Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  Tyrissa sat down and took up a watch on the night-darkened hall. Soon she had Tsellien’s cloak clasp in hand and rolled it between her fingers like a gambler’s lucky coin, a recent habit she’d adopted in idle moments. She glanced down at the simple yet vexing crest etched into the metal disc. Tyrissa had searched through two thick books on heraldry during one visit to the library, traveling through all the realms, cities, and noble houses of the North via their emblems and crests. Though there were numerous shields and wings, nothing matched the clasp. She patted Karine’s dagger sheathed under her coat. Finding another example of the symbol in the Pact Witch’s ransacked home only made this whole quest more frustrating, a taste of success that led precisely nowhere.

  With no other avenues of investigation remaining it was time to consult an expert. The posters advertising his show claimed Giroon the Great knew every legend, every tale, and every song, true or fanciful. Heraldry like this should be simple. Of course, he would have no reason to help her, but Tyrissa knew how to approach him thanks to the one part of the show she had seen.

  A hummed tune from down the hall brought Tyrissa’s attention back to her vigil as Giroon the Great rounded the corner from the stairwell. He looked shorter without the dramatic framing of the stage, but was dressed no less grand fashion in a long coat of dark red fabric intricately embroidered in silver thread that shimmered when he passed through the hallway’s lamplight. Tyrissa stood as he reached his room and Giroon gave a slight start, just now noticing her.

  “Hmm? Ah. Tell Madam Allimon that there must be some error. My next scheduled visit isn’t for another two nights.” He unlocked his door without a second glance in her direction. His voice was true to the stage, a deep, projecting timbre infused with the rhythms of a poet with a verve that you felt as well as heard. He wasn’t old, but his face already bore a handful of deep lines from a life of smiles, laughs, and scowls, feigned or otherwise.

  “What—”

  “Please deliver her my thanks for attempting to give me more variety,” his eyes gave Tyrissa a quick assessment, lingering on her face, “However, you’re much too tall, young, and pale for my tastes. No offense meant. I’m sure the large, exotic northerner angle will work out well after another year or two of filling out. I like the hair.”

  “Wait—”

  Giroon pushed the door open just wide enough to slip through and spun in place on the other side of the threshold.

  “I bid you a good evening, miss,” he said through the narrowing gap.

  Tyrissa shot out a hand, stopping the door with a thud that reverberated in the air between them.

  “I’m not a whore.”

  The slice of Giroon’s face between frame and door looked halfway apologetic and said, “No? Well then we’ve truly naught to discuss. My apologies for the misunderstanding. Good. Eve.” He punctuated with pushes on the door. Tyrissa inwardly smiled at being stronger than him and leaned a little more into the polished wood. She began her pitch.

  “During your show tonight you took challenges on heraldry and titles from the audience.”

  Giroon seemed to give up getting the door closed, but held his position all the same, mouth turned in a stymied half-frown.

  “Yes, there’s a schedule posted outside the theater if you didn’t get your chance. I’m here through the winter.”

  Tyrissa stood firm against another push from the other side and held up the cloak clasp. “Have you ever seen or heard of this symbol?”

  The bard opened his mouth to fire off a quick dismissal but remained silent, his brow furrowing in concentration. Tyrissa could almost see the pages of ancient tomes turning behind his eyes, the trance of an expert racking his brain. After many moments of dredging though his memory, Giroon loosened his hold on the door, said, “My dear, why don’t you come in?” and retreated into the room. Tyrissa took a second to savor the little victory, then followed.

  The bard’s room was one of the inn’s suites, a grand room suitable for their temporarily residing Great Bard. It had the same soft carpets and the paneled walls were hung with paintings of distant landscapes of pointed mountains and sun-scorched deserts. Two gold-rimmed travel trunks sat in one corner, one gaping open and empty, the other closed and locked. Through a wide doorway in the rear was another room where a four post bed stood in the shadows. Giroon made a quick circuit around the darkened suite, sparking to life a handful of lamps that bathed the room in warm yellow light and filled the air with the faint odor of oil. An empty fireplace stood along the outer wall, flanked by tall, curtained windows. Tyrissa settled into a one of a pair of thickly upholstered chairs placed in front of the fireplace. The chair was so deep and comfortable that it threatened to send her right to sleep as the weight of the long day crashed onto her.

  “May I hold the emblem,” asked the bard, standing above her with palm outstretched. Tyrissa obliged.

  Giroon shed his extravagant coat over the back of the other chair and began to pace a circle around the room. His arms were bare to the shoulder and Tyrissa saw that he had matching tattoos of delicate script shaped into chains etched around his upper arms. The ink was a fiery red against dusky skin and its brilliance made the common tattoos she’d seen among the men of the Cadre seem dull and ancient. Giroon held Tsellien’s emblem in his palm, his hand slightly extended in front of him, as if he chased the emblem as he paced about. He would look down at it every so often, as if to make certain it was still there and still a mystery to him.

  “The rune is old Hithian for thirty-two,” he said after three circuits. “That much is trivial. But the arrangement of the feathered wings is unusual and shields are rarely so plain…” he deliberated quietly to himself for a few more circuits about the room, his speech slipping between the common language of the North and a far more exotic, rhythmic tongue.

  “How did you come across this?” he finally asked.

  “I found it in the ruins of a temple in Morgale. It was on the previous owner’s corpse, lying in the dust of defeated daemons.”

  “Daemons,” Giroon mused, “The fodder of fiction and reality, for some.”

  Tyrissa shivered despite the warmth of the room and could feel the cuts on her skin, fresh and hateful phantoms. She pushed the memories back down.

  “Right,” she said through clenched teeth, “Fodder.”

  “You’re a little young to be crossing continents for the sake of a strange symbol,” he motioned at the emblem in his upturned palm with a flourish. “What is your concern with this number thirty-two, if I may ask?”

  “She was Hithian, a Pactbound of some kind I’ve never heard of. And I am number thirty-three.” The admission still had such weight. While she had internalized the idea weeks ago, speaking it aloud to someone new made all the more real.

  Giroon smiled with some secret satisfaction. “Ah. The chosen successor lost in the world with only the barest hints at her true nature. I love it when life mimics fantasy.”

  “It’s not as great as the tales make it seem.”

  “No, but by being true your story will be made that much better,” Giroon extended his hand to return Tsellien’s clasp. Tyrissa took it back and closed her hand around it, slightly more comfortable now that it was back in her possession.

  Giroon settled into the opposite chair and tented his fingers into some semblance of an image of wisdom.

  “Perhaps you should tell me the story so far, hmm?”

  “Sure,” Tyrissa whispered, steeling herself and sorting out her thoughts. She couldn’t keep this entire thing bottled up any longer. She needed more help.

  Tyrissa spun out a story for the storyteller. She started with what she knew of Tsellien and, by extension, Karine. She told him what she could remember of the receiving her Pact, but glossed over the fact that she died in the process. The more time passed, the more that part felt too unreal to voice. Then it was onto the odd interactions with elemental magicks, of turning one element into its opposite, and the reaction of other Pactbound
to her mere presence. She finished with the icy vision of the other woman with the same mark upon her shield and briefly drew out Karine’s dagger to show off another example of the mark. Once she finished, the relief from telling someone else everything she knew was palpable.

  “Above all there’s this sense of interaction with the elements themselves. It’s somehow part of the Pact. What I can do… it doesn’t match any of the stories. It’s like I’m outside of the Elemental Wheel. The version with eight elements, at least.”

  “So then you are part of the ten-segment wheel,” Giroon said, his first words in a while. “The wings do have something of an angelic appearance. Given what you said about where you found your predecessor’s corpse, we can likely rule out the Infernal segment of the wheel, correct?”

  Tyrissa nodded. “So it would be the Divine by elimination. That is what receiving the Pact felt like. Divine.”

  “The Divine and the transmutation of elemental magicks,” Giroon murmured while drumming his fingers against the arm of the chair. “With those two points we have a place to truly begin.”

  “But there’s never been a Divine Pactbound.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “No.” She thought of the Cleanse, of the tales of men corrupted and empowered by the touch of daemons. By infernal magicks. Where was the counterbalance to the touch of the Infernal? Fire and Water, Wind and Earth. The Infernal and the Divine. She found it difficult to think of herself as some piece of Divinity. Tyrissa was hardly pious but such a thought went beyond presumptuous. Beyond arrogance.

  “For a divine source of magick, the nearest tales that comes to mind are a handful that end with the protagonist being taken away to the afterlife by some variety of an angel or messenger. Normally it’s played as a ‘Your time has come’ situation, after they’ve accomplished all they’re destined to do. The heroes go willingly, but the villains and anti-heroes fight it to no avail, finding all of their powers useless against divine judgment.” He gazed over toward the closed travel trunk across the room. “I must dig up some examples.”

  “Calad Stoneshield,” Tyrissa said, “He was brought before the Ten Gods by an escort of Valkyries after completing his quest.” Tyrissa had the misfortune of reading that part of his saga early, though it made little sense until she found other books with Calad’s earlier tales.

  Giroon waved a hand, dismissive. “Or vanished into the conflagration of Vordeum, consumed by the uncontrollable fires like so many others. Like many stories it all depends on which ending suits your purposes.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Tyrissa preferred her version, but endings were so mutable. She said as much when she told the Zeris story to Alvedo and Jesca before the autumn gala.

  They spent the better part of an hour comparing stories, dredging for anything similar to the emblem or Tyrissa’s tenuous grasp on her and Tsellien’s shared abilities. Giroon’s knowledge was encyclopedic and bordered on unnatural. Despite not even being from this side of the world, he knew every story Tyrissa mentioned, often including alternate versions. Once reminded of a single aspect of a tale he could rattle off a summary. It was like speaking with a living library.

  After some time Giroon drew out a pocket watch.

  “The hour grows late, Tyrissa,” he said. “I have another show tomorrow and you should return home. I will have to think on all of this and do a little research in my spare time.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

  ”Indeed.”

  “Does that mean I’ve stumped the great bard with a story he doesn’t know?”

  Giroon held out his hands as if to stop her. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I will admit that it holds considerable fascination to me.”

  “Everyone wants payment in this town. What is your price for this Giroon?”

  “True enough,” the Bard said, pausing to consider his price. “The challenge will be enough for now, but I will think of some form of favor in exchange. Return to me if you discover anything more about yourself or this symbol.” He grinned and gave her a knowing look. “You clearly know where to find me.”

  They bid each other a good night and Tyrissa made her way out of the inn. The same receptionist worked the front desk and shot her the same dirty look but Tyrissa barely noticed, buoyed as she was by the relief of having another hand in her search.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Summer Crime Spree Continues!

  The resurgence of organized criminal activity continued in the early hours of Amberfields seventeenth when a band of thieves raided a warehouse owned by the Rift Trade Company. The security on duty responded to curious sounds from multiple entrances that were soon followed by bursts of elchemical smoke that prevented any accurate accounting of the assailants. The warehouse’s security detail was quickly overwhelmed, bound, and blinded, though no serious injuries were inflicted. The guards have said that the thieves were highly organized and mostly silent as they uncovered and cracked the warehouse’s underground vault. Investigators the next morning found that the locks of both the entrance and the vault were melted off and considerable elchemical residue remained at the site, evidence that aligns with the methods of previous robberies and break-ins across the city.

  Further clouding the case is motive, as the Rift Company has said that nothing of importance was currently stored in the vault, and nothing was taken from the warehouse. ‘Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find here,’ said Zaria Hessen, a spokeswoman for the Rift Trade Company.

  When asked for comment on this latest elchemically aided break-in, a spokesman for the Concordium stated ‘It is clear we’re dealing with a rogue elchemist operating outside the regulations and oversight of the Concord and Central Admin.’ The Concordium has repeated that none of its elchemists or vendors are involved with the recent crime spree, and that they have fully cooperated with Central’s investigations. Central Administration has increased the reward for viable information on the resurgence of The Thieves Guild to one hundred and fifty gilders, double if it leads to the arrest of a member of the ever-elusive cabal.

  Tyrissa set the archival print of The Times of Khalanheim from Amberfields eighteenth aside with a sigh. She was back in the archives under the library, in the old military storeroom that had all the comfort of a dungeon with the door left open. To one side lay a notepad, thick with notations and ideas and theories. To the other stood the oil burning lantern, her loyal companion in the dusty depths of the library. Between the two lay a dozen archive issues spread out around her in a half-circle of frustration.

  She wasn’t even sure what she sought. From what she saw during the attack at Khalan Southwest’s party, Vralin clearly had a connection to the Thieves Guild. That incident was merely the boldest of a steady stream of hits throughout the summer and into the autumn, many aided by elchemy. It wasn’t much of a leap to peg Vralin as the ‘rogue elchemist’ that the Concordium insisted was behind the well-equipped raids. He even wore the flasks and vials of the profession when he and Tsellien came through Edgewatch.

  The reporting was scattershot, sometimes specific, other times vague to the point of useless. Tyrissa assumed many companies didn’t want so many details known. Aside from the attack that she personally witnessed at Southwest’s party, the papers relegated the continuing exploits of the Thieves to the later pages of their daily editions. The targets appeared to lack a clear pattern and occasionally even an objective, as in that last article. Tyrissa lifted her notes and flipped to a page with a list of business and properties that have been hit. They were mostly smaller guilds with vague names like Riftside Supply, Dawn to Dusk Storage, or Khalan Foundational. She would have to ask Liran to take a look, see if he recognized any of the names. A long list of dates ran down one side of the page, noting the articles of interest for this mad little project.

  Figuring that that was enough for today, Tyrissa stood, stretched, and set to work replacing the archives in their proper places on the shelves. S
he felt that the Thieves were building to something big, but she was running to catch up and at this rate she’d find out when everyone else did. It was a web that she only see half of, but entangled her all the same. The question was where Vralin fit in to it all. Was he the spider, or was he somehow caught up in the web, as she was?

  Tyrissa was getting used to emerging from the library to see that evening had snuck up on her. The hours vanished into thin air while she was in that building. As she crossed the central courtyard to the south entrance of the university grounds, she saw that the construction crews were gone from the base of the observatory tower, their work complete. Light shone through windows on each floor of the tower when they normally would be darkened by now. Strange. Tyrissa paused among the hedges, noticing that now two Talons guarded the main doors. In the gloom of evening, she could see additional pairs of Talons patrolling the gardens, stopping to note entrances to the various university buildings in the central grounds. Tyrissa had made similar rounds on her own assignments with the Cadre and the layout of the university sprang to mind almost on instinct. There were three main entrances at the south, east, and west, but a handful of smaller side entrances were scattered along the outer walls. The old fortress towers at each corner of the outer walls made excellent vantage points, but seemed to be inaccessible. Tyrissa had poked around and looked in the tunnels below herself, though not extensively. She did not envy the Talons on this job. Running security on this place wouldn’t be easy.