The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “And if the key is the real one?” she demanded, torn. “You’ll vanish with it, leave me stranded here among the dragons. Why should you take the trouble to return me, and face my cousin and the firebird again?”

  “It can’t be the true key.” He turned his face restlessly away from her. “Your cousin is too shrewd.”

  She knelt, chipped a piece of ice with the crystal, and put it to his lips. There was color in his face now, a feverish glitter in his eyes. “Why,” she asked abruptly, frowning down at him, “did you pick that rose for me?”

  “Because,” he said softly, “you made me remember what words like honor and courage mean. Why did you pick up the rose instead of the sword?”

  She sighed, defeated. “I wish I knew.” She turned, lifted the dripping icicle out of his boot. She held the boot upside-down; the key dropped out onto the ground.

  He picked it up, studied it curiously. He traced the crescent moon of ivory with his forefinger, and then the letter that clung in gold to the dark of the moon. She watched his face.

  “Which is it?”

  He shook his head. “Every spell carries somewhere in it the mage’s signature. It may be the order in which things are done. Or the favorite spellbook used. Or some familiar element. Chrysom liked riddles. Unexpected images. Your cousin had no time for that. This has no centuries clinging to it. No riddles except for its shape. Nothing of Chrysom’s; something of a mage I wouldn’t have recognized.”

  “How do you know so much about Chrysom? Is Saphier in another time? Or are you a thousand years old?”

  “I like to wander . . . sometimes I wander in and out of time. I learned things, watching Chrysom. I would go and build his fires, fetch things—”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “He never asked where I was from. But we spoke of time, how it turns and loops. . . . He knew I didn’t belong there. He spoke of a spellbook of time he had written. He had hidden it, but he gave me hints, from time to time, when I came. From time to time.” He smiled a little, holding the key one way, and then another. His smile faded; he saw the shadow behind the key. “So you see I must return to Ro Holding.”

  “Why?” she asked wearily. “What more do you need to know of time? You and Nyx will only fight each other.”

  “I must have the key. I need it. Your cousin only wants it out of curiosity. I need it for my life.”

  “Tell her that,” she said, startled. “She’ll help you.”

  “Mages don’t help one another.”

  “In Ro Holding—”

  “Not in Saphier. And I can’t tell her why. I can’t even whisper it to air. Not in Saphier. And most certainly not in that tower in front of the firebird.”

  “Why? What are you to the firebird?”

  He kindled a tiny flame out of nothing, set the crescent moon on fire. “Once,” he said, “we were friends.” He let the flame devour moon and letter and shaft, like a candle, until the flame danced on a tear of gold on his palm. He blew it out, let the tear melt into the ground, and buried it. “Now,” he explained, “there is only that much of your cousin to be found in Saphier. What is her name?”

  “Nyx Ro.”

  His brows went up. “She is—”

  “The Holder’s heir.”

  “And you, Meguet Vervaine?”

  “Her cousin.”

  “And?” He smiled a little at her silence. “The woman who sees into time. You saw the dragon’s shadow. It takes a great, complex power to find the dragon.” His eyes wandered to the jagged, barren thrusts of rock, the varying hues of gold and dust, the plumes of steam. “That’s why I love these deserts. From the time I was young, I could catch glimpses of the dragons. A shadow. A wing folded into a rock. A roar that is not wind. Light that is not sun. If you saw an entire shadow, it is more than most see in a lifetime. I dream of seeing them emerge from stone and air and light. . . .”

  “Are they ghosts?” she asked, entranced.

  “No. I think they shift in and out of time. Which is why,” he added obscurely, “I need that key.”

  “Can’t you open the book without it? If you know Chrysom’s ways?”

  “I do know Chrysom’s ways,” he said, but no more. He slid his hand into his pocket, brought out the little cube of gold. “You used a dragon’s tooth to start that fire,” he commented. Her eyes widened, going to the crystal. “And claws for the canopy. They leave pieces of themselves around.”

  “I heard one snoring, I think, in the ice cave.”

  “I tried to see that one. No light will shine in that dark, not even fire. It lives in some black plane so cold its breath freezes even in this heat. It must look like its own shadow, to the human eye.” He set the cube down on the ground.

  “What is that?”

  “Supplies. For when I travel.” He murmured something. One side of the cube opened; he shook a water skin out of it. “Size,” he said, as Meguet’s eye tried to fit the full skin back into the tiny cube, “is illusion. I didn’t want to frighten you before, with my sorcery.” He shifted to hand her the skin, then sagged back wearily, settling himself into the ground as if he drew some deep, healing comfort from it. “I have a house in a village on the edge of the desert. I can take us both that far. I need to rest before I return to Ro Holding. You saved my life, but there wasn’t much of it left. If I hadn’t taken you with me, I would be lying here dreaming while the sun and the sand and the carrion snakes worked their magic on me.”

  She brought the skin down incredulously, splashing herself. “You deliberately brought me with you? To help you?”

  “I hoped you would. I was desperate. But I didn’t expect—” He shifted again, his eyes on the dark spikes holding up her billowing skirt above his head. “I didn’t expect you to find ice in the desert. I didn’t expect you to see the dragon’s shadow.”

  She looked at him, frowning again, but feeling the strange desert working its magic of light and illusion into her bones. She said abruptly, “Do you have a name?”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I thought you’d never ask. My name in Draken Saphier’s court is something he gave me, and that only mages use. In this place I love, where I was born, my name is Rad Ilex.”

  - Seven -

  In the black tower, Nyx waited for the mage and the moon.

  The Gatekeeper came before either one of them, at evening when the household had gathered for supper and the yard was calm. Nyx, deep in contemplation of Chrysom’s key, which opened nothing in itself that she could find, scarcely heard him knock. She lifted her eyes to find him in front of her, an occurrence so rare that for a moment she wondered if the tower were the gate and the Gatekeeper watched them both. Then she remembered why he had come.

  “Hew.” She pulled her bare feet off the nearest chair. “Sit down.”

  He shook his head. “I came to ask you.”

  “About Meguet.” She was silent a moment, studying him, her eyes luminous with sleeplessness. Gatekeepers of Ro House were rooted like stone and vine to the house. When they grew old, they wandered away looking for an heir to some peculiar power which Nyx had never explored. The Gatekeeper, his own face set and shadowed with weariness, did not look accessible to exploration. But a part of him had gotten tangled in the fire’s enchantments, the night before; she was aware he had been there, though in what form she was not quite certain. Instead of waiting, like the mage’s dragon, for moonlight to free him, he was on his feet in front of her, looking perplexed. If, as she suspected, he saw everything that came and went in and out of Ro House, including ghosts and portents and the Cygnet itself, he would have known Meguet had gone. But not where.

  “I thought,” he said, “the bird might have told you something by now about where it came from.”

  “It’s a good guess that’s where the mage took Meguet,” Nyx said. “But where is still a mystery. He left something here; he may still return.”

  “With Meguet?”

  “If not,” she said grimly, “I’ll search for he
r.”

  He sat down then, his head bowed, his eyes on the floor where it had opened like a mist to Meguet’s falling. Would it, Nyx wondered suddenly, open also to the Gatekeeper who opened and closed every door? But he did not seem inclined to dive headlong into solid stone. He asked, “Where would you look? Or would you just fling yourself blind into time beyond Ro Holding? Did the bird or mage give you a word to guide you?”

  “Not yet. Why? Do you know of places beyond Ro Holding?”

  “Me? No. I know the gate and the house and the back swamps of the Delta. The winds don’t blow me names of other places. And even so, what name would mean more than another? Unless you could tell me.”

  “And what would it be worth then? Would you leave the gate for Meguet?”

  He lifted his head, met her eyes, his own colored like the silvery bog-mosses and about as transparent. “You would leave the house for her.”

  “My mother told me to find Meguet. I have no intention of finding out what life is like with my mother and without Meguet.” He said nothing, still waiting for an answer; she added, “I’ll find her. If the mage brings her back, I’ll do what I must. If I have to search for her, I do have the means and I’ll discover how and where any way I can. It’s only a question of time.”

  “I have more than enough of that, during the night at the gate.”

  She was silent again. Something vital hovered beyond her memory: He had been in the tower, seen the mage and Meguet, but in what shape? Had she seen his face? Or only something she recognized as Gatekeeper that had entered a mage-locked room, and had been transformed by the bird’s fire just long enough to have known what became of Meguet? She eased back in her chair. Meguet would remember. She said softly, “What time you have is counted by the movement of the Cygnet’s stars. I’ll find Meguet. If you leave the gate, my mother will only have me searching for you as well.”

  He stirred a little. “And if you leave? Who will search for you? How far beyond the Cygnet’s eye can you go, before you come to a gate without a Gatekeeper to open it?” She stared at him; he met her eyes again and said more plainly, “There is only one gate in this house and everything enters and leaves by it. Including the odd mage. It’s bad enough losing Meguet to a place with no name. But you are more than mage, and if you vanish from this house without the Holder’s knowledge, if you leave the named world, then you must either find yourself another Gatekeeper, or pay the one you’ve got with a time and a place to find you in. Gatekeepers grow old at the gate; they don’t get thrown out of it before their time. Which is what will likely happen to me if I let you out under strange stars.”

  “You let Meguet go. And the mage.” He said nothing; she straightened, frowning. “Hew, what are you seeing that I missed?”

  “I only want to know where you go when you go. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “You’re not asking. You’re making demands. You’re only asking what little you’re asking so that you can search for Meguet if I fail.”

  “Both,” he said softly. “Both of you.”

  “How? If you cannot leave the gate?”

  “It’s not a question anyone will bother asking if the Holder loses you. Least of all me.” His face eased a little, at her expression. “It’s only what you didn’t notice, following Chrysom’s path into sorcery. A little household magic. It’s an ancient house, and it has its ways and means. I’m one of them. That’s all.”

  “Is it?” she breathed. “Is that all you are? A little household magic?”

  “You know that. It’s why you’ve been talking to me, instead of telling me politely to mind my business and let you mind yours.”

  “You could stop me from using all the power of Chrysom’s sorcery to go where I want?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a power with a singular purpose. To protect the Cygnet. Only that. Tell me where you are going, beyond the Cygnet’s eye, and you are free to go.”

  “But why you?” she asked, fascinated. “Why must it be you who will come searching for us? You are bound by household magic to the gate.”

  “And by other magics to Meguet,” he said softly. “That’s why it must be me. How is what I’ll figure out later.” He rose; she watched him, wordless. His eyes flicked at the firebird, then back to her. “You must make him remember. Or time, for you, will begin and end at the gate to Ro House. It’s the way of the house, to protect.”

  “Will I know these things when I am Holder? All the household magics? Or should I begin to ferret them out now?”

  He smiled his tight, wry smile. “I don’t know. It’s my guess that whatever you want the house will give you. There’s never been a mage-Holder of Ro Holding. Once you start looking, who knows what you’ll find?” He bent his head and left her staring at the door he closed behind him.

  After a time, she transferred her gaze to the firebird. It was nearing moonrise; the sky at the bird’s back had grown milky. “You,” she said, “must find a way to remember.”

  The bird cried its silent cry, then was still again, waiting for the moon. Moonlight touched it. The bird spread its white wings, dropped down from the ledge. As it reached stone, it changed: Brand stood in a mingling of moonlight and candlelight. Other enchantments changed: The amber-sealed books were free; garnet and opal petals swirled together to form a glittering mist that slowly dispersed. Beside the hearth, leaves of pearl and bone drew together, formed the mage’s dragon. Hovering in the shadow of the wrong world, it seemed both real and unreal. Fire picked out a scallop of thread along one unfurled wing, turned it into a delicate layering of flesh and bone.

  Nyx, marvelling at it, froze it with a word before it could fly. She heard Brand move and turned quickly, but he had only stepped closer to see the dragon. Memories struggled into his face. He whispered,

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Rad Ilex. The mage I fought last night.”

  “He hasn’t come back yet. Why do you want to kill him?”

  “Because—” He stopped, linked his fingers over his eyes. His voice came harsh with pain. “He betrayed my father. He betrayed me. He trapped me in the firebird’s shape. His face is the last thing I remember, the first thing the firebird saw.”

  “Why?” She stood as motionless as the dragon, scarcely daring to ask questions, lest the sound of her voice disturb the fragile cob-weave of his remembering. “Why did he put you under that spell?”

  He was silent a long time; his shoulders dragged. “I don’t remember,” he said bitterly.

  “Do you remember who you are?”

  “I am Brand Saphier.” His hands slid away from his eyes; he turned. His face looked ashen, haunted, but his past had etched expression back into it. “My father is Draken, Lord of Saphier.”

  Nyx’s eyes flicked, at the name, to the dragon at his feet. “Draken?”

  “His father was a dragon.”

  Wordless, Nyx found herself staring at him, searching for the dragon. She found the firebird instead, its beautiful, proud, ruthless face within Brand’s face, as if some boundary between enchantment and truth had grown strangely fluid. She said finally, softly, “Sit down.” She sat at the table, still studying him, wondering if the spellbound man would prove even more exotic than the spell.

  She said, “In Ro Holding, there are no tales of dragons. You could walk the four Holds and find maybe four people who even know the word. Setting aside physical complications, is that customary behavior in Saphier, humans mating with dragons?”

  He shook his head. “Some say there are no dragons in Saphier, only the memories of dragons. But my father’s mother went to the desert in south Saphier and came back with child. She ruled Saphier, and if she said her child was dragon-seed, no one would argue. The dragon was a great mage, she said, capable of changing shape. My father—” His voice caught. He gripped the arms of his chair, his eyes widening, as other memories shifted into place. “My father.” He rose, paced, the tower room no longer a haven but a cage. “I wonde
r how long I have been gone. If he knows what happened to me.”

  “He must be searching for you.”

  “He may be mourning me, for all I know.” He added savagely, “With Rad Ilex beside him.”

  “Is Rad Ilex your father’s mage?”

  He looked perplexed by the question. “My father’s court is full of mages. My father is very powerful; he trains mages, those with special gifts, like Rad. It’s not like this house. You seem to be the only mage. And you have little sense of order.” She drew a breath, but found no argument. “Or manners.”

  “What?”

  “No mage would speak to my father the way you speak to the Holder.”

  “She’s my mother,” Nyx protested.

  “Perhaps it is because you have all the power in this house.” He turned, pacing again; she stared at his back. “The mage would be stripped of power.”

  Nyx’s brows lifted. She picked up a wine cup, blew the dust out of it and filled it. She took a sip, watched him turn, pace back. “Is that where Rad Ilex took Meguet? To your father’s court?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps, if my father still trusts him.”

  She took another swallow, set the cup down. “Fortunately, Meguet’s manners are better than mine. Who is this Rad Ilex? Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” He stopped, turned his face away. Nyx saw him tremble, in rage or grief, she couldn’t tell. “He was born in the Luxour Desert, and he came to my father when he was a boy and said there were dragons everywhere in south Saphier. There have always been rumors of dragons. Crystals that look like dragon’s teeth. Spiky plants that die and turn black and look like claws. My father always wanted to see dragons. He wanted to become one, like his father. He wanted to find his father, he taught by him. He says that a mage-fire like no other power runs through the blood of dragons and he wants that power. So when Rad said he saw dragons, my father took him into the house to train.”

  The door opened. Servants summoned by moonlight entered, bearing supper. Brand roamed again; Nyx watched him, wondering if he had come to the end of his memories, or the heart of them. He came back to the table, stood gazing down at the trays. “That’s what I can’t remember,” he said at last, tightly. “That’s where the wall is. I can remember loving Rad. And now I hate him. I would kill him as quickly as I tried to destroy his dragon. But I don’t remember why.”