Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  “Liran. What in the name of the Ten is that sound?”

  Her brother looked up from his work, eyes glancing around, and said, “What do you mean?” He sat at a makeshift desk built of carefully arranged crates in the corner of the cabin. He had his ledger open, likely adding to the already vast volume of figures and calculations contained within. Tyrissa flipped through it once and could make no sense of the contents. It may as well have been code, with half the words being some manner of mercantile jargon. Liran guarded that leather-bound folder as if it were his life. Perhaps it was.

  “That awful, howling, screeching noise. Don’t you hear it?”

  He blinked a few times, listening. “Oh! Those are the riftwinds. They’re louder up here where the Rift narrows and turns northeast. They’re not so bad in the city itself and after a few days you stop hearing them.”

  “The Rift? Then we’re close to the end?”

  Liran nodded and said, “We’ll arrive at Avenlild in a few hours and be in Khalanheim before sunset.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his ledger and passed it to her. “Sign the blank line there,” he said while offering her his pen. “It’s a notice of your arrival in the city for the purposes of Central’s bureaucracy.”

  Tyrissa took up the pen wrote her name on the bottommost line, an inelegant scrawl next to Liran’s refined signature. The paper was titled ‘Notice of New Resident’ and dated yesterday, the seventeenth of Amberfields, 257 AR. The Khalan calendar still gave her pause. It was tricky to switch to a second set of the names of the months and even more disorienting to have the current year lose three centuries. She handed the paper back.

  “Can we see the Rift from here?”

  “I was just about to suggest that we take a look,” Liran said, placing the signed paper into the center of his ledger. He then set it on the desk, weighing down a short stack of other papers. “Get dressed and meet me on the top deck.”

  It was already warm outside, the clear skies promising one of those early autumn days where summer’s influence still held sway. A handful of other passengers had gathered on the top deck of the North Wind to take in the view. Tyrissa took her place at the railing next to Liran and looked out at the edge of the world.

  To the east, the land slopped downward from the Heartroad until it dropped off a cliff like no other. Parallel to the road ran the Rift, a legendary canyon a mile wide and thousands long that slashed across the earth like a vicious, jagged wound. From its origin at the gravesite of Hithia to the highlands far to the east of Vordeum, the Rift nearly split the entire continent in two. Like the Vordeum Wastes, the Rift was born from the uncontrolled magicks of an elemental domain. In this case the culprit was the disintegrating touch of the Plane of Air brought into the world by the Fall of Hithia two hundred and sixty years ago. The cliffs of the far side were composed of white and gray stone stacked in layered strata and stood in shadow, the morning sun not yet high enough to light the cliff’s face. It all reminded her of the many crevasses throughout the Morgwood, but on a scale that defied description. A steady, warm wind blew out of the Rift and tossed at Tyrissa’s untamed hair, beckoning and mystifying.

  Liran excused himself to return to his figures, but Tyrissa remained for a time, drinking in the views as the caravan rolled along the Heartroad and weaved through hollows and small vales. All around the land was partitioned into a dense patchwork of farmland, all bright in green and gold for the coming harvest. The farms stretched away from the road for miles in every direction, right up to the Rift’s edge and continuing on the other side. Neat lines of trees and narrow, dusty roads delineated the boundaries between lots, each plot dotted with farmhouses and barns painted in an array of colors but all topped with gray roof tiles that caught the sunlight in glittering points.

  Her curiosity to see yet another legend sated, Tyrissa left the railing to prepare for her last day of work with the mastodons.

  Avenlild looked as if someone had boiled a town down to its bare components. The satellite town, as it was called around the caravan, was well outdone in size by many of the villages they passed in the last leg of the journey, but the proportions were all wrong. While there were relatively few homes, the inn, stables, and warehouses were scaled for a much larger population. A central guildhall completed the core, crowned by a pointed spire in a style that Tyrissa had seen many times since entering Khalan lands. Today the offices from within the guildhall spilled out onto the Heartroad and formed a line of tables and officials under sun-blocking canvas awnings, a checkpoint for processing the stream of trade headed into the city. Dotted among the dominant blue and black livery of Khalan North was the gold, silver, and bronze tricolor of Central, the governing guild of the Khalan Federation.

  The North Wind slowed at the edge of town and, without ceremony or acknowledgement, the caravan dispersed for good. The smaller wagons drove on to the checkpoint, exchanging paperwork in a flurry of bureaucracy while uniformed guards from Central and Khalan North checked their cargo. Anton directed the mastodons off the road toward the largest of the warehouses, a hangar big enough to house the massive barge and its team. A fence of tall wooden planks topped with coils of razor wire ringed the warehouse and Tyrissa noted a fair number of armed guards, all understandable given the scope and cost of the barge’s operation and Liran’s mention of a previous arson. The oversized doors to the warehouse stood open and a small army of workers in plain shirtsleeves and dusty overalls waited inside with an array of handcarts and wagons ready to unload the barge’s haul from the north.

  Her final round of work with the mastodons treated her to one last view from Roth’s back, this time of the clockwork shuffle of cargo pouring out of the North Wind, the spoils of the north unfurling across the floor of the warehouse. Tyrissa spied Kexal and his brother with Hali, the three packed and mounted, Hali and Garth sharing a horse. She had no idea the three of them were together, though it wasn’t surprising given how private Hali was. Tyrissa’s practice sessions with Kexal never returned to the frequency of the days before the wastes, and she often spotted him riding into the towns along the Heartroad as the North Wind inched its way around. Always, he would rejoin the caravan a short time later looking disappointed. The Weapon Master caught her gaze and gave her a tip of his brimmed hat and a smile before kicking his stallion into motion distinctly away from Avenlild’s checkpoint. Tyrissa waved at their backs, thankful for the chance to train with him. She felt her skill with the staff was honed and sharpened, but knew she could always get better. Of Ferdhan, there was no sign. He must have slipped away with the rest of the separate wagons. Tyrissa was sure to return her most recently borrowed book to him, another collection of Khalan stories and legends.

  Tyrissa finished her tasks well before her brother, concluding her mastodon tending service with a fierce bear hug from Anton and the assurance that, “When you get tired of the bustle and noise of Khalanheim, come to Jolenhem. You will be welcome there.” She now waited in the doorway of their cabin, watching as Liran worked in a flurry, pinning a final set of labels to his aromatic cargo. Soon they were among a small fleet of carriages that waited outside the warehouse to carry the caravan’s merchants on to the city. Liran strode to a smaller one with an open top and two rows of seats, pulled by a pair of black horses and driven by an older man with narrowed eyes and a serious forward hunch. Liran slapped a pair of golden Khalan coins onto the bench beside the driver and said, “Crossing Square, southeast side,” with that disarming smile of his. The driver simply nodded and they climbed aboard, Tyrissa taking the back bench with their packs.

  Another guild member climbed aboard the carriage and joined Liran in the front passenger bench. He was about Liran’s age and shorter by a few inches, but his build and blade marked him as a fighter, as did the sword stitched at the center of his coat’s guild crest. He had a clean shaven, hawk-nosed face, with brown hair shorn short in a simple, efficient style. Tyrissa saw him earlier as the North Wind unloaded, barking orders at the assembled ar
med guild escort with a quick, precise Khalan accent.

  “Crossing Square is close enough for me,” he said to the driver while tossing a third coin into the fare. “Liran, welcome back.”

  “Good to be back, Arik. How was your summer?” Liran brightened when he saw him, a meeting of long-parted friends. The carriage rumbled into motion, the driver directing his team to the checkpoint.

  “Hot and busy, though the heat’s not so bad today. I can’t wait for winter.”

  Tyrissa found the day well past comfortable, the riftwinds keeping the air stirred but far from cool. As promised, she could still hear the weakened howl of the Rift, like the dull roar of a rainstorm’s gusts cutting across the roof.

  “Ty, this is Arik, part of the guild’s security corps. Arik, this is my sister Tyrissa.”

  “Great, now there’s two of you.” He gave her an appraising look. “What are you, some sort of Morg Battle Maiden?”

  “Lirina the Lovely reborn,” Tyrissa said with a smile. While she hadn’t killed a frost giant lately, the association was welcome. Interesting that that tale had made it this far south and he knew of it. Better that then the horror stories of the Cleanse, at least.

  “Are you as good in a fight?”

  “Ask some of your men from the caravan.”

  They passed the checkpoint without incident and Tyrissa received a thrice stamped paper declaring her new residency.

  “Hold on to that,” Liran said. “Or at least don’t lose it for a while.”

  They rode on towards Khalanheim, its gray walls looming high, the land cut clear for hundreds of yards. From what Tyrissa read, cities always had a sprawl of shanties and huts, the walls unable to contain growth. But the base of Khalanheim’s wall was clean. She remarked on the absence to Liran.

  “We have those, like any other city,” Liran said. “The south side has a lot of buildup around the reservoir. The bulk of the rougher areas are underground, in the old tunnels and caverns. For the sub-city you’ll hear people calling those districts by whatever’s above them. Under Forge, Under Bridge, and so on.”

  Tyrissa hummed a half-hearted response, the city stealing away her attention. The bulk of Khalanheim was vaguely square, those long, straight walls forming three sides and the Rift the fourth. Two hills rose from within the city walls. The taller was covered in a dense buildup of mansions nestled among a coat of trees. A white tower with the lens of a telescope jutting through its domed top crowned the other hill. Across the rooftops of Khalanheim, tenuous companions of smoke and steam joined the tower in reaching to the sky. A bridge spanned the great canyon at the center of the city’s Rift-ward side. From here it looked to be a narrow finger of civilization meekly spanning magick-spawned carnage, but up close it would have to be massive, taking many minutes to cross. A smaller extension of the city lay on the other side of the bridge. Beyond the city, on the south side, shined a reservoir and a wide river that curved away to the west.

  Liran turned back to Arik and said, “How is the city? I’m starved for news.”

  “Could be better. We thought it might boil over in the heat but it looks like we dodged that for now. Big news is that the Thieves Guild is back.”

  “Already?”

  “Already. They’ve been doing hits on storehouses, Hill mansions, workshops. They’re much smarter about their targets and half the time they’re not even after money, just supplies or weapons or elchemical materials. The last month’s been like the bad days of the Forties. Central and the Talons can’t get a handle on them.”

  “The Talons took them down last year. What changed?”

  “They’ve gotten better at hiding. The bosses aren’t living it up like the old days, buying vacant mansions with sudden fortunes. They stay down below with their boys, running the show in disconnected groups. Our guys caught a cell trying to make off with a shipment of Velhem silver. We barely caught them in the act and they put up a hell of a fight. Only one lived to talk and all he could give us was their hideout location. Some place in Under Bridge. It was stripped bare by the time we showed up with some Cents.”

  “Elusive, then.”

  “Easier to catch the wind. The Primes are all on the defensive, so there’s less stomach for the normal guild politicking. We haven’t had a suspicious incident in weeks.”

  “Only obvious thefts.”

  “Right. I prefer the incidents.”

  They passed through the shadow of Khalanheim’s northern gate and the driver slowed to pass a slip of paper to one of the guards, the crest of Khalan North stamped clearly atop it. Like the bridges the Heartroad traversed in the Vordeum Expanse, the city’s walls were seemingly built of a single piece of stone pulled ready-made from the earth. Tyrissa knew it must be the result of earth magicks used in construction, the hallmark of Stone Shapers, of Pactbound. How else could it be so perfect, so enduring?

  Arik glanced back at her staff, propped against the back seat like a fourth passenger. “If your sister needs a job,” he said, “security’s booming. You’ll just have to find a place that’ll hire a woman. We don’t, but I think the Rift Company does. So does Kadrich’s, if you want to avoid another Prime.”

  “Would be a good fit for you, Ty,” Liran said.

  Tyrissa nodded. She would need to find a place in all this if her true reason for coming here didn’t work out.

  A practical place for me. Father would be proud.

  Most of the buildings that lined the Heartroad hewed to a consistent design, always four stories tall with the windows forming grid-like faces above the ground floors. At times it looked as if the connected buildings would stretch on forever, only to have sudden breaks for cross streets. Shops often occupied the ground floors in long arcades, set back from the street in arched and shadowed overhangs. Each store bore guild crests above the entry, discs adorned in numerous colors and heraldry. The smells and sounds of the city were just as varied and Tyrissa found herself in a pleasing, overstimulated state, eyes looking every which way to see something new or unknown.

  The carriage slowed to a stop at the largest square Tyrissa seen thus far, the intersection of the Heartroad and an equally broad avenue running east to west. The square could have swallowed Edgewatch whole. Heavily ornamented halls and homes formed the four walls of the square and at the center stood an elaborate fountain topped by a stature depicting a man offering up a palm full of coins. Carts and temporary stalls ringed the fountain, their attendants selling items as diverse as the people passing through the square.

  “Crossing Square already,” Arik said while hopping out of the carriage. “We’ll talk tomorrow in the hall. Get a drink afterward?”

  “Will do.”

  “Miss,” Arik said to her with a nod, before turning away and quickly becoming lost among the square’s shifting evening crowds. The carriage lurched into motion again, slowing and stopping as the driver navigated the crowded streets. Soon they left the bustle of Crossing Square and entered twisting, ever-narrower side streets where the light of evening jumped ahead an hour from the shadows of the buildings. The general style of the rest of the city persisted but the uniformity broke down, with the houses varying in height and color. More dirt and grit occupied the spaces between the cobblestones, and many of the buildings had small cracks or weathered paint.

  “Southeast Crossing has none of the glamour of the nicer parts of the city, but the rent is cheap and there’s sky above you,” Liran said. “Here is fine, driver.”

  “You sell it so well,” Tyrissa said, taking in the sights and committing it all to memory as they unloaded their packs. The crooked, aged streets and buildings did have a certain lived-in charm to them, begging for exploration of hidden corners.

  “A merchant’s nature,” Liran said.

  Liran led them through a few more twists and turns, their long southward journey finally ending in front of a row house much like the hundreds they already passed, this one with a wooden staircase descending from the second floor to the street. Th
e ground floor looked abandoned, the doors and windows boarded up and painted to roughly match the rest of the building’s pale yellow exterior.

  “Home sweet home,” he said before ascending the stairs, each footfall producing a welcoming creak.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tyrissa stood near the peak of the Sunrise Span, her fingers gripped through the wire fences that lined the great bridge. Below her feet, past the elegantly worked stone tiles, past the substructure of cables and pipes and supports that she could only glimpse from the city, there was nothing. When looking down into the Rift you saw no bottom and the canyon walls showed no intent of ever meeting. There was nothing but the endless vertical descent below and even that was eventually obscured by mists the color of a pale, clear sky. The Rift was a modern legend and when seen this close, from above, it was dizzying and amazing in equal measure.

  Behind her, the morning’s traffic of cargo carts lumbered along the wide lanes of flat, tessellated stonework. Most of the carts had the purple and gold emblem of the Imperial Company painted on the sides. The noise of it all, the grind of wagon wheels, the calls of workers, and the ring of horseshoes faded to a din overwhelmed by the sight just below and stretching hundreds of miles north and south.

  She could have stood here all morning, letting the riftwinds whisper and roar around her while the vertigo from the infinite height created a slowly building knot in her stomach, as if her breakfast had turned to stone. It was an effort to turn away, back toward the western side of Khalanheim. She had an entire new city to explore and she could always come back.