Bladedancer

by Michael Wallace

  Her first thought was to give herself a few more seconds to finish mending her broken ribs and other, more minor injuries. Not too long; she had to recover her swords and fly back to the temple to help her companions defend themselves. But then one of the lizards stopped its frantic back-and-forth search and stood with tongue flicking near where one of her swords was buried, clearly sensing the weapon and its auras.

  She bent her sowen into a wedge and shoved it ahead of her. It struck something, resisted and even bowed backward, and then burst through. The protective shield broke apart and sent ripples through the surrounding auras. All around, lizards stopped, lifted their heads, and tested the air with forked tongues. Several turned in her direction.

  Narina jumped to her feet and sprinted toward her buried sword and the lizard rooting around trying to find it. The creature spotted her and opened its jaws, but she jumped over it, just out of reach, and sent her sowen slamming into its head before it could snap at her. It went down, flailing. She thrust her hand into the snow, feeling with her sowen for the hilt, not the blade. She dragged it clear, and it flared with black energy, shadow trailing off the edge.

  A single swipe cut the lizard in two. More lizards came at her from every side, and with only one blade, she couldn’t hold them at bay for long. One bit her on the calf and threw its body and tail around her, but she got free, limped clear, and healed her wounded muscle as she fled the attack. The other sword was up over the top of the broken caldera, calling to her, undiscovered by her enemies, but with several of them still blocking her way. They were slithering, sliding, and running at her from all directions.

  Narina jumped again to leap a pair of lizards, sliced down at a third that snapped at her, and blasted a hole through the rest with her sowen. Seconds later she found her other sword, which had landed tip down, embedding itself until only the top two inches of the hilt rose above the snow. She got her hand around it and dragged it clear just as the first of a mob of ice lizards leaped at her.

  Shadow and heat flared through her demon blades. She whirled about in a dance of death as lizards threw themselves upon her swords in a suicidal frenzy. She cut them down with every swing, until shortly a pile of writhing, twitching corpses surrounded her. There were others still approaching, but she’d gained herself some space. Narina turned on her heels in a pivot toward the mass of dark clouds suddenly hovering over a spot up the canyon that could only be the temple grounds.

  She crouched, leg muscles tensing, and leaped toward home.

  #

  Katalinka had battled demons on the road and the volcano, even fought briefly against the giant crow-headed demon king. She’d seen the awesome, fear-inspiring dragons fighting against demons, taking wounds, and delivering crushing blows of their own. She’d never forget the first time one of the demigods had flown overhead, while she was with Abelard on her way to the firewalker temple, and the terror that had gripped her heart.

  None of those experiences prepared her for her first glimpse of the Great Drake as it broke through the clouds and descended toward the temple with its wings outstretched. It was covered with bulbous scales of mottled green and emerald on its breast, each one glowing and pulsing. Feathers covered its wings and throat, each one like a sliver of broken green glass. The enormous head was large enough to swallow a horse in a single gulp, with spines like jutting icicles running up its nose ridge to a forehead with a single horn that itself was bigger than Miklos, the tallest human she’d known. Its nostrils spewed a frothy white breath that coalesced into a shower of snow and ice.

  The dragon beat its wings as it slowed its descent, and a gale-force wind threw Katalinka back and drove snow into her face. It dropped into the clearing with its clawed feet outstretched. There was a man standing there—she couldn’t see who through the blasting snow and ice—and he lifted a sword in a futile gesture to defend himself as the monster slammed to the ground with an earth-splitting crash. The man made no sound as the monster landed, simply disappeared beneath its bulk.

  The dragon swung its head about with a shake almost like a dog coming out of the water. It turned about with more breath blasting out of its snout. A pale green liquid the consistency of blood trickled from one of its nostrils. Was that a wound of Narina’s doing? If so, she seemed to have done her job, and enraged the monster.

  That same thought chilled Katalinka. What happened next? Had the sword saint delivered a single, stinging blow, only to be crushed as easily as the man she’d spotted with his sword upheld in a futile gesture? The monster had obliterated him like a boulder dropped onto a mouse.

  There were shouts behind her, coming from the blacksmith shed, and the dragon turned its head in that direction, even as it drew a huge breath through its nostrils with such force that it lifted Katalinka’s cloak and made the nearby trees shake. Its chest expanded. It seemed to be drawing its breath in preparation for unleashing a blast toward the smithy.

  She’d been on the receiving end of a dragon attack on more than one occasion, and knew full well the wintery hell it could deliver. Except on those other occasions she’d been a good distance from the dragons in question and hadn’t been the recipient of its full wrath. This blast would destroy the smithy, scatter the fire and the weapons, and bury it all in snow. The battle would be over before it started.

  Katalinka recognized all of this in an instant, and also knew she had to buy time for the temple warriors to fetch their burning weapons from the fire and direct them against the dragon. She raised her swords and crossed them above her head even as she shoved the dragon with the full weight of her sowen.

  “I’m here! Face me!”

  The monstrous head swiveled toward her and cocked, and a dark spot in the middle of one emerald-green eye constricted. Blood continued to leak from its wounded nostril. There was no expression on its icy, scaly face, but she sensed a malignant energy in that gaze, anger at the creatures that dared stand against the might of the demigods, refusing the gift of power offered to them and turning against those who’d bestowed it. Katalinka’s knees almost buckled as she felt the weight of its wrath.

  “My sister did that to you!” she shouted. “My swords will do the same. You created me, you gave me power, and now you will face the bite of my blades.”

  The dragon drew in another, deeper breath. The vortex caused by the intake of air whipped her hair around her face, and her clothes flapped.

  “Katalinka!” a man bellowed against the howling wind.

  It was Miklos, standing near the shed, though she couldn’t see him through the swirling snow. He’d recovered his falchion; its auras glittered dangerously, and she felt the heat cast off by its blade.

  “What are you doing?” he cried. “Get out of there!”

  Katalinka ignored the warbrand. “That’s right, you ugly beast. Come at me, I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” She shoved again, this time even harder.

  The dragon opened its mouth. She caught a glimpse down its throat, where something twisted like a whirlpool of ice and snow, with a black void at the center that was deeper and darker than a night sky empty of stars. Even looking into it, she felt the thing drawing at her soul, as if to tear it from her body and swallow it. It was a glimpse into the abyss, the heavens before the creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  And then the dragon let out a blast of its breath. Katalinka braced herself with every bit of her sowen. She held it in front of her like a shield, knowing she had to withstand the initial assault, and then maybe the others would attack in time to draw the dragon’s attention before it was too late.

  Everything went white an instant before a hammer blow of ice and snow slammed into her. It shredded her sowen and knocked her to the ground. She tried to fight her way back to her feet, but a cascade of snow and ice pounded down on her, holding her down, drowning her. The ground shook with a fury that could only have been the dragon stomping toward her to finish her off, and she couldn’t so much as rise to her feet to defend
herself with one final, feeble effort.

  Sowen struck her with such force that it practically lifted her to her feet. Kozmer. A second push of sowen knocked aside the snow and ice as the initial assault finally came to an end. That was Miklos. The elder and the warbrand had thrown her their strength at the last moment.

  She got herself upright just as the dragon was looming over her, so large it blotted out the sky. Its mouth opened, and with it came a chill so deep it stole the air from her lungs. She rolled to one side as its head slammed into the ground, jaws open. It came up with a mouthful of snow and earth, which it spat to the side in a dismissive gesture.

  Katalinka had recovered her wits, together with some of her mastery of the sowen, and even as the dragon whirled about to snatch her up with a claw, she charged forward with a battle cry. She used her entire weight and the weight of her sowen as she slammed into its belly with swords outstretched. The swords clanged against its scales as if against stone, and she flew backward from the force of it, nearly losing her balance again.

  My swords have cooled. They must be hot to damage the monster. Drive sowen into them.

  The thought came to her even as she realized that there would be no chance to rectify her error. She was ducking to the side, but the dragon had tracked her movement and grabbed her with one of its clawed feet. The claws tightened around her chest, and it lifted her toward its mouth, which opened wide to devour her. She struggled to free herself, struggled to get her swords clear, even as her eyes bulged and her vision went black from the crushing grip.

  Suddenly, she was falling, air coming back into her mouth in a ragged gasp. She landed with a grunt, the impact softened by the heaps of fresh snow. As she rose, half-stunned, wondering what had happened, she had to duck a swing of the dragon’s tail. It was turning away to face some new threat.

  Two flaming arrows stuck from its back. A longer spear had impaled itself all the way to the shaft on a spot higher up, near the neck. Fraters and students from the warbrand and bladedancer temples threw spears and fired arrows, while firewalkers ran out to arm them with more such weapons plucked directly from the fire. At such close range, and with Drazul standing at the shed, speeding their shots with his sowen, every arrow fired and spear hurled at the dragon was striking true. Heated to near melting point, and forged by Katalinka’s own hand and with all of her skill, the weapons embedded themselves in their enemy’s flesh one after another.

  Had the Great Drake been a normal foe, the weight of the attack would have quickly settled matters, but the shots only seemed to enrage the monster. It lashed its tail and smashed a bladedancer frater who’d been reloading his bow. The young man went flying and crashed into the trees some fifty or more feet away, surely a lethal injury.

  The dragon began to draw in its breath a second time. Katalinka leaped forward, pouring sowen into her blades until they shimmered with heat. At the same time, Miklos appeared to her right and joined her in the charge, his falchion drawn back over his shoulder. Katalinka jumped through the air, twenty, thirty feet high, aiming for the monster’s chest. Miklos swept in below her with his sword. He smashed one of its legs as Katalinka thrust the twin demon blades forward as hard as she could.

  The first of her weapons—her own master blade—penetrated several inches. The second, lesser blade only scraped the surface and didn’t break the skin. The dragon gave a jerk and roared, and she went flying backward. She tried to pull her good sword out as she fell, but it was stuck too deeply in the creature’s body, and she lost her grip.

  Miklos’s blow had landed with a bone-crunching strike, and now he staggered backward as if stunned, his sword all but vibrating in his hands. The dragon lashed out with its tail, struck him on the side, and sent him flying. It wasn’t as strong a blow as what the creature had used to kill the other warrior, but it was enough to send the warbrand halfway across the clearing, where he landed with a heavy thump. He’d somehow kept hold of his sword, but as he rose to his knees with a grimace, one of his arms hung loose and shattered at his side.

  The dragon seemed to be temporarily distracted by the wounds, not only those inflicted by Katalinka and Miklos, but those from the knot of temple warriors standing next to the smithy and bravely flinging hot projectiles in its direction. Arrows stuck out of its hide and a couple of the spears had buried themselves all the way to the shaft.

  Kozmer was somewhere nearby, still throwing his sowen to Katalinka, and she should have had a perfect opportunity to follow up and inflict greater damage. None of the other attacks had delivered a blow like hers, and she could have delivered a second of equal or greater strength. Unfortunately, her master demon blade was still embedded in its chest, with shadow leaking off the exposed portion of the blade. It was out of reach, and the creature turned away from her to draw in its breath again.

  She made to charge, thinking she could get over its tail, around its legs, and leap for her sword, but her right ankle felt numb and nearly gave way with the first step. She seemed to have twisted it when landing in the snow and ice, and her sowen had blunted the pain without yet healing it. She turned inward now to rectify this problem, even as she realized any cure would come too late to recover her sword and stop the dragon’s attack.

  Katalinka waved her arm as the dragon opened its mouth in the direction of the defenders at the blacksmith shed. “Get out of there! Move!”

  The dragon let out a blast.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Narina broke through the clouds on her descent toward the temple. She’d managed to fight off the cold with her sowen, but the buffeting wind, the ice and snow and hail in her face, and the thin air left her lightheaded and short of breath. She wasn’t sure if she’d set off in the right direction, and with green lightning rumbling about her and making her hair stand on end, she half-expected to emerge from the cloud cover disoriented, far afield from her goal.

  But no, she was exactly on track. The temple grounds stretched before her in a patchwork of clearings through the forest, beginning near the post road and continuing up past the upper baths to the high meadows where the animals grazed. Snow left it blanketed, but here and there she caught glimpses of dark roofs, as well as the red and black and green of the shrine itself. Smoke rose in a roiling cloud from the smithy.

  It was here that the dragon had landed. From above the creature looked not so different from some of the demons she’d faced, except for its monstrous size and the way it reflected light like an enormous emerald. It was only when she drew closer that she saw the tucked wings, covered in glass-like feathers, and the monstrous reptilian head with its spines and fins.

  Bodies lay strewn about, struggling in the snow. Others were completely buried, and she felt their sowens as she descended, felt their fears and even their wounds. A handful were either dead or near death—fraters and students—while others still tried to drag themselves clear. Miklos lay some distance off, his arm and shoulder broken. Katalinka was closer in, within range of the monster’s swinging tail and stomping feet, trying to stagger clear on a badly twisted ankle. She seemed to have lost one of her swords, and was fortunate that the dragon’s attention was directed elsewhere.

  That attention was fixed on a handful of temple warriors standing in front of the forge, gamely hurling hot spears and firing scorching arrows. They hadn’t done the monster much damage, but they’d drawn its attention.

  The Great Drake opened its mouth and let fly a cone of snow and ice, so powerful that the gusts buffeted Narina even as she was still three or four hundred feet above the action. The blast struck the defenders and drove them back, then hit the shed itself, which was already missing one wall, perhaps stripped away to allow people to come and go with greater ease.

  The remaining shed walls vanished in the attack, and boards and timbers and tools and weapons went flying, along with people. The cold, wet blast hit the hot fires of the forge, which had been sending up more smoke than Narina had ever seen. There was a dull thump, a sort of explosion, an
d a second shock wave rolled out, this one smelling of burning charcoal.

  Narina had been falling toward a spot very close to the ledge from which she’d originally launched herself, but twisted her body at the last moment to veer toward the smithy instead. She had better mastery this time and angled directly at the dragon. There were survivors from the blast lying around, together with the two sohns, both working furiously to heal themselves and get back into the fight. The monster was already gathering its breath to let loose a second blast.

  Narina rotated her swords in her hands and lifted them overhead as she descended, hilts up and points down. The dragon was close now, only fifty feet or so distant, and the nostril she’d impaled earlier was still bleeding, which gave her courage. She’d wounded it once. She could do it again. She sent her sowen through her arms and into her swords.

  Take my heat. Let the blades burn like lava.

  They turned black, nearly vanishing, like her fists had become encased in shadow. At the last minute, the beast noticed her and began to lift its head. As it did so, she slammed down with the points and struck it on its forehead, nearly hitting the eyes.

  She was trying to do just that thing in fact, repeating how she’d blinded the crow-headed demon king, but the dragon was a blank spot in the auras, and its presence twisted its surroundings and forced her blades to the side. Even so, the points struck home and partially impaled the dragon’s head as her feet landed on its snout, where she fought to keep her balance.

  But the head was harder than a block of frozen granite, and her blades, even as hot as she’d made them, couldn’t penetrate its hide. It roared and bucked, and she barely managed to leap clear of its snapping jaws. She landed in a roll, swords still in hand, then rolled again to avoid a foot stomp. Its tail lashed about and struck her hard in the chest.

  Dimly, she heard a cry that she knew at once was her sister.

  Katalinka’s sowen joined hers as she went flying, and this was fortunate, as the dragon opened its mouth and blasted at her. Narina was caught in the attack and might have died if not for the shield of her sister’s sowen.