An hour later he found himself approaching the edge on his hands and knees, so that the howling wind could not blow him over the precipice. He watched great swirling plumes of snow blow out from the cliff-top, like white-speckled spiraling banners a hundred feet long, gleaming in the moonlight, and he knew that if he were to stand too close he would be swept off the edge as well.

He, however, would not glitter and swoop gracefully in the night air; instead he would tumble down the cliffs to a horrible painful death.

He fell to his belly and crept forward through the snow, so low to the ground that each time he brought up a knee the opposite end of the spear on his back would slap against the snow to the side. Despite this, in time he found himself peering over the top of that final snowbank.

He could not look straight down; there was no way to safely get that close to the edge. Instead he was looking along the curve of the cliff-face, toward where the trail doubled back on itself two miles south and half a mile down from where he lay.

He blinked snow from his eyes and squinted, trying to interpret what he saw in the colorless moonlight. At first the white and gray and black seemed mere meaningless lines and shapes, but at last he managed to resolve the image into stone, snow, and ice. He found the trail, and followed it with his gaze.

The path was not lost beneath drifting snow, as he had feared; snow had not clung to the sheer cliffs and piled up on the trail. No, it was worse.

It was covered in ice.

He could see how it would happen; the afternoon sun shining on the snow-pack atop the cliffs produced a thin trickle of melt-water, which ran down the cliffs and pooled on the first horizontal surface it struck – which would usually be the trail. And there most of it froze again, building up over time into the thick sloping layer of slick gray ice he now saw shimmering glassily in the moonlight.

The entire route down the cliff was utterly impassable. He could not possibly hope to climb down mile upon mile of ice without sooner or later slipping over the edge and plummeting to a bloody death.

Whether going down to Winterhome to confront the Wizard Lord was a good idea or not no longer mattered. It wasn't possible. He was trapped in the Uplands until that ice melted in the spring thaw.

He was trapped – and he didn't have enough food.