Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (29 page)

Tyrissa entered the broad, half-circle plaza at
the bottom of the avenue, the same one she visited this morning. Ahead, Vralin had
stopped at the base of the mills to lean against the pole of a night lamp, notably
staying well within the light. He drew back a sleeve to adjust something wrapped
around his left arm, the details obscured by distance. A slim figure, wreathed
in fire and trailing smoke, raced across the north side of the plaza at a speed
well beyond that of a normal human being. It was Ash.

The Windmage motioned up the street and bellowed
out command, though Tyrissa couldn’t hear the words. Ash shook her head,
prompting a vicious backhand from Vralin that sent her reeling. The flames that
Ash wore as a shawl flickered like a candle in the face of a tempest. She
pointed up the street and let loose a cord of white fire from her fingertips
that snaked through the air and coalesced into a massive orb of flame that
floated above the center of the plaza. Tyrissa blinked against the sudden searing
light that bathed the baker’s plaza and banished away all shadows. It burned
silently and a filled her with that tell-tale grip of frost running through her
bones. Her head swam for a moment as she felt the forces of Earth and Water
course through her in distinct circuits, like two dogs sizing each other up but
never striking.

Tyrissa circled around the orb at a generous
distance, not wanting to risk further reaction with it. She was worried enough
about what she had already absorbed tonight. Ash was gone by the time she
circled around the orb. Vralin had a hatch open on the underside of an ornate
bracer that encased his arm. He shook out a cluster of pearlescent discs that hit
the street in a series of sweet chimes. His breathing was loud and labored, and
his face had a pale cast not entirely from the white magick fire that illuminated
the area.

Vralin gave her a dismissive glance before
digging into a pocket to pull out a stack of crystalline discs, each about two inches
in diameter. He carefully slotted them into the bracer, though there were so
large they must have been sliding into his arm. Vralin closed the hatch and
sighed with relief as some color returned to his face.

“I’m being generous tonight, girl,” he called to
her. “I made a deal for two, not three. Don’t press your luck.”

Tyrissa kept coming in a slow march, staff
readied. She wanted to ask him so much, wanted to scream out questions. Why
this? How that? And most of all:
what am I
?
But words failed her.
Her mind was slowed in the lethargic grip of Earth, the frigid embrace of
Water. A terrible amount of power pulsed inside of her and she had no idea how
to control it. She didn’t know whom to be more wary of: Vralin or herself.

“Very well.” Vralin hitched up the bulky sack on
his back, shrugging against the weight of his prize. He extended one hand
towards her, palm upward, fingers slightly curled. A hot gale kicked up from
behind, carrying embers that flashed to piercing needles of cold on her back.
An overpowering heat enveloped her, as if she were bathing in a bonfire.

A surge of frost from within pushed back the
embrace of fire. Crystalline shells of ice hardened into being across her skin
like armor, then melted and flashed into steam only to be replaced by another
shell.

I cannot be burned.

The winds at her back broke against an anchor of earth.
The weight in her gut spread through her body, turning her legs into pillars
that were one with the sculpted stones below her feet, one with the very earth below.

I cannot be moved.

She couldn’t control it. She still wasn’t sure
how. But then again, she didn’t have to. She simply had to let go and trust the
Pact. For now. Time and place dissolved into an elemental storm and she was the
exhilarating calm at the center. She opened her eyes and through the haze of
steam and fire, she could see the incinerating winds carry on past her towards
Vralin. The Windmage faced down the flying flames and split the flow in two, his
hands guiding each branch around and above him to crash into mills at his back
and set them ablaze.

The clash of elements ended in a blink, leaving
only the smell of cinders and a vast puddle of water around her. She looked
down at herself. Aside from a few singed patches on her clothes, she was unharmed.
Even her staff only dripped from water, its wood and metal unaffected. She
looked up, remembering where she was. Vralin still stood there, sword now drawn
and half-raised, face hesitant when he saw a woman standing where he expected
nothing but bones and ash.

Dazed from the abating storm, Tyrissa couldn’t
think straight. There was still too much energy swirling around inside her. It
was too much of an effort to stand and her legs gave out. She fell to the wet
stones, catching herself with one hand. She was numbed from the cold, deadened
by the weight in her stomach. She could hear the approaching ring of horseshoes
striking the street, the howls of the riftwinds, the crackle of the burning
mills, and the hiss of a sword finding its sheath.

Get up.

There was another blast of wind. She barely felt
it. It took a mountain of effort to raise her head just in time to see Vralin
sail between the burning windmills and over the safety fences. He then fell
into the abyss of the Rift at a steady, controlled rate and vanished from
sight.

Overwhelmed, exhausted, and unable to hold on any
longer, Tyrissa collapsed into a welcomed abyss of her own.

Tyrissa could hear hushed voices speaking around
her, but she let herself fall back into sleep. She was at that borderline of
consciousness that has eluded her for weeks, where she had seen the
Other
trudging
through the snow
.
The babble of her dream-mind wavered, came close to
waking, and then broke into another vision.

Formless and flying, Tyrissa soared across the
floor of an arid valley, weaving between stray boulders and strange, squat
plants coated in sharp spines. Ruddy red and brown mountains rose ahead of her,
their slopes bare save for hardy pale green shrubs. The sun burned high in the
sky, creating a powerful dry heat that could sap moisture away in moments.
Tyrissa came to a stop in a clearing at the base of the mountains near the shadowed
entrance to a large cave. A girl stood at the center of the clearing,
surrounded by three men.

All four wore brown trousers tucked into
blackened leather boots. The men were bare-chested and bald, and the girl wore
a thin harness of leather straps around her chest, barely enough to be decent.
She didn’t seem to mind. No more than fourteen years old, she appeared to be in
charge. All four had deep brown skin nearly lustrous with sweat. Tattoos of
brilliant red ink ran across their exposed arms and shoulders like intertwining
snakes built of a foreign script that Tyrissa had seen once before. The girl’s tattoos
were the most elaborate, running down the length of her arms and spine.

She stood tensed and ready, feet spaced wide. She
nodded to the man in front of her. The three raised their hands in unison and
fire sprang from their palms, six searing lines that converged on the girl. They
were Fireweaver Pactbound.

She stood firm and didn’t even flinch as six
gouts of flame barreled into her and engulfed her entire body. The men lowered
their hands and watched. For a moment, they stood around a creature of pure
fire, an elemental. The fire dwindled away and the girl emerged from the
inferno untouched, smiling with a mad enthusiasm. She knelt and slammed a fist
to the earth in a single, smooth motion. A sudden flood of water erupted from
the impact. The three men stumbled against the flow but showed no alarm. As the
girl knelt, Tyrissa could see a circular emblem tattooed just below her neck,
the ink burning brighter than the rest. Once again it was the winged shield,
though this one’s shield was circular.

That makes three of us.
Tyrissa couldn’t
help but feel a little jealous of the other’s control.

The flood abated and all four returned to their
original positions. The girl laughed and cried out, “
Tela! Tela!”

The three men raised their hands and unleashed
another shower of fire. They didn’t stop this time, feeding an unending torrent
into their target. The girl bathed in the flames, dancing in a circle and
laughing all the while. It began to snow, swirling clouds of flakes appearing in
the air for fleeting moments before melting in the desert heat. Streams of
water flowed outward from her, carving miniature valleys in the dirt. Spears of
ice arced into the air as the interplay of water and fire became a storm, a
tempest of elemental power. Rising above it all was the marked girl’s laughter,
unceasing and unstable, as if she were barely in control of the fury around her
and loved every second of it.

Tyrissa felt a hand on her shoulder shaking her
awake and the vision faded.

She lay in a bed at one end of a long, cabin-like
room. The place had every look of a temporary residence that was slowly
becoming a long-term one. It was sparsely attired with basics like cots, a
table, and a pair of storage chests. The two windows set high on the wall to
either side of the door looked like they belonged to a warehouse. A weapon rack
stood against the far wall, and bore a pair of swords, a war hammer, and her
staff. Two travel lanterns lit the room with pale white elchemical light. Kexal
sat in a chair pulled over to the bed. Garth and Hali were seated at the central
table, both nursing steaming cups. She wasn’t surprised to see them. She had
seen enough hints of the presence at the tower.

Kexal leaned over her and said, “Mornin’ Ty.”

“Kexal… how long…” It was dark outside the windows.
Had she been out for an entire day? She needed to get back home at least and prove
to Liran she wasn’t dead somewhere. Never mind that she would be overdue at the
Cadre today. Especially today.

“You’ve only been out for a few hours. Should be
just about sun-up topside.”

So they were in an under district. That was some
relief, though she would almost certainly be late for work today. Tyrissa sat
up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She brushed some errant hair
off her face and massaged her forehead.

“Kid, just what the hell were you doing out there
last night?”

The details returned in a blink.

“Same as you, I think,” she replied. “Going after
Vralin.”

“Alone?”

Tyrissa shrugged. She never thought it was a
good
idea. It was her only one. In the end, it had worked out better
and
worse than she hoped.

“Well, you were lucky.”

“No argument here,” she said.

Tyrissa’s pact-sense of magick drew her eyes past
Kexal to the door where a pool of shadow crept along the floor. She raised a
hand and pointed it out as thoughts of daemons came to her mind. Then she
remembered the rooftops last night and the Shadowpact man that pursued and
clashed with Vralin.

Kexal followed her hand and said, “Wolef, you can
use the door like a decent person. All that talk of conservin’ your rods rings mighty
hollow when you Slide into my house.”

Her alarm and memories of daemons gave way to a
sudden, alluring curiosity. Though still groggy from sleep, Tyrissa tried to
isolate the sensation of shadow magick but the feeling soon vanished. The moving
shadow climbed onto the far wall of the room and resolved into the shape of a
man. Out from the shadows on the wall stepped a man clad in silken black
clothes and armed with twin long knives on his belt. His skin, like polished
ebony, marked him as an Evelander, though he much darker than Giroon or the Fireweavers
from the vision. His face was clean shaven with a broad nose and dark eyes. Short,
densely curled black hair topped his head.

“I see our guest has awakened and has a good
eye.” Wolef spoke with the precise enunciation of a learned yet practiced second
language. He gave them all a wide smile. Tyrissa fumbled for words, and stayed
quiet. He moved like a panther in the night as he walked to the table and unclipped
his belt, setting it and his weapons down with a stony thud.

Kexal stood and dragged his chair back to the
table, but remained standing and planted his hands on the chair’s back.

“Might as well start up a war council since we’re
all here.” He clicked his tongue a couple times before continuing. “He got away
again but we ain’t about to let that stop us. We roughed him up pretty good
last night. That should slow him down for a spell and give us a chance to prepare
for round three.”

Garth fished out a gilder and let it fall onto
the tabletop with a loud ring. He spread his hands to either side of it and
frowned.

“And we’re low on coin,” Kexal said, translating
and drumming his fingers against the chair. “Wonderful timing.”

“Already?” Wolef asked.

“No one does anything for free in this city and we
were really banking on that quarter million. Thought we had him. Guldres will
be mighty angry with us squandering that advanced payment.”

“I’ll soothe Master Guldres,” Hali said. “Don’t
worry about him.”

“Still got a few favors held over him?”

She nodded. “A few.”

“So it was a trap,” Tyrissa said. “Set up by
Guldres to lure Vralin out.”

“Yeah it was a trap, more or less. A botched one.
We didn’t think that the Talons were so heavily infiltrated. Gave them a little
too much credit.”

Tyrissa took some satisfaction in her theory
being correct, even if the night was ultimately a failure.

“I made the rounds this morning,” Wolef said. “It
appears no one expected the Thieves to carry out their threat in such fiery
fashion. The hit on the observatory was well executed, but the night as a whole
had more cracks in it than their previous activities. They didn’t melt away as
easily and took some losses last night. That might have broken some bonds,
loosened some tongues. I have a few leads that I’ll follow up on tonight.”

As he spoke, Wolef unclasped a black bracelet from
each wrist and pulled back the sleeves of his shirt. He ran a thumb down his forearm,
following the veins from elbow to wrist. A pitch black rod about six inches
long slid out into this palm. He held it up for a quick inspection and then
tapped it against the tabletop. The rod turned into wisps of black mist that
drained off the table and disappeared into the shadows on the floor. He
repeated the process on the other arm.

“Anything on Vralin?” Kexal asked.

“Nothing helpful. I Slid over the cliffs where he
jumped and found a cavern entrance that was scorched up from signal fires, likely
the handiwork of that pet of his, the Fireweaver girl. It was just below the
level of the under districts and is a place to start. Then again, we already assumed
he was hiding somewhere in the depths.”

“That artifact will take space and time to work
on, if that’s his aim,” Hali said.

“Speaking of,” Kexal said. “Hali, last night you
said you figured out what that thing was.”

“Yes. It’s a floatcore from Hithia.” Hali saw the
blank looks everyone gave her and continued. “The floatcores were crafted by Windmage
technicians and fueled the thrusters that kept the city flying. They were
somehow sabotaged to fail all at once during the Rhonian’s siege. I remember
the sound, like the sky shattering. The one Vralin took must have been a backup
and somehow survived the Fall and the subsequent centuries buried in the
rubble.”

“Wait,” Tyrissa interrupted, “Hithia fell two hundred
and sixty years ago.”

“Two hundred and fifty-eight, actually,” Hali
replied softly. “No one knows that number better than I.”

“Then how… ?”

Hali almost looked confused. “That’s right, I
never told you on the caravan. As a result of my specific Lifepact, I’m
immortal or near enough not to make a difference.” She spoke in an offhand
manner, as if discussing the weather. “As I recall, we had firekin to deal with
at the time. As for your inevitable follow-up questions: three hundred and
twelve. No sickness can touch me, no wounds are permanent, and the passage of
time leaves no mark. Is that clear?” She sounded as if she had explained it a
thousand times before.

Tyrissa nodded, realizing that her initial
assessment of Hali having a goddess’s face was more appropriate than she
thought.

“But that thing was broken,” Kexal said. “Right?
Big ole crack in it.”

“
Damaged
. What one Windmage built, another
could repair. Vralin
is
an elchemist after all.”

“Repair it to do what?”

Hali shrugged. “Floatcores were like faucets of
energy between our world and the Plane of Air. They drew in steady amounts of
air magicks and we used that energy to create lift for the city or power the forges
and sky skiffs. There were hundreds in Hithia but they were carefully throttled.
If properly modified, a single one has the potential to pull in a disastrous amount
of elemental power. It could create a new domain, or summon who knows what from
the Plane of Air, or even tear open a new Rift. We don’t know. One theory of
the Fall posits that the floatcores weren’t destroyed. They were overloaded.”

“In any case, something destructive,” Kexal said.

“We should assume so,” Hali agreed. “Vralin is
acting like a Pactbound whose patron is pressing him on.”

“Indeed,” Wolef said. “He’s taking very large
risks but seems to be sticking to a plan.”

“And tell me again why we didn’t use a decoy?” Kexal
asked.

“Vralin would have known,” Hali replied. “That
thing
bleeds
wind magick. It had to be the real one or he would have
felt its absence from outside the tower and left.”

“Fair enough. So for now, Garth and I will rustle
up some capital and Wolef will scout the depths. Hali, you’ll keep Guldres on
our side and we’ll give you a holler when we need you.”

“One more thing,” Tyrissa said. “I want in.”

“Do you now?” Kexal said, amused.

“Vralin was… odd around her,” Wolef added.
“Uncertain and hesitant.”

“Who wouldn’t be,” Kexal said with a smile.
“After that display at the mills, I’m not so sure we should even have you in
here. Might burn the place down.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Tyrissa said. “I
guess I should explain.”

They all saw what happened, so there was no use
in keeping too many secrets. She took a deep breath to sort her thoughts and kept
it brief: the interaction with pact magicks, the inversion of elemental energy,
her suspicion that Vralin was behind the disappearance of Karine, his hand in
Tsellien’s death, and finally the unfortunate point that he was still her best
source for answers for what, exactly, she was.

“I don’t have a lot of control but I think I know
just the person to help me out with that. Besides,” she grinned, “If you don’t
let me join up, I’ll just keep chasing him on my own.”

“I’ve got no problem with it, and you might be
useful,” Kexal said. “Anyone say otherwise?”

No one did.

“Welcome aboard.”