The Kasari Sacred Quest

Every ten years, the Kasari send a procession of young rangers north into the Kulines to renew their covenant at the ruined Diketower, the ancestral hall their people abandoned in antiquity. The Quest is both pilgrimage and rite of passage: the youth who walk it return as full Kasari adults.

The Book 4 Quest fell during the unsettled years after the Battle of Timberwatch, when bandits, displaced gurvani, and a renegade Censor with a stolen witchstone all stalked the road. Sir Tyndal and Sir Rondal, riding their unofficial knight-errantry circuit, were attached to the column as escort by Master Minalan and the Kasari headman Arborn.

The boys discharged the duty in a string of running fights: a goblin ambush at a river crossing, the breaking of a slaver ring preying on the column from the wood, and a final duel in which Rondal cracked the Censor's borrowed shard with a textbook spellbinding from the Imperial Magic primer. The pilgrims reached the Diketower, completed the rite, and the two knights magi came home with reputations the Order could no longer pretend not to see.