Bladedancer (The Sword Saint Series Book 4)

by Michael Wallace

  She set her hammer across the anvil, picked up the smaller one Bartal been using, and placed it alongside before following him into the shed, where he heaped the coals and started at the bellows. While the bellows wheezed behind her like the lungs of some great beast, and heat emanated in waves from the coals, Narina turned to the shelves on the opposite side of the room.

  Some held newly worked swords, practice spear points, maul heads, and the like, created by others from the temple. A partially finished falchion blade—this the work of warbrands, of course—shared a shelf with pieces of steel selected by firewalkers, who needed to keep up their own craft. Eventually they’d construct a smithy of their own.

  Another shelf held a handful of partially worked dragon cores left from Narina’s efforts these past few weeks. They were a flawed jumble, especially the first few that she’d bungled while shuffling half-dead in the camp, partially healed after her battle with Lady Damanja. They would eventually be melted down and remixed until the auras returned to a chaotic state, from there to be poured once more into molds.

  It was the shelf above it that drew Narina’s attention. There, she’d stacked three blocks of demon steel carefully selected from among twenty or so options. They were the best she’d found, the purest of the lot. She picked them up, weighed them carefully in hand, and turned them over to study their auras.

  They were all fine pieces of steel. Each had the potential within it to make a master demon blade, black and polished and lethal, with the ability to cut through flesh and bone. To slice a lesser weapon as if it were made of green willow.

  They each had different qualities, however, and she’d been unable to decide. One would be extremely balanced, with a strong connection to her sowen, while another would be more fickle, but with a powerful ability to bend the auras ahead of it. The final core, and the one she chose now, had a stronger hint of the demonic in it, manifest by a slightly bluish sheen to the metal. The iron making up this core had once passed through the heat of a volcanic eruption. Could it possibly deliver damage to a dragon demigod?

  She grabbed it with the tongs and thrust it into the coals. Bartal was still working the bellows. “What better steel to fight a dragon?” she said. “If this can’t do it, nothing can.”

  “Master?”

  “Never mind, I’m just thinking out loud. Heap the coals, will you? I’ll work the bellows this time.”

  She thought of Katalinka’s description of the lesser demigods—the Blue and White Drakes—she’d spotted when fighting demons on the post road. Monsters, both of them, capable of burying an enemy in snow or shooting shards of ice from their frozen skin. Then there was the Great Drake, the largest of the dragons, with untold power and fury, which nobody had yet seen. It was unfathomable that even the mightiest sohn could stand up to such a creature.

  And yet that was what Narina had been contemplating when she’d chosen the core. It all seemed ridiculous as she turned over the glowing steel, waiting for it to heat. This first time took the longest, with the metal in block form and starting off cool. Yet getting this first hammering right was key to starting correctly. All it took was a few bungled strokes and she may as well start over rather than try to wrestle damaged auras into alignment.

  She’d been working for almost thirty-six hours straight, with short breaks to eat and wash, and a handful of naps, none of them lasting more than a half-hour, and yet she had never felt so alert and powerful as she did when carrying the glowing piece of steel the handful of steps to the anvil, while Bartal rang the forge bell behind her. She felt strong, like she could throw the anvil across the yard if she wished, agile enough to leap to the highest peak of the smithy roof, and swift enough to race to the shrine and back again before the steel had a chance to cool. When she looked around her, she could see every aura in the surrounding rocks, trees, and soil as if they’d been sketched by hand.

  And so it was that as she picked up her hammer, held the steel in place with her tongs, and nodded for Bartal to begin with his smaller hammer, she was feeling the entirety of her surroundings.

  Including a single crow flying high overhead.

  The bird wasn’t merely winging through the air above the temple. Other birds had penetrated the subtle barrier laid down by Kozmer, Drazul, and the other temple elders, but none had yet broken through a second, even more finely woven net that concealed the temple from their prying eyes.

  But this one wasn’t a random crow of the mountains. Its attention was too focused, and its flying pattern, circling, was too regular to be a coincidence. A spy then, yet why didn’t it continue on its way, turned aside by the temple’s defenses?

  Bartal had been tapping his hammer, but now he stopped. “Master?” His gaze drifted skyward, but it remained unfocused, as if he couldn’t see the bird that was clearly circling overhead. He should be alert, but there was no change in his sowen.

  “Go to the shrine,” she told him. “There are fraters training, and elders. Drazul is there, and that old woman from the warbrands—what was her name? Never mind. Tell them the temple warriors must be gathered, and quickly. Bring them to the shrine. The elders must form their sowen into a shield. Everyone else should be prepared to fight. Every man and woman with his or her swords.”

  “What is going on?”

  “No time for questions. Go!”

  Bartal stripped off his apron as he ran, letting it fall and then casting his hammer on top of it. He scaled the flagstone steps leading toward the mill, the armory, and the shrine two at a time, and was shortly out of sight. In spite of the urgency, Narina was careful not to let haste disturb the perfect harmony of her sowen.

  Narina picked up the demon core with the tongs and carried it back inside, leaving the hammer where it was. She set the still-glowing piece of steel onto a metal shelf next to the forge, between a pair of horseshoes and a tin pitcher brought in for mending. She hung her apron on its hook, washed her hands in a pail, and splashed more water on her face. When that was done, she removed her sword belts from where they hung next to the apron and strapped them on.

  Now armed, she bent to tighten the bindings on her slippers, loosened her hair and pulled it back again into a knot, then refastened it with the silver oak leaf pin that had once belonged to her mother. Finally, she bent the auras around her and stepped back outside.

  Narina was not surprised to see a woman standing next to the anvil. The woman wore a dark cloak with its tails swept back like the wings of a bird, and carried a warbrand sword across her back, with its hilt poking up beside her head. She wore black boots and black leather pants, with a jerkin tucked against her body by a polished, gleaming belt.

  Everything about her gave the impression of a crow having taken human form except for a silver wolfhead pendant hanging around her neck, one of the emblems of Damanja’s fiefdom.

  Narina relaxed her sowen and allowed the crowlord to see her clearly. The other woman’s attention sharpened at once.

  “You’ve changed since we last fought,” Damanja said.

  “As have you,” Narina responded, wary. “Your sowen is different, and you have new abilities. Who have you murdered?”

  “Your friends, who else?”

  Narina forced herself to remain calm as she prodded at Damanja. She was relieved not to find Katalinka’s sowen lingering around the crowlord, as for a brief moment she’d worried the woman had killed her sister. It seemed to be a firewalker essence, instead. But not Sarika’s, either; Narina knew the woman well enough by now to recognize that the unknown sowen was not hers.

  “Lujza. Is that it? Is that who you killed?” Narina shook her head in disgust as the other woman returned a slight smile. “I’m not surprised. The curse had you both.”

  Damanja chuckled. “The woman thought herself safe. She’d found some little sanctuary, put up by other fools, it would seem, to hide themselves from the inevitable. It didn’t protect her any more than this place will protect you.”

  “Then I feel sorry for he
r,” Narina said. “It is possible to break free of the bloodshed, you know. Or at least the bloodlust. Have you considered it?”

  Damanja bared her teeth in a good approximation of the wolfish snarl on the pendant at her throat. “You think you’ve purified yourself? You think you’re cured, is that it? Your friends brought you home, and now you can step out of the war and let it pass you by? Don’t be a fool, bladedancer. You’re smarter than that.”

  “I’m not a champion of the demons or the dragons, and that’s enough for me. As for stepping out of the war, no, that isn’t possible. But I can master my own choices, and that’s something.”

  “They are gods, woman. Do you understand that? You can’t fight the will of the gods.”

  “Demigods,” Narina corrected. “They may be immortal, but not all-powerful.”

  “What are you trying to do here? Do you think you can do battle without taking sides, is that it? Play off the demons against the dragons and hope to keep them in balance?”

  Narina didn’t want to share her exact plans. Neither did she want to provoke the woman into a fight. Not yet. Let Bartal raise the alarm, let the temple arm itself. She didn’t have Katalinka, Miklos, Sarika, or Kozmer at hand, but there was enough strength in the combined might of the three sword temples to give Narina an edge against a superior opponent.

  Yes, superior. The two women had been equally matched in their first fight, but Damanja seemed to have strengthened herself since then, this time by plundering the sowen of a firewalker sohn.

  “Is that such a foolish idea?” Narina asked. “If the dragons grow too strong we throw in our lot with the demons to push them back. If the demons grow stronger—and right now they are—we thin their ranks to allow the dragons time to recover.”

  “Every day of the war is misery for this world,” Damanja said. “The surest way to peace is to bring it to a swift end.”

  “You mean a victory of either fire or ice. What kind of end is that?”

  “Only fire. Ice is death.”

  “They’re both death,” Narina said.

  “Also, you are a fool if you think the demons will win without aid. The Great Drake has yet to take the battlefield.” Damanja tapped her chest. “That is my role. To be the champion who draws that frozen monster out of its icy lake and defeats it. To drive off the cold and misery and endless winter and bring warmth to the land.”

  Narina blinked. Warmth? The air was thick and sweltering and stank with sulfur and woodsmoke. They didn’t need demonic heat any more than they needed unseasonable snow. Damanja was apparently so far down the path of her own curse that she couldn’t think clearly.

  Something tensed in the crowlord’s posture, and Narina drew her swords even as the other woman’s falchion seemed to materialize in her hand. Shadows swirled around the blade and dripped to the ground, where they dissolved like mist.

  “Come, bladewalker,” she said. “Let’s finish this.” Suddenly, Damanja’s gaze shot past Narina’s shoulder and she snarled. “Where did they come from?”

  Narina didn’t have to turn to feel the sowens of her fellow sword temple warriors coming down the path. The firewalker elder, Drazul, was at their head, with Bartal by his side, leading a collection of other elders and fraters from the three temples.

  “I summoned them, of course,” Narina said.

  “Very well. Sacrifice your foot soldiers if you’d like. They were going to die all the same, but now you can watch it happen.”

  Damanja moved in a blur, her cape sweeping behind her, as if to charge around Narina, explode into the midst of the gathering supporters, and tear them apart with her shadow. Like cutting down a swarm of annoying flies to eliminate the distraction. But the temple elders had prepared a shield of sowen, which they thrust outward like a thunderclap. It held up the crowlord long enough for Narina to react.

  She leaped at Damanja’s back, a jump of twenty feet or more, and came down from above with her swords gleaming black and white in the sunlight. The crowlord spun away, and one of Narina’s swords sliced the woman’s cape in two, but otherwise missed. Damanja looked down at the severed bit of clothing and whirled around with a snarl. She swung her sword, and with it came the shadows.

  Narina had learned from her previous battle with the crowlord. Instead of ducking or swerving, she leaped backward, just out of reach of the thrusting tip of shadow. By now the fraters were charging into the battle with swords swinging, supported by a wall of friendly sowen from the elders at their rear. Damanja was almost encircled from behind, and with Narina in front, it looked like their enemy would be quickly overwhelmed.

  But the crowlord did something unexpected. She thrust her falchion overhead with two hands, and shadow shot into the sky with an ear-splitting crack, like a black, oily lightning bolt stretching into the clouds. The thunderclap threw Narina backward, and other temple warriors fell or dropped their weapons.

  Narina was already recovering, ready to press the attack again, when black shapes filled the sky and came hurtling downward. They had the shape of crows, but as they slammed into the trees, they started fires in the upper boughs. More hit the ground, smoking and glowing, and she saw they were pieces of volcanic debris.

  A firewalker frater dropped with a cry as a stone struck him in the head. Others threw up their sowens to deflect the bombardment. Narina dodged some, struck others from the sky with her swords as she had Lord Balint’s arrows, and ran at Damanja with her blades lowered.

  More thunder sounded overhead, followed by the sound of a more distant rolling boom from down the canyon. The sky darkened as the thunder continued, and there was an unsettled feeling in the auras overhead, but Narina didn’t take her eyes from the enemy to have a closer look.

  The crowlord tore off her tattered cape, threw it to the side, and braced herself with her sword drawn. “Come at me!” she cried. “We’ll settle this now.”

  Chapter Five

  Katalinka and her companions were trudging their way grimly up the post road from the short battle with the fire demons when thunder rolled down from the canyon above. She looked up, expecting to see a storm brewing in the heights, some new push from the dragons as they sought to break out of their mountain peaks and renew the war.

  Instead, something that looked like black lightning reverberated in the clouds, a bizarre and unsettling sight. The light where they stood seemed to be sucked away, with everything dimming moment by moment, and a thunderclap shook the sky directly overhead.

  “Demons take me,” Sarika said. “What is that?”

  Before anyone could answer the firewalker’s question, something slammed into the road in front of them, where it lay hissing and smoking. It looked like a chunk of black volcanic rock the size of a clenched fist, and it seemed to have fallen directly from the clouds overhead. Moments later another came hissing down, and soon they were falling like hail. One struck Kozmer on the shoulder, and he dropped to a knee, wincing in pain, while his staff clattered to the ground.

  The temporary loss of his sowen was a bigger blow than the injury, which, while surely painful, was likely not enough to seriously wound him. With the injured elder out of commission, three sohns scrambled to patch together defenses against the murderous hailstorm. The trio of warriors formed a shield overhead that deflected the stones, giving them momentary protection.

  The hailstorm fell with increasing ferocity until it was deafening as it hammered against the stone surface of the road all around. It was only when Katalinka glanced over to see how Andras and Notch were doing that she noticed that the dog was barking frantically as the ratter tried to calm her.

  It wasn’t the rocky hail that was setting her off, because she’d turned about on the road, facing back the way they’d come. It was then that Katalinka saw the glow of demons massing behind them. The creatures had no aura, and she couldn’t tell how many there were, or where they’d come from, but she could only imagine that these were more of the ones who’d been swimming across to get at them earli
er. They’d somehow found their way, perhaps drawn or aided by the hailstorm of hot volcanic rock.

  At the same time, a black, billowing cloud of smoke came roiling up the post road to envelop the demons. The cloud was roughly two or three hundred feet distant still, but moving like some living thing. Black cinders swirled about it, seeming to coax it forward, and as the companions stared, the cinders took the form of flapping crows with glowing red eyes. The bombardment continued to thunder onto the road, but over the din came a shrieking, wailing cry from the crows.

  Katalinka had no idea what all this meant, but she was quite certain she didn’t want to risk the cloud flowing over them, so she released her sowen from the others’ and pushed it forward instead. The others faltered for a moment, then regained their strength, and the sowen shield held. She used her own sowen to attack the strange cloud.

  At first her efforts seemed to stall the cloud’s advance, thinning it into a filthy black fog, but the crows opened their mouths and spewed an oily black residue, and the cloud regained form. As it drew closer, the glowing figures of demons were visible one more, and by the time it was about forty feet away, she heard their growls and snarls. A lash of the whip, a struggle within the cloud; the demons seemed to be fighting each other even as they continued to advance.

  The cloud was close enough now to feel the terrific heat radiating off the thing; the demons seemed to have found another way to keep their molten skins from hardening. The infernal magic would allow them to keep fighting without lava or fire.

  “The cloud is heating the demons!” Katalinka cried, struggling to be heard above the din of falling rock, shrieking crows, and screaming demons. “I can’t break it apart. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  But how, with the companions pinned beneath a sowen shield while volcanic rock bombarded them from above?

  Just when the situation seemed the most bleak, the strange lightning and thunder stopped, and the aerial attack eased. The temple warriors released their sowen and made to retreat. Andras and Notch bolted up the road, while Sarika and Miklos grabbed Kozmer’s arms and half-carried, half-dragged the old man forward. Kozmer struggled to hold onto his staff.