Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part II

                                    

                                              
To Tesa's great relief, one of the riders on the dragon she had rescued was Glenna's mother. She called out to Siora as Orrie and Aerix winged nearer the beach. To her surprise, Glenna and her dragon were some of the only ones on the beach awaiting their arrival. Tesa had thought that by now, Malía would have organized all of the able dragons and riders into a fighting force, ready to meet the approaching mages.
                          
"Where is everybody?" Tesa asked as she slid down from Orrie's back. She scanned the horizon over her shoulder, noting that the mage ships were not visible yet, but the oncoming rain clouds darkened the sky on the horizon.
                          
"They're in the camp. They opened a door," Glenna said. She was helping her mother and the other rider climb down off of the exhausted dragon, who lay limp, eyes closed, on the sand. His wings folded and flopped as Glenna and Neela helped to move them out of the way so the riders could dismount.

                          
It took a moment for Glenna's words to sink in. "A door?" Tesa asked. "Already?"
                          
Glenna's face lit up, almost with glee. "You'll never guess where it leads to," she said.
                          
Tesa's eyebrows drew together. "Where?"
                          
Glenna shook her head. "You have to see."
                          
With a frown, Tesa glanced toward the horizon, where the dark clouds advanced toward the island. Her clothes were drenched and cold from the flight, as were Neela's, Glenna's mother's, and the other rider's. 
                          
"I could just ask the dragons, you know," Tesa said, tempted to do just that. She was about to call ahead to the dragons in the camp, when Glenna grabbed her hand.
                          
"Just come. We have to get you all in dry clothes anyway, and get the healer mages to come back to help this dragon."
                          
Tesa allowed Glenna to lead her up the beach, while Neela and the others followed behind.
                          
Though Tesa itched to get out of her sopping clothes, all of her urgency was lost when they came through the trees into camp and encountered the crowd. It seemed like every rider, dragon, mage, and every other soul were gathered in the camp. Except, there didn't seem to be as many people as there had been. The whole camp couldn't be accounted for in this crowd. Had they gone through this door already?
                          
The plan had been to open doors to many places, one for each place they would hide an egg. Tesa knew that there hadn't been time to decide on locations, much less begin opening doors to all of them. 
                          
As if she had been following Tesa's thoughts, Glenna piped up beside her. "They opened one door so we could move to safety before trying to open others. Emric said we couldn't have fought off the mages of Yennar Lei."
                          
They skirted the circle of people and dragons to get a better view. The crowd was gathered around something in the open space in the center. Tesa broke away from Glenna and wove her way through the crowd.
                          
Malía stood with Emric beside a circle of large stones on the ground. At first, the ground inside the circle of stones looked normal, but as Tesa got closer she could see the movement that gave it away as a door. The browns and greens that she saw were not earth and grass, but trees and brush. Nobody stopped Tesa as she approached the door. She drew up next to Malía and Emric and peered down.
                          
Other magic doors she'd passed through had been created upright on cave walls, so that passing through them hardly seemed like magic at all, simply going from one place to another. This door, however, disoriented her. It was as if she were looking up into the forest from below, as if the ground inside the circle of stones were a mirror, yet it reflected a different place than the one in which she stood.
                          
Due to the odd perspective, Tesa did not at first recognize the forest through the door. A wind sighed through the pines and their tops swayed. Tesa scanned the trees, then down their trunks to the brush beneath. The plants looked familiar. She spotted herbs that she'd used to collect for her healing basket, several that were common in all of Arethia. So somewhere in Arethia, then. Then she saw it, dragon's tongue, a flower that she'd only seen in the mountain forests of her home.