The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  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?”

  “Maybe,” Nyx said softly. Her eyes were wide, luminous; they seemed to look through Meguet. “Maybe one.” Meguet, recognizing that expression, felt herself grow very still; she seemed to pick out of Nyx’s mind the jewel that hung there. “You do it so easily, Meguet, when you need to, but I have never tried. Yet I saw it all within the Cygnet’s eye. . . .”

  “What?” Calyx and the Holder asked together.

  “All the fractured moments within the whole, like light fractured within the prism . . . a moment shifting into all its layers. If I could throw the bird’s cries into another layer of time, we would not hear them and it would still have its voice. I have taken its fire. That cry is its heart and the only word it knows. I will not take its heart.” She paused, her eyes clinging to Meguet in lieu of the great dark prism beneath the tower that was the Cygnet’s eye. “I looked into the Cygnet’s eye, and saw its power. But did it only show me things I could never know? Or did I take that power?” Meguet, transfixed, birdlike, could not look away. The room was soundless. “You wander through the walls of time at need; so did I, that one time, flying faster than thought. But can I wander at will? I am the Cygnet’s heir: Did it give me only what I needed, or what I wanted? I wanted everything I saw. . . . For that one moment, I flew within time, but did I fly? Or did the Cygnet?” The black tower walls wrapped around her like the small, circular chamber at the heart of Chrysom’s maze. Concentrating, her gaze still on Meguet, she saw the black prism, the faceted eye of power, hanging in the still darkness within a triple ring of time. “You could cry into that silence,” she told the bird. “I did.”

  The bird cried. She heard it standing once again beneath the great prism, which was no longer dark, but fire-white, sculpted with planes of light. The cry filled the chamber, buried deep where only the Cygnet would hear it. It cried, and cried again; the stone walls echoed with its tale, as if it had found the safe and secret place to tell it. Nyx, gazing into the prism, listening for one familiar word, saw Meguet’s face reflected in every plane. Then she saw Meguet, in the shadows on the other side of the prism, caught in the tangle of cries, as if Nyx, using her face to open memory, had pulled her into the fractured time.

  She blinked; the prism faded, and she saw Meguet’s face again, a stillness in it like the stillness of stone. The mage’s tower circled them again, with its triple ring of stone and night and time. Color flooded suddenly into Meguet’s face; she stared, incredulously, at Nyx. The bird cried, but its cries were soundless now, its story hidden.

  The Holder and Calyx were both on their feet.

  “Where did you go?” Calyx demanded, astonished. “You both vanished.”

  “I sent the bird cry into the heart of the maze,” Nyx said. She ran her hands through her hair wearily, scattering jewels, her eyes on Meguet. “I seem to have pulled us both along with it.”

  “That’s not possible,” the Holder said. She appealed to Meguet. “Is it?”

  “No.” She drew breath, shivering slightly. “There was no need for me there.”

  “I needed you,” Nyx said. “You took me there in memory. Who knows which of us guided whom? The bird is crying to the Cygnet instead of to us, which means we can all sleep soundly.” She dropped her hand on Meguet’s shoulder, and smiled a little, tightly. “Maybe that’s all we did: walk back into memory, and leave, appropriately, a bird cry there.”

  Meguet, still standing tensely, shook her head. “You shifted time,” she said simply, “not memory.” She paused, listening to her words, or to other words echoing under the moonlight. The Holder said softly, her dark, troubled eyes on the sorceress’s face,

  “‘All the time I hold.”’

  - Four -

  Meguet watched the dawn unfurl like a wing of fire across the Delta. She had wakened early, anticipating a summons, and had seen the Gatekeeper, anticipating dawn, extinguish the torches beside the gate. Beyond the wall, the waves picked up light, rolled it into scrolls and unrolled it again, like a spell in some forgotten language across the sand. She dressed quickly, without waking her attendants, pulling swans down her wrists and across her shoulders, for despite the mysteries and magic, there was yet another prosaic day of council ahead of them, if they could dodge the sorcery falling headlong out of the air. She braided her hair as she went down. Crossing the yard, she caught a breath of the moist, dank sweetness of the inner swamps, lily and mud and still, secret waters. The Gatekeeper’s face turned toward it; she wondered if he had smelled it, too, if he were breathing in memories. And then he saw her.

  His breakfast followed close behind her. He shared it with her, the tray balanced between them in the tiny turret. He buttered hot bread for her, offered pale, spiced wine from his cup, peeled quail’s eggs. She nibbled, weary and absent-minded, listening, in some deep part of her, for the Holder’s voice.

  He said, “I saw light all night from the mage’s tower.”

  Her eyes, following the white thread of a gull’s flight, flicked to his face. “Then you were awake all night.”

  “I thought it best,” he said wryly, “the way things have been getting past me.” He cut wafer-thin strips of melon and passed her one. “I don’t know what to expect next.”

  She saw then the familiar shadows under his eyes, that came when he saw too little or too much in the small lonely hours of the night. She set the tray aside abruptly, shifted to sit beside him.

  “Nobody knows,” she said, and told him what the firebird had said, what Nyx had done. When she finished, her head in the hollow of his shoulder to dodge the flood of morning light, he commented,

  “She has a way with birds.”

  Meguet lifted her head, eyed him narrowly. He let her see the faintest line of a smile beside his mouth. “You had better be smiling,” she said dourly.

  He smoothed her hair. “It’s not so long ago that she had us all dancing at shadows because of birds. Now here’s another over the gate so fast it left the Gatekeeper of Ro House standing with his mouth open in a wake of pinfeathers. I might as well row myself back to the swamp.”

  “Take me with you,” she sighed. “I’m house-bound with this council. I want to pick lilies in a bog and have you braid them in my hair.”

  “They must be getting edgy, the Hold Councils.”

  “They’re curious. I’m edgy. The Holder looks as if she swallowed a thunderbolt. Her house was spellbound by a mage with no good intentions who may or may not return, and her heir is up in Chrysom’s tower with a bird who may be trouble or may not, but most likely has trouble on its tail. In the middle of this, she has to sit through speeches about sheep.”

  “What kind of trouble does she look for from the firebird?”

  “The mage who cast the spell.”

  He made a soft sound, stirring. “Another one? How many mages are we looking at?”

  “Maybe this one will knock on the gate.”

  “They don’t seem in the habit of knocking. Why would
a mage twist a man out of his shape for all but a few moonlit hours? Only to make him remember that he’s human?”

  “That’s all he does remember.”

  “Not what he did to get himself turned into a bird?”

  Meguet was silent, thinking of the cries that came and went across the man’s face like lightning across a barren landscape. She said, “The bird remembers.”

  “But not the man.” His eyes strayed seaward. “So. I must watch for a dangerous and cold-blooded mage.”

  “If he’s still alive. And if—” She paused again, her brows crooked uncertainly, her eyes on another bird: the Cygnet, flying across the mantle of the bell ringer entering the north tower to summon the councilors together.

  “And if what? What do you see, Meguet?”

  She blinked, her thoughts clearing. “I see that I must leave you.”

  “If what?” he asked insistently, holding her with nothing more than the tone of his voice, his eyes. She gazed back at him, perplexed, hearing again the terrible, desperate cry of the firebird.

  “If,” she said, “the bird is innocent.”

  * * *

  Nyx, present to the outward eye during the council that day, was so preoccupied that Calyx touched her once or twice, wondering obviously if she were still breathing. All her attention was focused in the high tower room, where the mage might return. He would want the key. He would guess that she had hidden it in a different place. She had spent some time before dawn trying to turn it invisible, or change its shape into one of Calyx’s hoary household records, or a rose among the hundreds on the tower vines. It resisted all enchantment. She gave up finally and put it in her pocket, a solution which would have horrified the Holder. Nyx did not approve of it herself, but she had run out of ideas by morning. The mage might disrupt the council, demanding the key, but the worst he would most likely do would be to give everyone something to talk about besides border tolls. The bird, she suspected with no particular evidence, might fare differently. So she had separated them, the key and the bird, in hope that the strange, ruthless mage, seeking one mystery, would ignore the other.

  She carried the key with her to the great hall in the third tower, where the councilors ate savory delicacies with their fingers, drank wine, and continued their endless debates while families and guests slowly gathered from woods and gardens, city shops and neighbors’ houses, for supper. She had promised the Holder that for one evening at least, she would not shut herself up behind another locked door with yet another bird. But birds and rumors shadowed her, it seemed. As she bit into melted cheese wrapped in butter pastry, young Darl Kell of Hunter Hold, who had eyes like some of the frogs she had used in her fires, asked with a bluntness he meant to be charming,

  “Is it one of yours?”

  She raised a brow mutely, her tongue busy dodging hot cheese.

  “The great bird in the tower. A bit of your leftover magic from the swamp?”

  She coughed on a pastry crumb. “No,” she said when she could speak. “If nothing else, I’m tidy. If I transform something, it stays transformed, and I don’t leave it a voice to complain with.”

  Darl Kell flushed to his broad ears. “You’re not like your sisters,” he said, and stalked off to gaze at Calyx. Nyx brushed crumbs off her silk and wished she could be as tidy in life as she was in art. Someone pushed wine into her hand and said, his voice too close to her ear,

  “He could stand some room for improvement, if you’re in the mood to transform.”

  She looked up, into the smiling eyes of Urbin Dacey, whose father led the Withy Hold Council. He was tall and black-haired and amber-eyed. She had noticed those eyes several times during the council, and had wondered what perversity they watched for. She took a sip of wine, and answered equably,

  “I don’t transform by whim. And I don’t practice such sorcery on humans.”

  “Pity. His ears could stand some.” He turned deftly, lifted a plate of stuffed mushrooms as she opened her mouth. “What sorcery do you allow yourself to practice on humans?”

  “As little as poss—”

  “You have been practicing some on me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve felt it in the council chamber. You meet my eyes with your pale moon eyes. You draw at me. Calyx is very beautiful, but she is day, and you are night, secret, beautiful, mysterious, perhaps dangerous. Are you dangerous at night?”

  Nyx gazed at him, a mushroom halted midway to her mouth. “What in Moro’s name are you talking about?”

  His smile never faltered. “I believe I make myself clear. I am falling a little in love with you.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She bit into the mushroom, added, chewing, “Love is the last thing on your mind.”

  He was silent, looking down at her so long that she wondered if she had left mushroom in some unsightly place. “It’s a game,” he said lightly. “You should learn to play it. It gives the world grace.”

  He slid the glass from her hand, took a sip of wine, and slipped it back between her fingers. She said softly, “And how well you play it. You must practice often.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “Unfortunately, I lack grace.” She set the glass on the table and stood quietly, not moving or speaking, simply looking at him until his smile finally faltered and he turned away.

  She picked up the glass again, took a hefty swallow. Someone else stepped to her side and marvelled, “You made Urbin Dacey blush.”

  She lowered the glass with some relief. “Rush.”

  He brushed a crumb off her sleeve. “It takes a complex sorcery to discomfit Urbin. He won’t give up easily, though. I’ve seen him watching you. He plays a game he hates to lose.”

  “I have no time for games,” she said, feeling the weight of the key in her pocket. Rush looked at her silently a moment; she glimpsed a familiar curiosity in his eyes and wondered what realm she had neglected to explore. He asked the question in his eyes.

  “Does sorcery preclude love?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s not in Chrysom’s books.”

  “Is that all you—” he began, then saw he was being teased. He smiled a little, still curious, while she helped herself to a plate of tiny biscuits rolled in poppy seeds and spices. She said, because he wanted to know,

  “I take after my mother, who roamed Ro Holding when she was young and found three fathers for three daughters. Sorcery does not preclude curiosity, and I have satisfied my curiosity at times. But—”

  “With whom?”

  Like her mother, she ignored the question. “But you have to stand still for love. I could never stand still.”

  “Like Urbin,” he said, then flushed a little. But she mulled that over calmly.

  “Maybe. But at least I’m honest.”

  “Yes,” he said, not looking at her, but she saw the memories in his eyes. “Urbin has a thousand ways of saying one thing. You don’t hide behind language, which is why he can’t find, among his thousand ways, the one way to make you listen. Neither could I,” he added, but lightly, and she smiled, seeing no bitterness in his eyes.

  “Now,” she said, “we listen to one another.” She touched his arm and turned, to find Arlen Hunter in her path, who had come to tell her what he believed about her, and what he didn’t, feeling it was important for her to know. She extracted herself abruptly from his muddle of awe and prurience, deciding that no effort to please her mother was worth becoming civilized for this. She slipped away to wait for moonrise.

  Across the hall, Meguet, disarmed, dressed in red silk and gold, found siege laid against her own patience. Tur Hunter, blue-eyed, golden-haired, heir to Hunter Hold, had lost, he said, his heart to her green eyes. He was smiling, but relentless, burning hot and cold, and willing to fight a slight to his pride. She said carefully, “My own heart is bound to this house; my eyes are not free to stray.”

  “Not from the gate?” he said, his smile thinning, and she felt the blood rise in her face. “Your whims a
re your business, but you should have some respect for your own heritage. What in Moro’s name can you do with a Gatekeeper?”

  “Love him,” she said simply, with no tact whatsoever. Tur Hunter snorted, flushing.

  “What will you do? Marry him and live among the cottagers?”

  She shrugged slightly. “I hadn’t thought. If past is status, some among the cottagers can trace their families back a thousand years, when Moro Ro’s status in Ro Holding was that he had a bigger cottage than anyone else and a bloodier sword.”

  “And what does your Gatekeeper have?” he retorted. “Born among tortoises and river rats, he still has the swamp in his voice. You’ll tire of that soon enough.”

  “Then,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort, “it is not worth your breath to interfere, since I will cast him aside eventually over the cadence of lilies and slow dark water and small birds in his voice.”

  Tur was silent a breath, then changed weapons. “Now,” he said solicitously, and took her hand in his, “I have put you in the position of having to defend him. I have made you angry. That was hardly my intention. If the Holder hasn’t interfered in your infatuation with the murkier side of the Delta, it must be because she is wiser than I am, and knows it is like the elusive, colorful swamp lights, of little substance and will burn itself out. Tell me what I can do to persuade you to forgive me.”

  She almost suggested something. But the Holder was beside her suddenly, as if summoned by the swamp lights smoldering in the air between them.

  “Tur,” she said, fixing a dark eye upon him, “stop trying to lure my niece to Hunter Hold; I need her here. She is one of the foundation stones of this house, like my Gatekeeper, and I won’t free her for all the gold in Hunter Hold. Go and get me wine and take it outside and drink it.” She took Meguet’s arm, forcing Tur to loose her hand, and led her to the hearth. It was cold, unoccupied, and offered a moment of privacy within the crowded hall.