THREE

The wizard Gyre was sitting in a tavern in the back streets of the ancient city Thuse beside the Yellow Sea negotiating a price for his services when he received the summons from Unciel. The tavern was noisy, flea-bitten, not a suitable place in which to meet a messenger from Prince Frewan. But the messenger was in disguise. They always were, Gyre knew, and they chose such places in order to disguise the message. Which was always the same, Gyre knew, in those lands along that part of the sea. A loose scattering of constantly bickering princedoms lined the coast; the princes were always in need of this or that, something made or done in secret, about which Gyre must pledge not to breathe a word.

Patiently, he ran through the list of things he would not do for anyone, for any amount of gold, as much as he could have used it. He was a dark-haired, sinewy young man, with calm eyes that hid an edge of restlessness as he spoke. Invisible weapons, this prince would want, or the walls around his palace made impregnable before he goaded a neighbor into attack. A secret tunnel built before dawn; a spy in the shape of a falcon to listen to conspiracies plotted on horseback in the middle of a meadow where no one could possibly hear. The wizard was more than familiar with such requests.

Gyre was simply dressed; nothing about him proclaimed any particular powers. He had been born in those noisome streets to an itinerant tinker from across the sea, who performed magic tricks for his children when he was drunk. The child Gyre, trying to imitate the tricks, realized quickly that they were not. The sodden tinker had a genuine spark of power within him, and Gyre found himself wanting it, with passion and beyond reason. When his father ran out of things to teach him, he looked elsewhere. He nosed magic like a dog in those poor, crowded, colorful streets, where strangers constantly wandered in from the sea. One day he followed a stranger out of the city, beyond the sea, to a place where others like him gathered to be taught the astonishing magic in the color orange, in the shape of an orange, who peeled away the rind to discover the mysteries hidden within the wonder of the visible.

Leaving that place a penniless wizard, he had wandered hither and yon, finding work where he could, until his path led him back to Thuse, perhaps to wait for another stranger to give him direction. He was still hungry; he woke at nights, wanting and not knowing what he wanted. He only had to wait and recognize it when it came. He thought he had found it once before, when he had first met Unciel, in a distant land full of the memory of dragons. He had found, he thought, the dragon’s heart: the power, the fierce strength, the indomitable beauty of it. But it had disappeared, melted away in Thuse. He had been mistaken; it had been nothing alive.

So here he sat, preparing to perform a series of tricks for as little as the prince who hired him could get away with offering him. Still, this prince might lead him to others, wealthier and more powerful, who could challenge his skills, use him for something other than those interminable petty feuds. He was listening with his usual imperturbable expression, treating the request with all the gravity with which it was made, when the image of a folded sheet of parchment slipped among his thoughts. It unfolded, revealing a handful of brightly burning words.

I need you in Dacia. Unciel.

He was on his feet without thinking; so Unciel had helped him once, when he was in dire need.

“I’m sorry,” he told the surprised and aggrieved messenger. “I must go.” The man made an inarticulate protest. “I promise,” Gyre assured him, “that your secret will be safe with me.”

Flying north from the sea in hawk-shape, he had only a map in his head to remind him where Dacia was. He had never been there. Rulers of Dacia were their own sorcerers. Rumors of their power kept the land untroubled; conquering armies tended to veer away from it. The rocky, wrinkled land beneath him flattened, after several days, into broad river valleys, placid and richly green. On a hunch, the hawk dropped straight as a plumb line to a valley floor, where a farmer guided a donkey dragging a harrow across dark, crumbling soil.

The farmer stopped to stare as the hawk landed on a furrow and the young man emerged from its shadow.

“Where am I?”

“In my beet field,” the farmer ventured, still amazed.

“I mean what country?”

“Oh. You’re in Dacia. East of Serre, north of Fyriol, west of—”

“Thank you,” Gyre said. He glanced around vaguely, as though the groves of trees and peaceful fields might conceal a city. He guessed at several things in that moment: that Unciel had sent as much as he could, that he was still weak from his strange ordeal, of which Gyre had heard even as far as Thuse, and that exactly where he was would be so obvious that he would not need to waste effort to send yet another word. Gyre waved a gad-fly away from his face and addressed the farmer again.

“Which way is the king’s city?”

The farmer loosed a rein and pointed. “That would be that way. Saillesgate, it’s called, after the first king. The one who brought magic into Dacia.”

Gyre nodded, remembering the name from his studies. The uneducated warrior Sailles had conquered the land, and then, curious and fiercely determined, had hired a wizard to teach him to read and write. Words sparked magic within the king as they had within the tinker in Thuse. The king’s children inherited his formidable gifts. Beyond that scrap, Gyre knew little of Dacia. It was small, wealthy, and rarely threatened. A good place for a drained, exhausted wizard to rest.

He reached Saillesgate one of several twilights later, in the shape of a ubiquitous pigeon. He changed shape somewhat wearily in a convenient shadow. Rather than send his name silently through the city and force Unciel to use his depleted powers to answer, Gyre questioned a few shopkeepers. The wizard was easily found, the third told him. He had not kept his presence hidden. But there was no use asking him for anything. Something terrible had befallen him; he had barely the strength to move his bones and breathe; he had nothing left to give…

Gyre found Unciel waiting for him beyond a door that said COME IN.

The wizard might have just opened his eyes after a nap, or he might have been awake and waiting for days. His eyes startled Gyre, who remembered them as the light, burning blue of a high mountain stream. A bleak, impenetrable mist had settled over the blue. His voice was a tendril of itself, frail and slow. There were no visible wounds, nothing unhealed, that Gyre could see. But the wizard who had once helped him so effortlessly seemed barely to exist; there was only this husk closed protectively around the embers of his powers, which he stubbornly refused to let die.

Gyre asked the obvious, suddenly aware in that quiet cottage of what might lie beyond the known. “What happened to you?”

“It’s dead,” Unciel answered, simply and implacably. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

They were alone, Gyre sensed, but for a startlingly observant raven and a cat dreaming somewhere within the cottage.

“So are you,” he breathed. “Nearly dead.”

Unciel did not answer, only gestured at a chair, and Gyre sat. He was silent, waiting for Unciel to speak, keeping his own thoughts as tranquil as the twilight garden, with its stakes and lattices rising like peculiar growths among the patches of seedlings. At least he tried for tranquility. Horror and curiosity bubbled beneath it, throwing up shapes, intimations of power that he could only guess at. Again and again, questions tried to form; against Unciel’s stubborn silence, they scattered into unfinished words, left question marks hanging in the air between them.

Unciel said slowly, forming each word as painstakingly as a spell, “I will tell you what I need. And then I will make supper.”

“Don’t—” Gyre began, but Unciel raised a palm.

“I like to cook. It is like making magic, and far easier for me these days.” He paused as though hearing another unspoken question; they both let it die unremarked. “The King of Dacia has pledged his youngest daughter, Sidonie, to the son of King Ferus of Serre. Serre being what it is, and as immense as it is, she will need a guardian and a guide. She must leave as soon as possible. It will take a few weeks of human travelling, perhaps most of the summer. The king will pay you well for guarding his daughter. Have you been to Serre?”

Gyre shook his head. “I have heard that its magic is primitive and it is full of trees.”

Lines deepened along the sides of Unciel’s mouth; it was, Gyre realized after a moment, the haunting memory of a smile. “All magic is primitive. It is the oldest language of the heart. Serre’s heart is ancient, wild, and very lively. I would go myself if I could. I cannot, so I thought of you. I think that such a journey will test and broaden your abilities, and add a dimension to your understanding of what it is you want most.” This time he took note of Gyre’s silent response; the seared, veiled eyes meeting Gyre’s seemed to look at him from very far away. “Which is what we all want, of course, for it is the nature of a wizard to want power.”

Gyre felt his answer before it became the word. “Yes.”

“The scribe I borrowed from the king’s scriptorium has gathered together my writings about Serre. Some, which are toothless, we will send to the king, to reassure him. The rest you should read. If you can get through my handwriting.” He separated himself from the chair slowly, bone by bone. “The cat is sleeping on them. Read a little before you decide.”

Gyre followed the flickering thread of cat-dreams, and found the scribe’s desk. He read for a long time, incredulous but intrigued, while in the kitchen knife debated with chopping block, and pot-lids commented. The magic of Serre seemed patched together out of children’s tales, Gyre decided. Its king was by all accounts a force greater than all its magic. He had forged an immense, formidable kingdom, and the princess Sidonie would one day become its queen. A young woman useful to know, and certainly in need of a wizard, to whom she might have cause, if Gyre kept her safe, to be grateful. The rest—witches, ogres, trolls—he consigned to a streak of eccentricity in Unciel, who seemed interested in anything, even cooking. Gyre had dealt with such small magics before, mostly witches’ spells, which frayed like spiderweb under a word of wizardry.

It seemed a simple matter, this journey across Serre with the princess. He owed Unciel far more than that. So he said, when the smells of hot bread and lamb stew drew him into the kitchen, “Of course I will go.”

“Good.”

Unciel ladled stew into bowls with mesmerizing slowness, the ladle shaking constantly. Gyre watched him, guessing that he would refuse help. Little enough he could do, now… Again the intimations of something powerful and terrible, beyond all Gyre’s imagination, swept through him. If he could have envisioned it, it might have forced itself into shape then and there between them in the wizard’s tidy kitchen. Unciel let drop a final mushroom from the lip of the ladle, and put it back into the pot. “Tomorrow,” he said, trying to pick up both bowls at once, “I will take you to meet the king and Sidonie.”

“Let me—” Gyre murmured hastily, taking the bowls from him. “I prefer not to eat off the floor.”

Again he glimpsed the forgotten ghost of a smile. Unciel found a couple of goblets in a cupboard, and a dusty crock of wine. He blew at the cobwebs on the label. “Pear? Or could it be pea?”

“No.”

“Then it must be pear.” He left it for Gyre to uncork, and carried a couple of spoons to the table. “I haven’t been here long; this place still has surprises for me. The widow who owns it told me that her son liked to experiment with different—”

“What happened to you?” Gyre demanded, standing with the wine in one hand, gazing at Unciel, while the dark pushed against the window behind him and tapped at it with urgent, invisible wings. Gyre felt his own bones willing to shape themselves into an answer, to reveal the deadly, perilous face of what must have been the opposite of Unciel. “What did this to you? And why did you fight it alone?”

For a moment, he saw Unciel’s face shift, its stark, rigid lines flow into the reflection of what he had fought. The vision was gone in an instant, but it took Gyre’s breath with it; he felt the hoarfrost form, cold and heavy, on his bones. Unciel took the crock as it began to slide, and set it with some effort on the table.

He said gently to Gyre, “It seemed a simple matter at first. I was mistaken.” He touched the young wizard’s shoulder, and Gyre could move again. He drew his hands over his face, caught a shuddering breath, feeling the ice still in his fingers. “It was very old,” he heard Unciel say. “And now it’s dead. Some day when I’m stronger, I will be able to speak of it. But not now. Not now. Let it leave us in peace for now.”

“You became what you fought.”

It was a moment before he realized he had spoken aloud. But it didn’t matter, he thought dazedly; Unciel would have heard the thought in his heartbeat, in his marrow. Unciel set bread on the table silently, a knife. Then he wandered into the middle of the floor, stood looking vaguely for something, and Gyre saw his eyes, stunned and bright with pain.

“I’m sorry,” Gyre whispered, shaken again, and reached out to grasp a trembling hand, guide the wizard out of his memories to the table. “I am sorry. I wish I had been there with you.”

“You were,” Unciel said, so quietly that Gyre made nothing of the words themselves, only of their echo, which he heard some hours later when a nightmare without a face loomed across his dreams and spoke his name.