The Sorceress and the Cygnet — Patricia A. McKillip

From the World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Bards of Bone Plain.

The Wayfolk are a dark-haired, wandering people who shun doors and walls. Corleu is Wayfolk, albeit with hair the color of the moon. But when his companions and his own true love become trapped in an unearthly swamp beyond the reach of time, he dares to cross a forbidden and forbidding threshold, to enter a dark house that should not exist, to meet with a tinker who is also a king, and to embark on a quest for the one long-lost treasure that may free his people: the heart of the Cygnet.

The Cygnet is a figure of myth and legend, like the Gold King, the Blind Lady, the Dancer, and the Warlock. Once Corleu had thought these beings to live only in the stars and in children's rhymes. Now he knows that they are as real as himself, and that it is the Cygnet that holds the others at bay.

To find the heart, he must walk paths he never imagined: apprentice himself to a beautiful sorceress of uncertain motives, brave the Fire Bear in its lair, catch the Blood Fox by its shadow, and elude a valiant woman warrior whose destiny is strangely linked to his own. More, Corleu must also wrestle with his own conscience.

For if he fails in his quest, those he loves are lost forever to timeless limbo. But if he claims the heart, then the Cygnet falls and so do all who live...