Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  The boiled residue took hours to reduce, and the resulting substance was too bitter to be consumed straight, but was tolerable mixed into food or drink. Andras eyed the remains of the honey pot, almost, but not quite empty.

  “Go out and dig up as much root as you can find. I’ve got an idea.”

  While Ruven ran off to fetch the root, he told Narina his plan. She listened with a deepening scowl, and he expected her to sneer as her curse returned with a vengeance. To his surprise she nodded.

  “All right. I’ll do it.”

  #

  It took a good deal of time to mash the sleepweed root, boil it in water, filter out the chunks of root, and boil it again to reduce it. That meant tending the fire throughout the night, waking periodically to stoke it. By morning, Andras had his concoction, which he mixed with honey and put it into Narina’s tea.

  She drank it without complaint, then took another cup. There was a lot of sleepweed root to consume, and Andras kept giving it to her until it was all gone. Was it enough? Was it too much? He wasn’t sure.

  “I feel strange,” Narina confessed. There was a slur to her words. “Not sleepy, really. Very relaxed, though. It’s like. . .no, it’s not like being drunk.”

  “Can you still find Miklos?”

  “Of course. Give me my. . .bring me my. . .no, boy, don’t touch them. I’ll get them myself.”

  She fumbled with the swords as she took them down from the hook on the wall and struggled to strap them in place. Finally, she furrowed her brow in concentration and whistled her breath in and out. For a moment, the air seemed to be shimmering, and Andras felt a sort of pressure on his skin, almost like someone had wrapped him in a tight blanket. It must be her sowen, strong but undisciplined, that he was feeling.

  Narina took Andras’s arm and tugged him toward the door. “Lead me. . .take me where. . .I’ll show you where to go. Come on.”

  Outside, Andras gestured for Ruven. The boy was next to the barn with the dogs, who were digging for rats in a pile of manure. They’d apparently found success; several had blood on their muzzles, and Notch sat to one side, chewing idly at one of the biggest rats he’d ever seen. When Stretch came up sniffing at her prize, she growled and snapped.

  “Enough of that,” Andras told the terrier in a sharp voice. Notch got to her feet, the half-eaten rat dangling. The others followed, bellies stuffed.

  “Rats and rat dogs,” Narina said. “They’re the only ones profiting from this war. I only wish. . .” Her voice trailed off, and she frowned, as if losing her thoughts. “I need to lie down for a bit.”

  Now it was Andras’s turn to take Narina’s arm. “We’re looking for Miklos, remember? You were going to find him.”

  She nodded. “Right.” Her face scrunched in concentration. “This way. There’s a ruined flour mill.”

  He wasn’t sure how she could tell, given that they hadn’t been this way before. More magic from her sowen, apparently. It seemed capable of stretching across the landscape in a sort of far vision that she hadn’t possessed before. She had found a thread, and had no problem following it. . .so long as she could remember to do so. More than once he had to gently remind her when she stopped and blinked with a puzzled expression.

  It wasn’t hot, but sweat stood out on her brow, and she looked flushed. Was that one of the effects of sleepweed? Or was she fighting her curse?

  Less than ten minutes after leaving the abandoned farmhouse, they came upon a cluster of similar buildings that had not fared so well. Doors hung from hinges, roofs had collapsed, and there were dead bodies lying about: peasants, soldiers, a horse and two big dogs, mastiffs with spiked collars. War dogs of some kind. Even dead, they made Andras’s own dogs whine.

  Narina stopped and stared. “Did I do this?”

  “Not unless you crept out in the night while we were sleeping,” Andras said.

  “Am I not sleeping now?”

  “No, we were looking for Miklos, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” She sounded relieved. “Thank the demigods for that. I thought I’d. . .that is, my blades had. . .”

  “I promise, it wasn’t you. No, don’t look at them. Which way?”

  “Keep, um. . .go straight.”

  Once they were past the slaughter, Ruven came up from tending to the dogs. He spoke in a low voice. “Da, I’m scared.”

  Andras lingered and let Narina get ahead. “I know. Me, too.”

  “What if we see soldiers? Can she fight?”

  “If they’re common soldiers, yes. Unless it’s a whole army, but I don’t think she’d be leading us there.”

  “What if Miklos wants to fight her?”

  Narina was a good distance ahead, but had apparently heard this. She turned. “Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll kill me. Maybe I’ll kill him.” A strange light gleamed in her eyes, and she bared her lips in what looked not so much like a smile, but an animal showing its teeth. “Maybe I’ll kill you. The blades are thirsty, and they will drink.”

  He didn’t see her draw her swords, but they were in her hands. The white sword—what she called her dragon—looked like a sheet of glowing ice. The black, demon blade gleamed like obsidian. The sleepweed would be in full effect by now, and she seemed to be struggling to hold her balance. He had no doubt that she could kill them both before she fell. Andras’s voice caught in his throat.

  But Narina was turning away from him. “My enemy comes.”

  They’d been traveling down a narrow path lined with a stone wall on the left and a grassy berm on the right, beyond which lay a patchwork of rice paddies, the fragile stalks torn up by the passing of men and horse.

  A tall, strongly built man walked cautiously toward Narina, who stood swaying on her feet. He wore a breastplate of boiled leather over his tunic and leggings that tucked into his boots, and he carried a massive two-handed sword.

  The weapon was familiar—a giant falchion—but the wielder was not. Narina had been wrong. This was not Miklos at all, but some other warbrand. Some other enemy. And she’d let Andras drug her into a stupor.

  The warbrand tensed, posture as taut as a bowstring. For a moment nothing happened. And then he sprang at Narina with a cry.

  Chapter Eleven

  Narina was asleep. She had to be. The air shimmered like liquid, and her breaths were as loud as the bellows at the temple forge. There was a ringing in her ears, and the cry of the charging warbrand sounded like it came from the bottom of a well.

  Somehow he missed with his falchion, and she found herself standing atop the stone wall, then flipping over his head to the dirt berm on the opposite side of the lane. He didn’t seem able to spot her, and she had a clear strike at his neck with her demon blade as she passed above him. But her sword was slippery in her hand. Not only did she miss, but the demon dropped from her fist.

  Narina landed on the berm, then danced clear as he took another swing. She dropped her other sword. How had that happened? Her swords were a part of her; it was like dropping her own arm, an impossibility.

  The ratter drugged you. And you let him. You told him to do it.

  Yes, that was right. She’d taken Andras’s foul concoction of honey and sleepweed, and now her limbs wouldn’t move as she told them to.

  “How do you do that?” the man asked. “How do you hide yourself like that?”

  “My sowen.”

  “A clever trick. Did you learn it, were you taught it? Or did it come to you?”

  “Who are you? Why do you share Miklos’s sowen?” Indeed, she’d have sworn it was the same man if either her ears or her eyes had agreed, but both senses told her this was a different man.

  “I’m his brother in arms. Radolf. We trained together, we meditated together. There’s no one I love more—our auras and sowen will be forever entwined.” A raised eyebrow. “Did you fight him? Did you kill him?”

  “What is it to you?”

  “Because if you haven’t fought Miklos, that means I’ll be the one to kill him. Once I’m done wi
th you. But I don’t think you did kill him. You thought I was him, didn’t you? That’s who you thought you’d be fighting.”

  Narina walked backward along the berm as he came toward her on the dirt path a few feet below her. That led the fight away from Andras, Ruven, and the dogs, but also away from her swords, which she could sense lying in the ground where they’d slipped from her grasp. Radolf hadn’t spotted the weapons, and couldn’t quite pin her down with his sowen, no matter how much he groped.

  “You’ve done something to yourself,” Radolf said. “There’s a poison in you. Some noxious herb or weed.”

  “I’m trying to. . .”

  “What?”

  “To stop this. Stop myself.”

  “Ah. Well you’ve weakened yourself. It’s a clever trick, the way you bend the light, but it won’t do you any good if you take a spill.”

  The warbrand moved in a blur. He charged alongside the stone wall with his blade sweeping across at ankle level, then cutting back in a return swing to where she’d have been if she’d been on that side of the path. But she wasn’t; she was on the berm side, and he’d guessed wrong.

  Narina jumped down and ran back toward her discarded blades. He sensed her movement and came after her. He almost caught her, maybe would have done so, if she hadn’t stumbled and fallen right before she reached the weapons. He leaped with his sword outstretched, and passed right over her head.

  Radolf landed near where she’d left the ratters and their dogs. They’d had the good sense to retreat from the battlefield. Good. With any sense, they’d fled to one of the farmhouses down the road, or better yet, run for the foothills, but she suspected they were taking refuge in a rice paddy or irrigation ditch.

  Narina snatched up her weapons, but the same problem remained. They were clumsy in her hands, and she couldn’t seem to find her balance. The danger should have clarified her thoughts, but they remained a muddle, and she couldn’t seem to formulate a plan. This man was swift and brutal, and she’d have struggled to best him in the days before the curse took hold. Now, of course, she had new abilities and powers, but that was small help if she couldn’t figure out how to use them to her advantage.

  That was the point. You were to find Miklos and let him subdue you.

  She leaped onto the stone wall, on the opposite side of the path from before, and backed away. “You’re not Miklos, you never were.”

  Radolf turned toward her. His sowen continued to probe. She bent it away from her. Run, that’s what she could do. Would he be able to find her? Yes, of course. So not run. Then fight?

  “I thought we covered that already. Is your mind gone, too? What is this concoction you took, and how was it supposed to cure you?”

  “I was going to talk to the other warbrand. He was going to help me.”

  “My brother in arms? Miklos? You do realize he started this, right? He’s the one who wounded that firewalker, who then gashed me across the forehead. Which infected me with this curse from which none of us will ever escape.”

  He removed one hand from his hilt and pointed to the scar across his forehead. The warbrands could suffer terrible injuries and heal themselves from anything short of a fatal blow, but they bore their scars. This one was a black, angry gash, almost charred. What’s more, as his sleeve slipped, she saw other partially healed wounds on his wrist and forearm.

  “I think Miklos is. . .” she began, before losing her thought and finding it again. “He might be able to help us. He’s cured. Maybe.”

  “He saw a dragon in the mountains,” Radolf said. “That’s what they say. Then he killed one of our elder sohns. Who would do such a thing if he were in his right mind? We can’t be cured, bladedancer. You should know that by now.”

  Narina had backed more than fifteen feet away from the man, far enough to react should he find her and make another leaping attack. Her senses were dulled, but she had quick enough reflexes for that much. But at the moment when she felt the most secure, he stretched toward her.

  No, it wasn’t Radolf stretching, it was the man’s falchion itself. The sword tip lanced at her, while she stood frozen, unable to move quickly enough. If he’d seen her, if he’d known her exact location, it would have torn straight through her heart and killed her. Instead it missed, passing inches from her arm.

  Now she moved. Before he could pull back his arm and make another stretching thrust, she dropped onto the path and charged. She got under his flailing sword, tried to swing at him, but missed clumsily, and came up on the far side. He whirled to face her and took another ineffective swing of his own.

  “Neither of us can see the other well enough to kill, can we?” Radolf said. He chuckled, but there was no delight in it, only a bitter sort of laughter. “But I nearly had you there, bladedancer. I’m getting closer to finding you. Meanwhile, your stupor will last a good deal longer. It won’t be long now until I have you impaled on my falchion.”

  “Your sword. . .how did you do that? I saw it. The weapon never left your hand.”

  “You’re not the only one with growing powers. We take from those we kill. We drink from the soul of the land itself. From great endowments of magic left by the demigods in this land. They will all belong to the sword saint.”

  “I don’t want to fight you. There must be some way to stop this.”

  In answer, Radolf lifted the sword above his head and let his sleeves fall once more. Both wrists were scarred, she now saw. “I’ve tried, bladedancer. Many times, many ways. I cut my veins, tried to throw myself from a tower. Hurled my sword into a ravine and charged a company of horsemen unarmed. Or at least I thought I’d thrown away my sword. Turned out it was in my hand all along.”

  “You couldn’t get rid of it. I understand. I tried the same thing, let them tie me up. Didn’t work.”

  “I don’t want this any more than you do,” he said. “I hoped you’d kill me, in fact. As soon as I felt you coming, I waited for you to find me.”

  “Then why did you set that trap in the village? Why did you make me slaughter those people? You wanted them to wound me, to weaken me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I wanted to strengthen you. I felt your sowen—you were strong, but not quite strong enough. I’d kill you, and when I did, I’d become invincible. No other temple warrior would stand before me and live. I’d grow stronger and stronger and I’d take this curse to its conclusion. But if I died. . .better you than me.”

  “But all those villagers. . .” Narina swallowed hard. “How could you?”

  A fresh wave of horror washed over her as she remembered the terror in their eyes, the way they fell with blood gushing from throats or clutching at bellies opened with a flick of her blades. They were only peasants, only people who’d thought to hide in their little corner of the world until the war burned itself out.

  “You draw with every killing, bladedancer. With every death, large or small, your mastery of the sowen grows. You and I, we see things, feel things unimagined only a few months ago.”

  “And you thought by slaughtering those villagers I’d gain enough power to defeat you?”

  “You were close already. You only needed a little more. But now. . .you’ve done something to yourself, haven’t you?” He sighed. “So now I must kill you.”

  Radolf reached toward her with his sowen, trying to pin her down. Narina made to duck to one side, and it seemed like the road was bending with her, but he caught hold of her before she could evade his touch. Her arms felt bound in coils of rope, and her own sowen, slippery as it was, couldn’t get free.

  Radolf let out a growl. “Now I see you. Right in front of me the whole time.”

  He came at her with his sword held behind his shoulder. His movements were a blur, shimmering behind the power of his sowen.

  Narina’s legs felt like her bones had dissolved. Her hands were sweating, and she struggled to maintain her grip on the swords. This wasn’t his sowen, it was the sleepweed, its effects overwhelming.

  She made
to leap back up to the stone wall, but couldn’t get clear of the ground and stumbled. As she landed on her back, her swords clattered away. Her hands were so damp with sweat they were dripping. And they smelled strange, too, like bitter herbs. Like the milky liquid Andras had boiled from the roots, in fact. It was coming out of her pores.

  She must be sweating out the sleepweed—her sowen was strong enough to purge it from her body. Her head was clearing. Her limbs were her own again. She saw Radolf coming toward her, no longer a blur, but slowed to normal speed. She snatched up her blades.

  Radolf swung his falchion with a grunt, his shoulder and arm muscles bulging as it swept toward her head in a killing blow. Narina crossed her blades and came up to catch his swing. His sword slammed into her weapons and sent a shock jolting through her arms and shoulder. She twisted away and rolled clear. Before he could swing again she was on her feet.

  Narina leaped backward to avoid the blow, and when she landed, fell into a roll. With every move, she shook off more of the sleepweed. Mind and body grew stronger.

  She came up again, her swords flashing, and charged him in an attempt to get past his defenses. He blocked her dragon, but the demon blade grazed his shoulder, shredding his sleeve, but not catching his flesh. Radolf was as fast as she was, and only handicapped by the extra size and weight of his sword.

  “Maybe you will best me after all,” Radolf said. “Whatever was slowing you is gone now.”

  “Leave the fight,” Narina said. “Neither of us has to die.”

  “You leave if you can. I cannot.”

  Walk away. Find your friends in the temple, let them help you.

  Her mind was telling her as much, but she couldn’t seem to stop and retreat. Instead, she closed the distance with her enemy, and he came at her with the same eagerness. They jabbed, swung, and thrust, again and again, trying to get past each other’s defenses.

  Radolf’s sword stretched and twisted to anticipate her moves, but her twin blades were faster. She was more nimble, and quicker on the attack, but he had a longer reach and proved to be an expert at defense.