Jan picked his way down and around the turns. Every dozen paces or so, some cranny burrowed down from the surface. Wan patches of light lay on the lime walls, glimmered on the crystal floor. The meandering ramp leveled out at last into a broad, straight hall. The light was dimmer here, the walls tunneling farther from the surface overhead.

Jan moved forward, gazing dreamily about. Smaller corridors angled off on either side. All around him lay drowsy still, but even so far down, so deep in the earth, the air was not stale. A faint breeze trickled in with the light. Jan scented the air, still following the smoke tumbling languidly overhead.

He came aware of a faded odor now—it smelled barely, hauntingly sweet. Yet underneath ran a slight stench, like moldering flowers, or damp rotted leaves. The scent itself was not faint, he realized, but subtle. It had taken him a long time to discover it under the keener, more pungent odor of smoke. But it had always been there. And the scent was old, very old, though lingering.

The smoke overhead had begun to grow thicker, wider in its stream. Jan spotted where it bled into the main hall from a side corridor. He followed it. The way was narrow, very dark, and doubling back upon itself. Jan had to pick his path by feel. Then the alleyway sloped suddenly, steeply down, and angled into a larger hall.

High, shallow tunnel windows provided light, while the smoke pooled and tumbled overhead. Jan set off down the broad, well-lighted corridor still in a dream, but beginning to come to himself now, a little. The hall came shortly to an end. Jan saw ahead of him a natural doorway, and a glimpse of chamber behind.

Warm, changing light played on that snatch of wall, the white smoke spilling through the door’s archway. Jan approached without volition, unaware of his own motion, as though he himself were smoke, only spilling toward the chamber, not away. He heard some slight movement beyond the door, just at the threshold of his hearing. The scent of rotting flowers had grown stronger. He reached the doorway and gazed through.

Fire lay in a golden bowl, which rested on a ledge of rock beside the far wall. The dish was circular, a pace across, and shallow like a shell. Within it, curling branches of milkwood lay upon a bed of fine gray dust. Those underneath were red and glowing, the ones on top blackened and covered with flickering tongues of flame.

At the foot of the altar lay a heap of dead milkwood branches, and upon the altar face itself, beside the bowl, a little pile of withered herbs. The wall just behind was a broad column of stone, grooved and water-stained.

Water had worn a depression in the wall overhanging the fire. The stone was eaten very thin there, translucent: Jan could see the water through the stone. The little crescent-shaped cistern was full to the brim. As he watched, a clear droplet condensed through a crack in the rim and fell into the flames with a hiss.

He had no idea how long he stood there. Time had become suspended, as it does in dreams. It seemed a long time. The room was warm, Jan realized suddenly, warmer than the cool, shaded corridors down which he had just come, warm almost as the air outside. The air above the firebowl shimmered with heat.

He watched the smoke arise and swirl about the ceiling, some of it escaping through the light well illuminating the chamber’s center. It was then Jan realized that he had entered the room, skirting the sun curtain as if by instinct, staying in shadow. He stood now only a few paces from the firebowl, and felt the last of whatever influence had brought him there dissolve. He was himself again, fully aware. And then a cold, sliding voice behind him said:

“When you have had done admiring my fire, little dark thing, turn around, that I may look you in the eye.”

Jan spun around. The wyvern lay on a bed of great, round stones, a sort of ground, he guessed, for sleeping. Larger than himself, larger even than Korr, the white wyrm reclined, its tail coiled languorously about itself, and forked at the end into three arrowhead stings.

Pearly, like the inside of a seashell, the creature stared at him. Its slender torso was propped on stubby forelegs, broad and clawed like a badger’s, but hairless, white-skinned, and translucent in the firelight. Jan could see the fingerbones through the flesh.

The wyvern had three heads. Jan felt a shudder run through him as he realized it. The long, sinuous neck was divided near the base, with the lowest head being also the smallest. On the other side, a higher, thicker branch bore a larger head. But only the tallest, central head had spoken. The other two hissed softly, shifting and swaying. All three were looking at him.

“I said come away from my fire,” it told him again, and the second added, its voice lighter than the primary’s, somehow younger, “Stand in the sunlight.” And when Jan hesitated an instant’s breadth, the third head snapped, “Can you not understand a civilized tongue? Be quick.”

The creature lay between him and the door. Jan’s heart beat hard and slow inside his ribs, and his throat was desperately dry. But strangely, curiosity very nearly overrode his fear. It scarcely resembled anything he had imagined of wyverns from the singers’ tales: white and sinuous, yes, but not noxious, not hideous. Very lithe and supple, rather—almost…almost beautiful. Jan stepped forward into the light.

“What is it?” he heard the two heads whispering. The primary head poised, eyeing him.

“What manner of creature…?” the second head began, but the tallest laughed.

“A unicorn! I have not seen one alive since my babyhood four hundred summers gone. Speak, unicorn. Tell us your business and your name.”

Jan felt his blood quicken. The white wyrms were sorcerers that could fell kings with a kiss. To give one his name, even his usename, would be a dangerous thing.

“Speak,” the third, smallest head hissed at him. “Your name.”

Sunlight was dazzling him; he could scarcely see for the glare. He shifted his stance till one eye moved into shadow.

“Do not approach,” the second head started, but the great one snapped at it.

“Oh, peace,” it ordered, languidly. “A little silence.”

The wyvern reared up, flexing and extending both powerful, stunted forepaws so that only a toe or two remained in contact with the ground. It was, it seemed, less looking at him now than scenting him. Jan noted the sickle-shaped nostrils, the catfish whiskers, and wondered how well this wyvern could see him out of strong light. He took another sidelong step, getting his other eye out of the glare.

“I have heard,” it began, almost companionably, “that the unicorns now live in a valley far to the south. They are ruled by a prince, are they not, a black prince?”

It settled back upon its bed of stones. Its three heads tilted and bobbed. Jan gazed at it and racked his brains. How to get past? He needed a stratagem, for it was huge. He could never hope to best it in a fight.

The wyvern did not seem to mind his silence. “You, too, are dark, little unicorn,” it resumed presently. “You would not by chance be some relation of his—his nephew, perhaps? Perhaps his son.”

If that last word was accented, ever so slightly, Jan hardly heard. His gaze had fixed on the wyvern’s tail. Its triple-barbed tip twitched and lashed as it spoke, sometimes coiling and knotting back on itself. Above, its three heads lazily bobbed and swayed. He found their ceaseless weaving fascinating.

“You are admiring my three heads,” it said suddenly. The flanking two hissed and intertwined, whispering to each other now. The central one continued mildly. “You know something of wyverns? It is unusual, yes. But I am very old. Only the very old among us grow more than one head.”