Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  “The Circle’s codes say nothing about freelance training. If what you say about your interaction with elemental magicks is true I think I can do better than be mere fuel,” Settan said, sliding the coin pouch towards him and off the table. There was the faintest glint in his eyes, like a vein of precious ore shining in a dull cavern wall.

  “Can you meet me here tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  “I can.”

  Tyrissa arrived at their third meeting halfway prepared for an adventure, with a plain overcoat, gloworb, and Karine’s badged knife, though without her staff. Settan waited outside the Miner’s Pick, leaning against a corner of the building. His nod in greeting seemed to say, ‘That’ll do’. Before Tyrissa could even get a question out, Settan said, “Follow me,” and set off running. Tyrissa lost only a second to confusion before sprinting after him, following the Stone Shaper through the side-streets of Under Forge before entering paths unknown. He set a pace that bordered on ruthless, barreling through complete darkness with all the confidence of broad daylight. From what she saw in the swaying light of her gloworb, Settan moved with an uncanny grace, his feet gliding across the ground like it were ice, his hands brushing against the rock walls that weaved between claustrophobically narrow and as wide as avenues. The tunnels of the under city flew past them, a twisting, forking blur of black caverns and precipitous drops. Tyrissa kept up only through blind determination and her years of experience running across the crowded grounds of the Morgwood, trusting her feet and the guide in front of her. They ran ever deeper, long past the last traces tunnels carved or modified by the hands of men and into the depths where only the bold, brash, or bestial trod.

  Then, after what must have been an hour diving through caves, Settan came to a stop after a bend in the tunnels where the harsh midday light poured through a gaping exit in the rock. The familiar howls of the riftwinds echoed up the tunnel. Settan stood there for a time, still as the rock walls that surrounded them.

  “This is one of the lower flats,” he said. “Wide plateaus deeper in the Rift where the riftwinds are weaker in force yet stronger in the magicks that drive them. The lingering influence of the Plane of Air is stronger here.”

  Tyrissa took a few steps toward the exit, blinking against the daylight after all that time in the dark. She could feel the magicks on the air as she drew nearer to the sunlight, a subtle, tingling sensation that made her body feel lighter and warmed her skin, as if she were already back out in the sunlight. The feeling was a strong and steady flow that went through her.

  Settan took an audible deep breath and strode past Tyrissa into the sunlight. The winds rippled his worn tunic, the loose threads dancing in the breeze. He let out a low groan, the rumble of a distant rockslide.

  Tyrissa followed him out, glad to have the natural warmth of the sun on her skin again to counterbalance the unnatural warmth of her Pact reacting to the magick. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. It is simply uncomfortable. I’ve slacked in exposing myself to the riftwinds of late.”

  The plateau stretched out two hundred feet from the cavern and hugged the Rift wall for twice that. The ground was not the wind-smoothed platform she expected but a field of jagged and contorted stone, as if freshly churned up from the core of the earth. A sparse layer of small broken rocks and pebbles coated the ground between a few larger boulders. Though little more than a light and pleasant breeze, the riftwinds were able to stir pebbles into motion as if they were fallen autumn leaves. Only the edges of the plateau, where the Rift resumed its ever downward descent, were bare and smooth.

  “Shapers come here for two reasons. One is to train in an accessible, but isolated place near the city.”

  “Accessible? It took an hour to get here.”

  “For your benefit. A Shaper can simply go to the Rift’s edge, get a good grip on the rock and slide down from above.” Settan pointed up and Tyrissa lifted her gaze to follow. The rotund shapes of zeppelins moored to the floating piers of Khalanheim bobbed high above them. A thin bar ran across the Rift just north of the docks, the Sunrise Span reduced to a tenuous streak in the sky. On the Rift wall above this plateau, Tyrissa could see descending vertical furrows as wide as a man’s fist, some single and others in pairs. Her mind reeled at the exhilaration and terror of the quick way down.

  “The other reason is to sweat,” Settan said.

  “Sweat?”

  “Pact magick is poison, Tyrissa. Every time a Pactbound makes use of their gift there’s a slight buildup of that poison. It is a wasting disease that we willingly accept into our bodies. It is why many varieties of Pactbound take on… unusual physical traits. That is one way the buildup expresses itself.” Settan turned his back to her and walked to a waist high boulder shaped like a barrel near the tunnel exit.

  “Pactbound have discovered means of mitigating the damage,” he continued. “Most use physical filters of some kind. Typically a processed elchemical plant or mineral tied to their patron element or it’s opposite.”

  Tyrissa had seen such filters recently. The black rods that Wolef pulled from his arms and the strange crystalline discs that Vralin used. Tyrissa couldn’t help but worry that she was damaging herself in ignorance, especially since she had no idea what her equivalent was. Or if she even had one.

  “For Shapers, if we expose ourselves to the air magicks of the Rift, the poisons are leeched from our bodies, as if sweating out the toxins.” Settan began to disrobe, pulling off his threadbare tunic. He then placed his free hand atop the barrel-shaped rock. The top of the boulder pulled away from his touch to reveal a hollow interior where he deposited his tunic. “It’s not unlike those who swear by the cleansing sweats of the steam rooms at the bathhouses. Sadly, our process isn’t perfect. It remains a losing battle. Eventually we succumb to the wasting effects, if something else doesn’t return us to the Earth before that. The previous leader of the Khalanheim Shapers Circle lived into his seventies. He was exceptional. Most make it to fifty-five or so.”

  By now, Settan had stripped to nothing but a loincloth and his stone bracers. Tyrissa helped herself to an eyeful. While his face was ragged and worn, his body looked chiseled from stone, seemingly nothing but muscle and hard angles, though flecked in many places by those rocky raised scabs. Not bad on the eyes, at any rate.

  “Do I have to…?”

  “No. You are not a Shaper. Removing your coat will be sufficient.” That was a relief. Tyrissa went over to the barrel only to see it had already resealed. She pinned her coat under a pair of loose fist-sized rocks instead.

  “You should feel the lingering air magicks. Therefore…” Settan prompted

  “For me, the Rift is a source of earth magick,” Tyrissa finished.

  “One that ceaselessly flows up from the Hithian Crater.”

  She looked southward in the direction of the Crater, hundreds of miles away. The Rift formed a cut in the horizon, the clear sky above meeting abyss of the Rift’s bottomless depths in the great distance.

  “Now,” Settan said after a moment, “How do you feel?”

  “Light.” The winds were soft but tugged at the fringes of her clothes as if they were much stronger. She had tied her hair back into a single braid this morning, but the riftwinds set it dancing without regard for the weight. Her skin continued to flush with warmth from the magicks of the riftwinds seeping into her.

  “Close your eyes. Dig deep, feel beneath the surface for something else.”

  Tyrissa did as he asked. Below the lifting, ready-to-fly sensations of the riftwinds, she could feel a counterweight building in her core, just below her heart. She recognized it as similar to what she felt that night she chased Vralin across the city, but not a sudden addition of weight that dragged her down. Here it grew at a gradual, graceful pace, an opening blossom of stone. She drew in a deep breath, trying to establish a greater familiarity with the sensation.

  “There’s a weight. Like a big meal that’s not quite dragging you down,” Tyr
issa searched deeper and could feel a tenuous connection between the internal weight and the stone at her feet. She followed the connection. “I can… sense the stone. All around me, just out of reach.” She could visualize the details of the plateau and could sense Settan circling her, his footsteps a remote vibration in the whole of the plateau.

  Settan nodded. “Good. Shapers feel it more intimately, as if we are part of a great biorhythm within the soil, stone, metal, ore. You are… a void in those rhythms. An absence instead of presence. Curious.”

  Settan’s voice sounded distant, the rumble of a faraway avalanche. “Notice how the presence within you is solid but malleable, like a potter’s clay. Split off fragments of the weight, borrow it. Will those fragments to descend through your muscles. Focus on your stance, your legs, the connection between your feet and the earth below. Form a stronger link with unknowable weight of the planet itself.”

  The internal weight grew with the constant flow of the riftwinds around her, rising to the challenge and presence of air magicks. Tyrissa focused on that core of energy, like pushing inward against herself. It quivered at her mental touch, ready to be molded into whatever she wished. She followed Settan’s directions and felt a surge of strength course down her legs, muscles tensing up as if she’d just run miles further than their trip down here and was eager for more. Her feet felt anchored to the ground, stable but not stuck, as if until now she had always walked upon uneven, sloped floors.

  “Good,” Settan said, though hadn’t asked for confirmation. He was close, behind her. “Brace yourself.”

  “For?”

  A powerful hand pushed against her back with enough force to send her tumbling to the ground. Instead, she simply stumbled a step forward and stayed upright, her feet finding their place before her mind had registered what had happened, the reaction faster and surer than her normal reflexes. Tyrissa straightened and spun on her heels to face Settan, ready for another.

  “How spry,” he said. “Again.”

  He stepped in but Tyrissa leaned to the side, farther than she could normally and not lose her balance. Settan nodded with approval and began a steady stream of jabs and kicks, at first slow and telegraphed, but quickly accelerating to a flurry. Tyrissa didn’t think one so aligned with the earth could move so fast, but her instincts took over, fueled by her newfound stability. She dodged most of his tests. Those that connected sent her reeling, but always she recovered, the ground an anchor that she could obey or dismiss as need be.

  Eventually, she fell and crashed to the uneven surface of the plateau with a grunt, any disappointment tempered by the satisfaction of a new taste of power. The blossoming of earth continued within, though the weight had shrunk from the rapid usage.

  “Take off your boots,” Settan said while looking her over. “It may be easier if you’re barefoot. I’ll clear a patch for you.”

  Settan knelt down a couple paces from her and brushed away a patch of loose rock. He then pressed his palm firmly against the ground. His arm tensed up in effort, corded ridges and ranges of muscle sprouted up through his shoulder. Then his hand sank into the ground, as if it were clay instead of stone. Ripples in the stone radiated out from his hand. The loose rocks and pebbles melted into the greater whole of the plateau without a trace, creating an expanding circle as flat as flagstones.

  Tyrissa paused with her boot laces in her fingers and watched the Shaper at work with his element. It must be simple work for him, but she found it enchanting. The expanding circle reached where she sat and parted around her, the pebbles refusing to fall into the whole.

  Wind into Earth. Earth into Wind.

  Flows of air distinct from the riftwinds rippled across her skin. The leashed and attendant currents ruffled clothes and tugged gently at her hair. Her fingers felt defter, and flew through the unlacing of her boot in a display of excessive grace. Tyrissa gave herself a small, satisfied smile, but soon her head swam and stomach roiled as the once controlled core of earth splintered and spread chaotically through her body. The two opposing elements clashed, the earth within rejecting the air flowing around her. The violence of the internal conflict went beyond the clash triggered by Vralin that night at the mills.

  Away! Push it away!

  The winds complied, gusting away in an outward blast that scattered small rocks and pebbles in a wide radius around her. Tyrissa wrapped both arms around her stomach and focused on willing the rebounding shards of earthen energy to gravitate back to her core. Inside, the bundle of earth magick gradually coalesced to its neutral state, though errant shards of magick still drifted through her body and caused her muscles to twitch in anticipation.

  Settan said nothing through the entire display, body still as a statue and face a mask of thought.

  “Two at once,” Tyrissa said to break the silence, “especially opposites, might be a little advanced for me right now.” Sweat soaked her brow and back, but within she felt the calm again, the core of energy once again awaiting her will.

  “I see,” Settan finally said, rising from his mostly cleared circle. “Shall we continue?”

  “Yes.” This was what she asked for, after all.

  Time passed in a blur of tumbling and dodging interspersed with moments of stillness spent listening to the constant whispers of the riftwinds and bathing in the lingering, endless magick in the air. After the fourth break Settan returned the stone barrel and began to dress. Tyrissa noted that his skin had deepened into what she guessed was a healthier color, less pale gray and more brown, and there were fewer flecks of stone scabs clinging to him.

  “That is enough here for today,” he said. A partial twilight had come to the plateau after the sun passed over the western side of the Rift. “Keep it short. You did well. You learn quicker than an initiate though I must be cautious when Shaping near you.”

  “We’re done?” Tyrissa stood, but placed a hand on her stomach. “I still have some left.” She didn’t want another loss of consciousness from disuse. Not yet, anyway. Not when she was unsure where the boundary between a slow release and unconsciousness lay. She walked over to where her coat was pinned down. The gloworb still burned and should have enough for the return journey.

  “Good,” Settan said, now dressed. “You’ll need it for the trip back up the tunnels. For the rest of the lesson.”

  He smoothly turned in place and broke into a sprint towards the gaping cavern entrance. “Try to keep up,” he shouted over his shoulder as the darkness of the earth swallowed him.

  Tyrissa swore and darted after him, feet striking the earth with more certainty than ever before.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Khalanheim’s night sky was once again lit by pockets of orange and red that brightened the gloom of the first night of winter. Despite the recent mayhem, the Khalans weren’t tired of flames and the Skyfire Festival was in full swing. The festival was a burst of revelry and reflection carried out in defiance of the coming winter and in celebration of a new year. Fireworks launched from the Sunset Span rocketed into the air above the Rift in brilliant white arcs and exploded in fiery showers of every color imaginable. The fading remnants of each explosion swirled on the riftwinds above the city, creating multi-colored trails of fading stars that drifted through a nebula of smoke.

  Tyrissa stood on an open veranda that wrapped around the third floor of a Heights mansion, the fire-lit city stretching out below. A string of party-goers lined the stonework railing in front of her. Another series of bursts in the sky drew gasps of awe, and Tyrissa could hear the cheers of the crowds thronging across the city beneath the false thunder rolling across the sky. Down the hillside, many other mansions were similarly lit up with private parties hosted and attended by the city’s elite. The view from this Heights manor was superb, but Tyrissa couldn’t help but think the festivities along the Rift would be more fun. For that matter, she’d rather be in the Rift training with Settan. They’d only had two sessions so far and she had already improved her handling of elemental ea
rth magicks to the point where she tried to conserve a small amount whenever possible, the steady presence in her core making her more surefooted. She was hungry for more practice, for more familiarity with the flows and interaction of the elemental powers.

  ‘The wind drives fire’s dance’. The display in the sky made her think back to Ash. She felt that she needed to help her, that the girl was caught up in a fight that would grind her down to nothing. Perhaps that could be her contribution to the group: to break whatever tie Ash had to Vralin. A decent idea even if she had no idea how to accomplish it. Their meetings thus far were more chance than anything else, as unpredictable as Ash’s elemental patron.

  Tyrissa scanned the rooftops of Khalanheim, her eyes catching little bursts of fiery light from smaller celebrations. The Skyfire Festival was a stark contrast to the Morg equivalent, a subdued, even solemn mid-winter feast when the days were all too brief. The difference must have been a result of the mild, soft winters this far south. Liran had said that they might see snow this year. Might! In any case, Tyrissa was working tonight and was in no position to celebrate. She wore the full formal Cadre uniform and cut a fine figure, Caliss having worked her magick once again, though this time there was far more red than white to suit the occasion.

  Olivianna Alvedo stood a short distance away along the handrail, watching the fireworks with a young Khalan man. She wore red, of course, with a string of garnets around her neck that dipped low towards a generous neckline. It was her typical flaunting of the Khalan style, an attention grabber among the similarly brilliant colored outfits of the locals. The couple moved in a pattern: watch a burst of fireworks, he would lean in and whisper some comment, she would laugh. It felt as scripted as a stage play but, to be fair, she actually seemed to like this one.

  The winds jumped higher and turned the cool night air from refreshing to biting. Olivianna and her suitor turned from the railing for the warmth of the party inside. Tyrissa followed, her charge’s red shadow. Two waist-high decorative braziers flanked the double doors that led into the mansion from the veranda, the flames within dancing wildly in the winds. Another couple stood over one brazier and dropped a pair of tightly folded pieces of paper into the fire in unison. Their wishes or goals for the new year would be written on the paper, another aspect of the Skyfire festival wholly different from the Morg version.