Bladedancer

by Michael Wallace

  Moments later she stood gasping over its corpse. Within seconds it looked like a blackened statue, and moments later, it began to take on an aged, eroded appearance, with its spines and the tips of its claws crumbling. No more time to waste. Narina recovered her swords and continued up the lava canal toward its source.

  As dawn broke to the west and Narina continued on her path, the landscape began to change. The charred remains of forest disappeared, replaced by bare, blackened hillsides that in turn gave way to bubbling pots of mud interspersed with volcanic rock pockmarked with holes that vented gas in periodic, explosive bursts. Manet Tuzzia loomed at the edge of the mountains, its cone grown to monstrous proportions, with trickles of lava leaking down the side, some of which must be feeding these canals.

  She could still see the river, increasingly distant below her, fighting its way over and around volcanic flows. Here and there, small lakes formed, and the water steamed from contact with the superheated ground before spilling over obstacles and continuing toward the plains below, now visible in the distance.

  She came upon another pool of lava, roughly the same size and dimensions as the one that had concealed the two-headed crocodile demon. She was more eager than ever to reach the volcano, and bent the auras as she approached rather than provoke another fight. She made it past this lava hole without incident, but moments later came upon two more lying on either side of the lava canals, each in a flat spot with steeper cliffs above and below, making it hard to get around.

  What’s more, a work crew of two overseers and eight slave demons was hacking away at one of the hardened canals with black sledges to get the lava flowing again. One of the overseers looked in her direction with a dull, lizard-like gaze, its forked tongue flicking the air as it twisted a fiery whip in its claws.

  Narina drew her swords without a moment of hesitation, charged forward in a blur, and shoved a dragon blade through the demon’s belly before it had a chance to react. As it toppled, she swung her other sword and took off the head of a nearby slave. Only one of the workers even realized it was under attack before it fell, and got in a swing with its sledge.

  She ducked it easily, gutted it with a twin sword attack, and then fell back under a furious whip attack from the second overseer. A lash of its tail nearly caught her in the face, and she took a whip across the thigh that burned through her pant leg and scorched her flesh, but in return the demon lost first its whip hand, then its tail, and finally its head.

  Within moments, she’d cut down the entire work crew and left them a pile of smoking corpses. Narina didn’t have time to marvel at how her skills had grown, because the fighting had awakened greater threats from the pools of lava flanking the canals, in the form of a pair of the two-headed crocodile demons. She jumped clear, took a powerful swing that nearly cut off a tail, then shoved a blade through the eye socket of one of the heads.

  After that, she was in a terrible fight that nearly ended when a thrashing tail knocked her onto the canal. Had it been the one still flowing with lava, she’d have been done for. As it was, she took a claw across the chest that left her gasping with pain, and was nearly pinned beneath the bulk of a crocodile while three of the four heads snapped at her.

  Fortunately, the dying head she’d pierced with her blade hampered one of the demons, which allowed her to concentrate on fighting off the attack of the other. Slowly, surely, she delivered piercing wounds and slashing attacks that cut off spines and claws. Finally, the demons lay dying and she was able to drag herself clear.

  Her clothes were charred, and burns covered at least eighty percent of her body. Her sowen dulled the pain, and she slowed her breathing to will it to heal her body. This it did with surprising speed, except for a burning wound across her chest, which was deep and painful and caused her difficulty for several long minutes after she had continued on her way. She was not invulnerable; it was good to remember that.

  Additional lava pits appeared with increasing frequency as she continued, along with more work crews on the canals. She imagined the entire land converted to such a blasted landscape, with demons destroying every living thing, and perhaps a few scattered humans clinging to hidden valleys and offshore islets. Everything else would be burned from the surface of the earth.

  With her growing power, Narina might have felt more confident in her ability to cleanse the blight spreading out from Manet Tuzzia, but when she reached forward to see what other enemies might remain in her way, a giant void enveloped her view. Something was bending the auras around the volcano, something large and terrifying that she couldn’t see or feel, and it filled her with dread.

  Chapter Eleven

  The post road was soon underwater, but Katalinka and Kozmer searched until they found the path they’d taken across the cliff wall when bringing Narina home. Katalinka’s sister had been battered and near death from her battle with the crowlord, and in theory, travel should have been easier without her.

  But it was night, dark and still, and the footing was treacherous, especially for the elder. With Sarika leading the way, Katalinka taking Kozmer by the arm, and Miklos guarding the rear, they made slow progress along the cliff edge as they continued down the canyon.

  Shortly before dawn, shrieking sounded from the opposite side of the canyon. There were flashes of white and blue lights and a stench of sulfur and ash. Katalinka was unsure what it meant until Kozmer cleared his throat.

  “It’s Narina. She’s fighting.”

  “Slaves and overseers?” Katalinka asked. “Crows?”

  “Something else, I think,” the old man said. “Something demonic, to be sure—I’m blind to exactly what.”

  “It’s big, whatever it is,” Miklos said from the darkness to their rear. “The auras are twisted around her. She’s in a fight for her life.”

  “Keep going,” Sarika urged. She was a distance ahead of them from the sound of her voice. “We’re not going to do any good jabbering about it.”

  “We get it,” Miklos said. Exhaustion and irritation alike clouded his voice. “You’re eager to fight demons. Don’t worry, there will be plenty to spare by the time we arrive.”

  “Yeah, well taking our time is a good way to assure we fight them alone. Our friend will be long dead before we get there.”

  Katalinka found Sarika’s grim tone alarming, but probably justified. Narina, for all her powers, was only one woman. They had three sohns here, plus the elder. Maybe they’d been fools for letting her set off alone instead of insisting she stay with them on this side of the lake. Perhaps Katalinka hadn’t been entirely convinced Narina would make it all the way across. More likely, she’d jump, splash into the scalding water, and then swim back in a hurry.

  Instead, her sister had taken a mighty leap, jumping so high that it seemed the earth were no longer capable of tethering her to the ground. She’d soared in an arc over the lake and landed easily on the far side, right in the middle of the startled demons, who had fallen before her dragon blades like stalks of rice before a farmer’s scythe.

  The remaining companions picked up their pace, keeping Kozmer moving with pushes from their sowens so he could hold his own strength in reserve. When dawn came, more light flashed from the opposite side of the canyon, together with belches of fire, distant shrieks, and other signs of battle.

  “Don’t stand there gawking,” Sarika said. “Keep going.”

  “She’s right,” Miklos said. “We can’t do a damn thing from over here. We have to get ahead of her, find a way to cross, and make it to the volcano if we’re going to be any help.”

  The sounds of battle receded behind them as they continued. Dawn spread a hazy glow through the canyon. The cool breeze that had gathered in the mountain heights failed to penetrate this far east, or maybe, Katalinka decided a few minutes later, the demonic strength was gathering again.

  Yes, that was certainly it. Narina defeating Damanja had seemed to weaken everything from the crows to the lava works to the scorching heat itself, but the dem
ons hadn’t been defeated, only given a setback, and with dragons apparently vanquished to their lakes in the highest peaks, the enemy was able to renew the push. And how long until another crowlord asserted dominance on the plains, gathered his or her power, and renewed the assault?

  The sun finally rose with a diffuse glow to the east, and they reached Hooffent, or rather, where the village had once stood. The site had been so altered by volcanic flow, mudslides, and several feet of ash and exploding volcanic rock that it was only possible to pick it out by its position against the peaks to the rear.

  Above it lurked Manet Tuzzia, now visible in all its power and dread. It had once been a rather tame, eroded cone, covered in vegetation and sleeping for generations beyond memory. Now it had grown to a monster, dark against the skyline. Not a scrap of grass grew on its slopes, and multiple trails of glowing, smoking lava trickled down its sides, small from this distance, but rivers of fire, she knew, each one capable of obliterating towns and farms in its quest to reach the sea.

  Some of these rivers of lava trailed to the east, penetrating deep into the plains before they disappeared into the haze. Others seemed to bend north or south, and one of these connected to a series of canals that flowed down and west, toward the canyon and the site of the demonic activity they’d spotted earlier.

  Katalinka pointed to a long arm of ash and volcanic rock stretching from the main caldera. “That’s where we’ll go. There will be demons there, channeling the lava. Narina is going to come up that crest and fight them.”

  “There’s something there,” Kozmer said. He sounded hesitant. “Or rather, something not there. It’s a void—the auras are blurred.”

  “And what about those pits?” Sarika said. She stopped next to Katalinka and stared up the mountainside with eyes narrowed and her sowen probing. “The circular lava holes—do you see what I mean?”

  Katalinka easily picked them out, as they stood like angry red blisters against the landscape. “Venting the volcano maybe?”

  The firewalker shook her head. “I don’t think so. We saw something similar opposite the river earlier. It was right about the time your sister was fighting that second time. Demon holes. Ambush spots.”

  “If you’re right,” Miklos said, “and I’m not saying you are, then it’s something different. Something other than a few overseers and their slaves. Something bigger and nastier.”

  He sounded dismissive of those lesser demons, though they’d given the sohns all they could handle and more on several occasions. Narina, however, had torn them apart, so maybe he was right. But what about these lava pits? They were opaque to her view, and the other sohns may very well be right. Something might be lurking within.

  “Narina will be prepared,” she decided after thinking it over. “She’ll know what to expect by now, assuming those lava pits are the same as what she faced near the dam.”

  “Except there are a lot more of them than last time,” Sarika said. “We’d better get up there, see what we can scare up. Give her some help if she’s going to make it to the top and fight the main army.”

  They set off climbing a slope of crumbling rock that leaked a continual stream of smoke from numerous vent holes. Miklos unbound a white sheet of linen that was wrapped around his sheath and cut off strips with a dagger. They tied them around their mouths to help them breathe.

  The terrain grew more precarious as they climbed. Every footstep sent cinders and ash sliding, and once Katalinka had to grab Kozmer’s arm to keep him from losing his balance and tumbling down the slope. They rounded a corner on the twisting path they were taking up the mountainside, and discovered one of the lava pits, which bubbled ominously as they approached.

  “Stay behind me,” Kozmer said. “Whatever the devil it is, we’ll hide from the thing.” He began to weave a sowen net to pull in the auras around him.

  “No,” Sarika said in a harsh whisper. “We should fight it. The more of these monsters we destroy, the better.”

  A large bubble burped on the lava pit, and they froze. A crocodile-like head lifted clear of the lava with molten rock dripping from its jaws. Blue flame jetted from its nostrils. A second head broke the surface, snapped at the first, and then pulled away as the pair tasted the air with forked tongues. Katalinka joined her sowen to Kozmer’s and pulled the auras in tight. The heads turned this way and that, hissing with what sounded like frustration.

  Katalinka caught Sarika’s eye and gave her a sharp look. She hoped the meaning was clear.

  Stay still, don’t do anything foolish.

  Moments later, the heads submerged once again beneath the lava. The companions waited a moment, then crept past it, hiding behind Kozmer’s sowen net.

  Miklos cursed in a low voice when they were clear. “Was that one demon or two? It was huge either way.”

  “We could have killed it,” Sarika said. “Killed them. We could have won.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Katalinka said. “Narina’s going to be coming along that slope any minute.” She pointed to a massive escarpment running down from the northern face of the volcanic caldera. The canals ran across its surface as they moved deeper into the canyon. “She might not wait for us. We have to get up top before she arrives.”

  “If all these lava pits hold crocodile demons,” Sarika said, “she’s going to be in trouble. The best thing we can do for her is thin their ranks.”

  Kozmer had been probing outward once again. Now he withdrew his sowen. “We might have a bigger problem than crocodiles. Look up there, see that ridge along the edge of the caldera? See that shiny bit catching the sun?”

  Katalinka followed his gaze. The shiny spot looked like an odd formation of volcanic rock jutting from one side of the caldera, as if a plume of lava had launched from the volcano, been caught by a chilling wind, and hardened into a knob where it splashed down. It was perhaps thirty, forty feet in length.

  “I see it,” she said. Miklos and Sarika nodded in turn.

  “There’s something lurking behind the rock, out of sight. Something big, creating a void in the auras.”

  She sent her sowen forward and saw what he meant. But what could it be? Not more of the lava crocodiles; he was right about that. These seemed to live in pits located on flatter stretches that extended from the volcano like shelves. The pits and the shelf-like protrusions seemed designed as defenses, traps for anyone trying to scale the volcano.

  The knobby stone, however, perched on the edge of the escarpment. There was no lava up there she could see, only bare rock. Whatever it was, it was big, and unknown, and that scared her.

  “Demons take me,” Sarika said. “Look!”

  The knob of stone was shifting, and Katalinka first thought that the edge of the escarpment was giving way under its weight, and a landslide would carry it away with a roar. If it fell in their direction, they’d be left scrambling to avoid being carried down with it. But incredibly, the stone was lifting somehow, as if heaved skyward from below. Two long, knobby pieces of stone moved beneath it like giant levers. Another piece of rock moved around from the opposite side.

  It was then that her entire perception shifted. The levers weren’t rocks, they were enormous, crab-like legs. A pair of pincers emerged from beneath the knob of stone itself, which wasn’t a knob at all, but the body of a giant, crustacean-like beast. Finally, a long tail topped with a stinger straightened and curved over the creature’s back.

  The monster that emerged was a black scorpion, at least thirty feet in length counting all the appendages, claws, and tail. The tip of its stinger glowed red and dripped what looked like flaming pitch, but the rest of the scorpion gleamed like black stone as it scuttled along the edge of the escarpment stretching above them, moving down a gradual slope on what must be the edge of the lava canals.

  It may have been lurking, but it was in a hurry now. Suddenly, it came to an abrupt halt. Its stinger folded inward, and it tucked its tail against its body. At the same time its pincers and legs tore up the surroundin
g ground, which sent so much ash into the air that it obscured the monster’s actions. Katalinka’s sowen couldn’t penetrate the void.

  When the cloud had cleared, the monster was barely visible, mostly buried in the ground, with only the top of its shell emerging above the surface. It looked like nothing more than a volcanic boulder poking out of the ground.

  “Blast it all,” Kozmer said. “Not now.”

  Katalinka followed his gaze, at the same moment sensing Narina racing along the top of the escarpment as she climbed toward the volcanic cone. Her sowen pushed ahead of her like a strong wind off the mountain peaks, with her own presence behind, driving it forward. She was traveling swiftly, at a near sprint, and as she crossed the escarpment, lights flared behind her.

  Someone was pursuing. Demons, it would seem. Perhaps they’d sensed her coming or received warning from a flock of crows who’d punctured her attempts to conceal her passage. And Narina, instead of facing them in smaller groups, had burst through their ranks, apparently content to drag them along behind while she charged the volcano itself.

  What she didn’t see—what she couldn’t know, surely—was that she was bearing down on the giant black scorpion. The monster had apparently spotted her, run to a spot of ambush, and buried itself to wait for her approach.

  Meanwhile, Narina’s four companions remained on the slope far beneath the escarpment. To reach her meant continuing their laborious path up the side of the volcano until they reached a twenty-foot shelf of rock, on top of which lay a flatter approach to the caldera. That would take a good twenty minutes of sustained effort.

  Katalinka threw out her sowen, desperate to warn her sister in time. She put all her will into it.

  Stop, for God’s sake. Look!

  Her sowen raced up the hillside, then struck the edge of the escarpment and rebounded, her message shattering, with wisps of sowen dissolving in the air. The monster had created a wall around itself that extended outward in all directions and left it hidden from psychic probes as surely as burying itself in the ground had hidden it from sight. That same shield had blocked Katalinka’s warning.