A second demon came tearing across the river of lava and took another jump. This one soared higher, and just managed to clear the river. It landed in the burning forest on the other side, and flashed through the trees, moving east, parallel to the bank. There were other glowing, burning figures already among the forest on the near side, more demons that had successfully cleared the river. Some of them must have already cooled, and with no way to regain the safety of the lava river on the far bank, they would surely be slowing as their skin hardened and turned black.
Why they would destroy themselves was beyond Narina’s understanding, but she could see a danger growing. As more lava poured into the river, the channel was narrowing and growing deeper. More demons jumped across as it did so, and the more that came over, the wider and more destructive the resulting forest fire on the opposite side.
What’s more, if the flow continued much longer, it was possible that lava could overrun the channel entirely, which would force the river to deviate all the way to the post road and submerge it. Even more frightening was the possibility that an extended lava flow from the formerly sleepy volcano could block the canyon entirely. Water would back up, flooding farmland upstream and possibly drowning the whole canyon for miles.
The Divine School of the Twinned Blades was so much higher up that it would never be touched, but a dam and its lake would cut off the temple from the plains to the east. To get around it would mean weeks through the mountains as the road worked its torturous way north. Mountain villages and farms would be deserted, and the bladedancers themselves would be forced to abandon the temple grounds that had sustained them for nearly three hundred years.
Narina had to stop this, and she thought she saw how. She ignored the dancing, gibbering demons racing through the burning woods at the base of the rocky ledge below her, sat cross-legged, and closed her eyes. She calmed her breathing, gathered her sowen, and willed herself into a meditative state.
At first, all was chaos around her. The auras were awash with fire, trees dying, forest animals suffocating or burning alive. Birds flew through, suffocated, and fell from the sky. Even the river seemed to be in pain, with water boiling into steam when the advancing lava struck it.
She was having a hard time maintaining her existing sowen while gathering more from the auras of her surroundings. That led to a moment of doubt, to the thought that she should ask Kozmer to do it, or at least to assist. But then she remembered her father, dying as his sowen slipped away, and thought of all the times he’d sat patiently with her as she trained. This was not so different from the tasks she assigned to Gyorgy, to be repeated over and over and over again, so that when the critical moment came, he would be ready.
This was her critical moment. And now that she was master sohn, many more such critical moments lay in her future. She had to surmount them, starting with this one.
A whisper to the earth itself started it. The ground beneath the surface was unharmed, unchanged and unchangeable even from such a violent act as the eruption. She gathered its aura to her, then pushed through the dying forest and to the river itself. The water rushing down the channel was still cold and deep upstream, still swift and confident. It was only when it reached the lava flow that it suffered.
Upriver, she told the water to gather itself, to hold into a single, powerful current. The earth she told to heave where it passed beneath the river.
Now.
The river bottom jerked into the sky so violently that the ground shook beneath Narina as if shifted by an earthquake. The water, instead of hitting this obstacle and spraying outward and around, thrust south in a massive fountain that sprayed down on top of the lava as it flowed downhill. It hissed and boiled and she could feel very little of what was happening, and see less.
Maintaining control over earth and water was strenuous, and within a couple of minutes, her sowen began to slip, and the auras slid away from her grasp. It was like carrying a heavy stone, and soon she could only let it drop. The riverbed slumped back into place, and the river returned to its channel.
When the steam cleared, a wall of blackened lava flow had formed along the far riverbank, and nothing new was dripping over the edge. Demons had no aura, but one could feel the chaos they caused in their surroundings. Those on the far bank had moved several hundred yards downstream, following the lava as it bent along the riverbank, but the river flattened out, widened, and they couldn’t seem to find a place to jump. What’s more, the lava itself, blocked in place and hardening, was backing up the molten stream until it no longer flowed against the river.
Meanwhile, the handful of demons who’d managed to cross earlier were cooling. Two, apparently sensing their doom, tried to leap the river back to safety, but fell short and disappeared with hisses of steam. The others kept burning and spreading fire until they began to slow as they cooled and hardened. The conflagration they’d started was still burning, but with the recent rains, the forest was too damp for the fire to continue its march up the hillside.
Satisfied the danger had subsided, Narina descended from the ledge. Since her ascent, the fire had spread to the trees all around, and burning, crashing limbs surrounded her. She had to leap over fires and tread quickly over burning ground that scorched through the thin soles of her slipper-like shoes.
She returned to the road to find her companions had moved a hundred yards or so further down the post road to get away from the fire. Kozmer stood over a blackened circle of ash that had been drawn across the stone cobbles. He rubbed at it with the iron tip on the end of his staff.
Any triumph she might have felt at turning away the lava and the fire demons faded when she saw the look of concern on the elder’s face. He looked up and shook his head.
“This is it, this is why. Someone called the demons across the river,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
“The post road carries its own aura,” Kozmer explained to Gyorgy as Narina walked around the blackened circle. “You can’t always feel it—it’s an ancient thing, and the cobbles contain remnants of the quarries from which they were taken, which also obscures the nature of the road itself.”
Narina bent and rubbed at the ash. It was still hot, as was the stone below, which had bubbled in places, deformed by the great heat that had passed over it. She could feel it radiating up through the light leather of her shoes into the already scorched skin on the soles of her feet. She lifted the ash to her nose; it smelled of burned pitch, as well as a sharper note that was harder to identify.
Gyorgy had closed his eyes. “I think I feel it. The road is in pain.”
“It’s not pain like a living being would have,” Kozmer said, “but nothing that is organized and whole wishes to be broken into its component pieces. But the damage isn’t severe. The road is too strong for that. The point is, you can tell something was here, altering the aura of the road. Before the fire demons arrived.”
“That part I can’t feel,” Gyorgy said, sounding disappointed with himself. “Everything is chaos.”
While Kozmer tried to explain to the young man how to find it, Narina made her way to where Andras, Ruven, and the dogs waited on a stretch of browned grass to the side of the road. He spotted her coming and frowned.
“You’re limping. Are you injured?”
“Burned feet,” she said. “They’ll heal. It’s a little painful for the moment, is all. By tomorrow I should be fine.”
“I’ve got something that will help with that. Off with your shoes.”
Narina sat down and untied the laces that kept her leggings tucked against the shoes. The soles of her feet were red and raw, with blisters already forming. Her sowen would heal them quickly, but in the short term, it would be painful to walk as the blisters grew and then burst.
Andras took a clean cloth, opened a jar, and took out a dab of a yellow ointment that smelled of eucalyptus and something else that smelled cool and clean. He took her right ankle with one hand and spread the ointment on the bottom of her foot.
There was an immediate cooling that brought relief. He repeated the action on her other foot.
“Thank you, that does help.”
“Let it dry for a few seconds before you put your shoes back on.”
“About that circle in the road,” Narina said. “Did you see it before?”
“It wasn’t here when I came through a few days ago, no.”
“I mean earlier in the day. You made it all the way down here, right? Before the fire jumped the road and you came back up to find us?”
“I was. . .” Andras stopped and seemed to be searching his memories. “It was awfully smoky. There was so much heat. And I don’t know anything about fire demons or how to call them.”
The ratter’s thoughts were confused, and not so easy to pick through as his son’s. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not accusing you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just wondering if you might have seen who or what did this.”
“I have no idea who’d have done it. The fire was terrible, and I turned around and came back—I didn’t see anyone. Would they have done it before the mountain erupted, or after?”
Narina wasn’t sure. It was hard to say what made a sleeping volcano awake in the first place. Manet Tuzzia hadn’t had an eruption like this in generations, and it was difficult to imagine a human making it go off. But maybe they’d known, somehow, that it was on the verge. They could have put the pitch on the road before, knowing that fire demons would be about and wishing to call them across.
Regardless of the how or why, the fact that someone had intentionally tried to sever the post road, and perhaps dam the river, flood the canyon, and cut off the people living above, worried her. It couldn’t be Miklos, could it? No, he was just a fool with a sword, obeying the commands of an even greater fool.
#
The village of Hooffent was under attack when they arrived, and the villagers were mounting a defense. Using a similar principle to how Narina had stopped the lava flow upriver, the people had flooded their canals and diverted streams meant to fill rice paddies to run along the leading edge of the lava. Here, the current of molten rock was slower but wider, a vast, glowing sheet as twilight came. The travelers were now downwind of the volcano, and the air was thick and poisonous smelling.
Lava inched across the landscape, nibbling at fields and farms, while people worked the ditches, formed bucket brigades, and even tried to channel the lava by digging up defensive berms. Others, mainly the elderly, had gathered at a shrine of three standing stones, moss-covered and carved with faded letters, to pray to the volcano looming over their village. Manet Tuzzia may have been sleeping for decades, but the shrine attested to its past anger and attempts to appease it.
The trio from the sword temple drew stares, even in the midst of the chaos, but as they threw themselves into the effort, they were quickly accepted as part of the small army fighting to save the village. Andras and Ruven helped, too, as did the dogs, who raced along the lava’s edge and set into a frenzy of barking whenever a fresh incursion breached the lines.
Narina plotted as she worked, and soon determined a course of action to end the danger to the village. She was exhausted after her earlier efforts, not to mention the long day of travel added on top of it, but the auras were more intact here. It was a simple matter to speak to the ground—she just needed a quiet place to meditate.
She was more cautious than she’d been while working up the road, not wanting to reveal the extent of her abilities to the strangers. Narina slipped away from the others, stripped to bathe in an irrigation ditch at the edge of a quiet farm back from the action, and then dressed in a change of clothes she’d carried with her from the cart. Finally, she sat cross-legged with her father’s swords on her lap and reached out to the surrounding landscape.
Slowly, carefully, like lifting the edge of an overflowing saucer of milk to tilt it out the back side, she hefted the earth until the lava pooled and hardened at its lip. By the time she let it go, the lava flow had shifted away from Hooffent, and the villagers let out a great cheer from up the hillside ahead of her.
Narina rejoined her companions, only to find Gyorgy and Kozmer surrounded by villagers, who pestered the strangers with questions. Were they bladedancers? They looked like it. And had the wrath of Manet Tuzzia drawn them from the temple, or were they already on the road when it happened?
Narina answered a few questions, deflected others without telling falsehoods, and asked questions of her own. Had Miklos and his company passed through on their way up the post road toward the temple? They had. Had the survivors returned this way after their defeat? Yes, again. Had they explained what had happened up above? No, they had not. Other than that, there was no sign of any other suspicious sorts passing through, only the usual farmers, craftsmen, and traders.
Andras found her later that evening, after the two sohns and the student had bathed in the river, washed their clothes, and eaten a simple corn porridge with goat cheese for supper. They’d laid out bedrolls in a field on the outskirts of the village, and Narina had withdrawn from her companions to stare across the gray, dimming plains to the east. She felt the man before she saw him.
The ratter was accompanied by one of his tall, slender dogs, all bony hips and rib cage, and what seemed to be a perpetually hungry expression. That was the dog’s breed, Ruven had told her earlier. The tall ones were lurchers, meant for running down escaping rats, but—and here the boy had anticipated her question—they were fed just as well as the stocky little terriers.
“Where are Ruven and the rest of your dogs?” she asked.
“Resting. I only brought Skinny Lad to sniff you out. Anyway, he’s restless, whining. I thought it would do him good. It’s the smoke—it’s got him spooked.” Andras rested an affectionate hand on the dog’s head. “A little more exercise might tire him out. Or not—he doesn’t like sitting still, happiest when he’s hunting or running or eating.”
The dog wasn’t the only restless one, Narina thought. Something in Andras’s posture told her this was a goodbye visit. His expression, too, was distant, as if his thoughts were already moving down the road ahead of him.
“You’re welcome to share our patch of ground,” she said, “and our food, such as it is.”
“We’re not much for sleeping outdoors—not this time of year when it’s likely to rain. We’ve taken up with a farmer and will do some light ratting in the morning to pay for our bed and supper.”
“And I gather you won’t be traveling with us in the morning?”
Andras shook his head. “I don’t think we will, no. Thank you for looking after my boy and my dogs for a stretch and getting us past the fire, but we’ve got work to do. Got to ply our trade, earn our keep. Coin, when we can get it. We might run into you on the road, though, depending.”
“You think?”
“Could be. We’ll be moving faster, but stopping more often. Word is there’s more fighting on the plains, which always complicates matters. If it’s bad, we’ll swing south until we find calm. Cross into Damanja’s lands, if we can.”
Narina had suspected the two groups would shortly part ways, and the thought worried her. It wasn’t so much Andras, but his curious, lively son that concerned her. It was a dangerous world, and if the pair and their dogs did cross through crowlord battlefields, they were precisely the type most likely to suffer in the encounters.
“Can I see Skinny Lad, first?”
“He’s not much one for strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger.”
Narina closed her eyes and felt for the dog’s aura. There was a tight, nervous energy over him, most of it directed toward his master. It was that sort of half-fear, half-honor that any pack animal felt for those standing above it in the hierarchy, but also love. Andras was a good master. She soothed the dog’s aura, gathered some of it to her sowen, and let him feel her own aura in turn. When she was done, she opened her eyes.
“Come here, boy. There’s a good dog.”
&n
bsp; Andras raised an eyebrow as Skinny Lad trotted up to her with his tail wagging. Narina put a hand on the dog’s head. He nosed at her until she petted him. She drew on his aura a little more and left him with an imprint of her own.
“There, you can go back now,” she told the dog. “No, I don’t need you to sniff me there.” She pushed his head away. “Or there, either. Go on, get back.” She gave him another nudge, and he returned to his master.
“What was that about?” Andras said.
“I was letting the dog feel my sowen.”
“You keep using that word, but I don’t know what it means.”
“It’s my collection and command of auras, what gives a bladedancer—or any member of the sword temples—her power. With it, I can bend the natural auras around me, like I did with the river, with the land beneath Hooffent. In battle, my landscape conforms to me. My enemies slow, their movements are sluggish and easily anticipated.”
“Oh, I see.” Except that he looked baffled. “And the dog can smell it? This sowen, I mean?”
“More than smell it, Andras. He’ll carry it with him. Skinny Lad and I will have a connection for a week or so, until it fades. A little longer if he remembers me.”
“And why would you do that?” he asked, his tone cautious, almost bordering on suspicious.
“It’s dangerous down there. If you’re in trouble, and we’re nearby, I can find you. I could have left your dog alone and touched your aura instead, but people are different than animals. You’d have felt it, and then you’d have felt me, and I’d have been with you later, and it would have made you nervous, like I was following you.”
“But aren’t you? I mean, if you can find Skinny Lad, that’s the same as following the rest of us, isn’t it?”
“A fair enough question,” she admitted. “I suppose I could. But I don’t carry evil intentions toward you, your son, or your dogs—I hope you know that by now.”
Andras looked at her seriously, and she could see a number of questions going through his mind. He may be a ratter, one of the lower professions, but the man wasn’t simple. Perhaps she’d overstepped. If not for her worries about Ruven, she’d have reached back for the dog and dissolved the connection between them so that Andras would feel more comfortable.
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