Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (34 page)

Garth rapped his knuckles on the table for their
attention. He raised a hand to his mouth and waggled his fingers, smiling all
the while. A string of little coughs, the mute man’s version of laughter,
followed.

“What’s that mean?”

Kexal glowered at his brother. “That’s his way of
remindin’ me of our run-in with a kraken.”

“I’d like to hear that story.”

“Some other time,” he shuddered. “Suffice to say,
you’ll never get me on the ocean again.”

Tyrissa let out a laugh that faded into a
thoughtful silence.

“How do you deal with it, Kexal?” she asked after
a moment. “The ‘crazy shit’. Your life in constant danger. The fighting. The killing.”

The big man thought on this one for a while.
“First, you make sure you’re fightin’ the good fight. That’s hard, I know, but
you gotta try. Second: you can’t let it overwhelm you. When things are at their
wildest you put your head down and do what you must. But afterward, if you make
it out the other side, you gotta be able to laugh.”

Kexal gave her a grin. “Can’t recommend it for
most folks. But we aren’t most folks.”

Tyrissa couldn’t argue with that. “We sure aren’t.”

Tyrissa and Jesca made their way through the
backstreets of Forge. Tonight’s contract had taken twice as long as estimated
and it was well past midnight. The job began with a pickup of an unspecified
cargo from the zeppelin moors, fresh off the boat and tightly sealed in crates
stenciled with ciphers. Questionable and secretive for certain, but the client,
or at least the intermediary running the operation, had all the necessary
paperwork from Central and the funds to hire a ten-strong band from the Cadre
to escort it all. From the moors, they escorted two wagons in a circuitous
route across the city, stopping at seven different places to deliver or pick up
additional supplies, all similarly marked with codes to signify which was what.

Their client’s expense was justified. They had
been tailed the entire time by an unidentified group, a succession of cloaked
figures in the night. Rival or Thieves, they made no move against them and
melted away when the wagons reached their destination: a Forge workshop that
was built and secured like a fortress.

It had rained heavily in the middle of the
escort, and the streets faintly steamed where the heat of the underground
forges and factories rose through vents in the ground. Tyrissa carried her
guild coat over one shoulder, enjoying the transitions between the crisp night air
and pockets of warmth rising from below. This had been their first job together
since the Alvedo contract ended, and Jesca showed nothing a professional face
to her. Beneath the ambient hiss and grind of Forge this walk back toward
Crossing was as silent as death

“What do you figure was in the crates,” Tyrissa
asked, trying to raise some sort of conversation.

“Wouldn’t know,” Jesca replied coolly. “Not
really our business.”

“Still fun to take a guess. So hush-hush. Maybe
some sort of new elchemical tech.”

Jesca gave her a hard look. “Why do you think
that?”

Because I could feel the earth magicks
radiating from inside.
Her Pact-sense was inconsistent with elchemical
materials. Most were inert with respect to her, like the newer street lamps, but
some set off her Pact just like actual elemental magicks. She was happy to
trade her spotter’s place atop the second wagon for walking along side it at
the first opportunity.

“Because of the stops around the Concordium’s campus
and the close attention from whoever was following us,” she said instead.

They turned down an alley between two tall stone
buildings, an empty canyon where long lines of exhaust vents belched up
residual heat from the manufactories in Under Forge. Layers of soot from below
stained the walls in graffiti-like patterns.

“Suppose it’ll remain a secret. Everyone has a
few in this city, right Ty?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyrissa knew that
Jesca harbored suspicions toward her, but played the part of mild indignation
anyway. It was only a matter of time until she couldn’t hide her true nature
anymore. Whatever
that
was.

Jesca sighed. “Nothing. Sorry. It’s just been a
long day,” she apologized with a weak, halfway sincere smile.

The alleyway flashed with a brief orange light
and Tyrissa felt the tell-tale shiver of elemental cold reply through her
bones. Wolef had delivered her message to Ash and the Fireweaver had chosen a
perfectly awful time to make her appearance.

“What was that?” Jesca asked.

Sooner than later, I guess. No use hiding
anymore.
“A Fire Pactbound on the roof,” Tyrissa replied in a liberating,
matter-of-fact tone. She could feel Ash circling around atop the building to
their left. The pull of frost was strong. She was burning through a dangerous amount
of magick.

“We have to get out of here,” Jesca drew the longer
of her two knives and scanned the linear slice of sky that topped the alleyway.

“No, I have to take care of this. Stay behind
me.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Ash!” Tyrissa called out. “Get down here!”

A fiery light surged behind them and Tyrissa spun
in place in time to see Ash landing, a wreath of fire chasing her descent.
Jesca followed, half a step behind, her blade raised and ready.

Jesca yelled an unconvincing, “Back off!” down
the alleyway.

Ash looked at Jesca and cocked her head to one
side. The flames across her shoulders surged and sent coils down her arm to
coalesce into an open palm. Ash’s arm snapped forward and threw the ball of
fire, but Tyrissa was ready for it. She fluidly spun about and hooked her staff
around Jesca to pull her out of the way. With her other hand, she flung her
guild coat into the path of the fireball, knocking it off course to burst
against the wall of the alley. The flames reduced her coat to a pile of ashes
and half-melted metal buttons before sputtering out.

Tyrissa faced down Ash and again felt the dueling
mental urges. One cried out to soothe this girl’s plight, to save her. The
other howled for blood, a demand to
end
her. Tyrissa tried to push them
away, knowing it was her own Pact pressing on. She had felt no such urges
around Settan or Wolef. It was specifically Ash that set them off.

She could see the duality in Ash’s face as well.
The Fireweaver stood still but her face flickered between blind burning rage
and a pure pleading panic. She was a mess, clothes ragged and burned in
patches, and hair a tangle of a half dozen singed shades. Whatever use the
Elemental Flames had for her had ground her down this. A puppet, a nearly broken
tool ready to be discarded. But still she held on to a fragment of herself, a
piece that cried out for help.

In that moment Tyrissa realized she felt more
kinship the desperate girl in front of her than with Jesca behind her. Tyrissa
had come to Khalanheim with a Pact etched in her head, looking for a way out. While
she no longer desired a way out, she could possibly give Ash that escape.

Tyrissa stepped forward, moving more on instinct
than out of any defined plan. Ash flinched, then scowled, her shawl of fire flaring
higher.

I cannot be burned. Not by you.

Ash raised her hands and let out a cord of flame
that lashed down the alleyway toward Tyrissa. It stopped a few inches short of
her, as if striking an invisible wall, and the ice in her bones surged higher.
Tyrissa let the converted magicks flow out of her, her footfalls creating pools
of water that drained into the heat vents. She heard Jesca gasp behind her, a
small, remote sound. Tyrissa let her staff fall from her hands. She wouldn’t
need it.

Ash held her ground and continued to funnel out a
constant stream of fire that gave the alleyway a harsh, infernal glow. Her face
was fixed into a snarl, teeth stained black and red from chewing inferno leaf.
But her eyes still betrayed desperation. Tyrissa let the flames filter through
as the intensity rose with each step. The trail of water became inlaid with
fleeting lattices of ice and snow condensed into the air around her.

Tyrissa came within arm’s reach and saw that
black, charred veins of corruption had spider-webbed across Ash’s skin. She was
overusing her Pact energies, about to burn out and be overwhelmed by the
poisonous, unmitigated usage. Tyrissa gently grasped Ash’s hands and brought
them together. The torrent of water and fire began to chaotically swirl around
them.

Filter it out.

She followed the flow of fire magick through Ash
and found a font of power chaotically churning within, a burning parallel to
what Tyrissa felt when full of any given element. That source recoiled from her
touch and Tyrissa saw what lay beyond Ash. In that instant she caught an infinitesimal
glimpse of Elemental Fire itself, an eternally burning furnace, a world-wide
wildfire. Not a mind, but a presence, a universal force of a scope beyond her
mortal capacity to fully comprehend. Chaos. Rage. Destruction. Those were its
fundamental components. Yet there was also a profound patience, a sense of indescribable
purpose at the beating heart of the inferno.

She couldn’t directly challenge
that
. But
she could place herself between it and Ash, a defiant wall of glacial ice. It
was presumptuous to even think of it in those terms. Ash was nothing but a
spark to this force, and Tyrissa a single rain drop. Somehow, defiance proved
to be enough and the Flames withdrew its connection. It was a concession rather
than a surrender, and carried the unspoken, menacing promise of a future
response.

The torrent ended in an abrupt jolt and Ash’s
shawl of fire winked out like a snuffed candle. Tyrissa let the remaining water
magicks flood out of her to drain into the heat vents. The alleyway was briefly
thick with steam, but the riftwinds soon cleared the air.

“Gone,” Ash whispered, swaying in place, looking
stunned. Tyrissa caught her as her legs gave out and guided her to the ground.

“So very quiet. Thank you. Thank you.” Ash said,
her voice weak and tears welling up in her eyes.

Tyrissa was at a loss. “The right thing to do,”
she said.
What did I do? How did I do that?

“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.”

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?”

Settan 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 took 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.