CHAPTER 3

There was a smell of fish cooking. Startled, he opened his eyes. He was instantly sorry. Inside, the small house stretched endlessly; the dark around him shimmered with vague colors, forms that he almost recognized until he stared straight at them, and then they dissolved, washed away by some invisible, lightless tide. He made the mistake of looking down.

All the stars in the night sky hung beneath his feet, as if he had stepped through the Ring to stand outside of time. He closed his eyes again, felt his whole body cry out, though his voice was frozen and made no sound. He began to fall back into the black, shining waters of time. Stars flowed past him like the bubbles of his final breath.

He smelled grass. He opened his eyes, lifted his head groggily. Sunlight he had not seen in weeks struck his face, Through the misty gold he saw Tiel again. He stretched his hand to her, tears of relief filling his eyes that he had fallen through all the worlds there were to find himself with her again.

Darkness fell between them before he could touch her. The filigreed dome of night rose over him, with its vast humans and prowling animals. The Dark House hung above the Cygnet’s outstretched wing: the four stars marking its walls, one star its peaked roof, one star its lintel, the seventh the door latch that Corleu had opened. Within the dark house…

Within the dark house…

Within the dark house he opened his eyes and saw the shrunken, dusty floorboards. Beyond the door he had flung open, perfect lilies tumbled from the tree-bough, down toward the pool.

There was the smell of fish cooking.

Within the Dark House he opened his eyes and saw beyond the open door the black, black night and the huge, northernmost star of the Cygnet’s outstretched wing.

Someone was singing. It was a smallfolk rhyme, about a dark house falling, falling out of the sky, and how you must never enter it, for having entered, you will never leave… He lay listening, his skin prickling with horror, because the door was open, he could have touched the dusty sill with his hand, but he could not move; he had leaped beyond the world into a child’s song, into the story behind the song.

There was the smell of fish cooking.

He opened his eyes. He no longer saw the black walls, but he knew the Dark House rose all around him, beyond the mists, its four walls the night, its shining lintel the star that was the world’s lintel.

There was the smell of fish cooking.

He sat up so abruptly that stars flecked his vision; he blinked fire into shape, water, a face.

A shaggy-haired man cooked over a fire beside the pool; from his battered pan came the smell of fish. Corleu’s eyes flickered across the pool. The lilies cascaded endlessly; the petals he had shredded still circled slowly in the water. He could not see Tiel. He turned quickly, looking for the house, in a desperate hope that he had only leaped into a dream and knocked his head against truth so hard he saw stars… A tinker’s wagon stood where the house had been. The black horse that drew it was stone-still in harness, not even blinking; its hooves and mane were shaggy as the tinker’s hair. Corleu could not take his eyes off the wagon. It was a tiny, rolling house, shadow-dark, with a peaked yellow roof and a yellow lintel; black stairs ran up into the open door. Painted in weathered yellow on the door was an ancient Hold Sign: the Gold King, with his furious, sun-round face and fiery petals of hair, imprisoned by the seven stars that formed the Dark House.

Corleu dragged his eyes from it finally to the face beside the fire.

It was a lean, swarthy face, with astonishing eyes of such light hazel they looked yellow. They smiled a little at Corleu; for a moment the smile was unfathomable. Then, in a shift of light, it was simply friendly. The tinker stirred the fish in the pan, cocked a dark brow at Corleu.

“Fish?” He ticked his fork against the side of the pan as Corleu stared at him. “Have a bite. Fish improves the mind. They say.”

“Fish.” His voice barely sounded.

“They say. Though,” he added, “those swamp fish are ghostly things. Sweet, mind you, but pallid, as if they’ve been down in that pool for several hundred years. They might do for the brain, but they do nothing to improve the eye.”

Corleu said nothing. He felt as ancient and pallid as the fish in the pool, something washed out of time’s backwaters, without much brain to speak of, for he had been caught, it seemed, on a tinker’s hook. Or had he? He cast a glance at the tiny, wheeled house; the Gold King glared fiercely at him, dusty and peeling. He swallowed drily. The tinker was filling his patched plate. His clothes were patched as well, with motley at neck and knee and elbow. He wore gold in one ear; a thin gold chain around his neck disappeared into his shirt. Words tossed crazily in Corleu’s head. Tinker or King? King or tinker? He said finally, since the tinker had handed him a fish to deal with:

“Mist might do that to them.”

“Mist?”

“Make them pale. For lack of sun. There is no sun under these mists. Except that on your wagon.”

The tinker’s mouth went up a fraction. “Likely you’ve hit upon the problem.”

“Could cut these mists with a knife.”

“To be sure. But,” he added, raising the knife he cooked and ate with, “knife is not what’s needed here.”

“No?”

“No. Besides, you haven’t got one. I noticed, as you slept. Not a knife or horse nor pot to your name.”

“Not here. Wherever here is.”

“A damp, muggy, empty place it is. Pretty, though. Smells nice.”

“It wasn’t empty—” His hands had closed; he kept his voice calm with an effort. “It wasn’t empty. It had all my Wayfolk company in it.”

“Ah. Wayfolk, are you? You wandered off the road a bit.”

“Far off. So far off I don’t know anymore where I am.”

“You’re between earth and sky like the rest of us, walking from morning until the fall of night like all folk.” He worked a fishbone out of his mouth. “Going from here to there, in one door, out the other, one place to—”

“Door.” His voice shook as it seized the word. “In one door. What other door?”

The tinker crooked a brow. “It’s a saying. An expression, so to speak. Are you sure you won’t have a—”

“No. In one door, out the other, you said. A way in, a way out. That’s what you said.”

The yellow eyes, catching light, seemed to smile again. “You’re a quick one, taking words up as fast as they fall. But, glancing around, I don’t much see there’s an in or an out here, unless maybe to the world itself.”

“There’s one,” Corleu said. He was as tense as if he were poised to run for his life: A flower hitting the pool in the silence that followed his words would have sprung him piecemeal all over the ground.

The tinker glanced at the door, surprised. “So there is. But that’s only my wagon with the one door in and out.”

“It’s a door. It’s here.”

“You’re welcome to it. I’ll be here waiting,” he added, as Corleu got to his feet, “when you come back out.”

Corleu paused. The dark house stood, weathered and tantalizing, a dream within a dream. He had yet to enter it, he had already entered it. It rose all around him, invisibly. Beyond it, there was Tiel, inside… another dark house, with perhaps inside it another dark house…

And another… He was shivering in the warm air, as if the icy stare of the Cygnet’s eye had rimed his bones as he fell past. He slid his hands over his face, murmuring, uncertain that Tiel would be anywhere in any of those houses, no matter how many he entered. He dropped his hands. The door was still there, beyond the tinker, who was still picking at his fish. He walked toward it. The tinker smiled; creases ran down his brown, stubbled cheeks, imprisoning his smile.

“Where are you going, Master Corleu?”

He felt his heart pound at the sound of his name. He did not dare look back. “To undo what I just did.”

“Ah. Doing and undoing.” Something in the tinker’s voice caught Corleu mid-step, as if he had reached out long, clever fingers and gripped him. “You can’t do and undo through the same door.” Corleu turned slowly, the cold sweat gathering at his hairline. “You know that. Under that hair.”

Corleu was silent, staring at the tinker behind the flames, with the gold in his ear and the flecks of gold in his eyes. Smoke billowed at Corleu; he blinked away tears, trying to see clearly through the harsh mist. He felt words push out of him, the last thing he wanted to say, the only thing he had left to say.

“That house,” he whispered.

“My wagon?”

“Your dark house with the yellow lintel and the yellow roof.”

“It’s my house.”

“It’s the house of the Gold King.”

“It’s my house.”

His heart beat raggedly; the colors of leaf and lily were suddenly too vivid. “Then you are the Gold King.”

The tinker’s smile did not change. He spat out a fishbone and said, “The dark house is a child’s song. One of those songs Wayfolk brats are endlessly singing. If I were King would I live in such a tiny, dark, windowless house?”

“Not if you could find a door out.”

“The Gold King is a moldy old shepherd’s tale, one of those silly stories that get passed around the world like air, only if they were dreams and smoke they wouldn’t be keeping such as the Gold King alive, would they, listening to his spoken name? Yes or no, Master Corleu?”

“Yes.” Sweat, mingling with tears from the smoke, ran ilnwn his face. “No.”

“If I were the Gold King, if I just happened to be him, eating fish in your company, how would I free myself?” He chewed a bite, regarding Corleu, knife pointed at him to invite answer. “How would I, do you think?”

“I don’t—I don’t know—”

“Think.”

He licked dry lips. “You would likely find a door.”

“I have a door.”

“Then you would—you would—” He closed his eyes, finished in the dark. “You would likely find a moonbrained fool muckerheaded enough to enter your house, and get him to do what you can’t.”

“Ah. A muckerheaded fool who thinks, is it? Good, Corleu. And think this over: What, likely, would I ask you to do?”

If he closed his eyes tightly enough, to shut out every splinter of light, he could see Tiel again, under a tumble of green leaves and lilies, her hair unbraided, her bodice loosened over her soft, nut-brown breasts. If he closed his eyes still tighter, he could see her eyes smiling, he could see his smiling reflection in her eyes. If he shut out all light, maybe he could slip through the dark, back into memory. There he could linger forever as he had been, in some distant, former life, too stupid to do. There in that private green memory, he could bury himself instead of asking the question that was forcing itself like breath out of his mouth.

He opened his eyes; they were burning; his throat burned. “I don’t know. What would you ask me to do?”

The tinker, finished with his fish, gazed at his reflection in the round tin plate. “Most likely just a small thing. Very small. Maybe I would… Yes. Maybe I would ask you to find something for me.”

“What thing?”

“A little thing.” He tapped the knife against his teeth, musing to himself. “A very small thing…”

“Where?”

“That’s just it.” He raised his head to smile at Corleu. “It’s possible, Corleu, that I don’t know where this small thing is. I’ve mislaid it, lost track of it, it went its way through time without me. It’s entirely likely that you’ll have to find it for me, as a clever young man who found his way through my door could do.”

“Where?” Corleu whispered.

“Back, ahead, before, behind. It may be hidden in a stone, a star, another child’s song. I have a few friends who might have glimpsed it, might have heard, might know exactly where. For instance, you might ask the Blind Lady. You’ve seen her silver ring. If you had something in trade, something she might wish for, as I have wished for this thing… For instance, you might give her what’s on the peacock’s feather. That’s all we’re in the business of here, you understand, Corleu. Trade. A bit of labor for me, a return to you of what I’m keeping of yours. A little something for us all.”

“What is it you want?”

The tin plate in the tinker’s hands was beginning to glow; light reflecting off it turned his face gold. His eyes, contemplating Corleu, were gold as coins. For a long time he looked at Corleu without answering, only smiling his tight smile, while the light crept over fire, water, lilies, even the black horse, coloring them gold.

“A small thing, Corleu. Just a small thing.”

“But what—” He had to struggle to find air. “Tell me what—”

The circle in the tinker’s hands was acquiring a face. The tinker covered his face with it like a mask. The gold light spilled over his hair. The eyes in the circle opened, blazing gold, tempestuous. The hot light flared into Corleu’s eyes. He flinched away from it, crying out, “I don’t know what you want!”

“Find it…”

The world flooded with light. He threw his arms over his eyes, feeling the sun drench him, close around him like the hot, heavy, clinging embrace of the summer days he remembered. A voice blasted at him like a roaring furnace. He dropped his arms, trembling, feeling oddly scorched.

He stood in a vast hall of pure gold, no other color; the light cast no shadows. Upon a gold dais sat a gold throne; upon the gold throne sat the Gold King. Lip, eyelash, fingernail, he could have been melted and stamped for coins. His face was a mingling of tinker’s face and the sun-face in the Hold Sign of Hunter Hold: wide-boned, wide-eyed, crowned with wild locks of gold hair. He wore a massive sword and armor spiked with points of gold at neck and wrist, knee and elbow. He was chained by one ankle to his throne.

Corleu stared at him, stunned.

“Don’t fret, Corleu. You’ll find it.” The tinker-king moved restively, testing his chain, pulling it after him as he paced. “A quick young man like you, who can see through dreams and shadow-lands. Who knows? If you find this for me, I might see my way to rewarding you with other things you might have seen and coveted, along your way.” He held up a gold-armored hand as Corleu opened his mouth. “Now, don’t be hasty. I know all you want now is your love beside you, and an open road through the Delta to the sea. I’ll give you that, don’t fear. But, as you search for this, you may begin to think a little, about what else you might ask for. I can listen, I’m prepared to be accommodating.”

“Why?” he asked, his voice raw with bitterness and terror for Tiel. “Of every sheep-brained fool in Ro Holding, why did you pick my life to fall into?”

The tinker-king laughed, swinging his heavy chain with an effort. “You were easiest to spot, with that hair. You were always saying our names, stargazing, never thinking who might be listening. Why did you go into my house? You knew what it was. Everything you ever heard about that dark house said: ‘Do Not Enter.’ And what do you do? You get a little weary of looking at mists, of not seeing the sun or the stars that turn time in their cogs, so you throw yourself headlong against the oldest warning of all. Look at you, standing here while your love wanders in an empty garden without you. Who else would have left her there at such a moment? Who else in Ro Holding would have been that moonbrained?” A sound came out of Corleu, half sob, half wordless agreement. “Ah, I told you, don’t fret. I need you, so I took you.”

“If you—if you harm her, any of them—”

“You’ll what? Stop the dark house from falling? Stop the sun from rising?” He turned again, grimacing slightly as he dragged his chain. “It’s a simple business, Corleu. You’ll see. If you give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. But you must never tell. Listen to me. Don’t speak. You must never tell anyone what you are looking for. Because, then, even if you find it for me, you will never find, either awake or dreaming, anywhere in your life, this little misty, timeless garden you have abandoned.”

“I don’t know what you want!”

The cry echoed off gold walls, splintered in corners where lines of gold melted to a single point. Corleu, his unanswered plea bouncing all around him, felt himself fall again, the endless falling within dreams. Eyes watched him: the Peacock’s tail, the Blood Fox’s yellow star, the Fire Bear’s ice-blue stare. He heard his younger voice, telling story…

The tinker sat beside his fire, roasting something small on a twig. Overhead the mists were darkening; the curve of gold in the chain around the tinker’s neck caught, from somewhere, a stray spark of light.

“Bite?” he asked genially. The small thing on the stick was charred. Corleu’s throat knotted at the smell. He shook his head, his eyes gritty from the harsh smoke roiling up from the spattering flames. He had fallen on his knees, supplicant to a tinker-king, but he had torn his voice raw with his last cry. He could barely whisper, as the thing on the stick dripped into the fire and the heat and the smoke billowed over him.

“Just. Tell me. What you want.”

The tinker lifted the twig from the fire, slid the small, bloody, burned thing off and bit into it.

“The heart of the Cygnet.”