Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (30 page)

Tyrissa found Settan seated in the same darkened
corner of the
Miner’s Pick
in Under Forge, exactly as she’d left him. It
was a few days before she could get away and seek him out in the tunnels of the
under city. Flush with new contracts in the wake of the Thieves’ night of
mayhem, the Cadre kept her busy, even with the Alvedos out of the city for
another couple of days.

Tyrissa helped herself to the opposite seat.

“Hi there.”

“You again,” Settan said, taking her reappearance
in stride. “Tyrissa, was it?”

“It is.”

“Did you find Karine?”

“Only her empty home. She’s gone. Dead at the
worst. Fled and in deeper hiding at best.” Tyrissa still felt sore from
that
particular dead end.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” His face didn’t match
his words. Settan showed all the expression of a mountain learning the sun
would rise tomorrow.

Tyrissa fished out a pouch of gilders and dropped
it on the center of the table with a heavy thud. Liran had told her that
presenting a monetary offer before ample discussion was rude in Khalanheim.
Tyrissa preferred to think of it as direct.

“What is this is for? I cannot freelance Shaper
work.”

“I’m not looking for fancy stonework. I need
training.” Tyrissa was finished with fumbling around with her abilities. She
needed to learn how to manage those energies.

“I fail to see how I can help you any more than I
have. You’re no Shaper.”

“No. I still don’t have a name for what I am. If
it even has a name. But I do know that whenever I’m near with pact magicks, I
absorb it and unleash the opposite.”

Settan said nothing. Tyrissa was betting on the
Shaper having a residual sense of being indebted to Karine and, by extension, a
willingness to repay that debt through Karine’s kin. But she decided to lay the
motivation on thick with some basic elemental opposition theory.

“Me and some… friends are going after the bounty
on Vralin k’Zhan. Have you heard of him?”

Settan’s immovable face nearly quirked up into a
smile. “I have. I would make mention of how foolish that is. However, you seem
the type to ignore that advice.”

Tyrissa nodded and said, “He’s already killed one
like me and possibly Karine as well. Or at least drove her away. I have no
intention of letting him make it three.” Vralin had opportunity enough that
night. Dazed and helpless after weathering the storm of wind and fire, she had
been easy prey. She owed Kexal and company a debt for their timely arrival. “The
opposite of Wind is Earth. What better way to prepare than to learn his tricks
myself?”

“You wish to know your enemy.”

“Exactly,” Tyrissa said. “All I need is a willing
Earthpact to provide some fuel. The money is for your time. Any wisdom would be
welcome, too.”

Settan nudged pouch of coins around the table.
Tyrissa figured it was a fair amount and a significant portion of her extra
wages from the Cadre.

“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,” Tyrissa 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.