The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Then why did you never turn your back on them and leave?”

  “Because by then you yourself live within the ruined palaces; you have inherited the forgotten kingdoms.” She stood up on the rock, let her hair flow on the wild currents. She held out her hand. There was a blood-red jewel on her forefinger: a dragon’s eye. “Come with me. I’ll show you where I live, among the lizards and the sand beetles and the blue-eyed snakes. There’s a well of water beneath the rocks, so deep I never touch the bottom when I bathe in it. A dragon sleeps at the bottom of the well. Sometimes at noon when sunlight pours between the rocks, I glimpse it, coiled, golden as the light. Come. I’ll show you.”

  “I cannot,” Meguet said gently. “I must cross the Luxour. I dare not be distracted by it.”

  “So I felt, when I was much younger. That a hundred reasons compelled me across the desert. But after a time, I realized there was no reason for me not to stay. No reason at all. What compels you?”

  “I must get to Draken Saphier’s court.”

  “Draken Saphier.” The woman’s face smoothed, as if she barely remembered the name. Then she gave a sudden laugh. It held memory, ambiguity, a touch of rue. “The Dragon of Saphier. I was in Saphier when his mother ruled.” She was silent a little, her silver-blue eyes looking inward. “Perhaps that’s why I lost myself in the Luxour so long ago. I, too, wanted the dragon’s child. But—” She tossed her hands lightly, freeing memory. “I could never find the dragon. If you stay long enough, Draken Saphier will come here. The Luxour will call him home.” She waited; when Meguet did not answer, she turned, slipped away among the ruins, as swiftly and easily as a desert animal. Her voice drifted back. “The world beyond the Luxour is the dream. Stay here.”

  Meguet rose. As she stepped out of shadow, light pressed down at her again, trying to melt her, reshape her into something shrunken and flat that huddled close against the earth. She drew long scarves around her face, her head, and marked a path from stone to stone, shadow to shadow. Water, the desert-mage had said. A well. Deep water. But perhaps that was also a dream, for nothing grew out of the ground but rocks. Still, she remembered the ice cave, the dragon’s cold breath. The memory itself cooled her until she reached another shadow. Stay, the desert said. Sit. Wait. There is no end to me, I am everywhere, and you will never find your way beyond me. There is no path out of me. Stop here. Stay. Rest. But she refused to listen, even when the light pressed her head down, her eyelids closed as she walked. The light was dragon’s breath; the Dragon hunted the Cygnet . . . She walked across the face of the sun itself, and she told the desert: I have fought the sun and lived. She stumbled into shadow and back into endless fire, and again into shadow until both sun and shadow weighed her down, and time and the sun seemed to have stopped.

  Finally the hot black cooled; the sun loosed its grip of the desert. A lavender sky began to darken, reveal the first faint stars. She heard water bubbling around her, smelled sulphur. Her mouth felt stuffed with sand, her body worn like old stone. She sat, felt for the water skin, took a few sips of warm water. Her eyes burned suddenly, though she had nothing left for tears; her body shook in a sudden, noiseless sob of fear and despair. She calmed herself, watching the night deepen, the stars grow huge, impossibly close. She saw no shimmering wings, no shadows unfolding to block the stars. Perhaps all she had ever seen were Rad Ilex’s dreams. The vast, warm dark, the star-shot silence comforted her. Others have been lost here and lived, she thought. And I’m not lost yet. She ate fruit that had fermented in the heat, cheese that would not last another day. She lay back again, above the ground along a ledge of stone, feeling the stone pull at her bones as if to draw her into itself. Tomorrow, she thought, I’ll walk before dawn. Just before she fell asleep, she saw the stars flow together against the dark, shape themselves into the dragon’s face.

  The next day she walked into the dragon’s heart.

  It was vast, golden, seething with hidden fires that blazed within stone, sand, shadow. Plumes of steam blurred the landscape, were snatched up and shredded by winds that blasted from the dragon’s mouth. Mud bubbled and belched; the ground hissed. Even the air she breathed burned, rank and fiery with steam. Sometimes she could barely see to cross the sun’s path; other times sun was everywhere, glowing in water, leaping out of raw crystals or dragon’s eyes. Steam or dragon’s breath trailed through the ruins, shaped ghostly faces where windows might have been. The ruins gave some shelter from the light, and the hot, stinging winds, but even their shadows burned. She made some attempt to capture lizards, shards of sun or shadow that scattered at her footfall and darted among the rocks. But they were too quick, and she couldn’t remember which Rad had told her not to eat. She ate dried, crumbled bread, a withering apple. Her eyes closed, She forced herself to rise, find her direction. She could barely see the dragon’s backbone pointing east and west behind her; the great towers, the roiling steam, half-hid it. At least it was still behind her; she hadn’t begun drifting in circles. The broken fragments of the lost kingdom rose everywhere in front of her. She could only sketch a path from one shadow to the next, and hope they did not shift themselves from place to place, stones and memories of stone, like some moving labyrinth, to trap her there. She walked until she turned gold with dust, and her thoughts under the violent heat were distilled to vapor, blown away before she could grasp them. Finally, a dragon-claw of light raked through her eyes, into her mind, and, between one step and another, she fell into her shadow.

  She tasted water, impossibly sweet and cold. She tried to speak, and choked. A hand cradled her head, raised it. She opened her eyes, trying again to speak, and saw a stranger turned away from her as he set the water skin down. Behind him stood a great dragon the color of twilight. Its eyes were stars, its wings, opening, spread purple-grey across the sky. She tried to rise, managed to lift one hand. The stranger turned to her. The dragon breathed; night swirled around her, a blinding dark without a star.

  When she woke again, a vast, silvery tide had swept across the sky. The dragon, looming against the night, was a shadow limned by stars. One star had fallen near her, giving out a soft, unwavering glow in spite of the restless winds. The stranger sat outside the circle of its light; she saw his loose, pale desert garb straying in the wind. He might have been dreaming or watching dragons, but he sensed her waking. She saw a flash of silver beneath his sleeve as he reached out to touch the fallen star. It burned brighter, sent its soft light washing over her face; his was still in shadow.

  She asked, “Is the dragon yours?” Her voice sounded thin, far-away, as if she were dreaming it. But he heard her; he had risen suddenly, noiselessly, to scan the dark.

  “What dragon?”

  “The one there against the stars.”

  He saw it; she heard his breath. Then he settled himself again. “It’s stone.” His voice was low, dispassionate. “Sometimes I think these great stones change shape at night, wander where they will. . . .” He passed her the water skin. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “You will be.” He passed her another skin, of honey wine. She drank a little, and closed her eyes. She saw dragon wings, sheer and delicate as moth wings, dusted with stars. She remembered then where she was going and why, and dragged her eyes open.

  “I must go.” But she could barely lift her head. He took something out of a pouch, began peeling it; the wind brought her the impossible scent of oranges. He passed her a section, ate one himself. “It’s easy to get lost at night, even for a mage.”

  The desert, it seemed, abounded with mages. “How many dragon years have you been here?”

  He was silent; she felt him study her. “Not long enough,” he said at last, “to be unsurprised by everything. Have you taken to dwelling in the desert?”

  “No.”

  “Then you came to see dragons.”

  “No.”

  He handed her another piece of orange. “Then why are you walking through the heart of the Luxour?”

  “I’m
travelling north.”

  “From where?”

  She did not, she realized, even know the name of Rad’s village. “South.”

  “Most people,” he commented after a moment, “would have followed the river around the desert.”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “The Luxour slows time for those who hurry; it elongates itself. It hides itself from the curious; it shows itself to the innocent, and the unwary. It works its own magic.” His voice sounded detached, as if his attention were roaming the desert around them, peering into moon-shadows, listening to the winds. “It is a place of enormous power, and when you reach for that power, it slips away to return when you have stopped looking for it.”

  Scanning the night for intimations of such power, she saw only a great, sinuous spiral of stars following the moon’s path, that reminded her of Rad’s white dragon. She thought of him, drugged by some deep, healing sleep, and of the white dragon in Chrysom’s tower, and then of Nyx, finding the key in Ro Holding that would unleash the dragons of Saphier, and she moved abruptly, murmuring in frustration, blinking dust out of her eyes.

  “Do these winds never stop?”

  “Never,” he answered. “They are dragons’ breath, fire and ice.”

  “I saw the ice-dragon.”

  He leaned forward slightly, his voice less distant. “Did you.”

  “Not the dragon itself—”

  “No.”

  “But the cave where it sleeps. Like a hole in the night.”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard it breathe.”

  “And what else have you seen?”

  “A shadow. But nothing that cast the shadow.”

  He said, “Ah,” very softly. “And what else?”

  “Nothing more. A heart, maybe. A bone. The mage I saw yesterday said there was a golden dragon at the bottom of a well. A dragon of light.”

  “Mage.” His voice went flat on the single word; she sensed all his attention then, pulled back out of the night to focus on her.

  “The one who lives among the rocks.”

  “Does this mage have a name?”

  “I didn’t ask. She is quite old and somewhat blind.”

  He made a soft sound; his attention strayed again. “She may see better, then, on the Luxour, where nothing is quite as it seems.”

  “She had lost, she said, all interest in magic long ago. How is that possible? To stop being a mage?”

  “To stop being compelled,” he answered; his face was turned away from her again, to the dark, singing distances. He added after a moment, “I don’t know if that in itself is possible.”

  “She seemed compelled by dragons.”

  “On the Luxour everyone is compelled by dragons.”

  She was silent: A dragon had compelled her into the hot, unbearable eye of the sun. She said, “It was kind of you to help me.”

  “You’re not the first I’ve found overwhelmed by the Luxour,” he said. “It happens. People come looking for wonders, for the dragon’s claw, the dragon’s fire. They never stop to think that they might find what they are looking for. They see crystal bones, a piece of petrified fire, fragments of some long forgotten age. They never see the living fire that breathes over them out of a passing moment. I find them and they wake and tell me they were struck by sun. Then they stumble to the nearest village and buy a dragon heart and go home, never knowing they have worn dragon’s fire, they have stood within the dragon’s eye.”

  She was silent, compelled, by something in his voice, to search the winds and stars for their reflections. “I thought it was the sun myself,” she admitted.

  “I thought you must be a mage when I saw you,” he said a little drily. “With enchanted shoes and no food. No one has less common sense than a mage on the Luxour. But I didn’t recognize you, and I know all the mages of Saphier.”

  “I’m not a mage,” she said. “A mage I met put the spell into my shoes.”

  “Yes.” His voice went soft, very thin; he might have been listening to the sound of a shadow shifting across sand. “I recognized his spell. Mages leave fingerprints that the skilled can read. How well do you know him?”

  She was silent, thinking of Rad with a dragon across his doorway, telling her what to fear. “Not well,” she said finally.

  “Is he in his village now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “He comes and goes.” He moved. The mage-light flashed suddenly in her eyes. She winced, catching dust again, her vision blurring.

  “I know those river villages,” he said. “Everyone knows everyone and everything.”

  “It’s true.” She wiped tears from her eyes, shielding her face from the light. “I’ve lost track of time, here. It seems so long ago, now, that I walked out of the village. I don’t even know where I am; how can I know where a mage might be? Mages—except you—don’t pay attention to you unless they need you.”

  “And did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Need you?”

  She looked at him, her eyes finally clear, wondering at this stranger pushing her gently, question by question, into lies, and why she felt compelled to hide the sleeping mage within her thoughts. In the wider cast of light she finally saw his face.

  She remembered to breathe after a time. It was the firebird’s face, older, passionate, controlled. She recognized the black brows slashing over cobalt eyes, the hard, clean-lined warrior’s face, weathered by experience. His long hair was varying shades of black and smoke and ash, tied back with braided ribbons of leather. The flash of silver at his wrists were the woven strands of time.

  She swallowed drily. He said curiously. “You know me. I don’t know you.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said. She felt her body trying to grow small, push into the ground away from his eyes. “You wouldn’t,” she said again, desperately. “I’m just another face in those river villages you know.”

  He held her eyes for a long time until it seemed she began to hear the secret voices of his dragons, and to see their wings moving in his eyes. Then his expression changed, lines deepening between his brows, beside his mouth. He said, “Rad Ilex sent you into the Luxour leaving the track of his sorcery in every step you take. Are you running away from him? You won’t elude him wearing those. He put some thought into your shoes, but into little else.” She did not answer. He touched the light again; it dimmed, throwing a welcome shadow over her eyes. “You are protecting him.” His voice was suddenly husky, edged with pain, his face so like Brand’s it startled her. “It doesn’t matter. I will find him.”

  “Why?” she whispered. He set the pouch near her, along with skins of water and wine. He sat still again, as she had first seen him, but his hands were tightly closed, his face taut.

  “He injured my son.” His hands opened, closed again; he stared into the mage-light. “Brand,” he whispered. “My only child. He is lost somewhere in time, crying fire like a dragon, unable to speak anything but strange, jewelled spells. Rad forced him out of Saphier, and destroyed his only path back.”

  “Why?” The word hurt, coming out, as if it were a strange, hard jewel.

  “I don’t know. They had been friends. Rad Ilex had discovered something, I think, something of enormous power, dangerous to Saphier. Brand tried to warn me, Rad silenced him. I have been searching for them both. I have sent my mages searching for them. But Rad Ilex is elusive and my son is—anywhere. You have been with Rad in his village. Is he there, still? You do not know. He comes and goes. So he came and went in my son’s life and twisted him out of shape, and tore time itself apart to fling him beyond Saphier. Beyond even my sight.” He paused; she saw him swallow. “I taught Rad to do those things.”

  She started to speak, couldn’t. She heard Rad’s voice: The Dragon of Saphier will test you and test you until you can’t call your own bones private . . . The dragon of night and stars had been on Rad’s own threshold, had filled his own doorway. It was Rad who searched for the key, Rad wh
om the firebird attacked, Rad who had tested her himself . . . Rad who lay helpless against Draken Saphier, alone and dreaming, recovering from Brand’s fury.

  Or was he? Had he lied to her, gone in secret to Ro Holding to trade her warnings for a key? Was he on the desert now, coming to find her, or had he sent her on an impossible journey to Draken Saphier’s court, simply to lose her and her suspicions to the Luxour?

  “I can’t help you.” Her voice trembled badly, torn as she was between truth and lie, recognizing neither. She felt something like wind glide over her feet, and Draken Saphier rose, holding her shoes.

  “You can help me,” he said simply. “You can stay here until Rad follows the path of his sorcery to you. Not even the whims of the Luxour can hide your steps from him. When he finds you, I will find him.” She stared at him, stunned. “Keep the food and water,” he said. “I’ll take the light.” He added, “Don’t try to walk in the dark. Things that are afraid of light, that bury themselves against the heat by day, dig out at night to feed. They are small, vicious, and can feel the vibrations of a falling pebble. As long as you stay still, you’ll be safe. And I’ll be here, watching.”

  The light went out. He was silent. He had, she realized, faded into the desert: a dark streak of wind, a thinking stone. She lay still, scarcely daring to breathe, trying to remember why, in another time, in another country, she had not picked up a sword instead of a rose.

  - Eleven -

  Nyx sat in a white room, contemplating three black leaves floating in a bowl of water. The bowl was white; the table it stood on was white. Thin white curtains caught light before it spilled a hint of color across the white floor. Nyx wore a fine, flowing, complex assortment of garments, all of white silk. In the entire room, only her eyes had color, the lavender in them so deep it seemed, when she caught her reflection, a comment on her surroundings.