The Cygnet and the Firebird (12 page)

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 wonder 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.”

“The firebird remembers.”

He looked at her, his eyes dark, bruised, but he did not answer. Nyx pushed a tray toward him. “Eat something. If Rad Ilex wants the key and his dragon,
he’ll return here, But I want no blood shed in this tower. My mother forbade it.”

He made no response to that, either. Nyx broke into an elaborate crust, found duckling flavored with orange and rosemary. She ate hungrily a few minutes, then asked, “Did your father find his father among the dragons?”

“No. He went with Rad to south Saphier. Rad was able to show him something—I don’t know what. Enough to give my father some hope, whether it was truth or lie. In the Luxour, some villagers collect big, iridescent lumps of stone they say are dragon’s hearts, and sell them. Those who buy them call them one thing, those who don’t, another. Rad said he knew a way to draw the dragons into time, but that he had to find something. A key.”

Nyx made a sound. “Not a book.”

“He said key.”

“How could he have known to find it in Ro Holding?” she breathed. “He knows too much, this Rad Ilex.”

Brand stirred edgily. “And where is he, if he wants this key so badly?”

“Being cautious, I suppose. Coming here, he must face you or the firebird. Perhaps—”

“I have remembered,” he interrupted. “He will face me, not the bird.”

“You have not remembered everything. We’ll know at midnight.”

His knife hit the edge of his plate; he pushed away from the table and rose, his shoulders bowed as if the
firebird clung to his back. “What kind of a mage are you that you can’t break a simple spell?”

She picked a bone out of a bite, watching him. “I suppose, by the standards of Saphier, not very apt. But I am considered adequate in Ro Holding.”

He came back to her, head bowed. “Forgive me. You took me in, tried to help. It’s not your fault you are pitted against the most devious mage in my father’s court.”

She frowned, thinking again of Meguet. “Where is Saphier? Do you cross a sea to get to it? Mountains? Maybe, if you could get home, your father could help you.”

“Saphier is the world,” he said absently. “I never looked beyond it.” Then his eyes widened, and she saw the sudden flare of hope in them. She pushed back her chair, rose.

“What do you remember?”

“These.” He turned his wrists up, spread his fingers, as if the tarnished metal wove through blood and bone into his fingertips. “They are all the paths to Saphier.”

“Paths of time.” She drew her finger down a weave lightly. “I thought so. But are they always so tarnished?”

“No,” he said, puzzled. “They should be silver, like the paths inside your tiny box. You need to know the path before you travel it; that’s why you couldn’t find your own way out.”

“You led me out,” she said abruptly. “You are also a mage.”

He shook his head. “I am a warrior. I don’t have mage’s gifts.”

“But you wear these. You can use them.”

“Yes.” He hesitated, still perplexed by them. “It is something my father taught me.”

“Do you always wear them?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why are you wearing them now? As if you know you might need them? Or you were working a time-spell, or travelling a path when you were transformed?” She saw his face change, as he veered dangerously close to memory. He said quickly,

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you remember,” she asked after a moment, “how to use these?”

“Yes.” He rubbed at one, trying to polish it with his thumb. “They are so dark. As if some enormous power ran through them.” He looked at her; she saw Saphier in his eyes, future instead of past. “I can go home.”

“Yes.”

“Tonight. Now. Before I change.”

“Yes,” she said, breathless at the thought. “But if you leave, and Rad Ilex does not return with Meguet, how will I ever know where to look for her? Can you wait a little longer for them?”

He gave her a distant, masked glance: the firebird’s eyes. “I forgot he must come here.”

“I will give him the key and his dragon for Meguet,” she said. “I will not give you to him, or him to you. If you fight him, it must be in Saphier, or my
mother will never forgive me for that as well as for a few other things she won’t forgive me for by now. Please,” she added, at his weary, desolate expression. “Only a little longer.”

“And then what? If he does not come?”

“Then,” she said steadily, “you will teach me the path to Saphier and I will look for her myself.”

He was silent, studying her, as if she had flung some peculiar spell over herself. “You would walk into a strange land to search for her?”

“She searched for me once in a strange place. She is part of Ro Holding, part of this house. It’s inconceivable that she is wandering around lost in some other country.”

“You are eccentric.”

“Even,” she said drily, “in Ro Holding.”

“My father’s court is structured according to precise law. Within that law, nothing disorderly exists for long. Either it shapes itself to law or it is destroyed.”

Her brows rose. “Does that include guests?”

“It is my father’s working philosophy,” he answered simply. “Out of order comes art. The art of government, the mage’s art, the art of poetry, the art of war. We do not give ourselves the luxury of eccentricity.”

“Perhaps freedom is a luxury,” she said. “But that aside, there must be someone you would wander through a stranger’s land to find.”

She saw it again in his face: the sudden, desperate aching shadow of memory, the firebird’s cry. He
whispered, “No one has come searching for me.”

She blinked, shaken by a glimpse into something more complex than she could unweave, or even imagine. She touched him; he looked at her, mute again, unable to give her either dragon heart or stone.

“We’ll go to Saphier now,” she said abruptly, and felt her own heartbeat. “It’s cruel to keep you.” And safer, she thought, remembering the spinning swords, than another battle in the tower. “Take me to your father’s house. If Meguet is not there, then teach me the paths so that I can return to look for her if I have to. Will you do that?”