It was dark--Liya wasn't sure how it had gotten so dark. There must not have been any windows in this room, because the double-moonlit night outside had been much lighter than this.

"Okay, okay," she coaxed herself, trying not to panic, "Get a grip, Liya. Where's the do--"

She walked into something very hard, then. Her legs went out from under her and she fell down onto the carpeted floor.

"OW," she said loudly, pressing her hand over her smarting nose and mouth, "ow ow ow--"

She realized suddenly that a light had come on in front of her, and looked up. She'd walked into a white stone plinth standing against a dark sheet-rock wall; atop it was one of those deer-things she'd seen in the stables, though this one had antlers. It perched with its head lowered towards her and its long tail wrapped loosely around its delicate-looking hooves. Between its antlers sat a large, round stone ball, which was giving off a yellowish light.

She got up very slowly, glancing around. The yellow light pooled at her feet and did little to illuminate the rest of the room. It looked like a high-ceilinged hallway of some sort, lined with white plinths atop which more deer-things--laar, she remembered--perched, each of them with stone balls balanced on their heads, each with their long tails wrapped in slightly different ways. The darkness yawned on either side of her; she had no idea where the end of the hallway was. The laar loomed quietly from the blackness, looking unsettlingly though as they were about to hop down from their pedestals at any moment.

She wrapped her arms around herself nervously, straining to see through the gloom. Quite suddenly she tasted blood above her lips; her nose was bleeding, as hard as she'd banged her face into the stone plinth.

"Great," she muttered, covering her nose.