Kellanved mouthed a curse, his shoulders falling. ‘Fine! Very well. Together then.’
Dancer and the mage stepped on to the stone flags of the ruin’s threshold. The next instant Dancer gasped as if stabbed; he hugged himself, his breath pluming, teeth chattering, and saw they now stood amid blowing snow on a dark snow-covered landscape below thick black and grey clouds.
The little mage groaned into the savage wind. ‘Ye gods! I shall die!’
Dancer pointed behind: domed hide tents shuddered in the wind, their bases secured by rings of heavy stones. He steered a stiff and shivering Kellanved towards the nearest, pushed aside the heavy hide flap and shoved the mage in before him, then fell in himself.
It was dark within, and stank of rotten fish and animal fat – but it was exquisitely warm, and Dancer just lay panting, grateful, clenching his numb fingers.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark he made out the faces of three elders staring at them in open wonder round a small central hearth. One spoke, an old man, his wide, blunt face lined and seamed. Dancer did not understand the language.
His vision improved and he saw that the three wore crude hides, painted and sewn with beads and bones. Their hair was grey and long and hung in greased tangled lengths; he wondered if this was the source of the sour animal fat stink.
The eldest spoke again. Kellanved roused himself and sat up. He gestured, grasped Dancer’s shoulder, and asked the trio, ‘Do you understand me?’
The oldster grunted his assent. ‘You are not spirits?’
‘No,’ Kellanved answered. ‘We are men.’
‘You are strange men.’
Kellanved nodded. ‘Well … I suppose we are. Now, where are we?’
‘Our village is named the Place of the Booming Ice,’ said another, an old woman – or so Dancer thought. The three appeared quite identical.
Kellanved shot Dancer a look. ‘How very helpful.’
‘What do you want here?’ the woman asked.
‘We seek a throne, a seat, a place of authority – do you know of what I speak?’
The three eyed one another, uncertain. One said, ‘We will take you to our eldest.’ They rose, and Dancer was startled by how squat they were; squat but wide. They searched about the hut and produced hide blankets that they offered to him and Kellanved. Then the eldest pushed aside the flap and exited. Dancer and Kellanved followed, wrapped in their blankets.
Their guide led them into the driving snow. Through the blowing whiteness a huge looming bulk took shape. Because of the darkness Dancer couldn’t be certain of the scale, but it appeared gigantic. They entered an opening, broad and low, like a cave mouth, except that the stone was worked smooth and dressed.
They walked a tunnel, of sorts; very broad, with slim descending steps cut into the solid rock of the floor. Snow and dirty wet straw littered the channel. Light glowed ahead – the flickering amber of firelight. The tunnel ended at a large chamber, one so huge that Dancer had no idea of its dimensions, as the walls and ceiling were hidden in darkness. A meagre fire lay ahead; their guide headed for it.
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.’