* * *
Jenna woke. A damp musty odor and the stench of accumulated fecal matter assailed her nostrils. She coughed against a gag. Her entire body throbbed with pain, but her wrists and ankles hurt the most, bound so tightly as to cut off the circulation to her hands and feet. Her fingers and toes were so numb she could scarcely feel them. She lay in a fetal pose on a clump of straw. Light filtered in through a cave entrance, beyond which Jenna could see blue sky. Where in Pharas was she?
Her last memory—gripping a rail on the back of Xandor’s wagon before the caravan had departed Vagar—made her wince. She needed Xandor now, but he was off doing his Age Quest.
With another girl.
In her last waking moment, Jenna had felt a surge of magic and caught a glimpse of a silver feather as it was thrust into her hair by some invisible force. She’d been invisible too, but some wizard more powerful than she had rendered her unconscious, using the enchanted feather to do it. Somehow, the feather had since been removed, allowing her to regain consciousness. An attempt to raise her head to look for it failed miserably.
She reached out with her thoughts to Willem, but before the mouse responded something moved in the shadows next to her, breaking her concentration. A creature squatted on two legs, with scales covering its unclothed body and a long tail waving behind. A hoobla!
The hoobla clutched a familiar silver feather that shimmered in the sun’s rays. Jenna trembled as she sensed powerful time-altering magic emanating from the item. She hadn’t only been rendered unconscious. She’d been in stasis from the time she’d left Vagar to now. There was no way to know how long that had been.
“You is awakens.” A forked tongue flicked out of the hoobla’s fanged mouth and tasted Jenna’s cheek. The reptile man ran a claw down the side of her neck. “Yes, you is awakens. You is hungry. I gets you food and water. You grows. You makes good stew.” He licked her cheek again.
Though the sound was muffled by her gag, Jenna screamed.