Crowlord

by Michael Wallace

  Just as she expected the dragons would lay down a final layer of ice and snow before flying off in victory, the ground rumbled beneath them. There was a tremendous cracking sound as the newly hardened surface of the caldera ruptured, and a massive column of fire and lava burst into the sky. Dozens of demons were in the rising blast. They twisted and swirled. Their shrieking laughter rent the air and sent shivers down Katalinka’s spine.

  The rising column of fire and lava met the dark, twisting cyclone descending toward it. The two forces exploded with a flash of light, followed a split second later by a tremendous thunderclap. Trees bent backward and snapped. Firewalkers who’d been standing around, watching, fell to the ground. An invisible fist punched Katalinka, and her vision went black. She came to lying on her back with her swords lying next to her. Her ears were ringing, and everything seemed muffled.

  Flaming points of light fell from the sky, like giant, molten projectiles fired from a catapult. As she watched in horror and disbelief, they landed in the trees, where they set the boughs on fire before scrambling toward the ground. Fire demons. They were all around, and the forest was suddenly ablaze.

  The snow had vanished, but fat globules of water—too big to be called rain—hammered down on them. They hissed and steamed as they fell into the fire. The rain was heavy enough that it might have put out the blaze if the demons hadn’t been running in crazy, twisting patterns through the woods.

  One of the firewalker initiates screamed as a demon swept him off the ground, tucked him beneath its arm, and ran, shrieking with laughter, back toward the cauldron. The lava was boiling over in earnest now. It surged across the earlier, hardened flow, and was soon pouring out in a dozen separate streams. The demon ran toward one of these rivers carrying its prey.

  Anyone but a firewalker would have burned up at the demon’s first touch, but even though the initiate’s clothes had caught fire, his sowen was still mostly intact. The screaming was as much fear as it was pain. He thrashed and fought to free himself.

  Just before the demon reached the stream of lava, a second demon raced up and grabbed hold of the initiate’s legs, trying to wrestle the victim from the first demon. Together the two demons snarled and hissed, extending long tongues of flame and kicking at each other with clawed feet while they pulled and stretched. As Katalinka watched, horrified, they tore the firewalker in two. He died with a final, anguished scream. Each demon leaped into the nearest lava stream carrying half of the man’s body.

  She didn’t have time to ponder the firewalker’s fate, as she felt movement rushing toward her from the left. It was another demon. The creature stood more than a head taller than she was, and dragged arms so long that they scraped the ground and left a trail of burning pine needles in their wake. It had a single, white-hot horn on its forehead, a high brow ridge, and a low, hanging jaw. A two-foot, snake-like tongue of fire darted from its mouth as it fixed her with a malevolent gaze. A forked tail whipped and lashed behind it. Steam hissed from two nostril slits.

  Katalinka didn’t have time to think of what she was doing. She found herself with her swords in hand—demon blade in the left, dragon blade in the right—and crouched in a fighting posture. She pulled in her sowen like a shield and bent the auras of the forest around her. The demon seemed to slow down even as it leaped toward her on a trail of fire.

  She ducked to her right and slashed with the sword in her left hand. As the demon flew past her shoulder, it took a double swipe with the claws of its feet. One churned just past her ear, while the other tore along her left arm, the one that was currently swinging the sword.

  Her demon blade hit the creature and cut right through it as if it were made of flame. It left no mark, and the demon was cackling with glee even before it landed. At the same time, a searing hot pain shot through her arm, and she cast a glance down to see her tunic scorched open, with an angry, bubbling burn swiped across her upper arm. She couldn’t help gasping in anguish, even as the demon turned about with its mouth opening in a hideous grin. Fire burned within.

  By the time it came around again, she’d recovered enough of her sowen to dodge a double-swipe with its claws. Her swords flashed again. This time, it was the dragon blade that struck, and this time her weapon met resistance as it hit one of the creature’s forearms. It howled in pain and fell backward. The forearm turned black as obsidian where she’d struck it. The demon cradled the limb to its body, but it cracked and fell off. The creature howled in pain and rage.

  Katalinka looked at her sword with shock. The white edge was covered with ice and it was so cold in her grasp that her hand felt almost numb. In contrast, the demon blade was hot and smoking, but that hadn’t helped her. The demon blade had gone right through its namesake without causing any harm. It was only the dragon that had done damage.

  The injured demon came at her again, this time more circumspect. Its tail twisted and lashed. Twice, she ducked backward as it whipped past her face, the second time so close that she smelled singeing hair. She waited for her opportunity, then made a move.

  With a roll that took her beneath the lashing tail and a fiery claw that tried to pin her to the ground, she slashed in a wide arc with her dragon blade. It cut across the creature’s legs, and the monster fell with a scream. Even as its legs hardened into stone, Katalinka took a leap into the air and came down astride the fallen demon with her white blade thrusting downward. It pierced the demon’s chest and pinned it to the ground. Before it could make a final clawed attack, she pulled it out and rolled clear.

  The demon’s glowing eyes dimmed. It hardened to stone before her eyes.

  The woods were still burning, and the clouds had broken apart, but the last of the demons that had shot skyward had by now either returned to their boiling cauldron of fire and lava or were farther away, spreading fire through the woods. Drazul, Sarika, and a number of other firewalkers stood around her, gaping. They held their swords out, but so far as she could tell, none of them had faced a demon.

  Meanwhile, the eruption continued in earnest, and the rivulets of lava had become rivers. The air stank and burned her lungs. The smoke from the fire didn’t help, either. The sky was clearing; there was no sign of the demigods, and it appeared that they’d fled the scene. Defeated.

  Katalinka’s demon blade cooled. Ice melted and dripped from the dragon blade, and it warmed in her touch. She looked at the burn on her arm. It was painful, but her sowen had already started the healing process, and the blisters were shriveling and falling away.

  Next to her, Sarika looked skyward, then back at the demons, which were farther up the hillside now, spreading their fire. More demons were swimming about in the lake of fire drowning the temple, but what they were up to, it was impossible to say.

  “What happened?” Sarika asked. “Where is the snowstorm?”

  This was directed to Drazul, who only shook his head, apparently as baffled as she was.

  “I guess you don’t know everything,” Katalinka told him, grimly satisfied. She sheathed her swords, and the firewalkers followed her lead and put away their weapons. “Someone won the first round, all right. But it wasn’t the demigods.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Narina squinted into the blowing smoke and fought down a curse. She wore a bandanna fashioned from a spare shirt, washed yesterday, dried overnight, but already turning black from soot and ash. Some of the smoke was getting through, too; her mouth tasted bitter and sulfurous.

  It was close to midday—or at least that’s what her body was telling her—but it looked like twilight through the oppressive, foul-smelling smoke. A surreal reddish glow came through from the fires on the mountainside, backed by a steady roar and crackle of flames. It was the forest fire, not the eruption, that seemed to be driving the wind.

  Gyorgy coughed, pulled down the shirt wrapped over his own mouth, and spat at the ground with a grimace. “Are we really going to push into that? Is the road even standing—mightn’t the lava have overrun it altogether?”


  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Narina said. She felt irrationally irritable. “If I can just push my sowen far enough in to sense the danger. . .”

  “The lava won’t have destroyed the post road,” Kozmer said. He held his walking staff with one hand and a shirt at his mouth with the other. “There’s magic in the bricks—they’ll resist the fire.”

  Brutus, meanwhile, seemed dispirited, and was surprisingly docile. They’d tried to tie an old shirt around his snout earlier—taken from the bags of one of Tankred’s dead riders—but of course the goat had eaten it, then chewed up and spit out a second shirt when they tried again. Now Brutus was left to breathe the smoke and ash, while Kozmer bent some of his sowen to stirring the worst of the air away from the animal’s lungs.

  Narina might have been more worried about her companions if she hadn’t been nursing a secret wound. It was the little jab Tankred had given her during the fight. The tip of the firewalker’s sword had entered deeper than she’d thought, perhaps puncturing her bowel or intestine. Such a wound might have killed a lesser fighter, but that wasn’t Narina’s problem. Her sowen had healed it well enough. Or so it seemed.

  So why was there a deep ache in her gut and a warmth, almost like an infection, spreading through her belly and up under her rib cage? Her heart was beating quickly, though there was no reason for it. And why did she feel reluctant to tell her companions about the wound?

  She glanced away from the smoke and fire to see Kozmer studying her. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I am,” she snapped. “Why would you ask that?”

  Her own tone of voice startled her. She felt edgy, angry, even. Her nerves jangled, and her fingers twitched. Her swords felt like they were vibrating in their sheaths, and she wanted to snatch them out, though there was no enemy to wield them against. What was she going to do, hack her way through the smoke and fire and ash?

  “Master Narina?” Gyorgy said. He sounded concerned.

  She turned to tell him to be quiet and let her think, but at that moment she felt Kozmer’s sowen. The elder was reaching toward her, and there was something gentle in the touch, like a grandfather resting a cool hand on the forehead of his feverish grandchild while whispering calming words.

  She wanted to let him, to sigh in relief and let him soothe her. Yet at the same time she was angry that he would presume. Why would the old fool think she needed his help? He had no strength left in him, no fighting ability. One slash from her blades and she’d take his head from his shoulders.

  This is madness. Something is wrong with you. Get hold of yourself before it’s too late.

  Narina clenched her teeth and forced herself to draw a deep breath through her nose. She adjusted the cloth around her mouth and forced herself to respond calmly. “You’re both right. Something is wrong with me.”

  “Was it the firewalker’s sword?” Kozmer asked. His tone was cautious. “The wound in your side?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can control it, whatever it is.”

  “Are you a danger to us?” he asked. “Should we leave you alone?”

  Gyorgy’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? What would she do?”

  “The same thing Tankred did,” Kozmer said.

  “But he was a firewalker,” the boy protested. “Narina is one of us. And she’s my teacher. She’d never—”

  “He’s right,” Narina said. “I am a danger. Something is in my sowen. You must feel it.”

  Gyorgy briefly closed his eyes. “I. . .I think I can. It’s a dark thread. It’s strangling the other threads.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d describe it like that. To her it felt like someone had taken mud or some other handful of filth and dropped it into a clear pool of water. It was gradually spreading and turning everything dark and corrupted. It was in her sowen and in her body alike. In her mind.

  “Kozmer, do something,” Gyorgy said.

  “Don’t resist,” the elder told Narina. “Let my sowen in. I can help, but you have to let me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Sit down, meditate.”

  She did as the elder said. It felt almost impossible, with her body vibrating, the noxious smells in the air, and the sense that something was about to happen. But Kozmer was persistent, and his sowen kept lapping against hers like waves on the shore of a lake. Slowly, surely, she felt her tension easing away. The corruption of her sowen didn’t vanish, but it stopped its relentless push.

  By the time Kozmer finished, she felt almost herself again, and climbed shakily to her feet. “I need more than that if I’m going to overcome it for long.”

  “We need to get you to the temple,” he said. “Sit you in the shrine and let the rest of us work at you for a while. Draw it out of your sowen.”

  “This is what happened to the others, isn’t it? This is why they’ve gone mad. It’s terrible—I want to kill. I want to dominate. I want to defeat everyone and everything. How do I stop it? Tell me there’s a way.”

  “Like this,” Kozmer said. “You talk about it, you don’t react. When you’re angry you explain, you rest your sowen. I’ll help you, let me do it.”

  She didn’t think he could, not truly, not for long. Nevertheless, talking helped some, even more than the calming presence of Kozmer’s sowen. Seeing the worried look on Gyorgy’s face added to her resolve. She must hold on until they reached the temple. Surely she could manage that much. But first they had to get through the fires and eruptions. And that looked impossible at the moment.

  Movement caught her eye from the swirling smoke. A figure emerged, tall and with his head hanging. He dragged an enormous two-handed sword behind him, its tip in the dirt. He staggered forward, step by step, as if he’d been traveling for miles in a suffocating, heat-blasted wilderness and was dehydrated and ready to fall. Nevertheless, when he lifted his face to stare at her with a dull, lizard-like expression, there was little ash on his face or in his hair, as one would expect from someone who’d fought his way through the fires and eruptions.

  She recognized the man with a start. It was Miklos—Lord Zoltan’s supposed captain, who’d led the attack and attempted theft of the bladedancer weapons in an attempt to keep them out of Balint’s hands. The aura surrounding his sword was clearer now, and she recognized the disguise that it had carried earlier. It was a master sword, a falchion constructed with the highest skill in the smithies of the Temple of Righteous Fury. That would make Miklos a warbrand sohn. How had she missed it before?

  “Where is he?” Miklos demanded. “Where is the vermin who poisoned me? I’ll skewer him, and the boy, too.”

  Narina pulled down the shirt from around her mouth. “You!” she said as fury rose in her breast. “You murderous bastard, you killed my father. It was you, wasn’t it? You started all of this.”

  Miklos stared at her with bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t start it. That was the doing of the demons and demigods who rule this land. Now where is the ratter?”

  “The ratter? You mean Andras? Are you mad?” Her face flushed as she truly heard for the first time his threat of skewering Andras and Ruven. “You won’t touch the boy, I swear it.”

  Her blades were in her hands. Without thinking, she took three running steps and leaped. Her sowen split the air and propelled her the fifteen or so feet separating her from the warbrand. She came down on him with a cry, her blades a whirlwind of murderous intent.

  Miklos had looked near death as he staggered out of the smoke, and barely able to drag his massive two-handed sword. That changed in an instant. Something took possession of him and he was instantly in a fighting posture as he grabbed the hilt of the falchion with both hands and lifted the sword just as she fell on him.

  Her blades clanked harmlessly against his, and she had to twist away to avoid an elbow that nearly caught her under the jaw. She landed lightly on her feet and sprang back around, easily out of reach of his counterattack.

  Her nerves jangled and hummed. Her fac
e burned with rage. “I’ll kill you.”

  A high, manic laugh escaped from Miklos’s lips. “It’s got you, too.”

  “Never.”

  “There’s no escape for either of us. The only difference is that now I recognize the curse. You apparently do not.”

  “Watch out!” Gyorgy cried.

  Miklos’s sword swung around in a massive arc, a blur impossibly fast for such a large weapon. But even before Gyorgy’s warning, Narina was already in motion. She somersaulted backward, and the point of the falchion whistled through the space where her body had been moments earlier.

  “Arm yourself,” she told Gyorgy. “Quickly.”

  He raced back to the goat, where his weapons were stashed with the rest of their supplies.

  Narina tried to mount a counterattack while she waited for her student to join the fight, but Miklos was strong and fast, and his sowen pressed upon hers with a suffocating weight that threatened to break it apart. Something pushed at her, shoring her up, and she realized Kozmer was lending his weight to hers. It strengthened her and heightened her senses and reaction times. The initial danger passed, but she still couldn’t get through her enemy’s defenses.

  Gyorgy charged into the action, only to find himself stumbling backward as Miklos turned the attack in his direction. If not for Narina’s intervention, the stronger, more skilled warbrand would have finished him in the first exchange. She guarded the boy’s retreat.

  Her student stood gaping, clearly unprepared for the challenge of fighting a sohn. Good. He needed to know what he was facing. This was not like killing a few crowlord foot soldiers; their enemy wouldn’t fall before him as if pushed onto his blades. This man was as skilled as Tankred, perhaps more dangerous, in fact.

  “The boy and the old man will die, you know,” Miklos said as the two sides broke apart and sized each other up.