Waterlogged (The Valkwitch Saga)

by Michael Watson

  It took a mountain of willpower for Tyrissa to stop and wait, the urgings of the fire magick in her veins begging her to continue the chase, the motion, the action. Arcing foot bridges crossed the waterway to either side of her, but they were each a fair distance away. However, she was finally able to get a good look at the waterpact.

  He was about average height, with a slight sort of build implying a heavy dose of grace but an underlying strength of body to back it up. The numerous night lamps along the waterway revealed a refined face worth a second and third look, with too-blue eyes reflecting the dancing, inconsistent light of the night lamps’ flames.

  “How rude of me. I’m Sidon.” His smooth, flowing voice was more than a little enchanting.

  “Tyrissa. It’s a fine night for a run,” she said while letting a ball of fire coalesce around her fist, readied to respond to any further attacks. She barely felt winded from the run and Sidon looked the same.

  “Agreed. A fine night to clear up some questions,” Sidon’s eyes flashed with concentration. As expected, his hand shot forward and launched another spear of ice at her. Tyrissa jumped to the side, hand snapping forward to let the readied flames lash out and meet his attack. The two missiles combined to steam and scattered, harmless shards.

  “And confirm what I saw earlier today,” he said, voice cool, as if their brief exchange were another form of pleasantries. Not far from the truth, so far as Tyrissa saw it.

  “I doubt you’ve seen anything like me before,” Tyrissa said while condensing another fist of flame. Just in case.

  “No. I have not. I’d thought you were merely of Fire. Not so.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Something more, something different, yes?”

  Tyrissa said nothing, suppressing another surge from within to unleash an inferno on this man. Sidon seemed to take her silence as a complex answer, mulling it over. He opened a small drawstring bag attached to his waist and carefully pulled out a pinch of powder, a few dark grains drifting from his fingers to the water below. He tipped his head back and let the powder fall into his mouth, then worked it around with his tongue. His breath puffed with mist despite the night’s warmth.

  “Shall we resume?”

  In response, Tyrissa took a few steps back and gave the fires within a longer leash. She darted forward and leapt across the waterway, trailing sparks in the warm night air and creating a departing chorus of sizzles in the waters below. Bright orange light bathed the area, briefly banishing the night. She aimed for the opposite boardwalk but forced Sidon to dodge away from her. Fleeting flames flashed out around her upon landing on the opposite walkway, and she turned to see Sidon gliding atop the water for a few seconds before jumping back onto the Stotten’s wooden paths. Tyrissa sped after him.

  While she reveled in every on-the-edge moment of this chase, it was a constant mental battle to keep the fire elemental energy restrained and not leave a burning trail through the tinderbox structure of Stotten. The additional distraction of Sidon being, frankly, gorgeous and the very image of fluid grace and power didn’t help matters. Tyrissa tried to dismiss it as the fire talking, a side effect of the pulse of passion and excitement that refreshed with every heartbeat. Even the bitter memories of other chases with other Pactbound across other cities turned to fleeting ashes in her mind.

  Soon enough their chase left Stotten behind. Sidon followed the winding waterways around town out into the half-flooded lands away from the Callen. Tyrissa pursued along raised pathways in the mud, her feet squelching along the softened ground and leaving steam shrouded footprints.

  Into the outskirts they went, along roads sinking dangerously low in the swamp and between weatherworn homesteads, some with the light of habitation within, others decrepit and abandoned. The lines of trees soon blocked all sight of the town behind her and within a few minutes Tyrissa found herself a lone, blazing figure in the flooded woods. Shadows were thrown into wild, contorted angles from her the cloak of fiery orange light. Sidon guided her on, a beacon of a different sort in the night.

  This could all be a trap, a thought whispered through the internal, fiery haze.

  I would welcome it. I could incinerate whatever dared stand in my way.

  Her quarry stopped at a broad pool in the swamps where the canopy of trees pulled back to reveal a circle of starry sky. He stood atop a sheet of ice near the water’s edge, looking almost impatient for her to catch up.

  Knowing she was likely to burst if she held in any longer, Tyrissa loosed two streams of fire into to pool well wide of Sidon. The waters boiled and hissed from the magick discharge. Sidon remained nonplussed at her warning shots, as if assured in the night’s outcome from the very start.

  “What do you want from me?” Tyrissa blurted out, possessing neither the presence of mind nor the patience for anything more polite.

  He responded with an extended hand and another spear of ice springing from the column at his feet and launching toward her. Without a thought, Tyrissa stepped aside and snapped her hands out, grasping the spear and breaking it with a twist. Flames puffed from her hands and melted away the ice in her grip.

  Sidon’s face was a mask of study. Again came the murderous urge to leap forward and see this job done. The fires within joined with her Pact to howl for her engage him. Fight him. End him.

  “You’ll forgive me tests, won’t you?” He stepped close, confident enough to come this near the flames.

  “We all must keep up appearances.” Tyrissa felt no true danger from him.

  Strike now. Make this one easy, quick. Her right hand closed around her dagger, and she wanted to shut her eyes and have this Calling over and done.

  “How bound are we?” He asked. So very distracting, that face, that smooth voice. “How can we know what course to take when the intent is so obscured by the mists of omen?”

  I’m not sure, she thought but said nothing. That very question had burned in her for months now. The dutiful yet violent urges began to fade as a new semblance of control came over her.

  Sidon traced a symbol in the air between them, his fingers trailing crystalline mist. The drifting ice swirled and shifted, but were soon drawn in towards Tyrissa, trails of frost settling across her and burning away into yet more fuel for the internal inferno.

  And still Tyrissa stayed her hand in defiance of the urges from her Pact.

  “For all my sight, for all the signs and omens, you are a surprise.”

  Some sort of oracle, then. There was more credence to the tales of an oracle hidden in the Rildermeek than the crew of the Drifter knew.

  “And what do you see now that we’re face to face?”

  He paused for a moment, eyes looking well beyond where she stood.

  “A vortex of nothingness. What that means, I do not know.”

  “I think you should be more afraid then you are,” she said, the fires made it more a threat than a warning.

  “Perhaps. But not tonight. All of the signs are unclear outside the central vortex, as if the waters cannot divine your place.” Sidon drew another pinch of dust from his pouch, the motion automatic. “When we meet again, I will fight you. Because I must and for the sake of…appearances.”

  With that he took off again, sliding along fleeting ice paths atop the dark waters. Tyrissa resisted a final urge to resume the chase and instead merely watched as Sidon disappeared into the night.

  Tyrissa unclenched her hand from the dagger’s hilt, the lethal urges melting away like the ice in Sidon’s wake. Then she willed out the build-up of fire magick into upraised palms and unleashed all of the fire in her blood. Rapid bursts of brilliant light surged upward to block out the stars above: a grand series of false will-o’-the-wisps over the swamps.

  * * * * *

  Tyrissa returned to The Willow to see Jesca sitting in one of the porch’s eclectic gathering of chairs. She held a steaming mug of tea and nodded at Tyrissa as she kicked mud from her boots and stomped up the stairs.

  “You’
re up early,” Tyrissa said in greeting. She figured dawn was a couple hours away and was surprised Jesca wasn’t still out cold from her extended planning sessions with the local sheriffs for the raid tomorrow.

  “Could say the same for you, Ty. You get him?” Jesca asked, knowing there would be one reason for Tyrissa to be out at this hour.

  “No. This was more of a proper introduction,” Tyrissa said. She fell into a neighboring chair, its weathered wood and woven seat creaking from age.

  “Informative?”

  Tyrissa flexed one hand, revisiting that heated feeling of power. She understood how firepacts could be so far gone, absorbed into the heady, intense seduction of their element. How easy it would be to succumb to the addictive strength and have mind and soul burned away without a care.

  “I should have a solid grasp on the magick side of things tomorrow. Or, later today, given how late it is. It’s strange. He’s strong, yet calmer and younger than I would have expected. Normally the Pactbound I hunt are broken, desperate, or insane.”

  “Maybe he’s good at hiding it. Seems to be a common trait among those types.”

  Tyrissa gave Jesca a hard look, but it melted away when she saw the joke in her eyes. It was hard to be angry when she was completely right.

  “Just can’t trust them,” Tyrissa said. “Too many nighttime disappearances. Too many secrets.”

  “Make bad soldiers.”

  “But good contractors.”

  “That’s pending review,” Jesca said, tapping her fingers against her mug in thought. “Think he’ll stick with the Sons through the raid?”

  “Yes,” Tyrissa replied with certainty. “For a time, at least. He seems to be following some divined path. He’ll be there but I think I can handle him. Might have to chase him well away from the Sons’ base. You guys won’t want to wait up for me.”

  “So long as he’s taken out of the fight among us mundane types, I’ll be happy,” Jesca said with a quiver of discomfort. “And so long as you come back,” she added.

  “Don’t I always?” Tyrissa said.

  They sat in silence for a time, the early morning air a comfortable break from the humid, clinging heat of days past and the day to come.

  “He’s downright gorgeous, though.”

  Jesca laughed. “Good to know you have your eyes on the prize.”

  “If they all looked like that, I’d look nowhere else.”

  “Still a few hours until we move out,” Jesca said after a while. “Might want to snatch a little more sleep.”

  Tyrissa shook her head at the suggestion. Though all remnants of fire magick had faded from her blood, she still buzzed with wakeful energy. There would be no more rest tonight.

  “I think I’ll stay up. How’s that tea?”

  “Can’t say I approve entirely,” Jesca said before downing the rest of her mug. “But hopefully it’ll get the job done.”

  “We all have our methods,” Tyrissa said.

  “That we do.”

  Chapter Six

  A flotilla of small craft set out from Stotten the next morning, the Cadre supplemented by an equal number of rough-looking local guardsmen and sheriffs. If she didn’t know better, Tyrissa would have a hard time distinguishing the law in these parts from the bandits they caught in the attack on the Drifter. There was a definite, yet unofficial dress code of this region: greens and browns matching the surrounding colors of the swamp and river but with occasional splashes of color, some rather garish. Such ornamentation was now missing on this mission, one of violence and, to some, justice. A steely resolve lit the locals’ eyes and there was the sense of this being a long standing score in need of settling, delayed due to local pride and not wanting to draw in outsiders.

  The Drifter departed at the first hint of dawn, bound for Eizba and the delivery of its not-too-precious cargo. It was due to return in two days to bring the Cadre back downriver to Khalanheim.

  Their fleet crossed the languid Callen and entered the swamps along the western bank, the varied boats nimbly slipping through gaps in the floating trees. Tyrissa rode at the rear of a narrow boat with a pair of Cadre members and a guard from Stotten rowing them along. A solidly built woman, Criss, if Tyrissa remembered correctly from her time in the Cadre, sat at the fore of the boat with a heavy crossbow and a cluster of wrapped bolts at her side. Tyrissa felt a faint flicker of fire magick coming from them: the incendiary shots purchased from Zaes.

  A sheriff guided their flotilla through the swamp from the foremost boat and plotted a weaving route along waterways hidden amongst the trees and sandbars. The Rildermeek alternated between sunlit patches of open, still water and oppressive narrow channels where the trees and vines clawed in close like bad memories. The day was cooler than the previous week on the river, owing much to the shade of the patchy canopy above. Every breath was thick with the scents of the swamp, of mud and decay, but also of fresh foliage hidden underneath.

  It was nearly noon when their target came into view. The trees gave way to an open pool of water crowned by a great pile of weathered construction. The Sons’ hideout was much like Stotten, if on a smaller scale and stacked like a sloppy two-level pyramid. Tyrissa figured it sprang from the same idea but never metastasized to Stotten’s size, a patch of inhabited ruin floating in the depths of the swamps. A flurry of activity buzzed throughout the ramshackle village as their flotilla fanned out across the pool.

  An exchange of crossbow shots flew out between the approaching landing party and the bandits. The lead boats had raised thick wooden shields at their prows, deflecting any shots from the village. Blue and red streaks of elchemical fire were launched from the rear Cadre boats and arced toward the upper areas of the village, exploding on impact with bursts of light that illuminated the swamp in strange shades.

  “I’m almost certain to get separated from everyone else. Don’t wait up for me,” Tyrissa said. The first of the boats had already reached the edge of the village and groups of Cadre and lawmen were creating beachheads. Their boat turned aside and began to circle around toward the far side of the village.

  “There’s a spit of dry land ahead. We’ll drop you there as we cover that side of the pool,” Criss said, eyes not leaving the closest points of the village as they made their way around.

  The Sons of Amatha had three choices: fight a superior enemy, burn in their village or in hastily launched boats, or swim for it and likely capture. The decision seemed split between the first and third option. A group had rallied near the landing force, but made no progress in shoving their attackers back to the boats or into the swamp. Any support from hidden positions within the village were covered by surrounding crossbow fire. A few men tried to swim to safety but the outlying Cadre boats caught them quickly. All in all, it didn’t appear to be much of a fight.

  Their own patrol boat came close to a line of land that ran from the village into the swamp, guarding one of the few exits on foot from the fighting. Another Cadre boat enclosed the net on the other side.

  “Here’s good,” Tyrissa said, shouldering her staff and hopping out into the shallows. “I need to head in and take care of that waterpact.”

  The battle was nearly over before it began and the only thing that could turn the tide was Sidon. As if on cue, a surge of white spray erupted from a high point of the driftwood village, dousing a spreading section of fire. Tyrissa sprinted along the soft ground and onto an open walkway at the edge of the village, trying to catch a corner of Sidon’s magick and draw it in but finding only faint scraps of power. Any droplets striking Tyrissa flashed into points of heat and sank into her skin, adding to the beginnings of another internal furnace. She could feel Sidon’s presence ahead of her, spiking with every use of his magick. He was in the upper levels, at some unseen vantage point over the area that drew crossbow shots from the Cadre yet remained free of the spreading fires. A gelid presence, flaring out arcs of ice and water magick to fight against the enclosing net of the attack. It was always like this, the
target of a Calling making a beacon of themselves to guide her along.

  Tyrissa reached the edge of the driftwood village and plunged headlong into the inner tangle of buildings, the heat rising in her blood as she closed on Sidon’s position. She went in unchallenged, distracted as the Sons were by the Cadre’s attack. They were half-glimpsed shadows between the chaotic jumble of construction, at best.

  These were the moments wholly lost to the thrill of the hunt where she scared herself by treading so close to that unknown edge between control and losing herself to the Pact’s drive. It seemed to come easier with fire, the thrill enhanced by the elemental power pulsing in her blood.

  The growing flames licking at the village parted around her as ran through the chaos, bowing on account of professional courtesy. They roared back to life once she had passed and if anything her presence was strengthening them. She used none of her absorbed magick, saving up whatever she could and biding her time. The village was coming apart. She would need to make this quick before it all collapsed into the swamp.

  Tyrissa ran to the heart of the village where the upper levels shaded the paths below. Scattered fires and dim, abandoned lamps lit the scene and the air was filled with dripping water and drifting smoke. She found an uneven stairway to the level above and took the steps two at a time, her boots squelching against soaked wood.

  The upper level was a relatively open space of stitched together platforms tented by pointed or boxed roofs from below. Everything was soaked by Sidon’s firefighting, the haze of smoke and scorched patches of wood speaking to a battle already fought. A few too-bright fires stubbornly refused to be doused: the impact points of elchemical bolts from the Cadre.

  Sidon skated along the far side of the platform, his hands gesturing as if conducting a frantic and unruly orchestra, calling up surges of murky water from the swamp below or conjuring pure icy streams from the air around him. He was well taxed dousing fires around the village, but did find time to shape and launch a spear of ice at the fighting below. He gave no indication he noticed her arrival, but Tyrissa knew he had to be aware of her drawing in of the lingering energies in the air.