Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (14 page)

Liran joined her and said, “You just watched the
most important exchange of the entire trip.”

“What’s that?”

“Water rights, as much as we can carry. We’ve
three days here to rest and restock. Soon we enter the worst of it.”

One, two, three, four.

The clack of her staff deflecting a sword strike
followed each mental beat. Tyrissa could hear the hiss of water, behind and far
below. Kexal chose to have their training session atop Roduun’s dam, a curve of
land cutting across the water and grown in with scraggly trees that lined the
road to the opposite shore. At a glance, you’d never know you were standing on
a massive stone dam plugging up the nameless river that meandered through
Vordeum. Entrances to the dam’s bowels dotted the wooded area, well preserved
examples of that ubiquitous Vordeum stonework. ‘We should get away from the
caravan for a spell’ Kexal had said. Tyrissa only wished he had thought of it
earlier. They would leave Roduun tomorrow morning.

Five, six, seven, eight.

The big man’s attacks came slower, but from
wildly different angles. Kexal’s teaching style was unstructured and chaotic.
He never told you what you were about to practice, he just came out swinging
and expected you to figure it out on your own, and quickly. With all his talk
of ‘No philosophy, no forms’ the Jalarni valued improvisation above all.
Tyrissa doubted he ever had a plan when he gathered his small group of
temporary disciples every other night. Everything was off the cuff, in the
moment. Tyrissa could respect that.

One, two, three, four.

Their group numbered five today, including Garth
who observed from the base of a nearby tree, a notepad and pencil in hand,
making adjustments to a series of schematics. Kexal recruited four of the
Khalan North guards into his training circle, though only Jearn and Rorstel had
come along today. They were all young, eager, and gluttons for the punishment
Kexal was able to dish out for hours at a time. The man never seemed to tire of
the practices, the honing of skill. Tyrissa was able to defeat the other
trainees most of the time, but they seemed to have come to accept that, and
shrug off any inherent shame of being beaten by some northern girl. She could
feel herself getting better, but wondered how necessary it all was. Eventually
her Pact would manifest itself. What good was a staff when you had
magick
?
Then again, Tsellien carried weapons and wore armor, even if none of it saved
her in the end.

Five, six
—

‘Seven’ landed just above her left elbow. Tyrissa
clenched her teeth against the shock and sighed at herself for getting
distracted. While these training sessions helped with putting those worries out
of her mind, they still cropped up from time to time.

“Now, you were just about finished, Ty. Only a
few more swings.”

“You always say that, whether you get me in the
beginning or after ten sets.” And he always got her.

“I do,” he grinned while tossing his wooden
practice sword between hands, “Because you never know how long it’ll last.”
Kexal looked to the sky, noting the sun’s descent. “We should pack it up. It’s
back to work tomorrow.” The two guild trainees had already gathered up their
share.

“When’s the next time, Kexal,” asked Jearn, the
elder of the two, and probably senior in rank in the guild.

Kexal glanced over his shoulder to the south,
towards the Vordeum Wastes.

“After the pass down into Lirveer.” The answer
wasn’t surprising. Tyrissa figured there would be no motivation for practice in
the days to come, if the Vordeum Wastes were half of what was said of them.

They returned knowing nods, bid their goodbyes,
and left through the trees.

Tyrissa knelt at her pack, dampening a cloth with
her canteen and wiping down her face. It was hotter here than the worst days of
a Morgale summer, long after the season’s peak according to the calendar.

She said to Kexal, “Worried about what’s ahead?”

“Any reasonable man would be. The wastes ain’t
some easy stroll. But, hey, we did it once before. Right Garth?”

His brother made a quick sign in response.

“Yeah, should be safer with the caravan.”

“Why did you go to Morgale in the first place?”
Tyrissa had asked Liran if he’d seen the two Jalarni on the way up. He hadn’t
noticed them. Or Hali, for that matter.

“Chasin’ a ghost,” Kexal said wrapping a trio of
practice blades together. “We’re bounty hunters. Our mark went north to Morgale
and we followed in kind.”

“But you lost him.”

“That’s right. He gave us the slip around Greden.
Your country is pretty and all, but has too damn many places to disappear. It
was worth a shot, given the value on his head.”

Tyrissa stood and shouldered her pack. She turned
to gaze out over the lower part of the river, the winding trickle that the dam
let through. The river cut southeast, carrying its thread of life well away
from the Heartroad’s route and the approaching wastes.

“Since we’re sharin’, what spurred you to go to
Khalanheim?”

The question took her by surprise, and Tyrissa
was glad that she had her back to Kexal. In her weeks with the caravan, no one
asked her why she was there. She never thought up a cover story, never thought
she would need one.

Kexal saved her from fumbling for a lie, “You
know what, forget I asked. Just seein’ the world, right?”

Tyrissa turned and gave him a thankful smile. He
seemed to understand without knowing specifics.

“Right.”

The landscape withered as they continued
southward, the blend of green and yellow grasses turning to dry stretches of
shrub dotted brown and red as the Expanse of Vordeum became the Wastes. It only
grew hotter, even as the season should be shifting toward autumn, as far as the
calendar was concerned. Snaking river-carved gullies were the main source of
life, sparsely populated by dusty little villages and holdfasts so small that
the caravan wouldn’t bother to stop.

Tyrissa rode Roth today with Anton, though the
master handler was quite capable of directing a mastodon alone. He would fire
off quick little tasks to Tyrissa, but the work was easy and allowed her plenty
of time to drink in the desolate scenery, even if actual water was the scarcest
sight.

The caravan had new followers in the skies. A
growing flock of black birds soared above them, gliding on skeletal wings that
granted flight in spite of a lack of feathers. When a bird flew low, it would
burst aflame and lift upward, the fire trailing behind it like a comet’s tail.
Emberhawks, they were called, and they grew in number the deeper they traveled
into the wasteland, a macabre entourage that would descend to feast on any
scraps of meat or the remains of horses that succumbed to sickness or heat,
tearing away the flesh in charred strips.

“They are a bad omen,” Anton said grimly. “No
traveler wishes to have the eyes of emberhawks on his back.”

“And what would be a good omen?” Tyrissa asked
while eying the sky.

“Clear skies and cool winds. We’ll find neither
in the coming days.”

Tyrissa expected a desert, and this land exceeded
her imagination. The Vordeum Wastes were utterly barren, and shockingly so.
Short bald mountains formed the distant horizon on either side, as lifeless as
the rocky fields that flanked the Heartroad. There were no forgotten ruins
here, and even the enduring Heartroad lay broken or buried in stretches. The
heat in the air was odd as well. It wasn’t the sweltering heat of a blazing sun
but an underlying, penetrating heat that permeated your bones. The air was
thick and Tyrissa felt like she was being roasted alive. The storied, stark
chill of desert nights was absent, instead the heat stubbornly lingered hours
after sunset, the fleeting hours before dawn were their only respite.

They kept a moderate pace, a cruel balance of
speed and caution against exertion. Still, some of the horses withered and died
at shocking speeds, well watered or not, healthy or not, many after they made
camp for the night. They were butchered in short order, the investment
partially recovered in the form of the chef’s nightly stew. It was palatable,
but Tyrissa found the means made it taste unpleasant. Such efficiency applied
to any wagons that broke down or found themselves without draft animals,
stripped of parts, their cargos shifted elsewhere. No such fate befell anyone
in the caravan, thankfully. In fact, Tyrissa couldn’t recall anyone being
seriously ill since they left Morgale.

The mastodons held up well, though Tyrissa
noticed Hali switching between them every couple hours, full of reassuring
whispers and closely examining each beast. Her suspicions of the woman’s nature
rose with the temperatures. Every time the woman switched to the other
mastodon, Tyrissa found herself subconsciously looking in Hali’s direction, her
attention pulled by a gentle tug and an odd sense of serenity in the midst of
the stresses of the wastes. That worried her more than the heat or the blasted
landscape or the growing flock of emberhawks eyeing the caravan from above.

Against all tension that the wastes gave the
caravan, the alert flag flew yellow for the first three days. Stillness ruled
to land to either side of the Heartroad, and by the middle of the second day
they no longer saw signs of human habitation, past or present. Tyrissa found
that she missed those haunting columns of stone. They were evidence that the
land could, at one point, accommodate life and a visual record of the day’s
progress. The Vordeum Wastes granted neither. This was no land of adventure and
hidden treasures. This was a land of nothing.

Smoke shrouded the world in a pallid fog. No
breeze stirred the air and the flags atop the
North Wind
hung limp. The
alert flag flew red today and the caravan moved at a crawl throughout the
morning, the wagons drawn into a tight circle around the barge and mastodons.
From Roth’s back, Tyrissa could only see a few hundred feet before the
landscape and Heartroad vanished into the haze. The outriders stayed close,
fading in and out of sight ahead of the caravan. Her eyes watered and burned
when they trudged through the denser banks of smoke that intermittently billowed
across the road, carried on wind currents no one could feel. Sometimes, a burst
of flame would cut through the haze above them as the emberhawks continued
their escort, their numbers hidden. She had a knack for turning to catch sight
of them through the haze, following an unconscious mental pull, similar to what
she felt around Hali on occasion.

Tyrissa tugged at the moistened bandana tied
tight about her face, the sky blue color now lost among the grime from smoke
and sweat. Anyone outside the barge wore similar masks, in addition to water
skins and whatever weapons they were handy with. She ran a hand over her staff,
wedged under a pair of rope handles on the platform and taking some comfort in
having it near, though it was clumsy to carry up to the Roth’s back. This was
the hottest day yet in the wastes and Tyrissa could feel the grit of the smoke
mixing with her sweat, coating her in a film of gray filth. She lifted her mask
and took another measured swallow from her water skin though it was too warm to
even pretend it was refreshing.

What I would give for the slightest wind.
Anything
to stir the air and grant the tiniest relief from the heat would be welcomed.
They had many miles to go yet today. She almost missed the desolate views the
smoke obscured.

Grefan guided Roth today. One of Anton’s nephews,
he was one of the better drivers with an intuitive grasp of every little detail
to keep the mastodons moving forward. He had a strong resemblance to the master
handler, with lank black hair that clung to the sides of his boxy face and
rivulets of sweat clearing channels down his neck and bared arms that were
decidedly less hairy than his uncle’s. He hummed to himself between making
slight adjustments to the mastodon’s direction, a tug on a rein here, a
reassuring pat on the beast’s forehead there. Tyrissa still marveled at how the
handlers managed such precise control over the beasts. One of the netted
pockets near Grefan bulged with a water skin and a rusted smith’s hammer.
Blades were scarce today among the caravan in favor of anything blunt and
heavy.

Hali rode between them. The robed woman wore no
face mask and kept her hood up, unaffected or unconcerned with the heat and
smoke.

Tyrissa finally had to ask: “Why aren’t you
wearing a bandana?”

“I don’t need one,” Hali said. Their little game
was long over, but the woman was still as taciturn as ever.

It was the last piece Tyrissa needed, so she went
right for her main suspicion.

“You’re Pactbound, aren’t you?” She saw Hali’s
shoulders draw up and tighten. The woman didn’t look back at her. She simply
sighed.

“What gave it away, child,” she asked, sounding
unsurprised.

“The way you talk. How you move. How you hide
yourself. You feel different.” Tyrissa spent the last couple nights considering
this. Mostly it was the
feeling
and those strange tugs she felt in her
mind that pulled her towards Hali. They were more than curiosity, more than
lucky shifts of attention.

Hali shifted her feet and turned to face Tyrissa,
staring her down with a look of pure iron, hazel eyes suddenly stern instead of
pretty. “I could say the same for you.”

How could she know?
Tyrissa looked down,
away from Hali’s gaze. She barely knew herself.

“How…”

“Young ladies don’t travel halfway across the
world without a good reason at their backs or in their hearts. Let’s just call
it intuition.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“You regret it and are uncertain.”

“Yes.”

“But you consented, no?”
Consent
. She
spoke the word as if it was all there was to say on the matter. Tyrissa nodded,
though didn’t say how it was under somewhat extreme duress. She didn’t have to.
Something approaching pity crossed Hali’s face, a flash of lightning across a
statue.

“Tyrissa,
They
don’t care about your
little doubts after the fact. You agreed. You accepted their gift. You have no
choice but to uphold your end of the bargain.”

“I just…”

“Stop. You don’t have to hesitate anymore. You
want my advice, from one to another?”

Tyrissa nodded, though she doubted Hali had as
much experience as she claimed. The woman looked at best a few years older than
Liran. But she would take any advice, any at all.

“Embrace it.” It was the most passion she had
heard in Hali’s voice.

Embrace what? It’s easy for you to say Hali.
You know what your gift is.

Hali’s cool self-assurance was grating, and
Tyrissa buried her jealousy with another question.

“Which are you, Hali?”

“Life.”

Lifepact. Healer. That explained the perfect
health of the mastodons and the disregard for her own well-being. She didn’t
have to care. All the same, Tyrissa expected someone with a Life Pact to be
warmer.

A stiff breeze finally stirred the air, but it
brought no more respite than a bellows pumping a furnace, preserving the heat
and drying sweat. Tyrissa found it a poor exchange. However, the air began to
clear and Tyrissa tugged down the bandana to fall around her neck. The air was
hot but fresh compared to before, and she took in a grateful, cleaner breath.

The wind carried away the haze to the west and
slowly revealed a view of hell on earth.

On their right the land sloped away from the
road, sinking into a basin of cracked, blackened ground. There was nothing but
the wake of a wildfire. As visibility grew so did the enormity of the charred
landscape. The air rippled from heat as wisps of smoke danced about on the
haze-clearing zephyr above the smoldering embers that dotted the plain. Flocks
of emberhawks wheeled about in the sky, many shifting course to join the
caravan’s existing entourage.

“Welcome to the domain of char and ash,” Hali
said. “Where our world is penetrated by the—”

“Elemental Plane of Fire,” Tyrissa finished. She
knew of planes and domains from the stories. Planes were fantastic parallel
realms where the native element held total sway. Worlds covered in water, ruled
by death and decay, or continuously burning in an endless worldwide bonfire.
Domains were scars upon their world, where the planes’ energies poured in and
warped the land to conform to an altered nature. Tyrissa squinted into the
distance, seeking evidence of the domain’s intersection, but could see naught
but the charred plain. The land looked as if it were being consumed, the sunken
basin a patch of earth drained of vitality.

“Where is the actual domain?”

“Many leagues from here. This is an extension
where the domain’s reach grows outward. The merchants say it gets closer to the
Heartroad every year, a probing finger of conflagration, as if it knows there’s
a road here. Something to destroy.”

“Who made it?” Domains never occurred naturally.
They were the mistakes of men or the ultimate goal of renegade Pactbound. The
villains she feared she had the potential to become.

“The ancient fools of Vordeum,” Hali said with a
flash of fervor in her quiet voice. “
This
is their true legacy, their
heartlands reduced to a scorched husk. When you carelessly touch the flames you
get burned. When an empire carelessly touches the flames, the world burns.”

“You sound almost as if you were there.”

“Not quite, but I can relate. If the winds are
right, ash will choke the skies and fall as rain as far away as Khalanheim or
the Jalarni coast.”

Shouts arose from the caravan.
“Elementals on
the right!”

Grefan stood and pulled Roth to a halt and Anton
did the same atop Regun. The mastodons grumbled, sensing the incoming danger,
the sharpening of the mood. Roth trumpeted a blast that drowned out the other
rising alarms and caused the platform at Tyrissa’s feet to rumble like a
fleeting earthquake. Tyrissa scrambled over to where her staff was stowed,
sliding it out from beneath the ropes. She scanned the western side of the
caravan and saw… nothing. A false alarm? Below, guards and merchants alike
readied weapons and drove the wagons closer to the
North Wind
. Above,
the emberhawks had begun to circle.

“Would you like to see a magick trick?” Hali
casually drew her dagger, a thin length of steel worked into curved waves, and
slid it across her palm. Instead of red, her blood oozed out a pale orange, the
color of tree resin. She sheathed her knife, reached into a sleeve and pulled
out a small packet of white paper the size of a small coin. She broke it open
with a fingernail and seeds spilled out, falling into the open, amber wound.
Hali clenched her fist, and Tyrissa felt that slight tug in her head again,
stronger than before, like an invisible thread between the two of them. Hali
reopened her hand with a flash of showmanship and the wound was gone. Three
creeper vines emerged from her sleeve, twisting around her hand, enveloping it
in fresh-grown green.

So the tugs were a warning, a sense of nearby pact
magicks at work. The mental admission was liberating.

“Eyes up, Tyrissa,” Hali said. “They’re coming.
Try to put that staff of yours to work.”

The dead plain was
moving
. Numerous fires
burst into being and the ground rolled toward the caravan, an avalanche moving
uphill. Fiery orange threads ran through the tumbling chaos, a vast web of
flame binding the animated stones together. The flow coalesced into dozens of
rolling balls of rock and charred debris, each burning from the core with a
harsh, evil fire. They spread out to attack the length of the caravan, trails
of smoke in their wake. Above, the emberhawks screeched and flared alight,
diving towards the caravan like a meteor shower.

A wedge of six mounted caravan guards rode to
meet the rock swarm. Kexal rode at the front with a war hammer held high and a grin
splitting his face. The elementals moved as a cascade, some with legs, other a
constant roll, their cores pulsing. A cluster rolled to meet the riders and
they met in a cacophony of shouts, cracks, and horses’ screams. Others
elementals split away and bounded into the air, crashing down among the wagons
and setting them aflame like the tinderboxes they were. A thin haze returned as
the attack engulfed the caravan.

A nearby screech brought Tyrissa’s attention to
the mastodon as an emberhawk landed at the rear of the platform. The creature
was an uneven collection of bones and slivers of stone in the shape of a bird.
It hopped about the saddle, clawing away and leaving smoldering streaks of char
and setting small fires. Tyrissa twisted in place to bring her staff down on
the bird and felt the crunch of brittle bones as the creature splintered to
pieces, flames winking out in an instant. They were even more fragile than they
appeared. A strange chill washed over her, a fleeting cold wind in the stilled
air. Tyrissa scrambled to stomp out the flames created by the bird, and kicked
its corpse over the side of the mastodon.

The platform shook as one of the elementals
crashed atop it between Grefan and Hali. The elemental wore a slender, nearly
human form, and flames licked out from its feet. Ropes began to smolder,
threatening to loosen the entire harness. Grefan was focused more on control of
the mastodon than the creature of rock and flame at his back, and the world
swung left as Roth lurched to the side, swinging his tusks at an unseen foe on
the ground.

The elemental swung a limb of smoldering rock at
Hali. She made no move to dodge, letting the blow slam into her. The vines
surged out from the impact, smoldering as they entwined the elemental’s arm.
The cord of flame at the center of the limb was snuffed out, and the rocks fell
away in a tumble of smoking plant life. Hali pushed ahead, ignoring the burns
on her skin and flames licking at her robe, to reach into the center of the elemental.
The vines surged outward, burning and coiling through the web of fire and
stone. The elemental tried to lurch away, but the two were entwined. Hali then
threw herself off the mastodon, pulling the elemental with her down to the
stones of the Heartroad, twenty feet below. Through it all Hali uttered not one
cry or gasp of pain.

Tyrissa helped Grefan put out the scattered
flames before looking over the side. Below, Hali stood amid a pile of
smoldering stones and vines. She moved as if unharmed by the fall and ignored
the blacked patches of skin on her vine-less arm.

A cluster of burning debris rolled toward the
fore of the
North Wind
, a jumble of limbs and joints. The elemental began
crawling up the hull, setting small fires as it climbed near where Roth’s
harness connected to the land barge. Tyrissa glanced around the mastodon,
seeing that Roth was clear and Grefan had his aged hammer out, ready to hold
the defense up top.

Tyrissa went to the rear of the platform where
the rope lines that lead to the
North Wind
connected to the harness and
platform. The lines were pulled taut. Just right.

I’ve always wanted to do this.

Uttering a quick prayer Tyrissa jumped between
the lines, hooked her staff above them and held on for dear life as she slid
toward the
North Wind
. The buzz of the rope announced her as she crashed
feet first into the elemental. Fragments of the creature went flying, the thin
cords of flame severing with angry hisses. Both of them tumbled down the hull
to the ground.