When Kirchel shook Erin awake the next morning, light was only just beginning to spread across the sky outside the bedroom window.

“Come on,” she said as Erin blinked sleepily up at her. “Our breakfast is here already.”

Kirchel stood next to the bed, making sure Erin didn’t fall back asleep. After she had crawled out of her blankets, Kirchel led her over to the table by the fireplace, where a cheerful fire was spreading warmth and light out into the chilly, predawn morning. A breakfast of bread and fruit was spread out on the table.

Erin sat down, tucking her bare feet up under her nightgown. Kirchel was already dressed and looked wide awake. She kept fidgeting nervously while they ate and didn’t seem to be very hungry.

After breakfast, Erin went into the bathroom to get dressed and brush her hair. Kirchel helped her wash and re-bandage her hands, which by today were only a little tender. Then Erin packed her jar of salve and other things into the small bag Healer Sil-Gaeryn had given her and tied the bag around her waist.

“Ready to go?” Kirchel asked, picking up a long grey cloak from the back of one of the chairs and pulling it around her shoulders.

“I guess so,” Erin said, taking a last look around the room that had been her home for the past few days.

Kirchel handed her a second cloak that looked identical to the one she was wearing. “Here, put this on. It will be cold outside.”

Erin pulled on the cloak and then followed Kirchel out of the room.

The palace was relatively quiet this time of day. They only met a few servants on the way downstairs. When they reached the entrance hall, they found Arturyn talking to Bredin, who was taking notes on a pad of paper. It looked like Arturyn was giving him some instructions to follow while he was gone.

Five other people were standing nearby. Two men that Erin recognized as Arturyn’s counselors were standing with two women she guessed must be their wives. All four were dressed for traveling, and Erin assumed that they were coming with them to Raylmiyr. But the fifth person….

“Jechrin!” Erin said, brightening.

Jechrin smiled at her as they drew closer. “I decided to come down and wish you a safe journey.”

“Silly,” Erin said with a laugh. “You already did that last night.”

He shrugged. “Well, it couldn’t hurt to do it again, could it?”

“Is your father coming down, too?” Kirchel asked. She sounded rather anxious.

Jechrin shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was still asleep when I left our rooms.”

“Oh. All right.” Kirchel still looked tense, and it was hard to say whether she was relieved or disappointed to know Teral wasn’t coming to see them off. “Well, I’ll let you two say goodbye. Don’t go anywhere—I expect we’ll be leaving in just a few minutes.”

She went over to speak to the others, leaving Erin and Jechrin standing a little apart from the rest of the group.

“It was nice of you to get up so early,” Erin said, a little shyly.

“Well, it seemed like a shame to miss the opportunity, since it's hard to know when we'll be able to see each other next. You'll try to give me a call when you get back to the human world, won’t you?”

“A call?” Erin blinked. “On the telephone?”

“'Telephone?'” Jechrin looked blank. “No, I mean with an ivareh. Kirchel should have one. She can show you how to use it.”

“Oh.” Erin had no idea what an ivareh was, but she remembered that time she'd seen Kirchel talking to someone in the upstairs storage room and guessed that it was what she had been using. “All right. I’ll ask her about it. I already talked to her about coming back to Silmar again during the summer, and she said that we could...as long as my parents don't force me to go back home as soon as I tell them what's been happening, that is.... But Kirchel said she'd check to see where the nearest portal to my house is, too.”

“Good.” Jechrin smiled again. “I’m sure we’ll be able to see each other again soon, then.”

“I hope so.”

Arturyn seemed to have finished talking with Bredin. The latter had stopped taking notes now and had his papers tucked under one arm. Their four traveling companions had already started walking toward the large front doors. Kirchel and Arturyn both turned to Erin.

“Come on,” Arturyn said, beckoning for her to follow them. “We need to get going.”

Erin took a hesitant step forward, glancing back at Jechrin.

“I’ll walk out with you,” Jechrin offered, smiling a little at her reluctant expression.

He and Erin walked side by side behind Arturyn and Kirchel. When they were outside the entrance hall, Erin saw two carriages waiting for them near the palace gate, each harnessed to two paskjys. There was also a group of about a dozen guards who were each holding the reins of a paskjy.

When the guards saw them emerging from the palace, one of them called out a command to the others, and they all mounted their paskjys and moved them into line with the carriages—half of them in front and half behind. Arturyn led Kirchel and Erin toward the front carriage while the other four went to the rear one. Arturyn helped Kirchel climb inside and then turned to Erin.

“I hope the trip goes well for everyone,” Jechrin said. “And I’ll see you again soon.”

Erin nodded. Then, on impulse, she reached up and gave him a brief hug. Jechrin looked startled by the gesture but also a bit happy.

“Take care of yourself, all right?” he told her softly.

“I will. You take care, too.”

They exchanged one last smile, and then Erin turned and walked to the carriage. As Arturyn took her hand to help her in, she saw him shaking his head, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Anaurians…” he muttered, his voice somehow sounding both amused and sad at the same time.

The carriage had two long padded seats running across the front and back, facing each other. Kirchel was sitting on the far end of the rear one, and Erin sat down next to her. Arturyn climbed in behind her and took the front seat.

There were windows in the sides of the carriage, and Erin leaned toward the closest one as their procession began to move. Jechrin had moved a little ways back from the line of paskjys and carriages and was watching them leave. Erin kept her eyes on him until they had passed through the gate and he was out of sight. Then she leaned back in her seat with a small sigh.

Kirchel and Arturyn were both watching her.

“You really like him, don’t you?” Kirchel asked, smiling.

Erin nodded but didn’t say anything. Her throat was feeling rather tight.

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It was strange. She'd only known Jechrin for a few days, and it wasn't like she'd never see him again. But the separation felt oddly painful for some reason....

She looked back out the window, watching the city moving past them. The streets were less crowded than usual, although there were still enough people who stopped and stared as they went past that Erin was grateful that they were hidden inside the carriage.

There were a lot of advantages in being friends with the Emperor, but all the attention wasn’t one of them.

The sun still hadn’t risen above the mountains by the time they reached the forest around the portal, and it was dark and shadowy among the trees. Erin was glad they had so many guards with them. They were probably perfectly safe that close to the city, but she couldn’t help remembering the last time she’d been in a dark forest, tied to a tree and waiting for whatever horrible fate the Mataiths decided to inflict on her.

She shivered slightly and turned away from the window and the dark trees, pulling her cloak more tightly around her.

Their procession stopped in the clearing outside the portal. The gatekeeper, Kaeld, had apparently been told they were coming because he was standing near the cave entrance, waiting for them. When their carriage had come to a halt, Arturyn got out and walked over to speak to him.

“How are we supposed to fit all the paskjys and everything through?” Erin asked. “The cave’s not big enough, is it?”

“It’s all right,” Kirchel said. “Kaeld can stretch it for us.”

“He can stretch rock?”

Kirchel nodded. “Gatekeepers have a special kind of magic that lets them control and monitor the portal system. That includes making the cave and portal big enough for a carriage to fit through.”

Arturyn was back in just a few minutes. After he had climbed back into the carriage and shut the door, they started moving slowly forward again. Looking out the window, Erin saw the rim of the cave entrance glow pale white as they approached and start to expand, like a balloon inflating.

As they moved into the cave, she saw that the curtained opening of the portal had also grown to several times its normal size. Kaeld was standing next to one of the pillars beside it, looking ghostly in the blue light coming from the flaming rocks.

There was a moment of darkness as they passed through the curtain, and then they emerged into another cave. Erin guessed that this one had been magically stretched, too, because it looked even larger than the one they had just left. Sunlight was streaming in through the entrance, seeming very bright after the dimly lit valley they'd been in before.

They slowed to a stop again outside the cave. Arturyn opened the carriage door and stepped out, then turned back to Erin and Kirchel.

“Come on,” he said, offering his hand to help Erin out.

“We’re not there already, are we?” she asked, confused. Teral had said it would take them several hours to get to the Raylmiyr capital.

Arturyn shook his head. “No. But we need to let the guards here see everyone who’s coming through. Nirayls are very big on security. Come on, it will only take a few minutes.”

He helped them both out. Looking around, Erin saw that they were near the end of a long, narrow ravine. High stone cliffs rose on three sides of them, and a road led down the ravine on the fourth side, winding back and forth alongside a river full of large, sharp-looking rocks. The river came from somewhere up above the ravine and fell down the cliffs at the end of it in a long waterfall. The splashing made a dull, steady roar and produced a thin mist that hung in the air.

In spite of the elegant waterfall, the mist-shrouded cliffs and jagged rocks gave the scene a rather foreboding atmosphere.

Erin felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at Kirchel, who was standing close to her. Kirchel nodded toward the front of their procession.

“Those are Nirayls,” she said quietly.

Erin looked in the direction Kirchel had indicated and felt her mouth drop open. Seven Nirayls were moving toward them, each riding a cat-like animal the size of a horse.

Kirchel had said that Nirayls were like fairies, and Erin probably would have said the same thing if she’d had to describe them in a single sentence. But they were hardly the delicate, flowery pixies she was used to seeing in books.

They were tall and muscular, but graceful, with pale ivory skin and long, vividly-colored hair. They had long pointed ears—even longer than Wraith’s—that were connected by a web of skin to the sides of their head and to a bony ridge that curved over their large, almond-shaped eyes. Their faces tapered out slightly below the eyes, forming a kind of short muzzle.

But the Nirayls’ most impressive feature was their wings. These weren’t at all like the butterfly or dragonfly wings that fairies in paintings usually had. They weren’t really like any kind of wings Erin had ever seen before.

They were formed of something that produced a bright, shimmering glow—like a mixture of fire and lightning. It was hard for Erin to see exactly how the wings were shaped because the Nirayls all had theirs folded back, but they looked similar to those of a dragon or a bat...except that there was no skin between the ribs—just long fiery strands that swayed and shifted individually, like seaweed drifting in an ocean current.

Each Nirayl had wings of a different color. In that small group, there were two different shades of blue, red, gold, two greens, and turquoise. Their hair color was a darker shade of their wing color.

Arturyn had moved forward to meet the group of Nirayls and was speaking to the turquoise-winged one, who looked like he was in charge. Arturyn was speaking Silmarith, but the sounds the Nirayl made in response didn’t sound like speech at all. It was like music—a strange and beautiful kind of song. The closest thing to it that Erin had ever heard was whalesong, but this was much more intricate, with quicker movements and a wider range of pitches.

“Is that how they talk?” she asked Kirchel in a low voice.

Kirchel nodded. “They understand Silmarith and English, though, so be careful what you say while we’re here,” she whispered back. “You don’t want to offend anyone.”

The turquoise-winged Nirayl had dismounted and was following Arturyn toward their carriage. Erin watched them approach, feeling rather nervous. It didn’t really make sense that a Nirayl guard would be more intimidating to her than the Silmarith Emperor. But Arturyn didn’t have huge, glowing wings. And he spoke normal words.

When Arturyn and the Nirayl reached them, Arturyn gestured towards Kirchel and said something in Silmarith that included the words 'Kirchel Lir-Anaurian.' Kirchel inclined her head respectfully to the Nirayl when Arturyn said her name, and Erin assumed he had been introducing her. He then did the same thing with Erin, and she imitated Kirchel, bowing her head when Arturyn said her name.

Perhaps she was imagining it, but it seemed to her that the Nirayl’s turquoise eyes narrowed slightly when he looked at her, and his expression became rather condescending. Was it because she looked so obviously human? Kirchel at least looked like a Silmarith.

After a brief pause, the turquoise Nirayl nodded, and he and Arturyn moved on to the next carriage, where their four companions were standing quietly, waiting for them. They repeated the same procedure—Arturyn giving the Nirayl the name of each person as they bowed their heads in respect.

Erin turned away. The turquoise Nirayl’s haughty expression made her feel uneasy. Instead, she looked back at his mount, which had lowered itself to the ground for him to dismount and was still lying there on its stomach, sphinx-like.

It was like a cross between a leopard and a lion, with a little bit of caracal thrown in. It had a thick black mane, and its pointed ears had black tufts of fur on the tips. Its eyes were bright green, and its round face and sleek, muscular body were pale gold with rows of large black spots.

As Erin watched, the cat yawned, revealing gleaming white teeth the size of steak knives. Even lying down, its head was nearly level with hers.

She remembered Kirchel being able to talk to the sethien and make it follow her commands. Was that because Kirchel was part Nirayl? Maybe all Nirayls could control animals like that. Erin doubted that one of those huge cats would have been willing to carry her around.

When the turquoise Nirayl had finished inspecting everyone in their group, he turned and gestured to his companions. The Nirayl with red wings and hair slid off his mount and walked over to them, carrying a dark blue bag that looked like it was made of velvet.

He handed the bag to the turquoise Nirayl, who opened it and pulled out a handful of thin, silver rings. He looked at them for a moment as though counting them, then dropped them back into the bag, which he handed to Arturyn before he and the red Nirayl walked back to their cats and mounted them again.

The turquoise-winged Nirayl spoke briefly to the rest of the group. It sounded like he was giving orders. Then he and all but two of the others turned their mounts and went back along the road in the direction they had come, disappearing behind the rock wall.

The two that had stayed behind—the gold one and one of the two greens—moved into line with their procession, one going to the front of the group and the other to the rear.

Erin could see the paskjys shying and tossing their heads in alarm as the big cats came near them. But the Nirayls spoke softly to them in their strange musical language, and they quieted and stood still again.

It looked like they could control animals....

Arturyn was taking the silver rings out of the bag and handing them around to the group. He gave a small handful to one of the rear guards, who took one and passed the others to his companions. The counselors and their wives each got one, as did the guard who was driving their carriage. Then Arturyn walked back to where Erin and Kirchel were standing.

“You need to put these on your wrists,” he explained, handing a ring to each of them. “And you can get back inside now. We’ll be starting again in a minute.”