“Are you comparing me to a cracked bell?” Miklos asked. “Fine, I can waste time when I finish and rub out remnants of my sowen. Then maybe your people can meditate in peace. Would that satisfy you?”
He rose to his feet, reached over his shoulder for his sheath, and put the falchion away in a fluid motion. He plucked the disk out of the sand like it was a dinner plate, though the muscles of his forearms and powerful shoulders were straining—the object must weigh fifteen stones—and carried it out of the training ground between the wings of the shrine. He propped it against a maple tree just beyond where the sands ended, then came back toward the bladedancers with his feet scuffing at the sand to obliterate his footprints. A snaking trail remained, plowing between the ridges raked out by fraters that morning at dawn.
Miklos stood in front of them, towering over the bladedancer sowen and the elder leaning against his staff. He fingered the crystal feathers hanging from a thong around his neck.
“That isn’t all, is it?” he asked. “You’re tense—something is wrong.”
Katalinka glanced at Kozmer, who nodded. She turned back to the warbrand and rubbed at the pommel of her twin swords, more to soothe herself than anything. “Aye. We might have a problem.”
As if on cue, a bleat came from up the trail next to the shrine, and a sheep trudged past, a bell clanking around its neck. “That’s a hint for you, right there,” she added. “Feel its aura—something is awry.”
Miklos briefly closed his eyes. “Was it separated from its flock, is that what I’m sensing?”
“Hard to say for sure,” she said. “But they’ve been trickling in all morning, one or two at a time.”
Kozmer moved toward the sheep and waved his staff until the animal trudged off, bleating and making its way toward the pens. “A sheep is a simpler beast than a goat or a pig,” the elder said when he came back. “Its aura is either pure conformity or pure confusion. In this case, confusion. But it wasn’t a wolf or a leopard that caused it, you can read that much.”
“But the sheep are just a symptom of the true problem,” Katalinka said, “which is that Gyorgy has gone missing.”
Miklos frowned. “Narina’s student?”
“I think he was watching this flock yesterday. We can’t be certain, as nobody keeps a ledger of the comings and goings around here, but it doesn’t seem to have been anyone else.”
“Given the situation at hand, maybe now is a good time to start keeping better records,” Miklos said.
“Most likely, the boy didn’t come down from the high meadows last night, and that explains the wandering sheep,” she said. “I’ve ordered everyone to stay on the temple grounds until he returns. But I fear the worst.”
“It’s not your sister, is it?” the warbrand asked.
Katalinka was on firmer ground here. “She’s nowhere near. I’d feel her sowen if she were.”
“Then it must be one of the other cursed sohns,” he told her.
“I thought Lujza or Volfram—they’re the ones who attacked us already, but I’ve already been down to see the firewalkers. They claim that neither of their missing sohns are nearby, either.”
“How sure are they?”
“They tracked Lujza down from the mountains after their shrine was destroyed. And one of their elders—the old fellow named Drazul—said he felt Volfram’s presence below them on the plains, so that rules him out, too.”
Miklos looked troubled. “I see.”
Kozmer cleared his throat. “They might be mistaken. We might be, too, if we’re talking about Narina. Those who have heard the call—the cursed—are growing in power. Who knows what they’re capable of.”
“I’m aware of that, too.” Miklos rubbed again at the crystal feathers. “Could be any or all of them lurking nearby, disguising their sowen. But. . .there’s another missing sohn. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? That’s why you came for me.”
Katalinka nodded. “I want you to accompany us into the mountains. If anyone can detect your missing warbrand and tell if he’s lurking about ready to ambush us, it’s you.”
“I can do that. If you’re right, and he’s up there, I can find him.” His tone was firm, leaving no doubt as to his confidence.
“And if he’s not up there, and Gyorgy merely fell and broke an ankle, you can help carry him down from the mountain,” Katalinka said. “But we’d better get moving. It’s a long, steep hike up to the meadows, and it’s almost midday already.”
#
A half hour later, the trio were climbing steadily up an old sheep trail, with the temple grounds spreading below them: shrine, baths, mill, smithy. Below the temple lay a fresh gash in the forest where the firewalkers were building, but it wasn’t as intrusive as Katalinka had feared. The firewalkers had taken a spot a good distance from the bladedancer temple and thinned the trees rather than clear-cutting.
What was more visible from this height, however, were the lower reaches of the canyon, now a charred wasteland. The mixed pine and hardwood forest had burned for miles and miles, destroying entire mountainsides, with only patches of green here and there standing apart from the destruction. The fire had destroyed many of the farms lining the river as it carved its way down the canyon as well, although thankfully, the nearest farms had been spared the conflagration.
Manet Tuzzia still belched smoke to the southeast. Lava flows had swelled the south face of the volcano, whereas the northern caldera seemed to have exploded and ejected its mass into the sky. Other volcanoes, further south, sent additional columns of smoke and ash into the sky. Such was the force of their eruptions that a pall of gloom obscured the entirety of the eastern plains.
Katalinka forced herself to look away from the destruction and concentrate on the hillside above them. Every boulder, tree, and patch of brush could be the site of an ambush, and she prodded each with her sowen as they approached. The trail itself was steep, but passable, mainly a challenge for Kozmer, who kept having to stop, lean against his staff, and gasp for air.
“Demons, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been up this high,” he said. “Give me a moment to catch my breath.”
“No worries, old friend,” Katalinka said. “This gives us a chance to search for this warbrand.”
She continued to probe the hillside for a disturbance in the auras as Kozmer wheezed for air. The only warbrand she felt was Miklos, standing right next to her.
“I was feeling trim when I returned from the plains,” the old man continued. “Your sister kept up quite a pace, and I’ll be damned if my muscles didn’t firm up with regular use. This altitude is another matter. Is it just me, or is the air a lot thinner than it was back in the day?”
Katalinka felt nothing on her first pass over the hillside, but sweeping back the other way, she detected a slight vibration in the auras about two hundred feet up the trail. The grass had been disturbed, and as she prodded, the nearby brush whispered of bent branches.
“Do you feel that?” she asked.
Miklos nodded. “I feel. . .something.”
There was nobody nearby, not precisely, but someone had passed this way recently—not an animal, either, because whoever it was had been a little too careful with the auras.
“Is it your missing warbrand?”
Miklos closed his eyes and she sensed him prodding harder. His brow turned downward, slowly at first, and then into a full-fledged frown. “He’s not here.”
“He’s not here at the moment,” Katalinka corrected. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t here earlier.”
“I agree,” Kozmer said. He took another deep breath. “Whoever it was seems to have moved higher. No sign of our missing student, either,” he added in a murmur.
Yes, that was the most unsettling thing of all. Katalinka dug her nails into her palm, mainly to keep from messing around with her sword hilts. She had no evidence Gyorgy had come to harm, only a feeling, but her disquietude continued to spread.
“Who is this rogue warbrand?” she asked
. “Is he strong?”
Miklos’s voice tightened. “Strong enough.”
Something about his tone made her wonder. “Were you close?”
“Very close.” Miklos’s lips thinned and he stared straight ahead. “You could almost call him my brother.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You’d better explain that.”
“I will.” He gestured up the sheep trail. “But let’s keep going.”
They continued, and shortly crossed a narrow, well-grazed meadow, then passed cautiously through a cluster of trees before turning up another hillside on their way to the lusher grass, wildflowers, and clover-filled meadows up above.
Warbrands were trained in pairs, Miklos told Katalinka and Kozmer, either two boys or two girls chosen and initiated at the same time. Almost always same-gender, although there were occasional exceptions. One’s training partner was known as his “brother” or “sister,” and the one doing the training was called “uncle” or “aunt,” regardless of whatever blood connection did or did not exist. It was common for one or the other to drop out as the warbrand training grew more intense with the passing years, and for a time Miklos’s pair seemed destined to dissolve.
“In this case, it was me who was incapable,” Miklos said. “I had command enough of my sowen for a young man, but I was sluggish and clumsy with the sword. Weak, essentially. Maybe if I’d been a firewalker or a bladedancer, it wouldn’t have mattered, but the falchion was too heavy for me to wield effectively.”
Katalinka looked him over. He was as strongly built as her old friend Abelard, but taller. She’d never seen a man who looked more like a warrior. “I find that hard to believe.”
“I was late to grow,” Miklos said with a little shrug. “Although it wasn’t only that—the temple makes allowances for varying body types, as one’s strength and mastery of the sowen develop hand in hand. I had a training weapon, lighter and easier to handle. But even when I came into my strength, I could never defeat Radolf. He was too quick, too strong.”
“Radolf was your brother-in-training?” Katalinka asked.
“That’s right. Stronger, faster, mentally sharper than I was. Everyone thought he was destined to become the master sohn of our temple. Then he lost interest.”
“What do you mean lost interest?”
Miklos shrugged. “He turned inward. He grew obsessed with the lore of our order. There are old books, oral traditions passed down that he wanted to learn by heart. He talked of making an expedition across the Narrow Sea to visit the wizard monks.”
Katalinka nodded. Her father had made just such a journey during the time of troubles, when he was a younger man. During the same period of upheaval that had sent Kozmer onto the plains.
“Maybe Radolf was going to travel,” Miklos said, “but I’m not sure. Mostly he meditated and took long, unexplained journeys into the wilderness.”
Miklos stopped as they reached the top of a hill, with another small meadow to cross. The trio spent a moment searching before the warbrand continued his story.
“People were still convinced he’d resume his duties and finish his training. We have no master sohn among the warbrands, nobody to order him to either continue or leave the temple. I suppose we all figured Radolf would take one of these steps on his own.” Miklos grimaced. “Now they tell me Radolf staggered into the temple with a black gash on his forehead where a firewalker cut him.”
“That would have been Volfram,” Katalinka said. “This was before Lujza went rogue, right? And Narina killed the other missing firewalker. Tankred.”
“Aye, it must be.”
Kozmer had been lingering behind, but now caught up with the other two as they crossed the meadow. “Radolf wouldn’t happen to be the son of a warbrand sohn by the name of Radolfa, would he?”
Miklos glanced back. “That’s right. You know her?”
“We met on the plains several decades back.” A brief hesitation that Katalinka didn’t miss. “Radolfa was sharp-tempered and quick to violence.”
Miklos grunted. “That doesn’t sound like her at all. There’s nobody more calm and introspective. The son is like his mother in that way.”
“The passing decades have a way of blunting one’s passions,” Kozmer said. He glanced skyward, a far-off look in his eyes. “Although blunting isn’t the same as dousing.”
“What kind of meeting was this, anyway?” Katalinka asked.
Kozmer only smiled. “Anyway, how calm and introspective is her son now that the curse is upon him? Radolf vanished, didn’t he?”
Miklos grimaced. “They say he started a fight two days after the curse took hold. He nearly burned the shrine, then raged into the forest saying he was going to kill us all. This is what they tell me—I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it.”
Katalinka suppressed a frown. Miklos wasn’t there to see it because he’d been down on the plains, starting wars and maneuvering to have Narina kill crowlords. This may be a demi-divine curse, but it was still Miklos who’d set it into motion. Now it appeared that he’d have a chance to rectify the situation by facing his old brother-in-training.
A sheep’s bleat caught their attention. They moved closer, cautious, and saw that the silly beast had got its wool coat caught in a copse of thorny trees. The more it had thrashed, the more entangled it became, until it had apparently given up and flopped to the ground. Katalinka drew her dragon blade to cut the animal loose.
“Be careful,” Kozmer warned. “This might be a trap.”
“I’m not feeling anything,” she said.
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t someone here,” the old man said.
Kozmer laid down a sowen shield while she worked, and Miklos probed their surroundings. Katalinka got the sheep loose and sent it off with a slap to the rump. It hurried, bleating, across the meadow with twigs and thorns and leaves still clinging to its wool, on its way back down the mountainside toward the temple. The sheep was a clue of sorts. Whatever had happened was likely nearby. The sheep had probably run off in a panic and got itself ensnared.
“Over here,” Kozmer said. His voice was grim.
The elder used his staff to lift a bloody, torn cloak. Katalinka recognized the style of heavy green embroidered wool. It was one of the garments the temple fraters bought in Hooffent, worn by those who had work to do in the high, cold meadows above the temple. People like Gyorgy.
Chapter Five
“Where’s the body?” Miklos asked.
To that point Katalinka had hoped they would find the boy alive. Gyorgy wasn’t her student, but her sister, Narina, cared a good deal about him and thought he had the potential to rise above the ranks of the fraters to become a sohn. Kozmer said he’d held his nerve when attacked by crowlord troops, and cut down several men in support of his teacher.
Even if he never became a sohn, there were a good deal of other paths open to him, all useful and important to the life of the Temple of the Divine School of the Twinned Blades. He was already important, in fact. Gyorgy had developed some skill with woodworking and knew how to make balms and tinctures from herbs and mushrooms gathered in the forest. Fraters, students, and elders were all essential to keep the temple’s small industries functioning, and they provided a secondary line of defense with their blades.
The past week or so of calm had dulled Katalinka’s vigilance, and she blamed herself for allowing Gyorgy to leave the temple grounds alone. That would change, starting now.
Kozmer moved ahead, angling slowly with his walking staff, his sowen a hard, shield-like force, as if he expected a sudden assault from the rocks or trees.
“No need for a body to confirm,” he announced. “It’s clear enough from the condition of the meadow that someone was grievously injured here. Probably killed.”
A trail of pressed-down grass and dried blood extended beyond where the elder had turned up the bloody cloak. It went right through the meadow, and a trail of boot prints paced it. What’s more, there were scattered bits of grass, as if
the wounded individual had torn up clumps in an attempt to stop someone from carrying him off.
Katalinka’s mouth went dry as she considered the ramifications. “I think Gyorgy’s still alive.”
Miklos squatted, lifted a few bits of the torn-up grass, and let it fall between his fingers. “Yes, he is. Or he was alive, anyway, when they dragged him through.”
He drew his falchion, and Katalinka followed his lead, her demon blade in her left hand, her dragon in the right.
“Be careful, the both of you,” Kozmer said. “This Radolf fellow sounds like a brute in combat. More so if he’s been touched by the demigods. And if he’s killed one of the missing firewalkers, he’ll be all the stronger.”
Miklos shook his head. “It isn’t Radolf.”
Katalinka was feeling a presence now, a foreign sowen. There was a flavor in it that reminded her of Miklos himself. “Is there a second missing warbrand sohn?”
“No, there’s only Radolf, now that Tankred is dead. But it’s not him.”
“I’m feeling a warbrand,” Kozmer said.
“Same here,” Katalinka confirmed.
“And I’m telling you it’s not Radolf. He’s my brother-in-training—don’t you think I’d know?”
Miklos sounded too defensive. It must be hard to admit that he’d corrupted his closest friend and turned him into an agent of chaos.
“I don’t want to kill your friend.” Katalinka waved her demon sword to cut off his objection. “Or whoever it is. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to kill them. There are two of us to fight, plus Kozmer and his sowen. He can prop us up if we start to weaken. We can win this battle. And we can win it in a nonlethal way.”
“We’ve never trained together,” Miklos said. “Shouldn’t we have a strategy first?”
“Warbrand on warbrand—that should be an even enough fight. Even if Radolf is stronger, you know him well enough to keep him at bay for a few moments. I’ll get under his defenses and hamstring him.”
“And if it’s your sister? You’ll do the same? Fight Narina while I come in and wound her?”
Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3) Page 4