Upon closer examination, the snowdrift was only part of a larger frozen structure. It looked as though there once had been a mine of some sort hewn into the rock of the cliff. It struck Adahni as odd that miners of any kind would dare to burrow where the molten rock beneath the surface of Toril flowed so freely, but then again... perhaps that why the mine was abandoned. There were still rails there that had once guided carts full of coal or ore along their way to the surface, but the iron was twisted and bent, and the tracks ended before they were mean to. The remnants of a trestle bring stayed on either side of a river – a river that was now frozen solid, even in the temperate climate of the Vale.

"I think we've found our ice hag indeed," Safiya said, pointing to the mouth of the mine, where the rails went in and descended into the darkness.

Adahni went first, calling upon the light of the Aasimar – one of the only tricks her celestial heritage gave her the benefit of. Descending into the mine was like going back into the snowy forest, and Adahni was glad for the warm cloaks and boots that they had brought with him. The walls of the mine, stripped of their ore, were covered in ice, and icicles hung from the ceiling like stalactites.

About twenty yards into the mine, Adahni felt a rush of chill, even colder than what she was already experiencing. At first she thought it was just a draft, but when the cold thing hit her, very solidly, above her right ear, she realized that it was not just cold, but sentient, too.

"Good gods, what is that?" she asked, trying to focus as she reeled from the blow.

"That's an orglash," Safiya said, "A spirit of cold. It seems as though someone has woven the very essence of cold into the walls of this place." She pulled her cloak about her, and put up her hood to shield her bald head from the cold. She then snapped her fingers and summoned a fireball, which bowled Adahni over without hurting her, and melted the orglash right out of existence.

They ventured deeper into the mine, the ringing in Adahni's ears finally subsiding just as they reached a larger room. There no fire, just an eerie blue light. In the center of the room stood what looked like a very old woman, with long blue hair and deathly white skin. The most extraordinary thing about her, though, was that even in the frigid air of the mine, she was nearly naked, dressed only in a ragged vest that barely covered her sagging breasts, and a short bit of cloth wound about her waist. She whirled as they entered the room.

"Visitors? But you didn't send a messenger to let me know!" she exclaimed. Her voice was creaky like an old chair, but Adahni could sense her strength in the depths of it. "This place is a sty! Human remains everywhere. If only I'd had a bit of notice... don't you know it's hideously impolite to drop in on an old woman unannounced?"

"You look perfectly normal to me," Adahni said, "What's a hag like you doing in a place like this?"

"Well it isn't for this ghastly landscape," the bheur replied, "Too hot, too hot by far!"

"So why don't you leave?"

"I can't leave!" the bheur replied, "Those two old bats at the Red Tree watch me, day and night, their damnable ghostly eyes never leaving me. If they find me here, every hathran between here and Thay will be at my doorstep. Probably unannounced too..."

"Why do the hathran want you out?" asked Adahni.

"Every year they drive me out of their lands," the bheur sighed, "Celebrate it too. This is the one place they'd never think to find me. But now, I'm stuck. I can't help it, you see, I freeze the ground wherever I walk, it's my nature. I can't exactly cover my tracks..."

"So if I were able to melt the ice outside, would that help?" asked Adahni.

"Those damned witch ghosts might think I'd left," the bheur said, stroking her chin, which up close Adahni could see was covered in wispy, snow-white hairs. She made a mental note that if she could die before the age where she started growing hair on her face, it might be for the best.

"What witch ghosts?" asked Adahni, "I didn't see any spirits here, not like in the wood."

"Surely you passed the Red Tree," the ice hag said, "Therein reside two telthor hathran, bound to this place in death. They can't do much on their own, but if you've been here for any length of time you will have realized that death does not mean in Rashemen what it means in the rest of Toril. The minute they lay their damned dead eyes on me, they'll be whispering it through the realm of spirits to all of the living hathran, and there they'll be, frothing at the mouth to drive me from the land!"

"I'd be happy to do it..." Adahni started. Before she could make a demand for restitution in the form of something to put out the fire of the burning grove, the ice hag had jumped in the air, quite spryly for such an old woman, and begun dancing around in a little jig.

"Bless you, child!" she crowed, "What a nice surprise from such an ill-mannered guest. Just melt the ice and tell the telthor there that you saw me creep from the Vale like a thief in the night. They'll believe that, as much as they distrust me and any of my kind. I will, of course, repay you in any way that I can. Now run along, children! I have so much tidying up to do."

Not needing to be told twice, the group scurried back out of the mine and into the sunlight of the Vale, where they stood in a circle, rubbing their hands to get some blood back into their fingertips.

"That was odd," Adahni said, "She seemed perfectly reasonable. But what was that about the telthor at the Red Tree? I didn't see any telthor there."

"Then you're terribly unobservant," Okku said, "Safiya, Kaelyn and I had quite a nice conversation with them while you and Gann where whispering to each other under the Moss-stone."

"We were not whispering," Adahni said, scowling, "We were thinking of strategies. You could have told me earlier when you caught up with us."

"They only repeated what we'd heard already," Kaelyn said, "We asked, of course, about the Wood Man, and about what's attacking the garrison at Lake of Tears. They said something damnably cryptic about the woods having instincts, which go wild now that the Wood Man is in hiding."

"Did they say anything about the b- the bh- the ice hag?" asked Adahni.

"Only that they thought she was here," Okku said, "And asked if we could get rid of her."

"And you neglected to tell me this before we arrived here and offered to help her?" Gann commented, "May I ask why?"

"Well we couldn't exactly as you to kill one of your own kind," Kaelyn said, "And it would seem as though our Adahni wouldn't exactly choose to help the hathran simply because they are the authority in these parts. So why would we have bothered?"

"How do you know that?" asked Adahni, "You barely know me."

"She has a point," Safiya said, "You heard the ice hag yourself – she didn't even know why the witches drive her out."

"She doesn't know why because there is no why," Gann said, "Yes, I understand why a human settlement might not want a hag around – they do tend to do a few unsavory things, lure children to their deaths and eat them, for example – but how many settlements do you see around here? There are no children to be lured to their death here. There's no reason they should not simply let her be."

"But they must drive her out because they just don't like hags," Adahni said, "Fair enough. I can see why Kaelyn did not tell me that right away. That sort of thinking makes me angry."

"I must say I'm a bit surprised," Gann said, "That you would take the side of the hag."

"I don't have to like her," Adahni said, "But that doesn't mean I begrudge her her very existence. That would just be unfair."

"Interesting way of seeing it," Gann said, "I must admit, I'm a little impressed."

"Well come on then, we have some ice to melt," Adahni said, "Perhaps it will help me to vent a little of this righteous indignation before we have to talk to the old bats, as she put it."

Adahni indeed had enough energy to roar fire out over the river that the ice hag had frozen.

"That is such an unnerving talent," Safiya said as they made their way back across the Vale.

"How so?" asked Adahni. A small flame flickered from her lips as she asked.

"You just... breathed fire," the wizard said.

"How is it any more unnerving than you slinging magical energy around like it was nothing?" she asked.

"I guess it isn't... it's just things are different in Thay. There aren't many sorcerers, and the bards we have don't have the power that you've managed to cultivate. Most emphasis is put on arcane knowledge. Even those wizards who have enough dragon blood to channel the weave in that way choose to ignore it, and just learn like the rest of us do."

"Really," Adahni said, "I've only ever known one natural sorcerer who tried to study the wizardly arts. It was a disaster to put it mildly. She was so arrogant of her own ability, she couldn't force herself to study like the rest of them. She had not incentive to, I guess, when you can just summon fire from nowhere on your own, why would you ever spend years poring over old boring texts learning how to do it another way?"

"What became of her?" asked Safiya.

"She was always a little unbalanced," Adahni said, "I suppose it's not her fault. But she betrayed me, at the end. I killed her."

"You killed her?" the wizard asked, her dark eyes wide with shock.

"Yes," Adahni said, "She forgot who I was, tried to burn me with a fireball. So I stabbed her. She couldn't magic her way out of that one."

"One such as that would have been executed in Thay," Safiya said, "We kept very close tabs on those who showed natural abilities with magic. We had to keep them very closely in line, lest they become too powerful."

"Too powerful for what?"

"For my mother to control," Safiya replied, "Wizards are all about control and study and keeping a close reign on ones abilities. Sorcerers and bards, on the other hand..."

"We just go about setting things on fire willy nilly, huh?" Adahni asked, chuckling, "You're right about one thing, though, it took me a long time to be able to channel my power into words and music. I suppose I'm lucky I didn't accidentally blow anything up before I finished puberty."

"I suppose," Safiya said.

They approached the tree from the south, and for the first time, Adahni made out the iridescent, barely visible shape of two telthor. As they drew closer, she could see that they were indeed in the shape of hathran, two middle aged women with masks covering their eyes and noses.

"I didn't quite believe them," the first of them said, "But now I see a face to cover the swirling vortex of hunger within you."

"Poetic," Adahni said, "Are you the hathran spirits that my companions spoke of?"

"Othlor in life, indeed," she replied, "I am Imsha, and this is Tamlith... or perhaps I am Tamlith and she is Imsha. It doesn't much matter any more I suppose. We linger on to fulfill our tasks."

"Does that include attacking me, and this swirling vortex of hunger, or however you put it?"

"What kind of wisdom would it be for a spirit to attack an eater of spirits?" Imsha chuckled, "No, we do not."

"We bring news of the bheur," Safiya said, "We searched the whole valley over, and she is no longer here."

"I don't believe you, red wizard," Tamlith said, "You're hiding something. Perhaps she has made some arrangement with you. What did you discuss?"

Safiya's face went as red as her robes at being caught in a lie. Adahni was growing hungry, and prickly, and sighed with exasperation at these two damned dead witches, worrying about some stupid hag that probably didn't bother them anyway.

"It doesn't matter, Tamlith," Imsha said, "We simply need to remain watchful – wait for her to re-emerge. She can't stay for long."

"Yes, we will keep watch. Obviously we have no one to trust but our own people."

"Oh fuck you and your people," Adahni cried peevishly, "Just leave her alone, she didn't do anything to you."

"Appealing to what? A sense of justice, is she? Obviously an outsider," Imsha said smugly.

"Leave her alone, or I'll be able to make a snack out of your and your smug little sister here," she said, not knowing really what she was saying. She saw fear in the translucent eyes of the telthor as she pronounced her threat.

"Perhaps we'd best be leaving," Imsha said. Without another word, first she, and then Tamlith, blinked out of existence.

"Assholes," Adahni muttered as they made their way back along the length of the valley to the ice hag's now quite melted lair. They found the inside almost completely devoid of ice, and what had been frosted to the sides of the tunnels was now flowing in a shallow river out of the mine and into the larger river outside it.

"I don't think she's here anymore," Gann observed.

In the main room of the mine, where the hag had kept herself, they found nothing to suggest that anyone had ever lived there. On a table in the middle of the room, they found a jar containing something glowing and blue. Tied to the neck of the jar with a bit of filthy twine was a note in spidery handwriting.

Thank you for your help. I'm off to Icewind Dale where most have never heard of my kind to drive me away. I hope you enjoy this delicious Orglash Essence. I canned it myself last year. You may find it quite useful should you ever want to make anything cold. Then again, that's really all I'm good at, so it will have to do. Ta ta, my dears, and may you steer clear of all the hathran!

"Well that settles that, I suppose," Adahni said, "What, do we just unleash this in the Burning Grove?"

"I suppose so," Kaelyn said, "Orglashes are powerfully cold spirits after all."

"But one thing," Gann said, "The sun will be down before we get back to there. What say we camp by the Moss-stone. It will make for some interesting dreams, after all." He and Adahni exchanged a glance , unnoticed by the others.

"For it to be effective, you'll have to sleep outside of the tent," Safiya said, "Like I said, it's like a bag of holding. Inside the tent, you're in another plane. If you want the dreams, you're going to be on your own. I'm certainly not laying out a bedroll under the stars."

"Nor am I," Kaelyn said, "You're on your own. I have no wish to tangle with the sort of magic held in the Moss-stone."

And so it happened, as the sun set over the mountains to the west, that Adahni and Gann were left to spread their cloaks out on the grass, which would likely become damp with dew. On this rather uncomfortable bed, they passed a bottle of whiskey back and forth, Adahni knowing that the drink was the only way she would ever be able to sleep, out in the open an unprotected, without even Davy guarding their camp. She didn't remember falling asleep, but when she awoke, she was back in the snow of the Ashenwood.

Or no, this was not Ashenwood.

And she was not awake.