PART THREE
  
HEART
OF THE
CYGNET

 

One
  

WHO is she?” Corleu demanded. “She stood in front of me with her eyes the only color in the world. She came out of nowhere to the top of that mountain like she knew I would be there, on that one day of all days in the year, she knew I would step across time from Delta to Berg Hold, and she came to meet me. I turned and there she was, holding that blade at my heart and all I could see was green, like the green of the cornfields of Withy Hold in late summer.” He was pacing; Nyx, curled in a chair, listened without moving, except her eyes, following him as he wove a convoluted path between chairs and book piles and the tiny round jar holding time. “Her eyes and her hair like when you tear the green leaves off corn and the pale silk holds to your fingers.”

“Why,” Nyx asked curiously, “are you comparing my cousin Meguet to a corncob?”

“Because that’s what I think of when I see her. My great-gran’s tale of Rider in the Corn. Green, she said, his eyes corn leaves and his hair corn silk. That’s all she ever said of him. He lay with her among the corn and then rode on.”

Nyx gazed at him expressionlessly out of her colorless eyes. Her fingers found a loose button on her sleeve, toyed with it. “That’s a preposterous idea.”

“I know.”

“You and Meguet related.”

“Moonbrained.”

“She is a descendant of Moro Ro’s wife.”

“And I’m nothing but Wayfolk. Almost nothing.”

A thin line ran across her brow. “What I want to know is what she was doing on that mountain. Did she hear you speak to the Dancer?”

He closed his eyes, sank into one of the chairs that for some reason were cluttering the workroom that morning. “I don’t know.” He dropped his hand over his eyes. “Dancer is freed.”

“What did you expect when you gave that fire to the Fire Bear?” she asked. He stared at her, felt the blood leap furiously into his face.

“You did—You knew—” He was on his feet suddenly, his fists clenched. Her cold eyes did not flicker. He whirled, found a door and let his fists slam into it. From within he heard the fluttering of startled birds. He dropped his face against the door, felt the sting of tears in the back of his eyes.

“Corleu,” she said softly, “to get what you want, you must give what they want. What did the Dancer say?”

“She said,” he whispered into the wood, “‘ask the Blood Fox.’” She was silent. He turned finally, found her gazing in conjecture at a twisted candle.

“Blood Fox… Last of the Hold Signs.” She drew breath. “So. That is why Meguet went to meet you in Berg Hold. Those powers you are waking must be finding their way into Ro House.” She rose abruptly, turned to him; he saw a shadow of color the candlelight dragged into her eyes. “You ask the Blood Fox.”

“That’ll be Warlock.” He swallowed drily. “I saw his shadow once.”

“Did the Dancer say anything else?”

“She said, ‘The thing sought lies always in the same place, but always in a different place, and that place is never far from the Cygnet.’ It’s no help.”

“Of course it is. Something near the Cygnet…a web. The Cygnet flies above it day and night… What gift did she say to give the Blood Fox?”

“She didn’t. But I figured out that one. Any smallfolk knows. ‘Shadow fox, fox shadow, hide your face, hide your shadow—’ It’s a hiding a game.”

“Go on.”

“‘Red star, blood star, find your eyes and see, find your—’”

“The Blood Star.”

“Cygnet broke the Warlock into pieces and trapped him in the Blood Star. What—what will happen—”

“I don’t know.” Her face seemed colorless in the shadows. “But it’s too late to undo.”

“How do I get the Blood Star to give it?” he asked her. “Hang on the horns of the moon and pick it out of the sky?”

“You make it.” She began pacing then, her feet following an independent path of thought. “And you make it fast. I don’t know how Meguet got to Berg Hold, but I doubt that she took the long way. Rush helped her, maybe. When she returns to the Delta, she’ll come to this house. She knows where to find you. And she wants you.”

“Why her? Why did she come for me?”

“I don’t know. She’s a mystery to me. She never was before this. She was only Meguet.”

“There’s nothing ‘only’ about her,” he said. “She nearly sent me diving off the mountain, with her eyes and her sword. How do I make a Blood Star? With a wish and an adage?”

“Almost. It’s a very old, very primitive sorcery. The Blood Star does not threaten, foretell, defend. It is all but useless except as a kind of lantern or guide between separated lovers. The effort far exceeds the results, which is why the making is rarely heard of, now. There are much simpler ways of keeping track of people than fusing your heart’s blood into a glass ball.”

“Mine.”

“A drop or three.”

“I can spare that, likely. Where do I take it, though? Where would Blood Fox be, in the Delta?”

“There’s a place upriver, a strange place that resonates with ancient power. Long ago someone sensed the power, and carved statues among the trees there. One statue was of the Blood Fox as human. Or as warlock.”

He nodded. “Trappers passed that place when they brought me here. I remember the Blood Fox.”

“You’ll make the Blood Star there. The Blood Fox will find you.”

He was silent, remembering the shift of tree into blood fox into man, all one, all rooted in the still water. “She’ll know this is the last of them.”

“Meguet?”

“Will she know this place?”

“She has roamed in and out of the swamps since we were children. She’d know it, I think, but perhaps only as a garden of statues, not as a place of power.”

“Because she has no power,” he said evenly.

She eyed him. “Maybe it’s not such a moonbrained idea after all. She does have some kin in Withy Hold. Do you want to see her again?”

“No.”

“Then I suggest we assume she will be at your heels like your shadow. Get something to eat. Then I will teach you how to make the Blood Star.”

Later, he borrowed the boat from the silent ghost, who bestirred herself in her pearls and laces to fade into the afternoon. He placed a lit, shuttered lantern at the bow and rowed through slow, tangled paths where the hanging vines were just beginning to flush with green. On a sandy bank beside the statue grove, he pulled the boat ashore. In the dying light he gathered wood. The night fell quickly, a dense darkness unrelieved by stars or moon. The bitter cold that he felt did not disperse when he lit the fire with the boat lantern. The fire itself—made from odd things—was yellow as a hunter’s moon.

He carried pale, damp, rough sand from the bank and added river water to it. He worked it into a ball the size of his fist. As he molded and smoothed it, he murmured under his breath, over and over, the old rhyme he had known since he could find his feet and walk. Sweating, fire-scorched, mesmerized by his own monotonous voice, he laid the ball of sand in the fire. He watched it thoughtlessly, still murmuring, as the gold fire licked it. When it had turned black, he lifted it out again and broke it in half.

He slid a tough razor-edged piece of marsh grass over the forefinger of his left hand. Then he teased a bit of flame out of the fire onto the grass, laid the flame carefully in the center of one of the broken halves. He fed the flame three drops of his blood. The flame ran from gold to blood red. He closed the halves, laid the ball into the fire again. After a time, during which swamp animals came rustling to the edge of his light to watch, he pulled the ball out again. This time, with the heated blade of the silver knife he had taken from the house, he began to sculpt the sides of the ball. Molten silver from the blade, blood from his hand, streaked the dark sand as he worked. Sweat rolled into it from his face; words seeped into it, mingling with the river water. He layered the sphere with flat planes angling against one another. When he finished that, he was ringed with watching eyes.

He put the faceted ball into the fire. His voice stilled finally. Around him the night was soundless, in the slow, lightless empty hours between midnight and dawn. The fire flared, flared again, washing silver, crimson, black. The small dark ball in the heart of it began to glow.

The eyes around him blinked suddenly out, like vanishing stars. He heard the sighing passage through the underbrush of many small, invisible animals. Then he heard something else: a blood fox’s sharp bark in the distance. Another answered, just behind his back.

He heard that as from a distance, too. Everything seemed detached from him: the heat of the fire, the burns on his hands, his dry aching throat, the appalling, lonely silence of the night. More eyes ringed the fire, some high as his knee and higher, others close to the ground. All were a smoky, red-tinged amber.

The ball in the fire had turned clear as glass, red as blood.

He did not touch it. The fire sank around it, yellow again. He stood up. A great blood fox walked into the light. The fur on its massive shoulders was bristling. Its eyes were cloudy, yellow with the fire. It was dancing a little, singing its high, eerie whine before it barked and attacked. The shadow stretching from its hind paws beyond the fire’s circle was not an animal’s.

“Shadow Fox, fox shadow,” Corleu said to it. His voice was so hoarse it might have been the blood fox’s growl.

“Hide your face, hide your shadow.

Red star, blood star,

Find your face, find your shadow,

Find your heart and follow.”

He reached into the fire, drew out the star that hid a pearl of blood in its heart and caught fire in all its glittering facets.

The blood fox stood silent as the trees around it. Its eyes burned into Corleu’s; they seemed suddenly faceted, like the Blood Star. For a moment, his detachment vanished under that inhuman gaze; he wanted to wrap the dark around him like a cloak and slip away before he became a human swarm of blood foxes, furious with him for disturbing the Delta night.

The Blood Fox faded away. A darkness formed where it had been, shaped a man in the firelight, a patch of night with a face that shifted, blurred, re-formed. Corleu stared at it, his thoughts reeling between terror and wonder; he felt as if he were falling again through that long, black, starry night in the Gold King’s house.

“You have something I want,” the shadow said. Its face stilled enough to form: long, sharp-jawed, red-browed; then the lines of it fractured again. Its voice was deep, husky, a blood fox voice. Corleu swallowed.

“I made it for you.”

A shadowy hand reached toward it, passed through it, darkening it briefly. At the cold touch Corleu, trapped between shadow and fire, would have backed into the fire if he could have made himself move. He glimpsed eyes, amber flames swarming across them.

“What do you want for that?” the shadow asked with a snap of teeth.

“Just—just a small thing.”

“That’s a small thing. That’s my heart you hold in your hand. Be careful what you ask for, or I’ll set a blood fox shadowing you to nuzzle out your heart.”

“I’m not—It’s not for me I’m asking.”

“Who then? Who sent you?”

“The King in the dark.”

The shadow made a complex sound, part human, part blood fox’s curious whine. “So the King goes hunting… You put your heart’s blood into that. Into my heart. You want something worth that much to you. Corleu. That’s your name. You’ve said my name now and then in your life.”

“I’m sorry I ever learned to talk,” he said starkly, and the shadowy face gave a lean, sharp-toothed grin.

“There is no idle chatter in the world. So here you stand with my heart in your hand, asking nothing for yourself?”

“I’m to be paid later.”

“To be paid. Or to pay?”

His voice shook. “Both.”

“I know that King, with his heart of fire. He stalks everyone’s days. What does he want? What small thing?”

“Something hidden away in secret for safekeeping. The Gold King told me to go to Withy Hold, offer the Lady there a peacock feather and ask. She told me to take fire and ask the Dreamer on the top of the world. Dreamer told me to ask you. All of them gave me pieces of a puzzle, none of them a whole answer. So I made this for you.” It burned in his hand with cold fire. He wiped at sweat and smoke on his face. “I need you to finish the puzzle.”

“How small is this thing that sent you wandering the world?”

“Small as the heart of something wild that flies by night over Ro Holding.”

The shadow was still; even the lines hinting of bone-structure stilled briefly, and gave Corleu a clear glimpse of its honed, red-furred, feral face. It made a soft whistling noise, like a branch keening on the fire, and blurred again. “He’s been thinking, that King… And you are feet and hands and eyes to find it. What of yours does he hold hostage?”

“My heart,” he whispered.

“Give me mine. I will tell you what I know.”

“How?” he asked, his heart pounding in sudden hope. “How do I give it?”

“Lay the Blood Star in the fire.”

Corleu knelt close to the flames, let the prism slide among them. Just before the flames closed over it, he saw the jumbled patchwork of a man in all its facets.

The shadow stepped into the fire. Flames flared high above his head, closed like the petals of a burning flower. Corleu flung himself back, watched, breathless, as the flames swirled and parted, died down again and the Warlock stepped out of them.

He stood over Corleu, grinning his fox’s grin, lean-flanked, his shoulders bunched with muscle, the hair on his head and body the red of the blood fox’s pelt. He tossed black, broken pieces of the prism in his hands, juggled them a moment into a whirling black circle.

“The thing you seek is well hidden, even from that King’s gold fingers, which go everywhere. But I have heard, in all my eons of wandering, dragged after a Blood Fox with its nose to the wind and its ear pricked to every whisper: The thing you seek will be reflected in the eye of the Cygnet.”

“Reflected in—But what does that mean?” he cried. “It’s only another riddle!”

“That’s all I know.”

He let the pieces of the prism fall into one broad palm. Then he covered them with the other. When he opened his hands again, the black glass had fused into a swan in flight.

He dropped it into the fire. It exploded, flinging glass, burning wood, shards of flame, into the night. Corleu, still crouched, ducked behind his arms. All around him he heard the whisper and crackle of leaves as the animals scuttled away.

“Thanks,” the Warlock said. “I’ll remember you.”

“The web. The eye. The Cygnet.”

Nyx was pacing. Corleu, slumped in a chair, watched her. It had taken him the rest of the night to return, and for what, he wondered bitterly, as he climbed the shivering stairway near dawn. What he sought was only tale. Just a story, a lie, to set him moving, rousing all the sleeping powers in the Holds. The thing was a dream, a lure to catch a Wayfolk fool, to trap his thoughts, keep his eyes from seeing what his hands were waking.

He said as much to Nyx. She stopped mid-step, looked at him with her cold, searching, inscrutable eyes.

“If you think that, you are a fool. The thing itself is of more power than what you are waking. Why else would it be so carefully hidden?”

“What’s to be done, then?”

“Be quiet and let me think…” She paced barefoot, a heavy gown of grey velvet swinging as she turned. She had been awake all night, he judged; her eyes looked luminous, and her temper was short. “If these powers disturbed Ro House enough to catch Meguet’s eye, then that’s where they all will gather. The place where the Cygnet flies, day and night. That’s the place of power that draws them: Ro House. Tell me again.”

He told her wearily, for the hundredth time. “A secret at the center of the web, over which Cygnet flies, day and night. That was Blind Lady.”

“The Dancer.”

“The thing sought lies always in the same place, but always in a different place, and that place is never far from the Cygnet.”

“The Warlock.”

“The thing you seek will be reflected in the eye of the Cygnet.”

“Cygnet. Cygnet. Cygnet.” She whirled, to contemplate him again, her arms folded, her mouth taut. “The thing you seek, Corleu, belongs to the Cygnet, I would guess. An ancient power that’s waking other ancient powers. Not even Chrysom hinted of anything like this. I want it, as badly as I do not want the Gold King to keep it.”

“You’re still not forcing me to tell you.”

“That wouldn’t be finding it, would it. You’d never see Tiel again, and you would hate me, and refuse to find this thing at all. Then we’d have chaos on our hands at Ro House. If not already. Ro House… A web. The Cygnet flying…” She stood still then, still as one of the carved, dead trees in the statue grove, her hands open at her sides, her head bowed, contemplating her reflection in the water. He couldn’t hear her breathe. Finally he heard the statue speak. “The maze.”

“What?”

She lifted her head, her face white, still. He had never seen such color in her eyes. “Chrysom’s maze. The black tower. The Cygnet pennant that flies on the tower roof, summer, winter, day and night. The secret of where to find this thing is at the center of Chrysom’s maze.”

“Where is that?” he asked wearily. “Where do I go this time?”

“To the house of the Holders of Ro Holding.”

 

Two
  

MEGUET stood at the edge of the lake beyond the thousand-year-old wood, watching the swans. Iris had brought the house back to the Delta; the swans, casting black and white shadows on the surface of the water, wove a tranquil dance among themselves. Used to flight, they seemed unsettled by the flight of Ro House. Meguet, drawn out of sleep by a dream of them, had slipped out at dawn. Every image in the dream, every word, had transformed itself into swan, until their elegant, masked, enigmatic faces had crowded into her mind. She had carried all their faces across the misty pastures, past the dark, dreaming wood. Finally, at the lake, the swans had shifted from her mind into her eyes: The great company clustered in the lake as usual, busily feeding. She felt her mind empty of them, grow still, peaceful.

A swan detached itself from the group in the middle of the lake. It glided toward the shore where Meguet stood. She watched it thoughtlessly. It was huge, as black as if it had flown straight out of midnight. Its smooth, steady drift toward her was soothing, almost a dream itself. It drew quite close, so close she could see the dark, steady gaze of its reflection. She blinked, surprised, for the swans kept to the far shore. It breasted the shallows, came on, its graceful head lifted as if to meet her eyes. Fully awake now, she watched it, not moving, not breathing. It stirred the muddy bottom, so close she might have touched it, or it her, extending its strong, quick, dangerous neck.

It roused so suddenly that she started. For a moment the air was black with feathers. Its wings beat; rising, it drew a wet wing tip across her lips. Darkness thundered around her, tangled in her hair. She caught her breath; lifting her face, she saw the sky again. Sunlight shot across the lake. She tasted lake water on her lips, felt it on her face. The great swan had vanished, like the night, into light.

She turned finally, startled, wondering. Sunlight raced across meadow, pasture, illumined the back towers, but could not reach across them to Chrysom’s tower, still shrouded in its darkness. As she looked at it, wings filled her mind again: dark crow wings rustling with uneasiness.

In the west tower, all the kitchen chimneys were smoking. The first of the Hold Councils was due soon. A messenger, arriving to request a guide through the swamps for a Council, assorted family, curious kin, retinue, bag and baggage, had spent a night wondering where Ro House had gone. The house was back the next morning. Meguet, greeting the messenger, had seen him torn between asking and appearing lunatic. “Hunter Hold Council,” he said, and the household bustled with preparations.

Meguet, walking into that tower in search of breakfast, found the Holder, surrounded by half the tower staff. She caught Meguet’s eye, sent them all flying, and gestured Meguet into an antechamber.

It was a tiny room off the main tower door, close as a bear cave and chilly even in midsummer, with a double thickness of stone. Even the chairs were stone: ledges beside the fire, in the windowless walls. There Moro Ro had taken council with Chrysom, where not even a mouse could overhear without being seen.

The Holder swung the door to with a thud that cut short all sound. It was, Meguet thought, like being entombed.

“Tell me what you dreamed,” the Holder said abruptly. She looked pale, edgy; Meguet tensed at the question.

“I dreamed of swans.”

“Living or dead?”

She felt the blood leave her face. “Living.”

“I dreamed all my children were dead.” She turned, grabbed the poker, toppled the neatly burning pile of logs on the grate so that they nearly slid onto the floor. “Rush dreamed that Nyx had become something so terrible that he did not recognize her. He shouted at me this morning because I refused to let him ride upriver with you. If this is something—” She stopped, began again. “If this is something of Nyx’s doing, I can’t let him go there.”

“No,” Meguet said flatly, and the Holder looked at her, hope waging against suspicion in her eyes. “I would sooner suspect the Gatekeeper of intending harm to this house.”

“Then what is troubling this house?” the Holder demanded, her voice rising in relief. “Even Iris was in tears this morning. Iris hasn’t cried since she was two. I haven’t even seen Calyx. She shut herself up in Chrysom’s library.”

“The Dancer is troubling this house. The Dreamer of Berg Hold. We brought her with us.”

“But how? How did she get in? The Gatekeeper never left the gate, he never opened the gate—that was my command.”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her eyes wearily. “I don’t know how she got in. Maybe she followed me off the mountain top. I couldn’t even stop an unarmed Wayfolk man from getting away from me. How could I stop the Dancer?”

“You’re supposed to know such things! It’s your heritage, your duty to protect the Cygnet.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Then, where were those in you who should advise you? Weren’t you listening to them?”

“I thought—I thought so. Maybe I haven’t learned how yet.”

“You’d better learn fast. We have the Hunter Hold Council on our doorstep and a mad dreamer under our beds. What’s next?”

“Worse,” Meguet said tightly. The Holder’s eyes widened.

“What worse?”

“The Warlock.”

The Holder pulled a pearl out of her hair and flung it across the room. “Send the Gatekeeper to me.”

Meguet gave him the message, then sat in the turret, watching the gate and waiting for him. A company of hunters rode out; no one requested entry. The Gatekeeper returned soon, his face impassive. Meguet asked him, as he joined her:

“What did you dream?”

“Of you.” He reached across, took her hands, warmed his own. “No good watching for the Warlock.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll get in. Like the Dancer, he’ll come when he comes.”

Meguet slumped back against the stones. “Did you tell the Holder that?”

“Yes.”

“Did she believe you?”

“No. I told her Dancer must have danced herself over the wall, because I kept a lizard’s eye on that gate night and day in Berg Hold. What did you dream?”

“Just swans.”

He smiled his quick, tight smile. He leaned forward, kissed her gently. “Don’t blame yourself so.”

“If we hadn’t gone to Berg Hold—”

“The Dancer would have come to us here.” He watched her. “And if, and when the Warlock comes?”

She shuddered. “Don’t say it. Words come to life, these days.”

“What then? What are they gathering for, like crows on a carcass? What’s in that maze but a wizard’s time-picked bones?”

“It’s a place to hide.”

“For what? Until when?”

“I don’t know!” she flared. “Don’t push at me with questions, I am so tired of hearing that answer from myself. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” He was silent; she raised her eyes finally, found a curious, dispassionate expression in his light eyes.

“You beg such questions,” he said abruptly. “If only because you’re the one in this house thinking for the house. And you get angry with me because I see that.”

“I told you,” she said helplessly, “I am part of this house. A lintel, a casement, a stone seat in a stone wall, some old walled-up grate that hasn’t been on fire since Chrysom’s time.”

“A lintel.” He pulled her hands to his mouth. “An old grate. A tower, more like. Chrysom’s tower, strong, mysterious and covered with roses.” He opened her hand against his mouth, said, breathlessly, head bowed, “Will I come to you, or will you come to me?”

“Come to me.” She opened her other hand, laid it against her eyes. “At least in the tower you can see the gate.”

“For whatever use.”

“The Holder should send for Nyx.”

He removed her ring finger from his mouth. “Nyx.”

“She could fight a Warlock. She’s a sorceress.”

“And bog witch, which is of more use. They don’t fight clean.” He kissed the center of her palm, then relinquished her hand. “She’s coming home for the Council. So I heard. Gossip about Nyx doesn’t stand around idle.”

“I think,” Meguet said, “that won’t be soon enough.” She rose, edged past him. “We’ve given the yard enough to talk about this morning. I’m leaving tomorrow to ride upriver.”

“With Rush Yarrow?”

“No. With an armed guard. I want that Wayfolk man. He’s the one who can answer questions.”

“When will you leave?”

“At dawn.”

“So,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Meguet.”

A swan wing, glistening, crossed her mind. She said, “Midnight.”

She rode across the yard the next morning with twenty of the household guard behind her, all in black, with a black, silken pennant flying overhead. The Gatekeeper, crossing in front of her to open the gate, looked up at her briefly. She saw night in his eyes, swamp leaves, secret, wind-stirred pools. His thoughts dragged at her; she closed her eyes, set her face resolutely toward the gate. Behind her eyes were moving, fire-edged shadows. A silver goblet spilled wine over white fur. She heard the gate open. She rode forward mechanically, her eyes on the road between the gateposts, where the Gatekeeper, moving, laid his shadow across her path.

Slowed as they were by spring-swollen ground, by water flooded with storm-pushed tides and snow melting in the upper lands, they reached Nyx’s house at mid-morning two days later. It looked more shrunken than mysterious in the spring light. Vines tugged at it here and there, threatening to encroach beneath a window sash, to pull off a corner beam. A motley gathering of old boats set the company on the dock. Meguet took two guards with her; they climbed the stairs cautiously.

Nyx came out to meet them on the porch. She looked dishevelled, dressed in threadbare velvet; her long dark hair fell untidily past her waist. Her face was pale, lean, smudged with tiredness and what looked like old ashes. She said, frowning:

“Meguet.” She cast a glance at the group on the dock, and her frown grew pinched. “If you’ve come for me, that’s far too many for courtesy, and far too few to do any good. I told you I would return home in spring.”

“If I had come for you,” Meguet said evenly, “I would have come alone. And unarmed. I have come for the Wayfolk man.”

“Why?”

“The Holder wishes to see him.”

“The Wayfolk man is gone.”

“Gone where?”

“He stepped through his circle of time. He might have gone anywhere.”

“He might have.” Nyx’s colorless eyes met hers, expressionless. “He might have gone upriver. He might have gone into a room in this rambling, changing, shifting house. He might have—”

Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know this house shifts itself?”

“I came back to spy on you.”

“Really.” She drew breath. “Really, Meguet. You do take chances. Did it ever occur to you that wandering around in a bog witch’s house might be dangerous?”

“Has it occurred to you yet that the Wayfolk man is dangerous? I came back that night when I saw you last, for only one reason: I looked at him and was warned.”

Nyx was silent. She pushed her hair back from her face absently, studying Meguet. “You never even spoke to him.”

“I know.”

“You saw him last in Berg Hold. He told me.”

“Yes. I came for him then. He disappeared into silver.”

“That was the Ring of Time. He stepped through it again two days ago. I cannot tell you where he went.”

“And why did he leave you so precipitously?”

“He is only Wayfolk,” Nyx said. “My work must have troubled him.”

“He stayed with you a long time before it troubled him.”

“Did my mother instruct you to question me?”

“She instructed me to find Corleu. I will find him.”

Nyx’s eyes flickered, a touch of color in them. “You even know his name.”

“Yes.”

“He is Wayfolk. Powerless.”

“He made a Ring of Time. He wakes power wherever he goes. And those powers are disturbing Ro House. I want him. Let me search the house.”

Nyx did not move. She said softly, “Meguet. You must not stand between the Wayfolk man and those powers.”

“Someone must,” Meguet said tautly. “Will you? Where do you stand? With the Wayfolk man, with those powers, or with Ro House?”

“I stand for myself,” Nyx said sharply and stood aside.

Meguet beckoned the guard up from the dock. She went first into the house. When she passed through the hallway, she heard Nyx’s cold voice behind her: “Stop.”

She held one arm across the door. Meguet waited, poised for anything from Nyx: charm, nightmare, a moment’s private conversation. Nyx spoke privately to the air. “These belong to the woman who entered. You will not harm them.”

She dropped her arm, turned away, letting the guards enter. Meguet’s skin prickled. “Who were you talking to?”

“My doorkeepers. They guard me, day and night. They never sleep. No one passes them without my permission.” She put her hands on Meguet’s shoulders, held her lightly. Her eyes seemed enormous, mist-cold. “Except you, my cousin Meguet. Except you. I have often wondered why.” She loosed her, as the guard, taking the stairs cautiously, began to file in. “Search.”

“The rooms in the house shift constantly,” Meguet said to the guard. “Don’t let it alarm you. If you get lost, you will be found.”

“By what?” someone wondered dourly.

“I will find you.” Nyx glanced at her sharply. She said no more, led the way through the single door opening out of the workroom. The hearth had been cold, she noticed, empty even of ashes. The air smelled only of a slight cellar damp. Nyx, she thought, is leaving. The guard separated, opened other doors, scattered themselves through rambling corridors, where the threads of time frayed and broke and knit again. Meguet wandered with them until she was alone, in a room empty but for a great loom, the thread in the shuttle a color not used before.

She opened the only door in that room, wanting one room, expecting one room, and found it: the room full of mirrors. She felt a sudden chill down the corridor, like a wind from a broken window, or the swift turn of a sorceress’s attention. She closed the door abruptly. All the mirrors were black.

“Meguet!” The door latch rattled, the door shook. “Meguet!”

She did not answer. Standing in the middle of the room, she watched the mirrors. All her thoughts were focused on one thing. The house heard her, showed it to her: the Cygnet in flight in all of its eyes.

They darkened again. Corleu, she thought, holding his face in her mind. You saw where he went from this house. You heard. Show me.

Others watched in her; she sensed their sudden waking interest, alert to her focused attention. They had watched him from the first, she realized then, before she even knew them. They had pulled her back into Nyx’s house, to hear his voice, listen for his name. The Wayfolk man was the danger to the Cygnet.

Fire flared in the heart of each dark mirror. A hand held the fire. The flame moved slowly, revealed a slab of marble, a lion’s paw, a gryphon’s eye. The flame shifted across the mirrors, across the dark between walls. Travelling, it illumined, briefly, a Wayfolk face.

“Meguet!” There was a shock of noise that should have broken the door. But Meguet, intent on the mirrors, held the door firm with nothing more, it seemed, than blind desire, and the old house strained to do her bidding. The blood had washed from her face; she could not move, she could scarcely breathe. The Wayfolk man had stepped through time into Chrysom’s maze.

The mirrors shook around her. The walls of the room shuddered, undulated. She whispered drily, “Not yet. Not yet,” and they held, as if the hands of all the ghosts of her ancestors stood with the ghosts of the house to buttress them.

Faces formed under the flickering light: brightly masked, half-human, half-animal. The flame moved from one carved, motionless face to the next. Meguet put her hands to her mouth, made a sound, another. He had found his way to the center of the maze.

“How?” she shouted furiously, and found no answer within herself, only a strange, watchful silence. “How?”

“Meguet!”

She turned, flung herself against the trembling door, felt the power threatening it, pushing inward against it, beating through her, like a heart, like wings. “Who is he? Nyx, who is he?”

He stood in the dark, surrounded by statues, in the small, empty chamber that all passages but one led away from. He had found the one passage. But he could not breach time itself. He turned in the dark, she saw from the changing light, like one uncertain. “He cannot,” she whispered through dry lips. “He cannot go within time.” The door bucked, throwing her. “Nyx!” she cried, still watching, as she picked herself up. “Nyx!”

“Meguet!”

She clung to the door again, felt a thousand years of power within her shielding the door to watch Corleu. “Who is he? Nyx, who is the Wayfolk man?”

“He said he is kin!”

“Kin to what?”

“To you! Meguet, what are you?”

Meguet closed her eyes. The door exploded inward with a sound like all the sorrows of the house. It flung her against a mirror, and then into the mirror. For an instant she saw room after room in the overburdened house torn by the conflict of powers in it. Walls and corners drew together, flattening; walls shrank. Ghosts thinned like spun thread. Guards tumbled, crying out soundlessly, terrified. Then they merged into wood, into warped glass. Meguet screamed, “No!” She felt glass against her mouth, glass tears falling from her eyes. Then the glass itself spun and spun toward nothing. Dimly, she heard it shatter.

She sat up slowly, amid an odd debris: a few rotten boards, a pink shoe, a pair of spectacles, a broken cauldron. She was sitting on bare, muddy ground where the house had stood. As if they felt the weight of her gaze, the ancient stairs gave up their hold on the leafless shrubs, slid with a dry clatter, like a pile of old bones, onto the dock. The drowned ghost stood up in her boat, staring upward under her hand. She vanished quite suddenly. So, inexplicably, did her boat. Guards in torn, mud-streaked uniforms pulled themselves upright, looking sour. Nyx, surrounded by a pile of old books and some broken jars, stirred near Meguet. She turned on her side, wincing. A book slid down the hillside, hit the river and floated.

She followed it a moment with her eyes. “Chrysom’s,” she said wearily. “They are indestructible.” She sat up, brushed old leaves out of her hair, then surveyed the destruction she and Meguet had wrought between them. She turned her head finally to stare at her cousin. “What exactly are you?”

Meguet slid her hands over her face, as much to evade that sudden, intense scrutiny, as to try to contain the headache that was rioting behind her eyes. “Desperate.” Her voice shook badly. “Nyx, what is the Wayfolk man doing in Chrysom’s maze?”

“Looking for something.”

Meguet dropped her hands, feeling the thousand-year-old fear like some icy wind, blowing off a place the sun never touched. Nyx’s eyes, catching at hers, seemed the color of that wind. “Looking for what?” she asked sharply.

The force of Nyx’s attention lessened finally. “He never told me. He is under duress not to tell. Something of Chrysom’s, I would guess, of great, secret power he may have hidden in the maze. Except that…”

“Except?”

“Not even Chrysom had power like yours,” Nyx said simply. Meguet, staring back at her, felt the chill again: this time, oddly, not an ancient fear for the Cygnet, but one a small night-hunter might feel for its bones, at owl wings darkening the moon. She got up too abruptly, had to quell the brawling in her head.

“It was only your power,” she said recklessly, “seeped into that crazed old house. I could not cast a spell of my own to save my life.” She counted heads swiftly, saw with relief that no one had been rendered into glass and framed. She held out a hand to Nyx. “We’re getting no farther than nowhere, sitting in the mud.”

For a moment it seemed the hand grasping hers was of stone, and the weight she pulled at was the stone-tortoise’s ponderous, time-burdened shell. “There are two things of great power in Ro House that I never knew existed,” Nyx said softly. “One is hidden in that maze. The other is you. If you will not tell me, Meguet, I will find out what you know, how you know it. One way or another, I will find out.”

White, mute, she set her teeth, pulled against Nyx’s grasp. Nyx, rising suddenly, nearly sent them both tumbling down the hillside. “Please.” She freed herself from Nyx’s hold. Her fists were clenched; the river blurred. “Please,” she whispered. “Just come home. Help us.”

The Gatekeeper found them a day or two later, trailing the twilight into the gate, a bedraggled company that caused him to lose his habitual impassivity.

“Lady Nyx,” he said, helping her dismount from behind Meguet. “Welcome.” Nyx, barefoot as the house had left her, grunted sourly as her foot hit a stone.

“Hew,” she said. She gestured a stableboy toward the great sack of books another rider carried. Then she folded her arms over her worn, archaic, velvet gown and surveyed the towers. “At least the house is still standing.”

The Gatekeeper held Meguet’s stirrup. She dismounted wearily, her face stiff. She could not smile at him; she could not even speak, until he touched her gently, as to help balance her, and then she could look at him, let him calculate the impossible distance the hand’s-breadth between them was. His hand rose toward her cheek, cupped air, dropped.

“You had a rough journey,” he breathed. She nodded, looking away from him until she could answer steadily.

“It isn’t over yet. Did the Hunter Hold Council arrive?”

“Not a sign of them. They’ll be a few days crossing the swamp. Lady Nyx, do you want a mount to ride to the towers?”

She shook her head. “I’d rather crawl, after that ride. I’m used to walking barefoot.” She took a step and stumbled, grasping at Meguet to keep her balance. Brows pinched in pain, she turned up a dirty foot. Blood welled across it.

She eased down, still clinging to Meguet, and picked up the glass she had stepped on. “What is this?” she asked, and Meguet tensed at the sharpness in her voice.

She took it from Nyx; red, it was, with curved, jagged edges. “It looks like part of a glass cup,” she said, puzzled. “A hollow ball of some kind. Why—”

“One of the juggler’s,” the Gatekeeper said shortly. “I missed it, lying there. I beg your pardon, my—”

“What juggler?” Nyx interrupted. Meguet stared at him.

“You let a stranger in the gate?”

“Not that I know,” he said, and she saw how his eyes had darkened with weariness, and the skin hugged the sharp bones of his face. “Unless he slid like a shadow under the gate. I took him for a cottager, juggling for the children. Smith, by the look of his shoulders.”

“You don’t know him,” she whispered, cold. “You don’t know his name.”

He hesitated. He put his hand to his eyes and said tiredly, “I never saw his face. Only his back and his juggling. Always those red glass balls. If he is a stranger, I don’t know how he got in.”

“You said it: a shadow under the gate.” Nyx took the glass from Meguet, dropped it. It shattered into fine sand, lay sparkling in the torchlight. “He is no stranger,” she said grimly. “He’s the Warlock with a heart of glass, and he has just laid blood across this threshold.”

 

Three
  

CORLEU sat in the center of the maze. The mage-fire he had made and carried through time into the maze burnt on bare stone in front of him. Other fires he had not made lit the strange statues circling him. Their eyes, slitted like goat or cat, painted unexpected colors, seemed to watch him.

The Dancer leaned among them, sometimes putting on one of their nightmare faces. The tinker sat next to Corleu, sharing bread and cheese, or providing it from somewhere, since he ate little but a bread crumb now and then. The Blind Lady sat mumbling names to herself, weaving from an underskirt of muddy linen. The juggler paced. Sometimes his shadow, pacing over Corleu, was the Blood Fox’s.

“It’s here,” the tinker said patiently. He broke more bread off a loaf, passed it to Corleu. “I can feel it.”

“Thread ends here,” the Blind Lady said. She cocked her head at some mysterious trembling in time, and found a dangling thread in her sleeve. She snapped it abruptly; Corleu jerked. “Time, for that one.”

“I can smell it,” the Warlock said, standing over Corleu. He dropped his hands on Corleu’s shoulders, and sniffed at the air above the fire. “Mage-fire,” he said.

“I made it.”

“I know. But who taught you?”

“My great-gran,” he said recklessly, and the Warlock grinned his fox’s grin.

“Great-gran taught you to make the Ring of Time,” the Dancer said. She turned a scarlet face to him among the shadows, with gold-rimmed eyes and delicate gold cat’s ears. She settled her long, lissome body along a statue. “I heard Great-gran’s dreams. I danced in them. White-haired man among the corn she dreamed, now and then, all her life. Her last dream was of green corn. I was kind to Great-gran. She never dreamed the Ring of Time.”

“She was Wayfolk,” the Blind Lady said, chuckling. “They see into time in little toad hops. A morsel of future here, there. Never great daylong strides of it.”

“Did Great-gran teach you to make my heart?” the Warlock marvelled. His fingers dug painfully into Corleu’s shoulders, then let go suddenly. He paced again. Corleu chewed stolidly, his mouth dry.

“Great-gran,” he said, swallowing with an effort, “had odd talents.”

“You take after her, then,” the tinker said, passing him a water skin. “Thirsty? What other talents did Great-gran have?”

“She could read. She gave my granda books. Odd books, with odd things in them.”

“Many odd things,” the Warlock agreed, turning noiselessly on bare feet. “A wizard’s blood in amber, for instance,” Corleu, tilting the water skin, lowered it without drinking. He met the Warlock’s eyes a moment; they were smoky amber red. He lifted the skin again, drank.

“You owe me,” he said shortly. “You all do. I promised to find what I would find, not loose you into the world.”

“You haven’t found it,” the tinker commented, carving a sliver of cheese with his knife.

“I’m near enough. I found the place.”

“We found it before you.”

He was silent, swallowing bitterness with his bread. “So,” he said to the tinker, “you knew this place all along. You only needed me to wake your friends. If you know so much, you don’t need me now. You can find the Cygnet’s heart by yourself.”

Hissing, the Warlock was behind him again, one hand over his mouth, the other tightening over his throat. The tinker put a finger to his lips.

“Things listen, in here.”

Corleu heard only the blood drumming in his ears. The Warlock loosed him finally; he sagged forward, blinking, until the darkening fire burned bright again.

“I made your heart,” he said hoarsely. “You said you would be grateful.”

“I smell a trap,” the Warlock growled. “I smell sorcery.”

“What sorcery could stand up to you when I find this thing for you?”

“What sorcery?” the tinker said genially. “You can answer that one.” Corleu picked up bread silently. “You won’t answer.” He cocked a brow at the Dancer. “What sorcerers have been dreaming of this thing we want?”

She discarded her mask, let her face flow into various faces. Nyx’s face came and went quickly; Corleu froze mid-bite, then chewed again, expressionless. “None dreaming,” the Dancer said, “not of this.”

“Of him?”

“Only one,” she said smiling, “still dreaming. Like me, before you woke me.” She wore Tiel’s face. Corleu caught his breath on a bread crumb.

“Easy,” the tinker said, pounding on his back, handing him the water.

“I told—I told no one.”

“Not even Great-gran? Not even whispered to her grave? Not even to a green stalk of corn?”

“No one.”

“Then who taught you?” the Warlock demanded. “Whose sorcery brought us awake?”

“You wanted that,” Corleu said tersely. “You wanted freedom. I couldn’t do it without learning somewhere, from someone. You said find it. I chose how.”

“Silver Ring of Time is a powerful magic.”

“So are you. I couldn’t free things of power without power.”

“What did you pay this teacher?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you promise?”

“What does it matter?” he said. “It’s my promise, my payment. Nothing to do with you.”

They were silent, looking at one another, even the Blind Lady, casting about with her fallen eyes.

“He paid for sorcery,” the tinker said, “with nothing we need worry about.” He cocked a brow around the chamber, then regarded Corleu, hand rasping at the dark stubble on his cheeks.

“What would Wayfolk pay with?” the Dancer asked. “All they own is time.”

“A man searching for treasure could promise that in payment,” the Warlock said, prowling the edge of the light. His eyes flared at Corleu. “Did you?” Corleu stared back at him. He turned to the tinker.

“You didn’t pay me for this,” he said. The Warlock snarled beyond the fire, then barked the Blood Fox’s attack, and he felt the cold sweat break on his face. But he kept his eyes steady on the tinker, who smiled a faint, thin smile.

“Wayfolk. Always one for a bargain.” He waved a remonstrating hand at the Warlock. “You should be a little grateful.”

“I’ll be grateful,” the Warlock said with a snap of teeth, “when he finds this.”

“You owe me,” Corleu said baldly, “not just tinker, you all do.” He reached for the knife, his hand trembling in the shadows. “You told me ask for myself.”

The Warlock, snarling, leaped over the fire. Corleu jumped to his feet, the knife in his hand. A blood fox’s weight crashed against him, bore him back against one of the statues. Its orange lizard’s face smiled over his shoulder, its cloven hand pushed into his backbone. The knife burned like a coal in his hand; he dropped it, crying out, and heard it shatter like glass on the stones. A blood fox’s eyes looked into his, feral, furious.

“You alone in this. Not with some faceless mage behind you. Who is it?”

The tinker chuckled. “Don’t eat him. We need him yet. Who, Corleu?”

“You may not need to know.” He stopped, catching his breath; the Blood Fox eyes still glared into his, all he could see. “Ever. How could—how could anyone threaten you, once you have it?”

The Dancer pirouetted along the statues, turning herself gracefully from embrace to embrace until she brought herself against Corleu. She put her hand on his hair, murmured against his mouth, “But how will we know who to protect, if we are threatened?” Her face became green suddenly, with fierce blue oval eyes and a sharp raven’s beak. He jerked his head back, banged it against the stones. She laughed.

“Pass the knife,” the tinker asked politely, “if you’re done with it.”

The Warlock loosed Corleu slowly. He bent, growling, picked up shards of glass and flung them to the tinker. They reshaped in the air; the tinker picked the knife out of it, cut more cheese.

The Dancer turned across Corleu, continued her dance. Corleu slid down to the feet of the statue, closed his eyes.

“Now,” he heard the tinker say, “let’s begin again. You want something more for your pains. For the worry and trouble. That seems fair. We told you you might want more. But here is the point we stick at, Corleu. There’s the small matter of the thing itself.” He cocked an eye up at the painted Cygnet flying across the small round ceiling, then down at the floor. “Even Wayfolk know not to barter with air. You find this small thing. Then ask.”

Corleu looked at him, wondering if any Wayfolk in all history had ever strayed down such a mysterious path to end sitting in the dark beneath the Holder’s house, surrounded by tales come alive and speaking. He said slowly, “You knew this place before I did. Why do you need me now? You gave me pieces of the puzzle. Is that all the pieces you have? If it’s not here, I don’t know where to look. I don’t have your magic. You could find it easily as me, now.”

“It’s here,” the Blind Lady murmured, and snapped another thread absently. The tinker’s yellow eyes smiled their faint, glinting smile.

“Another fine point. But so easily answered, you answer.”

“You can’t find it without me.” He shook his head, bewildered, as the tinker’s smile broadened. “I’m Wayfolk,” he protested. “That means back roads, herb magic, no corners. Ignorance, field dirt, living and dying in a wagon. I’m nothing. If you want me for more than my feet and hands, there’s little to find. Why me? Why me to find it?” They were silent. The tinker gazed into the fire; the Dancer beside a statue imitated its distant stare. The Blind Lady picked at thread; the Warlock picked a red glass ball out of a gryphon’s mouth, set it flaming in a niche in the wall. Corleu’s hands closed tightly. “You do need me,” he breathed. “So I have more than air to barter with.” The Warlock’s face flashed toward him, snarling, but noiselessly, and he did not move. The tinker picked his teeth thoughtfully with the knife.

“It’s an unusual position to bargain from. You alone can find this thing. But you don’t know how to get at it.”

“Hear him,” the Dancer murmured. “It costs nothing. And it may amuse.” She strayed to Corleu, traced his ear with her thumb. “What more does the Wayfolk man want? A house? A palace?”

“I don’t like walls.”

“Wealth?”

“Wayfolk can’t count. They use coins for buttons.”

“A sorcerer’s power?”

“I’ve had a bellyful of sorcery.”

“Knowledge?”

“I’m getting that, just breathing.”

“Then what, Corleu?” the tinker asked. His smile was gone; his voice had thinned. He tossed the knife in the air, caught it. For a moment, wheeling in the firelight, it turned gold. Corleu’s hands clenched; he looked at them blindly, testing the demand silently, against the straight doorposts and towers, the safety of the ancient house above his head.

“I want,” he said, “a promise. That no harm will come to the one who helped me, or to her house, or to any who know her name.”

There was dead silence from the gathering he had wakened; they gazed at him, remote and eerie as the statues around him.

Behind him, the statue he leaned against seemed to shift.

Meguet and Nyx entered Chrysom’s tower. Nyx had paused to heal her foot, standing in the middle of the yard, with one hand on Meguet’s arm. No one greeted her; no one stared; no one, Meguet found bemusedly, noticed either of them. Then she saw the yard as from another angle, a world without them, and she said, feeling an odd mingling of uneasiness and freedom:

“Have you made us invisible?”

“For a moment,” Nyx answered absently. “Just until we reach Chrysom’s tower. I have things to do; I don’t want to be distracted.”

“You will see the Holder first.”

“No.”

Meguet caught her breath. “Nyx, she has waited years!” Nyx’s grip on her tightened slightly; she stared down at the dark head, hair swept impatiently behind one ear, what she could see of the pale, lean face quiet, absorbed in work. Nyx answered finally:

“She will be here when I have finished. If I don’t begin, neither she nor I may be here in the end.”

“And if you don’t return from the maze? You will not go to her first, even to let her see your face? Nyx Ro, that is cruel.”

Nyx straightened, tested her foot on the bare ground. “I haven’t your warmth,” she said, “which you extend so unexpectedly. Even to Gatekeepers, apparently. Even to me.” She added, at Meguet’s silence, the ghost of a smile touching her mouth, “Hew, I can understand. But you use so carelessly, at times, something that to me is simply another source of power.”

“Love?” She felt the blood in her face, a confusion of anger and helplessness, as if she were without arms or armor in some vital battle. But the word touched Nyx; her eyes flickered, following a thought.

“Not even Chrysom suggested that as a source of power,” she commented. “It’s an interesting thought. I only meant that you allow yourself to be distracted by so many small things. To focus power you must first focus your attention.”

“I am,” Meguet said shortly. “It’s all in that maze. If you are finished.”

“First I must go to Chrysom’s library.”

“Moro’s eyes! We have no time! If you haven’t learned it by now, you don’t need it.”

“But I do.” She looked at Meguet, her eyes distant, unreadable. “There is something vital in that library. I will need it in the maze. It may save our lives.”

Meguet hesitated. Her attention drained inward, to the still, secret place where a great prism hung in darkness. She sensed disturbance in a layer of time around it, but, so far, it was itself undisturbed.

“All right,” she said tensely. “But hurry.”

In the library, she paced, picking bog leaf out of her hair and rebraiding it. Nyx searched through books, letting pages dance through her fingers, a mysterious task which spun Meguet’s calm to a fine, frayed thread.

“Nyx,” she breathed. “We must go.” Nyx did not answer. She closed a book, opened another. Meguet closed her eyes, turned on her heel. Her hands fell to her sides, clenched. She forced them open. Nothing had happened, yet. Nothing, yet… “Nyx.”

“Be patient,” Nyx murmured. “In matters of sorcery there’s nothing more dangerous than haste.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A puzzle piece.”

Meguet drew breath, held it. She listened to the silence a few more minutes. Then she wheeled, went to the door, opened it. She got Nyx’s attention then.

“Where are you going?”

“Down. Catch up with me.”

“Wait, Meguet. Please wait. We may lose each other in the maze.”

“Will you at least let me send word to the Holder?”

“The guards must have told her by now.” She waited, her eyes on Meguet, looking faintly troubled, until Meguet’s hold on the latch loosened. She resumed reading. Meguet stood gazing at the half-open door. She closed it finally, leaned against it, head and shoulder against the wood as if she might hear voices from far below carried upward through the ancient stones.

“Rydel.” Nyx’s flat voice nearly made her start. She closed a book sharply. “Secret powers. Powers not to be known. To be used only for Ro Holding.” Meguet turned incredulously to face her. “Rydel,” Nyx reminded her, “was your ancestor. Chrysom himself, Timor Ro said, stood in her shadow.” She took a step toward Meguet, her eyes wide, speculative. “The enormous powers of the mage Chrysom were overshadowed by the powers of Timor Ro’s eccentric gardener. That’s how you could walk past my doorkeepers.”

“Your doorkeepers,” Meguet whispered. Then she heard herself shout, an unfamiliar sound. “Nyx, what are you doing wasting time reading about gardening? This house is in danger!”

“Gardening is not at issue, and the acquisition of knowledge is never a waste of time. You stood against me in my house. You. My cousin Meguet, who could never find your way through a book, let alone a spell. I want to know how. I want to know before we go into the maze. I want to take this thing Corleu is searching for, and I need power. Power like Rydel’s. Like yours.”

Meguet stared at her, stunned. She whirled abruptly. “You stay and look for it, then. I’m going down.” She wrenched the door so hard it should have swung back to boom against the stones. Instead it pulled her off balance, brought her up hard against it.

She leaned into the wood after a moment, her heart pounding. “Nyx.”

“Open it.”

“I can’t!”

“You could fight me in my house.”

“I wasn’t fighting you! I was watching! I can’t—”

“Open the door.”

“I can’t use those powers at will!” She stopped, appalled at what she had relinquished: an ancient privacy, a secret between Holder and Guardian. But it had already been relinquished, by consent, in Nyx’s house. She stood quietly then, her face against the wood, calming herself out of long habit, as for a bout. She turned finally, trembling slightly, her face white, feeling unskilled and clumsy at battles of will instead of movement. She said softly, waiting for an inner uproar of voices that did not come, “The powers are ancient. I may use them for one purpose. Only one purpose. I can’t use them at my own need. They are kept always secret, and through some generations they are never used.”

“Power is power,” Nyx said. She stood as calm as the stone Cygnet carved above her head, unfamiliar, suddenly, as if her own past in that room, in that house, could no longer lay claim to her. “It can be worked with, changed, manipulated, shaped in whatever ways you choose. I only need to know its source.”

The black prism, the Cygnet’s eye, formed in Meguet’s mind. She said, trying to find Nyx in the dangerous stranger in front of her, “The source itself is ancient. I obtained power by being born, only that. It is my heritage. And but what for you and the Wayfolk man have wakened, I might have lived and died without using it.”

“Use it now. You can. Open the door.”

“I can’t. The power is not mine to summon.”

“It could be. Only learn how. If the need is there, the power will come. You know that yourself. Desperation spawns power. Open the door.”

The Cygnet’s eye was still dark, untroubled, in its secret rings of time… She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak further, for desperation would spawn nothing more magical than anger and anger was a beggar’s blade. Without moving, it seemed, Nyx stood in front of her. She laid her hands against the door, on either side of Meguet’s face. Her eyes, misty, unblinking, drew at Meguet.

“There must have been a place where you first knew your powers. A moment in time when you first recognized them for what they are. When was the time? Where is the place?” Meguet turned her face away; Nyx lifted one hand from the door, turned it back gently to meet her gaze. “Tell me.”

“I cannot,” she whispered.

“Why? Who stops you? What?”

Meguet closed her eyes, shaking with anger. In one of her lithe, skilled movements, she had ducked away from Nyx, put distance, mentally and physically between them in this peculiar battle, before Nyx realized she had moved.

But she had not: She had only thought the movement. She was still backed against the door, pinned under Nyx’s gaze, with the anger in her turning into a nightmarish panic. She tried again to move. Her voice broke away from her in terror.

“Nyx, I can’t—”

“You can move. If you choose. Find the way.”

“How can you do this to me, how can you—”

“Don’t panic. Find the power. Use the source.”

“It is not—I cannot—it is not mine to use!”

“It is yours. Take it. Have the courage to take. To use.”

“You don’t understand—You think you know so much, you understand nothing.”

“What? What don’t I understand?”

“How to know without using.”

“Power is to be known, is to be used, is even to be shared. You must share this knowledge with me, Meguet. It might save my life. If that, at this particular moment, does not move you, then think of the safety of this house. I can help, but you must help me.”

“Nyx—” She could not even blink; she felt as immobile as one of the strange statues in the maze. She could only speak, and her voice shook badly. “You have brought your swamp ways into this house. The power does not belong to me. If even the thought of using it so crossed my heart, I would lose it. Do you think I would risk my own heritage only because I can’t move a finger or open a door? Ask me what my heart is worth to me, or my life. Then make me an offer. Ask me.” Nyx, a hair-fine line between her brows, said nothing, waited. Meguet’s breath caught suddenly, painfully; she was going to cry, in sheer frustration, she realized furiously, and she could not even wipe away her own tears, or turn her face to hide them. “I never judged you before,” she whispered. “I never knew the things you know. It seemed that what you sought might be worth a long journey, a stay in the desert, a lonely life, even the life of an animal or two. But now I judge you. I know you as the small birds know you. You cut out their tongues so they cannot speak, you cut off their wings so they cannot fly. They look at you and know you. You make what you are. When you burn their hearts, it is your own heart burning in the fire.”

Color flared into Nyx’s face. Her eyes seemed enormous, luminous. The door latch rattled suddenly and she started. She pushed herself away from the door.

“Nyx!” It was the Holder. “Open the door!”

She pounded on it impatiently. Meguet, freed suddenly, turned her whole body, hid her face against the wood. She reached out, at the insistent pounding, pulled the door open with shaking hands. The Holder stood on the threshold, looking at the lank-haired, barefoot woman whose back was turned to her. “Nyx?” she said tentatively. “The Gatekeeper told me you had come.”

Nyx turned slowly, met her mother’s eyes. They were both silent then, their faces reflecting the same faint surprise at the still unbroken bond between them. The Holder spoke first, her voice soft, shaken:

“Nyx.” She looked at Meguet then, her eyes suddenly vulnerable, haunted. “You went upriver for the Wayfolk man. Not Nyx. Not now.”

“The Wayfolk man is here,” Nyx said.

“Here! Where?”

“In Chrysom’s maze. He came to look for something.”

The Holder’s face whitened. “What is he looking for in my house?”

“I don’t know. He never told me. He is coerced. I promised him help. That’s why I came back with Meguet. We are going together into the maze—”

“No,” the Holder said sharply. “Meguet will go. I don’t want you in danger.”

Nyx paused, looked at her oddly, a touch of color in her eyes. Then she linked her hands tightly together; her brows pinched. She answered carefully, “Meguet will need help.”

“Meguet may need help, but—”

“Mother, I did not spend nine years wandering Ro Holding for no reason. Almost nothing can stand against me. Almost nothing. And I promised—”

“I don’t care what you promised the Wayfolk man and I don’t care if you can harry Chrysom himself out of his tomb, I want you here with me. Or better yet, out of this house. Go back to the swamp.”

Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you wanted me out of the swamp. Your fey third daughter eating toads under a full moon, causing gossip across four Holds—”

“Then, take that as a reason to be sent back to the swamp,” the Holder said sharply. “Better there than here. This house is not safe.”

“That is why I came back. To deal with the danger. When I have done that, I will be gone. If that is what you want.”

The Holder closed her eyes. “Moro’s name. I have wanted you home for nine years. Now I want you home tomorrow. Not now.”

“Why?” Nyx asked, and answered herself, coldly, evenly. “You don’t trust me. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know anymore which daughter is yours: the one who lived so innocently among the witches, or the one who dwelled among bones in the swamp. Which one will go into the maze? Which will fight in this house?”

The Holder was silent; Meguet saw the confusion of anguish and guilt in her eyes. So did Nyx; her head bowed slightly, away from her mother’s expression. She added softly, “There is only one way for you to find out. You must let me go into that maze.”

The Holder’s face looked pale, brittle as the pearls she twisted between her fingers. “No,” she said. “For many reasons.” Nyx did not move, or change expression, but Meguet, watching her, felt something twist in her own heart.

She said abruptly, “Nyx is right. I will need her with me.”

The Holder turned to her, startled. “Meguet, no. You cannot take her. She has only a mage’s powers.”

“And at this moment, I have none at all.” She paused. She had fought back tears, but her face was colorless, and her voice unsteady with anger and shock. The Holder said sharply:

“What’s wrong?”

Meguet’s shoulders straightened, lined to the stones at her back. Nyx gazed at her expressionlessly, asking nothing, forcing nothing. Meguet said evenly, “Everything is wrong. I keep blundering a step behind the Wayfolk man. I could not stop him in Berg Hold, I missed him in the swamp, and I may well miss him again unless I get into that maze. If it is only sorcery to be dealt with in the maze, I will have only a sword to fight it. I will be helpless without Nyx.”

The Holder drew breath, her eyes flicking between them. The strand in her fingers broke suddenly; pearls ran like mice at her feet. She threw the last of them down.

“Then go,” she said huskily to Nyx. She did not look at her daughter. “If you do not return, you will break my heart.”

They were nearly at the foot of the tower stairs before Nyx spoke. “You could have told her. I thought you would. It would have been just. And,” she added dispassionately, “she has already judged me.”

“I fight my own battles,” Meguet said shortly. “And I may well need you. I have no idea what is down there in the dark by now.”

“I do not mean to harass you.” She touched Meguet’s arm lightly and for a breath, once again, Meguet froze, so precariously balanced between steps that if Nyx had shifted a finger she would have tumbled headlong to the floor. She felt the dark anger beat like insect wings in the back of her throat, in her wrists. “I only want to understand you, and the great secret power that uses you. I want to see its face.”

In the heart of the tower, Corleu saw the small chamber he sat in waver around him. The fires went out, hiding the still faces of both stone and the living. Time closed over him like water. A globe lit the room now, silver-green, hanging from the center of the ceiling above a marble effigy and tomb.

The stone statues began to move.

 

Four
  

THE tomb guardians, colorful and fierce, prowling silently around the tomb on their half-human legs, the black stone effigy itself, of a tall old man frowning faintly, it looked, at the doings in the tower, impressed Corleu fully but briefly. His eyes kept returning to the globe.

Just a light, his brain told him. But his hands wanted to hold it; he wanted to see into it. Nothing in it but a green-white mage-flame, his eyes told him, but his attention fluttered around it like some frantic moth. There, he wanted to say, there. But it wasn’t there.

“Nothing there but fire,” the tinker said. Corleu dragged his eyes from it finally, turning. He opened his mouth to answer, then could not, stunned finally in that chamber full of wonders.

The Gold King stood in his gold spiked armor, masked in gold, crowned with the seven gold stars of his house. The edges of his scabbard rippled like flame. The chain he dragged went just so far across the marble floor, then simply stopped in the middle of a link, as if it continued elsewhere, in another chamber, perhaps, or somewhere among the stars.

Behind him the Warlock, dressed in the black of his night-shadow, juggled the stars that limned the shadow, and the one red star that was his heart.

“We’re close,” he said. His red-furred, feral face looked intent, watchful, the blood fox scenting the hunters, perhaps, or the prey. It was an ancient expression, Corleu thought suddenly, seeing the first blood fox in the Delta waiting, wide-eyed, still, for what it smelled flying low over the swamps on the wind.

His heart pounded. There was too much power. Tinker, he had told Nyx; old blind beggar woman. The Blind Lady wore peacock feathers from throat to foot. Her long black hair tumbled away from a delicate oval face. Her eyes were closed, a faint frown between her brows. Her ringed hand wove threads of palest silver; like the Gold King’s chain, they stopped short in the air, continued elsewhere. Her face was so calm she seemed elsewhere as well, but she spoke. “A little farther, Wayfolk man. Take us farther.”

He stared at her, not knowing how he had gotten even that far. “You must promise,” he said desperately. “You haven’t promised what I asked.”

The Dancer chuckled. One side of her hair was black as night, the other white as snow. She wore a Fire Bear pelt; her fingers were its curved ice-white claws. She looked old as night one moment, then, at a shift of light or expression, as young as morning. “We gained ground without a promise.”

“Then I won’t move. I’ll go no farther.” He sat down at the foot of the effigy, his arms folded. “I’ll stay here with the dead until you promise.” His face was blanched; his old man’s hair, he thought, would have turned white anyway at this point. The Gold King turned his imperious mask of gold at Corleu, and he had to drag at air, just at the movement.

“Tell us who might be waiting for us,” the Gold King said. “Tell us who might have taken an interest in whatever you searched for, who might have turned a thought toward taking this thing I want. How can we promise without a name?”

“I won’t name until you promise.” He had reached out, clung to something solid on the tomb, in the face of the Gold King’s wrath. The guardians swung their horned, beaked, goat-eyed heads at him as they roamed around the tomb. But no fire came out of their mouths, no roars of warning. “And she doesn’t know what or where. She can’t be there waiting.”

The Warlock paced, juggling, with one hand, small worlds of fire.

“Then why are you afraid for her? This ignorant, innocent sorceress who has no interest in why we wake? If she’s nowhere, how could we harm her? I know mages, witches, sorcerers. Their minds are always turning, always busy, nosing out this, that. She pointed your way here. You’d have spent years searching on your own for this maze. But she would not come with you if only to see for herself what you might find? She was not curious? She had better things to do? And why,” he added, tossing a star and catching it, “would we harm her for helping us?” Corleu, gripping stone, stared at him, dry-mouthed. “No answer from the Wayfolk? Then I’ll answer. Because she intends us harm.”

He threw a glass ball in his hand hard across the chamber, straight at the globe. Corleu, on his feet before he realized it, saw the ball pass through the globe as if it were air, and rebound against the wall. The Warlock caught it. Corleu molded stone in his hand, still searching the globe, for a crack, injury, a wavering of its light. He moved finally, took a step toward it, touched it with one hand.

He flinched away from hot glass; it was only mage-light, burning for centuries, likely old as the maze. He turned, found an audience out of nightmare watching him.

“What do you see,” the Dancer asked softly, “in there, Wayfolk? It’s only a round globe of light.”

“Nothing.” He sat down again, cooling his hand against the cold marble: It was the effigy’s left foot, he realized, he had hold of like a spar off a swamped ship. He moved his hand quickly before the effigy stirred in annoyance.

“I looked into a round globe of light once,” the Blind Lady said in her low, grave voice. “I saw what I saw and never saw again. Be careful, Wayfolk, what you look too closely into.”

“It’s too late for care.” His eyes wandered back to the globe, then dragged away from it, to meet the Gold King’s expressionless, armored face.

“There,” the Gold King said softly. “In there, Corleu?”

“No.”

“Maybe in its shadow?”

He did not answer; his face turned resolutely from it. But it burned in his thoughts. “You must promise,” he said doggedly, “or none of us will ever know. She could never harm the likes of you. She could never take from you.”

“Could she not?” They consulted one another silently; so did the fey-eyed tomb guardians.

“Never harm,” the Warlock said thinly, tossing balls again. “Never take.”

“But would she try?” the Dancer asked, revealing her ancient furrowed face. “There’s the question. If we promise, and she tries to harm, then what, Wayfolk man? Will you come to our rescue?”

“She can’t harm you,” he said again, wearily. “No one could. You’re old as story. You never die. Nothing’s got more power than a dream. Or time. Or sun. You’ll take what you want and walk through her like glass through that globe. She’d maybe throw a spell or two, but what’s that to do with you? You’ll go on forever. Promise.”

“Name her.”

“Promise. Her, and her house, and all who know her name.”

“Name her.”

“Nyx.”

Rush’s voice, pleading, breathless, caught them across the black tower. Meguet, pushing the Cygnet banner away from the door, saw Nyx’s eyes widen, expression cross her face, before she finally turned.

“Rush.” It sounded like a sigh. He was armed, but for his heart, which had no defense against Nyx anywhere, it seemed.

“I heard you had come home to fight for this house.”

“Rush, we cannot wait—”

“I’ll come with you.”

Meguet closed her eyes. An impatience like some deadly acrid desert wind shook her. The Wayfolk man had breached time. She saw his face, turned upward, gazing, pale, entranced, puzzled, at the silver-green globe over Chrysom’s effigy. “Nyx,” she whispered. “We have no time left—”

Rush swept a torch out of its sconce, crossed the floor toward them. “You’ll need help. I have some power, Nyx—”

“No.”

“I won’t let you go there alone.”

“Rush,” Nyx said, her voice cold as the gate hinges in midwinter, “you have been saying that for nine years. And for nine years I have gone my way and I have gone alone. You don’t have the power to follow us. I will not be distracted trying to guard you.”

“You won’t.” He had reached her. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he were trying to fit a face of memory over the sharp-boned, expressionless, intent face in front of him. “I’ll take care of myself. I’ll guard Meguet—she has only her sword against those sorcerers.”

“I need only Meguet,” Nyx said flatly. His temper flared a little, sending blood to his face.

“I’ll come with what I have: The house is in danger. You can’t return after three years, give me a glimpse of your back and your shadow and then disappear into that convoluted puzzle out of a dead mage’s brain, and expect me to wait—”

“I never expected you to wait!” Nyx’s cold, calm voice, raised in sudden, genuine despair, startled Meguet. “I never wanted you to wait! You kept thinking I would return to love you—if it was love I wanted, I would never have left! You can’t understand, you never could, that I could want knowledge more than you, experience and power more than you. You love a shadow that left this house nine years ago. I have nothing in me of that woman. I have travelled a strange country, and I have changed myself to live in that magic country. Love is not what I have learned in nine years, Rush. It’s what I left behind.”

“I don’t believe that,” Rush said. He was shaken, white, but grim, clinging with a blood fox’s death grip to something that, to Meguet’s eye, had given up life years ago without a protest. Nyx’s mouth thinned; her eyes looked silvery in the torchlight. “For nine years, yours was the first face I saw waking, the last I saw sleeping, no matter who lay beside me. How could I be that mistaken? You must have given me something, each time you returned—the way you spoke my name, the way you turned your head to catch my voice—You can’t have turned so far from love—”

“You did,” she said flatly. “It was you who turned away from love, these nine years, turned away from those who might have truly loved you, to wring love out of a memory, a ghost, air. You loved nothing, Rush. You loved no one. Not even me. At least in nine years I learned something.”

She turned abruptly, pulled aside the banner. Rush stood blinking, his face patchy, as if she had thrown more than words at him. For a moment he almost heard her: Meguet saw the hesitation in his movement. Then, obdurately, he stepped forward. Nyx spun so fast she blurred; there was a sound like air ripping. A line smoldered across the stone in front of Rush.

“You will wait,” she said, her voice shaking with anger, “and you will wait, and you will wait in this dark tower—”

“Nyx,” Meguet breathed.

“Until the woman you will love freely frees you from your waiting.”

“Nyx, what have you done?” He stood very still, looking half perplexed, half frightened, as if he had come to that moment, to that place, by choice, and then could not remember why. Nyx turned again.

“Nothing more,” she said with grim weariness, “than what he has laid on himself for nine years. You said to hurry.” Meguet, with a final, stunned glance back at Rush, followed her down the steps. “We’ll have to elude Chrysom’s tricks,” Nyx added, “to reach the center. We might have used Corleu’s Ring of Time, but it frayed when the house and all its odd time-paths broke apart.” She paused at the bottom of the steps; a mage-fire in her palm illumined a lion’s face at the first wall, turned to gaze back at her. “However, there are other ways of passing through time—”

Meguet, impelled by a thousand years of voices incoherent in their urgency, did not bother to speak. She gripped Nyx’s arm, pulled her forward through the wall into the center of the maze. For a moment, the strange statues appeared around them, then Meguet, all her attention focused on the prism, changed that moment. The statues disappeared; black walls rose around them, enclosing the black eye of the Cygnet. It slowly paled, turned its fire-white gaze on them.

Meguet let go of Nyx then, her eyes flickering at the shadows. She drew Moro Ro’s sword, out of habit. Nyx, standing stone-still, her back to the prism, blinked at the sound.

“He’s close, the Wayfolk man,” Meguet said, prowling, tense. “He changed time at the center. I don’t know how.” Nyx moved, turned her head slightly to follow Meguet’s movements. “Only a Guardian can do that.”

“Meguet.” The word was almost inaudible, but in that chamber any word ran clear as crystal to the ear. “What is this place?”

“The heart of the maze.”

“How did you find it?” Still she had not moved; expression had not yet come back into her face. “Who showed you the way?”

“You did,” Meguet said a little bitterly. “Those that you and Corleu woke hid themselves here. I came here to search for them. They attacked, I had to run. Time opened. I ran here.” She stopped pacing finally, leaned against the wall, watching Nyx. “You should not know about this place. I could have left you behind easily. But you said you wanted to see the face of power. I don’t know its face. But there is its eye.”

Nyx turned. She moved then, swiftly, to stand beside Meguet, staring at the great prism that, moonlike, was affixed to nothing but time. “What is it?”

“The eye of the Cygnet.”

Nyx was silent, testing it, Meguet knew, recognizing the intent, detached expression, as if she were trying to breathe it like air, swallow it with her mind. “It yields nothing,” she whispered. “Who made it?”

“Astor Ro. Chrysom made the maze to protect it. She was the first of us.”

“The first—”

“Of the Guardians.”

“What is it—exactly that you guard?”

“The Cygnet.”

Nyx stared at her. “You never even wanted power. You never cared. You couldn’t get through the maze when we were young. Is this what gave you power?”

“Yes. It needs hands, eyes, a mind living in the world. Other minds, older Guardians, woke in me to give me advice.”

“What advice are they giving now?”

“They are silent. Listening.”

“Listening?”

“To you. For any sign of danger from you.”

“Toward you?” Nyx asked with a certain wariness. “Or toward the Cygnet?”

“Toward both.”

“They did not help you before.”

“The danger was only to me, not the Cygnet. Now, it would be to both, but”—she shrugged slightly, a small gesture she regretted—“now you could not touch me.”

Nyx’s gaze flicked away, back to the eye. “Why you?” she asked. “Why were you chosen?”

“We are all related, in some way, to Astor Ro. Beyond that, I don’t know why.”

“And you never knew. As we grew up together, you never sensed this power.”

“I never needed it. The Cygnet was never in danger.”

Nyx was silent, searching her face. The fire-white prism drew any hint of color from her eyes. “The thing he seeks belongs to the Cygnet,” she said slowly. “Or is it a danger to the Cygnet? Does the Cygnet give holding power to the Holders of Ro Holding? The power of the Holders turns on a tale? A constellation? But where is the Cygnet? Four Hold Signs and their faces of power are gathered in this maze. But where is the Cygnet’s face? You, Meguet?”

She shook her head, wondering, herself, what mask the Cygnet might choose. “No. I’m simply a Guardian.”

“My mother?”

“Perhaps. But these powers only wear their faces to give them a human aspect. Tear the mask away, and you would have other words for them. Take those words away and—what?”

“The power itself,” Nyx said softly. She looked at the prism, her arms folded, her face intent in a way that made Meguet alert, uneasy. She was no longer overawed; her busy mind had begun to weave again. “The eye of the Cygnet… What is in there?” Meguet did not answer. Nyx threw her a curious glance. “May I look into it?”

“Be careful.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“No. But that’s what the Wayfolk man is reaching toward, through time.”

“Where is he?”

“Here.”

“Here?” Nyx said, startled.

“In this chamber. In the same moment, but in a different circle of it. The wall is a Ring of Time. Not like you make them, from one place to another. But in one place, one moment, and deeper into the same moment. It is part of the knowledge within that eye.” She paused, wishing she had bitten the word in two and swallowed it before she flung it to Nyx like bait. She added carefully, “As I said, all the power it gives is transitory; it can be used only for one purpose.”

“Perhaps. I think power is malleable; it can be used to suit purpose. How much knowledge must have collected there, in a thousand years… And you might never have such power again in your life. This place could close like an eye closing, never to be seen again while we live. How much of it do you know, Meguet?”

“I have no idea,” Meguet said shortly. “But it will be enough to stop the Wayfolk man.”

Nyx was silent. All her attention had withdrawn from the prism to focus, suddenly, on Meguet. She put her hand on Meguet’s arm, gently, as if to coax her to turn, to look at something. “Meguet”—she picked words slowly—“whatever Corleu is searching for, he has been compelled to find. He is not acting by choice.”

“Compelled,” Meguet said flatly, “he may have been, but he has found his way step by step to this time, to this place, and he has always known exactly what he wanted. And I am born to defend it.”

“He is Wayfolk, powerless. I had to teach him spells a cottage brat could work, to get him this far.”

“He should never have taken the first step.” Nyx’s fingers tightened on her arm; she moved slightly, left them closing on air. She eased into shadows again, her face shadowed. “He threatens the Cygnet. That is what the powers within me will see.”

“Meguet.” Nyx’s face, with the color washing into her eyes, seemed candle-pale. “He is an innocent—”

“How would you recognize innocence anymore? You have no mercy for any who love you, why would you defend someone you yourself coerced, except to get what you want?”

“I did not coerce him. He needed me so he could rescue some Wayfolk girl—”

“And that moved you, I suppose.”

“It did, oddly,” Nyx admitted. Her brows were pinched; expression had broken through the cool detachment in her eyes. “I know he looks for something of great, dangerous power. But he wants nothing from it. All he wants is to rescue his Wayfolk love. It is a kind of innocence. A kind I never knew. I thought I could take what he found, and then use the power in it to protect him, send him unharmed back to his life. Back into that innocence. It seemed—even to me, living that way in the swamp—something worth protecting.”

Meguet closed her eyes. “Then why,” she breathed, “did you send him here? He could never have known about the maze without you. What kind of innocent dream does this look like to you? You knew I wanted him. What did you think I would do when I found him in this house? Why should I believe what you tell me, rather than what I see with all the power within me? He is here. He is searching not for the face of power, but for its heart. You have sent him here to die.”

Nyx caught her breath, a small, unguarded sound, a half-formed word. She vanished abruptly. Meguet, startled, had time only to tense, and then she found herself adjusting her vision like a telescope, pulling Nyx out of the air, focusing clearer and clearer, until she could see even the changing expression in Nyx’s eyes.

The great swan-etched broadsword wrenched itself out of her hands. It stroked the air with silver, a line drawn straight toward the shining prism. Fast as it moved, Meguet was faster, folding the moment in her mind, stepping across time to seize the sword with both hands, stop it an instant before its tip broke the facets of the prism. It resisted her, in midair, dragging against her on its determined path. Then the desire that had held a door against Nyx’s power filled her; the need to see, to protect, became stronger than the threat, and she pulled the blade down and whirled.

“Nyx!” She caught her breath, furious and terrified. Nyx had disappeared again; Meguet’s eyes picked her out from behind an illusion of black stone wall. She looked unfamiliar in concentration, detached, unreachable.

“You can move like thought,” Nyx said softly. “You can see through illusion, your strength is formidable. You can walk through stone, you can walk through time. What else can you do? What else did that eye teach you that not even I know how to test? You guard a living power. I want it.”

“Nyx, be careful,” Meguet begged, white, trembling. “Please stop—”

“What mind is in that eye?”

“You will go too far—too far even for me to protect you. Nyx, please—”

The dark walls blinked, hid Nyx. Meguet turned, drawn as always toward the Cygnet’s eye, and found her there, reaching out to it with both hands.

Finally the voices within her spoke. They checked her, stilled a thought that would have transfixed Nyx within that moment, left her always reaching, never grasping. Wait, the Guardians said. She waited; their voices stilled, left a silence in her like the silence in the face of the moon. Nyx’s hands touched the prism, held it.

In the misty light between her hands, the Cygnet flew.

Corleu saw it within the globe. It left him no time to think, no time to move; he stood at the globe, reaching for it, his hands settling on it before he had even gotten off the tomb. He never felt the hot glass. Here, it was, he knew: The thing that trapped him and would set him free, the Cygnet, flying through that mist between time, to the place where it had hidden its heart.

A face formed out of the mist; mist lingered in the eyes. “Nyx,” he said, a small word startled out of him that seemed to echo in whispers behind him. She also looked surprised, at something he could not see.

And then he saw.

 

Five
  

HE dropped his hands, spun in horror and nearly impaled himself on the blade burrowing against his throat. Down the length of it, he saw Meguet’s eyes.

They stared at one another: he seeing green, hearing the green rustling corn leaves and knowing what they whispered of in their dry, ancient voices. Nothing, he heard, nothing, nothing, nothing, because that is what he glimpsed between him and the blade poised so surely in her hands that the light on it did not even tremble. She saw him dead. He had crept into the heart of time and held the Cygnet’s secret between his hands, revealing it to the wild, dangerous powers he had brought with him. She saw, held him transfixed with what was in her eyes. But her hands did not move to complete the image.

Kill, she heard within her, and felt the ancient, killing anger sweep through her. Light shook down the sword. He saw Tiel’s face, smelled the lavender in her hair, and then sorrow thrust a sharp, heavy blade into his throat. He opened his mouth, breath grating through him, and realized that he was still alive.

He was powerless against her, she sensed. Powerless to lift a finger to help himself: He did not even carry a knife. Still stunned by what he had seen, he could not even speak, beg, bargain for his life. Only his eyes spoke: of a terrible despair. Powerless as a swamp bird in Nyx’s house, and yet he had made his way to a place not even Nyx herself had found. He had known where to look. He had recognized what he had seen…

She heard her own voice finally, among the clamoring winds of centuries. The voices cried at her; she beat them back with her own: I am your eyes and feet, I am your killing hand. I live in this world, I look into the eyes of those you tell me to kill. I have the right to be heard. How could he have reached this place without a Guardian’s powers? He has looked into the Cygnet’s eye. He is born to guard.

She could barely speak, among the wild voices. Neither had moved, except him to take a breath. Together they had formed a private moment within a slow, slow drawing out of time around them. Nyx still held the prism, walls were still changing, Chrysom’s effigy shadowed the air, faces were still coming visible around her. “Wayfolk.” Her voice shook. “What are you?”

“I—” He stuck, mute, forgetting how to talk as his eyes ran again over her face, her hair. “I never knew,” he said helplessly.

“What did you see in the eye?”

“The heart of the Cygnet.”

“What you have searched for.”

“Yes,” he whispered. Light flashed from her blade again; it bit at him and he jerked, feeling the sweat run down his face.

“I should kill you.”

“Likely.”

“Why do I recognize you?”

So he told story, his life hanging on his great-gran’s tale. Her green eyes narrowed at him through the tale; her face was hard and pale as marble. But it reached her. He felt the blade shift slightly against him. Something flicked into her eyes, memory, expression, something that was not death.

“My great-grandfather,” she said tautly. “He was a restless man, with odd, stray power. He lived in Withy Hold until heritage drew him here. He would have taken a Wayfolk girl in a cornfield.”

“How she remembered,” he said, “was she saw and took as well. It was what she came back to all her life. The place where time stops. Where green never fades. Where story begins. When I saw you in that house, I saw what she told: corn-leaf eyes and corn-silk hair. But that wasn’t all. It wasn’t even close to all, what I saw in you.”

“No.” The voices within her were all silent now, waiting, it seemed, for judgment from her of this dangerous, bastard power. She lifted the blade finally, held it an inch or two away from him, still tense, still watchful. “You found what you need here. What will you—”

“How can you ask?” he cried, seeing it again: the black swan flying into the mist of Nyx’s eyes. “I couldn’t lift a finger against her. When I told the tinker yes, it was stories I was thinking of: the heart kept inside a nut inside a tree, or locked in a box on one side of the world with the key in the other. I didn’t know it would be in someone living! And she—she wanted this thing I looked for. She said she wanted its power.”

Meguet was silent. She lowered the blade, let the tip fall to the floor, her eyes wide, troubled. “Nyx,” she said softly.

“You’d think a bird would have chosen better.”

“She wasn’t always so…” Her eyes searched around them: Nyx’s hands had fallen, the effigy had seeped back into its own time. The forces gathered against the Cygnet had pulled themselves clear into the moment. She said quickly, “Hide. Go back through time.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. You know I can’t. Cygnet is in danger.”

“Do you have a Guardian’s full power?”

“I’ll find out, likely. If not,” he added bleakly, “maybe I’ll stand a better chance at finding Tiel as a ghost. But who is it the Cygnet is in most danger from? Gold King’s heart or Nyx’s?”

He was unprepared for time roiling back over them like a fierce, moon-tossed tide. Nyx’s hands finished falling away from the prism. She turned, her face still wearing a private, startled expression at what she had seen within it. Then the Warlock stepped out of the shadows.

Her hands were moving before she even changed expression. A huge red ball formed around him; he snarled soundlessly, testing it with his hands. The Gold King drew a sword that was a blinding stroke of light, and dragged his chain toward the Cygnet’s eye. Meguet, stunned by his flat, metallic sun-face, the lines wrought into it of fury and cruelty, recognized the tinker only by the gold he wore, and the tricks he played with light. She moved into his path, her back to the prism, holding the broadsword between them with both hands. She heard him laugh. The Warlock exploded out of his glass prison, throwing splinters of fire everywhere. The Blind Lady, gathering them out of the air, began to weave a net of flame.

The Gold King’s sword wheeled, moving so fast it left its reflection across an arc of air. It caught one of the Cygnet wings along the grip of Meguet’s sword and wrenched it from her hands. It flew across the room toward the Dancer. As she looked at it, the swans on the hilt and pommel, etched along the blade, startled away from it, flocked together as they flew, tiny birds turning desperately along the curved walls.

Meguet pulled the Gold King’s relentless path along a fine, slow, narrow line of time; he walked his halting pace toward the prism, but the distance he crossed was minute. The Blind Lady lifted a hand toward them, reshaped the Gold King’s path, and he pulled himself close to Meguet. He was molten, she saw; blisters of gold appeared and disappeared along his armor. Nyx swung toward them. Her face seemed as detached as ever, concentrating, as she juggled spells, but her eyes were wide, and there was a desperate edginess to her movements. She flung out a hand, frowning. The Gold King’s chain lifted ponderously, began to wrap itself around him.

He only laughed again, the dark, jangled, echoing laughter that Meguet had heard before. He was so close to her, she could feel the heat within him. She would not back; Corleu, behind her, gripped her finally, pulled her a step or two closer to the Cygnet’s eye. The Warlock sent the small birds scattering out of the air, dead at Nyx’s feet.

She stared down at them, a moment that cost her. The Blind Lady flung her web. It fell over Nyx, a weave of fire and light that tangled around her. She cried out suddenly. Meguet, her heart pounding at the sound, left the Cygnet’s eye to Corleu and moved to her, so quickly that the Gold King, swinging his chain at her, tripped only empty air.

“Wayfolk,” the Gold King said, facing him. He put out a burning hand; Corleu flinched back from it. His shadow, flung forward by the light within the prism, fell over the Gold King. For an instant he was tinker again, with shaggy night-black hair and smiling golden eyes. “You found what I wanted. Why fight me? I’ll return what’s yours.”

“I didn’t promise you someone living!”

The tinker shrugged. “Who will miss her? She’s swamp-mired. Her heart is full of little bones. Who would want her ruling Ro Holding?”

“The Cygnet—”

“A bird, like the ones she pulled apart?”

“It’s more than bird,” he said desperately, but the tinker smiled his mocking smile and shifted out of Corleu’s shadow. Armed again, masked in light, he swung his hand at Corleu, his upturned face glowing pale in the light from the prism. The spiked armor hit Corleu like stone. Thrown out of the Gold King’s path, he hit the wall and clung, blinking, trying to stay on his feet while the wall moved against him. The floor bucked suddenly; he fell to his knees.

Wayfolk, he heard suddenly, deep in him: the frail, whispering winds of voices. Watch his shadow.

It lay under his hands, the Gold King’s shadow, stretching away from him. Its hands reached toward the prism’s reflection, a complex dance of light thrown along the wall. The shadow of a swan flew into the fractured light. Shadow-hands closed around it. The bird eluded, flew again into the light. Again the hands grasped. The bird flew.

The rhythm of it transfixed Corleu; the action seemed of a world apart, a different time—small, silent movements he could draw out, he felt, if he wanted. In his mind, he changed one color trembling on the wall. The Cygnet flew, the hands grasped. He changed another color, made it a different reflection, in a different time. The hands grasped, closed, empty; the bird flew. He change a color. A different shadow, a different time, a different world. The hands closed. The bird flew.

How many worlds? he wondered, fascinated. How many times?

Then a blood fox’s shadow leaped across the wall. Corleu heard its bark. His mind, a sparkling prism, moved too slowly to shift into the Warlock’s time. Something struck him. He slid helplessly on a tide of splintered light. The wave broke, slammed him against the wall, then let him fall onto his back, half-stunned, blind, heaving for breath. He smelled blood fox, felt a warm, snarling weight on his chest. And then he felt its sharp claw over his heart.

Meguet saw him fall. The Warlock was invisible, but its blood-fox shadow hunched over Corleu, clear on the wall. Her mind was tangled in the Blind Lady’s net, tracing its threads of fire and time one by one, breaking them. As fast as she broke, the Blind Lady wove. Nyx and the Dancer were fighting over Moro Ro’s sword. Birds flew, fell dead; the blade formed, turned to peacock feather; the blade formed again, made of fire, streaked the air toward Meguet. Flame crumpled against something invisible, blew out, re-formed. It was an idle but desperate game, to keep Nyx from freeing herself from the net. The time in its threads was slowing her movements, measuring them to its flow. Soon, Meguet knew, the sword would form, slip beyond her, strike.

She glimpsed the Dancer’s chaos then: panic, nightmare. I cannot hold them, she thought, almost in wonder, for failure was unthinkable. She saw Corleu move under the blood fox, like a drowned man touched curiously by fingers of tide. Then he lay still again. The blood fox lifted its muzzle, barked.

I need help! she cried down the centuries, then saw the Gold King’s hands close within the prism.

No bird flew.

Her desperate unweaving faltered; unravelled lines of time snarled in her mind. She heard Nyx cry, “Meguet!” The great, flaming blade flew at her again. Nyx’s hand, rising to stop it, was a scant moment late. It bore onward. Meguet, her attention snared between Nyx trapped in time, and the small bird trapped in the Gold King’s hands, hesitated, torn. Nyx turned to follow the sword’s path, tightening the net around her. She swayed, her face glistening, white with exhaustion, as if time were wearing at her. “Meguet!” Her voice was husky with weariness and horror. “Use your power! Save yourself!”

But she had been given no time for herself: Time was divided between the Cygnet and its heart. She could only pick apart one final thread in the web of time around Nyx, and then the great sword severed the future in front of her eyes. She did not see it swerve; it impaled her breath as it flew past her, or through her, left a deadly edge of silver in her vision. She closed her eyes, shaken by her own heartbeat, and felt time knit itself again as she found her breath. Opening her eyes, she saw Corleu lift his head finally, groggy, bewildered. Silver caught his eye. He turned his head, saw it come.

“No!” Nyx snapped. A thread in the fiery net snapped in response. She dredged a word from somewhere deep in her; Meguet did not recognize her voice. Another thread snapped. She threw both hands upward, shaped the word out of shadows, it seemed, and white fire torn across the air out of the shining prism. The starry fire fell over Nyx, dissolving the net of time. She reached up again, drew at air with her entire body. Air sculpted her, lifted her. Meguet saw her eyes as she flew past, pale lavender, strange in a swan’s face.

Then the white wings shifted time as they fell; in a fractured movement, the swan was across the room, ahead of the flaming sword, swerving in the air to push it out of its deadly path. But the sword, searing the air in front of Corleu’s eyes, was faster. He caught a confused image of silver fire, white feathers; he heard Meguet’s voice, crying out with his own.

The sword formed its own wings. A swan’s neck extended along the blade. It came so close that for an instant Corleu saw a night-black eye, with a pearl of light in it from the prism’s light. Then it pulled itself up, climbed the air, its black wings thundering past his face. He gasped. The swans wheeled together in the small chamber, one black, one white, turning and turning endless circles that gradually lost their frantic speed, slowed to an endless, timeless spiral, as if they had all the night and all the stars to fly through.

Then there was only one swan, and its black shadow; one angled down to meet the other. The white swan touched its shadow; Nyx reappeared, standing beside Corleu.

There was not a sound in the chamber; Gold King and Blind Lady might have been among the statues Chrysom had made. Meguet stood as still, feeling something build in the silence, like another wild, powerful, mysterious word. Nyx felt it, too. She looked around her, hands poised to work, her shadow falling protectively over Corleu. But no one moved; faces only stared back at her, wordless, motionless, masked.

She began to tremble suddenly, gazing back, incredulously, at what she had been fighting. “What are you?” she breathed. “What is it you are looking for?” She looked at Corleu when they did not answer. The Blood Fox, its human shadow lying beneath Nyx’s feet, moved its paw from his chest. It sat back on its haunches, grinning its fox grin as Corleu pulled himself up. Even he could not stop staring at her.

“You saved my life,” he said in wonder. “You did all that, became swan, just to save a muckerheaded Wayfolk man who brought all this on you—”

“But what—” Her voice broke away from her, echoed off the high stones. “Corleu, what have you been searching for?”

“The heart of the—” He paused. His eyes widened on her face, as all the threads of the tale they had made among them wove into place. She wavered under his sudden, burning tears. He whispered, “Your heart.”

It was such a rare and startling sight, Nyx weeping, that Meguet felt her own throat tighten. Wordless, spellbound, she watched the Gold King loose what he held in his hands: A shaft of sunlight struck the prism. Color danced along the walls. Her eyes widened; she put her hands suddenly to her mouth.

“Just story, you see,” he said to her, and was tinker again. “Just a piece of sky.” He reached up, snapped the gold chain around his neck. The sound it made as it hit the floor boomed ponderously against the walls, then faded into the rustling wings of small birds. The Blind Lady was busy reweaving her net, gathering its fiery, broken threads into a patch over a hole in one of her skirts. She whispered as she worked, whispered story, Corleu knew, all the story in the world.

“But you always fight the Cygnet,” he said dazedly, as the tinker reached down, helped him to his feet. “In all the tales.”

“Look again,” the tinker said, “and it’s Cygnet fighting us: whatever sun touches, whatever dreams, whatever works magic, whatever flies… When the heart casts a shadow instead of dancing light, there story begins.”

The Blind Lady finished her weaving. She took the ring off her finger, tossed it in the air. The Ring of Time opened in the heart of the maze, a blinding silver that enclosed the night. She stepped back. The Fire Bear lumbered through it, sending a soundless roar of its black fire across the stars. The Blood Fox leaped through, dragging its tantalizing shadow. The shadow flung something behind it before night swallowed it. A small red prism cracked in two on the stone floor, a drop of darker red glistening within it.

The Blind Lady’s sightless face turned toward Meguet before she left. “You have some talent,” she commented, “with my threads.” A white peacock feather drifted to the floor as she vanished.

The tinker stepped toward the Ring. “Wait!” Corleu cried, and he turned, his eyes luminous, smiling his thin, equivocal smile.

“Don’t fret, Wayfolk. I always pay my debts.” He put his hand over his heart, bowed his head to them both. “Thanks,” he said, and added to Meguet, “I’ll do a bit of tinkering for you, when I go.”

He walked through the Ring, into a darkness squared by stars, one gold star rising above it. The Ring dwindled; stone walls patched the night. The Ring fell to the floor, a tiny circle, then a stroke of silver, then wings and circling swans on a flawless, sun-forged blade.

Corleu picked it up, held it out to Meguet. She met his stunned and weary gaze; she took the sword in one hand, and slipped her other arm around his shoulders. Their pale heads touched. Together they watched Nyx wipe her face on a threadbare velvet sleeve. She turned away from them without speaking, moved into some private vision under the Cygnet’s eye.

The Holder and her children stood waiting beside Rush in. the black tower. It was morning, Meguet saw, startled, as she pushed aside the Cygnet banner. The rich spring light tumbled down from the high, narrow windows, lay in slabs across the stones. They all looked worn, fretted, sleepless. Even Calyx’s hair had tumbled down.

Nyx went to the Holder. She said huskily, her head bowed, “In my house in the swamp, there was a room full of mirrors. I looked into them. I never saw what they reflected. Their reflections seemed to have brought me here, forced me to look again.”

The Holder touched her hair, drew it back from her face. “I don’t understand,” she said wearily. “But you are safe and Meguet is safe, and that is all I need to know now.”

“The House is safe.” She added, “The Wayfolk man fought for the Cygnet.”

The Holder looked at Corleu. His face burned; he felt Wayfolk to his bones under that dark, powerful gaze. Then she moved it to Meguet and he could breathe again.

“How?” she demanded.

“It seems,” Meguet said, “my great-grandfather met his great-gran. In a cornfield.”

The Holder made a blackbird’s noise. “It’s unprecedented.”

“His hair is like yours, Meguet,” Calyx exclaimed. “Are we all related, then?”

Corleu stared at her delicate face, which surely must bruise under a whisper. Iris said tiredly, “Work it out later, Calyx. What I want to know is how, when Meguet and Nyx went into the maze, Meguet and Nyx and a Wayfolk man came out of it.”

“What I want to know,” Calyx said, “is will you take the spell off Rush, now?” She patted his arm soothingly as he stood there, silent and pale, looking, to Corleu’s startled eye, remarkably like the Warlock’s distant descendant. “I can understand why you didn’t want him wandering around in the maze, setting things on fire at random, but he’s harmless now.”

A touch of color rose in Nyx’s face. “I forgot about Rush.” Her eyes flicked, troubled, to the Holder; the Holder’s eyes narrowed.

“Now what have you done?”

“I’m not sure…” She looked at Calyx, standing close to Rush, then hid her eyes behind her hand. “I’m very tired,” she sighed. “Calyx, just talk to him. I’m afraid he’ll shout at me.”

“Rush,” Calyx said. She stood in front of him, her hands on his arms, her pale, weary, smiling face coaxing his bemused, distant gaze. “Rush, wake up. It’s morning and the house is still standing. Nyx is here.”

He was looking at her suddenly, blinking, as if she had just wakened him out of a dream of nine years. “Calyx?” he said, and touched her face. Meguet heard Nyx’s faint sigh of relief, met her eyes a moment.

“Nyx is here,” Calyx said again, her smile deepening; he lifted his face, jerking himself farther out of dreams.

“Nyx,” he said. A long look passed between them. He drew breath. “You never wanted me to follow you,” he said ruefully. “But last night you went too far. Farther then I could ever go.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I hope you will forgive me. What happened—whatever happened down in the maze was my doing also. My fault. You were right: I wandered too far. Corleu and Meguet brought me back. That is how I would tell the story,” she said to Corleu, “if I were telling.”

“If I were telling,” he said, “I would say you brought yourself back.”

“What I would say,” Iris said, “is that someone should tell us what happened all night down there. Meguet?”

She shook her head quickly. “No, not me,” she said, remembering the Gold King’s molten face swinging toward her, masked and furious, and the tinker in the woods, smiling as he picked out the lizard’s eye, and the sword flying at her, and then the swan… “I only saw pieces of it.”

“Corleu, then.”

“No,” he said with sudden intensity. “I’ll never tell. It’s not mine, not for me. I only want to find what I lost, which is,” he added, “near enough like what was almost lost in the maze.”

They were silent; the blood fox eyes moved to Nyx. “Then you,” Rush said, “must tell.”

She met his eyes. “It’s a very long story, Rush. And not yet over. I still have things to learn.”

“Nyx,” the Holder breathed, “not again!”

Nyx put a hand on her arm. “I have things to learn in this house,” she said gently. “You must teach me.”

Horns sounded outside the gate, a startling fanfare that made the pigeons whirr outside the windows. The Holder closed her eyes, touched her wild hair.

“Not Hunter Hold. Not now.”

“Now,” Calyx sighed.

“Meguet—” The Holder paused, eyeing Meguet’s stained uniform, her fraying braid, and flung up her hands. “At least you’re dressed and armed. Go to the gate and wait for us. Corleu, don’t leave this house. I want to talk to you. Nyx, did you come all the way from the swamp without shoes?”

A stable girl led her horse out as Meguet ran across the yard. It was saddled and caparisoned; the Gatekeeper had seen the Council coming. She pulled herself up wearily, rode to the gate. The impatient, golden flurry sounded again. The Gatekeeper did not come down yet. But he looked down, and his impassive expression strained badly at the sight of her.

The Holder joined Meguet finally, after the horns had sounded a third time. Her children and Rush Yarr sat mounted behind her, in such astonishingly tidy attire that Meguet suspected a sorceress’s hand in it. She looked for Corleu, saw him standing with some cottagers near the smithy. Too far, she judged, to slip through the gate unnoticed, in the tangle of entry.

The Holder nodded. Meguet rode to one side of the gate, stood guard, according to ancient ritual, Moro Ro’s sword outstretched before the gate. The Gatekeeper opened the gate.

The Gold King stood outside: the Hold Sign of Hunter Hold, the crowned King in his dark house on a field of dark blue, newly sewn, for the silver thread depicting the stars glittered like water in the sun. Cedar Kell’s two young children held it, one on each side, their faces immobile with terror at the sight of the Holder before them. The Holder began the ritual that in Moro Ro’s time had cost blood for every word.

“Who speaks for Hunter Hold?”

Cedar Kell stepped in front of the banner, looking tired, dusty from travelling, but cheerful.

“Kell speaks for Hunter Hold,” she said in her booming voice, that must have laid threats on her children, for not a smile or a tear touched their faces.

“Under what sign?”

“The sign of the Gold King.”

“Under what stars?”

“The yellow star its lintel, the yellow star its roof, the four stars of red and pale its walls, the blue star marking its door latch. Under this sign the Gold King holds Hunter Hold.”

“Does the Gold King recognize the Cygnet?”

“The Gold King recognizes the Cygnet.”

“Under the sign of the Cygnet, the Gold King holds Hunter Hold. For the end of time, the Cygnet holds the Gold King under its eye, beneath its wing, within its heart. None shall break this bond.”

“The Gold King holds Hunter Hold, the Cygnet holds the Gold King. Under its eye, beneath its wing, within its heart. So bound are they, so bound are we. Truth in my words, peace in my heart, Lauro Ro.”

“And peace in mine,” the Holder said, and smiled. “Welcome to my house, Cedar Kell.”

Meguet lifted the broadsword, turned her horse away to let what amounted to a small travelling village through the gate. She remained mounted, sword sheathed, until the Council members, families, kin, retinue had entered. When the baggage and supply carts started rumbling in, she dismounted, gave her horse to the stablers. She found Corleu again, looking tense and frayed in the crush.

He seemed relieved when he saw her. “I must go,” he said. “Can you tell the Holder that? I’ll come back, but there’s only one thing in the world I want to do now—”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “I know. But you can’t leave. Not yet. You are half-Guardian—”

“And all Wayfolk at this moment,” he said, his face turned to the open gate. “I’ve been in walls too long.”

“Don’t be afraid. You have kin within these walls.”

He looked at her, silent. Then he sighed, his body loosening finally under her touch. “Seems strange. Last night you nearly killed me. Now, you’re the only reason I might stay.”

“You must do better than might. Be patient. You have a formidable inheritance. You’ll never be able to stray far from this house. The heart that brought you here will bind you here. Wait for the Holder.” His eyes moved to the black tower. She saw him draw breath and hold it. “Wait,” she said again. “The Holder will send for you soon.”

“How much,” he asked abruptly, “do I tell her?”

“You tell her everything. But only her. No one else in this world.”

He nodded, his eyes still on the tower, with the Cygnet flying over it, by day and night. He sighed again, sagged against the smithy wall.

She left him there, to watch him from the Gatekeeper’s turret. She felt, climbing the stairs, that there was no end to them. Then she was at the top, sitting thoughtlessly, watching the sea, and the Gatekeeper help ease a wagon through the gate. The sunlight touched her eyes gently, closed them.

She was asleep when the Gatekeeper came up finally. He smoothed her hair from her face, in small, gentle touches; she woke dreaming of wings. Then she saw the burning sword fly at her again and she started. Sword turned to swan, swan to Gatekeeper’s taut, tired face.

She caught her breath at the vision. Then she leaned forward, quickly, into the warm, familiar dark of his embrace. She slid one hand around his neck, where she could feel the blood beat. “It’s over,” she said finally. “The House is safe. They’ve all gone.”

“Have they? Through which gate?”

“The gate they came through.”

“There is only one gate to this house.”

She nodded against him, her eyes closed. “And you are the only Gatekeeper.”

He was silent; she felt him begin to speak, hesitate. She lifted her head; he held her face between his hands, looked into her eyes. He said at last, very softly, “Why is there a swan in your eyes?”

“There always is,” she answered. “Have you never noticed? A great wild black swan, who sometimes watches me sleep… The only swan that never leaves this house, summer or winter.” She smiled a little, at his stillness. “It’s only story.”

His head dropped; his lips touched hers, feather-light. She closed her eyes and heard, from some distant corner of the yard, children’s voices, chanting to some game:

In a wooden ring,

Find a stone circle,

In the stone ring

Find a silver circle…

She felt Hew move; sun spilled over her face. She saw the back of his head as he leaned out of the turret, looking over the wall.

“What is it?”

“We have a guest, it seems.”

“Who now? The whole world just came in.”

“Wayfolk by the look of her.”

She caught breath, leaned across him to look down as he spoke to the visitor, as courteously as he would have spoken to a lord’s daughter. The girl was slight, with long, straight, heavy black hair, and wide-set dark eyes. Wayfolk to the bone, yet standing alone, and prepared to cross a threshold.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for someone,” she said, her voice, gentle and timid, barely carrying above the tide’s voice. “We came down from Withy Hold. A Wayfolk man named Corleu. We passed a tinker said he might be here.”

The Gatekeeper got up to open the gate. Meguet, trembling, closed her eyes again, felt the sun lay its hand across her face, catch her sudden tears.

Corleu, slumped against the wall, his eyes on the dark tower, turned his head at the sound of the opening gate. His heart saw before the light relinquished the dark, slender figure to his eyes: He felt the green timeless secret place bloom in him again, with all its scents and still pools and sweet, rustling shadows.

Tiel crossed the threshold as he began to run. They met within walls, in a place with no walls.