Alec turned around to find Seregil—and the chicken—gone. The road was nothing more than a grassy track along the bank and the stars were gone. He walked up the rise again and looked out over the landscape. In this light it didn’t look much different than it had a few minutes ago with Seregil. Mika’s mute little friend was probably out there, tending his ghostly sheep.

It was too far to walk to Zikara from here, but perhaps he could get a look at Menosi as it had been. He started up the river trail toward where the camp would be, but he hadn’t gone far when the stars were back and Seregil was waving to him from atop the rock. The chicken was on the ground in front of him, head tucked under her wing, apparently unharmed.

“I don’t understand,” said Alec, walking up to join Seregil. “Why is it different here than in the palace?”

“That’s a question for Thero.” Seregil scooped up the sleepy hen and they walked back to camp and Thero’s tent. Micum and Mika were there with the wizard and looked up in surprise as Seregil and Alec came in.

“It didn’t work,” Seregil said, handing Thero the hen. “Alec got in and out like Mika did, but the chicken didn’t.”

“So I see.” Thero examined the bird closely, then gave it to Mika to carry back to the poulterer. “Well, that answers that question. Only a dra’gorgos can drag another living thing across.”

“That doesn’t do us much good,” said Micum, lighting his pipe from the lantern. “If we wear our amulets they can’t touch us, and if we take them off, the monsters kill us.”

“Precisely.” Thero sighed. “So there is a portal by the river.”

“There is, but it’s different,” Alec told him. “I didn’t see a portal, I was just suddenly on the other side, and it was the same place, rather than transporting me like the portals in the palace do. I just walked in and back out again. I wanted to go up to the city but I came out by the river before I could get there.”

“Very strange.” Thero went to the desk and unrolled a map he’d made of the palace and surrounding area. He’d marked portals found around the palace in blue ink. Now he dipped his pen and made a wavy blue line beside the river. “What Alec has found so far are like rents in time. But this? Perhaps it’s more a thin place in the fabric, as it were?” He looked down at it for a moment, then found a caliper and used it to draw a circle on the map with the town at the center and the farthest portal at the palace marking the circumference. The others gathered around to watch. The place by the river was outside the circle.