The Cygnet And The Firebird Part 16

"No."

"Then why me? Because I am a stranger from another land? Is my presence troubling?"

"No," Magior said quickly. "Only the circ.u.mstances 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 Hex 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sionately 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 Chiysom'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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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."

Again there was silence, even from the far table; the still eyes gazing at her reminded her of the dragons. Magior asked, her voice dry, precise, "Whom? No one of Ro Holding, I hope."

"Rad Ilex."

"Brand's father teaches him many things," the strange mage answered smoothly. "He is extraordinarily skilled and proficient. As tired as you arc, I am sure it would be as tedious for you to listen to an account of a warrior's training in Saphier, as it would be for you to disclose your own warriors' training. In battle, as you know, everything becomes a weapon."

"You must eat," Magior murmured. "How will you recover your strength?"

Meguet picked up her fork, ate a tasteless mouthful. A man at a side table, with the stamp of Draken Saphier in the bones of his face and his black hair, commented, "The ritual originally involved ceremonial blades carved of bone- Since they could be played, it is a.s.sumed that the dance was performed to music."

"Perhaps a hunting ritual," someone else suggested, and the ensuing argument, tossed back and forth across the tables, brought to light an endless list of ancient and startlingly named battles.

"Much of the music in Saphier," the mage beside Meguet said, "originated in the battlefield, or the training field. In the Battle of Toad Stone, whistles made of raven bones were blown, to scare the scavenger birds from the dead."

"Toad Stone?"

"Two clan families fought over a great stone that resembled a toad. They revered the toad as kin to the dragon, a link between worlds, a messenger, perhaps. The dragon, in Saphier, is the symbol of all power: the power of magic, of battle, of art, of birth. I would imagine it means the same in Ro Holding."

"There are no dragons in Ro Holding."

"Some say there are none in Saphier. I meant in tales."

"There are no tales of dragons," Meguet said reluctantly, as if the mage might deduce from this no standing army, no fleet of warships, no revered toads and almost no mages.

The hooded eyes widened a little. "How curious. What, in Ro Holding, symbolizes power?"

The Cygnet, Meguet thought, and wondered if she would survive that supper to breathe under its familiar stars again. "In ancient tales," she said, "the sun symbolized the fury of war."

"And now?" the mage pressed, her gaze, intense and curious, searching for what Meguet strove to hide.

"Now it just grows crops."

"But under what symbol do you fight now?"

"Another ancient symbol," she said desperately. "A random grouping of stars. Is it the dragon you carry into battle? Or is it the symbol on the floor, there and within the square: the patterns that your warriors dance?"

The golden eyes flickered slightly. "The symbol," she said vaguely, "is not at all ancient, unlike the ritual. If you were stronger, I could show you one or two of the exercises the warrior-mages are taught. They are quite simple."

"I'm not-"

"So you say. Magior seems less certain. The exercises are designed to wake dormant power through physical movement, and then to channel that power, focus it, and release it as a weapon. The waking and release of power occasionally surprises those who think they have no such gifts- Magior rarely makes mistakes about those with potential for power."

The room was silent again, as if, Meguet thought, the mages' attention were tuned, beneath their lively conversation, to her voice. She said more calmly than she thought possible, "I have no such power. And I have no interest in it. My place in the Holder's house is bound by ancient traditions; I have no desire to trouble those traditions by changing my ways, even if it were possible. You understand tradition in this house, I know."

Magior moved her cup an inch, found no argument beneath it. "Perhaps," she said slowly, "you should consider the matter. In a day or two, if Draken has not returned, and you are stronger, we will broach the subject again. Tradition has its uses, and its limits. It ceases to be useful when it stands in the way of knowledge."

"I would not want," Meguet sighed, "to cease to be useful to the Holder."

"No. But-Enough. You have scarcely eaten. We will trouble you no more with such matters tonight."

In bed at last, exhausted with fear, she could not sleep. She lay staring into the dark, wondering if she could get out of the house without being seen, find her way back to the Luxour before the mages began to pick her apart. But if Draken returned with Nyx, if Meguet abandoned Nyx, if Draken found Meguet vanished ... She tossed answerless questions in her mind for so long that the blood-stained face appearing behind its glowing silver prison seemed another dire portent.

"Meguet."

She was sitting bolt-upright, she realized, with both hands over her mouth. She dropped them. He could not seem to find her; he looked here and there as through shifting layers of time.

"Meguet. Help me."

She swung out of bed, stood in front of the floating, luminous weave. "Rad," she breathed, and tried to touch it; her cold fingers closed on air. His voice sounded weak, distant; still he could not see her. "Rad." Her voice shook. "I'm here."

He saw her finally. "You're so far away," he said. "Down a stairwell, at the end of a long hall. I'm getting lost, here. You must help me. Please."

"Yes."

"Please. Quickly. You must listen to me, you must believe me."

"I do."

"If you don't, I'm dead, and you will have Draken Saphier with his army in Ro Holding searching for that key. You're in his house, you must have seen something to make you doubt that his intentions are as peaceful as Ro Holding's heartland. He will burn across those fields of sheep and wheat until peace is a charred memory, and there is a warrior-mage in every Hold, and a dragon coiled around Chiysom's tower."

"Rad." She tried to grip the weave again, pull him closer. "Can you hear me?"

"Of course."

"Then why aren't you listening to me?"

"I'm trying to tell you-"

"Rad. I have seen that dragon. It is black as night, and its eyes arc fire. Please. Help me."

He was silent, gazing at her, one eye out of dust, the other out of blood. He was trembling, she saw; the desert and the time-prison, as well as the firebird, had drained him. He said very softly, "Did they question you?"

"They have begun to. I don't want Nyx in this house. Help me find her in the Luxour. I'll set you free-tell me what to do before you disappear again." She slid her hands over the air, groping for a single thread of silver, as if she could pull the weave apart.

"Meguet. You need a time-path."

"Yes," she said quickly. "How do I get one?"

"There is a guard outside your door." She nodded; there was a guard at every door. "Open the door. Let the guard see me. I'm enough to amaze anyone for a split second. I don't have much strength in here, but I can disarm a guard who is not a mage. If he feels it, Draken will only think I am testing his power, Let's hope the guard is not a mage. Open the door."

She opened the door with shaking hands, gasped something unintelligible at the young man who stood there. He whirled into the room, a movement out of ritual, and stopped himself dead mid-step at the sight of Rad's face. Meguet swung the door shut with one foot, grabbed a bowl of water with three leaves floating in it, since the guard had nothing obvious in the dim, silvery light, by way of arms, and broke it over his head. He fell to the floor in a pool of water, a leaf clinging to his hair.

Meguet tossed the pieces of the bowl on the bed, checked the motionless body. "Not even a knife," she said, frustrated. "What in Moro's name do they use for arms in Saphier?"