Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (7 page)

The far side of the hilltop dropped away into
sheer cliffs. Beyond, the Morgwood and foothills of the Norspine Mountains
rolled onward into the uninhabited northern wilderness. Myths of the far
reaches of the world greatly outnumbered facts. Even the ranger manuals were
silent on anything beyond the northern fringes of the Morgwood. Legends of
endless fields of snow where frost giants built cities of magick-infused ice
were the best they had. For a minute Tyrissa half-leaned on her staff and
stared into the seductive unknown, despite the sample at her back and below her
feet.

Glancing down the cliff, Tyrissa saw that below
the lip of the hilltop was a wide ledge that overlooked the steep drop. A wind
worn, dark colored obelisk stood half embedded in the rock. Tyrissa lowered
herself down the short drop to the ledge, happy to pass out of sight of the eerie
spire. The obelisk was not made of the same material as the spire, but bore
similar faded carvings and overall shape, like a waist-high sibling. She ran
her fingers along the runes, though it brought her no closer to understanding
any of it. There were two languages, one similar to old Morg runic, with many
geometric angles and cross-hashes. Tyrissa could slowly read the old Morg runic
language, but these were subtly unrecognizable, an antiquated dialect. The
other language was written in more organic shapes, like flows of blood made
into text. She cursed herself not bringing means to copy down the symbols for
later.

Opposite to the obelisk on the ledge was a cave
entrance. Tyrissa peered within and saw a wide doorway stood a short distance
within. The doors were constructed of the same black stone as the spire and
seemed to blend into the shadows. They stood open, the darkened interior
inviting and challenging. Tyrissa tightened and loosened her grip on her staff,
took a courage-fortifying breath of mountain air, and went inside to seek out answers.

It was far hotter inside than the mild summer day
at Tyrissa’s back. Beyond the black doors was a long hallway that burrowed into
the hillside, the walls made of the same, now omnipresent black stone. Tyrissa
pressed into the gloom, taking the knot in her stomach as steeled courage.
Frescos covered the walls in long, rambling panels, covered in more of the
alien script that was on the spire, as well as other symbols and designs that
defied explanation. It all felt unknowably ancient.

Tyrissa ran the fingers of her free hand along
the wall, seeking meaning through touch if not sight. There was no conceivable
order or logic to the work, script mixed with shapes and icons at random. As
she passed, the occasional face or recognizable animal would emerge from the
chaotic crowd of foreign symbols, but they only further obfuscated any meaning
in the expansive mural.

Enchanted by the eerie frescos, she was well into
the hall before realizing that, despite the enveloping blackness of the
stonework, the interior of the ruin wasn’t entirely dark. She carried no light
source and the sunlight from the entrance seemed to stop a few feet into the
hall, as if hitting a wall. Yet there was a clinging luminance within the
hallway, degrees of shadows rather than light, that caused the strange carvings
on the walls to twist and contort as she passed. A few narrower halls split off
from the main passageway, but many of those were filled with rubble from
collapsed ceilings and fully darkened in every case.

If the silence above ground was unnerving, here
it was overpowering. The scrape of her footfalls upon the stone floor took
shape as whispers in her ears, speaking in sinister tongues of unknowable
syllables, the language of the twisted art on the walls. Tyrissa shook her head
to clear away the doubts and fears of an overactive imagination. Every few
paces she would step onto a softer patch of floor and saw flecks of that black
ash clinging to the sides of her boots. At each muffled footfall, she would
quicken her pace until she stood upon clear stone again. She pressed on,
heartbeat rising with each step.

At the end of the hall, what appeared to be a far
wall in the distance was merely the black ceiling descending into a deep
stairway. To her eyes, the dim light and steep angle made each step merge into
a smooth slope. Furtive sunlight crept into sight at the base of the stairs far
below, perhaps an entry to the large cavern she had seen from above. The light
was inviting and despite the heat weighing in and the sweat running down her
face, Tyrissa wanted nothing more than the warmth of that light.

Steadying herself with one hand on the wall, she
started to descend the inky black stairwell and entered a void. Each step
echoed away from her to be swallowed by the darkness. The stairway stretched on
forever, hundreds of steps, as if she wasn’t moving at all. She was utterly
isolated, an island of life in a place devoid of it. She used her staff as a
guide, feeling out each step before taking it, making sure there were steps to
take and not a sudden drop into an abyss. Either seemed equally likely, equally
rational. The whispers returned, louder but still indistinct, alien. The
thought of turning around and running never occurred to her. Tyrissa could only
see the light below drawing closer and resolutely marched downward. She would
not be afraid. If she reached the light all would be well. All would be well.

As her feet landed at the base of the stairway,
the whispers stopped, the heat dissipated, and relief washed over her like a
cool rain. She stood in a plain hexagonal chamber, built of the same black
stone but the floor clear of ash and the walls free of murals. A grand arched
doorway, fifteen feet tall, stood before her. One of the stone doors lay
crumbled on the other side of the threshold, torn off its unseen hinges as if
it were paper. Tyrissa stepped around the still standing door and into yet
another scene from the tales.

Within lay a massive chamber, hundreds of feet
long and half as wide, a cathedral of stone. Both sides of the room curved
sharply upward to the roof, mimicking the shape of the doorway. Giant frescos
covered the walls, dwarfing the ones above in their sinister grandeur.
Afternoon sun poured through dozens of cracks in the ceiling. A long crevasse
ran along the center of the roof, casting a highway of light among the smaller
pools of gold upon the stone floor. Much of the chamber was bare, the floor a
seamless piece of black stone dusted with pebbles and debris from the cracks
above. On the far side of the room the base of the spire descended from the
roof, a thin pyramid that merged into the far wall. A great pile of rubble,
twenty feet tall, lay at the base of the spire, ringed by a skirt of scattered
debris. A lone figure lay face down and unmoving on the floor, a discarded
scrap of life. Tyrissa recognized it from a distance. It was Tsellien. She
hadn’t come back through Edgewatch for a terrible reason.

Any earlier hesitation forgotten, Tyrissa broke
into a sprint across the grand hall, boots crunching against the layer of
pebbles and dust that coated parts of the floor, each step a grinding echo in
the cavernous and otherwise silent space. A curious flash of warmth washed over
her as she drew near, like a rush of blood to the head. Tsellien was long dead,
though well preserved. No smell of decay hung in the air and at a glance the
warrior could have been mistaken for unconscious were it not for the thin knife
buried deep in the nape of her neck. A dried patch of blood encircled her head,
a profane halo. Her sword lay nearby, the blade broken and the crystalline orb
shattered.

Tyrissa kept a few steps away from the corpse,
unsure of what to do. She looked around for anything that would shed further light
on what happened here. The giant pile of rubble at the base of the spire wasn’t
made of stones fallen in from the hilltop, but held shapes. Judging by the many
stone limbs and faces among the rubble, it looked to be the collapsed statue of
some monstrous creature. A neatly arranged circle of stones sat nearby and
around that was a ring of runes sketched onto the floor with white chalk. Three
human skulls, picked clean to a bright white sat evenly spaced atop the stones,
staring inward at the center. It was a ritual circle, straight from the
stories. Tyrissa moved closer and saw that the three skulls gazed at a pointed,
pyramidal gem in the middle of the macabre arrangement. It shone with gentle
silver light and beckoned with a slight tug in her heart that begged for
Tyrissa to take it away from this terrible place. Just as she moved to do so,
the shadows at the base of the ruined statue began to boil, bubbles and coils
of animate darkness leaping among the rubble.

“I wouldn’t disturb that, were I you,” said a
chorus of voices that came from all directions. Tyrissa raised her staff to a
defensive pose on pure reflex, only to lose focus as a patch of shadow detached
itself from the rubble and flowed towards the gem. It stopped on the opposite
side of the stone ring and grew upward. From the moving shadows emerged a black
outline, a silhouette. It grew in mass and paled to an ashen gray humanoid
form. Tyrissa found herself backing away with eyes fixed on the shifting shape
and fear rising ever higher in her gut.

It came into focus as an approximation of a human
figure, hairless and naked, but utterly androgynous, like a template that
needed severe refinement. Its face was dominated by a wide, gaping mouth lined
with too many narrow, white teeth. Behind the teeth lay only a black void. Its
eyes were a milky white and without pupils, but Tyrissa could feel that it was
looking right at her. Or perhaps through her. It flexed its overly large hands,
the fingers ending in curved black talons.

“Daemon,” Tyrissa said, her throat tightening in
dread. A creature of mythology, of fiction stood before her. No, not fiction.
They were the very real puppet masters of the Cleanse, the whisperers that
turned men into savage, depraved beasts.

Its face split into a broad, feral smile.

“A sharp girl. My name is Xivo. Will you tell me
yours?”

“No.” Daemons were featured in many of her
favorite epics and half the time a daemon that knew your name was stronger than
one that did not. In the other half it made no difference. Her mind raced to
remember anything that might be useful, but came up blank. She knew to be
afraid. That much was easy.

The daemon moved toward her with an unnerving,
sensual grace. It did not walk so much as glide across the floor. As it came
closer an overpowering scent churned her stomach, vile and sweet, the rot of an
unkempt slaughterhouse masked by lavender. The sun’s warmth washed over her as
she back peddled into a pool of light from above. Somehow, she found the nerve
to stand her ground.

How much of the stories are true?

Xivo reached out a hand as if to stroke Tyrissa’s
cheek. It began to smolder as it crossed into the sunlight. The daemon drew
back, but looked unconcerned. It tilted its head to one side and regarded her
with narrowed eyes, as if reassessing a piece of meat at the market.

“Clever indeed. I am so happy that you arrived,
child. The boredom of being bound here was becoming unbearable. I wish to make
a simple deal with you. Then I’ll let you leave with your fragile
all-too-mortal life.”

“No.” The answer is always no. Never agree to a
daemon’s requests. She wanted to run, but Xivo’s unearthly stare kept frozen in
place. Nor did she want to leave the apparent safety of the sunlight.

“Come now, don’t be difficult. You are weak, you
are nothing,” it waved a hand at Tsellien’s body. “That one, she was strong,
beyond corruption, and,” it growled, “victorious, after a fashion. Her
companions were less so, weak points in the armor. Not so…
blessed.
”

“No,” she said again. This time it was a meek whisper,
that of a field mouse protesting against the will of a falcon. The daemon
ignored her and continued.

“All I need is a donation of human blood. Our
magick of blood and souls is complicated, you wouldn’t understand the details.
I would need a considerable amount, to be sure, but you appear sturdy in body
and
should
live through the process. Do this and I shall let you leave.
Once you have the strength to walk, that is. What do you say?”

In a single motion, Tyrissa raised her staff and
spun in a tight arc, smashing one end into the side of the daemon’s head with
as much force as she could muster. A sickening snap echoed in the great hall
and the daemon fell to the floor with its neck bent at a freakish angle. Not
waiting to see if it was dead, Tyrissa turned and ran into the long streak of
sunlight that led to the entrance. It said that it was bound here, if she could
make it out of the chamber…

A roiling patch of shadow flashed along the
ground beside her. It overtook her and stopped between the end of the streak of
sunlight and the broken grand doorway. Tyrissa stopped at the end of the sunlit
channel and watched in horror as Xivo reformed, rising from the patch of shadow
like a melting wax statue in reverse. When fully rebuilt it appeared slightly smaller.
One clawed hand massaged its neck as it walked towards her, seductive and
lethal. Tyrissa glanced down at the pool of sunlight and stepped into the very
center, staff held up in defense, quivering in her hands.

“I see I must take what I want,” the daemon’s
all-surrounding voices said.

“Come on then, monster,” she said, her trembling
voice betraying away any feigned confidence.

“Child, I have all the time in the netherworld,”
its head tilted upward at the afternoon sunlight pouring through the roof. “I
can wait until nightfall.”

A cloud passed over the sun. Xivo grinned.

“Or that.”

The daemon’s body thinned to a near-skeletal
state and its right hand bulged, contorting and reshaping itself. In a blink,
foot-long talons burst from the fingertips its hand. Xivo leapt forward with
shocking speed, talons whistling through the air. Tyrissa took a step back and
managed to deflect the blow but the weight behind it sent her stumbling
backward. The daemon’s thin hand darted out and punched the center of her
chest, knocking her to the floor and the breath out of her lungs. Tyrissa sat
up, gasping for air, and swept her staff into the daemon’s legs. Its knees
buckled but it did not fall, and it merely raised its talons to strike in
reprisal, face a mask of eerie calm. Tyrissa tried to roll out of the way but
was a fraction of a second to slow. There was a razor flash of pain as one
talon struck true and opened a deep gash across her right shoulder. The others
gouged small scratches in the ancient temple floor.

Tyrissa pressed a hand to her shoulder as she
stood. The wound bled heavily, bright red streams running down her arm, but the
shoulder was unbroken. She gripped her staff tighter and swung at the daemon.
Again it dodged, flowing away from her attacks with infernal grace. Xivo’s
strikes came slower now, each getting blocked but always managing to slip a
single light cut past her defenses. They repeated the sequence many times, a
strike, a block, a fresh cut in a new place, and a step backward to recover. The
grim dance pushed Tyrissa to ruin, her clothes and skin gradually cut to bloody
tatters. The daemon was toying with her, draining out her energy and enjoying
every moment of it.

The sun had returned, but their melee had pulled
them away from the refuge of light. The pools of safety lay too far away, were
too fleeting, and were too late.

There’s no way out. No escape.

The thought vanquished the splintered remains of
her spirit. She was going to die here.

As if sensing her despair, Xivo stopped and
stretched a smile around the sides of its head. Its small, withered hand
snapped out and ripped the staff from Tyrissa’s hands with ease. The daemon’s
talons merged back into its body, its arms expanded with grotesque muscles, and
it swung the staff in a vicious underhand. Tyrissa felt ribs shatter beneath
the blow’s unreal force as she was knocked into the air, thrown about like a
doll. A second hard blow greeted her when she hit the floor and slid to a stop
against Tsellien’s corpse.