Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  Tyrissa stuck a tentative hand into the open air while the other maintained a death grip on the column. Warmth washed over her skin, a faint tingling sensation distinct from the heat of the sunlight. The feeling quickly sank through her skin and went deeper, running in currents to coalesce in her core and create a center of earthen gravity. She pushed away from the rock window, steadying herself against the realization more than the vertigo or her footing. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on the feeling of pact magicks running through her. The energy was less demanding that her encounters with Fire and Water. It was as calm and patient as the mountains, yet pliant.

  Turning toward the narrow path, she let her heart set the pace, one deliberate step for every three beats. Each step landed with more certainty that the last, as if rooted to the smooth stone below. The path lost its precarious nature and became a regular road that was no danger to someone like her, to someone that walked with the elements. To a Pactbound.

  Using her new abilities, despite their unknowns, felt less alarming and more empowering every time. Though she felt anchored by the calm power within her, the riftwinds still playfully tossed her hair and clothes in aimless rhythms.

  Soon the path merged back into the cliff and once again became a tunnel. She left the Rift behind, but the surefootedness remained, the weight in her core slowly dwindling. The final waypoint in Settan’s directions followed shortly after: a lit street lamp, wildly out of place this far from the settled underground districts of Khalanheim. A trio of replacement bulbs lay at its base.

  This cavern was much wider, running deeper into the earth and away from the Rift, though another long tear in the Rift-ward wall let in sunlight and the winds. Opposite the tear were the dilapidated facades of houses carved into walls, the wooden frames and doors rotting away from the march of time. At the center of it all stood a free standing house built like the others, a block of stone with the hallmarks of humans carved into it to make it livable. All was silent save for the riftwinds howling across the window onto the canyon.

  “Finally.”

  Tyrissa jogged up to the long-promised mystic’s house, circling around to the far side. Her head swam with questions and anticipation. But something was wrong and promise withered to dread in an instant. The front door of the house was gone and the interior darkened. She came to a stop a few feet from the threshold. Metal hinges hung empty on the frame and a thick wooden door lay inside, broken and cast aside like a child’s forgotten toy.

  “Hello?!”

  The house had that eerie stillness of abandonment and all was quiet save for the roar of the Rift and. Tyrissa unclipped the gloworb and settled the other hand on her knife. She stepped through the doorway, boots crunching against fallen splinters. To her left was a common room in total disarray. She ran the light of her gloworb across the room. Fallen books and loose papers littered the floor below a bookshelf, two chairs and a small wooden table lay overturned, along with broken plates and the remnant of an abandoned meal. A stout writing desk and cast-iron stove stood oblivious to the mess around them.

  Tyrissa repeated her call as she gingerly walked through the detritus littering the floor to the center of the room. No answer. Despite her caution she nearly stumbled and realized that the stone floor was warped and uneven beneath the scattered books and objects.

  Four sets of weapon mounts were drilled into one wall. The top two held a sword with a slightly curved tip and a long dagger. Both were stored in leather scabbards banded with silver cloth. The other two mounts were empty. Tyrissa moved closer and saw that the dagger bore a slightly different version of the winged shield crest stamped into the disc of the pommel. The feathers were harsher and pointed, and the shield was a diamond instead of a kite shield.

  Reverently, she lifted the dagger from the mount and ran her fingers over the insignia. Then her eyes caught an arc of dried blood just below shallow rents in the rock of the wall. The furrows were spaced just wide enough to have been made by fingers dragged across the stone, leaving their mark as if the wall was wet clay. Tyrissa aimed the light of the gloworb around the room once again. More blood lay in a dried pool near the middle of the room. The window looking out on the gap in the tunnel wall was shattered, the glass thrown outward.

  The story began to come together and the chaos of the home started to make sense. Karine must have been attacked, the intruders breaking through the door. She grabbed a set of blades from the wall and fought back. A melee wrecked the room, tossing aside furniture and shattering the rear window. Judging from the warped floor, earth magicks must have been involved. Tyrissa nearly jumped to blaming Settan or another Stone Shaper, but paused and ran a thumb over the winged shield on the dagger.

  ‘You have the same curious gravity.’

  Earth into Wind. Wind into Earth. Karine was attacked by a Wind Pactbound. Maybe a failed target from one of her infamous night hunts. Maybe the same one from the attack at Khalan Southwest’s party.

  There was little else for her here. The bedroom lay in similar disarray. A small chest was left open and pieces of clothing were tossed carelessly over the narrow bed. Tyrissa returned to the main room and picked up a sheet of paper from the writing desk. The script was in that language she didn’t recognize, as were the titles of the books that littered the floor. She folded sample sheet and placed it in her coat pocket. Perhaps she could get it translated.

  Regardless, Karine the ‘Pact Witch’ was connected to Tsellien. To her own Pact. And was now either dead or long departed. Tyrissa hoped for the latter, but both led to despondency. Her best hope for understanding what she was becoming was gone.

  Sunset was an hour gone by the time Tyrissa wove her way through the twisting but now familiar streets of southeast Crossing. The days grew short and for once the air held the chill she expected of an autumn night a month ago. She could feel the eyes of the night watching her from the darkened balconies and windows of the jumbled buildings that loomed over the time-worn cobblestone streets. The Cadre’s red and white crest on her dirtied guild coat would deter most trouble, at least in this neighborhood. Never mind the manner in which Tyrissa stalked the streets, still fuming from the failures below, her staff striking the stones as a third, furious footfall.

  Halfway across the damn world for an empty house.

  She visited a bath house upon leaving the under-city to wash away the dirt of the tunnels and cool off, literally and otherwise. The cold baths were less crowded, which meant fewer eyes on the tall Morg and her golden hair, a continuous curiosity for chatty local women. Tyrissa was in too ill of a mood to explain once again that no, she couldn’t tell you where she bought the dye because her hair was normally like this. She was self-conscious enough in Khalanheim’s public baths without the surreptitious staring and whispers.

  Tyrissa sighed in disappointment when she tried the knob to Liran’s home and found it unlocked. He expected her, but was too trusting in their neighbors. However, any thought of scolding him was buried by the assault of spices on the air that billowed out upon opening the door. Liran was cooking. It almost smelled great.

  “Ty?”

  “Yeah,” she called back. Tyrissa made certain to lock the door behind her before hanging her coat in the tiny alcove on the one empty peg. Liran’s collection of merchant coats occupied the other five. Her staff followed, propped into a corner.

  “Liran, you realize that adding spices to your cooking doesn’t make it good. Just flavored,” she said as she entered the common area of their home. Liran stirred a small cauldron that was perched over a fire in the hearth.

  Liran smiled and said, “It’s nothing compared to our mother’s, but I think I do well enough.”

  Tyrissa leaned over the small cauldron and saw a medley of vegetables floating in a thin brown broth. She doubted there would be meat in it, but it was more than enough.

  “Thank you for dinner, in any case.”

  “My pleasure, sister.”

  Liran poured two servings of the s
tew in two wildly different bowls. One was thin, blue lacquered stoneware, the other carved and treated wood with a broad rim. Tyrissa figured the primary rule of Liran’s possessions was that nothing ever matched. Everything in his home, from the dishware, to the furniture, to the curtains on narrow windows was an imperfect product, or left-over stock, or something added in at the last minute to sweeten a deal. The only consistency was the chaos of it all. And his clothing, of course. That much was guild regulation.

  “How goes your epic quest?” he asked as he sat down at the table. The question was rather direct. They didn’t talk often about her Pact. Tyrissa suspected Liran preferred to pretend she was still just his little sister. She couldn’t blame him.

  “Miserable. I come across a continent, get used to living in this city, and have to tolerate and protect that wretched little Felarill harpy, all while looking for this supposed Pact Witch.” Tyrissa punctuated each step with a fierce jab into a large chunk of potato with her fork. Liran stayed silent, not wanting to interrupt the tirade and share in the potato’s fate.

  “I wade through the filth of Under Forge, probably ensured that one guy will never walk right again—”

  Liran perked up, “What guy?”

  “Some thug who thought me an innocent, lost girl and turned out to be only half right. I finally find the house of this ‘witch’ and she’s not even there anymore!”

  “She’s gone? That’s a shame.”

  “Gone. The door was broken open and the house torn up, clothes strewn across the bedroom as if someone left in a hurry. There was some blood in another room.”

  “It could have been a robbery,” Liran said.

  Tyrissa shook her head, “No. It was turned up like one, but there were obvious, valuable looking statues and trinkets on the floor, weapons, stuff worth stealing. That reminds me…”

  Tyrissa stood from the table and hurried to her coat for the paper and knife she took from the house. She set both in the center of the table, flattening the folded paper.

  “Do you recognize this language?”

  Liran scanned the paper and shook his head. “I don’t, though you could probably have a scholar tell you, since it’s a current language, if foreign. Nothing—”

  “On this side of the Rift,” Tyrissa sighed into her remaining stew, feeling as if the answers kept getting farther way, dispersed across the whole world.

  Liran pushed on the hilt of the dagger, spinning it in a half circle, the blade and polished winged shield emblem catching the room’s light.

  “I thought it wasn’t a robbery, dear sister.”

  Tyrissa returned a sheepish grimace and tapped the symbol. “I had to. She’s connected with Tsellien,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “Connected to me.” The dagger was proof enough of her suspicions that grew with each new piece of information.

  “So. What’s next? Your mystery is alive and well, even if the home of your only real lead looked as if the riftwinds tore through it.”

  Winds.

  The thief in the theater looked a lot like one of Tsellien’s companions, the one with the map. Same fashion sense and size, at least. And all he wanted was a single piece of jewelry. If the Thieves were there solely to sow terror and take a little vengeance of the Talons, what else could he have wanted? ‘Your husband knows what I want,’ he said. With all the smoke and chaos of the moment, it was the voice that made Tyrissa so sure it was the same man.

  “Liran, what do you know about amber teardrop necklaces?”

  That provoked a quizzical raised eyebrow from her brother but the intense stare Tyrissa gave him prevented any sly evasions or jokes.

  “They’re from the Hithian Crater. Desperate fools have been throwing away their lives ferreting out treasures and relics from that place. Most only find death in the form a wurm or some other domain-spawned monster. Every once in a while, one of the fools stumbles back here clutching some trinket or prize along with tales of more for anyone that’ll listen to their recently enriched drunken rants.”

  Liran raised and drained his bowl before continuing.

  “About a year ago a man came out of the ruins with a small chest. Inside was a pile of old shattered glass and fifteen pieces of jeweled amber in the shape of teardrops. They were exquisite and unique and worth millions. Buyers from across the continent came into town and the resulting bidding war was vicious. There were a handful of murders, including the poor bastard who found them. Five or six were stolen and disappeared. The rest were auctioned off, eventually.”

  And that woman was wearing one as a necklace. How fashionable.

  “A couple have traded hands a few times since then and no one knows for certain how many are floating around. Seems like a few more have been found, but everyone is less enthusiastic about trading them. Almost more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “How can amber be worth so much?”

  “They’re not normal amber. They had the Concordium take a look at one. Said they were an unknown but inert kind of elchemical material, either from a domain or an elemental plane.”

  “So it would be profitable enough group of thieves to steal one from the chest of a wealthy woman in the middle of a play?” Tyrissa asked.

  Liran chuckled, “I heard about that. Is that what happened?”

  “Yes. They had a taste for theatrics.”

  “Why the sudden interest in high fashion?”

  “One of the Thieves, the one who took the necklace, looked like one of Tsellien’s companions from when they came through Edgewatch.”

  “I thought they all died in that temple?”

  “I thought so too.” She remembered Tsellien calling him over with the maps. Tyrissa had told them where to find their deaths.

  Vralin.

  The Cadre kept records on the Thieves, as well as criminal bounties. As she worked through the rest of her stew, Tyrissa promised herself to find time to look for anything on this Vralin before yet another night out with the charming Miss Alvedo. It was all she had to go on, for now.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Tyrissa stood in the Cadre’s record room on the second floor of the guild hall, surrounded by four centuries of history. Company banners decorated the walls, though these were eight tattered and scarred originals and not the reproductions that hung elsewhere in the building. Taken together they showed the gradual progression of the Cadre’s emblem from bloodied spear on a white field to the current abstracted geometric spear point on a disc of red and white quadrants. Trophies of victories filled the vaulted room: banners of defeated rivals, display cases of old weapons, and a quartet of griffon skulls, their beaks just as sharp as when their owners were alive. Kadrich, in portrait form, kept watch over the collection of the company’s history with the stern gaze of commander and father.

  Another painting covered much of the wall opposite of Kadrich. It was an old map of the northern nations, centered on the Khalan states before they joined into a federation. Once perhaps a practical piece of art, the passage of time had rendered it an anachronistic relic. The varied Khalan states were drawn with their independent borders, when there were a dozen states instead of the modern seven, plus a patchwork of tiny city-states and baronies. The top of the map still had the three old Morg kingdoms of Kroya, Groddan, and Motengard. The Rift was nowhere to be seen and Hithia, colored a faded blue, dominated the southern third of the painting. Vordeum, however, was still in largely unclaimed ruins, its lands painted a faded red over whatever once was.

  Flanking the antique map were bookshelves filled with archives, chronicles, and a copy of what she sought: a leather bound folder, its cover embossed with ‘Active Bounties’. She brought it over to a nearby table and began her search. The entries were organized by bounty value, high to low and it didn’t take long for Tyrissa to find her man. He was the third entry, after a serial killer with no name but an extensive resume and an embezzler that skipped town with over a million gilders from Central’s coffers.

  Bounty Notice: Vra
lin k’Zhan

  Funding Party: Johan Guldres (Rift Trade Company)

  Value: 250,000 gilders for proof of death. Live capture assumed to be unreasonable.

  Description: Male Hithian, brown hair, brown eyes. Height: Five feet, eleven inches. Lean build. See attached face sketch.

  Crime: Wanted for the murder of five members of a Rift Trade Company expedition and liable in the deaths of twelve others due to abandonment contracted duties. Additionally, the subject stole an undisclosed number of Hithian artifacts unearthed by the expedition.

  Subject is an Air-aligned Pactbound. Engage with extreme caution and advantage. Subject possesses considerable skill with blades and thrown weapons and is aided by elemental magicks. Further, the subject is a known associate of the remnants of the Thieves Guild. His last confirmed sighting was during a capture operation in Under Moors on Silverspring 20th. The subject escaped but the artifacts were recovered.

  Restricted Tier bounty approved by Central Judiciary of Khalanheim.

  First posted on the 13th of Pearlshade 257 AR.

  Updated on the 25th of Silverspring 257 AR.

  Tyrissa stared at the sketch in her hands. She wasn’t mistaken. This was the same man that accompanied Tsellien through Edgewatch, the one with the floating walk and the map. He was the lone survivor of that ill-fated group and was here in Khalanheim. She didn’t want to think on how he had escaped when everyone else who entered that temple died. Including herself, by certain measures. With ‘Karine’ gone and her own Pact offering nothing but the vaguest hints and teases, Tyrissa’s only lead to any sort of answers was a highly wanted criminal. Perfect.

  “Already looking for extra income?” It was Jesca. She must have slipped in without her noticing.

  “Hey Jesca. Nothing like that I’m just… looking into something.”