Its voice was strange, hollow, oddly modulated. It shifted up and down scales weirdly, invitingly. Abruptly, Jan shook himself, on guard against its spells.

“Yes, I am old,” the wyvern sighed,” and only the king has seen more years. Lynex has lived to seven heads.”

Lynex. Jan felt a bolt go through him. Surely not that same Lynex from the old lays? The wyvern paused, surveying him, he guessed, to see whether its wordspell was having an effect—and felt a small triumph to see its flash of disappointment. But the wyvern hid it swiftly, and resumed.

“I was not sleeping, just now when you entered. Oh, no. I do not sleep much in winter, as others do. Do you know why we sleep the winters by, most of us? Too cold.” It shimmered, shrugging. “And not enough food in the cold season, too.”

It nodded past him toward the golden carrying bowl. There was no wind in the still chamber, but Jan could feel the fire’s heat along his coat in gusts.

“But I am mistress of the wyverns’ fire. The king granted me this honor when I was no more than a slip, barely hatched, not long after we won these shelves for our own from you unicorns.”

Jan felt a spark of anger then. Almost, it overrode his fear. The other’s eyes darted wickedly, as if expecting him to understand something that he did not. The firelight glinted in them, and ran over the walls in watery streams.

“Lynex’s reward for my part in the battle.”

The wyvern laughed suddenly, throwing back all her heads, her mouths gaping wide, and Jan caught a glimpse of her teeth for the first time: like ice-splinters, or fishes’ spines, rows of them.

“There, my little cloven-footed visitor. Now do you understand who it is who commands you to speak—or does my greatness overawe you?”

Jan found his voice.

“You are a wyvern, hatched just before your people drove mine from our homeland through trickery and deceit. That is all I know of you.”

He saw the other’s eyes flash then. She reared again.

“Oh, you are full of contempt, are you, little four-foot, for me and my kind? Because we use stratagems to gain our ends when it suits us.”

“Proud beasts!” the second head spat. “Do you think that you yourselves are above such games—that none of you ever harken to the whispers of power?”

The littlest head spoke now in a voice gone suddenly quiet, almost sweet. “Did your own princess not cut down her father, seizing his place four hundred years past, just before we took possession of these hills?”

Jan stared at her, and felt his blood burning. That she could even speak of such a thing! But he had no time to make reply.

“Has your own father not held you back from initiation because he fears you? You are cleverer than he, and see much he cannot or will not see.”

Jan clenched his teeth. Lies, all of it.

“And does the prince’s mate not scheme against him by urging you to follow your own heart, not his commands…?”

“Not so!” cried Jan. “Halla was a brave princess and a true warrior who struck in her own defense against the king, who was mad with a wyvern in his ear and fell dead when the thing had eaten out his reason.” He drew breath, shaking with rage. “And as for Ses, and Korr my father….”

“Ah.” The wyvern smiled. Very white she looked suddenly, very cool and deadly. Her teeth snapped, still smiling. “So you are the prince’s son.”

Jan choked to a halt, startled, staring. The wyvern’s gaze had grown keen now, her eyes like polished stone. The flanking heads growled, deep in their throats, but the main one snaked closer to him.

“Listen to me, Aljan son-of-Korr, did you think I would not know you? That I had drawn you down into my den with a spell of fire to no purpose?”

Her whiskers bristled. The ruff of gills on her three heads spread. Jan felt astonishment flood him. She knew his name, his own truename, and had known it all along. Fear sprang into his mind again, cold as river ice. A wyvern magicker held him in her power.

“I am the mistress of mysteries,” she whispered. “I gaze into fire and much I see there. I know your people dream of a great hero, one who would make war on the wyverns and drive us from our dens….”

“The Firebringer,” breathed Jan.

“Your name for him is unimportant,” the wyvern snapped. “I care only that he is to be color-of-night—a black warrior such as this Korr who rules you now.”

“My father,” murmured Jan. Did she know, did she speak the truth? Was Korr to be the Firebringer?

“It is he; it must be,” her third head was muttering. “What other unicorn is color-of-night?”

“And yet, for a long time, I was not sure.” The second head mused now, seemingly more to itself than to him. “Though I watched him—and lately I have been at great pains to thwart him—for the patterns in the sky have told me this hero’s time is coming, very soon.”

The central head was looking at him. “Yes, I can read the stars,” she said, “though their meaning is often veiled. And there are other powers within my skill. When upon my fire I lay certain herbs, I can walk in others’ dreams.”

“Dreams,” murmured Jan, and just for an instant her voice became so familiar, eerily so, he could have sworn he had heard it somewhere, somehow before. “I dreamed once, in a gryphon’s eye….”

He remembered now, with perfect clarity, that dreamlike trance.

“Dreamed I saw a fair serpent charming a hawk. Was it you?” He turned to the white wyrm again suddenly. “You who spoke in the gryphon’s dream?”

The wyvern laughed. “I have seen many things gazing into my fire. One of them is how close the Gryphon Mountains lie to your Vale. And the gryphons are jealous. Shreel, the blue female—I spoke in her dream of the glory to be had if she and her mate destroyed the black prince of the unicorns.”

Jan felt himself shivering, with revulsion, not fear. “We defeated your wingcats,” he told her. “Killed them both.”

The wyvern shrugged.

“And the pans?” Jan demanded suddenly, remembering now the sting of stones, the whistles of warriors, branches whipping, and horns crying in pursuit.

“I told the goatlings when your pilgrimage would pass.” She smiled. “But my powers lie not only in the reading of stars and the directing of dreams. I can call things and conjure things, given time: raise wind and bring weather….” Her long, sinuous necks shifted, swaying. She hummed a little, almost crooning.

“The Serpent-cloud,” cried Jan, softly. His limbs prickled, momentarily weak. “You called the storm upon the Plain.”

The wyvern’s middle head chuckled. “Clever. No. I did not make it—but I did coax one wheeling funnel of darkness to dance your way.”

“We outran it,” Jan answered, defiant. “It passed us by.”

“Well,” the wyvern said. “I am almost glad, for that has enabled you to come to me.”

She shifted position, coiling herself more tightly about her sleeping-stones.

“Smug unicorns,” her third head muttered, “thinking yourselves so secret and so safe. Did you think we do not know what you unicorns do, that you come each year at borning spring into our hills?”

Our hills, our hills, she called them.

“Come for your rites by the poison pool,” the second head added. “We find your marks, your hoof prints above the banks, traces of your passage along the paths.”

The main head rested now upon the stones, seemingly unconcerned, letting the others talk.

“We know about your Circle,” the little head murmured, the last word hissed. “How you, all of you, pledge yourselves to it and serve it. And I know the reason you are with me now, young hothead, is that you are outcast.”

That last she spat, crackling with contempt. Jan felt his bravado vanish instantly. Shame scathed him like a scourge. It was the truth. She spoke the truth. Her words needed no spell now to catch him in their teeth. The wyvern laughed.