Kellanved's Reach

She awoke amid nets on board a small fishing vessel. It was night, and two old men peered down at her, a lantern between them. One was scratching his head, the other stood with hands on hips.

‘You are perhaps a mermaid?’ one asked, rather hopefully.

Iko just let her head fall back.

‘She is, I think, one of those sad suicides,’ the other said. ‘A lover betrayed her, perhaps.’

Iko threw herself for the side, but she was so weak that even these two scrawny elders were able to pull her back.

‘By Chem!’ the first said, ‘I think you are right!’

‘Bind her,’ the second said, and the first did so.

‘Let me die,’ Iko croaked, and she could not help it or resist it – she started to weep.

The second elder patted her shoulder. ‘Later,’ he said, as one might soothe an infant. ‘Plenty of time for dying later.’

*   *   *

Once there was no more wood for fires – or bare rock to set them on anyway, only ice – Ullara was beginning to suspect that she’d pushed her luck past the breaking point. That night she sat wrapped in blankets in the lee of a crag of ice, trying to gnaw a portion of dried meat from a frozen strip. Chewing, she decided she’d gone too far to turn back now, and she lifted a portion of the blankets to study Tiny in his wicker cage and feed him a few bits of seed from a dwindling pouch.

In the morning she set out northward once more. The only birds she could reach inhabiting these icy wastes were large snow-white owls, and these she drew near her occasionally to serve as her eyes. Other than these broader views, it was Tiny who provided her vision.

So it was a blow when she awoke to find she could not see. Whether it was the cold, the improper feed, or perhaps plain loneliness, she wasn’t certain. She couldn’t help but sit and cradle the basket, thinking that it was now fairly certain that it would not be long before she followed.

And if that were to be the case, she decided, then she might as well get a move on. Feeling about, she grasped her long probing stick and stood, sensing about. She found a hunting owl not too far off and urged it her way. After a short wait she was peering down at herself, and she set off.

With the aid of the hardy snow-owls, she crossed many more leagues of the wind-scoured ice wastes. Now she began to despair. Was there nothing here to come to? Why the drive for such a journey? To what end? Was it all just a delusion, or childish wilful foolishness, as that Crimson Guard commander Seth had suggested?

Yet there was no turning back now, so she hunched her shoulders against the driving wind with its stinging jabbing needles of ice, and struggled on.

As the days passed, the owls became more and more difficult to find or call. Eventually, one morning, she found herself blind, her allies gone. She knew she couldn’t just sit still and freeze, so she set out, probing the ice and crusted snow before her, advancing one step at a time.

Later that very day, the sun’s heat sinking where it touched upon her cheeks, she pushed her stick down before her, testing, and relaxed her grip momentarily, only to have the stick slip from her hands and disappear. She heard it, for a few moments, banging and rattling as it fell hundreds of paces, striking the edges of whatever deep crevasse of ice lay before her.

Now she did find herself fighting back tears, but they flowed anyway, freezing to little beads of ice upon her cheeks. She sat hunched. Now what? Who knew how far across this canyon was, or how far to either side? What could she do now, other than just sit?

She decided to send out as strong a call as she could, for who knew? Perhaps one of the snow-owls, or some other bird, would answer before it was too late.

She called and called as she sat, wrapped in blankets, rocking. Night came, then day, and as she sat, her legs and hands now numb and useless, she thought she sensed some sort of answer. But no doubt her imagination, desperate for life, was playing tricks upon her, for it was too late. Her head was drooping for longer and longer. Her face was completely numb, and she couldn’t feel anything. In fact, it was becoming rather pleasant – she wasn’t feeling any pain at all.

But she could still hear, and what she heard over the constant howling of the winds alarmed her: the crunching of footsteps on crusty snow. She struggled to rise – and hands aided her to her feet. And suddenly, like a blessing, she could see.

Four individuals faced her, squat, wrapped in furs, with wind-darkened wrinkled features and narrow slitted eyes. One held a cage that contained a large bird of prey of some breed unfamiliar to her. The four bowed to her. ‘Welcome, priestess,’ one said – a woman by her voice.

‘Priestess?’ Ullara mumbled through her numb lips. ‘I am no priestess.’

‘Our last priest is old, dying. He cast forth a summoning for new blood and you have answered.’

‘Answered? But who are you? I don’t know you.’

‘We are the Jhek. The beast-blood is strong in us, and you have been called to be our new priestess.’