Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (41 page)

Hithia. Since she was a small girl, struggling
through stories where many of the words were beyond her grasp, Hithia held a
powerful mystique. It was a land of legend where people lived as angels,
floating high above the world on their island city in the sky. The very air
itself was their tool, its currents their power, the winds their lifeblood.
They crafted a city that shamed all others in its beauty and grace. Those
winsome childhood visions were blasted away by what lay before her.

The Hithian Crater was a miles-wide puncture
wound in the earth’s surface. Khalanheim could fit inside with room to spare
between the city walls and the ring of sheer, marble-veined cliffs that were thousands
of feet tall. The Rift broke through the north wall of the crater. The
continental gash continued right to the center, a mile-wide crevasse on the
crater floor that pulsed with sky blue light. It burrowed into the centerpiece
of the crater, a mountain of rubble with countless bits of intact masonry and
carved stone protruding from its mass, the city of Hithia itself. Like the
ascent to the grove, the ruins below looked as if the Fall had occurred
yesterday and as if the land had been like this since the beginning of time.

The crater wasn’t lifeless. A river poured over
the rim on the far side, the winds dispersing it into a long trail of white mist.
A sapphire lake dominated the east side of the crater floor, its rippling
shores reaching the base of the collapsed city. Groves of trees and other
greenery fringed the lake and crept around either side of the main ruin, but
the growth stopped dead at the Rift, where a narrow river flowed into the
crevasse and disappeared into the crackling light.

On the nearer, west side of the Rift, the crater
floor was covered in a forest of massive spines of rock that pointed away from
the central ruin of the city and toward the rim. Tyrissa estimated that each
spine was dozens of feet tall, and a few appeared to be close to a hundred,
like the gargantuan claws of the planet itself. South of that the crater floor
was clear, if interwoven with smaller tears and sinkholes. It looked to be the
best place to cross the crater to the ruins proper.

But above and through it all there were the
winds. They howled across the Hithian Crater and sang their chorus against the
ruins, the spines, the flatlands. For all the life and wonder that may have
flown here in the past, it was the winds that remained and they whispered only of
loss.

“Two hundred fifty-eight years, five months,
seventeen days,” Hali said after a long while. “The sight of it has never
ceased to be breathtaking and horrifying in equal measure. Time’s ability to
heal all wounds is chronically overstated.”

Tyrissa slid off her rocky perch and walked over
to Hali.

“Do you come here often?”

“Whenever I’m in New Inthai,” Hali replied. She
turned away from the crater, and Tyrissa caught a glimpse of Hali’s face in
total grief. It was fleeting and soon went back to her neutral beauty. “I seeded
this grove eighty years ago. Glad to see it’s still going strong.”

“I’ve never seen trees like these. Where are they
from?”

“The Plane of Life,” Hali said simply.

Tyrissa nodded. She figured that was the answer,
especially with the life magick coursing through the ground below. It was both
disturbing and understandable that Hali would create another piece of land
warped by elemental magick as her own personal refuge. An act of defiance
perched on the shore of devastation.

Hali pointed at the center of the crater, at the
mountainous pile of rubble that marked the fallen city’s grave. “Tyrissa, you
see anything that may be of help to our mission?”

Tyrissa stared back at the ruins, concentrating
on the air, eyes flicking around the bits of stonework sticking out of the
rubble. From this distance, those pieces of rubble must be the size of
buildings. She sent the ever-rising earthen energy to her feet as an anchor against
the winds and to aid her concentration.

She did indeed see something else.

“Yes. A column of denser wind magicks where the
air is twisting and shivering, emerging from the peak of the ruin.” Once she
could see it, feel it, it couldn’t be unseen. The soaring column of elemental magick
had a passive but sinister look, like a black thunderhead crossing the sky.

“Then it is as Kronall said,” Hali said with dismay.
“Vralin is really pursuing some fantasy of rebirth.”

Tyrissa stepped away from the cliff’s edge. Hali
had taken a seat on the grass and meditatively stared out across the crater. While
she had Hali here, she
would
get more answers. Vralin’s betrayal of
Tsellien weighed heavily on her. Srahoun said they were lovers since they were
youths. If that didn’t make a line that couldn’t be crossed, what could? Could
anything? She couldn’t let too many unknowns gnaw at her when they resumed the
hunt tomorrow.

“Hali. Tell me what you know about Tsellien and
Vralin.” It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.

The Hithian gave her a brief, hard look that
melted into a passing resemblance of sympathy. She patted the ground next to
her and said, “Here. Sit.”

Tyrissa did so and Hali was silent for a minute,
gathering her thoughts.

“I know little more than you do. Truly. They were
an odd pair, though that is understandable given their respective natures. I
was away when they were children and didn’t visit New Inthai for twenty years.
I’ve devoted a significant portion of my unending life to rebuilding the
Hithian people. You can imagine my frustration when I returned to learn that
two
unique Hithian children, two opportunities to push our people’s recovery ahead,
had slipped away to engage in some foolish adventure. I eventually caught up
with them about twenty years ago, deep in Rhonia. I tried to convince them to
help me, but then the Daemonic Incursions happened.”

“The Cleanse.”

Hali nodded. “A trial by fire for more than just
Morgale. The Rhonian Empire had its own surge of daemonic infestations in their
eastern provinces, far from here. Despite the scale of the incursion they managed
to keep relatively quiet. The Khalans had no idea how bad it was beyond rumors
and a minor drop in trade. Blissful ignorance.”

That explains why they were in Morgale.
They
were continuing their old fight against the residual influence of daemons, of infernal
magick. Tyrissa kept the conclusion to herself and waited for Hali to continue.

“Before the ashes had even settled I tried again
to convince them to help me in rebuilding our people. Tsellien… she simply didn’t
care
. The Fall was history to her, a judgment and punishment that had
been delivered. Hithia was to be learned from and left in the history books. I
named her traitor, among other things. She commanded me to leave her sight, or
else.”

Or else I will destroy you like the dangerous
Pactbound you are.
The thought came unbidden, like an echo of a nearly
forgotten, angry memory. Tyrissa shivered and the feeling was gone.

“I only met her a few times after that and not at
all in the last decade. Suffice to say we didn’t get along.”

“And Vralin? What did he believe?” Tyrissa asked.

“He was more sympathetic and I nearly convinced
him to my way of thinking. I thought Vralin, far more than Tsellien, was the
key to rebuilding our nation. He was a Windmage, just like before the Fall. I thought
understood what he was.
She
was just a…”

“An unknown.” Tyrissa was starting to believe
Hali’s claim that she didn’t know much about Tsellien’s Pact, about what a
Valkwitch was. Hali knew just enough to keep her distance.

“Yes. But in the end Vralin was more loyal to
Tsellien than Hithia. With her gone… well, it is clear he is convinced some
sort of violent rebirth is now in order.”

“Convinced or commanded?”

“It is hard to tell the difference with our kind,
yes? He’s certainly acting like a Pactbound being driven by his patron. Enough
to conflate long-simmering beliefs with causing another round of elemental
destruction. Enough to…”

“Kill the woman he loved.”

“Enough for that,” Hali agreed. If Vralin could
betray and murder the woman he loved for the sake of his Pact, how could she
trust any Pactbound? How could she trust herself?

“Could his plan work?”

“Perhaps. According to you something is clearly
happening down there. Hithia’s connection to the Plane of Air was the source of
our power. The city was part domain and part… something else. The Fall severed
that connection and we lost our blessed status in the eyes of Elemental Air. No
more Windmages or easy elchemical tech, and far fewer priests like Kronall.
Power, technology, soul, and capital city all lost in a single day. Perhaps
Vralin truly believes he can reestablish that connection and raise us back to
greatness, that what was lost in an instant can be regained in an instant.”
Hali shook her head in disbelief. “In the end… Vralin is simply caught up, as
we are, in the ceaseless gales of elemental conflict.”

“Yet you told me to embrace it,” Tyrissa said.

“I did.”

“But it’s more complicated than that.”

“Oh yes. That was a favor, back on the caravan. I
didn’t want to weigh you down with too much of my own bitterness. We struck a
deal. In exchange for power we agreed to carry out their will or some fragment
of whatever designs they have. Sometimes those demands push us too hard or
force us to turn away or even destroy what we love. So we justify it, rewrite
the demands to align with a personal desire. We numb the pain and distract
ourselves.”

“What if that’s just the Pact forcing you in a
different way?” Tyrissa asked.

“Now there’s a scary thought, yes? ‘How do I know
what I truly want?’ For example, in Rhonia I am known in the recent histories
as ‘Rhalienne, Vines of Vengeance’. An honored Imperial Style for someone who
systematically hunted down and took bloody revenge on every single legion
general or courtly lady responsible for the military campaign against Hithia
that precipitated the Fall. The question becomes this: was my rampage a
personal vendetta or an assignment from my Pact? Which version of that horror
story do I accept?”

“I don’t know,” Tyrissa replied. “Regardless of
whether the motivation was yours or the Pact’s, if they were responsible wasn’t
it a form of justice? How did you feel when it was done?”

“How did I feel? I felt nothing. Vengeance can
fuel a person for many years but even in the name of justice it bears a bitter,
meager fruit. My bloody quest did nothing for my fallen people and I realized
afterward that so long as I walk this earth, there will be a living legacy of
Hithia. Make no mistake, I still hate the Rhonians. They destroyed the most
beautiful creation of mankind for the sake of empire, gold, and gods. Words can
describe the city and do justice to its beauty, but nothing can mimic being
there and beholding it with your own eyes. Nothing can bring back that sense of
belonging, the eternal wonder, the communal ownership of it all. Everyone had a
right to it, even a high-class whore from the streets of the Kynarral.”

Hali let out a bitter laugh that drifted out on the
shifting winds of the Hithian Crater.

“And she’s the only one left. How’s that for a
legacy? Come, we should go back to the inn. I’m sure Kexal has made himself
useful and is waiting on us.”

A medley of scents filled the air of the cramped,
private dining room of the
Leaning Tower
. Kexal had arranged a feast for
their final night in civilization. Hithian cuisine favored spices and fowl,
mushrooms and greens. Tyrissa ate sparingly, distracted by the task ahead of
them and the history behind it. The depth of Vralin’s betrayal haunted her, and
she only half listened to the chatter around the table. Kexal was finishing a
story about the first Pactbound they ever hunted, a renegade Rhonian Fireweaver,
aided by frequent corrections by Garth, some written, some signed. Eventually
Kexal turned to serious matters.

“Now, are you sure he’s in the crater, Hali?
Locals claim they haven’t seen him in years. We’re runnin’ on the word of one
priest.”

“He’s there,” Tyrissa said in Hali’s place. “I’m
sure of it.”

“How?”

“He already started activating that device, the
floatcore. I can see it’s magick in the air above the ruins. Feel it pulling me
along.”

“Alright then. Not meanin’ to doubt you kid. Just
want to be sure.”

“I’ll be the one to ask,” Wolef said, “How is
this time going to be different from the caves or the observatory?”

“Three reasons,” Kexal said. “One: He’s on the
run. Less time to prepare tricks like in the caves.”

“Unless he has a bigger pet to throw at us,”
Wolef suggested.

“Well, if that happens again I figure Ty could
wrangle it down.”

“I don’t see why not,” Tyrissa said as flashbacks
of riding the deep wurm ran through her mind. She summoned a faint smile to
avoid being a complete grim cloud over the dinner.

Kexal continued. “Two: Since he’s on the run,
he’s frazzled. It’s likely that whatever he’s going to do with that floatcore
has been upended by us being on his tail. He has fewer supplies in the middle
of a ruin than under Khalanheim.”

“Unless it’s complete,” Hali said. “We have no
idea.”

“Granted. All the more reason to hustle tomorrow.
Thirdly,” Kexal motioned at Garth, “We have an ace in the hole. Garth’s little
dust box is good to go this time. It’s good to go, right?”

Garth nodded smugly.

“Right. The locals say we can descend to the crater
at a spot nearby. It’s called ‘The Spiral’, some kind of wind-carved oddity in
the rock. I got a guide lined up to get us there, and he says it’ll take us all
the way to the bottom. Then we’ll hug the crater wall to the flatlands past the
spines and run like hell to the middle. Get some good sleep tonight folks. Tomorrow’s
gonna be a long, wild ride.”