The Black Swan (16 page)

That was a lie; she knew very well that she
could
have kept everyone in their swan shapes—but he had already shown disapproval of her mastery of his spell, and this would be a test of sorts. . . .

“Good; now I see what your reasoning was, and your actions were well thought out,” he said, and there
was
a hint of approval in his voice, that made her lift her head a little. “An efficient use of power, much more efficient than trying to hold the shape-change spell over the entire flock. You were wise not to attempt so difficult a feat.”

Odile bowed her head in a dutiful nod to hide her expression, but she felt a momentary flash of anger that he considered her ability so minimal.

“Why feed this one?” he continued, the approval replaced by suspicion as he gazed at the hungry young swan. “You spoil her—”

“Not at all,” Odile countered swiftly, daring to interrupt him. “She hasn't eaten or rested well and isn't as strong as the others. I had to support her for half the journey yesterday, or she would have dropped to the ground with exhaustion. Sleeping longer helped her, but that meant that she wouldn't have as much time to forage, so when the flock followed you today, she would be in difficulty again.”

“Ah. Another good solution.” The suspicion was gone, and he actually smiled. “You prove that placing you in a position of responsibility was warranted.”

“Thank you, Father!” she replied, the smile and the words giving her a feeling of heady euphoria. She smiled back at him, her anger completely forgotten. “I want only to please you—”

“And you do please me, more than ever,” he told her, and picked up her hand to place a cool kiss on the back of it. “You are showing that you are worthy to be my offspring, and are truly your father's child.”

She finished her breakfast in a daze of happiness; he had not given her such a powerful reward in a very long time—not since she was a child and had first demonstrated she had inherited his magical powers, in fact! There was no further conversation between them, but then the baron was not one for much conversation even in his most expansive moods. He finished first and left the shelter, shortly after Lisbet ate the final crumb of cake and joined the rest of the flock in filling what little space was left in her stomach with water plants. When she had finished her own meal and sent back the empty dishes to the manor, he had already taken on his owl form, and was waiting in a nearby tree.

Time to go.
The flock had formed up at the far end of the pond; swans were heavy birds, and they would need every bit of clear water to get airborne. She gathered her powers around her, feeling them brushing against her skin as she stood with her arms poised above her head, the center of a whirlwind of force barely visible in the bright sunlight.

She felt her forearms, hands, and neck lengthen, her legs and upper arms shorten, felt feathers appear to cover her like a garment reaching from her nose to her toes. The world appeared to loom taller as she shrank in height; her teeth vanished, her nose and mouth lengthened and hardened, her eyes moved to the sides of her head. Her sense of smell vanished (something of a relief, given the surroundings), her sight and hearing sharpened, and she now saw the odd colors at the edge of violet that only birds perceived. Her vision now encompassed three quarters of a circle around her; disorienting for a moment, until her mind accepted it.

Then, the transformation complete, she shook herself all over, settling her feathers, and plunged into the water to join the rest of the flock.

The great owl launched heavily into the air, laboring upward with powerful strokes of his wings. Odette spread her wings in the next moment and followed, in the half-flight, half-run that a water bird needed to become a bird of the sky. As she got halfway across the pond, the rest of the flock churning the water and air in her wake, she tucked her feet up and rose from the surface of the pond.

Odile followed, last of all, well-satisfied to see that Lisbet was flying up with the rest of the flock, not lagging wearily behind. She looked back over her shoulder at the island she had created; it did look rather odd, the perfectly circular clump of tightly interlaced willows apparently rising from a pond of clear water in the midst of the swamp. She felt a bit of amusement, wondering what the baron had made of it when he first returned this morning.

Well, although it would remain, an odd island in the swamp, it would gradually lose its peculiar appearance since she was not there to impose her will on it. Some of the trees would die; otters and muskrats would build dens in the bank and it would lose that perfectly circular shape. The trees that survived would drop all their unnaturally large leaves in the autumn, and when they regained their vernal cloaks next spring, they would bear the same foliage as any other willows. Within a year, two at the most, no one would know that a magician had made the place.

And that is as it should be.
It was one thing to impose her will on the place where she lived and spent most of her time; it was quite another to do so arbitrarily and permanently everywhere she happened to spend a few hours. At least, that was how she felt about it. She had no idea how her father felt; he'd never expressed his views on the subject.

As they gained height and left the vicinity of the swamp, her experienced eye noted subtle signs, both in the cultivated fields and in the wilder lands, that the summer was coming to an end. Subtle changes in the color of the foliage that only a bird could see told her that the leaves of the trees were fully mature and only awaiting the touch of the first frost to put on their flaming colors, phoenixlike, so that they could die. The hayfields had been mowed, the hay gathered in; the grain fields had taken on the golden shimmer that presaged full ripening. Other crops would wait for that first frost, for they would continue to improve in size and ripeness until the cold killed them.

But all these signs of the coming of fall made her uneasy about her father's plans. Surely he didn't intend for them to spend the winter away from the comforts of the manor? He'd never done
that
before—and while it was perfectly reasonable to set up an
al fresco
camp in the late spring, in summer, and even in early autumn, it was neither reasonable nor comfortable to do so in the dead of winter!

Her worries, however, were not soothed. Von Rothbart would suffer nothing in even the harshest winter; he had power enough and to spare to transport himself to and from the manor if he chose. But Odile didn't, not yet—and certainly the flock could not. While in swan form, they wouldn't suffer too much, provided that she could produce food for them, but how could he expect a group of girls clad only in the thinnest of silk to survive a single winter's night out-of-doors?

Could Odette's challenge have made him forget all of that? Surely he didn't expect
Odile
to supply shelter against the winter's rage for all of them!

No—he had this journey planned before Odette flung defiance in his face,
she reminded herself. He had been on the hunt for weeks before Odette's little revolt. Whatever alterations he'd made to accommodate her hadn't substantially altered those plans. The way he had reacted, with an odd kind of pleasure, rather than annoyance, proved that.

He must expect all of this to be over and done with before the end of autumn,
she decided with relief.
We'll be fine. He probably knows she won't have a chance to test his promise on this quest—yes, that must be it. There probably isn't a susceptible male within miles of where we're going, much less a suitable one to lift the spell.

She knew him as well as anyone
could
know him; of all things he hated, the one he hated most was not being in control at all times. There was even the slight possibility that he
intended
to allow Odette her attempt to regain her freedom, and either was entirely certain she had repented enough that it would succeed, or was equally certain that she was still so unrepentant that it would fail. In either case, he must have it all planned down to the very hour that would see her freed or bound forever.

Wherever this was to be, it was not in any lands Odile had seen before; in fact, this was by far the farthest that she had ever gone from the manor. What could have tempted him into so long and potentially perilous a journey? Below her now there were more cultivated lands than wild; it would be harder and harder to find suitable places to stop overnight. She cast her glance downward, to the moving manikins of field workers at their tasks, bending and straightening and bending again. There was always the chance that someone down there was of noble birth, and a hunter—while they were out of bow shot
now,
they would not be when they came in to land or rose to fly. And a trained falcon could circle higher than the flock could go . . . falcons weren't normally set at swans, but some falconers were wont to test the skill and strength of their birds against a strong and difficult target.

And there is always the chance that someone has dared convention and law to train an eagle. . . .
An eagle could
easily
bring one of them down—convention and falconer's law dictated that only an emperor could fly an eagle, but if one of the many little monarchs far from the Emperor's eye chose to claim such a bird, there was no one and nothing to stop him.

She shivered, and now turned her wary attention upward, suddenly aware that she was going to have yet another responsibility, to guard against attack from above as well as stragglers.
That's all right; I can make a bird miss her mark. I can even do the same for a bowman. And father's in the shape of an eagle-owl; no falcon would dare attack an eagle-owl, and I'm not sure a falconer could get even an eagle to make a try.
While they might willingly harass an eagle-owl trying to rest in a tree by day, no smaller bird would challenge one already in the sky above her.

There's no way to force your bird to do anything,
she reminded herself,
unless you are a sorcerer, and there isn't a magician in the world who would dare to challenge Father. Not even an eagle is going to make a stoop at us, not when there's easier prey about. Besides, you have to fly eagles from cliffs, and there aren't any cliffs below us.

What was bringing on this sudden spate of worries? She'd never been like this before; she'd always followed the baron's orders, blithely certain that he would take care of everything—

That must be the answer. He'd actually
granted her
equal responsibility this morning—not just implied that she was expected to take care of some limited tasks. Once again, her spirits lightened, and she was only sorry that swans had no ability to sing, for she would have enjoyed being able to carol like a lark.

Father's plans will all end as he wishes, and I will be there to help him,
she told herself, with renewed confidence.
He already sees how much I can do—and surely, soon, he will realize just how much more he can accomplish with
me
to help him! He'll realize that all I've ever wanted to do was to please him.

After that—no, she wouldn't think of what would happen after that. She would concentrate on what she needed to do
now,
and all else would follow.

With that firmly resolved, she concentrated on the task at hand, with one eye watching for trouble from above or below, and the other keeping track of the flock.

T
ERROR ruled Siegfried's night. Once more, the ghost-gray gypsy girl approached him as he stood rooted to the spot, sweating with fear. Once again she held up the mirror to his face; he looked for a moment into his own eyes, to see his face replaced by that of a monster—a maddened boar this time, rather than a wolf, a boar with bloody tusks and a mouth dripping foam. He saw his eyes in the boar's face, eyes that glared back at him with insensate rage. With a shout of terror, he wrested himself free—

Choking with fear, he sat bolt upright in his bed, entangled in the bedclothes, staring into the darkness. Sweat soaked, heart pounding, shaking in every limb, it took an act of will to lie back down again; he kept expecting to see the girl's horrible, blue-gray face staring at him out of the darkness. Worse, at any moment, he expected to feel her cold hands seize him.

What was wrong? The girl had been buried at the crossroads, staked into the grave, exactly as he had ordered. She should not be able to night-walk and haunt him like this!

This was the fourth night in a row that the same nightmare had sent him plunging into horror; no matter what he did, how much he tired himself out, the nightmare returned. The only change was in the beast she showed him—wolf, boar, bull, mastiff—all with his eyes, but with the light of madness in them. The only comfort he had was that once the dream was over, he was through with it for the night, and so far it had not returned to haunt him twice in the same night.

I can't go on like this,
he told himself, raking his sweat-drenched hair out of his eyes.
I can't. Who knows what she's going to do next?

There should be one way to be rid of the ghost, one he'd been reluctant to pursue until now, and that was to go to the priest, make confession, perform penance, receive absolution. He didn't like the priest, whom he suspected of telling tales to the queen, but things had gone far enough that he was willing to bear the brunt of his mother's lectures in order to be free of the vision.

With that resolution, he managed to get back to sleep, and woke again just after sunrise. He surprised Arno by hurrying into his clothing, after accepting the first suit that was presented to him, and going straight from the hands of his servants to morning Mass.