Khisanth's stomach rumbled, finally awakened by the memory of her last gorge. The gnawing hunger drove all other thoughts from the black dragon's mind. Her flared nos shy;trils detected the meaty scent of rats. Rats and worms. Some shy;thing nibbled at her tail. She wriggled on her belly to thrash it away, but she discovered again that she could barely move in the confines of the cave. The cavern of her memory was roomy; if, as she suspected, this was that same cave of long ago, she had grown at least four-fold while she slept.

Khisanth felt the persistent nibbling again. The dragon snaked a claw arm along her right side, absently noting the tightly folded, leathery wings on her back. Snatching at the offending rodent, she held it up at eye's height for inspection, taking pleasure in the stunned and terrified gleam in the raf s orbs.

"How long have you been chewing on me?" she asked aloud, surprised by the dark timbre of her own voice.

She tossed the rat into her waiting jaws, eyes closing as her senses delighted in the taste of flesh. But the morsel only whetted her appetite. Blood pounded in her head, and she could think of nothing but gorging.

Still lying, curled, on the cool cave floor, Khisanth rose slowly, carefully, onto her massive elbows and tried to turn

her whole body about. But her new size would allow no shifting in the egg-shaped cave, just long enough and wide enough to contain her. The long, sloping tunnel to the surface was blocked by new, jagged projections of rock, shiny with dripping water. They rose from the floor and ceiling like teeth in an ancient dragon's slathering maw. She would not be leaving by the same route she had arrived.

Driven by hunger, Khisanth let loose a horrific, braying wail of frustration that rent the still air. Her mouth was filled with a hot, acidic-tasting liquid that roared past her teeth in a powerful stream, splashing the cave wall before her.

The dragon felt a slow, painful warmth spreading on her right claw arm and looked down, where green, glowing droplets sizzled through the dusty black scales to the flesh beneath. Angry at herself for forgetting her ability to breathe acid, she snatched up a claw full of sand and rubbed it on the wounds. The sizzling stopped, replaced by numbness both there and in her head.

There has to be another way out of here, she told herself stubbornly.

Khisanth's great, golden eyes turned upward for the first time. Expecting a rocky dome, she was surprised to see no ceiling at all. Her cave stretched upward like a chute beyond her field of vision. The air above lightened gradually, giving Khisanth hope for an opening to the surface.

Suddenly, the dragon's sensitive eyes and ears perked up. To her surprise, she both saw and heard movement on a rocky ledge above.

"Is that you, Dark Queen?" Khisanth gulped with a shaky voice. She instantly wished she sounded more reverent and less timorous.

"Thou must be speaking Dragon with that deep voice, because I cannot understand," someone said casually, the words floating down to the dragon's ears. "It is too much to hope thou understands Nyphid. Wouldst thou know the Old Common tongue?"

Khisanth understood the speaker's formal, stilted words, but she had never heard the language called anything but

Common. When had it become old? Craning her heavy head back, Khisanth squinted upward, straining for a view of the voice's owner. A ball of bright white light stabbed her in the eyes. The dragon slammed her leathery lids shut against the pain and tore her gaze away.

"Thou shouldst not look into the maynus globe," said the voice from above, now closer.

When at last the burning light disappeared from her mind's eye, Khisanth opened her lids, searching about with an angry squint for the speaker. Her expression softened slightly to surprise.

Hovering above her just beyond the reach of her claw arm were not one, but two small creatures, sheer wings fluttering like thin crystal between their shoulder blades. Belted green tunics covered their slight frames down to their deeply tanned calves. Poking from their cuffs were slender hands with tapered fingers. Their hair, one's chestnut, the other's silver-gray, seemed to glow around the edges as if lit from behind. Their faces were an even deeper bronze and filled with gentle grace.

Their most remarkable and riveting features, though, were their piercing blue eyes. The color of lightning, thought Khi shy;santh.

"What are you?" she breathed, not quite in awe, but dis shy;tracted by their aura nonetheless. "Pixies?"

The chestnut-haired one scoffed and rolled his blue eyes. "Pixies! Humph. They are pointless and flighty." His chest swelled. "We are nyphids. I am known as Kadagan, and he"- the young one pointed to his elder -"is Joad. Our full designations would be indecipherable to thine ears. Hast thou a title?"

"You mean a name?" the dragon asked, mildly perplexed. When Kadagan nodded, Khisanth became downright con shy;fused. "I'm called Khisanth. Didn't she give you my name?"

Kadagan and Joad exchanged puzzled looks of their own.

"Aren't you agents of the Dark Queen?"

Kadagan's vivid blue eyes clouded over, and he shook his head. "We serve no queen."

'Then who are you?" Khisanth demanded, her voice rising in pitch and intensity at the same time that her eyes flattened into suspicious slits. The feeling of wonder the nyphids had first inspired quickly dissolved into vexation. Even the nyphid's awkward speech was beginning to grate on Khi-santh's nerves.

"As I said, we are nyphids," Kadagan supplied again, oblivious to the dragon's irritation. He looked at the other of his kind, dark head tilted as if listening; Khisanth heard noth shy;ing, though. "Yes, I believe that is the proper way to approach her." He turned his blue eyes on Khisanth. "We woke thee for a business proposition."

Khisanth froze momentarily, then slowly tilted her head back to consider the nyphid. "You woke me? Then the queen had nothing to do with that either?"

"Joad jolted thee awake with his finger," Kadagan offered.

Khisanth closed her eyes and tried to still the anger that was rising with each word the nyphid spoke. She felt choked -by chatter, by questions, by this pit. Nothing was turning out as promised by her geetna. Nothing that had happened since she'd awakened made sense. Except the rat. She under shy;stood gorging. The hunger flared in her stomach, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

"Listen," she growled, squinting against the soft light of the glowing globe. "We are both victims of some cosmic case of mistaken identity. You're not who I thought you were, and I'm definitely not interested in any business deal with pixies. Get away from me now, and I'll overlook the trouble you've caused me."

"Nyphids," Kadagan corrected. "And thou shouldst hear our proposition first." His soft features were pulled into a frown. "We would like thee to rescue Dela."

Khisanth shook her head like a dog with a burr in its ear. "Huh?"

"Dela. My betrothed, the daughter of Joad. The last female of our race. She-" The nyphid's voice caught in his throat. "She was captured by humans, and-"

"That's all very interesting to you, I'm sure," cut in Khisanth. "But as you might have noticed, I'm having diffi shy;culties of my own." She looked up, considering the climb before her. The nyphids' glowing globe allowed her to see farther into the gloom, but she still could not detect any opening.

The nyphid followed her gaze, then took quick stock of her size. "How didst thou come to be in such a tight spot?" he asked artlessly. Without waiting for an answer, he added, "Joad and I could assist-"

Khisanth cut him off with a raw, vicious chuckle. "You can't retrieve this pixie friend of yours from some humans, but you think you can help me climb out of this pit?" Laugh shy;ing humorlessly, the dragon dipped her head to look for toe shy;holds in the base of the rocky walls.