The voices of Oro and his fellows sounded through the cavern in long, resonant notes. While one singer chanted a melody, four or six others droned a background chord which changed as the song progressed. These airs—some solemn, but many lively—filled the chamber’s vast expanse. Jan marveled how the great hall enhanced sound and channeled it, so it seemed, to all the depth and breadth of the Smoking Hills. He imagined his words and those of the singers reaching out along all the netherpaths to wash against the ears of dragons slumbering, or perhaps listening, far underground.

At last he became aware that all voices had ceased, his own and those of Oro and the rest. A silence pervaded the dusky chamber that was neither cold nor ominous. Jan felt suspended still, untouched by thirst, hunger, or fatigue. Once more Oro stood beside him near the great crystalline boulder. The shaggy throng of mountain unicorns that once had kept their distance had moved closer now. A new voice spoke, one the dark Unicorn had not heard before: a dragon’s voice.

“Well sung,” she sighed, and the echoes whispered, “Sung. Sung…”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Jan heard gasps of “The queen! The queen!”

“Aye,” she answered. “You have wakened me, and the song your words have woven has entered my dreams.”

The dark unicorn heard Oro’s delighted, breathless laughter, saw playful nips and gleeful chivvying exchanged among many around him, though all seemed mindful of decorum, at pains to maintain a respectful hush.

“Of one singer I would hear more,” said the dragon queen, her strange voice penetrating yet mellifluous, “the outlander who calls himself Aljan. Oro, who escorted him on the netherpath, guide him, I pray you, to my chamber below.”

Jan sensed a sudden change in the hall. The unicorns around him froze, caught in their breath with expressions of uncertainty, even alarm. He himself felt nothing, neither terror nor joy. Beside him, Oro tensed.

“Great queen,” he began, as if straining for calm.

“Peace,” she bade him, almost gently. “Has he not drunk the dragonsup? Would I send for him if to do so would bring him harm?”

Her words seemed to calm the Scouts, though glances still darted among the company. The young maroon swallowed.

“And I, great queen?” he asked, nearly choking as he glanced at the shallow, fluid-filled depression in the dome of the huge crystalline boulder beside which he and the dark prince stood. “Am I, too, to sup?”

“Not yet,” she answered. Jan sensed amusement just beneath her tone, saw Oro heave a soundless sigh of relief. “Do but lead him as far as safely you may, then instruct him the way to journey’s end.”

The words rang briefly in the still chamber. A moment of silence followed. Then quickly, quietly, the crowd began to disperse. The scores, perhaps even hundreds of small, shaggy unicorns moved near silently, melting back into the shadows to exit the great hall, through what egress the dark unicorn could not see. Soon he discerned from an almost indistinguishable change in the soft echoes in the chamber that he and Oro now stood alone.

“We must depart,” the maroon beside him breathed. “First we must climb a little, and then descend a very long way for you to reach the queen.”

The roan stallion led Jan to the far side of the immense chamber. The dark prince spied an inclined path leading up the wall toward a tunnel above. Oro started up. Jan followed, pausing in the tunnel’s entry to gaze back down at the vast chamber below. The scattering of huge jewels, the pale, pillar-like shapes all lying fallen, the great, reddish scales, and the enormous oblong, irregular boulder with the fluid-filled depression in its crown all altered suddenly in the dark unicorn’s view.

They no longer appeared to lie in random, orderless scatter. They were, he realized, the scales and bones of some great animal, its flesh long gone, its spine forming a winding trail across the floor. Bones of four great limbs splayed to either side. Toppled ribs lay in between, among the jewels and scales which must have adorned the creature’s hide. Its skull, Jan perceived with a start, was the oblong boulder, resting jaw downward, empty eye sockets the symmetrical, gaping hollows. The little pool gleamed darkly in the—apparently natural—depression upon its brow. Jan could not guess the source of the liquid forming there. Gasping, he gazed at the huge reptilian skeleton below.

“What is that?” he managed. “Whose bones?”

His guide glanced at him quizzically. “The bones of Mélintélinas, late queen of the red dragons. Did I not tell you this be her lair?”

“Late…?” Jan shook his head, trying to clear it. He felt stunned, stupid still. “But is not Mélintélinas the queen who has summoned me?”

Oro shook his head, turning to travel on. “Nay. That be her daughter, the new queen, Wyzásukitán.”

The Hall of Whispers served as the old queen’s audience hall,” Oro panted, champing to moisten his mouth in the hot, dry air. “It be sacred to the dragons, but we have always stood welcome there. Our hosts tell us our Congeries honors the memory of the queen they mourn still.”

“Mélintélinas,” Jan murmured. “To whom Halla sent envoys four hundred autumns past?”

The other nodded. “The same.”

“When did she die?” the dark unicorn asked. “I thought firedrakes lived centuries.”

0ro nodded. “Queen Mélintélinas reigned twelve hundred year and passed into eternity scarcely a hundred winter past. Her successor, Wyzásukitán, be young—as yet unpaired—but very skilled in dragonlore…”

The walls of the tunnels through which they descended grew warmer, their dull golden glow becoming brighter. Wafts of steam curled by, passing in gentle gusts. Jan was aware of the heat, but it did not truly reach him. He felt no flush beneath the skin, no prick of sweat. His heart did not pound, nor his breath labor. It seemed to him he could embody the very heat of the sun and suffer no ill.

Beside him, Oro’s thick roan coat ran with sweat. His ribs heaved. His speech came short. Sometimes he stumbled. At last he halted, staring ahead down the sloping path. Jan halted beside him. The fog had dissipated. Below them lay a lake of fire. Air shimmered above it. Beneath, liquid spurts of yellowish white mingled with sluggish swirls of sunset orange and molten red. A series of small, black islands, very closely spaced, formed a kind of path across—if one were very sure of foot.

“I can fare no farther,” Oro gasped. “Heat fells me. You, though, be shielded by the dragonsup. Forge on across the cinder isles. The hold of Wyzásukitán lies beyond the brimstone sea.”

Jan bowed to his host, seeking words of thanks, but found himself unexpectedly tongue-tied.

“Farewell for the present, Scout,” he heard himself say at last. “I trust to rejoin you shortly.”

Oro also bowed, very low. “Fare you well, Firebrand,” he answered gravely. “I and my folk await your return.”

Abruptly, he swung and stumbled back up the trail. Jan watched the dark roan stagger, reeling almost, then rally and press on. Jan watched him disappear as the trail rose, curving away and passing into other, higher chambers. Oro’s halting hoofbeats gradually receded. Motionless, Jan listened until they faded at last. Then he turned and headed down to the lake of fire.

The air about it shuddered with heat, the burning fluid Oro had once called dragonsflood, fiercely incandescent. The feather in his hair smoked slightly, fragrantly. Yet, he felt no fiery blast as he crossed the black and cindery shore. Near its edge, the glowing brimstone had darkened and solidified into a fragile crust. A great gust of heat shook the ground, rumbling like the breath of some immense creature beyond the subterranean lake of fire. Its sun-bright surface wrinkled, rippling.