Thero pulled off his boots and began rummaging in a clothes chest. He soon came up with a pair of leather shoes and put them on.

“What are you doing?” asked Alec.

“As I said, Great Seals almost always operate as pairs. I’m going back to that cave to look for an outer seal.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Thero gave him a curt nod and turned to an equipment chest, thrusting things into a leather bag.

“What if there’s a portal there now?” asked Micum. “If you get in by way of the cave, how will you know where to get out again? If she spirited you away to it, then you don’t even know where it is.”

Alec shrugged. “We’ll just have to take what the Lightbearer sends, I guess. I got back here by touching the seal on that side. At least I think I touched it. I was reaching for it when I ended up in the other cave. If that doesn’t work this time, then I’ll try to find the river and follow it, as I did before. All I need is a good stock of food and water.” He paused. “All those people in the town. If they’ve been in that place with the necromancer for as long as you seem to think, then how have they stayed alive without real water? And food. The only livestock I saw were the sheep. How would they survive? And now that I think of it, I only saw the one flock. That wouldn’t be enough to feed a town that size even if you slaughtered them all at once.”

Thero pulled the bag shut and slipped his arm through the strap. “And what do you deduce from all this?”

Alec frowned as something began to take form at the back of his mind. “I was in the town all day and after sunset, but I never smelled a cooking fire, or bread baking, or anything else like it. There were no street vendors, either, or food stalls in the marketplace. I didn’t see a single person eating anything.” He turned to the others as a nasty chill ran up his spine. “Their clothing and language … If that seal created a plane to imprison the necromancer in, then maybe those people were caught in there, too, and after all this time … Could they all be ghosts?”

“That would explain a lot of what you observed,” Seregil replied. His eyes were closed now and his brows were drawn together in pain, but he was still in the conversation. “And what happened to your clothing that you stole there—these rags—this has something to do with time.”

“What if the necromancer is dead, too?”

“You saw her perform a spell on Mika. That seems unlikely for a dead woman,” said Thero.

“I’ll carry food this time, just in case.”