his back. She checked her instinctive movement to Nyx’s side, having no desire to be caught in the enchanted fire. The bird finished the cry in midair. Fire swarmed at Nyx; Meguet heard Calyx cry out behind the silken, red-gold wall. Nyx opened her hand, held up her defense: an amber earring.

  Fire kindled in the amber, a reflection of the onslaught of flame. It kindled in Nyx’s misty eyes, washed them with color. For a time her mind was an amber, fire-filled jewel guiding the magic, inviting more, expanding endlessly as it flooded into her, while, to watching eyes, the small jewel in her hand focused and ate the fire. The gorgeous and magical imagery of the bird’s enchantments changed and changed again in her mind as it tried to change her: black roses, emerald leaves, snowflakes of silver latticed like the odd armor, birds with sapphire wings and eyes, golden lilies, bird-eggs of topaz and diamond. The threads of the spell were a tapestry of tiny detail worked by a skilled hand. Dimly, as she dragged the fire and rich images endlessly out of it, she heard the bird’s ceaseless cry.

  Then there was only pale moonlight in her mind, a final rose the color of mist. She could see again; she dropped her hand, blinking. The bird, perched on the chair, was silent. The air darkened slowly, candlelight and shadow. The faces gazing at her looked haunted, exhausted by the cry. She lifted the amber, red-gold now and cracked like glass, and put it back in her ear; her hand trembled slightly.

  “So the bird knows where it is,” she said.

  “Nyx,” the Holder breathed, and nothing more. Beside her, Calyx lifted her face from her hands; tears slid between her fingers. Rush, stunned by the sorcery, moved behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. The guards’ faces looked pinched, as if they had been standing in a freezing wind. Iris had gone. Nyx’s eyes moved to Meguet. Her face was composed, watchful, as always, but so white it might have been carved of snow.

  “That must have wakened the house,” Meguet commented. Her voice shook suddenly; she put her hand to her mouth, hearing an echo of the fury and the sorrow. “Can you find a jewel hard enough to hold its cry?”