The Cygnet And The Firebird Part 19

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, "I think she's here...." Then he vanished again within his thoughts. Meguet watched the colors in the water swirl, form a reflection of her face. The reflection slid leaf-like down the steps before it broke apart. A warrior-mage appeared out of nowhere, stared into the water. He turned abruptly, searched the mist. Meguet, not daring to breathe, turned her thoughts to steam, stone, crystal. Then the mist itself leaped at him, poured, burning, into his mouth as he .drew breath to scream. He fell backward into the scalding water and followed Meguet's reflection into deeper water. Meguet saw a silver path begin to form in the air above him, break apart as he sank. One of his ritual blades spun out of the water, snagged on the crystals along the bank. She eyed it, but seemed oddly incapable of moving.

She heard Rad's whisper close to her ear, and started. "I found Brand. The firebird. But I can't find Draken-"

She allowed herself to move finally, tried to touch him. "Let's find Nyx. She must go home- She won't leave until she knows where I am."

"She won't leave without you," he said, startled "I must stay. I can't hide behind the walls of Ro House and wait for Draken Saphier to bring his war there. If I must fight, I must fight here."

"You'll die," he said incredulously.

"Either here, or in Ro Holding. As I would have died defending Chrysom's tower, if Draken Saphier had come to steal that key instead of you. It's my heritage."

"It's ridiculous," he snapped, but no more, for the mists, s.n.a.t.c.hing at Meguet's thoughts, whirled into a high white tower covered with what, at first glance, seemed to be red roses, but which changed, to Meguet's horror, into the black dragon's malevolent, flame-red eyes. They looked everywhere, the eyes of Draken Saphier; they saw through mist, through Rad's spell, through her mind into the Cygnet's eye.... "Come," Rad said, gripping her. She could not move. He pulled her roughly away from the image, and down another silver path.

Here they were surrounded by bubbling pools; even the mud spoke. Meguet could scarcely see the wall of yellow rock rising above the mud-pools, which she might have touched with the point of a broadsword. She waited while Rad searched the place; his thoughts came back to her, "You must leave," he breathed. "You'll kill us both."

"Then leave me."

"No."

"Were they real?" she asked. "The dragon-eyes?"

"One might have been. Draken knows how to play with the Luxour's power. But only as a man with one finger knows how to play a flute. I still can't find him. Finding him will be dangerous enough, but it's far more dangerous not knowing where he is."

"Hide." she suggested after a moment. "I'll bring him to you."

He looked at her darkly, but said only, "You'll do that soon enough as it is. I want the key first. And then you and Nyx Ro out of Saphier. Then I want Draken Saphier. In that order."

She did not bother to answer. She saw something move in the solid wall of yellow stone. Mist, she thought, a trickle of water. But something made her reach out to grip Rad, warn him silent. Her fingers closed on nothing; he had vanished even to her eye. The dark s.h.i.+fting became a crack in the stone. The crack widened as she stared. Then the face of the rock tore like paper and a dozen warrior-mages emerged.

She was surrounded in an instant; their whirling blades spun, plunged into the ground around her, elongating into a high, deadly cage so tight she cut her forearm, turning. The teasing desert gave one blade swans on its hilt, down its blade; she reached for it desperately. It snapped silver light, numbing her hand. She stumbled back, cut her shoulder on another blade. She caught her balance desperately, stood trembling while the mages appeared and disappeared into the mists, searching for Rad Ilex.

The ground around her turned to boiling mud. It swallowed the mages' blades, along with one mage who, leaping for Meguet, turned visible in midair as a wave of mud flung itself up and shaped him before it slapped him down. Steam blew everywhere, glittered with fine grains of silver and gold. Meguet, feeling a hand close on her wrist, pulled against it. It pulled harder; the silver grains snaked into a pattern around them. The pattern shattered like gla.s.s. She heard Rad cry out; the grip on her wrist slackened, tightened again. Light flashed, bright and painful as a flas.h.i.+ng mirror; the island she stood on melted beneath her. She had no time to scream before she was dragged into mud. Like the mist, it found nothing of her to grasp. Silver wove in the murk; she could see again suddenly, as the mud pool faded. Still Rad remained invisible. Or was it Rad? she wondered suddenly, panicked. Was it Draken Saphier instead, leading her down the time-path? She pulled free abruptly; a flock of tiny swans formed themselves out of the silver path, soared upward, flew in a ring around her. She stopped, tense, her eyes wide, searching nothing.

"Meguet."

It was Nyx. The swans scattered at the word, turned back into silver. Nyx appeared a moment later, pale, and dishevelled, her eyes full of color, but, to Meguet's eye, unharmed. Nyx took a deep breath, closed her eyes. "Meguet," she said again. "What a place to find you in. A lake of boiling mud."

"Nyx." She felt, saying the name, as helpless as she had ever been in her life, finding the heir to Ro Holding underground in a strange country, while a deadly storm of magic raged above their heads. "Do you have any idea what kind of danger you're in?"

Nyx nodded. "I know exactly what kind of danger I'm in. And so are you and so is Ro Holding." Her voice sounded composed, but as she touched Meguet's bleeding forearm, Meguet saw her hand shake. "You're hurt."

Meguet ripped a length of silk loose from her torn sleeve impatiently. "Nyx, listen to me-" She stopped abruptly, searching the soundless dark beyond the time-path. "Where's Rad Ilex?"

"Still battling mages." She took the silk, wound it methodically around Meguet's arm. "I thought he would be safer without you."

"He said so, too. But he wouldn't leave me."

"You might as well be carrying a blazing torch, the way power is escaping you."

"I can't help it. Rad complained, too." Nyx checked her shoulder; Meguet shrugged away. "Nyx, listen."

Nyx folded her arms, stood quietly, her eyes colorless again, "fm listening."

"I want you to give me that key and go back to Ro Holding before we take another step in the Luxour."

Nyx raised an eyebrow. "You do. While you do what? Battle the warrior-mages of Saphier with your good intentions? Don't be preposterous."

"Then give the key to Rad and go home. He can find the dragons, bring them to the Luxour to fight Draken."

Nyx was silent a moment, her fingers tight on her arms. Her eyes slid away from Meguet's, the expression in them unfathomable. "Does he imagine them to be so obliging? To rouse themselves to fight for or against Draken, at the whim of whichever human reaches them first? They are very dangerous."

"I don't know." Meguet rubbed her eyes wearily. "I don't know what he thinks, except that this is what he wants. He takes power from the Luxour, he says. Maybe that would persuade them. At least he could hide the key from Draken. Or you could. Hide it on some path and go." Nyx remained unmoved; Meguet's voice rose. "Nyx, you are heir to Ro Holding!"

"I might as well be heir to the moon if we can't stop Draken here and now. I know what he wants. I'd go home only to sit in Ro House and wait for him and his army of mages and dragons to knock at the gate. I saw your kinsman with his com-silk hair appear in Chrysom's tower just as I left with Brand- He came to warn me,"

"Then why did you leave? Nyx, what possessed you to come here?"

"What possessed you to think you could cross the Luxour on foot to Draken Saphier's court?"

"I had to find the danger-I couldn't see it sitting safely in Rad's village."

Nyx shrugged slightly. "And I couldn't see what the firebird saw, by sitting safely in Chrysom's tower. Nor could I find you. A minor point to you, perhaps, but it seemed important to my mother. What was the warning you were given?"

"I saw a dragon of night and stars across Rad's doorway, in the morning light. At first I thought Rad was me danger-he knew too much-and Draken, when he found me in the desert, was persuasive. I didn't know-I was confused-"

"With reason."

Meguet paused, remembering the dragon, her hand straying to her shoulder. "I doubt that Corleu even knew the word for what he was compelled to warn you of. The Dragon hunts the Cygnet. That is the warning."

"I thought as much." Nyx gazed at nothing, wandering a tangled path of magic or memory, while Meguet contemplated their dubious fates grimly. "Brand," Nyx said softly. The color washed into her eyes at the name. "He might stop Draken."

"Why should he?"

"It's complicated," Nyx said, and nothing more, seeming, for once, at loss for words. Meguet, looking at her, found the unspoken words in her eyes.

"Nyx Ro," she said incredulously, the blood startling through her. "He's a warrior!"

"So? You love a Gatekeeper."

"At least he is part of Ro Holding." Meguet laid a hand on her forehead, where the headache was beginning, and added crossly, "Moro's name. Brand himself barely knows who he is. Other than the son of a ruler who wants to scorch the four Holds of Ro Holding with dragon-fire. Is he Saphier's heir?"

"I forgot to ask."

"Oh, Nyx, really."

"Such things are unimportant in Ro Holding. You know that. I never knew my own father's name."

"That's because your mother fell in love discreetly and in private, and not, I would imagine, in the middle of a strange land with a man who spends most of his day in a tree." She was holding her shoulder as she spoke, frowning at the nagging pain. "You love him for the color of his eyes."

"Most likely," Nyx said temperately. She drew the ivory ball out of her pocket, opened it, and extracted something that looked like a brown, withered hand.

"What is that?"

"Olem root. From Berg Hold." She applied it gently to Meguet's shoulder. A numbness washed across the pain; the scent of cloves and earth and mint seemed to quiet even the nickering ache behind her eyes. "Country magic. It will cling there until the bleeding stops, and then it will drop away and wither again. A trifle gruesome, but it works."

"Yes," Meguet sighed. "Thank you. So. Brand will stop his father from destroying Ro Holding for your sake?"

"Not exactly for my sake," Nyx said, but did not elaborate, nor did she allow expression into her eyes. She took the amber earring from the ivory, hung it from her ear. Gold fire s.h.i.+mmered across it, faded. "As you say, we hardly know each other. But," she added on a breath, "he knows his father even less,"

"What-"

"We must find the firebird now. Quickly."

"Draken will be with him."

"Draken was alone, when I saw him last. I'm hoping the Luxour separated them."

"What about Rad?" Meguet asked anxiously, as Nyx shaped the silver pattern into their future. "Should we leave him on his own?"

"He would only distract the firebird. I want all of Brand's attention." She listened a moment, for what Meguet could only imagine: dragon's breath, the silent voices of the mages, the footsteps of the dragonlord. "Come."

Winds, desert, stars, spilled around them at the path's end. Meguet saw the broken palaces rising up against the night. The transparent, elusive colors in a dragonfly's wing illumined windows, flickered away. In the next moment, the palaces were only stones.

"Should we hide?" she whispered to Nyx. "Are we invisible?"

Nyx shook her head. The wind tossed her hair into dark, tangled paths; for an instant her eyes reflected moonlight. "I want the firebird to find me."

"What if the mages find you first?"

"That's a risk I'll have to take. Meguet-" she breathed, as stars sparked in the ground around Meguet, s.h.i.+fted to form a familiar constellation. "Will you stop that?"

The Cygnet rose above their heads, star-fire marking its wings, its cold bright eye, until the winds picked the stars apart and they fell like fading embers into the dark. "It's the Luxour," Meguet said a little wildly. "I can't control it."

"I can't either."

"What do you want me to do? Should I hide?"

"Go wait among those stones. Maybe their power will disguise yours."

Meguet left her alone, barely more than a shadow in the desert, using a power at once simpler and far more complex than any mage's power to call the firebird. Turning as she entered the nearest ma.s.s of stones, she saw tiny black swans form and fly out of her footprints in the dust. Appalled, she moved deeper into the stones.

Moonlight pulled her own shadow from the dark; she looked up and saw again the haunting s.h.i.+ft from jumbled stones to the sagging walls and broken towers of a great ruined palace. Her mind wandered down an imaginary time-path and found the palace again, in a moment so close to the Luxour's time that the two worlds of desert and palaces, made unstable by enormous, random powers, were constantly overlapping. The moonlight in the high windows grew filmy with b.u.t.terfly colors. The colors washed away; the cold light poured down stone. She heard Nyx's voice.

She walked soundlessly to the opening in the stones, looked out. The firebird had come to Nyx; as it spiralled around her, she coaxed it down. It came to rest finally in front of her. It gazed at her a moment, motionless, crying neither sorrow nor fire. And then it changed.

He is free, Meguet thought with wonder, and then, as the stones around her s.h.i.+fted, he changed under her eye: She saw the broader, more powerful line of his shoulders, the white in his hair. She felt something flash out of her entire body; the winds took her fear and shaped it into the dragon's shadow.

Nyx vanished. Draken simply turned his head, looked at the stones where Meguet was hiding, and Nyx appeared again.

"No," she said sharply.

"Then give me what I want."

"Where is Brand?"

"Where I left him. Give me the key. Then I will set you and Meguet on the path to Ro Holding. You can go home."

"And wait for you." Her voice shook with anger. Draken said very softly, "Yes."

Meguet felt her body flash again. This time her own rage shaped the shadow that flew, soundless and dark as night, with its coldly burning eye on Draken Saphier. She flew and did not fly; she felt the power gather in her again, as the black swan neared him. Blue light flickered along its wings. He must have heard the winds part for it; he spun suddenly, flung up his hand. The black dragon formed against the moon and stars, its red eyes flaming. It opened its mouth, swung its long neck down and caught the black swan as it flew into Draken Saphier.

He cried out, as the blue flame rippled over him. Then the dragon broke the swan's neck and tossed it away. Meguet, still caught in it, felt herself grow limp and thoughtless with its death, falling farther and farther away from a point of light that grew small, so small she could scarcely see it, though it seemed, as she fell. the only important thing left to do.

Then the hard ground shaped under her again; someone gripped her, shook her. "Meguet!" She opened her eyes. The world was still black, but she recognized Rad's voice. She lifted her head, saw Draken rising. She heard a strange noise beside her; Draken, hearing it also, vanished just before the mage-light struck.

So had Nyx; the light snaked across the air where she had been, and picked one of the warrior-mages out of nothing. Her ritual blades and time-paths caught the light, flared brighter than the moon. Then she seemed to lose all light, become a piece of nothing darker than the night. She fell without a sound. Another mage appeared beside her; power snapped back at Rad. The stones shook around them; a shard flicked across Meguet's cheek. She flinched, heard Rad breathe something.

"Stay here," he said, and vanished. She stumbled to her feet, gripping stones to keep her balance, and looked out.

She saw a calm and empty desert. Then both Rad and Nyx seemed to waver in and out of the air, as if they were being pulled into eyesight and constantly pulling themselves back. As the silent struggle gradually and relentlessly worked them visible, the warrior-mages appeared around them, still as monoliths in the moonlight.

Draken saw her. He was an eye in her mind instantly, blood-red and unblinking, staring everywhere she fled, forcing her finally into a maze where she took every wrong turn she could make, and every wall that stopped her turned into the dragon's eye and forced her on. Once she turned and stood in its glare, refusing to move- The eye turned to fire in her head; from some far place she heard her own voice. She ran.

Abruptly, she could see again. She was on her knees, clinging to stone, trembling as if she had been running for her life through the maze of palaces on the Luxour. Draken had turned away from her to watch the firebird come.

It flew fast, and it flew straight to Rad Ilex.

He could not seem to move; he could only watch it, his head uplifted. He tried to speak; he could not. The bird's silver claws shone like ritual blades; they were open, curved, and dropping toward his heart. Nyx's face was turned toward the bird; she too struggled to speak. Meguet, freed from Draken's attention, walked the maze in her mind to what the dragon had sought: the eye of the Cygnet.

Nyx, she said, from that secret place, and Nyx met her eyes.

Power swept through her, from the Cygnet to the Cygnet's heir. Nyx shook free of the web of minds that held her, and cried to the firebird, "Brand' Not Rad! It's your father's spell! Remember!"

The firebird faltered above Rad. It tore its voice out of Ro Holding and screamed, falling as if it had been shot. Brand, his face rigid with the firebird's fury, rolled to his feet and leaped in a single unbroken movement, at his father. Draken, startled, nearly unleashed mage-fire; he pulled it back quickly as Brand's body struck him. He staggered, regained his balance and gripped Brand. The back of his hand, coupled with the weight of time-paths, whipped across Brand's face. He fell like the firebird had out of the air, and lay still.

A few of the warrior-mages stirred; Meguet heard an indrawn breath. Draken met their eyes, said calmly, "It was necessary. He will understand." He looked at Nyx. "The key."

Her eyes flicked at Meguet, leaning drained and helpless against the stones. She bowed her head. Something small, burnished with amber fire dropped into her hand. Draken, his eyes on it, stepped toward her. She flung the amber at his feet.

It exploded with all the firebird's beautiful enchantments. For a moment Draken vanished among them: a scattering of garnet roses, a diamond snowfall. But as he picked himself out of the spell he had made, the mages held Nyx, shaped her back into the waning moonlight as she tried to vanish. Draken, shaking gold leaves out of his hair, stepped across Brand's body to her.

"Perhaps." he said, "you will give me something to fight after all in your peaceful kingdom. You and your cousin who is not a mage."

He held her eyes and held out his hand. After a long time, during which she stood like the warriormages, a standing stone beneath the setting moon, she reached into her pocket for the key to all the dreaming worlds.