"I know," Prinivere said, her voice a dull rasp.
Ialin settled on a shriveled shoulder. Falima lowered herself to one of the chests, listening on the fringes. As usual, she could understand only half the conversation, at most. Collins wondered whether the old woman actually used fluent English or some device translated her words into whatever language necessary for comprehension by every listener. He only knew he used English exclusively and carried nothing to make it sound like anything else.
"You know?" Collins needed clarification, but before he could voice it, Prinivere continued.
"I know the reason you came to me. Your companions told me."
Good. Collins nodded.
"There are no other portals."
Stunned by bad news so unceremoniously and abruptly delivered, Collins froze, speechless. Zylas should have told him that days ago and rescued him from this ridiculous charade. The Barakhains could have kept their beloved elder safe, unmet and unknown, and they would not have wasted time taking some inane, meandering path to her. Gradually, the full implications seeped into a mind already plagued with desperation. They had no choice but to return to the place where Collins had started and find a way past a contingent of archers.
"But-" Prinivere said. That one word seemed to float, alone in a vast vacuum of hope. It felt to Collins like hours passed before she continued, though she never paused. "-I might be able to create a new portal."
Still unmoving, Collins lost his breath. "Create… one?" He forced the words out, then gasped in a clumsy breath accompanied by saliva. He choked, coughing so vigorously that Falima leaped to her feet and patted his back helpfully.
Wanting to hear what Prinivere had to say, Collins waved Falima off and tried to control his seizing diaphragm.
But Prinivere did not go on. Turning her attention to Zylas, she engaged the albino in conversation while Collins lost the battle to his cough.
For several moments, Collins struggled, throat raw and full. Finally, the spasms died to a tickle, and he regained control of speech. "Sorry." His voice sounded hoarse and unrecognizable. "Did you say you could create a portal?"
Prinivere spun back to face Collins. "I said I might be able to, yes."
"So…" Collins kept his sentence slow to avoid the need to cough again. "… you're… a sorceress?"
Prinivere's recessed eyes narrowed, so they seemed to disappear into the wrinkles. "Sorceress." She ran the word over her tongue, then shook her head. "Not sure what you mean."
Collins sought synonyms. "A witch." He watched Prinivere's face for clues to her disposition to see if the word had the same negative connotations here as back home. "A magician. A wizard. A person who uses magic."
"No such thing," Zylas grunted. "People, magic." He shook his head. "Don't go together."
Collins suppressed an urge to laugh. If people turning into animals isn't magic, what is? He kept the thought to himself. It seemed the populace had little control over the transformation. "You have magic," he reminded.
"I carry a magical item," Zylas admitted, though he glanced around as he did so, as if afraid someone outside their group might overhear. "That doesn't make me a user of magic."
In strict terms, of course, it did; but Collins decided it was better not to make an issue of such a thing. "If not by magic, how do you make a portal?" Collins wondered if he might have the means to do it himself.
"Making a portal does require magic." Zylas confused the issue still further. "That's why we need the lady's help."
"But she's not a sorceress."
"No," Prinivere patted her hair into place.
"So you have some sort of portal-making item."
"No such thing." Zylas said.
Clear as mud. Collins sighed and took the chest seat Falima had vacated. "I don't get it."
"You will," Zylas promised with all the believability of a politician a week before an election. "You will."
An undertone in the albino's voice made Collins wonder if he wanted to.
Chapter 11
PRINIVERE wandered to the farthest corner of the cave to sleep while Collins discussed matters fervently with the one companion who did understand him and insisted on translating for the one who did not. Twilight faded from the opening and the cave so gradually that, even in a darkness that might have seemed solid under other circumstances, Collins found himself able to differentiate between the gray silhouettes of his companions.
"Let's talk about those rats back at the lab." Though redirected several times, Zylas always returned to the matter Collins now fervently wished he had never raised.
Collins sighed, certain he would have to change his major. After this day, he might never find the courage to euthanize another experimental animal. That, or fill my home with pet rats, nice, guinea pigs, and monkeys. He imagined the look of horror twisting his landlady's meaty features; she screamed at the sight of a large spider. "They'll be fine," Collins insisted with a finality he hoped would satisfy his companion-this time. "They've got plenty of water till my preceptor gets back." Is that today? "At most they'll go a day without food, and their cages will stink a bit."
Zylas' expression remained taut.
Collins laid an arm across the albino's shoulders. "Look, man. There's nothing we can do about it, is there? The whole school's getting back tomorrow. Believe me when I say every biology professor at Algary will head straight for the lab." Where they'll see the crappy job I did and flunk me on the spot. More concerned for his future than the temporary comfort of a bunch of laboratory rats, Collins again sought a topic switch. "So what's the big secret about Prinivere anyway? I mean, besides the fact that she's a woman when you had me believing she was a man."
Zylas shrugged off Collins' arm. "Lady Prinivere," he corrected in a bristly voice. "And I don't recall ever calling the lady a man."
"Not directly." Collins admitted. "But you did refer to her only as 'the elder.' Never even used a pronoun as far as I remember. Didn't correct me when I called her 'him'."
"That's you assuming, not deception." Zylas paced to Falima and joined her on the chest.
Depends on what the definition of "is" is. Collins shook off the presidential comparison. "You can claim you didn't lie. But not correcting an assumption you knew was false is deception." He straddled the opposite chest, facing Zylas directly. "Are you going to tell me it's different in your world?"
Zylas conceded with a sigh. "I'm sorry. Vernon thought that, if we never made it to the lady, any information you had that the guards might get would be… misleading. He's a smart man, and it seemed safest at the time."
Falima poked Zylas' back, and he turned to translate.
A sensation of being watched spiraled through Collins suddenly, and he shivered, glancing toward the cave mouth. "You've managed to deflect my question again, I notice. What exactly-" The hair on the nape of his neck prickled. A realization of intense and imminent danger grasped his gut like an icy hand. His heart raced into wild pounding, and words caught like a sticky lump in his throat. Panic sent him lurching to his feet, and he skittered to the cave mouth before logic trickled between otherwise ravaged thoughts. What the hell?
Pressed against the stone wall, Collins glanced back into the cave. Zylas and Falima had also risen, their backs to him. Though they had not run, they did seem agitated. A dinosaur-like creature took up most of the back of the cave: long-necked and -legged, covered in greenish-black scales that seemed to glow. Plates jutted from the neck, back, and tail, which ended in a ragged scar. "Dr-dragon?" Collins stammered out the only English word that might suit this massive animal. Though he knew it must be Prinivere's switch-form, he could not force himself to reenter the cave.
Ideas rushed back into Collins' mind. Memory came first, of a girl he had dated in college. A fan of aliens, angels, and conspiracy theories, she had once brought him a book that "conclusively proved" the existence of dragons. For the purposes of domestic harmony, he had read it, a pseudoscientific account filled with blurry photographs, anecdotal sightings, and misconceptions a freshmen science student should see through. He had tried to argue the biological impossibility of a heavy, four-legged creature with wings. If dragons did exist, he had asserted, they would look like pteranodons. Wings had served as the forelimbs of every flying animal throughout history.