night's burst of fighting, and the two lizards had not yet finished feeding when Cypress sent them inside to guard the lair. Unless the prince had misinterpreted last night's events, they would be voracious enough to devour the punt as well as its contents.

So why hadn't they attacked?

Tang's yearning for air grew so overwhelming that he nearly opened his mouth. Instead, he blew his breath out through his nostrils and continued to swim.

At this point, he expected the coward inside to remind him that it was treason to risk the life of a Shou prince, to urge him to swim for the swamp. The whispering voice remained mercifully silent, perhaps because it knew

Tang had come too far. The punt was his only camou- flage. If he was not behind its sheltering bulk when he pushed his head above water, the wyverns would swoop down to bite him in two, just as they had bitten apart those bodies in the swamp outside.

A black fog gathered at the edges of Tang's percep- tions, and he realized he could no longer deny his lungs.

He rolled onto his back and pushed his head up alongside the slimy hull. When his face broke the surface, he opened his mouth and quietly filled his chest with dank, moldy air.

The cavern ceiling hung thrice a man's height above hie head. It was a dark vault of broken stalactites and shadowy hollows, dimly illuminated by the swamp's emerald light. Here and there were blocky holes where some huge chunk of stone had long ago fallen into the water, shaken loose by an earthquake, or perhaps some ancient outpouring of Cypress's anger.

Tang allowed his gaze to follow the curve of the ceiling down to the wall, then farther down to a rock ledge loom- ing above the water. Hanging above this stony bench were two pairs of huge orange eyes with slit pupils and gleaming, voracious gazes. The prince's heart skipped a beat or several, and he stopped himself from crying out only by pulling his head beneath the water.

The wyverns struck the next instant, taking Tang's bait so hard that they slammed the bottom of the dugout into his chest. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he found himself choking on fetid brown swamp water. His head broke the surface of its own accord and violent coughs began to rack the prince's body. He grabbed the side of the punt and tried to regain control of his convulsing chest.

A pair of severed legs splashed down on the other side of the dugout. Tang looked up and saw four reeling wings silhouetted against the cavern's far wall. Still coughing, he grabbed for his halberd, nearly capsizing the punt as he reached inside. The wyverns turned toward him.

Their orange eyes glowed bright as fire, and strings of flesh dangled between their needle-sharp teeth. In the dim light, the prince could barely make out a prickly leather ball lodged in the corner of one creature's mouth.

He could not see the second poison sack, but the other reptile kept whipping its narrow head from side to side and thrusting out its forked tongue, as though something were caught in its throat.

The wyverns swooped low over the water. Tang found the heft of his weapon and saw his attackers raise their tails to strike. He forgot about the halberd and pulled hard on the side of the dugout, flipping it over on top of him. The polearm's shaft fell across his shoulder; then a pair of loud, sharp thuds cleaved the din of his dead sol- diers' voices. The bitter smell of wyvern poison filled the air. The prince grabbed the halberd and slipped beneath the surface.

A muffled crack reverberated through the water, fol- lowed quickly by a great gurgling sound as a large mass splashed into the pool. Tang kicked away from the spreading slick of wyvern poison-he did not want the stuff seeping into his scratches-and came up for air.

At the base of the stony ledge lay one of the wyverns, thrashing about in the water and hurling shards of splin- tered dugout in every direction. A puffy black bulge had

The VeUed Dragon

formed halfway down its sinuous neck, where the snake venom was eating away the delicate tissues of the throat lining. As the ring of swollen flesh began to restrict the flow of blood and air, the creature's nostrils flared, and its eyes bulged. It swung around and, when it tried to rip the obstruction from its own throat, came away with nothing but a mouthful of black mush. It flung the putrid flesh across the cavern, then suffered a wave of uncon- trollable convulsions and collapsed into the water.

A long, mournful hiss sounded from atop the ledge, where the second wyvem lay above its mate. One side of the beast's head had bloated into a shapeless mass of dark flesh. The reptile itself looked listless and sick, but there were no tremors or spasms to suggest the venom would ultimately prove fatal, and the venom ball was hanging precariously at the corner of its mouth.

If the wyvem was to die, Tang realized, he would have to kill it. He swam toward the back of the cavern, angling toward a large block of stone that rose out of the water and leaned against his foe's rocky perch. The great rep- tile raised its neck, turning its head to track his progress.

As the prince neared his goal, the wyvem lifted its wings as though to take flight, then abruptly let them fall and reluctantly gathered its legs beneath its bulk.

If he turned back now, the wyvern would be too weak to follow him, but Tang had no desire to flee. He wanted to rescue his mother, and to do that he had to slay this beast. He reached the boulder and clambered out of the water, then started up the slippery limestone. The wyvem peered over the top, then turned sideways and whipped its poison-tipped tail toward his chest.

Tang brought his halberd around, slapping the poison- dripping barb aside with the flat of the blade. In the same instant, he continued the motion, circling it over the top of the wyvern's tail and bringing the head up on the inside. Had he been fighting a man with a lance or spear, the maneuver would have sent his foe's weapon flying away. In this case, it twined his polearm into the

powerful appendage. The prince clamped the shaft beneath his arms and held on tight.

The reptile pulled its tail back to strike again, jerking

Tang up the boulder and swinging him across the stony ledge. He slammed into the cavern wall and nearly blacked out as the breath exploded from his body. The wyvern started to whip its tail back toward the boulder, nearly ripping the halberd from Tang's grasp, then real- ized it was dragging something and stopped. The mis- shapen head swung around and fixed an angry orange eye on the prince, who began to wish he had not been so rash when he had had the chance to flee.

Tang leapt over the tail, thereby freeing his halberd, and brought the blade around in a quick arc. The sharp edge slashed through the scaly tendril and sent the tail's poisonous barb skittering across the stones.

Even had he not felt the wyvem's hot breath washing over his back, Tang would have known what was coming next. He instantly pulled back, pushing the halberd butt into the air behind him, and smoothly switched stances so that he was facing the opposite direction. He found the wyvem's fang-filled jaws descending toward his head. The prince stepped forward to meet the attack, at the same time thrusting the butt of his weapon into the leathery ball lodged in the corner of the reptile's gaping maw.