“More than enough.” Ash said. She faded into unconsciousness. Tyrissa checked her pulse in a short panic. Still there.
Jesca came up to Tyrissa with her staff in hand. She was soaked below the knees, but kept a neutral face
“There’s a clinic nearby that should be open. We can take her there. Say she was caught in a fire… though I guess that isn’t a lie, is it?” Ash still bore the ravages of her pact magick, her face blackened in long veins. Tyrissa gathered Ash into her arms and stood.
“No. It’s true enough,” Tyrissa said.
They found an all-night clinic that normally serviced Forge’s factory workers. The staff didn’t ask many questions. They left Ash there with what money they had on them. After, Jesca and Tyrissa resumed their silent walk toward Crossing Square. The crossroads of Khalanheim were moderately trafficked even at this early morning hour, with carts and pedestrians traversing the square among a few merchants with mobile stalls selling food to passing night shift workers.
Jesca finally broke their silence. “Ty… I don’t mean to seem ungrateful but—”
“I can’t stay with the Cadre after tonight.”
“Yeah. I have to report what happened. Those are the rules. You’ll be dismissed today.”
“I understand.” Tyrissa was comfortable with that, all things considered. In the back of her mind she knew the Cadre was a temporary arrangement. “How long have you suspected?”
“A while,” Jesca admitted. “It was the small things at first. You have no scars, and bounced back from getting trounced in the training yard a bit too quickly. You’re a little too fast in fights. The interest in that wanted Pactbound made it a bit obvious. Vralin, was it?”
“Yeah.” She knew that her future encounters with Vralin wouldn’t be as uncontested as with Ash. Being released from the Cadre was a partial blessing. She would be able to focus on the hunt for Vralin and would have more time to train with Settan and prod out further details of her Pact. After tonight’s display she had even more points to puzzle over.
“Oh, and the waves of water and ice from nowhere were a hint,” Jesca said.
“And I thought I was being subtle there!”
“I almost missed it, in retrospect.”
They arrived at the point on the east side of the square where they usually parted ways. Jesca lived not too far away, in northeast Crossing.
“Ty, you saved my ass back there and I owe you for it. I mean that.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I need a favor.”
“Zeris of Many Masks, right? I guess you figured out which one to wear?”
“Not yet. But it’s coming together. Piece by piece.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Tyrissa sat cross-legged on a broad, sun-warmed rock on a plateau deep in the Rift. She wore a thin white linens today, her top stopping well short of her waist, baring her stomach to the cool riftwinds. Goosebumps marched across her skin, but once the heat of the training returned, she would be glad for the freedom of movement. She wasn’t sure if clothing interfered with the elemental transmuting process at all. Still, Tyrissa felt a little exposed, and in more than one way, though Settan either didn’t seem to notice or was simply disinterested. That much was reassuring, at least.
The magicks carried on the winds seeped into her skin and added to the now familiar weight of earthen energy that blossomed in her core in response. Tyrissa smiled to herself. The transmutation was starting to feel natural. Starting to feel right.
No. Not quite right.
The riftwinds never stopped being odd. Though they cooled the air like any regular wind, they carried a clinging, underlying warmth to them, a warmth apart from the transmutation she felt from her pact. This was supposed to be winter, yet Khalanheim felt the chill of the season only slightly. She kept telling herself that it was simply out of being so far south the winters she was used to in Morgale, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong about it all.
Settan busied himself with flattening out a new training area, and Tyrissa sat a prudent distance away to avoid absorbing the earth magicks. No need for another clash of opposing powers, though she was getting better at sensing the subtle thrum of earth magick in use nearby, like a distant, barely audible sound. The first round of their training today had been done in a course built from a dense forest of stone pillars, walls and platforms, all slopped sides and smoothed edges that gave little purchase to cling to. Settan had Shaped the course in minutes and now the entire construction merged back into the plateau, melting like ice under the glare of a summer sun. Tyrissa still marveled that so much power and potential could reside in a single man, and yet he now answered to no will but his own.
Freed from his Pact. Just like Ash.
Her mind kept returning to Ash. Tyrissa had cleansed a Pact, the obligation and damage and danger swept away in a flurry of ice and fire. She still found it a strong source of private pride days later, but no matter how she broke down and dissected the actual cleansing, Tyrissa had no idea what she actually did. The entire process had been intuitive and reactionary.
“Are you ready, Tyrissa?” Settan asked from across the now-clear training area.
“Not yet. Tell me more about Karine.” It wasn’t a question. Not this time. When she had asked after Karine during their previous training sessions Settan only replied in vague terms or changed the subject. He had been generous in their very first meeting of where she might find Karine, but after that the Shaper had been as reticent as a rock on the subject.
Settan sighed and said, “You, Karine, you’re oddities. In all the research the Circle did before I contacted Karine we found little tangible mention of women like you. You’re ghosts of history.”
Women, specifically. You’re not as guarded as you think, Settan.
“Ghosts is a good way of putting it,” Tyrissa said. “I’ve only found scraps and frustrating hints so far, and I’m one of them.”
“A strange coincidence that two would come through Khalanheim in less than a year.”
He was trying to deflect the conversation again. She wouldn’t allow it this time.
“What did she actually do to you?” she asked.
Settan crossed the training circle with an utterly neutral expression on his face that made her think she went too far. He then stood above her, still and thinking on it for many moments, the only motion the swirls of weightless dust in the riftwinds. There must have been something in Tyrissa’s hard stare that nudged Settan past his remaining resistance.
“A ritual,” he said finally. “One I still don’t understand. We met at a secluded hilltop, far west of the city. Away from eyes. Away from everything. The area was… deadened. Imagine the difference from here to outside the Rift. It was the same drop from normalcy to a sort of drained state. Within that area I felt my connection to the Earth fade to a brittle, breakable thing. A pillar fractured to the point of shattering.”
Tyrissa said nothing. Karine must have had something beyond what Tyrissa had done to Ash. Some additional technique or device.
“Nothing marked the area as special. The difference could only been detected by feeling alone, a sense of a great void reaching into this world. Similar to the void you’re creating right now in the rhythms of the stone around us. Much larger than that, though. A localized alteration of the normal way of things.”
“Like an elemental domain?”
“Something like that, yes. We sat facing each other. I placed my hands in hers. Karine said, ‘This will be unimaginably painful.’ She was all too correct. The actual severance was marked by only an unreal, blinding pain encased in a powerful light.”
“The light, was it silver?”
“Yes.”
“Was there a sudden excess of wind around you during it?”
Settan shook his head. “I don’t recall. The entire process was very internal.”
Tyrissa stood and extended her hand. “May I see something?”
Sett
an grasped her hand. His skin felt like smoothed rock. She closed her eyes and reached through him. There it was, another well of power, just like with Ash. But here there was no chaos, no roiling sea of liquid fire. Instead it was as still as an underground pool fed by a slow drip of water over centuries. Calm. Controlled. Nor was there that dominating presence underneath it all, the Pact. She could sense Settan’s power, his link to the magicks of Earth, but could do nothing to alter it, as if she was blocked. Nothing she could draw out. Nothing she could break. She freed her hand and stepped back.
“No Pact. Nothing I can touch. Only serenity and power.”
“It is good to know I’m still well. Enough of this. We have plenty more training to do today.”
Tyrissa nodded, her mind returning to the growing weight inside her that contained enough earthen energy for at least another hour.
They continued the training, this time focusing on using earth magick to reinforce the skin, a means of blunting blows and dulling pain. The process was similar to keeping your balance or a grip on stone, but more akin to creating a second skin, like coating yourself in a layer of mud. This was the exact sort of knowledge Tyrissa needed, and absorbed every tiny detail.
As soon as they decided to take another break to rest and recharge, Settan’s eyes snapped upward and narrowed, gazing far up the Rift wall.
“Away from the wall! We have company.”
Tyrissa looked up to see a cloud of dust falling along the Rift wall. It had to be another Shaper using the more direct route down to the plateau. She and Settan scrambled away from the Rift wall with earth-guided ease. The descending Shaper leapt from the wall twenty feet above the plateau and slammed into the ground with a thunderous crash that birthed a cloud of dust. Tyrissa felt a flicker of earth magick pulse through the plateau as the unknown Shaper landed.
Did he create the dust just for dramatic effect?
The riftwinds quickly cleared the cloud to reveal the Shaper holding a three-point landing pose, his left arm pointed in the direction of the wind currents as if shooing away the dust himself. Tyrissa blinked in surprise when she saw a broad smile cross Settan’s face.
“Eidar, I told you many times: if you insist on jumping at the end of a descent have the sense to use both hands on landing.”
“Call it style winning out over common sense, Settan,” Eidar replied, his voice holding the quickened pace of a typical Khalan accent, but with the texture of two slabs of marble grinding against each other. The other Shaper was young, perhaps in his early twenties. Like Settan, he had the statuesque physique of an Earthpact, though the angles were somewhat softer and his skin was a dark gray.
Eidar strode over to Settan and the two men shook hands.
“How are you, Eidar?”
“Solid and steady, my friend. I’m lucky I fell into you, it saved me the trouble of looking. I have news from the Circle that you’d… Who might this be?” His eyes, slate gray like Settan’s, slid over Tyrissa in obvious appraisal. Clearly his youth made him less dulled than Settan in certain ways.
“Tyrissa,” she said, crossing her arms. “A short term trainee.”
“I hadn’t heard of any new Shapers in the area,” Eidar said. “Particularly a woman. Rare.”
“I’m no Shaper.”
“No. I suppose not. You’re a little too… soft.”
“Eidar,” Settan said. “You had news?”
Eidar turned back to Settan. "Core Kroth is dead,” he said with little remorse in his voice.
“Returned to the Earth,” Settan said solemnly.
“Where we all must end.” Eidar replied. He allowed a small silence before saying, “But that means the entire Circle is being recalled to select a new Core.”
Settan harrumphed. “Two full gatherings in a year. What a pain.”
“Yes, but this time it isn’t your fault,” Eidar said with a wry smile.
“Who’s favored to succeed Kroth?”
“Brothers Stegalt and Jaspar have roughly equal support from what I can tell.”
“No… Jaspar? He’s too extreme.”
“I agree. Every voice will count if it’s to be a close election. Even yours.”
“You want me to return,” Settan said, even and dry as a salt plain.
“Why not? Kroth was behind your expulsion after your… change.”
“I offered to leave out of compromise. The expulsion was by my hand, not Kroth’s.”
Eidar spread his arms, as if the answer were obvious. “Self-exile is the easiest kind to undo,” he said.
“I’ve come to terms with leaving the Circle, that life, behind.”
Eidar went silent and mulled over Settan’s refusal. Then he turned to Tyrissa and gave her another generous look before saying, “Yet here you are, training her. How good is she? I’ve spent far too much time in Under Moors on a renovation job. It’s been too long since I had a good duel.”
“She’s still a neophyte Eidar. Perhaps another time.”
“No,” Tyrissa said, “I’ll give it a try.” She needed actual practice against another Pactbound. And she didn’t want to leave the looks Eidar gave her unanswered.
“Very well,” Settan agreed. He seemed to be happy with the subject changing. “I’ll prepare a duel circle.”
Settan knelt and placed a hand onto the plateau’s surface. Two smooth stone arcs rose from his touch, extending into a complete circle thirty feet wide and three inches tall. Any irregularities within the circle were smoothed out to perfection. Tyrissa stepped well away from the circle to avoid absorbing the magicks at work and showing her hand to Eidar too soon.
“Tyrissa, the rules of a Shaper duel are simple: Knock your opponent completely to the ground or out of the circle. That means a complete loss of balance. Nearly all recoveries are legal. I will judge when someone is out. Any Shaping that doesn’t break the circle is allowed. Understood?”
Tyrissa nodded at the instructions but kept her eye on Eidar as he walked to the other side of the dueling circle. He moved with the subtly unnatural grace and confidence of a Shaper, as if his step were foreordained yet taken as a trifle.
Use all of the earthen energy, then switch to air.
Her plan hinged on simple surprise and figuring out an element she hadn’t learned yet. It was time to jump and learn to fly while falling. She stepped over the lip of the circle and took up a position opposite of Eidar.
“Proceed,” Settan said, his voice thrumming across the plateau.
Eidar broke into a sprint across the circle. Tyrissa stood still, muscles tensed to react when he drew closer. At the center of the circle Eidar slid onto his knees, both hands scrapping against the ground and drawing eight furrows into the stone. He flung his hands forward released eight pointed shards of rock that and screamed through the air at Tyrissa. Her feet moved with a certainty that bordered on autonomy and she dodged to the left of the cluster of projectiles. She reached out a hand as they flew by and snatched one spike from the air, spun on her heels and threw it back at Eidar. The Shaper, already back on his feet, danced out of the way and the shard shattered against empty ground.
The young Shaper charged at her, ducking low mid-stride to snatch a fistful of stone from the ground, tearing it away like it were grass. The stone molded into a long baton in his hand, its surface polished like marble. Tyrissa stood her ground. This was more familiar, even if she was unarmed.
He came at her with a flurry of quick strikes, all avoiding vitals but seeking small touches and trying to throw her balance. Tyrissa weaved around each one, flowing away with twists that should have sent her tumbling backward.
Then her foot slipped she was suddenly subject to a normal sense of balance. She hadn’t enough time to recover from her last training interval with Settan and had already burned through her stores of earthen energy. Eidar aimed a strike for her legs, but she managed to tumble out of the way and avoid going all the way down. Lacking the grace her opponent had endless amounts of, Tyrissa stood and too
k a few steps backward, eyes casting about for options. Eidar didn’t pursue. He only watched her, tapping his stone baton against one palm in thought. There was a grinding of stone on stone behind her and she tripped over a low wall that wasn’t there moments ago. She fell backward but managed to catch herself again, using up whatever fragmentary energy she absorbed from the riftwinds as soon as it came.
Three more walls sprang up around her to form a confining box of stone, the top of the walls rising out of reach. Tyrissa found her feet once again and jumped, kicking off one wall to grasp the rim of the opposite. She hung on and noticed that this wall’s growth began to lag behind the other three. Currents of air surged across her skin as she absorbed and transmuted the earth magicks fueling her would-be stone prison. The rim of the wall began to crumble beneath her grip and her feet struggled for purchase against the smooth stone. She was now many feet above the ground, the bottom of the shaft shrouded in shadow.
She flirted with the idea of yielding. Eidar outclassed her, that much was clear, and she had no idea what to do with all this air coiling around her limps. She pushed the air magick out below her feet, creating a focused gale that carried her upwards and launched her over the rim of the growing stone column.
For a split second, she hung high above the dueling circle, feather-light and buoyed by currents of wind that obeyed only her whim. Far below, Eidar took a few steps backward, mouth agape and head tracking her through the air. Settan walked along the edge of the dueling circle, still officiating the duel. Both of their movements appeared to be slowed by a fraction of a second, just long enough to allow an extra thought.
The moment of weightlessness ended and Tyrissa tumbled back to the earth. With a shriek she tried pushing the air towards the ground in a panicked attempt to put anything, even incorporeal magick, between her and the waiting stone of the plateau. The air rushing around her intensified and she slowed to a stop a foot above the ground, then fell the rest of the way. Tyrissa managed to turn aside and take the kiss of the earth in her shoulder. She lay still on her side, trying to calm her pounding heart. Flying was overrated and terrifying.
Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) Page 32
