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Like how you always know what the dragons need. And—” understanding dawned on me “—back at your cabin. Chase told you how I was feeling and when I needed anything!” How had I not guessed before now?
    Grey picked at his fingernails. “Well, not all the time,” he muttered. “Only when it was important. I wasn’t spying on you or anything.”
    “I didn’t mean—” I stopped pacing and sat back down next to him. “Grey, this is great! I had no idea. How could I? But why didn’t you tell me before?”
    He looked at me, his grey eyes piercing me. “How?” Grey’s eyes slid from mine. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just—” He let out a long sigh. “Well, I’ve always had to hide it from everyone except Malk.” He was the hermit who’d raised Grey after his parents abandoned him. “I guess I got into the habit, one that was hard to break.”
    I understood that. I wanted to reach out and touch him, let him know that it was all right, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to say the words without sounding stupid.
    A silence grew between us. Grey eventually broke it. “None of that really matters now anyway. We need to figure out what’s going on. The last thing I remember is falling.” He shuddered.
    “Me, too. I think we got hit by that lightning.
    “What was all that, anyway? Do you know?”
    The word came out as a whisper. “Dragonmasters.” It was my turn to shudder.
    “Who are they?”
    “They’re awful. They’re very powerful magicians who work for the king. They wear these black robes, and they move about as if they own the world. And the power just reeks off them. They attacked the mages a few times. That’s why we had to go into hiding. And,” I lowered my voice, “Xyla herself is afraid of them.”
    He raised his eyebrows and looked over at her. “That’s saying something.”
    “But how did they find our hiding place in the mountains?” I wondered aloud. “And how did they know Xyla was there? That shows how powerful they are, don’t you think?”
    Grey turned his attention back to me. “All right, so they attacked, and as you said, some of their lightning must have hit us. Did it—I don’t know—move us backward in time or something?”
    That took me aback. “Why do you say that?”
    Grey let out an exasperated sigh. “Because it’s pretty obvious that no one’s been here for ages. It’s the same place—there’s the shelf of rock where all the cooking gear was kept, and the natural chimney is right here,” he pointed at the ceiling over the fire, “the same as before.”
    “I don’t know. Is moving in time even possible?”
    “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I can’t think of anything else. It doesn’t seem any more likely that we just all lay there unconscious for a few years. If your old dragonmasters had just left us and we didn’t wake up, we would’ve died.”
    Just then, Xyla let out a groan that echoed around the cavern, making it sound even louder. I sprang to my feet and rushed to her.
    “Xyla, are you all right?” I reached out and placed a hand on her jaw.
    “Donavah? You are really here? I am not dreaming?”
    That sounded so human I almost laughed. “No, Xyla, you’re not dreaming. I’m here. So’s Grey. And Traz. Wherever here is.”
    “You do not know where we are?”
    “Well, we’re in the cave. But everyone else is gone. We don’t know where to.”
    She let out a long, slow breath that whistled past her nostrils and blew my hair away from my face. “You have not guessed?”
    “Guessed what?” Now I was growing a little impatient with her.
    “We are on Stychs.”

    Your Royal Highness, Sir:
    Per your command, sire, I have ventured to the Westfront Range. I am loathe to report that while the land itself is interesting and even fruitful, there is about it something uncanny and unsettling. An alien magic permeates the atmosphere. Never has any king taken this land, nor do I see that you would gain sufficient benefit