It had barely snowed overnight. Azkar was easily able to find the tracks despite Geoffrey tramping all over them in his enthusiasm.

"This is going to be a long journey if you don't listen to me." Azkar admonished him. "Stay behind me, I need a clear path."

He certainly was grumpy today. Geoffrey knew the stone was important, and he wanted it back, and this certainly didn't care what Azkar thought. Azkar was his sworn protector and he was sure Azkar was secretly glad to be out of the castle too. He once led armies and fought the great battles against the Core. He was older now but hadn't lost any of his strength or skill. The castle guard would probably be thankful Azkar was gone for a while, he drove them hard and scolded them constantly for their laziness.

"They went through the mountain caves, we will not follow them there." He turned and let the snow covered branch he had lifted pull back to its place.

"Yes we will," Geoffrey tried to hold Azkar's rock gaze, "we will....why not?"

"I have sworn to protect you, and I will protect you from the caves of Dooor, by not going in there. There is some truth to the stories you have heard, it is not wise to venture there for naught but a stone."

Silence fell like the light snow between them slowly covering the tracks. He had heard the stories. People who had never returned after venturing within, children who had never spoken again after what they had seen when playing at the entrance.

"Well.. Where do the caves come out?" Can we pick up the trail at the other end.

"There are two known exits. West and north. The Wolves usually live in the western ranges, another place we should not go."

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His mind went back to the stone, those visions he saw, none of them were of snowy ranges.

"And North, where does that entrance lie?"

"Beyond the pass, the glades of Hoor, near High Shale village."

"There. We go there to Shale." He turned and started walking back through the snow towards the horses leaving Azkar shaking his head.

"Hurry Azkar, there is more chance of one of the people I saw the vision in a village than in the western ranges." Besides, he thought might have answers about the stone even if they couldn't pick up a trail, and he wasn't going back to that castle.

The ride to the pass was rocky and precarious, Azkar silently led the way as if he had travelled it every day. They climbed along narrow paths through snow-drifts the wind bit at Geoffrey and pulled at him. The warmth of a new adventure was slowly being replaced by the cold of the mountains.

"Azkar," he called through the whipping wind, "I ..." His voice was whipped away by a fearsome gust, snow blew violently between them, almost obscuring Azkar in front of him. Geoffrey's horse almost ran into the back of Azkar's as he had stopped dead.

Before them snow covered the path that edged the mountain, an Avalanche had swept from above and left its own mountain of snow. The path was impassable.

Geoffrey looked up at Azkar's face, a line of concern etched from top to bottom of his dark skin.

"Most unusual." Askar shouted across the howl. He swept his arm towards the snow and rock before them.

"What shall we do?" Geoffrey's voice barely audible.

"Return, there is no other way through the pass."

As he spoke the earth rose before them, not the sliding of an avalanche, but the mountain of rock and snow lifting itself before them.

"Mountain Troll." Askar shouted.

They both made to back up on the rocky trail. Before them rose what seemed like half a mountain. As it towered into the sky before them, Geoffrey could make out the back of a human form amongst the cascading ice and stones.

The Troll turned ponderously towards them, the head like a giant rock with snow cascading from its Boulder like head as if waterfalls of sweat.

It lifted its arm swung it down. Geoffrey prepared his last breath with a sharp intake of icy wind.