A Few Years Ago…

He walked across the windblown ice of the glacier known as Cold’rin, its frozen surface not causing him the slightest discomfort, not even in his feet, though he wore open-toed sandals.

He was Badden, Ancient Badden, leader of the Samhaists, who knew the magic of the world more intimately than any others in the world. Badden was the greatest of them; no creature alive was more connected to those magics than this man. So while he stood upon hundreds of feet of solid ice, he felt, too, the earth below that freeze, where the hot springs ran. Those very springs had led him to this place, and as he neared the edge of the glacier, the wide expanse of Alpinador opening before him, the old Samhaist trembled with excitement.

He knew.

He knew before he glanced down from the edge of the glacier that he had found it: Mithranidoon, the steamy lake of legend, the place where the god Samhain forsook his mortal coil and melted down into the earth, the source of all magic, the guardian of eternity. Samhain’s servant was Death, men like Badden believed, who would bring the souls to the harsh judgment of the god who suffered no fool.

It was a clear morning. When Badden looked down his breath fell away from him, and many heartbeats passed before he could catch it once more. Below him was a fog-shrouded, huge, warm lake, perhaps twenty miles long and half that wide.

Mithranidoon.

The old man smiled at the rarely seen sight. He had found the holiest of Samhaist places and the source of his greatest magic just as his war with the Abellicans in Vanguard to the south had begun to ignite.

“Dame Gwydre,” he mouthed, referring to the leader of the men of Vanguard. “You chose poorly in taking an Abellican as your lover.” He ended with a chuckle, and no aged wheeze could be detected in the voice of the strong man, however many decades had passed since his birth. Most who knew him-or knew of him, for few actually knew Badden in any real way-believed that eight full decades and part of the ninth were behind him.