The Cygnet and the Firebird Read Online Free Page A

gate.”
    And then she saw the flash of fire that scratched the air with gold and turned a rearing cart horse into a tree with diamond leaves.
    *    *    *
    Meguet had been sitting with the Gatekeeper in his turret when the bird flew over the gate. Dressed in corn-leaf silk the color of her eyes, strands of tinyjewels braided into her rippling hair, she had abandoned guests and musicians in the supper hall, pulled on her oldest boots and wandered into the summer twilight to talk to the Gatekeeper. She had seen nothing of him the day before; at the Holder’s request she had stood watch in Chrysom’s library most of the evening, while Nyx puzzled over the key she had found. Some of the gossip had evidently found its way to the gate; as she entered the turret, the Gatekeeper handed her a rose.
    She eyed him; his lean, sun-browned face, with its silvery-green swamp-leaf eyes, was expressionless. She said, “It was red, not white.”
    “I hoped you’d like this better.” Then she saw the beginnings of his tight, slanted smile, and she sighed and slid onto the stone bench next to him.
    “I was hoping no one had noticed. Does gossip blow on the wind across this yard? Or do you hear through stone?”
    “People like tales.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “For nine days you’ve stood at that tower door with a sword in your hands. When you suddenly toss it aside for a rose, it causes comment. What was he like, this mage who gave you the rose?”
    “You should know,” she said grimly. “You let him in.”
    He stirred; his eyes flickered away from her, across the wall, where the lazy tide sighed and broke. “He did get past me. Odd things have, in this house. Tell me what happened. No one saw him but you and Nyx, and the tales being spun around this mysterious magemake me afraid to open the gate.”
    She smiled at the thought. “You’d open the gate to winter itself. Or time, or the end of it.” She brought the white rose to her face, breathed in its scent. He opened her other hand, dropped his lips on her palm where thorns had left an imprint.
    “You fought a battle with the red rose.”
    “I nearly lost it,” she said, and heard his breath.
    “Tell me,” he said, and listened with the hard, expressionless cast that his face took on when something disturbed him. He applied a taper to his ebony pipe before the end of it, blowing smoke seaward, his eyes hidden. She told much of the tale to the rose, turning it in her fingers, finding memories in its whorl of petals.
    “Is he expected back?” he asked. “Or did she kill him?”
    “She doesn’t know. She told the Holder that if he is alive he might return, since he seemed that desperate.”
    “For a key? To what?”
    “Nyx thinks a book. Some secret magic book of Chrysom’s.”
    “I thought she had all his books.”
    “So did she.”
    He turned his head, tossed smoke downwind. “What kinds of things would a mage keep hidden?”
    “That,” she sighed, “is why Nyx refuses to let the stranger have what he wants, which is the advice that, at some length, the Holder gave her. If she knew, she might let him take it and stop threatening the house.But she is spellbound by this book that she can’t even find.”
    “So is the stranger, it sounds, stopping time and threatening to burn the house down for it.”
    “What was that like? Did you feel time stop?”
    He shook his head. “Your corn-silk hair caught my eye; I turned to look at you. I was hoping you would turn. Then I blinked, and there was your face. Then you vanished into the tower, and what caught my eye was the blade of silver light on the stones just inside the door. A moment later one of the tower guards ran for help. And I guessed what the light must be. I nearly left the gate. But I didn’t want to risk trouble letting itself out while I was gone, though it had wandered in without my help. So I waited. And the tales started flying like birds out of the tower, each one more