Yes, there's no mention of the glacier in the prologue.  And we know that there's a glacier leading to Ishual.  But what if the map lead them to the ruins in the valley instead of Ishual?

Coincidentally, just read this during the Kell/Moe conversation:

From the very first, ever since descending the glaciers into the wastes of Kuniuri, Kellhus had pondered the man now leading him through these galleries of darkness.

Already told my boss I might have to take a day off in early July to read a book.

"But you read books here all the time."
"Not like this I don't."

So I was reading about zen koans and came across these quotes through wiki:

Huà-tόu is literally translated as “word head” but is also translated as “critical phrase”.  Before the term was appropriated by Zen teachers it was used to refer to the main idea of a literary passage.  In Zen, it refers to the nature of the origin or source of a thought, word, or phrase that arises in one’s mind, or, more poetically, to “the mind before it is stirred”.

All hua-tous have one thing in common.  See if you can figure out what it is from these six common ones:

Now tell me some of this don't strike you as familiar:

Who is it who now repeats the Buddha's name? TELL ME
Who is dragging this corpse about? WHAT DO YOU SEE
What is this?
What is it?
What was my original face before my father and mother were born? WHO AM I

and further:

Hua-tou practice is about looking deeply into the nature of being by asking ourselves an open-ended question which we lock into our brains and return to again and again.  The objective is not to answer it, but to play with it, letting it taunt, tease, and torment us.

I looked up koans because I heard about this idea that in some styles of zen buddhism, the whole point of a koan is to present such an absurdist notion, that by meditating deeply enough on it causes the conscious mind to itself enter a state of absurdism.  From the wiki:

A koan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and test a student's progress in Zen practice.

Not just a destruction of meaning, but an embracing, or maybe even a becoming, of that destruction. An especially significant act in a world that is, by the author's words, the story of someone bringing meaninglessness to a meaningful world.

So all that is just what I wanted to put out there for everyone to consider, because I believe the parallels are too close to ignore.

It made me think of the Dunyain 'The logos is without beginning or end'. A significant declaration. A statement. And in that - whelming cycle? - we see Kellhus go through, it ends with 'The' repeated, which is declarative in itself (I think - some of you guys are so into linguistics, I don't want to look like an asshole).

If we treat each progressive cycle of the 'logos' mantra like a statement or an answer, or an understanding, and everything said by the No-God as a question, or a blindness...

Are the Dunyain (or just Kellhus) the answer to the No-God?

And what's the self-certainty that the No-God denies when it exists, to the point that souls can't be brought into this world?

OK OK OK I gotta stop just to put this out to you guys.

They recall the tone and timbre, the passion, of the God’s voice—to near perfection—even as the meanings that make up true sorcery escape them

I think Kellhus might be wrong, in the sense that Cishaurim blind themselves not to see more, but to literally see less.  The world itself is vulgar in the sense and the Onta is pure, so they see only the purity of their own intention and intuition, not the contradiction between the world they know and the world they see.

There may be a hint there, when we think about how Bakker's personal godlessness applies to a universe where a god exists. It may be that the Cishaurim study very little if any of their own powers, because it is borne of faith - which is to say, something that is not at all studied, but merely accepted as is, and that the most powerful Cish are those utterly willing to accept without analyzing even slightly.  The 'meanings that make up true sorcery escape them' because anything more analytical would, by the nature of observation and consideration, diminish the strength of their sorcery. To consider is to diminish.  Moenghus cannot help but to see, even blinded, the mechanisms that allow the Water to flow, and so he is restricted to the most nuanced applications.

Huh...how long did it take the nonmen to realize that atrocity and horror were the surest way to retain memory?

I don't remember it making the men sick.  From the TTT Glossary:

The Second Watch was disbanded and the Inchoroi moved freely among the Cunuroi of Siol, becoming their physicians.  They ministered to all, dispensing the remedies that would at once make the Nonmen immortal and doom them.  Soon all the Cunuroi of Earwa, even those who had initially questioned Cu'jara-Cinmoi's wisdom, had succumbed to the Inchoroi and their nostrums.
According to the Isuphiryas, the first victim of the Womb-Plague was Hanalinqu, Cu'jara-Cinmoi's legendary wife.  The chronicler actually praises the diligence and skill of the High King's Inchoroi physicians.  But as the Womb-Plague killed more and more Cunuroi women, this praise becomes condemnation.  Soon all the women of the Cunuroi, wives and maidens both, were dying.  The Inchoroi fled the Mansions, returning to their ruined vessel.

Also probably worth noting, that immortality was not the Inchoroi's idea.  When they asked what tribute would temper the High King's Fury, he responds 'I would be young of heart, face, and limb.  I would banish Death from the halls of my people.'

The goal of Dunyain philosophy is a manipulation of the self, that it becomes capable of moving through the world purely under it's own volition.  Manipulation of circumstance is a secondary effect, and a lust for power the way Man would consider it isn't a quality they seem to have.

Remember how surprised Kell was to see how mundane people wore a second face, lying to themselves.  He wasn't really expecting this particular set of circumstances, but seized on it with the full weight of his focus and perception.