The Black Swan (33 page)

The poor jest called up the polite laughter of the servants, but put them a bit more at ease. They stuck their torches into the earth at the lake's edge, then went in search of deadfall for a fire, and prepared to while away the time while Siegfried and his friend hunted. Siegfried wasted no more thought on them; hunt-fever was on him, and all he wanted was to have his quarry in sight. Already, in his mind's eye, he centered his bow on a fine, fat bird. . . .

He worked his way around the edge of the lake, noting as he did that the height of the shore above the water varied from less than a foot to tall cliffs it would be dangerous to dive from. Presuming one could swim, of course; Siegfried couldn't, at least, not well.

So I had better not fall into the water tonight,
he told himself wryly.
Or any other night, for that matter.
The water looked icy, and it would be no joy to get back to the fire in soaked, freezing clothing.

Sound carried well across the water, so he took care with his own steps, making sure of his position before putting his weight on his foot so that he didn't betray himself with the crack of a breaking twig. At the very edge of the shore, he didn't need to fight his way through the bushes, but there was plenty of debris to pick his way over. It looked, oddly enough, as if very few people hunted or fished here.

Then again, the place has a reputation for being scant of birds and large game, and from all I can tell, it's a deserved reputation. I don't think I've ever been in a forest this silent.
The villagers said that the lake had another kind of reputation—not an evil reputation, precisely, but known for evoking unease after dark, as if there were invisible spirits about. Nevertheless, according to the innkeeper, they fished it regularly and hunted it for rabbits, too, so it couldn't have frightened them much.

From across the water came the bark of a fox, then the call of a curlew. As he rounded a point, and saw one of the arms of the lake stretching darkly before him, the splash of a fish near at hand gave him another reassuring sign of ordinary life about him.

Here the cliff was easily twenty feet above the water, and he looked down at it for a moment. Black as the sky above, and not at all inviting, he wondered if daylight would improve it any. Or would it be like a few other tarns he had run across, whose chill, deep water, murky and impossible to see through, turned a sullen gray on a cloudy day, or a dark brown-green in sunlight? Such places seemed to discourage human visitors.

I need to find a beach, or some other spot low enough for the swans to come up out of the water,
he reminded himself.
They'll have to come out to graze, to dry off, and probably to sleep.

Since the ground sloped away toward the end of the arm, it seemed reasonable to think he might find such a low spot somewhere ahead of him. He hesitated, thinking about the possible terrain and vegetation ahead of him.

The ground is clearer under the trees, not as much underbrush. It would be easier if I worked my way into the woods, so long as I keep the shoreline in sight.
Now that the torch bearers weren't surrounding him, his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and it was easier to see that what he had taken for a solid wall of trees was actually more of a forest of trunks. The trees grew so closely together that their lowest branches had long since perished, leaving the area immediately below their boughs fairly clear.

He fought his way through the bushes lining the shore with gritted teeth; moving slowly, carefully, and as quietly as a human being could. Only a rabbit would have been able to worm its way through the tangled mess without any noise, but at least he managed to get in under the trees with a minimum of noise and fewer stinging scratches than he had expected.

He took the time to pick bits of branch and leaf out of his clothing; if he had to freeze in place, it was bound to happen that one of those bits would start to itch unbearably. Then he steadied himself with several deep breaths of the pine-perfumed air, before continuing his wary stalking. His caution would have maddened anyone but another hunter with the same patience he had. He would move a few yards, pause to take in everything his senses told him, then move again, step by slow, careful step. His nose and feet told him that he walked on a soft floor of old pine needles; better and quieter footing than the dry leaves and twigs at the shoreline. His ears picked out fewer noises of wildlife than he would have expected, but there were
some;
none of the sounds he associated with deer, for instance, but the little scuttles and scurries that might mean rabbit or other small game. The darkness beneath the trees was not as absolute as he'd feared, though it was so thick he barely made out the trunks of the trees nearest him against the general gloom; they were a dark ashen gray against the black of the deeper forest, or black shadows against the starlight on the lake. By contrast, the shoreline to his left was
quite
bright; it was easy to stay just within the forest with that light to guide him.

He judged that he had gotten very close to the end of the arm of the lake, when regular splashing ahead of him made him freeze for a moment, as he took stock of the sounds.

There was quite a lot of it, and it didn't sound like fish; it sounded like a flock of waterfowl coming ashore.

Now he went into a true stalk, crouching to make his silhouette as small as possible, working his way closer to the splashing noises with such painful slowness that his muscles ached with the strain. He ignored the ache, all of his attention centered ahead as intently as if the only thing of importance in the world was the cause of those sounds before him.

When he reached the bushes, he crouched further; putting his crossbow aside, he parted the branches, twig by twig, leaf by leaf, until he had a spy-hole through to the other side.

Yes!
His heart exulted at what he saw; here was the beach he had been searching for, and here were his swans, arrayed so perfectly for him that they might have been following his directions!

There must have been at least two dozen of them, perhaps more—most were out of the water and up on the bank, preening, shaking out their wings, or grazing. The rest, still in the water, waited patiently for their turn to jump up on the bank to join the rest of the flock.

He had never seen birds so huge or so magnificent before; they were so large that if another hunter had told him the size, he would have thought the man a liar. With wingspans of better than six feet, their heads would reach his chest with their necks still curved in a graceful arc.

They must weigh upwards of forty pounds!
he thought in awe.
And I've never seen plumage so perfect!
They would make a fine show on the banquet table, roasted and redressed in their feathers—better, by far, than peacocks, which for all their pretty colors were often scrawny, tough, and not particularly savory.

With great care, he reached for his crossbow, and put a bolt into the slot by feel. It was already pulled and nocked, and he had two more bolts in his belt; he needed only to stand up, aim, and shoot, and he would have at least one in the bag. Given that he was between the swans and the water and that they'd have a hard time getting into the air under the trees, he could get off three shots, and bag three—then he might still get off more shots as they tried to escape, in the air or on the water. That would be chancy, though, without dogs to retrieve the bodies from the lake, and he really ought to be content with what he could take on the land tonight.

With that in his mind, he put the bow to his shoulder, ready to sight, and stood up.

The birds saw him at once, and did something he had never expected, action that took him so completely by surprise that he wondered for a wild moment if they
wished
for him to kill them.

They ran—ran away from him with their wings half-spread in panic, then huddled together under the protection of a huge tree trunk, cowering away from him, with their heads averted behind those half-spread wings. Stranger still, this all took place in complete, unearthly, silence.

He had expected the squeals and calls of aroused and frightened swans; he had figured they would try to flee past him to the water. He had never seen a flock of swans behave like
this.

Suddenly, from behind and above him, came a strange, angry cry, like nothing he had ever heard in his life, a melding of a trumpet and a woman's scream of outrage. He didn't even have time to react to the sound—a white shape arrowed down out of the darkness and landed in front of the huddle of terrified swans.

A swan more magnificent than all the rest pivoted to face him, spreading her wings wide to shield the others, defying him to shoot with an angry hiss. She stretched out her neck, her black eyes wide in anger, completely without fear.

He had only just caught the glint of metal around her neck when the moon rose over the trees and touched the entire flock with its silver rays.

As one, the swans, including the defiant one, dropped as if they had all been struck by lightning. They shimmered, and a cloud of mist rose out of their prone bodies, rising in a strange, wraithlike column above each bird. His crossbow dropped as he gaped at them—and he rubbed his eyes as they suddenly blurred in a confusion of silver and white. He looked again, but his vision was no better—and he felt a curious twisting in his stomach that forced him to look away for a moment.

Then his eyes cleared, and he looked back—but the swans were gone.

In their place stood a huddle of frightened young women, with one dazzling beauty facing him defiantly, her eyes sparkling with anger.

He backed up a pace, crossing himself involuntarily, and shook his head.
Blessed Jesu!
he thought numbly.
What witchery is this? Am I mad?

He closed his eyes, then opened them—nothing had changed. He faced a single woman robed in a strange gown of white, her arms spread to protect the huddle of white-clad maidens behind her, head high, eyes blazing. On her head she wore a thin coronet, though in the moonlight he could not have told whether it was silver or gold. And now he saw what he had missed before—behind the white-clad girls was a row of terrified maids in
black
gowns.

No matter how logic told him that it was impossible, his own senses told him that there had been
magic
here. The swans had become women, as if he had stepped into a tale of Arthur and Merlin, Tristan and Isolde. As one part of his mind grappled with that, another, more whimsical, wondered about the girls in the black gowns; had there been black swans he had not seen in the darkness, hiding behind the white?

Whoever heard of
black
swans?

“Begone, varlet!” the first maiden cried out angrily. “Leave us in peace! We have harmed nothing of yours!”

He dropped the crossbow to the ground from fingers gone numb with shock, and rather than turning to go, took one slow step after another, until he stood face-to-face with the woman. If this was evil, some form of spirit unhallowed by the knowledge of God, he wanted to confront it. These women were on
his
land, and he would not leave his people to face them unwarned. If they were shape-changing witches, he would know that, too. The nearer he came, and the clearer he saw her, the more his mind stilled and his heart pounded.

But he had seen an angel—in his dreams, at least—and he thought she was too earthly to be angelic. The anger of his angel had been a tangible force, and though there was anger in this maiden's enormous dark eyes, it was not
that
powerful. Further, it was swiftly fading, transmuting into puzzlement, and surely an angel would not be puzzled by him.

Her fragile loveliness made him want to go down on his knees to her, but it did not inspire the awe of the divine he had felt even in his dreams. She had none of the angel's strength, either. Whatever she was, it was mortal.

He came within touching distance, and looked down at her. “Who are you?” He spoke the words before he took thought, saying the first thing that came into his mind.

Her anger rekindled at his presumption. “Who are
you?
” she countered, raising her head with pride, as if she and not he were the ruler here. “How dare you threaten us with weapons? How dare you come upon us like a thief in the night? How dare you approach us without invitation?”

Not the words of a witch or an evil spirit, either. Surely such would have answered his question with destruction for his insolence or an immediate attempt to beguile him.

He answered the pride with a humility he had never felt before, and dropped to one knee, free hand on his breast, head bowed for a moment.

Then he looked up, so that she could see
his
expression. “I am Prince Siegfried, my lady,” he said with quiet pride of his own. “These lands are ruled by my mother, Queen Clothilde. I humbly beg your pardon if I have affrighted you and your maidens. But you see, I came here as an honest hunter, and but moments ago, you all appeared to be, as it were, fair game. Though had I known that the game was so fair, I would never have raised a bow against you, unless it were Cupid's and not mine.” He raised his head a little more, and smiled winningly up at her, with an expression that had won forgiveness from women many times before. He invited her to share the jest, hoped she would, and prayed that this was not all some strange vision that would fade when he blinked, leaving him alone in a moonlit glade. His heart still pounded so loudly that he was certain she could hear it, and he felt a strange giddiness, a lightness in his heart and a sense of intoxication stronger than any wine.