Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (46 page)

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.”

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.

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.

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.