Upon leaving Dumumshtu, the Dragon Expedition proceeded slowly northward, still generally following the course of the Shdulus River toward its source. Though the river was much reduced in this region, the last remnants of the spring snowmelt meant it raced through the narrow canyons with terrible potency. Viable crossing points were rare, and always guarded by Bahab standing sentry. These we avoided when possible and approached carefully and openly otherwise, seeking to avoid any provocation. Progress through the mountains is a sluggish, drawn-out affair for any traveler, but especially in the case of large parties carrying much heavy gear. The narrow trails demanded that the entire expedition march single file, often strung out across a significant distance. Scouts struggled to hold sentry paths upon the flanks due to the thick nature of the forest and the many snarling rock formations that left all progress in shadow. The mountain routes are circuitous and winding, charted for the ease of travel by hunters, not overland speed, and find their way around the high peaks lazily. False trails, whether laid down by game animals, cultists, or worse, must be identified and avoided. The time lost to such distractions can be considerable. Rough ground, which strains the knees and ankles of horse, camel, and human alike further imposed difficulties in caring for those who acquired injury. The Bahab's use of dogs and bears as pack animals that paw and scramble over the broken ground came to swiftly make sense following the struggles of our hoof-bearing mounts.

Fuel and clean water are thankfully abundant in the Dumum Range, but so is chill and damp. Igniting fires for heat to ward off the bitter nighttime cold requires carefully gathering and storing tinder, and logs loaded onto the flames may need considerable time drying before they ignite and contribute any heat of their own. This sluggish process adds to the delay tied to any stop where heating is required, for food or to dry soaked clothing from a stream crossing. To limit such stops the morning and midday meals were formed of dried jerky, precooked porridge, and cheese. Such foods demand much of the jaw. Evenings were often little better, for the distance between villages often stretched beyond that of even the most efficient day's travel, and the expedition would be forced to camp upon the trail, with little opportunity to hunt for fresh meat in the thick undergrowth. Snares and fish traps left in the cold streams gathered in some small prizes, but not enough to fill the bellies of a large group. Nor does the forest hide easily harvested fruit or nuts in the spring and early summer. Even if these were abundant, as occurred later on, being foreign visitors we largely lacked the knowledge to easily locate them. For almost all our caravaneers this was their first time in the mountains, and while the Snow Banes held more experience in the alpine lands, they were little inclined to share their knowledge or hunt for food beyond their supplied rations.

Thankfully, Bahab villages are generally never that far apart in the mountains, especially in the southern portion of the range. While large caravans are indeed very rare, smaller trading parties are surprisingly common. Many consist of a single peddler, often a hunter whose vision had failed past the point of successfully wielding a bow, and their ursine companion. These, when passed on the trail, observed the seemingly universal fellowship of merchants and pointed out the way ahead while alerting us to any dangers that might lurk upon the path. The Bahab generally avoid preying upon outsiders in their lands outside of the winter months, a tradition they refer to as 'the Sun's peace.' Traditional bandits are exceedingly rare here, for the land is too hard and too poor when the steppe awaits nearby. The Sunfire Cult and Obsidian Order do, however, remain as potential dangers to travelers. Their threat is compounded by the shifting nature of the terrain.

Great walls of snow and ice, sufficient to bury cities, build up on the slopes of the high peaks. Sometimes, due to a shifting of the earth, a great blast of wind, or some other irregular phenomenon, these rupture and buckle, unleashing the great slides of ice called avalanches. Though the Dragon Expedition arrived too late in the year to witness such disastrous motions, these cascading waves of ice reshape paths, trails, and whole forests in the manner that storm waves can reshape a beach. Routes from one village to another therefore are not constant year over year, and of course the periodic relocation of the villages themselves compounds this. False paths leading to nothing but broken stones or empty clearings are left behind in their place, and these inevitably draw predators.

Sunfire Cultists were spotted by the scouts three times during the month and a half of hard and sluggish progress north toward the source of Shdulus River. In the first and third instances they seemed to judge the numbers ill and quickly vanished into the trees and up the slope. During the second encounter a young man with swords in each hand, perhaps having never seen a crossbow before, for the Bahab do not utilize that weapon, scuttled forward casually to well within the killing range of an imperial crossbowman. A single bolt put the end to that overly curious life and his companions scattered. The cultists seemed to retreat instantly upon sighting that weapon in the future. Of the various marks the Dragon Expedition left behind in Shdustu, one that can be claimed with pure pride is that it taught the Sunfire Cult to fear the crossbowmen of the Sanid Empire.

The agents of the Obsidian Order proved rather more elusive. They were abroad, doubtless, but traveled in disguise as Bahab trappers and hunters, the people they had once been and at least partially remained. Regrettably, many elderly Bahab not willing to perish in glorious but pointless battle or, in the case of women, shivering away at the edge of starvation in their blankets, seek out those who can grant them strength for their twilight years with little regard as to how such a bargain might cut those years in half or worse. Similar choices are made by those with severe injury or crippling illness. The shamans of the Bahab do their best, but they are far below the mastery of the Rose Opal Society, and very few healers of that order are willing to come north and live among people they consider heretical and primitive. I personally observed Bahab suffering from infections that a dedicated healer might arrest where shamans were forced to cut away the inflamed limbs instead. A wizard can give back that which has been lost in that way, at the cost of a much-shortened life. It might seem a foolish choice, but in the frigid and brutal conditions of mountain life, where anyone without a hand or foot will struggle to survive even a single winter, the temptation is grave.

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I would not pass judgment on such choices, were the wizards sincere in their bargaining. Regrettably, the Obsidian Order offers no clean solutions. Their promises are poisoned, trapping those subjected to their arts to shortened lives of dependency and bondage. To their eyes those without mystic mastery are less than slaves, mere fleshy tools suitable for any use their sickening sense of superiority can devise. Even knowing this, desperate persons of all lineages still accept. The temptations of restoring that which has been lost are truly unmatched.

Erun Nassah fully expected the wizards to test us, for they surely sought the dragon for their own purposes. A being of such immense power, a living crystallization of divine essence, was of incalculable value to wizardry just as it was to any other mystic path. More, if the old legends are to be believed. Dragon blood is said to be a key prerequisite to the transformation of a forsaken life into a demon warrior, the most potent and fell of all wizard creations. Records I studied within the chapter house of Lavesassu spoke of such terrible acts of desolate distortion, conducted in ancient times. Kharal legend claims that the Falcon Khagan, with his warband backed by a legion of lightning falcons, slew such a monster when the wizard-kings at last found sufficient unity to challenge his claim to the steppe. No doubt the tale is heavily embellished, but demons are not mere legend. Though the wizard with the power and ambition necessary to produce such an abomination is a true rarity, I have myself seen such horrors and witnessed the devastation unleashed by the swords of bone.

Yet, as the Dragon Expedition proceeded north the Obsidian Order made no moves. I suspect that having spent nearly two years trying and failing to locate their draconic prize, they believed our chances were minimal. Secure in their assumptions that we would discover nothing, they ignored our progress until much later.

Certainly, our advance was slow and plagued by delays. Our large party demanded substantial supplies, which necessitated a prolonged, zigzag path from one Bahab village to the next, endless rounds of lengthy negotiations regarding the purchase of provisions, and equally exhausting festive feasts as every chieftain sought to outdo his rivals in welcoming 'the foreign princess and her guard.' This misinterpretation of the expedition's structure, which neither Erun, I, or Princess Romou herself could correct despite many attempts, was rooted in the nature of Bahab understanding of the faith, something that I did not grasps until after many firelight conversations served to increase my comprehension of the language to something resembling conversational.

While the shamans of the Bahab are not so heretical that they allow those of their number to marry, a state few of them would be inclined to desire in any case, their society simply does not allow for the possibility of a princess to be a sworn servant of the Divines. No shaman can be chosen from the line of a chieftain, and as Princess Romou was obviously royal and the Bahab language has no word properly equivalent to 'priestess' that aspect of her being was broadly ignored. Worse, a rumor gradually spread across the villages that any tribal scion who managed to convince Romou to become his bride would be granted as a dowry a foreign army capable of making him master of the entire mountain range. While it seems unlikely that any of the chiefs believed in such absurd promises, it certainly did not dissuade them from hurling their sons in the Princess' direction. While Princess Romou swiftly became masterfully adept in the proper manner of offering polite refusal among the Bahab, the obligatory feasts continued, nonetheless.

Bahab cuisine is heavy on meat at any time, but especially in spring, when it relies primarily on the newly arrived birds from the south and mammals trapped as they emerged from their burrows to slake the hunger of winter. The flesh of predators such as wolf and polecat are added to this. The resulting meals are lean and pungent, something increased by treatment with mushrooms and marsh vegetables. Celebratory feasts, supplemented by the crudely fermented berry wines and heavily honeyed mead that the hunters rely upon for liquor, are fortifying but rather foul-tasting, and leave behind a brutal headache when morning comes. The belly will be full, but also nauseous, afterwards. To make good progress on the days following such events, and they were numerous, was not easy. The members of the Snow Banes, who refused to spend the night inside Bahab palisades unless seriously inebriated, made these delays especially substantial.

For my part I attempted to avoid heavy alcohol consumption as I sought to master the language and tease news of the dragon from the mouths of hunters and trappers. Lady Indili and the apothecary Amanili did their best to deploy their charms upon the tongues of the shamans to similar purpose. The previous experience in the Tasgusun Hills proved greatly beneficial here, for stories of battle with the ancient puppets triggered a sort of game of mystical braggadocio. Many stories of giants, demons, wizards, and more were offered up, most of highly dubious provenance. Inevitably, however, the dragon would descend upon such conversations. High and north, those were the most consistent directions. These combined with a series of vague directions that, when laid down as arrows upon the map, all converged upon the same place: a ring of high peaks surrounding the origin of the Shdulus River and the immense plateau-filling glacier from which that great stream of water emerged. The Bahab have a word for that place, a name that translates as the Cracking Void. It was to this glacier that the Dragon Expedition advanced, slowly crawling deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains.