Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  She couldn’t control it. She still wasn’t sure how. But then again, she didn’t have to. She simply had to let go and trust the Pact. For now. Time and place dissolved into an elemental storm and she was the exhilarating calm at the center. She opened her eyes and through the haze of steam and fire, she could see the incinerating winds carry on past her towards Vralin. The Windmage faced down the flying flames and split the flow in two, his hands guiding each branch around and above him to crash into mills at his back and set them ablaze.

  The clash of elements ended in a blink, leaving only the smell of cinders and a vast puddle of water around her. She looked down at herself. Aside from a few singed patches on her clothes, she was unharmed. Even her staff only dripped from water, its wood and metal unaffected. She looked up, remembering where she was. Vralin still stood there, sword now drawn and half-raised, face hesitant when he saw a woman standing where he expected nothing but bones and ash.

  Dazed from the abating storm, Tyrissa couldn’t think straight. There was still too much energy swirling around inside her. It was too much of an effort to stand and her legs gave out. She fell to the wet stones, catching herself with one hand. She was numbed from the cold, deadened by the weight in her stomach. She could hear the approaching ring of horseshoes striking the street, the howls of the riftwinds, the crackle of the burning mills, and the hiss of a sword finding its sheath.

  Get up.

  There was another blast of wind. She barely felt it. It took a mountain of effort to raise her head just in time to see Vralin sail between the burning windmills and over the safety fences. He then fell into the abyss of the Rift at a steady, controlled rate and vanished from sight.

  Overwhelmed, exhausted, and unable to hold on any longer, Tyrissa collapsed into a welcomed abyss of her own.

  Part Three

  Wind Chasers and Stone Shapers

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Tyrissa could hear hushed voices speaking around her, but she let herself fall back into sleep. She was at that borderline of consciousness that has eluded her for weeks, where she had seen the Other trudging through the snow. The babble of her dream-mind wavered, came close to waking, and then broke into another vision.

  Formless and flying, Tyrissa soared across the floor of an arid valley, weaving between stray boulders and strange, squat plants coated in sharp spines. Ruddy red and brown mountains rose ahead of her, their slopes bare save for hardy pale green shrubs. The sun burned high in the sky, creating a powerful dry heat that could sap moisture away in moments. Tyrissa came to a stop in a clearing at the base of the mountains near the shadowed entrance to a large cave. A girl stood at the center of the clearing, surrounded by three men.

  All four wore brown trousers tucked into blackened leather boots. The men were bare-chested and bald, and the girl wore a thin harness of leather straps around her chest, barely enough to be decent. She didn’t seem to mind. No more than fourteen years old, she appeared to be in charge. All four had deep brown skin nearly lustrous with sweat. Tattoos of brilliant red ink ran across their exposed arms and shoulders like intertwining snakes built of a foreign script that Tyrissa had seen once before. The girl’s tattoos were the most elaborate, running down the length of her arms and spine.

  She stood tensed and ready, feet spaced wide. She nodded to the man in front of her. The three raised their hands in unison and fire sprang from their palms, six searing lines that converged on the girl. They were Fireweaver Pactbound.

  She stood firm and didn’t even flinch as six gouts of flame barreled into her and engulfed her entire body. The men lowered their hands and watched. For a moment, they stood around a creature of pure fire, an elemental. The fire dwindled away and the girl emerged from the inferno untouched, smiling with a mad enthusiasm. She knelt and slammed a fist to the earth in a single, smooth motion. A sudden flood of water erupted from the impact. The three men stumbled against the flow but showed no alarm. As the girl knelt, Tyrissa could see a circular emblem tattooed just below her neck, the ink burning brighter than the rest. Once again it was the winged shield, though this one’s shield was circular.

  That makes three of us. Tyrissa couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the other’s control.

  The flood abated and all four returned to their original positions. The girl laughed and cried out, “Tela! Tela!”

  The three men raised their hands and unleashed another shower of fire. They didn’t stop this time, feeding an unending torrent into their target. The girl bathed in the flames, dancing in a circle and laughing all the while. It began to snow, swirling clouds of flakes appearing in the air for fleeting moments before melting in the desert heat. Streams of water flowed outward from her, carving miniature valleys in the dirt. Spears of ice arced into the air as the interplay of water and fire became a storm, a tempest of elemental power. Rising above it all was the marked girl’s laughter, unceasing and unstable, as if she were barely in control of the fury around her and loved every second of it.

  Tyrissa felt a hand on her shoulder shaking her awake and the vision faded.

  She lay in a bed at one end of a long, cabin-like room. The place had every look of a temporary residence that was slowly becoming a long-term one. It was sparsely attired with basics like cots, a table, and a pair of storage chests. The two windows set high on the wall to either side of the door looked like they belonged to a warehouse. A weapon rack stood against the far wall, and bore a pair of swords, a war hammer, and her staff. Two travel lanterns lit the room with pale white elchemical light. Kexal sat in a chair pulled over to the bed. Garth and Hali were seated at the central table, both nursing steaming cups. She wasn’t surprised to see them. She had seen enough hints of the presence at the tower.

  Kexal leaned over her and said, “Mornin’ Ty.”

  “Kexal… how long…” It was dark outside the windows. Had she been out for an entire day? She needed to get back home at least and prove to Liran she wasn’t dead somewhere. Never mind that she would be overdue at the Cadre today. Especially today.

  “You’ve only been out for a few hours. Should be just about sun-up topside.”

  So they were in an under district. That was some relief, though she would almost certainly be late for work today. Tyrissa sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She brushed some errant hair off her face and massaged her forehead.

  “Kid, just what the hell were you doing out there last night?”

  The details returned in a blink.

  “Same as you, I think,” she replied. “Going after Vralin.”

  “Alone?”

  Tyrissa shrugged. She never thought it was a good idea. It was her only one. In the end, it had worked out better and worse than she hoped.

  “Well, you were lucky.”

  “No argument here,” she said.

  Tyrissa’s pact-sense of magick drew her eyes past Kexal to the door where a pool of shadow crept along the floor. She raised a hand and pointed it out as thoughts of daemons came to her mind. Then she remembered the rooftops last night and the Shadowpact man that pursued and clashed with Vralin.

  Kexal followed her hand and said, “Wolef, you can use the door like a decent person. All that talk of conservin’ your rods rings mighty hollow when you Slide into my house.”

  Her alarm and memories of daemons gave way to a sudden, alluring curiosity. Though still groggy from sleep, Tyrissa tried to isolate the sensation of shadow magick but the feeling soon vanished. The moving shadow climbed onto the far wall of the room and resolved into the shape of a man. Out from the shadows on the wall stepped a man clad in silken black clothes and armed with twin long knives on his belt. His skin, like polished ebony, marked him as an Evelander, though he much darker than Giroon or the Fireweavers from the vision. His face was clean shaven with a broad nose and dark eyes. Short, densely curled black hair topped his head.

  “I see our guest has awakened and has a good eye.” Wolef spoke with the precise enunciation of a learned yet prac
ticed second language. He gave them all a wide smile. Tyrissa fumbled for words, and stayed quiet. He moved like a panther in the night as he walked to the table and unclipped his belt, setting it and his weapons down with a stony thud.

  Kexal stood and dragged his chair back to the table, but remained standing and planted his hands on the chair’s back.

  “Might as well start up a war council since we’re all here.” He clicked his tongue a couple times before continuing. “He got away again but we ain’t about to let that stop us. We roughed him up pretty good last night. That should slow him down for a spell and give us a chance to prepare for round three.”

  Garth fished out a gilder and let it fall onto the tabletop with a loud ring. He spread his hands to either side of it and frowned.

  “And we’re low on coin,” Kexal said, translating and drumming his fingers against the chair. “Wonderful timing.”

  “Already?” Wolef asked.

  “No one does anything for free in this city and we were really banking on that quarter million. Thought we had him. Guldres will be mighty angry with us squandering that advanced payment.”

  “I’ll soothe Master Guldres,” Hali said. “Don’t worry about him.”

  “Still got a few favors held over him?”

  She nodded. “A few.”

  “So it was a trap,” Tyrissa said. “Set up by Guldres to lure Vralin out.”

  “Yeah it was a trap, more or less. A botched one. We didn’t think that the Talons were so heavily infiltrated. Gave them a little too much credit.”

  Tyrissa took some satisfaction in her theory being correct, even if the night was ultimately a failure.

  “I made the rounds this morning,” Wolef said. “It appears no one expected the Thieves to carry out their threat in such fiery fashion. The hit on the observatory was well executed, but the night as a whole had more cracks in it than their previous activities. They didn’t melt away as easily and took some losses last night. That might have broken some bonds, loosened some tongues. I have a few leads that I’ll follow up on tonight.”

  As he spoke, Wolef unclasped a black bracelet from each wrist and pulled back the sleeves of his shirt. He ran a thumb down his forearm, following the veins from elbow to wrist. A pitch black rod about six inches long slid out into this palm. He held it up for a quick inspection and then tapped it against the tabletop. The rod turned into wisps of black mist that drained off the table and disappeared into the shadows on the floor. He repeated the process on the other arm.

  “Anything on Vralin?” Kexal asked.

  “Nothing helpful. I Slid over the cliffs where he jumped and found a cavern entrance that was scorched up from signal fires, likely the handiwork of that pet of his, the Fireweaver girl. It was just below the level of the under districts and is a place to start. Then again, we already assumed he was hiding somewhere in the depths.”

  “That artifact will take space and time to work on, if that’s his aim,” Hali said.

  “Speaking of,” Kexal said. “Hali, last night you said you figured out what that thing was.”

  “Yes. It’s a floatcore from Hithia.” Hali saw the blank looks everyone gave her and continued. “The floatcores were crafted by Windmage technicians and fueled the thrusters that kept the city flying. They were somehow sabotaged to fail all at once during the Rhonian’s siege. I remember the sound, like the sky shattering. The one Vralin took must have been a backup and somehow survived the Fall and the subsequent centuries buried in the rubble.”

  “Wait,” Tyrissa interrupted, “Hithia fell two hundred and sixty years ago.”

  “Two hundred and fifty-eight, actually,” Hali replied softly. “No one knows that number better than I.”

  “Then how… ?”

  Hali almost looked confused. “That’s right, I never told you on the caravan. As a result of my specific Lifepact, I’m immortal or near enough not to make a difference.” She spoke in an offhand manner, as if discussing the weather. “As I recall, we had firekin to deal with at the time. As for your inevitable follow-up questions: three hundred and twelve. No sickness can touch me, no wounds are permanent, and the passage of time leaves no mark. Is that clear?” She sounded as if she had explained it a thousand times before.

  Tyrissa nodded, realizing that her initial assessment of Hali having a goddess’s face was more appropriate than she thought.

  “But that thing was broken,” Kexal said. “Right? Big ole crack in it.”

  “Damaged. What one Windmage built, another could repair. Vralin is an elchemist after all.”

  “Repair it to do what?”

  Hali shrugged. “Floatcores were like faucets of energy between our world and the Plane of Air. They drew in steady amounts of air magicks and we used that energy to create lift for the city or power the forges and sky skiffs. There were hundreds in Hithia but they were carefully throttled. If properly modified, a single one has the potential to pull in a disastrous amount of elemental power. It could create a new domain, or summon who knows what from the Plane of Air, or even tear open a new Rift. We don’t know. One theory of the Fall posits that the floatcores weren’t destroyed. They were overloaded.”

  “In any case, something destructive,” Kexal said.

  “We should assume so,” Hali agreed. “Vralin is acting like a Pactbound whose patron is pressing him on.”

  “Indeed,” Wolef said. “He’s taking very large risks but seems to be sticking to a plan.”

  “And tell me again why we didn’t use a decoy?” Kexal asked.

  “Vralin would have known,” Hali replied. “That thing bleeds wind magick. It had to be the real one or he would have felt its absence from outside the tower and left.”

  “Fair enough. So for now, Garth and I will rustle up some capital and Wolef will scout the depths. Hali, you’ll keep Guldres on our side and we’ll give you a holler when we need you.”

  “One more thing,” Tyrissa said. “I want in.”

  “Do you now?” Kexal said, amused.

  “Vralin was… odd around her,” Wolef added. “Uncertain and hesitant.”

  “Who wouldn’t be,” Kexal said with a smile. “After that display at the mills, I’m not so sure we should even have you in here. Might burn the place down.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Tyrissa said. “I guess I should explain.”

  They all saw what happened, so there was no use in keeping too many secrets. She took a deep breath to sort her thoughts and kept it brief: the interaction with pact magicks, the inversion of elemental energy, her suspicion that Vralin was behind the disappearance of Karine, his hand in Tsellien’s death, and finally the unfortunate point that he was still her best source for answers for what, exactly, she was.

  “I don’t have a lot of control but I think I know just the person to help me out with that. Besides,” she grinned, “If you don’t let me join up, I’ll just keep chasing him on my own.”

  “I’ve got no problem with it, and you might be useful,” Kexal said. “Anyone say otherwise?”

  No one did.

  “Welcome aboard.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Tyrissa found Settan seated in the same darkened corner of the Miner’s Pick in Under Forge, exactly as she’d left him. It was a few days before she could get away and seek him out in the tunnels of the under city. Flush with new contracts in the wake of the Thieves’ night of mayhem, the Cadre kept her busy, even with the Alvedos out of the city for another couple of days.

  Tyrissa helped herself to the opposite seat.

  “Hi there.”

  “You again,” Settan said, taking her reappearance in stride. “Tyrissa, was it?”

  “It is.”

  “Did you find Karine?”

  “Only her empty home. She’s gone. Dead at the worst. Fled and in deeper hiding at best.” Tyrissa still felt sore from that particular dead end.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” His face didn’t match his words. Settan showed all the expr
ession of a mountain learning the sun would rise tomorrow.

  Tyrissa fished out a pouch of gilders and dropped it on the center of the table with a heavy thud. Liran had told her that presenting a monetary offer before ample discussion was rude in Khalanheim. Tyrissa preferred to think of it as direct.

  “What is this is for? I cannot freelance Shaper work.”

  “I’m not looking for fancy stonework. I need training.” Tyrissa was finished with fumbling around with her abilities. She needed to learn how to manage those energies.

  “I fail to see how I can help you any more than I have. You’re no Shaper.”

  “No. I still don’t have a name for what I am. If it even has a name. But I do know that whenever I’m near with pact magicks, I absorb it and unleash the opposite.”

  Settan said nothing. Tyrissa was betting on the Shaper having a residual sense of being indebted to Karine and, by extension, a willingness to repay that debt through Karine’s kin. But she decided to lay the motivation on thick with some basic elemental opposition theory.

  “Me and some… friends are going after the bounty on Vralin k’Zhan. Have you heard of him?”

  Settan’s immovable face nearly quirked up into a smile. “I have. I would make mention of how foolish that is. However, you seem the type to ignore that advice.”

  Tyrissa nodded and said, “He’s already killed one like me and possibly Karine as well. Or at least drove her away. I have no intention of letting him make it three.” Vralin had opportunity enough that night. Dazed and helpless after weathering the storm of wind and fire, she had been easy prey. She owed Kexal and company a debt for their timely arrival. “The opposite of Wind is Earth. What better way to prepare than to learn his tricks myself?”

  “You wish to know your enemy.”

  “Exactly,” Tyrissa said. “All I need is a willing Earthpact to provide some fuel. The money is for your time. Any wisdom would be welcome, too.”

  Settan nudged pouch of coins around the table. Tyrissa figured it was a fair amount and a significant portion of her extra wages from the Cadre.