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"Good." Ryze offered me his arm and ignored Zared's scowl as he led us from the room.
11
Khala
We stepped out into a corridor bright with white stone floors and walls. Similar in size and precise cut, to those in the temple back in Ebonfalls, here, they were unstained and less marred by wear. Tapestries in rich colours, most depicting winter scenes, adorned the walls. They looked like they were completed and hung yesterday. I suspected each was older than me.
I managed to tear my gaze away to ask, "How far did we come? When we came through the portal, I mean."
"I thought that was the kind of come you meant," Ryze said with a straight face. "We travelled approximately three hundred kilometres."
"Three hundred—" I looked up at him and gaped. "But it only seemed like a handful of steps." It would have taken days to travel that far in the carriages.
"That's the beauty of magic. As long as I've been to a place, and have water or ice nearby, I can make a portal to that place. It doesn't seem to matter how far, or how many people pass through. Admittedly, I haven't tried to test the limits recently. I presume that as long as I can hold it, people can move through it."
"How long is that?" I asked.
"An hour is as long as I've ever managed," he said thoughtfully. "Ten minutes is a sufficient strain. The more the strain, the smaller the portal."
"What happens to anyone inside when it closes?" Did I want to know the answer to that?
He shrugged. "I have no idea. I can't imagine it would end well for them. They'd probably get ripped apart by magic. All the more reason to hurry up when I tell you to."
"You went through last," Zared pointed out as he trailed along behind us like a dark cloud. He sounded as though he would have been happy if Ryze was torn apart.
"Yes, I did," Ryze said over his shoulder. "I'll make sure to let you be last next time."
Zared made a rude noise, which both Ryze and I ignored.
"You can stay here." Ryze stopped in front of a door. He turned the handle and pushed it open. The door was silent, like the hinges were recently oiled. “It’s not the biggest room, but it should do,” Ryze said apologetically.
Zared made a choking sound I interpreted as disbelief. It mirrored my thoughts with accuracy.
The room was huge. The walls were lined with similar panelling to the sitting room, but these were painted soft grey-white. What looked like a glass candelabra hung from the centre of the tall ceiling.
Ryze pressed a button on the wall beside the door. The button clicked and the glass bulbs in the chandelier illuminated.
"What the hells?" I was starting to lose track of all things I'd stared at today. This was another one of them. "Magic?"
"Electricity." Ryze smiled but he didn't seem to be mocking me. "I suppose you could say it is magic, to some extent."
Once I stopped gaping at the light, he led me to a washroom to the side of the sleeping area.
"I trust you both know what a bath is?" he teased.
Zared grunted. "Of course we do. We're humans, not animals."
Ryze ignored the low hanging fruit and walked over to turn the tap on the side of the bath.
"Hot. Cold. Turn the tap again when there's enough water in the bath." He straightened and crossed his arms like nothing could be simpler. Like water coming out of a metal tube set in the wall was no big deal at all.
I glanced around. "Where's the fire?" Surely the water passed over it before it poured into the metallic sided tub and started to fill the room with steam?
"In another part of the palace," Ryze said simply. "Any time you want hot water, or just warm, you can get out of any of the taps. Now, here's Joviena. Can you find suitable clothes for Khala after you show Zared to his room?" He nodded to a Fae with long, dark hair, and striking green eyes.
She nodded and gestured for Zared to follow her.
When he hesitated, I said, "I'll be fine. Go and get clean."
