I've been caught up here in the mountains by a blizzard. All day it's been a struggle to stop the howling wind from extinguishing my small campfire, though it's hardly been worth the effort. Any small amount of heat from the fire is sucked away by wind, sleet, and snow. The remains of those wolves' hides have come in useful. I've piled them around and over myself, and they at least keep the worst of the raging elements off me. I'm cold ... so cold, and my clothing and equipment are saturated and just about freezing solid. The cold and the wet make the wounds I took fighting off the wolves ache even more than when they were freshly made by the creatures' slashing teeth and claws.
I've been thinking about this journey. Up here in the middle of a raging snowstorm, the reasons seem less compelling somehow, and I have even less of any idea as to what I might accomplish than when I started out.
Of course I have no true idea of what I'll find. For sure, Ellyana and I watched that tower burn ... but the thought's been on my mind for some time that maybe, just maybe, enough of it survived the flames to carry on exerting some malign influence. If I'm wrong, all well and good. But if I'm right ... what to do? The best thing seems to my mind to not leave that benighted place until I've made sure that there's no stone left standing on another.


My thoughts have been wandering ... must be the cold working it's way into my bones, into my very soul. I think I slept for a time then roused when I thought I heard her call me ... but the only sound I hear now is wind shrieking through these mountain passes. I've been trying to focus my thoughts, to call up memories of other times ... of the last time we came this way travelling with so much hope. But it's been difficult to pin down those thoughts, to stop my mind from drifting and darting around like the snowflakes blown around me.

I recall a comment a few days ago ... Lowrenzo asked what if I no longer walked the lands, and he told a tale of me, and there were none to recall the rogue Pallas? There are, true, a few items ... a few parchments on which my name is mentioned ... memories, perhaps fleeting, of what some might have thought at the time of any small thing I may have accomplished ...

Definite thought merges into daydream ... memories mix with what I see before me ... words and faces from the past fly around in this howling storm. Faces and names not seen or heard in the lands for a long time now ... it may be that my fellow rogue was right, that it's my doom to fall somewhere and lie unremembered ... but those names and faces are remembered, by me at least.

I need to rest but should not ... I need to sleep but dare not lest there is no waking ... I'll stay in what shelter I have 'til this frozen tempest blows itself out, and then I'll move on. Yes, once I can rouse myself I must keep moving.