The Cygnet and the Firebird (22 page)

“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.

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?

The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

Draken Saphier was in the Luxour, looking for his son. Who was with Nyx.

Rad, not Draken, had come to Ro Holding to steal a key. Rad had named Draken Saphier as the threat to Ro Holding, yet he himself dreamed dragons on the Luxour, longed to set them free. Draken, he said, wanted Chrysom’s key. Yet Rad had ensorcelled an entire court to obtain it. So he had ensorcelled Brand Saphier, both Brand and Draken insisted, and his own spell was not strong enough to contain Brand’s rage within the firebird. But it was the firebird’s magic that had wounded Rad: It had been made, he said, to kill.

She sank down wearily on a stone bench. Did Nyx
have the key with her? she wondered. She might have brought it to bargain with Rad for Meguet. Or she might have simply dropped it into her pocket and forgotten it was there. Was Draken only searching for his son? It was Rad who had talked of the key, of dragons; Draken had spoken most passionately of his son.

But he knew of Chrysom, of Ro Holding. He had brought Meguet into his house, and for all Meguet could see, every door was guarded. He would find Nyx, bring her back with him. And then what would he do?

The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

She pushed her fingers against her eyes, blocking light, and the dragon rode the dark behind her eyes. She smelled roses. The dark became her shadow, with a red rose lying in it.
Choose
, the mage had said.
The rose or the sword.

Choose
, the colorful, motionless dragons around her had said, and she had found the face she had been warned to fear.

She stood abruptly, the images growing clear in her mind. The red rose. The black dragon. She drew breath, feeling her hands grow icy with terror, for she had made her choice about Rad Ilex before she ever learned his name. In Chrysom’s tower she had wielded his rose against a dragon of thread; he would have the key now, if he had not paused to protect her from his own sorcery. If she had picked up the sword, he would not have recognized her in that brief, tense moment; he would have loosed the dragon, distracting
Nyx, then taken the key and fled, leaving Nyx frustrated but safe in Ro Holding, never knowing what Rad had stolen.

If she had picked up the sword.

The rose had cost them all. But the mage was still asking her to choose between the sword and the rose, for if she refused to help him, he would be at Draken Saphier’s mercy. There had been no mercy in the firebird.

The red rose. The black dragon.

The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

She had seen the dragon’s face.

Rad Ilex had left a rose in her mind. Draken Saphier had left a dragon, and it was not one of the Luxour’s half-dreams, entrancing in their mystery, floating between worlds. A dark and killing thing, she carried in her mind: It had, of all the dragons in Draken Saphier’s house, come alive within her heart and spoken.

The Dragon hunts the Cygnet.

She was in the dragon’s house.

*    *    *

Magior took her back to the mages’ wing that evening. She recognized the long, dark hallway, the great bronze dragon at the end of it. She asked, trying to keep her voice calm, controlled, “Is Draken Saphier back?”

“No,” Magior said, as the dragon doors were opened for them. “I am taking you to supper with the warrior-mages.” Meguet felt her face whiten. Around her the dragons seemed to come alive; their
golden, glaring eyes, their brilliant wings, their breaths of fire burned the air with color. Magior glanced at her, as if she felt the sudden chill in Meguet’s mind. “It is considered an honor.”

“Then,” Meguet said numbly, “I am honored.”

“They will treat you with all due courtesy. There is no need to fear them.”

“I’m hardly used to the company of mages. Nyx is the only mage I know.” And Rad Ilex, she remembered, growing cold again at the thought that he might appear, bloody and helpless, floating above the mages as they ate. Guards opened tall red doors on the other side of the dragon-room; murmuring voices, the smell of food spilled into the air. Meguet walked blindly forward into a sudden silence, as faces turned curiously toward her, the stranger from the land at the end of one twisted strand of silver around their wrists.

“This is Meguet Vervaine, of the court of Ro Holding,” Magior said, leading Meguet to a chair. Even the long tables were placed in a square; what seemed a hundred mages faced the intricate spirals and coils of Saphier’s emblem patterned in the floor. They wore the emblem, Meguet saw, on their breasts, each path colored by a different thread. “She is,” Magior continued as they sat, “quite weary from her ordeal with Rad Ilex in the Luxour and is not to be overly troubled with questions. Those of you who saw her at Draken Saphier’s brief return know already that she is not a mage, though she is kin to the mage Nyx Ro. She is, however, by the standards of Ro Holding, a
warrior, and has shown interest in the movements of the warriors’ ritual.”

Food, borne by a hand and a sleeve, appeared on Meguet’s plate; she stared at it, wondering what she could possibly be expected to do with it. The mage sitting on her left, a woman with white-gold hair and a hawk’s restless, hooded eyes, said kindly, “The movements of the warriors’ dance are quite old. I take it you have no such tradition among your warriors in Ro Holding?”

We barely have warriors
, Meguet thought starkly, then stilled her thoughts, lest the mage forget her manners and listen. She said, trying to find her usual composure, as if she had not fallen out of the sky into this elegant and dangerous land, “No. Only games and exercises involving appropriate weapons.” She hesitated; the hawk’s eyes watched her, waited for the trembling in the grass, the revealing word. “You call it ritual. In Ro Holding, while Brand Saphier was with Nyx, I saw him use that ritual to try to kill.”