AFEW HOURS into the Troll hunt, Richard’s Bluetooth headset began to bleat out a pathetic low-battery warning. He severed the phone connection to Corvallis, which was becoming less and less useful as Richard got up to speed. Embedded in a complex of spells and disguises about twenty deep, he had made his way to the Torgai Foothills by actually flying there directly, eschewing the crowded ley line network, which would have forced him to emerge at a place where his character—or rather the disguised version of it—might be noticed. Here he was fighting certain ineluctable features of the rule system. He didn’t want it understood that Egdod was on the move, and so he had disguised himself as one Ur’Qat, a K’Shetriae warrior mage of much lesser powers—but still powerful enough to survive alone in the war-torn Torgai Foothills.