Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (28 page)

With the modern additions and comforts dulled
away by the darkness, the university’s fortress past reemerged by night. It was
an illusion of security. The complex had dozens of entrances, many without
gates or locks and it would be impractical to guard them all. Tyrissa had proved
that herself when she slipped in and reached the library unseen. The Talons
focused on guarding the observatory itself, the round tower of pale, smooth stone
that rose twice as high as the squat, old thing Tyrissa occupied. Many of the
tower’s windows had light shining from within, a shadow crossing by every so
often to mark the passing of a guard.

Tyrissa’s lone vigil stretched from one hour and into
two. She paced a circuit around the old tower, running one hand along the tops
of the battlements, her fingertips coming up with a layer of grit that she
brushed against her trousers, leaving little darker streaks in the charcoal
colored fabric. Aside from two pairs of Talons patrolling the gardens around
the base of the observatory, the university slept. Not once did they look up to
see that they had an extra set of eyes watching over the grounds. Smoke rose
into the sky from the now doused fire on the south side of the city, the
riftwinds carrying the haze westward. But the water brigades would find no rest
tonight, as another fire had started near the center of the city, in Crossing.
Tyrissa looked closer at the strings of streetlights that intersected at
Crossing Square, making sure the fire was far from the home she shared with
Liran.

Nothing continued to happen. Doubts began to
build up in her mind over the last hour.
Could I be wrong?
Was the trap
on the wrong side of being too obvious?

Then came the sound of metal against brick, then again
and a third time. Tyrissa looked down along the northern rooftops and saw a
trio of shadows creeping along the tiles. The shadows resolved into cloaked
men, each with a compact crossbow and a brace of bolts across their backs. They
crawled to the central peak of the roof and spread out, two lying flat and the
last crouching and keeping his eyes on the tower looming above them. In the courtyard
below, a pair of Talons patrolled though the low hedges of the gardens,
oblivious. The prone crossbowmen took careful aim, anchoring their weapon
against the peak of roof tiles.

“The roof! Snipers!”

Her warning was too late. The crossbows snapped
in unison and a mortal scream pealed out below as one of the Talons jerked and
fell. His partner ducked below the hedge row and yelled toward the tower, the
words unintelligible. Dark shapes flowed through the gardens as the rest of the
Thieves made themselves known, two descending on the remaining Talon and
silencing him with a flash of steel. The rooftop snipers reloaded and were
joined by a fourth, his arrival announced by the flutter of wind-tossed cloth. Vralin
landed on the rooftop, as if carried by an invisible hand.

One of the upper windows of the tower slammed
open above them, glass rattling in its frame. Another crossbowman appeared in
the window and rained down three rapid shots faster than anyone could reload.
The wet sound of one shot hitting its target cut through the scattered shouts
from the gardens below. The kneeling Thief returned fire but hit only stonework.
One of the prone snipers let his crossbow slide away as he curled around his wound.

Vralin paid no mind to his wounded ally. He crossed
the rooftop in a single too-long stride and launched into the air as if fired
from a crossbow himself. The Windmage ascended to the top of the observatory
tower in a graceful arc, landed atop the dome, and slipped into the gap around
the protruding telescope.

How am I going to get some answers out of him?

The man in the tower window retreated into the
building after exchanging another round of shots with the Thieves on the roof. A
second sniper went down, a bolt stuck prominently through his leg. The third turned
to help him and the first wasn’t moving at all. Cloaked shapes swarmed up to
the main entry to the tower, a set of arched doors on the north side. They kept
to cover and no one approached. A series of white flashes leaked through the windows
flanking the entryway. Then the doors swung open and a man wearing a Talon uniform
waved the waiting Thieves inside. An inside man. The pack of cloaked figures
drew steel and charged into the tower.

A surge from below and a wind from above.
And
she stood far from the action, powerless to do anything but watch. It would
take too long to make her way down to the gardens and there were far too many
of them to make a difference.

If Vralin flew in, he’ll fly out.
She
could catch him then, though she ignored the nagging question of what would
happen if she did. Tyrissa waited at the corner of the old watchtower, glancing
down to reassure herself that the drop to the rooftops was only somewhat
dangerous. The minutes stretched on, demarcated by distant shouts and shattering
glass from the lower levels of the tower. White smoke drifted out of the open entry
doors to coil through the bare, brown skeletons of the hedgerows and around the
feet of the two Thieves that kept watch outside. Tyrissa spared a look at the
city as she waited and saw that more fires had broken out in scattered places
across Khalanheim. The Thieves were carrying out their promise in full.

A window on the east side of the tower shattered
outward, glass shards raining out into the night air. Vralin followed,
gracefully diving out the window, a short sword in one hand and a dangling sack
held in the other. Animated creeper vines pursued him out of the window and came
close to ensnaring the Windmage in mid-air, but Vralin twisted about and cut
away the nearest tendrils. He rolled as he hit eastern rooftop and stood
slowly, looking dazed from the hard landing.

This was her best and only chance. Tyrissa leapt
over the wall of the tower, landed in a crouch and launched into a sprint, her
feet ringing off the roof tiles. As she ran she saw a figure appear in the
broken window that was now fringed with limp vines. The same man as before, he
lifted his crossbow and sent another volley of shots thrumming at Vralin. Sudden,
fierce winds whipped out across the rooftops, lifting away loose tiles and
causing the bolts to careen off course. Showers of fragmented tile work jumped
into the air as none of the bolts struck true. Vralin sheathed his blade,
shouldered the sack, and darted to the outer edge of the roof. She was almost
on him and reached a hand over her shoulder to her staff. He didn’t seem to
have seen her. She had one good chance.

Twenty feet below this side of the roof lay a street
that was little more than an alleyway on the east side of the university’s
walls. The gap to the row houses across the alley was short enough to jump, if
you were reckless. Or a Windmage. Just as Tyrissa drew near, her staff whirling
forward in a single debilitating smash, Vralin leapt across the gap to the
neighboring buildings as if it were nothing. She struck the roofing tiles, the
force cracking them into pieces.

Vralin landed on a thin balcony crowded with
clothes drying on a line. He spun in place and a dart streaked her way. Tyrissa
barely caught the glint of metal flying through the darkened air and threw
herself to one side, landing dangerously close to the edge of the roof. She
cried out in pain as the dart went deep into her left shoulder. With that, Vralin
wasted no more time with her and turned away to climb up to the flat, connected
rooftops of the row houses. He vanished into the night.

Tyrissa clenched her jaw and pulled the dart out,
a wash of blood following in its wake. She pressed a palm against the flow,
fingers griping the dart’s handle and teeth still held tight as the wound
closed itself, the skin and muscle underneath stitching themselves back together
with all the pain of the initial wound. Tyrissa pushed back from the edge of
the roof and waited for her Pact to work its magick. Behind her, the courtyard still
rang with the metallic clash and guttural shouts of the melee in the tower.

One chance and she was too slow and had missed
it. Pulling away her bloodstained hand, she looked at the dart that almost
killed her. A few inches in one direction or another and it would have struck
her heart or neck, wounds she doubted her healing could overcome. She turned
the dart over. The handle had a distinct design, like a thin cyclone of air. Tyrissa’s
blood went cold.

It was the same design as the knife imbedded in
Tsellien’s neck.

Tyrissa left her questions for later. She stood
and let the dart fall from her hand to clatter against the rooftop. She set her
staff on her back, the metal clicking to the harness under her coat. She took
two strides, leapt across the gap to the balcony and hauled herself up to the
roof.

She would
make
another chance. If she had chase
down the wind, so be it.

Tyrissa could feel him ahead across the darkened
rooftops, a tenuous sense of magick, an invisible trail in the air. Vralin ran
straight for the Rift, descending the giant’s stairway of linked homes from the
heights of the university to the creaking mills that lined the great canyon. Tyrissa
hardly needed to see the faint flickers of cloth and shadow in the distance to
give chase, and ran after him with reckless abandon. She let the Pact guide
her. If it was going to pull her through life towards a destination unknown, it
might as well make itself useful. The rooftops flew by as she vaulted over vents
and dividers, her boots crunching through grime and dirt. In that weightless
moment at the peak of a jump the city of Khalanheim seemed to stretch out
around her like a tapestry crafted of light and shadow. There were more fires
now and those multiple isles of red-orange light lent the night sky an
appropriate bloody glow.

Against all odds she was gaining on him. As the
rooftops leveled out at the base of the hill, Tyrissa saw a second shadowy
outline of a man spring up from nowhere to join her quarry. Vralin stopped and
spun in place, and soon she could hear the distinct ring of steel on steel. He
was popular tonight. Two shadowy silhouettes swirled around each other and
though her view was blurred by distance and motion, Tyrissa could see and hear
that not all of their exchanges ended in a neat, ringing parry.

As she drew near, girding herself to join the
fray, there was a desperate, guttural shout from the dueling shadows. A blast
of savage wind containing all the condensed strength of a summer storm tore
across the rooftop. Tyrissa felt as if she ran straight into an invisible
padded wall. Her skin flushed with warmth and her gut tightened into a knot, as
her Pact absorbed the magicks on the air and spun them into their opposite. Wind
into Earth. The gust threw Vralin’s assailant aside to crash against the
sculpted gable of the row house. In a blink, he vanished into the darkness of
the rooftop, adding a second brief sensation of magick in Tyrissa’s head. Another
Pactbound, one of the Shadow.

Vralin stood alone on the rooftop, finally still
for a moment. His breath came in ragged gasps, with one hand pressed to his
side. The other held a thin dueling sword, its point drooping downward. The
sack of whatever he stole from the observatory sat near his feet, its contents
about two feet long and egg-shaped. When Vralin turned to watch Tyrissa hop
over the low dividing wall and raised his weapon to greet her, it was the first
time she saw him move with anything less than a perfect, airy grace.

“Persistent aren’t we?” Vralin never met her gaze
for more than a split second, preferring to eye the shadows and corners of the
rooftop. A gentle breeze swirled around them. Tyrissa could feel the wind
seeping into her skin, the weight in her gut growing in response. Vralin had to
notice how the winds weakened and died around her. Perhaps he didn’t see her as
a threat. Perhaps she wasn’t.

“You have a lot to answer for,” Tyrissa said,
waving her staff in front of her in a loose, defensive posture, ready for the
slightest hint of an attack. She hesitated, suddenly unsure of what she even
wanted from him anymore. If that Shadowpact would come back they could overcome
Vralin together, split the difference.

“You have no idea.” Vralin’s patted at his belt, searching
for another throwing knife and coming away empty. In the faint light cast up
from the street below, Tyrissa could see that blood darkened his free hand and
his clothes bore a collection of tears and cuts from a dozen close calls.

A flare launched into the sky from the streets
near the Rift, exploded into a ring of blue fire above the slowly turning
mills. Vralin took that as a sign to leave, snatching up the bag while turning
on a heel before running for the edge of the roof. Tyrissa sprang forward,
swinging her staff low but only grazing his leg. Vralin stumbled with a growl,
but leapt over the side of the roof, carried down to the street below on
another blast of controlled winds.

More bound by the laws of gravity, it took
Tyrissa precious seconds to find a ladder down to the alleys behind the linked
row houses, and then precious more to find one of the connecting tunnels that
ran through the ground floors of some buildings. She emerged onto the empty,
half-lit streets to see Vralin far ahead of her, running towards the mills and
the Rift with a hitch in his step. Any attempt at staying hidden was now
forgotten and he kept to the center of the street lights whenever possible.
Though wounded and limping, he outpaced Tyrissa as if he weighed nothing at
all, his injuries mere paper cuts. If anything, she felt slower, weighed down
by the twist in her stomach but somehow steadier, her feet hitting the street
with that innate assuredness she’d felt when traversing that Rift-side path
deep below the city.

The weight of earth,
she thought,
the
surety of stone.
If only she knew how to use it properly.