The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s enormous.”

  “What else? Did it speak?”

  “It lies within a ring of fire.”

  “Did it speak?”

  “The point is: You can’t survive attack by fire.”

  “Chrysom did.”

  “Chrysom was a mage.”

  “Did it speak?” he asked again, patiently, and she sighed.

  “It made, Chrysom said, overtures of Interest in a language he found fascinating but obscure.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It could be my grandfather,” Brand said hopefully. “If it saw one human, it would have known what my grandmother was, when it saw her centuries later.”

  “How did she find it?” Nyx asked, puzzled. “Or did it find her? Did it walk its own path of time into Saphier out of some peculiar longing for a human heir to its powers?”

  “No one knows,” Brand said. “She was a warrior-mage, like my father, very powerful, though she did not train mages. She must have come looking for dragons; the dragon may have let her find it. But I wonder why.”

  “Perhaps, like Chrysom, it was very powerful and very curious. Perhaps it liked to travel. It had seen humans before, and it approached your grandmother in that shape so not to frighten her.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like this dragon. This one likes sleeping in the hearth fire; it doesn’t travel.”

  “More dragons than my grandmother’s must have travelled,” Brand pointed out. “Legends of dragons have come out of the Luxour for centuries. You saw my father’s dragon-room. Some of the things are very old.”

  “How many dragons would it take to produce a legend?”

  He hesitated. “None,” he admitted. “Some say the only dragon ever seen was by a mage having a bad dream on the Luxour. But they’re here,” he said softly, fiercely. “Even I can feel them. Chrysom saw them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then find another. One I can see with you. It may recognize my grandmother in me. She had long black hair and blue eyes.” His hand closed lightly on her arm. “Please. I’m in no shape to worry about risks.”

  She opened the book again.

  The next path ended under the earth. They stood in a starless black, surrounded by thunder. Nyx, casting a mage-light so Brand could see, found water everywhere, dark rivers and cataracts tearing at the reflection of her light. The mage-light hollowed a vast cavern around them; its walls and ceiling receded into shadows. Brand, his face teared with water from a misty, roaring waterfall, asked incredulously,

  “Are we still in the desert?”

  “Chrysom says so.” She looked around, her hair shining with jewels of water. “How strange . . . It’s as if the dragons create their own small worlds within the Luxour.”

  Drawn to the plunging water, he missed a step in the shadows; she heard him splash. “What does he say about this one?”

  She consulted the book again. “This dragon is white as bone, with eyes like blue water. It recognized the human form. It is a shape-changer, an imitator, capable of taking any form—” Brand opened his mouth; she held up her hand. “It is quite old and transforms slowly, with much effort now. It breathes a kind of incandescence that shrouds it as it sleeps. The mist itself is a form of power. It seems to be a subtle labyrinth, a time-trap in which the unwary might easily become lost, if the dragon does not wish to be disturbed. Apparently Chrysom chanced on it at the right time.”

  “Does it speak?”

  “It has, Chrysom says, the power of communication.”

  “Then let’s communicate with it,” Brand said tersely. Nyx looked past the book in her hand, at his set, tense face. “It may know my grandfather, at least.”

  “Well,” she said after a moment, “I suppose it’s pointless to be cautious now.”

  “It also takes up time.”

  “At least, if we’re both trapped, I won’t have to explain to your father what happened to you.”

  “Chrysom wasn’t cautious,” he reminded her. “And he lived to write the book.”

  “True,” she said, but did nothing.

  “Are you afraid of dragons?” he asked. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

  “I seem to have grown cautious,” she admitted. “There was a time when, like Chrysom, I would have taken every path to every dragon, for no reason but to see them in all their power. Then, I supposed I had no one but myself to think of, and the acquisition of knowledge of any kind seemed more important than returning home in one piece.”

  “I’m not in one piece,” Brand said starkly. But he was listening; his eyes were on her face. He stood with his arms folded, motionless, while the dark water poured endlessly behind him.

  “This is not my land,” she said. “You belong to Saphier. I’ve brought you this far, and I am responsible for you on the Luxour. If I lose you to time, Saphier will mourn you and curse me, and if I lose us both—”

  “Ro Holding will lose its heir.”

  “I’m not accustomed,” she said apologetically, “to being this reasonable. But I have already lost Meguet somewhere in Saphier through my own willfulness, and I don’t dare lose you. I can’t go through my life scattering people into various bog-pools of time from which they might never return. I’m not afraid of much. But I am a little afraid of myself. And I am terrified of harming you.”

  He stood silently, still motionless, his brows drawn, a peculiar expression in his eyes. Then he blinked, and the expression faded. “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “That’s all I thought I was to you: a puzzle to be solved. And so that’s all I thought you were: a mage with a puzzle to solve. Now—” He hesitated.

  “Now?”

  “Now I wonder who you would be if I were not a man lost within a spell. Instead of dreading midnight, feeling time pass like this black water rushing away from me, I might ask you questions. For a change.”

  She was silent, seeing him differently now, as if for a moment, in that place beyond the world, his face was no longer haunted by the firebird within. It belonged only to him, and she knew him and didn’t know him. She said tentatively, “What questions?”

  “Anything. Why you’re always walking out of your shoes.”

  “I find shoes distracting when I’m trying to think.”

  “Or how you knew you were a mage when you were young, and there was no one in your house to tell you what you were.”

  “I had Chrysom,” she said. She was motionless herself, caught in his odd stillness, the little ivory ball in one hand, the mage-light at her feet. Water misted over them both, luminous in the light: the dragon’s iridescent time-trap. She watched the light move in his eyes, the flick of cobalt beneath his dark, slanted brows.

  “Chrysom is dead.”

  “Chrysom brought us here.”

  “Did you always follow his teachings?”

  “No.”

  “My father’s mages rarely question him. But the firebird follows you. As if you understand something more than power.” He moved; his face grew clearer, chiselled out of light and shadow, the water flecked and gleaming along his cheekbones. “What do you think the firebird knows?”

  “That it might be safe with me.”

  He blinked. “Are you saying—”

  “No. Just that it couldn’t fly home to safety. So it flew to me.” She paused, her lips parted, remembering. “An odd choice, considering.”

  “Why?”

  “Not so long ago, I was learning sorcery in a bog. I burned birds in my fires and read the future from their bones.”

  “You did.”

  “I thought—a mage should know everything, no matter what the knowledge entailed. So I tried to learn everything.”

  “Did you?”

  “I learned to leave the birds in the trees.”

  He smiled a little, his face losing its lean, feral cast, becoming, to her entranced eye, ag
ain a stranger’s face: someone who, in his forgotten past, had learned to laugh, who had been loved. “Except the firebird.” He moved again, step by step closing the distance between them. Light shifted over him, caught in the folds of cloth across his chest, traced the straight line of his shoulders. “Except the firebird. Your eyes have so much color now. What causes them to change like that?”

  “When I work a spell.” She paused, scarcely hearing herself, wanting to reach out, touch a star of water at the hollow of his throat. “When I’m angry. When I find something—something of overwhelming interest.”

  “And which is it now?”

  “Probably not anger.”

  He swallowed; the star moved. “Probably,” he said huskily, “you are casting a spell.”

  She shook her head a little. “I’m not doing it.”

  “You’re changing shape.”

  “Am I?”

  “You used to look like a mage.”

  “What does a mage look like?”

  “Like a closed book full of strange and marvellous things. Like the closed door to a room full of peculiar noises, lights that seep out under the door. Like a beautiful jar made of thick, colored glass that holds something glowing inside that you can’t quite see, no matter how you turn the jar.”

  “And now?” she whispered. He came close; the light at their feet cast hollows of shadow across his eyes, drew the precise lines of his mouth clear.

  “Now,” he said softly, “you aren’t closed. You’re letting me see.”

  He slid his hand beneath her hair, around her neck. She watched light tremble in a drop of water near the corner of his mouth. He bent his head. The light leaped from star to star across his face, and then vanished. She closed her eyes and he was gone: Her own hand shaped air, her face lifted to a dream. She heard his cry deep in her mind: the firebird’s voice torn free. She heard her own cry and opened her eyes. A jewel fell at her feet.

  She looked at the firebird, her eyes as colorless as bone. It spread its wings, crying noiselessly as it swooped into the shadows, found stone rising everywhere, no way out. It circled furiously as she turned helplessly to watch it; its wild flight slowed, spiralled inward around her turning, and finally the light caught it, pale and fiery, masked even to itself, trying to change the dark, rushing water into gold. It settled at her feet. She knelt beside it, touched its breast lightly with her fingertips. Then she rose and opened a path back into midnight.

  - Fourteen -

  Meguet stood gazing at a waterfall that came out of a solid wall and vanished into stone. The water flowed noiselessly, ceaselessly, a thin, even wash that gradually fanned so wide it broke into graceful, shining threads before it disappeared. Mage-work, she decided, trying not to yawn. She had slept poorly after the sight of Rad Ilex in his prison; her dreams were fleeting, but seemed full of portents, urgent warnings that she could not quite understand. She hoped, when Magior appeared at mid-morning, to be taken to some peaceful place and allowed to contemplate grass. But Magior seemed to think she needed exercise, though she felt bruised in every bone from walking on fire, sleeping on stone.

  “Is it real?” she asked, for Magior seemed to invite comment. “May I touch it?”

  “You may,” Magior answered. Meguet touched one thread of water gently. It separated instantly, formed a double strand. She put her finger to her mouth thoughtlessly, then flushed.

  “I beg your pardon. I must have thought I was still in the desert. I am very tired.”

  Magior, oblivious to suggestion, moved down the hall. They were on some floor, in some wing of the vast house; Meguet had no idea how far they had gone. The long, pale corridors, the light-filled rooms, seemed never to vary. She remembered Nyx’s odd house in the swamp, which seemed to ramble forever in and out of memory. She asked,

  “Is the house real?”

  Magior looked at her, astonished. “No one has ever asked before.”

  “It seems we might be walking down a single hallway, through a few rooms; only the things in them change. There’s a timelessness about this place. As if it were constantly being made.” She added apologetically, at Magior’s silence, “My mind is still wandering in the Luxour, seeing odd things everywhere.”

  “Yes,” Magior said vaguely. She led Meguet into a room full of gold.

  It was stunning: a priceless collection of goblets and urns, vases, plates, sconces, baskets woven of flattened strands of gold, tiny, ornate tables, even a head molded out of gold, small statues of birds, lamps, a bouquet of golden flowers. As Meguet stared, the gold took on the hues of the Luxour: dust and light so rich it could not possibly fall for free. She followed Magior across the room; Magior stopped in front of a round gold table standing on three legs. On top of it stood a simple bowl carved of black wood.

  Meguet looked at it, aware of Magior watching her silently. “There must be a land,” she commented finally, “where wood is more important than gold. But somehow I do not think it’s Saphier. What is this? Some kind of test?”

  “In a way,” Magior said calmly. “There are no answers. Only responses. Some see the wood more valuable than the gold. Others find its presence troubling, want it removed.”

  “Do you always test your guests?”

  “No.”

  “Then why me? Because I am a stranger from another land? Is my presence troubling?”

  “No,” Magior said quickly. “Only the circumstances which brought you here.”

  “You mean Rad Ilex.”

  “I mean Brand Saphier. Rad Ilex is no longer a question; he exists only in Draken Saphier’s mind. I know you are tired and need to rest. May I show you one more room? And then, I promise I will take you into the gardens.” She moved without waiting for an answer. Meguet, bewildered, followed her down an interminable hallway, up a staircase or two, down another corridor until she thought her feet would simply stop, plant themselves in the floor, and she would become one of the house’s ambiguities, for other guests to find troubling and wish removed.

  A dragon reared in front of her; she paused mid-step, blinking. It was attached to doors, which armed guards opened, breaking the dragon in two. The inner room was full of dragons. She stopped in the center, turning slowly, for she had never imagined them in such vivid colors, with varying expressions and forms. They were woven on banners, tapestries, sculpted of bronze and clay, painted on wood, on silk, carved into chairs, screens, boxes. She tried to see them all, tried to look everywhere at once, until her eye was caught by one and it drew all her attention.

  It was painted on a shield: a dragon black as shadow, with wings of shadow, and blood-red eyes of such malignity that, staring at it, she felt her heartbeat. Behind her, Magior was so still she might have vanished.

  “Is it real?” she asked finally; her voice sounded thin, tense.

  “Why that one?” Magior asked abruptly. “Why not others of far more beauty, far more mystery?”

  “This one is terrifying. What terrifies also fascinates.”

  “So does beauty fascinate. Why do you fear this? It is only imagined; None of them is real. Why choose this, as the one truth in the room?”

  Meguet turned. She closed her eyes briefly, felt the weariness in them, hot and dry as dust. “I don’t mean to offend,” she said. But the old woman frowned.

  “You are more than just a stranger. If I had to place you, I could not be sure. . . But you felt the power, as we walked down the hall?”

  “What?” Meguet shook her head, perplexed. “I don’t understand.”

  “The mage’s power. Your cousin felt it.”

  “I’m not a mage.”

  “Perhaps not. But Draken was right to ask me to question you. Your responses, even allowing for your unfamiliar surroundings, are not innocent.”

  “Innocent of what?”

  “Experience,” Magior said. She read the expression in Meguet’s eyes; the lines moved on her face.

  “Draken asked you to do this?” Meguet breathed.

  “
He is curious about you. You are in his house. He is always curious about those within his house.” She turned. “Come. I promised to end this. I am sorry it has upset you. It was not Draken’s intention.”

  “What was his intention?”

  “To see if you possess power. Sometimes those who are gifted don’t know it. Come with me. I’ll take you to a more tranquil place. One without dragons.”

  Meguet walked alone among rose-trees. The vast house met her eye whichever direction she turned: a world enclosed, constantly looking inward toward the path of time at its heart. She could not stop her restless movements, though they led nowhere. In the distance, through the roses, she could see the movements of the household guard, a bright army wielding spinning shafts of light as they performed their ancient ritual. “Ritual” was the word Magior had given her: It was, she explained, little more than a meditation exercise. The meditators outnumbered all the inhabitants of Ro House. And that number, she had been told, did not include the warrior-mages.

  She watched them as she paced, guessing that she herself was watched by someone, somewhere. It did not, she admitted to herself, take extraordinary subtlety to weigh the dangers of one mage, however powerful, against an army trained to march through time. The dragon, red-eyed and malevolent, loomed in her mind: destroyer, death-giver. That dragon she had recognized, of all those Magior had shown her.

  The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

  But which dragon? Draken Saphier? Or the dragons of the Luxour which Rad Ilex wanted so badly to see?

  Draken wanted the key, too. So Rad had said. Better, she thought coldly, to let the mage loose the dragons into Saphier against that army, than to watch its bloody dance across Ro Holding. Rad had been in the Luxour looking for dragons; Draken had been searching for the mage who had ensorcelled his son. Draken had saved her life, even knowing she protected his enemy. Still, he did not trust her: He had had Magior question her. How far, Meguet wondered uneasily, would he permit his curiosity to go?