Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

He smashed his knee up into the thing’s elbow and heard a satisfying snap.

The creature didn’t react with pain, or even drop the sword as a living opponent would have. However, when it broke free of Taal’s grip and swung at him again, the attack went wide on account of its arm hanging without skeletal support at the joint.

It also wasn’t completely mindless-it dropped its shield and took up the sword in its offhand. But by then, Taal had launched an attack of his own-a front kick in the thing’s stomach sent it stumbling back into the fiery stream.

That was when Taal saw the first creature emerge, completely unharmed by the blue energy or singed by the heat.

He realized he’d been stupid. The guardians would have been pretty poor wardens if they could so easily be harmed by their own in-place defenses.

He sidled away, so that his back was to the open drop behind him.

The first attacker, without its spear, saw the opportunity and charged him. It opened its toothless mouth as if to scream out a challenge, but it had no breath. Its attack was soundless. As it reached him, Taal snatched its outstretched hands and fell onto his back, kicking up into the creature’s stomach at the same time. The undead defender flipped high over him and off the side of the ziggurat.

Taal’s totem growled, and he rolled to one side. An arrow glanced off the ground where he’d planted his back.

Another arrow came through the fire, and he rocked the other way. Guardians must have emerged from the other two squat bunkers too. Or the second one he’d thrown through the fire, which hadn’t yet re-emerged, had found a bow and a supply of arrows.

Either way, he needed to get across that river and deal with them before one got off a lucky shot.

He recalled the width of the stream before it had become a river of blue fire. It was about twenty feet. Should be easy, he thought.

Taal ran straight at the fire. His totem gave him enough warning to dodge another arrow, but his footing was slightly off when he launched his diving roll over the flow and through the sheet of flame.

Fire seared his skin. When his reaching hand struck the far side of the landing, the combined stumble in his step and pain of the burn contrived to degrade his form; he didn’t quite curl his body into a smooth roll. When his body spun around the first time, his ankle cracked the ground. It could have been worse, but at that instant, the Citadel’s substance was composed of some kind of chalky green soil, which was slightly springy.

Three shriveled guardians stood on the other side of the flames. Two had bows, and one was the creature whose elbow he had shattered. Like its fellow, that one didn’t seem any the worse the wear for its swim in the blue fire.

Taal regained his feet, and ignored the twinge in his right ankle from the bad landing.

The two creatures with bows loosed, and he was forced to drop again.

The swordless undead lunged at him and tried to stamp on Taal’s head.

He caught its foot, twisted, and pulled. The undead didn’t fall, but stayed unbalanced long enough for Taal to use its body to pull himself upright. It tried to grapple him, and its undead sinews were unnaturally strong. But it had no technique whatsoever.

On the other hand, the threat of cutting off its air or blood supply to its head by squeezing its neck was nullified by the fact that it needed neither. So instead of trying to choke it, he managed to snake his arm up and apply an arm lock on its good arm, levering the creature’s head down by pulling its elbow into his own stomach. It might not need air or circulating blood, but ligaments and bones connected the same way in living adversaries as they did in those animated by magic.

The archers loosed again, but Taal ducked behind his captive enemy. One of the arrows struck it. Like the sword and spear, the arrows burned with some kind of holy white light. Unlike the blue flame, that energy had an immediate and deleterious effect on the undead.

It spasmed, opened its mouth wide in a silent scream, then fell limp. White vapor escaped from its lips and whispered away.

When the next arrow whistled toward his head, Taal attempted and succeeded at one of the feats for which Xiang Temple had been famous. He snatched the arrow from the air, and hurled it back at his foe.

The arrow caught the undead archer in the neck. It fell onto its back like a toppled statue and lay still. A faint banner of vapor streamed from its mouth and was gone.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the last defender even as it nocked another arrow and loosed it on him.

He skipped out of the way, bent, and pulled the shaft that had killed the undead he’d held in the joint lock. The arrow tip yet glimmered white.

Taal charged his foe, the arrow held in his grip like an ice pick. The undead didn’t have time to draw again before Taal ended its sentinel duty in the Citadel of the Outer Void.

When Taal approached the sculpted face for the second time, nothing contested him.

On that side of the stream, he noted a rune scribed just inside the gaping mouth. He didn’t recognize the symbol, but it glowed with the same white light as had glinted from the guardians’ weapons. Bracing against the heat of the burning river, he reached in and touched it.

The blue fire died out.

Taal waited, watching the lip of the landing. A moment later, Malyanna came into view up the stairs, her wolf-grin back in place. “You are a wonder, Taal,” she said. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then let’s go-I see we have at least three more landings dripping this horrid fluid to get past.”

“I think I know how to deal with the remainder more efficiently,” said Taal. He picked up the spear his very first adversary had dropped. Its tip still shimmered with holy radiance.

He turned and ascended the second stage of the stairs.

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Citadel of the Outer Void

White light blinked through the surrounding haze like distant lightning. The shadow of a gargantuan pillar flickered across Raidon. He slowed his frantic pace to a walk and called, “Japheth, did you see that?”

The warlock stepped out of his cloak directly beside the monk.

“Yes, some sort of detonation?” he said.

The monk thought better of asking Japheth to investigate the disturbance via his pact. Considering what had happened last time, he doubted the man would return a second time from whatever mental abyss he’d stared into so raptly.

Another display of flashing light danced soundlessly from somewhere ahead of them, its origin hidden by the twisting vapor.

Raidon laid his palm against the Sign. Its energies hadn’t really settled down since they’d come through the discontinuity, making it difficult for him to direct its power. Truth was, he’d never actually mastered its functions in the first place.

When the next series of flashes lanced through the fog, he communicated his desire through the Sign, asking it to show him what had transpired.

A point of fire expanded before his face, becoming an image of Malyanna, laughing, her mouth wide with more teeth and mirth than nature had ever intended. She stood atop some high place. The vision blew away a heartbeat later.

Concern sharpened Raidon’s breath. “We don’t have time to follow these tracks,” he said. “Malyanna’s reached the Citadel. We must go now.”

“But … very well,” said Japheth, “I suppose these tracks go to the same place. But how do we get there? I need a lot more preparation to go that far through my cloak, especially for a location I haven’t actually seen yet.”

Raidon looked up. “Madwing! Can you bear us?” he called. “We need to move as quickly as your wings can fly us!”