Lamashan 9, 4712 (late afternoon, Path of Aganhei in the Hoarwell March)

The silver dragon returned today. It flew in from the east directly overhead, and then spiraled down towards our caravan. This was another one of those tense moments that had me second-guessing myself: Are those scales silver or are they white? It got close—uncomfortably close—and then called out to us. “Ho! Caravan! Ice trolls ahead of you!” Several of us shouted gratitudes in some form or another in response, and it flew off.

Silver dragons are known for taking a protective role around humanity. Actually dealing with the ice trolls directly would have been better, but that is probably a bit too much to expect. It is not it’s job, and I think the species in general takes the same philosophy as parents when looking after children: it is important to learn to fight your own battles. A little nudging here and there is fine, but intervening directly makes you soft and dependent. I admit I have mixed feelings about this approach to pedotrophy, though, probably because mom’s definition of “a little nudging” differed significantly from the norm: she left the hen house open to the fox and the extent of her guidance was “figure it out”.

Sandru stopped the caravan so that we could work out a plan and the first thing we did was consult with Ulf. “Ice trolls are smaller and weaker than regular trolls, but they are adapted to the cold. And, they’re smarter.”

Of course that is a relative term. It’s not difficult to be smarter than a troll, but he didn’t mean for it to be a backhanded compliment: ice trolls really are cunning, or at least cunning enough, and have been known to create skillful ambushes. We could very easily have stumbled into one if the dragon hadn’t warned us. We needed to know what we were walking into.

I asked Nihali to scout ahead and see what she could learn. This earned me a number of stares. Every time I send her out or involve her in our activities I get questioned about her safety and my apparent disregard for it. I never know what to say to this.

Etayne treats Ling like he is made of glass, and I get it. Much of that is simply the reality of being a witch, but on top of that she has her reasons—very personal reasons—and I don’t question that. But it seems everyone has the same expectation of me, and that is just not how it is. I am sorry to disappoint you. My relationship with Nihali is no less important to me, but what I need from her is not the same as what Etayne needs from Ling.

Whatever their opinion, no one argued with the results. Nihali returned in short order with the rough location of the ice trolls’ camp, and we dealt with them.

Were they as smart as Ulf suggested? More or less. They attempted a respectable, albeit unoriginal, ruse that certainly caught our attention. Their only mistakes were assuming that we didn’t speak giant and wouldn’t recognize flanking maneuvers. In all fairness, I suspect few would pass the first test, and though the second was fairly obvious, if you were close enough to see it you were probably in trouble, anyway. Unless, of course, you were equipped and prepared as we were.

I would never say this to the others, but this skirmish nags at me. It was the first time we have gone out of our way to engage—to kill—creatures native to this part of the world. Logically, I understand that they are a menace, dangerous not just to us but to everyone who lives here, and we saw enough human bones in their camp to reinforce that point, but there’s this fine line between preemptive and aggressive. On which side did we just fall?

Lamashan 11, 4712 (evening, Path of Aganhei in the Hoarwell March)

Snow has been falling steadily since late this morning. This would be lovely if it weren’t for the winds. By mid-afternoon heavy white flakes were blowing all around us making it difficult to even see the road much less make any progress on it. Until they died back it wasn’t possible to tell if the snow we were seeing was newly falling or merely being relocated from points north.

“Died back” is not the same as “stopped entirely”, however, and drifts have started to form on the windward side of the wagons that mark the perimeter of our camp. We’re going to have to dig out in the morning before we can get moving, and that’s assuming we’ll be able to move at all.

I’m not exactly a stranger to snow or even blizzards, but such things are rare occurrences along the Lost Coast and I’ve never been in snowstorms as intense and heavy as this. Growing up we’d get at most an inch or two here and there, and maybe one big snowfall every few years. It was fun as a kid but it’s less so when you can’t just go inside to get out of it. The campfires created from the beads are helping to keep us dry, and our spells and enchanted items are keeping everyone warm, but these things do not keep the wind from whipping the canvas of our tents and the covered wagon, nor do they keep the snow out of our face and hair. The latter in particular makes guard duty particularly unpleasant. I predict a long, damp, and restless night.

Lamashan 13, 4712 (evening, Path of Aganhei in the Hoarwell March)

The storm has been our faithful companion for three days now. Only a few inches of snow seems to be falling overall, but the winds have been a constant presence whipping up to blizzard and whiteout conditions for hours at a time. Yesterday it took us much of the morning to dig out and de-ice, and I doubt we traveled more than a dozen miles afterwards.

Today, we didn’t even try to move. The drifts were several feet high, nearly burying the supply wagons, and the wind was gusting heavily. We’d get one wagon cleared, but in the time it took to do another the first would be inundated with more snow and ice. It wasn’t worth wasting our energy on a pointless activity. We have opted to wait it out until morning and see if the weather improves.

I suspect this is just a taste of what is in store for us in the coming months.

Lamashan 14, 4712 (morning, Path of Aganhei in the Hoarwell March)

The storm finally broke over night. After days of gusting winds the air around us is eerily still and silent. We are surrounded by an ocean of snow, with drifts like waves stuck in time. We are supposed to turn off of the Path of Aganhei today and head for the village of Iqaliat but I don’t know how we will be able to see the road we are currently on, much less the next.

Skygni dropped in on us as we were de-icing the wagons in preparation for leaving camp. We asked in passing what he thought of the storm. “Get used to it,” was his reply. I thought that pretty much spoke for itself, but he had more to add. “It’s not common to see this so early in the year, but we’ll get more of it as we head north.”

So that is something to look forward to.

Lamashan 17, 4712 (morning, Hoarwell March)

We can finally see it clearly in the distance: the cliffs that form the edge of the arctic plateau. The High Ice. After two months of travel we are nearly there.

Ulf says we will make Iqaliat by noon. I asked him what we should expect.

“They are mostly a nomadic people. The main caravan route bypassed their village, and they are generally suspicious of outsiders.” He paused and then said, “They have their own ways.”

I interpreted that to mean we would not exactly become close friends during our stay. Ulf concurred. “Don’t expect them to be friendly until they get to know you, and you them.” He pulled out a strange talisman that looked like it was made of remorhaz scales. “This was a gift from their hearth mistress. It’s a token of friendship between me and their tribe.” Which meant he would do most of the talking.

Why make the stop at all, given the cold (ha!) reception we are likely to receive? Because they can tell us what the conditions are like on the Ice. If we ask the same question in Unaimo—which is the last village along the main caravan route on this side—they will in all likelihood (and rather sensibly, I might add) just tell us not to go and leave it at that. Unfortunately, this is not one of our options. We need information, not a nanny, so Iqaliat it is.

(Afternoon, Iqaliat)

There are basically two decent people in this entire village: the hearthmistress, Sonavut, and the chief. Two gods-be-damned people in a village of over one hundred, and truth be told? I think the chief is just being polite. What is wrong with these people?

That’s a rhetorical question. What’s wrong with them begins with, “what is wrong with their shaman, Tunuak?” He is an old, bitter, angry man. Every misfortune is a punishment sent by the gods for some transgression; every penance requires some form of sacrifice (the barbaric variety where you kill some hapless animal and let it go to waste). All his solutions involve returning to the “old ways” and spilling blood.

The Erutaki worship elemental spirits, and if Radella and I are right they believe these spirits control the seasons and the weather. Please the spirits and you are rewarded with sunny skies and a balmy subzero day. Anger them and they park a storm over your head. Or worse.

They are currently dealing with “worse”. In the past four months, a white dragon has raided their village three times, flying nearly 60 miles one way to do it.

Their shaman tried to use us as scapegoats. We stepped out of Sonavut’s home and into a lynching. “It is as I told you,” he cried out to the crowd of villagers that had gathered around him. “We need a grand sacrifice! One of the outsiders must be killed!”

It was almost as if we weren’t welcome here.

He was whipping the villagers into a frenzy, and was not above using a little magic to improve his delivery. Well, sir, two can play at that game. I had prepared for the possibility that we would need similar help ourselves, so when Olmas stepped up to try and reason with the people and their chief, I figured there was no better time than the present. The shaman then tried to bully us with veiled threats, but Sparna would have none of that. Finally, he resorted to the time-honored tradition of outright lies, and that’s when Qatana joined the fray.

In the end it was something of a draw. “We are not going to sacrifice anyone,” the chief said, which sounded pretty good, but then she turned to us and added, “You may stay the night, but you must leave the village in the morning.” Hardly a ringing endorsement. As for the shaman? He expected his performance to end with, I don’t know, a public beheading or something. When it didn’t, he stormed off in anger.

I wanted to leave this village to rot and its wounds to fester right then, especially given the welcoming party, but two things have turned their problems into our problems.

The first came from the hearth mistress. The usual caravan route is completely blocked by what she called the morozokus. “They are terrible storms that come down from the north, from the center of the High Ice.” It’s been an unusual year. Not only is this not their normal season, but they are traveling farther and farther south, and are fiercer than ever.

If that sounds a little like she thought of them as being alive, I had the same question. “The old gods of the wind oversee the mighty storms. Our shaman has been chastising our people for not doing the normal homage to them.” More elemental spirit mumbo-jumbo. Regardless of the reason, though, the result is the same: the caravan route is blocked by the storms, and that leaves only the alternate route—the passage north that Ulf spoke of. The problem is that this northern route will take us near the dragon’s lair.

Of course, we could just take our chances on that: three attacks in four months sounds like pretty good odds for just passing through. But there’s that second thing I mentioned.

It came from Radella, who had the wisdom (and the skill) to follow our shaman friend after he left his impromptu town hall meeting. With a little help from some invisibility, courtesy of yours truly, she was able to tail him all the way to his secret lair hidden in the cliffs above the village. No, really. That is actually a thing.

Tunuak has been a busy man, and we’re pretty sure no one else in the village knows what he’s up to. We’re certain they don’t know he’s been creating or controlling undead. This little but of news was enough to grab our full attention, and even Ulf had something to add after Radella described what she saw. “They say the souls of those who die from the freezing cold come back as frost spirits.”

Qatana and I looked at each other and I could see the look of grim resolve and determination on her face. She started in Pharasma’s church before…well, before. Unlife is the very antithesis of Pharasma’s domain. Willing souls use it to cheat death and avoid her judgement. Unwilling souls are ripped from her grasp. Qatana may no longer be part of that faith, but her views on this particular matter haven’t changed. If the shaman is using this brand of necromancy then he is up to no good, and we are getting involved.

I admit I am concerned, though. They insist on doing this today…on doing it now. I don’t have the right spells for this. I am going in unprepared.

(afternoon, cliffs above Iqaliat)

He smashed the eggs. The bastard smashed her eggs.

OK, I don’t have proof of that, but something tells me those eggshell fragments are not some  grand coincidence, and he wasn’t trying to hatch a dragon of his own. And if I am right…

Gods! What if I am right? What if this is exactly what it appears to be? She’d just be defending her nest. Can we blame her? Should we be surprised if she blamed the village for this crime? They don’t all deserve to be punished for what happened, but isn’t this her nature? If we kill her, are we any better? Are we even doing the right thing?

Gods, I feel sick.

Can we do this? Should we do this?