Cygnet

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Yes.” Her voice caught. “So he said.”

  His expression did not change, but she felt the sudden shock within his thoughts, as if it had disturbed the air between them. “He remembered?”

  “A few things. The mage’s name. That once he loved him and now he wants to kill him. Even the firebird recognizes the mage.”

  “And what more does he remember?”

  “Saphier. You. That’s why we came here: to search for you. He is convinced you can remove the spell because you are the most powerful mage in Saphier.”

  “The mage who made the spell will unmake it.” he said harshly. “I have him.”

  She made an abrupt, uncalculated movement; her body peeled itself away from the stones, stiffening. “You have Rad Ilex?”

  “I trapped him on the Luxour two nights ago.”

  She reached out to touch him, did not. “Please.” She felt herself tremble, windblown. “Was there a woman with him? He pulled my cousin out of Ro Holding; I came to Saphier to search for her—”

  “You followed Rad Ilex out of Ro Holding?”

  “No, I came later. She is tall, with long pale hair—”

  He was nodding. “Meguet Vervaine.” he said, and for an instant she saw gold rays of dragon-light burn in his eyes. “I found her half-dead, alone in the Luxour.” Nyx tried to speak, put her hand over her mouth. “I was suspicious of her at first. She tried to protect Rad Ilex, she lied about herself and him. But I persuaded her to help me trap him. She did, and so I took her with me to my court, where she is safe, cared for by my mages. She knows that you are here in Saphier, and that I am searching for you.”

  “Thank you.” She closed her eyes, felt a burning like hot, dry winds, the merciless sun, behind them. She said again, numbly, “Thank you. I would have blamed myself forever if she had died here, alone and lost in a strange land.”

  “Blaming Rad Ilex seems more to the point. He brought her here. Under duress, you say. Then why would she have tried to protect him from me?”

  “I don’t know.” She eased back against the stones, considered the question blankly. “Falling headlong into another world, perhaps she trusted no one. One mage had already terrified her; perhaps you frightened her even more. She isn’t used to mages.”

  “I fed her, spoke gently to her. She recognized me as Brand’s father and as Saphier’s ruler. Still she tried—” He lifted a hand, let it fall. “It isn’t important. I have you all now: Brand and Rad Ilex, your cousin and you. As you said, I must have frightened her, and it is sometimes difficult to think clearly in the Luxour.”

  “But where was Rad Ilex?” she wondered, puzzled. “Why was she alone? If she ran into the desert to escape him, why would she try to protect him?”

  “People do strange things when they are confused by circumstance. She said, when she finally told me her name, that she was walking to my court.”

  “Across the desert? On foot?”

  “So she said.”

  “But if she was running away from Rad Ilex to your court, then why was she afraid of you, and trying to protect Rad at the same time?”

  “I thought,” he said patiently, “you might explain that.”

  She brooded, her brows knit. “It makes no sense. Meguet usually makes more sense than that.”

  “Is she a mage?” he asked abruptly. She transferred her brooding from the ground to him.

  “No,” she said, surprised. “Why ask me? You recognized what I am the moment you saw me. You were with Meguet; if you were curious, you would have answered that question, one way or another.”

  “At first I thought not. And then I saw…” He hesitated. “A shadow. Perhaps it was only the Luxour.”

  She was silent, gazing at him, trying to put pieces together: Meguet protecting Rad Ilex from Brand’s father, Meguet trying to walk alone and powerless across a desert to get to Draken Saphier’s court, Meguet casting a shadow of power when she no longer had the strength to move. “It makes no sense,” she said again, baffled. “If Rad Ilex left her in the desert to die, then why would she—and if he didn’t, then what was she doing there? She has more intelligence than to try to cross a wasteland like this on foot.”

  “One or two other things I found puzzling also. Why did Rad Ilex go to Ro Holding? And how did you get from Ro Holding to my court, and then from my court to the Luxour? Rad Ilex wears the time-paths I forged for him, and so does my son. But Brand’s were destroyed. So. You must have walked paths of your own making.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, and hesitated, unwilling, without knowing why, to open the marvels of Chrysom’s book to Draken Saphier. As the answer hung in the air between them, she saw his eyes change, and she realized that he had known the answers to those questions even before he had found her on the Luxour. His eyes caught mage-light, turned gold. Dragon’s eyes, she thought, frozen under the strange, inhuman gaze, and then: Meguet was born knowing what to fear.

  She remembered the figures standing in the doorway of Chrysom’s library, as the time-paths slowly misted the world with silver: the young man with Meguet’s hair, and her heritage, with the warning to the Cygnet in his eyes…

  The stones and shadows were misting around her now, washed with gold; the pale mage-light burned gold. The key floated in a dark, secret place in her mind. But the dragon-eyes permitted no secrets; the key might as well have been in her open hand. It turned slowly in her mind, as if touched by invisible hands, that could not, for the moment, break through its mystery to open it.

  Then the dragon closed his eyes; the gold melted into shadow and stone and light. Nyx blinked, saw Draken frowning deeply, concentrating, but not on her. She took a step away from him, another. He did not notice, lost in some private, harrowing moment. At her third step, his eyes opened. The taut lines of his face loosened; he sagged against the stones, spent and amazed.

  “I’ve lost him,” he breathed. “How could he escape a time-path looped back into itself?” He was silent, working out an answer; so did Nyx, in case the knowledge came in handy. But it only mystified her. “He had help,” Draken said flatly, and Nyx felt herself grow cold with fear.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Not—”

  “No one in my house would have helped him. No one else.”

  “She wouldn’t have. She couldn’t have. She has no power.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “She wouldn’t need power for that. She’ll be with him now.”

  “No.”

  He pondered, his eyes human again. “The Luxour,” he said at last. “They’ll come here. It’s the only place in all Saphier where he can breathe a moment or two longer, though he is dead now, as he runs.” Then a ghost of memory haunted his face; he whispered. “Brand.” He turned away from Nyx, slumped against the wall, his face hidden in one upraised arm.

  She heard a sound: stones shifting, dragon-claws scraping over them. It was Brand, she realized, climbing down from the firebird’s roost. The garnets had vanished. Standing within the dragon’s golden eyes, she had not seen the milky rising of the moon. Draken lifted his head, listening as Brand followed the path of the mage-light through the stones to Nyx.

  He stopped when he reached the light; she saw him rock on his feet, as if a wind had pushed him. Then he made a sound, a broken word, and slid to his knees at his father’s feet. Draken bent to pull him up, then knelt himself, as if even he could not bear the weight of all the bird’s enchantments, and drew Brand into his arms.

  Brand, lifting his face from Draken’s shoulder, found Nyx, and stretched one hand out to her. Draken’s shadow lay between them; she could not bring herself to move. Draken said, bringing Brand to his feet,

  “Nyx Ro said she found you in Ro Holding.”

  “The firebird found her.” His eyes clung to her a moment longer, and then returned to his father. His hold on Draken’s arms tightened a little. “She gave me the only hope in the world of finding you again.”

  “Yes. I did not know how or when or where I wo
uld see you again, since your time-paths were destroyed.”

  “Nyx has a book. The ancient mage Chrysom of Ro Holding fashioned time-paths all through the Luxour. I made her bring me here to search for you. When we could not find you, I made her search for dragons. For my grandfather.”

  Draken looked at her, his expression unfathomable. “And did you,” he asked, “find dragons?”

  “No.”

  “Nyx decided that, even for a desperate man in the shape of a firebird, the dragons were too dangerous.”

  “That was wise of her.” He touched his son’s hair lightly, let his hand drop to Brand’s shoulder. “What a strange thing to find in Ro Holding: the paths to the dragons of the Luxour.”

  “And equally strange,” Nyx said tightly, “to find on a warrior’s wrist the path from Saphier to Ro Holding.”

  They both looked at her as she stood alone, the mage-light casting her shadow wide and dark across the stones behind her. Draken seemed only thoughtful, but Brand, troubled, left his father abruptly.

  “Nyx.” He put his hands on her shoulders, frowning, then kissed her, as if to change the expression on her face. He succeeded only in changing his father’s expression. “How can you believe that my father will be anything but grateful to you, to your house, to Ro Holding, for caring for me?”

  “How could I?” she wondered.

  He held her a moment longer, searching her eyes, tuned to the undercurrents in her voice, but not understanding them. He turned to his father again, said tautly, “Help me. Please. Nyx tried to remove the spell, Magior has tried—I can barely remember day, and I am beginning to hate the night. It’s like drowning, every midnight, night after night after night. Only Nyx has made it bearable.”

  “I see.”

  “You can remove the spell. You taught Rad Ilex everything.”

  “Rad.” Draken’s mouth tightened. “For a day or two I had him trapped.”

  “You found him?” Brand said sharply. “Where?”

  “Here in the desert. But he managed to escape.” He touched his eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “Free me.” For a moment Nyx, used to all Brand’s expressions, barely recognized him: He wore the cold, intent, merciless face of a warrior of Saphier. “We’ll both find him.”

  Meguet, she thought, chilled, and a stranger’s eyes flicked at her, as if responding to her fear, yet hardly seeing her.

  “He must be here still,” Brand added. “Where else could he go without leaving Saphier? Unless he went back to Ro Holding. But he wants Chrysom’s key, and Nyx has it here. He must have known she would come here to find Meguet.”

  Nyx closed her eyes, heard Draken say, “Chrysom’s key.”

  “His book. The key is the book. Father—I am only human by moonlight, only until—”

  “Listen to me.” Nyx, wondering if she could fray into wind before either of them noticed, opened her eyes at the urgency in Draken’s voice. He took Brand’s face between his hands. “Listen to me,” he said again. “I will try to help you. But I may fail.”

  “No.”

  “Listen. I know Rad’s power. The Luxour shaped it. Before he could speak, he understood the language of these winds, the stones; he heard the dragons breathe before he knew the word for dragon. I don’t know what of all this vast and unpredictable power around us went into the making of that spell—”

  “Why?” Brand whispered. He was trembling; Nyx saw a streak of silver run down his face. “Why did he do this to me? I can’t remember.”

  Draken shook his head. “I never knew,” he said bitterly. “I only saw you after you had changed. When your human cry became the firebird’s cry. You will remember. Look at me.”

  They were both silent. Nyx, sensing all Draken’s attention on his son, was caught in the spell of the Luxour as its magic responded to Draken’s making and unmaking. Their shadows, etched lean and black across the ground, changed shape: A great dragon spanned the circle of light, its black wings closed, its long neck bent toward the thing it held mesmerized beneath its gaze. The shadow of the firebird lay beyond Brand; winds shifted it, colored it yellow, red, peacock-blue. Then the dragon’s wings lifted, opened, folded around the gaudy shadow, swallowed it into blackness. Nyx, staring, raised her head abruptly, startled by a movement above her head. Something shifted in the night: A head as bright as blood rose clear against the moon. Fire streamed out of it, washed red across the stars. The great head disappeared. Nyx found Brand again; spells flowed over and away from him like tattered rags: an owl wing, a lizard claw, a lion’s face, his father’s face, a dragon’s misty, glittering breath.

  Then the magic flowed elsewhere, left their shadows intact, shifting, as Draken’s hands fell from Brand’s face, and Brand, white, tearless, took a step back from him.

  “I’m sorry,” Nyx heard Draken whisper. And then she opened Chrysom’s book, chose a dragon at random, and ran.

  Whether Draken tried to follow her or not, she was unsure: What leaped at her like a great wind, nearly tangling the strands of the path in her mind might easily have been the raw power sweeping across the Luxour, forming its own spells around anything magical. She found herself in the deep caves, among the roaring waterfalls where Brand had forgotten, so briefly, the memories that constantly reshaped him. Her own memories threatened to distract her; she felt the sudden loss of him like a hollow in the air beside her, a silence where his voice belonged, stone where her eyes expected his face. But she had no time for such unusual feelings; she had no idea whether Draken would pursue her or Rad Ilex first, and she had to reach Meguet before he did.

  She turned another page, opened another path. This one ended among the stones and dream-palaces, too close to where Draken had found her. She opened another path instantly, and fell into a place so black she thought she had reached the ice-dragon’s hole torn out of the night between the stars. But the air was warm, tranquil; she caught her breath a moment, reading a phrase or two about the dragon hidden within this shadow.

  …a small and exquisite creature, with scales like gold leaf and shining copper…its eyes are azure. By temperament elusive but not unfriendly…

  She opened its path back into the Luxour, and came face to face with a warrior-mage.

  He carried ritual blades; they and the time-paths on his wrists glittered like frost in the moonlight. His black garments flowed on the wind; odd colors seemed to flame and break free from them, then fade into night. With mages’ sight, they recognized one another.

  “Nyx Ro.”

  She stopped herself from vanishing before he attacked; he sounded only surprised.

  “Yes,” she said tersely.

  “Draken Saphier is looking for you and his son. Where is Brand?”

  “He flew ahead,” she said, hoping it was some-where near midnight. The mage looked disturbed.

  “Rad Ilex is loose in the Luxour. It’s not safe for the firebird to wander.”

  “How—”

  “Meguet Vervaine is with him,” the mage said without expression. “Your kinswoman. The warrior-mages are searching the Luxour.”

  “She was obviously under duress,” Nyx said quickly. “He ensorcelled her.”

  “Most likely,” the mage agreed politely.

  “How many of the warrior-mages are out here?”

  “All of them.” He shook his head a little, fretfully. “Magic blows like sand in your eyes, here. It’s hard to distinguish minds, even faces, from the lies the desert tells. Even those of us searching together got separated. You must not lose the firebird.”

  “No,” she said, and he vanished, leaving a shining, faceless ghost of himself imprinted on the wild winds. She opened a path hurriedly to anywhere, and nearly scalded herself in steam from a boiling pool.

  She backed away from the heat and cloying smell, and found a slightly cooler place where she could think. Surrounded by the bubbling pools, the mists, she felt hidden for the moment. She wiped steam-slick hair out of her face, and wondered starkly how, in a des
ert full of wild magic and mages who could barely find each other, she could possibly locate the two who had fled there to hide.

  The Luxour itself had shaped Rad’s power. So Draken had said, and if Rad could wear the faces of the desert, stones and dragon-dreams and shadows, and empty his mind of all but the constantly shifting winds of power, then even Draken with his dragon’s eyes and relentless mind would have trouble picking him out of the air. But how Rad could hide Meguet, Nyx was unsure. Rad might transform her into a moon-shadow, but not even he could hide her thoughts. Nyx would be on her mind, Ro Holding, the Cygnet; words foreign to Saphier would drift into Draken’s mind. If the warrior-mages did not find Meguet first. Like Draken, they would search for her to find Rad. Would Rad, knowing that, abandon Meguet to plead coercion and duress to Draken Saphier? Meguet would more likely fight what would be the shortest battle in her life. And if Draken didn’t kill her, he would use her to force Nyx out of hiding.

  And to yield the key. She stirred, remembering her own danger, and made herself as transparent as the steam billowing around her. But what, she wondered, would he do about Brand? Rad Ilex, she was certain, had not cast that spell. If not even he could remove it. Brand would wrench the firebird’s voice out of the Cygnet’s labyrinth, and its fire from Nyx’s hold, and sear the burning desert itself with his despair.

  But the firebird had attacked Rad. Brand had named him the maker of the spell.

  Meguet had tried to protect Rad from Draken.

  Rad knew who had cast the spell. He had been there.

  She felt her body shocked into visibility; even in the steam, her skin was cold.

  No witnesses, Draken had said. No one else saw, but he and his son and Rad.

  Three leaves. One blue as Brand’s eyes. One gold as the Luxour. One as red as the black war-dragon’s eyes.

  She whispered, “Draken.”

  As if she had summoned him, he began to shape himself out of the mists in front of her.

  She ran before he had a face. But his mind’s eye saw her and the random path she had pulled from Chrysom’s book. He pursued her, a single burning dragon’s eye in the dark, a force like night-wind at her heels. He could, she remembered with horror, forge his own paths, not from place to place perhaps, but from here to nowhere. As quickly as she shaped Chrysom’s path, he reshaped it, cutting through her weave of silver, leaving her on an edge of nothing, or turning her own path back on itself, until she lost all sense of Chrysom’s design, and guessed that the path she fled down would loop through itself to lead her inevitably, strand by shifted, twisted strand, to the Dragon of Saphier.