Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  “It leads to the core?” Kexal asked.

  Tyrissa returned an absent nod. The road led roughly in the direction of that pulsing pull that rose from the heart of the crater’s central mountain. It was a secondary, powerful sense of air magicks in her mind, like a separate melody below the ambient chorus of the air domain that encompassed the ruins. Following it was a good start, though they needed to go much deeper.

  “Lead on then, Miss Valkwitch.”

  Kexal addressing her by that newfound title gave her pause. Tyrissa looked back at the Jalarni to see the joke in his eyes, but found that all four of them were deferring to her direction.

  The deeper they traveled the more the rules of nature seemed bent to the point of breaking. Light streamed through cracks in the walls in inconsistent directions, never with a dominate source. They paused by a stream flowing from a cleft in the walls and into a man-made channel. The channel ran straight and true for about one hundred feet to empty into a circular shaft. A savage, constant wind howled up from the depths, breaking the flow of water into mist and lifting it upward. Tyrissa expected that if she followed it up she would find it resuming a downhill course.

  Time passed in a blur of warped ruins fused into the rock, unreal light sources, wild plant growth, and the ever-shifting winds. Hali would point out intact buildings she recognized: a tenement where a friend lived when they were children, a brothel, a Windmage chapterhouse. She played the tour guide and kept her voice light, but Tyrissa suspect that the Hithian did it for her own benefit, a distraction. Among all the intact buildings, they saw not one piece of evidence of the former inhabitants. Such a disaster should have produced a massive number of dead, yet there wasn’t a single corpse mummified by time or set of bones picked clean by scavengers. Hithia wasn’t just lifeless, it was deathless.

  Tyrissa brought them to a stop after they cleared yet another stretch of floor filled with jagged rocks where the Road of Roses ran along the ceiling and the passageway dead-ended at a fifty-foot-wide sinkhole. Above, the paving stones of the road above turned down the far wall to vanish into the depths below. Tyrissa walked to the sinkhole’s edge and gazed down into the darkness. The source of the pulsing was now more below than ahead. She then reached through the stone as if to begin a Shaping, trying to sense out the structure below. It was hazy, disrupted by the constant barrage of air magicks.

  “Wolef, if you will?”

  The Shade came to stand next to her, sharing in the view. His eyes flickered to that haunting deep gray, like liquid iron.

  “I’ll check it out,” he said, kneeling to place a hand below the edge of the bore and then melting into retreating shadows. He shifted close enough for Tyrissa to feel felt a slight flicker of another element running across her skin, a faint memory of the terrifying pleasure of Light. She tried to shape it, control it, but it was like grasping at a puff of seed on the wind. Soon it was gone, overwhelmed by the presence of earth grinding through her body.

  Wolef returned within a few minutes, boiling out over the rim and reshaping into a man. “Short initial drop,” he said as he walked over the other four seated in a circle beneath the road. “An easy repel, fifty, sixty feet. Then an easily navigable sloped tunnel and back out into a continuation of…” He motioned at the road on the ceiling, “All of this.”

  Garth had a pocket watch in hand and elbowed his brother’s side for attention. Kexal looked down at the watch and ran a hand over his face in response.

  “It’s well past nightfall outside. Any place to rest on the other side Wolef?”

  “Yes, on the lower road there were many buildings sticking out of the rock. Some were ruined but others were intact and at an accessible height.”

  Nightfall already? Tyrissa hadn’t noticed the passage of time. The strange light of this place showed no change in intensity since they entered. Rays of slightly wrong sunlight still shone through cracks in the walls, as bright as ever. She had given no thought to the pace she set, fixated as she was on the guiding pulse below. Even after running across the crater, fighting off that creature in the cave, and then walking through Hithia for hours, she felt as fresh as she did this morning. The Rawlins brothers looked nearly exhausted and even Hali seemed a little ragged.

  “Then we’ll make camp below,” Kexal said. “Get out the ropes and spikes, one last bit for today.”

  Their campsite turned out to be an old armory, according to Hali. Once inside, past the entry that was missing a door, you could almost mistake the interior for a normal, if empty, building anywhere in the world. There was almost no rubble or structural damage, through the weapons and armor housed here had long since fallen into decay.

  As Garth sorted through their gear for the night’s rations, Kexal started picking through the piles of rusted, long-forgotten weapons and armor.

  Hali loudly cleared her throat.

  “Oh pardon me. Hali, may I loot your fallen nation for anything of value?”

  “You may.” She almost smiled. “This looks like an armory for the Winged Champions, the elite of the city’s defenses. You might find something a collector would want.”

  Tyrissa accepted a packet of rations from Garth: a compacted brick of bland cornbread paired with jerky that was so overly salted that it masked its source animal. Kexal was right to spring for that meal in New Inthai. It was a royal feast compared to this.

  She watched and ate in silence as Kexal shuffled between the backrooms of the armory and made a fine racket as he searched for anything worthwhile. It was an improvement over the constant howling of the winds outside, at least. Wolef already slept in one corner of the room, a bundle wrapped in black. Tyrissa fought down the little twitches that ran through her muscles, the earthen energy begging for release. She knew she would get no actual sleep tonight but wasn’t even sure if she needed it. A steady buzz of energy ran through her, and not just the weighty presence of elemental earthen power.

  Kexal emerged from a back room with a toothy smile and two thin blades, both sheathed in matching aged scabbards. “How about this,” he said, drawing one sword to show three inches of steel. Colors swirled along the metal as it touched the air, green to red to gold, then fading to nothing more than polished steel.

  Hali gave a little gasp.

  “That’s a magecrafted gale blade. They were given to high ranking officers.”

  “So it’s magick?”

  “They were used against Earth-aligned Pactbound or beasts, but they’ve almost certainly lost their charge by now. Aside from the colors, the most magickal thing about it is lack of maintenance. Should be perfect as the day it was forged.”

  Kexal drew the full length of the gale blade. The colors flared and faded, like a burst of autumn. He gave it a close examination, then a few test swings.

  “A bit small and light for my tastes, but they’re keepers.”

  After that they settled into a quiet dinner. Tyrissa finished her portion quickly and tried to rest, but was unable to calm down. Even in this sheltered location the ambient air magicks flooded into her and soon her muscles began to spasm wildly with pent up earth energy, impossible to ignore any longer. Tyrissa laid a convulsing hand on the stone floor and poured the earthen energy into it without concern with the final result, the stone shifting through a blur of shapes and figures. She tried to be as inefficient as possible, adding unstable flourishes to the stone like fish scales and hair-thin spines.

  The muscle spasms subsided after a few minutes of dumping magick into the rock, the earthquake running through her body smoothing out with only sporadic aftershocks. Her body’s reaction to the elements was changing. Instead of shutting down from overloading, it would instead riot, throwing about the stored power in an internal storm. Tyrissa had cleared the normal changes of adolescence and found them replaced by something far less common.

  At least I’m getting plenty of practice. As Settan had said, Shaping was easier within the boundary of an air domain. However, as inefficient as that Shaping was, i
t was only enough for about ten minutes of peace. She started to feel the quivers start up again.

  “I’ll be outside,” she said while standing. “On watch.” It was a weak excuse. They knew there were exactly six people in this entire ruin, she just had to be outside, had to spend some of this energy. She wanted to be alone.

  Tyrissa left the armory and broke into a sprint alongside the shattered and intact façades that lined the Road of Roses, the once-noble constructions of a people on top of the world. She barely paid attention to the uneven surface of the road, the ankle-breaking gaps, the jagged little spires shaped by the unnatural winds of this place. She ran with the steady, assured steps of Earth, spending as much of the pent up power with each stride as possible. It wasn’t enough.

  An itch you can’t scratch.

  She had to make a conscious effort to turn around and run back to the armory where her allies rested. She wanted to leave them behind, to run headlong toward the pulsing magick below. To find Vralin and tear him down, piece by piece. Her thoughts were a bubbling stew of revenge and questions and memories. She used to be a girl from a no-name village in Morgale. She wanted to be a ranger, something unneeded, something quaint. That wasn’t long ago, a span of mere months. Less than a year. Now she was something else entirely. She wanted more, and more was expected of her.

  A hunger you can’t sate.

  Unsatisfied, Tyrissa focused a weight of earthen power into her fist. She knelt and punched at the ground, dumping the energy into the stones of the road below. A web of cracks sprouted from her fist, marring the enduring masonry of old Hithia. As she stood she Shaped the stone below her hand to follow her up. She pulled up an ugly stone column that started to crumble as soon as she took her hand away. It broke in two and crashed to the cracked ground. Still the winds howled, topping up her earth magick reserves, mocking her, daring her to continue her defiance in Air’s domain.

  An addiction you can’t feed.

  Tyrissa answered the winds’ dare, kneeling and drawing up another column of stone. This one was better, but still fell apart in seconds. So she did it again and again until it stood against the winds, as she must do. She made another column, and another, until the roadway became a five-foot-high forest of stone, some connected with arches, others delicate but enduring spirals.

  Prove your worth.

  “I will,” she whispered. She knew it was the Pact pushing her towards her goal, and she was unsure how much of the desire to press forward was the Pact’s and how much was hers. She didn’t care. Tomorrow it will end.

  Tyrissa walked back up the road to the steps of the armory. She sat down, nearly spent, the buzz of earth coursing through her muscles a faint quiver for the moment. Tyrissa sat on those steps through the night, dozing for brief moments and returning to the street to add to her creations when the trembling earth magick within approached unbearable.

  Footsteps snapped her awake during one break. Wolef stood behind her, looking as well-rested as sleeping on an ancient stone floor would allow. He looked over the new stone formation in the middle of the road.

  “Your handiwork?” he said.

  “Yeah. A little bit of practice.”

  “Ah. Care to give me a direction to scout?”

  Tyrissa pointed down the road. The lights were weaker here resulting in plentiful shadows for Wolef to work his abilities. “He’s still below us somewhere. Check for another bore that goes down along the right side.”

  The Shade nodded and gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. There was something new there, a wariness.

  “Wolef, there’s something I want to know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just before the fight in the caverns, Vralin was taunting you about other Shades. What was he talking about?”

  An unreadable shadow regarded her. “It’s not unusual for one Pactbound to have… experiences with another,” Wolef said after a too-long pause. “You have to remember that we’re all rivals. There are no true alliances between the Outer Powers.”

  “Is that all? He seemed awfully specific.” It sounded like there was a history of conflict. And if Wolef fought against Vralin before, wouldn’t Tsellien be included? ‘Time and again we sent your kind fleeing into hiding.’

  “There’s more to it than that, Ty. I… I should be off.”

  “Wolef, what are you holding back. I see the way you look at me now. Ever since—”

  “We can discuss it after.” He made to leave.

  Tyrissa sprang up and grabbed his arm. “No. Not after. There might not be an after. Tell me now.”

  The Shade sighed and said, “And the shadows shall flee before dawn’s fury.” He then turned into an ethereal outline and slid out of her grasp to melt away into the shadows, his words lingering in the air.

  Tyrissa looked down at her hand. Pale drops of liquid light dripped from her fingertips.

  Of course he looks at me like that. Wolef knew it would be simple matter to go from Air and Earth to Shadow and Light. Tyrissa sighed and tried to push such thoughts away. She was nearly full again and went to get in more practice among the columns.

  Chapter Forty-three

  In the morning, such as it was, Tyrissa’s bloodhound sense of direction and Wolef’s shadow scouting produced a circuitous route into the very heart of the ruins of Hithia. With each step the pulsing sensation in her mind drew closer until it overwhelmed the ambient wind magicks flowing through every fissure and tunnel of the ruins. There was only the goal, everything else faded into background noise. Wolef returned from one last foray in advance of the group, once again bearing three words they were all waiting to hear.

  “He’s just ahead.”

  They left most of their gear well away from their destination, carrying only the essentials for their bloody work. Garth even left his crossbow. It was useless against Vralin and the dust box was the key to making this easy. Kexal went over the plan as they walked through that last tunnel. Tyrissa suppressed the urge to charge ahead, only half listening.

  “We move in at once, but keep a look out for more tricks. Knives, elchemical flasks, swirling clouds of broken glass…”

  “Giant monsters?” Hali suggested.

  “Giant monsters,” Kexal agreed. “Garth will stick behind me, everyone else spread out. You three keep him occupied while we activate the box. The rest is easy.”

  “He had something special ready for me the last two times,” Hali said. “Don’t be alarmed if he makes it three.”

  “Noted,” Kexal replied with a grim nod.

  They emerged into a vast cavern, the floor checkered with fragmented flagstones of faded black and dirty white. There was nothing below the flagstones save for the abyss of the Rift; the courtyard was suspended in the air. The sky blue light of the Rift sparked and crackled up through the gaps in the flagstones, a luminous network shining from below. Cyclonic winds churned through the air in changeable, unpredictable directions, but the ground appeared to be anchored and stable.

  “This was the courtyard of the Primarch’s Palace, the crown jewel of the city.” Hali said, her voice a meek whisper in the face of the roaring winds. All around the perimeter were hints of a massive, once beautiful palace that enclosed the yard, the rock walls studded with white stonework, elegant arches, and pieces of stained glass. Scattered through the courtyard were the broken remnants of statues, their heads and limbs floating in the air at approximations of their original positions. On the far side stood an intact façade of the palace, cracked white stone steps leading up to a row of soaring columns. Half of the columns floated in the air, disconnected at crown and base but holding to their original positions like the statues. Tyrissa could only imagine the grace and beauty of this place, now warped into a ruined grotesquerie by The Fall and the ceaseless gales of an elemental air domain.

  At the center of the courtyard, atop a broad raised disc that crowned a dry fountain, Vralin stood above the floatcore. Cloak shed, Vralin looked frail and withered since she saw h
im in the caverns below Khalanheim. He still moved with that self-assured grace, adjusting a band of glowing sensors and dials that ringed the base of the floatcore. The device pulsed with the same light as below, as if it were a solid piece of clear sky. A column of faintly visible magick flowed upward to the zenith of the cavern and through a bore in the rock that assuredly lead to the actual sky outside. Boulders and pieces of the palace drifted through the heights of the cavern in chaotic orbits.

  There would be no surprise attack from either side this time. Vralin looked up at their approach and leapt down from the top of the fountain. He shook his head, like a father disappointed in the antics of children.

  “Must we do this again,” he called out across the floating flagstones. “Here?! At birthplace of the Rift and the grave of a nation?”

  A skin-tearing wind lashed across the cavern and drove all but Tyrissa to their knees to avoid being swept away. Even she found herself checked, the rumbling earth within poured into simply standing against the winds. One by one they regained their footing as the gust abated.

  “All bluster and noise,” Kexal said. The big man raised his shield high. “Let’s do this.” Garth stuck close behind his brother, the dust box held close to his chest, like an infant. They fanned out as planned and approached cautiously, stepping onto the floating flagstones and waiting for the inevitable thrown knives or elchemical flasks.

  Vralin had no such subtlety waiting. Instead, the Windmage casually raised a hand and made a casual, dismissive wave. A vicious, focused gale cut across the room, lifted a spear-like column of stone that rested near the base of the fountain, and sent it flying towards them. Tyrissa felt it hurtle pass her, turning aside in time to see it strike Hali dead on, right in the gut. The fantastic momentum carried her back to the rock walls near the entrance, the spear pinning her against the wall with a sickening wet crunch and a burst of amber colored blood.