Bladedancer

by Michael Wallace

  Katalinka finished an arrowhead and waved off a frater who rushed up with another piece of steel in tongs to hand it to Bartal, who was quenching her last one in water.

  “Enough.” She raised her voice to be heard above the din. “Enough! We have no more time. Fetch the shafts, and get the bows. And we need more charcoal. Pump the bellows. I need fire!” She turned about and fixed Bartal with her gaze. “And you! Bring me swords. I need my demon blades if I’m going to fight a dragon.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Narina climbed higher and higher during the first few minutes of her flight. The view was breathtaking, with mountains that had once dominated her view from the temple turning into mere foothills to the massive peaks that rose to the west. Other mountains—many of these volcanoes—ringed the eastern edge of the range. All of the volcanoes, not only Manet Tuzzia, had fallen silent.

  The scars of their eruptions remained, however, with black rivers of frozen lava stretching from the range to gash through once-fertile farmland. Fires had torched the mountains as far as she could see, forests turned to mile after mile of blackened stumps and a wasteland that ate up the hill country as well. The latter had been brigand territory, and later, a refuge for those fleeing the crowlord wars. It was hard to imagine how anything could live there now. Only the higher mountain valleys remained untouched, and, she presumed, the far side of the range where it descended to the shores of the Narrow Sea.

  The cold struck her with increasing fury long before she finished her ascent into the clouds. It wasn’t a normal winter-like chill, but a deep, bitter cold that sapped the strength from her body and assaulted her sowen. She’d spent enough time in the mountains to know the air thinned as one climbed, but she was unprepared for the way she gasped for breath, feeling as though she were suffocating as her head pounded. She closed her eyes to gather her sowen, and used it to draw more of the biting air into her lungs.

  That helped some, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw that she was drifting lower as the momentum of her jump stalled. Manet Tuzzia loomed ahead of her. The crown had been obscured by a thick and growing mass of black clouds, but now this was sliding to the east, toward the plains. There was a massive snowstorm in those clouds, she guessed, one capable of blanketing the farmlands in white, even as the dragon continued to build more storms from its home on the frozen volcano. And when the Blue Drake and the White Drake finished healing in their mountain lakes, they would add to the cold air masses and thus begin the final, killing winter.

  As the clouds shifted clear, they revealed Manet Tuzzia’s crown. Something green glittered amidst the white as it briefly caught the rays of the sun. It must be the dragon, though she was still at least three miles distant, and even such a massive beast shouldn’t be visible from so far.

  Now she was above the volcano and dropping swiftly. She held out a shield of sowen and let it catch the air to slow her descent. She gripped her swords and willed heat into her hands and through them into the weapons.

  The splotch of green grew larger. She expected features to resolve themselves into the monster’s tree-trunk-sized legs, a tail thick enough to crush a castle wall, and a head large enough to swallow the crow-headed demon king, but it was far too big even for that. She’d caught a glimpse of the caldera in her fight yesterday, and whatever she was staring at had plugged the entire hole, which had to be four or five hundred feet wide. From there, it spread for another hundred feet or so down the slope in a field of translucent, shimmering green.

  It was only when she was two or three hundred feet above it and falling that the object came into focus. It was not a dragon, or at least, not only a dragon.

  Instead, it seemed to be a pulsing field of green ice, so thick and cold that a sort of haze formed above it and rose past her with an icy sting. From there, the haze drifted into the sky, where it seemed to be strengthening the brooding mass of clouds above the volcano.

  The leading edge of the green ice field pushed out, flowing down the cone like a moving glacier, gradually losing its color until it became solid white like normal ice. The ice and snow was so thick already that it had covered the escarpment on which they’d battled the demon lord, obliterating the lava canals in the process.

  Right at the top lay a larger, knob-like lump that pulsed with green light and churned up a green, slow-flowing liquid, almost like frozen lava, and it was this that was causing the ice sheet to spread. Something moved beneath the surface of the knob, and Narina caught sight of enormous open jaws spewing liquid that bubbled to the surface through a small hole over the thing’s head.

  Demons take her, it was the Great Drake after all. The monster was encased in a protective shield of green ice, through which it spread a chilling liquid that caused the cold and the clouds. Dropping onto it would be like falling into a freezing version of the lava that had so recently run down the volcano’s slopes.

  Green, noxious-smelling gasses vented from the hole in a loud spurt, and when she caught a whiff of it, it made her dizzy and sick to her stomach. It was poisonous, and if she approached directly, it might kill her.

  Narina pulled up short and dropped to the edge of the green cap where it bordered the regular white ice. This was the first time she’d flown with her new powers, and she landed so hard and fast that she might have broken her ankles if the ground had been harder. Instead, she slammed into the snow and buried herself to the shoulders.

  She’d had her demon blades in hand, ready to fall on top of the dragon, strike it two or three times, and flee before it destroyed her. Now, she had to sheathe them again to get her arms free. She scrambled, half-climbing, half-swimming, to the surface. There, she flailed about some more before she found her footing.

  It didn’t help that the ground was shifting beneath her feet, groaning with the movement of ice. At the same time, a thick, quiet snow fell, undisturbed by the buffeting winds that had struck her as she’d descended. She staggered forward, trying to reach the green ice, more determined than ever to confront the dragon and deliver a blow that it would not soon forget. She’d challenge it to a fight and cut through that cap of ice over its head if necessary.

  The cold was brutal, rising from the ice and radiating up through the soles of her feet. Narina had prepared herself for this eventuality, and had been hardened by her flight above the mountains, where the air was thin and chill, and she pushed it back with her sowen. As if sensing her resistance, the moving ice heaved and threw her to the ground. A debilitating cold grabbed her, and it was all she could do to get back to her feet.

  The snow ended as she climbed the volcanic cone, until there was only the green ice, which glowed beneath her feet with light pulsing down from the cap above. The ice flowed in a strange, viscous way, and when she stopped to contemplate her best way forward, it grabbed hold of her feet. She tried to jump free, but it already had taken hold of her, and crept up her calves, the grip hardening almost instantly. The cold bit deeply.

  Alarmed, she drew her swords and hacked at the green ice around her feet and legs. It broke off and scattered across the ground, smoking as the pieces touched the air. At first, she did little more than chip away bits of it, barely stopping its spread, let alone ending the threat, but then she remembered her sowen. She concentrated, slowed her breathing and ignored the tendrils of ice that seemed to be spreading through her veins, and directed heat into the blackened edges of her blades.

  It was as if her weapons had been pulled directly from the forge. The ice melted away with every touch. Except melting wasn’t the right word for what happened, not exactly. Instead, the ice hissed and burned directly into steam. It held a bitter, noxious flavor when it hit her nose and mouth, and she held her breath until she’d fought her way clear.

  Once free of the ice, she ran across the surface instead of walking, afraid of a repeat. When she paused to eye the final approach to the nob of ice at the top, the glacier tried to catch her, and she was forced to hack herself free a second time.

&nb
sp; The ground shook beneath her feet, and a deep sound rumbled in the air, almost too low to hear, but making her chest and bones vibrate with the intensity of it. The monster seemed to have sensed her approach. Bubbles formed like blisters on the surrounding ice, each one growing, first knee-high, then swelling until it was eight or nine feet tall. There must have been fifty of them in all.

  The nearest burst with a hiss and a flash of icy particles that hung in the air, shimmering like a million tiny green crystals that slowly faded and sank to the ground. Emerging from the bursting green blister was a long, sinuous form with dozens of centipede-like legs, except the body and tail were reptilian, with a flexible backbone topped with spines. Every part of it was white, except for the spines on its back, which glowed a pale blue. It tested the air with a forked tongue and turned its gaze toward her. Some sort of lizard-like creature, made of ice.

  The creature sprang at her, and such was her surprise that she barely got her swords up before it grabbed her with its legs. She swung one of the demon blades and took off its head even as the body slammed into her and knocked her to the ground. The legs wrapped around her chest in death, as if the lizard wished to pin her to the ground long enough for the ice to hold her down and engulf her.

  One of her arms remained free, and she used the edge of her blade to sever the legs holding her. The green ice held her legs fast when she tried to regain her feet. Anger welled up inside, and she hacked at the ice with a cry until she’d freed herself.

  Back on her feet, dancing about to keep the ice from grabbing her, she turned to face another of the creatures. The enormous blisters were popping all along the volcano’s slope, and from them, more and more ice lizards appeared. They all came toward her, writhing and twisting. Some spit ice that slammed into her and drove her backward. Others flexed the spines on their backs, which burst out and rained down like lethal darts.

  Narina flexed her sowen, which bowed away from her and blasted aside the spines and the icy spit. It wasn’t enough to stop the ice lizards themselves, who slowed briefly when they hit her sowen, then broke through and leaped at her. Mouths gaped, and dozens of arms reached for her, ready to envelop her in a ball of the creatures and drag her to her doom.

  She was angry at these delays and shouted as she sprang into action. She entered their midst with blades flashing, her face flushed with heat as her sowen raged through her body, strengthening and speeding her attack and driving away the cold that had left her sluggish. Ice lizards reached for her, snapped their jaws, or tried to strike her with exploding spines, but there was too much power in her.

  She severed limbs, melted their heads with blows from the demon blades, and sliced open bellies to let their icy guts spill onto the ground. More blisters formed, and these she punctured with her sword tips before they had a chance to swell and burst.

  In this way she ran up the hillside, ducking attacks, weaving in and out of the newly forming blisters, stopping only long enough to break them apart and spill their half-formed contents onto the ground. When the ice grabbed her feet, she hacked big swaths in the surface, leaped over crevices that tried to swallow her alive, and made her way the last hundred or so feet to the knob of green ice at the very crest of the frozen volcano.

  That bulge of ice loomed above her, larger than the crown of the temple shrine. It was still venting poisonous gasses, which rolled toward her in a stinking green fog. She closed her mouth to hold her breath and took a final leap. She flew through the air and was about to come down on top of the bulge at the top of the volcano when it burst open with a loud roar.

  The subsequent blast knocked her backward, and she landed with a painful thud. Her lungs were burning; she must have gasped at the blow and sucked in some of the poisonous air. As she rose to her knees, coughing and spitting and trying to drive the poison from her body, the volcano continued to vent above her. She had no time to consider what was happening as more of the ice lizards pounced on her.

  By the time she’d fought them off, the explosion was coming to an end, but the aftermath was awesome to behold. A column of swirling green and white lifted into the clouds overhead, and from there radiated outward in jagged green flashes that reminded her of the black lightning Damanja had called down during her attack at the temple. Wherever they raced through the sky, snow fell, together with what looked like glowing, pulsing lights that drifted toward the ground.

  One final swing of her blades repulsed another lizard attack, and then she renewed her charge at the icy knob at the crest. It had blown open in the detonation, and she got a glimpse of knobby scales, together with razor-like feathers as clear as green glass. Green ice flowed from the monster in the hole and would soon seal off the caldera again. An eye like a black emerald turned toward her.

  Do not approach, mortal. You will be destroyed.

  The words struck her mind like a gale force, and she staggered backward, nearly dropping her swords. Still gripping the weapons, she put her fists to her temples and clenched her eyes to drive the dragon’s words away.

  No, she told herself. She wouldn’t flee. She didn’t need to flee. If she weren’t a danger, the creature wouldn’t try to drive her off. It wouldn’t attack her with ice lizards and poison her with noxious gasses. She ducked her head and forged on. Only thirty feet now; she was on the edge of the green knob.

  You will die, mortal!

  Narina broke into a run. The knob over the creature sealed itself just as she arrived, but she slammed down with her swords. She shoved her sowen into the weapons, and they shattered the ice, which rained down on the creature below. Her support destroyed, Narina fell through after it. The monster’s head was directly below, its mouth opening to show teeth as long as swords.

  Narina twisted away from its open jaws and landed on its snout. Before it could move, she reared back and rammed her swords into its nostrils. And then there was a giant heave, a blast of noise and freezing wind, and everything went black.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Less than five minutes after Katalinka declared an end to the work at the forge, there was a sound like a waterfall or a heave from mountain-sized bellows, a rushing blast that rolled on and on for several seconds and then abruptly stopped. It was followed by cracks of lightning in the sky.

  Lightning of a sort, that was. The flashes were thicker than usual, and relatively slow as well, like lightning in slow motion. And green. That part was ominous, as was the deep rumbling afterward and the way the sky grew heavy and leaden. The temperature, already cold, dropped. Green lights drifted slowly from the sky.

  Most of the temple warriors were still at the forge, working to fix arrowheads and spear points onto shafts. As each one was finished, the warriors impaled it point down into the fire to heat it. An elder from each temple, led by Kozmer, stayed with the finished spears and arrows. They directed their combined sowen to keep the shafts from catching fire, while ordering just the right amount of pumping of the bellows.

  A handful of people filtered outside at the strange sounds and joined Katalinka in looking skyward at the falling lights. One light landed in the woods not far away, where it pulsed green through the gloom. Others landed some distance farther away, up the hill in one case, and in two other cases closer to the post road. Katalinka reached out with her sowen, but found a void, and no real disturbance to the surrounding auras. Very strange.

  Katalinka spotted Bartal among the gawkers and waved him over.

  “What is it, Master?”

  “You’re armed,” she said, nodding with satisfaction when she saw his swords strapped to his side. “Go into the woods and investigate that light. I want to know what it is, but if there’s danger, come back.”

  More lightning flashed as the young man ran off, and an additional wave of green lights drifted down from the clouds. Again, not directed toward the temple in particular, but some appeared to be falling near enough to leave her unsettled. Whatever it was, she didn’t like it. She turned back to the work at hand and spotted Mi
klos approaching with a basket of charcoal on his shoulder. He jostled his way past others to enter and dump the coal onto a pile in the corner.

  “I’ve got my warbrand students heating their swords in the fire, too,” he said when he came back outside. “You might consider issuing a general order. We do what firing of arrows and spear throwing we can manage as the monster approaches, then run for our swords.”

  “Not a bad idea. I should do the same with my own blades. Yes, spread the word. Meanwhile, can you grab a few of your people and pull down the siding on the blacksmith shed?”

  “You mean rip out the planks entirely?” he asked.

  “There’s too many people crowding in and out of the doorway. We need to store all the spears and arrows inside until the last moment to keep them hot, and once the fighting starts, I’m afraid it will be pure chaos, people running in and out with red-hot weapons in hand.”

  More green lightning flashed overhead, followed by a deep, bone-shaking rumble. A third wave of lights fell slowly from the heavens.

  “And that?” Miklos said, pointing. “What the devil does that mean?”

  She was about to tell him that she’d sent Bartal to investigate, when the young man broke out of the woods, swords in hand, waving them wildly. “Master, help me!!”

  A creature burst through the snow about fifteen feet behind the frater, long and sinewy with multiple legs, something like a cross between a lizard and a centipede. It was all white, the same color as the snow, except for a ridge of pale blue spines on its back. In spite of the young man’s panic, the creature was moving more slowly across the surface of the snow than the frater. Its legs were too small and thin to help it run.

  But then it dove into the snow, fully submerged except for the spine, and it swam forward with all of the speed of a snake through water, quickly chasing down Bartal. The frater gave a final, panicked look behind him, then the creature grabbed his legs and pulled him under.