Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

  She pushed her fingers against her eyes, blocking light, and the dragon rode the dark behind her eyes. She smelled roses. The dark became her shadow, with a red rose lying in it. Choose, the mage had said. The rose or the sword.

  Choose, the colorful, motionless dragons around her had said, and she had found the face she had been warned to fear.

  She stood abruptly, the images growing clear in her mind. The red rose. The black dragon. She drew breath, feeling her hands grow icy with terror, for she had made her choice about Rad Ilex before she ever learned his name. In Chrysom’s tower she had wielded his rose against a dragon of thread; he would have the key now, if he had not paused to protect her from his own sorcery. If she had picked up the sword, he would not have recognized her in that brief, tense moment; he would have loosed the dragon, distracting Nyx, then taken the key and fled, leaving Nyx frustrated but safe in Ro Holding, never knowing what Rad had stolen.

  If she had picked up the sword.

  The rose had cost them all. But the mage was still asking her to choose between the sword and the rose, for if she refused to help him, he would be at Draken Saphier’s mercy. There had been no mercy in the firebird.

  The red rose. The black dragon.

  The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

  She had seen the dragon’s face.

  Rad Ilex had left a rose in her mind. Draken Saphier had left a dragon, and it was not one of the Luxour’s half-dreams, entrancing in their mystery, floating between worlds. A dark and killing thing, she carried in her mind: It had, of all the dragons in Draken Saphier’s house, come alive within her heart and spoken.

  The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

  She was in the dragon’s house.

  Magior took her back to the mages’ wing that evening. She recognized the long, dark hallway, the great bronze dragon at the end of it. She asked, trying to keep her voice calm, controlled, “Is Draken Saphier back?”

  “No,” Magior said, as the dragon doors were opened for them. “I am taking you to supper with the warrior-mages.” Meguet felt her face whiten. Around her the dragons seemed to come alive; their golden, glaring eyes, their brilliant wings, their breaths of fire burned the air with color, Magior glanced at her, as if she felt the sudden chill in Meguet’s mind. “It is considered an honor.”

  “Then,” Meguet said numbly, “I am honored.”

  “They will treat you with all due courtesy. There is no need to fear them.”

  “I’m hardly used to the company of mages. Nyx is the only mage I know.” And Rad Ilex, she remembered, growing cold again at the thought that he might appear, bloody and helpless, floating above the mages as they ate. Guards opened tall red doors on the other side of the dragon-room; murmuring voices, the smell of food spilled into the air. Meguet walked blindly forward into a sudden silence, as faces turned curiously toward her, the stranger from the land at the end of one twisted strand of silver around their wrists.

  “This is Meguet Vervaine, of the court of Ro Holding,” Magior said, leading Meguet to a chair. Even the long tables were placed in a square; what seemed a hundred mages faced the intricate spirals and coils of Saphier’s emblem patterned in the floor. They wore the emblem, Meguet saw, on their breasts, each path colored by a different thread. “She is,” Magior continued as they sat, “quite weary from her ordeal with Rad Ilex in the Luxour and is not to be overly troubled with questions. Those of you who saw her at Draken Saphier’s brief return know already that she is not a mage, though she is kin to the mage Nyx Ro. She is, however, by the standards of Ro Holding, a warrior, and has shown interest in the movements of the warriors’ ritual.”

  Food, borne by a hand and a sleeve, appeared on Meguet’s plate; she stared at it, wondering what she could possibly be expected to do with it. The mage sitting on her left, a woman with white-gold hair and a hawk’s restless, hooded eyes, said kindly, “The movements of the warriors’ dance are quite old. I take it you have no such tradition among your warriors in Ro Holding?”

  We barely have warriors, Meguet thought starkly, then stilled her thoughts, lest the mage forget her manners and listen. She said, trying to find her usual composure, as if she had not fallen out of the sky into this elegant and dangerous land, “No. Only games and exercises involving appropriate weapons.” She hesitated; the hawk’s eyes watched her, waited for the trembling in the grass, the revealing word. “You call it ritual. In Ro Holding, while Brand Saphier was with Nyx, I saw him use that ritual to try to kill.”

  Again there was silence, even from the far table; the still eyes gazing at her reminded her of the dragons. Magior asked, her voice dry, precise, “Whom? No one of Ro Holding, I hope.”

  “Rad Ilex.”

  “Brand’s father teaches him many things,” the strange mage answered smoothly. “He is extraordinarily skilled and proficient. As tired as you are, I am sure it would be as tedious for you to listen to an account of a warrior’s training in Saphier, as it would be for you to disclose your own warriors’ training. In battle, as you know, everything becomes a weapon.”

  “You must eat,” Magior murmured. “How will you recover your strength?”

  Meguet picked up her fork, ate a tasteless mouthful. A man at a side table, with the stamp of Draken Saphier in the bones of his face and his black hair, commented, “The ritual originally involved ceremonial blades carved of bone. Since they could be played, it is assumed that the dance was performed to music.”

  “Perhaps a hunting ritual,” someone else suggested, and the ensuing argument, tossed back and forth across the tables, brought to light an endless list of ancient and startlingly named battles.

  “Much of the music in Saphier,” the mage beside Meguet said, “originated in the battlefield, or the training field. In the Battle of Toad Stone, whistles made of raven bones were blown, to scare the scavenger birds from the dead.”

  “Toad Stone?”

  “Two clan families fought over a great stone that resembled a toad. They revered the toad as kin to the dragon, a link between worlds, a messenger, perhaps. The dragon, in Saphier, is the symbol of all power: the power of magic, of battle, of art, of birth. I would imagine it means the same in Ro Holding.”

  “There are no dragons in Ro Holding.”

  “Some say there are none in Saphier. I meant in tales.”

  “There are no tales of dragons,” Meguet said reluctantly, as if the mage might deduce from this no standing army, no fleet of warships, no revered toads and almost no mages.

  The hooded eyes widened a little. “How curious. What, in Ro Holding, symbolizes power?”

  The Cygnet, Meguet thought, and wondered if she would survive that supper to breathe under its familiar stars again. “In ancient tales,” she said, “the sun symbolized the fury of war.”

  “And now?” the mage pressed, her gaze, intense and curious, searching for what Meguet strove to hide.

  “Now it just grows crops.”

  “But under what symbol do you fight now?”

  “Another ancient symbol,” she said desperately. “A random grouping of stars. Is it the dragon you carry into battle? Or is it the symbol on the floor, there and within the square: the patterns that your warriors dance?”

  The golden eyes flickered slightly. “The symbol,” she said vaguely, “is not at all ancient, unlike the ritual. If you were stronger, I could show you one or two of the exercises the warrior-mages are taught. They are quite simple.”

  “I’m not—”

  “So you say. Magior seems less certain. The exercises are designed to wake dormant power through physical movement, and then to channel that power, focus it, and release it as a weapon. The waking and release of power occasionally surprises those who think they have no such gifts. Magior rarely makes mistakes about those with potential for power.”

  The room was silent again, as if, Meguet thought, the mages’ attention were tuned, beneath their lively conversation, to her voice. She said more c
almly than she thought possible, “I have no such power. And I have no interest in it. My place in the Holder’s house is bound by ancient traditions; I have no desire to trouble those traditions by changing my ways, even if it were possible. You understand tradition in this house, I know.”

  Magior moved her cup an inch, found no argument beneath it. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “you should consider the matter. In a day or two, if Draken has not returned, and you are stronger, we will broach the subject again. Tradition has its uses, and its limits. It ceases to be useful when it stands in the way of knowledge.”

  “I would not want,” Meguet sighed, “to cease to be useful to the Holder.”

  “No. But—Enough. You have scarcely eaten. We will trouble you no more with such matters tonight.”

  In bed at last, exhausted with fear, she could not sleep. She lay staring into the dark, wondering if she could get out of the house without being seen, find her way back to the Luxour before the mages began to pick her apart. But if Draken returned with Nyx, if Meguet abandoned Nyx, if Draken found Meguet vanished… She tossed answerless questions in her mind for so long that the blood-stained face appearing behind its glowing silver prison seemed another dire portent.

  “Meguet.”

  She was sitting bolt-upright, she realized, with both hands over her mouth. She dropped them. He could not seem to find her; he looked here and there as through shifting layers of time.

  “Meguet. Help me.”

  She swung out of bed, stood in front of the floating, luminous weave. “Rad,” she breathed, and tried to touch it; her cold fingers closed on air. His voice sounded weak, distant; still he could not see her. “Rad.” Her voice shook. “I’m here.”

  He saw her finally. “You’re so far away,” he said. “Down a stairwell, at the end of a long hall. I’m getting lost, here. You must help me. Please.”

  “Yes.”

  “Please. Quickly. You must listen to me, you must believe me.”

  “I do.”

  “If you don’t, I’m dead, and you will have Draken Saphier with his army in Ro Holding searching for that key. You’re in his house, you must have seen something to make you doubt that his intentions are as peaceful as Ro Holding’s heartland. He will burn across those fields of sheep and wheat until peace is a charred memory, and there is a warrior-mage in every Hold, and a dragon coiled around Chrysom’s tower.”

  “Rad.” She tried to grip the weave again, pull him closer. “Can you hear me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why aren’t you listening to me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you—”

  “Rad. I have seen that dragon. It is black as night, and its eyes are fire. Please. Help me.”

  He was silent, gazing at her, one eye out of dust, the other out of blood. He was trembling, she saw; the desert and the time-prison, as well as the firebird, had drained him. He said very softly, “Did they question you?”

  “They have begun to. I don’t want Nyx in this house. Help me find her in the Luxour. I’ll set you free—tell me what to do before you disappear again.” She slid her hands over the air, groping for a single thread of silver, as if she could pull the weave apart.

  “Meguet. You need a time-path.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “How do I get one?”

  “There is a guard outside your door.” She nodded; there was a guard at every door. “Open the door. Let the guard see me. I’m enough to amaze anyone for a split second. I don’t have much strength in here, but I can disarm a guard who is not a mage. If he feels it, Draken will only think I am testing his power. Let’s hope the guard is not a mage. Open the door.”

  She opened the door with shaking hands, gasped something unintelligible at the young man who stood there. He whirled into the room, a movement out of ritual, and stopped himself dead mid-step at the sight of Rad’s face. Meguet swung the door shut with one foot, grabbed a bowl of water with three leaves floating in it, since the guard had nothing obvious in the dim, silvery light, by way of arms, and broke it over his head. He fell to the floor in a pool of water, a leaf clinging to his hair.

  Meguet tossed the pieces of the bowl on the bed, checked the motionless body. “Not even a knife.” she said, frustrated. “What in Moro’s name do they use for arms in Saphier?”

  “That is a mage,” Rad said tersely. She stared at him, then began to move again, dressing quickly in the light, silken garments they had given her. She bent over the guard, touched the paths on one wrist. “You can’t remove the time-paths,” Rad said. “Just hold one. I’ll open a path for you. Any warrior is taught this—it takes no power. You must walk down the path to me. Draken won’t sense anything until you reach me. The path will end inside his trap. Don’t enter; I’ll be able to walk your path out. When I’m free, he’ll know it. But I’ll open another path to the Luxour, then; we won’t return here.”

  “What about the mage?” she asked.

  “What about the mage?”

  “He’ll wake,” she said, holding the silver tightly, as if mage and time might disappear together. “He’ll tell Magior—”

  “Meguet. He’ll tell the entire house. It will take them just long enough to find breath to say ‘Luxour’ before they know where we have gone. They’ll come looking for us, they’ll come fast, and they will be the warrior-mages. But they’ll have to search the Luxour for us, and a hundred mages on the Luxour will confuse even Draken. For a while.”

  He was shaping time as he spoke, weaving a pattern around them, silver smoke in the dark; she could not tell if the path lay before her, or behind her eyes, within her mind.

  “Trust me,” she heard Rad say. The guard stirred a little under her hand. She heard Rad say something else—in her mind or beyond it—and she rose. Come, the path said, the frozen shining stream at her feet, and she followed it into Draken Saphier’s tangled weave.

  Fifteen

  NYX sat outside a ruined palace, listening to the dry shift and stir of dragon wings. Earlier, the palace had been a pile of stones; twilight had reshaped it, given it depth, subtle colors, ghosts. She had been reading Chrysom’s book, searching for Brand’s grandfather, since his father had either left the Luxour or been swallowed by it. The firebird had flown somewhere within the rocks, dropping darkly gleaming garnets like a trail of blood through the shadows. Nyx drew her mind out of dragon-paths long enough to make a mage-light so that Brand could find her when he changed. Then she wandered back with Chrysom underground, within still water, up cold barren peaks, into magical rings of mist and gold and fire. Some part of her, listening for Brand, was aware of the gently changing hues of blue above the mountains where the moon would rise. She refused to look, for that might slow the moon. She refused to let her thoughts stray, for then she would find Brand’s cobalt eyes looking back at her through every page she turned. The moon took its time, leaving her adrift among the dragons until a footfall brought her out of dragons’ time into her own, and she closed the book in her mind.

  The moon had not yet risen, but the man who stepped into her mage-light was so like Brand that she almost said his name. And then she saw the white in his long dark hair, the lines beside his mouth. He looked at her silently, out of Brand’s eyes. She rose slowly, making no ambiguous movements, for she sensed an enormous power in him, as if in his dragon’s blood he had inherited something of the Luxour. He stood motionlessly, taking in what she revealed to the inward and the outward eye, before he spoke.

  “You are Nyx Ro.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know all the mages of great power in Saphier, and therefore you are not of Saphier. You know my face, therefore you know my son.” He paused; she saw his eyes follow the glittering path of garnet into the stones. His lips moved soundlessly. He turned abruptly, disappeared for a few moments among the caves and crevices; Nyx waited. He returned without the firebird. “It’s sleeping,” he said. “On a high ledge, with its face toward the moon.” She saw him swallow. “I think he ca
n get down.”

  “He says he’s grown used to finding himself in odd places when the bird changes.”

  “Where did you find him in Ro Holding?”

  “He flew over the walls of Ro House, and started turning cart horses into trees with diamond leaves. Cobblestones into glass. He changed my cousin into a rose-tree. He was very nearly shot. His cries were terrible.”

  “Yes,” he said huskily. “I heard him—it—cry before he vanished from Saphier. And then what? You calmed him. You call the bird him.”

  She nodded a little wearily. “Brand and I have argued over this. He insists the bird is sorcery, that it has nothing to do with him. But I think he is the man and he is the firebird, and the bird cries of all the things the man can’t remember, in the only language he will permit himself to use.”

  She heard his breath. He moved closer to her, leaning against the stones between her and the firebird’s trail of jewels. He studied her silently again. Mage-light catching in his eyes revealed fine rays, like dragon’s gold, across the cobalt. “You are perceptive.” he commented, “for so young a mage.”

  “I’ve seen his face,” she answered grimly, “when as a man he hides from memory. It’s like a man flinching from fire.” His own face changed, as if he had felt the sear of memory; for an instant he wore Brand’s expression. “What is it?” she whispered, shaken. “What is it he will not remember? Do you know?”

  He looked away from her, down at a single jewel. “I heard Brand cry out,” he said tautly. “And then I saw the firebird, and the mage who had ensorcelled him. I heard the firebird’s cry before it disappeared. No one else had been with them, to witness what had happened between them. No one in my court could give me the shadow of an explanation why the most gifted mage I have ever trained had cast a spell over my son. No one. I questioned everyone, often, and in every way I could, with and without language.” He paused; the lines along his mouth deepened. He met her eyes again. “They had been close. That’s all anyone could tell me.”