Free The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia A. McKillip Page A

his hands clenched. Nyx saw the firebird cry in his eyes, of grief and rage and danger.
    Red shimmered in the corner of her eye. She turned her head, saw Meguet, dressed for supper, slide a blade noiselessly off the wall. Whether she wanted it to fight mages or dragons, Nyx wasn’t sure; either, it seemed suddenly, might blow in unexpectedly on the night wind. She turned back to Brand, touched the metal patterns on his wrists lightly. When he made no protest, she lifted his hands in hers.
    “Is this the path of time you followed here?” He looked at them, mute. “All Chrysom’s paths are silver. How did these get so black?”
    He shook his head, seeing nothing of mage or time or color in the blackened metal. “I don’t understand. The bird brought me here. Not these.”
    “You are the bird,” she reminded him patiently, and as patiently he replied,
    “The bird is sorcery.”
    Meguet tugged at Nyx’s attention. She still stood silently at the door, but her face was pale and her eyes flicked at every breeze-strewn shadow. She met Nyx’s glance, asked softly, “Is the mage looking for him?”
    “Probably.”
    “Nyx—”
    “It’s an interesting problem,” Nyx admitted. “It’s hard enough to hide the key, let alone the bird.”
    “Where did you put the key?”
    “In my pocket.” She added, at Meguet’s expression, “It refused to change its shape, and I couldn’t think what else to do with it.”
    “So you took it to the council hall?”
    “Well, I could hardly slide it under a carpet. If the mage returned, I wanted to be there.”
    “I didn’t,” Meguet said succinctly. She made a move toward a chair, then drew back to the door, looking, Nyx thought, with the gold threading through her loose hair, and the ancient sword, almost as tarnished as the metal on Brand’s wrists, half-hidden in the silken folds of her skirt, unlikely enough to startleeven the mage again. Nyx said,
    “You might as well sit. I doubt that either dragon or mage will use the door.”
    Meguet did so, but reluctantly, still holding the sword. “Dragon,” she said, “being the little winged animal made of thread.”
    “According to Chrysom, who must have roamed farther than I ever realized, dragons are made of flesh and blood and fire, and most are not small.”
    “How big,” Meguet asked after a moment, “is not small?”
    “Huge. So Chrysom said.”
    Meguet shifted uneasily, hearing dragon wings in the rustling wind. “Well,” she sighed, “at least they can’t come through the windows. Did Chrysom happen to say where there might be dragons?”
    Nyx shook her head. “Like the firebird, he considered them fable. Or he wrote as if he did. Now, after coming out of that black box, I’m not sure what he knew, where he travelled, or when. He—”
    “What black box?” Meguet’s eyes fell to what Nyx still held in her hand, and widened. “That? You were in there?”
    “My mind was.”
    “Moro’s name. Why?”
    “It seemed a good idea at the time. Not,” she admitted, “one of my better ones. I wanted to see if any of those odd things were the missing book. This is full of paths, twisting, turning, looping strands of silver. I think they lead to different times, moments within moments, perhaps the sorcery the mage usedto slow time. But I don’t know how to use them, and I think the knowledge is in the missing book, as well as in the firebird’s memory.”
    “That was the spell he rescued you from?”
    “Brand. Coming out, he remembered his name. But nothing more, not even that he had walked a path of time with me in that box, and led me out.”
    Meguet closed her eyes, dropped a cold hand over them. “I don’t know why your mother bothered to send me up here.”
    “I don’t know, either. Why did she?”
    “I’m supposed to guard you. At best a futile notion, at worst laughable.”
    Nyx turned, set the box carefully back on the mantel. “My mother worries too much.”
    “How can you say that? The