Crowlord

by Michael Wallace

  The forests below had already gone up in flames during the initial assault, but now demons came dancing and running from the boiling cauldron, following the obliterated path, now a river of lava. They reached the untouched stretch of woods where Katalinka and the firewalkers had taken refuge. Venerable pine trees, their trunks bigger around than what three people could encircle with linked hands, went up like massive torches.

  The firewalkers were in a state of shock, and some of them would have no doubt stayed to gape at the destruction until they, too, were caught in the holocaust. But once Katalinka made to leave the scene, the remaining firewalker sohns—Sarika and Drazul—seemed to realize the growing danger. She heard them encouraging the others, cajoling, pleading, and in some cases, speaking in sharp tones, even as Katalinka used the light of the fire to regain the post road, anxious to flee the destruction.

  She would have preferred to travel with greater speed. Run as far and as fast as she could until she’d put several miles between herself and the eruption of lava and demons at her rear. The light of the fire at her back dimmed, and then dimmed again when she crossed a ridge and came down the other side, until it was nothing more than a glow behind the hills. But she was more than capable of continuing by feel and the use of her sowen to find the auras surrounding the road.

  It was fear that slowed her. The other firewalker sohn, Lujza, had abandoned her companions. The woman had apparently been taken by the same madness that had seized Abelard, and set off on a violent quest. That quest no doubt included taking revenge on the surviving bladedancer who’d violated her temple. She might be lurking nearby, ready to fall upon Katalinka and murder her.

  Katalinka didn’t even have the luxury of grieving Abelard’s death. To bear his loss with her sowen, to allow it to weigh on her shoulders and wound her heart. Instead, she had to stay alert, to continually scan her surroundings. A momentary loss of attention, and the firewalker sohn might leap from the darkness and shove her sword through Katalinka’s heart.

  About an hour later, still moving cautiously, she sensed the sowen of the remaining firewalkers gaining behind her. They moved together, roughly eighteen in number, with the larger, sharper forms of Sarika and Drazul identifiable up front, and the rest a blurred mass behind.

  The last thing she wanted to do was confront them again. They may or may not wish to confront her with their loss and anger, but there was no sense staying to find out. In any event, she wanted no part of them, either. No, they weren’t responsible for Abelard’s death, not truly, but she couldn’t help remembering Drazul directing initiates in a wave of thrusting, striking swords that eventually brought her friend to his knees. And then they’d killed him without mercy.

  She picked up the pace, but the firewalkers increased theirs as well. They used their sowen to strengthen each other, like a flock of migrating birds flying in formation. Katalinka had shed her belongings, and was capable of moving with great speed for an hour or more before she had to slow, but the pursuit continued relentlessly, reeling her back in again. Before long she was thinking about leaving the road to conceal herself in the woods and let them pass.

  But if they were searching for her—and why else would they have come this way?—they’d already have a grip on her sowen. Leaving the road wouldn’t hide her against a determined search. And there was the small matter of the missing firewalker sohn. She didn’t want Lujza at her front and the rest of the firewalkers at her back.

  It was already dawn, and the western horizon was stained a spectacular red. Daybreak would only help her pursuers; whatever advantage she had of having recently traveled the post road would vanish in the light of day.

  And so she stopped at the next defensible spot. Here, the post road bent, with a steep hillside on its northern edge, and the south side hugging a cliff that ancient engineers had chiseled away to create a passage for their cobbled stone road. The passageway was still wide enough for two or three to attack at the same time, but they’d be unable to surround her as they had Abelard at the temple.

  The sky was oppressive as the dim orb of the sun rose above the lower reaches of the mountain range to the east. Plumes of smoke marked the south and the southwest, as well as behind her in the direction she’d come. So many eruptions.

  In addition, there was a black air mass above the highest peaks to the northeast, which was the one direction not covered with choking air. This seemed to be storm clouds of a more traditional nature, centered roughly above the three frozen lakes where the dragon demigods had slept, but apparently no longer did. She thought of the pummeling snowstorm that had nearly buried her and Abelard before they’d taken refuge in Volfram’s cave. The dragons may have lost the first fight against the demons, but they hadn’t abandoned the war.

  Birds flew overhead. Flocks of starlings, darting sparrows, grackles, jays, grosbeaks. They scattered this way and that, driven from their forests by smoke and storm. Several deer and a pair of elk had crossed her path during the night, their auras scattered and frightened, as well as a large mountain goat like the kind kept by the temple, but this one was wild, driven down from the heights. In addition, there were numerous smaller animals, all in terrified flight from the cataclysm.

  Katalinka sat cross-legged in the middle of the road with her blades on her lap and meditated to strengthen her sowen. If they meant to kill her, she’d sell her life dearly. If not, then let them explain why they’d let her leave, only to run her down when she was no longer a threat.

  She didn’t have long to wait. With her eyes still closed, she felt them coming up on her, Sarika first, with her older companion just behind. Drazul may have been an elder of his temple, perhaps no longer as skilled with the swords as a decade or two past, but his sowen was like a granite pillar. If he threw it behind Sarika, the woman would cut Katalinka to pieces.

  The others had lost their tightly knit pattern during the chase, but now gathered into a knot behind the two masters. They felt restless, aimless. No doubt it was the loss of three other master sohns that left them in disarray; many would be students or retired masters of the ones missing. Nevertheless, if it came to a fight, there were enough of them to present a separate problem.

  Katalinka waited until Sarika drew near, then sprang to her feet with blades in hand. The other sohn’s sword was still sheathed across her back, but it would only take an instant to draw it. If she did, Katalinka meant to make the woman pay. For now, the firewalker sohn remained calm, with Drazul just behind her, also wary but unarmed.

  Sarika had cut strips of cloth from the bottom of her tunic and wrapped them around her palms. Drazul wore no such bindings, and his hands were red and blistered. The lesser members of the firewalker temple—students and elders—likewise seemed to have burned their hands since she’d seen them last.

  Katalinka’s temple used meditation and ritual washing to strengthen their sowen, but she recalled that the firewalkers used pain. Her father said their preferred method was to submerge themselves in hot springs where the water was hot enough to scald, but a quicker way was to burn their hands. Given that Volfram had been standing barefoot in an actual fire when she and Abelard found him in the cave, yet had seemed unharmed, they must have directly touched lava to wound themselves so visibly.

  Firewalkers quickly healed from even the most severe of burns, so no lasting damage had been done. Still, it spoke to their desperation to run down the bladedancer sohn that they’d injured themselves to the last man and woman.

  Sarika’s dark eyes held Katalinka’s gaze. “You were wise to stop when you did. Another mile, and it would have been too late. There would have been blood.”

  “And now?”

  A slight frown. “How do you mean?”

  Katalinka shrugged. “Will you take me prisoner? Will you throw me into the ravine? Bind me and sacrifice me to the lava in hopes of appeasing the fire demons?”

  “I understand what happened at the temple,” Sarika said. “It wasn’t your fault the apprentice died,
and less so that demons destroyed our home. I’m not here to punish you.”

  Now she was confused. “But you mentioned blood. So this isn’t about revenge?”

  “Oh, it is. In part. But not any revenge we’d take from you. It’s Lujza—she’s lurking about a mile down the road. You can’t feel her sowen—she’s hiding herself—but the five sohns of the Sacred Temple of the Elegant Sword are bound in ritual. Drazul and I can sense her, and sense her intentions. Lujza means to cut off your head.”

  “She’s battling for supremacy,” Drazul said from behind Sarika. “First she’d kill you, then, strengthened, turn her blade on us. The more she kills, the stronger she becomes. Soon she’d find Tankred and Volfram and finish them, too. Warbrands, bladedancers, firewalkers—she’d kill us all if she could. Or be killed. The only thing that matters now is to see her rivals dead. She intends to be the sword saint, that’s what’s become of her now.”

  “And what’s your role in all this?” Katalinka asked. “The lot of you hunted me down on the road, throwing your sowen into the chase just to give me a warning? I don’t believe it. You want something else.”

  “We’re homeless,” Sarika said bleakly. “The temple was destroyed. Where else are we to go?”

  Katalinka blinked, uncertain she was hearing what she thought they were saying. “Are you suggesting coming with me to the bladedancer temple?” She shook her head. “There have to be a thousand valleys in these mountains, and they can’t all be burning. Find one you like and rebuild.”

  “You make it sound simple,” Drazul said.

  “Anyway, why would you want to risk our company? You don’t know us, and you don’t trust us. Not in the best of times. Now you’ve killed Abelard, and one of your own sohns, Volfram, put the madness into my friend’s sowen in the first place.”

  A hard edge entered Sarika’s voice. “You killed one of ours, too, Katalinka. Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t. I couldn’t. All the more reason to keep our distance, one temple from the other.”

  “Why did you come to us in the first place?” Drazul asked.

  “Faulty information. It was obviously a mistake. Doesn’t matter anymore—we need to part company. Each of us to our own.” Katalinka’s resolve hardened. “The last thing we want to do—the most dangerous thing—is to mingle. We’ll be at each other’s throats with swords. That’s what this is all about, and it’s safer if we keep our distance.”

  A crow landed on a branch of a tree growing at an angle from the ledge above the road, and it chased off a pair of outraged-sounding jays, who squawked and rejoined the scattered flight of birds overhead. Additional caws drew her attention, and several more crows landed around the first until the branches sagged beneath them. They watched the humans on the road below, heads cocked.

  These were no ordinary birds; some were as large as ravens, while others had a grayish tint to their feathers, or eyes that seemed to stare too intently at the people, especially the three up front.

  Drazul frowned up at the crows. “Devil’s horns, what are they doing here?”

  “Fleeing the fire, I should think,” Sarika said.

  “Not that type of crow,” Drazul said.

  His companion shook her head, expression clouded. “How do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t understand,” Katalinka told the older man. “I’m surprised you do. You live so far from the plains—I wouldn’t think you’d see this kind of crow often up where you are.”

  Drazul explained. “They’re crowlord emissaries. Spies. They’re listening in order to report to their masters. And more than one crowlord is spying, too. Look at the sizes, the colors.”

  “What does it matter to crowlords what we do in the mountains?” Sarika sounded bewildered. She ran her fingers through her hair, which was as black and shiny as crow feathers itself. “Does this concern them, somehow?”

  Katalinka had no idea what Narina, Kozmer, and Gyorgy had discovered in the plains. The failed robbery of bladedancer weapons had certainly suggested a desperate struggle among the crowlords, but she’d assumed it to be plains business, the concerns of the violent overlords of the lowlands and their unfortunate subjects.

  “I’ve seen crows near the temple,” Katalinka said, “but never this many. And we’re several days into the mountains. No lowland crow would ever come this high.”

  Drazul gestured with a blistered hand. “And yet. . .”

  “I agree, it’s a bad sign.”

  For the first time Katalinka grew worried for her sister, Narina, who hadn’t known any of this when she’d set off. It now struck her as likely that she’d run into trouble below. Nobody had accounted for Tankred, one of the missing firewalker sohns, and what about the warbrand who’d attacked Sarika and Drazul’s people in the first place? There might be other rogue sohns, for all she knew, and it suddenly seemed likely that these unaccounted for men and women were meddling with crowlord affairs. Or being meddled with, as the case may be.

  Sarika strode toward the rocky cliff face that Katalinka had counted on to keep the firewalkers from flanking her in a fight. The woman jumped, grasped a ledge with one bandaged hand, and pulled herself neatly up in a single, fluid, effortless swing. From there she made another jump, and shortly reached the hillside, where the trees were growing at angles. No mountain goat could have made a more impressive climb.

  So much for using the hillside to protect her, Katalinka thought. If it had come to a fight, the hill would have been a liability, not a shield. A place for enemies to scale and hurl themselves onto her from above.

  Once up top, Sarita climbed the tree holding the crows with an equally impressive display of agility. Her burned hands seemed to provide no hindrance, and as she reached the tree heights, her sword came out of its sheath. She sliced through branches to clear a path, and as she approached the crows, they lifted off, squawking.

  There had been several more crows hidden among the branches and in the surrounding trees, and they all kicked up a ruckus as they lifted away. It might have ended there, but three of the big ones swooped back without warning and slammed into Sarika.

  The woman held her sword with both hands, and was straddling a branch, gripping it with her thighs. The first bird struck the side of her head, and she flinched instinctively away. The second smacked into her back with a squawk, and the third came right at her face with feet extended and beak open. Sarika struggled to hold her balance.

  A great mass of the crows she’d chased off came wheeling back around. Katalinka and the others cried a warning. Sarika got her grip in time, and whirled about on the branch and gave a great sweep of her sword through the flock of crows. There was an explosion of wings and feathers as the blade struck.

  Katalinka flinched, expecting the bodies of dead and dying crows to come crashing down onto her head, but all that she saw was a drifting rain of glossy feathers. As they descended, they seemed to dissolve, and what came down was a sifting of ash, as fine as black flour. The remaining crows flew away noisily, their scolding audible for some time.

  Sarika seemed shaken when she finally descended, as well as regretting her impulsiveness. She apologized to both Katalinka and her fellow firewalkers. Drazul rubbed a bit of ash between his fingers with a thoughtful expression while staring after the last of the departing crows. One of the apprentices came up to wipe blood from Sarika’s cheek where a crow had pecked at her.

  The woman stared at Katalinka. “Well?” she demanded.

  “Don’t look to me. I have no idea what just happened.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? We can separate all we want, try to wait it out. But there are dragons in the sky, burying the mountains with snow. Fire demons are destroying sword temples. A curse is consuming our members, blighting our sowen and making us kill each other. And now crows that dissolve to ash when struck. Do you still think we should cower and hide?”

  Katalinka thought it over. She felt as helpless as ever,
and the crows turning into ash had left her shaken and confused. Were they even real birds, or something else?

  Her eyes fell on Drazul’s lined face, and that made her think of Kozmer and the other bladedancer elders. Someone, somewhere, must be able to piece this together.

  At last she nodded. “Come with me to the temple. We’ll stand or fall together.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A few days later, a man stood in the road facing Katalinka, his sword planted tip down, with the hilt of the massive weapon almost reaching his chin. She couldn’t distinguish his face at first glance. The sun was rising from the east, just above a craggy peak behind the man, a hazy red ball through the smoke and ash, and its light caught her eyes and washed out the man’s features.

  But he was tall and powerfully built. From the sheer size of the sword, she guessed it was a falchion, and she guessed again that the man was a warbrand sohn. His sowen was powerful, but guarded, covered as with a cloak on a moonless night.

  Katalinka had left her new companions a mile or so back, where they could wait beyond the range where they might alarm the bladedancer temple. First, let her explain. Let her meet with Narina and the elders and decide how best to bring in the outsiders. Assuming there wasn’t too much resistance. And if there was, to come to a consensus on how to proceed.

  But now her path was blocked by this warbrand. Her heart skipped in her chest, and her hands found the hilts of her two blades. She did not yet draw them, and took a deep breath before speaking. She’d do her best not to aggravate the man until he declared himself an enemy.

  “Who are you and why are you blocking my path?” she asked.

  “Who are you? Pull back your hood and step forward where I can have a better look. And keep your blades sheathed or there will be trouble.”