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.Elaborate lamps sculpted to resemble golden dragons lit the way.Raidon had played near the gate, against the directives of his mother and father, as a child.Pretending to be some silk-draped trader arriving from mysterious eastern lands had been his favorite diversion.As the gate fell behind his carefully measured steps, he wondered if he'd ever see it again.The streets of greater Telflamm were different from Shou Town.Alien.He recognized many Shou walking the streets, but the smells, the markets, the structures, even the people, Shou and non-Shou alike—everything was atypical of the streets just blocks away.He wondered why the Shou Towners kept themselves apart from the natives of the lands they now called home.Afraid of losing their traditions? Unhappy with the culture of the indigents? Western traditions were somewhat known to Raidon.He suspected he was about to become intimately familiar with many things formerly unknown.As he walked, he decided against the docks—it was the first place he'd thought of to flee Telflamm.The Nine Golden Swords would hit on the same strategy.So he hurried down the cobblestone streets in the opposite direction.Hisdestination was the trade road that passed southeast out of the city.Perhaps he could sign onto a caravan heading to Two Stars.He'd always wanted to make that trip.It would be his coming-of-age journey, he decided.Perhaps he eluded the Nine Golden Swords.Or maybe they gave up the chase of theit own accord.Whatever the reason, Raidon was unmolested when he exited the city proper through high gates.As best he could determine, no Golden Sword marked his departure.He questioned a few seedy-looking merchants whose wheeled stalls were set up just outside Telflamm's legal boundary.They pointed him down the road toward a rambling edifice surrounded by stables, carts, and several large warehouses—an eatery called the Leaping Ogre Taproom.According to one gap-toothed fellow, the place was a touchstone used by caravans departing and arriving in Telflamm down the Golden Way.Raidon learned he could get a job working a trade wagon if he was "good with that swotd you got there—watch it! Put it away, why don't you?"Raidon required a sheath for his daito—a saya, as they called it in Shou Town.Carrying a naked blade in one free hand was attracting unwelcome attention.And despite his joy at regaining the blade, it proved awkward for all activities not related to fighting.He asked among the vendots and found his way to an old chicken keeper.The suspicious looking woman sold him a ratty saya for an obscene price.Raidon didn't have time to haggle.He had enough coins in his pouch to cover the price, barely, and besides, he'd soon find work on the road.The Leaping Ogre Taproom was a bustle of activity.Raidon quickly learned that all new work was assigned at dawn outside, in front of the tavern.In the meantime, would he like a tankard of mead?Raidon demurred, and instead spent the remainder of his coin on a room for the evening, a private room.He didn'twant to find any more lodge mates strung up and dismembered.Tomorrow, if he landed a position with an outgoing trader, he'd be sharing living space with other hired hands soon enough.He pulled out the cedar box where he kept his mother's forget-me-not.He hadn't gazed at the shining blue stone for some tendays.He'd been too busy as his plans for infiltrating the Nine Golden Swords moved toward culmination.Raidon considered.Was his attachment to the old amulet a childish behavior he should leave behind with his departure from his home? It looked valuable; he could probably sell it for a reasonable sum.But his sentimental attachment to the object was forged over a decade of ownership.Raidon believed that as long as the stone shone, his mother, wherever she had gone, kept him in her thoughts.Selling it was out of the question.He opened the box——and saw in an instant that the blue field around the tree was obscured in darkness.Raidon's eyes lost focus and he blinked tapidly.His stomach clenched.What was he seeing? He couldn't understand.He looked in the pack for the real cedar box—this couldn't be it.But it was.The amulet had, before this moment, shown a white tree silhouetted in brilliant cerulean.Now the treelike symbol seemed shrunken, as if the encroaching darkness clenched it with savage pressure.He couldn't imagine what had caused the change—his actions? Had leaving Telflamm caused this?Growing up, he often gazed into the stone aftet his mother's departure.He always imagined the treelike symbol was emblematic of an ancient grove of trees his mother sometimes described.A place she had called "Yuirwood."Conviction crystallized
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