Erin was running back into the forest before she was even aware that her legs had unfrozen enough to move. Perhaps they hadn’t entirely, because she stumbled as she ran and tripped headlong over a fallen branch just past the outer line of trees. She scrambled to her feet, oblivious to the pain shooting through her knee, and tried to keep running.

But the monster moved much faster than she did. Erin glanced over her shoulder to see where it was and found it almost on top of her. She screamed and tried to duck behind a tree as one of its massive paws swung at her.

The tree took most of the blow, but the paw grazed Erin’s shoulder, one sharp claw tearing into her upper arm. The force of it knocked her off her feet, and she landed on top of a large shrub. She rolled over it, barely escaping another blow, and somehow managed to regain her footing. She dodged around the tree, which now had a set of deep gouges in its trunk, and heard the wood creak and splinter as the creature struck it again.

She ran, but the only direction she could go was back into the open meadow, where she knew the monster, larger and uninjured, would run her down in a matter of seconds.

Her panicked brain just managed to register that this was the end. She had no way to fight back or escape.

Then she heard hooves again.

It seemed the rider had seen her. Looking up, Erin saw him steering his mount back toward her and the monster, still going at a full gallop. They curved around to pass alongside her, and as they reached her, Erin saw the rider lean hard to the side, almost throwing his animal off its feet, and reach out toward her. He caught her under the arm and pulled her up onto the animal in front of him, at the same time forcing it to pivot sharply and race off across the meadow, away from the monster.

Erin lay face down across the animal’s neck, clinging on for dear life. She could hear it panting heavily, and its hair felt drenched in sweat. The man was still holding onto her tightly with one arm, using the other to guide the straining animal.

As they neared the trees on the opposite side of the meadow, Erin looked back. The monster was still coming after them, and it was getting closer. It couldn’t travel quite as fast as they could, but the horse-like animal they were riding was obviously tiring quickly, especially now that it carried two people. It seemed like only a matter of time before the creature caught up with them.

As they reached the trees, the man surprised Erin by turning their mount sharply and steering it along the edge of the forest. Glancing up at his face, she saw that he seemed to be scanning the line of trees, as though he were looking for something.

Then he dropped the reins and used both hands to pull Erin upright and half off the animal below her. She hung precariously for a few seconds before he heaved her in the direction of the forest.

She shrieked as she flew through the air and landed heavily in a large clump of bushes.

A second later, the man had leapt from the animal and was crashing down next to her. She could only stare at him, stunned, but he was moving again instantly, pulling her down with him into the middle of the bushes. When they were covered by the surrounding leaves, he stopped, his body tense.

“Seh elara,” he said in a low voice.

Erin had no idea what the words meant, but from the fact that he was still holding her and had placed a hand lightly over her mouth, she guessed that he was telling her to be still and silent.

She didn’t understand. The monster was right behind them, and here they were, stuck in the bushes and just waiting for it to come serve them up for lunch.

The man was peering intently through the leaves back out into the meadow. Erin turned her head a little to look, too. She could just see the retreating figure of the horse-like animal through the branches, and looking to the left, she saw the monster charging up to the tree line.

She cowered down lower in the bushes, expecting any second to feel the huge paws tearing through the branches to get to them.

But the monster didn’t go into the forest at all. Instead, it curved its path to follow their mount, heading away from them.

Then Erin finally understood why she had been thrown off a speeding animal into a prickly mess of bushes. She watched in a daze as the two animals sprinted away along the forest edge. Even after she could no longer see them, she could still hear the retreating footfalls.

A long moment passed.

Then there was a roar, followed by a shriek of pain and terror, which was cut short by a faint thud and a crunching noise.

Erin felt like she was going to throw up. It was a few seconds before she realized the man was pulling her up and out of the bushes. He half led, half carried her further into the forest, moving rapidly away from the sickening sounds of the animal that had just saved their lives meeting its final resting place inside the monster’s stomach.

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When the sounds had died away, the man slowed his pace. Erin saw him looking around them. He turned their path a little to the right, and after a few more minutes, they met a small stream. It might even be the same one she had seen before, Erin thought numbly. Maybe it cut across the meadow further down. She had been rather too busy to notice.

The man led her to the edge of the stream, where there was a small patch of grass clear of trees and bushes. He motioned to her to sit next to the water, and Erin collapsed awkwardly onto the grass, trying to lower herself without bending her left leg. The strain of escaping the monster had aggravated her knee to the point that she could barely move it anyway. It felt like her entire leg was on fire, and she was starting to come out of her shock enough to realize that her arm was aching as well. The cut on her shoulder was bleeding freely, and most of her sleeve was soaked with blood. She stared at it, trying to decide whether it made her most want to cry or faint…or both.

Then a pair of hands took hold of her arm, and she raised her head to see the man kneeling in front of her. He examined the wound for a moment and then pulled a small knife out of his belt and started to carefully cut and pull away the cloth from around the injured area. Erin watched him work for a moment but then decided that looking away from her bloody arm would probably make her stomach feel less quavery, so she looked up at the man’s face instead.

Her first thought was that this must be a man of very strong nerves. Even though he looked tired and a little shaken from their narrow escape, his dark, focused eyes and the firm set of his jaw told her he had dealt with plenty of situations as bad or even worse. He had a lean, muscular build that suggested a lot of physical activity, even though his skin was only lightly tanned. He looked slightly unkempt, as though he had spent several days camping outdoors, but his face was clean-shaven, and his light brown hair was short enough to clearly show his….

Erin’s eyes widened, and she felt her jaw drop slightly as she fixed her gaze on the man’s ears. They were about the same size as regular human ears, but they slanted out slightly, and the top came to a rounded point, rather like the ears of a fox.

She suddenly realized she had been staring at the man’s ears for more than a minute. She looked quickly away, hoping he hadn’t noticed. If he had, he gave no sign. She could still feel him working on her arm, gently pulling the cloth clear of the wound. Erin swallowed hard and looked down at her other arm, which was covered in thin red scratches from falling into bushes.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” she said under her breath.

“What was that?”

Erin looked up. The man had paused in his doctoring of her arm and was looking at her curiously, a piece of her bloody sleeve in one hand.

“What did you say?” he asked again. “I didn’t catch it all.”

“Nothing,” Erin said hastily, doubting whether he would understand what she had said and doubting even more whether she would be able to explain it to him. “It was nothing. I was just—” She broke off abruptly and looked at him, frowning slightly. “Wait,” she said slowly. “You…you speak English?”

He nodded and dropped the blood-stained cloth on the ground. “Yes, I do.” He started digging through a small pouch that was strapped around his waist. “I’m probably the only one within a hundred miles, though—other than you. Lucky we found each other, isn’t it?” He pulled out a round metal tin about the size of a deck of playing cards and looked back at her arm. “Then again, maybe it wasn’t so lucky,” he said with a sigh.

“What do you mean?” Erin asked, watching him remove the lid of the tin to reveal a pale green powder which sparkled faintly in the sunlight. “I’d be dead now if you hadn’t been there to save me from that…that thing.”

He took a small handful of the powder and started sprinkling it over the cut on Erin’s shoulder. “True. But you wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t come along and led the sethien straight to you—not something I intended to do, of course.”

“The sethien? Is that what that thing is called?”

The man nodded, looking closely at Erin’s arm, which was now covered with the green powder. “There, that should do it. Just stay still for a few minutes now.”

He put the lid on the box of powder and slipped it back into his pouch. Then he looked into Erin’s face. He seemed to be studying her.

“You just came through the portal, didn’t you?” he said finally. “How did you get past the gatekeepers?”

Erin blinked. “Huh?”

“Well, there’s a portal not far from here. And you’re obviously human. And you don’t seem to speak Silmarith or know what a sethien is. I assume, then, that you’ve just come through for the first time. But the gatekeepers stationed at the portal entrances are supposed to keep unknowing humans from coming through alone and getting themselves into trouble.” He smiled wryly. “But they obviously didn’t stop you from doing that.”

“I don’t know anything about a gatekeeper,” Erin said, frowning. “And I didn’t know I had come through a portal. I didn’t mean to come here at all. It was kind of a…well, maybe not an accident, exactly, but it wasn’t my idea.” She was thinking of Wraith. He had obviously meant for her to come, though she still had no idea why. “Where is ‘here’, anyway?”

“‘Here’ is Isil-Gal, on the southern edge of the Tior Mountains, in the kingdom of Lomáril, which is on the northwest border of the Silmarith Empire. And I would estimate that we’re about thirty miles from the city of Suviel.” The man smiled faintly at Erin’s blank look. “But of course, that probably won’t mean much to you if you’ve never been here before. You don’t know anything at all about this world, then?”

Erin shook her head.

“And I don’t suppose you know what clan you’re in?”

“Clan? I’m not in a clan.”

“All humans have clans. At least, all humans with magical bloodlines do, and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have magic in your blood.”

Erin stared at him. “Did you say…magic?”

“Yes, I said ‘magic’,” he said gently. “Look at your arm.”

Erin looked at her shoulder. A few minutes before, it had been covered with a mixture of blood and green powder. Now the skin was clean and perfectly normal-looking except for a dark green line that looked like it was in exactly the same place her cut had been.

The wound had been completely healed. Just like magic.