Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  There was no grand finale. After what felt like hours but was no more than a few minutes, the end came not as a gale but as a gasp. As she caught up to him once again, their weapons clashing off each other, something gave way in the Windmage. As he drew back from another barely blocked attack, he lost his balance in the air and fell, as if the invisible bonds carrying him had disappeared. Vralin fell like a feather in a slow, aimless drift. Tyrissa Shaped the stone under her feet downward, passed Vralin, and then expanded her platform in a large, thin disc to catch him. He crashed to the rock in a broken heap.

  He didn’t recover from the fall and made no move for his weapon that fell just out of reach to his right side. He simply lay there, finally beaten. Tyrissa stood over him but stayed her hand, allowing her blood to cool. She wanted to scream questions at him, all of which started with ‘why’. But in the back of her mind, she knew the answers.

  I had to. I did what needed doing. I had no choice. I made many mistakes.

  What lay in front of her was a Windmage, a once feared and mighty Pactbound, reduced to a broken and discarded tool, all used up by an uncaring elemental master. What choices did he make and which were made for him? How much of the murder and mayhem and betrayal were Vralin’s doing, and which belonged to the unseen lord of the Plane of Air?

  Is this what I’ve become? Judge and executioner?

  Only minutes ago all she wanted was to beat him to death, to make his final moments as painful as possible. That rage was long gone, replaced by pity for this husk of a man. Tyrissa replaced her staff on her back with a magnetic click and stooped to pick up Vralin’s thin sword. She recognized the styling of the hilt and cross guard. They were the same design as Tsellien’s weapons, curling vines, the center hollow. Dried blood flaked off the blade, some of it hers and some… not.

  “I’m not sure if you deserve this piece of mercy,” she said while standing over him. Vralin made no response but the feeble wheezing of his breath. His eyes were hard but not hateful. Tyrissa thought she saw regret there, but that might have been a lie for her own sake. “But at some point in the past, maybe you did.” Then she drove the point through his heart until she hit the stone below. Vralin appeared to deflate as he died, his last breath an accepting sigh carried away on the winds.

  And it was done. Vralin was dead. Tsellien’s and countless other deaths were avenged. The long-awaited dose of justice tasted as bitter and hollow as Hali promised. A flash of anger returned in that moment. Tyrissa hurled Vralin’s sword off the disc of rock to fall into the depths of the endless sky below. She now stood alone on that isle of rock at the heart of a ceaseless vortex of pure, primal Air, the counteracting energies of Earth rumbling through her body, begging for yet more release. She stared into the still pulsing, still strengthening column of blue planar energy and realized that Vralin’s plan was still in motion. Tyrissa then asked herself a simple, terrifying question.

  What now?

  Above, she could see the nexus of the planar conduit, a radiant, growing sphere, like the entire sky condensed to a volatile ball. There was nothing here, nothing to manipulate, no reflection of the device that created this in the real world. Her eyes settled back on Vralin’s corpse, or what was left of it. His body was disintegrating into a fine sand that blew away on the wind currents, a continuation of the decay that consumed him at the end of his life. Soon the only recognizable piece of Vralin was his bracer, the filter that kept the elemental powers from ravaging his body too quickly.

  Filters.

  Shaping the isle below her into another column, Tyrissa ascended to the nexus point, looking away from the remnants of Vralin’s body as it tumbled into the blue abyss, a burial in the infinite skies. She stopped when the radiant point was at chest height. An eerie calm surrounded the growing nexus, now wider than her shoulders. Tyrissa Shaped the isle below her into a broad, flat surface, though directly below the nexus the stone became jagged and broken, dust and pebbles getting drawn up into the confluence of energies and consumed in tiny white bursts of light.

  Tyrissa reached out and grazed the surface of the nexus with a single finger, hoping for the soothing touch like earlier in the Hithian ruins. The nexus flickered. She drew back with a cry, the tip of her finger a brilliant white silhouette. White veins ran up her finger and faded in her palm. This wasn’t pain. Pain she understood, could overcome. This felt like being unmade, like being disassembled piece by minute piece. Earth raged within her, far beyond what she felt while confronting Vralin. Wild and primal. She loosed the energy into the stone below her, an uncontrolled Shaping just to get rid of it. Moments later an impact rocked the isle from below and she sensed the mass of stone at her feet increase. Tyrissa took a step back from the nexus, now large enough to swallow her whole. It drew in the stone below it, leaving a perfect, circular gap, the expanding edge fringed with the white glow of annihilation.

  She scratched at her fingertip with her thumb. It was like scratching a statue, numb but rebuilt.

  Filters and Opposition.

  Tyrissa tightened both hands on her staff and took one last breath of the pristine air of this realm. Then she stepped into the nexus.

  Air ripped her apart and Earth rebuilt her. She became the filter between the two powers, a channel of conversion, a font of nullification. She could see her body seared white, burning like the surface of the sun. Every fragment of her being became its own world of annihilation. A counterbalance came as a wellspring from within, bottomless, stoic, unfeeling. They clashed against each other in a cycle, a raging storm of forces in opposition.

  Disintegration. Reconstruction. Destruction. Creation. The cycles repeated for an eon compressed into a second. It could have been either, time was nothing to her. But it was not endless. The last thing she felt was an abrupt severance, a closing of the tear between worlds, the wound sealing up.

  There was no one to bear witness when the column of condensed air magick vanished and for a brief moment, the constant winds of the Plane of Air ceased their flow. The vortex was gone and at its center floated a mountain created from the dust and disparate islets of earth drifting through the plane, drawn to this point to restore balance. It was a reflection of the Hithian ruins, a mountain lording over desolation. The moment of stillness passed and the winds of the Plane of Air resumed their chaotic churn, subdued. For now. Only scattered, spinning fragments of the reflected lip of the Hithian Crater remained. Of Tyrissa, there was no sign at all.

  She awoke to another vision, but instead of a slice of reality on the other side of the world, this was an obvious, dream-like construction, the details on the fringes vague. Tyrissa stood in a circular clearing among a forest of white columns. They ran off into the distance, and no walls could be seen, only a distant argent fog. Silver tiles covered the floor, coming together in blurred lines. Tyrissa had her staff in hand, one end planted on the floor. Out of all this it felt the most real, an anchor that linked her to where she truly belonged.

  A rolled, yellow parchment floated ahead of her. It was ten feet tall, as if it belonged in the library of a god. The parchment unfurled to reveal a map of the entire world in absolute clarity and detail. It was simply stunning to behold. Tyrissa’s mind reeled as her eyes wandered over the coastlines and contours of the four great continents. Her focus went to the familiar shape of Morgale at the top of the northern continent, her homeland now locked in the smothering white and dark evergreen of winter.

  Then the scars appeared in bright, elemental colors that matched the phases of the aurora. Numerous wounds of elemental magick crisscrossed through every corner of the world. The Rift showed as a bold sky blue gash through the North, the Hithian Crater at its southern base a festering boil, a churning, permanent storm. Such damage was everywhere, the remnants of civilizations brought down by planar powers they barely understood, pacts they made that they could never fulfill. They went through all that suffering only for another nation, another people to arise and make the same mistakes, crafting layer upon
layer of broken lands built on best intentions.

  She’d seen it everywhere she’s been. Hithia, Khalanheim, Vordeum, even Edgewatch. All were built upon the follies of the past, smoothing over the errors. It was a vicious cycle that left the world poisoned and crumbling while it blindly marched toward its own destruction. Tyrissa could see the Elemental Powers pressing in on the world, presences just beyond the veil of reality. They were hungry to shatter it for good, fueling agents obvious and subtle, human and inhuman. Standing amidst the chaos of a world hurtling towards oblivion were four tiny but brilliant points of silver light, beacons of stability that were vastly outnumbered. One point was in the heart of the Hithian Crater. The colors of the windstorm had faded but did not disappear. It was too late for that. The damage was permanent, and the Rift and its winds would endure.

  Tyrissa could feel unseen, expectant eyes on her. ‘These are the stakes’ they said without a sound, ‘This is our struggle.’ Her Pact was gone, fulfilled, her worth proven. Without it she felt empty. Normal. They offered another. Tyrissa knew that she could refuse to continue. To walk away from this life.

  She never even considered it.

  “So much more to do,” Tyrissa said to nothing and everything. “You’d best send me back.”

  A new, urgent sense of purposed settled across her mind. A new, welcomed Pact.

  Seek. Judge. Purge. Repair.

  It was no less vague than the last one, but Tyrissa understood. Context was everything in a good story, why not Pacts?

  The vision burned away in silver flames that guttered out into a warm, embracing darkness. She felt herself return to the grit and dust and blood and life of reality and heard a familiar voice calling to her.

  “Come on, kid. Wake up.”

  Epilogue

  Valkwitch

  Tyrissa sat among the mooring towers of New Inthai’s docks, right on the edge of a pier, her feet dangling over the tributary of the Rift. The moors were empty, so she wasn’t in the way of the dockworkers. That was why she was here, to watch for the day’s only arrival and their ride back to Khalanheim. Though she could see the bottom of this canyon hundreds of feet below, the riftwinds still billowed out of the depths, granting her a slight earthen charge. She funneled the excess energy into a rock held in her hand, Shaping it at random. The process was so simple to her now that it barely required thought. It was nothing compared to what she felt in the Hithian Crater, which in turn was nothing compared to her time in the Plane of Air. Her use of magick wasn’t second nature anymore. It was first.

  Valkwitch. The name was starting to fit, a comfortable new skin.

  The rippling layers of red and brown rock in the canyon walls looked much like the bands of color in the aurora back home. Home. It would be the heart of winter in Morgale, with the midwinter festival sometime in the next couple weeks. Of all the minor things she left behind, Tyrissa missed snow the most. She missed the flash of fresh flakes on her face, the points of frost turning to fire as they melted against her skin. Here, Tyrissa had to remind herself what season it was supposed to be. It was all too warm this far south. It felt wrong.

  It feels wrong because it is.

  She thought back to when she accepted the full responsibility of her Pact and the map of the world inlaid with countless glowing, elemental scars. A world that seemed so fragile, cracked and vulnerable. The same winds that warmed these lands and allowed the zeppelins to fly were a side effect of a massive scar on the world. And as large as the Rift was, it was but one of many elemental wounds across the planet and it fell upon four points of silver light to keep the damage from getting out of control. In the days after her return from the Plane of Air and that space between, everything looked so clear to her, so simple. Despite the enormity of her Pact and the life of struggle it promised, Tyrissa felt only an enduring calm. That certainly helped getting through Wolef’s funeral pyre. Funny that a man and culture so closely tied to the Shadow would exit the physical world in a bath of fire and light.

  ‘The shadows shall flee before dawn’s fury’. It sounded like verse. She didn’t know whether to thank Wolef for the hint or gently curse him over the vagueness of it.

  That serenity lasted a scant few days, enough for the trip back to New Inthai. After that, there was only the pain of loss and paltry satisfaction of vengeance, never mind the doubts and worries of her future. The assurance of her new role and purpose only guarded against so much.

  Even after all she’d been through, Tyrissa still had far more questions than answers. She Shaped the rock into a ball and rolled it off the platform to tumble into the canyon. She came to the docks after a long talk with Srahoun. She told him everything and he seemed to understand, but then again, all this would be somewhat familiar to him. Tyrissa placed a hand on the weathered book at her side. Srahoun gave her the book as a gift. It was one of Tsellien’s diaries, begun when she set out from home, when she was no older than Tyrissa. The contents were written in Hithian, but she could begin translating it once she got back to Khalanheim. Tyrissa knew she would find some degree of guidance inside. The prospect brought a small, excited smile to her face.

  A zeppelin rose from the depths of the canyon. Tyrissa stood, clutching the diary like the treasure it was. She turned away from the approaching ship to find the Rawlins brothers and Hali, allowing her doubts and questions to retreat to the back of her mind. For now.

  Tyrissa learned years ago that when you finished one story the best way to proceed was to begin another.

  This was no different.

  About the Author

  Michael L. Watson has spent much of his life in fantasy worlds, be it reading, watching, game-mastering, or playing. He figured he might as well write a few and complete the set. He lives in beautiful Boulder, Colorado.

  Valkwitch is his first novel.

  His Twitter handle is @M_L_Watson, if you’re into that sort of thing.

  His website is http://www.michaellwatson.com/ and will contain sporadic updates and supplemental information related to the world of Valkwitch.

  Acknowledgements

  First, a hearty thank you to my early readers who, at some point, gave their feedback, suggestions, or simply lent an ear to my ramblings about this book: Mike Curtis, Turing Eret, Tyler Knappe, Jacquie Richardson, Tom Szymanski, and Sarah Watson.

  A big thank you to Jaclyn Williamson, who took my nebulous ideas for the cover design and elemental icons and turned them into something that was somehow both exactly what I wanted and totally surprising.

  Finally, thanks to my built-in fan club of parents and grandparents for their endless enthusiasm and words of support: Katherine Landes, Charles Reinke, Joni Reinke, Kevin Watson, and Susan Watson

  .

  Valkwitch

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael L. Watson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover and icon designs by Jaclyn Williamson.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed are the result of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  dedication

  Prologue: Story Tellers and World Enders

  Part One: Beneath the Aurora

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two: Two Sides of the Coin

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-thre
e

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part Three: Wind Chasers and Stone Shapers

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Part Four: The Ceaseless Gales

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Epilogue: Valkwitch

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright