“You’re not as strong as Narina,” Damanja said.
“Neither are you.”
“I fought her and won.”
“No, you didn’t. She’s at the temple, alive and growing stronger. You’re lucky to be alive. You won’t be next time.”
Damanja gritted her teeth, knowing there was a grain of truth in the firewalker’s boast. Damanja had been on the verge of losing to the bladedancer when a timely intervention by the woman’s companions had turned the tide of the battle. Narina’s friends were fools, apparently unaware that their companion was in a fight for her life. Damanja had cut Narina and used the chaos to escape.
“And where is the temple?” Damanja asked.
“So you’ve looked, and you can’t find it?” There was mockery in the other woman’s voice.
“I have crows. They’ll find this temple, and they’ll report its location.”
“No, they won’t. The elders are shielding it.” The firewalker gave a grim smile. “I can feel that, too. You, however, are blind, aren’t you? Stumbling through the mountains looking for them. If I hadn’t been careless, you’d have never found me, either. Well then, go ahead and kill me. Get it over with. If you’re so strong and all-powerful, what’s holding you back?”
“You’re already dead,” Damanja said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
She was referring to the shadow wound, but even as the words came out of her mouth, she realized that the firewalker had been buying time and wasn’t dying at all. Instead, incredibly, her sowen was pushing out the corruption, and healing the wound.
Damanja darted in, eager to deliver another wound before the healing could be completed, but already the other woman was moving. The firewalker darted to one side, seemed to draw her breath, and stomped a foot on the ground. Decaying pine needles lifted from the ground and flew at the crowlord’s face like a million tiny needles.
By the time Damanja had fought her way through a choking cloud of needles, the other woman seemed to have disappeared. The auras were bent, and the stink of her sowen lay all around, but she’d effectively rendered herself invisible.
Enough of this. Damanja closed her eyes and sent out her thoughts.
Come to me. Find my enemy.
Her crows would land by the hundreds in these woods and dart back and forth until they disturbed whatever cloak her enemy had thrown around her.
Her thoughts climbed skyward, then seemed to bounce back before they reached the tree crowns. She tried again, this time shouting the words aloud. “Crows! To me!”
Her voice came out in a blast, strong enough to shake the branches overhead, and should have ruptured whatever lid the firewalker had placed over the grove, but the result was like shouting from the bottom of a deep cave. Nothing could escape this silent, gloomy place.
No, this wasn’t the firewalker’s doing. It was the magic of the place that was doing it. This cursed sanctuary of tree and stone. When Damanja came into her power, she would cut down the trees, heap them to the sky, and burn them in an offering to the demons. The stones she would pulverize into dust and scatter to the wind.
A figure dropped from above and Damanja barely had time to lift her weapon as a sword swept toward her. The enemy’s weapon slid around her shadows and struck her. Pain exploded in her right shoulder, and she screamed. With horror she looked down to see her severed arm on the ground. Blood gushed from the stump.
Somehow, Damanja managed to hold onto her own sword with her left hand, even as she sank to her knees. So much blood was leaving her body; last time she’d lost so much blood—in the fight with Narina—she’d nearly passed out. Yet somehow her mind remained clear, and the blood came to a stop almost at once.
If she’d been facing Narina again, the fight would already have been over, but this firewalker was slower, and Damanja saw the enemy’s sword swinging around in time to lift her own weapon before the killing stroke landed. The two weapons met with a clash of gleaming black against bleeding shadow, and there was a terrific screech. Surely one of the blades would shatter, yet somehow they both held.
The firewalker disengaged and leaped up. Damanja was still on one knee. If the other woman got around her, she’d never regain her feet in time, and she’d take the enemy’s sword through her back. She lifted her falchion, and shadow speared outward as the woman passed overhead.
The shadow tip penetrated the firewalker’s chest and thrust out the far side. The woman’s jump dragged the sword out of Damanja’s hand, and she flew past, finally slamming into the ground with a thud and a groan.
Damanja rose shakily to her feet, went over, and took hold of the sword hilt jutting up out of the firewalker’s chest. The woman was lying on her back and looked up with a glazed expression. Her eyes had gone dark, like they’d turned to ink. When she opened her mouth, she seemed to have swallowed a mouthful of shadow, and it dripped from the corner of her mouth like black blood.
“I can’t see,” she whispered.
“You are dying,” Damanja said. “That’s why. I’ve killed you.”
“Your arm.”
“It will heal.”
“You don’t. . .you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do,” Damanja said, but even in her triumph, she felt a twinge of regret. These temple warriors were a noble sort, as far above the useless soldiers of the plains as soldiers were above the peasants whose farms they burned and looted. It was regretful they needed to die, every last one of them. “What is your name, firewalker sohn?”
“Lujza. Please don’t kill them. Others have turned their back on the fight, and so can you. You can—”
Damanja jerked the sword free, and the woman shuddered and fell silent. Inky shadow spilled from Lujza’s mouth, and her entire body slumped, as if dissolving into the ground. An acrid smell like burnt pitch drifted off the body.
Damanja’s sympathy vanished, and she felt only disgust. This Lujza had talked too much. She’d died uttering the same pathetic plea as before, and it had grown tiring.
Damanja was in pain, and as she went back for her severed arm she wondered if it would grow back, like what had happened after her battle with Narina, or if she’d be forced to continue her war against the temples with only one arm. Based on the warm tingling sensation that was beginning to push aside the burning pain of the wound, she thought it would grow back, but how long would that take?
She sheathed her sword and picked up her severed arm, turning it over curiously. It was warm, and still seemed a part of her, and she swore she could almost feel sensation in its fingers. Curious, she lifted the arm and placed it against the bloody stump. The stump burned, and she gasped, nearly dropping the arm, but then a warm, not entirely unpleasant sensation raced down her skin all the way to the fingers of the amputated limb. She tried to flexed them, and they moved.
Something squirmed in the flesh where the stump and the severed arm touched, like a thousand tiny worms, and she watched, incredulous, while muscle and bone stitched themselves back together. Moments later, it was done. Damanja threw her head back and laughed.
Yet even as she was still exulting over the rebirth of her arm, she felt another change come over her, like a flush of incoming power. It must be the sowen she’d seized from the dead firewalker. Damanja’s hearing sharpened, and suddenly she could see glowing lines moving through the woods, connecting the trees and the ancient stones. Beyond that lay a thinner thread that led to. . .where? She was apparently seeing the path taken by the firewalker, a trail far stronger than the tentative one Damanja had followed to find the woman hiding in this grove.
She bared her teeth in a smile. It seemed that Lujza had inadvertently left a trail to the hidden bladedancer temple.
Chapter Three
The companions setting out from the temple in the gray light of pre-dawn numbered the three sohns, the ratter and one of his dogs, and a single elder. It was an uneven mix of abilities and stamina, with the ratter and one of his terriers up ahead with Miklos and Sar
ika, and Katalinka staying back to keep Kozmer company. She was grateful this time for the elder’s deliberate pace as he used his walking staff to pick his careful way through the woods toward the post road.
From the sound of it, Miklos and Sarika had already reached the road, where they continued an argument about what should be done when they reached the demons. The question was whether they were simply scouting the situation, or whether they should mount an attack if given the opportunity. Sarika, who hadn’t been privy to the conversation at the forge yesterday, wanted to take a more aggressive position, claiming that every moment the demons continued their destructive labors made it that much harder to drive them back to the fiery depths.
Earlier, Miklos had suggested that Sarika was motivated by revenge for the destruction of her temple, but the firewalker had only thrust out her chin and owned up to the charge. Yes, she wanted revenge, and what of it?
Apart from the argument, it was a still, quiet morning, save for the fading sound of a clanking hammer at the forge behind them. That was Narina again. She’d either risen before first light to continue her work, or spent the entire night working. Katalinka wasn’t sure which. After yesterday’s conversation, she’d apparently called back Bartal and put him to work. That had pleased the frater, who’d set about removing hilts from Narina’s old swords so they could be reused with the new blades she was crafting.
Narina had explained over supper last night her intention to finish the master dragon blade within the next few days, even if it meant working around the clock. Then she’d be able to face the demons armed with two of the white blades, one her own, the other one her father’s. Next, she would focus on forging the final demon blade. Bartal had leaned into this conversation with an eager expression, and Narina indulged his questions. In spite of her earlier dismissal she’d seemed pleased to have a student again.
Kozmer, walking beside Katalinka, seemed to be reading her thoughts. “Your sister is a natural teacher. A little like your father.”
“She seems to have forgotten that. Losing Gyorgy was a blow.”
“She’ll remember. Bartal will help with that.” The elder scratched at his chin with his free hand, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps you should have been the master sohn, not her. She could have focused on her students.”
“I don’t remember you bringing up that option at the time. Anyway, why does it have to be one thing or the other? My father was both the master of the temple and an excellent guide and teacher, remember?”
“That is true. Narina has many abilities. But you were the superior warrior.”
“I was the superior warrior. I couldn’t touch her powers now. Nor would I want to,” Katalinka added with a shudder. “Not if it meant going through what she’s suffered. I had my own taste of it, and it was hell. No thanks. Let her be master sohn. Let her be the sword saint.”
Kozmer’s expression darkened, and he looked like he was going to say something else, but just then they came out of the forest and onto the post road, where the others were waiting for them to catch up. Miklos and Sarika had stopped their argument, with the warbrand looking down at the firewalker with a questioning expression. Sarika sniffed the air in an almost dog-like way, while Andras’s terrier looked up at her and whined. The ratter studied his dog, seemingly more curious about the animal’s reaction than that of the firewalker sohn.
“What is it?” Katalinka asked.
“It’s Lujza,” Sarika said. “I felt her just now.”
Katalinka’s hands dropped to her sword hilts and she probed outward with her sowen. There was nothing amiss with the surrounding auras, so far as she could detect, but she had no reason to doubt the firewalker, either.
Notch barked, and Andras gave a curt whistle. “Quiet, girl.”
“It isn’t just me,” Sarika said. “The dog feels something, too.”
“Notch is only responding to your worry,” the ratter said. “If there was anything amiss, she’d be growling or standing still. And looking outward, not up at your face.”
Indeed, the dog was still staring at Sarika and wagging her tail with what looked like anxiety. The dogs always seemed perceptive, but Ruven had told Katalinka a few days earlier that they stirred whenever a sohn or an elder passed, and she wondered how much natural ability they possessed to sense the disturbed auras.
“Does anyone else feel anything?” Katalinka asked. Miklos and Kozmer shook their heads, and she allowed herself to relax as she turned back to Sarika. “It might be nothing.”
“I know what I felt,” Sarika said, her tone defensive. “Maybe Luzja is near, maybe not. But it was definitely her sowen. There’s no mistaking it.”
They’d been fooled before. Those cursed could hide their sowen, disguise it as someone else’s. Steal sowen, even, when they killed their enemies. Or maybe Lujza had simply traveled through here before her mysterious disappearance, and Sarika sensed a residue of her passing.
Katalinka felt unsettled as they continued down the road, unable to shake the worry she was overlooking something about the missing firewalker, but they soon had other concerns to draw their attention. The farms lining the river close to the temple lands were holding on, well above the wildfires below, and with their fall cold-weather crops having partially survived the unseasonable snowfalls. A handful of farmers were out digging up potatoes or pasturing their animals. And cutting wood, of course; these mountain people were no fools and recognized the approach of a long, brutal winter when they saw it.
The farmers stared at the travelers as they passed, but whereas in the past they might have hailed the temple warriors, asking for news or perhaps offering goods to trade, now they looked worried and held their tongues. And these were the fortunate ones, those who lived in the canyon, away from the depredations of brigands, the fires, and the endless crowlord wars.
Not long after the companions passed the farms, they entered a stretch of uncut forest, and the smell of sulfur began to grow. Ash coated tree limbs and the road itself, as much as an inch deep in places. The river had risen in its gorge, where the charred crowns of trees poked above what had once been forest, but was now the surface of a mountain lake.
Fortunately, the road stayed high above the water level for now, although it must eventually descend to the riverbank and be submerged. That meant the only way out of the canyon to the plains below entailed scaling the mountains.
Katalinka soon had to raise her hood for protection from the drifting ash. She put a hand to her mouth to breathe. “What a stink. Is that all sulfur?”
“Sulfur and other noxious smells of the abyss,” Kozmer said. His staff gave a muffled tap as it hit the ash-covered road. He let out a wheezing cough. “Andras, tell me we’re near. Any more of this and I’m going to suffocate.”
Andras came up leading Notch, who kept close to her master, panting and drooling nervously. The ratter gave the terrier a worried look and rubbed her head before responding. “Not yet. It’s another two hours, at least. Several miles.”
The air grew hot and stifling, and Katalinka found herself marveling that Andras, the dogs, and even his son Ruven had made it all the way down through this choking, gloomy haze to see the demons at work. The man was brave indeed.
Yet perhaps he hadn’t gone so far as he’d claimed, or at least the situation had changed, because it soon became evident they were a good deal closer to the demonic activity than two hours. The backed-up lake began to lap the road, and the water was steaming, with bubbles rising from the depths. It reminded Katalinka uncomfortably of the baths that Sarika, Drazul, and the other firewalkers had prepared to boil out the corruption from the wound Volfram inflicted on her.
The sweltering air took some of their concentration and sowen to dissipate, and they were forced to drink most of the water they’d carried with them just to replenish what they lost through the sweat that drenched their clothes. Andras poured some into his cupped hands, and Notch lapped it eagerly, almost desperately.
Andras rose
to his feet when finished, face flushed. “It wasn’t this hot when we came down yesterday. Things are worse.”
“All the more reason to figure out what the devil is going on,” Miklos said.
There were unburned trees lining the south side of the road, but they had suffered all the same, their branches wilted, the leaves curled and dying. Fire or no, this stretch of forest was doomed. Was there any part of the land that wouldn’t suffer and die if the demons and dragons were allowed to carry out their war unimpeded?
“There’s the hill Narina climbed a few weeks ago,” Kozmer said, pointing. “She forced the river from its channel to keep demons from leaping across from the other side.”
“It’s as good a place as any to get a better vantage of this nightmare,” Katalinka said.
There was no longer a river to leap, but a lake, and the hill had become a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the encroaching water. A narrow path allowed them up to the top, and they warily picked their way up. Blackened chunks of volcanic rock littered the hillside, half-buried, as if they’d been hurled there by an eruption.
The rocks were still emitting heat, and some hissed noxious gasses from their porous surfaces or emitted a slow, foul-smelling smoke. The overhanging haze was thick, and combined with rising steam, it had reduced visibility to a few feet by the time they crested the hill.
“I can’t see a thing,” Sarika said, sounding impatient. “Let’s get back to the road. We’ll figure this out soon enough.”
“Not yet,” Miklos said. “Let’s see if we can clear this mess.”
Katalinka had her doubts. It was one thing to stir a breeze, but another to gather wind strong enough to clear the canyon. But they numbered three sohns and an elder, and both Katalinka and Miklos had gone through ordeals that had strengthened their power. It was worth a try.
She sat cross-legged on the ground and closed her eyes. Her firewalker and warbrand companions joined her, with Kozmer a comforting presence as he remained standing next to Andras and the terrier. She felt the sowens of her companions and let hers flow into theirs. Sarika’s was sharp and aggressive, much like the firewalker herself, while Miklos’s had a solid, irresistible power, a crushing force. Kozmer’s wasn’t as strong as that of the others, but offered a depth imparted by years of experience and wisdom.
Bladedancer (The Sword Saint Series Book 4) Page 3