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apparently. Foam lathered his chest and neck, and the rest of him was wet with sweat and rain. Ears back, he rose to his hind legs in a slow, controlled rear. Warhorses, Tier had once told her, had been trained to turn their fear to anger—just as Seraph herself usually did.
    Tier had his sword out, not brandishing it, but at the ready.
    Some chance movement in the crowd gave Seraph a quick view of Rinnie, standing just behind Skew. She was a child still, with only the faintest of signs of the woman she would be. She should have looked pitiable next to the warrior and the troll, but her whole body glowed brighter than the lanterns Seraph had just passed.
    For a moment Seraph let herself be awed by the beauty of the power a Cormorant could gather.
    But it was just for a moment because Rinnie didn’t have the control to hold that kind of power—nor was it doing any good against a troll. Seraph began threading her way between the men, who dropped away as soon as they saw who it was.
    Lightning flashed and hit the troll. It rolled its eyes and shook its head, but other than that, the lightning did nothing. But while it was distracted an arrow found its target and the troll took several steps back with another of those agonized cries. It reached one of its arms up to bat at its face and pluck the arrow from its nose slit. It held the arrow up and shook it before throwing it aside and striding forward with a ground-shaking stride that boomed almost as loud as its scream.
    Lehr, standing to Rinnie’s left, nocked another arrow and waited.
    The troll hit Seraph’s warding and magic leapt up in a fine display of light and color and held it off. The creature stayed for a long count of two before falling back, covering its eyes; but it was obvious to Seraph, if to no one else, that the warding wouldn’t hold it back much longer.
    â€œRinnie!” shouted Seraph, as soon as she was close enough that they might hear her over the storm. She stopped as close to her daughter as she dared. “Rinnie, let the storm go. Your lightning won’t hurt it, and it prefers dark to light. Lehr, in the ear, eye, nostril, and ventral slit—if you can, get someone to make flaming arrows for you. A troll is partially immune to magic, so I can’t set it afire, but real fire sometimes works.” Sometimes.
    Though her glow hadn’t dimmed, Rinnie must have heard what Seraph had said: the rain and wind died, leaving an uncanny silence in its wake, but the storm and all its potential violence still hung overhead malevolently.
    â€œThere are a few spells that can hurt it,” said Hennea.
    In her anxiety for her family, Seraph had almost forgotten the other Raven.
    She turned to see Hennea circle her hands as if she held a large globe, then make a tossing motion. As soon as it crossed the wards, her spell turned into a ball of fire so hot it burnedblue. It hit the troll in the middle of its forehead with an impact Seraph could hear from where she stood.
    Blinded by the light of the fire, the troll pulled the molten ball from its forehead, and at its touch the magic fell into nothing, leaving only a great blackened area in the troll’s face. The troll howled its rage.
    â€œYou have to teach me that one,” said Seraph. “But it’s not going to help us much. They hunt by scent and hearing. Blinding’s only going to make it angry.”
    Someone had heard her tell Lehr to use fire; she heard a voice cry, “We need flaming arrows!” Someone else yelled, “Eyes, mouth, and private parts, boys.”
    The troll charged the warding again. Seraph dodged past Skew to give the ward more power, ignoring Tier’s shout of consternation. The troll saw her, too, and began wading through the barrier of magic to get to her.
    Trolls were smarter than they looked.
    A great mountain cat leapt onto the troll from the top of a tree, landing on the top of its head and sending it staggering back away