The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She was alone in the small chamber, whatever alone meant in a house full of mages. She had been treated with impeccable courtesy from the moment she appeared: a sorceress from a strange land walking a path of time into a ruler’s house, with a firebird she claimed was his missing son. This she explained to more mages than she had ever counted even among the dead in the history of Ro Holding. There was not a shadow of disbelief in their expressions, as the firebird cried noiselessly, constantly overhead. Of course this was Draken Saphier’s son, this wild bird trying impotently to turn them all into jewelled trees. Unfortunately, Draken Saphier was not there to thank her himself. Neither were Rad Ilex and Meguet, her eye told her, among this grave and attentive gathering. She must wait, of course, for Draken Saphier’s return. She had, she explained, urgent business elsewhere. No, they persuaded her, she must wait. Draken Saphier would want to question her more fully about his son’s enchantment, perhaps seek her advice. This, she had to admit, seemed reasonable, considering the state in which his son had returned. Draken Saphier’s arrival, they told her, was imminent.

  It remained imminent. She had been given pristine quarters, three leaves in a bowl to contemplate, attendants of exquisite tact and skill who were all, she realized, mages of varying degree. Draken Saphier had not yet returned, but would soon. Soon became three days, and in three days she had been shown extraordinary things in the vast, white, light-filled palace. But she had seen nothing of the firebird.

  She kept an eye out for him, as mages led her through the palace. It seemed an irregular assortment of cubes piled at varying heights, the whole house formed around a great square which was separated into formal gardens, and, at the center, a broad square of red and white stone. From the highest windows in the house she could see the pattern in the stones: the emblem of Saphier, an intricate, stylized weave of lines coiling, locking, parting, meeting. She wondered, if she walked that path, where it would end. It held, she realized after a time, the only curved lines in the palace. The palace had no round towers, no turrets, no spirals or circles, only a series of arched windows now and then, open to air and light, overlooking the gardens. The chambers and halls, corridors, stairways, all carried continuous straight lines from angle to angle as the palace turned at the corners of the square. Nothing was jumbled, labyrinthine, untidy with past. Past had been relegated to memory, or it was framed in orderly fashion within the present. For a house full of mages of varying powers the space and pale walls and light would be calming, and the strict lines the eye perceived might order the mind. So much Nyx conjectured, though, within those lines, she was shown fascinating deviations.

  “This wall is very old,” a very old mage named Magior Ilel, who was Brand’s great-aunt, told her. She was quite tall and thin, with hands that seemed all bone, translucent with age, and eyes as dark and still as the new moon. The wall, a great slab of pale wood at one end of a white room, was so completely and intricately carved with tiny figures that it seemed to move. It was a battle, Nyx realized, taking a closer look, depicted with ruthless and startling detail: Not even the cart horses seemed exempt from slaughter. Only birds, picking out an eye or a bloody heart, eluded arrow, spear, fire, club, stone. The carving of the devastation was elegant, skilled. She studied it, curiously; such fury seemed remote in the peaceful house.

  “Where are the mages?” she asked, turning to Magior. She surprised a fleeting expression on the ancient, composed face.

  “A mage witnessed it,” she answered. “He carved it, as an example of power he thought beyond the control even of sorcery. There were few mages then, and magic seemed a force as raw and random as lightning.”

  “Then he didn’t connect sorcery with savagery,” Nyx commented. She turned away from the silent, frozen carnage, to a more tranquil tapestry hanging on a side wall. At first glance it seemed a tree full of birds and flowers, bright, varied blooms growing along the same bough, with small, vivid birds fluttering among the leaves. As she gazed at it, odd dark shapes intruded: broken pieces of shadow, faces, perhaps, half-revealed behind the leaves, or even within a flower, as if some other work were embroidering itself through this one. She looked closer, intrigued, trying to piece the darkness together, but it remained elusive.

  “It makes me want to frighten the birds out of the tapestry, part the leaves,” she said, “to see what the tree is hiding.” She looked at Magior. “What is it? What do you see?”

  “I am too old,” Magior said in her slow, dry voice, “to see anything. Flower and shadow, dark and light, in the end they are what they are. There is no resolution. You are unconvinced. What do you see?”

  “A mystery,” Nyx answered simply. “What I would like to see, unless you have some objection, is the firebird.” Magior looked at her silently; she added, “It flew to me for help. I’ve grown—accustomed to it. To Brand. I’ve left work unfinished, which worries me, and will worry me until I see it completed. Or has he remembered everything? Is the spell broken?”

  Lines moved across the aged face, undecipherable expressions. “The firebird is resting. It has several—roosts, I suppose we must call them. We thought it best to surround him with familiar faces, so that he could more easily remember his past. The past he remembers with you is intricately bound with the spell.”

  “I see.”

  “Please do not be offended.”

  “No.”

  “If he looks at you, he will only remember himself as the firebird, needing help.”

  “And is he remembering himself?”

  “It is,” Magior said after a pause, “an exasperating piece of sorcery.” Her face worked again. “When we follow his memories back, there is a point at which all we find, inevitably, is the bird’s face. The bird’s silent cry.”

  “You go into his mind?” Nyx asked, startled.

  “You didn’t?”

  “Only to find the bird’s mind. And that was like entering some hard, polished jewel, where every part is like every other part. And yet Brand kept insisting that all he lost of time and memory could be found in that enchanted bird.”

  Magior nodded. “So he still insists,” she murmured. “All we can do is wait for Draken Saphier.” She paused again, her eyes on Nyx’s face. “We wondered,” she said at last, “what you did with the bird’s fire and its voice.”

  “I trapped them outside of the bird. I didn’t want to dodge its fire while I worked, and I couldn’t bear hearing its cry. No one in the house could. Have you heard it?”

  “Once.” Magior closed her eyes briefly. “In the middle of the night. Its first cry. Before it vanished. A terrible, terrible sound.”

  “The spell was cast here, then.”

  “Yes. By a mage who also vanished.”

  “Brand remembered something of that . . . He was afraid the mage had deceived his father, and was still here.”

  “No,” Magior said a trifle harshly. “He has not been seen here since. He would not dare return.”

  “I see.” Nyx kept her face and her voice calm, but still the dark eyes lifted, at some disturbance her impatience caused in the air between them. She asked quickly, “Something I wondered about: the time paths on Brand’s wrists. How did they get so black?”

  “We assume the mage destroyed them, when Brand tried to escape him.”

  “Would that be simple to do?”

  “No. It would take enormous power. The paths are nearly indestructible. They must be so, or people might be left stranded in odd places, in strange times.”

  “Who made them?”

  “Draken. He fashioned all the paths of time.”

  Nyx watched, the next day, the household guard gather in the stone square and perform a complex series of movements. They were very old, the young mage with her explained. Developed by the first mage-ruler of Saphier, for far different purposes. Now, despite the blades, it was more an exercise, a dance. The movements were slow, but Nyx recognized the whirling blades, the deadly rhythms of Brand’s attack on Rad Ilex. There seemed guard
s enough for every window and every mouse hole in the house, all wearing the path of time that lay under their feet, emblazoned in red across their breasts. They also wore the familiar silver on their wrists. The thought of such an army marching the spiralling paths of time disturbed Nyx profoundly. Yet all she saw of martial art was relegated to a dance, and all she saw of magic was the complete disappearance of the firebird.

  The mage with her, Parnet, a sturdy young woman from north Saphier, with a fat braid of red hair and a milky, freckled face, said when the guard dispersed, “Perhaps you would like to see the lemon garden. The fruit is ripe now and the trees are beautiful.”

  “I would rather see Brand Saphier,” Nyx said. She added, infected by the constant courtesy, “Please.”

  “The firebird is resting,” Parnet said slowly. “I don’t know where in the house it might be.”

  “I thought you were trained to read minds.”

  “Oh, no,” Parnet said, her complacency shaken. “I mean, yes, we are, but not without careful regulations, and not ordinarily without permission. It’s punishable, though experiments are always made, among the younger mages. You can see such rules prevent a good deal of confusion, as well as animosity. Some mages are inclined to temperament.”

  “I see,” Nyx said temperately. “Perhaps, then, at moonrise?”

  “I’ll ask Magior for you.”

  Nyx was silent, swallowing frustration. They had drifted to a stop beside an immense bowl of black marble, containing water. Above the water hung a huge tapestry of a man in a plain black robe, sitting on a floor of brilliant tiles, in front of a great black bowl of water. He studied it with interest, though it held, as far as Nyx could see, only a couple of threadbare patches.

  “Who is that?” she asked. Parnet answered without a hint of judgment,

  “No one. It is a question.”

  “The man?”

  “No. What you see: the real bowl, the tapestry bowl, the water, the man. It is all a question about you.”

  “Me.”

  “Few pass here without speaking. What you say about this tells something about you. Even those who say nothing tell something. It is one of the ways of grouping beginning mages, according to their perceptions of what is most important. You chose the man. Some ask what he sees in the water; others what relationship the real bowl has to the bowl of thread. I suppose that, in a land full of strangers’ faces, you would see the unknown face first.”

  Nyx opened her mouth, hesitated. The house came alive around her suddenly, puzzle-pieces everywhere, springing out of what she had considered background. “The bowl in my room,” she said suddenly. “The color. Or rather the lack of it . . . This entire house is full of questions.”

  “Yes.”

  “How fascinating.” She gazed into the water, saw the color deepen in her eyes. “And there are no answers. Only responses. Some must find all that white in my chamber peaceful.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the walls of battle-scenes?”

  “Some find them absorbing,” Parnet answered simply. “Most of them become the warrior-mages.”

  “Is Brand a warrior-mage?”

  “Brand is a warrior. He has no gifts for sorcery.”

  “Yet he can walk the path of time on his wrists.”

  “That is common here, for warriors,” Parnet answered, with a touch of surprise in her voice. Nyx frowned down at the water. She let one hand fall to her side, touch the tiny ivory ball that held Chrysom’s key. She saw Parnet’s reflection, her expression open, waiting, calm. She asked abruptly,

  “And is the firebird itself a question? Or do you have a few answers for that here?”

  Water rippled for no reason, obscuring both their reflections. Nyx turned her head, found Parnet still looking into the water. Her brows were raised slightly, worriedly; her face hid nothing. She said very softly,

  “They have been trying, as you tried. All we can do is wait for Draken Saphier.”

  “Who will return soon.”

  “Soon.”

  Nyx sat that evening after supper, gazing into the white bowl of water in her chamber, watching the black leaves turn and turn, fashioning, out of water and air, some mysterious path of their own. Thoughts as dark were beginning to shape their own patterns in her mind. She barely gave them form, or language, for in that house apparently not even memory was private. One black leaf had Draken Saphier’s name, one Rad Ilex’s, and the third the name of an unknown mage who had entered Draken Saphier’s house, ensorcelled his son, cast the blame on Rad Ilex, and vanished—or who had been taught by Draken Saphier, had learned far too well, and who, having fashioned the firebird and driven Rad Ilex away, still lived in the house, free and unsuspected. That mage would be among those working with the firebird now, to guard the spell. Someone close to Brand, who had flung him out of his world, destroyed the path back to it, and never expected to see him again.

  Until I brought him back, she thought. Along my private path. The mage could destroy that, too, if Chrysom’s key were found.

  But who? And why? And what had Brand witnessed that he had been so ruthlessly reshaped, and even human, had only the firebird’s cry to speak of it?

  She reached out, turned a leaf over between thoughts, as if it were the page of a book. Its underside was gold. She watched it awhile, thinking of the silver paths, and Draken Saphier, who had a power like Chrysom’s, to fashion bridges across time. How expansive was that power? she wondered. And why did one of those patterns lead to Ro Holding? Or had the bird simply gotten lost in the strands of time, fleeing down a path that was being consumed by sorcery?

  She turned another leaf idly; it was deep blue. Blue, gold, black . . . What would the third color be? Did the colors have significance, or was it another of the house’s questions? If she did not turn it, it would be any color she imagined . . . She could find the firebird in the house, open Chrysom’s book and walk the path to the Luxour. The bird would follow. They would escape this house of puzzles, its bewildering courtesies and maddening equivocations. At least the desert would not equivocate: earth, stone, light, did not lie. Or did they? There were ancient magics in the Luxour, Brand had said, complexities even there. But Draken Saphier could be found, to free Brand from the firebird. Only for that, it would be worth some subterfuge to find Brand and leave. But if she fled with the firebird down one path, just as Draken Saphier returned by another, he would be mystified and justifiably outraged. She might put herself in danger; no one knew her here but Brand, no one could speak for her but a man whose memories of her might in their eyes be hidden within the firebird’s cry. She had already taken its defense, its voice; they might wonder what else she had done to it.

  She shifted restlessly, touched the third leaf gently to still herself. Meguet . . . where in Saphier was she, if not in Draken Saphier’s court? With a mage hiding from Draken? Where would he hide?

  The Luxour. Where the magic was unpredictable, and not even a mage could find a mage. And he knew the desert. He had been born there, Brand said, among the rumors of dragons. . . .

  She turned the third leaf. The door opened behind her; she turned her head, saw Magior Ilel and a strange mage in the doorway.

  Magior said, “Brand will see you now.”

  She rose, then turned back silently, looked into the bowl. Red as blood, as dragon’s fire, the third leaf . . .

  “Is it a question?” she asked.

  “You chose the colors,” Magior said without a flicker of expression. “It is an answer.”

  They led Nyx through endless airy corridors, toward chambers in an unfamiliar wing. Opening her mind a little, she sensed an enormous power, like a silent cataract. She barely touched it, a hand-brush against thundering, pounding water.

  “Is this where the mages are trained?” she asked, and Magior cast a startled glance at her.

  “Still your mind,” she instructed.

  “It has been suggested before,” Nyx said tranquilly after a moment. “To no
one’s satisfaction.”

  “I do not mean to offend,” Magior said stiffly. “You are a stranger in Draken Saphier’s house. Your own powers are unknown to us.”

  Nyx glanced at the shadow beside her, flung forward by the angle of light, of the nameless mage who walked noiselessly behind her. He wore the emblem of Saphier across his chest; he would know, she guessed, the deadly movements of the dance. She swallowed a sharp comment, concentrating on her surroundings. They had moved into a corridor of rich dark wood, carved with ancient scenes, she guessed, of Saphier’s history. A great bronze dragon clung to double doors at the end of the corridor. Warrior-mages guarded the doors. At a sign from Magior, they split the dragon in two, and through the open doors Nyx saw Brand.

  The room was full of dragons, carved in wood, in red stone, in amber, painted, embroidered on tapestry, limned in ink on the margins and frontispieces of old books on stands and shelves. The chair Brand sat in had dragons’ faces lifting out of the arms, and dragons’ claws for feet.

  “You wished to see me,” he said to Nyx. The politeness in his voice chilled her until she saw that his face was as rigid as his courtesy. The firebird’s cry of fury and despair, she guessed, was so close to the surface of his thoughts that it took all his patience to keep it from cutting to the heart of language. He glanced at the warrior-mage, and then at Magior, before Nyx could answer. “Why is Han here?”

  “Only a precaution—” Magior began. Brand rose abruptly, his mouth tightening.

  “No one set such guards on me in Ro Holding.”

  “My lord, you were a bird. Nyx Ro is an unknown quantity.”

  “I know her. Dismiss him.”

  Expression rippled across Magior’s face, a mingling of worry and doubt. The warrior-mage inclined his head, disappeared into thin air.

  Nyx said carefully, “I haven’t seen you since we came here. I wondered how you were, if returning home had altered the spell at all.”

  “No,” Brand said tersely. He paced among the dragons, touching an eye here, a claw there.

  “It is a spell,” Magior said fulsomely, “of unusual complexity and power.”