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The detention káján was well-run, providing shelter, showers, and three solid meals for him and his fellow inmates.
He’d enjoyed thick, chunky, fresh bread and rich, hearty soup, drank cold, light beer and maintained his physical fitness with kapo sessions.
He’d also tried to keep up his sab?r skills.
The ferocity of his blade work had been enough to deter the more feral of the detainees from approaching too close.
Now, he was almost sad that he had to leave and contend with the real Katáne outside the káján’s refuge.
Killen gave the pair waiting at the entrance a wry chin jerk and rose.
Sheathing his koya barrier, he wrapped his cloak around him and headed out, stepping over the still crashed-out bodies of his fellow internees.
Minutes later, the giant Kärd guide trudged along a winding avenue that wound past a sea of tents in a valley cradled within four massive gulfs of mountainous cliffs.
Killen ploughed behind the sure-footed sentry through the kambí that was stirring to wakefulness.
It was a footslog through delicate sand drifts, his feet sinking deep, the cold seeping even through the thickness of his boots.
When he paused to shake a rock from under his boot, he jolted when an energy snaked around him.
Seconds later, he sensed a slight flutter on his upper arm.
He slapped at it, expecting to come away with a bug in his hand. Scanning the area with urgency, he searched for the source of the tiny stroke.
His steps stalled, and he glimpsed, for just a moment, a shimmering iridescent creature.
A crystalline eagle?
Yet one so diaphanous it was barely visible.
Then it was gone, like a flame burning out.
A vapour essence of a presence remained along with droplets of luminescence.
He could make out its ionic trail as it led to the ranges above them.
He latched onto the ebony-dark mountain and narrowed his eyes.
His hawkstone reached out, sifting through dimensions, and without warning, his cognition was assailed with images.
They flashed so fast he couldn’t focus on any in particular; they all moved at a dizzying speed.
He chomped hard on the ever-present ball of klaw. It flooded his mouth with its bitter mint flavour, giving his mind an instant clap of clarity of sight that burst into his lodestone.
He glimpsed such gloaming that his spirit recoiled. Dark ghost-like filaments flitted through the air, reaching from the ground around him, choking the trees and all life forms.
‘Oy! Kínai! Move!’
Heart pounding, he shook himself from his hereafter vision and jogged up to the impatient Kärd, tapping his boot into the snow.
‘Got places to be,’ the sentry growled and charged forward, not waiting to see if Killen followed.
He did, still shaking from his hallucinations.
To help stave off the horror in his mind, Killen studied the signs of life appearing in the kambí.
From the first smoke of cooking fires to glimpses of daybreak ablutions through half-open shack flaps and the aroma of food cooking over fire wafting over the camp.
