The Cygnet And The Firebird Part 2

"I didn't-I swear I didn't even see her!" He touched a gla.s.sy leaf tentatively; his eyes sought Nyx's. "Can't you do something?"

"I was trying!" she flared, exasperated, and Rush flushed a dull red.

"I'm sorry. I am so clumsy with sorcery. It makes me blind and deaf and extremely stupid."

Nyx did not bother to answer. She touched the rose-tree here, there, with her mind. It was a great jewel of malachite and emerald, with ruby, garnet, amber and moonstone blossoming among clouds of paler jade. Within the jewel was Meguet; seeking her, Nyx found veil after veil of fire, and, at last, the face of the bird.

It was masked, like a swan, with red plumage; its eyes were golden. Sensing her, it cried. The Cygnet in front of it, flying on a long triangle of night sky, melted into a strange vine with swan-shaped leaves.

The bird was on the tower roof- Nyx spun her thread again, flung it like a message: / am the one you seek. The bird landed a moment later, noiseless, glowing faintly, its white and fiery red bruising the dusk, clinging, with silver talons, to the malachite leaves.

The faces around Nyx resolved themselves again. The Gatekeeper's was among them, pale, expressionless, hard as the jewel he stared at.

"Apt," he commented. His hand slid among the leaves and silver moms, closed gently around the stem. Nyx saw him swallow. "It was me put the idea into its head," he added, ten years of courtly smoothness swamped suddenly by his river-brat's accent.

"Me shouting at her like that." Like Rush, he sought Nyx's eyes. She said slowly, her arms folded tightly, "It's an intriguing spell. I can't seem to find her, only the bird. It should be simple, but it's not."

"I'll wait," the Gatekeeper said.

"The bird is waiting, too," Calyx said wonderingly. "It's not screaming now. Is it real? Or sorcery?"

"I can't tell yet," Nyx said. She held its eyes, looking, with her smudged, jewel-framed face, as fey as the firebird. Voices disturbed her; they all turned, saw the Holder and her oldest daughter, surrounded by household guard, half the Hold councilors and their a.s.sorted families.

"There it is'" someone cried, as they crossed the yard. They gathered in sudden, perplexed silence around what it clung to. The Holder, her hair nearly as dishevelled as her daughter's, studied the firebird grimly. The guard ringed it, arrows poised; Calyx cried in horror, "Don't shoot it! You'll hit Meguet!"

"Meguet," the Holder exclaimed, then took in the truant Gatekeeper, his hand, and what he held. Her dark eyes widened; her voice, raised, caused even the firebird to s.h.i.+ft. "Moro's eyeteeth! I'll wring its neck!"

"Mother," Nyx breathed.

"That's Meguet? Are you sure?"

"Magic seems to follow her in that shape," the Gatekeeper said.

"Why," Lauro Ro demanded of Nyx, "are you just standing there? Are you waiting for the roses to bloom?"

"I'm waiting," Nyx said tartly, "for some peace and quiet."

"After alt that time in the bog, what you don't know about birds, inside and out, you could thread a bead with. How could you let this happen? Can she breathe in there? Is she even alive?"

Iris, her stately and practical eldest, glanced at Nyx's frozen face, and then at the guests fascinated by the sorcery and by the threat of explosion between the Holder and her unpredictable heir. Troubled, she touched her mother's arm. "Mother, Nyx knows what she needs to work with, and if it's peace and quiet, you could at least stop shouting. How could anything possibly be Nyx's fault? Do you think there is anything she wouldn't do for Meguet?"

The Holder looked at her dusty, barefoot heir, standing dark and stilt, with the first wash of light from the rising moon spilling over her shoulder. She gestured at me guard; they lowered their bows, but kept their tight, watchful circle. Nyx, her voice low, taut, said, "There is no reason to think she isn't alive. But the bird's magic is random, uncalculated, and very strong. What I need to know is if the bird is the sorcerer or the sorcery. The maker of the magic, or simply its bewitched object. For some reason, it's difficult to tell. It shouldn't be this difficult, but it is. I can't find Meguet at all. You'll have to be patient. Please. If you startle me bird, it may scream again, and I'll have twice the mystery to undo."

The Holder sighed. Arms folded, pins dangling in her wild hair, she looked much like her magical daughter. "I'm sorry," she said. "All this sorcery makes me edgy. It's quiet, now. And not afraid of any of us. It didn't, most likely, fly into my house to turn Meguet into a rose-tree. Was it looking for you?"

"I think so."

"The guard say it s.n.a.t.c.hes arrows out of midair."

"It caught mine," Rush said. "Meguet was running to stop me; she got tangled in its cry."

"There's a blacksmith in the yard with a silver hand," the Holder said grimly. "If this bird is the sorcerer, it has much to account for. May we watch? If it turns you into a black rose-tree, may I wring its neck then?"

Nyx smiled a little. "Please." The smile faded; her brows twitched together again. "What intrigues me most is something Meguet said. She has no power of sorcery, but sometimes she can make very complicated things very simple, by looking at them from an angle I miss. She said about the bird: It has a human cry. That, I think, must be what makes its cry so terrible."

The bird had not stirred since the Holder startled it; it clung like something carved of marble to its spell. A curve of moon rising behind the east tower caught in its silver talons; they flashed like blades. Its eyes, flooding with moonlight, turned milky. Nyx looked at it, leaving her mind open, still, tranquil, an invitation for whatever violence or enchantments or speech it might be moved to. It gazed back at her, as still as she. She tried again to find some thought of Meguet within its spell: Leaves moved through her eyes, endless leaves and petals of carnelian and beaten gold, as if she wandered through an enchanted garden.

Moonlight touched the jewelled leaves, spilled its cold fire over the bird. It roused abruptly, crying its fierce and terrible cry, but its fire only fell pale and spent, harmless as the risen moon's light. As it moved, leaves trembled. The Gatekeeper, still holding a stem, found his hand at Meguet's neck, her hair falling over his arm. For a moment her eyes were malachite, and then they were her own, blinking, surprised, at the Holder's face. The bird landed at her feet in a flood of light. The cry it gave, as it transformed itself, was fully human.

Three.

He looked without expression at the arrows aimed at him, as if he did not recognize them, or as if such things, in his peculiar life, were commonplace. Meguet, stooping instinctively for the sword she had dropped, started as it slunk away under her hand. No one else moved; his cry held them spellbound. But nothing of its raw fury and despair lingered in his face; he did not seem to realize he had made a sound.

He was oddly dressed, in a tattered dirty tunic of blue silk, and an embroidered belt of raw red silk. Beneath that he wore a close-fitting garment of gold thread or mail. His soft leather boots were torn and scuffed. He wore strange metal bands at his wrists, intricately fas.h.i.+oned, as if strands of molten metal had been poured over each other in a wide filigree. They looked fire-scorched, so blackened they might have been made of iron. His hair, thick, black, fell past his shoulders. The moon, striking his face at an angle, illumined half: a dark brow, long bones at cheek and jaw, skin drawn tightly across them. The other side of his face was dark.

He did not speak; he seemed resigned to whatever impulses his actions might have inspired. Nyx, connecting moonlight with the pale fire that had come out of the bird before it changed, asked abruptly, "How long are you human?"

He seemed surprised that she had thought to ask. "Until midnight." His voice was nearly inaudible. "Then the bird hunts."

"What," the Holder asked sharply, "does it hunt?"

"I think mice."

"Who are you? What kind of outlandish place are you from, flying into my house, frightening my household, turning my niece into a rose-tree?"

Meguet, glancing around for the niece in question, took a step backward suddenly, found her own shape against the Gatekeeper.

"The bird cries. It changes things." His voice held a hollow, haunted weariness. "I cannot stop it. Are you the mage?"

"No. I am the Holder of Ro Holding."

"Ro Holding." The blankness in his voice was stunning. Then he added, ' "The realm of the Cygnet. I have seen the black swan flying on wars.h.i.+ps' sails. Or the bird has. One of us. Or perhaps it was only a picture. I don't remember."

"Do you remember your name?" Nyx asked. He looked at her for a long time before he answered.

"You are the mage."

"I am Nyx Ro. And mage, sorceress, bog-witch, something of everything." She was holding his eyes, speaking slowly, calmly, using words like tiny grappling hooks to draw and fix his attention. "You are ensorcelled. You came for help."

"Yes," he breathed. "The bird cries for help-it transforms its cries to jewels, gold, anything precious to catch the eye."

"How did you know to find help here?"

"The bird knew."

"You are the bird."

He opened his mouth, closed it. His face changed suddenly, like s.h.i.+fting flame: For a moment he was going to scream. And then it changed again, forgetting. "No. The bird is the sorcery."

"How long have you been ensorcelled?"

"I do not know. A week. A month. A century. I do not know."

"Where are you from?"

"I have forgotten."

"What is your name?"

"I have forgotten," he whispered. Nyx was silent; her own eyes, catching the moon's pale fire, turned misty, inhuman. Meguet, resigned to the expression in them, knew she had ensorcelled herself by her own curiosity. After a moment, Nyx loosed the man, turned her gaze to the Holder. Her brows crooked questioningly. The Holder, equally resigned, flung up a hand.

"All right. I am curious, too. But I will have no more sorcery from that bird. Keep it out of sight, and in Moro's name give the man something to eat besides mice."

The man slid to his knees. His head bowed; he held his arms together as if they were bound, elbow to upturned wrists that the strange, latticed metal protected. His fingers spread wide and flat, a gesture that riveted Nyx's attention. "This to the Cygnet," he said. "All the time I hold."

The Holder sent him, under guard, to be fed, washed, clothed and presented to Nyx's scrutiny in the mage's tower before the bell in the north tower changed night into morning. Nyx returned to what a hasty eye might have deemed the disaster in the library. So orderly was her chaos that she saw at a glance Calyx's futile attempts to straighten things. Musing, the stranger's gesture repeating itself in her mind, she stared into the eye of the Cygnet flying through black marble above the mantel. Beneath the Cygnet, things glinted in candle and torchlight: tiny opaque bottles, dark gla.s.s boxes that refused to open, mysterious things carved in amber, wood, gold, that had no openings yet when shaken moved from the liquid rolling within them. She fingered a seamless cobalt box; something buzzed in it like a furious insect. She still did not know, after years of wandering, study, work, what magic lay within that tiny box. What she had finally learned was why she was still ignorant.

The door opened; Meguet, about to enter, stopped in the doorway with an amazed face peering over her shoulder. She turned with barely a flicker of expression, and took the tray that had followed her up. The door closed; she stood, with more expression, looking for a place to set Nyx's supper.

"Just let it go," Nyx said. Meguet, who had been transformed into a rose-tree with less notice, yielded calmly to the whims of sorcery and left the tray hanging in midair. "Thank you."

"Your mother asked me to bring it. She said you hadn't eaten all day."

"How could she remember that? I didn't." She waved the tray across the room. Meguet, glancing around, caught sight of ancient weapons hanging like icicles above her head. She moved promptly, joined Nyx at the hearth, where nothing hung overhead but a faded tapestry. Nyx, bread in one hand, cold chicken in the other, asked, "Where is he?"

"In a bath, I think. What is it in you that causes furniture to behave in such a peculiar fas.h.i.+on?"

"I prefer a world in a constant state of trans.m.u.tation," Nyx said with her mouth full.

"Is that what you will tell the Holder?"

"Is she coming up?"

"She's hardly in the mood to leave you alone up here with a man who turns cart horses into trees by breathing."

"Oh."

"So she said." .

Nyx shrugged. "The bird's spells wear away by moonlight. Luckily. You made a beautiful rose-tree."

"A rose-tree," Meguet said with feeling. "In front of half the household. Why did you wait for the moon to rescue me? You could have spared me some dignity."

"I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

Meguet gazed at her. She folded her arms, leaned against the mantel. She rarely made unnecessary movements; the heel of her boot ticked uneasy questions against the hearthstones. "You mean you couldn't."

"I couldn't." She put down a chicken bone, eyed it with a bog-witch's speculation, then licked a finger. "That's what fascinates me so. To break a spell, you simply unweave it, strand by strand, until the spell does not exist. Of course, doing this, you are liable to catch the attention of the sorcerer who cast the spell, who may look askance at your meddling. I couldn't undo the spell over you because I couldn't find a single strand. It was of a piece, that magic, like a single jewel. Very beautiful."

"You mean if the moon hadn't risen-"

"Eventually I would have worked it through. There is always a way. Always. But the moon worked faster."

Meguet was silent. A night breeze drifted through the windows, scented with roses; she saw in memory the rose on her shadow. She asked slowly, her fingers gripping hard on her arms, "Is there a connection between the mage and the firebird?"

"I don't know." Nyx poured wine, stared into it without drinking, her dark brows knit. "Is there a connection between a mage looking for a key and a firebird flying over a wall? If the mage had come a month ago and the firebird tomorrow, I would say no. But they came one after another, and both from lands beyond Ro Holding."

"He spoke of wars.h.i.+ps."

"Then the spell may be very old and the mage dead. Which may make it easier for me. Or more difficult, if the spell is archaic. How long has it been since wars.h.i.+ps sailed under the Cygnet on Wolfe Sea?"

"Centuries." Meguet s.h.i.+vered suddenly, envisioning time- "Ensorcelled so long, no wonder he cries like that. But will the mage or sorcerer be dead? Didn't Chrysom live for centuries before he even built this house for Moro Ro?"

"Legend says."

"What did he say?"

"Chrysom said very little about himself; he hid his life behind his spells. And apparently he hid a few spells as well, locked away in a secret place.... Meguet, if you had something to hide in this room, where would you hide it?"

"Up the chimney. Under a hearthstone. In a table leg. Unless I were a mage. Then-" She shook her head helplessly, blind to sorcery. "I don't know how mages think."

"I do. I want to know what you think."

"What am I hiding?"

"A spellbook. It may not look like a book; it may look like a doork.n.o.b. It might even be a book within a book, lines hidden between lines, words within words, but I've searched every book in here that was made before Chrysom died."

"Someone took it."

"No."

"How do you know?"

"Because the spells would have become common knowledge by now. I've suspected for some time that a book had been lost or hidden. What gave the visiting mage a clue to look for the key, I have no idea. Perhaps he will come back and I can ask him. Perhaps he realized what I did: that Chrysom hints now and then at spells which are unknown, even to the mage Diu, for he never told me."

Meguet nodded blankly. The ancient mage Diu, a descendant of Chrysom's, was such a legendary figure it was difficult to conceive of him still alive and swapping spells. "Why? What made you suspect?"

"These," Nyx said, touching the mysteries on the mantel. "He never makes use of them in any book I've ever seen, and I thought I had all his books. And because I came across an odd mark now and then at random, in the margins of his spellbook: a C or a crescent moon holding an M in its arms. The key has the same design on its handle. I've always thought the spells he marked with that sign were incomplete, or so old they are little more than curiosities. But now I know he completed them in another place. A secret place, locked by the key he hid."