Crowlord

by Michael Wallace

Heat flushed her face. “Fire demons scald your bones. You’re blocking the road to my temple, and you are an outsider here. Give me your name and your purpose at once.”

  She didn’t pull back her hood. She’d drawn it the previous evening—their fourth since leaving the ruins of the firewalker temple—when a cold sleet fell from the summer sky. The sleet was filthy with ash, and cold. She’d kept it drawn all night, even after the sleet stopped, as the air temperature continued to fall. A giant shadow had flown overhead during the night, but this time it didn’t bring a blizzard.

  “Narina,” the man said. “I know it’s you. There’s no point in hiding it.”

  “What are you going on about? Where is my sister, what do you know of her?”

  “Ah, Narina’s sister.” He chuckled, but the laugh contained scant humor. “That explains the voice and the angry tone. Tell me, has it taken you?”

  “The fighting curse? No, I’m untouched. And you? There’s something I don’t like in your sowen. You are one of them, aren’t you? I can feel it. And what’s that around your neck?”

  She referred to something hanging from a leather thong, glittering and crystalline. The sun was still rising, and she was slowly getting a better glimpse of his commanding, proud visage. At the same time, some of his strength seemed to fall away at mention of the objects around his neck. He rubbed at them between thumb and forefinger.

  “I was taken by it, but the feathers have come out of me, and I’m free again. I believe—I’m not completely sure.”

  She didn’t know what the man meant by feathers, but she was still suspicious. “Then you aren’t on some bloody path seeking dominance over the rest of us?”

  “We’re all on that path, whether we like it or not. But no, at the moment I am free of its influence. The command, the curse, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Then what are you doing here, threatening my temple?”

  “I’m not threatening, Katalinka, I’m protecting. That is your name, isn’t it? There was a woman yesterday. Barefoot, with red hair. A firewalker. She attacked two of your fraters and killed one of them. A second firewalker was seen in the meadow valleys above your temple—a warrior marked with ash and with a scarred chest. We don’t know where either of them have gone.”

  Lujza. And either Volfram or Tankred.

  Katalinka pressed her lips tightly together before speaking. “And you’ve taken it upon yourself to stand vigil?”

  A little shrug. “Vigilance is the best course for now, and I can only do my part. Now that you’re here, and your temple has a master sohn, however. . .”

  “Where’s my sister? Where’s Narina?”

  “You are like her, aren’t you? Where’s your patience? Wait, your friend is coming.”

  She was surprised when Kozmer emerged from the woods, as she hadn’t sensed the old man. Yet this outsider, this warbrand, apparently had. The elder had a new walking staff made of smooth white pine with an iron cap on the bottom. The old one had been a glossy, lacquered brown.

  More surprising, however, was that he was armed. Blades hung from his hips. The sheaths were aged leather, tooled with the figures of dragons and demons. The hilts were wrapped in gold- and silver-colored thread.

  “Am I glad to see you,” Kozmer said. His expression darkened as he studied her. “And Abelard? Please tell me he’s up the road with the ones we sensed earlier. Firewalkers, aren’t they?”

  “You weren’t supposed to sense us. We were treading carefully. Anyway, no. Abelard isn’t here.” Katalinka swallowed hard. “And won’t be.”

  Kozmer’s gaze moved up the road to where it passed alongside the river toward the defile beyond which she’d left Sarika and her companions.

  “Let me see your face,” Kozmer said. “I need to look in your eyes.”

  Katalinka swept her hood back and approached warily without taking her gaze off the warbrand. In a conciliatory gesture, he swung around a long sheath that had been strapped across his back and put away his weapon. At that, she glanced at Kozmer to see that some of the fear in his expression had diminished as he continued to study her carefully. He’d been worried, she realized, that she’d turned against them.

  She kept her voice calm, not wanting to sound like either Abelard or Lujza after they’d been wounded. “Who is this warbrand, and why is he at the temple?”

  “Let’s get something out of the way so there’s no trouble,” Kozmer said. He twisted his gnarled hands around the staff and stepped forward until he was between the two sohns. “This man was under the demigods’ spell.”

  “He said that already.”

  “Yes, but what he didn’t say is that he’s the same man who led the attack against your father. He didn’t kill Sohn Joskasef directly, but he ordered it done.”

  It was all Katalinka could do not to stagger backward. “This is him? This is Miklos?”

  Miklos stiffened, his face grim. He was a man who could and would kill, she saw, whether he was under a divine curse or not. He’d murdered her father. How could she. . .? Her hands reached for her hilts, then fell away again, and she dropped her head. When she lifted it again, Miklos let out a deep breath and dropped his hands to his sides, his jaw unclenching.

  She was still trying to digest the situation as Kozmer explained. He laid out everything that had befallen them in the last several weeks, including what had become of her sister. They’d fought crowlords—even killed one, it seemed—delivered the weapons to Balint, and then battled a rival sohn. Tankred, one of the missing firewalkers. Narina had killed him, but not without taking a wound.

  It should have been a minor injury, easily healed by her sowen, yet it had changed her. She’d grown belligerent, combative, not so different from how Abelard had reacted. Kozmer, Miklos, and Gyorgy had struggled to contain the curse, but eventually Narina had run off, and nobody had seen her since.

  There was also something about a ratter, his son, and some dogs that Katalinka couldn’t quite place. The ratter had seemed to be alternately a friend who gave them warning, and someone who’d sold them out to the rogue firewalker and his master, Lord Balint. She shook her head, trying to make sense of it all.

  When Kozmer finished, he had questions of his own. The most important: where was Abelard? When Katalinka told what had happened with Volfram in the cave, the elder’s face fell, and the edges of his sowen frayed.

  “That was it for him,” she said. “Like what you said about Narina. He turned angry and violent and confrontational. I didn’t understand what was happening, or I’d have kept him away from the firewalker temple. When we got there, he made trouble.”

  “And now what? Where did he go?”

  “He started a fight, and they killed him.”

  “Demons!” Kozmer closed his eyes and turned his face skyward with a wince.

  She summarized the rest of the fight at the firewalker temple, then told how demons had emerged from the ground. The creatures and their lava had destroyed the temple and followed the fleeing humans up the hillside. Katalinka had cut one down with her dragon blade. Her demon blade seemed to have no effect on them.

  “More clues,” Miklos said. “More evidence.”

  She turned on the warbrand and couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from her voice. “So it was you who set this in motion? You attacked the firewalkers, who in turn made war upon us?”

  “I did. But I didn’t take that turn on my own, I was called to it. Once that happened, I had no more choice than your sister or your friend.”

  Miklos briefly described how he’d been with his cousin performing meditative rituals at one of the sacred frozen lakes when the ice cracked, and a dragon demigod emerged from its depths. It had pierced him with crystalline feathers, and until the two now hanging from a thong about his neck had passed completely out of his body, he’d suffered under its curse.

  “I was only a vessel of the demigods’ poisonous intents,” Miklos said. “And if it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. Maybe
you, maybe Narina.”

  This last part was a painful reminder. “Tell me what happened to my sister. When did you last see her?”

  Kozmer released one hand from the staff and put it on her forearm. “We were in the fire, fighting for our lives. Nobody saw her go.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her out of your sight.”

  “There were demons. The smoke was thick and choking. We’d tied her to Brutus for her own good—that was Narina’s idea, she’d agreed to it. But she cut loose and escaped in the chaos.”

  Katalinka could only think of the dark mood that had taken Abelard. Did that mean she was alone now? Was she out there somewhere, trying to murder people from other sword temples? Or had she stayed on the plains to meddle in the crowlord wars?

  And what did that mean for the bladedancers? Father was dead, Abelard dead, and Narina had escaped with a corrupted sowen. There were no other bladedancer sohns left. Only Katalinka.

  Kozmer let out a deep sigh. “We’ve looked for her since her escape, as much as is possible, what with the volcanoes and forest fires. Haven’t seen Narina or felt her sowen. She’s the one we’re most afraid of—who’s to say she might not come back with her blades at our throats?”

  “She will,” Miklos said. He fingered the crystal feathers at his throat. “I don’t see how she escapes from this. They aren’t feathers in her heart—whatever it is won’t come out so easily.”

  Kozmer gave another frustrated-looking twist at his staff. “Gyorgy is beside himself, as you can imagine. He was leading Brutus at the time and blames himself for not noticing until it was too late.”

  “It’s not his fault,” she said. “Narina would want him to know that. The real Narina, anyway.”

  These were ugly times, and Katalinka was glad she didn’t have any students at the moment. The previous one had graduated to the ranks of frater about two years earlier, falling just short of sohn, and she’d yet to take on a new one. Nevertheless, that reminded her of Abelard’s two students; they would have to be told what had become of their master. It would be a painful discussion.

  “In spite of what this one says,” Kozmer added, with a tilt of his staff in Miklos’s direction, “I think we could have drawn it out of Narina if we’d only brought her back to the shrine in time. I would have wanted to try. Maybe it’s not too late. If only we knew where she was.”

  Miklos looked skeptical. He opened his mouth to say something more on the matter, but stopped suddenly, turning his head up the road. His eyes narrowed. “Who is that? Who’s coming?”

  “Firewalkers,” Katalinka said. She could feel them in motion, reaching carefully with their sowen. “The survivors from the temple. I suppose they’re tired of waiting for me.”

  “You invited them,” Kozmer said. It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. “Dangerous.”

  “I thought it necessary.”

  Katalinka cast a glance at Miklos, standing tall and proud, with his massive falchion strapped to his back. The warbrand presented his own danger, even if he had been entirely cured of the curse. She was not convinced he had been. She was not sure any of them were in the clear. Even leaving aside those enemies already circling, looking to draw others into the fight, who was to say that more sword temple warriors wouldn’t be called? She remembered what Volfram had said in his calm, falsely measured tone as he’d set upon them in the cave.

  We have been called. A champion will rise.

  Chapter Twenty

  Andras and Ruven had taken refuge in a ravine when sparks leaped the hilltop above them, ignited pine trees already desiccated by the hot, fire-whipped winds, and spread the conflagration to the other side. Hot, smoky air pushed into the ravine and seemed to steal the air from Andras’s lungs.

  The roaring fire was too loud to hear the dogs whining, but he could feel them shivering in terror as they crouched next to him, as if hoping somehow that proximity to their master would save them. Ruven was very still and very quiet as he buried his face in his father’s chest. Every so often he broke into long, hacking coughs.

  Andras thought his heart would split in two. He was not so afraid of death, although the exact manner of dying frightened him in this case. Already he was having a hard time breathing, and he imagined choking and wheezing as he gradually suffocated. Or, if more sparks fell into the ravine and ignited the trees at the bottom, he might be roasted alive.

  But to see his dogs die while following him trustingly to this spot was terrible to contemplate. To have Ruven suffocate, face buried in Andras’s shirt, still counting on his father to protect him, was enough to destroy him.

  And it was his own fault, his own bad judgment that was to blame. The night he poisoned Miklos and made a run for it with Ruven and the dogs, he’d set off in what he’d thought a clever path south, and then east toward the plains, and then hooked west into the foothills once again.

  They were necessary precautions to keep Miklos from catching them, he thought. The warbrand could sense father and son from a distance, and probably feel the dogs, as well. If the man recovered too quickly and gave chase, he’d hunt them down and exact his vengeance. But if the poison took hold of him, forced him to move slowly, or better, kept him sick for a day or two, they had an excellent chance of escaping. The key was speed. Go as fast as possible, don’t stop for anything.

  A strange, thin sort of daylight had greeted them the following morning. Ruven was stumbling, exhausted and near tears, and the dogs whimpered and tried to stop at every stream and grassy meadow. If he let them, they’d all flop down and refuse to get up. Andras allowed for short breaks, but no lengthy stops. They’d betrayed a dangerous, possibly insane sohn of the mountain temples, and if the man found them, it would be death.

  The erupting volcanoes were an advantage, or so he thought at first. The fires spreading down from the mountain forests into the drier foothills could only help as well. They confused the landscape with smoke and blotted the light. Light, falling ash would cover their footprints.

  And then Andras made a critical mistake. Coming over a ridge he caught a glimpse of several men below wearing a mixture of tattered military tunics and homespun jerkins. Men with heavy beards and dirty faces. They were armed mostly with daggers and short swords, and a handful had crossbows. There were two ponies to carry goods, but the men were traveling on foot.

  Andras shrank back with Ruven and the dogs, old fears resurfacing. Brigands. The same sort who’d burned his village, murdered his wife, and carried off his son before Lord Balint had brought Ruven back.

  Andras knew they’d been lucky to make it this far without running into brigands these past several days, but that luck seemed to have run out. Or maybe not.

  Had the ratters and their dogs been spotted? He didn’t think so. If they kept quiet and moved toward higher ground nearer the mountains, they should be safe. The fire was spreading in that direction, and it would keep these brutes in the lower foothills. He just had to keep moving south to stay clear of Miklos and they should be safe of that danger, too.

  At first Andras’s new course seemed to work, but by afternoon he realized that the forest fire was now below them, as well as above. There was more fire to the north, marching relentlessly in their direction. The ground rumbled once, and there was a distant, booming explosion from the direction they were traveling, and when the air cleared a little, he saw even more forest fires to the south.

  It was then that Ruven asked if they were surrounded, and Andras realized that they very nearly were. It was time to find their way back to the lowlands and hope the brigands hadn’t been traveling in the same direction.

  But by then it was too late. The fire had spread, and was all around them and drawing closer. A choking smoke settled in, and human and dog coughed and struggled for breath. Ruven, normally brave beyond his ten years, began to sniffle, and when Andras put a hand on his shoulder, the boy was trembling.

  Just when he’d thought they were doomed, he’d stumbled into the ravine. Th
e air was better at the bottom, as it acted as a sort of funnel for winds coming from the highlands, and it was deep enough that the fire hadn’t reached the bottom. The ravine petered out below, but higher, toward the mountains, it grew deeper, and it seemed safer to climb.

  Andras led them higher up the ravine, hoping it would lead them out above the worst of the fire, but the gulch dead-ended not long after. There was nothing to do but hunker down and wait for the fires to burn themselves out. A little stream trickled from the rock above, which gave them water. The trees in the ravine were largely cypress, with spreading, occasionally overlapping branches, and plenty of dry scrub at the bottom. Deadly, should the flames reach the bottom, but isolated enough to give him hope.

  We can wait this out, he told himself. We can survive it.

  Only now, two days later, the fire had returned with greater force, pushed to the north edge of the ravine, and jumped to the other side. From there, it was lighting up the trees on the far slope one at a time, turning them into great bonfires that in turn leaped again. Either the fire would continue its relentless march down into the ravine, or sparks would fall and light the trees at the bottom all at once.

  Either way, they’d either suffocate or be roasted alive. There seemed to be no escape.

  “Look, Da!” Ruven cried.

  The crown of a cypress further down the gulch had ignited, and its crackling flames gleamed through the pall of smoke. The top sparked and sputtered as flames spread down its trunk. The branches burned like brands.

  This was it. This was the end.

  The dogs whined, stood up, and sat down when ordered, panting and drooling. Andras brought them into the hollow beneath a large boulder, the most protected spot he could find, but the dogs had to be held in one big clump to keep them from bolting as the fire began a relentless march up the ravine toward them.

  Skinny Lad was especially restless. The lurcher stood and pulled, and had to be forcibly dragged back by father and son. He growled and bared his teeth, and Andras, shocked by the aggression, pressed the dog’s muzzle to the dirt.