The Cygnet and the Firebird (16 page)

Authors: Patricia A. McKillip

Sometime later, she walked along shallow furrows, straight lines raked long ago across the ground as if by some giant claw. The scars had weathered, but never closed. She glanced up uneasily, wondering at the size of such a thing. A fierce, golden eye left an imprint of fire in hers. She looked down, blinking, and continued doggedly, wondering if she would become like the desert dwellers, seeing dragons everywhere. Her shadow fluttered like black fire in the wind: the loose, flowing garments she had taken from Rad. He had worked some magic into her velvet shoes, during one of his waking moments, so she could walk, he said, if she got restless while he mended himself. Wearing them, she would feel neither heat nor cold nor water nor stone; she would
walk on air. Dust did not cling to them either, she noticed, though dust clung to her sweating face and wove itself into her hair. She carried a water skin and a pouch with some bread and fruit and goat cheese. She would find lizards when she ran out of food. She would find the water that the desert dwellers drank. She would cross the desert somehow; even the Luxour came to an end eventually.

Her shadow shrank; the eye overhead blazed at her. She felt even her bones shrink under its cruel gaze, as if the weight of light pouring down over her pushed her closer to the earth. She reached one of the strange ruins, steep upthrusts of stone that had weathered and sheared pieces of itself away. From a distance it had doors, broken towers, and fallen walls, empty windows framing sky. Close, it was simply a pile of rock, within which she found shade, a resting place. She ate and drank sparingly, then leaned against a slab of warm stone and closed her eyes.

She woke with a start at a sound, and found a woman watching her.

“Are you mage?” the woman asked. “Or dragon?” Her eyes were blue desert sky, split with streaks of silver lightning; she peered at Meguet, blinking. Her long hair was white, her hands slender and delicate. She wore a black robe and magic shoes; there was no dust on them. “I hear you breathing. I cannot see so clearly now; everything breathes now, everything has wings. Which are you?”

“Neither,” Meguet said. She straightened slowly, stiff. The woman, perched on stone like a butterfly
sunning, smiled, her smooth brown face breaking suddenly into a spider web of wrinkles.

“A riddle!”

“No. Only a woman crossing a desert.”

“You are not a mage.”

“No.”

“Then,” the woman said, “you have a chance of getting out.”

Meguet was silent, puzzled. She found her water skin, drank a mouthful, and held it out. “Are you thirsty?”

“No. But thank you. I have learned to smell clean water, after so many years here. I never go thirsty.”

“Years.” Meguet swallowed, staring at the ancient, beautiful, half-blind face. “How many years?”

“I can’t remember. I only remember how old I was when I got lost here; after I decided to stay I started counting dragons instead of years.” She smiled again. “In dragon years, I might be five. Or a thousand. Or I may not even be born. They are that elusive. . . .”

“Are you a mage?”

“I was. Maybe I still am. I never think about it.”

“I thought that’s all mages thought about.”

“Being mages?” She nodded, her hair drifting in the wind, a long cobweb cloak. “You’ve been around them, to know that.”

“A couple of them. But how did you get lost? All you have to do is follow the sun or cross it, to find your directions.”

“Mages,” the woman said, “tend to get distracted in the Luxour. There’s such a tangled magic here. It
lures you this way, that. It tantalizes, it whispers.” She put her hand on a jagged tower of rock. “It lies. It says:
Once I was this, search me, find who built me.
So you search, and once you begin to see one fine, lost palace, you begin to see entire kingdoms lost; you wander from ruin to ruin, trying to find a memory.”

“A memory of what?”

“Of those who might have lived here among the dragons. Or, dragon-born, built them.” She patted the stone fondly. “Oh, they’re like the dragons, these old stones. They never say yes or no, but always maybe.
Maybe I’m stone. Maybe more than stone.
”

“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?”