The Cygnet and the Firebird Read Online Free

rose again, lying beside the sword in her shadow.
    She let it fall, as if a thorn had pricked her. “I was bewitched.”
    “Apparently,” the Holder said curiously. “But, I wonder, by what?”
    A murmuring rippled through the crowd at Meguet’s back; she looked up to see what the mage wanted so badly out of the stone that he had stopped the world.
    Nyx held it in her hand: a golden key.

- Two -
    Nyx was crouched under a table in the mage’s library a day later, picking at a crack in the stone floor with her fingernail, when the firebird flew over the gate. Engrossed, she did not immediately hear the effect of its arrival. The Hold Councils and most of the household were at supper; strings and flutes from the third tower played a distant, ancient music in the peaceful twilight that wove among the reeds and drums from the cider house. Nyx, dressed for supper, had forgotten it. Cobwebs snagged in her dark hair; absently, she had rearranged the elaborate, jewelled structure until pins and strands of tiny pearls dangled around her face. Her black velvet dress was filigreed with dust; she had walked out of her shoes some time ago. Her eyes, usually the color of bog mist, were washed with lavender. Her face had taken on a feral cast; she seemed to be scenting even threads of smoke ingrained in the ancient stone.
    The disorderly clamor of people and animals finally intruded into her concentration. She straightenedabruptly against the table top. Someone pounded on the door, then opened it.
    “Nyx!”
    It was Calyx, who, looking high and low in the shadows, finally looked low enough. Nyx, rubbing her head crossly, said, “I thought I locked that door. What in Moro’s name is that racket in the yard?”
    “It’s a bird,” Calyx said dazedly. “What are you doing under the table? And what have you—” Her voice caught; color washed over her delicate face. She found her voice again, raised it with unusual force. “Nyx Ro, what have you done with all the ancient household records I was studying?”
    “Over there,” Nyx said, waving at a cairn of books as she crawled out. “A bird. What bird?”
    “They’re all jumbled up! I had them all in order, a thousand years of household history—And look what you’ve done to this room!”
    A pile of chairs balanced on a tiny wine table; shields and furs and tapestries hung in midair above their heads; bookshelves climbed up the stairs to the roof. Spell books, histories, accounts, diaries, rose like monoliths from the floor. Nyx, her arms folded, stood as still among them, eyes narrowed at her sister.
    “Calyx,” she said softly. “What bird?”
    “Look at this mess! And look at your face! There are black smudges all over it.”
    “That would be from the chimney. Calyx—”
    “You put your face up the chimney?”
    “Evidently.”
    “Why,” Calyx asked more precisely, “did you putyour face up the chimney?”
    “Because I’m looking for something,” Nyx said impatiently. “Why else would I crawl up a chimney?”
    “I have no idea. I thought, after studying sorcery for nine years, you’d pull an imp out of the air to do it for you. Maybe I can help you. What is it we’re looking for?”
    “Most likely a book.”
    Calyx stared at her. “Did you,” she asked ominously, “look on the bookshelves?”
    “Oh, really, Calyx.” She wiped at ash with her sleeve, her breath snagging on a sudden laugh. “You do keep dwelling on nonessentials. After studying sorcery for nine years, I have learned how to clean up a room.” She picked her way through the chairs to the windows. From that high place, she could see the parapet wall linking the seven white towers, most of the cottages clustered beyond the wall, and the vast yard with its barns and forges and craft houses that dealt with the upkeep of the household and the lands that rambled endlessly within the outer wall. One thing caught her eye instantly at that busy hour.
    “The Gatekeeper is not at the