The Flight of Swans

by Sarah McGuire

  I threw myself at him and hugged him so tightly that I embarrassed myself. I made sure to scrub my cheek against his tunic so there wasn’t any trace of tears on my face when I stepped back.

  I didn’t have time to tell him more. One of the captains had come to Aiden’s door.

  I heard Aiden murmur something in response. “—my brothers meet me in the courtyard.”

  “A band of men is approaching,” he told me when he returned. “I need to be there, and I want you with me. I’m not leaving you alone again.”

  “Visitors for the Ambassador from Danavir?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. The watchman reports he’s never seen anything like the approaching band. That’s why they called me.” Aiden swiped at the dampness on his tunic. “Are you well enough to come with me?”

  “Never better.” I hadn’t broken Father’s enchantment and I was still trembling, but Aiden was himself again. I wiped the blood from my lip and followed him to the courtyard.

  * * *

  The cobbled courtyard, like every other part of the castle, was quieter than it had ever been before. I could still hear the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer. The hunting dogs bayed from their kennels.

  But the men and women working in it were subdued, and the undercooks scurrying to and from the pantry that supplied the kitchen didn’t look up. Rees walked with a horse to the post where it would be saddled, and I couldn’t tell if he led the horse or leaned upon it.

  My home had changed that much in only seven days.

  I watched as Aiden scanned the courtyard. He noticed it too. His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed, and he smiled just a little. Those who didn’t know him paid attention to the smile. I knew it meant he didn’t want his opponents to know he was about to attack.

  He strode to the gatehouse, and I trotted to keep up with him. The constable and the Captain of the Guard waited for him.

  The Captain silently handed Aiden a looking glass, and he peered out to the approaching band.

  “Drop the portcullis. Now.” Aiden handed the looking glass back to the Captain. “I don’t know who they are, but they don’t enter the courtyard until they swear peace and surrender their weapons.”

  “That bad?” I asked as Aiden escorted me back across the courtyard, toward the well by the kitchen and pantry—as far from the gatehouse as possible.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I won’t risk it.”

  “Aiden!”

  Mael and Cadan were jogging to meet us. Declan, Gavyn, and Owain weren’t far behind.

  Declan noticed my face first. “What happened, Ryn?”

  I glanced at Aiden, unsure how much to tell.

  “She angered Father’s new wife,” he spat out.

  Cadan cocked his head, as if he didn’t believe his ears.

  “What did you do?” Mael asked me.

  Cadan’s gaze lingered on my swollen lip. “She did that to you, Ryn? With her own hands?”

  I nodded, willing him to see all that had happened.

  “She’s a gentle soul!” protested Mael, and Declan nodded agreement.

  Cadan blinked, and I saw her hold on him evaporate. “Maybe she isn’t a gentle soul, Mael.”

  Gavyn nodded. “A gentle soul wouldn’t resort to violence.”

  “Don’t speak against her!” blurted Owain.

  Three brothers believed me. Three remained enchanted.

  The standoff was broken as a horn from beyond the gatehouse rang out. It had a fierce center to it: music made from an animal roar.

  The mysterious band had arrived.

  The Captain of the Guard called out that they announce themselves, surrender their weapons, and swear peace.

  Silence from beyond the portcullis. Finally, a gravelly voice that we could barely hear from across the courtyard answered, “. . . the white lady.”

  The Captain looked at Aiden from the gatehouse and shook his head.

  Aiden cursed under his breath. “Cadan, stay with Ryn. Don’t leave her side.”

  Then he strode over to the gatehouse.

  Cadan tugged me to stand by him. “Here, Ryn. Stay close and protect me from these mighty warriors.”

  He tickled me—just enough to keep me distracted—while Aiden joined the Captain. We stood nearly fifty paces from the gatehouse, but we all saw Aiden stiffen at the sight of the band.

  “I don’t think—” I began.

  “Raise the portcullis!” The Queen’s voice rang out like a bell.

  She stood at the library balcony, only a little to the right of the gatehouse.

  Aiden bowed. “My Queen, they have not—”

  “You must not have heard me, young Aiden: Let them in. They serve me.”

  “That’s little comfort,” murmured Cadan.

  After a dreadful pause, Aiden motioned to the gatehouse soldiers. The clang, clang, clang of the portcullis being raised echoed off the stone walls.

  No one else dared speak.

  A moment later, the men entered the courtyard. They looked wild, with unkempt hair and eyes that flashed warily in dirty, bearded faces. None of them possessed metal armor. Instead, they wore battle-scarred leather breastplates.

  Cadan pulled in a hissing breath. “They are not from Danavir. Gavyn?”

  Gavyn knew the crests and flags of all the lords and chiefs of neighboring lands. He was almost as good as a book, but even he shook his head. “I’ve not read or heard of anyone like them.”

  The men didn’t even nod to Aiden or the Captain of the Guard. Instead, they looked around insolently, chins raised, eyes roving, like they’d caught scent of something. They reminded me of the blacksmith’s dog that prowled around the bellows looking for something to make him snarl.

  “I greet you, men of the forest!” the Queen called out.

  “Our Queen!” called a tall man near the front of the pack.

  “How did they know she was here?” whispered Gavyn. “Or that she is queen? It’s been only a week.”

  The wild men arranged themselves into rows and drew their swords. Then they held their black weapons over their hearts and saluted the new Queen of Lacharra.

  “Captain!” called the Queen. “You will make sure that my guard is given room in the barracks.”

  The Captain glanced at Aiden, who nodded reluctantly. Then the Captain motioned that the wild men should follow him.

  “Obsidian blades,” murmured Gavyn as we watched the men sheath their dark, glossy swords and disperse to the barracks. “I know of no warriors who carry them.”

  “Warriors in the old songs did,” offered Declan, smiling as if hearing the ancient melodies. “The ancient ones abhorred metal, so they carried obsidian weapons. But I never thought I’d see black blades in this world.”

  Mael didn’t share Aiden’s worry or Declan’s fascination. “In this world, obsidian shatters. One blow from a regular sword would ruin these. Don’t let the blades frighten you. They’re good for only one cut.”

  “One may be enough,” muttered Aiden as he joined us. “I don’t like this.”

  “But they’re with her,” reassured Mael. “We’re safe—you can trust that.”

  “Are you that foolish, Mael?” snapped Cadan. “Wild men with blades out of the ancient tales stroll in and you don’t wonder if perhaps something is amiss?”

  “I’m no fool,” Mael shot back. “I trust the woman who saved Father from the forest! Don’t you?”

  “I did until I saw what she did to Ryn.”

  But Mael wouldn’t even look at me. Declan shook his head sadly as if the bruises were merely a misunderstanding. Owain glared.

  They turned and walked away.

  “Never mind them, Ryn. I’ll take you to your rooms.” Aiden turned toward the nearest entrance to the living quarters. He stopped at the sight of the wild men standing in the way.

  “This way.” He moved toward the other entrance near the gatehouse, the one near the balcony where the Queen stood. “Don’t look at her. Just walk.”
<
br />   I could feel the Queen’s eyes on me, bright and burning as the summer sun.

  Just before I followed Aiden into the passage, a small, dark object flashed before me and landed at my feet.

  A single clove lay on the narrow cobbles.

  I looked up.

  The Queen smiled down at me. “You forgot this, cygnet.”

  I wished I had a grand and cutting reply that would wipe the smile from her face. I wished I was powerful enough to banish her for all the evil she’d wrought.

  Instead I stood silent and still, ashamed at how my rabbit-heart raced at the memory of her attack.

  “I will not forget your defiance in the library,” continued the Queen.

  And still I had no reply, except the anger rising up in me. I glared up at her and slowly—deliberately—ground the clove to dust beneath my foot before following Aiden.

  Somehow, that was reply enough.

  Chapter 4

  Aiden walked me straight to my rooms and didn’t relax until Cadan and Gavyn joined us.

  He shuffled through the mess that covered my writing desk, then pulled parchment and ink forward. “Tell Father you don’t feel well and that you’ll miss the ambassador’s feast tonight. I don’t want you anywhere near that woman.” He pointed to Cadan and Gavyn. “You two stay with Ryn until the feast begins and lock the door behind you. No one visits in the meantime. No maids. No guards. No one.”

  “Not even Mael or—?” I couldn’t finish the question.

  Aiden shook his head. “They’ll come around.”

  That’s what I thought about Father.

  I felt like I should argue with Aiden about going to the feast, but I was relieved. I wanted to pull the walls of my chambers closer, like a blanket around me, until my heart stopped racing.

  Until I felt certain we could defeat the woman who had so completely invaded our lives.

  I wrote the note to Father under my brothers’ watchful eyes. Before Aiden left, I pulled a sleek, pale feather from one of the drawers and laid it on the desk.

  “I found this four days ago,” I told them.

  “The Queen attacked you, her wild men have entered the castle without surrendering their weapons, . . . and you’re showing us a feather,” said Cadan.

  Aiden elbowed him, but Gavyn picked up the feather and examined it. “Where did you find it?”

  “Just inside my open window.”

  Cadan rolled his eyes. “So a swan flew near Ryn’s window and a feather dropped in.”

  “It isn’t from a swan,” said Gavyn. “I’ve never seen a feather like this before.”

  The long drooping feather looked like the mother-of-pearl that traders brought to court. It glistened with pinks and yellows, greens and purples, and every shade in between.

  “It was inside your window?” asked Aiden.

  I nodded. “The window was open. But that’s not all.”

  Cadan half-shrugged: Go on!

  “I dreamed I heard singing that night. Or maybe I fell asleep to it. It was just there.”

  “That’s not very sinister,” said Cadan.

  “The singing wanted something from me—wanted me to fall into it, I think.” I glared at Cadan. “Like when Cadan wants me to believe one of his wild stories. Except this was more. It reminded me of the Queen, wanting me to surrender to it. So I didn’t.”

  “Because you are stubborn and irritating even in your dreams.” Cadan grinned.

  “Then what?” Aiden wasn’t smiling.

  I paused. This was why I hadn’t told them about it days ago.

  “Ryn?”

  “The castle burned. Sheets of fire covering everything. It felt like a threat. Or a warning. And then it was just the Queen and me. And I told her something. Just one word, I think. Or maybe two. And she disappeared.”

  Aiden put an arm around me. “I was a fool not to see who she was, Ryn. I left you unprotected.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not—”

  “We would have had nightmares if we’d recognized how evil the Queen was,” said Gavyn.

  “But that doesn’t explain the feather!” I protested.

  They just stared at me.

  “I don’t think it was a dream,” I said slowly, hoping they’d believe me. “I think she was trying to enchant me too.”

  “With a feather?” asked Cadan.

  “No! What if she sent the bird?”

  “She sent a bird to enchant you?”

  “Gavyn said he’s never seen anything like this feather! And when I wouldn’t be enchanted”—I faltered—“what I saw became a threat.”

  I felt like an idiot the moment I said it aloud. My brothers—even Cadan—were kind enough not to say they thought the same thing.

  “Ah,” said Gavyn, using a tone like he was talking to a child. “Except that if she was threatening you, she wouldn’t end it with you defeating her, would she?”

  He was right.

  And then Aiden was hugging me as he slipped out to prepare for the feast, and I was standing in my rooms, feeling like a little fool.

  “Come sit beside me, Ryn.” Cadan patted the spot on the bench by the fire. “We’ll sort this out.”

  “Will we?”

  “Of course we will!” He pointed to the new purple- and crimson-edged tapestry on the wall. “Little wonder you feel morbid with the Lady Rhiannon staring down at you!”

  He was trying to distract me, and I was grateful for it. I tucked my feet under my gown and leaned against him.

  “She used to scare me when I was little. I always tiptoed past her when I went to Mother’s chambers.”

  The Lady Rhiannon in the tapestry was beautiful—and fierce. She stood at a lake’s bank, her ankles in the water, her gold and green skirts floating around her, as if she’d just stepped into this world. Three birds gathered around her. Gold threads twisted with other colors etched their wings and the long plumage that trailed behind them. According to Declan, she was the Queen of the Otherworld. She ruled a realm with colors deeper than sight and music that echoed in bone and blood. Her birds, the adar rhiannon in the old tongue, could sing the heart’s deepest desire so that the souls of men would step away from death—or toward it, if she commanded her birds to sing so.

  “What sort of girl is scared by a tapestry?” teased Cadan. “And then hangs that tapestry in her room?”

  “You’ll think I’m silly.”

  “I already do. So tell me.”

  “I thought she’d step out of the tapestry and kidnap me.”

  Cadan snorted.

  “But I also liked her because she was in Mother’s room.”

  He sat quiet for a moment, the way he did when he didn’t want someone to guess how he felt.

  Then he studied the tapestry, eyes narrowed, before looking at me. “Please tell me you don’t think that your feather came from Lady Rhiannon.”

  “She doesn’t have feathers,” I said, trying to dodge the question.

  “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it. Do you think the Queen is Lady Rhiannon?”

  I’d have said no just to make Cadan stop. But as I looked at the tapestry, I realized I didn’t believe it either. The Lady was fierce and grand and the adar rhiannon could sing songs that wrapped human hearts around them, but . . .

  . . . the Queen was too small inside, somehow. Too hungry.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think she’s the Queen.”

  Cadan looked relieved. “Very well, then. So why did you bring this tapestry of a purely-mythical-figure-who-is-not-the-Queen into your room?”

  I rolled my eyes. Cadan could never be subtle.

  “It made Mother seem so grand to have the tapestry in her quarters. And I decided years ago I’d be brave enough to hang frightening tapestries in my room when I was a lady. So when she”—I hated calling her the Queen out loud—“stripped the tapestries from Mother’s quarters, I asked the servants for it.”

  “Even with the tear?”

  The tapestry ha
d been damaged in the move: an ugly tear crossed the Lady’s neck and the bodice of her dress.

  “Even with the tear.”

  Cadan chuckled. “You’re a funny thing, Ryn-girl. But Mother would be proud of you.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes.” And then, because Cadan could never stay serious: “She’d have her doubts about Owain, though. We all do.”

  A knock at the door made all of us jump. Gavyn opened it cautiously, then returned with a note bearing Father’s seal.

  “It’s for you, Ryn.”

  Chapter 5

  The note was from Father, written in his own hand, pressing me to attend the feast. He wanted to see me.

  Maybe the cloves had helped him remember more than I thought.

  “I’m going,” I told Cadan and Gavyn.

  That evening, I wore my favorite gown, an under-tunic of fine white linen with an over-tunic of blue velvet: blue like the background of the Cynwrig crest, blue like the sky the white swans flew through. I cinched it with a belt of finely wrought gold that had been Mother’s.

  Aiden was worried, despite Father’s request, and insisted that Gavyn and Cadan escort me to the Great Hall. But no danger lurked in the corridors—we didn’t even see any of the Queen’s wild men.

  And then we stood at the entrance to the Great Hall, my brothers on either side of me.

  Cadan paused at the doorway. “Are you ready, Ryn?”

  I thought of Father’s note and smiled. “Lead on!”

  “That’s my girl.” He nodded at Gavyn, and they each looped my hands through their arms like proper escorts.

  A moment later, we were in the Hall itself. Father sat at our table at the far end, on the raised dais. The walls were hung with the shields of long-dead warriors who had fought alongside the House of Cynwrig. Nobles sat at two long rows of tables positioned against the walls, and just near the dais, the great fireplace roared, sending shadows streaming and dancing.

  I felt a surge of pride as we walked to our table. We were all part of a great and grand kinship: a flight of swans bearing swords.

  Not even Father could forget that. He’d invited me here, despite all his wife had tried to do.

  Finally, we stopped before the dais and the table where my family and the ambassador would dine. When I looked up, Father was smiling down at me.