There were others at the back, but Andras took a moment to get over his surprise at what could only be a young frater or student from the bladedancer temple. The clothing, the overall cleanliness, and the strange image of a shod goat pulling a cart left no other possibility. He’d never set eyes on one before, but he’d heard plenty.
Behind him, an old man with a stick, a woman in her mid- to late-twenties, her hair pulled back in a bun with a silver oak leaf holding it, and . . .oh, he realized with a shock. Andras’s son was with them, along with the dogs, who suddenly spotted their master, forgot all discipline, and ran past the others to greet him with a series of joyous barks.
The sudden cry and movement of the dogs made the goat whip its head around. Stretch and Skinny Lad, the two lurchers, came bounding through first, but Notch was next, and a goat horn was moving with perfect timing to impale the dog through her belly. Andras didn’t have time to whistle a warning before the terrier was suddenly flying into the air.
But even as Andras watched in horror, he saw that the horn had somehow missed. Something else had sent Notch flying. There, standing several feet ahead of where he’d been only moments earlier, was the old man, his walking stick finishing a sweeping movement. He’d somehow caught the terrier with his staff and flipped her neatly clear of the horns, and all before Andras had spotted him moving.
As the dog yelped and righted herself, the rest of the pack surrounded their master, barking, with tails and stump-tails wagging furiously. Andras continued to stare at the old man, who leaned casually against his staff as if he hadn’t just moved in a blur from behind the goat and rescued the dog from a certain impaling. The young man up front grabbed the goat’s other horn and twisted its head around so it wasn’t tempted to make another go at it.
Andras was still gaping at this when Ruven spotted him and came running up from behind. “Da! Is everything—”
“Hush, everything is fine. No, don’t say anything,” he added. Ruven frowned, glanced at his new companions, and fell silent. Good boy.
Andras felt sure that he’d look at the three from the temple and see suspicion blooming on their faces. Why had this man silenced his son so quickly? But they were either skilled at hiding their doubts or hadn’t felt them in the first place.
Andras whistled at the dogs, a long note and two short blasts, then pointed to a spot in the grass next to the road. They whined, disappointed that he hadn’t given them more than a perfunctory pat or two on the head, but trotted over and sat on their haunches, panting and waiting.
Andras gave the three strangers a closer look as they brought the cart to a halt. The younger one up front had a casual air, a boy nearly turned into a man, but with a childlike gleam in his eye. The old man seemed bent with time, his joints stiff and his walk labored as he leaned heavily on the staff that he gripped with bony, wrinkled hands. Andras began to doubt what he’d seen the old fellow do; maybe Notch had been jumping clear already and the man merely gave her a nudge.
It was the third member who caught his eye. The woman was of average height, lithe and smooth in her gait, with every movement seeming like it was deliberate. Dressed in the same tunic and bound leggings above boots as the young man, her arms were bare, and as she sized him up, her hands rested on a pair of hilts sticking from lacquered wooden sheaths at her sides. One hilt was black, covered with twined leather with delicate imprints in the material, and the other was a clean, almost brilliant white.
Andras tore his gaze away, suddenly afraid. The woman was wearing the legendary swords of a bladedancer sohn. The demon blade and the dragon blade. The same type of weapons that must have blurred through Miklos’s company, gutting and decapitating dozens of men.
One old man had done that. This woman looked tranquil, almost friendly, in fact, but the thought that she could kill him, his son, and the entire pack of dogs before Andras could take a single step made his blood run cold.
“So you’re Ruven’s father,” she said.
“Thank you for looking after him. We’ll be going, now.”
“We’ve been enjoying his company—the boy makes me laugh. Walk with us a pace, and I’ll share our wine and rice cakes. None of you look like you’ve eaten much lately.”
“Oh, we’re fine,” Andras said. “Ate already. Anyway, we’re going up the road, not down.”
The goat was hauling a cart, and his guess was that it carried Balint Stronghand’s weapons, forged with the precision and power of the temple magic that it was said the bladedancers gathered from every living and inanimate thing of their surroundings. After Miklos’s attack, the bladedancers must have decided to rid themselves of the temptation that had brought enemies looking for plunder.
Which meant that they were all on the same side. But the bladedancers, like all the sword temples, were so solitary and secretive that Balint hadn’t dared send someone to demand an accounting of the work. Only a ratter and his son, and only because he seemed to have caught wind that one of his enemies was on the move. The last thing Andras wanted to do was admit that he’d been spying on these people. One careless word from Ruven might do it.
A frown touched the woman’s mouth. “If that’s the case, why was Ruven going downhill instead of waiting for you?”
The best answer was truth. Mostly. “We were going that way, now we’re turning back. There’s a volcano erupting below. The forest is burning.”
“I know. I can smell it. I sense fire demons—they’ve thrown the forest into chaos, and the auras are disturbed for miles.”
“It’s worse than that,” he said. “There’s fire threatening the post road. I was almost caught in it. Don’t go down, not yet. I’m going to take my boy up to where it’s safe, and you should find your own place to wait it out.”
“We have somewhere to go. No time to wait for a fire—it could burn for days, and we don’t have that sort of time.”
Now it was Andras’s turn to frown. “Didn’t you hear what I said? The fire is right up to the road. Probably across it by now. I saw. . .well, it’s not safe.”
“What did you see?” the old man asked. “Was it a fire demon?”
“I. . .well. . .probably nothing.”
“No use denying it,” he said. “I can read it in your thoughts clearly enough.”
Yes, a demon, and a strange circle of pitch spanning the road, though it sounded strange. No, it sounded unbelievable, even, that one of the monsters would be so far from the lava flow, which must have been three or four miles from the road, at least.
“Do you need to get down to the plains?” the woman asked.
“Eventually, yes, but I’d rather do so alive.”
“Then come with us,” she said. “We’ll see you through. Nothing you saw will harm you.”
All three of them seemed strangely unperturbed. They were from the bladedancer temple, not the firewalkers’, so he didn’t see how they’d be able to bear the heat of the fires, let alone confront a demon.
At the same time, their confidence made him think they knew what they were doing. And since they didn’t seem to suspect him, since his mission was urgent, and since accompanying the trio would keep him close to his master’s weapons, his course of action seemed obvious. A glance back at Ruven must have given away something of his concerns, because the woman gave another warm smile.
“Your boy is safer with us than if you set off on your own,” she said. “Come, and rest easy. You can trust us.”
Chapter Ten
Narina thought Ruven’s father seemed anxious as she led the group down the canyon toward where the man had reported the fire lapping the post road. To ease his mind, and because they weren’t hiding anything, she introduced herself and her companions, then asked his identity in turn.
The man’s name was Andras—a ratter, by trade, as Ruven had already indicated—and he’d apparently been scouting the potential hazards of the road to make sure it was safe to bring his son and dogs down through the fires. Once on the plains, he was going to
spend time working the farms and granaries along the north bank of the Lornar.
There had been a truce between Damanja and Zoltan, but it had recently broken down as Damanja accused her rival of sending brigands to raid her fiefdom. As a result, nowhere south of the river was safe, and the villeins and freeholders who’d been trying to repair war-damaged farms, mills, and the like had no coin to pay a ratter.
Kozmer sighed as he tapped along with his cane. “The crowlords fight, the brigands profit, and the common folk suffer.”
“That’s right,” Andras said. He took a rag from his satchel and tied it around his son’s face, then pulled his own soot-stained rag over his mouth. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled. “How do you plan to get us past. . .? Well, it’s not me I’m worried about, it’s my boy. And the dogs, too. They’re my responsibility and my livelihood.”
He’d addressed it to Narina, but Kozmer spoke again. “Your dogs don’t look worried, do they?”
Andras glanced at them trotting along with their tongues lolling. “No, but I wouldn’t expect them to know the danger.”
“Every animal knows the risk of fire,” Kozmer said. “Even a bird or a moth will fly away from smoke. Your dogs aren’t worried—they feel our sowen. Look at Brutus.” The old man gestured with his stick for emphasis. “That ornery goat is more concerned with burying his greedy face in the clover next to the road than walking into fire.”
“It’s mostly my son,” Andras said, and Narina sensed real concern, not mere reluctance to be trudging along with strangers.
She remembered what Ruven had said earlier about losing his mother. These were perilous times for all, but especially for the small folk, as Kozmer had pointed out. A hardened military sort like Miklos could trample a child like Ruven with his horse and be happily drinking in a tavern ten minutes later. She was glad to be escorting the boy and his father, if only for a short stretch.
“Ruven is in no danger,” she assured the man. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I might just pluck the boy up and make him my new student. My old one is nearing the end of his training, and I need a new mind and body to shape.”
Ruven’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t toy with him,” Andras said. “He takes those sorts of things seriously.”
“I’m not toying.”
“You’re certainly exaggerating one thing,” Gyorgy said from up front, where he was still pulling slightly on Brutus’s rope to keep the goat trudging forward with the cart. “I’m nowhere near the end of my training.”
“Neither am I, for that matter,” she said, thinking of the one crucial task remaining her, with her father’s swords a continual reminder as they hung at her sides. “But since we’re on the subject of training, this air is getting thick. Gather your sowen and clear the smoke. Can you do that while walking?”
Gyorgy nodded. “I think so.”
Narina caught Andras staring at Gyorgy as the student closed his eyes and fell back from Brutus’s head to let the goat pick his own way for a stretch. After a moment, the man looked away with his brows pulled together as if trying to puzzle out what the young man was doing.
Most of Narina’s attention was on Andras, Ruven, and the dogs, the latter of which trotted ahead in a squirming, dirty pack, but she felt Gyorgy pulling in his sowen and sifting through the auras of the trees, the river, and the mountains, looking for what would drive off the smoke.
Ruven came up next to Narina and gave her a bold look. “Could I really be your student?”
“Not looking like that,” she said. “You’re filthy and smelly and your clothes are only fit for burning.”
“Son,” Andras said, “I told you to give yourself a good bath before you left the farm.”
“You said wash up, not take a bath.”
“I didn’t mean splash a little water on your face and call it good.”
“Next time listen to your father,” Narina said with a solemn nod. “He gave you the first lesson of the temple already.”
“But the farmer woman brought my mush out to the barn,” Ruven protested. “There wasn’t any need to wash up. What’s the. . .what’s the first lesson of the temple?”
“The only thing more important than a clean body is a clean mind,” she said.
“Oh.” Ruven sounded disappointed, either because the lesson failed to impress, or because it had, and he realized he’d rather be dirty than a student of the bladedancers.
Andras gave Narina a look and shook his head with a wry smile, which she returned. Then he glanced back to Gyorgy to watch as the young man continued his work. Already a puff of cool mountain air was stirring the hairs on the back of Narina’s neck. Soon, a gentle, but continuous breeze pushed down the canyon and drove the worst of the smoke away from them.
“Is that your doing?” Andras asked Gyorgy. The boy half-opened one eye and glanced at him, but didn’t have enough mastery to talk and continue his work at the same time, and his eye blinked shut again.
Ruven’s look of disappointment vanished. “It is! He’s making it blow, Da.”
The younger boy stared at the older boy with open admiration, as if Narina’s student had sprouted wings and gone flying overhead to scout out the terrain.
“It’s not a real wind,” Kozmer said. “Even the three of us working together couldn’t manage that. It’s not like we command the magical powers of the demigods or anything. It’s only a slight movement of the auras that surround us all.”
“Sounds like magical powers to me,” Andras said. “But I have to warn you, a breeze can push away the smoke, but it can’t drive off demons.”
“A demon is a manifestation of heat and chaos,” Narina explained. “When order returns, when the air cools, they must flee. If they don’t reach their lava holes in time, they turn to stone. Either way, a cold demon is a harmless demon.”
“I know that, but. . .” Andras stopped, as if he was thinking matters over and deciding how much to say. When he spoke again, it was clear he didn’t expect to be believed. “The demon I saw was next to the post road. It was in the trees, and then it was on the ground. Must have been miles from the lava.”
“The farther from the lava, the less dangerous,” Narina said. “There’s not enough heat in even the hottest forest fires to sustain it for long. If it was foolish enough to venture so far, it’s surely going to die.”
“Still might cause us some trouble, first,” Kozmer pointed out, which was a valid concern. “I’d better give some attention to my sowen, too. Maybe the thing will come to its senses with a gentle warning.”
Kozmer, for all his age and physical weakness, hadn’t lost his command. The auras around him sorted quickly and powerfully, in a way they hadn’t when Gyorgy fought to stir a little breeze. Soon, it was almost chill, and the air ahead of them began to clear.
“That’s remarkable,” Andras said. He sounded more encouraged, but there was still a hint of doubt on his face.
For her part, Narina’s skepticism about the ratter’s claims faded when they came around the bend, and the sound of burning pine trees grew too loud to ignore. Pitch popped and exploded, and the wind drove back up the canyon and blasted through the cool breeze Gyorgy and Kozmer had gathered. The two bladedancers, young man and old, pushed back and managed to clear the air briefly, but in the battle of elements, the firestorm kicked up by the conflagration was starting to win.
Soon, they spotted the fire itself. It ripped through the trees on the south side of the post road, and in two cases had even leaped across to start fires on the opposite hillside. This fire was spreading more slowly, however, and Narina began to believe Andras’s claim that there was a demon in the woods on the south side that was whipping up the heat.
But how was that possible? For one thing, how would it even get across the river? This she had to find out, but she needed a break in the flames before she could venture out to take a look. At the moment, it was all they could do to hold back the massive wall of heat th
at was finally making the dogs and goat skittish, and sent the humans’ cloaks flapping. Everyone, human and animal alike, was worried, and Narina felt her own mastery slipping.
They gained some respite a few moments later, when a bare ridge of stone cut up against the post road from the south and forced the road to make a serpentine hook to get around it. She told the others to wait for her while she climbed the ridge to get a better look. What she saw at the top gave her a shock.
The canyon below was a wall of smoke and glowing, crackling fire. The fire obscured the plains with an impenetrable haze, but she could see the volcano to the south, where it grew at the edge of the range. A column of ash spread skyward from its heights, and its entire northern slope glowed with rivers of lava.
That alone was shocking enough, since she’d never known this particular volcano to do more than smoke and let out an occasional ear-shaking blast of air. The name was Manet Tuzzia, which roughly meant Sleepy Mountain in the old tongue. It wasn’t asleep now; it seemed determined to fill the canyon with lava. But closer at hand lay an even greater surprise.
The river this far down the canyon was a powerful force, cold and deep from melting snow high in the upper ranges, where dragons slept in their glacial lakes. One of the larger tongues of lava had flowed all the way from the volcano, struck the river, and was kicking up billows of steam as a black, crumbling wall of hardening lava formed.
Several fire demons ran back and forth along the edge of the lava where it reached the river. White-hot tendrils of flame sprouted from their fingers, and their tails lashed with agitation. One of them sprinted across the surface of the lava, reached the cooling, blackened edge, and gave a high, warbling scream as it leaped above the river.
The lava had narrowed the channel, but not enough, and the demon landed short of the opposite bank. A boiling explosion of water geysered skyward and the demon disappeared. The cold water must have hardened it and sent it tumbling downstream, a dead, fossilized relic. It had been a suicidal jump.
Narina gaped. She’d never heard of such a thing.
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