Jan felt himself rising away from the Vale. the air around him thinned and darkened. His view dimmed. He had the brief sensation of hurtling through stars, then of sudden descending. He became aware of himself underground once more, beneath the Hallow Hills. Lynex the wyvern king lay in his barren chamber, all seven snaking heads wakeful now. Despite the absence of fire, the den was lighter than it had been. Illumination from the lightwells had the warmer intensity of spring. The wyvern heaved his scarred and bloated form upright to stare at the charred fireledge. The single greatest head among the writhing tangle of necks pulled transparent lips back from splintery fangs.
“First these stingless peaceseekers,” it snarled. “Then my queen slain. Now the last of our fire burnt out.” Its voice was deep, all gravel and broken flint.
The tiniest head struck out at nothing, flattening its hoodlike gill ruff, hissing, “Burnt out. Burnt out!”
“No thanks to you,” one of the middle-sized pates muttered, glaring at the smaller ones.
The little nob turned, spat at its companions. “You!”
“Silence!” roared the one great head.
Five countenances flinched, but the sixth, the tiniest, turned and hissed. The large head snapped savagely at the little thing. With a shriek, the tiniest nob ducked. The great head eyed each smaller one in turn.
“I hold you all responsible,” it snarled. “I might still cull the lot of you and rear a new crop of secondary skulls—ones with brains this time!”
The last words were a shout. Again the smaller heads cowered. None spoke.
“If only my queen lived still, she would know what to do. Winters have been so cold. Our torch dimmed, and the stingless freaks thwarted the wood gatherers. How they must have celebrated when they learned the torch was out. ‘Devour them all!’ my queen would have said.”
The great head turned away, muttering. The half-dozen subsidiaries watched, all turning in unison as their leader wove. Jan was reminded suddenly of pacing among his own kind, or the random pecking of nervous birds. The wyvern shifted from one thick, badger-like forepaw to the other. Knifelike nails bit into the chamber’s crystalline floor.
“So many of them now,” the great head continued peevishly. “Their mothers hide them from me. They even breed. Whole nests of stingless offspring from stingless progenitors! There must be away to find and seize them.”
“A way,” one of the two middle-sized heads echoed warily. The great head ignored it.
“Perhaps we should command loyal followers to hunt them, harry them from one end of the warren to the other,” the companion middle-sized pate suggested softly.
Two of the other nobs nodded vigorously. “Harry them! A clean sweep.”
“Yes,” the great head mused, picking at the ancient scars on the royal breast. “Yes. A sweep.” Abruptly the One frowned. The smaller pates tensed. “But not all with stings can be relied upon. Most have nieces or nephews who are stingless, sisters or brothers, even daughters and sons! Some have gone so far as to begin to believe the ravings of those…those barbless lunatics.”
“Ravings,” the tiniest maw fizzed. “Lunatics!”
“How do they stay alive?” the wyvern king’s largest pate exclaimed. “They will not hunt living prey. They must eat carrion!”
“Carrion!” the littlest head spat.
“What sort of existence is that for a wyvern?” the largest nob growled at a middle-sized head.
“No existence at all,” it responded hastily.
Preoccupied, the large one turned away. “They are reverting to what we once were, when we dwelled among the thrice-cursed red dragons: stingless rubbish clearers, eaters of the dead!”
“Never again!” one of the small pates echoed.
Its fellows joined it: “Such indignity.”
“The degradation.”
“All our woes are the unicorns’ doing,” one of the middle-sized muzzles ventured. “Had they not deprived us of our queen, the stingless ones would never have multiplied.”
“We must wreak revenge against the unicorns as well,” the other middle-sized nob added.
The largest, central head considered. “That we must,” it murmured. “But they only come in spring, and only a score or two, to keep their nightlong vigil by the wellspring atop the limestone steep. Truth to tell,” he mused, “they come a few weeks after equinox. It is that time now.”
The wyvern king reared suddenly. The other heads jerked in surprise.
“The stingless traitors can wait,” Lynex’s oldest pate said sharply. “We’ll arrange an ambush for the unicorn pilgrims instead. My loyalists shall have the meat—and I’ll know my supporters by who agrees to taste this living prey. Once we have feasted, time enough to fall upon the stingless and their collaborators!”
“Yes! Yes!” the other nobs rejoiced. “We’ll lie in wait for unicorns along the path to their vigil pool. They will never sip its healing draught! We’ll rend the flesh of our enemies, then devour our own kind—stingless cowards and any others not wyvern enough to use their stings.”
The seven-stranded laughter of the wyvern king echoed through the limestone hollows. Again Jan felt himself lifted, drawn up through tons of earth covering the wyverns’ dens, out into the light and air again. A blur of motion, the momentary feel of rushing. He found himself hovering above the Vale once more. Spring had advanced another half moon. Tek stood upon the council rise. Dagg and Ryhenna, Teki and Jah-lila, Ses, Illishar and Lell flanked her. Once more the whole herd stood assembled.
“He is not yet among us, but he will return,” Tek told them. “We have waited as long as we dare. To delay more would betray his vision. I doubt not that Jan will rejoin us, but our march must now begin. We have just-weaned colts and fillies among us. This trek will last the remainder of the spring. It will be new summer when we reach the Hills, where wyverns wait our hooves and horns!”
Shouts of approval rose from the press. The cry of “Jan, Jan the prince!” went up, while some—more than a few—shouted, “For Tek! Tek, regent and prince’s mate!”
Aye, Jan thought with sudden bitterness. They should cheer her, for she is their rightful battleprince, not I. Regret seized him, and envy. Would that I were wholly other’ than who I am, he thought, some Renegade, even, not the late king’s son. Sooth, I could gladly give any office up if only I might keep my pledge with Tek. He shoved his painful thoughts aside. It was all hopeless. Below him, Tek cried: “Away” then. To our homeland! To the Hills.”
She sprang from the council rise, her mane of mingled black and rose streaming. Her companions on the rise sprang behind her: red Jah-lila, painted Teki, dappled Dagg and his copper mate, Ryhenna, darkamber Lell with the milk-pale mane, and her mother, Ses, the color of cream with a mane like crimson fire. Illishar rose into the air in a green thrashing of wings. Sunlight flashed on his golden flanks. Beneath, the herd surged after Tek, all eager to depart the Vale, hearts bound for the far Hallows.
Jan became aware of an echo, oddly hollow, as though originating deep underground. His view of the herd climbing the steeps of the Vale shrank, grew distant. Before them, he knew, lay the Pan Woods and the Plain. Once more he pulled back, traveling at speed. It seemed that darkness fell, until he realized he had merely come to himself in the vast and sunless dragon’s den. Glare of the molten firelake flickered across the pool of water in the red queen’s brow. The chanting that had drawn him from the Vale echoed somewhere overhead, in the caves above. Awareness of himself and of Wyzásukitán once more faded as his mind floated upward to the source of the sound:
“Now fare we forth, far Hallows bound…”