course, I'l have a bottle sent to - "Lady Ulma hesitated and then quickly recovered. "To your room, but why don't we al have a nightcap now? It looks just the same outside,"she added to Stefan, the newcomer, "but it's real y rather late."
Elena drank her first glass in one draft. The attendant had to refil it immediately. And again a moment later. After that her nerves seemed to relax a bit. But the seesaw feeling never entirely left, and though she slept alone in her room, Damon didn't visit to quarrel with her, mock her, or kil her - and certainly not to kiss.
Thurgs, Elena discovered, were something like two elephants stitched together. Each had two side-by-side trunks and four wicked-looking tusks. Each also had a high, wide, long ridged tail, like a reptile. Their smal yel ow eyes were placed al around their domelike heads, so that they could see 360 degrees around, looking for predators.
Predators that could take down a thurg!
Elena imagined a sort of saber-toothed cat, enormous, with a milk-white pelt big enough to line several garments of hers and Stefan's. She was pleased with her new outfits. Each one was essential y a tunic and breeches, soft, pliable, rain-shedding leather on the outside; and warm, luxurious fur on the inside. But they wouldn't be genuine Lady Ulma creations if that was al there were to them. The inner bodysuit of white fur was reversible and removable so you could change depending on the weather. There were triple-thick wind-around col ars, which trailed behind or could be turned into scarves that wrapped a face up to the eyes. The white pelts spil ed out of the leather at the wrists to make mittens you couldn't lose. The guys had straight leather tunics that just met at the breeches, and fastened with buttons. The girls'tunics were longer and flared out a bit. They were neatly fringed, but not stained or dyed except for Damon's, which, of course, were black with sable fur.
One thurg would carry the travelers and their baggage. A second, larger and wilder looking, would carry heating stones to help cook human food and al the food (it looked like red hay) that the two thurgs would eat on the way to the Nether World.
Pelat showed them how to move the giant creatures, with the lightest of taps of a very long stick, which could scratch a thurg behind its hippo-like ears or give it a ferocious tap at that sensitive spot, signaling it to hasten forward. that sensitive spot, signaling it to hasten forward.
"Is it safe, having Biratz carry al the thurg food? I thought you said she was unpredictable,"Bonnie asked Pelat.
"Now, miss, I wouldn't give her to you if she wasn't safe.
She'l be roped to Dazar so al she has to do is fol ow,"Pelat replied.
"We ride these?"Stefan said, craning his neck to get a look at the smal , enclosed palanquin on top of the very large animal.
"We have to,"Damon said flatly. "We can hardly walk al the way. We're not al owed to use magic like that fancy Master Key you used to get here. No magic but telepathy works up at the very top of the Dark Dimension. These dimensions are flat like plates, and according to Bonnie, there's a fracture, just at the far north of this one - not too far from here, in other words. The crack is smal by dimensional standards, but big enough for us to get through. If we want to reach the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures we start on thurgs."
Stefan shrugged. "All right. We're doing it your way."
Pelat was putting a ladder up. Lady Ulma, Bonnie, and Elena were weeping and laughing over the baby together.
They were Stilllaughing as they left on their way.
The first week or so was boring. They sat in the palanquin on the back of the thurg named Dazar, with a compass from Elena's backpack dangling from the roof. They general y kept al the sides of the palanquin's curtains rol ed up, except the one facing west, where the bloated, bloody red sun - too bright to look at in the higher, cleaner air outside the city - constantly loomed on the horizon. The view al around them was dreadful y monotonous - mind-bendingly so, with few trees and many miles of dried brown grassy hil s. Nothing interesting to a non-hunter ever showed up. The only thing that changed was as they traveled farther north, it