The Chaos Curse by R. A. Salvatore

flaming troll a wide berth), and she met the monstrous thing with another flying double-kick.
    Danica had the devious notion of herding the troll into its flaming companion, but the cunning monster wanted no part of that. It staggered back from the kick, then came around again, pointedly putting Danica between it and the burning troll.
    An arrow thudded into its side; it turned its ugly head to regard Shayleigh.
    Danica flew into it again before it turned back, and the monster stumbled and toppled. Danica was up quickly, thinking to leap atop the monster, but she skidded to a stop, seeing another flaming sphere come to life in the air above the prone troll.
    An instant later, that troll, too, was shrieking in agony, engulfed by the biting magical flames.
    Shayleigh held her next shot, sensed movement to the side, and spun and fired-into the troll she had already dropped. The thing went down in a heap again, but stubbornly writhed and squirmed, trying to rise.
    Danica was on it at once, pounding wildly. Shayleigh joined her, sword in hand, and with mighty hacks, cut off the troll’s legs.
    Those severed limbs began to wriggle immediately, trying to reattach to the torso, but Danica wisely kicked them away toward the glowing remnant of the campfire.
    As soon as one of the legs touched the embers, it burst into flames, and Danica scooped it up by the other end, using it as a grotesque torch. She ran across the clearing and shoved the flaming limb into the face of the unburned troll, the amazing monster still thrashing against Shayleigh’s repeated strikes. Soon, that troll, too, was ablaze, and the battle was ended.
    Dorigen walked back into camp then, inspecting her work on the two flame-shrouded trolls. They were little more than crumpled black balls by that time, and their regenerative process was surely defeated by the wizard’s flames.
    Danica could hardly bear to look at Dorigen, ashamed of her earlier doubts. “I thought you had run off,” she admitted.
    Dorigen smiled at her.
    “I vowed to…” Danica began.
    “To hunt me down and teach me about loyalty,” Dorigen finished for her, lightly and with no accusation in her tone. “But, dear Danica, do you not know that you and your friends have already taught me about loyalty?”
    Danica stared hard at the wizard, thinking that Dorigen’s bravery here, and the fact that she had bothered to stay around and aid in the fight, would weigh in her favor once they returned to the library. As she thought about it, Danica realized she was not surprised by Dorigen’s heroics. The wizard had been won over, heart and soul, and, though Danica agreed that Dorigen should pay a strict penance for her actions in favor of Castle Trinity, for the war she helped direct against Shayleigh’s people, the monk hoped that the penance would be positive, in which Dorigen might use her considerable magical powers for the good of the region.
    “You likely saved our lives,” Shayleigh remarked, drawing Danica’s attention. “I am grateful.”
    That remark seemed to please Dorigen greatly. “It is but a pittance of the debt I owe you and your people,” the wizard replied.
    Shayleigh nodded her agreement. “A debt that I trust you will pay in full,” she said sternly, but with apparent confidence.
    Danica was glad to hear it. Shayleigh had not been cold to Dorigen in any way, but neither had the elf been friendly. Danica could appreciate the elf maiden’s turmoil. Shayleigh was an intelligent and perceptive elf, one who based her judgments on an individual’s actions. She, more than any of her clan, had accepted Ivan and Pikel as true friends and allies, had not allowed typically elven preconceptions concerning dwarves to cloud her judgment of them. And now she, alone among the elves of Shilmista, had seen this new side of Dorigen, had come to where she was ready to forgive, perhaps, if not to forget.
    That support, as well as King Elbereth’s (and Danica was confident the elf king