The old warrior reared up, like a startled horse, and Pug’s own mount shied away. “Then, mad black one, northward go. Death waits there. Find that out you shall. Those who in the ice live none welcome, and the Lasura no contest with madmen seek. Those who do a mad one harm are by the gods harm done. Touched by the gods you are.” He dashed off.
Pug felt both relief and fear. For the Thun to know “those who live in the ice” showed there was a chance the Watchers were neither fiction nor long vanished into the past. But the Thun’s warning caused him to fear for his mission. What waited for him high in the ice of the north? Pug moved away as the Thun band vanished over the horizon. Winds blew down off the ice, and he pulled his cloak about him. Never had he felt this alone.
More weeks had passed, and the horse had died. It was not the first time Pug had subsisted on horsemeat. Pug used his arts to transport himself short distances, but mostly he walked. Vagueness about time disturbed him more than any danger. He had no sense of the Enemy’s imminent attack. For all he knew, the Enemy might need years to actually enter Midkemia. Whatever else, he knew it couldn’t still possess the power it displayed in the vision of the time of the golden bridge, otherwise it would have swept into Midkemia and no power on the planet could have stopped it.
Pug’s routine became dully monotonous as he continued northward. He would walk until he topped some slight rise and would fix his vision on a distant point. With concentration, he could transport himself there, but it was tiring and a little dangerous. Fatigue dulled the mind, and any mistake in the spell used to gather the energy needed to move him could cause him harm, or even kill him. So he would walk, until he felt sufficiently alert and at a place conducive to such spell casting.
Then one day he had seen something strange in the distance. An odd feature seemed to rear up above the icy cliff. It appeared vague, too far away to be seen clearly. He sat down. There was a spell of far seeing, one used by magicians of the Lesser Path. He remembered it as if he had read it a moment before, a faculty of his mind that had somehow been enhanced by his torture by the Warlord and the odd spell fashioned to keep him from his magic. But he lacked the strenuous stimulation, the fear of death, that had allowed him to use a Lesser Magic, and he could not cause the spell to work for him. Sighing, he stood and began again to trudge northward.
For three days he had seen the ice spire, rising high into the sky above the leading edge of a great glacier. Now he trudged up to a high rise and gauged his distance. Transporting himself without a known location, a pattern to focus his mind upon, was dangerous unless he could see his destination. He picked a small outcropping of rock before what seemed to be an entrance and incanted a spell.
Suddenly he stood before what was clearly a door into an ice tower, fashioned by some arcane art. At the door appeared a robed figure. It moved silently and with grace, and was tall, but nothing of its features could be seen in the deep dark of its hood.
Pug waited and said nothing. The Thun were obviously frightened of these creatures, and while Pug had little fear for himself, a blunder could cost him the only source of aid he could think of to help stem the Enemy. Still, he was ready to instantly defend himself if necessary.
As winds whipped snowflakes in swirls about him, the robed figure motioned for Pug to follow and turned back in to the door. Pug hesitated a moment, then followed the robed figure into the spire.
Inside the spire were stairs, carved into its walls. The spire itself seemed to be fashioned from ice, but somehow there was no cold here, in fact, the spire seemed almost warm after the bitter wind of the tundra. The stairs led up, toward the pinnacle of the spire, and down, into the ice. The figure was vanishing down the stairs, almost out of sight when Pug entered. Pug followed. They descended what seemed an impossible distance, as if their destination lay far below the glacier. When they halted, Pug was certain they were many hundreds of feet below the surface.
At the bottom of the stairs they came to a large door, fashioned from the same warm ice as the walls. The figure moved through the door, and again Pug followed. What he saw on the other side caused him to halt, dumbfounded.