He traveled by foot, by cart, by a riverboat that had been converted from a military patrol vessel to a civilian transport. The land changed as he went: from the grey stone of Harma's Rest to the green foothills of the Divide, then to the brown scrubland that marked the approach to the Obsidian Ridge, then to the white of the glacier's meltwater plain. The air grew colder as he climbed, but the water beneath his feet grew warmer—geothermal vents, the boat captain explained, heated by the same underground forces that had created the gas pocket.
