There was a moment of dislocation, of being in one place and then another. The temperature warmed, the light brightened, and the smells that filled the air freshened. All of a sudden they were no longer underground, the passageway and the cavern they had fled as distant as yesterday. Instead, they stood at the mouth of a cave that opened out onto the forest they had seen while still on the other side of the strange transparency.

Phryne looked back the way they had come. The curtain and the passageway it had barred were gone. She was looking at a solid rock wall that formed the back of the cave in which they now found themselves. It was clear that magic had allowed them to leave, but would not allow them to reenter.

“I didn’t want to go back, anyway,” Phryne said softly, knowing there was no longer any reason even to consider it.

Leaving the cave and its sealed entrance to the underground tombs of the Gotrins behind them, they set out anew, emerging into the light of day and a forest of tall, multi-limbed trees that looked like oaks, but were something else entirely. Huge, hoary old growth, they formed a forest that stretched away from the cave and the hillside into which it burrowed for as far as they could see. Moss and lichen formed an eerie second skin over trunks and branches, the colors a mix of contrasting greens that allowed only bits and pieces of the graying bark beneath to show through.

“What are these?” Phryne asked.

Panterra shook his head. “Whatever they are, they’re dead. Look at the branches. Lichen and moss everywhere, but no sign of buds or leaves. The whole forest is dead, probably a long time for this much covering to spread. This doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever—”

He stopped in midsentence and looked at her, and she knew at once what he was thinking. “We’re not inside the valley anymore, are we?” she said. “We’re outside again.”

“I think so. I don’t understand it. The time and distances are all wrong. It must be the magic that made it possible for us to come this far in such a short time. We couldn’t have walked it in less than a day or two.” He paused. “But why would the Elfstones bring us this way? Why didn’t they keep us inside the valley? Phryne, did you do something…I don’t know, something that…something different…”

She gave him a look that silenced him at once. “I did exactly what I was told to do by Mistral. I did the same thing I did when she told me to test it the first time by trying to find you!” This time she didn’t blush. She was too angry. “Don’t you try to put this on me!”

“I was just…”

“You were just suggesting I did something wrong!”