“Narina was here,” she said. “She might still be here. If not, she hasn’t gone far.”
“The ratter and his boys are inside the mill,” Miklos said.
“I feel them, too,” Sarika said. “She might be inside with them.”
That put them all on edge.
It had been Kozmer who first detected the ratter’s aura flickering across the landscape—he’d traveled with Andras, Ruven, and the dogs for several weeks—but only Katalinka had been able to follow Narina’s sowen, and even then only sporadically. Narina didn’t want to be found, that much was sure.
The mill was closed and barred, and so Katalinka and Sarika used their sowen to weaken the heavy wood door, while Miklos leaned his shoulder into it with a grunt. The wood grain softened, and the door finally burst inward with a loud crack. Katalinka sprang through the hole even as the door was still shaking and the splinters hadn’t yet settled. Kozmer and Drazul reached through after her with their sowens, ready to hold Narina at bay should she turn on Katalinka with her blades.
The room was empty. Rain dripped through holes in the roof and left the floor a sticky mess of damp flour. There had been bags of grain in the room, stacked to one side away from the water, but rats seemed to have gnawed through and spoiled it all. The others entered after her and looked around.
“They were here,” Kozmer said. “Not just the ratters and the dogs, but Narina. I can feel her, too. Not long ago, either.”
Katalinka closed her eyes and let her sowen do the searching. No, not long at all. It was fresh—an hour ago at most.
“Guard the entrance,” Miklos said in a growl. Like the others—all except the two elders—he had his sword out, and he gestured the falchion at the ruined doorway they’d just burst through. “It might be a trap. Or an ambush.”
“Why would you think that?” Gyorgy asked.
“Because she locked up the mill, boy,” Miklos said. “Why would she do that if she were leaving and never coming back?”
“How would she do that?” Sarika asked. “That’s the better question. She left the mill, pulled the door shut, and somehow dropped the bar from the outside?”
This set the others to arguing about the extent of Narina’s abilities to manipulate her environment, as well as how much she might know about their plans. How could she know the specifics? Maybe she’d just sensed the pursuit, and hadn’t known who was following.
While they talked, Katalinka set about studying the interior of the mill with greater attention. Something felt strange about the room, beyond the gloom and the oppressively damp air with a steady drip from holes in the roof. There was a second dry patch of ground near the wall opposite the rat-eaten sacks, and she moved across to see if she could feel if this was where Narina and her companions had been sleeping.
Her foot kicked something, and she stumbled and nearly fell with her swords still in hand. Alarmed, sure the space had been empty, she threw out her sowen, felt a moment of resistance, and then burst the illusion.
A man crouched against the wall, a boy of about ten in his arms, head against his father’s shoulder. They stiffened in fear as they saw her looming above them, armed, and it was clear they had been as blind to her presence as she had been to theirs.
Four terriers and a pair of larger, bony dogs lay in a half-circle around them, perfectly still with their heads against their paws, as if ordered to hold still. With the bladedancer’s approach, one of the terriers let out a low growl, and soon all six of the dogs were growling and tense on their feet.
The sound drew the others’ attention, and Kozmer hurried forward with his staff tapping. “Andras! Don’t be alarmed! This is Narina’s sister—you’re with friends.”
“Andras?” Katalinka said. She took a step back and dropped the swords to her sides without sheathing them. She took a closer look at the boy. “Then you must be Ruven.” The boy returned a frightened nod.
Andras gave a low whistle, and the dogs relaxed. They whined as Gyorgy approached, and panted and licked anxiously when Narina’s student attempted to soothe them. Andras and the dogs fixed their attention on Miklos, though Ruven was staring at Katalinka with his mouth slightly ajar.
“Do I resemble my sister?” she asked him. “Is that why you’re looking at me like that?”
“Aye, you look like she did before she went bad.”
Miklos still held his sword, but he’d moved over to the rat-eaten bags of rice as if wondering whether others might be hiding in the room. He turned back around when he’d found nothing. Andras eyed him warily.
“Don’t worry, ratter. I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I could thank you. Your poison cured me.” His face darkened. “It was a hard cure, and I didn’t want it. I didn’t know what was good for me at the time.”
Katalinka thought of her own cure, such as it was. Boiling water to burn away the nightmare of her murderous thoughts. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the nightmare or the reality.
“Miklos won’t hurt you,” Kozmer said. “He’s on our side now. We’re here for Narina.”
Andras still looked doubtful. Events must have hardened the man beyond what Katalinka could imagine. Not his son, though. The boy’s face radiated open, unguarded hope.
“You can save her?” Ruven asked.
“I don’t know,” Katalinka said. “She might be too far gone. She might kill us before we can help.” She wasn’t sure it was wise to admit it, but the boy’s vulnerability had gotten to her, and made her speak frankly. “How long ago did she leave?”
“She’s still here,” Andras said. “Well, not here exactly. She’s outside—didn’t you see her?”
Katalinka frowned. “How do you know she didn’t run off?”
Andras shook his head, looking momentarily confused. “I don’t know. . .I just feel her. She’s fighting, she’s in danger.”
Kozmer studied the ratter with a steady gaze, and Katalinka felt the elder prodding with his sowen. That touch wasn’t as confident as it could have been. Kozmer had pushed himself to the limit these last two days, and exhausted much of his mental effort in order to keep his physical body on the move. What he and Drazul both needed was rest and the meditation—fire or water—of their respective temples.
“I think you’re right,” Kozmer said at last. “I think you feel her better than any of us. You and your son both.”
“We’ve been taking care of her,” Ruven said, his voice high and nervous. “We’ve been trying to stop her from hurting herself. And hurting other people. But she told us to stay in here or crows would eat us. She told us she was going to hide us until she was done.”
“Is that what’s going on out there?” Sarika asked Katalinka. “All those crows flying around, do you think they could be chasing your sister?”
Katalinka didn’t know, but frankly, it was baffling. Narina had grown so powerful that a few crows shouldn’t bother her, regardless of whether they could turn into ash and back again. Why would she bother fighting them?
“Get up, ratter,” Miklos said. “Come on, lead us out of here and show us where she is.”
Andras gave Kozmer a questioning look, and even glanced at Gyorgy, as if Narina’s student was going to make decisions in the present company. To Katalinka’s surprise, they both looked in her direction. She was uncertain how to respond.
“Are we ready to face her?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Kozmer said. “We’re exhausted, and your sister has gone mad. But what choice do we have?”
#
Andras left Ruven inside with all the dogs but one. This was one of the lean, hungry kinds; Andras called it a lurcher, and said it was for chasing down rats that made a run for it when the terriers dug them out of their holes.
Once outside, Katalinka joined the others in pressing her back against the mill wall as the rain continued to fall. The crows were circling overhead, rather than diving at the ground, but Narina had to be out there still, or they’d have gone for shelter. Assuming the
ratter was right, of course.
“I can feel her nearby,” Andras said, “but not exactly where. Skinny Lad will sniff her out. They have a connection—your sister gave it to him, in case we got in trouble with bandits or soldiers and needed help. It was supposed to fade, but it never has.”
“Only you’re the one helping her, not the other way around,” Katalinka said. “My sister is lucky to have you as a friend. I hope she’s grateful.”
“She doesn’t act grateful. She’s nearly killed us more than once.”
“Narina’s not lost to us yet,” Katalinka said. “And she clearly isn’t indifferent to your plight. Otherwise she wouldn’t have hidden you like that.”
The ratter’s expression darkened further. “I don’t know. If you saw what happened in the village, what she did. . .” He shook his head. “She’s not the same as before.”
“The true Narina is still in there somewhere,” Miklos said. “Whatever she did or didn’t do, remember that. She knows it, and she hates it, and if we draw this curse out of her, we can end it.”
“She slaughtered those people, all those innocent villagers who were just trying to survive,” Andras said. “Then she fought and killed another sohn. And the crows—it makes no sense to fight them. She’s gone mad. If you haven’t seen it, you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Nobody understands better than I do,” Miklos said, his tone bitter. “I started this whole blasted thing, and if not for your poison, Narina would have killed me by now. Or I’d have killed her, and it would have been me slaughtering peasants instead. Either way, the result would be the same.”
Miklos let out a long sigh and stared into the rain. When he spoke again, his tone was different, more subdued. “I can’t change what I did, and I can’t bring back the dead. But I can stop Narina before she does any more damage.”
“We can stop it here,” Katalinka corrected. “We’re all in this fight together. Andras, help us find her.”
“Skinny Lad,” he began uncertainly. “I’ll let him go—he’ll sniff her out. She can hide herself from sight, make herself go silent, even throw her voice, but she forgets about dogs, about her scent. Skinny Lad always knows when she’s coming and going, even when Ruven and I don’t.”
“Even in the rain?” Katalinka asked.
“My dogs can sniff out a rat in a burrow three feet below the ground. They can smell through the rain and mud. He can find her, but”—Andras swallowed hard—“but I’m afraid she’ll harm him.”
Drazul, the firewalker elder, put a hand on the ratter’s shoulder. “You leave that to us.” He exchanged nods with Kozmer, and the two elders began to weave a tapestry around Skinny Lad, who stopped panting and stood rigid and alert as they worked. The dog’s mind calmed, all the nervous energy easing as the two men’s sowen bound ever more tightly to his aura.
“Here is what we do,” Katalinka told the others while they worked. “Narina is agile, and whatever speed and skill she has with her swords will be multiplied with her growing power. But I’ve sparred with her dozens of times, and she has a weakness that can’t have disappeared entirely.”
Sarika, Gyorgy, and Miklos stared at her with the same calm, tightly bound attention that held Skinny Lad, focused on the task at hand.
“Go on,” Miklos said.
“When Abelard joined us on the training sands, and the fighting turned chaotic, my sister struggled to divide her attention among more than one enemy.”
Gyorgy shook his head, looking disappointed that this was her idea. “You didn’t see her at the farm compound. She cut down Zoltan’s men right and left. Dodged crossbow bolts, ducked spears, sliced open an enemy’s belly with her demon while her dragon took off another man’s head at the same time.”
“Paper soldiers,” Katalinka said. “Not one of them had sowen. We are different. Miklos, Sarika, and I will surround her, force her to face all of us at once.”
“We’re ready,” Kozmer said, looking up from his work. “The dog is ready, I mean.”
Andras dropped to a knee and whispered in Skinny Lad’s ear with an arm draped over the dog’s shoulders.
Katalinka continued. “The elders will throw their sowen into the fight to slow her. The three sohns will harry her, cut her legs and arms. Knock her into the mud, and then we disarm her, bind her with our sowen, and carry her home.”
“She got away from us once,” Miklos said.
“She won’t this time,” Katalinka said firmly.
Andras let go of Skinny Lad’s neck, and the dog trotted into the rain. He turned his head and sniffed at the air, then nosed the mud before continuing forward.
“Protect my dog,” the ratter said, his tone pleading.
“We’ve got him,” Drazul said. “Stay calm.”
“What about me?” Gyorgy asked. “What should I do in the fight?”
Katalinka didn’t take her eyes from the dog, now twenty feet away, moving up the muddy path that led from the mill. He stopped to sniff at something on the ground.
“You stay here and protect Andras. Skinny Lad too, when he comes back.”
“They can go back inside with Ruven and the rest of the dogs. I want to help.”
“No,” she told the boy. “You stay here. Do not leave under any circumstances, do you understand? If Narina turns on you, she’ll have a blade through your chest before you even see her moving.”
Gyorgy opened his mouth like he wanted to protest that Narina would never kill her student—though surely he knew better by now—or claim he was stronger now that he’d been through his own ordeal. Surely he knew better about that, too. Stronger or not, he was no match for the master sohn, her power grown beyond their understanding.
But at that moment, Skinny Lad barked. He’d pierced a veil that had bent the surrounding auras, and as things shifted into focus, Katalinka saw the dog standing astride a corpse lying on its belly in the mud. The body had been decapitated, with the head a few paces away, where it had rolled to a stop.
Miklos let out a muffled a cry beside her. “It’s Radolf. She’s killed Radolf.”
Andras made a grim sound deep in his throat. “That’s the sohn I saw her fight. It’s what I was telling you earlier.”
“He was my brother in arms.” Miklos’s voice was choked. “Demons, this is my fault. What did I start? What did I do? And he’s just lying in the mud. I’ve got to get him out of there.”
Katalinka grabbed his shoulder. “Not now. Hold still.”
“Look,” Sarika said, pointing.
The dog had sniffed his way past the dead body and up a rise to his left, and there he broke through more of the bent auras that had hidden the scene from view. A figure whirled and flailed in a grotesque dance, movements so fast they were as blurred as a dragonfly’s wings. Crows darted and pecked, only to be cut apart by flashing blades, one black, one white.
Narina.
She seemed to have gone mad. There was no enemy, only crows, and for all Katalinka could tell, she was calling them to her with her sowen. She killed them with every blow, and still they descended on her. It was strange and unsettling. What could it mean?
“She’s distracted,” Katalinka said. “Now is our time. Go!”
Chapter Twenty
Narina fought off Damanja’s crow attack even as she choked on the smoke and cinders spewing from their beaks. She turned about just as the crowlord herself swooped in with shadow seeming to launch from her hands. Narina bent over nearly double to let the shadow pass overhead, rolled forward, and came up with her demon blade slashing.
The sword would have caught the woman across the thigh if crows hadn’t thrown themselves in its path. They exploded into feathers and ash when struck. A follow-up cut by her dragon destroyed several more. Damanja fell back from Narina with her shadows drawing into a shield. This makeshift armor wilted under the bladedancer’s slashing attacks. Narina hurled her sowen forward and broke apart the shadows before they could reform. She got her sowen on top of the woman
and forced her to her knees.
I have you now.
But Damanja had one last trick. She pointed her sword forward, and from the shadows at its point burst a flock of shadow crows that bombarded Narina’s face and tried to pull down her arms. The crowlord took advantage of the confusion to bend the auras around her. One moment she was there, and the next she’d vanished.
But before she could get far, Narina finished killing the last of the crows and slashed at the air where the woman had been moving. Her blades struck something solid. There was a cry and Damanja reappeared. She lurched forward with her falchion falling to the mud and her hands going to her belly. Blood and guts gushed from the wound.
A dog barked, and even through the crashing waves of battle Narina recognized the lurcher’s voice. It was Skinny Lad. Before she had time to wonder what Andras’s dog was doing outside the mill where she’d ordered all of them to remain for their safety, something struck her chest with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer.
She staggered backward, and her sowen recoiled to strengthen her against the unexpected attack. Another blast hit her—a second sowen—and it nearly broke through her defenses. There were two enemies striking her now in an attempt to gain control, and though neither was strong enough by themselves, when they worked together it was all she could do to keep them from binding her down. The earth rumbled at her feet; that was a third person shifting the ground to knock her from her feet.
Suddenly, a woman blasted through the rain and swung her sword at Narina. There was no time to get her swords up, not while she was trying to fight off the sowen attacks and keep her balance on the heaving earth, and if she hadn’t leaped backward, the blow would have cut her down.
But the other woman was moving too slowly to catch Narina, and she ducked clear before the sword struck. It was a firebrand; Narina recognized the style of fighting and the sword from her battle with Tankred. She was a powerful sohn, but not strong enough to handle what Narina had become. She’d finish this interloper in seconds, then find Damanja before the crowlord could escape and heal herself.
Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3) Page 19
