‘You ready?’ Dancer asked.
Kellanved froze, then turned to face him, his features composed; the nacht, too, peering over his shoulder, suddenly looked innocent. ‘Of course! What does it look like?’
‘Like you’re having some trouble with the help.’
‘Nonsense!’ He reached up and grasped the beast by the neck and yanked it from his back. ‘Ha! Got you now.’
The creature reached to bite his arm and he let it fall, yanking his hands away. ‘Now, now. Bad! Bad Demon.’ The nacht clambered back up to the rafters, hissing what sounded eerily like laughter.
‘I thought you were going to call it something else.’
‘Many things come to mind, I assure you.’
‘If you’re finished?’
Kellanved sent the beast one last glare. ‘Certainly.’ He motioned Dancer closer. ‘The shift should be smoother now.’
Dancer drew two blades and crouched into a ready stance. ‘Very well.’
Scarves of murky darkness coalesced from the air about them, spinning and twisting, and for an instant his vision darkened. He blinked, squinting, weapons raised. Then a tilt in the surface sent him forward and something struck him a blow on the forehead. He staggered backwards in loose stones and gravel, falling.
The darkness slipped away. He lay on his back staring up at the leaden sky of Shadow. All about them stood a forest of tall cylinders, broken off at various heights.
Kellanved loomed into his vision, peering down, concerned. ‘Sorry about that.’
Dancer jumped to his feet, rubbed the back of a hand to his forehead, slightly dizzy. ‘It’s fine. Never mind. What is this place? Ruins?’
‘Of a kind. Take a look.’
Dancer examined the nearest column – it appeared to have been carved in the likeness of a tree, complete with scabs of bark. Yet the placement made no architectural sense. Towers rose everywhere, in no apparent straight lines.
Kellanved had started off across the hardscrabble rock pavement that lay between. Dancer followed, marvelling at the scale and insanity of the gargantuan site. ‘Who would do this?’ he asked. ‘Do you know?’
‘No one did,’ the little mage answered, humming to himself once more and tapping his stick – a sure sign that he was pleased and at ease. ‘What do they looked like?’
‘They’re made to look like trees. Perhaps these Edur we’ve heard of?’
‘No. They are trees. I quite assure you.’
Walking between the countless trunks, Dancer couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. ‘Real trees? Was it a curse? Who could possibly be so powerful? Anomandaris? Kilmandaros? Ancient K’rul?’
Kellanved waved his walking stick, chuckling. ‘No, no. No one is that powerful – at least, so I hope and believe. No, scholars argue that this is natural. That if things are buried and remain inviolate for long enough, then they turn to stone.’
This made a kind of sense to Dancer. He grunted, saying, ‘So, Burn’s work then.’
Kellanved tilted his head to one side. ‘Well. I suppose you could call it that.’
They passed through the boundary of the eerie silent forest to low dry hills, their tops carpeted in broken rock and brittle thorny brush. A heap of stones crowned a number of the rises – each a burial cairn, Kellanved explained. One had obviously been demolished, its stones scattered all down the hillside, and this one he approached. Dancer followed, wary, hands on blades.
The little mage stood staring down inside for a time, and, after scanning the surroundings, Dancer joined him.
The cairn held a half-revealed corpse. Tattered cloth and leather wrapped its bare white bones, the dry environment having preserved the coverings well. The bones looked nearly human to Dancer, though somewhat too robust. ‘What are they?’ he asked.
‘Edur, I judge.’
‘Did you…’
Kellanved shook his head. ‘No.’
Dancer was relieved; not that he was overly superstitious. It just seemed … prudent … not to interfere in anything here until they understood the potential consequences.
A prickling brushed the back of his neck then, as of a faint awareness of something, and he spun, drawing his blades. There stood the man from the cairn – yet not him, less ragged in leathers, a spear straight at his side.
Kellanved turned, his brows rising, then bowed. ‘Greetings.’
The man, or Edur – it was hard to tell since he was covered in dust and obviously dead – did not respond, and after a time Dancer sent Kellanved a questioning look. The mage signed for patience.
As if carried by the wind, or the brush of the sands over the stones, there came faint words. ‘Disturb not the dead.’
Kellanved bowed once more. ‘We would not dream of it.’ He waited for a response, tapping his fingertips together.
Once again, after a long silence: ‘Disturb not the dead.’
Now Kellanved sent Dancer a look of exasperation. He bowed his farewell to the figure and waved Dancer on.
Together they abandoned the hilltop, Dancer walking backwards, weapons still readied. He glanced away for a moment to make sure of his footing and when he looked back the figure was gone. ‘A ghost?’ he asked.
‘We’re all ghosts here. Shadows of pasts and futures.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Emurlahn is broken, shattered. Perhaps one may think of it as a repository of all the shadows of everything past and future, now spilling over and jumbled.’
Dancer scratched his chin, thinking. Finally, he gave up. ‘Sorry. Doesn’t help one bit.’
Kellanved raised a brow at him. ‘Really? I rather liked that one. Been working on it for a while.’
‘Try again.’
‘Critic.’
‘Now, now. So, where’s this gate?’
Kellanved raised the walking stick, pointing. ‘Beyond those hills.’
‘Couldn’t you have got us a little closer, then?’
The mage eyed him for a time, as if wondering whether he was being serious or not. ‘I don’t choose where to appear, you know. Anyway, we have to make it there before—’ He stopped himself.
‘Before the hounds find us,’ Dancer finished.
Wincing, Kellanved cast him a wary glance. ‘Ah … yes. Before that.’
‘Then we’d better hurry.’
They marched through the hills, passing more cairns and sand-choked scattered ruins. It struck Dancer that Shadow seemed nothing more than a gigantic mausoleum or trash heap of time and history. As if all the moments hidden by time in the world he’d left behind were all naked here, exposed and visible. Strangely enough, it made him rather sad to think of all that had been, or could have been.
He couldn’t relax, however, and kept glancing back over his shoulder to a dark smear in the sky – a lazily flapping creature like no bird he knew of, which seemed to be following them, or, at the very least, going their way.
They passed between two hills to find the dark arch of the gateway ahead, still half buried in sand. To Dancer, the gnawed stones of its frame seemed weary beneath the weight of unknown ages upon it. Kellanved began rummaging in the saddlebags at his shoulder. Dancer peered round, waiting for the inevitable.
While Kellanved set to work, muttering to himself, or mouthing invocations, examining his drawings, and touching the stones in precise places, Dancer kept watch. Why, he wasn’t certain, as there was nothing he could do in any case.
The Hood-blasted hounds remained a problem for them. Thinking about that, he probably should’ve brought a spear, like the one that ghost carried. He wanted to know Kellanved’s ideas on their history and why they kept coming, but the fellow was busy. Were they guarding Shadow? Or were they just damned hungry?
The first thing that happened was that the flying thing came circling down to land on a nearby hilltop. Like a bat it was; dark, with broad leathery wings. But bore a long pointed beak more like a pelican. Dancer watched it and it watched them.