Kellanved's Reach

Something of the proportions of this structure, whatever it was, troubled Dancer. It didn’t seem built to a human scale, but for something far larger. Noises rebounded, echoing from the distant unseen walls: the tap of Kellanved’s walking stick, the crackling of the fire, and the booming of distant surf.

At the fire sat a single, tiny figure. A young girl wrapped in a crude hide similar to their own. Tiny she might have been, but her features were not gracile: her brow was much too thick, her cheeks too wide, and her nose far too large. Their guide bowed to the girl, and Dancer was quite startled when the fellow greeted her as ‘Grandmother’.

The girl peered up at them with sharp brown eyes that soon flicked aside, dismissing their guide, who bowed again and withdrew.

‘And you are?’ Kellanved asked.

‘Jahl ’Parth,’ the girl piped. ‘Bonereader to the tribe.’

‘Ah,’ Kellanved observed. ‘We are—’

‘I know who you are,’ the girl interjected. ‘And I know why you are here.’

‘Indeed …’ Kellanved mused, sharing a troubled look with Dancer.

‘And where is here?’ Dancer asked.

The girl opened her arms, the wrap falling away to reveal that despite the terrible cold she wore only a hide vest, leaving her thin arms bare. She eyed Kellanved, and her lips quirked, almost mischievously. ‘Where are we, mage?’

Kellanved made a show of studying the silver hound’s head of his walking stick. Eyes downcast, he answered, ‘Well … broadly speaking, we are in the Warren, or Hold, of Tellann. Perhaps in the past – or in a moment held from the past.’

The child offered the mage a lofty, arched look of acknowledgement that only an ancient could summon. ‘Well done,’ she granted.

‘That old fellow called you grandmother,’ Dancer said, eyeing her now more carefully.

Jahl shrugged. ‘That is because I am his grandmother – many times removed.’

Dancer shot Kellanved a questioning look that the mage declined to acknowledge. Instead, he said, ‘You carry your years well, Jahl ’Parth.’

She smiled. ‘Your humour is welcome – you know I do not speak of the flesh.’ The Dal Hon inclined his head, and Dancer was struck by their dissimilar similarities: he a false ancient, and she a false youth. ‘At my birth the elders identified me as Jahl ’Parth returned,’ the girl continued. ‘Ancestor to many here.’

Kellanved rocked now on his heels, back and forth, and Dancer recognized that he was done with the pleasantries. ‘Well … greetings, Jahl. We are here—’

‘As I said – I know why you are here,’ the girl cut in once again, but far more sharply this time. ‘And I asked you where we were.’ Her thick lips hardened, drawing down. ‘So far you have declined to answer.’

Kellanved tapped the silver hound’s head to his lips, looking away to the surrounding darkness, almost pained. ‘Ah …’

Dancer managed to catch his eye and mouthed: Time – we must go.

The mage raised a hand, but not peremptorily, rather a begging for indulgence. ‘Well,’ he began, drawing out the word, ‘if I were to guess … an immense structure, strange larger-than-human dimensions … arcane mechanisms hinted at in the dark recesses … I would have to offer the guess of a Mountain that Walks.’

Dancer could not help but snort a laugh. ‘Children’s tales. Mountains that walk? Just stories.’

Jahl turned her narrowed gaze on him. ‘And were not structures that flew similar stories to you?’

Dancer coughed into a fist. He rubbed his neck, almost wincing. ‘But an entire mountain?’

The ancient – a true ancient – returned her piercing eyes to Kellanved, and Dancer followed the gaze to see the mage nodding. ‘And who built them?’ she asked, almost accusingly.

Kellanved cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. ‘The K’Chain Che’Malle,’ he murmured, half under his breath, as if afraid to say the name aloud.

Jahl ’Parth nodded now, her gaze softening, as if some sort of test, or threshold, had been passed. ‘You are not entirely ignorant, I see. Good. Indeed, the K’Chain. This was one of their cities, their bases. My tribe was tasked with destroying it. It was our bloodline’s only purpose. Eventually, over the span of twenty generations, we succeeded. It was a war to the death between them and us.’

‘You being the Imass,’ Kellanved observed.

Jahl nodded. ‘Indeed. And in the full knowledge of such a history – which is but one chapter in a library of wars beyond your comprehension – you would still dare meddle in this? Is your lust for power that blind?’

For his part, Dancer was beginning to reconsider. He remembered Tayschrenn’s own appalled reaction once he understood their goal. Kellanved, he noted, was now shaking his head.

‘I do not seek power,’ the mage said. ‘I seek knowledge.’

Jahl also shook her head, almost in disappointment. ‘Do not pretend that knowledge is neutral. It can be dangerous.’

‘And ignorance isn’t?’

Dancer cocked a brow – that almost sounded like a good point.