Kellanved's Reach (Path to Ascendancy) Page 3

  Gregar looked away. ‘I suppose so. Can’t really remember.’

  ‘Then how did they capture you?’

  He sighed, spat the knuckle to the floor. ‘I passed out.’

  The figure, who had been lying or crouching, now rose to stand, and Gregar was appalled by the state of its emaciation, and the filthy rags that hung from its skeletal frame. He was also rather unnerved by the brightness that flamed in its huge eyes. ‘What is your calling?’ the figure asked.

  ‘Calling?’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Oh. I’m an apprentice mason.’

  ‘Mason.’ The figure nodded to itself, thinking. Gregar now noted a collar and chain that ran from the poor slave’s neck to a ring set in the wall nearby. ‘Have a way with stone, do you?’ it asked, suddenly, as if struck by a thought.

  Gregar gave a curt jerk of his head. ‘Aye. Always. Comes natural to me. I can just see it.’

  ‘See it? See what?’

  Gregar shrugged again. He fished out another pig’s knuckle. ‘Where to strike. The stresses and strains running through any rock. It’s all obvious to me. Plain as day. The north tower, for example – it needs shoring up. The foundations are eroding.’

  The sickly lad smiled now – a corpse’s grin of yellowed teeth against sunken cheeks. He grabbed hold of the chain securing him to the wall and held it out. ‘Break this,’ he demanded.

  Gregar waved him off. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m for the higher halls.’

  ‘You won’t make it ten paces.’ The lad’s fevered pale eyes were blazing with a new light. ‘I, however, know all the upper halls. I can get you out of Castle Gris.’

  Gregar waved him off. ‘Sorry, but I can’t break that chain.’

  The lad lifted his chin, revealing his collar. ‘What of this?’

  It was a plain length of leather riveted about the boy’s neck. Gregar thought even this fellow ought to be able to break it. ‘That’s our deal then, is it? I release you and you get us out?’

  The young lad nodded, very sombrely. ‘Oh yes. And we join the Crimson Guard.’

  Despite himself, Gregar laughed his disbelief. ‘Really? I was just boasting.’

  The slave edged his head from side to side in all seriousness. ‘You break this collar and we will join the Crimson Guard.’

  ‘Really? Just like that?’

  The young slave nodded. ‘Just like that.’

  Gregar laughed. ‘You sell a good line, whoever you are. But I’ll give it a try.’ He reached out to the poor fellow’s neck. A yank and the leather band parted. He handed the broken length to the lad. ‘There you are. Don’t know why you couldn’t have done that yourself.’

  The slave stared for a time at the leather band in his pale, long-fingered hands. Then his gaze rose in wonder to Gregar. ‘My master ensorcelled these bonds so that I couldn’t break them. Only a certain sort of person could.’

  At the word ‘ensorcelled’ a cold sickness took hold of Gregar’s stomach. ‘Your master?’ he breathed.

  The skinny lad nodded. ‘The sorcerer Ap-Athlan. High Mage of Gris.’

  Gregar resisted the urge to cuff the youth across his head. ‘Why didn’t you say so, dammit! I thought your master was just the cook or something!’ Realizing he was shouting, he lowered his voice, hissing, ‘I don’t want any attention, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  The lad – in truth, perhaps no older than himself for all he knew – raised his eerily long-fingered hands in reassurance. ‘I know, I know. And I can get us out. Guaranteed. Then we’ll join the Crimson Guard.’

  Gregar rubbed the back of his neck while the lad limped about the kitchen, digging out a cured ham, a wedge of cheese, a skin of wine, and throwing all into a burlap sack. ‘Ah, about that joining up thing … I was drunk. It was just a damned boast … I really don’t think that’s gonna happen …’

  The lad raised a hand once again. ‘Don’t worry. It will. They’ll take both of us. I’m sure.’

  Gregar laughed, shaking his head. ‘Well, kid. As I said: you talk a good line – I’ll give you that. What’s your name, anyway?’

  He raised his hands to study them once more. ‘Dog, he called me. My master. I did … things for him. Things I do not want to think of. But now that I am free – I can forget him. So, I will use my old name, Haraj. And you?’

  ‘Gregar Bluenth.’

  The lad pulled a face. ‘Gregar Bluenth? Really. Have to do something about that …’ He limped to a heavily bound door that Gregar knew must lead closer to the rear chambers, and possible freedom.

  ‘That’s locked,’ he warned. ‘No point trying that.’

  The lad pressed his hands to the door. He brushed and rubbed his long fingers over the iron lock. Then, with one extended finger, he gave the door a push and it creaked open. He flashed an evil boyish grin to Gregar. ‘No it’s not.’ He crooked a finger, inviting him onward. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chapter 2

  The day after he, Surly, and Kellanved had their strategy talk, Dancer was in the upper chambers of Mock’s Hold when Kellanved entered and carefully shut the door behind him. The mage, now permanently appearing as a wrinkled, black-skinned Dal Hon elder, beckoned Dancer close and whispered, hushed, ‘Are we alone?’

  Dancer shrugged, a touch mystified. ‘Well, yes. I imagine so.’

  ‘Good. Then let’s go.’

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  The grey-haired ancient raised his eyes to the ceiling in frustration. ‘Our research. The stone! We follow the stone!’

  For the last month Dancer had heard nothing but this and so he pulled a hand down his face, exhausted by it. Their first trip chasing up a lead regarding ancient weapons from the Fenn mountains had been an utter disaster and they’d barely escaped with their lives – yet again. He’d hoped that would’ve been enough to quell the lad’s ambitions, but apparently no setback, no matter how dire, could in any manner rein in this one’s plans. ‘Right. The spear-point. You mean this very moment?’

  ‘Of course!’ The mage drew himself up straight and pronounced, ‘If not now, then what? If not where, then who?’

  Dancer stared at him, his brows crimping. ‘What?’

  The mage threw a finger in the air for a pause. ‘Wait!’ He stroked his chin, thinking furiously. ‘If not where … then why … no, that’s not it. If not what, then who?’ He shook his head. ‘No. Wait …’

  Dancer waved that aside. ‘Not now. We have to prepare. Water, food, the proper gear.’

  ‘Fine!’ Kellanved pointed to a candle inscribed with lines. ‘One segment – an hour.’

  Dancer nodded his agreement. ‘Okay. One hour.’ He headed to the door. ‘We’ll meet here.’

  Downstairs, in the main hall of the Hold, he found Surly. She was leaning up against a long feasting-table, her arms crossed, the usual sceptical and disapproving scowl on her hard face. ‘You’re off disappearing now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re leaving.’

  She raised a hand to inscribe a languid circle as if encompassing the Hold. ‘And what makes you think all this will be here waiting for you when you return?’

  He raised his shoulders, dismissive. ‘I don’t assume any such thing – if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Really? Then why all this? Why do any of it?’

  ‘This? The Hold? The isle?’ He waved a hand. ‘I care nothing for this. It’s a by-product only. I don’t need it.’

  Now Surly raised a brow, extremely doubtful. ‘Really. A by-product … of what?’

  ‘Of me challenging myself.’ He inclined his head. ‘Now, if you will excuse me – time is short.’ He headed off.

  ‘What if you do not return?’ Surly called after him. ‘Then what?’

  Turning, he bowed, while retreating. ‘Then do with it what you will.’

  An hour later he pushed open the door to Kellanved’s chambers then kicked it shut behind him. He now wore his customary armoured vest beneath his shirt and pocketed jacket. Knives
of all lengths and weights were thrust into sheaths sewn into vest, shirt and jacket. Further weapons were secreted at his neck, in his boots, and round his waist. A coiled rope was at one shoulder, and a pack containing a drinking skin and dried food. A pouch inside his jacket held a selection of miscellaneous coins, a tinderbox, lengths of drawn wire, a few fine tools, and two beeswax candles.

  Kellanved he found once more behind his desk, feet up, snoring.

  In three long strides he was across the room to kick the desk and Kellanved fell from his chair, arms flailing. His head appeared from behind the desk, peering about in wonder. ‘What was that?’

  ‘An earthquake.’

  ‘Really? Imagine that.’

  ‘Yes. Ready to go?’

  ‘Already?’

  Dancer righted the candle, indicated the remaining scribed lines.

  The mage frowned, then shrugged. ‘Hunh.’ He stood and straightened his vest. ‘Very well.’

  ‘All set, are you?’ Dancer enquired sweetly. ‘Got everything, have we?’

  The ancient-looking Dal Hon fluttered a hand. ‘Well, I imagine you’ve taken care of all the mundane details.’

  ‘Thank you so very much …’ His acid comment trailed off as he found he was no longer in the mage’s chambers in Mock’s Hold. The two now stood on a vast plain of volcanic black dust and ashes, a sky of roiling dark clouds shot through by blasts of lightning above. ‘That was … very smooth,’ he managed, secretly quite impressed.

  ‘Why thank you,’ the little mage answered, with all his usual smugness. ‘It’s coming so much more easily now. Almost as if I never really leave, you know?’

  Dancer didn’t know, but he nodded. ‘If you say so. This isn’t Shadow, clearly. The Scar?’

  Kellanved nodded. He waved his walking stick about and headed off. ‘Yes. More private, don’t you think?’

  Personally, Dancer didn’t like it. He was uncomfortable in this wasteland region, or Warren, or whatever it was. He felt as if he were always being watched. And there was also the atmosphere. Melancholy was the best word he could come up with to describe the aura this place seemed to exude. It unnerved him. But at least nothing was actively trying to kill him – nothing he knew of, at any rate.

  He turned his attention to the crabbed, hunched, falsely aged mage at his side. ‘As if I never leave,’ the fellow had said. Dancer thought that inadvertently revealing. Once more he tried to make sense of what the Tano Spiritwalker had confided to him that day in the far-off Seven Cities prison. That this mage may inhabit more than one plane or Warren at any one time. That having been engulfed by a storm of Otataral dust, his essence had been annealed, or translated, across more than one location: the mundane physical plane, the Warren of Shadow, and this strange artificial dimension – be it whatever it was.

  And if this were indeed so – he glanced aside to the mage as he sauntered along swinging his walking stick – it may be that this fellow had become rather difficult to kill. For it may be that his spirit would persist in those other Realms.

  Dancer rubbed a temple, almost wincing. Whatever. Not his area of expertise. Suffice it to say he had a resourceful partner he could trust, and so it was time to push himself as far as possible to see just what he could accomplish.

  Kellanved fished in a vest pocket and brought out the stone – the infamous knapped broken spear-point – which he jiggled in his palm. ‘Nothing,’ he announced. ‘Thought not. The influence, or connection, that bears upon it does not extend to this Realm.’

  ‘So we return.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘North. Somewhere north.’

  ‘Not Heng, please,’ Dancer said, laughing.

  Kellanved offered a weak smile. ‘No indeed.’ Then he frowned, thoughtful. ‘But it came to me there, didn’t it?’

  Dancer’s half-amused smile fell. ‘Not that town.’

  The mage offered an ambiguous shrug. ‘Who knows? I swear, Dancer, I mean to avenge myself upon those mages. Eventually.’

  They paced onwards for a time; a thin, wind-borne scarf of ash and dust preceded them. Dancer could not shake his discomfort, his sense that the Realm was somehow haunted. ‘I dislike this place,’ he announced to Kellanved, who nodded, not surprised at all.

  ‘Yes. It has that aura. A great crime was perpetrated here, I believe. Long ago.’

  Finally, Dancer could endure the wait no longer, and he asked, ‘Now?’

  Kellanved paused, peered round. ‘Well. I suppose we could see where we are …’

  In a moment Dancer found himself in sudden night, amid a plain of tall windswept grasses. He peered round, crouching, now quite used to these transitions. ‘Northern Dal Hon,’ he offered, cocking an eye to his companion.

  The mage glanced about, distaste upon his wrinkled features. ‘Sadly so,’ he agreed. He studied the stone in his hands, then announced, ‘This way.’

  Dancer followed, hands on his heaviest weapons, for hyenas, leopards and other beasts stalked these grasslands. After a time, the wide, bright bridge of the gods arcing overhead, he suggested, ‘We should bed down for the night.’

  The wizened Dal Hon native had been slashing his walking stick through the grasses as he went. ‘Really?’ he answered. ‘Are you tired?’

  Dancer considered. Was he tired? He realized that he was not. The walk through the ashen Warren had only been a few hours, after all. Yet it was night here. Had it been a half-day, or even two? He had no way of knowing until they reached a settlement that kept a decent record of the days – beyond that of the traditional ‘close to harvest’, or ‘soon after the solstice’, or whatever.

  Not that it mattered. Days and years came and went. There was no pressing need to keep count. Why bother, after all? Only pinched dry historians argued over what happened in the third year of king so-and-so’s reign. It was all over and done with to him. Not of the moment.

  Setting aside his musings, Dancer looked to his companion and realized that he was uncharacteristically sombre and quiet this night. ‘You are troubled?’ he asked.

  The little fellow shrugged his thin shoulders as he swatted at the grass. ‘Unhappy memories.’

  Dancer smiled to himself. He thinks he had a difficult childhood?

  ‘I was beaten and mocked and belittled all through my youth,’ Kellanved began, unbidden. ‘Dal Hon tribes value martial ability, you see. Fighting. Strength. Athleticism.’ He motioned to his skinny form. ‘I possess none of these qualities, as you see. So I was the mongrel dog, the runt of the litter, that is the target of all abuse. Further, there seemed some darker motive behind it all. Some deliberate dislike or dread. At the time I knew nothing of this – all only became clear later.’

  Dancer listened quite astonished; this was the first time the lad had opened up regarding his background.

  The mage swatted anew as they paced along. ‘Eventually, useless as I was judged for warfare, I was taken in, reluctantly, by a neighbouring tribal shaman. I was overjoyed at first. This would be my calling! It seemed to fit so very well. But soon I found myself suffering even worse abuse at the hands of this fiend. Every degradation, every humiliating and disgusting task he set me, seemed deliberately designed to drive me away. And so, in time, he succeeded, and I ran away from my apprenticeship, out into the wilds, quite alone. Of course slavers captured me almost immediately.’ The lad swatted ferociously at the grass. ‘I will never forget the torture I received at their hands!

  ‘So I languished for a time, a bound servant in their camp. Then, one day, a man picked me out and took me away to serve him in his tower on the Itko Kanese border. He was a mage and he revealed to me that he’d picked me out because I, too, was touched by talent. There my real journey began.’

  Dancer nodded. All this sounded not too dissimilar from his experience. ‘He trained you,’ he offered.

  The lad nodded. ‘Yes. The rudiments. But nothing more. Stingy, he was. Never revealing quite enough to allow me to stand on my own. Ev
entually I realized the damned fellow intended to keep me perpetually in his service, if he could. And so I ran again.’

  Dancer nodded. He, too, had also fled his master.

  The lad raised his walking stick to the stars. ‘Then it happened. A revelation in the wilds. As you now know, mystic legend has it that ancient Shadow, Kurald Emurlahn, was shattered, broken into countless shards. In these very grasslands, I stumbled upon, or was washed over by, one of those shards, and at that moment everything became clear. Shadow! That was my home. All the dark insults and muttered asides directed my way during my youth were explained: such a fragment had happened to pass over, or through, the village during the moment of my birth.’

  The mage halted, and Dancer drew up short, surprised, as Kellanved faced him. ‘That is why Meanas does not trouble me, you see. It is my home. I was born in it. All this,’ and he gestured about, ‘all this is an impediment; irksome. I loathe it. It is in Meanas that I feel most whole. It is my centre. I was formed within its influence. Do you think it mere chance that the Hounds responded to me? No. My soul, my essence, belongs there. It took a while – but they recognized a kindred spirit.’

  Dancer let out a breath, nodding. Well … that explains a lot. ‘I … see …’

  Kellanved continued on. ‘For a time I bounced from scholar to scholar, mage to warlock, ever pursuing more knowledge of Shadow. Everything since has been an effort to return there for ever. And I shall.’ He thrust the walking stick to the night sky. ‘I shall!’

  ‘I do not doubt it,’ Dancer murmured.

  The mage now set a finger to his lips as he eyed the silvery monochrome landscape before them. ‘I judge we are some three days south of the Idryn. Must we walk it?’

  Dancer considered the alternatives – neither of which he judged desirable. ‘Sorry,’ he answered, ‘but we really ought to.’

  Kellanved sighed, his thin shoulders falling. ‘Really? Must we?’ He raised a finger in warning. ‘Fine! If we must. But I tell you, once I come into my own there’ll be no more of this tramping about, I promise you!’

  Dancer smiled his approval. ‘Agreed. Once the benefits outweigh the hazards.’