The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham

Author:David Anthony Durham [Durham, David Anthony]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: 01 Fantasy
ISBN: 9780385532112
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

The next afternoon Kelis noticed something strange on the southern horizon. He said nothing about it, not that day or the next. But on the third day Naamen tried to make eye contact with him as they walked. He shot concerned glances that Kelis did not return. Kelis was glad that his companion did not voice his thoughts, for he still hoped he might awake the next morning and find the shapes had been but clouds, mirages, tricks the heated vapors played.

But in the clear air of the fourth morning he could no longer avoid the truth. Near, now, so suddenly near—as if they had crept on their toes forward during the night—stood a horizon-wide wall of mountain peaks. Foothills fronted slanting slabs of granite, behind which dark slopes ramped toward the sky, fading into the haze so that one could only guess their true heights. Rank upon rank of them, shouldering their way around the curve of the world. They were a range like nothing he had seen in the Known World, and they most certainly had not been here the last time he ventured into the far south.

Benabe asked, “I see those, and you see those. We each see those, right? So I ask, why are there mountains before us? Nobody said anything about climbing mountains.”

“I do not know these mountains,” was all Kelis could say in answer.

“What do you mean?” Benabe asked. “You have been this way before—”

“I have, but the mountains were not there before.”

He stared a long time as the others shot questions at him. What did it mean? Were they so lost as that? How can there be mountains so large that they had never heard of them? How could he not have seen them if he had really come this way before? Must they cross them, or go around them, or—

To each he shook his head and repeated, “I do not know these mountains.” He glanced at Shen, who was watching him. She was the only one who was unconcerned by the massive barrier facing them. She just cocked her head and smiled, as if untroubled and seemingly ready to carry on.

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