Katalinka closed her eyes. “So you’ll let me bathe, and then what?”
“Then you can meditate,” Kozmer said.
“Fine, so I wash, I meditate. This corruption stays within me all the same.”
Drazul spoke up for the first time. “It’s weakened,” the elder firewalker said. “We believe it can be drawn out this time.”
She opened her eyes again. “It’s not that weak, believe me. I can bathe and meditate all you’d like, but it will only come back.”
“And yet listen to you,” Sarika said. Her words were calm, yet she’d never once taken her hand off her sword hilt. “You’re discussing things rationally. There’s no rage, and you haven’t tried to attack us or escape.”
Katalinka groaned at their stubbornness. “How many times do I have to explain it to you? That’s only because—”
“Listen, please,” Kozmer said.
He took another step toward her, using his staff as support, and this time took hold of her wrist. She winced at the touch, and he must have found it disgusting, too, as dead skin sloughed off in his hand. But he didn’t let go, and his sowen unfurled itself against her in a soothing touch. She fought it off with her own, and he relented.
“Katalinka,” he said softly. “You can bathe, you can meditate. And then we’ll try again.”
“Demons,” she groaned. “You mean boil me alive, don’t you? I can’t go through that again, I can’t. Please, just kill me. If you won’t set me free, one of you take out your sword and cut off my head, I’m begging you.”
“One more time,” Kozmer said. “Please, try.”
“It won’t work. You have no evidence. None!”
“But we do,” he said. He gestured with his staff. “Come here, show her.”
The hooded figure who’d been standing next to Miklos approached. Her first thought was that he was an old man, back bent and joints seized up, the way he moved with a shuffle. Nobody she recognized, so maybe an elder from one of the other temples—the absence of his sowen notwithstanding—although how he would have traveled through the mountains in such an aged, feeble condition she didn’t know.
He stumbled and grabbed for Kozmer’s staff to steady himself. White linen bandages covered his hands and forearms. The hood slipped, and she saw that he was bandaged about the face, too, with even his eyes covered. Katalinka felt for his sowen, but it remained occluded.
“Katalinka,” the figure croaked. “Listen to them.” The voice was feeble, but recognizable.
“Gyorgy? Is that you?”
“I was called to the fight.” The boy gave something between a laugh and a hacking cough. “As if I had the strength to win. But I’d have tried. I would have killed as many as I could if they hadn’t caught me, bound me, and sent me into the hot water.”
“There was no point to it,” Kozmer said. “Even supposing Gyorgy had somehow killed us all, and every frater and student as well, he was never going to rise to sword saint. Narina would have slaughtered him like a lamb.”
“But he was called,” Miklos said. “Once it has you, you can’t resist, even if it means your death. That’s how insane this curse of the demigods is.”
“And you boiled him for it?” she asked.
“He was raving,” Kozmer said. “Twice, he tried to get a weapon and kill someone. We meant to pry it out of him with our sowen, thinking that he was just a student, and maybe it could be done.”
“You should have known from my sister that it wouldn’t work.”
“Boiling him was the only way we could think to bring him back,” the old man said.
“It worked,” Gyorgy said. “I was healed.”
She laughed. “Healed? Looking like that?”
“In here.” The boy tapped his chest with a bandaged hand. “I’m still me inside, that is the point.”
Gyorgy seemed blinded and had almost boiled to death. But he was alive, and his sowen, even in its weakened state, seemed to be healing him. The others could help with that, but it would be an agonizing process.
“Tell me,” Katalinka said to the boy. “All that pain, was it really worth it?”
“They can save you,” he said. “And then you can save my master. It’s her only hope.”
“Narina,” she whispered.
Her sister was down on the plains, fighting and killing. If she wasn’t stopped, she would only grow stronger. More lethal. Eventually she would return and destroy them all as she rose to her final power.
She gave a violent shake of the head. “But it didn’t work for me. I went through the same thing, and I’m not healed.”
“You’re stronger than the boy, and you’re fighting back,” Sarika said. There was a grudging respect in the firewalker’s tone. “That doesn’t mean it won’t work in the end.”
“I know what you’re going through,” Miklos said. “I had two dragon feathers inside me. My mind cleared when the first one came out, but the curse still controlled me. It took that ratter’s poison to do it. He made me vomit up the second one. And then I was done with it—it had left me.”
“I don’t have dragon feathers in me. It’s the wound of that blasted firewalker sohn.”
“Yes,” Miklos said, “but something has changed since you came out of the water. I can feel it, can’t you? Doesn’t your mind seem clearer?”
Well, yes. It did. She still itched to get at these people, to make them pay, but at least she was able to recognize the insanity of it. After Volfram had injured her, she’d gone mad. It was as if something had possessed her, and her true self had watched from a distance, screaming for her to stop.
Poor Narina. This is what had taken hold of her sister, too. Narina was strong-minded and stubborn, and no doubt she was fighting it. But all the same, she’d cut herself free of the goat and run off into the smoke, then stayed away, which meant she was most likely down on the plains, fighting and killing and growing stronger. And every moment weaker in her ability to resist.
Either Narina would fall in battle, as had Volfram, Tankred, and Abelard, or she would keep fighting, along with Lujza and Radolf. Wasn’t Katalinka in that category, too? She was destined to grow in power until she was either cut down by a rival or became the sword saint, capable of killing entire armies of men and demons. There was no possible escape.
Unless. . .
Katalinka glanced between the bandaged face of Gyorgy and the hard scowl of Miklos. There were two standing in front of her who’d found cures. Maybe others could follow their path.
“All right.” The words tasted bitter and defeated. “I will try.”
“Good,” Kozmer said. “Let’s get you cleaned up, first. You can meditate and gather your sowen. That will make the pain easier to bear.”
“No, Kozmer. If you’re going to torture me, don’t try to be kind about it. There’s no point.” Katalinka shuddered, but this time it was not in self-revulsion, it was in fear of what she was about to say. “The firewalkers are already stoking the fires, aren’t they? I can smell the smoke from here. Take me straight to the boiling pool and throw me in.”
Chapter Thirteen
Miklos felt stripped and barren as he took in the bladedancer shrine and the people gathered around it. The shrine had an elegant, spare look, with slender wooden columns lacquered in alternating red and black. The tiled roof curled gracefully at the corners. Even the waterspouts had a carefully crafted look, with what looked like bells hanging on a chain that funneled rain in cascades to be carried away in brick-lined channels.
It was beautiful in its way. But it wasn’t home.
The warbrand shrine, in contrast, was a sanctuary of granite, as secure and protected as the mountain into which it had been hewed. Carvings of stylized dragons and demons decorated the great iron door. The Mountain Gate, as this main entrance was called, towered twenty feet high, and led to a cool, dark interior lit by torches. Inside, warbrands read scrolls of temple lore, shared in rituals of bonded sowen, and meditated in front of a massive azure
crystal that was said to have emerged from the world’s molten heart.
If the bladedancer shrine matched the elegance of their twin swords and their fighting style, the warbrand temple represented the power of the two-handed falchion and the warriors who wielded it, implacable in combat.
Miklos wondered if he would ever see his home again.
The central training ground of the bladedancer shrine had been abandoned to the pouring rain. The raked lines of sand slumped under the downpour, and the standing stones seemed to weep as water ran in rivulets to the ground. Instead of gathering in the open space, as had been planned, the temple warriors stood on the covered wooden walkway that bent three-quarters of the way around the sodden training ground.
The firewalkers clustered on the left wing, while the more numerous bladedancers—hosts of this desperate gathering—had taken the right. That left the center, connecting walkway to the warbrands, with Miklos at their head.
But it was a thin, pathetic gathering of his kind. There were two lay warriors—what the bladedancers called fraters, those who had fallen short in their rise to the elite status of sohn—and a single student. She was a girl of twelve or thirteen named Greza who had been under Radolf’s tutelage. With Radolf missing, she’d looked to Miklos for guidance and wisdom. He had little to give.
There had been two other lay warriors until yesterday, when Miklos sent them back into the mountains to look for more warbrands while he joined in the efforts to purge Katalinka of her curse. They’d slipped out in the middle of the night, leaving at a near run. Enemies were still abroad in the land, chief among them the missing firewalker sohn, Lujza.
What about Radolf?
Thinking of his brother in arms opened an aching hollow in Miklos’s chest, and he avoided looking at Greza. When the girl edged toward him, he moved off toward the bladedancers, and Kozmer came hobbling toward him, leaning on his walking staff.
“Master sohn?” Greza asked at his back.
“Not now.”
He knew what the girl wanted, an answer to what had become of her teacher. He couldn’t give it to her, but not because he didn’t know. It was because he did.
Radolf had fallen. Miklos was sure of it. He’d suffered a terrible dream in the night, a figure crawling toward him through smoke and fire, moaning and sobbing for help. He’d thought at first it was Katalinka, whom he’d returned to the root cellar after a second scalding. She had come to accuse him of cruelty, or so he’d thought.
But when the figure emerged from the smoke, he saw his old companion, or what was left of him. Radolf’s arm had been severed, and he clenched at his neck to keep his head from falling off. It had been severed.
Somehow he spoke. “She’s taken my sowen.” Blood bubbled at his lips. “Brother, avenge me.”
There was another moaning cry in his dream, and this time it was Katalinka. He’d awakened to find himself sleeping under the open sky on the grass outside the cellar, where he and Sarika had kept vigil these past nights as the woman recovered from her wounds. Sarika peered at him through the darkness, also awake.
“Are you all right?” the firewalker had asked.
“Yes, fine.”
“But your sowen. . .”
“Give me a moment. It was only a bad dream.”
Except something was different. There was a hollow in his breast that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep. Something had been broken that he hadn’t even been aware had existed, a psychic connection to his brother in arms. Radolf was gone, somehow he knew it. The man had fallen in battle. Who had killed him? Lujza? No, it must have been Narina, also on the plains, where Radolf had escaped after falling to the curse.
Now, waiting on the walkway for Kozmer to approach, Miklos ignored the questioning tone from Radolf’s former student. It wasn’t in him to explain that her teacher was dead, and that Miklos was to blame. He may not have swung the sword that killed Radolf, but he was responsible all the same. The curse had flowed from his sword and sowen until it infected many others.
What could you have done? It took hold of you and you couldn’t stop it.
Kozmer cleared his throat. “Katalinka wants to join us.” There was a slight tremor in his voice, but it was only the effects of age, and when the elder continued, he spoke more clearly. “I think we should bring her into our confidence. I think she’s healed.”
Miklos glanced over the man’s shoulder at the two cloaked figures behind him, one standing more easily than he had yesterday, and the other hunched over like a dying old woman. The first was Gyorgy, who still didn’t like the sun and wind touching his skin, but who seemed to be on the path to a full recovery. The other was Katalinka, who’d submerged much longer in the boiling water than the boy. Twice, in fact.
She could barely hold herself upward at the moment, but her powers far outstripped the boy’s, and Miklos had little doubt that her recovery would ultimately be swift. Physically, that was. On a deeper, spiritual level, he wasn’t so sure. Her sowen was occluded and difficult to read. Had they burned out the corrupt strand, or no?
Imagine if they’d subjected her to such a horrific treatment only to see it fail. Yet there had been no alternative. It was either that, or kill her.
“And if you’re wrong?” he asked the old man.
“Drazul and I will pin down her sowen. You and Sarika can subdue her physically.” Kozmer must have caught a hint of Miklos’s doubts. “Look at her—how would she get past two armed sohns in that condition?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. I don’t want her hearing us plan and scheme. What if she turns again, and runs off knowing what we’re intending?”
“If that happens, we change course. Hide our intentions with something new.” Kozmer released one hand from the staff and placed it on Miklos’s forearm. “Please, we need her. We’ll never take Narina back without her help.”
He wanted to tell the old man it was too late for that, anyway. Narina was lost to them. If she ever returned to the bladedancer temple, it would be to kill or be killed. Instead, he nodded. Katalinka, at least, had some hope of recovery.
Kozmer lifted an aged hand and gestured for Katalinka. She edged along the railing of the covered walkway, with Gyorgy guiding her elbow with a bandaged hand of his own.
As soon as they started in motion, two of the firewalkers cleared from where they’d been having a discussion among themselves. Miklos was not surprised to see that it was Sarika and Drazul coming around toward them.
Kozmer and Drazul exchanged nods as the latter approached. A certain confidence had grown between the two elders these past couple of weeks. Each had been a great warrior in his day, but unlike most from their generation, they’d remained strong in other ways, even as their physical skills had deteriorated. They weren’t simply repositories of wisdom, but leaders of their respective temples.
Miklos longed for someone similar he could lean on. His cousin was gone, killed by his own hand, or she might have assumed that role. The other elders had remained at the warbrand shrine to guard the scrolls carrying temple lore. Hopefully the two lay warriors he’d sent back would return with someone to give him advice.
He felt Katalinka’s sowen sliding along his and gave her a sharp look to let her know he was aware of her prodding. Her eyes met his through the slit in the linen wrapping her face.
“I’m not your enemy,” she said in a whisper. “You saw to that well enough.”
He responded cautiously. “I hope you’re right—it’s what we were hoping for.” He turned it over, thinking of his own internal struggles. “Still, we don’t know entirely what we’re up against. There’s always a chance of a reversal.”
“Demons.” A bit of rasp in her voice at that. “I’d sooner die.”
“So,” Sarika interrupted in firm voice, “I assume we’re in agreement about the missing sohns.”
“They must be stopped,” Miklos said. “It’s the only way to put an end to this. Apart from that, no, we haven’t bee
n clear on anything yet. What are we intending here?”
“We’ve proven the idea, already.” The woman gestured at Gyorgy and Katalinka. “We’ll do the same with the others. Capture them, boil it out of them.”
“You make it sound so easy,” he said, “as if they won’t try to destroy us first.”
“Do I?” Sarika said. “I certainly didn’t mean to imply it would be simple. I expect they will try to kill us, and may very well succeed. But what choice do we have?”
“None, I suppose.”
A curt nod. “Lujza is closer, so we’ll go after her first.”
“Not as close as you think,” Katalinka said, again in a whisper.
“Drazul felt her on the mountainside yesterday,” Sarika said.
“And I felt her on the post road this morning,” came another whisper, almost too soft to hear over the growing murmur of those gathered in the shrine wings. “She was moving away from us.”
Sarika glanced at Drazul, who gave a little shrug, his bushy eyebrows pulled together. It was clear neither of them had the same fine control of their sowen as the crippled bladedancer.
Sarika looked discomfited by this, but pressed on. “Even so, Lujza is still closer than your sister. Narina might be three hundred miles from here by now.”
“My sister isn’t that far—I’ve felt her, too. But yes, your firewalker is closer. It’s not so simple as waiting for an attack. If that’s your plan—” Katalinka broke into a cough.
The conversation felt like it was stumbling into a ditch, and they hadn’t yet addressed the main problem, so Miklos took her cough as an invitation to raise it again. “What makes you think we can capture them? It was hard enough to take Katalinka, and she wasn’t so far gone.”
“Excuse me,” Gyorgy said. He pulled down the bandages from around his mouth. His lips were pink and raw, but healing. “Why can’t we leave them be? Why do we have to go after them at all? We’re safer here, and I don’t know, maybe it will pass on its own, whatever it is. Like a pestilence—nobody is infected forever. You die or your sores scab over and heal.”
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