When the tremor had passed, Jan stepped out onto the first of the minuscule islands. Its pitted surface grated and clanged beneath his heels. Little showers of sparks fell into the radiant substance of the lake and disappeared. The dark unicorn moved cautiously, sometimes retracing his steps. The lake stretched on, its low, dark ceiling lost in shadow. Such must be the birthplace of the sun, he mused, whence mares of smoke and stallions of fire blazed forth to charge heaven.

He saw lake’s edge ahead. At first it seemed but a far distant darkness upon the gleaming surface, but as he approached, Jan realized it was neither a cluster of islands nor floating slag, but the limit of the brimstone sea. He stepped from the last island onto the cinder shore, which rose gently toward a cavernous opening in the wall of rock ahead. The ceiling soared higher here, the gigantic cavern mouth smoothly oval in shape.

Another glow lit the chamber beyond, steady and reddish. Jan walked toward it, up the beach. Pale smoke trailed through the crest of the entryway in a steady, tendriled stream. Another great sighing, accompanied by rumbling and shaking. The smoky mist redoubled. The dark unicorn halted till the quake subsided, then moved forward again. The black, pitted pebbles crunched and shifted beneath his cloven heels. He reached the great entryway.

“Welcome, Firebrand,” the creature before him sighed. “For you I gladly suspend my contemplation. Enter and be welcome. I have awaited your coming four hundred years.”

The dragon queen sprawled, inestimably vast, filling the great chamber before Jan. She was long and sinuous and covered with jewels. With a start, the dark unicorn noticed huge leathery wings, red as the rest of her, draping her back. Puzzlement made him frown. Living as they did, so far underground, he would never have imagined the red dragons to be wingèd. The old lays mentioned no powers of flight, and the remains of the old queen, Mélintélinas, had borne no wings.

Wyzásukitán looked at him. Her head was wedge-shaped, the muzzle long and slim, with flaring nostrils through which her hazy breath steamed. Two long mustachios, like those catfishes bear, sprouted below each nostril. They floated fluidly on the air as the dragon moved and turned her head. Her ears were slim, like gryphons’ ears. A row of spiky ridges ran from the top of her head down the back of her neck, along the spine and tail to the tip, which ended in a flattened wedge.

Her body was covered by a myriad of ovate, interlocking scales which shimmered, reflecting the light of the lake of fire. Innumerable round and faceted stones encrusted her scaly skin. Of every color, though red predominated, they caught and held the light, burning like distant fires. Her massive hind limbs bore immense, pardlike claws. Her forelimbs, smaller and more delicately made, sported taloned toes of a size to crush a unicorn in a single snatch. Her breath moving through her lungs and throat did so with a hollow rushing like surf.

Upon her forehead, above the great ruby eyes, a circular depression lay, like a shallow bowl. In size and shape, it exactly resembled the slight hollow in the enormous skull of the late queen, from which he had recently sipped. The natural dish in Wyzásukitán brow gleamed, a dark, clear liquid pooling there. The firedrake kept her head perfectly level, he noted, as if on guard against spilling the precious contents. Jan bowed to her.

“Hail, Wyzásukitán, queen of red dragons,” he said.

“Hail, Aljan Firebringer,” Wyzásukitán replied. Despite the harsh susurration, her voice was surprisingly melodious. Her steaming breath smelled of resin and spice. “Before her end, my mother spoke of your coming.”

“What word did Queen Mélintélinas say of me?” Jan asked, surprised. Oddly, he felt no fear.

Wyzásukitán exhaled another cloud of fragrant breath and lowered her head, turning it slightly, only very slightly, to one side.” She told me one of your kind would come from beyond, bearing news of my great enemy, Lynex.”

The dark prince nodded. “Lynex the wyvern king was driven from the Smoking Hills by your mother, Queen Mélintélinas, four hundred winters gone.” Jan recited what he knew. “He and his folk wandered the Plain until they reached the Hallow Hills, at that time homeland to my folk. Lynex inveigled his way into the good graces of my people’s then-king, despite protests by his daughter, the princess Halla. When the wyverns slithered into limestone caves hard by my people’s sacred mere, the Mirror of the Moon, Halla, her suspicions roused, sent scouts to find the Smoking Hills whence these white wyrms had originally come. Her scouts parleyed with your mother the winter’s length. She kept two here and sent the third back with warning of the wyverns’ treacherous ways… But surely Halla’s scouts informed your people of all these things,” Jan broke in on himself, “when first they arrived four hundred years ago.”

The huge dragon nodded, her breath swirling about her. It rose toward the chamber’s distant ceiling. Jan guessed it eventually reached the surface of the hills to drift in the dense fog that gave the region its name.

“Yea,” Wyzásukitán answered. “So they did. And the two who remained here at my mother’s behest became founders of the line that dwells here yet. Their chanting fills our meditations with beautiful song. We have lain very still these last four hundred years, harkening it.” One shoulder moved: perhaps a shrug. “In that regard,” she breathed, “your Scouts do for us much as the wyrms once did.”

“The wyverns were singers?” Jan exclaimed.

Again the red dragon nodded. “They patrolled our dens, kept them free of vermin. They ate our dead. But we prized them for their songs and the stories that they told, which nourished our dreams.”

“They call themselves your cousins,” the dark prince told her.

Wyzásukitán snorted. Her breath swirled. “They are no cousins of ours.”

“What do the red dragons dream?” Jan asked.

The dragon queen sighed. “Much in the heavens and under the earth. We live a long time, by your counting, and have no need to hurry about our affairs. Much time we spend in contemplation, envisioning what will come and what is and what has already passed—but I stray. I was asking of Lynex. We have heard no news of him since your late princess’s scouts arrived. Tell me what befell after the one who departed returned to the Hallow Hills.”

Jan nodded. “He warned Halla of wyvern treachery. But too late. The wyrms had already bred. Come spring, they attacked, killing most of the herd before driving Halla’s small band of survivors away. These wandered until they found the Vale, which has sheltered us for forty generations. But our time there is almost out. My folk mean to return to the Hallow Hills within the year, to wrest them back from Lynex and his crew. We are told he lives and rules the wyverns still. In the way of his kind, he has grown more heads than the single one with which he started. We hear he is seven-headed now.”

“And seven times more treacherous, to be sure,” mused Wyzásukitán.

“Why do the red dragons hate the white wyrms so?” Jan ventured. “You lived in harmony so long. What trespass caused you to cast them out?”

“Harmony would be too strong a term,” the dragon queen replied, voice darkening. “Suffice to say we dwelled without enmity until the advent of Lynex. Lynex was different from other wyrms. His tail bore a poison sting, unlike the blunt tips of his fellows. He used this barb to hunt live prey, including his own kind. He ventured aboveground to stalk the shag-haired goats and bred with others of his kind to produce more sting-tailed wyverns, killing those of his broods that bore no stings.”

Wyzásukitán turned her head, remembering. “He and his folk conspired many seasons, while we slept unaware of the plots fomenting around us. Lynex led his sting-tailed wyrms to kill or drive away all other wyverns. But we suspected naught until Lynex and his followers began to prey upon my people’s pups, carrying off eggs from the nest and stinging to death the newly hatched, then dragging away their bones.”