Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (44 page)

“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.

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 him 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.

She’ll be fine.
The thought was still
utterly surreal and Tyrissa forced herself to look away from Hali feebly
struggling against the impaling spear. Another gust surged across the floating grid
of flagstones, this one pulling down one of the impossibly drifting boulder to
crash at Kexal’s feet, sending the two Jalarni reeling back in a shower of
stone and swearing. Garth slipped and fell halfway through a widened gap in the
broken ground, one hand hanging on for dear life, the other maintaining an iron
grip on the dust box. Kexal scrambled over to haul his brother away from the
bottomless fall into the Rift.

“Keep him busy,” he shouted through the howl of
the winds.

Tyrissa and Wolef exchanged a glance and ran on
towards their quarry. She skimmed across the fractured tiles, letting the
steadiness of earth guide her, barely feeling each step. Wolef was a flickering
image of a man, flashing from shadow to whole and back again when he crossed
one of the cracks in the floor that poured light upward from the Rift. Vralin
waited for them, the stillness at the eye of the storm, blades drawn and
readied in a relaxed, overconfident posture. Tyrissa saw the ravages of his elemental
work as she drew closer: pallid skin, bony limbs, sunken eyes. The brace of
throwing knives was empty and no elchemical flasks or orbs hung at his hips. He
was out of such tricks. He was just one man with two swords, fueled by the
blessing of Elemental Air.

Tyrissa reached him first, sending out a high,
bone shattering strike while Wolef circled around to his back. Vralin leaned aside
just enough for it to miss, a smirk on his face. Steel rang against black iron as
he spun to meet Wolef’s attacks from behind, and the dance began anew. Wolef
wore shadows as a cloak of black mist, rapidly blinking between solid and
spectral. All three became isles of controlled chaos, the air between them
thick with singing blades, wisps of shadow, and the rush of air. Tyrissa poured
the strength of earth into her strikes, mountains of force. They would land
with an unmatched brutality, but the only thing she struck was the empty air
and the tiled floor. Vralin twisted and dodged as if he could use the air as
solid footing and remained elusive, like trying to snatch a feather out of a
whirlwind.

Wolef had little better luck, Sliding in and out
of his attacks and scoring a pair of feeble cuts on the Windmage, one on the
shoulder and the other a graze across the thigh. Vralin cut his dodges as close
as possible, letting the Shade’s knives hit nothing more than a scrap of
clothing. On one of the Shade’s retreats, Vralin timed a gust while he was
solid to send him reeling backward. Wolef’s recovered quickly, dropping to a defensive
posture, wary. Tyrissa saw that Kexal and Garth were up and closing in on the
melee. They only had to occupy Vralin for a few seconds longer.

Vralin reached his left hand out, pointing past
Wolef. The winds in the chamber shifted and Tyrissa saw one of the many
drifting boulders near the ceiling shudder and change direction to hurtle at Wolef’s
back. Vralin leapt forward out of Tyrissa’s reach, pressing the attack on the
Shade. She charged around them and received an offhand slash across her back, the
cut hot and bright. Wolef gave her a brief, confused look as she slipped past
him, unaware of the boulder flying at him. She focused as much earthen energy as
possible into one side of her body and shoulder-checked the makeshift meteor as
it crashed into the melee. Tyrissa poured a wild burst of Shaping into the boulder
and it exploded dust and stone fragments.

All three staggered away from the impact and sudden
shower of rock. Tyrissa spun in place, nearly losing her balance as she tried
to bring her staff to bear again. But Vralin recovered first, nimbly replanting
his feet and bringing his longer blade up in a whistling arc. A flash of steel
crossed Wolef’s throat and opened a precise, lethal cut. Bright red blood stained
black cloth and the Shade fell to the stone tiles, threads of shadow trailing
in his wake. Tyrissa’s scream sliced through the howling winds, full of fury
and sorrow and everything in between.

The Rawlins brothers reach them, moments too
late. Vralin wheeled to face the Weapon Master, gliding out of Tyrissa’s reach.
Garth stepped out from behind Kexal, held the dust box high, and twisted the
handles on either side. Metal scrapped against metal, glass shattered, and a
fine, dark gray mist burst out from the slotted walls of the tinker’s
invention. The dust spread on the winds swirling through the chamber into a
blinding, choking cloud. Tyrissa covered her mouth in the crook of her elbow,
coughing and blinking against the grit. Then the dust flashed white, becoming a
luminous storm that swirled through the cavern. Vralin screamed in agony, a
satisfying sound. As the light flared ever brighter, the winds died, their
strength sapped away. For a brief moment, Tyrissa felt no nearby air magicks
for the first time since Khalanheim.

After a few seconds the blindness faded as the
air cleared. The brief respite from the winds ended, the currents picking back
up, wild and chaotic, but without the aggressive force from before. The
haunting, floating fragments of the sculptures and statues had fallen to the
floor, but already the smaller pieces started to drift back into the air,
reassuming their unnatural positions. Atop the fountain, the floatcore shone
with a riotous blue light that leaked through new hairline cracks in its
surface. Vralin lay on his side nearby, dazed. Shining motes of dust clung to
his skin and clothes, his body turned into a brief field of stars. Already he
tried to pull himself away in a half crawl, half drag toward one of his fallen
blades.

Tyrissa grabbed his leg and gave it a hard yank,
slamming his face to the flagstones. He blindly tried to kick her away and
clawed the ground, fingers leaving bloody streaks. After all this he still
fought, he hadn’t given up. Tyrissa felt a dam break inside her heart,
releasing a flood of pent up fury and frustration. She snatched up her staff
and let loose. She couldn’t think straight, sending one hateful blow after
another into the fugitive Pactbound. She blamed the hot, angry tears on the
dust in her eyes. She felt the crack of ribs reverberate up the length of
steeloak. Cruel, satisfying cracks. Vralin took them with the slightest grunts
or gasps, still crawling inch by inch away. In the corner of her eye she saw
Kexal stalking toward them with a grim set to his face, sword held in both hands
and looking every bit the executioner.

Vralin reached his shorter blade and rolled onto
his back, raising his other arm to block her attacks. Her staff crashed into
his ornate bracer, breaking it in two. Tyrissa’s mind cleared enough to see him
flip the blade around in his hand, preparing to throw it. Her heart skipped a
beat. From here he couldn’t miss her. As his arm snapped back, she spun in
place, raising her staff and crossing her arms in a vain attempt to cover
herself.

The blade sailed past her and embedded itself to
the hilt in the floatcore. A larger crack split the device from base to tip,
blue light pouring out in harsh rays. Kexal stopped in his tracks, shying away
from the ruptured piece of old Hithian magick. The cracks running over the
floatcore spider webbed across its entire surface like pane of glass ready to
shatter.

Then it exploded, like the sky bursting from a
pinpoint star. A blinding wash of light flooded the cavern, flashing cerulean
blue and lightning white and storm gray, all the moods of the sky. A sound like
the sky splitting open thundered through the cavern. Tyrissa fell to her hands
and knees, skin afire from transmuting the air magicks as an upheaval of earth
roiled through her.

Her vision returned in time to see the storming light
coalesce around where the floatcore once stood into a massive column of elemental
energy that bathed the cavern in a blue glow and a stiff breeze. The device and
fountain were gone, consumed. Through the gaps in the flagstones she could that
the column had connected with the Rift and a constant flow of energy transferred
between the two.

She was too stunned to do anything but watch as
Vralin staggered to his feet. He stumbled away from her, retrieved his longer
sword, then stepped into the column and vanished. Escaped. Again.

“Garth,” Kexal said, “Go see if Hali needs any
help.” He laid a gentle hand on Tyrissa’s shoulder. She hardly felt it as she
stared at the column of blue light. “Go on over to solid ground. We’ll regroup,
figure out what’s next. You hear me?”

Tyrissa looked away at from the column, down to
her feet, closing her eyes against the light, the grit, the tears. She nodded,
and followed Garth without a word, listening as Kexal gather up Wolef’s body.

The shaft of rock was still embedded in the wall,
but Hali had pulled herself off while they fought, leaving a grisly amount of
her amber blood along the spear and pooled on the floor. The color was
different, but the scene stuck home and Tyrissa felt her stomach heave as she
caught the scent, a sweet mix of blood and sap. Hali sat propped up against the
wall, her waved knife in hand. She probed the gaping wound in her abdomen with
the tip of the knife, her face a clenched mask of defied pain.