Kellanved's Reach

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. Eventually 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.’