Andy Remic - Kell’s Legend

With every sound, the Black Pike Mountains screamed their dominance.

After a short break for a lunch of dried meat from the brass barge’s hold, they continued, until Alloria, who was leaning at the craft’s prow allowing breeze to stream through her hair, gasped.

“What is it?”

“There! That narrow river. To the left. Follow it!”

“What did you see?”

“Just follow it! Maybe I am going insane.”

Anu nudged the brass barge up the narrow river, and they travelled for maybe a quarter of a league; the water grew deep, channelled between two towering four thousand feet walls of sheer black granite, polished and gleaming with ice, and they emerged into…

Into a lush, green clearing.

The water ended in a circular flat pool, and beyond the water’s edge stood a proliferation of trees, plants and flowers. Colours and perfumes raged through the clearing, and Anu brought the barge to a halt, bumping against a natural sloped jetty of rock.

Alloria jumped out onto the jetty, and stood with hands on hips, smiling. The sun was shining, beaming down, warming her face, and she turned back to Anu and laughed. “What is this place?”

Anu climbed from the boat, wary, aware that when on the boat she had some small sanctuary from the Harvesters. She shook her head. “I do not know.”

“Vashell talked of such a place,” said Alloria.

“He did?”

“Yes, he said it led to…the Vrekken? Whatever that is. He said there would be green trees and flowers; and there would be a tunnel. Follow the tunnel, and the foolish traveller would find the Vrekken.”

Anu turned, and her eyes narrowed. In the far wall there indeed was a tunnel opening. It was too perfect, so obviously man-made as opposed to a natural occurrence. This made Anu even more suspicious.

“Did he say anything else?”

“No. Look! Fruit!” Alloria ran to a tree and pulled down an apple. She took a bite, and laughed through juice. “It’s wonderful! Fresh and clean. I can’t believe this little…garden exists amongst the mountains. And can you smell the flowers?”

“I can.”

Alloria tossed Anu an apple, which she caught and bit. Juice ran down her chin, and she felt her mood lighten a little. Alloria was right; this place, with the winter sun shining down between towering walls of rock, was a serious uplift to the soul.

“We cannot stay. We must stock up with supplies. We must continue.”

Alloria sighed, and waded through flowers to look deep into Anu’s eyes. “What are you searching for, Anu?”

“My father. You know this.”

“Truly? And to what end?”

Anu opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. What she wanted more than anything was to be accepted in the Silva Valley; to be accepted as pure vachine. But that had gone, now. Denied her from an early age by the very same father she sought to save; but he’d had his reasons, hadn’t he? For forcing her to become outcast? And, she realised suddenly, what she wanted more than anything was for Kradek-ka, the great inventor, to make her whole again. To put right that which he had twisted. But it was too late for that. Her chance had gone.

“I would seek acceptance,” she said, finally.

Alloria nodded, and gazed off through the trees. Birds sang in the distance. It was an uplifting sound. “Vashell said there was a path, here; a path that leads south, away, out from the embrace of the Black Pike Mountains.”

Anu stared at her. She licked her lips. “You wish to leave?”

“Yes. I would return to my husband. I would return to my children. You understand this, surely?”

Anu sighed. “Yes. I understand you. But it will be a harsh and terrible journey. I believe the paths are…treacherous.”

Alloria nodded. “I would suffer anything to see my family again.”

“Then go. With my blessing.”

“You could come with me,” said Alloria. “I heard what Vashell said; about this place, this Nonterrazake. And the Harvesters who reside there. You don’t even know if your father still lives! It is insanity to go on.”

“You listen well,” said Anu, a little stiffly. “No. I will travel there. If nothing else, I will discover the truth.”

Queen Alloria moved forward, and gazed into Anu’s eyes. “I know I have been…distant.” She licked her lips. “but…thank you, for saving me, from the soldiers. I find it hard to comprehend your ways, but hopefully, one day, if you arrive at my lands in Falanor, I will be able to extend you some form of courtesy; some help.” She paused, awkward, not really sure what she wanted to say, her mind awash with conflicting thoughts.

Anu smiled, leant forward and hugged Alloria.

“It will be as you say.”

Anu stepped back onto the Engineer’s Barge, the scents of rich flowers in her nostrils, in her golden curls, and she nosed the boat away from this inner sanctum, this temporary Eden, and towards the ominous cave which seemed to beckon her with a tiny, sibilant whisper.

Come to me, the cave seemed to say.

Come to the Vrekken.

The brass barge glided across still waters, and entered the darkness of the tunnel.

Within seconds, Anu was swallowed. Was gone.

For hours the brass barge eased through blackness. Occasionally, it would bump against jagged rock walls, and Anukis found herself praying. She did not want to drown. Even worse, she did not want to drown in a tomb-world beneath the Black Pike Mountains!

The wind whistled eerily down tunnels, and it was with a start Anu realised she was in a maze. The tenebrosity obscured the nature of the labyrinth, and it only came with time, with context, as Anu realised she was being drawn along by powerful currents, and no longer the hum of the clockwork engine. For a while she set the engine to full power, heard it clonking, gears stepping, straining against the pull. Then she realised it was futile; whatever pulled the brass barge seemed almost sentient, and she would simply burn out the engine if she continued.

Anu cut the power, and sat in eerie silence made more deafening by the stillness of the barge. She realised, then, she had grown used to the sound of the clockwork engine; it had been a comfort, like mother’s heartbeat in the womb.

Now, only the wind sang her to sleep.

Minutes passed into hours passed into days, and Anu lost all concept of time. She slept when she was tired, and ate what meagre rations remained in the hold of the barge, mainly hard bread, salted fish and a little dried pork. Or at least, animal flesh of some kind.

Eventually, veins of crystal ran through the black rock over Anu’s head; faintly at first, no more than occasional threads, strands of orange and green to break up the monotony of the terminal black. Then the threads grew more proliferous and thicker in banding, and it provided an eerie, underground light of sorts. Anu could make out the backs of her hands, and a vague outline of the barge. That was all.

The noise came after…she did not know. It could have been two days, could have been five. It was a blur, a blur of time, of memory, of identity. The noise began as a tiny crackling sound, which had Anu scampering down to the engine to see if there was a fault. But the clockwork engine was dead; killed by her own pretty, vachine-clawed hands.

Then, after hours, the noise increased and Anu realised it was the sound of gushing water, like that of a waterfall, or fast rapids over rocks. It echoed through the tunnels, strange acoustics summoned and distributed by the very nature of the environment.

More hours passed, and Anu grew increasingly agitated as she realised the source of the increasingly raging noise. It was the Vrekken, a natural whirlpool talked about with reverence in adventurer circles, around camp fires in the middle of the night, by hushed bards in rush-strewn taverns; and by the Blacklippers, who were said to have some unholy alliance with the great whirlpool. Nowhere, however, had Anu ever heard tales that the Vrekken was beneath the Black Pike Mountains-effectively entombed.