Location from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams
The roof of the world — homeland of the Qanuc trolls, a mountain realm of ice and wind where survival is a daily negotiation with gravity and temperature.
Yiqanuc is where the Qanuc live, and the Qanuc live where nobody else can. The air is thin enough to make lowlanders dizzy. The paths are narrow enough to make goats nervous. The trolls navigate it with the casual ease of people who learned to climb before they learned to walk, herding their animals, reading the weather, and staying alive through a combination of skill, tradition, and philosophical acceptance that the mountain will kill you if you're stupid. Binabik's village of Mintahoq sits high on its namesake peak. The Singing Man — the troll equivalent of a shaman-scholar — serves as the community's link to the wider world. Qanuc society is practical, egalitarian in ways that surprise lowlanders, and deeply connected to the mountain's rhythms. They also have wolves. The wolves are important.
A range of towering peaks — Mintahoq, Sikkihoq, Chugik — rising above the clouds into a world of ice, wind, and thin air. The troll villages cluster on mountainsides and in sheltered valleys, constructed from stone, hide, and whatever the mountain provides. The views are staggering; the cold is relentless. The Grey Sisters — a cluster of peaks — stand as landmarks visible across the entire range.
Also known as: Yiqanuc, The Trollfells