It wasn’t there. Come to that, neither was the pillow!
She sat up with a jerk, eyes wide in alarm. Melilot’s guest room had vanished. This was another place entirely, a long low-ceilinged stone- walled hall, wherein she found herself on an oblong padded couch, Klik- itagh still at her side. The air was pleasantly warm, pervaded with fra- grance from dried herbs sprinkled on a brazier.
Looking down on her, clad in a many-layered cape, was a tall and rather handsome youth . . . but where a normal person’s eyes would be, there burned two red betraying sparks. She exhaled with a gasp.
“Enas Yorl!” she exclaimed.
Her voice roused Klikitagh. He came together all of a piece, instantly swinging his legs to the floor-which was spread with soft pelts, sable, marten, and sea otter. He cast around for his sword, but there was no sign of it, or of his clothing. Perceiving in the unknown youth a captor and perhaps a rival, he shook sleep from his brain and advanced with both fists clubbed,
Or rather, tried to do so. When he set his foot down a second time, his limbs slowed, as though he were forcing his way through deep water against a fierce contrary current. With vast effort he achieved another step, but that was all; eventually he remained utterly still, balanced ab- surdly on his left leg, mouth ajar in a face that had become a mask of fury and frustration.
Jarveena knew how he was feeling. Just so had she been trapped at her first unexpected entry into the magician’s palace. Guarded by basilisks, it lay beside and beneath Prytanis Street, to the southeast of the Avenue of Temples.