1-Million-Words

They traversed Bordh to the head of the valley, where the Relza’s icy roar grew out of the spring runoff that flowed from the heights of the Llaethlagara and beneath the waterwheel that allowed for both mining, milling, and the villagers other needs. Their climb was gradual at first, along foot paths worn smooth by centuries of miners, past first one intrusion into the rockface and then another, deep caverns that echoed with the pick and hammer sounds of mining that Kavan was largely unfamiliar with. A rope line, upon which wooden pails swung, anchored to the waterwheel below them, stretched up the mountain, always straight, always accessible to the wooden mine platforms constructed at the mouth of each shaft. There were other tunnels blocked by milled boards, other abandoned lines to the left and to the right, but instead of entering one of them, or the mines within which the villagers toiled, Mallis continued upward. Off of the path over ancient rockslides, through patches of snow shielded from the sun by peaks or boulders a trail that only those familiar with the mountain could follow.