Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (6 page)

“I—” she stopped herself short, considering the
why. “It seemed too personal. The way they look at her, or rather,
not
look at her makes me think they don’t know the truth either. I’d just get their
versions.”

“Showing more maturity already,” he said with a
smile. “Now, enough of this grim,
adult
talk, this is a joyous occasion.
My little girl is no longer little, and no longer a girl.”

Orval stood and went to the door. There, he
retrieved a staff propped against the doorframe. So absorbed was she in the
book, Tyrissa hadn’t noticed her father bring it inside. Their talk and the
stories of her new book vanished from her thoughts as her heart jumped in
excitement.

“I thought it would be a few more days,” she
said, the words rushing out.

“I pushed your order to the front,” her father
said as he reentered the pool of lamplight. “The mending of chairs and building
shelves can wait for this.”

He held the staff up horizontally in his
weathered upturned palms.

“For you, my daughter, on the day of your rise to
womanhood.”

Tyrissa sprang up, smile as broad as it’s ever
been, and accepted the weapon with a little bow. The storm gray wood was
smooth, pristine. Three bands of polished steel were set into the staff, a long
one at the center and two narrower bands at either end. Tyrissa took a few
steps back and gave her new staff a few slow, experimental spins and swings.
The balance was exquisite, though it was little long with room for growth.

Tyrissa laughed and threw her arms around her
father in a tight hug.

“It’s perfect. Thank you, papa.”

They embraced in silence for a moment before
Orval said, “I wish you’d tell me where that tree is.” There was a touch of
hunger in his voice. He could make a fortune from that tree, given the rarity
of steeloak lumber. A woodworker with nigh-indestructible products would be
well off indeed. Her father wasn’t greedy, but was a business man all the same.

“You just said how you’ve had to leave the old
ways behind Papa. That tree belongs to the forest and those who still follow
old paths.”

He pulled away, hands on her shoulders, and gave
her the look of a man who just outwitted himself.

“That I did,” he said nodding, beard curling around
that small smile of his. “That I did.”

Tyrissa awoke before summer’s early dawn, her
mind too full of anticipation to sleep any further. She craned her neck back
and looked up at the tall thin window set into the wall above the head of her
bed. The aurora’s hazel light filtered through the thick pane of glass,
promising clear skies. Lying there in the near-darkness, she smiled to herself.
Today would be the day she traveled to the distant, beckoning spire that she’d
spied from the steeloak’s branches.

Fighting down the excitement that jolted away any
lingering lethargy of sleep, Tyrissa lay still and ran her eyes over her darkened
bedroom. It was small and narrow, partitioned off a few years ago (at her
mother’s insistence) from the much larger bedroom now shared by Oster and Sven.
Her room was just large enough to hold a bed, a stout storage chest and the
proper level of privacy for a young lady. Two built-in shelves lined the
dividing wall with twenty-three books in a neat row upon the upper shelf:
Tyrissa’s collection of adventure tales, myths, and a pair of well-loved ranger
almanacs. Each was a treasured gift, a hard earned purchase, or simply
‘borrowed’ on a very long term basis. Tyrissa listened for the sound of other
early risers, but heard nothing but her own breath. Today was the day of rest
after all, and the Jorensen household was still. It was time.

The would-be explorer sat up, threw aside her
quilt and peeled off her night clothes. Her skin broke into goose bumps against
the cooled night air as she sprang out of bed and padded over to the storage
chest. It opened without a sound (she had oiled the hinges a few days ago to be
certain) and she grabbed the bundle of clothes set aside the night before.
Tyrissa pulled on her outfit for the day, consisting chiefly of a faded green
shirt with short sleeves that stopped just below the shoulder and her favored
pair of earth-tone trousers that were, week by week, becoming a bit too tight
at the hips.

As she blindly worked her belt on, Tyrissa mentally
ran through the contents of the small pack attached to the belt. It held a fair
amount of jerky, nuts, dried berries, and bread pilfered from her mother’s
pantry and an empty water skin. There were also a few matches, a length of
bandages, and an extra pair of woolen socks.

Ranger rule number twenty-one: always carry
extra socks.

Tyrissa clipped on her knife, which had jokingly
become known as
Wurmslayer
. Lastly, she retrieved her new, but already
prized, steeloak staff from the lower shelf. It was unnamed and every idea for
one felt forced. Weapons had to earn their names.

Everything was readied. Tyrissa picked up her
boots and padded down the hallway, through the living room and out the front
door. Her bare arms flushed red against the crisp morning air, an invigorating
feeling to begin the long day to come. The common green lay as quiet the house
at her back. Only a pair of the other houses had windows illuminated with
bleary, yellow light creeping through curtained windows. The mix of the hazel fire
of the aurora and blue, pre-dawn light made the village look as if it were
underwater. All she could hear were the caws of the morning crows and the
occasional bleat from the nearby sheep flocks.

Tyrissa trotted northward across the village
green, racing to be away from the eyes of any waking neighbors. She paused only
to fill her water skin at one of the wells and made it to the outer edge of
town as the pink light of dawn ignited the soaring faces of the Norspine
Mountains to the northwest. She would be alone, of course, both to have total
ownership of this discovery and in the interest of speed. Her brothers or
friends could never match the effortless way she could glide through the
forest, and she had many hours of travel over rough terrain ahead of her. She
ran through the route in her mind countless times over the last week. Out
before the dawn, at the spire by midday, and back by evening, just in time for
one of the final family dinners before Liran returned to the caravan for good.
He would be traveling back to Khalanheim soon, and Tyrissa wanted to say
good-bye with the tale of her own adventure.

Pastures for the herds of charcoal colored sheep
and the bulky
kaggorn
lined the northern fringe of Edgewatch, filling in
the space left by the retreating edge of the Morgwood. Tyrissa slowed to a walk
as she passed the low stone walls of the pastures, glancing over the fields at
a herd of about twenty sheep. A shepherd and his dog, both unrecognizable at
this distance and light level, glanced at her in unison but turned back to
their mutual watch without a word. Tyrissa continued unhurried, letting the sun
grow strong enough to light the canopy-dimmed trails. Everything was coming
together just as she planned. Even the aurora would be at its hazel peak tonight,
bright enough to light her way should she take that long to return home. As the
abrupt edge of the forest rose higher, so too did her excitement. Crossing into
the tree line always felt like crossing into a different world. Her world.

The trails around Edgewatch were well packed and
Tyrissa knew them better than anyone. She struck off into the forest, the first
part of her northwest route long since memorized in other excursions. With the
arrival of sunlight the forest awakened into its usual chorus of faint rustles,
bird song, and the buzzing of insects. To Tyrissa, it was the sound of
contentment and belonging. She quickened her pace under the shelter of the
forest, her thoughts wrapped up in the thrill of what lay ahead.

As the initial hours and miles passed, the route
turned from the well-trod routes of men, to forgotten and disused paths, to
narrowed, natural game trails or untouched forest floor. Tyrissa knew from her
schooling and her own explorations that there used to be a great many of homesteaders
who preferred to live within the woods, either single family cabins or isolated
clusters of homes. Their occasional traffic back to town would keep the trails
clear, and extended the reach of man over the Morgwood.

The Cleanse had taken them all. The forest’s
isolation made them easy prey for the roving bands of Pactbound raiders, or
from the other side of the coin, they became pockets of corrupted men that had
to be purged. People shunned the forest after the Cleanse, unfairly associating
the shade of the trees to the shadow that crept through Morg hearts in those
dreadful years. Now they clung to the still partially empty cities and towns
for the perceived safety of numbers, civilization, and the reach of the king
and his sentinels. Their abandoned cabins stood scattered through the southern
reaches of the Morgwood, ruined and silent reminders of a discarded way of
life.

It was approaching noon when the forest thinned
and dropped away into a wide, glacier-carved valley. Tyrissa fished out handfuls
of dried berries and nuts from her pack as she picked her way down to the
valley floor. Here, she would turn west towards the mountains and avoid the
detours caused by crevasses that broke the direct route. A long gradual rise to
the foothills stretched ahead of her and as always the forest floor was strewn
with nature’s chaos: varied shrubs and saplings sprouting between errant
boulders and the occasional fallen tree.

Tyrissa inhaled a full breath of the sweet, crisp
air and broke into a run, kicking up dead pine needles in her wake. She ran
with a focused yet reckless abandon, flowing through the forest like water over
rapids. Every obstacle was part of the route, the variable ground all part of
the plan. Fallen trunks were vaulted over, low hanging branches ducked below,
fields of rocks became stepping stones, and the soft forest floor cushioned
each landing. Any waver of balance from an uneven step became part of the flow
and part of the thrill as the Morgwood blurred around her. The idea that should
might take a serious fall and injure herself never crossed Tyrissa’s mind.
Alone and wounded this far from the village, she would be easy prey for the
wolves or wurms. But that was impossible. She was a ranger of the woods. In
those moments of flight through the forest, she was invincible. She would only
stop when her breath struggled to keep up, or if her balance ever verged on
being lost. The breaks were time to savor the taste of youth, of freedom.

“This is what I want, papa,” Tyrissa said to the
sky while running her hand along a nearby tree, through gentle moss and rough
bark. She wanted the forest, the hunt, the exploration. She wanted to be the
guide, the watcher, the Ranger.

I want something that’s no longer needed. I
want something we’ve left to the past,
the voice of reality reminded her.
Tyrissa tried to push the idea away. It was persistent, but even when she tried
to imagine herself as something practical, her mind drew a blank slate. She
couldn’t be something so mundane. She wouldn’t allow it.

Her feet begged to run again, and she obliged.
The foothills of the Norspine loomed higher, beckoning her closer. Tyrissa
could see base of the hill where the curious black spire stood, though the top
lay obscured by the forest marching up the slope. She ran on towards her goal,
trying to escape her own thoughts and doubts.

Soon Tyrissa had to slow her pace, as the closer
she came to her destination, the more rock-strewn the valley became. For a time
she paid it no mind, but eventually she noticed that something was amiss. The
rocks and boulders littering the valley floor weren’t the typical, half-buried
and erosion-worn stones of the Morgwood, but fresh and bright. They sat atop crushed
grass and many trees had recently scarred trunks. She thought back to her
original idea of a landslide, but there was no wake of an avalanche to be seen
and too many trees stood unharmed. It was as if it had rained stone.

By the time she reached the base of the hilltop
with the strange spire, Tyrissa cautiously picked her steps around the serrated
stone fragments that littered the ground. She already bore a pair of minor
scratches and a tear in her trousers from careless stumbles. Looking up the
hillside she saw that it was an easy climb clear of the disconcerting fresh rubble
of the valley floor. On her left the Norspine Mountains dominated the western
horizon, the sheer cliffs of Giant’s Gap soaring thousands of feet above her.
Sparse isles of clouds drifted over the summits, blemishes on the day’s
otherwise brilliantly clear skies. Using her staff as a hiking stick Tyrissa
began her ascent of the hillside.

Tyrissa felt a silence descend around her. The
ever-present sounds of the forest did not follow her up the slope. Halfway to
the crest of the hill she paused to simply listen and she could hear only her
own breath and the wind sighing through needled boughs. It was unnatural, and
the disquietude of the stillness wormed into her heart. Briefly, she flirted
with the thought that this journey was a bad idea. No, ridiculous. Tyrissa
resumed the climb, reassuring herself that there was nothing to fear here.

At the hill’s crest, Tyrissa laid eyes upon a
landscape that belonged in one of her adventure novels. The hilltop was nearly
flat, as if a rusted razor had shorn off whatever natural peak it once had.
Fallen trees ringed the space, all pointed away from the center where the pitch
black spire jutted from the ground like a thorn piercing the skin of the earth.
The spire bore faded, unfamiliar runes etched deep into its otherwise smooth
surface. The ground circling the base of the spire was blackened and broken, as
if charred by fire. All was still save for the stirrings of the wind.

This must be what Tsellien was looking for,
Tyrissa
thought, though her directions had been slightly off; Giant’s Gap lay a few
miles to the north of here. They hadn’t passed through Edgewatch on their
return trip, much to her disappointment.

Stepping around one of the blasted-flat trees,
Tyrissa crossed the rocky plain to the edge of the black circle. Despite the
land’s appearance of being recently charred, the air didn’t carry the long
lingering scent of wildfire. She knelt at the edge of the charred circle and
extended a cautious hand, running a finger along a blackened stone. Her finger
came away with a clinging layer of pitch black ash, utterly devoid of the
natural grays and whites. Flicking the ash off with her thumb, she watched as
it fell back to the ground without drifting on the air. Indeed, despite the
light wind, no ash stirred from the black circle surrounding the pointed spire.
For all appearances, it could have been painted on.

Tyrissa walked a circuit along the edge of the
ash, obeying her gut feeling that it would be a poor idea to step directly on
it. The spire constantly drew her eye, its surface smooth and polished like
obsidian, yet reflecting none of the afternoon’s sunlight. The etched runes ran
in coiling spirals upward along its height. Questions of who built this and
when bounced through Tyrissa’s head. She racked her memory for stories, true or
otherwise, modern or mythic, of anything similar to the spire, but nothing came
to mind. It was a complete mystery.

As she made her way around the circle, she
spotted crooked gaps with shadowed depths hidden among the black ash. Crevasses
opened by whatever broke away the hilltop and exposed the spire, no doubt. The
ground was violently cracked between many of the gaps in the earth, causing the
entire area to look unstable and further discouraging a closer look. Still,
Tyrissa paused near a crevasse close to the circle’s edge and tried to peer
within. At first she saw naught but shadow but soon she noticed a stream of
sunlight beaming through the depths. She leaned in for a closer view, gingerly
stepping atop the ash, and saw that a large cavern lay just below the surface
of the plateau. No, not a cavern. She could barely make out a stone floor far
below.

“Like the icebergs of fjordland,” she said to
herself, resuming the slow circuit. There was much more of this ominous
curiosity hidden from view and she cast her eyes about for an entrance. Nothing
presented itself as such; the blasted hilltop was uniform outside of the
ash-coated center.