"Nothing," Brinn said.

"And how do we know you're being honorable?" Aldwyn asked.

"I have no riches to lose on this one," he said. "I promise you, it's nothing I've ever heard before. And my mother yelled at me in every elvish dialect there is."

Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert began to walk away.

"I knew it was a long shot," Skylar said. "But at least we've ruled it out."

"Hey, frog, what's your secret?" Brinn called. "I've never seen a slug sit so still in the bull's-eye before."

"Concentration," Aldwyn said.

"Yours or his?" Brinn asked.

Aldwyn didn't answer.

"We all cheat here," Brinn said. "It's good to see you do it with such style, cat."

6.

REVEALING GLa.s.sES.

Much was different about the New Palace of Bronzhaven. For starters it was hovering inside an enormous gla.s.s ball, and snowflakes were falling all around it. Stranger still, desert stretched for miles outside the gla.s.s. Aldwyn was at the foot of a long staircase that rose halfway toward the bedroom window of the queen. Loranella herself stood at the balcony, her hair floating above her head as if she were underwater. Aldwyn bounded from step to step, desperately trying to reach her. She called out to him, but no sound left her lips. The words only came out in letters that blew away like torn pages from a book.

Aldwyn shot awake and discovered that he was lying under the oak tree in the heart of the forest that hid the Smuggler's Trail. Skylar and Gilbert were sitting beside him.

"You dozed off," Skylar said.

"We should go," Aldwyn said with extra urgency. The queen's plight was weighing heavily on him.

"What about lunch?" Gilbert asked.

"We don't have time for any more ch.o.r.es," Aldwyn replied.

"I worry that we haven't waited long enough for our pursuers to pa.s.s," Skylar said.

"That's a risk we'll have to take then," Aldwyn said.

The Three collected their scant belongings and returned to the trail.

"Gilbert, did they say you could take that?" Skylar asked.

Aldwyn turned to see that she was asking about the sluggot on Gilbert's shoulder.

"I didn't think they'd notice one little slug gone," Gilbert said.

The group headed west on the Smuggler's Trail, toward Kailasa.

"Once we leave the woods, I'll cast another illusion," Skylar said. "It should only be a short distance across the plains to the Ebs."

"What are we going to be this time?" Gilbert asked, catching flies out of the air with his tongue. "Goat? Fox? A very small pony?" He lapped up another swarm of bugs.

"I was thinking pig," Skylar said, eyeing the mess of flies dripping from Gilbert's mouth.

"How'd you come up with that one?" Gilbert asked.

Normally Aldwyn would have gotten a good laugh over that, but right now he was too concerned to even smile.

"You okay, Aldwyn?" Skylar asked. "You haven't seemed yourself since you woke up."

"I had a dream," he said. "Queen Loranella was in it. I think she was calling for my help. But I couldn't get to her."

"We're doing everything we can," Skylar said.

"She was trying to tell me something, but it only came out in letters, and they blew away before they turned into words."

"The Dreamworld often tries to send us messages," Skylar said. "And it's not always easy to understand them. There are no rules in the place where our mind travels while we're asleep."

"I hear something," Gilbert whispered to the others in a panic. "Quick, hide!"

"No need," Skylar replied calmly. "Remember what the bearded fairy said. The woods won't expose those who don't wish to be found."

She fluttered to the side of the road to avoid whatever was coming. Aldwyn and Gilbert joined her at the edge of the path. From there, Aldwyn watched as a band of warriors clad in black armor rushed toward them on horseback. It was the Nightfall Battalion. A large-eyed lemur rode atop the first horse. Aldwyn knew these creatures had the magical talent of seeing through solid objects, and it appeared this one had been enlisted as the Battalion's scout. The lemur turned its head from side to side, scanning the forest. Navid and Marati sat together on the second steed, while the rest of their troop followed behind.

The lemur held up its paws, slowing the group. The horses came to a halt just a few feet away from the familiars, but it was evident that their riders couldn't see them. The forest was doing its job.

"I spotted something through there," the lemur said, pointing past a cl.u.s.ter of dense trees. "A flash of blue."

Marati leaped down from her horse and went scurrying past the trio, into the woods. Aldwyn glanced over to the soldiers of the Nightfall Battalion, who were pulling noose sticks off their backs.

Marati returned with an oversized blue feather.

"It's too big to have fallen from Skylar's wing," she said.

"Looks like it came from a parrot or a pixie steed," Navid said from atop the horse.

"If they are hiding in here, they won't be able to stay forever," Marati said. The white-tailed mongoose practically brushed Aldwyn's paw as she walked past. "Let's keep moving."

The king cobra swung down his tail and gave Marati a boost back up into the saddle. Then the horses charged east, leaving the three animals behind in the magical cloak of the forest.

"I knew we should have waited a bit longer," Skylar said.

"Yes, but now we know the Nightfall Battalion is headed in the opposite direction of where we're going," Aldwyn said.

During the remainder of their trip along the Smuggler's Trail, the familiars didn't pa.s.s anyone else. Not that they were aware of, anyway.

Once out of the forest, Skylar and Gilbert were atop Aldwyn's back yet again, and this time they were traveling as a wandering mountain goat. The journey to the Ebs was not long, and was rather pleasant. Farmers tended to their spring harvests, plucking the winter pumpkins and frostc.u.mbers from their branches. Tulips and crocuses were in bloom.

For several miles the Three walked alongside a cow and the dairyman who tended to her. Still in disguise, Skylar engaged in friendly conversation with the cow, and while much of the chitchat revolved around the best-tasting gra.s.s in the region, a few purposeful questions were able to make it clear that news of Loranella's near demise had yet to spread beyond the castle walls. Which meant the familiars' fugitive status was likely unknown as well.

After pa.s.sing a trading village, Aldwyn came up over a small hill and the trio found themselves staring down at the Ebs, a thick band of blue hugged on either side by pebbly sh.o.r.es. The waters sparkled under the high sun.

"Hey, look at that inn," Gilbert said, pointing a suction-cupped finger toward a wooden building just off the main road. "Remind you of anything?"

Aldwyn couldn't help but smile.

"Looks just like Tammy's," he said. She was the orange-and-white house cat who had invited the familiars to stay in the innkeeper's barn during their first adventure across Vastia. "There's even a cat door out front."

Spice yachts and fishing boats glided upstream, propelled by phantom sails and silver oars. A golden bridge crossed the river, hovering above the waters with no wooden beams to support it.

"Do you think Banshee and Galleon had a hand in that?" Skylar asked.

"I don't know, but it looks like some wizard was definitely showing off," Gilbert replied.

"Then it probably was Galleon," Skylar said.

Bridges like these had been magically erected all over the land in place of the ones that had become river dragon fodder during the Uprising. And Banshee and Galleon, who stood with the circle of heroes, had been traveling across Vastia rebuilding the queendom to its former glory.

A pair of soldiers stood at security checkpoints on both sides of the bridge. Lines of humans and animals stretched down the road. The four guards held magnifying scopes up to their eyes, viewing each traveler as they pa.s.sed.

"Those are revealing gla.s.ses," Skylar said. "They're able to expose any illusion by creating a yellow aura around it."

"Is there any way to counteract it?" Gilbert asked.

"Those devices are foolproof," Skylar said. "They were the creation of the great inventor Orachnis Protho, first used against the Phantasmanians, an evil sect of illusionists seeking to overthrow King Brannfalk. I never imagined one would be used against me."

"We'll have to find another way across," Gilbert said.

"Not necessarily," Aldwyn said. "Maybe instead of making the revealing gla.s.ses not work, we can cause them to work too well."

"I don't follow," Gilbert said.

"Skylar, would you be able to cast an illusion on everyone standing in that line?" Aldwyn asked.

"I don't know. I've never tried something of such magnitude before. Even if I could, I'm not sure how long I could hold it. Why?"

"If every man, woman, and animal trying to cross that bridge appears as if they're hiding behind an illusion, those soldiers might start to think there's something wrong with the gla.s.ses."

"I do hold the Nearhurst record for most illusions conjured at one time," Skylar said. "It's worth a shot."

The blue jay lifted her wing and it began to tremble. Then right before Aldwyn's and Gilbert's eyes . . . nothing happened. Everyone standing in the line appeared just as they did before Skylar raised her wing.

"Not to be the slow frog here, but I'm still confused," Gilbert said. "I don't see any illusions at all."

"You're not supposed to," Skylar said. "I just conjured identical illusions of each person and animal in line. That way when they reach the bridge, the guards will see a yellow aura around them, but instead of suspecting that everyone here is trying to pull a fast one, they'll have no choice but to think that something is amiss with their revealing gla.s.ses."

"That's why I let you and Aldwyn come up with the plans," Gilbert said, still trying to catch up.

Ahead, the soldiers were starting to hold the line, asking animals and humans to step aside. Confusion was setting in, followed by frustration. Angry travelers began to shout out.

"What's the problem?" someone yelled.

"Come on, let's keep it moving!" another hollered.

"Everyone, please, calm down," one of the guards called back. "We'll have this all sorted out soon."

But wiping down the lenses of their revealing gla.s.ses wasn't going to make this problem disappear.

Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert, still appearing as a mountain goat, hastened to join the tail end of the line, and more people walked up behind them. The mob was growing more impatient by the minute. If Skylar was able to hold the illusion, their trick just might work. Finally the guards had no choice but to usher the crowd forward.

The familiars' mountain goat illusion blended in with the throng now crossing the bridge. Aldwyn, with Skylar and Gilbert on his back, had gotten about halfway to the west side of the bridge when he heard his blue jay companion groan uncomfortably.

"I can't maintain them any longer," she said.

"Just a little farther," Aldwyn encouraged.

"I'm sorry," Skylar replied.

Her wing slumped to her side, and suddenly they were exposed as the cat, frog, and bird that they were. Although the humans and animals crossing alongside them looked no different, the illusions Skylar had cast over them were gone as well.

"We need to get out of here," Aldwyn said. "Fast."

Aldwyn and Gilbert burst into a sprint, while Skylar flew above, but the quickened pace only brought more attention.

One of the guards standing at the eastern checkpoint spotted them.

"There they are," he shouted. "The fugitives!"

The other pa.s.sersby on the bridge had no idea what was going on, but the four guards immediately pulled their weapons. From each side they began to close in. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert were trapped at the center.

"So you're absolutely sure you don't have any more of that Icari weed?" Aldwyn asked Skylar.

The guards were fast approaching, brandishing their swords.

Aldwyn thought for a moment about standing his ground and putting up a fight, but the truth was, he was outnumbered. He glanced over the side of the bridge to the swift-moving channel below, looking for the river dragons. They made a habit of trolling these waters, giving locals and visitors alike a good reason not to swim across.

Then Aldwyn spied a fishing boat coming out from underneath the bridge, dragging its nets at the rear. It would be a long drop to the deck below, but if they were going to make the jump they would have to do it quick.

"Surrender now," one of the guards ordered. "We have been authorized to use force if needed."