Kellanved's Reach

Tarel held out a hand in invitation. ‘Lords and ladies, may I introduce the Witch Jadeen, terror of south Itko Kan.’

The smile the witch gave in answer to that introduction could only be described as hungry.

*   *   *

Dancer did not mind the actual physical walk across the central plains; the gentle hills, small copses and tall grasses were pretty, as was the enormous sky with its horizon-to-horizon fronts of massed clouds passing overhead like the fabled sky-castles of the ancients.

Fabled no more, he reflected, as they’d found the shattered remains of one such in Shadow.

No, it was the uncertainty surrounding the errand that bothered him. Were they wasting their time? Could they simply wander for ever, pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp? Had Kellanved finally slipped over the edge into obsession and madness?

How could he discover the answers to any of these questions? Whom could he ask? Certainly not Kellanved.

So for three days they walked in relative silence on a roughly northward path, tracing the ever diminishing escarpment until it lay across the landscape as nothing more than a particularly steep hill. At nights he lay back to study the starred night sky – so much brighter here, far from the lights of any city. There was a delicacy and an intricacy in their arrangements he never would have guessed at before. Perhaps there was some credence after all to the astrologers’ assertion that secrets lie hidden there among such complexity.

That third night he could restrain his unease no longer, and he cleared his throat, turning his head to regard his partner who sat now, hands atop his walking stick, studying the flames of their meagre fire. ‘Do you even know what you are looking for?’ he asked.

Kellanved did not stir – he might have been asleep for all Dancer knew – yet he answered readily enough, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

Such unhelpful answers were the main reason for Dancer’s unwillingness to ask the maddening fellow any questions.

‘We really should be heading back. We have no idea how far—’

‘It is close,’ the hunched mock-elder snapped. ‘Close. I feel it.’

Dancer raised a brow; the man was rarely so touchy. Clearly he must be sharing something of his own disquiet. So Dancer relented; he would push no further – for now.

As winter was coming on, morning revealed a thick misty ground fog. The blanket Dancer slept wrapped up in carried a silvery lacing of frost. He rose to see Kellanved still sitting hunched, hands atop the short walking stick. ‘Kellanved?’ he asked.

The lad’s head jerked as he came awake, blinking. ‘What?’ Then his gaze slid aside, probing the rolling fog, and he faced the east, standing. Now Dancer felt it too; though no mage, his training had raised his senses to a point where active Warren magics played upon his nerves.

The fog was not entirely natural.

As if now aware of their regard, whoever lay behind the deception let it slip away and the roiling banks parted, fading, to reveal a band of Seti horsemen and women, some twenty or so.

Their leathers and regalia were impressive. Wolf-tails swung from the tops of raised spears; necklaces of wolf and cat teeth hung at their necks. The foremost, the oldest, rode a dappled grey mount. A thick cloak of white fur draped his shoulders, and the tails of grey-white animals adorned a stone-headed mace cradled in his arms.

‘Shadow mage,’ this Seti elder called to them, ‘did you think your crossing of our lands would go unnoticed?’

Kellanved thoughtfully scratched his chin. ‘Actually, no – I didn’t.’

‘Then you are even more the fool than you appear. You know you are not welcome here.’

Kellanved opened his arms wide. ‘We are merely passing through. That is all.’

‘Passing through?’ the elder repeated, doubtingly. ‘Passing through to what? There is nothing here for you outlanders. No town or settlement. Only our plains, which only we seem to value.’ He pointed the mace to the north. ‘But perhaps you mean to travel to the mountains yonder and the fields of ice beyond. In which case, you are welcome to continue onward and good riddance to you.’

Kellanved tapped his walking stick to the ground, tilting his head. ‘In truth, we are searching for something …’

Now the lean elder frowned suspiciously beneath his long grey moustaches. ‘Searching for something? For what? A quick death?’ He motioned with the mace and the war band spread out to either side, beginning to encircle them, spears lowered. ‘You are not intending to meddle here with the resting place of the Great Goddess, are you? In which case you have earned your deaths.’

Dancer set his back to Kellanved and rested his hands on his heaviest parrying blades.

‘And who will have given us our deaths?’ Kellanved asked.