Jan could not recall ever seeing a creature more beautiful, though there nagged somewhere at the back of his mind the notion that she ought to have seemed hideous. Why? For she was pure, admirably pure, without a twinge of conscience or shame.

“Serve me, Aljan,” her little head hissed. “Once we have destroyed the unicorns, I will let you go—off across the Plain to run wild Renegade if you will. Or even,” her voice grew sly, “back to your Vale. Who would know, with all the others dead, that anything you chose to tell them was not the truth? You would be prince, then, little darkling. You would rule the unicorns….”

Something struck him then, dimly, through the fog. Why was she so importunate? And then that, too, came to him—because time is slipping away. It must be noon by now, or past, and the unicorns preparing to quit the pool. Because I am the last trick she has against my father. Without me she will never get him into that dead-end canyon. Her people are afraid to go near the poison pool.

And without me to lead the unicorns into her trap, she will never have her bold stroke to outshine the king, to seize his place in her people’s hearts and come to power. I am the spark to all her kindling. Without me, her great scheme becomes only ashes and dust. I have only to refuse her, and she shall be undone. I have only to refuse.

But he could not refuse. For she held his name, like a mouse struggling in her teeth. Aljan, Aljan—every time she said the word, he felt himself sink deeper in her power. He was tangled, frozen; he could not get free. Her spells had knotted round him like a snake. But she seemed oddly unaware how nearly he was hers—and then he realized he stood in shadow now. She could hardly see him.

“How may you deny me?” her central head grated. Her tone had grown darker. She hissed with frustration. “Look what I have offered you: power, freedom, the death of your enemies. Unicorns! I know your kind to the marrow of the bone. When I was barely hatched, I fed upon the wit of one mightier than you, foal princeling. Do not tell me I do not know the things that tempt a unicorn.”

Her words, like a thunderclap, brought Jan sharp awake. The cold coils that had trammeled his mind fell away. He stared. This one, this great three-headed thing, had been the little slip to gnaw away the mind of Jared the king half a hundred generations gone? She. She had done?

A blazing anger rose in Jan, and the last of the white wyrm’s spell dissolved in its heat. His jaw tightened; his body tensed. He tossed his head, his nostrils flaring. He was Jan, the son of his people’s prince, and not some wyvern’s gamepiece. Eyeing her ice-white, reptilian form, he felt himself growing dangerous.

What will you give me?” said Jan suddenly. “What will you give me in exchange for the unicorns?” He picked up his hooves and set them down again, restlessly, for a sense of power had flowed into him. He could not keep still. The wyvern cocked her heads, clearly surprised.

“What I have said…” she began.

“No,” Jan told her. “My freedom? The leadership of the unicorns? Those things I will have anyway, if I do as you say.” He sidled, dancing. “You must give me another thing—to make this worth my game. Another thing, mistress of mysteries.”

The white wyrm lay silent, eyeing him suspiciously. Jan knew it must be plain to her that he no longer lay beneath her spell; but it did not matter. He had her. She needed him. She must agree.

And if he could stall her, dicker with her long enough to let the unicorns depart the Hallow Hills, if he could keep her from rousing her people for only so long—a weary sense of finality overcame him now—then it did not matter what happened to him after she found out he had been gaming her.

The wyvern shrugged after a moment, her smallest head snapping its teeth. “Oh, very well, little unicorn,” she muttered. “What will you have? I will give it to you if I must—only because it pleases me.” Her central head added sharply, “But be brief. Our time is short.”

Time, time, thought Jan, what thing might he ask her for that would take the most time? A mystery. One of her mysteries—but which? How to read the stars? Only there were no stars, for it was still broad day. How to raise wind and bring weather? But here below, out of sight of the sky….

His gaze strayed to the firebowl, burning red flags in a golden shell. The air rippled and distorted above it, threads of black smoke rising and twining, then thinning out into a gray haze near the chamber’s ceiling. The wet pillar of stone gleamed behind the heat shimmer. Jan returned his gaze to the wyvern.

“Tell me of fire.”

“Ah.” The wyvern forced a smile. “You are ambitious, little darkling, and far more clever than I thought. Knowledge is a greater tool than mere glory. Very well. I will begin to show you. Then you will run my errand for me. But we can start the lesson now.”

Her flanking heads hissed, as if to make some protest, but the great head warned them both to silence with a glare. She left her bed of sleeping-stones and slithered past Jan to the slab of rock where the firebowl rested. Jan realized with a start that his path to the doorway now lay clear. The wyvern’s back was turned to him.

But he dared not flee, for even if he were able to outrun her, much less find his way to the surface again, her clamor would doubtless rouse her people, and that he could not afford. The wyverns must continue to sleep until the unicorns were clear of the hills.

He heard a sound in the passageway suddenly, just a small, soft sound: a scrape, a scuff, far down the corridor outside. He froze, listening, his skin gone cold, but no further noise came to his ears. The chill faded. It must have been nothing, a bit of earth shifting. He turned back toward the white wyrm and her fire.

But then, just as he was turning, another thing caught his attention. His gaze fell on the wyvern’s sleeping ground, and for the first time he realized what it was. Not stones, not great round stones, but eggs, a double-dozen of them, melon-sized. They shone with the same milky translucence as the wyvern herself, as the chamber’s floors, as the passageways. Each globe was mottled like a moon, and within each Jan saw a tiny wyrmlet coiled.

The wyvern had half turned to look at him. This time her smile was real. “Yes, eggs.” She crooned now, all three heads at once. “Winter eggs—the first such our warren has seen in almost four hundred years. And ready to hatch now, soon. Soon. The king’s and mine.”

Her smiles deepened. Her teeth glistened.

“I am the king’s concubine—though always he has visited me only in autumn, thinking to avoid heirs that way.” Her whiskers twitched. “But I am the mistress of the wyverns’ fire, and I have not been cold this winter. Now my people will see for themselves how our breed may be improved.”

She chuckled, hissed; but her smile spoiled after a moment, her tone growing impatient. Jan tore his gaze away from the translucent eggs to look at her.

“But come now. Enough. I will show you the fire.”

Jan turned and went to join the white wyrm at the bowl.

“This, then, is flame,” she told him, tossing a dry branch onto the twigs. They no longer burned now, only glowed. Jan drew up beside her, watching close. The new wood smoked, then white flames licked at it, the branch curling and blackening as the fire caught. “You must feed it wood,” the wyvern said. “Dry wood is best.”

Jan nodded. He had seen fire in the Pan Woods. He already knew it ate wood, and dry grass as well. The sorceress shifted impatiently. Her words were quick, half whispered. He watched the twigs she scattered crackle and burn.

“It must be tended,” she told him, “like a hatchling, or it dies.”