Cygnet 02 The Cygnet And Th McKillip, Patricia

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.No one will ever know.”“I will,” Meguet said succinctly.“And so will you.Honor is a word you would not bother to toss at me, if it meant nothing to you.You may not enter.”He was silent again, so still he might have put himself under his own mysterious spell.His eyes had narrowed; light or memory flashed through them.“What made you time or honor’s guardian?” he breathed.“You have seen a few of its back roads, its crooked lanes and alleyways.Haven’t you.But you are not a mage- Or are you?” She did not answer.He stepped closer, she did not move.He stepped so close that the blade snagged the golden eye of the winged beast across his chest.He said, “If you do not let me enter, I will turn every rose on this tower into flame.”“Then you will burn what you have come for.”He moved closer.The blade turned a little in her hands as if the animal had shifted under it, and she felt me sweat break out on her face.“I will seal every door and window in this tower, and turn it into a tomb for those you guard.”“It is already a tomb.” Her voice shook.He stepped so close the blade slid ghostlike into him.Her shoulders burned at the sudden weight, but she held the blade steady under his expressionless gaze.“If you do not let me enter, I will kill you.”“Then,” she said, as sweat and light burned into her eyes, and the clawed, airy animal whipped beneath the blade like a desperate thing, “one of us will die.”He stepped back then, as easily as if the great sword were made of smoke.The animal turned a smoldering eye at her and subsided into the cloth.The blade trembled in her hands; still she did not lower it.The mage’s face changed; the expression on it startled her.“You deserve better than a doorway,” he said abruptly.“What kind of upside-down house is this where no power but honor is pitted against the likes of me? You can’t stop me.You can barely hold that sword.It is shaking in your hands- It is so heavy it weighs like stone, it drags you down.It is heavier than old age, heavier than grief.It falls like the setting sun, slowly, slowly.Watch it fall.Watch the tiny flame of light on its tip shift, move down the blade toward your hands.Watch it.The light trembles among the silver swan wings.What is your name?”“Meguet Vervaine.”“Is it night or day?”“I do not know.”“Are you awake or dreaming?”“I do not know.”“Are you a mage?”“No.”“Have you a mage’s powers?”“No.”“How do you have the power to see and move through shifted time?”“I have no power.”“Then who gives you power?”“No one.”“You have power.You are standing here talking to me when no one else in this house can move.”“I have no power.”“What gives you power?”“Nothing.”“You are guarding something from me as steadfastly as you guard this door.I will enter this tower.Do you have the power to stop me?”“You may not enter.”“Do you have the power to stop me?”Meguet was silent.Wind brushed her face, a cool breeze smelling of twilight.For a moment she stared senselessly at what she saw: the inner yard, the towers, the outer yard through the arches, where cottagers’ children flung a ball back and forth, and the Gatekeeper on the ground, his back to her, opened the gate to a couple of riders.Then she looked down at her hands.They were locked so fiercely, so protectively around the hilt of Moro Ro’s sword that her fingers ached, loosening.The smell of roses teased her memory.I fell asleep, she thought surprisedly./ had a dream.Then the Holder’s voice snapped across the chamber.“Meguet!”She turned, startled.The sword slipped out of her hold, rang against the stones like a challenge, and she saw beside it the rose that had flung itself off the outer wall into the room to lie burning in her shadow.She dragged her eyes away from it to the dais.Nyx had vanished.Dream shifted into time, became memory; she felt me blood leap out of her face.She reached down, snatched up the rose and began to run.On the dais, the sorceress had felt the sudden shift of time.Intrigued, she simply sat still, not a difficult thing to do for one who had spent nights in the black deserts of Hunter Hold watching the constellations turn and the orange bitterthorn blossom open its fullest to the full moon.She saw Meguet bring up the sword in her hands, turn.The fair-haired stranger stopped at the threshold.Nyx’s attention focused, precise and fine-honed, on her cousin, who was waving a blade of sheep grass against the wind.Their voices carried easily across the eerie silence.She watched, unblinking, while the stranger came so close to Meguet only the swans on the sword hilt protected her.Light sparking off a jewel in Nyx’s hair would have alerted the mage; when he forced her to move, he would not see her.But he backed away from Meguet, passed around her, left her defending a breached threshold in a dream.He had paused, for some reason, to pick a rose off the tower vines.He dropped it in Meguet’s shadow.He passed among the councilors with no more interest in them than if they had been hedgerows.At the stairs, beneath the Blood Fox prowling between green swamp and starry night on the Delta banner, he hesitated.The power within the tower was complex, layered as it was with Ctuysom’s ancient wizardry, household ghosts, the impress upon the centuries of every mage or Cygnet’s guardian who had left a trace of power lingering in time [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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