“Now, tell me about this Teral fellow,” Sarah said as they passed through the herb garden. “Who is he?”
While they walked up the canyon, Erin explained about meeting Teral at the Council Ball and how he and Kirchel had been almost inseparable for a few days. She also mentioned Jechrin’s concerns about the relationship and Kirchel’s peculiar behavior while they were in Katan Jyrat and after they'd come back home.
“She forgot about him?” Sarah asked incredulously. Her expression had been growing more and more worried as Erin had been talking.
“Well, not exactly forgot...” Erin said, panting slightly.
Sarah could walk much faster now that she had four legs, and Erin had to half run in order to keep up with her and Anthony. She was extremely grateful that her left knee wasn't in the same state it had been a couple of weeks ago.
“Last night I suggested to her that she might want to call him, and she knew who I was talking about. But it seemed to take her a minute to really remember him. Or at least to remember why she might want to talk to him. But we were talking about Jechrin just before that, and she seemed to remember him just fine.”
Sarah stared down at the ground, looking deep in thought. “I don’t know what that could mean,” she said after a moment, sounding troubled. “But I don’t like it.”
“Sounds kind of like he slipped her something,” Anthony said. He seemed to have recovered somewhat from his shock and had been listening attentively to their conversation. “Some sort of drug might make her act like that. But I don’t know if you’ve got those kinds of drugs in this magical world of yours. Love potions, maybe?”
Sarah considered that, her head cocked to one side.
“You could be on to something there,” she said slowly. “He might have been influencing her somehow. Not with a love potion. Those do exist, but no one uses them much—just for pranks, generally. They don’t last very long, and they have some obvious side effects. Someone in Katan Jyrat would have noticed right away if Kirchel had been given one of those.” She shook her head. “No, it would have to be something much more subtle than that. And more powerful.”
“Arturyn said that he thought Jechrin might have some Thryith blood in him—because he could make me understand and speak Silmarith,” Erin said. “If he does, then his father probably does, too.”
She paused, frowning. Something had suddenly occurred to her.
“Teral wasn't happy when he found out about Jechrin's language projection. He said it was because experimenting with magic is too dangerous. But what if he just didn’t want anyone to know that Jechrin can use Thryith magic? Because then they'd be able to figure out that Teral can, too.”
“Thryith magic…” Sarah repeated, her eyes widening. “Well, that's a possibility. But I’m not sure how one of the Silmarith royal lines could get that much Thryith blood in it without anyone realizing.”
Erin shrugged. “Well, just look at Kirchel. She’s half Nirayl and no one knew until last week. Besides, it was Jechrin’s mother who was from the royal family. Teral’s only king because he married her. And he's technically just a regent—Jechrin is supposed to become king once he's old enough.”
They had reached the small clearing outside the portal cave. Sarah and Erin both moved purposefully toward the cave entrance, but Anthony hung back, looking around.
“Uh…where exactly are we going?” he asked, his expression blank.
Erin paused and looked back at him. “Into the cave. That’s where the portal is.”
“What cave?”
Erin raised an eyebrow. The cave opening was right there in front of them. How could Anthony possibly miss it...?
“Oh, right. He can’t see it.” Sarah had also stopped and was looking back over her shoulder. “Most of the gates in this world are enchanted so that people without magic in their blood won’t be able to see them. Not that they could get through without magic anyway...but it still tends to cause problems when someone stumbles onto a gate without knowing what it is.” She looked up at the stone archway. “I could take off the enchantment, but it will be faster to just sneak him in around it. Come over here, both of you.”
They went over to where Sarah was standing, right in front of the cave entrance. Anthony was still staring at what probably looked like a solid stone wall to him. He seemed rather apprehensive, as though he thought something might jump out at him from the rock face if he took his eyes off it.
“It really is there,” Sarah reassured him, watching his anxious face. “You’ll be able to see it once we get inside. Now, all you have to do is shut your eyes.”
Anthony shot her a skeptical glance but obediently closed his eyes.
“Good. Keep them closed until I tell you. Now, Erin, you take his hand and lead him into the cave.”
Erin couldn’t help feeling a touch of skepticism herself, but she did as she was told, taking Anthony’s hand in her own and pulling him gently in the right direction.
“Trust her, Ant,” Sarah said quietly as Anthony took a couple of hesitant steps forward. “Trust us both.” She started walking slowly backwards, keeping just ahead of them and still watching Anthony. “Remember, we’re right here in front of you. We’ll run into the rock before you will, so you don’t need to worry about it. Just keep walking.”
Anthony was moving more confidently now, and Erin realized that he was following Sarah’s voice as much as her pull on his hand. She had to admit, she was impressed by the amount of trust he was placing in them to follow them into worlds unknown like this.
She suspected his feelings for Sarah had a lot to do with it....
“That’s it,” Sarah went on as they passed through the cave entrance. Her voice was still soft and encouraging. “Just keep coming. Good.” She had stopped walking, and Erin, who really was about to run into a stone wall now, did the same. “You can open your eyes now.”
Tentatively, Anthony opened his eyes and looked around. His eyes widened at the sight of the stone pillars and green flames. He turned around, looking slightly panicky, as though checking to make sure there was still a way out behind him. He stared out through the cave opening at the surrounding trees for a long moment and then slowly turned back around.
He looked close to fainting again when he saw Sarah touching the rock wall between the pillars and making it melt open.
“This is so weird…” he said, shaking his head, his voice sounding almost like a whimper.
“You don’t have to come with us, Ant,” Sarah said gently. She was standing in front of the open passageway and looking back at him with an understanding expression. “I won’t blame you if you want to just turn around and go back to work.”
Anthony looked at her uncertainly for a moment, as though the suggestion were tempting. Then he set his jaw and shook his head again, resolutely this time.
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“I’m coming with you,” he said firmly.
In spite of her wolfish features, Erin was almost sure that Sarah was smiling. There was definitely a look of admiration in her eyes.
“Let’s go then. They’ve already got a good head start, and it will take some time to follow their trail.” Sarah turned and started along the dark passageway.
Erin opened her mouth to ask if she and Anthony should take the rocks from the pedestals to light the way through the cave, but the instant Sarah set foot inside it, the entire tunnel lit up with a dull, blue-green glow.
Erin blinked in surprise. Then she closed her mouth again, and followed after Sarah's disappearing tail, Anthony close behind her.
As they walked deeper into the cave, Sarah lifted her twitching nose into the air, apparently smelling out the trail that Kirchel and Teral had left. It must have been quite strong because Sarah didn't seem to have any trouble picking out their path through the twisting, branching tunnels.
“How can you follow their scent in here?” Erin asked after several minutes of silence. “Wouldn’t they have gone directly from your gate to the one they wanted? That’s how we did it when I went through portals with Kirchel.”
“I’m not following their scent,” Sarah said in between her steady snuffling. “When someone goes through the portal system—even if they use the shortcut method—it leaves a magical trail here in the cave network. That’s the scent I’m following.”
“And only gatekeepers can smell the trails?” Erin remembered Arturyn telling her that the gatekeepers were the only ones who could track people through portals. “So you must have helped Kirchel find me when I came through with Wraith…I guess she told you about him?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes and yes. I’ve never seen Kirchel more worried than she was that night.... Fortunately, you came through the long way, so your scent was in here, too. It made the trail easier to follow, so I could almost move fast enough for her.”
“You helped save my life, then,” Erin said soberly. “Mine and Arturyn’s.” She was quiet for a minute. “I don’t suppose you could smell Wraith when you were following me, could you?”
“Not a whiff.” Sarah gave her an apologetic glance. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you what he is any better than Kirchel could.”
“Who’s Wraith?” Anthony asked curiously.
“My guardian angel,” Erin said with a sigh. “Or personal demon, however you want to look at it. I don’t know who he is, really. Or even what he is. He’s not human, and no one I’ve talked to seems to know what else he could be.
"All I know is that I started seeing him every so often after I hurt my knee. No one else can see him. It sounds like it had something to do with my reaction to the pain medication. But I kept seeing him after I stopped taking it—nobody can figure out why. And just lately he’s been…well, he makes me do things. I don’t know how. But he made me go through this cave and into the other world a couple of weeks ago.”
Anthony raised an eyebrow. “So is that what was going on that day Nathan and I saw you tearing out of the greenhouse and Kirchel had to go after you? She said something afterward about your medication sometimes making you see things that frightened you.”
Erin nodded. “Yes, that was him.”
“So, rubbing shoulders with invisible demons and making trips to parallel universes? Interesting summer vacation you have going on, Erin.”
“Tell me about it…” Erin muttered, rolling her eyes.
----------------------------------------
The small chamber Sarah led them to was almost identical to the one Erin had gone through when she had been traveling with Wraith. Sarah halted briefly as they entered, regarding the curtained archway in front of them with something like a frown.
“Where does this lead to?” Erin asked. She found herself speaking in a low voice, as though not to be overheard by someone lurking just behind the curtain, even though she was reasonably sure there wasn’t anyone there.
“Aner. Just outside the capital, Eloril.” Sarah was still looking at the archway with a troubled expression. “And the trail smells like King Talinde entered through this same gate when he came as well.”
“Well, didn’t you say he was the king of Aner?” Anthony asked. “It makes sense that he would be coming from—and going back to—the capital city.”
“Yes, it does,” Sarah said slowly. “It’s just…I know the keeper at this gate, and she’s usually very reliable. It makes me wonder….” She hesitated. “Well, we can ask her what happened when we get to the other side, I suppose.”
She started toward the archway again. With a slight flick of her head, she made the curtain billow up and hover in the air so they could pass underneath it. Erin put a hand on one of Sarah’s wings as they stepped into the darkness and saw Anthony copying her on Sarah’s other side.
A moment later, they had emerged into a cave formed out of dark grey stone. It was lit with an eerie green light from the fires on the two pedestals next to the portal. A tunnel led off to their right, but no light was visible at the other end of it. Erin wasn’t sure exactly how many time zones they had jumped by going through the portal, but she knew it must be quite late at night here in Aner. A chilly breeze blew in through the tunnel, making her shiver.
“What’s with the change in clothes?” Anthony said, sounding surprised.
Erin glanced over at him and then down at herself. They were both now dressed in typical Silmarith attire.
“That’s built into the portal magic. So you don’t go around in clothes from the wrong world and have people staring at you,” Sarah said. “Don’t worry, I'll change your clothes back when we go back to the other world.”
She had her nose in the air and was sniffing vigorously. After a moment, she gave a kind of soft, high-pitched bark. Then she listened with her large ears pricked up and an expression of concentration on her face.
“Verasa’s not answering me,” she said after a long pause, looking worried.
“Maybe she can’t hear you?” Anthony suggested. “I don’t see anyone here. Maybe she’s gone out somewhere.”
Sarah shook her head. “Just because you can’t see a keeper doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And even if she’s not close by, she should still be in tune with her gate. She should hear me.”
She let out another bark and then stood listening anxiously. After several minutes of tense silence, Sarah shook her head again and began sniffing around on the floor of the cave.
Erin and Anthony exchanged a worried look, but neither of them spoke, letting Sarah keep her full attention on her investigation.
“Stay here,” Sarah said after she had circled the cave twice. “I’ll be back.”
She started out the tunnel, moving slowly and sniffing the floor and walls thoroughly as she went. Erin couldn’t suppress a small, nervous shiver as she watched Sarah disappear into the darkness. She edged a little closer to Anthony and then realized he had just taken a step closer to her as well.
There was a very long silence.
Finally, Erin, who was straining her ears for any sound from outside, heard the faint clicking of Sarah’s claws on the stone floor and saw her reemerging from the blackness at the end of the tunnel. She was still carefully smelling the rock and air, and she looked, if possible, even graver than she had when she had gone outside.
“She’s still here in the cave,” Sarah said in a low voice as she drew near them. “The scent in here is fresher than the scent outside.”
“Here in the cave?” Erin’s voice came out slightly higher than normal. She ran her gaze around the cave again, wondering if the gatekeeper Verasa could be lurking in a dark corner. But she didn’t see anything. “Where? Why isn’t she showing herself to us?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said quietly. For the first time, she sounded a little afraid.
Erin and Anthony stood near the archway and watched silently as Sarah began another round of the cave, passing her nose over every inch of the stone floor and as high along the walls as she could reach.
When she had finished her circle, she started around yet again, but this time she focused her attention on the left side of the chamber.
She finally came to a halt near a section of the far left wall, sniffing furiously at the dark rock. When she had covered the lower portion of the wall, Sarah stood up on her hind legs, placing her front paws against the wall, and continued her examination up higher. Then she finally stopped sniffing and stared at the wall just above her head.
For a long moment, she didn’t move. Then slowly, cautiously, she stretched her paw up to touch the rock wall.
The stone glowed faintly and then melted away, revealing a hollow in the wall’s surface. Something large and dark rolled out of it.
Erin let out a yelp of surprise, and Sarah leapt backward as the object fell to the floor with a muffled thud.
For what felt like a very long time, the three of them stood there, frozen, gazing down at the silent, inert figure.
Even the dim green firelight was enough to clearly make out the crumpled wings and splayed limbs, the matted, bloodstained fur, and the vacant, staring eyes.
They had found Verasa.