I can’t promise that, thought Dinah drowsily as Sir Gorrann struggled to blindly put her gag back in. I will fight for my pathetic existence, no matter how meaningless it is at this point. Her head throbbed, and she dropped swiftly into the soothing arms of sleep.
She awoke flat on her back, her eyes staring up at a circle of bright blue sky. She blinked a few times before her hands came up to wipe her watering eyes. Her arms were free. This was a good sign. She let her eyes play over her surroundings, hesitant to move. She was in a tent of some sort, but it wasn’t triangular or square. It was perfectly round and short, shaped like the tarts she had loved back at the palace. She knew if she stood that her fingers would brush the top of the roof, and if she were just a bit taller she would be able to stick her hand through the open hole at the top. Dinah pushed herself up shakily. She was sitting on some sort of incredible mattress made of woven grass. For the first time in a long time, Dinah felt truly rested. She stretched her arms out in front of her—which led to a pulse of pain that radiated down from her head.
Tenderly, she probed the wound near her temple. Dried blood covered the area, and a lump the size of a walnut protruded from just over her ear. Her head was pounding, and the sharp pressing against her skull made her grind her teeth. She sat still for a few minutes until the sensation decreased to where she could move around. Dinah took a breath. She was fine. She was alive. It was enough. She looked longingly back at the mattress of grass and considered simply curling up and playing dead for the rest of the day, but she had a feeling that wasn’t in her best interest. There were questions to be answered. Her eyes finally adjusted to the light of the tent and she saw that two Yurkei warriors stood silently near the door, their hands locked around their bows.
Dinah turned back to the mattress. A simple red tunic and a pair of white feathered pants had been laid out for her. She dressed herself quickly, vaguely aware that the warriors’ bright blue eyes watched her every move, even while their faces remained unreadable. She attempted to rebraid her hair, though the thick black curtain that she once so loathed was more a rat’s nest than a hairstyle these days. Her boots were gone, and she hoped that they weren’t gone forever if she was going to live through all this. She had grown quite fond of wearing boots.
When she approached the door of the pod-shaped room, the two guards parted. “Mundoo wish to see you,” said one of them in heavily accented Wonderlander. Dinah nodded, hoping they couldn’t sense her growing fear. They haven’t killed me yet, she told herself. That’s something. The seething hatred in one guard’s blue eyes was intense, while the other looked simply intrigued by her presence. Taking a breath, she pulled back the tent flap. White sunlight assaulted her eyes as Dinah struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. After a few moments, she let herself exhale, stunned into a respectful silence. She was in Hu-Yuhar, the legendary city of the Yurkei. She stood in a very narrow valley surrounded by rocky gray cliff faces on both sides that veered up and away. Past these towering walls of stone, the gorgeous Yurkei Mountains rose up around them, their tops always concealed behind a foggy mist that rolled and leaped like a child at play. The mountains were said to be endless, and the closer Dinah got to them the more she believed it.
The entire valley couldn’t have been more than half a mile wide. The ground was covered by a lush, bluish-green grass. Horses were everywhere, roaming free—eating, running, sleeping. The valley floor seemed to belong to them, although she watched hundreds of Yurkei going about their daily business on two narrow dirt pathways flanking the rock walls. Dinah looked up, shielding her eyes from the light that draped the whole valley in dewy sunshine. Tents—shaped just like the one she had awakened in—protruded from the mountainside, hovering above the ground like little clouds. Round and flat, they jutted out from holes in the rock or the edges of cliffs or, sometimes, just the vertical, flat rock face. Long wooden beams that twisted and wrapped under the pods secured each tent to the side of the mountain, supporting them from below. Biscuits, thought Dinah, that’s what the shape reminded her of. Round, flat biscuits.
Soaring through the space between the two mountain faces was a system of lofty bridges, made of the same wooden material that secured the tents to the cliff sides. Yurkei moved across the bridges with alarming speed: children chasing each other, women walking swiftly with baskets full of food, men dashing around carrying handfuls of arrows. The valley bustled with life, although most of it was taking place above Dinah’s head. Something hit her shoulder, something blunt and hard. She winced and turned around. The Yurkei warrior who had looked at her with such loathing stood behind her, brandishing the butt of a long, curved spear. “You. Move. To chief.”
Dinah began walking forward, not sure of where she was going until several Yurkei children ran in front of her and proceeded to lead the way. Their long white hair flowed freely over their shoulders, clean of the white stripes that marked the men. Boy or girl, Dinah found it hard to tell. Altogether they were lovely, until one of them turned and spat in her face.
“C’hallgu quon!” Then several others turned and followed suit. “C’hallgu quon! C’hallgu quon!” they chanted. Bad queen? Dinah tried to translate in her mind as she wiped the spit off her lip. Small rocks appeared out of nowhere and suddenly Dinah was being pelted with all kinds of things: grass, rocks, spit, and dirt. She raised her hands to protect herself and the two Yurkei guards closed in on her, each taking one arm and barking orders at the children. Fervently, she looked around for Sir Gorrann, but his grizzled face was nowhere to be seen. She was alone.