Raidon gained control of his breathing and dashed toward Adrik. He gasped, "Can you bring them down?"
The sorcerer nodded briskly, his hands already essaying a complicated nulling pattern, his lips shaping words whose meanings slipped across Raidon's memory without leaving a mark. Adrik finished by throwing wide his arms. A pulse of mazing, twirling energy leaped up and around the suspended wizards. The woman, her footing in thin air already questionable, dropped like a stone. The man wavered, then rapidly dipped behind the tree line. The Red Wizard hadn't fallen; he'd merely descended under cover.
"By the coin!" yelled the sorcerer, "he's still alive! If he gets away, he'll call down a full Thayan patrol!"
Raidon bolted down the path, then into the trees where he expected the wizard would find the ground. If he could surprise the man . . .
Red fabric flashed ahead past intervening trunks, and a sinister chant floated on the air. The Red Wizard was casting. The Xiang monk summoned his training and became like the wind, flowing through the trees without slowing. He rushed the lone wizard like a zephyr—
A flash of green light, and the wizard was alone no more. A rubbery-skinned, olive-hued creature towered before the Thayan. The newcomer was thin, but wiry muscles sheathed its ungainly arms and legs. Its hair was thick and black, and seemed to writhe as if straining for a life of its own. From stories he'd heard and images he'd seen in books, Raidon guessed it was a troll.
The Red Wizard called out, "Devour the Shou peasant! Rip off his arms and save one as a trophy!" So much for surprise. The monk broke off his charge several yards from the troll.
Raidon shook out the sleeves of his travel-stained silk jacket. They snapped, and the troll's eyes flicked toward the distracting sound. Just long enough for Raidon to kick a nearby stone hard, launching it directly into the troll's left eye. The partial blindness distracted the creature, and Raidon vaulted up and over the troll and its too-long arms. He landed lightly in front of the wizard, the troll at his back. Better to deal with the spellcaster before all else; it was a certainty the Red Wizard was capable of other destructive spells.
A strangely luminescent scar disfigured the red-robed man's face. And he was already chanting. Raidon 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.