Kelfor (The Orthomancers)

Chapter 9

The water supply has nearly run out three days later. We have limited sleep to four hours each night since Jethran and Kalyka caught up with us. We are approaching the Rift of the Timeworn. Linnith and Karith are already scouting ahead. We must be close; they are both excited.

Now we are reaching the South Pole of Hethor the landscape has changed again. The sands of the desert have given way, first to compacted granules and later to rock. What was simply an infinite vista of nothingness that made my eyes ache has become littered gradually with more and more rocks, and today there are so many that we are actually having to walk between two escarpments. Strange shapes of eroded stone are appearing. Crags of softly molded rock, almost like melted candle wax, surround us. Weather-beaten pillars, similar to those surrounding the Abaloss Rift, rear up from the land, their flattened tops making them look like arrowheads in flight.

I am awed. There are even egg-shaped boulders covered in swirling enameled patterns which meld into each other. It is as if some huge ancient animal might have deposited them here hundreds of centuries ago, hoping they would hatch.

Linnith and Karith both ignore all of this. They are searching the outcrops as they walk, their gait getting more and more stiff-legged as they fail to find whatever sign they are looking for.

Kalyka dashes up to the nearest egg-like stone and runs her hand over the smooth surface. "What is this, Remeny?"

As if I know all the answers. I have to shrug. I can't answer. It looks like something from another planet.

The whole landscape is eerie, jagged. The rocks themselves give a serrated skyline, but it is more than that. All around us are surreal columns and chimney stacks of natural stone. Each stack is topped off by a flat rock, for all as though our ancestors had clambered on top and gently covered each one of them. The tops are smooth, whittled down over thousands and thousands of years by the sharp winds for which the South Pole is famous.

It is not only the sights we are seeing. The wind, gentle today, is funneling through the area where we are walking and it whistles as it circles around the stacks of stone. The sound is low pitched, continuous. A humming that seems to provoke an answering call within my own body. I vibrate as I walk.

Occasionally there are thin vents in the ground. None big enough to take a person, mere slits hinting at passageways beneath our feet. They will lead to Kelfor, if we can ever discover the entrance. I wonder what it is exactly that the two speakers of the land are searching for.

Whatever it is, they cannot find it. We walk for the whole day until it is too dark to see anything much at all. Then we sling our carricks between suitable chimneys. So far south in this season it is daylight nearly all the time. We have only a few hours to pass and rest before the new sunrise.

I rock in my carrick, watching the stars. Here, near the Rift of the Timeworn, they shine much more brightly. They glitter as if they could cut our eyes if we stared at them for very long. I end up closing my lids against the glare. As soon as I do that I fall into an uneasy sleep. Full of starts and scares, my dreams are vivid and uncomfortable.

I wake up to a large hand which is shaking my shoulder. "You were twitching." It is Doven.

"I was not. I was ... shifting position." I am not going to tell anybody about the nightmares I have been having since I watched my mother fall to her death. It is my business. Nobody else's.

"Day is breaking."

I clamber out of my carrick, smiling at Doven as he helps me dismantle the ropes holding it above the ground. "Maybe today we will find the entrance to the rift?"