“Then the thing flicked its thin, forked tongue very fast between its needle teeth, as in anger. But in a moment, eyeing the dawn-colored princess of the unicorns, it grew softer, seeming to reconsider. It spoke to her in a strange sliding voice that hissed and lilted, hollow and velvety sharp. ‘Oh, please, a drink. One drink. I perish!’
“ ‘Not of this lake,’ the king’s daughter replied. ‘But if you thirst, I will tell you where lies another pool whereof you may drink.’ ”
Again Tek turned away from him and Dagg, more toward the side as she gazed over the Circle.
“And at those words,” the healer’s daughter sang, “at Halla’s words, the creature at the wellside crumpled, seeming too weak to rise. So Halla walked along the curve of the shore until she came to it and bade it follow. It roused itself with difficulty and came slithering alongside her downslope through the woods.
“She studied it as they went, long and pale as a fish’s belly, cold-looking like ice. It seemed smaller in body than a unicorn, with a long, scaled tail that had a sting-barb at its end. It kept two stubby forelegs folded against its body as it slithered. High on its neck, behind the head, a ruff of gills fanned and gaped when it opened its mouth. Its teeth were long, back-curving fangs.
“ ‘What are you?’ Halla asked it.
“ ‘Oh, please,’ it panted. ‘Water first. A little water.’
“They reached the second pool. Near the top of a fall of stone shelves, a little spring welled and cascaded forming a pool at the base of the rocks. As soon as the pale creature saw this, it darted past Halla quick as a grass-flick and dropped its long neck to the water, lapping at it and laving it over its head.
“And as it drank, it seemed to grow, its withered sides swelling like a toad that is fat with poison. Then it slipped into the water and writhed about, bathing and whining a high, thin pleasure-song—until it caught sight of Halla on the bank and crept out of the pool, cringing again.
“ ‘You must forgive me,’ it moaned. ‘It has been months since I last tasted water.’ It was now nearly twice the size it had been before.
“ ‘What are you?’ Halla asked again.
“ ‘I?’ it said, in its strange, sliding voice, preening its wet, gleaming skin. ‘I am Lynex, and a wyvern.’ ”
Jan listened to the singer’s voice, clear and dusky under the smoke moonlight. The wyverns were a noxious breed, sprung from the stink of quagmires at the beginning of the world. That was why the unicorns had come to call them ‘wyrms’: slithery, slippery things. Tek sang:
“But just at that moment, as he was speaking, the wyrm caught sight of the caves and rock shelves beyond the pool, spreading away to the southeast. Streams threaded across those rocks, welling and falling, pale as cloud. And seeing these, the wyvern gave out little sharp barks of glee, sliding here and there over the shelves, muttering.
“ ‘Ah, but these are just the thing. They would suit perfectly! Not as vast as the dens we left, but we could dig more at need. Perhaps….’ Then he turned on the princess of the unicorns, demanding, ‘Who dwells here?’
“ ‘No one,’ replied Halla, mildly.
“ ‘Ah.’ The wyvern sat, considering.
“ ‘But these lands fall within our territory,’ the princess said, ‘the unicorns’.’
“The creature glanced at her. ‘Quite so,’ it answered, more softly now. ‘Quite so. I…we…that is, my people….’
“ ‘Your people?’ Halla inquired.
“ ‘There are more—a very few. A very few more of us. We have been lost, wandering across the Plain. We wish to settle.’
“ ‘You seek the unicorns’ leave to settle here?’
“The wyvern bowed stiffly down to the dust. ‘You would know our gratitude.’
“ ‘I have not the right either to grant you or to turn you away,’ Halla replied. ‘My father Jared is king. Tell your leaders to assemble here tomorrow. Bathe and drink. I will bid the elders of the unicorns come to you. Then we will decide.’
“So Halla left the wyrm beside the shelves and pools, and sprang off through the milkwood trees, traversing meadow and dale and grove to gather the unicorns to come parley with the wyrms.”
Tek fell silent in her singing, bowing her head. She changed her stance again, turning more and more away from Jan, taking in others of the Circle. He was aware of Dagg beside him in the dark.
“I wonder…” he began, but his friend’s sigh cut him short.
“That’s your trouble,” Dagg whispered. “You’re always wondering. Now quiet. She’s starting the second cant.”
Tek lifted her head. “And next day beside the shelves and pools, parley was held between the sinuous leader of the wyverns and Jared the old king, with Halla his daughter and Zod the singer and a great many others, both wyverns and unicorns, present as well.
“ ‘How many have you in your band?’ inquired Jared of the wyrms.
“ ‘Not many,’ Lynex replied, hollow-voiced and sliding. ‘Only a very few. Not nearly enough to fill these burrows.’
“ ‘He is lying,’ murmured Halla between her teeth, close to her fathers ear. ‘I sent scouts to spy them out. They reported more than just a few. Yet most, they said, were torpid, near death. They look a livelier lot this day. Well-watered.’
“ ‘We do not wish to intrude,’ the wyvern leader continued, ‘only leave to stay here a little and rest from our arduous journey.’
“ ‘When first you spoke with me,’ said Halla, stepping forward, ‘you said you desired to settle.’
“ ‘Only for a season or two,’ Lynex replied, ‘to breed. We must have hatching grounds to brood our eggs.’
“ ‘Well enough,’ said Jared, seemingly very little intent upon the parley. He had slept but fitfully the night before, strange troubles sliding through his dreams, and he was old, grown old before his time—sometimes his mind wandered; no one could say why.
“ ‘I see a wyvern breeding in a unicorn’s belly,’ said Zod then softly, an evening-blue unicorn all spattered with milk, ‘eating up the children that were there.’
“But the princess ignored his words, for he spoke but softly, near her ear. Zod was a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams, and often spoke riddles that meant nothing.
“ ‘How long will it take your eggs to hatch, and how long thereafter before your young may travel?’ said Halla to the wyrm.
“ ‘Not long,’ said Lynex, preening his supple skin with a thin, forked tongue.
“ ‘Well enough,’ the king replied.
“ ‘Not well enough,’ the princess cried. ‘How long?’
“ ‘Oh, a season,’ said Lynex, smiling. ‘No more than that. Our young thrive fast.’
“ ‘How many eggs do your kind lay in a clutch?’
“ ‘Oh, two—three?’ the wyrm replied, as if he did not know. As if he were asking her.
“ ‘No snake I know lays so few little death-beads at one squat,’ muttered Zod the singer, more loudly.
“ ‘We are not snakes,’ the wyvern snapped, fanning his hood. A double tongue flicked angrily between his needle teeth. ‘We are wyverns.’
“ ‘Wyrms.’
“ ‘Peace, Zod,’ said Jared the king; then, to the creatures: ‘Pay him no heed. We do not. He is a speaker of foolish nothing.’
“ ‘Wise foolish nothing,’ the seer replied beneath his breath.”
“Why don’t they believe him?” muttered Jan under his own breath now. He could never lie still during the second cant. “Why doesn’t the princess heed him? Can’t she see the wyverns are lying?”
“This is a tale,” Dagg hissed at him. “Of course we can tell.”
“Halla spoke,” said Tek. “ ‘Where will you go when your younglings are ready?’ the princess of the unicorns inquired.
“The wyrm hung its head. ‘We do not know. We will move on, across the Great Grass Plain, hoping to stumble upon some place hospitable to our kind, where we might live peaceably, disturbing no one.’ ”