Hatchlings, thought Jan, and stole another glance back over one shoulder at the eggs. Another slight sound from the hall again—very faint, just on the edge of his hearing. Earth, earth shifting, and no more, he told himself. He knew in his bones it could not be wyverns. The wyverns slept. He turned back to the wyrm.

She arranged the dry, burning twigs over the coals with a moldery wet one; he noticed that it did not catch, only smoked a little, thickly. Jan stood fascinated. Her third head took a sprig of leaves and brushed the scattered ash back into the heart of the flame.

“A thick bed of ash will keep fire hot,” she continued. “Sweep ash over the coals to keep them warm overnight —but not too much, too long, or you will smother them. Fire must have air. It breathes. It is alive.”

Alive? thought Jan. And a little thought sprang into his mind, bright, burning like the flame. If fire is alive, then it can be killed. He glanced sidelong at the white wyrm, but she was studying the fire, its dancing flickers and rising tendrils of smoke.

“What else kills it?” he asked, keeping his voice low and steady.

The wyvern shrugged. “Earth kills it. A sudden gust of wind can snuff it. Or rain.” Yes. Rain. He remembered the rain in the Lay of the Unicorns. She glanced at him. “We keep it below, protected from wind and rain.”

Jan glanced at the crescent cistern above the bowl. “But near water.”

The wyvern laughed. “Ah, clever, Aljan. And how if a spark overleapt the bowl? The crystal floor of our dens is flammable, the oil of our skins volatile. Flame would run along our caverns faster than we could slither to escape.” A low laugh. “It happened once.”

She smiled slyly.

“In the beginning, when first we lived here, the king shared fire among us all. Every chamber had its hearth. Eggs hatched in all seasons, and no one slept. But all the while, the trails were building up—within a few years all our passages were crystal-coated.

“Then one day a torch fell—some servant in the king’s room—no one knows. That whole quarter of the warren went up. The king escaped, but many did not. We tore down the ceilings of connecting passageways to seal the wing. It smoldered for days.

“Afterward, Lynex ordered all fire either killed or confiscated, and put it into my keeping as a sacred charge….”

Jan stared unseeing into the dancing flames, and it seemed he could almost see what the wyvern described to him, behold it happening that moment, vivid as a dream.

“But what is fire?” he found himself demanding, interrupting the white wyrm. “Where does it come from?”

The mistress of mysteries bent her head to his ear.

“Sunstuff,” she whispered. “The stuff of lightning flash in storms. Starstuff—our god. It can kill or quicken eggs to life: a weapon or a friend. It is Magic. It is Power, the source of all our sorcery. We worship it.”

She was looking at him from the corners of her eyes.

“One can even see visions in the fire, if one is a dreamer or a sorcerer. Look, look into the fire, little unicorn. Look closer. Closer.”

Her voice had grown sly, but Jan hardly noticed. He leaned forward. The heat shimmer above the flames was like water rippling, like the stirring beneath the surface of the Mirror of the Moon. The wyvern’s mocking laughter haunted softly through the room. She lifted a clump of herbs from beside the firebowl. They were small, withered pods with wispy spires on the underside.

“What are those?” he asked.

“Rosehips,” the wyvern said, “the fruit of the milkwood tree. We gather them in autumn.” She tossed them onto the fire. “They give a sweet smoke to bring one dreams.”

Jan watched the round seed cases fall among the burning twigs. Soon they began to smolder, to send up thick, twining tendrils of smoke, pearly white mixed with bluish gray. The pale smoke had the heavier, milder fragrance, smooth and soothing; the darker, thinner threads had the keener scent. It stung his eyes.

Jan realized he had leaned far forward over the rosehips even as the wyvern had moved back out of their vapor. His face, his throat and nostrils tingled. A trembling began in the center of his limbs, made him feel at once weak and utterly unbendable, rooted to the stone. The sensation spread to his chest and ribs.

His senses were growing very acute suddenly. Before, he had not noticed the sound of fire. Now it fascinated him—a thick hissing, almost a thrum, like sea surf, a slow, arresting roar. He began to distinguish licks of color in the flames, greens and reds, pale violets. They flickered and danced.

Behind him he heard the three heads of the wyverns arguing.

“Why have you told him our secrets, of fire?” That was the second head, impatient but controlled.

“No matter.” The central head, softly. “He’s no more than a prit, a child. And he’ll have no time to make use of what we’ve given him, even if he understood….”

“And why the rosehips?” the little head cut in. “Their influence is always uncertain. They may put him in such a stupor he’ll be no use to us at all.”

“What choice had we?” the great head snapped. “We are out of time. And how was I to know he would be strong enough to throw off a wordspell? Only the fire seems to have any power over him.”

“I say pounce on him now and be done,” the third head muttered.

“Patience. We’ve other plans for him.”

Jan did not mind their words. He knew he ought to, somehow, but he could not manage it. The wyvern’s voices remained a faintly distracting background noise.

“Hist, be still.” That was the second head again. “He’s not quite under yet.”

Under what? Jan wondered briefly, and could not care. He had the feeling that he must watch, watch very carefully now, as if this were the most important lesson of his life and he must memorize it all the first time, for it would not come again.

Yet at the same time he was vaguely aware that presently he must act. Watching the fire was important, surpassingly important, but it would end soon. He mulled over what he might be expected to do then, and had not a clue. No matter. A plan would come to him, or not, just as it chose. Things were moving so slowly now. There was time enough.

“I say slay him,” the third head hissed. The thin, sharp sound of its voice fizzed on the air. “Our eggs are but a day or two from hatching; perhaps only hours. Red meat to nourish our little prits—and meat improves with age.”

Jan admired the glow of the charring rosehips. They did not seem to burn. Winter eggs, he thought. Little poison-prits. Heirs to the king that would have no heirs. What had Lynex done, all these hundreds of years? Pashed all the eggs of his mates to bits before their hatching.

“Fah.” The wyvern’s second head scoffed at the third. “If we killed this unicorn now, I can well guess where the greater part of the flesh would go—down your greedy gullet.”

“Only a little,” the little head sniffed. “What could be spared. The winter has been long. I’m ravenous.”

The second head did not reply. Jan listened without interest. The fire was absorbing his whole attention. But he had begun to feel that time was starting to slip away. He sought to rouse himself from the torpor now creeping over his limbs, tried to lift his head away from the heat, but the vapors were making him slow. His limbs refused to move. He made to speak—how slowly the words formed in his mind.

“Is this….” He had to pause, draw a breath heavy with smoke. His throat burned. “Is this the only fire the wyverns have?” He could not seem to turn his head. The words did nothing to lift the spell.

“Yes,” the wyvern’s central head replied, raising its voice, “save for the king’s. He keeps his own small torch with him. The king, you see, must never sleep.” She laughed, mocking. “And he thinks to keep himself safe from my magic that way. But his puny brand does not make half the flame my firebowl does.”