Sword Saint

by Michael Wallace

  The boy was quiet again, but not for long. “You want to know mine?”

  Narina took a closer look at him, really studying him for the first time. His hair was blond and curly, and apart from being dirty, badly needed a cut. She’d taken him for as young as six or seven, but now thought he was at least nine, based on his mature way of speaking. He simply hadn’t lost the baby fat in his cheeks yet.

  As for the dogs, the largest of the pack were two long, scrawny beasts that looked like they hadn’t eaten well in days, although she suspected that was more down to their breed than a lack of food, as they seemed content. The other five were short, aggressive-looking terriers, a mix of colors (all covered with a patina of grime), with the fiercest of the lot a gray-and-black splotched dog missing part of one ear.

  “I think I know your name already,” she told the boy.

  “No you don’t. We’re not from around here.”

  Narina closed her eyes, felt the sun warming her face, and gathered her sowen. It carried whispers of their surroundings, and she felt the thoughts of the dogs, all scattered and eager. Images of rats being shaken went through her mind, and impressions of the rivalry and loyalty among themselves, as well as the fierce love they felt for this boy. There was another human too, whose absence made the dogs vaguely worried. He was their leader. A man. Probably the boy’s father.

  Narina let the chaotic, jumbled minds of the dogs pass her by and picked through her sowen until she felt the boy’s aura and his thoughts. They were bright and clear and curious. There was something hanging on his tongue that he wanted to share, but he was waiting for her to ask it. It was his name, and she could almost hear it.

  “Your name is Rouben,” she said. “No, wait. Ruven.”

  His eyes widened. “How did you know that? Magic?”

  “Of a sort. How old are you, nine?”

  “Ten. You don’t know everything.”

  “I know very little, in fact. What I do know, I know well, though. Narrow, but deep. Like a river.”

  “I know a little of everything,” Ruven said.

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  He sighed. “But nothing very well. Only stuff about dogs and rats. My letters aren’t good, because my ma died.” Pain darkened his face.

  “So did mine. In fact, I was about your age when she died.”

  He looked at her again, more solemn than curious this time, as if the revelation had created a connection between them, and Narina felt an uncomfortable stirring, a sense that she’d inadvertently drawn him into a confidence that she couldn’t maintain.

  “Are those swords under your cloak?” he asked.

  Kozmer cleared his throat. “Is it your habit to ask inopportune questions of strangers?”

  “My da said you can learn a lot by watching and listening.”

  “Your father is a smart man,” Kozmer continued, “but I think he’d also warn against asking strangers about their weapons.”

  “Where is your father, anyway?” Narina said. “I think he was with you earlier today, wasn’t he? Maybe he left you this morning. . .?”

  “He went up ahead to. . .um, I think he had to. . .let’s see.”

  “You’re about to say something he wouldn’t want you to,” Kozmer said. “Better keep that to yourself, young man.”

  “He’s in the village, though. We’re traveling together after that.” Ruven nodded. “It can be dangerous in the plains because there’s a war. There’s always a war, my da says, but nobody bothers people who are about their business. Not usually.”

  Narina wondered, in spite of Kozmer’s warning to the boy, if she should press Ruven for details. He might be able to offer suggestions for how to avoid the fighting. There was no sense getting mixed up in that nonsense if they didn’t have to.

  But before they could work this out, Gyorgy turned back from where he was leading Brutus along, and said, “Is that our village up ahead? Because if so, there might be a problem.”

  Narina left Kozmer and the child and pressed past the cart and the goat to see what her student was talking about. The view had closed up again, with a rocky cliff looming to their left, while the sound of the river continued its dull rumble to their right as it flowed swiftly but invisibly behind a screen of pines. Above the river—the south side of the canyon—lay a gentler slope that nevertheless led up to giant, squatting mountains.

  The entire range was studded with volcanoes, and there was a perpetual haze lingering overhead. This was where the fire demons played and cavorted, and occasionally burst forth in fiery, destructive excursions.

  One volcano closer at hand had sent a large plume into the sky, and there was smoke roiling out of the forest in that direction as well. The woods were on fire; it seemed the eruption was more than smoke and ash. If the volcano had gone off and was throwing out rivers of lava, then the villages and farmland on its slopes were at risk.

  One of these villages straddled the post road, and was their destination for this afternoon. Quite possibly, that was where Ruven’s father was waiting to reunite with his son.

  From the look of the smoke, she guessed the village was directly in the path of destruction.

  Chapter Nine

  It was a crow that had made Andras leave his son behind. Not that Ruven and the dogs couldn’t have kept up—in fact, they had more stamina than he did—but he wanted to get ahead and size up the situation before he led them out of the mountains and into danger.

  The bird had awakened him while they were sleeping in the barn of a man they’d done some light ratting for in exchange for food and shelter. It was cawing at another crow, which answered from some distance away.

  Unable to sleep from the noise and the unpleasant memories it raised—memories of childhood, when dueling crowlords had done battle among the farms outside his village, destroying crops and driving dozens of small farmers into misery—Andras left his bed in the hay and stepped into the gray of early dawn.

  There, on the overhanging peak of the barn roof, sat an enormous crow. It was so big that if he hadn’t heard it jawing, he’d have thought it a raven, but the caw of a crow was distinctive from the low gronk of a raven. Another crow sounded from a cluster of trees across the yard, and then he saw dark shapes flitting in the sky. Six or seven in all.

  And the first crow was watching him with a dark expression. Intelligent, that one, even more so than the wild kind, which were clever enough. This one was thinking, contemplating him, even asking itself questions about who he might be.

  Andras went back inside and woke his son. The boy responded groggily in the darkness.

  “It’s likely a coincidence,” he said after telling Ruven what he’d seen. “I might have been imagining something in its gaze—it’s still pretty dark outside. But if there’s a crowlord nearby with his army, spying out the land, we don’t want to stumble into them. I’m going to. . .are you awake or am I talking to myself?”

  “I’m awake, Da.”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t see your eyes. I’ll go down the road to see what’s up. If I don’t come back before you awaken, eat with the farmer and his family, then take the dogs on the road. We’ll meet at Hooffent—there’s no rush. Oh, and wash up. I think you smell of dogs and manure.”

  “All right, Da. Be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine—you’re the one I’m worried about. Maybe find some trustworthy travelers to keep you company. You know how to identify them, right? Good.” He kissed the boy’s dirty head, grabbed his cloak, his satchel, and his spade, and left the barn.

  Andras guessed that Ruven would follow all of his instructions but one. He was pretty sure the boy would show up for his breakfast dirty, and be oblivious to the way the farmer’s wife wrinkled her nose and suggested he eat in the barn. Apart from that, Ruven would be careful, and Notch and the rest of the pack would help keep the boy safe.

  Anyway, Andras figured he’d only be separated from them for an hour or so, until he’d answered his questions about the crows. When
he left the road to scramble up a rocky ledge for a better view a little while later, the air was thick with the birds down by the village of Hooffent, where the post road finally emerged from the mountains.

  Most definitely a crowlord nearby, possibly leading his army. It wouldn’t be Andras’s master, he decided, twisting at the sigil ring. Too far south for Lord Balint. That meant either Zoltan or Damanja. If Damanja, she’d likely be leading an excursion up along the foothills to fall down on one of her two rivals. That was dangerous enough, but a more worrying possibility was that Zoltan had come to await the results of the attack on the bladedancer temple.

  If so, he’d have learned the disastrous results as Miklos and the survivors met him on the road. Angry, equipped with an army, it was impossible to say how he might lash out. Either way, Andras needed to get to Hooffent, to see what was afoot before he brought his son through. He hurried down the post road, trusting Ruven to keep himself safe.

  At the time, Andras hadn’t give much thought to the haze in the air. Not right away. One of the nearby volcanoes was acting up, which meant fire demon mischief, but it had been similarly hazy on their ascent several days earlier, and it took some time to realize the scope of the eruption.

  When he was still two hours from the village he began to taste a bitter flavor in the air. A few minutes later, bits of ash began to drift down like large gray snowflakes. When the road bent away from the river for a stretch, the quieting of its roar allowed him to hear the crackle of pine trees burning in the distance.

  Andras stopped, torn with indecision. The post road was a good distance from the volcano; lava flow wasn’t an issue. But if the forest fire continued to spread, he might risk descending only to have the road close off behind him. Then what would happen if Ruven tried to push through for their planned meeting at Hooffent? Surely the boy would know better than to enter smoke and fire, but in the end they’d still be cut off from one another.

  But if it was still open, he needed to know. Lord Balint would want his report. The attempted theft by Miklos and the rest of Lord Zoltan’s men was an act of war, not only against the temple, but against Balint himself.

  He decided to continue down the road. If things looked dangerous, he could always turn back, no need to charge through flames. Make an assessment of the state of the road, then return for his son and the dogs.

  Andras came across something curious about twenty minutes later. The post road was only twelve feet wide along its entire length. In the plains, the road surface was brick, whereas the mountain roads had been cobbled with a variety of stone, depending, he supposed, on sources that had been available to its long-vanished builders. Here, the surface was a light gray stone similar in coloring to the surrounding cliff ledges.

  And there, across an otherwise nondescript stretch of the road, someone had painted a black circle whose diameter encompassed the entire width of the road. In the center of the circle was something resembling an upturned triangle, with two of the points curving into horns. He bent, curious, and touched at the edge of the circle, and his finger came away sticky. Pine tar, mostly. It had a strange, astringent smell, like the urine the hide workers used in the tanneries of Riverrun.

  Something about the scene made him wary, and Andras decided not to break the circle and the horned triangle with his stride. Instead, he carefully skirted the road, entering the ditch lining it just long enough to get around the thing before continuing on his path.

  Shortly thereafter, the smoke started to roll across the road. He took a cloth from his satchel that, although washed and dried since, still smelled like the ointment he’d rubbed on the wounds of Miklos’s men. It didn’t filter as much smoke as he’d hoped, and he was soon coughing. The sun was rising overhead, but was reduced to a dim orange disk in the sky. The roaring of fire grew louder. A hot wind swayed the tops of the pine trees.

  When he caught his first glimpse of flame, whipping through some trees to his right, he knew the time had come to turn around. Any longer and he might be cut off from Ruven and the dogs.

  He went back uphill with some alacrity, his alarm mounting as the smoke thickened to choking proportions. The fire had spread behind him as he descended, torching trees between the road and the river. Needles curled and browned from the heat before suddenly bursting into flames. By the time he got back to the curious circle and triangle of pine pitch, a solid wall of flame lined the post road.

  The heat was terrific, and sparks and balls of flame were crackling and popping from the burning trees. Some blew across the road to the swaying trees on the other side, and it seemed only a matter of time before the fire leaped the road and set the opposing mountainside on fire.

  Andras didn’t make any attempt to skirt the pitch circle this time, but sprinted across, gasping and coughing and terrified. He might have collapsed from the heat and smoke, but a breeze from above momentarily drove back the smoke, and the path ahead of him cleared. He ran for his life.

  Andras was on the verge of getting above the fire when a high, maniacal laugh sounded behind him. He turned to see a white-hot shape swinging through the burning trees on the edge of the road near the painted circle on the cobbles.

  A fire demon.

  Physically, it was the size of a child, but its halo of flame made it seem much larger. It had a long, forked tail that twisted and lashed like a whip made of flames, and long, grasping fingers that propelled it through the boughs of the trees, torching everything in its path. Strands of burning hair, each thicker than a man’s thumb, flickered and waved behind it like tongues of blue flame.

  The demon spied Andras and fixed him with two black eyes, the only thing on the creature that didn’t seem to be made of fire. A forked tongue sizzled out of its mouth and tasted the air while Andras remained rooted in terror. It opened its mouth and let out another terrifying cackle of glee.

  Andras’s heart seemed to stop, then kicked into a panicked gallop. He fled up the road while the demon laughed at him, not daring to turn to see if he was being pursued. He ran until his thudding heart and gasping lungs could take no more, then fell to his knees, sobbing.

  There was a raging storm in his mind, and a dozen gibbering voices, and he thought that if he’d heard the demon’s laughter one more time, he’d have gone mad.

  Demons and demigods, what was happening?

  The creatures lived within volcanoes, emerging only during eruptions, rioting through the destruction of lava flows and stinking, burning masses of hot air. As they cooled, their flame dimmed, and they either fled back to the safety of their calderas or risked being left as blackened, frozen statues. There was an ancient, eroded demon near the border of Balint Stronghand’s lands, a memory of some long-forgotten volcanic flow that had poured out of the mountains and run all the way to the sea. Others could be found in the foothills nearer the volcanoes, often tantalizingly close to frozen lava flows, having ventured too far from safety to make it back in time.

  So how was there one so near the post road? It must be several miles from the edge of the lava flow. Unless, he thought, an especially large eruption was blazing a path of destruction from the small, unassuming volcano above Hooffent. If so, the village itself was in danger.

  Once his thumping heart had calmed, Andras picked himself up and continued up the road, climbing back into the mountains toward where he’d left Ruven and the dogs. His skin felt tight and raw, and the hairs on his arms had curled from the heat. His lungs hurt, and his face felt warm, as if sunburned. He swished some water, spit it out to clear his mouth of the bitter taste, then drained the leather skin.

  When he emerged from the forest and entered farmland again where the river had cut a wider, gentler path, the farmers had stopped working and were staring at the sky. A column of thick black smoke climbed thousands of feet into the air until it loomed above the entire range. More ash was falling, thicker now. The air remained hot and bitter tasting.

  A woman spotted him and shouted to see if he had news from below. He
didn’t, except to warn that the road was hazardous, and if she wanted to be safe, she’d make sure any family members or livestock stayed clear of the forest where it crept alongside the river to the edge of her farm. She opened her mouth as if to scoff at the idea that the fires would climb this high, then shut it abruptly and gave him a curt nod.

  Further up, he encountered other travelers on the road, mostly farmers carrying their produce to market, but also woodcutters, men leading horses with carts of hay, a tinker with tools and scraps of metal, and others who had business in Hooffent or beyond. Most had left the road to stare at the column of smoke from a grassy hillock to one side, but a few remained hesitantly in the road, neither advancing nor withdrawing.

  Andras warned them about the fire. He didn’t mention the fire demon. It sounded implausible, and there was that curious detail about the pitch circle with the triangle in the center that was making him think. The creature had emerged at that exact spot, as if drawn to it.

  It was only around the next bend, where the road climbed an especially steep stretch, that he came across the first people who didn’t seem aware of the events below, or at least they were continuing in spite of it.

  The group comprised several people accompanying an animal-drawn cart, and it took a moment to take it all in. The first strange detail was the cart animal itself, an enormous mountain goat twice the height of the goats on Valter’s farm, nearly as big as a mule, in fact, with wicked-looking curved horns. Its shod hooves clacked against the cobbles as it pulled.

  A young man led the goat and cart, but he didn’t look anything like the others Andras had passed on the road. He was far too clean, for one thing. His shirt was white, and he wore trim gray trousers bound in at the legs above his boots. His dark, glossy hair had been pulled into a tight knot at the back. Boys that age usually had a bit of fuzz at the lip and chin, but his face was cleanly shaven. His eyes were sharp, and he gave Andras a cool stare as the smoke-stained, dirty man approached from the opposite direction.