“Tell me exactly what happened. Every word they said, every answer you gave. The more we know about whatever Pact you agreed to the better.” Her mother arrived at the Pact conclusion faster than Tyrissa did. She knew without asking, and wouldn’t explain what happened when they touched outside, only muttering a ‘Not yet.’
Tyrissa told them everything she could remember. When she described the fight with the daemon her mother’s face softened. She reached out a hand, perhaps to comfort her daughter, but drew back, instead gripping the charm again. Seeing that pained Tyrissa the most. The details between her death and rebirth were now vague impressions attached to the underlying desire to ‘Prove Herself Worthy’.
“I remember the promise, the Pact, the color silver, and Tsellien’s face.” Tyrissa finished her retelling.
“A poor way to make a deal,” Liran said. He sat on a dining room chair, leaning back on the rear legs against a wall. “You’d think the Outer Powers would be more specific with their recruits.”
“Tell me about it.” Tyrissa said. She could feel the Pact if she sought it out, like a near-unnoticeable itch in the back of her mind. It was subtle and passive, but somehow binding.
Her mother paced through the center of the room during Tyrissa’s retelling, saying not a word. “I knew they would be trouble,” she said finally. “But I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“You said she was like Kavelis, Iri,” her father said from the other blue chair.
“Yes. She said she was ‘a sister’ of Kavelis and that there was unfinished business that we missed during the Cleanse. It sounds like they were successful in that, even if it cost their lives and us a daughter.” Iri’s voice matched her hard, absolute choice of words.
“So Tyrissa is like them?”
“That’s possible, but we can’t be sure. I can’t tell one type of Pact from another. Especially when daemons are involved. It could be an elaborate trick, a deception. It’s in their nature.”
Tyrissa was sure, knew she had to be just like Tsellien, even if that meant next to nothing to her. “Mother, who is Kavelis?” she asked.
“Curious about that myself,” Liran added.
Their parents exchanged a knowing look. Iri nodded and took a seat on the long padded bench across from the blue chairs. She brushed some imagined bit of dust from her trousers, then folded her hands and sat with a straight back. Iri said nothing for a few seconds, eyes downcast, thinking. When she spoke, her voice was firm and clear, as if trained for this moment.
“Kavelis was the oft-rumored ‘divine warrior’ that aided King Horald in his conquests during the Cleanse, the angel that delivered us from the daemonic corruptions that wracked our people. While she was no angel, she was Pactbound of some kind. She cared more about ending the corruptions than we did. She spoke and acted with such a ruthless fervor, we were almost as afraid of her as the daemons.
“She came to the future king in the darkest days of the Cleanse, when it seemed we were forsaken to destroy ourselves. She said she would end the daemonic corruptions, but needed compatible volunteers, and only women. I was compatible, one of twenty. Kavelis did something to our eyes and hands, some share of her magick that allowed us to see Pactbound or identify them with a touch. Like what happened outside. Then she disappeared into the forests and mountains, hunting the sources of the corruption on her own terms.
“As for myself and the nineteen other women, we became Horald’s bloodhounds, his inquisitors, his witches, traveling with bands of soldiers to root out the daemon-touched. We became the secondary focus of all the hate and fear of those times. I would point… and people would die. Sometimes whole villages. Sometimes old friends. Neighbors. That was my life for two years, at the front of the worst of the Cleanse. People know about the King’s Seekers, but few had any idea of how we were so effective.”
The room was still, the air heavy from Iri’s words. For years Tyrissa thought her mother was holding back heroics or some personal tragedy. This was both and worse than she could have imagined. Anything that remained of her past curiosity or resentment dissolved into sympathy and respect.
“Mother, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“It’s in the past,” Iri said. She rubbed her bad eye through the cloth. “Most of it. You probably have questions?”
A thousand and one, Tyrissa thought.
“Were you ever wrong?”
Through her entire story, her mother’s voice had been steady as the mountains. For the next two words it wavered.
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Tyrissa felt a pang of shame, and tried to change the subject.
“What was Kavelis? What sort of Pact did she have?” She sounded like nothing Tyrissa had ever read about in her stories. Pactbound were bound to Elements like Fire or Earth or Death, or to the will of daemons.
“I don’t know. I met Kavelis all of three times. The first when she declared me ‘compatible’, literally pulling me off the street in Greden. I saw her a second time when she gave us this… ability and one last time two years later to thank us and remove it. That was a somber reunion. Only half of us survived to the end. Obviously the removal didn’t work very well and since then my eye has never been quite right.” Iri looked down at her hands as if seeing them in a new light. “I suppose that goes for my hands too. For all her mysterious magick Kavelis was only human after all, and she said that we were an experiment. I think she wasn’t sure if it would work at all. Desperate times and all that.”
Tyrissa had a wealth of unknowns, but suddenly no more questions. A short silence fell over the group.
“What’s our next step,” her father said, always the pragmatist.
“Tyrissa can’t stay here,” Iri said. “The current King’s Seekers will start their check of the smaller towns any day now. They always come through with the census men at the end of summer. They aren’t aided by pact magicks, but they’ll still find out about Tyrissa.”
The census men were so innocuous. Tyrissa only ever saw them as funny men obsessed with accurate counts and bearing stacks of ledgers. They worked with a methodical and fanatical, if polite, determination, as if the stability of the entire kingdom rested on their shoulders. They were shadowed by a single man or woman with a distinctive silver eye stitched to their cloaks. That one never said a word, merely observed. Suddenly they weren’t so innocuous. As for the Seekers, well, they kept the King’s Law: no Pactbound. How they enforced that law was vague. Tyrissa had never heard of anyone violating it.
That would leave a neighboring nation, but as Tyrissa envisioned a map of Morgale she remembered there simply weren’t neighboring nations. Beyond the borders of the kingdom lay only wilderness dotted with scattered towns that clung to ancient roads like the Fjordway.
“The caravan leaves in a few days,” Liran said. “I can take Ty with me to Khalanheim. What’s more, as we were leaving the city, the rumor mills began to hum with talk of a ‘mystic’ that can remove pacts. There was a lot of noise about one of the senior Stone Shapers leaving their order.” That was likely all rumor. Tyrissa hated being cynical, but the tales were all unified on one thing: once you take on a Pact it is for life.
Iri sighed. “I don’t know Liran, Khalanheim is so far away, and you have to cross the Vordeum Wastes.”
“Far away is what Ty needs. Khalanheim is less safe than Morgale for the average person, sure, but its worlds safer for Pactbound. The danger of the wastes is overblown. After all, I’ve done it twice now. I’m still standing. Regardless, Ty will be safer there. She won’t be a fugitive, and will be able learn more about her new… situation. Perhaps even be cured, if rumors are to be believed.”
“They rarely are,” Iri said. “But you’ve sold me on the idea, as is your way. Tyrissa?”
“I’ve always wanted to see Khalanheim.” The idea of removing the Pact gave her dual flicker of hope and disgrace. Last night’s wholesale acceptance suddenly felt premature.
“Then it’s de
cided. You two need to leave immediately. Tonight.”
“Can’t we wait a few days to tend to her foot?” her father asked.
“No, it must be tonight. There were too many eyes on us when I reacted with Ty’s Pact. You know how they look at me, Orval. The lingering fear and resentment… they will talk. It must be tonight.
Classic, Tyrissa thought. With the aurora at a weak, fading hazel, a nighttime departure would be a under cloak of darkness. Perhaps her mother had an unintentional flair for poetic adventure after all.
“Liran, ready your mare and wagon. Orval, help Ty pack up. I’ll gather some food for the trip to the caravan,” Iri said, standing, “and bring in the boys for their good-byes. We’ll tell them that your injuries need the attention of a physic in Tavleorn and that you’ll be away for a week or so.”
“They aren’t so naïve as that mother. What happens after a week when I don’t come back?”
“Then you’ll be away on the caravan and we can tell them the truth. Come, on your feet. We’ve much to do tonight.”
Iri dealt out their tasks with a stoutness Tyrissa had never seen before. Her mother’s bearing, the solid, unflinching look on her face and the crisp way she spoke were such radical departures from the distant, private woman she grew up under. It was as if Iri Jorensen became someone else. Or perhaps, someone she used to be.
Outside, the early morning hours crept by. Tyrissa managed to catch a few hours of sleep while they all prepared for her and Liran’s departure. Soon she would leave all that she knew for a world she’d only read and dreamed about. However, she had enough time to leave a parting gift.
Tyrissa sat on her bed. Tales from Across the North lay on her lap with a small, blank sheet of paper atop it. On the floor next to her feet sat a pack, filled with clothing and a handful of useful possessions for the journey. She had only read about half of Tales thus far, and it would be the one little luxury she would bring along.
She addressed the note to her father and wrote:
Take the left branch of the trail that starts near the Grossen’s. Follow it northwest for an hour. After the rotting wooden bridge there is an overgrown trail that splits off due north. Look for a pine with my initials carved in the bark. Follow that trail for another half-hour. You’ll come to a hill. The steeloak is at the top. You can’t miss it.
Oster has a terrible memory when it comes to the forest, but should be of some help.
With Love,
Tyrissa.
She capped the pen and folded the note in half. Footsteps sounded in the hall and Tyrissa looked up to see her mother standing in the doorway. She wore the same outfit from before, and still looked like a completely different person. For two reasons.
“Are you ready?”
Tyrissa stood the folded note on the nightstand and took a long look around her bedroom, lingering on the row of epics and adventure stories on the shelf. She had fantasized about this, the moment right before setting off on some grand, world spanning adventure. Such dreams never included this sense of melancholy.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Iri walked in and took a seat at the far end of the bed, keeping a noticeable distance between them.
“Tyrissa, I realize I perhaps haven’t been as kind or open with you as a mother should. I’ve been cold at times, distant, and I’m sorry.”
“I understand, mother,” she lifted the Tales book in one hand, before letting it fall to the bedspread. “Heroes are shaped by their pasts.”
Iri reached over and picked up the book, turning it over in her hands. “Sometimes you get what you want in unexpected ways,” she said. “I don’t have to tell you that I love you dearly. Just… I will never be ashamed of you, or the path your life follows, Pact or no.”
Tyrissa said nothing, slide closer to her mother and took her hands in her own. Iri flinched at the touch as the white light sprang into being. The light gathered in pools at her fingertips, flowing in luminous veins along the back of her hands before fading to nothing along her arms. It was strangely beautiful.
Mother and daughter sat in silence, faces bathed in a warm glow.
Chapter Ten
They left Edgewatch without fanfare beyond parting tears that betrayed the falsity of their cover story. Tyrissa slept as they drove through the night, lulled by the rhythmic grind and strike of wheels and horseshoes against the ancient stones of the Fjordway. Liran’s wagon was just large enough to serve as an acceptable bed if enough compromises were made in regards to comfort. It was already mid-morning when she awoke to a pang of hunger and went rummaging through their modest supplies. Liran heard her shifting in the wagon, and looked over his shoulder.
“Good morning sister. Welcome to the glade formerly known as Mateth.”
Only younger trees lined this stretch of the roadway. Old stone columns, the remnants of hearths and chimneys, stood among the saplings and regrowth. Once a village, these ruins were far along in the process of being reabsorbed by the southern reaches of the Morgwood. Here, the stillness of the forest had all the comfort of a tomb.
“Did you know it?”
“Not really. I remember passing through when I was six. The Cleanse was over and we were going home from Greden to what was left of Edgewatch, a home I never knew.”
Tyrissa found a piece of bread and dug in.
“You know the Rudbecks? The tanner’s family? They used to live here”
“Yeah,” she nodded between bites, “I played with their youngest, Alfred, growing up. He asked me to dance at this past Midsummer’s feast, even after I broke his nose two weeks before. By accident,” she added quickly.
“That explains how he got uglier. I was friends with his elder brother. Turns out there was a group of Pactbound holding out in Mateth, hiding among the residents. The army torched the place not a week after we passed through. The Rudbecks were deemed ‘clean’ and allowed to resettle in Edgewatch, after a fashion. Karl saw the whole thing. Said people he thought he knew fought without fear or pity, some without weapons, clawing and biting. Pure madness. They fought like…”
“Like daemons,” Tyrissa finished for him. Liran’s story wasn’t uncommon. King Horald spent the initial years of his rule hunting down holdouts, some hiding in the wilderness, others within plain sight in cities.
“Right,” he said, nodding at the passing ruins. “That’s the only Cleanse story I have. Don’t remember much else, thank the gods.”
“Did mother ever tell you…” she left the rest unsaid.
“No. No, that was all news to me. I remember that she was gone for a long time. It might as well have been forever. Father served around Greden, and took care of us with Grandma Jo. He was home more often in winter, so those were better times. I suppose even daemons prefer warmer weather. When mother returned, I recognized her, but she felt like a stranger, a distant relative instead of my mother.” Liran shook his head, seeming to try to jostle childhood memories loose. “Hell, hard to say I even remember those days. Most of what I know Corgell told me. He’s old enough to remember it all, more or less.
“It’s for the best that I don’t remember. There’s a certain… paralysis among our people. The scars run so deep, deeper than you can know until you leave and see what it’s like elsewhere. Call it a shared cultural guilt that holds us back, and for all the talk of moving forward, all the rebuilding we’ve done there’s still a sense that we’ll only go so far before settling back into a comfortable constant. That’s why I left, Ty. That’s why I went south.”
“When did it become a week of sharing old stories and inner thoughts,” Tyrissa said, trying to lighten their talk. The last few days were far too grim.
Liran gave her a grin, though she could see the tiredness in his eyes. “I guess you and mother put me in the mood,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you rest, Liran? Not here, obviously.”
Liran turned back to the road ahead, shaking his head. “Later. Maybe tonight. The sooner we get to Tavleorn, the
better. We still have a couple days until the caravan leaves. I can catch up on sleep then.”
As they continued westward, Tyrissa’s heart jumped a beat whenever they passed another group traveling on the Fjordway, but nothing came of the encounters besides friendly nods and small talk over the road ahead. She tried to see threats everywhere, as the idea of being Pactbound becoming further internalized. Even if she didn’t know what that really meant yet, the events of the past few days redrew what and where she considered safe.
“I’ll give Morgale one thing over the south, besides scenery,” Liran said when they had the road to themselves. “Here, bandits are rare, nearly unheard of post-Cleanse. For now, at least. No merchant would dare travel like this down south, not without armed guards.”
Tyrissa lifted her staff from the wagon bed and gave him a light jab in the back.
“What about me? I’m armed.”
“Oh, of course. My mistake. I feel much safer now.”
Tyrissa leaned back, watching bands of clouds roll across the sky through the trees that lined the Fjordway. With the aurora between color phases, it was invisible and the sky was a pure, boring blue.
“Liran, how much of it is true, this mystic you’ve talked about.”
Liran paused, clearly choosing his words or un-censoring them from before. “As I said, there are rumors. ‘Mystic’ is perhaps too kind a word. I believe most reports and talk had settled on calling her the ‘Pact Witch’. The newspapers followed every trace of her for a time, though I’m sure they’ve moved onto another fixation by now. I know she’s a recluse, only seen in the under districts of Khalanheim by day and only glimpses and hearsay by night topside. A few known Pactbound have come forward as severed from their pacts, including one of the Stone Shapers. So the removal stuff is true, at least.”
Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) Page 8
