Waterlogged (The Valkwitch Saga)

by Michael Watson

  Time to catch his attention in earnest.

  Tyrissa gathered a fistful of flame and hurled it at Sidon, charging ahead behind it, staff held back and readied. Sidon took the attack in stride, missing not a beat as he spun in place and clawed both hands upward. A pillar of muddy ice burst through the platform between them, catching her fireball in a blast of steam.

  Stepping aside the new hole in the platform, Tyrissa rounded the broken pillar and loosened her grip on the rising fires within. A dispersed aura of heat burned around her and ice melted away from her footsteps. She whirled her staff around but found only empty air. Sidon glided backward, his face a mask of concentration. Tyrissa pressed her attack, darting after him as he weaved away from her. What few strikes she managed to get close were deflected by crystalline shields of ice that sprang into being to shatter before her blows.

  Sidon was careful not to send much magick her way, throttling her absorption and limiting her fire reserves, the end result of their mutual study the night before. All of his effort was focused on Tyrissa, however, leaving him no time to deal with the Cadre’s raid below. Mission accomplished in that regard.

  “Clarity in combat,” Sidon said upon gaining a reasonably safe distance from her. Tyrissa’s response was halted by Sidon raising his arms to match an immense surge of water magick. Tyrissa’s breath stung in her throat as if she had stepped into the dead of winter. The fires within raged in response, but not enough to blunt the chill in the air. All around, the platform and rooftops began to creak as everything turned to ice and the soaked wood splintered and exploded. Flying splinters and pointed shards of ice stabbed at her back, and her footing shifted and weakened.

  It was too much for the upper level of the village to handle, and it all began to collapse at their feet. Pumping the fire through her limbs, Tyrissa raced for one edge of the platform and leapt for safety on the level below as the crash of crumbling frozen wood resounded behind her.

  She deftly landed in a crouch on an intact walkway below. Tyrissa paused for a moment, listening and feeling out Sidon’s position. The crash and whistle of his magicks went silent and Tyrissa felt only traces of his presence in her mind, useless echoes. She remained crouching and motionless, seeking a stronger signal to act upon while eyeing the fires around her and quelling the urgings from the fires within. The crackle of burning wood. The scattered hiss of debris falling into the water. The shouts, rings, and snaps of fighting. A woman’s shouted commands, Jesca directing the Cadre.

  But of elemental signals, there was nothing.

  Tyrissa stood, tense and ready for any surprises. This was new to her. The few Pactbound she’d fought so far never had the self-control to go dark and calm like this. They were too afraid of her presence to cease using their powers. Even in moments of ambush they gave off slight sensations from the passive thrum of magick that accompanied their physical, often instinctual enhancements or changes. Changes such as the rush and haste of fire begging to be used within Tyrissa right now. She sated it for the moment by spinning her staff in her palms, the friction of skin against wood a distant feeling.

  Perhaps water has more self-control? This was a learning experience for her as much as just another Calling, after all. Sidon’s stillness could only help her allies and push the fight quicker towards its inevitable end.

  A flare of water magick came into being above. And another to her left. Behind. Below and ahead. All the exact same intensity, clones in her mind.

  Tyrissa chose the point off to her left and charged ahead without hesitation. Anything to get moving again. She took a fork when the walkway split and arrived at an intact hut, the magick presence pulsing inside beyond a slightly ajar door in a moisture-warped frame. Tyrissa rammed one end of her staff into the door while funneling a fistful of fire into her right hand, ready to throw.

  Inside stood a man-sized pointed shard of ice, a cloudy mix of frozen muck thrust up from the swamp below and puncturing through the floorboards. Bait. All but one would be. Tyrissa stepped in and placed a hand on the shard. The flames she’d prepared withered away, but a burning surge of heat remained as the component magick of the shard drained into her, further stoking the fires in her blood.

  He might think he cannot fight me. It was a reasonable thought pushing through the passionate haze of fire, but the sheer disappointment that came with it made her uncomfortable.

  Bait has two components. The other presences of water magick in her mind shifted and vanished save one, now behind her. Tyrissa spun in place and blindly released a broad gout of orange flame down the walkway. Spears of flying ice careened off their paths into her exposed back. They met the flames and flashed into clouds of mist and steam.

  Mist swirled around her as she strode back down the walkway. Sidon was close ahead, no longer hidden to her, but still unseen among the jumbled construction of the village. The sounds of battle were fewer now, replaced with the primal crackle of a spreading inferno. Filled with flames herself, Tyrissa gave in to the fire’s urgings and took the obvious, reckless solution.

  Burn it all down.

  The flames knew what to do more so than Tyrissa. She poured most of her leashed energy into a solid shield of flame in front of her, an oval six feet tall.

  Hold.

  She added more, intensifying the shield to a furious, white-hot inferno. Then it was a simple mental command to push it away from her. The shield shot outward in a shaped explosion. Streaks of white fire sliced through the kindling of the driftwood village. Huts shattered and walkways collapsed. Tyrissa stood in a protected circle, untouched by the explosion. Perhaps a tad excessive, she chided herself. She felt a brief flash of nervous weakness after draining so much magick, but the sensation passed by the time the wreckage settled. Much of the fire burned itself out far quicker than a natural blaze, leaving smoldering, hissing embers.

  A rising column of steam billowed among the collapsed piles of burned wood. Tyrissa strode into the wreckage without a care, the remnant levels of fire magick keeping her protected from the lingering flames. She found a protective cocoon of ice slowly melting among the debris. Sidon’s face was visible through the ice, a haunting, beautiful visage. The shell melted at her touch, again refreshing her stores of fire magick. She rebounded it back into the ice to speed along the melting process, annihilating it.

  Sidon tumbled out, alive and weary. He tried to stand, his previous grace now gone. He fell. He lay there, alive, but broken and defeated. A powerful rage rose within her, well apart from the influence of fire.

  This was the moment when the station, not the woman, did what came next. This was her Pact’s retribution, its cleansing fury, that terrifying moment when Tyrissa felt detached from herself. The moment of the kill. Her hand went to her dagger, its hilt warm to the touch. The fires within withered away, replaced with an outflow of silver light.

  “I saw…I saw a vortex of emptiness,” Sidon said in a dry whisper. It gave her pause. “Breaking the flows and draining away the water’s touch, leaving a shell.”

  Finish the job. The Valkwitch dagger came free from its sheath, the metal softly chiming and glowing with pale, purifying light. There was power in the weapon, power Tyrissa didn’t yet understand.

  “A living shell.”

  Tyrissa stopped. There had to be another way beyond a kill. She did it once before, though knew not what she was doing.

  Can I do it again? I can be an angel of Vengeance. Of Battle. Of Purification.

  Can I be Mercy as well?

  With a mountainous force of will Tyrissa slammed the dagger back into its sheath and extended an open hand to Sidon.

  “Where can I break the flow?” she asked, pulling him to his feet.

  “I’ll show you,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  Sidon led Tyrissa on a slow, circuitous hike through the swamps, well away from the battle at the driftwood village. He moved with a remnant of his previous elegance, seemingly spent after their fight and his surrender. Nor
did he say much, though the defeated but defiant look haunting his face spoke volumes. This was a betrayal of his Pact and should have provoked a reprisal from his patron. Yet there was nothing but a serene, if worn, stillness. The sense of magick pulsing from Sidon remained, but it was a remote, subdued feeling. Tyrissa had long spent any absorbed fire magick, glad to be free of its influence for a time but missing the addictive union of impulsiveness and power.

  Tyrissa allowed him the silence and listened to the enveloping cacophony of the woods’ creatures to distract her from the feeling of being both captor and executioner. After more than an hour of soggy paths through the half-flooded woods, the calm waters around them began to flow in increasing currents. She noticed no dominant direction of the water’s flow to either side of the winding paths. Sometimes it flowed in the direction of their travel, sometimes against them. The trees changed as well, becoming more vibrant, a little more unusual. They didn’t match any of the species she had seen since the start of this river journey, with thin curling trunks and too-large leaves bearing coats of clinging dew. Soon Tyrissa began to feel a weak background sensation of water magick, distinct from Sidon’s presence; a pervasive, subtle influence hung in the air and radiated up from the gently flowing waters.

  The elemental influence wasn’t at the level of a true elemental domain, where the Outer Powers warped the land in their image. This was something minor, some mid-point between the two extremes. A fresh flush of warmth ran through her blood, well below a boil, but rising with every passing moment. Control. This time she’ll hold a firm rein on it all.

  “This is the place,” Sidon said, breaking Tyrissa from her examinations.

  Ahead, bounded by a wall of the tall, thin trees, the land rose in short tiers, as if a hill had been pruned down into an artificial landscape. Each tier rose about three feet with five levels in all, each ringed with the strange, too-vibrant trees to form a rising grove. Throughout flowed channels of utterly clear water cascading down the tiers with the babble of many small waterfalls. The channels emptied into the surrounding swamp, creating confined pools of clarity before fading into the natural murky depths.

  “A fountain of elemental water,” Tyrissa murmured. They paused at the base of the first tier and she could feel a powerful magick presence at the heart of the water gardens. Tyrissa knelt and dipped her fingertips into one of the clear flows. It felt hot to the touch, her Pact drawing in the resident magicks into another source of internal fire. Hot to her and her alone.

  Perhaps this was how Water operated. Tyrissa knew of no massive expressions of water domains on the continent, no equivalent to the wind-carved crater of Hithia, the titanic mountains of the Ten Brothers, or the ever-burning lands of Vordeum. Perhaps, like the rivers and lakes and oceans, this element’s presence was dispersed across the planet, spread into countless points of influence, like fountains dotting a city’s every square.

  Sidon knelt beside her and said, “This is my connection to the Endless River, the Bottomless Depths. A sort of relay point between us.” He grabbed a fistful of soaked soil and clenched his hand. Tyrissa felt a flicker of magick from him as water leaked away from his closed fist. Sidon tossed the dirt into the clear pool, the now dry motes spreading out across the rippling surface. The dirt swirled on the flows, forming shifting, fractal shapes before drifting away with the current.

  “Nothing,” Sidon said in wonder. “No signs, no omens. As if I’m being ignored.”

  “All the better for us if They don’t notice what comes next,” Tyrissa said, standing.

  They entered the grove and ascended an open slope through the tiers, passing among an exquisite, unnatural garden. But the garden contained a sense of structure and order well apart from the few places she’d seen influenced by proper life magick. Plant life seemed amplified, fueled into a vibrancy she’d never seen before. Shards of ice formed and melted in unknowable rhythms in the cascading channels of water. Tyrissa’s blood soon flowed like lava and she loosed what heat she could without becoming a walking inferno. The saturated ground at her feet steamed and grass wilted at her passing. Small serpents of flame coiled around her staff, not harming the steeloak wood.

  Just unleashed it all. Burn it. Remove this cancer.

  Restraint, she countered internally. Don’t let it rule you. There is a proper time.

  It pained her to have to destroy something so beautiful, but appearances aside it was yet another point of elemental corruption on the face of the world. Cleansing these places was her purpose, a primary drive of her of Pact. This was but one of many wounds in need of mending before they festered into a greater and more dangerous elemental domain. This she could fix. Not yet a domain, but a font of elemental power. Through the surging haze of fire, she could feel the source drawing closer with each step. She simply had to remain in control of the raging energies within until the right moment to set them to work.

  Sunken into the center of the top tier lay a wide bowl of water, its depths clearly visible from the rim of ground they stood upon. The source of the elemental presence resided at the bottom of the pool, seen as a glimmering blue distortion through the clear waters. Tyrissa set her staff aside and motioned for Sidon to keep his distance.

  Let’s get this part done. No use delaying any further.

  Tyrissa stepped into the edge of the pool and provoked an immediate response from the resident magicks as the water iced up around her in thick sheets. She loosened her grip on the fire within, letting it flow into the pool and melting the ice. Water flashed to steam around her, but more ice formed in response, this time jagged shards that pressed in toward her, biting at her skin. All it accomplished was refueling her stores of counter magick. Once she stood waist deep, Tyrissa removed the limits on the fire and loosed a tempest of flame around her, flash boiling away the water of the pool and lifting a cloud of steam to the open sky above. More glacial walls formed around her but these were the futile measures of a cornered and defeated foe. Above, the flows of water into the swamp ceased as the pool boiled away in the face of Tyrissa’s flame-cloaked march forward.

  All the while, she held a contingency bundle of magick back, saved just in case she felt some attack from behind. In case this was all a deception.

  Soon only an ankle-deep puddle of water remained, and Tyrissa leashed the fire back under control. At the center of the pool stood a core of glacially blue ice, five feet tall and as wide as a man, its surface coated in numerous melting spines. It shone with a strange light, like a lantern submerged in the seas. Yet now it was a fragile, fleeting thing.

  Tyrissa drew her dagger, the emblem flashing silver in the sunlight. Unlike with Sidon, there was no cold possession of ‘what must be done’. The weapon was merely a way to channel the powers raging within her. She funneled her remaining fire magick into the blade until it glowed forge-fresh hot with alternating bands of silver and orange heat. She plunged the blade into the pillar. It sank into the shard as if it were made of air and after a moment there came a release of clashing, annihilating powers. Coils of water, fire, and silver light spiraled up into the air, releasing a final burst of elemental energy that dissipated to elsewhere. And then, silence and stillness.

  The dagger fell to the ground, landing in the puddle at her feet and hissing with residual heat. Tyrissa gazed around the empty bowl and up at the already wilting trees of the gardens. Aside from a single, steady point watching her from above, all sense of water magick had departed. The area felt right and natural again.

  Tyrissa retrieved her dagger and replaced it in its sheath, the hilt cool to the touch, once again inert. She looked up at Sidon and tried to give him a reassuring smile. His face remained a careful mask, guarded, perhaps afraid.

  Now it was matter of keeping a promise she wasn’t sure she could fulfill.

  Chapter Eight

  Tyrissa asked Sidon if he knew of a spot clear of foliage nearby where she could attempt to cleanse his Pact. There would be plenty of elemental fire involved and
she didn’t want to start a minor wildfire. He knew of just such a place. After a stop at a Sons supply cache in the woods, they soon rowed a small boat up the Callen. The fading afternoon lay thick and golden over the water, enriching every color of the swamplands and highlighting every insect in the air.

  “How easy it is for our kind to go from enemy to ally,” Sidon said as Tyrissa took her turn at the oars. Once again his voice had a serene quality.

  “Don’t call me ally just yet,” she said between strokes. “The hardest part is yet to come.”

  “You’ve done this…cleansing before, right?”

  “Yes. Once. In the opposite direction. A girl named Ash. A firepact.” For all the parallels and counterbalances between elemental pairs, the difference between Sidon and Ash was vast. He was calm, collected, any desperation hidden behind his comely face, a mask of calm. Ash was a ragged, nearly broken thing, acting on instinct and the urges of her Pact.

  “I can’t promise you it’ll work, Sidon,” she said after an extended silence broken only by the dip of the oars into the Callen. “It’s just a chance.”

  “I’m coming to understand some of what I read in the mists over these last few days. That a vortex will arrive. That I must be carried on its currents.”

  No doubt shaded his voice. Tyrissa had to envy his conviction.

  After some time on the river they came to a rocky outcrop along the Callen’s east bank, a brief interruption of solid ground thrust up from the swamps of the upper Rildermeek. The bluffs followed the river for a short distance, their face lit in the descending sunlight. Sidon guided their boat around the rear of the isle to a hidden cove where a weathered wooden dock waited, empty and abandoned. A natural stairway in the stone rose toward the bluff’s heights.