Phania shuddered. “She feeds on them. No one lasts long down there.”

“I had an escort with me. Are they down there now? Captain Sedge was leading them.”

“Sakor’s Flame!” Phania groaned. “His face is the last thing I saw before I ended up here. If he and the others are still alive, then they’re in the dungeons below.”

“How do I get down there?”

“You don’t, Highness. I’ve tried myself, but Rhazat obscures the stairway somehow. I don’t even know where it is.”

“Why hasn’t she killed you?”

“I almost wish she had, Highness. She said the night she took me that she needed a good servant, and that it amused her to let me linger on.”

“Courage, Lieutenant. We’ll get out,” Klia told her.

With Phania in the lead, they headed for the main gate. The grey, oppressive sky was brightening, but there were no other people on the street. It was eerie, being alone in this dreary town, and she was anxious to be out of it.

“Where is everyone?”

“Sometimes they’re here, sometimes not.”

The gate was unguarded, but the bar was too heavy to lift.

“This way, Highness.” Phania went to a postern door and opened it. There were no guards outside, either.

Rather than relief, this only made Klia more uneasy. This all felt like another trap or a strange dream, although she was reasonably sure she was awake. She bit her tongue just to be sure.

Once outside, there was the matter of where to go.

“Rivers always lead somewhere, and you said you tried upstream. So we go downstream,” Klia said, setting off in that direction. “Hopefully we’ll find a town less strange than Zikara.”

Phania fell in beside her on the river road but said nothing.

They walked all morning, stopping only to rest and eat. Water was a problem, however. She hadn’t found a waterskin at Rhazat’s tower, and when she tried to drink from the river she discovered that it was some sort of illusion. It looked and sounded like rushing water, but her hands came out of the water dry and drinking it was like trying to chew air.

“How much worse can this place get?” she wondered grimly.

“How much worse could anything be than this?” Phania sighed.

“Don’t give out on me now,” Klia ordered. “Eat something and then we’ll go on. What was it like, when you were captured?”

The lieutenant shrugged as they sat on the riverbank eating. “One minute I was talking to Captain Sedge. The next something grabbed me and I was here, or in the tower, rather. My weapons were gone, and the queen gave me this dress to wear and made me a servant.”

“You do the cooking?”

“No.” The woman shivered. “I don’t know where the food comes from. It just appears.”

“Does she withhold food from you to make you obey her?”