Crowlord

by Michael Wallace

  Tuzzia had never been known as particularly active. The very name meant “sleepy mountain” in the old tongue. Yet she’d never seen an eruption as powerful and relentless as what she was staring at now. Most likely the eruption had blocked the post road and closed any hope of returning home. The sky was clear overhead, but the way that black cloud was drifting, she imagined it wouldn’t be long before it brought an early twilight.

  “This isn’t just an eruption, is it?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “And it isn’t just a battle for dominance among the sword temples.”

  “I agree,” Kozmer said.

  Narina felt for the wound at her side, which chose that moment to throb, but didn’t take her gaze from the spreading blackness. “What it feels like is the end of the world.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It was all Katalinka could do to resist the initial, furious attack by the rival sohn. Lujza was quicker than seemed possible, wielding such a large, heavy two-handed sword, and her blows fell with the fury of a mountain hailstorm. The slender redheaded woman pushed Katalinka backward, got her spun around, and drove her onto the fine red sand where Lujza and Sarika had been sparring when the two bladedancers arrived.

  Sarika made to join her fellow firewalker in a combined assault, but Abelard had already rushed into the attack, and the two of them were quickly locked into a deadly embrace of their own.

  To Katalinka’s surprise, the sand of the training pitch was hot. Not merely baking-in-the-sun hot, but as if they’d spread it over a bed of coals. Heat radiated through the thin, slipper-like shoes Katalinka was wearing and burned the bottom of her feet. Meanwhile, Lujza came onto it barefoot, and seemed untroubled. In fact, the heat seemed to strengthen her.

  Realizing this, Katalinka leaped from the sand and forced her opponent to follow her up the basalt steps to the edge of the shrine. She got to the top, whirled to deflect an attack, and soon found her back against the shrine’s polished obsidian surface. She let Lujza press the attack, let her think she’d pinned the bladedancer in place, unable to escape.

  And then Katalinka made her move.

  Of the three bladedancer sohns, Katalinka had always been the most agile in the arena. Her sister Narina was clever, skilled. Give her an opening, reveal a weakness, and she’d pounce. Abelard had stamina that would eventually wear down his opponents if they didn’t put him away in a hurry. But Katalinka had an unequaled ability to jump between the standing stones, to slide beneath the opened legs of an opponent, and to twist away from blades that seemed like they would strike her head only to whistle harmlessly past her ear.

  She placed the sole of her left foot against the stone wall and launched into a leap. It somersaulted her over her enemy’s head. She slashed downward as she passed, met only steel with her blades, and landed at Lujza’s back, still swinging. Her opponent was already whirling about with her sword sweeping in front of her, point down, to block additional thrusts from the demon and dragon blades.

  A lethal double-stab had been Katalinka’s plan when she made the leap. The skillful parry of her flying attack changed her strategy. Instead, she feinted with the blades and swept out her left leg. Lujza leaped backward, but not in time.

  Katalinka’s leg sweep caught the young woman’s heel. That in turn forced an awkward landing on the woman’s back foot, and when the bladedancer rained down more blows, the off-balance firewalker tripped and fell. Katalinka was on her in an instant.

  Lujza, lying on her back, somehow got her sword up and expertly parried Katalinka’s blows. But a twist of the wrist, a jump over the top of the woman, and a downward thrust with the dragon got past the defense. Lujza cried out as the tip penetrated her breast.

  Katalinka had to roll away as a determined punch from the woman’s sword hilt caught her in the belly. Lujza got to her feet with a grimace. Her sowen was wavering. The woman was desperately trying to staunch a wound that seemed to have broken through a rib and sliced into a lung.

  It was not a fatal wound, not for a sohn, assuming she could get clear of the battle. But it left her critically weakened, whereas Katalinka felt herself strengthening as the fight continued. Another flurry of blows kept Lujza completely on the defensive and flagging. Only a matter of time, now.

  “Katalinka!”

  It was Abelard, shouting for her help. While Katalinka and the younger firewalker sohn battled on the steps of the shrine, several initiates had gathered weapons and joined the fight against the second bladedancer, who’d already had his hands full with the older firewalker master.

  Compared to the quicksilver movements of the sohns, the initiate attacks were clumsy and easily parried. None of them carried master swords. One young man, sixteen or seventeen years old, had only a blunted training weapon, its aura so weak that one of Abelard’s blades severed it like a broom handle.

  But there were too many initiates, and they forced his response, which allowed Sarika to come at him without fear of counterattack. What’s more, Abelard’s superior stamina was flagging, and Katalinka saw Sarika had driven him onto the scorching sands and pinned him there with her initiates.

  Up at the shrine, Lujza was faltering and ready to fall. A few more moments would do it. But Katalinka had to get to Abelard. Had to get him out of there. She launched a final, ferocious assault. The attack failed, but Katalinka managed to drive Lujza back up the stairs long enough to allow her to disengage. She charged for her companion’s side.

  Katalinka blasted into the initiates. One turned, and she shattered the man’s blade with a twin strike. A woman thrust at her belly from the other side, and Katalinka whirled with her blades flashing. The demon blade drove into the woman’s kidney, and the dragon cut her throat. The rest of the initiates fell away from her.

  A wise move. They would have died.

  Katalinka got to the burning sands just as Abelard dropped his demon sword to one side. Someone, most likely Sarika, had cut his left bicep. The woman ducked away from Abelard’s dragon blade, lifted her sword, and brought it down in a wide arc. Abelard tried to lift the demon with his wounded arm, but couldn’t get it up in time.

  Sarika’s sword fell. It split the bladedancer’s collarbone and dropped him to the ground. Initiates rushed him and pinned him to the ground with their blade tips before he could get clear. He threw back his head and let out an animal howl as their sword tips punctured him. His swords fell harmlessly away.

  Katalinka let out a cry of anguish and rage. She paid the burning sands no heed as she fell on Sarika. It was all the firewalker could do to resist wilting under the ferocious initial attack. Another attack followed, but Katalinka couldn’t get enough strength into it.

  The blasted sand was sapping her energy. That was it. She tried to break free, failed.

  The initiates were skillfully pinning her in place while staying clear of another attack that would cut down more of their numbers. That left it a one-on-one fight between Katalinka and Sarika, a battle that the latter would win if the former couldn’t get clear. Something was strengthening Katalinka’s enemies while draining her own sowen. She looked wildly about her.

  The culprit was an elderly man standing to one side. He wasn’t armed, but directed the attackers while using his sowen to batter her.

  “Hold her there,” the elder said. “Karoly, move right. Ili, get behind her. Lujza, bring your sowen under control and get back into the fight.”

  Lujza had come down the stairs, but was holding her two-handed weapon in her left hand while she fisted her right hand against the wound on her chest, wincing. She was no challenge at the moment, but her sowen was hard at work cleansing her aura and binding the wound. She’d reenter the battle weakened, but with her fighting at Sarika’s side, they would be more than Katalinka could fend off.

  Assuming the fight lasted long enough for Lujza to make a difference. Katalinka’s fury at seeing Abelard die had spent itself. Now there was only fear and a gradual draining of her strength
from the scalding sand and the elder’s sowen attack. She made another attempt to get through her enemy’s defenses. It failed. She braced herself for a deadly counterstroke.

  Without warning, Sarika lifted her sword high. “Stop fighting!”

  Katalinka didn’t know if this was directed toward her, or at the others. It didn’t matter; it was hope. She pulled back, moving into a defensive posture.

  “Gladly. I don’t want this fight.”

  She tried to break free of the sand, but the others closed ranks and blocked her path. She didn’t try to force her way through. The pain at her feet was intense and eroded her sowen.

  “You should have never come here,” Sarika said.

  Katalinka’s eyes strayed to where Abelard lay on his back with his head slumped to one side and his gaze blank and staring. Blood trickled from a dozen wounds and smoked where it hit the sand. An acrid smell filled the air.

  “Hanni is dead,” Lujza said from behind her. The younger sohn’s voice sounded pale, in near shock. “This woman killed her.”

  “You killed my companion in turn,” Katalinka said.

  “Put down by your own stupidity,” Lujza spat.

  Sarika studied Katalinka with her dark eyes glittering. The older woman looked angry and dangerous, but seemed under control at the same time. “Let her off the burning sands,” she said.

  “Keep her on the damn burning sands,” Lujza said. “Finish her off.”

  “No, this isn’t her fault. It isn’t even his fault,” she added, pointing her sword at Abelard’s body. “May as well blame Volfram and Tankred.”

  “I’ll blame them, too,” Lujza said. “Call or no call, none of them had to answer it.”

  “What call? What do you mean?” Katalinka asked.

  “Get off the sand, or die fighting,” Sarika said. “It’s your choice.”

  Katalinka, knowing she was dead if they renewed the attack, crouched carefully, wiped her blades on the sand, and sheathed them. She moved off the sand, and the cool stone on the other side was a relief. Sarika gestured again with her sword, and the initiates pulled back to give her room. Many of them moved to gather around the young woman Katalinka had killed.

  The initiate’s blood had drained in great quantities to pool on the black stone. One hand still clenched at her side, where the first sword had penetrated. Her mouth hung open in the position it had assumed during her final, futile gasp of air. Staring at her handiwork made Katalinka sick to her stomach. But what choice had she had?

  Lujza sat down on the lowest step of the shrine with a groan. The woman was still in turmoil, it seemed. Her sowen swirled about, gathering, then fell apart again. The wound was deep, but not mortal, and Katalinka was curious to see how the young woman would heal herself. A capacity to absorb wounds was a hallmark of the firewalker temple; perhaps Katalinka could learn something.

  And then, to her horror, she sensed a familiar thread, twisted and gray, entering the woman’s sowen, even as her punctured lung closed and began to fill once more with air.

  “Someone get me some water,” Lujza snapped at the initiates and elders who gathered around the dead initiate with their backs to her. “I’m dying of thirst.”

  Katalinka stood next to Sarika as two initiates ran off, and others moved to help Lujza. “It’s got her sowen,” Katalinka said in a low voice. “It’s the same thing that took hold of my friend after Volfram struck him in the cave.”

  Sarika answered in a grim tone. “I sense it, too.”

  “What the devil are you muttering over there?” Lujza demanded. “Don’t talk to that woman—she’s our enemy. Make her pay, cut her down. By all the demons! Why is this rock so hot?”

  “Someone help her into the shrine,” Sarika said. “She seems feverish.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not fev—don’t touch me!” Lujza slapped at the hands trying to help her to her feet.

  Katalinka needed to get Abelard’s body out of here, retreat to the woods, and gain some space to think matters through. Let the firewalkers work through their own issues in their own time.

  She was trying to puzzle this out when the ground vibrated beneath her feet like the beginning of an earthquake. She held out her arms for balance as a rumble sounded below her. The shaking grew, until suddenly the ground was heaving and buckling, as if waves were passing through the stone beneath the temple.

  Katalinka tried not to panic. “Does this happen often?” she asked Sarika.

  “Never!”

  There was a cracking sound, and a fissure formed in the basalt ledge on which they’d built the shrine. The crack became a terrific splitting sound, and a sliver of rock ten feet long and three feet wide fell from the ledge and broke into pieces when it struck. A crack formed in the gleaming face of the shrine itself, which brought cries of fear and alarm from the firewalkers.

  Lujza let out a high, cackling laugh. “Look what you’ve done, bladedancer. Look at this woman. Look at her! She brought this. All of this is her fault!”

  If Lujza hoped to convince her companions to renew the attack against the surviving bladedancer, she failed. They cast about with terror-stricken looks, and the younger ones begged the older to know what was happening. Nobody seemed to have an answer except Lujza, who kept ranting that somehow the bladedancers had caused the earthquake.

  Katalinka’s sowen was shaking along with the ground, breaking apart as the earthquake gained in strength. It was the hot ground that clarified her thoughts. Her feet were burning again, though she’d moved away from the scorching sands. The air over the training ground itself shimmered with heat. With terror, Katalinka realized this was not simply an earthquake.

  The leaves of the vines and other plants growing on the terraces on the inner wall began to curl as if they’d been tossed on a fire. Flowers wilted. The gong, with its red and orange demons cavorting on the surface, fell from its stand and rolled down the steps from the shrine where it landed with a clank.

  At that moment, the wall of the firewalker shrine split in two with a sound like a sheet of glass struck with a hammer. People lifted arms to shield themselves from flying obsidian shards. When Katalinka looked up again, she watched in fascinated terror as the shrine split in two, with the near half crumbling into a pit that opened at its base.

  She thought suddenly of the volcanoes erupting on the edge of the mountain range to the east, and of the dragon that had flown overhead, and she guessed at what was going to happen.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she told Sarika. “All of us, now!”

  “Are you mad? It’s an earthquake, it will pass.” To her companions, Sarika cried, “Stand back from the walls. No, don’t go inside there.”

  “But our library!” someone protested. “All our lore is inside.”

  “We’ll pull the scrolls out of the rubble when the earthquake stops.”

  “It won’t stop,” Katalinka insisted. “It’s not an earthquake.”

  What was left of the shrine continued to break apart, and then a blast of steam and sulfurous smoke erupted from the ground. It roared twenty, thirty feet into the air, then collapsed into a spreading, stinking cloud as the fissure continued to open wider.

  A glowing hand thrust out of the hole. Its fingernails were claws, and its flesh seemed to be made of fire. A head popped out, with fiery horns and black eyes and nose slits set in a face made of molten rock. It was a demon, clawing itself from the underworld. The monster made a sound like hissing steam as it escaped. More blasts of steam and smoke jetted from other pits opening across the temple grounds and throughout the gardens.

  Other fire demons came clawing and scratching their way out of holes, even as the ground continued to send up more and more geysers of smoke and steam. Lava bubbled after the creatures, flowing down stairs and hillsides and collecting into pools. All the while the ground continued to shake and rumble.

  Katalinka no longer cared what the firewalkers intended to do. She turned and fled for her life.
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  Chapter Twelve

  After Narina drove him from the camp, Andras led Ruven and the dogs down the hillside trail a half-mile or so until he found a good place to leave them. It was a brush-clogged ravine on the edge of a larger hill, watered by a thin muddy stream. The bushes had thorns, and had grown together and choked the entrance to a small, tight refuge. It felt too close to the main trail for a proper hideaway in these brigand-infested hills. Too easily spotted.

  But it would have to do for now. He crawled in on his hands and knees to make sure it was empty, not only of people, but of snakes, wildcats, and other dangers, then used his knife to cut away branches to make a little hollow. He whistled for the dogs, who came squirming in beneath branches. One of the terriers got his fur caught in the thorns, and he had to do a little more cutting to free it.

  He left the dogs inside and emerged to where his son was waiting. He told the boy to haul their satchels inside and keep the dogs quiet. Don’t make any noise, and don’t respond to any sounds or cries. He’d be back as soon as he could. He thought about taking his spade for protection, but figured that would be more likely to get him killed than if he were unarmed and inoffensive in appearance.

  “Where are you going, Da?”

  “Back to watch the fight.”

  “You think the bladedancers are going to be attacked?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh.” Ruven’s face fell. “I was hoping Narina was wrong. Or you were wrong. Or something. I was hoping that you. . .”

  “Hoping I’d what?”

  “Nothing.”

  There was something in the boy’s voice that Andras couldn’t remember hearing before. Something that sounded like disappointment. Andras burned with shame and looked away rather than stare into the boy’s earnest face.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d been humiliated in front of his son. He was a ratter; he was used to insults from strangers, from the way a woman wrinkled her nose when father, son, and dogs passed through her village. Used to being denied the use of public baths, used to people trying to cheat him out of his hard-earned coin. Soldiers had ignored him, treated him like a part of the scenery, or worse, skewered his dogs for sport.