The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia A. McKillip Page A

of swords, shear-edged, gleaming like ice. The white dragon slipped under his blades and flew headlong into the amber fire. A swirl of leaves the color of bone and pearl scattered to the floor.
    Brand, his face white, set with fury, was thwarted only for a moment by the blades. He changed himself; the firebird cried within the ring. It caught air, flew above them. Nyx’s searching amber found the mage again: a flickering just visible beside the windows. He shifted. The fire continued out a window; Meguet heard an outraged shout from the yard. The firebird circled, its wings brushing wall and torch fire, silver talons outstretched to tear the mage out of the air and hold his shape. The fire swept over him again. He moved, fading, but not quickly enough; the bird’s claws raked his outstretched arm before he vanished. Nyx, sweeping the amber fire across the dark, following his movements with a mage’s eye, nearly transformed Meguet as he reappeared beside her.
    “Give me the key,” he said to Nyx. “Or I’ll take her with me.” His voice shook; Meguet saw the blood under his tattered sleeve.
    “Take the spell off Brand,” Nyx said with disconcerting control, “and we’ll discuss the key.”
    “He is fighting his own way out of it,” the mage answered. “If I take your cousin, you’ll never find her.”
    “Brand is fighting you,” Nyx said evenly. “He is still spellbound. Remove the spell.”
    Meguet, disinclined to being haggled over, slidsmoothly out of the mage’s grip, whirled away from him. He vanished again; this time he threw up a mist to scatter Nyx’s fire. Meguet, swinging her blade, attacked a sudden shower of rose petals as the fire hit the mist. The bird snatched at them as futilely; she ducked as one of its claws tangled in her hair.
    “Moro’s eyes,” she breathed. The bird became man, desperate, furious, bewildered, and then bird again, taking wing. Gold fire flared, limned the mage, and encased half the household records in amber. The bird swooped at random, swooped again, then cried noiselessly as its talons snagged the mage and dragged most of him into light. The mage spun away; the bird’s claws scored his shoulders just before he vanished.
    Someone cried: Brand or the mage. Brand appeared again, blurred, half-bird, half-man; blood dripped from his fingers. The bird wrenched him out of shape, took wing, and Meguet saw its broken, bloody talon. She cried, a sudden, helpless pity snagging at her voice,
    “Nyx, stop this! Can you stop this?”
    Nyx cast her a glance, frowning slightly. The color had come into her eyes. “This makes no sense,” she murmured, and the amber flared again. Something flew through the window, shadow-dark, as graceful as the dragon. Meguet, expecting dragons, saw it in the corner of her eye and turned her head. The fire transformed it instantly: A black swan circled in golden flame became a white rose falling through the fire into shadow.
    Tears pricked her eyes, for no reason, she insisted to herself: Everything was enchanted, even the air. The mage was at her side again, and then the firebird overhead, swooping, talons open, descending toward him.
    He seemed to slow the bird; Meguet saw its movements overlapping, image fanning out from image in the air. But he could not stop it entirely. In that charmed moment gold turned and turned through the air, clinked finally at the mage’s feet. Bending, he eluded the bird’s grasp; its talons flashed, scarred empty air just above him. He could not seem to balance himself; he gripped Meguet, dragged at her until she stumbled. The stones rose like water around her; a key floated on them into her hand. Then whispering air and fire slashed down again at the mage. He gasped, reaching for the key as for a spar in the shifting world. His hand locked around Meguet’s wrist. She gave one terrified cry and then he pulled her into stone.
    Nyx, staring at the stones where Meguet had vanished, found her nowhere. The firebird,