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Throughout the long, icy day, Mog had focussed his sights on the far distant horizon, aiming himself mindlessly at the tiny dark point that represented his goal. For an endless time, it grew no bigger, but slowly, slowly and painfully, as the light leaches away and the soft dove grey of the winter's sky fades to gunmetal and then charcoal, the minute speck grows and takes shape.
Camp! Even at this distance, a light can be seen flickering in the one crude window of the rough hewn hut, shining out across the thick white sheet of snow like a guiding beacon.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of his ravaged mind, he knows what that means. Warmth, and an end to his suffering, albeit it temporary, and he quickens his pace, gritting his teeth against the white heat of his agonised muscles and scarcely flinching as the tip of the horsewhip flays the matted fur on his back.
On, on! He needs no urging.
He has lost track of time. His Ughvark existence has lost all meaning. The seething miasma that passes for his mind begins to concentrate and focus itself for the first time in many years, memories stirring, provoking a tumult of confusion and fierce emotion. He hasn't always been this way. Once, he'd stood as tall and proud as the man now holding him in thrall, his mind as sharp, his body as strong and sturdy. He had worn clothes, laughed and drunk with his friends, made love to many women. Across the plane of his mind, pictures scud freely but without form, dazzling his Ughvark brain with their colour and life and complexity, and dragging back from the rim of oblivion the details of a life he had sacrificed in a moment of supreme folly and arrogance.
The nebulous memories slip frustratingly from his grasp, dancing elusively before him. If only he could think, if only......! But his brain is a mushy soup.
The banishment is supposed to be forever. Somewhere in the dim recesses of Ughvark hell, he remembers falling foul of the Great Sorcerer and being subjected to the full power of a most terrible wrath, forced to live out the rest of his life as the meanest savage for a crime committed at the height of his most selfish and thoughtless youth.
The only faint glimmer of hope lies in the contents of a small earthenware jar, hurled in a fury by the Sorcerer to the ends of the earth, and Mog knows it will never be seen again.
How could it? Who could ever find this lost treasure, or bring it once more within his orbit? |
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