Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

But it had failed to blunt his despair.

He’d been a fool to think it would help.

As the tavern song meandered on, Raidon realized how far he’d really fallen. Was he to become a town drunk, suited for nothing better than staggering the streets of New Sarshell, chasing a chimera of equanimity?

“No,” he whispered. With his free hand, he touched the hilt of the sword sheathed at his belt. With a snap of searing cerulean fire, Angul burned the confusion from him.

Raidon’s mind cloud faded, but a headache smote him like a thunderclap.

Angul did not care for wielders too far in their cups; the blade couldn’t apply its influence through a haze of alcohol. Which could have been why the blade’s previous owner was driven to drink … Raidon let go of the hilt.

He dashed the wine bottle to the cobbles. The sound of its shattering glass went through his achy head like a spike. As if in a chain reaction, the first tendrils of nausea brushed the half-elf’s stomach.

Raidon plunged down the nearest alley, seeking shadow and escape from the tavern song.

In the narrow way, the street cobbles were broken and buckled from lack of maintenance. Blank walls frowned down on either side, so close that the sun failed to find any purchase. The monk paused, reaching for some semblance of his focus, but the sounds of conversation distracted him.

A gang of humans and dwarves lingered at the alley’s far end.

“This is a dead end, Shou,” said one. “You shouldn’t’ve come this way.”

Raidon focused on the speaker, a dwarf in brown leather, bedecked with angular tattoos. The threat implicit in the speech wiped away Raidon’s nausea. He took a deep breath, feeling anger take the place of despair.

“Did you hear me?” yelled the dwarf.

“Yes,” Raidon said. “But here I am nonetheless.”

“Then you got a death wish,” the dwarf replied. “Everyone knows this alley is ours.”

“If I had a death wish, I’d seek foes instead of pimple-faced children like you,” Raidon said. The words spilled from his mouth like bitter dregs.

The dwarf’s eyes widened ever so slightly. Raidon expected he’d roar, “Get him,” or utter some other ridiculous call to action.

Instead, the dwarf drew two medium-length blades in a single elegant motion and stamped forward, while his sword tips executed a technically perfect figure eight through the air, each arc designed to end in the monk’s neck.

Raidon was adept at countering a single blade, even in the hands of an accomplished swordsperson. But overcoming a dual-wielding blademaster required greater delicacy. He backpedaled to give himself a chance to study his opponent’s style.

The dwarf chuckled. He continued forward as his blades carried on their hypnotic dance. Instead of joining in, the thugs behind the dwarf were more interested in jeering and describing how they would divide up the Shou’s belongings once the dwarf dispatched the monk.

Angul muttered in its sheath, drawing attention to itself. As if Raidon needed the relic’s help to dispatch a mundane threat! He faced a dwarf, though obviously one especially skilled with weapons.

As his opponent shuffled closer, the half-elf dropped low and spun. His leg lashed out, his arcing heel crashing into the dwarf’s exposed calf.

The dwarf stumbled to the side, his swords crossing. It was the distraction Raidon wanted.

The monk spun out of his low crouch, stepped in, and elbowed the back of the dwarf’s hand. One of the dwarf’s swords clattered to the street.

Raidon shifted his hips so that his other shoulder angled toward his enemy’s chest. When the dwarf swung his remaining weapon, Raidon countered by chopping at the bearded man’s neck and the forearm simultaneously. He slid one hand down and captured the dwarf’s thumb where it gripped the sword’s hilt. He stamped down one foot on the dwarf’s toe, and simultaneously pushed and wrenched. Raidon’s foe finally toppled, and Raidon held his blade.

The tattooed observers shouted in surprise. “Hemet?” said one.

“This Shou knows his forms,” said the dwarf. He made to stand, but Raidon shook his head.

The dwarf continued, “He probably studied in one of those fancy monasteries in Telflamm or Phsant. Thinks he’s better than me.”

“No way, Hemet!” called another in the gang.

“Damn straight!” said Hemet. “He just caught me by surprise. But there’s no way he’s better than all of us!”

The gang roared and rushed the monk.

Raidon spun his borrowed weapon to a new grip, then hurled it end over end. The blade spun through the air into the press. It drew no blood, but it did make the group pause for a heartbeat, giving Raidon time to leap straight up.

His hands caught an overhanging lantern pole. He jerked his body up and around, managing to catch one of his attackers under the jaw as he did so. He lingered for a moment, standing on his hands on the bar, his feet high in the air overhead.

Then he spun down and around, once, twice, the air shrieking in his ears; he released just after the third revolution. His momentum propelled him through the air in a curving arc that deposited him several dozen feet back up the alley, only a few steps from its entrance, leaving the gang far behind.

His headache complained, as did Angul. The sword didn’t want Raidon to abandon the fight. It sensed how easy it would be to take out the entire group of ne’er-do-wells, probably even the dwarf Hemet.

Raidon didn’t disagree. Rushing back down the alley was what he most craved. Because … For the duration of the much-too-short conflict, he hadn’t given a single thought to what he’d done.

He hadn’t thought about how he’d killed the memory of a little girl named Opal in the nightmare city of Xxiphu.

Raidon growled, a noise uncommon on the lips of half-elves and Xiang temple initiates alike. Hot needles seemed to prick his brain. His hands clenched so tightly his nails drew blood from his palms.

A red fury trembled in his limbs-Anger at his own childishness. The damned alley gang had drawn Raidon’s attention away from his brooding, yes. But in doing so, they had laid bare Raidon’s own unconscious deficits. The meaningless fight showed the half-elf for what he was-a hollow man who couldn’t order his own thoughts without violence to distract him.

Then … What was that odd smell? It wasn’t from anything present in the alley.

Something sweet. Something familiar …

The street ceased spinning. A scent like honey drew Raidon’s mind into the past in a twinkling. He was a child again, a boy of seven or eight years. His mother stood before him, kneeling down with one hand on his forehead. Tears were wetting his cheeks.

His mother?

Raidon tried to shake off the unbidden vision. But his ruined mind conspired with the aftereffects of the wine to blind him. The memory was too strong.

His mother stood before him. Erunyauve-the enigmatic star elf he’d sought for years but had never found, who had left him the Cerulean Seal that blazoned his chest like a tattoo.

Her soft voice assailed him. “Poor Raidon,” she said. “You suffer so much. Give me your hand.”

Warm, firm hands took his own.

Then the memory dissipated. With it went the rage that had billowed him like a sail, and the headache too.

Instead of charging back into the alleyway and murdering the lot of his accidental foes, Raidon turned and entered the main street. In place of the odd vision remained a twinge of conscious: regardless of the nature of the men in the alley, an initiate of Xiang Temple would not seek them out merely as an excuse to exercise his own failings.

With his breath coming a little easier, Raidon turned his feet toward Marhana Manor.