"So, have you enjoyed Escalus so far?" Helly asked kindly.
The panel in front of Liya went 'pon'. She was pretty sure they were in an elevator; the door had slid shut of its own accord, and the panel in front of her was lined with buttons marked with diamonds inscribed in circles, most of which had lines crossing them down the center. It didn't, however, feel as though they were moving at all.
"I haven't seen it," she answered, casting a wary eye on the panel, as she did with everything else.
"Nuvar suoki qullyer," a voice said tonelessly from the panel.
"Well--" Liya amended, remembering, "I mean, I saw some of it on the way to the Palace, but...one minute, we're in some weird building in Enodia, and the next--we're in Escalus."
It really had been that simple, too. She'd been led, hands still bound, dressed in castoff baggy clothes that Captain Marinos's soldiers had lent her, into a circular room with an intricate gold design inlaid into the marble floor. She'd been made to stand between her escorts--the apparent Private McCleary, and another woman who had a forked cat's tail and who never introduced herself.
And then, quite suddenly, the design in the floor erupted into blue light, bubbling energy that literally lifted the three of them several inches off the ground. There was a rushing sensation, like a huge wind blowing up out of the floor, and then they were set down again. The room had changed into one that was all stone and hung in flags with rings of red and blue on them. Liya had been startled; her escorts looked completely unruffled.