ELEVEN

The face and form of Prince Ronan of Serre returned to his father’s summer palace very early in the morning, just as the moon slipped beyond the western mountains into Dacia. Gyre, who had shaped Ronan’s gaunt, starved, magic-ridden body so completely he carried even the prince’s hunger, had walked on foot up the granite face of the cliff. He had let his powers drain down into the deepest, most secret parts of his mind. He had buried his name where even Ferus’s blind eye, with its intimations of omniscience, would never see it. The misused body, with one bare, blistered foot, was exhausted by the climb up the hard, winding road. He did not notice the guards on the wall staring down at the bedraggled, limping figure with its powerful breadth of shoulder and hair touched to fire by a last finger of moonlight. They raised a shout. The man sank down at the foot of the closed gates and went to sleep.

Later, he woke to find a scarred, snarling, pit-eyed creature looming over him. The wizard started, then remembered the savage face of the King of Serre. The single eye, black and fulminating like a thunderhead about to kindle lightning, studied the prince’s face and grew less ominous.

“It’s about time,” he said roughly. He clamped a thumb and forefinger along the prince’s jaws, turned his head this way and that. “You look sane enough. The queen said you had been bewitched by Brume. Are you free of her? Or is this another of her tricks?”

He loosed the prince, who shook his head slightly and pushed himself up. As though the room spun around him, he dropped his face in his hands. “I am free,” he whispered. “I was—I have been running mad in the forest. It seems like a dream now.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Only hungry.” He let his hands fall, took a cautious glance at the unfamiliar room. There were no windows in it, just stone walls hung with bright ribbons of tapestry. It must be deep within the palace; he would have to open a wizard’s ear to hear the sound of water.

“Good.” The king’s huge hand closed on his neck, one thumb pushing against his throat as if feeling for a vein, or a thread of breath. The single eye came so close to the prince’s that it divided into two, both charred, unblinking. “No more running. You will wed by day’s end or I’ll toss you back to Brume myself and you can take a bath in her cauldron. Which is it?”

He said as clearly as he could around the probing thumb, “I will wed.”

“Well, we can thank the witch for that much,” the king said dourly, and loosed him. He opened the chamber door, said to the hovering servants, “Get him ready for his wedding.”

He was bathed, shorn, fed, dressed without needing to utter a word, let alone assemble an entire sentence that might have been spoken by the prince. He was weakened, it was understood. He had barely escaped death in the shape of the witch, and madness in the beguiling shape of the firebird. That he had returned at all was a tribute to his strength and an indomitable will to live despite himself. He had come back to wed; he would give his father heirs for Serre. If he spoke strangely now, or produced an opinion not formerly held, or had trouble remembering things he had known all his life, that could be blamed on the vagaries of magic. No one, he suspected, would care what he said that day as long as he said yes.

At last, resplendent in black silk and cloth of gold, a ceremonial sword at his side that looked as ancient as a tree in the forests below and felt about as heavy, he was taken to meet the woman he would marry.

She rose as he entered her chamber. Her attendants clustered around her in pale silks and satins; clouds, his eye told him, in the wake of the rising sun. The tall, slender young woman in a gold gown webbed with pearls startled him. Surely that could not be Sidonie, who had nearly shot him in his raven’s shape, who had tossed a frog out of her pavilion one morning as handily as any stable-boy. Something stirred deep within the hidden wizard. He had, Gyre realized suddenly, acquired a heart. It confused him; he had never had one before. Her courage moved him; so did her grave eyes, which, he suddenly saw, were the color of the hour he loved best, when the last haunting moments of day shifted toward the deepest purples of twilight. They changed now, as she gazed at him, darkened into that secret promise of night. He had touched her heart, he thought with wonder. So he felt, in that magic, timeless moment before he remembered whose face he wore.

The realization made him awkward; he fell short by half a step, which the princess attributed to the exhaustion from his misadventures.

She said quickly, “Please, my lord Ronan, sit.” She took his hand, to his astonishment, and guided him to a chair. Then she glanced at her attendants, the guards at the open door. She asked the prince softly, “May we be alone?”

He tried to think; a guard answered for him. “My lady, we dare not let him out of our sight. But if you leave the door open, we can watch him from the hall. He must not go near the windows.”

She nodded, gesturing to her attendants. When the watching eyes were all beyond the threshold, and the prince as far from views of water and trees as possible, she sat down beside him. He watched her fingers tighten, twist slightly before she spoke. The callouses were softening, he saw. She had given away her bow, he remembered; caged, she could have only shot at reflections in the water.

“My lord,” she said quietly, “do you remember me?”

“I do.” Even his voice was not his own, the wizard thought ruefully; it was deeper, husky, tentative. “You told me your name when we met in the forest.”

“I know that you have—that you are still in mourning. I am sorry.” She hesitated, loosed a breath, and held his eyes. “I only want to say that you don’t have to run from me. I won’t ask you for things you cannot give. I only hope that we can become friends. If such a thing is possible in this place.”

The wizard hesitated. It does not matter, he told himself, which of us she loves as long as she marries me. A name, a kingdom, the possibility of an heir to his powers and the vast, astonishing powers of Serre, would be his before nightfall, if the wizard himself only relinquished the possibility of love. The true prince, whom he had left without a voice in the deadly house of the witch, would likely be safe enough for a day or two. If he chose, Gyre could rescue him after the wedding, set him free to wear his life to the bone in pursuit of the firebird. He would die or go mad before he found his way beyond the magic and back into the world. Gyre could wear his face forever. If he chose.

At that moment, as he watched the familiar face of the princess with its unfamiliar expressions, as he heard the shift and catch of threads of lace at her uneven breath, forever seemed just long enough.

He heard himself whisper, “You must give me time.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Oh, yes.”

“I remember that—you were kind to me in the forest.”

A line quivered above her brows. “I threatened to shoot you.”

“You gave me your bow.”

“I thought you were an ogre.”

“And now?”

She hesitated. Her voice grew very soft. “I was as terrified of you as of any ogre before I met you. I am still a little afraid. You are, after all, the ogre’s son. But if we can continue to be kind to one another, maybe I will learn to see past your father’s face, and you will see past—your past.”

He nodded, wordless again, and reached out to touch a strand of tiny pearls circling the sleeve on the underside of her wrist. He heard her breath gather and stop. They both watched his fingers slide from pearl to glistening pearl. “How beautiful you have suddenly grown,” he said in wonder, and raised his head confusedly as the breath came too swiftly out of her. “I mean, since I saw you in the forest.”

“But you never saw me there,” she said, giving him the beginnings of a smile. “You could only see the firebird.”

“My lord,” someone said stiffly from beyond the threshold. “The king.”

The princess’s face emptied itself of expression and much of its color. Sighing noiselessly, the wizard braced himself for an explosion because the prince had left his guards in the hall to enter a room singing with water and light. But the single eye seemed placated by what it saw in the prince’s face.

Ferus said brusquely, “The queen asked to speak to you alone in her chamber. The princess will come with me.” He held out an arm to her on his blind side, riveting her with his puckered, peering eye-socket. “Bring your mother to join us in the hall. Tell her to be brief. We have waited long enough for this moment.”

He bowed his head, trying to remember where in the palace he might find the queen. But the guards did not let him wonder beyond a step through the door; they gathered around him, led him to a small chamber overlooking the crux of separating waters.

The chamber was so full of tapestries, stories covering every stone, in fire and bone and gold, that the wizard felt he had stepped into one of the queen’s tales. There was even an unfinished tale at her loom: something with three burly, crowned figures galloping after three bright foxes, who were also crowned. The queen, wearing delicate shades of lavender and grey, said the prince’s name as he entered, and took his face between her hands. Startled, the wizard stood very still while she searched his eyes.

Her hands slid finally to his shoulders, tightened. “She freed you, then. You have truly returned.”

“Yes.”

“How? Brume never gives anything freely.”

He hesitated, then decided to tell the tale he knew. He let his eyes slip away from hers, and said bitterly, “I paid her price.”

“What was it?” she breathed.

“The firebird.” The prince’s voice shook slightly. “She wanted it in a cage to sing at her hearth while she boiled her bones.”

“The firebird.” She stared at him, astonished. “You caught it for her?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“No, it can’t have been—But how could you possibly—”

“I had no choice,” he answered wearily. “There was no other way home.”

She was silent, holding him lightly now, a fine line between her brows. “But what made you want to come back that badly?”

“I was so tired… I thought—I thought anything must be better than running like a wild thing through the forests after a dream. So I did what the witch demanded. I don’t like to think about it.”

“No.” Her eyes seemed still puzzled, but she brushed his cheek with her fingers. “The firebird will not stay with her any longer than it chooses. Some day, when you can, tell me everything.”

He nodded, catching her hand in his. “I will. We must go. The king is waiting for us.”

“In a moment.” She hesitated, her fingers tight around his, her pale eyes studying him again, trying to see into his heart. “I wanted to tell you that the princess seems to have a kind and loving disposition. How long she can keep it in this crazed household, I do not know. But don’t—don’t be afraid—”

“I’ve spoken with her,” he said as indifferently as possible. “There’s nothing to fear. I’ll do all that my father wishes. The sooner the better, for all our sakes.”

She loosed a breath. “I never imagined that the witch would lay your ghosts for you. But then Brume has always been unpredictable.”

He was silent, trying to imagine Ronan’s ghosts. “No one,” he said evenly, “will ever lay them. They will stay in my heart until I die.”

“I know.”

“After my wedding, before the sun sets, I will lay flowers on their graves. Candles will burn on them all night long in their memory.”

He felt her hands slacken, then tighten again quickly. She bowed her head; he could not see her eyes. Her voice shook a little when she spoke.

“We must go. The king will be impatient.”

“Will you come with me,” he asked, wanting to see her eyes. “To light the candles?”

She raised her head; he saw the sheen of grief across them again, the stark grey of winter. She could not speak, but she nodded quickly, and took his arm, clinging to him as he opened the door.

In the great hall overlooking half of Serre, the courtiers had gathered; the princess waited with her attendants. The queen drew the prince to his place in the light. Then she joined the king among his guards. She said something; frowning, Ferus bent his head to listen. The prince waited alone, framed by the sky and the brilliant flare of sun beyond the broad wall of casements. His eyes moved to the golden figure across the hall. Who would marry them? he wondered. Some hermit steeped in lore, so old his body had begun to twist like the roots of trees he lived among? Some good witch, who knew the name of every moss and mushroom in the forests?

No one joined him, he realized, surprised, a moment before the queen spoke again. Then he heard her voice, high and piercing, furious enough, he thought, to shatter glass.

“My son did not bury them!” she cried. “He burned them, and sent their ashes down the falls! That’s why we fear for him near water. You are some spell of Brume’s—you are not my son!”

And then the fire came at him, the crude sorcery of the king’s, which would never have touched him except that the queen’s voice, so unexpectedly powerful in its anguish, held him stunned a moment too long. The wall of glass exploded around him. Every broken shard seemed to call his name as it fell, a rain of glass and Gyre. Stunned again, moving far too slowly, he felt the impetus of fire sweep him through the shattered casements. Fire-blown over an airy expanse of nothing, he heard his name again, a distant and astonishing voice out of the past, it seemed, and calling someone he no longer knew.

Then he began to feel the fire. He changed shape and dropped away from it, translucent as air, mirroring sky. He angled toward the water and fell with it a long, long way before he changed shape again. He crept on four legs behind the thundering water, and hid within the hollow of stone behind the falls until the moon rose. Then the king and the guards searching for the broken pieces of the witch’s spell decided that it must have been a powerless thing of twigs and earth, and wended their way back up the cliff.