The tunnel was wide enough for four wagons abreast, two in each direction, plus foot traffic. It descended at a gentle slope for hundreds of feet, turning at a switchback before spilling out onto a square that appeared to be a mirror of the one above. Stepping aside the flow of traffic from the tunnel, Tyrissa paused and gazed around the massive urban cavern. The roots and bases of many of the same factories and processing plants from above lined the underground intersection, some built as full towers that burst through the earth, others connected to the surface by lifts that rose through gaps in the ceiling. Countless skylights sent angled shafts of morning light down into the under district.
Tyrissa began her search, politely pulling aside the rare worker that looked less harried, or asking stall merchants selling pieces of fruit or bread wrapped in protective cloths. Their responses were uniform, either having no idea who Settan or the ‘Pact Witch’ were or returning rueful shake of the head. Soot and smoke hung heavy in the air, and many of the people going about their daily business were stained with a layer of grit on their faces and clothes. A few wore bandanas over their mouths and noses, and after a few minutes of soaking in the sight and smells of Under Forge, Tyrissa wished she had one of her own. Blast furnaces belched out heat and seemed to be everywhere she went, making a warm day even hotter. It was nothing compared to the Vordeum Wastes, but well above comfortable, particularly in her guild coat. Channels of water ran along many of the wider streets, most carrying blackened wastewater toward the Rift. Despite being underground, the riftwinds occasionally stirred her hair and kept the air from being overpowered by the scent and heat of industry.
Her search began to look fruitless after an hour. Any veins of information on these streets were mined out and exhausted. Tyrissa’s wandering brought her away from the heat and smoke of the central forges and into side streets that looked equal parts cave and carved. She traveled against the flow of the riftwinds, when she could feel them, eventually coming to a quiet residential area of tenement houses stacked against the stone walls like a half-circle of smelted metal bars. The ceilings pressed lower here, and night lamps provided illumination instead of skylights. The rough paving stones of the street sunk down a few steps toward the center of the half-circle, where water flowed from an open pipe into a clear, communal pool. A cluster of washerwomen worked nearby, fighting a losing battle against the grit of Under Forge. Tyrissa hadn’t been down here long and already the whites of her guild coat showed some graying from the soot and dirt in the air. When asked, the women were just as innocently ignorant of who she sought, if kindly offering pieces of advice.
“You take care now,” one said as Tyrissa bid her thanks and goodbyes. “Some streets down here aren’t safe for a girl walking alone, even one such as you.”
Tyrissa smiled at her concern. “Thanks, but I can handle myself. It’s not like I’m going to be accosted by a trio of street toughs looking for ‘a bit ‘o sport.’”
Sometimes I love being wrong, Tyrissa thought as the end of her staff slammed into the side of the final thug’s head. The wood thrummed in her hands from the impact, a feeling of pure satisfaction. Her would-be assailant dropped his blade and fell to ground in a heap. One of his comrades lay groaning nearby and the third shuffled down the alley from whence they came with a severe limp. The fight was almost too easy, the weeks of training with Kexal and now the Cadre leaving their mark. The street was otherwise quiet, a nearly abandoned section of Under Forge’s web of narrow side streets and alleys.
Tyrissa planted an end of her staff at the center of the conscious thug’s chest, knocking the wind out of him. As he gasped for air, she leaned over and said, “Let’s try this again. I’m looking for someone. Could you please help me?”
Might as well be civil.
A thinning trickle of blood ran down her arm to her wrist and left a chain of bloodstains along the sleeve. A few drops fell and pattered onto the thug’s chest. One of the three had landed a lucky blow on her arm just above the elbow, leaving a mild gash and a damaged guild coat. Tyrissa could feel the flesh knitting itself back together and she wished the coat could do the same. Caliss will be incensed, though the Cadre’s matriarch of uniforms had assured her that she would have a properly fitting new coat soon. Below, her new friend coughed and managed to draw in a full breath.
“Who’re you looking for?” His voice sounded even more ragged than before their brawl but held an air of near politeness. A quick beating can result in vast attitude improvements.
“Word has it that a mystic or witch lives down here and that she can remove Pacts. A Pact Witch, if you will. Know anything about that? Maybe someone who made use of her services?” Tyrissa tilted her head to one side and gave him a cold stare for emphasis.
“Settan,” he said with a nod. “He used to be one of them Shapers, but not anymore. Now spends his time and coin at the Miner’s Pick, trying to drown.”
Tyrissa continued to stare at him. His answer came out quick and sounded earnest enough, and between gasps for air he would glace at the butt of her staff with a worried look. She eased off.
“Shaper? As in Stone Shaper?”
He nodded, taking grateful deep breaths.
“Are you sure?”
“He makes no secret of himself and let’s just say losing his Pact hasn’t made him any less vulnerable.”
Must have decided I was easier prey.
“Why don’t you tell me where the Miner’s Pick is?”
The Miner’s Pick stood along a narrow street just off the main road that mirrored Smith’s Row aboveground. Like the other buildings along this street, the tavern was older and built of soot-stained wood instead of stone. The second story had been abandoned long ago, the windows boarded up and the interior forgotten, but light and sound drifted out from the ground floor to counter the lifeless second story. Tyrissa wondered if the name was supposed to be some bawdy reference then saw that the wooden sign hanging above the doorway depicted a helmed man with a mining pick positioned just so.
That would be a ‘yes’.
Bolted to the front door and taking the place of a normal handle was a secondary eponymous mining pick. The tavern was half empty, the crowd a subdued set of off-shift workers from ore processing or foundry jobs wearing tough, soot stained clothes but cleaned hands and faces. A handful of eyes spared her a glance or a curious look, but quickly returned to their conversations or card games. Tobacco smoke collected between the ceiling beams and gave Tyrissa’s lungs a change of pace, the haze in the air tasting of agriculture instead of industry.
Tyrissa stepped up to the bar and received a nod from the tender who matched the exterior of his tavern, grayed and weathered but still standing. A pair of casks were mounted on the wall behind him, between which stood a rack of dubious liquor bottles of made of smoky glass. All were unlabeled. She assumed he had a system.
“Well. You seem to be out of place, miss. What can I do for you?” She suspected he didn’t mean her guild coat.
“I’m looking for Settan.”
“He’s there in the back,” he pointed at the far corner to a second sitting area partitioned from the main floor, connected by two empty doorways. The wall between bore a painting of a mining town nestled among conifer covered mountains.
“You’re not bringing him any more trouble, are you? Fellow’s seen enough for twelve men.”
“Nothing like that. I only have a few questions.”
“Always starts that way.”
Tyrissa nodded her thanks and weaved through the tables to the back. Shadows shrouded the partitioned room, the only light a steady candle at the single occupied table. This would be the best spot in the tavern for roguish business, with a clear view of the door and fewer eyes and ears on you. Every good tavern had a table like this one.
“Settan?”
Though he watched her cross the room to his table he still gave a small start when she drew near.
“Yes. You are?”
Settan’s face
contained all the ravages of age and rough living, run through with crags and ravines but lacking the beard stubble she would expect of a man trying to wash away his whatevers in a run-down tavern. In fact, Tyrissa could see no hair on him at all, not even on his brow or eyelashes. Flecks of stone protruded from the skin of his neck and upper arms like raised scabs, and his eyes were the color of slate. He wore rough spun clothing, and the only pieces of ornamentation on him were a pair of polished stone bracers clasped around his forearms. Settan was clearly imbued with earth magicks, an example of the obvious Pactbound that she’d imagined in all the stories.
“Tyrissa. I heard about you and just have some questions.”
Settan pointed at the Cadre’s badge on her coat.
“Strange. Most security guilds do not take our kind,” he said at a measured pace.
Well that was a quick reveal. She hoped to keep that fact unsaid until later. Something about her Pact must set off signals in other Pactbound. Hali knew, as did that fire juggler in the Harvest Market. This made three out of three.
“I… keep a low profile. I’m looking for the Pact Witch.”
“Ah.” He didn’t look surprised. His face betrayed barely any emotion at all. Calling him stone faced would be too easy, but appropriate. He motioned to the chair across the table. She leaned her staff against the wall and sat down. Settan considered her for a moment, those slate eyes steady.
“Why?”
“I’m looking for her for the same reasons you had.” As soon as the words were out Tyrissa realized that they were partially true at best. She couldn’t even tell herself what she wanted out of this Pact Witch. Answers first, certainly. Some degree of clarity. Then perhaps freedom.
“Yes. However, we haven’t the same reasons. You are more like her.”
Tyrissa’s heart rose at that comment, some of her vague suspicions solidifying into a faint hope.
“What do you mean ‘like her’?”
“You have that same curious… gravity.”
“Who is she? Please, I need to know.”
Settan took a slow drink and said, “An older woman, though ‘witch’ is unkind, her strange magicks aside. Yes, a witch. Also a huntress. Most of all an angel providing a certain sort of salvation, the true meaning of which I’m still working out all these months later. She arrived in the city a few years ago, though more rumor than fact at first. Then Pactbound started turning up dead. Always the rogues, the criminals, the outcasts.”
“The huntress part, right?”
“Right. She became known as a witch from stories of those who escaped her attacks. Stories of pact magick going awry. Magick that refused to touch her. After she cleared out the less desirable Pactbound she started offering a way of removing pacts. Those that took up her offer were cleansed. When they survived.”
All that Settan had said aligned with and expanded upon what Tyrissa had heard from Liran or read in the newspaper archives. She waited as Settan took another drink before continuing.
“She never came for the Stone Shapers. The Circle was nervous all the same. I volunteered to seek her out on our behalf. An ambassador. We knew she would be here, where someone can hide amongst the old tunnels, the long-forgotten settlements built of stone. These tunnels are the dominion of the Earth. Our realm. I found her, in time. Said her name was Karine. A Khalan name,” he frowned. “A false one. That accent belonged to no land nearby.”
“Where would you put it then? The accent.”
Settan shook his head and said, “I couldn’t tell you. East of the Rift for certain. Not any flavor of Rhonian though. No Rhonian dialect sounds like that. Further away, then. Whatever lies beyond the empire.”
Tyrissa tried to remember the rare maps she’d seen of the Far East. Beyond the vast Rhonian Empire lay the jungles of Amonzae, an area that was half-myth, and the lands past that were even more defined by contradictions. Cartographers couldn’t even agree on whether the North and the East were connected by land.
“Though I came as an ambassador it was she that delivered an offer. She promised to fix me. Not like the others, the drained and freed former Pactbound that were the handy work of a faceless ‘Pact Witch’. Karine thought of me as an experiment. ‘A new method’ she called it. A new method that created something new, something unbound and unknown. She kept her promise. Thanks to her my will is my own yet the Earth’s gifts remain.”
“You still have your Pact abilities?” All of the power and none of the obligation? That seemed like cheating.
Settan leveled his gaze on his left forearm’s stone bracer. The surface began to ripple like a lake stirred by the wind. A line of short spines rose from the stone and solidified. Once stilled, it appeared to have always been that way. Tyrissa’s skin pricked up, as if a cold draft had moved through the room, though the air around her was calm.
“Most of them.”
Tyrissa drummed her fingers against the tabletop. It was a lot to digest, but didn’t dissuade her from wanting to find the Karine as soon as possible.
“Can you tell me where she is?”
Settan’s bracer rippled again, the spines merging back into the polished whole. His face almost looked bemused. Almost.
“If you seek her, remember that the Outer Powers do not let their tools go so easily. While the obligation of the Pact is gone, the costs remain.” Settan ran a thumb down the collection of short stony ridges on his bare upper arms. “At times, I still hear the whispers from the stones that surround us, calling me back down. Are you certain you wish to proceed?”
“Yes.”
“Then listen close, Tyrissa. It’s a long way.”
Settan’s directions proved accurate but also provided a history lesson, a trip through the construction and expansion of Khalanheim’s under-city. As she followed the route the streets narrowed and abandoned their mimicry of the stately grid system of the surface. They began to resemble tunnels as the ceiling slopped closer to the floor, transitioning from cavern to cave. The buildings lining the streets melded back into the rock and the number of people and lit windows dwindled to zero.
The streets became progressively more cavern-like as Tyrissa’s journey in the under city went ever-deeper. Tyrissa reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a gloworb once the flickering and poorly maintained night lamps became rare enough. The device was made of two conjoined hemispheres, one clear glass and the other coated in thin leather. The leather had ‘Under License from the Khalanheim Elchemist Concordium’ stamped just below the equator. A thick soup of gray fluid studded with tiny white beads sloshed around inside the gloworb. She pressed in the small brass lever and the orb burst into a brilliant lens of white light. Warmth radiated through the leather half as the elchemical reaction burned inside the orb. Tyrissa pointed the gloworb away and blinked against the sudden night-blindness. A circle of brass that pressed open and sprang shut opposite the lever allowed her to attach the orb to one of the metal rings embedded on the shoulders of her guild coat.
‘There will be a trio of tunnels that split off from the main road after you’re the only light to be seen. One should be open.’
And there they were. Tyrissa angled the orb’s light down each of the three. Two were collapsed, with only piles of rocks greeting her curious light. The leftmost passage was crumbling, but could be squeezed through. She turned sideways and pressed on, the coarse walls closing in on her like an unwanted embrace from the earth itself. Moistened rock and dirt fell away from her touch and smeared into her hair and clothes, mixing with a day’s worth of soot and smog from the two sides of Forge.
The tunnel seemed to go on and on. The gloworb cast out chaotic fingers of light and shadow that tricked her eyes into seeing an exit that would vanish after a few steps. Her breath became shallower, sipping in short gasps of musty air. Tyrissa could feel the walls drawing closer together, or perhaps imagined it so.
Settan didn’t mention a narrow gap passage like this. Did I take a wrong turn?
Then, the
earth released her and she stumbled out, falling to her knees within a cavern on the other side. She took a moment to rest, breathing in the suddenly fresher air. Wind currents curled chaotically through the tunnels, tugging her hair every which way. Sunlight shone from around a curve in the tunnel ahead of her. She must have come all the way to the Rift’s wall.
If Settan considered that a ‘tight’ squeeze, Tyrissa dreaded what came next: a ‘brief, narrow ledge’. So far his directions had the insufferable phrasing of someone with a memorized familiarity of the area.
Tyrissa stood and followed the increasing sunlight and winds around the curve in the tunnel and was greeted with a view straight out into the Rift through a gaping hole in the cavern wall. The gap in the wall was ten feet tall but partially enclosed by a handful of thin stone columns.
From this vista, a branch of the path turned south into a knife’s edge path that hugged the wall of the Rift and was just wide enough for a single person. The riftwinds had eroded the path to appear somewhere between smooth and slick and aside from scattered columns that joined the floor and ceiling there was nothing to stop a strong, errant gust from sweeping off anyone foolish enough to take this route. The columns were too uniform and evenly spaced to be anything but the work of intentional magick, though they were spread too far apart for Tyrissa’s comfort.
Tyrissa took a firm grip of one of the columns and leaned out into the Rift. To the south and high above, the Sunset Span crossed the canyon and bulbous zeppelins drifted at their mooring towers. Once again she felt that growing weight in her gut, stronger than what she felt on the Sunrise Span high above, or the flash of the same sensation she felt when that Wind Pactbound crashed Khalan Southwest’s party. The Rift was carved by wind magicks and those same energies must still course through the unending gales that flowed within the canyon. Of course she would react when immersed in them this deep in the Rift.
Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) Page 21
