Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

Still, they each drew wounds. During one engagement, she got beneath his sword and slashed her blades across his calves. She hadn’t cut as deeply as she’d have liked, but expected him to falter long enough for her to gain a short advantage. Yet he didn’t so much as flinch, and his sowen healed the wounds before Narina could take advantage and strike him a second time.

  Moments later, Radolf slammed his sword against her blades, and the tip stretched past her crossed weapons and pierced her above the right breast. The blow shoved her back, and would have impaled her if she hadn’t leaned backward, almost doubling over to disengage herself.

  Narina gasped at the pain. Her shoulder burned, and the arm carrying her dragon hung limp. She jumped across the narrow lane, landing on the berm, thinking only to keep away from his blade long enough for her shoulder to heal. Already, the pain had reduced to a throb, and then to a dull ache. She looked down in surprise to see only a spot of blood and a small pucker in the flesh where he’d gashed through her linen shirt and punctured her flesh.

  While the bladedancer and warbrand clashed with swords, a second fight occurred between their sowens. They tangled, and tried to suffocate and overwhelm. Narina couldn’t get the best of him here, either, but did manage to keep him from smothering her. She disengaged and used her sowen to shake the ground beneath her enemy’s feet. She drove a breeze up the narrow path, picked up dirt, and hurled it into his eyes.

  Radolf fought back, collapsing the berm when she used it to launch another attack. Moments later, when his sword blow slammed her into the rock wall opposite, the mortar dissolved and the stones tumbled around her and drove her to her knees.

  It was here that her enemy made a mistake. Instead of shoving his sword through her chest while her legs were pinned beneath the collapsed wall, he drew it behind his shoulders to make a single, killing blow.

  Narina got free before he could swing and leaned toward his exposed belly with her dragon blade while lifting her demon to deflect his blow. He was too far into his swing to check his momentum, and it carried him onto the tip of the dragon. She twisted her wrist and gave the sword a brutal jerk against his stomach as he pulled back.

  Radolf groaned and dropped one hand to his belly. It lay open, with guts spilling out. He pushed them back in, and shockingly, his flesh was already trying to close itself. What fresh devilry was this? That wound should have finished him, yet it had only slowed him momentarily.

  But Narina wasn’t giving him a chance to get back in the fight. She pressed the attack while he was still clutching at his belly. His other hand lifted his falchion across his body to block an attack at his torso, and that exposed his arm.

  Narina kept the falchion engaged with her dragon and slammed into his forearm with her demon. It hit with full force and took his arm off just below the elbow. Radolf groaned in agony and fell to his knees, even as his forearm and the hand still clutching the falchion fell away from his body.

  His remaining hand still clutched at his belly, which had stopped closing itself, as the shock of multiple wounds seemed to overwhelm his sowen, which withered in on itself. Blood flowed from his severed arm and from his belly wound alike.

  He grimaced and looked up at her from his knees. “You’re covered with my blood.”

  She could feel it on her face. More of it dripped down her sword hilt onto her hand. “And I’ll have the rest of it, too,” she said.

  “Good. By the demigods, I’m glad it won’t be me.” He was already pale from blood loss. When he spoke again, his voice came out in a rasp. “It will be you committing the slaughter. It will be you to fight the demons with the blood of thousands fueling your sowen.”

  Narina nodded. “I will be the strongest of them all. I’ll kill every one of them if I must.”

  “And you will. Everyone you love will fall to your blades.”

  In answer, Narina crouched into a fighting stance. She waited for Radolf to raise one last defense with his sowen, but what he had left was working to staunch the bleeding. In spite of everything, it was still trying to heal him. She came at him with her dragon blade swinging at his neck.

  #

  Narina opened her eyes to find herself lying on her back. She rolled onto her side, feeling stunned, though she guessed she’d only been unconscious a moment. Radolf lay beside her, motionless. His head had rolled a few feet away, and stared back at her with eyes glazed in death.

  Her limbs felt strangely heavy when she lifted herself to her feet and looked around for her swords. No, not heavy. Full. She could move easily, but there was something different, something more solid in her form, that nevertheless felt right and proper. It was as if her body had been a phantom, ghostly thing, but now it was complete.

  When she reached for her swords, they too felt different. She wiped the blades on her pant leg, a gesture that would have horrified her at one time, dirtying herself with someone else’s blood, and when she turned them over in her hands, their auras were taut and coiled, like vipers ready to strike. She reached out with the dragon blade and released the coiled energy. The blade stretched outward in a blinding flash of light, then returned to its normal shape.

  Narina climbed onto the berm, and this time it didn’t crumble away. The surrounding auras were sharper than they’d ever been. She could see her own course across the landscape, saw the warbrand’s too, coming up from the ruined flour mill, the mill wheel broken and lying on its side in the mill race.

  This was even though the mill itself was too far away to see, behind rice paddies and over a small hillock several hundred feet from where she stood. It was as though she could peer right through the landscape, and her gaze extended at least a mile in every direction. She felt like a hawk soaring over the landscape, but instead of looking down on it, she looked over and through, picking out details that should have been impossible from this distance.

  Narina glanced at the dead body lying on the path. She dropped from the berm and picked up his sword. It felt light and insubstantial in her hands.

  “Radolf, you villain. I took your powers.”

  Her words disturbed the still, heavy air, and she remembered her boast about killing everyone who stood in her way. And she remembered Radolf’s grim response.

  And you will. Everyone you love.

  Her feeling should have been one of horror and revulsion, like after the village slaughter, but those emotions had dissipated. Now she only wanted to shout in triumph. A whisper in her head warned that she’d been taken by the curse once again. That she was turning into a monster. She silenced the voice.

  Andras, Ruven, and the dogs were only about a hundred feet away, crouched in a weedy irrigation channel. Before, she’d have felt their sowen in the landscape, but now she could see them quite clearly. She could hear them, too. Their breathing, the whispers of the father comforting his frightened son. Even their heartbeats, which thrummed with nervous energy. If she reached out, she could wrap her sowen about each heart in turn and squeeze.

  “No,” she said. “There’s no need for them to die. Not yet, anyway.”

  She picked her way through the fields, past the mill canal, and down to the riverbank, searching the landscape for other sohns as she did. There were none that she could sense, at least not within fifty miles of this spot. But as she hurled Radolf’s sword into the river, she sensed another presence lingering to the northeast, and there was a strange warping of the auras around it.

  It was a crowlord.

  Chapter Twelve

  They kept Katalinka underground, where she curled up on the cool surface of a stone-lined cellar that smelled of root vegetables. Terrible, ravenous hunger took her, and when she could rouse herself, it was to devour the raw carrots, potatoes, turnips, onions, and garlic in the cellar. She slaked her thirst with water from the clay jugs they’d left. When she was done, she returned to the ground and curled back into a ball.

  The roof overhead was sod, and through the agony of her recovery, she heard worms and spiders and blind grubs living i
n the soil. She reached for them, and they flinched away in fear, so she spoke in soothing tones, whispering to their tiny little minds.

  Help me, my friends. I’m a prisoner. Dig me free.

  At first they ignored her—or maybe didn’t understand—but such was the strength of her growing sowen that they soon began to obey. They dug and tunneled and burrowed in their own deliberate fashion. Too slow. There must be a mole or badger nearby, but they resisted her call.

  Dammit, she had to get free. She had to kill. That was the only way she would grow in strength. She would steal the auras of the dead and strip the sowen from her fellow temple warriors. These thoughts of murder repelled her, yet she couldn’t stop them from intruding, again and again.

  The boiling water hadn’t cured Katalinka, and neither had it killed her, though it had been a very near thing. During those first hours she’d wished it had. When Miklos and Sarika dragged her out of the pool, she’d screamed as their hands pulled at her flesh. They grimaced at her reaction, but didn’t relent no matter how much she struggled, begged, and threatened. She lashed out with psychic energy, but Kozmer and Drazul were there, too, and the elders pinned her battered sowen in place so she couldn’t cause harm.

  After dragging her from the baths, they’d taken her up the hillside to the cellars. A trio of warbrand refugees had arrived—friends of Miklos’s—and they were building a low-slung building nearby to house them. The boiling water had burned her eyes, and they were only a blur, but she could feel them staring.

  “Help me!” Katalinka begged, but they’d ignored her.

  Sarika and Miklos pushed her inside, and she’d stumbled and fallen. The first touch of stone against her skin was agony. She’d cursed them as they’d closed the heavy wood doors and latched them. May the demons roast them alive.

  From there, she sank into a stupor, and when she woke, the worst of it was gone. The burns were intense enough, but the chill cut through the pain and gave some relief. At least at first; by the second day she was shivering and wishing for a blanket, or at least clothes. Frustrated and angry, she commanded the creatures to hurry their digging.

  There was no light in the cellar, but she felt the sun passing overhead. Could hear the footsteps of people and animals nearby with her sharpened senses. These unseen clues helped determine how long she’d been in the cellar, and how long the blind, mindless creatures under her command had been digging. By the third day, the ground above her was a spongy, porous mass, four feet of dirt, rotten all the way through. All she had to do was wait until nightfall, push on the stone overhead with her sowen until the ceiling collapsed, and then climb out and flee into the woods.

  She’d worry about her swords later, worry about clothing and provisions. Somehow, she needed to arm herself without being detected by her enemies. She needed a few more days in the wilderness to strengthen herself, and then she’d return and take her vengeance.

  But unlike before, the thought of killing her companions opened a hollow space inside her. She felt weaker mentally, her anger nearly spent. It might take more time to recover her strength.

  It was late afternoon when someone rattled at the latch. She reached out, curious, but the person kept their sowen guarded, and she couldn’t determine their identity, so she looked about for something to defend herself with, but there was no tool or weapon in the cellar she could use, except maybe an empty barrel.

  The doors swung open. She blinked against the blinding light, trying to see with her still-healing eyes. At last she had to look away, frustrated by the attempt.

  Something soft fell at her feet. It was a linen shift, cool and light. She pulled it on, wincing at the touch against her still-tender skin. She was glad to have the linen shift, but it was no kind of clothing to flee into the wilderness with. That ended the hope that someone had come to help her escape.

  A shadow moved across the opening. Katalinka shielded her eyes. “Who is it?”

  “Come out. Let’s have a look at you.”

  It was a familiar voice, one that she would have longed to hear under other circumstances. Now, it only made her burn with anger.

  “Go away, Kozmer. Leave me be.”

  “So you can collapse the cellar roof as soon as it’s dark?” When she didn’t answer, the old man continued, “You didn’t think you were tunneling out of here unnoticed, did you?”

  “You’re deluded, old man.”

  “I don’t know how you speak to the creatures—some skill beyond my understanding to be sure—but it’s easy enough to feel you doing it. And it was a simple matter to scare off rodents and other animals that might have helped. No matter how much you wished it so, worms and grubs were not going to be sufficient.”

  She probed, and felt his sowen surrounding him like armor. She was too weak to force her way past him physically, but even if she hadn’t been, no doubt other traitors lingered about to rush to his aid.

  “Let me go, Kozmer.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  “I’ll leave here and never bother you again, I swear it.”

  “If I believed that, I might. . .no, actually, I don’t think I would. You have to be healed, my friend, brought back into the fold, even if it costs you more pain.”

  “Pain? You mean boiling me alive? It didn’t work last time. Why would torturing me again do any good? It’s cruelty on your part, nothing more.”

  “It’s not cruelty, it’s. . .listen, Katalinka, we don’t know yet. It can still work.” Kozmer’s voice twisted with barely concealed pain. “Please, come out, come into the light. Let’s have a look.”

  There was nothing more to be done, so she limped toward the door on tender soles, the skin recently grown back after sloughing off that first night. Every step was painful. The light at the doorway was almost worse, and even the breeze flapping the linen shift against her skin hurt.

  As she’d suspected, Kozmer was not alone. The two firewalkers, Sarika and the elder sohn, Drazul, stood to one side, looking at her with a mixture of pity and suspicion. Like Kozmer, Drazul kept his sowen at the ready, while Sarika placed a hand on her sword hilt. Miklos and another from his temple stood to one side. The hated warbrand sohn stood with his hands on his hips, staring. He didn’t say a word, but whispers of his thoughts entered her mind. They were full of doubts.

  Unchanged. Still a danger. Might need to kill her. Narina, too.

  Katalinka met his gaze. “Is that so? Do you really think you can take my sister? She’ll cut your head off, you fool.”

  His eyes widened, and he glanced at Kozmer as the elder sohn looked at him with a questioning frown. “Yes, I was thinking about how we might need to kill Narina,” Miklos confirmed. “Nothing we haven’t discussed openly.”

  “Can you read my thoughts, too?” Kozmer asked Katalinka.

  She felt for him, but he was closed, as dark as the root cellar mouth yawning at her back. Then, a trickle of emotion came through. Compassion.

  “I feel what you want me to feel, old man. It’s probably a lie.”

  “It’s not a lie. We’re your people. Even these firewalkers and warbrands are allies, necessary to help us survive the cataclysm.” Kozmer took a deep breath. “As for me, I’m family, as much as your father and your sister.”

  “Family.” The word tasted dry in her mouth.

  “I watched you as a child, taught you at my knee. Saw you and Narina grow in power, and later join the master and Abelard as sohns—I was proud, and honored to have been a part of it. I won’t give up on you now.”

  Katalinka looked away from him. She squinted at Miklos, hoping to read more of the warbrand’s thoughts, but the man had shut himself off more effectively. She shielded her eyes and instead looked at Miklos’s companion, who’d stood quietly with his hood drawn and his hands tucked into the sleeves of his cloak. His sowen was flat, with no thoughts she could latch onto, but she realized with surprise that she’d been wrong about his identity. He was no warbrand, and neither was he a
firewalker. A fellow bladedancer? She wasn’t sure.

  “You’re calmer,” Kozmer said, drawing her attention back to him. “That’s a good sign.”

  “I’m weaker,” she corrected. “That’s another thing entirely. Once I’ve recovered, I’ll be your enemy again, believe me.”

  “Unless we cure you first.”

  Katalinka gave a bitter laugh that turned into a pained cough. Her lungs had been scalded by the steam rising off the boiling water, and had apparently not yet healed.

  Kozmer took a step toward her. “Come, we’ll lead you to the baths.”

  “That again? You miserable, twisted—”

  “You’ll bathe in cool water and get cleaned up. That will help some.”

  Her eyes were finally adjusting to the afternoon light, and she looked down at herself. Her skin had mostly healed, but clumps of the old, dead flesh still clung to her in places, black with scabbed blood and pus, and smelling awful. Her hair was matted and filthy, and her mouth had a dank taste in it that no water from the clay pitchers had cleansed.

  In contrast, the air smelled clean and crisp. The haze drifting across from the volcanoes had cleared, replaced by the scent of pine and mountain streams. An early crown of snow frosted the highest peaks above the temple. From the hillside below came the rhythmic clink of hammers at the forge, together with the steady thwack-thwack of nearby axes. Someone rang a gong at the shrine, whose gleaming, lacquered roof peeked through the trees.

  The whole scene should have calmed her with its normalcy, but instead, she began to tremble. Her body was filthy, and so was her sowen. The gong seemed to be ringing a sinister note calling her to repentance. The forge sounded like someone was making shackles for her. The fraters with axes were splitting wood to feed the fire that would heat the water into which they’d throw her to suffer. Except they used charcoal, didn’t they? All the better to raise the water to a boil.

  Demons and demigods, why couldn’t they have killed her when they had the chance, left her in the boiling water after she’d lost consciousness and let it destroy her once and for all?