Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  She’ll be fine. The thought was still utterly surreal and Tyrissa forced herself to look away from Hali feebly struggling against the impaling spear. Another gust surged across the floating grid of flagstones, this one pulling down one of the impossibly drifting boulder to crash at Kexal’s feet, sending the two Jalarni reeling back in a shower of stone and swearing. Garth slipped and fell halfway through a widened gap in the broken ground, one hand hanging on for dear life, the other maintaining an iron grip on the dust box. Kexal scrambled over to haul his brother away from the bottomless fall into the Rift.

  “Keep him busy,” he shouted through the howl of the winds.

  Tyrissa and Wolef exchanged a glance and ran on towards their quarry. She skimmed across the fractured tiles, letting the steadiness of earth guide her, barely feeling each step. Wolef was a flickering image of a man, flashing from shadow to whole and back again when he crossed one of the cracks in the floor that poured light upward from the Rift. Vralin waited for them, the stillness at the eye of the storm, blades drawn and readied in a relaxed, overconfident posture. Tyrissa saw the ravages of his elemental work as she drew closer: pallid skin, bony limbs, sunken eyes. The brace of throwing knives was empty and no elchemical flasks or orbs hung at his hips. He was out of such tricks. He was just one man with two swords, fueled by the blessing of Elemental Air.

  Tyrissa reached him first, sending out a high, bone shattering strike while Wolef circled around to his back. Vralin leaned aside just enough for it to miss, a smirk on his face. Steel rang against black iron as he spun to meet Wolef’s attacks from behind, and the dance began anew. Wolef wore shadows as a cloak of black mist, rapidly blinking between solid and spectral. All three became isles of controlled chaos, the air between them thick with singing blades, wisps of shadow, and the rush of air. Tyrissa poured the strength of earth into her strikes, mountains of force. They would land with an unmatched brutality, but the only thing she struck was the empty air and the tiled floor. Vralin twisted and dodged as if he could use the air as solid footing and remained elusive, like trying to snatch a feather out of a whirlwind.

  Wolef had little better luck, Sliding in and out of his attacks and scoring a pair of feeble cuts on the Windmage, one on the shoulder and the other a graze across the thigh. Vralin cut his dodges as close as possible, letting the Shade’s knives hit nothing more than a scrap of clothing. On one of the Shade’s retreats, Vralin timed a gust while he was solid to send him reeling backward. Wolef’s recovered quickly, dropping to a defensive posture, wary. Tyrissa saw that Kexal and Garth were up and closing in on the melee. They only had to occupy Vralin for a few seconds longer.

  Vralin reached his left hand out, pointing past Wolef. The winds in the chamber shifted and Tyrissa saw one of the many drifting boulders near the ceiling shudder and change direction to hurtle at Wolef’s back. Vralin leapt forward out of Tyrissa’s reach, pressing the attack on the Shade. She charged around them and received an offhand slash across her back, the cut hot and bright. Wolef gave her a brief, confused look as she slipped past him, unaware of the boulder flying at him. She focused as much earthen energy as possible into one side of her body and shoulder-checked the makeshift meteor as it crashed into the melee. Tyrissa poured a wild burst of Shaping into the boulder and it exploded dust and stone fragments.

  All three staggered away from the impact and sudden shower of rock. Tyrissa spun in place, nearly losing her balance as she tried to bring her staff to bear again. But Vralin recovered first, nimbly replanting his feet and bringing his longer blade up in a whistling arc. A flash of steel crossed Wolef’s throat and opened a precise, lethal cut. Bright red blood stained black cloth and the Shade fell to the stone tiles, threads of shadow trailing in his wake. Tyrissa’s scream sliced through the howling winds, full of fury and sorrow and everything in between.

  The Rawlins brothers reach them, moments too late. Vralin wheeled to face the Weapon Master, gliding out of Tyrissa’s reach. Garth stepped out from behind Kexal, held the dust box high, and twisted the handles on either side. Metal scrapped against metal, glass shattered, and a fine, dark gray mist burst out from the slotted walls of the tinker’s invention. The dust spread on the winds swirling through the chamber into a blinding, choking cloud. Tyrissa covered her mouth in the crook of her elbow, coughing and blinking against the grit. Then the dust flashed white, becoming a luminous storm that swirled through the cavern. Vralin screamed in agony, a satisfying sound. As the light flared ever brighter, the winds died, their strength sapped away. For a brief moment, Tyrissa felt no nearby air magicks for the first time since Khalanheim.

  After a few seconds the blindness faded as the air cleared. The brief respite from the winds ended, the currents picking back up, wild and chaotic, but without the aggressive force from before. The haunting, floating fragments of the sculptures and statues had fallen to the floor, but already the smaller pieces started to drift back into the air, reassuming their unnatural positions. Atop the fountain, the floatcore shone with a riotous blue light that leaked through new hairline cracks in its surface. Vralin lay on his side nearby, dazed. Shining motes of dust clung to his skin and clothes, his body turned into a brief field of stars. Already he tried to pull himself away in a half crawl, half drag toward one of his fallen blades.

  Tyrissa grabbed his leg and gave it a hard yank, slamming his face to the flagstones. He blindly tried to kick her away and clawed the ground, fingers leaving bloody streaks. After all this he still fought, he hadn’t given up. Tyrissa felt a dam break inside her heart, releasing a flood of pent up fury and frustration. She snatched up her staff and let loose. She couldn’t think straight, sending one hateful blow after another into the fugitive Pactbound. She blamed the hot, angry tears on the dust in her eyes. She felt the crack of ribs reverberate up the length of steeloak. Cruel, satisfying cracks. Vralin took them with the slightest grunts or gasps, still crawling inch by inch away. In the corner of her eye she saw Kexal stalking toward them with a grim set to his face, sword held in both hands and looking every bit the executioner.

  Vralin reached his shorter blade and rolled onto his back, raising his other arm to block her attacks. Her staff crashed into his ornate bracer, breaking it in two. Tyrissa’s mind cleared enough to see him flip the blade around in his hand, preparing to throw it. Her heart skipped a beat. From here he couldn’t miss her. As his arm snapped back, she spun in place, raising her staff and crossing her arms in a vain attempt to cover herself.

  The blade sailed past her and embedded itself to the hilt in the floatcore. A larger crack split the device from base to tip, blue light pouring out in harsh rays. Kexal stopped in his tracks, shying away from the ruptured piece of old Hithian magick. The cracks running over the floatcore spider webbed across its entire surface like pane of glass ready to shatter.

  Then it exploded, like the sky bursting from a pinpoint star. A blinding wash of light flooded the cavern, flashing cerulean blue and lightning white and storm gray, all the moods of the sky. A sound like the sky splitting open thundered through the cavern. Tyrissa fell to her hands and knees, skin afire from transmuting the air magicks as an upheaval of earth roiled through her.

  Her vision returned in time to see the storming light coalesce around where the floatcore once stood into a massive column of elemental energy that bathed the cavern in a blue glow and a stiff breeze. The device and fountain were gone, consumed. Through the gaps in the flagstones she could that the column had connected with the Rift and a constant flow of energy transferred between the two.

  She was too stunned to do anything but watch as Vralin staggered to his feet. He stumbled away from her, retrieved his longer sword, then stepped into the column and vanished. Escaped. Again.

  “Garth,” Kexal said, “Go see if Hali needs any help.” He laid a gentle hand on Tyrissa’s shoulder. She hardly felt it as she stared at the column of blue light. “Go on over to solid ground. We’ll regroup, figure out what’s next. You hear me?”

  T
yrissa looked away at from the column, down to her feet, closing her eyes against the light, the grit, the tears. She nodded, and followed Garth without a word, listening as Kexal gather up Wolef’s body.

  The shaft of rock was still embedded in the wall, but Hali had pulled herself off while they fought, leaving a grisly amount of her amber blood along the spear and pooled on the floor. The color was different, but the scene stuck home and Tyrissa felt her stomach heave as she caught the scent, a sweet mix of blood and sap. Hali sat propped up against the wall, her waved knife in hand. She probed the gaping wound in her abdomen with the tip of the knife, her face a clenched mask of defied pain.

  “Garth. Be a dear and—” she gasped as her knife rasped against something Tyrissa couldn’t see, “check for any rock in the wound.” She flipped the knife around and held it out.

  Garth gave her a sour face, but removed a glove and knelt next to her. Tyrissa turned away as he gingerly reach into the wound, and returned to staring at the column of magick shining at the center of the courtyard.

  Kexal walked over with Wolef’s body and set it down away from the rest of them. There was no use in even asking Hali to help the fallen Shade. She only had mastery of life and it was too late for that. Wolef wouldn’t be so lucky twice.

  “I recognize that… thing,” Hali said, voice growing a touch stronger. “Saw them before, during the Fall. Hundreds of pillars of blue light tearing up the city like knives from the sky. This one is much bigger.” The pillar already showed signs of taking up that role again. The ceiling looked like it was being consumed, pieces of rock and ruined palace stone breaking away from the roof and orbiting the pillar.

  “What is it?” Tyrissa said, reaching around to her back to assess her own injury. She winced as she touched the wound across her back through the tear in her shirt and felt the raised ridge of enflamed flesh. Her fingertips came away with only a little blood. The wound was slowly repairing itself. This one would be sensitive for days and she would have to take care. Starting tomorrow.

  “It’s a portal,” Hali said. “A direct conduit of elemental energy between our world and the Plane of Air. This one looks unstable. Unrestrained. Perhaps because the Rift is so close.” Tyrissa turned back to the Hithian. Garth had finished and wiped the amber blood from his hand with a kerchief. The wound started to stitch close, strips of pink flesh growing over the hole like vines.

  Kexal had joined them, after finding a makeshift death shroud for their fallen companion. Tyrissa tried not to think about it. There would be time for that later. Kexal turned to his brother and said, “Garth, that thing was supposed to shut down wind magicks, not tear a hole in reality.”

  Garth gave an elaborate signed response punctuated with a helpless shrug.

  “Well, it did! Now what?”

  Tyrissa stood and said, “We see where it goes.” She clicked her staff onto the magnets, gritting her teeth as the harness tugged at the slash on her back, and started walking. They couldn’t leave now, even as battered as they were. This whole desperate venture could be saved. Somehow. Tyrissa let the earthen energy rumbling in her core course through every muscle, let it calm her, steady her. She heard Kexal stand with a curse and follow her out onto the broken tiles.

  She reached the column and extended a tentative hand at the planar portal. Close up, it was surprisingly calm, giving off only faint, lazy breezes. Her fingertips grazed its surface and slipped through, creating ripples as if it were a vertical pool of water. She could feel wind currents on the other side, much stronger than what stirred the air in the chamber. She pulled away without effort.

  “I think I can go through. Follow him.”

  Kexal tried to reach into the tear and was rebuffed, a shock of thunder resounding over the howling winds of the cavern. He clutched the offending fingers with his other hand, wincing.

  “Alone?”

  “Who else?” From what little she knew, this is what a Valkwitch was supposed to do: shut down rogue elemental energy. She could feel no compulsion driving her forward, no Pact leaning on her mind. This felt right. Their goals were one in the same.

  She forced a weak smile. “Wait as long as you can, yeah?”

  “Sure thing, kid. Give ‘em hell.”

  Tyrissa took a deep breath and stepped into the portal. Reality disintegrated around her, the ground at her feet vanishing, the howls of the winds becoming mute. For a split second she was nowhere.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Tyrissa floated in midair for a frozen moment. Vralin hovered nearby, just out of reach. They exchanged a look and he gave her the barest flicker of a smile. Then she fell. Aside from a few scattered boulders that floated impossibly in the air, there was nothing below her but an endless blue abyss.

  Either through the favor of the ten nameless gods or simple dumb luck, Tyrissa hurtled straight at one of the islets of earth drifting through this cerulean void. She was so heavy, her skin aflame from transmuting the bottomless energies of the Plane of Air. An incredible font of earthen energy flowed through her, like the core of a planet, more than she thought possible. All of it went into hardening her skin, her muscles, turning her bones into diamond. She struck the earth mote with a resounding crack of thunder that would have turned buildings to rubble. Stone cratered around her, the deep rifts running out from the impact threatened to split the boulder in two and send her falling once again.

  Drawing in a ragged breath, Tyrissa tasted a sublime crispness on the air that made the fresh winds of the Morgwood seem like the filthiest smog of Forge. Pure, absolutely pure air. She pushed herself up with a groan, sending earthen stability into the stone below as an anchor against the constant, shifting gales that tried and failed to sweep her away. The boulder floated in a slow circuit at the base of a churning vortex of wind. Other isles of rock drifted on the air currents, orbiting about a center where a radiant pillar of deep blue energy pulsed at a steady heartbeat rhythm. A continuous thin ledge of floating stone ringed the vortex in the distance. Massive stalactites hung from the ledge along its entire length like the maw of a creature sized beyond understanding. Tyrissa recognized its scale and shape: it was the lip of the Hithian Crater, a hollow reflection of the real thing. Past the ring lay nothing but an unending sky dotted with islands of solid ground, like an infinite, waterless sea.

  The column of power tapered to a brilliant point near where the portal dropped her, above which the air twisted, as if being shaped by a hasty, aggressive hand. Vralin floated near the nexus of energy, a distant, dark silhouette against unending blue. Tyrissa knew he was still trying to complete his work, to compete the will of his elemental patron and birth another wave of destruction carried outward on unnatural winds.

  Amidst this raw tempest Tyrissa felt as steady as a mountain. Each foot locked to the ground below her with absolute certainty. Yet, the winds that stirred her hair and clothes made her feel light as cottonseed, as if she could slip into the currents and fly upward to the next islet of earth drifting impossibly above her.

  Stay with what you know.

  Tyrissa willed the stone below her to reshape. It responded easily and smoothed out into a disc, almost happy to oblige. Settan’s words from their final training sessions returned to her: ‘In the Planes we would be as gods.’

  The rock at her feet felt liquid and quivered for her command. Tyrissa pointed ahead and the stone complied, reshaping into a narrow ramp that coiled upward like a counter vortex of earth. The effort made no noticeable difference in the weighty core of power that grinded within her. No limits. Tyrissa checked that her staff was firmly in place on her back and started to run up the newly created ramp. Her feet landed without doubt, defiant of the endless fall to either side. Ahead, the ramp stretched on as she ran. She could feel a flow of stone on the underside racing to the fore to provide a place for its mistress to run.

  Even that wasn’t enough, so she tried something she never learned. She stopped in her tracks and pulled the stone into a pool below her feet,
then pushed it upward into an animate pedestal just wide enough to stand on. Tyrissa shot upward like a Skyfire rocket with a tail of stone and soon she was level with Vralin. He flew on unseen currents of wind, freed from the bonds of the earth in this place where his power originated. Nearby, the column of blue energy converged to a single shining nexus of elemental magick. The air around them shivered with power.

  Vralin’s skeletal figure and torn clothing flapping in the winds made him seem all the more a ragged, dying bird of prey. The bracer on his left arm was in ruins, but trailed a quickly fading white mist. He drew his remaining sword and assumed a duelist’s pose that was still infused with that subtle grace, like the wind stirring a field of tall grass. His eyes gave her a venomous look, hateful but weary. Above all, he looked so very tired.

  “Very well. Let’s end this.” As he wheezed out those words, he drifted upward. Tyrissa felt the winds slashing across her skin, a remote sensation through the earth magick running through her body. Tyrissa didn’t need to fly to follow him. The stone at her feet flowed around her with each step, rising or falling as need be. She carried solid footing with her, and charged forward in silence.

  Vralin weaved away from her first attacks, twisting and dancing through the air without effort. But Tyrissa could sense a slowness to his movements, a sluggishness when reacting to her strikes. It was the poison of his power. Without his bracer, his filter, the energies of Air were consuming him even faster than before. He held his left arm close to his side, broken and useless in more than one way.

  They settled into a pattern: she would charge on a surge of Shaped earth, they would exchange a few blows, all but a few parried or blocked, and Vralin would fly away to give himself space. Each repetition brought more signs of weakness in the Windmage, a slow dodge here, a grazing strike from her staff there. Tyrissa realized it was only a matter of time and pressed on like a rockslide, unstoppable.