stepped forward and delivered a magnificent roundhouse kick. It was like hitting a stone pillar. His shin flared with pain, but despite the rocklike density of his adversary, Raidon also saw the man flinch. Something of his attack had penetrated the wizard's stony ward. He delivered a killing elbow strike to the scarred man's face. The wizard flinched again, but the ward absorbed most of the strike's lethal energy.
Ribbons of black fire streamed from the wizard's open hands. Raidon evaded, leaping sideways. His pack, an unfamiliar weight on his back, snagged on a low-hanging tree branch. The monk's trajectory skewed left, and he fell.
Raidon was already rolling to his feet when another volley of darkling fire found him.
Warmth streamed from Raidon's open mouth, from his nostrils, even from his eyes and the ends of his fingers. Numbness raced through his limbs. He tried to pull himself upright on the bole of the tree his pack had snagged, but failed.
Desolation beckoned.
Then something warm touched him on his back, high on his shoulder blades. Heat returned to his core, and tendrils of sensation stole back into his limbs as quickly as cold had numbed them. Raidon whispered, 'From form to formless and from finite to infinite.' It was a mantra of his temple about overcoming limits. He'd overcome a limitation, but not through his own efforts.
Accepting the gift of salvation without understanding, Raidon deflected a green-muscled claw with his forearm. The troll snarled-his left eye was bloody, but was already visibly regaining its normal hue and shape. A memory surfaced from stories he'd heard-few things could permanently hurt these hulking terrors. Raidon slipped below another claw's vicious thrust.
He couldn't be distracted! The Thayan was still the greater threat.
Raidon ducked beneath the troll's legs and charged the wizard, unsheathing his daito. The look of triumph on the Red Wizard's face crumbled, and he backpedaled. A root caught his heel, and he went over onto his back. The monk leaped forward, his knee coming down firmly on the wizard's neck.
'Yield,' he instructed the scarred man.
The red-robed caster mumbled something unintelligible, then clearly stated, 'You have made an understandable mistake-I am your friend, so I forgive you. Now, get up and help me to my feet.' The words rang through Raidon's head like a gong, growing stronger and more reasonable the more he considered the new idea.
Then warmth touched his back once again, and the compulsion blew away like ash, leaving only powerless words, naked in their inanity.
The man's eyes narrowed as he exclaimed, 'That's the second spell you've thrown off! What fell resistance guards your-urk!'
Raidon leaned, exerting slightly more pressure with his knee on the scarred man's carotid. With the blood flow to his head restricted, the man passed out heartbeats later. The monk jumped and spun, but the rush of wind signaling the troll's attack had warned Raidon too late. The troll grabbed him and raised him in the air.
Whatever guardian spirit had protected him from the Thayan's magic failed to respond when the troll beat the monk like a wet rug against a nearby tree. The initial impact nearly jarred loose Raidon's grip on the daito.
The troll raised him high once more, ready to dash him against another tree. Raidon cast away pain and bent his body forward, slicing at the brutal fingers squeezing his leg. The troll squealed and lost its hold plus a few fingers. The monk dived into a shock-absorbing roll. He grunted on impact but used the energy of the fall to propel himself several yards away from the green-skinned giant before coming out of the maneuver on his feet.
Raidon turned and assumed a thrusting stance with the sword before him. He preferred using his limbs as weapons, but the daito was Raidon's answer to the troll's enormous, clawed reach.
Its roar of challenge was the sound of a furious waterfall at snowmelt. Raidon held steady in the blaring noise, but faint nausea touched him when he noticed new fingers growing from the bloody stumps of the troll's hand, waving and reaching like worms. It was obscene, too much like watching the birth of tiny monstrosities.
Raidon charged. The troll waited, its arms apart, its mouth wide and hungry. The monk feinted left and chopped right. Off came the troll's entire right hand. The creature's lack of response to such an injurious loss was unnerving. Raidon had expected to press his attack, but the troll was already clawing at him with its remaining hand and biting at his shoulder. Its breath stank of spoiled meat.
A sparkle of green light washed across the troll. Where the light passed, the troll melted away, entirely disappearing in the span of an eye blink.
The monk's head swiveled. Had a Commorand brother tracked him down and banished the Red Wizard's guardian? No, he remained alone, save for the scarred man. Raidon shrugged. The creature, called by a spell, had probably returned whence it came. He hoped that was so. The less palatable alternative had the troll in some nether realm waiting to ambush him. Raidon decided to act as if his first surmise was true.
He studied the defeated Red Wizard. He bent and wiped the troll blood off his daito on the man's expensive garment. The Thayan was not breathing.
'Xiang forgive me,' he mumbled. He'd pressed more forcibly on the man's neck with his knee than he'd intended.
Raidon sheathed his blade and quickly stripped the man of his belongings, including a tome and a jagged blue wand. Raidon blinked when he found a writ of marque authorizing raids up and down the Umber River, even unto the edges of Aglarond. The writ was signed by Ansuram of Nethentir, Warden of the Fifth Lore. Raidon shrugged. If the scarred man had survived and regained consciousness without equipment or outer clothing, he would have fled upriver toward Nethentir and probably returned with an overwhelming force.
Raidon threw the man's red robe into a ravine. He pulled off his own pack and stuffed the book and wand into it, amongst the splinters of his cedar box. He'd felt it collapse when the troll had bashed him against the tree. He reached in and pulled out his mother's forget-me-not. It was warm to the touch.
A familiar warmth. It was the same temperature as that light touch on his back when he'd thrown off the wizard's spells. He wore his pack high across his shoulders. .
Raidon's eyes widened. He clutched the forget-me-not, hard. Could it be true? Had his mother left him more than a simple remembrance? It seemed clear the amulet was suffused with a potency he didn't understand. A potency that had twice saved him.
He reverently drew the chain over his head. He gazed down on the stone as it lay on his chest, then dropped it beneath his silk jacket. Against his skin, remnants of its original warmth seeped into his body. The years of storage in a dark box were done. Raidon vowed to wear his mother's forget-me-not from that moment until he found her.
She had left him an unexplained relic, something important. Why hadn't she told him its real nature? Why leave it with him in the first place? She must have been more than she seemed. After all, what was she doing with a relic of magic?
He would find her, as she must have anticipated. Then she would explain mysteries to him whose outlines he couldn't conceive.
CHAPTER NINE
Stardeep, Outer Bastion War Room
From the shadows, Telarian inquired, 'Commander Brathtar, how stands the Causeway?' An elf caparisoned in mithral greaves and hauberk started, then looked up to the unlighted balcony. Brathtar stood before a great oak table scattered with maps, miniature figures sculpted in lead, and quill pens. Several others around the table, similarly armored and armed, if not quite as grandly as Brathtar, broke off their discussion, which had grown heated.
The Empyrean Knights were pledged to Stardeep first and foremost, and their watchword was valor. A knight who joined the elite in Stardeep first learned that anyone, meek or brave, could wake to valor if the cause was true. Empyrean Knights held fire in their hearts, but were not unthinking brutes. Knights held tight to sword in one hand, and strategy in the other. That strategy was determined first and foremost by the Knights' commander,
