Corleu sat in the center of the maze. The mage-fire he had made and carried through time into the maze burnt on bare stone in front of him. Other fires he had not made lit the strange statues circling him. Their eyes, slitted like goat or cat, painted unexpected colors, seemed to watch him.
The Dancer leaned among them, sometimes putting on one of their nightmare faces. The tinker sat next to Corleu, sharing bread and cheese, or providing it from somewhere, since he ate little but a bread crumb now and then. The Blind Lady sat mumbling names to herself, weaving from an underskirt of muddy linen. The juggler paced. Sometimes his shadow, pacing over Corleu, was the Blood Fox’s.
“It’s here,” the tinker said patiently. He broke more bread off a loaf, passed it to Corleu. “I can feel it.”
“Thread ends here,” the Blind Lady said. She cocked her head at some mysterious trembling in time, and found a dangling thread in her sleeve. She snapped it abruptly; Corleu jerked. “Time, for that one.”
“I can smell it,” the Warlock said, standing over Corleu. He dropped his hands on Corleu’s shoulders, and sniffed at the air above the fire. “Mage-fire,” he said.
“I made it.”
“I know. But who taught you?”
“My great-gran,” he said recklessly, and the Warlock grinned his fox’s grin.
“Great-gran taught you to make the Ring of Time,” the Dancer said. She turned a scarlet face to him among the shadows, with gold-rimmed eyes and delicate gold cat’s ears. She settled her long, lissome body along a statue. “I heard Great-gran’s dreams. I danced in them. White-haired man among the corn she dreamed, now and then, all her life. Her last dream was of green corn. I was kind to Great-gran. She never dreamed the Ring of Time.”
“She was Wayfolk,” the Blind Lady said, chuckling. “They see into time in little toad hops. A morsel of future here, there. Never great daylong strides of it.”
“Did Great-gran teach you to make my heart?” the Warlock marvelled. His fingers dug painfully into Corleu’s shoulders, then let go suddenly. He paced again. Corleu chewed stolidly, his mouth dry.
“Great-gran,” he said, swallowing with an effort, “had odd talents.”
“You take after her, then,” the tinker said, passing him a water skin. “Thirsty? What other talents did Great-gran have?”
“She could read. She gave my granda books. Odd books, with odd things in them.”
“Many odd things,” the Warlock agreed, turning noiselessly on bare feet. “A wizard’s blood in amber, for instance,” Corleu, tilting the water skin, lowered it without drinking. He met the Warlock’s eyes a moment; they were smoky amber red. He lifted the skin again, drank.
“You owe me,” he said shortly. “You all do. I promised to find what I would find, not loose you into the world.”
“You haven’t found it,” the tinker commented, carving a sliver of cheese with his knife.
“I’m near enough. I found the place.”
“We found it before you.”
He was silent, swallowing bitterness with his bread. “So,” he said to the tinker, “you knew this place all along. You only needed me to wake your friends. If you know so much, you don’t need me now. You can find the Cygnet’s heart by yourself.”
Hissing, the Warlock was behind him again, one hand over his mouth, the other tightening over his throat. The tinker put a finger to his lips.
“Things listen, in here.”
Corleu heard only the blood drumming in his ears. The Warlock loosed him finally; he sagged forward, blinking, until the darkening fire burned bright again.
“I made your heart,” he said hoarsely. “You said you would be grateful.”
“I smell a trap,” the Warlock growled. “I smell sorcery.”
“What sorcery could stand up to you when I find this thing for you?”
“What sorcery?” the tinker said genially. “You can answer that one.” Corleu picked up bread silently. “You won’t answer.” He cocked a brow at the Dancer. “What sorcerers have been dreaming of this thing we want?”
She discarded her mask, let her face flow into various faces. Nyx’s face came and went quickly; Corleu froze mid-bite, then chewed again, expressionless. “None dreaming,” the Dancer said, “not of this.”
“Of him?”
“Only one,” she said smiling, “still dreaming. Like me, before you woke me.” She wore Tiel’s face. Corleu caught his breath on a bread crumb.
“Easy,” the tinker said, pounding on his back, handing him the water.
“I told—I told no one.”
“Not even Great-gran? Not even whispered to her grave? Not even to a green stalk of corn?”
“No one.”
“Then who taught you?” the Warlock demanded. “Whose sorcery brought us awake?”
“You wanted that,” Corleu said tersely. “You wanted freedom. I couldn’t do it without learning somewhere, from someone. You said find it. I chose how.”
“Silver Ring of Time is a powerful magic.”
“So are you. I couldn’t free things of power without power.”
“What did you pay this teacher?”
“Nothing.”
“What does it matter?” he said. “It’s my promise, my payment. Nothing to do with you.”
They were silent, looking at one another, even the Blind Lady, casting about with her fallen eyes.
“He paid for sorcery,” the tinker said, “with nothing we need worry about.” He cocked a brow around the chamber, then regarded Corleu, hand rasping at the dark stubble on his cheeks.
“What would Wayfolk pay with?” the Dancer asked. “All they own is time.”
“A man searching for treasure could promise that in payment,” the Warlock said, prowling the edge of the light. His eyes flared at Corleu. “Did you?” Corleu stared back at him. He turned to the tinker.
“You didn’t pay me for this,” he said. The Warlock snarled beyond the fire, then barked the Blood Fox’s attack, and he felt the cold sweat break on his face. But he kept his eyes steady on the tinker, who smiled a faint, thin smile.
“Wayfolk. Always one for a bargain.” He waved a remonstrating hand at the Warlock. “You should be a little grateful.”
“I’ll be grateful,” the Warlock said with a snap of teeth, “when he finds this.”
“You owe me,” Corleu said baldly, “not just tinker, you all do.” He reached for the knife, his hand trembling in the shadows. “You told me ask for myself.”
The Warlock, snarling, leaped over the fire. Corleu jumped to his feet, the knife in his hand. A blood fox’s weight crashed against him, bore him back against one of the statues. Its orange lizard’s face smiled over his shoulder, its cloven hand pushed into his backbone. The knife burned like a coal in his hand; he dropped it, crying out, and heard it shatter like glass on the stones. A blood fox’s eyes looked into his, feral, furious.
“You alone in this. Not with some faceless mage behind you. Who is it?”
The tinker chuckled. “Don’t eat him. We need him yet. Who, Corleu?”
“You may not need to know.” He stopped, catching his breath; the Blood Fox eyes still glared into his, all he could see. “Ever. How could—how could anyone threaten you, once you have it?”
The Dancer pirouetted along the statues, turning herself gracefully from embrace to embrace until she brought herself against Corleu. She put her hand on his hair, murmured against his mouth, “But how will we know who to protect, if we are threatened?” Her face became green suddenly, with fierce blue oval eyes and a sharp raven’s beak. He jerked his head back, banged it against the stones. She laughed.
“Pass the knife,” the tinker asked politely, “if you’re done with it.”
The Warlock loosed Corleu slowly. He bent, growling, picked up shards of glass and flung them to the tinker. They reshaped in the air; the tinker picked the knife out of it, cut more cheese.
The Dancer turned across Corleu, continued her dance. Corleu slid down to the feet of the statue, closed his eyes.
“Now,” he heard the tinker say, “let’s begin again. You want something more for your pains. For the worry and trouble. That seems fair. We told you you might want more. But here is the point we stick at, Corleu. There’s the small matter of the thing itself.” He cocked an eye up at the painted Cygnet flying across the small round ceiling, then down at the floor. “Even Wayfolk know not to barter with air. You find this small thing. Then ask.”
Corleu looked at him, wondering if any Wayfolk in all history had ever strayed down such a mysterious path to end sitting in the dark beneath the Holder’s house, surrounded by tales come alive and speaking. He said slowly, “You knew this place before I did. Why do you need me now? You gave me pieces of the puzzle. Is that all the pieces you have? If it’s not here, I don’t know where to look. I don’t have your magic. You could find it easily as me, now.”
“It’s here,” the Blind Lady murmured, and snapped another thread absently. The tinker’s yellow eyes smiled their faint, glinting smile.
“Another fine point. But so easily answered, you answer.”
“You can’t find it without me.” He shook his head, bewildered, as the tinker’s smile broadened. “I’m Wayfolk,” he protested. “That means back roads, herb magic, no corners. Ignorance, field dirt, living and dying in a wagon. I’m nothing. If you want me for more than my feet and hands, there’s little to find. Why me? Why me to find it?” They were silent. The tinker gazed into the fire; the Dancer beside a statue imitated its distant stare. The Blind Lady picked at thread; the Warlock picked a red glass ball out of a gryphon’s mouth, set it flaming in a niche in the wall. Corleu’s hands closed tightly. “You do need me,” he breathed. “So I have more than air to barter with.” The Warlock’s face flashed toward him, snarling, but noiselessly, and he did not move. The tinker picked his teeth thoughtfully with the knife.
“It’s an unusual position to bargain from. You alone can find this thing. But you don’t know how to get at it.”
“Hear him,” the Dancer murmured. “It costs nothing. And it may amuse.” She strayed to Corleu, traced his ear with her thumb. “What more does the Wayfolk man want? A house? A palace?”
“I don’t like walls.”
“Wealth?”
“Wayfolk can’t count. They use coins for buttons.”
“A sorcerer’s power?”
“I’ve had a bellyful of sorcery.”
“Knowledge?”
“I’m getting that, just breathing.”
“Then what, Corleu?” the tinker asked. His smile was gone; his voice had thinned. He tossed the knife in the air, caught it. For a moment, wheeling in the firelight, it turned gold. Corleu’s hands clenched; he looked at them blindly, testing the demand silently, against the straight doorposts and towers, the safety of the ancient house above his head.
“I want,” he said, “a promise. That no harm will come to the one who helped me, or to her house, or to any who know her name.”
There was dead silence from the gathering he had wakened; they gazed at him, remote and eerie as the statues around him.
Behind him, the statue he leaned against seemed to shift.
Meguet and Nyx entered Chrysom’s tower. Nyx had paused to heal her foot, standing in the middle of the yard, with one hand on Meguet’s arm. No one greeted her; no one stared; no one, Meguet found bemusedly, noticed either of them. Then she saw the yard as from another angle, a world without them, and she said, feeling an odd mingling of uneasiness and freedom:
“Have you made us invisible?”
“For a moment,” Nyx answered absently. “Just until we reach Chrysom’s tower. I have things to do; I don’t want to be distracted.”
“You will see the Holder first.”
“No.”
Meguet caught her breath. “Nyx, she has waited years!” Nyx’s grip on her tightened slightly; she stared down at the dark head, hair swept impatiently behind one ear, what she could see of the pale, lean face quiet, absorbed in work. Nyx answered finally:
“She will be here when I have finished. If I don’t begin, neither she nor I may be here in the end.”
“And if you don’t return from the maze? You will not go to her first, even to let her see your face? Nyx Ro, that is cruel.”
Nyx straightened, tested her foot on the bare ground. “I haven’t your warmth,” she said, “which you extend so unexpectedly. Even to Gatekeepers, apparently. Even to me.” She added, at Meguet’s silence, the ghost of a smile touching her mouth, “Hew, I can understand. But you use so carelessly, at times, something that to me is simply another source of power.”
“Love?” She felt the blood in her face, a confusion of anger and helplessness, as if she were without arms or armor in some vital battle. But the word touched Nyx; her eyes flickered, following a thought.
“Not even Chrysom suggested that as a source of power,” she commented. “It’s an interesting thought. I only meant that you allow yourself to be distracted by so many small things. To focus power you must first focus your attention.”
“I am,” Meguet said shortly. “It’s all in that maze. If you are finished.”
“First I must go to Chrysom’s library.”
“Moro’s eyes! We have no time! If you haven’t learned it by now, you don’t need it.”
“But I do.” She looked at Meguet, her eyes distant, unreadable. “There is something vital in that library. I will need it in the maze. It may save our lives.”
Meguet hesitated. Her attention drained inward, to the still, secret place where a great prism hung in darkness. She sensed disturbance in a layer of time around it, but, so far, it was itself undisturbed.
“All right,” she said tensely. “But hurry.”
In the library, she paced, picking bog leaf out of her hair and rebraiding it. Nyx searched through books, letting pages dance through her fingers, a mysterious task which spun Meguet’s calm to a fine, frayed thread.
“Nyx,” she breathed. “We must go.” Nyx did not answer. She closed a book, opened another. Meguet closed her eyes, turned on her heel. Her hands fell to her sides, clenched. She forced them open. Nothing had happened, yet. Nothing, yet . . . “Nyx.”
“Be patient,” Nyx murmured. “In matters of sorcery there’s nothing more dangerous than haste.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A puzzle piece.”
Meguet drew breath, held it. She listened to the silence a few more minutes. Then she wheeled, went to the door, opened it. She got Nyx’s attention then.
“Where are you going?”
“Down. Catch up with me.”
“Wait, Meguet. Please wait. We may lose each other in the maze.”
“Will you at least let me send word to the Holder?”
“The guards must have told her by now.” She waited, her eyes on Meguet, looking faintly troubled, until Meguet’s hold on the latch loosened. She resumed reading. Meguet stood gazing at the half-open door. She closed it finally, leaned against it, head and shoulder against the wood as if she might hear voices from far below carried upward through the ancient stones.
“Rydel.” Nyx’s flat voice nearly made her start. She closed a book sharply. “Secret powers. Powers not to be known. To be used only for Ro Holding.” Meguet turned incredulously to face her. “Rydel,” Nyx reminded her, “was your ancestor. Chrysom himself, Timor Ro said, stood in her shadow.” She took a step toward Meguet, her eyes wide, speculative. “The enormous powers of the mage Chrysom were overshadowed by the powers of Timor Ro’s eccentric gardener. That’s how you could walk past my doorkeepers.”
“Your doorkeepers,” Meguet whispered. Then she heard herself shout, an unfamiliar sound. “Nyx, what are you doing wasting time reading about gardening? This house is in danger!”
“Gardening is not at issue, and the acquisition of knowledge is never a waste of time. You stood against me in my house. You. My cousin Meguet, who could never find your way through a book, let alone a spell. I want to know how. I want to know before we go into the maze. I want to take this thing Corleu is searching for, and I need power. Power like Rydel’s. Like yours.”
Meguet stared at her, stunned. She whirled abruptly. “You stay and look for it, then. I’m going down.” She wrenched the door so hard it should have swung back to boom against the stones. Instead it pulled her off balance, brought her up hard against it.
She leaned into the wood after a moment, her heart pounding. “Nyx.”
“Open it.”
“I can’t!”
“You could fight me in my house.”
“I wasn’t fighting you! I was watching! I can’t—”
“Open the door.”
“I can’t use those powers at will!” She stopped, appalled at what she had relinquished: an ancient privacy, a secret between Holder and Guardian. But it had already been relinquished, by consent, in Nyx’s house. She stood quietly then, her face against the wood, calming herself out of long habit, as for a bout. She turned finally, trembling slightly, her face white, feeling unskilled and clumsy at battles of will instead of movement. She said softly, waiting for an inner uproar of voices that did not come, “The powers are ancient. I may use them for one purpose. Only one purpose. I can’t use them at my own need. They are kept always secret, and through some generations they are never used.”
“Power is power,” Nyx said. She stood as calm as the stone Cygnet carved above her head, unfamiliar, suddenly, as if her own past in that room, in that house, could no longer lay claim to her. “It can be worked with, changed, manipulated, shaped in whatever ways you choose. I only need to know its source.”
The black prism, the Cygnet’s eye, formed in Meguet’s mind. She said, trying to find Nyx in the dangerous stranger in front of her, “The source itself is ancient. I obtained power by being born, only that. It is my heritage. And but what for you and the Wayfolk man have wakened, I might have lived and died without using it.”
“Use it now. You can. Open the door.”
“I can’t. The power is not mine to summon.”
“It could be. Only learn how. If the need is there, the power will come. You know that yourself. Desperation spawns power. Open the door.”
The Cygnet’s eye was still dark, untroubled, in its secret rings of time. . . . She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak further, for desperation would spawn nothing more magical than anger and anger was a beggar’s blade. Without moving, it seemed, Nyx stood in front of her. She laid her hands against the door, on either side of Meguet’s face. Her eyes, misty, unblinking, drew at Meguet.
“There must have been a place where you first knew your powers. A moment in time when you first recognized them for what they are. When was the time? Where is the place?” Meguet turned her face away; Nyx lifted one hand from the door, turned it back gently to meet her gaze. “Tell me.”
“I cannot,” she whispered.
“Why? Who stops you? What?”
Meguet closed her eyes, shaking with anger. In one of her lithe, skilled movements, she had ducked away from Nyx, put distance, mentally and physically between them in this peculiar battle, before Nyx realized she had moved.
But she had not: She had only thought the movement. She was still backed against the door, pinned under Nyx’s gaze, with the anger in her turning into a nightmarish panic. She tried again to move. Her voice broke away from her in terror.
“Nyx, I can’t—”
“You can move. If you choose. Find the way.”
“How can you do this to me, how can you—”
“Don’t panic. Find the power. Use the source.”
“It is not—I cannot—it is not mine to use!”
“It is yours. Take it. Have the courage to take. To use.”
“You don’t understand—You think you know so much, you understand nothing.”
“What? What don’t I understand?”
“How to know without using.”
“Power is to be known, is to be used, is even to be shared. You must share this knowledge with me, Meguet. It might save my life. If that, at this particular moment, does not move you, then think of the safety of this house. I can help, but you must help me.”
“Nyx—” She could not even blink; she felt as immobile as one of the strange statues in the maze. She could only speak, and her voice shook badly. “You have brought your swamp ways into this house. The power does not belong to me. If even the thought of using it so crossed my heart, I would lose it. Do you think I would risk my own heritage only because I can’t move a finger or open a door? Ask me what my heart is worth to me, or my life. Then make me an offer. Ask me.” Nyx, a hair-fine line between her brows, said nothing, waited. Meguet’s breath caught suddenly, painfully; she was going to cry, in sheer frustration, she realized furiously, and she could not even wipe away her own tears, or turn her face to hide them. “I never judged you before,” she whispered. “I never knew the things you know. It seemed that what you sought might be worth a long journey, a stay in the desert, a lonely life, even the life of an animal or two. But now I judge you. I know you as the small birds know you. You cut out their tongues so they cannot speak, you cut off their wings so they cannot fly. They look at you and know you. You make what you are. When you burn their hearts, it is your own heart burning in the fire.”
Color flared into Nyx’s face. Her eyes seemed enormous, luminous. The door latch rattled suddenly and she started. She pushed herself away from the door.
“Nyx!” It was the Holder. “Open the door!”
She pounded on it impatiently. Meguet, freed suddenly, turned her whole body, hid her face against the wood. She reached out, at the insistent pounding, pulled the door open with shaking hands. The Holder stood on the threshold, looking at the lank-haired, barefoot woman whose back was turned to her. “Nyx?” she said tentatively. “The Gatekeeper told me you had come.”
Nyx turned slowly, met her mother’s eyes. They were both silent then, their faces reflecting the same faint surprise at the still unbroken bond between them. The Holder spoke first, her voice soft, shaken:
“Nyx.” She looked at Meguet then, her eyes suddenly vulnerable, haunted. “You went upriver for the Wayfolk man. Not Nyx. Not now.”
“The Wayfolk man is here,” Nyx said.
“In Chrysom’s maze. He came to look for something.”
The Holder’s face whitened. “What is he looking for in my house?”
“I don’t know. He never told me. He is coerced. I promised him help. That’s why I came back with Meguet. We are going together into the maze—”
“No,” the Holder said sharply. “Meguet will go. I don’t want you in danger.”
Nyx paused, looked at her oddly, a touch of color in her eyes. Then she linked her hands tightly together; her brows pinched. She answered carefully, “Meguet will need help.”
“Meguet may need help, but—”
“Mother, I did not spend nine years wandering Ro Holding for no reason. Almost nothing can stand against me. Almost nothing. And I promised—”
“I don’t care what you promised the Wayfolk man and I don’t care if you can harry Chrysom himself out of his tomb, I want you here with me. Or better yet, out of this house. Go back to the swamp.”
Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you wanted me out of the swamp. Your fey third daughter eating toads under a full moon, causing gossip across four Holds—”
“Then, take that as a reason to be sent back to the swamp,” the Holder said sharply. “Better there than here. This house is not safe.”
“That is why I came back. To deal with the danger. When I have done that, I will be gone. If that is what you want.”
The Holder closed her eyes. “Moro’s name. I have wanted you home for nine years. Now I want you home tomorrow. Not now.”
“Why?” Nyx asked, and answered herself, coldly, evenly. “You don’t trust me. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know anymore which daughter is yours: the one who lived so innocently among the witches, or the one who dwelled among bones in the swamp. Which one will go into the maze? Which will fight in this house?”
The Holder was silent; Meguet saw the confusion of anguish and guilt in her eyes. So did Nyx; her head bowed slightly, away from her mother’s expression. She added softly, “There is only one way for you to find out. You must let me go into that maze.”
The Holder’s face looked pale, brittle as the pearls she twisted between her fingers. “No,” she said. “For many reasons.” Nyx did not move, or change expression, but Meguet, watching her, felt something twist in her own heart.
She said abruptly, “Nyx is right. I will need her with me.”
The Holder turned to her, startled. “Meguet, no. You cannot take her. She has only a mage’s powers.”
“And at this moment, I have none at all.” She paused. She had fought back tears, but her face was colorless, and her voice unsteady with anger and shock. The Holder said sharply:
“What’s wrong?”
Meguet’s shoulders straightened, lined to the stones at her back. Nyx gazed at her expressionlessly, asking nothing, forcing nothing. Meguet said evenly, “Everything is wrong. I keep blundering a step behind the Wayfolk man. I could not stop him in Berg Hold, I missed him in the swamp, and I may well miss him again unless I get into that maze. If it is only sorcery to be dealt with in the maze, I will have only a sword to fight it. I will be helpless without Nyx.”
The Holder drew breath, her eyes flicking between them. The strand in her fingers broke suddenly; pearls ran like mice at her feet. She threw the last of them down.
“Then go,” she said huskily to Nyx. She did not look at her daughter. “If you do not return, you will break my heart.”
They were nearly at the foot of the tower stairs before Nyx spoke. “You could have told her. I thought you would. It would have been just. And,” she added dispassionately, “she has already judged me.”
“I fight my own battles,” Meguet said shortly. “And I may well need you. I have no idea what is down there in the dark by now.”
“I do not mean to harass you.” She touched Meguet’s arm lightly and for a breath, once again, Meguet froze, so precariously balanced between steps that if Nyx had shifted a finger she would have tumbled headlong to the floor. She felt the dark anger beat like insect wings in the back of her throat, in her wrists. “I only want to understand you, and the great secret power that uses you. I want to see its face.”
In the heart of the tower, Corleu saw the small chamber he sat in waver around him. The fires went out, hiding the still faces of both stone and the living. Time closed over him like water. A globe lit the room now, silver-green, hanging from the center of the ceiling above a marble effigy and tomb.
The stone statues began to move.