Crowlord

  Crowlord

  by Michael Wallace

  Copyright ©2020 Michael Wallace

  Balsalom Publishing

  Cover art by Félix Ortiz

  Welcome to a fantasy world torn by demons and demigods, where Narina, a sword master of the Bladedancer Temple, is called to join a larger conflict: the rise of the legendary Sword Saint, a warrior with the ability to single-handedly defeat an entire army.

  The Sword Saint Series:

  Book One: Sword Saint

  Book Two: Crowlord

  Book Three: Shadow Walker

  Book Four: Bladedancer

  Chapter One

  The bladedancer sohns were five days into the mountains when a freak storm hit. Only an hour earlier, Katalinka had removed her slipper-like shoes, rolled up her pant legs, and waded through a mountain stream, delighting in the chill water that cooled her sore, sweating feet. Now, she was drawing her cape against a sudden chill, while dubiously eyeing the fat snowflakes drifting from a sky that had turned leaden.

  “Demons and demigods, what the hell is this?” she asked. “It was full-on sun twenty minutes ago.”

  Abelard, her companion sohn, looked skyward with a frown tugging at the edge of his mouth. His response came out in a low rumble. “We are higher in the mountains. There are sometimes storms up here, even in the height of summer.” His tone, as usual, was cautious, but he didn’t sound convinced of his own words.

  “It’s not a question of the season. Where the devil did it come from? I’ve still got sweat cooling on my back.”

  He gestured to a rugged peak that towered above the northern edge of the canyon wall. “The clouds are coming right over that mountain. Must be a pocket of cold air above the glaciers.”

  The mountain in question was one of several massive, snow-crowned peaks that rose triumphantly above their lower cousins. With every passing mile on the post road, the high peaks had grown in prominence, and now they dominated the skyline. Living in the highlands already, it was easy to forget that the center of their homeland was commanded by a range so forbidding that those few who’d climbed its heights claimed you could glimpse the eastern ocean and the Narrow Sea to the west from the same vantage point.

  The mountain heights were the domain of the demigod dragons. There were three of them in all. According to the stories, they slept at the bottom of ice-bound lakes, where their dreams raised storms that drifted all the way to the plains. In spring, freak hailstorms could ruin crops and cause misery for thousands. At least once every winter, a massive blizzard fell howling onto the bladedancer temple and buried them in eight feet of snow.

  Was this another dream of the demigods? A nightmare, more like, if it could bring snow in the middle of summer.

  Even so, Katalinka knew the snow wouldn’t last. The ground was too warm for flakes to stick, and a glance behind showed clear skies below, in the lower reaches where they’d been traveling these past few days. The strange, thickening cloud formation would shortly break apart, and the sun would return for the last two or three hours of their daily exertion. She was already looking forward to bathing, eating, and some light meditating with her swords to calm her mind. One more day, she guessed, and they would reach the firewalker temple.

  Katalinka held out her hand and watched a flake land on her palm and melt. A second one drifted toward the first. She reached for its aura.

  “Where are you from, little one?” she murmured.

  A shock greeted her probing mind. Normally, a snowflake, like a drop of water or a grain of rice, was a blur, an insignificant part of a whole that could better be sensed along with thousands of its companions. She’d only hoped to determine this one’s provenance, to know if it had formed above that high peak, as Abelard speculated, or farther north, in an even colder part of the range, where perhaps it continued to snow throughout the year.

  Instead, its aura had purpose. An alignment. Like a single soldier with a spear lowered for battle. A man who knows his place in a vast army.

  Katalinka stopped in place, and Abelard turned from ahead and swung his satchel to his other shoulder. They were each carrying a bedroll, food, cookware, and other supplies, in addition to their swords, which made for a heavy and cumbersome burden.

  “Something the matter?” he asked.

  “It’s. . .I’m not sure. Try it yourself—touch a snowflake, feel its aura.”

  He shrugged and gave her a little smile, as if indulging a whim. From anyone else—even her sister, Narina—that look would have annoyed her. But from Abelard it seemed more a commentary about the absurdity of the world than anything personal. It was that light touch that made him such an effective teacher. His students practically worshiped the man.

  His smile faded as he captured a snowflake and let it melt on his hand. They were falling faster now, and he caught several more, one after another. His sowen reached out and studied each of their auras in turn. His frown deepened.

  “They remind me of grains of raked sand,” he said at last.

  “Ah, yes. That’s it.” It was a better analogy than her initial impression of soldier.

  Temple fraters collected and cleaned the sand from the training arena at the shrine, then formed it into a large cone. From there, they raked it afresh across the arena. During the cleaning process, when bits of leaves and twigs were picked out, and then the whole mass was baked in the oven to purify it, the sand was nothing but an undifferentiated mass. But once the fraters raked it smooth, formed ridges and grooves and geometric patterns, the sand took on a collective aura.

  These snowflakes had been shaped in a similar fashion as the raked sand.

  They continued up the road, but Katalinka’s unsettled feeling grew with every passing minute. The snow continued to thicken, and now there was a breeze to accompany it. Clouds continued to overrun them until they darkened the eastern horizon. Gone was any thought this was a passing aberration. Finally, the first flakes began to stick to the ground.

  “This must be some dream,” Abelard said.

  “It’s more than a dreaming demigod,” she said. “Someone is using their sowen to push a storm down from the peaks.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.”

  “You don’t believe it?” Katalinka said.

  “I couldn’t push a storm, could you?”

  “We’re bladedancers. That isn’t our skill. We sense, others shape.”

  “Even firewalkers can’t organize the aura of a snowstorm. It would be like our fraters raking smooth an entire beach, but using only ocean waves to do it.”

  “And that’s impossible?” she asked.

  Abelard raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never been to the ocean, have you?”

  “No, have you?”

  He smiled, neither answer nor negation. “It’s a favorite activity of children to make castles in the sand, and of the ocean to wipe them out again. Agents of chaos. Storm winds aren’t so different from ocean waves. How would you control them?”

  “Someone is aligning the auras,” she said.

  “Or something. Might not be a conscious act. Anyway, it’s not aimed at us,” he added. “Not meant as an attack. At least I don’t think so.”

  “I hope you’re right. If the snow picks up, we can push it away. Might not keep us warm, but at least we won’t freeze to death.”

  “Freeze to death?” Abelard gave an indulgent chuckle. “I’m sure it won’t get to that.”

  Katalinka gave a return laugh. Of course it sounded absurd. The sun was almost directly overhead this time of the year, baking the plains, and in the mountains sending wild goats up to cool alpine meadows. No storm could overcome the natural rhythm of the seasons for long.

  But the weather continued to deteriorate as the pair continued their gradual ascent. The breeze tu
rned into gusts, and the snow thickened to an almost fog-like consistency as it obscured the road ahead. The snowflakes first had melted instantly, then reluctantly, then stuck. The cobbles grew slick and slushy. Actual snow clung to the boughs of pine trees lining the road, then to the grass and ferns that grew in the cooler, more shady parts of the forest. Finally, the slush on the road began to form a cap.

  They came upon a shepherd girl with fifteen or twenty sheep clustered into a knot, a sheepdog pacing about, whining, while the shepherd herself cut pine boughs with a hatchet to make a temporary shelter. The girl gave them a baleful look as they passed, as if they were somehow responsible for the freakish weather.

  “Should we stop and help?” Katalinka asked. “She can’t be more than fifteen years old.”

  “A shepherd of the high mountains knows a lot more about waiting out storms than we do.”

  She nodded. Of course he was right, and the girl was also wise enough to hunker down. Maybe they should consider the same thing. But at the moment, it didn’t seem so bad. Unpleasant, yes, but hardly life-threatening.

  “All right,” Abelard said a few minutes later. He sounded tired. “Your turn. Give it a push.”

  “That was you pushing?” she said. “My cloak is soaking wet, and my feet are turning numb.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said lightly. “Was I not helping enough? If it’s not doing any good, I may as well let it drop. Well, let’s see if there’s any difference.”

  Katalinka had been focused on the weather, and on picking their way along the road, with the graying figures of trees lining their path, boughs dipping under the heavy, wet load, and she hadn’t paid much attention to how he was using his sowen. She noticed at once as he withdrew it.

  Suddenly, the wind was whipping in her face, and the snow contained what felt like shards of ice, frozen sleet, and even hailstones that pinged against the hood of her cloak. Demons, this was a real storm. Only Abelard’s efforts had kept them moving.

  She gathered her sowen and sent it into the surrounding auras. In spite of her companion’s struggles, she didn’t expect the storm to fight back. It shouldn’t be any different from dispersing smoke in the smithy or bending a light breeze to cool her on a hot day. But when she pushed, the storm pushed back, as if someone were sensing her efforts and responding.

  She could hold back the storm, but the effort was tiring, and within ten minutes, her sowen began to flag. A few minutes after that, she gave up the struggle entirely, not ready to concede, but needing to catch her breath and gather her attention.

  Katalinka swore at nobody in particular as the wind-driven snow pummeled them once again. “Demons and demigods.”

  Abelard said something, but the wind whipped away his words.

  “Huh?”

  He raised his voice. “Could be precisely that. Demons and demigods.”

  She didn’t follow, and shook her head to show her confusion. She wrestled her sowen under control and sent it out to do battle with the storm once more.

  “Remember the volcanoes?” Abelard said as the howling wind diminished around them. “Manet Tuzzia, Manet Uz?”

  The first of these volcanoes had been erupting when they left the temple. A column of smoke rose high above the plains, and a forest fire was burning lower in the canyon, near the village of Hooffent. Narina, Kozmer, and Gyorgy were traveling that way, and Katalinka and Abelard spent a good deal of time that first day discussing how their companions would be faring. Pushing through regardless, they eventually decided.

  The second volcano had caught their eye on the second full day of travel. The volcano itself wasn’t visible to their eye, only the ash cloud, a huge gray shape that blotted the sun, drifting east. But the only volcano in that direction was Manet Uz, and it was a big ash producer relative to Tuzzia, which sent out rivers of lava.

  Neither had been known as among the most active or dangerous of the range. That meant there must be some sort of agitation in the underworld, if so many demons were near the surface.

  Katalinka didn’t know what to make of this. “Are you saying this storm is caused by dragons? Surely not.”

  “I’m not saying they’re awake,” he told her. “But if the demons are active, and the demigods sense them in their sleep, then they could dream up storms to smother the eruptions. You look exhausted—here, let me have a go at the storm.”

  “No, it’s still my turn. You carried on a half hour, or longer.”

  “But it was easier then. Storm is picking up.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Katalinka. . .”

  But she wouldn’t let him, and kept her sowen focused. “Rest and gather your strength.”

  The storm was still growing worse. Never mind the freak summer part; the rate of falling snow, together with the gusting winds, was turning this into a full-scale blizzard. How much longer could she carry on? Not long.

  When her efforts finally collapsed, the storm fell upon them with a howl and a fury that she wouldn’t have believed possible. Abelard struggled to fight it back, with limited success. He was already tired, and when she threw in her lot with his, even together they were unable to make much headway.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “We have to find shelter. There’s some caves near here.”

  “Are there? I can’t see a thing. How can you tell?”

  Katalinka lifted her voice to be heard above a fresh howling assault. “I’ve been up here. I came through a couple of years ago—the caves are half a mile or so up ahead. I think.”

  “You’d better be sure.”

  She considered a moment longer. She was relatively sure. “You fight the storm, I’ll lead us to the caves.”

  Katalinka eyed gaps in the trees, thinking conditions might be better off the road and among the woods, even if they got dumped on from sagging pine boughs. Before she could make a decision on that score, a crackling, howling sound came from the forest ahead. The trees bent and groaned, and a terrific gale pushed through. She struggled to remain on her feet, felt Abelard’s hand on her shoulder, trying to hold her upright, and then the two went down in a heap.

  Something huge roared overhead. She stared, gaping, into the sky. Ice and hail and snow pummeled her and forced her to lift a forearm in protection. There were endless buckets of it landing on her, filling her mouth and nostrils. Mercifully, it only lasted a moment.

  Such had been the ferocity of the attack that it was all she could do to draw another breath and knock away the snow that left her half-buried. It was as if she’d fallen into one of the snow wells that formed around tree trunks during a storm. But the sum total had fallen in an instant.

  “It can’t be,” Abelard said. His voice sounded numb with shock at the sight of what had just passed overhead.

  Katalinka couldn’t manage a sound. Yet even though his denial was ringing in her own head, she knew it must be true. She’d only caught a glimpse of its massive shadow, yet there could be no doubt.

  A dragon demigod had flown overhead.

  #

  The worst of the blizzard-like conditions faded with the passing of the creature, but by now they were cold, wet, and exhausted, and the task of finding shelter took on a new urgency. The auras of the surrounding forest—trees, rock, snow, wind—were unsettled, vibrating as if expecting the return of the demigod.

  Katalinka shivered uncontrollably. The blast of snow had left her temporarily buried to the waist, but more than the cold and wet, her self-control was shattered. Abelard shook his head violently, and snow flew from his hair. His face was pale with shock, and his words slurred.

  “It was a demigod. I never. . .did you see it? There was just a shadow. . .a chill. And then. . .”

  “Master your sowen,” she told him. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  They weren’t students or temple fraters, but full sohns, and even in the dreadful conditions, a few moments of meditation brought their sowen under control.

  “Where do we go from here?�
� Abelard asked. He looked and sounded better. “How do we find the caves?”

  She pointed, and they set off.

  Bladedancers were nimble on their feet, and able to bend the auras of their surroundings, and so they sprinted over the top of the snow, barely touching between steps, satchels held overhead to reduce the drag. Even so, it was exhausting work. Finally, Katalinka found a gap in the trees that led to the cliff wall.

  They pushed their way along the wall for another ten minutes or so, inspecting potential shelters. There were a handful of eroded fissures, but none were deep enough to shelter them from the snow that had blasted in on the wind to fill every crevice. Little protection here should the dragon return; one more pass like that and they might very well find themselves buried alive.

  “Here!” Abelard called from somewhere ahead of her. He was a dim shape in the dying light of afternoon, with snow still swirling down from the sky. “It’s a good-sized opening and. . .”

  “Abelard?” Katalinka said when he didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Come here. Quickly.”

  Something in his tone made her stiffen, and as she waded through the snow to his side, her heightened senses felt something shimmering in the auras ahead of them. He’d found a yawning opening in the cliff face, but there was a presence there. And a light—that was curious.

  She reached her companion’s side to find him rigid, tension visible in his posture. He’d swung his satchel over his shoulder and tucked his hands into his cloak. They were resting on his sword hilts, she could tell. Her hands immediately went to her own weapons, but she didn’t draw them until she saw what had alarmed him.

  This was precisely the shelter she’d been thinking of. There was an opening about twelve feet high and three or four feet wide that widened into a cave maybe twenty feet deep and thirty feet wide, if memory served. Fingers of stone dangled from the ceiling, but they were no longer growing, instead dark with soot as the cave had been used by travelers for generations.

  The previous time she’d passed through, some three or four years earlier, a pair of young brigands had been sleeping inside, but had fled in terror when she swept open her cloak and showed her weapons. The villains had lived like animals and soiled the interior with discarded bones, bloodstained rags, and their own human waste.