The Cygnet and the Firebird (25 page)

“Most likely,” the mage agreed politely.

“How many of the warrior-mages are out here?”

“All of them.” He shook his head a little, fretfully. “Magic blows like sand in your eyes, here. It’s hard to distinguish minds, even faces, from the lies the desert tells. Even those of us searching together got separated. You must not lose the firebird.”

“No,” she said, and he vanished, leaving a shining, faceless ghost of himself imprinted on the wild winds. She opened a path hurriedly to anywhere, and nearly scalded herself in steam from a boiling pool.

She backed away from the heat and cloying smell, and found a slightly cooler place where she could think. Surrounded by the bubbling pools, the mists, she felt hidden for the moment. She wiped steam-slick hair out of her face, and wondered starkly how, in a desert full of wild magic and mages who could barely find each other, she could possibly locate the two who had fled there to hide.

The Luxour itself had shaped Rad’s power. So Draken had said, and if Rad could wear the faces of the desert, stones and dragon-dreams and shadows, and empty his mind of all but the constantly shifting winds of power, then even Draken with his dragon’s eyes and relentless mind would have trouble picking him out of the air. But how Rad could hide Meguet, Nyx was unsure. Rad might transform her into a moon-shadow, but not even he could hide her thoughts. Nyx would be on her mind, Ro Holding, the Cygnet; words foreign to Saphier would drift into Draken’s mind. If the warrior-mages did not find Meguet
first. Like Draken, they would search for her to find Rad. Would Rad, knowing that, abandon Meguet to plead coercion and duress to Draken Saphier? Meguet would more likely fight what would be the shortest battle in her life. And if Draken didn’t kill her, he would use her to force Nyx out of hiding.

And to yield the key. She stirred, remembering her own danger, and made herself as transparent as the steam billowing around her. But what, she wondered, would he do about Brand? Rad Ilex, she was certain, had not cast that spell. If not even he could remove it, Brand would wrench the firebird’s voice out of the Cygnet’s labyrinth, and its fire from Nyx’s hold, and sear the burning desert itself with his despair.

But the firebird had attacked Rad. Brand had named him the maker of the spell.

Meguet had tried to protect Rad from Draken.

Rad knew who had cast the spell. He had been there.

She felt her body shocked into visibility; even in the steam, her skin was cold.

No witnesses, Draken had said. No one else saw, but he and his son and Rad.

Three leaves. One blue as Brand’s eyes. One gold as the Luxour. One as red as the black war-dragon’s eyes.

She whispered, “Draken.”

As if she had summoned him, he began to shape himself out of the mists in front of her.

She ran before he had a face. But his mind’s eye saw her and the random path she had pulled from
Chrysom’s book. He pursued her, a single burning dragon’s eye in the dark, a force like night-wind at her heels. He could, she remembered with horror, forge his own paths, not from place to place perhaps, but from here to nowhere. As quickly as she shaped Chrysom’s path, he reshaped it, cutting through her weave of silver, leaving her on an edge of nothing, or turning her own path back on itself, until she lost all sense of Chrysom’s design, and guessed that the path she fled down would loop through itself to lead her inevitably, strand by shifted, twisted strand, to the Dragon of Saphier.

In desperation she opened another path, and then another, flowing away from that. She shaped a third, a fourth, flinging them into the dark, and running without knowing what dragons waited at their endings. She opened others, sending filaments of silver like crazed nets to catch a drifting moment and open it. She gave Draken no time to alter them before she spun another, sent it branching away into the unknown. Finally, she opened two that, by some luck, were so close they seemed almost indistinguishable. She fled down one, leaving Draken to snarl the other until he wove it through itself and then found he had trapped nothing.

So she hoped. The path she followed remained true to Chrysom’s pattern. She had no idea where it led; there could be no worse, she reasoned, than the dragon hunting her. When the path ended, she closed it behind her, let it fade back into possibility, and then into a dream that only Chrysom’s key would bring to
life. Stranded on some island of time within the Luxour, she turned to face the dragon.

At first she thought she was alone. She stood at the mouth of a cave so massive even her mage’s eye could not find walls or ceiling. But she smelled earth, wet stone, heard the slow drip and trickle of water. She took a step forward, sensed something where her eye saw only air. Tentatively, she let her thoughts flow around it: It might have been the ghost of stone that had once filled the cave. As she had with Chrysom’s tiny jars, she let her mind drop into it.

She seemed, for an instant, made of light, as if the sun burned behind her eyes, and all her bones were lucent and bright as fire. She could not speak or think; she was as formless and bright as air at noon in the Luxour. Then the sun blinked, and she felt cold stone beneath her face, her body, and realized she had fallen. She pulled herself up, shaking, stunned, blind, waiting for the pain to begin, the punishment for touching fire. But she felt only the cool breath of the cave. She opened her eyes finally, and saw the dragon.

Its shadow had been burned into her mind, it seemed; her eye shaped a darkness against the dark. The heavy bulk of its head loomed above her; it could have swallowed her and scarcely noticed. Its huge eyes glittered faintly, flecks of light as colorless as stars. Its voice filled the cave or her head, slow, ancient, dry, dust blowing across dust.

“Who are you?”

Her own voice sounded small, trembling in the vastness. “I’m sorry—”

“Answer.”

“Nyx Ro. A mage. I came—I was running—I didn’t see you. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

She heard its breath, long and endless. “Nyx Ro. Running. From where? To where? Answer.”

“I was running away. From another mage.”

“What mage?”

“Draken Saphier.”

She had no idea what those words might mean to it: The act of running would not occur to it, and she could not imagine anything it would be compelled to run from. A great nostril, vague and colorless, expanded slightly; she heard a hiss from it. “When humans run, they run from the greater to the lesser fear. They do not run down the spider webs of time where unknown dragons wait. How did you find me? Answer.”

“I have a book of paths—”

“You did not make them.”

“No.”

“I eat paths of the makers I dislike.” It seemed to shift. A hollow echo rolled through the cave; light sparked as its scales dragged across stone. Still she could not see its color. She swallowed.

“You eat power.”

“I dislike minor annoyances.”

She made a movement, half a step. “I won’t disturb—” Black moons sculpted out of the dark descended behind her, slid together and locked. She
stood ringed by dragon-claws, and wondered if some of the minor annoyances it ate were human. She said carefully, “I would not make much of a meal. You have already terrified me. Your power is like the Luxour’s, ancient and unimaginable. You don’t need to threaten me, any more than the sun needs to threaten. I must get back to the Luxour. Those I love are in terrible danger. If there is a price I must pay for disturbing you, just tell me.”

It made another sound, a faint, distant rumble. “Who disturbs the Luxour? Answer.”

“Draken Saphier. And his mages.”

An eyelid descended; stars vanished, reappeared. “A dust storm. A random shift of rock. The Luxour will survive that.”

“Yes.” Her voice shook again. “But Brand Saphier may not. And Ro Holding may not—”

“Human names. Human dreams.”

“That’s all I know. That’s what I am. I have no dragons’ time for loving. While I stand here in your hold I am disturbing you, and those I love might cease to exist. Please let me go. Tell me what I must do. I will leave you in peace; you’ll never see me again. Please.”

“You woke me. Nyx Ro. Weaving my secret path out of mages’ fire.”

“Destroy the path behind me,” she said desperately. “I don’t have the power to make such things, only to follow them.

“Who does make them? Answer.”

“He is dead.”

“Who else?”

“No one.”

“Why have you come here? What petty breath of storm across the Luxour sends humans running in fear beyond time? Answer.”

She drew breath, held it, feeling as if its thoughts had looped back through themselves, trapping her within some answerless question. There was no place where she could hide herself from its bright, relentless eye. It would burn the leaves of Chrysom’s book inside her mind; it could turn her bones to gold and hoard them until trees grew on the Luxour. She searched for an answer it had not already heard, and remembered at last the word for what she fought.

“The dragon’s son,” she said.

The dragon was silent. She waited a moment or two, listening, before she realized that the black around her held no more subtle shades of dark, nor did the stillness hold more questions. She turned, trembling again, and opened Chrysom’s book to fashion a simpler path back to the Luxour.

Rad Ilex took one step onto the Luxour from his time-path and vanished. Meguet, looking for him wildly in the moonlight, saw winds, shimmering veils of dark and silver, swirl around her. She closed her eyes and heard Rad’s voice.

“Meguet.”

“What?” she said tersely. She opened her eyes, saw nothing now but the vast, wind-swept desert.

“I’ve made you invisible.” For a moment, she was afraid to move; she stared rigidly ahead, lest she look down and find she stood on nothing. “Don’t be afraid,” he added. “You can see yourself. I can see you.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Wait.”

Slowly he shaped himself out of air and night; she saw the strange winds glide over him. He said softly when his face became more than a blank shadow, “I’m using the power of the Luxour to do this. It’s a turbulent force all across the desert. Draken will have trouble isolating me from it.”

“What causes it?”

“The dragons, I think. They breathe power; they dream it; it escapes from all their private worlds into the desert. I can disguise myself in it. But hiding you will be more difficult. Look.”

She looked down and saw a moon-shadow the strange power had shaped, that clung to her invisible heel: a black swan, its wings outstretched. She swallowed drily. The shadow peeled away, flew into the wind.

“Will he see—”

“I don’t know. The magic creates itself constantly, especially when it responds to other sources of power.” She stopped searching the night for the shadow of the Cygnet, and met his eyes. “I can hide from Draken Saphier. Perhaps I can hide you. But you cannot hide from the Luxour.”

He was worried, she realized, and with reason; she felt the ground drop away again, as if she stood on nothing. “It’s a power,” she heard herself say, “that rouses only in defense of the Cygnet. When Ro Holding itself is in grave danger.”

She saw his grim face tighten. “Now?” he demanded incredulously. “In the middle of the Luxour with a hundred mages and Draken Saphier alert for any hint of power?”

“If Draken threatens Ro Holding, or Nyx in such a way that Ro Holding itself is threatened, then by my heritage I must fight for the Cygnet. Even on the Luxour. Even against a hundred mages.”

Another shadow formed, broke away from her: a
black rose. She heard his breath. “How were you trained? And by whom?”

“No one,” she said simply, “I was born, I am the Cygnet’s eye, its hand. At such times. Now, I’m only a woman in a desert in the dead of night, facing danger without even a sword.”

“A sword. You saw how much use that was to you in Chrysom’s tower.”

“I know. But it would make me feel better.”

“If I could risk it, I would make you a hundred swords. But if you raise a weapon against the warrior-mages bearing the ritual blades, they will fight back. They are fast, ruthless, efficient. You saw what Brand could do. And he’s not even a mage.”

She nodded, her eyes wide. “They lied to me.”

“Who?”

“The warrior-mages. They said the dance was only ritual. I didn’t believe them and they knew it.”

“They are preparing for war. They don’t care where. They want to experiment with an attack through time: an army of mages and warriors and dragons that can appear and disappear seemingly out of nowhere. Ro Holding is as good a place as any to begin.”

She stared blindly at the ground, trying to think. “We must find Nyx.”

“And that key, before Draken does. I can hide it forever from him among the dragons.”

“They will still have time-paths,” she said starkly. “Who will hide Ro Holding?”

He shook his head, scanning the desert. She saw
nothing move in the moonlight but dust; they might have been the only people on the Luxour. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Can you find some water? With your face like that, you look already dead.”

“Oh.” He touched it; the dark mask of blood and dust vanished. His own face, taut with weariness and pain, was no more comforting. He stood silently, letting his mind wander, she guessed, for a long time. He seemed to draw strength from the desert’s power, calm from the ancient, unchanging mountains; his face eased a little as he contemplated the thing he loved. He stirred finally; she said,

“Now what?”

“There are a dozen mages prowling nearby, but neither Draken nor Nyx.”

“I don’t see anything,” she said, shaken. “Can they see us?”

“I can’t see them either. But I can tell the difference between a warrior-mage’s power, and the Luxor’s. That’s what keeps me safe. To them, I am another random thought of the Luxour.”

“And what am I?”

“In danger,” he said. “Let’s search among the stones and pools; it would be easier for her to hide there than out here.”

They emerged from another silver path onto the banks of a steaming waterfall that poured down steps it had carved in stone washed with all the colors of opal. Rad was silent, searching again, Meguet guessed, while the damp, cloying mist billowed
around them and away, finding nothing of them to cling to. She heard Rad breathe finally,