Kellanved's Reach

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.’