“We crossed a stream a few hundred yards back,” Narina said. “Grab your spare clothes and wash. And don’t forget your meditations—if your sowen had been in better shape, you’d have jumped clear in time. Oh, and take your swords, too. This is brigand country, after all.”
Gyorgy made more disgusted sounds as he wiped his hands on the grass and fumbled through the pack for his change of clothes. He was soon trudging back down the hill.
“To be fair to the boy,” Narina observed, watching him go, “that was some determined spewing. If I hadn’t been expecting it, I’d have been cut down without mercy. You moved pretty fast there, old man.”
“I was highly motivated,” Kozmer said.
After a brief moment of repose, Brutus once again refused to stay down. Narina wrestled with his head, and Kozmer tried to knock out his legs with his staff. Even Andras came in, but that proved the wrong move. Brutus swung his head from side to side in an attempt to get at the ratter. Narina flipped backward to avoid one horn, and another horn bashed Kozmer on the shoulder and drove him back with a curse. Freed from the bladedancers, Brutus made a lunge for Andras, mouth open.
“Watch out, Da!” Ruven cried, quite unnecessarily.
Brutus would have bit the ratter if he’d been able to keep his balance. Instead, he stumbled and fell. There he lay, groaning, still trying to get at Andras.
“He knows,” Narina said with a shake of her head. “Somehow he pegged you as the one to make him throw up.”
“The man did more than that,” Kozmer said. There was something curious in his voice, and he directed an intense gaze at Andras. “Look at him. Look at his aura.”
Narina did, and saw threads in it that she didn’t like. Guilt and evasiveness, and a desire to flee. She fixed him with her own hard stare.
“What was in that flask?” she asked.
“Just what I said. A mixture of bitter herbs. To purge the beast.”
“Is that right, Ruven?” she asked without looking toward Andras’s son, instead keeping her gaze fixed on the ratter himself. “Has he used it that way with the dogs?”
“Ay, my da gives it to ’em whenever they eat something nasty.”
“Then it’s something else upsetting you,” she told Andras, who shook his head in a not very convincing denial. A thought occurred to her. “When did Brutus get sick, anyway? It was shortly after you returned, wasn’t it? And now that I think about it, the goat wasn’t really foraging at the time, just munching regular grass along the trail.”
“Brutus knew,” Kozmer said. “That’s why he’s going after the man.”
“What did you feed him?” Narina asked.
“Nothing, I—”
“I can feel it on you. You’re radiating guilt.”
“No, nothing.”
Narina pulled back her cloak and rested a hand on the hilt of her demon blade. “I’m warning you, ratter.”
Andras paled. Finally, his head dropped. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t. . .I had to do it.”
“Dammit,” she said. She’d hoped she was wrong, that there was some other explanation.
“Da? What’s the matter? What is Narina talking about?”
Andras didn’t look at his son, but an intense flush of shame came over his face. Narina had never seen a human’s aura in such disarray outside of heavy wounds or the loss of a loved one. That he felt guilty about it didn’t ease her anger, however, which was rising to a boil.
“I’m only going to ask you this once,” she said. “And then I’ll tear your aura apart and leave you weeping in a puddle of your own piss as we take the boy away. Why did you poison my goat?”
“It was Lord Balint,” Andras said without hesitation. “He wanted me to slow you down on the road, and he gave me something to feed to the animal.”
“Meant to kill him?”
More intense shame crossed his face, and his head hung even lower. “Yes.”
“And will the purging save his life, or was that another trick?”
“It wasn’t a trick, I swear it. But. . .I don’t know. The poison was in his belly for a long time.”
Narina paced, rubbing her hands together. She glanced back at Brutus every few moments. The goat had given up all attempts to make another charge, and was lying weakly on the ground. But his chest was still rising and falling evenly, and he wasn’t so sick that his eyes didn’t follow her movements. He would, she thought, recover. No thanks to Andras.
She made a decision. “You will leave now. Head into the hills, go back to the plains—it doesn’t matter so long as I never see you again. I’ll keep your boy and your dogs—they shouldn’t suffer for your treachery.”
Andras made a strangled sound, and Ruven whimpered and looked suddenly much younger than his ten years. He hurried to his father’s side and threw his arms around the man’s waist.
Kozmer gave a shake of his head. “Have you thought this through, Narina?”
“What is there to think? Wouldn’t Ruven be better off with us than living the ratter’s life? Not to mention facing brigands, crowlord wars, and the lot? What kind of life is that for a child?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Kozmer said.
“I’ll take him to the temple and train him—or better yet, he can apprentice for a few years, then be Gyorgy’s first student.”
Ruven’s eyes welled up. “Don’t make me leave my da.”
“Narina, no. You can’t take the man’s son. You can’t take his dogs, either. They’re his livelihood, and he’ll starve without them.”
“Let him starve, then. What’s it to me?” She cast a furious glance at Andras, who looked stricken, even as he clung to his son. Finally, she waved her hand. “Fine, go, all of you. Boy, dogs, everything. But I won’t see you again. If you run into trouble, if some stupid soldier uses your animals for spear practice, remember that you did it to yourself.”
Andras turned without a word, took Ruven by the hand, and whistled for the dogs. He and the boy took up their bags, hoisted them over their shoulders, and set off down the road in the same direction the group had been traveling before, right into brigand country. Before Brutus took sick and ruined everything.
Sick was the wrong word. Brutus was not sick, he was poisoned. A different thing entirely.
After the last terrier disappeared down the trail, she turned her attention back to the goat. It wasn’t hot on the hillside, nor did it look to be cold that evening. The sky was clear, so no rain, either. But somehow it felt wrong to leave him lying there in the midst of the bones, the broken pottery, and the wrecked cart. It was a place to die, not recuperate.
“We’ll do some scouting as soon as Gyorgy returns from his wash,” she said. “See if we can’t find a better spot and get Brutus there somehow.”
“You never asked him why,” Kozmer said.
“Huh? You mean the ratter?” She refused to say his name. “Because he’s a lowborn, traitorous worm, that’s why. I assume he did it for a little coin—what else motivates someone like that?”
“He’s none of those things. Well, maybe lowborn, but what does that matter? You were all too happy to take on Ruven as your student not five minutes ago.”
“What do you call what just happened, if not treachery? We protected them, broke bread with them.”
“And he sent his dog to warn us. This time, unfortunately, Andras had a greater loyalty. Balint saved the boy from brigands and killed the ones who murdered his wife.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Ruven and I had a talk before we left Hooffent. The boy told me a good deal. The point is, Andras had to do what Balint commanded. I can’t imagine it was easy.”
“Now what? Do you think we’re about to be attacked again? Is that why he poisoned Brutus, so we’d be forced to stop?”
“How would I know that? You sent Andras off without bothering to ask.”
“You didn’t ask, either. Or make any such suggestion that I do so.”
Kozmer sighed. “To be honest, I was t
aken aback. It was all too much, too fast. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“I guess I wasn’t, either. I still don’t know what to think. It’s all this sword saint business that’s got me on edge. So much killing already.” Narina glanced up the road to where Andras and the rest had disappeared. “Stay here with Brutus, and I’ll run after them and see what else I can learn. But they’re not coming back with us—that part I meant. I’ll never trust Andras again.”
Before she could make a move, Gyorgy came running up the hillside from the opposite direction. His hair was wet, and he was bare chested and barefoot. He’d pulled on his leggings, which flapped loose and unbound, but carried the rest of his clothes in his hand, with his sheathed swords propped on top of it all.
“Riders!” he cried as he stumbled to a halt, out of breath. In spite of Narina’s instructions, his sowen was still ragged and barely contained. “Forty, fifty men. Not brigands, either. Regular cavalry from the plains.”
Chapter Nine
Katalinka was relieved when she caught her first glimpse of the firewalker temple. The post road had humped over the highest passes, and they’d been forced to wade through melting slush left by the snowstorm. It was exhausting, even dangerous at times, and there was also the fear of the demigod’s return. The great dragon had nearly buried them alive in snow and ice, and it was impossible to say if it had returned to its frozen lake to sleep or was still awake and wreaking havoc.
Neither the inconvenience of travel nor the demigod had been her principal worry before she first spotted clearings in the pine forest and the black outcrops of volcanic rock that marked the edge of firewalker territory. Her biggest worry had become Abelard. She was now relieved to have something else to occupy her mind.
Abelard kept walking several paces while she stopped to take in the view, and when he finally seemed to realize she had come to a halt, he didn’t turn back, but stepped to the side of the road and leaned a forearm against a tree with his head bowed.
“Feeling all right?” she asked.
“No.”
“Need a break?” Katalinka glanced across the bowl-like valley to estimate the distance to the volcanic flow. The distances up here between the high peaks could be deceiving. “Looks like we’re still an hour away, maybe longer. We could eat the rest of our food—no need to save it anymore.”
“Just get on with it, will you? The sooner we get there, the better.”
Abelard’s tone stung. In fact, he’d stung her repeatedly these past few days with sarcastic remarks and brusque words that dismissed almost any suggestion she made. Instead of chatting companionably, as had been his habit during the first few days after leaving home, he’d stayed several paces ahead, where he muttered to himself in a low voice. Hopefully, he’d snap out of it once they could meet with the firewalkers, but she wasn’t sure. She was no longer sure of anything.
Studying him now, there was still a twisting, chaotic thread in his sowen. He’d been shielding it from her earlier, but now it lay exposed. Could it be that Volfram’s blow—a sharp thrust to the belly—had left an unhealed wound? The flaws in his sowen might be nothing more than unresolved pain.
Better to ignore his sour mood. With any luck, the firewalkers would be able to explain more. Provide some cure for the physical and spiritual wounds left by one of their weapons, and explain why one of their own had assaulted the bladedancers.
“Still,” Katalinka said in a low voice, “I’d rather not stumble in there unaware. We don’t know them, they don’t know us.”
If Abelard heard this, he gave no sign. Instead, he mumbled once more to himself, something she couldn’t pick up, something about fire demons. Maybe just a curse.
They continued in silence, dipping in and out of the forest with increasingly wide vistas in the clearings. They were on the far side of the range now, as mountains rolled down toward the Narrow Sea to the west. The highest peaks stretched to the north, but even the lesser mountains to the south wore crowns of snow throughout the year. A great mountainous forest filled the valleys among the lower peaks, and there was the evidence of old volcanoes in outcrops of black volcanic rock.
The firewalkers had carved their temple atop the largest of these, and as they drew closer, its outlines came into sharper view. Over the years the firewalkers had chiseled at the rock until it had become a fortress-like array of towers and columns that seemed to grow mushroom-like from the stone. Some of these were surprisingly delicate: onion domes with thread-like spires at the top, a gossamer bridge that crossed between towers, and, in the interior, the gleaming obsidian of their central shrine.
To get to the temple, one left the post road, crossed a short stretch of forest, and followed a white ribbon leading out of the trees that crossed several hundred feet of bare volcanic stone until it reached the temple gates. From here that trail looked like pure white sand, but she knew it was quartz gravel laid down by firewalker initiates over the generations.
A few hundred feet down the slope from their shrine, the firewalkers had carved several terraces for vegetable gardens, with their smithies, training grounds, and mill tucked into the woods in a series of tiny clearings. There were surprisingly few of these clearings in the forest; for a temple that honored fire, they were reticent to burn the trees closest to their home, and must be carrying their wood from farther away.
They soon arrived at the final approach. Katalinka’s first inclination was to march down the hillside, cross the white road, and enter their temple grounds with swords drawn, demanding answers. Where was Volfram? Who would answer for his crimes?
Under normal circumstances this was the point where Abelard would have urged caution. What if Volfram hadn’t gone rogue on his own? What if instead the entire firewalker temple had gone mad and declared war on their fellow temples? These thoughts had been lingering in her head the last few days, once the shock of the demigod sighting and the fight in the cave had passed, but now they came to the forefront.
She was trying to figure a good approach to the firewalkers when she glanced over to see Abelard moving off without her. He’d thrown his cloak over his shoulders and dropped his pack, together with the bedroll, cooking pots, and spare clothing he’d been carrying since leaving home. She was still carrying her own pack, and was annoyed as she grabbed his and slung it over the shoulder by one strap.
“Hey!” she called out. “We’re going to need this stuff, you know. Slow down, what are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, but kept striding ahead. His pace of the last few days, shuffling along, muttering and grumbling like Kozmer or one of the other elders of the temple, had been shrugged off. Forced to carry both of their packs, she found herself losing ground. She barely caught sight of him leaving the post road and disappearing into the forest. If she hadn’t, she might have missed the path toward the firewalker temple entirely.
“Dammit, Abelard! Will you stop?”
He didn’t, and she was furious. Let him stumble forward, make a mess of things with the firewalkers if he wanted. She was going to sit here on the post road until either he returned or one of their sohns came out to inform her that he’d offended some arcane rule and would now spend the next three years chained to the basalt, chipping away a new terrace for their gardens.
But reason came over her. Something was wrong with him, that much was certain. Something seriously, horribly wrong. Whether it had been caused by the dragon, the fight with Volfram, or something else didn’t matter. His sowen was damaged. She couldn’t simply let him blunder in there by himself or he could wreck everything.
The forest was quiet, with the pines sighing in a breeze that stirred their crowns. Most of the forest floor was covered with a springy bed of pine needles, but here and there sat slushy piles of snow that seemed to have fallen from branches, landed in the deepest shadow, and then melted slowly. The demigod must have flown this way, too—evidence of its passing remained.
By the time she left the forest and reached the narrow p
ath of crushed quartz that stretched across the sterile expanse of basalt, Abelard was far ahead and crossing through a fissure chiseled into the stone, already beneath the outer spires of the firewalker temple. A pair of faces peered down from one of the towers, and a deep gong sounded from within. It began as a low hum and built in crescendo as its ringer kept at the mallets. By the time she passed through the fissure herself, it carried in a long, deep boom.
The outer towers atop the volcanic hill had partially blocked her view of the interior, and the lush colors inside were a shock to her eyes after nothing but a white path across black stone. The inner side of the hill had been turned into terraced gardens covered with a riot of red, orange, and yellow flowering vines, around which dozens of honey bees buzzed, along with other insects and hummingbirds taking advantage of the flowering bounty.
To the right lay the firewalker training grounds, a smoothly raked patch of red sand. Obsidian pillars marked the corners. Standing barefoot in the sand among the pillars were two women wielding the long, elegant swords of the firewalker temple. The swords were bound in cloth, and the women had evidently been training, but now they stopped to stare at the newcomers.
Behind the training women lay a bed of smoldering coals. Young, barefooted initiates walked across coals, their eyes blindfolded, while a pair of firewalker elders observed.
Unlike the warbrands, who worshiped the demigods, the firewalkers focused on the fire demons, and so it wasn’t a surprise to see that the temple gong—a large round sheet of hammered metal—had been painted with red and orange demons dancing, brawling, and cavorting across its surface. But what did surprise her was the way the still-vibrating gong seemed to make the painted demons shimmer as if alive. A young woman with bandaged hands and a shaved head still held the mallets she’d been hammering at the gong with.
The gong hung from a curved beam of painted yellow wood that stood atop a raised platform of basalt. Behind the woman and the gong sat the small shrine for which the Blade Temple of the Elegant Sword was known. It appeared to be made of paper-thin obsidian, through which Katalinka could see figures moving on the interior. The entrance was on the right, and on the left-facing wall, water spilled down its surface, pumped out of spigots at the roof. The water ran in a sheet down the wall to a channel below, and the sun caught the fine mist in a rainbow that was all the more beautiful for being set against the gleaming obsidian.
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